Once More With Feeling

Chapter 4: Linework

I can't have exceptions. I can only have killer marks and golden opportunities.

If Sakura's suspicious of my slip-up, she doesn't show it. "I'd love to," she says conversationally, her voice lilting over the noise the vacuum cleaner makes humming back and forth across the burgundy carpet. "Get a tattoo, that is."

"Then why don't you?" I ask, half-wondering why I even care, but she's got great skin. Pale and smooth and healthy. It would pick up color really well, keep it fresh for a long time. It would be years before it aged on skin like hers.

"I'm a ballerina," she giggles, like it's obvious. "I'd never get hired anywhere with a tattoo. I stand out as it is, pink hair and everything."

Too bad. Something floral would look great on her. She's got toned arms, they'd look good under a half-sleeve, maybe, and...

That's the problem with me, I realize, looking away from Sakura to my guitar case in the corner. I haven't touched it all day. The problem with me, the reason why Itachi was already so successful when he was my age and I'm grasping at straws, is because I don't think like a musician, the way he does.

I think like an artist.

I look at things differently. I look at people like they're blank canvases. I think up things that I think would look good on them, and in the back of my mind, I'm always sketching something.

I like guitar, don't get me wrong. But I don't think up songs the way I think up pictures. I can't put a song to Sakura Haruno, but I'm designing art for her body without even meaning to.

Tch. I'm concerned about the significance this girl might have for me someday, at the same time I'm painting every inch of her body in my mind with indelible ink.

There's something fucking wrong with me. I have to get out of here.

I stand up, leave the sketchbook on the coffee table with the other artists'. Go pick up my guitar (I have a gig coming up, a jam session with Naruto and some of the other guys in our Music Analysis and Performance class, and I haven't touched my guitar all day.) Prepare to leave without a goodbye.

Sakura stops me at the door, all smiles. She thinks we're friends. Stupid girl, I can't let you be relevant to me, pretty skin and all.

"Tell you what though," she says playfully. Is she flirting with me? Does Sakura Haruno flirt with anyone? Is that allowed? "If this whole ballet thing doesn't work out for me, I'll let you tattoo me. As long as you use color, though!"

"Hn. I don't like color."

She smiles like she knows something I don't.

"I heard you guys hired Sakura Haruno!" Naruto says, injecting her name with a sickening amount of adoration.

He's never even spoken to her.

"She's the night cleaner," I mumble, just because he'll keep pestering me if I don't answer, and I'm trying to enjoy this fajita wrap.

"Aw, man, I thought you'd hire her as a model or something!"

While I can see where he's going with this, that a girl like Sakura is better suited to showing off her killer body compared to scrubbing floors and windows like she's doing, I'm not in the mood for another hours-long monologue about her alleged beauty.

"She's got no ink at all, what would she model for at a tattoo parlor?" I snap.

"You gotta introduce me, man! Does she have a boyfriend, do you think?"

"What do I care?"

Naruto looks at me from across the table with this shit-eating grin on his face. Like he knows so much. It pisses me off, but I ask anyway.

"What the hell are you looking at me like that for?"

"Nothing, man. You just sound really sensitive about the whole thing, that's all. Does wittle Sasukins have a wittle crush on pwetty Sakuwa?"

Is it normal to have fantasies about killing your best friend?

Itachi doesn't call for the rest of the week.

Instead, I get a string of texts each night, words misspelled or misused, barely legible. He's drinking, still. Heavily. I wonder what else he's taking, but I think I'm happier not knowing.

My brother the hero. My brother the rock star. My brother the celebrity.

Weird, though. How I wish he was just my brother the kid who picked me up from school. The kid who taught me how to play three chords on his old guitar before he gave it to me and went on the road.

If it makes me a pussy to admit it, then whatever, but I really just miss my brother.

Friday morning, I don't have any classes, so I usually head to the shop early. There's nobody else there, since we don't open till eleven, but it's a surprisingly good place to practice my guitar. Good acoustics. Go figure.

I get there around nine. It's a shitty day, rainy and dark when the sun should be up, even a little bit cold. I shake rainwater out of my hair and fumble with my key, and eventually stumble inside where it's warm and dry and...

I stop dead.

Stupid Sakura's still here.

On the sofa.

Asleep.

She must never have gone home last night after her shift was over, which would have been about six hours ago. I'm irritated already. What kind of stupid girl spends the night in a tattoo parlor, when she should be in her dorm across campus?

She's asking to get molested, I swear.

Dumb girl, I think, glaring at the way she's curled up on the old, threadbare couch cushions, her arms crossed for warmth, her hair a tangled mess as she sleeps.

"Hey," I snap. I'm not known for my grace or gentility. "Hey. Get up, what the hell are you doing?"

She stirs and it takes her a moment to open her eyes. When she does, she sees me, and sits bolt upright, completely startled.

"What? What time is it?" she demands, her voice raspy from sleep. I refuse to admit that I like the sound of her voice like this. Refuse to.

"It's after nine, what the hell are you still doing here?"

"It's after nine?" she gasps, and she's on her feet in nanoseconds, yanking her hair into a ponytail as quickly as she can. "Shit, shit, shit!"

Hearing a ballerina cuss is like watching a dog walk on its hindlegs. You know it happens every now and then, but it's so fucking weird when it does. The ballerinas at KPAA are like fucking soldiers. They're painfully proper every minute of their lives, they don't swear, they don't show up messy or unprepared for anything.

There's something fucking different about Sakura. The way she drops cuss words like she's been doing it her whole life, the way she takes a bizarre pride in doing a job that requires her to scrub toilets and sinks, the way she doesn't have the same fears a regular girl does about being alone at night all the time.

She's different. She's not like everyone else. I can't figure her out.

And whatever X-factor she has that makes her so unique, that's what's threatening to me. The way she doesn't even mean to do it, but she's making herself interesting to me.

That's what's so terrifying about this girl.

"I'm so fucking late," she moans, seizing her hoodie from the back of the sofa and ripping it over her head. "Miss Suzume's gonna have me running laps for a month!"

Fucking neurotic. I should've just let her sleep, she wouldn't be this noisy.

"Sasuke I'm so sorry. I swear this won't happen again, I just closed my eyes for a minute and...God, I have to get over to Studio A, she's gonna tear me a new 3-bedroom, 2-bath doublewide asshole."

Something different. Something terrifying.

"Crazy bitch," I grumble as she sprints out the door into the pouring rain.

Something interesting.

If I'm not careful, she's gonna be my downfall.