Having headcanons about your first OTP is oddly like coming home. For the bae (Murasaki_B) who's the only one I still talk Naruto with. #hdgdl
Cross-posted from AO3 same-date.
A lifetime of being snuck up on helps Naruto not to jump when a hand lands on his shoulder as he's packing the kids' assignments into his briefcase for the weekend. He turns and smiles at Sakura, the first friend he made when he started work at his current elementary, and he focuses on her lips when she starts to speak slow.
「Uchiha-yama?」 she asks, eyes wide in innocent hopefulness.
"Sure," he says slowly, moving his throat and his tongue and lips the way Obaa-chan taught him. He's pretty sure he still has the scars from her teaching methods too, crazy old bat. "It's Lee's treat this week. How could I say 'no'?"
He knows his enunciation is perfect, if a bit loud, even though he can't hear himself, not just because he still bears the scars of Tsunade's voice training, but because Sakura's eyes flare in that same temporary surprise everyone's seem to when they hear how well a deaf guy can speak. Then her eyes crinkle at the corners and her shoulders shake in laughter he can't hear but he bet sounds lovely. She loops an arm in his and he has to crane his head to see her mouth, missing the first half of her sentence entirely.
「-dibs, but then I beat her in ro-sham-bo.」 He held back a sigh. His new friends were well-meaning and very good about including him when they remembered that he couldn't hear, but sometimes it was getting them to remember that was difficult. It isn't until Naruto is packed in the backseat of a cab with Hinata and Lee that he remembers the battle that awaits him at the end of their journey.
The first time his friends had brought him to the restaurant they had made a tradition of visiting weekly before he'd come along, he'd almost gotten into a brawl with their impossibly attractive, impossibly rude waiter. He'd never been so furious in his life at the condescending looks and sneers they'd been treated to, nor at the formal words bitten out sharply enough that even Naruto could see them. The week after saw them back at the same table with the same waiter, and it had been its own battle keeping himself from rising to shouting volume. A third week with the same stupid waiter found a pattern developing, one where he began to look forward to their weekly verbal spar at the same time he dreaded Sasuke discovering he was deaf and calling a cease-fire out of some misplaced guilt.
He doesn't usually dread people finding out about his... disability. He's never been ashamed about being deaf, but against someone as attractive as Sasuke, someone who looked and spoke and acted like he had grown up around perfection his whole life...
Sakura practically shoves him from the car, a familiar determined gleam in her eye that immediately puts him on edge. He's seen the way she watches how he watches Sasuke when they visit. She's a driving force behind him as the hostess seats them at their usual table, and her eyes are like lasers when Sasuke drops by their table for their drinks order. As usual their waiter's eyes are equally laser-like and don't leave Naruto's face the entire time they order. Sakura is on him as soon as Sasuke is gone again.
「Why don't you just ask him out?」 Sakura mouths furiously, snapping her fingers in front of his eyes to keep his attention when he tries to turn them away.
Hinata turns curious eyes to him, and he wonders if Sakura had actually spoken out loud. He couldn't always tell. Then Lee turns the right way in his seat and stares down at Naruto too, arms flailing wildly and lips forming the shape of his familiar bullshit like 「eternal youth」 and Naruto stops paying attention to him immediately.
"One, the bastard looks like a painting," he points out, darting a quick look around for said bastard. "He's gorgeous as fuck and ain't gonna want someone like me. Two, I've never dated someone and had my inability to hear go over well."
Something whaps him in the back of his head and Naruto jerks up, insults on the tip of his tongue to find Sasuke staring down at him, order pad in one hand and a tray of their drinks in the other. Naruto blushes but can't look down, can't take his eyes from Sasuke's lips when the man may still have something to say to them.
「I already know you're deaf, dobe.」 Naruto blinks at Sasuke's lips, wondering if he's actually seen what he thinks he just saw. He can feel his brow furrowing and he flicks his gaze up to meet the waiter's eyes, which Sasuke just rolls as he pockets his notepad and puts the tray down on the table. -I already know you're deaf, dobe,- he signs, fingers even more fluid than Naruto's have ever been.
Naruto's jaw drops.
-And if you don't think you're gorgeous, you're even more of a dobe than I thought.-
Naruto can't think. His mind is blank. He turns wide eyes to his friends, all of whom look equally shocked, right up until they start grinning like the loons they are, gesturing wildly at him to turn back around. He does so slowly, finding Sasuke waiting patiently for his attention again. Those black eyes that have quickly become familiar enough to feature in his daytime fantasies are warm in an unfamiliar way that dries Naruto's throat and makes it hard for him to swallow.
"How long?" is all he can think to ask, his hands feeling too swollen and clumsy to try signing anything back.
Sasuke rolls his eyes again. If he were any less formal, Naruto suspects he would have thrown his hands up and sighed explosively in exasperation. -Since the beginning, you idiot. Did you really not notice that I speak directly to you every time I come to your table?-
At first, the teacher goes to shake his head, but the more he thinks back on the last few weeks, the more he realises that what Sasuke is saying is true. He can see flashes of Sasuke's face turned in his direction as he spoke, even as his eyes dart around the table.
"Why didn't you just sign at me from the beginning?" There was something off about him speaking and the hearing-able signing, but he was too distracted right now to figure out exactly what.
-I had to teach myself first, dobe.- Naruto hadn't known it was possible to sign scathingly until right now either. -I was hardly going to ask you out before I learned how to sign. On that note, you won't be joining your friends next Friday. I'm taking you out on a date.-
Sasuke must have spoken the last bit out loud because suddenly Sakura is grinning lecherously at him as she leans over the table and slugs him in the arm. 「Told you」 she mouths smugly.
Lee is waving his arms around even more exuberantly than normal and Naruto already knows what he's going to be saying and doesn't bother trying to read his lips.
Small fingers fold around his and his looks down to follow the line of the arm attached, and finds Hinata smiling shyly at him, mouthing 「Congratulations」.
Somehow, Naruto feels like he's being given away for a wedding and his face heats up as he turns to eye an amused-looking Sasuke.
"Don't you work on Fridays?" he asks helplessly, wondering if he'd actually been hit by a truck crossing the road to the restaurant and this is all a drug-cocktail-induced dream as he's laying in the hospital, Granny shouting death threats at him from the sidelines to come back to her alive.
-I'm talking the day off, dobe,-. Sasuke's eyes were getting a regular workout with all the rolling they were going through.
"Don't you have to tell the owner first?" Naruto asked frantically, feeling a bit like the time Granny had pushed him off the dock and shouted after him to figure out how to start swimming.
-I'm pretty sure I already know.- The waiter's grin was positively wicked, and it took a moment for Naruto to realise that Sasuke was implying that he was the owner. He tried to come up with a response, but his mind was blank. -They can't understand sign language, yet, correct?- Sasuke asks suddenly, catching him off guard.
"They're trying to learn," Naruto replies, not just because his hands are still feeling useless, but so that his friends can finally chip in on the conversation. He catches sight in the corner of his eye of all three of his friends explaining their slow learning, and Sasuke nods along thoughtfully.
「I see」 his mouth says as his fingers form different words. -So they won't understand me when I sign that I can't wait to hear what you sound like when my lips are wrapped around your cock?-
Naruto splutters and chokes on nothing but air, his face growing hot as he stands in an embarrassed huff and stomps for the door. He only makes it just outside the door before his wrist is wrapped in strong fingers and he's tugged back to face forward.
Sasuke is grinning at him as he tugs Naruto hard enough to trip the teacher into his chest, and then there's lips tickling his ear, the vibrations of speech tingling from the waiter's chest into his. Sasuke pulls away, black eyes twinkling in the fading sun, and Naruto feels his face flame at the lecherous look on the other man's face.
"What did you say?" he demands hotly as his friends spill out of the building behind them.
The waiter- or rather, the owner turns to look at them and Naruto can see the twitch of a grin in the corners of his lips.
"What did you say!" he repeats forcefully, embarrassment overshadowing everything else.
Sasuke turns back to him, eyeing him for a long moment expressionlessly, before his lips stretch in a slow, sultry smile that makes Naruto weak in the knees. -I promise I'll tell you what I said when I have my dick in your ass. See you next Friday.-
The duck-butt hair disappears back into the restaurant, and Naruto gapes after it, struck speechless. Even as his friends group around him, clamouring for answers, for once, he can't think of a single thing to say.
FIN
Reblog the thing (themadkatter13fanfiction tumblr, post/121489069853). Tschüß. :3