Wow, wonderful response! Glad you all enjoyed the last chapter! To answer you guys' questions, they will definitely meet, but it will not be this chapter. I am not gonna tell you when, but I can tell you that they definitely will! Anyways, Onwards!

Chapter 2: I Needed To Hear Your Voice

"Uchiha-san? How do you want to proceed?"

Silence filled the boardroom as all the managers of the company as well as the Uchiha lawyers turned to Sasuke. He'd never been allowed to lead the managers of the company while his parents were alive. They'd never allowed him to really take part, more than his part as the Purchasing Manager, but... Itachi had tried to guide him, tried to get him to the board meetings, but Fugaku had always refused, and Sasuke didn't know why.

He got the distinct feeling that something wasn't right.

The air in the room felt too thick to inhale. Maybe that had something to do with the members of staff that were smoking. Or maybe it was just the panic blocking off his airways. Maybe it was a mixture of both.

"...Uchiha-san?"

"Excuse me, while I use the restroom," Sasuke choked out, rising from his seat and pushing his way out of the boardroom.

"But Uchiha-san, wait! You haven't told us-"

"I said," Sasuke snapped, "Excuse me." The youngest Uchiha pushed the boardroom doors open, tugging frantically at his necktie as the article of clothing had begun to feel as if it were strangling him. He noticed absently as he stalked down the hallways that he was sweating, and his stomach felt upset again.

What was he supposed to tell them when he went back? Would he even go back there? He had no idea really what to do, and now the multi-million dollar business was in his inexperienced hands. And what was that feeling that he couldn't seem to shake? That feeling that dictated that there was so much that he had no idea about...

Sasuke ignored the curious stares of the workers he passed as he pushed his way into the elevators. He was alone in the moving box, and halfway down, Sasuke began to regret his decision. His vision was swimming, making the elevator walls seem like they were closing in on him, and when he looked down, the burgundy carpet took the appearance of a swimming pool of dark red liquid.

Sasuke gasped, stepping back sharply and looking upwards instinctively. A pair of eyes looked back at him, and a shadowy figure stood several steps away, holding a knife still dripping. No. It couldn't be. Sasuke swallowed deeply, blinking rapidly to try and clear the images.

It wasn't real. In fact, the man before him was not his murderous older brother, but his reflection in the shiny silver elevator doors. The bloody knife was nothing more than the mirror image of his red tie hanging loosely from his hands. Sasuke gasped, his lungs already burning, and desperately slapped at the buttons on the elevator's control panel. He needed the machine to stop. He needed to get off. Now.

The machine hissed to a halt, jerking only slightly, and Sasuke was moving before the doors were even fully open. He jogged to the restroom as his stomach turned again, nauseated by the hallucinations he'd seen in the elevator. Sasuke cupped a hand over his nose and mouth, dragging in shaky breaths in an effort to calm his stomach, but to no avail.

He'd barely gotten to a stall in the restroom before his breakfast and lunch came surging up his throat and into the toilet. The bile stung and created an acidic burn in the back of his mouth, and his hands trembled from where they rested on the rim of the toilet bowl. They wouldn't be able to hold his weight for much longer.

Sasuke, his hands shaking weakly, pulled the stall door shut and sat on the floor, his back resting against the door.

He longed to just... to have someone.

Hinata.

The name seemed to just echo around his mind, weaving around all the clutter that filled it and burning itself in the foreground of his consciousness, and before Sasuke knew it, he was reaching for his phone.

He'd called her every night for the past week, and he needed her again now. Sasuke had been addicted to things before, so he could recognize it when he saw it... or rather, felt it. And this is what calling Hinata was slowly becoming. An addiction. He couldn't sleep at night without hearing her voice first.

His right thumb jabbed over the numbers and then he put the phone to his ear and just waited. It rang twice before she answered.

"Hello?"

"It's gonna be alright... right?" Sasuke said immediately, his voice raspy after he'd thrown up. "I mean... I'm gonna get through this, right?"

"Sasuke...?" he heard her say. There were some shuffles, and some other authoritative voices in the background, so Sasuke figured he must have caught her at work. He'd never called her during the day before.

"Sasuke... I'm at work..." she continued, her voice hushed.

"Hn... I just... I needed to hear your voice..." Sasuke murmured. "Would you... Would you stay a bit?"

"I... One moment," he heard her say. All the sounds coming over the line seemed to be muted and warbled, so Sasuke surmised that she'd put her hand over the receiver. The sounds grew sharper and Sasuke could hear a sound like stilettos over tile... Hinata wore heels. High heels by the sounds of it. He'd not known that before. He could hear people greeting her as she walked, and then there was the sound of a door being opened, and then there was a blowing sound, like wind. She must have gone outside.

"Sasuke? Are you still there?" she asked then, her voice soft and worried.

"Yeah... yeah I'm at work... and they are all looking to me to lead them, but I don't know... I don't know what to tell them... and I keep seeing things... I keep seeing blood, and Itachi with the knife... and my parents... oh, Kami, Hinata is something wrong with me?" Sasuke rasped his eyes stinging.

He was scared.

He was terrified.

"It sounds like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Sasuke. Have you spoken to a psychiatrist? The police are supposed to assign one to you after-"

"I told them I had my own doctor, and that I didn't need theirs. I don't need a shrink," Sasuke groused, his brows pulling together.

"Sasuke..." Hinata murmured. "You do need o-"

"I only need you..." Sasuke said, his voice low and quiet. His heart hurt. "I don't want anyone else. I just need you."

Hinata blinked, her mind going completely blank. Sasuke's words rang in her ear, ricocheting around in her brain.

I don't want anyone else. I just need you.

How was she supposed to respond to that?

"S-Sasuke... I'm not a professional. I've never done this before, so I don't know what to-"

"Just..." Sasuke interrupted, sounding a bit impatient. "You're fine the way you are. I don't need a shrink. I don't want a shrink. If I go to freakin' therapy I'm going to have to keep talking about feelings when I just want to hear your voice. So just... just talk to me..." Hinata swallowed, unsure of how to proceed.

"Sasuke... What do I talk about? Just..." She cleared her throat. "Just anything?"

"Just anything..." he reiterated softly. Silence filled the line for a moment, and Hinata moved to lean her back against the wall. She was so unused to this. What was she even supposed to say?

"S-So... this morning... I overslept," she began, just choosing something completely random. And then it was like everything was going wrong after that because I was rushing, and nothing was working... and when it comes to lateness, the general manager is seriously..." Hinata faltered as she thought of the correct word to use to accurately describe Hashirada-san.

"Anal?" Sasuke supplied, a hint of a smile in his voice. Hinata giggled.

"...Yes... he's..." She looked around a bit to see if anyone was around before whispering, "...anal, and-" Sasuke's laughter halted Hinata's words. His laughter was kind of... adorable... apart from the fact that he seemed to be laughing at her.

"What?" she asked, her lower lip pushing forward slightly. "Wh-What's so funny?"

"You... You're kinda adorable..." Hinata frowned at his reply.

"What? No I'm n-not! Wh-where is this coming from?" she asked over Sasuke's slightly raspy chuckles.

"Say 'anal' again," Sasuke said, still chuckling softly. Hinata frowned. She did not want to say that word again.

"A-" She looked around before trying again. "Anal..." she whispered. "Are you happy now?"

"Well, yeah... because you keep whispering it. You're a big girl... say 'anal' out loud," Sasuke demanded, a smile in his voice. Or maybe it was a smirk.

"N-No," Hinata refused. "I-I don't want to... I-It's such a dirty word..."

"What, are you chicken?" Sasuke goaded. Hinata's face went red. "Don't want to say dirty words with me?" he teased, the smile no longer in his voice, but the amusement still apparent.

"I-I" She looked around hastily before continuing in a furious whisper, "I don't want to say dirty words with you. What if someone hears me?"

"That's the point, isn't it? When you go back to the meeting, I dare you to say 'anal' somewhere, and send me a recording from your phone," Sasuke said, his voice dropping low and sultry.

"Wh- No, I won't," Hinata hissed as she tried to squelch her smile.

"Come on... you know you want to..." he teased. Hinata folded one arm across her stomach and turned to the wall. She wanted to. Something so juvenile just seemed so... tempting.

"I w-won't be able to do it..." she said, a little sadly.

"Sure you can... leave the line open, then... I want to hear..." Sasuke said. Hinata felt her face heat. She'd never had anyone dare her to do anything before...

"F-Fine. I'm going back in now, then... If you dare hang up on me..." she half growled.

"What? What could you possibly do?" Sasuke taunted.

"I won't pick up the next time you call..." Hinata threatened, loving how firm her voice sounded. Silence reigned over the line.

"...No you won't..." Sasuke said after a moment. "You'll pick up. Right?" The hesitancy in his voice broke Hinata's heart.

"I'll pick up," she said. "I'll always pick up."

Ten minutes later, Hinata was back in the meeting, but had not found her opportunity yet.

"The quarterly budgets have not come in yet, and they need to be sent in before Monday," the general manager groused, shuffling a sheaf of papers that lay before him. "They need to be reviewed before there is any spending, because we don't want a repeat of the July incident, which occurred last year." Several of the other managers sighed.

"Hashirada, are you ever going to let that go? It wasn't as bad as-" one of the other managers said tiredly, but was interrupted by the general manager.

"If you dare say it wasn't as bad as it seemed!" Hashirada-san yelled. "I worked my way up to my position for fifteen years in this company, and that moronic... spatz nearly had me removed from my position! My career was on the line!" Hinata was beginning to grow weary of the general manager's yelling.

"Hashirada-san... you don't have to be quite so a-anal about the whole issue," she said quietly, and all sound ceased to exist in the boardroom. Literally. "M-My father would never have fired you because of such a g-gross misunderstanding," Hinata continued in the silence, hearing the tinny laughter coming from the phone in her lap.

"A-Anal?" Hashirada-san sputtered, eyes round, face pale and mouth agape. "Did she just say... anal?" Once again, silence reigned supreme before the other managers erupted into laughter.

"C-Can we move on?" Hinata asked, but her whispery feminine voice was drowned out by the raucous masculine laughter that filled the room.

"I will never live this down," Hinata complained to Sasuke as she fumbled with the lock on her apartment door.

"Why do you even want to? I wish I'd been there to see his face," Sasuke said, amusement evident in his tone. The meeting had to be put off because the managers could not calm down after Hinata's uncharacteristic comment and had begun to insert the word 'Anal' into every sentence where it could be applied. It turned out that the stuffy managers with apparently repressed childhoods could find numerous applicable spots for the word in their sentences.

"Well, you're not me..." Hinata mumbled as she pushed the door open and stepped inside. "I don't say things like..." She looked around again. "Like anal..."

"Why do you keep whispering that word? Anal. Anal. Anal," Sasuke said, his voice low and blank.

"B-Because..." Hinata muttered, unable to come up with an actual reason. She just couldn't seem to say it any louder than a whisper.

"Hn. Maybe you will make more friends because of the word anal, and then it will become your favorite word..." Sasuke mumbled, sounding as if he was eating something.

"What are you eating?" Hinata asked, glad for a reason to change the subject. She tossed her keys onto the kitchen counter and shrugged off her coat before kicking off her heels.

"Tomato," Sasuke returned. "So... are you home yet?"

"Just stepped in, why?" Hinata replied, opening the fridge door and taking out a chilled bottle of water.

"...No reason. Just asking." Hinata paused at the abruptness of the last sentence. He'd obviously wanted to say more, but didn't. Hinata wasn't sure whether to press for more information, or to just move on.

"Tell me what you were going to say..." she heard herself say.

"Leave it alone, Hinata," Sasuke said bluntly. Hinata sighed and unscrewed the cap of the bottle before taking a sip.

"Just tell me," she pressed after swallowing. This was the first time she's had a friend... who she could talk about random things with. She liked it.

"Hinata... Let. It. Go," Sasuke growled over the line, seemingly getting a bit touchy. She needed to relax the tension building up over the line.

Whoever thought that she couldn't give a bit of friendly ribbing had another think coming. Hinata grinned to herself before replying, trying to mimic Sasuke's attitude and the sound of his voice as best she could.

"Hn. No need to get anal about it."

So not much here. There will be a sighting next chapter. I just wanted to put a bit of friendly banter in here. Really random, so I hope it wasn't too slow. The first part bears meaning on the rest of the story, though, so there is that.