Day 1: The beginning of us
Of playdates and dinosaur cookies
Sasuke bit his lower lip, feeling shy for the first time in his short life.
His eyes roamed the entire landscape in front of him, but they fervently avoided looking to his right side, fearful that if he did, then he might never look away again.
That´s was what his older brother told him would happen if he did, and Sasuke, barely a seven years old boy, was terrified just thinking he would spend the rest of his life feeling the whirlwind in his tummy, the warmth of his face and the tickling sensation in his throat that told him he would throw up at any moment just by looking at his new neighbor.
Instead he looked at Itachi, his seventeen-year-old older brother, who was sitting across from him as he talked animatedly to the girl's caretaker beside him about things he couldn't understand and didn't seem to match the rhythm of his lips.
The four of them were at the park, sitting at a picnic table taking a break from the playdate that the older ones arranged for the two youngers who were now having a snack before going back to play each for their part, like they had been doing it for an hour.
That day when both couples met, Sasuke had refused to let go Itachi´s leg, hiding his face in the fabric of his brother´s pants to avoid looking at them and let out a furious blow on the older's thigh when he heard him laugh with Kö - as he learned the man's name was - after Hinata - that's what she was called - asked them if his tummy hurt.
When Itachi and Kö left them in the middle of the playground to sit and watch them from a distance, Sasuke had done his best to avoid looking at Hinata, feeling inexplicably annoyed when she stopped trying to talk to him about what they should play.
But now it was difficult because they were sitting together and there were a lot of interesting noises that caught his attention but he couldn't look for where they were coming from, because if he did, he would have to turn to Hinata's direction and he would undoubtedly look at her.
He couldn't allow that.
So he keep eating the dinosaur cookies he´d brought especially for this occasion, feeling his tongue dry after putting a Pterodactyl, a Stegosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus Rex in his mouth at the same time, so he reached for the apple juice box he'd left on the table with one hand, but he squealed in surprise when his fingers collided with others as small as his, and before even think about it, he turned his head and froze when his gaze locked onto the pale eyes of the girl.
A few seconds went through in complete silence, until he began to cry.
He didn't speak to her until they were both twelve years old.
Honestly, it hadn't been his intention, the words that were hovering in his head had simply left his mouth without any warning.
"Digimon is better than Pokémon"
She looked at him in horror, as if he had just said the worst insult that could be said to a person, clutching the strap of the Jigglypuff crossbody bag in her hands.
He bit his tongue and instantly turned away from the metal fence that separated his house from the rest of the world, determined to walk back inside his house and put his face in the first bucket of water he could find, but before he took a third step he heard her speak.
"D-Digimon is a copy of Pokémon"
He slowly turned around, feeling personally insulted.
They both began to have a heated discussion about why one show was better than the other, launching arguments and counter arguments that were moved to the living room of his house after he invited her in to continue arguing while they ate cookies and drank lemonade as an Itachi´s courtesy, who simply walked into the room and put the refreshments in front of them when they were organizing a schedule in which they would watch both series together to showoff which one was the best.
Only a year later he realized, with the help of his brother, that he might be in love with her.
At fifteen he took her hand for the first time.
It happened while leaving school.
He was walking a few steps behind Hinata when some older boys, seniors, approached and started harassing her.
Like everyone in his class, puberty had caught up with Hinata.
But while the other girls in his grade had barely defined their waists or their breasts just started to grow, Hinata had had to adjust her clothes and change bra sizes at least half a dozen times.
And those changes certainly caught the attention of the boys at school and men on the street, who didn't care if she was still wearing her Togepi-themed stockings or the sheer number of pokemon-faced pins in her backpack, instead of stopping them, they actually seemed it cute and reason enough to try more insistently.
Sasuke was bothered by that, but he didn't interfere because he believed she should be brave enough to stop them herself.
Well, that changed when he saw how they tried to pull up her skirt.
With a sudden wave of fury and taking advantage of his recently developed high -average stature for boys his age- in addition to his robust body, he walked faster, pushing the boy who was most actively teasing her aside and grabbing her hand to move her away with fast steps from that place.
He only stopped when they arrived to the park and nearly collided with the ice cream man, just realizing her fingers had slipped between his and closed around. He squeezed her hand and stroked with his thumb as best he could in an attempt to comfort her when she rested her forehead against his shoulder, preventing him from seeing her face.
She mumbled something and he laughed, motioning for the ice cream man to come over them, letting her choose the most ridiculously large and expensive ice cream that this ice cream man could offer.
Later when they returned home, they watched a Pokemon marathon even though it was supposed to be Digimon's turn, as they had christened Fridays years ago.
Several weeks later, when she was no longer emotionally sensitive about what happened on that occasion, he confessed to her.
To his surprise, she did not reject him.
They started dating.
The first time they had sex, it was the night of the prom, which neither of them wanted to attend.
They were seventeen years old, but they both felt ready to take that step in their relationship.
And, well, they hadn't planned on doing it on that particular night.
Instead of going to the prom, they preferred to celebrate on their own by going on a date to the ice-skating rink in the center of town. He fell a lot, he wasn't afraid to admit it, he had humbly accepted his legendary inability to handle any kind of rollerblades that might exist, but ice-skating was one of Hinata's favorite activities, and he would sacrifice his butt any day as long as he could watch her laugh happily while trying to teach him to skate.
When they were finally exhausted they went out to eat and then decided to walk home in the cloudy night, ignoring the thunder that warned of the impending storm.
They were close when it started raining loudly, drenching them from head to toe hopelessly before reaching Sasuke's door and entered the house, where they were all alone.
They went straight to Sasuke's room. He pulled her towel over her head and began to dry her hair while Hinata took off her coat and helped him get rid of his. They hugged for a moment as they looked into each other's eyes, the space between them disappearing as their lips met.
But the defining step was taken by Hinata, who pushed him onto the bed to sit and then climbed on top of him, kissing him again as she worked to remove her blouse and unbutton his pants.
That night the cold parts of his body began to heat up with the touches they gave each other as they fused into one.
Having a long distance relationship was difficult, people always said it but they did not believe their relationship was so fragile that they could not bear a few kilometers between them.
But being in universities so far apart from each other proved to be a more difficult challenge than they could bear. They were barely twenty and twenty-one years old, adulthood was still very young for both of them, and the process of adjusting to this new life was proving more complicated than they had ever thought.
He didn't notice the decline in his relationship with Hinata until it was too late, but looking back, there was no other possible outcome.
The first few months there were many love calls, talking almost every night until one of the two could not carry on anymore. But the further the semester progressed, the more difficult it was to talk, the calls went from being daily to inter-daily, then only on weekends.
One call a week, one every fortnight or once a month.
When they talked… well, they didn't talk, they argued.
They argued over trifles or jealousy until one of them couldn't take it anymore and hanged up the phone without any warning.
Then it happened.
"I think we should break up"
Sasuke was livid upon hearing that.
His brain stopped registering the other words she said through the loudspeaker, and instead it repeated them cruelly over and over again, mocking him.
I think we should break up.
We should break up.
Break up.
He did not say anything and pressed the red button on his cell phone, wasted no time and blocked her contact from both his phone and any social network they might have in common and then threw the device against the wall, destroying it in one fell swoop.
He didn't sleep an eye that night, not the night after or the night after that.
And when he finally got to sleep, he dreamed of her.
Now Sasuke is twenty-six years old, he had finished his studies two years ago and returned to his hometown, got a good job and paid for his own apartment where he lived comfortably.
Hinata hadn't come back, not even for the holidays.
Kö had told him that she had stayed to do a specialty, that she was fine and happy. He wanted to see it for himself.
So he looked for her on networks just to remember that he had blocked her, so he unlocked her phone number- which he had never deleted, and even if he had, it would not be a problem, since he remembered every digit of her number - and he unblocked her from Instagram, her Facebook was gone, it seems she had deleted her account.
On Instagram there was nothing new, the last photo published had been three years ago, and reviewing the previous publications he noticed she hadn't deleted the pictures both of them were together.
He tried calling her only to find out she had changed her number, and that the one he was calling now belonged to an older man with a severe cough problem.
He didn't try anymore, there was nothing more to try.
He had to focus on the present.
He is now a lawyer, the uncle of three little terrors whom he loved with all his soul even though he constantly complained about how loud they were.
Soon they would be staying at his house to take care of them while Itachi and his wife went to another city to finish the transmissions for the adoption of a fourth child, the second that was not biologically theirs.
That's why he was at his childhood convenience store, the only one that still sold the dinosaur cookies that had him so obsessed as a child, which his nephews absolutely loved and demanded every time they visited.
He paid for a large quantity of them and thanked the clerk, opening one of the cookie packages for him as he turned to leave.
The automatic door opened and someone rushed in, bumping into him and knocking the cookies onto the floor. He was about to insult them, but that person beat him to it.
"I am so sorry! I'll pay for the cookies"
He froze, recognizing that voice instantly.
"Hinata?"
"Sasuke?"
His black eyes met her clear ones and the little breath that had remained inside was expelled from him. After years without seeing her, she still seemed like the girl - woman, he corrected himself - more beautiful his eyes had had the privilege of resting on.
"It's been a while"
He wanted to kick himself for commenting on the obvious; instead he bit down hard on the inside his cheek in the sneakiest way possible.
"Yes ... quite ..." she looked at the floor and so did he, where the cookies had already beaten the five second rule more than a minute ago "I'm sorry again for your cookies" she said, this time with a little humor in her voice.
"No problem, I have more" he replied, raising the bag in his hand, emphasizing his words with that action.
Silence fell between them, uncomfortable as it had been in his youth when he had refused to speak to her during all those play dates Itachi had made for him without asking, but the lack of words or active movement allowed him to observe her more closely, listing all of the characteristics that had changed during those years without seeing her.
Her plump cheeks were no longer as prominent, giving her face a more pronounced shape. Her eyes were still large and expressive, but even in the poor light of that establishment he could make out the darkened skin under her eyes. Hadn't she been sleeping properly? Was she working too hard? It had also seemed she had grown a little more, or perhaps he had shrunk, he was only sure that she did not reach the tip of his nose before. He couldn't tell from her baggy clothes - old habits hardly die - but she was probably thinner than before if her face was any indication of it.
Before he could continue searching for the differences between the her of the past and the present, the door opened again and they were both forced to move to make way for whoever came in.
"It was good to see you, Sasuke" she said and he could see the sincerity that was expressed on her face at her words. It was a goodbye, he knew it, and the storm raged inside of him as she walked around and past him, beginning to move away from him.
It was a full-blown impulse when he leaned back and grabbed her arm, sliding his hand quickly towards hers noting the lack of any jewels that could make him reconsider his actions, secretly grateful for the lack of any kind of rings.
"I know a place," he started, his brain working a mile for minute searching for the right words to say "It's near here and they serve decent food, maybe we should go there to catch up?" he said, increasingly unsure of his own voice and ending in a question, something uncharacteristic of his usually blunt attitude.
Instead of answering immediately, Hinata looked at him searching for something that he couldn't even guess what it was. Maybe he was wrong and she was with someone? Maybe she was looking for better words to reject him, she was that considerate.
He tried to lower his hopes, but it was difficult when her own hand closed momentarily around his before releasing it again, perhaps it had just been a small spasm, nothing intentional.
But when she smiled and her hand closed again, the weight of his shoulders and the nervousness of his body disappeared, being replaced with relief when she said...
"Lead the way"
Day one done!
I want to apologize if something was confusing; English is not my first language and I'm incredibly unsure of my ability to communicate in another language that is not Spanish –even in Spanish I'm reaaaaally shy-
This is the sweetest ting i´ve done in years, and it drane me!
For people who know me, they know how my writing is, so the most of the one-shots and drabbles of the month going to be more angust than romance. I also skiped days 2 and 4, and still writing day 5 (it's becoming longer than I thought) and haven't translate day 3, soooo a lot of work to be done.
I hope you liked it, and turn on the notifications! it is possible that the classification will change according to each day.
Thanks for reading!
