Chapter 2

Sakura woke up on Wednesday morning at 7am. Her patient had remained unconscious all through the night and he was still unconscious when she woke up.

Deciding she wasn't hungry, and not bothering to change out of yesterday's clothes, she returned the duvet and pillows to her bed and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and to fix her hair before grabbing her sketchpad and a pencil and returning to the living room.

She put them down on the floor before going to the kitchen to wet another cloth and this time, as her patient drank, his eyelids began to flicker and she realised that he would finally wake soon.

After returning the cloth, Sakura sat cross-legged and parallel to the couch and started to sketch. She sketched a girl dancing, frighteningly thin but beautiful at the same time, both happy and sad at the same time, taking extra care with the details in the girl's large eyes. The girl danced in a house that was breaking down, decaying and crumbling but even that, in a way, was beautiful too.

Her pencil froze when she heard a soft groan coming from the sofa and her patient's eyes finally opened. They were the colour of obsidian, dark and beautiful like the girl in her drawing.

At first, he watched the ceiling with a blank expression on his face as he registered where he was, but realisation soon dawned on him and his eyes scanned the room; when they fell on Sakura the boy went rigid.

Sakura smiled reassuringly. 

"Good, you're finally awake." 

Her gaze dropped again as she continued sketching. She wanted to allow him some time to orientate himself. She heard rustling as the blanket she had given him shifted.

"Where am I?" he asked wearily, sitting up and wincing at the pain of his bandaged wounds. His voice was dark and alluring. 

Sakura looked up from her sketchpad to see him watching her closely with hard, black eyes. She shrugged. 

"You're in Manhattan." 

His lip curled upwards slightly with annoyance at her bland answer. 

"Where in Manhattan?"

"Well, this block's called Konoha," she offered, purposefully ignoring the icy and condescending look he was giving her, as she put down her sketchpad and pencil again, before standing to get fresh bandages from the bathroom. "Don't move or you'll reopen those wounds."

The boy watched her silently as she returned and knelt down next to him, bandages in hand.

"I'm going to need you to let me change those," she told him, indicating the slightly bloody bandages strapped around his torso, "Okay?"

"Hn," he muttered but nodded his head in allowance.

"Do you remember what happened?" she asked as she worked, frowning with surprise when she felt that his skin was still ice-cold, and... white. Surely his temperature and skin tone would have regulated by then?

The boy flinched as the bandages came away from the four, raw gashes but they had closed up nicely and Sakura hummed with approval as she replaced the old bandages with new ones.

The boy sighed. 

"I don't remember much, just running and a horrible pain here," he gestured at where his wounds were before continuing. "I fell in front of a building, I think it was raining. Then I woke up here." 

Sakura finished the bandages and stood up to assess her work while her patient watched her suspiciously. 

"And what part do you play in all this?" he demanded and Sakura rolled her eyes.

"Well, I think it's pretty obvious but you collapsed outside my apartment building. You would have died from blood loss if I hadn't seen you and brought you here," she told him, moving to throw the bloody bandages away, "In other words. I saved your life," she called over her shoulder.

Silence followed her explanation for a while as she threw away the bandages and returned to sitting parallel to the sofa. She resumed drawing.

"Thank you," he murmured and Sakura looked up to see him watching her again with a gentler expression than the icy, hostile one he had worn before. "Most humans wouldn't have done what you did."

Sakura shrugged and dropped her gaze back to the sketch on her lap. 

"I'm almost always alone, so I know what it's like to not have anyone around when you need someone." The boy raised a curious eyebrow. 

"You live here alone?" 

Sakura put the drawing down again and lay back on the floor, gazing up at the ceiling with a sigh. 

"I might as well be, with all the time my parents spend here."

She didn't know why she was telling all of this to a stranger but it felt oddly comforting to know that he was listening to her.

"How old are you?" 

Sakura could feel his eyes on her again but she kept her gaze trained on the ceiling. 

"Seventeen. How old are you?" 

There was a pause, almost as though he had to think about it before answering. 

"Seventeen."

"How coincidental," she teased.

"Hn."

xxxxxxx

"Dammit, Sakura!" he hissed as she poked him once again with the silver sewing needle. "I thought you knew how to sew."

"I do. You just keep moving so hold still," she chided as she stitched up the four rips in his muscle tee. "Are you sure you don't remember who did this to you?" she asked seriously.

"I told you I don't."

"Yeah well, for some reason I don't believe you," Sakura muttered as she finished the last stitch. "You almost died, Sasuke." Even when she was standing, Sasuke was still a good foot taller than her, and she had to tilt her head to properly look at his face. "You don't just forget things like that."

"I don't remember," he repeated sharply and Sakura knew to leave it at that.

"Okay, okay," she said giving up and putting her hands up as she went to put the needle and thread away. "No need to lose your temper, Sasuke."

"I am Sasuke Uchiha..."

That name sounded like it carried some significant importance but Sakura shrugged it off. When she returned to her living room, she found Sasuke examining her sketch pad.

"You're very talented," he said before putting it down on the sofa and turning to her with his usual, reserved expression. 

Sakura bent to pick up his jacket from where she had discarded it the day before. 

"My parents don't think so. They just think I'm weird."

"I don't see what's weird about expressing yourself."

Sakura suddenly felt a strong sense of gratitude toward the raven haired boy and she grinned at him as she handed him the clothing item. 

"No one's said that to me before."

"Well it's true, isn't it?" he shrugged, taking the jacket from her and frowning at the dark blood stains on it. "What happened to it?"

"I used it to stop the bleeding," she replied apologetically, "Sorry." He gazed at it blankly. 

"I see."

"Shouldn't you tell your parents you were attacked?" Sakura asked, feeling an odd sense of dread in the pit of her stomach as her eyes fell on the blood stains.

"I doubt they'd care much," he answered with disinterest, turning to look outside the window. "It's raining again."

"Won't they be worried that you didn't come home last night?" Sakura pressed but Sasuke answered in the same disinterested tone. 

"I highly doubt it."

"Okay..." Sakura trailed off, not sure of how to respond. 

"Hey," Sasuke gave her a lopsided smile and put a hand on her head. "You don't need to worry about me. I'm just a stranger."

Sakura frowned. 

"You stopped being a stranger when you told me your name." 

Sasuke's smile was replaced by a blank mask as he turned back to the window. His expression darkened as his hand dropped from her head and lightly brushed her cheek accidentally in the process, still cold as ice.

"I wonder," he murmured...

xxxxxxx

The rest of the day passed quickly, with Sasuke helping Sakura clean up her small apartment like the true friend she had never had before. He didn't seem inclined to leave just yet and she was happy with that, not feeling inclined to ask him to leave either. But Sakura noticed how his behaviour started to change a few hours before sunset, and asking him about it had only led to him giving her cold looks and shrugging it off before hastily changing the subject to something more innocent. 

Odd, she thought to herself.

Sakura looked out the living room window at the darkening sky outside. 

"Shouldn't you go home, Sasuke?"

He looked at her curiously but she noticed that his face looked strained. 

"Do you want me to leave?"

"No," she said quickly with an apologetic smile, "To be honest, it's nice to have someone here other than myself for a change. Stay as long as you want."

Sasuke turned his attention back to the window. 

"Hn."

Sakura noticed that his already pale skin was a shade paler, and that his hands were faintly shaking. His jaw was clenched tightly as he watched the twinkling lights of Manhattan on the other side of the glass. 

"Sasuke-"

"How long have I been here?" He cut her off, turning and looking at her with slightly wild looking eyes, his voice strained. Sakura took a nervous step back, not used to him acting this way. 

"Just over twenty-four hours." 

Sasuke was usually calm and collected, reserved at best, and this Sasuke reminded her oddly of a drug addict who hadn't had their fill of drugs for a while.

"Four days," he muttered, holding his head in his hands and leaning heavily against the wall.

"Sasuke," Sakura said with concern, "What's wrong? Is it your wounds? Do you feel sick?"

"You can't begin to imagine how I feel," he hissed in response, his hands fisting in his hair tightly as he sank to the floor with his back pressed against the wall. He groaned and Sakura knelt beside him and placed a hand on his arm. 

"If you'd stop being so cold and help me to understand, Sasuke then maybe I would. Tell me what's wrong and I'll do my best to help you." 

He froze, and after a short while, slowly lifted his head and gazed at her with desperate eyes, clouded over with something Sakura couldn't identify, but very much resembled... hunger. These were not the eyes of the boy she had rescued from the rain.

"Sakura," he rasped huskily in a voice that made goose bumps rise on her arms, from fear or not she was unsure. It was inviting, commanding. He sat up on his knees and pulled her closer to him so that his lips hovered barely an inch over her neck. "I'm going to ask you to do the unthinkable for me."

Sakura froze at the feel of his cool breath on her skin. 

"What do you need?" she asked in a small voice that trembled slightly, to her annoyance. The last thing she wanted was to look weak in front of this predatory version of Sasuke.

He pulled his head up quickly and looked at her with wide eyes, remembering himself. Multiple emotions danced through them in a matter of seconds, too fast for Sakura to identify them.

"You're afraid of me," he whispered, jumping up and moving away from her to the far end of the window. "Dammit!" His voice was anguished and filled with self-loathing as he turned his back to her, the shaking in his hands more pronounced.

"Why now?!" It was almost like he was fighting a battle in his head, against himself.

"Sasuke," Sakura whispered, stunned. She wasn't afraid of him; Sasuke was her friend. She stood slowly and walked to him. She tugged on his arm to get his attention. He was her only friend, the first person she had met that seemed to actually understand her and how she felt. She wasn't going to just let all of that disappear. He tensed at her touch.

"Tell me what you need," she pleaded and her breath caught in her throat as he turned to look at her with wild, feral eyes that glowed red with three black commas around his pupils.

Those eyes, she thought and in one quick movement, his lips were by her ear, his hands holding her hips. Sakura held her breath, willing herself not to panic and willing herself to not be afraid.

"I need," he murmured, his breath sending shivers down her spine. "Your blood."

"My blood?" she breathed, shocked as the realisation hit her, but unsurprised because she had already suspected what he was. "That means you're-"

"A vampire," he muttered with disdain, his tone suggesting that it was something foul and repulsive. Sakura couldn't see his face, but she was sure his expression would be stony. She could feel his body trembling against hers. "You and I formed a bond when you decided to save my life. I can no longer drink the blood of another human. Only you, Sakura, but of course, it's your decision. I cannot take it by force. That would be against the laws of my kind." 

Sakura's arms wrapped themselves around his torso, with her hands gripping the back of his shirt tightly as she buried her face against his chest, breathing in his scent, earthy and masculine and completely familiar to her now.

"Take it," she breathed, coming to her decision. "Take my blood, Sasuke. You can have it." She wasn't going to lose him just yet. She needed someone, other than her parents in her life.

"Are you sure?" he asked softly, his hands moving from her hips to her waist, pulling her closer. Sakura had never been so sure about anything in her life. "Yes."

"I promise it won't hurt," he murmured softly and Sakura felt two painless simultaneous pricks pierce the soft spot between her neck and shoulder before she blacked out.