Life on the Road

If there was no place in Konoha for Sasuke, then neither would there be for Naruto. Together they learn that finding their place in the world involves - among other things - learning to deal with each other.

***


Carefully honed instincts woke Sasuke and kept him still.

His eyes remained closed, his breathing slow and even as he listened to the second person in his room. Only a few feet from him, the pattern of their breath faster, a little uneven. Another ANBU from Konoha? That wasn’t right, they’d have attacked by now.

It didn’t matter, he finally decided. Anyone who knew him at all knew better than to wake him this way in the middle of the night. Anyone who didn’t know him shouldn’t be this close to him in his sleep, and was therefore about to die. Messily.

The split-second of moonlight glinting off the polished blade of a kunai as it slid from underneath Sasuke’s pillow - that was the only warning Naruto got before he very nearly found said kunai lodged squarely between his eyes. He yelped and fell backwards, hearing a thunk as the weapon found its home in the wall behind him. They’d never get their security deposit back now, but he liked his forehead stab-wound-free, thank you very much.

Sasuke was out of bed and in a defensive stance before he even noticed that his would-be attacker was actually his roommate. Naruto got to his feet while Sasuke was busy considering why the blond would be in his room this late at night, but didn’t stay on them for long. Sasuke was done considering and Naruto found himself on the floor again, screeching and nursing what would soon be a black eye.

“Bastard! What the hell?!” he demanded as he lowered his hands and glared up at the Uchiha.

Sasuke stooped down in front of Naruto, inspecting his face. Kyuubi was already healing the bruise, so Sasuke hit the blond again, just for good measure.

Naruto was ready for this one and turned his head in the direction Sasuke‘s fist was traveling, taking the punch but turning it into more of a sideswipe than anything. Sasuke appeared distinctly disappointed; hitting Naruto just wasn’t satisfying unless he got a nice, bone-crunching impact. His favorite punching bag had an annoying habit of recovering almost instantaneously, so he had to make what little damage he could inflict count, damnit.

He didn’t think about the fact that Naruto had, unless he got really riled up, taken to not fighting back. It just made Sasuke angrier, made everything that much more uncomfortable between them. They couldn’t even relieve their frustration through a good old brawl, anymore.

Sasuke appeared to be considering hitting him again, so Naruto laughed nervously and held up his hands. “H-Hey, look, I was just… uh…” What was a good excuse to use after having been caught watching someone sleep? Surely Jiraiya had given him some valuable nuggets of wisdom for a situation such as this. He thought back over everything he’d learned from his former master, but only came up with a lot of talk about condoms and antibiotics. Damn.

Naruto held up his hands innocently, deciding to resort to his reliable fall-back: bullshitting until something he said made some sort of sense. “It’s not what it looked like! See, I woke up because I had to pee, and, uh… I heard a noise.” He nodded emphatically, trying to buy time as he decided what the imaginary noise might have been. “It was… you! Having an asthma attack!”

Sasuke lifted a brow, but didn’t hit Naruto again. The blond took this as encouragement and eagerly continued.

“Yeah! Asthma! Sucks, right? So I ran in to save you, ‘cause that’s what handsome, smart, available heroes do. You were thrashing on the bed, gasping for air and struggling to hold onto life when I bravely used my large, manly muscles to--”

“I don’t have asthma,” Sasuke said calmly, cutting him off.

Naruto gave the Uchiha a wide-eyed stare. “Then I’m sorry to be the one to inform you that you do now.”

That didn’t even deserve a response. Sasuke sat down on his bed, the springs of the old mattress creaking beneath him. “We need some ground rules,” he said after a moment, rubbing his temples.

Naruto stared at his friend, surprised that he wasn’t about to get clocked again for the asthma thing. “…Ground rules?” he asked slowly, not really liking the sound of that.

Sasuke nodded, lowering his hands from his head and looking up at Naruto. “Sit down,” he said, indicating the bed. Naruto briefly looked way too happy, and Sasuke’s eyes narrowed. “Far away from me.”

The blond adopted his kicked puppy look as he dropped down onto the edge of the bed, a safe distance from Sasuke. “What kind of ground rules?” he asked sullenly.

“First,” Sasuke began, deciding to address the issue at hand before he tried to think about everything else, “you are not allowed in my room at night.”

The reaction was instantaneous. “That’s not fair! What if you have another asthma attack?! What if somebody’s attacking?! What if I--”

“No,” Sasuke insisted. “I don’t have asthma, and if someone attacks, I can take care of myself. You’ve lost… ah… my room at night privileges.” Not that he’d ever really had them in the first place. And wasn’t that the problem?

“But I never had them!” Naruto whined, voicing Sasuke’s thoughts.

Sasuke decided to ignore that, instead moving on to the next order of business. “And stop sniffing me all the time.” Naruto opened his mouth, but Sasuke cut him off, “And don’t say you don’t sniff me, because I know you do.”

“Fine,” Naruto muttered, before brightening. Perhaps these ‘ground rules’ could be used to his advantage. “But you’re not allowed to hit me anymore.”

“Alright. You’re not allowed to be an idiot anymore.”

“What the hell, Sasuke?!”

“If you don’t want me to hit you, don’t be an idiot. I know it‘ll take some effort, but just do your best.”

A short staring match ensued.

Naruto lost. “Fine. Then you have to take the stick out of your ass.”

“You have to grow a brain.”

“You have to grow a dick.”

“You first.”

“Make me! …Wait.” Naruto shook his head furiously, waving his hands in the air. “That didn’t come out right! I already have one! It’s huge!” There was a short pause. “…Wanna see?”

Sasuke thought that it was quite possible that the ground rules had gone slightly off course from their original intention. “Naruto, go back to bed,” he said tiredly.

“So that’s a ‘no,’ then?”

It took several moments for Sasuke to get his temper under control. When he finally had, he opened his mouth to very sternly affirm to Naruto that that was, indeed, a no, but Naruto didn’t give him the chance. He was on Sasuke in an instant, pressing his lips to the Uchiha’s in an impulsive kiss.

The kiss itself wasn’t the passionate, arousing experience each of them secretly imagined during fervent, sticky daydreams in the shower. It was more like their first kiss: rushed, and a little painful in more ways than one. But it was real, more real than longing looks or the hesitant brushing of hands in soapy dish water.

It was too real to pretend it hadn’t happened.

Sasuke lied on his back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling for several hours after he’d pushed Naruto off and sent him back to his own room. He thought of Itachi and Konoha, of the necklace still hanging, useless, around Naruto’s neck.

But mostly he just thought of Naruto.

It was that idiot’s fault that he couldn’t get any sleep, after all.


***