Chapter 4
Sasuke isn’t ignorant to how the village treats Naruto, though he’d never been particularly interested as to why. He’d been a notorious prankster and just general delinquent, regularly defacing monuments and causing trouble. People dislike Naruto for a reason. Sasuke dislikes Naruto for a reason. Or he did.
But there’s absolutely no fucking reason for the stall attendants hand coming down across Naruto’s face. Sasuke had been with him the entire time and he’d done nothing.
“How many times do I have to tell you?! You’re not welcome here, boy.”
Naruto doesn’t reply, just grits his teeth, rises to his feet, and makes a quick grab for Sasuke’s wrist as he attempts bloody murder.
“Don’t, Sasuke,” Naruto begs, tugging at him with a strength he rarely shows during practice. Sasuke snarls all the same, meeting the eyes of the man who’d struck Naruto with obvious intent until he’s dragged around the street corner, shoved up into an empty alleyway with Naruto’s hands fisted in his shirt.
Naruto breathes roughly, avoiding Sasuke’s eyes even while he presses him against the wall. Sasuke is also breathing hard, sucking air through his teeth in an attempt to keep the sheer rage off his face, but god damn it what the fuck.
Actually-
“What the fuck?!”
Naruto cringes, raising his head to look Sasuke in the eye. There’s a mark on his cheek, quickly colouring in an unhealthy way. The stall attendant hadn’t been a small man.
“Listen,” Naruto huffs, taking his hands off of Sasuke when it’s clear he’s not immediately going to kill someone. “That was, uh, super embarassing for me.”
The cheek that isn’t bruising flushes, and Naruto awkwardly scratches the back of his neck.
“…Excuse me?”
“Ya so,” Naruto stutters. “Like, that sucked. If it’s okay maybe you could not mention it..?”
Sasuke is so floored by that he can’t even begin to formulate a response. His pulse is singing in his head, his muscles tense and ready for a fight that his damn teeth demand of him, needing blood in retribution for the fucking disgrace he’d just witnessed.
Naruto’s trembling.
He hadn’t noticed it before, but his teammate is shaking minutely, blue eyes blown wide as he waits for Sasuke to respond, hands clutched together as he shakes.
Sasuke breathes out.
“Let’s go back.”
Naruto relaxes. In the next moment he’s grinning up at Sasuke, cheeks pulled back in a characteristically wide smile but all Sasuke can think of is how it probably hurts him to do so.
It’s Sasuke that takes Naruto’s wrist this time, pulling him down the alley and over to the grungy route that leads to Naruto’s apartment. Naruto says nothing, content to let himself be dragged until they reach his door and he has to take out his key.
The second they’re through the door Sasuke makes for the kitchen, pulling out the ice tray in the freezer and wrapping a few cubes in a dish towel. Naruto makes a noise of protest when Sasuke pointedly hands him the ice, but Sasuke’s patience on the matter is clearly deteriorating so he makes the wise choice to accept. Sasuke bullies him into the kitchen chair and says nothing else. It’s late by now, long shadows filling the small kitchen and Sasuke chooses to put the kettle on and chop some vegetables, a small dinner for them to pick at.
Because he’s going to make Naruto talk.
“Does that happen often?” is the first rational question that comes to Sasuke, so he lets it out.
Naruto groans. “Not at all. It’s really not a big deal, though.” Naruto waves the cold press in the air, clearly expressing that Sasuke was the one who was making a big deal about this.
“Has it happened before?” Sasuke asks next, already knowing the answer.
Naruto sighs. “Can we have ramen?”
“No.”
He sighs louder.
Sasuke can feel his shoulders ratchet higher, Naruto’s tone making him feel like a busybody, but…
“Why didn’t you tell anybody? That’s fucking assault.”
Something both bitter and wry twitches at Naruto’s lips, before he just regards Sasuke impatiently.
“You’re such a hypocrite, Sasuke. Why haven’t you told anybody?”
“I just found out today!”
“Not me! Dickhead!” Naruto yells, getting to his feet to point accusingly. “You! I’ve seen them hurt you before! Don’t try and deny it!”
Sasuke recoils. Well…of course they’ve hit him before, but that was so long ago it’s almost irrelevant. Besides, that was at a point in his life where he would randomly lash out at civilians who either gave him too much pity, something condescending and way more about patting themselves on the back for giving the new orphan their attention than actual sympathy, or treating him like he was cursed. He’d go to the damn laundromat and the comments would grow so loud and grating that Sasuke would spit at them, curse them, tell them to fuck off with a mouth his mother would have scorned and they just reacted to his bad attitude. He’d provoked them first, and eventually he learned not to react and he’d stopped getting hit.
“That’s…it’s not the same. You didn’t do anything to that guy.”
Naruto’s jaw drops, outrage and confusion warring.
“Besides,” Sasuke says quickly, refusing to make this about him, “you have people you can tell. You’re friends with the hokage.”
“I’ve told the hokage! A hundred times!” Naruto’s tearing at his hair now. “He doesn’t listen so why bother!”
Sasuke opens his mouth, trying to find a rebuttal but he can barely process the idea of the gentle old man who would give speeches at the academy about valuing the village and the next generation simply…doing nothing when a kid gets beaten.
“You…have Iruka,” Sasuke settles on. “You could have told Iruka.”
“You could have told Iruka.”
Sasuke scoffs. “Iruka’s not my friend, why would I trust him? But I know you trust him.”
“Yeah, okay,” Naruto admits. “I tell him and then what? He goes marching out to scream at some civilian, and everyone will just think he overreacted. He’s a teacher, he can’t just endanger his reputation by defending me all the time, and he’d be doing it all the time! I tell him and defending me would be his full time job.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Sasuke feels himself start to tremble, his rage choking him. “How often does this happen?”
“All the time!”
“That’s not what you said earlier! You fucking liar!”
“You’re the liar!”
“Well, you’re a dumbass!”
“UGH!” Naruto throws his hands in the air. “What do you want from me?”
He doesn’t know, can barely think past the tension in the air around them. They lapse into silence and Sasuke tries, forces himself to think how he can fix this. Iruka isn’t Naruto’s teacher anymore, they barely see each other because of training. Apparently the hokage is a dead end, and he’d inspect why that is later. Ideally Naruto would tell Kakashi, but a ninja going to their superior to complain about a civilian being violent towards them was…Naruto would never go for it.
“Me,” Sasuke decides, quick and furious and resolute. “Someone gives you a hard time and you come to me.”
“Uh…” Naruto looks at him funny. “And what will you do?”
Sasuke gives him a mean smile, flexing his hand. “I’ll give you one guess.”
Naruto suddenly looks uncomfortable. “Your reputation-”
“Like I give a single flying fuck what those people think of me.”
“They would start coming after you again,” Naruto says simply. “All it would do is give them two targets instead of one.”
Sasuke shrugs. “I don’t care.”
“Well I care,” Naruto says through his teeth, pink dusting his cheeks despite the anger still present in his voice. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Well I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Naruto’s jaw drops for the second time that day, but it’s completely slack in his shock. Wide blue eyes watch him, gaging his sincerity, and Sasuke can feel the gradual flush fill his cheeks the more Naruto stares. He shifts uncomfortably on his feet, wondering how he got to this point.
Naruto drops back down into the kitchen chair, his wide-eyes focused on the floor. “You’re my friend.”
Sasuke doesn’t even have room to react to that before fat tears start welling up in Naruto’s eyes.
“Oh for- don’t cry you idiot.”
But Naruto’s face screws up, trying to sniffle up the snot pouring from his nose like a faucet as he blubbers. Sasuke cringes, looking around the room before grabbing a fresh roll of toilet paper from Naruto’s cupboard, tearing off a strip and offering it to Naruto. He supposes it’s reasonable to cry after getting hit.
Naruto accepts the tissue before he looks up into Sasuke’s eyes, and Sasuke’s annoyed to realize his blush still hasn’t disappeared yet. In the next moment his breath is violently knocked out of him, Naruto’s arms thrown around his waist and his face digging into Sasuke’s stomach as he sobs.
“Ugh,” Sasuke scoffs. “Get off.”
Naruto doesn’t listen, and Sasuke rolls his eyes before settling a hand on Naruto’s back, instinctively patting it before realizing.
Oh, shit. Naruto’s his friend.