When Sasuke wakes up the next day, Hinata's gone.

Rubbing his head, he pulls himself up to a sitting position and digs into his pocket to pull his phone out, which he had been laying on and now leaves a sore spot on his leg. It had been vibrating for a while, he thinks because he's pretty sure he dreamed about an earthquake or something. Tries to click it off, but doesn't relent. He squints as he pulls it up to his face.

'go to hinatas tomorow diner'

"Go to…Hinata's…" he repeats back to himself, searching his blurry memories. Then it dawns on him, while at the table, he admitted to being one of those loser bachelors who can't cook themselves more than eggs and toast. She had been shocked to learn he didn't know how to cook and insisted (perhaps against her better judgment) that he come to her apartment so she can show him one of her recipes. He doesn't remember what that was but does remember telling her he was putting it in his phone so he'd remember to come over the next day.

"You did this to yourself," he had said, teasingly, waving the phone with the reminder set in front of her while she laughed, "hope you're ready to impress."

"Oh you dumbass," he huffs to himself, swiping away the reminder.

Sasuke drags his hands over his face, thinking about all that lead him to this point. A girl he had zero interest in forgets her keycard, buys him lunch, and somehow, he's spent every lunch with that girl, taken her to drinks, has a very long string of texts between them, and now, they've shared a room after attending his brother's wedding. He's got pride, but he's also clueless about how to navigate opposite-gender friendships. If this were Naruto or even Shikamaru, they'd argue about who got the bed and probably just end up both sleeping on it opposite ways.

Things with Hinata were rather complicated because while she wasn't the best at hiding her emotions, he still couldn't get a good read on her. Whether the little cutesy things she did were intentional or just part of her quirky personality. Like taking his hand, or fixing his tie, or listening with open ears to his tirades about stupid things like capitalism and whether fruit had any business being in a salad (and how he wishes pretentious people would stop pointing out to him that tomatoes are technically a fruit. Whoever first said that was an asshole, Sasuke knows it).

Once he gets his things together and heads down, hoping to duck out without further communicating with family, he hugs the walls of the lobby.

Feels like he might have gotten lucky until a hand finds his shoulder, stopping him.

"Hey man." Shisui steps in front of him, tilted head with his eyebrows scrunched up. "What was that about last night?"

"Who's idea was it to put us in the same room?" Sasuke asks, deciding if Shisui's gonna stop him, he's gonna vent on him.

"It's just how the wedding was planned, bud." Sasuke crinkles his nose at the nickname. "All the plus ones got slotted into the same rooms. Because you know…it's usually a date."

"It put us in a really weird position," Sasuke snaps back, feeling insulted that Shisui's blowing this off like no big deal. "We weren't there as a couple, we were there as friends. It made things awkward."

"Aw, no," Shisui says it with sympathy in his tone that doesn't make things better. "She rejected you?"

"No!" In fact, Sasuke thinks it might have been him doing the rejecting if one of them was being rejected. "Just, whatever. I gotta get home."

"Got something important waiting for you there?" Shisui asks, letting his hand drop to his side.

Sasuke thinks on that a moment. Is getting cleaned up and going to Hinata's for a drunkenly agreed on dinner…date something he considers important?

With a shrug, Sasuke turns and starts to trek away, ignoring Shisui's call for him to take care of himself and come by sometime when he's not shitfaced.

Sasuke takes a long shower, letting all his regrets and doubts wash off of him.

Tries to think that, really, last night was nice. Even after everything, they found a way to make it work, and actually, he laughed. Out loud for the first time in a while. It's been a while since he's felt much outside of mild irritation. He's learned to repress his emotions to a frightening extent (according to his friends) and it was never intentional…just sort of…happened.

But he thinks he might feel kind of happy. And maybe even kind of excited about going to see Hinata.

When he's on the bus, staring out the window, he doesn't think about his knees or the ache in his back. This time he pays attention to the area around him, an area he's passed through countless times to get to Shisui's. It looks a little clearer now, the crispness of the leaves, the shine of the metal bus stops, the glow of the sun peaking over rooftops. Sasuke scratches his cheek before looking back at his phone, deciding the polite thing to do is to give her a heads up he's on his way.

Be there in about 10 minutes.

He's off the bus and beginning his walk to the apartments before he feels his phone go off. It's just a simple "okay!" with a smile emoji that he'd usually ignore but his eyes linger on. He imagines Hinata smiling back at him with it. Shakes his head with this goofy little smile, tucks the phone into his jacket, and treks down the street. Without realizing it, he's humming something soft.

When he gets to her door, he knocks with a bit more gusto than is normal and waits. He hears some banging from the other side, a scratchy sound, then a loud sigh of frustration. A little punch of anxiety hits his gut as he awaits her welcome, but it comes soon enough.

"Hello!" Hinata greets him in that breathy way she usually does, but one that feels a little more irritated than normal. Sasuke darts his eyes around, realizing – well, this is his first time here, actually coming into this apartment.

In her apartment.

"Come in, please! I – uhm – I apologize, it might have slipped my mind you were coming…"

Sasuke nods and automatically steps out of his shoes, glancing over to see hers sort of just…tossed to the side. His eyes cast upwards to immediately scan the entire room and he realizes why she seems so anxious. Her apartment is pretty much a disaster.

Immediately, she turns away from him and starts picking clothes off her couch, rushing down the hall with them. There are towels strewn from several chairs, cups of noodles on the table and empty tea cups, random accessories in odd places: a necklace on a chair, hairbrush on top of the entertainment center, scarf on the ground.

So Hinata Hyūga is kind of…messy. He feels a little mean thinking it, but come on, the proof is right in front of him.

"I didn't have much time to tidy," she calls from the other room.

"It's fine," he tells her, slowly stepping inside. "I can help you clean up."

"Please don't!" she says, frantically running back out to stop him. He chuckles a bit, shrugging.

"I don't mind." He tries to reach for some of the cups on the table, but her hand grabs his wrist, gently and he looks up at her. Tries to give her a reassuring smile. "Where's your trashcan?"

"This is really quite embarrassing," she whines, letting him peel her fingers off his wrist, even if he doesn't really mind her touch. Which is strange, because Sasuke can't recall anyone's touch he didn't really mind outside of his mother's or the occasional hug from Naruto. "It's in the kitchen…"

"Got it." Sasuke gathers as many as his arms can hold and takes them out. On his way, he notices her sink is full and he frowns. He sees she's got a dishwasher, so he opens it, surprised to find it empty. Decides to go ahead and start loading it up.

"Oh, don't put those there!" Hinata says when she comes in with some dishes. Sasuke raises an eyebrow when she starts pulling them out. "I'll just handwash them."

"Got something against dishwashers?" he asks, resting his hip against the sink. She pauses, and he can see the pink forming on her cheeks.

"I—uhm—I don't know how to…use it."

Sasuke stops, staring at the mug that's shaped like a cat's head with little ears and whiskers. Then he busts into laughter, louder than he's expressed in – well, a long time.

"You can't be serious?" When he sees her hands fall and her head hang, he feels a little bad and realizes that he's being rude and she's not finding it as funny as he is. He shakes his head, then starts loading the dishes into the dishwasher anyway. "I'll teach you how."

"I don't want to burden you," she says, quickly. "I invited you here to cook for you, not to help me with my problems."

"Let's call it a trade," he offers, continuing to slot plates and silverware away. "I'm assuming you don't have detergent or anything?"

"I don't…but, I was going to order groceries!" Hinata pulls out her phone and Sasuke side-eyes her.

"You get them delivered?" he asks, folding his arms with this disapproving stare.

"Going into crowded spaces makes me anxious…" she says, twisting her lips to the side a bit.

Huh. She's really got some sheltered-kid issues…

"We'll work on that later, then."

He says it without really thinking about it, so when she looks frozen in place, he raises his eyebrows at her, then nudges his head.

"Go on, keep tidying up. I'd hate to call you a slob."

When she lets out a surprised laugh, he almost sighs in relief, because he wasn't sure if he was going too far with the tease. And suddenly, a new door to their friendship is opened, and increasingly, Sasuke's beginning to value it.

While she's tapping away for groceries on her phone, he tells her not to get the first thing that pops up because it's either too cheap, too expensive or a bad product. Tells her to swipe until she sees something for hard water. He jokes about whether she needs to be taught how to do laundry, too, and isn't even surprised at this point when she reveals that she does not, in fact, have a good handle on how to do laundry.

Normally, Sasuke would think so incredibly lowly of a rich girl who doesn't know how to take care of herself, but Hinata's so kind and sincere that he decides it's not her fault. Helping her with these skills gives him an excuse to be around her more often, and he also decides that's fine by him.

While they wait for the groceries, Sasuke walks her through the basics of running a dishwasher. Gives her all his best tips, like splashing vinegar into it and slotting a towel in between the opening after it's done so that any leftover water gets absorbed before putting the dishes away. Once the groceries get there, she gives him all her best tips for dicing an onion, cutting almost to the root but not quite, then turning it to make an even dice. He questions her on how she knows how to cook a full-blown meal, but not how to run a dishwasher.

"It was one of the things my nanny decided to teach me," she told him with a shrug while oiling a pan. "They always told me to go rest or play after we were done eating, never bothered to have me clean…I mean, can you blame me?" She looks up at him with her bottom lip between her teeth. "How many kids do you know go out of their way to learn to clean if no one tells them to?"

Sasuke tilts his head but nods. "You have a point." He glances back at the sink that is slowly accumulating dishes. "Makes sense why you don't seem to know the concept of 'clean as you go' either."

"Clean as you go?" she asks, looking over her shoulder after dumping the onions into the pan. He turns on the faucet and starts rinsing.

"As you dirty dishes," he says, slotting another away, "you clean them so you don't have this huge pile at the end."

"Oh, that's a good idea!" He chuckles because her naivety is cute and her willingness to learn is unexpected but nice. Doesn't even mind doing these dishes.

Hinata walks him through her cooking process. Talks about "mis en place", and he thinks it's funny because he'd usually make fun of someone for using another language to describe something like 'everything in its place' but with her, he just listens. Wants her to keep talking about it, even if it's kind of boring. But the way she describes things excites him – he wants to understand her. And he doesn't even know what's happening in his own mind.

It's when he drops a piece of dough into a pile of flour, causing the flour to cover his face in a thin dusting, that he feels solidified as the most awkward man on the planet. But hearing her giggle for it is nice and the way she immediately grabs a towel and wets it to clean him up, well…that's not so bad either. She wipes at his eyes first, and he blinks them open to see her smiling up at him, a pearly straight row of teeth with her tongue between them. And he realizes he really likes the way her face looks, kind of heart-shaped, pointed nose, curve of her lips and the brightness of her eyes.

Thinks for a moment it wouldn't be so bad to look at this face more often.