Saturday dawned with the smudged promise of a hangover and a sky already threatening rebellion. Naruto's stomach lurched when his phone buzzed. Then again. Then a third time. A series of increasingly insistent notifications: REMINDER: "Location Scouting - 09:30AM" / S. Uchiha. "Be downstairs." / S. Uchiha. "Dress for outdoors. Bring manuscript notes." / S. Uchiha.
At precisely 9:29, Naruto's palms were slick with sweat as he paced by his building entrance. A sleek black coupe with window tint dialed to "villain" rolled to a stop. His heart hammered in his chest as he hustled out, fumbling with his bag, sneakers double-knotted but jacket forgotten in his anxious haste. Through the passenger window, he could make out Sasuke behind the wheel, head bowed over the center console, left hand tapping out that rhythm Naruto had memorized from study halls and detention: one, two, three, pause, repeat.
Naruto took a deep breath, wiped his hands on his jeans, and wrenched open the passenger door. He slid in, immediately registering the climate control—set three degrees higher than default, like Sasuke remembered he was always cold. The radio was off, but the navigation screen glowed with their destination: "Uchiha Productions - Field Visit 1." Sasuke glanced over, impassive, while Naruto's pulse raced in his throat.
"You're late," he said, though Naruto had timed it to the second.
Naruto grunted, snapped his seatbelt, and dug through his bag for the battered folder. "Where are we even going?"
Sasuke shifted into gear, eyes on the empty Saturday streets. "First, an old factory. Then the theater. Then the lake." He paused, then added, "I thought it would help to see them for yourself."
Naruto scoffed. "Since when do you care about creative context?"
Sasuke's mouth barely moved, but his reply cut through the static: "I care about getting it right." The way he said it—emphasis on right, not on getting—implied a universe of unspoken history.
The first leg of the drive was silent, save for the hiss of tires over rain-damp asphalt and the hum of a motor so refined it sounded more like white noise than combustion. Outside the city, the roads twisted through fields half-drowned in snowmelt, the horizon walled off by trees rendered black by the season. Sasuke drove with the same control he brought to everything—two hands on the wheel, precise acceleration, never a wasted motion. Naruto felt himself relax in spite of everything.
At the edge of a dead-end industrial park, Sasuke braked to a stop in front of a crumbling brick monolith. The windows were mostly gone, the walls tagged with graffiti and old campaign posters. Sasuke killed the engine, and for a moment neither of them moved.
"This is where the first fight happens," Sasuke said.
Naruto blinked. "What?"
"In your book," Sasuke clarified. "The protagonist confronts the Shadow." His gaze was fixed on the building, not on Naruto. "I remember it because the pacing in that chapter was better than anything else you wrote."
Naruto's cheeks flushed, but he tried to cover it with sarcasm. "Is that a compliment? Or just an insult to the rest of my writing?"
Sasuke's lips twitched. "If I wanted to insult you, you'd know." He pushed open his door and stepped out. Naruto followed, trudging across the gravel, suddenly aware of how cold it was without a jacket.
Inside, the factory was cathedral-vast, the roof open in places to admit shafts of gray light. Puddles reflected the exposed beams and rebar, and somewhere above, a pigeon cooed, indifferent to their presence.
Naruto's throat tightened unexpectedly. His fingers trembled as he reached toward a column, not quite touching it. The concrete was exactly how he'd imagined it—cold, pitted, scarred with decades of industrial memory. His chest constricted with a strange possessiveness, like finding a stranger wearing your clothes.
"Feels weird being here," he managed, voice rougher than he intended. "Like someone reached into my head and built it." He glanced at Sasuke, expecting mockery, but found him standing with eyes half-closed, as if mapping the space in his mind.
"You were always good at building worlds," Sasuke said. "Even if you didn't always want to live in them."
Naruto blinked rapidly, turning away before Sasuke could see whatever was happening on his face.
The next stop was a historic theater in the center of a town so small it didn't have a single chain store. The marquee advertised a matinee of "Grease" and, less plausibly, a weeknight showing of Sasuke's own adaptation series, "Phoenix Dreamers." Sasuke waited while Naruto scanned the facade, his throat suddenly tight.
Inside, the smell hit him first—musty velvet and ancient wood polish—exactly as he'd written it. Naruto's fingers trembled as he trailed them along a brass railing. Each step deeper into the theater made his chest constrict further, like someone was slowly turning a dial inside him.
"This is where the confrontation in Act Three will be set," Sasuke said, but his voice seemed distant.
Naruto sank into a seat three rows back, overwhelmed. He tilted his head to catch the dusty gold of the ceiling, blinking rapidly.
"Better or worse than you imagined?" Sasuke asked.
Naruto managed "Realer," and for the first time, Sasuke's mouth curved—not a smile, exactly, but the closest thing he'd shown in months. Naruto's heart stuttered against his ribs, then accelerated like it was trying to escape his chest. He looked away quickly, pretending to study a fraying velvet seat.
They lingered until an usher started closing up. Back in the car, Naruto slumped down, one hand unconsciously pressed against his sternum, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the drive.
Naruto's fingers drummed against his thigh. "You don't have to do all this," he said, studying Sasuke's profile for any flicker of emotion. "The hands-on creative consulting, the field trips. The calendar invites at six in the morning."
Sasuke didn't take his eyes off the road. "I do."
"But why?" The question escaped before Naruto could swallow it back. When Sasuke's jaw tightened, Naruto turned to the window, pretending the blur of town becoming woods becoming water was enough to satisfy the hollow ache spreading beneath his ribs. It wasn't.
By the time they reached the lakeside park, the clouds had thickened to a bruised mass, the wind biting through Naruto's sweatshirt. They walked along the path in silence, boots crunching on the gravel, their breath visible in the air. The lake itself was gray, rimmed by dormant reeds and a scattering of half-frozen sand. Naruto's mind drifted unbidden to summers past—the wooden dock's splinters in his palms, Sasuke's rare laughter echoing across water.
"Remember when we used to go to that lake house?" The words tumbled out before he could swallow them back.
Sasuke glanced at him, eyebrow raised. "You mean when you tried to swim across and nearly drowned?"
Naruto grinned, teeth chattering, the memory of panic and then relief washing over him just as vividly as the day it happened. "You jumped in after me, even though you couldn't swim either."
"I calculated the risk," Sasuke replied, deadpan. "I assumed you'd float if you stopped flailing."
Naruto barked a laugh, the tension in his shoulders unwinding. For a moment, their eyes met, and something electric passed between them—a memory of summers past, of shared secrets. Naruto looked away first.
"You really haven't changed at all," he said, voice catching slightly.
Sasuke's gaze lingered on Naruto's profile, his jaw flexing. "Neither have you," he said, voice low enough that Naruto had to lean in to hear it.
They stood at the edge of the water, shoulders almost touching, until the first raindrop splattered on Naruto's cheek. Within seconds, the sky opened. Sasuke grabbed Naruto's wrist instinctively, fingers warm against his pulse, then just as quickly released it. They ran toward the car, Sasuke cursing under his breath while Naruto's laughter echoed across the lake. When Naruto slipped in the mud, Sasuke's hand shot out, steadying him against his chest for one breathless moment before they broke apart.
The only shelter nearby was a weathered sign advertising "Hot Coffee—2 miles." Sasuke shot him a glare that somehow managed to be both accusatory and concerned, and they sprinted the length of the muddy lot to the coupe, shoulders bumping, fingers accidentally brushing as they both reached for the passenger door handle at the same time.
Sasuke slid behind the wheel, water streaming down his hair onto his collar, the wet fabric clinging to the outline of his shoulders. Naruto collapsed into the passenger seat, suddenly aware of how small the car felt with both of them inside, steam beginning to fog the windows.
"Well," Naruto managed, trying not to stare at the droplet sliding down Sasuke's jawline, "at least you can say you survived the great location-scouting monsoon."
Sasuke's eyes flickered to Naruto's lips for a fraction of a second before he looked away, starting the engine. The heat blasted on, and Sasuke's voice dropped half an octave. "Take off your shirt," he ordered.
Naruto's stomach did a slow flip. "What?"
"You'll get sick if you stay in wet clothes," Sasuke said, but his knuckles were white on the steering wheel as he peeled off his own jacket, tossing it in the back, and started on the buttons of his dress shirt, revealing a sliver of pale skin.
Naruto hesitated, then peeled the soaked sweatshirt from his skin, the wet fabric clinging stubbornly before surrendering. His t-shirt underneath had gone nearly transparent, outlining every ridge of muscle. Sasuke's eyes flickered down, then deliberately away. "You act like it's the first time you've changed in front of me," he said, voice pitched slightly lower than usual.
"It's been a while," Naruto muttered, hyper-aware of Sasuke's bare collarbone just inches away. The car was already warming, windows steaming up as they drove the last mile to the café, the small space electric with unspoken tension.
The place was exactly as advertised: a squat building with a lopsided roof and a hand-painted sign. Inside, it was blissfully warm and smelled of burnt coffee and cinnamon. Sasuke shook out his hair like a disgruntled cat, water flying. Naruto wrung out the hem of his t-shirt, then noticed Sasuke watching him, eyes lingering a little too long before he glanced away.
They found a table by the window, their jackets and shirts hung on the radiator to dry. The server brought menus, but before Naruto could reach for one, Sasuke was already ordering. "Two coffees," he said, then paused. "One black, one extra cream, extra sugar."
Naruto sighed, not even bothering to correct him. For weeks now, Sasuke had been doing this—ordering his lunch, suggesting the right tie for meetings, having his favorite ramen waiting after late sessions. The constant reminder of how well Sasuke still knew him was both comforting and unnerving.
"You could at least pretend not to remember everything," Naruto muttered.
The rain hammered the windows, blurring the parking lot into impressionist streaks. The server brought their coffees. Sasuke cleared his throat, opened his mouth, then closed it again. He tapped his index finger against his cup three times, shifted in his seat, and glanced at Naruto, who was stirring sugar into his coffee with intense concentration. Sasuke picked up a sugar packet, turned it over in his hands, set it down.
"I read your interview," he finally said, the words coming out too loud in the quiet café. He winced, tried again. "The one in Rosewood Review."
Naruto's spoon clinked against the rim of his cup. "Oh?"
"You said you write because you're afraid of forgetting." Sasuke's eyes darted to Naruto's face, then away, then back again. "That stuck with me."
Naruto froze, spoon poised halfway to his mouth. "I don't remember saying that."
"Issue six. Two years ago." Sasuke's words tumbled out faster now. "The interviewer asked if your books were therapy, and you said, 'I write because I'm terrified I'll forget how it felt to want something and not get it.'"
Naruto stared at the tabletop, his ears reddening. "God, that's embarrassing."
Sasuke's shoulders relaxed a fraction. "It's honest."
Naruto risked a glance up. Sasuke's face was open, unguarded in a way Naruto hadn't seen since high school. Without thinking, Naruto leaned forward, elbows on the table, close enough now to see the tiny flecks of gray in Sasuke's dark eyes. His knee bumped Sasuke's under the table. Neither moved away.
"You read all my stuff?" Naruto asked, voice smaller than intended, the practiced edge of indifference completely gone.
Sasuke reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a slim, dog-eared paperback. The cover was faded, the edges annotated in blue pen. Naruto's throat tightened as he recognized his first chapbook, a print run of fifty, sold out in a month and never reprinted. His fingers reached for it automatically, brushing against Sasuke's as he took it.
Sasuke's voice softened. "You always sent your mother copies," he said, flipping to a page about a third of the way in. "She lent me this one. I kept it."
Naruto's breath caught as Sasuke ran his finger down the margin, stopping at a passage highlighted in blue. Without thinking, Naruto leaned closer until their foreheads were nearly touching, his chair scraping forward an inch.
The storm wasn't something to fear, but something that finally gave him permission to stay.
Sasuke slid the book across the table, his fingertips lingering on the page. "You wrote this after we fought. After graduation." Their knees touched under the table, and Naruto didn't pull away.
Naruto didn't trust himself to speak, so he turned the book over in his hands, fingers tracing the annotations. The margins were filled with neat, precise notes—sometimes a single word ("better," "why," "ouch"), sometimes entire sentences in Sasuke's tiny, familiar script. His heart hammered against his ribs as reality crashed over him like cold water. This wasn't just business anymore. Sasuke had carried his words—his heart—for years, had argued with them, had refused their endings. In one place, underlined three times, Sasuke had written in all caps: "THIS IS NOT HOW IT ENDS."
For a long minute, they sat in silence, the book between them, the storm pounding outside. Naruto's fingers drummed against his thigh beneath the table, starting and stopping rhythms that matched his unspoken thoughts. He opened his mouth twice before words finally emerged.
"You didn't have to follow my career," he said at last, voice barely more than a whisper, eyes fixed on a water stain on the table rather than Sasuke's face.
Sasuke stared out the window, but there was a tremor in his voice when he replied. "I didn't have a choice."
Naruto's jaw tightened. The rain slowed to a patter, and in the pause between thunderclaps, he set down his coffee with deliberate care, creating distance by wrapping both hands around the warm mug.
Naruto picked up the chapbook and tucked it into his bag, hands shaking a little. His throat tightened around words that refused to form. The silence stretched between them like a tightrope he wasn't ready to walk. He cleared his throat, fingers drumming against the table's edge.
"I should get back," he finally said, glancing at his watch though he had nowhere to be. "We've got that call with production at four."
Sasuke's face flickered—hope collapsing into something carefully neutral. "Right," he said, reaching for his jacket. "Business first."
Outside, the clouds broke, and a thin wedge of sunlight spilled across the wet asphalt, gleaming on the black coupe parked just outside. Inside, they gathered their things in practiced silence, the book's dog-eared corners visible in Naruto's half-zipped bag—a bridge neither was ready to cross.
Naruto took a breath, deeper than he'd taken in weeks, and opened his mouth. "I—" The guilt twisted in his stomach like a knife. He swallowed hard, looked away, and settled back into his seat.