Uchiha Sasuke was an international terrorist, a traitor to Konoha, and absolutely the last person Neji wanted to be even tangentially responsible for. Well, he wasn’t really responsible for him, but he had a responsibility to him. He had to tell him. He had to tell someone.
He’d tagged along on Naruto’s most recent expedition to bring Sasuke back, and while personally Neji thought it was futile and a waste of resources, he wasn’t ignorant to how this was probably the only way Naruto would get to see him. Naruto was weird about him, and maybe Neji wouldn’t have been as suspicious if he didn’t have a few months worth of his father’s journal entries permanently etched onto the inside of his brain (not to mention the pictures). Said journal entries (and pictures, fuck) were currently burning a hole in his pack. He both wanted to hold on to them as a side of his father he’d never seen before, as well as burn them in effigy. Ritualistically. Luckily none of the pictures were of his father, but having nude photos of someone else’s father was not a comfortable position by any means.
Being a witness to whatever Naruto and Sasuke had going on was also not very comfortable, and he looked around at the sparse squad to see if he was the only one uncomfortable at the lofty declarations around knowing each other. Sakura and Sai all seemed completely ignorant to the connotation, but thankfully Yamato met his eyes with a wry shrug. Good, so he wasn’t alone in thinking their whole thing was a bit…odd.
God. He shouldn’t be here.
“Not to interrupt,” Neji called out, cutting off some conversation around hearts and pain or what have you, “but I have something to tell Uchiha.”
Sasuke gave him a disdainful look, but Neji couldn’t let himself get offended when he realized what he’d have to say next.
“Well…” Neji tried. “There’s some…information I recently came to acquire…that concerns you…”
Sasuke rolled his eyes. “What, that the massacre of my people was done on the orders of Konoha?”
“No-” Neji stopped, absorbing that. “What the- Is that true?”
He turned to the squad for answers, and all of them refused to look directly at him.
The…the Uchiha massacre was done on the orders of Konoha? Men, women, children, elders; all of them slain at the behest of the village they were a part of, that their ancestors had helped create? Was Itachi a scapegoat? What the hell?
Suddenly Sasuke made a lot more sense.
“Okay,” Neji tried. “That’s…well, that’s not what I had to tell you.”
The implications of the village ordering the wholesale slaughter of their own people were impossible to grasp. There was no crime the Uchiha could have committed that would justify murdering the children or non-combatants, and if they had committed a crime as a clan then they should have been held to account publicly, not executed in private, the whole affair hushed up. There was gross injustice here, and Neji’s shoulders were ratcheting up as he realized they now had two things to bond over.
He shrugged off his pack, pulling out the cloth-wrapped bundle of incriminating material.
“This won’t be easy to hear-” and even harder to say “-but…well…”
“Spit it out, Hyuuga. I have shit to do.”
“Our dads used to sleep together.”
Whatever Sasuke expected him to say that certainly wasn’t it, but his reaction was muted next to Naruto and Sakura’s disbelieving screech.
“What!?”
“They, er-” Neji knew he was red, knew his normal poise was nowhere to be found, but he couldn’t help it. “They would have sex,” he clarified. “When they were kids, uh, off and on again for a few months?” He waved his father’s journal in the air. “My father’s journal only goes for so long, so it could be longer.”
Sasuke said nothing, his face completely blank as he processed. Neji envied him, annoyed that he was struggling so much.
“I, uh, thought I should tell you. There’s pictures too-”
“You have pictures of my father?” Sasuke asked, apparently glossing over the explicit portion of his news. His voice hadn’t changed, but his eyes looked just a bit longing.
“You won’t like them,” Neji said quickly. “But, er, I thought you should be the one to make the decision on where they go.” Because they can’t stay at the Hyuuga compound that was for damn sure.
“Let me see,” Sasuke snarled, suddenly right next to him. Neji easily gave over the journal, the pictures tucked within the pages.
“Um, I want the journal back, but the pictures-”
“What the fuck.”
Yeah. The pictures were objectively tasteful but Uchiha Fugaku was clearly, erm, the erotic subject and even knowing his father would be on the other side of the camera made the pictures painful. If he’d actually been the subject Neji suspected he might have simply keeled over and passed away.
“He looks like you,” Neji offered, before realizing that was probably the worst possible thing he could have said.
Sasuke flipped through the journal, removing every photo he found but very deliberately kept the image facing away from him. He then opened the journal near the front, skimming until he, presumably, found his father’s name. He read, and Neji’s awkwardness didn’t abate. He knew what he would find; the fondness. The freedom and rebellion Neji’s father found in this strange relationship. The humour.
Hiashi may be the heir, may always have power over me, but he will never be able to say he got Uchiha Fugaku on his knees - the Uchiha heir. The future clan head. God, only I’ve had that privilege.
He was grimacing even remembering his father’s words, and watching the emotion play out over Sasuke’s face brought it all back. He cringed, his lips turned down while his eyebrows flew up. He flipped through a few pages.
“If it helps,” Neji allowed, “it probably means that your father would be okay with…you know…”
“With what?” Sasuke challenged, his eyes flicking up at him to glare, but it was clear he actually had no idea what Neji was getting at.
Neji took a moment to pray, then gestured awkwardly between Sasuke and Naruto. “You know…if our dads were into this sort of stuff they would be okay with their sons, uh, also being into it.”
He got it, finally, and Neji had the novel experience of seeing international terrorist Uchiha Sasuke fight between flushing and homicide. Naruto, on the other hand, seemed completely puzzled until his eyes suddenly widened, his mouth dropping open in shock. He turned those wide eyes on Neji, his own face flushed as he awkwardly rubbed his hands. Neji grimaced.
“Neji…” Naruto said, staring up at him with an earnest expression that was hard to look at. “Are you gay?”
He’d need more than prayer to get through this.
Neji stiffened. He gave the bleakest, most unimpressed, most disparaging glare he could muster at the idiot. Naruto cringed, but dared to reach out and pat him on the shoulder.
“It’s okay, buddy,” he said, grinning wide in support. “It’s like you said, right? Your dad would totally support you!”
See, now Neji was the one being forced to restrain himself from murder.
“I’m going home,” he declared, snatching his father’s journal out of Sasuke’s hands. He was never going to read it again, but he wasn’t going to just get rid of it. “You guys can get back to grand declarations of devotion or whatever.”
He missed his team. Tenten would know what to do about this, and he’d take Gai-sensei and Lee’s exuberance over this shit any day.
“What? You can’t just leave!” Naruto cried. “What about our mission?!”
Neji let his eyes trail over to Sasuke, who was daring a look at one of the photos only to shudder and look away.
He pat Naruto on the shoulder, a mockery of the support Naruto had given him. “I think you can handle this one.”
Naruto gave him an odd look, like he was finally putting the pieces together, and Neji took the opportunity to sprint as far and fast as he could away from the scene. He’d done his due diligence, had kept the honour of the man his father had once loved by returning incriminating material to his heir. He had no more business with team seven, and honestly believed spending one more second in their presence was bad for brain activity.
Now he just had to go back to his clan and tell them the village betrayed the Uchiha. Shit.