Chapter Text
See… Naruto wasn’t even a media or arts major. He was basically just a number in all his pre-med courses, and wasn’t even one of the top numbers; to everyone else, he was a faceless nobody lagging behind the masses.
When he was younger, he thought he had something to prove. Thought he had to be the best, and if he couldn’t achieve that, then he had to be the loudest, the funniest, whatever it took to make people look his way and remember his name: Naruto Uzumaki, the child that gave his all because he never wanted to be left behind--or unwanted--again.
As he got older, the almost painful drive to do everything as much and as loudly as possible simmered down to a searing guilt whenever he found himself putting off an assignment or studying in favour of something less boring; it manifested in more extracurriculars than he could feasibly juggle, and therefore more sheepish chuckles as his committee and club co-chairs admonished him for yet another postponed deadline, yet another late submission.
Hence, he was supposed to be getting some artsy photo to publish alongside a student submission to the campus newspaper, and here he was, staring at the display of the student union’s nicest (read: most expensive) Nikon DSLR camera with a picture that he absolutely could not submit for publication.
Although…
“Uh, excuse me?”
The guy didn’t respond at first, his earbuds in and laser focus trained on the textbooks spread out in front of his laptop. Naruto cleared his throat awkwardly and tried again, this time tapping him on the shoulder.
“Hey, I um--”
The words died in his throat as a pair of dark eyes locked onto his. The boy pulled out one of his earbuds, impatient little furrows forming between his brows.
Naruto tried to find his voice while gathering any remaining shreds of his dignity under an incredibly intense, scrutinizing glare. “Er, I just… I accidentally took a photo of you.”
The guy’s face was completely blank for a moment. Then those deep, dark eyes began to narrow and Naruto felt his heart clenching tighter and tighter with each millimetre those dark lashes dropped.
“I mean--I, like, was trying to get a photo out this window, but you happened to be… in… it.”
Naruto could feel the sweat prickling at his hairline. If looks could kill, this guy would’ve put him into cardiac arrest.
“I mean, you happened to be sitting here? Where I wanted to… wait, no, that… I didn’t realise you were there when I was setting up the shot, so then when I looked at it I noticed you.”
Naruto’s ears were on fire. He swallowed thickly while the other guy continued to glare at him, completely nonplussed. He tried clearing his throat again and shifted his weight uncomfortably. He rocked forward onto the balls of his feet, twisting his fingers together in the neckstrap of the camera.
“Okay, look, I didn’t mean to take this picture of you, alright? I was just trying to get this sorta emo-slash-hipster vibe from this window, but you were in the shot, and I was planning on just deleting it, but I thought it’d be such a shame because it’s kinda stunning, you know? Like I feel like someone should be able to appreciate it, so--”
Naruto abruptly cut himself off when a pale hand circled his wrist in a firm grip. His fingers froze in the camera strap and he looked back up, surprised to realise his eyeline had fallen to the space between his sneakers without him noticing.
When he raised his chin to look at the guy’s face again, he felt like all the breath was scraped out of his lungs.
Instead of the scowl from before, curiosity had smoothed the space between onyx black eyebrows and softened the line of the guy’s mouth.
He was… really pretty. Naruto’s heart stumbled in his chest.
“Can I… see it?”
Naruto did not expect that voice, smooth and silky, to come out of a guy that, on first interaction, had looked like he was going to kill him twice over and then laugh in satisfaction at his mangled remains.
“Oh! Yeah! Yeah, of course, just let me--here.”
He turned on the display and handed the camera to the other boy, biting his lip as he watched slender fingers delicately cradle the camera without touching the lens. His whole world seemed to collapse into the instant that he saw the slightest upward quirk of the guy’s lips, eyes soft in pleased surprise.
“It is a nice picture,” he hummed softly. Naruto made an embarrassing squeaky noise in response, but the other guy either did not hear him or mercifully chose to ignore it. “Considering the fact that you sound like an absolute idiot when you talk about photography.”
“Thank--wait, hey! I know what I’m doing, I just hadn’t accounted for--you know what? I don’t need to explain myself to you! Do you want me to send you the damn photo or not?” Naruto huffed, annoyance flaring through his veins and quickly incinerating the mounting attraction that had been making it harder to breathe around this painfully pretty (but off-puttingly blunt and rude) boy.
The holier-than-thou smirk occupying the guy’s lips quickly melted into a softly-parted look of awe.
“You… you’d send this? To me?”
Ha, looked like it was his turn to be dumb and speechless. Naruto couldn’t help the smug grin he shot back in response (nevermind the fact that the guy was cute as hell when he looked surprised like that, and some of that grin was just pure delight).
“Well, duh. I can’t publish this in the paper since you’re in it, and you didn’t give me permission to use it, but it’s an awesome fucking photo because I’m fucking amazing at photography, so why let it go to waste? May as well send it to you.”
Something flitted across the guy’s expression, something that Naruto hoped was pleased and maybe a little excited, before he schooled his face into something much more neutral.
“Sure,” he finally said quietly, grabbing the pen resting in the open spine of one of his textbooks and sifting through his various books to try to find some spare paper. Naruto chuckled and held out his hand.
“Just… write it here. I swear I’ll wash it off tonight.”
The guy looked at him suspiciously for a beat before rolling his eyes and grabbing Naruto’s hand. Naruto prayed that he couldn’t feel how his pulse skyrocketed as soon as their skin made contact, doing his best to take deep, measured breaths and keep his gaze fixed on the smooth strokes of the pen across his wrist. (He failed--every so often he’d sneak a glance at the flutter of long, dark lashes as the other boy blinked, and the rapid flash of a pink tongue that darted out to wet his lips. Naruto’s mouth went dry while his palms went slick with sweat.)
“So, [email protected]?”
The guy nodded. Naruto smiled, running his hand through his hair in a nervous gesture before reaching for the camera that had been perched on the table beside the laptop.
“Okay, well, I’ll send that to you, then. And then I promise I’ll delete it.”
“You don’t have to.”
It came out so quietly that Naruto wasn’t sure he’d heard it.
“What?”
The guy pressed his lips together in a tense white line before he looked away and repeated, “You don’t have to. Delete it, I mean. You could… you could use it for your article, or whatever.”
Naruto’s eyes widened before a wide grin stole over his face. A laugh bubbled out of him before he could stop it.
“Thanks! That’s awesome! I’m really happy that I won’t be late for this week’s submission.” He winked and the guy’s shoulders twitched up toward his ears as he hunched away from Naruto, but Naruto still saw the dusting of pink that swept over that pretty pale face.
Fuck, he was so cute.
He let out a relieved sigh. “Thanks, man,” he repeated sincerely. “It really is a really great pic! I can’t wait for it to be published in the paper. You know where to find it, yeah? Next week’s issue of the Konoha Chronicle?”
The guy nodded again, half his face still hidden as he ducked into the collar of his large mock neck sweater.
“Perfect. You’ll get an email from me tonight then! See you around.”
One pale hand was raised in a meek little wave before the guy turned back to his studying. Naruto took one last glance at the photo on the camera display before turning it off and humming to himself, the corners of his lips upturned almost against his will.
He headed back to the campus newspaper office in the student centre before realising he didn’t even get the guy’s name--all he had was a university email address and the way the light through the window threw the gentle slope of the guy’s nose and the swell of his lips into sharp relief against the artfully messy fall of his bangs. The light reflected in his endless dark eyes and Naruto again felt his breath catch in his chest--he’d never seen such a beautiful person before.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, belatedly noticing that he’d fisted his free hand into his shirt over his rabbiting heart.
He exhaled slowly out of his nose, closed his eyes briefly, then looped the camera strap around his neck and ducked through the hallways toward the office.
-----
To: <[email protected]>
From: <[email protected]>
Subj: Photo
(attachment: 2020-02-05.jpg)
Thank you again for giving us permission to use this photo in our next issue of the Chronicle. We hope you can find the picture next week!
Regards,
Naruto Uzumaki
Co-Editor
The Konoha Chronicle
P: 920-204-3473 ext. 12405
F: The Konoha Chronicle
T: @konohachronicle
I: @konohachronicle
-----
To: <[email protected]>
From: <[email protected]>
Subj: RE: Photo
No problem. Thanks for sending me the picture. I hope it ends up being helpful.
Sasuke Uchiha
Biomedical Sciences, Second Year
Class of 2022
-----
“Bingo,” Naruto murmured to himself, cracking his knuckles as he read the reply. He took a sip from his stupidly large cup of coffee as he settled into his chair a little more comfortably for a long night of scouring every social media platform in existence for one Sasuke Uchiha.
-----
“I hate you,” Sasuke muttered darkly. Itachi’s eyes danced with a familiar malevolent glee as he clicked around Sasuke’s otherwise very sparse Facebook account.
“You wound me, little brother,” Itachi deadpanned, though Sasuke could tell that internally, his older brother was cackling madly. This just wasn’t the way the two of them communicated, however--most of what they had to say to one another nowadays was expressed through pointed stares and quirks of their eyebrows.
Well, this is what he got for leaving his laptop open on the living room table while he took a quick bathroom break. He had only been gone for four minutes and Itachi smoothly sidled into his seat to wreak havoc on his entire life.
Sasuke rolled his eyes and bumped Itachi’s ribs with his hip. Itachi swayed away to avoid most of the force behind it and continued clicking around.
“What are you even doing?”
Huffing out an incredibly put-upon sigh (a sigh that he perfected at the age of thirteen, when Itachi had really begun to fulfill his sacred fraternal duties as his glib tormentor), Sasuke cocked his head to the side to lean into Itachi’s space and see what he was doing.
“Wait, what the fuck?”
Shoving his brother’s head away with a well-placed hand to the face, Sasuke ignored Itachi’s sinister chuckle (barely a breath, but Sasuke knew the difference) in favour of gaping at his computer.
“Why--what did you-- Itachi!”
Itachi just smiled serenely and relinquished Sasuke’s chair.
“It really is a nice picture,” the elder said flatly, the tiniest quirk of his lips the only indication of his godawful amusement in the situation. Sasuke groaned and pressed on the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger in an effort to choke down the desire to strangle his brother with all the fucking hair he was always leaving in the shower drain.
“You’re the worst,” Sasuke murmured, the resigned slump of his shoulders enough to have Itachi turning on his heel with the haughtiest, most satisfied air he could possibly convey in the swish of his braid over his shoulder.
“...But you’re not going to change your profile picture back because you agree,” Itachi said in as close to a sing-song tone as Sasuke had ever heard from him. “You think it’s a good picture, too.”
Sasuke frowned. Itachi swiveled back just long enough to poke his brother in the forehead with an infuriatingly innocent-looking smile.
“Besides, it’s something much better than the Facebook stock picture for when you message me to whine about the cute boys that steal your attention and keep you from studying your ass off.”
“I--I did not...! That wasn’t--you--I didn’t!”
Sasuke let out a sound of exasperation that was only vaguely human. Itachi just smiled back, jabbing his fingers into Sasuke’s forehead one last time before he headed into the kitchen.
“Whatever you say, little brother. Now, did you say tomato soup was okay for dinner?”
“...I still hate you,” Sasuke grumbled back.
Itachi’s laugh carried over the sound of clanging pots and pans.
-----
Naruto Uzumaki has sent you a friend request
-----
Naruto Uzumaki has sent you a message request
Naruto Uzumaki (12:08AM)
hey
this is Naruto, i’m the guy who took your photo by accident lol
(1:32AM)
from the school paper?
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Sasuke Uchiha has accepted your friend request
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Sasuke Uchiha (6:55AM)
how did you find my facebook account?
Naruto Uzumaki (10:24AM)
well i mean
you used the photo i took so like
(11:12AM)
...yeah 😛😉
Sasuke Uchiha (1:06PM)
Oh. I see.
Naruto Uzumaki (1:09PM)
but im really glad you used it!
cuz you like it, riiiight? 😁
(1:14PM)
told you im a damn good photographer an dshit 👍
Sasuke Uchiha (1:25PM)
Sure. It’s a good picture
Naruto Uzumaki (1:27PM)
😫😫😫
cmon im amazingg
why you gotta be like that though
(1:29PM)
😑
(1:33PM)
😥
Sasuke Uchiha is writing a message… (1:36PM)
Naruto Uzumaki (7:48PM)
… 😭
-----
Naruto didn’t get another response from Sasuke. He would check his phone first thing in the morning for a notification and swallowed past the tight sensation of disappointment that pressed on his throat when none came from him.
There was a soft knock on his bedroom door a few minutes after he had thrown his phone in the vague direction of his nightstand (only to hear it topple onto the floor with a distinctly pitiful fwomp with absolutely zero motivation to reach over the side of his bed to pick it up).
“Hey, Naruto, are you still sleeping? We have to leave to get to class in like, five minutes.”
“I’m coming,” he groaned from where he’d let his arm flop over his face, words slightly muffled by the crook of his elbow.
“Okay, but you’d better move your ass. You know what Sakura is like when we walk into class late.”
Naruto let out a more begrudging groan of acknowledgement as he finally threw back the covers and swung his legs over the side of his bed.
“I know, I know. I’m coming. Tell her to hakuna her tatas.”
There was a snort on the other side of the door. “I’ll let Ino know you said that about her girlfriend’s tits, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”
Naruto stumbled into his closet as he struggled out of his pajama pants.
“Hey! No, don’t sic that she-devil on me!”
“You gotta lie in the bed you make, man.”
“Fuck you, Shikamaru. Shino and Gaara would never do me like this.”
Finally clad in a (probably) clean pair of sweatpants and the only hoodie that wasn’t in his laundry hamper, Naruto opened the door to Shikamaru’s bored expression. His housemate’s eyes flicked up to his hair for a moment before meeting Naruto’s again.
“You look like a rat’s nest.”
“Yeah, and you look like an asshole.”
He pushed past Shikamaru to get to the bathroom, where he ran a wet hand through his hair while shoving his toothbrush into his mouth.
“Sure, that’s original.”
“Ugh, fuck you. Go make yourself useful and make breakfast or something.”
“Kiba’s actually already done that.”
“Kiba is truly my only friend in his goddamn house.”
Shikamaru scoffed. “Right. Definitely what you said last week when Akamaru pissed on your lab report or whatever.”
Naruto poked his head out of the bathroom just to send a scowl Shikamaru’s way. Shikamaru looked predictably unphased.
“I had to pull another all-nighter just to redo that goddamn report.”
“How could I forget? You were only whining about it the entire fucking time. Heaven forbid you let any of the rest of us sleep if you had to miss out on some beauty rest.”
“I hate you.”
“Sure you do. You have legit one more minute before I’m leaving your ass here.”
“Shikamaru! You don’t even need to go to class to ace this course, come on!”
“...Thirty seconds!”
Fuck.
Naruto quickly finished brushing his teeth and spat out the foam, not even bothering to rinse his mouth in his hurry to grab his backpack from his room and bolt out the door. By the time he got his shoes on, Shikamaru was already leaving.
“Hey! You said I had thirty seconds!”
“I did,” his housemate said flatly. “It’s been almost forty-five.”
“Oh for the love of--Hey! Wait up, Shikamaru! Ugh, man, that is so not cool…”
Naruto had barely caught up to Shikamaru after a full sprint from their house’s porch when he realised he’d forgotten about breakfast. His stomach grumbled loudly between the two of them as he slowed his pace to match Shikamaru’s, and he chuckled sheepishly, scratching at his cheek as Shikamaru shot him a sidelong glance.
“I uh… guess I let Kiba’s breakfast pass me by, huh?”
With an extremely long-suffering sigh, Shikamaru shrugged his backpack off and reached inside to pull out something wrapped in foil.
“You’re so lucky he already wrapped it. I wouldn’t have picked it up for you if he had left it on a plate.”
Naruto’s entire face lit up and he felt a warm rush of gratitude toward his friends and housemates.
“Yes! You guys are the best!”
“You’re such a pain… I swear you’re the most bothersome piece of crap I have ever met.”
Naruto unwrapped Kiba’s egg sandwich and bit into it with relish. “Yup, but you love me!”
Shikamaru just rolled his eyes and they walked the rest of the way to class in companionable silence.
-----
“Can’t say I would’ve pegged you as the type,” Neji said mildly as he slid into his seat next to Sasuke, handing him his medium black coffee in a motion so practiced it was essentially spinal.
Sasuke took a sip of the scalding liquid without dignifying his lab partner with a response. He skimmed through the prelab notes he’d scribbled out the night before, not really paying attention to what Neji was doing beside him until something was shoved over top of his notebook.
He flipped it over, shooting an unamused glare in Neji’s direction as he did so.
He heard the sharp intake of breath before he realised he had been the one to draw it; then he could practically hear his labmate’s smug little smirk by his shoulder as he curled in on himself, trying to shield the glossy cover of the Konoha Chronicle on the lab bench so no one else would see.
“Where did you get this?” he hissed under his breath, quickly shoving it into his bag before burying his hands in his hair and staring hard at his notes, as if willing the image out of existence by sheer stubbornness.
“In the newsstand.”
Somehow he heard Neji take an obnoxious sip of his own coffee over his roaring, humiliated pulse in his ears.
“This will be everywhere now.”
Neji just hummed noncommittally.
“You should finish your coffee,” he said lightly, as if Sasuke wasn’t feeling his entire life spiral into a sense of dread and mortification. “You know how Professor Kakashi is about breaking the food and drink rule in the lab.”
Sasuke couldn’t even feel the burn as he downed the entire cup in three gulps, crushing the empty cup in his shaking hands and tossing it in the vague direction of the waste disposal. He saw Neji raise an eyebrow over the rim of his reusable tumbler, the upward curl of his lips barely visible above the lid.
“That idiot never said anything about the cover,” he grit out, hands balled into fists that he pressed between his thighs to mitigate the shaking.
Professor Kakashi predictably waltzed into the lab nearly ten minutes after class was supposed to start. Sasuke went through the motions of pipetting and diluting various solutions on autopilot; Neji had to replace the tubes in his hands once or twice to make sure he was actually mixing the right solutions. By the end of the lab, he had no recollection of what he had just put in the PCR machine or which cultures had been set in the incubator. Neji just handed him the carbon-copy from his own lab notes for the day with an impassive expression as they both headed out the door.
“I’m not sure why you’re so shaken up about this,” he said, grimacing as he drained the last dregs of cold coffee from his travel mug.
“I never asked for this,” Sasuke mumbled. “I just want to graduate and get the hell out of this school, this city, and this… ugh.” He passed an agitated hand over his mouth as if gathering the remaining words and pulling them away from him with utmost prejudice.
“You could contact the paper to complain, I’m sure they’d have to recall all the copies and get rid of them.”
Sasuke sighed. It was a sigh that he usually reserved for Itachi’s bullshit, but this situation actually surpassed his brother’s assholery.
“Too late. You already got a copy, so I can’t get them back from every moron who picked one up on campus.”
“You do realise it’s not obvious that it’s you, right?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Neji stopped in his tracks. Sasuke would’ve just continued walking if it weren’t for the hand that clasped unforgivingly around his wrist.
“This is clearly not about the photo itself,” he stated flatly. There wasn’t even a shadow of a question in his tone. “Care to explain the real reason why you’ve got your panties in a twist?”
Sasuke exhaled slowly through his nose, eyes closed.
“I already feel like everyone’s watching me,” he admitted softly. Neji’s grip didn’t relent in the slightest, but some of the tension in his friend’s posture drained away. “I’m itchy just thinking about how many people will be trying to recognize me from the stupid paper.”
Neji’s mouth was pulled into a tight frown.
“I think you’re flattering yourself, Uchiha. Not that many people even pick up the school paper, much less actually look at it. I’m sure you can live in your anxiety-ridden anonymity in spite of this ridiculously hipster photo of you all over the place.”
Sasuke had been paired with Neji for enough academic commitments to know that this was his way of trying to put him at ease.
“Whatever.” Sasuke tried to take his mind off the issue of the school paper that was branding a target on his back with every passing second. “Did we end up actually transferring our plasmids in lab today?”
Neji snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, no thanks to you. You were spiraling so loudly your overthinking was drowning out the centrifuge.”
Sasuke winced. “I--sorry. Thanks for giving me your notes.”
“You’re lucky I need you and your caffeine-fuelled brain to get me into grad school, Uchiha.”
“We both know you want to get out of here just as badly as I do, Hyuuga.”
Neji hummed in response. “I know what you mean about people looking at you different for things that are in the past, I guess. We can’t control where we come from, just where we end up.”
Sasuke wrinkled his nose. “Ugh, shut up. You sound like my brother.”
“Well then, I must be right if I sound like a philosophy professor.”
Sasuke immediately picked up a brisk pace. Neji caught up to him effortlessly.
“The ‘youngest PhD to graduate from Konoha’, the ‘best and brightest professor they could hire’…”
Sasuke pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and broke into a jog, but the thin fabric couldn’t block out Neji’s heckling from barely two steps behind him.
-----
Sasuke Uchiha is writing a message… (9:55PM)
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Sasuke Uchiha is writing a message… (1:02AM)
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Sasuke Uchiha is writing a message… (3:21AM)
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Sasuke Uchiha (12:15PM)
You never said anything about the front cover.
Naruto Uzumaki (12:19PM)
omg you saw it! 😊 did you like it?
oh right my bad yah i mean
the team liked the photo so muchw e decided to use it for the cover
hop wthat’s ok w/u?
Sasuke Uchiha is writing a message… (12:23PM)
-----
Sasuke, in a fit of poor decision-making coupled with his flair for dramatics, slapped the crumpled issue of the Konoha Chronicle onto the dining table right under Itachi’s nose. The force of it sent a few papers flying--Sasuke realised belatedly that Itachi had been marking something or another, because he had that particular pensive look on his face (now overtaken by surprise behind the lenses of his reading glasses) and he was holding a red pen.
“Oh, uh… sorry,” he mumbled, quickly gathering the stray papers into a haphazard pile that he placed back onto the table within his brother’s reach. Well, now he just felt stupid.
His sanity returned to him a second too late, however--Itachi was already propping his glasses up on the top of his head while he smoothed his hands over the glossy cover of the school newspaper, lips stretching into a grin as he did so.
“Is this what I--”
“Yes, yes, fuck, it is… ugh, I should never have--you know what? Give it back, nevermind, I am not doing this right now--”
Sasuke made repeated (and rapidly thwarted) attempts to pull the paper away from his brother, who grabbed the paper, sprang to his feet, and was holding it above his head while still smiling at the cover photo. It was like a childish game of keep-away as Itachi dodged from side to side to prevent Sasuke from swiping the paper out of his grasp.
“They made you look so pretty,” he chirped, relishing in the colour that rose to Sasuke’s face as he continued to try to climb Itachi to claw the paper out of his hands.
“Fuck, Itachi, just give it back. I regret everything!”
“Yes, of course you do. This is what you get for letting a cute boy use some lame excuse to flirt with you and then do something dumb to get your attention.”
“I know, I’m a--wait, what?”
Itachi smirked at his brother, whose hands had frozen mid-reach, eyes comically wide.
“Of course you would have no idea what flirting looked like until it literally took your face and plastered it all over the cover of some under-supervised student-run publication.”
“What ?” Sasuke spluttered (not that he’d ever admit to spluttering like some scatterbrained young adult novel heroine).
Itachi shook his head and finally pushed the newspaper into Sasuke’s chest, using his other hand to poke him in the forehead. It was a true testament to Sasuke’s shock that he didn’t even retaliate to the familiar, annoying gesture.
“It’s your turn to make dinner, otouto,” he needled, pressing all of Sasuke’s buttons to see which would finally bring him back to the world of the living.
“I am going to spit in your food.”
Itachi chuckled. “I’ve done worse to yours when we were kids. Now I’ve got to finish marking all these midterms. I defrosted the salmon like you asked me to, it’s on the top shelf in the fridge.”
Sasuke stalked off, but not without shooting his brother one last withering, poisonous glare.
“Love you too, little brother!” Itachi called to his back as it rounded the corner into the kitchen.
Sasuke’s hand was thrust through the entryway to flip him off.
-----
Sasuke Uchiha (6:47PM)
I guess.
------
The one blessing--a small oasis in the midst of an absolute disaster, or perhaps more accurately the eye of a giant shitstorm, per Sasuke, was the fact that the lighting in the picture itself was just dim enough, just hipster-slash-artsy-slash-maybe-filtered-or-Photoshopped enough that he wasn’t immediately recognizable. (Which was pretty much what Neji had been trying to tell him, but he was still knee-deep in panic at the time.) Obviously, if you knew him, you could tell right away; but if you’d never seen him before, you wouldn’t exactly stop him on campus to gawp at him and ask, “Are you the guy from the paper?”
“Also,” Neji said mildly as he fell into step beside his lab partner, “it’s not like there’s a dedicated readership for the school newspaper. I’m pretty sure most people just pick it up to do the free crossword and then they use it for their compostable waste bins or whatever because they’re too cheap to actually buy the proper bags.”
“Pretty sure Lee uses it to line his cat’s litterbox,” Tenten quipped.
Sasuke just rolled his eyes and rubbed the pad of his thumb over the callous on the side of his middle finger absentmindedly. It was a weird unconscious habit he picked up after he was old enough to write, and therefore, develop that callous. Itachi used to call it his “think tic”, but Sasuke quickly learned that if he wanted his brother to shut up about something he had to stop doing it in his presence. Hence, it only really came out when he was anxious.
Too bad he spent so much of his time feeling anxious. (Perhaps not-so-ironically, the apartment he shared with Itachi was one of the only places on the planet where he felt completely at ease, if not pissed off ninety percent of the time. He might be willing to die for his older brother, but the asshole was definitely the biggest source of irritation in his life.)
“Sasuke!”
Sasuke felt his jaw tense uncomfortably. He sucked a steadying breath through his teeth.
Sure enough, a pair of very unwelcome arms slung around his neck and an ash-blonde ponytail whipped around his face. Sasuke jutted his chin up slightly to avoid getting a mouthful of hair.
“Yamanaka, you know how much he hates being touched. Exercise a little restraint, won’t you?”
Ino turned and gave Neji a dirty look.
“I’m capable of fighting my own battles, Hyuuga,” Sasuke huffed. Ino’s ridiculous ponytail nearly whipped him in the face again as she turned her head a little over-enthusiastically, leaning her face uncomfortably close to Sasuke’s cheek.
“Aw, Sasuke, you--”
Sasuke slipped his hand neatly between her face and his, pushing her firmly away.
“Yamanaka, you know how much I hate being touched.”
Ino pouted but thankfully kept her distance. “I was just excited to see you!”
Sasuke raised an unimpressed eyebrow. Ino sighed. “...and I saw the paper, so…”
Sasuke bit down a groan. “So what?”
“So I was hoping, since you’re basically a famous model--”
“Being in the school paper is really not equivalent to fame--”
“--that you’d… you know, come to my party this weekend?” Ino barrelled on as if Tenten hadn’t interjected at all.
Sasuke didn’t even spare her a glance.
“Not a chance.”
Ino’s pout sagged deeper. “Come on, Sasuke, you never come to my parties, and we’re already in third year! It’s time to live a little, right?”
“You should’ve outgrown these kinds of things by now.”
“Stop trying to pretend you’re some old fogey. Just because you’d rather snuggle with your brother--”
Sasuke’s eyes narrowed sharply, and Ino quickly switched gears from whining to crooning sweetly. “It’ll be fun, I promise! Everyone is gonna be there, and--”
“I’ll pass.”
Ino frowned, then looked at Neji and Tenten in turn.
“You guys are coming, right?”
Tenten winked. “Of course! You know I won’t pass up an opportunity to watch your girlfriend make a giant fool of herself.”
Ino smirked but still smacked the other girl’s shoulder. “Hey now, leave my billboard-head alone.”
Tenten snickered. “She’s a real sloppy drunk, Ino. You might need to implant a tracker in her or something.”
Ino shrugged. “I think she’s just repressed. So used to needing to be perfect, y’know? But anyway--” she turned her attention back to Sasuke, who bristled under the weight of her eyes, “--I figured it’d be nice to have a little hometown reunion.”
“I told you already, I’m not coming.”
Sasuke started to walk toward his next class a little faster, ignoring the patter of footsteps that followed in his wake.
“You could try lightening up a little, Uchiha.”
“You of all people have no right to judge me, Neji.”
Neji tipped his head to the side in a noncommittal gesture. “Maybe. But I’m going too, and you probably could use a little break from being an uptight dick.”
“Or maybe some dick is exactly what he needs,” Tenten muttered under her breath, but not quietly enough for Sasuke to miss it. He halted his warpath across campus to divert his eyes heavenward for a moment before levelling his acquaintances (because he didn’t really have friends) with a cold look.
“If I agree to this,” he said lowly, glare quickly cutting off the excited squeal that almost bubbled up out of Ino, “you will never ask me to do this again, got it?”
Ino nodded frenetically, eyes shining. Sasuke pressed his lips together in chagrin, then resumed his power walk to his next class, which didn’t even start for another half hour.
“Well, this weekend has officially gotten interesting,” Neji mused from behind his right shoulder.
Sasuke took a deep breath. He really hoped he wasn’t going to regret this.
-----
“Uh, I dunno, Sakura. I have a lot of shit to do this weekend, and I’m really, really behind on pretty much everything Dr. Iruka wanted me to review for my next experiment, and the formal planning committee wanted me to submit the final budget proposal by Monday, so--”
Sakura’s huge green eyes peered up at him, framed by her soft pink eyelashes as she gave him her best puppy-dog look from across the table at Ramen Ichiraku, both their empty bowls sitting between them.
Naruto looked at her and rubbed the back of his neck, chuckling nervously.
“I mean, I really am so late on these things, and don’t even get me started on…” he trailed off, watching how the wibbling of Sakura’s bottom lip intensified.
He bit the inside of his cheek, letting both hands come down to grip the edge of the table.
“Okay, fine! I’ll come. Jeez.”
Sakura immediately brightened, clapping her hands together with a delighted grin. “Yes! Thank you!”
Naruto felt distinctly manipulated as he slid down a bit in his chair. He avoided Sakura’s gaze as she tried to catch his eyes.
“Aw, c’mon. Don’t be so pouty. I’ll pay for your lunch.”
That caught Naruto’s attention. He perked up, meeting Sakura’s excited expression with a lopsided smile of his own.
“Okay, my compliance can be bought.”
Sakura snorted indelicately into the back of her wrist. “Oh, who would’ve guessed.”
“What can I say? I’m a man of simple pleasures.”
Sakura’s face softened into something fond and familiar.
“Really though, thanks. It means a lot to me that you’ll come.”
Naruto reached across the table to let his fingers rest on his friend’s forearm.
“Of course, Sakura. And really, if you told me it was this important to you, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”
Sakura’s hand rested lightly on top of his own. “Thanks.”
Naruto leaned forward, open and earnest. “I mean it. If you need me, you know I’m there.”
They looked at each other for a moment, broken finally when Sakura pulled away to wipe at her slightly misty eyes.
“Ugh, it’s just a party, dammit. I don’t know why I’m like this.”
Naruto chuckled, shifting his weight to rest against the back of his chair.
“Well, I mean, it’s not every day you get an early admittance into med school and find out you’re moving across the country before you finish your honours.”
Sakura swatted at him bashfully.
“Shut up,” she muttered, cheeks flushing a pretty pink. Naruto smiled wider.
“I’m really proud of you,” he said, nurturing the last vestiges of tenderness in this little moment.
Sakura sniffed and smacked her hands onto his cheeks. “It’s gonna be you next, you know.”
Naruto cleared his throat awkwardly and pried her hands off his face. “Yup, for sure. Someday I’m gonna be the Chief Medical Officer of the world.”
Sakura giggled. “Pretty sure you mean Chief Medical Officer of the country, not the world.”
Naruto winked cheekily at her. “I’ll be the first CMO of the world, just you wait.”
Sakura stuck her tongue out at him as she reached for her purse to make good on her promise to pay for lunch. Naruto tried to ignore the heavy feeling in his gut as he thought about the upcoming year--his final year--a year without Sakura, when he’d be finally applying to medical school, and hoping and praying he’d actually get in.
She looked up at him expectantly, so he grinned back with as much levity as he could summon before following her lead to the cash to pay.
The bowl of ramen he’d practically inhaled sat like lead in his stomach for the rest of the day.
-----
As soon as Sasuke walked up to the door of Ino’s house, he regretted everything--he cursed all the poor life decisions that had led him up to that moment. He could feel the bassline of some trash EDM track vibrating through the foundation of the house and under his feet, rattling up through his bones as if to replace his pulse. He grit his teeth and briefly contemplated dipping out; he could easily tell Sakura that he had come but had to leave early for something or another. It’s not like they had really kept in touch after she moved away for high school, and neither of them made that much of an effort to rekindle their stilted friendship when they happened to bump into each other in university. Ino was just a meddler, and for some reason she had this misplaced sense of sentimentality that made her think that Sakura would even care that he showed up to this ridiculous party to “see her off” before she moved away for medical school.
The only thing that rooted him to the spot was the ripple of revulsion that crept across his skin as he imagined the disappointed look Itachi would try to hide behind some book or another when he saw him walk through the apartment door.
Steeling his resolve, he finally reached forward to open the door, only for his hand to meet something much warmer and softer than the knob.
He belatedly realised that the warm, soft wall his hand had met was, in fact, the very firm abdomen of some guy that smelled like woodsy citrus aftershave and booze. He dumbly trailed his gaze up said guy’s torso to be met with a familiar shock of blonde hair and unsettlingly blue eyes.
“It’s you,” he breathed in unison with the guy standing in front of him, those blue, blue eyes wide with shock.
Sasuke was the first to recover. “I… uh, was just going… in…?”
The newspaper guy blinked at him a few times before finally seeming to gather his wits enough to step aside. “Oh! Uh, yeah. Sure. I mean. Go ahead. Right in. Go right in. To. Uh, here. I mean…” He ran an agitated hand through his hair, gaze darting away and down for a second before he met Sasuke’s eyes again and he grinned with one hand behind his neck. “Sorry, come on in.”
“You’re um…”
“Naruto,” the newspaper guy supplied helpfully, and Sasuke nodded (like an idiot).
“Right. I’m, uh… I’m Sasuke.”
Naruto chuckled. “I know, I remember,” he said. Sasuke felt even more like an idiot, but just held Naruto’s gaze for a moment in the foyer. There were so many people in the house Sasuke could pretty much feel the pressure of bodies and voices all around him, and it made him want to crawl out of his skin or melt into the wall.
He really regretted everything.
Naruto closed the door and scratched at his cheek.
“Sorry, that probably sounded creepy. I mean, I do remember you from the picture and stuff, and we’ve been messaging on Facebook, yeah? So I mean, I remember. It’s not like--ugh, I’m not making this any better, am I?”
Sasuke just shook his head.
Naruto honest-to-God blushed, and Sasuke felt his scalp prickling and face tingling. He prayed that the bumbling, adorable idiot couldn’t tell how flushed he was in the awkward yellow lighting in this sketchy house in the student ghetto.
Fortunately (and, simultaneously, very unfortunately), the near-palpable tension between them was shattered when a stumbling mess of pink hair draped herself over Sasuke’s shoulders.
“Sasuke!” Sakura exclaimed delightedly, face already pink with excitement and intoxication. “I can’t believe it--how long has it been?”
Sasuke just hummed noncommittally, stiffening in Sakura’s hold. If Sakura noticed, she didn’t let on.
“I haven’t seen you since… since the eighth grade! When they made you do that valedictorian speech, and--”
Sasuke cleared his throat, knowing exactly where that story was going and not really wanting to relive the blunders of his youth in front of a mostly-stranger. Especially not a mostly-stranger that made his stomach swoop the way it did when Naruto’s lips quirked up with a curious, mischievous smirk.
“Yeah uh, it’s good to see you. Congrats on… you know.”
Sakura melted into him with a little squeal. Sasuke took an awkward step back, both elbows pinned to his sides and forearms jutting out at an angle to hold Sakura upright. He was completely at a loss as to what to do with someone who was acting more like a liquid than a human.
“Aw, Sasuke, that’s so sweet! I’m so happy to see you. Why didn’t you message me? When I saw you in the bookstore in first year I was so excited to be back home with you again!” She giggled, the sound effervescent. Sasuke nodded distractedly, hoping that someone would come and put him out of his misery as soon as possible.
“Sorry, I guess I just… got really… busy?” he didn’t mean for it to come out as a question, but he found himself making very uncomfortable eye contact with Naruto, silently pleading him to just do something, dammit!
Naruto, the asshole, was just watching smugly from where he was tucked into the space between the door and the wall, arms crossed nonchalantly across his chest. He looked so amused at Sasuke’s expense that Sasuke might’ve accused him of being Itachi in disguise.
Thankfully, Ino eventually wandered by in search of her wayward girlfriend, and Sasuke felt himself release a breath he didn’t realise he was holding as his childhood friend (or… whatever Sakura was to him) was peeled off of him.
“Thanks for taking care of her, Sasuke!” Ino sing-songed, obviously also inebriated, as she pulled Sakura deeper into the house. Sakura whined in protest, but didn’t really put up a fight as another drink was pushed into her hands and she saw another person to latch onto.
Sasuke had to make a conscious effort not to slide down the nearest wall in relief.
A snigger snapped him out of his hazy discomfort still churning in his gut, and his eyes narrowed at the blonde who continued to mock him from less than a foot away.
“She’s something else, isn’t she?” Naruto said before Sasuke could bite out a scathing remark. He blinked--that wasn’t what he was expecting.
“Huh?” he responded intelligently.
Naruto’s mouth stretched into a fond (and unfairly attractive) smile as his eyes tracked Sakura’s path through the throng of twenty-somethings all crowded in the living room. The music playlist had gotten to a few pop songs that Sasuke vaguely recognized, and most of the party-goers were drunkenly shrieking along with the lyrics (though unintelligibly, therefore Sasuke had no way of knowing if they were actually trying to sing along or instead trying to summon a demon from the underworld).
“Sakura,” Naruto said a little louder, crowding into Sasuke’s personal space a bit to get closer to his ear. Sasuke barely suppressed a shudder at the waft of bright cologne that came with the blonde’s new proximity.
“Right, sure,” Sasuke mumbled, maybe not even saying words, but Naruto nodded along anyway. There was a beat where neither said anything, but Sasuke could feel the heat radiating off of Naruto’s body like a physical presence in the space between them.
A light touch to the inside of Sasuke’s wrist sent his heart rate through the roof. He whipped his head around to find Naruto watching him intently.
“Hey,” Naruto said, quiet enough that only Sasuke could hear and close enough that he could feel Naruto’s next sharp inhale against the shell of his ear.
“Hey,” Sasuke replied on autopilot, hoping his voice wasn’t as shaky as his hands, which he immediately stuffed into the pockets of his jeans to try to pass it off as nonchalant. Naruto’s intense blue eyes never flickered away from his face, so he had no way of knowing if he succeeded.
“I was actually trying to go get some air. Before. When you came in.”
Sasuke watched Naruto’s lips shape each word. He nodded mutely.
“So… wanna come with?”
It was phrased as a question, an offer--an invitation. But to Sasuke, it felt like a command. When he looked nervously between the door and Naruto’s easy, eager smile, he swallowed past the knot that tightened in the back of his throat.
“Okay,” he said, wondering if it sounded as breathless as he felt.
Naruto’s grin grew impossibly wider and impossibly brighter as he pushed off of the wall, a warm hand encircling Sasuke’s wrist to tug him out the door. Next thing he knew, Sasuke had followed Naruto out the front door and up over the railing of the porch to stretch out side-by-side on the roof.
It was surprisingly serene, given that they could still hear the din of laughter and chatter from inside, and the house seemed to be trembling slightly with the volume of the music. But the sky above them was dotted with stars, blue-black velvet studded with twinkling rhinestones that made Sasuke feel both small and infinite.
It was the most at peace Sasuke had felt since he had been a child, sitting in Itachi’s lap as his brother read him the same book he asked for every night, so familiar he could rattle off the entire story word-for-word, but the real comfort came in the cadence of Itachi’s voice as it lulled him to sleep with his cheek pressed against the steady thump-thump of Itachi’s heart. A time when things were simple, his parents were alive, and he was happy.
He didn’t notice the film of tears gathering along his lashes until he heard a soft, shaky sigh from beside him. He bit the inside of his cheek and turned his head slightly.
Naruto was stretched out like a starfish, both arms and legs out as if he were planning on making snow angels right there on the roof of some house in the middle of March, long after the last frosts had melted under the first kiss of spring. The other boy’s face was painted in a soft glow of moonlight, with long shadows across his cheekbones from his eyelashes.
Sasuke had never really given much thought to what beautiful meant to him, but he felt his breath catch in his chest at the sight.
“I guess I can’t believe she’s leaving,” Naruto said, just loudly enough to be heard over the constant drone of sound from the bowels of the house beneath them. Sasuke felt like he may as well have been speaking directly into his brain, as hyper-aware as he was to the other boy’s every word.
The blond finally turned his head so they were staring at each other again, not unlike that strange stilted moment they shared in Ino’s doorway only about an hour ago. But this… this felt different. Heavier, somehow. And yet Sasuke felt so light he could have been made of air.
“You grew up with her around here?”
Sasuke just nodded, afraid to say the wrong thing and break whatever this moment was. Naruto smiled, and this time it was wistful and a little bit sad; he looked devastatingly, achingly beautiful washed in moonlight and stardust.
“I met her in high school. I was kind of… I don’t know. A class clown, I guess, before she showed up. The smartest and prettiest girl, and somehow she ended up one of my best friends.”
Naruto laughed and it made Sasuke’s gut twist. “And of course, I was a little bit in love with her, you know? And now she’ll be gone and I… I guess I’m realising that everything I’ve been able to do up ‘til now is because of her.”
He turned back to the sky stretched forever and ever above them. “I guess… I guess I get it now. When she’s gone, I’ll go back to being no one.”
Sasuke sat up a bit, leaning back on his hands and tipping his head toward the expanse of darkness as if he could parse out some deeper meaning in the smattering of lights.
“You aren’t no one,” he murmured, halfway hoping that Naruto wouldn’t be able to hear him while praying that he could. “You weren’t no one when you took that picture of me, then stalked me until you coerced me onto this roof.”
Naruto let out an indignant squawk and scrambled to sit up as well. “What are you--?”
It was Sasuke’s turn to chuckle. “I mean, I was maybe a little impressed that someone was so dumb and yet so brave that he could not only do something stupid, like take a picture of a complete stranger by accident, but also just… tell them about it?”
“It was a great picture!” Naruto argued, then his mouth hung open as if he had something to add but it abandoned ship before he could form the appropriate sounds. “...Wait, you think I’m brave?”
“To a fault, idiot,” Sasuke snapped, pulling his knees to his chest and turning his face away. Well, he’d officially ruined whatever ‘moment’ they had going on.
When Naruto next spoke, it was soft enough that Sasuke thought he might’ve imagined it.
“I figured someone as beautiful as you deserved to know it.”
He knew he wasn’t imagining things because when he turned to gape at Naruto in shock, the other boy’s face was soft and his hand was open between them, palm upturned.
It was another question. An offer. An invitation.
Despite everything his brain said in staunch protest, Sasuke threw caution to the wind and took it.
His fingers slotted between Naruto’s, cold and pale against skin that had no right to be so warm after over an hour in the twilight chill. He wrapped his free arm around his knees and rested his chin in the little divot between them.
Neither said anything else until well after the sun broke across the horizon, bleeding warmth into the dappled indigo dawn.
The party had long died down when Naruto finally moved to get to his feet, tugging Sasuke up by their still-joined hands. He dusted off his pants before surreptitiously pulling out his phone. He dangled it between them with a shit-eating grin.
“So, I’d say that after a night of stargazing I’ve earned the right to your number, wouldn’t you?”
Against all his better judgement (which was becoming an alarming trend, when it came to this infuriating ball of sunshine and piece of shit in front of him), Sasuke relinquished his hold on Naruto’s hand in favour of typing his number underneath “That Gorgeous Emo Bastard”, but not before editing his contact name to simply, “Sasuke”.
Naruto accepted the phone when Sasuke handed it back, but not before tapping away a few times. Sasuke narrowed his eyes, not quite sure if he wanted to know what Naruto had done (and not quite sure if he would be better off never finding out), when his phone vibrated insistently in his own pocket.
He pulled it out warily.
-----
From: Unknown (6:18AM)
look up!
-----
He obeyed without having a chance to think twice, befuddled, when he heard the click of a camera shutter. This time, it was just Naruto snapping a sneaky photo with his phone before tapping a few more things. When the other boy turned the screen toward him, Sasuke saw the unflattering image of him with his mouth slightly open, brows furrowed in confusion. The idiot had set it as his contact photo.
“Wha--give me that!” he growled, viciously swiping at Naruto’s phone. The other boy laughed and held it out of reach. The two of them grappled for a bit (with a few close calls wherein one or the other nearly lost their footing and toppled off the roof) until they were a breathless, tangled mess of limbs and Naruto’s phone was tucked in the waistband of his boxers, where Sasuke refused to even try to retrieve it.
“Real mature, dumbass,” he panted, glowering at Naruto from where his face was smushed against the other boy’s shoulder with both his hands pinned beneath Naruto’s weight.
Naruto just laughed, and that strange, weightless feeling filled Sasuke’s stomach again.
“Oh my G--what the fuck are you two doing up there?” Ino screeched from the front window, which woke most of the extremely hungover students draped across various surfaces in the house. There was a rising grumble of angry university students like the awakening undead, so Naruto and Sasuke took that as their cue to spring apart, climb down from the roof, and scamper to their respective homes as fast as possible.
(Even though it was kind of a mess, Sasuke found that when he thought back on that night--and whatever that was on the roof--he actually didn’t regret a single thing.)
-----
From: That Dumbass (10:33AM)
hey! your in biomed sci right? i thnk biochem lectures cancelled
you’re in that class right?
cuz theres only one core so like
From: That Dumbass (11:13AM)
i mean
since we have no class
wanna grab lunch with me?
To: That Dumbass (11:24AM)
didn’t get this until now
I’m already on campus, so I guess lunch is okay
From: That Dumbass (11:25AM)
YES!!! 👌👌👌
Ichiraku?
To: That Dumbass (11:31AM)
Where?
From: That Dumbass (11:33AM)
Ichiraku!! okk just meet me in front of the chem building and we can go from there its like 5 min
To: That Dumbass (11:37AM)
ok