Chapter Twenty Six

Itachi's steps were the first she learnt to recognise, quick discreet ones trying and only just failing to sound like a servant's. He comes up behind her while she's packing, desultorily looking over, rejecting, folding – she has not actually lived at Lilypad for close to two years, and is far less prepared to make do with Kakashi's clothes, books, toiletries now that she has Kakashi himself.

Going through the wardrobe, it had become obvious that the outfits she wore at fourteen still fit her body but no longer her taste, and for once it's nice to be back in the penthouse, in what is empathically her own room.

"Are you moving back in with him?"

She neglects to turn around. "For the moment. Are you?"

"I've not wanted to impose."

"We're family," she says, tightly, forcing a thick shirt into the bag. The penthouse is warm, warm enough that she's barefoot on the rug, but Lilypad's always been chilly.

"Yes, well. You've always come first with him."

They stood like this, almost exactly like this, several weeks ago, in Kakashi's bathroom, Itachi just behind her shoulder, after they had slept there together.

"When you said I'd never share him – did you want me to?"

"Does it matter if I did?" Presumably he feels her stiffen, bracing for the crash, because his hand comes up to squeeze her shoulder the way he knows she hates. "No, Sasuke, that's absurd."

That would be a hell of a lot more reassuring if their entire life wasn't absurd.

"You should come," she says, careful the way she is with Itachi sometimes now.

The only ones who have been over are him and Anko and Naruto; Mum's easily discouraged, and Temari is keeping her distance. Ask him over for dinner, Dad said, but retracted without argument when told Kakashi is still convalescing.

"I will," he says. "What are you going to do about Naruto?"

"Go to hell."

"Sasuke, be reasonable."

"No. I don't ask you about Anko."

"Anko's not your best friend."

The thing is that she is at the end of her rope, dangling from it over the abyss, feeling it slip and fray between her fingers.

"If she were I'd be talking to her."

This is a lie, slips out far too easily to be truth.

"I should," Itachi says. "I will. But you're my sister. You're the one in the middle, it's not like he doesn't know what he wants."

"When exactly did you turn into the gay best friend cliché?"

"About when you started to need one."

And fine, she set herself up for that one, she can see that. It doesn't change anything. "Leave me alone."

For some reason when he does she can't concentrate on packing, or on pacing, and calls Neji, the original gay best friend cliché in her life. She talks to him standing in front of the window, tracking the slush raining down. Maybe it would be easier if the two of them just got together. Forget Hinata, forget coming out of a closet he might not even be in, forget Kakashi and Naruto. They'd be safe together. White wedding, carefully orchestrated prenuptial agreement.

Except she's not a loser or a quitter like Neji.

"You'll be eighteen in less than two years," she says. "Then take your trust fund and tell him to go fuck himself."

He laughs a short breathy laugh, cuts it off abruptly. "Is that what you're planning to do?"

"Why wait?"

For the past four years she's regularly made it clear to her father that she hates him. It's pretty clear he doesn't care.

"I have to go," she says, pocketing the phone and her disappointments, slinging a backpack over her shoulder and walking out. Learning to turn your back, indeed.

The weather has finally, though in all likelihood temporarily, broken, long-standing champion winter knocked out and dazzled by spring. She walks fast, slush bleeding through her shoes, earphones thudding. The voices, Kakashi's and Naruto's and sometimes Temari's, Itachi's, she can no longer stand. Instead there is music, the digital equivalent of a mixed tape Kankurou pressed on her.

Or, curse him for the devil, perhaps it was Tenten who insisted on this particular song.

Someday, get up on my way/I think I'll be okay/for a while/I know you/ were never mine to keep/I know that I'll see you/ in my sleep.

It would be ironic if she put her queenship on the line for Naruto and retained it, only to lose it now over Kakashi.

But whatever, fuck it. If Tenten and Ino prefer a bitch oligarchy, Sasuke can't summon the interest to stand in their way.

Her phone buzzes in the lobby, redirecting her from the elevator to the stairs. "Yes?"

It's Naruto, of course. One way or another it's always Naruto.

She's hung up outside the door, slams the key in the lock and twists, metal slipping and cutting against her palm.

Kakashi is lounging in the broken-in stuffed chair flanking the sofa, hair heavy with damp over his face. Presumably he is able to detect her raised eyebrow psychically at this point, because he answers it, "Genma took me for a stroll."

He must only just have showered. Same brow-lift, different question as she looks around the flat.

He answers that one too. "I won't have him in the house."

It was the same with the girls, all those years ago, always him staying over at their place.

Perching on the armrest, she picks up a book – a worn copy of The Years, not the elegant edition but the one that's actually been read, actively and often, with an open mind and an eager pen. A thick black streak of what smells like old eyeliner underlines the words, they are aware of each other; they live in each other; what else is love?

The quote left in her mind by the book, rather dull, was of a different ilk. Happy in this world – happy with living people.

Really The Years is a tedious slump of a novel, without even the exciting aspects of failure evident in The Voyage Out and Jacob's Room. No real character, no life, barely any ideas either, or at least not any new or appropriately developed and framed ones.

Below it on the coffee table rests The Prince, and below that Guilty Pleasures.

And she'd thought Itachi's Gossip Girl volumes were bad enough.

Peeking up from lowest in the pile is a grey, defaced edition of 1984. The official Hatake party line proclaims Animal Farm to be far superior, bemoans the Julia character and storyline are a travesty, but really he's a sucker for it. Teared up at thirteen when reading, when men are different from each other, and do not live alone.

"So," he says, sitting more alertly though still rather slouched, slinging an arm over her legs. "Tell me about Naruto and the tragic past. Those were some pretty impressive facial scars she had."

"I can't."

"Come on, I'm sure it's riveting."

"That's not – it's none of your business."

The words are an earthquake, the safe steady world erupting into abysses.

"But your business is mine, mine's yours. Isn't that what we said? That's how it works."

His voice hasn't broken for years but it comes close to it now.

"That was years ago."

"I didn't realise it was a temporary sentiment."

The last frayed ends of the rope are out of her fingers now. Freefall.

"Neither did I."

They breathe in the quiet, she's painfully, completely aware of it – the effort, the loneliness of it. She clutches the arm still sloped over her lap with shaking fingers.

So where does this leave them?

In a place where for the first time there's a piece of her that isn't his, that's Naruto's.

In a place where maybe there's a difference between on the one hand having a relationship and then keeping on having it, and on the other having it and having it end and then resuming it. Maybe especially there's a difference if it only ended for one party.

xxxxx

"You didn't like me being there. At Lilypad, I mean."

Sasuke takes a long, slow drag on her cigarette. "It's not exactly that I didn't like it. It's not – you don't belong there."

"You live there," Naruto snaps, and Sasuke's too pale in the spring sunshine. "You never even mentioned it but you live there."

"I don't tell him about you, why should I tell you about him?"

"There's a difference between telling me about him and telling me about you. That you live somewhere with your boyfriend, that's kind of about you!"

Sasuke did say, perfectly plainly, I did sleep with him, but Naruto was so grateful then, so hungry for any scraps at all. Also she gets, at gut level, the whole falling into somebody's arms that you've loved, that you thought you'd lost. Moving in with them, that's something else, something daylight and deliberate.

"What do you want, then? For all three of us to hang out?" She spits out the cigarette, rubs at her mouth, roughly until her lips are red under the layer of dead chapped skin. "What is it you're even after, are you trying to be friends with him or find weaknesses?"

"I don't want to hurt him," Naruto says eventually, grabbing for any words that are true. "But yeah, I want you. Any way I can."

"I'm right here."

"You're fucking living with your boyfriend that you were going to marry."

"If you'd been the one alone after a coma, I'd have been staying with you."

And she hates that. How can you hate a guy who just woke up from a freaking coma, who's never done anything wrong except love his girlfriend?

Except how can you not, when she's your girlfriend?

No, fuck that. Naruto's better than that. She's going to be better.

Maybe they should have just gone to class, because she needs to figure this out, and this is going to be ugly, she's so raw and ragey with that dizzy needy burn for Sasuke.

And loving somebody shouldn't mean, shouldn't ever mean, wanting to take away from them anybody else that they love, but honest to god Naruto doesn't believe in light-hearted dating, not really, she believes people really do belong to people, not just to themselves.

"I need more information," she says, realises it was said and not thought when Sasuke snort-laughs.

"Not arguing." She turns around, and Jesus fucking Christ Naruto is sick of her turning away. "Bio ought to help with that, come on."

She steps forward very quickly, quicker than thought which drags behind all the time these days, catching Sasuke round the neck. It's half a hug, half a strangle-grip, her elbows jutting out at awkward angles, her nose pressed into Sasuke's jaw.

"I'm trying not to be selfish," she says, feeling Sasuke's chest move with the fast hard beats of her heart, "I really am. But I need to know, I need you with me."

Sasuke goes very still before she turns, Naruto's arms still looped around her neck but loosely now, their jackets bunching up between them. "You're so bloody ridiculous," she says, but their faces are touching, in fact pressed quite hard into each other, Sasuke's killer cheekbone scratching Naruto's scars. "Stop trying to make everything high drama."

"I'm not trying," Naruto insists. "That's the problem."

"Um, guys?" Kiba says from behind her. "Are you about done or should I start filming?"

"Fuck off, Inuzuka," Sasuke says, and Naruto seconds this with a furious, disbelieving glare as Sasuke slips free of her and starts walking, Naruto and Kiba coming with, across the dirty half-melted ground and into the forbidding confines of the Natural Sciences building.

It's pretty ridiculous that the subject even rates a building, since frankly you'd be going to a different school if that was your thing, but it figures somebody donated it and wanted that name.

In bio they have assigned seats, the bad seeds like Naruto and most of her friends grouped together at the front for easy scolding access, Sasuke hidden behind her among the other members of the Straight A Squad.

Whatever their teacher is harping on about goes in one ear and out the other, but it was true what she said before, she does require more information, just of a more pertinent kind. This requires ninja skills, sneaky friendly ninja skills.

Beside her sits Kiba, who somehow scored two fake dates with Hinata.

Unfortunately, trying to pump him for information gets them both chucked out of class.

"You good?" Kiba asks outside, messing about trying to fit his notebook into a gigantic pocket. "Didn't mean to interrupt before, or anything."

"It's cool."

"Cool," he repeats, his grin managing to be bashful despite the canines. "So, I was going to catch the bus, get home, you want to come with?"

"Yeah – but. I need to ring somebody."

"Right. Well, I'll see you later then."

"Right." She stands alone in the corridor while the echo dies out, her mobile cutting into her hand. She didn't remember to save Kakashi's number from when he rang her, but it's still there in the call history. She presses the button.

It's funny, she always thought it was completely anticlimactic when the big gesture in a film was button-pressing, but it feels pretty damn apocalyptical now.

One, two, three, four, five, six rings later he says, "Yes?"

"Hi it's me I mean Naruto hi it's Naruto," she says in a rush. "I mean. Hi."

"Hi," he repeats, and his tone is snarky and supercilious but rather warm too, considering.

Subterfuge be damned – she'd probably make a better samurai than ninja anyway. "I wanted to – know you more. About you, I guess."

"Huh," he says, thoughtfully, and then he keeps not saying anything more.

"I thought, since you called before, I figured…"

"Indeed. You're quite correct. Do stop by."

"Yeah, I will. Like, now?"

"I'm not getting out a lot."

It strikes her only after she's ended the call that he won't have seen her nod. No matter, they were pretty much done, no need for awkward goodbyes.

Lilypad is easier to find this time around, the thin bluish house rising in front of her. Up on the right floor, there are voices, or at least a voice, which becomes familiar underneath its angry sarcasm as she comes closer to the door. Kakashi's door, which is slightly ajar, a sliver of privacy just perceivable in the gap.

"Someone's grumpy," says Itachi over the noise of what is probably him taking his shoes off, in a tone of voice that wouldn't go over well even with Sasuke, who actually is his little sister.

"My girlfriend's dumping me for a hick dyke, grumpy is not the word I'd choose." It's past sneering and teetering on snarling territory.

The door falls open under her hand, half inadvertently, slams against the wall. Her face feels hot, she feels ridiculously like crying, and then hitting something until she stops.

"I really fucking wish she were." She swallows around the thick words, painfully. "I have these fantasises of really savaging you and everything."

He laughs, sort of, rubbing at his ruined eye. Does it hurt, that limp glare?

"Well, shit. You shouldn't have had to hear that."

Maybe she shouldn't, although maybe he needed her to. She shrugs.

"Savage me, huh," he continues, with a sudden smile that stuns and charms her, all spoilt easy glitter. "Tear my throat out, or maybe the heart would be more appropriate." He holds out his hand, offers it, the smile twisting into something both meaner and realer. "No, let's be friends. Whoever comes out on top will want to rub the loser's face in it, after all."

"Yeah," she says, knowing perfectly well that if Sasuke leaves her for him she will never want to see Kakashi again, her eyes will bleed. "Totally."

His hand is smooth, incredibly smooth with the long sleep, chilly. He doesn't do the hand-crushing thing at all. Maybe she does, a little.

From half a meter away, shoes now entirely removed and reaching to belatedly lock the door, Itachi snorts. "I cannot believe the two of you just made my sister look like the mature one."

"Unless you're speaking to console me, shut the fuck up," Kakashi tells him.

Not even Sasuke speaks to him that way; simply, casually, something she needs better adjectives to catch, or a better verb.

"Big baby," Itachi mutters, but leaves it at that.

"Do come in."

"Yeah. Thanks."

She fumbles off her shoes, a frustrating procedure since snow always sticks in the zippers then freezes them shut, and pads after them. It's a nice place, she has to admit that, lots of light and air and lots and lots of Sasuke; her things, her pictures, furniture she will have liked, will have maybe chosen.

Itachi disappears somewhere, presumably to the bathroom, and shit, is it weird to be curious about that? People's bathrooms are pretty relevant, all things considered. There will be Sasuke's toothpaste, and tooth brush, and hair brush, and nail clippers, and soap, and shampoo, and conditioner, and lotion, and razors, and BC pills, and supplements, and makeup, and deodorant, and tampons, and ipecac, and throat medicine, and emergency extra cigarettes, and painkillers, and cotton wads.

Kakashi's voice jolts her out of her reverie, but she's missed what he actually said. Probably something about the house, it's what she thinks polite strangers are supposed to talk about; he doesn't seem like a weather talker kind of guy.

"It's not like the penthouse," she says.

"No. They were more of a power couple than a dynasty, my parents."

"Oh. Sorry. About the dead thing."

"It was years ago."

"I figured it wasn't the kind of thing that stopped mattering." Her hand snaps to the back of her neck, embarrassment reflex. "Er, that came out kind of snotty, huh."

He waves it away. "It's a fair point, I suppose. But it was a very long time ago. It matters like the other basic constituents of one's existence matters."

"Like – gravity? Capitalism?"

"A personalised version of something like that, yes."

"Huh," says Naruto, restless without quite knowing why, in that terrible febrile way, her entire body achy and jittery with frustrated energy.

Itachi returns from wherever he was, and she takes the excuse to move towards the sofa group, the part of the room that's for using rather than looking; they've been standing in the extra space before the windows, the kind of extra space sorely lacking in her own house, bought to be empty. She likes it.

It isn't cosy, but there's a freedom in it, an ease. Plus, the worn stuffed chair and having the walls full of pictures at least a third of which are your own, like a child, negates any excess formality.

Her fingers, itchy, skid over the rim of an ashtray. It's elaborate, sort of nice – before the chain smoking girlfriend she would not have recognised its function.

"Did she always smoke so much?" slips out, idle, curious. She hadn't expected to be able to feel friendly, even in a wary sort of way.

"No," Kakashi says. "She didn't smoke at all. Pot, once, and the regular ones I think twice, almost threw up." His mouth twists a little, an expression that becomes subtle in its contradictions; tenderness, ruefulness, a certain sentimental humour.

Naruto's struck abruptly and absurdly cold with the realisation that of course she's not the only one who's seen Sasuke loose and soft and ridiculous with drink, not the first one to hold her up.

"She started up in the waiting rooms," Itachi divulges. "There was a packet left in your jacket pocket and, well. I suppose it was a way to kill time, to do something."

Kakashi falls back on the sofa, slouching elegantly and very wearily. "It is comforting to know I am such a corruptive influence."

"Oh shut up," she mutters, in response to the plaintive tone not the words.

There's surprise in his grin, but honesty.

She upsets a baby-pile of books, scatters them over the coffee table and, cursing, grabbing for them, catches sight of an embarrassingly familiar front page. "Anita Blake? Are you shitting me?"

"God, you still read that dreck?"

Kakashi flips him off. "You've no room to talk, at least my vampires don't sparkle."

"One, I'm reading that for my thesis. Two, at least mine don't engage in anatomically improbable orgies."

"You say that as if it's not a further point against them." He turns to Naruto with what is too amused to be a leer. "I take it you're familiar with our esteemed vampire executioner turned vampire lover?"

"Yeah, it's like crack, they jumped the shark books ago but I can't stop. Also, vampires! Besides, until about eight books ago Anita was pretty awesome. At least we've got the telly to pick up the slack now."

"Really?" He leans forward, elbows on knees, chin on his interlocked fingers. "Tell me more."

It emerges that Kakashi too is an avid fan of the televised version of True Blood, at once woeful and gleeful at the prospect of a missed season. She calls chicken when he admits to not having watched The Vampire Diaries for fear of having his book memories soiled, books he apparently started reading only to tease Sasuke but fell in love with himself.

"You need to watch that, it's totally awesome in all its different-ness. No, really, look, with the books I was all for Stefan and Elena, in the series Damon is way more fabulous. And Caroline! You are so watching this."

"I yield to your expertise." He's sat back again, but the pleasedness remains, like a stray cat deciding it might not like you but it likes you feeding it. "Friday, perhaps? You're joining us, of course, Itachi – we will need extra hands to hold down Sasuke until she awakens to the glory of teenaged vampires."

And so it is decided. Friday will bring unhealthy doses of supernatural telly and snacks, and hopefully the brainwashing of Sasuke into happy fanhood.

Itachi, who has been roped into chauffeuring Kakashi to a PT session at the hospital, offers Naruto a ride to Central. "It must be difficult for you," he says, rather non-committaly, the hospital disappearing behind them, Central fast approaching.

"Yeah. I reckon it's pretty tough on everyone. Thanks for the ride."

It is difficult. Living like everything is normal, with people who insist everything is normal, when it so manifestly is not. It's like life has been scanned into Photoshop and Naruto's ended up on a different layer than everybody else.

There's this crust over reality, sitting beside Sasuke in school talking about inconsequential things, like the hard topmost layer of snow, which has melted then snap-frozen into a brittle roof over the thick messy stuff underneath.

The cracks deepen, as if she's poured hot water over them, when she picks up the phone to Gaara's monotone. "Hi!" Someone has to supply the exuberance due a conversation between friends, and Naruto rolls onto her back, feet against the wall, a touch dizzy from letting her head drop over the edge of the bed.

"…hello." There's a long pause, she can't even hear him breathe. "I was given to understand there is to be a vampire party. Am I required to attend?"

"You mean the thing at Kakashi's? It's not exactly a party, I mean, there will be awesomeness, but not really of the party variety, you know?"

"I'm not sure how that's relevant to my question."

"Er, I guess you should come if you want? I didn't even know you were invited. Oh my god, do you secretly know Kakashi? How could you not tell me that?"

"I don't," Gaara says, his monotone a touch more displeased. "He knows my sister's best friend. She's invited too, by the way, and Shikamaru."

"Huh. Okay. Well, I'll see you there then. You're going to totally love True Blood."

Gaara doubts that very much, but then Gaara's is a barren sceptic's soul.

Naruto, who was going to anyway because she's not sure if she's supposed to bring anything, calls Kakashi. Her hands still fumble with the unfamiliar number. After some pretty unsubtle beating around the bush, which by the way Naruto has always wanted to do non-figuratively, she blurts out a completely awkward line about hanging around with all these younger kids. She really did not consciously mean to call him a paedophile, but either the implication was only obvious to her or he doesn't care.

"It was thought it might be a touch uncomfortable with just the three of us," Kakashi says. "It was further surmised that it would be unfair to you if only Itachi and Anko joined us."

"How – oh. That's pretty nice of you."

"I can hardly claim credit," he says, which she thinks might be code for, It's not like Sasuke wouldn't have had my hide if I neglected to invite anybody you know.

"I never thought, I mean it never occurred to me that you'd know them too."

"They've been friends for a long time. Besides, Shikamaru's the only decent chess competition around."

It occurs to her to wonder, as Friday evening approaches, whether Sasuke's okayed Gaara's presence. They've done all right at the Sabakus', but they're hardly bosom buddies. It's unexpectedly nice of her, if she's included him for Naruto's sake, what with Sasuke not being, in general, a nice person, hardly prone to gestures of either pity or friendliness.

After the train ride, her neck growing red and scratchy from the wet scarf getting stuck in the jacket zipper, kids dancing and yelling their way towards the city's Friday night, she picks up the bag with DVDs like she might have picked up her shield and mallet during a previous century.

Mum's face when Naruto said, no, she wasn't going to Sasuke's or Gaara's, actually, she's headed to Kakashi's, was incredulous.

They've been friends for a long time, Kakashi said about Sasuke and Temari. Which is true, which Naruto knows is true, although the last f in bff seems in danger of being rubbed out, and sometimes, frankly, the b too.

They must've been a lot closer before, because Temari evidently is friends of a kind with Kakashi too, is comfortable standing close enough their clothes are brushing, although she has never once struck Naruto as touchable.

Of course, originally neither did Sasuke, really, but even Shikamaru rarely gets any sort of physical in public.

"Naruto! Yo." Anko saunters over, lifting one beer bottle to her mouth, offering Naruto another. Shikamaru waves; Gaara nods; Itachi pokes Sasuke's forehead, mumbling something very like, get over it, princess; when they turn towards Naruto they both wear the polite, professional smiles Mikoto must have taught them.

"Well, cheers," says Anko. "That's everybody, let's get this show on the road."

She must have been late, later than she thought; the living room furniture has been rearranged, snacks and drinks distributed. On the other hand she brought most of the films, courtesy of Dad's love for teen dramas, so it's not like they could've started without her.

There's momentary awkwardness, an avalanche of it, as they drift off to be seated, and Naruto realises eight might be an unlucky number, cleaving so easily into couples. Itachi and Anko would make one, and Temari and Shikamaru, and nobody except Naruto could feasibly team up with Gaara, which leaves Kakashi and Sasuke.

Unless he'd so carefully noted that her friends were invited too, it wouldn't have occurred to her to think this may be deliberate.

Except Temari's on Kakashi's left side and Anko on his right, Sasuke snug between Temari and Itachi. Naruto plonks down in between Shikamaru and Gaara and takes a large gulp of her beer.

It goes pretty well, though, even though a lot of drinks are required to smooth the conversational path. Shikamaru snoozes between occasional quips, Anko's laughing her head off at most of the action scenes, and Itachi's taken out his notebook and is busily scribbling.

Between the lovely familiar shows, and the beer and crisps and Gaara's solid presence, Naruto goes from tense to relaxed to comfortable, laughing at Damon's crazy brand of awesome and then at Gaara utterly failing to grasp it.

"Bah, dump the angsty good guy already," Anko tells the heroine. "Go for the antihero."

"Damon's abusive," Temari argues. "Stefan may be boring, at least he doesn't snack on your friends."

"They both suck," Naruto says. "Go Caroline."

"She's a messed-up bitch," Sasuke grumbles.

"Maybe I like messed-up bitches," Naruto says, the words so obvious she only blushes afterwards, hard, when she recalls everyone else, Kakashi. It's true, though, and guarded or not Sasuke smiles at her, after she's snorted.

"Troublesome," Shikamaru mumbles, which is a welcome excuse to laugh. If this continues she'll have rubbed the nape of her neck skinless before summer.

After half a season of The Vampire Diaries and some Buffy highlights, it being implicitly understood that True Blood would be way embarrassing to watch around your girlfriend's brother or rival significant other, Temari gathers up her boys to leave, and everyone left migrates to the sofa, Sasuke in between her and Kakashi, Itachi and Anko on the far side of him.

Sasuke's wearing that soft blue jumper, with sleeves down to her knuckles but snug across her chest. Naruto's warm and sleepy and content, in all the crazy awkwardness of Kakashi just one girl away from her. It's the beer, maybe, or counting the freckles at the base of Sasuke's neck for the millionth time.

Kakashi, who's been mostly quiet, turns out to have an eye for quality vampire drama, is in fact the first person to agree with Naruto's assessment that Caroline deservers far better than Mat.

"Yes! Exactly! She's awesome, she should be with someone who sees that!"

"Mat will never last," Kakashi says. "Too human for Mystic Falls. More importantly, too human to get good ratings."

"You're both crazy," Sasuke interjects. "It's a kid show."

"Yeah, well, maybe some of us are mature enough to be childish!"

A laugh rumbles through Kakashi's chest, moving Sasuke softly against Naruto's side. "I'm siding with Team Caroline on this one."

And maybe this is a peace offering, and maybe he's just teasing Sasuke, or maybe it's just further proof of what Naruto already knew, that he has impeccable taste in girls. When you've got used to the sort of indolent irony, he's easy to talk to, surprisingly easy. She doesn't notice when Anko and Itachi leave; they're there when the re-watch of a contested Buffy scene starts, gone when it's over. The beer has made her fuzzy, the world sweet-sour around her, Sasuke hot against her side, and for a moment she feels sheer panic.

It can't be like this.

It is, though, and it's – kind of okay. She rests her head against the bony jut of Sasuke's shoulder, and for a moment everything's sort of all right, sort of possibly great.