This came to me yesterday, where I was nowhere near a maths classroom at all. In fact, I was in bed! So it was

random... :) And yes, I do know that I should be concentrating on my other story, but I just had to do this!

I myself found the test easy. The hardest maths question was 'If twelve people had twelve baskets of oranges, how many baskets would they have altogether?' But 12 x 12 has always equaled 144, no matter how you looked at it. I was idly sitting in my grey plastic chair in the cramped test hall counting the ceiling tiles when Kakashi, our lazy (and quite often late) maths teacher declared loudly that we were 'hard to deal with' and that he needed a coffee, although we all knew that it was an excuse he wouldn't be coming back until the next morning.

Sakura, the pink haired class nerd that seemed to have some insane infatuation with me, was of course finished her test and appointed temporary class teacher.

It was pointless really, as the usual troublemakers were not looking all too troublesome at that time. Shikamaru had blissfully dozed off eons ago, Temari was making goo-goo eyes at the back of Shikamaru's head and Gaara had somewhere found a bit of sand to play with. The only one still working was Naruto, though I suppose 'working' was a term I used loosely. It was more like he was staring, dumbfounded, at the slips of paper in front of him.

I tried to restrain the smile that threatened to stray onto my usually inexpressive face as I wondered how someone could be so stupid and yet so infuriatingly adorable at the same time. He sighed softly and scratched the blonde hair at the nape of his neck, defeat evident in the blue pools of his eyes.

"Dobe." The word slipped out of my mouth without my conscious permission. It was too late to call the word back in and unsay it, although I didn't really want to anyway – he was so cute when he got annoyed. In a weird way, I loved the way his calm blue eyes held an angry hidden fire in their depths, and I loved the way he would play with his spiky blonde hair when he was agitated. I loved the way his sun-bronzed skin would catch in the light as he moved and make my tummy feel funny. I loved so much about him, that it was hard to put into words.

"Teme," he sulkily grunted in reply and, to my annoyance, Sakura decided to defend my honor.

"Naruto, you idiot, don't talk to Sasuke-kun like that! And no talking during a test or I'll send you out and you will get a big, fat zero!" She raged with her hands fisting at her sides as her unattractive billboard brow went beet red with defensive anger.

"Can it, Sakura, I can fight my own battles," I growled and to this she just pouted and sat back down, facing the wall, on Kakashi's comfy chair at the front, obviously fighting tears.

Looking at Naruto's all blank answer sheet I felt a twinge of protectiveness over him and couldn't let him fail. From experience, I knew that his grandma Tsunade could get very angry and very fast. Naruto and I had used to be best friends when we were younger and I had really hated getting on the wrong side of Lady Tsunade. I had once forgotten to take off my shoes, and she had almost exploded, banning me from the house for a week and berating Naruto for not telling me all of the house rules.

I don't really know what happened to our friendship to make it the way it is now. I guess that we just gradually grew apart, to the point where we were once again strangers to each other. But I wanted that friendship back. I missed the way we could tell each other anything, the way that he could always cheer me up when I got into one of my darker moods and the way we used to play and run around until our energy was all spent. I missed us stargazing together, making faces in the clouds and always just about living in each other's houses. I'm not sure what went wrong, why we were now rivals, but I did know that whatever it was I wanted to undo it.

Tsunade was a nice woman at heart, but would be most outraged and disappointed if Naruto didn't do well in this test and Naruto would hate to disappoint the only family he had left. Knowing this, I ripped a piece of paper from my black notebook to write on and dug my pen back out from the bottom of my bag where I had banished it to. Hey, Naruto I wrote, you would make your old lady angry if you got no questions right on your test.

I slid it along the desk to Naruto (god bless assigned seating) and nudged him gently with my elbow. He looked up to read the note and almost instantly his defeated expression turned into one of frustration. You think I don't know that teme? He scrawled back in his almost unreadable handwriting, reminding me once again of when we were younger and a lot less literate.

I pushed my test a little closer to him to offer him a lifeline but he just shook his head. I raised my perfectly shaped eyebrow, not knowing what the problem was. We had always helped each other out when we were younger, me helping Naruto with maths and in return him helping me with history. We had been just about joined at the hip.

After a lot of nudging and head shaking, he eventually sighed and started hastily copying my answers making some of them different so that he wouldn't get full marks like I would but having enough correct to pass. Sakura stayed quiet or didn't notice this as she was having a deathly staring contest with Ino, her best friend, most probably about which one of them I fancied.

The answer was, of course, neither.

The bell rang for the end of school and I rose from my seat,not caring when the hard plastic clattered to the floor, quickly making my way outside of the classroom and into the crowded hallway. From studying his routine – as un-stalkerishly as possible of course - I knew that he would go into the toilets next to the sport department to get a drink from the water fountain and wash his hands of the pen that he usually drew on his hands with. The toilets next to sport were usually empty as people coming out of the lesson usually just use the toilets in the shower room but I still wanted to get there before him.

I started hurrying there even before everyone else had left the room, using my scariest look to part the crowd and get to my destination as fast as possible. I heard a few whispers and "he looks like he wants to kill me" s coming from cowering people. And It felt awesome.

He just left me. He left me even as the bell rang - he darted up from his chair and bolted. Did he really hate me that much? What had I done wrong?

I rose from my seat and had barely made it out of the door when I bumped into a blushing Hinata.

"You should be careful if you are going that way, Naruto," she quietly warned, "Sasuke looked like he was going to kill someone just now."

I thanked her for the advice and left for my usual after school hideout but with a heavy heart. Did Sasuke really hate me that much? I hoped not.

Why would he help me if he wanted to run from me? Countless questions plagued my head, so I did my best just to squash them back down.

I arrived at the bathroom and splashed some cold water onto my face, enjoying the privacy of a deserted room. Without the usual remarks about my admittedly low intelligence or the strange scars across my otherwise unblemished face, I could just relax.

I finally let my thoughts be vocalized, " why does everyone hate me so much?" I sighed aloud, not expecting an answer.

" They don't, Naruto." I replied and he whirled to face me, obviously not expecting someone else to be in the room. His eyes widened comically and I could just about hear his heart beating out a steady rhythm of ten times the usual pace. " They don't all hate you. Kiba doesn't, Hinata can't get enough of you and I certainly like you." It took a moment for me to realize what I had said but when I did, my face turned as red as that of a newborn baby. "As a friend!" I not-so-tactfully added.

I drank in the scariest but most beautiful image that I had ever seen: Uchiha Sasuke. He was barefoot and wearing faded blue jeans that were ripped at the knee just enough to see his creamy white skin. He was wearing a jet black band top of some kind, but that wasn't what made my heard race.

He was smiling. Not the usual tight lipped Uchiha grimace but a nervous smile that showed that he really was happy and not faking. You cold see his smile in the glimmer of his eyes and by the was that his sexy duck-butt hair was slightly mussed - he truly was perfect.

A light blush dusted his cheeks and he looked so adorable that I had to physically stop myself from going over there and kissing him repeatedly on the lips. He certainly wouldn't have liked that.

He didn't hate me? But... " Why did you run away from me after class?"

He looked puzzled. "Run... away? Oh! I just wanted to get here before you!" he blushed mysteriously.

I really had to stop letting these things slip! If I said much more, I would be just about admitting that I liked him more than a boy should like another boy. But his lips looked so soft...

Without my knowledge, I had been slowly walking closer to the blonde boy. I only noticed what I was doing when I found my finger tracing his lips. I quickly yanked my hand back and noted that yes, his lips really were soft.

A shock came when Naruto grabbed hold of my hand, but an even bigger shock came when he brought my hand up to rest on his cheek. He din't let go and he never broke eye contact..

I looked into his big, mesmerizing eyes and saw an emotion that I had never seen before. Not in the eyes of my parents or my friends. I saw...

Love.

Naruto warily put his hand to the back of my neck as if waiting for me to flinch away or yell at him but when I did neither it seemed to harden his resolve. He was messing up my hair but it was the last thing on my mind as he pulled me down into a kiss.

I had been waiting so long for this moment, so long thinking of the little blonde. I opened my mouth in a silent gasp and he took the opportunity to slide in his tongue, swiping over my own and tasting every inch of my mouth. He tasted of ramen but I didn't mind when it was mixed with the taste of Naruto on my tongue. With my thumb I traced the scars on his face to show that I loved them and didn't care about his disfigurements that he he seemed embarrassed about.

I never wanted to move from this spot.

The door opened and my face flushed red as Kiba walked into the room. "Naruto, where's..." his eyes widened as he took in the scene. I broke off from a very disgruntled looking Sasuke and shouted "Kiba, wait!" to his fleeing back.

He slowly turned. I could see the shock at what he had witnessed on his face.

Sasuke - the bastard - seemed to think that it was a good time to disappear. With neither me or Kiba noticing, Sasuke had escaped through a side door that even I didn't know was there.

"Kiba ... I know what it looks like but it isn't... actually it is. I think I might be gay. Slightly," I fidgeted nervously.

"Naruto, I..." Kiba tried, but I stopped him with my own words.

"Before you say anything Kiba, you should know that you won't be able to change my mind. I won't even mind if you tell everybody because I'll have Sasuke - and I love him!"I stopped for breath and looked down at the floor shamefully.

"OK"

"What?"

"I get it. I won't tell. You can do that on your own." He turned to leave.

I was confused. "Seriously? I don't get it!"

"Well I'm no homophobe, naru. And besides, he told me he liked you at the beginning of the year," he grinned mysteriously and, in my confused stupor, I let him go.