Dictionary Talk

Summary; As an afterthought she quickly scribbled a final word beneath the haiku - (Stalker.) Just in case he didn't get the message. ItaSaku. Au.

...

...

Licking her thumb, Sakura flicked through the delicate, if slightly musty, pages of the huge dictionary placed squarely in front of her on her desk. Stopping at the page she sought, her bright green eyes flickered across the columns of often unrecognisable words. One cold hand played with the frayed edges of the cover while the other loosely dangled a blue ballpoint pen above the page. Her breath swirled in smoky coils in front of her in a testament to the freezing autumn weather. Oh, she would show him.

Glancing up, she looked at the haiku that had been left in her letter slot, the infuriatingly neat copperplate handwriting staring at her blackly, brazenly, from the paper.

...

As beautiful as,

the blossoms of your namesake,

but as fugacious.

...

Frowning, she clamped her tongue beneath her cheek and thought hard. Really, she should be doing work for her upcoming virology exam, but to ignore this... Would make whoever wrote it think they had won. At first she had thought (hoped) for a brief, crushing moment that it was Sasuke - her frown darkened - but his handwriting was nowhere near as neat. And, anyway, he had never called her beautiful, and he sure as hell had never written her poetry. The same logic could be applied to every other man she knew, so who...?

Chewing her pen absent mindedly, Sakura looked down at the page and decisively circled the word "fugacious". It meant what she had thought it did; transitory; fleeting; inclined to flee. He was calling her a coward - that nameless, faceless bastard was insulting her. Even the fact that he had called her beautiful did not mollify her in the slightest. In fact, when combined with the last line it actually sounded sarcastic.

Tapping the point of her pen against the paper she had ready, Sakura began to flick through the pages of the dictionary hoping to find a suitable work to reply with. She settled on "Tenebrous"; gloomy, shadowy, or dark. It seemed like it suited him. This person she imagined sulking around in the library watching her and knowing stupid, big words with which to insult her in the form of flattering poetry.

She had never been that good at creative writing, but after a few discarded attempts Sakura looked down at her haiku with some satisfaction.

...

Tenebrous voyeur,

villains seeking fair maidens,

are doomed to failure.

...

As an afterthought she quickly scribbled a final word beneath the haiku -

(Stalker.)

Just in case he didn't get the message.

Smiling slightly, she went to focus back on her medical textbooks just a pale, slender hand darted out and plucked up the haiku that had been left with her. Sakura whipped around with her teeth bared to see Uchiha Shisui, and a mischievous grin on his face, as he held her haiku aloft and began to read the first line in a booming voice completely not suited to a library.

"As beeeeautiful as -"

Wrapping her hands around his neck she squeezed, the force of her throwing herself at him causing them both to go tumbling to the ground. At the sound of the scuffle, the old, wizened bitter librarian began to make her way over to the section they were in - Sakura could tell be the 'click' 'clack' of the heeled shoes she wore every damn day of eternity. Well, that and the sound of her distinctly acidic curses carrying over the shelves

Shisui scrambled free enough to gasp just as she rounded the corner, "Young love! Can't keep her hands off of me!"

"I'm so sorry, Miss Ai!," Sakura wheedled in an overly saccharine voice while re-attaching her hands to Shisui's abused neck - digging her nail into where she hoped his jugular was," the tiled floor here is so slippery. How clumsy of me to fall!"

"And how good of your little boyfriend to catch you so gallantly," she fired back, eyes softening from glacial to icy.

As usual it was hard to tell whether she was being sarcastic or not, Sakura erred on the side of caution and let out an overly high-pitched fake laugh until Miss Ai turned and walked away at her standard brisk pace. Sakura resumed her strangling with gusto, until Shisui flipped her onto her back with infuriating ease. He hovered over her with his usual cocky smirk on his pale, sharp features, and not-so-usual red scratch marks from his chin to his sternum.

"You know how much I love you playing rough, Sakura," He said, winking, when he saw where her gaze was directed.

"Shut up, you creep! And get off of me - this is a public place!"

"Ahh, I could get off of you buuut," he drew out the last word in a way that made her want to rip off his limbs and beat him with them," then I might not be in the mood to tell you who wrote that poetry for you."

Sakura stopped trying to kick him in the family jewels long enough to look into his smoke-coloured eyes with her mouth half open. Shisui? - she hadn't considered that it might be him. Her cheeks suddenly felt scalding hot.

"You're lying," she spat.

Ino liked him - really, really liked him. She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach, and wanted to melt into the floor more than ever. She liked Shisui, but not like that. And, besides, there was still Sasuke to consider. Her Sasuke. The one who had walked off last year on the coldest night of that autumn into the snow without even a coat, and hadn't been seen since. They knew he had taken his motorcycle, and money was taken from his account on a regular basis, but whether that was actually him or not...

"Oh," Shisui mock-sighed, eyes losing some of their sparkle when he saw her expression," I am wounded."

He straightened more gracefully than she could ever have managed, and offered a hand to drag her to her feet. Sakura was caught by surprise when a nimble hand slid under her chin and forced her to look up at him. She could count the number of times she had seen Shisui with a serious expression on his face on one hand - this was one of them. The intensity in his grey eyes almost made her want to shy away, but she wasn't as fugacious as some people seemed to think.

"Been thinking about him again, haven't you? - my baby cousin."

She didn't say anything.

"Come on," he rubbed a thumb over the deep frown lines that had formed on her face," keep your face like that and it'll stay that way."

Sakura let out a derisive snort and swatted his hand away," I have. You know I have."

"He left on purpose." People usually didn't say that to her face. It hit like a sucker punch to the gut.

She would have left Shisui there if he hadn't grabbed a hold of her wrist and turned it around until the palm faced the ceiling. In the centre he placed the haiku that had been written for her and curled up her fingers around it. He looked surprisingly contemplative as he took in the fist dangling at her side - tight and angry.

"You aren't the first person that's wanted to strike me for saying that. In fact, I told the other one to invite you out for coffee. I suppose he's getting around to it in his usual periphrastic manner."

Sakura pouted slightly," Matchmaker? And stop with the fancy words - a dictionary sprouting out of your head couldn't make you seem intelligent."

"Pfft, whatever. You know you want out to make-out with me bunches."

Sakura laughed and replied," I exhibit concupiscence for a make-out session of magnitude?

His face paled significantly," Just take your poem, and go out to the big oak tree by the river; he's usually brooding there. I can't take any more of this dictionary talk."

Only when he had left and she was gathering up her books and belongings to not go where he suggested did she realise that she still didn't know who he had been talking about. Sakura bit her nail - a habit she had all but given up, but still did when very worried. There was still Sasuke - in her mind, and her heart. But, this was autumn - the season of change - so maybe there was room to try something different.

And, anyway, she hadn't gone to the last search for Sasuke for a reason.

He wouldn't have looked, or waited, for her.

...

Her way back to the student accommodation just happened to pass by the aforementioned oak tree. By sheer total coincidence. Stuffing her hands, into the pockets of her deep blue wool coat and shoving her cold face deeper into the recesses of her huge, trailing scarf Sakura let out a muffled sigh. She kicked the crunchy leaves in a spray of warm golds, reds, browns and ambers.

It was difficult to pretend not to feel the iron weight of the small piece of paper that held her haiku in her pocket. Sakura remembered why she didn't like to look at Itachi when she saw him sitting propped up against the tree with a small black book clenched in his nimble hands. He looked so much like Sasuke it made her eyes water. So this was who Shisui had decided to pair her up with, who had called her fugacious. She forced herself to look at him rather than his face, and wondered - aghast - how he wasn't freezing to death: he wasn't even wearing a coat.

Something else Sasuke and him had in common... She shut down that train of thought just as it started.

Even though her boots crunched cringably loudly, he didn't even glance up as she approached where he sat among the decaying leaves. Beside all the colour he looked starkly pale. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered if this was another one of Shisui's tricks, and it wasn't Itachi at all. But, then he looked up at her with eyes as dark as a pit, or a void, in the paleness of his face and quickly focused on the piece of paper in clutched in her gloved hand.

She felt how cold he was even through her gloves as he carefully took it from her and read. Butterflies fluttered velvety wings in the pit of her stomach as she watched him raise a slender, dark eyebrow.

"You knew it was me who wrote this, and where to find me, and I am labelled as the stalker?"

"It was Shisui who told me."

He looked irritated by that revelation.

Letting out a very unlady-like snort, Sakura sat at the base of the huge tree beside him and hugged her knees to her chest. She didn't think about the flush of heat that blazed through her body that had nothing to do with the many layers she had on, and everything to do with the way Uchiha Itachi was watching her closely. For a long moment, Sakura stared resolutely at the frozen river beside them and ignored his smouldering gaze.

He turned back to his book, and the silence between them stretched in an uncompanionable manner.

"I am not fugacious," she grumbled, finally, turning to glare at him.

Closing his book with a snap, he turned his devastatingly dark eyes to hers, "I believe you are. For one that confessed to love my foolish little outou so much, you have given up looking for him very quickly."

That stung.

"Oh, Saint Itachi, I know you're looking for him only so you can trample all over him again! Do you know how often he told me how you treated him? - huh? How much you made him feel like shit."

For the second time that day she ended up sprawled on her back. This time crisp, dry leaves cushioned her unlike the cold tiled floor. Itachi hovered over her with his white teeth clenched in a rare display of emotion. He looked so furious it felt like she would burst into flames just from him looking at her, but she bared her teeth right back at him.

"That was my father's doing, not mine. Do not speak about that which you do not understand."

"Hypocrite," she spat, furious at him and furious at her body's reaction to him - she was glad he could not see the goosebumps that had nothing to do with the chill, "Do you know how much I've thought about him? How long I've spent looking in the places he used to go? How much I've tortured myself wondering? Don't you talk about that which you do not understand, Uchiha Itachi."

He moved to let her sit up. She was still panting as though she had run a marathon, but he had regained his cool, calm composure. The bastard.

"You are right. I apologise," he said, calmly, politely.

Arching her back, she pressed herself along the length of him like a cat as their mouths met in a furious clash of teeth. He smelled like autumn - like fire, smoke, and crisp leaves. Compact, lean and hard beneath his thin shirt - it felt like he could rip her in half. The arms that held him above her quivered with tension as he drew back from her lips though she tried to follow him. She wanted something from him, something she couldn't define.

"This is wrong," he murmured, eyes closed, voice hoarse, "you belong to someone else."

Sakura ignored the way his words seemed to stab her where she was most vulnerable and spread her coat and scarf to show the skin of her neck and sternum. When he opened his eyes they became as dark as a starless sky as he looked at her.

"Sasuke forfeited everything he had when he walked out on us, and this is autumn - the season of change. I want that."

"It is also the season of the dying, but that does not mean we should do that," Itachi answered, breathing heavily enough through his nose to let her know she was affecting him.

Sakura leaned up and kissed lightly under his chin. She felt and saw the muscles of his jaw tense.

"You are lonely, and vulnerable, and looking for company," he murmured through clenched teeth.

"And so are you."

And I look like Sasuke."

Perhaps they had hit the heart of the problem, or merely the tip of the iceberg, but Sasuke knew in that instant it was Itachi - and not Sasuke - that she wanted. Itachi had already shown more warmth than Sasuke had ever seemed capable.

"But you are not."

He pressed his forehead to hers and it felt as though the chill of his skin would soak into her very being.

"Either way," he said, finally," just looking at you makes me feel somewhat like the tenebrous voyeur you described me as."

"Voyeurs only watch, Itachi-san, I would have thought a genius like you knew that."

The sharp hiss of air he let out between his teeth made her feel glorious and empowered. Sakura encouraged the suggestion that she had ladened on her voice by looking up at him through thick, dark lashes coyly. It had been so long since she had experienced this kind of closeness and she was sure Itachi was the person she wanted it with now, wanted to move forward with. He knew what she had been going through - he knew what it was like.

Damn Shisui for being right.

Though, when Itachi kissed her again with enough passion to wipe out her ability to function as an autonomous human being, she managed to forget completely about Shisui and Sasuke and everything but Itachi and his intoxicating autumn leaves scent.

Written for the lovely Vesper-chan's October/November October Spirit contest! If you're interested in more AU ItaSaku gloriousness I would heartily recommend Paws-Bells's Dreams.

Hope you enjoyed it!

~ Silver.