Hello! So it's been a super long time since I've updated anything and I'm so sorry! I've been so busy with school and whatnot...Anyway. I decided to go ahead and post the first chapter even though I don't have the rest done yet. I thought you all deserved to hear something so you didn't think I was dead! I also left the notice up for any new readers just so you know whats going on. Get on to the actual story, you say? My pleasure. ;)

OoOoO

'Damn, I can't believe winter break is already over.'

Naruto huddled deeper into the scarf he wore around his neck as he shut the front door to his house. He quickly jumped into his car and cranked it up, immediately turning the heater on full blast. It was the middle of January, or as Naruto liked to call it, the ninth circle of hell. He absolutely loathed winter; he just couldn't stand the cold. Currently it was so cold outside that his ass cheeks were practically frozen together. Looking down at his radio clock Naruto realized that if he didn't leave right that second he would be late for school. He threw his car into reverse and sped out of the driveway. Shifting into drive he pealed out of the cul-de-sac and raced towards the school.

Iruka had left some time earlier claiming that as a teacher he had an obligation to arrive before all the students so as to be better prepared…or some shit like that. That left Naruto to his own devices for breakfast and transportation, which meant he would eat absolutely nothing and would arrive precisely 2 seconds before the bell rang.

It seemed the rest of the student body had decided to be on time the first day back from break, so Naruto spent a few precious moments looking for a spot and ended up in the one furthest from the school. After running through the lot and into the building he was out of breath.

It was a new semester, which meant new classes. This also meant he had no fucking clue where he first class was. Naruto stood in the middle of the hallway like an idiot until he remembered.

'Wait! We have homeroom today!'

He immediately took off down the hall to his homeroom class. Unfortunately for him, the bell had rung 5 minutes ago, so when he threw open the door to his homeroom, the teacher and all of the students in the room turned to look at him. He felt blood rush to his cheeks as all the stares began to make him uncomfortable.

"Well, thank you for finally joining us Mr. Uzumaki. If you will have a seat…"

The teacher gestured towards the only empty seat in the room. Naruto rushed over and quickly sat down only for the teacher to slam a paper down on his desk and walk away.

Looking down Naruto realized it was his schedule for the coming semester.

1st period: AP Calculus
2nd period: AP World History
3rd period: Art
Lunch
4th period: AP Biology
5th period: AP English

He would have a rough semester, but being a senior it was his last one and he was determined to make the best of it. At least he had art in the middle of the day to give him a break from his demanding schedule.

Naruto went to an extremely large high school with over 5000 students. The class sizes were large with over 50 kids in each class and because of this he was easily able to blend into the background and hide his academic ability from the majority of the student body. Only a handful of people really knew how smart he was. Naruto didn't have many friends—only a handful—and he found himself wondering if any of them would be in his classes this year.

The bell rang for first period, pulling Naruto from his thoughts. Jumping up he practically ran to his first class. Despite the fact that he absolutely loathed math, he was in a hurry to get to class. He wanted to snag a seat in the back. It allowed him the freedom to goof off during class without the teacher noticing like they would if he sat in the front.

He made it to his class fairly early and was relieved to see two out of the six seats on the back row still open. It seems he was not the only one who considered the back row prime seating. He walked over and chose the seat on the end of the row. He plopped down in the chair and waited for the rest of the class to arrive. As he waited, Naruto was relieved to see a few of his friends had this class with him. He saw Sakura and Ino, ever the teacher's pets, walk in a take their seats in the very front of the class. Kiba, who had been his best friend for as long as he could remember, came in and sat down in the open seat in front of Naruto.

"Hey man! I'm so glad you have this class too." Kiba said when he was finally situated at his desk.

"Yea, now I don't have to suffer alone." If Naruto was being honest, he didn't mind not having any of his friends in his classes. In fact in some ways her preferred it; the less people that knew how smart he was the better, in his opinion.

Naruto had a rough time growing up, constantly being bullied and/or shunned by everyone, so he did his best to make friends and become cool. He managed to make friends with some of the more popular kids and started playing soccer, which he loved so it was really just a bonus that playing the sport helped his social standing. He figured kids would just go back to bullying him if they knew he was smart and it certainly didn't help that he was into art too; just one more thing they could make fun of him for.

So yes, not having friends in his classes was ok. All he hoped for was that one particular person wasn't in his class.

Sasuke Uchiha.

Sasuke had never really liked Naruto. When they were little the two boys were friends, one of the only friends Naruto had really, but one day Sasuke just quit talking to Naruto. The blond tried to ask Sasuke what was wrong, but the other boy kept pushing him away. Eventually Naruto gave up on trying to figure it out.

At first Sasuke just ignored him, but the more they grew, the worse it got. Instead of ignoring him, Sasuke would verbally and physically harass Naruto any chance he got. The abuse lasted all through middle school and the first two years of high school. Then in their junior year Sasuke suddenly stopped. The boy obviously still didn't like him judging from the nasty looks and mean words thrown his way, and in some ways this was worse. Naruto could handle a beating; the bruises would fade and the marks would heal, but words…words stuck with him. Words were worse than any physical abuse Sasuke could inflict on him. They ran through his mind and kept him up at night. They surfaced when he least expected them, telling him how worthless he was and that he would never be able to do anything right.

He didn't know what he did to make Sasuke hate him so much, and he wasn't sure he ever would. He wanted to though. Oh how he wished he knew so that maybe he could fix things between them, but that would never happen. In order to find out, he would have to actually talk to Sasuke and that required being in the same room as him for more than two seconds.

But regardless of what Naruto wanted, the fates seemed to have another idea. At that moment, the one person Naruto never wanted to see came walking through the door. He watched as black eyes scanned to room looking for an empty seat. Naruto looked around too. He hadn't noticed, but while he was reminiscing the classroom had filled up with students. His blue eyes looked around to find that the only empty seat was, of course, right next to him.

He looked back at the raven and their eyes met. Sasuke had clearly noticed the placement of this seat as well, for a scowl slid onto his face as he weaved his way through the desks.

Naruto closed his eyes and lowered his head to his desk, preparing for the worst. Not only did he have to suffer through his least favorite subject—math—first thing in the morning, but now he had to deal with Sasuke as well. His life couldn't get any worse.

He heard the scrapping of a chair against tile and then…nothing.

'That's strange.' he thought. Normally Sasuke didn't miss a chance to harass Naruto. Why is this time any different?

He cautiously peaked through his hands at the dark haired boy sitting next to him. He was surprised to find him staring back.

"What are you looking at, teme!" Naruto couldn't help but sound defensive.

"Hn." was all he received in response before Sasuke calmly looked away and began to pull out his notebook for class.

This sort of thing went on the entire period. Naruto would catch Sasuke staring and the other boy would simply snort and look away, pretending to focus on what the teacher was saying. Naruto couldn't understand it. For as long as he could remember Sasuke had tortured him and now all of a sudden he was practically ignoring him! By the time the end of the period came around Naruto had decided to ask Sasuke about it. Sure he was a little scared to talk to the guy, but he wasn't about to give up.

The bell rang and Naruto quickly packed up his things and stood from his desk. He turned to confront Sasuke, but the other boy was already gone.

'Dang it!' Oh well, he would just have to do it some other time. That is, assuming Sasuke continues to act this way. Who knows, maybe he was just biding his time so that when he did say something to Naruto it would have more of an effect.

The day continued in much the same manner. Naruto would show up to class, only to have Sasuke sit right beside him and not say a word. And goddamn that bastard, he had to be in every one of Naruto's classes. Thankfully he had art in the middle of the day, his one sanctuary away from all the stress Sasuke and school caused him.

It was nearing the end of 5th period, the last class of the day, and Naruto was just ready to go home. Most of the period they had just been reading silently thanks to Kakashi, their english teacher's laziness, when all of a sudden the man rose from his desk.

"Ok class, so we have an assignment that all of the advanced english classes are required to participate in. Each one of you is going to be assigned a pen-pal. You have to talk to this person at least once a week and get to know them throughout the semester. At the end of the term everyone will be required to write a paper on his or her pen-pal and provide a guess as to who they think it is. There will be no extra points for getting it right, that won't be tempted to just tell each other your names. This is for all grades and everyone will be randomly assigned. One at a time I want you to come up and put in a name you want to use for the duration of this project. After that you can leave."

Naruto had been paying minimal attention up until this point, but when he heard those magical words 'you can leave' he immediately rushed to the front of the room. He wanted to be out of there as soon as possible. He quickly typed in the first thing that popped into his head, foxy_drawer10, and then hurried back to his seat to gather his things.

"You will get an email after class telling you the pen name of your partner." Kakashi said just as Naruto was leaving the room.

Once he made it home Naruto threw his bookbag on the ground and immediately went to the pantry. He was starving, so hopefully Iruka would be home soon to make some dinner. In the meantime though he decided to head out back and practice a little. He went and changed into his cleats and grabbed his soccer ball on the way out the door. Tryouts weren't until the end of January, but pre-season conditioning started next week and Naruto wanted to be ready. Kakashi, their coach, always killed them the first week trying to weed out the newbies, so he could do less work during the actual tryouts.

Naruto came back in when he heard Iruka's car pull into the driveway. He ran inside to great his adoptive father. "Hey Iruka, how was school?"

"Same old, same old. I have this really snotty brat in my AP world history class though." Iruka smirked.

Iruka just so happened to be Naruto's history teacher, meaning he would actually have to do all the homework Iruka assigned him and he had to call him 'Mr. Umino' in class. It was awful.

"Ha ha, your so funny. Are you gonna make dinner soon?"

"So demanding." Iruka rolled his eyes at him. "It will be ready in about an hour, so you should go start on your homework."

Naruto groaned, but scooped up his bag and headed upstairs to his room anyway. He would need something to distract him from his grumbling stomach and he might as well be productive in the process.

When he got to his room, he pulled his laptop out of his bag along with some of his textbooks. He flopped down on his bed and opened up his computer to see he had two new messages. One was an email from Kakashi telling him the name of his pen-pal, and the other was from said pen-pal. He deleted the message and opened up the one on the chat program from his pen-pal.

MidnightPrince23:
Hey, what's up? I figured I'd message you since it's much better than doing my actual homework. I'm slammed already and it's just the first day of class! Ugh, I know I have a hard semester, but give me a break. It's the first day. So what are you up to? Tell me about yourself.

He quickly typed back a reply and hit send.

Foxy_drawer10:
Yo Prince! I'm doing the same as you…putting off my mountain of homework that I have for tonight! Do you think they will go through these and grade us on our grammar? I freakin' hope not! Anyway…you wanna know about me? Ok. Well I'm a senior here and am in AP english. I love to draw and was thankfully able to squeeze in an art class this semester. I really didn't this I was gonna be able to Other than that I play soccer, which pretty much takes up all my time. If I'm not at school or doing homework, I'm playing soccer. I really love it, and am hoping to get an offer to play in college. What about you?

Naruto waited, but it was taking awhile for Prince to reply, so he decided to take a quick shower. Well…ok maybe a really long shower that consisted mostly of him singing along to his favorite rock songs, but whatever.

Once he was out, Iruka called him down for dinner. After dinner Naruto went back to his room and saw he had a reply from Prince.

MidnightPrince23:
I am also a senior in AP english, maybe we are in the same class…though I doubt it, our school is huge and we have a ton of AP english courses this semester. I play a couple different sports, so that takes up most of my time, but outside of that I mostly just listen to music.

Naruto smiled when he read that Prince was a senior too. He didn't know why, but he sort of hoped they were in the same class. Maybe once they figured out who each other were they could be friends. He sent back a quick reply saying that he needed to go to do his homework and Prince agreed.

Naruto had a long night of work ahead of him and he didn't finish until well after midnight. He breezed through most of his work, but calculus had him stumped. There was a reason he didn't like math, and it was because he wasn't good at it. He was smart enough to get into AP, but he had to work hard to be there. After hours of work he finally gave up. He closed his laptop and fell asleep right then and there: clothes still on, book, paper and calculator still scattered across his bed.

Sasuke wasn't sure why he didn't tell his pen-pal he was on the soccer team too. It was anonymous, and he kind of wanted to keep it that way. At least until he knew who his partner was, though knowing that he was a senior in AP english and on the soccer team certainly narrowed it down.

After getting Foxy's reply he pulled out his school stuff and began working. He had stuff to do in every class and it was going to take a long time. He breezed through the calculus homework he was assigned—math had always been his best subject—and quickly moved on to the rest.

English and bio weren't too bad either, but he was really struggling with his history work. Mr. Umino had given them a guideline to fill out for the first three chapters in the book, which of course were obscenely long and boring.

He swore some of the questions on the homework weren't even mentioned in the text! It took him twice as long to do his history work as it did all of his other work combined.

Regardless he pushed on and eventually completed the assignment…three hours later! It was almost two in the morning when Sasuke dragged himself into bed.

This was going to be a long year.

OoOoO

Chapter 1 done! Let me know what you thought and if you read my first one let me know how this one compares/which one you like better! (hopefully this one, I for sure think it's better). Anyway, follow an review and I will love you forever!

LOVE!