Chapter Text
Sasuke had been bored for so long that he had stopped keeping track of time. Naruto had dragged him to the party sometime after midnight with the promise that there would be good food, decent music, and people worth knowing, which had turned out to be three separate lies.
The food had been mediocre, the music was loud enough to qualify as a minor assault, and the people were, for the most part, strangers Sasuke had no interest in knowing.
He sat lazily in the corner of a sofa with one ankle resting over his knee, a cup of something Naruto had assured him was water held loosely in his left hand, and stared into the room with the dead-eyed patience of a man waiting for a natural disaster to end.
Someone had spilled something on the carpet. Someone else was laughing too loudly near the kitchen. Naruto had disappeared into a crowd twenty minutes ago, which Sasuke considered a personal betrayal but not an unexpected one.
A woman approached him at some point.
Sasuke didn’t notice. Or perhaps he noticed the movement and simply didn’t register it as something requiring his attention. Oblivious to the world around him exploding with music, he sat there looking as if he were on the verge of falling asleep. The woman stopped in front of him, said something, laughed at her own words, and eventually sat down close enough that the perfume reached him. Sasuke stared ahead, taking another indifferent sip of the strange water.
What on earth is this thing anyway?
The dark-haired young man eyed the glass of water in his hand skeptically, wondering about it before shrugging. He decided to ignore the anomaly swirling inside; if he ended up in the hospital with a stomach ailment tomorrow, he would have all the more reason to dodge the loudmouthed, golden-haired idiot who called himself his best friend.
The woman leaned closer. He glanced at her. She was talking. He had no idea what she had said. Her mouth kept moving.
Sasuke’s eyes drifted briefly over her face before settling somewhere past her shoulder. He had absolutely no idea why she was still there. He could have asked, but that would require participating in the interaction, and Sasuke had already decided that the party was beneath his tolerance. Besides, there was no room in his head for this sort of thing.
There never had been.
No girl had ever managed to occupy enough of his attention to become a problem. No woman had either. There was, however, one exception.
Sakura.
Haruno Sakura had somehow managed to take up a small, permanent corner of his mind without ever asking permission. He didn't deny it at all, even though everyone knew about it—though, in reality, perhaps only a certain pink-haired girl was completely unaware.
It had started years ago, back when they were in high school and Sasuke had still been an arrogant little shit with an ego large enough to compensate for the fact that he had absolutely no social skills. He had initially classified her as an annoying fangirl and nothing more.
She had followed Naruto around often enough, talked too much, smiled too brightly, and possessed an apparently limitless ability to insert herself into conversations Sasuke had not invited her into. He had even tried to tell her she was the most annoying person in the world—something he now likely retracts with regret.
Then Naruto became obsessed with her.
Worse, romantically. But time flies, and it became another normal thing for the blonde. Just in the particular way Naruto became obsessed with anything he decided was important, which meant Sasuke had no chance of escaping her.
Sakura was there when they studied. Sakura was there when they ate. Sakura was there when Naruto dragged him somewhere he didn’t want to go. Eventually, she simply became part of the scenery.
Then Sasuke started noticing things.
She was smart. Ridiculous smart (Nara Shikamaru had even spilled his drink when he founded out someone could level him in a Shoji match).
She remembered things people said. She listened when others spoke. She noticed when someone was uncomfortable and changed the subject before they had to ask. She was kind in a way that didn’t seem performative, and she had ambitions that were considerably larger than the life everyone expected her to have. Sakura wanted to become someone. She wanted to do something meaningful with herself. She had dreams.
Big ones.
And somehow she worked toward them instead of merely talking about them.
She was, Sasuke had eventually decided, far too good for most people.
Possibly for him too.
He had never said that aloud.
He barely admitted it to himself.
Uchiha Sasuke had never been particularly gifted when it came to emotions. His mother had been the only person in his family who seemed capable of expressing affection without making it sound like a threat. Everyone else had apparently decided that feelings were something best buried under several layers of silence and pride.
Sasuke had inherited that talent.
So when the woman beside him continued talking, he looked at her again. She wore too much makeup. Her hair was a messy shade of ginger that looked unnatural, and her clothes seemed to have been selected on the assumption that fabric was merely an obstacle to be negotiated rather than something meant to remain in one piece.
Sasuke’s mouth pulled faintly to one side.
He didn’t like her.
That was perhaps unfair. He didn’t know her. He simply didn’t care enough to correct himself. She was nothing like Sakura. The comparison had arrived automatically, which annoyed him more than the woman did. Sasuke sighed, placed the cup on the table, and stood.
The woman stopped speaking.
Sasuke didn’t explain. He shoved both hands into his pockets and walked away.
Naruto could walk home. He had reached the limit of his generosity. Apparently, the party had lasted nearly an entire day, because by the time Sasuke stepped outside, the sun was already high overhead.
Noon.
He stopped beside his car and leaned against the driver’s door, enjoying the sudden silence. The street was warm and almost painfully bright after hours spent under artificial lights. Sasuke closed his eyes for a moment. His phone vibrated. He pulled it from his pocket without much interest. Then stopped.
Sakura.
Sasuke stared at her name.
She hadn’t messaged him in almost a year. He didn’t know why he noticed that immediately. He also didn’t know why something inside his chest shifted at the sight of her name, small enough that nobody else would have seen it, but distinct enough that he did.
He missed it.
The thought arrived without permission. He missed those stupid messages. Sakura used to send him random questions about homework, photographs of things she thought were funny, complaints about Naruto, occasionally pictures of food she had made and apparently expected him to judge despite never asking for the responsibility.
She had stopped.
He had told himself it was nothing. He had not noticed when the messages stopped. He had not wondered why. He had definitely not checked her chat several times over the following months.
Sasuke unlocked his phone.
Maybe she was asking about the new school year. Maybe she needed something. Maybe—
The image loaded and Sasuke stopped breathing. For several seconds, his mind supplied absolutely nothing.
There was Sakura.
In a bikini.
Sakura.
In a fucking bikini.
His face went completely blank, eyes widened slightly. His hand came up and covered his mouth. He stared. He should have looked away but he didn’t. His brain, which had handled exams, fights, family disasters, and Naruto with considerably less difficulty, appeared to have encountered a problem it had not been designed to solve.
She looked good.
No.
That wasn't convincing.
She looked—
Sasuke swallowed. He looked at the photograph again. Then again. There was no logical reason for his heart to be beating that quickly. The picture wasn’t even particularly—
It was.
Fine. It was alright.
Sasuke Uchiha had never once been unsure of his judgment—never. But this was the first time he found himself having second thoughts.
No, scratch that. It was fucking good.
His thumb remained motionless against the edge of the phone.
He liked it.
He liked it far more than he was willing to examine. Something warm had spread beneath his ribs, and Sasuke hated the fact that he recognized it as happiness.
She had sent him a picture of herself. That meant something.
Didn’t it?
Before he could determine what, the photograph disappeared.
Message deleted.
Sasuke frowned. The expression was so severe that, had his phone possessed the ability to feel fear, it probably would have deleted itself.
Why did she delete it?
His thumb hovered over the keyboard. Maybe it wasn’t meant for him. The thought made something unpleasant twist in his stomach.
Then who was it meant for?
He stared at Sakura’s name. There were several possibilities and Sasuke founds he disliked all of them. His thumb moved toward the keyboard.
Why did you delete it?
He stopped, hand lowered slightly. Sasuke realized that he had actually zero authority to ask that. They weren’t together, that was obvious. She didn’t owe him an explanation. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Sasuke stared at the empty message field for a long moment.
He had absolutely no idea what to do.
This was...uneasy. He was standing beside his car in broad daylight, frozen over a deleted photograph like an idiot.
Three minutes passed and Sasuke was glaring at his phone like it somehow declared war on him. Sasuke remained exactly where he was, looking painfully stupid. Eventually, he typed one word.
Okay.
He stared at it.
Why? He didn’t know. It seemed neutral. Non-threatening. Normal. A completely ordinary response from a completely ordinary person who had definitely not just experienced a total internal collapse because the girl he had quietly liked for years had accidentally sent him a bikini photograph.
His finger pressed send before he could think better of it. The message disappeared into the conversation. Sasuke stared at the screen. Then slowly lowered the phone. He used every ounce of dignity he possessed not to scream.
He wanted to curse.
He wanted to throw the phone into traffic.
He wanted to somehow go back thirty seconds and stop himself from sending the single most useless word ever invented.
Okay.
What the fucking hell did that even mean? Did it mean he liked the picture? Obviously not. Did it mean he didn’t like it? Also not. Did it mean he was fine with her deleting it? He wasn’t. Did it mean he wanted her to send it again? Absolutely not something he was prepared to think about.
Sasuke exhaled through his nose and rubbed his thumb against the side of his phone.
He would wait.
That was all he could do. They would see each other when school started.
Three days.
Sasuke looked at the bright sky.
Three days.
He could handle three days. He had survived worse.
His phone remained silent. Sasuke glanced down at it anyway. Then immediately looked away, annoyed with himself.
Three days suddenly seemed very long and Uchiha Sasuke hates waiting for answers.