animal I have become

theeflowerchild

Chapter 2

Sakura loves her new job. She loves working with Shikamaru, who's cranky and brilliant and edits at the pace of a perfect snail. She loves the couches they have in the breakroom, dark brown and suede and dangerously comfortable. She loves the hazelnut coffee they have next to the keurig in the hallway. She loves the easy commute, and how every day is a casual day, and the smoothie shop right next door.

Mostly, she loves the excitement when she finishes highlighting an article, the butterflies in her stomach when Kakashi gives her a "job-well-done," and the warmth in her chest when she edits her first news article all by herself.

Shikamaru, with a friendly smirk and bright eyes, tells her, "Not bad, newbie."

She cheers with a pretty, full-faced grin, all pearly whites and twinkling, green eyes. "Thanks!"

"You never forget the first time," Kakashi tells her with a wink.

Sakura rolls her eyes, but even a sleazy joke isn't enough to take away the soaring feeling of pride making her tingle.

"Very nice," Hinata agrees with a kind smile and a nod.

"Since Sasuke won't be back until tomorrow," Kakashi explains, "we'll have you finish up another article with Shikamaru."

"Sounds good to me."

"He's feeling better, I hope?" Hinata interjects.

Kakashi shrugs. "That, or he's run out of sick time."

Shikamaru snorts, sinking into his office chair with a huff. "Enough with the capitalism, let's move on to the next article."

Sasuke comes into work to flowers on his desk, yellow and pink and perfumed. Flowers remind him of death; funerals surrounded by bouquets, headstones with wet vases buried in the ground before them, wreaths with sashes that say sorry for your loss. He thanks the office curtly and puts them in the break room.

He's still signed into his computer, Skype for Business open with his last conversation with Kurenai, eighty-one emails ready for him to address, a half-worked novel with green highlighter and text box comments littering the page. He closes what he can, works through dozens of emails about office parties and deadlines, and stops when he sees one from Kakashi dated yesterday.

To: Uchiha, Sasuke
From: Hatake, Kakashi
Cc: Haruno, Sakura
Subject: side by side

Sasuke,

Sakura will be working with you directly tomorrow. Please have material ready to review. She's already worked through articles with Shikamaru so I think she's ready for something longer. If either of you have any questions, let me know.

K.

Sasuke frowns, deeply. He looks over his shoulder to find Shikamaru alone, sifting through paperwork on his desk and tying his hair up, out of his face. He's alone, and so is Hinata, and Kurenai. The new interns shy away when he glares at them, looking for pink hair.

She must be in Kakashi's office.

He stalks into the office manager's office and he's entirely correct. She's standing there, pin-straight pink hair perfectly coiffed, a tight pencil skirt wrapped around long, creamy legs, talking directly to Kakashi with a smile on her plush, pink lips. Sasuke feels his headache go away. One good look at her and he feels lighter, freer. She has light makeup on her heart shaped face, and her eyes crinkle kindly as she talks about something he doesn't particularly care about with Kakashi.

She's entirely perfect. Tall, and gorgeous, with the sweetest melody of a voice he's ever heard, and when she turns, she smiles at him, too. "Sasuke, right?" she takes a step forward, offering her hand. "I'm Sakura."

"Uh," he starts, embarrassingly, dumbly. His heart is racing, he realizes, beating his chest like a drum. There's a sharp noise in his ears, a hollow whistle that's just as distracting as her pretty smile.

Except, she's frowning now. "Are you okay?" she asks, and then she gasps. "Are you having another asthma attack?"

"Sasuke?" Kakashi calls him.

It takes Sasuke a moment to gather himself. He makes up his mind, then, on how he'll be dealing with this situation. "What?" he hisses, angrily, mouth in a tight grimace.

"You spaced out," Kakashi says.

He scoffs. "I'm fine. Is this the one I'm working with?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Sakura, yes. You might remember her from the meeting you ran out of."

"Tch."

"It's nice to meet you," she offers, serenely, extending her hand again.

Don't think about her voice, he tells himself. Don't think about her smile, or her kindness, or her anything, he tells himself.

"Whatever." He ignores her hand, and she drops it. "Can't you find somebody else to do it? Suigetsu does exactly what I do."

"Suigetsu isn't one of mine," he muses.

"Annoying," he says, and he sees Sakura wince. Good. Maybe she'll take a hint and stay away from him.

"It seems our Sasuke is in a sour mood this morning," Kakashi says with a laugh, more to Sakura than him. "That's enough of the attitude. Sakura is going to be fiction editing permanently eventually, so you should get used to her."

Sasuke rolls his eyes. "You're sure she's any good?"

"Are we going to continue talking like I'm not in the room?" she snaps. "I'm plenty good, actually."

"I wouldn't have offered her the job otherwise," Kakashi agrees.

"Whatever. Don't hold me back," he snaps at her, and this woman, seemingly unfazed, rolls her eyes.

"I wouldn't dream of it." She follows after him with a thank you to Kakashi, and pulls a chair up to his desk.

"Don't sit too close."

She rolls her eyes, again. "What crawled up your butt and died?"

"I just don't like annoying people," he grunts. "Follow my lead and we'll be fine."

"Fine."

"Fine."

Sasuke doesn't realize he wasn't fine his entire life until he suddenly feels the relief of sitting close to his imprinted.

It washes over him like a sun shower, this connection, warm and serene. She makes him feel smooth and placid. He's not sure he's ever known the meaning of relaxed until he's met Sakura. His skin isn't crawling, he doesn't feel as hot, as feverish as he normally does, he doesn't feel ready to jump out the window into the wild.

He's quite content sitting right next to her. So content that it's challenging to keep up this facade of annoyance.

"So what are we looking at now?" she asks, long since having ignored his imposing demeanor.

"Some shitty horror novel." He clicks quickly through the manuscript, barely giving himself a chance to catch a few words. "It's pretty short, only two-hundred pages. I like to start from the beginning and work my way through the basic stuff, like syntax, and grammar, and then read it through a second time for any notes."

She nods. "Makes sense."

"Two-hundred pages shouldn't take longer than a day or two," he explains to her.

"Right."

"I personally like to do my work on the computer. You could print it out, like Shikamaru," he nods toward the offending man, "but it seems wasteful to me."

"Heard that," Shikamaru calls.

"Wasn't a secret," he calls back.

Sakura laughs charmingly. She has the prettiest laugh, like bells; it makes him want to laugh, too. Instead, he just smirks. It's hard to feign indifference toward her, let alone anger.

"How long have you been doing this for?" she asks.

"Seven years," he explains.

"Was this your first job out of college?" she asks.

He shrugs. "What's with the twenty questions?"

"Just curious," she says. "If I'm going to steal your job one day—"

He snorts. "In your dreams."

She laughs again, smile blinding and pleasant. "I'm just curious about your story."

"Well," he begins. "I graduated from college ten years ago, took three years off to… find myself, and started here when Kakashi hired me as an intern. Eventually, I got your job, and worked my way up until I became senior editor."

"In only seven years?" she gushes. "That's amazing."

He shrugs. "It wasn't without hard work."

"What'd you do for the other three years?" she asks, friendly.

Sasuke swallows. Truthfully, he spent three days out of college turning into a fucking wolf, and then two years trying to figure out what the hell was happening to him, and one more year conspiring with Orochimaru and his pack before he decided he was human enough again to enter the real world, but he couldn't tell her that. "I traveled." It's not a complete lie.

"Awesome. I'd love to travel," she says.

He shrugs, again. "It's not all it's cracked up to be." Searching through woods across America for others like him, fighting other animals he had no idea he could win against, finally meeting a man in the Adirondacks that knew what he was going through and could lead him toward some semblance of a future.

"Where was your favorite place?" she asks.

"Maybe Virginia."

"Are you from around here?" she asks.

He shakes his head. "No, but the Hudson Valley is nice."

"I'm not from here either. The weather is pretty crazy," she commiserates. "But it's nice."

Before he can find out more about her, he reminds himself of their wall that he attempts to build between them brick by brick. "Do you have any questions?"

She looks surprised. "None yet."

"I have to get some work done, go take your lunch." He waves her off with a hand.

She leaves, taking with her a pretty scent of something like sunscreen and something human. Something he never smells on himself. Something warm and comforting, and then something else distinctly Sakura.

Distinctly his.

…

Sasuke has to be very careful. There isn't anything else he can be. He doesn't know what Orochimaru would do if he found out about Sakura, but it can't be anything good.

It's not that Orochimaru doesn't allow anybody to be in love. On the contrary, he's been pushing for Ino and Sai to procreate since Sasuke can remember, and he insists that one day Sasuke will find a wolf to, using the man's own words, "own." Orochimaru says that one day Sasuke will take over the pack, an Alpha in his own right, but Sasuke needs a legacy to do that.

He needs a woman to have a legacy.

Sasuke figured he'd settle for somebody in the pack eventually, pop out a few kids, wait for Orochimaru to keel over and take over valiantly. Instead, he's imprinted on a human girl and he has no idea how to move forward. He'll never be able to just settle down with anybody.

Anybody except Sakura, that is.

Sasuke walks through the woods, everything quiet except for the crunching leaves. He doesn't have time to ruin his clothes, so he hikes to the center. Ino is already there, along with her husband, Sai, and Juugo and Ami sit in the corner pulling petals off wilting flowers.

"Sasuke." Sai waves. "Took you long enough."

"Tch. Where's Orochimaru?" he asks.

Ino shrugs. "Late."

"Can a leader ever be late?" Orochimaru quips, coming out from behind a large, oak tree.

"Yes," Ino says with a smile.

Orochimaru grimaces. "Watch your tone. I'm happy you're all here. We have a lot to talk about."

"Like what?" Sasuke asks, carefully.

"We found a boy," Orochimaru says. "Only fifteen. Kabuto has him right now."

"Fifteen? Wow," Ino says. "That's young for a transition."

"He's very confused," Orochimaru explains, slyly. "Kabuto will make him comfortable."

Sasuke has to hold back from rolling his eyes. By comfortable, Orochimaru means he'll drug him up until he's complacent enough to understand. "What's the kids name?"

"Naruto Uzumaki," he says. "Poor child ran all the way here from Maine."

"I'll take him," Sasuke says, quickly.

Orochimaru raises a careful eyebrow. "Interested in taking a little brat under your wing?"

"Or paw," Sai adds, and Ino smacks him none-too-gently across the back of his head.

"Better to learn now," he explains with a smirk of his own, but what Sasuke doesn't say is that he can't imagine what this boy must be going through. If Sasuke was twenty-one and he could barely handle it, he can only imagine how somebody that's fifteen could need someone like him to guide him.

Someone who gets it.

Someone that won't let anything happen to him.

Someone that won't let Orochimaru get him, first.

Someone who understands change.

"That's fine with me," he agrees, smiling as sickly as always. "Once Naruto… wakes up, I'll leave the boy with you."

Sasuke nods. "Thank you, sir."