And Who?
By The Eternity Dragon
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, partly because it is not my brain child, and partly because if I wrote it Itachi would have been given some depth as a character. Oh, and there would be orgies... lots and lots of orgies...
A/N: chapter one of five, fic written as a gift for Katie, because I love her.
This is a NaruSasu with the side pairings of: NaruSau, SaiSasu, NaruSaiSasu, SaixAnything, ShikaIno, ItaSaku
Chapter One of Five
How do you describe someone who makes you think of the universe and all the stars in the solar system spinning around the sun, just from looking in their eyes?
How do you begin to talk to someone who never makes sense and frequently proves that the world does in fact stand on its head?
How do you tell someone with a smile like sunshine to leave and never come back?
You can't-well, actually you can. It just doesn't work.
And if that wasn't bad enough, I'm starting to think he was right…. about everything actually, although I'd rather bite my own tongue off then eat the words I've already said.
None of this would have happened if I hadn't looked him in the eye and told him the truth, but that doesn't make any of this my fault.
Does it?
Sunday, late afternoon
"I think you ought to get off the motor way." Ino Yamanaka-Sasuke Uchiha's stern but benevolent secretary said in her clear crisp voice that resounded over the loud speaker.
It was the sort of voice she used when he lost a court case, when he had to attend the birthday party of his two-year old nephew in which he was sure to be covered with baby food, or like when his pet cat had sicked up hairballs all over his favourite suit... again.
Sasuke Uchiha found himself taking hardly any of this in anyway, his expensive black Lexus has taken a sudden unexpected turn into the opposite carriage way when he'd exclaimed a violent "What the fuck?" and had almost driven into a tree and a truck at the sentence she had spoken before.
"W-what do you mean my brother jumped out of a window…. What the hell is that supposed to MEAN?!"
"Sasuke," Ino continued her voice still stern but sympathetic and concerned at the same time, "please pull over. You don't need any more speeding tickets."
Sasuke Uchiha was too busy fuming to take any notice of either her or the long line of angry drivers behind him.
"Who the hell jumps out the living room window of your parents house?" He was still shouting, "And what do you mean jump? Did he fall? Did he trip out of it? No how could he!? There's a twelve-foot table in front of it!"
She cleared her throat, "May I remind you of your speeding tickets, sir?"
"I CAN'T BELIEVE HE JUMPED OUT A WINDOW!"
There was a long intake of breath and then a slight recollection to what she said, his stomach settling slightly.
"Half of those speeding tickets," he said with some acidity on his tongue, "were only because I was late."
On the other side of the phone he could almost see her smile, the way her mouth with it's ample coating of glossy pink lipstick would curl up before she said dryly, "Late to what? Your manicure."
The banter made Sasuke's head clear a fraction and prevented him from almost colliding with another car, "Do I pay you to make sarcastic comments?"
"No," Ino replied with a twinkle of laughter on her lips, "you pay me to be your memo-pad, and certainly not enough I might add.
"This is hardly the time to discuss your pay!" he snapped, his foot on the accelerator as the car flew down the M25, trees, bushes and grass on either side of the tarmac road a blurrish confusion of colour, outside the speed limit of course but there were no cameras to document that.
"Well he's been taken to hospital, and his condition is stable, I thought you'd might like to know. Take a right here Sasuke."
"How many times have I told you," Sasuke Uchiha ground out between his teeth pretending not to worry about Itachi or the possible implications of having to bury another family member, "I know how to use my SatNav."
"Of course you do." Ino told him with false sincerity; "Just like that time you ended up in Aberdeen when you were trying to drive to Brighton."
Sasuke hung up the phone and resisted the urge to bash his head against the steering wheel.
Yesterday afternoon there had been a message on Sasuke's answer machine from Itachi; it had been a short uneventful passage about selling their parents house, estate agents and picking up the key to the garden shed which nobody could find.
Sasuke didn't know where the key to the garden shed could be, neither did he really care, he hadn't been back to that place in years and neither did he want to step a foot inside of the place ever again. So he'd walked over to the answer machine and deleted the message the second he was sure Itachi had finished speaking.
Too many deaths and too many bad memories lurked in that place, sometimes at night he still had dreams of ambulances and police officers all standing on the front lawn, the sirens screeching and the lights flashing on and off and on and off as he sat at the top of the stairs peering through the slats in the banisters as uniformed officials moved two bodies in stretchers out of the house.
Sasuke had seen numerous psychiatrists, councillors, and quacks with PhDs as long as his arm, but none of it had helped. Not really. He was cynical, bad tempered, distrusting, arrogant and self centred. One doctor had called him due to the fact that he'd never grieved for his parents.
Stupid man.
How could he grieve?
There was no coming to terms with what had happened because no one had understood how it had happened.
The last image Sasuke had of his mother has her tucking him into bed, her long hair tickling his face as she leant over to kiss him, the faint smell of her perfume lingering on his bed sheets as he drifted off the sleep, and the reassuring step of her light foot upon the stair.
She'd gone downstairs to go sit with his father in the living room, one cold October night, and they'd never come upstairs again.
The neighbours said later that they'd heard screaming, shouts even, cries of help and murmured behind closed hands that perhaps Sasuke's father had beaten his mother to death and then shot himself in the head. Some rumours spoke of a third person, an affair and a lover's quarrel that spiralled tragically out of control. Itachi would roll his eyes at this, in exactly the same way he had done then all those years ago.
"There were no screams," he'd said firmly once across the breakfast table, when Sasuke was sixteen and living with his brother in the flat they rented with their inheritance money.
"If there was screaming you and I would have woken up, and I would have gone downstairs to see."
Now Itachi at the age of thirty-one, a serious crimes investigator of the homicide division had exactly the same view as he'd had the day they'd both woken up to find their parents dead on the living room floor.
It hadn't been a lover's quarrel, it hadn't been suicide, it hadn't been an accident, it had been murder.
Pure and simple.
Sasuke remembered the old woman from across the road saying something to him once, the one who put flowers in old shoes and broken down watering cans and who's house was so patched over and bent double it looked like it had sprung from the pages of a nursery rhyme. But now that he tried to remember what it was that she had once said the words slipped away from him, Sasuke drummed his fingers over the rim of the steering wheel, and realised he'd missed his turn off.
Today was not a good day.
Sunday, early evening
"Well, at least he's sleeping soundly."
"That's because he's in a coma Sasuke." Sakura snapped angrily at him, her green eyes blurry from tears and her three-year old son balanced haphazardly in her lap. The child was whining; the low irritating noise children use when they are slightly uncomfortable and know something is wrong. It didn't have the pitch of a real cry but as Sasuke eyed Itachi's son warily he could hear the child revving himself up into a proper tantrum.
Sakura seemed to sense this too, because she stood up, jiggling her son in her arms and began to walk up and down across private room making crooning noises and speaking over her shoulder to Sasuke as her son dribbled against her neck.
"I just don't understand why he did it!" her voice several octaves higher than normal, the slap, slap of her grey plimsolls against the linoleum floor tiles grated slightly on Sasuke's nerves as he held the cheap market brand coffee in it's polystyrene cup to his lips, and tried not to look like he was being stabbed with a multitude of small sharp objects.
She began to go on then, was Itachi depressed? Had he been hiding it from her all this time? All those late nights back from the office and she had believed him when he'd said he'd been working late. Had he felt he couldn't tell her? Had he been drinking perhaps? Was he an alcoholic? Was he on anti-depressants? Was he on drugs? Had he been trying to commit suicide? But he'd been so happy two weeks ago when they'd discovered she was pregnant again- here Sasuke woke up. Jerked awake by the sudden arrival of new information which meant more squealing family members that would drool all over his clothes and spew up milk on his extremely expensive Persian carpets. He stood up and took Sakura's son out of her arms and told her sternly to sit down again, pacing up and down the room himself and clenching his teeth as felt the beginnings of drool damped his Armani shirt.
Sakura was in despair, her soft bubble gum pink hair in a tousled mess about her head and her green eyes rimmed with red as she sat by Itachi's bed sobbing softly into her folded arms. Sasuke felt weird, slightly unattached to the situation as if he didn't believe it was actually happening. He'd known Sakura ever since they were kids, the slightly bohemian girl from next door with the dyed pink hair, who didn't drink or eat dairy products, meat or anything that wasn't organic. She played Bob Marley records when she sat down at her easel and painted and strung gingerbread men across the house at Christmas time. It was odd watching her cry like that, looking helplessly and forlornly at her husband whom just lay there, his left arm broken, his skull fractured partially across the crown, but still Itachi ... Still Itachi just lying there as if he was sleeping and about to wake up.
Perhaps Sasuke was in denial…perhaps Itachi was never going to…couldn't ever…would never just…
Wake up.
He was relieved when Sakura's parents showed up, the Mr and Mrs Haruno with their open arms, tissues, and bag of Werther's originals. He backed out the door making excuses: he needed to ring his boss, Neji was looking after his cat Fluffy and he needed to pick her up. He had a client first thing tomorrow morning but he'd be back tomorrow afternoon, and if it made anything easier on Sakura he didn't mind babysitting if she needed some time alone with her parents.
The last one was a lie of course, Sasuke minded babysitting very much, children confused him and frankly drove him mad, but he wasn't about to admit it.
Sunday – 8:30 pm
By the time Sasuke had pulled out of the hospital car park the mobile phone in his pocket had begun to buzz in his pocket like an out of control vibrator.
As he ran through his voice mail messages in the car he picked up one from his boss, Kakashi Hatake, telling him to take the next month off. Apparently to his great irritation, Ino had told him about his family predicament before he'd had a chance to go in and downplay the whole thing.
That's what happens when your secretary is best friends' with your sister in law, he thought bitterly.
Another message on his voice mail played, this time from Neji, telling him his cat was stuck beneath the patio trellising and if he'd come by with a packet of butter and a crow bar his help would be very much appreciated.
Cursing Sasuke put his foot down on the accelerator and shot through a light as it turned to red, he'd have to pick up the butter and the crow bar and drop his suitcases off at the same time then double back and plead for his job back then prise his very fat cat from between Neji's patio slats.
The last thing in the world Sasuke wanted to do was to sit down and contemplate the fact that his old home might have stolen his brother away from him like it had done with his parents. As his car ran up the gravel drive to his flat and slid smoothly into the garage it occurred to him to remember the words the old Lady had spoken to him years ago through a dense clump of foxgloves planted in her dead husbands old boots: "That house…something evil lurks there."
Sunday, 8:45 pm
Kakashi Hatake was a shrewd man in many ways; he had a wry sense of humour, a strong sense of morality and had habitually worn an eye-patch to work since Sasuke had first met him. Despite all of this, Sasuke would not have described Kakashi as an overly kind man, so when Ino had told him Kakashi had given him a months sick leave Sasuke had barged into his office without an appointment or even a polite knock, forcing his boss to hide the pornographic novel he was reading in the top draw of his desk.
"I'll quit!" Sasuke had begun forcefully expelling the words like a projectile missile the second he had got in through the door and he had continued in much the same manner too. He threatened to leave and go work for a rival company run by a man called Gai whom as far as Sasuke was concerned was both a fashion disaster and had no concept of personal space, but that didn't matter as long as there was no dreaded time off.
Kakashi had surveyed him over the bridge of his nose curiously for a few minutes, in a manner which made Sasuke suspect there might be something on his face and reminded Sasuke that he wouldn't be any good to the company if his judgment was impaired by what had recently befallen on his brother.
Sasuke had ground his teeth inside his mouth, replying with frustration that his judgment had never been clearer but Kakashi had launched into a long lecture about 'personal time' that had made Sasuke recalled that Kakashi had once been best friend's with his Uncle Obito and cursing the family line and every gay gene in it Sasuke had moodily stomped out of the office again after managing to whittle down a months leave to two weeks and a half.
Ino had appeared down a corridor as he'd made his way down to the lifts, his prickly mood gathering about him like a storm cloud gathers thunder and told him sweetly through smiling lips that if she caught him sneaking back into work early again, she'd call security and have him thrown out.
There were not enough offensive words in the world Sasuke had concluded as he had stood there swearing at her oblivious to the lift behind him opening full of passengers and all staring at him slightly alarmed. Ino had laughed, knowing full well her employers bark was worse than his bite and had charmingly told him not to keep the other passengers waiting.
Sunday- 9:30 pm
"Sasuke," Neji said in polite tones of exasperation as he held his friend's yowling tabby cat at arms length whilst Sasuke brushed off the dirt from his clothes and dropped the crow bar on the ground.
"I hate to tell you this, but your cat is obese."
Sasuke scowled at him, "She's not obese," he snapped, taking her from him and wincing as she dug her claws into his arms and hissed at him, blaming him for leaving her with this negligent man who fed her too little, kept her away from the green caged canary and was far too negligent of her for her liking.
"She's just a large cat."
"If you mean she's about as large as a small hippopotamus, you'd be right." Neji replied, throwing all caution to the winds and coming out straight with it as he looked grumpily at the huge hole right in the middle of his patio decking.
"Well what am I supposed to do about it? Take her for walks? She's a cat, not a dog, I feed her once a day and that's it."
"And when you say you feed her once a day, what do you feed her six meals at the same time?"
Sasuke glowered at him, but Neji fuelled on by the mourning loss of his patio continued, "I'm serious, she almost has her own climate."
Owners can be funny about their pets, Neji decided as Sasuke put his free hand over his cat's ears and told him to shut up.
Sunday, 10:15 pm
The news played on the plasma TV as a fuzzy hum in the background that fell across his ears like distorted white noise, the telephone rang in the kitchen once again and his answering machine picked up the call (Sasuke Uchiha and don't leave a message), and the pot of soup he'd left to simmer over the stove bubbled gently against the cast iron sides of the pot.
Sasuke lay on his living room sofa ignoring the sounds of life thrumming on about him, instead in a confused contortion of long slender limbs and awkward angles he considered with both regret and desperate longing that usually at this time of day he'd have work to catch up on, meetings to arrange, papers and legislations to proof read and check.
He'd have lunch meetings and dinner arrangements, this week he'd have to sit through at least two presentations and help prepare some himself. But the distraction of work was not to be, and with a devious mind such as Ino's he was sure all of his acquaintances and their second cousins would know that he had the next two and a half weeks off with nothing to do except entertain people try to avoid other people and spend as much time as possible doing the laundry.
The phone rang again.
He would have disconnected the phone completely as he had done in the rest of the house, but the faint hope that Kakashi might change his mind and beg him to come back to work again.
It was a daft-feeble-pathetic thought even, but Sasuke couldn't help but wish for it.
It wouldn't happen of course, they were all too concerned about him to try to not persuade him to tackle his personal demons. But they were working against the fact that Sasuke didn't want to tackle any demons, he didn't want to get out of the office, on the contrary, he wanted in the office, he wanted to be in some place where he was in perfect control of all aspects of his world.
Time off wasn't relief it was hell, new routines to work out, filling up free time that seemed to seep relentlessly out of his ears. He would no doubt be forced to re-establish and maintain relationships with the people around him that he had known for years and simply couldn't get rid of. He'd live alone and die as a spinster or preferably die before he hit the big five zero and he'd be happy with that.
People were crazy he had decided, one had no control what so ever over relationships so why should he ever wish to be romantically involved with someone as people kept trying to convince him to do was beyond him. He was sure to never understand the appeal of romance and close interpersonal relationships, as they were only liable knock over the picket fences Sasuke had carefully laid down across his life.
Sure he'd been with a few people, who hadn't?
They had all been brief, pleasant encounters, no one spectacular, and no one who had threatened to make the earth move, the moon sing or the sky lower. Sasuke's world had continued to rotate in its smooth linear circles, never moving for passion and continuing in convenience.
Itachi had asked him once with that hard stare he had acquired from dirty white interrogation rooms, that perhaps the lines Sasuke had carefully drawn from one horizon to the next would perhaps be tilted by a person who didn't live in a straight line, but instead lived in a squiggle.
Sasuke had replied to this in an after dinner sort of voice that if something didn't have a definite answer there wasn't much point in answering it and seeing as he didn't want a long term relationship with anybody there wasn't much point in looking for one. He could function perfectly well on his own, he didn't need anybody getting in the way and tilting the horizon as Itachi had put it, to an angle that wasn't straight.
Neither would he ever let them.
Sasuke let out an unmitigated sigh, hearing the timer beep in the kitchen and knowing it was time to take the pot of soup off the stove before it boiled over. He turned on his back only to hear a purring next to Sasuke's face and the heavy weight of Fluffy rested on his abdomen. After thirty seconds of near suffocation Sasuke decided that perhaps he ought to consider taking his cat to the gym.
He wouldn't tell Neji that of course.
Tuesday- Late Afternoon
A day and a half of being unemployed, and so far thirteen people have been over to visit in the space of a little over twenty-four hours. Now I need to restock the fridge.
N.B Change the locks.
"No, no and for the last time no!" Sasuke snapped, dropping the rest of the egg and cress sandwich into the bin.
"Why not?" Suigetsu asked, one hand tucked under his chin as he leant against the pristine cleanliness of Sasuke's kitchen counter tops.
"Because the last time you set me up on a date," Sasuke recollected with a very heavy sigh, "I met Karin."
Suigetsu blinked at him cocking his head to the side with much the same expression a particularly cheeky magpie will give you before it opens it's wings to fly directly over your head.
"The chick totally digs you." He responded, his dark eyes glittering with mischief and the top of his pink tongue against the line of his perfectly white but slightly pointed teeth.
Sasuke ran a hand through his hair in a distracted manner.
"The woman is deranged." He announced tartly.
A small but quirky smile crept up the side of Suigetsu's mouth.
"She's forceful and somewhat eccentric I'll give you that." He said with a glimmer of wickedness in his lips and face.
"Eccentric?" Sasuke shouted incredulously, actually slamming his fist down and onto the grey granite counter top of his kitchen surface.
"She stole my underwear! The woman followed me around, I had to get a restraining order to get her to stop!'
Suigetsu, apparently unable to keep it in any longer burst into hysterical laughter, and Sasuke shaking his head and muttering under his breath brought out the ingredients for tonight's dinner whilst he waited for the last waves of chuckling to subside.
Suigetsu wiped his eyes with the back of his hand; "You know Juugo's coming round for dinner tonight, don't ya?"
Sasuke hummed a yes, his head somewhere down by the vegetable draw, and upon rising again the turned to give Suigetsu a stern but steady look.
"So as far as he knows this is vegetarian household, there will be no mention of meat or fish at the table. I don't want another animal rights speech on my hands again, thank you."
"People do seem to forget Juugo is a violent vegetarian…" Suigetsu replied with half a fiendish smirk, rising to his feet and coming to stand close behind Sasuke as he leaned over the stove to switch on the hobs.
'But you know what I really wanted to do was persuade you to go out with me, get absolutely pissed off your face in the hope that maybe you could get a little bit unwound…."
There was pause as Suigetsu's chest bumped against Sasuke's back, "I suppose you would shoot me down if I suggested we skip dinner and the six-foot-vegetarian?"
"I should think so." Sasuke replied mildly, nudging Suigetsu with the back of his elbow so he could reach for the olive oil. He could feel his friend press the bridge of his nose against the back of his neck and sigh.
"Mmm, I still have two and a half weeks to persuade you in." he muttered, hands now splayed against the back of Sasuke's spin and the tip of his nose against Sasuke's dark, dark hair.
"That's a lot of time to make you say yes in."
Sasuke made an irritated noise and rolled both of his shoulders forwards.
"If you're going to stand there sexually harassing me Suigetsu, at least pass me the salt and pepper, or I shall dial 911 and have you thrown out."
Wednesday – early morning
Sasuke was not an early morning person, in fact he was not a morning personstat and he'd rather stay in bed even if the house were burning down around him. But free time had mucked up his usual sleeping cycle, and throughout his life he'd only slept for an average of four hours a night ever since he could remember.
Due to this fact, Sasuke's usual routine was to hit the covers after a long haul of work wake up at a reasonable time and then drag himself into work to find that Ino would inevitably have left a cup of coffee on his desk (de-caffeinated), either that or face the consequences of a Sasuke coffee bean-less, and she'd seen nuclear bomb sites with a better bedside manners.
Last night after bidding Adieu to Suigetsu and Juugo, the former of which he'd forcefully pushed out of the door after Suigetsu had suggested he should keep Sasuke 'company during the night', to which Sasuke had politely declined and then slammed the door in his friend's face face.
Sasuke, Suigetsu had learnt the hard way as the solid oak wood door had slammed shut millimetres from his nose, was immune to his bedroom eyes. Or at least what Suigetsu called bedroom eyes; this was Suigetsu after all, Kisame's nephew. And all of that family acted as impetuously and as unpredictably as cold-blooded sharks, and Sasuke wasn't about to risk being chained to the bedposts once again.
Last time he'd dislocated Suigetsu's shoulder and kneecap before Suigetsu could explain that he was joking and 'Ow! Yes, I'll do whatever you want, just stop that please it hurts.'
As for a lack of anything else to do Sasuke had written a list of things for himself to do tomorrow: 'Visit hospital – bring flowers
Alphabetise CD collection
Shampoo Carpets
Buy Groceries'
And then gone to bed.
As such he'd woken up at the ungodly hour of 6am, heralded by the morning chorus, hissing, cussing and grinding his teeth at the idea of surplus time to fill in which threw off his whole schedule. Meaning he had to start afresh and reorganize his whole day.
With this in mind he'd got up, taken a shower, washed his hair, put on black slacks, a white t-shirt, trainers, stuck his wallet in his back pocket, plugged his white iPod headphones into his ears and walked out the front door.
The early morning jog ended up taking him around the hospital twice before the local flower stand opened allowing him to purchase a bunch of daffodils for his brother's bedside table (and so Sakura would stop pestering him that he hadn't been in to see Itachi enough within the past few days).
Not that Sasuke found it avidly entertaining or remotely logical talking to someone who wasn't able to distinguish between whether someone was sitting next to them, or singing Madame Butterfly whilst wearing a purple tea cosy as a hat.
To his irritation he found that the girl whom had served him at the counter had slipped a card with her phone number in it amongst the sunny yellow blooms, and after angrily harassing several nurses for a pen, scribbled out the line of numbers and wrote a note to Sakura instead, explaining that the daffodils were from him and 'would she like to drop in with her son for dinner tomorrow night?'
As he left the hospital Sasuke tried to ignore the nagging thought at the back of his mind that told him he'd hardly looked at his brother body, despite being in the same room with it for at least ten minutes.
Shaking off the thought Sasuke turned his brisk walk into a run and decided to take the long route home, the extended jog would release endorphins into his blood stream and keep him occupied for another hour and half.
Tying his jacket round his waist, he set off around Regents Park, circling lake twice before coming up to run across the bridge. Or at least he tried to cross the bridge, a thick layer of fog settled over the lake as he came up to the edge, jogging on the spot he frowned, a little unhinged by the sudden stillness. The distant rumble of traffic stilled and the birdsong died and Sasuke, taking a step backwards came to a halt, telling himself not to be stupid – that a little fog had never killed anybody, and despite the fact that he might not be able to see the end of the bridge that the bridge was still there.
He got halfway across before it happened, a thin wiry man with a face like a triangle and electric blue hair slammed into him. With a yell Sasuke fell over onto his back, fully winded and with the distinct impression he'd just been run over by a train there was a loud clatter as he hit the ground as if many objects had been scattered in several different directions.
Above him there was an enraged yell and the stranger leant over him, picked him up by the scruff of his shirt and shook him like he was a doll.
"Now I've dropped them and he'll find them!" the person roared with what sounded a little like a thick Austrian accent.
And throwing Sasuke back onto the ground again as if he weighed nothing the stranger began to frantically pick up what seemed to be a small pile of scattered silver spoons, then with a leap like an antelope the person was off into the thick haze of mist and vanished from sound and sight.
Sasuke lay there moaning for a moment, very much suspecting he was suffering from serious concussion and had just hallucinated a blue haired spoon thief bounding off into the fog like an African gazelle when he realized he was lying on something that was digging painfully into his back.
With a groan he sat up, his hands floundering about behind him until his fingers fumbled across the whatever-it-was that he had been dropped on.
It turned out to be another one of those spoon things, and standing up slowly he frowned at it, turning the smooth metal over and over in his hand until he heard footsteps in the fog and pocketed it.
Another figure came dashing forwards into Sasuke's line of vision, smaller, stockier, blond hair, high cheekbones, vertical scars on his face and beautiful blue eyes.
Sasuke couldn't help himself from thinking that; it had erupted from his subconscious unexpectedly, and he rather wished it would go away.
The young man looked about him (he seemed about Sasuke's own age, although something about the intensity of his eyes seemed to suggest he was in fact countless years old) then he spied Sasuke and with an urgent and energetic leap towards him cried out: "Spoons! Have you seen a man with spoons?!"
Sasuke's stunned response was to nod once, then jerk his thumb in the direction that the man with the spoons had run off in. The blond turned to look in the direction of Sasuke's thumb and turned back to look at Sasuke with a slow grin and with those brilliant blue eyes flashing something close to triumph. It animated his whole face into a twinkling grin that made Sasuke's insides buzz and hum with what felt like electricity.
"You're one in a million." The blond said ecstatically, and with dashed off towards the cloud of fog.
But before his visage was swallowed up completely by the swirling mist, he had turned around adding with a roguish grin, "And very handsome too if I may say so."
And with that he was gone.
The world as it seemed to Sasuke stopped spinning. He stood there, his heart beat elevated, his stomach seeming to contain hundreds of swallowed butterflies, his head woozy and not remember at all how one use the pink warm wet thing in his mouth to talk with other than make the noise he was currently making now, which sounded very much like: 'Uhhhgn.'
After five minutes or so of standing there dumbly, Sasuke had shook his head firmly, decided he was coming down with something serious like the flu, pneumonia, SARS, Ebola… and that he should go home and rest, there was really no logical explanation as to why he should feel so light headed unless it was the prelude to a very serious infection, so shrugging his shoulders he set off in the direction of his flat.
The fog lifted as he got out of the park and as he crossed the main road noticed the stream of police cars and fire trucks that all zoomed off sirens blaring in the direction he had just come from.
Wednesday - early afternoon
As it turned out Sasuke didn't have a temperature, he didn't have a runny nose, or a headache, a sore throat or any symptoms of an illness of any sort, shape or form.
What he did have was a woozy feeling in his stomach and a light headed walking on air feeling that had settled on him like frost to glass on a windowpane in mid-winter. To his great irritation he could diagnose himself with nothing and was unable to pinpoint the reason why throughout the day he had repeatedly stopped and sighed whenever he kept recalling the blond's smile and fantastic blue eyes fringed by those sandy long lashes whilst he was trying to do something else.
He'd even phoned up Sakura and asked if spacing out was a symptom of serious concussion, but no such luck, apparently it was not a symptom of brain damage.
Neither was it his alternate hypothesis of some internal organ being damaged by the collision with the man this morning Sakura had assured him could in anyway be accountable for it.
He had grumbled his way into the kitchen as he fixed himself breakfast, wondering as to why Sakura had asked him so curiously (and with a sort of high pitched giggle) as to the identity of the mystery man he had bumped into in the park.
Wednesday – mid afternoon
Sasuke was halfway through grating a celery stick when he heard the first bang ring through his house as it shuddered up the brick and concrete from the garage. He dropped the bowl of celery shreds all over the floor, for once not caring if he spilt bits of transparently sliced bits of vegetable over the expensive carpet in his haste to make it over to the nearest window.
There was a plume of fine blue-ish smoke curling out from underneath the garage door, which was, then followed by another loud bang as sparks flew from beneath the metal grates.
"Dear lord, my car is self combusting!" Sasuke yelled, leaping back from the window and looking round wildly for his phone so he could dial 999.
From behind him his cat Fluffy gave a wild hiss, arching her back whilst standing on the back of the sofa, her white hair on end, ears flat back and eyes wide as a strange rush of air filled the house, then a creaking sound began, faint at first but coming closer and closer like the seam of the world was slowly coming undone.
Fluffy shot from the sofa, streaking out between Sasuke's legs as he tried to grasp the phone from it's receiver, the combined momentum of his panic and an obese cat streaking around his feet caused Sasuke to trip up whilst his cat hissing like a deflating puff adder streaked across the living room and out of the cat flap in the front door.
Sasuke came to fifteen minutes later, the remnants of stars floating across his eyes from where his head had collided with the table leg. The noises had all stopped now the world apparently back to what it had once been, and Sasuke, tentatively bringing himself up to sitting level grumpily entertained the notion that he most likely had some form of brain damage now.
The house sat silently waiting for him to move, to do something-anything, as if it were holding its breath.
The garage, Sasuke thought dimly, he needed to check the garage…
He donned his jacket from this morning, stuck his mobile in his back pocket in case there was an emergency and grabbed a poker from the fireplace to defend himself with from … well, just in case.
The door to the garage leading from the house stuck somewhat as Sasuke tried to giggle it open, before it gave way suddenly to an almighty creak and a groaning shudder on it's hinges. Sasuke could have wished for a quieter entrance, he also could have wished for the front of his car to still have been in the same condition that he had left it in when it had parked it there the other day. Instead of the smooth pristinely cleaned black sheen of metal that his car bonnet had once possessed the front of the car was crinkled as if it had had a full on encounter with a rampaging rhinoceros. And before Sasuke could get properly worked out about that, someone cleared their throat.
Someone who was sitting on top of his car holding a fire extinguisher and grinning at Sasuke like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, someone with impossibly blue eyes fringed by sandy lashes and ridiculously blond hair.
Someone who was looking at Sasuke with both intrigue and mischief written all over their face.
"Hello again." the person sitting on Sasuke's car said cheerfully, as if ambushing people in their own garages was something everyone did everyday.
"I was hoping to catch you again."
A/N 2: Cookies and chocolate milk to who ever can guess what this fic is based on!
A/N 3: Yes, I am writing Fish Bird, be patient it's a hard chapter to write.