Title: Kiss Away the Pain
Disclaimer: If I owned Naruto, Sasuke and Hinata would actually have a bit of interaction in canon. As it is, they don't, so I guess I don't own Naruto.
Rating: PG ( K+ ) – for a bit of cursing and Sasuke being a meanie.
Spoilers: If you haven't read past the first volume of Naruto, you're in for a few surprises. Additionally, you're a total idiot for reading fanfiction in the Naruto section. Shoo!
Summary: ThreeShot. "N-nothing heals w-without a k-kiss..." SasuHina. (Prequel to "Speak Up")
Written in honor of Riceesquared, my newest accomplice.
Part Two: More
'I need more training...,' was the single thought that skittered across Sasuke's mind as he lay glaring up at the sky, flat on his back in what he assumed to be someone's backyard zen garden. Though the sandy terrain had cushioned his ungainly fall, Sasuke cursed it for the rash he was bound to have later. 'So much for changing my underwear this morning...'
With a creak in his spine, Sasuke sat up and shook the powdery earth out of his hair. "I really hate girls," he decided, rubbing the sore muscles in his neck tenderly. "Feather-brained, moody, psychotic, and deaf, the whole lot of them."
"A-ano...Sasuke-san, is that y-you?"
Startled by the soft, unobtrusive voice that called out to him, Sasuke leapt to his feet, assuming a reflexive fighting stance.
A couple hundred yards away, standing on a low porch wrapped around the house he had fallen off of, was a girl about his age staring in startled horror at him. She seemed vaguely familiar, but Sasuke had to admit that he could hardly tell one grasping, opportunistic female from another. Overall, there was nothing about the girl that hinted at the girls identity aside from her eyes, which were large and blanched.
Though he didn't know many specifics about the family, he could tell that the girl was a Hyuuga. The hueless eyes were a tell-tale sign of the clan's infamous bloodlimit, which was only carried by those closely related to the main branch. Undoubtedly, this timid little weakling was some random second cousin to the illustrious clan that had found herself lucky enough to chance upon the Konoha heartthrob in her own backyard.
Sasuke surveyed her carefully from a distance, gauging his potential threat with a keen eye. She seemed harmless enough at first glance, but they all did; there was no telling what the girl might be plotting behind those innocent alabaster eyes of hers.
The girls' body was wrapped in an indigo-dyed yukata ( 1 ) that was patterned with white and lavender lilies along the bottom hem and sleeves; the casual attire of the Hyuuga household, most likely. The fabric was snug on her silhouette, but not in a vulgar or licentious way, suggesting that she wasn't hiding any easily accessible weapons on her person.
Her hair made him a little suspicious at first; the only reason he could think of for a woman with short hair to pull it back would be to hide a discreet kunai in plain view as a hairpin. Though her cut was more of a stylized bob, she had attempted to form the longer layers into a bun at the back of her head, neglecting to realize that the feat was practically impossible to achieve on an aesthetically pleasing level. The girl's disheveled coiffure was an unfortunate failure of style, but in the absence of any ornamental clips or combs, appeared to be innocent enough.
Overall, the girl was unfortunately dressed, but probably harmless.
'She won't even slow me down,' Sasuke decided, straightening his posture to stand erect.
As the girl began to descend the steps, however, the Uchiha prodigy tensed his muscles in preparation to flee. Just in case.
"W-what happened, S-Sasuke-san?" the girl asked, stepping gingerly onto the first stepping stone leading into the sandy zen garden. Her feet were bare save for a pair of tabi ( 2 ),but she seemed to ignore the rough stone upon which she tread. "Are y-you alright?"
Sasuke stumbled back a few paces, hands held up before him in self-defense. "Stay back," he warned.
The girl stopped, each foot on a different stone. "B-but..."
"I said stay back," Sasuke snapped, moving backwards away from her. There was no telling when she would pounce; girls were slippery like that.
The Hyuuga girl remained obediently in place. "O-okay, Sasuke-san..."
The girl stood stiff and perfectly still, moving only enough to breathe.
"Sasuuuuuuukeeee-kuuun!"
Sasuke jumped as his heart leapt into his throat. Forgetting the potential enemy right in front of him, the Uchiha prodigy spun around in all directions searching for the known enemies that he couldn't immediately locate.
"Sasuuuuuuukeeee-kuuun! Where are you, sweetums?"
"Don't call him that, you hussy!"
"I'll call him whatever I want, you – "
Without pausing to curse as he so dearly wanted to, Sasuke spun around and propelled himself forward toward the girl and the safety of the covered porch.
"S-Sasuke-san?" the girl squeaked, taking a wary step out of his path. "What's wr-wrong?"
Amending his route, the Uchiha Avenger bounded after her and swept the only witness to his location up in his arms. There was no way he was going to leave such shivering, cowardly waste of a human being to Sakura and Ino; she'd give away his position faster than he could get away!
With a swift leap, Sasuke mounted the porch, the Hyuuga girl trapped in his grasp. He ducked behind a convenient pillar holding the roof and the floor apart and, pinning the girl's back against his chest with his right hand, he covered her mouth with his left.
"Scream, cry, speak – anything, and you're dead!" he hissed, pressing his lips against the shell of the girl's ear. From his close proximity, he could feel the quick pulsation of her heart; it was a steady throb, despite its speed.
Though she trembled a little, the Hyuuga girl acquiesced to his threat and held her silence. The only sounds leaking from her body were those of her deep, heavy breathing rasping against the back of his hand.
"Sasuuuuukeeee-kuuuun!" another desperate cry rang out, quivering with grief. It came from nearby. "Wheeeeere arrrreeeee yooouuu?"
Sasuke clenched his fist into the girl's shoulder, causing her to squeal a little.
"Shut up!" he reminded her, squeezing harder. Judging by the amount of padding she seemed to be wearing, he doubted that he was actually hurting her.
Sasuke caught a glimpse of her tearful gaze in the corner of her right eye before she looked away again, resuming her silence.
...tha-thump...
"Saaa...kee...!"
"...kee...uuun!"
The voices of his foes were melting away, signaling that it was finally safe to breach his hiding place. He relaxed his grip on the girl, dropping his hand away from her mouth, and whispered, "I think it's safe..."
Just in case he was mistaken, Sasuke held onto the girl's body. The other two could still be hunting in the general area, so the Uchiha wasn't ready to drop his guard completely yet. It was best if he held onto the Hyuuga girl until he was absolutely certain that they were gone. Her shampoo smelled pretty good, anyway; like lavender and green tea. Very calming.
"A-ano...S-S-Sasuke-san...?"
Sasuke looked down to address the girl's question. She kept her face averted from his, but Sasuke noted a red tint on the tip of her ear that seemed to indicate that she was blushing.
'Stupid girl,' he thought with a smug smirk. Probably fantasizing about why he had grabbed her, or something. "What?"
"C-could you l-let m-m-me go now?"
Sasuke had his mouth opened to snap about how much he hated holding her – about how damned lucky she was that he had decided to spare her life – and how much his ego wasn't bruised by her rejection when it suddenly occurred to him that skinny girls didn't have such...plush shoulders.
Slowly, Sasuke allowed his eyes to travel down the length of his own arm to where his hand rested –
– against her chest.
His immediate reaction was to go stiff, thus forcing himself to stop squeezing...her. After taking a moment to allow the blood to start circulating throughout his body again, Sasuke's logical deduction began functioning again.
'I just... my first...touched...b-b-bre – '
Well, almost.
The garbled, nonsensical words forming in his mind incited his secondary reaction, which was to push the girl as far away from him as possible and overcompensate for the amount of blood that had drained out of his face.
Sure that he was blushing in a most embarrassing way, Sasuke removed his offending hand and shoved the girl forward and away from his person. She stumbled a little, but managed to catch her balance against the wall.
The Hyuuga girl righted herself and turned toward him, hand pressed against the place where he assumed her heart to be, mouthing words that had no sound. "Sa...Sasuke-s-san...," she barely managed, digging her nails into the lavender fabric of her yukata.
The cotton wrap was pulled back from her neck, revealing the barest of glimpses of what Sasuke had recently had the benefit of groping. Despite himself and his strong anti-female sentiments, the Uchiha prodigy couldn't prevent his curious eyes from dropping down to that smooth, pale sample of skin that almost allowed him to...see...
Sasuke's brow crinkled as a sudden thought struck him. Turning his back to the girl (and her cleavage), he held up his hands and began flexing his fingers as if taking invisible measurements. 'Huh...,' he thought, sneaking a covert peek of the cowering Hyuuga girl over his shoulder. 'She must be older than she looks.'
"S-Sasuke-san...?"
The Uchiha avenger quickly looked away, convinced that he had been caught staring. He dearly hoped that the girl didn't think he had been "checking her out," or anything stupid like that. As her body was nearly consumed by the folds of her kimono, there wasn't much to oggle, anyway...
"What?" Sasuke grunted, taking great care to not even look at the girl through the corner of his eye.
"I...I th-think you're h-hurt."
With a skeptical eyebrow raised, Sasuke turned to glare at the Hyuuga girl. "I'm fine," he retorted simply.
"B-but...," the girl fiddled with the hem of one of her heavy sleeves, looking down. "You're b-b-bleeding."
Sasuke gave his body an abbreviated once-over, but found no evidence of the alleged wound. "I am not."
Raising a shaking hand, the Hyuuga girl indicated a rusty stain directly above her heart. When he had been...observing the girl earlier, Sasuke had mistaken the splotch as a part of the floral pattern that was scattered across the blueish-purple fabric. "I th-think you hurt y-your h-hand."
Sasuke looked down to observe the appendage his brief scan had overlooked; across the palm of his right hand was an oozing cut, probably acquired during his tumble from the roof.
"It's nothing," the Uchiha immediately dismissed, stuffing both hands deep into his pockets.
"I'll b-bandage it f-for you," the Hyuuga girl offered, taking a few shuffling steps toward the shoji ( 3 ) screen nearest to her. "W-wait here."
Before Sasuke could protest, the girl had drawn back the paper-screen door and disappeared within the house, presumably to retrieve the materials necessary to fix his hand.
"Hmph," the Uchiha snorted, turning toward the steps leading off the wrap-around porch.
'Like I need help from a girl...'
"Sasuuuuuuuukeeeeeeeeee-sweeeeeeeetums! Come out, come out, wherever yoooou arrreee!"
"I told you to stop calling him that!"
"Make me!"
"Yooou...!"
Leaping back to flatten himself against the house, Sasuke thought better of his immediate escape. Though he didn't quite look forward to an extended period of time with the strange Hyuuga girl, Sasuke didn't particularly fear her intentions, either. Sure, she was probably as madly in love with him as every other girl in the village, but she at least attempted to hide it a little (the stuttering kind of gave her away, though).
Then again, she had rebuffed his...embrace earlier, which might have indicated that she wasn't interested in him after all. That was how Sakura treated Naruto's advances, anyway.
Sasuke couldn't hold back a snort of laughter at the thought of his attentions being rebuffed like his idiot teammate's. 'She's probably the shy type,' he decided.
Looking down to gaze fondly at his bleeding hand, Sasuke's lips quirked in a smirk as his cheeks lighted in the barest of blushes. Girls had a couple redeemable qualities, it turned out.
"Sasuke-san?"
The wary Uchiha avenger kept his body plastered to the wall as he whipped his head around to face the owner of the voice he now recognized. The Hyuuga girl was standing in the doorway, first aid kit clutched betwixt her pale hands, and staring at him as if he had lost his mind.
"What are you d-doing?"
"Hiding," Sasuke snorted, as if this were the most obvious conclusion in the world. He dropped his hand to the floor and hoped that she would equate his staring as concern for his injury (it kinda hurt, after all; well, a little).
The Hyuuga girl blinked her milky eyes at him, but didn't press the issue. "Oh."
Sasuke scrunched his face into a frown for appearances sake. "They're still close."
"Who?"
"The girls," Sasuke sneered, genuinely annoyed by the placating look she was giving him.
"A-ah...," the girl awarded him a humoring smile that the avenger detested. Did she not know about the psychotic fangirls chasing him? Or was she simply pretending that they didn't exist? "I see. W-would you l-like to sit down while I f-fix your h-hand?"
Sasuke snorted derisively, but decided not to pursue the issue. If she wanted to be in denial about all the other girls that found satisfaction in stalking him, then he wasn't going to go out of his way to correct her perceptions.
Slumping down to the floor from where he stood, Sasuke resigned himself to fate for a few minutes. If things got out of hand (pun unintended), he'd just dash off and take his chances with Sakura and Ino. He'd had enough experience with the other two to know how to handle them (though he really preferred not to).
The young Hyuuga girl knelt beside him slowly, careful not to tear her yukata, and set the first aid items aside. "L-let me see your hand, p-please," she smiled, holding out her own palm to receive his.
Sasuke stubbornly crossed his arms over his chest, hiding them away from her good intentions. Hiding out in her yard didn't require him to actually touch her (intentionally), after all. And he never allowed girls to touch him. "I don't need your help," he intoned firmly.
The Hyuuga's trembling smile fell, but she continued to hold her hand out to him. "B-but it will get inf-fected i-if I don't c-c-clean it."
"Feh."
"Y-you should really l-let me clean it," the Hyuuga girl insisted, scooting a little closer to him so that her knees brushed his thigh.
"No."
"P-please...?"
Sasuke's frown deepened into a scowl, "Are you deaf or just plain stupid? I said I don't need help."
The Hyuuga girl recoiled as if the hand she sought to treat had just struck her across the face. Finally withdrawing her arm, she cradled it to her body as her lip began to tremble. She lowered her head so that her bangs obscured her blanched eyes and stammered her apologies, "I'm s-s-sorry, S-Sasuke-san."
"Ah, damnit...," Sasuke muttered, squirming in place as her she withdrew into herself.
The Hyuuga's shoulders were hunched forward so that she almost appeared to be bowing to him in deference, as if she weren't a part of the most powerful and illustrious family in the entire land of fire. The uneven strands of her hair were beginning to fall from the tiny bun she had probably spent a lot of effort creating as her entire body shook, silently expressing the Hyuuga girl's anguish. Though he couldn't actually see any tears, every so often Sasuke could hear a little sob or covert sniffle, implicating that he had, in fact, made her cry.
"Here," the Uchiha barked, thrusting his hand under her nose. If the stupid girl was going to cry about it...
The Hyuuga leaned back, her probative eyes wide open and startled, and stared at his reluctant offering. Flicking her gaze upwards, she peered almost hopefully up at him through her disheveled hair. "S-Sasuke-san...?"
The Uchiha refused to look at her and, instead, fixated on the chaotic spot in the surrounding garden which he had destroyed in his trespassing. The flowing patterns of swirls and contour were destroyed by the initial landing and the two sets of footprints leading away from it.
"I can't afford to have an infection. I've got to leave for a mission tomorrow."
"Eh...?" was the soft response from the girl. Out of the corner of his eye, Sasuke could see her tilt her head in confusion. "Oh! R-right, Sasuke-san. I-I'll c-c-clean it f-for you, th-then."
"Fine."
Without further preamble, the Uchiha's injured appendage was accepted into careful hands. The girl's slim fingers guided his arm by the wrist, stretching it to rest comfortably on a bed of fine cotton and plush flesh.
Once he was certain that the Hyuuga girl was no longer looking in his direction, Sasuke ventured to turn towards her again so that he could watch her dress his wounds. All the better to monitor her proficiency, of course.
His splayed fingers were relaxed against her thigh, cushioned lovingly as she soaked a cloth with some sort of antiseptic solution. The girl set the bottle aside and took up his hand, again by the wrist, lifting it away from it's contented resting place amongst the pattern of cotton lilies.
"This might sting a little," she warned before dabbing lightly at his abrasion with the swab.
'Might sting a little' The Uchiha thought as he yelped and yanked his hand away from her. Sasuke, in his first true display of emotion to this fragile little girl, growled, "What the hell is that stuff?"
"M-my family's s-special h-healing s-s-salve," the Hyuuga replied, hanging her head a little. "I w-warned you it m-might st-sting a little."
Sasuke covered his wound protectively from her sight again by tucking it behind his back.
"A little?" he growled. "That stuff burns like hell!"
"B-but it will p-prevent inf-fection. Let me f-finish," she held out her hand to accept him again.
"No."
"Y-yes."
"No."
The Hyuuga girl thrust out her lower lip in a frown and admonished him, "You're making this h-harder than it has to b-be. I'm almost d-done."
Leaning forward on her knees, the Hyuuga reached out for his arm, obviously prepared to pull it out of hiding herself. Sasuke countered by moving out of her way. "You lied to me. You said it would only sting a 'little.'"
The Hyuuga made another grab for his elbow, but Sasuke pulled it out from behind him and held it far above his head where he knew she wouldn't be able to immediately reach. His well-meaning antagonist swiped at it, but didn't come anywhere close to grabbing him. She steadied herself on his knee and leaned forward as he continued to lean back. "Sasuke-san! Just let me – "
The Hyuuga girl squealed as the hand bracing herself on Sasuke's knee slipped.
Overcorrecting herself, the girl pulled herself upright and away from Sasuke and began falling in the opposite direction. She teetered precariously on the edge of the porch, fighting with gravity to keep her balance, with her arms flailing about helplessly. Squeezing her eyes shut tight, she succumbed to the forces of nature and tilted backward with an alarmed wail.
With a single, automatic motion, Sasuke leaned up and caught her, curling his left arm around her rib cage. A small tug and minimal strain on his muscles reversed the direction of her fall and she collapsed into his lap, hands grasping for stability. She found it in the folds of his shirt and clung tightly.
The Uchiha prodigy grimaced as he cradled the Hyuuga against his chest, fighting to maintain his own balance. 'Girls fall for me all the time, but this is ridiculous.'
— — —
Footnotes:
( 1 ) Yukata – a summer kimono. They're usually made of cotton, consist of only one layer, and sport colorful patterns. In Japan today, you usually only see girls wearing yukata (in public) for summer festivals (as is often depicted in manga/anime).
Aside from giving you a decent idea about the setting, I chose this clothing for Hinata because 1)
it's light an airy, like her personality, and 2) because I figure that the Hyuuga household is traditional/formal, even when relaxed.
This is an extremely abbreviated explanation about Yukata. There are different yukata for men and women, public and private use, and differing color patterns depending on age. For more information, check your nearest search engine.
( 2 ) Tabi – socks. Specifically, socks for geta or zori (both of which are a type of sandal) with a slit between the big toe and the next. You people that like to wear socks with flip flops would LOVE these.
Who else thinks it's funny that the Japanese cornered the market on socks for sandals?
( 3 ) Shoji – a type of door likened to a screen. The frame is made of wood and covered in paper and slides back and forth on a track, again much like a contemporary screen/back door. These doors are generally found in traditional Japanese homes/mansions.
---
Authors Notes: Ugh. being a pain tonight. I had to use a different file type just to get this document uploaded! If there's anything wrong with the structure, text attributes, or whatever, be patient; I'll load a better version tomorrow if such is the case.
Sorry that I'm updating this story before "Speak Up" this week; I was getting behind in the completion of this story and Riceesquared has been waiting for such a long time. Not to worry, though, because I've already finished up the last portion of this story so it should never take precedence over its sequel again.
Oh, and the eighth chapter of "Speak Up" is also on its way. I'd give it another day or so since it's a little longer than previous chapters, but it'll definitely be up by the weekend. Oh! And now that I no longer have to work on the weekends, I should be able to update quicker! HAZZAH! (Hehe, RenFest speak is hard to break n.n;)
Conclusion to be posted on: December 1st, 2006. Check my Author's Notes at the bottom for a special holiday surprise!
. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) .
– Love can be black and white. SasuHina.