Seeing him was like realizing a deep injury, that you were slowly bleeding away all along.

He felt sickish, watching him touching a girl with tomato red hair, talking to a guy with a biting smile.

Sasuke rarely laughed.

And if he touched Sakura, it did not hurt Naruto.

It was not merely that he missed him, but that Sasuke tore him out of a group dynamic where Naruto thrived. Sometimes it felt like missing an integral organ.

He knew the moment he noticed him, the stiffening of his joints, and the girl under his arm cried out in pain.

'You're hurting me!'

He disappeared from their table the next moment, and iron fingers clasped around Naruto's upper arm, dragging him outside the inn.

'Are they trained not to make a fuss when you disappear without a word?' Naruto looked back in their direction.

'They are,' Sasuke said simply, leisurely looking him up and down and he suppressed a shiver in response.

'Are they your new team? Where did you get them? Did you put out an advertisement?'

'You don't like them?' Sasuke's eyebrows ran upon his forehead.

He was so pretty it made Naruto nauseous.

'They look like a bunch of weirdos.'

'You're one to talk.'

'Auch.'

'Is this another intervention?' Sasuke asked impatiently, running his hand through the black of his hair. " I am surprised you did not bring Sakura.'

'Well, she is less approachable nowadays. When I talk to her about you, her face gets all smooth and empty.'

'She is moving on. Great. That is what you are supposed to do.'

'She is traumatized.'

'Sometimes I think you don't know Sakura at all,' Sasuke sighed wearily. ' She never lets her feelings settle, she likes to get rid of them in one outburst of anger, or she just erases them altogether.'

'Only this time, maybe she is too angry to be able to express it. It suffocates her.'

'Naruto,' Sasuke gently pushed him to the wall of the building with a sigh.

'Her world is no centered around me. You're the one whose world does.'

Naruto blushed angrily.

'It is not true, I...' Sasuke's lips brushed his, and his words stuck in his throat, his lips thirstily parting under his fleeting touch.

'Go home, Naruto,' Sasuke murmured, and walked away, shutting the inn door behind him.

Naruto was looking up at the sky in genuine confusion; was he thinking this is what going to convince him?