Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, the anime or the manga, or any of its associated characters!

A/N: Chapter 7 already! This has gone by so quickly :O

Welcome Home

Chapter 7: Warming Up

Sasuke practically carried Naruto up the stairs with the way he pushed him. He wanted to get Naruto warm as soon as possible, and that meant getting him dry as soon as possible.

Or, maybe…

"Do you want to take a bath? Like a hot one?"

"Sure, y-yeah," Naruto was obviously still cold and uncomfortable, but Sasuke had blasted the heat in the car and that seemed to help a little.

"Okay," Sasuke said, following him into the bathroom. Naruto pulled the curtain closed and passed him his wet clothes through it, and Sasuke left to go throw everything into the dryer.

He had no qualms in going back to the bathroom afterwards; modesty be damned, he had to make sure his dobe was okay.

Apparently, Naruto had no qualms either, because he had the curtain pulled back and made no move to close it when Sasuke entered. He was slouched so his knees were poking out of the tub, but everything else, up to right below his nose, was covered by the water.

"Is it warm enough?" Sasuke stayed far enough away that he couldn't see in the water—he would still respect Naruto's privacy as much as he could…and now really, really wasn't the time to start fighting his attraction to the blonde again.

Naruto nodded, his eyes drifting closed.

Sasuke hesitated for a moment, and then pooled a towel next to the tub to sit down on. His hangover had, for the most part, passed, but now he was coming down from quite the adrenaline rush. He let out a long sigh, closed his eyes, and let his head rest against the wall.

"Sorry," he heard, and he opened his eyes to see Naruto, head resting against the side of the tub, looking at him with serious eyes. Sasuke felt his heart rate rise.

"It's my fault," Sasuke looked away. He could never lie to those eyes.

Sasuke heard the water splash as Naruto shifted.

"It's your fault I went out in the rain?" Naruto gave a little snort, "like an idiot?"

Sasuke closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them, still looking away.

"I don't—I didn't mean it when I said I didn't want you to live here. I do."

Sasuke was startled when Naruto just…laughed.

"I know that, teme. I was just pissed and wanted to burn the energy off or somethin'."

"You," Sasuke looked at him, "what?"

Naruto just grinned, having shifted so that his arms were folded over the ledge of the tub, and his chin was resting on them.

"I wasn't really thinking," he offered. "Or I would have taken my phone with me…"

"Oh—fuck," Sasuke suddenly remembered he needed to call Sakura before she sent out a search party. Luckily, he still had Naruto's phone.

"Hello—Sasuke? Did you find him?"

"I found him."

He ignored Naruto's curious gaze.

"Thank god. Jesus, Sasuke, don't scare me like that again. Can you pass the phone to him?"

He held out the phone to Naruto.

"Sakura wants to talk to you."

"You talked to Sakura?" Naruto's eyebrows were raised, but he dutifully dried his hands and took the phone. Sasuke didn't answer him.

"Hey," he greeted quietly.

"Uzumaki Naruto, you complete and utter moron."

Sasuke smirked when he saw Naruto cringe. Good—Sakura would make sure he wouldn't do anything like this again.

"Now—I admit I still have no idea what happened, but what I do know is that I had Uchiha—fucking—Sasuke call me in a complete flustered panic, demanding to know if you had come here. First of all, what on earth possessed you to go running off—and second of all, why the fuck didn't you take your phone with you?!"

"I—uh—" Naruto grimaced a little, "sorry, Sakura, I didn't really…think…"

He heard her sigh on the other end.

"Sasuke's still in the room with you, isn't he?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Okay. Then tell me everything later—I assume he must have been some sort of legendary asshole to get you to leave like that."

"Not—not really," he admitted, "it wasn't like that."

"Uh-huh," she didn't sound like she believed him. "Tell me later anyways. For the record, though, PLEASE do not leave me as him with my only way of knowing if you're okay or not—he literally hung up on me as soon as he could and didn't reply until now. I've been running around the house in a complete panic."

"Sorry," he offered again.

"Uh-huh," she said, "you're going to need to pass that on to Lee, too, because he's been trying to calm me down for the past two hours. Anyways, I'll let you and Sasuke get back to yelling at each other or whatever you do when you're alone—but first, you really ought to know that he was convinced we were dating."

"We—what?"

"I don't know. He said something about yesterday. I figured you should know."

"But—you're with Lee—"

Sasuke suddenly really regretted passing the phone to Naruto.

"I know that, you know that—he, apparently, didn't. I don't know. But you should talk to him about it before we get into any misunderstandings, okay? He'll believe you more than he'll believe me."

"Yeah, yeah—okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, cool. Work it out, you two."

"Mhmm," Naruto said noncommittally.

"Glad you're okay, Naruto."

"Thanks, Sakura. Me too," he laughed a little, "I'll talk to you later."

"Okay. Bye!"

"Bye," he hung up, and passed the phone back to Sasuke, but not before giving him an utterly disbelieving look.

"Me and Sakura? Really?"

"I—"

"She started dating Lee like a year ago, you dunce." Naruto had a wide, sleepy grin on his face, and he slumped further down into the water again.

"I assumed they broke up." Sasuke was scowling. Naruto snickered.

"Not likely. Those two are gonna get married and have lots of loud, youthful babies." He giggled to himself again.

"You sound like you're drunk."

"'m just sleepy. Why'd you think we were dating?"

"I—it doesn't matter. It was a misunderstanding."

"What'd we do to misunderstand?" Naruto furrowed his brow, "I guess we were together a lot, but she was try'na help me find you…"

Sasuke felt worse.

Naruto blinked slowly a few times, and then shook his head. He really didn't want to fall asleep in the middle of this; he forced himself to sit up and took a deep breath in.

"Whew," Naruto rubbed at his face. Sasuke very intently looked away from the water droplets sliding down Naruto's chest.

"The water's making me sleepy," Naruto explained unnecessarily, "and you still haven't answered the question."

"Naruto…"

"What? 'm I being annoying again?" He tilted his head from where it leaned on the tile just enough to look at Sasuke with hooded eyes.

"You weren't being annoying," Sasuke was frowning.

"Wasn't I?" His eyes opened just a little wider. "I thought that's what pissed you off."

"No, I was pissed off because I was pissed off. It wasn't anything you did."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"…you're so confusing," Naruto shifted in the water again. "I'm gonna drain out some water. It's getting cold."

"I could boil some water for you, if you'd like," Sasuke offered.

"Nah, that's okay," Naruto had already moved to pull the plug, "I'll just refill it with the hottest this can go."

They didn't talk over the rushing water, but as soon as Naruto turned the tap off, he spun back around to face him.

"You keep distracting me," he said, looking playful and wet and gorgeous and why was Sasuke looking at him—

"Why d'you keep avoiding the question about me and Sakura? I'm more curious about it than anything else—I don't want anyone else to think the same thing, y'know."

"They won't. I just jumped to conclusions, Naruto. It was my fault."

"Sasukeeeee," Naruto whined, "you're just making me even more curious!"

Sasuke sighed.

"Please?"

Sasuke felt incredibly awkward. "It's nothing like—I just…saw the two of you come out of your bedroom. Holding hands." He cleared his throat. "And I jumped to conclusions."

There was a moment of silence, and then Naruto started snickering. Sasuke rolled his eyes, fighting down the embarrassment because really, he deserved to be laughed at.

"You're such a bastard," Naruto flicked water from his hand onto Sasuke face, making Sasuke flinch away. He scowled and wiped at his face. Naruto just smiled fondly.

"You could have just asked, y'know."

Sasuke only shrugged. As if he would ever willingly bring up who Naruto wanted to or was dating.

"I don't like Sakura like that. Not since I met you, anyways."

Sasuke's head snapped up. That had almost sounded like…

"I had a crush on her in middle school. A bit in high school too, I think. I was way over it by the time I got to university and met you." 'And then I fell for you instead, you stupid jerk.'

Sasuke nodded and looked away. He hated how easily his hopes went up.

"Have you ever had a crush?" Naruto leaned up against the side of the tub with a teasing grin.

In a moment of madness, Sasuke spoke.

"Yes."

"Y-yes?!" A bunch of water splashed out of the tub as Naruto adjusted himself to look at Sasuke better. "What—really? Who?"

'You.'

Sasuke just rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'm madly in love," he forced as much sarcasm into his voice as he could, "I can barely sleep because I'm ever so wild with desire—"

"Okay, okay, asshole," Naruto settled back down with a pout, "I get it."

Sasuke just smirked, finding some sort of sadistic pleasure in having the truth be so unbelievable to Naruto that he dismissed it without a thought.

"Well I have a crush," Naruto said with a grin, "and I'm not gonna tell you anything about it. So there."

'Please don't.'

"What a tragedy," Sasuke deadpanned.

"You're all wrinkled," Sasuke continued before Naruto could, "you should get out soon. You've been wet for long enough."

"Ah, yeah, I guess so," Naruto conceded, "okay."

Sasuke nodded and stood, stretching his spine a little. Naruto watched him walk away with sad eyes.

Their partition door was wide open, so when Naruto exited wearing nothing but a towel, Sasuke was able to see the entire, glorious view. The blonde seemed to notice, and he gave Sasuke a sheepish smile.

"I didn't have any dry clothes in there," he explained. Sasuke nodded, eyes hungrily raking up and down Naruto's tanned skin before he forced himself to look away and leave the room.

Naruto watched him for a moment. If he hadn't known any better, he could have sworn that Sasuke had just been…checking him out.

But that was impossible…obviously just wishful thinking on Naruto's part. He sighed softly, eyes downcast.

Sasuke—the guy could be so cold sometimes, and then he would turn around and do something incredibly nice. Like spend two hours driving around in the rain, desperately trying to find Naruto—and then sit with him, next to the bathtub, and offer to boil water just in case the bath wasn't the perfect temperature...

He smiled a little to himself. At least he knew the teme gave a crap.

A/N: You guys dizzy yet? ;) Thank you all so much for reading!

- Kinomi