Opening Lyrics: Wide Awake - Hot Milk
-everyone plays games, background pairings, Sakura runs the board
VIII.
Now I've got a feeling that's cold in my bones
The pseudo-king sparks lies on his throne;
There's no heart, no moral, no regard —
The judgment swift, the cash cold and hard
.
A cascade, a cavalcade, a colonnade. A deluge in preparation of somehow containing their friends' inevitable chaos.
Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. Please leave a message —
"This is getting ridiculous! Now yer phone doesn't even ring. Call me back, bastard."
Naruto wonders if voicemail boxes get "full" anymore; technology shifts at the speed of light and so does the heart.
Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. Please leave a message —
"I don't care where you went but you didn't say anything! Typical asshole move. Ino's worried too, ya know; Sakura isn't answering either. Call back!"
In slippers and a stolen shirt, Ino leans on the counter in a bathroom that doesn't belong to her and rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand. Lips puffy, tasting like that mellow, pastel scent of warm summer sun after spring advent — that first day after the equinox bleeds through on the turn of a new dawn.
Funny, that taste and soft emotion against the murk of night. Both mired in mutual guilt after the hour for their friends' flight arrival came and hurtled by. They never deboarded. This was just a fix, temporary stress, she'll justify to her inner.
Everything's a little blurry, her usual unflappable talent of waving off a hookup seeming a bit out of reach.
Glancing at the door, she lowers her voice on the voicemail recording, words slipping in the receiver under Naruto's obnoxious din.
"You're doing it again." It's a tone barely above a whisper, struggling in its neutrality. "Fading out, worrying your friends. Now you've just found someone similar to do it with. Cut the shit, Sakura."
Setting her phone facedown, hard, on the cold marble counter, she tries to bottle the taste before it dissipates, like the salt air of the ocean, like sunflowers unfurling in low summer heat.
Leaning against the door, she listens to Naruto's increasingly agitated jokes channeled into voicemails. She's also unaware of his frantic texting:
Are u dead? In a k-hole? Answer me!
To Sakura:
Noone's heard from u since flight. Hope ur ok?
Stricken by a sudden thought, ingenious or ridiculous and it doesn't matter which, Naruto can't pluck forth the right word for what he's thinking of. E-something. E-late? E-lope, ELOPE—!
Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. Please leave a message —
"I hope yer not running away to get married! One, that'd be so cliché and two, what about me?"
Angrily thumbing the phone to hang up and try again, Naruto grumbles under his breath and starts yanking on pants. With a shift in — shit, he's overdue, late, and Shikamaru's going to be in the right this time, for once. Lazy leverage lost.
"It's sooo like 'im," Naruto mutters, buttoning his shirt haphazardly with the phone crushed between his shoulder and his ear, "to do this shit. Bah, 'I'm alone, I'm dark, I'm Sasukeee,' then boom, asshole, runs away to fuckwhere with cute-girl. And I get it, but—"
Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system. Please leave a message —
Groaning, he changes tack to leave one last chiding message:
"You're obsessed, and you shoulda married her two weeks ago. You're an idiot, too, but I'm worried. Don't make me call you in as a missing person." He pauses, realizing all his shirt buttons are married to the incorrect holes. "Also also . . . d'you think Sakura would be mad if super hypothetically maybe I was interested in Ino? Not like I am or anything. Just a question."
The response is the tone letting him know he's run over, cutting off his last sentences.
"He's late," Temari observes unnecessarily.
Eyes cutting across the bar counter with a steely veneer, she watches her complicated person of interest flip a rag over his shoulder and fold his arms.
She can't help but smirk.
"Yeah, well," Shikamaru says, waving it away. "Things happen. Usually it's me, so I guess I owe him this one."
They share a significant look over the rim over her glass, and it's uncanny how she seems to intuit situations in large part without him ever revealing details. He's a bit guarded and she's a little brusque, but they still fit together in something that feels like carved wood finding its destined groove.
"In a panic, is he?"
"And infatuated."
Temari's gulp is more than she anticipates, and she clears her throat while pressing fingers to her lips to wipe away an escaping drop.
"This seems fun; your bar comes with its own mythology. Enlighten me."
"Ehhh," he waffles, avoiding her sharp eyes. Without looking at her: "It's boring to tell all of it, but essentially Sasuke's obsessed with Sakura, a stranger really, and I'm fairly sure as of yesterday Naruto's involved with her best friend." Pursing his lips in a manner oddly fussy, Temari snickers into her current sip and chokes again. Spatters liquid on the bar and on herself, to her dismay.
Proffering the semi-filthy rag, there's tight amusement toying with the side of his mouth. "And here I am, in the company of a princess and feeling like I'm missing a damn lot of chess moves."
She obliges him a roll of her teal, bright eyes.
"You're not different, you know. What makes her such a stranger — which by the way, you hide your skepticism of her like total shit — and me palatable for you?" Tossing the rag back at him, she smiles. "Snob. Head in the clouds. Isn't that what drives you crazy about Uchiha?"
"What I see with you is what I get. That's different."
"Well let me enlighten you, Nara," she teases, drawing out his surname, "lesson one: everyone has another layer, even if you don't think so. Lesson two: be supportive of your friends, even if they do dumb things. They have stars in their eyes — it's gross, I know. You're too cool for that, are you?"
"He's my friend." Shikamaru crouches under the bar for a moment, busying himself with what she suspects is nonsense. "Naruto too. It all just feels a little too surreal, too neat. I'm not a big believer in coincidences, or fate."
"Too much thinking, not enough supporting. I have two brothers, they've both done some stupid things. Bad decisions are made and you have to catch 'em when they stumble."
"Dumb is one thing. Dangerous is another."
"Essentially," Temari says, adopting a mockingly wise demeanor, "we're all just fools falling in love."
"Even if we see where it's all going?"
"Especially if," she says, draining her glass. "People in love don't listen to their friends."
Temari studies him for a moment as he removes his phone from his pocket, considers it as the screen alights, ready for him to interact.
"You think you're too smart to fall in love?" Grinning, she slides her empty glass across the bar; with his free hand Shikamaru intercepts it from falling off the edge with ease. "Then you're sure no genius."
The pointed word use feels poignant, a message cleaving hard and pugnacious from the skin.
Of course: Why would a woman with high status and ample information access not dig into his life? How fine the lines among politicians and titans in industry, more osmosis than web. The powerful run the board. And why wouldn't she have her own questions on his apparent lack of ambition, not deigning to follow in his father's footsteps?
Shikamaru opens a message chain of interchanging links and occasional paragraphs, the topics often of a scientific, medical, or competitive strategy sort.
This is my obligatory message to check on you. Kidding, but might be a good idea to charge your phone and let Ino know you're all good. She's worried.
Sends it, then adds the final thought in a separate line,
Enjoy your trip.
"Did that assuage your guilty conscience?" Temari's words prick as barbs but her smile is gentle, if amused.
Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura — Some dysfunctional troika now, each a celestial body exerting and repelling equal obsession and force. They fit together in their own odd way. But he can empathize with Sakura's unique onus of precognition, which he suspects is what he sees in her eyes:
A mind in constant motion and a soul always running crave respite.
Glitz and glamour take center stage.
The heat of human bodies and relentless hot movement: A restless sense and spirit of its own, the moneyed rubbing souls with the seediest.
One man with tousled red hair sits at a nearby bar with a scopic view of the gambling tables; at a slot machine across the floor, a woman with blonde pigtails and sharp eyes of almond shade.
They seem to triangulate a single target. Pink hair is far from the most vivid shade on the gambling floor, bright against chaotic moods. Hear, the vibrations of minds begging the stars to align, murmurs sprinkled with the occasional stealthy removal of those over their drinking limit, or out of chips, and the ping and song of slot machines.
For all her work to stay one step ahead of the pursuit of darkness, however, she's been commanding a table for hours in plain view with a handsome man (pedigree family, they say) at her shoulder. Having surrendered his cards so long ago it's difficult to ascertain the hour or the day, he looms with intensity, territorial, but still with a carefully-defined orbit around the object of his affection. She defines these gravitational loops, not the other way 'round.
Eyes blazing like sea glass and in an emerald dress to match, Sakura tastes the drink on her tongue and watches the dealer for a moment, then gathers another large chip stack in her fingers and places it next to the original, substantial pot.
She points.
The dealer acknowledges her raise, and after more shuffling and tapping from the other players, the card round begins.
Atmosphere, sharp. Blonde-pigtails camping at the slot machine purses her lips.
The redhead remains impassive in expression, only deigning to twist a ring around his finger where it sits on his left thumb.
Cards are flipped, and the table erupts as Sakura wins the lot.
Beaming, she lets out a held breath, dizzy from the heady stake she placed. She collects herself, though, as Sasuke's hand skims her bare shoulder to shift the pink curtain of her hair; his quick grip and release feels conspiratorial, a compliment. Straightening again and jewel-tone dress aglitter, she separates a section of chips and dips her head directly to the dealer with a smile, indicating his cut.
"You've upended this table," Sasuke murmurs in her ear.
"Lucky me." She says this skillfully out of the corner of her mouth. Lipstick shade a gentle peach, glossing away the movement of her lips.
"And where did you learn to gamble like that?"
"Oh, here, there, anywhere. Every town has a backroom game, you know, just a matter of finding the right person."
She takes the hand Sasuke offers her, gets to her feet. Those two strangers' sets of eyes burn brands into her cheek, their watchfulness a portent.
"I spy an old friend."
"They're expecting you to collect. Did you already forget you've won?"
"I'm not so lush, or did you forget that post-event hangover?"
"Sakura—"
"See if they'll do the amount in cash, okay? And tip anyone necessary. I only know so many rules."
Placing both hands on his tie, she runs her fingers over the well-stitched material and pulls him closer. He seems to float, barely rooted to the ground, watching her with eyes always dark and fierce. Before he can protest:
"You're commanding when you want to be, hm? Authoritative. I think you can handle it."
She glides away, fingers trailing off him and retreating, then rallies with intent. Picking up a more determined path as she proceeds through the casino floor, green eyes holding those of almond, feeling strung and taut between two distant points as her past reels her in and the present watches her with intensity, causing resistance.
She knows he's memorizing her as she goes, mapping all her contours.
Blonde pigtails takes a proffered drink and folds the other arm underneath her ample chest, the red flush of drunkenness painting a butterfly shape across her nose and cheeks. Gesturing with the glass in her hand at the empty slot seat next to her, Sakura takes it and also accepts a gin for herself, leveling a significant look at her new — old? — friend.
"You do know you need to tip them, Tsunade?"
Tsunade waggles her finger at Sakura, the corners of her mouth pulled down into a pout. By the sea of empties, it's clear she's way ahead of the waitress's ability to keep up.
"I don't need lip from a wayward girl." It's a gentle barb, affectionate, and she follows it up with a finger-flick at Sakura's long pink locks. "But you look grown now, and healthy. Not an awkward, lost young lady anymore."
"Savvy, too. I could feel your eyes on me for the last two hours."
Tsunade scoffs, draining another half a glass and fingers twitching toward the slot lever. "I've been watching you over there, with your handsome shadow. And I can see it in your eyes, that sharp edge. A shark in game and love."
Sakura repeats love under her breath in a dismissive sniff.
"Saw him, too," Sakura says, raising her eyebrows but not giving any other indication toward the red-haired man lingering at the bar. With oddly callow eyes at odds with his parlous appearance, he continues to nurse the same drink and occasionally fiddle with the ring on this thumb. "He hasn't moved."
"Don't worry, I've had my eye on him too, the scrawny prick."
Sakura chokes a little into her sip, suppressing a laugh.
"Where have you been roaming, Tsunade? Sometimes I could use your insight." Smiling, she glances out over the casino floor.
Tsunade watches her, hand moving again toward the slot lever.
"Oh, from one coast to another, on a boat or a train, moving among people without being known. The same things we've always done. Exist."
Sakura has no answer for this, sighing at the slight lines around her mentor's eyes. Slight for her age, anyway. No, she was much more than a mere guide for a lost girl who wasn't used to how rough the world was, how little people would extend kindness, who didn't know how to hide.
"I did do one thing," Tsuande says suddenly, "a small thing."
"Oh, go on then," Sakura says, pointing at the slot lever. "Do it, your fidgeting is driving me crazy!"
With a cheeky drunk grin, Tsunade pulls the lever with a reverence often reserved for members of a strict church, finally receiving spiritual release.
"Opened a hospital."
"No shit! Oh sorry, pardon, damn—"
"Sakura, you can curse in front of me now," Tsunade says, one eye on the fast-turning slots, colorful icons a blur. The embarrassed bluster takes her back to a simpler time, a safer one, in retrospect. "Do you curse in front of him, your beau? Your escort? Dunno what you consider him."
"How did you—"
"You think I'm old, dumb, or both?"
Ping. A small icon of a toad, garish orange and a pipe dangling out the mouth, shudders into place and stops.
"I—"
"Uchiha are easy to spot. They all have that look, don't patronize your elders."
"We're just—"
Tsunade waves away her protests as dust. "Don't pretend. You must also think I don't read magazines, or keep in touch with old friends."
"Old friends." Sakura rolls her eyes.
Ping. A coiled purple serpent with a dangerous crown of horns is the second icon to slam into place — no jackpot, anyway.
"Jiraiya always has the best tales for me. It's why I still talk to the old lecher, come to think of it."
Sakura frowns, summoning a memory from the depths of her mind of a drunk, loud, hanger-on she'd met briefly many years ago. Inebriated on liquor and on her mentor, earning himself a punch in the mouth by Tsunade in some dimly-lit dive . . . Sakura makes the connection and covers her mouth, remembering Hyuuga Neji's event.
"Absolute vagabond shit," Sakura mutters. "You two. Why don't you cozy up with this stalker at the bar and compare notes."
"Don't be sassy," Tsunade scolds. "You always need people watching your back. Well, friendly ones, not your baby-faced clinger over there."
"Just what I need, more trouble."
A pause. The slots sing round and round, but the third begins to slow. The whole machine, really, feels unbearably sluggish.
"So there's been others?"
Sakura doesn't answer.
Ping. A blue and white slug, slinging a spurt of acid, is the last icon to slam into place and complete the odd animal trio. Tinny, chiming tunes encourage the gambler to play again and again and again.
Tsunade ignores it.
"Watch your back, young lady," she says quietly. "Powerful men are trouble, and you've always had a knack for somehow ending up with it."
"Which, the men, or the trouble?"
The raise of her eyebrows suggests the answer is so obviously both.
"He's different, you know." Sakura's voice is barely discernible over the casino din and raucous machines. "He's a good man, whatever he comes from."
Tsunade surveys her with a bit of skepticism: A girl turned woman, a little hardened and worn by circumstance, but still smart. She considers herself and feels that type of love has only seduced her once, and the loss of it is enough for a lifetime.
"And if you lose him?"
"I've been honest, that this isn't forever. That it can't be."
"And if he loses himself for you?"
She knows where Tsunade's questions come from, care and concern germinating from the soil of her own hard life; a woman that loses a gentle soulmate, taken too soon, strung up and tangled in endless guilt.
Tsunade doesn't wait for an answer.
"If you ever need something in the future, call on me. I'm out west now."
"Out west?"
"The hospital. It's mine, actually. Felt like I should try to cultivate purpose, or something. I don't attach my face to it, but—"
"But you should," Sakura insists, taking her hand. "You have no reason to hide. You're too brilliant for that."
"I would say the same to you. I mean it, call on me. If you need me. Even if you don't." Tsunade pauses. "If you get tired of running."
They share this moment in the smoky casino, knowing how much and how little can be discussed when hidden in plain sight. Seemingly infrangible curses settling between them, the type they've always shared which bonded them so tightly before.
Tsunade breaks the silence first.
"How did you know I was here?"
"I didn't! A lovely fated encounter."
"Really, how did you?"
A pause. Sakura casts her eyes to the three kitschy slot icons, troika animals. Slot currency. "I'm just on vacation.
"You're a better liar now, but still not with me, Sakura."
Sakura stands, fingers trailing from Tsunade's. The smile they share may last them two days or twenty years, so is the destiny of those always on the move. The former fixes her eyes on the redhead at the bar, turning away as she says in undertone,
"Having a good time, nothing more."
Chill creeps into her chest as she departs but she presses it down, setting off across the casino floor again to cut a severe swath with her unshaken gait. Her new focus brings forth anger simmering under the skin, adrenaline, already on to the next encounter. That sadness will have to wait, indulged in private, compartmentalized: The lessons she's learned before, useful for broken hearts and setting broken bones.
Placing her fingers on the bar, taking up a space next to the stranger, Sakura glances over her shoulder to see the slot seat resolutely abandoned.
He signals a two-drink order, but ignores her. Lowering her guard, extending a peace offering? Posturing?
"That's an interesting piece," she trills, eyes flickering to the ring and then to his gaze. They stare at one another for longer than strangers should; she catches the barest flinch in the corner of one of his eyes.
"Some type of heirloom, is it? A fashion statement? Criminal syndicate?"
The last phrase drops casually, and he turns fully to her now, abandoning pretense as his elbow meets the bar and he drops his head into his palm.
"Girl, did I hear the last part quite right?"
"It's familiar. The ring, I mean. Just curious who you pledge your allegiance to, that asks you to stalk young women."
"'Pledging' is a weighted phrase. And incorrect.'"
"For an impatient man, you sure do a lot of watching and waiting. Your boss isn't playing to your strengths."
A strained, faint grin that produces more of a sneer; he turns away again.
Sakura's eyes glitter in the smoky air.
"I see," she says, glancing at the bartender, who sets two glasses down. "You're disgruntled with your stakeout role. I could tell by all your fidgeting that you're a man who likes to be moving."
"I do wait for things that are interesting, even if tedious."
"Tell your keeper I know people are following me. The club, my workplace."
He doesn't acknowledge this was his doing, but also doesn't see the smugness she should. A man like this would want credit, edify his immorality. Not him, then. His voice doesn't fit.
Their heads are close, voices low. On the edge of violating one another's space.
"Oh, does 'keeper' bother you too? Should be your own boss, then," Sakura adds, closing thin fingers around one of the glasses. He's so close that they brush hands, his cold metal ring dragging across her hot skin. "Loyalty doesn't seem to suit you."
"We have that in common, then," he murmurs, taking the other one. Tipping the glass edge toward her in a mild toast, he takes a swallow; she offers a sip with tight lips.
Frowns.
"Little girls," she responds, "don't owe anything to crime families and puppets. Not then, not now."
"Then what are you doing here, seeking a mess, searching through old wreckage?"
Her lips twist. "You're irritating. You're used to manipulating, thinking people are beneath you. Got a name, puppeteer?"
A quiet scoff, and his eyes remain watching the back of the bar.
"Sasori," he finally says.
Sakura shifts in her seat. The chances of him being even distantly involved in the Sand oil syndicate are high, which opens up a terrifying ocean of inquiry both deep and dark. It would behoove her to pick the brains of Shikamaru or even Ino to see if they have any knowledge, however slight, from their government families. But she's ahead of herself right now.
She's only on vacation.
A name swirls on her tongue and she tamps down the ripple of her temper, the urge to demand secrets of him and force him to speak. Don't overplay your hand — they're likely not related.
Still, there's a shadow on him that's too familiar.
Glimpsing the visitor's book under the nose of a smitten guard had been child's play. Name branded in the soft tissue of her brain, easy to commit to memory. Linked to nothing, at present, that she knows.
Tobi.
"Well, Sasori," she says, setting her glass down with a sharp sound, "tell your keeper to let you find more interesting targets. Or find better prospects yourself. There's a casino full of them."
She stands, smoothing her emerald dress down over her thigh; it shimmers as undulating waves. Gentle collarbone slopes beckoning in the dim. Fingers coming forward and for a moment his eyes rivet to them, watching her hand approach —
— she tips her glass over, liquid pooling on the wood in an abstract omen creating prophecies where there are none.
There's a steady drip as it crests the edge and begins to soak the carpet.
"And . . . try harder, the next time you want to poison me."
As always, thank you summerspringss for your thoughts on chapters, I'm always interested to hear them. Re: last, the themes of fate, destiny, and whether the characters are making their own choices or not has been fun to play with because there's no real right answer - Sakura flees that happen to her, but circles right back into a mess, and while there's all these weird signs for Sasuke that there's layers underneath, things are not what they seem, but he's pursuing truth anyway. idk I like all that mess!
If you read smut and or / you read Red, I published Pink a week ago or so. Roughly same verse, mostly pwp. In hindsight I should have made it all in the same "story" anthology style but you can't win them all haha. On Ao3 it's in a series style because I outlined ideas for other installments. big ope.