I don't know what it was that possessed me to visit Uchiha Sasuke's house. I just knew that as soon as I sat up in bed that morning, I had to go there, I had to see him. So, I pulled on my weekend clothes--a white t-shirt with a blue spiral on the front and blue jeans--yanked a comb back through my mess of yellow spikes and ran out of my house, almost forgetting to lock the door behind me. It was a lazy Saturday; the kind of day where one tends to stay indoors because it's just so damn hot and sticky. But here I was, jogging up the hill toward the house of some guy that I can't hang out with half the time because he just gets on my nerves, and during a heat wave nonetheless. Subconscious, I thought to myself, you'd better have a damn good reason for making me go all the way over here.

His door was open, and that struck me as odd when I stopped on his porch and looked inside. "Hello?" He didn't respond. "Sasuke?" I took a cautious step inside, looking around the foyer slowly. "The door was open…" I distantly heard music playing: it sounded classical, like piano and violins type classical. I shuffled inside and looked around the well-furnished place. Antique vases and dark mahogany tables decorated several corners of the room and there were ornate rugs on the floor and hanging over the back of the lush-looking couches. I was really afraid of ruining something so…pristine. Carefully, I made my way to the main hall, glancing left and right, trying to find my teammate.

"Sasuke?" I tried again. To my right, the music suddenly got louder as the instruments swelled into a crescendo and thundered out of speakers that seemed to be coming from outside… A sound-system on the back porch? Sasuke, you lucky little shit.

"Hey, are you out th--" I made my way down the hall and pulled back the sliding glass door that led out to the backyard, then my words caught in my throat.

Sasuke was standing before a huge canvas (six feet tall and five feet wide, at least), a paintbrush hanging from his slightly-twitching fingers. He had his eyes closed, and his entire body was swaying to the rhythm of the music playing from his speakers. He had no shirt on. His entire upper torso, some of his face, and all of his hands and forearms were covered in thick, oily-looking paint, all different colors muddled on his skin by the sheen of sweat that coated his entire body. His khaki shorts were ruined. At my entrance, his eyes snapped open and he whirled to glare at me. I gulped and hid behind the glass…as much as one can hide behind transparent glass, anyway.

"I, erm… The door, it was open, so I…" I tried not to look guilty. "Um… Hi."

He stared at me in that uncomfortably intense way that only he knew how to. His black hair was slicked back, and had streaks of red in it. Red? Oh, paint. I couldn't stop my eyes from leaving his and traveling over the canvas behind him. He saw the movement and tried to lift one arm in a half-assed attempt to stop my eyes, but I guess he thought it was too late for that, so he just dropped it and stepped aside so I could see the whole thing. It looked like a landscape, but I had never seen something on this earth that was so beautiful and pure before; it made a lump rise in my throat. I felt myself walking forward but couldn't stop; I ended up beside him, my eyes trying to sweep over the entire surface at once. There were trees, tall and handsome, with a thick, jungle-esque look to them bordering a mystical-looking fountain of some sort. Or a spring…a giant pool of glowing, vibrating water that radiated out from the lower-half of the picture plane. Tendrils of the sparkling water rose up and spiraled together, twisting into some type of crystallized fountain that never spilled over. The sky was a collection of pinks and oranges and gray-blues that folded over onto one another and created layers so thick and full that very air itself bore down on the trees and pressed the lush dark green leaves down, creating a counter-arc in the direction of brushstrokes. For the longest time, I couldn't tear my eyes away. When I finally did, I met Sasuke's heated glare.

"You can't tell anyone you saw this," he hissed, eyes narrowed. I blinked, not expecting such hostility from the same person who created such beauty.

"Why…" would I? was the question I wanted to retaliate with, but the question I asked was different, "not?"

"Because," he said bitterly and shoved past me, storming into the house. I couldn't follow him--couldn't bring myself to leave the presence of this painting. I watched him moving about the house, the music suddenly ending with a jarring abruptness that made me feel extremely uneasy. He stomped back and forth between rooms a couple of more times, looking decidedly cleaner each time he did so, until he came back outside dressed in a short-sleeved black shirt and unstained khaki shorts. There was still red in his hair though. He reached past me for the side of the painting.

"Sasuke?" His hand stopped. "Why don't you want anyone to know about this?"

"…because," he said a little less harshly, his eyes looking suddenly sad, "he used to paint too."

Oh. I tried to think of something to ask that wouldn't involve him storming off in one of his traditional 'brother hissy fits'. I really wanted to know more about this side of him, and I wouldn't get any closer if I messed up right now.

"Well, how long have you been painting?" I asked softly after a long moment. He considered the question, lowering his hand and looking up fully at the large painting. I saw a streak of blue-gray running down the line of his neck that he had missed in his cleanup.

"Since I was seven," he answered. I did the mental math: One year before his brother went nuts. I tried to find another suitable question, but everything I came up with ('Who taught you how? Who else paints in your family? Did you keep on painting even after your brother left?') just screamed no. Thankfully, he took my silence as an opportunity to talk freely about this unknown habit of his. "I saw my brother doing it one afternoon and tried to teach myself, but…" He laughed bitterly.

"…You did a good job," I said timidly and his eyes dropped down to mine, reflecting slight shock. I motioned toward the painting then shoved my hands awkwardly into my pockets. "I mean, teaching yourself and all. It looks really pretty."

I'm sure pretty was not the word he had expected, but it still fit. After considering me, he nodded, the tenseness relaxing out of his shoulders. I gladly followed the example. "I stopped for a couple of years, then started up again after I entered the academy. It took a long while to get here."

"And that was only a few years ago," I turned my full attention to the painting. "Must have taken a lot of practice, and to have training on top of that." Dammit! Does this guy have any flaws? "…Hey. Do you have others?"

"What?"

"Other paintings. Did you make any others?"

"Of course, dobe."

I let it slide. "Can I see them?"

He hesitated. "You promise not to laugh?"

"Much."

"Ass."

"Come on, Sasuke. Please?"

I think it was the please that got him (wonders never ceased--today was a very strange day indeed). He nodded and motioned for me to follow, grabbing the border of the large painting and moving it over to the shaded porch where he leaned it against the wall, then he shoved open the glass door and walked into his house. I followed after him obediently. We shuffled into what was most-likely the master bedroom: king-size bed, ornate writing table and side chair, full-length mirror, ancient-looking weapons hanging on the walls. The only thing that told me that this was actually Sasuke's room were the random kunai scattered across the hardwood floor and his blue clan shirt hanging over the back of the chair by the window. I couldn't help it, I gaped.

"What?" he looked back at me from the closet, where he had pulled out several smaller canvases.

"I just…" I shook my head, also shaking the vision of the small, cramped living space I had to sleep in every night out of my thoughts. "It's nothing. So, let's see."

He gave me a funny look, but laid the paintings out on the white bed sheets. There were four, which made the large one outside five in total. The first one was a self portrait of Sasuke looking fairly young, around ten or so. The second was a view--the view from this bedroom window--of a hilltop and a single cherry blossom tree swaying gently in the wind. The third depicted a few figures playing in the abandoned park down the road--I recognized our friends Kiba, Shikamaru, and Chouji among the group. The fourth appeared to be a landscape of the surrounding forest at night, but it looked like another place entirely; somewhere far away, perhaps where the fifth paining that lay drying outside had come from. And each of them had been at least ten times better than the one before it.

"I had more, but, after my brother…"

He caught himself midway through the sudden statement, but it was already tangible, hanging in the air between us like some dead weight. He turned his head away, and I knew instantly that he was crying. I don't know how I did, but I knew, and I turned my head in the opposite direction to try and give him some form of privacy. He took only a minute. Maybe he was a little sick of crying all the time, like I was…

"They were lost. So, I had no inspiration to do this for a while. And then, when I went to the academy, it was like…I started seeing things for the first time in a long time."

"That explains these three," I gestured to the left. "But what about this one? And the big one outside? They're so different from…from anything real I've ever seen."

This took him a bit longer to answer. He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. Nervously? "I painted those from my dreams."

"…" I stared at him. This was like a Sasuke I'd never known before. It was a little scary and a lot exciting. Like getting to know a twin or something. I looked from the fourth painting to him for what seemed like a long time. Then, I opened my mouth: "If I had dreams like this, I'd be asleep all the time."

For the world, it sounded so dumb. But Sasuke just looked at me and smiled. He smiled. I will say it again: today was turning out to be a very strange day.

"Yeah. But I like this place too."

"Oh?" I pulled my hands from my pockets and crossed my arms over my chest. "You? Mr. I'm-So-Much-Better-Than-Everyone?"

He scowled: "Oh, shut up, Naruto."

"No, really," I nudged him with my shoulder. "What's so good about being here? I mean, in dreams you see those kinds of places and you get to be with people you want to be with, and--"

"I'm already with someone I want to be with," he murmured and I almost didn't hear it. I stopped breathing, I think, for a minute or two. Before my mouth could catch up with my brain though, his black-amber eyes found mine and pinned me down, shutting me up quite efficiently. "This is my home. No matter what happens and where I go or what I do, this is the place I want to come back to. Even if I have no one to welcome me back--"

"Oh, shut up, Sasuke." I scowled back. "Even though you're a bastard, I'm here, you know."

There was a moment of silence.
"You're--"

"I'll welcome you back," I shrugged. "Whether you like it or not."

And, today was a day for miracles, Sasuke smiled at me again. Or grinned, rather. "Maybe one of these days, I can paint something for you."

"You're not afraid I won't tell anyone about this?"

"Not unless I thought you liked pain."

"Got it. And…thanks."

"I should be thanking you, dobe."

"…I let you get away with that once today, don't push it."