notes: did anyone see the meteor shower? because i didn't. :( uhm, by the way, to those who are expecting some intense plot in this—don't. you won't find it.
and the youtube song mentioned is by gabe bondoc. amazingness in a video, if i do say so myself.
.chapter one— G major
"Wow, this place is gorgeous," Sakura said as Sasuke let her into his penthouse. "You really do earn from your books, don't you?"
He grunted. "I earn enough." He gestured towards his laptop sitting on his couch. "I have the general plot and the beginning down. I'd like your thoughts. I would also appreciate it if you pointed out any flaws or differences between you and the character."
"Wow, you're so picky." He headed into the kitchen to make some drinks. "Is this what makes all of your stuff bestsellers?"
"If I told you my secret, you'd be earning millions, too."
He glanced over at Sakura, where she made herself comfortable in the bend of the couch. Her eyes skimmed the screen, almost in an analytical way.
Odd girl.
He mixed some iced tea powder with water and added ice in two glasses. After a moment of thinking, he plopped two extra cubes of sugar into Sakura's glass. As another afterthought, he fetched some lemon slices from his fridge and added one to each glass.
Uchiha Sasuke was a perfectionist, after all.
"Thanks," the pink-haired woman said without even looking at him, accepting her iced tea and sipping thoughtfully through the straw. "Mm. The sugar hasn't melted yet."
"Hn."
Sasuke sat beside her, placing his glass on the coffee table after drinking from it. Sakura was one of the strangest (And only, he could hear Naruto's voice snickering in his head) girls he'd met—with, perhaps, the exception of Karin, one of his managers of his publishing company. Her attention was caught and distracted by the oddest things—
"Sasuke-san, why is your font Times New Roman? That has got to be the ugliest font to have ever existed."
"It's the default font."
"So you should change it! Don't you think it's ugly?"
"I would appreciate it if you'd concentrate on the contents of the text, and not the way it's presented to you."
"Oh, I finished reading already." His eyes locked with hers, his expression unmoving. She was a fast reader. Certainly above average.
"And your thoughts?" The most important asset to his writing was the uniqueness of every main character, every personality, every tone to each of his novels. In this book, he was determined to have Sakura's essence imprinted all over it.
She thought for a moment. "Well. It's great that you see me this way, but I think I'm too…perfect."
A frown grew on his lips. "Explain."
"Sasuke-san, seriously. When you look at me, do you honestly think 'soft, plump lips', 'long, pink tresses' and 'shining emerald orbs'?" She laughed. "Who even uses the word orbs to describe eyes?"
The frown deepened. "I do."
"Somehow, it sounds less ridiculous when it's not about me. Please don't make a Mary Sue out of me when I am clearly not perfect."
"I'm impressed with your terminology."
She shrugged. "I researched it last night. Figured I should be on the same ground as you."
"I see." He was feeling restless and his fingers wanted to move along the keyboard of his laptop. The entire feel of this new book would be completely different from his previous works—because Sakura was so different. She was the first among all of his main characters to tell him to not make her perfect.
Despite his cool demeanor, he was incredibly excited.
"I understand that you have medical school and you schedule is rather tight," he said, taking the laptop back from her, "but I hope that I'm able to spend more time with you. I'd like to have a firmer grasp of your personality."
Sakura grinned, and he took note of the subtle dimples. "I'd love to! You're my favorite author, after all. And you're not as much as an uptight guy as I thought you were." She wrinkled her nose. "But you still need to work on that stick up your ass."
"I find it necessary to point out that there is nothing up my ass that holds any resemblance to a stick."
"Just loosen up, Sasuke-san. All I'm saying."
He rolled his eyes, drinking his iced tea.
Odd girl.
x
"Man, I wish I could write like you."
"You don't."
"What makes you think that?"
"My words constantly feel heavy to me when I go back and reread them, but it's the only way I've ever known how to write. It's why, as you say, I have a stick up my ass."
"Then just chill a bit. Y'know, add a little humor to it. A new flair. You'd be able to do that." They were at her apartment, her strumming away aimlessly at her guitar while doing homework. (How she managed that, Sasuke had yet to find out.)
"And how do you suggest I 'chill'?"
She shrugged. "Do something that'll loosen you up—in mind and body. I'd suggest music, but you don't seem like the musical type."
He'd rather not embarrass himself. "I hold no interest towards these things."
"Why don't you try? Actually—here." Rolling over to him in her chair, she pulled his laptop out of his hands and gave him her guitar. "Try it."
His lips set into a scowl. "I'd rather not, thank you." The object felt foreign in his hands, not belonging. Delicate, even. The way Sakura's fingers moved over it seemed so natural, but he was sure his movements would be clumpy and graceless.
"No, try. Everyone's a beginner at some point." She got off her chair and rounded behind him, handing him the pick in the process. He was sitting in a stool because of the lack of other chairs near her desk—not the most comfortable while typing on a laptop, but he wasn't going to complain. "Just put your hand here—yeah. Don't press any strings. And with your right hand, just…strum."
The note of each string clashed in a slight dissonance. But nevertheless, Sasuke felt a little…accomplished. Proud.
(Uchiha blood flowed in his veins, no matter how much he denied it.)
"Here." Her hands ran over his left hand, where he was holding the neck of the guitar. (Not the handle part, but the neck. He had learnt since then.) She arranged his fingers in a strange pattern across the strings and frets. "Now press those fingers down, and strum." He did. It sounded…better.
Screw that—it sounded good.
"That's a C chord," she told him, smiling and sitting back in her chair. "Remember that. I'll teach you more—then soon, you can play songs, too. Chords are the basis of everything on the guitar."
"Did you teach yourself?" he asked idly as he strummed this peculiar C chord over and over again. Each string at a time, and then altogether. The way music worked was beyond him.
"I took lessons when in high school—then I just continued by myself. But it's so much easier once you learn music theory. Then you can make your own covers and stuff." He got confused about halfway through, but he pretended like he understood.
What were covers? You could make covers with music theory?
"Actually—look at this." With quick fingers, she went onto YouTube on his laptop and searched for something. "Listen to this guy. Listen."
The video began with a man saying hello and doing a brief explanation of the song—it being a duet, he was going to sing one part and allow the watcher to sing along to the other part and post a response, if he or she wanted to. It was of Aladdin's A Whole New World—
Hm. Sasuke was actually kind of impressed. He was pretty good for someone on YouTube.
Much to his horror and embarrassment, when it came for Princess Jasmine to sing, Sakura actually opened her mouth and sang the part. Sasuke averted his gaze, not sure of where to look. Was he supposed to be listening? She was so awkward.
"Yeah, anyway." She laughed. "You fill in for my part, Sasuke-san. I'm going to the bathroom."
When she left the room, he stared at the singing person on the screen stubbornly. He wasn't going to sing along.
The lyrics appeared in the annotations, screaming at him. The guy was just playing his guitar, smiling and all—
Okay, maybe he'd mumble the part. He wasn't going to sing it—it was the princess' part, after all. And he wasn't going to be seen singing the part of a princess. The person's voice was just rather…inviting, was all.
Screw that. He wasn't singing.
Disgruntled, and even a little frustrated that he temporarily lost his control over his intelligent thoughts, Sasuke promptly closed the window and returned to his novel-in-the-making.
"Aw, so you do have an ounce of music in you!" He whipped his head around, eyes narrowing when he saw Sakura leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed with a smug look spread across her features. "What do you know. Let's do a duet one day—I'll play and you'll sing."
"The chances of that happening is highly unlikely," he said, forcing himself to face his laptop again. He couldn't afford an argument with her right now, when his profit was at stake. "Has your mother ever taught you that eavesdropping is rude?"
"I wasn't eavesdropping," she said lightly as she sat down in her chair again, shrugging. "I needed to go to the bathroom, changed my mind halfway there, and came back, only to stumble upon a surprise." She stuck her tongue out at him. How immature. "And anyway, my mother never taught me anything."
He raised an eyebrow, not even looking at her as he typed away. "Really."
"Really."
"Do explain. Please don't forget that anything you say can be distributed to the general public."
"I don't really appreciate having my overly personal stuff written in that book of yours."
"I haven't forgotten to add that this is a work of fiction, and therefore, any resemblance to any real person, alive or dead, is purely coincidental."
"Authors always put that, but everyone knows that it's bullshit."
"Really."
"Really."
x
"It's pretty old," Sakura said, pulling a battered, ancient-looking guitar case out of her closet, "but once we change the strings, it'll be usable."
Sasuke shoved his hands into his pockets. "Please remind me again why we're doing this?"
"Because every time I see you, you're writing that stupid book of yours. You need to other things too."
"And you need to put down your damn guitar."
"What do you think I'm doing in med school?" She shot him a playful look, grabbing his arm and dragging him into her living room, where her guitar was sitting on the couch. She plopped down beside it and opened the case in her hands. "This was my first guitar, so please refrain from killing it more than it already has been killed."
"I'll do my best," he responded dryly. He watched Sakura pull a pack of strings out and change the guitar's strings with skilled hands.
She never ceased to remind him that she was one of the strangest girls he'd ever met.
It took nearly ten minutes for Sasuke to tune the guitar, because his ears weren't accustomed to matching pitches. Finally, Sakura let out a sign of exasperation. "Play a C chord."
He felt the tips of his ears reddening a little when it took him ten times longer for his fingers to settle into the proper formation than for her fingers to do the same thing. When he strummed, and she strummed right after, he looked at her. She had an eyebrow raised.
"Did you notice the difference?"
"Yours sounded better," he pointed out. "You must've really done a number on this guitar."
"No." She rolled her eyes. "You're just a little tone deaf. But whatever—it's good enough. Take it home with you later and practice tuning it. The strings are new, anyway—they'll be constantly flatten themselves you wear them in."
"I hope you realize that I have better things to do than to constantly tune a guitar."
"Shut up, Sasuke-san. God knows you're not getting a life anytime soon, so this is the next best thing. I'll teach you how to read tabs today."
"I have a book to write."
"Get over it."
x
When writing, Sasuke often paired his main character with someone he knew—just so the antagonist's personality was familiar to him as well. When he wrote about Hyuuga Hinata, the manager of his local Starbucks, she was (pitifully) paired with Uzumaki Naruto. His brother was paired with one of his male friends. (Yes, he had written homosexual books. Yes, they were socially accepted. No, he wasn't gay.)
These things just worked in his head.
But he had no idea who Haruno Sakura should be with. He wasn't one for making his own characters; they proved to either have an inferiority or superiority complex.
"You're being a matchmaker on the side, you know," Naruto said when Sasuke voiced out his problems. "It turns out Hinata's had a crush on me ever since she met me. And I've seen your brother and his blue friend…y'know. Going at it in an alley once. Wasn't pretty."
"I don't particularly care for anyone's love life." He took a drink of his black coffee.
"Oi." The blonde swiped the laptop from him and turned it around so he could scroll through Sakura's character profile. "Y'know, I think she wouldn't be too bad paired with you."
Sasuke would've choked on his own spit, but he had far too much dignity to do that. "Shouldn't there be a limit to your moronic ideas?"
"No, man. I mean, think about it." Naruto's sky-blue eyes were intent. "She's all happy and cheerful and all—and you're not." Sasuke scowled. "She teaches you guitar and you actually listen to her. She's able to handle your stifling"—"Where did you learn that word?"—"shut up—company. And you tolerate how annoying you say she is. And look at the way you described her! 'Soft, plump lips'? How do you even know her lips are soft?"
"For your information, none of my main characters have ever been ugly," Sasuke pointed out, ignoring the latter part. "I have used similar descriptions in my other books as well."
"Whatever, teme." Naruto pushed the laptop back across the table towards him. "You asked me—I answered. I don't care if you don't take my advice."
Pairing himself with Sakura? Of course not.
But despite himself, the idea was rather tempting.
x
It was mid-December, and they'd taken a habit to spend their weekends together at Sakura's apartment. She liked to wear sweats, fuzzy socks and a t-shirt, and he liked to wear jeans and a sweater. Sakura would sometimes make tea, or hot chocolate—even though she always drank his cup of hot chocolate too, because he wasn't fond of sweets.
Often, they'd sit on the couch with the television on, even though neither was watching it. She'd be reading her medical textbook for fun, or studying for an exam, and he'd be typing away at his laptop.
It was a quiet, peaceful equilibrium that he couldn't get enough of.
"Hey, Sasuke, let's go to the park." However, when she opened that loud mouth of hers, it was an entirely different story. She was the most annoying brat ever.
"No."
"Why not?" Shutting her book, she scooted closer to him on the couch, until their arms were touching. She leaned against him, looking up at him with earnest eyes. "I love going outside when it's snowing like it is now. It's so, I don't know—tranquil."
It was snowing lightly outside right now, but he really couldn't give a damn about it. "It's cold."
"Then throw on some layers, dumbass. I'm going to change, okay?"
"Hn."
As she disappeared into her room, Sasuke ran a hand through his hair. He was going to keep it from Naruto for as long as he could, but he decided to use himself as the antagonist in his own novel. He changed his name, of course, and his appearances by a little, but overall, his personality was the same. The predicament was that he couldn't get a move on with the plot. He found himself writing useless scenes that contained nothing but romance. Romance was always the secondary genre in his works—but this useless shit—
(Also known as fluff, some obnoxious voice in the back of his head told him.)
He would delete anything that proved useless to his book, but he couldn't find it in himself to highlight said scenes and press the backspace button.
Sakura reemerged from her room, wearing pink socks, jeans, and a green turtleneck sweater that matched her (bright, bright, bright) eyes. "C'mon, Sasuke. You need a break." She snatched the laptop from his hands, shut it and placed it on the coffee table before yanking him by his arm onto his feet.
He grunted stubbornly when she dragged him to the front door and pulled his coat from the closet. "Don't be such a child."
"You're the one who wants to go to the park."
"Shut it. It's for your own good." She pulled on a white toque, and Sasuke took note of how she looked, imprinting the image in his mind. He'd use it for later. (He couldn't help but also notice how it accentuated her eyes and her natural innocence. Even though said innocence wasn't displayed even once during the time he spent with her.)
Realizing a little too late that he probably couldn't defy her and her horrific female strength, he slipped into his black coat, albeit stubbornly and bitterly. "This is a waste of time."
"This is going to be fun."
There was no wind when they stepped outside, the snowflakes drifting to the ground at a lazy pace. Sakura stuck out her tongue and caught some of them in glee.
"That's actually just as insanitary as eating snow off the ground," he told her out of spite. "The atmosphere and air is filled with chemicals that could be harmful to your body if consumed in large amounts."
"Don't rain on my parade. A couple of snowflakes are a large amount?" She mock-glared at him. "I'm studying to be a doctor. Don't think I don't know."
As they walked along the sidewalk, Sakura told him about her fellow classmates and teachers at medical school. She ranted about a girl named Ino who started one year after her, but was still arrogant and acted like a pig. Sasuke wondered with amusement if she was talking about Yamanaka Ino, the one who had something going with Shikamaru.
"I also have a senpai," she told him, almost dreamily. "His name is Hyuuga Neji." His eyes narrowed. Hyuuga Hinata's cousin. He sure knew a lot of people from the medical field.
"He's a prick who needs to loosen up."
She rolled her eyes. "The same could be said about you. Neji's nice, once you get to know him—kind of like you, I suppose."
"Don't compare me to him."
"And believe it or not, he's pretty modest. Outside of school, he doesn't brag about his intelligence or anything. His hair is nice, too. I wish I had hair like him. I'm jealous of Tenten; they're so close—"
"I'm sorry to rain on your parade," he said, mocking her from before, "but we've arrived at the park that you desperately wanted to go to."
She blinked. He noticed that a snowflake had found a place to sit on her eyelashes. "Oh." And with that, she turned away from him and jogged to the swings.
The park was devoid of any other people, and Sasuke found that understandable. He wouldn't be out either, if not for a certain pink-haired girl. Stuffing his hands in his coat pockets, he followed her at a slower pace, watching her brush the snow off of the swing with the sleeve of her coat before she sat on it, swinging idly. "Will you push me, Sasuke?"
"No."
"Party pooper." She glared at him with those bright eyes, and after a short glaring contest, he sighed exasperatedly.
"You're such a child." But, nevertheless, he went behind her and gave her a little push. When she swung back to him, he pushed her again. This was such a waste of time. He could be doing much more productive things on his laptop.
She giggled and swung her legs unnecessarily as she swung back and forth, causing her to spin in awkward directions and making it difficult for Sasuke to push her. "You make me smile."
The words caused unnecessary feelings to bubble in his stomach.
"Being a medical student, don't you think you should be more mature?"
"Being a human in the slowly dying world, don't you think you should live a little? I mean, you write about that all the time. Running along train tracks, ringing doorbells and running off, lying in the forest for a day and not caring about the world—you know, that kind of stuff. Funny how you'd write about it, but you wouldn't actually do it. Is it a fantasy or something?"
"No," he responded breezily, moving aside and leaning against one of the poles supporting the swings when he decided that she could continue swinging on her own. "This is just the world's view on what love is. I merely replicate that to make a profit."
"Lame," she said loudly as she passed him to swing forward. "Love is a beautiful thing, Sasuke."
"I don't feel a need for it." His own words made him scowl. He didn't feel a need for it, and yet, here he was, at a park in the middle of winter with a mere girl.
Sasuke wasn't stupid. He wrote romance novels for a living. It was blatantly obvious he was growing attached to her.
Scowling deeper, he crossed his arms.
"I think love would make you a happier person. I'd like to see you smile once in a while. In the months I've known you, all your lips have done was frown and scowl. It's quite unattractive, actually."
"Hn."
Sasuke was only beginning to fear himself when he actually contemplated the idea of smiling.
They passed a minute or two in silence; Sakura, swinging, and Sasuke, leaning against the pole with his arms crossed, a frown set permanently on his thin lips.
"You're boring," Sakura finally said as she stopped propelling herself forwards and backwards on the swing. "What do you want to do?"
"Go back." He watched her swing lower and lower, until she was only swinging at a medium height. Right at the peak of moving forward, she leapt off the swing and landed clumsily on her feet before falling onto her behind.
"Ow…" He raised his eyebrow at the girl who looked like she was in a fix. "Sasuke, the ground is cold!"
"I wouldn't have guessed. Get up."
"Help me up?"
He vaguely wondered what kind of independent woman wouldn't be able to get off her ass on a winter day, before he answered his own question. Sighing wearily, he uncrossed his arms and headed to her. When he offered his hand to her, a smile spread across her lips, making her originally bright eyes even brighter. Her cold fingers pressed against his skin when she grasped his hand.
"So, you wanted to go back?" He let go of her hand, but she linked arms with him, grinning. He felt the tips of his ears reddening—but they were already red from the cold anyway, he told himself defiantly.
"It would be appreciated."
"All right, then."
Surprised at her sudden willingness to comply, he didn't even shrug her off his arm.
(Not that he particularly wanted to.)
He fought the smile that was so persistent to appear on his lips. (Because he definitely wasn't going to have her say something like "Your smile is way more attractive than your scowl. Do it more often.")
That night, when he went home, he wrote more fluff about the park on chilly winter afternoons.
x
"If I didn't know better, I'd think that you were the one that I'm falling in love with in his book."
"Hn."
"Wow, so even you have hormones. I'm getting it on with this guy."
Pause.
"Hn."