Say It With A Straight Face
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summary: "Okay, Sasuke, here's how you can prove you don't like Sakura. Say 'I don't like Sakura' five times with a straight face!" "I don't -twitch- like Sakura -smirk-" "HA! YOU DO!" "SHUT UP! I JUST... HAD TO SNEEZE!" Sure. Sequel to "Just Press 'Send' "
timeline: The characters are juniors in high school; I've also lumped Neji, Tenten, and Lee in with the juniors, to make it easier. I've made Temari and Kankuro seniors. A/U
Chapter Three
Sakura rolled over between her warm, comfortable bed full of blankets and sighed. She pulled the covers up higher over her head and reluctantly glanced at the clock on her bedside table to see how much time she had left to sleep before school would ruin yet another morning by forcing her to get up early.
The glowing, red numbers read 7:55 am.
7:55... mm...
7:55?!
Sakura jumped out of bed, her bones popping, and grabbed the alarm clock in her hands. She reread the screen several times, as if the LCD had just been playing some cruel, sick joke on her.
-beep-
7:56
Uh oh.
"GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!"
Sakura glared at the alarm clock that she had in fact remembered to set. More like the clock had forgotten her - stupid thing kept resetting itself. She swore it hated her because she pressed the 'snooze' button every morning a little harder than necessary. She threw it out the window in disgust and ran into the bathroom at a speed that would have made Tenten and Gai proud.
It didn't help that Sakura's brain had decided to pick today to take an extended vacation. She pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, backwards, fixed it, brushed her hair with her tooth brush for two whole minutes before noticing, and accidentally dropped trash in a drawer and her hair brush in the wastebasket.
She stumbled out of the house without breakfast, preparing to make a run for it to school, when she saw Sasuke sitting in a car parked in the street, in front of the house across from hers, smirking. She noticed his amused expression and immediately looked down, wondering if maybe she had forgotten something important, like pants.
Sasuke leaned over inside the car and opened the passenger door. Sakura got in, grinning sheepishly, and they actually managed to get to school with five minutes to spare.
"Eh heh, uh, thanks for realising I was late, Sasuke," Sakura said, blushing embarrassed as Sasuke manoeuvred the car into a student slot.
Sasuke cracked a smile, and pulled out the alarm clock she'd thrown out the window, which was now totally destroyed.
-about fifteen minutes earlier-
Sasuke was just driving, not paying attention to anything in particular, that is, until an alarm clock flew out of the sky and hit the street, missing his car by inches.
'What the hell? Was that an... alarm clock?!'
"I didn't know you had such a nice car," Sakura commented, trying to change the subject from her folly and making a face at the broken clock that was bleeding wires and gears all over the back seat.
The Uchiha shrugged, "It's supposed to rain pretty hard today, so walking wouldn't be the smartest thing."
They both got out of the car and headed to first period as the bell rang and everyone started to walk inside.
"Really, thanks, Sasuke," Sakura said at their lockers, a gave him a quick hug, "You're the best," she smiled, before disappearing into Kakashi's classroom. Once inside, she grimaced to herself as she felt some weird emotions pop up from the hug. Emotions she really wanted to squash right now, because she knew they were foolish.
Sasuke felt his face go pink and he gave a small, involuntary smile. He jerked his head sharply and slapped himself before anyone could see him standing there like that, and silently stalked into pre-cal after her.
Naruto, Sasuke, Shikamaru, Neji, Kiba, and Shino sat at the same table for lunch in the noisy cafeteria packed with the rest of the juniors, who were basically screaming and acting retarded. Naruto gulped down ramen blissfully and Neji and Shikamaru talked, while Shino let a beetle crawl all over his hand and Kiba watched. Same as any other day really, except for one thing. Sasuke stabbed at his plain, white rice and tried to force himself to quit looking towards the girls' table, where Hinata, Sakura, Ino, and Tenten sat. Temari was a senior so she had the second lunch.
Damn, he looked again. This was hard.
'What the hell is happening to me anyway? Why can't I just leave Sakura alone?'
Naruto chugged the last of his ramen down and Neji and Shikamaru started to disagree about something and began punching each other. Naruto glanced across the table at the Uchiha and grinned, a noodle still stuck to his face.
"That's the seventh time you've looked over there in the past five minutes, teme. And you're not eating," Naruto gave a low whistle, "You've got it worse than I thought."
"What do I have, Naruto?" Sasuke snapped through clenched teeth, glaring. He was really starting to lose patience with Naruto.
Naruto grinned and shouted, "Lovesick, Sasuke! You're lovesick!!" Sasuke cringed. That was way too loud.
Sure enough, all the guys turned around to look at the best friends, "Okay, did we hear correctly? You, Uchiha? Lovesick?" Neji and Shikamaru actually stopped fighting and turned to the action.
"Must be Sakura," Neji said.
"Yeah." "I though so." "Totally." "Duh." all the guys agreed in unison.
Naruto turned to a very pissed off looking Sasuke with wide eyes, "See, Sasuke? It's soooo obvious."
Sasuke closed his eyes and tried to unclench his fists, breathing deeply as he rubbed his fingertips into his temples, "No, I-
"Ten dollars that they're a couple by the end of this week," Kiba said, raising a hand and grinning.
"At the rate loverboy seems to be at, I'll double that bet, for by this weekend," Shikamaru smirked.
"Five on next week!"
Sasuke growled, giving up on calming himself, and threw an apple at Naruto, who was laughing hysterically.
"Okay, next group - Uchiha Sasuke, you're with Haruno Sakura," Kurenai said, sending the stalker fans and slackers a glare, "Because they were the only ones who didn't ask to be paired up. And that way none of you get them!" Kurenai said, smiling evilly, obviously proud of her brilliant solution.
"Awwwwww..."
"QUIET!!"
Sakura twisted around in her chair and smiled at Sasuke, "That's great! We can get a head start in the library today! Well, if you want."
Sasuke nodded wordlessly, gripping the bottom of his desk, his jaw tight. As is he wasn't confused enough already.
Sakura nudged Ino as Asuma droned on and on in their English Literature class.
"Ino... wake up," she muttered under her breath.
"Huh? Whaa? Where are the rainbow panda bears?" Ino slurred as her eyes blinked open.
Sakura took her by the shoulders and shook her.
"Wake up, Ino!"
"No..."
"Hey, is that Temari kissing Shikamaru?"
"WTF, you bitch!!!!" Ino shrieked, jumping out of her chair, wide awake. Everyone in the class turned around to stare at her, including Asuma, his hand halfway to his mouth with some Tic Tacs.
Stare.
"Uh... she means 'what?' That's not chronological text structure in the third piece - it's inductive!" Sakura said speedily, yanking Ino's ponytail to pull her quickly back down into her seat, "And inductive can be such a bitch to find, you know!"
Asuma glanced at the board, "Oh! You're right, girls! Sorry. I hadn't caught that. Good eye!" he said, chomping down on his handful of Tic Tacs. He was a known smoker and he couldn't smoke in school unless he wanted Tsunade to kill him and totally eat his soul, so Asuma went through about six packs of the little mints a day, to compensate.
"Thanks," Ino muttered gratefully as she fixed her ponytail. Once Asuma's attention was back to the board, she laid her head back down on her arms and closed her eyes. Sakura poked her. Hard.
"OWWWWW!!"
Asuma and the class looked at them again.
"Owwww! You missed a comma - it's almost painful to look at!" Sakura groaned, wincing at Ino.
Asuma looked at the board and added the comma, "You girls are just on a whole other level today!" he remarked proudly through his Tic Tacs. The front row got sprayed with Original Mint flavour.
Sakura poked Ino again, more softly. The blonde turned her head and glared at her friend with sleepy, blue eyes.
"Sorry - you have to stay awake in class."
"But I hate English Lit," Ino moaned, "It's so boring it'll kill me if I pay attention! Just talk to me instead; screw text evidence," she whined, throwing in some puppy dog eyed looks for good measure.
Sakura rolled her eyes but brightened up a little, "Me and Sasuke get to be partners for our physics project. We're going to work on it today after school."
"Aww," Ino gushed, clasping her hands together excitedly, "You guys' first date."
"Shut up - it's not a date. We're working on a school project. In the library."
"Well, you're both kind of nerds, only you don't look like it, so the library should be nice and romantic. Like one of those cute, movie scenes. Geeks in love."
Sakura slapped Ino's arm, "Quit it. It's not like that."
"Then why do you sound so excited?" Ino countered, grinning.
"You know I love quantim physics."
"Yeah, but not as much as Uchiha Sasuke."
"Ugh! You're impossible!!"
"Thanks - I try."
"Can't come over for ramen, Naruto. I've got to work on a project with Sakura after school," Sasuke commented to Naruto, not sounding the least bit sorry, as they walked down the hall out of boy's health class to their final classes.
"Sakura... project... EWW!! Too much information, Sasuke!" Naruto shouted. Sasuke cringed. Probably not the smartest wording around Naruto, especially after coming out of a health class. Awkward.
"Wha - You perv! Our project for Kurenai's class. Physics."
"Suuuuuure."
"Naruto-" Sasuke started to say, getting really annoyed with him again. He was really going to have to start watching himself. If Naruto kept doing this to him his blood pressure would become terrible. He already had a headache.
"Wait," Naruto threw out an arm and made Sasuke crash into it just before they entered the fine arts hall, where Naruto had theatre arts and Sasuke had band.
"What, you idiot!?" Sasuke snapped, stooping down to pick up the books Naruto had just made him drop.
"Don't go to eighth period. Go get some flowers!"
"What?! No - why?!"
"For Sakura when you meet her after school for your date," Naruto said, as if he was talking to an idiot.
Sasuke glared, "I told you, it is not a date."
"Fine, fine, not a date," Naruto said, sticking his hands in the air as if in surrender.
He went back stage for theatre arts and stood beside Ino, the only one who had that class with him. They both watched Sasuke stalk off, muttering something like, "It's not an effing date."
Ino and Naruto exchanged a look.
"It is so a date."
"Totally."
Other than health, which would be... awkward, English lit, and world history, band was one of the few classes Sasuke had without Sakura. He glanced at the clock behind their director, Anko. Class was nearly over. Key word: nearly. No way was one minute supposed to take that long. He was positive that the clock needed new batteries or something.
"Good job, band! More percussion, and I only want battery, trombone, and euphonium this time!!" Anko shouted at the top of her very loud lungs, even though they weren't even playing anymore and the room was silent. Damn, was she loud. Sasuke, in the front row, flinched, and an annoyed expression immediately came across his face at the giggles and girlie shrieks that pierced the silence from behind him.
When their reeds weren't in their mouths being played, the entire back row of the saxophone section shrieked and giggled. It was the largest section in the band, but all it really was was a section clogged with screaming fan girls who somehow (he didn't even want to know how) found out that he played the alto saxophone. So they all joined so they could spent eighth period screaming and trying to touch him.
"Clarinet, alto sax, oboe!!" Anko shouted.
"Good job on those staccato eighth notes, Uchiha," Anko hollered as they lowered their mouthpieces at the end of the line.
And an outbreak of giggles.
"Oh, Sasuke, you're awesome!"
"Go out with me, Sasuke!
"I WOULD BEAT MYSELF WITH THIS SAXOPHONE FOR YOU!!"
'Ugh! Shut up, you stupid girls!! What is wrong with you?!' he thought, cringing and glaring behind him, as Anko ran and took away Suicidal Fan Girl's saxophone before she could hit herself. On the other side of him, Naji patted him on the shoulder sympathetically. Thank God Neji was a sax too; honestly, he wouldn't have survived alone with them.
Anko returned to her podium, "You girls, though, on second alto sax part - awful!! We're doing staccato, not practically legato!! And we're in the key of B flat -what the eff are you guys in, G?!" Anko screamed, whacking her directors stand over and over with her baton.
They just giggled again, probably unaware of what a B flat was anyway.
-whack!- -whack!- -whack!- -whack!- -whack!- -whack!-
'What's with all the stupid, loud, obnoxious girls today?!'
"Try it again!!" Anko hollered, raising her baton.
'Try to stop shouting - my ears are bleeding and then I won't be able to hear the metronome.'
"WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG!!" Anko shrieked, gripping at her hair and practically snapping the baton in half. It bent in her hands and got flung across the room into a tuba player.
"OWWW!!"
More giggling. Giggling should be illegal.
"Maybe if you bitches left me alone, you'd have some free time on your hands. Then you could practice more and maybe, just maybe, you'd be able to play those instruments a little better than a ten year old. No better yet, get the hell out so i can have some peace and quiet. Well, even if they left, there's still Loudmouth-sensei over there...'
"UCHIHA!! QUIT LOOKING AT THE CLOCK!! I DON'T CARE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE HERE, YOU JUST ARE!!"
"Grrr..."
Neji sighed and patted him on the back again.
Next chapter is the long awaited date!
Love the feedback, guys! Keep at it! Much love.