"What'cha doing Sasuke?" Naruto asked. His curiosity had been growing from the moment that Sasuke had gotten his hands on a computer and after a couple of days of just sitting around he just couldn't hold it in anymore.
"I'm looking some stuff up," Sasuke replied being intentionally vague. Naruto leaned over to look at the screen and Sasuke almost ripped the computer away from his sight, but then he remembered that Naruto couldn't actually read so he just let the boy take a look at the words that he had no hope of understanding. Hopefully that would satisfy Naruto's curiosity enough to leave him be while he worked on his research.
"I can't read it," Naruto pouted.
"I know," Sasuke replied. He didn't want Naruto to be able to read the documents that he was finally able to hack into after days of trying. He was actually surprised at how hard it was to get to. Sasuke was one of the best hackers that the organization had and he had tested his skills, without the council's knowledge, on the organization's mainframe. The system had become so easy for his to break into that it was no longer even a challenge, but this information had been so locked away that Sasuke almost couldn't get through it. He was able to in the end, but he almost wished he hadn't been able. There wasn't much information on Naruto, apparently his father decided to keep most of the research on hard copy so that it wouldn't be stolen by random hackers, but everything that was there almost made it sound like Naruto was nothing more than an animal. There were a few test results where Naruto was forced to do something physically tasking and if Naruto failed he would be punished. The tasks and punishments were never specified, but Naruto's responses were and they weren't pretty. A lot of times, Naruto would be physically injured during one of the tasks and he would then get punished. The more and more Sasuke read, the more and more he just wanted to torture Naruto's father.
"Will you teach me how to read Sasuke?" Naruto asked suddenly pulling Sasuke from his own reading.
"Why?" Sasuke asked.
"I just…" Naruto tried to explain what he was feeling, but he just couldn't figure out how to put it in words. What could he really say? He just wants to be out from underneath the thumb of the council? No, he didn't really care about them and could leave this place whenever he wanted even without being able to read. He'd like to read some books and learn some more? No, his father had made sure to teach him anything and everything that he needed to know to survive and do his job so he didn't need to learn more. He just didn't want to annoy Sasuke? But he would be annoying Sasuke just by asking him to teach him. Maybe he shouldn't have asked at all. Naruto opened his mouth to say just that, but then Sasuke spoke instead.
"I'll teach you after this mission," he said. "They're going to send us out soon so there's no point in starting right now."
"Thank you!" Naruto grinned excitedly.
"Yea yea," Sasuke rolled his eyes just so that he could stop himself from grinning. Now that he was allowing himself to really look at Naruto instead of try to shove the boy away, his childish actions were actually, dare he say it, kind of cute. Sasuke shook himself when that thought passed through his head and he found himself no longer able to look at the files that he had dug up on the computer. Instead he pushed it onto the small table next to his hospital bed and took their case file into his hands. "Come here," he said as he scooted over to make room for Naruto on the bed.
"What is it?" Naruto asked even as he crawled onto the bed so that he was sitting side-by-side with Sasuke. The bed was small and they were pressed a little closer together, but Naruto actually found that comfortable. He never really knew the comfort of being close to another person, but now he was sure that he would enjoy it if Sasuke would let him.
Sasuke didn't answer. Instead he opened the case file on both of their laps and began to read. Out loud. With his finger tracing the words to keep track of where he was.
Naruto's eyes widened when he realized what Sasuke was doing. He couldn't show Naruto how to read quite yet, but he could at least show him the words that were coming out of his mouth. It was an unexpectedly nice thing to do and Naruto grinned as he watched the finger slip under the words that Sasuke was reading intentionally slowly.
It was kind of weird reading like this. Sasuke wasn't used to having to do something so slowly. He learned that he should do everything quickly, even reading, and without showing his hand when he joined the organization. It had been so long since he had actually read anything out loud, having taught himself to speed-read, and now he was doing that and more for Naruto. It was weird, but he found that he actually enjoyed the slow pace for once in his life. Besides, reading slowly gave him the chance to mull all the information over in his head.
It looked like their backstory wasn't going to be that hard to remember, thankfully. The two of them were to be long-time orphans who had met at a young age and ran away from the orphanage to live on the streets together. They were supposed to be in love, though Sasuke had no idea why the council had to go into that much detail for a simple backstory like this one, and Naruto was to be the type of dependent person who didn't even know how to fight. That made sense, though, because they didn't want to give away Naruto's strength from the beginning and not be able to use him in the end because their target was so cautious around Naruto.
It was everything after their cover story that concerned Sasuke. Their target was apparently the leader of a gang and they were going to have to gain his trust before they would be able to kill him. They had to find a way of getting into the gang without being murdered and then they had to kill the boss by making it look like one of his other underlings had done it. This was going to be a hard and dangerous mission, but Sasuke would make sure that the both of them came out of it alive.
