AN: hello! This is a very personal story I've been working on for a bit now. It will really explore the themes of (internalized) homophobia quite a bit as well as depression and social anxiety so if those are things that bother you please be advised. I tried to handle these situations in the best way I could and I am personally a gay man so I've actually experienced some of these things in a way (a trans way) and I'll tell you it has a happy ending bc if it didn't it would send me into a spiraling depression! So! Enjoy!

Also I'm currently looking for a beta for this and possibly some other works and do not plan on updating this until I find one. I currently have almost 16k words on this fic and I really can't count on myself to edit things without someone else pushing me into it and possibly helping me along (see: all my other works) so if you want to work with me you should be aware of that. Also, other than just looking at grammar and spelling/word mistakes, I'd like someone who can tell me if something looks stupid, reads poorly, or just kind of sucks bc I really, really appreciate that (knowing that one part of my work sucks at least means the whole thing probably doesn't).

Chapter 1: Sasuke Has Sleepy Bitch Disorder

He got home and threw his bag on the kitchen counter, flopping back against the couch and not even bothering to take off his belt and jacket. He rubbed his fingers against his forehead, sighing as he lay back and closed his eyes, trying and failing to rest. Before he could really try, however, his phone started ringing incessantly and he rolled over, trying to reach for his bag without getting up. He pouted as he realized he couldn't and stood reluctantly.

By the time he reached his phone, it had just stopped ringing and he sighed exasperatedly as he looked at his missed call. Itachi. Great. What could he possibly want? He pulled his brother up in his contacts and called him back.

"What," he said with the most annoyed tone he could create.

"Sasuke. You just got back from your last day at the internship, right?" his brother asked, completely ignoring his annoyance.

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to tell me about it before I tell you what I called you for?" He knew it wasn't really an invitation so he sighed and began describing his day.

"We basically just finished up all our paperwork and had a party, nothing much." He said with a shrug. Yeah, it hadn't been too tiresome a day but he hated parties with a burning passion and didn't really like any of the interns he'd worked with so having to see them all day had been exhausting.

"Sounds fun," he could hear the sarcasm in his brother's voice and rolled his eyes. "Did you say goodbye to that girl we ran into the other day?" He dropped his head and silently gagged, he'd run into one of his fellow interns while he was out with his family a few days ago and his parents hadn't shut up about it since. He knew his brother was only teasing him about it but just hearing him talk about it he knew he was going to get an earful from his parents when he told them he didn't get her phone number.

"No, actually, she wasn't there. I think she was out sick," he lied.

"Aw, that's a shame," Itachi teased.

"Oh, shut up. What did you even call me about anyway?"

"Well, your internship is over now and you don't have school for… how long again?"

"'Til August," he said apprehensively, his eyes narrowing as he realized the direction Itachi was taking.

"Well, I convinced father and mother that you could use a break in that time and they said they'd pay for whatever vacation you want as long as you stay in Japan." He rubbed his forehead again and sighed.

"Look, Itachi, I app—"

"Don't try that 'I don't need a vacation' BS on me, I've seen you through your worst times last semester, even if you don't think you need one, you deserve one and if you stay at home you're just going to work yourself even harder. Just pick a place in Japan, any place you've never been or have been and loved though I honestly can't think of a place we've been to you were overenthusiastic about." He sighed and closed his eyes as he laid back on the couch again. "Please, Sasuke, even if not for yourself, for me? I'd love—"

"Hokkaido," he interrupted.

"Hokkaido? The whole island?"

"No, just one city. I don't want to spend the whole time going place to place."

"We've been to Sapp—"

"Not Sapporo. Not a big city, not a place with too many people but not some place with only five hundred people either."

"I have a friend who lives in Wakkanai." Sasuke quickly goes on Google maps and looks up where that is.

"That's pretty far north," he commented.

"That it is, but it's summer so it'll be a nice break form the heat of Tokyo. If there's a heat wave here at least you'llsurvive." Sasuke snorted as he looked through the city's website.

"This place doesn't seem half bad," he mused.

"No, it's very nice. Not too big and not too small, lots of natural beauty and you can even take a ferry out to a couple of volcanic islands nearby."

"They're not active, right?" He asked, half-joking.

"Of course not." He smirked at the huffy tone his brother took. "Plus, you can stay with my friends if you like, it's their vacation house so they likely won't be there often and that way you won't have to worry about spending too much of mother and father's money."

"I don't need to worry about wasting their money, they have enough already," he snorted. He heard Itachi laugh on the other side of the phone and considered it a victory. "Fine, I'll do this for you. Take a vacation, stay at your friends', whatever."

"Thank you, Sasuke, I hope you'll still enjoy it."

"I'll try," he acquiesces.

"Well, you hang in there. I'll call my friend and tell him to expect you in… a week?"

"Sounds good," he sighed, "love you."

"You too, Sasuke." He smiled tiredly at his brother's reluctance to return the sentiment and hung up. Now that he'd done that he thought it was a good time for a nap and took the throw pillow out from under his legs and took a nap right there.

When he woke up again it was about an hour later and he groaned as he stood up, his back sore from the discomfort of the couch. He stretched and sighed again, his head still groggy. He hated feeling some kind of anticipation for his trip now as he wondered what kind of things there would be to do there. There was the beach, of course, and the mountains to explore but he might want to explore some of the things in the city as well. He'd be staying with a local, it probably wouldn't be hard to get them to take him around town. Maybe it wouldn't be that bad, and he could at least read that book he'd been meaning to get on with.

He yawned as he dragged himself over to the kitchen to make dinner, well, maybe it was too early for dinner but he planned on sleeping again as soon as he was done so it might as well be. He thought about his day as he heated up his pre-cooked meal.

It had never been that he hated his studies, he loved law. It was one of the most interesting things in the world to him, he loved studying policies and the way laws were interpreted throughout society, but being a lawyer, that was the problem. He hated the long hours and being forced to fight for people who were guilty, or people he'd detest outside the courtroom. There was no way around it, that was the life of a lawyer. If only he could do nothing but study he'd be perfectly happy. He told his old adviser this and he'd said he should just become a professor but it wasn't that easy, was it? All the professors at the law school had been lawyers before they became professors and most were still lawyers afterwards.

Maybe he should just quit law school and get a history degree, he already had his undergrad in that and it wasn't as if he didn't like the subject at all. He could just focus in law and help all the pre-law students get through their innocent years. But the problem with that was his parents. They would hate that idea and though they probably wouldn't take away the money they gave him for food and an apartment they would definitely nag him constantly and his mother would call him every day. God.

In a way, they already did that with their nagging him to get a girlfriend, his mother calling weekly to know if he'd met any girls and subsequently telling him he ought to go out more to try and meet someone. Thing is he hated going out, he hated being surrounded by people he didn't know or care about and trying to make someone care about him. He knew that was how you made friends, how you became less lonely but, honestly, he was fine. He had his family, he had Itachi and his three friends from undergrad, he didn't need anyone else.

And other than that, being with girls just made him uncomfortable. He'd enjoyed a few girls company but never anything past friendship. He'd had plenty of girls confess to him but he'd never so much as had a second thought about them like they saw him. He just couldn't. Some deep part of himself probably felt guilty for that and maybe that was why he isolated himself. He feared someone might fall in love with him and he'd be unable to reciprocate it and he was so scared of hurting people. He didn't want to disappoint anyone.

AN: it's also the internalized homophobia