Chapter Text
“So you’re a lawyer?” She asks. And the first thing he notices is the slight nodding of her head to the song playing at low volume. Behind her mask of pleasure and delicacy, she wears an expression that says she'll throw her chair behind and stumble onto the volume key somewhere deliberately situated beyond her eye's reach and turn it up until the knob is about to break. Ino, the unbelievably attractive woman sitting across from him with golden tresses of hair falling over her shoulder and the rest of it kept away like it’s an unparalleled scene allowed to be noticed by only a handful of people, is like firecrackers under a scorching sun: dangerously loud, and has an air about her that tells him, and everyone else around her, that she won't hesitate–—to kiss or to kill. She tells him later that her family owns a flower shop while she teaches bottony while the dessert on her plate ceases to hold the shape in which it was brought. She attacked it with her fork, ate the frosting first, and began fiddling with the spongy cake that’s left. Sasuke’s plate is untouched; the small flower somewhere along the swirl of cream stretches its back and leans onto the heavy frosting. And time. Time crawls like it has just grown legs.
Sasuke adjusts himself in his seat as if the new posture will grant him freedom from what he has to face later tonight. But it doesn’t dull his gaze and allow the same to glide over the figure of the woman now entering. With her hand, thrown unnecessarily to the strap of her perfectly compact bag that matches her peach-colored outfit, her eyes scatter all over the place. His wife. But he doesn’t call her that anymore. He calls her by her name; he calls her Sakura. A reflection of that intricacy prevailed in everything about her.
When her gaze falls on him, the strain on her face drains, like water through sand. She nods and turns her back to give him some sort of privacy. Perhaps he will do the same had their positions been exchanged. Sakura stands a bit far from him–—and his date, them. Far enough, he thinks.
“Is… everything okay?” Ino asks as she turns her head to follow his eyes: a victim to his wife's riveting presence.
“Yes.” Sasuke jumps back. He has to wrap this up.
“So I was saying-”
“No. Give me a minute.” He pushes his chair back and scurries down through the spaces between pushed-back chairs. Some empty, some the contrary.
“Hey.”
He smells lavender. But not the soothing scent; the rough, piercing one that people buy just because they know it’s expensive and the number of people in possession of such objects consequently happening to be very less. Somehow it is generally concluded that the essence of such an ornament can only be understood by people who can afford it. He doesn’t question her about a lot of her actions. Sakura–—as Sasuke finds–—is easily agreeable. But tonight, he knows the reason behind such an odd embellishment.
“Hi. I’m here early, I know. Go finish up.” The small necklace lying perfectly aligned to the middle of her slightly exposed chest winks at him.
“Not interested.”
“Why? No sex, I suppose?” There’s that tone in her voice. One she uses now and then, but lesser these days, he hasn’t failed to notice. It has taken him time to hold the meaning of her latest gestures solely invented as a result of her deviation from her past self in his palms (and he needed to hold everything in his palms; to have a perfect understanding of the why of everything–—everything he cares about, at least); to notice the variation in her pitch and the words said, accompanied by the slight brush of her elbow against his. And now, he knows.
“No sex. At least not tonight.”
“But you should go say bye.”
“I will.”
Sakura says she’ll wait, wait for him to come back so that they can undergo the tradition of him putting his hands around her shoulder and whispering sweet nothings into her ears. They’re a lovely couple or so people say. Until they reach back home. And within the second it takes Sakura to tear off her high-heels from her feet; before the agonizing pain from wearing such high platforms can subside, Sasuke will be gone to his separate apartment–—his separate home.
He clears his throat and positions himself in his initial position across his date, who now, as he notices, smells of rum and fresh blueberry.
“I’ll see you next time.” He rushes it and it’s too obvious but he doesn’t care.
“I don’t think you’ll want to, Sasuke-san. When you look at that lady over there like that. Nice meeting you, though. I mean it.”
It’s her turn to push back her dining chair, fully aware of the shriek it will create. She saunters down the place, walks past his wife, and out into the night. When Sasuke, unbothered by how poorly it went, restrains a run and marches towards Sakura, she speaks, “bad date? I’ll give you a pat. Come here.”
“Mother wouldn’t want you saying that.”
“True.”
She steps into the alley, a smile lingering on her lips as her heels tap the asphalt glinting in the moonlight. It’s almost like her necklace, only darker. Any object dark in shade has never been affiliated to Sakura or any of her endeavors. But that’s now.
Sasuke has known her before this moment. She wore black but only along with hot and cherry pink. Wild earrings and disheveled hair, her head rocking back and forth in tune to the drum sticks spun in her fingers like it has its own esoteric melody. The local crowd that loved them screamed just as loud as the clash of the sticks against the somehow delicate and yet powerful membrane of her drums. The drum set was painted with the same hot pink splashed across her lips and clothes. Sasuke watched her, his fingers, unable to restrain from the beats arising from her side, jamming onto his electric guitar. They go well together. That’s when he had that thought for the first time in his life only to last for what Sasuke likes to call a sprinting moment. He knew the thought to be as false as the artificial fog that covered them up to their waist. Even though his feelings have changed–—if he had any control over them that is–—Sasuke pities the world that will never again be fortunate enough to see that side of his wife. Wild, loud, and carefree Sakura. Maybe those adjectives won’t last her for a lifetime. But Sakura still does.
The topic of ‘his date’ falls victim to their conversation in the car, simply initiated because of the need to maintain one.
Of all the people Sasuke’s parents trust other than their children, their favorite is Sakura. And this trust was not established on a mushy evening when Mikoto got a call from her son–—who was had been adamant in not marrying anyone for some reason he wouldn’t tell them–—informing her that his friend for more than a dozen years; the pink-haired wild drummer girl Mikoto was always concerned about thanks to her carefreeness evident in both her words and actions, is now his wife. What she wasn’t informed of was the mere sheets of parchment responsible for it.
“Well,” Sasuke sighs as the garden lights clash with the headlights of his car like they're hungry for competition. The car heaves against the cropped shrugs in front of his house.
“Can’t wait.” Sakura leaves him alone in the car with sarcasm as an aftertaste. He doesn’t hold the door open for her anymore owing to his belief that she doesn’t like it when he does so.
Her feet come to a halt after taking a few steps. Sasuke is convinced that it’s because she has forgotten that they’re supposed to walk together. She spares him a quick look as if telling him his assumption is right. He pulls himself out of the car seat and lets the crisp air enter his lungs.
Their fingers snake around each other: a gesture they’re familiar with. A tradition, more than an expression. A habit, more than a message. And it's only years later that Sasuke realizes traditions can have expression and habits can have a message; for now, he is blinded.
The garden lights, accompanied by the moon, lead them to the front door. And their feet play the same symphony as they pace the well-maintained garden tiles deprived of fallen leaves because of the weather. An adequately familiar set of circumstances.
When they enter the house, his parents tell him many things. Who went, who stayed, who moved and who changed. Sasuke has always been rather picky when paying heed. Small talk generally never made it to the list of things he sharpened his ears for. He helps himself to a glass of wine and wishes to disappear to the balcony upstairs, the one which once belonged to him. He somehow doesn’t seem to possess anything in this house anymore. And the ‘guests not permitted’ sign in front of the stairs he thought didn’t include him proves him wrong with the look on his mother’s face when he tried to cross it. Mother, to Sasuke, was someone who knew him. She could already tell from the way he walked away from the crowd, so briskly that no one would notice his disappearance, with the glass of wine clutched in his hands. She reached him as swiftly as her long flowing gown allowed and whispered to him of how the reason behind the presence of more than half their guests is due to the news of him arriving. Why such a crowd would want to converse with him, Sasuke is not sure.
But what his mom said was not entirely inaccurate either, or so he is coaxed into thinking by the wave of people rushing to him for advice and he keeps it strictly legal. Estates, rights, properties, agreements, wills. Anything beyond that required one to be either his wife or who he called–—and very rarely–—his friend.
When Sasuke finds an interval between the chatter of the company, he quickly advances to the more vacant part of the hall and grabs another glass of wine, falling back first onto the white couch in the corner. The sight of Sakura though, on the other side behind the glass wall, smiling at one of his relatives like she has known them forever, is like white tiles on a sunny balcony similar to the ones she has in her house unperturbed against the sunlight, so radiant that once his gaze falls on her–—even if coincidentally——his eyes will need time to adjust to the overwhelming amount of light. So simply formidable that when he looks away, for a fleeting second, he’s blind.
When her eyes meet him from about a dozen heads away, she blossoms into a smile. This time, the better one. It is not heavy with the need to convince. It, in fact, doesn’t possess a need at all. She flows down the sea of well-tailored tuxedos and chooses to sit next to him. Sasuke has known her enough to carelessly place an arm on her knee when she places herself next to him, so gracefully that not an inch of the cloth around her thigh is allowed to crease.
“I should have known you’d be here.”
“I take it that you were searching for me?”
“I was.”
“Reason?” Sasuke sips some wine and keeps it away so that he can fully turn to her. Enough wine in his mouth to last for-
“Your aunt thinks I should spend more time with you.” Her eyes point to the lady she speaks of.
“Hn. And so you are here to spend time with your husband? Provoked by the influence of a certain aunt?”
Sakura opens her mouth and Sasuke already knows that when her voice pours into the world–—into his world–—it’ll be decorated with that whimsical tone of hers.
“I’m afraid so.” She shrugs. “And you should stop drinking. Giving you a ride is one thing and giving you a ride while you’re drunk is a whole nother.”
“Are you teasing my drunk self? You forget your marital duties.” Sasuke says this fully aware of the fact that it will cause her lips to tremble, trying to hold in a roar of laughter. Sakura’s face flushed when she chained her emotions in, be it a state of devastation or happiness. She bites her lower lip and looks away to the crowd, throwing out an anchor and hoping it will hook somewhere, hence providing another base for her thoughts but the party being monotonous does not side with her desperation.
“God, you can’t hold it in.” He grabs her wrist and drags her through the crowd and into the garden, only letting go when he sweeps her to his front. His words weren’t worth the minutes-long laughter, he knows. But every time her laugh reduces to a chuckle he fuels it more with carefully crafted sentences.
Even though–—like every other time–—Sasuke is so confident he won't join in her hysterics, in the end, he does. Confidence–—he has more of it than he can hold within his hand, but not past a line. And beyond that line lays the feelings of a fifteen-year-old boy who knew nothing but a few chords on a bass guitar; the testament to his gaze on her gasping figure; the unexplainable certainty he felt, with the idea concerning the impossibility of love with complete devotion and loyalty; marriage; all the reasons why he, sometimes, fails to notice everything else except her breath; material reasons to his sporadic compulsion to deviate from certain beliefs he has formulated on his own.
When Sakura’s laugh tops the piano music a couple of meters away, he wonders if it reaches the tip of the trees shooting above from near their feet. Sakura’s presence in this fraction of a second, to Sasuke, feels like pouring clear water through a sieve.