title: love month
prompt: SASUSAKU MONTH ON LJ!
rating: T-M

summary: oo6; "Hello?" she murmured softly. "Sasuke-kun?" Voicemail full. She teared up. "Goodbye, then." End call.

.oo6.
Hello/Goodbye

"The number you have reached is currently unavailable. Please check the number and try again later."

Sakura sighed. It was always like this. Ever since they started dating, they would talk into the night for hours at a time. Laughing, crying, shouting…they would all be incorporated into minutes on their phones.

They had gone through hell and back together. And, when they were together, it was paradise. Heaven on earth. Their significant others were their yins and yangs, and they just fit perfectly together…

But until recently, Sasuke never picked up his phone. Whenever she called with her friends' phones (like Naruto's or Sai's), he would always pick up. But when he heard her voice, he immediately…panicked, and made a lousy excuse to hang up.

Sakura, trying to be happy, convinced herself that it wasn't her. It was just Sasuke. Perhaps he needed some alone time or some Sasuke-time. She shouldn't be pressing him on. Doing that was just annoying.

But the fear of him being bored with her…and cheating on her clouded her mind and her vision. Thinking about it would send her into fits of sadness and tears, and she would do nothing but cry in her bed all day imagining the scenario.

Sasuke was a gorgeous man, and it was easy for him to get any girl he wanted if he tried. (Or didn't). Knowing how he could use his beauty as a power made her scared out of her wits, and she…just didn't want to think about it.

"I love you," she whispered into each voicemail message. Then, she would always hang up, hoping that he got the message and called her back.

It never happened.

"Voicemail full."

At these words, Sakura's heart sank. He hadn't listened to any of them at all. He had just let them go to waste in his mailbox, ignoring her words of love and letting them rot in a stupid cellular device.

She looked at the phone in her hand and at the wallpaper. It was a picture of the two of them hugging each other tightly while she laughed and kissed his cheek. He was smiling, something that he only did around her, and held her waist as he took the picture with her phone.

Sakura wanted so badly to call him again, or to take the picture and delete it from her phone forever, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. In a fit of anger, she threw it against the wall, watching the pink and white phone shatter and the memory card falling out of the case.

Realizing what she had just done, Sakura ran to her phone and checked to see if it was alright. She put the card back into her phone and breathed a sigh of relief as it clicked open, the picture of her and Sasuke shining brightly into her face.

Feeling hot tears brim against her eyes, she shut down the phone and put it on her night stand, hoping that when she opened it the next time, there would be the sign "Missed Calls" from "Uchiha Sasuke."

.

.

.

Sasuke, sweaty and frustrated, stood there in annoyance as he listened to his boss yell and yell at him for not "doing a good job at his work."

He wanted to call Sakura and tell her everything that had been going on, and apologize to her for not keeping up with her messages and responding back to them. Granted, he ignored all of her calls and texts and picked up only his close friends' (Naruto's and Sai's), but that was because they knew his plan and promised to keep quiet (hell, imagine Naruto keeping quiet!), and talking to Sakura would just delay his plans and cause him to become obsessed with their talks again, not getting anywhere.

"Fuck," he cursed as he made sure to turn off his phone. He felt bad for ignoring Sakura's calls, but he was determined to finish the job properly. Thinking about all of this while listening to his boss, nodding his head part of the time and saying "Hn," every once in a while, he was dismissed and forced to work overtime with no pay.

"Damnit," he cursed. Picking up his phone, he was tempted to press his finger onto Speed Dial 2, Sakura's number, but instead moved to number three, his home phone, and listened to the rings as Itachi picked up.

"What's up, little bro?"

"Tell mom I'll be home late." Sasuke sighed, looking at all the work he had to finish by himself.

He heard Itachi giggle. "You mean…a late night with Sakura-chan?" By now, Itachi was guffawing and Sasuke could hear his brother choking on his laughs for his own joke. Groaning, he hung up, muttered, "I wish," and continued to mop the floors clean.

Twenty-seven dollars more to go…he thought as he imagined her smiling face.

.

.

.

"Sakura." He was surprised to see her at his doorstep, angry and upset, her eyes cloudy. He knew that when she was like that, she was incredibly emotional and ready to burst at any minute. "What, uh…why are you here?"

"Since you won't talk to me over the phone, I'm coming here to talk to you. Why have you been avoiding me? Are you getting bored with me? Just tell me everything. If you want to break up, at least tell it straight to my face instead of making me suffer like this!" her voice raised with every shrill pitch, and he saw that she was about to cry.

"Sweetheart, no…it's not like that."

"Then what is it? Why have you not been answering my calls? Why do you pick up Naruto's, or Sai's, but never mine? Are you seeing another girl? Are they covering up for you? Damnit, Sasuke! I've been sitting in my room crying ever since you've been ignoring me, trying to think about what I've done to wrong you or make you angry, but I've come up with nothing. And now I'm here, so you better have a good fucking reason why you're like this!"

Sasuke sighed. Itachi came down to see what was wrong, until Sasuke glared at him and yelled, making the scared Itachi run back to his room.

"Come in."

She stomped her way in, pushing past him and sitting down. "You explain this to me in less than five minutes, or I swear, I will cut you."

Sasuke, analyzing the situation in his head, knew that there was no way out of this trap. He attempted to find better situations for the outcome, but there were none. The only way was to tell her the truth, even if it meant sabotaging his plan.

"Sakura, listen to me, and I'll explain everything that's happened. Now, I don't want you to get mad, and—" looking at her clenched fists, he panicked. "And I can't stress that enough. I'll start from scratch." Sighing, Sasuke ran a hand through his hair. "I…I took up part time jobs to earn money."

"What do you need money for? If you asked, I could've lent you some," she muttered.

"Quiet. I wanted to get you something. And it was really expensive with erratic hours, so I couldn't talk to you for as long as I liked. I only picked up the phone if it was Naruto, or Sai, or my family, because they would always keep it simple and short. Not that I don't like you calling me, because I do," he said quickly, watching as her fist was raised. "In fact, I liked talking to you so much that if I called you, I would probably reveal my secret and blab about everything, and be so into talking with you that I would get fired…"

"Two minutes and four seconds," she murmured.

"Yeah, whatever. So…I couldn't listen to your voice messages because then I'd be tempted to call you back. I wasn't with another girl, I promise. In fact, every other girl isn't the girl that I'd like to spend my weekends with talking on the phone for long hours at a time. I needed to earn eighty dollars, and this week, I managed to earn the thirty dollars I needed to buy you a gift."

"So…what was the gift that caused all this pain and anger?" she muttered, crossing her legs. Sasuke, making sure she stayed put, went over to his backpack and sighed, pocketing the object in his pants.

"I wanted to make this gift exchange more special, but since the situation's like this…" he handed her a pink object, small and thin, looking away and blushing, his arm outstretched. She took it gingerly, looking it over.

"W-What is this?" she asked.

"It's a new phone. Your old one was all scratched up and stuff, and it was really slow to load and useless…so I bought you a new one. It has a plan already and I'm one of your top contacts, so we can talk anytime you want without being charged minutes."

Sakura looked from him to her new phone, powering it up. "You did this for me?"

"Hn."

She saw that the wallpaper was the same picture she had on her old phone, and the same one on his. The two were embracing each other tightly, kissing and holding the other and smiling at the camera. Sakura felt tears at her eyes and hugged Sasuke tight.

"I love it, Sasuke-kun. It's so sweet! I can't believe you went through all this for me…" Sakura choked on her sobs. "I've been such a bad girlfriend, getting mad at you…I should've trusted you more. I'm such an idiot!"

"No, sweetheart. Don't say that. I'm kind of the one to blame." He patted her head. "Do you want to try it out?" he smirked.

She nodded, wiping her tears away. "Yeah."

She held Speed Dial 2 (which he already programmed onto hers), and he picked up his own phone, matching in shape but different in color. "Hello?"

"Hi, Sasuke-kun." She blinked through her tears. "It's me."

"Hey, Sakura."

"I just wanted to let you know…I love you."

She saw Sasuke smirk as her vision became cloudier. He wiped her tears away with his free hand. "I love you too."

Sakura's voice shook as she said her final words. "Okay. That's all for now. So, I guess…I'll talk to you later. Bye, Sasuke-kun."

"Goodbye."

Both phones were then in his hands as she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her body to his as she kissed him sweetly.

End call, 0:47 minutes.

Slight changes 7.8.14!