AU Police/Detective story - SasuNaru/NaruSasu
A/N: Thank you for joining me for another story! This one is sad, but I hope at the end you'll be glad you read it (think "happy ending!" — I promise! I already finished it, so I'm sure!). Special thanks to Yaoi415 (my wife) for being the first to hear it and give feedback; she's the reason this story even makes sense!
There are 7 chapters (plus a prologue and an epilogue, and a side-story that's still in progress), and I'll post one chapter per day for the next week. I hope you enjoy it!
Warnings: angst like whoa (maybe bring tissues), flashbacks, suicidal thoughts, smoking cigarettes, alcohol, smut, implied character death
We All Fall Down
by vernajast
"omnes vulnerant, postuma necat"
(all the hours wound; the last one kills)
Prologue. (ash)
Ash falls and gathers around the crease where glass meets wood on the table top. The tumbler—previously filled to the brim with scotch, then rum, then whatever alcohol had been left in the house—is now brimming with the remains of cigarettes, sooty and damp against the sides.
It's been three days.
Three nights of sleeping alone.
Seventy-two hours of silence in the suddenly too-big townhouse.
Six glasses full of ash and sodden cigarette butts.
The stench of it turns his stomach, but not as much as the thoughts that crowd into all the empty spaces in his head. The possibilities. Contingencies. Backup plans.
The would-haves and should-haves.
None of it matters now.
A clock in the den chimes three a.m., and Sasuke shifts slightly, lights another cigarette, inhales deeply. He listens, as he always does, for the sound of clumsy feet on slick stairs, the rustle of keys before the right one is found and slotted into the lock, the click of the mechanism, and the slam of the front door.
The house remains silent.
Itachi says he's falling apart. He whispered it at the funeral this afternoon. His thin lips were tilted into a smirk that reeked of self-satisfaction and amusement at his little brother's suffering.
Perhaps he's right.
[TBC]