Come In with the Rain
Sakura sits on her couch, her phone in her lap, and stares at the unanswered texts and calls to Sasuke she has sent over the past she-doesn't-know-how-many days. Sasuke, the long-distance love of her life, has disappeared into thin air. It had been weeks since she last heard from him, and she goes through every single message they have ever exchanged, trying to pinpoint what it was that has driven him away. For a year, they made their long-distance relationship work, but now it seems like it was all falling apart. She racks her brain, wondering what she said that was too much, too honest, too real.
Was she not pretty enough compared to the other prom queens that she knows he had loved before? Is her heart too broken by all the men and boys that weren't him? Does she cry too much, requires too much soothing for any one man to give? Is she too outspoken, too right for all his wrongs? Does she not make him laugh enough? Had the distance and obligations to his family's business across the country finally ripped him away from her arms?
'It has to be any one of those things,' Sakura insists to herself. 'It must be. Because Sasuke couldn't not love – '
Her own thoughts stop in their tracks, the idea of Sasuke falling out of love with her too painful, too unmoored to sustain.
The Sasuke she knows was calm, ready to lend her reassuring affirmations to all her thunder and wild; a salve to smother her pain. He would never want to hurt her, but the swirling storms in her heart now match the dangerous conditions outside her home. The sky is dark, and the rain falls in sheets, much like the tears she has shed over the past few weeks.
It was hurricane season, and the entire eastern part of the country was blocked from the sunshine. The roads were all blocked and the beaches were inaccessible. The rain outside picked up, the sound of the drops hitting the windowpane like the steady drumbeat of Sasuke's breathing during one of their late-night Facetime calls. Sakura sympathizes with the hurricane outside her door. Without her own moon to control the tides of her heart, Sakura also feels like exploding, letting her ire at Sasuke's ghostly silence become uncontrollable.
As Sakura paces around her living room, her confusion and rage crash against any bit of calm she is harboring, swirling and churning everything in its path. Her anger is a deluge of rain, pouring down upon everything and everyone around her. She was a tempest, a force of nature that could not be tamed or controlled. It has been a week. She'd only known one week without Sasuke, but Sakura knows what will happen. Her pain will linger on, leaving destruction and chaos in its wake that will last for generations.
Above the sound of her tears and the storm outside, Sakura hears something. A knock; a pounding knock at her door.
Has Sakura's anger and fear and confusion and heartbreak invoked Amphitrite's violent temper? Has Oya heard Sakura's cries and come to challenge her powerful winds and rain with her own? Has Varuna herself come to drown Sakura's sorrows with her display of true power?
Her heart races as she cautiously opens the door, expecting the crash of water against her shaking harbor. But there he is: Sasuke, standing in the pouring rain, his hair matting at his forehead.
"Are you crazy? You'll catch a cold!" Sakura exclaims, but Sasuke just pulls her into a tight embrace.
"I needed to see you," he murmurs, his voice raw and eyes swirling with dark emotion. "I couldn't stay away any longer."
"What about your parents? And Itachi?" Sakura asks, the howling winds whipping her insecurities out into the elements.
"I don't care!" Sasuke explodes. "All I care about is right here. Just you. You and me."
Sakura can't believe her eyes and ears.
He's here. Sasuke is here and not bound to his obligations. He is here and not there. He is real, and so much taller than she expected. His tall figure looms over her, and his arms around her figure are soaked and smelling of rainwater. Behind him, Sakura sees the sedan he's shown off in their video calls and photos, looking severely waterlogged and muddy. License plates belong to a state across the country, thousands of miles away. Specifically, 1,324 miles of road away between his house and hers – she should know; the two of them counted them together during their many when-we-finally-meet trips down a shared fantasy life. She lets out a shaky breath, and for the first time since the storms began, Sakura felt the overcast skies inside her part away, making way for ribbons of colors stretching across the horizon.
They stood there, in the middle of the driveway, the rain soaking through their clothes. There were no other people in the periphery, no one to see their first meeting. It was like they were the only two people in the world, like the rest of the world had floated away like petals on the smooth tide.
In this first meeting, Sasuke tethers himself to Sakura, no longer lost at sea, having found refuge. He leans in, his lips meeting Sakura's in their first kiss, flawless and fearless.
THE END.