Fakers
Please Note- This fic has been rated Adult for a reason! It contains graphic homosexual sex and loads of swearing and generally grown up situations. Please adhere to the age of consent for your country. I take no responsibility for those who don't.
I do not own the copyright for these characters. I get no money for writing about them. It is entirely an act of worship (and partly lust) so don't sue me. I don't have any money anyway...
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“Fuck off.”
“Get out of the car, Sasuke.”
“Drop dead.”
“The appointment is in ten minutes. If you’re late they stop your money.”
“Do I look like a man who gives a flying fuck?”
“I give a fuck.”
“Oh, well, if you really want me to go in...”
“Good.”
“You didn’t let me finish. If you really want me to go in...you will have to physically extract me from this car and carry me over the threshold.”
A short pause.
“Ok then.”
The cowed and despairing attendees of the Job Exchange were briefly roused from their humiliation by the spectacle of two Japanese men entering the building. This was unusual enough in rural England. What was even more unusual was that one of the men had the other one slung over his shoulder like a sack of enraged potatoes. Those unlucky enough to catch a glimpse of Sasuke’s expression reeled back in fear. He looked angry enough to melt eyeballs.
Including the blue eyeballs owned by a blond who was at that moment walking through reception holding a photocopy. Naruto stared at the Japanese men. He watched as the younger one got unceremoniously dumped onto the ground. He watched the other one leave, smirking, and he watched the expression of loathing and thwarted dignity that stared after him. Soon the remaining man was standing up, brushing off grit and dust from the door mat. He was unaware that he was on a sensor mat and that he was causing the automatic doors to open and shut behind him. He was alternately bathed in light from the bright day outside and then sucked into the artificial gloom of the Job Exchange.
Naruto’s chest had tightened and his heart was pounding and he had forgotten where he lived and what his name was. His brain had shunted all other trains of thought onto side roads and was giving priority travel to one idea. ‘He so pretty.’
Naruto walked into a pillar.
Sasuke saw the man walk into the pillar and it merely confirmed all his worst suspicions. This place was staffed by idiots. Handsome idiots with unbelievable blue eyes but, nevertheless, idiots. He considered leaving again but he had a horrible feeling that Itachi was waiting in the car park. Possibly with a sniper rifle trained on the door.
So Sasuke Uchiha irrevocably besmirched both his dignity and that of all of his ancestors and went to apply for a government handout.
Naruto was absolutely gutted to see that the man (‘he soooo pretty’) wasn’t booked in with him but with the middle aged woman two desks down. He didn’t know her name, only having started here himself three weeks before, but he just knew that she couldn’t appreciate the gorgeousness in front of her and that the man should be at Naruto’s desk, not hers.
Possibly up against his desk.
Sort of being repeatedly rammed into it.
Naruto’s mind, which normally had a tendency to skitter about like a curious rodent, rarely staying with one idea for long, became very still suddenly and gave its total attention to that thought.
“Excuse me?”
Naruto’s head snapped back to his own interviewee who was staring at him.
“Are you alright?” She asked.
“Yes.”
“Only you were dribbling a little bit there.”
Naruto gave her a blast of The Smile. She blushed and smiled back, gooeily. Just for a minute Naruto hated himself.
“So, did you look for work this week?” He asked, trying to return to some semblance of his job. But he soon zoned out again while she detailed her job hunt. At least she had actually tried, he noted, as his eyes relentlessly swivelled back to the man two desks down. Normally Naruto was besieged with excuses as to why recipients hadn’t been looking for jobs. These ranged from, ‘I had leprosy all week, it’s only just cleared up,’ to, ‘I couldn’t look for work. The saucepans told me not to.’
As the girl burbled on Naruto watched the other interview out of the corner of his eye. It did not appear to be going well. The woman’s jaw was so tight that a muscle in her cheek was visibly twitching. Her client was sprawled arrogantly in his chair, his earlier public humiliation apparently forgotten, arms crossed with an air of total indifference.
He was treating the woman to an evil that could have been seen from space.
Out of nowhere Naruto wondered what it would be like to break through that hard exterior and puncture all that front. He wondered what it would be like to make a man like that excited.
It was just as well that there was a big gap between Naruto’s groin and his desk or the clunk that resulted from that thought would have been very painful indeed.
The girl opposite him had stopped talking and was looking at him expectantly. Naruto roused himself to stamp her card, uttered a breathy, “Bye then...” and when she scuttled off he returned his full attention to the Japanese man. While trying to look like he was working, obviously.
Sasuke was barely keeping control. Rage and wounded pride were careering through his veins both aspiring to dominance.
He was being patronised.
It is fatally unwise to patronise an Uchiha. Insult then if you must or hit them with sticks. They will probably rip your arms off but they won’t hold a grudge about it. Patronise them however and they won’t just come after you but after your children and your children’s children. In fact, they will probably encourage you to breed simply so that there are sufficient generations available on which to visit their vengeance.
The woman was talking to Sasuke as though he had the brain capacity of a tea spoon. Her voice had that sing song false chumminess that suggested that she considered everyone not on her side of the desk to be utterly retarded.
“What about education?” she asked, tapping away at her computer, her long painted fingernails making unpleasant noises on the keys, “just GCSEs is it?”
“No, I have an honours degree,” Sasuke grated, “I got it at,”
“Oh,” she cut in, dismissively, “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters!” Sasuke snapped, “I have twelve grand in student loans to prove it.”
She coloured angrily, “There is no need to be like that, Sasuke.”
“I don’t remember giving you leave to use my first name.”
This was one of Sasuke’s bugbears. In the new ‘approachable’ public services it was considered too formal to use ‘Mr’ whereas Sasuke saw the honorific as essential to his dignity. He promised himself that if she went so far as to shorten his name to ‘Suse’, he would allow himself to shut her head in a filing cabinet.
The patented Uchiha Glare was starting to get to the woman. He was slightly impressed that it had taken so long. Most people would have cracked within seconds. Clearly public services turned out a tough breed. The woman typed shakily for a minute and Sasuke glanced impatiently around the depressing room, at the post its and the defensive clients. He didn’t belong in such a place. He was better than this. He was being tainted by the general air of hopelessness.
And then his eyes locked with the blond two desks up. It was the handsome man who had walked into the pillar. There was a red mark starting on his forehead from the impact. Golden hair brushed against it. Blue eyes stared with an almost manic intensity. They met The Glare and didn’t falter. They didn’t quail and they didn’t look away. It was the first time in a long time that someone didn’t acknowledge Sasuke’s dominance within seconds. He fidgeted nervously. His body was sending him some very decided messages about tanned skin and strong looking hands.
Sasuke had often heard the phrase ‘he was undressing me with his eyes,’ and it had always made him cringe a little, suggestive as it was of certain coyness. Nobody could call Sasuke coy. But now he understood what it meant. He might as well have been sat on his chair completely naked. His mouth went dry.
The time for contemptuously breaking the gaze came.
And went.
‘Look away! Look away!’ Sasuke screamed at himself, internally. A warm tingling was growing in his belly. Then, God help him, he blushed. He blushed and lowered his eyes like a school girl.
The horror.
He barely paid any attention to the rest of the appointment. He quietly answered any questions put to him while staring, stonily, straight ahead, painfully aware of the blond’s eyes still on him. Aware of the gaze running down his neck, easing like a gentle finger between his shirt collar and his throat. Sasuke shivered.
“There,” the woman said, with some relief, “Done. Come back in a week to sign on.”
“OK,” Sasuke muttered.
Maybe he would come back next week. Maybe Itachi wouldn’t even have to threaten to beat him to death to make him do it.
You know, if Sasuke had nothing better to do.
As he left he felt the possessive stare linger on the back of his neck.
When he emerged into the car park he confidently expected to find Itachi waiting for him to drive him home but it soon became clear that there was no one there but a couple of pregnant women smoking. Sasuke checked his mobile and was unsurprised to see a terse text message from his brother declaring that something had come up at work (‘because some of us have jobs, Sasuke’) and so Sasuke had better get the bus home.
With a sigh the youngest Uchiha headed to the bus stop with The Glare firmly in place to ward off any overly expansive member of the public. Since he had refined The Glare to its current state of perfection he rarely experienced his childhood trial of being yelled at by random morons. But occasionally, he had to admit, he still got ‘Oi! Jap!’ screamed at his back by people who clearly considered themselves to be witty and original. He hadn’t found that ‘Oi! Brit!’ gave him much sense of a comeback.
To stop himself from thinking about just how shaming that appointment at the Job Exchange had been Sasuke reluctantly allowed himself to dwell on the blond God that worked there. He was glad that he hadn’t been interviewed by him because he would certainly have dried up and made a total twat of himself. Sasuke wasn’t usually one to leer but the blond seemed to demand it as his due. Simply by existing and looking like that.
When the bus arrived and Sasuke got on he was still deep in thought about all the things he would love to do to the man. So at first he didn’t notice the gaggle of teenagers at the back of the bus. But somewhere around the second set of traffic lights, round about the time that the blond had got naked in his minds eye, Sasuke became aware of the shouting. He tensed and was abruptly hurled back ten years to the school bus and everything that that had entailed. His stomach heaved and his blood raged.
It wasn’t even what they were yelling that got to him (as much as Sasuke was prepared to admit that anything got to him at all) but the sheer volume at which they were yelling it. He hated noise and he loathed being forced to listen to the stupidity of others. Why couldn’t people go through the world softly? Why did they feel this need to rape everyone around them with sound? It didn’t convince Sasuke of their strength or manliness, quite the contrary. It convinced him of their basic tosser-ness.
He set his jaw, tried to stop feeling like an impotent twelve year old and settled down to endure the journey.
Naruto got home in time to hear his next door neighbours having their six o clock row. They were consistent, he had to admit that. You could set your watch by them. It started at six every night (except for at weekends when it started around lunchtime) and ended by the time Eastenders started on TV. Content varied but tonight they were rehashing an old favourite.
“You fat slag, when are you going to stop eating?”
“Around about the same time you get back the hair you had when we met!”
Naruto sighed and dropped his bag of groceries. Slumping into his sofa bed he put on his stereo and tried to drown them out with Sisters of Mercy. He closed his eyes and finished the fantasy he had been having ever since mid afternoon. It involved a gorgeous Japanese man and all the wonderful things that they could do to each other. Naruto grinned a little. He couldn’t remember the last time his imagination had run away with him like this. The second he had seen the man everything had intensified. The whole world had switched to surround sound high definition.
The shouting next door had reached a crescendo and Naruto knew that soon he would be trying to ignore the sound of makeup sex. They weren’t the best neighbours in the world but in a way he admired them. They were totally sincere. They never faked anything.
He wished that he was like that.
One week later at four minutes past noon Naruto sat tensely in his chair, feeling like a very punctual gunslinger whose opponent hasn’t arrived yet. He was smiling slightly to himself. It had taken some finagling but Sasuke Uchiha of ‘he so pretty’ fame had been assigned to Naruto as a permanent client.
Providing the man hadn’t done something awful, like get a job.
It hadn’t been exactly difficult to find out the man’s name. It had stood out somewhat on the database, like an exotic island in a sea of Smiths and Browns. Despite a moment of ‘I’m such a stalker,’ shame Naruto had memorised Uchiha’s file. He was 25, a graduate in art and philosophy (hence his joblessness perhaps, although from talking to his first advisor Naruto suspected that it might be more to do with his personality) and he lived with his brother. Sasuke was single, or he claimed to be, but the Exchange wasn’t allowed to ask him about his sexuality so Naruto had no idea yet whether he was going to be restricted to staring or if there was the smallest chance of something happening between them.
Although the blush had given him hope.
Naruto looked at his watch. Sasuke was late. Technically this meant that Naruto could cancel his unemployment payments but that probably wouldn’t be the best way to seduce him.
And he was absolutely determined to seduce him, even if it cost Naruto his job which it certainly would if anyone found out about it.
He rearranged his desk for the third time and resisted the urge to get another coffee. He was already way too hyper and more caffeine might push him over the edge. He was ridiculously over excited and that was a bit embarrassing. He felt that it must be obvious to everyone how much he wanted this man.
A breath of guilt whispered around him. He wondered what Lucy would make of it, when he got up the nerve to tell her about it. She would probably just smile and say,
“Christ, Naruto, you could stop looking so tragic! We’ve been split up for over a year and besides, it’s about time that you proved that you really are gay and that it wasn’t just an incredibly elaborate way to dump me.” And she would laugh but there would be hurt beneath it.
She was the biggest casualty of Naruto’s fake self. He would never forgive himself for it.
He looked up to see Sasuke Uchiha stroll in, apparently unconcerned at his lateness, and stand casually, gracefully, waiting to be called. He had an air of, ‘I might deign to cooperate, I might not.’ Naruto once again found that his eyes had turned into Sasuke seeking missiles and were moving furiously over him. He took a moment to admire the pale skin, the narrow shoulders, the sardonic mouth. Naruto swallowed.
“Mr Uchiha,” he said.
Well, he tried to say it, but his voice freaked out and no sound came out. He coughed, mentally slapped himself and tried again.
“Mr Uchiha,” he said.
Sasuke looked up and a brief expression of uncertainty crossed his face. He had clearly been expecting the same adviser as last time and was a little thrown to be called by a man with lust in every line of his face. Nevertheless he sauntered over as though he owned the building and sat down. He crossed his arms and looked at Naruto as though the blond’s mere presence on earth was an offence to slime everywhere.
Naruto had to suppress a shocked smile. He didn’t believe any of it. He knew a faker when he saw one.
He ought to.
Sasuke’s stomach had just finished the parallel bars and had progressed to the floor display. He had come here hoping, at most, to get stared at by this man, not to be plonked down opposite him in disturbing proximity. He drew his legs as near himself as possible to avoid any unintentional under-desk collisions. He wasn’t sure why he was nervous. ‘Anyone would think that you had never fancied anyone before,’ he sneered at himself. At least he could be fairly confident that the blond had no idea because he was fixing The Glare firmly in place. Sasuke knew for a fact that nothing showed through that.
Nothing at all.
“I’m Naruto,” the God said.
Sasuke shrugged as if to say, ‘And I care why?’ but he secretly squirreled the name away to be shouted out later during a very particular activity. An activity that he had been doing rather more than usual since his last visit here.
“Have you been looking for work this week?” Naruto asked.
“No.”
Naruto looked up in surprise, his blue eyes giving Sasuke shameful thrills. He couldn’t remember the last time such simple things had turned him on so much. Naruto’s eyes were bluer than a Disney heroine’s.
“You do understand that if you don’t look for work we can stop your money?” Naruto sounded genuinely concerned but Sasuke was sure that he sounded like that with all the claimants. It was his job to pretend to care. Sasuke was mentally kicking himself. He did actually need the money quite badly and he had psyched himself up to come here and jump through every one of their soul shrivelling hoops but here he was, telling the truth like an idiot.
He just hadn’t wanted the first thing he said to this man to be a lie.
“Perhaps you’ve been ill?” Naruto prompted, meaningfully. He was patently giving Sasuke a way out but, unfortunately, Uchiha pride had just wrapped itself round the white neck and was refusing to let Sasuke take it.
“I’ll put down that you were ill,” Naruto said, looking like he was about to wink but then seeming to change his mind about it. He typed for a minute but there was a lot of backspacing because his fingers appeared to be shaking.
“You should know that there are many services here to help you find a job,” Naruto mumbled, sounding very much as though this was the standard spiel that he gave everyone but was embarrassed to have to say to Sasuke. Their eyes collided and locked. “CV writing, careers advice, interview training...”
Sasuke’s heart was ricocheting off his ribs. He felt a blush trying to climb up his neck. Close to he was getting a good view of the blond and it was awe inspiring. The staggering eyes, the firm jaw, the muscle definition hinted at under cheap clothes and the deep collarbone that just sat there behind a badly buttoned shirt, telling Sasuke to run his tongue along it. Naruto looked like something that belonged in a stained glass window. But Sasuke wanted to do things to him that would permanently disqualify them both from any kind of angel status.
“So...anything I can do for you, just...let me know.” Naruto trailed off, his hot gaze still on Sasuke’s face.
‘Promise?’ Sasuke wanted to say. He started to wonder if his thoughts were showing on his face, even through The Glare, although that would be unprecedented. It was hard to believe that the sweaty pictures in his mind weren’t somehow leaking out of his eyes. Naruto’s lips parted, Naruto’s hands clinging, fingers digging into Sasuke’s back, flesh parting, panting breaths.
Loss of control.
As a general principle Sasuke wasn’t a fan of losing control. He wanted to feel like he had some say in his life. But this man made him want to lose everything.
“Is that it? Are we done now?” he heard himself saying, contempt dripping from his tone, and he immediately started kicking himself again. Much more of this and Naruto would decide that he was an obnoxious bastard not worth staring at in that gloriously hungry way. Not for the first time Sasuke cursed his total inability to show that he wanted something, that he cared about something. Panic surged. He was going to drive this man away before he had a chance to try any of the perverted scenarios in his head. He had to make his intentions perfectly clear. Right now!
The irrationality of that decision was due to its being made not by Sasuke’s brain (which left to its own miserable devices would let him die alone in a bedsit aged forty) but by something else much further south, something very impatient, not prone to logic and very prone to Naruto.
So Sasuke moved one long leg and pressed it briefly against Naruto’s under the table. He left it there just long enough to be unequivocal. Inwardly he prayed to the God of Emos that Naruto wouldn’t let the continued presence of The Glare detract from the message of The Leg. Sasuke could feel warmth through fabric. He felt Naruto jump in shock.
“Perhaps I could make you an appointment with a careers advisor?” Naruto blurted, his words bursting out like fizz from a shaken bottle. He had to find a way to get Sasuke back here before his next official sign on in a fortnight. Naruto knew with certainty that he couldn’t wait two entire weeks to see this man again. He had nearly cried with despair when Sasuke moved his leg away.
“Are YOU a careers advisor? Maybe I could see you?” Sasuke asked. His words belied his emotionless expression.
“No,” Naruto confessed. Why wasn’t he a careers advisor? Why? Why? But he was sure as hell going to find a way to be Sasuke’s careers advisor if he had to slaughter the rest of the office to achieve it.
“Oh.” Sasuke said. Naruto strained to hear disappointment in his tone and failed.
“So,” he burbled.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I will attend the appointment with the careers advisor. When?” Sasuke was gazing at him with calm dark eyes.
“Huh? Oh,” Naruto had a flash of inspiration. He opened the file with the careers advisor’s diary and saw that she wasn’t even in the building on Friday and promptly booked Sasuke in.
Five minutes later, when Naruto’s caseload of increasingly irate clients made it impossible for him to string the appointment out any longer, he watched Sasuke stalk out and grinned. Oh dear, there had been an unfortunate administrative error. Sasuke would need to be seen by someone else on Friday.
And Naruto knew exactly who that would be.
Sasuke wasn’t enormously surprised on Friday to find himself ushered into an interview room that barely had space for more than two chairs and a desk and Naruto sat there, looking triumphant. Despite a surge of excitement Sasuke was irked by Naruto’s smile.
He looked very confident indeed.
Nobody likes to feel easy and in actual fact Sasuke was very hard to get, mainly because any situations where he wasn’t in control made him profoundly uncomfortable. He avoided people that he felt strongly about. When he did have sex it was always with people that he was only pleasantly attracted to and was sure that he would be able to drop later.
Somehow he wasn’t sure he would be able to drop Naruto.
The whole thing was making him nervous. It was painfully obvious now that Naruto wanted him; there was no other interpretation to be put on that hot eyed stare. Part of Sasuke wished very much that Naruto was just after a quick fuck.
It would be safer for the Uchiha’s quiet, ordered life if he was.
“Mr Uchiha,” Naruto stood up and went so far as to shake Sasuke’s hand. Sasuke flinched under an urge not to let go but to pull the blond towards him, dragging him across the desk. Warm fingers clasped for just a second too long and then let go.
They both sat down. The tininess of the room meant that they were almost looming over each other and when Naruto breathed out Sasuke could feel it. His blood started pounding in his ears.
He was in big fucking trouble here.
“You said that you weren’t the careers advisor?” Sasuke couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Naruto fidgeted and then flashed a mega watt smile that nearly threw Sasuke through the wall. The Smile was cheerful, friendly, brimming over with bonhomie. It was like staring directly at the sun, bright and very, very painful. But utterly fake. Despite the joyous grin before him Sasuke went cold. He knew a faker when he saw one. Naruto had probably got through his whole life on that smile. It would have fooled most people.
Well Sasuke wasn’t going to fall for it. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms and glared.
“I’m filling in for her,” Naruto said, still smiling.
Sasuke wanted to kiss the fakery off his face.
He also wanted to throw up.
“So,” Naruto moved some papers about pointlessly, “Here are the personality and aptitude questionnaires. If you could just fill the first one in. Don’t over think the answers, just select the first option that appeals to you.”
Sasuke stared at the papers pushed across the desk at him. Was he seriously expected to do this with Naruto practically sitting on him? The blonds face was separated from him only by the width of the desk, and not even that in it’s entirety because Naruto was leaning forward over it, seemingly trying to get as close to Sasuke as possible. With an irritated grunt Sasuke snatched the personality questionnaire and filled it in rapidly with the tiny blue biro provided. The questions were stupid of course. The writer of the test had clearly not appreciated the complexity of human beings and of Uchiha in particular. For example it was not permissible to claim to be both creative and organised because according to the questionnaire such characteristics were antithetical.
Growling with disgust Sasuke finished the test and flung it back across the desk to Naruto. There then occurred five awkward minutes while Naruto checked the answers against a grid. Sasuke resisted the urge to grind his teeth. He also resisted the urge to lean forward and run a finger down Naruto’s neck. He had been obsessing about that tanned neck for three days.
“Um...” Naruto gave Sasuke a look of mingled embarrassment and amusement. “According to this you are a borderline psychopath and I should lock you in here and call the police.”
Sasuke shrugged, “Heh.”
“Never mind,” Naruto laughed nervously. It was just as fake as The Smile.
Sasuke had always considered himself to be the most repressed person he knew. Then he met Naruto, who cleverly hid it behind an act of not being repressed at all. Sasuke was quite impressed.
Sasuke wanted very badly to get something real out of Naruto, something sincere. He could understand now why his own lovers had considered him such an irresistible challenge. The urge to break through the layers of Naruto’s outward self was overpowering. Sasuke blamed it on the smallness of the room and the growing heat of their two bodies in a confined space. That was why he lost it a bit and ran a foot slowly up Naruto’s leg.
The blond nearly shot out of his chair in shock. His leg pressed instinctively forward, trying to get nearer. Sasuke wanted to smile but stopped himself. This was a serious matter. He lowered his foot, kicked off his boot and then ran his socked toes back up Naruto’s leg. Naruto’s eyes glazed over. Sasuke promised himself that later he would figure out what the hell he had been thinking, playing footsie in an interview room with a man he barely knew. Right now, it seemed the only thing to do. Naruto’s lips had parted in the most wonderful way and when Sasuke’s foot trailed up the inside of his thigh the blond made a soft, sighing sound.
Sasuke found himself hauled out of his chair and dragged half across the desk onto Naruto’s mouth. Their teeth collided in their haste and enthusiasm. Sasuke’s head started to spin as warm, hungry lips moved on his. Naruto tasted of coffee and, was that Nutella? A grown man who had chocolate spread on his toast? But just as Sasuke was about to pull away a hand moved to the back of his neck and stroked gently. Sasuke nearly buckled from arousal. The hot fingers teased his skin, stirring the little hairs and raising goose bumps in extraordinary places.
Sasuke started to panic. He wasn’t even slightly in control here. His body was reacting in a way that he had never used to believe in, had never sought. Sexual obsession had been something he had always considered destructive, humiliating. He had taken pride in his ‘take it or leave it’ approach to sex. With Naruto ‘leave it’ wasn’t even a distant possibility. Sasuke was about to run a hand down Naruto’s chest when there was a knock on the door. They whimpered with horror almost simultaneously.
Before Sasuke knew it he was slumped back in his chair, flushed and thrown, completely spaced out.
“Yes?” Naruto called out, his tone all calm and breezy. Sasuke stared at him in stunned amazement while the door opened. A woman with wild red hair came in as far as she could and asked Naruto something about another client. Sasuke wasn’t really listening. He was wishing she would drop dead and also wishing that he and Naruto were somewhere private. With a bed.
Somewhere he would be able to devote himself to wiping that smile off Naruto’s face.
When the woman had gone and the door was shut again Sasuke took the opportunity to point out,
“I could get you fired for jumping me like that.”
“I know.” Naruto looked a bit miserable now. The Smile had disappeared the moment the door closed, “Are you going to?”
“No.”
Sasuke hesitated. He considered how it would feel if he walked out of here right now and never came back. It would be safer that way but the idea of it made him shudder with distaste.
“When do you get off work today?” Sasuke asked. He saw the hope flare in Naruto’s eyes. Just don’t do The Smile, he prayed. Let me be special. Let me be the one person you don’t have to charm.
I’m already charmed.
“Five.” Naruto managed. He looked like words were temporarily beyond him. His mouth was bruising.
“See you then.” Sasuke said.
Then he got up and left.
Naruto spent the rest of the day in an agonising blur of impatience, fear and lust. He kept trying to remind himself that all Sasuke had implied was a meeting, not sex necessarily, not an opportunity for Naruto to run his hands over his naked body, to hear him groan, to taste that mouth again with its edge of herbal tea. Naruto paused in mid sentence and had to be shouted at by his boss. His brain appeared to be caving in on itself. The waiting was unbearable. The clock said 3.15 for at least an hour and a half. At one point he even stood on a chair and took it down to check the batteries.
The worst point came at 4.45. It was like a dream where he was desperately trying to do something but was always held back by relentless, malicious forces. By 4.47 he was cracking up. By 4.48 he had made a decision.
Out in the evening light of the car park Naruto reassured himself that no one ever got fired for leaving work ten minutes early. Even if there had still been a client sat at his desk who had watched him with bemusement as he stood up and wondered dazedly out of the building. He hadn’t been able to help himself. The thought that Sasuke might already be out there, waiting, had made Naruto’s skin heave.
And there he was, leaning against a bollard and squinting in the sunlight. Naruto reminded himself to breath and walked casually towards him. At least the aim was to be casual but it came off rather more like a diseased marionette.
Sasuke looked up and Naruto resisted the urge to smile. He had noticed the way Sasuke tensed whenever he did it.
“I thought we should get this out of our systems.” Sasuke said, calmly.
“How long do you think that would take?” Naruto wondered. He wanted to bite Sasuke’s nipples.
A sudden burst of laughter made Naruto jump. He watched, open mouthed as a real, non-sardonic, smile lit up Sasuke’s face. The laughter went on for some time.
“I don’t know,” Sasuke said at last, breathlessly, “Thirty years or so? What do you think?”
Naruto grinned.
“I didn’t know that you did anything but glare.” He said.
“Do you do anything but big fake smiles?” Sasuke’s tone held a challenge.
“Good point.”
They fell into an easy pace, heading without agreement to Naruto’s flat. Naruto’s heart was shivering. Nothing felt real. He kept glancing sidelong at Sasuke who had plastered The Glare back onto his beautiful face on noticing a gang of youths up ahead. Naruto watched as Sasuke’s back stiffened. Uchiha watched the teenagers like he was expecting one to pull out a nuclear bomb. When he spoke it was clearly to distract himself.
“Why are you called Naruto?” he asked, still not looking away from the men.
“My mother had a Japanese obsession. It was awful at school; I used to wish I was called John or something.”
Sasuke snorted, “Don’t try to tell me that you were bullied. Why would someone like you get bullied? I mean, look at you.”
Naruto felt an unexpected burst of rage. His experience of school had been so horrific and so scarring and here was someone who hardly knew him discounting it in that contemptuous way. Naruto stopped and grabbed Sasuke’s arm painfully tight.
“I got bullied the crap out of me for fifteen years you arrogant fuck!” he hissed.
Sasuke’s eyes widened. “I had birthmarks all over my face and a weird name. They used me as a human football.”
Sasuke looked embarrassed, “What birthmarks?”
“I got them treated last year, they faded.” Naruto stepped closer to Sasuke, still holding his arm aggressively, “Look closer.”
Sasuke stared, “They look like whiskers.” He mumbled.
Naruto released him, “Yeah, I got called Fox Boy.”
They resumed walking. Oddly, Naruto wasn’t angry any more but actually happy. He had never before let someone know how he really felt about what had happened at school. He had covered it up with The Smile and trite phrases about how ‘kids can be cruel’. He had felt that if his real bitterness got exposed he would lose the friends he had now. Even Lucy had no idea how bad it had been.
But with Sasuke it was easy.
They had drawn level with the teenagers and they took one look at Sasuke before yelling, “Oi! Jap!” Sasuke sighed and ignored them. Naruto wanted to go over and punch one of them but it wasn’t him getting yelled at. Plus he was cowed by The Glare which had deepened. He suspected that Sasuke’s tenuous dignity wouldn’t take too kindly to Naruto playing Sir Lancelot to his Guinevere.
“Oi! What are you doing here? We won the war you know!”
That didn’t even make sense.
Sasuke stopped suddenly. The Glare faltered. The world stilled. And then he ran at the youths with a blood curdling cry and they were scattering under the sheer force of his rage. Naruto followed at once.
Ten minutes later they were bleeding on the field of victory.
OK, the tarmac of victory.
Naruto started sniggering, “My mother will reckon you are a bad influence. Getting me into a fight on our first date.”
Sasuke rubbed blood off his lip, “Date?” he asked.
“Isn’t it a date?”
Sasuke stared sightlessly at a streetlamp, “Quite a weird date.”
By the time they got to Naruto’s flat his neighbours had started their row. Sasuke raised his eyebrow at both the noise next door and the thirty packets of noodles on the draining board.
“Don’t you eat anything else?” he queried.
“No.” He wasn't about to tell him about the Nutella.
Naruto was sick with anticipation. He wanted to jump Sasuke, wanted to throw him on the bed. But somewhere between the Job Exchange and home their unspoken agreement to have sex had turned into an actual date and Naruto was fairly sure that you weren’t supposed to have sex on a first date. Not if you wanted a second date.
Sasuke wondered over to Naruto’s CDs and proceeded to mock them roundly for ten minutes. He had to raise his voice though, to be heard over the shouting next door.
“Sisters of Mercy?” he sneered, “how retro.”
“There is nothing wrong with un-ironic metal dance.” Naruto replied, unfazed.
He found himself standing behind Sasuke at the CD rack. Sasuke continued to laugh at Naruto’s music taste but his heart wasn’t in it as Naruto’s arm stole round him and his hand slid under his shirt. When Naruto’s fingers brushed against Sasuke’s stomach they both breathed in sharply. Naruto closed his eyes and rested his chin on Sasuke’s shoulder. No one said that you couldn’t stroke someone’s nipples on a first date.
Especially as Sasuke seemed to like it so much. He trembled against Naruto.
Naruto turned his mouth and kissed Sasuke’s neck, earning him a strangled whisper. Next door the screaming had not yet abated but Naruto could barely hear it. He was focusing far more on Sasuke’s skin which was hot and yielding under his teeth.
Abruptly Sasuke turned in his arms and they started kissing desperately. Naruto burned. He ran his hands shakily through Sasuke’s untidy hair. He had been wanting to do that since the first day. There were so many other things that he wanted to do that he barely knew where to start.
But still in the back of his mind he was cautious. What if Sasuke really believed that they could get this ‘out of their systems’ and that was all?
Naruto decided that he would have to make it so good that Sasuke would need to come back for more.
Sasuke was lying on Naruto’s cheap bed with the bed’s aforementioned owner on top of him. Sasuke was trying very hard not to panic. Desire was lacerating through his body and making him behave in a very unaccustomed manner, making him arch his hips up against Naruto’s. Their bodies rubbed together once, they groaned, and then they started bucking furiously together, moaning and begging, clothes flying off in all directions, frustration resulting in one broken zip and several mislaid buttons. Sasuke ran his hands over tanned skin and tried not to come there and then. Naruto was kissing and licking at his chest, his tongue circling Sasuke’s nipples and his hand running down to clasp them both together and rub fiercely.
Sasuke arched off the bed and dug his fingernails into Naruto’s perfect skin. Nothing made sense anymore, there was no control and no dominance and no hope of being able to drop Naruto after this. Sasuke wasn’t going to miss out on having this feeling again and again. For as long as Naruto was prepared to give it to him. He forgot completely that he was never bottom and instead gloried in opening his legs for Naruto’s fingers and his mouth. Waves of pleasure blocked out the nasty flat and the shouting next door, blocked out Sasuke’s ever present sense of failure, his brother’s contempt and disappointment in him, left only cries of animal lust and Naruto.
Naruto kissing him, Naruto biting his shoulder when Sasuke stroked him, Naruto’s invasive fingers, Sasuke’s eyes closing in overwhelmed hunger and then his eyes flying open when Naruto pressed inside painfully. But it was too late to stop, Sasuke’s own body wouldn’t let him. He looked up at Naruto and their eyes locked. The first thing he had noticed about Naruto was that blue and now he focussed on it, watched it darken with shocked bliss at the tightness around him. Sasuke resisted an urge to crow in triumph. Naruto looked like he couldn’t take much more. Sasuke ignored the pain and slammed his body forward, forcing Naruto roughly in and out. Naruto yelled and moved to meet him. Pleasure started to return to Sasuke when Naruto reached down to touch him.
Sasuke began to hope that they could manage thirty five years instead of thirty.
The ancient bed began protesting and made ominous, ‘I’m about to collapse, I wasn’t designed for this much gay sex,’ noises but they ignored it. They ignored everything but each other.
Sasuke came hard when Naruto’s hand discovered the right rhythm. He heard himself crying out helplessly, all dignity vanished, as relief turned him almost inside out with pleasure. He felt himself tighten around Naruto, felt the blond’s fingernails dig into his hip. The mingling of pain and gratification was unsettling, almost frightening. Naruto collapsed on top of him, gasping out his orgasm as though he could barely fill his lungs. Sasuke put tight arms around him, reluctant to lose him.
He was going to be in agony in the morning.
Sasuke smiled.
Later on they ate noodles.
I do not own the copyright for these characters. I get no money for writing about them. It is entirely an act of worship (and partly lust) so don't sue me. I don't have any money anyway...
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“Fuck off.”
“Get out of the car, Sasuke.”
“Drop dead.”
“The appointment is in ten minutes. If you’re late they stop your money.”
“Do I look like a man who gives a flying fuck?”
“I give a fuck.”
“Oh, well, if you really want me to go in...”
“Good.”
“You didn’t let me finish. If you really want me to go in...you will have to physically extract me from this car and carry me over the threshold.”
A short pause.
“Ok then.”
The cowed and despairing attendees of the Job Exchange were briefly roused from their humiliation by the spectacle of two Japanese men entering the building. This was unusual enough in rural England. What was even more unusual was that one of the men had the other one slung over his shoulder like a sack of enraged potatoes. Those unlucky enough to catch a glimpse of Sasuke’s expression reeled back in fear. He looked angry enough to melt eyeballs.
Including the blue eyeballs owned by a blond who was at that moment walking through reception holding a photocopy. Naruto stared at the Japanese men. He watched as the younger one got unceremoniously dumped onto the ground. He watched the other one leave, smirking, and he watched the expression of loathing and thwarted dignity that stared after him. Soon the remaining man was standing up, brushing off grit and dust from the door mat. He was unaware that he was on a sensor mat and that he was causing the automatic doors to open and shut behind him. He was alternately bathed in light from the bright day outside and then sucked into the artificial gloom of the Job Exchange.
Naruto’s chest had tightened and his heart was pounding and he had forgotten where he lived and what his name was. His brain had shunted all other trains of thought onto side roads and was giving priority travel to one idea. ‘He so pretty.’
Naruto walked into a pillar.
Sasuke saw the man walk into the pillar and it merely confirmed all his worst suspicions. This place was staffed by idiots. Handsome idiots with unbelievable blue eyes but, nevertheless, idiots. He considered leaving again but he had a horrible feeling that Itachi was waiting in the car park. Possibly with a sniper rifle trained on the door.
So Sasuke Uchiha irrevocably besmirched both his dignity and that of all of his ancestors and went to apply for a government handout.
Naruto was absolutely gutted to see that the man (‘he soooo pretty’) wasn’t booked in with him but with the middle aged woman two desks down. He didn’t know her name, only having started here himself three weeks before, but he just knew that she couldn’t appreciate the gorgeousness in front of her and that the man should be at Naruto’s desk, not hers.
Possibly up against his desk.
Sort of being repeatedly rammed into it.
Naruto’s mind, which normally had a tendency to skitter about like a curious rodent, rarely staying with one idea for long, became very still suddenly and gave its total attention to that thought.
“Excuse me?”
Naruto’s head snapped back to his own interviewee who was staring at him.
“Are you alright?” She asked.
“Yes.”
“Only you were dribbling a little bit there.”
Naruto gave her a blast of The Smile. She blushed and smiled back, gooeily. Just for a minute Naruto hated himself.
“So, did you look for work this week?” He asked, trying to return to some semblance of his job. But he soon zoned out again while she detailed her job hunt. At least she had actually tried, he noted, as his eyes relentlessly swivelled back to the man two desks down. Normally Naruto was besieged with excuses as to why recipients hadn’t been looking for jobs. These ranged from, ‘I had leprosy all week, it’s only just cleared up,’ to, ‘I couldn’t look for work. The saucepans told me not to.’
As the girl burbled on Naruto watched the other interview out of the corner of his eye. It did not appear to be going well. The woman’s jaw was so tight that a muscle in her cheek was visibly twitching. Her client was sprawled arrogantly in his chair, his earlier public humiliation apparently forgotten, arms crossed with an air of total indifference.
He was treating the woman to an evil that could have been seen from space.
Out of nowhere Naruto wondered what it would be like to break through that hard exterior and puncture all that front. He wondered what it would be like to make a man like that excited.
It was just as well that there was a big gap between Naruto’s groin and his desk or the clunk that resulted from that thought would have been very painful indeed.
The girl opposite him had stopped talking and was looking at him expectantly. Naruto roused himself to stamp her card, uttered a breathy, “Bye then...” and when she scuttled off he returned his full attention to the Japanese man. While trying to look like he was working, obviously.
Sasuke was barely keeping control. Rage and wounded pride were careering through his veins both aspiring to dominance.
He was being patronised.
It is fatally unwise to patronise an Uchiha. Insult then if you must or hit them with sticks. They will probably rip your arms off but they won’t hold a grudge about it. Patronise them however and they won’t just come after you but after your children and your children’s children. In fact, they will probably encourage you to breed simply so that there are sufficient generations available on which to visit their vengeance.
The woman was talking to Sasuke as though he had the brain capacity of a tea spoon. Her voice had that sing song false chumminess that suggested that she considered everyone not on her side of the desk to be utterly retarded.
“What about education?” she asked, tapping away at her computer, her long painted fingernails making unpleasant noises on the keys, “just GCSEs is it?”
“No, I have an honours degree,” Sasuke grated, “I got it at,”
“Oh,” she cut in, dismissively, “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters!” Sasuke snapped, “I have twelve grand in student loans to prove it.”
She coloured angrily, “There is no need to be like that, Sasuke.”
“I don’t remember giving you leave to use my first name.”
This was one of Sasuke’s bugbears. In the new ‘approachable’ public services it was considered too formal to use ‘Mr’ whereas Sasuke saw the honorific as essential to his dignity. He promised himself that if she went so far as to shorten his name to ‘Suse’, he would allow himself to shut her head in a filing cabinet.
The patented Uchiha Glare was starting to get to the woman. He was slightly impressed that it had taken so long. Most people would have cracked within seconds. Clearly public services turned out a tough breed. The woman typed shakily for a minute and Sasuke glanced impatiently around the depressing room, at the post its and the defensive clients. He didn’t belong in such a place. He was better than this. He was being tainted by the general air of hopelessness.
And then his eyes locked with the blond two desks up. It was the handsome man who had walked into the pillar. There was a red mark starting on his forehead from the impact. Golden hair brushed against it. Blue eyes stared with an almost manic intensity. They met The Glare and didn’t falter. They didn’t quail and they didn’t look away. It was the first time in a long time that someone didn’t acknowledge Sasuke’s dominance within seconds. He fidgeted nervously. His body was sending him some very decided messages about tanned skin and strong looking hands.
Sasuke had often heard the phrase ‘he was undressing me with his eyes,’ and it had always made him cringe a little, suggestive as it was of certain coyness. Nobody could call Sasuke coy. But now he understood what it meant. He might as well have been sat on his chair completely naked. His mouth went dry.
The time for contemptuously breaking the gaze came.
And went.
‘Look away! Look away!’ Sasuke screamed at himself, internally. A warm tingling was growing in his belly. Then, God help him, he blushed. He blushed and lowered his eyes like a school girl.
The horror.
He barely paid any attention to the rest of the appointment. He quietly answered any questions put to him while staring, stonily, straight ahead, painfully aware of the blond’s eyes still on him. Aware of the gaze running down his neck, easing like a gentle finger between his shirt collar and his throat. Sasuke shivered.
“There,” the woman said, with some relief, “Done. Come back in a week to sign on.”
“OK,” Sasuke muttered.
Maybe he would come back next week. Maybe Itachi wouldn’t even have to threaten to beat him to death to make him do it.
You know, if Sasuke had nothing better to do.
As he left he felt the possessive stare linger on the back of his neck.
When he emerged into the car park he confidently expected to find Itachi waiting for him to drive him home but it soon became clear that there was no one there but a couple of pregnant women smoking. Sasuke checked his mobile and was unsurprised to see a terse text message from his brother declaring that something had come up at work (‘because some of us have jobs, Sasuke’) and so Sasuke had better get the bus home.
With a sigh the youngest Uchiha headed to the bus stop with The Glare firmly in place to ward off any overly expansive member of the public. Since he had refined The Glare to its current state of perfection he rarely experienced his childhood trial of being yelled at by random morons. But occasionally, he had to admit, he still got ‘Oi! Jap!’ screamed at his back by people who clearly considered themselves to be witty and original. He hadn’t found that ‘Oi! Brit!’ gave him much sense of a comeback.
To stop himself from thinking about just how shaming that appointment at the Job Exchange had been Sasuke reluctantly allowed himself to dwell on the blond God that worked there. He was glad that he hadn’t been interviewed by him because he would certainly have dried up and made a total twat of himself. Sasuke wasn’t usually one to leer but the blond seemed to demand it as his due. Simply by existing and looking like that.
When the bus arrived and Sasuke got on he was still deep in thought about all the things he would love to do to the man. So at first he didn’t notice the gaggle of teenagers at the back of the bus. But somewhere around the second set of traffic lights, round about the time that the blond had got naked in his minds eye, Sasuke became aware of the shouting. He tensed and was abruptly hurled back ten years to the school bus and everything that that had entailed. His stomach heaved and his blood raged.
It wasn’t even what they were yelling that got to him (as much as Sasuke was prepared to admit that anything got to him at all) but the sheer volume at which they were yelling it. He hated noise and he loathed being forced to listen to the stupidity of others. Why couldn’t people go through the world softly? Why did they feel this need to rape everyone around them with sound? It didn’t convince Sasuke of their strength or manliness, quite the contrary. It convinced him of their basic tosser-ness.
He set his jaw, tried to stop feeling like an impotent twelve year old and settled down to endure the journey.
Naruto got home in time to hear his next door neighbours having their six o clock row. They were consistent, he had to admit that. You could set your watch by them. It started at six every night (except for at weekends when it started around lunchtime) and ended by the time Eastenders started on TV. Content varied but tonight they were rehashing an old favourite.
“You fat slag, when are you going to stop eating?”
“Around about the same time you get back the hair you had when we met!”
Naruto sighed and dropped his bag of groceries. Slumping into his sofa bed he put on his stereo and tried to drown them out with Sisters of Mercy. He closed his eyes and finished the fantasy he had been having ever since mid afternoon. It involved a gorgeous Japanese man and all the wonderful things that they could do to each other. Naruto grinned a little. He couldn’t remember the last time his imagination had run away with him like this. The second he had seen the man everything had intensified. The whole world had switched to surround sound high definition.
The shouting next door had reached a crescendo and Naruto knew that soon he would be trying to ignore the sound of makeup sex. They weren’t the best neighbours in the world but in a way he admired them. They were totally sincere. They never faked anything.
He wished that he was like that.
One week later at four minutes past noon Naruto sat tensely in his chair, feeling like a very punctual gunslinger whose opponent hasn’t arrived yet. He was smiling slightly to himself. It had taken some finagling but Sasuke Uchiha of ‘he so pretty’ fame had been assigned to Naruto as a permanent client.
Providing the man hadn’t done something awful, like get a job.
It hadn’t been exactly difficult to find out the man’s name. It had stood out somewhat on the database, like an exotic island in a sea of Smiths and Browns. Despite a moment of ‘I’m such a stalker,’ shame Naruto had memorised Uchiha’s file. He was 25, a graduate in art and philosophy (hence his joblessness perhaps, although from talking to his first advisor Naruto suspected that it might be more to do with his personality) and he lived with his brother. Sasuke was single, or he claimed to be, but the Exchange wasn’t allowed to ask him about his sexuality so Naruto had no idea yet whether he was going to be restricted to staring or if there was the smallest chance of something happening between them.
Although the blush had given him hope.
Naruto looked at his watch. Sasuke was late. Technically this meant that Naruto could cancel his unemployment payments but that probably wouldn’t be the best way to seduce him.
And he was absolutely determined to seduce him, even if it cost Naruto his job which it certainly would if anyone found out about it.
He rearranged his desk for the third time and resisted the urge to get another coffee. He was already way too hyper and more caffeine might push him over the edge. He was ridiculously over excited and that was a bit embarrassing. He felt that it must be obvious to everyone how much he wanted this man.
A breath of guilt whispered around him. He wondered what Lucy would make of it, when he got up the nerve to tell her about it. She would probably just smile and say,
“Christ, Naruto, you could stop looking so tragic! We’ve been split up for over a year and besides, it’s about time that you proved that you really are gay and that it wasn’t just an incredibly elaborate way to dump me.” And she would laugh but there would be hurt beneath it.
She was the biggest casualty of Naruto’s fake self. He would never forgive himself for it.
He looked up to see Sasuke Uchiha stroll in, apparently unconcerned at his lateness, and stand casually, gracefully, waiting to be called. He had an air of, ‘I might deign to cooperate, I might not.’ Naruto once again found that his eyes had turned into Sasuke seeking missiles and were moving furiously over him. He took a moment to admire the pale skin, the narrow shoulders, the sardonic mouth. Naruto swallowed.
“Mr Uchiha,” he said.
Well, he tried to say it, but his voice freaked out and no sound came out. He coughed, mentally slapped himself and tried again.
“Mr Uchiha,” he said.
Sasuke looked up and a brief expression of uncertainty crossed his face. He had clearly been expecting the same adviser as last time and was a little thrown to be called by a man with lust in every line of his face. Nevertheless he sauntered over as though he owned the building and sat down. He crossed his arms and looked at Naruto as though the blond’s mere presence on earth was an offence to slime everywhere.
Naruto had to suppress a shocked smile. He didn’t believe any of it. He knew a faker when he saw one.
He ought to.
Sasuke’s stomach had just finished the parallel bars and had progressed to the floor display. He had come here hoping, at most, to get stared at by this man, not to be plonked down opposite him in disturbing proximity. He drew his legs as near himself as possible to avoid any unintentional under-desk collisions. He wasn’t sure why he was nervous. ‘Anyone would think that you had never fancied anyone before,’ he sneered at himself. At least he could be fairly confident that the blond had no idea because he was fixing The Glare firmly in place. Sasuke knew for a fact that nothing showed through that.
Nothing at all.
“I’m Naruto,” the God said.
Sasuke shrugged as if to say, ‘And I care why?’ but he secretly squirreled the name away to be shouted out later during a very particular activity. An activity that he had been doing rather more than usual since his last visit here.
“Have you been looking for work this week?” Naruto asked.
“No.”
Naruto looked up in surprise, his blue eyes giving Sasuke shameful thrills. He couldn’t remember the last time such simple things had turned him on so much. Naruto’s eyes were bluer than a Disney heroine’s.
“You do understand that if you don’t look for work we can stop your money?” Naruto sounded genuinely concerned but Sasuke was sure that he sounded like that with all the claimants. It was his job to pretend to care. Sasuke was mentally kicking himself. He did actually need the money quite badly and he had psyched himself up to come here and jump through every one of their soul shrivelling hoops but here he was, telling the truth like an idiot.
He just hadn’t wanted the first thing he said to this man to be a lie.
“Perhaps you’ve been ill?” Naruto prompted, meaningfully. He was patently giving Sasuke a way out but, unfortunately, Uchiha pride had just wrapped itself round the white neck and was refusing to let Sasuke take it.
“I’ll put down that you were ill,” Naruto said, looking like he was about to wink but then seeming to change his mind about it. He typed for a minute but there was a lot of backspacing because his fingers appeared to be shaking.
“You should know that there are many services here to help you find a job,” Naruto mumbled, sounding very much as though this was the standard spiel that he gave everyone but was embarrassed to have to say to Sasuke. Their eyes collided and locked. “CV writing, careers advice, interview training...”
Sasuke’s heart was ricocheting off his ribs. He felt a blush trying to climb up his neck. Close to he was getting a good view of the blond and it was awe inspiring. The staggering eyes, the firm jaw, the muscle definition hinted at under cheap clothes and the deep collarbone that just sat there behind a badly buttoned shirt, telling Sasuke to run his tongue along it. Naruto looked like something that belonged in a stained glass window. But Sasuke wanted to do things to him that would permanently disqualify them both from any kind of angel status.
“So...anything I can do for you, just...let me know.” Naruto trailed off, his hot gaze still on Sasuke’s face.
‘Promise?’ Sasuke wanted to say. He started to wonder if his thoughts were showing on his face, even through The Glare, although that would be unprecedented. It was hard to believe that the sweaty pictures in his mind weren’t somehow leaking out of his eyes. Naruto’s lips parted, Naruto’s hands clinging, fingers digging into Sasuke’s back, flesh parting, panting breaths.
Loss of control.
As a general principle Sasuke wasn’t a fan of losing control. He wanted to feel like he had some say in his life. But this man made him want to lose everything.
“Is that it? Are we done now?” he heard himself saying, contempt dripping from his tone, and he immediately started kicking himself again. Much more of this and Naruto would decide that he was an obnoxious bastard not worth staring at in that gloriously hungry way. Not for the first time Sasuke cursed his total inability to show that he wanted something, that he cared about something. Panic surged. He was going to drive this man away before he had a chance to try any of the perverted scenarios in his head. He had to make his intentions perfectly clear. Right now!
The irrationality of that decision was due to its being made not by Sasuke’s brain (which left to its own miserable devices would let him die alone in a bedsit aged forty) but by something else much further south, something very impatient, not prone to logic and very prone to Naruto.
So Sasuke moved one long leg and pressed it briefly against Naruto’s under the table. He left it there just long enough to be unequivocal. Inwardly he prayed to the God of Emos that Naruto wouldn’t let the continued presence of The Glare detract from the message of The Leg. Sasuke could feel warmth through fabric. He felt Naruto jump in shock.
“Perhaps I could make you an appointment with a careers advisor?” Naruto blurted, his words bursting out like fizz from a shaken bottle. He had to find a way to get Sasuke back here before his next official sign on in a fortnight. Naruto knew with certainty that he couldn’t wait two entire weeks to see this man again. He had nearly cried with despair when Sasuke moved his leg away.
“Are YOU a careers advisor? Maybe I could see you?” Sasuke asked. His words belied his emotionless expression.
“No,” Naruto confessed. Why wasn’t he a careers advisor? Why? Why? But he was sure as hell going to find a way to be Sasuke’s careers advisor if he had to slaughter the rest of the office to achieve it.
“Oh.” Sasuke said. Naruto strained to hear disappointment in his tone and failed.
“So,” he burbled.
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I will attend the appointment with the careers advisor. When?” Sasuke was gazing at him with calm dark eyes.
“Huh? Oh,” Naruto had a flash of inspiration. He opened the file with the careers advisor’s diary and saw that she wasn’t even in the building on Friday and promptly booked Sasuke in.
Five minutes later, when Naruto’s caseload of increasingly irate clients made it impossible for him to string the appointment out any longer, he watched Sasuke stalk out and grinned. Oh dear, there had been an unfortunate administrative error. Sasuke would need to be seen by someone else on Friday.
And Naruto knew exactly who that would be.
Sasuke wasn’t enormously surprised on Friday to find himself ushered into an interview room that barely had space for more than two chairs and a desk and Naruto sat there, looking triumphant. Despite a surge of excitement Sasuke was irked by Naruto’s smile.
He looked very confident indeed.
Nobody likes to feel easy and in actual fact Sasuke was very hard to get, mainly because any situations where he wasn’t in control made him profoundly uncomfortable. He avoided people that he felt strongly about. When he did have sex it was always with people that he was only pleasantly attracted to and was sure that he would be able to drop later.
Somehow he wasn’t sure he would be able to drop Naruto.
The whole thing was making him nervous. It was painfully obvious now that Naruto wanted him; there was no other interpretation to be put on that hot eyed stare. Part of Sasuke wished very much that Naruto was just after a quick fuck.
It would be safer for the Uchiha’s quiet, ordered life if he was.
“Mr Uchiha,” Naruto stood up and went so far as to shake Sasuke’s hand. Sasuke flinched under an urge not to let go but to pull the blond towards him, dragging him across the desk. Warm fingers clasped for just a second too long and then let go.
They both sat down. The tininess of the room meant that they were almost looming over each other and when Naruto breathed out Sasuke could feel it. His blood started pounding in his ears.
He was in big fucking trouble here.
“You said that you weren’t the careers advisor?” Sasuke couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Naruto fidgeted and then flashed a mega watt smile that nearly threw Sasuke through the wall. The Smile was cheerful, friendly, brimming over with bonhomie. It was like staring directly at the sun, bright and very, very painful. But utterly fake. Despite the joyous grin before him Sasuke went cold. He knew a faker when he saw one. Naruto had probably got through his whole life on that smile. It would have fooled most people.
Well Sasuke wasn’t going to fall for it. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms and glared.
“I’m filling in for her,” Naruto said, still smiling.
Sasuke wanted to kiss the fakery off his face.
He also wanted to throw up.
“So,” Naruto moved some papers about pointlessly, “Here are the personality and aptitude questionnaires. If you could just fill the first one in. Don’t over think the answers, just select the first option that appeals to you.”
Sasuke stared at the papers pushed across the desk at him. Was he seriously expected to do this with Naruto practically sitting on him? The blonds face was separated from him only by the width of the desk, and not even that in it’s entirety because Naruto was leaning forward over it, seemingly trying to get as close to Sasuke as possible. With an irritated grunt Sasuke snatched the personality questionnaire and filled it in rapidly with the tiny blue biro provided. The questions were stupid of course. The writer of the test had clearly not appreciated the complexity of human beings and of Uchiha in particular. For example it was not permissible to claim to be both creative and organised because according to the questionnaire such characteristics were antithetical.
Growling with disgust Sasuke finished the test and flung it back across the desk to Naruto. There then occurred five awkward minutes while Naruto checked the answers against a grid. Sasuke resisted the urge to grind his teeth. He also resisted the urge to lean forward and run a finger down Naruto’s neck. He had been obsessing about that tanned neck for three days.
“Um...” Naruto gave Sasuke a look of mingled embarrassment and amusement. “According to this you are a borderline psychopath and I should lock you in here and call the police.”
Sasuke shrugged, “Heh.”
“Never mind,” Naruto laughed nervously. It was just as fake as The Smile.
Sasuke had always considered himself to be the most repressed person he knew. Then he met Naruto, who cleverly hid it behind an act of not being repressed at all. Sasuke was quite impressed.
Sasuke wanted very badly to get something real out of Naruto, something sincere. He could understand now why his own lovers had considered him such an irresistible challenge. The urge to break through the layers of Naruto’s outward self was overpowering. Sasuke blamed it on the smallness of the room and the growing heat of their two bodies in a confined space. That was why he lost it a bit and ran a foot slowly up Naruto’s leg.
The blond nearly shot out of his chair in shock. His leg pressed instinctively forward, trying to get nearer. Sasuke wanted to smile but stopped himself. This was a serious matter. He lowered his foot, kicked off his boot and then ran his socked toes back up Naruto’s leg. Naruto’s eyes glazed over. Sasuke promised himself that later he would figure out what the hell he had been thinking, playing footsie in an interview room with a man he barely knew. Right now, it seemed the only thing to do. Naruto’s lips had parted in the most wonderful way and when Sasuke’s foot trailed up the inside of his thigh the blond made a soft, sighing sound.
Sasuke found himself hauled out of his chair and dragged half across the desk onto Naruto’s mouth. Their teeth collided in their haste and enthusiasm. Sasuke’s head started to spin as warm, hungry lips moved on his. Naruto tasted of coffee and, was that Nutella? A grown man who had chocolate spread on his toast? But just as Sasuke was about to pull away a hand moved to the back of his neck and stroked gently. Sasuke nearly buckled from arousal. The hot fingers teased his skin, stirring the little hairs and raising goose bumps in extraordinary places.
Sasuke started to panic. He wasn’t even slightly in control here. His body was reacting in a way that he had never used to believe in, had never sought. Sexual obsession had been something he had always considered destructive, humiliating. He had taken pride in his ‘take it or leave it’ approach to sex. With Naruto ‘leave it’ wasn’t even a distant possibility. Sasuke was about to run a hand down Naruto’s chest when there was a knock on the door. They whimpered with horror almost simultaneously.
Before Sasuke knew it he was slumped back in his chair, flushed and thrown, completely spaced out.
“Yes?” Naruto called out, his tone all calm and breezy. Sasuke stared at him in stunned amazement while the door opened. A woman with wild red hair came in as far as she could and asked Naruto something about another client. Sasuke wasn’t really listening. He was wishing she would drop dead and also wishing that he and Naruto were somewhere private. With a bed.
Somewhere he would be able to devote himself to wiping that smile off Naruto’s face.
When the woman had gone and the door was shut again Sasuke took the opportunity to point out,
“I could get you fired for jumping me like that.”
“I know.” Naruto looked a bit miserable now. The Smile had disappeared the moment the door closed, “Are you going to?”
“No.”
Sasuke hesitated. He considered how it would feel if he walked out of here right now and never came back. It would be safer that way but the idea of it made him shudder with distaste.
“When do you get off work today?” Sasuke asked. He saw the hope flare in Naruto’s eyes. Just don’t do The Smile, he prayed. Let me be special. Let me be the one person you don’t have to charm.
I’m already charmed.
“Five.” Naruto managed. He looked like words were temporarily beyond him. His mouth was bruising.
“See you then.” Sasuke said.
Then he got up and left.
Naruto spent the rest of the day in an agonising blur of impatience, fear and lust. He kept trying to remind himself that all Sasuke had implied was a meeting, not sex necessarily, not an opportunity for Naruto to run his hands over his naked body, to hear him groan, to taste that mouth again with its edge of herbal tea. Naruto paused in mid sentence and had to be shouted at by his boss. His brain appeared to be caving in on itself. The waiting was unbearable. The clock said 3.15 for at least an hour and a half. At one point he even stood on a chair and took it down to check the batteries.
The worst point came at 4.45. It was like a dream where he was desperately trying to do something but was always held back by relentless, malicious forces. By 4.47 he was cracking up. By 4.48 he had made a decision.
Out in the evening light of the car park Naruto reassured himself that no one ever got fired for leaving work ten minutes early. Even if there had still been a client sat at his desk who had watched him with bemusement as he stood up and wondered dazedly out of the building. He hadn’t been able to help himself. The thought that Sasuke might already be out there, waiting, had made Naruto’s skin heave.
And there he was, leaning against a bollard and squinting in the sunlight. Naruto reminded himself to breath and walked casually towards him. At least the aim was to be casual but it came off rather more like a diseased marionette.
Sasuke looked up and Naruto resisted the urge to smile. He had noticed the way Sasuke tensed whenever he did it.
“I thought we should get this out of our systems.” Sasuke said, calmly.
“How long do you think that would take?” Naruto wondered. He wanted to bite Sasuke’s nipples.
A sudden burst of laughter made Naruto jump. He watched, open mouthed as a real, non-sardonic, smile lit up Sasuke’s face. The laughter went on for some time.
“I don’t know,” Sasuke said at last, breathlessly, “Thirty years or so? What do you think?”
Naruto grinned.
“I didn’t know that you did anything but glare.” He said.
“Do you do anything but big fake smiles?” Sasuke’s tone held a challenge.
“Good point.”
They fell into an easy pace, heading without agreement to Naruto’s flat. Naruto’s heart was shivering. Nothing felt real. He kept glancing sidelong at Sasuke who had plastered The Glare back onto his beautiful face on noticing a gang of youths up ahead. Naruto watched as Sasuke’s back stiffened. Uchiha watched the teenagers like he was expecting one to pull out a nuclear bomb. When he spoke it was clearly to distract himself.
“Why are you called Naruto?” he asked, still not looking away from the men.
“My mother had a Japanese obsession. It was awful at school; I used to wish I was called John or something.”
Sasuke snorted, “Don’t try to tell me that you were bullied. Why would someone like you get bullied? I mean, look at you.”
Naruto felt an unexpected burst of rage. His experience of school had been so horrific and so scarring and here was someone who hardly knew him discounting it in that contemptuous way. Naruto stopped and grabbed Sasuke’s arm painfully tight.
“I got bullied the crap out of me for fifteen years you arrogant fuck!” he hissed.
Sasuke’s eyes widened. “I had birthmarks all over my face and a weird name. They used me as a human football.”
Sasuke looked embarrassed, “What birthmarks?”
“I got them treated last year, they faded.” Naruto stepped closer to Sasuke, still holding his arm aggressively, “Look closer.”
Sasuke stared, “They look like whiskers.” He mumbled.
Naruto released him, “Yeah, I got called Fox Boy.”
They resumed walking. Oddly, Naruto wasn’t angry any more but actually happy. He had never before let someone know how he really felt about what had happened at school. He had covered it up with The Smile and trite phrases about how ‘kids can be cruel’. He had felt that if his real bitterness got exposed he would lose the friends he had now. Even Lucy had no idea how bad it had been.
But with Sasuke it was easy.
They had drawn level with the teenagers and they took one look at Sasuke before yelling, “Oi! Jap!” Sasuke sighed and ignored them. Naruto wanted to go over and punch one of them but it wasn’t him getting yelled at. Plus he was cowed by The Glare which had deepened. He suspected that Sasuke’s tenuous dignity wouldn’t take too kindly to Naruto playing Sir Lancelot to his Guinevere.
“Oi! What are you doing here? We won the war you know!”
That didn’t even make sense.
Sasuke stopped suddenly. The Glare faltered. The world stilled. And then he ran at the youths with a blood curdling cry and they were scattering under the sheer force of his rage. Naruto followed at once.
Ten minutes later they were bleeding on the field of victory.
OK, the tarmac of victory.
Naruto started sniggering, “My mother will reckon you are a bad influence. Getting me into a fight on our first date.”
Sasuke rubbed blood off his lip, “Date?” he asked.
“Isn’t it a date?”
Sasuke stared sightlessly at a streetlamp, “Quite a weird date.”
By the time they got to Naruto’s flat his neighbours had started their row. Sasuke raised his eyebrow at both the noise next door and the thirty packets of noodles on the draining board.
“Don’t you eat anything else?” he queried.
“No.” He wasn't about to tell him about the Nutella.
Naruto was sick with anticipation. He wanted to jump Sasuke, wanted to throw him on the bed. But somewhere between the Job Exchange and home their unspoken agreement to have sex had turned into an actual date and Naruto was fairly sure that you weren’t supposed to have sex on a first date. Not if you wanted a second date.
Sasuke wondered over to Naruto’s CDs and proceeded to mock them roundly for ten minutes. He had to raise his voice though, to be heard over the shouting next door.
“Sisters of Mercy?” he sneered, “how retro.”
“There is nothing wrong with un-ironic metal dance.” Naruto replied, unfazed.
He found himself standing behind Sasuke at the CD rack. Sasuke continued to laugh at Naruto’s music taste but his heart wasn’t in it as Naruto’s arm stole round him and his hand slid under his shirt. When Naruto’s fingers brushed against Sasuke’s stomach they both breathed in sharply. Naruto closed his eyes and rested his chin on Sasuke’s shoulder. No one said that you couldn’t stroke someone’s nipples on a first date.
Especially as Sasuke seemed to like it so much. He trembled against Naruto.
Naruto turned his mouth and kissed Sasuke’s neck, earning him a strangled whisper. Next door the screaming had not yet abated but Naruto could barely hear it. He was focusing far more on Sasuke’s skin which was hot and yielding under his teeth.
Abruptly Sasuke turned in his arms and they started kissing desperately. Naruto burned. He ran his hands shakily through Sasuke’s untidy hair. He had been wanting to do that since the first day. There were so many other things that he wanted to do that he barely knew where to start.
But still in the back of his mind he was cautious. What if Sasuke really believed that they could get this ‘out of their systems’ and that was all?
Naruto decided that he would have to make it so good that Sasuke would need to come back for more.
Sasuke was lying on Naruto’s cheap bed with the bed’s aforementioned owner on top of him. Sasuke was trying very hard not to panic. Desire was lacerating through his body and making him behave in a very unaccustomed manner, making him arch his hips up against Naruto’s. Their bodies rubbed together once, they groaned, and then they started bucking furiously together, moaning and begging, clothes flying off in all directions, frustration resulting in one broken zip and several mislaid buttons. Sasuke ran his hands over tanned skin and tried not to come there and then. Naruto was kissing and licking at his chest, his tongue circling Sasuke’s nipples and his hand running down to clasp them both together and rub fiercely.
Sasuke arched off the bed and dug his fingernails into Naruto’s perfect skin. Nothing made sense anymore, there was no control and no dominance and no hope of being able to drop Naruto after this. Sasuke wasn’t going to miss out on having this feeling again and again. For as long as Naruto was prepared to give it to him. He forgot completely that he was never bottom and instead gloried in opening his legs for Naruto’s fingers and his mouth. Waves of pleasure blocked out the nasty flat and the shouting next door, blocked out Sasuke’s ever present sense of failure, his brother’s contempt and disappointment in him, left only cries of animal lust and Naruto.
Naruto kissing him, Naruto biting his shoulder when Sasuke stroked him, Naruto’s invasive fingers, Sasuke’s eyes closing in overwhelmed hunger and then his eyes flying open when Naruto pressed inside painfully. But it was too late to stop, Sasuke’s own body wouldn’t let him. He looked up at Naruto and their eyes locked. The first thing he had noticed about Naruto was that blue and now he focussed on it, watched it darken with shocked bliss at the tightness around him. Sasuke resisted an urge to crow in triumph. Naruto looked like he couldn’t take much more. Sasuke ignored the pain and slammed his body forward, forcing Naruto roughly in and out. Naruto yelled and moved to meet him. Pleasure started to return to Sasuke when Naruto reached down to touch him.
Sasuke began to hope that they could manage thirty five years instead of thirty.
The ancient bed began protesting and made ominous, ‘I’m about to collapse, I wasn’t designed for this much gay sex,’ noises but they ignored it. They ignored everything but each other.
Sasuke came hard when Naruto’s hand discovered the right rhythm. He heard himself crying out helplessly, all dignity vanished, as relief turned him almost inside out with pleasure. He felt himself tighten around Naruto, felt the blond’s fingernails dig into his hip. The mingling of pain and gratification was unsettling, almost frightening. Naruto collapsed on top of him, gasping out his orgasm as though he could barely fill his lungs. Sasuke put tight arms around him, reluctant to lose him.
He was going to be in agony in the morning.
Sasuke smiled.
Later on they ate noodles.
