gigiree:

A/n: for Sasuhina Month Day 1: trampoline
I’m going to try and write a continuous story for all the days. Btw, has anyone watch bee and puppy cat? 🙂
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She watches the relatively sunny day devolve into a stormy mess. The muggy air sweeps through her long hair, mischievous and full of anticipation for the rain to come.

Konoha had been wrapped up in the passionate embrace of a typical heated summer. This flash summer storm hadn’t been expected by anyone but Shikamaru and her.

She’s grateful for the fat droplets that strike against the window of the cafe she sits in. Her thin cardigan isn’t thick enough to quell the slight chill she feels, but she doesn’t mind.

Her book is left forgotten on the mosaic-inlaid table, the foam in her latte has already melted into the creamy concoction.

Hinata is painfully aware of her lack of place in this world. Somehow the resolve in her mind doesn’t always translate to solid change, and so she finds herself in the uncomfortable situation of feeling like a paper in the wind. Or perhaps a little rubber ball on a trampoline?

She’s been bounced around, lost her footing a few times until she lands again on another surface and finds herself being thrown in the air without direction.

So the rainy weather is a welcome change from blue skies that don’t altogether tell her what to do with her life. This cafe is also a welcome change. A new addition to Konoha’s establishments, it had popped up like a daisy from among the concrete and newly rebuilt shopping district.

The war has left everyone weary, hollow and a little bit hopeful. But she’s too carved out to follow along on their bounding towards the future. She’s lost someone and so have a few others, but maybe she’s being selfish when she tells herself that her pain is a reason to take a break. To cut back on missions until she feels her mind won’t break apart by the tiniest breeze.

And in the midst of these thoughts, she sees him. Solitary. Solid. Sad, maybe.

He stands near the market stall, with it’s crates already being stacked and carted away to protect the produce from the rain. The tent is straining underneath the sudden onslaught of wind, and he holds an empty plastic bag that flaps mockingly in the fierce rain.

Hinata…the little bouncing ball…sees someone as directionless as her…but while she seems to constantly be drifting, he is stagnant. Pity or a feeling of kinship, she’s not sure what moves her to action, but she grabs the old, blue umbrella she had stowed away in her satchel, and runs out into the rain…across the street and in front of a closed down farmer’s market.

Her umbrella is still closed. She blinks against the droplets that sting her face.

It all looks a little despondent, the empty crates stacked like skeletal remains and the sound of his flapping plastic bag, is like a call for help. But with one look at his face, all her resolve fades into nervous fear.

Sasuke Uchiha is neither a person to be pitied nor a person that accepts help. He is simply a stone carved into the likeness of human beauty, with flashing dark eyes and thick hair plastered to his pretty face by the rain. His expression is inscrutable as she comes up to him, unopened umbrella held in front of her like an offering or a warning? She’s not quite sure.

Her jaw works to say something, but nothing comes out. The silence fills itself in with the barest traces of thunder and the pitter patter of the water.

She looks down at a growing puddle lapping at her black galoshes, hair heavy and wet as it slips past her neck.

She offers him the umbrella without a word and when he doesn’t move to take it, she stubbornly holds to her position. Strange and awkward, she has her own brand of steel that shows up whenever someone needs assistance.

It doesn’t stop the nervous energy from threading it’s way to fingertips, doesn’t stop her from fiddling with the button on the handle. She presses it by accident.

The umbrella swoops up and out, smashing with painful alacrity into Sasuke.

By the time the familiar swish of the umbrella opening registers, it’s already been followed by a strangled help of pain.

She stares for a second in horror, umbrella held out like a saber, the tip of which has very clearly jabbed into Sasuke’s lower half. A lower half which he’s bent over, groaning in such an uncharacteristic show of hurt, that’s she’s unsure what to do.

The umbrella falls with a plop to the ground. She can see his plastic bag flying off in the distance.

“Oh crap…are you okay?! I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry?!”

She waves her hands, unsure of what to do. On instinct, she directs a bit of chakra to her fingertips, healing energy already surging.

“I can help. Where did it hurt you? Do you need ice? I can get you some I-”

“Don’t touch me.”

The words are hard and sharp and everything unpleasant. His eyes are just the same as he looks up at her from his huddled position, hissing at her as a snake might.

She jerks away, and she sees exactly just where her umbrella had hurt him. And in all her seventeen years of existence, she’s never been more humiliated. Sasuke’s hands are clasped in between his legs, and his lovely mouth is torn between a snarl and a yell.

She doesn’t think much when she turns on her heel, and bounds back across the street, shouting over her shoulder-

“I’M GOING TO GET YOU SOME CROTCH ICE!”
—

By the time she makes her terrible run on sentences clear enough to the kind waitress and by the time she has the cold bag of ice in her hands, he’s already gone.

Her face is still flushed in mortification, her chest rising with shallow breaths as she holds the ice. It stings her fingers, but she can’t find it in herself to let it go.

Her umbrella is nowhere to be found, and her cardigan and skirt are soaked. The tiniest spot of color in all this gray catches her attention.

It’s a little piece of white paper on the concrete, soaked through. She can just barely make out the little red and white fans lining the edges. The ink of the writing is already running.

She picks it up, and with all the skill of one who knows how to use their sight in the best way, picks out the blurred words.

“Tomatoes, Green Tea, Rice, Salmon, Vegetables (whatever)”

A small, unexpected smile comes to her face as she realizes it’s a shopping list. The fact that the stationary is personalized with the Uchiha emblem, makes its owner a lot more human, a little less stone, than she had thought previously.

And Hinata being Hinata, with that wrought iron idea of kindness of hers, decides that she should make it up to Sasuke…and apologize again. Definitely apologize.

She makes the walk back to the cafe with slow contemplation, the crotch ice melting in its bag and the list safely tucked away in her pocket.

Sometime, many years from now, Hinata will look back on today as the day she stopped her directionless bouncing off of trampolines, and the day an unmoving rock gave her some sort of direction.

Um. Hello who are you ?where have you been? This was a delight to read! Watching out for more, thank you! What a lovely concept. Kudos with the use of the prompt word.