A/N: I know, starting another story when I have, like, fifty unfinished ones is stupid. But this one was bursting out of me so hard that I wrote the first chapter in three days, which is pretty remarkable for slow, old me.

This one is very SasuNaru, even if the first chapter may not look like it. And, y'know, as many other pairings as I can cram into it.

Disclaimer: I have no inside knowledge of Olympic Village. And I really tried to research it, but it's weirdly hard to find information! So if you, valued reader, are an Olympian or have an Olympian friend, I apologise for my inaccuracies. Please enjoy!

There were only so many times that you could remind yourself that being late was a normal, socially acceptable part of being human. Parties? Absolutely; turning up exactly on time was weird. School? Once in a while, sure. Concerts? Well, there were some that would refuse to let you in if you didn't make it before the doors closed, but most of them were fine, too.

But Naruto was finding it really freaking hard to justify the fact that he, a competing athlete, was two days late for the Olympics.

Well, not the actual competition part, thank God, although his event didn't even start heats until the end of the second week, so two days wouldn't be a disaster; still, the shame would be unbelievable. It was embarrassing enough to be flailing in when all the other competitors were already settled into their rooms at the Village, probably having made friends and chosen roommates like it was a school camp. Lugging his gigantic backpack-slash-suitcase along the ground behind him as he ran, he felt like the dork that had been chosen last for a team. He'd never actually been that dork, but he could imagine. And he imagined that they probably didn't like being called dorks, so in his mind he apologized for that.

It was July the twentieth, five days before the Opening Ceremony, and all the competing athletes were in the middle of their settling-in week, getting used to the accommodation of the Olympic Village, and of course getting in as much last-minute training as possible now that they were in the city. The climate here was colder than what Naruto was used to, so he'd have to figure out how to deal with that. He'd missed the official tour of the facilities, which sucked, so he hoped there were no nasty surprises like there had been at his last Nationals: back then, the long jump pit had been a few feet closer than usual to the athletics track, and if both areas were being used at once, a jumper would spray sand right into the face of a passing runner. About thirty people complained and they had to re-run a whole bunch of races, and the whole thing was a nightmare.

Speaking of nightmares, this Village was insane. Naruto had been jogging around its perimeter for at least twenty minutes, but it was completely walled off from public view and he couldn't find an entrance. He was getting so frustrated that it was almost tempting to ignore all the barbed wire and just climb in, but nowadays there were probably armed guards ready to shoot if anyone tried that. That would make quite a headline: OLYMPIC ATHLETE CAN'T FIND DOOR; KILLED.

Another five minutes later, he finally found something that looked like a reception office. It had a door, anyway, and that was good enough. Weary and relieved, he dragged himself inside and caught the eye of a beleaguered-looking woman behind a counter. A badge on her shirt said 'Karin'; her glasses were almost falling off her nose, she was surrounded by stacks of paper and a phone was lying askew as if it had been thrown, so Naruto wasn't expecting the warmest of welcomes.

"Trainer or family?" the woman asked sharply, without really looking at him.

"Er… neither. I'm Naruto Uzumaki, I'm a –"

"Journalists were let in over a month ago for pictures. I'm sorry, but there's no admittance for anyone right now besides trainers or family. You'll have to wait until August the fifteenth."

Naruto grimaced a little as Karin turned her back to him, frantically scribbling notes on some of the papers. This was a fine start. "Uh, no, I'm actually in the Games. As a competitor."

"That's great," she answered, not hearing him.

"Like, I'm meant to be living here for the next three weeks."

"Mhm. If you have any issues, there are several contact numbers available from our –" At last, Karin froze, his words having penetrated her bubble. She whirled back around, her eyes narrow and suspicious. "You're an athlete?"

"Yes," Naruto said in relief.

"Proof of identity?"

He handed her a normal licence and an Olympic ID badge, wondering if her personality would magically become nice once she believed he belonged here. Somehow he doubted it. She shoved her glasses into place and studied both items, front and back, even holding them up to the light like they might turn transparent.

"Do many people try to sneak in by pretending to be athletes?" Naruto joked.

Karin ignored that, apart from shooting him a dirty look. Somewhat begrudgingly, she handed back his IDs along with a map. "Your team's in Hope block, rooms thirty-one to sixty. You would've had an assigned room, but since you didn't turn up until now, someone might have switched it. Have fun figuring it out. Why are you so late, anyway?"

Damn. He'd been hoping that question wouldn't come up, though admittedly it was a very faint hope. He knew exactly what the reaction was going to be. "I… had my dad's funeral," he mumbled quietly.

"What did you say? A funeral?" Karin's voice was scornful. Scornful. "Whose?"

"My coach's," Naruto said louder. As he expected, the atmosphere changed immediately.

"Your coach's? Shit. What a disaster. What an absolute mess that must be for you."

He nodded, blurring out her words as best as possible as he shuffled out into a hallway, officially entering Olympic Village. Sometimes he missed normal people. Only international-level fanatics got teary-eyed at the disaster that was losing your coach, while brushing aside the idea of losing a parent. Most of them tried to care either way, but clearly one was more important than the other. It reminded him of when he heard Heath Ledger died – people were sad, sure, but their first question was always, "But he finished filming The Dark Knight, didn't he?" Because that was the important part.

It wasn't like he was lying, though. His dad was his coach. How many Olympians came to the Games coachless? If he hadn't been, you know, grieving the death of his closest family member, he might have been concerned about his performance, but it was hard to care when his main critic wasn't going to see it. Hell, no one he knew was going to see it. It wasn't like his regimen left any time for friends.

God, that was sad.

Hope block was the first area of rooms he reached, and helpfully enough there was a noticeboard up between two of the many unmarked, brown doors, covered in printouts of room allocations. He skipped the pages for rooms one to thirty – the people there weren't from his country – and it took him forever to find his own name:

FIFTY-SEVEN:

UCHIHA, SASUKE (ATHLETICS)

UZUMAKI, NARUTO (ATHLETICS)

Huh. How crazy that he was put with someone not only in the same sport, but also with another surname starting with 'U'. One or the other was normal, but both? You didn't see that every day.

Now, how the hell was he supposed to find room fifty-seven when none of the doors here had numbers? He wasn't even sure if he was closer to room one or room six hundred. Damnit, it was so empty, so void of life here, he might as well have been two days early. With a groan, he began walking again, keeping his eyes peeled for any sign that he was in the right area, and just as he was about to admit defeat and slink back to Karin, the corridor curved off to the left, and he knew he'd made it.

The doors he'd already passed were bare and boring, like they weren't even inhabited. The ones he'd just reached, on the other hand, were vividly decorated with flags and emblems, with slogans and enthusiastic chants chalked all over them and the walls, and one of them even had a necktie slung over its doorknob. He'd seen that in movies before, but he had no idea people actually did it in real life. It made him grin a little as he began knocking on the one opposite, in the hope that someone inside could help him find his bearings. At least some people had a little spirit!

It took him a few goes before finding a room that contained a person – or, if he was being cynical, a person who didn't ignore him, at least. An irritable-looking guy pointed him further down the hallway, saying he was only at room forty-two so far, so Naruto continued on, counting very carefully.

This was it. Room fifty-seven, he was positive. When knocking on the door gave him no answer, he tested and found that it was unlocked, so he shrugged and let himself in. Hey, it was technically his room, wasn't it?

Now, he was only able to take in so many things at once. His brain barely managed to register the fact that the place was tiny before getting into its crosshair a slightly more important detail: lying on one of the two cheap, cotton-sheeted beds was a young man, who was obviously awake and even more obviously shirtless.

Naruto's jaw dropped. It wasn't that he made a habit of losing all motor skills at the sight of a half-naked guy – he saw that and more at every competition – but this one just made him shut down for a moment. It wasn't what he was; it was who he was.

The guy noticed Naruto as soon as he'd opened the door and stared up at him, not moving from the bed. "Looking for someone?"

His body was excellent, but it was his face that captured Naruto's complete attention: his cheeks each bore a tattoo of a downward-facing, red triangle, an image that a million fascinated sports photographers had captured in recent years while commentators called it genius. The two triangles were specially designed, the ink containing a higher-than-normal amount of zinc oxide to help cope with glare from the sun. Only one person in the world had those tattoos.

Naruto knew how stupid he was about to sound, but words spilled out of him anyway. "You… you're Kiba Inuzuka."

"Yep." The guy scratched the top of his head, inadvertently flexing in a very flattering way.

"The tennis player."

"Correct… "

"You – you won two Grand Slams last year! You beat the world number one when you were a teenager!"

He actually sat up now, looking amused. "You'd think I'd get tired of people telling me things I already know, but for some strange reason, I'm quite okay with it. You can tell me my record serve speed, too, if you like. I'm quite proud of that one."

It probably looked stupid for Naruto to be getting so worked up about meeting a famous sportsperson, but Kiba Inuzuka was on a completely different level to anyone else that was here. Nobody paid attention to the names of most Olympians until they'd actually won a couple of medals, and even then it was hit and miss depending on what sport you did, but everyone knew tennis. He was probably the most internationally recognized person on the planet right now – not to mention one of the absolute richest.

Damn, what Naruto wouldn't give to actually make some money from athletics! But unless you got gold, broke a record or two and were handed some world-class endorsement deals, that just didn't happen. You were more likely to go bankrupt being an athlete than being an actor.

"Sorry," he said with a weak grin. "I've been here all of five seconds and I'm already making an idiot out of myself. Story of my life."

"Hey, I'm not judging. I mean it when I say you're welcome to praise me and talk about my many achievements all you want. And you can call me Kiba. Or Grand Master Inuzuka, I'll accept that as well."

Naruto laughed. Thank God Kiba was nothing like Karin! This was an awesome way to start things out. He introduced himself and asked, "So, are you my roommate? I saw there were assigned places, but I guess they've –"

"Oh shit, is this your room?" Kiba practically leapt off the bed. "Sorry, man. I'm actually in forty, but after practice I went back there and what did I see? A fucking tie on the doorknob! So like hell I'm going back in there until they've sterilized everything twice."

"What, you mean it wasn't a joke? Someone in there is actually …"

"Performing acts of an illicit nature, yes. It's my doubles partner. The dirty, little rat told me he was feeling too sick to train today, but if I'd known that this was how he planned on making himself feel better … anyway, I heard that Uchiha didn't have a roommate, so I came in to crash on the spare bed. I had no idea it was actually taken."

"Right." Naruto wanted to get the idea of Kiba's doubles partner having sex out of his head, but it was strangely hard to do. It gave him an uncomfortable sensation in his stomach; maybe it was because of how close room forty was? Someone was having sex – two someones, really – only a matter of metres from where he was standing right now. It was almost creepy. Trying to make light of it all, he said, "Well, I guess if you feel like getting even with the guy, you can always tell him that being kicked out of your room got you right into someone else's bed."

Kiba raised his eyebrows. "True. I like it. Not that I need to stretch the truth when it comes to getting into people's beds."

"Of – of course not." Naruto felt colour rising in his cheeks. Jesus Christ, was he really having this conversation with Kiba fucking Inuzuka? To avoid embarrassment, he broke their eye contact and cast his gaze downwards a bit more – but that just left him looking right at Kiba's chest again. And it was getting more and more difficult to remind himself that he'd seen a million toned chests before and that this one was nothing special. Of course this one was special: it was famous.

Just to make things worse, it was clear that Kiba noticed his staring. "Hey," he said, clicking his fingers in front of his face. "My eyes are up here, dude. No one ogles me without my explicit permission."

"S– sorry!" Oh God, his face was burning, he must have looked like a beetroot.

"Are you gay, or just extremely jealous?" Kiba was grinning. "You know what, don't answer that. I prefer not knowing."

Well, that was some mercy, at least. Naruto wasn't sure if he was ready to answer a question so huge to a (famous) complete stranger yet. He knew that he'd been a bit more repressed about sex than a lot of teenagers, what with having no friends or dates because they'd distract him from training, but he was positive that this wasn't a normal conversation for two people meeting for the first time.

The truth was, he was pretty sure he was gay. Like, ninety-five per cent sure. But how the hell was he supposed to actually find out? Not only did practising his track and field for eleven hours a day drop his chances of finding someone he liked to basically zero, his coach was his dad. That meant that his dad was always with him, everywhere he went, watching everything he did. Try to take a cute girl out for ice cream and see if he could develop feelings for her? His dad would be there, barking out how many calories were in each flavour. Meet a guy at the track and sneak off to experiment with each other for a while? Dear old dad would know, and would yell at him later for being too friendly with the competition. Neither of those things ever happened, but Naruto knew that was exactly how they would go.

So, he hadn't even so much as kissed anyone of either gender, at the ripe, old age of nineteen. If given the opportunity, he wouldn't have a clue what he was doing. But he was kind of hoping that now – although he would never admit it aloud – with his father out of the picture, he could begin to catch up to his peers.

He was doing a tremendous job so far.

"Well, either way, you'll probably see a lot of me." Kiba grimaced. "I'm anticipating many more ties on doorknobs this week. That jerk's probably used up both of our stashes already."

"Your stashes?" Naruto questioned.

Kiba nodded. "Yeah, they give you six in your bedside drawer, and if you want more you've got to snatch them from the nurse's office. Still free, though, which is handy."

Puzzled enough that he didn't care about showing his ignorance, Naruto dropped his bag, moved straight to the bedside table and opened the drawer. He had no idea what Kiba was talking about and he hated not knowing things. The drawer pulled open smoothly. The inside of it was bare except for a small package the size of his fist. He read the label, and was stunned.

"Condoms? They – they just give you condoms here?"

For the first time, Kiba seemed genuinely bemused. "You didn't know that? It's pretty common knowledge, dude. You take six thousand eighteen-to-twenty-five-year-olds and shut them up in a private complex for three weeks, you think they're going to be nuns and priests? Hell, they don't give us alcohol, so what else are we supposed to do with our free time? I'm just dying for an hour alone with one of the beach volleyball girls."

Okay. Maybe when Naruto's dad had sheltered him from all the sex stuff, he hadn't realized that his son would end up thrown in the deep end a week before the biggest event of his life. Maybe he'd believed that everyone would be so focused on the actual Olympic Games that they'd put their ordinary, teenage urges on hold for a while. And maybe that was an incredibly stupid and naïve thing to believe.

"Well, I'd better get out of your hair. Let you unpack. What was your name again? Naruto? Well, I'll see you around. And thanks for the ego boost – if you keep drooling over me and talking about how brilliant I am, I think we're going to be great friends."

As Kiba left, smirking now, Naruto collapsed onto his bed in a pile of shame. He felt so pathetic; here he was, in a place where everybody apparently knew more about sex than he did, and he couldn't even get through a conversation with a guy just because he was shirtless and famous. He might as well have been a groupie. He wasn't even sure where all that painful awkwardness had come from! He was usually great at talking to people!

Had he been sexually stifled for so long that it was going to burst out of him at random intervals? What if he met someone more attractive than Kiba? Would he just… what, like, jump on them? Shit, this was not what he had expected.

It seemed that he was way more than two days behind everybody else right now.