Hi Chaps and Chapettes!

My first ever fanfiction, woo...

I am sorely not talented or rich enough to own any of the copyrighted goods in this piece! They all belong to the respected owners.

Enjoy!


Chapter 1

Pillboxes.

For those who look completely and utterly normal on the outside, yet are wholly different and inflicted on the inside, the world is an ever-circumscribing corridor. Existence is a frustrating struggle and dangerous, yet stifled with the pressure of envisioned obligation and convention.

Deep within an English town, ten minutes west of Knebworth, one such person lived. Eighteen-year-old Sasuke Uchiha didn't look like any kind of irregularity; laying awkwardly on his mattress with his sheets twisted around his ankles, still dressed in yesterday's wrinkled clothes and breathing shallowly in slumber. However, deep within Sasuke's brain, fired a thousand many-armed abnormalities. To look into his handsome face, it would be impossible to guess that beneath all of that smooth eggshell skin, sputtered and failed trillions of defunct synapses.

Sasuke could walk like a regular person. He could talk like one too. He was the perfect emulation of normal. However, Sasuke's brain was broken. Sasuke was epileptic. He was not normal.

"Sasuke, it is nine 'o' clock!" Mikoto's bellow galvanised Sasuke into life and he lurched sideways off his bed. "That is, if you're still planning to get any A-Levels," she continued to rant hotly from downstairs. How her temper could permeate Sasuke from such a distance, he didn't know, it really was a talent of his mother's.

Groaning from the floor, he fought to untangle himself from his duvet. His hand connected with cool glass as he struggled upright and a furious hissing made him recoil.

"Sorry Aoda, mate," Sasuke said breathlessly, as the snake thumped his mauve coils testily against the glass front of his tank.

"Sasuke!"

"Alright! I'm awake!"

By the time Sasuke arrived in the kitchen, his whole family had congregated there. His mother was nestled in a nook of kitchen counter-tops, waffling animatedly to no one in particular as she fussed over the coffee percolator. His father was sat at the rectangular, chrome topped table, rustling papers. Fugaku was to be seen eternally shuffling and pouring over papers; be it spreadsheets, contracts, water bills, or even the Daily Mail. The man's kryptonite was the shredder. Finally, sat Sasuke's older brother, Itachi Uchiha.

Itachi sat opposite Fugaku staring intently into the dregs of his cornflakes like they might reveal his fortune. He was wearing a grey herringbone suit, complete with maroon handkerchief, periwinkle blue shirt and navy tie. Sasuke's brother had always been rather stiff and uptight, but today he oozed a new level of anal pomposity. Itachi must have felt Sasuke watching him, because his eyes moved to his younger brother. They travelled immediately, as Sasuke could have predicted, to the sunglasses propped on Sasuke's head; ready and waiting for when Sasuke's hungover eyes had to face the sunlight. A grimace rent Itachi's well-groomed face and Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"Looking remarkably snappy today, Itachi," Sasuke drawled as he reached for the coffee and a mug, "Are they genuine wool slacks? Wow, I'm jealous, and here I am in jeans," Sasuke clucked his tongue, narrowing his eyes at Itachi from over his mug as he took a sip.

"Itachi's apprenticeship at the Hyūga Plant has finished, he's starting work at our company as of today," Fugaku beamed, swelling with pride and apparently not detecting the sarcasm in Sasuke's voice.

Sasuke cast an eye over Itachi as he set his mug down, wrinkling his nose in disgust; what a pathetic little suck up his brother was. If they were kangaroos, Itachi would never have left his mother's pouch.

"You'll be making the top deals in no time, son," Fugaku inclined his tea towards Itachi who only smiled weakly.

"Dad, you sell celery, you're hardly Apple or the cartel," Sasuke pointed out in exasperation.

"Celery products," Fugaku corrected with a cool triumph glittering in the pits of his eyes.

"Oh Jesus, sorry, celery products!" Sasuke threw his hands up and turned in search of his medication before anybody tried to remind him.

His eyes fell upon a small white box. The box had fourteen different compartments and each one was labelled with a different day of the week and each day had a different meridian ascribed to it. Sasuke stared, he stared in contemplation for a moment before comprehension dawned on him.

"What is that!?" He shouted at his mother, gesturing furiously towards the pill organiser. "What is that, mother!?" He repeated when she only looked from the box to Sasuke sheepishly.

"It's just…Just to help you to remember to take them," she said edgily, an attempt at a smile twisting her lips.

"I am not an eighty-year-old woman, mother!" Sasuke seethed, grabbing the box.

Just looking at it made him bristle. It made him feel foolish and small. It made him feel different to everybody else in the kitchen.

"Well, if you'd just remember to take…Sasuke, what are you doing!?" Sasuke had opened every single compartment on the pillbox and turned it upside down. A shower of little lavender coloured pellets hit the floor, beating a tattoo against the pristine marble tiles. Sasuke watched as the twenty-six Sodium Valporate capsules – for he had kept two to take – shook for a moment before falling still; then he was gone. Straight out the door, before anybody could shout at him.


"You missed tutor," Naruto observed later in their Philosophy class.

"Hn," was all Sasuke could muster, there was an ever-convoluting web of reasons why he couldn't give Naruto a proper response. If it had been another one of their friends, for example, Shikamaru who sat to Sasuke's left, he might have managed at least seven words. For Naruto however, there was no hope.

"You're gonna end up on report with me, Kiba and Ino," Naruto snickered and Sasuke only nodded, focusing resolutely ahead of him.

He knew, that Naruto knew, exactly why things had dissolved between them. They had once been best friends, maybe better than that if there was a bond stronger than that. Then, everything had started to go wrong. They had both come to the earth-shattering realisation exactly which bond was stronger than the one they had nursed for so long, and it was territory neither of them were willing to touch, no matter how great the want. So that was that, they had fallen apart, or rather torn apart for the sake of self-preservation.

"Did something happen?" Naruto inquired, his blonde eyebrows drawing in at their centre and Sasuke felt his chest constrict at Naruto's concern.

"No," he trained his attention with far more resolve on Kakashi, dictating in front of the electronic whiteboard.

"I just…"

"How am I supposed to hear about Hume or Kant for that matter with you hissing away in my ear? You're worse than Aoda," Sasuke snapped under his breath, shooting Naruto a sidelong glare. He had meant to silence Naruto but instead saw his blonde head bow and broad shoulders start to shake as he suppressed laughter. "It wasn't supposed to be funny," Sasuke snarled pointedly, paying more attention to Naruto who fought to sober up.

"I'm sorry, I just thought something might have happened with you know…" He gave a meaningful inclination of the head and Sasuke felt hot all over.

"Honestly! Every time I twitch or show up a second late, Naruto, I am not mid-seizure! I overslept, just like Kankuro but you're not…"

"Sasuke, Naruto…" The two boys fell silent and whipped around to face their lecturer who stood bearing down on them. Sasuke had been so invested in his furious tirade, he had neglected to keep a watchful eye on the ever-attentive man. "You do understand, it isn't obligatory to attend sixth form, you are perfectly free to leave my lesson, enjoy your conversation and waste away the rest of your lives outside of Konoha College…"


Sasuke was still feeling sulky later that night at Kiba's, scowling down the neck of his Budweiser. Kiba's bedroom wasn't small, certainly not as small as Naruto or Ten-Ten's. However, trying to accommodate twelve people and Kiba's Great Pyraneese Akamaru was a push. Then, there was Kiba's vast collection of MK DONS memorabilia; shirts with his name printed on the back, flags hung like tapestries and what felt like a veritable pit of team footballs. So, when Kiba came through carrying his large and rather expensive hookah pipe and a box of shisha tobacco, a surge of panic went up where they could rest the instrument.

"You're taking up the most room, move," Kiba booted Choji ruthlessly into a pile of balls roughly the same shape as the latter boy.

"Yo," Sasuke went tense all over as Naruto dropped into the snug space beside him. He was acutely aware of the fibres of Naruto's apricot jacket brushing against his knuckles.

"What?" Sasuke asked tightly, drawing his hand back into his lap.

"Sorry," Naruto apologised and Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Sorry for getting you in trouble, and sorry for pissing you off about the epilepsy. It's new to all of us." Naruto scratched the back of his head looking guilty, "I wish I had exactly the right thing to say all the time." He admitted and Sasuke's eyes trailed from him back to the hookah pipe.

"It's new to me too," he confessed with a tired sigh, drawing his knees up ever so slightly. "I'm one year deep in epilepsy and literally still don't fucking get it," he shrugged and then smiled coyly at Naruto. "If I don't get it, you don't stand a chance man."

"So why were you late earlier?" Naruto quizzed and Sasuke evaded his eye.

"This is ready, who wants first go?" Kiba raised the mouthpiece on the end of the hookah's long hose. Sasuke watched the object now that it had come to life. Its base looked like an amber hour glass and stirred with water. At the top though, in a complete paradoxical state, worked fire as embers chewed through a charcoal disk; heating the sticky tobacco and filling the room with the saccharine stench of strawberries and pomegranates.

"I didn't lie, I did oversleep," Sasuke began without look up, "but I had a fight with the family." He stared at the pipe until his vision went blurry and finally turned to Naruto, "mum bought me a pillbox, like I'm some kind of shuffling, doddering, invalid." He bit his lip and shook his head, "just got under my skin a bit you know." He shrugged.

"A pillbox? Wow that is…" Naruto's expression was unreadable for a moment, "hilarious." Sasuke blanched as Naruto crowed with laughter. "Oh, come on," Naruto snorted, ribbing Sasuke who was ready to get up and storm off. "It is a bit funny," Naruto pinched his forefinger and thumb together, "just a little bit?" Sasuke watched Naruto vibrate with waves of mirth and after a while the scowl slipped from his face and with it lifted the anger and resent.

For a moment, everything was right again, the integral parts of Sasuke's reality were dropping into place again. Then, it seemed Naruto deemed it okay to tempt fate and moved to scrub Sasuke's hair with the heel of his palm. The second their skin connected everything fell away again and they were no longer unblemished as a voltage of some feeling surged through Sasuke, striking him right at the core. Sasuke knew Naruto had felt it too because he snatched his hand away, taking a few strands of Sasuke's hair with him.

"I've got to take my meds," Sasuke was on his feet in a flash, picking his way towards his messenger bag and he saw that Naruto had done the same; jumped to his feet and slid away from Sasuke like he was contagious.

They weren't okay. Everything wasn't right again and it wasn't going to be. They were broken, just like Sasuke's brain.


Taadaa!

And that is one chapter :D

Please, rate and review is it? I keep seeing R&R and I'm like...Hmmm, very confused...It would be nice if you could because there are probably a thousand glaring errors that I'm just miserably failing to see (boohoo)

Hope you enjoyed huns!