Chapter 13: A Few Ill-Fated Circumstances – Part 1

Sobs echoed through the house as Sakura cried endlessly into her pillow. There she lay, with mussed hair and wrinkled pink pajamas, similar to how Sasuke looked the night before. To her left lay an empty pint of chocolate ice cream, and the "It's a Wonderful Life" DVD menu replaying itself over and over on her television.

She was hurt. She was confused. Even more so than she had been when she was on that date with Sasuke. Sakura wasn't even sure how long she'd been awake crying.

She rubbed at her eyes, reaching over to grab a tissue from her nightstand. Sasuke hadn't received any messages from her in days, and he sure as hell wasn't going to get any now.

She whispered to herself questions she didn't know the answer to, getting up from her bed and disposing of the ice cream container and a bunch of used tissues. After taking ample time to get dressed, Sakura plopped down on her bed and contemplated what she should do next.

"Well, let's see... Naruto and Sasuke were all over each other, yet I saw Hinata walk away from Naruto just minutes before hand. Could he have been letting her down gently...?"

There was a pause in her speech to herself as she considered what she was saying, that this was perhaps a new thing and Hinata had just found out herself. After all, why else would they be talking and hugging like that? Unless they're together and Naruto is cheating... Nah, he wouldn't do that.

Right?

Finally deciding what she would do to get to the bottom of this mystery, Sakura stood to make her leave toward her new destination.

If she couldn't figure it out, she was going to go straight to Hyuuga Hinata herself.

Haruno Sakura is a curious girl, and although her original mission was to first go to Hinata to find out what was going on, she couldn't help wanting to go to Sasuke himself after walking past the Uchiha manor. Although she had just said to herself earlier that Sasuke didn't deserve any contact from her, secretly it was what she wanted.

Her eyes started to well up, and the sadness of the whole situation once again started to consume her. But, being Haruno Sakura, she walked bravely up to Sasuke's door and gently knocked. She was vaguely hoping she knocked lightly enough so he wouldn't even hear it. Maybe she wasn't so brave after all. After a minute passed, she knocked again with more force, but still she heard nothing from the other side. So she decided to test her courage and tried to open the door herself.

It was unlocked.

Sakura slid open the door slowly just enough to peek inside. "Sasuke?"

Nothing. There were no lights on, and every door in her view was closed, except for the bathroom. She walked in, sliding the door closed and taking a few steps toward the staircase.

"Sasuke, are you home? Hello?"

Grabbing the banister, Sakura softly treaded up the stairs, incase Sasuke was asleep. Upon reaching Sasuke's door she became nervous, hearing her heart pounding in her chest and wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans. She suddenly felt hot, taking off her sweater and hanging it over her right arm.

Inside the room, Sasuke's bed was empty. Along with the adjoining bathroom.

Sakura looked around with a confused face, mumbling to herself. "Where would Sasuke go without even locking the front door...?"

She looked to the left, her eyes suddenly falling upon something out of place. The desk drawer was slightly open, and that was very unlike Sasuke. He was a neat freak. Walking over to it, she pulled the drawer open a little further, her eyes lighting up at what she saw.

His journal.

Sakura grabbed the book, tossed her pullover onto the bed and then dove on it herself, flipping it open to the first page. Heehee, Ino will be so proud of me for this!

As she speed-read and started turning to the later pages, her mischievous smile started to dissipate. Sakura read more and more about how Sasuke was happy that she wasn't calling him anymore, and it seemed to her that with every passing entry he seemed to realize his feelings for Naruto more and more. She tried to combat the sudden urge to rip the horrid book in half; but she just decided to put it back down where she found it.

Sakura did this to herself. She saw it last night, and she should have known that that was what was going to be in the journal.

It was just false hope.

She got off the bed in a very zombie-like way, closing the door smoothly and pushing herself down the stairs. As if a robot, she silently walked out and closed the door behind her. If Hinata didn't already know what was going on... she definitely had to be let in on this new secret.

"Does Hinata know about this? She'll, like, go into a coma."

"I know. I was thinking the same thing."

Sasuke leant there stoically against Kakashi's pale yellow wall, watching his teacher lounge on the couch wrapped in a blanket and tapping on his wine glass. His eyes scanned idly around the house, sighing afterwards to separate the thick silence.

"Nice place you got here." Sasuke drawled out, pulling up his too-loose jeans at the butt to pull his pant leg out from under his foot. He went to sit next to his sensei on the couch, relaxing.

Kakashi yawned. "Yeah, so I've heard. ..You're pants tracked dirt on my white carpet."

"Eh." Sasuke scratched at his pectoral muscle through his body-hugging shirt, heaving another sigh. It seems our brunette friend doesn't know what size clothes he wears.

Nah, I just know what makes me look damn good. Wait, aren't we having a crisis?

"Sensei… do you think we're being too calm about this?"

"No." The older man was now leaning his head back against a pillow. "Being gay is a perfectly reasonable thing to explain to Hinata and Sakura. As far as I can remember, it was only them who had the feelings, right?"

Sasuke averted his eyes to the ceiling. "Mm." He swished around his glass of Californian Merlot, slightly miffed that Kakashi didn't have French Merlot. Picky, picky.

"So, don't worry about it. Hinata might have some problems coping, but if they flip out, what can you do? Pretend not to be gay?"

"I guess you're right. But it's not just them."

The last statement caught Kakashi's attention, and his head turned to look at the side of his student's face. He pulled his blanket as close to him as he could with one hand, mentally reminding himself to turn up the heat in this cold weather. He slowly took a sip of his own glass, wondering why the hell he was even drinking it at 10:30 in the morning. The man's silent stare was enough to will the boy to continue.

"I want to revive my clan, sensei."

This was spoken almost inaudibly, but the other man heard it and instantly came to realization. Sasuke wasn't afraid of ridicule, he wanted a family.

"Well… I don't know, Sasuke."

And now, Kakashi knew. Because alcohol always helps in times of tragedy.

bang bang bang!

"Hinata-chan! Hinata-chan!"

As Sakura continued pounding on the Hyuuga compound door, she couldn't hear the footsteps that were approaching on the other side. When the door opened, she nearly bashed her greeter right in the head.

"S-Sakura-chan, are you alright? I could hear your screaming from in the-"

Hinata was cut off as her visitor grabbed her by the arm and dragged her violently out of the house. They ran toward the woods across the path from the Aburame compound, running until only trees were in sight and Hinata grew tired.

"Sakura... what is going on?" Hinata heaved in and out trying to catch her breath, her face flushed. Sakura sat on a rock carefully, also breathing heavily. Waiting until the other girl was seated across from her on a log, Sakura continued.

"What did you talk to Naruto about last night?"

Hinata's eyes went up in thought for a second. "Well... nothing, actually. Why?"

"Naruto went to visit Sasuke last night."

Hinata shrugged, not seeing anything wrong with the statement. Wasn't it common for friends to visit each other?

"I saw them together."

"Sakura-chan, where are you going with this?" Hinata was not amused, nor happy at being abruptly ripped from her house. But she heard the girl across from her gulp and start to sweat at the brow, whilst also biting her lip. Hinata raised an eyebrow at her, growing curious.

"What I mean is, they were... making out."

There was a very pregnant pause.

"W-What did you just say?"

Very suddenly and to Hinata's surprise, Sakura grew frantic very quickly.

"I don't know! I mean one day I'm on a date with Sasuke, whose only the hottest piece of ass ever to grace this earth, he asks me to do him a favor then kisses me because he's the biggest jerk alive, then a few days later he's playing tonsil hockey with Naruto and I'M ON THE OTHER TEAM!" Sakura sank back onto the rock, burying her face in her hands.

"He must not like the Islanders, then."

"You are NOT funny, Hinata."

The pale-eyed girl chuckled to herself, but only she knew that it was simply a façade to hide how broken she was inside. She would go home and cry her eyes out, cry for days and days on end, but never would she show any of this to a woman who had as big of a reputation for gossip as Ino. Her fingers lightly clutched at her pants, trying her hardest to stop the tears from falling until she got home.

"So they aren't going to choose either of us then, right?"

Hinata looked at Sakura with hopeful eyes, thinking maybe she was joking - maybe she was just pulling a prank. But when the cherry blossom looked back at her with the same emotion, she knew it was very true. Their lips quivered in sync, thinking about themselves, about what they had lost.

But in reality, they hadn't really lost anything. Sakura couldn't lose something she did not have to begin with. From the very start Sasuke's love was not with her, and the same thing with Naruto. There can be no loss in something that was never given to them, something that was one-sided - it was the loss of hope that saddened them. The thought that maybe one day, they would get a chance. That maybe their feelings would finally be returned to them sometime in the future... but now, they knew it would never happen.

And so, they decided that there was no use trying to hold in their tears until they were in the privacy of their own homes. There was no use, because both of them knew that they shared the same pain. So they cried together, Hinata and Sakura, until the sun was no longer in the sky.

And when they eventually returned home, they felt that the isolation of their bedrooms and comfort of their pillows was enough to make them cry even more.

When Sasuke returned home, it was with Naruto in tow. He had finished his visit with his sensei, but didn't bother to mention to Naruto what they had talked about. In fact, he felt no obligation to tell the blonde anything that happened at all.

He was more concerned with discussing with him if they were actually... boyfriends now.

As they slipped off their shoes, there was a definite tension in the air. A tension that screamed for resolution, for answers as to what really happened, and what they really were to one another. After Sasuke had a battle getting his pants to untangle from his shoes, they silently and calmly walked up the stairs, planning to lounge in Sasuke's room. It was more comfortable up there, and the brunette was all for being comfortable right now when they were about to discuss something very awkward.

They stepped into his room, Sasuke pulling off his jacket and tossing it on a chair, heading for the bathroom. Naruto followed suit and tossed his jacket on the bed, hearing peeing noises coming from the adjoining room.

But as Sasuke stepped out of his bathroom, he stopped in his tracks and noticed his blonde friend had a very disapproving and evil look in his eye.

"Does this belong to Sakura?"

Naruto was holding a very dainty cashmere sweater between his fingers, letting it dangle in front of him.

"I found this on your bed."

The Uchiha could hear the acidity in Naruto's tone. But he simply raised an eyebrow at the boy across from him, taking the fabric out of Naruto's hand and looking at it with intensity.

What... the fuck?

And he looked up into those blue eyes, not knowing what the hell to say. Hell, technically they weren't even together; but I guess if you just made out with another guy you wouldn't expect to find women's clothing in their bedroom...

But that wasn't enough for Naruto.

"Well?"

(Tidbit: I changed the rating of this story to M, there's a little too much cursing)
Author's Note: Guh, I have been so sick :/ I hope you like this chapter. What will happen next :D Lots of drama in this chapter.

I wish I could draw well, because I would totally draw a fanart of what Sasuke looked like in the clothes he was wearing that day. xD I have the perfect picture in my head, and I can draw somewhat, but definitely not well enough to show anyone what it would look like. :P Also, Sasuke also likes Merlot a lot, the French kind, because he's a snooty bastard.

This post and the next post is the last chance to give me your input on who Kiba should be paired with. I need to start thinking of a good plot in a reasonable time frame after I finish this, so please give me your choice soon. You can pick from (but not limited too, these are just the ones I think might go best): Naruto, Hinata, Shino, Shikamaru