Author's note: I don't own these characters, though if I did, I'd write them a happier past and future. Hope you like it.



I don't know what finally made me cave in and say yes. She had been hounding me for years, which hadn't changed recently, so it couldn't be that. I was just as single as I had always been, so it wasn't that either. And I sure as hell hadn't started to have feelings for her.

I thought, maybe, it was the party her roommate had planned with my roommate in order to get us together. That had to be it. Since it couldn't be my feelings about her that changed, it had to be my feelings about him.

Anyone who has been around me long enough will tell you that I am an Uchiha to the core: composed, intelligent, confident (if not sometimes haughty) and distant. As such, I would never be seen at one of those fuck-it-all keggers hosted by the frat houses, which is why my lazy roommate, Shikamaru, had conspired with Ino to host a party in our off-campus apartment with the hopes of getting me and Sakura together. Except, when I say conspired, I mean Ino had nagged Shikamaru, who thought it would never work, for so long that with a sigh of "so troublesome" he had relented and let Ino plan the whole thing.

Therefore it was with a scowl that I stepped out of my room, where I had been attempting to ignore the pulsing music and inebriated yells of my friends, and into the living room.

"Yo, Uchiha! Leaving your sanctuary?"

"Hn." I grunted at Kiba before hugging the wall on the way to the kitchen. On my way I heard voices call my name, to which I answered with a slight raise of my left hand. My right fumbled in my back pocket for my pack of Marlboros.

I was looking down as I entered the kitchen with an unlit cigarette between my lips, searching my pockets for my lighter. I bumped into something soft and looked up into a pair of almost unnaturally blue eyes.

"Hey – hic – Sasuke!" I lurched forward as Naruto greeted me with a slap on the back.

"Naruto."

"Sasuke. Hey! Sasuke! I didn't know you smoked! That's bad for you, you know?" For years I had never let him see me smoke before, but since this was my apartment, I had forgotten about it. He came even closer, as if worried I'd die right then and there, before I heard the click of a lighter beside me.

I looked over to find a girl with short pink hair holding the light for me, blushing. I bent over, realizing that she had probably been carrying that lighter around for me all night at the insistence of Ino, pulled on my cigarette as it took flame, and slowly exhaled towards the ceiling. I loosened my scowl in Sakura's direction as a thank you before finally answering Naruto.

"Drinking until you've blacked out isn't?" I walked towards the light switch to flick on the overhead fan.

"Sakura-chan," I heard Naruto stage whisper behind me, "Does Sasuke hate me? Ne, Sakura-chan?" Turning around after mixing myself a Bloody Mary, I saw Naruto had his arm around Sakura, but was looking at me unwaveringly with tears forming in his eyes. When he saw I was watching, he immediately burst into a huge grin, ran up to me, kissed me on the cheek, returned to Sakura to giver her a peck, too, and skipped off into the living room, apparently bumping into the tangle of Ino, Lee, Ten Ten and Kiba playing Twister on the floor. I heard them all laugh as they fell over.

"Haha, Naruto, you're such an idiot!" Kiba yelled. Such an idiot. While ruminating on the many facets of Naruto's idiocy, I felt a small, softhand grab my wrist.

"Let's go join everyone, Sasuke."

As the night wore on, I sat on the armchair smoking, only moving to refill my drink a few times. The extreme craziness had dissipated for the moment, with Lee and Neji arm wrestling at the kitchen table while Ten Ten cheered them on. Kiba and his girlfriend, Hinata, were talking with Shino, Shikamaru, Chouji and Ino, an abandoned game of Beer Pong behind them on the Ping-Pong table. Sakura leaned happily against my legs while sitting on the floor.

"Where's Naruto?" Sakura's sudden discovery of Naruto's absence caught everyone's attention. "Naruto?" He appeared from the kitchen with an empty vodka bottle and a huge grin plastered on his plastered face.

"Truth or Dare!" he giggled, landing on the floor with a thud. Though we were all a few years into college, Truth or Dare remained a highlight of our parties. However, my eyes were still trained on the empty vodka bottle. I had only used it ten minutes earlier to refill my Bloody Mary, and it had been only half empty.

As everyone gathered around, eager to relish in one another's discomfort, I growled low, surprising myself that I chose to comment, "Naruto… what did you do with my vodka?" I scowled at him while smoke unfurled through my nostrils.

"Eh? Oh, oh. The tequila bottle is empty, but it's square, but I thought you'd had enough of your girly drinks, so I brought you this!" Simultaneously insulted that he said I drank girly drinks and surprised that he brought me a replacement, I grabbed the frosting beer bottle from Naruto's outstretched hand. I had only had four drinks so far, and as I rarely got drunk and hadn't planned on it tonight, the fact that his logic was lacking and half a bottle of vodka was still missing did not go unnoticed by me.

I let it go as Ino, ever the bossy one, began. "Okay! Here are the rules! No take-backs on truths or dares! You can't put yourself in the dare! Couples do not have to make out with anyone else—"

"—Unless they want to!" interjected Naruto.

"Unless they want to," continued Ino, "but must be willing to make out with each other!" Hinata blushed, while Kiba, behind her, smiled stupidly at Naruto, who gave him a thumbs-up.

A few rounds in and I had swapped spit with Ten Ten, Ino and, strangely, Shino (whose mouth I don't think I'd ever really seen before); Kiba was stuck the rest of the night in only his boxers, while a very red Hinata was stuck next to him (why she chose "dare" nobody knows); Neji had to fake a "youthful" confession to Lee; and Ino had dared Shikamaru and Sakura to swap clothes and personalities for the rest of the night. As such, Shikamaru wore 3-inch heels, a red halter-top and denim shorts that even his thin frame barely fit into, while Sakura wore loose khaki shorts cinched as tight as possible around her narrow waist and a black wife-beater.

Sakura's spin of the bottle landed on me, and I let out the faintest of sighs escape as I said, "Dare." The first truth people always asked single people was who they liked, and I would not have answered that for the world. Sakura furrowed her brow in thought, obviously unhappy that she couldn't dare me to kiss her, when Ino crawled over to her from across the circle and whispered in her ear. It did not bode well for Sasuke Uchiha. They giggled.

"Alright, Sasuke!" Sakura began before Ino's tut-tutting made her realize she dropped character, and rephrased, "Uchiha, I know it's, like, so troublesome—"

"I do not say 'like'" Shikamaru interrupted. Another tut-tut from Ino, who was clearly just enjoying messing with them, and he sighed, "No way, Sakura, I so do not say like!"

Ignoring the exaggeration of her speech patterns, Sakura continued. "It's troublesome, but… make out with Naruto, uh, Uzumaki!" I should have known. At this point, Naruto had made out with almost everyone (some of them not because of dares) and even dry-humped a boxer-clad Kiba, so he didn't hesitate, but my impassive mask cracked momentarily as Naruto got off the floor and wove towards me, oblivious to my nerves.

He straddled my lap, his jeans making that uncomfortable noise against the leather. Catcalls from Kiba prompted Naruto to begin, but I guess the beers Naruto had kept feeding me took their toll, because before he could begin, I did. I kept my cigarette-holding hand safely away on the other side of the armrest, while my other hand ran up the back of Naruto's shirt and into his blonde hair, noticing for the first time how fine and soft it was. I brought his head forward into a kiss.

The top lip was wet and slightly sticky from Sakura's alcoholic lemonade he had been stealing sips of, but the bottom one dry. I licked it before parting the pair with my tongue. Just as our tongues met, I pulled back and sucked on his bottom lip. I don't know how long I teased him like that, letting our tongues touch before moving somewhere out of reach, like the salty dip behind his ear or the delicate skin under his jaw. My free hand found his ass and I put my it into his pocket before squeezing. I began to kiss him for real, finally, letting his tongue and mine intertwine and explore the ridges of one another's mouths. About five minutes in, it dawned on me as the ember of my cigarette crept towards my fingers that I had done my dare, and that going any further would arouse suspicion, or at least discomfort in my peers. I pulled away and smirked at Naruto, who opened his eyes panting slightly.

"Damn, Sasuke! You're lucky I'm not gay or I'd be all over you!" My smirk morphed into a scowl.

"Hn."

In the end, I had also made out with Sakura, though substantially less passionately than with Naruto, as a calculated last dare of the night by Ino. I woke up with her again leaning against my legs, now sleeping. I shifted to get up, putting my hands behind her back and resting her against the chair. My vision spun as I brought my head up. I shuffled to my room, hung over and still half asleep. I turned the knob and the door didn't open. I tried again. The frustration woke me up a bit and I tried harder. I grabbed the key, which mysteriously hadn't slipped out of my pocket and gotten wedged in the leather armchair like it always does, and stuck it in the lock. As I did, I heard a sleepy murmur from the bedroom. My bedroom.

I pushed open the door and saw two blonde heads poking out of my black sheets. I walked towards the bed silently and looked down at Naruto before punching him in the face. The smack and Naruto's yell woke up Ino, and apparently most everyone else in the apartment.

"Get out," I seethed, voice even and eyes glaring, "get out now." Ino, fortunate enough to be clothed, ran out of the room. Naruto sat in my bed stupidly before I grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him onto the floor naked. "Out!"

It was the first time Naruto, or anyone besides Shikamaru, for that matter, had heard me yell. He took notice fast, and grabbed his boxers, jeans and t-shirt before running out of the room. I slammed the door after him and stared at my bed for a few minutes. I could hear voices whispering behind me as people started to file out, asking about what had just happened. My eyes fell on Ino's bra, which lay across my desk as if it had been flung there in the heat of the moment. I walked to it, picked it up, walked to the door and was about to chuck it against the farthest wall when I found myself almost nose to nose, well, more like her chin to nose with Sakura.

"Sasuke—"

"You can give this to Ino." I handed her the bra.

"Sasuke, please, calm down!"

"You're annoying, get out."

"Sasuke…" her eyes started to tear before she looked up in a moment of epiphany and slapped me across the face. "Sasuke, I don't know if it's because you have a crush on Ino, or that you didn't want your room messed up, or… I don't know! But you don't have to take it out on me." Her voice was surprisingly calm towards the end. Meanwhile, her slap had brought back my Uchiha stoicism and while I looked down at her, revealing nothing, she continued, "I care about you, you know? I… I think maybe you should find somebody to care about, too. It might help you relax."

I took the bait. If my heart couldn't be satisfied, I'd distract myself until I no longer cared. I had waited like this long enough. "Okay."