A/N: This chapter touches on PTSD symptoms and alcohol abuse, please keep yourself safe. There is also fluff.

The sky opened up into a sudden deluge. Naruto cursed beneath the garish orange helmet he was wearing, the rain soaked him down to the skin and considerably slowed down the speed at which he was riding. The unexpected autumn rain hurtling from above in an inky black sky, rain clouds rolling across the horizon like the charging stallions of Poseidon. Had he known it was going to shower he would have taken the tube but the forecast had been clear.

Typical English weather.

He slowed the bike down, taking heed of the sudden lake of water near a blocked drain as he rounded the bend. His jeans were soaked, his top was soaked and to make it all worse the cold evening air stung against his skin as he raced towards his destination. The thrum of the Ducati Monster revving beneath him as he wound his way through traffic with the odd sensation of having a perfectly dry head.

He had sent Sasuke an 'OMW' around forty minutes ago and considered pulling over to text if he also had a pair spare of clothes he could borrow on arrival. He tossed his head, dislodging rain droplets from his vison as he came to a stop before a pair of traffic lights his heart thrumming a little at the idea of seeing Sasuke again…alone.

Kiba had handed the pamphlets over to Naruto with a recalcitrant expression on his face as if he was itching to berate Naruto about something but could not find a reason to do so.

"What?" Naruto had asked innocently packing them away in his bag and pulling on his leather jacket.

Kiba had narrowed his eyes at him, his mouth grim.

"You're taking the Bike, are you?"

"Did you expect me to walk?"

His friend had snorted at him, eyeing him critically up and down.

"What?" Naruto asked, in the middle of pulling his right shoe on. "What is that look for?"

"I know you and that…bike." Kiba had said seriously as if the motorcycle was some sort of demonic spirit, "You're trying to impress him. You've hardly even taken me out for a spin on that thing."

"Kib, every time you've gone anywhere near my motorcycle we've had an argument over who is gonna do the driving!"

Kiba had flashed his teeth at Naruto, walking him to the door of the flat.

"Are you just going over empty handed?" He had asked officiously as the blond had moved past him to start down the front steps.

"Oh," Naruto had said, pausing and putting his hand in his backpack in his excitement to see Sasuke again he had forgotten about common niceties. "I hadn't thought about that."

Kiba had rolled his eyes to the ceiling and wondered off back inside the flat muttering to himself about buffoons and plebs before re-emerging with a box of chocolates.

"Why do you have these?" Naruto had asked suspiciously as Kiba thrust them into his hands.

"I think you mean 'thank you'." Kiba had snapped at him, "You better pay me back for those."

Naruto had run up the steps and given his best friend a hug who made a gruff noise in response to the blond swinging his arms around his neck.

"Go." Kiba had retorted, "Before I change my mind."

What 'changing his mind' would have entailed was left up to Naruto's active imagination. He imagined Kiba challenging him to a joust and felt himself smile despite the wet and the cold. He turned the last corner on his journey, careful to avoid the spray of a bus (not that it would have mattered much, he was waterlogged through and through) and rode up to the pavement to park.

He dared now to take his phone out of his pocket. It had taken a little longer than he would have liked but he had still made it, just about; all in one very soggy piece.

Would Sasuke be alright with him borrowing a towel and maybe chucking his clothes in the dryer? It was not quite the entrance he wanted to have made but 'needs must'.

Hey, do u mind meeting me out here with a towel and a spare T-shirt? Had to swim half of the way.

He rolled the bike into a parking space and proceeded to lock it with his heavy-duty chain. The September evening was turning chilly and the wind had a cutting edge to it. He began to shiver and looked back down at his phone.

Sasuke had not replied back.

Naruto huffed, picking up his bag and moving to open the iron gate to walk to the front door. The neighbourhood was quiet, street lamps illuminating the pavement with a gentle amber glow as the blond walked up the garden path and stood in front of the stained-glass doors.

He stood for a minute waiting for someone to answer the doorbell; no cigar. Perhaps Sasuke was in the shower? He withdrew his phone from his damp pocket and clicked the call button. It went straight to answerphone. Frowning and with a sinking feeling in his stomach he pressed the doorbell again and sat on the top step, clutching his backpack to his chest.

Had there been a mix up? Could Sasuke have possibly thought he would be round on another day? He stared at a few neatly pruned hydrangea bushes and considered how long he should continue ringing the doorbell for or whether that would be in bad form.

For a moment he considered texting Kiba as he always did when he was facing predicaments but he couldn't imagine what other advice his auburn-haired friend would give him that he had not considered himself. Scaling the wall was out of the question, he didn't know Sasuke that well and the house looked like it would have a very expensive alarm system installed. He could just imagine trying to explain to his Godparents why they had to bail him out for breaking and entering, the idea of Tsunade's temper made him shudder at the very thought.

He looked back at his phone, his fingers he noted were going pale in the cold evening air, distal circulation shutting off to preserve core warmth, his jeans felt uncomfortably heavy and stiff on his legs. Droplets of water dripping from the cuffs of his trousers and sliding uncomfortably down the neck of his boots.

He rang one more time to hear the device hit Sasuke's answer phone and shivered, wrapping his arms around the backpack hugging the item towards his chest.

"Alright," he muttered to himself, "one more time and then I'll go."

He moved back to press the doorbell and waited, nothing happened.

Feeling crestfallen he swung his bag back over his back and turned back towards the garden gate, when a light flicked on down the hallway behind the stained glass.

Naruto felt his insides lift as the door opened and Sasuke stood in the doorway looking as handsome as ever; he was wearing an expensive looking dark jumper the blond noted, and his signature cigarette jeans. There was a slightly odd energy about him Naruto thought looking him up and down.

"Sorry." Sasuke said quietly in a way which made Naruto lean forward to catch what he was saying, "I didn't hear the door."

"Hey! Your phone's off or at least I can't get through. I'm sorry about my appearance."

Sasuke looked over Naruto as if suddenly seeing him and said with surprise: "You're wet."

"Yes, that can happen when it's been raining." Naruto said, blinking his cornflower blue eyes at him tilting his head to the side like an owl.

Sasuke seemed to avoid looking him in the face, he stepped aside allowing Naruto over the threshold and said in hushed tones: "I'll go get you a towel."

Naruto frowned at his vanishing back, taking off his boots and walking into the kitchen whilst trying to minimise the puddles he was leaving behind him. He wasn't quite sure what was off, but something was off.

Cat rushed up to rub her head against his feet and he knelt down to stroke her under the chin as she leant into his hand for better scratching access. He looked about the kitchen, the underfloor heating was mercifully running and the room was warm. The under-cabinet lights were on but apart from that no other sources illuminated the room. There was a carton of orange juice out on the kitchen counter but no indication that anyone had been eating or preparing food.

He sat on the floor not wanting to get any of the seats wet with his sodden jeans and waited for Sasuke to come back. A few minutes passed before Sasuke returned with a dry fluffy towel, Cat was busy asking for scratches on her other ear now and was most disgruntled when he got to his feet to dry himself off. Sasuke's face he noticed looked paler than before and there was an artificial stiffness to his body as he sat down, as if being particularly careful of the movement of his limbs. He looked absently into the corner of the room as Naruto ran the towel over himself.

"Sorry, it didn't say there would be rain on the forecast. I got caught on the bike."

"It's…it's not a problem." Sasuke said, slowly. His words were deliberate and carefully enunciated.

Naruto put the towel over his shoulders, his initial reaction was to ask 'What on earth is going on with you?' But he had a gut feeling that Sasuke would not react very well to that.

"Did you get my text message?" Nartuo inquired, risking sitting on the chair opposite Sasuke.

"About dropping the pamphlets off? Yes, I did."

"No, the one I sent after."

"Oh," Sasuke's expression looked almost alarmed at this, his silver-grey eyes suddenly appearing worried. "Oh no I didn't, sorry. I was in the shower."

Naruto had only sent that text message ten minutes ago and Sasuke looked perfectly dry. He didn't say anything about it, an odd sensation crept into his stomach.

"Would it be alright if I borrowed a t-shirt?" He asked, giving a light and reassuring smile.

Sasuke nodded, "I'll see if Itachi has any spares you can wear." And he headed out of the room, Naruto noticing he put his hand on the door frame as he exited.

He waited for a moment, listening for Sasuke ascending the stairs before he got up and walked towards the orange juice carton, opening the top and looking inside. Most of it had been drunk but a little was left in the bottom, Naruto gave it an appraising sniff detecting that it was still in date and tilted his head back to taste it. He was not altogether surprised when the substance hitting his tongue was of ninety percent alcohol with a flavouring of orange juice. He winced, he had never been the biggest fan of vodka. At least he thought it was vodka. He stooped to find the bin under the sink and flipped the lid off, sure enough there were two empty spirits bottles, immediately clocking the Grey Goose labelling on the bottle closest to him.

"What are you doing?" The voice came sharply behind him and Naruto jumped turning to face Sasuke who was standing across the kitchen from him, his pale face a mask of anger and his grey eyes dark and glittering.

Naruto didn't know why he had bothered to ask that question, they both knew what he had been doing. Perhaps under different circumstances Naruto would have felt ashamed of himself for going through someone else's trash (literally) but for some reason because it was Sasuke he didn't feel that. He almost felt like he had a right to know.

"You, are plastered." Naruto said frowning at him, watching as Sasuke glared at him, one hand reaching out to the kitchen counter as if to steady himself.

"I'm …" Sasuke opened his mouth as if considering saying: 'I am not' but seemed to re-evaluate his answer and sat down on a nearby chair.

"So, what if I am?" He responded back, defiantly.

Naruto blinked at him; something was very wrong.

"You don't give me the impression that you're a casual heavy drinker," the blond said, looking at Sasuke with his cornflower blue eyes and trying to work out what on earth was going on. "So why are you drinking this," he gestured to the orange juice and the empty vodka bottles "alone and in the dark?"

Sasuke anxiously pressed his lips together and looked down at the floor, his hand on top of the kitchen counter clenched into such a tight ball his knuckles became white.

"You should go, you shouldn't see me like this."

Naruto felt he should have expected that response, Sasuke throwing up walls as an immediate defence mechanism.

"I'm not going anywhere." What exactly made him say this or why he felt this way the blond could not offer up an explanation for. He only knew his feet were firmly planted on the ground and that Sasuke would have to physically relocate him if he wanted him out of the house. He tensed his jaw, looking stubborn.

"For fuck's sake Naruto," Sasuke ground out, there was that anger that the blond had noticed before by the garden gate, the anger that seemed to spark from deep within Sasuke's eyes. "I'm not a child, I don't need someone to babysit me."

"I never said you were, I'm just concerned." Naruto had a tone of voice that he used with difficult patients. He could hear himself switching to it now, an attitude of authoritative neutrality that apparently immediately put Sasuke's back up.

"Oh, fuck off. I'm not someone for you to fuss over." Sasuke snapped, seemingly becoming really angry now. His shoulders were tense, a taught line across his spine and his dark eyes glittering furiously. He was breathtakingly attractive Naruto thought as strands of dark hair fell across his pale forehead. For a moment the thought crossed the blond's mind that Sasuke very well might have swing at him but he stood resolutely in the kitchen staring him down. His blue eyes not moving from Sasuke's face.

What was driving this exactly? Sasuke who was so cool, calm and collected. That impenetrable iron persona that he strove to move around with like an armoured tank at all times had fallen away, to reveal something very very vulnerable underneath that he was now fiercely protecting. Naruto shifted his weight from one foot to another.

"Is your brother around?"

Apparently mentioning Itachi in any way shape or form was some sort of flash point for Sasuke; he looked startled then got up very quickly (too quickly in fact) from the table, staggered and fell. Naruto immediately moved forwards, he had had experience of headwounds before in A&E when people were inebriated. Head wounds bled a lot and alcohol made your blood thinner. It also loosened the bodies reactions to falling causing nastier injuries: he instinctively put himself between Sasuke and the floor. They ended up tumbling in a tangle of limbs, the top of Sasuke's head clipped the blond's lower lip drawing blood as they fell. Sasuke angrily pushed himself away from Naruto with a snarl until he caught sight of the blood. Then his grey eyes grew wide in abject horror, his face becoming even paler and his breathing becoming erratic as he took what had happened in.

"Fuck." He muttered, his skin almost white.

Naruto gently wiped his lip with the back of his hand, it wasn't the first time he had obtained a cut lip from being in a scrum with someone and he very much doubted it would be his last. He watched as Sasuke went into some sort of emotional shut down in front of him, his entire body tensing up as he put his arms over his face, his shoulders shaking.

Naruto moved his bodyweight so he was sitting adjacent to Sasuke and reached out to gently touch his shoulder, he could feel Sasuke's body lightly trembling beneath his fingers and without making more noise made small concentric circles on his arm. Sasuke's hands were both pressed over his mouth and eyes as if trying to protect himself from interacting with something.

They remained there on the floor for fifteen or so minutes - Naruto wasn't really sure and neither was he counting. Eventually the shaking subsided and Sasuke's breathing slowed.

"I hate…" he said quietly, his hands curled up into tight fists by his side, "I hate being like this."

He looked at Naruto with his silvered grey eyes and for a moment seemed completely unguarded, a look which made the pit of the blonde's stomach magically vanish.

"Does it happen often?" Naruto asked, his hand was still making concentric circles on Sasuke's shoulder.

"It used to happen a lot more," Sasuke admitted, staring up at the ceiling and swallowing. "Now it just happens when something sets me off…"

He declined to name what the cause was and Naruto decided not to push the question further.

"I had claustrophobia when I was a child so badly I passed out once." Naruto offered, "I used to have nightmares about being locked up in smaller and smaller spaces. I'd feel like I was drowning."

"Does that still happen to you?" Sasuke asked, he sat up a little not moving away from Naruto's reassuring touch.

"The Psychiatrist thought that it was a remnant from when my parents died." Naruto said with an offhanded shrug as if he was unsure whether or not the memory was something he should be sad about or not.

"A junction light malfunctioned and a lorry hit the front of the car, I was cut out of the wreckage. I don't remember, but I guess some part of me remembered it. I wasn't much more than a baby."

Sasuke opened his mouth as if about to confess something, thought better of it and then closed it again, bringing his knee up to his forehead and resting on it. He still had not moved away from Naruto's touch, if anything he was leaning slightly more into it.

"Ugh," he muttered into the cloth of his jeans, "everything is spinning."

"I'll take you upstairs." Naruto said with a small smile, Sasuke didn't fight him on this. He allowed Naruto to drape his hand over his shoulder and gently support him to his room.

He collapsed onto the bed all dark angles and pale skin breathing heavily, he turned to look at Naruto who was still damp with his shirt clinging to his chest.

"I left you some of Itachi's clothes on the kitchen table."

Naruto left to change into a pair of soft grey joggers and a dark t-shirt, he walked quietly back up to Sasuke's bedroom and put his head around the door to check if the dark-haired man was asleep. Sasuke was instead staring up at the ceiling, an odd expression on his face.

"Hey." Naruto said gently standing in the door frame, unsure now of what to do.

"Hey." Sasuke replied lightly, turning to look at the blond, his eyebrows knitted together as if he couldn't quite work something out.

They stared at each other for a moment, Naruto had the odd sensation of feeling endlessly lost in Sasuke's silvered grey eyes.

"I should go –" Naruto began at the same time as Sasuke said the word "Stay".

The dark-haired man seemed to blush from the roots of his hair to his chest, propping himself up on his elbows.

"Sorry you should go." Were the words that left Sasuke's lips as the words: "I'll stay." left Naruto's.

Sasuke looked completely mortified by the exchange and Naruto laughed gently, leaning against the door frame and looking his companion up and down.

"I'll stay." He repeated firmly, giving Sasuke one of his half smiles which seemed to make the tips of the dark-haired man's ears redder.

The pamphlets lay forgotten in his damp bag downstairs as Sasuke let him flick through his tv to find a program that interested him. He settled for a cartoon, Adventure Time - a classic.

"Are you kidding me?" Sasuke asked from where he was sitting on the bed, his normal tone creeping into the sentence.

"Nah, I'm not. Now scoot over." Naruto said, moving to sit next to Sasuke on the bed.

They weren't touching but they were so close they might as well have been. Almost shoulder to shoulder, legs and ankles parallel and only a few millimetres of space separating them.

Naruto watched for a while, allowing the kaleidoscopic colours of the animated feature wash over him, ever conscious of the dark-haired figure next to him who seemed to be gently falling asleep. Sasuke's blinks became longer and longer until his eyes eventually shut and his breathing slowed.

Naruto vaguely wondered if he should sleep on the floor until he noticed Sasuke's hand was clasped very tightly around the material of his T-shirt by his hip. He stared at his hand for a moment, looking at the long pale fingers intertwined with the material and then back up at Sasuke's sleeping face. He still looked beautiful even with his eyes closed, his brow smooth and uncreased for the first time all evening. For a moment the blond saw him beneath him again, silvered eyes wide in shock and horror, his breath coming ragged gasps.

He raised his own hand and brought it over to Sasuke's stopping just shy of putting his hand over the dark-haired man's fingers. Gently he brushed his little finger against Sasuke's little finger, immediately feeling a surge of something move through him like a tide. He moved his head slightly and felt his nose brush against Sasuke's hair and inhaled the smell of sweet citrus again.

His phone buzzed in his pocket but he ignored it, he would face down a likely pissed off Kiba tomorrow. For the moment he was going to enjoy whatever this was.

Sasuke's head spun, as he opened his eyes the world fuzzily came into focus. He could dimly hear the sound of the shower from his en-suite and wondered for a moment if he had left the water running all night.

Then the memory of last night hit him like a truck. He sat up quickly in bed, immediately regretting doing so as the sides of his head screamed in abject protest to the sudden movement. His stomach seemed to contract over itself with a burning sear of pain as he lay back down almost double on the mattress. He was going to pay for this one.

After a moment Naruto poked his head around the bathroom door, his blue eyes fixing on the prone figure of Sasuke on the bed who was quietly cursing.

"Finally caught up to you has it?" The blond asked cheerfully strolling into the room, he was wearing one of Sasuke's towels around his hips in a way which framed his muscled abdomen. Sasuke could see his abdominal muscles in the light that had made its way through his bedroom curtains and dimly registered that it should be illegal to look that good when he was feeling this awful.

"Please…spare me the lecture." He ground out, doubled up with the searing pain from his stomach.

Naruto looked at him for a moment as he pulled Itachi's t-shirt over his head, walking back into the bathroom to put on the joggers.

"Shall I just leave you in this pitiful heap then?" The blond quipped with more than a little amusement in his voice.

"Just…just kill me." Sasuke said, rolling onto his back and putting a pillow over his face.

Naruto snorted.

"Can't do that right now, I'd lose my license to practice."

Sasuke could feel him move to the side of the bed and lifted the side of the pillow up to look up at him, wincing from the daylight trying to push its way into the bedroom.

"Have you come to gloat?"

The blond grinned, "I know better than to kick you when you're down, you'd probably bite me or something equally terrible. I might have something that can help, if you ask me nicely."

"How about, I won't kick you in the groin will that do?"

Naruto made a tutting noise, "Someone needs to teach you some manners." But he winked at Sasuke, an action which made the dark-haired man, despite himself, flush down to his neck before he disappeared out of the room.

Sasuke was really too tired to care where exactly Naruto had disappeared off to, he closed his eyes and willed his headache to be absorbed into the mattress beneath him. The pain was throbbing so viciously between his temples he felt like trying to claw his way out of his body to avoid being subjected to it for any longer.

Presently there was a creak on the floorboard and Naruto re-emerged holding a half-drunk bottle of diet Coke and a box of chocolates, as Sasuke watched he started shaking the coke bottle vigorously.

"What are you doing?" The dark-haired man asked suspiciously sitting up, his eyebrows knitted together.

"Completely anecdotal evidence," Naruto said mid rigorous shake, "but I had a Neurology Prof. who once told me the cure for headaches was flat coke and Aspirin."

He chucked a small wad of 300mg Aspirin onto Sasuke's lap and continued to shake the bottle. Sasuke frowned, the tablet looked like a horse pill.

"You want me to take this?" He asked suspiciously.

Naruto set down the coke bottle and sent Sasuke an amused look.

"Or don't and just suffer."

"Hn." Sasuke began to peel back the silver foil covering one of the tablets feeling slightly dubious.

"Before you do that though." Naruto moved over to the side of the bed, pulling a chocolate out of the box and pushing it against Sasuke's lips. He was so surprised he opened his mouth, tasting for a brief moment the salt from Naruto's finger tips and then the sweetness of the chocolate. He blinked with surprise and then frowned to bite into a chocolate cream, his least favourite.

"You take that NSAID on an empty stomach and you'll be in for the worst gastritis of your life. Well one of the worst, the worst I've ever had was when my Godfather gave me Vitamin C and I hadn't eaten anything; I thought I was gonna die."

Sasuke swallowed the chocolate down slowly, wondering vaguely where Naruto had produced the box from and then reached for another, avoiding a similarly shaped one to the last he felt himself bite down into a delicious pistachio-flavoured marzipan. This was not a cheap box of sweets.

He felt the blond's blue eyes on him as helped himself to another one, and carefully avoided eye contact lest Naruto should tease him further.

Swallowing the flat coke with the Aspirin he leant his head back against the headboard, allowing his head to settle for a moment on his shoulders as the world seemed to spin slowly back into focus.

"Thanks." He said quietly.

The blond flashed him one of his heart-breaking grins. "I've got a slightly late start so I'll have to head off in a mo, but couldn't just leave you in such a pitiful heap without trying to do something."

"You're just worried that I'll report you to the university board for participating in human torture."

Naruto gave one of his warm laughs, "Something like that." he conceded.

Naruto and Sasuke reached for the same chocolate at once, Sasuke slightly beating Naruto's fingers to it as they both moved for the praline. He was still not sure what made him do it, the remnants of the alcohol playing with his mind, the warm easiness of Naruto's countenance or a part of himself that he was not particularly familiar with that seemed to surface when he was in close proximity to the blond.

He placed the chocolate on the tip of his tongue, lips parted and raised his eyebrows at Naruto as if in a dare; throwing down the proverbial gauntlet.

He was not quite sure what he was expecting next, Naruto's eyes seemed to become a dark shade of indigo for a moment before he leant over Sasuke in one swift movement placing one hand on Sasuke's jaw and covering his lips with his. For one glorious moment all Sasuke was aware of was the warmth of Naruto's touch, the smell of carbolic soap and the saltiness of his skin against his own. He felt the hotness of Naruto's tongue inside is mouth and felt his stomach soar, the sweetness from the chocolate intermingling between their mouths.

Sasuke felt his heart race as his own fingers reached up to intertwine themselves with the blond's.

With a confident swipe of his tongue Naruto moved the chocolate into his own mouth and sat back, his own lips parted and slightly moist.

Vaguely Sasuke registered a desire to place another chocolate in his mouth and for Naruto to do the same but for longer. He settled instead for fixing the blond with an intense stare.

"Thief." He said quietly.

Naruto was regarding him with the same lazy expression he had given him before he had whispered in his ear that time. His vision moved from Sasuke's black pupils back to his mouth again, then as if it cost him some effort back to his eyes.

"I have to go." He said in husky tones and Sasuke felt as if every nanometre of distance between them was charged.

"Yeah, okay."

"I'll see you soon." It was more of a statement than a question.

"Sounds good."