Spring finals, 2014. The three of them are crammed unceremoniously in Naruto's tiny apartment. The air is saturated with the smell of cheap school printer ink and Red Bull, which almost overpowers the stink of teen boy, but not quite. It's only been an hour and a half, but already Sakura has done enough berating about the odor to last both boys a lifetime. By now she's calmed down, but every so often she inhales deeply and wrinkles her pert nose in disdain.
Finally, Naruto snaps and tomahawks his review packet across the room. "I cannot care less about the Opium War." He flops dramatically onto his stomach and begins rummaging through a sea of empty aluminum cans for one that still contains a drink.
Sakura, who's been scribbling vivaciously in her notebook, looks up and gives the blonde a frown. Her reading glasses sit a little crooked on her nose, so she pushes them back into place with end of her bubble-gum pink pen. "None of us care about the Opium War, Naruto, but it's on the test. You need at least a C- on this final to pass, so stop dragging your ass." She shoves an Eastern History textbook toward him with her foot.
"Easy for you to say," he scoffs, reluctantly picking it up and flipping through the pages. "You and Marilyn Manson over there got to opt out of the damn thing. Some friends you two are, leaving me to bear this burden alone. Eat six dicks."
Sasuke throws an empty Pepsi can at him. For the past several minutes he's had his face stuck in his phone, scrolling through who-knows-what and talking to God-knows-who. "Shut it, you loser. Maybe if your head wasn't stuffed so far up your ass, you wouldn't be super-failing the class."
Naruto groans, long and drawn out. "I can't help it. Ebisu-sensei's lectures are drier than Lee's elbows and there is only so much a kid with ADHD can handle. And I can't pass if you stingy misers don't let me copy the homework."
"Do your own homework, you scrub!" Sakura bellows, rocking forward to grab a fistful of blonde hair. Sasuke scoots out of the way and lets them battle it out.
In fact, things have been more or less the same in school since kindergarten. Sakura got the best grades, and had an innate for basically everything. Sasuke wasn't far behind, but he was hampered by perpetually shitty math grades. That just left Naruto, dead-last in everything except gym class and sports. It wasn't that he was an idiot. Sakura (and Sasuke too, begrudgingly) would admit that Naruto was rather smart. But his intelligence was mortally stifled by an overwhelming sense of apathy towards things he didn't care about. He'd scrapped by thus far largely due Sakura's and Sasuke's efforts to keep him afloat.
However, he's now on his own. In order to graduate from Konoha Central High School, he needs to pass each of his finals with C's, at the bare minimum. There's only a handful of other seniors required to take finals; Kiba is one of them, having failed both Contemporary Literature and Physics, in addition to being suspended earlier in the semester for letting his massive pet hound into the school. Chouji is another, who ate his way through math class and subsequently flunked the exit exam.
So Naruto takes a smidgen of comfort in the knowledge that he is not the only moron stuck in finals for the last week of high school. But even this isn't a big enough kick in the pants to encourage studying.
He cries out long strings of promises until Sakura is contented enough to let up her attack. She offers him an olive branch in the form of a half-eaten carton of Oreos and implores him to study. She nudges Sasuke in the thigh with her elbow and tries to get a few words of encouragement out of the boy, yet despite her best efforts all he supplies is a noncommittal grunt and a lazy wave of the hand.
At some point it becomes two in the morning, and the three of them pass out in a heap on Naruto's worn-out couch. Sure, it smells like stale beer and cup ramen and is about as clean as a subway restroom, but it's comfortable and able to fit all three of them at once. It's Friday night (well, more accurately, early Saturday morning), and finals are still a couple of days away.
But a night spent sleeping together in a nest of cheap Walmart afghans on a rickety old couch, as reruns of Friends play softly on the TV, is an ample reward for an evening of less-than-diligent studying. Naruto doesn't even mind that his apartment is veritably trashed or that Sasuke keeps kicking him in the ribs while he sleeps. You learn to take little victories.
A/N: I have got no idea where I was going with this but I have an intense weakness for Naruto highschool!AUs. I may do something more with this in the future but in the meantime, who the heck knows?
it's a mystery.