Summary: Naruto has been cheating on Sasuke for nearly a month with none other than Neji Hyuuga, Sasuke's biggest competitor at everything. It's obvious that a breakup is going to ensue, but will they ever actually get over it?

Warnings: NaruSasuNaru (with a squint-worthy amount of NejiNaru), which means yaoi. You've been warned. Also, there may be harsh language. No lemons. Sorry. Also, there's a bit of Neji bashing, but only for relevancy to the story (I think).

Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine. (Remembered it in this one story.)

A/N: Don't ask. Oneshot.

Breakdown Rebound

Author: Alley-Oop

"How dare you!" Sasuke roared vehemently, throwing a shimmering black vase in my direction. I barely managed to duck out of the way in time, and when I did move, I heard the glass shatter against the wall behind me.

"Sasuke, let me explain first, please," I pleaded, still dodging the various breakables that he was chucking at me. Okay, it was more than chucking at me. He was trying to take my head off with these things.

"Explain what? Explain how I've wasted three years of my life with you? Explain how I cared about you and was loyal to you, and then you went behind my back and whored around with Neji Hyuuga?" He said the name with unshielded disgust. "What the hell is there to explain, Naruto?"

As I watched his lips move, I noticed how they were still swollen from me kissing him not five minutes ago, before Neji had called my phone and Sasuke had glimpsed the caller I.D. Sasuke certainly was a beauty, but he had a temper that was just as hot as his appearance. However, he was right. I had been cheating on him with Neji for about the past month. I had a feeling that he had known throughout the whole thing, but he was denying it. He denied it because he loved me and wanted to believe that I was loyal to him. I'd never felt worse in my life than at that exact moment. Little did I know that there was plenty more guilt and hurt to come.

I looked into his eyes, and, surprisingly, I saw them shining with hope. He wanted me to deny it, to say that he was wrong (even if he wouldn't exactly believe it) so that life could go on the way it had been. Just him and me… and, semi-secretly, Neji.

"Sasuke… I don't know what to say to you to make you understand everything that's been going on."

Sasuke's face fell, and I could see his temper flaring up as his hope was ripped away.

"To make me understand? You're kidding, right? Naruto, I understand what's been going on. You've been trying to hide the fact that, for the past month, you've been hooking up with Neji."

It was true. He'd known the whole time. I felt like a whore, a slut, a bastard, and the one thing I wanted more than anything at the moment was to kiss Sasuke's already swollen lips.

"Sasuke, give me just one more chance…" I begged. My mind was in a whirlwind. How do I fix this, how do I fix this? What have I done, and how can I fix it? I thought.

"You want a chance? Fine, I'll give you a chance. Tell me I'm wrong, and I'll let it go. All you have to do is tell me I'm wrong, Naruto… Tell me I'm wrong."

Sasuke already knew that I wouldn't lie to him, that I couldn't. He had me trapped. He gave me an escape, and all I could do was stand there and blink like a deer caught in headlights as I watched him slump to the floor, candy dish (which he had been prepared to throw at me) in hand. He just sat there, looking alone and scared, and I felt a pang in my heart. I had done this to him.

I watched in awe as the first few tears escaped his eyes and ran down his face. Then I found my voice.

"Sasuke…"

"You know what, Naruto?" His voice was soft with sorrow and disappointment, yet filled with so much hatred that I flinched when he said my name. "When we got together, I was broken. Then you healed me, just to break me again. I'm sick of you and your lies. Just get out of here. Just… leave."

My own eyes were welling up. I had never seen Sasuke cry, I had never heard him explain his feelings, and I had never known that I had been the one to heal him. I had also never known how much he completed me until I felt like there was a gaping hole in my chest, growing larger with every word he said to spite me and drive me away.

I couldn't just leave him now.

Slowly, I walked over to him, each silent tear of his reminding me of all the things I had done wrong. I touched him on the shoulder and leaned down to talk to him. He whipped around so fast that I could not react to the fist that came flying at my face. Sasuke hit me so hard that I went toppling over. I could feel blood in my mouth. The pain was instant.

"Don't fucking touch me. I told you to get out."

His voice didn't waver, despite the crisp, salty tears that still ran down his face. If anything, his tone had grown icicles that burrowed into my heart.

I couldn't say anything. My mouth hurt too badly for words. Slowly, I pulled myself to my feet and walked towards the door.

"Naruto," I heard, then stopped. My heart thundered wildly as I turned to Sasuke, hope evident on my face. Sasuke looked away, unable to look at me, and told me, "Leave your key on the counter."

I had never felt like such an awful person before as I watched Sasuke push himself to his feet and walk quickly towards the bedroom. The bedroom that had once been ours, the bedroom that still smelled of last night's sex, the bedroom where the most magical things had happened. It was the exact room where we had first admitted our love for each other.

I felt the first sob coming right after I closed the door…

"It's all right, love, it's okay," Neji told me, stroking my hair. I'm sure he was actually ecstatic about Sasuke's and my break up, but I was far from being all right or okay. I was having a breakdown, and I wasn't sure if I could rebound from this one.

I missed everything about Sasuke. I missed his hair, which was so much softer than Neji's. I missed his laugh, which meant more than Neji's; his eyes, deeper; his teeth, brighter; his smell, thicker; his sex, rougher. Everything I missed, but none so much as his comforting, which actually was never very comforting at all.

"Shut up, Naruto. You'll get over it. Now let's go get something to eat, I'm staving." I could still hear him. That was what he used to tell me: to shut up because I would get over it. And I did. I always got over it because he would not tolerate me being mope-y. He didn't like snot all over the place, he certainly didn't like to see me cry, and he thought that I was even more annoying than usual when the atmosphere was melancholy.

I wanted that lack of comfort, but Neji was not the idyllic person for it. He took the more common approach. The pat-you-on-the-back-and-whisper-reassurances-to-you kind of comforting was the kind that he offered to me, and I tried to accept it. But it's not easy to accept that the one person who had loved you despite everything, the one person who had taken the time to see what no one else wanted to, was gone. Sasuke was gone. And now I was stuck with second-best and an empty heart.

The thing that had really gotten me was when I received Sasuke's letter.

Naruto,

I'm moving. Get your stuff on the 14th. If you don't, it's going in the dumpster.

Sasuke

He didn't say where he was moving to, so I had no way of contacting him. Of course, the fourteenth was a few days ago, so I had picked up my stuff and moved in with Neji in his cozy, uptown apartment. When we had gone, though, I was shocked to find just a few boxes sitting in the middle of the living room with all of my things in them. On the top box, there was a note.

Check the bedroom.

And, with unsteady footsteps to match my unsteady heart, I had stumbled into the bedroom to find it completely void of everything except for a small box in the center of the room. I fell to my knees in front of it and opened it slowly.

Inside was a photo of Sasuke and me after training one day. His spiked hair was flat and we were sweaty, hot, and annoyed. But it sent a pang through my heart. The photo was significant. It was taken the day before our first date. When I lifted out the photo, underneath I found a pile of massacred rose petals, and tears immediately sprung up in my eyes. They were petals from the rose I had given him on the night of our first kiss. I hadn't even known that he had kept that flower throughout the three years of our relationship, and I was torn up inside. Had it really meant that much to him, that he would save it for that long?

I realized that he had ripped the petals to shreds then left them here for me to find, and I tried my hardest to spite him for doing so. But I couldn't. All I had to do was remind myself that this was entirely my fault, and then I was back into my self-loathing stage.

Now I was silently sobbing into Neji's chest, even after two weeks of being broken up. Neji was becoming increasingly annoyed with me, and I knew it. It was hard on him. He had to comfort me for the loss of Sasuke when I had also been with him. He had to put up with my incessant moping and moody attitude. He had to watch his words around me for fear that it would bring back memories of Sasuke.

But he needn't have taken the time for such things. Reminders of Sasuke were everywhere. His smell was still on my clothes that I had retrieved from our old apartment; the rose petals were stashed under the bed, the photo under my pillow; and just looking at Neji reminded me of Sasuke, they looked so similar at times.

One day, Neji finally snapped.

"Naruto, would you stop moping around? I'm sick of it."

"I'm sorry that I'm a bit depressed, Neji. I'll try to brighten up for your benefit." It was unfair of me to say, especially after nearly a month of being split up with Sasuke.

"Naruto, don't you get sassy with me. I've put up with this for long enough. Actually, I admire Sasuke for putting up with you for so long. It was different when you only came over on the weekends, but having you here constantly is starting to irk me."

My heart gave a tremendous twinge at Sasuke's name, but I didn't fall apart into tears, so I figured I must've been a bit better.

"Neji, we spent three years together. I'm not going to just get over it overnight."

"I didn't ask you to. But a month should be plenty long enough to pull yourself together."

"How would you know how long is good enough? Sasuke and I… We were more than partners. We were best friends."

"You know, I'm beginning to see why Sasuke would break up with you."

His words cut me deeply- more deeply than they should have.

"He broke up with me because of you," I responded. Once again, I was being unfair, childish, and unreasonable.

"No, he didn't. He broke up with you because of you. I didn't force you to come over every weekend for the best sex of your life."

"It wasn't the best," I said, before I could help myself. "Sasuke was the best."

It was the worst possible thing that I could ever say, and I knew it. Even when I had been saying it I had known that I could have said anything, and it would have been better. I slapped myself mentally a few times before stuttering to cover up what I'd said. "Neji, I didn't mean that. Really, I-"

Neji cut me off. "If it wasn't the best, then why did you keep coming back? Why are you here now?"

My mouth gaped for a moment as I tried to grasp the words, but I had nothing. There was no reason. I had just liked the feeling of being loved and sought after by two different people. It had given me a thrill like no other to know that I had hooked two people- especially two that were highly respected and had great prestige-, not just one.

But in the end it had backfired, and I had been separated further from both people.

"I don't know," I finally whispered, hanging my head.

"Well, I don't know either, so why don't you just leave?"

That was it; I had no place to go. I had no one to cuddle at night, no one to help with the bills. I moved into a run-down apartment on the other side of town. I used all of my spare time (and money) fixing it up, and I kept to myself. I had a job, and it took up a decent chunk of my time. For once in my life, I actually loved working, because it distracted me from everything. Like I said earlier, when I was home, I redecorated and fixed things up. I did everything I could to forget about life. After I had cleaned up one run-down apartment, I would move out and go on to the next one, leaving little touches of me behind in each one. I painted yellowed walls, I replaced broken windows, I plastered over holes in walls, and I hung pictures to eat up some of the blandness that I felt.

Whether it was miraculous or unfortunate or both, I hadn't talked to Sasuke since our break up. I didn't see him around town on the few occasions that I did manage to peel myself away from my "extracurricular" activities. When I got to the point where my redecorating was having side effects- paler skin, rounder stomach-, I pulled myself together enough to go jogging in the mornings and get a tanning package from the closest salon.

Not too long after I had done these things, I awoke with an epiphany. Sasuke wasn't coming back. Through the long months of my socially inactive life, of my ridiculous breakdown, I had somehow buried the fantasy of Sasuke and me getting back together in the back of my subconscious. I had unknowingly been waiting for him to call my cell phone, waiting for him to send me an email, waiting for anything, anything at all, from him. And, when I had finally come to this conclusion, I sobbed and sobbed until my eyes were sore from dryness and my face felt as if it might permanently be contorted into a sloppy, blotchy mess.

I had never felt so hopeless, so desperate, before in my entire small, measly life. For the love of the God, I could not control the emotions raging through me, or those evident on my face. I didn't accept what I knew unfailingly to be true- that Sasuke was gone forever, and that I was alone and miserable because I was selfish and cowardly.

As if someone could read just how awful I was feeling and had decided to come to my rescue, I heard a knock at the door.

"Perfect timing…" I mumbled to myself. "Just a second!" I then called, racing to the bathroom. I splashed my tired-looking face with cool water from the sink, and then dried it. I hadn't noticed the bags under my eyes, and I had forgotten to shave for the past few nights. My face was rough looking, as if I had become a hunter-gatherer living in the woods rather than an employed, depressed man. I blew my nose once, then dashed to the door, hoping that I looked presentable.

I opened the door, expecting anyone but who I found there.

"Sasuke?" I asked.

There he stood, tall and beautiful as he had always been, however, there was a change. His face was warm, glowing. I felt self-conscious, knowing that my own face was so destroyed at the moment that I would have happily crawled into a hole and died a miserable, painful death.

"You look like hell," he said, his face still warm and inviting- more so than I had ever seen it. I decided that I liked his new, toastier side.

"Thanks. Glad to see you, too," I retorted with an air of resentment. I left the door open and meandered back into my apartment, making a beeline for the kitchen. Sasuke followed, closing the door behind him. "You want some tea?" I offered. For some unfathomable reason, tea had always been Sasuke's thing.

"Tea would be nice." He sat at the table, his long, slim hands folded neatly on top of the cheap, slender wood surface of my worn-down old table. He looked so out of place in my mediocre apartment that I would really have been pleased to just be shot in the foot. But at least I knew he was planning to stay for a while. As upset as I was, I was filled to the brim with relief when I saw his face. I had missed him so much that I had become numb. Numb until right at that moment, when I had laid eyes on him for the first time in many months and felt actual feelings overcome me, warmth and tingling and… and longing overtook me. I wanted back what we had had what seemed to be so long ago. The thought of it was exhausting and thrilling.

"You look well," I complimented, messing at the stove longer than necessary to get the tea started. I had been hoping most of the blotchiness was gone from my face and that my swollen eyes had calmed down. Honestly, I was just not sure if I was ready to face him. He looked like our breakup had done nothing to him- absolutely nothing at all. There was no sign of the stress and hurt that I had been through on him. Not just on him, even, but around him. His content, warm aura was quickly suffocating my daft, depressed one, and I found myself turning and setting across from him at my- I just then realized- rather petite table. It was bizarre to see him again, and I felt myself possibly begin to melt. Even after all the things that had happened, I still loved him so much.

"Well, I haven't let myself go to hell, like someone I could mention," he remarked smugly. I missed him so much that I let the snide comment slide.

"I've been busy. It's hard to rebuild your life when you're suddenly abandoned by everyone." I hadn't meant to sound so sorry for myself, and I felt like a child. In fact, I felt so overwhelmingly stupid that I looked down at my own hands, which were splayed over the table. Sasuke must have seen my distress, because he did not intone on my self-pity.

"I think it's probably been good for you," he said. I was stunned. How could he think that this has been good for me? Was he blind? "I realized," he continued, "after we broke up, that I had been pampering you. When I really thought about it, it was my fault. I should have kept you on a tighter leash. And I should have confronted you right away about Neji, not let that anger build up."

If I hadn't been stunned before, I certainly was now. Had he just admitted to me that it was his fault? Had he just done that? Did he forget who had been the cheater in the relationship?

I cleared my throat, trying to summon my voice- trying to summon words into my head. "I… I…" Great job, Naruto. Way to argue your case…

"I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that it's your fault, after all, you were the one who cheated after three years, right?"

I nodded, continuously dismayed with Sasuke.

"Well, you can stop thinking that. I don't care anymore. What's done is done. What I do want to know, though…" Here he hesitated, as if unsure of his footing with the upcoming topic. His head bowed to examine his hands, which had started fidgeting just the slightest. My heart clenched painfully with hope and suspense unlike anything I'd ever felt before. I knew that Sasuke was the only one who could make me feel so miserable without even trying. "Why… Why did you cheat? And why Neji?"

My heart and hopes plummeted right through my feet and right through the ground, until they were devoured by Earth's smoldering core. I felt empty again.

"I mean, I thought on it and thought on it, but I couldn't figure it out. We never fought any more than the normal gay couple- if a normal one exists, that is-, we never treated each other awfully, and the sex was good." Sasuke's eyes glazed over for a moment, as I'm sure mine did, as we both went back to those wonderful times in the old apartment. "Okay, the sex was excellent. So, what was it?"

He was asking me the question that not even I knew the answer to. Neji had basically asked me the same thing right before he tossed me to the street.

"Sasuke, this is going to sound so awful, but, really, I haven't figured it out yet. Neji asked me right before he threw me out, and I didn't know then. I still don't know. All I can say is that you'll never understand how much something can mean to you until… it's gone. I didn't know how much you meant, how great you were, until you were gone…"

I felt the tears coming on again, but before I could stop myself, I was crying again. Not heaving sobs like earlier, just crying. They were tears that I should have released so long ago.

"Naruto…" I thought Sasuke was going to say something comforting, and I felt sick. "Shut up and get the tea," Sasuke chided me in the way that only he could without sounding like a total prick (or maybe he did sound like a prick and I just didn't notice anymore). My stomach released and I managed to force the tears back to the warm, salty depths from which they'd come.

Relieved and not really willing to face Sasuke, I retrieved the tea and poured both Sasuke and myself a cup, though I didn't care much for it at all.

"I thought you didn't like tea…" Of course, just like Sasuke to notice.

"I don't," I responded, taking a huge gulp. The tea was unmercifully hot, and my tongue and throat were badly scalded. I coughed and hacked and held my throat until I could breathe again.

Sasuke clicked his tongue at me like a disappointed mother. "You should know better," he told me. He quickly got up and wandered toward the fridge. There he opened the freezer and retrieved two ice cubes. Returning to the table, he put one in my tea, and the other in his. "It'll dilute the taste a bit, but it won't burn your mouth now."

I took his word for it and, after giving the ice cube some time to melt, took another swig. He was right about the flavor- it was even more tasteless than normal-, but the gentle warmth soothed my damaged mouth and throat.

"Thank you," I croaked as Sasuke took his first sip of tea. He grimaced at its "diluted" flavor, but he swallowed all the same.

"You really should think things through before you act," he told me, all the wise sage. I could tell by his tone that he meant more than just the tea. He meant everything. Had I thought things through, I would never have considered that month with Neji, would never have destroyed my relationship with the one person who really loved me, and I would have saved myself so much agony.

"I know. But I don't. That's why you loved me, wasn't it?" I said. It was originally a joke, but I said it so quietly that it was going to have to be taken seriously.

"Loved?" he inquired, quirking an eyebrow in my direction. I gazed up at him expectantly through heavily lidded, long lashed eyes, not understanding. He sighed heavily, as if I couldn't possibly be as stupid as I was. "Naruto, I will always love you. That will be something that will never go away…"

He looked so explicably embarrassed that I wanted to put him out of his misery myself. I flicked my eyes about my infinitely tiny kitchen, looking anywhere but his face. I was trying to save him from the nearly impossible mortification that he was up against while also saving me from myself, my eyes guns waiting to be fired and loaded with nothing other than more tears.

Sasuke cleared his throat, and I let my eyes drift back to his slowly. I almost thought that I saw tears floating over the dark, glassy surface of his pupils, but I wasn't sure.

"But, there's something I still can't figure out," he said. His fingers started to get fidgety again, and I felt my palms start to sweat. "Why Neji?" he asked, his voice just barely over a whisper.

This question I knew the answer to. "Because Neji reminded me of you," I told Sasuke, who snapped his head up to look at me with a scrutinizing expression, as if trying to decipher if I might have been lying or not.

"Why would you want someone who reminded you of me, when you had me?" Sasuke pressed. I was sure it made no sense in his mind, so I would have to explain myself. I took a deep breath and began.

"Well, it was more than his looks, though they were oddly similar to yours. It was how he seemed to be the gentler side that you were missing. You were always so blunt and rough, but he was more illusive, and far gentler." I finished my now-cold tea and sat, wondering if what I'd said had achieved anything at all.

"You could have just told me," Sasuke finally said. We looked up at the same moment and our eyes met involuntarily. "You could have told me that I wasn't sensitive enough."

"Would it have made a difference?" I retorted. Just because I told Sasuke, it didn't mean that he would change. He could've heard me and not let a word of it sink in and take root.

"We'll never know now, will we?" He said it so casually that I didn't know what to think. Honestly, I would have just liked to go back in time and sort everything out. What if I had just confronted Sasuke to begin with? How would things be different?

"Why did you come?" I asked. I'd have talked about anything to change the topic from my cheating on the highly esteemed Sasuke Uchiha. Anything but reflecting on my scandalous mistakes.

"The same reason you cheated on me," he said, and I felt my brain twist, trying to figure out what he was talking about. I looked at him like he was slightly retarded, and he sighed. "I don't know."

We sat in silence for a few long minutes, during which I wanted to demolish the clock on the wall, with its steady, dauntingly annoying ticking. I massaged my face with my hands, taking deep breaths. Why did Sasuke come? Why did I cheat?

"It's been hard, hasn't it?" His voice was so soft, yet it filled my head like it was the only noise in the world. I didn't answer. It was a semi-rhetorical question, anyway, I knew. "Maybe I shouldn't have broken up with you at all? I was rash and… and stupid."

This was a side of Sasuke that I hadn't seen very often and wasn't sure I wanted to get used to. After all, hadn't I missed everything about him originally when we'd broken up: his bluntness, his roughness, and his stubbornness? Hadn't those been the things I'd missed so dearly?

"I was the rash and stupid one," I offered. "I don't even know what I saw in Neji… He's a stupid prick."

"I can agree with you there," Sasuke said, finally giving us a bit of mutual ground.

"I wish more than anything that I could take that back."

"Me too. But-"

"-What's done is done," I finished for him. He looked up at me and, for the first time in so, so, unbelievably long, I saw him smile. I couldn't help it when my own lips curled up to match his own.

"I've missed you," he told me. My heart fluttered and skipped as if I were a schoolgirl.

"I don't even want to talk about how much I've missed you," I said to him.

Everything that I had been through those past few months melted away as our eyes locked once again. The pain, the fakeness, everything… It just dissolved into a distant, unwanted memory. Sasuke was here! He was sitting right there- right in front of me!

I leaned across the table, expecting him to meet me halfway, just like old times. When he didn't, I leaned farther.

"Naruto," he said. I sat back down at his tone, which was slightly amused and slightly… disappointed, maybe? "I can't."

He could. I could tell he wanted to kiss me just as badly as I wanted to kiss him. But I understood. I blushed, embarrassed, as I responded, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's just… too soon. I…" Sasuke paused and took a deep breath, which made me nervous. I'd never really seen him this frazzled before. It was unnerving to know that being with me made him so uneasy now. It never had before.

"I'm willing to give you a second chance, but I can't take it fast. What you did…. It really hurt me, Naruto. I'm not really sure I'm completely over it yet," Sasuke told me. My heart did somersaults. I wanted to leap, bound, sing, skip, fly, scream, and so much more. Happiness consumed my very essence. Yet, I felt sick at the same time. I had really, really cut Sasuke deeply, and he was still giving me another chance. He was too good for me, and I knew it. I knew it, but I was so selfish that I grasped and clung to the opportunity to have Sasuke back.

"I know," I responded. "What I did… It wasn't right. You didn't deserve it." The more I said how much I regretted cheating on Sasuke, the less sincere it sounded, but it was true every time, and somehow I knew that Sasuke knew that.

"I know," he told me. Then he looked down at his watch. "I have to be somewhere. I moved back into the old apartment. You know the number to reach me?" Sasuke inquired, rising from his seat.

"Yeah, I know it," I responded, rising so that I could be a proper host and show him out. I was still ashamed of my trashy apartment, but it didn't mean that I couldn't make the best of it.

"So you'll call me?" Sasuke almost sounded desperate to hear the answer that he knew I would give him.

"Definitely." I shot him a grin, and his lips almost twitched up into a smile.

"Okay. Talk to you then."

And, just like that, he was walking down the stairs to the parking lot where his beautiful car sat.

Maybe, just maybe, this would be a breakdown that I could rebound from after all.

A/N: Forgive me for any inconsistent style. I seriously started this nearly a year ago, and just finished it. I'm sorry if my style changed.

This was an idea I had for a long time. It originated from a song by Boys Like Girls, and took off from there. Also, I originally was not going to have them hook back up, but I couldn't help myself. Naruto without Sasuke (and vise versa) is like a shark without teeth, or an ocean without water: completely wrong and incomplete, and I couldn't bring myself to tear them apart permanently.

Oh, and to everyone reading Paragon: the update is going to come eventually, but the chapter makes me angry because it sucks so badly. So I'll probably have to mess around with it some more before uploading it. And don't be mad at me for uploading this- I wrote it like a year ago, before Paragon was even thought of.