Won't Let You Go

Chapter Six

“What the hell happened to your face?”

Sasuke found himself sincerely wishing people would stop asking him that as he slid into the seat opposite of Kiba; consciously refraining from poking himself in the cheek to see just how much of the bruise was left from earlier in the week.

“I slipped on some water in my kitchen,” he lied, nodding his head at the waiter who set two cold bottles of beer on the table.

Kiba snorted. “Yeah, and you told your mom that you fell down a flight of stairs after that fight at your first ever college party. Don’t lump me in the ‘concerned’ category. I’m asking so I can point and laugh. What really happened?”

Sasuke stalled from answering by taking a long swig from his beer. “That’s not the point of why I’m here,” he said, causing Kiba to frown.

“You didn’t piss Sakura off, did you?”

It was Sasuke’s turn to snort. “Even if I did, she wouldn’t go as far as to punch me.”

Kiba nodded in understanding. “It was Naruto, then,” he concluded logically, causing Sasuke to choke on his drink. “Ha! I knew it! Why’d he punch you?”

Sasuke slouched in his chair, staring at the label on his bottle, wondering how the tiny beads of condensation would fall if it was sweat on tanned skin.

“Do you remember the conQUEST of Dreams party?” he asked abruptly.

“How could I forget? I was questioning my orientation for weeks after that event.” Kiba shook his head at the memory. “It wasn’t until Sai approached me and assured me that no ‘conquests’ were made on me that I was able to relax and move on with my life. Why?”

Why indeed? Sasuke asked himself as he reflected back on the past week.

The very night after the ill-fated kiss, he had shown up at Naruto’s door, ready to give the idiot a crash-course lesson on what it was like to date Sakura. However, before he could even get one word out, the door was slammed shut in his face. It took a good twenty minutes of shouting and door pounding to convince Naruto that no, he wasn’t here for revenge and hell no, he wasn’t going to ‘molest’ him again. After enduring another five minutes of insults and name-calling (including, but not limited to, lech, freshie, perverted closet homo, and ass-hat), Naruto finally calmed down enough to let Sasuke in, only to find that his arms were laden down with bags.

Part of the crash course involved Sasuke transferring all of the miscellaneous items Sakura left at his place to Naruto’s to help make it more believable that a female was constantly stopping by. Sakura apparently owned a lot of miscellaneous items; including things Sasuke hadn’t even been aware of until he had started gathering them up.

As soon as Sasuke set his bags down on the coffee table, Naruto immediately began to nose through them, pulling out a light pink box and opening it, curious as to what was inside.

“What are these?” he had asked, his hand reaching into the box.

Barely casting the object in question a glance, Sasuke had replied, “Tampons.”

“Oh. What are tampons?”

Upon hearing Sasuke’s explanation, Naruto had panicked, throwing the fistful he had at Sasuke’s head and dropping the box, officially starting the comedy of errors that was to carry through the entirety of the crash course over the rest of the week.

Normally, Sasuke wouldn’t put up with such behavior for more than four minutes, but one, this was Naruto and two, well, this was Naruto. If Sasuke was to give up, it would mean Naruto would win and this Uchiha had sworn long ago that he would never let an idiot of such caliber get the best of him.

Not even in kissing.

…Not that he dwelled on such a thing.

Ever since that practice…lip mashing (as he had been calling it all week), Sasuke had forced himself so deeply into denial that flashes of Egypt were running though his head. He hardly bat a lash at this, having experienced the same thing shortly after the conQUEST of Dreams party and figured such visions would go away within a month or so of constant sex with a member of the female species, just like they did last time.

Unfortunately, his rude awakening came to him in the form of a walking wet dream come true several days later.

The lessons on how to date Sakura were over and the final test was looming overhead for the night: a dinner with Naruto’s senseis that only the ‘happy couple’ had been invited to. Despite learning everything there was to know, Naruto had been unable to will his nerves away, leading Sasuke to decide to stop by before the date for a little pep talk.

What Sasuke had been expecting was a Naruto in nothing but his underwear looking frantic with his entire wardrobe in his hands, desperate for Sasuke’s opinion on what to wear for the night.

What Sasuke had not been expecting was a Naruto fresh from the shower after working off his nerves at the gym, still dripping wet and wearing nothing but a towel wrapped lowly around his waist.

All images of pyramids and pharaohs zoomed so far off into the distance that some small part of Sasuke would have wondered if he were to ever see them again, had he not been so hypnotized by the sight before him.

Not only did Naruto’s tan run even down past his beltline, but his muscles seemed even more defined than before. This had to be an illusion created by the way the tiny rivulet of soapy water ran down the solid torso, not to mention the way the light shined off the path it left behind.

The inexplicable sadness that Sasuke felt when the foamy drop hit the towel and was absorbed just below the bottom of a six pack was accompanied by an equally inexplicable dry mouth and sudden tightening of pants.

Amazingly enough, the sadness went away once Sasuke finally looked up and met Naruto’s eyes. The suddenly smaller pants, however, did not.

Upon regaining his hearing and realizing Naruto had been trying to invite him in for the past twenty-eight seconds, Sasuke had found himself fighting the overwhelming urge to insist they practice kissing a few more times under the excuse that he wanted to make sure Naruto had it just right for his date tonight. He had managed to hold his tongue long enough for Naruto to leave the room to finish rinsing off and get dressed before his brain encountered what could only be called an explosion of fantasies.

Sasuke was both horrified and amazed at the flood of perverted thoughts and how each and every one of them seemed to center around a man who was more than likely naked in the very next room. In an effort to regain hold of his mental dignity, he left before Naruto had the chance to reappear, parting with the shout of, “Good luck tonight, I’m sure you’ll do fine!” as his farewell.

Feeling extremely unsettled, he headed straight to the bar for his pre-scheduled meet-up with Kiba.

“Oh my God, you kissed Naruto.”

Sasuke snapped to attention, realizing he had been silent for much too long, leaving Kiba to jump to his own natural conclusions.

“I did not!” he automatically denied.

“You did!” Kiba triumphantly crowed. “You did and you liked it! HA! Is that why he punched you?”

Sasuke scowled and decided it was time for them to get to the point of why they were here. “Naruto tried to quit.”

Kiba frowned, trying to connect Sasuke’s statement with his own train of thought. “So…you’re gay?” he asked hesitantly.

“What? No!” Sasuke cried out vehemently. “Where the hell did that come from?”

“Well first you’re asking me about what was literally the gayest party of our college lives, and then you have Naruto quitting after you kissed him – what did you do? Confess your love to him or something?”

“I’m here to talk about why Sakura is pretending to be his fiancée, you idiot,” Sasuke growled defensively, gripping his beer tightly and resisting the urge to beat Kiba over the head with it.

“Oh yeah? Then why’d you bring up the party?” Kiba challenged, his brain obviously failing to comprehend the indication to lay off a touchy subject.

It took another three rounds of beer and four reminders about why they were here in the first place before things finally sunk in.

“I…cannot believe shit like this happens in real life,” Kiba admitted, eyeing the empty beer bottles that had been used as props in an attempt to make things easier for him to understand. He began to snicker. “I can’t believe you’re the one who got us all into this mess.”

Sasuke’s eyes narrowed as Kiba shifted the paired up bottles that represented Naruto and Sakura closer together. “This isn’t a mess, it’s a…” he tried searching for the right word. “…conundrum. It’s only a mess when it encompasses something bigger.”

If his mouth wasn’t full of beer, Kiba probably would have snorted. “Bigger?” he echoed after swallowing his drink.

“Yes. Like…Naruto actually marrying Sakura. Or you and I actually having to act out the gay in our ‘relationship’. Or having the whole town in on this thing,” Sasuke stated confidently

“But what about the threat of Naruto quitting?” Kiba challenged.

“That doesn’t exist anymore,” Sasuke countered. “I took care of that.”

“If you say so,” Kiba said dubiously. “So, what does Naruto owe you for doing all of this for him?”

Sasuke blinked, a frown slowly making its way across his face. “I haven’t thought about that,” he admitted, sounding surprised to even himself.

He did his best to ignore the wide-eyed look Kiba was now giving him. It was a well established fact that Sasuke rarely went head first into anything without some idea of the demands he would be making in return later on.

He could probably get away with the excuse that he was too busy worrying about saving his own job to think about anything else, but now that such an immediate danger was out of the way, he would normally have a list in the making of ways to have Naruto pay him back.

Still scowling at the positioning of the ‘Naruto’ and ‘Sakura’ bottles (the difference told by the two peanuts dropped into ‘Naruto’ to represent his masculinity…plus the large ‘N’ Kiba drew on the label with a stolen sharpie), Sasuke briefly calculated if he was sober enough to drive home before his mind decided it would be more fun to think of ways to have Naruto pay him back.

Maybe if he could make Naruto pay him back in kisses…Or make him come to work with no shirt on. Lord knew he’d be doing everyone a favor by getting rid of those unflattering suits.

But then since the pants were part of the suit, should Sasuke make Naruto get rid of those as well? But that would mean he would be coming into work naked…

Finishing up the rest of his sixth bottle of beer, Sasuke found he didn’t mind the idea as much as he knew he probably should.

Would Naruto’s underwear be as bad as his suits? Did he wear boxers or briefs? Did he have some secret kinky side that put him in silky thongs with wild animal prints? Or maybe he just couldn’t be bothered with underwear at all and went commando everywhere. Sasuke could imagine Naruto doing that.

However, no underwear would be a problem when coming to work. While Tsunade would probably accept Sasuke’s reasoning for Naruto being in the office in just his underwear, she would probably draw the line at stark naked.

If that was the case, Sasuke would just have to buy Naruto some underwear and make him model various types and designs to see which ones suited him best. And then he would have to bend over and crawl around so Sasuke could make sure the choice flattered the important assets as well.

Abruptly standing, Sasuke decided he had enough to drink for one night. He really couldn’t afford to constantly allow his mind to travel down such paths.

Fishing for his wallet, he tossed down some cash.

“Aw, come on!” Kiba complained. “There has to be something you want from him.”

“Nope.” Sasuke refused to acknowledge the something he had just been pondering.

“What? Not even lunch for a year? Or making him streak through town with his underwear on his head?” Kiba called out as Sasuke walked away. “We’re making Lee do it tomorrow night! You should have Naruto join him!”

Something inside Sasuke snarled at the idea of Naruto being naked in front of a bunch of frat boys as he exited the bar and headed to his car. He decided it was his sense of public decency.

Doodle-eh doo! Doodle-eh-doo! Doodle-eh-doo!

“Byakugan Industries is still waiting on our assessment-”

“I put my half of that in your inbox two hours ago.”

“Temari said she wouldn’t have the figures for that until the weekend was over,” Sasuke challenged, looking up from his folder at Naruto, who had his own copy of the same folder tented over his head as he slouched down in his chair, feet propped up on the meeting room’s giant table.

“I don’t need figures to come up with a proposal,” Naruto shot back lazily. “If you don’t like it after we get Temari’s numbers, just give it back and I’ll tweak it a little.”

Naruto knew Sasuke was staring at him, but he didn’t care. He had been tired and cranky all week, and lack of sleep wasn’t the problem.

Everything Naruto had worked so hard against was falling apart around him and he had no idea how to stop it.

All the long hours he was being forced to spend with Sasuke were starting to wear him down. Every little moment they shared, each new piece of information Sasuke learned about him put Naruto more and more on the defensive. Feeling unable to handle this new closeness, Naruto had thrown himself even more into his work than before, hoping to find distraction in his job. The strategy failed seeing as how Sasuke was not only his immediate coworker, but a workaholic himself.

Naruto knew it was things like this that created friendships, but he was fairly certain such a word didn’t exist in Sasuke’s vocabulary. After all, a friend wouldn’t force you to stay at a job when you had plans to move to Fiji. A friend wouldn’t tease you by making you kiss him for practice. A friend wouldn’t stand in your doorway and stare at the hideous scar on your stomach for twenty-eight seconds, making you wish you had never let your shower be interrupted in the first place.

Naruto sank lower in his chair at the memory, realizing he had just hit the nail on the head for the main reason he had been in such a foul mood these past few days. His scars weren’t something he was necessarily ashamed of, but they were certainly not something he enjoyed sharing with people at ease. He wasn’t sure if he should be terrified or grateful that Sasuke still had yet to bring it up, but he wasn’t about to question the matter either way.

Instead, Naruto took a deep, calming breath, vaguely aware that the action caused Sasuke’s voice to grow a notch more insistent with whatever he was saying. Not bothering to let the tone be enough to gain his attention, Naruto allowed himself to drift away to his Happy Place.

He hadn’t visited his Happy Place for a while and was a bit surprised when his mind’s eye led him to his outer office instead of his ramen drawer back at home. His confusion turned into horror at the scene that he found occurring in this new happy place. Why was his memory of the kiss impeding on his ‘Every Flavor Known to Man’ ramen drawer??

As his senses recalled the heat of Sasuke’s hands at his waist and the taste of Sasuke’s lips and tongue, Naruto decided to ban himself from his Happy Place forever. He would not allow such a simple memory undo years of extreme repression.

He would not allow himself to relive the look in Iruka-sensei’s eyes when he had found about Gaara all those years ago…

Life would be so much easier if he could just hate Sasuke for being the asshole that he was. Them spending so much more time together had done a number on Naruto’s unguarded emotions, leaving him with a strong desire to punch something so he could channel it all into anger.

Not that it would help the situation any. He was already well aware of how hard it was to hate someone when you knew you were one of the very few people who could make them smile…

“…and I’ll go ahead and schedule a meeting for that on Thursday, probably around two or so…”

From his unchanged position under the folder, Naruto drifted back to the one-on-one meeting, listening to the sound of Sasuke flipping through their work planner.

“Mm, scratch that. Hinata’s brother will be in town and we promised we’d be there for lunch. Looks like she already has a place and time picked out for that day.”

As Sasuke leaned over to push the planner to his partner’s side of the table, Naruto caught a whiff of the same expensive cologne that was now seeped into his couch at home. He had stopped sitting there when he realized the stirring feelings he got in his gut were because of the scent and not the Baywatch reruns.

The memory caused Naruto to quickly push himself back; an action that resulted in him tipping his chair over and crashing violently to the floor. He looked up to see the almost comforting sight of Sasuke’s scowl.

“If you give yourself a concussion, I’m not rewriting that proposal for you,” Sasuke stated.

“I wouldn’t want your cooties all over it anyways,” Naruto shot back, sticking out his tongue for good measure, causing Sasuke to sigh and shut his folder. Naruto blinked. “What? Are we done?” He glanced up at the clock from his position still on the floor.

“Your sudden enthusiasm for work has us ahead of schedule to the point where we can probably slack off for a few days and get away with it,” Sasuke said as he stood. “This means we won’t be late to your senseis’ big celebratory dinner they have planned tonight.”

Naruto groaned and thumped his head against the floor. “Can’t I just stay here and tell them I’m stuck working overtime?”

“Naruto, we’re business partners. It wouldn’t make sense for only one of us to have overtime,” Sasuke rationalized. “Besides, what would you do? Lock yourself in your office and play video games?”

“Maybe.” The childish pout tested Sasuke’s patience. “This whole thing is a stupid waste of time anyways.”

“Nonsense. Thanks to me, you now know more about girls than you ever would have found out in a lifetime on your own,” Sasuke said self-righteously as he stepped over Naruto on his way to the door.

“Who said I wanted to know all that stuff about them anyways?” Naruto grumbled as he picked himself up, ignoring the glare sent his way.

In truth, a lot of the knowledge Sasuke had shoved down his throat over the last week was pretty handy when dealing with Sakura in front of Naruto’s senseis. Not only that, but much of what he had been taught could be used with the female population in general. Naruto figured it wouldn’t be a complete waste for the next time he tried the impossible task of dating a girl.

Impossible because for some reason girls just weren’t interested in him. Ever.

Remaining silent as he followed Sasuke to the elevator, Naruto leaned back against the mirrored wall as the button to the underground parking garage was pushed. Naruto didn’t own a car and as a result, Sasuke often ended up being the one to drive him to any meetings he had with his senseis, if only in reassurance that Naruto didn’t try to bail out and move to Fiji overnight.

Not that Naruto felt like he could escape at this point…

“What am I supposed to tell them once all of this is over?” Naruto blurted, frowning down at his shoes.

“That Sakura dumped you for another man,” Sasuke replied readily, causing Naruto to look up in surprise just as the elevator dinged and the doors slid open.

“But…wouldn’t you end up being that other man?” Naruto asked as he exited the elevator and headed to Sasuke’s car.

“Of course,” Sasuke answered matter-of-factly. “And then it will be as if this whole situation never happened in the first place.”

Naruto sent Sasuke the skeptical look he normally reserved for when the man was secretly thinking of himself as a genius over simple things. “You’re supposed to be gay,” Naruto pointed out.

The statement caused Sasuke’s shoulders to momentarily stiffen before he unlocked his car – an action that went unnoticed by Naruto. “We can just say Sakura helped me see the light,” he said, causing Naruto to snort.

“Yeah, because that will sound completely believable,” Naruto muttered as he climbed into the car, immediately leaning over to fiddle with the radio as Sasuke started the engine.

After being forced to accept rides from Sasuke, Naruto had made it his first order of business to reset all of the preset stations to ones that were “worthy of this kind of overpriced vehicle.” Naturally, Sasuke would switch all the presets back as soon as Naruto was out of the car, leading to a battle of sorts every time Naruto returned.

In the end, it was usually Naruto who won seeing as how driving took a bit of concentration. Add to that the fact that recently Naruto had been loudly voicing the threat of jumping out of the car and just walking to wherever the destination happened to be if his choice in radio stations wasn’t played.

Tonight’s choice, oddly enough, was Beethoven, blasting from some AM station that Sasuke had never heard of before.

He immediately turned down the volume.

“Alright, spill,” he demanded as he pulled out into traffic.

Naruto sent him a questioning glance. “Spill what?”

“You’ve been more of an ass than usual ever since the lessons ended and I want to know why,” Sasuke elaborated, watching Naruto’s frame stiffen from the corner of his eye.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Naruto denied, stubbornly keeping his attention glued to the passing street side scenery.

Sasuke’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, but he remained silent. He wasn’t exactly sure how to explain that what was once like dealing with an annoying puppy had turned into trying to handle a mistrustful stray dog over the past few days.

While a part of him was sure it was just the stress of Naruto being forced to act out his lies on a nearly daily basis, Sasuke couldn’t completely ignore the twinge of fear that perhaps Naruto had somehow caught on that he was now the one Sasuke’s fantasies seemed to revolve around. Sasuke had done his best to keep this new development well-hidden, knowing fully how nervous homosexuality seemed to make Naruto, but with the blond’s recent mood…

“You just missed the turn.”

Sasuke slammed on the brakes, growling out low obscenities as he barely made the next turn-in for the parking lot.

For reasons beyond the both of them, dinner was to take place at the same tavern as the first luncheon that marked the official beginning of this whole mess. Why anyone would want to celebrate anything in the same place twice didn't make sense to Sasuke, but he kept his mouth shut since he had no say in the matter.

The parking lot was understandably packed for a Friday night, causing an argument to erupt as Sasuke passed up several decent parking spots in favor of parking his car at a safe distance from any potential dings and scratches.

The problem with this safe distance was that it was about a million miles away from the building and it was cold out.

“The parking spaces are huge! No one could put a dent in your car even if they tried!” Naruto complained as he hugged his torso and danced in place a bit to keep warm as he waited for Sasuke to hurry and catch up.

“This place serves alcohol. Someone could easily total my car like magic and not even remember it the next day,” Sasuke countered.

Rushing forward to the entrance, Naruto yanked open the door, still too irate to notice how dark and unusually quiet the place was. “If I catch a cold because of your stupid gay feelings for your car, Sasuke, I swear I’ll-”

The lights flickered on.

“SURPRISE!” shouted a room full of no less than one hundred people.


Author’s Note: These will be going down at the bottom from now on. This way I can freely talk about the chapter without giving stuff away. Genius!!

First off, I want to apologize to everyone who attempted to bribe me for this chapter. It’s been so long, I don’t remember what anyone promised. Truth be told, I had this written shortly before finals came around (when a bulk of the bribes were issued), but I completely hated the chapter and decided to rewrite all of it. I kind of feel like a failure…

I blame cosplay and Anime Expo…and my job that I kind of hate right now.

On the bright side, I will be spending the rest of my free time writing this summer. Next semester I have an overload of classes (in an effort to get my degree on time), so I need to update as much as possible before then!