Day 2
(AU)
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He’d been hoping for the break in weather to last just a little longer, but the six-day streak they were on came to an abrupt end when Gaara stepped out of his house and observed the darkening skies overhead. He grabbed his rain gear before leaving, it hadn’t begun to sprinkle yet, but when it did, he wouldn’t have much time before the skies opened up. Quick steps would close the gap between his residential block and the east end of campus in no time, he knew all the short cuts and which backyards to cut through when he was running late, and he double-checked the contents of his bag as he went.
Late or not, Gaara didn’t want to be caught in the rain, he hated the rain.
When he first moved up here for school, he thought he would like experiencing different weather more often. Where he was from, rain was a rarity and the clouds were merely for decoration. They passed by without ever spilling a drop, but now that he couldn’t seem to go a week without this bleak atmosphere and droning drizzles, he missed those parched skies desperately. The American southwest had been his whole world until he flipped it all on its head to move to northeast Oregon and pursue his talents in art. Rocky soil and arid plants had been his home, clear skies with stars for miles, the smell of heat in the air, that was what he yearned for again.
First period was Life Drawing, a coveted class that he’d finally been able to convince his advisor to help him get into. He’d been trying since freshman year but it maxed out quicker than anything else in his major, and now that he had gotten one of those seats, he couldn’t afford to miss any of it. Quite literally; he’d taken loans and received grants to afford moving up here for art school.
Arriving before the start of class, and just before the start of the downpour, he set up his station at his usual spot; at the back by the door, first easel by the center aisle. It provided the best view of the subject with the isle next to him no matter where his classmates set up, and he preferred being in the back anyway. He took his sketchbook out and warmed up his hand while the class filled in. Soon, when the model arrived, the professor gave their instructions, and class went underway.
For the first half hour, the classroom was silent save for the charcoal scratches on paper and the rain drizzling on the roof. The monotonous pattering always made him feel so sluggish and he didn’t appreciate how tired he became during his first class of the day. One of these days, Gaara had thought since beginning this class, he was going to pass out right there at his easel.
It may have even been today, but the doorknob to the art room clicking and the old hinges creaking open caught his attention.
“Sorry, sorry,” came an embarrassed whisper as someone slipped into class. “I had a hard time finding- Oh!”
He, and everyone else in the class, all jumped a little and looked over to see who had just walked in to class late and gasped like that.
She had her pastel pink hair done up in a messy bun with bedhead fraying out at the sides. A grey campus sweater was damp across the top, she clutched a textbook to her chest, and had a fully stuffed backpack pulling at one shoulder. She’d been wearing sweatpants and slides, and she’d clearly caught herself in the chilly morning rain. Coming in the door right next to him, just a few feet away, he could see a distinctive blush cover her face as her eyes widened at the sight of their nude model. He watched them move up and down, mouth agape, only to tear away a moment later as she ducked her head and brought her hands up to her face.
“Oh god!” she gasped again, her voice shaking with embarrassment. “I’m sorry! I – I must be in the wrong place.” As she whipped around, shielding her eyes from the naked man stood dumbfounded on the center riser, her backpack slid off her shoulder, pulled at her arm, and tossed her book to the floor. It also ran straight into his easel and nearly knocked it over.
“Watch it!” he spat, an impulse reaction as he steadied his easel and dodged a textbook to the foot.
She flushed even deeper and dove after her book, he could read Anatomy on the spine before she snatched it off the floor. “I’m so sorry,” she apologized as she stood and backed up from him. “I’m sorry, I was just trying to get to-” she broke away from his disgruntled stare and saw the rest of the room watching her, effectively silencing her with social mortification.
The professor stepped forward then, standing between her and their volunteer model for the period, and pointed to the door she’d left open. “Miss, if you’re not part of this class, please leave,” she said firmly.
“Of course,” the student agreed, repositioning her backpack and fidgeting with the book in her arms. “I am so sorry.” She glanced back at Gaara with an apologetic half smile and fumbled with the loose doorknob of the classroom.
Her footsteps could be heard receding down the hallway and when Gaara looked back to the professor she made a gesture to the door, to which he responded by latching it shut and locking it.
That was the first time he saw her.
After that he had spent the next few weeks working on a couple pieces and he’d had to spend extra time on campus in the studio. Thankfully the cafés were usually stocked well enough with quick meals and coffee round the clock, they’d been his lifeline this week while he put in the extra hours. He’d been sleeping like shit and he assumed trying to work on his projects at his place would only tempt him to procrastinate for the sake of sleep.
It was on his way back toward the door during one of these visits that he noticed a familiar messy bundle of hair bent over the table at a corner booth. There were papers strewn about beneath her diligent hands scribbling away, and two textbooks lay open for her reference. She sat alone, with a few crumpled wrappers and an empty bottle at the edge of the table, he could see the cord of a singular headphone dangling from her ear.
He hadn’t thought about running into her again, but with his dinner in one hand and his drink in the other, he found himself walking toward that booth she sat in. Gaara hadn’t made a habit of being outwardly social, especially if he didn’t share a class with someone, and she clearly hadn’t even been part of his major given the textbook she’s nearly thrown at him. Though, it was a good thing, he figured; she was avoidable enough if things bombed, but he hoped she wouldn’t mind a last-minute addition to her study table, there were plenty of open seats as it were.
She hadn’t noticed his approach but when he slid into the booth opposite her and placed down his coffee, she stopped her writing and peered across the table. She seemed confused upon first glance, but when she lifted her head and straightened her back, the recognition to cross her face was complimented by his own greeting.
“Well,” he said with a smirk. “If it isn’t Miss I’m so sorry.”
He could see her shoulders drop with her steady exhale as her ears turned pink. She pulled the headphone out of her ear and put her pencil down. “Lovely,” she mumbled with a glance to the side. “Can I help you?” she asked, folding her arms over her chest and mirroring his slouched pose. “I’m trying to study.”
“I just had a question,” he stated, keeping his voice smooth, appreciating the opportunity to take in the color of her eyes. She raised an eyebrow as he took a casual sip of his coffee. “How does someone show up to the wrong classroom nearly four weeks into the semester?”
She furrowed her brows in response and answered his question with her own. “What’s it matter to you?”
“You’re medical?” he guessed, gesturing to the array of papers she was working on. “How’d you end up at Life Drawing in the art building?”
She scoffed and straightened her papers, now embarrassed of her messy spread. “They’re on the same side of campus,” she said in her defense. “I went to the wrong building and asked an art student where Anatomy was.”
He stifled his laugh but he couldn’t hold back his grin. She looked away. “They did you dirty,” he jested. “But you should have known your way to class by then.”
Again, she glanced at him before speaking her explanation to the empty seat next to her, avoiding his eyes. “I hadn’t been on campus yet this year,” she huffed with a bit of attitude coming through in her voice. “I had to take most of my classes online while I was back home with my dad taking care of my mom, so I’m trying to catch up.”
Hesitating with the snarky response after that, he instead asked, “This your first year on campus?”
She shook her head. “Second, I’ve been…online a lot. You?”
“Third,” he answered as he opened the wrapper to his food and settled in across from that tempered look she gave him, though she never told him to leave.
That had been the first time he sat with her in the café.
He had a newfound appreciation for his time spent in the art studio, as over the following weeks it offered him plenty more opportunity to crash her solo evening study sessions in his new favorite booth. It took a couple times of him calling her Sorry for her to give up her name more or less unprovoked, and he’d given over his even though she hadn’t asked for it. Sakura – he wouldn’t be forgetting that – always sported the same messy updo and comfortable athleticwear, a classic look of socks with slides that he didn’t care for until she had worn it so well, and it was only twice that he’d seen her studying without that singular headphone in. Her note taking started to slow when he came around recently, she looked up from her books more, and even allowed his company long enough to take his book out and sketch in between projects. The winter was also beginning to settle in, and the icy rains and biting wind gave him plenty of excuses to stay longer when he came by, even when he didn’t need to put in the studio time, and he used them.
One evening, Gaara had gotten there before her and sat at the back of the booth, welcoming Sakura to the seat next to him upon her arrival. After an hour and half of scribbling and silence nearly the whole time, Gaara felt confident enough in the skills he’d honed thus far in his curriculum to reach across the table and put the open page of his sketchbook in front of her. He’d spent that evening sketching the way she looked as she studied; hunched over the table with her pencil straight up, her face inches from her paper, concentrating and focused beyond distraction. He’d grown to love that meticulous and analytical look in her eyes, and he wanted to show her the best that he could do.
Sakura had glanced over only to doubletake, her pencil dropping as she slid the book in front of her. She looked up at him, those round eyes reflecting the dim lights of the campus café, her lips slightly parted, and he wished he’d had the perspective to sketch those features as well.
“Is this me?” she had asked, earning an uneven grin from him that, like many of his others had before, made her cheeks tinge just a little.
“Who else would it be?” he replied as he leaned back in the booth, his hands stuffed in his pockets and his feet stretched out in front of him. He didn’t bother moving his foot when his boot knocked against hers and rested there under the table, and neither did she.
She responded by simply admiring herself on the page a little more, a free hand now playing with a lock of hair that had fallen loose from her bun.
He could have sworn his heart was going to beat out of his chest, but he took a steady breath while she admired his work. “I have a project at home I have to work on,” he said, gauging how her soft smile fell a little bit as she looked at his sketch, showing just a smidge of disappointment in the casual way he’d brought up his departure.
“All right,” Sakura said, her tone light as she folded closed his book and slid it back to him.
Without reaching for his sketchbook, he continued, “My roommate’s girlfriend is gonna come by later, said she’d pick up takeout on her way.” Gaara knocked his boot against hers more deliberately this time and Sakura glanced up to him, visibly swallowing. He willed himself to keep his cool and, trying his hand at the bold approach – as it had been working in his favor so far, he made a show of admiring the blush settling across her cheeks and tinting her ears red. “She’ll pick something up for you,” he said, her eyes going a bit wide when he asked, “Why don’t you come over?”
She hadn’t answered right away, and had only begun stammering an o-okay when she looked down to start straightening her papers.
Gaara couldn’t hope to understand which papers went with which, but he scooped them up all the same and shut them inside her textbooks, grabbed them with his sketchbook and tossed them all in his bag to carry for her. Still trying to play it cool even in his haste, the anxious excitement hadn’t fully set in until he heard the zipper of her parka slide shut and saw its fuzzy-lined hood come up to frame her rosy face.
That was the first time he’d asked her over to his place, and he’d been building up the courage to do so for weeks.
When they left the café together and were met with the wet sleet falling quietly in the streetlights, his heart nearly flipped in his chest when she remarked that her dorm was so close to the café, she hardly ever brought an umbrella and worried about her backpack getting wet in the rain. Knowing he’d see her today; he was fully prepared for this miserable weather and even welcomed it. Slipping his umbrella out from the side sleeve of his bag, he opened it over them. It was a large umbrella given that he often had to carry his portfolio to and from campus, but he welcomed how she still drew closer to him to fit under it, and how she bumped into him a few times as he showed her the way to his house.
He’d let his roommate know that he was bringing someone over later but hadn’t gone into details, he didn’t know if she would actually accept his offer, and he slipped him a twenty for an extra entre order that evening. But she had accepted, and he hoped the heads-up text he’d sent him when they were walking over would be enough for him to make a good impression. When they arrived at his house though, he should have known he’d have nothing to worry about; his roommate had a dog, a puppy no less, so he was huge hit with Sakura for a little longer than Gaara would have liked.
But, to his credit, during that time he read the room and figured out what Sakura wanted from their takeout restaurant, passed the order along to his girlfriend, and took the dog out for a bathroom break after the excitement of meeting a new person. She turned so coy when the door shut and they stood alone in the living room, perhaps she could feel the energy burning off him, or maybe she was just nervous in new places.
Lifting a hand, he tapped the back of his fingers against the arm of her jacket and she gripped her backpack straps just a little tighter, the cold air they had walked through was her only excuse for the color on her face. “Come here,” he said, motioning through the living room as he led her to the back hallway. “You can put your stuff in my room, all my supplies are in there.”
She chewed her lip and nodded, her eyes wandering and taking in everything on display in his rental as she followed him. He opened his door for her, took her backpack and jacket, and set them on his bed. His door had always swung shut a little on its own, but it wouldn’t close, and he let it be.
Not wanting to look anxious, he gave her his sketch board to lay her notes flat on and brought out his current piece to showcase his progress. Perhaps not the best idea, since the thoughtful way she looked over his work had him nearly sweating bullets, but he breathed a quiet sigh of relief when she said she liked it and continued to study it for a moment.
Goaded on by his small success, he stepped next to her, as if to observe his piece from her own perspective, and he could practically feel the way she tensed as he got closer. He bent down slightly, his face level with hers, and asked as he glanced over, “I think I did pretty good this time, what do you think?” His voice had dropped and turned raspy upon seeing her here in his house, in his room; he thought he’d been fantasizing to pursue this outcome.
Sakura had apparently felt the same.
Free from her backpack and puffy jacket, and compelled by weeks of indecisive desire, she had reached for him without warning and pulled him close. She pressed her lips against his and fisted her hands in the collar of his shirt, desperate to hold onto him, and she was shaking because of it.
That had been the first time he kissed her; an unexpected and treasured payoff to the time he’d invested withstanding her skeptical and arduous vetting, all the while casually sowing the seeds that had led to this moment. Sakura was gasping when she pulled away at first, he’d almost been able to tell her to calm down, but then she pulled him back again and he grinned against her lips.
She had melted, welcoming any touch that he gave her, and allowed herself to be pressed against him. Bemused, Gaara thought over how he might turn this first visit into the first night she would spend at his place, as she appeared eager enough to be convinced.
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