19 | burnished harmony
{naruto}
A ringing cut through the comfort of the bedroom that was silently bathing in the faint, early light. The chill had dissipated and a warmth had sunken into the bones of the two figures lying tangled in the sheets.
The frosted window against which all the bottles of paint were stacked filtered muted patches of sunshine, they grew brighter and stronger with every passing cloud. Sasuke's bare back was dappled in a variety of muted colours reminiscent of a stained glass masterpiece and it made Naruto want to paint it.
It dawned on Naruto that if he had to choose only one reason for waking every morning, the best one, without a doubt, would have to be to watch the different hues dance back and forth as Sasuke breathed slow and lazy.
Distantly Naruto might have realised that the ringing had come to a stop but he'd lost himself in his musings.
He'd happily spend all morning, every morning watching the dynamic kaleidoscope slowly migrate across the expanse of pale skin down to Sasuke's magnificent rear with the aid of the rising sun. The design rippled as Sasuke stifled a yawn against Naruto's abdomen.
The ringing started up again and Sasuke groaned.
"Who the fuck..." Sasuke's arms slipped around either side of Naruto's waist and tightened. He pressed his cheeks closer as he grumbled against Naruto's stomach. "...invented cell phones? And where do I find the motherfucker?"
Naruto's soft chuckle vibrated right into Sasuke's head, maybe disturbing a few marbles loose. "All cell phones? Or just the first one? Because if you want to find them all that would turn into a long-winded and wasteful vendetta. And, personally, although I am completely biased, I'd rather you stay right where you are."
"Too early, too chatty." Sasuke murmured plaintively. The swirling tattoo print was right under his head and the scattered black locks of hair of various lengths made it look like Sasuke had a dark, hypnotic halo.
Naruto ran an appreciative hand down Sasuke's back, and up his side, creating a ripple effect as his hand changed colour with the light.
Sasuke's lips brushed against Naruto's belly button for a moment before Naruto slid out from under him and Sasuke scolded the loss with disappointed humming. The sheets slid off the bed with a soft rustle as Naruto went to the bathroom looking for a pair of pants.
"Oh hell, it's the boss!" Naruto said as he returned to the room. Pausing to take note of the pants in the stained light. "No, wait, these are your pants… so technically, it's your brother calling."
"Fuck it, I'll call back later." Sasuke murmured as he reached for the lost sheets and crooked a finger at him.
Naruto padded back with a growing smile, the cool wooden boards almost silent under his feet as he crawled back under the sheets Sasuke had spread out again.
"G'morning…" Sasuke whispered as he went back to the spiral tattoo, tracing its pattern with his lips, smiling as he watched the abdomen under his mouth go taut.
Naruto couldn't contain his smile even as he squirmed a little to make Sasuke's lips wander off the inked path.
Tan fingers combed through dark hair, nails softly scraping against the scalp and Sasuke practically purred, draping over Naruto, relishing the feel of sleep-kissed skin after the torrential downpour had subsided.
"Breakfast?"
Sasuke shook his head, brushing his nose against Naruto's stomach in the action, one hand coming up to cover Naruto's lips. "Shh. Sleep."
Naruto chuckled against the fingers, kissing them a couple of times before Sasuke took his hand away, tucking it under Naruto's back.
Growls and barking roused Naruto from slumber this time. An upset Kurama meant he hadn't attacked yet. Which begged the question of 'why not?'
Sasuke, who still had his cheek resting on Naruto's stomach, huffed and held on tighter when Naruto jostled him as he sat up. Naruto sighed softly, moving slowly to flip Sasuke to be laying his head on a pillow.
"Nar...?" Sasuke pushed up onto his elbow immediately despite being unable to open his sleepy eyes.
"Sh." A hand pressed to Sasuke's lips silencing him. Naruto was looming over him, pressing him back into the mattress gently. "Listen to me." His voice held an urgency that alerted Sasuke's drowsy mind. Dark and heavy eyes blinked open. "Stay here. And stay quiet. Don't come out no matter what you hear, okay?"
Sasuke grabbed Naruto's bicep with a tight grip when he started to pull away. A cold tendril of fear slithered down his throat unwelcome as poison. It settled uncomfortably deep in his stomach, convincing him that he'd lose the little happiness he found after just a taste. "Don't take your gun."
Naruto let out a small snort "What, you'd rather I take a knife instead?"
"No." Sasuke sat up to groggily rubbed his face into Naruto's shoulder, reaching an arm around him, ready to cling for life. "No, fuck. Just- just… Don't- Don't shoot yourself."
"Thanks for all that faith, little Uchiha." Naruto dropped a quick sloppy kiss on his face, almost on the ear, before untangling himself and reaching into his bureau for the gun. Belatedly realising he needed pants he went for Sasuke's sitting abandoned at the foot of the bed.
The kitchen lights were on, reflecting off the light grey tiles in all their artificial glory, the blinding fluorescence created a sickly pale contrast to the backdrop of the faint early light, they were accompanied by the sound of a mug and a spoon clinking against each other.
A head of wild, red hair stood out. The man was sat on the countertop, beside the microwave, a few boxes lay open and scattered beside him as he calmly sipping from a teacup, another one sat on the island table.
"I made a cup for you too..."
"Yeah, forgive me if I don't drink from it," Naruto muttered, making his way across the living room, pulling out his gun and placing it on the kitchen island between them, his own offering in exchange for the liquid in the teacup.
The redhead raised an eyebrow. At first glance he looked young and pretty, there was a timelessness to his face, as though he slept in a cryogenic chamber every night while wearing healing clay masks. But the tired lines under his eyes belie his age and stress.
"Rude." he remarked, "You don't actually assume I'd choose to kill you." The man clicked his tongue in disappointment. "In your own home?"
Naruto's left eyebrow twitched in annoyance. "There's no love lost between us, old friend. I suggest you leave the way you came right now because I'd rather not have to kick you out the window." Naruto braced himself against the counter, holding back from doing just what he'd warned about.
"I know-" The other man sighed, putting his teacup down beside him.
His face visibly aged with tension as he fiddled with the boxes beside him, replacing the lid on a few, and placing them back in the cabinets he had dug through. He fidgeting in a way that didn't look very restless but was every bit so.
"I know I- I've troubled you often about coming back and I'm sorry about that… I was just playing around. Having a little fun… You know how it is… I was just teasing, Nar. Things were a little boring and you never failed to prove entertaining..." The redhead man leaned forward, supporting his elbows on his thighs, his hands hanging between his knees, his face looked grave. Maybe he'd mistaken healing clay for plaster the night before. "Now I see that I should have counted my blessings instead of wishing for some action."
Naruto was puzzled, if this was a new approach they were taking then he didn't like it. "Apologising isn't going to change anything."
"Naruto, we need you."
Naruto's hands tightened into fists. How could he say no to need? But he's been played too many times ad this time he has something in his new life to fight for. "No! Fuck that, Sasori. You helped me and I helped Gaara in return just like you told me to. We're even."
"Okay, then let me call in a new favour and I'll owe you one." Sasori sounded reasonable enough. But he always sounded reasonable. Even when a deal goes south and he has to dive into his car window, to escape bullets, as it drives by while he's in drag.
"Sasori, if Gaara finds out you're here he will insist we move… This time to another planet probably..."
"You want me to beg? I'll beg."
"Don't bother." Naruto dropped onto a high stool at the breakfast bar, shoulders hunched. "I told you I was out! I'm out of the business, Sasori. For good. I've told you one hundred times before and I'll tell you over and over again if I have to. I am out. The end."
"Your new business will suck you dry, what will you do then?" Sasori hopped off the counter and stepped closer to the breakfast bar. "When your legs fail you and your youth leaves and you turn into a has-been?"
"I don't know, sell pancakes? Or shampoos? I might try a music career, this voice only gets better with age, yanno?" Naruto sniffed the drink in front of him. If they're trying to get him back they're hardly going to poison him now. A second sniff made him reconsider, it definitely smells like poison.
"Ah yes," Sasori tapped his fingers rhythmically on the closest surface he could find. "Nagato still has people on the lookout in Thailand."
"Aw, a whole country invaded by Nagato? For little ol' me?"
"Why Thailand?" Sasori asked.
"Training under someone who wants to protect rather than destroy is a very different experience. It helped me accept who I was and who I could be."
Sasori smiled. "Come back to the fold, Naruto. We need you."
Naruto shook his head, still not comprehending what Sasori was still doing in his kitchen. "No. No fold for me. I remain unfolded. No refolding, no going back, only forward." His shaking hands clasped behind the back of his neck.
"You could fix everything you thought was broken in our little world," Sasori said, a flicker of something in his eyes, something akin to the face of a player before he drops a winning hand.
There was a moment of silent interaction. A clash between eyes of stubborn blue and pleading hazel.
"Please," Sasori added finally. Standing there, across Naruto, he was looking entirely too small for an infamous drug lord - his voice sounded even smaller.
Had he not been eating? Was he indulging in his own goods? Did anyone know? Did anyone in the fold care? What if Naruto was his last hope?
Well fuck.
When Naruto didn't reply, Sasori took it as a good sign. He slipped around the island table to stand beside Naruto. "Nagato wants you to succeed him."
Naruto inhaled sharply, stilling while his heart beat out a bongo in his ears. He managed a barely audible, "What?"
"He's dying, Naruto."
Naruto tipped forward, suddenly feeling off-balance. The world around him felt like it was swaying.
A lone leaf in the gusty wind of change.
He leaned heavily against the counter, his composure finally breaking at the seams.
He didn't want to go back but the situation was nothing less than complicated. He didn't approve of a life of crime but that didn't mean he wished death on any of them.
After all, they had once given him purpose, taught him to fight an survive the way he did, one trick a day, one day at a time.
"How?" he creaked out the question.
"Cancer." Sasori put a strong hand on Naruto's shoulder as if to help steady him. "Yahiko takes him to his treatment and he wears a wig now, he looks a little anaemic but Yahiko is the one that looks like walking death… he's taking it pretty hard, he doesn't show it but there are somethings that show on their own." Sasori nudged the proffered cup towards Naruto a bit and leaned on the island bar.
Naruto didn't hesitate. He took a sip by dipping his head close to the table and barely lifting the mug with shaky hands. He made a face as soon as the liquid touched his tongue. "This is straight-up vodka with a tea bag."
"Don't knock it, just knock it back." Sasori barely batted an eyelash, his face was still solemn despite the lightness in is tone.
"You always were the worst influence. Cold alcoholic tea and gateway drugs first thing in the morning, what next?" Naruto downed the drink despite the grumbling.
"Naruto, we need you." His hand tightened on Naruto's shoulder.
"I can't, I'm going clean, Sasori. Why can't you let me be?"
"Because Nagato and Yahiko want you!" The rise in Sasori's voice surprised Naruto and it surprised Sasori too apparently because he immediately let go and sat down on a high stool, suddenly a little blanched.
It was becoming clear just how stressful and desperate things were for the syndicate. Their kingpin was at risk and his right-hand man was subject to loss and all the loyalists were probably shaken by the unease in the oligarchy.
Everyone looked up to Yahiko and Nagato, the only reason their team lasted long was that, together, they were an unstoppable team and their revolutionaries were a tense mish-mash of mean, mouthy, temperamental, insane, well-oiled pieces of a flexible machine.
But with the loss of any one of them, the other pieces would be in no way to work smoothly.
They were counting on Naruto to fill the gap again, be the new version of an old part and work even as he was being moulded.
But Naruto had made his decision a long time ago and he wasn't wavering. "Nagato can't have me just because he has cancer. If anything he has more reason to make things right, right now."
"How can you say something like that, Naruto?" Sasori looked like Naruto had declared God was evil.
"It's death, it takes you at some point. Now that he knows when it's his time, he can make things right before he goes."
"We could help you find Minato." Sasori's face had tightened but his voice was calm and careful, clearly expecting something.
Naruto jumped up from his stool, sending it crashing into a side table, several photo frames tumbled to the floor, inciting growling from a restless Kurama who hopped onto the sofa and over the back of it to skid to a stop on Sasori's other side, trapping him in between them.
"You fucking bastard! Don't you dare say that name again! As if I'll ever make a deal with you for the rest of my life! You promised me that you'd leave me well enough alone when I earned my freedom and I did more than what our deal entailed. And how did you repay me? By ambushing me in every city, wherever you could pull your strings. You made it clear that I'll never escape your sight for long and hell maybe I never will. You can hang over my head like a damn guillotine all you fucking want but you can't make me do anything I don't want to no matter how far you chase and corner me and no matter which one of you dickbags are choking on a fucking tic tac-"
"Naruto?" Sasuke stood at the end of the corridor. A deep frown on his face.
Naruto turned to look at him and found he could breathe again, a pile of anchors lifted off his shoulders, his fury dissipating quick.
"Oh." Sasori's face had been washing from pale to red to green during Naruto's rant but as he looked over at Sasuke, his face was a clear porcelain mask. "You have a guest."
Sasori then looked around, as if wondering why there seemed to be no evidence of a guest but he only spotted Naruto's shirt and jacket from the previous night on the stool beside him. "Were you leaving, Mr?"
Sasuke folded his arms across his bare chest, a defiant lift to his chin and a challenging lift to his eyebrows, he was bracing his feet in a fighter's stance. Attitude flaring to life in every line of the man, no longer a shadow but a darkness so pervasive Naruto found it concerning at the very least. "Definitely not before you."
"No. He's staying. It was you who was leaving." Naruto was suddenly very upset that Sasori had ruined his morning after breakfast with Sasuke by delivering bad news of his one distant male relative only in an attempt to manipulate him into going back to a life of law-breaking and hell.
Sasori blinked at Sasuke then dismissed him entirely as if he was a piece of furniture or a pet parrot that had taken to speaking nonsense. "I see… So is this a one-time thing or…?"
Naruto grabbed a hold of Sasori's collar and lifted him up from his seat. The stool sliding smoothly on the tiles with a muffled sound. "Get the fuck out of my house!"
"Temper, temper, temper." Sasori scolded, unaffected by the circumstances.
"Naruto, who is this?" Sasuke asked taking a step into the room, he was wearing those tight, tight jeans Naruto had donned the night before and they clung to his hips in a way so delicious it angered Naruto that Sasori was there to see.
Sasori chuckled in amusement as he hung in the shirt Naruto was seconds from tearing. "Who am I? Does he know anything? Does he know about Gaara?"
"He knows more than you at least and Gaara is a private person - if you actually cared you'd bother him and nose around in his love life rather than stalking me and fucking up my morning!"
Sasori raises his eyebrows, having expected anything but that as a response. His eyes turning to Sasuke with renewed interest. "He knows more, does he? Then maybe I could ask him for some help because I'm getting nowhere with you."
"What the actual fuck is your goddamn motherfucking problem? Do you fancy yourself my mom?"
"Well… Family, at the very least."
"Family my ass! You all bullied me the whole fucking time."
"Stop being such a brat, little boy blue. Clearly, you learned all that cursing from Hidan. All that fighting from Kakuzu and all the rebelliousness from Deidara. And if you actually don't give a damn if any of them choke on a Tic Tac then you picked up a lot more of Kisame than I anticipated."
Naruto let go of him and Sasori adjusted his shirt. "Sasori, don't you have drugs to sell?"
"So testy," Sasori got up and walked to the window, side-eyeing Kurama the whole time as the dog stood guard between the kitchenette and the corridor to the bedrooms in which Sasuke lingered in like a pale apparition. A low growl threatened any untoward movement.
"I will take this abuse no longer." Sasori peeked out the window. He then climbed up onto the window seat. "Just remember, some die in action and some die in their bed, which do you want to be? See ya later, little boy blue."
"Please don't." Naruto huffed as the man stepped out onto the window ledge.
Sasori slipped away and Kurama raced up to the window seat, sticking his head out with a barked phrase that almost sounded like, 'and don't come back!'
Even before Naruto could turn to look at him Sasuke was asking, "Naruto, who was that?"
Naruto sighed. "Just my previous employer."
Sasuke's eyebrows shot up. "You have a terrible sense of humour."
"I'm not kidding."
"I'm guessing you didn't part on the best of terms." Sasuke came to the kitchen counter and sat down. His voice strained, "So he's the drug dealer?"
"And my pimp." Sasuke's stony expression had him backpedalling immediately. "Well, he didn't pimp me out or anything... but... he is a pimp… and I know him… so..."
"You fucker!" Sasuke twisted at Naruto's ear and the blond shouted out in equal parts surprise and pain.
"And what that the drug dealer part?" Sasuke demanded.
Naruto didn't reply.
He took Naruto's hand a little too quick and rough. "Look, you have to tell me! At the very least these kinds of things-"
"I'm not an addict, Sasuke! Jeez!" Naruto made a face, his tanned, scarred cheeks still pink from all the yelling. "What kind of face will I show my parents if I return to them addicted?" Naruto winced as if considering his parents' reaction to him having the drug stamp on his resume.
"Naruto," Sasuke said the name with a sharp yet gentle scolding tone.
Naruto looked Sasuke in the eyes. "Do I look like an addict to you?"
Sasuke studied Naruto's steady gaze. "No."
Naruto nodded like that was the responses he expected. "So what do you want for breakfast?"
Sasuke didn't respond.
"I have call time in a couple of hours and you know what? If I don't wash my hair, Ino will beat my ass. How about we save the drug talk after work? Okay?"
Sasuke pouted and Naruto couldn't resist the chance to press a kiss to the pouty lips. "Grilled cheese sandwich for breakfast?"
Ino glared at Naruto for ten minutes until he finally broke.
"I'm sorry."
She sighed, took her sunglasses off and rubbed at her kohl-lined eyes, smudging them into a more grunge look. "Naruto, I'm glad you're having a lot of filthy gay fun with the boss little brother," she grinned at Naruto's red-tinted ears. "But can you at least try and not get love bitten when we have to do a shirtless scene?"
"What shirtless scene?" Naruto sighed. "What am I saying? Most of the scenes are shirtless!"
"You know which shirtless scene, you know the script pretty well by now. It's that gym scene where you meet Kiba." Ino paused. "Come to think of it, this might work…" She turned around and walked out the dressing room yelling for Itachi.
Naruto scrambled to cover up but then realised he'd have to do a shirtless scene in front of the whole crowd, so it didn't matter if he covered up or not. Apart from making it obvious that he had something to hide, it would do nothing for him.
Instead of Itachi and Ino, it was Sai who entered and let out a low whistle. "You look like art."
Naruto didn't know whether to laugh or curl up and die. "Say that to the artist." He replied.
"No, not good art, just art." Sai clarified as he walked a circle around the blond. "Nothing to write home about."
"Who hired you to be the art critic anyway?" Naruto threw his shirt at Sai.
The man caught the grey fabric and smiled his trademark lukewarm smile. "Your… Artist seems to be a possessive man."
"I'm not for sale if that's what you're asking." Naruto stuck his tongue against the inside of his left cheek and softly chewed the muscle, trying to keep from laughing.
"Shame. I could do you justice." Sai remarked, coming to a stop in front of Naruto.
Naruto couldn't tell if that was flirting or a serious comment but either way, it made him snicker, something about Sai's social skills tickled him pink. "No offence, Sai, but you're talking art and I'm talking pleasure. They're not the same thing ."
"Ah... well, that's not true." Sai let a few fingers linger down the path of darkened love bruises. "Art is pain. And often enough, pleasure is also pain. You just need the right ratio..."
Footsteps approached the pair of them, hands getting between them. "Alright, alright, thanks for the wonderful philosophy. Now move the fuck on." Sasuke had entered the room, detached Sai's fingers from the trail they were pursuing, and ushered him out of the room and slammed the door shut, anger marring his calm façade.
Naruto cracked a smile, rushing to diffuse the fire. "He called you an artist...a mediocre one at that."
Sasuke turned to look at Naruto, his brows pinched in incredulity. "Yeah? Well, he's an asshole! What are you doing letting him touch you anyway?"
"I'm an actor a hundred people from the cast and crew touch me in a day, it's part of the job."
Sasuke was breathing hard, apparently worked into a frenzy. "Not. Him."
"Calm down, Sasuke, he touched my shoulder and back not my dick."
Sasuke grabbed a metal and cloth folding chair set up by the mirror and flung it in anger. The collapsible seat, rolled a bit and skidded across the room and fetched up against the far wall, closing shut in defeat.
His fingers curled into a fist and he regulated his breathing before speaking again. "He shouldn't be here touching you at all, nowhere in his job description does it say to touch the actors."
"Sasuke, Sai's an old friend. He means no harm." Naruto let his tone drip soft and sweet as he took a fist in his hand and slowly unclenched the fingers.
"Older than me?"
"No one is older than you, grandpa." Naruto sighed as he worked on the second fist. "It's an old game we play. He hits on me, I hit back, we play along until he gets to the point. I laugh at his new and improved worldview and either agree or disagree. He hands me a backhanded compliment for not being a space case. I call him a dick. He calls me dickless. And then he leaves."
"I don't like him. He reminds me of…" The shutters came down and Sasuke looked away.
"Old or otherwise, Sai is a friend to me, Sasuke." Naruto walked Sasuke across the room to the fold up chair.
He retrieved the chair, careful to lock it in the open position, he sat Sasuke down in the seat and kneeled on the floor before him, leaning forward into Sasuke's lap.
"He was the one who balanced me when my sorrow overshadowed my rage. He constantly teased and mocked me, he was a perpetual annoyance rather than a friend in the start. But soon he turned into the marker of a normal day. A statue in the barren garden of my life."
Sasuke frowned. "Have you told him that?"
"I don't need to. He was there, he saw what happened and what I was and what I became. And he helped me get through it."
Sasuke's eyes widened. The day was turning into an actual excursion into the past. "Does he know Gaara?"
"He knows about him, but they haven't met."
"Who exactly is this Gaara?"
Naruto sighed. "Gaara was my first good deed. He was far out in the same sea that I had been lost in but he didn't have a Sai to help him float. Sasori made me a deal. He'd let me out for good, even help me my education, but in return, I had to save his cousin."
"Does Gaara know that Sasori sent you to him?"
"Maybe? We haven't spoken about it. But Gaara is both, sharp and paranoid."
"Why did Sasori show up today."
Naruto stood up, a tension seizing his head and shoulders. "To tempt me back into hell."
"What were you yelling about?" Sasuke started to get up but Naruto pushed him back into the seat.
The smile on his face was tense but real, like the helpless silence after a terrible verdict. "Don't worry he didn't do a great job. And I have a lot to stay here for."
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Cute. But that's not what I asked."
Naruto threw his hands up in the air. "You say that about everything!"
Sasuke opened his mouth to argue but the door opened and Itachi entered, took one look at Naruto's bruise painted body and let out a bark of disbelieving laughter. "Are you fucking kidding me, Sasuke?"
"Uhh..."
"First, you weren't at home when dad dropped by, leaving me to explain that you hadn't come home last night!" Itachi approached Sasuke slowly, making his little brother jump up and back up. He moved like a predator that had been waiting for the right moment to pounce all night. He had a maniacal glint in his eyes of a man pushed beyond his limit. "And if my morning wasn't excruciating enough already, you come to work with my star looking like that! There is a storm of paps trying to break down the door and you just sit there smug as a bug, you little fucker! Are you trying to sabotage my show?"
"Itachi, calm down." Sasuke backed up even further as Itachi closed in on him.
"And then I fight out my favourite bottle of white Rum is sitting empty in the minibar! Who did that I wonder?"
Sasuke winced. "My bad."
Itachi lunged for Sasuke, grabbing by the shirt a wrestling him into a half Nelson on the floor of the dressing room.
"Holy shit." Naruto, was split, does he pull his boss of his boyfriend? Is it wise to meddle in a battle between brothers?
"Is it wrong to find that extremely hot?" Ino asked Naruto as Sasuke yelled out that he couldn't breathe.
"What is your damn problem, you damn brat! How difficult is it to let me know where the fuck you are going? Did you forget how to pick up a phone? Did you have a brain aneurysm last night and forget what a call back option is?"
"I'm sorry, Aniki, I was a little... preoccupied." Sasuke gasped out, he did seem rather breathless.
Naruto dropped to the floor beside them in an imitation of a push-up, it put him face to face with Itachi. "If I promise to make him check in with you more often can we all put this behind us and go back to our jobs? I really don't want someone, probably Ino, tweeting out a picture of this and then everyone will speculate why you two, the calm, collected, respectable Uchiha boys, were rolling around on the floor of my dressing room."
"Hey!" Ino protested, even though she was holding her phone out in front of her, clearly caught red-handed. "Snitch!"
Itachi pulled away from Sasuke and Sasuke heaved like he'd resurfaced from water. They were both relatively red in the face.
"I'm really sorry about this, Itachi." Naruto tried for a smile as he checked on Sasuke but it looked like a wince. "We had… a busy night and busy morning...uh… there was a lot to talk about… "
Itachi straightened his clothes, dusting himself off as he stood up, his face was still flushed, but whether it was due to the grappling or the frank statement Naruto couldn't tell. "I'm not uncomprehending of your budding romance, Naruto. But I'm sure you've realised that Sasuke is an adult who, despite his wonderful qualities, is too foolish to realise that, as his brother, if I'm interrupting his extended rendezvous, it's for good reasons."
"You could've said that instead of tackling me to the floor."
"Somehow, you only respond to punishments, orokana otōto."
"Okay, I thought this was going too emo and then he said that." Ino turned and zoomed in on Naruto's face a little too much before backing up. "What do you think about that, Naruto?"
Naruto rolled his eyes. "Ino, you're really bringing down the gravity of the conversation here by being a bad camera-woman."
"How about I promise not to post the whole thing?"
Naruto paused to think about it then stuck out his tongue and threw up a peace sign, apparently appeased.
"Aw, cute!" Ino clicked a bunch of pictures and Itachi crowded closer to get a look at what she was doing.
"I hate you all," Sasuke muttered, despondent.
Naruto assisted Sasuke with straightening out his hair. "I basically saved your life, teme, have some gratitude."
Sasuke sucked on his teeth, a sceptical sound he often made, but let Naruto. "Some boyfriend, you are."
"I will have you know that Sakura told me that the latest poll shows that I'm voted the most dateable fresh-face!"
"Yeah, only for the one date."
Naruto's jaw dropped, Ino hissed a sharp intake of breath and Itachi dropped Ino's phone.
The extended pause made Sasuke clench his toes inside his shoes.
"WELL FUCK YOU TOO THEN, YA BASTARD!"
Naruto shoved Sasuke away, clearly offended.
"What, I'm not wrong. They'd all want to date you for the fame or the looks, or just to say they did. They don't care about you the way I do." Sasuke hurried to explain.
Ino whistled out and Itachi sniffed in derision because he was too well-groomed to snort.
"Nice save," Sai commented from the doorway.
Naruto made a face. "I don't believe you. So… go fuck yourself."
"Don't be like that. How many times do I have to say I love you before it becomes fact in your thick skull."
"Is this an Uchiha thing?" Naruto asked Itachi, completely ignoring Sasuke. "Insults instead of affectionate endearments?"
"Yes, it's rather common. My mother calls my father her biggest curse."
Naruto slapped a hand on own his forehead. "Brilliant."
Itachi always delivered any and all wise-cracks with a straight face so it was impossible to know if he was kidding or not. "What do we do? About the scene?"
Itachi hummed in consideration.
"We could do the aftermath scene today," Sai suggested. "Ino, you can make Naruto look less loved up and more beat up, yes?"
"Uh, if you have to ask, you're not invited into this dressing room ever again."
"That sounds like a great idea, Ino," Sasuke remarked, even as he prodded at Naruto's arm to get a reaction out of at the blond who was ignoring him.
Sai pouted, it was an exaggerated disaster, it made him look like he'd gotten the last pick at a build-a-face workshop.
"What the fuck?" Sasuke said.
"Sai, stop." Ino begged.
"Never do that again." Itachi forbade.
"Needs more practice, my dude." Naruto's comment had the other three look at him like he was crazy. "Block the haters out, Sai, none of that negativity, this is a safe space for creators."
"Thank you Naruto, your kindness knows no bounds."
"Ah, shut up. Go annoy someone else." Naruto threw an arm around Sasuke who was a few more cold shoulders from starting to wilt from the lack of his attention. Naruto found it amazing that he could tell now that the seemingly placid man was clearly anxious about their last conversation.
"I will leave." Sai agreed. "But because I have actual work, work that is not practising fake facial expressions in a mirror all day and calling it a job."
"I'm not gonna lie, Sai. You probably should." Naruto called out after him as he left.
Ino muttered to herself as she busied herself by opening up a bunch of cosmetics and separating them into three categories.
When Naruto and Sasuke turned to Itachi they both took an unconscious step back. There was a weird smile on his face as held Ino's phone.
"What is with that face?" Naruto whispered to Sasuke.
"I don't know, but it can't mean anything good." The fairer man replied.