Chapter Seven ::

"Up! GET UP!"

Celesse moaned and tossed over onto her front, slamming the down pillow over her head to block out Jackie's shrill voice outside the hotel room. She had a strange, sickly feeling that she wasn't the only one ignoring it. But the assistant was used to this behavior (anyone who was as tied to Kakashi as she was had to be) and wasn't about to give up so soon. The blonde eyed her Guess watch, the numberless rectangular face glaring up at her, the second hand ticking away the minutes they all had to get their butts to the studio. She had already gotten Kakashi himself up and out of his room…and deeply regretted offering to wake the four girls up herself. If one of the actors had done it they would be dashing out to the elevators in no time.

"Come on! Lateness is not an option this morning!" she called out, fist still banging on the door. Right now, Jackie was past caring if she woke the whole hotel up. She had seen Kishimoto truly angry--last night was absolutely nothing--and despite her better judgement, would rather the younger girls not experience that.

Cel pulled her arm out from under the warm sheets and waved to her friends (knowing full well that none of them were really paying attention). "Can someone go answer the door so Jackie doesn't have a seizure or something?" Though she herself was normally a morning person, the warm bed was so suffocatingly cozy and cotton-ball soft that she wasn't about to pass it up.

She heard Lynn groan, but saw Brit stand up in the corner of her half-open eyes and shuffle over to open the door. Murmurs and mumbles. "We're getting up, Jackie. --No, I promise. We'll be down in fifteen minutes. Yeah. Bye." A door slam, some more shuffling. A slipper thwapped her head. Hard. "Get up. Everyone's downstairs already."

Celesse rolled out of bed as Brit went to wake up Brielle, then Lynn. Lynn wrenched the slipper out of her hand and chucked it right back at her. "Now, now, Lynn. Be nice. They don't know how you are in the morning."

"Whatever."

"Don't make me drag you out of bed. 'Cuz you know I will."

"Alright, alright. Break it up, people. We've gotta be downstairs in fifteen minutes!" Brit tapped her foot impatiently. "Let's get moving!"

It took what seemed like quite some time to get everyone out of the room and into the lobby downstairs, but true to Brit's word they were there in more-or-less fifteen minutes. Celesse took a bleary look at the clock above the elevators. 4:46.

Surprisingly, Kakashi was already up and munching on a bagel while lounging in a comfortable arm chair. Sasuke leaned on the table next to him, reading through a tabloid silently, a serenely happy look on his face. Kakashi motioned for them to join him. "Jackie's getting donuts and bagels," he explained simply.

Lynn perked up, unexpectedly breaking out of her dreamy stupor. "And coffee?"

"Not Starbucks, I hope," Brit added with something just short of certain distaste on the tip of her tongue.

"Nope. Dunkin' Donu--"

All of a sudden, the table Sasuke was leaning on began to tremble--his hand quivered violently with surpressed shock and confusion. And…anger…?

"Sasuke…what's up?" Brielle asked, stunned at his abrupt change of mood.

The actor slowly closed the magazine and tossed it on the table. "Nothing," he muttered unconvincingly. "Nothing that should concern you at all. Stupid tabloids."

The elevator dinged. It's golden doors slid away to allow two more fellow actors out; Sakura's pink hair was tied back in a ponytail, its original blonde color threatening to show itself at the roots, and her sparkling emerald eyes were happily laughing at some joke or the other that Itachi hadn't surpressed and he now evidently looked extremely smug with himself. For a brief moment Brielle thought she saw a flash of the on-screen Sasuke pierce through.

But it must have been her imagination.

Because no one had the recovery time of a nanosecond…right? Right. It was silly. Just a silly thought.

There wasn't time to really discuss the miniature scene that Bri thought went on. There was too much to do, to much to set up, just too much to handle all at once. She wasn't used to this. Multi-tasking wasn't hard for her, really, it was just that this was a different type of multi-tasking. One where actual work was involved.

From Cel's unusual silence, to Brit's disappearance of energy, to Lynn being even more withdrawn than normal, it was obvious that she wasn't the only one who thought so.

So it really was just icing on the cake when Sasuke pulled her off to the side to talk to her. Any normal, sane girl would faint from the opportunity (or at least sigh longingly), but Bri's mind was on other things. She didn't want to screw up like yesterday, even though it technically wasn't her fault. But as the words left her lips, she knew it was the wrong thing to say at a very wrong time. "Sasuke, can this wait? I'm sorry, but I'm kind of busy."

Silence.

Tension.

Something wasn't right.

Sasuke whipped out the tabloid he'd been reading in the lobby while they waited, flipping frantically to the page with the cover articles. Though his movements were crazed his face remained frighteningly passive, even when he practically slapped a certain headline in her hands. A bold photo of two familiar faces coming out of the studio last night greeted her.

ROMANCE ON SET?!?

Naruto's Uchiha Itachi and Haruno Sakura get together?

Brielle looked up to where the actor jabbed his finger by the cappuchino machine. Sakura was there with Itachi, chattering away again. It took a few seconds and more than a couple of blinks for the girl to put two and two together, but when she did…she was still just as confused as ever. Being confused immediately jumped to teasing.

"Aww, is someone jealous?"

The teen looked slightly infuriated at the thought. "Of course not!"

"I think you are."

"And if I'm not?"

"That's not even an option, because you--"

"AUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!"

An ear-piercing scream hit the two of them with the force of cymbals clashing right next to them, followed by plastic cups filled with what looked like smoothies splattering their contents all over the set. Sakura was the first to fall victim to the spill when she ran to help--her foot crashed into the gaffing ladder and Lynn tumbled head over heels onto both of them--Shikamaru had sleepily walked in, headed to check in with Kishimoto, unknowingly tripping over the growing heap of people--Ino, who had been brushing her long brunette hair with a nonchalante expression in her eyes when the brush slipped out of her hands and she landed face first in the stuff--Brit slipped and so did the hot coffee she was carrying--

The horror grew the longer Sasuke and Bri watched, finally leaving only the two of them and Kakashi left standing. Kakashi actually had tipped his shades down and was studying the catastrophe with a smirk written all over his face. He searched the wreckage for the source of it all, and when he found her the smirk only grew bigger.

Celesse, all the way at the bottom and covered head-to-toe in strawberry smoothie, saw his wry grin and felt a sob bubble out from her chest.