Three days after the Easter brunch apocalypse, Naruto's apartment was a chemical spill of inertia and self-loathing. The floor bore a patchwork of unopened mail, crushed energy drinks, and the muddy footprints of a person who'd stopped removing his shoes at the door. The window blinds remained shut in a perpetual dusk, the only light a pair of monitors, each dimmed to the color of soured milk, casting their sickly pallor across the studio space that functioned as both his bedroom and tomb.
He sat slumped at the scarred IKEA desk, surrounded by the shrapnel of manuscripts—some halfway marked up with red pen, others reduced to origami nightmares by hands that needed to keep moving. His phone vibrated every hour on the hour, and sometimes in five-minute intervals, always flashing the same name: Sasuke Uchiha. It had become a game of attrition. If he ignored them long enough, maybe the little red badge would disappear. Maybe so would the memories.
He hadn't slept more than two hours at a stretch since the flight back from his parents'. He tried to work—tried to care—but the words on the screen blurred into a slow-motion accident he couldn't look away from. Every time he blinked, he saw that room: Fugaku's face going grey, his mother's tight-lipped fury, Sasuke's hand on his, still cold and heavy with the last thing he'd ever expected.
His shoulders hunched closer to the keyboard, as if he could force the ideas to crawl from his spine by sheer will. He reread the same sentence five times before giving up, jaw clenched, eyes burning. His hands hovered over the keys, knuckles gone white, the fine blue veins standing out like the lines on a roadmap he no longer knew how to follow.
The phone buzzed again, this time a string of texts in rapid-fire:
[Sasuke: I know you're reading these. Please.]
[Sasuke: At least tell me you're alive.]
[Sasuke: Naruto. I'm not going away.]
He turned the phone face-down, the little death rattle of its motor echoing in the empty apartment. If he listened, he could almost hear Sasuke's voice in the hum of the fridge: deadpan, pissed, alive.
He wasn't sure if he wanted that or not.
He got up, circling the living room without aim. A stack of unopened ramen containers sat on the kitchen counter, slowly coagulating into an archaeological record of despair. Next to them, a mountain of mugs, each with the faint ghost of his mother's over-brewed coffee, waiting to be washed. Every surface was a monument to the week he'd spent ignoring the world, hoping it would stop returning the favor.
He tried to force himself into some ritual of normalcy—pacing from the desk to the fridge, from the fridge to the couch, from the couch to the desk—anything to keep from thinking about the last time Sasuke had touched his hand. The last time he'd looked at him like he was the only person in the room.
On the fourth lap, his phone started to ring—not buzz, but ring. The sound startled him so hard he nearly dropped it. For a brief, traitorous second, he thought it might be Sasuke. It wasn't.
The caller ID read: G.SABAKU.
He let it go once, then twice, then on the third ring answered with a voice he barely recognized as his own. "Yeah?"
"Nice greeting, Uzumaki," Gaara said, the words clipped but not unfriendly. In the background, Naruto could hear the echo of traffic—city noise, urgent and impersonal. "You alive, or did you forget how to use your phone?"
"Not dead," Naruto said, too honest. "Just busy."
"Bullshit," Gaara replied, and Naruto found himself almost smiling despite everything. "I got three separate texts from Lee asking if you're okay. He's very concerned about your 'emotional vigor.' When my boyfriend starts texting that frantically about another man at 2AM, I have to intervene. It's in the relationship bylaws."
Naruto pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm fine. Tell him I'm fine."
"Tell him yourself." Gaara paused, the silence weighted. "You want to talk about it?"
Naruto sank onto the couch, its springs squealing in protest. "What's the point?"
"Closure," Gaara offered. "Or maybe you want permission to wallow. I can grant that, too."
Naruto let the silence stretch. He stared at the ruined city of his coffee table—bent pens, a mug with a lipstick stain (whose?), the dried-out remains of what had once been a clementine. "He lied to me, Gaara. Not even by saying anything. By saying nothing." His voice cracked. "It's not about the engagement or the contract. It's that he never bothered to tell me. Left me stumbling around in the dark while he had the fucking light switch the whole time."
"Do you want me to kill him for you?" Gaara's voice was so flat that Naruto couldn't tell if he was joking.
Naruto barked a hollow laugh, then stopped, suddenly uncertain. "That would help, but no." He paused. "Wait. You're kidding, right?"
The silence stretched a beat too long. "Sounds like heartbreak," Gaara finally said, ignoring the question entirely. "Welcome to the club."
"Fuck off."
"That's the spirit." Another silence, gentler this time. "You know he's going to keep trying, right?"
"Yeah. I know."
Gaara's tone shifted—still measured, but now laced with a faint note of concern. "Don't make permanent decisions while you're this emotional. At least hear what he has to say."
Naruto stared at the ceiling, the old cracks spidering out from a leaky patch by the kitchen vent. "How am I supposed to trust anything he says now? He was engaged the whole time, Gaara. Engaged."
Gaara's voice hardened. "Listen. I'm not saying you should forgive him. What he did was shit, and you have every right to be angry." A pause stretched between them, punctuated only by the distant sound of traffic on Gaara's end. "But you owe it to yourself to hear him out. Get the full story, then decide what you want to do with it."
Naruto didn't answer. He was already pacing, the phone pressed so hard against his ear it hurt, each step across the apartment floor tightening the invisible cord of his rage around his chest.
Gaara let him twist for a moment, then cut in. "For what it's worth, I think he's an idiot." A pause. "But I've also never seen you happier than you've been these last few months. Not since I've known you."
The words hit Naruto like a physical blow. His throat tightened, and he pressed his palm against the cool wall to steady himself. He wanted to argue, but couldn't find the lie. "Thanks, Gaara. I owe you."
You do. I'll invoice you later."
They hung up, and for a few minutes, the apartment went eerily quiet. Naruto stared at his phone, at the wall, at nothing, until finally the urge to move won out and he started back to the desk.
He picked up his phone again, thumb hovering over Sasuke's name in his messages. Three dots of unread texts glowed accusingly. His heart hammered as he tapped the thread open, watching Sasuke's desperate pleas fill the screen. He started typing—deleted it—started again. "I can't just—" he muttered to himself, but his fingers kept moving: *We need to talk about*
Halfway through his message, a knock at the door cut through the silence. Not the polite tap of a delivery guy or the half-hearted rap of a neighbor, but the crisp, certain knock of someone who'd come a long way and wasn't leaving without answers.
Naruto's heart kicked into gear, then skidded sideways. For a second, he considered not answering. He could wait it out, maybe they'd leave, maybe—
The knock came again, louder this time.
He wiped his hands on his shirt, brushed hair from his eyes, and steeled himself. If it was Sasuke, he'd at least make him say it face-to-face.
He pulled the door open, ready for a fight.
Instead of a black-haired avenger with a chip on his shoulder, Naruto found himself staring into the face of the woman with the pinkest hair he'd ever seen.
For a second, his brain short-circuited—he knew her, but only as a half-memory from a Uchiha Corp elevator, the perfume of money and ambition so thick he'd almost missed the nervous energy bubbling under her surface. Now she was standing on his welcome mat, hands wrapped around the strap of a designer bag like she planned to strangle it, her green eyes darting between his face and the hallway behind him.
Naruto's grip on the door tightened. "Uh. Hi."
The woman looked even more rattled than he felt. She glanced at her phone, then back at him, as if double-checking his identity. "Hi. I—I'm looking for Naruto Uzumaki?"
"That's me," he said, voice flatter than intended.
The woman nodded, set her shoulders, and tried for a professional smile. "I'm Sakura. Sakura Haruno."