Chapter Text
Naruto Uzumaki wasn’t unhappy.
He reminded himself of that every morning when he kissed Hinata’s cheek and grabbed the lunch she packed for him, still warm in its little glass container. He reminded himself when he came home from work to the smell of her cooking, her soft hums following him as he loosened his tie. He reminded himself even now, sitting with a cold beer in hand, laughing with his friends at their usual booth.
He had everything he’d ever said he wanted.
A steady job at the design firm downtown. A girlfriend who adored him. Friends who felt like family.
So why did he still dream about Sasuke Uchiha?
“—You’re zoning out again,” Sakura’s voice broke through the chatter.
Naruto blinked. “Huh?”
She sighed, pink hair shining under the bar’s amber light. “I said, you’ve been staring at the same coaster for five minutes.”
“I’m not zoning out.”
“Yeah, you are,” Shikamaru drawled lazily, leaning back in the booth, his half-empty whiskey glass in hand. “And we all know what that means.”
“Do we?” Gaara muttered, expression flat as ever, though his brow twitched. “He’s probably thinking about—”
“Don’t,” Naruto cut him off, a little too fast.
Gaara’s lips curved into something between amusement and annoyance. “—Sasuke,” he finished anyway.
Sakura’s gaze softened, while Shikamaru just sighed. Naruto groaned and rubbed his face, fingers catching in his messy blond hair.
“Man, I’m just tired,” he said lamely.
“Sure,” Sakura said. “Tired from thinking about your ex for three years?”
Naruto winced. “Sakura—”
She didn’t let him talk his way out of it. “You can’t keep pretending it doesn’t eat at you. Every time we come here, every time you have more than two drinks, his name comes up.”
Gaara’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Sasuke was an asshole,” he said bluntly.
Naruto looked up sharply. “He wasn’t.”
“Sure he was,” Gaara countered, swirling his drink. “Arrogant. Cold. Always made you feel like you were chasing something that didn’t want to be caught.”
Naruto’s jaw tightened. “You didn’t know him like I did.”
“I knew enough,” Gaara said. “You were miserable the whole last year you were together.”
“That was my fault,” Naruto said, surprising even himself with how quickly the words fell out.
Sakura sighed and leaned forward on her elbows. “You were both at fault. You were an insecure twenty-year-old frat boy who couldn’t handle the idea that people might think you were gay, and Sasuke-well, he doesn’t forgive easily.”
Naruto laughed bitterly. “Yeah. That’s one way to put it.”
He could still see it — the last night they’d spoken. The shouting. Sasuke’s face, pale and furious, his voice cracking as he told Naruto to never speak to him again. Naruto hadn’t even followed him. Too stubborn. Too proud. Too scared.
And then Sasuke disappeared. Deleted his socials, blocked his number, stopped going to the same circles. Gone.
It was Sakura who kept him vaguely alive in their conversations.
“He’s working freelance,” she’d say once.
“He’s living on the other side of the city now,” another time.
“He doesn’t ask about you,” always at the end.
That last one always hit hardest.
Naruto had Hinata now. Sweet, gentle Hinata, who looked at him like he was everything. And he loved her. He did. He swore he did.
But when she kissed him, he sometimes felt the ghost of someone else’s lips — colder, sharper, tasting faintly of cigarettes and black coffee.
“You ever think you fucked up your only shot at something real?” Naruto asked suddenly, eyes distant.
Shikamaru raised a brow. “Deep question for a Thursday.”
Sakura’s expression softened. “Naruto…”
“I mean it,” he said, voice low now. “Like, you ever just… sit there and think, ‘yeah, this person saw every ugly part of me, and I pushed them away because I was scared they’d leave anyway’?”
No one spoke for a moment. The hum of the bar filled the silence — low music, laughter, glasses clinking.
Gaara shifted in his seat. “He made his choice too, you know.”
Naruto nodded. “Yeah. He did.”
Sakura hesitated. “You know, he’s… not doing great lately.”
That made him look up. “What do you mean?”
She hesitated again, glancing at the others. “He’s working freelance, barely leaves the apartment. He doesn’t talk to anyone except me, and even that’s rare. I think… he’s lonely.”
Something twisted deep in Naruto’s chest.
“Don’t,” Gaara said quietly, as if reading his mind. “Don’t go down that road again.”
Naruto’s grip on his beer tightened. “What road?”
“The one where you start thinking you can fix him.”
Naruto looked away, eyes unfocused. “Maybe I don’t want to fix him. Maybe I just… want to see him.”
Sakura’s voice was soft now. “Would Hinata understand that?”
That one landed like a punch.
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Because the truth was, Hinata didn’t deserve to be second place to a ghost.
Shikamaru finally spoke. “You can’t move forward if you keep looking back. But maybe closure’s what you need.”
Naruto gave a weak smile. “Closure, huh.”
“Yeah,” Sakura said, almost hopeful. “I could text him. Maybe he’d—”
“No,” Naruto interrupted quickly. “If he wanted to see me, he’d have reached out.”
She frowned. “Naruto-”
“I mean it,” he said, more firmly now. “I messed it up once. I won’t drag him into my mess again.”
But later that night, lying beside Hinata as she slept, Naruto’s mind was far away — back in that tiny college apartment where the walls smelled like paint thinner and cheap takeout, and Sasuke’s head used to rest on his chest, his voice low and teasing as he called Naruto a dumbass.
Naruto turned over, staring at the ceiling.
He wasn’t unhappy.
He had everything.
Everything except the one person he still dreamed about.
And maybe that was the worst part, that he could love someone so completely once and still wake up years later feeling half-finished.