II.

He's got everything ready and perfect, so now all that is left is to sit in almost silence (as smooth R&B plays from his mounted iPod on the counter) and pull his hair out. It's 7:45 pm and he's just finished triple-checking everything there is to check to make sure it is right and spotless. Which it is. It was the first two times he checked, too, but he had to make sure one more time.

Good ol' anxiety, always a killer.

His anxiety is also telling him that Sasuke's going to be late, or not come at all. That he'll find something better to do and text Naruto two hours later like:

"oh, I forgot, so and so called and I'm going to go hang out with them, ok? Also, fuck you."

Which, of course, he's never ever done and probably never would but Naruto's just a ball of nerves right now and his mind can't be reasoned with.

Because this….might lead to something, right? This is totally new territory and he isn't sure what to make of it. He isn't sure that he wants it to lead to anything else—but from the way he's acting he sort of kind of maybe does— and he just knows in his gut that he has to do this right for reasons he can't really explain. Well, he can. He's so horribly attached and a bit of a perfectionist, so everything he does has to be top-fucking-notch or he'll beat himself up for it for literal years.

So he's griping about it internally and thinking about every possible way this could go wrong and suddenly it's 7:59pm and he jumps when there's a knock at the front door. Shit. He was just being a space case for the last 15 minutes and he can't possibly answer the door sexily now, can he? He can try, but it's probably going to come off as awkward.

The knock comes again, a little more insistent this time, and Naruto jumps and strides over to the door, having a moment of panic because what if it's someone else and not Sasuke? If it is, he'll literally punch them in the face because—

The first words out of Sasuke's mouth are: "You wore it." With an appreciative smirk and a trademark raise of his eyebrow.

Naruto grins, shifting around self-consciously in his cliché "kiss the cook" apron (with nothing underneath), tugging it down a bit so he won't get a view of the goods before it's time.

"You said you'd be disappointed otherwise so…" he mutters with a shrug, and the sides of Sasuke's mouth are sliding wider and wider and Naruto feels a nasty blush coming on so he shoves his poorly wrapped present into his hands and all but shouts: "Happy Birthday!"

Smooth.

Sasuke laughs good-naturedly at him. It's all he ever seems to do whenever he's around, like Naruto is just a delight. (He totally is.) He says a quiet 'thank you' as Naruto ushers him inside.

It takes at least 5 minutes to get Sasuke's grubby little hands of his bare ass as he follows him to the kitchen.

Not that he's complaining, but he at least wants him to try the cake first. He's tells him this, and quickly follows that up with:

"And if you say something corny like 'you are the cake' I'm going to slap you." Naruto says before Sasuke can get a word in. At least the other man has the decency to look caught.

"Fine, fine. What kind of cake is it?" Sasuke asks, sitting down dutifully in the chair that Naruto all but pushed him into.

Naruto looks anywhere and everywhere around the kitchen instead of at Sasuke when he mumbles: "Black Forest."

"That's my favorite." Sasuke says immediately, smiling, but then his face turns suspicious. "How did you know that?"

"I didn't. It was a lucky guess, I guess." He replies, trying (and failing) to remain nonchalant. Dammit, why couldn't it be something more common like carrot or red velvet? Now he's going to be totally cau—

Sasuke stares for a second, considering, and Naruto can see the gears working in his head out of the corner of his eye. All of a sudden, Sasuke bursts out laughing.

"You looked at one of my fan pages, didn't you?" He says around his laughter, and Naruto makes a noise of distress and shakes his head.

"No I didn't." He protests a little too quickly, but Sasuke just keeps on laughing.

"You totally did, oh my god." Sasuke says playfully, but Naruto's absolutely dying inside. Because he did, ok? Shut up. Most of it is good, valid information but he'll take the fact that he knows about them (and frequents them) to his grave.

Sasuke tries to smother his chuckles in his fist but he's failing miserably and Naruto's trying to figure out if he can grab the floor cleaner fast enough from underneath the sink and chug it before Sasuke can stop him.

"I know it's kind of weird but—"Naruto grinds out, physically having to stop himself from diving out the nearest window.

"No, no, it's fine, Naruto." Sasuke says, scrunching his eyes up in a way that almost looks painful and sighing happily out of his nose. "You're so cute."

And if he didn't want to bail before, he sure does now. But Sasuke sees this, and stands up to trap him against one of the counters.

"You just wanted to make sure it was right for my birthday, so thank you." And Naruto cannot physically bring himself to look at him because he's almost made himself look like an obsessed fan and not the…friend he's supposed to be.

(Which may or may not be one of his biggest fears about this whole thing. Maybe.)

Sasuke huffs out a small laugh against his cheek and presses a kiss there.

While he still has him trapped, Sasuke cuts a small slice and tastes it, making a pleased noise in the back of his throat.

"It's good." He says, with a hint of surprise in his tone, pushing the rest of the slice in his mouth all at once and Naruto snaps out of his funk and pushes at his shoulder.

"Don't say that like you're shocked, asshole!" he exclaims, feeling a tiny smile coming on.

Sasuke raises his hand up in mock surrender. "I didn't mean it like that!" He says around a mouthful of cake. He swallows and continues. "It's just that you've never made this before and it turned out great. Good job, is all I'm saying."

Bullshit. "Mhmm. Sure. But it's your birthday so I'll let you off." But Sasuke's not even paying attention to him, too busy trying to get another slice.

"Speaking of birthdays," Naruto announces loudly after a few moments so he won't have to watch Sasuke lick icing off of his fingers. It's doing bad things to his brain and focus. "You didn't open your gift."

Sasuke actually pouts, which makes the weird stomach flutters start again, and Naruto mentally stomps them down with a steel-toed boot. "My hands are sticky." He moan pitifully, and Naruto rolls his eyes so hard it almost hurts.

"Fine, I'll open it while you wash your hands off. God, you're such a dweeb."

Sasuke mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like 'your dweeb' but Naruto is convinced he's hearing things.

"So what is it?" Sasuke after he turns around and pats his hands dry on his pants. Naruto actually flinches because those have got to be five hundred dollar (or more!) pants—he saw similar ones in a magazine so it's a good guesstimate—and he just used them like a paper towel.

God that must be nice.

This is actually the part he's been dreading the most, you see, because Naruto couldn't think of anything to buy him. He's rich as hell, if that point hasn't been made already. Naruto…is not. So anything really cool he could think of was way out of Naruto's price range. Therefore, he got creative.

He spent weeks (weeks I tell you!) learning how to make jewelry from his friend Anko so he could create exactly what he saw in his head. So, he made an arm cuff. A white one with little detailed scales and shiny-red eyes, or to keep it simple, a white snake. He knows that Sasuke didn't have anything like that (from extensive study of old out-and-about pictures and stills from his shows)—

It's not weird, shut up!

—so he'd thought it'd be cool and that Sasuke would like it.

And from the look on his face, he does.

"Where did you even find something like this?" Sasuke's asks, taking it from him gently to examine it. "I haven't seen anything like it."

Dammit, now he's going to have to tell him, isn't he?

"I made it." Naruto blurts out, shifting back and forth a little bit. Shit, does this mean that he's the dweeb now?

Sasuke's eyes snap back up to him and he raises an eyebrow.

"You made it?"

Naruto nods. "Yeah, it's actually pretty easy. All you have to do is—" He starts to ramble to avoid having to see the way that Sasuke's looking at him again, like he's seriously something special, but he gets cut off anyway because in the next second Sasuke's trying to steal the air out of his lungs with a searing kiss.

Ok. Now we're in business.

He gets manhandled all the way to couch by strong arms that make him want weep and before he knows it, he's naked and on his back, trying to paw Sasuke's pants off.

"You're so—"Sasuke mumbles against his lips and Naruto's not having this potentially mushy shit so he shuts him up by kissing him harder.

Nope. Nuh-uh. Not today. They've already gone farther into the rabbit hole than they should have and it's high time to pull back.

He makes him goal known by pulling at Sasuke's zipper more insistently and the other man gets the hint, breaking the kiss to sit up and wrestle them off.

Naruto almost slips and says something stupid like "let me choke on it" when he gets a view of that eggplant outline in his boxers, but he's already embarrassed himself enough today.

Sasuke swoops down to kiss him again, still woefully not-naked (to Naruto's disappointment) one hand trailing down to his dick and beyond. He lets out a quick breath against Naruto's mouth, pulling back and looking at him questioningly.

"Did you—"He asks when he feels that Naruto's already a little wet back there.

Naruto grins hard at the look on his face. "I did it not too long before you came over, to be honest."

Sasuke looks up to the heavens like he wants them to save him, and bites Naruto's neck almost hard enough to draw blood, sliding one finger inside.

Naruto moans, dropping little kisses on the side of his face as his finger works inside him. Sasuke drags his face up from his neck (which is sure to bruise, Naruto thinks giddily) and goes back to kissing him.

He's about to get his world rocked tonight, Naruto thinks. He can tell by the way that Sasuke's in a rush, like he wants it right now and Naruto couldn't agree more. He's feeling a little devious, so he pulls back and whispers "I missed you." Against Sasuke's ear, earning him another quick breath and another finger, just the reaction he wanted.

He's all set to tell Sasuke he's ready and to get a condom when his soul flees his body because he feels a random, tiny hand press against his cheek. He stiffens, and Sasuke's about to ask him what's wrong when the same hand presses against his face, too.

They both stare at each other for a moment, breaking out into twin smiles as an insistent little meow echoes up from beside them.

Not the worst way to have the moment broken, Naruto thinks.

"Down, Demon." Sasuke says disapprovingly, but once his eyes land on the orange fur ball Naruto's cat takes that as invitation to get all the way up on the couch to try and snuggle.

"Ow. Claws, claws!" Naruto cries as he jumps on his bare chest. Sasuke's sigh is drowned out by another loud meow and they both ruefully accept that Demon will not be ignored.

Damn cat, cock-blocking him.

Naruto gently lifts the cat off of him and Sasuke gives in, reaching down to pet him, only to startle when Naruto snatches his hand out of the air before he gets anywhere close, horrified.

"What!?" Sasuke exclaims.

"Don't pet him with that hand! That's the butt hand!" Naruto cries dramatically. They both burst out laughing immediately after, but Sasuke switches hands anyway and pats his little head.

…The cat.

He was talking about the cat.

Naruto bitterly slides his apron back on as he watches Demon curl up against Sasuke's leg. He can't be too mad, as his little buddy missed Sasuke too. And seeing as how he belongs to Sasuke just as much as he does Naruto he guesses it's only fair.

You see, Sasuke's the reason why he even has Demon, whose name affectionately comes from how much trouble he was as a kitten, mixed with the fact that he's actually orange. Sasuke found him when he was just a baby, shortly after he and Naruto met, and couldn't take care of him no matter how much he wanted to because of his scheduling. He'd feel bad leaving an animal in the care of others for so long so he decided to give him to Naruto, who is a sucker for all things cute and would love this shit out of the little guy. Sasuke pays for toys and special food (that is only in the house when Sasuke buys it himself because Naruto's not paying for that shit) and he even got him freaking pet insurance. Like, seriously. Pet Insurance. Demon has his own little PPO network because of it. Unreal.

So, clearly Sasuke loves the cat and comes for him just as much as he does for Naruto, so Naruto will let them have their little time because he can just lock him out of the bedroom later and have Sasuke to himself for the rest of the night. He lets Demon know this through a pointed look which his cat thoroughly ignores in favor of pressing his face into Sasuke's shin, purring up a storm.

Smug little bastard.

Sasuke runs his hand over the cat carefully, checking for nodes that were there the last time he came over.

"Did you ever find out what was causing his skin irritation?" Sasuke asks.

"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you last time. Turns out he's allergic to egg so I have to make sure there's none in any of the food he eats."

"Oh, good. I was worried that it was more serious." Sasuke says with a sigh of relief.

Naruto blinks for a second, confused how he went from getting fingered one minute to discussing the health problems of their sort-of shared cat the next.

"What?" Sasuke asks, noticing his look.

"Nothing." Naruto replies with a quick shake of his head.

Seriously. Unreal.

The night stays sort of cool from there, seeing them watching TV in his bedroom and eating cake while they catch each other up on what's been happening with them. Some they've heard before, as they talk often enough, but everything seems new when Sasuke's in arms reach, just lounging on his bed in his boxers with his head propped up on his fist. Every once in awhile he presses his lips to the top of Demon's head as he lays sleeping in a ball in between them, and Naruto just maybe falls in like with him more and more as each minute passes.

At some point, Naruto drifts off to sleep, waking up with a start as he hears the bedroom door close.

"Shit, did I fall asleep?" he asks groggily as Sasuke comes back into view.

"Yeah. It's almost 1am now. I just put Demon out in the living room." He says. He pauses and then waggles his eyebrows. "It's officially my birthday." He says suggestively.

Naruto chuckles softly and holds his arms open for Sasuke to fall into. "Then come here for the second part of your gift." He says in true, over dramatic porn-star fashion.

Sasuke plays along, climbing on the bed and dragging Naruto towards him by his legs.

"Oh, baby, you shouldn't have."

…

When Sasuke's finally inside him, he hates it, because instead of rough and quick like he wants it, Sasuke takes his time and is almost….tender. Naruto doesn't know what to do with tender, no he does not, and he tries to get Sasuke to move faster that the tortuous pace he's set, which only results in Naruto's arms being pinned above his head. Even the grip he has on his arms is gentle!

Goddammit!

"Thank you." Sasuke says in between their quiet breathing.

Naruto cracks his eyes open and stares at him.

"Are you thanking me for having sex with you?" He asks, a little disturbed, and Sasuke shakes his head gently with a smile, causing a few dark hairs to brush softly against Naruto's face in a way that makes him sigh.

"I meant for…all of this. For making things for me and for listening to me and just—thanks."

Naruto's heart breaks a little bit at that, knowing from previous conversations they've had that Sasuke really appreciate when someone just…lets him talk. Not about his fame or his band, just about anything he wants and likes. Like comic books and bad horror movies (a few that he's even been in himself) or how he likes to cook and still has a Tamagotchi that somehow still works. It makes him want to cry for some reason, because he can't imagine how people stopped paying attention to Sasuke as a person and not a public figure.

He wonders what Sasuke was going to say earlier, before he cut him off.

(You're so—)

Naruto's heart is thumping loudly in his chest and he's afraid that Sasuke might be able to hear it in the quiet room, so he tries to lighten the mood.

"I mean, of course you're welcome and all that, but I do find it a little weird that you decide to say that while you're balls deep and everything." He quips.

Sasuke chuckles and ducks his head. "Shut up." He says playfully and starts to move in earnest.

Attaboy, Naruto thinks, and then forgets his next few thoughts.

…

When he wakes up next, at about 7am, Sasuke's face is still pressed into his neck, his arms still tightly around him as the sun's rays begin to break through the curtains.

Some part of him is indescribably happy about that.

Maybe.

…

He's so fucking screwed.