TW: Vomiting
Opening Lyrics: Talking Myself in Circles - Four Year Strong
IX.
Get a map, draw a line that connects you and I
And follow it to the end, to
start all over again
.
.
.
While comfortable breaking into Sasuke's apartment on whimsy and boredom, Naruto's not used to coming home to people in his own living room. It takes him several moments of languid blinking to remember that he's given this woman a key, so seeing her sprawled out on his rug, snuffling slightly in the glow of the television, glittering and beautiful even in her mess of sleep, shouldn't feel so strange.
Naruto's head bobs dangerously close to the open V forming the front of her jumpsuit as he tries to determine just how asleep she is.
Ino's eyes open. "Do you have any food in here?"
Yelping, Naruto jumps back. "What?"
Rubbing her bright blue eyes with the heels of her hands, she pouts. "My date sucked, and I want to eat my feelings. Don't tell anyone."
"But don't you have a hotel room?"
Ino seems to lose air, wilting as depressed and dehydrated flowers. "Look, I was in the neighborhood, and I thought, I don't know . . ."
She doesn't finish, but the expression on her face gives him a sympathetic pang somewhere under the ribs. I don't feel like being alone. He can certainly understand the feeling. Sasuke's sour enough for him on the daily, and Ino's too pretty to look quite so sad.
"Whatever you want, I'll get it. And whoever it was, he's an idiot."
His comment makes her blossom, replenishing her wellspring of confidence: It might be one of the brightest things he's ever seen.
"He was an idiot. And super weird."
So they camp on the floor of his sitting room with snacks from the nearby corner store; he pops the aluminum tabs of cans, she grips the bottle neck of the least-terrible wine carried on the shelf. Even with sleepy smudges under her eyes, she has the glow of sunshine and moonrock, sparkle innate to her chemical makeup.
"A lunatic, really," she says. A tartness lingers on her lips, from the wine, or maybe from the date. "It's my fault for going after weird underground artists. What a joke. I know better!"
Naruto takes a swig of beer, flipping through boring twilight channels. "So what does he make? Does he paint stuff?"
"Get this." Eyes rolling, she pours herself another glass as if the rest isn't going to her anyway. "Performance art. I'm dead, Naruto. He really means he blows weird shit up in his garage."
"Well, most people don't have garages here. And I'm not saying you picked a bad one, but—"
She hits him with her shoulder and he chokes into the can.
"Oh! But I did get the goods. You owe me." With a sly smile (and his stomach seems to fall away, like missing a step on the stairs), she unlocks her phone, dancing a little in anticipation. Leaning close, heads touching at the temples —
and Naruto swallows hard at the proximity, the scent of fruity wine on her lips, smoothing over the carbonated, astringent taste from his own —
she brings up the photos from earlier in the evening, crowing.
"Look at this, they're so cute it's nauseating," she says, swiping through several. Naruto yields to tipsy laughter at the sight.
"He's an idiot. So serious. Oh man, that's the dress you put her in?" With a low whistle, he tips back the rest of his beer and finishes by crushing the can against his head. Ino elbows him. He retaliates in a mature manner by sticking out his tongue. "Can you send me these? The bastard will never."
"Sure," she says, "but don't send them too far. He was very weird about the whole thing. Come to think of it, Sakura doesn't have a lot of photos, either."
"Sounds like they're made for each other, then. Gimme," Naruto whines, flicking her hair. "I never get anything to make fun of him for, and this is perfect."
Her thumb moves a mile a minute, the other holding her wine glass aloft. There's a perfect, preserved imprint from her mouth, vivid, a shade of peach. His eyes are drawn to it, but surely it's only the beer making him contemplate the shape and curve of her lips.
"You don't strike me as a guy who buys himself wine glasses. Who got you these?" Ino hits the send button with a triumphant click, signaled by the tap of her fingernail.
Sinking to the floor, Naruto squints as he types, fingers moving with much less grace. Holding his phone above his face, he pauses to think.
"Huh. I don't know. Gotta be a gift."
His phone slips and lands on his face; Ino throws her head back, dissolving into unabashed laughter at his expense.
The photos go from Ino's phone to Naruto's, who sends one to Shikamaru —
he's got it bad. look at his dumb face lmao
who's still up unusually late, and ends up sending one to his not-girlfriend he was already talking to —
He's sort of obsessed with her. It's a real drag. He's known this girl for a month, maybe ...
who immediately shoots it to her siblings' group chat, pausing in her research; on her large monitor, design software takes up the lion's share of the screen while a search window floats in the corner showing her not-lover's place of employment —
This is her, right? You saw them in the elevator? You won't win that one; they're so in love it's gross
And Temari receives a message back from Kankuro, who's currently on a trip that robbed him the joy of attending—
Who the fuck are they?
Then a second one, his subtle follow-up—
And go to SLEEP!
She frowns and scoffs in the glow of her computer screen, muttering under her breath and then actually typing it, telling him where he can stick his suggestions.
And so it goes on into the early morning, gossip passed as tokens on a spectrum of close friends to mere acquaintances.
Not that any of it matters, because a reporter covering the event already handed off his photos and observations to a close friend and gossip columnist as a favor, pleading thinly-veiled ignorance to trifle and trash.
Nothing quite escapes a well-planted camera lens.
And here he is again, coming back from the dead in a swirl of salt, skin, and the tang of her.
He inhales, forcing a fresh burst of oxygen into his lungs, which in turn causes a yawn. A hand goes to his temple which feels waterlogged, heavy. The other hovers in the air and then comes down on the nightstand, groping for the phone. He'd open his eyes, after all, but he's not ready for the sharpness of full consciousness.
Sasuke palms the entire phone and drags it onto the mattress next to him. Grumbling, the punching of keys.
"Room service?"
"Good morning, Mr. Uchiha!"
Sasuke winces, clears his throat that feels full of glass. Peels his eyelids apart. Knowing his brusqueness doesn't endear him, he manages to grunt out something about coffee and breakfast.
"Of course." Always smooth voices, and he's never able to decipher if it's part of the job or it's another unknown, unspoken deference. "I assume late checkout as well?"
A pale forearm snakes out from underneath a mess of pillows and sheets, the former seized en masse from him at some ungodly, gloaming hour. Tapping him, he looks to see one green eye amid a tangle of pink, and she wiggles her fingers at the phone.
Sasuke coughs to clear his throat again, but it comes out wretched, crackling. "One second."
He hands Sakura the phone, and she drags it into her makeshift cave of warmth.
He should know, by now, her unwitting charm undoes him so easily; how only the throaty flutter of her voice, raspy and stupid with indulgent afterglow, can reduce his body's reactions to those shamelessly base.
"Good morning. Ah, yes, we did, thank you."
Sasuke closes his eyes; he's not quite a praying man, but getting hard while the girl next to him chats with room service makes him wonder again if he's dreaming, or in the longest coma. Because he's damn sure she was just asked how they slept.
"Do you have anything sweet on the menu?" Her voice smooths, melts into the consistency of syrup and sauce. "Mmm, that sounds wonderful. Yes. Let's do that. Yes, room 1865. Thank you."
Sakura emerges from the nest again, waving the phone receiver at Sasuke, who yanks the sheets around his hips with a scowl and hangs it up.
Holding his temple again, he rolls over to face her and hates that even with her hair in a tangle, coal smudged under her bright eyes, and remnant red lipstick dappling her skin as a canvas, she's sublime and not a bit hungover.
"So this is closer to the real you; drama with the other rich and famous, debasing hotel rooms with sin," and here she trails fingernails down his already-marked chest, "being curt toward those that serve."
His scowl sinks deeper, but she's smiling. Then she giggles.
"You can't even help it. But I understand it's the morning."
Unsure of exactly what she's poking fun at, he snatches her wrist and yanks it close.
For a moment she can't read those dark eyes, and a familiar chill skips down her spine.
Between the presses of his mouth — kissing the bones of her wrist, her palm, each finger, his words vibrate in the marrow, con bravura, like fire:
"You are . . . so full of noise."
She's simmering: pink in her cheeks, obsession in the skin.
Breathlessly, she asks, "Where are my shoes?"
His reply is a rumble, eyes never leaving hers. "Last I felt them, they were propped on my—"
She shushes him; he retaliates by nipping at the skin of her finger.
"I don't think I'm frightening you enough, Sasuke."
Grimly, he thinks perhaps she just makes him incredibly stupid.
.
.
"We hope to see you again soon." It's a prim, professional departing phrase. Sasuke and Sakura, both donning sunglasses and slouchy clothes in the manner of rumpled, clandestine vacationers, respond in expected fashion, the former with a surlier nod than usual courtesy of his hangover; Sakura smiles to make up for his lack of charm.
"Oh, one moment, miss," the desk manager says, fluttering a hand. "This was left for you." She proffers a sealed legal envelope; regarding it warily, Sakura takes it. Feels the weight of the heavy paper.
"Ah, thank you. I appreciate it."
She tucks it under her coat with what she hopes is a nonchalant air. Sasuke raises an eyebrow.
"I requested some information," she supplies. "From some of the men I met last night. Some on boards and in universities and whatnot. I didn't know they would respond so . . . enthusiastically?"
He scoffs, then winces. His touted tolerance seemed to be failing him this morning. "Perverted, enamored and self-important. How charming."
Linking her arm in his, she rests her head on his shoulder to hide her expression, the way her lips flatten at the lie. She's terrified he'll soon be able to decipher and deconstruct those as well as he already does the same to her body and its desires.
When they reach the curb, she gently takes him by the elbow.
"You need more sleep," she says, "and I need to check on my apartment. Would it trouble you to take my bag back with you, to your place?"
This handsome man, with his shadows and hints of danger, simply pouts at her. "Is your building made of straw?"
"It's my roommates," she explains, shoulders sagging. "They're just — they're odd. They think it's weird I haven't been staying there. Plus two of them, well, they're intense. One day they'll actually set the place on fire."
"Consider a different type of roommate." Consider me.
Fingers trailing off his arm, she uses the other hand to summon a cab. The corners of the legal envelope are sharp, unbending underneath her jacket.
This smile for him is flimsy, delicate. "Why trade one hazard for another?"
Something ominous appears in his face, then disappears swiftly as it came.
Sakura doesn't know if her attempt to kiss it away succeeds; she doesn't look back as the cab leaves the curb.
Setting the envelope on the seat next to her, she takes her phone from her jacket pocket and turns it off. Rifling through her purse, she takes a paperclip and bends it into the desired, haphazard mimicry of a picking tool and relays an address to the driver.
Guiding the metal to a tiny divot in the side of her phone, she opens the slot and tips the SIM card into her palm. Then, throws all of it back into her purse and twists at the waist to look out of the rearview window of the cab.
The sky threatens rain.
.
.
The workspace entrance is a painted door opening into the brick wall alley which momentarily disrupts the flow of the mural as patrons come and go. Though it's a popular day for conversations and cafes, she spies a single computer booth open and rushes to claim it. The library had been another option, of course, but with everything monitored, this may be the better choice.
The tearing sound of the taped flap of the envelope sets her on edge. Sakura tries to steady her breathing, wondering how Hinata could have possibly managed to gather this so fast. Reaching into it, all she finds is a small and unbranded USB drive.
Holding it between her forefinger and thumb, she clicks it into the public computer and starts to review the files.
At first they're things she already knows: Uchiha Sasuke, a family with members in high places and hands in everything. Wealth that, to her, seems obscene.
But her fingers are shaking on the mouse, pain searing her gut in the violent intuition of stalked prey; she's clicking through faster, dredging up photocopies of scribbled police reports and staid financial statements with intimidating lines and court dates and candid snapshots of various dark-haired men (and women, too, an obvious proclivity for those resembling themselves, some unconscious desire for an unbroken line of black hair and regal noses) in beautiful rooms and descending jet stairs and even a classical, powerful shot of men with large shoulders coming toward the camera, down an expansive hallway with heads inclined in worldly orchestration, as women and media feather and flank the edges like gorgeous birds — except, Sakura thinks in a sidebar of hysteria, the men are almost more vivid and threatening in this case, just as their plumage and demeanor is so often in wildlife —
at 3:30 a.m. police officers are called to the estate by the family's assistant, having discovered the bodies of whom they stated to be Uchiha Fugaku and Uchiha Mikoto
grisly photos, black and white and crimson in color, all dark hair and wax skin and blood
the youngest, Uchiha Sasuke, was located by the assistant facedown, prone, in the front lawn, unconscious but seemingly unhurt, spared for reasons unknown
The memories she's buried bubble to the surface; the scorch of his gaze, watching as her hand flies across the board, the magnificent orchestra din of beautiful, balanced chemical equations
the eldest son and alleged suspect, Uchiha Itachi, apprehended after weeks of being on the run
whispered conversations, empty classrooms, cold, ring-laden hands.
When she lands on the family photo, she gags into the hand she's quickly slapped over her mouth, choking back the sound.
There they are, so young, both of the brothers pale and elegant even as children, with the delicate bones of those born into wealth and ease. Shadows ripple at their dignified edges, as if the dark reign is channeled into the firm hand that grips the oldest boy's shoulder. The wife, whom she only saw once or twice, who knows, can she remember anything anymore, can she trust anything she's seen is dazzling, the bright spot in the photo as she holds the youngest on her hip. He pouts as he did just an hour before, an imprint of the past.
Here she is swimming in the ignorance and bliss of fated encounters, all the dire warnings and vehement neuroses of her mother ringing in her ears, churning in the stomach, consoling and condemning the unearthly quality of her strange daughter to become entangled with things so much larger than herself. To blame her for it. And every synapse in her brain alights in panic as it all comes together so easily she's amazed, again, she ever thought she was intelligent.
She touches the screen, dragging fingers over each face as if reading by Braille.
Another wave of nausea ripples underneath her ribs, drains the saliva from her throat. Black and blank — her vision threatens to close in.
A clink of china on wood: The barista peers at her with a detached politeness, concerned but wary as he sets down her order. "Miss?"
"Yes?" she gasps.
"Your order." He shrugs with one shoulder, seeming to debate whether to press further. She's aware she looks unhinged, one of those wandering people that roam looking for a warm urban oasis on an endless journey to nowhere.
"Thank you, I — do you have a — can I print from here?"
Relief is visible in his face; not a crazy patron, just weird. "Sure, it should work. Can't say many people want physical copies nowadays. It's near the kitchen."
She thanks him with a smile, acid burning at the back of her throat.
Every single page, she sends to the printer. The mug cools and the steam eventually stops rising from it, abandoned. The realizations come and drown her in waves, that they're brothers, that she was telling Sasuke she was obsessed with his brother, and all of it coalesces in a frantic runaway panic because how could he look her in the face and pretend . . .
and Itachi's in prison, the consequence to her bringing him evidence, wanting him to confront the truth.
"Itachi, you have to tell someone—"
He touches her forehead gently.
"You sound like my little brother, earnest and sweet. No, I mean it as a compliment, I do — you still think it's all good and evil, black and white."
and the police smoothed it out, washed it away, because while it's usually a carnival to watch a famed family fall, no one wanted to be caught up in an investigation like this, a net gathering the small fish who leech off them,
and Sasuke came home to find them, the fatalities from her meddling.
Ripping the USB from the computer, she logs out and shoves the copies into the legal envelope, feeling the sand grains tick, tick through the hourglass, a narrowing of time forming a loop around the neck.
The rest is blurry, watching an old, grainy film disassociated from herself. Clutching the copies, thumb drive in hand as she returns to the painted alley. Dizzy, gasping. Crunching the source under the heel of her shoe and breaking fast.
The brick wall is crying and when she briefly reconnects with reality again, so is she.
Rain.
In the odd lightness, the cold city mist, she crouches on the pavement and spectacularly vomits.
"The photos are everywhere, now."
Naruto's sheepish, apologetic, hunched over the kitchen table. Leaning on one arm, he flips through the contents of his phone camera with a face of concentration.
"Here's the thing, Sasuke, the ones on the internet don't match the ones Ino sent me. See?"
Seated at the other end of the table, Sasuke's arms are folded tight as a straightjacket across his chest. The sneer that pulls at his lips is some overwrought combination of anger, hangover, and embarrassment. Shikamaru's slightly less rigid and tight, but he's deep in thought as well.
"You can't do one fucking thing I ask," Sasuke snaps. "Ino I expect — she doesn't know me. But you know what it's like to have your life plastered everywhere. To deal with that."
"I'm sorry!" It's a sincere apology, but whiny nonetheless. "I really didn't think it'd become a big deal."
"I don't think this was you, Naruto. Hear me out!" Shikamaru raises his palms to Sasuke, whose mouth opens in anger. "He's right. The photos I have don't match anything taken at the actual event. Let's assume there were journalists there, it makes sense, right? To cover such a big event?"
"He sent them to you too?" Sasuke snorts, shakes his head. "Let me guess, you sent them to your oil princess?"
"Oi, that's not really here nor there—"
"Shikamaru, you're killing me here," Naruto moans.
"Maybe they were tipped off," Shikamaru continues. "It's perfectly reasonable to assume that with these names in attendance, and Neji Hyuuga at the helm, this is standard coverage. They happened to be distracted by a famous name that brings a lot of draw, and you happened to be with an attractive date."
"She was smokin' by the way," Naruto interjects. Pointing at Shikamaru, he adds, "See what I did there?"
Air whistles through Sasuke's nose with menace.
"It could be nothing, just a coincidence. Happenstance. Circumstances." Shikamaru shrugs.
Sasuke raises his eyes to both of them in turn. "But you don't believe that."
In the intervening pause, there's the sound of a key in the lock. Sakura opens the door to find them all in the kitchen in various states of solemnity, the discussion weighing on the atmosphere.
No one speaks as she drags herself over the threshold and kicks the door shut behind her. Waterlogged, pink locks plastered to her face and eyes ringed red and racooned underneath, she clutches a dry legal envelope bulging with who-knows-what and on top of that, letters Sasuke recognizes as originating from the prison, all of which he's been disposing.
On cue, his phone buzzes, clatters against the counter in an ominous rhythm as it signals a fated intrusion.
"Please get out."
No one responds. Naruto, stupidly, makes an attempt.
"Sakura, um, I can get you a—"
"Be quiet."
Shikamaru does that careful, distancing raise of the palms again, a physical barrier between him and anger as he edges around her space, giving a wide berth. Sasuke knows better than to move, and can feel her eyes on him tearing him to his core, a rabid, frenzied flock of birds.
"H-hey," Naruto tries again, standing up with a hand outstretched. "If this about the blog photos—"
Eyes green and crazed, she slaps everything in her hands onto the table: Papers in one hand, keys in the other. The keys clatter, and the letters go skidding.
"Get. Out."
"Ooookay." Naruto gingerly flattens himself against the wall, sliding out of her grasp and toward the front door. Shikamaru's lingering, glancing between Sasuke and Sakura but ultimately decides to leave.
The click of the lock triggers her flight: Sasuke stands, stumbles, finds himself flush against the counter with her small fists beating on his chest. He knows if she wanted, she could leave him with a gorgeous bruise or a broken nose; this is shattered, despairing, unbelieving, whatever's pouring out of her as she crumbles, clay, as he tries to get a grip on her. She seems to sift and slip through his hands in some alien way.
"I thought—" Breaks off, a throaty sound somewhere between a sob of mirth and anger. "I thought you were just hiding a smoking habit. You think I couldn't smell it on you?"
She leaves him, breathing hard, faces the letters scattered on the table. He lets out air, rabbitquick, inhales again, trying to quell the prickling and ominous foreboding crawling at the base of his neck.
"You've been burning them. He found me, and you knew—"
"I don't read them, Sakura." Dropping pretense, now that they both know. "I don't know how he found me, but—"
"You wouldn't tell me what he went to prison for. You didn't even tell me his name!"
Sasuke has the sense he's missing a crucial piece. "What would that matter?"
With a frustrated wail, Sakura sweeps her arm across the table and sends everything flying, the keys becoming a heavy, weighted shotput that ricochets against a cabinet and drops.
Sasuke closes the space between them in two swift strides and takes her by the wrists. Yanks her close, face in her face, and hisses
"He's dead to me."
"So dead that he's writing to you? Found your phone number? Don't—" she snaps at him, heading off his protests, "—I'm not that stupid. Well, I must be! How could you — how could you play this game with me?"
"It's none of your business. None. He has nothing to do with you, with us."
She flinches, mouth opening and closing before she's able to choke out,
"He has everything to do with this."
"Sakura." His head begins shaking slowly, words following in similar, measured fashion: "I don't know what you're talking about."
Her expression transforms, confusion to a spark of understanding and finally to horror.
"You don't know."
eyes on the back of her neck, or perhaps her hands flying across the board, she never knows what he's looking at and wishes he'd just kiss her, because that's something she understands, boys like girls, not whatever this is, the way he observes her with this intolerable heat
Quaking in Sasuke's grip, she closes her eyes. "Sasuke. It was him. Itachi was my tutor."
Silence so heavy it fractures time as glass.
She continues.
"I know now that . . . he's in prison." She pauses again. "Itachi is—"
"— my brother." He finishes the sentence, he thinks, anyway; a surreal tone lost in the void, perhaps it never left his mouth at all.
The world opens up to swallow him whole, the sense of unreality wholly consuming; he sways like she's hit him, but as he crouches and finally sits on the kitchen floor she comes with him, equally stunned. She sounds faint and far away as she rests her forehead on his, her spine bowed, running her fingers over the same spot on his chest as if she'll wear out the skin down to glossy white bone. Words like a talisman chant, though the roaring in his ears drowns so much of it out.
"I didn't know when I met you, I didn't know, Sasuke—"
"He was your—" Chest collapsing, crushing his lungs. Memories steal his air, and Itachi is the string that entangles them past and future, and it's sick how in this second it's not about him never knowing about her, always feeling on the outside of his beloved but inscrutable brother's life, bereft of the bond he so wanted and unable to understand him, but rather it's the agonizing sensation of roots burrowing in his chest, his wanton jealousy, or is this envy, covetous, and his brother truly ruined everything, leaving a trail of devastation in his wake, because he's taken their parents and ruined every normality but fuck him, he will not take her — !
Sasuke advances on her, hands and knees, but she's scrabbling backward on the heels of hands and feet until her back's against the wall, kneeling between her thighs and he's so close the words flutter on her neck, rich, with heat —
"Why did he do it?"
"I'm s-sorry, I'm so sorry."
"Tell me everything," he hisses.
"Sasuke—"
"Everything!" At his shout, she flinches. "Every fucking thing you knew about him!"
Unhinged, unraveling, as if he's watching himself disintegrate from the other side of the room, a voyerish spectacle of his own insanity. Because it isn't her fault but the thoughts in his head come a savage rush, the girl that turned his brother's head, the girl his father hated, because even in his brother's neurosis and oddity and flouting of principles he still, always, was golden and loved in a way that Sasuke never could quite achieve.
This woman, sweeping into his life as a hurricane, the sublime crux and keeper of the brother he couldn't reach.
Sakura shivers in the wake of his explosion, cracked open and spilling like black ink, a curse that stains hands and hearts.
An odd gleam in her puffy green eyes surfaces as she accepts it, the absurdity of it, this, them. She touches his face with kindness he's beyond deserving, and for a moment, it's not so impossible to conceive that his brother saw this — her unearthly quality, the sense that the world moves through her rather than the other way 'round, an aperture in times and spaces and lives so fleeting and always on the ragged edge of disappearing, impossible to capture or cage.
And he could kiss her; oh, he could kill her.
To Midding: You using those words to describe my writing honestly makes my heart flutter; you're swell!
I sense eager Guest reviews and I respect that!
This has also been updated on Ao3 (same username) if that's more your speed. I always recommend checking me out there too, the biggest reason being that Equilibrium is never updated here. Would FFN get a series function mayhaps? I doubt it.
Thanks, as always, for following, favoriting, reviewing; the time I've spent in original writing circles is really a different beast. The way critique and feedback comes is different, I think, not least because you're always having to "kill your darlings" and work toward something publishable - fanfic is fun in that I get to do whatever I want even if it's sordid and dramatic and indulgent because, I mean, what else is fandom for, really?
Be safe, stay healthy!