A/N: I am on a roll. 6MML Chapter Four, here we come! (This chapter has a profusion of Sasuke. I apologize. He kept nagging me for some screentime.)
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Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or anything associated with it, including stupid diseases that kill hot missing-nin years before their time. Seriously, Kishimoto, that was downright cruel.
Six Months of Man-Love
Chapter Four
Of Responsibility and Advice
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Sasuke was sitting huddled up on the cold wood floor of his parents' bedroom, eyes staring wide and unseeing at the dark, earthy red-brown of dried bloodstains in the center of the empty room. He'd been there for a good couple hours – well into the night – and he had no plan to leave his sanctuary anytime soon. Here, he felt closer to his older brother, and nowadays that was the only thing that could clear his mind. But it seemed that it wasn't working very well tonight; the conflicting thoughts swirling around his head hadn't let up since they began that afternoon in the hospital.
--
They wouldn't approve.
They're dead.
They wouldn't approve.
They're dead.
Uchihas enter into purebred, clan to clan, contractually bound marriages.
Also known as straight marriages.
Not man-to-man, clan-to-relatively-unknown-family, non-contract marriages.
And most certainly not to a jinchuuriki.
But it's Naruto!
And you're an Uchiha.
Screw Uchiha! They're dead anyway!
Itachi's not. You owe it to him to have a good marriage.
But that's exactly why I can have an unconventional spouse – I'm not the clan heir! Itachi was – and still is – so it's up to him to secure the clan-clan marriage! The Hyuugas always wanted him to marry into their family, right? It's perfect!
You seem to forget that Itachi is sick with a debilitating disease that will kill him before he's 25.
He's 23! Surely, in all his physical prowess, he can knock up some Hyuuga before he kicks the bucket, damn it!
Everybody believes him to be an S-class criminal…because that's what he is. They wouldn't let him come within a mile of a clan-born shinobi unless that particular shinobi happened to be a hunter-nin.
But I know the truth!
And how will that help? The godaime isn't about to reveal that devastating truth to the general public. Or even her most trusted ANBU, for that matter.
And anyway, Itachi's asexual.
Whaat? He is not! He had a girlfriend before he left!
They all say that, but you're his brother and you never saw him with a girl besides his teammate, that Inuzuka. And if he's supposed to be in a clan-clan, contractually bound marriage, then why would he have a girlfriend? He would've had a betrothed instead.
Okay, fine. But he's not asexual. He used to be good friends with Hana-san – his teammate – and he told me once that they promised to give each other their virginity so they wouldn't have to lose it to some stranger their clan provided for their spouse.
Does your silence mean I win?
Fine. But you still owe it to him-
---
Sasuke tuned his inner voice of common sense out. If his twisted sense had won over his supposedly perfect, righteous, Uchiha common sense, it couldn't be that good after all. He'd go after Naruto.
Pushing himself up and walking across to the door, he pulled the heavy pieces of wood open and let himself bask in the starlight as he walked across the outdoor hallway into the main section of the house. Letting his thoughts turn to Itachi, he smiled softly. His brother was a true shinobi, sacrificing personal want in every way to follow through with his eleven-year-long mission. Talk about long term. Even Kakashi, one of the best jounin of the village, had only been on six-month missions at the longest. Eleven years…was unthinkable. And if the council had their way, it would be forever. Forever… forever hiding your true loyalties and wants under a mask of cruelty and bloodlust, a mask forming a personality so completely and utterly different than what lay underneath; a loving, caring brother whose favorite word was peace.
Climbing up the stairs, he walked along the hall and passed his bedroom door, choosing Itachi's bed tonight instead of his. He kept them all clean as could be – Sakura swore he was hiding an obsessive-compulsive disorder for cleanliness – and occasionally he would sleep in his brother's bed, reliving childhood memories of years long past. Tonight, he would go to sleep content, because tomorrow he would go to Naruto and ask the blonde if they could become a couple. And after that…well, who knows. But he definitely wouldn't be using Itachi's bed anymore – it was a single.
---
Sasuke had woken up an hour ago and was currently involved in research. Paper-shuffling, more accurately; he was going through the various personal journals and assorted colloquial tomes in the clan library. It was an old, stately building – by far the largest in the compound, taking up several mansion-sized structures – made of aged wood that time had treated well. It was one of the oldest buildings in the Uchiha sector aside from the clan meeting hall and was all the more honored and respected for it. The dusty shelves contained scrolls by figures ranging from the founder, Madara Uchiha – although some on the higher levels of Sharingan had mysteriously gone missing a few years ago - to the Sandaime Hokage, detailing everything from basic academy genjutsus like the bunshin and kawarimi to the most dangerous forbidden jutsus like the Kage Bunshin – banned because of excessive chakra depletion – and the Edo Tensei, banned because it reanimated the dead. The library was coveted by the Hyuugas and lusted after by the Hokage, because even though some of their own works were contained within its shelves, Sasuke had made the compound off-limits to anyone not of Uchiha blood. For him, the complex was reserved for the souls of all the people slain that fateful day, lonely and forlorn, and he wanted to make sure it stayed that way. It would hurt too much to see life in it again.
He had placed barriers around the outside – not even the strongest shinobi could enter. The only person who had wandered the dark streets after the massacre was Sasuke himself; he hadn't even let Naruto, Sakura, or his sensei in to see where he lived in solitude.
As such – lacking a proper parental unit to provide for him and teach him the ways of the ninja aside from the occasional jutsu Kakashi tossed his way – he had turned to this library as his teacher, and it had done well. It was his family, in a sense, and one of his sanctuaries. He was interested to see Naruto's reaction to it when he brought him over later.
Which brought him back to why he was here in the first place, buried under piles of paper and leather-bound diaries.
Yes, his clan was almost all gone, but Sasuke still held pride in the Uchiha – not in what they were, but what they would become.
So he would take advice from the ancestors of old…courting advice. He needed to convince Naruto that he really loved him, after all. This was going to be a major accomplishment.
Uchiha Sasuke, the cold heir to an even more frigid clan, was going to ask the blond dobe for a date.
Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my.