Title: Of Food and Fun

Author: WolfPilot06

Pairing: Nascent, barely-there SasuNaru

Warnings: Some language, probably tad bits of OOC (which are ever-present in most fanfiction, I've noticed), hints of shonen ai, gen, faint inklings of angst, and really, NO POINT.

Notes: The ideas just keep coming.

By the way, my style had a tendency to vary from chapter to chapter or story to story, so forgive me if this chapter's style doesn't really coincide with the mostly-dialogue chapters of before. This chapter is wordier and involves fewer witticisms, because, really, I have this thing about digging into my characters' heads and dragging out their most mundane thoughts for the world to see.

I also hate ending chapters. I never really know what to say in closing, so…blah.

I swear I won't be updating this often in the future. I'll only be updating when I have an idea. Fortunately for you people, I've another part in the making. It involves an injured Naruto, Nursemaid!Sasuke (I'm just kidding - er, well, sort of), and stitches.

And, argh, Sasuke's getting more and more OOC. I apologize for that. It's just – cookies, Sasuke, and Naruto. How can there not be any OOC?

--

There were two reasons - and two reasons alone - that Sasuke was currently lying on his rival's bed, contemplating murder, muffins, and the possibility of out of world invasions all at once.

First, Naruto had, in an impressive show of pyrotechnics and with an incredible lack of control over a fire jutsu he'd persuaded Sasuke to teach him, managed to set fire to Sasuke's own apartment earlier that day, forcing Sasuke to call upon the water jutsu he'd picked up from Kakashi and a nearby well to drown the raging inferno that had once been his bedroom.

The rest of team 7 had shown up to find both genin covered in soot and grappling in the soggy remains of Sasuke's kitchen as the Uchiha heir tried his level best to strangle the living hell out of his teammate. It had taken nothing short of Kakashi putting the both of them into headlocks and refusing to let them go until they promised to stop trying to kill each other before Sasuke stopped attempting to asphyxiate the blond idiot.

As it was, Sasuke would never, ever be able to figure out why exactly Naruto had decided to practice the jutsu in Sasuke's apartment. There was stupidity, and then there was stupidity, and Naruto always seemed to feel the need to prove that he was not only the loudest ninja in Konoha, but possibly the stupidest one, too.

The second reason that Sasuke was lying on top of Naruto's faded coverlet, freshly showered and wearing the plainest, not-orange clothes that he'd managed to scrounge out of Naruto's closet (a pair of worn-out jeans and a white t-shirt), was because he was secretly convinced that an alien had descended from the skies and possessed Naruto. Either that, or Ino was practicing her Mind-Switching jutsu again.

Whatever the reason, the boy who called himself Uchiha Sasuke's main rival was currently up to his elbows in flour, butter, and salt in the tiny corner of his one-room apartment that he called a kitchen. He was busily ignoring Sasuke, who had one dark gray eye fixed untrustingly upon his powdery host, and singing something in a wavering, slightly off-key alto soprano that had Sasuke cringing and wishing he was back in his own apartment, fire damage or no fire damage.

The Uchiha heir closed his eyes and tried to take a nap, a task that was neatly defeated by Naruto's crooning and banging around the kitchen. For the fifth time in ten minutes, Sasuke imploringly asked of himself the same two questions that had been plaguing him ever since Kakashi had smilingly ordered him to move in with Naruto until his apartment was fixed.

'Why me?' Sasuke cried in the silence of his mind, for all that his expression showed none of his discontent. It was a question he often muttered in the dark of the night, when bloody murder and his brother haunted his thoughts and kept him from sleeping. In this case, though, he was not wondering why fate had so spectacularly decided to screw him over by having his brother go psycho and kill off his entire family in one go. Rather, he was wondering what bad karma had crossed over from his past life and forced him to bear with Naruto's terrible howling and attempts to make some indistinguishable and hopefully edible food.

'Why him' Sasuke moaned next. He could understand why Sakura's residence was out of question, for all that the pink-haired girl desperately had tried to figure out a way to let her precious Sasuke-kun stay at her house for a week (Sasuke had to admit, however, to being extremely relieved when Kakashi had brought up the fact that having a twelve-year-old boy stay in a girl's house for a week was extremely suspicious and bordering on improper). Kakashi was so secretive about his private life that Sakura and Naruto were secretly convinced that he had none, that he perpetually was somewhere in Konoha either reading his dirty novels or plotting some new way to torture his genin team. The silver-haired jounin had not even mentioned the possibility of having Sasuke stay over at his apartment, and Sasuke was not so desperate as to overstep the rules of propriety his upbringing had instilled in him and ask if he could stay at his teacher's residence. That had, of course, left Naruto as the only option.

Naruto had cursed the decision, citing everything from how Sasuke stunk (which he probably did in the aftermath of the explosion, but then, so did Naruto), to how Sasuke probably snored at night (if he did, he wasn't aware of it), and finally to how Naruto only had one bed (as the guest, Sasuke had smugly kicked Naruto out of his own bed and taken it over, condemning the blond to sleeping on the hardwood floor). In the end, Kakashi had cheerfully ignored all his protests, and within the space of an hour, the two boys found themselves blinking at each other from within the doorway to Naruto's apartment.

Despite his initial protests, Naruto was proving to be a more gracious and considerate host than Sasuke would have given him credit for. He'd allowed Sasuke to usurp the shower first and had even dug up clothes for him to wear before taking a shower himself, and now he was making an enormous effort to prepare some semblance of a meal for the two of them that didn't involve ramen. Sasuke had shoved Naruto's face into the ground enough times to make the point that he didn't like the over-salted noodles nearly as much as the blond did. It was a consideration for their rather grudging friendship that Naruto hadn't wholly ignored Sasuke's preference and was trying to make some kind of neutral food for them to eat.

Still, Sasuke had no idea what Naruto was trying to make. Whatever it was seemed to involve a great deal of grunting, kneading, and getting flour in his hair as Naruto laboriously rolled out a great chunk of dough on his clean kitchen table and began rummaging in his cupboards for something. After having watched his rival slave away at whatever he had been making for the past half-hour or so, Sasuke finally felt compelled to speak.

"Oi, idiot," he said by way of preamble, "What the hell are you making?"

There was a brief moment before Naruto's blond head popped out of a cupboard, a wide grin plastered across his face.

"Cookies!" he announced cheerfully and dove headlong back into his cupboard again. Sasuke blinked once, shook his head, and blinked a second time.

"Cookies?" Sasuke demanded incredulously, lurching to his feet and stalking towards his rival.

"Yep!" Replied Naruto as he finally found what he was looking for and stood up, a pair of people-shaped cookie-cutters in hand. Undeterred by Sasuke's looming presence at his elbow, he began cutting cookies from the sheet of dough and carefully transferring them to a battered cookie sheet.

Sasuke counted to ten and back again, took several deep breaths, and, deeming himself calm enough to speak without raising his voice, finally turned towards Naruto.

"Why on earth are you making cookies?" Sasuke yelled. Perhaps he wasn't all that calm. Naruto scowled at him, still cutting his pastries.

"'cause cookies are good." Naruto said belligerently, "'sides, I stole the flour and sugar from your apartment when we left. I usually can't – er, I don't make cookies, 'cause of time and stuff, but we don't have a mission tomorrow, so I figured-"

"I thought you were making dinner, Naruto." Sasuke growled, "It's almost six thirty!"

Large blue eyes blinked at Sasuke with deceptive innocence. "I thought we'd go out to get ramen."

Take back all the charitable thoughts he'd had earlier about Naruto's consideration for their friendship. Naruto was an ass.

"Naruto, I think we've had this discussion before," Sasuke said with as much calm as he could muster. The forced smile on his face was threatening to turn into a scowl as a muscle in his cheek twitched. "I don't like ramen."

"Yeah, well, that's 'cause you're a weirdo." Naruto said dismissively, "Besides, ramen's cheap and good and filling."

"Only if you eat five or six bowls of it, moron." Sasuke growled, "I'm not paying for it this time. You burned down my apartment. The least you could do would be to treat me to a decent meal."

Naruto glared at him.

"What? I'm putting up with you in my apartment for a week, already!" he protested, "I'm not filthy rich like you are, pretty boy Uchiha!"

Something in Sasuke snapped.

"That's it!" he cried and tackled Naruto to the ground, nearly getting his eye gouged out by a wayward cookie-cutter in the process. Naruto let out an incoherent noise as he was pinned the ground, but soon retaliated by punching Sasuke in the shoulder. They scuffled for several minutes, rolling over the ground of Naruto's apartment and knocking into the table and chairs as they tried their very best to beat the crap out of each other.

Sasuke was infuriated. He'd been waiting all this time while Naruto made cookies? The – the absolute moron!

"We're getting barbecue!" he yelled, as he squashed Naruto's face against the floor. Naruto flipped them over and proceeded to try to twist Sasuke's arm out of its socket.

"No! Ramen!" Naruto declared before he was thrown against the wall and pinned there by Sasuke's elbow.

"Barbecue!" Naruto's knee hiked up into Sasuke's stomach.

"Ramen!" Sasuke swept Naruto's legs from under him as he fell and landed on top of the other boy heavily.

"Barbecue!" Naruto bit Sasuke on the shoulder.

"Ramen!" Sasuke put Naruto in a headlock.

"Ahem."

Both boys froze abruptly. Slowly, sheepishly, they looked up to find Sakura standing in Naruto's open doorway, her fists set on her hips and her expression torn between amusement and affront at the scene before her. "Well. I came to ask if you two wanted to come over to my house to eat dinner…" A delicate pink eyebrow lifted as she surveyed the mess that had been Naruto's apartment. Remarkably, the cookies were undisturbed, but a number of other things – pictures, weapons, magazines – had been knocked to the ground in their fight. "But, you know, if you'd rather choke each other to death, that's fine by me."

Sasuke coughed, attempting to regain his dignity as he tried to disentangle himself from Naruto. The blond wasn't helping much, giving Sakura nervous, embarrassed looks as he turned crimson under her amused scrutiny.

Sakura had matured incredibly since the formation of Team 7 – enough so, at least, to acknowledge Naruto as a friend of sorts – though she had yet to give up on Sasuke. Still, there was a great deal of sisterly affection in her green eyes as she watched them silently move to clean up the mess a little.

"Er, Sakura-chan," Naruto finally piped up, sounding far more nervous than usual, "Don't worry about me. I'm in the mood for ramen today, so – " He was grinning now, scratching the back of his head in apparent nonchalance, but Sasuke knew him too well to really be deceived by his behavior. Sasuke's eyes narrowed.

"Don't be silly." Sakura declared, marching over to Naruto, and – much to both boys' surprise – took out her handkerchief and wiped at some of the flour still dusting Naruto's nose. "I invited you, didn't I? I'll be hurt if you turn down my offer." She smiled then, lifting an eyebrow. "Haven't you always wanted to have dinner with me, anyways?"

As Naruto's eyes widened in surprise and gratitude, Sasuke felt a surge of respect for Sakura. The girl was much smarter than he had ever given her credit for.

"Thanks, Sakura-chan." Naruto said quietly, his voice suspiciously choked. He rubbed surreptitiously at his eyes while his two teammates pretended to look elsewhere.

"Let's go, then." She started heading towards the door, pausing by the kitchen table long enough to roll the remaining cookie dough up and stick it in the fridge in a covered bowl. "My parents are waiting for us, and if we don't hurry, they'll eat all the food without us."

Sasuke reached the doorway and realized that Naruto still hadn't moved from his place on the floor. He turned to look at his rival over his shoulder, lifting an eyebrow slightly.

"Hey." He said. Naruto didn't respond, staring at the ground with a faint smile on his lips. "Oi. Dead last."

Naruto's head snapped up, annoyance flashing in his clear blue eyes.

"Don't call me that!" he yelled and scrambled to his feet. Sasuke waited until the blond drew level with him and cuffed the back of his head almost affectionately.

"Let's go, Naruto. You can finish your cookies later." He paused, and then, grudgingly, "I'll help you."

--

End

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Comments and Criticism desired as usual. Blah.

Wolf