A/N: I apologise in advance for the total randomness of this chapter.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, but I do own Sasuke! My friend Jack got me a Sasuke figurine for Christmas! Isn't he sweet?

9

"For God's sake, Gaara," Sasuke whispered urgently as he shot a quick glance at their teacher. S&E class of all places to have a nervous breakdown. "Will you calm down?"

"Hey, what's the freaks problem?"

Bad move Kiba.

Gaara slowly took his head off of his arms to stare at the human-canine boy in front of him. "What's my problem, Kiba?"

He leapt to his feet; the chair went with a small crash to the floor. Everyone looked up, expecting to see some unfortunate person they could laugh at, but were instead met with a very pissed off red-head.

"You want to know what my freaking problem is?!!"

"Yeah, I do or I wouldn't have asked!"

"Shitumi is my problem!"

Sasuke seized Gaara from behind and pulled him backwards before Kiba could throttle him.

"I knew it! I knew it! I've seen the way you keep perving on her! You're after my girlfriend, you gothic freak!" Kiba was bristling with rage, his fangs bared.

Gaara burst into mirthless laughter. "I'm gothic? Take a good long look at Shitumi, dog boy! If I'm gothic, what does that make her? The vampire queen?"

Kiba's face abruptly came into contact with the floor when he launched himself at Gaara, only to find that Sasuke had wrapped his arms around Gaara's torso and had flung him around in a circle to face another direction.

"Let me go, God dammit!" Gaara snarled over his shoulder at his friend.

"Hell no!" came Sasuke's reply.

"Sasuke! Just because you're too freaking afraid to admit you like Nojiko doesn't mean you can stop me from admitting I like Shitumi!!"

Sasuke nearly let go of Gaara as his face turned pink. "You promised you wouldn't tell anyone!"

Through the door walked Shitumi.

"Sorry I'm late, the psych say's I've got emotional issues or something like-" she froze in mid-sentence as she spotted Gaara still tightly wrapped in Sasuke's arms.

Her black eyebrow rose towards her hairline. "What, are you two going out or something?"

Sasuke scowled and said, "No, Shitumi, Gaara and I are not going out."

"Could've fooled me. How do you ever expect Nojiko to go out with you if you go with Gaara?"

"Shitumi!" Kiba hollered. "Gaara fancies you for Christ's sake!"

"If you say so, Kiba-baka. So when did you two get together?"

"SHITUMI!!!" three voices shouted at once.

"Oi! Am I the only one who didn't know Sasuke liked me?!" Nojiko said from the corner of the room.

"Yes." Shitumi said. "You can be so oblivious, Nojiko."

"Alright! Alright! This has gone far enough." Kurenai-sensei said as she walked towards the small group. "Shitumi, sit down, take out your book and do the work on the board. Kiba, get off of the floor and return to your seat. Sasuke, put Gaara down and the both of you need to calm down and get back to work. Whatever you need to discuss, you can do so at lunch time which is in, oh, eight minutes."

"Baptised in the river, I've seen the misery in my life and I wanna be delivered,"

"Sasuke!" Kurenai –sensei declared, looking like she'd had enough for one day. "You know the school rules."

"Sorry, sensei."

"In the city with the sinners, I've done a hundred things wrong but I swear I'm a believer-" the phone was abruptly cut off as Sasuke answered it.

"Dad, I really can't talk right n-"

"It's Anko, Sasuke."

"Anko? What are you using my Dad's phone for? Well, never mind, I'm in class, I ca-"

"Go straight outside and wait for Itachi, he's coming to pick you up. Kakashi's in hospital, he had a heart attack." She hung up the second she was done talking.

Sasuke was frozen in shock. After a good two minutes of staying completely rigid, Gaara was getting worried. He poked Sasuke in the neck, which made him snap out of it.

"Uh, Sasuke? Are you okay?"

Sasuke ran to the door, calling over his shoulder, "My dad's in hospital! Take care of my stuff til Monday, okay?"

He didn't bother to wait for an answer as he slammed the door behind him and bolted towards the front gates of the school.

Four hours later, Sasuke was once again in Deidara and Itachi's shared apartment. Kakashi didn't want him to be left alone.

"Hey, don't worry, un," Deidara said as he sat beside Sasuke on the couch. "He'll be fine. It's probably just stress; they're only keeping him in over night to make sure he stays that way. You'll just spend the night with us and we'll go get him in the morning. I'll make you some tea, ok?"

"Thanks, Deidara." Sasuke said as the blonde went into the kitchen with Itachi.

A sudden vibration from his pocket caused Sasuke to pull his phone out of his pocket, he quickly discovered he had four missed calls. "Yo."

"Hey, man, you ok? How's your dad?" Sasuke smiled at the concern in Gaara's voice.

"I'm fine, they're keeping dad in overnight though."

"Jeez, what's wrong with him?"

"He had a heart attack, but he's ok, according to the doctors and Deidara, it's just an overload of worrying and stress."

"Wow, your dad? Stressed? What a surprise, he's always so easy going and carefree. What could he be stressed about?" Gaara sounded more curious than concerned now.

"I know. I can't figure it out, either. Hey, were all four of these missed calls from you?"

"Four? No, this is only the second time I've called. I know two of them were from Shitumi, I was with her when she made them, one of them is from me and...um..."

Sasuke frowned; he knew that tone to Gaara's voice. Nothing good was going to come from this. "Yes?"

"Well, uh, don't get mad, but I gave your number to Nojiko, she wanted to talk to you."

"..."

"Sasuke? Hello? You still there? Listen, I'm sorry about today, I just lost it, I didn't mean to blurt out to our whole S&E class that you like her-"

"Gaara."

"Yeah?"

"It's ok. Really. I just didn't know what to say is all. Don't worry about it. Listen, I've got to go and interrupt before Itachi and Deidara get carried away in the kitchen."

"What do they do?" Gaara asked sounding incredibly cautious, as if he regretted asking the minute it was out of his mouth. He was straight, after all.

"Sometimes nothing. But it's always better to make sure. I walked in on them last weekend. God, that was terrifying. Talk to you later."

"See ya." With that, they both hung up and Sasuke made his way to the kitchen.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Over in Konoha hospital, two figures sat in a room, one in a bed, the other on a wooden chair beside the bed's railing.

"Well, have you thought it over yet?" the purple haired woman asked.

Kakashi sighed and ran a hand through his silver hair. "Yes, Anko, I have and I just don't know what to do."

Anko smacked him on the back of the head, forcing his forehead to almost come into contact with his knees. "I thought it is quite obvious what you should do."

He glared half-heartedly at her. "To you, maybe. You know what? I regret ever going to talk to Mikoto. I regret bringing Itachi here. In fact, I regret everything I've done in my life so far. Sasuke's the only thing in my life that I have to live for, and he's getting further and further away from me every day."

Anko restrained herself from hitting him again. "I've told you what you need to do, Kakashi. Just give him some space to breathe. He loved you, but he loves Itachi and Deidara as well. You've got to be willing to compromise. You know why Sasuke wants you to have this party, don't you?"

"He wants to set me up with someone."

"Yes. He wants you to have fun and live for someone else besides him. And I think he's right."

"I haven't got time for that, Anko."

"What?!! It's a perfectly good-"

"Not Sasuke's plan. Mikoto and Fugaku. They found out about Itachi being here. They've decided to punish me for my rudeness when we last met. Mikoto has gone to court. She wants full custody of Sasuke. She's taking my boy away from me."

A/N: This whole thing just came to me as I was writing. I'm happy I managed to get a cliff hanger in there as well. Hope you enjoyed it.