Chapter Text
Sasuke doesn't walk home this way often. Usually, he takes the fastest way back from the Academy, the — what would Itachi call it? Most pramgatic. Pragmatic, that's it. The route is short and basically a straight line.
He shouldn't be thinking about Itachi anymore, except for how he's going to grow up strong and kill him one day. But Sasuke can't help himself. Sometimes he closes his eyes at night in his empty room surrounded by his empty compound and he thinks of Itachi, helping him train. Watching him with a smile. Carrying him home on his back. And he misses him.
He misses him so much that he doesn't even notice the rock under his toe. He goes down to his knees, scraping his palms. The river rushes by him. He can still remember a few minutes ago, walking by that other kid — Uzumaki Naruto, that was his name — who was skipping rocks by there. Sasuke had glared at him. He heard Naruto's family was gone, too. He wondered if it hurt for him the way Sasuke did.
Embarrasingly, Sasuke can feel his eyes getting damp. He still can't understand Itachi. Why his house is so empty and so cold, now. How he's supposed to put together his own bentos without Mikoto smiling at him, reminding him to go easy on the tomatoes. How he's supposed to wake up every day and walk through the gates with his clan crest and not just see corpses.
His knees don't even hurt that much, but he can feel tears leaking out of his eyes. He pushes up to his hands and knees, wipes his eyes with his scraped hand. That hurts, too. But where it really hurts is in his heart.
Itachi would think he was weak, and pathetic. He is. How can he get stronger like this? When half the time he can't make himself hate Itachi, he just misses him.
He's forcing himself to take in a breath and is going to get up when he hears footsteps crunching behind him, fast and loud at first but softer and slower as they approach.
Could it be an enemy? Maybe Itachi's come back to– reach for your kunai, Sasuke tells himself, reach for a shuriken, anything, but he can't make himself. He's stuck.
"Hey," he hears a voice say up above him.
"D'ya— d'ya need help?" No, Sasuke doesn't need help. He's fine, thank you. If he could just get his arms to move.
"Uh– Sasuke, right? Uchiha. We met before, at the Academy. I'm, uh, Uzumaki Naruto." Sasuke forces breath into his lungs and sits up on his knees. When he pushes his hair back, he finds himself looking up at Naruto. He's smiling, almost kind of tentatively. Looks like he wants to say something, but isn't. He's holding out his hand. Sasuke hears Itachi's voice in his head, saying, gather your hate, use it to be strong against me. He still can't breath, he thinks he might pass out. Naruto's still looking at him, but his smile's waning a bit. His fingers twitch, like he might take back his hand. His eyes look sad.
Angrier than he's been in months, Sasuke thinks, fuck you, Itachi, and he reaches up and grabs Naruto's hand.
Naruto looks kind of shocked at him. "Oh," he says, really wide-eyed. His eyes are really clear and blue. He's got scars on his cheeks that make him look kinda like a cat. Sasuke really likes cats. They had one at the compound, but most of them ran off after Itachi–
"Uchiha Sasuke," he says. He doesn't really speak that much these days, so his voice is kind of rough when he talks. Naruto doesn't seem weirded out, though. He just turns his smile up to megawatts, so bright Sasuke thinks he might need to look away.
"Don't worry, I think you won," he says, kicking away the rock. "Finally found an opponent that could beat you, huh?"
Sasuke stares at him. He's found plenty of opponents who could beat him. He keeps staring at Naruto until Naruto's gaze drops. They're still holding hands. Sasuke wants to say, shut up, you don't know anything, but the words just stick in his throat. Everything sticks in his throat, these days.
Suddenly Naruto perks up. "Don't worry, I'll get rid of it!" He kicks the rock and it goes soaring down the cliff across the river.
"Haha, see! Now the rock can't hurt you anymore!" He says, and he turns back to Sasuke. Sasuke still thinks he might cry, but he also feels like his lips are trying to tug into a smile. Which is weird. Naruto seems really stupid. But Sasuke must be a little stupid too, because he doesn't want to head back home right now.
"…Thanks," he says after a long pause, and Naruto grins really hard at that.
"Anytime!" he says. "I'm gonna be Hokage, so I gotta get strong, protect everyone from dangerous rocks!" He clutches Sasuke's hand tighter. Sasuke's pretty sure they're not supposed to hold hands like this, but he really likes it. Nobody's touched him in four months.
"Ne, Sasuke. I'm going to for ramen."
"Huh?"
"Do you— do you wanna come with me?"
Sasuke doesn't really like ramen. But what he likes even less is sitting in the empty Uchiha compound.
"Okay," he says. "You pay though."
"You think I'm rich?" Naruto pulls a face at that. He's got a lot of silly faces. Sasuke kind of wants to touch his cheeks, or his teeth, just to see what makes him that expressive.
"You're going to be Hokage, you'll have lots of money soon," Sasuke says. He's trying to be funny, he guesses. But he's never really been good at that, so he's not super surprised when Naruto takes him seriously.
"You really think?" He goes starry eyed. "All the ramen I could eat…" He tugs on Sasuke's hand, pulling him back towards the village. He was walking the wrong way when he ran into Sasuke, the idiot.
And that's how Sasuke becomes Naruto's friend.