Life Of A Secret Agent

Chapter Seven

He would kill Neji the next time he saw him, Sasuke decided. It was only fitting after the flaming embarrassment.

He didn't call again.

It took him three days before he was even able to look at Itachi's stupid WGB proposal properly, time torn between pushing his own interest in the takeover of Houton Manufacturing and researching more deeply into NuMe Designing Consultant Inc. and Shamrock Sales. Sasuke never knew how his brother came by his information...but once again it was golden.

By the time he got home on Thursday afternoon, the three rough proposals were done and ready to be passed onto Itachi's underling Shisui. The proposed projections for Houton - that he had felt were such a steal, looked paltry now next to the truths of Itachi's finds. He had been hopeful this one time...

Now he had a day and one night to try to create something he could run past Itachi before showing it to Naruto... Sitting on the ground next to his low coffee table, Sasuke flushed and glared murderously at his carpet. He could always skip murder and wreck his car or something likewise precious to Neji.

With a granola packet and water bottle next to him, Sasuke settled in to work, dissecting the WGB proposal to the station by what Uchiha really wanted from them and what it cost in the real world. Future projections aside for now, they wanted exclusive use of WGB as their on-air marketers and virtually unlimited access.

They would not get that without buying the station, Sasuke could admit. Currently as it stood however thanks to certain...parties, and their wildly successful sports center segment, WGB was pulling in the listeners at unrivaled numbers by other stations. And Uzumaki seemed comfortable right where he was - if he wasn't leaving and nothing changed...

Scratching out areas as he thought and schemed, Sasuke did have to snort at how skewed the proposal was. Itachi was a piece of work. Oh sure, the number offered seemed high on paper if you just looked at it but Uzumaki was - unfortunately, probably right about there needing to be more zeroes. The listenership, advertising, promotion and revenue the station would be giving up to cater to Uchiha Inc. alone as their business market...? They may be a conglomerate company but even all their subsets and branch companies wouldn't fill the void. They would perhaps have to edit what they were asking for to more reasonable goals. Like, shutting out direct competitors, rather than the entire field.

The light in his living room burned through until the early hours of the morning and when Sasuke finally gave up and removed the slim, small reading glasses he was loathe to use but had to if he wanted to preserve his vision, it was nearly three am. He was surrounded with sticky notes, loose leafs of scribbles and notes and the butchered version of the proposal Uzumaki had seen...but he was done. He started to gather everything up, into small neat piles. It had actually become relatively easy once he had figured out how to sort everything Itachi wanted versus what he believed he could get from Narut-WGB, at the price they were offering.

Standing for a full body stretch and toes curling with tingling pleasure at blood returning to extremities after the long period of immobility, Sasuke was just fighting a yawn and planning to just turn off the light and pad off to bed when his cellphone started to chime.

Looking at the phone shaking on the coffee table in muddled confusion, he picked it up and answered without thinking.

"Hullo?" What, bloody time was it again? He rubbed his eyes and blinked, looking around his living room.

"Hi! Someone called me from this number...?" Sasuke had frozen, numb from shock after the first cheerfully exclaimed word. "Sorry if I'm calling late - I, was called late and I thought maybe I'd have a better chance reaching you now than earlier in the morning...well, I already tried earlier in the morning and no one answered so..." Naruto was rambling on now, apparently not needing input from the secondary party that Sasuke was currently unwilling to give. "...uh, hello? Hell-llooo?"

He could hang up, Sasuke thought quickly, or say wrong number and hang up, if he didn't want to be rude. Except that Naruto would have his cell number now and if he had to contact Naruto during their negotiations on the WGB business deal, there was no way he would not notice that Sasuke's number was the same number of this incident. The pause was lengthening...

"Uzumaki - it's late. This is Sasuke. Just -" He was dead-on-his-feet tired and Sasuke couldn't handle this now. "I'm sorry I'll call you back tomorrow about the proposal. I need to sleep."

There was the slightest of inhales in his ear. "Oh. Oh-kay. Right. Sure." A short pause and then a cheerful laugh. "Ah, my bad Sasuke. Sorry, I'll just save the number and let you, go, then." He made a grunt of some sort into the phone and hung up, throwing it onto his couch and leaving it there as he stumbled off to bed. Fuck Naruto Uzumaki.

A/N: Heya...is ah, anybody reading this? Because I'm just...yeah. *crickets*