Blackmail and Betrayal

AN: Here it is finally! Sorry for not posting last week, but I wanted to make sure things were going the way I wanted them to before putting up something that would lock me into a place I didn’t want to be.

Thanks for your wonderful comments from last chapter!! I hope this lives up to your expectations!!


Chapter 9


5:40 am

Sasuke awoke to the feeling of a warm back pressed up against his chest and his arm around a lean waist. His eyes slowly opened to a vision of yellow. Focusing, he realized that it was Naruto’s hair eclipsing his view. Carefully lifting himself up to an elbow, he looked down at his still-slumbering couch-mate.

He gently brushed a lock of hair back from Naruto’s closed eyes as he studied the face of the sleeping man. He thought with some amusement that Naruto didn’t look anything like what girls always described slumbering men as. He wasn’t angelic looking, he wasn’t innocent looking and he didn’t resemble a cute little boy. He just looked like Naruto. Asleep.

Not that a sleeping Naruto didn’t wreck havoc on his both his brain and his hormones. Both were crying out for him to molest the man to wakefulness; however his brain was thankfully aware that doing so wouldn’t be the best idea with Sakura in the next room. Not that that particular fact had stopped them last night.

He shivered as he recalled their passionate love making the night before. And it was love making no matter how much he wanted to perhaps deny it, though that part of him was losing vehemence in its protests.

‘I want to keep you.’

His eyes fluttered as those words echoed in his mind. He wanted to be kept; he wanted to wake up like this every morning. He could see it so clearly; kissing Naruto awake until the blond gave a sensuous stretch that made Sasuke’s eyes rake over his body. He could see the two of them showering together, touching each other teasingly, just to enjoy the feel of each other’s bodies. Then in the kitchen where they would have coffee and Sasuke would taunt Naruto about burning the bagels. Naruto would pout of course but only because he knew that Sasuke couldn’t resist coming over and kissing his jutting lower lip until he was smiling again. Then there would be deep languid kisses, tasting and holding each other. Sasuke would then happen to glance at the clock on the microwave and panic, knowing he was going to be late for work. He would then rush to the door after kissing Naruto about four or five more times on the way.

Sasuke’s daydream was interrupted as the alarm on his watch started beeping. He quickly shut it off but Naruto was already starting to stir.

Deep, hazy blue eyes blinked open and panic streaked through them for a split second. However, they focused on Sasuke and the look immediately cleared and softened.

“Good morning,” Sasuke said quietly, trying not to blow his morning breath in Naruto’s face.

Naruto hesitantly smiled, as if unsure what to do in his current situation. Sasuke couldn’t help but wonder where the confident sex machine from the night before had went. It was like the man didn’t know how to react to truly intimate moments that didn’t involve fornication. It then occurred to him rather belatedly that perhaps Naruto really didn’t know how to interact with someone on a romantic level that didn’t involve sex.

He couldn’t repress a snicker at the thought that the blond was probably just as inept as he was at relationships. They would make a good pair of fools.

A flaxen eyebrow lifted at the sardonic noise. “Oi, bastard, are you laughing at me?” he demanded, ready to take offense if the answer was affirmative.

“At both of us, moron,” Sasuke said, smirking at the unconvinced look the other man gave him. He gave a nudge at the broad back before him. “Let’s start getting ready. We have a busy day today.”

Naruto gave one last pout, exactly how Sasuke had imagined it to look a few moments ago, before he swung his legs to the floor so that he could stand. He turned to face Sasuke when he caught the interested look on the other man’s face. He gave a mischievous grin and dragged a hand down his bare chest, watching the dark eyes follow its course raptly.

He had just reached the band of the black, silken boxers that contained his half hard morning erection when Sasuke’s eyes wrenched themselves back up to his.

“I’ll shower first,” the pale skinned man practically growled before quickly getting up.

Naruto chuckled at the ill-concealed reaction that Sasuke had had to him. “Make sure you think of me when you jerk off,” he instructed teasingly.

Sasuke’s response was in the form of a middle finger as the taller man stalked out of the room.

****************
Sasuke sat in his chair across from Naruto at a table in a small little café. He liked to eat breakfast here when he could. The atmosphere was casual, which was necessary since Naruto was still dressed like a Chippendale’s stripper, and the food was good without being either commercialized or haute cuisine.

Despite all of that, he sat a trifle awkwardly, wondering if he should broach the subject of their strange affair or to let things continue to move at their own pace. He couldn’t help but feel a bit girly in wanting to discuss such matters, but then he didn’t like being in an area where he wasn’t sure of where he stood.

He was saved from making a fool of himself however, when Naruto seemed to notice his consternation and comment on it.

“Yo, bastard, what’s bothering you? You’ve been squirming like you’ve got ants in your pants since we got here,” the blond pointed out with his usual tact and guile.

Sasuke’s gaze flickered upward in irritation, encountering genuinely concerned blue eyes. Slightly mollified, he gave a sigh followed by a slight shrug.

Naruto’s continued to look at him expectantly, setting his elbows on the table in a display to relate his willingness to wait until the cows came home for Sasuke to talk.

Steeling his resolve, Sasuke spoke. “Last night,” he said, forcing himself to maintain eye contact, “what was it?”

Naruto felt a small surge of panic go through him. He hadn’t expected the detective to actually want to talk about what had happened. He was afraid that the other man was setting him up to end their encounters, but one normally wouldn’t start a conversation in such a manner for such a purpose. Still, he was cautious.

“It was us,” he said slowly, fingers finding and fiddling with the paper napkin on the table, “being together.”

There was a moment of silence as Sasuke absorbed the statement. “Were you serious?” he asked quietly, eyes trailing off to the side before moving back.

Naruto waited as a server stopped by to ask if there was anything else that they needed. After they both answered negatively, the girl shot the two very good looking men a brilliant smile and moved on.

He swallowed around the large lump in his throat. “I was serious,” he affirmed, his blue eyes riveted on the dark gaze across from him. He was still asleep on the couch, he thought almost dazedly. He had to still be asleep and was dreaming this whole conversation.

“I care about Sakura,” Sasuke said quietly, “and I don’t want to hurt her.”

‘Ah, there it is,’ Naruto thought with some cynicism and even greater pain. He knew that this had been too good to be true. Men like Sasuke didn’t leave their fiancés for trash like him.

“But…” Sasuke continued, trailing off.

Naruto’s eyes lifted once more, unknowingly having dropped down to where his fingers had shredded the napkin. He felt hope rise in him again even as he tried to brutally crush it under his understanding of reality. Then it suddenly came to him. Sasuke was going to ask him for an affair. He wouldn’t have to leave his fiancé and he could still have Naruto on the side to fulfill his sexual desires.

And Naruto would agree.

He wanted more of course. He wanted Sasuke with an intensity that was frightening. So much so that he was willing to take what he could get no matter how much it killed him inside while doing so.

“Yes,” he found himself saying without waiting for Sasuke to finish.

A black eyebrow lifted over dark grey eyes. “Yes?” he asked in evident confusion.

Naruto looked away, a sick feeling turning in his stomach. “Yes, I’ll have an affair with you.”

Sasuke felt himself still in his seat. “Is that what you think I was going to ask you?”

Blue eyes flickered over to him, a flicker of something in their depths but gone before he could identify it. “Weren’t you?” came the challenge.

Sasuke calmly pulled out his wallet and dropped some cash on the table. Standing, he glanced down at the blond. “Then you don’t know me as well as I thought you did,” he said coolly.

Feeling as if something he had wanted desperately had just been yanked from his grasp, Naruto got numbly to his feet, feeling as if he would retch at any moment.

“Let’s finish this,” Sasuke said, starting to turn to head for the door.

“You never give anyone an inch, do you, bastard?” Naruto heard himself say harshly.

Sasuke paused but didn’t turn back around.

“If all you look for is perfection, you will never find anything that will make you happy,” the blond added grimly. “Least of all me.”

Pushing past Sasuke, Naruto made his way out of the café and over to the nice, but non-descript car that the detective drove. A few moments later the automatic locks popped up as Sasuke hit the button on his keychain and they both slid into the quiet interior of the vehicle.

Sasuke didn’t start the car right away.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, sounding like the words had been dragged out of him by a team of wild horses. “Maybe I overreacted,” he muttered.

“You think?” Naruto asked a trifle sarcastically.

Sasuke’s lips thinned out. “I would have thought it would have been apparent that I am not the type of person that would engage in a long term affair behind my fiancé’s back.”

“You’ve already screwed around on her,” Naruto pointed out bluntly.

“One night stands,” Sasuke said defensively. “I’ve never been interested in continuing with any of them.”

“It doesn’t matter the length of time, Sasuke,” Naruto said quietly. “You still cheat. You can’t blame me for making assumptions.”

Sasuke gripped the steering wheel in a tight hold. “I meant what I said last night as well,” he said through a tight jaw. “I want you. More than a night. More than a few nights.” He turned blazing black eyes over towards Naruto.

As much as he reveled in those words, Naruto felt compelled to be realistic with the man next to him. “We’ll use this time to get to know each other. And afterwards, when we are no longer partners, we’ll see if you still feel the same.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Sasuke almost demanded, sounding once more defensive, as if Naruto had called his sincerity into question.

“Because after this we won’t be partners anymore,” Naruto explained, his voice slightly strained. “After this you will be the detective again and I’ll be the whore.”

Sasuke’s eyes hardened at the words, his gaze taking in the downcast look that Naruto directed at the dashboard. “You’re not a whore,” he growled out.

Naruto’s lips quirked into a self-deprecating smile. “Yes, I am, Sasuke, but thank you for thinking otherwise.” His eyes hardened slightly. “I’m a whore, buying favors-”

Naruto’s blue eyes widened in surprise over the hand that was suddenly covering his mouth.

“Don’t you even dare finish that sentence,” Sasuke said furiously from mere inches away. “We both know that there is more to you than that. Don’t you even think about believing that bullshit.”

A hand came up to gently clasp Sasuke’s wrist and the detective allowed it to be slowly pulled away.

“Sasuke,” Naruto whispered, staring into those impossibly dark eyes, “thank you.”

Sasuke merely nodded in reply. They had a long way to go, he knew that, but at least they both knew that they were both willing to try. Right now, that was enough.

****************
They were being followed. Sasuke could feel it even if he couldn’t see who it was or where they were at. The sensation had started outside of the café and had continued from there on.

At first he had thought that perhaps it was some of Orochimaru’s men, but Naruto didn’t spot anyone he recognized when Sasuke had asked him to look around. After being called a “paranoid fuck,” Sasuke stopped mentioning it to his companion and just kept an eye out.

The apartment was in the lower middle class area of the city. Not a bad neighborhood but not the greatest obviously. The quickly went up the six flights of stairs since there was no elevator and located the apartment by the number on the door.

After their rather eventful morning, it was already nine o’clock by the time they were knocking on the door. The door opened a sliver to reveal a chain connecting it to the frame and a brown eye looking out at them.

“Miss Mokume, it’s Sasuke Uchiha with the police department,” Sasuke announced while holding up his badge. “We talked the other day about your boyfriend.”

The door closed to only to be reopened completely. “Have you heard anything?” she asked immediately as she stepped aside to let them in.

“We think we may have a few leads, but we aren’t entirely certain at the moment,” Sasuke told her, trying to keep the atmosphere in the room calm. “My colleague here is working on another case and has discovered that the man he is investigating has been in e-mail contact with Mr. Mimura. Do you recall him mentioning a Mr. Gantetsu?”

She shook her head. “He mentioned a friend of his being in trouble not too long before he disappeared, but he never told me any names,” she said with a slight shake of her head.

“Do you mind if I take a look at your computer?” Naruto asked after he spotted the machine on a nearby table.

“Feel free,” she said with a slight look of distaste as she stared at the piece of equipment in question. “Haul it off if you want to,” she continued. “He spends too damn much time on the thing anyway.”

Naruto sat in the cheap office chair in front of the computer. It was a newer model than the one at Gantetsu’s and looked like it was actually capable of running something other than solitaire.

As he got it up and running, he could hear Sasuke in the background talking to the man’s girlfriend, asking her whether Mimura kept his computer files anyplace else other than his computer. She didn’t know anything naturally, but Naruto could almost have predicted that answer.

He started in the usual places; documents folder, any specially made folder that he could readily find on the desktop and then on the c-drive. After that failed to turn up anything besides some lesbian porn that his girlfriend looked embarrassed about but not upset over, he did a search of files by date, hoping to find anything newly created around the time of his disappearance.

“Does he keep a list of passwords or anything around here? Or do you happen to know how to access his email account?” Naruto chirped up as he surveyed the results of his search.

She gave him a helpless look. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know anything at all about those things. Hamaki is the one that always messed around with it.”

Naruto forced himself not to give into the huge sigh that was building within him. “There’s nothing on the computer itself that I can see. If he has the file, it’s somewhere else. Or he might not even have saved it to the computer itself. He could have opened it and watched it directly from his email.”

Sasuke felt the acidic wash of frustration seep through him. Dammit, they had been so close! “You can’t get into the system?”

Naruto gave a short laugh. “I’m good but not that good. We’ll need someone a lot more talented than I am.”

“Let’s go,” Sasuke said shortly. He turned to the woman. “If we find anything new, we will let you know immediately.”

She nodded, but didn’t reply, looking sadly down at the floor.

Naruto gently placed his hand on her shoulder and gave her an encouraging smile before he followed Sasuke through the door.

*****************
“So, now what do we do?” Naruto asked curiously from the passenger’s seat in Sasuke’s car.

“I don’t know,” Sasuke said slowly, sounding as if he was still thinking it through. “We need to get that file. Do you know any hacker friends?”

“Not really. Most of the stuff I know I learned through trial and error. Never really had any friends,” Naruto answered with a slight shrug. “At least not any that would know that kind of stuff.”

Sasuke frowned. They needed to take this to someone higher, but who could they trust?

“I can tell you one possible way to get something on Orochimaru,” Naruto finally spoke up.

Sasuke looked over at him in surprise. “How?”

“I’ll go there this afternoon. He is usually out and about around that time, schmoozing with his business associates. I can sneak into his quarters and find something you can pin on him,” Naruto suggested.

“Do you even know for sure that there is something there that we can use?” Sasuke asked skeptically.

“Not really, but we are running out of options and time. If I don’t get something on you before tomorrow, then I am going to get turned into his next toy. I’d rather avoid that, thanks,” Naruto said tightly. “I need to find something on him and then we need to get Ino out of there.”

Sasuke felt his jaw clench at the image Naruto’s words conjured. He’d kill the snake bastard himself if the man ever laid a hand on Naruto.

“Get in there and get out as soon as you can. I don’t want you staying there any longer than you have to,” Sasuke growled. “As soon as we have proof, I can take it to a captain in another district. He can’t own everyone in this town. Once they have proof, they will raid the place and we can get your cousin out of there.”

He looked over to see Naruto smiling at him. “What?” he asked a little brusquely.

“You care,” he said with a delighted grin.

“Of course I care, you moron,” he said, feeling his face heat up. He glared out of his window, avoiding the happy, surprised, pleased expression on the other man’s face.

“Drop me off at Kakashi’s so I can get my bike,” he said, his voice cheerful.

“Meet me back at my place in a few hours. I don’t care whether you have found something or not,” Sasuke instructed him with a light scowl.

“Don’t worry about me,” Naruto said in a more serious tone. “I’ve been dealing with Orochimaru for years. I can handle myself.”

Sasuke let out a dubious noise before pulling out into traffic.

The sensation of being watched returned, but he still couldn’t pinpoint the source. Perhaps Naruto had been right after all. Pushing it to the back of his mind, he kept his eyes out but continued to drive.

Otherwise, the ride to Kakashi’s was made in a companionable silence, both men lost in their thoughts about both the case and their budding relationship. When he pulled to a stop back behind the porn shop, Naruto turned to him and gave him a firm but chaste kiss to the lips before slipping out of the car.

“Be careful!” Sasuke called after him.

“Careful is my middle name,” Naruto laughed as he shut the door.

Sasuke watched the blond mount the bike and settle his bags comfortably before pulling on his helmet.

“Foxy, huh?” Sasuke said with a slight chuckle as Naruto pulled out, down the alley and onto the main road.

He glanced down at the clock in the dashboard. 10:24am.

Heaving a sigh, he figured he should go home and have a talk with Sakura. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but he had to say something to her. He cared about her too much to just up and leave her without any warning. She needed to know what was going on in his head and that he just couldn’t participate in a relationship where there was no passion and only the love that was similar as that between friends or family.


The sound of running water reached him as he closed his apartment door behind him. Moving deeper into his home, he could hear the shower running in the master bathroom.

Unexpectedly having a few more moments before the big confrontation, he moved over to the computer where Naruto had left his notes, the DVD with the three blackmail videos that he had made for Sasuke and the jump drive with Gantetsu’s information on it.

The DVD and flash stick he put into a case with a regular movie. He thought U.S. Marshals would be easy enough for him to remember. He was feeling particularly paranoid at the moment and told himself that he could always retrieve the items later. At this point in time he only wanted his original information in the case folder on the off chance that Baki took it from him.

The shower stopped and, after several minutes, Sakura walked out of the bathroom. He moved into the bedroom as she was toweling her hair off, prepared to start the conversation that would bring about the end of their relationship. He hoped that all the years that they had been friends wouldn’t be wasted and that they could at least be cordial to each other after this.

“Ah, there you are, dear,” Sakura said with a bright smile. “Your captain called earlier looking for you.”

Sasuke’s thoughts immediately latched onto her words. “What did he want?”

“He wanted to know why you hadn’t shown up for work yet,” she said with a shrug, letting the satin robe slip slightly. “I told him that you and your new partner were off getting an early start.”

Sasuke felt the cold wash as fear shot adrenaline through his system. “What did he say?” he asked, choking down the anxious tone that wanted to invade his words.

“He was a little confused at first ‘til I reminded him who he had assigned you with,” she laughed. “I guess he must have a lot on his mind.”

‘He knows…Naruto!’ He turned and bolted out of the room, desperate to try to find Naruto and warn him before it was too late.

*************************
Naruto pulled through the gates after the guard waved him on. He couldn’t help but feel a little nervous as he rode closer to the warehouse. He was about to commit an irrevocable act that would be a major step in either getting Ino and himself out of their situation or get them both killed.

Philosophically he guessed they were both the same, really.

He pulled his motorcycle alongside the garage door and banged on it three times to signal someone inside that he was there. The door was raised and he pulled his bike inside.

He quickly moved to his usual parking space, put down the kickstand and removed his helmet after turning off the engine. There were only a few souls up and around even at this late in the morning, but then they were usually night creatures by habit. Only ones that were charged with various day duties would be up at this hour.

He adjusted the strap of his bag on his shoulder and headed towards the doors that separated Orochimaru’s personal quarters from the rest of the riff raff. Quietly easing inside, he saw that the house was silent and still. Frowning slightly, he made his way through the rooms, not seeing anyone around.

Maybe fortune was smiling on him and giving him a chance to gather the evidence that he needed.

He unlocked the door to his room, not noting the spot of raw wood next to the lock as he pushed it open. He took a step inside, turned on the light and froze in shock. His room was torn to bits.

The computer on his desk was gone, his bed was overturned, his clothes were strung all over the place and all of the drawers of his desk were pulled out, their contents all over the floor.

“Good Morning, Naruto,” Orochimaru’s deep, raspy voice said from behind him.


TBC