The internet is a cruel and wicked mistress indeed. I'm sorry that this is a little late, but it really wasn't my fault. Everything was ready. Except my computer :death glare:. It would seem that it truly does hate me and wishes death upon my soul. If the internet STILL isn't working when I do get back up to school I'll have to go get it checked out… AGAIN!!! :dies a little inside:

Oh! Just so you know I confused the house that was going to drop on my head. I told it that I technically posted the chapter on time, just wasn't able to do it. It stopped in midair and gave me enough time to escape XD ha.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Because we all know that if I did own it, things would have worked out very differently. It would gone a little something like… this :holds up a drawing of Sasuke and Naruto making out while Sakura gives them two thumbs up and a big smile:

Warning: One sided Boy Love and language. I realized that I forgot to add in something witty in this space last chapter. What a shame! :long pause: Oh! You wanted me to make up for last week, didn't you? :another long silence: I thought you would have gotten the hint that I wasn't going to do it. Gawd.

"My one day off this week and you guys pull be back to the mall." Kiba complained as he, Naruto and Sasuke walked in through the large, front entrance to Century Three Mall, his eyes glancing around at the familiar stores on either side of the wide hall.

"But it's Black Friday." Naruto replied back almost innocently.

"THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT!! I CAN BARELY BREATH 'CAUSE OF ALL THE PEOPLE!!" Kiba's loud voice was lost in the large crowds that roamed the great hallway of the mall. Sasuke had to admit that the brunette had a point. The mall was filled with at the very least four times as many people as it usually held with its confines. He never did care for crowds, but Naruto had insisted on going to the mall today and he was not going to pass up a chance to hang out with the blonde (and Kiba as well) just because of his dislike for the large hordes.

"But there are crazy sales everywhere!" The blonde-haired boy whined as he began leading the other two boys down similar routes that lead them to their most frequently visited stores.

"Doesn't give you an excuse to join the masses in their frantic shopping frenzy." Kiba chided back as his arms crossed defensively over his chest.

"I decided that I was going to get all my Christmas shopping out of the way early this year." Naruto started to explain as he walked a step (maybe two) in front of both Kiba and Sasuke. "Every year I'm always scrambling the week before to buy all those presents, so I decided that I would do it all now so that I wouldn't have to worry about it later."

"You just scramble at the last minute 'cause you're so absent-minded." As soon as the insult left Kiba lips, Naruto spun on his heels and stopped abruptly, ready to yell with insults of his own at his friend.

"What was that dog-breath?" Sasuke sighed at the childish behavior of his friends, who were currently tossing back insult after insult at one another, hoping that sooner or later the other would run out of comebacks and forfeit the argument (if one could call it such). He was just glad that there were so many people currently roaming the mall so that the mall cops would not bother with his friends' little squabble.

"Let's just buy your presents and get out of here." Sasuke said loudly, trying to be heard over the roar of the large crowds that surrounded the three boys.

"All right." The two of them said, almost in unison, instantly forgetting about their fight.

It took quite some time to get all the presents that Naruto needed to pick up for the many people on his list this year, due to the huge crowds and long lines. But eventually the blonde was able to make all of his purchases, minus one or two gifts that he could not decide on, and the three boys were able to make it out of that Hellhole once known as a mall.

"Want to go eat at Denny's?" Naruto asked once the three males made it back to Sasuke's car, which seemed as if it was parked a mile away from any entrance into the mall. The raven-haired teen unlocked his pretty, blue car, allowing all of them to piles into the vehicle, before he considered his friend's offer.

"Sure. I wouldn't mind getting something to eat." The Uchiha replied as he turned to his right to look over at the brunette whom climbed into the back seat and then continued to watch as Naruto slid into the passenger seat beside him.

"Well it certainly beats this place." Kiba huffed as he settled into the comfortable seat. "Did you see the food court? Almost every table was taken! I never want to go back to the mall on Black Friday ever again!"

"It wasn't that bad." Naruto said with a nervous smile. "I mean, we got really good deals on things so that makes up for it, right?"

"Not a chance." Kiba said with both a deadpan expression and tone to his voice.

The blonde let out a short chuckle at the brunette's statement, hoping that his dog-loving friend would not hate him for forcing him to be in such an environment as the mall on Black Friday. Sasuke started up the car and carefully pulled out the parking spot, silently cursing to himself when a car came up almost right behind him (giving him very little room to maneuver his car), just waiting for him to surrender his parking spot. Once he was able to make his way out of the packed parking lot, it was practically three minutes later that they pulled into the Denny's parking lot since the restaurant was literally one lot down from Century Three Mall.

Once the Uchiha had found a spot in which to park, the three boys exited the car and proceed into the restaurant, which, to Kiba's joy, was far less crowded that the mall's food court. They were giving a booth in the very back of the building, a regular spot for them since they starting coming to Denny's when they started high school(1), almost immediately after they walked into the restaurant.

As they sat down, a young waitress set down three menus for them before she left to check on another one of her customers. The three boys thanked her and then opened up their own individuals menus to look at their choices.

"I forgot to ask you guys." Kiba said randomly whilst the three of them looked over their menus. "How was your Thanksgiving?"

Both Sasuke and Naruto visibly tense at the question.

Sasuke realized that his blonde friend had also remained silent, which was odd considering Naruto was hardly ever silent for long periods of time. The raven kept his gaze on his best friend, his curiosity growing rapidly, as he hoped that Naruto would eventually speak up and reveal what had happened during Thanksgiving with his mother and father that was so terrible.

"Well, you know how my mom invited me, my dad and my grandma over for dinner." Naruto started out with a nervous grin placed firmly on his lips. "Let's just say it didn't go very well." The blonde then focused his gaze back on his menu and prayed that his friends would not pry any further.

"Dude, I still can't believe your family did that." Kiba said, showing honest pity for his friend. "Must have been terrible."

"It wasn't all that bad, I guess." Naruto admitted, placing his menu down on the table. "Turns out my grandma used to work with Iruka's grandfather."

"That's a weird coincidence." Kiba said before their waitress came back over to their booth.

"What can I get you boys to drink?" the young girl, no older than any of the boys sitting at the table, said with a bright smile. The group figured that she must have been a new employee since none of them recognized her and she did not seem like she hated her job just yet(2).

"I'll just have a diet Coke." Kiba said with a charming smile, no doubt trying to win over the new waitress. Sasuke momentarily wondered to himself if all the flirting that Kiba did with the waitress here was intentionally or all subconscious. He was pulled from his thoughts when the young girl looked over at him with expectant eyes.

"I'll have a coffee." Sasuke said, his voice just barely audible. The waitress wrote down his order and then finally looked over at the last of the three boys, her cheerful smile never wavering.

"Sprite for me." He answered her gaze with a smile of his own.

"I'll back in a minute with your drinks." And with that, the young girl walked away and left the three friends alone once again.

"How did your Thanksgiving go, Sasuke?" Naruto questioned, trying to get the attention off him and his family's problems.

"…" The raven took a long paused before he glanced up from his menu and looked onto the curious faces of his friends. With a mental sigh he forced the words from his mouth. "My parents found out about my brother and Kisame."

"What?!" Naruto gasped, practically jumping from his seat in his surprised state. Kiba wore a similar expression to the blonde sitting across from him, but he kept his composure better and stopped himself firmly in his seat and just gaped at Sasuke in shock. "How?!"

"He told them." Sasuke replied as he set his menu to the side, knowing that his friends would not allow him to look at it again unless he had told them every single detail about his holiday. "Itachi received a call from Kisame during dinner. Seems his apartment caught fire while he was trying to cook something on the stove. Itachi tried to leave and my dad wouldn't let him. So he just blurted everything out while they were fighting."

"Did your dad do?" Kiba asked cautiously, afraid that he may hit a cord with the youngest Uchiha.

"… He kicked him out."

Naruto could not believe what he was hearing. Itachi, Sasuke's older brother and main source of support, was no longer welcome in his own home. The blonde could shake the feeling of guilt that sat in the pit of his stomach. He was so certain that he was the one whom had been put through Hell this Thanksgiving, when Sasuke had been through so much more and yet he was willing to tell his story, while Naruto tried to brush off the topic.

He like a complete ass.

A chuckle pulled both Naruto and Sasuke from their thoughts and forced them to turn their attention to the brunette beside them. "I can't believe Kisame almost burn down his apartment." Kiba laughed out. "I'll never let him live that one down."

When the dog-loving teenager broke out into a loud laugh, Sasuke could not help but add in a smile of his own. "Itachi called me last night. He was pissed at Kisame when he found out the whole story."

Both Sasuke and Kiba shared a short laugh at Kisame's blunder. As Naruto watched his friends laughing and trying to see the bright side of this unfortunate situation, the guilt slowly melting away and was replaced by a small smile tugging at his lips.

"I guess Kisame will never be allowed near the kitchen ever again." Sasuke added on as an afterthought while he reached for his menu, set aside some time ago.

"Anyone else just get a mental image of Itachi in an apron(3)?" Naruto said after a short pause. The statement itself made both Kiba and Sasuke stop whatever other thought process their individual minds were leading them down, Naruto's words forcing their way into their brains, and made them think of nothing else but that slightly disturbing mental image. The silence produced from the boys' momentary pause was then immediately followed by an outburst of laughter from the brunette sitting directly across from him.

"Oh dear god!" he exclaimed, tears forming in the corners of his eyes. "That image will haunt me forever, I swear!"

"It will for me as well." Sasuke grumbled as his pale fingers gently massaged his temples, almost like he believed the action would rid him the disturbing images of his older brother. "I should tell him about that thought of yours to get back at you, Naruto." The raven's eyebrow twitched in his annoyance, since the image of his brother simple would not leave his mind, and gave his blonde friend an irate smirk while his fingers still worked on his pale temples.

"No! Don't tell him!" Naruto shouted, throwing himself closer to the raven-haired teen in his panicked state, his hand latched onto the collar of Sasuke's shirt. "He might just actually do it if he knew that I thought about him like that!" Sasuke pulled his hands away from his face and let his dark orbs open so that he and Naruto may see eye to eye. He tried to ignore the small distance between himself and the blonde, wishing not to overreact to such closeness while they were not only in public, but had a witness to his secret. Sasuke let his gaze drift over to said witness for a moment and realized, which great relief, that the brunette beside him was too busy laughing to notice anything out of the ordinary.

Or so he hoped.

Luckily, Sasuke was spared from further humiliation when the young waitress walked back over to their booth and placed their drinks down along the wooden table. Naruto let go out his friend's collar and placed his order, followed by Sasuke and Kiba who did the same as he. The young girl smiled at the three boys and then left their table once again so that she may attend to the other customers in the vicinity.

Sasuke was just about to answer Naruto's plea, now that the young waitress was out of earshot of their odd conversation, when once again his poor shirt collar was assaulted by Naruto as his tanned hands wrung themselves around the thin material. And once again he found the air around him to be slightly denser. Or maybe it was that his lungs refused to breathe in the oxygen around him. Either way, he knew whatever had come over him was only because his best friend had yet again closed the distance between their bodies and once again tried to test his patience (even if Naruto himself was not aware of that fact).

"You're not going to tell him, are you?" he whined, almost pleaded. "You were just joking, right?"

"Of course I was, moron." Sasuke said as he pried the blonde's hand off his shirt collar and slipped past Kiba so that he could exit out of the booth. It was suddenly getting a little difficult to breath with his friend in such close contact with him. He needed to get somewhere he could cool down and make his mind stopped turning toward inappropriate thoughts.

"Where are you going?" Kiba asked, moving his body away from the raven as he passed by him with his face fixed into a tense and forced stoic expression.

"Bathroom." was his simple reply.

The remaining two boys watched their friend closely as he walked away from their almost private booth, due to how far away it was from the other customers. Kiba narrowed his eyes on the raven's retreating figure before he turned his attention over to the blonde sitting across from him.

Kiba slid over in the booth, so that he was now sitting directly next to the blonde-haired boy, whom was still completely focused on Sasuke even though the raven had vanished out of their sight for some time now. The brunette tapped his friend's shoulder, causing him to jump slightly, and gained his undivided attention with the serious look on his face.

"Don't you think Sasuke is acting a little strange?"

Well the question certainly threw Naruto off. "What do you mean 'strange'?" the blonde countered with his features twisting into a look of confusion.

"Just… strange." Kiba said, almost as if he himself were unable to fully explain the Uchiha's behavior.

"If he is, he has reason to." Naruto scratched his cheek as he tried to reach for words. He was not exactly sure what Kiba was trying to get at and what was worse is that it made him feel as if he had missed something completely and utterly obvious to everyone else, but he was unable to notice any chance in his best friend. "I mean, the whole thing with Itachi really got to him so of course he's going to be a little weird."

"No. It's not that. You saw the way he was able to bounce back from that after he told us about what happened." Kiba finally let his gaze move away from the blonde and drift off into space, like he was searching for the right words to voice his thoughts properly. "And… I've been noticing little things for a while now. Long before today. Maybe a little less than a month."

Naruto tried to understand what his friend was telling him. After all, he was the closest person to Sasuke, so he should have noticed if there was any change in his behavior. He, unfortunately, found that he had not noticed anything in particular that stuck out as being odd in the raven's actions. The fact that Kiba had noticed something different about Sasuke before him was weird and new experience for the blonde. He almost felt… jealous.

"Did something happen between you two?" Kiba asked suddenly, returning his gaze back to the blonde.

"W-What?" Naruto stuttered, suddenly feeling very nervous with the turn the conversation was taking. "What do you mean by 'happen'?"

"I don't know. Just thought that maybe he was acting weird because something happened between the two of you. After all, you guys are best friends."

That same feeling of guilt piling up in the pit of his stomach returned with full force yet again as the brunette's words fully sunk in Naruto's mind. Kiba was observant. More so than anyone would guess. And now it was obvious to Naruto that all those times where he had thought that Kiba was ignoring the signs or simply not even registering that things were slightly off, he was secretly collecting information until he felt the need to bring up the topic to someone. It was as if Kiba had backed him up into a corner without him evening knowing.

Why did Sasuke have to leave them alone?

"I guess something happened." Naruto confided, his voice getting softer, which coaxed Kiba to scoot closer to the blonde once again. It was obvious that Kiba was very interested, maybe even a little shocked that Naruto was actually going to tell him something rather than brush it off. But it was definitely something that the blonde had to tell. Things had gone on for far too long and he needed to get it off his chest.

Especially if it was affecting Sasuke the way that Kiba said it was.

"I sort of…" he stalled, afraid to put the words out there. Naruto took a deep breath, held the oxygen in his lungs for only a moment before he released it in an unsettling sigh. "Kissed him."

"…" The look of Kiba's face would have been priceless to Naruto had he not been dreading that his friend would react like this. The brunette stayed silent for a moment longer; Naruto could feel his patience wearing thinner and thinner the longer Kiba prolonged the inevitable freak out he knew was coming. The blonde tensed when his friend regained his composure and finally spoke up, breaking the heavy silence. "I was wondering when you two would finally get together."

Not exactly the response that Naruto had envisioned.

It was now his turned to dawn the expression of complete and utter astonishment that had graced Kiba's face only a moment beforehand. And then the denial started to set in. He began to second guess his own ears and able to comprehend others. Because there was no way in Hell that his friend had just said that to him.

"What?" he managed to force out.

"Well it was obvious that you and Sasuke had some sort of thing for each other." Kiba confessed as he reached across the table to grab his drink, obviously bored with the conversation now that he knew what was up with his two friends. "Everyone was just waiting for you two to act on it."

"That's not…" Naruto then suddenly got the full extent of Kiba's words. "Wait. Everyone?"

"Yeah. Ino, Shikamaru, Choji, Temari and her brothers… That's one of the reasons why Hinata gave up on her crush on you. Well, besides figuring out what a catch I am." The brunette lips stretched out into a haughty grin as he enjoyed his own compliment to himself.

For second Naruto got the sudden urge to hit every single one of his friends. He stared at his friend for another second before the use of his vocal chords finally came back to him. "That's not what happened between us at all!"

Kiba looked a bit taken back by that last phrase. He set his drink back down on the table and looked over at his blonde friend, his look of confusion back in place. "Then what did happen?"

"I…" he stalled again, now a little ashamed as he tried to avoid eye contact with the brunette. "It was the night of my party. You remember how drunk we were." He waited for a second since he noticed that the dog lover nodded his head in agreement to his statement. "And… I just sort of did it."

"Why?"

"I don't know! I was drunk! I just… did it."

"How did Sasuke take it?" he asked slowly, almost as if he knew the answer and did not want to hear it.

"He doesn't know that I remember doing it." Naruto said reluctantly. He knew full well the next reaction that he was going to get from his brunette friend. He closed his eyes, turning his head away from the dog loving boy and waited for his friend to begin.

"WHAT?!" he shouted. Naruto oddly felt better after the first shout left Kiba's mouth, now that the suspense was over. But at the same time, he felt worse than before. The blonde let his head hang slightly, his guilt only increasing the more he told his friend of the night in question. He now found himself wishing that he had not even brought up the subject. He could have lived with that guilt festering within him rather than having another person's scorn weighing down on him.

Just what he needed to add to his already shitty life right now. More guilt.

"You just let him think that you couldn't remember?" Kiba reproached. "What the fuck, dude?"

"What did you want me to do?" Naruto said, his voice much softer than his friend's, hoping that it would signal him to follow his example so that they may continue their conversation without adding any unwanted attention to themselves. "I was drunk and it meant nothing. Just a stupid action while I was out of it."

"You sure?" Kiba pressed.

"…" Naruto pursed his lips together tightly, still too afraid to make eye contact with the brunette beside him. "… No." Even Naruto was surprised to hear himself say that. To be so brutally honest with both himself and Kiba after he had been deluding himself for so long now.

"You should tell him."

"I don't even know where to begin." Naruto mumbled, fiddling his tanned fingers as they lay against his lap.

"Naruto, you and Sasuke have been best friends for a long time. You owe to both of you to be honest with him. He'll understand and you guys will still be friends no matter what happens."

Naruto sat still, his eyes focused solely on his hands in his lap, not evening attempting to look over at Kiba in fear that he may feel another wave of guilt splash upon him and break him down to his limit. He knew the brunette next to him was right, but at the same time he was too scared of the slight chance that everything between him and his best friend would crumble before his eyes. Over what? A kiss. It was not worth it. It was nothing. To either of them.

At least that's what he kept telling himself.

The silence was broken when Sasuke walked up to the booth, silently signaling to Kiba for the brunette to move out of his seat. While he waited for the dog lover to move out of the booth, he sighed in relief for that break he took away from his two friends. Just a few minutes to cool down and banish any and all wicked thoughts that any compromise his secret feelings for the blonde was exactly what he needed.

He gave a mental sigh of relief before it dawn on him that his too noisy friends were suspiciously quite. He slid into his seat once Kiba had made room for him and glanced back and forth between the two boys on either side of him.

"Something wrong?" he asked looking to Naruto first, then to Kiba when the blonde remained silent.

He noticed that Kiba also stared at the blonde, though his gaze held something else behind it, as if the two of them had some sort of secret that they were trying to silently convey without the Uchiha's knowledge. He brushed it off as nothing when the brunette finally spoke up. "It was nothing." Kiba replied in a sort of impromptu act. "Naruto was just telling me more about his Thanksgiving."

"What happened?" Sasuke asked, seeming more concerned for his friend now that he knew the topic of discussion that had just passed by without him.

Naruto felt the guilt rise in his stomach yet again. Sasuke was worried about him. The mere thought was laughable now. Thanksgiving seemed like a walk in the park compared to his current problem that Kiba had forced to the surface of the blonde's mind. He took in a deep breath and braved a look over at the worried raven. "Mom and Dad had a big fight during dinner." Naruto was surprised at how easy it was to talk about the whole thing now. He felt as if he had been blowing the whole thing way out of proportion before.

He felt like such a fool.

"Both of them ended up blaming Iruka for the fight." He added on at the last minute.

"Even your mother?" Sasuke replied, taken back somewhat from the surprising information. "Is everything going to be all right?" The blonde flinched at the worried tone in the pale boy's voice. He did not deserve it.

"I think so." Naruto said, putting a false smile on his face in hopes that it would ease Sasuke's nerve. "You know my mom. She's just being stubborn right now. She'll come around and realize she was wrong sooner or later."

He felt Kiba's eyes on him as he spoke. And he hated every second of it. But at the same time he knew that he deserved the disappointed stare and his silent scorn. Because he was at fault here. And he needed to fix things.

Naruto just wondered if he had the courage to fix things.

Nevertheless, the blonde knew that this lunch was going to be the most stressful lunch of his lifetime.

--

(1) I have been going to that restaurant with my friends for almost just as long and that is our spot. I like sitting under the picture of five guys' asses XD. They were nice asses. ((I'm a perv, I know))

(2) Those of you who had held a job before should understand that line. I think anyone who works for minimum wage will inevitably hated their job.

(3) I'm sure almost everyone who's reading this just imagined the same thing. And I would eternally love the person who would be so kind as to draw me a picture of that mental image :D!

So was that worth the wait? I hope so. People second-guessing themselves. Kiba being awesome. Well, I thought he was awesome. But I may be a little biased considering Kiba is one hot stud XD ha, ha.

Enjoy!