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“Tell me, little brother,” Itachi starts, hooking the offended piece onto his pinky and lifting it up to eye level. “why was this particular article of cloth behind your door?”
Sasuke sees red; the lace material that is so familiar to the touch by now. He feels red; the color dusting the bridge of his nose and the tips of his ears.
With meticulous precision, he swallows slowly, and the discomfort of the situation is almost imperceptible, if it wasn’t his nii-san looking right through him.
Thinking quickly, the raven-haired nin recalls his eventual afternoon and averts his eyes when shrugging nonchalant. He knows that his little secret—and all involved parts— would be doomed if Itachi finds out.
“Well,” Sasuke says, with a small tension at the corner of his brows as his mind races for an excuse. “Well.”
Itachi looks at him expectantly, a taunt in the way he echoes: “Well?”
“I mixed up the… laundry?”
Itachi’s eyes are dark and Sasuke cannot decipher the way his lips tighten and quake. He places the garment onto Sasuke’s bed duvet, and Sasuke almost, almost dives for it—to throw it far, far out the window.
But he can’t, because Itachi was blocking his view, arms crossed over his broad chest, legs parted austerely.
“Does this have something to do with your team-mate?”
“Naruto?” Sasuke says—as a last ditch effort—and he frowns, feigning obliviousness.
“I don’t think Naruto-kun has slept over in ages,” Itachi challenges with an arched brow. “Even if he pranks everyone with that infamous jutsu of his, I don’t think this particular piece belongs to the blonde.”
Sasuke huffs, pretending blasè and adds far quickly than he should: “Maybe it’s mother’s?” Moving to open and close a few drawers, he continues; “It came up with the last load yesterday. I put everything away, this was in the bottom.”
Not convinced, Itachi looks between his little brother and the place where he found the questionable piece. “Mother’s? She wouldn’t—”
They lock eyes and still in place at the assumption. Clearing their throats as they were clearing their minds of unriquieted thoughts, both nin let it go and only nod in mutual understanding. Let’s not talk about that any longer.
“I’ll drop it off downstairs, along with the laundry load.” It’s the final sentence exchanged between the brothers and Sasuke can’t really decide if he feels relieved or if he should start to worry now.
“Wait a second,” His mind is still whirring from—whatever he and Sakura has been doing, and since his hair is still rumpled, he suspects Itachi might just put two and two together. So he distracts him with a question. “Why are you home early?”
Itachi doesn’t look panicked, and doesn’t fumble. “Training was cancelled.”
“What happened to Shisui?”
“Nothing,” his brother tells him. “He’s great.”
Itachi leaves the room, and Sasuke sighs dramatically, plopping down on his bed, head hitting the pillow. At least his plan to push his brother out the room worked.
Sasuke reflects.
He had lived in denial, but he knows better now. He had denied when his mother would hint when he was younger, and he had denied friends pointing the obvious.
They were ice and fire; spring and winter. More often than not, they would argue and they would spar. It was as exhilarating as it was annoying.
At age of five they were almost friends, acquaintances. At age of twelve they were placed on Team Seven and became friends. At age of fifteen they became best friends, which was possible due to Naruto’s adventures with the Toad Sannin. And then, at seventeen, everything was burning.
Glances shared across the bustling streets of Konoha, a soft smile that Sasuke only saved for her. Fortuitous touch, from arms brushing to fixing an unruly lock of her hair.
The pace seemed fair and innocent, and Sasuke didn’t question. Until that day, that damned day. The day his father brought over Uchiha Akane for dinner, his future fiancé.
Incredulous at the idea of a setup, Sasuke huffed and run, leaving a screaming Fugaku and worried Mikoto behind to take care of the unwanted guest.
The first thing he thought after that was how everything was wrong. From the shade of her pale skin, to the color of her eyes and hair. They were all wrong; wrong shape, wrong color, wrong girl.
And at the realization of such fate, the one he didn’t care to be part of, he found himself knocking frantically to Haruno Sakura’s window.
She opened it quickly, she had probably sensed him long ago. The opened window allowed the wind to brush her hair from her shoulders, bathing the room with her scent. The moonlight highlighted the pink and green and the ethereal halo humming around her. And then he knew.
Sasuke knew she was the one; it was always her.
Sasuke knew that they had been dancing for far too long around each other, avoiding the inevitable. And the concern in her green green eyes, so tender, just confirmed that he didn’t feel that alone. He dropped to his feet, extending his hand to cup her face, bringing her closer.
Sakura moved unquestionably, searching his eyes for confirmation if he was okay.
He smirked then, because it was easier than to smile, or maybe because the moment called far more emotion than contemptment. Leaning closer, he erased the space between them, sealing their lips and fate.
From that day, it only escalated. The burning, the longing, the want.
And that’s how he found himself cornered that afternoon, pressed against the wall of his bedroom.
Of course, Sasuke made sure to lock the door, seal the windows—and press a palm to her mouth when she got a little loud.
She was pinned against the door, her flush angled against his hardness, and she kissed him wildly, hands roaming in his hair, him whispering a mantra of her name, incessant and syllables bleeding into each other, a slur adding as she pulled his lower lip between hers.
They were panting in a harmony that was electrifying, clothes against clothes, foreheads pressed against each other, eyes hooded and brimming with emotions.
Sasuke slid his hand under her red tunic, running up the knobs of her spine, lingering at her vertebrae, and finding the hook to her bra.
She had nodded, melting against him, and Sasuke peeled it off, flung it to the floor.
He found her black shorts already on the floor when he step back to toss his jacket aside. Finding her eagerness amusing, he dropped to his knees and pulled the scrape of her lace underwear between his teeth, dragging it slowly through her long and smooth leg, stopping only to bite her tight here and there.
The little punishment rewarded him with little mewls of encouragement, which he was sure to make her repeat and repeat. When he was past her knee, she lift her leg, bending it to help the removal. Before he could finish though, she hooked it over his shoulder, swinging the red piece behind him with a tantalizing movement that drew him closer.
Sasuke pressed his lips at the juncture of her thighs that was neither here nor there, and met her eyes, with the promise of what was about to come. But he brought her legs downwards, as if to say, not now, and she crossed her legs around his torso, bringing her teeth to the valley of his collar bones, fingernails sinking into the terrain of muscles on his back.
She whimpered as his thumb ran over her pebbled peaks, and then—
Then there was shuffling outside, of ascending footsteps, and Sasuke jerked away from her, straightened his shirt, threw his flak jacket under the bed, as Sakura disappeared in a gust of wind and a pair of twirling leaves.
The same crescendo up the stairs brought him back to the present. He expects a knock, since the pair of footsteps stopped in front of his door, however, his door flings open instead.
His mother always knocked. And to see an angry Mikoto forgetting her manners is alarming, the bells on his head were ringing and swinging so loud that he jumps up. If anyone asks, he’d blame the shinobi instincts.
Mikoto stand over his bed, a mighty glare fixated on her son, hands planted on her hips, expression twisted so far from motherly reprimand that it was villainly.
Sasuke chokes, sitting ramrod upright, abruptly put on full attention. “M-mother?”
She squints at him, wagging a finger in his face. “Sasuke Uchiha.”
Holy shit she’s using full names—holy shit holy shit holy—
It was at that moment that he knew, he fucked up.
“Why is there an exceptionally fancy pantie in my cupboard?!”
“Uh…”
“Young man, if you don’t answer, I will not hesitate to use my sharingan and look inside that stupid head of yours. What were you thinking, bringing a girl to our house?”
“I—”
“Who was it?” She demands, eyes severe.
“Um—Who?”
“Who was the girl.”
Sasuke swallows, steadies his breath. If he didn’t answer—then she’d read his mind. And that was a whole other level of mortifying.
So he hangs his head, and says—“Sakura.”
There’s silence, loud enough that it rings in Sasuke’s ears. He waits for a lecture to be spewing out his mother’s mouth, aggravated and disappointed—but it doesn’t come.
He risks looking up.
There are tears in his mother’s eyes, a palm pressed to her agape mouth, and her expression is blown open with surprise.
“When?”
He pauses. “A few months, I think, three.”
“So that’s what it took.”
Sasuke frowns. “Uh, what?”
“Akane.” She says, as if it would explain everything. “I was obviously against your father choosing a bride for you, because you belonged with Sakura—”
“Wait—”
“—so it took you the thought of marrying someone other than her, to get you to open your eyes, you dense idiot.”
“Hey, woah, wait—”
“When are you calling her over?”
“No, wait, wait—rewind, rewind—what?”
Mikoto grins, now, dark eyes sparkling in ambient light—the same look she got in her eyes when she spoke to Sakura’s mom and Ino’s mom, giggling in some isle of a bazaar. It made Sasuke wary and uncomfortable.
“You and Sakura-chan were so obvious, Sasuke! And I’m happy for you.”
“So you planned this?!” The incredulousness of his voice makes it rise a few octaves, and he’s too shocked to be embarrassed.
“A little,” she admits. “A lot. Okay yes.”
Sasuke should be angry, but he can only smile. It’s a foreign expression for him, but ever since him and Sakura began to steal kisses—behind a tree, in an abandoned alley, in a crater that she created in the training grounds, pressed against Naruto’s apartment—much to the blond’s chagrin—or simply late at night, when Konoha slumbered.
His mother hugs him, now. When she pulls away, the glare is back.
“At our home, Sasuke? Seriously?”
A tsk, tsk sound reverberates through the room and Sasuke looks up to see Itachi leaning against the threshold, arms crossed and head moving disapprovingly.
“I expected that from Shisui, not from you, little brother.” Frowning deeply, he adds; “Or should I say, brother—“little” doesn’t fit anymore.”
Mikoto fixes Itachi with an encrypted look, a little tut, tut escaping her lips. “And I suppose those bruises on you knees are because of your tutoring with dear Shisui?”