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Opening the wooden door, Naruto quietly arrived at the rooftop. The late afternoon breeze blew gently, mussing up his hair as he walked across the familiar, paved surface. The old gallery building he stood on was two stories high and stood directly across from his old high school. It was a place where he used to take refuge on the days when teenage life seemed too overwhelming to handle.
He abruptly froze when he spotted a figure standing against the surrounding parapet on the side of the roof. His eyes widened slightly in surprise.
A tall, broody-looking young man casually leaned against the raised barrier, smoking. He was wearing a form-fitting, black leather jacket with dark, form-fitting blue jeans, and black boots. He had equally inky, dark hair styled in a distinct fashion, with heavy, long bangs framing a pale face. The young man looked pensive as he silently stared at the view of the city before them.
Naruto was surprised to find him here. Flashes of gaming sessions, lazy conversations while on the rooftop, and high school gym sessions assaulted his mind in an instant. But then again, at one point in time, this used to be their playground after all. He remained silent as he absently shut the door behind him.
Sasuke turned slightly upon hearing the roof door shut and stilled.
Sasuke Uchiha would be lying if he said he wasn’t surprised to see who the new arrival was. He hadn’t seen the other in months. They’d only seen each other once after their graduation almost two years ago. An unbidden torrent of emotions rose up in Sasuke’s chest before he ruthlessly squashed it.
He turned sideways, idly bracing an elbow on the parapet, as he dispassionately eyed the other. Deep, golden-blond hair, ridiculously bright blue eyes, and tawny skin stood out against the plaid pattern of the other’s flannel, military-style shirt, white sneakers, and light brown khaki pants. The other had grown taller since high school, he thought mildly, which was ironic considering that at one time, he used to tower over the other.
However, that was a long time ago. Many things had changed since then.
An effortless smirk curved his lips. “Well, well. Long time no see, Uzumaki.”
Naruto blinked as he quietly took in the familiar dark features of the other’s face. “Sasuke.”
Intense, black eyes regarded him with indifferent ease. “How long has it been now? Seems like only yesterday that we were punching the living shit out of each other at that party,” Sasuke remarked casually, taking a drag from his cigarette.
“Yeah, good times,” Naruto murmured.
A few months prior, at a party held by their mutual friend, Sakura, they’d come to blows less than ten minutes into their initial greetings. They hadn’t been told the other would be attending. It was the first time they’d been face to face in well over two years. Due to a series of unprecedented events, a rift as wide as the Grand Canyon had formed between them during their junior year of high school, crippling a friendship that went as far back as elementary school.
Naruto calmly shuffled over to an old crate that was positioned a few feet away from the other male and sat down, resting his elbows on his knees. Although a part of him was wary of where a potential conversation between them could go, he wasn’t about to punk out now that he was here.
This meeting was long overdue.
Sasuke turned fully towards him, his back against the parapet. “Right,” he drawled.
Lean arms crossed over a black, v-necked Foo Fighters shirt, revealing a leather wristband on one wrist. He also wore a silver chain that had a familiar charm hanging from it just above his breastbone.
“Still wearing that, huh?” Naruto said, his eyes fixated on the charm.
Sasuke glanced down. He scowled. “Old habits die hard, I guess,” he said with a careless shrug.
Naruto eyed the red and white fan-like symbol. He recalled that for most of his life, Sasuke had lived under the shadow of his family name. They came from old money, his father having been a chief executive of a holding company, and his mother a socialite. Every member of the Uchiha family had excelled in some money-making field, and nothing less had been expected of Sasuke and his older brother, Itachi.
Itachi, being an exemplary prodigy, had graduated with honors from high school and had immediately gone off to Harvard to study law. Sasuke, however, had done everything but be an exemplary Uchiha. While at the start of high school, he’d done extremely well, there was a downturn later on. During that time, Sasuke had dabbled on and off with drugs, missed classes, and gained a reputation for being unruly as well as a rebel.
Somehow, he’d managed to graduate, but afterward, instead of heading off to college, he’d formed a rock band, to the displeasure of his family. Naruto was aware that Sasuke now spent his nights playing local gigs with his band, and they were acquiring a small but loyal following.
Naruto had done the complete opposite. He’d managed to get into an arts university and was working to help pay for a portion of his tuition. Unlike Sasuke, he didn’t come from money and had worked a part-time job since high school to be able to buy many of the frivolous effects he’d wanted as a teenager. His parents had died when he was younger, and he’d lived with his aunt and uncle, who were hard-working store owners. Now he lived with a roommate in an apartment. He was still far from wealthy and was no genius, but what talent he did have, he put it to use and was determined to get somewhere.
They’d lived divergent lives all of this time and they hadn’t run into each other once, with the exception of that one incident. Now they were both face to face at the age of twenty and it was never more awkward.
“How’s your brother?” he suddenly asked out of genuine curiosity. Naruto had gotten along well with Itachi when he and Sasuke were still friends and the elder Uchiha had been nothing but courteous towards him.
“He’s alive,” Sasuke replied blandly, although his eyes were sharply studying him. “Still making the family name proud and all that shit.”
“Did he graduate law school yet?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, cut the crap, Naruto,” Sasuke suddenly snapped with a roll of his eyes. “We haven’t talked civilly in years, so quit pussy-footing around.”
Naruto glared at the other, shaking his head. “Still acting like a n asshole after all this time. To think I thought you would’ve changed, even a little.”
Sasuke smirked darkly. “I’m not changing any time soon. What are you here for?” he asked, his smirk dropping.
“The same reason you probably are,” Naruto countered perceptibly.
“Hn. You know nothing,” he said acerbically, turning his back and leaning his front against the parapet again.
Naruto sighed. This was stupid.
A rare opportunity was being presented to him, he suddenly thought. Unlike the time at the party where they’d been surrounded by people, they were now alone.
Naruto rose. He positioned himself alongside Sasuke with several inches separating them. He mimicked his former friend’s position, bracing his arms along the barrier. The other’s face was tight with a brooding expression. Despite that, it didn’t mar the pale, poetic profile he’d inherited from his mother.
Bearing the taut tension in the air for several minutes, they silently watched, as across the street, some straggling students came out of the tan-bricked, high school building. They looked very young. One of them spontaneously started doing the latest viral dance craze on the sidewalk and his companions laughed hysterically, the laughter echoing through the street below.
“Dumbasses. Our future is screwed,” Sasuke suddenly muttered disdainfully.
Naruto lifted a brow. “What’s wrong? You don’t have any faith in the next generation?”
“Tch. There’s no one for me to have faith in but myself.”
“That’s a shitty way to live, Sasuke,” Naruto murmured next to him, watching as the other took another drag of his cigarette.
His former best friend cast him a sidelong glance, effortlessly exhaling smoke. “But I do shitty so well,” he drawled with a leer.
Naruto rolled his eyes. He hated the other’s mordant wit. Sasuke had always been a little sarcastic. But with time, his sarcasm became dark. At one time, Naruto used to derive humor from it, but now it was biting.
“Since when have you become so all-knowing about life anyway, Naruto? Don’t tell me you’ve become some Buddhist or something. Maybe had some new-age awakening?” he said dryly.
Naruto snorted. “Don’t be stupid. I wasn’t crazy religious before, and I’m still not, but I’m not faithless. I believe in something.”
Sasuke chuckled, surprising Naruto. He eyed the other, thinking to himself that if his chuckle hadn’t been so heavy with cynicism, the visual would’ve been pleasant. He almost looked carefree. Almost.
“You were always the altar boy compared to me. You and your childish faith and convictions. Let me put it to the test, shall I?” he asked, a sly look crossing his face.
Naruto looked at him steadfastly. It felt as if Sasuke had spent a lifetime testing him. “Knock yourself out,” he challenged.
Sasuke inclined his head in acceptance. “Very well. If you could either be God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?”
Naruto blinked, his brow furrowing slightly. The rocker’s lips were turned up slightly at one corner, anticipating his answer.
After a long, drawn-out moment, Naruto sighed heavily. “Enemy.”
A slim, black brow rose beneath Sasuke’s dark fringe. “Is that right?” he replied with vague amusement. He turned around so that his back was pressed against the parapet, bracing his elbows against the edge. “Why?” he demanded, looking at him.
Naruto looked up at the blue sky, his eyes lingering on a particularly large cloud. “Because… then at least my existence would be acknowledged in some form by someone,” he murmured. He felt the other’s scrutinizing gaze on him. It was several moments before he finally cast Sasuke a glance.
Sasuke snorted derisively. “Still the same fucking fool you’ve always been,” he mocked with a shake of his head.
Naruto turned to face the other, shoving his hands in his pockets, as he looked squarely at him. “Better a fool than totally irrelevant.”
Any trace of amusement vanished from Sasuke’s face. His dark eyes hardened a fraction. He eased off the parapet and walked forward a few paces, flinging what was left of his cigarette down onto the floor, and snuffing it out with his boot.
He turned around, glaring. “Now I remember exactly what pissed me off about you,” he stated, crossing his arms.
“What, Sasuke?” Naruto goaded dryly.
“Your passive self-righteousness,” he snapped, his face darkening. “You might’ve been a prankster when we were younger, but you became worse than a mother, bitching at me every chance you got about following the right path and doing the right thing. ‘don’t do this, Sasuke,’ 'it’s bad for you, Sasuke,’ 'this isn’t the way to do things, Sasuke.’ Do you know how tired I was of that shit, and yet I still put up with it?”
“With your brother away, someone had to give a shit, Sasuke,” Naruto said with mounting exasperation.
“Oh, right!” Sasuke said, throwing up his hands dramatically. “Someone had to, and yet you turned your back on me just like everyone else!” he accused.
Naruto straightened, bringing his clenched fists out of his pockets. “The fuck? I turned my back on you? Get your facts straight, Sasuke—it was you who abandoned me. I stayed the same; I tried to be your friend! But I didn’t have the luxury of money to fall back on if I decided to drop out of high school. I had to stay focused and graduate. How the hell was I going to do that with you trying to convince me to skip classes with you and do stupid, useless shit?”
“Oh! Well, fuck. Forgive me! I’m so sorry for nearly holding you back in life,” he declared, laying a hand over his chest. He then furiously turned, walking away from Naruto across the roof.
“It wasn’t even really about that, Sasuke. I tried to help you!” Naruto heatedly insisted, following the other. “There was no one more important to me in the world than you. You were my fucking best friend! But the shit you were doing… it was just fucked up! We were teenagers. We should’ve been gaming every afternoon, going to homecoming and football games, and comparing dates our junior year—not going to fucking drug houses and sex parties!”
Sasuke whirled around to face him, his dark eyes blazing with anger. “So, because of that, you called it quits, then? I couldn’t fucking control it! Don’t you understand! It would’ve been fucking nice to have been the perfect model student, the perfect teen idol that every one of those drones in school thought I was. I didn’t give a shit about becoming a homecoming king! I didn’t want to deal with insecure, anorexic bitches asking me every five seconds if they looked too fat! All those popular skanks wanted to fuck me and those loser jocks wanted me to follow them on social media, but they didn’t know shit about me!”
“And whose fault is that!” Naruto shouted back in his face, his mouth trembling with anger. “You never wanted to let anybody in! You even avoided school counseling. People tried to help you, and be kind to you after what happened with your parents!”
“I didn’t give a shit about them! I just cared about you!” Sasuke yelled in return, his face contorted in sheer rage.
Naruto abruptly felt tears burn the back of his eyes. The other’s words had struck a chord so powerfully within him that he desperately found himself trying to swallow down the lump he felt rising in his throat.
Staring back into fathomless, dark eyes, Naruto was surprised to see the other's eyes become glassy, as his own probably were. A wealth of pain and hurt swirled in those dark depths and it hurt Naruto to look at them, his chest aching.
He was silent as Sasuke's jaw set and he turned around, giving him his leather-clad back, his fists clasped tightly at his sides as he angrily strode toward the door.
Naruto sighed, feeling the anger drain away from him. It was quickly replaced instead by deep-seated anguish. This had to stop.
“I…when your parents died, I didn’t know what to do,” Naruto said, his voice low.
Sasuke’s footsteps ceased.
“I felt useless,” he continued. “You were in so much pain but you didn’t react the same way I did when…mine died, so I just tried to be there with you…but then, the following week, you showed up to school, as if nothing happened. You were completely different after that. I felt like…I didn’t know you anymore…and you wanted me to lose myself with you,” he murmured softly, his gaze downcast.
Sasuke shifted in his stance but he remained turned. “How the fuck was I supposed to deal with it?” he said with a slight rasp in his voice. He stared blankly in front of him.
“My parents…especially my father were assholes, but… they were my parents," he said. "I wanted nothing more than for them to leave me alone, and when they did… I felt like shit. I hated what they put me through when they were alive, but I hated what they put me through when they died even more. I suddenly didn’t have to be a perfect teenager like Itachi was anymore, a perfect son… and... I didn’t know what to do ,” he admitted haltingly.
Naruto stared at the other’s back, his heart aching for him. He strode forward, then walked around Sasuke until he was facing him.
“Sasuke… you don’t have to run from being a perfect anything anymore. You’re an adult now—we both are. There’s nothing to run from anymore. Trust me, I’ve been there. You can’t torture yourself like this and hold on to those negative emotions. They’ll just eat you alive. And you have too much living to do,” he assured unfalteringly, his eyes pleading.
Sasuke stared back at him in silence, the gentle breeze blowing the tendrils of his ebony bangs around his face.
It was now or never and Naruto only hoped that the defensive man could see the sincerity in his face and hear it in his words.
“I wish things could’ve been different, Sasuke. I wish I could’ve been in a position to help you better. You were… everything to me for a long time. My only regret is losing you. And if we never talk again after this, I just want you to know... I'm so sorry, Sasuke. I really am,” he admitted, his voice trembling.
For a long moment, Naruto just watched and hope as the other processed his words. Sasuke looked away, but Naruto could see his throat working and his muscles in his slim jaw clench.
When Sasuke finally did look back at him, Naruto felt his breath catch a little. As his eyes studied Sasuke’s face, he noticed that it was the first time Sasuke looked somewhat reflective since their encounter started. It was a look that indicated that the other was on the precipe of deciding something fundamentally important.
Suddenly, a very loud, unexpected gurgle was heard, causing both males to eye Naruto’s stomach. Naruto covered his tummy with one hand. “Eh, I guess I’m a little hungry,” he said with a hesitant chuckle. He’d forgotten how late it was with the sun hanging low in the sky now.
Sasuke gave a soft snort. “Some things never change.”
Naruto offered a tentative, lopsided smile. “Whatever.”
The moment passed.
Naruto then abruptly turned, striding forward as Sasuke stared apprehensively after him. “I’m gonna grab a bite to eat.” Naruto stopped before reaching the rooftop door, turning slightly to look back at the other. “Do you... wanna come? My treat.”
Sasuke stared wordlessly at the other. His mind was still trying to catch up with what had just transpired. As he stared at his long lost friend’s endlessly blue eyes and watched as the blond fringe above them shifted with the breeze, Sasuke felt an inkling of a feeling he hadn’t felt in years.
It felt something like hope.
Throughout the final years of his tumultuous teenage existence, he’d moved through life like a robot, feeling nothing but a dark void within him where innocence had once been. He’d desperately sought to fill that void in all the wrong ways, only to feel emptier than before—inadvertently pushing away the one person he’d wanted by his side in the process.
He knew he’d been a damned asshole even if he’d never admit it. And he also knew that he’d been getting tired of the state his life was in more and more with each passing day. Even now as an adult he’d subconsciously wished for a change of any kind.
He didn’t how he’d go about it or if he could even accept the other man’s intent to mend the bridge Sasuke had allowed to be destroyed years before. But he needed a new lease; he needed something to believe in, even if he wouldn’t admit to it aloud. He’d been too immature and scared to reach for it back then, but now…
He looked at Naruto’s expectant face.
He was tired of running. He was tired of fighting. Perhaps… little by little, he could possibly find a way to be the best true self he could be with help from the right person.
Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Sasuke silently caught up with Naruto, noticing the other’s small smile from the corner of his eye.
Sasuke’s footsteps were lighter than they’d been in a long time.