I'd like to thank the all-day thunderstorms for helping me wrap this up today. Intro lyrics by All Time Low (just bookmark this album I suppose), "Favorite Place" ft. The Band Camino. Credit where credit is due!
Please check the bottom for responses to some of the comments.
III.
"I hear the sirens West of 8th now,
Wonder if you're hearin' em too.
No, you can't be tamed, love—
And maybe I was wrong for this."
"Don't."
Sleeves buried in his shirt and back exposed to the stale, dank air of the locker room, his admonishment gives Shikamaru pause. In the middle of pulling it over his head and his friend's hand hovering in the air intent on, perhaps, touching whatever's presenting itself as a work of art and a decimation of his skin in one.
A long, low whistle, and he withdraws. "Can I ask if this girl is human?"
"Already did," Naruto quips, struggling with his shirt a few feet away.
Sasuke continues to dress without meeting their eyes, Naruto struggling with the correct way to put on his clothes while Shikamaru's mind generates its own kinetic heat, rifling through a catalogue of questions and discarding each as useless. A gesture of demurring acceptance, palms out with a shrug. Sasuke runs a hand through his messy dark hair, feeling again the prickling of heat on the back of his neck.
As if all the questions he muses on have already been asked, he just says, "And you met her for the first time, that night?"
"Leave him alone, Shikamaru." Naruto, finally fully dressed, slings his gym bag over his shoulder and claps Sasuke on the back. A quiet noise of irritation. "Oh, sorry. 'Sides, we keep hearing about this supposed girl you have and—"
"Not a girlfriend."
"Just a girl you spend most of your free time with, travel across town to see, won't invite us to meet."
"Can't imagine why," Sasuke mutters. Slamming the door shut and closing his lock a sharp snap, he moves so swiftly the other two start jogging to keep up.
"You're just cranky because no one ever impresses you; they never get to you. And now you haven't seen her for two whole days." Naruto puts the back of his hand against his forehead, fluttering his eyelashes in the way of a movie damsel, but it elicits no reaction except an angry twitch of his lips. "You must be miserable."
In habit, Sasuke slides his phone out of his pocket. Stomach twinges at the familiar area code, a poignant collection of numbers from his past; dialed from pay phones and friend's houses from muscle memory, then used in a steadily improving succession of shrinking technology. Eventually, forgetting the number itself is easy and acceptable. It's been assaulting his voicemail box and battery as of about 48 hours ago, so many notifications that they flash, regroup, and do so again. Clears them like flicking away annoying insects except the acid in his gut churns with impunity, a signal that his mind knows more than his body is willing to process. Blocking it seems like the most obvious choice. Hasn't picked up once because who answers unknown numbers anymore?
Naruto keeps up a steady stream of babble about his "sweet gains" interspersed with implications that Shikamaru's new lady friend doesn't actually exist and even tinier, more fleeting compliments on Sakura's attractiveness. Sasuke's had years to perfect the art of tuning him out as they take the leisurely walk back to their bar, but he broods exactly in the way he's expected to and it sparks his temper for reasons plentiful, not the least because yes it's a woman and yes she's been off the grid for two days while leaving bits and pieces of her puzzling life in his apartment and yes , she undoes him and demolishes any sense of his routine.
And the worst part is, it feels like the best mess that's ever happened to him; fuck knows he's had so many and they're things he's had to bury unfathomly deep. The calls are increasingly persistent, the letter forever burning in his heart. Alongside the girl that's fallen into his life, windswept, gorgeous, and ushering in tumult akin to a hurricane, these things seem as though they cannot possibly coexist.
"Uh, Sasuke?"
An uncertain tone reaches him, breaks through the haze. Habit and memory have carried them to the bar's back door, and there at the end of the brick alley a little to the left of the entrance, she's standing there, clasping her elbow with her hand opposite, bag strap crossing her chest. Weight teetering from one hip to the other and eyes on something far beyond reality, chin bouncing in time to beats and songs unknown. Absolutely average to any objective observer in ankle-length pants and strapped sandals and a green sweater wide on the neck, but her peeking collarbones and gentle lips mouthing lyrics which dissipate into the blessed, vivid dimension that must be her universe — well, Sasuke thinks it must be a wonderful place.
Realizing finally that it's Naruto who lobbed the undertone and also that he's ungracefully short-circuited, his best friend handles the interaction, waves and flashes a luminous grin. "Hey, Sakura!"
Her pink eyebrows raise and then a flash of green; just like that, the world aligns again when her eyes pass over him in slivers of seconds. Removing her headphones to rest them on her neck, she returns the smile teeth and all, raising her delicate wrist adorned with a pair of silver bracelets in a wave that undulates as the dance of a swan's neck. Sasuke is dimly aware of Shikamaru's eyes on him in a searching, scrutinizing way.
They congregate at the exit in a small circle, Sakura breathlessly saying, "I realized I didn't have your number, Sasuke; in fact all I have is the business listing for the bar!"
Speak, speak
Swallowing hard, once, he beats back the heat that threatens to sear his face and make him feel like a small child and this may be the first time in his life he desperately, seriously considers religion if only the wisp of a prayer will grant him the semblance of being sophisticated, or at least not such a fucking mess.
"I left some things at your apartment—" and Shikamaru's eyes politely avert, which is irrelevant because he's not an idiot. Sakura breaks off with delicate lilts of laughter to cover the implications. Naruto elbows both her and Sasuke at the same time; she humors him by sticking out her tongue. Pivoting, she flashes that bright smile at the unintroduced member and says, "I don't think we met properly the other day. I'm Sakura."
Shikamaru nods, eyes sharp and searching nearly on the border of being impolite. Noticing, something in her bright beryl eyes responds in kind, the erecting of gates to keep out strangers. A person too close. "Right. I'm Shikamaru."
Sasuke cuts through their small circle with purpose, and the others hear the jangling of metal keys. Unlocks it with his usual practiced and kinetic finesse, that slight fealty to the chivalrous and noble behaviors that bleed through in certain moments and lately only appear to surface around this woman unfamiliar.
With his eyes on hers, he steps aside and says, "Come in."
Sakura tucks pink strands of hair behind her ear, readjusting the strap on her shoulder; trails soft pads of fingers against his strong jawline and the abrupt trigger, the connection as their eyes meet, rings with the acuteness of an unexpected spasm. Heartbeat pounding in his ears.
"Thank you, Sasuke." Like the rustle of leaves, wafting in hot summer wind.
His best friend gives him a stupid, redolent expression, snickering as he passes. Contrasting starkly with Shikamaru's silence in which he raises his eyebrows but says and implies nothing of note as he files in.
Gathered behind the bar and settling in a semicircle teetering on the edge of awkward and casual, Sakura reaches across it to hand her phone to Sasuke; why they keep ending up with such safe space between them, careful and repelling magnetic forces in a cavorting dance with firm equidistance, is a reasonable question but of course the answer is easily known to the two involved and potentially obvious to a third, while the fourth waits at the pink-haired girl's elbow to exchange numbers next. The meticulous and vigilant orbit they do not, cannot break, because what awaits them if they stray and tumble off is that splitting of atoms, that concatenation of events so consuming. All swap and share and blithely comment on choice of wallpapers until each has fulfilled the other by modern ritual.
Sasuke wonders if she notices the numerous missed calls.
Sakura wonders if he notices the same.
"Now we're all just a phone call away," Naruto says, nudging her elbow. Beaming at an uncomfortable brightness, incandescent. Shikamaru folds his arms without comment. Sakura's eyes land on him as he does, surveying him with some inscrutable expression.
"I feel like you enjoy strategy games," she says to him. The smile on her face, Sasuke can tell, doesn't quite reach her eyes. Unsure if he's ever seen her falter a little on her charm, except how would you know, you've only known her for a few days. "Chess, maybe?"
For a tense second, perhaps a half of one, he doesn't oblige; then his mouth relaxes into an easy smile, reflecting the Shikamaru they know can be at ease and mild in a manner bordering on lazy indifference that's often so unfocused as to be rude. "Indeed. I prefer shogi, though. Not sure how you knew that," he finishes, with a wry smile.
Shoulders dipping a little, she releases tension of which she was unaware. "That did sound forward, didn't it? Sorry. I know me showing up like this is a little sudden. Weird."
"It's fine." Shikamaru's response is automatic, and his arms loosely unfold and instead a hand comes to rest on his hip. "Friends of theirs are friends of mine."
"You just strike me as someone who likes to get the measure of people first," she says, nodding. "Sharp." He concedes the point with his expression, a raised eyebrow and swaying nod. "Anyway. I'm sorry for leaving all my things in your apartment, it's really not like me. I came to pick them up."
She's redirected her attention and the conversation back to Sasuke, who immediately wonders where he should put his hands. Being the focus of her gaze is not unlike feeling as the target in a viewfinder, and, coupled with the difficulty breathing, makes him wish they were alone. With all eyes on him, feeling as though she's about to walk back this raucous affair, he decides to try to channel that boldness and fire she manages to stoke in his heart and mind, and other carnal parts of him, into giving her as good as he's been getting.
Removing the keys from his pocket again, he flips through them one at a time idly. A smirk settles in his lips — she stirs up something elemental, the ego he's worked to tamp down to keep himself anonymous and safe in this new place he's established as his home. The aspect of himself that when wielded pulls the attention of women, in particular, into his messy life. But his past, the narrative he's never desired has ruined so many things, and the ache to throw caution to the wind beckons.
Locating the prize, he separates the key from the rest and unhooks it, holds it between his thumb and forefinger. When he raises his eyes to hers and they connect, again, that short circuit in the marrow, a shot of adrenaline.
He's pleased to see the tiny dusting of color high in her cheeks.
"You work tonight, and still live across town." Extending his hand, he indicates the item with a lofty gesture.
"I do, but—"
"I won't have you traveling that distance every night you work. I have an extra."
"I'm imposing," she insists. Foreboding, sharp. Blinks rapidly.
"Nothing," he says crisply, "that you've done is imposing."
She withholds riposte, pausing, seeming like she wants to suss out the possible sarcasm. Refusing to be outdone, she gently takes the key while the outliers watch; Naruto physically with a hand over his mouth, a paragon of subtlety.
Tossing her pink hair over her shoulder, she says, "I suppose you'll be seeing a lot of me, then, Sasuke." She sounds almost haughty.
He shrugs with one shoulder, still holding her gaze. Naruto snorts, failing to pass it off as a hasty cough.
"Well, I'd better be going." Flashing another bright grin, she spins on her heel and heads for the back exit. "Things to do. Bye Naruto; nice to meet you, Shikamaru!"
In the same doorway he crossed the threshold of a few nights before, she hovers in it, pivoting back to cast a hook with her bright eyes and long lashes and the delicate curve of her collarbone. "Although . . . I do have questions. Logistics, of course. If you could walk me out?"
Striding through their loose semi-circle, again, with a burgeoning confidence and swagger that Naruto can attest he hasn't seen in many moons, Sasuke falls in step behind her as she departs, like a spell, as a man learning the steps of an unfamiliar dance, primed with hesitance and surrendering to a blind and stupid faith.
Naruto bursts out laughing, the abrupt sound shattering the silence left in their departure. Practically crying, he leans back with the heel of his hand pressed to his forehead while Shikamaru eyes him warily.
"Are you all right?"
"You don't find this hilarious? It's so embarrassing, ugh. And the worst part is, it's totally working for that bastard!" Wiping away tears, chest heaving, his hands land on his hips as he scoffs. "So you two are killing the game and I'm over here dying!"
Thoughtful, his companion folds his arms again and says nothing.
Facing one another again like the first night, as all the nights that follow — she shrugs her shoulders, rolls her neck and stretches, preening, some beautiful bird while his eyes follow as the lovesick mate.
Leaning back against the brick, she regards him with a searing expression. As if there's any other way they've beheld one another since their meeting has been orchestrated. Sasuke senses a delicate essence in her, always layered and wrapped with care; it strikes him that she may intuit the same in him. Smothering secrets.
"Offering me a key like this is . . . quite bold." A quiet admonishment laced with a benediction. "You really don't know me well at all."
Again, the ghost of a smirk, an imprint on his beautiful face which fades in immediate. "No, I don't. But we want things from one another."
Sakura raises an eyebrow. "Sure. But I told you who I am, and what I do."
I leave without warning, without saying goodbye.
"I don't care about that."
"And what about what I want?" She flushes so easily, he notices. They both do, entangled in their mess. "What if I'm just here to use you? What if I don't want anything else — I don't want to be known, or saved? And—!" Folding her arms tightly, in the way of a straightjacket, the litany of questions becomes an unraveling liability, stop it, stop caring. "I mean, who even are you, this guy who clearly has wealth and means but hides in all of your average things and routines? And you're incredibly, infuriatingly attractive and wanting me from afar like some stupid romantic movie and it's just too much, don't you think?" Hides her eyes with her forearm, embarrassed, then lets it dangle and drop.
When she meets his eyes with that strident, piercing sense of purpose, he feels himself on strings. Powerless and led by a dormant fervor, aching for her to use him as she wishes and also to bring her to him, into his mess — at repelling odds in a chaotic cosmos.
Endlessly teetering on the edge of an indulgence.
As he closes the space between them, his forearm against the brick above her head and the high bridge of his nose against her hair, they hear it in unison, the tandem buzzing of electronics vying for attention. Neither make a move to address it.
"Who wants to speak to you so badly?" Sasuke's voice hits her deeply, shuddering in her bones.
Bright green fingernails brush his neck, find refuge in his dark hair. "I could ask you the same."
But they don't enlighten the other. It's not time.
"Sakura," he murmurs, throat dry. Swallows hard, still speaking into her hair. "Is there someone else?"
Eyes rolling to the sky, she stifles a giggle. "No, Sasuke. Not in the way that you're thinking. Not even close."
Dropping a kiss on his jaw, she smiles sincerely, and the glamour and shine threatens to loosen him from the bounds of earthly gravity.
"The next time we're both free," she says, "let's do something normal. Not that this isn't, but you know. Low pressure? I don't think I'm ready for a date — sounds hilarious, doesn't it, considering?"
"Whatever you want," he says. Brushes a strand of pink hair behind her ear, leans in to capture her lips.
Placing a thin finger on them, she seems sad. "Not here," she says quietly. "We just can't seem to stop once we start."
She lets it trail off him, leaving a burning in its wake. Instead takes his hand and swings around to his other side, toward the street. Holds him for a long moment, then does the same again, separating from him so gently.
"Besides," she says, turning to go, "I can't have you falling in love with me."
Watching her leave, framed in the late afternoon sun as a lone figure against an urban canvas, he knows with a certainty he rarely has about anything else that he definitely, already, tragically is.
Long after she's disappeared, Naruto startles him out of a daze by clapping him on the shoulder. Whistles. "At least you didn't scare her away. That was aggressive of you."
Shaking him off, he pivots and sees them both there; his best friend bouncing slightly on the high of Sasuke's success, Shikamaru blank and impassive. Tilting his head, the latter says, "She doesn't seem to mind that, though."
"So you're going on a date?" Naruto punches Sasuke in the arm. "You must give it fucking good, because there's no way she likes your shitty personality."
Sasuke returns the hit, hard, ignoring Naruto's ow!
"She's interested," Shikamaru says. Folding his arms, he sighs. "Still, you don't really know her all that well."
Naruto shrugs. "Who cares?" Nudging Sasuke incessantly, suggestively, he asks, "So, are you gonna give her a gift? Other than your di—"
"Don't."
.
.
.
Who knows how a voice will invade?
As Sasuke lingers on his windowsill, staring out at the dusk dregs of the day, he considers that she may be easier to know through airwaves than through flesh. Pieces of her linger in places that recently were only his. Now, two coffee mugs are in his sink and she forgets to close the door to the balcony tightly and the scents of faint fruit and warm skin linger on his belongings.
Leaning his head against the frame, his eyes wander over to the screen, which is still leaning against the building. Neither of them thought to put it back. Hanging onto the rim of a glass with his fingers, savoring the singe of liquor, he listens.
"From my perspective," Sakura says through the radio, "love in these particular plays only serves to get the women in trouble."
"How so?"
"Antigone's story is that she seeks to bury her brother with respect — familial love. The root of her name is steeped in the idea of worthiness, also in the context of family. Men defend honor, but women, even in their specific capacity, are expected to be the glue to preserve it under ever-changing rules."
"Ah," Kakashi concedes. "But, Haemon also suffers for this love, and ultimately commits suicide over her death."
Sasuke truly fucking hates this older man's vague, soft voice. Hates how often he calls in and how lively their discussions are, how delicate and hazy and sexual their interplay feels. Perhaps it's all in his own head. It's a quality he's never been able to place, and it reminds him of someone in his own life that embodies it, a mystery they partly revel in. The connection he's just created in his own head between these two men that will never know one another leaves a bitter taste on his tongue.
"That is true." Sasuke can hear Sakura smiling. "Everyone falls to tragic love in these plays. Still, I maintain that the men hold up the hypocrisy; Creon endeavors to flaut the gods with his choices despite saying he does this to follow the rules."
"These ideas, I feel, can exist together and be justified."
"I don't think we have time to unpack that one," Sakura laughs.
"Fair point. You have a long evening ahead with many strangers."
"Well to let you down easy — I think I have a favorite stranger."
Sasuke feels a nonsensical flutter of panic and anxiety, manifesting as irritation. Drains the dregs of his class and sets it on the carpet in his room.
"I assume that means it isn't me? Well, can't win them all, Sakura. But can I be frank?"
"I guess."
"It takes a certain type of personality to do a job at night, and a quality even more specific to want to see the most vulnerable sides of others."
"Forgive me if I don't take psych assessments from said strangers."
He chuckles easily, unruffled. "Isn't that what a host is seeking too; lonely, in the middle of the night, conversing like this?
Avoiding an answer, she softly says, "And we'll end it there, in time for the next music block. Thanks again."
Babble and words from other segments, speakers. Sighing, Sasuke eases himself back into his room, shuts and locks the window. Running a hand through his hair, he paces with a deliberateness from one end of the room to the other, lost in sifting thoughts. Switches off the old radio with a solid click.
Seeing the ruined book on his dresser, he settles on a decision. Unlocks his phone and with one idle sweep, clears the missed calls. Instead hunts through his contacts for someone he's avoided for years and partly hopes the freak has changed his number, that this won't somehow lift the curtain on people and things he's left in the rearview.
His swallow is loud in the quiet left in her wake — the voice that inhabits him and brings him to the edge of this precipice. As the dial tone drones in his ear, his heartbeat flails.
Sasuke hears him answer, the raised tone at the end indicating an inquiry. Clearing his throat, he responds.
A stretching silence.
"Master Sasuke, it's been—"
"Don't. Call me that, I mean."
"Charming as ever," the voice responds. The sss's in his words always linger too long, the flickering of reptile tongues. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Looking for a book. A play, really."
The pause that balances between them holds a hint of derision. "You call after several years to have me . . . find a book for you?"
"It's important."
"Really."
"Listen," he snaps, temper flaring, "I need to find something specific."
"This must be for someone else." Voice like silk, but woven around the neck, like a threat. "You've never been interested in—"
"Can you do it or not?"
Always with the dramatics Sasuke remembers, his connection lets out a long-suffering sigh. Sasuke lets him dither while being distracted by something lacy and small peeking from under his pillow. Realizing, the telltale heat brushes the back of his neck as he crosses the room and drops it into the hamper.
"Of course," the man on the phone says, after muttering to himself for a while. Sasuke again runs his hand through his hair.
"Good."
.
.
.
Two days later, he nearly forgets to present her with it.
Unable to discern where she spends her time when she's not with him and not at work (and he's intuitive enough to know not to ask her too many questions), she arrives back at his apartment as the sun starts its languid, heliod arc toward dusk. When he opens the door in response to her knocking, it feels a bit like looking into a bright light.
"I know, I have a key," she says apologetically. "But this feels right." Her smile is the equivalent of having his kneecaps broken, never knowing why her attention feels like pleasure and pain in the same vein.
Casual, effortless: Another wide-necked sweater over white jeans, those collarbones that draw the eye. Bright beryl eyes and long hair swept over the shoulders. She's some work of art molded in the presence of ancients, and he feels clumsy in comparison. The slopes of her ankles and calves in heeled sandals bring her closer to looking him in the eye, and he imagines him carrying her over uneven ground or them pressing on his back, his neck—
"I can walk in them," she says. "Don't worry!"
Nodding, he pulls the door shut behind him and locks it. Opening her crossbody bag, she winks and indicates the wine.
A smirk passes his face again; it keeps happening, and he can't stop himself.
Every time he does, Sakura's knees feel weak. Feels hard to breathe. She doesn't think he knows how gorgeous he is.
She prepares to set off down the hallway, but he catches her wrist lightly instead. Absolutely no one else in her life, if she had anyone, anyway, is able to do that, no man nor woman, but she seems to let him do things that are different, vulnerable. Intimate.
With two hands, he presents the package wrapped in paper to her, proffering. With a formal air, as though there's a weighty ritual involved, and it piques a part of her mind again, wondering from where and whom he hails. Taking it with wavering fingers, she turns it over in her hands to assess the heft and shape. Looks at him questioningly.
"A gift."
"I — you don't have to get me things."
"I wanted to replace it."
A glint in her eyes, and she slips a bright green fingernail underneath the patterned tape. When the pads of her fingers feel the item, she seems to quiver. Raises her gaze to his again, stunned. Soft.
"How did you find another one of these?" she asks, now flattening her palm over it. The old and textured cover caressed by her hands.
Errantly, he wishes he was that book.
"It's old, you know. I figured when I ruined it, I wouldn't find another one. I didn't know there was another." She says this with the reverence of a recitation. Deftly replacing the paper around it, she hands it back to him.
"You're keeping it." Winces, wishing he wouldn't do that, sound so rough.
"Of course," she responds. "But if I bring it now, with my luck, I'll spill this wine on it."
Trying to clamp down on the amusement that threatens to show in his face, he unlocks the door and brings it inside. Now, this time, they set off.
When she kisses him in the elevator, that gentle flutter against the edge of his jaw, he considers ripping out the entirety of the emergency system wiring and staying with her forever.
Surreptitiously wandering the concrete sidewalks with a shared cooler mug, they share the plush taste of a dry red while their skin heats up in contrast to the cooling evening. They pass storefronts and outdoor art exhibitions; Sakura twirls through a street market laden with luscious food smells and departs with several snacks skewered on sticks. The way she presses him to eat, wafting it under his nose and daring him to say no, reminds him of people and relationships long buried. And with her, he's loath to refuse anything.
She watches him askance, a slight more hesitant than the days before. Does he know that he's dangerously close to undoing her with his intense eyes, the effortless attractiveness? Tall, dark, and handsome embodied; a proud and aristocratic face of which his mother must have surely been proud. Muscular in a lean way, nothing overwrought, wearing plainclothes as though he's eager to be understated, unseen - who does he think he's kidding? Just beyond her grasp of familiarity. Makes her a little wary, as it's much easier for her to be the one in control. With him, she doesn't know his depths.
When she tastes him, sipping in the imprints of his lips as they share, Sakura wonders if he'll recover when she's gone.
The streets widen, the crowds thin as the evening presses on and the chill descends. They speak about small, idle things despite their drunkenness, despite how close they walk with one another. Heads inclined. Wandering like lost children in a place that paints itself in dreams and disappears upon awakening.
She leads him to an open space on the outskirts of downtown, neither park nor city-sponsored cultivation. Abandoned is the politest word for it, a wide panorama with the twinkling of expressway lights playing games of chase through the wafting of tall prairie grasses. One of the tiny places the urban jungle fails to consume. Eventually it will become housing or shopping — currently, it exists as this. She lets him go and darts through the gold stalks, scattering seeds and fluff, and he keeps an eye on the pink flash among them so as not to lose her to unseen things.
Emerging, stumbling onto a stretch of withered railroad ties as far as the eye can see. Sasuke follows close behind, head on a habitual swivel to check each direction. She giggles at him, red high and flush in her cheeks, and walks heels to toes on the track.
"Nothing comes through here anymore. An old line." Wobbling a little, she snorts. "Everything is transformed eventually. Surprised this is still untouched."
She continues to follow the track and he walks alongside, ready in case she slips. She's surprisingly steady considering how much wine they've gone through, and the fuzziness enveloping him is warm and billowy.
"I used to be a different person," she says abruptly, as if resuming a conversation they began before. "When I was young, I had everything meticulously planned for my life. I knew I wanted to be a doctor. Escaping the small place I came from wasn't a dream — it was the only way I could keep on living." The tone of her voice leaves no room for misinterpretation. "My mother and I, especially, could not get along. After I had a," she catches her breath, "situation with a man, everything fell apart. Looking back, I wasn't old enough for that situation. But the damage was done, and I moved out to live with a friend. We didn't really speak again, her and I."
"A man?" Despite himself wanting to let her speak, he interjects.
"I wanted to think it wasn't a screwed up situation. But then," she sighs, downcast, "doesn't that happen a lot, when you're in the middle of it? You can't see it for what it is."
The vision, the idea of lifting her off her sandaled feet, reigns in his mind. She doesn't deserve to carry this, to have it resting on her shoulders and weighing her down.
"Then they passed away." She says it simply, a fact. Like reading a label from a box. "My parents. So we had all that between us, left unresolved. It derailed me, and everything I'd worked so hard for."
The admission buzzes, and she waits for his judgment.
He faces forward, continues walking, jaw set hard.
"Who was he?"
The question is unexpected, and she turns to look at him. "The man? Just a person. A guy who hated the family he had, too, and had a lot of expectations placed on him. Admittedly, my type, a clear weakness of mine. He didn't — it wasn't like that. Sexual. But it was unhealthy."
He wonders what she means by a weakness, a type. If she's referring to looks or to a quality unseen.
Her balance fails for a moment: He puts out an arm and she latches onto it, a little oh! tumbling off her lips. Resumes her trek with his support.
"But sometimes people fall together because they're falling apart."
They continue, reaching toward one another on the pretense of steadiness. After a long while, he inhales deeply and then exhales slow.
"That morning," Sasuke begins, "when I said my brother and I don't talk, he's — he committed a crime. He's in prison."
Sakura continues heel to toe, fingers wound in the back of his shirt. Listening.
"So I'm also different than I used to be. It changed the direction of my life."
He doesn't elaborate, and she doesn't press. After a minute or so, she hangs onto the fabric of his shirt, pulling him back. Placing her arms around his neck, he crouches just enough for her to leap ungracefully onto his back with an oof!
"Let's head for the water," she whispers. Voice draping over him like fine silk, long pink locks fanning across his chest and neck in waves.
So they do.
It's been years since he's spent so many hours in the company of another person, particularly one with such energy. She's a match to a tinderbox, spurring him to act in all the ways he's sworn against, the ways he's tried to leave behind to erase the tragic family name and emerge as someone average, unseen. The urge is strong and vivid, to drape her in finery and expensive dress, bring her around on his arm and present her as his , the life he had been groomed to step into.
A slap of cold wind sears his cheeks, makes his eyes water; Sakura drains the last of the red and skip-stumbles to a nearby park trash can to dispose of the glass. Beaming, she runs back to him and takes his hand, pulls him along as though leading him on a mushroom journey, an adventure in some wonderland. Tall concrete stairs lend credence to the idea, and she steps down toward the rush of the water, sitting back and closing her eyes against the spray. As she settles in, pleasantly tipsy, he does the same. She languidly unhooks her shoes and leaves them to the side.
They exist in comfortable silence. Eventually his head ends up on her lap, feeling drunk and overheated and exhausted and rooted to the spinning earth only by her and the indiscernible push and pull of the tides. The touch of her fingers on his hair and scalp send shivers in waltzes down his spine.
"It's sad," she whispers, "that every year, people end up drowning here. In such a beautiful city."
He blinks up at her slowly. She blinks also, staring out at the merciless, dark churn.
"But then, can't you drown anywhere? A couple of inches is all it takes."
The ends of her hair brush his face, tickling him. In spite of himself, he reaches up toward the delicate hollow of her throat. Lulled to sleep by the siren sounds of the disasters that dissipate and perish as they fall from her lips.
"Of water. Of liquor. Of sorrow."
When he's kissing her fiercely in the cab not long after that, the cab she magically conjured like she's never been put on the earth to do anything else, he drinks those words time over and time over, never slaked.
One of their phones buzzes incessantly, vibrating with impunity. It falls out of a pocket, hits the floor of the car with a dull sound. Did they give this poor witness to their mess an address? Must've, as they sail through the gloom along the street grid and struggle with decorum. He's too intoxicated for it, and her, well, she's still some sort of oracle that he brushes his fingertips against but cannot quite possess.
The driver politely ignores them, navigates with ease. Sasuke keeps meaning to attempt an apology, but words seem too difficult for them both.
Flushed and bright-eyed, Sakura retrieves her phone from the cab floor and jumps out the moment they arrive, managing to land on her sandaled feet. Sasuke tosses extra bills on the center console despite already paying, waves a hand at the driver's protests, and follows.
Into the lobby with its seeping, fluorescent lights. They wait for the elevator and in the reflective glass of the walls see themselves reflected as debris — breathing hard, feathered with red, the marks of one another on his neck, her collarbone. When the doors sweep open they step inside and make it a few seconds after they close before they resume. Weak, tremulous, obsessed. An orbit doomed to waver endlessly, the collapse of stars.
Kissing her leaves him spinning, losing seconds and minutes on end; pliable and lush, she still fights to direct him and lead the waltz, but tonight he senses an ask, a yearning unvocalized and subtle. So he relaxes the pace of his tongue in a way that leaves her pulling at him, breathing harder, compressing her desire into coils so tight she's sure it will be her end. Gripping his back, her other hand working between them quickly, the hollow taps of her fingernails against his belt buckle—
(the familiar lift in his gut at the shudder of the elevator)
—he nudges her sweater off her shoulder with his nose, feeling vindicated at every new breath and sound beneath his lips.
When his fingers reach her buttons she writhes and hums beneath him like that radio static, sound beyond the edge of human perception, knees buckling in the dangerous way that signals she's having trouble holding herself up. She grips the bar that runs a circuit around the elevator for leverage, knuckles white.
That divine moment, breathless, when she gasps his name. "Sasuke—!"
He punches the emergency stop button with a closed fist. As the warning tones drone in the background and he kisses her slowly, so slowly, touching her between the thighs with the intent of bringing her there and back again,
again,
again.
In the back of his mind, profusely thanking the old and antiquated elevator system.
And if this is drowning, then surely it's the only way to go.
TeenageCrisis: At the time Sasuke leaves / departs, his brother was a suspect. This chapter confirms Itachi's in prison. What all happened in between and why? idk someone knows prolly me
Guest who wrote "just wow! I'm so enthralled with this fic I'm really enjoying how you're portraying Sakura and Sasuke in this story! It's refreshing seeing Sakura not so perfect, like she's broken and so used to running away from those who want more from her, Idk maybe I'm wrong lol ;)" - you are really spot on with that, it's exactly what I was going for. They both have secrets but giving Sakura her reasons for being unable to be vulnerable is a dimension I wanted to explore. Sasuke has canon lore to draw from for his story, in comparison.
I'm a bit of a slow writer - you know, work and life and pandemic! Always happy to hear from you, stay healthy, thank yous gaiz