This is a thankyou fic for narutolover15. Thanks for the 200th review!

Warnings: story contains citris (eventual), violence and character death (eventual)

This is unBeta-ed. Any and all mistakes are my own.

Enjoy...

You Are My Sunshine

Someone was crying. The sound was distant at first, like it was coming from the other side of a long dark tunnel, echoing and thread. It was coming closer, the crying, or maybe he was the one bridging the distance. And then all at once he became a part of the noise.

She sobbed into his arm, calling for him, telling him to wake up. He couldn't see her face, but he could hear her pleading.

"Come back…come back…"

He wasn't going anywhere. He was right here. Stupid woman.

Someone else was speaking; a man. He couldn't see him either.

"…nothing we can do…wait for him…"

Wait for him to do what? Fall asleep? They were the ones keeping him awake.

The woman shouted at the man's voice. He couldn't hear all of it. She said something about 'baby'.

He wanted to tell her to stop all the yelling, that he couldn't sleep. Be he couldn't open his eyes, or turn his head. He tried to speak, but no sound emerged; his throat was as unresponsive as his petrified body.

What was going on? Why was this happening?

And then the voices disappeared. He was shoved back into the tunnel, with a new destination. He heard a single, drawn out note carry over the blackness of far away. Louder it pitched until it was right in front of him.

He opened his eyes just in time to see the headlights flash in front of him. And then his world exploded in a wave of heat, light and sound.

Sasuke woke sweating.

.XX.

It was raining the night Naruto walked into his life. Lightening rent the black curtain of night as thunder produced a continuous rumble in the sky.

He was staring at his computer screen. The blank page in front of him glared back mockingly. He couldn't think, not a mental state he preferred; especially not while he was writing a college entrance essay.

Obsidian colored eyes trailed over the single pre-written line on the screen for what felt like the hundredth time.

'As we go through our lives we meet many people; some for the good, others not. Tell about a time/place or person who has touched you, for the better or worse.'

Sasuke like to think that he was many things. The girls at school would call him sexy, or athletic. The teachers praised his intellect and drive whilst the guys on his team stood in awe of his natural talent. Yet, amongst those attributes accredited to him, 'emotionally touched' was not one. Sasuke learn early on that Uchiha's didn't do touched.

His mother tapped lightly on the door before peeking inside her son's room. "It's late Sasuke. How is the essay coming along?"

"Not as well as I'd like." The raven said. He wouldn't have admitted it to anyone else, but he'd always gotten along better with his mother than Fugaku or Itachi: his father and brother. Perhaps it was just a symptom of being the younger of the two boys, but he appreciated his mother's kindness more than his father's unerring disapproval and Itachi's indifference.

The woman smiled and placed her hands on his shoulders. Her thumbs traced slow circles on the nape of his neck as she had for years. It relaxed him a bit; not much. But there wasn't anything his mother could do to completely relieve his tension, unless she wanted to write the essay for him. But she wouldn't do that, and Sasuke would never ask.

"Thank you." He sighed and her hands disappeared.

"Your father is going to be in the office for a little while longer." She murmured gently. "You should try and get some sleep."

"Thank you." He repeated, this time with the appreciation he felt. It soothed her enough to allow her to retire. She had done what any good mother would do and her good son would try and get some sleep soon. He just needed to get something done first.

Sasuke listened as her footsteps faded off down the hall. He heard her door close and all was sweetly silent.

But only for a few short seconds. There was another reason for his writers' block besides lack of subject matter and it was currently lounging on his bed.

"Thank goodness." The woman giggled, toying idly with a strand of pink hair. "I thought she'd never leave."

"I was hoping you might."

The pink-haired girl, whom Sasuke had begrudgingly learned was named Sakura, pouted. "You're still not very nice."

The youngest Uchiha ignored her.

The recently murdered woman had followed him home from school one day. After three weeks of her stiflingly constant affections, Sasuke was just about ready to kill her for a second time. He didn't care if she was a ghost, he was an Uchiha. He would find a way.

Instead of answering, the raven took another game stab at his bummer of an essay.

After the better part of another hour had gone, Sasuke was on his eleventh restart and wanted nothing more than to shut his laptop and go to sleep. But his Uchiha pride wouldn't allow him to accept defeat. He'd accepted the challenge. He had to get something done.

He felt a chill run across his skin. It would happen sometimes when Sakura tried to touch him. She couldn't actually touch him since she had no actual physical substance, but the shiver still manifested. Maybe it was something only he could feel. Then again, maybe that was the way spirits touched the living and every time someone shivered they were touching someone from the realm of the dead. Either way, a disembodied spirit had run its' clammy fingers across his shoulder and he was laying odds it was Sakura trying to get his attention.

"Stop it." He said abruptly. The ghost woman had responded the best to straight-forward frankness if she chose to ignore his prolonged silences.

He heard a gasp. It didn't belong to Sakura. It most definitely belonged to a man.

Sasuke swiveled around, locking gazes with a pair of the bluest eyes he had ever seen.

The boy was washed out, like all the other spirits Sasuke had had the misfortune of meeting in his seventeen years of life. The ghost looked faded, as though he had been washed one time too many. Despite this, the golden yellow spikes still shone like rays of sunlight. His skin was lightly tanned and he sported six whisker-esk scars across his cheeks. Oddly, it didn't look stupid. In fact, they made the boy look almost…sexy.

Sasuke arched an eyebrow as the ghost began to back up, blue eyes wide.

"You…you can see me?"

The Uchiha nodded once.

Truthfully, he had been seeing spirits for as long as he could remember.

In his younger days he tried to show his parents the funny people who could walk through walls and had been punished for lying. After several repeat performances, Sasuke stopped trying. But the funny people never went away; they stuck around until he had grown up enough to call them 'ghosts'.

The boys' expression had shifted from surprise to curiosity. He peered at Sasuke like he was the transparent one and grinned.

"Well it's about time I found someone to talk to. I thought I'd go crazy all by myself."

Sasuke rolled his eyes and turned back to his computer. The boy certainly recovered quickly.

He had an essay to compose and it wouldn't get done while he sat chatting with another wayward spirit lost between earth and the afterlife.

"What are you doing?" Another wave of cold washed over his shoulder as the ghost leaned over to look at his laptop screen. Sasuke wished for a moment that he could push the boy away. But since ghosts were annoyingly non-corporal, he was forced to lean away from the source of shivers running down his spine.

"What kind of stupid pills is your Lit teacher on?" The ghost asked.

Sasuke snorted. "It's an essay for college idiot. They don't ask you normal questions."

"Oh." The blond back away, chuckling self-consciously as he did. "Well, I guess that makes sense."

The raven didn't respond. He wasn't particularly good at entertaining people; even those he thought were worth his time. At the moment, however, he wasn't really thinking about his uninvited house guest. His mind had snapped back to that essay again…and was still coming up with jack-squat.

"So…" The blond cleared his throat and shifted back and forth on his translucent feet. "I'll just…get out of your hair then. See you around." He turned to go.

Sasuke could feel more than hear the tell-tale rustling. His wayward spirit was departing his room and his life. He only wished that Sakura would leave that easily. But for some reason he didn't want the blond go so easily. His departure felt wrong.

"What's your name?" He called out before he could consider the consequences.

"What?" The blond turned. He was standing half-way inside the bedroom wall.

"What's your name?"

The spirit's grin was sheepish. "Naruto." He said. "Naruto Uzumaki."

Sasuke nodded wordlessly and turned his attention back to the screen in front of him. He thought about letting it go at that, but once again, the niggling tremor of prophecy wouldn't allow him to. Instead he blurted out: "Uzumaki, if you care, I…wouldn't hate it if you came back. Just as long as you don't make a complete nuisance of yourself."

He didn't need to look to know that the blond ghost was grinning ear to ear.

The knot inside his chest loosened when Naruto said "Sure." and disappeared through the wall.

Sasuke stared at the blank screen, his fingers poised over the keypad, but his mind was no longer on the essay. Sighing, he shut his laptop and leaned back.

He blond would return. Sasuke knew he would. The question was: why was did it matter so much to him?

He dreamed of the crying woman again.

She shed no tears now. Instead she sat beside him, held his oddly immobile hand and sang. She had a sweet voice. It was kind and motherly. He loved her. He didn't know her, but he felt as though he should love her with all his heart, should love this voice; this voice he had heard all his life.

The song she sang was sad, haunting, like the tremor underlying her beautiful voice.

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,

You make me happy when skies are grey,

You'll never know dear, how much I love you,

Oh please don't take my sunshine away,"

Sasuke woke shaking.

"Okay class, that's the assignment. You have the remainder of the class period to get as much of it done as you can. Get to it."

There were scattered murmurs of assent from the twenty-odd students gathered in Kakashi Hatake's AP Government class.

Sasuke sighed and bent over his book. He didn't bother joining any of the quickly forming study pods. The ones who had any brains wouldn't need his help and the rest didn't deserve it. He preferred to be on his own: self-sufficient. At least he could legitimately claim he'd completed his work all on his own merit.

The assignment was to create a nation and a system of government to rule over it. The framework could be as complex or as simple as the founder (student) was willing to make it. Of course, the more effort on put in, the better the end grade would be.

Sasuke's eyes wandered to the noisier of the clicks massing together, specifically to the source of most of the classrooms' noise: a one Kiba Inazuka.

The boy was currently attempting to unscrew the table attached to his chair, much to the amusement of his fellow classmates; who were egging him on as loudly as they dared without tipping off Kakashi that shenanigans were afoot.

Sasuke glanced over to the teacher's desk and snorted. Kakashi had his head buried in a book. He wasn't even pretending to pay any attention to his class. The Uchiha just hoped that the Principle didn't decide to walk in when Kiba got his desk taken apart.

"What are you doing?"

Sasuke turned his attention to the new voice to his right. The ghost was back. It had been almost a week since the raven last saw him. For a while, actually, he'd thought that Naruto wasn't coming back. It was odd how disturbing that idea had been; more so than he cared to admit.

"Project." He was careful to keep his voice low. Even if his classmates couldn't see or hear Naruto, they could hear him.

Naruto either didn't understand this or the ghost simply didn't care. He leaned closer to inspect the AP government literature and the Uchiha's notebook lying open on the desk-top.

"What the United Emeriti?" He asked.

Sasuke was tempted to ignore the spirit, but couldn't quite bring himself to do it. Before the Uchiha realized it, he was explaining the project to a politely silent Naruto.

When Sasuke finished, he whistled. "Sounds like fun. Can I help?"

The raven shrugged noncommittally, but allowed Naruto to lean in and put his two cents. After twenty minutes of 'suggestions', his well-organized ruler-ship had deteriorated rather spectacularly into anarchy stitched loosely together with the barest layer of rules disguised as national holidays.

He couldn't recall the last time he had so much fun on a school assignment.

"Naruto." He said. The ghost's incredibly blue eyes transferred from the page he was studying to the Uchiha's face.

"What's up?"

Sasuke tried not to look back. It was weird enough he was muttering to 'himself', best not to compound the oddity by staring at thin air. He contented himself with the notebook in front of him.

"How did you get here?" He wondered absently if he had another ghost stalker.

The blond snorted loudly. "Yeah, right. Who would want to follow your lame excuse of a personality around all day?"

Sasuke arched an eyebrow and waited for Naruto's question to ask itself. The ghost had to have seen Sakura.

Sasuke didn't have to wait long.

"Oh, well…I didn't mean to follow you. Actually, I don't really know how I got here. I just sort of happened. I was all hanging out in your room and then I was kind of…" He seemed to be searching for the right word. "…pulled here."

"Pulled?" Sasuke repeated.

"Hey, don't look at me." The ghost raised his hands defensively. "I can't explain it any better. I'm new to this whole 'ghost' thing. I wasn't planning on stalking you if it makes you feel any better. It just happened."

Naruto leaned in and wiggled his eyebrows. "Good thing too. It looked like you needed me to liven this class up a little."

The Uchiha didn't answer. The blonds' explanation left more questions than it answered, but it was something. At least Naruto wasn't stalking him like some of his other metaphysical visitors. And perhaps there was something about the blond that he enjoyed. Sasuke smirked down at his paper and the loose guidelines of anarchy they had assembled together. It wasn't the guy's brains.

The bell trilled loudly, effectively severing his train of thought.

"All right class." Kakashi called from behind his desk. "It's that time. Hand in what you've got."

The obligatory groans were issued before the rustling of notebooks and backpacks overtook the room.

Sasuke handed his pages over and started to leave, Naruto at his side.

He paused at the door, chancing a glance at his teacher. Kakashi's eyebrows had disappeared up somewhere in his hair as his eyes continued to scan Sasuke's assignment.

"Something tells me." Naruto chuckled once they'd travelled a fair way down the hall. "That wasn't a sample of your typical work."

Despite himself, Sasuke laughed.

Sasuke didn't do friends; for the simple reason that he had no use for them. They took away the time and energy and resources better spent in more worthwhile endeavors.

He discovered quickly that Naruto didn't do anything less than best friends.

The blond was everywhere, constantly poking around his room, pestering him while he tried to do homework, hanging around school, or pulling faces at him at dinner. Sasuke was almost certain that his parent's thought he was developing a mental condition. His classmates already did. After his government project was shared with the class the following week, rumors began flying in earnest.

And maybe there was some truth to their murmured mutterings.

In the beginning, Sasuke didn't pay attention to the idiots who stared and whispered to one another. He had his own idiots to worry about; ones who were blond and named Naruto Uzumaki and could walk through walls.

There was a point, however, when he could no longer deny he enjoyed the ghost boy's company more than perhaps was right. He wasn't sure when he had come to desire the blonds' constant stream of babble. But the nights Naruto was away felt oddly empty.

He didn't think about it. It was best not to, then the implications could be comfortably ignored.

There came a point, however, when Naruto could no longer be ignored.

He was staring at the computer again. The same essay spread across the screen. The stark whiteness of the page was like the gleaming fangs of some predatory animal.

Lightning painted the slivering black of night visible through his curtains. Rain was once more drilling into the roof, staying the silence with a thousand nimble fingers.

He still couldn't think.

Frustration edged along his spine. It curled innocuously around his mind until he wanted to write what he really thought about the essay and send that instead of the given prompt.

"Hey, what'cha up to?"

Naruto was back.

"Writing."

The blond peered over his shoulder, brushing sweet chills down his backbone. Naruto chuckled and pulled back.

"It looks like you're just staring at the computer to me. There's nothing but the instructions on the page."

He paused while he read those instructions. Sasuke mentally ticked off the seconds till the blonds' predictable exclamation.

"You're still on this essay? Dude, it's been…like forever and you haven't even written anything."

The raven arched an eyebrow at his irksome poltergeist. He didn't mention that it had only been two months since his first attempt at this particular essay. He wasn't going to give Naruto that kind of ammunition.

Instead, he said: "Maybe if I wasn't constantly being interrupted I would be finished."

Naruto backed off Sasuke's shoulder, but he shook his head.

"Nah, it's not that. You have to have friends to answer a prompt like that. Since you don't have any…"

The ghost's heavily implicated trail off only made Sasuke want to roll his eyes.

"Funny," He said. "Tell it again."

Naruto didn't and the silence expanded uncomfortably between them.

At length the ghost cleared his throat. "So…how come you don't have any friends?"

Sasuke shrugged. "The idiots at school aren't worth socializing with."

"What about me?"

"You don't go to school."

"No." The blond scowled. "I mean: why do you let me hang around? If you're that against 'socializing'." The way he casually tossed the Uchiha's words back at him stung. Sasuke didn't know why.

The raven didn't answer at first. He wasn't really sure what to say. At length, honesty won. What prompted the words he couldn't fathom, but the confession felt right.

"I had a feeling." He responded at last. "If I'd let you leave I would regret it."

For the rest of the night, Sasuke failed to produce a single substantial line of text, and Naruto said nothing. He just sat on Sasuke's bed and smiled.

"Oh, Sasuke, this is just perfect. You're perfect. I can't believe that I'm going out with the most perfect guy in the whole school. Nobody can get a date with you. And…well…if it wasn't for you talking to yourself all the time…you'd be perfect. Oh, Sasuke. I'm so excited about tonight. Do I know where we're going? I'll bet it's going to be perfect, because it has to be. You're perfect, so our date just has to be perfect too…"

"Does she ever shut up?"

Sasuke smirked. Naruto was floating around his 'date' for the evening, frowning and inspecting her tall slender figure like he was the judge in some contest. She wasn't contending well.

"Oh, are we going to the carnival, Sasuke? Aren't you sweet, that's the place I wanted to go the most. I meant to go, but I haven't had the chance. I'm always studying and reading to improve my mind so I can help all of humanity. Those poor people who don't have any food or clothing or water and can't speak or learn or anything; it's so sad, don't you think it's sad. I do, that's why I'm studying so hard all the time, improving my mind. So I don't have much time to go to carnivals."

"Her mind needs all the help it can get."

"Speak for yourself usuratonkachi."

The blond pouted and Sasuke's date turned to look at him.

"Did you say something Sasuke?"

When the raven didn't respond, the girl just giggled.

"Oh, Sasuke, you're so strong and silent. You're the strong and silent type. You're so perfect for me. It's like we were destined to be together for the rest of our lives because…well, you're so strong and silent and handsome and wonderful…"

Naruto made a gagging, choking noise and Sasuke could help but smirk again. He shot the ghost a warning look though. He didn't want to be rude, even if this girl was the single most addle-brained individual he had ever met. He was an Uchiha; some semblance of decorum was required.

Naruto stuck out his tongue, but stopped baiting Sasuke. After that, the night steadily declined into bedlam.

His date wasn't the hardy sort, nor did she care for carnival food. Neither did Sasuke, but she was the one who had suggested this particular destination. Sasuke was nothing if not a gentleman.

After enduring two hours of nearly incoherent stream-of-consciousness prattling she threw up on his shoe.

She insisted she was fine and that they should continue the date. Another hour passed and she had tossed her cookies twice more, once in an accommodating dumpster, the second on Sasuke's clean shoe.

Naruto was doubled over with laughter at this point. Between glaring at his paranormal companion and attending to his corporal one, Sasuke was feeling a bit testy.

The girl didn't last long after that. Not that Sasuke would've let the chaos go on even if she were still game. He refused to trudge around a public place another minute reeking of nacho cheese vomit.

She called a driver to pick her up. Sasuke saw her off and then head out for his car.

"Where are you going?"

The raven turned to look at his ghostly companion. Naruto looked indignant, but Sasuke was in no mood to play games.

"Home."

"But it's a weekend and you still have hours before you have to be home. What do you plan to do when you get there, sit in your room and stare at that 'friend essay' some more?"

Sasuke still hadn't made any headway on that essay and it was already four months into the school year. It was a sore spot and the blond knew it.

It may have been petty, it may have been juvenile. But Sasuke was tired; he had been forced to endure four long hours of brainless nattering; he smelled of grease and nasty bodily fluids. Naruto's words were a solid punch to the remainder of his tried and frayed nerves. He spoke without thinking.

"Maybe I am." He said, venom dripping from every syllable. "But you don't have to stick around my boring room while I do."

The blonds' eyes widened. "What does that mean?"

"It means you should go and find someone else to bother, idiot." He regretted the words the instant they emerged from his mouth. The hurt on Naruto's face almost had him apologizing. But Uchiha's didn't apologize, Uchiha's didn't need to cater to the whims of juvenile spirits. Uchiha's didn't need anything, or anyone.

So Sasuke didn't say anything. He just walked away and didn't look back.

AN: I'm back...long time no see. I'm going to get back to my other stories. I promise.

Anyway. Tell me what you think so far.

Until next time...