Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sky was so blue in autumn—bluer than any other time of year, in Naruto's opinion. Sure, spring was brighter, but nothing was as satisfying as watching puffy white clouds float by against such a riveting color as the sky when the air was crisp with fall. It was almost enough to relieve the pressure at the back of his skull, laying in the middle of the quad surrounded by scattered and denuded grape vines, casually tossing them out of his line of sight for Choji to catch effortlessly and just—watching the clouds.

"Honestly, it's a miracle you're still on scholarship with the way you're coasting," Sakura growled from where she was furiously scratching vitriol over his latest essay attempt. Her bench was tucked just under the retaining wall that surrounded the grass quad, so all Naruto could see was her headband when he let his head fall to the side.

Ino, next to her, rested her head in her arms where they were folded on top of the wall. Honestly, it couldn't be comfortable to kneel on those crappy benches but Ino didn't seem phased.

"Only you, Golden Boy of Hookups, could think you could fail your way into a legendary career," she said, smirking.

Naruto flicked a grape stem at her forehead and stuck out his tongue.

"Hey, I'm not failing," he said, voice pitched to maximum indignation. "I'm... selectively succeeding."

Shikamaru, propped against the pile of all their bags, cracked one eye open, grinning lazily. "Selective enough to tank your GPA."

"That's not how scholarships work," Hinata said in her soft voice, the admonishment gentle and almost wheedling. "You can't charm your way past the grade requirements."

"Charm works on plenty of things," Naruto shot back, propping himself on an elbow and pointing a grape-stained finger at her. "Professors just have no taste."

"Professors have plenty of taste," Ino shot back, rolling her eyes. "That's exactly why you don't get your way with any of them."

Everyone around the loose circle of friends was nodding. Naruto scoffed and pushed himself up fully, sitting criss-cross in the grass. "You guys are just brutal," he whined.

"Brutal? Nah," Kiba said, jumping onto the retaining wall somewhere behind Naruto. He could hear the other man's bag drop and Akamaru jump out, sniffing enthusiastically. "They're just telling the truth. Everyone knows you'd get better grades if you got laid more."

Naruto spluttered, choking on an indrawn breath as he whipped around, probably getting grass stains on the seat of his jeans. "What does that even mean—?!"

Temari, having arrived with Kiba, crossed her arms and cocked a hip, unimpressed. "It means stop whining. Either study harder or—" her smirk sharpened, shark-like. "—get yourself a plaything."

"Or both," Shikamaru said, his smirk mirroring Temari's as he fingered the charms on her anklet with a sly glance up her long leg. She rolled her eyes and playfully kicked at Shikamaru's hand. He smiled fully as he caught the appendage and wrapped her ankle with his fingers instead. "The right person might be happy to play both roles."

Before he fully grasped the idea, Hinata slipped in again, her voice soft and hesitant: "Maybe Sasuke could help? He's top of the program and I heard his last student caught up enough to be dropped from the tutoring program."

Naruto nearly choked on his tongue. "What?! No way—absolutely not! I'd rather—"

"—run into him with your tongue this time?" Kiba cut in, grinning wolfishly.

The circle erupted—Ino and Sakura screeched indignantly, Choji choked on the chip he'd just put in his mouth, Temari laughed into her hands and Shikamaru didn’t bother trying to smother his loud guffaw.

Naruto shot to his feet, grass stains be damned, arms flying like a windmill. "It wasn't a kiss! It was an accident and it was last year! Get over it already!"

And that, naturally, was exactly when Sasuke walked out of the Humanities building with Gaara and Neji.

The group continued to laugh around him, various members waving the trio over, but it seemed suddenly muffled to Naruto. His gaze had connected with Sasuke's across the open expanse of the quad—only a moment—and he felt a spasm in that knot of tension at the base of his neck. Then—

A scowl, sharp enough to cut glass. Naruto felt his own grin pull tight as his eyes narrowed in calculation.

"As if I'd ever let him boss me around," he said, laughing louder than maybe he would have otherwise. He watched Sasuke's scowl deepen as he moved on toward the library, parting from Gaara and Neji without a word as the other two joined the group on the quad. Naruto put his hands on his hips as all the sound around him came rushing back in with his own words.

No one commented on the predator's edge in his smile, but he felt it in the way his tongue pressed against his canines like a fox on the hunt.

———

All through school, Naruto had been “bright, but unmotivated” according to every teacher he’d ever had. He hadn’t seen the point—it wasn’t like there was anyone waiting to see his report cards. Hell, he’d almost missed his very first day of school because the foster family had forgotten his birthday had already passed. He’d fully intended to drop out as soon as he was old enough, knew no one would stop him.

The foster system was so bogged down anyway that he’d really thought he deserved some kind of reward for being so damn selfless.

But after twenty foster families in fourteen years, Old Man Sarutobi had changed tactics abruptly for Naruto’s high school career—he’d dumped him at an honest to Gods orphanage.

It was unheard of, most of the residents at Shielded Flame Youth Village had either been there most of their childhoods or were only stopping in for the final few months before they aged out of the system. Naruto pointed these details out, vehemently, when Sarutobi picked him up the week before he was scheduled to start high school from the detention center he’d spent most of the summer in.

The case had been biased from the start—it wasn’t like Naruto could have known it was a judge’s Lexus he was hotwiring.

And the orphanage itself hadn’t changed anything. Even with more adults keeping an eye on him, even with a tighter curfew and more doors between him and sneaking out, Naruto was nothing if not a slippery little eel.

What changed was his friends.

While he’d always made friends during his time floating between foster families, he’d learned quickly that once he was gone, there really wasn’t much sense in trying to keep in touch. Out of sight, out of mind. Not to mention that the kids he always got closest to were the other fosters, and there was almost no way to keep track of other kids filtering through the system at the same time as himself.

So he’d never really had friends, only acquaintances that he dismissed from his mind like ghosts as soon as his bags were packed.

He hadn’t thought much about the two years ahead of him as he trudged to the bus stop on his first morning as a student at Konohamaru High. Shielded Flame was the end of the line, not another stop on the merry-go-round—it was the last resort for kids like him, who were too much for a family of any experience level and still too small to just hunker down with freedom on the horizon.

Everyone knew only infants and maybe toddlers could manage to get adopted out of an orphanage.

Naruto had grumbled when he’d been unable to overlook the bus stop—there had already been a cluster of other kids waiting. He’d stomped to the general vicinity of the end of the “line” as viciously as he could manage and kept to himself for the last few minutes of the wait.

The bus smelled like vinyl and old gym socks, the kind of smell that seeped into your clothes whether you sat down or not. Having placed himself at the end of the line without considering the consequences, everything looked pretty much taken by the time he stared down the long length of the aisle. He’d sworn, earning himself a pointed look from the bus driver before he started making his way along the rows, watching for any bench with a big enough gap for a butt.

About halfway, just behind the emergency exit, Naruto caught movement out of the corner of his eye. A backpack that had been hogging the end of a bench suddenly toppled sideways into its owner’s lap.

Naruto didn’t question his luck—he slid in fast before the seat could be reclaimed.

“Hey,” the kid beside him said sharply. Wild brown hair, sneer, eyes narrowed. “That was my seat.”

Naruto smirked, tried for cocky. “Guess it isn’t anymore.”

The kid stared at him for a beat—then snorted like he couldn’t help it. “Fine. But you smell like juvie.”

Naruto jerked around, ready to swing. “What the hell—”

“Relax,” the kid said, grinning toothily—he had pronounced canines that gave a rather wolf-like lean to his appearance. “I like trouble. I’m Kiba.”

Before Naruto could retort, Kiba hugged his bag closer to his chest and tugged at the zipper. “Check this out.”

The bag wriggled. Then a tiny white puppy’s head popped out, blinking up at Naruto like this was the most normal thing in the world.

Naruto blinked. “You smuggled a dog on the bus.”

“Not a dog. Akamaru.” Kiba scratched the pup’s ears proudly. “He goes everywhere with me. Mom says I don’t need to hide him, but the school’s too uptight to get it. So, bag it is.” He shrugged like smuggling a live animal in and out of class was the easiest thing in the world.

Naruto stared, then barked a laugh. For the first time that morning, the bus didn’t feel quite so suffocating.

By the time the bus pulled into Konohamaru High, Naruto wasn't sure what to make of Kiba—loud, toothy, smuggling a puppy like it was no big deal. But he'd laughed for real more on the short ride from his stop to the school than he had in years. And when they spilled out into the open courtyard, Kiba stuck by him, leading him directly to a shaded patch of concrete that was supposed to be a walkway and was being used as a bed.

"Shikamaru! Meet Naruto!"

Shikamaru, stretched almost the full breadth of the shadowed walkway with his head cushioned on his backpack, cracked an eye lazily and flicked it over Naruto before rolling over and muttering something that sounded like, "What a bother." But when the bell rang, he curled his legs under himself and stood gracefully.

"It looks like we only have final period together, but we're in the same lunch period," Kiba had said, handing back Naruto's schedule. "Shika, let me see your schedule before we're late."

Shikamaru fished a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and held it out, rubbing at the back of his head.

"Oh, here ya go," Kiba said triumphantly. "You guys have a ton of stuff together, just stick with Shikamaru until lunch."

So Naruto had, following the slumped-shouldered boy into the closest building and gratefully taking a seat with him in the back of the room. There, he'd met Choji, popping a bag of chips under the desk so quietly that it actually impressed him.

At second period, the teacher was standing at the door with a seating chart and Naruto had groaned internally, expecting to be somewhere right up front. Luck was with him though—that fate was reserved for Shikamaru, who grumbled loudly as he kicked his bag under the chair and dropped into his seat. Naruto managed a seat somewhere roughly in the middle with Choji at the next table over.

The girl in front of him had hair the color of cherry blossoms and Naruto was entranced by the way it fell over her shoulders and down the back of the chair. He bet it smelled just as pretty. He stretched out over the top of the desk, like he could find out through his fingertips if they were just a little closer.

In a sudden shift, chairs all over the room scraped back, twisted and just generally moved and suddenly, that hair was in his hands, soft and whisper light.

“Do you mind?” the girl snapped, jerking away and glaring over her shoulder. Her green eyes flashed ominously and Naruto had felt himself go pale as he snatched his hands back, but that didn’t stop him from grinning up at her.

“Not at all, your hair is lovely—I’m happy to put my hands on it anytime you want,” he shot back, sly as a fox.

“Why you—!”

“Sakura Haruno!” The teacher cut in before the fist she’d raised could fall, whether it was aimed for the desk or his head. “I believe your partner is up here. Naruto—please begin your first assignment.”

The girl—Sakura, fitting—scowled for another second, then took a deep breath and turned a bright smile on for the teacher’s benefit. While she apologized for the disruption, Naruto looked at the board for the first time and realized he’d definitely missed something while he’d been wrapped up in daydreams. Thankfully, Choji had been paying enough attention to nudge him and they completed their review of the syllabus while the husky boy stealthily opened another chip bag.

By the time lunch rolled around, Naruto had decided there must be some kind of gravity to these Konahamaru kids—Choji and Shikamaru had been in step with him all day, Kiba was waiting at the door to the cafeteria to shove money into his hands, hastily muttering something about letting Akamaru out before campus patrol circled by. Even Sakura never seemed too far away, sitting on the edge of the fountain just far enough away to seem on her own while still trading snide remarks when Naruto fumbled up with two trays. Shikamaru was stretched out in the sun with his tray on his stomach, lazily picking at his fries. Choji was crumpling another chip bag and starting in on his lunch. And Kiba ushered Akamaru behind him against the wall of the fountain just as patrol stepped out of the building directly across from them.

It was loud, messy, full of elbows and arguments and crumbs, but Naruto had a weird feeling in his stomach as he laughed—like something slotting into a place he didn’t know was empty.

Biology was like a cold plunge after the warmth of eating lunch in the sun, something about the tidy counters and barren lab desks enforcing a kind of silence that muffled even Naruto’s rambunctious spirit. It wasn’t until after the teacher had droned through the syllabus and was explaining the simple experiment they would perform in pairs that Naruto even realized he didn’t know anyone in this class—It had felt perfectly natural to walk in when Kiba waved and moved along to the next door down the hall.

He grimaced and glanced to the sides. The teacher seemed to be pairing them up predictably and as he counted ahead across the rows, Naruto could confidently say the girl on his right would be his partner.

Her hair was short, spiky in the back but falling like raven’s wings around her face. Like she felt his eyes on her, she glanced over meekly and her eyes were bright and clear, the kind of gray that would glow when the light hit it.

She didn’t quite startle at his attention, but she did look away quickly, and kept quiet as they made their way to their lab counter.

It was a simple enough experiment—pond water slides. Naruto had always liked playing with microscopes but when he looked through the viewer, he saw only the bright white of the backlight.

“You’re looking at it backwards.”

He did jump at that, blinking as he found the girl right at his side, fiddling with the cuff of her sweater. After a moment of silence, she leaned in and rotated the slide gently, her hands steady and sure. When he looked through the scope again, all the little particles and signs of life were clear.

“Oh—thanks,” he muttered, but she was already stepping back, eyes fixed on her notes.

Hinata, the top of the page read.

The rest of the day slipped by in a blur, marked by already familiar voices—Shikamaru sighing in the back row, Sakura’s sharp pencil scratches on the other side of the room, Kiba loud enough to cover Akamaru scratching at the lining of his backpack on the floor. Naruto found himself laughing without thinking, tapping his pencil just to see who would snap at him first.

By final bell, it didn’t feel like the first day of anything. It felt like he’d always been there.

The bus ride back to Shielded Flame was rowdy but only because all the other kids were yakking it up about their first day. He sat with Kiba again and actually got to hold Akamaru when the other boy scooped him out of his backpack. The puppy was light and warm and golden in the afternoon sun streaming through the window and Naruto could feel Kiba’s accidental jostle as he shifted things around in his bag and suddenly, he realized he wasn’t dreading the rest of the week.

When the bus wheezed to a stop at his corner, Kiba tucked Akamaru into the front of his jacket and gave him a lazy salute.

“See ya,” Kiba said, like it was inevitable.

And Naruto stepped down to the curb grinning, feeling the weights on his shoulders shifting ever so slightly.

Maybe he didn’t have to run at sixteen—maybe there would be a place for him after all.

———

The weeks blurred into months, and the months into years. Shielded Flame never stopped feeling temporary in his mind, but the school—the people—shifted into permanence faster than he expected. He stopped counting the days until sixteen.

By sophomore year, Naruto wasn’t just showing up. He was keeping pace. Homework finished—mostly. Teachers sighing less, sometimes even smiling. His grades crept higher, and for the first time in his life, he cared about the numbers beside his name.

By junior year, he’d found rhythm. Loud mornings with Kiba, afternoons needling Shikamaru, lunches split with Chōji, Hinata’s quiet corrections in whatever class they inevitably shared, Sakura’s sharp remarks like a whetstone for his wit, keeping him sharper still. A circle. His circle. He wasn’t looking for the exit anymore—he was looking forward.

And senior year? Senior year he tore through it. Late nights bent over essays, afternoons pushing himself harder just to prove he could. Determined stares at teachers who still muttered “bright, but unmotivated” under their breath. He turned every one of them into believers.

Letters came to Shielded Flame in a stack of bills and flyers, plain white envelopes with impersonal PO boxes. But Naruto knew—he didn’t even make it to his room before tearing it open, right there in the entrance as Sarutobi arrived for a check-in.

“See?” Naruto barked, grinning as he shoved the papers in the old man’s face. “Told you I’d make it.”

Sarutobi set his glasses low on his nose and read, lips curling into the smallest of smiles. A scholarship. Real money, enough to cover what Naruto could never have scraped together.

Then the second letter, envelope thinner. The university’s regret, GPA averages in neat, impersonal print.

Naruto felt the silence stretch, his grin wobbling for a breath before he laughed it off, loud and defiant. “Figures. They don’t know what they’re missing.”

Sarutobi folded the papers carefully, set them back in Naruto’s hands. “It’s not a no, Naruto. It’s a wait. HLCC will take the scholarship, and if you keep your grades where they’ve been this last year, you can still get to KU as a sophomore next year.”

Naruto blinked at him, throat tight, then shoved the letter into his bag like it was already old news. “Fine by me. I’ll just prove them wrong. You’ll see.”

“I already do,” Sarutobi said gently.

Naruto didn’t answer, but he felt the words settle. By the time his friends were second-years, he’d be standing right beside them. Late start, maybe. But not for long.

———

He hadn’t lied to Sarutobi. A year at HLCC, a blur of credits and late nights, and he’d pulled the numbers high enough to walk through KU’s gates. His scholarship carried, his transfer went through, and by the start of sophomore year he was back on track—exactly where he’d promised he’d be.

But it didn’t feel the same.

The circle he came back to had shifted. Inside jokes had sprouted without him. New names threaded through his friends’ stories—Ino with her sharp smile, Gaara with his unnerving silences, Kankurō always lurking at his shoulder, Temari caressing a fan with sharp nails like she needed another weapon, Neji like some kind of Hinata doppelganger with more bite, that kook Rock Lee and his tai chi, Tenten smirking and hogging all the girls.

Naruto told himself it was fine. More people meant more noise, and he thrived in noise. But some part of him bristled anyway, chafed at how easily they’d let strangers weave themselves into the fabric he thought was theirs. His.

It was easier to laugh it off, louder than anyone else. Easier to shove the thought down and remind himself he’d caught up, just like he said he would.

And then came Uchiha.

A scowl like cut glass, eyes sharp enough to slice him in half, and suddenly Naruto’s drive was back, smothering any potential sullenness in its cradle. Because Uchiha thought he was going to get there first, wherever there ended up being, and he was just another person for Naruto to prove wrong.

The intense rivalry burned all through sophomore year. While Sakura was well on her way to being valedictorian, he and Sasuke stayed locked in step—neck and neck with each other but never breaking ahead of the rest of the year, too focused on outpacing the other to think about things like salutorian.

By junior year, Sasuke was dug in deeper, sharper, like he was daring the world to pry him out of his fortress. And Naruto craved it—that edge, the competition, the fire in his blood whenever their eyes met across a classroom.

So he decided. If Sasuke thought he could ignore him, well, Naruto had more than one way to get under his skin. It wasn’t like he couldn’t pass all his classes, he just wasn’t on that particular afternoon. And he knew, in that instinctive way he knew everything about Sasuke’s head, that the Uchiha would never turn down a new tutor gig even if it was the loudmouth he’d spent a year and half publicly snubbing.

The fun part, Naruto thought as his eyes followed after Sasuke long after he’d disappeared through the arch and into the library, would be seeing how far he could push before Sasuke pushed back.

Chapter Text

Everything on the desk rattled as Sasuke slammed his laptop closed. He’d had time set aside every week to discuss the company figures with his father for two and a half years, and now he was suddenly “unavailable” at the time of the call? And his mother, in that gentle way that wasn’t so much kindness as it was death by a thousand paper cuts, had just shrugged and said, “He’s busy.” Like Sasuke hadn’t known that, hadn’t always been sure to confirm twenty-four hours in advance. “If you were here…” Like it was that simple. Like he could walk back into the company boardrooms and not see the way people looked at him—Uchiha, but not like Itachi was, even if he had been the one who blew everything up.

Sasuke shoved himself back from the table almost violently, spinning in his chair so he could look at something else, anything else. But when all he saw was his tidy dorm, it made him want to scream.

So he tilted back in the chair, crossed his arms tightly over his chest and stared at the ceiling.

Because this call had been longstanding and always on the schedule, it was one of the things that everything else in Sasuke’s life revolved around. He didn’t schedule tutoring on Wednesdays because no matter how tightly he ran the session, there was always a distraction or overflow in the guidance of others. His homework for the week was always completed before the time of the call could sneak up on him, so he could spend the rest of the week going over the information his father gave him. Prepping new insights for the company to go over on the next call.

But now, all he could think about was those regimented timeblocks on his calendar, evaporating like mist.

Sasuke rubbed his temple, wishing irritation burned itself out instead of circling back tighter each time. His father vanished into business, blocked him out. His mother couched blame in softness. His brother was off god knew where. And Sasuke—Sasuke was left with nothing but empty hours and the pressing feeling that nothing he ever did would measure up quite right.

That did it. He had his Nikes on before he’d even processed finding socks. He twisted his earbuds into place and started his running playlist at full volume, Mr. Self Destruct taunting him as he tucked his phone, key and credit card into the black armband that fit tight to his bicep. And he was gone.

Sitting still would only make the silence worse, the thoughts in his head louder. And he couldn’t just block everything out with noise—he needed motion.

He needed enervation.

Out the back door of his building, over the cracked sidewalks, through the weeknight hush of campus. It was late enough that the streets were fairly empty, everyone either hunkered down for early classes or in late ones. The air was sharp in his lungs and he maybe should have put on his track jacket but it didn’t matter—he planned to warm himself up plenty.

One footfall after another. Like pistons hammering, like he was nothing more than a machine built to run.

There was a park just off campus, a solid block of grassy hills, jogging paths, sports fields and even a playground that underage students liked to get drunk on. But on a Wednesday, it would probably be empty.

So Sasuke was rather more frustrated with the way his night was going to find that it actually wasn’t. There was in fact a group of students hanging off the playground in various states of inebriation but worse than that—on the soccer field, he could just make out two figures with something silvery light racing between them as they lobbed something back and forth.

Kiba. That fucking dog. Naruto.

It didn’t matter. With Ministry pounding rhythmic against the thoughts in his head, he’d never even know if they tried to stop him. With his eyes determinedly down on the path in front of him, Sasuke started the longest track around the entire park and started counting laps.

He’d meant to run until his body was too exhausted to let his brain get a word in edgewise. Wanted to find that hollowed out fatigue that would make everything quiet in a good way, even if he’d weave like a drunkard on the jog home and have to prop himself up in the shower. But his playlist wasn’t set up for that kind of slog and when it cycled back around to Mr. Self Destruct again, it sparked the irritation all over.

He slowed to a stop by a fountain, rubbing sweat from his eyes and pulling his phone from its armband sharply. Sasuke didn’t have the patience to try to add anything in but he could hand over the reins to Spotify and see how that would stack up. He paused the music, set the shuffle to “smart” and steadied his breathing enough to get a long drink out of the fountain.

Just as he was about to press play and get back to running a rut into the path, something hit his ankle.

“Hey, Sasuke!”

Sasuke scowled down at the football at his feet as though he could rewind time if he just glared hard enough. He could hear someone—please be Kiba, please be Kiba—running up behind him.

He fought with himself for several moments before bending down to pick up the football and turn to face the interruption.

Not Kiba.

“Sorry about that!” Naruto said, voice muffled by the silenced earbuds but no less chagrined, no less exuberant. “How’re you doing? I was actually hoping I’d run into you since you didn’t join us on the quad this afternoon—that class you tutor for?”

Sasuke’s eyes narrowed dangerously as the football passed into Naruto’s hands. The blonde didn’t take the warning.

“I’m kinda struggling with this module we’re on,” Naruto said, passing the football from one hand to the other. It was a steady motion, almost mechanical. “And I kinda struggled on the last module too—I guess I could use some help?”

“If you need a tutor,” Sasuke said lowly, quirking an eyebrow, “sign up for the program. I don’t do favors.”

It came out sharper than he thought he intended it, ending on a hiss he could feel in the way his teeth clenched. For a moment, Naruto blinked at him—like he was confirming a hunch. Then, he relaxed, smiling loose and easy like he’d gotten exactly what he wanted.

“Fair enough, I’ll let you get back to your night,” he said, already turning back to Kiba and Akamaru. He threw a lazy wave up and called over his shoulder, “Don’t bleed all over those Nikes, they’re too good for that!”

Akamaru barked. Kiba was scooping him up, having moved off the soccer field. Sasuke watched Naruto jog up to the other man, clap him on the shoulder, tuck the football under his arm and then the pair were walking away. Walking out of the park and back towards campus.

Sasuke stood there for another long moment, glaring after them. He didn’t understand why everything about Naruto amplified the irritation still simmering in his blood, but he knew the short interaction had just doubled how long he was going to be out there that night.

Even through his earbuds, Naruto’s laugh carried back across the field, loose and unbothered. It grated against the drumbeat pounding inside Sasuke’s head.

So he turned the music back on.

———

The alarm cut through him like a blade. Sasuke rolled out of bed on pure, protesting muscle memory, his legs heavy and screaming with the kind of ache that meant he’d overrun his previous limits. It was fine. It was deserved.

Shower. Coffee. Class. More coffee.

Kakashi strolled into Corporate & White-Collar Crime fifteen minutes late, as usual, hair a mess and coffee in his hand. Nobody ever knew how he finished it during lectures, since he never removed his mask—something about any classroom being a petri dish—but it was always empty when he dropped it in the trash can at the end of the period.

He set his notes on the podium with the kind of absent ease that made Sasuke grind his teeth on a good day. This time, he almost snapped his pen in half.

“Today,” he said, one eye flicking over the classroom, “we’re looking at the Enron collapse. Fraud, embezzlement, regulatory failure… a little bit of everything. It’s a party.”

A few chuckles rippled through the room. Sasuke’s pen moved fast, too fast, irritation sharp in every stroke. He hadn’t had more than three hours of sleep—he didn’t have time for jokes. When he looked down again, the precise script didn’t even look like his own.

Halfway through the period, the yawn Sasuke had been swallowing all morning niggled its way into his jaw, the joints popping audibly over Kakashi’s lecture. The professor’s gaze slid to him, sly and glittering with amusement.

“Sleep is a compliance issue too, you know. Exhaustion leads to poor judgement. Very dangerous in high places.”

The heat that crept up Sasuke’s neck was fury, not embarrassment. He straightened his shoulders and met Kakashi’s stare defiantly as students tittered around him.

The professor let the remark hang for a moment. “Take care of yourselves, people. Even the best of you make mistakes when you’re tired—isn’t that right, Sasuke? He grades your assignments, he would know.”

That shut everyone up. Sasuke smirked.

“Yes, sir,” he said, tone mild.

The rest of class, and the one after it, passed in a blur, his notes getting progressively messier as the day rolled over him. By the time he made it to his lunch hour, Sasuke’s shoulders ached from holding himself upright.

The cafeteria didn’t help, loud with chatter and full of too much motion for his tired brain. Everything fused into one steady, pounding rhythm against the inside of his skull. He grabbed a tray automatically—protein, greens, something beige that was supposed to pass for carbs—and escaped the enclosed, echoing space as quickly as possible.

Outside wasn’t any better, the commercial carts of fast food vendors hocking their alternatives a grating cacophony. He sat on a bench around the corner, letting distance muffle everything coming at him from the high traffic area. He ate slowly, every bite turning to chalk on his tongue. His stomach roiled, refusing to decide if it was hungry or sick.

And the whole time, the block on his calendar pulsed at the back of his mind. An hour and a half of empty space like a black hole in his brain.

Maybe he’d be tired enough to just call it a night after the other two sessions before it.

The vibration against his thigh startled him just when the idea was starting to grow on him. He pulled his phone from his pocket with more force than necessary.

Tutoring Program Update
Student Request: Quantitative Analysis & Corporate Finance
Availability: Immediate — open to filling evening session tonight
Priority: High (student is currently failing)

He clicked accept before he’d finished reading the message. It didn’t matter the situation—what mattered was the empty timeslot that wasn’t empty anymore.

The food still tasted like cardboard. Sasuke set the tray aside with a sigh and pulled out his laptop to pull up the class details instead.

The rest of the day passed without incident. The fatigue continued to make his notes choppier and less organized than he normally preferred, but the stress that had driven him to exhaustion was relieved by thoughts of how to approach this new pupil. By the time he ducked into the library, the ache in his shoulders had still wormed its way into his jaw.

Thursdays meant three sessions, stacked one after the other, the way he’d always arranged his week around the call. Other tutors spaced their hours, treated it like a side gig. Sasuke treated it like a job. Library by four. Prep half an hour. Three sessions, ninety minutes each. Done by ten.

Tonight, he slid into his usual corner table, pulled his laptop free and opened the tutoring portal. A new student meant submitted forms, diagnostic scores, class rosters. He’d need to run through all of them, read the notes, form the outline of a plan of attack.

At the top of the screen: Uzumaki, Naruto.

Sasuke’s finger on the trackpad spasmed, sending the cursor darting out of screen sharply. It didn’t matter.

He knew how Naruto would be doing in this class.

He saw a flash of that grin in the park the night before and his eyes narrowed dangerously.

It made sense now.

A throat cleared across the table. He looked up, focusing the laser of his gaze on his first pupil—wide-eyed, already fumbling for their notes. Sasuke blinked and glanced back at his laptop screen, specifically the time.

He’d been glaring at Naruto’s name for his entire thirty minute prep period.

Sasuke inhaled a low breath, trying to find a way back to center so he could get through his tutoring sessions without flipping a table in the library.

The first ninety minutes dragged. Every hesitation grated, every timid question made his jaw ache worse. By the end, the student's voice was a whisper, their hands shaking when they packed their bag. Sasuke dismissed them with a clipped nod.

The second was worse. Brisk, competent enough, but clearly unnerved by the ragged edges poking out of Sasuke. Every time he rephrased a question or pushed harder for an answer, they flinched like it was a rebuke. By the last half hour, they’d stopped making eye contact altogether, muttering apologies every time they lost their place.

He shut his laptop a little too hard as they walked away and he saw them flinch again.

Two sessions down. His irritation wasn’t going anywhere—it had deepened, compounded, sharpened into something that vibrated under his skin. The block in his schedule wasn’t empty anymore, but he wasn’t sure if this would be any better than the unregimented free time would have been.

Sasuke took one more deep, slow breath, closing his eyes for a moment of peace. Just a moment, before the final battle of the day.

When he opened them again, Naruto was sitting across the table. Notebook out, pencil twirling between his fingers, grin already in place.

“Yo.”

Sasuke’s pulse jumped hard enough that he almost flinched. Almost.

“How—” His eyes narrowed. “When did you get here?”

Naruto shrugged, his grin edging into a crooked smirk. “Couple minutes ago. You looked like you needed a sec—I didn’t want to interrupt your… meditation, or whatever.”

Sasuke’s jaw locked. The idea that Naruto, of all people, could have snuck up on him was somehow the worst part of this entire situation. Maybe this entire week.

Naruto leaned forward, elbows on the table and pencil clasped under his chin in an imitation of earnest attention. “So, sensei. Ready to teach me how to not tank finance?”

———

The session went the way all sessions did, except louder. Naruto filled the silences with muttered commentary, pencil tapping against the page while he worked through each line of the problem set. His answers sprawled wide across the sheet, quick and messy, but there was a logic to the sprawl. Every time Sasuke cut in to redirect him, narrowing the frame, Naruto adjusted without argument. It was infuriating how fast he caught on once the explanation landed—like he hadn’t been drowning at all, just waiting for someone to throw him the right line.

Sasuke kept control the way he always did: firm corrections, clipped instructions, letting silence stretch until Naruto inevitably filled it, with a question, with a snort, with humming. Still, his gaze betrayed him more than once. The furrow in Naruto’s brow wasn’t one of confusion but concentration, the kind that deepened with each problem. The scrawl of his handwriting was chaotic, uneven, yet the strokes themselves were surprisingly fluid—more elegance than the page deserved. Sasuke catalogued the details without meaning to, storing them the way he stored every data point.

By the end of the ninety minutes, Naruto had covered two pages in messy scrawl, but most of the answers were right. Sasuke sat back, fingers steepled, unwilling to voice the thought pressing at the edge of his irritation: not hopeless. Not even close.

“See?” he said, raising a brow as he slid the papers back across the table. “When you stop guessing, the numbers work.”

Naruto shot him a sidelong look, mouth tilted wryly. “Guessing’s more fun when it pays off. But sure—maybe I’ll listen more if it’s your voice in my head.”

“You’ll at least keep up,” Sasuke said, finally shutting down his laptop with a sigh.

Naruto packed his notebook, stretched as he stood, slung the bag over his shoulder. He lingered just long enough to smirk, crooked and infuriating.

“Oh, I was listening,” he said lightly. “Just not always to the numbers.”

Sasuke’s gaze narrowed, wary of that tone, but Naruto was already halfway to the door, giving that same lazy wave as he walked away.

Chapter Text

Naruto was barely through the door of Neji’s apartment, late as usual, when Lee clapped him hard on the back with a booming, “My rival in youth!” He’d learned early on not to flinch at Lee’s enthusiasm—he meant every word and it was easier to let him have his way than try to argue with him.

Choji was the second person to greet him from his natural habitat, grazing amongst the snacks everyone had brought as tribute. Through the other side of the kitchen, the living room was already chaos. Sakura lounged in Ino’s lap with their legs stretched under the coffee table. Kiba, Kankuro, Gaara and Hinata were shouting at each other inches from the TV, hands clenched around Xbox controllers.

“Gaara, you cheated—”

“It’s not cheating, it’s strategy—”

“Hinata, you traitor!”

Their voices tangled into laughter as Temari and Shikamaru heckled from the couch, and even with his back to the door, Neji looked like he regretted every life choice up to and including giving out his address to these people.

Tenten was sprawled sideways in Neji’s only good chair, boots kicked off, drink in hand. She gave Naruto a smirking salute with it instead of her typical tipped chin—there were no potential hook-ups here for them to fight over. There weren’t exactly rules to their game, whether it was who got the number, who got the story, who walked away smugger—but they both knew she was already ahead three to one this semester and didn’t need to remind him of it.

Through the balcony door, Shino was absorbed in a spiderweb strung between the railing and a dying potted fern. Temari must’ve dragged him here again, or at least technically here. Nobody ever remembered Shino getting invited, but he always ended up in the pictures, like some half-forgotten landmark.

Naruto grinned to himself. A year ago, he’d hated that his friends had let strangers worm their way in. Now, it felt weirder to imagine the group without every single one of them.

He shouldered his way past Choji and collapsed onto the couch beside Temari and Shikamaru with a groan. Before he could even sink into the cushions, Kiba yelled over his shoulder from the TV, grinning wide, “So how’d round one with the Ice Prince go? You get past first base this time?”

Naruto shot upright. “WHAT—no! I don’t—shut up!”

That was enough to get everyone’s attention. Temari leaned forward, smirking. “Please. If anyone’s gonna score off that tutoring gig, it’s Sasuke. He’s had a year’s head start.”

Sakura bolted upright in Ino’s lap. “Don’t even joke about that!” she shrieked, even though her laughter broke through anyway.

“Yeah,” Ino added, clutching her drink. “Sasuke could do so much better than him!”

Naruto flailed both hands. “It wasn’t even like that! You guys are sick!”

Nobody listened. They never did. Kiba was trying to get the whole story out through his wheezing laughter, Shikamaru was interjecting anytime Kiba couldn’t hold it together, Sakura and Ino were almost laying on the floor from laughing so hard. Even Gaara was struggling to contain himself. Only Kankuro kept it together, having not been witness to the event and desperately trying to eke out a win while everyone else was distracted.

He almost threw the controller when Hinata beat him anyway, despite smothering her own quiet giggles into the collar of her hoodie.

Same script, same laughter, waiting for him to combust.

They didn’t even know.

That moment of imbalance, that tilt that had felt like it slowed time. Sasuke’s face, too close, squeezing his eyes shut and expecting to hit something hard—

Naruto hadn’t intended his first day at KU to be eventful in any way. He’d wanted to see and catch up with his friends, make sure he’d gotten all of the introductory work and documents from every teacher, learn his way around campus. He’d even been looking forward to homework, just because every little bit of it was one step closer to his ultimate goal—a serious job at the top of the food chain where no one would ever be able to overlook him again.

That was the plan. Keep his head down, prove he deserved to be here. Prove that a year at community college wasn’t a death sentence, that he wasn’t behind, that he could run with everyone else who had gotten in the first time around.

But with that year he’d been separated from all them, the fabric of his friendships had—changed. They all talked about things he hadn’t been around to witness, people he didn’t know.

He felt left out.

Just like before Konohamaru.

And when Naruto felt left out, he acted out—got louder, bigger, brighter. If they were laughing, it must’ve worked right? It didn’t matter that half the laughter wasn’t at his jokes. It didn’t matter that it was at him.

And then there had been Sasuke.

Cool, sharp, untouchable, sitting among his friends like he belonged there. Another stranger basking in familiarity that Naruto had earned, had missed—and cutting him down like it didn’t matter.

“A year late and still a child.”

Naruto felt every hair on his body stand on end, like his body was trying to play porcupine, to protect itself. He’d leaned over his desk, gotten in Sasuke’s face. “Say that again, bast—”

Then there’d been a jostle, a bump from some other student who didn’t care about the tension they were cutting through as they pushed onward to their seat. Completely unperturbed by a motion that must have felt mild to them, but felt like being shoved out an airplane to Naruto.

He’d really thought he was going to crack his head open on the floor. Or maybe just head butt Sasuke, which would be better because then they would both be embarrassed and injured.

What happened was so much worse.

Because instead of any hard landing, Naruto had managed to catch himself almost gracefully on Sasuke’s shoulders—but only after their lips met.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t been kissed before. He knew what it was supposed to be: sloppy, eager, experimental; hot and desperate, teeth clashing; or soft and easy, mouths fitting together like they were meant to. He’d had all of those, enough to know what to expect.

But this—this wrong, accidental brush of lips in the middle of a crowded classroom—hit low in his gut, sharp and electric. His stomach swooped like the whole classroom had just dropped out of gravity’s pull. For a breath, he couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but register the heat of it.

Then Sasuke shoved him back, gagging, swiping at his mouth like Naruto had infected him.

The silence broke into chaos. Catcalls, laughter, whistles. His friends doubled over with it. Someone shouted, “Get a room!” The noise swelled until it was unbearable.

Naruto’s own voice cracked out, furious and flailing: “It wasn’t me! I didn’t—it wasn’t—gross! I’d never—!” Too loud, too fast, too desperate. And once you denied something that hard, there was no going back. The denial became its own prison, clanging around in his chest every time the memory resurfaced.

If it had happened any other way, though—without the stumble, without the gag, without the whole world watching—Naruto thought it might have been one of the best kisses of his life.

———

The roar of laughter, whistles and jeers blurred—then snapped back sharp, not a classroom now but Neji’s cramped living room.

Shikamaru had dragged himself upright, hands on the coffee table as he leaned over Kiba, narrating the whole moment. “And then, Naruto leans in, all puffed up, says, ‘Say that again, bast—’ I think that was supposed to be ‘bastard’ but someone bumps him trying to get past to their seat and—”

He launched himself across the table, rolling into Kiba’s lap and mock making out as Kiba grabbed his waist and rolled with him. They fell apart with a particularly obnoxious lip smack, the whole room wheezing with laughter.

Naruto crossed his arms and slumped into his seat. “You guys are the worst.”

“They can be surprisingly committed,” Temari said, smirking around the rim of her cup.

“You’re encouraging this!” Naruto shot back, pouting.

“You just make it so easy,” Kankuro said with a shrug, waving his controller absently.

Naruto dropped lower in his chair, smothering himself with his jacket collar. A whole year, and they were still acting it out like dinner theater.

“Um…” Hinata’s voice slipped through the noise, gentle and careful, but it carried enough to quiet the others. Her hands twisted in her sleeves. “But really, Naruto—how was tutoring?”

Naruto peeked out through his fringe. She was too nice, genuine enough to actually want an answer.

He sighed, sitting up. “He’s a good tutor—I can see how he got the rep already. He knows the stuff cold, explains it fast.” He frowned, looking at his hands as his fingers tangled together. “This class is, like, exactly in his wheelhouse and I’m lucky he had the slot available.”

That earned him a few nods, and for a second it looked like the conversation might move on—until Naruto couldn’t help adding, “But he ignored me the whole time. I could’ve shown up in nothing but my briefs, dropped my pencil and bent over right in front of him and he wouldn’t have blinked.”

Ino rolled her eyes so hard her whole head followed. “That’s just Sasuke.”

Naruto squinted at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’ll find his picture in the dictionary next to ‘oblivious’.” She twisted her head, leaning back on the couch and throwing an arm out over Temari’s legs. “The boy’s a wall, Naruto. Sakura and I can both attest to that, and believe me—if he didn’t notice me hanging off his arm, he’s not going to notice you making eyes at him over derivatives.”

Temari nearly spat her drink. “You hung off his arm?”

“Oh don’t look at me like that.” Ino laughed, unabashed. “We were sixteen. He was Itachi’s perfect little brother, our families thought we were a match made in heaven and yeah—we got a little hot and heavy for a bit. It was fun.” She shrugged, like it meant nothing. “But it wasn’t real. Once we’d gotten it out of our systems, it was obvious we didn’t actually care about each other that way. Better as friends.”

Sakura snorted, turning in her lap to wrap her arms around Ino’s neck. “Speak for yourself. Some of us were tragic about it.”

“And look where that got you.” Ino kissed her sweetly, grinning against her mouth. “Sitting in my lap.”

Sakura tried to glare, but her laugh gave her away.

Naruto slouched further—really, he would fall out of the chair at this rate—but his head filled with pictures he didn’t ask for as the party moved on around him.

He could see it—Sasuke sprawled out on some ridiculously expensive and probably antique couch, shirt rucked up, one arm hooked behind his head like he owned the world. Ino on top of him, laughing into his mouth as his other hand trailed up the back of her thigh, her hands tangled in his hair. Teen mess. The kind of half-clothed, breathless thing that happened at every party, and Naruto knew it because he’d had his share too.

Only the image shifted before he could stop it. Ino blurred, dissolved, and suddenly it was Naruto braced over Sasuke instead, close enough to feel his breath hitch. And now he could picture his face, those dark eyes and all that intensity focused on him as the whole scene echoed with that one precarious moment a year ago—except this time, Sasuke didn’t shove him away, didn’t gag.

Naruto blinked hard, cheeks hot. Stupid. He was being stupid.

Still… if Ino was right, if Sasuke was that oblivious, then Naruto was just going to have to make damn sure he was noticed next time.

———

The rest of Saturday blurred into a smear of noise and color—somebody burned pizza rolls in Neji’s oven, Temari heckled Kankuro into the ground after another burning loss on the Xbox, Lee made declarations of eternal youth at two in the morning. Naruto trailed after Kiba and Choji for late-night (early morning?) ramen, fell asleep in the common room during Shino’s Planet Earth marathon, tried to study in the afternoon. But no matter what, his brain kept circling back—dark eyes, sharp lines, the heat of a memory that wouldn’t fade.

By Monday afternoon, even Jiraiya noticed.

The old man leaned on his podium with a knowing smirk at the end of Media & Market Influence. They usually waited for the auditorium to empty out so they could head to Jiraiya’s office without being trampled by hundreds of other people moving around at the same time. Naruto was pretty sure he’d been smirking at him all period, but he’d been too distracted to really track anything that didn’t need to go in his notes. The man talked so fast about so much that it was a struggle to keep up even when he didn’t keep drifting back to Sasuke’s hands as they pushed papers across a library table at him.

“What’s this? You’ve got a look,” Jiraiya said gleefully as they followed the last stragglers into the hallway as it blissfully began to empty in preparation for another period. “Don’t tell me—somebody’s caught your eye.”

Naruto sputtered, too fast, as the world suddenly dropped back into focus around him. “Nobody’s caught anything! You’re imagining things!”

Jiraiya only grinned wider, pushing open the office door with his hip. “Kid, I’ve been teaching long enough to know when a student’s taking notes and when they’re doodling daydreams in the margins.”

Naruto tripped over the threshold. “I wasn’t doodling! That was—charts. For the assignment.”

“Sure.” Jiraiya dropped into his chair, feet up on the desk like he owned the department. “Media strategy, entrepreneurial branding, romance—same principles, different markets. The trick is mystery, the chase. Get people leaning forward.”

Naruto groaned, already rifling through the mess of forms he was supposed to get signed by the registrar. “This is supposed to be independent study, not—whatever this is.”

“This is independent study.” Jiraiya snatched one of the sheets out of his hands and signed it without reading. “Consider it field research. If you want to make an impression in business—or anywhere else—you’ve got to find the hook that gets under their skin.”

Naruto froze halfway into his seat, heart thumping. Hook. Under their skin.

He shook it off, face hot, and dropped into the chair. Stupid. Still stupid.

Sitting through an hour with Jiraiya was like being caught in a riptide—you could try to fight it, but eventually you had to give in and let it drag you wherever it wanted. If his lectures drifted anywhere near sex, that was it. You were gone. No brakes, no rerouting, just Jiraiya free-associating through history, marketing, politics, and porn like they were all branches of the same damn tree.

Naruto had learned early to stop trying to redirect him. The more you resisted, the more he leaned in, gleeful, eyes bright behind his ridiculous glasses as he made you complicit. And when he got on a roll, he was fast—talking faster than Naruto could take notes, faster than he could even follow. Half the time Naruto left these “independent study” check-ins with a page of nonsense that read more like conspiracy theories than assignments.

By the time the clock in the corner finally dragged itself toward the end of the period, Naruto’s head was pounding. He shoved his papers into his bag and shot Jiraiya a look.

Jiraiya stretched like a cat in the sun, hands laced behind his head. “You’ll get it someday, kid. Chase and payoff—markets, media, romance. Same thing.”

“This is why no one believes you’re a real professor.”

“Tenure,” Jiraiya said cheerfully, as if that explained everything.

Naruto escaped the office before he could get dragged into another half-hour lecture on “branding through innuendo.” The hallways were mostly empty, the campus settling into its Monday evening rhythm. By the time he made it back to the dorm, the place was silent—Gaara off in the library like clockwork, his side of the room squared away as if no one lived there at all.

Naruto dropped onto his bed and spread out like a starfish, grinning at the rare quiet. No Xbox blaring next door, no roommate sighing in disapproval. Just him.

But silence meant his brain wouldn’t shut up.

It replayed Jiraiya’s words—the hook that gets under their skin—until the phrase twisted sideways, dragging Sasuke’s face up with it. The last tutoring session, Sasuke’s hands sliding papers across the table, the way he didn’t look at Naruto except to glare.

And then Ino’s voice, casual, offhand: hot and heavy.

Naruto’s stomach tightened. He tried to imagine what those two words could mean on someone as stoic as Sasuke—was he loud, sloppy? Or was he just the same as he always was but with the addition of something like hunger, some raw edge that he was trying to blunt against his partner?

Before, Naruto had pictured Ino on top, and that still felt right somehow. God, he hoped Sasuke wasn’t just a bottom in wolf’s clothing. The idea of being on top of that body as it rolled into him—

He hadn’t realized he was hard until his hand, having apparently gained sentience, pressed down on his groin and he groaned, loudly.

Naruto bit his lip, the litany of Stupid, stupid, stupid not enough to drown out the image in his mind.

When his hips shifted under his palm, the friction made his breath stutter. He couldn’t stop.

As his hand dove under his waistband, he ran through the string of fantasies he usually got himself off to, trying to put Sasuke’s face in one. But he kept coming back to that couch he’d imagined over the weekend, the way he’d pictured Sasuke so relaxed—stretched out like a sacrifice and still the one doing the teasing.

His hand was moving now, his rhythm swift as he mentally fast forwarded through the foreplay. Stripped himself entirely, Sasuke most of the way. He’d never had a reason to really look at the other man before, but that run last week—all that sweat. And he’d had his hands on his shoulders the previous year, could feel the force he shoved away with.

Naruto reversed the motion, stifling a whimper into his teeth. It would be good, to have that force pulling him in instead. He imagined another set of noises echoing his own, imagining—hoping—Sasuke wouldn’t mind, would like that he wasn’t as loud in bed as anyone who spent an hour with him would expect.

In his shorts and behind his eyes, Naruto was speeding up. Sasuke had a hand in his hair, twisting his head to the side to get at that spot on his neck that he liked. Girls were never aggressive enough with it, but Naruto knew he would be. Could almost feel the heat of breath, the sensation of a tongue laving the whole area.

But it was the imagined sting of teeth that set him off.

In his mind, Sasuke was coming too and Naruto couldn’t figure out if he wanted it inside of him or between them, where he could watch and mix their essences together on Sasuke’s stomach.

When he opened his eyes, Naruto groaned to see the room growing steadily darker. He was still flushed from his climax, still breathing heavily, but he needed to get cleaned up before Gaara got back, before any of his friends came looking for him.

He had maybe fifteen minutes to shower, change and hide any offending evidence.

He hauled himself upright, wincing at the mess in his shorts. Stupid. He really was being so stupid.

As he stripped off his shirt and grabbed a towel, Naruto lingered over the last image as it would look from above: him, head thrown back, Sasuke’s teeth locked into the fleshy part where neck meets shoulder.

It should maybe say something about Naruto that the idea of a guy biting him hard enough to draw blood could finish him off that quickly. And with that thought, another: did Sasuke even like guys?

Naruto snorted, shaking his head as he let himself out of the dorm and headed for the hall showers. Didn’t matter. Wouldn’t be the first straight guy he got in bed.

———

Sasuke already had the night’s work laid out by the time Naruto got to the library, neat stacks of paper and sharpened pencils aligned like soldiers. Naruto dropped into the chair across from him with a little too much force, grinning wide, like he hadn’t spent the past twenty-four hours thinking about this exact moment.

“Man, you’re serious about this,” he said, reaching for a pencil. “You sharpen these yourself? Bet they cry if they’re not lined up straight enough.”

Sasuke didn’t even look up. “You’re late.”

Naruto’s grin wavered for a second, then came back sharper. “Only by, what—five minutes? You miss me that bad?”

Sasuke’s eyes flicked up, flat and unimpressed. “No,” he said shortly, holding out a hand. “Give me your last returned assignment for the class and whatever you’re working on for it now.”

Naruto’s ears went hot as he dug through the mess in his bag. Jiraiya’s signature slashed across one page, big and lazy, like he hadn’t even read what he was signing. Typical. Naruto sighed and shoved both pages across the table—the last assignment with its glaring red marks and a fat “D” at the top, and the half-finished one Jiraiya had already ruined with his scribbles.

Sasuke’s eyebrow arched as he took them in. He didn’t say anything, just set the papers aside with surgical precision and gestured toward the fresh worksheet.

Naruto flushed harder. Somehow the silence was worse than if Sasuke had torn into him.

He tried to focus on the worksheet—really, he did. But every movement across the table tugged at him: the scratch of Sasuke’s pencil, the brush of his hand over a sheet of paper, the impression of movement from the corner of Naruto’s eye as he adjusted the row of pencils. Last night’s images crowded in uninvited—Sasuke’s body curled into him, his teeth hot points of pressure on his skin.

He pressed the eraser too hard, snapped the tip clean off. “Shit.”

Sasuke’s sigh was audible. He slid one of his perfectly sharpened pencils across the table. “Try not to break this one.”

Naruto picked it up, fingers brushing over the wood. His grin tilted recklessly again, covering the twist in his gut. “Careful—you keep handing me things, I might start thinking you like me.”

This time, Sasuke didn’t even dignify it with a look.

Naruto slumped back in his chair with a silent groan, eyes fixing on the ceiling as his heart thundered harder than it should. He was being too obvious, too loud, but he couldn’t stop. If Sasuke noticed even a little, just one thing, maybe it would mean last night hadn’t been completely insane.

Maybe Naruto wasn’t being that stupid.

“Is that done, then?”

Naruto jerked, eyes snapping down to find Sasuke staring at him across the table, expression flat but gaze sharp. He glanced down at the worksheet, at his fumbling attempts at the problems on the front page. “Uh—nearly?”

He leaned forward, over the sheet again. “Seriously though, do you ever get tired of being so cold?” he asked, almost without thinking about it. “Half the time, I can’t tell if you’re ignoring me on purpose or if you really are that dense.”

“Dense.”

The tone in Sasuke’s voice was flat; when Naruto looked up through his lashes, the other man was looking at him with a strange expression on his face—not quite a sneer, not quite a grimace. Like he wasn’t sure what the dig actually was, just that it was there.

Naruto huffed a nervous laugh. “See? That’s almost funny—you’ve got jokes and everything,” he said.

That earned him the barest flicker of an eye-roll, and Naruto’s pulse jumped like he’d scored a point.

“Seriously,” he pressed, pushing the worksheet away from him as he met Sasuke’s gaze. The words seemed to tumble out before he could check what was actually going to come out of his mouth. “I’m throwing out my best material here. Are you really that oblivious—” The grin was back, sharper. Reckless. “—or do you just not swing this way?”

Chapter Text

Sasuke's brain stalled. The words kept ringing in his ears—swing this way—like a curse designed to burrow and rot.

Was he macking on him? That would be a standard Naruto tactic: stupid joke, no depth. Except... Naruto's grin hadn't looked edged with triumph, only a kind of nerves. Maybe a little shock, like he'd surprised himself. Too genuine. So it had to be a trap. A crude game of chicken, Naruto laying bait to see if Sasuke would flinch.

But then again, maybe it was an insult—Naruto picking up old whispers, turning them back on him. A dare, because his reaction could prove everything true. He could already hear the laughter if he snapped back too fast, could see Naruto holding it over him until the end of the semester—longer, even.

Unless it was pity. A crueler thought, but one Sasuke couldn't rule out. Naruto, all wide-eyed benevolence, trying to reach across some imaginary divide with clumsy words. Pathetic. Sasuke's stomach twisted harder at the possibility of that humiliation. But that wasn't right—Naruto wasn't one for pity, no matter how pitiful a person he was presented with. Arguably, it could be difficult to present him with anyone more worthy of pity than himself, and he certainly didn't abide that from anyone else l.

Was it projection? Naruto foisting off his own embarrassing fixation, pointing the spotlight elsewhere before anyone could notice where it belonged. That sounded more like him—loud, messy, impossible to ignore.

Then again, maybe it wasn't a question at all. Maybe Naruto had already told everyone, had a whole audience waiting to hear how the great Uchiha reacted to being cornered. The idea burned in Sasuke's chest—humiliation before it even had a chance to happen.

Somewhere behind all the twisting, sinuous paranoia was a small voice, like the light at the end of a long tunnel: What if he's serious? No mocking. No baiting. No pity. Just... asking. Wanting to know.

Sasuke turned that thought over as little as possible, not wanting to examine why it was the one he couldn't find it in himself to refute. Or why it sparked other memories—ones he’d buried, but never managed to erase.

Helping string paper lanterns across the quad last spring, roped in with Naruto to make Sakura and Ino’s anniversary “romantic.” Naruto had complained the whole time, made a mess of the streamers, but for a handful of minutes they’d fallen into rhythm. Up the ladder, hand off, tie, repeat. No rivalry. No biting words. Just… work. In sync.

The first time he’d heard Naruto laugh for real, later that same afternoon, when the lanterns lit and Ino kissed Sakura in front of everyone. Bright, unguarded, nothing to do with bluster or noise. Sasuke had looked up before he could stop himself, caught in the warmth like an idiot.

And then the memory that refused to fade, no matter how hard he walled it off: Naruto’s mouth sliding against his, an accident, brief and clumsy and unforgettable. Everyone had laughed, called it nothing, and Sasuke had played along. But the imprint lingered anyway, flaring hot whenever he let it slip through.

Sasuke sat frozen, expression flat, while his head spun through these thoughts like a chalkboard covered in frantic scrawls: motives, arrows, accusations, half-erased conclusions. The crazy thing was that sincerity—that impossible, idiotic sincerity—was the one answer he couldn't bear to disprove. And in the center of that mental chalkboard: What did he mean, his “best material”?

He might've sat there forever, locked in silent catastrophe, if not for the library doors slamming open.

"MY FRIENDS!" Rock Lee boomed, chest out, arms flung wide like he'd just conquered some invisible battlefield—completely ignoring the librarian's glare of death and destruction. "This weekend we celebrate with PASSION and YOUTH—I am hosting a gathering most EPIC!"

Across from him, Sasuke watched Naruto blink, then turn slowly to face the door. "...A party? You're throwing a party?"

"Yes!" Lee's grin blazed. "I have been told it is a rite of passage in university, a duty—nay! An honor! And I shall perform it with vigor!"

Naruto's voice sounded hesitant. Sasuke could picture his face, eyes squinting, suspicious.

He didn't examine why it was so easy to picture Naruto's expression either.

"Who told you that?"

Lee puffed up even taller. "Some noble upperclassmen, wrongfully maligned for their own past festivities, but generous enough to share their wisdom with me."

Naruto groaned, loud enough to earn another death glare from the librarian even though Lee had quieted down. "Lee, that's not—"

But Lee had already shifted focus, fixing Sasuke with eyes so wide and earnest they might've been weapons. "Uchiha! You must come. It will not be the same without you. Ino, Gaara, Temari, Kankuro—they have all promised their presence. You are my friend too, and I cannot imagine my first great party without you!"

Sasuke opened his mouth, ready to dismiss him outright—except the words snagged on his tongue. Friend. He didn't consider Lee his friend, exactly, but Lee had said it like a fact. And now Sasuke could see the names listed out in his mind, all the people who would be there, all the witnesses if he refused.

The lack of an immediate "no" seemed to be enough for Lee. He turned and threw the library doors open again, to the librarian's outrage, and strode off into the night, on a mission to spread the word to who knew how many more people. Sasuke blinked after him, then refocused on the flustered blonde across from him.

Naruto was scrubbing his palms over his scalp, grimacing. "I've gotta go find out what exactly is going on before this turns into an arson charge or something," he said, shoving his work into his bag carelessly and leaning across the table to snatch up his current assignment, the one Sasuke hadn't had a chance to look at yet. Sasuke opened his mouth to protest—that assignment was due Thursday, there wouldn't be another chance for him to review it—but Naruto was already on his way to the door with a casual, "I'll see you Thursday!"

And then he was gone, chasing Lee across the quad as the doors slipped closed behind the two. Sasuke remained, staring at the empty chair on the other side of the table, the snapped pencil the only evidence of its most recent occupant.

The library echoed with silence after the boisterous interruption, but it couldn't drown out that last, impossible question still ringing in his head.

Do you not swing this way?

Sasuke gathered his papers with more force than he meant to, the edges crumpling under his grip. The pencil Naruto had snapped lay abandoned on the table like a jagged laugh at his expense. He swept it into his bag anyway, as though leaving it behind would be evidence someone could gather against him, could lead to answers he didn’t want to give.

The walk back to his dorm cut across the quad, lamplight spilling in clean angles over brick and stone. Students lingered in clusters despite the late hour, their voices cutting through the night. None of them were talking about him, but suspicion prickled anyway—like Naruto’s words had attached themselves to his back, were spreading in the open air.

He knew what he wanted out of people. Right now, that was nothing. But he’d had something like it with Ino, he’d thought he had it with Shisui. Both had been worth wanting in their own way. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was Naruto: loud, reckless, with a reputation he wore like a second skin. Not someone Sasuke could ever take lightly. Not someone he could let close, no matter how sharp the spark when their eyes caught.

By the time he keyed into his single, suspicion had settled into his skin like static. He shut the door behind him harder than he meant to. The silence wasn’t peace, just a cage with thinner walls.

The question still clung. Do you not swing this way? Even in the phrasing, Naruto seemed to be asking more than he’d intended. Unless he knew something not many people did. Not a matter of gender. A matter of Naruto—always Naruto—somehow the trap and the honey coating it in one being.

He set his bag down with clinical precision, lined his notebooks in order on the desk. Routine, methodical. It did nothing to smooth the tension threading through him.

When the notification chimed on his phone—Wednesday’s call with his father canceled—it barely surprised him. Just another absence to add to the list.

He wanted to run, but he’d blown out the soles on his Nikes with some impressive time on the treadmills over the weekend. Plus, his calves would probably revolt. Maybe if he lay really still for just fifteen minutes, he would be able to fall asleep despite the brushfire raging in the back of his mind.

———

He couldn’t.

He’d lain there, perfectly still, body heavy against the mattress, waiting for quiet to come. But quiet hadn’t meant silence. It meant the question echoing back at him on a loop: Do you not swing this way? Every time his breathing slowed, there it was again, colliding with the chime of his father’s cancellation, with the hollow grid of tomorrow’s empty schedule.

By the time dawn dragged itself across the blinds, his head felt packed with ash. No rest, only residue.

The day stretched in front of him blankly, unspooled hours where the call should have been, where something—anything—should have broken the monotony. Instead there was nothing, and into that nothing Naruto’s voice kept seeping, filling up the gaps.

He tried the usual rituals: shower, coffee, notebook in order. He moved through each step as though the precision could make him untouchable. But the brushfire in the back of his mind never went out.

And with no call, no obligations, there was too much room for it to spread.

By the time he sat down in Kakashi’s lecture, the fire had settled into something honed. Every question, every example tossed to the class, Sasuke was there with the answer—quick, clipped, precise enough to sting. Kakashi’s mask shifted more than once, no doubt hiding a smirk, but he didn’t challenge it. He knew the difference between preparation and weaponization. Sasuke was eviscerating the material like it had offended him personally.

Later, in his TA block, that edge only got sharper. His grading pen slashed through mistakes with a satisfaction that felt almost physical. Students unfortunate enough to cross his desk in person got the same treatment: wrong answers dismantled with cold, merciless logic until they squirmed. More than once, Kakashi joined in, trading off barbs with Sasuke in a way that left one sophomore blinking back humiliation. Kakashi even chuckled at one particularly ruthless turn of phrase, and Sasuke felt the smallest flare of vindication.

He didn’t smile once.

Toward the end of the afternoon, Iruka appeared in the doorway, folders under one arm and that polite-but-determined set to his jaw. “Kakashi, I need those student petitions signed before the registrar deadline. You can’t keep—”

Kakashi waved lazily from behind his desk. “Deadlines are just guidelines, Iruka. You know that.”

Iruka’s sigh carried all the weight of someone who’d had this argument too many times. “The registrar doesn’t.”

Sasuke stacked his papers in silence, slipping them neatly into his bag. He moved past them without a word. Iruka offered him a small nod, recognition tinged with something almost warm, but Sasuke didn’t return it. His eyes stayed forward, already fixed on the hallway ahead.

———

Anko’s class didn’t allow for silence.

She was already prowling the front of the lecture hall when Sasuke slid into his seat, heels clicking sharp against the tile, eyes flashing like she’d sniffed blood. “Case study time, kids! Enron. Biggest fraud of the century. Everyone ignored the whistleblowers—everyone thought the profits were real. Guess what happened next?”

Hands rose hesitantly. Sasuke’s was first, his answer clipped, merciless. “Collapse. Criminal charges. Thousands unemployed.”

Anko’s grin was feral. “Bingo, Uchiha. And why?”

He didn’t blink. “Because people are stupid. They believe what benefits them.”

She barked a laugh. “Cold, but not wrong.”

Naruto, a few rows back, leaned forward on his desk. “Or because people didn’t want to admit the system was rigged in the first place,” he blurted. “Like—if you start pulling at one thread, the whole sweater unravels, right?”

A ripple of chuckles went through the class. Anko’s head snapped toward him, smile sharp. “You think you’ve got a better read, Uzumaki?”

Naruto didn’t flinch. “I mean… yeah? Sometimes the obvious thing isn’t stupid, it’s just uncomfortable.”

Anko’s grin widened. “Finally, someone with teeth.”

Sasuke turned, expression flat, but Naruto was focused on the board, where Anko was scrawling Stupid vs Uncomfortable, already calling out for other examples of similar failures that could fall under either or both. Sasuke scowled as she wrote ‘Enron’ right in the middle.

By the time Anko dismissed them, Sasuke’s notes were immaculate, the margins neat, the content distilled to its sharpest points. He’d successfully avoided any additional contact with Naruto by sheer force of will, smothering his own cutting remarks whenever the blonde’s contributions got that wolf’s grin out of the professor. It should’ve been satisfying. Instead it only fed the restless hum under his skin.

Normally, he would have gone straight back to his dorm, checked off the rest of his list with methodical precision—homework, grading, review before talking to his father. Tonight he lingered. Stopped by the library to double-check a citation he already knew was correct. Went to the gym and drew out his workout until the muscles in his shoulders burned. Even took the long way back across campus, ignoring the cold bite of the evening air.

Anything to stretch the hours thinner, to keep from stepping into that single room and being left alone with the echo of silence where a call should have been.

But time resisted. The campus emptied, the air grew sharper, and still the question invaded every thought: Do you not swing this way? It wove itself into every gap, like smoke dissipating and getting everywhere.

Avoidance was just another trick of the coward though, and Sasuke soon found himself outside his door, keying in to face the dead laptop he hadn’t carried around all day to review company memos. It was on his desk, exactly where he’d left it when he realized he wouldn’t need it. Sasuke had stretched the hours thin, but it hadn’t dulled the edge of anything—only sharpened it. His muscles still buzzed from the gym, his head still thrummed from Anko’s lecture and the silence inside his single room offered no relief.

Fine. He knew another way to wear himself out. Crude, mechanical, no different than a treadmill or a pen run dry.

He didn’t bother unpacking his bag, just shoved it aside as he kicked off his shoes and stripped, methodical, as though precision could disguise intent.

Naked, with the lights off and the door locked, he stretched out on his bed and reached down, seeking sensation and an empty mind.

For a moment, there was nothing but movement and breath. The rhythm was steady, mechanical, as if he could grind the tension out of himself by sheer force. His mind went blank the way he wanted it to—until blankness betrayed him.

The silence filled, and what rushed in wasn’t relief. It was Naruto, crashing in like he always did. That grin, too wide and too careless. That voice, grating and impossible to ignore. The heat in his eyes when he’d leaned across the library table, the nerve in that question that had left Sasuke frozen.

Do you not swing this way?

Did he?

The thought made him growl. He tried to shove the image, that face, back, tried to picture anyone else—Ino, Shisui, Gaara for fuck’s sake—but the smoke curled back every time, reforming the same face, the same voice, the same rapacious heat.

Naruto was everywhere. Overwhelming. Permeating. The more Sasuke fought it, the more it consumed.

His brain supplied images: Naruto in the gym, working out with Kiba until they had to wipe down the weight bench three times before someone else could use it; Naruto, always pushing back during Iruka’s Principles of Management course until one or both of them were yelling, fire in his eyes; Naruto on the quad between classes, alone for once, bobbing his head to whatever music he listened to on those oversized headphones he carried everywhere; Naruto, Naruto, Naruto.

It was like a dam broke—a hundred little glimpses flooded his mind, then evaporated in waves of steam against the wildfire that had been growing in the back of his head all day. The steam twisted into images and sounds that Sasuke had never seen, never intended to imagine, but his body reacted like it had been waiting for them.

He’d be powerful in bed, whether he was on top or bottom. He’d never lose that fire in his eyes, even if he were on his knees at Sasuke’s feet. He’d hum with his mouth full, never silent, never still.

Sasuke rolled onto his side and smothered a shout into his pillow, the image of those blue, burning eyes searing through his synapses as he came in his hand, desperately wishing it was Naruto’s mouth.

The silence afterward was worse than the fire. His breath still ragged, his hand sticky, the air in the room heavy with heat—and Naruto still everywhere in his head. He dragged himself to the bathroom, washed his hands until the skin felt raw, but the water didn’t scour the images out.

Disgraceful.

He pulled his laptop open with clinical precision, eyes locked on the screen as if the glow could erase what had just happened. Logged into the tutoring program. The excuse he typed was flimsy—schedule conflict, unexpected workload—but he knew it would pass. He never canceled. Not once. One request wouldn’t raise suspicion.

Disgraceful.

He submitted it, made sure it only flagged the single Thursday block—the one name he couldn’t stand to face tomorrow—and closed the lid again. Routine, methodical, all under control.

Disgraceful.

The word echoed in his head, each repetition heavier than the last. He’d treated it like exercise, like maintenance, like discipline. And still Naruto had invaded, overwhelmed, consumed. And now Sasuke had screwed up his carefully organized time blocks of his own freewill.

Coward.

———

The next day passed in a blur, classes and people swirling around him. He sat down in one class and looked up in another, mystified by what had happened in between. Thank Gods his notes were meticulous even through the haze—he’d have to look over everything at some point.

Not some point. He had ninety minutes free that very evening.

The underclassmen seemed to think it was a sign of things to come, that he was relaxing as they inched ever closer to midterms. Some even approached, fawning, cowering, sycophantic—suffocating in their urge to appease him in some way.

He almost—almost—missed the one person who would never appease him.

By the end of the second tutoring block, Sasuke found himself glancing around the quiet library, expecting an obnoxious blonde who didn’t bother reading his emails to pop out of the woodwork. If Naruto showed up anyway, what would Sasuke do then?

But Naruto did not appear in the library, or anywhere on campus as Sasuke made his way back to his dorm.

Back in his room, Sasuke tried for his usual diligence. He pulled out his notes, flipped through the margins, checked each outline against what he remembered. The precision was still there, the content sharp. He was sure he would remember all the details if he just read back over everything—that’s why students take notes, after all.

But he yawned before he could flip back to the beginning and dig in, his jaw cracking like a gunshot in the quiet.

For the first time all week, relief pressed down on him, heavy and unfamiliar. Maybe it hadn’t been Naruto at all. Maybe it was fatigue, the cancellation, the stretch of days without real sleep. Ordinary issues. Nothing more.

He shut his notebook, stacked it neatly. He could look over the notes later, if he still felt the need.

He changed out of his day clothes, firmly ignored the interest coiling in his belly, forced himself into pajamas he didn’t usually care for and crawled into bed.

This time, sleep came fast, thick and dreamless.

When morning broke, his body felt lighter, steadier, as if the ash that had been clinging to him all week had finally burned off. His mind clicked cleanly from one thought to the next, sharp, orderly.

He almost laughed at himself—at the wasted energy, the paranoia, the restless haze. Foolish, really, to think one blond idiot could knock him off balance so completely. Fatigue, that was all. A canceled call, a few late nights. Nothing more.

He dressed with brisk efficiency, notebooks stacked with their usual precision, and set out into the day with something that felt like clarity.

All day Friday, he wavered. His scowl deepened whenever the echoes of Lee’s booming announcement floated across campus, but the weight of names—Neji, Ino, Temari, Kankuro, Gaara—hung there too. People who would notice if he didn’t show. People who might believe Lee when he called Sasuke a friend.

By nightfall, he found himself standing in front of another dorm lounge just like his own, jaw tight, every step another argument with himself. He wasn’t going in. He had no reason to.

And yet, against his better judgment, he pushed the door open anyway.

The blast of sound hit first—music rattling cheap speakers, the bass fighting with a dozen different conversations. The air smelled of too many bodies crammed into too small a space, sweat and sugar and the bite of spilled beer. Someone had already ground chips into the carpet.

Sasuke’s gaze skimmed the chaos: Lee booming over the din, arms windmilling as he shouted something about hydration; Temari perched on the arm of a couch like a queen surveying her domain; Shino half-shoved into a corner by Kankuro, who was trying to keep his drink upright; Ino laughing too loudly at something Gaara hadn’t actually said.

And then—Naruto.

He was already facing the door, sprawled across the back of a chair like he owned the room, eyes bright and fixed, waiting. The grin that broke across his face wasn’t careless at all. It was sharp. Hungry.

Like he’d been hunting.

Sasuke froze, the illusion of clarity from the morning evaporating in a single glance.

Naruto didn’t look away when their eyes met. He leaned forward, slow, deliberate, that grin stretching wider.

“Bout time you showed up,” he called over the noise, loud enough to cut through. “Thought you were gonna stand me up again.”

The words landed like a trap snapping shut.

Sasuke’s jaw tightened. He turned, already angling toward the quieter edge of the room. He pushed through the crowd, jaw tight, telling himself he’d last ten minutes, fifteen at most. Long enough for Lee to see him, long enough for everyone else to mark his presence. Then he’d leave.

The noise was worse in the lounge, so he cut sideways toward the kitchen. If he was going to survive this, he was going to need a drink.

And there was Naruto, already leaning against the counter, a bottle held out jauntily. Not cheap swill, either—something cold, dark, real. It wasn’t what anyone else at the party seemed to be drinking either, but he held it out like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Sasuke took it slowly, suspicion coiled tight. It was still sealed, so it couldn't be tampered with at all. And it was just one beer—so it couldn’t be some kind of ploy to get his guard down. He popped the cap and raised it to his mouth. It was clean, bitter, the kind of thing he actually drank.

He glared over the rim, let what passed for silence at a party this big speak for him, and turned on his heel.

Back in the lounge, Lee was shouting himself hoarse, trying to convince people to partake of the filtered tap water. Sasuke made sure to tip his head in the man’s direction as he passed. Obligation fulfilled.

He could still feel Naruto’s gaze like heat on the back of his neck. But when he didn’t follow, Sasuke breathed a little easier in the crush of bodies.

Chapter Text

Naruto had been in top form all night—loud, laughing when someone shoved a drink into his hand, grinning when Lee climbed on the counter to declare something unintelligible over the music, throwing out jokes just sharp enough to keep himself in the current. But underneath it all, his eyes were tracking only one thing from across the room.

Sasuke.

Three days ago, Naruto had asked a question he hadn’t even been sure he wanted answered, and Sasuke hadn’t given him one. Not really. But the delay—that interminable, frozen moment before Lee’s chaos cut in—was enough for Naruto to take as a sign. Non-answer was still an answer. It meant he wasn’t completely wrong to push.

Even the cancellation felt like less of a loss in the face of that one moment of hesitance. He’d spent all of Wednesday’s class drilling holes into the back of Sasuke’s head, waiting for him to snap, to glare, to something. The only answer came the next morning in the form of that bland cancellation email—sent the night before, after a whole period of sitting stiff-backed and refusing to turn around. It felt less like a brush-off and more like a tug on a fishing line.

And now, Sasuke had shown up like he didn’t even want to be there, shoulders set, that scowl already tugging at his mouth. Naruto had seen the moment Sasuke had angled toward the door—fifteen minutes, tops, Naruto knew that look—but then Ino snagged him, and Gaara drifted over and suddenly there was a whole current pulling Sasuke deeper into the crowd. He hadn’t managed to break free again, not really. Someone always seemed to fill the space beside him.

Naruto was leaning against the wall between the panel windows that lined the whole side of the building, running through the lounge and into the kitchen. A girl he didn’t know—what a rarity—was flirting her heart out and running up against a brick wall. His attention had one focus tonight.

Even better? The plan was working.

He’d watched Sasuke try to disentangle himself at least twice already, only to get swept right back in. Like quicksand.

Kiba had brushed past him only a few minutes after he first tried to bolt, casual as anything, swapping out his empty bottle for a fresh one. And it was good beer—Naruto had made sure of that, even if it had taken an hour of stroking Ino’s ego to get the information out of her and his wallet would scream at him for a week. Choji did the same, no fuss or fanfare as he handed off a fresh bottle, popping the cap before Sasuke could protest.

His friends thought he was ridiculous, but they’d shrugged and gone along when he’d asked them to. Why not? They knew they’d planted the seed themselves and there was absolutely no point in trying to stop Naruto once he put his mind to something.

And now there Sasuke was, beer always in hand, never noticing how it found its way back to him.

Naruto tipped his own bottle to his mouth, hiding the grin threatening to break loose. See? He could execute a plan.

Sasuke was cornered now—half-listening to Sakura gush, one shoulder angled toward the exit like if he shifted just right, he could slide free. But Shikamaru and Temari were guarding the exit in their couple-y way, making out behind a fake tree. When Temari ducked her head into his neck, Naruto caught a lazy smirk and a wink aimed in his direction.

Naruto snorted into his drink, the foam hitting the back of his throat, and pushed off the wall. Time for the next brush.

He timed it easy, loose—half-spinning past the open floor full of couples dancing too close, dropping a quick joke in Kiba’s ear on his way, and then, oh, look at that, right into Sasuke’s path.

“Yo,” he said, tipping his bottle like a casual greeting, but stepping just close enough that Sasuke had to shift away from the door. Smooth. Subtle.

Sasuke’s shoulder twitched like he’d felt the maneuver and hated it. His gaze flicked toward the exit again, then cut back to Naruto, sharp.

Naruto grinned wider, playing dumb. “Relax, man. Just keeping you company. Didn’t think you came here to brood in a corner.” He tipped his chin toward the door. “Anyway, you wouldn’t make it far in that direction. Shikamaru and Temari’ve been guarding it for, like—” he let out a snicker, “twenty minutes now.”

Sasuke’s eyes flickered, not quite leaving Naruto’s face but giving the impression of looking over his shoulder, expression carved from stone.

“I wasn’t leaving.”

Naruto’s grin crooked. “Right. You’ve just been angling in that direction all night for absolutely no reason.”

The glare Sasuke leveled could’ve cracked glass. “Well,” he said, voice dangerous and low. “You’re in the way now.”

That was as good as any invitation Naruto had ever heard. He felt it fizz under his skin like soda and PopRocks. He rocked forward, bracing one hand flat against the wall above Sasuke’s shoulder, arm stretched out so he wasn’t crowding him, not really. But the bubble of space between them shrank all the same, charged tight enough to hum.

“Hey,” Naruto said, all teeth, all grin. “I’m doing you a favor. You really wanna fight your way past Temari mid-make out? Pretty sure she’d take your head off.”

Sasuke huffed through his nose, short and sharp, turning his face away. “Better than listening to you.”

Naruto leaned in another hair’s breadth, grin curling into a devious little smile that had charmed guys, gals and non-binary pals into giving him the time of day.

“C’mon, I’m good company.” His voice dropped, rough-edged with amusement, leaning close enough that he could feel Sasuke vibrating with tension. “Just admit it—you’d be bored out of your mind without me.”

Sasuke’s eyes cut back to him, sharp as a blade. “You don’t know when to quit.”

“So you have noticed.” Naruto’s voice was warm and deep with satisfaction and he watched Sasuke’s face twitch like he wanted to cringe back from the words. It was—cute, all the tightly contained intensity that Naruto could bring to the surface with just a few words.

He blinked, momentarily lost to the conversation.

“—waste time on someone like you?”

His focus snapped back, Sasuke’s voice low and cutting. Naruto straightened, heat licking up his neck, but he grabbed onto the words like they were another joke, not a dismissal. His grin snapped back into place.

“Hey, no need to get dramatic. It doesn’t have to be anything serious,” he said, rolling his extended shoulder in a shrug. “It’s a party, who cares?”

The shift was instant. Sasuke went still, like a string pulled taut. For a heartbeat, Naruto thought he’d scored, that the silence meant he’d finally gotten under his skin the way he wanted.

Then, Sasuke’s shoulder dipped, sliding out from under Naruto’s arm in a motion so precise it felt like he’d been practicing it all his life.

He didn’t look back when he spoke, voice pitched low and sharp enough to cut. “Find someone else to screw with. I’m not interested.”

The words hit like a slap—brusque, crude, nothing like Sasuke’s usual controlled precision. For a beat, Naruto just stood there, mouth opening and closing around a reply that wouldn’t come. And then he was moving—shoving through the press of bodies, chasing recklessly while Sasuke cut smoothly through the chaos, the spark of indignation and something rawer driving him forward.

He caught Sasuke’s wrist at the hallway, quieter and filled with closed doors.

“Wait—hold up! I didn’t think I’d—” his voice caught, too loud in his own ears— “scare you.”

Sasuke wrenched his wrist free, slow and deliberate instead of violent, like he didn’t even need the effort. His eyes were black ice when they cut to Naruto.

“It’s just like you,” he said, voice quiet and lethal. “To assume everyone's as flippant as you are.”

Naruto flinched, the words slicing closer than he wanted to admit.

Sasuke’s mouth curled, not a smile—not even close. “We’re not even friends.”

Naruto swallowed hard, throat dry. The grin he always wore slipped, words tumbling out rougher, rawer than he meant. “I didn’t—look, I didn’t mean it like—”

A roar split the air behind them, glass shattering, laughter pitched too high into panic. Someone shouted Lee’s name over the crash.

Naruto twisted instinctively toward the sound. And when he snapped his head back, Sasuke was already at the far end of the hall, stride sharp and steady, not sparing him a glance before slipping out the back exit.

Naruto stood there, heart pounding, apology dead on his tongue.

———

It took twenty minutes, a flurry of broken furniture and Naruto, Neji, Tenten, Kiba, Shikamaru and Choji to restrain and contain Rock Lee. Temari, Sakura and Ino fielded fleeing party-goers, somehow convincing all of them not to call campus patrol and after another thirty minutes of smothering his erratic outbursts, Neji and Tenten were able to soothe him enough to cart Lee off to his dorm room.

Naruto tried to slip out the second they disappeared down the hallway, but Temari had a broom in her hand before he made it three steps.

“Nice try. The host is down, the hall monitor’s gone, and you’re on cleanup duty, Uzumaki.”

He groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “I’m the only one who told Lee this was a terrible idea. Shouldn’t that be, like, the end of my responsibility?”

“Shouldn’t have come if you didn’t want to pick up after him,” Temari shot back, shoving the broom into his hands.

Naruto stayed, of course—grumbling, griping, but sweeping broken glass into piles until long past midnight. By the time they got the lounge furniture shoved back into something resembling order, Sasuke was long gone.

The rest of the weekend was a blur of hunting. He wheedled, bargained, and outright begged for Sasuke’s number—Ino smirked and told him to get lost, Shikamaru pretended not to hear, and Gaara just stared until Naruto gave up. When that failed, he haunted the quad, loitering on benches and pretending to nap with one eye cracked open, waiting for a flash of black hair to pass by. Nothing.

Sunday morning, bleary-eyed and nursing coffee, he finally checked his email—and nearly dropped the mug.

Your tutoring sessions are being reassigned. Please check the scheduling portal for updates.

Canceled. Just like that.

By Monday, Naruto was wound tight enough to pop. So when he slouched into the chair across from his mentor’s desk and tossed the email printout down like evidence, he reeked of desperation.

“My tutoring got canceled.”

Jiraiya barely glanced at it. “Maybe your grades were enough to scare off your tutor.”

“Not funny.” Naruto’s knee bounced, restless. “It was Sasuke. I—” He cut himself off, dragging a hand through his hair. “I screwed it up. Said something stupid. He thinks I don’t care, but I do. I really do. And now he’s avoiding me like some kind of—ninja!”

Jiraiya leaned back, fingers laced behind his head like he had all the time in the world, a knowing grin unfurling across his face. “Ah, Sasuke.”

Naruto bristled, scowling at the old man. There must have been enough venom in the look to prove he was serious, because Jiraiya sighed.

“Look kid, you’re overthinking it. Romance is a dance—you push, you pull, you retreat. Keep him guessing, keep the mystery alive.”

Naruto blinked, incredulous. “Mystery? He already won’t talk to me!”

“That’s the point,” Jiraiya said, wagging a finger. “You don’t just hand yourself over. People value what they have to chase. Tease him, back off, make him wonder why you’re not knocking on his door.”

Naruto groaned. “So your big idea is to ignore him?”

“Not ignore.” Jiraiya’s grin was wolfish. “Strategic retreat. Then when you reappear—bam! Dramatic timing. Works every time.”

Naruto dropped his head into his hands. “You’re the worst. The absolute worst.”

But the words stuck anyway, lodging under his ribs. Push, pull, retreat. Dramatic timing. Maybe there was something there, if he twisted it around. Not games, not bait—but… pacing. Giving Sasuke space. Picking the right moment?

When he left, he wasn’t any calmer but at least he had a plan. Sort of.

Now if he could just fucking find Sasuke.

———

Tuesday afternoon found him waffling between actually going to his classes and haunting Kakashi’s office. He knew Sasuke was the lazy professor’s TA, he’d have to show up there eventually right?

“You’ll never convince him to take you seriously by skipping class.”

The soft voice cut through his indecision and he turned to find Hinata watching him mildly.

Naruto flushed and laughed shakily. “What do you mean? I’m going to class!”

“You’re thinking about hiding by Kakashi’s office and waiting for Sasuke,” Hinata said, cocking her head to the side. “Like a creep.”

Naruto deflated, head hanging from his shoulders like his spine had liquified. “Man, you’re brutal.”

Hinata’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “I just pay attention.”

He dragged a hand through his hair, grinning weakly. “So you noticed me making an idiot of myself at the party too, huh?”

“I noticed him,” she said softly. “The way he looked at you. At the end.”

Naruto’s breath hitched, grin faltering. “Yeah, well. He’s not looking at me now.”

Hinata shifted her books in her arms. “He goes to the library early. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Thirty minutes before his other sessions start. If you really want him to hear you—that’s when.”

Naruto blinked, stunned, then lit up like someone had dropped fire into his chest. “You’re a lifesaver, Hinata, seriously—”

She only shook her head, turning toward the quad. “Just… don’t waste it.”

The rest of the day passed in fits and starts, Naruto’s attention snapping like a rubber band. He sat through lectures without hearing a word, his notebooks filling with half-scribbled doodles of dark hair and sharp eyes instead of notes. Every clock ticked too slow and too fast all at once. By the time his last class let out, he’d already rehearsed a dozen apologies and shot each one down in his head.

He cut across the quad, nerves buzzing, and found himself at the edge of the library’s steps with thirty whole minutes still to kill. He ducked into the shadows of a side path, chewing at his thumbnail, eyes locked on the door.

Five minutes. Ten. And then there he was—Sasuke, steady stride, expression like carved stone, slipping through the doors with his bag slung low over one shoulder.

Naruto’s chest squeezed. He waited, bouncing on the balls of his feet, giving Sasuke time to settle. He knew how it worked by now: once Sasuke spread his papers out, lined up his pens, arranged his notes, that table became his territory. A lion’s den. He wouldn’t abandon it easily.

That was the moment Naruto needed.

He pushed inside, forcing his hands to stay loose at his sides instead of fisting with nerves. The library smelled of paper and dust and the faint tang of coffee from the basement café. It was quiet, every sound magnified—the creak of the door, the scuff of his sneakers on the floor.

And there was Sasuke, already spread out at his table, bent over his notes like the world could end if he looked up.

Naruto swallowed hard, heart hammering. This was it. His chance. One shot to get the words out before Sasuke shut him down.

“Uh—hi.” Great start.

Sasuke’s head whipped up, his eyes flashing dangerously, intent to harm in the way his fingers clenched on his pen. Naruto scrambled back a step, trying to say Peace Offering with the distance, with his stance, with his expression.

“I’m not here to waste your time, okay?” He blurted the words, clumsy and quick, before he could lose his nerve. “I screwed up at the party. Said the wrong thing, and I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

Naruto could see Sasuke’s jaw working, building up a scathing retort with incendiary force. His throat went tight, but he pushed on.

“I’ll be downstairs, in the cafe,” he said, taking another step back and gesturing with a thumb over his shoulder. “If you want to tell me to fuck off, or if you’ll even think about tutoring me again… that’s where I’ll be.”

And then he spun on his heel, before Sasuke could level him with another glare. Before he could linger and take up anymore of his prep time.

Before he could literally beg for forgiveness in the middle of the library.

The stairwell smelled like burnt espresso and lemon cleaner. Naruto thudded down the steps two at a time, heart hammering. He bought a coffee he didn’t want, snagged a muffin he wouldn’t eat and planted himself at a corner table.

His knee bounced. His fingers shredded the paper sleeve around the cup. It felt like waiting for a first date—except worse, because this felt like it actually mattered.

Chapter Text

Sasuke stacked the last set of notes for the night, squared the edges and slid them into his folder with a precision that had nothing to do with efficiency. It was ritual—pens capped in order, books shut, papers gathered.

He’d been planning on an early night when his two sessions were done. He had all those notes from last week he wanted to go over, from when he’d been so uncharacteristically distracted. Even that wouldn’t consume the entire hour and a half freed up by his cancelled third session, but he expected it would have been enough to exhaust him.

But he wasn’t the only one being uncharacteristic. Naruto had seemed almost timid, the way he backed up, gestured like he wanted to keep his hands in view at all times, to reassure that he wasn’t hiding anything.

His words from hours before clung like burrs. If you want to tell me to fuck off, or if you’ll even think about tutoring me again…

Sasuke hated being maneuvered. He hated it more when he could tell the other person didn’t even know they’d done it.

It wasn’t until his bag was on his shoulder that he made up his mind. And even then, it was more like his body made the decision for him. Sasuke found himself on the stairwell down to the cafe. The smell of burnt espresso and sugar syrup seemed to burst around him with every step.

Naruto was there, of course. Sprawled in a corner seat like he’d been waiting for hours—he had—a coffee cup shredded into confetti between his fingers. He was watching them breaking down small scraps into even smaller bits with a kind of focus that Sasuke really hadn’t expected him capable of.

Sasuke stood by the stairs for a long moment before scowling to himself and marching up to the table. He was satisfied with the way Naruto stiffened as soon as he pulled out a chair, his hands dropping from the mess of his cup into his lap and his back straightening.

“Hey,” the blonde said, voice low, careful. There was no sign of that repellently magnetic grin. No jokes, no swagger.

Naruto cleared his throat when Sasuke didn’t respond. “Look, I meant what I said. I was a dick at the party, and I’m sorry.” He glanced down, then looked up through his fringe. “And I was rude at our last session. You didn’t deserve—”

“Stop.” Sasuke cut him off before the apology could spiral. Naruto’s mouth snapped shut and he looked back down at his lap. Sasuke watched with narrowed eyes, sure there was still some game here despite the fact that he seemed to be acting so—remorseful.

After a long moment, Sasuke drew in a deep breath through his nose. “If I agree to tutor you again, there would be rules.”

Naruto blinked, lifting his head. For once, he didn’t look like he had any kind of quip ready. “Rules,” he echoed carefully.

“Yes,” Sasuke said, grinding his molars as he ordered his thoughts. “You would have to show up on time. Prepared. And I would not accept half-finished homework or excuses. You take my corrections and you fix your mistakes. No arguing. No distractions. If you can’t manage that, then it’s done.”

The words dropped like stones, each one sending a ripple of something over Naruto’s face and body language. When Sasuke was done, the flicker of a grin threatened at the corner of Naruto’s mouth—habit, reflex—but he caught it and smothered it into something smaller. More serious.

“Okay,” he said. “I can do that.”

Sasuke narrowed his eyes. “You say that now.”

“I mean it,” Naruto insisted, leaning forward with a glint of that foundational determination. “You think I’d sit here tearing a coffee cup to shreds for three hours if I didn’t? I’ll take it seriously—I promise.”

Sasuke studied him for another beat, searching for cracks. Naruto’s knee bounced under the table, but his gaze held steady.

“Thursday,” he said at last, pushing his chair back. “Don’t be late.”

Naruto’s relief was obvious, but he only nodded once, sharp and quick. “I’ll be there.”

———

Thursday came, and with it, Naruto.

On time. Books stacked, pencil sharpened, ready to go.

Sasuke made sure that wasn’t enough. He pushed. Every shortcut in Naruto’s notes, every half-formed answer, every pause too long over a formula—Sasuke pounced on it, voice sharp and cold. He wielded silence just as brutally, letting it stretch until Naruto flushed with discomfort.

But the outbursts never came. No excuses, no jokes to cover the sting. Naruto took every correction with a nod, erased, and started again.

Tuesday was the same. Sasuke kept his guard high, testing, circling. Naruto only bent his head and wrote, jaw tight but steady.

By the following Thursday, Sasuke was irritated in an entirely different way. His father had canceled Wednesday’s call again—short, perfunctory, not even an apology this time. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been bracing for it until the silence was all that remained. That sourness bled into his tutoring, but it rang hollow. The edge in his voice dulled—not softened, never that, but less honed to cut. His questions turned less toward finding flaws and more toward pressing depth.

Naruto still answered seriously, but every so often, Sasuke caught the twitch of a smirk, a flicker of the old grin held carefully in check.

By the end of the second week, when Sasuke closed his notes and found the silence stretched between them easy instead of brittle, he had to admit it: Naruto was diligent when he put his mind to something.

“Can I ask you something?”

Naruto wasn’t looking at him, was carefully putting his things away. Sasuke made a noncommittal sound—it didn’t matter if Naruto asked anyway, he didn’t have to answer.

“Every other tutor does shorter sessions, three days a week,” Naruto said after a moment, looking up at last as he zipped his bag shut. “What’s the deal with Wednesdays for you?”

Sasuke’s spine went rigid. The question landed harder than it should have, sharp as a hook because the sting of last night’s cancellation was still raw. Four weeks, and his father hadn’t even bothered with a dismissive excuse these last two.

His mouth shaped an automatic deflection—none of your business—but it caught in his throat. Naruto had shown up, followed every rule, refused to flinch under pressure. For once, there was no smirk, no bait in his tone. He was just watching Sasuke, open and humane.

“Up to now, I have had… obligations on Wednesdays,” Sasuke said finally, his tone low as he tried to put the words together in a way that wouldn’t expose the bleeding wound of the situation. “Lately, they’ve… become unreliable.”

Naruto’s brows furrowed. Then he huffed out a humorless laugh, shaking his head. “Figures. Sounds like a bunch of crap—making you bend your whole schedule around something they can’t even show up for.”

The words weren’t sharp, not meant to cut, but they lodged anyway. By the time Naruto slung his bag over his shoulder and left with a casual wave, Sasuke could still feel them pressing between his ribs.

The weekend passed in fragments. He tried to sink into his routine—morning runs, his own coursework, a perfunctory dinner with friends that was missing faces he’d grown used to. Namely, Naruto.

The thought kept circling back.

Unreliable.

Making you bend your whole schedule around them.

Saturday night, Sasuke sat at his desk with a blank calendar grid open, redrawing his week without the Wednesday call pinned like a weight at its center. The gaps it left behind startled him. He could run longer in the evenings. Sleep earlier. Reclaim the stretch of hours he’d been holding hostage for years.

Sunday morning, he drafted a message to his father’s assistant, concise as always. Please cancel the standing Wednesday calls until further notice. Let me know if Father’s schedule opens again.

Polite. Neutral. Nothing that revealed how raw the cancellations had left him, how much space they had carved out in his week.

By evening, he still hadn’t received a response. Sasuke wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

So he opened his tutoring portal instead. Requested the adjustment: three nights a week, one hour per student. A note about efficiency, nothing more. The confirmation email landed in his inbox before midnight.

He shut his laptop on it like closing a door.

———

Tuesday evening, Sasuke was already at the library table when Naruto barreled in. Five minutes late. His hair looked like he’d sprinted half the quad, his bag half-zipped with papers threatening to spill.

“Sorry—sorry, I know—” Naruto skidded to a stop, bracing a hand on the chair before collapsing into it. “I was trying to finish the problem set, and then I lost track of time, and then—”

Sasuke flicked his eyes to the clock, then back to Naruto. “Four minutes late.”

Naruto winced. “I know. I know. I swear I had everything ready—mostly ready. Just—less time than usual.” He dragged out his folder, pages crinkled but complete, and shoved them across the table. “You changed the schedule—my timeslot moved up like, an hour and a half. I had to work faster.”

Sasuke watched Naruto lean back in his chair, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. He wasn’t wearing his jacket, just a t-shirt, and he could see the muscles of Naruto’s torso flexing with each inhale, relaxing as the air rushed back out.

He blinked hard and picked up the sheets with overly precise fingers. The work was messy, but thorough. More thorough than he would have expected, given Naruto’s excuse.

“You’re telling me an earlier session is what finally made you prepare ahead of time?”

Naruto blinked, then grinned sheepishly. “Uh—yea? Guess deadlines work on me.”

Sasuke smirked, rolling his eyes as he slid a new worksheet across the table. “Well, that totally justifies the change.”

“Maybe for you,” Naruto huffed, but he was hiding a smile as he dug out his pencil. He tapped it nervously on the table, glancing back at Sasuke. “I’m just saying, I used to have a lot more room to work. Now I’ve gotta be on my game sooner. You could’ve given me a heads-up.”

“You’ll adjust,” Sasuke said coolly, smirk twitching into an almost-smile as he pulled out his notes. “Or you’ll fail. Either way, it’s not my problem.”

Naruto’s mouth twitched, caught between protest and a grin. “Cold, man. Real cold.”

But he bent his head to the work without another word.

Sasuke had to give him one thing—Naruto adapted quickly. He was on time Wednesday, dropping into his seat right at seven, but his stomach growled loud enough that the student two tables over turned to stare.

Naruto slapped a hand over his midsection, face flushing. “Okay, don’t say it—I know. I didn’t have time to eat.”

Sasuke arched a brow, pen pausing mid-line. “That’s not my problem.”

“Yeah, well, it kinda is,” Naruto muttered, flipping open his notebook with more force than necessary. “You moved me up, remember? Can’t finish my assignment and grab food. Something’s gotta give.”

“You could plan ahead,” Sasuke said flatly.

Naruto groaned, dragging both hands down his face. “You sound like Sarutobi. Planning ahead doesn’t fill my stomach right now.”

Another loud rumble punctuated the complaint, and Sasuke’s mouth betrayed him with the faintest twitch.

Naruto dropped his hands and leaned across the table, eyes bright despite the grumbling. “C’mon. When we’re done, we should hit Ichiraku. I’ll even pay—no excuses.”

Sasuke smirked faintly, already returning to the worksheet. “You can’t afford me.”

Naruto laughed under his breath, unbothered by the jab. “Bet you ramen’s cheaper than therapy.”

The corner of Sasuke’s mouth tugged higher despite himself. He bent back over his notes, letting the sound of Naruto’s pencil scratch fill the space. But when they packed up an hour later, Sasuke didn’t turn toward the dorms.

He followed Naruto out into the night air instead.

Thursday’s session slid by easier than Sasuke expected. Naruto got sharper every day, his answers quick if not always neat, his logic steadier under pressure. By the forty-five minute mark, the worksheet was done and checked twice over.

Naruto stretched back in his chair, pencil dangling from his fingers. “Hah. Look at that—I’m actually ahead of time. Miracles do happen.”

Sasuke glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes left. Too long to dismiss early, too short to bother starting something new from scratch. He tapped the edge of his notes, considering.

“Are there any other courses you’re behind in?” he asked.

Naruto hesitated, then grimaced. “Uh. Yeah. Risk Management & Corporate Governance. Don’t laugh—it’s brutal. Risk stuff I kind of get, but the governance side? Feels like trying to breathe underwater.”

Sasuke smirked, leaning back in his chair. “That’s because it requires discipline.”

Naruto sat up straighter, stung. “Hey, I’m not bad at it on purpose. I just think about risk different. Like, you jump in, see what happens, figure out how to deal with it after. Not… spreadsheeting every possible thing that could go wrong.”

“That’s recklessness,” Sasuke said flatly. “Risk isn’t guesswork—it’s controlled exposure. Governance is what makes it matter. Without oversight, it’s just chaos.”

Naruto leaned forward, bracing his arms on the table. “Yeah, but too much oversight just kills the risk part. You can’t grow if you’re so afraid of what might go wrong that you never move at all.”

The timer on Sasuke’s phone buzzed. End of session. Neither of them reached for their bags.

Instead, Naruto tilted his head toward the stairwell. “You’re good at this stuff. Wanna break it down more over coffee? I’ll buy, since you already saved my ass on derivatives.”

Sasuke should have said no. His schedule didn’t account for lingering.

“My treat,” he said instead, the debate already sparking in his mind, too alive to dismiss.

The café was half-empty, the low hum of conversation blending with the hiss of the espresso machine. Naruto appropriated an empty table and Sasuke went to the counter. He carried two black coffees back to their corner, already sorting through the argument in his head.

Naruto didn’t waste time. “Okay, so risk—you can’t avoid it. It’s built in. You cross the street, you risk getting hit by a car. You ask someone out, you risk looking like an idiot. That’s life.”

Sasuke took a measured sip, setting the cup down with deliberate care. “You would know—but governance is what keeps that risk from spiraling. Traffic laws. Crosswalks. Expectations.”

Naruto grinned irrepressibly as he leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Ouch. But rules don’t stop cars from running red lights. You can only prep so much before something blindsides you. And when it does? That’s when you figure out what you’re really made of.”

“That’s reactive,” Sasuke countered. “Which is another word for unprepared.”

Naruto grinned crookedly. “Or adaptable. Depends on how you spin it.”

Sasuke rolled his eyes, but the tug at the corner of his mouth betrayed him.

The debate rolled on, bouncing from case studies to half-baked analogies. Naruto compared corporate compliance to wearing a seatbelt—“annoying, but it keeps you alive”—while Sasuke dissected the flaws in the argument with surgical precision. Naruto pushed back harder than he should’ve been able to, his instinct for risk sharper than Sasuke wanted to admit.

At some point, their cups emptied. The tables around them too. Sasuke checked his phone only when Naruto paused to rub at his eyes, and the time startled him—two hours gone, just like that.

Naruto groaned when he saw the clock. “Shit. I was supposed to meet Kiba half an hour ago.” But he didn’t move to get up, only slouched deeper in his chair with a laugh. “Guess I got distracted.”

“It’s reassuring to know even you can focus for two hours straight,” Sasuke said, repressing a chuckle.

Naruto grinned like Sasuke had handed him a gift. Sasuke looked away, unwilling to admit how easily the words had slipped out as he reached for his bag.

———

The weeks blurred. Somewhere along the way, Naruto became a fixture.

At least once a week, they ended up at dinner after a session—Naruto’s stomach always betrayed him first, loud enough to make Sasuke scowl, only for his own hunger to follow. Ramen, curry, greasy takeout from the corner stall; it hardly mattered.

Other nights, they left the library together and ended up at the gym. The first time, Sasuke had led, continuing their conversation about the finer points of risk and governance, and Naruto had followed without a second thought. He hadn’t even paused as he followed Sasuke into the locker room, calling his commentary over the wall of lockers between them as they changed. The next time, Naruto had thrown him a challenging grin, taunting “Try to keep up” as he held the door open for Sasuke. Either way, they pushed each other harder than they would’ve alone.

And once, on a night with no tutoring at all, they still collided at the cafe. No worksheets, no timer—just an argument that sprawled across their table, stretching too long and too late, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Sasuke couldn’t pinpoint when it shifted. When Naruto stopped being an intrusion and became… routine.

Which left him with the questions he couldn’t quite shake: had the stupidity ever been real, or was it just another mask Naruto wore to get close?