Author's Note:

Hello, this chapter is heavy, I am incredibly excited to share it with you and really want to know your thoughts.

Please note some perhaps triggering things may be present. If sexual situations, cheating, or suicide bother you, I would maybe skip this chapter.

I hope you enjoy.

"You said you wouldn't and you fuckin' did,
Lie to me, lie with me, get your fuckin' fix,
Now all my drinks and all my feelings are all fuckin' mixed."

-i hate u i love u gnash, Olivia O'Brien

Now.

The air tasted bitter, coffee grounds seemed to float around him, inhaled into the walls of his black lungs, stuck to the inside of his nose leaving him itching with a sneeze. Sasuke's jaw ground as he sighed, attempting to dislodge the particles of coffee with a swipe at his nostrils. The windows in Roasted let in the dying afternoon light, casting golden shadows across the warm brown tones of the walls. He was hunched in his seat, daggers glaring into the chipped wood of the tabletop. There was a half drank espresso sitting to his right, but he had no desire to finish it.

Not nearly enough time had passed since his last foray into this establishment. He wasn't entirely sure if had been a day or a week, but however long, it was not nearly long enough to stave off the desperate edges lacing his emotions.

Sasuke frowned and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose before pressing his fingers into his eyelids until he saw rainbowed stars in his blank vision.

He didn't understand why it seemed like everything happened here. In this damnable coffee shop.

He had decided, before he agreed to come here, to try and do better today. Maybe if he didn't inhale six espressos, he wouldn't end up hurling them violently into the still crunchy spring grass somewhere in the neighborhood near his apartment. His hands were far too jittery for only consuming one and a half espressos. Useless hands fell into his lap, nails immediately digging into the hangnails decorating his digits. Black eyes hung lifeless against the chocolate brown walls. He supposed all these warm walls were supposed to elicit a sense of comfort and security, but it was a sentiment the establishment had never imparted on him. His knees were shaking, jostling beneath the table, the same wooden table. Why, he wasn't sure, but his long legs carried and deposited him here before he could think better of it, and here he was stuck. Trapped facing an empty seat, and each time he closed his eyes the ghost of a pink haired girl haunted his mind. Fuchsia hair curling wickedly, petal pink mouth hanging open so invitingly, her fingers frozen over a half-filled notebook.

He growled quietly to himself and wondered if maybe that was the problem.

He could still see her when he closed his eyes.

Sasuke shook his head, twitching fingers pushing through his black hair before kneading almost painfully back into his tightly closed eyes. He needed to get his head together if he was going to face her.

He wasn't sure why he agreed to meet her, why he was still here waiting even after thirty minutes had elapsed since she was supposed to show up. He had been there for eons, black hair turning grey, skin souring to sallow wax, vision tunneling and fading into blindness. His jaw ground, and the moment the bell above the door tinkled, something in the universe called to his blood, and it ran cold.

His stomach revolted as he shifted his eyes towards the entrance, and when he saw her, he weakly swallowed down a gag. Because there she was, painfully, devastatingly beautiful

Ino.

Something sharp wedged between the slats of his ribs, pressing in near his heart. Her white, blonde hair was pulled into the sleek ponytail he remembered she preferred. But there was new fringe framing her almond eyes, highlighting the glorious baby blues in white. Soft makeup smudged along her waterline, a pale pink accentuated her full cheeks, and her mouth was faded red. He nearly winced when he remembered all the nights they had shared together to ruin her makeup to the flawed perfection that now adorned her features.

She didn't see him at first, walking towards the counter, towards a weak-kneed boy who floundered as her eyes settled on him. Sasuke watched as her hips swayed, wrapped in dark denim resting a little low, cropped shirt riding high, leaving a small expanse of toned, pale skin that the younger boy glanced at with rosy cheeks. She rested her elbows on the counter, letting her chin nestle into the palms of her hands, as she asked the boy something. He visibly swallowed, mouth moving to explain something, before she smiled bright and blinding, and he looked at her like he discovered god.

Piercing blue eyes swiveled to Sasuke then, needling into him, and he wondered if she could see the blade dripping blood plunged through his ribcage. The way she stared at him cooly, offering a soft, small smile that had him swallowing bile again, he assumed she hadn't seen it in the slightest.

He lifted his cup to rid his mouth of the sour taste, but the liquid struggled to trickle down his throat. His heart was too busy choking him to allow for such a simple act as drinking coffee. Dainty feet carried her closer as she said some final words to the worker, who almost dropped to his knees in supplication right then and there.

Soon she was upon him, and he wanted to cower in her presence, like one would cower in the face of a hurricane or tsunami. But the scent of her lavender perfume invaded his brain, bringing a sense of calm that he always associated with her, but as she set her bag down, and her faded red mouth frowned at the cracked leather of the seat in front of her, Sasuke noticed another layer of scent swimming just beneath the floral, that was harsher and made his nose wrinkle. She felt so familiar, achingly so, that he almost reached out, almost smiled like he would have only a couple of weeks ago. Whisper something that sounded like love to her and nuzzle into the soft valley between her neck and shoulder, relieved to have her home.

But she wasn't home. And she was no longer his.

Even with his recent inoculation with radiation green eyes that worked to temper his reaction, he wasn't sure if maybe this was it. Maybe he was dying. Because even as the grey air rattled in his scarred lungs, even as his eyes dissected every instance of this Ino being his Ino, even as his mind desperately tried to reconcile what he saw and what he knew, he still noticed the poorly hidden bruises trailing from her throat. His intestines felt like a noose as he tried to swallow once more, and tears prickled at the back of his eyes.

"Sasuke."

It was even, but faded around the edges. Like a once loved garment now riddled with holes and stains. She used to say his name with more meaning. Whisper it before nipping at the soft skin beneath his ear at the edge of his jaw. She'd breath it with reverence as he dipped between her legs, tongue tracing along her folds as she dropped prayers into the air while he worshiped. It was a soft thread that stitched his heart together when he was inside of her, hips tilting until her smile broke, and whimpers fell heavy from her throat.

"Ino." His voice managed not to waver, but he couldn't stop his coal eyes from flickering along the path of soft bruises adorning her neck. She had the courtesy to blush and shift her top in an attempt to hide them from his view. But it didn't work, and he recommitted himself to his glaring at the tabletop. He lifted his cup mechanically, the entirety of his body grimaced at the prospect of drinking the liquid, but he pulled cold espresso in his mouth so it couldn't say something stupid, and frowned as the coffee drained like thick sludge into his rolling stomach.

"Thank you so much for meeting me," she said gracefully, finally coming to terms with the cracked leather and tucking herself into the seat across from him. He saw her shift from the corner of his eye, saw the way she looked him over in concern, and he frowned more. "I didn't know if you would or not, but I really wanted to see you."

He wanted to berate her then and there, tell her she was an idiot for asking him to be here, that she so obviously didn't give a shit because she came late to her own meeting, but he didn't. He blinked and struggled to blank out his brain before the anxiety strangled him.

"Here I am." He offered instead, face behind a mask of indifference even his father might be proud of.

A blond brow quirked slightly, and a small, timid smile grew on her face. He wanted to tell her to stop smiling like that, because it was almost like she used to smile at him when he would say something particularly dryly and she couldn't quite tell if he was joking or not.

"Well, good," she mumbled and glanced down at her hands in her lap. "Good," she repeated with a bit more strength, inhaling air like she was the one about to be lit on fire and tossed to the wolves.

As if Sasuke's flesh was not already charred and bleeding from that very act.

The boy from the front counter walked over, legs jittery and pink painting his cheeks. He set a tall glass down for her and murmured an apology for her wait. She waved him off before pulling the glass closer. Her pink mouth wrapped around the paper straw, and she sipped her drink easily. The boy watched her with wide brown eyes, before nodding at her, dipping into a shallow bow to Sasuke – who he just seemed to notice – and made an escape from them.

"How are you, Sasuke?" she asked then, the smile on her mouth was too tender to be anywhere except at the bedside of a sick family member. It made his jaw grind at the pity so obviously lining her face. "It's been so long since…" her voice drifted as his hands curled into loose fists inside his hoodie and he tried to ignore the way her face fell from his periphery as she collected herself. "It's been too long." She said instead. "Karin tells me that you're well."

His eyes involuntarily snapped up to hers and he had to hold in the scoff skirting his throat. What would her twin sister know? It's not like he had seen the redhead any time recently, hadn't seen either of the sisters recently. He thought about staying quiet, but his shaking legs loosened something in him, and he found his nose and upper lip wrinkling into a sneer.

"What would your idiot sister know?" he let the scoff out for good measure and rolled his eyes. "I hear the Shit Pistols got picked up for a cross-country tour, so I don't know what she could have told you about me."

Blue eyes narrowed at his tone. "All but one of the shows are in Fire, Sasuke, it's not like they're very far from home."

"Ah," he nodded, "it's not nearly as far as Otogakure is it?"

"That's not fair." Ino said quickly before she sighed. She was too obvious in her attempt at even breathing that it just made him angrier. "I just want to hear how you are, why do you have to fight me on it?"

"I'm not fighting you," he lied, "I just don't understand why you'd take your stupid sister's word when she's probably too busy getting dicked down on 'tour' to know anything about me."

Sasuke could see her jaw muscles flutter as she clenched her teeth, and her nostrils flared. "You're such a fucking pervert, I bet you think about her getting dicked down when you stroke one out yourself." They both knew it wasn't true, but he still flinched at her words, almost taking the bait to fight with her. "What the fuck is your problem?" she asked harshly, already furious with him.

His shoulders coiled with tension and his skin felt itchy. "You, princess, you're my problem."

Her brows furrowed at his nickname for her and her mouth tipped down. "Karin told me she talked with Sakura, who said you were well."

A low laugh barked from his throat as his eyes narrowed into slits, setting a searing glare on her that made her shrink back in her seat. "And what would Sakura know about me or my life?" he banished the memory of his escape from the pink haired girl, and didn't wait for Ino to flounder for an answer.

"Actually," he continued, tilting forward, voice like a knife's edge, thin, sharp, and quiet, Ino fled further back into her leather cushions. "What would any of you know about me or my life? Who the fuck do you think you are, princess," he spit it with venom mixed with equal malice, "to have the audacity to ask me to come here and then start making assumptions."

Her lower lip trembled at the mocking way he used the once sacred nickname. It was a sacrament between them, something that was never to be crossed in anger. Sasuke saw the hurt and betrayal clearly in her crystal blue eyes and found he didn't care. He saw nothing but a baren landscape between them, empty fields that used to be so full, and he wanted nothing more than to set fire to the dry tinder.

A quiet whimper escaped her throat, and a sense of satisfaction washed into the man's being. "I should have known you'd do this, Sasuke," she fidgeted with the hem of her stupid shirt. "You always fucking do this, you ruin everything, just like he always has for you."

"No, I don't." he said evenly, shaking his head at the accusation. "You did this, Ino. You did this when you had sex with Sai."

Her blue eyes blew wide, red immediately coloring her cheeks as she gasped, hands curling together protectively in front of her at the accusation. "I did no such thing!"

"Don't," he shook his head, suddenly all the fight and anger he had gathered in his chest expelled with a single sigh. He didn't want to talk about this, didn't want to relive it again. But it had slipped out of him, like so many other sentiments, that he couldn't take it back.

"I would never do something like that." She asserted, offended at his accusation. She flicked pieces of her blond ponytail behind her shoulder and crossed her arms.

"Ino," a twisted smile pulled across his lips as scattered parts of his brain noted how she was desperately lying to him. "You fucking called me; you left it on my voicemail."

"I did not."

"Do you want to listen?" he was laughing then, low and pained, like an animal that had been shot. "I still have it; I couldn't delete it."

He pulled his phone from his pocket with a shaking hand, thumbing quickly through the menus to get to the small play button in his voicemail. He had repeated this action so many times, he could find and listen to it in his sleep.

He probably would have if he slept anymore.

"Sasuke, I don't want – "

"I didn't want to hear it either," he said softly, eyelids feeling intensely heavy as he pressed play and turned the volume up enough so that she couldn't escape it but low enough the poor boy at the front counter wouldn't hear her moans.

It was undeniable. He knew the noises she made, he himself had pulled them from her body enough times, they had imprinted in his brain. The soft mewling, the tender chanting of curses, before the rush of air that escaped her lungs as she crested. It had always been so utterly beautiful, devastatingly beautiful to his stupid heart. They were the only sounds or experiences he had that were still filed away safely from all the bullshit in his brain. Kept under lock and key, only to be gently taken out and enjoyed as a lifeline when the distance away from her was strangling him.

He had never even thought of asking to record it, or them. To have something so much more visceral to accompany his loneliness while she was away. To keep a piece of her with him, and only with him. He had never even considered it until he had it. But then it was too late.

On the day he woke to the voicemail, it had been the first night his medicine gave him some godforsaken rest, and he was initially delighted. It was from her, from Ino, for him. Because he thought she had missed him and because she was Ino and so much more open than he was, so much more liberated than he was, he thought maybe she wanted to surprise him. Send him a voicemail of her pleasuring herself before a gentle 'I wish you were here' and 'I'm sorry for fighting' and 'I miss you'.

But then the sound of slick, slapping skin accosted his ears, he heard the deep male groans, and suddenly the world fell off its axis and everything was wrong.

And then he heard her voice calling out for another, begging someone else to throw her off of that precipice, to bury inside of her until her limbs were heavy and satiated. Hearing her begging, hearing her fucking someone else, broke his brain in a way he never could have imagined.

Sasuke would never to admit it to anyone, he barely admitted it to himself, but he was going to kill himself that day.

He had listened to it incessantly, living in a Schrödinger's space of simultaneous delight and horror, for almost a full twenty-four hours. Delight because it was Ino, and he loved her and how could anything that had been that beautiful hurt him so fucking much. But then the rushed clapping of bodies together and the grunts that weren't his would flood over his synapses and he had to listen again because something wasn't right. That couldn't have been real. Ino wouldn't do that to him. She wouldn't. It had to have been a nightmare, or a glitch in the simulation, but not reality. It couldn't have been reality. Because she was Ino, and she had promised to never hurt him. She had promised she loved him.

And then… hours later, dazed, unfocused, exhausted… it finally made sense. It finally clicked. That it had happened, that she in fact could, and did, do that.

Once it clicked, he had wandered his apartment like a ghost, carefully gathering all the medication he had ever been given, arranged them by symptom, further organized by concentration. A flock of obnoxious orange bottles that rattled with promises of sound sleep. Another herd for his major depressive disorder, varying sizes of bitter pills that offered almost suffocating numbness rather than reprieve. A separate stash for the incapacitating anxiety, there were blues and whites and pinks, all pleading for him not to scratch his skin off or gouge out his eyes at the thought of being forced to interact with strangers. There were a few that offered to bury his pain receptors to dull the ache that still laced his left arm. He had run the numbers, looked up the synergistic medical effects, and had a plan. It was honestly simple, stupidly so. He was going to take them all, swallowed down with some old absinthe, and slit his wrists for good measure.

Because who the fuck would care? If she didn't, which, she obviously didn't, who the fuck would. It wasn't like anyone would come to check on him. Maybe his mother, but she was all alone dealing with his father now. And Itachi… well he and his wife were pregnant; his brother would have something more worthwhile that he could pour his love into. If anyone would come looking, it would be Naruto.

Sasuke had frowned at the thought. Thinking about his sunshine friend finding his fucked-up body a second time almost made him reconsider. But Naruto was strong, he had already survived the death of his mother and unborn sister. He still had Minato, and he had Hinata now. Naruto was maybe the strongest person Sasuke knew. He would be fine. Honestly probably better off without Sasuke's bullshit constantly holding him back.

He had sighed, dumped the first container into the palm of his hands. The pills were oblong and blue, and stuck slightly to his damp skin. As he had lifted them to his mouth his phone went off.

Even a week later, Sasuke couldn't explain why he paused. It didn't fundamentally matter who had messaged him, it didn't change the fact that the only thing he heard in his head were Ino's moans as another man fucked her senseless, it didn't change his mind. He still wanted to die. But maybe it was the universe intervening, maybe some kind of twist of morbid curiosity, or maybe even some survival instinct he thought he had long buried. But whatever the reason, he stopped and tapped the screen.

And for the first time in five years, Technicolor had flashed in his tired eyes.

"Sasuke," he startled and looked up at her, surprised that he didn't still have the fistful of blue pills in his hands. But then his tired mind gently reminded him that was last week, and instead today, a beautiful and painful Ino was sitting in front of him. Beautiful Ino, face smeared with tears and makeup and snot. He realized the voicemail was playing again, he hadn't noticed he shifted back to listening to it on repeat, and suddenly shut it off and blacked his phone screen.

"Sasuke I'm…" she looked like she was really trying to think of something to say to him, her cheeks were flaming red, eyes wide as the moon, gazing at him glassy and distraught.

good. He thought. now you know.

He waited as her mouth gently opened and closed, a fish out of water, uncertain, embarrassed, thrown off kilter.

"I wouldn't have if-"

"If what?" he scoffed at her again but any anger that previously resided in him went up like smoke, twirling uselessly through his fingers as he tried futilely to hold onto it. As it dissipated, it left him overwhelmingly exhausted with a void where his heart had been. "If I had been there? If you hadn't taken that position covering art instillations in Otogakure? If what, Ino?"

"I don't know." She said miserably.

"If I had tried phone sex with you when you asked? What?" his brain regurgitated the new vocabulary he recently learned. "Was it because I'm asexual? I didn't, we talked about it –"

"No, Sasuke, that's not –"

"Then why?" it broke from the confines of his throat in a soft whine, desperate and pathetic. He hadn't meant to ask; he didn't want to know. But, in this godforsaken café, he found his mouth again speaking words he never approved.

Pale white brows were furrowed together, pink mouth was twisted into a deep frown, and tears were still streaking down her fair skin. "I don't know," she repeated, hands falling uselessly down into her lap. She looked away from him. "You were so far away – I didn't…" she bit at her lower lip, and his heart squeezed at the sight. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

Her blue eyes met his, and for the first time since she entered the establishment, there was sincerity in her voice.

A breath he didn't know that he was holding trickled out of his lungs, and they sat in silence, staring at each other. Eventually Ino sniffed, raising a delicate hand to wipe at her upper lip and almost chuckled at the yawning chasm now between them.

"I think I might be in love with him." It was whispered so faintly he thought for a moment he made it up. But that damned sincerity was still there, and he could only shake his head.

"Ino," he glanced down at his hands and hated that the tone of his voice was nearly identical to his father's. "I don't care." It was hard, serrated, poisoned, but spoken so softly, so remotely, and so unbothered that no hatred was traceable in it. That was his father speaking through him, and for a moment he almost took refuge in that thought.

"I don't fucking care. About you, or me, or us. About this." He motioned weakly between them. "I don't… I don't have anything left to say to you."

And he found it was true, even with the bloody void in his chest, it was true.

She was silent, and he waited, because maybe there was some fucked up part of her that had something else she needed to say. One final fuck you to inflict on him, intentional or not.

The damage was done in the form of a battered copy – his battered copy – of his favorite novel that she pulled from the bag he hadn't noticed she brought with her. She set it on the table between them, long fingers tracing the outline of the hardcover, before she pushed it across the table top to him.

"I never ended up reading it." she gave him a small wry smile. "I don't know why. But I figured you would want it back."

His throat constricted as he picked the book up and searing hot tears made their way to the edge of his eyelashes.

"Thanks." It was hollow as he looked down at the object in his hands. He didn't need to open it to know that inside the front cover was a short love note scrawled in her flowing handwriting, an apology for accidentally destroying his first copy, and on the title page was the signature of the author along with a short dedication to Sasuke for being a fan.

"I really am the worst." She murmured.

He shrugged, held in the urge to blame her for the end of them, and gripped the book with white knuckles.

He stood then, shoulders rounded and pulled his car keys from his pocket. He was staring at his dirty tennis shoes, wondering if Sai wore loafers and smoked expensive cigars, when Ino stood too, and for an awkward moment they were physically closer than they had been in months. But before she could try and stop him, he slipped away from the table, slipped out of the building, and slipped away from her without any further goodbye.

Author's Note:

Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment letting me know what you think!