Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Naruto is half asleep when he’s woken by the door closing. He’s up right away, stirring from his sleep, his eyes wide open. The light is clicked on not even a second later. 

Sasuke is looking at him from the other side of the room. He’s fully dressed, wearing his nice shirt and a pair of wide black jeans. He’s also looking at Naruto like he’s seen a ghost. 

Which is, y’know— weird. He’s the one who’s in bed, not the one returning home and turning on the big light at three AM. 

Which is fine. Naruto is a cool roommate. He doesn’t care if Sasuke goes out. 

It does hurt a little that Sasuke has never really gone out with him. Every time he does, he says that he doesn’t drink and keeps his distance. He wishes he’d have an excuse to get closer to Sasuke, to, whatever, maybe dance against each other. 

“You—” Sasuke points at him. “Why are you here?” He’s slurring his words. Holyshit. 

“Are you drunk?” Naruto asks him. He sits up even straighter, scooches to the side of his bed. “You never drink!” 

Sasuke snorts. “I don’t drink around you.” He says this like it’s a known fact. Naruto, in fact, did not know this. It hurts a little.

“What? Why?” 

“Because, genius, I’ll definitely let slip that I—” Sasuke shuts up, frowns at him. “You’re trying to make me say it.” 

Naruto grabs a hoodie from the floor and pulls it over his head. “I’m not trying to make you say anything! What are you even talking about?” 

Sasuke keeps frowning at him, eyes him suspiciously. “I’m not telling.” Then, he adds. “You were supposed to be gone.” 

“Yeah,” Naruto turns on the lights on their nightstands — matching ones they got a while back — and turns the big light off. Then, he grabs Sasuke’s water bottle off his night stand and starts filling it at their room’s sink. “Yeah but Kiba’s sister was supposed to drive us but apparently Kiba had lied about something and the whole thing didn’t go through. I’m glad she’s not not my sister, to be honest. She scares me.” 

Sasuke chuckles, then keeps a soft smile on his lips as Naruto hands him the water bottle. He even hums slightly, in the way he always does when he means thank you. Naruto knows him like that.

They stopped fighting a while ago and grew comfortable in each other’s presence and Naruto thought he knew him so well. 

“D’ya, drink more often?” Naruto sits down next to Sasuke, on his bed. His eyes are heavy with sleep but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to close an eye. 

“Sometimes.” Sasuke takes a swing of his water. 

“Do you not like—” He stops that sentence. What is it he even wants to ask? Do you not like drinking with me? Do you not like hanging out with me? Do you not like me? 

Sasuke laughs. “Ha— I wish. It’s—” He makes a twirly motion with his hands, as if he’s telling an ancient joke. Then, he adds: “The opposite.” 

Naruto’s heart skips a beat. Oh. So Sasuke does like him. He’s just… he’s really glad. 

“Wait no—” Sasuke adds. “Don’t listen to me. Drunk Sasuke. Can not be trusted. That’s why drunk Sasuke—” he waits a beat, looking for the right words. Then, he looks up at him with his deep black eyes. “Can not be in a room with Naruto.” 

“Why not?”

“Talk too much.” 

“Me?” 

Sasuke shakes his head. “No, stupid. Me.”  He tries to point at himself but forgets he’s holding a water bottle, spilling water all over his shirt. “Ah, fuck.” 

“Is that why you went out while I would be gone?”

“Ha, ha, slow down smarty pants. This is not an interrogation.” He puts down his bottle and starts rubbing at his shirt, trying to get rid of the wet spot. Eventually, he sighs and leaves it. 

“Just take the shirt off,” Naruto tells him. “Where’s your pyjama shirt?” 

Sasuke looks at him, then asks: “You want to see me naked?” 

“I see you naked all the time.” 

Sasuke stares at him, then covers his face with both of his hands. “Oh god,” he says. 

“It’s fine.” 

“And you looked?” 

Naruto wants to laugh. He wants to yell. He wants more of this honest Sasuke. He wants to put him into bed, cover him with the blankets and have him sleep off his drunkenness so that he won’t feel ashamed tomorrow.

He’s kind of torn.

“I’ve seen it tons of times, Sas, c’mon.” 

Sasuke peeks at him through his fingers. “Did you like it?” 

“What?”

“Did you think I was handsome?” 

“Everyone thinks you're handsome!” 

Sasuke pulls his hands away and kind of smacks one of the pillows from the bed. “No!” he calls out. Naruto has never seen him like this. “I don’t give a shit about them. What did you think?” 

“Sas— You’re— of course you’re handsome. You know that.” 

“But you never say that,” Sasuke says softly. He suddenly sounds a bit shy about it. 

Naruto wants to laugh. He’s seen so many girls fawn over Sasuke. He’s been asked out by both boys and girls, and though Sasuke hasn’t answered positively to any of them, it can’t be bad for his confidence. Every single person in their college thinks he’s the most beautiful boy alive. There were times Naruto wanted to be in his shoes, though that has passed, and these days… Naruto can really no longer disagree—

No, the truth is: Naruto is nothing like those other people. He knows that Sasuke is prettiest when he’s just woken up. He knows Sasuke sometimes talks in his sleep and that it’s kind of lovely, though embarrassing as well. He knows how Sasuke acts when he’s warmed up to you. He knows looks Sasuke has that no one else knows about. 

He can’t just simply agree with those rando’s. 

“C’mon, Sas— you don’t need another ego boost. Everyone says that.” 

“You’re not everyone,” Sasuke answers. 

“No.” Naruto breathes out. “Would it matter more coming from me then?”

To his surprise, Sasuke simply nods. Oh. Oh fuck, okay. 

He doesn’t know if he has it in him to tell Sasuke everything he thinks about how he looks. About the soft look in his eye when they’re watching a movie together. About his bedhead. About — and that’s what this was about — his pale shirtless chest, his broad shoulders and the way his hair falls perfectly against his neck. 

“I think you’re pretty,” Sasuke says. 

As if that doesn’t turn his entire world around. 

It’s the first time someone had ever said that to him. He tries his best to ignore that it’s said by someone who is so obviously drunk off his ass, because — because this is still Sasuke. Holyshit. 

“Really?” He sounds so insecure when he says it. He’s tried to hide that, kind of. He’s tried to convince himself and others that he knows he’s handsome or fun or at least a good friend — but the thing is; he doesn’t know any of that. 

Sasuke huffs, as if that’s a stupid question. “With your fucking—” he waves his hand again, towards Naruto. Luckily doesn’t bump anything over this time. “Stupid fucking blond hair, all messy when you wake up. And your stupid shirt that somehow shows all your muscles while it’s also baggy — what the fuck, how does that even work — and your bright blue fucking ey—”

Sasuke looks at him and fall still.
He looks straight into his eyes and stills as if he’s an animal in headlights. 

“You should shut me up now,” he adds. 

“I don’t think I want that,” Naruto answers. 

“Stupid,” Sasuke curses at him. “This is why! Because seeing you will make me all honest and — no. Nope. Forge—” 

“After you’ve showered, your hair falls against your neck in a way that’s just — so pretty, I can’t explain properly but I notice it every time.” Naruto starts. Sasuke is gaping at him, but at least he’s stopped trying to deny everything he’s said so far. “And it’s not the same as with everyone. Your eyes are thick and small when you wake up, but it only makes the dark of them deepen. Or when you smile in secret, even though you never do that anywhere else, because these sixteen square meters have been more of a home than any place else.” 

Sasuke is looking at him. 

Naruto is awfully aware that, while Sasuke has the excuse of being drunk, he does not. He has the excuse of always saying too much anyway. The excuse of having been woken up at three am. He has the excuse that he’s the one who hopes. 

“Oh,” Sasuke simply says. 

“Yeah.” 

Sasuke straightens his back. “Oh! So I can just say— Naruto—” 

“Yeah?” He’s pretty sure he’d tell Sasuke anything he wants to hear right now. 

“Maybe then, right now, we should fuck. No. No— sorry. That was stupid. Kiss first. Can we kiss?” He looks at Naruto with these dark deep eyes and Naruto feels like he can’t deny him anything. “Please?” 

Oh fuck. 

“How do you know you won’t regret it tomorrow?” 

Sasuke laughs. “What! You’re stupid! I wanted to ask that for one maybe, I think, yeah, maybe two years. When did we get this room again?” 

“Two and a half years ago,” Naruto simply answers, because, holyshit, how do you answer the rest of that? He can’t even process it. 

“Yeah almost two years. So. Kiss? Now?” Sasuke leans in slightly and holds Naruto’s leg. His hand is still a little wet from all the water he spilled all over himself. 

Naruto reaches out and tugs a bit of hair behind his ear. “Won’t you regret it if our first kiss is while you’re drunk, then? What if you can’t remember details of it?” 

Sasuke frowns and waits a few beats to think about it seriously. He looks cute, frowning and all serious about it.

Eventually, he says: “Yes. Probably. Shut up.” 

Naruto laughs. 

“But you got to promise to kiss me tomorrow.” 

“I promise,” Naruto says. 

“And! You got to say that you like me. If you like me. But you can only kiss me if you like me. Also, don’t remind me of any of this if you don’t like me. Just poison me with some deadly—” 

“I like you.” He’s surprised by how easily the words leave him. How true they are. How much he, somewhere, not even that deep inside, he must have known that all along. 

“Sick,” Sasuke says. “Ew, that was embarrassing. I mean: cool. Nice. That’s— yeah. Okay. Kiss me tomorrow and remind me.” 

“Okay” Naruto says. “I promise.” 

Sasuke nods. “And sleep with me in my bed?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, sure thing.” 

“Cool! Okay, yeah cool.” Sasuke eyes him, and then frowns again. “Now turn around so I can change my shirt. Don’t look.”

Naruto laughs brightly, turns around. 

Chapter Text

The morning light shines through the crack of their curtains and Sasuke groans. His head is killing him, and that seems to be the least of his problems as flashes of last night come back to him — I think you’re pretty; We should fuck. No, sorry. Kiss first. — and he figures that he might have to kill himself. 

He can still pretend that he doesn’t remember.

He can tell Naruto that he always gets clingy and romantic like that when he's drunk, with everybody. 

He can kick Naruto out of his bed and pretend nothing happened for long enough that Naruto will let go of it and everything will slowly turn back to normal except maybe a little awkward again.  

With his mind racing, he hears Naruto’s soft snoring in his neck, and feels the warmth of his toes against his shin. He tries not to stir, just so he can enjoy Naruto’s arms around him a little longer. He lets himself sink under the pressure of Naruto’s warm, comfortable and heavy, and in his mind — loud with every single thing he regrets — the words I like you slip through. The memory of Naruto saying those words. 

They’re louder and more persistent than anything else. 

He opens his eyes to look at Naruto against him, slightly open mouthed like he always is when sleeping, and his hair messy against the pillow. Sasuke's pillow. He’s wearing his blue pyjama shirt, the one with buttons. He has his arm draped over Sasuke like he hasn’t let go all night. 

And Sasuke has confessed. 

Not poetically. Not desperately. Not anything like what he’d dared to imagine.

Naruto stirs and Sasuke can actually feel his heart skyrocket. He thinks of what to say, whether to pretend he doesn’t remember anything. Before he gets anywhere, Naruto opens his eyes — his wonderful deep sky blue fucking eyes — and as soon as he sees Sasuke, he grins. 

Sasuke feels his head pounding. He squints his eyes slightly.

“Hi,” Naruto tells him. He doesn’t freak out, he doesn’t ask why he’s in Sasuke's bed. Instead, he pulls Sasuke in a little closer and snuggles him. “Mornin’” 

He grumbles. “My head hurts.” 

“Oh shit. I’ll get you some painkillers in a bit.” 

Sasuke nods. Sometimes he wishes Naruto was not this nice all the time; it would make being a jerk to him and pretending not to like him so much easier. He figures it’s kind of hopeless, though; he’s liked Naruto since he was still picking fights with him. Trying to fight him. Cussing at him. Calling him a jerk (though he still does that, making it sound like it means something completely different). He’s kind of stuck. Hopeless. 

“So, uh—” Naruto starts. Sasuke is pretty sure that he’s going to talk about what happened. He’s torn between wanting to bury himself alive and never coming back to the land of the living, and wanting to pull Naruto into a disgustingly open mouthed kiss by his bedhead.

He does neither. 

He stays still and looks at the bright boy in his bed. 

“I don’t know how much you remember, but, eh— I promised you yesterday that I’d tell you that I like you.” 

Sasuke knows he must look dumb as he stares at him. 

“And that I would kiss you,” Naruto adds. He thinks for a bit, then adds another thing: “But only if you want that too, of course. You wanted to, eh, yesterday, but you were pretty drunk, but yeah you made me promise that we’d—” 

Sasuke buries his face in his hands. This only brings him closer to Naruto’s warm chest underneath the sheets, which makes his heart skip a beat. Fuck. “Ugh shut up.” 

“Oh,” Naruto whispers. 

Sasuke looks up and Naruto is looking — wide eyed and insecure. Sasuke is pretty sure that he can feel another heartbeat skyrocketing nervously, maybe even louder than his own. And he knows. He knows that Naruto needs him to be honest; that Naruto is not as confident as he always seems and that he’s dealt with bitter loneliness and rejection that he never deserved. 

And then the person who loves him as if he’s hung the sun in the sky is a complete repressed fuck up. Sucks to be Naruto. 

Sucks to be him, looking for his words. 

Once again avoiding saying how he feels. Avoiding getting drunk just because it might make him honest. Avoiding Naruto because he’s afraid he’ll slip up and say something genuine. 

God, he’s so done with himself. He’s so done avoiding those blue eyes. 

“No. I’m embarrassed.” He tries to explain. He swallows, grabs a hold of Naruto’s arm and holds him in place. Not that Naruto would run away now, he’s not the person always running from shit. Still. Still he holds Naruto. Maybe just to hold onto something to ease his nerves. “Fuck it. You should definitely kiss me.” 

Naruto’s face flashes through a thousand emotions in seconds; a small frown staying between his eyebrows. “And what you said yesterday? Was it—” 

“The only thing I lied about is that you shouldn’t listen to drunk Sasuke,” He says. Then, he chuckles at how much he means it. “Fuck it. Drunk Sasuke got us here and—” he tightens his grip on Naruto’s arm. “Everything was true.” 

A grin spreads on Naruto’s face. Bright and beautiful and excited and much like he knows Naruto, but times hundred. 

“Stop grinning.” 

“I can’t.” Naruto says, his happiness even hearable in the sound of his voice. “I’m really—” 

“Naruto. Just kiss me. C’mon. If you’re that—” 

He asked for it himself. But when Naruto grabs him by the neck and pushes their lips together, he’s far from prepared. For one, he’s in his middle of talking and so he’s holding his lips awkwardly and open— which Naruto makes good use of when he pushes their lips open against each other, something soft to the pressure. 

And, secondly, because he had never allowed himself to imagine getting here. 

Of course, there are moments that he remembers, that had him hope and imagine, before he killed that spark again. There was him, a year ago, admitting to Naruto that he’s gay and Naruto answering that he doesn’t really get how people choose a sexuality, like, how are you sure? Sasuke had hoped he wasn’t unknowingly homophobic, and awkward around him for the rest of their college life, but he had never imagined him being open. 

There was the moment they stopped fighting and started hanging out more, watching movies together on their days off and going to Ikea to buy shit for their room to share or to match. Cabinets with the colourfull boxes Naruto liked. Their funky looking night lights. The same bedsheets in different colours. 

His friends, raising an eyebrow at them and asking what the fuck is going on between you two, you together? and Sasuke saying no, fuck off, with his heart racing because apparently there was something to them that made them seem like a couple. 

He’s pushed away all of those moments. Killed the small hopes. Imagined the worst case scenarios more often than the best case scenario. The best case being— 

Naruto in his bed, slowly moving his hand from his neck to his hip and grabbing onto it. Their noses bumping as they kiss. The sheets clammy from their first time sleeping next to each other and he’s awfully aware that his feet are sweaty but he still pushes them against Naruto’s legs to pull him closer, closer, closer. 

Naruto is smiling against his lips. 

Maybe he is too— who gives a shit. He can’t get much more embarrassing than he was yesterday, might as well get really sappy about it. 

Naruto pulls back and caresses their noses together. “I like you,” he says again. 

“You have morning breath,” Sasuke answers. Yeah, yeah, he’s pretty sure he’s smiling too. 

He laughs. “Mi morning breath es su morning breath.”

“Ew, that's—”

When Naruto dips down and kisses him again, he can’t even be mad. Whatever, he didn’t even particularly want to finish that sentence anyway. He grabs a handful of Naruto’s messy bed hair and presses himself as close to Naruto as he possibly can. 

For a while, that’s all there is in his world. The sixteen square meters of their room. His dark blue bedsheets, warm from sleeping, and Naruto’s orange ones left when Naruto had gotten up last night. Their matching night lights. Every single warm bit of Naruto’s tanned skin against his fingertips as he caresses it. 

When they pull away, Naruto softly caresses his forehead, rubs his left eyebrow. “How’s the headache?” 

Sasuke kind of forgot about that. “Present,” he mumbles. 

“You want, eh—” 

“Coffee." 

Naruto is almost out of bed immidiately as he says it. “Stay here, I’ll get some.” 

Sasuke pulls him back, presses their lips together for a quick peck. He can do that now. “Let’s go together. It’s fine.” There’s a coffee shop on campus. Five minute walk. Their black coffee is not that good, really, and they specialize in the kind of sweet frappoccino caramel macchiato whatever stuff that Naruto likes, but he’ll live. 

“Yeah? Let’s go.” Naruto grins, then slips out of the bed completely. Then, a little softer, he adds: “It’ll be a date.” 

Sasuke raises an eyebrow at how hesitant Naruto still sounds. “Idiot.” 

“What, why?” 

Sasuke slips his legs out of the bed and frowns at how light the room is. “Of course it’s a date. We’re dating.” He gets up and pulls a clean shirt from his shelf, slips out of his sleeping one and pulls the clean one over his head. “C’mon, I don’t just kiss everyone.” 

Which is, you know, because he’s been in love with his best friend for fuck knows how long. 

“Speaking of which,” he holds out his hand towards Naruto. “Let me wear your blue hoodie.”