When Love Fades

Chapter 2 - Dissatisfaction II

Sasuke unlocked the door to their apartment. It was after midnight, but at least they'd finally found the problem with the design and could hand it over to production the next day. His eyes were bloodshot from staring at a computer screen all day and he had a headache from stress and lack of sleep.

The single light left on in the kitchen was the only sign that Naruto was home in the quiet apartment.

He saw the black duffle with Naruto's photo equipment on the coffee table, and assumed Naruto had a shoot the next morning. He eyed the bag somewhat hostilely. Photography had been Naruto's hobby when they met their freshman year in college. Even though Naruto's major in political science hadn't been that much more practical, Sasuke had been somewhat annoyed when Naruto had decided to make photography his career when they graduated.

Who wanted to spend their life taking pictures of snot-nosed kids at birthday parties, or trying to make the bride not look fat in her wedding photos? Naruto said he needed to start somewhere, but in the three years since they'd graduated, it didn't seem like it was going anywhere. And it certainly wasn't paying much.

At least one of them had a real job.

Sasuke had majored in electrical engineering and gotten a job at a top consumer electronics company immediately after graduating. His skills had been recognized right away by his supervisor, and he'd been promoted to team leader by his third project. The project had been a huge success, developing a market-ready prototype six months ahead of schedule and on budget, something that was almost unheard of.

Sasuke had caught the attention of one of the senior VPs, and had been put on the fast-track ever since. It meant long hours and a lot of responsibility, but he excelled at it and thrived on the pressure and tangible evidence of his successes. It was addictive... the feeling of exceeding the expectations of his peers and supervisors. He'd always been second-best in his father's eyes compared to his prodigy older brother, but this was something that Sasuke could own. Itachi had gone into medicine and was still finishing his residency. They were in different fields, and finally the endless comparisons would stop.

Even though he was working sixty to seventy hours a week, Sasuke loved his job. Though it was starting to wear on him. He knew his long hours annoyed Naruto, but it was only temporary. He was just at a critical time in his career, and he needed to push hard. Sasuke glanced at the empty dining table.

Since Naruto had more flexible working hours, the blond did most of the grocery shopping and maintenance on the apartment. On the days when Naruto didn't have a shoot, Naruto used to make dinner for them.

As Sasuke's career had advanced, his working hours had gotten longer and longer and most nights he was hours late for dinner. He'd try to let Naruto know when he was going to be late, but sometimes he was stuck in a meeting and couldn't call. Other times, he just didn't know how late things were going to run until it was already past the time when Naruto would have started cooking. When you were troubleshooting a design, sometimes it took three hours, sometimes three weeks to find the issue. There was no way to predict it.

More often than not lately, Sasuke would end up just having dinner in the office with his team. He'd had dinner at work earlier that evening, but the team had ordered something weird and he hadn't eaten much of it. He was hungry, but too tired to cook or stay up to order take-out.

He opened the refrigerator. There wasn't much inside. Naruto had started cooking less and packing the leftovers in his lunch when he had a shoot. Sasuke was glad in a sense that they'd stopped fighting about it. They had never had the same taste in foods, and Naruto had said there was no point in cooking something he didn't even like for someone who wasn't there to eat it.