disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to Mew Mew.
notes: a kind of rebellion. or something. Happy Christmas!

title: investigation, the
summary: Christmas morning in a high rise somewhere above Konoha. — Sasuke/Sakura.

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He fucked her against the window in a high-rise in Konoha's business distrcit with her teeth dug into his skin on Christmas morning when the rest of the world was asleep. It was still so dark it could have been the previous day, for all anyone knew. It was heat and pounding and a strange sort of blinding pain-pleasure that grated at the back of their eyes and more, more, more—

She was cold and quiet and small and pale as a ghost, and she bit down on his skin to keep herself from screaming and waking the whole building.

(Or something like that.)

And after, she clung to him, trembling with her face pressed into the crook his neck and trying to breathe.

"I can't forget, you know," she breathed, and kissed the words into his skin. "I just can't."

He couldn't expect her to forget something like that, but it was that or letting her go, and Sasuke wasn't prepared to do the latter. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

"I know," he muttered.

And pressed there, together, Sasuke breathed her in—the late-summer scent that seemed to cling even underneath her skin, like autumn sunshine and wilting flowers drowning in heat then frost, pink hair stuck to her forehead with sweat and eyes dull and green. It was a sham of who she used to be, but a sham-memory was better than nothing. He traced the curve of her cheek with the pad of his thumb, darkly reflected in the glass.

"Sorry."

Sakura tried to shrug, her shoulders stuck absurdly against the glass, and smiled weakly. "Don't be. It wasn't your fault."

They fell to silence, then, and Sasuke half-carried her across the room. Her feet skimmed the floor, and he didn't remember her ever being this small. She was naked and shameless in the dark, a carefully strung up study in contrasts where the moonlight hit her bare skin.

And he set her there, on his bed, where she'd always belonged (even when she didn't know it, even when he'd denied it—she'd always belonged there. And now that he had her, to give her up would have been torture). He left her there, stretched out in his sheets, and let the world burn at her fingertips.

It was a dangerous silence that surrounded her; her on her pedestal of sheets and pillows and moonlight.

It could have been perfect.

She rolled away from him.

Sasuke dragged his fingers through his hair, guilt welling up somewhere close to his stomach and exhaled in a rush. He traced the line of her back and watched her shiver.

"Maybe I should go," she said.

And Sasuke should have agreed. Because she should have gone. She should have been long gone—should never have given him this chance. The memory of her should have haunted him until he died; it should have rested in the back of his head, a palace of repose. It would have served him right, and he knew that.

"Stay?" he offered.

The question hung in the air for a very long time.

Sakura rose from the bed slowly. The planes of her shoulders jutted out to leave gaping shadows down her back. The words worked, but Sasuke clamped them down in his throat—he would not force her decision. Not now. Not this time.

She reached for his shirt, rumpled on the floor, to slide it around her shoulders.

And this time, he couldn't control it. "What…?"

She looked over her shoulder, and shot him a smile that was slow and soft and sweet. "Do you have any tea?" she asked. "I can't sleep without it."

Sasuke nodded mechanically. "Kitchen," he murmured. "I'll come with you."

She shrugged. "If you want."

"Hn."

Because he did want.

He wanted very much.

And later, there would be time for apologies and maybe violence, maybe screaming; but for now, it was 3AM on Christmas Day, and Sasuke's hand curved around Sakura's hip, and things…

Things were good.

fin.