Chapter 1
Teamwork.
It’s not like the idea of teamwork hadn’t been introduced to him before Kakashi, though certainly never so brutally. The academy had team exercises, strategy taught with the presumption of having at least a 3-man squad. Teamwork was practically ingrained in the curriculum, now that he thought about it. Almost every day he’d been forced to deal with fighting subpar taijutsu or poking holes in a classmates piece of shit mock-mission report or having to weather the questions of his teammates for whatever exercise they didn’t understand. It had been a special kind of hell, dealing with other people. Unproductive, grating, a waste of time. He should already be chunin, how could he compete-
Maybe it’s because the danger felt real, dealing with Kakashi. Come at me with the intent to kill, he’d said, and Sasuke had felt the command enter his bones like it belonged there. When it became clear he was outmatched (too outmatched) and that there would be no good ending for him in this test he’d felt that twist in his gut that he buried as deep as he could, the helplessness he resented and worked daily to get rid of. Yet after the big reveal, teamwork, he hadn’t felt the frustation and anger that came with dealing with lesser ninja. And when Kakashi came out of the forest to scold them about giving Naruto food, the helplessness hadn’t felt so…whole. Yes, he was facing down a man who could kill him, a man who had already proved he would hurt them, but he hadn’t been alone.
It had felt right, but there was no reason it should have felt right. He was weaker than Kakashi. He’d failed multiple times. There wasn’t a single damned thing to feel good about. He’d passed his test, so what? That was expected, not impressive.
So why had it felt like a victory?
More pressingly, why does that feeling keep persisting?
“Are you going to pull me up or are you going to let me drop?”
“I’m going to let you drop,” Sasuke immediately replies, but starts the process of pulling up his teammate from certain death anyways.
Naruto huffs from where he’s suspended upside down above the hazardous waterfall, crossing his arms and allowing himself to be passively saved by Sasuke.
“You’re a bastard,” he says once he’s on dry land and Sasuke rolls his eyes.
“Alright?” Kakashi asks, nose buried in his book but the fact he asked at all was telling.
“Like a little water could take me out,” Naruto blusters, dusting himself off like he’d just been in a fight and not like he’d slipped on a rock collecting trash from a river and almost plummeted to his untimely death.
“Are we done?” Sakura asks, her normal girlish tenor abandoned in her irritation. They’d been out collecting trash for hours by now, and admittedly Sakura had done the bulk of the work.
Kakashi nods, closing his book and smiling with his eye. “I’ll have your payment by tomorrow, but rest up for now. Good job, team!”
Warmth flares in his belly and Sasuke scowls, squashing it down. There it is again, that feeling. Annoying.
Annoying because even while Kakashi disappeared into the wind, Sasuke lingered. When Sakura caught her breath and flushed head to toe, looking at Sasuke and then looking at her dirty clothing and deciding to hightail it back to her family, Sasuke toyed with his pack, pretending to check his money for lunch. And when Naruto would finally decide what he wanted to do with his day, yelling aloud with as the idea comes to him and fully running towards whatever it is Naruto does, Sasuke would be the one left, kicking the dirt and wondering why he waited. He always stayed because of some annoying instinct begging he chase after that warm feeling, and left feeling sick. Wondering why he was wasting time. Wondering why he-
“Hey.”
Sasuke does not startle, because he is fully aware of his surrounding at all times like a good ninja. He flinches instead, because Naruto is suddenly next to his face and blinking at him with that dopey look, which gradually morphs into a cat-grin at Sasuke’s reaction.
“Why so jumpy?”
Sasuke scowls, putting a hand to Naruto’s face and shoving him away.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than annoy me?”
Naruto frowns, crossing his arms and squinting. “Hmm…can’t think of anything.”
Something light flutters in his chest but Sasuke pays it no mind, choosing instead to sit down and go back to fiddling with his pack, for all intents and purposes ignoring the blond only a meter away. It’s a lie. Naruto’s the only thing keeping him there. (But why-)
“What’re ya looking for?”
“None of your business.”
And now he’s pouting.
Sasuke sighs. “What do you want?”
Naruto doesn’t reply, squirming in place. The silence stretches out, and Sasuke stops pretending to look in his pack to pin Naruto with a look, demanding an answer. Naruto looks down and fiddles with his pants, pulling out loose hair. Sasuke groans.
“Naruto-”
Sasuke shuts up when Naruto’s eyes meet his, both flat and desperate at the same time. Tempered turmoil so familiar it lodges something in Sasuke’s throat. A hopeless hope.
“Today was a short day, eh?” The tone is cheerful, so Naruto in every way, his cheeks pulling into a smile.
It isn’t the first time he’s seen something like this in Naruto, but it’s the first time he’s seen it so close to the surface, the veneer of cheer brittle instead of the overpowering thing it usually is.
Sasuke doesn’t reply, can’t, is shocked silent by what he sees and what he understands despite himself. The moment is too tense, too demanding, but Sasuke doesn’t know how to fix it. Too soon, Naruto’s eyes colour with resignation. His smile remains, always, but Sasuke can feel him pulling away.
“Not even five hours,” Sasuke blurts out, then cringes. It’s a damn stupid reply but he’d needed to speak, to say something to fix the creeping darkness on his teammate's face.
Teammate.
His dumb comment works, for as much as Sasuke can see. Naruto’s grin slips, surprise flicking over his face before he grins wide, a less desperate hope shining in his eyes. Something more genuine.
“Do ya wanna spar?” Naruto asks.
Sasuke is shaking his head before he gets it, but the shadows closing around Naruto just when he thought he chased them away makes him realize.
“Let’s do something else,” he says quickly, before he can regret it.
Naruto gasps in a little breath, disbelief shining before being replaced by a joy so ridiculously bright Sasuke feels burnt out just seeing it. He looks away.
“Okay~!” Naruto cheers, flushed with happiness. Before Sasuke can protest Naruto has grabbed his wrist and is dragging him away from the river.
“Oi, don’t pull, loser.”
Naruto ignores him, and Sasuke ignores him ignoring him.
Idiot.
***
Something incredibly strange happens after that day, strange enough for Sasuke to finally start considering the state of his sanity.
He and Naruto start…hanging out.
That’s a poor way of putting it. Rather, Naruto starts hanging around him and he doesn’t have the heart to turn him away. No, he most certainly does have the heart to turn him away, he just won’t listen.
Either way, it’s not so bad. All they do is walk around the border of the village, Naruto keeping up inane chatter half the time while lapsing into comfortable silence the other half. Sasuke was quiet the entire time save a few “idiot” comments thrown in here or there. It was only an hour or two after practice or what Kakashi says passes for “missions.” It isn’t a whole lot to put up with and, if he really thinks about it, it may even be a net positive. Naruto is…calmer, something he never could’ve believed to be a possibility if he hasn’t seen it with his own eyes. He was less prone to ranting at Sasuke, to snapping at Kakashi over their (so, so terrible) missions. He even abandoned Sakura as the lost cause she was after the first punch. He doesn’t stop working hard but, in Sasuke’s opinion, works better, putting thought into his actions instead of letting himself get frustrated and just running at a problem.
He’s a better ninja, is the point. And Naruto being a better ninja made the team stronger and that’s apparently a priority for him now. Teamwork.
It had nothing to do with how Naruto’s chatter filled the gaping chasm in his stomach or covered the whispers of dead voices in his mind. It had nothing to do how the world righted itself on their walks, a little bit of what Sasuke refused to call peace finding a home in his life. He can’t be at peace, he has too much work to do. A bloody ambition that drives him to fight every single day, that carves callouses into his hands and consumes his dreams but-
“You good?”
Sasuke doesn’t startle this time, way too used to Naruto in his space to do so, and the thought alone floors him.
“Ya,” Sasuke replies, noncommittal. “So what did Iruka do?”
Naruto’s eyes light on fire and he gestures as widely as his body allows, launching into a story Sasuke shouldn’t care about but finds interest in nonetheless. It’s hard not to when Naruto himself is such a spectacle.
Moron.