Title: Speak Up
Disclaimer: I'm not entirely sure if Sasuke and Hinata have even officially met in the series.
Rating: PG ( K+ ) – For nothing but fluffy insinuation, a bit of violence against Ichiraku's ramen stand and a couple naughty words here or there.
Spoilers: Umm...I guess I've given away that Sakura becomes a medic-nin, does that count?

Summary: Naruto shook her off and confronted Sasuke again, "Not until he apologizes and promises to leave Hinata-chan alone!" SasuHinaNaru.

Sorry, it gets a little cliche from here.

Chapter 5: Admit It

It was one of those awkward silences that seemed to have no comfortable solution. One that lasted seconds, but felt easily like it stretched into minutes or hours. It was almost like the air that lay between them thrummed with the words that they were both too embarrassed to speak...

"So...," Naruto started the conversation with little cough. He stared out the window, intentionally looking anywhere but Sasuke.

Sasuke grunted, "So, what?"

"Did you...what...?"

"Spit it out, dobe."

Naruto chanced a glance at his rogue teammate out of his peripheral vision. "What are you doing here?"

Sasuke, still leaning stiff shoulders against the wall on the opposite side of the room, met his eyes for a few brief moments before looking away again. "Visiting."

"Before visiting hours...?"

Naruto flinched a little at the acerbic glare sent his way. "Yes."

Silence reigned again, this time with a seething energy.

Naruto had never claimed to be the brightest shinobi – the strongest, most daring, and coolest, perhaps – but he knew (eventually) when something wasn't quite right. And if there was one subject that he was an expert on, it was his friends. The fact that Sasuke was acting so out of character meant...something.

"Nng..."

Sasuke leapt away from the wall, looking almost startled as opposed to...well, the way he always looked. The grim expression of vague disinterest wavered as he approached the hospitalized Hyuuga, taking proper precaution not to wake her completely.

Hinata squirmed beneath the sheets, clenching and unclenching her fists as if she were staving off a great deal of pain. She scrunched up her face as she whimpered, muttering words that Naruto couldn't make out from his distance, and bit her lip. Any idiot could tell she was having a nightmare.

"Hyuuga...," Sasuke called out to her in a breathless whisper, leaning over the bed railing to get a better vantage of the situation. He licked his lips as his eyes glided down her body and back up again. "Hyuuga, wake up."

Hinata didn't respond as requested and, instead, turned away from the helpless Uchiha onto her side and curled up like a fetus. She covered her head with her arms and began to shake like she was sobbing.

Naruto took an initiative step toward the bed, though he wasn't at all sure what he could do to help. After all, no one ever soothed his bad dreams away.

The kyuubi watched as Sasuke leaned further forward over the bed until he was hovering directly above Hinata, close enough for his breath to disturb the wispy knots of flyaway hair that sprouted from her head. His exhalations were heavy and fast, almost as if he had been running laps around the girl instead of standing next to her.

The Uchiha relieved one of his hands of the burden of holding up his upper body by removing it from the bed railing and brought it out before him, quivering and tentative. "Shh...," he breathed into the shell of her ear as his hand finally made contact. With slow, almost shy motions, he stroked the hand over her forehead and down the length of her hair, hissing condolences in her ear.

Hinata began to calm slowly. Though she didn't unfurl herself from her position, her body became less tense and more at ease as Sasuke trailed the palm of his hand from the side of her face to the base of her neck over and over again.

Though Naruto had thought he'd known his friend better, he couldn't help but sense that this petting was...affectionate. A form of endearment. Loving.

A tingle crept up Naruto's spine at the thought; Sasuke? Loving? 'That's way too gross to even think about...,' the kyuubi vessel decided, shivering again for good measure.

Watching his dark, creepy, too-cool-for-the-hoardes-of-girls-that-chase-him-around friend petting Hyuuga Hinata – one of the only girls in the entire village who had never shown any obsessive, sadistic tendencies towards him – was almost too much for Naruto to sto –

As if the proverbial lightbulb had suddenly flickered to life above Naruto's head, he came to a (rather startling) conclusion; 'Sasuke...likes...Hinata.'

Sasuke didn't look away from the comforted Hinata until Naruto collapsed to the floor, shaking an accusing finger at the out-of-character avenger. "YOU LIKE HINATA!" he screeched, scooting away from the bed by propelling his feet against the floor and sliding on his hindquarters.

The sound of Sakura's voice through the closed door – which had been constant since her departure a few minutes beforehand – was suddenly absent in the background.

Naruto had a split-second glimpse of Sasuke's eyes wide as saucers before he was pinned to the floor, an unnecessarily strong hand clamped over his mouth, and he got to see them up close.

"Shut the hell up, dobe!" Sasuke hissed, throwing a wary glance over his shoulder. Naruto snuck a peek from beneath the Uchiha's arm; Hinata had rolled over again, but there was nothing about the steady rise and fall of her chest that suggested she had woken up.

"Mmph...," Naruto attempted to say through Sasuke's hand.

Sakura's voice started squawking again, this time at an unusually high pitch. "Scream? What scream?" she screeched, the laugh that followed verging on maniacal.

"Don't scream like that, you moron!" Sasuke whispered, flicking his eyes to the door where they could hear the ANBU asking Sakura if she needed a healer.

"Buph...," Naruto, fed up with trying to relay his words through the filter of Sasuke's hand, slid his tongue out from between his lips and washed the Uchiha's palm with his own saliva. Repulsed, Sasuke pulled back, staring at his hand as if it had developed a deadly rash. Naruto took the opportunity to speak freely, "But it's true! You do like Hinata-chan, don't you?"

"What the hell makes you think that, dobe?" Sasuke growled, wiping his hand on the front of Naruto's shirt before rolling off his chest. He settled on the floor a couple feet away, still looking a little ill.

"Well...," Naruto began, glancing at Hinata one more time to make sure that she was, indeed, still asleep. Finding her even breathing and untroubled face satisfactory, he continued, "The way you were...petting her was pretty...erm...well, you know."

Sasuke didn't look at Naruto as he answered, "It wasn't like that. My mother used to...pet me when I woke up from a nightmare. That's all."

"Yeah, okay, but then why did you sneak in here in the first place?" Naruto asked, finding yet another fact to support his case from Sasuke's odd behavior. "It's not like you ever visit me or Sakura when we get hurt."

"You," Sasuke spat, "heal almost instantly and Sakura is a medic-nin. That's completely different."

"How about that weird fight we had in Ichiraku?" Naruto was beginning to feel a bit queasy with how much evidence stacked up against Sasuke.

Knowing that his best friend had been crushing on Hinata all day made Naruto wonder how when it had started. A week ago? A year? Could Sasuke have been obsessing over Hinata for even longer...? There was no way of knowing the feelings of a guy who'd had a stick up his ass since before puberty. Besides, Naruto didn't think he wanted to delve too far back into history for more proof. He was close to losing his ramen already.

Swallowing a rising tide of bile, Naruto finished his thought. "We don't fight over Sakura like that. Well," he amended, "you don't."

His own argument inspired another bulb to flick on above his head, this one burning with more brilliancy than the last; if Sasuke liked Hinata, then that meant he didn't like Sakura. If he didn't like Sakura, then that meant that Sakura didn't have a chance. If Sasuke were to start dating Hinata, then Sakura would realize that she was wasting her time on Sasuke and run right...to...

'Me!' Naruto's inner voice cheered, dancing around in a party hat with fireworks bursting behind him. 'If I set up Sasuke with Hinata, then Sakura will have no choice but to settle for – I mean, fall in love with me!'

Sasuke was taking more time to come up with a counter-argument this time, adding more proof to the already enormous pile of evidence supporting Naruto's theory. In the end, Sasuke only managed to snort, "Feh."

With a Cheshire grin spread across his face, Naruto bounced in place with ecstatic energy. He wasted no time in inquiring, "So, you gonna ask her out, or what?"

"Why should I?" Sasuke demanded, a startled flush bleeding onto his cheeks. In his usual way, he broke eye contact with Naruto and stared elsewhere in a vain attempt to avoid the issue. "It's not like I want to."

Naruto tilted his head to the side, one eyebrow lifted in disbelief. "You don't?"

"Do you have fur in your ears, dobe?" Sasuke burned his gaze to the wall. Naruto could have sworn that he saw a few paint chips flake off and fall to the floor, scorched at the edges. "I said I wasn't interested."

Naruto looked to Hinata; cute face, pretty hair, huge boo – er, eyes. She seemed alright to him. Turning back to Sasuke, Naruto had to ask, "Why not?"

Sasuke drew one knee up to his chest and draped an arm over it in an obvious attempt to seem like his usual aloof self. "None of your business."

Naruto recoiled with a dramatic expression of disgust. "You're not gay, are you?"

Sasuke's eyes opened wide before he snarled, "No! What the hell makes you think that?"

"Well, after you've been chased by so many girls for so long without ever dating any of them, a guy starts to wonder – "

"I'm not gay," Sasuke repeated firmly.

Naruto exhaled a sigh of relief. "Good, cause I want you to know that I don't swing that – "

A finalizing punch to the jaw silenced the rest of the words that Naruto had been intending to say. "God, you never shut up, do you?" Sasuke grunted, withdrawing his fist.

Naruto sat back up, rubbing the blackening patch on his face. "So why don't you want to date Hinata-chan, then? It's not like she's taken, or anything," the kyuubi vessel reasoned, hoping for the sake of his functioning organs that neither Kiba nor Shino had made some type of move without him knowing about it. "I mean, yeah, she's not exactly my type, but she's not bad to look at. And I hear that some guys like the innocent, virginal thing."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed into a glare that promised a painful death.

Naruto waved his hands around placatingly and backpedaled, "N-not that I think you're going to take advantage of Hinata-chan, or anything." 'I hope not, anyway.'

"Look, I'm not interested in dating any girls. They're annoying, selfish, psychotic and a complete waste of time," Sasuke said, as if this settled the matter entirely. "A girl would get in the way of my training."

Naruto ventured to speak on Hinata's behalf, "But Hinata-chan isn't – "

"Besides," Sasuke interrupted, glaring hard at a spot on the floor. "She likes...someone else."

"Really? Who?"

"No one."

"But you just said..."

"Never mind."

"Um...okay, in that case, I still don't see the problem," Naruto scratched his head, utterly confused. "Every girl in this village would be willing to bow down and lick your shoes for a date. Hell, they might even agree to date me for a chance to go out with you!"

For some reason, Sasuke shifted his glare to fix upon Naruto. The burning desire to beat, strangle and eviscerate the kyuubi vessel swirled around in his irises just like the marks of the Sharingan.

Naruto's smile stretched into a grin; the jealousy thing seemed to be the way to go.

"You know, now that I look at her without that sweater on...," Naruto trailed off suggestively, sliding mischievous blue eyes over to the girl sleeping soundly on the bed. He allowed his ogling stare to linger on the hefty endowments that jiggled on her chest whenever she exhaled. Man, that gown was paper thin! (All the better to see her in.) "Hinata-chan's pretty cute. If you don't want her, maybe I should – "

With one hand, Sasuke reached out and grabbed Naruto by the front of his windbreaker, dragging him forward so that they were nose-to-nose with each other. "No," Sasuke growled, his eyes flickering from black to red for a brief moment.

"That's what I thought," Naruto grinned, his whiskers twitching triumphantly. "So, are you going to ask her out before she leaves the hospital or wait until she gets out?"

With a frustrated snarl, Sasuke threw Naruto backwards to land flat on his back. "Will you drop this stupid idea of yours? I have no interest in fraternizing with some girl."

Naruto slid his body closer to Sasuke, cupping his hand around his mouth to whisper, "Don't tell me that the heartthrob of Konoha is afraid of asking a girl for a date...?" He waggled his eyebrows at Sasuke, snickering openly.

The Uchiha avenger's cheeks lit up in a light blush. "Shut up."

"Don't worry, I'll help," Naruto offered, slapping a hand to his chest as if he were giving Sasuke a solemn vow. "Unlike you, I've had to work for my girls."

"Tch," Sasuke snorted, wrinkling his nose in a sneer. "What do you know about women?"

"You forget, I'm the number one student of the pervy-senin," Naruto's grin was luminescent in the overhead florescent lighting. "He knows everything about babes!"

"...I'm filled with such confidence."

— — —

Authors Notes: Seriously, you're not getting more than ten chapters out of me (if that). I really mean it this time.

This chapter is a little longer than usual, probably because it's the most pivotal part of the plot. Yeah, I'm going in the cliche matchmaker direction, but I figure it's twisted enough to be somewhat original; Naruto's only helping to get Sasuke out of the game for Sakura's heart, Jiraiya's "techniques" will be involved, and who knows how Sakura's going to be dealing with all of this...

Shoot me if I'm being too unoriginal. There's no point in living if I am. (No, just kidding; I value myself for more than just fanfiction.)

Sadly, this chapter is also un-beta'd.

. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) .

– Love can be black and white. SasuHina.