The grass soaked through Naruto's jeans in a heartbeat. He crouched in the dark, senses raw and shredded, and waited for the building's lights to blink back on or alarms to start screaming, but nothing came except a rush of wind and the distant thump of a car door. The science complex hunched in the gloom, unbothered by their break-in, as if the building itself couldn't care less what happened inside its walls.
Naruto waited. One Mississippi, two, three—still no alarms. He pushed himself up, legs shaking beneath him. The quad stretched before him like a minefield of open space. He had to move.
"Go," he whispered to himself, already sprinting toward the shadow of the nearest tool shed. He cut across the quad, ducking behind benches and trash cans, moving so fast his lungs burned and the world spun. The silence around him was not quiet—it was ringing, absolute, a pulse in his ears louder than the alarms he'd been bracing for. Nice try, whispered in his ear like a taunt.
He reached the dorm in half the time it usually took. The stairwell was empty, and by some minor miracle, so was the third floor hallway. His trembling fingers fumbled with the key before he managed to open the door to 327. He stumbled inside and closed it with a decisive click.
The second the door latched, Naruto's legs gave out. He sagged against the nearest desk—his, he guessed, but he wouldn't have bet money on it in that moment. Sasuke loomed, eyes wild, every line of his body sharp with adrenaline.
"You okay?" The question wasn't a question so much as a demand, punctuated by Sasuke's hands already gripping Naruto's arms, his shoulders, his face.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm—" Naruto started, but Sasuke's fingers pressed at his pulse, thumb sweeping the underside of Naruto's jaw as if checking for hidden damage. He spun Naruto by the shoulders, yanked up the sleeve to inspect a red mark there, then ran his hands methodically from wrist to elbow to make sure it wasn't worse.
"I'm not bleeding out, if that's what you're worried about," Naruto managed, still dizzy from the run.
Sasuke ignored the comment and turned Naruto again, holding him at arm's length. Their eyes met for a flash—black and blue, both pupils blown wide from terror or something like it. Sasuke's gaze raked over Naruto one last time, and whatever he saw finally let him exhale. He dropped his hands, his posture collapsing by slow degrees until he slumped on the edge of the bed, elbows braced on knees.
A minute passed. Two. The heating system clanged on, the radiator burping and groaning, and the whole room seemed to exhale with them.
Naruto, now shaking in the aftermath, realized his teeth were chattering. He jammed his hands into the pocket of his hoodie, then yanked them back out, noticing the plastic of the stolen badge still tucked in the seam. He set it on the desk, but it skittered off the edge and fell with a dull thunk to the carpet.
Nice try. Nice Try. Nice Try. Rang in Naruto's head over and over again.
Sasuke's eyes fixed on Naruto's hands. "You can't stop trembling."
"Yeah, well," Naruto said, watching his own fingers twitch against his thigh. "When a psychopath professor nearly catches you stealing files—"
"He saw me, not you," Sasuke interrupted. His fingers raked through his hair, yanking at the roots until his scalp blanched. "You were hidden. He has no idea you were there."
Naruto knew better—had seen Orochimaru's gaze slide past Sasuke to the shadow where he'd crouched—but his body was crashing from the adrenaline spike, leaving nothing but a hollow vibration beneath his sternum.
Sasuke watched him, then gestured at the closet. "Drink some water. Sit down."
Naruto hesitated, then grabbed a water bottle from his backpack, fumbling twice with the cap before it twisted free. The water tasted metallic and cheap, but his body couldn't decide if it wanted to gulp it down or throw it back up. He perched on the edge of the desk chair, legs alternately bouncing and freezing mid-motion. His gaze darted around the room—the band posters he'd hung last week suddenly seemed like they belonged to someone else, the pile of laundry both comfortingly normal and sickeningly mundane. How could their dorm look so unchanged when everything else had just imploded? He wanted to run again, to stay perfectly still, to scream, to disappear.
For a while, neither spoke. Naruto stared at his hands, the weight of what he'd read in the file pressing against his chest like a stone. Orochimaru's words to Sasuke replayed in his mind—that smug tone, the familiarity that felt like a threat. There was history there, dark and tangled, something Sasuke had conveniently left out when he'd dragged Naruto into this mess. The realization stung: Sasuke had let him stumble into danger without warning him what—or who—they were really dealing with.
But beneath his anger, Naruto recognized something else. If he'd been through whatever Sasuke had with Orochimaru—the memory of that serpentine smile made his skin crawl—he wouldn't exactly volunteer the information either. He studied Sasuke's profile, the tight line of his jaw, the way his fingers kept curling and uncurling against his thigh. There was only one way forward.
He cleared his throat. "What's your deal with Orochimaru?"
Sasuke tensed so hard the mattress creaked. For a second he didn't answer, then he stood, pacing three steps to the wall and back. The footsteps were measured, a nervous rhythm, heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe.
"You heard him," Sasuke finally said. "He was in charge of me. When I was a kid. My parents paid him to… oversee our education. Our health. The usual shit Alpha parents do for legacies."
Naruto watched, not blinking.
Sasuke crossed his arms over his chest. "Every month, sometimes more, I'd sit in his private office while he filled syringes with clear liquid. I remember the rubber band he'd snap around my arm, how cold the alcohol wipe felt." His voice hitched, almost imperceptibly. "After the injections, I'd spend days with fevers so high I hallucinated. My sheets would be soaked through. My parents just thought I had a weak immune system. Meanwhile, he was telling them I showed 'extraordinary biological potential.'"
Naruto opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "How old—" He stopped, uncertain if he should push further, if he even wanted to know. The question hung half-formed between them until he finally surrendered to it. "When did it start?"
"Ten," Sasuke answered, his voice flat but his fingers digging crescents into his palms. He laughed, a sound like glass breaking underfoot. "My parents thought—" His face twisted, caught between rage and something that looked almost like grief. "They believed Orochimaru was 'helping' me."
Sasuke continued in a voice drained of emotion, his gaze locked on something invisible beyond the wall. "Things escalated. Every time I resisted, he'd push harder. I'd hide in the closet when my parents went out—sometimes he'd discover me, sometimes not." His fingers twisted together in his lap, clenching and unclenching rhythmically. His expression hardened suddenly, lips curling. "Until Itachi discovered what was happening."
Naruto felt his throat tighten. Something in Sasuke's tone made the hair on his arms stand up, but he couldn't stop himself from asking, "Itachi?"
Sasuke turned to face Naruto, his black eyes suddenly hollow, like windows in an abandoned house. "My older brother," he said, the words falling between them like stones dropped into still water.
Naruto's fingers twitched with the urge to reach across the space between them. He curled them into his palm instead. "What happened?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Sasuke's jaw worked, the muscle jumping. "Nothing. That's the worst part—nothing happened. Not for days. Then one morning, I woke up to screaming. The house was full of smoke." He trailed off, lost for a second, "Itachi grabbed my hand pulled me out of the house. I remember screaming to go back for our parents, but he told me they were already gone."
Naruto's throat closed up, dry as sandpaper. All this time, he'd thought he was the only one who'd lost everything. Now, watching Sasuke's face harden against memories, he felt a terrible kinship form between them—the brotherhood of the abandoned. He wouldn't wish that membership on his worst enemy, let alone someone he was starting to care about.
Naruto's legs carried him across the room before his brain could object. He lowered himself onto the mattress beside Sasuke, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched but with enough space that Sasuke wouldn't feel crowded. Words felt inadequate, so he offered silence instead, his presence a quiet promise that whatever came next, Sasuke wouldn't face it alone.
Sasuke's voice dropped to a whisper. "The police report said Itachi set the fire deliberately." His fingers curled into fists against his thighs. "I spent years hating him for it."
Naruto's throat tightened. He knew loss—the empty chairs at birthday dinners, the phantom voices he sometimes thought he heard—but this was different. His brother had been his anchor, not his destroyer. Yet something in Sasuke's hollow voice made him wonder what he might have done if Kurama had been the one to take everything from him. Would he have found a way to forgive, or would that hatred have consumed him too? "Did he—" Naruto's voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Did he go to prison?"
Sasuke's throat worked. "Juvenile psych hold," he replied, voice rough. "He was in and out for years." His fingers picked at a loose thread on his jeans. "After he got out, he tried to reach me. Letters. Birthday cards. Even showed up at my guardian's house once." Sasuke's jaw tightened. "I burned everything without opening it. Told the doorman never to let him up again."
The silence returned, thicker than before. Naruto ran a hand through his hair, then let it fall useless to his lap.
Sasuke's next words came out softer, but carried more weight than anything else he'd said. "I used to think maybe he did it. Maybe he snapped. But after tonight? I think he was trying to kill Orochimaru, and the bastard just wasn't home. He got our parents instead."
There was nothing to say. The theory hung in the air, hideous and perfect.
Sasuke straightened up, wiped his eyes with the heel of his palm—quick, almost angry at himself for needing to do it. "Orochimaru left town a week later. The police said he gave a statement, that he'd only ever been my tutor. He took a job at the university, and that was it. No one ever questioned him again."
He looked at Naruto, eyes glittering, not from tears but from a total lack of anything else to fill them. "Now you know."
Naruto looked at his own hands, suddenly self-conscious about their ordinary size and dirt-rimmed nails, the lack of anything in his own past that compared. He thought about his brother—gone, but not in a way that left burn marks on the world.
He thought of the file, of the mocking words. Naruto knew he should tell Sasuke, but not right now. Right now Sasuke needed a friend, not more stress.
Naruto watched Sasuke's profile, the way his jawline tensed and eased, the micro-movements of his eyes as they darted from desk to wall to carpet and finally, briefly, to Naruto's own. The red marks on his wrists were already fading, replaced by the paler traces of old scars—a roadmap of past disasters, all leading to this one point.
Naruto spoke with the soft neutrality of a therapist, or maybe just a friend. "So this is why you're helping, right? To catch him. Or at least to prove he's a monster."
Sasuke looked away, lips a flat line. "He's worse than a monster," he said, the words barely above a whisper. "He's a scientist. A true believer."
The answer held no drama, no self-pity, just fact. Naruto found himself nodding, because he understood. The worst monsters always had a reason, and that was what made them terrifying.
They sat like that, breathing. In and out. Gradually, the cadence of their lungs matched, so that every inhale was mirrored, every exhale doubled. The room around them faded—the heating, the faint hum of another dorm's late TV, the muted footfalls of some distant RA. None of it mattered.
After a long while, Sasuke looked up. His eyes were glassy, but not with tears. He turned, squaring himself toward Naruto, and for the first time his shoulders were lower, his hands steadier. "Can I—" he started, but the question hung in the air unfinished.
Naruto's heart thundered in his chest, each beat a wild percussion against his ribs as he waited.
Sasuke's face shifted, the mask of control slipping for just a second to reveal the uncertain kid underneath. "Can I kiss you?" he finished, so softly it was almost drowned out by the old radiator.
He nodded, just once, not trusting his voice.
Sasuke's hand moved to the back of Naruto's neck—no command in the touch, just request, his fingers cool against the flushed skin where blond hair tapered to nothing. Their faces closed the distance slowly, as if afraid the air between them might burn them, Naruto's breath catching in his throat when Sasuke's dark eyes fluttered half-closed. The first contact was gentle, barely lips, dry and tentative, but it was enough to send electricity racing down Naruto's spine, pooling hot and liquid in his stomach. The world didn't explode or collapse; it simply realigned, tectonic plates shifting under the surface with a bone-deep rumble only they could feel, revealing something new and raw and so, so wanted that Naruto's fingers trembled where they hovered, uncertain, at Sasuke's sides.
Then the world imploded. Naruto's hands flew to Sasuke's hair, fingers tangling in those silky black strands he'd secretly wanted to touch for weeks. The kiss transformed from hesitant to ravenous in seconds, their mouths colliding with the force of planets. Sasuke captured Naruto's bottom lip between his teeth—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to make him gasp—and when Naruto's lips parted, Sasuke's tongue slipped inside, hot and insistent. Their tongues slid against each other, neither willing to surrender control, the taste of Sasuke—mint and something darker, something uniquely him—flooding Naruto's senses until he couldn't remember why he'd ever resisted this.
Naruto's breath hitched into a desperate moan as Sasuke's cool fingers slid beneath the hem of his shirt, tracing a deliberate path up his heated skin. His head fell back, exposing his throat to Sasuke's hungry mouth. Teeth grazed the sensitive spot where his pulse hammered wildly, sending electric shivers cascading down his spine. The world narrowed to nothing but the wet heat of Sasuke's tongue against his neck, the possessive press of fingertips mapping his ribs. Just as he arched into the touch, surrendering completely to the sensation, his phone vibrated sharply against his thigh. The harsh buzz sliced through their shared trance, forcing them to spring apart, panting and disoriented.
Heat flooded Naruto's face like wildfire, his cheeks burning so intensely he could feel the flush spreading down his neck to his collarbone. He scrambled backward, nearly toppling off the edge of the bed in his haste to put distance between them. His lips still tingled, swollen and sensitive from Sasuke's possessive mouth. The vibration against his thigh felt like an electric shock, jarring him back to reality. With trembling fingers that refused to cooperate, he fumbled for his phone, squinting against the harsh blue light that illuminated the darkness between them. The timestamp—4:13 AM—glowed accusingly as a message notification appeared:
Gaara
I'm willing to meet, let me know when.