A/N: Hello again! ^^ I am back after hours of editing the second chapter of this story. Overall, I'm pleased with the outcome but I am hopeful that you will all like it as well. I'm not going to waste anymore of your time so...Enjoy! :D

Chapter Two

If there was one thing in life that Uchiha Sasuke was not sure of, it was not himself. He knew exactly who he was, the boy that he used to be, the young man he grew into and the man he became. There were some things he had done in the past that he would have liked to change. But he figured that everyone did, as well. And every waking moment, he would convince himself that those choices were what molded him into the person he was today.

Not that he was proud of who he was.

At 27, Sasuke was a loner. Predicaments in life had pushed him to build an emotional wall against people who threatened to get too close to him. Sasuke was also not a man for words. He found that unnecessary speech may lead to unnecessary conflict. Even though most of the time he did not have anything to say anyways.

It was clear that Uchiha Sasuke was not a social butterfly. Not in the slightest.

In rare times, he found a confidant in his cousin, Naruto, whose apartment he also shared with. And besides the hyperactive blond idiot he had the pleasantry of calling cousin, there was no one else. It was not like he was not granted a choice. He preferred not to get caught up in such trivial matters like relationships, love, or even feelings.

It was too much of a hassle, he convinced himself.

As a child, Sasuke was never given the privilege of having a happy childhood. A broken family was what he had been born into. The only male figure he ever respected in his life was his older brother, Itachi. Being the righteous man he was, Itachi had enlisted in the army when Sasuke was just 6. Sasuke always wondered, however, if his motive for joining the army was to escape the whirlwind of a marriage that their parents led. He never got a chance to ask him.

Two years after he enlisted, Uchiha Itachi was killed in action.

His father had more than once returned home drunk to the point where he had his blind fits of rage at anything and anyone who came too near. And every single time, Sasuke's mother would be his desired target practice. After Itachi's death, the incidents became more frequent, more violent.

Uchiha Fugaku was not a weak man. As a construction worker who had a penchant for liquor and bouts of violence, it was a wonder how his wife, Mikoto, had ever agreed to marry him. Sometimes, Sasuke pondered whether his father had truly loved his mother like he knew she loved him.

All too many times, Sasuke was reminded of how he trembled and watched in horror, as his father would slap his mother around when she had simply tried to help him. Sasuke had tried, many times to subdue his father. But being the scrawny kid he was, he always managed to anger his father even more and this brought way to more beatings on him and her mother.

At 15, Sasuke knew that he could no longer stay silent. With all the love and respect for his father already turned into hate and resentment, he decided that he would no longer stand back whenever his father tried to lay a finger on his mother and him, ever again. And so, he learnt how to fight. Be it on the ring, on the streets or wherever, Uchiha Sasuke became a fighter. And a very good one at that.

So when the time came and his father had once again returned home in his violent, drunken stupor, Sasuke no longer stood as the trembling young boy he once was when his father had thrown his mother to the floor after she reprimanded him for drinking again. Call it instinct, or maybe a long-awaited reflex. But whatever it was, it prompted Sasuke to deliver a powerful blow to his father's jaw with so much fury, fueled by years of neglect and abuse. The cracking sound when Sasuke's fist came in contact with his father's face resounded throughout their entire house. And he still remembered what had happened after that.

The blow had sent Uchiha Fugaku sprawling on the floor, sputtering blood from his mouth. Mikoto screamed in horror as she witnessed her son towering over her husband, eyes filled with uncontrollable hatred. Fugaku then looked up at Sasuke with an expression so blank and emotionless that it was as if his soul had just left him. After what seemed like forever, he simply picked himself up off the floor and walked out the door silently.

He never returned since.

Never once had Sasuke regretted what he had done for his mother that night. He knew he had saved her from further abuse she did not deserve at all from the man she loved. He, on the other hand, knew he could never be saved. His past had made him into a brooding man with no purpose in life. A man who only knew how to fight, survive and go on with the motions of life. It was no wonder that he found no reason to delve into love. He just wasn't the type to, he had more than once said to himself.

Nevertheless, one would think someone so silent, antisocial and void of emotion would be unattractive.

One could also be completely wrong.

After years of physical exercise and training, Uchiha Sasuke had achieved a well-defined, muscular but lean physique. He stood at the height of 6'2" and easily towered almost everyone he knew. He had thick, ebony black hair that always appeared tousled and disheveled, dark locks always kept at bay by the motion of him running his hand through his hair. With strong and defining facial features, he made women swoon at the glimpse of him and men scramble away in fear when he glared at them. His eyes were the color of charcoal, so dark and intense that they mirrored exactly what Sasuke felt at all times. In definition, Sasuke was the epitome of tall, dark, and dangerously handsome.

He however, did not appreciate that fact.

Sasuke could remember on more than one occasion where had to practically pry away women who were literally salivating at the sight of him. His looks that he had inherited undoubtedly from his mother drew so much unwanted attention from the female species that he had either three options to throw off their distasteful advances:

1. Glare at them with killer intent.

2. Mention something rude about their physical appearances, and,

3. Pretend that he was gay.

Option 1 and 2 were almost always never effective. When option 3 was always chosen, women would always laugh in return and stalk off in the opposite direction, saying how it all made sense as too why Sasuke was too fit and good-looking.

Like hell was he gay.

All in all, Sasuke was pretty sure of himself.

But if there was one matter that Uchiha Sasuke found himself at loss, it would be how to do laundry.

He looked down at the rather large laundry basket he was carrying with both his arms, scrunching his nose in disgust at the ominous smell coming from underneath the pile of dirty shirts, socks, pants, and yellow briefs. Sasuke frowned. These were not even his laundry to begin with.

And he suspected the briefs in the basket used to be white.

Sasuke entered the nearest Laundromat he could find, a few blocks away from him and Naruto's apartment. As soon as he stepped into the facility, he was overwhelmed by the smell of detergent and perfume. He inwardly paled as he realized that the only people present in said facility were of the female species.

Almost instantaneously, he felt the eyes of all five females from different corners of the room ogling at him. Sasuke silently fumed and his grip on the basket tightened as he made his way towards the counter, ignoring the increasingly seductive smile the woman behind the counter was giving him. He was immediately reminded of why he was in a self-service laundry with a basketful of disgusting clothes that he did not own and attention that was not desired in the least.

Naruto, his blasted distant cousin –more than twice removed- was usually given the privilege to do all the laundry, both his and Sasuke's while Sasuke was in charge of overall maintenance of the apartment. God, the more he thought about it, they sounded like a couple. With that thought, Sasuke resisted the urge to puke in his mouth. He swatted the thought away.

This week, Naruto had apparently forgotten to do his laundry but had conveniently remembered to do Sasuke's. So he had the nerve to send 23 text messages to him, pleading him to do his laundry as he was busy with a girl doing God-knows-what in God-knows-where.

The constant beeping of his cell phone earlier this afternoon had distracted Sasuke from a much needed run he usually had to clear his mind.

'Hey, bro. 4got to do my laundry. Did yours tho. Mind helping me do it? Pretty please?' The first out of the 23 messages had read. It was a message that Sasuke felt obliged to ignore, if not for the other 22 messages on his cell.

'Come on Sasu-channnnnnnnnn. Help out ur dear old cuzin.' Another one had read, to which Sasuke just rolled his eyes at before deleting it.

'Wif Amy now…or Aly? Kinda tied up now so…hows about sum mercy?' Sasuke snorted in response before deleting that one, too.

It was the last of the troublesome messages that really caught him.

'You should know that I dun hve any clean clothes so I'm wearing ur shirt, ur pants, and ur briefs. Wherever that went.'

With that message, Sasuke had immediately changed course and bolted for his apartment to pick up Naruto's laundry. In lieu to his run back to the apartment, Sasuke made a mental note to annihilate his cousin if ever the clothing he had borrowed was to have any sort of mysterious stain on them.

'The dobe never fails to surprise me.' Sasuke thought to himself has he practically slammed the basket of dirty laundry on the counter in front of him.

The woman manning the counter had her face caked in make up and her hair dyed bright orange. Bobo, as her name tag read, seemingly did not notice the seething anger coming out from the man in front of her as she still wore that alluring smile on her face. She leaned over on the counter, exposing a hefty amount of cleavage from her low-cut black tank top. Sasuke quirked his eyebrow at her attempt at seduction, inwardly sniggering at her name.

'Bobo-chan? What kind of self-respecting parent would name their kid that?' Sasuke thought.

"Hey, handsome… What can I do for you?" Bobo said breathily while batting her fake eyelashes at him. Sasuke wondered if that was supposed to sound sexy. 'Cause he was not attracted.

He grunted in annoyance. To be honest, his didn't know how Laundromats worked. In all 27 years of his life, never once had he stepped inside such place before. So far, he already decided he did not like Laundromats. He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. It was then that he realized that he has yet to reply the counterwoman. Though she did not appear to mind as she was busy running her eyes from his chiseled face and down to the ripples of his toned arms behind the sleeves of the black t-shirt he wore.

He glared at her in return. "Wash these clothes." Sasuke uttered rather rudely, shoving the basket of rancid clothes up to her face. One of the yellow briefs fell out of the bucket and onto the counter.

Bobo eyed the soiled brief warily before resuming into her seductive manner. "Why you're a dirty boy aren't you?" She recoiled, batting her eyelashes once more. Disgusted, Sasuke decided to ignore the innuendo in her words and glared at her with much more intensity.

"Just wash them." He said through gritted teeth. "Do I pay you up front?"

She giggled at this and her high-pitched voice rang through his ears. Sasuke questioned if one could be diagnosed with audio impairment simply by such a horrid laugh comparative to that of a banshee's call.

"We can do it however you want it, handsome-kun." She purred and leaned even more forward. At this point, Uchiha Sasuke had had an eyeful of the orange bra Bobo-chan was wearing underneath her tank top. It matched her hair.

'How cheap and distasteful.'

Obviously fuming, he shoved his hand into the left pocket of his jeans, took out a fifty and threw it at the counter. "I'm not interested." He spat out. This caused the woman in front of him to pout exaggeratingly. At this point, he didn't care how much it actually cost to wash the bucketful of clothes, but he just needed to get the hell out of there. The uncomfortable ogling stares coming from the other females in the vicinity did not help as well. With that, he turned on his heel and headed towards the door.

"But-"

"I'll be back in two hours." Sasuke immediately uttered as he yanked the door open and stepped outside of the Laundromat.

There, right outside the entrance of the Laundromat, he shut his eyes for a brief second, trying to suppress the growing irritation coming from every crevice of his soul. Sasuke did not know why he was always subjected into situations all because of his looks and persona. Did women really crave for the attention of worthless, emotionless men?

When he opened his eyes, he saw a middle-aged woman across the road wearing a jumpsuit that was practically too tight for her. She was winking and blowing him a kiss. Furrowing his eyebrows at this, he turned to his left and started walking.

'Yes. They do.' Sasuke thought.

He put his hands in his pocket and paced along the street, not knowing where he was headed for. He only knew that it was comforting to get lost in the crowd, blending in and not getting noticed. But since he was practically taller than everyone, 'blending in' proved to be a much difficult task. He was thankful that there were no lustful females in sight, though. After a while, Sasuke figured it was a good four blocks away from the Laundromat. He heaved a sigh of relief.

It was then that he sensed something was wrong.

He stopped dead in his tracks. And there it was.

In the corner of his eyes he noticed three shady men, all dressed in black. They were big and burly, faces stoic and hard. They had stopped walking just as Sasuke stopped in his tracks. His eyes hardened.

'Trouble.' He thought to himself.

Pretending as if he didn't realize a thing, he ran his fingers through his hair and resumed walking, in a faster pace than he was. The three men went trailing after him, just as he thought they would. Sasuke tried weaving in an out of the crowd, but they always caught up with him. He grunted in annoyance.

'They want trouble? I'll give them trouble.'

He headed for the back alley he knew very well that was close to his apartment. And when he reached the familiar junction, he turned swiftly to his left, away from the crowds and walked further into the alley. The men mimicked his actions. It was secluded and quiet, and Sasuke had to avoid the disgusting liquid pools of God-knows-what on the floor. When he reached the end of the alley, he was satisfied that nobody was in the area apart from him and the three buffoons. He took his hands out of his pockets and stopped his pace, turning back to face the three men.

"What do you want?" Sasuke uttered nonchalantly. The three men's faces instantaneously broke into equally malicious smiles. This prompted Sasuke to roll his eyes. 'Are they triplets or something?'

"You owe Mr. Tobi a large amount of money, Uchiha." One of the men, sporting a crew cut and a chipped tooth, quipped.

"Yeah, yeah, and it's long overdue." Another one, with cornrows and nose piercings, added with a gruff voice.

"So we're here to remind you of how bad it is.." The third one sporting a sleeve of tattoos on his right arm started. "..To mess with Mr. Tobi." He cracked his knuckles, no doubt to add for the dramatic effect.

Sasuke chuckled in return. "I'm afraid I am a bit broke at the moment." He said nonchalantly, realizing that the fifty he gave to Bobo at the Laundromat was probably the last his current life savings.

"So why don't you save your pathetic attempts at intimidating me for some other dude who would buy into that amount of bullshit the three of you just said." Sasuke added, flashing them his trademark smirk.

"You son of a bitch!" Chipped-tooth yelled, red-faced with anger as he started barreling towards Sasuke with his fists clenched.

See? Somewhere deep in his conscience, Sasuke knew that unnecessary speech led to unnecessary conflict.

The Uchiha merely swayed to the right to evade Chipped-tooth's punch, and subsequently to the left at his pathetic attempt of a roundhouse kick. With speed only a trained fighter with his experience could, Sasuke grabbed him by the left wrist and twisted Chipped-tooth's left arm around to his back and delivered a swift, powerful blow to his jaw. This sent Chipped-tooth falling to his knees as he looked up at Sasuke, gaping in horror. Sasuke raised his eyebrows in amusement.

Chipped-tooth had indeed, chipped another tooth.

His trail of thought was disrupted when he noticed Cornrows and Tattoos were both charging towards him. Sasuke jumped away from his position when Tattoos practically tried to pummel him to the ground. Knowing that he was significantly leaner and lighter that Tattoos, Sasuke decided staying still was probably not a good decision. He then strategically elbowed Tattoos at the back of his neck with enough force to cause him to land face-first on the ground. Tattoos laid there, twitching and groaning in pain, just as Sasuke had expected.

Sasuke then directed his attention to Cornrows, who was by then standing in fear at the sight of his fallen comrades. Sasuke walked slowly towards Cornrows, glaring with ferocity and cracking his knuckles for the dramatic effect, like Tattoos had done earlier.

Now if there was one thing that was undeniable about Uchiha Sasuke, it would be that he had a deadly aura about him. And it was this same killer intent seemingly seeping out of him that caused Chipped-tooth to practically haul Tattoos on his back and scramble away from the terrifying scene. Cornrows shakily stood in front of him, eyes filled with fear as Sasuke inched nearer to him.

"Get lost." Sasuke said through gritted teeth.

It was at that second that Cornrows hastily reached inside his jacket to pull out a concealed gun. Aiming the gun at Sasuke, Cornrows chuckled sadistically. Sasuke stood unperturbed, his eyes moving from the barrel of the gun towards the eyes of his opponent. He was inwardly satisfied at the look of fear in his eyes. Sasuke knew that Cornrows' fear could be his chance to get out of the dangerous situation.

And so, with a jerk of Sasuke's arm, Cornrows was seen running away for his dear life.

"Coward." Sasuke muttered at Cornrows' retreating figure and cursed when he realized his own rapidly beating heart.

He could've been shot then.

It was a simple thought. Something that instantly crept into his mind at the thought of him dying from a gunshot.

If he really had been shot dead in this alleyway, would anyone mourn for him?

Naruto? Maybe. But was there anyone else?

Uchiha Sasuke ran his hands through his hair and looked up to the graying sky. Feeling the first drop of rain fall down on his cheek, he closed his eyes and sighed.

No.

He was alone.

Nobody loved him.

"Hey Sasuke-teme! You really did do my laundry!" Naruto exclaimed joyfully after he had returned home from his date wearing his blue button-down shirt, his beloved faded jeans and for all he knew, his prized tomato-print boxers.

'That's probably soiled beyond doubt.' Sasuke thought grudgingly as he pretended to be asleep on the couch. After the fight with the three buffoons and the subsequent emotional epiphany he had, Sasuke was beat. And dealing with a moron would not lessen the fatigue but instead do otherwise.

"You're not such a jackass after all!" Naruto added, his robust laughter filling the entire apartment.

Sasuke could hear Naruto sorting through the fresh laundry, probably marveling at how clean and white his boxers were.

"Errrr…" Naruto suddenly uttered in confusion. This caused Sasuke to quirk an eyebrow, as he continued his fake slumber.

"Sasuke, what's an orange bra doing in my laundry?" Naruto quipped quizzically, holding up the brightly-colored undergarment with his left hand. Sasuke opened his eyes immediately and looked at Naruto.

Naruto then held up a folded piece of paper to his face, scrunching his nose as he opened and read it. "It says 'Call Me'."

This caused Sasuke to furrow his eyebrows in disgust. "Hn." He simply uttered in reply.

The blonde then put the paper down and looked at Sasuke, his eyes narrowed and his nose scrunched up in disapproval.

"Who in their right mind of fuck would name their child Bobo?"

Sasuke smirked to himself and closed his eyes once more in hopes of catching some real sleep.

And that's it! Hope you enjoyed chapter two of 'My Bodyguard & I' :D I know it's brutal for me to kill off Itachi in this story but hey, I'm just staying true to what's supposed to happen :) I'm going through my A-levels Exam currently so I probably won't be updating as often as I'd like but I'll be sure to continue this story :)

So thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day!