DISclaimer- I do not own Naruto, nor any of his smexy friends.

I hope you like this one, I really do.

XOXO- there will eventually be lemon/lime, just not in this chapter. So, the rating WILL go up.

They lived in a wide spread bit of land next to the mountains, where the closest thing was your mailbox, and the second closest thing was your mailbox, but somehow, even though they were all far apart, all the neighbors knew each other, and each other's business. Gossip travels quickly when there's nothing better to do.

Naruto and Sasuke sat in the middle of a field, meditating. Actually, Sasuke was meditating while Naruto watched. Naruto was watching Sasuke a lot lately. And unlike from their childhood, it was not for Naruto's personal pleasure. This time, it was all Tsunade's fault.

According to Tsunade, Sasuke was a See-er. (1) That meant he saw things.

Naruto had been a little skeptical of this nonsense, but when Sasuke saw that he was going to break his toe by stubbing in on Tsunade's chair tomorrow, Naruto was especially careful around that chair, and ended up not breaking his toe. That, to Naruto proved that Sasuke was a See-er. And not just a See-er, but a good one, because he could prevent bad things from happening.

Since Naruto worked for Tsunade, and Tsunade owned a bodyguard agency, she had the power to tell Naruto what to do. So when Naruto was old enough, she charged Naruto with protecting Sasuke from the things Sasuke couldn't see, because, as skilled as he was, Sasuke only had two eyes. Take Sasuke's two eyes and Naruto's two eyes, apply a little basic addition, and the result was four eyes. Four eyes are always better than two, even if two of them could be a bit scatterbrained at times. So Naruto watched Sasuke while Sasuke watched everything else, and everything was working perfectly.

Except that it wasn't. Because Sasuke was a pain in the derrière.

Naruto knew a few things about posteriors after having sat through a presentation behind Chouji, Naruto's nice but large friend. And he knew a bit about pain, too, after falling out of a tree and into a patch of cacti.

So Naruto knew what a pain in the derrière was, and Sasuke definitely was one.

For one thing, Sasuke insisted that Naruto leave him alone in the shower. What if something bad happened and Naruto wasn't there to help? And Naruto wasn't allowed in the kitchen while Sasuke was cooking. What if Sasuke dropped a knife on himself, and Naruto wasn't there to help? It was stupid things like that that could jeopardize Naruto's reliability and Sasuke's life.

Also Sasuke wouldn't let Naruto read his diary, which could hold important secrets that… Actually, the real reason Naruto wanted to read Sasuke's diary was because he was curious.

But still, if Naruto was supposed to watch over Sasuke, how was he supposed to do it if Sasuke wouldn't let him?

Sasuke sat up and glared.

"Will you stop talking to yourself and meditate? Or if you want to talk to yourself, why don't you leave?" That was another thing about Sasuke. He was always trying to get rid of Naruto. Naruto would never tell (ok he might) but he was glad that Tsunade was making him watch Sasuke.

"No." Naruto said. He couldn't help adding, "So there."

"Fine, I'll leave." Sasuke said. He stood up and brushed off his pants. Naruto looked up at him.

"Did you see anything interesting while you were meditating?" Naruto asked. Sasuke almost always saw something interesting. Though almost always wasn't as good as always.

"No." Sasuke replied. He was lying. Naruto could tell. After watching Sasuke, Naruto knew that kind of thing. Naruto had been watching Sasuke for a long time.

"How long have I known you?" Naruto asked, tugging Sasuke back down.

"Well, you were given the mission a year and seven days ago, but you met me when I was fifteen. So we have known each other for three years and three days." Sasuke was precise like that.

"Right. A long time. From when you moved from the city to here because Tsunade thought it would be too dangerous for you to be around all those hooligans to now. And I can spot a lie from you from a mile away, metaphorically speaking, and I know you're lying to me now.

"I don't understand why Tsunade assigned you to watch me. I'm seventeen, and perfectly capable of taking care of myself." Sasuke said loudly, avoiding Naruto's question.

"She wants you to have four eyes. I would have watched you anyway," Naruto said, letting it go for now (he was going to get the answer one way or another because he was determined, and very curious), "But now I'm getting paid for it."

Sasuke rolled his eyes to the left, the way he did when he was acknowledging that something was stupid, and poked Naruto in the side.

"I'll pay you to go away." He said in a way that was not nearly nice, but not mean at all.

"Right, like you could bear the chance of getting killed because you see things that people don't like." Naruto said.

"I'm not a fortune teller. I'm not inclined to tell people about how lucky they are. That isn't accurate."

"You wouldn't get death threats if you were less accurate." Naruto pointed out, knowing it was helpless. Sasuke couldn't help being right- something that was utterly precious, and extremely tedious.

"If they did things to fix it themselves then the bad things wouldn't happen. I'm not a fate teller, I'm See-er. That means I don't see the way things have to be, I see the way things will be."

"To most people, there isn't a difference." Naruto said. Even he wasn't quite sure about the difference.

Just because you could help yourself didn't mean you would. Lots of people liked the thought of something dreadful happening to them so that they could get sympathy and gift baskets with exotic fruits and chocolates shaped like hearts and kidneys (2). What most people don't know, is that the word "exotic" technically means "not from here", meaning it could come from anywhere, and that anywhere might not be completely sanitary.

After living with Sasuke for three years, Naruto found that Sasuke was not one to eat any sort of exotic anything, preferring everything to be clean and tidy, thank you very much. So it would make technical sense for Sasuke to want to avoid trouble so that he could avoid the exotic gift baskets.

Though Naruto would admit that he wouldn't mind a few chocolates shaped like kidneys.

"Maybe you should stop looking for the misfortune and tell about the good fortune." Naruto said. "You'll still be accurate, but you'll be accurate about something else. It would also help if you stopped telling people that the reason for their illness was science. "

In this part of the world, no one believed in science, it was always little fairies that flitted around giving people ailments. Something that people knew better didn't argue with. It wasn't worth the time it took to explain it.

"And I won't be helpful." Sasuke snapped. The two fell into silence. Naruto listened to the cicadas, who's loud chirping filled the air and made the clearing seem heavy and claustrophobic, and let his head fall down to rest upon his friend's shoulder. Though Sasuke pretended to complain about Naruto's company, Naruto knew that he was Sasuke's best friend. Sasuke wasn't always accurate.

A wagon rolled down the road. Wagons do that, you know. Usually the wagons rolled down the road, disappearing into the purple mountains that Sasuke said weren't purple but were actually green, the purple color was just an optical illusion. Not that people listened.

This wagon apparently didn't feel like disappearing into the purple-green mountains. The driver turned her wagon down Sasuke's driveway, and rolled to a stop in front of Sasuke's door. A pink blob jumped out of the wagon, followed by a purple one. The two blobs made their way toward Sasuke and Naruto.

"Oh no." Before Naruto could say "punctuality" (3) Sasuke was gone a small brown cloud of dust, disappearing over the horizon. Naruto shaded his eyes with one hand and watched the pink and purple blob turn and chase after the cloud of dust. They would be back soon, he knew, so he just leaned back and let the sun beat down on his tan face.

Sasuke was always being chased around by screaming girls. That was one of the reasons Sasuke was never tan- he stayed in doors to avoid them. Staying indoors lowered his chances of getting mauled by over eager fan girls, but also lowered his chances of getting skin cancer. (4)

The fan girls that Sasuke had were like cockroaches-metaphorically speaking- they weren't afraid to love Sasuke, even though he spouted scientific nonsense. His smarts just made him more attractive. Girls were odd, though Naruto couldn't honestly say he didn't understand what they were thinking. Sasuke was a pretty special person.

Three figures appeared over the horizon, moving at a somewhat fast pace toward Naruto. He wasn't quite sure exactly how fast. Sasuke would know. Naruto sighed. They were back quickly. He was looking forward to some time by himself. His eardrums needed a break from the fan girl's continuous screaming.

When the three figures got closer, Naruto saw that they were not Sasuke and fan girls. It was Tsunade's two favorite bodyguard agents, leading a resistant donkey.

"Neji! Tenten! What are you doing here?" Naruto asked, running over to help them pull the poor animal along.

"We're here with the exciting news you've always been waiting for." Tenten said, wiping sweat from her brow, "Someone is finally after Sasuke." Naruto blinked at her, not quite understanding what she just said.

"Tenten, he won't be happy to hear that news." Neji said. He turned his wide grey eyes toward the sky and said, "It's going to rain."

"Who? Who is after Sasuke?" Naruto asked excitedly, reflexively looking up at the sky, too. He couldn't help it.

"Some guys that want to use his skill to do unspeakable evil." Tenten said calmly. Naruto blinked at her.

"Oh." Then he realized something, "This must be really enormously big. Because Sasuke gets death threats all the time, and Tsunade never sent you out here before."

"It is." Neji said. He was a man of few words, Naruto had found out through the years he'd known him. He spoke even less than Sasuke, at least to him. According to Tenten, he could talk forever and still not run out of breath. Naruto supposed it was a personality thing. In fact, most people were like that. If you know someone well, you can say and do anything you want because you're comfortable with them. (5)

"How big?" Naruto asked.

"So big, they may be willing to kidnap him." Tenten said, "So make sure you keep an eye on him at all times."

"I'm not a chameleon," Naruto pointed out, "It will be hard for me to watch Sasuke with only one eye."

"It's an expression, baka." Neji said, "If I were you, I'd watch Sasuke with both eyes."

"Okay." Naruto said. There was a pregnant pause where the three humans stared blankly at each other. It was one of those times where everyone knew that should say something, but in the pressure built up between them, there was no room to come up with anything clever. Cicadas hummed noisily in the background, but they weren't noisy enough to smother the awkward silence. The donkey brayed. Finally, Neji spoke.

"So, where is Sasuke?"

YAY! I'm trying a bit of a different style, to see how I like it...

And here for the footnotes!

(1) There is a big difference between a Seer and a See-er. Mostly it's just the pronunciation. However, while Seers do it as an occupation, See-ers do it because they can't help it. It's like the people with arachnophobia that can't help but find a spider in every room. See-ers are also compulsively accurate- a quality that most Seers try to avoid as much as possible. It isn't good business, being right all the time. It gets boring.

(2) The people in the town figured that if the heart got to be made into a candy, then the other internal organs deserved to be candy, too since they were just as helpful.

(3) Fan girls always are on time.

(4) Sasuke predicted a few cases of skin cancer, but no one believed him because he said it was from radiation.

(5) Some people, Naruto included, can't behave like they have no filter with their friends. According to these people, if you don't know them, the less liable you'll be for your actions later, and the less blackmail can be applied.

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Not too much NaruSasu or SasuNaru in this chapter- sorry, but I'm gettin' warmed up! XOXO

~Ondageist13