Marionette
Everyone noticed how he manipulated her, everyone but her. AU
Disclaimer: The big reveal! Find this story now cross posted to AO3. M for bad boys.
Chapter 8
Now that finals week had wrapped up, Sakura found herself with a week-long break leading up to graduation.
She had been hoping to spend some of the downtime with Sasuke. However, she was finding it difficult to coordinate after he'd picked her up from campus last week and bestowed her with her own fully stocked panty drawer at his house.
Not for the first time of late, she wondered what he was doing that was eating up so much of his time.
On Monday afternoon he'd responded with a short and concise message promising to pick her up on Thursday night at 6 p.m, but then he'd said nothing since. It was now Wednesday.
"Sakura!" Ino snapped.
"Huh?" Sakura whipped her head up from her phone and looked at Ino from her spot on the corner of their couch.
"Were you even listening to me?" Ino asked, one hand on her hip in irritation.
She was in the kitchen making herself a salad and Sakura... Sakura was texting Sasuke to zero response.
"What's up with you? Finals are over! It's time to relax, have a margarita, live a little... choke on the sweet air of freedom!" Ino punched the air with a well manicured fist and then tightened her high ponytail and walked over to the couch with her salad bowl.
Sakura smiled and picked at the edge of her green maxi dress.
Ino shoved a fork full of lettuce into her mouth and then turned on the television in front of them.
Sakura considered her words carefully. Knowing Ino was not a fan of him, she didn't want to incite any anger or make Sasuke look even worse in Ino's eyes.
"Sasuke has been," she began. Ino tensed and stabbed an avocado slice onto her fork with extra vigor. "Busy a lot? Lately," she continued.
Ino's eyes were drilled on her plate, her mouth now in a thin line.
The blonde sniffed loudly, took a breath and then bluntly asked, "So what, you think he's seeing someone else?"
Sakura's mouth dropped open. She deposited her phone on the coffee table and adjusted her bra straps.
"Ino! No! No... I don't think that," she shook her head.
Her mind briefly drifted to the way Sasuke subtly doted on her, the strong feelings she was without a doubt certain he harbored for her and could not see infidelity as a plausible reality. Quite frankly, he was too obsessive over her and too indifferent towards anyone else for that to ring true.
Ino put her half eaten plate onto the table and turned her body towards her pink haired friend.
"Then what?"
Sakura picked at a fingernail and looked towards the dining table behind Ino. She looked out the dining room window and spotted a bird fly across the backdrop of a blue sky.
"I'm not sure," she finished lamely, shrugging her shoulders and looking down at Ino's hands.
Ino snapped her fingers and Sakura looked up. She blew out a breath that moved her ashy bangs forward and sharply demanded, "How's the sex?"
Sakura choked on her own spit. She could feel her face getting hot.
"Wh-what?"
"You heard me."
"It's very..." Sakura recalled waking up last week to his head between her legs and blushed further. "Passionate," she finished.
Ino scoffed, "I'm sure."
Ino stood up to take her plate back to the kitchen.
"Well, if it was nonexistent and tame, I'd tell you you have something to be worried about."
Sakura nodded her head in agreement. She heard the clang of Ino's plate on the counter.
"Maybe he's a drug dealer?" Ino joked.
Sakura laughed. She pictured Sasuke standing on a street corner selling dope and shook her head at the thought. Sasuke was a little too... refined for that sort of thing. Did drug dealers even stand on street corners anymore?
She saw Ino's body disappear as she bent over to open the fridge.
"Wanna drink?" Ino asked.
And so they dropped the topic and drank into the night.
Sasuke paused his movements to lift up his hand and eye the dirt collecting under his fingernails with distaste.
"What's wrong pretty boy? Thought you could found a black market website that lets people hire contract killers and not get your stupid Nancy-boy piano hands dirty?" Suigetsu flashed his sharp teeth at him, wiped the sweat off his brow and continued to plow his shovel into the ground.
Sasuke lifted his eyes at his companion's commentary and scowled.
"Shut up."
He dropped his hand back to his own shovel, grunted and continued to drill into the dirt. The sun was setting rapidly, and the darkness of twilight was fast to consume everything around them.
"What?" Suigetsu threw the dirt uncaringly over his shoulder. "It's just fascinating is all," he slurred.
Sasuke jammed the blade of the shovel into the ground and placed both of his filthy hands on the wood of the handle, proceeding to glower at the imbecile in front of him.
"You find it fascinating," he started softly, "That I am put out by the fact that we are standing here, in the middle of nowhere... Digging a shallow grave to bury a bunch of—a bunch of FUCKING RANDOM LIMBS, that YOU," his voice was crescendoing with every sentence, but he stopped here to breath deeply.
"That YOU, were supposed to handle the disposal of, through the PROPER CHANNELS," he spit into the dirt, "We have protocols for a reason you dipshit!" he concluded.
He would have pinched the bridge of his nose if his hands weren't covered in grime.
Suigetsu stopped his shoveling to look up at this. He grinned wide. Entertained.
"Lighten up Boss-man! We're not just digging a shallow grave, we're going to pour concrete over it too!"
Seething, Sasuke looked away, grumbled under his breath, and pulled out his main cell phone. He'd turned all location data, cell network services and sensor data off before driving out to meet up with his... henchman (for there was no better word for Suigetsu). He eyed the unread message from Sakura from three hours prior that he had yet to address. Skimming the message quickly, he shoved the phone back into his pocket and then clapped his hands together.
"Hurry the fuck up, I need to pick up my girlfriend."
He was late. So late to pick her up. She'd been texting and calling him all week, and he'd promised to get her tonight. He inwardly seethed some more at Suigetsu's blatant negligence. This week was hell. Mess after mess needed to be addressed or cleaned up and he'd had no time. His hands were so tight on the steering wheel that he felt like the skin on his knuckles was going to rip open. These kind of oversights would be what got them caught. If it happened again, he thought darkly, he would pay Juugo to put a hit on Suigetsu and be done with it.
He needed to change. He needed to wash his hands, take a shower. He needed to switch cars. But he was running so behind that he wouldn't be able to craft a valid excuse to get out of this. Sakura wasn't a fool, he knew she was getting suspicious of what he was doing when she wasn't around.
He groaned as he slowed down at what felt like the tenth red light in a row. Once he was close enough to the city, he would turn his cell connection back on.
There was a very specific mile marker he had to cross to ensure his cell pinged a tower within the vicinity of the city limits rather than some random ass bumble fuck tower outside of the area.
As he passed the marker, he deftly lifted his phone from the center console and tapped into the settings to bring it back online. He had done this so many times lately, that muscle memory took over. He didn't look down.
He was driving one of his older cars, so did not have the capability to connect his cell to the Bluetooth navigation.
The phone vibrated multiple times with a backlog of messages. He side eyed the screen.
Naruto. Naruto. Sakura. Sakura. Sakura. Sakura. Itachi. Sakura.
He tapped into her most recent message before delving to messages from farther back, and he stiffened at the note.
"I'm already at your house. Itachi picked me up."
White, hot, anger flooded through his veins. He considered pulling over to quell his rage, but kept driving instead. What the fuck? What was she doing texting Itachi to fucking pick her up? She couldn't take an Uber or some shit? A taxi? On top of that, what was his pestering older brother even still in town for?! He bashed his hand on the steering wheel, accidentally honking the horn. He could see the shadow of the driver in front of him turning around in their seat. Sasuke instinctually flicked them off.
"Piece of shit, fuck you!" he uttered.
He took a deep breath through his nostrils and let it out of his mouth as he picked up speed on the road.
Okay, okay, he thought to himself. This way, I can just wash up in the downstairs bathroom after I park the car. Change into clothes from the laundry room. Look presentable. Not show up looking like I just dug a fucking backwoods grave, he placated to himself.
Ugh. This was the sort of shit he paid other people to do. This was insane!
This. This was insane. Not him. He was fine.
Sasuke came up the steps from the garage and lower level of the house toweling his hair dry. His clothes were clean and presentable, a freshly pressed flannel, t-shirt, jeans and some striped socks. Stripes were cool, he thought absently. Like really straight. He looked down at his sock. 15 stripes. 180 degrees a line. Or were they considered circles instead of lines since they wrapped around his foot? 360 degrees a circle then.
He had shoved his old clothes covered in dirt, sweat and blood into a garbage bag along with his sneakers. He'd thrown it all out in the dumpster at the lower level of the house. He could hear Sakura's lilting voice carrying over from the kitchen. She was talking to Itachi. Again. Inwardly he groaned.
He rounded the corner with the towel now around his neck. Itachi saw him first. Sakura was facing the other way.
There were a couple empty beer bottles on the table at the bay window between them. They were drinking together. How fucking cute. He scowled as he approached the table and sat down next to Sakura.
"Hi!" she bubbled.
"I was worried about you, what happened?" she questioned.
He could tell she was already well on her way to smashed.
"How long have you been home?" she asked puzzled.
"You took a shower?" she was asking questions a mile a minute.
He was looking at Sakura but could feel his brother's gaze focused on him. He was staring him down with that stupid ass neutral expression on his face. He wanted to claw that smug calculating look right off his goddamn body. Fucking righteous ass Itachi.
"You have dirt," he started, "all under your fingernails," he finished.
His eyes dropped to Sasuke's left hand.
Sasuke looked away from Sakura and peered down momentarily.
FUCK.
Looking back up at Itachi, he lifted his eyebrow as he slid his hand under the table and away from sight. Guilty.
He said nothing.
Itachi eyed him a moment longer before breaking the eye contact and taking a swig of his beer.
TBC...