Title: Investigative Journalism

Pairings: SasuNaru, and a myriad of cliché, overused side pairings

Warnings: Language (later), overused cliches, AU.

Disclaimer: Naruto does not belong to me.

Notes: So it's not even close to the best thing I've ever written. I've been consistent with my too-much-dialogue-and-not-enough-detail style of writing.

I feel guilty for writing this, because… well, multiple reasons. But I wrote it anyway.

Enjoy.

ooo

"I don't care what you put there, just fill it in!" Naruto heard from inside the office. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, waiting it out. Three… two… one…

The door slammed open as Haruno Sakura stormed out. He fell into step beside her, grinning widely and (some might argue) sadistically. "I take it Tsunade-baa-chan didn't like it that we're short a story?"

"Naruto, do you want me to break the wall with your head?" Sakura asked in a poisonously sweet tone, her green eyes flashing with ire.

He instantly stepped a pace out of her reach, watching her warily. "Uhh… no. What do we do about it?"

"You're an environment and society reporter!" She yelled, gesticulating wildly in the air. "You find a story."

"Well, you're the environment and society editor!" He yelled back, refusing to take the blame for the situation. "It's not my fault some moron told you they'd have a story and then didn't show up with it!"

Sakura sighed world-wearily, rolling her head around to crack her neck. "I know, and I'm sorry for yelling at you. Just… we really need a story. Do you think you could do a follow-up of something that happened a while ago?"

A placated Naruto paused to think about it. "Maybe an anniversary story. You know, cash in on an event that happened a while ago, talk to the people involved, get a story about how their life has changed because of it."

"We're not in this business for the cash." Sakura pointed out.

Inuzuka Kiba, who happened to be passing by at the moment, took the chance to shake his head vehemently and growl, "Not with paychecks like these."

"Oh shut up," Naruto shot at him. "You're the freaking sports editor; you get way more money than us lowly reporters."

"We lonely reporters," Sakura corrected instantly.

The blonde cocked his head, clearly confused. "You're an editor too, Sakura."

Sakura buried her head in her hands, exasperated, as Kiba gave a bark of laughter and kept walking. Sakura and Naruto reached the environment/society cubicles, and the glare the pink-haired woman shot Naruto over her shoulder as she entered the editor's office was remarkably easy to interpret: find a story.

With a groan, he sank into his maroon fake-leather swivel chair and jogged the mouse to wake up his painfully old computer. Wikipedia, here I come. The free online encyclopedia could be credited as the background information for many of Naruto's articles, and it had yet to be wrong.

Twenty minutes later, Naruto burst into Sakura's office, waving a print-out in front of her face. "I got it! Fifteen years ago to this day, the Montreal Canadiens won their 24th Stanley Cup?"

"What?" She exclaimed icily, staring uncomprehendingly at the blond idiot. "Is that all?"

"Nah, I'm just kidding, Sakura-chan." Naruto snickered, almost twitching from excitement. "Fifteen years ago to this day, the Uchiha family was massacred."

"Oh…" Sakura brought a hand up to her mouth, speaking softly. "Tell me more."

Naruto dropped the papers onto the table and plopped down into a chair, kicking back and setting his feet on the mahogany surface. "One known survivor: the younger brother, Uchiha Sasuke. It was a huge ultra-religious family; they all lived within a mile radius of each other. Every body is accounted for except for one. Itachi, the older brother."

Sakura nodded and took a seat next to Naruto, settling into her chair a tad bit more gracefully than he. She scanned over the print-out as he talked.

"Here's the kicker," He continued, eyes sparkling with intrigue. "Sasuke claims that Itachi is the one that did it."

Sakura's gaze shot up to him, her mouth literally dropping open in surprise.

"Nobody knows if it's true," Naruto shrugged, pointing to a highlighted passage. "They credit it to posttraumatic stress disorder, and there's no evidence pointing it to Itachi besides Sasuke's word. It's possible that he was kidnapped by the murderer, but like I said, his body was never found. Sasuke took over the company at age 16 – you know the one, Sharingan Corporation – and nothing ever came of the massacre. Completely unsolved crime."

"If it's a crime story, leave it to the hard news reporters," Sakura murmured vaguely, still scanning the article.

Naruto shook his head with a pout. "I'm not going to cover it from a crime angle. I'm going to do a follow-up on Sasuke himself… a features story. It'll be fine."

"I don't know, Naruto…" She winced, thinking of the stress that the poor Uchiha man must be under. "That seems kind of insensitive."

"Do you want a story or not, Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked, a strangely serious light in his normally childlike eyes.

She thought for a moment, then her own eyes hardened and she pointed out the door. "Go get me a story, and make it good."

The blonde grinned and pranced out the door, grabbing his coat and a reporter's notebook from his desk before going to seek out the Uchiha.

Twenty minutes later, he was knocking on the door of the largest mansion on which he had ever laid eyes. There were five cars in the driveway, all black and sleek and shiny. There were fountains in the yard, chandeliers in the windows, evergreens lining the walkway. This was the house of a rich megalomaniac.

The door creaked halfway open to reveal a pair of the coldest black eyes Naruto had ever seen. The eyes were set on a pale, delicate face, contrasting against feminine pink lips, but blending in perfectly with the midnight bangs that partly blocked them from view.

"Do you need something?" The owner of said eyes inquired, his voice equally chilling.

Naruto snapped to attention, remembering for what he was there. "Yeah, I'm Uzumaki Naruto from the Konoha Post, and I'm interested in doing a follow-up article to the event that happened here 15 years ago."

That's when the door slid shut.

Naruto set his jaw determinedly and knocked again, unwilling to take no for an answer.

This time, it took a full five minutes of knocking before the inhabitant of the house flung the door open, now looking royally pissed off.

"I'm not interested." The black-haired man growled, his arms crossed over his chest.

Naruto took a deep breath and prepared to make the argument of a lifetime. "I know that it seems forward to request an interview, but I can assure you, the article will be tasteful and – hold on, are you even Uchiha Sasuke?"

A hint of a smirk touched the man's lips as he nodded.

"Awesome!" Naruto pumped his fist in the air in victory. "So the article would be very tasteful and low-key, and you would definitely be able to look at it before it was printed."

Sasuke made a dramatic show of considering it before shaking his head. "Still not interested."

"How old were you at the time?" Naruto inquired, feigning innocence.

"Look, I'm not holding an interview. I don't want to be published." Sasuke glared frostily.

Naruto was stunned speechless at how very attractive this asshole was. Before, he just looked like an androgynously pretty boy. But when he glared… wowzers. Still an asshole, but a ridiculously gorgeous one.

Sasuke coughed delicately, drawing Naruto's attention away from his sculpted-in-marble jaw.

"You couldn't possibly consider it?" Naruto wheedled, about ready to genuflect in front of the guy.

"How much more mental scarring are you going to cause?" Sasuke growled, a sneer on his lips. "The media had a feeding frenzy with my parents' deaths. I might have been able to get over it, but for the fact that I couldn't leave the house for months without being mobbed by supposed well-wishers and sycophants who wanted my family's money. What more can you take from me?"

A pout sprang up on the blonde's lips, making his face look even more round and childish. "You can't blame me for something some insensitive reporter did 15 years ago."

Sasuke almost face-palmed, except that Uchiha's do not express themselves outwardly like that. "That's exactly what you're trying to do again. Make a story out of my tragedy. Make money from my pain." He hoped that would be sufficiently angsty to make the blond man leave out of guilt, but such was not the case. "Are you writing that down!"

"What!" Naruto shrugged defensively, trying to hide the small reporter's notebook from view. "It was a good quote!"

"Let me make this very clear to you," The black-haired man murmured in a throaty voice, leaning against the doorframe with insolent grace. "I assume you are familiar with the concept of death, Uzumaki."

Naruto nodded dumbly.

"If you come onto my property one more time, I will kill you." Sasuke said bluntly, pushing himself off the doorframe to lean closer to Naruto. His tone dropped into an almost crooning whisper, juxtaposing a romantic voice with somewhat less than romantic words. "I don't mean I'll-damage-your-reputation-death. I don't mean come-back-from-a-coma-after-a-week-death. I mean full-blown, buzzards-picking-at-your-mangled-corpse-in-some-godforsaken-desert-death. Are you prepared for that, Uzumaki?"

Naruto could only stare, eyes wide, at the frighteningly good-looking madman in front of him.

Sasuke leaned closer still, lingering his lips over Naruto's ear. The blonde couldn't bring his body to move back, still reeling from the Uchiha's words. "I didn't think so," Naruto heard in that same throaty whisper.

Naruto shuddered – literally shuddered – at the sensation, the contrast, of cool lips and warm breath so close to his ear. How cliché, some detached part of his brain told him disgustedly.

And Uchiha Sasuke pulled away, sent one final glare in his direction, and slammed the door in his face.