A tiny little thing, SasuNaru. Nothing serious, really. A oneshot, if you must. This goes through the course of Naruto's life as he's learning just what love is.

When you're a kid, there are various things you learn in school. Of course, there are the basics, like math, writing, and reading. Each of those branch off into various categories.

In math, they usually taught you how to add first. It was fairly simple—you have two apples, and your friend gives you two more. Now how many do you have? Easy, you have four. Next, they would teach you how to subtract. You have four apples, right? Well, you get hungry and you eat two. Suddenly, you're right back down to two apples again. Next came multiplying and dividing—suddenly your apples become groups and aliens and clone themselves, and separate themselves.

In writing, you would start out writing your name. It was quite easy for most, difficult for some. Hold the pencil in your hand, repeat these strokes. Trace over these—now that sure as hell beats some conformity into you from the get-go, right? Stay in the lines, no, don't write it like that, you're not Picasso making a masterpiece.

With reading, you're taught the various sounds of letters. A, I, U, E, O. Ka, ki, ku, ke, ko. Oh, hey, there's more than one alphabet? Why didn't you teach me this before? What? There are more languages? That would explain why that TV show on the other day didn't make any sense to me. After that, they would teach you new vocabulary. This is red. Yeah, I know that. This is orange. Yeah, it's my favorite color. This is also an orange. Wait, what the hell? This is happy. This is sad. This is mad. See here? Yeah, I know. I'm happy when someone buys me Ramen. I'm sad when someone doesn't buy me Ramen. I'm mad when someone takes my Ramen.

Why didn't they ever teach me about love?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to go all sad-sap on you and complain, I never knew what love is! I wanna know what love is! I want you to show me—no.

What I'm trying to say here is…

I seriously was never taught fully what love was. Actually, I don't think anyone was ever really taught what it was aside from what their parents told them, like when they say, Bye! Have a nice day! I love you! or Goodnight, sleep tight. I love you. or even to each other, Baby, I love you. Well, yeah. When you don't have parents of your own, you get kind of observant of everyone else's to kind of get a general idea of what parents do or say, and I hear a lot of that, sometimes from spending the night at a friend's house and whatnot.

But why wasn't I ever told what it was? Well, okay, they did tell me a little. They told me that loving something was really, really liking it. For instance. I love Ramen. It made perfect sense to me. And also, that you're supposed to love those close to you, like your family. But doesn't that just mean that I really, really like them? And how am I supposed to really, really like someone that I don't know, or don't have? Honestly, please, explain that to me.

So, naturally, I grew up without the slightest idea of what this whole fad of love is. All you need is love, love makes the world go round, love, love, love. Printed on shirts, hats, mugs, anything you can possibly think of. It was inescapable, this idea of love, and here I was, having never experienced it.

Now, there is a slight exception, though I'm not sure how far this can go.

Sakura.

She's this beautiful, gorgeous girl who I knew wouldn't look twice in my direction, so I was always trying to make it impossible not to look. I was always striving for her attention, but she never gave it to me unless openly mocking me or insulting me. Naruto Uzumaki, you are an idiot. Leave me alone! You're so annoying!

There was never a way for me to get her to like me, or even, really, really like me at all. I knew, though, that I didn't want her to love me, because I was told that you love things and family members. She wasn't a thing, and I wasn't about to treat her as such, and she definitely was not a family member. So was I allowed to love her? Still, I… I admired her.

She never returned it, though.

So after awhile, I sort of gave up.

But even after all of this, what was I to do about love?

As I grew older, things became apparent to me, that yes, you can love another person. How, though? I never knew any particular kind of love or affection, so I didn't know how the concept worked. I was a newbie to love. I went after Sakura a few times more—got rejected a few times more—and soon became to accept that she would never love me. I started to notice that Hinata loved me, though she never admitted it, and I really never was sure what to do about it, so I acted like I didn't notice. I also started to notice when other people loved each other, like when Iruka would talk to Kakashi…

None of it really seemed that weird to me, so I didn't bother with it.

After awhile, I'd developed some kind of love in me, love for an actual person.

I still wasn't sure what to do about this, either, so for the longest time, I'd dismissed it as something you'd feel for a sibling, a certain closeness. I wasn't sure what to call it, or if it even was love. Was it? I can never tell.

Uchiha Sasuke was like a brother to me.

Yeah, we would always get in pesky fights and arguments and he would call me names and I would just insult him right back—albeit his were always better than mine…

It took me awhile to acknowledge the feelings I'd been developing for him over time.

Still, I didn't know what to do with them, so I just let them grow more until I could identify them. It was like waiting for a generic-looking egg to hatch. You never really know what it is unless you're skilled in that area (which I wasn't) or until it hatches. So, I waited.

And waited.

And after awhile, I noticed…

My feelings were, more or less, being reciprocated. He was feeling something for me, too, and whether it was love or not, who was I to know? I was just the kid that was never taught what love was.

So what was I to call this?

I told him he was a brother to me.

He told others that I was his special friend.

It seemed he didn't know what to call it, either.

It seemed okay to love him, then, because if he was like a brother figure, or something of the sort, it was okay. Family members loved each other—right? That was one of the things that they had taught me in grade school.

When high school came, they started to actually make us read books for classes. One happened to be this terrible, apparently, love story. In my opinion, at least, it was terrible, just from the fact that I had to read it in my own spare time. I thought that it was a waste, but hell, whatever. It made it a lot worse that the class we had to read it in had this stick-up-the-butt teacher who over-interpreted things in stories. The curtains on her walls were blue… What does this signify? Her longing to be free, and also the melancholy spirit that lingers within her…

The curtains were fucking blue.

Anyway, the story was primarily about this girl who longed for this thing you all call love. She had lost her whole family, so apparently, now, she had no one to love. She'd lost her belongings, so she had nothing that she loved. This all made sense to me, of course, but when she met this boy, it said she fell in love.

So now, love had become an object to fall into. None of this made sense to me at all, so I became a little skeptic of the idea.

But my one thought and curious wonder was always…

You can love someone… that wasn't your own family? By that, I meant, love was something else that I'd been taught all along?

One day, in one of our many heated debates in class, I managed to question the teacher about it and still seem like it was relevant to the book that I had now become so interested in.

What is love?

Love is a feeling. A deep, passionate feeling in which someone feels the urge to have more of something, or in this case, someone. She wants more of him, to be near him, to always be a part of his life, and for he to be a part of hers. She wants to grow closer to him, to get to know him better.

That is a very, very shortened version, mind you, of her long and detailed rant of what love really is, because, you know, from the length and detail of what she said, she might have been able to convince someone that she freakin invented love.

After she'd told me this, though, I pondered it, determined to figure out what love was. Exactly what it was, and what I could do with it.

I tried to apply everything she'd said to what I'd been feeling lately.

To be near them… I wanted to be near Sasuke. To always be a part of their life… Yeah, I wanted that, too. For them to be a part of yours… Absolutely. To grow closer to them and get to know them better… Well, I didn't know a thing when it came to Sasuke, so perhaps it would be good to get to know him.

So after awhile, I strove to get closer to him.

I was a lot nicer, for one.

Still, he wouldn't have it.

Even after calling me his "special friend." What the hell was that supposed to mean, anyway?

After awhile, though, I penetrated the bubble he kept around himself at all times, forcing myself in like an needle, and let the poison flow.

And sure enough, he was affected.

From what the two of us knew combined together to make this thing called "love…"

Or at least what everyone called "making love…"

Fuck, I still don't know what love is.

Let me know what you think! I'd love to hear your opinions, and I love structured critique. This is probably the shortest (and in a way most pointless) thing I've uploaded so far, hahaha.