Work Text:
Sakura Haruno jammed out to the radio in her car as she drove back to her apartment after a long day of studying.
Idling at a stoplight she glanced into the rearview mirror to get a good look at herself. Her spiky short ponytail was beginning to come undone and let a few bangs hang over her brow. She ignored the stray hairs in favor of staring deeply into her own eyes.
Sakura couldn't get enough of them. They looked so damn happy, for once, because she was happy. Shining bright and green, full of that fiery energy she thought she had lost after graduating into high school. Oh what dark years those were...
Well now she was twenty-two with a boyfriend, a 3.8 GPA at a prestigious medical college (thank you, plentiful scholarships, thank youuu), and a nice apartment in a decent part of the city. The young lady had never felt so confident, not since she was an energy-filled kid ready to take on the world. Scratch that, she still was an energy-filled kid ready to take on the world. Only now she could add driving and alcohol retention to her list of strengths.
She flashed herself a smile before refocusing on the road before her and gently pressed the gas as the traffic light turned green. Home, home, home here we come.
It was Friday, so that naturally meant two and a half days for herself; one day of goofing off and relaxing followed by homework and studying to be reserved for all of Sunday. The strategy had worked well so far for her three semesters at college and seemed to prevent the stress from the previous week to drag her down.
Enough indulgence to actually live outside of the rigorous knowledge retention required for her chosen line of work and just enough time to actually get shit done. Easy. Soon she had paralleled parked and was speed-walking across the street, looking both ways. The door to the apartment complex closed behind her with a large gust of fall wind and she wasted no time in climbing the two flights of stairs to her own abode.
"Hoooney I'm hooooome!" Sakura backed into the door to shut it and slapped her keys onto the side table in the corner.
"I'm in the living room, dear." Came a voice down the short hall. After slipping her shoes off, Sakura slid majestically along the wood-paneled floor with her pantyhosed feet and grabbed the door way to the living room to stop herself, whipping her head slightly and causing more hair to loosen out of her ponytail.
A head full of shaggy red hair poked out over the couch. Sakura grinned, took a step, then a leap and launched herself onto the couch and fell into the unoccupied half of the love seat.
Her boyfriend didn't even look up from the book in his lap despite his body bouncing in place from the disposition of weight.
Sakura pretended to pout, then grinned slyly as she cast herself onto his side, blocking his view of his reading material with her head. She gazed up into his face and said "Pay attention to me, Sasori! Your darling girlfriend has returned from college."
Sasori's lips quirked into a small smile and his normally tired eyes settled into an even more peaceful expression. "So she has."
Sakura looped her arms around his neck and pulled him into a kiss. She liked to fully mack on him whenever possible but Sasori preferred saving passionate kisses for sex or almost-sex. Despite this preference he found it amusing when she randomly tried to swallow his face whole.
She pulled back and laughed. "So what am I preventing you from reading?"
"Nothing important, just a biography on Salvador Dali."
"Hmm, that name rings a bell..." Sakura scratched at her scalp in an attempt to look like she was thinking very hard. Names were never her strong point in school: Anatomy labeling, yes. Founding Fathers, no.
Sasori brushed some loose bangs from her face as he replied, "You know that painting of the melting clocks in the desert?"
"The one that makes me think of breakfast?" She said half-jokingly.
"The very one. He did that, as well as a photograph involving him jumping in the air while someone threw cats and other objects into the frame. It took him and his photographer five hours and twenty-six throws of the cats to get it just right."
Without skipping a beat, Sakura retorted with a blunt "that's really weird" and acquired a faraway look on her face as she stared off into the air to undoubtedly ponder upon the benefits of cat-throwing besides the apparently obvious "artistic".
The door bell rang and someone pounded on the door twice.
"I'll get it." Sakura announced, jumping up from the couch and hanging a sharp right out the room.
Sasori only smoothed out a page Sakura had accidentally folded and continued to read, crossing his ankles leisurely.
Sakura sailed to the door and opened it with a dramatic flourish. "Oh, Deidara, what's up?"
Deidara was the child of a friend of Sasori's family. Too young to have been in college with her boyfriend, but as he aged he only grew more ambitious artistically, wielding a passion that made even the normally stoic alumnus raise an eyebrow and quirk a smile. This grabbed his attention more than anything else his junior could have done, and a friendship was struck that continually strengthened with proximity now that the young man lived within a few blocks of Sakura and Sasori's apartment and attended a liberal arts college on the other side of town.
His forte was sculpture and modeling, the former of very surreal figures and the latter of both his own body and others'. But even his most beautiful pieces frustrated him in some way, Sakura could tell. She was unsure if it was perfectionism or that he had not yet found his niche. Sasori was not willing to intervene, as he reasoned 'It wouldn't do either of us any good if I simply taught him my way without him coming to the conclusion himself. I could argue my point of view, yes, and I surely would if he asked for my opinion, but it's much more satisfying for someone to come to the fold of their own free will than be led by the nose'.
Sakura had then come to the conclusion that artists were a confusing lot, but enjoyable and fun company nonetheless.
Despite how messy it ended up, he never cut his blond hair and after knowing him for two years it had reached his mid back and was restrained by two sturdy hair bands. Sometimes he asked Sakura to braid it for him and sometimes he put it in a ponytail on top of his head for some inexplicable reason.
'Just to shake things up', he had told her the first time she questioned him about it.
Deidara leaned against the door frame and stuck his hands into his dirty cargo jeans. "He-ey Sakura, is Sasori here, yeah?"
"Yeah sure, come on in."
"Sweet.."
Deidara wrapped an arm around her shoulders as he steered them to the living room, placing a soft kiss on her temple as he did so.
"Sasori, Deidara's here." Sakura announced, idling by the doorway as said man flipped himself upside down onto the couch, bare toes wiggling in the air (much to her amusement).
"I am I am, Sasori my man."
Sasori made a dramatic show of snapping his book closed. "I can see that, you brat."
"Hey you rhymed better than I did, un!"
Before Sasori could reply with a mixedly amused and irritated quip, Sakura interrupted with, "I'm going to send an email to one of my professors. I'll be back in a sec."
"Hurry back. Face/Off is coming on in 5 minutes!" Deidara said.
Sakura grinned to herself before slipping off to her room with wooden floor-powered slides.
...
When Sakura returned, Face/Off was indeed on the TV with its opening credits rolling. She took a beat to stare at the back of the two artists' heads as she leaned against the door jamb.
She was lucky to have such supportive and fun guys in her life. Hugging her middle, Sakura bit her lip to fight the urge to laugh.
Honestly, her life was going so well for once. She could hardly contain it some days. Going from a the severely depressed loner-loser in 6th grade with a cancer-stricken mother and a father doing his best to a hard-working college student with a handful of scholarships to strike out the worst of the debt and plenty of support from two charming and nice men who were not only supportive but actually fun to be around to the point where she was sharing an apartment with one of them?
She must have been a saint in a previous life. Sweet, sweet karma, hallelujah.
---
It was almost 11 PM and normally that wouldn't have been a problem for Sasori but this had just been the fifth episode of Face/Off in a row and while he would grudgingly admit it was indeed a compelling reality show, his eyes were beginning to blur from the brightness of the TV screen in the otherwise pitch-black living room. He turned his head to find Sakura curled up on the couch with her head in Deidara's lap; the man himself had drifted off to sleep right alongside her with a fist propping up his chin on the couch's armrest.
Sasori tsked and gently eased himself off the loveseat, inwardly rolling his eyes at the squeaking springs that protested regardless of his efforts to be quiet. Making his way to Deidara's side of the couch, the dryly amused man slapped his colleague's arm down, resulting in his head falling sideways in a rude wake-up call.
"Whaaguh--ugh, hey!"
Sasori quickly knocked the young man's head with his knuckles. "Shh. She's sleeping."
"Oh," Deidara exclaimed softly as he realized that someone was using him as a pillow, "sorry."
Sasori folded his arms loosely and took a few steps to the doorway, pausing as something conveniently occurred to him just then. "You want to spend the night?"
"Yeah if it's not too much trouble, un." Came a distracted and tired reply.
"Wake her up gently and steer her to our bedroom. You can sleep with us."
"Sweet..." Deidara yawned out, stretching, "The usual arrangement?"
Sasori allowed himself a little smile at the suggestion. "Of course; she still hasn't outgrown her tendency to roll over in her sleep. She fell out of bed twice last week."
Deidara chuckled to himself and stroked the medical student's hair gently. "I can believe it, yeah."
Sasori was already in the master bedroom and discarding all his clothing, save for his underwear, into the hamper. The door creaked open but he didn't even glance to see who it was, as he could tell by the light tromping of feet against the floor that it was the female of the trio gracing the bedroom with her presence first.
"Aaagh, why did you wake me up? I was fine sleeping on the couch...Fine!" Came an angry whine. Sasori sighed. She became cranky so very easily.
"Hey, beds are made to be slept in, yeah. Besides, Sasori made me wake you up, it wasn't my idea."
Smirking to himself, Sasori quickly climbed into bed and watched the two fumble around in the darkness with their clothes.
"Sh-i-it!" There was a heavy thump. "Fuck it's hard to take pants off in the dark.." came a grumble on the opposite side of the bed.
Deidara plopped himself down onto the mattress, making his colleague's body hitch slightly into the air once again. "If you need help, just ask, un." This was followed by him laughing.
Sasori busied himself with staring out the starlit window, paying no mind to the other two's last-minute bickering.
"Come on, Pinky. Get your tush into bed, un."
"I'm coming, I'm coming."
"Come faster, yeah."
Sakura huffed while crawling into bed to take her place between the two men. "Save those lines for during sex, please." She murmured as Sasori put an arm around her waist.
"Too late!"
"Hush now, both of you." Sasori whispered, giving Deidara a particularly hard stare in the dark. He knew his junior could feel it even if there wasn't enough light to illuminate his own face.
Sakura's response was a yawn and Deidara's a happy sigh as he snuggled up closer to Sakura's side and rested his head next to hers. In turn she grabbed his arm and draped it over her chest with his hand cradled in the crook of her neck.
And odd amalgation of limbs to be sure, but somehow they had all naturally found a way to mesh like this.
"Hmm, good night." came Sakura's tired voice to both men. Deidara was already asleep, and Sasori shifted in order to kiss the knuckles of the sculptor's hand as it was lying limply between Sakura's visage and his mouth. To be sure, they were an interesting lot, making this work.
Sasori remained conscious until he was sure both his medical student and sculptor had knocked themselves out.
Tomorrow he'd wake up early, and make breakfast...help Sakura study, kick Deidara out of the apartment so he would stop procrastinating on his final project due Thursday (he had forgotten to scold him this evening)...So much to do.
The man's eyes slid closed and he instead let his mind think of nothing but the shape of the woman beneath his arm, the earthy, clay smell that emanated from the slender fingers before his nose, and the harmony of two sets of breaths from two people he had come to call companions.