Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A black sedan rolled to a stop behind a cluster of cruisers, their radios buzzing with fractured dispatch codes. Flashes of red and blue lights bled into the night. The driver of the sedan killed his engine and stepped out, pausing as his breath curled in the frigid air. The weight of his coat settled against the chill as he took in what lay before him.

The abandoned power plant loomed like a great rusting beast. With its cracked concrete and corroded steel, the old plant was an industrial relic of an era when the streets of Konoha got life pumped into it by its towering smokestack. For decades, it had been the city's sole provider of power, its dominance unchallenged. That was until the Hyuuga Hydro Plant came along. Backed by a syndicate of ruthless venture capitalists and fueled by the cutting-edge technology of Hyuuga Inc., it wasn't just another energy supplier, it was a revolution. With its promise of 'clean energy,' the hydro plant didn't ask for a share of the market. It took it. Hyuuga moved like lightning, undercutting prices, buying out contracts, and whispering in the ears of city officials.

Within years, the once-mighty facility had been rendered obsolete, its doors shuttered, its halls left to decay. Now, its broken windows, gaped like empty eyes, were the only witnesses to a crime.

Detective Sasuke Uchiha flashed his badge at the flurry of police officers manning the entrance before ducking beneath the yellow crime scene tape. He wasn't surprised to find forensics already swarming the scene.

Their team leader had a reputation for being unnervingly enthusiastic about her job. He has had the displeasure of witnessing it several times. The woman simply came alive at the sight of death. He had long since stopped questioning it. In this line of work, he supposed that one took whatever motivation they could get.

Flashes of light cut through the darkness, painting strobe-lit snapshots of the scene: a forensic photographer's camera freezing moments in time, techs in white coveralls moving like ghosts as they bagged evidence. A disposable hankie, a crumpled soda can, dried mud from a shoe print—each item vanished into labeled bags with clinical efficiency.

Without breaking stride, Sasuke advanced further into the building, his polished shoes crunching over broken glass and debris.

A nauseating cocktail of decomposition and industrial wear greeted him.

In the centre of the vast cavernous space, a body lay, sprawled on a stained tarp. It was a young woman, dressed in a brown pencil skirt and crisp white blouse that looked absurdly out of place in this derelict setting. Her face was bloated and discoloured. The early stages of decomposition had set in and made her features almost unrecognizable.

Tenten, the forensic investigator, crouched beside the body, her gloved hands moving with practiced efficiency. Her brown hair was tied into its usual twin buns and her face was a mask of concentration, though her eyes sparkled with a strange enthusiasm.

If he were the type of man to, Sasuke would've shuddered. Instead, he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his trench coat and cleared his throat to alert her of his presence.

"Definitely not the primary scene," Tenten said, breaking the silence. Her voice was bright and matter-of-fact. "No blood spatter, no signs of a struggle. The body's been cleaned, too. The state of her clothes is immaculate for a dead girl. Someone went through a lot of trouble to clean her up before dumping her here."

Sasuke inwardly groaned. "So, we're looking for a killer with a sense of decorum. Great."

Killers with a conscience were the worst kinds. They were the ones who made you question the line between humanity and monstrosity.

A cold-blooded murderer, someone who killed without remorse, was easier to understand. Evil in its purest form was something you could hate without hesitation. But the ones who cleaned the body, who dressed it neatly, who tried to preserve some semblance of dignity in death? They forced you to confront the uncomfortable truth that even monsters could have a flicker of humanity.

And that flicker, that tiny spark of conscience, made them infinitely more dangerous. It meant they could justify their actions, convince themselves they were doing something noble or necessary. It meant they could live with what they'd done. And that, Sasuke thought, was the most terrifying thing of all.

"Someone's trying to throw us off. Clean body, clean clothes, but dumped in a place like this? It doesn't make sense. Whoever did this is either meticulous or a complete psychopath."

"Or both." Sasuke ran a hand over his face.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out, glancing at the screen. A text from his father, the precinct captain.

He groaned under his breath, shoving the phone back into his pocket. Fugaku Uchiha ran the Konohan precinct with the same iron-fisted control he tried to wield over the Uchiha family—schedules, expectations, and a relentless focus on appearances.

"You're not getting any younger", he often said, as if Sasuke hadn't noticed the years ticking by. As if he didn't know that every case, every late night, every close call aged him faster than time ever could.

His father, of all people, should understand. He lived this life too—the long hours, the sleepless nights, the constant weight of responsibility. But Fugaku behaved as if Sasuke's refusal to settle down was a personal insult to the family's legacy. Sasuke afforded him the liberty of behaving like a drill sergeant at the precinct, but outside those walls he refused to have his personal life micromanaged.

Fuck him and his dinner.

He crouched beside Tenten, keeping a comfortable distance between them. For a brief moment, the absurd idea of asking her to be his plus one flickered across his mind. A stickler for the don't-shit-where-you-eat rule, Fugaku just might have a heart attack if Sasuke were to turn up with another member of the precinct as his date.

He dismissed the idea and forced his focus back on the corpse.

As tempting as it was to ruffle his old man's feathers, he wasn't in the mood for that inevitable lecture about professionalism and boundaries. Besides, he had enough on his plate without adding unnecessary workplace drama to the mix. Outside of the few times their paths crossed on cases, he and Tenten were practically strangers. He intended to keep it that way.

"What've we got?" he began their routine exchange.

Her gloved hands tilted the victim's head to the side, exposing the wound. She studied it with clinical fascination. "Cause of death looks to be a single, precise stab wound to the base of the skull with a small thin blade. Probably an ice pick or stiletto. Whoever did this knew exactly where to strike for instant shutdown of the central nervous system. No struggle, no mess. Just..." Her fingers flicked open in a gesture that mimicked an explosion. A pantomime of synapses short-circuiting. "...nighty night."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow at this but made no comment. "Professional hit?"

"Maybe," she said, plucking a stray hair from the tarp. She held it up to the light like a jeweler inspecting a diamond. "Seems the killer studied anatomy just for this. Some serious attention to details was paid here." She paused, tilting her head. She all but salivated. "You know, if they weren't murdering people, they'd probably make a great crime scene cleaner."

"Do we have an estimated time to death?"

"I'd say about six or seven days ago based on the level of decomposition and the presence of insect activity." She indicated to the body's swollen abdomen and the sickly green pallor creeping across the skin.

Sasuke hadn't noticed the insect bites at first.

"The cold, damp air in here might've slowed the decomposition process but not enough that it would throw off the timeline significantly. One thing's for certain though, whoever dumped her here did it postmortem, probably within a day or two after she was killed."

"And who is she?"

Tenten shook her head, stood and peeled off her gloves. "Working on it. No ID. The decomposition made facial recognition tricky. We'll have to run prints and dental records. But given the clothes and the state of her hands—" She gestured to the victim's manicured nails and smooth skin. "—she wasn't living on the streets. This was someone with money."

Sasuke's frown deepened. "A meticulous killer and a high-profile victim." He glanced back at Tenten. "This has all the hallmarks of a professional hit."

"Maybe someone's trying to send a message?" She offered.

"By dumping her in a place like this? With no audience?" His mouth twisted wryly; his doubt evident. He'd been in this business long enough to know that if the nature of a homicide seemed easily discernible, there was always something more sinister at play.

"Some teenagers called it in," she informed him, then added as if it were any consolation, "Apparently this place gets occasional traffic."

"Unless one of them saw the killer, how she was discovered is irrelevant. Damn kids were probably too busy bumping uglies or getting high to notice anyway. I need something concrete to work it," he told her frankly.

She gave him a mock salute. "I'll have the preliminary report on your desk by morning, sir."

"And I'll start pulling records on missing persons. If she's been gone for seven days, someone's probably looking for her."

Sasuke made to turn heels and take his leave, but Tenten affixed him with a stare that kept him rooted in his spot. It was a look of pure manic curiosity. The kind she usually reserved for the corpses.

He shot her a glare, but there was no real heat behind it. "Is something the matter?"

"Detective," she said, suddenly sounding very serious. "I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend."

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

Chapter Text

Pretend to be my boyfriend.

The sentence lay between them, cold and stiff, like an unclaimed body.

Around them, the power plant's shadows leaned closer, listening. The silence stretched on, long enough for Tenten to count the slow drip of water from a broken pipe somewhere in the distance. Twelve drops. Thirteen.

The look Sasuke gave her was one of complete bewilderment. Then, like a circuit snapping shut, his expression flattened into something unreadable.

When he finally spoke, each word was glacial and precise. "Over my dead body."

"Does it have to be yours specifically? Because I've got one right here that's prepped and ready," she grinned, nudging the victim's body with her boot.

Sasuke's jaw locked so tight she heard his molars grind. For a glorious second, Tenten thought she'd succeeded in cracking his composure, but his face smoothed into terrifying calm once again.

"If you're this cavalier with living subjects," he said, "No wonder you prefer corpses."

"Now that's just unfair. I'm equally inappropriate with both," she joked.

He didn't laugh. Not that she expected him to. She'd never met an Uchiha with a sense of humour. She had pegged Sasuke as the most approachable of the lot—which, granted, was like calling a scalpel 'softer' than a kunai. His default expression hovered somewhere between 'smelling week-old decomp' and 'calculating how many ways he could legally murder her,' but at least he didn't radiate active hostility like his father. That man could curdle milk with a glance.

Sasuke's spine straightened and Tenten took it as his cue that he'd be exiting in five, four, three…

"We're done here," he said with clipped finality.

Having worked with the trifecta of Uchihas for the past five years, she knew their immediate response to absurdity. Fugaku's was volcanic temper, Itachi's was psychic warfare, and Sasuke's specialty—immediate withdrawal, all dramatic exits and zero percent engagement.

Tenten supposed it was an evolutionary step towards sanity for the family. Not that sanity was their strong suit.

Sasuke turned to leave, and she lunged in front of him, arms spread wide open, barring his escape.

"Look," she said. "All I need is one dinner. Two hours max. You show up. My friends see that I wasn't lying about having a love life. If nothing else, they'll fawn over you." She gave him an exaggerated once-over before leaning in and lowering her voice to a whisper. "We do love the tortured detective trope."

Sasuke exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled, like he was counting down from ten in his head.

"At the end of the night, we go our separate ways and never speak of it again. Easy peasy," she finished her pitch. "What do you say?"

"What's in it for me?" The question was flat, disinterested.

Uchihas didn't do favours. Hell, she wasn't even sure they did basic human decency outside of courtroom formalities. She hadn't given much thought to what he stood to gain or lose from agreeing to her little charade.

"The satisfaction…" she decided, pressing a hand to her chest. "...of knowing you helped a friend."

His black eyes flicked over her like a whip. "We're not friends."

"Harsh." Tenten rocked back on her heels. "But we could be."

"No." The word landed like a gavel.

"No to being friends or no to being my pretend boyfriend?"

He sidestepped her. "What do you think?"

Tenten shifted to block him, and their shoulders collided. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough that she felt the solid weight of him through his coat and smelled the expensive cologne that clung to his clothes.

"I think you'd rather autopsy yourself," she cracked a laugh.

"Then why ask?"

The retort should've been dry. Maybe even teasing. But this was Sasuke. Tenten had seen skeletons with more emotional range. At least bones had the decency to rattle when you shook them. Sasuke just got tighter, like a tourniquet twisting around the conversation.

"Report," he said tightly, moving past her. "On my desk by noon, tomorrow."

She opened her mouth to protest but he was already gone.

Tenten knelt beside the corpse, her gloves snapping back on with more force than necessary.

"Don't suppose you've got a single brother?" she asked her deceased companion. Somewhere deeper in the plant, an old metal pipe groaned. "Too soon?"

Damn, Tenten mused.

She's been given the cold shoulder twice in a single night. One from indifference and the other from rigor mortis.

The midday sun glared off the precinct's glass doors as Tenten shouldered her way inside. A cardboard tray wobbled in her grip, two steaming coffees threatening to spill over. One black and bitter, the other sickeningly sweet, loaded with enough sugar to tempt even the most stubborn Uchiha. She'd bribed enough colleagues to know caffeine opened doors faster than formal requests.

She'd give it one last shot before she threw in the towel.

It wasn't that Sasuke was her only option. Just her best one.

The renowned detective had spent his career evading admirers—journalists, socialites, even fellow officers—all of them drawn to the brilliance and icy magnetism that made headlines alongside his cases. But Sasuke had built walls where everyone else had built bridges.

That was why it had to be him. Anyone else—a mutual friend, some polite acquaintance—and Ino would sniff out the lie before the appetizers arrived. But Sasuke? The human equivalent of a locked vault? No one would question it. They'd be too busy picking their jaws up off the floor.

Five years of burying herself in work, of letting cases and crime scenes consume every waking hour, hadn't exactly left Tenten with much to show outside of professional accolades. "You'll die alone, and the mortician would've been the first person to touch you in years," Ino had once told her. The worst part? She wasn't wrong.

So, when she'd casually dropped "I'm seeing someone" into conversation after her friends staged yet another intervention about her "concerning lack of human connection with the living," the shock had been almost comical. But her triumph was short-lived. Their relief had been worse than their pity. Because now, she had to produce a man that didn't exist.

And for that? She needed Sasuke. He was a tactical advantage.

The one man no one could imagine faking it.

With renewed purpose, Tenten cut through the precinct's midday chaos. She sidestepped an intern juggling a teetering stack of case files and another balancing a tray of over-brewed espressos. Rookies hunched over keyboards, typing with the frantic staccato of gunfire, while veterans barked into phones.

Tenten wove past a bulletin board featuring smiling photos and grainy security stills, all with the same red-inked "UNSOLVED" stamped over them. Soon, yesterday's Jane Doe would join them, another face swallowed by the archive.

The toxicology report came back clean. No benzos, no opioids, not even the usual recreational suspects. It ruled out the possibility of a deal gone sour. The kids who found her had cracked under questioning and admitted they'd been there to meet Kabuto, their weed guy. Apparently, the abandoned plant was a hot pickup spot. But clearly Jane Doe had been placed there to muddy the waters because there was no trace of anything in her blood.

As Tenten neared Sasuke's office, a hush fell over the place, even the heaving printer choked mid-page. She found Captain Fugaku standing stiff-backed outside, shepherding two people inside: Sasuke, his expression carved from granite, and a woman with dark hair that cascaded down her back like spilled ink. The stranger leaned close to murmur something that made Sasuke's jaw clench harder, before Fugaku snapped the blinds shut with finality.

Tenten's steps slowed. She didn't have to wait long before the whisper network whirred to life around her.

"Can't blame him, with a face like that, she's bound to be everyone's type," an officer muttered near the vending machine.

"Heard she's rich," someone else offered.

"She's clearly got the captain's stamp of approval."

The coffee tray cracked in Tenten's grip.

The cool sterile air of the morgue was a welcomed embrace when the elevator opened. Tenten approached the nearest sink, and without ceremony upended the extra cup of coffee into the drain. The motion was cathartic, but not enough.

With a resolved sigh, she pulled out her phone.

His response came only seconds later.

On the elevator ride, a methodical review of her associates identified Kiba Inuzuka as the most viable option: frequent proximity, absence of contradictory evidence, and predictable behavioural patterns reduced deception parameters to acceptable thresholds.

They ran in the same circles but never dragged dates to group hangs. His love life was as nebulous as hers. The lie—that their mutual absence of partners indicated a longstanding private relationship would barely need stretching.

She pocketed her phone and slipped into her lab coat, ignoring the buzz of Kiba's reply. She needed no more reminders of her tactical misjudgment. And that's all it was.

The heat coiling in her gut? Pure frustration at a derailed plan.

The way her fingers fumbled the buttons? Midday fatigue.

The fact that she'd give anything to be a fly on the wall in Sasuke's office, right now? Professional curiosity.

Tenten snapped on her gloves and yanked Jane Doe's freezer drawer open. The body slid out with a whisper of plastic, pale under the morgue lights. She was about to start swabbing the victim for any signs of foreign DNA, when the door burst open.

Sasuke stood in the doorway; his hair slightly mussed—like he'd been running his hands through it. His jaw was set in a way that promised violence.

Tenten blinked. "Can I help you?"

"Let's do it." The words came out strangled, like he was wrenching them from his own throat.

Then he was moving towards her, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it over a chair. His fingers went to his cuffs next, rolling up the sleeves with methodical slowness that made the tendons in his forearms flex.

Tenten flushed. "…It?"

Sasuke's expression twisted into something between amusement and revulsion. "Control your imagination. This is a workplace. A morgue, nonetheless."

Her face burned hotter than a crematorium.

The corpse between them, at least, had the decency not to snicker.

Chapter Text

The moment the words "Let's do it" left his mouth, it became apparent that Tenten's mind had taken a nosedive into the gutter. But then—too fast, too smug—she composed herself.

One latex-clad hand flicked between them like she was swatting away a fly. "Actually, that offer's been rescinded."

His fingers twitched at his sides. His father's words still clawed at his ribs, and now hers threatened to peel them bare.

Mere hours ago she'd been pitching her fake boyfriend scheme with the polished ease of a con artist mid-performance. She couldn't back out now. Not when he needed the ruse to work more than he cared to admit.

"I changed my mind," Tenten supplied, casually checking her buzzing phone. An infuriating smirk played on her lips. Like she was enjoying this. "Kiba's gonna do it."

The hum of the morgue's refrigeration units spiked in Sasuke's ears.

Her phone buzzed again. Kiba Inuzuka flashed across the screen like a taunt.

Something hot and unpleasant coiled in his gut.

He moved before she could react. Three measured strides closed the distance between them. His shadow swallowed hers under the flickering fluorescents.

"Kiba?" His fingers closed around the phone just as her grip tightened, their knuckles brushing. The device vibrated insistently against his palm and he glared down at it. "From Narcotics?"

"Give that back," she said calmly, but a pulse jumped in her throat.

"You're rescinding your offer?" He kept the phone just out of reach. His other hand braced against the autopsy table, caging her in without touching. "And going with Inuzuka?"

There was the slightest hitch in her breath.

His gaze tracked the way her fingers twitched toward the scalpel tray. He had no doubt she was just as skilled at carving into living flesh as she was with corpses. Unfortunately for her, he was in the best shape of his life. It would take a lot more than that to best him.

Tenten sighed, seemingly realizing this for herself. "You made it abundantly clear yesterday with the whole 'over my dead body' dram—"

The door burst open.

His partner's arrival was so perfectly timed, Sasuke felt he'd personally willed it into the universe.

"Yo, Tenten—oh shit." Naruto froze mid-step, case file dangling from his fingers.

Sasuke didn't move. Didn't so much as glance away from Tenten's face as Naruto's gaze darted between his grip on the phone, their close proximity, and the flush creeping up Tenten's neck.

"Am I... interrupting something?"

Sasuke watched realization dawn across Tenten's face. If their position wasn't compromising before, it certainly was now with Naruto, the precinct's biggest blabbermouth, clearly drawing conclusions. And as his best friend, Naruto's words would carry weight.

Tenten's lip parted in protest just as Naruto barreled forward.

He slapped the file onto a clean autopsy tray. "Hydroplant Jane Doe update—turns out she might've been pregnant. They recovered a positive test amongst other things from a handbag believed to be hers," he grimaced. "Gonna need you to confirm."

The air shifted. Tenten's professional mask slid into place as she reached for the file. "Possible double homicide."

"Possible motive," Sasuke slotted in. "Pregnant women are sixteen per cent more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence. When the pregnancy is unwanted? That number doubles."

Naruto whistled low. "Damn. So we're looking at—"

"Boyfriend. Husband. Lover."

"I'll ask Karin to run a beta-hCG test on the liver tissue," Tenten volunteered. "We should know within the hour."

The phone buzzed again in Sasuke's hand.

Chapter Text

The wipers squeaked in a steady rhythm as Sasuke's car slowed to a stop at a red light. 8:53 PM glowed on the dashboard, yet the streets remained a sea of brake lights and impatient horns cutting through the drizzle. Somewhere ahead, a pedestrian darted between gridlocked cars, their umbrella flipping inside-out in the wind.

Tenten sat stiffly in the passenger seat as she realized with growing horror that Sasuke Uchiha—the Sasuke Uchiha—was literally giving her a goddamn debriefing.

On himself.

"I take my coffee black," he told her, eyes fixed on the road.

A motorcycle weaved past, Tenten tracked it for half a second, a brief reprieve, before Sasuke yanked back her attention.

"I don't understand the purpose of decorative pillows."

Of all the things she'd braced for in life, his interior design hot takes hadn't made the list. Worse—she couldn't think of a scenario where any of these oddly specific facts about him would ever come up in conversation.

She had this deeply unsettling feeling that Sasuke wasn't just sharing. He was arming her. Prepping her for something.

She felt compelled to ask. "Hey, what changed your mind?"

But he ignored her completely, stating "I'm not particularly fond of cats," like it was a critical piece of intelligence.

She glared at his side profile, half expecting PowerPoint slides to start projecting onto the windshield. "Should I be taking notes?"

If he picked up on her sarcasm, he didn't indicate. "My—"

"Let me guess," she cut in. "Blood type is O-negative. You're allergic to small talk. Your favourite colour is something boring like navy blue?"

His fingers flexed on the wheel. "AB-positive. Peanuts. And it's charcoal."

"Oh wow. Early signs of a personality. "

The stoplight turned green. Sasuke jammed the accelerator, slamming her back into the seat.

"Anything else I should know? Preferred funeral arrangements?"

Since he was clearly trying to kill them both!

His sidelong glance was razor sharp.

Ridiculously, he answered. "I like tomatoes."

Tenten dug her nails into her jeans, incredulous. "Am I going undercover as your fucking chef? Tell me about your eggs then, Detective. How do you like them? Scrambled? Over-easy? Hard-boiled, like your conversational skills?"

Five years of forensic work, and this was what broke her composure?

The wipers hiccupped mid-swipe.

"Unfertilized," he said with a straight face.

She whipped out her phone with a mind to launch it at his head. Instead, she opened her notes app and typed aloud. "Subject exhibits dark humour. Likely defense mechanism. Also: possible sociopath."

"We're here." He killed the engine outside a dimly lit izakaya.

Tenten didn't move. "You didn't answer my question."

Sasuke's fingers lingered over the door handle. "Which one?"

"What changed your mind? Last night it was 'over my dead body.' Now you're reciting your entire dating profile like I'm your goddamn Konoha Mingle ghostwriter."

The streetlight flickered, painting his face in fractured gold.

"Because," he said at last, "My father needs the mayor's endorsement for Commissioner of Police, and I'm his bargaining chip."

Her brain scrambled for context. "Huh? How so?"

"The mayor's daughter," he said by way of explanation.

There weren't too many different ways to interpret that.

"Oh." The sound slipped out before she could stop it—small, hollow.

The car door clicked open.

"Let's go."

Sasuke turned his black eyes on her, and for the first time, Tenten saw how truly depthless they were.

This was war by alliance. But while she'd played her cards face-up, Sasuke dealt his hands in the shadows, sacrificing pieces she'd never been told were in play. And now that she realized the board was tilted against her, he'd already inked her name on the betting slip.

The izakaya's paper lanterns swayed overhead, painting trembling shadows across the table and sharpening the tension in Tenten's white-knuckled grip on the laminated menu.

Yakitori smoke and searing miso cod thickened the air—a taunt to her hollow stomach, still clenched from the six hours she and Karin spent peeling placental tissue from Jane Doe's womb.

Six hours of delicate work, only to find no matches in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).

While this ruled out a convicted offender as the father, that small statistical relief provided no actionable leads.

Tenten's stomach gave another one of those guttural snarls that would've made Kiba's detection hounds proud.

The thought of him twisted something deeper than hunger. She owed him an apology, but it would need to come armoured in a lie so airtight it could suffocate the truth.

The jealousy story was tempting—claim she'd used Kiba to make Sasuke jealous. But Kiba worked Narcotics; he smelled bullshit for a living. Perhaps it was better to let silence do the lying.

"So," Tenten said. Her gaze sliced over the menu at the brute who'd caused the whole Kiba mess. "Let's start over."

Sasuke sipped his whiskey, the ice clinking against the glass. "Start what?"

"Our actual relationship briefing." She flagged down a waiter. "We'll take the wagyu platter. And the lobster sashimi. And—" She skimmed the price column for the most expensive thing she could find. "That bottle of sake."

Sasuke raised a brow at her. "Are we drinking me into bankruptcy?"

"This might be a fake date, but you're not fake rich. You'll survive."

"Gold-digging and zero subtlety." There was a deliberate pause as the waiter set down their sake. "Bold strategy."

Tenten poured herself a generous cup. "If I was digging for gold, I'd have gone after the Uchiha with a pension."

The sound that escaped him then—a low, unexpected chuckle—seemed to startle them both. For a fleeting moment, the harsh izakaya lighting softened the edges around his mouth, revealing a smile so disarmingly handsome that Tenten nearly forgot she low-key couldn't stand this man.

She cleared her throat (and her obvious brain fog). "We need to ask each other important questions. The ones everyone will be curious about. Like how we met."

"Work."

"No, how we met met."

"Hm."

His thumb traced the rim of his glass, either reminiscing or savouring her impending humiliation. Because their meet-cute was more of a meet-disaster, and she doubted he'd ever forget that day.

"Gas station."

"Excuse me?" Tenten stared blankly at him in confusion.

"The gas station on fourth street. That was where we first met," he clarified.

She shook her head. Not recalling.

"You were parked at the pump for over twenty minutes, hysterical on your phone. It was the only open pump. I gave a courtesy honk. You flipped me off and walked away."

He took a leisurely sip, watching her face cycle through confusion to dawning horror.

"You left the nozzle in your tank." His lips curled into something too sharp to be called a smile. "And as luck would have it, the pump was still authorized to your card. Seemed wasteful not to fill up." He tilted his head, faux-thoughtful. "Might've topped Naruto's shitty pickup off as well. He was behind me. The memory's hazy."

Her jaws unhinged, chopsticks clattering onto her plate. "That was you?"

"And that," he said, sounding pleased with himself, "was you."

Tenten's face drained of all colour. The memory of the exorbitant charge was still fresh. Even fresher, the memory of why she'd been so out of it that day.

"Motherfu—" She inhaled sharply. Then lowered her voice when she realized her outburst had caused nearby diners to turn. "I had to pay for your gas!"

"I'd say we're about even," he shrugged. "You did eat my box of evidence at a crime scene two weeks later."

Her face burned. "How was I supposed to know the donuts were evidence?"

"The blood spatter wasn't enough of a clue?" Sasuke countered, unimpressed.

The memory still made her stomach turn. Five years ago, fresh on the job, she'd simply asked where to find something sweet—a perfectly reasonable request on her third day at the precinct. When the officer at the front desk smirked and said, "The Leaf Bakery, two blocks east," she'd assumed it was a recommendation, not a dispatch.

The bakery had shown no signs of being an active crime scene: no tape, no officers. Just the saccharine smell of sugar and a single pristine pastry box amidst empty display cases. The chocolate-glazed donut with its suspicious red swirl had looked perfectly edible.

So, this was the infamous cop-donut initiation, she'd thought as she bit into it.

The door's violent crash against the wall nearly made her choke. There stood Sasuke, gloves already on, evidence bags in hand, his dark eyes tracking from the half-eaten donut to her guilty face.

"Those," he had said with terrifying calm, "Contained the victim's last known biological traces."

The forensic tech's helpful addition— "We'll need gastric and DNA samples from you now"—did nothing to ease the way her breakfast threatened to reappear.

Later reports confirmed the baker had been struck from behind mid-frosting which explained the red swirl. Tenten spent twenty minutes dry-heaving behind the shop.

It took three years—and her hard-earned promotion to senior forensic Investigator—before Sasuke would deign to process a scene she'd set foot on.

Tenten swallowed against the bile that rose at the memory and made a decisive shake of her head. "We can't share either of those 'how we met' stories."

"Why?"

"Because neither paints both of us as well-adjusted members of society."

"Speak for yourself, I'm not a consumer of crucial crime scene evidence."

"And I'm not a gas-pumping thief with zero civic decency," Tenten bit back. "We're telling people we met at a coffee shop."

"We met at a gas station." The way he said it, like he was stating an immutable law of the universe, made her fingers itch to strangle him.

"Like hell we did."

"December 29th." His voice was all clipped case-file certainty. "You wore jeans shorts and a gray hoodie with a bleach stain on the left sleeve. Your hair was in the same sorry state it is now." A pause. "You drove an old silver Honda Civic. License plate KNV-479. Had a broken headlight, likely from reversing into a pole."

The details were alarmingly precise. So, this was Sasuke's infamous recall—exact, unemotional, and utterly terrifying.

Her skin prickled. "That's—" Impressive hovered dangerously close to her tongue. She swallowed it. "—borderline stalking, Detective."

"It's basic observation," Sasuke said, unfazed as the door burst open with laughter. "It comes with the job."

Kiba spilled into the izakaya with several friends in tow, already halfway drunk. When he spotted Tenten, his face lit up with the same easy grin he'd always given her.

"Tenten!" He stumbled toward their table, the scent of gin trailing behind him. "Didn't think I'd see you in a place like this." When his eyes landed on Sasuke, the transformation was instant. His expression hardened. "With a guy like Sasuke, nonetheless."

He muttered something under his breath about women and their painfully consistent taste.

"The exit's in the same direction you came," Sasuke told him.

Kiba's fingers flexed at his sides like he was imagining them around a throat. Seemingly for want of something safer to do with them, he planted both hands on their table.

"What's with the tough guy act, Uchiha?"

"You're interrupting my dinner." Sasuke's calm voice carried the weight of a cocked gun.

"You interrupted my call."

His next words hit like a subpoena—cold, binding and terrifyingly official. "When I told you to lose her number earlier, I meant to never breathe in her general direction again."

Kiba fisted a hand in Sasuke's collar and hauled him up. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Tenten shot to her feet, Kiba's name dying on her lips as Sasuke's punch cracked through the izakaya. Kiba stumbled back—

—right into the steadying grip of Neji Hyuuga.

The air turned to ice.

Sasuke straightened slowly. "Hyuuga." The name was a blade.

Neji's grip tightened on Kiba's shoulder. "Uchiha." His voice was just as cold. "Still as flighty as ever, I see."

Then his gaze cut to Tenten.

Neji Hyuuga.

The man who'd promised her forever before deciding forever was too long to pretend.

Neji Hyuuga.

The reason she'd been crying at that gas station five years ago.

The world lurched sideways. That familiar hollowness yawned in her chest—

—and she remembered, with brutal clarity, the kind of death that left no corpse. The kind where your heart kept beating, but nothing else did.

Chapter Text

The precinct parking lot stood nearly empty, its cracked asphalt gleaming under the streetlight. Tenten's new ride—a gunmetal-gray Toyota Crown with blacked-out trim—crouched low near the forensic bay, looking less like transportation and more like a warrant waiting to be served.

Sasuke didn't need to conduct a search to spot the violations. The tinted windows alone breached Konoha Municipal Code 12.4.7, and the aftermarket exhaust suggested ECU tampering.

He mentally catalogued the infractions and slotted his unmarked sedan in the space beside it. A wry thought surfaced. At least Tenten had interests beyond dissecting corpses, even if the alternative didn't exactly scream character growth.

He killed the ignition.

The silence between them was a live wire.

Tenten hadn't so much as breathed a word to him since they left the izakaya. She sat rigid the entire ride back, her fingers curling white around the seatbelt. Now they tapped a staccato rhythm against the door handle. Three quick beats, like she was counting down to an explosion.

She looked more battered than Inuzuka, and Sasuke's knuckles still throbbed from the hit.

He'd wanted that fight. Had practically been gifted the opportunity when he overheard Kiba's crew would be hitting the izakaya. He'd picked the place deliberately, waited for the inevitable confrontation. He would've provoked it himself if Kiba hadn't risen to the bait like a dog to a bone. But their history guaranteed it.

Kiba always collected on grudges, and Sasuke had simply… expedited the process.

Tenten's presence merely ensured the reaction was both immediate and public. The latter served a critical purpose. It lent credibility to their arrangement. Every whispered account of tonight would only reinforce the narrative.

Still, Tenten's silence was the bite back after putting down a rabid animal he hadn't expected. A victory, not without cost.

"You're angry."

He didn't phrase it as a question.

She shoved the door open. "No shit. What gave it away?"

Sasuke followed, his shoes crunching on wet, loose asphalt. "Inuzuka had it coming."

She whirled on him, the parking lot lights catching the fury in her eyes. "He was drunk, Sasuke. You don't throw punches at someone who can't even stand straight."

"I do when they grab first." His thumb brushed the faint crease in his collar where Kiba had fisted it. "But this isn't about him, is it?"

Her breath hitched—just once—before she schooled her features. Her tell.

Earlier, her reaction to Hyuuga's sudden appearance had been… excessive. A full-body freeze. Dilated pupils. Fingers twitching (habitual fidgeting under stress?). But when Sasuke had struck Kiba? Her reaction had been disproportionate, almost as if violence had been expected of him.

And now? The same tension carved lines along her collarbone, even though Sasuke had avoided naming Neji.

Controlled variable, same result. Meaning the trigger wasn't circumstance—it was him.

Neji Hyuuga.

"You embarrassed me." She spun away from him, her voice breaking like glass under pressure. The sharp edges giving way to raw, unguarded emotion.

Ah. There it was. The motive.

His prior assessment had her pegged as indifferent to social perception—no vanity, no posturing. Yet here, the evidence contradicted: she cared. Specifically, about how the polished Hyuuga prodigy saw her.

He was the exception. And exceptions meant something.

The observation settled like cold on his chest. "That reaction to Hyuuga, don't let me see it again." The words escaped containment.

It wasn't possessiveness; it was simple operational logic. Their cover depended on credible performance, and her visible reaction to Hyuuga broke character. Data didn't lie: she showed more physiological response to Neji's presence than to anything Sasuke had done all night. That wasn't just poor acting—it was a liability.

"Excuse me?" Tenten spun around again.

This time her heel caught on uneven pavement.

He moved on reflex. His hand snapped around her wrist, pulling hard enough that she collided with him. The impact knocked the air between them into something charged.

For one fractured second her breath was warm against his lips.

Their noses brushed.

Suddenly, she was close enough for him to see the flecks of gold in her eyes. Close enough to smell the soft jasmine of her perfume undercut by sake. Close enough to feel the heat of her body pressed along his.

Something unfamiliar twisted in his chest.

Sasuke released her like she'd burned him.

Tenten hit the pavement with a graceless thud, knees scraping the asphalt. For a moment, she just sat there, staring up at him with an expression he couldn't quite parse. Not anger, but something more dangerous: quiet devastation.

"Would've been better if you hadn't caught me at all."

The words landed with unexpected weight. And yet he knew they weren't meant for him.

He studied her for a moment before offering a hand. When she took it, her grip was deliberately loose, as if she expected him to let go again.

He didn't.

His fingers closed around hers. Not pulling her up yet. Just holding on. A silent rebuke to every hand that extended with the promise of forever only to retract at the slightest inconvenience.

When he did pull her up, it was just as hard as before.

She stumbled into his chest again, this time with a soft 'oh' that vibrated through his sternum.

Her fingers, still loosely clasped in his, twitched like a polygraph needle.

And then—

The barest press of her hips against his. Unconscious. Instantaneous. Gone the moment she registered it.

But Sasuke had felt it.

Her reaction to Hyuuga had been visceral, like a suspect caught in flashlight beams. But this? The reflexive arch of her spine toward him before she caught herself.

It was different.

Sasuke didn't steady her. Didn't step back. Just let her feel the unsteady rise and fall of his breathing, the way his fingers flexed once—an experiment—against her waist before he dropped his hand.

If Hyuuga could unravel her with a glance, he'd simply override it with more tactile stimuli, going forward.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

The leather chair groaned under Fugaku Uchiha's weight, the sound like a warning in the quiet office. He cradled his coffee mug between both hands, steam curling upwards. The porcelain hovered just below his lips. Not drinking, not yet.

He was making him wait.

Sasuke knew this game all too well. It always began the same way. With the illusion of patience.

Before his father lowered his mug, Sasuke knew the lecture that was coming. He'd known it the moment his knuckles had split against Kiba's face. Had known, too, that Fugaku wouldn't care about the why—only the optics. The Uchiha name was a spotlight, and his father had spent a lifetime polishing the lens.

Truth be told, he needn't care about the why just yet, because everyone else will. And by the time Sasuke was finished breadcrumbing them, by the time word got to his father, the "relationship" would be far too substantiated to dispute.

"You fractured another detective's nose," Fugaku's fingers tapped once against the armrest. "In front of several witnesses."

"He grabbed me first." A fact, not an excuse.

Fugaku's exhale was barely audible, but Sasuke caught it. The faintest slip in a man who never slipped. Disappointment, maybe. Or the quiet recognition that his son had stopped flinching under that tone years ago.

"You're not some wet-behind-the-ears recruit," Fugaku said. "You're next in line for this office after Itachi. Start acting like it."

Act like it.

Sasuke had spent the better parts of his life acting. Playing the star cadet, the model son, the perfect Uchiha marionette. All for a father who kept moving the goddamn finish line every time Itachi's shadow stretched longer across his path.

Well no more.

"You want me to apologize? That won't fix his nose."

Fugaku's fingers curled slowly against the desk. "What I want," he said, each word a hammer strike. "Is for you to be at the mayor's golf outing on Sunday. With his daughter by your side. Like a man who understands what his name demands."

The hypocrisy burned like whiskey in an open wound. Since when did their vaunted legacy require whoring out its spare heir?

"Not happening," Sasuke told him.

The chair screeched as Fugaku rose, palms flattening against the desk like he meant to crush it. "That seat you seem so eager to let slip into another family's hands—" he hissed, veins standing rigid along his temple. "Has had an Uchiha sitting in it for the last seven generations."

Seven generations. The number echoed like a death knell. Seven generations of Uchiha men who'd earned their political capital through sacrifice and cunning.

Now his father sought to make him the latest sacrifice.

Not through merit. Not through strength. But by prostrating himself before some politician's spoiled daughter like a show dog at auction.

Itachi had never been asked to debase himself this way. Itachi had been given command because of his skill, his reputation. But Sasuke? He was expected to kneel. He was never being groomed to inherit the seat. He was being dressed up as the pretty bargaining chip to keep it.

Sasuke's vision tinged red at the edges. "If you're so desperate for the mayor's approval, why don't you fuck his daughter yourself?" His voice dripped with acid. "You've never let marriage vows stop you before."

The silence that followed could have frozen hell itself.

"Get out."

Sasuke was already moving, the door hitting the frame with a crack that split the plaster... and something far more fundamental.

Let the old man choke on his ambitions.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

The slam of Fugaku's office door cracked through the precinct like a gunshot. Heads jerked up from cubicles, coffee cups froze halfway to lips. Sasuke's glare swept across the floor. A silent challenge that had every officer suddenly finding their paperwork fascinating.

His phone buzzed.

Sasuke's thumb moved before the screen dimmed.

Three dots bounced. Then:

The attached file loaded with infuriating slowness, each passing second stretching the wire of his patience thinner. When the buyer's name finally appeared, Sasuke's grip threatened to crack the phone's casing.

Of course.

There were no coincidences in murder. When a body shows up days after you return to the city, draped in lingerie you bought, it ain't bad luck. It's a smoking gun.

His thumb hovered over the reply.

He was halfway to the doors when they hissed open—

—and there she was.

Tenten.

Hair down.

That was the first absurd detail his brain registered. The usual twin buns were gone, replaced by chestnut waves that fell past her shoulders, catching the morning light in ways that made the rich brown of her eyes deepen. Different, some traitorous part of his mind supplied. Softer. He crushed the thought like a cigarette butt.

She carried two coffees, her mouth a tight line as she listened to the very pregnant blonde woman beside her. The woman—not precinct personnel, judging by her civilian clothes and the way she gawked at her surroundings—was talking animatedly, one hand resting on her rounded stomach. Tenten walked a half-step ahead, the set of her shoulders telegraphing annoyance.

Then she spotted him.

Something flickered across her face before she altered course, cutting smoothly through the desks to stop before him. Without a word, she thrust out one of the cups.

"Black," she said.

He eyed the offering, then her. "I trust that you didn't spit in it?"

The corner of her mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "There are worse things I could do to a cup of coffee."

"And I'm sure you've considered them all."

Their fingers brushed during the exchange. A spark of contact—brief, accidental—and yet the blush that spread across her cheeks was… satisfying.

The blonde woman froze mid-step, her blue gaze darting between them like she was working out a particularly juicy puzzle. Then—

"Oh my god, Tenten!" Her scandalous shriek cut through the precinct's hum like a fire alarm.

Heads snapped up. An intern stumbled into a desk.

"Sasuke Uchiha." She gaped, pointing (excitedly?) between them. Her voice dropped to a stage whisper that carried across the entire floor. "You're fucking Sasuke Uchiha!?"

The silence that followed was absolute. For exactly two seconds.

Every head swiveled in unison. Tenten's expression cycled through shock, horror, then resigned mortification as the whispers began.

"Saw them leaving together last night."

"I did see Uchiha's jacket in her lab yesterday—"

"—and not on his body," someone else finished.

"Explains why he rearranged Inuzuka's face at that izakaya."

A rookie cop's eyes went saucer wide. "Wait, that's what that was about?"

"You totally are!" Tenten's blonde friend crowed, emboldened by the growing whispers. She fanned herself dramatically. "And here I was, worried you were too busy with dead men to appreciate a live one when—" The once-over she gave Sasuke should come with a public indecency charge. "—you're bagging evidence that's clearly still throbbing!"

"Ino, I swear to god!" Tenten admonished hoarsely. Where she'd been pink before, she now matched the emergency exit sign's exact shade of alarm-red. "Pipe down!"

Sasuke took a sip of coffee, the bitter heat mirroring his private amusement.

Right message. Wrong blonde.

She could've gone about it more tactfully, but he'll allow it.

The seed had been planted for everyone to water with their collective imagination.

A job well done.

Chapter Text

The steady buzz of the overhead lights filled the silence of the forensic lab like insects trapped behind glass. Tenten slumped into her chair, pressing her palms against her closed eyelids in an effort to stave off a headache. The morning's disaster played on loop in her mind.

Ino's shrieking accusation.

The precinct's collective gasp.

The way Sasuke had just… left. No icy glare to silence the whispers. No thinly veiled threat to send everyone scattering back to their desks. Just a casual "See you later," as if he hadn't just left "bagging throbbing evidence" hanging in the air to become the precinct's new catchphrase.

She'd expected—no, counted on—his usual brand of terrifying damage control. One Uchiha glare could empty a room faster than a gas leak. But today? When she'd actually needed that patented intimidation? He'd smirked into his coffee and sauntered off, leaving her standing in the wreckage.

Across the lab, Ino perched on a stool working the jaws of a skeleton model like a puppet. "Relax," she said, clicking the plastic teeth together. "It's not like he denied it. Honestly, for an Uchiha? That's practically a public declaration of love."

"It's that he didn't do anything…" Tenten muttered. "...that's the problem."

But wasn't that just typical? Silence was Sasuke's favourite weapon. And today, he'd turned it on her, letting the rumours metastasize. Letting the stares linger. Letting the precinct dissect every innocent (and professional!) interaction between them.

This was supposed to be simple. A one-time performance meant to get Ino and all her other friends off her back about the lack of romance in her life. It was supposed to be a clean operation with minimal fallout. Not this circus that it was turning into, with the entire precinct as audience.

Ino's smirk faltered as she caught Tenten's expression. She set the skeleton aside with exaggerated care. "Shit, you're actually pissed."

Tenten counted the ceiling tiles. Twelve across, fifteen deep. Of course she was pissed. At Sasuke, yes. But also, at herself.

Because Ino shouldn't have noticed anything just yet. Tenten hadn't been trying to sell the act. So why had Ino's eyes lit up with recognition the moment she'd handed Sasuke that coffee? Had she lingered too long when their fingers brushed? Had some unconscious micro-expression betrayed her when their eyes met?

The most unsettling part? Ino's psychological intuition was terrifyingly accurate. A combination of professional training and lifelong friendship made her practically telepathic. Which meant somewhere, in some tiny unconscious gesture, Tenten had betrayed herself without realizing it.

Ino tilted her head. "You know," she mused, eyes twinkling with mischief. "When you first said you were seeing someone, I totally thought you were bluffing. Had money on you and Kiba staging some half-baked relationship." She gestured vaguely with her hand. "But you and Sasuke. The way you two were eye-fucking in front of everyone…" A knowing wink. "Body language doesn't lie, babe."

Except that it absolutely does, Tenten wanted to snap.

"You're not even supposed to be in here without clearance," she deflected, grabbing a clipboard to shuffle papers with unnecessary force. "What was so urgent that you had to hunt me down at work and create all this ruckus? A text couldn't have sufficed?"

The damage was done. Most damning of all, her autonomic responses to Sasuke might be revealing truths she hadn't acknowledged yet.

Tenten's thoughts froze on the word 'acknowledged'. Was there anything to acknowledge? Sasuke was objectively attractive, yes. But actual attraction? Preposterous. She'd chosen him for the ruse because he was everyone else's fantasy. Not hers.

"I wanted to talk to you in person." Ino's playful smirk dissolved like sugar in acid. "Neji's back in town. Two days now. Shikamaru invited him to our little get together."

His name echoed through her like a misaligned bone snapping back into place. That same old pain, sharp and familiar.

Neji.

It had been five years. Five years since his "It's not you, it's me." text had lit up her phone like a bomb. No warning. No discussion. Just five words. Polite and final. She'd spent months replaying every moment, searching for some hint that she'd missed. But there'd been nothing. No fights. No slow fade. Just Neji deciding she wasn't worth the trouble before she'd even known there was trouble.

It was probably for the best that no one knew they had been together. The reality had once gnawed at her with insecurity, but now, in hindsight, it was a quiet mercy. Neji had kept her a secret. Like she was something to be tucked away, something that wouldn't fit into whatever vision he had for his life.

Ino sighed, her usual bravado replaced by something softer. "I wanted you to hear it from me first. So you could... I don't know, prepare. Or bail. Whatever you need."

Tenten stared blankly at the clipboard in front of her. "It's fine."

"It's not fine." Ino's nails tapped a restless rhythm against the table. "The way he ended it. His reasons—how he dangled friendship in front of you like some kind of consolation prize—" Her hand slashed through the air. "I swear, I could kill him."

Tenten exhaled slowly, trying to purge the very thought of him from her lungs. She didn't want to think about Neji. Didn't want to remember how carefully he'd dismantled them. How he'd made her believe, right up until the end, that there was still something worth salvaging. She'd mourned that relationship twice. First when it ended, then again when she realized their 'friendship' was just Neji's way of easing his guilt. The third betrayal came when he stopped needing even that from her.

Ino flashed her a conspiratorial wink. Though it was half-hearted, Tenten knew she was only trying to lighten the mood. "Sasuke's a serious upgrade, if I do say so myself. Neji's head will explode when—"

"No." The word left a metallic taste in her mouth, like biting down on a bullet. She got to her feet. "We're not some prop to make him regret anything."

The absurdity (and irony) wasn't lost on her that she was defending her sham of a relationship against the suggestion that it be used for its intended design. But the thought of parading Sasuke in front of Neji curdled her stomach. It was one thing to play pretend for her friends' benefit. It was another entirely to try and weaponize it against a man who'd treated their relationship like a secret shame.

Let him see her unaffected. Let him get exactly what he'd given.

Nothing at all.

"Does Sasuke know that you and Neji used to date?" Ino's fingers made air quotes around the last word.

Tenten opened her mouth to lie. To deflect. To change the subject. To something. But the lab door hissed open before she could shape the words.

"He does now." Sasuke's voice cut across the room, sharp enough to make Naruto wince beside him.

Tenten's spine straightened. "I thought you left."

His dark gaze flicked to her, then to Ino, lingering just a second too long. "You don't have clearance to be in here," he said, his voice a controlled monotone that somehow carried more threat than a shout. "And she—" A pointed glance at Tenten, "—lacks both the rank and good judgment to grant it. This infraction will be documented before end-of-shift."

Tenten's eyebrows shot up at the jab. Either the Neji revelation had struck a nerve, or some new development had turned a case sideways. Because the sudden shift from this morning's banter to this icy professionalism went beyond standard protocol violations.

Ino slid off the stool with a grace that almost masked her haste. She raised her hands in a dramatic gesture of surrender. "Already gone," she said, already backing toward the door. She mouthed, "text me," to Tenten before brushing past Naruto.

The moment the door sealed behind her, the temperature in the room dropped several degrees.

Tenten's grip tightened on her clipboard, the edges digging into her palms.

Sasuke's jawline sharpened, the muscle twitching beneath his skin. "Where's Uzumaki?" he demanded.

Naruto cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his neck. "Uh… I'm right here?"

"Not you, dumbass." He told him, but his gaze locked onto Tenten with the intensity of a scope's crosshairs. "Karin. Where is Karin?"

Tenten met his stare without flinching. "She's in court, testifying on the Danzo case," she said casually. "You needed something processed?"

A beat of silence passed.

"I need Neji Hyuuga's DNA profile ran against Jane Doe's fetal sample."

The clipboard hit the ground with a clatter that echoed.

Tenten's fingers hovered in the air, frozen mid-motion. "On what grounds?"

Sasuke didn't blink. "Probable cause. I've already filed the warrant." He nodded to the sealed court order that Naruto held. "Hyuuga Hydro's biometric database has his profile. Run it. All employees are mandatorily sequenced. Cross-reference the samples. Flag me the second you get a match."

"This doesn't make any sense."

Naruto shifted uncomfortably. "Look, Tenten... we pulled the purchase records from that boutique. The lingerie that the victim was wearing? It was bought under Neji's name." He pulled a folded receipt from his pocket.

She reached for it with numb fingers, mentally cataloguing the details: the date stamp, the item SKU matching Jane Doe's undergarments, the payment method. All irrefutable.

"Neji relocated to Suna five years ago when Hyuuga Hydro's operations began expanding outside Konoha," Tenten said, the words bitter on her tongue because he'd told her the long-distance wouldn't work.

Sasuke laid the travel manifest across the examination table. Tenten and Naruto moved closer as he arranged the documents in chronological order. Boarding passes, immigration stamps, and corporate expense reports forming an undeniable paper trail.

Tenten's throat constricted. The records showed three Konoha visits last year alone. Not once had he called.

Naruto leaned heavily against the table. "He flew into Konoha International two days ago. But Jane Doe's been dead for at least a week."

Her finger stopped on a specific entry, the date coming into sharp focus. "So, he couldn't have—"

"Killed her? No." Sasuke's voice dropped to that quiet, dangerous register. "But he was here exactly nine weeks ago." A calculated pause. "Gestational math doesn't lie. I need you to run the test."

Tenten exhaled sharply. He was acting like this was already an open-and-shut case. Like proof of paternity alone would establish motive. As if Neji's secrecy around the relationship was reason enough for him to want her gone.

"We need to ID the victim before we can take anyone into questioning. Did the boutique tell you who the gift was delivered to?" she pressed.

"Bearer pickup. No name, no contact, just a cash tip for discretion," Naruto informed her.

"Something doesn't track."

Sasuke leveled her with a look. "Elaborate."

"If they were this careful—bearer pickup, no records—why use his own card to make the purchase?" She sifted through the documents. The paper edges fluttered like nervous wings. "Were there other purchases? Hotel receipts? Restaurant charges? Any activity during his visits to Konoha that would suggest he was entertaining a woman? What if his card had been skimmed?"

Naruto stilled her wrist. "Tenten."

"Neji's no killer."

Sasuke's expression twisted into something between pity and contempt. "Jane Doe probably thought so too. Now she's on my table—"

His words dropped like a guillotine's blade.

"—and you're off my case."

Her stomach lurched as if watching her own head roll.

.

Chapter Text

The DNA sequencer's whine grated against Sasuke's nerves. He leaned against the steel table, letting the cold seep through his sleeves. A physical counterpoint to the simmering irritation beneath his skin. The progress bar crawled forward with infuriating lethargy. At this rate, Naruto might actually form a coherent thought before the machine produced any results.

Across the lab, said detective was attempting to balance a pen on his nose while Karin scrolled through her phone, the glow reflecting off her glasses.

"Even negative results won't exonerate him," Sasuke began, breaking the silence. "We need to bring Neji in for questioning. He knew the victim. That lingerie purchase wasn't philanthropic."

Karin didn't look up. "Oh, I'd love to hear how the great Neji Hyuuga explains this one."

Naruto caught the pen mid-fall. "You think the killer chose the old power plant because of Hyuuga Hydro's bid to redevelop it? Are they sending a message?"

"It was more likely a practical consideration," Sasuke dismissed the notion. "Abandoned industrial sites check all the boxes. No cameras. No witnesses. Just rust and rats."

Naruto rubbed his chin, suddenly serious. "But think about it. A dead pregnant girl found at the exact property Hyuuga Hydro's been trying to acquire? With a receipt and possibly an unborn child linking her to Neji?" He gestured with the pen. "Either this is the world's worst coincidence, or someone's setting a very specific scene."

The observation hung in the air, uncomfortably close to what Tenten had argued before she stormed out. Against his will, his mind conjured up an image of her with her hands trembling, not from fear but from the effort it had taken to not break his nose. She hadn't taken too kindly to being kicked off the case.

Karin, seemingly noticing his silence, tilted her head. "You know, if you'd just admitted you were benching her because you didn't want her near her ex—"

"There's clear conflicts of interest," Sasuke cut in, sharper than intended. "On her part."

Damn her for reading him so easily.

And damn Naruto for being incapable of discretion. Sasuke had specifically avoided mentioning Tenten's history with Neji in the official case notes, precisely because it opened doors he needed to keep shut.

"Uh-huh." Karin adjusted her glasses, the lenses flashing. "And the fact that Hiashi Hyuuga's been trying to oust your dad as Commissioner isn't a conflict of interest on your part?"

Sasuke shot her a glare.

The Hyuuga family's political maneuvering against his father was common knowledge at the precinct, and while no one could prove he'd ever let it colour an investigation, the optics were... problematic. Especially now, with Hiashi's golden boy—who happens to be his fake girlfriend's ex—potentially implicated in a murder.

The sequencer beeped; a sharp, accusatory sound. Sasuke didn't flinch. "My professional conduct stands on its own merits."

"Of course it does," Karin said, popping a stick of gum into her mouth. The crinkle of the wrapper was unnecessarily loud. "Just like my partner's."

Sasuke had anticipated her ire.

Karin and Tenten's friendship had been inevitable. Two brilliant obsessives with a mutual fascination for the macabre. He'd watched them bond over cold cases and even colder corpses, over autopsy techniques and ballistic trajectories. Part of him was relieved Karin had stopped trying to get into his pants every other Thursday. The other part? Less thrilled to discover that the single-minded focus she'd once reserved for stalking him had been rerouted into defending Tenten.

She fixed him a look over the rim of her glasses. "Pulling her over personal history isn't protocol. It's petty."

Petty. If only she knew how much more complicated it was.

Naruto, sensing the rising tension, waved his hands like a traffic cop. "Okay, okay—but can we talk about the actual elephant in the room? The whole precinct thinks you're taking Tenten to Pound Town."

Karin's boot soles hit the floor with a wet thwack as she jerked upright, half-chewed gum lodged in her windpipe. For one glorious second, the only sounds in the lab were her wheezing attempts to dislodge it and Sasuke's silent gratitude for the distraction.

He wasn't entirely sure what 'Pound Town' was, but the way Naruto wagged his eyebrows suggested it wasn't a place one visited for the architecture. Heat crept up his neck but his face remained impassive.

"Where the hell did you pick up that phrase?" Karin finally demanded.

"Kiba."

"Of course it was Kiba." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "That walking hormone is a blight on this precinct."

"Hey, I'm just saying!" Naruto held up his hands. "They were awfully close in the lab yesterday. Like, 'breathing the same air' close."

Sasuke exhaled slowly. The moment stretched thin. The oversight was clear now. His fake relationship has been sold too well, and too quickly. With Neji's name staining case files and Tenten's past with him dragged into the light, the dynamics had changed. The gossip wasn't background noise anymore; it was a competing narrative that threatened to eclipse an actual murder investigation. He should've weighed the risks more carefully. Should've known that in their line of work, the most dangerous lies were the ones people wanted to believe.

"The fact that you aren't immediately threatening to castrate anyone who implies that there's something going on is very telling." Karin smirked, polishing her glasses with the edge of her lab coat.

He ignored her. Some battles weren't worth fighting, especially when losing them served a larger purpose. Besides, arguing with two Uzumakis at once was a special kind of hell. Naruto couldn't leave well enough alone, and Karin couldn't leave him alone. Individually, he tolerated them. Valued them, even, in small doses. But together? They were an endurance test.

"Look," Naruto said, undeterred. "All I'm saying is, if you are taking her to Pound—"

Sasuke turned just enough to lock eyes with him. "Finish that sentence," he said, so quietly the machines nearly drowned it out. "And the next set of fingerprints lifted in this lab will be from your crushed larynx." He pushed off the table, his stomach contracting around nothing but Tenten's coffee from earlier. "Text me when the results are in," he told Karin, striding towards the exit. The wait had frayed his patience. "And run a secondary tox screen on the fetal tissue."

"Aye aye," she said.

Naruto scrambled after him. "Wait. Who's briefing the captain?"

Sasuke hit the door's release. "You are."

The blond went through the five stages of grief in three seconds flat. "B-but…b-but he's still pissed from this morning!"

The door hissed open. "Should've thought about that if you didn't want 'Pound Town' to be your last words."

Naruto's wail followed him into the hallway.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

The precinct cafeteria was a hive of low-grade noise; the scrape of chairs, soft conversations, someone cursing quietly over a spilled cup of vending machine coffee. But underneath it all, Sasuke could feel the tension.

The moment he stepped inside, the ambient chatter faltered. Shifted. Like a current changing direction. He could feel it in the eyes that flicked toward him, then to the back corner of the room.

Where she sat.

Tenten.

She hadn't noticed him yet. Or at least, she pretended not to. He couldn't help but take in the sight of her hair again, spilled loose over her shoulders. She ate in the same methodical way she processed evidence. Her chopsticks moved in measured increments, separating vegetables from rice with surgical focus.

Her tray was organized. A napkin folded into a neat rectangle was tucked under the edge of it. Tea bottle on the left, a small paper cup of miso soup that had gone lukewarm on the right. Every bit of it screamed control. The kind that came when everything else was slipping.

He walked toward her without a word, ignoring the peripheral eyes tracking his steps. When he reached the table, he pulled out the chair across from her and sat.

She didn't greet him. Didn't look up.

"No one can know about you and Neji." His voice was low, calibrated to avoid carrying.

Her chopsticks paused.

To say she looked taken aback would be an understatement.

"What's the matter?" Each word was flat, but sharp around the edges. A grain of rice clung stubbornly to the corner of her mouth before her tongue flicked it away. "Does it hurt the Uchiha brand to be linked to Neji's sloppy seconds?"

The self-deprecation was unexpected. "It's not a matter of ego." The denial came too quickly. He schooled his features. "Hiashi will exploit any connection to challenge the investigation."

She laughed. A short, brittle sound. "Relax. I'm not exactly bragging about being his dirty little secret." She pushed her tray away. "And Neji? Trust me, he'd admit to murder before he claimed me."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed. Not in offense, but in calculation. He took note of her reaction: the forced casualness of 'dirty secret,' the defensive hunch of her shoulders. These were amateur tells. But the convulsive swallow, the bloodless grip on her chopsticks? Those spoke of deeper damage. Damage she'd hidden well.

"Your past with him isn't the issue," he stated. The words landed somewhere between fact and something dangerously close to reassurance. "It's what people can do with it."

When at last she met his eyes, hers were glassy. The sight sent something akin touching a live wire through him.

Quite abruptly she changed the subject. "Are you going to apologize for punching Kiba last night, or what?"

"I'm not apologizing." His voice was dry. Then more evenly: "But you should take comfort in knowing that unlike Neji, that display was a clear, public claim."

Her chopsticks clattered against the tray. "So… punching a guy for me is… romantic?"

"Neji hid you. I'm not."

Her jaw tightened.

Around them, whispers hissed like leaking gas.

For a moment, she just stared at him, weighing his words. If she chose to interpret them as reassurance rather than strategy, that was her miscalculation. Mistakenly believing that this was about a validation of worth rather than an obstruction of Fugaku's plans would only make her performance more convincing. And if their little charade happened to salt Neji's wounds in the process? Well, that wasn't sentiment, it was killing two birds with one stone.

"This isn't about pride." He kept his tone flat and factual. "Hiashi doesn't need much to claim bias. Give him this, and he'll tear the case apart."

The words were stripped of unnecessary inflection. Yet he noted the tension in her jaw, the minute tremor in her fingers.

"Personal connections compromise objectivity. That's all this is."

He didn't examine why he'd bothered to explain. Or why some absurd part of him wanted to close his hand over hers to steady it. Not every instinct deserved dissection. All that mattered was cutting Neji out of the equation entirely. For the case, for Tenten's sake, and for whatever tightness had taken root in his chest when he saw her fighting back those tears.

He flicked a glance at her half-eaten lunch. "Finish. I'll wait."

The order might've sounded offhand, but the intent wasn't. He didn't wait. Not for anyone. And he ordinarily didn't subject himself to the cafeteria's greasy air longer than it took him to fetch a cup of coffee. But today he'd sit. For appearances, of course.

Tenten eyed him suspiciously. "I could do without another pair of eyes gawking at me."

A slow scan of the room confirmed the poorly concealed interest directed their way.

Then movement at the cafeteria entrance caught his eye.

Itachi.

Three months deep undercover as some low-level thug should've left him looking like gutter trash. Instead, his brother strode in like Konoha's underbelly had fucking dry-cleaned him between beatdowns. Jacket pristine, hair perfect, only the fresh bruising around his wrists hinting he'd spent the last month getting 'initiated' in some backroom.

Tenten tracked his stare. "Ah. The actual hot shot is back."

Sasuke scoffed.

Itachi's gaze swept the room until it snagged on their table. There was a hitch in his step, a slight tilt of his head and the barest flicker of his lashes. Subtle betrayals of curiosity only perceptible to Sasuke because he'd spent his entire life studying him.

But it was that fucking nod that did him over. Casual as a stranger's passing glance. Like Sasuke was just another detective in the precinct instead of his little brother who spent twelve weeks staring at his phone, torn between hoping for a call and dreading what news it might bring.

"Is it too late to swap you out?" Tenten jerked her head in Itachi's direction. "Or are all sales final on Uchihas?"

Sasuke's lips thinned.

The joke shouldn't have cut so deep. But it did. Because Itachi was always the standard. The prodigy, the preference, the paragon Sasuke could never eclipse. Just once, he wanted to plant his flag first. It didn't need to be monumental—just one small step onto territory Fugaku had mapped for his prized heir.

"Relax. That was a joke." Tenten blinked up at him with amusement. "Your brother-complex is showing."

A bitter thought struck him: Itachi might have the promotions, the commendations, the perfect record, but he didn't have this.

Whatever this was with Tenten.

It could be leveraged. If Sasuke played his cards right, Fugkau could overlook her being a coworker. She was competent. Top of her forensic cohort. No prominent family name to contend with theirs. No striking features to dilute Uchiha traits. Pragmatically, she was acceptable.

His fingers moved before his mind caught up, brushing her temple, tucking back a stray strand. Warm. Too soft against his calloused skin.

They both froze.

Across the cafeteria, Itachi's gaze snapped to the contact. He always knew how to look at things and see too much.

Sasuke withdrew his hand.

The charade of obedience, of playing Fugaku's dutiful son, of settling down like he wanted him to, was enough to tip the scale in his favour. But Sasuke didn't give a damn about his father's approval. What he truly craved was the moment his old man realized the truth: that it was the wrong son, with the wrong girl, tearing pages from the script he'd penned for Itachi, line by line.

And the cruelest cut?

The performance was just that.

A performance meant to rattle the cast and steal the spotlight.

His phone chimed.

Sasuke was on it in an instant, unlocking the screen before the device finished vibrating against his thigh.

Chapter Text

"...you should take comfort in knowing that unlike Neji, that display was a clear, public claim."

Tenten's fingers dented the plastic of her tea bottle, the sound like vertebrae popping under pressure.

The words had landed like a perfectly timed blow. A naive girl might've taken it as some fractured form of reassurance. But something in his detached, procedural tone told her he hadn't meant to comfort her.

This was something colder. Sharper.

Meant to harden her, not heal her.

Her jaws clenched. The bottle split along its seams. Iced tea bled between her fingers, sticky and cold, but she barely noticed.

The nerve of him to try and reduce her history with Neji to a single damning comparison—

"Neji hid you. I didn't."

As if she should be grateful for his brand of possessive posturing, just because it came with an audience. As if being paraded around like a pawn was somehow better than being kept secret. As if any of this was real.

At least Neji had the decency to be ashamed of using her.

She glared at the space he'd occupied minutes ago, still feeling the ghost of his fingers at her temple where he'd touched her hair. She wanted to claw the memory from her skin.

Fake dating was supposed to be silly. That's what she'd signed up for—the awkward hand-holding, the exaggerated displays of affection to keep up appearances, the bad cover stories, the occasional fake lovers' quarrel.

A little cringe here. A lot of acting there. A shared script of lies.

There was comfort in the predictability of it all.

In novels, there was that slow erosion of pretense until the line between lie and longing blurred. In film, there was that single, cinematic moment when the charade collapsed under the weight of something far too sincere.

Not that Tenten wanted reality to lean too hard into the cliché.

But this wasn't how it was supposed to be.

Sasuke treated their relationship like a chess match. Every word, every glance followed a strategy only he understood. What could pass for affection was just calculation in softer packaging. A quiet, methodical dismantling that left her questioning whether she was a partner in the game or just another piece being sacrificed.

Across the cafeteria, she watched his retreating back disappear through the doors, phone already pressed to his ear. His stride purposeful, his shoulders tense.

The DNA results were in.

She knew that walk. Knew that particular set of his jaw. Whatever Karin had found, it was substantial enough to send Sasuke stalking off like a predator scenting blood.

Neji.

Her stomach twisted.

He was many things. A liar, a coward, a man who'd erased her from his life with a five-word text. But a killer? Impossible.

A father? Questionable.

Still, the fetal DNA had to share alarming similarities with his profile for it to trigger something in the system.

Tenten stood abruptly. She was out of her seat before she could second-guess the impulse, her tray forgotten.

She followed.

By the time she caught up, he was already halfway down the hall leading to storage, voice low but unmistakably tense.

"What does that mean?"

Karin's response was unintelligible from this distance, but Sasuke's next words froze Tenten mid-step.

"Run it again," he ordered. "I don't care what it says. I'll draw his blood myself if—"

A pause. Karin must have interrupted.

Sasuke's head tilted slightly, a tell Tenten recognized. He'd just been given information he didn't like. She edged closer, pressing herself against the wall as he stopped.

His fingers tightened on the phone like he could wring a confession out of it. "What do you mean by a thirty-four percentage allele overlay?"

Tenten exhaled slowly, only then realizing how long she'd been holding it in.

Though it was significant, thirty-four percent wasn't enough to establish paternity.

Her forensic training immediately supplied the answer: familial match. A sibling. A cousin. An aunt or uncle. Anyone in the family tree could produce those results, but not the father.

And Sasuke knew that. But it was clear he wasn't looking for alternatives. "I don't care. I want him in interrogation within the hour."

The call ended with a sharp click.

For a heartbeat, he didn't move.

"I know you're there."

Tenten's pulse spiked. She'd be caught.

She held her breath, waiting. She didn't speak.

Neither did he.

Then, without turning, he walked away.

She watched his back recede and felt her throat tighten with a question she couldn't silence.

What did he know—that he was not saying—that made him want to bulldoze past protocol to corner a man that science had already half-exonerated?

Neji wasn't innocent. But he wasn't this guilty, either. If they pinned this on him too fast, without connecting the right dots, they risked building the entire case on circumstantial smoke.

The forensics was thin. Jane Doe had been dead a week, and Neji hadn't even been in Konoha for the last five days. The timeline only worked if you ignored his verified absence from Konoha during the critical window. And while the fetal sample returned a familial match, it only narrowed the field to the wider Hyuuga bloodline, not directly to him. Everything pointing to Neji felt suspiciously tidy. Like breadcrumbs laid out for someone impatient enough to chase them. It would all collapse the moment a jury asked for one hard link.

The most damning evidence they had was a lingerie purchase traced to his card. And what did that prove? That he was sleeping with someone already involved with another Hyuuga?

Sasuke knew better than to move on smoke.

He wasn't the type to fixate on the first viable suspect. He isolated inconsistencies, disassembled motives, and peeled back every version of events until only one could stand up to cross-examination. His obsessive attention to detail was what made him good at his job. Unbearable, but damn good.

Which was why this didn't track.

He wasn't following the evidence this time around. He was steering it. Forcing pieces into a picture that didn't quite exist. And for someone who made his career off being infallibly right, his actions begged more questions than answers.

Tenten's nails bit into her palms.

Suddenly, her thoughts went back to last night. Back to the brief, brittle exchange she'd witnessed between the two. Barely a handful of words passed between them, but the body language had said more. Not hostility, exactly, but a grudge disguised as indifference.

Something deeper than family feud.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

The elevator dinged softly.

Its doors slid open to stainless steel tables and cold storage drawers that lined the walls. Tenten stepped forward, adjusted her white coat and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. It was a practiced ritual.

The elevator sealed shut behind her.

Silence settled over her, dense as fog. Upstairs, the precinct thrived on urgency. But down here, her thoughts could slow down. Settle at a pace she could keep up with.

The plan was simple enough: extract secondary DNA samples from Jane Doe to narrow down her identity. They knew the child she carried was linked to the Hyuuga family, but no one had a name to put to the body. It was up to Tenten to start compiling a list of women connected to the Hyuugas who might fit. Without a name or clear ties, everything was guesswork. She needed to sift through every detail, no matter how small, to find a lead.

She crossed the room, heading for drawer KT-7319.

She hesitated a moment, listening for any sound around her. Footsteps. Rustling. An echo of someone else.

Today, she was a trespasser in the morgue.

Sasuke had pulled her from the case.

Which meant every step she took from here on out was technically insubordination. Unauthorized. A breach. If anyone checked the elevator logs, she'd have a lot of explaining to do.

Her fingers tightened around the cold metal handle; slowly, she opened the drawer.

The tray slid out with a hiss of cold air.

Jane Doe lay there, skin stretched taut over sharp cheekbones. Dark hair spread like a shadow around her head. Decomposition had already set in when they found her, so her face had lost a lot of the definition that would've helped them to identify her. She was bloated in some places and collapsed in others.

She leaned in, scanning the body for anything she might've missed the first time. Ligature marks. Tattoos. Piercings. Any discolouration that might have gone unnoticed in the chaos of the initial examination. On her hands, on her torso, in her hairline. Anywhere.

Tenten's gaze moved to the face again, where Jane Doe's eyelids were slightly parted, as if caught between sleep and waking, the lashes frosted with tiny ice crystals.

She reached into her coat and withdrew a slim flashlight, clicking it on. She brought the beam to the woman's eyes, gently prying one open. She used her index finger to lift the upper lid and her thumb to pull down the lower, careful not to disturb the surrounding tissue.

That was when she noticed it.

The sclera was slightly yellowed, as expected, but the iris was unusually well-preserved. Too smooth. Too dark.

That wasn't natural.

She adjusted the angle of her flashlight and tilted the head ever so slightly. There. Just beneath the edge of the upper lid, a thin meniscus of tension clung to the surface of the eye. A faint halo of polymer.

Contact lens.

A flicker of disbelief prickled down her spine.

Using a moistened sterile swab, she gently touched the edge of the lens, testing whether it had fused to the corneal surface. It shifted ever so slightly.

Definitely a lens.

With a clean pair of forceps, she pinched the edge and slowly peeled it back. The polymer membrane curled as it lifted, revealing the iris beneath.

Pale lavender. Ringed in gray.

Almost luminous under the beam of her flashlight.

Tenten staggered back a step. Her shoulder bumped the drawer, and the metal tray rattled softly in its slot. She reached out and shoved it closed with a shaky hand, the drawer clanging into place more forcefully than she meant.

No mistaking it now.

Jane Doe hadn't just been involved with a Hyuuga.

She was one.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

It was her training that overrode the tremor in her fingers when Tenten gathered the presence of mind to place the contact lens into an evidence pouch and pocket it.

For a moment, she just stood there, heart pounding in her ears. Then she peeled off her gloves, tossed them into the bin, and made her way back to the elevator, pressing the button with her elbow. As the doors shut, her reflection stared back at her: tight-lipped, wide-eyed, caught between professional clarity and personal unraveling.

Jane Doe was undeniably a Hyuuga.

Those pale, luminous eyes were an inescapable birthright. Centuries of selective breeding made it biologically impossible to carry the Hyuuga blood without manifesting the phenotype.

This new revelation blew the case wide open.

She hit speed-dial.

Karin answered in half a ring like she'd been a tap away from phoning Tenten herself.

The brunette beat her to the punch again by speaking first. "Jane Doe was wearing black contact lenses. She's a Hyuuga."

The line went so silent Tenten could hear the faint electronic buzz of Karin's headset.

"Wait. Say that again?"

"She was wearing lenses. I just confirmed it."

Tenten didn't elaborate, and she was grateful that Karin didn't ask her to. Sasuke had pulled her off the case. They both knew she wasn't supposed to be meddling.

"That explains the garbage reading I got earlier." Karin muttered. A sharp clink followed. A coffee cup hitting the desk. "Thirty-four percent is too low for a parent but too high for a non-immediate relative."

Tenten nodded in agreement, then realized Karin couldn't see her.

"Genetically," she said, grounding herself in what she knew. "A child inherits half of each parent's DNA. Full siblings usually share around fifty percent, give or take. Half-siblings fall lower, maybe twenty-five. Thirty-four is… an in-between."

"The kind of overlap you'd get if the child belonged to a sibling," Karin said.

"Problem is, Neji is an only child," Tenten cut in. "At least to my knowledge."

Both his parents passed away when he was very young. And neither had any outside children. For the most part Neji was raised by his uncle, Hiashi Hyuuga.

The realization was slow to hit, but simultaneous. Tenten's back hit the elevator wall.

"Hiashi and Hizashi Hyuuga were twins," they said in unison.

The pieces clicked. "Identical twins share one hundred percent DNA. So, genetically—"

"—his uncle's kids would show as his father's too," Karin finished. "Making Jane Doe, Neji's cousin on paper."

"But his genetic sister," Tenten said quietly.

"Which explains why the fetal DNA was such a close match. The baby wasn't his child. It was his niece or nephew."

The call ended. The elevator chimed.

Tenten barely registered the sound before the doors slid open. And there Sasuke was. Just outside the threshold, arms folded, expression unreadable. Instinctively, her hand flew to the evidence pouch. His gaze dropped to the pocket of her coat, and then back up to her face.

"Jane Doe is one of Hiashi's daughters," she informed him quickly, voice cracking with something perilously close to panic.

A security camera glowed red overhead, unwavering in its silent watch.

Sasuke stepped inside the elevator. His voice was low, controlled. "Are you certain?"

She held up the lens. "Positive."

"Then you know what happens next."

Of course she did.

The Hyuugas would leverage their political weight to ignite a full-scale manhunt. Every precinct in Konoha would be mobilized. Their resources hijacked. Their autonomy gone. Hiashi would torch the city to the ground, and them along with it.

If there was ever a time to call on every quiet skill they'd learned to stay one step ahead of criminals, it was now. The stakes were higher than their careers.

"The paternity angle was never going to hold," she said, tone clipped. No room for argument. "I don't know what your deal is with Neji, but now is not the time to settle scores."

A muscle in his jaw twitched.

Her gaze stayed cold and steady. She was putting her foot down. "Find us something that sticks, before someone else does."

Chapter Text

Death hung thick in the morgue, perserved and sanitized for examination. But today, beneath the sterility, something heavier saturated the air. Something even the sting of antiseptic couldn't mask. It spilled into the spaces between them where oxygen should've been, stealing the ease from every inhale and pressing down until the act of standing became an act of endurance.

Grief.

It showed in the way Hyuuga Hiashi stood at the foot of the steel examination table. His spine held painfully straight, hands clasped behind him. Not out of discipline, but restraint. Because if they moved, they might tremble.

It showed in how Neji lingered half a step behind him, his pale eyes fixed on the draped sheet, his breathing too controlled to be natural.

Sasuke leaned against the far wall, arms crossed in practiced indifference. His face was impassive, but his mind was sharp, alert. Every nerve buzzed like a live wire.

The sheet did little to obscure the body's outline: the faint slope of a shoulder, the delicate ridge of a nose, fingers stiff in unnatural repose. He took it in, quietly processing, even as his expression remained unreadable.

When the precinct contacted the family, their response had been a mix of confusion and disbelief. A body for them to identify? They hadn't known anyone was missing. Everyone was accounted for.

And yet here she was. A daughter of the Hyuuga household, dead for at least seven days. Unclaimed. Unsearched for.

That silence alone was unsettling.

And in the silence, Sasuke could feel something else brewing. The tension between Hiashi and his father had been quietly simmering for months. Now, with a Hyuuga corpse in Uchiha custody, that tension was primed to ignite.

Layered beneath their grief, Sasuke sensed something colder: suspicion. They hadn't just hesitated when the precinct called. They'd balked at the request. He'd caught it in their silence, the way their questions circled before they agreed to come. As if they believed the tragedy was too well-timed. As if they thought someone wanted them here. Not to mourn, but to react.

But now, the truth lay beneath the sheet. And the question that lingered was no longer who, but how the fuck had no one noticed?

He had seen glimpses of the Hyuuga daughters in passing, but never cared to learn how to tell them apart.

Now, one of them was gone.

Forever distinct in death.

Karin adjusted her gloves with a snap of latex, her gaze flicking between Neji and Hiashi. She didn't bother to ask if they were ready. Some mercies were better left unspoken.

"We went ahead and confirmed identification through dental records," she said, voice measured. "But given the circumstances, visual confirmation is required."

Hiashi gave a single nod.

Karin gripped the edge of the sheet.

For a fraction of a second, the room held its breath.

Then she pulled it back.

The woman's face was waxy under the fluorescent lights, her skin tinged gray at the edges, lips parted slightly as if caught mid-breath. Her hair fanned out around her, strands clinging to the steel where condensation had gathered. But it was her eyes—now exposed, lavender irises unmistakable even in death—that made the air in the room thicken further.

Hiashi didn't flinch.

But his hands, still clasped behind his back, tightened until the knuckles bleached white.

Neji exhaled. A sharp, punched-out sound. His fingers twitched at his sides before curling into fists.

"Cause of death?" The words left Hiashi like a stone forced through his throat.

Sasuke had never seen the Hyuuga patriarch look anything but composed. Then again, the circumstances were usually different on the occasions he had seen him; this wasn't politics. This was blood.

And it had been spilled.

If his composure was ever meant to crack, Sasuke figured, it would be now. And no one could fault him for it.

"Single stab wound to the base of the skull. No signs of struggle," Karin informed him.

"And what of the child? Of its father?"

The question caught them both off guard. Karin glanced at Sasuke, blinking once before adjusting her glasses and answering.

"I was hoping you could shed some light on that front. Did she have a boyfriend?" She asked. "The father remains uncertain."

They hadn't expected Hiashi to ask. Not like that. A Hyuuga daughter. Unmarried. Pregnant. Murdered. It was the kind of truth that usually bred scandal, not sympathy. And yet, he hadn't asked out of concern for appearances.

He asked as a father.

In hindsight, the question made perfect sense. Establishing paternity could establish motive. Could lead to a killer.

It was easy to forget that men like Hiashi weren't just monuments of tradition and pride. Even easier to forget that they were still human. Capable of grief, of clarity, of thought that didn't just serve power, but justice.

Hiashi took a step forward, his gaze never leaving his daughter's body. "What else have you gathered?" His voice was cool, but tight with the strain of restraint.

That, they'd anticipated. Controlled outrage, framed as polite inquiry. Each question barbed with subtext. What Hiashi really wanted to say was painfully clear:

That they weren't doing enough. That under Uchiha leadership, the police force had grown complacent. That they'd forgotten their purpose. That the only thing they truly sought to serve and protect was their own legacy.

Sasuke had heard it all before and was mentally counting down to the seconds to the indictments—veiled or otherwise.

Before they arrived, Karin stepped in, steady as ever. "It's very likely she was killed elsewhere and then dumped where she was eventually found," she said crisply. "We're pulling surveillance from every building within a one mile radius."

A subtle reminder: the precinct was doing its job. Thoroughly.

Sasuke gave a brief nod, and left her to take it from there. Karin didn't flinch under pressure. Much like Tenten, domineering personalities didn't fluster her.

Tenten.

Something cold dropped in Sasuke's gut.

While he could tell himself that his actions thus far have been justifiable, that Neji was a logical suspect given the circumstances, he knew deep down that she'd been right about his innocence.

"Hyuuga," he said quietly, laying a hand on the younger Hyuuga's shoulder. "Walk with me."

Neji barely responded. His eyes had been locked on the body the entire time, unmoving, unreadable. Since they'd arrived, he hadn't said a word. Just stood there, silent and statue-still, as if his body was present but his mind hadn't caught up.

Sasuke guided him toward the elevator. They stepped inside and doors closed behind them with a hush.

He didn't speak until they were halfway to the ground floor. "You mind explaining to me why the lingerie your cousin was wearing at the time of death is traceable to your credit card?"

There was nothing overt in Neji's reaction, nothing that suggested guilt or even shock.

A small, pained smile tugging at his mouth. "Ah. So that's what happened to my card," he said to himself, before cutting Sasuke a glance that could draw blood.

He deserved that glare.

Because he'd known Neji reported his card stolen a while back.

The report was there, buried in the system. He'd seen it during his first pass. It was flagged and time-stamped. The bank had simply failed to deactivate the card. A clerical error that had kept the transaction alive.

And yet he said nothing.

He could've cleared Neji hours ago, could've spared him the silent suspicion, the humiliation of standing beside his cousin's corpse with fingers pointed in his direction. But Sasuke had held on to the detail, tight-fisted and quiet.

Hoping.

For something neat and conclusive.

Waiting.

Wanting the pieces to fit.

He looked away, resolved to let it go.

The elevator ascended into silence. Not the companionable kind, but it was respectful enough.

Sasuke broke it.

The words, "Sorry for your loss," scraped on the way out, like they didn't quite belong in his mouth.

"No, you're not."

It wasn't said with malice. Just quiet certainty.

Sasuke didn't bother denying it. Instead, he pulled a card from his coat pocket and offered it over. "If you think of anything that could help, feel free to reach out."

Neji took it without a glance.

The elevator chimed and the doors slid open.

Tenten paced back and forth outside, eyes rimmed red, lower lip trembling. She froze when she saw them, gaze locking instantly with Neji's.

Whatever passed between them didn't need language. She crossed the space in two quick steps and threw her arms around him.

Neji gave a startled breath. Almost a gasp. But then his body sagged into hers, tension melting as if she'd given him permission to fall apart.

Sasuke stood to the side, spine drawn taut like a bowstring.

It shouldn't have bothered him.

He said he'd let it go.

But watching her hold Neji like he was something breakable and precious made him realize—

—the decision was made prematurely.

⋅───⊱༺ ♰ ༻⊰───⋅

A few hours later...

Sasuke pushed his rice around, appetite long gone. His mother's voice hummed in the background, something about his hair getting long in the front again.

Ridiculously, his mind looped back to the hug.

Did she have to hold him like that?

If anyone deserved that kind of comfort, it was the surviving sister. The poor thing hadn't even made it to the morgue. She passed out in the precinct hallway and Naruto had to stay behind to help resuscitate her, while he just kept walking.

"I'm glad you made it," his mother said, her voice gentle, drawing him out. "You hardly come by anymore."

Mikoto Uchiha's smile was warm and weary all at once, like a candle burning low but still steady. Her hair, thick and black, was swept into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, strands silvering at the temples.

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He'd always told himself that the fights with his father were just between them, with nobody else caught in the crossfire. But the evidence of collateral damage was in the lines that shouldn't have appeared for another decade, framing his mother's smile.

"I came because you asked," he said, not meaning to sound so blunt.

She gave him that soft maternal look that only made him feel guiltier. She was the reason this house still felt like it had an open door for him. The least he could do was show up when she asked.

"You've lost weight," she noted softly, pouring tea into his cup with a quiet grace.

She set the cup down in front of him, then reached up without hesitation to brush her thumb gently over the faint crease above his eyebrow, as if trying to smooth away the tension she knew lingered there.

"Have you been sleeping? Or has your father been working you to the bone again?" she teased, her eyes flicking towards Fugaku at the head of the table, whose eyes remained fixed on the TV mounted before them.

The local news anchor's voice droned on, rehashing the Hyuuga tragedy for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

Grainy footage rolled again of Hiashi Hyuuga emerging from the precinct and slipping into a black SUV. Neji followed suit, grief carved deep under his eyes.

Sasuke recognized that look.

Saw the arms around him all over again because of that look.

His fingers curled around his tea cup. Tightly.

"At this time, authorities have no concrete leads in the investigation of Hanabi Hyuuga's murder. Sources confirm the case remains open but stalled, with officials urging the public for patience as detectives continue their efforts. The twenty-two year old's body was discovered in an abandoned power plant owned by her family's business rival—"

"Tch."

Fugaku's eyes narrowed as he reached for the remote and killed the screen with a sharp click.

"Disgraceful," he said, though his glare was for Sasuke. "You've let the media spin this into a circus."

Sasuke's voice was level. "I don't control the press."

"No," Fugaku said coldly. "But you control the investigation."

Their eyes locked and a tense silence stretched.

Mikoto cleared her throat delicately, interrupting the standoff as she set down a platter of grilled fish. "Your brother will be late. He messaged earlier."

Fugaku didn't look away from Sasuke. "The mayor will expect this to be handled quietly before the fundraiser."

"Don't make this about politics," Mikoto admonished quietly.

"It already is. Everything becomes politics when names like Hyuuga and Uchiha are involved."

Sasuke let out a sigh and rolled his eyes.

"Speaking of the fundraiser," Fugaku pressed on, knife screeching across his plate as he cut into his fish. "The mayor's daughter will be very disappointed if you showed up alone. She's made—"

"I won't," Sasuke cut in.

"—her interest in you very clear," his father finished, undeterred. Then paused, eyes narrowing. "You won't, what?"

Sasuke leaned back in his chair, arms folding. "I won't take her."

His old man had actually looked hopeful for a moment. But Sasuke knew better. It wasn't hope. Not really. It was the disorientation of a man so used to control, he couldn't quite process the idea of not being obeyed.

Fugaku didn't speak, but the vein at his temple began its slow, furious throb.

The doorbell rang like a divine intervention. Followed by the quiet swing of the front door, and footsteps padding down the hall.

Itachi entered the dining room moments later, a bottle of aged sake in one hand and a grin on his face. "Apologies for being late."

Fugaku's frown morphed into something suspiciously close to approval. "You've brought a guest?"

"And wine," Itachi said smoothly, before stepping aside.

Sasuke blinked.

Then blinked again.

Tenten stood in the doorway, clutching a bouquet of white lilies like they might deflect gunfire. She looked like she'd been strong-armed into a hostage negotiation. And judging by the way her eye twitched, she was still negotiating.

He was on his feet before his brain processed the movement. What the hell was she doing here?

And more importantly, was she wearing a dress?

She was. A peach thing that clung to her like she hadn't worn anything this feminine since birth. Her hair was pinned up, loose strands brushing her neck, and was that makeup?

Their eyes met for a brief moment, and in hers, he saw the same unscripted horror mirrored back. She hadn't signed up for this.

Her smile was so tight, it looked like it had been stapled on at the last second.

Itachi, the traitorous bastard, placed a hand on Tenten's shoulder with the smug satisfaction of a child at show and tell.

With his next words, he didn't just derail Sasuke's plans. He hijacked the train, set it on fire, and invited everyone to watch it crash.

"Father. Mother. Meet Sasuke's girlfriend."

.

Chapter Text

This isn't up for debate.

The most stressful "meet the parents" scenario isn't the one where you're in a new relationship and need to size up the source material. It isn't even the serious ones where by then, you're too invested to back out and approval feels like the last barrier between you and the life you're trying to build.

No.

The real nightmare is when the whole relationship is pure fiction, and your improv skills are being graded by experts in criminal tells.

Because dinner with the in-laws isn't just dinner then.

Not for Tenten.

It was a high-stakes audition for a role she hadn't rehearsed, opposite a co-star who needed stage directions because his older brother had shoehorned them both into the production without warning.

She wasn't even sure what genre this was. Romantic comedy? Psychological thriller?

How the hell did she get here? One moment, Itachi was casually cornering her at the precinct; the next, she was standing in a pair of borrowed heels before Fugaku and Mikoto Uchiha, wondering how much prison time she'd get for jamming a salad fork into their firstborn's jugular.

Seriously, fuck Itachi.

Murder mystery, the anger inside her confirmed. This would be a murder mystery.

"Father. Mother. Meet Sasuke's girlfriend."

Tenten barely registered the weight of Itachi's hand on her shoulder when he stepped aside to introduce her. The crushing reality of having to face her boss—now with the world knowing she was supposedly fucking his son, even though she absolutely was not—left no room for trivial concerns like personal space.

Somehow the sheer professional suicide of the situation hadn't occurred to her until Fugaku's obsidian eyes locked onto her.

In that horrifying instant, every rational thought shattered beneath the tsunami of primal panic roaring through her skull: "Oh God. Oh no. Oh shit. Oh fuck."

Smile, she told herself.

Her face tried. It really did. But the result felt less like a charming expression of warmth and more like a hostage blinking in Morse code.

Fugaku didn't return her smile.

Of course he didn't.

Mikoto Uchiha, blessedly, stepped forward with an inviting smile. Seeing her in the flesh, it was clear where Sasuke got his quiet intensity. There was no question where Itachi got his steady gaze. He and Sasuke looked remarkably alike though they each favoured a different parent.

Ugh.

She hated Uchiha men.

Not with fire, but with fatigue. It was the kind of hatred reserved for things that wear you down over time. Like tax season or root canals. Unpleasant, inevitable, and somehow your fault by the end of it.

To make matters worse, Sasuke just stood there, hands useless at his sides, like a malfunctioning NPC. Not saying a word.

Itachi nudged her forward and she almost tripped over her feet.

The room somehow managed to look both elegant and funereal. Cream linens. Immaculate place settings. Not a single thing out of place. Except for her.

"This is Tenten."

"Girlfriend, you say? Well, isn't this a pleasant surprise?" Mikoto beamed, turning to her husband like she needed confirmation that the girl before her was, in fact, real.

The reaction alone told Tenten everything she needed to know.

"Oh. Are those for me?" Her gaze dropped to the bouquet of white lilies clutched tightly in Tenten's hands.

For the life of her, she couldn't unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth to speak.

The flowers were trembling. Or maybe she was. 

"Lilies are my favourite," Mikoto said, delighted.

Tenten's arm moved on autopilot, thrusting the bouquet forward like someone presenting an offering to appease a very pretty, very powerful deity.

"Come. Please sit, Tenten." Mikoto accepted the flowers with a graceful nod and gestured to the dining table both in invitation and command.

The spread was immaculate: lacquered chopsticks, silver utensils, and ceramic bowls. Grilled fish gleamed under a light soy glaze, flanked by simmered vegetables, steaming rice, and delicate pickled sides. A teapot sat near a polished wooden tray, beside a porcelain tureen of what looked like miso soup or maybe suimono, still gently steaming.

Without a word, Itachi herded her forward like a sacrificial lamb towards the seat beside Sasuke. Then he took the one directly across. All with infuriating calm and smugness.

Sasuke sat when she did, their thighs brushing under the table.

He leaned in slightly and spoke out of the corner of his mouth so only she could hear. "What are you doing here?"

Three pairs of black eyes fixed on her like she was under a microscope.

They were watching. Not just her, but them. The way you'd watch animals at a zoo, curious to see if the rare pairing would bicker, bond or bite.

Something in her expression must have given away that she didn't know the answer to his question, because Sasuke eased back into his seat.

"For the record, I had no part in this," he said, preemptively absolving himself.

She didn't believe him but speaking would only result in either a string of expletives or unintelligible rambling.

Thankfully, her stomach chose to betray her, growling so loud it drew all the attention.

"Oh, you poor thing," Mikoto said kindly, already piling a mound of steaming rice onto her plate. "It's so nice to finally meet you. Sasuke has always been rather… reserved about his personal life."

With a teasing glint in her eye, she gave her son's shoulder a gentle nudge.

He scowled.

She laughed softly. "Honestly, I was starting to worry. At one point, I accepted that Naruto might be the only one he'd ever bring home."

Itachi muffled a snicker into his glass.

Tenten stuffed her mouth full of food to stifle a giggle. Yeah, those two. She could see it. They were a sitcom waiting to happen.

"Speaking of old friends, whatever happened to that pretty pink-haired girl who used to stop by all the time with Naruto?" Mikoto tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Sakura, wasn't it? Is she still working at the hospital?"

Tenten's chewing slowed, side-eying Sasuke with dry disbelief.

Oh, this was rich. He had spent almost an hour detailing every trivial fact about himself that night in his car. His hatred of decorative pillows. His peanut allergy. His love of tomatoes. And yet somehow, this Sakura person hadn't made the cut.

"She was absolutely smitten with him," Mikoto told her breezily. "If he'd given her the time of day she'd have turned it into a lifetime."

Sasuke's expression darkened like a storm front. "Mother."

Tenten filed his reaction away for future reference.

Mikoto's smile didn't falter. If anything, it softened, but she smoothed the tension over.

"Every cloud has a silver lining, I suppose," she said, turning to Tenten. "We might never have gotten the chance to meet you. And what a loss that would've been." A wink. "Because now, at least, we know he's capable of choosing someone for himself. Right, honey?"

Fugaku, ever the bastion of warmth and hospitality chimed in.

"Well, it's good to see he's consistent in finding companionship within the workplace. Some might call it convenience. Others, a lack of discernment."

Tenten sat up a little straighter, acutely aware that she was deep in enemy territory. There was no mistaking the subtext. Workplace romance was easy and thoughtless. A distraction, not a decision.

She's binged enough dramas to know that even if she were the precinct's most valuable asset, merit would never matter as much as pedigree when it came to her boss' sons.

She braced herself for Mikoto to echo the sentiment with a knowing nod. Not because the woman was some blue-blooded snob. To someone like her, the danger was far more practical. Mixing business with pleasure was rarely a winning formula.

Instead, the older woman let out a long, theatrical sigh. "Ugh. Not another cop."

Of all the reactions Tenten had expected, that wasn't one of them.

Even less expected was Fugaku's follow-up: "A damn good one, admittedly. Far too competent to be wasting her time at my dinner table."

Did he just insult and compliment her all in the same breath?

It wasn't "you're beneath him," but "you should've known better than to try."

Mikoto waved him off with a dismissive flick of her hand and turned to Tenten with a sly grin.

"Still, it's nice to finally have another woman at the table. I'm already outnumbered by two. Maybe you'll even score with a granddaughter someday. I might be able to overlook you being in law enforcement."

Tenten nearly choked.

"Alright." Sasuke looked ready to combust. "We're leaving."

"You didn't come here together," Itachi made a point to remind his brother. "Mother, you're getting ahead of yourself."

Mikoto huffed.

He shot Tenten an apologetic glance that wasn't remotely sincere. "Too soon, right?" he had the gall to ask.

He was obviously enjoying this. She didn't know what game he was playing, inviting her here, knowing this was the ambush awaiting her.

"Too soon," she agreed stiffly.

The last thing she needed was the idea of having kids with Sasuke take even the smallest root in her head. She didn't want to imagine what kind of unholy Uchiha offspring would emerge. A stoic, black-eyed baby glowering at the world like it had a vendetta to settle in preschool. No thank you.

"Too soon?" Fugaku repeated, brows lifting with genuine offense, like she'd refused a divine right.

The table fell silent.

Tenten gawked at him. Was he serious?

He leveled her with a stare as sharp as a scalpel. "I have to ask, what are your intentions for my son?"

The question was curious. It was loaded, almost accusatory. Like she had the audacity to come into his house, eat his rice, and not be halfway ready to lend her womb to the preservation of his bloodline.

Tenten considered retorting that a better question would be what his son's intentions were for her.

Both of his sons, actually.

Because one lured her to the lion's den when he agreed to fake date, and the other tossed her in headfirst just to watch her get eaten.

It cannot be said enough.

She hated Uchiha men.

"This isn't an interrogation," Itachi reminded his father.

"It's a fair question."

Tenten blanched. He actually wanted an answer.

Somewhere in the middle of this absolute circus of a decision she'd been strong-armed into, something inside her snapped. Not gently. Not quietly. But with the satisfying snap of a tripwire triggering a grenade.

Once upon a time, she'd wanted this. Wanted the messy, awkward normalcy of meeting someone's parents. The validation of being seen.

But this wasn't that.

This wasn't real.

And frankly, she was tired of Sasuke acting like he held the script and she was just there to hit her marks.

This fake relationship had been her idea. If it couldn't play out like a rom-com, then she'd make it a parody.

"My intentions?" she let her voice drip saccharine poison. "Oh, I figured I'd keep seeing him until you offered me a discreet cheque to disappear from his life so you can marry him off to someone more suitable. You know… like in those TV dramas."

Fugaku's brows pinched together, not with confusion, but with the tight restraint of a man choosing not to dignify nonsense with a reaction. He seemed to recognize that she was pulling his leg and made the decision not to indulge her.

Under the table, Sasuke's hand closed around her knee in silent warning.

Not caressing. Not coaxing. A clear, calculated squeeze that said: shut up.

The heat came humiliatingly fast. Not a blush but a brand seared her skin with the undeniable truth. Ino had been right. The evidence was written in her own traitorous physiology.

"Let's try that again. What is it that you see in my son?" Fugaku asked, tone flat as a cutting board.

A socially acceptable excuse to dodge the 'there's somebody out there for everybody' pity lectures from my friends.

So many responses. Very few would satisfy him.

She smiled, resting her elbows lightly on the table. "Well, he's tall. Has all his teeth. Broods impressively. That last one's really hard to come by these days."

Fugaku's lips thinned. "That's it? Teeth and… brooding?"

Sasuke's hand crept higher.

Her spine stiffened, but she kept her smile lacquered on.

Let the fucker sweat. She'd been rolling with his punches since this whole shebang began, it was time for her to hit back.

"Also he's emotionally unavailable," she said with mock solemnity. "Which, let's be honest, is catnip to women with saviour complexes."

Another inch. His thumb brushed the inside of her thigh. Heat shot up her leg and lodged somewhere inconvenient.

The worst part was that she knew he wasn't even trying to be sexual. Every press of his finger was the threat of a blade at her throat. But his tactic was misguided. A hand up a skirt wasn't a deterrent. It was an invitation. A rather confusing one.

"Sounds like a character flaw," Fugaku said dryly. "Not a foundation for a relationship."

"Ah, but that's where the magic lies." She leaned forward conspiratorially. "The allure of potential. I'm not dating the man he is. I'm dating the man I can fix."

Sasuke squeezed her leg again. Her breath caught. She hated that it did, but recovered with a sip of water she absolutely did not need.

Fugaku blinked. "So, my son is a project?"

"Have you seen the damage you left on this one?" She jabbed a thumb towards Sasuke without breaking eye contact.

His fingers slid even higher, and this time she coughed—actually coughed—into her napkin.

Fugaku's gaze slid between the two of them, something skeptical and sharp in his eyes. "With your pick of Konoha's finest you bring home a woman who thinks your teeth are your best feature?"

Tenten placed a hand over her heart, mock-wounded. "I never said they were the best. Just notable. They're very symmetrical."

Fugaku arched his brow.

"She's joking," Itachi said helpfully. His tone suggested he found this entire thing hilarious.

"Oh, I know," he said flatly, gaze returning to Tenten. "That's what makes it worse." He regarded her coolly. "You understand this isn't a game. This is my son's future."

She opened her mouth, ready to double down. But Sasuke dug his finger into her thigh hard enough to bruise.

Her jaw clicked shut. So did her knees, locking his hand in place. Which probably wasn't the wisest decision.

"Oh hush, dear," Mikoto chuckled lightly. "Why don't you relax? I'm sure it's not that serious."

Fugaku visibly relaxed, exhaling as if the mere thought of the relationship going nowhere was a relief.

Sasuke didn't let the illusion last.

"But it is… that serious."

The conviction in his tone hit Tenten like a jolt of electricity. For one heart-stopping second, she almost believed him.

Then it really hit her.

The reason he agreed to the farce.

Her mind flashed back to the pretty woman she'd seen at the precinct. She remembered Sasuke's unexpected willingness to play pretend with her after he met with the woman. She thought of his words in the car outside the izakaya:

"My father needs the mayor's endorsement for Commissioner of Police, and I'm his bargaining chip."

Then his explanation.

"The mayor's daughter."

Three words that brought clarity now, but confusion then.

The puzzle pieces were clicking together.

This wasn't about her. Not really. This was a power play. A petty, manipulative screw-you to his father. A giant middle finger wrapped in packaging that just so happened to look like her.

And she, the idiot, had spent the last ten minutes treating it like a comedy sketch.

Fuck.

She wasn't the star.

She was the punchline.

.