A/N: Only one thing to say in my defense. If y'all kill me, you won't find out what's gonna happen next!

Chapter V

Sasuke woke the next morning in a much better disposition than the day before. He didn't knock over all the books in his possession, he didn't drop his milk when he ate his breakfast, and he didn't have any schoolwork to do.

If he were in less control of his thoughts, he would've said he was actually having a good day.

After he ate breakfast, he began looking over his finances: balancing his checkbook, and other various dealings with his small sum of money. He figured that if he were to continue working the hours that he already was, he'd be able to eventually quit one of his jobs and still go to school, living off the other. He may also eventually gain some free time.

In his bank account, he calculated that with the interest gathered in the next couple of years, continuing with the salary he's been earning, he'd have enough money in his account to pay for the next three years of schooling by the end of the summer.

And this was definitely looked forward to, free time. He didn't want to completely burn out before he was twenty, and if he continued the way he was going, that is exactly what would happen. And he really didn't want to outlive his brother only to develop ulcers or die from an early heart attack caused by stress.

As soon as that thought crossed his mind, however, he abruptly stood up and put that particular stressor away. It wasn't that he was poor, and money was an extreme stressor; if worse came to worst, he could borrow money from his foster family. They weren't rich, but they lived comfortably and would be happy to lend him the money, if he asked. Except that he was too proud to ask for money. He was an Uchiha, after all, and Uchiha's don't ask for money.

So Sasuke's day was still looking up as he locked the door after him after deciding to take a walk. After all, it was the nicest day they've had after a long winter and Sasuke was never one to pass up a walk in the nice weather.

There was just something alluring about the clear skies and a cool breeze to him. The quiet serenity of a walk in the park always helps him organize his thoughts. Not that his thoughts were often out of his control, but it was just relaxing to know it did.

But what was most certainly not relaxing was a bright blonde interrupting his train of thought and personal space bubble in one fell swoop.

So Sasuke's tone wasn't exactly nice when he asked, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Yeash, your such a bastard," Naruto replied good-naturedly, apparently now immune to both the Uchiha's bark and bite. "You looked lonely walking all by yourself, so I thought I'd join you."

Sasuke glared, but raised an eyebrow. He wasn't feeling particularly lonely. He was felling pretty peaceful, though. Surprising even himself, he capitulated, with conditions. "Fine, you can join me." At the incredulous look, he laid his demands. "If you can keep quiet. Perfectly, blissfully silent."

Naruto opened his mouth to reply, but thought better of it and instead nodded with a grin. They walked in silence, admiring the lovely spring weather. Sasuke was immensely surprised that the blonde even knew the word quiet and even more so that he was able t act out the definition.

Sasuke glanced down at his watch and paused. They had been walking for almost a half-hour -in complete silence. He sighed noiselessly and opened his mouth.

"I have to go; I need to stop by my apartment before heading to the hospital. I'll see you there," and he walked off, saluting a peace sign, not waiting for an answer.

An outraged squawk followed by a hissed quiet, "Bastard," caused Sasuke to smirk in amusement, hidden from everyone save nature.

Within minutes he was plugging his key into the door and pushing it open. He didn't bother with closing it -he'd be leaving in a few minutes anyway.

He quickly gathered his work shirt and nametag, along with a bottle of water and a granola bar and stuffed them into his small backpack. As he couldn't get the entire weekend off of work, he would be going directly from the hospital to work at Java Sounds. If he was lucky, he'd be able to sneak out from the hospital early so that he wouldn't be late to work.

One could only hope.

A shuffling sound from the open door alerted Sasuke to the presence of a stray. Person, that is.

Sasuke shook his head of it's previous thoughts and walked to the door. A growl was heard when he spotted the sheepish creature backing away, hands raised innocently. All previous thoughts of possible almost acquaintances flew from his mind when he took in the blonde's guilty look.

"What, pray tell, do you think you're doing?" the menacing growl was heard. He could sort of understand the blonde's curiosity with him, always being as enigmatic as possible, but he liked his privacy, damn it! He needed his privacy!

"Heh-heh, oops?" was all he got in return. It took every ounce of his self-restraint to not strangle the blonde on the spot. In the back of his mind, he was proud of his obvious self-restraint, but this thought was quickly being out-shined by the strong urge to kill this annoying nuisance. The urge was, slowly but surely, drowning out common sense at this point.

"I was curious, okay?" Naruto said, obviously oblivious to the waning self-restraint of the Uchiha in front of him. How was he to know he was mere words, mere minutes, away from sure annihilation? "You're always so secretive, so I thought maybe I'd follow you home to see-"

"Stalk me?" He didn't raise his voice, but it was powerful all the same.

"No!" Naruto shouted indignantly. "I wasn't hiding; you must've been too preoccupied to notice me following you, that's all. Plus, you're always so quiet, it wasn't like you were about to invite me over, so I took it upon myself to invite myself."

Somehow the blonde gained courage during his little speech, and it was the courage that calmed the unrivaled Uchiha rage, if only just a little. He was no longer close to loosing his cool, doing something he may or may not regret. He was, however, still furious, though no longer in such a blind rage.

"It changes nothing. You," he restrained himself from poking the blonde in the chest, "still followed me to my home, with no respect for my privacy. You think something like that is proper etiquette?"

The blonde didn't bother to answer, because he hadn't heard. He was too busy looking curiously around the studio apartment. "Wow, this place is tiny. I sort of thought you'd live in a big fancy mansion with your family." Naruto didn't notice he'd done the taboo, in mentioning the "f-word". He continued on with rambling about how small his place was and so seemingly out of character it was. He didn't even notice the once again darkening aura surrounding the Uchiha.

"Naruto," he cut off the blonde abruptly, who looked at him in confusion.

"What?"

"Just shut the hell up and leave," he said with an angry leer.

Naruto blinked confusedly at the malice and hate in Sasuke's tone, but had enough sense when to know to push his luck, and he was definitely pushing it. He backed out of the apartment that slammed with a resounding snap as soon as his toes cleared the threshold, all the while stammering apologies he didn't know what for.

He frowned at the door for a minute, but the metaphorical light bulb blinked on and he snapped his fingers. "I'll ask Kakashi!"

Sasuke had never before been so out of control of his own emotions before. Yes, he'd always never been able to fully reign in his rage, but usually he had enough bearings to be able to hide it.

He had not meant to loose it so much in front of Naruto, which was why he was able to be so rude and not care. There was just something about the blonde that made him much more quick to temper than anyone else.

He put his pack that he held in a vice-like grip on his floor and sat cross-legged. He'd meditate for a few minutes before meeting the blonde again.

He'd make sure he was in control of himself the next time they met.

It took less than five minutes for Naruto to sprint to the perverted professor's apartment. And the only reason he knew where the man lived was because one day he'd refused to have class in the school and instead invited the entire class to his apartment.

It was weird, but that's just how the man was.

A series of quick knocks followed by an apology for barging in on a Sunday morning, and Naruto was led by a bemused, but amused, Kakashi into his living room.

"And to what do I owe this pleasure, Mr. Uzumaki?" Kakashi asked, after just a moment's silence.

"You know Sasuke, right? Better than most, I mean?" Naruto began, trying to get a feel of the situation, if Kakashi could really answer some of his questions.

"I've known him for quite a while, if that's why you're asking. But why?" Kakashi countered, a strange light, gone unnoticed by Naruto, entering his eyes.

"Well, I was following him home this morning, after we'd accidentally bumped into each other at the park," Naruto started, conveniently leaving out the walking together part. The man didn't need to know everything. "But so I followed him home, to this really tiny apartment by the way, and he got seriously pissed. That I can kind of understand, but after I began talking about it, he got even madder and almost literally kicked me out. What was that all about?"

"Huh, I don't know. He is a very private person. Maybe it was in what you said. What did you say?" Kakashi asked, genuinely gaining interest in the subject.

"Oh, I don't remember! I said something about how I didn't expect that he'd be living in such a tiny place all alone, and that he'd be living in a mansion with his family, or something. I don't see what would have made him freak out so badly…" he trailed off.

Kakashi nodded, enlightened. "There's your problem. Sasuke's a little… sensitive, I guess is the right word, when the topic is about family. He doesn't, well, have much of one. But that's all I can tell you. The rest you're going to have to find out from him yourself. I'm not really the one that should be talking about something so personal. Plus, he'd be really pissed at me if I told you."

Naruto nodded in understandment, but it still didn't take away all the confusion and questions he had. If anything, it just added to them.

Just who was Sasuke Uchiha, and what were his secrets?

The silence was awkward and tense as the two college students met by the flowering tree in front of the hospital, about a half-hour since their last encounter. One sporting an anxious and apologetic look, while the other wore his normal indifference mask.

"I'm really sorry for stalking you and whatever it was that I said to offend you." Naruto didn't bother to mention his little trip to Kakashi's for purely self-preservational reasons. That and Kakashi made him swear not to mention it to Sasuke, as he feared for his own safety.

Sasuke just waved a slightly impatient hand with a blank face. "Whatever; it doesn't matter."

Naruto gaped at the indifference in his voice before replying. "Who are you and what have you done with the real Sasuke?"

Sasuke narrowed his eyes, the only sign of his slowly growing annoyance. An eye twitch, but tone still not changing, he said, "I'm going to pretend you didn't seriously just say that. Now let's go before we're late."

"No siree! I'm not gonna let some imposter go in there. There's no way you can be Sasuke. He was pissed and I'm sure he wouldn't have gotten over being so angry, so quickly. Not a chance!"

"Just because I'm not showing it, doesn't mean I'm not angry. It just means I was going to let it slide, if you would stop bringing it up," Sasuke said, voice lowering slightly to cover the quiver of anger that would have been evident, had be been talking normally. But he took a deep breath and counted to ten, calming him effectively.

Naruto's mouth opened to a wide, "O" and he nodded vigorously. "Yep, you're definitely Sasuke. Same bastard attitude," he added under his breath before continuing. "Okay, we can go in now, sorry about that…"

"Tch, whatever," was the only reply the blonde received as Sasuke walked past him and into the hospital. Naruto scowled as he raced to catch up with Sasuke's long gait, all the while muttering under his breath about annoying, quiet bastards who think themselves better than everyone else.

"Welcome to torture session two, my pretties," Tsunade smirked creepily when they reached the nurses station. She noted the sour mood the two were already in and sighed at the predictability of this occurrence. Really, were they college students or first graders, she wondered.

Sasuke had a small frown accompanied by crossed arms, while Naruto had a full-blown scowl and huffed every time his eyes drifted to his partner. Tsunade rolled her eyes at the childish behavior and cleared her throat.

"I don't know where to put you two today, so you two have the amazing job of cleaning the nurses station! Have fun with that," and she was gone, unwilling to deal with any bellyaching from the teens.

They turned to look at their daunting task. Both groaned, noting the huge piles of messy charts, and other random crap that has accumulated since the last time it was cleaned.

Unsure as to why, Sasuke spoke up. "For the record, I'm feeling inclined to blame you for this."

Naruto turned his incredulous eyes to the Uchiha picking up an old half-eaten doughnut and dropping it in disgust. "Why?! I didn't do anything!"

"I know," he answered and almost snorted at the blonde's confused look. "It just felt like the right thing to say, given our current situation. Plus, you're better to be around when you're angry, by not talking incessantly."

"Bastard!"

A/N: Okay, this is definitely not some of my better work. And it's so short! But I had the worst case of writer's block that I just had to push past. This chapter was like two weeks late, and I'm really sorry that it took SO LONG. That and I haven't really been in a "Naruto" mood. I got Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, the video game, and that was so amazing, it took me less than two days to finish it (16 hours?). And then I got the movie, Advent Children, which is easily my most favourite movie of all time; I've watched it over fifteen times since I've had it, which is about two weeks. What can I say, I'm obsessed!

I WILL update before I leave to go on vacation, and we're leaving on the twelfth. Thanks everyone for all the reviews!

One last thing, I got a new FF account, and I have posted a couple of one-shots (2 at the moment) that I've had on my computer. PM me or something if you want it.