WARNING: There will be graphic depictions of sex in this fic, as well as NaruSaku cheating. If this is not your kind of story, please do not read any further. Also some OOCness.
A/N: So this was a side-project I began during Finals week to specifically avoid writing my 8 page ethics paper. I debated on actually uploading just because of the story's nature and the extremely graphic lemons; I figured I'd probably get many flames, but what the heck. This fic was supposed to be a SHORT project, but so far I have about 7 chapters written. I guess we'll just have to see, as I also need to work on Captain! xD The last thing i'd like to mention: Although his parents are dead in this fic, this Sasuke is a non-mass Sasuke, and he's very much how i'd imagine to be without having witnessed a murder at 8 years old.
My Bestfriend's Girlfriend
Chapter one
x
One Year Earlier
.
.
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Regret.
A feeling all too familiar for 21 year old sophomore law student; Sasuke Uchiha.
There isn't a moment he doesn't feel it—not a day that goes by that it doesn't flirt with his mind, taunting and teasing him with what could have been.
Of course, there are times when the regret is more tolerable than others. Like the times he's four hours deep in his studies on the fifth floor of the library; far, far away from reality, where he can pretend that he is happy with himself—with his choices.
Or the times when sleep doesn't find him and he trudges to the bars downtown, long after midnight. Where he throws back shot after shot and the acrid burn of whisky glides down the tight walls of his throat just before he puts his head down on the sticky bar top.
But as he sits in the middle of the Student Union across the table from his two best friends—whom are very openly in a relationship—it's especially times like these when regret comes back with a fiery vengeance, a sharp dagger twisting in his chest and a foul bitterness in the back of his throat as the Uchiha is forced to avert his gaze with every peck of the lips, every sweet giggle, every brush of his tan fingers through her pink hair.
Sasuke looks up at the high-vaulted ceiling, at the several wall-mounted TVs around the room, at a therapy dog's panting tongue as it stares at him from under a table across the room as if it can sense his discomfort—anywhere but the couple right in front of him.
Naruto leans in and whispers into her ear, thinking his deep voice has some semblance of secrecy.
It doesn't.
"I love you, Sakura."
She blushes, hiding her coy smile behind a sip of cola that Sasuke knows is diet; no ice.
He also knows, without looking, that the half eaten sandwich on her plate is absent of pickles, dotted with light mayo, extra cheese, and no onions. He knows, without checking, that her fries are lightly salted and that the prongs of her plastic fork are snapped off because of her irrational superstition that unused plastic utensils are bad luck.
He knows, without checking under the table, that her right foot is tapping. A childlike tic she does when she's feeling particularly fidgety and bit bashful—a habit she's had since they were eight years old.
Sasuke inhales sharply before breathing out slow and steady, once again averting his obsidian eyes and taking an absent sip of water when Naruto feeds her a fry.
It isn't that he isn't happy for his two best friends.
But as Sasuke chances another look across the table, unconsciously glaring at the blond idiot of a guy he considers his brother on a good day, he can't help but think the same selfish sentence he's been torturing himself with for the last six years now.
That should be me.
Not Naruto and Sakura.
Not Sakura and Naruto.
Sasuke and Sakura.
It has a ring to it, he thinks, even as Naruto obnoxiously pecks her cheek once more, not even bothering to hide their wanton display of affection in front of the third member of their trio.
Most days, he thinks he's used to it. After six years, he should be.
But it's times like these, as they sit in front of him and openly taunt him with what he can never have, that he knows he'll never be used to it.
Sasuke closes his eyes, swallowing his petty jealousy with another swig of water.
It's his own fault, he knows; he is the only one to blame in this fucked up equation. Knows just how terribly he screwed up once upon a time.
'I love you so much I can't even stand it.'
The whisper of an anguished Sakura pouring her heart out to him on her twelfth birthday party in the blackness of her closet—the result of the two of them having been chosen in a stupid game of 7 minutes in heaven—plays more frequently in his head than should ever be allowed.
But his own voice from that evening haunts him even more.
'Learn how to take a hint, Sakura. If love is what you want, Naruto's right outside. But leave me out of it. You and me are just friends—that's all we've ever been and that's all we'll ever be. So don't fuck this up between us.'
At twelve years old, girls were the last thing that had been on Sasuke's mind. Let alone love in any form. And with six minutes still to spare, he had left the closet without so much as a glance back.
And he knows now that if he would have, he would have seen for himself the permanent way in which her heart shattered into a million pieces—the way her face crumpled with grief, tears trembling around her red-rimmed eyes before they slid down her cheeks and collided beneath her quivering chin.
Instead, he had simply returned to his spot in the circle just outside, cross-legged and uncaring, where all of their friends looked to him in confusion before Sakura burst from the closet in a mess of tears. She had ran up to her room and hadn't come out for the rest of the night.
Needless to say, her birthday had ended the moment she slammed the door shut.
'What the hell did you do to her in there!?' Naruto had jumped to his feet and stomped over to him, snarling before he shoved Sasuke's chest with a force that nearly knocked him onto his back.
Broke her heart, he should have said and let the idiot beat his ass right then and there, like he so rightfully deserved.
Instead, unbothered and cruel, he had simply looked up at Naruto with nothing but emptiness in his onyx eyes: 'Nothing she won't remember in a day or two.'
But nine years later, he knows it's the one thing she does remember.
To this day, that hesitance still lingers in her eyes when she looks at him sometimes. When she smiles at him. When she laughs with him. Always it is there; as if even the tiniest slip up might provoke him into repeating those same words he had said to her that night all those years ago, no matter how irrational the idea may be.
Every shared glance is a sickening reminder of his mistake. Of what could have been, and what will never be. A reminder that his distant words echo in her heart as much as it does his.
Back then, he saw it every time she looked at him, too. The hesitance in her emerald orbs every time they hung out together, the few inches she would put between them when they sat next to one another—at school, at the dinner table of Naruto's house, on her living room couch where they used to comfortably fall asleep on each other as the credits screen rolled on the TV before them.
The dwindling frequency of her texts, the slow but sure distance she had begun to put between them without him even realizing it.
All of the signs had been there—all the little ways in which she had been slipping from his fingers. Ways in which she had begun to trail behind him instead of next to him when the three of them walked home from school, ways in which she switched seats at the lunch table so that she didn't have to look at him, ways in which she stopped calling the house and Itachi had to double check with her parents to make sure she had been okay.
All of it had been happening right in front of him.
He had just never thought to look.
And over the painful period of their childhood, she had begun to gravitate towards Naruto—filled the gap in her heart with the next best thing. The white knight in shining armor, given reason to grow closer to her all because Sasuke had been a blind fucking fool.
Although she and Sasuke had managed to remain best friends, grew even closer in their adult years—ever since that day, an invisible wall had slowly wedged between them, brick by brick; built by his own callous words.
Words he should have never, ever said.
Words he still thinks about every night before he closes his eyes and begs the universe for sleep.
And as he looks at her now, across the table but worlds apart, he wishes more than anything that he could take it all back. Wishes he could relive that night all over again. But instead of taking a sledge hammer to her twelve year old heart, he would slam his lips upon hers and spend far more than just 7 minutes in that stuffy little closet.
Regret—so much of it. And everyday that he sees her pretty little smile, full of so much kindness and affection, not for him but for Naruto, it tears him apart just a bit more.
Because as it was, it had been far too late.
Too late that Sasuke realized he's in love with Sakura Haruno, and has been for a very, very long time.
And nothing hurts more than watching the one you love, love somebody else.
A/N: Please don't forget to review and let me know what you think! :D ~Sloshi