For Bullwinkle's Lady, because we did the fic trade thing. I went with the SasuNaru, SasuKarin and baking, with a slight whiff of 'in the closet' which was not exactly the theme, but you know. Also, I like the Your Every Color by Train more than Hey, Soul Sister, but one's a hot new single and the other isn't, so whatever.
Much Ado about Muffins
Karin cackled gleefully when she peered into her mailbox and shiny silver plastic blocked her vision. It had arrived, one business day later than promised. She could finally unpack her last two boxes, consider herself moved in, and go greet the hunky neighbor and his roommate. With a nice warm plate of muffins. The sight of muffins ought to be enough for him to tell her his name. The potion would take care of the rest. She had to move quickly though, since she had shelled out the cash for expedited shipping with the aim to have herself and her baked goods ready exactly half an hour after hunky-neighbor's-roommate went on the thing he planned with the person he was talking to while he was taking out the trash the other morning and almost dropped his cellphone into the dumpster when Karin broadsided him with her empty boxes.
The website had promised the philter was undetectable and infallible because it created real love rather than an instant obsession for the person who gave the dose because 'the first thing he saw' could be dangerous, but it had also promised to get here within two days, so she wasn't sure she ought to trust it. After a nanosecond of careful consideration she decided that since there was no such thing as too much love, there could be no such thing as too much love potion, and upended the whole flask into her muffin mix. The second the trays were safely in the oven she dashed into her room to find something that looked good without proclaiming her to be a complete slut. Three days of living in this apartment had showed her that complete sluts knocking at 6A were ignored and then later escorted away by men in uniforms. Yesterday's had involved men in labcoats.
The timer went off and she crashed back into the kitchen, yanking her treasures out of the oven without even realizing her oven mitts were still hanging on the wall. She snatched a fork and spent five agonizingly long minutes carefully prying the muffins out of their recesses and piling them on the nicest platter she could afford. She scampered down the hall to the corner room and stabbed her finger into the doorbell.
Her god opened the door looking about ready to stab her, but she moved quickly.
"Hi, I'm Karin. I just got settled. Apartment C. I made muffins. Have one!" She shoved one into his half parted luscious lips, no doubt opened to deliver some divinely displeased diatribe.
He didn't have a choice but to chew, since no one could call the cops with a maniac waving hot muffins in their face. Once he swallowed, he lasted long enough to say "What the fuck is wrong with you?" before her $19.99 kicked in and his eyes went wide and worshipful.
"I uh... I'm Sasuke." He shifted slightly, and Karin just about fainted because she'd only ever seen him looking put upon or annoyed and now he was actually nervous in her presence and it was glorious.
"Well it's very nice to meet you Sasuke," she purred, or tried to over the shivers jumping up and down her spine and lodging in her throat. He didn't seem to notice it was the purr of a sports car engine hitting a wall and not of a dangerous and fascinating jungle cat. It was enough to key him into the fact that she was interested and he relaxed, slipping back into his cool, untouchable but damn sexy paces.
"Not as nice as it was to meet you. I look forward to getting to know you better." He gave her a smoldering look from beneath his lashes that promised he would get to know her very well. "Thanks for the muffins."
She was floored by the fact that it had actually worked and Sasuke was hitting on her like some cheap James Bond knockoff. Numbly she let him take the plate and return to his apartment, easy and smooth like a sword sliding into its sheath. She wobbled back to her room and spent the next hour hyperventilating into the muffin mix bag and went to bed wearing the shirt she had pilfered from his laundry machine yesterday.
Sasuke woke up actually feeling like mornings weren't so bad. He made his way to the kitchen without once walking into the furniture; and Naruto humming that Train song while he fried eggs didn't actively make him want to beat the blond and his early bird attitude back into the Dark Ages with the coffee maker. The only reason he never did before was his fondness for this particular coffee maker and how it didn't care what brew strength you selected, you were getting enough caffeine to drop an elephant. He wasn't even crotchety enough to comment on the ajar nature of their front door and whose fault would it be if some crazed psycho burst in and made off with all their underwear. Again.
Naruto pulled a muffin out of the toaster as Sasuke added milk to his oatmeal.
"Nuke this for me," he muttered, handing the bright orange bowl to his roommate.
"Hey, you actually asked, rather than you know, shoving and grunting. Progress. You gonna join me on my five o'clock jog tomorrow too?" He crammed half of his muffin into his mouth as he punched the buttons on the panel. When the bowl stopped spinning and the microwave beeped at him, internal light going dark, Naruto caught sight of his reflection in the glass as he reached for the handle.
"Wow, I look hot this morning," he told himself, disregarding the crumbs that had attached themselves to his stubble. "Wait a minute, since when did we have muffins that weren't blueberry or banana nut?"
"Since yesterday when the cute new girl stopped by to say hi."
"Oh, okay. That was niiii-waitjustafrickingminute did you say 'cute new girl'? As in 'cute new girl'? Like a girl, who you think is cute, that is new? Who the hell dropped a piano on your head, and why wasn't I around to point and laugh?" Naruto was spazzing so hard he dropped Sasuke's oatmeal into his nearly-burning eggs.
"Shut up asshole, and give me a muffin before you clean that."
Naruto set the muffin down in front of Sasuke like it was evidence in an interrogation. "So, talk."
"What do you want me to say? She rang the bell yesterday while you were studying with Jiraiya, introduced herself and gave us a plate of muffins. I kinda thought she was another demented lunatic but then I guess I got a better look at her." Sasuke shrugged to indicate the end of it, peeled back the kind-of-cute-strawberry-printed paper and took a bite.
"A better look? You stopped giving people 'second chances' since your twelfth birthday and you got a party about Pilates and not pirates, and no one would talk to you until you blew up the chem lab."
"It's not Itachi's fault his eyesight was getting worse and the Yellow Pages suck, and it's not my fault twelve year olds are traitorous little bastards." Sasuke scowled at the table.
"Seriously though, I'm glad you finally have something like a normal love life. Everyone's giving me crap about living with a guy who doesn't like women and-"
"We've been friends for years, haven't we?" Sasuke was staring intently into Naruto's face.
Naruto blinked but nodded. "Yeah, I guess we could call that whole rivalry thing 'friends'."
"Right, we get along enough to live together, know and understand practically everything about each other... you know, maybe they're not wrong."
Naruto knew this was serious and Sasuke was trying to tell him something important, but Naruto knew he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed so to be sure, he needed Sasuke to spell it out. "When you say 'they're not wrong', you're talking about..."
"Everyone thinking we're secretly gay for each other," said Sasuke simply.
Naruto thought about it for a second, rubbing his chin with his thumb. Then he shoved the table into Sasuke's ribcage as he pushed away and ran.
Sasuke, being the athletic and intellectual genius that he was, was not far behind and tackled him to the floor ten whole feet from the safety of a bedroom with locks.
There was a tap at the door, and Karin stuck her head in. "Morning! I was wondering if I could borrow a cup of milk, I guess I ran outohmygodSasuke? WHYAREYOUSNIFFINGHISHAIR?"
"Because it smells like oranges," was the bland response. "I like oranges."
The roommate was petrified, with only enough muscle function to whimper pathetically.
"What happened?" Karin demanded, an ominous glint in her eyes.
Naruto recovered enough to relate everything from the oatmeal going into the microwave to giving Sasuke the muffin when the memory of Sasuke turning a conversation about a girl into a look at their relationship and the changes needed to be made and wedged his knees between his chest and Sasuke's so he could curl into a ball.
Karin chewed on her lips and when she felt composed enough to speak without screaming, she did. "Gee Sasuke, Naruto looks like he could use a cup of coffee or something. Maybe you ought to go get him one."
Sasuke gave his roommate a concerned look and wordlessly headed into the kitchen. Karin took that opportunity to dent the wall with her head. Repeatedly.
The whir of the garbage disposal distracted her and she peeked into the kitchen to see Sasuke methodically feeding her muffins to the sink.
"It was the oddest thing," he said with deadly calm, not looking up. "I turned on the coffee maker so it would be hot, and remembered I hadn't actually gotten to eat anything this morning because it always ended up on the floor. So I had another muffin. Much as I wish I could, I didn't actually forget anything that happened before that, but it was put into the right perspective, and I figured out what was going on because I'm amazing smart like that. I'm going to go file a restraining order, so I would start packing if I were you. Shame about just getting settled and all, but you're fucking dangerous and I'm not living in the same city much less building as you."
Karin fled back to her room and was wholly devastated to discover her second chance had been shut down by the FDA. Convincing him to change his mind would be much harder if he wasn't in love with her. Sighing, she fished out her credit cards. Finding another site on the internet that wasn't complete bull was going to be such a bitch.