Naruto threw his door shut behind him, the bang making the picture hanging on the wall next to the door fall down, glass shattering against the floor. Naruto could not care less. He was angry. He was pissed off. He was fucking furious! Finally he had gotten his break, and they had stuck him with the biggest fucking bastard on the entire planet! Fuck, he would have preferred the usual awkward way people acted around him, keeping their distance out of fear he was about to shift and kill them any moment.
No such luck with the The Bastard though, nope! Firstly the guy had insinuated he was a cat, and then he teased him for being a fox, and then he fucking spent the next hours ignoring Naruto completely. Naruto had tried talking to him, he had tried poking him, he had fucking tried shoving him, but The Bastard ignored him completely, like he was just some annoying fly buzzing around his head. It infuriated Naruto to high heavens.
Dropping his shoulder bag onto the floor he stalked over towards his kitchen. There was only one thing in the whole world that would help his mood right now. Delicious ramen, food of the gods. He whipped up a large bowl and took it into the living room with him, dumping down in front of the TV, happily slurping up the noodles. He could eat the stuff every day, for every meal, much to his dad's chagrin. Too bad daddy dearest was nowhere around to scold him for the choice of dinner.
His dad was possibly the only thing Naruto would miss having moved. Iruka Umino had taken him in as a kid, and was the only person that had ever cared about Naruto, not giving a damned if he was a shifter. Growing up not only a shifter, but an orphan, bouncing from foster home to foster home had been awful, and when Iruka had taken him in and shown him how having a family was like he had probably saved Naruto. Naruto wasn't sure if he would have pulled through all the hatred directed at him without Iruka there to stroke his hair when he cried himself to sleep, or to patch up his wounds when someone had used him as a punching bag. He'd have to call Iruka soon, the man was probably anxious to know how Naruto was doing. Oh, Naruto couldn't wait to tell him all about The Bastard!
With thoughts of his dad, and ramen slowly filling his stomach he finally calmed down enough to do some actual pondering rather than just cussing out his partner.
He had been so stoked to get this opportunity, and his only fear had been that the people couldn't deal with what he was. Apart from Sasuke being a complete dick, things weren't so bad though. One of his other co-workers had taken mercy on him and rescued him from the futile attempts at coaxing some kind of response out of the raven. Kiba Inuzuka turned out to be a pretty decent guy, showing Naruto around, and introducing him to the other members of their unit. Being only eleven people they were going to have to work closely together, so Naruto was happy to see that most of them weren't complete assholes, and none of them had commented on him being a shifter at all.
Kiba had to leave for patrol pretty soon though, as well as the other guys, leaving only Sasuke and he in the office. Naruto wouldn't be sent into the field for a couple of days, he needed to be filled in on their cases beforehand, and Sasuke wasn't allowed either until Naruto came with him. Sasuke had complained loudly about the fact to Kakashi, but their unit leader had shut him down by explaining that if he stopped scaring away his partners he wouldn't have to stay inside. The raven had merely grumbled and gone back to his computer, showing his displeasure by ignoring Naruto for the rest of the night, tapping away on his keyboard, scowl marring his brow.
Knowing that Sasuke seemingly had the tendency to scare away his partners just made Naruto determined that he was not going to become one of them. He was not easily scared. Fuck, he'd grown up being ostracised after all, he'd long since developed thick shields. He had great motivation for joining the DPA, and no stuck up bastard was going to ruin this for him. Sasuke might not like him, and Naruto sure as hell didn't like the pale bastard, but that didn't mean he was going anywhere anytime soon. No, he was just going to have to find some way to ignore his lousy partner and excel at what he did. He had lots of experience ignoring shitheads before, so it shouldn't be much of a problem.
He had been dealt a bad card in life, but he was not going to let that stop him, he was going to be the best damned agent DPA had ever seen, and he wouldn't let being a shifter stop him. It had never been his choice to be like this, so people would just have to deal.
A wide grin spread on Naruto's face as he leaned back on the couch, visions of rising in the ranks until he was the head of the entire Department of Paranormal Affairs.
Sasuke stepped into the shower, lathering up his hair, fingers digging into his scalp to alleviate the budding headache he could feel coming on. He'd spent the entire night at work doing his best to ignore the blond menace of a partner. He had no need to know anything about him, or talk to him, or even see him. All he needed of him was to get ready for the field ASAP so Sasuke would be able to go back out and do what he did best: kill.
Out of all the paranormal beings roaming the world the vampires were the worst scourge. Where shifters or fey could create trouble, and leprechauns loved nothing more than create mischief, vampires were plain evil.
A couple of decades ago, before the paranormal beings made themselves known to the world people had this stupid notions that vampires were these sexy beings, tortured souls just looking for that one person who could love them. Truth was that vampires were demons.
Sasuke sneered as water cascaded over him, washing away the shampoo as he moved to wash his body, fingers tracing across soft skin marred by a few scars he had accumulated through the years of fighting the monsters. Oh, how people's views had changed when the vampires were unmasked.
Turning into a vampire was nasty business, nothing romantic about it. You'd be drained completely, vampire blood introduced into your body. The vampire blood acted as a conductor, opening a portal from hell, allowing a single demon entrance into the now dead body. That demon now controlled that body completely, having full access to the person's memories. Vampires thusly had no problem acting exactly like the person had in life, making it hard to identify them. Until they ate you that was. Needing blood to be able to stay in the body, and having no conscience made it easy for them to kill without remorse, leaving a trail of dead bodies behind them to rot in the sunlight.
There was only one thing to do about vampires, kill them, and kill them fast. Demons were vulnerable when they took a physical body; stakes, decapitations, fire or sunlight all surefire ways to kill them for good, but seeing how hell was, well, hell, they took chance willingly. Besides, most of them were arrogant, not believing that measly humans would really be a threat against almighty demons. Sasuke kept showing them just how wrong they were in that assumption.
Vampires were the reason the rest of the paranormal population stepped out of the closet to begin with. The vampire population had suddenly surged in numbers, growing completely out of control, and there were no hiding anymore. They needed help from the humans to control them, before the beasts took over the world completely.
The Department of Paranormal Affairs, most commonly referred to as DPA, came about quickly when the government realised the threat they were up against, similar departments popping up all over the globe. Training law enforcers they soon managed to take some control over the situation. Vampires were still very much roaming the world, but the numbers were controllable now. For every new one popping out an agent would take one out. They hoped to be able to kill them all at one point, no vampires meant no more ways to create portals to the human realm, but so far it was proving a hard task. New vampires weren't much of a threat, not strong enough to stay alive when the DPA agents hunted their ass. The old vampires though, those who had roamed the world long before the humans knew about them, the ones who were smart and hid their trail of bodies, those were the real problem. Cunning, hard to kill and paranoid they would secretly create just enough new vampires to keep their population alive while staying in hiding, ensuring no agents knew they existed.
Sasuke had grown up in this world, vampires being something they were taught how to protect themselves from at an early age. Sure, most of those lessons were pretty much variants of stay inside after dark, but still. He hadn't thought he would be very much affected by the supernatural, the vampires were few enough in number so most people just went through life, never meeting a single one. That had all changed when Sasuke was still a kid though, and soon the paranormal was very much a part of his life, eventually leading him to his current occupation as an agent of DPA.
Not in the mood to go down the path of his childhood trauma Sasuke conditioned his hair and rinsed off before leaving the shower. Dwelling on the past did him no good, so he'd just store those thoughts back in the dredges of his mind and do his best to ignore them, like he always did.
Dressed in a dark-blue pyjama pants Sasuke walked out of the bathroom, heading into his living room and the desk placed in the corner. He booted up his laptop and sat down in front of his. Work might be over for the day, but he had a personal mission on the side. Besides, it wasn't like he had anything to do with his spare time after all, he had no use for stuff like hobbies or watching TV or having a social life.
Clicking open his email he scanned through it, hoping to have heard back from one of his contacts. No such luck. He had exactly three new mails. One from Kakashi telling him to stop being a prick and just deal with his new partner. One from his phone company with the monthly bill, and the last one spam. As if Sasuke needed some pill to enlarge his dick. It was more than large enough thank you very much. With a scowl he deleted the latter and the first, taking a certain glee in the fact that he was pissing off Kakashi. At some point the unit leader should take the hint that Sasuke did better on his own and stop pairing him up with all these morons. A fucking shifter…
He was about to close the computer when a sudden thought hit him, and soon he had opened Firefox (the irony was not lost on him), and typed in "Naruto Uzumaki" in the search bar.
The first hit was to his Facebook, and of course the dumbass kept everything open to everyone. Didn't he have the sense to keep it private? Oh well, it made his task easier. He was sure to find some kind of dirt he could use to get rid of the blond, whether it be embarrassing photos, or something else entirely. Sasuke was not above playing dirty.
Apparently Naruto had joined the police force four years previously. It was usually how most of their agents came into the job. Police academy, a stint on the force, followed by twelve months training to become an agent. He was 26, which made him one year younger than Sasuke, and had an unhealthy fascination with ramen, of all things. His banner photo was pretty much an homage to the food.
Sasuke clicked on Naruto's profile photo, enlarging it. It was just a headshot, the blond grinning madly at the camera, showing off his perfectly straight teeth.
Moving through the rest of the blond's pictures Sasuke was surprised to see that almost all of them were of Naruto alone. No party photos, no photos of him hanging out with friends or anything like that. The only other person to appear in the photos was a brown-haired man with a scar across his face. The picture descriptions named him as Naruto's dad, but they looked nothing alike, and the man still looked to be in his thirties, hardly old enough to be the father of a twenty-six year old.
Frowning he clicked back to Naruto's profile, clicking on the Friends tab. Naruto had exactly 317 friends, but when Sasuke kept on going down the profile it looked like none of them interacted with the blond at all. No comments on his wall, no tagged photos. And the few updates Naruto had made had no comments whatsoever, and only a like or two.
It didn't look like any of his 317 friends actually were his friends at all. Was the blond really that unlikeable? Sure, Sasuke hadn't exactly fawned over the man, but then again, Sasuke hated everyone, so that was to be expected. If Sasuke had a Facebook profile it would be about as deserted as the middle of Sahara.
Scrolling back up the page Sasuke found himself staring at the other man's picture. The goofy grin was so unlike any expression Sasuke had ever made. The raven didn't actually think his lips could stretch that way. The blond hair was pretty much the opposite of his own black locks as well. Blue eyes versus dark brown. Tan skin versus pale. The only way they could look more different was if Naruto had been a woman.
Shutting the window Sasuke turned off his computer. He really didn't care if Naruto had loads of friends or not, he sure as hell had no intention of becoming one. No, his plan was what it always was, be himself and soon enough all his partners gave up. He didn't need incriminating photos to do that. Naruto would be gone soon enough, some way or another.