Chapter Text
It's All In The Kiss (And Bondage)
Chapter One
Uchiha Sasuke was many things—shinobi prodigy, handsome, aloof, easily a genius, and from one of the most prestigious families in Konoha—but one thing he wasn’t was patient. And currently, the pink-haired kunoichi in front of him was fraying his last nerve with her incessant prattling about picking up where they had left off.
He had always known that Sakura had a screw loose from the way she revolved her life around him, taking every possible rumor about his preferences and conforming herself to it without any thought about whether he actually liked it, but now it seemed she had moved onto delusional daydreams. The fact that she believed he would possibly kiss her, and even more ludicrous that he was just about to do it, only proved her imaginings had reached stark-raving mad levels.
Add to it that he hadn’t even been around her because he had been so caught up in thinking about Naruto kissing him that he had been caught off guard by the idiot and tied up. Thankfully, while the kiss had been in front of their classmates, no one had to see his humiliation at being bested by the worst student in the academy. He had to admit, Naruto had more tricks up his sleeve than he gave him credit for and some part of him—buried deep down—admired Naruto’s ingenuity in feigning being caught so that he could overpower him in the end.
It had to be the first time he was bested since joining the academy and he had still been processing just how Naruto had been able to pull it off when Sakura had called out so cheerfully to him. Usually, wherever Sakura was, Naruto wasn’t far behind, but as he looked around him, he didn’t see the hyperactive blonde anywhere. He ignored his other teammate as he searched for Naruto, he wanted to know just why he had kissed him and then tied him up, it was imperative for him to know the answer.
“You know he doesn’t have any parents, right?” Sakura’s voice cut through his musings and he sharply looked at her. “He’s always selfishly doing whatever he wants, my parents would get so angry at me if I did something like he does all the time,” she continued, missing the way Sasuke’s eyes narrowed with anger. “There are no parents to nag you if it’s just you alone! So his selfishness comes out at various times.”
“The loneliness…” Sasuke muttered quietly, catching the kunoichi off guard, as his rage grew. What right does she have to judge Naruto? Or to mock that he’s an orphan? “It’s something worse than getting scolded by one’s parents.”
“Sasuke,” she recoiled back, taking a step away from the furious aura surrounding him, “why are you being like this?”
He turned towards her, shoving his hands in his pockets and uttering flatly, “You annoy me.”
Sasuke walked away from her and ignored the shuddering breath he caught as he looked once again for Naruto. Sakura wasn’t his concern, she was a mere teammate and he would care about her as was necessary as a shinobi of the Hidden Leaf, but anything beyond that was pointless and not worth his time. Instead, finding Naruto and questioning him was of the utmost importance to him and he smirked as he spotted a familiar blonde dressed head to toe in orange running towards him.
Naruto gasped in realization, skidding to a stop in front of him and balling his hands into fists, “W-what are you doing here?”
“I used the Escape Jutsu, the most basic of techniques,” he snorted as Naruto looked away nervously. “What were you planning to do by transforming into me?”
“Uh…I thought it’d be fun, so I gave it a try!” Naruto yelled before jumping back and crossing his hands to summon his shadow clones, four more orange monstrosities appearing with a puff of smoke.
“Tch,” he glared at the oncoming attack, was this the only attack Naruto knew?
“I’ll show you how amazing I really am,” he crowed as the five Narutos headed towards Sasuke and his clones chimed in, “I’ll defeat you and make you accept me! Prepare yourself, Sasuke!”
Sasuke fell into a defensive stance, trying to gauge who was the real Naruto and who wasn’t, when a sudden growling brought all five figures to a standstill. He watched silently as the Narutos clutched their stomachs, faces pale and drawn as whatever illness Naruto had affected his clones as well.
“J-just like that…my stomach,” Naruto moaned before he and his clones all rushed back down the hall, “Bathroom!”
He stared after them, watching with incredulity as instead of dispelling his clones, Naruto stood outside the bathroom arguing with himself over who should get to use it first. Sasuke rolled his eyes and turned away, “How stupid!”, but whether he was speaking about himself or his blonde teammate, he wasn’t quite certain.
Sasuke sat cross-legged on the ground, studying the book lying in his lap closely, and he frowned as he read the passage dictating ancient Uchiha customs. Ever since he had been tied up by that idiot, something had been niggling at him in the familiarity of events that refused to let him sleep. They were supposed to be meeting their jonin sensei tomorrow and he knew he needed to get an adequate amount of sleep since he didn’t know what to expect, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t stop thinking about Naruto and what had transpired earlier.
His frown deepened, disbelief making his eyes widen as he re-read the same passage for the third time and then a fourth. “There’s no way…” he whispered as he squinted his eyes and then rubbed them to make certain that he wasn’t somehow misreading the kanji, but the words were the same as before.
The start of an Uchiha courtship begins when the possible suitor makes his or her intentions known with a kiss. This is followed by a show of strength wherein the possible suitor apprehends and subdues the prospective match to prove their skills as a shinobi or kunoichi. If the possible suitor is able to complete both steps within seventy-two hours, then they have formally extended their hand to start an official courtship.
He exhaled slowly, his thoughts racing as he re-read the same passage again and again until the words were etched into his memory. “Naruto couldn’t have meant this though,” he said as if trying to convince himself, but he also couldn’t ignore that Naruto had followed the proper, traditional steps of his clan to ask for one’s hand in marriage. It had originated after one of the Uchiha men kidnapped a kunoichi from a rivaling clan, which had resulted in a battle between the two clans until the kunoichi was rescued and brought back to her own territory. Yet three days later, she had returned and kidnapped him, dragging him back to her clan and declaring that they were now engaged. It wasn’t a common way of getting engaged anymore, but still one that was accepted and even seen as the highest declaration of love.
There’s no way the dobe knew it was though, he closed the book and tried to banish it from his thoughts as he stood up to return to his bed. Naruto hadn’t proposed to him, not only were they both boys and only twelve, but he was quite certain the blonde hated him even if they had rarely ever interacted with each other. It was ridiculous for him to even entertain that Naruto would have actually meant it, but…
“I’ll defeat you and make you accept me!”
Naruto’s words echoed in his head, refusing to be dismissed in the same stubborn way their owner refused to be, and Sasuke clenched his hands into fists as he glared down at the tatami mats beneath his feet. Was it even possible that Naruto did actually mean what his actions conveyed? He had already proven to be stealthier and stronger than Sasuke had originally thought, so maybe Naruto was smarter than he looked too. Naruto had followed the courtship ritual in its proper steps and had shouted that he wanted Sasuke to accept him, if not his hand in marriage, what else could he mean?
I’ll need to take his proposal seriously then, Sasuke thought as he gently placed the book back on his mother’s bookshelf. If Naruto had genuinely put that much thought and effort into proposing to him in his clan’s traditional rite, then he needed to put the same amount of thought into his answer even if he had never imagined being in a relationship with another boy before. Then again, he had never imagined himself in a relationship with anyone, but he didn’t know much about Naruto other than the fact that he was loud, brash, and the dead last in their class.
And even if he didn’t mean it, my family honor still demands I answer him, he slipped beneath the covers as he tried to recall everything he knew about Uzumaki Naruto, yet he quickly realized that everything he knew could be counted on one hand. There was no possible way he could make a decision when he barely knew the blonde. I need to learn more about him before I can give him a proper answer.
Dhampir
Page 4
10/1/2022