Title: Still I Rise -- #44: turpentine kisses and mistaken blows
Characters/Pairings: Hinata, Naruto, Sasuke, Ino, Sakura, and Sai
Rating: T
Notes: I love Sai. Also, promised fist-fight, wahoo! (Um, and SakuSai and SasuNaru.) The next bit (or two bits) should conclude this mess.
Hinata suggests an airy café for their third date, and Naruto, in typical sunny Naruto fashion, agrees enthusiastically.
"I'm up for anything," he tells her, grinning at her conspiratorially, a grin that makes Hinata feel like it's just him and her on their secret team against the world. Her heart skips another beat.
She thinks that night as she is laying out clothes for their foray the next day, sometimes, when she is talking to him, there is a light in his eyes that blinks out, only slightly, only for a second, and he looks beyond her, through her, at something else, something distant, and in that second, there is longing, naked and needy, on his face. By the time she notices, his attention has snapped back to her and he's raptly listening again. Hinata is not fooled: Naruto is not the loud simpleton he pretends to be. There are layers inside of him, but he protects them with weapons—bright smiles and loud laughter—and Hinata has no experience with those.
So Hinata says nothing. She has been raised with whispers and shame as her bedmates and knows all about secret desires.
When Hinata enters the café the next day the appointed time, everything seems fine: he is as solid and cheerful as ever, and his eyes look at nothing but her. Still, she thinks, it is a precarious balance—whose face does he superimpose on her own in those fleeting moments?
And as she is wondering, a troop of people burst through the door, and suddenly, Naruto has bolted to his feet, eyes wide.
"What--?" she begins, but before she knows what is going on, a slim, black-haired man has flown across the room and punched Naruto across the face.
"So it's official?" Ino whispers to Sakura as both girls stand in the hallway leading to Sakura's tiny galley kitchen. "He's officially out of the closet?"
"I—I think so," Sakura mutters back, staring at Sasuke brood in her living room with furrowed brows. "He didn't say anything about it but all he's been doing is asking obsessively about Naruto since he got here."
"Wasn't it just a passing phase? I mean, they went to an all-boys boarding school. Everyone's gay at all-boys boarding schools. Naruto got over it."
Sakura still looks concerned, worrying at her bottom lip and tugging on a forelock of her hair. "Sasuke's going to kill Naruto when he finds out that he's dating some chick."
"Kill him dead," Ino agrees. "I think it's best not to let him know. As in, ever."
Sakura nods her assent. "It'll save that poor moron's life."
Sai, standing behind them in the kitchen and eavesdropping on the whispered conversation, decides that he is decidedly unhappy about the situation. He doesn't like it when his girlfriend frets and worries over other men, but he's got a special sort of dislike for Sasuke. Sakura claims she's over it now, but she had spent an inordinate amount of years pining after the dark, brooding young man after all.
Which makes Sai feel distinctly uncomfortable about having Sasuke sulk around Sakura's apartment.
Time to get things moving, then.
He sidles into the living room, takes a seat across the Uchiha heir, and smiles his brightest, fakest smile.
Sasuke is not amused, and the glare pinning Sai to his chair makes that manifest.
No matter. Sai is not out to win any popularity contests. He just wants this melodramatic sulk-fest out of his girlfriend's apartment.
Yesterday, Sakura could have counted the times she has been this scared on one hand, but now it will take two.
"Fuck," she hisses as Sasuke makes yet another wild left turn and avoids an on-coming car by millimeters. She should yell something, scream something, but all she can do now is fight to catch her breath and hope that she hadn't done something so irredeemably wrong that God would send her to hell, because, with the way Sasuke is driving, she probably will not survive this trip.
"Sasuke!" Ino screams from the back seat where she is clutching on to Sai—who is looking even more ashen than usual—"what the hell do you think you're doing?"
No, Sakura corrects her silently through gritted teeth. What the hell are we doing in this car?
It had been Sai, Sai and his stupid perpetual smile, who had told Sasuke that no, he didn't know where Naruto was living, but he did know that he was dating some pretty young thing and they should be at such-and-such café now. Sakura had dashed into the room one second too late to pounce on the moron, but had seen Sasuke's mouth tighten nearly imperceptibly and witnessed his lunge for his car keys and felt her stomach do summersaults worthy of the Olympic Games.
They had all tumbled into the car—she and Ino because they had enough experience with these matters to know that to allow Sasuke to go alone would be tantamount to being complicit accessories in Naruto's murder and Sai because he was Sai—but had made the mistake allowing Sasuke to drive because Sasuke is livid, .
That scares her even more than his driving.
Sakura swallows bile. Sai is going die, and, if she lives long enough, she will make sure it will be in the most painful way imaginable.
Hinata backs away from the flying fists and the tumbling glassware and splintering tables with a wildly pounding heart and hanging jaw.
What had just happened? Her mind gallops to catch up with the situation, but can make no sense of it: why were Naruto and the stranger boring a hole in the center of the café? The pair throws punches and kicks with utter abandon and she can make out Naruto's voice demanding answers—"What the fuck are you doing, bastard?"—and the stranger's answering grunts.
And then her heart freezes because she catches a glimpse of the stranger's face. The features, contorted in now rage rearrange themselves and fit themselves in another instance in her mind; the aquiline nose, the thin lips, the black eyes, all belonging to Sasuke Uchiha.
The man her father had intended for her to marry.
Naruto takes a vicious punch. Her stomach turns in on itself and suddenly Hinata wants to throw up.
Although the car ride may have been a bit frightening, Sai is quite pleased with the scene he is partially responsible for causing, and especially pleased with the way Sakura and Ino are clutching their faces in abject horror. He's sure that Sakura will not be talking to him for another week—perhaps two—but he's already worked out a game-plan to mollify her. It involves lots of flowers, a painting of questionable nature, and promises of lots of sex. Sai is confident it will work.
More importantly, however, she will surely be so mad at Sasuke for laying waste to in innocent café that she will not talk to him for a month, at the very least.
He grins to himself. It's a fair trade-off.
He spies the girl that is unfortunate enough to have gotten herself involved with Naruto. She is a pretty thing in a plain, understated way, and Sai imagines that she would make an interesting subject. A study in blushes, he surmises. The color washing across her cheeks and the light slanting though her hair are quite fetching.
He watches as the red abruptly drains from her face as the expression on it morphs from confused-with-an-edge-of-terror to utterly mortified and she covers her mouth with her hands. How curious.
He sidles over and smiles his most comforting smile at her. "Frightening, isn't it?"
She turns her wide eyes on him. (He makes up his mind to paint her: he's never seen eyes so light and striking, and his hands already itch for a brush.) "N-no!" she gasps, her hands wringing together. "I forgot, I swear, I forgot! I should have called or wrote or something—oh, I don't know what to do!"
Sai frowns. He doesn't like her features arranged in that expression; it contorts the image he has superimposed on the canvas in his mind. "I afraid I don't understand."
Tears gather in her enormous eyes. He doesn't like this either. Eyes like those must be unclouded.
"I-it's my fault!" she wails, getting more distressed by the second. "I was supposed to marry him and now he's here hitting my date—"
Sai is unsure of what this girl is trying to say, but he is quite sure that the brouhaha ensuing in the middle of the café—oh, how quaint, the proprietor is finally threatening to call the police—is the result of Sasuke's repressed desires and his prolonged and uselessly melodramatic struggle with his sexuality. Well. He doesn't want this girl's face to crumple any more than it has, so he puts two fingers in his mouth and blows.
The ensuing whistle is shrill enough to halt even the morons destroying a perfectly fine café: they stop in mid-blow to stare at the source of the noise. Sai is proud of it despite himself, and tells the girl with a smile, "The floor is yours."
She is not stupid and jumps at the chance. "I-I'm so sorry!" she cries.
"No, Hinata, it's not your—" Naruto starts, but she cuts him off.
"I'm sure you d-don't remember me, Sasuke," she says, more steady but still clearly on the verge of tears. Sai is rather impressed. "I'm Hinata Hyuuga. I was," she swallows, "supposed to marry you."
Everyone in the shop stares at the unfolding drama. Ino lets out a low whistle.
The girl—Hinata, Sai tells himself—wilts under the stares, but continues. "I refused a-ages ago, but I didn't t-t-tell you myself. I'm—I f-forgot, I swear! I m-meant to, b-but--but there was--I mean, I'm n-not going to marry you! So, please, don't hit Naruto anymore!" Color floods her cheeks as she turns and rushes out the door.
Before anyone can move, she is lost to the rush outside.
"Well, shit," Sakura says after a beat of silence.
Sai cannot help but agree.