Chapter Text
The email notification popped up in the corner of his screen, and Sasuke clicked it so fast he nearly knocked his coffee all over his keyboard.
It was stupid. It was embarrassing. In one of his undergrad courses he’d read about neurochemical rewards and learned associations. For example, he’d spent so much of his life since he moved to Ottawa waiting for the bus, often in temperatures below minus thirty, that something in his chest now fluttered with conditioned joy every time he saw a bus trundling down the street, even when he wasn’t waiting. The sight of that excessively Canadian red-and-white paint job and those digital orange numbers punched the metaphorical gas on his neural reward centre the same way the sight of a slot machine would hit a gambling addict.
And now the same thing was happening at work, with his email notifications. It started with an initial acceleration of his pulse when the notification popped up in the corner of the screen, and then morphed into either a moment of dizzying breathlessness or a disappointed lull when his eyes snapped to the notification a millisecond later. It all depended on the name of the sender. It depended, to be more specific, on whether the email was from Naruto, or not.
It was stupid. It was embarrassing. It wasn’t even like he enjoyed reading Naruto’s emails. They were ungrammatical, unprofessional, annoying, and usually off-topic. All Sasuke ever did was open them, roll his eyes, shake his head, and send off a scathing reply.
He opened this latest email, resigning himself to whatever stupid joke or ridiculous idea had happened to float through Naruto’s hyperactive mind this time.
To: Sasuke Uchiha
Subject: 1988 mortgage assistance program policy
hey sasuke do u know where i could find a copy of the 1988 version of the mortgage assistance program policy i need to check something for that moosejaw grant application p&p sent over
---
Naruto Uzumaki
Co-op Student
Rural Housing Development Team
Operations Branch
Oh. It was an actual work email. Well—good. That was good. This was how it was supposed to go. Sasuke wrote back to Naruto, telling him to check the archives. He returned to revising the policy draft Tenten had sent him.
A minute later, another email notification popped up, and he went through the same thing all over again. He opened it.
To: Sasuke Uchiha
Subject: Re: 1988 mortgage assistance program policy
k cool thanks
also do u want to go to bridgehead i want a caramel latte so bad
---
Naruto Uzumaki
Co-op Student
Rural Housing Development Team
Operations Branch
Sasuke’s mouth twitched. It was definitely a small muscle spasm and not the beginnings of a smile. He glanced at the clock on his computer and made himself wait six minutes before he wrote back.
To: Naruto Uzumaki
Subject: Re: 1988 mortgage assistance program policy
Fine, I guess.
---
Sasuke Uchiha
Junior Policy Analyst
Rural Housing Development Team
Operations Branch
***
“It’s November 18th,” said Kakashi. They were sitting in his office, passing a box of Timbits back and forth. Sasuke suspected the box was, once again, courtesy of Gai, but he was past the point of caring. His TB sub had been due two days ago and people were still making changes to it, on top of which Lee had cornered him by the shredder this morning and spent a good twenty minutes trying to convince Sasuke to add him on GCConnex.
“Yep,” said Sasuke. He picked out a chocolate glazed and bit it in half. It was slightly stale and mildly disappointing, just the way a good chocolate glazed ought to be.
“Our lovely kiddos only have a month left in their contracts.”
“Yep,” said Sasuke. He’d been trying not to think about that. In one month, they’d take Naruto and Sakura out for lunch, and then Sakura would go to her parents’ place in Stittsville for the holidays, and Naruto would go home to Thunder Bay. They’d come back to Ottawa in about two weeks, but then they’d be in school again, and Sasuke would return to being the sole member of Team Kakashi, with no one to email him annoying questions or distract him from his work. It would be… good. Yes. That was what he kept telling himself.
“What do you think of Sakura?” Kakashi asked.
“She’s amazing,” Sasuke answered immediately. Professional jealousy still simmered in him at the thought, but he knew she was good—efficient, competent, smart, friendly. She’d even been working on her French. Worst of all, he’d realized he liked her.
Kakashi nodded approvingly. “Good. I think so too. So does Tsunade. She’s got a year of school left, so I’d like to get her in part-time through FSWEP during that and then try to bridge her in.”
Sasuke nodded, and tried not to feel threatened. A year was plenty of time for him to land an indeterminate position. Or at least a longer contract. He hoped. “What’s she doing in school, anyway?”
“Film studies, apparently.”
“Really ? ”
“Mm hmm. I believe she told me she specializes in, uh... images of the feminine grotesque in late twentieth-century Japanese horror.”
“Huh. That’s… huh.”
They both took a moment to digest this. Kakashi picked out a honey cruller Timbit and studied it contemplatively.
“And what do you think of Naruto?” He popped the Timbit in his mouth and added, “Professionally, that is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s just a question. The same one I asked about Sakura.”
“Yeah, but—whatever. Naruto’s…” What? What could he say about Naruto? Naruto was Naruto. He was loud. Irritating. Overly enthusiastic. He ate way too many instant noodles and drank way too many lattes and stood way to close to people and forgot his pass all the time and fidgeted constantly and had the absolute worst fashion sense and biked recklessly without a helmet and, infuriatingly, despite all of this, he was... not bad… at his job.
Alright, fine. He was good at his job.
And. Well. It was stupid. It was ridiculous. It was totally irrational. But, inexplicably, Sasuke didn’t want him to leave.
“Well?” Kakashi prompted.
Sasuke was struck by a sudden wave of paranoia. This felt like another test. If Sasuke was too complimentary, Kakashi might think Sasuke actually liked Naruto, which would be terrible and completely false. But if Sasuke wasn’t complimentary enough, Kakashi might decide he didn’t want to keep Naruto on, which was unthinkable.
“He’s… pretty… alright,” Sasuke said carefully. There. That should do it.
“Just alright?”
“He’s… good.”
Kakashi nodded, satisfied. “I’d like to do the same thing with him. He’s set to finish his master’s at the end of the summer. You three work well together, although I’m sure Tsunade will keep stealing Sakura from me every chance she gets. Some of your recent projects have the potential to generate income for us, and Jiraiya thinks that if EXCOM likes them, he should be able to get the CEO to sign off on the staffing requests.” He cleared his throat, and directed his gaze away from Sasuke, staring vaguely at his collection of dog photos. “Ah. Then there’s also the matter of seniority. Obviously, you’ve been here the longest, and you have the most experience. You’re a little young, but I think you’d make a good supervisor. If that’s something that interests you.”
“Really? I—ah, yes. Yeah.” Staffing sign-off. Supervisor. Wow. He’d get a raise, which Phoenix would immediately screw up. And paid vacation. And benefits. Holy shit, he’d get benefits. He could finally go to the dentist again.
“You understand that you’d continue supervising both Sakura and Naruto. It might be a few years before either of them moves up to your level.”
“Okay…?”
Kakashi picked up a picture of his bulldog and stared at it intently. “Having them as your direct reports could interfere with any… interpersonal relationships… that might be… developing.”
“Excuse me? What’s that supposed to mean?” Sasuke demanded. So they were about the same age, and they ate lunch together sometimes. So what? Did Kakashi think that just because of that, Sasuke wouldn’t be a good supervisor? Did he think Sasuke wasn’t doing a good job supervising them now?
“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Just something to think about. There are other options, if anything… changes.”
“It won’t,” Sasuke assured him.
***
“Hey, Sasuke. Sasuke. Sasukeeeee.”
Sasuke slipped off his headphones and turned away from his computer to glare at Naruto, who had rolled his chair over Sasuke’s desk. “What do you want? I’m busy.”
“Aw, come on, you’re always busy. What am I s’posed to do, just leave you alone?”
“Ideally, yes.”
Naruto grinned and scooted his chair a little closer. “So. My intramurals got cancelled tonight—”
“That’s nice. I don’t care.”
“Hey, hey, I wasn’t done. My intramurals got cancelled tonight, so I was thinking, d’you want to, y’know, go get a burrito with me?”
“A burrito.”
“Yeah, we could go to that place in the Byward, or, like, we could get tacos, if that’s more your thing…”
Naruto’s mouth kept moving, which suggested he was still speaking, but Sasuke had tuned him out in favour of staring at him uncomprehendingly. Naruto had never asked him to hang out outside of work before. It was. It was. It was…
It was a thing that had happened. Sasuke didn’t really care. It was annoying that it had happened today, when he was stuck working on three urgent dockets and would probably have to work late into the evening—but, of course, he didn’t want to go anyway, so really that didn’t matter. He already had to spend eight hours a day reading Naruto’s stupid emails and feeling the desks in the pit vibrate as Naruto bounced his stupid leg and staring at Naruto’s stupid blond head as he made coffee in the kitchen.
“I can’t,” said Sasuke.
“Pleeeeeease?” Naruto wheedled. “Come on, my roommate’s having all his weird art friends over tonight. Don’t make me hang out with them. They’re gonna talk about fine-tipped pens and Fauvism and shit.”
“I can’t,” Sasuke said again. “I have too much work to do.”
He eyed the stack of dockets Karin had given him, suddenly bitter. Stupid dockets. And stupid Kakashi, going to Kingston for leadership training with Gai, leaving him at the mercy of the avalanche of urgent requests that always materialized whenever management was out of the office. To be clear, he still didn’t want to go or anything. He didn’t. But. It would have been nice to have the option. And, okay. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, going down to the market together, making snide remarks at each other over burritos, mocking Naruto for spilling salsa all over his pants, which Sasuke was absolutely certain he would do.
Naruto looked at the dockets too and made a face. “Ugh, that sucks. Hey, d’you want help? I could do one of those for you.”
“It’s fine. They’re big. You’d have to stay late.”
“I don’t mind,” Naruto said cheerfully. “Weird art friends, remember? Hit me.”
“I—uh—well—that’s—” Sasuke was suddenly very aware of the rest of the students in the pit. They all appeared to be working away very diligently at their computers, but they were definitely also listening in. Gai’s team could probably hear them too. In the time since the office’s Workplace 2.0 renos, Sasuke had come to know far more than he’d ever wanted about the intricacies of such matters as, for instance, Lee’s overly complicated workout routine, Tenten’s tumultuous on-again-off-again boyfriend, and Choji’s Dorito preferences. The office’s new layout was designed for spontaneous collaborative brainstorming sessions, not frivolous workplace luxuries like focusing on your projects in peace or trying to schedule a doctor’s appointment without informing every single one of your colleagues about your embarrassing rash.
Not, obviously, that Sasuke cared whether or not anyone overheard this particular conversation. It was hardly private. All Naruto had done was ask him to get burritos and then volunteer to stay late to help Sasuke with his dockets. That was all. Sasuke’s face was slowly flushing pink right now for entirely unrelated reasons.
“Fine,” Sasuke said shortly, to hide his discomposure. He picked a docket off his pile at random and thrust it at Naruto. “Try not to mess it up.”
***
To: Sasuke Uchiha
Subject: ghosts??
wow being the only ones here is weird haha do u think this place is haunted
---
Naruto Uzumaki
Co-op Student
Rural Housing Development Team
Operations Branch
“Naruto. The office is literally empty. If you have something stupid to say, just say it to my face so it won’t clutter up my inbox.”
“Sorry,” Naruto whispered.
“Why are you whispering?”
“I don’t know.” He was still whispering. “This place is creepy at night. For real, d’you think it’s haunted?”
“Tch. I didn’t realize you were such a scaredy-cat. Do you need someone to hold your hand?”
“Well, if you’re offering—” said Naruto, grinning. He rolled his chair over and started reaching for Sasuke’s hand.
Sasuke snatched his hand away and snapped, “Don’t be stupid. Obviously it’s not haunted—”
The lights went out. Naruto yelped. Sasuke, who had spent enough late evenings here to know most of the building’s quirks, just sighed and waved his arms around. The lights flickered back on. “It’s just a motion sensor, idiot. Relax.”
The office was sort of creepy at night, though, with all the desks empty and the lights shutting off if you sat still for too long. Sasuke had spent plenty of evenings here on his own, forcing his tired eyes to focus on his screen, jumping every time something clunked or clicked or thudded somewhere in the building. Having company was… not the worst. Even if that company was only Naruto.
They worked for a while longer, until Naruto announced he was done. He sent his documents to Sasuke for review and proceeded to hover around Sasuke’s computer, chewing on his pen and staring intently at Sasuke as he watched Sasuke look over his work.
“Not bad,” Sasuke admitted. “Th…” He gritted his teeth. He could say it. It was just one word. “Th… anks.”
“Ha! Yes! I’m the best, believe it!” Naruto surged up out of his seat and stretched. Sasuke heard Naruto’s spine pop, and then felt his own chair dip backwards as Naruto leaned his arms on the headrest. “So, what are we gonna do now?”
“Well, you could go home,” Sasuke suggested pointedly.
“Aw, don’t be so boring. We have the whole office to ourselves.” Sasuke’s mind did not stray to inappropriate fantasies inspired by the chapters of Corporate Affair he’d peeked at on Halloween. It absolutely did not. “What d’you usually do when you work late?”
“I work. And then I go home.”
“Wow. You really know how to show a guy a good time, huh?” And, while Sasuke was spluttering indignantly, willing the lights to flicker back out to hide the fact that he was turning red for what felt like the hundredth time that day, Naruto slapped his chair and said, “I know. I’ll race you up the stairs to the top floor. Loser buys the winner’s burrito.”
“Tch. No way. That’s stupid. Anyway, I still have to finish this.”
“Oh yeah? You have to finish this? This here?” Naruto picked up the docket. The bright red folder containing the instructions for the request clashed horribly with Naruto’s pink-and-orange-striped shirt.
Struck by a sudden sense of foreboding, Sasuke tried to snatch the docket back, but Naruto held it out of his reach. He took a step away from Sasuke’s desk.
“Naruto. Give that back.”
“Okay, okay, sure. I’ll give it back—if you can catch me,” said Naruto, and he took off sprinting towards the stairwell.
Sasuke swore and leapt to his feet so fast his chair went over backwards. Ahead of him, the door to the stairwell slammed as Naruto darted through; a split second later Sasuke yanked it back open and started tearing up the stairs, the concrete amplifying everything—the clatter of their footsteps, Naruto shrieking with laughter, Sasuke yelling profanities after him—into an unintelligible cacophony.
Sasuke had always thought of himself as a good runner. He’d done track and field in high school, placing modestly well at the provincial level. Plus, having spent much of his life as the baby in an unreasonably large cohort of first, second, and third cousins, he’d become excellent at escaping whenever Itachi, Shisui, Obito, or any of the others got that gleam in their eyes that suggested they were planning to use him in some unpleasant scheme. But either he was out of shape, or Naruto was an experimental metahuman with godlike speed and stamina, because by the time Sasuke reached the eighth floor—gasping for breath, clutching at the stitch throbbing in his side—Naruto was still ahead of him, and still leaping up the stairs two at a time as if this were nothing more than a relaxing warm-up.
Fine. If Sasuke couldn’t beat him with speed, he’d have to outsmart him. That shouldn’t be hard. He saw his chance as Naruto rounded the landing between the eighth and ninth floors; Sasuke put on one last burst of speed and lunged forward, just in time to catch one of the belt loops on Naruto’s pants and haul him backwards. Naruto was taller and bulkier than Sasuke, but he was also mid-step and off-balance. He stumbled back onto the landing, where Sasuke used Naruto’s own momentum to slam him against the wall. Naruto let out an oof as his back collided with the concrete.
“Are you done now?” Sasuke demanded. He reached for the docket, still clutched in Naruto’s hand.
“Not yet,” said Naruto, and kicked Sasuke’s legs out from under him.
As a younger brother, Sasuke had plenty of experience wrestling someone bigger and stronger than him. It was the only chance he’d had to fight back when Itachi tried to cheat at Mario Kart, or to escape with his life when Itachi discovered Sasuke had snuck into his room to borrow his purple nail polish. Even now that Sasuke and Itachi were both adults, and had theoretically matured, they still found that some arguments—such as whose turn it was to clean the bathroom, or whether to watch Property Brothers or Beach Front Bargain Hunt— could best be resolved by resorting to violence.
Mostly what Sasuke had learned from Itachi was that there was no such thing as a dirty fight, and that he should never hold back, because Itachi wouldn’t. Confronted with the six-plus-foot mass of muscle that was Naruto, he did the same thing.
“Ow, ow, ow!” Naruto yelped as Sasuke pinched Naruto’s bicep, digging in his nails. “What the hell, man? Cut it out!”
Naruto dropped the docket and grabbed Sasuke’s wrists. Sasuke struggled to break free, but it was useless; Naruto had a good grip, and he was just too strong. Sasuke gave up and headbutted him instead.
This was a mistake. Naruto did let go of Sasuke’s to clutch at his forehead, but Sasuke’s hands were immediately occupied by grabbing his own head, which was pounding as if he’d sprinted face-first into a brick wall.
“Why is your head so hard?” Sasuke demanded.
“ My head? You’re the one who headbutted me!”
Sasuke put a hand down to steady himself. It occurred to him, for the first time, that he was sitting on Naruto’s stomach, in a position that could reasonably be described as compromising. His face was very close to Naruto’s, and Naruto’s chest was heaving underneath him as he struggled to catch his breath. The collar Naruto’s shirt came down in a modest V that showed a triangle of tanned collarbone and sternum, and Sasuke found himself staring at it, suddenly transfixed. His traitorous gay hindbrain chose that moment to remind him, in graphic detail, of all those shirtless pictures he’d combed through so diligently on Naruto’s Facebook.
Naruto groaned and let his arms sprawl on the floor. “Bastard. You’re nuts. That hurt .”
“Good,” said Sasuke. He dragged his eyes away from Naruto’s exposed sternum and up to Naruto’s face. This was another mistake. Naruto was staring at him. Sasuke stared back.
“Has anyone ever told you,” said Naruto, “that your hair looks stupid as hell?”
“At least I don’t dress like a colour-blind Ivey Business dropout—"
And then, somehow, they were kissing.
***
It was 3:47 a.m., and Sasuke was lying in bed, wide awake, staring intently at the ceiling. He was having… feelings.
He didn’t like it.
When it came to emotional management, Sasuke took inspiration from the arms’ length relationship between the Government of Canada and its Crown corporations, which were fully government-owned but independently operational. He preferred to let his feelings do their own thing while he did his, with minimal interaction, like a pair of amicably divorced parents. And if there was one thing he disliked more than dealing with feelings, it was—well, alright, it was dealing with ATIPs, getting funding proposals rejected, being stuck in the elevator with Gai, having GCDocs crash on him for the fourteenth time in one hour, being screwed over by Phoenix six paycheques in a row, et cetera. But if there was one thing he hated more than all that, it was dealing with complicated feelings. The ones that went beyond the pure and blissful simplicity of good, traditional emotions such as blind rage and exhaustion.
These feelings definitely fell into the complicated category. Helpfully, his mind insisted on replaying the events of that evening over and over and over and over and over in his head on an infinite loop, allowing him to cringe and squirm anew each time.
After Naruto had kissed him—or maybe he had kissed Naruto, he wasn’t really sure—it had taken Sasuke's brain several minutes to catch up with his body. In that time, Naruto's fingers had managed to twist their way into Sasuke's hair; Sasuke had discovered one of his hands clutching at Naruto's terrible shirt, the other cupping his jaw; and, even more mysteriously, their tongues seemed to have found their ways into each other’s mouths.
When the numbing haze of unadulterated shock had started to flag and he’d regained the self-awareness to comprehend exactly what he was doing—namely, kissing Naruto ( Naruto ) on the slightly grimy terrazzo landing between the eighth and ninth floors of his government office—Sasuke had done what any rational human being would have done in his place: he’d panicked.
He’d shoved himself away from Naruto, both of them breathing heavily. Naruto had grinned at him, looking slightly dazed, his terrible shirt crumpled.
“I—I’ve just remembered I have to do laundry tonight,” Sasuke had blurted out.
Naruto had blinked at him, and started to say, “What—?”
But by that point, Sasuke had already taken off running. He’d sprinted back down to the fifth floor; Naruto had shouted something after him, but his voice echoed off the concrete and mingled with Sasuke’s frantic footsteps, making his words inaudible. Sasuke had slammed his badge against the sensor on the fifth floor. He’d grabbed his backpack from his desk. He’d raced to the elevator. And he’d gotten the hell out of the building, as if the CEO himself were hot on Sasuke’s heels, brandishing a stack of Excel sheets that needed reformatting and asking Sasuke to add him on GCConnex.
And now Sasuke was here, in bed. Agonizing over it instead of sleeping. His alarm was set to go off in just over two hours, at which point he would have no choice but to get up, brain-dead, jittery, and slightly nauseated from sleep deprivation, and go back into work. There he would have to look Naruto in the face and pretend they hadn’t been heatedly making out in the stairwell only the previous evening.
Sasuke rolled over and tried to punch his lumpy pillow into submission. It wasn’t like he’d wanted to kiss Naruto. He didn’t even like Naruto. Naruto was annoying . His stupid handsome face. His stupid tasteless clothes. His stupid nice arms. His stupid off-topic emails. His stupid enthusiasm for everything, literally everything, translating meeting minutes into French, doing ATIPs, going to Bridgehead, everything . His stupid idealism, the way he went around befriending everybody, always wanting to help out, believing in their corporate mandate . His stupid laugh, his stupid refusal to write grammatical emails, his stupid insistence on teasing Sasuke all the time, the stupid way he grinned and rubbed the back of his neck when he’d messed something up, all the other three thousand stupid things he did and the stupid way they made Sasuke’s stomach flip over and his pulse pick up—
Fuck. He did like Naruto, didn’t he. That was—that was—that was just— terrible . When the hell had it happened? How the hell had it happened?
Through the wall, he heard the springs of Itachi’s bed shift, followed by a resigned sigh, and the creak of the floorboards as Itachi got up. Just like dark hair, dark eyes, a penchant for home improvement shows, and a tendency toward workaholism, insomnia seemed to run in the Uchiha family. Sasuke, busy slowly self-destructing, spent a few minutes listening to Itachi move around the apartment—turning on the tap in the kitchen, opening the fridge, wandering into the living room, settling on the couch, all done with the care of someone trying not to disturb his little brother, who was supposed to be asleep.
Sasuke checked his phone. 4:15 now. Ugh. He tossed aside the covers and went into the living room, where he threw himself down on the couch next to Itachi, who was eating the slightly congealed leftovers of a Hogtown poutine and doing sudoku.
“Fancy seeing you here,” said Itachi. He tapped his pen against his page and then, with confidence and care, filled in six boxes, one after another.
“I did something dumb at work,” said Sasuke.
“How dumb? Dumber than the time you called your manager dad in front of your entire branch?”
Trust Itachi to make him feel worse about himself. “I wish I’d never told you that.”
“But I’m so glad you did. So? Dumber than that?”
“Maybe. I, um. I might have…” Itachi was watching him expectantly. Sasuke picked at the loose threads where his pajama pants had started to wear thin, and mumbled, “I might have… made out with one of the co-op students.”
“Goodness,” said Itachi.
“Yep.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“How was it? Is he cute? Do you like him? What’s his name?”
“ What? I—that’s—it’s not—why should it— obviously I don’t— are you texting Mom? ”
“No,” said Itachi, setting his phone aside. “Just Shisui.”
Sasuke groaned. Entrusting Shisui with a secret was about as effective as using a colander as a rain barrel. Shisui would tell his mom, who would tell Sasuke’s mom, who would tell every single Uchiha on the face of the planet, probably via a celebratory announcement over their family WhatsApp group chat followed by a preemptive invitation to Sasuke’s wedding.
“I hate you,” said Sasuke.
“You wound me. So, did you ask him out?” said Itachi.
“No, I, uh. Panicked.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I. Well, I told him I had to do laundry. And then I, uh. Ran out of the building.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh dear.”
“Yeah.”
Itachi reached for his laptop, which was sitting on the coffee table. “Well, I think I was done sleeping for the night anyway. Do you want to watch Love It or List It, or Love It or List It Vancouver ?”
***
“Oh, if it isn’t my very favourite junior policy analyst. Come on in. You can move the books.”
Sasuke entered Kakashi’s office and, as Kakashi had instructed, carefully moved the stack of romance novels occupying the spare seat. Kakashi had clearly been getting in the holiday spirit; the one on top was called It’s Cold Out, Cowboy. Sasuke sat, and tried not to stare at his manager’s festive Christmas sweater, which was the baggiest, gaudiest, ugliest garment Sasuke had ever had the misfortune to behold.
“Nice, isn’t it?” said Kakashi, following Sasuke’s gaze down to his chest, where a misshapen reindeer with bulging, psychotic eyes appeared to be roundhouse-kicking a snowman. “Gai knitted it for me himself.”
“It’s definitely… unique,” Sasuke said diplomatically.
“And how are the preparations for the Christmas—sorry, the seasonal party going?”
“Fine,” said Sasuke. Kakashi had had the bright idea to volunteer Sasuke for the branch’s social committee several months ago, which was how he had found himself spending most of his morning hanging strings of tinsel and paper snowflakes all over the office with Lee and Karin. He was pretty sure he’d have silver glitter caked under his fingernails for the next five years.
“So? What can I do for you?”
“Uh. Well.” Sasuke found his eyes drawn inexorably back to Kakashi’s sweater. It was like walking past a squashed raccoon on Anderson Road: revolting, but also weirdly hypnotic. “I was just wondering where, uh. Where Naruto is today.”
Casual, he reminded himself. He had to look casual. It was a perfectly reasonable question and he had perfectly legitimate professional reasons for asking it. He just had to remind himself that the large billboard flashing I KISSED NARUTO IN THE STAIRWELL LAST NIGHT AND NOW I THINK I HAVE A BIG DUMB CRUSH ON HIM in bright neon colours over his head was only a figment of his own self-conscious imagination and had no corporeal presence in the material plane.
“He has it off, remember?” said Kakashi. “He asked a few weeks ago. I think he said he has a friend in town.”
“Oh,” said Sasuke. Shit. He’d forgotten all about that. Of course the only day Naruto had taken off all semester would be today. Of course . “Right.”
“Did you need him for something?”
“What? No! Why would I—no. It’s nothing. It’s fine. Never mind.”
Kakashi gave Sasuke a look that was far too shrewd for his comfort. Sasuke tried not to squirm. “While you’re here, I wonder if you might be able to help me with a little mystery.” Kakashi slid something across his desk for Sasuke to see, and Sasuke experienced an unpleasant sensation not unlike standing up on a moving bus at the exact moment the driver slammed on the brakes.
It was the docket. The one Naruto had grabbed from him. The one they’d wrestled over in the stairwell. Sasuke had forgotten all about it, which was unfortunate, since it had technically been due that morning. He hadn’t noticed at the time, but the docket’s contact with Naruto had definitely left it looking a little shabby. A sharp crease cut through the folder, and one of the corners was torn. The red cardstock also bore, right in its centre, an almost perfect print from someone’s shoe—Sasuke’s, judging by the tread pattern.
At a certain point, one went straight through shame and emerged out the other side. Sasuke looked Kakashi right in the face and said, “I have no idea.”
“Pity. It looks like an interesting story. Well, you’d better finish that up before Karin comes after us. Try to keep an eye on it this time, will you?”
***
“Well, well, well, well, well!” crowed Hidan, towering over Sasuke’s desk. He slapped his hand down on the cardboard box sitting beside Sasuke’s computer tower. “What do we have here? I sure hope you weren’t planning on plugging this in . Because that would be in direct contravention of our workplace Small Appliance Policy .”
The box contained a toaster. It was a replacement for the twenty-year-old toaster Sasuke and Itachi had inherited from their grandmother, which had finally reached the end of its life that morning, giving out with one last, peaceful clunk as Itachi tried to toast a strawberry Pop Tart. On his lunch break, Sasuke had taken a brief break from stringing Christmas lights around all the cubicles to run out and buy this new one, which had been the second-cheapest model in the store. Due to Phoenix-related pay complications, he was only slightly less broke now than he had been as a student, but it was still nice to feel like he was an adult with options.
“Hi, Hidan,” said Sasuke. “Yeah, actually I was going to plug this toaster in right here at my desk, even though the kitchen is literally ten feet away from me, because I have nothing better to do with my time than toast five hundred bagels a day. Is that okay with you?”
“Well! I suggest you take a nice, thorough look at our small appliance policy then, because—”
“He’s being sarcastic, Hidan,” growled Kakazu, who was lurking behind him, glowering. “Let’s go.” They stalked off towards Jiraiya’s office.
“What’s their problem?” asked Sakura, wrinkling her nose in distaste at their retreating backs.
“They’re on the risk management team,” Sasuke said bitterly. He’d gotten to know risk management all too well since he’d started here. They were nearly as bad as audit.
“Do we seriously have a small appliance policy?” Shikamaru asked.
“We do. It’s on the intranet.” The co-op students stared at him in disbelief. Sasuke sighed, opened the intranet home page, and clicked to the section on workplace policies. The co-op students crowded around his desk.
“No way!” said Ino. “That’s so—hey, are you okay? Sasuke?”
Sasuke barely heard her. He was staring at the workplace policy directory. He’d seen it before, of course. He’d even read through some of the policies, back when he was a bright-eyed go-getter co-op student himself, paralyzingly terrified by the prospect of being fired over some small corporate misstep. At the time, none of the policies had seemed particularly relevant to him, so he’d more or less forgotten all about them. Now, though—after last night—well—
“Sasuke? Hello-o-o?” Ino waved her hand in front of his face, and Sasuke blinked.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought, uh. I thought I saw a typo.”
“Wow, you’re worse than Sakura,” said Choji.
“Hey!” said Sakura.
The four of them dispersed back to their desks, where they all proceeded to pull up the small appliance policy themselves and read aloud the most outrageous lines to each other. When he was certain they were thoroughly distracted, Sasuke returned to staring at the policy directory. The bland sans-serif font of the Interpersonal Relationship Policy stared accusingly back.
Sasuke swallowed. His throat seemed suddenly to have gone sandpaper dry.
***
The thing about working for a Crown corporation with nearly 2,000 employees was that December became one long string of seasonal parties, party after party after party until, as Sasuke had discovered last year, the thought of eating one more nondenominationally shaped gingerbread cookie made him gag a little. There was the HQ-wide party, which was a formal evening affair at the CEO’s exorbitant Ottawa River estate. There was the branch potluck party, which they were having today. Later, Kakashi’s team and Gai’s team would have their division party, which normally involved laser tag; and, finally, there would be a team party. Last year Kakashi and Sasuke had just gone out to get smashed on whiskey sours together at some seedy Gatineau bar, but Sasuke suspected that might change now that Naruto and Sakura were on board, at least if Sakura had anything to say about it.
The branch seasonal potluck party was traditionally about as much fun as getting a dental cleaning: it wasn’t painful, per se, but it was the sort of thing people did out of obligation, not because they actually enjoyed the experience. Sasuke’s personal highlights from last year’s party included making forced conversation with his coworkers, spilling coleslaw all over his shirt despite his best efforts, hoping no one would notice the coleslaw stain on his shirt, tanking at seasonal charades because he still couldn’t understand his francophone colleagues’ accents, and desperately praying he didn’t look as awkward as he felt.
But at least the party would finally give him a chance to talk to Naruto. After spending three-and-a-half months plagued by Naruto’s constant chatter and incessant emails, on the one day Sasuke had actually wanted to catch him alone, the powers of corporate bureaucracy conspired to keep them apart. Sasuke had had a meeting in the morning that ran over, and when he’d come back to his desk, Naruto was by the photocopier talking to Jiraiya—because of course Naruto had just casually befriended their branch director—and then Sasuke had had that call with the Atlantic RO, and then Naruto and Sakura had been meeting with Kakashi, and just as they were finishing that , Karin and Lee had corralled Sasuke again to finish prepping for the party.
“I hate this,” Sasuke muttered to Neji once they’d started the year-in-review slideshow and stepped back to let it run. Irritating holiday music jingled along with photos of the Operations Branch taken throughout the year. For some inexplicable reason, Sasuke and Neji—perhaps Operation Branch’s two least personable members—had been elected the party’s MCs. Sasuke could only assume it was the result of some practical joke, though whether the joke was on them or on the party’s attendees was difficult to say. “Do you hate this as much as I hate this?”
“Absolutely,” said Neji. “If they ever make me run a game of charades again, I’m giving notice. Screw my pension.”
The picture of Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke dressed up as Kakashi for Halloween, posing with the man himself, popped up on the slideshow. From somewhere in the crowd of public servants, Naruto cheered, and Sakura shushed him.
It wasn’t till the slideshow had wrapped up and people had started drifting around—eating, talking, the most misanthropic branch employees already heading back to their desks—that Sasuke finally got a break. He spotted Naruto, Sakura, and Ino hanging around by the nondenominational SEASON’S GREETINGS banner Karin had bought at Dollarama, and started squeezing his way through the crowd to get to them.
Sakura spotted him first. Her eyes widened, and she looked between Sasuke and Naruto before grabbing Ino’s arm. “Ino, come get some more quiche with me.”
“No thanks, I’m stuffed,” said Ino, and then, “Hey, stop pulling! Can’t you get it yourself?”
“No, I really think you want more quiche. Remember? You were just saying how much you loved that quiche. Right?” Sakura said pointedly.
“I don’t even like—” Ino spotted Sasuke too. “Oh. Um. Right. Now that you mention it, I think I could maybe eat one more piece…”
And the two of them disappeared into the crowd. Which left Sasuke alone with Naruto.
“Hey,” said Sasuke. He tried to wipe his palms on his pants surreptitiously. They’d started to sweat. He wished he’d taken Tenten up on the glass of wine she’d offered him earlier in the party.
What would Naruto say? What were you supposed to say after you’d made out with your coworker in the stairwell after hours? Would he play it off? Maybe he did this sort of thing all the time, at all his co-op placements. Or would he think it meant something, that they were— together , now, or something, and Sasuke would have to let him down, even though—
“Hey,” said Naruto, who was wearing light-up reindeer antlers. He had a paper plate that was bowing under the weight of all the food he’d piled on it, including two enormous peppermint nanaimo bars. He picked one of them up now and took a bite. “Did you know your fly’s undone?”
Sasuke looked down. His fly was indeed undone. He yanked it up hastily, his face flushing hotter than the curry Lee had brought in for the potluck. “Was it—?”
“Yep. Whole time you were up there with Neji.”
Well, that was just… wonderful.
“So, did you get your laundry done?” Naruto asked, grinning.
“Yes,” Sasuke said stiffly.
“Nice. Hey, have you tried this stuff?” Naruto picked up the plastic cup he’d set down on someone’s desk, which contained something cloudy and orangish.
“That’s not Gai’s homemade kombucha, is it?”
“Sure is. It kinda tastes like compost, but like, in a good way?” And, to Sasuke’s immense horror, Naruto actually put the cup to his mouth and knocked back a sizeable swallow. “Anyway, you still good for that burrito? My treat.”
Sasuke narrowed his eyes. This felt like one of Kakashi’s traps. “But I didn’t beat you to the top of the building. That was the deal.”
“Can’t a guy just buy his cute coworker a burrito once in a while?”
“I—what?”
Naruto grinned and set down his cup. “I’m trying to ask you on a date, dumbass. ‘Cause I like you. In case you didn’t get that already. So?”
Sasuke looked at Naruto—that cocky grin, that holiday sweater garish enough to rival Kakashi’s, that small smear of chocolate at the corner of his mouth. He wanted to say yes. Or rather, he wanted to say eh, fine, I guess so that Naruto didn’t get the mistaken impression that Sasuke was too keen, or actually liked him, or anything like that. He wanted it just about as badly as he wanted to land an indeterminate EC-02 Step 2 position, salaried, with benefits and vacation and sick time and relative job security and a projected track for career growth. But therein lay the problem.
“I can’t,” he said, and tried not to sound bitter.
“Right, let me guess. You “have to work.” Well, how ‘bout Saturday? You can’t tell me—”
“I can’t ,” Sasuke insisted. “I’m your supervisor. Our Interpersonal Relationship Policy—”
“Prohibits relationships between supervisors and direct reports, yeah, yeah, I know the dumb policy too. But technically Kakashi’s my supervisor, even though you do all the actual work. I already checked.”
“You… checked.”
“Yeah, see, I asked Kakashi if there were any rules about dating coworkers, and he said to read the policy, so I did, and then I went back and asked if you were actually my supervisor, and he said no.”
Sasuke closed his eyes. He resisted the urge to go up to the secure filing cabinet behind Naruto and bang his head against it. “So basically, you went up to our manager and told him you wanted to date me.”
Naruto rubbed the back of his neck and had the good grace to look somewhat contrite. “Heh, I guess sorta, yeah. But don’t worry,” he added quickly, “I was really subtle about it.”
Naruto. Subtle. Right. Suddenly that conversation he’d had with Kakashi the other day about onboarding Naruto and Sakura made a whole lot more sense. There are other options, Kakashi had said, if anything… changes. Oh, hell, and when he’d gone into Kakashi’s office yesterday to ask where Naruto was, Kakashi must have thought—
Sasuke was going to kill Naruto. He was going to kill him.
… right after he let Naruto buy him a burrito, though. And maybe after Sasuke kissed him again.