Title: Change
Series: Naruto
Parings/Characters: Sakura, Sai, Naruto and Sasuke. Hints of Sakura x Sai.
Disclaimer: Sakura and the entire Naruto series belong to Kishimoto. I'm just having some non-profit fun with it all.
Rating/Warnings: T or PG-13 for situations, implied and otherwise. AU.
Dedication: Fans of Sakura and Sai, whether together or apart.
Summary: Sakura isn't handling this new change all too well.
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She couldn't believe this was happening. She wanted to scream. Or hit something. Or both! Both sounded good. Really good. It may hurt for a little while after but she had to do something. Something that would help make sense of this- this- this stupid new situation!
Her best friends, Naruto and Sasuke, the two guys she could always count on during everything in her entire life - from their first meeting in kindergarten where Naruto put glue in her hair and Sasuke tried to cut it out with a pair of broken safety scissors to just last month when the two had not-so-subtly thrashed her ex-boyfriend in that unusually sparse mosh pit - were now gone, leaving her all alone, for who knows how long!
Perhaps "wanting to scream" wasn't exactly the right phrase. Perhaps "wanting to punch down a building and burn down the remains into absolutely nothing" was more appropriate. Perhaps more drinks of an alcoholic kind were necessary to form a coherent descriptive phrase that didn't make her sound like a possessive, homicidal freak of nature.
Sakura signaled to the bartender for another shot of liquor and downed it just as quick.
Really, she couldn't fault them. They were going off to visit Sasuke's dying brother one last time... and then to have wild hot and steamy passionate marathon sex at his favourite beach house out of spite. Maybe even on top of his grave after he kicked the bucket.
Okay, so Sakura could fault them. Heck, she may of hated Itachi's guts just as much as those two, but at least she wasn't abandoning her best-friends-forever to dish out some - rather disgusting when she thought about it - last minute revenge! At least she hadn't of done that! She hadn't done much of anything, really, to deserve this...
Another shot down.
And to top it off, to top it freaking off, they had both promised to send her post cards and call! As if she needed a reminder that they were gone and away and untouchable for an indeterminable amount of time. Like she really needed a picture of the beach they were currently sexing each other up on smack dab in the middle of her fridge.
Sakura slammed her shot glass down and began to mutter beneath her breath. Abandoned and drunk. Her night was turning out to be perfect.
Suddenly, someone pushed her from behind, spilling their drink all over her favourite shirt. Abandoned, drunk and wet - neither of the three in any sense of a good definition, either. That was it! She absolutely needed to hit something now.
"Oh! I'm sorry!",the voice of her liquid attacker said from behind as suddenly a handful of napkins were pressed against the front of her shirt. She grabbed them in a rage and shot out of her seat. Abandoned, drunk, wet and groped. For one split second of enraged insanity, Sakura briefly wondered if steam was actually coming out of her ears like it occurred in cartoons.
"You're sorry?!",she hissed, turning around and giving her attacker a glare that had often turned most individuals into a whimpering shell of their former selves. To her surprise, he didn't even flinch.
Her attacker - she briefly noted how pale his skin was, how black his hair was, how dark his eyes were, how fake his smile seemed and how that smile seemed to immediately annoy the hell out of her - took a step back and nodded, absently scratching his head in an instinctive quirk. "Well, yes, miss. That's what I said."
Sakura snorted, folding her arms across her damp chest. "Sorry for dousing me in beer or sorry for groping me? If you value your limbs, you'll answer carefully---"
"Both, I guess.",he replied, not even having the grace to let her finish her usual small, threatening rant. She glared harder.
"Both?",she asked, her voice no longer loud but dangerously low.
He nodded, his smiler growing into a smirk. Alarm bells suddenly went off in Sakura's mind. The smile seemed fake. The smirk was real. She eased herself back onto her bar stool, now facing him as she ordered a glass of water instead of another shot. If this beer bumbler was going to try something funny, she couldn't let herself get any more intoxicated.
"Both.",he restated, sliding into the seat beside her with an all too smooth ease. "The groping was mostly an accident."
Sakura could feel her temperature rising. "Mostly?",she asked, only to have her question ignored.
"The beer, well, I had to get your attention somehow.",his smirk grew slightly wider as he took the new beer the bartender handed him.
Sakura quickly swiveled her chair about and began to sip down her glass of water so as not to allow him sight of her rapidly burning face. He had, he said...wait! No! He had groped her - mostly on accident - and doused her in beer - not on accident. What was he, five?! Then again, Naruto had poured glue into her hair and Sasuke had given her a rather choppy new hair cut--- Wait! What does he have to do with Sasuke and Naruto?! He's not them! He's - well, she didn't know his name, but still! People didn't just go up to other people and throw beer at them in order to begin a conversation. A bar fight? Sure. But never a conversation!
Sakura tried to focus on the negatives, hoping to cool herself off in the process. She had just been abandoned by her friends and then got attacked with alcohol. She was not in a good mood! Some handsome stranger hitting on her at a bar would not improve her mood! She was angry, dammit, and had ever right to remain as such!
Didn't she? It wasn't like she had asked for all these changes to come up. It wasn't like she wanted to be abandoned by the people she trusted most in order for them to have some sort of wild revenge-fling thing. It wasn't like she liked not having control. But, really, was it all out of her control?
The pink haired young woman glanced to her right and frowned. Maybe change, her own, carefully planned out and totally in control of, change wouldn't be so bad. Maybe.
"So, what's your name?",she asked, setting down her now empty glass.
A look of rapidly passing surprise flittered across the black haired young man's face before being replaced with that annoying fake smile. Like that smile was really going to make everything better. Sakura held back from smacking him across the face.
"My name is Sai and I'm an art student at the Konoha University, Root Dorms.",he replied with an almost practiced ease.
She nodded. "Hi, Sai. I'm Sakura. Nursing student in the Sannin Dorms."
So far, so good.
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Are you surprised by the length of this? Good. Me too. Don't expect it too often.
Anyways, thanks for the read and feel free to review! Here's hoping I was able to entertain someone for a little bit!