Thank All Time Low again for the lyrics bby. If you're into their music, new album Wake Up, Sunshine is chef's kiss
I think I'm upping this to M? I'm old and at 13 I wrote on a lawless internet so I may be a little out of touch with what ages tolerate at this point. Thank you for taking the time to read and especially leave comments! YOU GREAT.
II.
Why do I run back to you like
I don't mind if you fuck up my life?
.
It's been a long time since he's awakened so slowly, consciousness meandering in, lackadaisical. Calm is the first emotion, smooth and unperturbed as a vast and cloudless sky.
Sated senses.
Doesn't open his eyes; doesn't want it all to shatter. Most days his mental and emotional stability feels as garish as a carnival and fragile like vintage curios, tchotchkes littered and left under a dark, abandoned bed. Carefully adorned by dust.
So he indulges the satisfied moan on his lips: Lingers in the few fantastical seconds left, because when he opens his eyes he'll be desperately alone. The blanket draped partway over him, a last attempt at covering him up with some grace. Sheets, cold. A pillow missing from underneath his head while mussed scents of fruit and warm skin let him sink into a reality unfamiliar. The stale wisps of sweat from hours ago.
A sting on areas of his exposed skin, tiny fissures open to the air.
So when he opens his eyes, rolling onto his side and sees her long pink locks, fluffed from their tryst and winding down her back in patterns on the sheets, like some nymph fairy or forest creature, the fuck! that bursts from his lips is genuine.
He closes his eyes again, resisting the urge to curl up and writhe like burning paper and die, there, miserably in his bed. Opens them.
She's still there. The essence of a sculpture, the embodiment of the million reasons no one should ever get close enough to touch. Now he feels the air cosseting what he understands are scratches and realizes he must be on the set of a goddamn soap opera or groping around in a dream or being pranked by his best friend because there is just no way—
But her sleepy sound ruins him, a sweet exhale floating to him softly. Adjusting her hip, she sinks into a more comfortable dip in the mattress and nuzzles into the pillows — which, it hits him, she has three and two are his. The curve of her hip draws his gaze, and as his eyes follow the devastating slope of her waist, he has the urge to bury his face into every warm crevasse she'll offer. Her face is one thing, gorgeous to be sure, but he would don armor and launch a thousand ships to ardently defend the waning gibbous mosaic of her spinal column.
Taking a strand of pink hair in his fingers, he wonders and worries in one breath if he's finally joined the ranks of the clinically insane. He never does this; well he has, but not as a habit. Not in a way that's ever meant or implied anything to the other side of the equation. Gone before the sun is up, if not immediately after the necessary. This feels vulnerable, bewildering. Muscles aching, scratches stinging; he reaches for, but doesn't touch, the purple-brushed ovoid imprint in a dip above the curve of her ass.
He's sure he's never been so thoroughly used and loved as one and the same.
They lie there — the remnants of a shipwreck.
"The fuck do I do?" Groans again when he realizes he's whispered it aloud. Sakura doesn't stir.
He thinks about texting Naruto, then squashes the idea immediately and self-diagnoses post-coital brain damage. His friend wouldn't know what to do with this caliber of woman . . . ever. Period. Remembers the previous night, memories sapped in a cloying haze, wanting to press his rapidly stiffening cock against her and wrest her from sleep, bring her to the surface just so he can drown in her one more time, but just as quickly realizes — he's terrified of what she does to him.
She's not of this earth. She bends him easily, leaves him in tatters. A word for her he's not able to grasp, can't seem to pluck out of the ether, but it's on the tip of his tongue.
Sakura makes another sleepy noise, a bluster and a groan, and yanks the sheet over the rest of her, blanketing pale skin and gooseflesh. A quiet hmph! like an admonishment, as if she can hear his thoughts.
Gently sliding out of bed, grasping around for clothes; he realizes they're everywhere, his and hers littered at all parts of their journey. Pulling on a pair of pants, exhaling roughly at the fabric gliding over him like it's personally done him wrong, he figures coffee, at least, is the most inoffensive gesture he can think to offer.
.
.
.
She's awakened in a few beds that don't belong to her, but the warmth and comfort of this one is particularly intoxicating. Mind buzzing as her body lags behind, slow to wake, questions of thread counts float in the haze. Must be high, because Sakura's never been intimate with sheets quite like these.
A moment crystallizes; she remembers who she's met and how she's ended up here. The aftermath of their story has a masculine, earthy smell: A sharp sting of something like sandalwood against a muted foundation of sleep, skin, and salt. Green eyes snap open quickly and when she sees he isn't there, she lets out a groan of relief and presses the heels of her hands against them.
Shit she hisses, barely verbalized. Sitting up with those luxurious sheets pooling around her, the way that only someone taking the time to tuck another person in would yield. When she surveys the room in full, eyes darting to individual pieces informing the whole — clothing dropped in haste, small knick-knacks from the side table abandoned on the floor, and, sweeping her hand underneath the pillows and sheets, a missing cell phone — she rolls her eyes to the ceiling and buries her face into her knees.
"Can I die now?" she asks out loud, beseeching no one. The only answers she receives are noises coming from what she presumes is the kitchen (after all, she didn't fucking look when she stumbled in last night and they were unwrapping and opening one another, presents on a holiday), and he's probably trying to make her something to eat without knowing if she has any allergies or a last name. A growl in her stomach makes itself known, and so does the craving for coffee when the smell starts wafting through the door.
Slaps her palms to her cheeks. Get away from him. You will ruin him, what are you thinking—?
Sliding to the floor, she kneels and looks under the bed for her phone. Nope. Not in the drawer of the table or tangled in the sheets, and she starts lifting pieces of clothing and gathering them frantically in her arms to clear the area. When she spies it facedown on the floor, she drops everything and scrambles to it on hands and knees. Of course, it's heavy and cold from several hours of being off and pathetically dead.
Here's why you didn't finish pre-med, Sakura: You're dumb. Exhibit A, dead phone in a stranger's home.
Feeling like she's narrating her own hot mess of a life for a rapt audience, she continues her trek on hands and knees to the trash basket sitting politely in a corner, out of the way; at least he's not a complete sham of a well-raised man, and her suspicions of his background manifest in the expensive but understated items in his room, far nicer than she's ever had the pleasure of using. She snorts at the hypocrisy of her judgment, but as she grabs the basket and digs through it with intent, her vindication reigns. A sigh of relief. At least you didn't muck up that part. No surprises.
Still, she takes stock. A dead phone in a handsome stranger's home in an unfamiliar neighborhood and now she's here the next morning like some idiotic, pining lover in a terrible direct to television film.
It's terrible because she likes him; it's the worst because she's sure he likes her too.
Getting to her feet, she plucks at clothes here and there trying to find what she arrived with. Pants, she finds. Shirt, she does not. In a selfish moment, she snatches one that she can identify as his in milliseconds; the heavier fabric, the rich weight of expense. Too big for her, but a consolation prize for her poor soul because in her heart she knows she'll never meet another man that can treat a woman this well again.
She alights on a thought and searches for a mirror, though there's not one in here. Discovering the closed bathroom door, she hurries in and flips the lights and coughs loudly, eyes wide as she looks over her shoulder at her back. An intimate constellation, a feral tryst. With some satisfaction, she imagines the canvas of his skin and is only sorry she won't be able to see it. That she won't be able to twist him in knots and leave him a mess again.
Pulling his shirt over her head, she pockets her phone while heading to the window, determined to extricate herself from this mistake. Opens the curtains and throws the room into full daylight, the aftermath of them and their choices in bright relief. Everything bare and dashed on the rocks, a shipwreck.
There — a lock. It's well-worn and emits no sound as she undoes the latch. Wondering savagely if he's had a parade through here, she opens the window and starts maneuvering the flimsy screen screws. Popping out the screen, she hesitates, then leans it against the brick outside wall, supported by the black iron fire escape that's facilitating her getaway. It's not the first time.
Patting herself to confirm she's in possession of her phone, it's too late she realizes she has no shoes. No matter. Cabs still work in this city, and that'll be her only option with no way to call a rideshare. Clambering over the sill, she pauses in a low crouch to admire the brilliant view. Tangles of telecom wires and invisible airwaves, an entity that swallows the meek and hiding whole. But do cabs let you in without shoes?
A warm, strong hand grabs her wrist, same as last night. The urge to say let go is smothered quickly by the desire to let him take her, let him drag her back in, her tackling him like an animal finally succeeding in its kill. Green, bright eyes meet glittering charcoal, and the way he looks so effortlessly attractive, shirtless and cut and by god, so indignant at her climbing out of his fire escape — the heat that settles low in her body could catch fire at the strike of a match.
"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?"
"You look ridiculous."
It takes her aback, how brazen he is. His friend was apt in his assessment. "Excuse me?"
Pauses, eyes dropping to linger on her shirt, his shirt, and rising to meet hers again. Another wave hits her, low and slow, desire with an aggression that's almost frustrating. She swears he's not of this earth.
"Well," she sputters, "I'm in your clothes, so. And I have to go. This is so much more embarrassing than I expected."
Affronted, he pulls her a little closer. Looks away, casting about for the right words. "Listen, I don't do this often. This isn't a habit for me."
"Sure, me either."
A mordant tinge lingers in her response, enough that he's not sure how he's meant to take it. Inhaling and exhaling for a full moment (which she deduces he's learned in some form of therapy), he says, "Your phone is dead, and you're hungry. We were safe. And you can't climb out of my window in broad daylight with no shoes."
"Says who? Neighborhood watch?"
"This is a city. It's midday. People can see you."
"Call me a cab, then."
"I will if that's what you want."
She pauses, lips pursed. Because it isn't and she doesn't know why she can't just be nice.
"Come." Voice rich and low, such a fine texture. Fingers loosening on her wrist. He's still speaking, but everything after he says that is a jazzy blur because she's lost in thinking about how she did, more than once.
"What?"
He still looks haughty, but there's a smirk settling into the corner of his mouth. "I said, come and have coffee."
Resistance gone, she takes his hand so he can help her off the fire escape and back into the apartment. Firm and hot, like all of him, at odds with his chilly personality. Standing on the tips of her toes, she kisses him on the lips on the cheek you idiot! and flounces away, the sleeves of his shirt drowning her wrists and hands.
The fire in his face burns like old coals overturned; uncovered, simmering and smoldering for years.
They manage to have the first cup of coffee in absolutely stunned and awkward silence. She doesn't bring up that he's prepared it exactly as she likes and isn't ready to process that information, how long he's been listening to her show, what she's said that he's filed away for use. In contrast, he's sitting rigid in a way that betrays he hasn't had a woman sit at his kitchen table for many moons. As the minutes tick by, though, it softens, and they approach something akin to a companionable occupation of the same space.
He breaks the silence with his question, like it's torn from him and hurts to formulate. For someone so handsome, in moments he can be so awkward. "Would you like something to eat?"
She tilts her head in genuine surprise. Something in him flutters, frenzied and obsessive. A small smile, and she raises her eyes to his.
"If you're really offering. I don't want to overstay my welcome." Tapping her fingernails on the ceramic mug, she continues staring at him, through him the way of chipping at a sculpture. Pieces of him falling away, digging at the core. "Can I ask one favor, though? My only ask?"
He nods once, reflecting that he's not sure he could ever say no to a request from lips like those.
"I live across the city, you see," she says tentatively. "I work tonight, so if it's possible, I'd like to use your shower?"
Only now does her gaze skitter away, red high in her cheeks. Without responding, he rises from the table and disappears into a part of the apartment she hasn't yet seen. Before he turns the corner, she can see the canvas of his back, still fresh with the trenches wrought by her fingernails. He returns quickly with two towels, considerately including one for her hair. She almost hates his thoughtfulness; she can't sink into his life like this.
She's always known she's something tragic, someone who manifests and pulls chaos into her orbit. As she took her first breath she was graced with a name signaling her transience on this earth, bypassing the idea of endurance and crashing into the overcorrection. What type of mother lays that destiny at a daughter's feet? But it's not her fault, either, just her fate that's been a ringing in her bones every day she's lived.
Sasuke places them in her waiting arms. Something draws his gaze: His shirt has slipped over her shoulder and reveals a meshy, wine-shaded love bite on her collarbone.
Feeling more vulnerable than she likes, as if he can see the fated visions in her eyes, she brushes past him.
They wonder if they can untangle from one another, or if they even want to.
.
.
.
Sakura hears the jangling of keys in a door, and doesn't think much of it; perhaps he stepped out to find ingredients for breakfast. Wrapping herself in one soft towel and her hair in another, she again marvels on how nice everything in his home feels, ergonomic and crafted with opulence in mind. An invisible divide between the privileged and the poor. His choice to live above a bar in an average apartment, though, knots a wrinkle in her brain, piques her curiosity.
The footsteps hit different, and she freezes. Adrenaline dropping into limbs from open floodgates. Opening the shower room door without a sound, she silently drips down the hallway toward the intruder, musing that this would be a terrible, tragic, and stupid way to die. Unable to find anything that can function as a makeshift weapon, she squares her jaw and steals across the wood floor in pursuit.
Sasuke's standing at the stove idly managing omelettes when he hears it: A shriek and a slap, low in pitch, and the sound of something colliding with the wall. Cursing and fragments of sentences dancing in anger.
He's there in a flash to take in the scene, but it's not as he expects. Naruto bent at the waist with his hands over his face, cowering while Sakura clutches the towel around herself, dripping and livid. Pink hair long and wild, embarrassment starts to creep into her expression.
"I'm sorry! I heard footsteps that didn't sound like yours. I didn't — he didn't—"
"I jus' was going to borrow—"
"Naruto," Sasuke says sharply, "I've told you not to just wander in here. The extra key is for emergencies."
"Defi' emergency." Voice sullen, he keeps one hand flush over his eye while the other one starts waving. "I didn' know you had security in here."
"Why are you talking like that, idiot?"
"I may have hit him in the mouth," Sakura whispers.
"Gotta say, no one could kidnap you." Naruto gets to his feet, rubbing his palm across his mouth and wincing as it comes away streaked with red. "Look, sorry Sakura. It's cool if I call you that, yeah? He usually doesn't have anyone staying overnight and honestly, no disrespect, I'm super impressed you've put up with him this long. What are you both looking at?"
Sasuke's eyebrows jump high as Naruto's hand leaves his face, revealing the red, stunning beginning formations of an eventual black eye. Sakura covers her open mouth with her fingers.
"Don't feel bad, he's been hit before. Trust me." Sasuke jerks his head toward the kitchen. "Get in there and get some ice."
"I'll help him," Sakura says, frowning. "Let me dress."
She pivots, feels resistance, his rough fingers on her shoulder.
"Sakura."
She recognizes the glitter of curiosity, entangled with worry and something like trepidation. Does he know his eyes say volumes, more than the things that leave his lips? The only thing that separates his skin from hers is a towel whose well-woven fibers seem flimsy in the storm of whatever this is, whatever they are. Imagining herself filled to the brim by him, his hands gripping her hips again and those delicate bruises pulse, alive, wanting.
Clinging to the last bit of the shipwreck.
A hitch in her breath; she continues down the hall and feels his gaze somewhere between her shoulder blades.
Little does she know he's imagining his lips on every vertebra in her spine.
.
.
.
"Dude."
Sasuke doesn't answer, doesn't want to dignify him with a response.
"She's still here. Usually they're out with cab fare before the sun is up."
Pouting, Sasuke slaps a bag of frozen fruit onto Naruto's eye and ignores his ow, shit!
"What did she do to you?"
"Naruto—"
"Have you looked at yourself?"
Pouring three mugs of coffee from a french press, Sasuke sighs and ignores him. Leave it to his best friend to burst into his life and try to analyze it. Though come to think of it, it's the playbook for all his pivotal and destiny-altering moments, including the girl in his shower, wearing his clothes, who apparently throws a mean right hook. The sense of unreality is starting to wear on him.
"You look like you had a fight with a wood chipper and gave it as good as you got. And enjoyed it, somehow."
"Fuck you." Sasuke wishes he had put on a shirt. Too bad she's conscripted one of his favorites.
"I think it's awesome. It's about time you enjoyed something." Squashing the malleable, melting fruit bag in his hands, he drops it back on his face with a dulcet Ahhh!
"Why are you here?"
"Can't I just hang out?"
"We 'hang out' all the time."
"Welllll," Naruto begins, and Sasuke is now sorry he's asked. "Shikamaru is with his 'girlfriend' who I think doesn't exist. He never brings her around, anyway. Get this - he said her job is designing boat sails. What? That's not a real job."
Adding an inordinate amount of sugar to one of the coffee mugs, he stirs it and sets it on the table in Sakura's spot. "I can see why he doesn't bring her around you. You're obnoxious."
"Well maybe he's afraid she'll see you and forget about him. Handsome jerk. If you mess up with this woman, I'll scoop her up."
Returning to the stove, Sasuke flatly responds, "You'll have two black eyes if you try."
When Sakura returns she winces at Naruto. Hovering a little, she starts in with a litany of advice. "If you have double vision or a headache or anything, please go see a doctor."
Naruto grins, flashing his pointed canines. "You didn't hit me that hard. Promise." Sighing as he sinks into a seat, he readjusts the makeshift ice pack with another moan. Reaching for the coffee cup, he continues. "You talk about that stuff on your show sometimes. Medical news and psychology. Did you go to school for it?"
The fingernail tapping returns. Sasuke plates food and listens hard.
"A lifetime ago, I was on a pre-med track. It didn't work out. Now I do . . . this, I guess."
"Don't look embarrassed," he says, fixing her with one bright ocean eye. "That's way more ambition than I've ever had. Both of us are sort of just here too; here from out East."
She smiles softly, moves her mug to let Sasuke place a plate in front of her. Hunger roils in her stomach, hunger she's unaware she was feeling. "Both of you? Is that where your families live?"
For the first time, Naruto pauses in his chatter, stabbing a forkful of egg. By the way Sasuke's knuckles clench around his coffee, she suspects it's a tactical delay.
"We grew up together. So, our parents are — well, they're gone. I don't have any siblings, just one cousin who's decent. Sasuke — ah man, do you want to explain or—"
"My parents are dead." Sasuke says this with the flat tone of reciting a passcode or grocery list. Sakura lets the mug rest on the table, unable to hold it up. "I have an older brother."
He lets it stop there, decides to take a bite of food. It's a while before Sakura tries to pry. "You and your brother?"
"We don't talk." Clipped, the end of the discussion. She takes the hint.
Naruto frowns at him, then hitches a grin on his face as if he can brighten the room with sheer optimistic will.
"So how about you?"
Still grazing her fingernails against the ceramic, she musters up a small, awkward smile in response. "Unfortunately, my parents have also, erm, passed away. Though even before that, we had trouble getting along. I was a stubborn child and wanted my life to go a certain way. But some of my weaknesses led me off the path and here I am now."
"Siblings?"
"No. One really good friend; better than I deserve. You remind me of her, a little."
Naruto's eye softens around the edges, cold drops from the frozen fruit trickling from his forehead. Sasuke pushes food around his plate, not meeting her eyes.
"Sorry," she says hastily. "Really bringing down the mood. I didn't mean to put you two in a position to explain."
Naruto waves it away with a smile. Sasuke raises his eyes to hers, and she obliges, both trying to suss out the secrets of one another's hearts in a spiraling silence as Naruto begins to shovel egg into his mouth.
"I know we all met in a weird way," he says, speaking around his food, "but sometimes I think people are meant to meet each other. Like this, I don't think it's a coincidence. Now, you two have met and, you know." Waves his fork to fill in the blanks. "All thanks to me, of course."
Sasuke's response is a faint blush, and he falls upon his food for something to do. Sakura does the same, but not without watching him with sharp, bright beryl eyes. Depending on the angle you were graced with, ever shifting, it could be an expression of wanton desire or rapacious hunger.
And it exists on a line so thin and imbricate.
When everything's cleared, when Naruto's on his way out, he gives Sasuke a significant look, one that Sakura's sure he's received countless times. It's a don't fuck this up, it's a don't let her go admonishment that she's familiar with herself.
Stealing her own shoes from the entryway with a guilty look, she waits until he's departed down the stairs and slips out Sasuke's front door, darting to the opposite end of the hallway.
So when Sasuke's finished with dishes and finds the door standing open, first he shakes his head and shuts it, assuming Naruto's the culprit. It's only as he finds everything starkly empty and echoing does he realize she's gone.
An unfamiliar pain in his chest leaves him with clammy hands, a hollow feeling. Her charging phone is still on his counter, flickering intently with the continuous receiving and regrouping of several messages as they flood in. The silence. Being used as a cadaver for inexperienced anatomy students may hurt less than whatever emotion is choking him now.
A reticent knock at the door, then another slightly firmer. When he opens it and sees her standing there, it's the last night all over again; the impulsivity to exist in her orbit, entangled so closely they can scarcely separate again. A leftover flush in her cheeks as she asks to come in, a sheaf of what looks like his mail in her hand.
"I do that sometimes - bad habit." She says this in a voice barely above a whisper. Leans back against the door until the lock springs back into place, eyes on him like she's pinning him up by the limbs. As she advances, he lets her pressure him back into the kitchen, thoroughly in her spell. Tossing the mail on his table with a somehow poignant plap! He feels the legs of a chair brush his calves and rocks on his heels as she continues, arms crossing as she grasps the hem of his shirt and removes it easily, lets it slip out of her fingers and smooth out on the cold floor, the undulating motion of a snake. "I leave without warning, without saying goodbye."
Dark eyes take in the residual mess of her skin, the detritus of their hurricane. As the advance continues and his gaze starts at her ankles, lingers on the slope of her waist and finally reaches her eyes, he wonders again if humans can exist in a form like this.
It's predatory, and he braces for her lunge. Instead her thin fingers settle on his face in the ghost of the previous night, and he feeds her pieces of himself in hushed confidence. Speaking against one another's lips.
"I need you."
"I know."
"What the fuck is this?"
"Does it matter?"
Holding on by a tenuous thread, too close to drowning again with familiar strangers.
"No one's ever done this." An admission in a growl, low and angry. "Not to me."
"If it makes you feel better," she whispers, fingernails dragging lazily down his back, "I'm not used to this feeling, either."
She kisses him again, relaxing the pace, drawing out each movement. Capturing his tongue and lips in an indolent waltz to keep him writhing at her touch. The gentle caresses of his skin turn to grips and before he can react, he's landing hard in the chair and she's straddling his hips and arousal tightly with the potent satisfaction of a conquering mercenary. Eyes dancing and alight with the victory.
For a moment he sits stunned. She's always leading, however imperceptibly. But she makes him bold, feeding a fire he's not sure he can extinguish, anger and desire and the need to see her heart laid bare as much as she wants the inside of his.
A schism in a moment: His hand tangles in her long locks and pulls her to him roughly. Nothing gentle or forgiving in this second as he marvels, in some separate dimension, who exactly he thinks he is. As he exposes her neck to his aggressive mouth, she hums beneath him and her skin sears them both, red flush flaring up through a sieve of ivory. Skims her collarbones and breasts with the high, handsome bridge of his nose and continues his assault on her skin as his fingers tease the hem of her leggings, brush against parts of her in perilous heat. Shuddering against him when he does, a cadence of startled, stilted moans falling from her lips as music notes.
When his hands grip her hips and his fingers settle into the ghost of the wine-bruised imprints before, it tears his name from her throat.
He fears he can't survive another encounter.
In her raspy, radio, twilight tone of voice, she gives him an order.
"Show me who you are."
.
.
.
And who is he?
Burning his mail in the kitchen sink with the panic of a hunted man.
When he sees the return address in black and white, the name of the prison, over and over and over —
Every time, he piles them up and destroys the evidence, clutching his chest and wondering if he'll ever escape a tragic narrative like this.
Because his brother always finds him, one way or another.