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The movies would have you believe that throwing rocks at a friend’s house in the middle of the night was a cute, acceptable way to get their attention. Find a little pebble and lob it at a window and boom, suddenly your childhood friend and/or love interest was awake and ever so willing to indulge in whatever nighttime shenanigans you had in mind.
Here’s the reality: Naruto picks up a small, white pebble he finds in the bushes on the side of Sasuke’s home. His bedroom is the second window from the left. Naruto pitches the pebble at the window, which results in a tiny little thud but nothing else. No other sounds, no signs of movements. He picks up another pebble, throws it; picks up another, repeat. Frustrated, he throws the pebble a little harder than he anticipated, which hits the window harder than he anticipated, which shatters in a way he hardly anticipated.
The moment the glass breaks feels incredibly slow, like a tape being played frame by frame. He sees the cracks, hears the glass fracturing in deafening clarity, each shard hitting the floor of Sasuke’s room akin to the gravity of a pen dropping to the floor in an empty study hall. The light in the room flickers on, and in seconds Naruto sees Sasuke’s face appear through the hole in the window, his eyes blown wide, mouth slightly agape. When they make eye contact Sasuke’s eyebrows immediately furrow, and he screams Naruto’s name in a sleepy, but angry way that makes his skin crawl.
Still standing in the middle of the sidewalk as if paralyzed, he can feel his friend stomping down the stairs to the front door, and he’s not surprised at all when the front door opens to a barefoot teenager, face livid.
Naruto is only about 80% sure that Sasuke won’t kill him thanks to best-friend privilege but still, he hopes he looks as apologetic as he feels.
“S-Sasuke, i—”
“Naruto, what the fuck?” Naruto isn’t sure when Sasuke got in his face, but at feeling the little bit of spittle from that last word on his cheek he’s very aware of Sasuke’s proximity. There’s a fist holding the collar of his shirt. He’s aware of that too. “What did you do to my window!?”
Naruto swallows. He wants to cough but he’s sure that coughing in Sasuke’s face will make the situation exponentially worse. “I was just trying to get your attention!”
“By breaking my window.”
“That uh. That wasn’t the plan.”
Sasuke shakes Naruto a few times but somehow, despite the murderous intent Naruto can see in his eyes, Sasuke doesn’t punch him in the face. Or hits him at all, for that matter. Naruto, who tensed his whole body to prepare for an impact that never came, is dumbfounded, but nonetheless relieved when instead he’s dragged by the shirt collar to the front door.
“Sasuke, what—”
“You’re going to clean up your mess,” Sasuke says, with more anger and conviction than Naruto’s ever heard those words said with.
Sasuke begins dragging him up the stairs still by the collar of his t-shirt, causing Naruto to wince, yelling “You’re hurting me!” only to be ignored, probably rightfully.
They arrive at his bedroom, and Naruto winces again at the sight of the window. The entire thing isn’t destroyed, but there’s a rather sizable hole right in the middle. Thankfully, Sasuke’s bed is on the other side of the room and was safe from most of the wreckage, with most of the glass ending up on the floor directly underneath the window. It occurs to Naruto that he should ask if Sasuke got hurt in any way, but turning to look at his friend only resulting in having a broom and dustpan shoved in his face.
“Get to it.”
It takes a good twenty minutes to clean up the mess. There was a lot more glass than Naruto thought, mostly tiny shards that somehow found themselves across the room or under the bed in weird places, not to mention the fine, almost sand like residue that ended up on the windowsill and on the desk, which was closest to the window.
When he’s done Sasuke finally hits him, a large smack to the back of the head. It feels a little anti-climatic, but Naruto is wise not to question it, considering that if he squints he can still see the steam coming out of Sasuke’s ears when he looks back to his destroyed window.
“Uhm…” Naruto scratches the back of his head. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re going to pay for it.”
“What?”
“What did you expect?” Sasuke, from his perch on the bed, has his head against the wall behind him. He’s not looking at Naruto. “I could kick your ass instead.”
Naruto bristles quickly, though his voice doesn’t carry a lot of venom. “Fuck you.”
“You broke my window. At like, one in the morning.” Sasuke rises from his bed, steady on his feet now that he’s been awake for a while. “What the hell did you even want?”
“Oh.” Naruto blinks, the tension leaving him for a moment. “Right.”
“What is it? or were you trying to start a fight or something?”
“I wanted to ask you something.”
Sasuke stares at him. He doesn’t blink and Naruto doesn’t like the way he narrows his eyes as if he sees something disgusting. “That’s it? that couldn’t have waited until tomorrow!?”
“It was important!”
“Then what is it?”
With his eyes darting around the room anxiously, Naruto hesitates to speak. He walks over to the bedroom door to close it, to Sasuke’s scoffing amusement.
“Why are you closing it? It’s not like my parents are here to hear it.”
Naruto gives a quiet little “oh,” realizing belatedly that he hasn’t seen or heard Sasuke’s parents once since the incident occurred. The oversight is a little embarrassing, but he leaves the door closed anyway. He doesn’t ask why his parent’s aren’t here, he just goes to join Sasuke on the bed, who’s lying on his side.
“It better be good or I’m kicking you out,” Sasuke says, then promptly yawns rather loudly.
It takes two tries, clearing out his throat three times, before Naruto can actually speak. “I, uh. This is harder now that you’re angry at me.”
“I’m not angry.”
“Lies! That’s a lie!”
“I’m kicking you out.”
“Okay! Look I wanted to ask you, uh, out.” He’s looking pointedly away from Sasuke as he says this, staring at a corner of the room and definitely not at the broken window, where a stiff, choppy breeze is flowing into the room.
It’s silent for a minute. One whole minute, where the sound of the wind creaking against the window is much, much louder than it needs to be. Naruto focuses on the way the branches of some tree on the side of the house are scratching against the wall, finding sanctuary in the tap-tap rhythm of it while ignoring the way his entire body is humming with anxiety. His heart isn’t beating extraordinarily hard, no, instead he feels calm and tingly, and he keeps clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides like he’s trying to suppress his energy. Suddenly he really wants to leave. Sasuke hasn’t said anything yet. He really wants to leave.
“...what do you mean?” Sasuke says quietly then, voice low and pensive.
Naruto swallows thickly. “Asking you out like. outout.” He looks up. Sasuke is sitting up, hands in his lap. “I couldn’t get to sleep and I was watching these stupid movies on tv and I,” Naruto takes in a deep breath then deflates on the exhale. “I wanted to, I don’t know. Be spontaneous. I really didn’t mean to break your window though, honest.”
He scratches the back of his head again, though his arm feels too heavy to lift. Sasuke takes another excruciatingly long pause without speaking, which is doing wonders for Naruto’s nerves.
“So,” Sasuke says slowly, staring at his feet. “You came here to ask me on a date…?”
“...yes.”
“At one in the morning?”
A cough. “....yes.”
“You’re an idiot.”
Naruto finally looks up to make eye contact with Sasuke, and pauses. He’s…. not exactly sure what he was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn’t Sasuke — his best friend Sasuke with the my chemical romance posters and the penchant for shopping at hot topic — blushing, albeit very, very lightly. He almost didn’t notice it at first, and it makes him think that, god, he hopes he hasn’t been doing that himself this whole time.
“Is that a no?”
Looking away, Sasuke runs his fingers through his hair. “You already caused enough trouble tonight.”
The silence this time seems so far away in the way everything feels so loud. Naruto can hear his heartbeat, the scritch of Sasuke’s fingers against his scalp, the bed springs as he shifts on the mattress. Naruto lets his head fall, not sure of what else to say.
The movies would have you believe that it’s the childhood friends who usually fall in love. Maybe he read something wrong along the way: they’ve been friends since elementary school, living only a few blocks away from each other. It’s been years full of dumb jokes and late-night hang outs and impromptu sleepovers, and somewhere along they way they learned to live with each other in some strange way that’s very, very comfortable. The hugs — the ones Sasuke allows, anyway, when they’re alone — have been a bit weirder lately. Naruto himself have felt a little weirder lately, and he thought that maybe, maybe.
Every single maybe collapses before his eyes and he’s sure that things could’ve gone much worse, window breaking not included, but it feels—
“Hey.” Naruto feels the warmth of Sasuke’s fingers before he realizes that they’re wrapped around his wrist. He looks up numbly. “Come on.”
He’s pulled up from the bed and led out of the room. For a split second he’s worried Sasuke’s going to throw him out and that things are much, much worse than they are but they end up in front of a closet instead, Sasuke rifling through it until he emerges with tape and cardboard. “What’s this?”
Sasuke rolls his eyes. “To tape up the window. Duh.”
“Oh.”
So they tape up the window, and once it’s done Naruto stands there awkwardly before clearing his throat. “What now?”
Sasuke shrugs. “You want pajamas?”
Here’s reality as Naruto seems to understand it: he broke his best friend’s window and confessed to him all in the same night, and somehow did not get his ass kicked. It’s a little past 2am and he’s wearing a pair of pajama pants borrowed from said friend and is lying beside him in bed, not in that awkward way where their heads are on opposite sides, but right next to each other. Sasuke’s body is warm, and every soft little breath is audible when they’re this close.
He doesn’t get it.
“Sasuke?” he whispers. Sasuke is watching the ceiling.
“Mm?”
Naruto starts to says something all buried in stutters, but all it takes is a loud scoff to shut him up. Sasuke shifts so that they’re facing each other, his dark eyes unwavering. They stare at each other like that for a moment before Sasuke leans in, Naruto follows and suddenly they’re kissing. It’s not long, it’s not that huge, exaggerated moment that he was expecting somewhere deep in the back of his mind, but it’s nice. Everything feels warm, from his chest down to his toes, and when Sasuke pulls away his eyes linger on Sasuke’s lips like he has tunnel vision.
“Naruto.” Sasuke says, and Naruto looks at him properly. “Try not to destroy the rest of the windows in the morning.”
“HEY!”
Smirking, Sasuke closes his eyes and rolls over, a definite sign that the night is over. Naruto, nearly buzzing with excitement, can only shift on the bed himself, the biggest, most ridiculous smile on his face.
“Goodnight!”
Sasuke parrots him, voice half buried in a yawn but no doubt as affectionate as Naruto knows him to be. Movies didn’t let him down for this moment, at least.