Author's Notes: This is a deleted scene from The Valley of the End, which I wrote the first draft of in… March 2016. :))) If you're not reading TVOTE, you might want to skip this little fic.
Unfortunately, there's no way to edit this scene that works in the story now, since the plot of TVOTE went in a wildly different direction.
In this version of events (which I've abandoned) Sasuke's parents live far longer than they do in the current story and he never becomes Hokage. Sakura doesn't get captured, and she and Sasuke spend years apart, fighting on opposite sides of the war. Sasuke eventually betrays his family, joins the resistance at the eleventh hour, and turns the tide against the Uchiha regime, which contributes to his parents' deaths. This scene takes place a few months after the war ends, with Sasuke and Sakura back in Konoha.
Obviously, most of those elements have already been left on the cutting room floor. As for the rest, some heavily altered plot points may or may not appear in future chapters of TVOTE.
Take your best guess! ;)
So, TVOTE has changed so much that this is entirely spoiler-free. But it's a very angsty, NSFW moment that might-have-been if I'd stuck to my original plan, and I thought some of you might like to see it!
.
.
AS LONG AS YOU'LL STAY
"sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love"
- Gabriel Garcí a Márquez -
.
.
Sakura waits up for Sasuke, even though he told her not to. She makes tea, reads the first few chapters of an old medical tome she borrowed from Tsunade, paces, sits, and paces again. He can take care of himself, she knows that, but lately Sasuke has been so angry and unpredictable that Sakura is afraid he might do something stupid, like try to leave the village. Every day he's trapped in Konoha, unallowed to escape the site of his family's ruin, forced to watch as the Leaf rebuilds itself over Uchiha graves, he grows less and less forgiving. She isn't sure who it is he blames the most: himself, or her.
The new guard mistrusts Sasuke and what's left of the Uchiha Clan hates him. Last week, Masami—who lost her father and two sisters in the final battle—slapped him across the face in the middle of the market square and called him a traitor.
He came home that night with a red mark high on his cheek, and when she tried to heal it, he pushed her away gently and said, "No, don't."
Sakura is too worried to sleep, but at four o'clock in the morning she goes to bed anyway. She strips down to a T-shirt and underwear, curls up on her side, and stares out the open window at the night sky, watching as it fades from starry black to twilight grey.
Then she hears a key jiggling in the lock, the creak of her rust-hinged door opening, a snap as it shuts again. His tread is almost too light to hear, but Sakura knows the cadence of his footsteps, no matter how quiet. By the time he reaches the bedroom, she's decided to feign sleep. To pretend that she hasn't been up all night, wishing for him to come home. She keeps her eyes closed, her breathing slow and steady, as he undresses and slips into bed beside her.
"I thought I told you not to wait up for me," Sasuke says.
Sakura opens her eyes, but she can't quite look at him. "I—I didn't. I just couldn't sleep."
"Hn. I know you can lie better than that."
Part of her wants to get mad, to argue, but tonight Sakura feels too tired and too guilty for those things. Besides, she knows it's what he wants, to draw out her temper so they can shout at one another, and there's a contrary part of her that just wants to deny him the satisfaction.
Sasuke pushes her onto her back and gets on his knees between her legs, right in her field of vision. Sakura turns her face away, but he catches her by the chin and makes her look at him. He's impatient and angry and beautiful. His breath smells like shochu, but she can tell by the precision of his movements and speech that even if he was drunk earlier tonight, he isn't anymore. And there's another scent on him, something completely foreign and utterly out of place, the faintest trace of lavender. A woman's perfume.
"Who were you with?"
The words hurt to speak, but she has to. Sakura spent so much time sharing him with Masami, and she doesn't think she can stand to do it ever again.
When he asks, "Does her name really matter?" she nearly chokes on her jealousy.
She won't cry in front of him. She won't. "Did you have sex with her?"
"No," Sasuke says. "We had one drink together, and when she invited me to go home with her I turned her down."
The thought of another woman at his side, close enough to leave traces of her perfume on his clothes, still makes Sakura want to scream.
"What would the point be?" Sasuke asks. "If anything could make me stop wanting you, betrayal would have done it already, don't you think?"
She hates it when he talks like this, when he reminds her of the awful things she's done.
He puts his hands on her hips, hooks his fingers under the waistband of her blue cotton panties, and slides them down her legs.
"What—what are you doing?"
It's a stupid question, but he hasn't touched her in so long, and she can't believe that he'd start now of all times.
"Fucking you," he says. "If you want me to."
For the last few weeks, when they've fallen into bed together and turned their backs on each other, she's been on the verge of begging him to take her, to have her however he desires. Now he's offering, and Sakura isn't sure what to say. She needs him with a kind of desperation that would embarrass her if she wasn't beyond caring, but she knows this is a bad idea, and she'll regret it tomorrow, if not sooner.
She pulls her shirt over her head, baring herself to him, and opens her legs in answer.
Sasuke sucks in an unsteady breath. When he grasps her thighs and holds them open, she can feel that his hands are shaking. He just looks at her for a long moment, his dark eyes drinking in the sight of her naked beneath him, and she remembers, suddenly, the first time they did this. How he told her she was beautiful as if it was a simple, indisputable fact and not a matter of opinion.
He pulls her to the edge of the bed, gets on the floor, on his knees, and presses kisses to the inside of her right thigh. Higher and higher, until she's trembling with anticipation. He pauses a breath from where she needs him most, and looks up at her, eyes flashing with some emotion she can't discern.
Sasuke waits for her to say please before he finally runs his tongue over her.
She whimpers his name and grips his hair. His mouth working between her legs feels impossibly good, and even after so long apart he remembers exactly how she likes this. Whatever other cruelties he's visited upon her lately, he doesn't withhold the pleasure she's seeking. He makes her come within minutes, and she's still reeling from the shock of it when he gets back on the bed, turns her over onto her stomach, and pushes his cock inside her. Sasuke presses her into the bed, his chest and stomach flush against her back, heavy, but far from feeling burdensome. She doesn't know if he's taking her this way because he remembers how she loves it, or if he simply doesn't want to see her face.
Sakura buries her cries in the sheets, moans and pleas punctuated by gasps of his name, again and again. He fucks her hard, fast—and it is fucking, what they're doing, because there isn't any tenderness or affection in this act. Lust, anger, and need, yes, but no love. It makes her feel less than herself and more all at once, both weak and powerful, using and being used.
The feeling of him moving inside her is almost too much to bear, but she pushes back against him, what little she can in this position, giving as much he'll take. And if there's anything she's learned about Sasuke, it's that there's no limit to what he'll grasp for himself if he wants it badly enough.
His breathing grows faster, harsher. The steadiness of his rhythm falls away, his pace erratic and furious as he thrusts into her. Sakura savors this, Sasuke losing that control he prizes in himself. He comes inside her, then lingers there, breathing heavily, but as soon as he stops trembling he pulls out and turns away from her.
At first she thinks that he just doesn't want to look at her, but then she notices the faintest shaking of his shoulders.
"Sasuke?"
He rolls onto his back, and Sakura sees the tears tracking his cheeks. Sasuke wipes them away, closes his eyes, and takes a steadying breath.
"I can't leave you," he says. "Every time I think of my family, I think of you and what you did, and the choice I made, and it's all tied up together. I almost hate you for it, but… I still don't know how to let you go."
It's over.
This is a bitter truth that Sakura has known for months but refused to face. Their love might linger in some fashion, but everything that held it together died with his parents. Now they're just clinging to one another, mostly because they can't figure out how not to.
Understanding this and accepting it are not the same thing. So Sakura moves closer, wraps an arm around Sasuke, and chooses to keep him for as long as he'll let her.
.
.