Sasuke glared at the ceiling, holding his phone in his right hand, almost crushing it in the process.
"You are sleeping on the couch." The voice on the other line was confused, in utter disbelief. Sasuke gritted his teeth and snapped, careful to keep his voice down "Yeah, that's it, just keep reminding me in case I dare forget."
"You're sleeping on your couch" The voice still hadn't lost its amazed tone.
Sasuke wished he could throw the phone somewhere, but he really liked this phone. His mom got it for him for his birthday last year.
Sasuke and Naruto had bickered back and forth for close to thirty minutes about the sleeping arrangements. Finally the blonde had sighed in frustration and agreed. He then wished Sasuke a good night and went inside the room. Sasuke had gaped for five full minutes, and then proceeded to settle on the couch, pulling out the bed sheet that Neji had set aside for himself, all the while muttering expletives.
He sat on the couch with legs stretched out in front of him, making sure to tuck in the covers around himself, and that his legs were covered and fell back on the couch, outraged as hell, and nearly blacked out from a concussion. The damn couch was too fucking short! Swearing up a storm, under his breath, he shifted down so that his head was safely nestled on the couch cushion and his feet were the one to suffer. They were just feet. Stupid feet.
Sasuke was so focused on blaming all his misfortunes on the length of his feet that he almost jumped when he got a text. It was from Neji.
"Started molesting him yet?"
Sasuke wanted to ignore the text, or say something barbed and witty, but was too angry. He blamed his anger riddled brain for coming up with the absolutely stupid idea of speaking the truth.
"I'm on the couch tonight."
Sasuke had mistaken his best friend for a human being, and didn't expect the asshole to actually call him. Thus bringing him back to the present.
"you're sleeping on the couch in your own home?", Sasuke really wished Neji would stop using that tone. And that Neji was in his car while taking to him, and would drive off a cliff.
"Yeah, and your sister is a whore."
Neji, however just sounded amused, "I don't have a sister."
Sasuke growled. Stupid brain. stupid feet. "Whatever. I'm going to sleep."
"You mean try to sleep. You need years of adjusting to be able to actually sleep on 'the couch from hell'"
Sasuke growled once more, just in case Neji didn't get the point that he was angry, and cut the call.
His wanted to itch his feet, but was too lazy to get up, so he pulled his feet to him, itched and itched. When he went back to the old position, the sheets were all pulled up, so now his feet were cold.
Damn stupid fuckin –. He sat up, now even more angry, tucked his stupid, stupid feet in again and fell back. He took a small amount of satisfaction in the fact that his head was safe this time.
He wiggled his feet, rubbing them together to get rid of the itching. Damn it. Sasuke couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so angry at his feet. He got up again, intending to murder them by scratching. It was after another two minutes of furious scratching that he remembered.
Neji had, one night, dipped one of Sasuke's hands in a glass of water while he was sleeping. (Neji had called Sasuke Mr. Wet Pants for weeks after that). It had been payback for another prank that Sasuke had pulled on him. As retaliation, in true gentlemanly fashion, Sasuke had put plenty of itching powder on one end of Neji's blanket.
He buried his face in both hands, wishing this were a nightmare he could wake up from. He sighed. Well at least the powder was in the other end and his face was safe. Sasuke's eyes widened. Removing his hands from his face and looking at them in horror.
It took him an embarrassing amount of effort to not cry.
Sasuke woke up just in time to see a sleepy Naruto emerging out of his room. His libido, brainless as it was, rejoiced. Naruto stopped, looking at Sasuke.
"Are you ok? You're face is all red."
Sasuke was about to give a wise ass and possibly a lewd reply, but then stopped, scared that his new streak of bad luck might continue. "I'm fine. It gets like that after a fantastic night's sleep on my couch" It didn't mean he couldn't be a tad sarcastic.
Naruto bit his lip and looked down. Sasuke perked up at this sudden change in demeanor in the usually cold blonde. "I'll make breakfast" Sasuke was distracted by the blush decorating the blonde's cheeks and missed the whispered sentence. "Huh?"
"I'll make breakfast for the both of us."He looked up at Sasuke and continued. "It's the least I could do, after –"and gestured at Sasuke sitting up on the couch with the sheet on the floor and his hands and feet red.
Huh. The last of Sasuke's anger which he had kept burning safely in the back of his mind, simmered out. He gave a lopsided smile and ran a hand through his hair. "You don't have to do that. It's fine." What the hell is wrong with my mouth? He was fucking hungry. And anything that would save him the trouble of putting in actual effort should be welcomed with open arms.
The blonde's eyes widened. He spoke again in a louder, more surprised voice. "But I do. You slept on the couch in your own home."
Sasuke didn't understand why everyone found it necessary to point that out to him, "It's not necessary. You don't owe me anything." Damn it.
The blonde's pressed further, with a louder voice. "But I do. You slept on the couch. And it looks so uncomfortable."
You gave no idea. Sasuke raised his arms in front of him in a placating manner. "Ok. Ok. Knock yourself out."
Naruto, seemingly just realizing how almost hysterical he must have looked, promptly blushed. Then he hurried to the kitchen.
The kitchen was more of a partition of the hall, than a separate room. It had all the basic appliances. Not that it mattered, since Sasuke couldn't cook for shit. Neither could Neji. But Neji could however, sometimes, if they were lucky, manage to make something edible. Sasuke on the other hand, burnt water.
Which was why, the only two appliances Sasuke used, if at all, were the refrigerator – to store takeout, and the microwave - to heat the takeout. He didn't even use the microwave all that often after he had almost set the apartment on fire, while trying to make popcorn. And on a different occasion, the day had ended with Neji screaming at him while struggling to breathe, 'Why did you put it in a plastic container you douche bag'
"Do you have any thing that isn't takeout?" Sasuke snapped out of the fantasy he had wandered into, looking at a bent over Naruto searching through his refrigerator.
"Well, there's some beer."
"Yeah I noticed" Naruto said looking at the 12 pack at the back, trying desperately to hide from the blonde's condescending eyes. Naruto sighed, "I meant something like food."
Sasuke scratched the back of his head," I don't think so."
Naruto picked up a container of Chinese food, "How long ago did you buy this crap?"
Sasuke felt the sudden need to defend his choice of food habits, "Crap? Some of this stuff is actually healthy. See, Broccoli". He reached into the container in the blonde's hands and picked up the piece of green with his fingers, ignoring the blonde's disgusted look and popped it into his mouth. He chewed it, making a show of savoring the taste, though it didn't taste all that good, and he didn't really remember buying anything that had broccoli in it.
The blonde looked at the container once more and began hesitantly, looking a little nauseous, "I think that was chicken"
Sasuke's eyes widened, bringing a fist to his mouth, he politely excused himself and ran to the bathroom. Naruto winced, hearing the loud sounds of Sasuke hurling.
Not one of Sasuke's finer moments.
Since there wasn't anything even remotely non lethal in the refrigerator, they had decided to eat elsewhere. Naruto left early to his apartment - to take a shower and get changed. He hadn't known that he would have to stay over at Sasuke's.
Sasuke sat in the office Cafeteria, munching on a French fry, dreading the second the grey eyed asshole would start talking.
"So." Sasuke closed his eyes slowly and gritted his teeth bracing himself.
"You slept on your couch"
Everybody could see that their Boss was in a bad mood, one that was worse than usual. The last time he had been in such a rotten mood, none of the employees got to go home for a week, including the weekends. The police had shown up thinking it was a hostage situation after all the complaints from the employees' friends and families. It had taken Itachi and Neji the better part of five hours to convince the police otherwise, after having lured Sasuke into the copy room with alcohol and locking him up of course. It also helped that just about every employee, had pasted on smiles on their faces and told the officers that they were there on their own free will.
One would think no one would ever want to work for a maniac, such as Sasuke can often be. However, it was the direct opposite. There were people vying for a chance to work for the Uchiha Corporation, especially to work for Sasuke. That was not because he was pretty, as Sasuke liked to point out when asked by the media. It was because, Sasuke, as insane as he could be sometimes (most of the time), was a great boss. A fact, that was understandably hard to believe by the majority of the population, but not by the people who had worked for him; was working for him; or was hoping to work for him.
He was very smart, knew what to do in the toughest of situations, and most of all, he took care of his people. Always made sure that the right people got the incentives that they deserved, helped out personally when one of them had too much work load, he had even given a week off (with pay) to one of the single mothers who worked there, to take care of her sick child. He couldn't find anyone in such short notice and so took over the job himself.
Also, Uchiha employees were paid bucket loads of money. People who had to work for Sasuke were given a bucket extra for having to put up with him.
Which was why, Kiba Inuzuka was currently accepting the jerk's abuse passively. "Are you fucking stupid Inuzuka? Why the hell is the sheet pink?" Sasuke stepped up closer to Kiba, staring him down. And the fact that he's built like a brick shithouse isn't really helping matters either.
Kiba swallowed, "Because it looks prettier in pink, sir."
Sasuke paused for a second, mulling that over, making sure that he really did hear right, "What?" He asked scarily quiet and with one raised eyebrow.
Kiba swallowed again. The Uchiha had clasped his hands behind his back. Not a good sign. The people who had to be in meetings with Itachi Uchiha, thought they had it bad. The tall man was extremely hard to read, and was ruthless when it came to business. But it was nothing compared to being in a meeting with Sasuke Uchiha. If Itachi was hard to read, Sasuke was easy to, he expressed two emotions when he was in business - Sarcasm and anger. And since sarcasm isn't really an emotion, they were left with one emotion.
The office bets weren't about if Sasuke would punch someone in the meeting, it was about who he would punch. They had been confused for a long time about why Itachi even made Sasuke sit in meetings. Until they had realized, that Itachi only made Sasuke attend the meetings which had very unpleasant people who Itachi didn't want the company to be associated with. Sasuke, after he had found out, skipped every one of those meetings, just to spite Itachi. However, he later on made sure that those people 'had changed their minds about joining them after all'.
To better handle the lawsuits, Sasuke was bribed to attend anger management classes. To be more accurate, he was misled to think that it was a 'special date' and that he would get to have some 'fun'. Apart from the sex that he did actually have with the surprisingly attractive therapist, he got a tip to hold his hands at his back when feeling the urge to hit someone. Or maybe that was part of the 'fun' too. There had been handcuffs involved, so he wasn't really sure.
Kiba was still standing in front of Sasuke, wishing he was far, far away. He flinched and closed his eyes when Sasuke leaned a bit forward. When he found his face still relatively pain free, he opened his eyes again, to see Sasuke smirking. Bastard .
"Change it back", and with that Sasuke went back to his desk and continued with his work, completely ignoring the man he had been terrorizing.
Kiba swayed in the spot for a couple of minutes, before he drifted out in a dream like state.
Neji opened the door to Sasuke's office just in time to see Kiba walk out with all the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Immediately guessing (correctly) the cause of that, he rolled his eyes and walked up to the desk of said cause, "Are you actively trying to get sued?"
Sasuke finally looked up from the blank sheets of paper he had been looking at before. Finally, I thought Inuzuka would never leave. "No, just actively trying to have some fun"
Neji sighed. Kiba was a really good worker. A bit tardy at times, but he got the job done and that was all Sasuke gave a crap about anyway. He also tended to get a little paranoid, but seeing that he was working for the Devil, it was justified. "What did he do?"
Sasuke leaned back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head, "Printed out every report for this week in pink paper " At Neji's scoff, he continued, "I didn't even know we stocked pink paper."
"We don't. He must have bought it personally", Neji smiled with a little amount of respect at Kiba's effort to annoy Sasuke, "You think it's a part of the game, or did he do it just to piss you off?"
"Of course it is a part of the game. Even he isn't that stupid"
The office employees, out of sheer boredom and Sasuke's occasional tyranny, had decided to pay Truth or Dare. Only, it was Dare or Dare (Sasuke had rolled his eyes at the name). DD for short (Sasuke had seriously considered a pay cut for the lack of creativity).And it always had something to do with their boss. Every week one person had to do a dare (mostly fucking lame, according to Sasuke), chosen by the rest of the employees. They kept it a closely guarded secret, one that might endanger the jobs and possibly the life of everyone involved if it every got into the wrong hands.
Sasuke found out about it in the first week. It had been Choji Akimichi's turn and had to find out what was Sasuke's screen saver. The mild mannered man had been sweating profusely when Sasuke had walked into his office to see him sitting in his boss's chair. He had narrowly escaped by telling Sasuke that he desperately needed some paperclips in order to submit the Order checklist in time. Sasuke's screen saver is an issue of debate to this day.
They even had a scoring system based on the difficulty of the task, the level of pissed off – ness of their boss and the risk of death by lynching at the hands of said boss.
"They always come up with such lame dares", Sasuke got up. It was time for lunch.
Neji open the door walking out, "You're right. They should just set your hair on fire."
Sasuke walked out, locking the door behind him, just in case the idiots decided to go big and set a bomb under his chair. Neji continued to think, "Or maybe give you an STD. That would be too easy though", he finished with a smirk.
"Ha. Ha. You crack me up", Sasuke stopped, seeing the scene in front of him.
It was Naruto, sure he looked cute and all, but what caught Sasuke's attention was the arm on the blonde's shoulder. An arm that was attached to Kiba. Naruto had gone for lunch early today, after making Sasuke promise that he'd be a good boy and stay inside his office till he got back. Kiba introduced Naruto to one of his colleagues, then, finished their conversation with a hug.
"Oh, did I forget to mention that Naruto and Kiba are best friends?" Sasuke turned to the voice to see Itachi, "Where the fuck did you come from?"
Itachi just chuckled mysteriously and glided away. Sasuke rolled his eyes. Freak.
He saw Neji smirking at him from the corner of his eye, "What?"
"I always told you that your actions were going to come back to bite you in the ass. Though, I never thought it'll be in the form of Naruto being best friends with your latest victim."
Fuck. All in all, it was turning out to be a sucky day.