You like sweets a lot, especially milk chocolate. You like white chocolate a lot. I pointed out that white chocolate isn't even chocolate. You laughed and continued wolfing down your ramen. You had cracked an egg into the ramen and offered some to me. I politely declined. I had eaten yakisoba before we went to hang out. We spend a lot of time together—on the days that I'm not kicking your ass, we hang out usually. It messes with me. Everything about you does. When people hang out enough and like each other, their mannerisms and speech patterns start to match, or some of them. Yours have begun to match mine, some of them. I never grew too fond of ramen, but I started eating chocolate. You don't like dark chocolate or raspberry filling. Those two combine to make my favorite sweet, the only one I'll really eat. I eat it when I get stressed out over you, because if I drink, I will do something terrible. I only drink hard liquor. I hate beer and wine. I wish I could hate you.
I can't. I wish we would stop hanging out. The only reason I go into our fights intending to land you in the hospital is because I can't fuck you. We're both gay and that's not the issue here. We fight, we spend hours together every day and you've stayed the night at my place. Every time we do this, every time I listen to you or you to me, it's a mistake. The amount of time I spend thinking of you every day is a mistake. Every phone call that lasts longer than a minute, all the text messages you send me, every time I make you laugh—your laugh comes so easy to you that you're probably faking it every time I'm supposedly making you laugh. Every time I say hi, every time anything. I am such an idiot. Yes, you with your big grin, are always telling me to come over, to talk anytime, that I'm so cool.
I hate myself more than the entire town of Konoha could ever begin to. Warning! Call the waaah-mbulance! Sasuke's in his emo corner! And it's over a guy he sees every day! I'm so sick of complaining. I am so sick of whining. I'm sick of myself. I hate this. Emo corner! Usually I can make a crush disappear within two weeks. But if I wasn't so twisted up over this, I wouldn't work so hard. I wouldn't be as good a ninja. I hate that I am tormenting myself with all this. But—no. It just—it has to be this way. I'm wasting my life over you—the hours-long phone conversations, the way my heart pounds, how I'm—besotted. Me, besotted. With you. It's been what, let me check. Oh, look. Two fuckin' weeks and a day down to the hour since the—moment, really, since it pretty much happened in a split second—that my penis reacted to you in a certain way and my brain decided to throw 'lovesickness' into the mix. What bullshit. All you did was look over to me and smile shyly. You wanted me to eat chocolate with you.
I had been planning on hitting the bottle. You stopped drinking the same time you stopped smoking. You told me two weeks ago that chocolate was better than the hard liquor I so favor. I eat dark chocolate with raspberry filling now. I haven't had a drink in four months. I was trying to only binge drink every four months. Then you wanted me to eat chocolate. It became my alcohol substitute. I think of you often.
Perhaps I entertain you. Perhaps I bore you. It's stupid how I talk to you every day. But you grin. You laugh. You got me to stop drinking for now. To you, I'm damn sure we're just friends. It's obvious, to me anyway, how I feel. On missions, you always ask me at night if I am scared. And I want nothing more in those moments to put my arm around you and tell you it'll be okay. I never, ever do. The desire to hold you and kiss would be too strong. I will never be able to do that. I've cried over this a few times. I struggled to hold back my tears in front of you once. It was the middle of the night.
My emotions had tossed me around over you that day. I was sharing quarter with you that night, as always on missions. I was in my emo corner and suddenly couldn't handle it anymore. I bolted and finally slowed to a walk. I was back fifteen minutes later. You were still awake. I swore silently as you greeted me. And suddenly tears were in my throat. You panicked. "Are you okay? What happened? Was it something I said?"
"Leave me alone," I choked out. Then I sobbed in spite of myself. The next day I acted like nothing had happened. We never brought it up.
I want to pretend this is nothing. But it's something. And thanks to you, the dark chocolate with raspberry filling is there to comfort me. Someday I'll drink alcohol again. For now, I will think of you.