Day 1 | Sharp and Gentle

The sound of the carousel took over the whole amusement park. It was a loud circus tune that somehow put Naruto is the most playful mood possible. Sasuke wondered with mild and unexpressed amusement, save for a slight curl of the lips, if Naruto had maybe been a circus performer in a previous life.

If the answer was yes, Sasuke would not be surprised.

Naruto had been charmed from the first shop they'd seen. It would be hours until he got bored of participating in every single activity possible and mellow down enough to browse peacefully.

Naruto tackled the rides like he did his syllabus the week of the final paper. Head-on and with no contingency plan, nor any forethought.

Sasuke would refuse every third ride or so. While Naruto's stomach was a hermetically sealed, bottomless abyss, Sasuke's stomach was far more delicate - and not to mention, human.

But, whether it was sitting next to the blond bombshell or watching from afar, Naruto's yells and screams in the heights of exhilaration had its own pleasure.

More often than not, Sasuke found himself feeling emotions purely as a second-hand effect from Naruto's wild, all-encompassing sentimentality.

A fire bloomed in the pit of his own stomach at the wobbly sight of his idiot stumbling out from the exit of the massive ride, the goofy vacant grin on his face.

He was so much happier when he wasn't staring him down twenty-four seven. As if on cue at that thought when Naruto noted the cigarette between Sasuke's lips his face cleared of the grin and he stomped over and plucked the stick from his lips, threw it on the floor and stomped on it.

"Why don't you have like a sugar or a coffee addiction? Or like a collection of like stamps or insects, like every other good little nerd? At least that won't kill you!"

"Everything can kill you, Naruto. Did you know that a person can overdose on water?"

Naruto pushed right into Sasuke's face, a finger pointing at him. "That doesn't justify filling your lungs with tar. One more cancer stick and I will handcuff you to the radiator. And it won't be for fun." Naruto then spun around, folded his arms and pouted and sulked and mutter to himself about addiction.

Sasuke sighed and rubbed his face. This was supposed to be a chill little expedition.

"Why are you not coming on the rides? Are you afraid of heights?" Naruto asked suddenly and so seriously, it surprised Sasuke.

Sasuke shrugged, he didn't have to force Naruto to change his furious pace of self-amusing. Even though what he kinda wanted to do was share a single hot drink between them as they walked hand in hand by the lake they'd passed on the way to the gigantic Ferris wheel that Naruto had ridden, twice.

Naruto turned slightly and one blue eyed peered surreptitiously at Sasuke. "Are you not having fun? Don't you like amusement parks?"

"I'm fine, dobe."

"No, you're not." Naruto crept back into Sasuke's personal space and eyed him carefully. "You refuse all kinds of rides, not particularly high ones or particularly fast ones. So what is it?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. Who'da guessed it? Naruto was spending precious grinning moments worrying about Sasuke.

"Are you feeling sick? Bad day in class?" When Sasuke simply shook his head in denial, starting to feel like he'd dug himself a deep hole by doing nothing really. "What? What is it, man? Tell me!"

Five people in their immediate vicinity looked at the yelling blond but he didn't budge.

The fact was, the amusement park was supposed to be a distraction. An attempt to lighten the mood between them. And to calm them down in their fiery path to love. Sasuke also hoped the distraction would somewhat quell the well of concern Naruto harboured for Sasuke. A well that was comparatively the same depth of his bottomless stomach if not more.

But it seemed, Naruto wasn't the only one who needed a distraction because the fire in the pit of his stomach had only grown. Warmth spread everywhere, his face and hands and knees. Oh god, his knees. His ears, his lips. Oh, of course, his lips.

Couldn't he spend one day without thinking of their lips?

When blue eyes looked at him, - blue eyes that were sharper and clearer than they'd been all night and so utterly observant - ran over him completely, looking for signs in face of the lack of verbal reply with a slight concentrated frown, Sasuke couldn't do it anymore. He broke, reaching out, he pulled the blond idiot close by the collar and pressing his lips to Naruto's.

They were standing in the middle of an amusement park but Sasuke couldn't be bothered about that. The surprised squeak from Naruto had Sasuke spin them around so the blond was the one with his back pressed up against the chain-link fence.

Their first kiss in public. And it was full of teeth, awkward and sloppy and nothing like their first, accidental, slap-dash kiss. Nothing like their hot, drunk ravenous second kiss. And only different from their third kiss because Naruto was not half-dead in a hospital with his right arm broken to bits.

Sasuke wasn't even sure which of those were his memories, and which were those of his other self.

But in the here and now, he grabbed blond hair, tilting the head attached to it so as to slot their mouths together in a less awkward way.

Suddenly the kiss was fire, Naruto, having woken up from whatever paralytic internal crises, was using his tongue. Tongue.

Sasuke pulled away and gulped down air.

"So this was a date!" Naruto didn't seem the least bit embarrassed about the declaration.

"Tongue? Really?" Sasuke asked, mind blown as he touched his own buzzing lips because he didn't know what else to do.

"Better than teeth."

Sasuke narrowed his eyes at the blond and he smiled in reply, not even having the decency to stop looking like a sexual offering as he leaned back into the fence, pupils blown wide and lips lightly reddened. Sasuke's mind felt bewildered.

"It's not exactly our first kiss."

"Hnn."

"You're the one who started it. I was just trying to improve it, yanno?"

Sasuke shook his head. If he was doomed to heat, there was nothing he could do but nurse the affections he felt for his blond idiot. "Come on, I want a coffee. And a walk."

He grabbed the blond's hand and lead him away. And if he didn't let go of the hand for many an hour, Naruto didn't complain a bit.