The good news is that I now know the plot for this story. Bad news are currently ignored. And I wasn't going to update this so soon, but you know. Shit happens.

And to those of you reading this without an account, it's smarter to review on ao3 because then I can reply. If anyone feels like reviewing.

For this chapter, I'd just like to say that the gay is becoming too strong already and I don't know if I should laugh at Naruto or just hit him with something.

Chapter 7: A simple touch

xxx

"Welcome!" Mikoto smiled as she opened the door, ushering all three of them inside. "Sasuke is in the bath, but he should be down shortly."

Naruto glanced at the adults as they all tried to fit into the relatively narrow hallway, shucking off his shoes and shuffling his feet as he moved towards the end of it.

"Umm, I'll go talk to Sasuke," he announced, turning before they could stop him and taking the stairs two steps at a time.

The door wasn't locked, so he pulled it open and entered, leaning against it in a casual pose.

"Hey, teme," he greeted Sasuke with, only his head and part of his neck above the water in the bathtub as he sent a half-hearted glare in Naruto's direction.

"Are you going to start bothering me when I'm taking baths from now on, too?"

Naruto grinned, taking a seat on the edge of the tub, facing Sasuke and pulling one knee up close to his body, running a few fingers through the water surface.

"I just thought we could have some quality time without the others."

Sighing through his nose, one of Sasuke's hands emerged from the water to push Naruto's foot off the edge.

"One: I'm not sure I want to know how you messed up this time, and two: your foot smells."

Making an indignant sound, Naruto pouted and put his foot back in childish protest.

"What makes you think I messed up? I mean, fine, I might have told Minato that Obito was the masked man that controlled Menma, but…"

Sasuke pinched his nose with closed eyes for a few seconds, then glared at him.

"Great. We've been here, what, three days? I should have known."

"Hey! It just slipped out, okay? He's not gonna start spreading it around the village or anything."

"No, but I'd rather not get an order from the Hokage that we have to tell them exactly what happened."

They stared at each other, Sasuke with a frown and Naruto with pursed lips. They hadn't exactly made any agreements on what to tell and what to keep to themselves, though both of them seemed to agree that the less the better.

"It won't happen again."

"No, forget it." Sasuke shook his head slowly, sinking a little deeper into the bath. "We can't keep it all secret, anyway. But try not to say too much."

When Sasuke fell silent, Naruto took the opportunity to search his face for any clues as to how his day had been. There was a light flush on his cheeks, the ends of his hair dipping into the water but otherwise starting to dry, eyes half-lidded as Naruto was blatantly ignored.

"Haven't you been in there a little long? I mean, it's so hot in here that even I feel like I'm getting a heatstroke."

Sasuke's glance was irritated, clearly stating that he should mind his own business. Naruto was fairly certain that Sasuke's health very much fell under the category of 'his own business' however, and so he bore his eyes into the Uchiha until he rolled his, pulling out the plug using toes.

"Happy now?"

Sasuke stood up, water splashing in the tub as it fell from his lean body. It took Naruto a few seconds of blinking in surprise before he realized that the hand Sasuke held out was demanding him to give him a towel.

"I know I offered to teach you the Reverse harem technique, but I think you wouldn't need it. You could just get naked instead."

The look on Sasuke's face made Naruto think he was going to facepalm, which would have been extremely hilarious but also make him suspect he was dealing with an impostor.

"Every time I start thinking you've grown up a little, you prove me dead wrong."

"What the hell! What kind of backhanded compliment was that!"

"It wasn't a compliment."

"Tch, you're such a bastard you know that?"

Sasuke was drying his hair, having stepped out of the tub, looking down at the still seated Naruto now with a haughty expression. Crossing his arms and letting his foot hit the floor, Naruto glared back as hard as he could.

"Whatever, I know you used to wear that open shirt because you thought it made you look hot."

"Wrong. It made it easier to use the curse mark stage two."

"Liar."

"Think what you want."

"Thanks, I will!"

He grinned again, if only because he knew it would piss Sasuke off. And sure enough, there was that familiar tick in Sasuke's eye as he started pulling on clean clothes, standard ninja pants with an open, high collared white t-shirt.

"You like the other Sasuke's clothes, don't you?"

"This isn't his."

If the words hadn't already confirmed it, Sasuke's stiffened posture spoke for itself. Naruto's grin faltered, wondering just what made Sasuke pick one of Itachi's shirts.

"Everything was purple or too tight, so Mikoto gave me this."

Huh, so that explained it.

"I thought you liked purple?" Naruto teased, not enjoying the newfound tense atmosphere. "I mean, you had a skirt and everything."

"It wasn't a skirt," Sasuke bit out, hanging the towel on its place and gathering up his dirty clothes.

"It even had a ribbon- whoa!"

Sasuke had grabbed the front of his jumpsuit jacket, holding him in a threatening grip above the bathtub, where water was still busy pouring down the drain.

"It wasn't a skirt."

Naruto tried chuckling, but Sasuke's grip only tightened as his glare turned vicious.

"But if I tell you I liked it?"

Sasuke seemed to fight with himself for a moment, but eventually dropped Naruto so that he was forced to grab the edges to prevent himself from getting wet.

"Why don't you stay here and drown while I go down for dinner."

"Oh come on, not cool, Sasuke! I was just messing with you!"

The other ninja didn't say anything, but Naruto could tell he wasn't that angry. Or, at least he hoped so. Hurrying after Sasuke he patted down the back of his clothes, making sure he wasn't wet anywhere. The door to Sasuke's room slammed shut in his face, but he simply groaned a little and went inside anyway.

"Give me that," he ordered after closing the door again, Sasuke sighing but throwing the roll of bandage to him anyway.

He gave Sasuke a light push so that he sat down on the bed, and pulled up a chair to sit in front of him. Taking a light hold of the pale wrist stretched out towards him to pull it closer, he started covering Sasuke's hand with the bandage. He hummed a tune, probably something annoying judging by the look in dark eyes. All it did was make him hum a little louder.

"Don't do that," Sasuke said, an almost imperceptible pause at the end that only strengthened when their eyes locked and Naruto fell silent.

A year ago, Sasuke had told him the same thing.

He'd hesitated then, opening his palm to stare at the mark in the center. Now, he lowered his eyes to Sasuke's hand again, finishing his task and picking up his humming as well. Sasuke didn't bother to tell him off again, and he folded the knot underneath a layer of white bandage with a contented smile.

"There you go," he said, Sasuke only pursing his lips slightly as they got up to head downstairs.

xxx

Dinner was surprisingly nice. Naruto was entertaining everyone with stories from the time he went travelling with Jiraiya, a safe topic it seemed, and Sasuke was fine just sitting back to listen. Kushina knew her fair share of stories, too, and the two of them kept the atmosphere light and cheerful. Sasuke had to wonder, however, if Naruto was pushing himself. He'd been so serious since they arrived, which wasn't unusual for him to be, but this was different. Of course, they were in trouble, but Sasuke would have thought that Naruto would try to enjoy himself while they waited.

Instead, it seemed as if the amount of rare moments they shared where Naruto seemed to be able to read every thought inside his head with little effort had escalated in number. Naruto may have proved himself to have grown out of his twelve-year-old attention-deprived goofy phase long ago, but Sasuke was starting to think that either something bad had happened last time Naruto was here, or they were in more trouble than they appeared to be. Not that Sasuke took the situation lightly, but watching Naruto laughing and joking now made him realize the absence of it the past few days.

Or well, absence was perhaps the wrong word. It was more a feeling that told him there was something wrong with Naruto. Was it because of his birthday? Sasuke didn't know. Sure, they were stuck here and Naruto had responsibilities, too, but that still didn't fully explain it. And the way Naruto had looked at him while putting on his bandage…

He was thankful that Naruto had never tried to show him his memories again after that first time, and had never asked to see Sasuke's. He got the impression sometimes that Naruto wanted to, and he wasn't sure what to think of that. Usually, he brushed all these thoughts off. Better to focus on the things he knew, and the present.

When the topic changed to Minato and Naruto's training session earlier that day, he focused on the conversation as Fugaku questioned Minato about the situation.

"Well," Minato explained, "it seems strange to me that Naruto would be able to use the Hiraishin to move to an entirely different dimension. First of all, you'd need a seal on something here, but the seal you were aiming for was on Sasuke's sword, wasn't it?"

He directed the last part at Naruto, who nodded, his expression attentive.

"And we didn't move from the spot we were standing in, either," he said, looking at Sasuke for confirmation.

"We did fall," he reminded the dobe, raising an eyebrow when Naruto flushed angrily.

"But that was your fault!"

"What happened?" Minato asked, and Naruto made a grimace.

"Sasuke wanted me to stand still in front of him so he could practice entering that weird dimension like Obito can do, but it was my turn so I wanted to teleport, and then he grabbed me and we fell."

"Not exactly what happened, but close enough," Sasuke commented with a raised eyebrow.

"Teme," Naruto muttered, leaning back in his chair with crossed arms.

"Language, young man!" Kushina berated him with a stern look, causing him to wince slightly.

"That reminds me, Sasuke. Tsunade-sama never told me what teleportation technique you were using?"

Sasuke glanced at Minato, then at Fugaku and Mikoto who seemed to share some sort of look. As Uchiha, they would of course know the conditions for developing the Mangekyo Sharingan as well as the Rinnegan. Unless things were different here.

"We meant to ask about that…" Mikoto started, her serious way of saying it causing everyone to look between them. "Only Obito can use the Mangekyo Sharingan, and Madara is the only one known to recently have possessed the Rinnegan."

"Oh, so Sasuke used one of those?" Kushina asked, oblivious to the tension in the room.

"The Rinnegan, yes," he answered, guessing that Tsunade had already told his parents.

"And, it's rare?" Kushina trailed off, having asked only because no one explained, Minato placing a hand on her arm to stop her from asking more.

"What about Kakashi?" Naruto asked.

"Oh, so you know about that? No, he can only use the Sharingan," Fugaku told him. "Obito forbid him to develop it further. Considering how he likes to overexert himself…"

…he would go blind in no time, Sasuke finished inside his head. So that was one thing that didn't seem to have changed, though it was with surprised relief that he'd taken the news of neither Itachi nor Shisui possessing it.

"I'm lost," Kushina admitted, Minato agreeing with a strained smile.

"I think this might not be a proper conversation for the dinner table," Fugaku said with finality, examining Sasuke with troubled eyes as he spoke.

Averting his eyes, Sasuke caught Naruto staring at him, and again he had that feeling of Naruto being able to tell exactly what was going through his head.

"On a brighter note," Mikoto said, smiling gently, "Itachi sent a message that he should be home tomorrow for a visit."

The blue in Naruto's irises seemed to darken as he kept their gazes locked for a few more seconds. Then his features relaxed into a pleasant smile matching Mikoto's, though his eyes were still boring into Sasuke's.

"Sounds great!" Naruto said, and Sasuke had to wonder what he was thinking in that moment.

As for what he thought himself… He'd rather not delve into that.

Yes, Itachi next chapter! This should be exiting... Also, the amount of research I had to do for this chapter isn't funny. But I think I've gotten most of it down for the plot and background. Narutopedia is like the smart best friend that makes you wonder if your head is empty after all.