Konoha kunoichi cameo time
themes of privilege and family secrets sksksks
As always, thank the lovely All Time Low for "Glitter and Crimson" for the opener
IV.
Glitter and crimson, fighting the friction
What a perfect mess
Fixed on a moment just out of focus
And we can't quite see bein' us
Ain't good for us
.
On the 28th day after they've met, she calls him from a police station.
On an unassuming Friday evening in which the bar is quite busy and all three of them are running ragged — well, Shikamaru is in the back office plodding through routine tasks even though Sasuke bestows his signature, smoldering, get your smoking lazy ass in the front look, pointed and serious, which does nothing to ward off the women lingering and coiling like clingy plant tendrils, hoping for a second of his time. By mere virtue of his pretty face, he's left to the night wolves.
Naruto, sidetracked and distracted from bartending by a loquacious brunette with hair in two buns and blunt-cut bangs, hears it first.
Completing her drink full of gin as sharp as the flashy knives she's rolled in with, he places an orange peel in it with a flourish and gives her a nervous, dangling half-smile. Cute, but her hobby is definitely one for someone more adventurous and decidedly not for him. Still, her grin suggests a gentler side and as he slides the cocktail to her, he reflects perhaps it's something he can overlook.
"Thanks," she says. "And keep it open; my friends and I just arrived."
"No problem," he responds, preparing to move on to the next.
"Ah, one thing . . ." Her eyes, a color in between hazy shades of silver and hazel, beckon him closer. Naruto inclines his head and leans in to hear her against the noise.
"I have to ask, who is he?"
Nods her chin at Sasuke, who hands off the next drink with the most minute, fleeting smile he can bestow, more of a movement of the head than any actual friendliness. There's always an easy grace about him and frankly, paired with his looks, it's infuriating to Naruto how a person can be given such tall, dark, and handsome sexuality and miserably fail to wield it.
A quiet chuckle, and he whispers, "A bastard, honestly."
Interpreting it as a joke, she giggles.
"Seriously, he's just complicated. You're welcome to try, though."
Lifting the cocktail and pinning a napkin to the perspiring glass with her fingernails, she winks and disappears into the crowd.
Naruto then hears what he thought he had before but shook off as his imagination — the ringing of a phone sounding not like the stock default tone of a mobile but the staid ring of importance, belonging to a lawyer's desk or doctor's office. Not the one in his pocket, but the one on the wall that hardly ever makes a sound and overall, hasn't been used in any useful capacity since a month ago.
It rings longer than it should; he wonders if they have voicemail. That's definitely a Sasuke question. He's drawn to the unusual event and though he's unable to put a finger on it, there's an air of happenstance and fate. Put that way, it sounds like he's crazy or clairvoyant.
Frowning, he puts up a finger to the next patron crowding the bar and says, "Be right with ya."
Sasuke of course hears it too, though he's currently drowning in a deluge of women who likely already have drinks in their hands but are eager to talk to him longer than necessary. If the bland expressions of disinterest, slivers between each interaction, aren't enough indication, perhaps the kind but firm manner in which he ignores the flirting and lingering touches as they connect to exchange liquor and money is; the inquiries glossed with a breezy veneer but trying to gain a foothold on what he considers inappropriate topics and details.. Glaring at Naruto over his shoulder, who's treating this unanticipated phone call with more solemnity than he's ever offered anything else in his life, he savagely wishes he had picked it up instead if only to get away.
They meet one another's eyes. He's known him long enough that it betrays its importance.
Extricating himself from a woman with blue hair and a sparkling silver chin labret, he leans in close and waits for details. Naruto covers the receiver and says, "It's her. Your girlfriend."
"She's not my—"
"Maybe go to the office. Sounds important."
A sensation in his gut, dripping dread. "Transfer it," he says impatiently.
"Ah, I don't think I— oh!" Naruto puts the phone back to his ear, listening to Sakura speak. Realizing it's upside-down, he fumbles it. Nodding, he says, "Sure, he's here. Jus' let me . . ."
Jabbing a button on it, triumphant, he's energetic and proud like a puppy as he slaps the phone back onto the wall with gusto. Grins.
A beat. Another.
"You fucking idiot," he snaps, yanking it back off the wall. Pointing at the correct button, Sasuke's eyes dance with what looks like the casual threat of homicide. Slams it back so hard his friend flinches. "If you hang up on her again—"
The ring echoes in stark contrast to his fury, and he snatches it up as Naruto opens his mouth. "Yes?"
"Not how your mom taught you to answer a phone," Naruto whispers, shaking his head. Pivoting to show him an irritated shoulder, it's the closest equivalent to a fuck off that Sasuke can give in full view of the bar. He strains to hear her over the din.
And then, there she is sounding so close. Echoes of the way her whispers curl and settle in his ear when she slips out of his bed, reverberating in the silent days that follow when she disappears on a schedule all her own, known only to one. Twenty-eight days can caricature a lifetime, a narrative he can clearly see in his mind's eye, even if she's weaving in and out of his life and their reality for most of it. It doesn't bother him so much as long as she returns.
The strain of her lovely voice is noticeable, tensed twine. The way people speak in crowded rooms on terse topics and desperately carve a bubble of personal space for private, intimate words.
"I'm always speaking to you in unconventional ways. Always odd and in the dead of night." Humor painted over the tightness of her vocal cords and wavering at the end, the tremolo of an instrument approaching repose.
"Are you all right?" Sasuke brings the receiver closer. No sounds from others on her end, just a gloomy quiet and possibly shuffling paper.
"Sure," she says, laughing a little. A nervous skittering. "I always end up in police stations on my off nights."
The beat that follows skips, stalls, as if there's a space ballooning between each begging to be filled.
"Which one? I'm coming."
"Sasuke—"
"Are you hurt?" The way he asks this is a gentleness defying his usual prickliness, so soft. Enough that Naruto glances at him over his shoulder as he manages the throng, piqued by the whispers.
"No! No, not really. I'm not sure what's going on. They brought me here and I was sure I'd be arrested—"
"Sakura—"
"—but I don't think so. No handcuffs, no fingerprinting. But this officer's definitely not sure what to do with me."
"Don't talk to them. Just wait."
Before she can protest, he hangs up abruptly. To Naruto: "I have to go. She needs help."
"Is she okay?" Naruto sends another customer off, trying to hide his worried eyes. A mark of the short catalysts required for the fascinating chemistry of bonding, of friendship. She becomes a fixture for two wandering men with the inevitably and grace of astronomic orbits crossing paths.
"Police station," he mutters.
Sasuke heads for the back office, not seeing Naruto's eyes wilt even more as he goes.
Whipping open the door, he ignores the fact that Shikamaru was absolutely asleep a moment before all over a scattering of ledgers and rouses him with his classic abrasion. "Get out front. I need to handle something." To drive home the point, pulls his jacket off the hook and swings it on quickly.
"Ah, right," Shikamaru rasps, rubbing the indented depressions and ink off his face. "Emergency?"
"Sort of," Sasuke mumbles. Reaches into his jacket pocket and casts about, in his mind, on who he can ask to dig into a situation that hasn't yet yielded an arrest.
He always knows someone, though. The curse of the name.
"It's that girl, isn't it?"
Sasuke surveys him from the threshold, already aiming to leave. He wonders what he must look like when he thinks of her, when she's in a room and has her beautiful hands on him, because the expression Shikamaru's giving him is inscrutable and poignant all in one. She has the uncanny ability to splay his heart as a cadaver, pinned and primed for inspection. And it always feels that everyone understands something beyond him.
"Go," Shikamaru says. "We're here too, if you need us."
He nods in response, and doesn't bother with the zipper as he jogs down the hall to swing open the back door and depart into the night.
.
.
.
A well-placed phone call later, he's at the police station front desk in an unfamiliar trendy neighborhood, asking after a girl with pink hair whose last name he doesn't have.
"Pink, you said?" An austere expression creeps into the desk manager's brows, sinks into her jowls; sharpness in her eyes. Clearly regarding him, and this, as ludicrous.
"Probably fake," he volunteers. "She was brought in a couple hours ago."
"'Probably fake,'" the woman echoes, setting down her pen.
Anxiety flits about in his chest, a moth stuck in a dangerous, fated tryst with lamplight.
A door opens to the right of the front desk and an officer leans over the threshold. Serious and composed in contrast, badges gleaming. "Uchiha Sasuke?"
"Yes." It's a reflex, something about the way he speaks reminding him of another imposing, authoritarian presence that still lingers at the edge of his nightmares. Never quite sure if he's relieved or regretful that he's gone. Growing up, everything was suffused with it, the power and the name.
"She's back here. Oh, he's with me, no need for that," he says to the woman. Waves a hand, blithe, sweeping away the very notion of procedure.
Sasuke follows him down a hallway expecting to be taken to holding cells, and the creeping familiar feeling settles into his shoulder. Instead, the officer sighs, yawns. They stop outside of a closed office door.
"Listen, this Sakura, your girlfriend? She's fine. I'm apt to believe what happened, but the scene got — well, it was disorderly, let's say that. We talked a little and the little lady she was defending is with her, too. Once she mentioned your name, well," and here he puts what's intended as a fatherly hand on Sasuke's shoulder, who glances at it surreptitiously, "I knew and respected your father. Head of your family, very helpful to us over the years."
Unable to express the fleeting, frenzied analysis that takes place as he's speaking, the myriad implications, defending someone, little lady, girlfriend, my father, helpful, and the swift undercurrent of distaste at the remembrance of his family name, how his father was a pillar rather than any sort of parent or individual, and how reputation always came first: Sasuke nods a few times and swallows everything he wants to say, instead responding, "I . . . appreciate this."
Nodding once, satisfied presumably at staying in a dead man's good graces by way of assisting his son, he smiles broadly. Such a contrast to the way his father ever did, who perpetually seemed sour. Still, many men can commandeer space whether with a jovial smile or the most straightforward intimidation.
They both startle as the door clicks open: Sakura in the left chair and a woman with long, luscious dark hair on the right. They exist as another illustration of contrasts — hair colors on opposite sides of spectrums saturating the drab, taupe-beige space, one's eyes green and sharp and the other's, soft and mottled, cream.
There's a spark of recognition when he glances at the unknown girl, a feminine personage and assumed offspring of a family he's met before, perhaps as a child. Now though, nothing resonates. Instead he watches Sakura, who tucks a strand of pink hair behind her ear and meets his eyes, lips tugging into a smile despite the circumstances.
Does she know she could get away with anything with a face like that? Sasuke's heart skips uncomfortably, the sensation of missing a step in some stairs.
When she sits up from the chair and sways, it's the other woman who catches her first. By the forearm, and with a butterfly-delicate touch.
"Hah, I forgot," Sakura mutters, more to herself than them. With a weak grin at her companion, she explains, "My ankle."
"What happened to you?" Sasuke asks. Frowning, he passes the pad of his thumb across her cheek to sweep away what he assumes is cosmetic. It smears and fades but stubbornly stays.
And he knows that color more than he's ever wanted to.
Sakura winces. "You should see the other guy."
"I can explain," the officer offers. Taking a seat behind his desk with another dismal yawn, Sasuke stands behind Sakura's chair. Heat dashes across the back of his neck in irritation, confusion; she uses his arm as leverage to lower herself into the chair, intensifying the cloying atmosphere. The other woman keeps her head down, bowed. A familiar gesture.
"The ladies here were at a popular lounge downtown, separately. From their statements, they arrived at different times and did not know one another before tonight." Pausing, his eyes sweep between the two, offering space for contradiction or comment. He continues. "Neither were unreasonably intoxicated. Over the course of the night, miss Hyuuga here," and that name sparks something in Sasuke's mind, neurons seeking details, "was dealing with the unwanted attentions of an intoxicated young man. At some point, miss . . . oh, the ink is smudged. Sakura, here, approached her," here he flips an upturned palm to indicate her —
"Hinata," she says quietly, inclining her head to Sasuke.
"— concerned for her well-being around this man. He apparently had friends as well, and the situation escalated to alleged harassment. Heated words were exchanged, bystanders becoming involved, and unfortunately it progressed to this man grabbing miss Hyuuga, and, well—"
"He received a face full of gimlet," Sakura interrupts, folding her arms. "And then my fist."
"You punched him?" Sharp, inquiring, but bewildered.
"No, with a palm to the nose. I didn't want a broken hand."
Sasuke's mouth opens, but nothing comes out. The officer winces and glances at Sasuke, under the assumption perhaps that he's already aware of her tart retorts and lives lovingly with them.
There's a pause, and Hinata yearns to fill the gap. "If she hadn't been there to intervene, I don't know how it would have gone. I truly, really appreciate what she did, even if it was, ah, unorthodox?" She smiles at Sakura, then the officer, and finally Sasuke. "Her form is quite good," she adds, blushing furiously.
"Look, I don't think we're in the business of charging anyone tonight." The officer has both palms up now in a show of calm.
"I asked you before, I'm not sure why you're just letting me go," Sakura says, sounding accusing. Folds her arms across her chest. "I understand why I'm here. I don't know if that's right, for nothing to be written up."
"There's much to be said for defense." The tiniest air of condescending patience, a parent refusing to elaborate for a child. Redirecting his attention, he says to Hinata, "Your father will be here soon."
The way Hinata bows her head again, bent as grass in the wind as if ready to bear difficulty, resonates with Sasuke deeply. A father whose existence was imposing and a relationship fraught with the inability to measure up.
Sakura pulls her phone out of her shimmering shirt with two fingers, plucking it from the magical ether with a certain polite grace in front of the men, and hands it to the woman next to her. Blushing, Hinata fumbles with the latch on a small clutch in her haste to exchange numbers.
Upon finishing, Sakura asks if there's anything for her to sign.
"No no," he says, again with that wave. A brushing away of rules and regulations by the mere implication of his authority. "Let your boyfriend take you home, rest that ankle."
Pink eyebrows could brush the ceiling with how high they rise; Hinata steals a glance but doesn't make a sound. As if relenting to the chain of events, the circumstances weaving far from the controlled loom of her own hands, Sakura's shoulders sag and accepting Sasuke's arm plays out as the next movement in a piece of music, an obvious outcome.
They stand apart on the sidewalk: Him in all black from the work he hastily left, her in a shimmering shirt, barefoot, sandals in her hand. The bruised knot on her ankle matches the navy of her skirt. For a few moments, they don't speak.
She doesn't cry, doesn't unravel, simply stands on the chilled sidewalk and idly swings her fingers with the sandal straps woven in them in time to an unheard rhythm. Noticing her shivering, his coat becomes hers once more, draped over her shoulders and covering the spatters of red and an abundance of glitter inherited from the lounge that will take days to erase, months to lose in the fibers of his carpet.
"You shouldn't have done that," she says softly. "Got me off the hook."
"I didn't."
A noise of disbelief, settling in the throat. Constrained.
"He said he knew and respected my father. That happens often."
Musing on this, she turns and raises her eyes to his. "It must be interesting, to have people grant that to you wherever you go."
She's quite short without her shoes. Wilting and exhausted, withdrawing in a way that could leave her as mere wisps as clouds on a cold night.. Even in this tension and the aftermath of another surreal chapter in a chaotic narrative, the urge to sweep glitter off her cheeks and lift her, carrying her off to another planet, is strong and vivid.
"I assumed you would be picking me up from a station one day," he says. Hates himself for the heat in his face that seems to crop up only in conversation with her.
With a wry smile, she responds, "So we're both very lucky little delinquents."
But her face falls, humor dissipating. When she falls against him, only then do her fears take shape between them. "This is why I leave." Arms around him and fingers in the fabric of his shirt to stay upright. "Because strange things always happen and it always feels like I can't stop any of it. Like fate."
Taking on her weight, his fingers find strands of her hair dancing aloft from the wind; they slip through like silk. When he speaks, it's a quiet murmur. "Sounds like that girl needed your help."
"Both of them made it sound much more noble than it was."
Untangling from him, she passes the back of her hand over her eyes, green and glimmering even in the wan, washed out glow of streetlights. Continues, letting weight off her bruised ankle. "The truth is, I was dancing and tipsy and full of false bravado, and spoiling for a fight. He just happened to trip into my orbit, stupidly bothering someone in front of me. The perfect storm of circumstances."
Following the movements of her lips, an ache radiating in his chest; how can she tell him not to fall in love with her?
"Isn't that everything?"
His words seem to take the wind out of her sails. Breath stolen, strength gone. She concedes his point with a small smile and nothing more.
Wincing as she readjusts her weight, he's about to tell her he'll find a car when she steps forward to the curb, albeit wobbly, and firmly thrusts an arm out, reaching into the blank night. Leaving him always wondering on her earthly origins as she summons one from the dead street with the enchantment of nothing other than her will.
They fall in against the seats, drunk on nothing but novelty.
As she pulls him close by his lapels and dips her tongue into his mouth
— skin humming and warm, as if she's still moving and undulating underneath hot lounge lights; music in her bones, the echoes of beats hours before; a tang of tartness and botanics, the tastes on her lips that she shares with his; the sharp inhale that tumbles out when she pulls away and nips his bottom lip —
he's apt to wonder which cabs they haven't kissed in yet.
.
.
.
Damp locks fanned beneath her head, pink waves splayed wide as if dropped from above with the luck to land and lie tenderly in a field, cradled by earth. But it's just her on the couch, chin crushed to her chest and face partially obscured, half of it pressed into the cushion as if burrowing for sleep.
"So I know I've asked you for enough already."
It's a tentative beginning, leaving a question unasked. Sasuke moves his thumb in light and repetitive movements against her ankle, skimming the fabric of the wrapping. She opens one jade eye, brilliant even in the twilight. He makes some noise of assent, and she continues.
"I have this work event," she says. "It's stupid, really, but I think it's somewhat of a formal thing. I tried to get out of it, I did, but one evening the owner of the company — the actual company, not the manager of our subsidiary media branch or whatever — was around listening to my show and he spoke to me afterward." She frowns, the expression of a sour conversation in her mind. "Anyway, he strongly implied it was an event that you wear something nice, and bring someone with. All above my usual social standing.
She pauses to blow a strand of hair from her face, then looks askance, eyes concentrating hard on the cushion.
"I need someone who's good at these things. Navigating events like this, all those important people with wealth and to know what they're actually saying, not just what comes out of their mouths."
Her meaning is plain: Who better than you?
Not speaking just yet, he instead places a hand on her thigh; hours later her skin still hums, pliant and warm and dashed with glitter missed from her wash.
She shifts beneath his touch, nudging his fingers in an unconscious request. Staring at him fully with open eyes which survey each atom of his face in incisive and keen patterns, memorizing. The sensation, again, of the precipice and the twinge in his stomach and swift wind in his ears, obscuring hearing, drowning out any rational thought. Testing the notion, his hand skims the hem of her skirt; the tug of her lips which stifles a sharp inhale isn't enough to go on, but the way her eyes brighten as he maneuvers her body easily, considerately, and he's feeling like the desired target at the barrel end of a poised rifle —
she, eager and him, obsessed.
She trembles like aftershocks — hips caged in by his arms and his handsome chin so close and the fleeting thought of yanking him by his beautiful dark hair and making a mess of that gorgeous face is only to be postponed for another thirty seconds, maybe.
"So," she exhales, "Will you be my date?"
He responds simply, "Yes."
An amused smile on her face, eyes alight. "Sometimes, you're a man of few words."
Shifting again, her hips sinking into a softer dip in the cushion with a little satisfied sigh. Prompting him to continue the charged venture between her thighs, where his fingers from before are replaced by his lips and the catch of air in her throat is enough to rouse him. Vulnerable things, stupid things, rise to his lips and he swallows them whole, and she senses them; he's defenseless enough to cough them into her waiting, shaking hands. Instead he whispers against the hot skin of her thigh:
"Do you trust me?"
Sakura reflects it's a trite question to ask, much less to answer, with him between her legs. Fingers plucking at the edge of her skirt, she says, "Yes."
And the rest is a whisper lost in her gasp, because despite her caution she's a failure at any rational thought like this, so dizzy and losing the concept of what's real and what's bliss, and it's possible it was never voiced at all.
But only just.
.
.
.
Bringing him to life with her soft hands on each side of his face and the fruity scent of her shampoo, she whispers, "I'm starving."
On the floor, both sprawled out on his luxuriant living room rug, verdant like lush jungle and comfortable enough to serve as the night's chaise. Neither's slept for much time, the sun's aurora crowning the horizon with a prophetic red crescent. Again, waking up next to her has the unmooring sensation of devastation and they're scattered as debris.
They pull the previous night together in languid movements: Refolding blankets, resetting pillows. Quick face rinses. She limps around on her own despite his quiet protests, intent on breakfast — food this time.
"I'm okay," she laughs, running her hands over counters and underneath couch cushions. Likely her phone.
Sasuke finds it facedown on the floor, and flips it over. Immediately it lights up and reveals messages upon messages, and as another comes in they flash again, regroup as they hit a limit. Blinding in the dark. All of them from the same number, unsaved, tender and worried and beseeching in a way that doesn't strike him as a lover and his heart rate falls but the way Naruto has messaged him after disappearing without preamble in a seedy bar or out a back alley, intent on a scuffle with someone to make him feel alive. A best friend who's rescued another one from numerous poor decisions and choices when they're feeling low like a layer beneath dirt.
The sound of her nails clicking against the case and scraping his skin startles him as it's snatched from his hands; it's a rough motion, jarring. Eyes jejune and dismayed. Emotional whiplash from the previous second as she swallows hard and clutches it to her chest and a sense of an animal cornered.
"Don't," she hisses.
"Sakura—"
"It's none of your business."
"Are you all right?"
Sliding it into her pocket, she pivots away; he takes her forearm and she shakes him off with the same ferocity with which she usually pulls him close. "Fine."
"Would you be honest if you weren't?"
Lips twitching, a response he can see her holding in. Instead, she swings her purse onto her shoulder in a wide arc that keeps him at arm's length and makes an attempt to limp out the door with her chin high. She's moving too fast on that sprain and he knows that she knows, pre-med and all, (and from the way she's discussed it, close to finishing.)
He heads out the front door after her, snatching up his jacket and keys as he goes.
Frustration mounts as she punches the door close button with a loud smack so he has to take the next one. Head spinning at the shift in it all and the horrible weariness that surfaced in her eyes; and everyone has something like that, the trigger to the shutdown and a signal to bar the doors. Taps his foot impatiently at the elevator ride that seems to last for years.
Lobby, out the doors. She's crossing the street against the lights, and he calls after her.
"Sakura!"
"Leave me alone!"
Bewildered, he plunges forward into the crosswalk—
The screech and hiss and smell of overworked brake pads; at the loud thumping sound Sakura pivots with a small scream mingling with cursing and raised voices—
Sasuke waves the driver's screaming and his near-fatal experience away with the same annoyance of flicking away an insect, and it seems to bring him to an aggressive and lethal sort of calm. Something in his shoulders and jaw that lifts him, comprises control. And now she's loath to move, feeling rooted to the spot by his glimmering dark eyes and the aberrant brush with catastrophe that intertwines their souls delicate as lace. Thinking perhaps he can survive even me, knowing as he advances that she could fall into his arms and he would break bones and move the world to remain in her space; he would lay it all at her feet.
Raises a hand to him, reaching as he safely makes it onto the sidewalk—
A thin arm causes her to pull up short, a horizontal barrier swung firmly into her path. Stumbling a little, she follows the long blonde hair with her eyes and drinks in the stance of this woman with her back to her.
Something breaks, a ballpoint hammer to a vulnerable crack in her decrepit heart.
"You better back off!" A voice Sakura knows in every fiber of her being, rattling her bones. Sasuke stops in his tracks at the sight of this blonde woman in his path, and shows his palms in conciliation and confusion.
With a toss of her hair, the woman turns to Sakura and holds her at arm's length like she's sprung from the grave, reborn and she's unable to believe it. Fingering her long hair and her eyes so blue, ocean and skies, beg for recognition. "It's me. It's Ino!"
Mouth falling open, Ino takes her lack of response as shock and shakes her head in a rapid motion, back and forth. "Shit, Sakura. I've been looking — I found you." Laughs in a light trailing way, stunned. Voice revealing a lightheadedness, a lovely giddiness.
Without warning she tackles her in a violent hug, the vehement and frenzied embrace of someone whose whole of her soul was lost and then found. Fingers clutching at hair and fabric and then Sakura obliges, relents and their behavior's the same, scrabbling and wavering voices.
Sasuke watches as Sakura lets her chin rest, heavy and weary, on Ino's shoulder. The reunification of two who have traveled on significant roads alongside one another, the mortar and brick of what he recognizes as found family.
Tears cutting salty paths down Sakura's cheeks as Ino says again,
"I found you."
don't be afraid to say hi ya'll, I see those stats
or lurk I mean you do you
It has been so hot here lately I can't deal and also wish people around me would stop sick/dying of this shit virus
3 stay healthy