Disclaimer: Characters are not mine.
Stares and Bunsen Burners
./-
"It's important for your safety," Kakashi stated to the pouting blonde boy directly in front of him. Naruto, being the rebel that he is, decided he would go without the safety glasses in the chemistry lab on the grounds that it was much more "manly."
And of course, by causing a commotion, he would get Sakura's attention. These two thoughts worked out well for him; he didn't really mind the possibility that he might get acidic compounds into his eyes anyway. As long as he looked manly it was good enough for him. Kakashi had to go by the school rules, being the supervisor, and he knew that Naruto, out of anyone else in the class, would have the highest chance of ruining their experiment. He didn't have the heart to break it to the frustrated boy, so he tried to think creatively.
"Just pretend they're sunglasses," he gestured to the eyewear in Naruto's clenched hand. "That's manly, or cool, don't you think?" He tried to smile, getting ready to pass the lab assignment out to the class. After all, time was ticking.
"I guess," Naruto sighed, reluctantly sliding them onto his face while Kakashi sidestepped him and began to explain the assignment.
"Follow the instructions on the sheet," he said. "Your lab groups are taped to the tables. You have the rest of class to finish everything. Lab reports are due tomorrow, typed..." he continued on. Sasuke sighed, placing his head in his hand and waiting for his sheet to be passed to him. He hated lab assignments. Especially ones where he had to work with the loudmouth, time-wasting blonde. Sasuke spaced out for a moment while trying to calm his irritation. He tried to work out the chances of having the loudmouth in his group, hoping they weren't too high.
"Got it?" Kakashi finished, reaching the end and slipping the sheet onto Sasuke's desk. He seemed to notice Sasuke's apathy towards the instructions, giving him a warning glance.
"I got it," he huffed, getting out of his chair as the rest of the class pushed one another out of the way in an effortless attempt to read the group labels. Sasuke stood at the edge of the class, reading over the assignment to himself. It was printed in a legible font, boring, but efficient. It was on white paper as well, which Sasuke rather liked in comparison to Iruka's use of multicolored worksheets. He tried to make math fun, though it failed miserably. It was still a worksheet in the end.
"SASUKE!" the blonde shouted from across the room, jumping up and down with his arm in the air. "You're with us!" Of course, Sasuke thought, it was just his luck to be placed in Naruto's group for the fourth time this year.
A few of the girls in the class scowled when they read off the rest of the names, shooting the meek girl beside Naruto mean looks. Sasuke would have overlooked her if it hadn't been for their attention. Not noticing her previously, he assumed she wasn't one of his crazy fangirls. Upon approaching the table, he narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out if he knew her. Shrinking back, she gulped visibly and took her place on the opposite side of the table.
"Alright!" Naruto grinned, slipping on his 'sunglasses' and doing a cool pose. "We've got this, guys!"
Sasuke watched her hands shake as she picked up her pencil to write her name on the top of the lab sheet. Trying not to seem that interested, he glanced at it as she finished. Hinata Hyuuga. He watched her slip on her own safety glasses, shaking a little under his gaze.
She avoided his eyes as best as she could, looking down to her feet and awkwardly touching the edges of her paper. As much as Sasuke thought about it, he couldn't place where exactly he'd seen her. It was possible that it had only been in this class, though he was sure he'd seen her before. But where?
"S-s-should we start?" she attempted a smile, looking over to Naruto standing next to her. He leaned down, processing her quiet voice, and a second later he shook his head.
"We can't! Our last group member isn't here yet."
Annoyed by this lack of progress and being forced to stand up to work, Sasuke moved quickly to the edge of the table and shoved Naruto's paper out of the way. Before the boy could protest, he had already read the last group member's name. Shikamaru.
"I could have gotten hurt!" Naruto pouted, catching the floating paper. Sasuke merely huffed, scanning the classroom for the lazy genius.
"From what? A papercut?" Sasuke retorted absently, finally noticing Shikamaru's sleeping form on one of the far desks.
"Yes," Naruto faked a tear, slapping his lab instructions on the black table and crossing his arms.
"Go wake him up," Sasuke said, turning his head to the side and walking back to his previous position. "We need him."
Naruto didn't want to follow Sasuke's orders, but when realizing he had a chance to wake up a sleeping person, a mischievous grin fell over his features and he crouched down, making his way silently over to Shikamaru's desk.
Sasuke noticed Hinata was watching the ordeal from her place across from him. She tried to smile at him, but it came out faulty. She looked as if she had something to say, but decided against it, picking up her pencil and tapping it on her paper to get away from his gaze.
"What?" Sasuke said to her quite harshly, knowing there was something dying to get out of her.
"U-um, d-d-don't you think that was... a bit um," she paused, still not meeting his eyes. Sasuke waited for her to finish, getting more impatient by the minute as she hesitated. Just as he was about to speak to her again, she finally got the rest of it out. "... mean?"
Sasuke stitched his eyebrows together, thinking the idea was laughable. "You think that was mean?" If she wanted to see mean, she would see mean. That was nothing.
"S-s-sorry-" she just managed to get out before being cut off by Naruto's loud, "BOO!"
Most of the class looked to the source of the commotion, though others were too busy working on their assignments. Thirty-two minutes remained. Shikamaru barely moved, slowly picking his head up to look plainly at the frustrated Naruto. A little embarrassed, Naruto stood up and pointed to the black table where Sasuke was twitching his eye at Hinata.
"We have a lab assignment," Naruto explained, moving out of Shikamaru's way as he got up and read over the lab sheet on the way.
The rest of the group members had to admit they were lucky to have a genius like Shikamaru in their group. Sasuke thought it would most likely balance out Naruto's idiocy, bringing the table to a nice equilibrium.
When Shikamaru started work with setting up the correct measurements of the beakers, Sasuke's annoyance faded. He started going through the different places in his mind and trying to figure out where he'd seen the small girl. She was trying to read the labels on the available containers, handing them across the table to Shikamaru as he asked for them.
Naruto stayed out of the business, though it was obvious he was itching for a task to do.
Each time she'd reach out to hand a container to him, she'd have to tuck back a bit of her long hair that spilled onto the table. Sasuke thought she looked like she really needed a hair tie of some sort. When she'd done it about the third time, he realized it probably would have fixed itself if she'd held her head up a little higher.
He let out a breath, thinking that she was also in his calculus class. He wasn't entirely sure, but he wasn't about to ask in order to confirm it. He could make a reference to the color of the paper, seeing if she responded to knowing of Iruka's crazy "math relatable" teaching style. Biting the inside of his mouth, he decided against it, turning his head back down to his lab sheet.
Not knowing where he'd seen her before started to eat away at him. He'd have to figure this out in the next twenty-two minutes, judging by the wall clock. His features became tighter as the time went on, though he was still no closer to figuring out where he'd seen her. He was sure he wouldn't forget strange eyes like hers.
"Now we just have to heat the chemicals and observe the temperature at which they-"
"I'll do it!" Naruto said, pumping a fist in the air.
"Fine," Shikamaru said, stepping aside and letting Naruto have access to the bunsen burner.
Naruto ran to the edge of the table, placing his hand on the knob just as Hinata managed to get the courage to speak up. "W-wait!" she said, holding her hand out. Looking up, Naruto blinked at her. The other two group members didn't have a problem with it, and they were clearly confused until she managed to support her exclamation. "K-kakashi said he'd have to be the one to supervise us w-when we turn it on."
Naruto thought about it for a moment, but decided against it. "Supervise shoompervise!" he said loudly.
"That doesn't even make sense-"
"AHH-"
Naruto's hand had twisted on the bunsen burner, shooting up a large flame and startling the few group members. Naruto, of course, had been standing too close to it, and a small flame had dropped onto his coat. Originally small, it quickly evolved into a big fire. Naruto had managed to throw the zipper down on his large orange jumpsuit-which looked to be fire retardant in Sasuke's opinion, but clearly wasn't-tossing it on the ground and attempting to stamp out the flames.
Kakashi approached two seconds later with a fire extinguisher, sighing as the carbon dioxide engulfed Naruto's precious orange jacket. Sasuke sighed, leaning over the black table and placing his head in his hands. "I'm done," he said quietly, shaking his head while trying to block out Naruto's crazed wails of, "My jacket! My jacket!"
"That's why I said supervise. You weren't listening, were you, cool guy?" Kakashi 'tsk'ed, shaking his head. The entire class had their attention on the exchange, a few laughing, the others relieved that the blinding orange jacket would be unwearable in its current condition. "But I guess you were bored with being cool, hm?" Kakashi was on his last nerve with Naruto's behavior, packing the fire extinguisher back up.
"S-sasuke-san?" Hinata had tried to bring him out of his annoyed state. Sasuke picked his head up, giving her an icy look. Then something hit him: he knew where he'd seen her before! It wasn't just in one place at one time like he'd originally thought. She was always there. She was everywhere. The shots started flashing into Sasuke's mind one after another. Of course...
She'd been standing near his locker attempting to talk to the blonde boy about every week, sometimes getting the courage to say hi, other times not.
She'd been just around the corner after school, anxiously glancing over her shoulder in paranoia as she walked to her house.
She'd been in his calculus class, trying to read off the blinding yellow paper Iruka provided.
She'd been carrying around a little box of chocolate on Valentine's day. Purple paper, white ribbon. Sasuke had remembered it, but when he went through his own goodies it hadn't been there. He'd seen the wrapping paper in the trash near Naruto's locker, the boy with massive chocolate stains on his mouth as he walked into the next class.
She was that one girl. The one girl in the entire school who liked Naruto.
He'd remembered!
As much as he hung around the blonde idiot, or rather, as much as the blonde idiot hung around him, he'd seen a lot of her.
He stood up straight, looking at her directly. Yes, it was definitely her who had been lurking around, never very far away from Naruto.
"A-are you okay?" she asked, finding her voice after a pause. She met his eyes for a brief second, looking away, back again, then away until she felt the need to have her attention rest on her pencil.
"I'm fine..." he trailed off, turning his attention back to their experiment. Shikamaru had moved the chemicals into the sink, logically concluding that they wouldn't have permission-or time-to finish their experiment. Sasuke looked at the clock. Ten minutes.
Shikamaru had gone back to his desk, packing up everything while Naruto was being escorted to the principal's office for once again disregarding the rules.
Sasuke and Hinata were left alone at the table, though it was clear Hinata didn't feel comfortable talking to him despite the fact that he was her crush's best friend.
The rest of the groups were finishing their labs, getting frantic in the time crunch. Sasuke merely stood there, wondering if Kakashi even expected a lab report for their group. He glanced over at her, thinking of asking about it, but saw her pushing her long hair over her ear again. She really needed a hair tie, he thought.
Getting a little frustrated at the silence, he wondered how she'd react when being confronted directly. So he simply stated, "You like Naruto."
He watched her jump, letting go of her hair and putting her hands up in front of her. She waved them frantically, denying it. "W-... what? I-I, um, N-naruto is very nice b-but-"
Sasuke chuckled, actually chuckled. "You can't deny it. I know."
She stopped moving momentarily, closing in on herself and tugging at part of her jacket. "H-how do you know f-for sure?"
"It's obvious." He shifted his position, trying to get her to look him in the eyes, but she felt too embarrassed to do so. "So, what are you going to do?"
"W-what do you mean?" she replied, glancing at the clock and hoping for an escape. Five minutes left.
"I mean, you know he likes Sakura. What are you going to do about her?" He was interested. She was fairly smart; she probably had a well-thought out plan for getting Naruto to reciprocate her feelings.
"Nothing?" she asked to the air, reaching up to fix her hair again. Sasuke was getting a little annoyed by the constant action, though he said nothing about it.
"Nothing," Sasuke repeated, giving her a look. "So you're saying, if you like somebody, you wouldn't do anything about it?"
"P-probably n-not," she admitted, looking back down at her shoes.
Sasuke thought about it for a moment and figured that his next birthday wish would definitely be that his entire fanclub had the same idea she did.
Still, Sasuke thought the idea was crazy, though he didn't figure the passive Hyuuga girl would be able to actively beat Sakura out of the picture. She was much too nice.
"You should," Sasuke advised, sticking his hands in his pockets. "He's oblivious, you know."
Hinata nodded, but Sasuke knew she didn't take his advice to heart. She reached up to fix her hair again, finally asking Sasuke the question she wanted to get off her chest. "Do you know w-what he likes? I-I could maybe d-do something for him or-"
"He likes food," Sasuke said. "Particularly ramen."
"B-but what kind? Or flavor? D-...do you know?"
"Any kind, I guess. He likes Ichiraku ramen. I'm sure if you offered to treat him there, he'd go with you."
She blushed as she thought about it, then smiled and thanked Sasuke for the advice. He didn't reply, so she continued, "Do you like ramen too, S-Sasuke?"
"Not really."
"Then, what do you l-like?"
"You're not going to give me something, are you?" he asked her, moving his brows a little closer together.
She shook her head. "N-not if you don't want me to."
He blinked, thinking it was rather easy to talk to her. She wasn't crazy. She was quiet, which Sasuke liked. Short responses, no complaining. He crossed his arms, looking her over. She was insecure about herself, but she was nice, probably to a fault. He tilted his head to the side, watching Hinata glance at the clock and pick up her pencil. It was almost time to go.
"Did Kakashi say anything about lab reports?" Sasuke asked her before she could raise her hand in a small goodbye wave.
"H-he wants them tomorrow," she replied, giving him a small smile.
He started to walk to the edge of the table, thinking their conversation was over, but he turned a little and caught her attention before she completely departed.
"By the way," he cleared his throat a little, "I like tomatoes."
He watched her smile wider at him, the small blush finding its way to her cheeks as she took in that bit of information.
Sasuke couldn't help but think she was interesting. And she was interested in Naruto?
How uncool.
(A/N: I might continue this? Also, I don't actually know if bunsen burners can do that, but I assume they can. I mean, it's fire. Thank you for reading!)