Naruto arrived at Sasuke's office fifteen minutes early, his heart jackhammering so hard he could feel it in his molars. Ten of those minutes he'd spent pacing the hallway, wiping his palms against his jeans until the fabric chafed, swallowing air that refused to reach his lungs. Twice he'd turned to leave. Twice he'd stopped himself. When he finally pushed through the door, his smile felt stapled to his face.
Inside, Sasuke's office swallowed him whole. The far wall was nothing but glass, the city sprawled beneath like something Sasuke had personally arranged. His desk—a slab of smoked glass suspended on black metal—seemed to float at the edge of the void. Naruto's legs went watery. He gripped the doorframe, counting breaths, one-two-three.
Sasuke didn't look up. Just traced his finger along a script page, slow and deliberate as a threat. His perfect stillness made Naruto's fidgeting feel obscene. When Naruto finally caught his reflection in the glass—hair wild, cheeks flushed, eyes too bright—he looked like exactly what he was: a man who'd spent years telling himself he was over someone, only to discover he'd been lying the entire time.
Sasuke didn't look up from his papers. "You're early."
Naruto draped his jacket over the chair back with practiced slowness. "Didn't want to be the reason this project derails before it starts." His voice came out flat, professional.
Sasuke's mouth twitched, the world's smallest smirk. "Self-awareness. A novelty."
Naruto's expression stayed unreadable as he slid into the chair, its aggressive lumbar curve almost pitching him forward. He set his battered folder on the desk with exacting care, spine flush against the glass.
Silence hung between them. Sasuke flicked his eyes over a page; Naruto picked at a seam in the upholstery, tugging loose thread before tucking it back and glancing up for any sign Sasuke had noticed. Finally, Sasuke nudged the adaptation outline across the desk—paper grazing his sleeve.
"I reordered the episodes," he said, clearing his throat. "The inciting incident belongs in the pilot. You drag it out, you lose momentum."
Naruto riffled through the pages, leaving faint smudges on the pristine white. He licked his thumb to separate two sheets and instantly regretted it. "Shift that up," he countered, voice catching, "and you erase all the relationship buildup. It becomes just plot mechanisms clicking. Nobody cares who wins if they don't care about the players."
Sasuke's gaze flicked up, held for a breath too long, then dropped. "The audience doesn't need every step of the courtship," he said coolly.
"Some things shouldn't be rushed." Naruto tapped his pen against the margin, leaving tiny blue constellations in the whitespace.
Sasuke's fingers drummed once, paused, then traced around one of those dots. "Careful," he said, voice low. "Some of us prefer our documents... unmarked."
Naruto's cheeks warmed. He set the pen down and leaned in, pressing a fingertip into the paper. "Interesting—placing that scene on page thirty. Bold choice." His tone was breezy, but the indent behind his fingertip belied his pressure.
Sasuke's eyebrow lifted the merest fraction. "Some of us prioritize narrative architecture over… sentimentality." He adjusted his cufflink, the movement so precise it looked choreographed. "Unlike certain people who always let their emotions run the show."
A subtle undercurrent sharpened his words. Naruto's lips twitched. "Wouldn't want anyone to suspect there's a human being behind the spreadsheets." He offered a tight grin.
Sasuke snapped the paper back into a neat stack. "Right," he said. "And yet every time you let your heart steer—you end up in trouble. Remember high school? Charging headfirst at those seniors until I had to yank you out of a real fight?"
The fluorescent lights of their high school cafeteria flickered behind his eyes. Sixteen-year-old Naruto, voice too loud, face too hot, screaming at some senior who'd called Kiba a slur. His finger jabbing into the bigger boy's chest. "Say it again! I fucking dare you!" The crowd forming, the whispers, the adrenaline making his hands shake so badly he couldn't form a proper fist.
Then Sasuke appearing beside him, face carved from ice. Not shouting, not even raising his voice. Just saying, "Uzumaki. That's enough," and gripping Naruto's wrist hard enough to leave marks. The senior's friends laughing—"Your boyfriend's saving you"—until Sasuke turned those obsidian eyes on them and something in his expression made them step back.
Later, Sasuke's fingers gentle on Naruto's split lip, his voice anything but: "You can't just lose it every time someone says something stupid. You'll spend your whole life fighting." The unspoken truth hanging between them: Sasuke would always have to step in, always have to be the one to save him from himself.
Naruto blinked back to the present, to the ink staining Sasuke's perfect skin.
"You can't keep doing this," he said, voice cracking. "Bringing up the past."
Sasuke stared, eyes flat and unreadable. "Then stop making me."
Naruto surged to his feet, papers exploding across the desk like shrapnel. "You know what? FUCK THIS." His voice cracked on the curse, betraying him. His hands trembled violently as he snatched at the outline, fingers fumbling, vision blurring as he shoved everything into his folder. "I can't—I won't sit here and watch you dissect the world into tiny, sterile pieces so you never have to feel anything that might actually hurt."
He turned to go, chest heaving, when Sasuke's voice sliced through him.
"You're the one who ran away," Sasuke said, each word a knife sliding between ribs. "You always do."
Naruto spun back, a wounded animal. "BECAUSE YOU BROKE ME!" The words tore from his throat, months of anger and grief erupting. His eyes burned. "Because you never once gave me a reason to stay!"
The confession hung between them, bleeding and raw.
Sasuke stood so abruptly his chair crashed backward. The sound made Naruto flinch. The desk separated them now—a thin shield of glass that couldn't possibly contain what surged between them.
The blood drained from Sasuke's face, leaving behind something haunted. His eyes burned like a man who'd spent years drowning. "Do you ever stop to think," he said, voice cracking on the final word, "maybe I was terrified you'd leave anyway?"
Naruto's lungs seized. His body moved before his mind could stop it, propelling him forward until the desk's edge bit into his thighs. The scar on his palm—from that night in high school when Sasuke had shattered his heart—throbbed with phantom pain. Sasuke mirrored him, leaning in until Naruto could count each uneven breath.
The space between them hummed with five years of silence. Naruto's fingers trembled against the glass. He couldn't look away from the slight quiver in Sasuke's lower lip—the same lip that had once called him disgusting, that had formed words that still echoed in his nightmares. Yet his body remembered other things: hands gentle on his face, whispers in the dark, promises neither had been brave enough to keep.
His hand crossed the desk before his brain could scream all the reasons not to. His fingertips brushed Sasuke's knuckles, and the touch sent memories cascading through him—eighteen and terrified, twenty-three and drunk, now here, still breaking apart at a single touch.
Sasuke's fingers twitched but didn't retreat. His eyes fixed on their almost-joined hands, pupils blown wide with something between terror and hunger.
"We shouldn't do this," Naruto whispered, even as his body betrayed him, leaning closer.
Sasuke's mouth twisted, but instead of the expected mockery, his voice emerged raw: "You idiot. It is the only thing I want to do."
They gravitated toward each other like planets returning to orbit. Naruto couldn't tell who moved first—maybe they both did, pulled by the same gravity—but suddenly Sasuke's breath warmed his lips, and the old wound in his chest split open, bleeding both fear and longing.
The door slammed open. Light from the hallway spilled in, slicing the moment in half.
Karin strode in, carrying a takeout bag. Naruto jerked back so violently he nearly toppled his chair, stomach plummeting as if he'd missed a step in the dark. What the hell was he doing? Five years of carefully rebuilt dignity, almost thrown away for—what? A moment of weakness?
"Dinner," Karin announced, her glasses flashing as she took in their positions. "Sasuke, your sugar's probably dropping. You get weird when you don't eat."
Naruto wiped his palms on his thighs, shame crawling up his neck like a rash. The taste of almost-betrayal—of himself, his promises, his hard-won self-respect—sat bitter on his tongue. Sasuke's mask slid back into place with practiced ease, while Naruto felt like his skin had been peeled back, exposing every stupid, desperate nerve.
Karin's eyes lingered on him, calculation in her gaze. "You should eat something, too," she said, but her tone made it an accusation. She handed Sasuke a spoon with the precision of someone marking territory.
Naruto's fingers trembled as he gathered the scattered pages, dropping several twice. His chest felt hollowed out, like someone had reached in and scooped everything vital away. Five years of carefully constructed walls—nearly demolished in seconds.
"Did I interrupt something?" Karin asked, her voice slicing through his panic.
"No," Sasuke said, voice cool as marble. "We were just finishing."
Karin positioned herself between them, a human barricade. Naruto couldn't look at either of them, focusing instead on a coffee stain on the carpet. The phantom pressure of Sasuke's breath against his lips made him dizzy. What was he thinking? This was the same mouth that had called him disgusting, that had shattered him so completely he'd needed to leave the state to reassemble himself.
Karin leaned toward Sasuke, her hand settling possessively on his shoulder. "You have to be up early tomorrow," she said. "Don't let this drag on. We have deadlines."
Sasuke's eyes found Naruto's, something dangerous flickering there. "You heard her," he said softly.
Naruto nodded mechanically, stuffed papers into his bag with clumsy urgency. His heartbeat thundered in his ears as he fled toward the door. At the threshold, muscle memory betrayed him—he glanced back. Sasuke was watching him, face unreadable, Karin's hand still on his shoulder. Five years of therapy, of rebuilding himself, of promising never again—all undone in seconds. What kind of pathetic fool was he, crawling back to the same fire that had already burned him to ash?
The city glared through the window, neon and unblinking. Naruto's reflection stared back at him, a ghost superimposed over Sasuke's silhouette—the same desperate, lovesick teenager he'd sworn he'd outgrown.
He let the door click shut behind him, the echo of what almost happened humming in his bones, self-loathing rising like bile in his throat.