Chapter Text
Sasuke enters the apartment, toes off his shoes, and freezes in the hallway.
Kakashi looks up from where he was haphazardly fixing his flak jacket, tucking his jounin uniform’s shirt back into his pants.
Sasuke narrows his eyes.
“Hello, Sasuke,” Kakashi smiles — or pretends to smile under his mask. “How did the mission go?”
Sasuke represses the urge to snarl. “You tell me,” he says, the corner of his mouth twitching in irritation. “You were supposedly with us for the past two weeks.”
Kakashi just vaguely waves, dismissive, his other hand fastening the flak jacket back to completion. “Aa, I probably was,” he confirms, sagely nodding and ignoring the audible sound of Sasuke grinding his teeth. “I can be in many places.”
Sasuke has no idea what that means.
He was just back from another C-rank — this time an actual C-rank, no bullshit S-ranked missing-nin cornering them in the middle of the Wave Country. It’s been a fairly easy mission: escort merchants across the border between the Fire and Wind Countries — it was also mainly filled with a lot of whining from Naruto about how annoyed he was that he got pulled away from training with some old pervert (Sasuke doesn’t even want to know), and Kakashi’s absolute refusal to let them have a proper night’s rest the closer to the border they got.
The Suna team — that crazy fucker with no eyebrows and two of his sidekicks from the chuunin exams — were the receiving party from the Sand, waiting for them at the border to take over the escort duty as Konoha genin were not authorized to lead missions through the desert. Sasuke was fine with it — sand fucking sucked, and having to hang around a guy who had nearly destroyed half the village after turning into a monster was not that particularly enticing.
(Naruto was ecstatic about meeting that Gaara kid again.
Sasuke didn’t see the appeal.)
The road back to the village was somehow even worse with Kakashi deciding to act like a teacher for the first time since their team’s formation. After deciding to become an even shittier jounin-sensei, he forced them to do useless tracking exercises, making them run after squirrels and hunt down rabbits. By the end of the mission, Sasuke was covered head-to-toe in dirt, mud, rabbit blood and squirrel shit, and his only plans for the downtime after the mission were to come home, raid the fridge, collapse, and sleep for a week.
Kakashi was the last fucking thing he wanted to see in his apartment.
Sasuke feels his head start to throb. “We just saw each other five minutes ago,” he accuses. “You were with us throughout the entire mission.”
Kakashi pretends like he is extremely interested in an uchiwa painted in the hallway, one of the few murals they had decided to move from the compound after the — after.
“Ah, just look at the time,” he says, looking at his bare wrist, squinting like he couldn’t quite figure out the time on his invisible watches. “How unfortunate. I do have a meeting I need to personally attend to in a minute.”
Sasuke opens his mouth to snarl an insult — honestly, this fucking excuse is somehow even worse than all the other ones Kakashi has come up with — when Kakashi reaches for his weapons pouch, pulling out a kunai.
He waves at a tense Sasuke where he was feeling like one of the squirrels Team Seven had cornered to bring for dinner during the trip.
“You did a good job during the mission,” Kakashi pauses, “I think. See you tomorrow, Sasuke-kun.”
Sasuke’s scream dies in his throat when Kakashi buries the kunai in his stomach, one hand still firmly holding the handle, the other still raised in a two-finger salute.
Kakashi’s clone disappears in a puff of smoke.
Sasuke stands there, face blank, dirt still sticking to his face and his clothes, his backpack half slung off his shoulder. The only thing remaining from the clone where it had stood just moments before is some leftover mud from his sandals.
Obito-nii sticks his head out of the bathroom. “Kaka— oh,” he notices Sasuke and half-heartedly waves at him, striding out of the room, firmly shutting the door behind him. “Hey, Sacchan. How did the mission go?”
Sasuke closes his eyes and tries to think about his own bed in his own room, a nice serving of onigiri he was going to inhale the moment he makes it home, and a quiet apartment, void of stupid senseis and idiotic, disgusting cousins.
He stalks past Obito in full silence, trying to ignore the half-naked state of the man and the arrangement of dark, purple bruises on his neck.
When Sasuke drops back on his bed he desperately wishes for that man to come back and slit his throat the same way he had murdered their parents.
---
Sakura hums, placing the chopsticks next to her empty bowl. “Did you guys notice,” she asks, her voice drowned out by Naruto’s loud slurping noises, “that Kaka-sensei is more late than usual these days?”
Naruto wipes his face with the sleeve of his jacket.
Disgusting.
“Yeah,” he says, moving Sasuke’s untouched bowl in front of himself and clicking his chopsticks together. “But it’s just Kaka-sensei. And anyway, we train with him less these days, so who cares?”
Sakura clicks her tongue as Naruto buries his face in Sasuke’s ramen. “I mean, yeah,” she fiddles with her fingers. “We do have our own senseis now. Tsunade-sama is very demanding and Jiraiya-sama is very busy, and…”
And Mitarashi Anko is batshit crazy. Sasuke wishes he had never agreed to be mentored by her after the chuunin exams. His arms are littered with snake bites and he avoids the dango spot like the plague — he takes longer detours around the village and wakes up earlier to get to Team Seven’s training ground just because the prospect of meeting Anko before their appointed training time makes him want to stab himself.
(“Aa, sweet little Uchiha,” Anko coos. “You can call me Anko-senpai.”
Fuck no.
She forces him to screech “Anko-senpai” twenty times after his initial refusal, Sasuke’s lower body paralyzed, snakes crawling over his torso and restraining his arms.)
Sakura clears her throat. “I mean,” she nervously glances at a gloomy Sasuke, “all of us have other stuff to do these days, right? It is still weird that he just dismisses us all the time. What could he possibly be doing?”
Sasuke knows what Kakashi is doing.
(His cousin, he doesn’t say out loud.)
Kakashi is hanging out at Sasuke’s apartment — he appears in the evenings or early in the mornings, eating Sasuke’s food, watching Sasuke’s TV, and bringing his stupid dogs to Sasuke’s living room.
He hangs out with Sasuke’s cousin, sits on his lap, makes his coffee, and bickers with him loudly during the nighttime when Sasuke is trying to sleep. He greets Sasuke as if he had always lived here and Sasuke despises Kakashi’s presence in his house where previously, no one was there to bother him other than Obito-nii.
Before, Obito-nii was at work most of the time anyways. Despite being annoying, he always made sure to make Sasuke his favorite food before the missions; sometimes, over dinner, he even told him stories about kaa-san, or silently patted his head when Sasuke successfully completed another Uchiha Katon jutsu in their backyard. And yes, Obito-nii was a stupid, good for nothing idiot who was always late for everything, but—
But he’d pull Sasuke out of his bed in the dead of the night to show him new shurikenjutsu katas, and he was there after what that man has done. He was there for Sasuke’s graduation and he held his hand during the (horrible, terrible) anniversary of the massacre. He was there when Orochimaru had attacked, and—
Sasuke bites his tongue so hard he feels the coppery taste of blood in his mouth.
“I’m going home,” he announces, dropping some ryo beside Naruto’s empty bowl.
He ignores Naruto’s and Sakura’s cries that follow him.
Sasuke goes to the closest empty training ground and punches the wooden log until his knuckles start to bleed.
---
“Sacchan,” Obito-nii’s saccharine voice rings right above Sasuke’s head. “Sacchan, my dearest. The light of my life, my sun, my adoptive child. My closest relative, my favorite boy.”
Sasuke scowls up at his cousin. “What,” he spits out, narrowing his eyes.
Obito plops down right next to him on the couch, slinging his arm over Sasuke’s shoulder and pressing his scarred cheek to Sasuke’s face. “Sacchan,” he repeats and then dramatically sighs. “Sacchan. I have a job for you.”
Sasuke stiffens.
Fuck no, he thinks.
He was just back from another training session with Anko who had run him dry, making him repeat kata after kata until his legs no longer supported him and he had planted face-first into the dirt, Anko’s cackling infuriating to his abused ears. Sasuke could barely move, now: he had dragged himself back to the apartment and had dropped on the couch, unable to even bring a glass of water to his lips without spilling half of it with his trembling hands. Anko’s training drills were rare but ruthless, and Sasuke seriously considered just going to join Naruto and his pervert Sannin for whatever the fuck they did other than ogling naked women in onsens.
(Surely, whatever the Sannin is making Naruto do, it couldn’t be worse than Anko’s specific version of torture.)
Sasuke remembers Kabuto and his chakra scalpel, the ruthless way he had used it in the forest. He remembers Kabuto facing him a week after Orochimaru’s attack, intending to bring him to the missing-nin.
Sasuke thinks of Tsunade.
He should ask Sakura if Tsunade wants to take another apprentice.
“Sacchan,” Obito-nii repeats. “It’s a matter of village security. An S-rank-worthy mission. Something only the best little murder genin can complete.”
Sasuke raises an eyebrow. “Hn?” he half-asks, mind wandering somewhere far away, Tsunade’s heavy fists and giant, disturbing slugs leading a frontline attack against half the missing-nin in the Bingo Book and Kakashi in particular.
Obito-nii turns his head and smiles, his grin all teeth and malicious intent.
Sasuke should’ve left for Otogakure instead.
---
Sasuke drops a pack of condoms on Obito-nii’s desk, his face beetroot red.
Obito gives him a thumbs up.
Sasuke ignores the sated look on Kakashi’s face a few hours later when the jounin arrives at their team’s training ground with his mask askew on his face, his gait a bit bow-legged.
---
Naruto furrows his brows. “Huh?”
Sasuke grits his teeth. “I am sleeping at your place tonight.”
Naruto tilts his head to the side. “But why? Don’t you live with Obito-nii? Kaka-sensei is not going to be home tonight either if you wanted to see him, and—”
Sasuke stalks past the dobe, grabbing the idiot by the collar and dragging him away from where Obito-nii was leaning on the tree, his gloved finger hooking the waistband of Kakashi’s pants and dragging the jounin closer to himself.
Sakura stares at him in perplexion, something like understanding crossing her features.
Naruto opens his mouth again.
“I am sleeping at your place tonight,” Sasuke warns and hopes the sound of him grinding his teeth would drown out the soft noise of Kakashi’s suspicious heavy breathing.
---
“I am sleeping at your place tonight.”
Naruto blinks up at him. “It’s the third time this week—”
Sasuke throws his packed bag at Naruto as dobe lets out a punch-out ‘oof’. “I am sleeping at your place tonight,” he repeats, slower, as if talking like that would help Naruto understand him better.
He ignores Naruto’s indigent squawk as he pushes past him into Naruto’s (and Kakashi’s) shoebox of an apartment.
Sasuke plops down on Naruto’s only chair and tries to ignore the fact that he knows the layout of Uzumaki’s apartment as well as his own.
---
Anko (no, not Anko-senpai, never Anko-senpai) lifts an unimpressed eyebrow as Sasuke struggles back to his feet and glowers at nothing in particular. She rolls her shoulders as if the past ninety-odd minutes of a mad sprinting exercise was strenuous for her instead of for Sasuke who had to dodge her senbon and snakes simultaneously, and crosses her arms over her chest.
“Anything bothering you, sweet little kouhai of mine?” she smiles, all teeth and fangs and venom, and Sasuke almost doesn’t shudder.
“No,” he says instead, hands propping his upper body on his shaky knees. “We can go again.”
Anko hums, swaying on the spot in an almost-dance. “You’re gloomier than usual, Gloomy. I wonder what had happened.”
Sasuke grits his teeth. “Nothing,” he wipes away the sweat from his brow. “We can go again.”
It’s like she didn’t even hear him. Anko glances to the side where Naruto and Sakura are both finishing doing stretches under Kakashi’s and Obito-nii’s watch, Sasuke’s teammates sweaty and half-naked and determined to outdo each other at how fast they’d finish each set. Naruto slumps into Sakura’s side as she doesn’t even try to push him away, camaraderie so easy between them, and they both laugh at something Obito says. Sakura loops an arm around Naruto’s neck like she is too exhausted to keep standing up.
She tries to push the dobe to the ground — the idiot struggles and they both fall down in a heap of boneless flesh. Sakura smiles and Naruto struggles, and when she sits on top of him like a queen on a throne she laughs, loud and bright.
Sasuke almost chokes when Kakashi’s hand picks that exact moment to sneak down Obito-nii’s spine to squeeze Sasuke’s cousin’s ass.
Sasuke can hear his bones creaking with how hard he is squeezing the kunai’s handle in his hand.
Anko’s smirk widens. “Ah-ah,” she says as if she has come to some kind of revelation. “Little Sacchan is experiencing the first throes of puberty? Do I need to ask Pinky-chan to leave so my kouhai could start focusing on training again?”
Sasuke blinks and stalls, trying to figure out what she could possibly mean.
Obito-nii wraps his arm around Kakashi’s neck and presses a loud, embarrassing kiss to Hatake’s masked cheek.
“We can continue. Now,” Sasuke grits out and shuts his eyes, resisting covering his face with his hands just to make sure his sharingan won’t accidentally, permanently record even more groping from across the training ground.
Anko makes a thoughtful sound.
Sasuke yelps and almost doesn’t dodge the next senbon flying his way.
---
“Are you sure you don’t wanna talk about it?”
“Shut up.”
Naruto opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, resembling an especially dumb fish.
Sasuke burrows himself in the sheets, turning away from dobe on his borrowed futon. Half of Naruto’s room is Sasuke’s things these days, and Sasuke makes a point of leaving as much of his stuff around the apartment so that Kakashi would feel as uncomfortable coming home as Sasuke feels coming back to his own flat.
(It never works.
Sasuke had replaced half the Icha Icha books with ninneko scrolls and shitty poetry Maito Gai reads. Somehow, even more porn appears around the place despite Kakashi never being here anymore anyway. Sasuke even threw out all of the eggplant-themed aprons Kakashi owned. He has filled the fridge with tomatoes and had purposefully washed Kakashi’s spare masks alongside Sakura’s pink dress after that one time she had visited them after a mission.
Nothing works.)
---
When Sasuke finds Kakashi with his hand down Obito-nii’s pants as he was stumbling down the hallway with his sharingan on, trying not to bump into furniture in the complete darkness of his apartment, he decides that he has had enough.
---
“Sakura.”
Sakura spins around where she was trying not to blow up a dead fish with her iryo-chakra, green eyes focusing on Sasuke’s face.
She flails a little. “Um,” she wipes her hands on the apron, trying to get the dirt and dried scales from her palms and from under her fingernails. “Sasuke-kun. Hi!”
Sasuke purses his lips. “Sakura,” he repeats, then hesitates, then grits his teeth. “I—”
Sakura owlishly blinks at him.
Sasuke tries to compose himself again. “I,” he says again, forcing the words out of his mouth, “I need your help.”
Haruno opens her mouth. Then she closes it. Sasuke observes with a morbid kind of curiosity as her face goes through a range of different colors, alternating between ghostly pale and a rich tomato-red.
“Wh-,” she starts. “Huh?”
“I,” Sasuke cringes and almost feels bile raise up his throat, “need your help. With Obito.”
Sakura perks up, then scratches her cheek, leaving dirt on her reddened face. “Obito-nii?” she asks, tentative, and Sasuke has long learnt that everyone and their grandma was trying to steal (murder, stab, adopt, seduce) his cousin, and his teammates were not any different.
(Sakura has parents, and cousins, and whatever other civilian relatives she has around Konoha. Naruto can have Kakashi for all that he, supposedly, has been living with him since he was kicked out of the orphanage at the age of six.
Obito is stupid and scary and Sasuke’s, because Sasuke has nobody else left. No one is allowed to claim Obito because Obito is an Uchiha and Sasuke has nobody else left, and if keeping Sasuke’s family intact means breaking Kakashi’s arms, Sasuke is fully prepared to deal with the consequences.)
“... it’s about Kakashi,” Sasuke manages to say instead.
“Kakashi-sensei?” if possible, Sakura gets only more confused. “I thought it was about Obito-nii.”
“Yes,” Sasuke doesn’t want to say it out loud. He doesn’t. He doesn’t understand how no one could realize what the problem was after mentioning Kakashi and Obito in the same sentence. They didn’t even speak to each other until recently, with Kakashi looking like a wet and beaten-up dog, and Obito-nii trying to actively murder Sasuke’s shitty sensei with his eye alone. “Obito and Kakashi.”
Sakura stays silent. Expectant.
Sasuke can’t deal with this anymore. “Obito-nii and Kakashi,” he says, fuming. “Together.”
Sakura’s eyes widen with realization. “Oh! You mean how they’re fucking, right?”
He takes a deep breath. Then another.
He stalks away before Sakura manages to grab at his wrist.
---
Sasuke doesn’t need help.
Sasuke needs a plan.