Chapter 54

Sasuke

It took us a while to get back to my place, only because I couldn't stop laughing at Gaara's comment to Naruto's pout. It was that funny, either that or I was waiting to hear something like that from him since Naruto does nothing but pout with his lip out nowadays and I finally got my wish. I don't know, but I volunteered to walk over with Naruto to get his clothes for the sleep over after I parked the car and gave Gaara the key to go inside just in case Itachi locked the house up after his shower.

"I can't believe he said that." Naruto groused quietly since his Dad's car was in the drive way. Itachi helped him get it fixed last Monday when we were all at school. So it was most definitely working now.

"Welcome home Naruto." I heard his father say from the back room, from what I'm guessing was his office when we walked inside. Naruto didn't bother to take his shoes off before sauntering to his room.

"Hi Dad, and I'm staying the night with Sasuke, Iruka-sensei wants us to start groups to critique our short story assignments." Naruto said, at least staying with the same story, though it wasn't a complete lie. "We decided to do that tonight to get it out of the way to leave the weekend free."

"Okay, I've been called in to work at the station tomorrow so I probably won't be home if you decide to come home tomorrow." His dad said, and I inwardly sighed with relief for some reason. I guess it's because Gaara's staying with us and now, since he isn't going to be home, he won't see those two together if they go outside at all.

"Have fun at work Dad." Naruto said as he rounded the couch quickly and we headed out the door and back to my place. Naruto, though, was running like something was chasing him. I found that odd … and suspicious because he usually doesn't do that.

"God it's fucking cold outside!" Naruto whined, shuddering when I followed him inside my house and the two of us took our shoes off before heading to the kitchen where our homework was, and thought possibly that's where we'd find Gaara since he wasn't in the living room. But he wasn't in the kitchen.

"I'll go put my stuff in the bedroom." Naruto said, and disappeared down the hall and into the guest bedroom where I heard him talk to Gaara as the door closed. Found Gaara.

"Why do I keep myself company with these two?" I groaned to myself as I rubbed my face a little bit. Then decided to check up on Itachi to see how he was doing.

"I take it Naruto and Gaara are okay once again?" I heard Itachi ask as I was about to open his bedroom door, only to have him behind me in his office with dripping wet hair and a towel over his bare shoulders since he didn't bother putting a shirt on again.

"Yea, it took a while though … Naruto froze when he tried to apologize and ended up choking on his words." I sighed. "Then Naruto asked if he could stay the night and now we're going to critique each others' short story assignment from Iruka-sensei."

"Okay, and Sasuke, I know it's the weekend, but don't you guys stay up too late please." Itachi said. "I have a meeting tomorrow here with Neji's uncle around lunch time."

"Alright, I'll pass the message on." I nodded and knocked on Naruto's door when I started to head back to the kitchen.

"Night Sasuke." Itachi yawned as I heard him open the door to his room.

"Night Ita-nii-san." I waved off when the door to the spare bedroom opened.

"You guys going to bed, or wanna work on the assignment?" I asked them when Naruto and Gaara poked their heads out of the room.

"Well, how about tomorrow? I'm more tired than I thought … and I took some pain medication a few minutes ago and it's starting to kick in." Naruto said as he scratched the back of his head.

"What did you do for your back to hurt?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"The sprint I did." He said, dropping his head in his defense.

"Oh, dumb ass." I sighed.

"And Naruto just cursed me out for not getting sleep last night." Gaara said, and now that I remember it, he sent me texts all night and into the morning about how rude Naruto was and then into morning was contemplating on apologizing for going off on the stupid ass blonde standing next to him. But it turned out that Gaara made his mind up this morning when he ignored the blonde all day until an hour ago.

"Alright, then I'll see you two in the morning. Itachi has a meeting with Neji's uncle, but he didn't say if Neji was coming over so we'll need to be up before ten." I told them. " The meeting is at eleven."

"Okay, night Sasuke." Naruto said as he opened the door further, now letting me take notice of him clad in nothing but a pair of boxers as he gave me a hug. "And I was getting changed for bed, if you don't mind." He added when he noticed I had stared at him.

"I know." I smirked until I earned a glare from Gaara.

"Night Sasuke." The red head said and I waved the two off and went to my own room.

They're going to bed … Itachi is in bed … what the hell am I to do until I pass out? I know, listen to Mozart until I fall asleep. But first, I needed a shower.

After my shower, I was too awake to even think about trying to lay down, so I went to the kitchen where my laptop was from earlier and turned it on. I decided to turn the kitchen lights on only because I was going to work on my homework and get it out of the way before the three of us went over the assignment in the morning.

Honestly, I hoped that Neji wasn't coming over. He had already helped Naruto with his math homework before we came home from school today. And the assignment was really starting to get to me.

I talked to someone called Tenzo, though I'm not stupid, I know he's a friend of Kakashi-sensei, our Math teacher. Later, I find out from Itachi that Tenzo and Kakashi went to school together and have been friends since childhood. I decided to use that to my advantage as blackmail of my own. But with me telling Tenzo about this stupid assignment, he had the brilliant idea of using it to get out my frustrations over my parents. I couldn't believe I told him about this stupid ass assignment in the first place. I knew if I had just kept my mouth shut, I would be writing about something else, not using me with a different name and talking about my parents.

"Whatcha doing up?" I heard someone ask behind me, startling me because I didn't know anyone else was up and when I turned, I found Naruto standing in the walkway to the kitchen with a towel over his shoulders and a pair of black plush night pants he got a couple days ago. I guess he was in the shower and I didn't even know it.

"I'm working on homework." I said, unable to bring myself to tell him that I'm actually seeing someone for my problems. He had his own to deal with, he didn't need to add me to the plate.

"I was gonna do the same thing." Naruto mumbled, and I rose an eyebrow before I returned to my work. I had roughly two thousand words to spare before I hit max amount of words we could have on the project, and I was already close to being finished so I was going to be done with it tonight within the next hour or so. "I have yet to get it started." He added with a sigh before he went into the fridge for the milk.

"Making hot chocolate?" I asked.

"I'm gonna try." He said. "That's the only thing I can't make like you and Itachi can."

"Then let me make it, you get started on your assignment. You know what Gaara will say if he finds out you haven't done that yet." I said as I stood up and grabbed the milk from him and got started on the hot chocolate while he took his seat heavily and started tapping his pen on the table.

"What are you writing about?" Naruto asked once he sighed heavily and finally stopped tapping his pen on the table or his notebook.

"You'll find out when you read it." I huffed, now pouring the milk into two mugs to measure how much milk I needed. "White or dark?"

"White."

I nodded and grabbed the white chocolate powder from the pantry and measure how much I needed and then added the sugar and vanilla before grabbing the whisk and started stirring the concoction when I heard a pair of feet walk into the kitchen from the hallway and I could only guess that Gaara decided to come out of the bedroom to see what he hell we were doing.

"You making hot chocolate Sasuke?" Gaara asked before I heard a chair pull out from the table behind me.

"Yea, you want some?" I asked.

"No thanks." He said, and it kind of shocked me a little bit. "I'll have some tea though."

"Okay, you go find the tea you want and I'll get the water going." I nodded, now pouring the hot chocolate into the two mugs I used earlier and replaced it with a tea pot filled with water and sat down in my chair while giving Naruto his drink.

"I take it neither of you two could sleep?" I asked. "Even after taking your medicines?"

"Naruto's just stubborn, I was going to take mine with tea." Gaara said with a shrug.

"I'm not stubborn." Naruto whined as he sipped at his drink while taking a break from writing, though from what I could see, it was nothing but scribble and doodles.

"Then why haven't you started your homework for English yet?" Gaara asked, his arms crossing and I was just about to take a sip of my hot chocolate before I froze and saw Naruto glaring at me.

"Don't look at me, I didn't tell him anything." I defended.

"I found out on my own." Gaara sighed heavily as he got up and went through the tea basket in the pantry when the water began to whistle on the stove.

Naruto mumbled a whatever as he downed the last of his hot chocolate before putting his mug down and started writing frantically on a new sheet of paper.

"Remember, you get roughly two hundred-fifty words per page single spaced." I told him to let him know how many pages he'd have to write on.

"Okay, thanks Sasuke." Naruto mumbled, too focused on what he was writing to really say anything but that and I sighed heavily when I put my mug down and started typing.

"Make sure we can read your hand writing." Gaara said, which was the only thing that got Naruto to stop writing and stare at him, but only for a moment before he got writing again with a shrug and began writing furiously once again. The look on his face made me wonder what the hell he was writing about.

"I'm gonna go lay down." Gaara said, and it made me look up only to see that he drank his tea already.

"Take your medicine?" I asked.

"Yea, see you two in the morning." Gaara yawned as he stretched while walking out of the kitchen and towards the hallway.

"I'll be there in ten minutes." Naruto said as he turned yet another page. God, I'd love to know what inspired him to write like that.