#i am half asleep and just yoloed this draft

[haruno-sakura-san]

33 itasaku (kiss drabble)

33. An unexpected kiss that shocks the one receiving it.

Oooo! Here we go!! (Mostly fluff with no plot, but hey its a drabble)

🌸🍡

Sakura fists her hands in her hair and lets out a frustrated groan. 

“This is impossible. There is no way we can get both sides to agree.” She glances at the clock, blinking a few times to clear her vision. 4:45 am. Kami, they’d been at this all night. 

Itachi hums across the desk, pressing long fingers into his temple. He has shed his Hokage’s robe hours ago. It hangs across the chair back behind him, a stark contrast to his dark hair. That too has been swept up into a bun, more casual than she’d ever seen. He looks as tired as she feels. From the darkening circles under his eyes to the way he kept squinting as he leafed through the documents littering his desk. She really should get him glasses. If he’d let her. But it’d be a shame to hide such pretty eyes behind them. 

And those kind of distracted thoughts were probably why it had taken her this long to come up with some kind of solution. She scolds herself, trying to refocus.

“Kami, I wish Shikamaru were here,” She mumbles. He may be more of the tactile advisor of the pair, but he was still very, very good with political matters. 

“He won’t be back from Suna until the day after tomorrow.” Itachi reminds her. This time, he slips his eyes closed, pressing fingers into the ducts, “And we need this matter settled by morning.”

“It is morning,” She pouts, slumping over and straightening a stack of folders compulsively. There’s a long moment of silence, both either thinking or spacing out. 

The sound of him straightening in his chair draws her gaze again. His eyes have sharpened, the same way a cat watches its prey before pouncing. But they are trained directly on her. Its unsettling. She sits up a little straighter as well. 

“What is it?”

“Shikamaru is in Suna discussing terms for .. “ he stands up, walking around to her side of the desk and rifeling through the pile of folder was straightening, “...this proposal, correct?”

He opens the file and sets it out in front of her, pointing to a paragraph that had been highlighted several times and circled in red.

“Yes,” she says slowly, trying to see where he was going with this. 

“What if we pull out of this deal completely, instead coordinating with both Iron and Wave to take our place instead?” He turns back to her and again his eyes are alight with the thrill of finding an answer to an impossible problem. Despite what he may say, Sakura knows he likes this part of the job. 

His excitement is catching and Sakura feels a second wind take over her. She stands, angling herself next to him to lean over the documents. Her shoulder bumps his, but she doesn’t care. 

“Its not like we really need this deal anyway,” Her speech speeds up with each word, the idea catching momentum in her head. 

“Right, if anything its simply a courtesy for Suna.”

“But the other nations, they’d really benefit.” Sakura grins up at him, “And they are definitely more willing to negotiate with Gaara than with you.”

Itachi shoots her a mock offended look that only lasts a moment. “Also very true.”

She bumps her arm against his and laughs, “You know what I mean.” Then she flips the file to the next page, eyes searching for a different passage. 

“And with we adjust these here,” she starts to cross off a few words and scribble in the margins. 

“Wait-,” his warm fingers brush hers, taking the pencil out of her grasp. He erases the last few words and finishes in letters penned much more elegantly than Sakura’s chicken scratch.

“This is brilliant!” Sakura laughs, turning her face up to his. He gives her a rare smile, and this close she swears time slows down. His eyes are still shining and his lashes dust over his high cheeks. But more than anything, his face is lit up with such a sharp intelligence and joy, she can’t help but be extremely proud of him. He was brilliant and inspiring and persistent and handsome. 

Suddenly Sakura feels so caught up in him and this feeling a shade off from admiration, she can hardly breath. Her heart pounds in her chest and something electric zings through her veins with each beat, urging her to lean into him. She does. 

Sakura quickly closes the few inches between them and presses her soft lips to his with the confidence and familiarity as if she’d done it hundreds of times before. 

Pulling back, her smile widens and she couldn’t imagine ever feeling more right than this moment. Until her eyes slide open and she sees is thousand yard stare looking right through her. His smile is gone, like she’d stolen it off his face, which is now blank. Shocked. He doesn’t move an inch.

Oh. 

She kissed him. Her friend. Her boss. Her Hokage. She kissed the Hokage. 

“Sorry.” What else was she supposed to say? “I didn’t - that was an accident.”

Right, believable. She accidentally leaned forward at just the right angle to do kiss him. Right. 

He still hasn’t moved, eyes looking right past her. She squirms. 

If Sakura had learned anything in her life as a shinobi, it was when to retreat. Now was that time.

“You know what, I��ll just take these back to my place and finish drafting them up,” She starts, quickly turning to close the folder and gather the other across the desk, “then have them on your desk tomorrow morning before you get here. You can message Shikamaru to give the heads up and well go from there.”

Kami, what had she been thinking? They spent a lot of time cramped in this office, sure, but its not like they’d ever flirted. She doubted Itachi even knew how to flirt. He’d only been professional, which she really appreciated after the sexist comments some of her coworkers - including Shikamaru sometimes - were fond of making. Then the first time he’d smiled, like that at her she suddenly just lost it. How? She shakes her head. She knows how, just didn’t want to admit it.

Since the first day working with him, Sakura was steadily falling more and more for him. Well any chance of that working out was no doubt over now.

Sakura clutches the folders to her chest, stealing herself before turning back to see if he’d heard a word she said. His brows are furrowed the exact same way he’d been trying to dissect this political issue. Only this time, he was trying to dissect her. She swallows. At this point, if she could still keep her job she’d be lucky.

“I’m sorry,” she pleads again, barely a whisper. Anything more and he might snap, she worries. “I know I crossed a line and I swear I didn’t mean to-”

His eyes regain some sharpness, making her feel like the prey now, and they settle to watch her mouth as she speaks, “to do that. Its just late and I must be sleep deprived and not thinking...”

As his fingers brush under her chin, she trails off, breathless for the second time this evening. He takes his sweet time bringing his face to hers, unlike her hurried kiss. This time, his lips are soft against hers pliant ones. The tentative brush is experimental, sampling her once, then slanting again, twice. 

He peers down under his long lashes, eyes spinning into red. Oh wow. He was so beautiful with that look. Her chest is heaving now, trying to keep her emotions in check and not willing to risk kissing him again. Knowing if she moves an inch she will. 

She feels a tug on the folders in her hands as Itachi pulls them from her. The slap of them hitting his desk is unnaturally loud in the silent room. Then a tug on her waist has her stepping closer and closer until she’s flush against him. To her surprise his chest is rising and falling just as quickly as hers. 

His Sharingan drags across her face one last time and his fingers brush over her warms cheeks, before tucking strands of hair behind her ear and settling over the nape of her neck. 

“Itachi?” 

There. His focuses back to her jade eyes and gives away that he’s found whatever answer he was looking for. Only this time, instead of lighting up, he eyes darken with desire for her. 

Her whole body warms and she presses closer into him as he dips down to capture her lips, shifting deeper this time. His hand is searing through her shirt at her hip, a sensation forgotten completely as he threads fingers through her hair and urging her to move with him. She loses track of how many times she complies. She lose track of everything and melts under him, so afraid she’ll sink down that she loops her arms around his neck. 

The plans are forgotten as he guides her back against the desk. Her folders disregarded as he lifts her to the edge. The whole village still sleeping as Sakura and Itachi lose themselves in each other and steal a few moments to themselves before the sun begins to rise.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I fell asleep watching Scanners on a Friday.  Honestly, not the worst way to be spending my time these days.  I spend most of it alone.  I’m an only child.  My parents divorced in college so a lot of the emotional referee duties fell on me solely.  I get along with both of my parents but they don’t really speak to each other.  It’s not like they don’t acknowledge each other’s existence.  It’s just awkward.  They don’t hate each other.  I know this because I’m a pass through in conversations about the other.  But both of them have pretty much moved on with their lives.  My mom has a giant garden in her childhood home she attends to.  My dad is remarried and spends half of his time up in Michigan.  The other half he spends working.  He still has not retired.  I know this because I do web development for his company every few weeks.  I talk to my parents a lot more than I do anyone else.  And they don’t really pry too much into what it is I’m doing with my life.  They know I quit drinking more than a few years ago.  They’re both moderate drinkers so it doesn’t really register to them.  They know the situation I’m in to a certain point.  But mostly every card I play in my personal life is pretty close to my own chest.  Facing peer pressure out here is similar to high school.  Everybody wants to know what you are up to but nobody really cares to ask.  When you are an only child resisting the status quo is horrifyingly easy.  You are so used to being left to yourself that you just develop survival skills.  Maybe you got sick and tired of crying to yourself.  Maybe you got sick of hearing it.  As your own best friend for long periods of time, you tend to get mad at yourself every once and awhile.  Your outlet whatever it is be it art, music or dancing in place for short bursts of time tends to grow more inward if you can’t share it.  I create to communicate things that don’t seem to register.  Things I’ve explained maybe in my writing time and time again that people never listen to.  As an only child you spend a lot of time just listening to yourself.  So you start to learn when communication breaks down talking to other people.  If you can’t talk and be real with yourself, you will get completely lost.  I’ve gotten madder at myself not being able to connect to mainstream society at times.  The most frustrating feeling is trying to reconnect professionally when you have no real friend network left in a city.  It makes you feel worthless and at times I feel it is intentional.  To isolate you to assimilate to the crowd.  The tough love approach of this city is abusive and gross in that respect.  That’s the nature of peer pressure.  When you have survived alone for long periods of time, you have varying intel on what works and what doesn’t. You don’t hear the war drum of popular opinion as much in terms of what everyone else thinks is wrong with a situation they care little to read into.  Writing to me here on the internet has worked as sort of a public meditation.  It bothers me that people follow me around in the street all day to get a read off what I’m thinking.  You know you could just read it here.  I don’t have facebook.  I don’t use any real geocaching apps intentionally.  I don’t have an account on a dating app.  When I make posts on the internet it’s usually to customer support wondering where my package has been misdelivered to.  I’m painfully pragmatic that way.  And easier to understand when it comes to why I shriek away from everything in theory.  Oh you’ve heard I’m some kind of monster!   If you believe hearsay and what people tell you, I’m alone because I like it that way.  I’m on the fringes of society because there’s something wrong with me.  I read this headline on CNN.  Hundreds of thousands of cybersecurity jobs are opening this very minute.  And they’ll pay you whatever you want.  I post in a hashtag about cybersecurity almost every week on a professional job networking site.  It’s like a tree falling in the forest.  I’m the only one who cares about posting what vulnerabilities are out there other than my fragile male emotions.  If there’s something wrong with me in terms of connecting, it’s that I care too much about what wiffs in terms of trying to be myself.  

I’m a minimalist at times.  This might be because I’m part Swedish.  I hate nationalism and attributing cultural ticks to my genes.  I’m nothing really like either of my parents and yet something born anew.  When my job was cancelled and my office was thrown in the garbage, I learned a valuable lesson.  To take stock in who I was at the present and move on.  Never look back.  I look back a lot.  It’s called post traumatic stress.  I constantly have to read into the past as a warning.  I operate by a simple posit.  What is working versus what isn’t,  And personal responsibility has been the one thing I have been able to count on.  I see results.  When I manage the net income I have, I move and plan around my goals financially for the next six months.  I’ve done that for over a year now.  So I have a lot of data just by isolating myself and setting milestones day by day.  Looking for a job lately has been demoralizing.  I am completely invisible.  In America this is somehow my problem for not speaking up over a wall of cacophony that sounds like verbal diarrhea ninety percent of the time.  Americans love to talk out loud and say absolutely nothing.  The retention of what they’re talking about is in constant flux.  My dad’s side of the family were poor missionaries.  My dad joined the army.  My mom’s family were working class.  My grandfather retired due to injury as an Electrician.  Also in the army.  To escape the constant hum of recruiters trying to draft me to do the same I wrote a letter declaring my status as a conscientious objector at eighteen.  I’ve been anti war for as long as I’ve known.  I still have the piece of paper I wrote in a file with the ten pieces of documents I needed to prove my identity to renew my passport.  The more I look back at all this, the more I realize the person I am now is something incredibly defined but outrageously misunderstood.  I’ve been writing since high school  Mostly poetry.  There is nothing clearer than writing when you care about the economy of words.  Writing three paragraphs on here for years is what some of my friends have come to expect.  I’ve connected with people here that have inspired me to continue to be myself.  Just a click.  An affirmation of not being alone in whatever it is I think or dream about.  That the things I consider beautiful, sacred, or art are shared.  That’s real connection.  It’s worth a lot to me.  It makes me feel like I’m not really alone.  And yet when I go back to the real world, I’m faced with a shuddering realization.  That nobody has the time to respect the history.  When I think about art and culture, I think about how long I’ve been trying to be creative.  I don’t try.  I am a creative.  I’ve been shunned by other creatives particularly in America for as long as I’ve known.  I’ve tried.  To be a part of scenes.  Out here everybody is comparing each other against each other’s insecurities.  It’s not unlike the army.  Where they break down your ego so that you’re easier to command.  In Chicago, everything connected to art now has some seriously hellbent agenda of social justice.  As if footwork, hip hop or any of the things I’ve been involved in for years hasn’t.  I’m more like a pariah out here than an artist.  For all the words I write and for all the things I try to connect with, I’ve hit a fucking wall.  Hard.  So hard that people hear it halfway around the world when I wake up in pain.  Looking back at the wall is something that gets old.  Like looking at a wall of text at five in the morning doesn’t.  At least it keeps me sane.  Keeps the narrative consistent.  That I’m ok and at the same time not.  I know I’ve got me.  And that’s all I know I’ve got.  Or at least all that I expect to rely on.  It’s called responsibility I guess.  And it’s nowhere in sight around here so I keep to myself.

This weekend is the start of the holidays here in the states.  The YOLO can commence.  We can all celebrate that the worst is behind us now.  And yet I’m just sitting alone in the ac with my cat typing out to all the beautiful people that tolerate my ranting weekly.  I’m not a kind of person who likes to complain.  I hate it actually.  I’ve relied on social engineering for years not as a hacker but as a forge.  I’m the one who shovels the sidewalks in the blizzard because I don’t want to fuck up my shoes.  I don’t really want anyone to fuck up their shoes.  But if no one is going to do it, it’s going to be me.  I know for a fact reintegrating into American society this summer is a no no.  It sucks.  To be alone.  To be isolated.  To not trust anyone but still have to pass off that tired smile.  I’ve gotten so angry over the last few months.  I’ve yelled at myself.  I’ve never hurt myself or anything.  I’m frustrated how people expect such a mammoth attention to detail from me and fail at even the most basic functions in return.  I’m always wondering if somebody is fucking with me behind my back.  Like this was all some sick, elaborate joke to hurt me that I brought upon myself.   At first I thought it was a test.  Then it started to feel malicious.  Then it was just people being emotionally chaotic..  Blame these times.  Blame whatever you want.  I don’t blame myself.  And that’s a big change lately.  Maybe because the weather is warmer.  Maybe because it’s not the dead of winter and I’m freezing, cold and alone.  All I really know is nothing I try to do works.  And I’m always expected to think eight layers deeper.  To think in reverse entropy.  Literally backwards and forwards without revisiting the past like some elaborate time heist.  Is it worth it?  Yes.  Which is why in typical time travel fashion I want nothing to do with any interactions of the past.  Think about it.  I was let go almost eleven months ago.  In those eleven months, absolutely zero people from my past checked in on anything.  My emotional well being.  My fiscal health.  My job search.  Nothing.  Look back to the past and think about it and your head will explode.  Scanners style.  To YOLO forward is it’s own little death for me.  The death of understanding the responsibilities.  I beat myself up over the fact that I should have escaped all of this years ago.  And I tried.  I flew half way around the world trying to be an independent artist only to get dropped from Pitchfork reviews of my own crew.  I sat with other musicians and artists and talked about this invisible wall only to be trapped outside of it.  Probably for the better.  Now it’s just a wall around me.  There’s a door.  You can enter it if you have the key.  But I’ve kept a lot of things at bay and locked out for good reason.  People love to deflect the blame.  That I’m angry.  Or I scare people.  How would they know?  I have never seen half of the people that talk about me on the internet or otherwise in about a year.  And yet they can’t keep my fucking name out of their mouth.  You would think that would work in my benefit.  Maybe I’d have some real job offers.  Maybe I’d have an offer to perform my music for the city and get a small piece of that COVID money you’ve been wasting on police overtime.  Maybe none of that is worth it.  Maybe I’m better off cutting my losses with this city and waiting for a quiet exit.  I don’t really know anything.  At all.  And the most frustrating thing is to worry more about the things you can’t control.  I can control the liquidity in my bank account.  The equity.  The lack of any sort of debt.  And I’m still worthless to people here just the same.  Not here on Tumblr.  Just here in the flesh.  The biggest whiff of all has not been my lack of a social life but the lack of imagination for people believing I keep it real in a city with a murder rate higher than unemployment.  Is the future really out here or am I just ducking for cover until somebody realizes I’ve been in danger all along.  I’ll be ok.  I’ve been on my own for as long as I remember.  And I’m not alone in the AC sharing memes with all of you this summer anyway. <3 Tim