Author's Note: THIS IS IT. THIS IS THE FINAL ACTUAL CHAPTER. IT'S HERE. There will be an epilogue after this. I do want to get some fluff and happy feels wrapped up, but this is the end of the drama. I'm pretty excited about that. If you clicked to go straight to the last posted chapter, I posted this one and Chater 26 at the same time, so go back and read that one first. If you've already read it then, go forth! Have fun!

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sasuke's face looked indifferent as always, but Hinata could hear the slight irritation in his voice. Normally, she'd try to help, but she already felt on the verge of a heart attack. Naruto had just confessed to her! Naruto had actually said he loved her. He loved her! Her thoughts were jumbled and she couldn't figure out what her friendship with Sasuke had to do with her feelings for the blond, but oh Kami he had said it!

"Uh," she heard Naruto say. "I can explain."

"Yes. I think you should do that," Sasuke said curtly.

"Um, Sasuke-kun?" Hinata interjected. She didn't mind working out whatever was going on with Sasuke, but she'd been waiting years to hear Naruto say that he returned her feelings. In fact, she'd recently given up all hope that it would ever happen. So she really wanted to finish her conversation with Naruto first. "Do you think you could give us a minute? We were actually in the middle of a conversation."

Sasuke looked petulant and Naruto suddenly looked at her like she'd grown a second head. She could tell something was off, and she sighed.

"Naruto-kun, do you think we could - um - talk about this a bit more later? Maybe on that walk you mentioned?"

"Uh… is that okay?" Naruto asked, for some reason looking at Sasuke as if asking him.

Instead of answering his question, Sasuke started in on his own.

"I thought you said you were busy tonight," he said to Naruto.

"I am," the blond answered slowly. His eyes flicked to Hinata and back toward Sasuke. "I told you I wasn't able to train, didn't I?"

Again avoiding answering, Sasuke directed the same declaration turned question to Hinata.

"You said you were busy, too," he said.

"Ano, Sasuke-kun, I am busy? I'm having dinner with Naruto-kun."

Naruto wasn't sure what to think about what was happening right now. Hinata seemed so nonchalant about the whole thing. Was she pretending he hadn't just confessed to try to save him from Sasuke? Was she going to let him down gently later? But why would she mention the walk in front of him?! Wouldn't that seem even more suspicious to her - er - whatever Sasuke was to her?

"You could have told me you were having dinner," Sasuke said, crossing his arms and looking a bit like a child who hadn't been invited to play.

Naruto decided to try to interject. "I, uh, invited Hinata to come out with me. Like to have dinner. With me."

"I can see that," the Uchiha said, gesturing to their table and empty dessert bowl. "Why didn't you tell me about it?"

Understanding started to dawn on Hinata, but Naruto had decided he was going to tell Sasuke the truth and deal with it right here right now.

"Sasuke, you're my best friend."

"Yes, I know."

"You're my brother in everything but blood."

"Yes, I know."

"So I need to be honest with you… I love Hinata."

"Yes, I know."

Naruto had been about to continue his explanation. About how he had feelings for Hinata and needed to be honest, but that he had no intention of ruining whatever was going on between them. But all that came out after Sasuke's last comment was:

"...whaaat?"

Sasuke huffed, annoyed, and said, "You love Hinata. Fine. Whatever. Why didn't you invite me?"

Why did Sasuke sound so much more disturbed about them having dinner alone than the fact that his best friend had just admitted to loving the woman he was currently involved with?!

"Well, I wanted to tell her how I felt. Which seemed like something I should do with just the two of us?"

He ended his explanation as more of a question than fact. Naruto was incredibly confused at the moment. He'd expected Sasuke to teleport them both to a training ground for a serious fight once he admitted his feelings for Hinata. And the Uchiha was asking why he wasn't invited? What?

"Then why did you invite Ino and Sakura?"

The two kunoichi, who were trying their damndest to become invisible, let out an 'eep' after being called out. It's too bad they hadn't henged before coming into the restaurant. Performing a henge after Sasuke's arrival would have been noticed immediately by Sasuke, Naruto, and Hinata considering their sensitivity to chakra.

"What are you talking about?" Naruto asked, starting to get exasperated. His dinner and confession to Hinata was not going as planned, and now his inevitable confrontation with Sasuke was also going entirely contrary to how he imagined it. Not that he'd particularly wanted it to get violent, but this was weird!

The Uchiha pointed to the booth behind Hinata, where two heads of pink and blonde peeked out suddenly. Sakura waved sheepishly.

"Hey, guys."

"Oh, Sakura, you're back in town!" Hinata said, her face brightening. "I've been so worried at how long the mission was taking I had planned on asking Tsunade if you needed any assistance. She mentioned there had been a lot less help there than anticipated. Are you doing okay?"

Sakura smiled warily at Hinata's genuine inquiries. How could the Hyuga ignore the massive conflict right next to her? Speaking of which, she had absolutely no idea how to digest what was going on. Sasuke knew that Naruto loved Hinata? He didn't seem too concerned about it. Did that mean he was that confident in his relationship with her? Was he more upset about not being invited to dinner because he expected to be part of the conversation when Naruto inevitably decided to make his feelings known?

"Hey, Hinata," Sakura said, her smile not quite meeting her eyes. "It was a bit more difficult than we originally planned, but everything worked out well in the end. I just got back last night."

Hinata nodded and smiled, glad to see her friend made it back alright, then turned to Sasuke.

"I know it's quite a coincidence, Sasuke-kun, but we didn't come here to have dinner with Sakura and Ino. At least, I don't think Naruto invited them?" She looked at Naruto to confirm.

Before Naruto could respond, though, Kiba and Shino decided to make their presence known.

"HEY!" Kiba yelled, acting overly jovial. "IT'S NARUTO AND HINATA. AND SAKURA AND INO AND SASUKE. SO WEIRD WE'D RUN INTO EVERYONE HERE!"

The last Uchiha's eye twitched and his lips turned further downward into a frown.

"Kiba, you must lower your voice. Why? Because there are people in this restaurant who are trying to enjoy their meals in peace."

At that, the other patrons realized they were now being noticed by the seven present members of the Rookie Nine and tried to pretend they hadn't been frozen and listening intently to the conversation taking place. They awkwardly resumed their meals, still as quiet as possible in order to eavesdrop further.

"Strange," Hinata muttered, as more than a few members of their ever growing party shared meaningful looks. She quickly shrugged the dining room atmosphere off in favor of beaming at her two teammates. It had been nearly a month since she'd seen either of them for more than a minute or two and even then they had seemed distracted and busy.

"Hello, Shino-kun, Kiba-kun!" she chirped, happy to see they were healthy and seemingly had time to wander a bit.

Shino responded with a tilt of his head and a smile hidden by the collar of his coat.

"Hey, Hina!" Kiba answered enthusiastically, shoving past Sasuke and sliding into the seat right next to her, much to Sasuke and Naruto's annoyance.

"You expect me to believe that you two were having dinner alone and that it's a coincidence that Ino, Sakura, Kiba, and Shino just happened to show up?" Sasuke asked. He turned to Shino. "Was this the 'personal mission' you were referring to?" The Uchiha assumed he had been purposefully kept out of the loop which explained why Shino (Hah, he remembered his name and it definitely didn't have anything to do with Hinata stating it out loud. Nope, not at all) and Kiba had been so jittery and vague when he spoke with them just a bit ago.

"In a way," Shino replied.

Meanwhile, Hinata had officially gleaned that Sasuke was upset that he hadn't been invited to what he assumed was a group outing.

"Sasuke-kun, we really didn't make a plan to meet up here," she tried to assure him. It's funny, because he said no to nine out of ten group dinners, but clearly being invited was important to him. He was awkward and a bit cold, but also lonely and somewhat insecure about the bonds he felt he didn't deserve after his desertion.

Kiba had slung his arm around Hinata as soon as he'd sat next to her, and he continued to encircle her further as if trying to become some kind of protective barrier. He looked suspiciously at Naruto, then at Sasuke, then back at Naruto who, at this point, had absolutely hit his limit.

"What the fuck, Sasuke?! You knew? What do you mean you knew?"

"So you're not even going to address the fact that you planned a dinner without me?"

"Why are you stuck on that? Shouldn't you be more upset about the fact that I have feelings for Hinata instead of the fact that we're eating together?"

"What do I care about your feelings for Hinata?"

Naruto didn't know if Sasuke was being flippant toward him or toward the Uchiha's relationship with Hinata and he wasn't sure why dinner was the thing that had apparently crossed the line, but either way he was insulted.

"You should care! You're the one sleeping with her!" he yelled.

Everyone froze at this proclamation and a pervasive silence settled over the restaurant.

Even Sasuke had gone from growling in frustration to a speechless confusion. What the hell was the Dobe saying?

Sakura was so stunned that her chest didn't even hurt at hearing her worst fears confirmed out loud. Ino couldn't feel her best friend's iron grip nearly fracturing her hand. Kiba nearly started to whimper at the blunt reminder of what his sweetest teammate had been doing and Shino merely stood there, watching and waiting for the moment he might need to step in to stop any violence.

"The fuck?" was the first thing Sasuke managed to get out. "Why would you even think that?"

"Hinata told me," Naruto said, a bit embarrassed that he'd gotten carried away and yelled the details of his friends' sex lives for everyone to hear.

"What?" Hinata squeaked, hardly able to form a coherent thought for the third of too many times that evening. First her father, then Naruto's confession, now… this?

"I mean, I just found out about some rumors from my sister and father," she said, her face on fire at the thought that Naruto would have heard and believed some of those rumors himself, "but I would never have told you that! It's not even true!"

"But you said - you know, the sessions? And... " Naruto leaned in to whisper as if that might protect the conversation from the intense scrutiny it was already under, "what you said about Sasuke going rough? And people possibly seeing?"

"Oh my god, Naruto, can you not?!" Kiba said, sounding horrified.

"Naruto, I meant training sessions! Training! Not - not - " Hinata started to hyperventilate and the blond was suddenly hit with the reality of what they had talked about and the drastic misunderstanding.

"Oh. Oh shit. Hinata, I'm sorry. Oh kami, are you okay? Please breathe. I just - you were at his house that morning and in his clothes and then when you said - shit."

Kiba meanwhile had been dragged out of his seat by Shino who immediately replaced him and rubbed Hinata's back while coaching her on her breathing. Ino could have sworn she even heard his insects humming something soothing.

"It's not - it wasn't -" Hinata was trying desperately to explain but couldn't get her breath to calm down enough to get any of it out. Finally she settled for, "We're friends!"

The impact with the ground had shaken Kiba out of his horror and self-pity enough that he registered Hinata's statement. It wasn't nearly as dire a situation as he'd originally thought, but he was still confused. He piped up from his spot on the floor.

"Wait, you guys are friends? Since when?"

Guys. Guys, it's done. Like not the final word, but the story is done. I'll have a small fluffy epilogue coming, but this is it for the misunderstandings! And I love Kiba's confusion over them being friends. Like, you believed they were sexing it up and now you're confused that they are friends? I'll touch on that in the epilogue, though nothing dramatic. Just a kind of wtf. Epilogue is for fluff now that the shit has gone down. Anyway, I hope it was as funny for you as it was for me. Poor Kiba is a lot of comic relief for me. He just gets so riled up! Let me know your thoughts and I'll have the final installment done as soon as possible. In the mean time have a WONDERFUL NEW YEAR!