Title: Fireworks

Author: Ember (the great and terrible)

-----

It's a lie. A kiss with opened eyes.

And she's not breathing back.

Anything but bother me.

(It takes my pain away)

Never mind these are horrid times.

Oh oh oh

I can't let it bother me.

--

Kakashi smiled and ran a finger down the metal edge of his head protector. "We're here," he announced, twitching the band up and down an eighth of an inch in a makeshift salute.

Sakura, who had been walking uncomfortably close to Sasuke for the past few minutes, her hands held behind her back, turned emerald eyes from where they were locked onto the Uchiha's jawline to glower at her sensei. "We'd noticed," she drawled sarcastically. Kakashi grinned at her, used by now to her temper, and the smile of acknowledgment was always enough to revert her back to her normal cheer.

Kakashi gestured at the large Shinobi building, where all requests for ninja aid stockpiled, waiting for people to come and select a particularly nasty burden for small children and teenagers who fancied themselves Genin. Of course, the three had known they were at their goal when the building loomed over them; it had always been their first stop, and their last, as well, bearing dirty knees, newly-paved roads, or furious cats. Or, of course, a signed note from a bridge-builder proclaiming the job complete.

"Kakashi!" The official inside behind one of the long tables looked up and flashed a white grin at the four shinobi. "Listen, Kakashi; Hokage-sama told me to tell you-"

"That's he's very sorry about the mistake with Tazuna. That he gave the mission to us as opposed to Jounin. I know, he's told me before. He's told them before. You all can drop it now." Kakashi sighed gustily and his shoulders moved almost imperceptively up and down. Naruto's brow furrowed; the demon vessel was uncertain about what was bothering Kakashi. They had completed the mission, hadn't they? "What do you all have for us today?"

The technician looked over to the stacks of papers piled all over the counters, obviously nervous. "Well... Hokage-sama was going to excuse Team 7 from having to do any more missions until they had recovered. Naruto and Sasuke, especially, did far more than is usually expected from Genin...."

Kakashi rolled his eyes. "Don't give me that. You all are always overburdened, trying to get shinobi to take tasks that've been sitting on the shelf gathering dust for weeks. You have to have something to throw onto their shoulders..."

A single dark eyebrow rose. "I did say, 'going to,' Kakashi," the technician reminded him ironically. "As it is, Naruto's latest.... what did Hokage-sama call it?- his latest creative self-expression, I suppose is close enough, was ample proof that at least one of Team 7's members is fully recovered." Four pairs of accusing eyes drifted to Naruto, who somehow contrived to look entirely innocent while simultaneously very much proud of himself.

"Honestly, Naruto." Sakura sounded disgusted. "What did he do this time?" Naruto's pranks had slowed down drastically since he had graduated, but they had not by any means stopped entirely. The memories of his 'improvements' on Mt. Hokage had become legends preserved forever by the faint red stripes still dripping down the grand and gallant faces.

None of you guys could do something this horrible- but I can! I'm incredible!

"Honestly, Naruto." Now the technician spoke directly to him, and if Naruto detected the slight change in tone, from 'speaking to adult' to 'speaking to animal, to be respected but not liked' it only showed in a slight shadow flashing across his face, not breaking his angelic mask. "The defacing of the Hokage statue you might have one day lived down. But did you have to stoop to feces, and in a direct attack on the Fourth? Lord, Naruto- he's going to spend days trying to clean off his windowsills."

For one moment, the calm, innocent facade shattered as Naruto snickered loudly, quelling the sound after it had escaped and regaining composure remarkably. A smile of amusement flickered for an imperceptible moment across Sasuke's face. Sakura looked irritated. Kakashi looked exasperated. The technician looked indignant.

"Anyway," he continued, glaring at the blonde for another moment before turning back to Kakashi. "We decided, he and I and a few others, that since your team completed their last mission with such a high degree of success for their current levels, perhaps another C-level mission is called for."

Naruto's mask shattered so completely and quickly it was impossible to tell that he had even been quiet and calm before in his life. "Yeah!" he cried, pumping his fist in the air. "Some more fun! We get another hard mission!" If this was Hokage-sama's way of punishing him for that little joke he should do it more often!

The technician's grin could only be described as malicious. "Of course," he said, spreading his hands happily. "We live to serve."

--

An hour later, Naruto felt as if his spine was going to snap in two. His hands rubbed raw on the rope he was clutching like a lifeline, he backed a pace away, grunted, and pulled his arms back, fervently wishing the shoulders didn't feel like they were about to pop out. The slight waves of the muddied- therefore somewhat pungent- water splashed up and down his legs, silt becoming lodged between the fabric of his clothes. "If that smirking bastard was here," he growled to the net, "I'd kill him. He's obviously doing a terrible job of serving, why should he live?"

"He wasn't saying he lives to serve you, idiot," Sasuke replied, dryly, looking as if he towed in three-ton fishnets with the help of two other teenagers on a daily basis. The splashes of lake water hadn't even messed up his hair; even Sakura, who looked less pleased than Naruto and was busily getting herself worked up over the fact that she was being punished for Naruto's immaturity, had streaks of mud down her face and thoroughly mixed in with her rose-colored hair, and her clothes were in disarray. She was even less happy about the prospect of looking like this in front of Sasuke, though to her credit that didn't stop her from wading into the water beside the two boys.

"Then who was he talking about, asshole?" the blonde shot back. "You? Well, of course! You're Uchiha Sasuke! We ALL live to serve you."

Sakura muttered something neither boy could hear over the splashing but the hopeful tone was obviously less discreet than she would have hoped, and it made it obvious enough that both Naruto and Sasuke could piece together, "I wish."

They both ignored it, though. "He was talking about Konoha. About how-" a grunt as he pulled himself up onto the beach, gracefully tugging his side of the net with him "-he serves them, and he assigns us to serve them." A cascade of shimmering silver fish flowed up on the banks after Sasuke and the newly-beached Sakura, who gave one last moaning jerk before her side of the net was grounded. Naruto quickly backed up, slipping twice on the smelly mud before finally getting his third of the catch onto the shore.

It looked less impressive than it had felt. Still, Naruto had never seen so many fish before in his life. The silver mound had to be more than a thousand, writhing, dripping, gleaming. It was beautiful in its silver incandescence almost as much as it was revolting, the way that many slimy creatures were writhing, their gills flapping out in desperate search for air. Somewhat sad, too, Naruto concluded. They were all fighting for their lives. He'd fought for his life before, and he knew how it felt; knew what futility felt like when it finally crashed onto your shoulders.

But then... they were fish. Life all fell back into perspective, and he was suddenly very hungry. Maybe he would get shrimp ramen for dinner tonight. They didn't make fish ramen. Maybe that was good; he didn't think he'd like fish, even though the dying creatures themselves didn't smell quite so bad when they were still barely living as he'd suspected they would when the technician had given them their assignment. Shrimp would be good, though. Some variety; he's had pork three nights in a row and alternated chicken with beef curry for two weeks before that...

Adult workers grabbed the mesh with calloused hands and proceeded to haul the weakly-thrashing seafood towards monstrous carts. Kakashi gave them a quiet smile and a wave, and they were gone.

"Good work, guys, that's two of the three," Kakashi cajoled. "Only one more to go, right down there." He pointed to the other end of the lake, barely visible in the distance.

Naruto groaned. "This is crap," he complained bitterly, his arms folded behind his head while he walked, Sakura between him and Sasuke. "Sensei, why is this mission C-level? It doesn't seem that much harder than what we've been doing..."

Kakashi rolled his head back to glare heavenward, then, without turning, shrugged. "D-level, Naruto, means that there is no or negligible danger to the shinobi, and it's a chance to practice skills without being put in harm's way. What you've been doing-" he didn't have to include the 'for the most part'- "is D-level; you aren't in danger, nor are you overworked or drained. D-level is only to practice skills, not build stamina, which is why it's commonplace for Genin to take place in both D- and C-level missions." As always when he explained things to Naruto, he was spitting out mouthfuls, slow and simple. "C-level, however, is a harder or more complex mission that requires stamina for its completion. As a result, it usually involves more danger to the shinobi than D-level and can also require that one leave the village, where one's protection is guaranteed. C-level weeds those who don't really know what they're getting in to from those serious about becoming ninjas." The sensei's glare fixed onto Naruto and spoke without words, "So if you're serious, shut your mouth."

It was, however, Sakura who spoke next. This cheered Kakashi immensely; unlike her teammate, Sakura rarely asked stupid questions and only asked anything when she couldn't puzzle out the answer for herself, which was rare enough. "But there were workers back there, who seemed perfectly capable of handling the weight," she said, sounding puzzled. "Why don't they bring in the nets, too? Why go to the trouble and expense of paying for a C-level mission twice a month to replenish supplies?"

Kakashi gifted her a smile and turned back to face their path. "Well, Sakura, the truth is- they haven't been willing to pull in their own nets for a long time, now. They refuse to, and have been more than willing to pay for the Genin and Chuunin to do it for them. They say they kept seeing sea monsters."

Two of the party suddenly stopped in their tracks and if Kakashi hadn't seen them, Sasuke would have been more than willing to continue the walk without them. This conversation was going a way he wasn't fond of and he had the feeling that it would end up with Naruto and Sakura bitching the rest of the mission. As if he didn't have enough to be annoyed about, with Sakura's clinginess and Naruto's.... Narutoness. He wished he didn't have to be part of a team at all...

"You didn't just say..." Naruto looked petrified.

Sasuke rolled his black eyes, glaring at the sky in annoyance. "Don't be such an idiot. You aren't going to be eaten by a kappa, Naruto." The blonde's blue eyes flickered to Sakura, who was staring out at the lake, then back across the dark surface. He wasn't scared of sea monsters. At least, he didn't think he was. He just didn't like the way the water looked, so deep and dark and secretive... But it was calm. So calm, with such a perfect and unbroken surface. Naruto knew quite a bit about deep, dark and secretive things with calm surfaces, and he had seen what happened when monsters broke through the facade.

And just on cue, the dark-eyed shinobi spoke again, grinning maliciously. "If a kappa attacks you, idiot, I'll protect you."

And suddenly, all introspeculation stopped. "The hell you will," Naruto growled loudly, catching up to Sasuke in three quick steps. His thoughts quickly changed from contemplation of mysterious beasts in dark depths to himself holding a massive Loch Ness-type monster away from a wailing, cringing Sasuke with one casual hand, and he grinned to himself at the thought of himself, the hero, the stronger one, lording it over the black-haired shinobi. There was no chance Sasuke was going to save him again!

Sakura smiled at Sasuke's retreating back, then, deciding that his promise to save someone who was threatened was not exclusively for Naruto. It was sort of aimed at me, promising to save me while making it look like another attack on Naruto, she realized suddenly, with swift and brutal decisiveness. Had Sasuke been glowering at the strutting blonde just then, or discreetly looking over his shoulder at Sakura? I might have lost his first kiss- now there was an embarrassing memory- but I came so very close to getting his second. She could never forget that moment, talking with Sasuke outside the school, then he had leaned in and they had almost touched, almost finally showed their true feelings....

Then, of course- then he had left and come back entirely changed. But... he was shy. It was alright; she was shy, too, and they could take their time, come to it slowly, learn to love each other. It would work. She knew it.

A small, red-orange flag marked where the third and final spot was, and Kakashi jumped into the crook of a tree branch to watch his three students set to work. He smiled to himself; for all that Sasuke was selfish, Naruto obsessed with his own glory and Sakura obsessed with Sasuke, they really did work magnificently together. The dark-haired shinobi immediately took the far right position, Naruto the far left, Sakura between the two, like she always was. The edge of the net, hooked to buoys that glittered a neon yellow color on the dark glittering surface of the water, was a little further out than the other two had been, but despite their earlier hesitation neither of the three paused now, not when they'd already accepted the mission. Sasuke threw his loose white shirt onto the ground; Naruto, who didn't care what happened to his clothing nor wanted to spend ten minutes getting his jacket and bulkier shirt off, jumped into the water with all of his orange garb intact. Sakura waded in after them until it was obvious she wasn't going to avoid getting her blush-colored hair wet, and then she hesitantly swam after them, reaching the buoys last of all. Sasuke, of course, had gotten there first; Kakashi couldn't hear but as he carefully lifted the tip of his leaf head protected slightly to expose the blood coloring of Sharingan, he could see Sasuke's lips moving in the correct rhythm it would take to taunt Naruto over the fact. "I was getting tired of waiting for you," the ebony-haired shinobi was saying, his long fingers intertwining with the mesh of the net.

Naruto's lip stuck out. While he was saying nothing and wasn't facing Kakashi- his own hands were buried into the mesh and he was kicking backwards furiously- he may as well have had a neon sign hovering over his head that said stupid Sasuke always has to show off and take his shirt off in front of Sakura.

He actually said, "Then why didn't you do the stupid mission by yourself, asshole? If you're so great?"

Sasuke's head moved slightly downward; Kakashi judged a derisive snort. "And let you off the hook? Don't be such an idiot. You have to work at it, or you'll always be the loser."

Sakura had gotten there by then, was slowly treading water- by the slight twitches in her upper back that meant motion of the lower back and legs- while she threaded the mesh netting through her fingers and slowly swam backwards. It was easier to pull the net along in the deeper water, though it didn't seem, by the tension in the three sets of arms, to be too easy a feat. Kakashi smiled. It wasn't the most challenging the three had ever seen- even discluding the Tazuna-thing- but it definitely seemed difficult enough, considering that it was only C-ranked because the shinobi had judged the fishermen's tales too ludicrous to award B-ranking but too descriptive- and just barely possible; maybe, by slight stretch, feasible- to be D-ranked.

The minute the bottom of the net touched the muddy bottom of the lake- Kakashi noted the slight jerk in arm muscles that meant it was suddenly slightly harder to pull the logged burden- Naruto and Sasuke broke off and swam in opposite directions around the net, bringing the far side to Sakura's side, and the three quickly tied the whole thing together. Even though the glittering, glass-like surface, Kakashi could see the wide stretch of net, dotted with silver swarms of fish that darted across their mesh cage, drifting out beneath the three shinobi's feet. They began dragging the net slowly towards the shore again, their speed decreasing as more and more of the net caught on the bottom and they had to drag it. Finally, first Sasuke's, then Sakura's, then finally Naruto's feet hit the bottom and they walked slowly, repeating their earlier performance, with Sasuke in the 'lead,' Sakura laboring the most behind and Naruto struggling to keep up with his rival and slipping around in the mud in the attempt. No longer up to their noses in lake water, Sasuke and Naruto had begun snarking at each other again, but Kakashi no longer bothered to try and pick out the individual words. He slid the metal of his head protector back over his left eye, shutting off his extraordinary sight and leaving him feeling blind, cut off. He shook off the feeling and grinned at his three students, who for the third time that day beached someone else's catch and staggered- or, in the case of Sasuke alone, swaggered- up the shore. The dark-haired boy snatched his shirt from the ground and, shaking stray drops of water from his hair, pulled it over his head. Blatant disappointment at the boy getting reclothed showed on- practically screamed from- Sakura's face, while Naruto, his arms folded across his chest, looked pointedly away until his rival was entirely clothed, his bottom lip protruding and his eyes seemingly closed. Kakashi didn't need the Sharingan to tell that at least one eye was partially open, however, and the pupil swivelled to the edge to look over the blonde's shoulder. The sensei hid his smile, wondering vaguely if Naruto knew- or, at least, was willing to accept- that he was peeping. He doubted it.

Naruto turned only when Sasuke had put his shirt back on and was glaring at the road as if the road itself had hurt the dark boy the way he seemed to think everything had. Naruto's lip stuck out further. If he looked at everything the way Sasuke did, he would be called whiny and ungrateful, but when the Uchiha did it, it became "oh-my-god-so-cool" and "Christ-he's-so-morbid-isn't-that-fucking-hot?". "Aren't the workmen supposed to be here to get that?" he asked, his voice entirely toneless, gesturing vaguely towards the empty road.

Kakashi nodded slowly. "Yeah, they are," he replied, slowly. "I'm kind of surprised they aren't here yet. If they ran into some trouble- maybe I should go find them."

As amusing as the image, still preserved, of Naruto saving Sasuke from the monster had been, it was quickly replaced by a similar ideal of Naruto single-handedly fighting off a hoard of missing-nins to save poor, screaming fishermen while Sakura watched in blushing awe and Sasuke, beaten to a bleeding pulp by said missing-nins, scowled in acknowledged defeat. He could hear Hokage-sama's congratulations, now- "Naruto, I present you this plaque for being the hero of Konoha and the most amazing ninja that ever was, for your amazing and heroic defeat of seventy-three of the most powerful and evil of all the corrupted shinobi of Japan. Also, I officially make you the new Hokage of Konoha, because I'm an old fart and you're a million times more awesome..."

"Kakashi-sensei!" he cried, happily. Three pairs of eyes swivelled to stare at him. "Maybe one of us should go with you! Just to... you know... keep you company, and help out." He grinned happily up at Kakashi, fingers crossed that the Jounin would agree.

Sakura grinned happily. Yes! Finally, Naruto was getting out of the way and Kakashi was leaving her and Sasuke alone together! Okay, so maybe she was streaked with mud and tired and wet and maybe she didn't smell quite a good as she always wanted to for her and Sasuke's first kiss together, but she was a ninja and she was willing to rearrange her dreams. If this was her number one chance, she was going to take it, no matter what condition she was in!

Kakashi seemed to consider, then grinned brightly. "Well, it could be a long walk (I can't just reappear where ever they are when I don't know where they are!), and I don't really want to go all by myself..." His grin got larger and his single shown eye closed in innocent happiness. "Sakura, will you come with me?"

All three Genin jumped at the latter part. Sasuke groaned inwardly. Left alone with Naruto, the air-headed blonde who couldn't shut his mouth. For however long Kakashi and Sakura took. Sakura, not looking forward to losing her number one chance, broke in as soon as she had recovered from the sudden paralysis of the mental images she had been concocting, about what the next hour would entail.

"Why me, sensei? You could walk faster if you took Sasuke or Naruto (preferably Naruto, of course); they have more endurance than me." It was a weak protest, but it was the best she could do.

Kakashi, of course, knew she didn't want to come. He just wasn't going to change his mind. "I wanted company, Sakura, not a teammate for the relay races." He snorted. "I want someone to talk to that will actually occasionally answer, and not stupidly."

Sakura shot glances to either side but she had to concede that she was, indeed, the only one of the three that fit the criteria. Damn.

"Yes, sensei," she said, shooting a helpless look to Sasuke, who didn't seem to notice or care. He had resigned himself to time spent alone with the idiot, and had bonelessly reclined against the trunk of a tree, their mission's fruits already starting to excrete a slight fishy smell. Inner Sakura cursed, at both her bad luck and Sasuke's seeming indifference.

Naruto, for his part, sulked. If something interesting happened, Sakura would get all the fun and all the glory. It wasn't fair! Of course, it was much better than Sasuke getting to go and becoming the hero- again, it should be added- but still. Sakura was the fastest learner, Sasuke was the strongest; why didn't he get any opportunity to do something great?

Kakashi's beam disappeared back into his "commanding Genin" face, and he glowered at Sasuke and Naruto. "You two watch over this," he said, gesturing in the general direction the increasingly strong fish scent was coming from. "I don't think anyone would steal it-" he flashed a grin- "but I don't want animals or anything getting into it. We'd mess up the fishermen's business. Alright? We'll be right back, as soon as we can."

"Yes, sensei," Naruto said, grinning broadly despite his disappointment. Next time. I can still prove that I'm a hero.

Sasuke nodded acknowledgment to Kakashi, then leaned back to rest his head against his makeshift backrest and closed his eyes against the sun.

Naruto waved to Sakura far past the point where she had turned her back onto him and walked away. Kakashi continued waving for longer but stopped way before the blonde. He only stopped when Sasuke snickered and then he half-sat, half-fell-on-his-ass onto the grass perhaps twenty feet from the dark-haired shinobi, his legs folded flat on the ground, and his shoulders slumped, leaning down onto his palms, pressed into the ground in the diamond made by the folds of his legs. He looked over the lake, watching the birds and thinking about fighting and glory and ramen noodles.

His thoughts, however, only occupied so much time before he began sensing the silence between himself and Sasuke turning from companionable, to awkward. He pouted again. Stupid Sasuke, always so stoic and silent, not even caring that Naruto wasn't looking at him or trying to start a conversation, not caring that Sakura was gone or whether or not the fishermen were in trouble. He repressed a sigh, and stared down at his hands, then at the lake, then, briefly, back at the shinobi behind him.

"We did good today, didn't we?" he asked at last, breaking the silence. Damn Sasuke, anyway. No matter who he was or how lone-wolf silent he chose to be, Naruto wasn't going to spend an hour alone with him, choking on the silence and the smell of fish.

Sasuke's mouth twitched in annoyance. Never mind that he had been waiting for the idiot to say something stupid and irrelevant- and, in this specific case, particularly subjective- to break the silence that had his damned thoughts going around in circles again. It was still so very infuriating, the demon-vessel's self-assurance. "Not really," he replied, coldly, the words shot like arrows to break down Naruto's walls of pride. The blonde almost winced.

"What do you mean?"

One dark eye slid open, surveying the world- the dark blue lake, the light blue sky, the middle hue of wide, pissed-off eyes. Yellow hair, yellow sun. The eye slid closed again. "We went fishing, Naruto. Nothing precisely notable in history books of the shinobi of Konoha." His shoulders rose and fell in a slight shrug. "I was hoping for maybe something a little more challenging than that." He didn't have to pointedly blame Naruto. All three of them knew why they had gotten that specific mission. He simply fell back into his icy silence, and neither spoke for a long moment.

When Sasuke opened his eyes again Naruto was two feet away and facing him. It was startling, but the taller boy didn't show it; didn't jump or say anything or even narrow his eyes. He stared at the blonde levelly, neutrally, ignoring the slight crease over his eyebrows or the intent blue eyes studying him, trying to pick out some emotion on Sasuke's dark veneer.

Naruto spoke again, his tone somewhere between accusing and dumbfounded. "Sasuke, why did you become a ninja?" It wasn't curiosity that had prompted the query. Naruto knew the reason; at least, knew the text-book reason, the flat, cold, reasonless-reason, "I want to kill my brother." He didn't know... he didn't know anything, really. Why he was so intent on his own brother's death, why he would go through all the trouble to become a shinobi in order to do it, why he didn't view what they were doing the same way he and Sakura did. He didn't know why he wanted to know, or why now, but he did and there were no other, more pressing concerns to deal with at the moment. So why not ask for all the details?

But Sasuke was not really intent on telling the blonde all of that. Some of it, he didn't know, though he didn't admit that to himself. "You know why, you idiot," he snarled, waving the unspoken questions away from his mind like cobwebs. Where was Kakashi?

Naruto's eyes narrowed further. They really were the most intense shade of blue Sasuke had ever seen. "I... I don't understand you, Sasuke." He didn't seem finished, but he lapsed into silence anyway.

Sasuke glared at the blonde, pointedly not thinking about their time spent training, abandoning everything else to fight their way to more and more strength. "Of course you don't." Idiot.

Naruto's eyes narrowed. Someone had asked him to kill them, once- and he had been about to. But he hadn't actually dealt the last blow, and when Haku had died... God. Naruto had been glad, extremely so, that he hadn't been the one to do it. There had been so much blood....

But he couldn't tell that to Sasuke. How the hell could one phrase that to some stuck-up asshole who would probably call him a coward or mock him for being scared of a little blood? "It's a stupid reason, you know," he said, and Sasuke's eyes opened slightly to look at him with an expression Naruto didn't recognize. The blonde crossed his arms tightly over his chest, and his mouth set into the 'lecturing' angle he'd seen Kakashi use so often. "Don't you have anything... I dunno..."

"Noble?" Sasuke shook his head. "Honorable? Self-sacrificing? No, Naruto- I don't want to make the world a better place, I don't want to protect Konoha or anything else. I really don't care about all that."

Naruto's eyes narrowed further, finally just slits of blue in his face. "You're an asshole, Sasuke."

Sasuke snorted in response.

Naruto frowned. All he'd said was that they'd done a good job, and as always it had started an argument. He couldn't remember ever having a conversation with Sasuke that didn't end in at least one of them tearing the other to shreds. God, who had stuck a kunai up this guy's ass, anyway? He was pretty sure he wasn't the one with the problem. No, it was all Sasuke's fault, acting like he had already been offered Hokage but had turned it down. Like he was the single greatest ninja of all time. Naruto glared at the lake and thought about sea monsters, feeling a slight tremble go up his spine. Sasuke hadn't been in the least scared of the idea of the monster. But Sasuke didn't really act scared of anything. Naruto scowled deeper. Stupid Sasuke.

And now he was just going to pretend he owned the world? That he was the strongest god-damned ninja in the world and the rest of the shinobi could just lower their heads in defeat? That it was over, there was nothing left to save, and the only thing worthy of the mighty Uchiha was his own fucking ass?

"So, what?" the blonde asked when the silence had him building up his anger at the dark shinobi. "You'll kill your brother and then become a missing-nin, like Zabuza?" There was no reaction from Sasuke but a slight shifting of his shoulders that may be translated as a shrug. Naruto almost growled. He turned to face Sasuke again and leaned over him, eyes gleaming. "Answer me, goddammit!"

Sasuke's eyes opened, slowly, the very edges of his irises starting to stain red. Naruto, mouth forming a slight 'o', drew back, slightly, his arms falling to his side from where they had been braced against the tree. Sasuke laughed, just slightly, black hair falling over his eyes. The other shinobi looked quite shocked for a long moment; his eyes had gone a few shades grayer at the sight of the Sharingan. But once he heard the mocking tone of Sasuke's laugh he was scowling again, and opened his mouth to shout something rude.

"Do you want me to pretend?" Sasuke, half-laughing, cut him off. "Pretend to give a damn about whether the idiots and cowards like you live or die?"

"I-" Naruto didn't really know where to begin.

"You want," Sasuke continued, his tones almost venomous though still frigidly cold, "for me to be like all the rest of you, pretending to care about other people when really all I'm doing is saving my own ass, serving my own double-fucking-crossing purposes; you want me to obsess over my face in rock when I could be doing something worthwhile?" He still didn't sit up; Naruto's eyes flashed and he leaned further over the other boy, almost incoherent with anger at this callous and unfair description of his own goals.

"Sasuke you bastard, you don't think-"

"You want me to put my own goals on hold while I cater to some ancient asshole's every demand?" He was starting to lean forward, black eyes trapped in the blue. He couldn't look away; his own and Naruto's intensity kept him locked there, immobile. "While I pretend to want something greater than my own devices? While I pretend to give a fucking shit?"

"No, you asshole. I want you to..." Neither noticed that their voices had dropped to whispers, slowly descending in volume as their proximity to each other increased. Their faces were inches apart. They could hear each other breathing louder than themselves; feel breath meeting between them in a vortex of warm air. "I want you to do something that makes things better for someone but just your fucking ass." But the words didn't have the desired infliction. He seemed to have lost all capability to give weight to his own words. They barely came out as more than stressed breathing.

Sasuke's voice was devoid of all emotion when he spoke. Cold, empty, like words written out in perfect, featureless manuscript. Dead. And almost silent, the words hushed and whispered, completely uncharacteristic of the dark-haired shinobi. "What do you want me to do?" And then he leaned just a little more forward, a few more inches, the space between them slowly vanishing, and...

A sudden whirl of air caught Naruto's eye and he fell, quite literally, backwards, landing on his ass and falling splayed out on his back. Sasuke jerked back, his right shoulder hitting bruisingly hard against the trunk of the tree that had served as his backrest. The dark-haired boy gasped in air, eyes wide and slightly rolling, but by the time the air had cleared and Kakashi stood grinning happily the dark-haired boy had regained his composure, sitting relaxed against the tree. His mouth felt as though there were ants on it, crawling over it; fire ants that left a stinging, burning sensation behind. He couldn't wrap his mind around it. What had happened? His mind spun, but he ignored it, studying Kakashi, who seemed perplexed by the strange tension and Naruto's rather unusual position.

Naruto, for his part, had not regained composure. Slowly he sat up, avoiding looking at the other boy- which suited Sasuke just fine- and looked from Kakashi to the road beyond the sensei. He didn't have enough of a mind for it to be spinning, but he had stomach enough and it was in knots. His heart hammered and he didn't know why. After a moment he realized his mouth was still slightly opened and he didn't understand why he had opened it in the first place.

And then he remembered, as if recollecting a dream, the barest hint of pressure on his mouth before he had fallen away and his heart stopped hammering so hard. In fact, for half a moment, it stopped beating altogether.

Had he kissed Sasuke?

...Again?

end chapter two