Cat and Mouse
The little mouse named Sakura Haruno was unintentionally toying with a big cat family. It wasn't the usual housecats or strays you'd find wandering the alleyways of Kohona.
Instead, they were the kind you only ever saw because they let you. Perhaps they were bored with stalking in secret. The kind that liked to use their paws to knock you about, watching intently as you struggled to get up and escape. Their claws had a way of snagging you just as you were about to reach safety.
Not that there ever really was a distance where you were truly safe from their teeth.
Sakura had just finished a double shift at the hospital and had been convinced by Naruto to join him and Sasuke for drinks. She'd been so busy that she skipped lunch and dinner, but she was too tired to care.
A drink sounded nice.
Especially after she had spent a good part of her morning chasing after a 7-year-old. The little boy with sandy blonde hair and dark freckles had gotten into the air vents to avoid getting a needle. The afternoon was a blur of surgeries and sowing up open wounds from the anbu team that she had found at the village gate in pools of their own blood.
As her feet carried her toward a familiar part of the village she tried not to think too much about the last time she'd been there.
She could still hear it.
The sharp inhale he'd taken when she had cupped him.
She tried not to think about it. She tried not to wonder about what other noises his mouth could make. When she had gotten home after spending another hour talking with her teammates at the dining table, the memory made her bed feel lonely.
She remembered the way Sasuke had walked her and Naruto to the door. She managed to put on her shoes quickly and while Naruto was putting his sandals on each foot she had reached for the doorknob.
Only her hand didn't make it to its destination and instead landed on the warm skin of Sasuke's hand. The fresh scent of rain and that intoxicating spice enveloped her as he moved to open the door for her. The heat at her back was just as warm as her fingertips.
And slowly, his skin slipped away from her fingers as he swung the artfully carved wood to the left of his body.
"Try it again." he said so quietly that she wondered if she had heard it at all.
Her heart quickened at his words and just like always, it was neither a warning nor an invitation.
She spun around and with speed, she snaked her right hand up to just below his right ear. He felt her middle finger rub deliberately hard against his skin.
Sasuke looked slightly surprised at the contact only to glare when her next words reached him.
"Try dodging."
And then dab of white on her finger that had appeared in front of his face disappeared behind her smirk almost as fast as her presence did from his home.
"Later bastard." Naruto's slap on his shoulder shook him from the trance he'd slipped into as the blonde slipped past him and into the summer night.
Sasuke closed the door and was left to look down at his hand in paranoia that electricity had collected there.
He desperately wanted to use her mouth as his palette.
Painting wasn't Sasuke's expertise, but his sharingan wasn't required to replay the scene of white being swallowed by pink.
Remembering the sensation of her cool chakra on his length did nothing but make his body temperature rise.
"Slippery."
Itachi's one-word statement startled Sasuke out of his thoughts once again. Sasuke turned to see his elder brother leaning against the wall. The older Uchiha's arms were comfortably crossed over his chest while his left leg was casually resting over his right. Sasuke's brows furrowed slightly in confusion only to receive clarification.
The corner of Itachi's lips lifted in amusement as he teased his younger brother further.
"Or was there another reason it took so long to catch her?"
Sasuke rolled his eyes and walked past him.
"Meddling perhaps, but you're above that aren't you?"
"Hn." Itachi made sure his voice gave nothing away and only allowed his expression to drop when he felt Sasuke's chakra disappear into his own quarters.
Sakura was getting closer to the Uchiha estate and the closer she got the more her stomach started to flutter. She looked down at her exhausted hands noticing the slight tremor in her fingers from the extensive healing she had performed that afternoon.
She thought back to the last time she had been in the Uchiha complex.
Her hands hadn't been tired during their race, she hadn't actually used them.
But for some reason her fingers had no strength to resist resting on top of the cloth-covered head of Sasuke's arousal.
Exhaustion, she mused.
The problem was that when she thought about the sound he had made against her ear, her mind offered the memory of Shisui's chest crushed against her own. Her morning teas had been sweeter than usual. Probably because she often lost track of how long she squeezed when the smell from the bottle of honey would fill her mind with the memory of his scent.
And she barely got her work done on days that sitting at her desk was no longer a productive environment. Her notes were messy on those days and her scalp had an itch she could not scratch. She had a curiosity about Itachi's grip strength that was going to get her in trouble. Was it stronger than the one of his brother? Sometimes when she closed her eyes she could feel the ghost of Sasuke's fingers fisted in her locs.
She needed to stop.
It had been two weeks of restless nights and frustrated slaps of her alarm clock.
She wasn't exactly sure what kind of game she had started with Sasuke. Her observation told her that he wasn't shy at all regardless of the reserved nature he owned.
She had so many questions about what exactly happened in the hallway, but she hadn't seen him since.
Her heart raced every time she saw a shinobi with black hair in the hospital. And she knew it was ridiculous and she knew her heart was too scared to ask the question it really wanted to.
She thought it was better to shield her heart from torment.
The black vest she was wearing did a better job of hiding the blush on her chest than the mesh tank top she was wearing underneath it. It was still early in the summer evening and there wasn't a chill but that 7-year-old from this morning had also managed to throw up on her red shirt once she'd pulled him out of the nurse's station vent.
She definitely needed a drink.
Looking up from the ground she realized her feet had already carried her to his door. Taking a deep breath she lifted her right hand into a fist and knocked on the door to Sasuke's home. She could hear a bright and excited yell from somewhere inside the complex followed by feet padding quickly towards the door.
She laughed when the door swung open and a tipsy Naruto attacked her with a bear hug.
"Sakura-chan! You're late!" his normally boisterous voice was slightly louder and his cheeks were tinted with the haze of alcohol.
"Hai, hai." she chuckled as he released her and moved to rush her body through the doorway.
"Come on Sakura-chan, we have to outdrink that bastard." Naruto's smile was easy and it made her feel like everything was normal.
Smiling, she slipped off her sandals and let Naruto drag her by the arm to the living room. She tried to ignore the increase of her heartbeat with every step closer to where she knew Sasuke would be.
And then she entered the living room.
Sasuke's eyes were the first thing she saw when she entered. Her heart did a tiny somersault when he nodded his head towards her in greeting. Determined not to stutter, she offered a polite greeting before Naruto dragged her down to sit on the floor next to him.
Sasuke was sitting across from her and she could tell he had already had a few cups. Dark eyes lingered on hers before breaking eye contact as his left hand shifted a cup of sake to her side of the table.
"Neh Sakura-chan, he thinks he can handle his liquor better than us."
A quiet snort escaped the beautiful man seated in front of her. She noticed how his hair seemed messier than usual, as if he'd just run his hand through it. His complexion was still fairly pale but she could see the slight tinge of warmth across the bridge of his aristocratic nose. She admired the barely visible freckles that hid there.
"Because I can." The raven-haired man offered as fact.
"Oh? Handle better you say?" she questioned with nonchalance.
"Shame about the yogurt then." The effort put into her fake disappointment was enough for Naruto to turn his head and cough into his hand to try and cover his laugh.
Sasuke's eyes narrowed at her before his right hand was pouring another cup of sake for himself. He grabbed the cup with his left hand and brought it to his lips. He didn't feel the burn as he poured it down his throat in one go.
Sakura tried to keep her eyes off the bob of his adam's apple when he did so. She chose to meet his stare and throw back her own. The warmth she felt in her throat did a little to ease its dryness from watching Sasuke's right hand use its thumb to wipe across his bottom lip.
And so they continued.
One empty labeled bottle became two, and two became three, and three became four, and all the while, two pairs of eyes filled to the brim with an unlabeled emotion.
The conversations were easy and the laughter was full.
She felt a little more than unsteady when she felt her bladder complain. She looked to Naruto who was animatedly telling Sasuke a story about a mission that the Uchiha offered a "Hn." to every now and then. Her heart warmed at the sight.
She smiled, lifted herself from her cross-legged position and excused herself to the washroom. Sasuke's eyes followed her clumsy rise and turned back to Naruto when she successfully left the room without too much difficulty.
Sakura enjoyed the warmth the buzz from the sake gave her. She felt free and all her stress seemed to melt away. Feeling a little too warm, she unzipped the black vest she'd modestly thrown on.
'That's better.' the cool air hitting her chest was a nice relief from the stuffiness of wearing extra material on a summer night.
She'd been so tired from her shift that it felt like the alcohol was hitting her harder than it should have. Skipping food that day was also doing a number on her tolerance.
It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, instead it made her rather giddy.
She lifted her right hand to the wall and use it to lightly steady herself. Her feet padded lightly across the wooden floors until she reached the washroom. She reached for the doorknob with her left hand but before she could twist the knob, it did so from the other side and swung open.
Her sense of balance was off and having expected to lean into pushing the door open she tilted forward and stumbled into a warm mass.
Spiced ginger and sweetness filled her nose as her warm face pressed into the hard contours of someone's body. To stop herself from falling she removed her right hand from the door frame and grabbed onto a strong shoulder.
"Oops." Slipped out of her mouth as she finally stabilized herself.
Chancing a look upwards, she was met with a vision of chaos.
Dark clouds were moving at a speed that called for a storm.
In her inebriation, she marveled at her view of the elements from the eye of the storm.
Or so she thought.
A hand had snaked underneath her open vest and around her waist with a speed that would make her head spin more than drinking a few more glasses of sake. She became shipwrecked when another warm hand caressed her jaw in greeting. It was odd that the hand at her back acted like an anchor.
Her warmth under Shisui's hands affected him more than the drinks she'd clearly had. The excuse to steady her was poor, even in his mind. His blood was beginning to simmer and now she was here in his palm. He'd spent countless nights sleeping on his stomach just so he could have a taste of something being pressed against his chest.
The bed was never close enough and it was too flat and not warm enough and not what Shisui wanted at all.
Like a little lamb, she had walked right up to the lion.
But curiosity killed the cat… right?
AN:
Was listening to "Movements" by Pham while writing this. The instrumental is chef's kiss and kinda rolls with the vibe of this story development. Lyrics are hit and miss tho, don't hate me if you listen to it and are confused. I'm one of those people who can literally only listen to beats and choose which lyrics to hear.
I think I'm figuring out how to build this dynamic
Reviews are for letting me know what you like and what you want to see?
When I finish the basic plot of this story I'm going to rewrite it with more detail