Chapter Text
Her head rests against the cold of the glass and she can see the road stretching in front of her, green giving birth to more green with grey painted all over the sky. She lifts her arm to check the time - 3 PM. So much for sunny afternoons.
Hawaii is everything she expects it to be and more. She remembers this place as pieces, which she joins together to return to. But Sakura has run away too many times to let this place become four walls that keep her safe.
“Dear fellow travelers, due to the unexpected weather, sightseeing is not possible today,” the guide announces from a distance.
The bus ride is agonizing but sleep succeeds in finding her. And for now, that’s enough.
“Excuse me, can we use this seat? You can just sit over there.”
“Hn.”
The scene takes place a few seats behind her but she can hear it. Even with her earphones plugged in, dying for a song to play into her ears. She tried searching for a track a while ago but couldn’t settle on just one. To Sakura, it's all at once or none at all. And now, none at all, it is.
“Excuse me,” and she looks up and nods to the man, somewhere around her age, with eyes as dark as his untamed hair falling onto his eyes. He frowns, occasionally, his eyes never meeting hers.
When the pack squeals at a passing animal (that she doesn’t care to pay heed to), he doesn’t flinch. When the coastal lines slowly show themselves he doesn’t throw them a glance. And it’s interesting, at least. What else will you call it if you see a man on vacation, but as uninterested and dispassionate as you?
With her elbow propped up on the armrest and her palm pressed to her jaw, she looks at him.
There’s something bothering him and she pretends not to notice it for a while but fails. It’s hard not to when you are staring at someone for so long. His hands clench and unclench, his lips part and he inhales through his mouth but words don’t come out. Air does. It reminds her of herself and it’s vexing.
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
And they surrender to an awkward pause.
“Can I sit next to the window?”
The corners of her lips try to turn up but she restricts them.
“Sure.”
She scoots over to his seat and he to hers. He bends low and grabs her loosely packed bag and gives it to her.
“Thanks.”
“Hn.”
“What’s your name?”
A frown and then, “... Uchiha Sasuke.”
“Hi… Sasuke,” he winces at his name divulging from her lips. Is he looking at her because he expects her to introduce herself?
“What’s yours?” He is.
“Hmm…” She looks at the meadows, dull unlike what everyone expects them to be, outside her window and adds as if they’ve given her the answer, “I’d rather not say.”
“I said mine.”
“Yeah.”
He nods again and looks away. And for a second, she wants to ask him why he is traveling. But as she itches for words, it gets lost somewhere between her lips. What is it for?
They don’t talk for the rest of the ride.
Hawaii is beautiful. Even when it’s raining. While Sakura preferred it when her green eyes mirrored the blazing summer sun, Hawaii still managed to enmesh her.
“It grows on you,” she heard that line back from the airport. Someone talking about the new ice cream flavor, she guessed, as she tried to choose a song from her phone and failed.
Sakura scratches her head and lets it drop back, peering at the window, now unfamiliarly far from her. Sasuke looks different now. Even if his face still stays expressionless, it accommodates tranquility, with his eyes on the sky, a shade darker than his own eyes. Who says the color of his eyes is a bit too dark for it to mirror the light? The bunch of clouds cracks in the middle and a ray of sunlight escapes, adorning the fields - once seized by the ghostly grey - with gold.
For the light to mirror, black, is just as sufficient.
It’s been a while since Sakura smiled.
“Be grateful. Remember to be grateful, okay?” Her mother said when Sakura told her about a joke someone made in class which made her chortle while she did the laundry. Another summer evening she spent with her mom, telling stories about her never-ending list of crushes and teachers she despised. “Huh?” Little Sakura didn’t get it.
“If someone makes you smile, you thank them.”
“Mm… okay.” She furrowed her eyebrows and gave her mother a shrug, busy with the toys in her tiny hands. “So I'm playing with dolls. Look! This boy met this girl one day and they fell in love- ah! Wait! Do you think love is real? You know, today in class-”
“Sasuke?”
He doesn't care enough to turn his head towards her. But that's okay. It's better this way.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
A shrug. And that’s all she gives away.
--
He can’t sleep. No, that’s a travesty. He doesn’t allow himself to sleep. His hands, long and spread on either side of the bed, cross themselves on his forehead so that they block his view of the ceiling. Ceilings make him nauseous. Or maybe the solid end, they suggest. He drags himself up on his feet and once he is out of the hotel room, the sound of the night sea engulfs him, enticing him to leave the building and let his feet take his body.
It’s chilly outside and he wishes he brought his jacket but is unconcerned enough to stop himself from returning to grab it. The hotel, facing the sea, has access to a private section of the sea to itself. He knew this by heart. While they waited for the guide to check them into their respective rooms, he despised the hotel banner hung right in front of him so much. The number of words, too little that they crammed in his eyes and he didn’t even have to read it but memorize it, instead.
So now he stands, hands as deep as they can fit into the pockets of his black pants, his nose tinted with blush as the zephyr fans out. Sasuke can already tell how it’s pregnant with a much stronger gust. He breathes in through his nose and turns around to see warm mellow lights popping out between the dark green of the leaves, slow-dancing in the wind, hand in hand. His gaze travels further up to see a board and reads the ornamental letters out in his mind. But his thoughts still race to things he doesn’t want them to. He reads the banner again, but this time, aloud. Welcome, the banner shouts. “Welcome,” so he mutters under his breath and is prompted to repeat, this time a bit sonorous, “welcome.”
“Thank you,” and it’s like the sea’s murmurs. For a second, he is tempted to look around for someone or something. But his mind is quick to race off again but this time to her. Her pink messy locks and earphones that match her half-chipped nail polish.
“Hey!” Sasuke doubts if he accidentally called her name a bit too loudly. But no, he doesn’t know her name. Yet. She flows - like the sea - down the flock of stairs and towards him.
“Hi.”
“Why are you in Hawaii?” Her question only rises once she stands leaning towards the sea, her elbow resting on the metal railing Sasuke believed to be too cold to hold onto considering the biting wind brushing by, filling their lungs with the crisp air. He expected her to ask him if he couldn’t sleep but then decided that this question would be somehow worse. Sasuke wants to be honest. So he blends honesty in his mouth and spits it out.
“I’m traveling.”
She sniggers, amused. He draws his head back a little and looks at her
“You’re traveling?” She chuckles again and looks at the waves, coming at them with all their might only to shatter against the sand as foam, stretching out their hands as they plead to linger on the land for just a second more and then, retrieving. She continues after a nod, “No, I don’t think you get my question. Traveling to move on or run away?”
And Sasuke wonders if a wave washed him over as he stays still. A couple of meters away, the ocean heaves.
“You look confused. Want me to tell you mine?”’
He looks at her. And this time, it’s not through the corner of his eyes or when she is asleep in a crowded bus with the penetrating smell of overly polished leather seats. And he is no longer sure which is more effulgent - her face under the stars or the stumps of garden light behind their back.
She takes the hint and mutters something. And it’s so incomprehensible that Sasuke is coaxed to lean in, but just a little bit, expecting her to repeat her words.
“Hn?” He asks instead.
“Running away.”
No, it’s definitely her face.
But he doesn’t get to tell her that. But then again, what is there to say?
So he watches her knee-length dress being tortured by the gale, her hands offering them solace by pressing it down to her thighs as she moves farther away from him. Sasuke is left with the remnants of her bare feet on the floor in the form of fog against the polished wood that starts to evade with each sprinting second. And he doesn’t want to see the end of it; of the absence of her.
Sasuke wishes he brought his jacket. Again.
When he doesn’t find her on the ride back, Sasuke contemplates whether he should ask the guide. Because asking about her meant something. But not doing so also has an elucidation and he chooses the latter.
“Ah, Sakura-san? She suddenly had to cancel due to personal reasons.”
Can people just cancel things in the middle? But that question is already answered.
Sasuke can sit near the window now, without having to interact with anyone. But this time, he searches instead of watching.
People fan out from the bus to the seashore and Sasuke doesn’t hold back. He doesn’t want to be the one who remains. He has been that before.
And he looks for her in the glinting sea accompanying him wherever he runs; in the sway of the coconut trees, some gleefully erect, some coiled, as if adjusting to someone they were supposed to hold, only to be left, abandoned; in the golden sand lying unperturbed against the fathomless blue overhead, dissolving into the mirror of the same color below, unexplainably deep.
When Sasuke’s feet vanish under the sand, he gasps. Sakura would not have been surprised. He always thought her unfazed and nonchalant. The scorching heat is an encumbrance but he doesn’t move away from facing the sun. He can feel his palms boiling but he doesn’t take them out from his pockets. Are blades of grass springing up between her toes while his remains, invisible; buried under the grains of gold?
He prefers the cold, he concludes, more than he ever wanted to.
“You know the pink-haired woman?” The words sharpen against his ears.
“Mm? The hot one?”
“Yeah, apparently she disappeared.”
She didn’t disappear, he knows.
She left.
--
“Do you want to go get some air?”
“No, I think I’ll stay here.” Her date nods as if he is pleased with her reply. But Sakura has just been through this too many times to know that he is not.
He looks at his phone and bites his lip, pretending that something on the screen has genuinely sparked his interest, while contemplating how to tell her that he is only here because he thought that at this point, she'll agree to sleep with him. And maybe she would have but tonight, to Sakura, is a pitch-black hole, sucking her into it with every passing second until she can't move. But she can, and it lies as the cause of the exasperation behind her sighs. Something her date fails to notice while rummaging through his ideas on how to tell her he is only here because he expected sex. Sakura presumes that he has got an escape plan when his face tenses more. He gasps out of nowhere and tells her there’s an emergency. His lips part and unite while she remains silent, and he muses on whether speaking more will persuade her to believe him.
“No no. It’s alright. You can go.” She gulps down her drink. Sakura has an acquaintance with the ease that comes with pretending, only a bit too much for her own liking. The absence of alcohol in her beverage makes her hand unlatch from it. She cannot get drunk today, her schedule demands it. Sakura stares at the light she has now awakened from her phone to check the time. It’s not that late. But she doesn’t read the time anyway. Her gaze lands on the lock screen and she feels stuck between turning off and unlocking her phone.
A picture of the beach through a window. But it’s blurry and she has better pictures of the sea; pictures she took when she was the one who sat next to the window. But Sakura likes to keep this one and she tells herself it’s not because of the fall of coal-black strands of hair, cascading from the very right corner of the picture. No, she likes the sea this way, she tells herself, a bit far from her; blurry; unclear; unsettling and she stops herself there. But that’s-
“-a lie. You're fucking lying.”
“Did you expect me to tell the truth? You know you didn’t. Face it.”
And the sound of fists jabbing against bones. She turns around as quickly as her stool allows. Another fight at the bar. But that’s not what catches her eyes. Black hair; same as the one on her lock screen for the past three years. That's what.
“Seriously, what is with that picture on your lock screen?” Ino asked once.
“It’s whatever.” Sakura found it funny, how desperate Ino sounded.
“Do you miss that place that much or something?”
“Mmm…” Her back fell behind to meet the wall against it and continued, “yeah, maybe I do.”
“Tell me, what’s Hawaii like? What do you miss the most about it?” Ino dropped her bag on the floor and walked to her friend, anticipation visible in the form of a smile plastered wide across her face, awaiting words like the beach, the wind, the sunset, the blazing sand against the vast blue of the sea, and all the like.
Sakura narrowed her eyes, and looked at something insignificant like the dress she was supposed to wear for another date - also the second one in that week - she said, “well… I guess I miss… the cold.” She ends it firmly.
“You miss what?”
“The cold.” Sakura shrugged, walking away from Ino who was left to ponder about her friend’s remark.
“Seriously, you miss the cold of Hawaii?” But when Ino realized that Sakura was not going to respond to her, at least with words, she added, “well why did you come back so quickly if you liked the… cold?” Sarcasm, evident in her voice, while she rolled her eyes.
“Ino I don’t think I’ll be needing your hairdryer,” Sakura shouted from a distance.
Ino was nosy. But she knew when to stop; when to give space and when not to. Sakura was reminded of this again when her best friend allowed her to change the topic as she said, “I thought you wanted to look all pretty tonight and make an effort. Get back from Hawaii and start dating. Remember what you told me?”
“Just not tonight.”
Months pass and Sakura still holds her breath and walks out of the bar even though she sees him. Just not tonight, she thinks again.
--
Sasuke knows it’s her and perhaps he grasps it a second too late because she leaves the bar. A practical decision, because they are on either side of the bar, with two enraged men in between. He caught her eyes between fastening hits and freshly bruised limbs. His eyes trail behind her and he thinks it’s the sound of hits landing on the men a few feet apart from him but it’s his heartbeat and he feels, for a second, the luxury of being oblivious. To everything else except the way, she plugs her earphones - something he has seen before; something that tells him it’s her, all over again - and strengthens her grip on her purse. She’s out of the bar and on the sidewalk within the time it takes for him to chug down a mouthful of the bitter alcohol in front of him. But the moment her feet touch the footpath as if the skies have been waiting for her consent, they darken, and in a couple of seconds, raindrops kiss her body and still pour down on her all at once. Sasuke can see her body strain as she stands in the pounding rain. Everyone else, moving to find shelter under the sunshade while she finds hers under the lamenting sky. He can see her holding the purse against her chest owing to the transparency of her white dress, even with his hands lazily holding up his jaw; even if a mile or a half and a thick glass through which rain trickles down separate her back to his face. He drops his gaze when the fabric permits the rain to reveal her pale skin below. Sasuke slams down his bill for a beverage he didn’t touch on the table and marches out. The fight behind him only rages on. Once the door slams behind him, the flying curses from the inside are replaced by the sound of raindrops shattering against the tiled footpath. He doesn’t know this place. But he despises it already. A big city with this and that; with more people than it can accommodate; with too many things untold - places, persons, reasons, names.
Sasuke’s under the shield of the sunshade but he steps out this time.
The pink-haired woman spins when she catches the sound of his shoes against the pavement and squints at him, the rain hindering her vision. She holds the purse closer to her chest and looks at him, her eyes searching for something that she doesn’t say out aloud. Sasuke is coaxed to peer at her soaked clothes but restrains himself. When he’s close enough to her, a song pours out from her earphones and he can hear it, even with the rain crushing them with its jewels, because of its low quality.
“- And then I can tell myself
What the hell I'm supposed to do”
A few more seconds and he is just as drenched in the rain as her. He tears off his jacket from his body and tries not to flinch at the warmth carried away from him together with it. Sasuke turns heedless to the needles piercing all over his body, his hands extended to her slightly shivering body, neither of them planning to return inside.
“Here.” He brings it in front of the purse.
“What?” She is shouting, literally. And it takes him a moment to realize that this is because of the rain, unbearably loud all of a sudden, penetrating its way into their conversation.
“Do you…” He shouts too, even if tentatively, “want… this?”
“And then I can tell myself
Not to ride along with you.”
She gives him a nod. And Sasuke decides to wait for a second, to play it inside his again to make sure he didn’t read her wrong. A cupped hand runs over her face, in an attempt to remove the water on it. “Yeah, okay.”
“When the night was full of terrors
And your eyes were filled with tears
When you had not touched me yet
Oh, take me back to the night we met”
She takes it from him and wears it across her shoulders but only after her sea-green eyes meet his black ones once again, for the first time in three years.
Sasuke knows he has something to say. He looks at her, pledging to open his mouth in a second or two but when he does,
“I had all and then most of you
Some and now-”
her phone rings. The music dies abruptly to be replaced by her ringtone. It's the default one that comes with the phone for the first time. She pulls it out from her bag and cups her hand over the screen and blinks at it a couple of times. She slides a finger across the phone and speaks into it before pressing it to her ears.
“What?”
His eyes hand on her hair that sticks to her neck like separate pink twigs, and then to the rise of her breasts ensuing her heavy breaths.
“Yeah, okay. Listen to me, I’ll reach there somehow. We have to do this now.” She says to the phone, a bit too loudly.
Sakura leans forward, sticks of her damp hair trailing her head. She scans the alley for the headlights of taxis but doesn’t find them and draws back, sighing and avoiding his gaze. The need to have her eyes on him makes Sasuke speak this time, “I can give you a ride.” He yells, even though they both know the rain is not as deafening now. There’s some kind of emergency, this much he knows.
“Really?” Does she not trust him?
“Where do you want to go?” They’re still shouting.
“Um, the hospital.”
He doesn’t interrogate her anymore.
“Sure, but I don’t know the way.”
“That’s fine, I’ll show you.”
“Hn.”
He walks to his bike and is confident that she’s following him. The small bar doesn’t have a parking lot so his bike is only a few feet away from them. He grabs the keys from his pocket and sits on the bike and so does she. And he can tell from the way she has placed herself, that she doesn’t have a lot of experience with riding on a bike. Sasuke suppresses a smile and the words escape his mouth before he can do anything else, “I think you’ll want me to speed up so sit… safely.”
He’s not sure if she heard him. But he likes to think she did when she places her palms down on his shoulders, rigidly, however. And her touch on his soaked shirt tells him of the absence of freedom she feels, to hold him anymore closer than this.
Sasuke speeds up once they are off the narrow alley of the bar and on the main road. The sharp wind makes him shudder but he doesn’t give into it.
“Are you cold?” She asks, and it’s not a yell anymore. It’s her lips, closer to his ears than before. But not a whisper.
“No, I’m not.” He replies.
He wonders if she remembers him, under the battering rain through which they strike past front yards and streetlights. Maybe. People don’t accept rides from a total stranger at the bar who offers them jackets. But is he a stranger? He is, in too many ways.
The rain feels somehow lighter. They don’t pierce, they scathe, and then they touch.
The bike pulls over in front of the ER, obeying her directions. It comes to rest amidst the sound of ambulances from miles away and water dripping down from her pink locks of hair. She grips on his shoulder tightly to support herself when she gets off the bike. Sasuke has felt this before; reliability. Okaasan. Niisan. But he leaves it there.
“I have to go.” She shrugs, already spinning away from him, and walks a couple of steps before turning to him again and shouting her gratitude. Sasuke nods and watches her leave. He drops his gaze as he doesn’t want to see the end of it. End of them, all over again.
But she still doesn’t disappear. She only leaves.
--
“Why are you so drenched in the rain?” Ino exaggerates and Sakura ignores.
“So where’s the patient?” They are climbing the stairs, three of four at a time and they don’t even have to take a look at it. The stairs, the building, the garden, the rain; everything, is familiar.
“It will only take three hours,” Ino assures her while Sakura rubs her hands together under the running water. The sound of water against the sink but she prefers the rain.
“What are you thinking about? You seem weird,” Ino closes her tap and continues, “you know that, right?”
She gives Sakura a look and pinches the mask to her nose a couple of times. Sakura does the same after Ino leaves. The door slams shut behind her and the light of the OR greets her. A rather familiar place she should not get used to.
She dips her hands in the gloves being stretched out for her and stands in her position.
“Ten blade.” And the metal meets her tightly gloved hands within seconds.
“So he lived?”
“Yeah well it took six hours instead of three but he lived.” They’re sitting in Hinata’s office.
“I’m just going to leave,” Sakura adds and exits the room and Ino doesn’t follow because she knows Sakura doesn’t want to be followed. Not now.
The raindrops run down the glass walls of the corridor that connects the ER block to the rest of the hospital; remnants of the rain now pulled back into the sky like it was a mistake. Like something they let conquer them in the momentary feeling of frailty and now they regret it.
“Sakura-senpai?” Someone calls out.
“Yes? I was just leaving. Is there something wrong?” She turns in the direction of the voice. It’s the new intern. Red hair, blue eyes.
“Okay, so I’m not sure but I think someone was waiting for you.”
“What? Who-” Her eyes glide past the ground floor, lying revealed through the paneled glass. Sasuke. And it’s unmistakable. A certain paper bag containing a black leather jacket hung loosely on her fingertips quivers as her hand folds itself into a fist owing to her hardening grip. She looks at her phone and the time knocks her off. 2: 48 AM, it screams and she flies down the flock of stairs and throws herself out to the front porch. He’s leaning on that bike of his; black; enclosed; concealed; like a part of him has grown onto it.
“Did you wait here for six hours?”
“I tried to leave.” He frowns.
“What are you doing here?”
“My jacket.” His eyes fall on the bag in her hand.
“Huh? Oh! Right!” She pretends that it’s convincing; that he waited half a dozen hours for his jacket. Maybe he did. “But it’s not fully dried yet so-”
“So are we going to talk about it?” It comes out a bit loudly and Sakura wonders if he meant it to be that way.
“About what?” She decides to play dumb. Like she wasn’t hoping that this won’t come up.
“About Hawaii. Do you-”
“Do you want to dry your jacket?” Sasuke takes a breath and opens his mouth to complete his question but stops when she says “from my place?”
But he remains unaffected, or so she thinks. Sakura inhales, realizing that she owes it to him. But it seems impossible. Giving him an answer other than how she wants to erase that picture of the sea, how she wishes the next time she opens her phone, she isn’t greeted with pieces of him that’s left; pieces of herself from three years ago; pieces she hasn’t announced her dislike for yet. But she owes it to him tonight, so she begins, “about Ha-”
“Want to dry my jacket? From my place?”
A pause and then.
“Fine.”
--
Sasuke wants to know if he’s a stranger and the words don’t need to be forced out from his mouth. It pours out on its own.
“About what?” She asks and something tells him she already knows what. Her emerald eyes release him from them all at once, and he is sure that now, she does.
“About Hawaii. Do you-”
Do you remember me? Are you back because you do?
The question coils itself inside his stomach.
“Do you want to dry your jacket?” He dodges the question and just when the words untangle themselves and begin to flow out of his mouth, she adds, “from my place?”
And it’s not because of how attractive she is, with her now dry hair, deliciously revealing her neck as a consequence of the wind, bathing in all its power even after the rain that seemingly arrived with the aim of destruction, that he loses his words. It’s because he is validated; because she answered him. Sasuke is not a stranger and she has established that and yet her face tenses up and she inhales. “About Hawaii-”
She doesn’t get it and what seizes him is the urge to tell her that he does; that he is sick of seeing only the ends. Of sentiments and ceilings, and both.
“Do you want to dry my jacket? From my place?” Her eyes widen in surprise and he searches for something else - disapproval or the lack of it. Maybe she doesn’t want to go with him. But there’s a pause in the air and for a second, everything remains static, as if it’s paused for her reaction; waiting to know how to feel; to decide on the aftertaste. Sweet or Sour?
“Fine.”
Sweet, this time.