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Sasuke has gotten into the habit of going to see Tenten first when he comes back to Konoha.
Well- habit implies complete consistency, and that is not what Sasuke has. Sometimes he drops into the Hokage’s office, and sometimes he shrugs his cloak off in the comfort of his own home, and very rarely, he lingers on Kakashi’s doorstep until the man lets him in.
A little more than half the time he goes to see Tenten. Not habit- but an action more common than anything else he does.
She does not always have time to see him, and it’s a comfort in its own right to be turned away by her, a reminder that she is not waiting for him. Whether he is allowed in or not does nothing to dampen his mood when he goes to her first. Tonight, Sasuke needs something to carry him onwards. Something to remind him that there is a world beyond the people who are precious to him. Someone like Tenten.
He steps into her shop, dragging his feet on the mat to make sure she hears him come in.
“We’re closing in ten minutes, so be quick!” she calls from the back of the shop. It’s another comfort; when Sasuke sends a letter informing Sakura that he is coming back to the village, she stays up waiting for him, for as long as it takes for him to trudge into the living room. All of them wait for him. He’s so tired of people waiting for him.
Tenten doesn't care if he comes by or not- doesn't even think to check if the person entering her shop is him.
“It’s Sasuke,” he says, voice raspy from travel. He wanders in a little further; even if she’s not in a mood to indulge him, he might end up purchasing some weapons. He could use a couple kunai.
“Oh, could you lock the door then?”
“Hn.”
Tenten is waiting at the back of the shop feet on her desk, flipping a chunky black object in the air over and over with a shit-eating grin on her face. “Wanna see something cool?”
“…is it that thing?”
“How’d you guess?” she teases, smile growing wider. “Look- I just made this. Took me about a week? But that was mostly fine-tuning the explosive seals.”
“It’s a weapon,” Sasuke says, because that much is easy to guess. “You… hit people with it? And then it explodes?”
Tenten holds it up considerately. “Yeah, I guess you could knock someone out with blunt force if you slammed it into their head. You could do that with a brick, though. This is for-!”
She straightens(?) the object in her hand, holds it steady, and points the end- it’s empty, Sasuke realizes, at least partially- a little to the left of him, and pulls her finger back. Something explodes, and then a tiny piece of metal goes flying out of it, embedding itself into the wall.
“Huh,” says Sasuke.
“It’s pretty easy to dodge if you know what you’re doing,” Tenten says, rubbing the back of her head. “But it’s got its uses- especially if you’re attacking someone who doesn’t know what it is. I call it a gun! I actually think it might be popular with civilians- doesn’t take much strength to kill someone with it, and I think the idea of having something to protect themselves with could appeal to them.”
“Interesting,” says Sasuke.
“So, anyways,” Tenten says, slumping back into her chair. “How about you? What have you been doing? Got any closer to a solution for this~?”
She’s only bringing it up to get a rise out of him for her entertainment. Sometimes, Sasuke lets himself get carried into the heat of the moment and argue with her over the futility of changing this- of changing Konoha. Not tonight, though. He’s tired.
“It’ll be Sarada’s birthday soon,” he says, gracelessly pushing the topic aside and ignoring the nausea that his daughter’s name summons in return. Tenten rolls her eyes.
Sasuke takes a step closer, lingering in front of her desk. The hard part of interacting with Tenten is using his words. She doesn’t know how to read between the lines of his actions, or maybe she just can’t be bothered to.
“Would you- mind if we skipped that part,” he manages.
“Skipped to what?” she blinks up at him innocently. The other hard part of interacting with Tenten is that she likes to annoy him for fun.
He grits his teeth. “Do you want to fuck?”
Tenten glances at the clock absently. “I guess. As long as we keep it quick- I need to get home and make dinner.”
Quick is fine. He’s not even horny so much as he is vaguely bored and itching for- something. Something that Tenten will deliver whether he wants her to or not.
“Hn.”
“I don’t really want to bother undressing,” Tenten says, standing up. “It’s such a pain to take off all my weapons and then put them back on… but I don’t want to do laundry, either.”
She pouts at him.
“I’m not forcing you to do either of those things,” Sasuke says dryly.
“Well, maybe we can just play around a little bit without getting serious- because I really do want to get home for dinner.”
Tenten moves over, looking him up and down. She’s still holding the gun- “Is that what you’re planning on ‘playing around’ with?”
“Got a problem with it?”
It’s not much different from the blades she tends to keep with her. “Not really.”
“Okay, then, open wide~” Tenten sings, grabbing his chin and feeding the mouth of the gun into his mouth. His tongue brushes up against it and tastes cold metal and ash before darting away, pressing itself to the roof of his mouth. “Hahaaa, is that good? You know…”
Sasuke watches her carefully. He trusts her not to blow metal through his head, of course, but he’s not sure where she’s going with this. With any of it.
“You know, when we create spaces that are unobservable, anything could be happening in them,” Tenten says, voice oddly wistful. “We’ve got no way of proving that nothing happened- or that something specific happened. Not really.”
She shifts her grip on the gun slightly, moving her finger towards the trigger.
“It’s pretty easy to do, too, way easier than anyone knows… we’ve got one right here! What’s inside of you, I wonder? We could find out, by taking the gun away… but that would only show us what was there then. We would have no way of proving that it was the same stuff that was there when the gun was blocking the way. Every second we stay like that… that’s another mystery we build up. Another truth lost forever.”
Sasuke inhales.
“And you like that, don’t you?” Tenten says, voice lilting. “Aw, that’s cute! You like not being known, right! You’re tired of it! Or, no- everyone’s always going around, saying they know you so, so well, and they’ve got it all wrong, so it’s refreshing when someone ends up being honest, right?”
She tightens her grip on his chin and pulls his head up and down slightly.
“Yes, you do. Well, Sasuke-kuuun, if I were to blow your brains out-” she moves her finger onto the trigger. “That’d make an even bigger space. I mean, maybe we could guess what was going on inside your head, but we couldn’t really say, now could we? Not unless the bullet went clean through. There’d be a hole carved up from your throat to your grey matter- but would there really be? Would it be there before I took the gun out of your mouth?”
She slips the gun out of his mouth.
“Uh,” Sasuke says.
“Sorry, sorry,” Tenten says insincerely. “But they are appealing, right? Unobservable spaces? There’s loads of them inside of us all the time. You know, your stomach, your intestines… close your mouth and clench your ass and the insides become a mystery~!”
“I don’t think anyone can see into my stomach even if my mouth is open,” Sasuke says.
“Ehh, guess that’s true. How’d you feel about opening it sometime? Wouldn’t that be fun? As long as we had a mednin around. Hey, you think Sakura would be down for that kind of thing?”
Sasuke blinks. “Please don’t try to ask my wife for a threesome. You… you know I’m cheating on her with you, right?”
Tenten laughs awkwardly. “Wait, it’s that kind of relationship? Ugh, marriage is a nice thing, I guess, but it’s not for me… I always forget the details around it.”
Sasuke is 80% sure that she’s joking.
“Well, anyways, this isn’t anything new. The stuff I was saying about the gun- that’s all any sex is about. Putting two holes together in order to create an unobservable space.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“No, no, think about it!” Tenten insists. “My pussy is a hole and your dick has a hole-”
“Please stop.”
“-and when they connect, there’s a space in the middle cut off from the world. Unobservable~! That doesn’t appeal to you at all?”
It does, unfortunately, but Sasuke won’t be telling her that. He takes a step back and turns to leave.
“Okay, bye,” Tenten laughs. “See you later, Sasuke.”
“...hn.”
He speedwalks out of her shop, fumbling the lock slightly as he goes. His face is too hot- but something within him, deeper than physical, has settled. He hates it- hates that being loved isn’t enough. Hates that this is the thing he needs to feel like he’s really here, really alive.
...hates that the thing he will be thinking about later, when Sakura pulls him to bed, will be the unobservable space the two of them create.
He really is disgusting- just as bad as Tenten, for all that he loathes her for knowing how rotten the world is and doing nothing about it. He’s here too. He’s still here. He’s playing house- discontent, ruining the illusion for everyone around him-
The only difference between them is that Tenten is happy, and he is not. Not usually. Sometimes, it’s a comfort. Tonight, though, he finds no purification in his misery. He trudges towards his home, yawning void inside his stretching minutely wider, and wishes that he didn’t love everyone who loves him so desperately in return.