Two months into their secret affair, Naruto and Sasuke had perfected the art of office discretion. Their morning arrivals were now choreographed with practiced precision—Naruto consistently eight minutes late, coffee in hand to explain away his alertness despite the hours stolen from sleep; Sasuke unfailingly early, his tie knots progressively more elaborate as if compensating for the nights his clothes lay scattered across Naruto's bedroom floor. Only the occasional lingering glance betrayed the now-familiar rhythm of enemies who had learned to fall into bed together sixty-one nights and counting.
Uchiha Corp's top floor pulsed as always, driven by the steady heartbeat of meetings, conference calls, and the soft whir of legal teams redlining anything that threatened to show an edge. The big project—the adaptation—had officially moved from drafts to animatics, and the pressure ramped accordingly. But the greatest tension wasn't on any slide deck or P&L statement. It was in the way Sasuke and Naruto carried themselves through the day: professional, yes, but bristling with a new kind of static.
At the morning check-in, Naruto sat mid-table, bright shirt only half-concealed by a loaner blazer, blue eyes fixed on the screen displaying a time-lapsed animation of their flagship character racing through a digital cityscape. Next to him, Karin snapped through her agenda, voice cloying but efficient, while Suigetsu made sarcastic notations in the margins of his notepad.
At the head of the table, Sasuke managed the room like a chessboard: never speaking more than he had to, never giving away more than a glance. But when Naruto finished a point about integrating fan feedback from the manga's online forums, Sasuke's gaze flicked up—fraction of a second, but direct, heatless and yet burning.
"Is there a reason we're deviating from the prior creative roadmap?" Sasuke asked, voice perfectly even.
Naruto shrugged, the old habit of rolling his neck surfacing as he forced himself to sound bored. "Because the prior roadmap tested at 12% favorability, and I'd rather not be trending under hashtags about corporate sellouts by next quarter."
The table braced for an explosion. Instead, Sasuke's lips quirked up, a micro-expression so fleeting it could have been a twitch. "Carry on," he said, before shifting his attention to Karin, who looked like she might bite through her pen.
They pressed through the rest of the meeting. Budget. Timeline. Legal's new compliance bullet points. Suigetsu's inexplicable pitch for a villain-themed dating sim tie-in ("the licensing upside is astronomical, trust me").
And then, while Karin was detailing the next steps for voice casting, Sasuke reached beneath the table—casually, as if scratching his own knee—and brushed the back of his hand against Naruto's where it rested on his lap. The touch was almost nothing, but to Naruto it was a live current, and he felt every synapse in his arm stand up and salute. He kept his face neutral, eyes locked on the script in front of him, but in his chest the remembered heat of the night before surged up, made it hard to sit still.
The touch was gone as quickly as it came. Sasuke straightened, hands folded together on the table, immaculate.
It was a dangerous game, but Naruto had never been good at resisting. He waited until Karin was arguing the ethics of microtransactions with Suigetsu and, keeping his face perfectly blank, nudged Sasuke's shin with his foot under the table—once, firmly, then twice for good measure.
Sasuke's only response was a tightening around the eyes, a subtle flare of nostril. But that was enough.
After the meeting, everyone spilled into the hallway in a swirl of tension and caffeine. Karin intercepted Naruto at the water cooler, eyes narrowed.
"Your section on the storyboard is still behind," she said, voice low.
Naruto filled his glass and shrugged. "We're a whole week ahead on the animatic. We'll catch up."
She leaned in, close enough that her perfume singed the air. "Sasuke expects results."
Naruto met her stare, cool as the ice in his cup. "Sasuke knows I deliver."
He left her standing there, blinking, and walked the long corridor back to his own makeshift office at Uchia Corp, when it was easier to continue working here then go back to the publishing company. The place felt both familiar and foreign, like returning to your childhood home and finding everything replaced by IKEA. He dropped into his chair, spun around once to clear the static, and unlocked his phone.
There was already a message from Sasuke, time-stamped to the minute he'd left the meeting:
[Quick question on the new animatic: can you meet in the garage after close?]
Naruto grinned, thumbing out a reply.
[Sure. 7pm. Don't forget your notes this time.]
He added a winking emoji, then deleted it, then added it again. For a man who'd once written three hundred pages on emotional authenticity, Naruto had a hard time letting himself be honest in two sentences of text.
He spent the rest of the afternoon in a haze of productivity, fueled by the memory of Sasuke's hand and the promise of later. By six, the floor emptied out—Suigetsu to whatever wet-bar he haunted after hours, Karin lurking like a ghoul but then finally disappearing into her Audi.
Naruto lingered, ostensibly reviewing the latest batch of storyboards. He even ordered in a sandwich, in case the late stay needed a plausible alibi. But really, he just killed time, cycling through his e-mails and occasionally, just to torture himself, reading old texts from Sasuke, preserved from the days when their only communication was weaponized formality.
At 7:03, his phone buzzed again.
[Stall at the far wall, next to the fire exit. —S]
He waited five minutes, to be sure, then rode the elevator to the garage. The air was different here—still, heavy, tinged with oil and the faint memory of tire rubber. The luxury cars lined up like a fleet of sharks, each one gleaming with promise. At the far end, near the fire exit, Sasuke leaned against the hood of his own vehicle, navy blue and predatory.
"You working late?" Naruto asked.
Sasuke shook his head. "I'm heading home. But you're coming with me."
There was no room for negotiation. Naruto followed, climbing into the passenger seat, inhaling the faint hint of Sasuke's cologne mixed with new leather and ozone. They rode up through the city, not speaking, the rush-hour gridlock melting away as they gained elevation and distance.
Sasuke's apartment—no, penthouse, Naruto reminded himself—was as he remembered: minimalist, cold, but with the little details that made it real. The scuff on the entryway tile from Naruto's sneakers, the battered denim jacket still hanging on the wall. Without thinking, Naruto kicked off his shoes in the exact spot where he always left them, reached for the light switch without looking, and headed straight to the kitchen to grab two glasses from the cabinet above the sink—second from the left, where Sasuke always kept them. He filled them with water and set one on the counter where Sasuke would want it, all before realizing he'd moved through the space as if it were his own.
They ordered takeout, worked side-by-side on the couch while the city glittered below, sometimes passing the same laptop back and forth to critique lines of dialogue or tweak a scene. Once, when Naruto's hand brushed Sasuke's on the keyboard, neither of them moved away.
Naruto watched Sasuke finish a message, thumb hovering for a fraction of a second before he pressed send. "If you answer one more e-mail before 11pm, I'm staging an intervention," Naruto said. He stretched, hands behind his head, and let his eyes roam across the windows, pretending not to be hyper-aware of the way Sasuke's jaw tightened whenever the phone buzzed.
"I'm worried you're going to get stress wrinkles," Naruto added. "Or just become an old man before you hit thirty."
Sasuke put his phone down, for real this time, and leaned back into the couch. The move was uncharacteristically loose. "It's nothing I can't handle."
Naruto nudged him with an elbow. "Don't give me that. You've been wired since the meeting this morning."
Sasuke ran a hand through his hair—a rare tell that Naruto had learned to savor, the Uchiha version of throwing up his hands and screaming.
"What's going on with you?" Naruto asked, setting down his curry. "You've been checking your phone every thirty seconds since we got here."
Sasuke's jaw tightened. "Nothing important."
"Bullshit," Naruto said, leaning forward. "You've got that crease between your eyebrows. The one that means someone's about to get fired."
Sasuke exhaled slowly through his nose. "It's just my father. The usual."
"Which usual?" Naruto pressed. "The 'why aren't you working harder'?"
Sasuke grunted, not a yes and not a no. He picked up his phone, glanced at it, then set it face-down on the table. "It's nothing I can't handle."
Naruto watched Sasuke's reflection in the glass, the way the city lights rimmed him with gold and made him look, for just a moment, untouchable. "You always say that."
"Because it's always true." Sasuke's eyes met his, steady and certain. "I've been managing my father for twenty-seven years."
"Managing him, or avoiding him?"
Sasuke's eyes met Naruto's, then softened at the edges. "It's something I'm handling," he said, voice barely above a whisper. His fingers brushed against Naruto's knee. "I'll tell you about it when I'm ready. Just... not tonight."
Naruto nodded. The muscles around Sasuke's eyes had softened, that rare unguarded look that made Naruto's chest ache. He opened his mouth to say something when his phone buzzed against his thigh. Sasuke's eyebrow lifted, the moment fracturing.
His mom's text lit up the screen. [Brunch? Easter weekend? I'll make carrot cake and invite the whole crew. Also, bring something nice to wear.]
The words blurred as his stomach tightened. He swallowed. "It's my mom. She wants me home for Easter."
"Family gatherings," Sasuke said, voice flat. "They're mandatory, aren't they?"
"Not if you have a doctor's note," Naruto said, attempting a grin that felt stretched across his face. The silence that followed hung between them like a physical thing.
He shifted on the couch, denim scraping leather as he turned to face Sasuke fully. "You should come with me." The words rushed out, surprising even himself. "My mom would love to see you."
Sasuke's shoulders pulled back slightly. A muscle in his jaw twitched. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
Naruto reached across the space between them, finding Sasuke's hand. Their fingers interlaced, warm against cold. "It's just brunch." He squeezed gently. "And besides, you need the vitamin D."
Sasuke's eyes met his, searching. Something flickered there—fear, hope, Naruto couldn't tell which. For a heartbeat, he looked like the boy from high school again.
"You really want me there?"
"Of course." Naruto said. His pulse hammered in his throat. "I want you everywhere."
The city hummed sixty floors below. The refrigerator clicked on in the kitchen. Sasuke's thumb brushed over Naruto's knuckle, once, twice, and then he squeezed back.
"Okay," he whispered, barely audible. "Okay."