note: Longest for last! Just the epilogue left, hopefully up by tomorrow.
The kiss is gentle, barely a press of skin to skin. Sasuke stays motionless against her mouth, and she, she can't help but lift her hand and sink her fingers into his baby-fine hair and, sighing, slant her lips more advantageously over his.
His mouth opens in a rush of warm breath and Sakura greedily takes him in, tangling their tongues and pressing closer until her breasts are crushed flat against his chest. His arms finally move, shifting from his side to curl around her waist, banding her to him, and they're suddenly plastered from chest to hip.
Sasuke tugs on her bottom lip, and in response she moans into his mouth. Letting go with a wet pop, he moves on to dust the delicate skin of her neck with soft kisses, pausing at the juncture of her neck and shoulder to bury his face there, stilling for just a moment. Sakura counts three warm puffs of air against her throat, head thrown back against the wall. She's gasping from the need, from how familiar and how different this kiss-these kisses are. In the absence of movement her brain's starting to wake up, to think, and she almost manages to remember why they definitely shouldn't be doing this, why his hands shouldn't be up her shirt when Sasuke moves again.
His mouth finds hers for another searing kiss, and her fingers are twisted in his hair, their legs hopelessly tangled. He's insistent, so insistent but at the same time, in every touch, in every nip and lick and press of his fingers there is a question, and Sakura is distressed to find that her answer, every single time, is a resounding yes, yes yes yes.
Her hands are slipping down to grip his shoulders restlessly now, nails digging through cotton and finding skin, and his, his are passing over her stomach, her back, the t-shirt bunching over his wrists. Another few centimeters upwards and suddenly he's cupping a bare breast. Sakura gasps, the sound sharp in the silence. The noise interrupts the rhythm of their breathing, and Sasuke stops, forehead tipped against hers, breath poised over her lips. His hand-the right-is still covering her breast, and the heat drives her to distraction. Sakura wants movement, she needs friction, and at the same time she never wants to move-she wants to stay here forever, his hand over her heart.
Her eyes are closed, she realizes, shut tight against the light. She opens them slowly, slitted against the bright sunshine streaming in through the windows. A cool shadow hovers over her, and Sasuke's looking right at her, eyes hooded, pupils blown. Stray strands of inky hair frames his face, barely brushing the tops of his cheekbones. He's perfect, she dazedly thinks, this is perfect. Her heart can't remember why her brain was so adamant on not getting close, on never getting closer, because this is what she's been missing every day for the past eight hundred and nineteen days and nights.
"I've missed you," he exhales across her lips, "I love you."
And with that, the spell breaks.
Her eyes are wide-open now, spitting fire, and Sakura straightens, shakes her head and pushes Sasuke away with the flat of a palm.
It's not a hard shove, normally she wouldn't have been able to budge him, but he reels back like she's punched him in the gut. His hair is mussed from her fingers, and his eyes still pitch-black, wide. She watches his hands clench, his arms rising as if to touch her again before dropping back down to his side.
"You can't-you can't just come in here after two years and kiss me, throw me some pretty words and expect me to come crawling back!" She spits, fingers curling into fists and nails biting into her palms.
"They're not just pretty words." Sasuke's voice is low and calm, but his eyes don't grow any lighter.
"Maybe you're right, Sasuke," Sakura smirks, "Maybe they're not pretty, but they are just words, and I'm still not going back with you."
"Then let me stay," he repeats, "Let me stay and prove to you..."
Sakura stares as he sputters to a stop, one hand now rubbing his jaw as he looks away. He is clean-shaven, which meant he'd used her bathroom, stood where she's stood for so many mornings alone, looked in her mirror and stood under the punishing spray of her shower. The thought agitates her more than she'd like to admit.
Sasuke is still looking resolutely away, his mouth pressed thin into a grim line, hand now running forcefully through tousled spikes. He is desperate, she realizes, the rigidity of his spine an epiphany. Uchiha Sasuke is desperate, distraught, torn, and she is the cause for it all. There's a part of her that relishes this newfound ability to hurt this man, who'd always seemed so impervious before. But a larger part of her, all the bits that make Haruno Sakura put her heart above her mind, is confused, is sent reeling.
"No," Sakura says, a soft whisper bridging two broken syllables into one, "I don't understand. You left me so easily last time, what's to keep you from leaving again? There was-there was no warning or-"
Her voice rises, gaining strength as she speaks, until she's yelling, eyes narrowed and indignant, so indignant because how dare he, how dare he waltz back in here like he could fix anything with just words.
In the end Sakura's left with nothing but Sasuke, standing there looking at her, properly now, something wild still evident in the shadows of his face. She's spluttering with her anger, with two and a half years of repressed rage.
"You know, I was supposed to have gotten over everything. I was supposed to be able to walk back into Konoha, bump into you,and maybe you'll have another girlfriend, maybe you'll finally have that trophy wife the entire company thinks you need so badly, but I'd be able to look you in the eyes and smile. I never wanted to be the girl who kept wanting, who kept waiting like some pathetic cliche-I just. I don't need that, Sasuke. I don't."
She quiets by her second sentence, and her words only tremble with conviction now.
Through the window, the sun is high in the sky. Sakura checks the cheap clock on the wall with a jolt, finally noticing how late it is. Her shift starts soon, and she has to leave, to get going, get out. This time, Sasuke won't follow her; she knows that what happens next, whether he'll stay or go is her choice, just hers. Sakura ignores how unlike Sasuke this is and takes a deep breath, fixing her stare at some point above his head. The man stands stock still as she takes her first step forward, head turned to the side, so she takes the opportunity to look at him, all of him. He's wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of well-worn jeans instead of the dark suit from the night before. His clothing is rumpled, the neckline of his shirt stretched beyond repair.
He's standing between her and the hallway to the bathroom; another step, and she is there-they are side by side, shoulders brushing. Sakura hesitates for just a split second, swallowing against the urge to turn and melt back into him, meld their bodies so all she can smell is his musk, until they are so inexorably linked that neither of them can tell where the one ends and the other begins...
There's a quick intake of breath, and Sasuke's arm shoots out, grasping hers again, "You're not sure."
Sakura looks at him, eyes so wide they hurt. She can't notice anything past the burning circle his fingers form around her wrist, or the way they're still so close that with the dissipation of the haze of lust she can make out perfectly the traces insomnia's left on his face.
"Don't walk away if you're not sure-I," he begins, fumbling uncharacteristically with his words, "I meant-I mean what I say. I love you, Sakura-I've, I've kept loving you. Nothing's going to change that."
Sasuke takes another step closer, fingers loosening around her arm, giving her a chance, a choice. Sakura doesn't move.
"I left you. I left you because I thought you deserved someone better," he backtracks when he catches sight of the expression on her face, "or, I don't know what I was thinking. You remember what day it was-I was just...I wasn't thinking, and by the time, by the time everything was said and done I couldn't take any of it back."
He stops, takes a single quick, deep breath. Then, "Please give me another chance."
Sakura wishes she knew what she looked like to him, right here and now; is she still as easy to read as she used to be? Uchiha Sasuke has just as good as admitted that he was wrong. It's the second time she's ever witnessed it and the first, the first she wouldn't believed him, because she could tell he'd only given her the words because he was sure they would make her stay.
Here, now, he is giving them to her freely. Sasuke isn't expecting anything, Sakura realizes, he only hopes.
She makes her decision.
"I'm not leaving Suna."
Sasuke's eyes have never left hers through the entirety of his speech (a speech, she thinks, this taciturn boy had made a speech for her), but at her words his head bows and defeat is written in the clenching of his fingers once, twice before his hand slips from her wrist.
Sakura bites her lip , "But I'm going to have to find a bigger apartment."
His head snaps up and he's watching her so carefully, like he doesn't believe her, like a single word uttered could change her mind. She should give him words of her own, but Sakura thinks that all those years, she's already said enough. Instead, she reaches out for Sasuke's hand, the one that he'd dropped just a few moments prior, entwining her fingers with his.
It feels familiar, those long fingers wrapped around hers, callouses rough against the skin of her palm. It's a hand that Sakura remembers, a hand that's been laid on every inch of her bare skin.
So much of the same, she thinks, except...
Except people aren't static. They change. This hand, this beautiful familiar hand is attached to a beautiful familiar man, and he-he must have changed. He has changed.
That sense of waiting, of wanting and standing still even as the rest of the world spins around her finally stops. Sakura looks up, tightens her fingers and steps back against Sasuke's chest. His arms are around her in an instant, and they stay that way, wrapped around each other for several small eternities, not moving, not speaking, his lips pressed against Sakura's hair and her head buried in the dark hollow between his neck and shoulder.
For the first time in almost two and a half years, Haruno Sakura breathes.
a/n: I hope that's satisfactory! Feedback is always loved and appreciated.