Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Now Playing: “Your Best American Girl” – Mitski

“Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me

But I do—

I think I do.”

Naruto’s spine bows against the ruined mattress as if the cracked springs and cigarette-burned sheets are the only altar that could ever hold what they’re doing to each other. Sasuke moves above him in a brutal, precise rhythm, all tight jaw and wet breath, the silver chain at his throat whipping a metronome against collarbone as he rides him.  Rain drums the warehouse windows so hard it sounds like a crowd outside begging for an encore, but the only music in the loft is the ragged stutter of the bedframe against concrete and the half-smothered curses that punch out of Naruto’s bitten mouth—salt-sharp, desperate, syllables sliding from profanity to plea and back so quickly neither of them can tell which is which.  They taste of stale smoke and cheap peach liquor from a bottle smashed sometime before the clothes hit the floor. Skin is slick with sweat that smells like city heat and stage lights, salt pooling in the hollow of Naruto’s throat where Sasuke’s tongue flicks once, fast, as if intimacy is something to steal and discard in the same heartbeat.

Sasuke keeps his eyes shut, lashes dark and wet, refusing the confession that eye contact would make of this, but Naruto stares, wide and shining, cataloguing every tendon in Sasuke’s neck, every tremor in the tattoo that curls down his ribs, because memorising pain is safer than asking for softness.  Nails scrape, a vinyl jacket—Naruto’s, faux-leather and plastered with pinned enamel stars—slides off the bed and slaps the floor like a wet flag; somewhere under the mattress a guitar pick vibrates with each collision of their bodies, a useless little click that sounds almost like applause.  The air is so thick with nicotine ghosts the single Edison bulb overhead flickers in protest, casting them in stop-motion flashes—pale torsos, bruised hips, the silver ball of Naruto’s tongue bar glinting as he moans around it.

Sasuke’s climax tears through him like it’s being dragged out by barbed wire: a hiss, a snap of teeth on lower lip, the ungentle grip of his fingers bruising Naruto’s thigh as he stills in a shudder that rattles the bedframe louder than the rain.  He doesn’t speak—he never does when he comes, as if giving sound to that surrender might kill the distance he’s spent a lifetime building.  Naruto follows on the echo, hoarse shout muffled against the back of his own wrist, body jerking beneath Sasuke’s weight; the sound that bursts out of him might be Sasuke’s name, might just be a curse, it tangles with the rain so no one will ever be sure except the broken boards under the mattress.

They separate like magnets forced apart—flinch, breath, recoil—heat evaporating into the damp breath of the loft.  No kiss.  No gentling touch.  Only Naruto’s trembling exhale and Sasuke’s heartbeat still strobing against the hollow of his own sternum as he pulls free, as he sits back on his heels and drags one palm down his face like he’s wiping off more than sweat.  Between them the mattress sinks, stained in the shape of frantic bodies; the rain keeps hammering the window, harder now, as if to wash it all clean, but the room—reeking of smoke, liquor, and the iron-sweet tang of sex—holds on to every second.  Their breaths slow, but the silence doesn’t soften, it thickens, heavy and wet, hanging between them like a sheet they’re both afraid to lift.

Naruto’s eyes track a bead of sweat crawling down Sasuke’s spine, disappearing beneath the crack of his ass, and for an instant something raw glints behind the gold of his irises—want, grief, maybe forgiveness—but the moment passes when Sasuke reaches for the nightstand, fingers closing around a cigarette and a cheap lighter without looking back.  Flame flares, smoke rolls, the chain at his neck swings once more as he stands, and the air that fills the space he leaves behind tastes like ash and regret.

Time doesn’t so much pass as thicken—congealing in the inch of humid night between them—while sweat cools on skin and turns to a tacky film that makes the smallest movement feel obscene. Rain shifts octave now that the rhythm of flesh against flesh has gone silent. Every drop that slaps the corrugated-iron roof echoes inside Naruto’s ribs like a drum still waiting for a cue, and somewhere outside a gutter gurgles, choking on runoff and bottle caps.  The smell in the room is a bruise you can breathe: stale nicotine braided with the coppery tang of blood from half-moon scratches on hips and the damp wool reek of Sasuke’s abandoned trousers soaking up window spray.  Over it all floats the faint sweetness of decayed peaches—the bottle they smashed earlier bleeding its syrup across warped floorboards, sticky enough to catch threads from Naruto’s shredded knee-sock each time he shifts his heel.

Moonlight slants through the cracked pane in a single oblique blade, silvering dust motes and catching on the plastic prescription bottle perched on the sill like a lighthouse warning ships from wreckage.  The label—half peeled, water-warped—still shows the ghost of Sasuke’s name before it curls away from amber plastic, two white tablets cling to the lip, trembling each time the building shivers under the subway that roars beneath the river three streets away.  Naruto’s gaze hooks on that bottle, pulls, drags his tongue toys with the barbell in his mouth as if he could tongue the pills from the plastic across the room, swallow the silence they represent.  Sasuke doesn’t look—not at the pills, not at Naruto,just exhales blue-grey smoke toward the ceiling where exposed pipes sweat and the single Edison bulb sways on its fraying cord, making shadows lurch like slow dancers that never learned when the song ended.

An ashtray—cheap tin, Ritz-crackers logo faded to bruised rust—sits on a cinderblock beside the gutted shell of a guitar pedal dissected weeks ago in a fit of midnight “repair.”  It overflows with twisted filters, lipstick-kissed ends Ino left, charred matches, the bent remains of a safety pin.  Cigarette ash drifts over the pedal’s exposed circuitry like volcanic snow, soft until it’s blown away by the tremor of Sasuke’s next breath.  Somewhere deeper in the loft a synth left powered hums its single sustained note—a faint, mournful F-sharp bleeding through cheap walls—vibrating the empty beer bottles that line the windowsill like soldiers shot where they stood.  The sound isn’t loud, but it needles. It makes Naruto’s molars itch, and he wonders distantly if Sasuke can feel the same frequency drilling through enamel or if benzos turn everything to blanket static.

The whole building shifts again, a long settling groan that makes the bedframe squeal in sympathetic metal anguish.  Plaster dust drifts from the ceiling joint, catching moonlight like cigarette ash; Sasuke’s cigarette ember flares as he inhales, and for one heartbeat the loft becomes a darkroom flash—silver rain threads, red coal, the wet shine on Naruto’s chest where sweat pools at the hollow sternum.  The cigarette crackles, the pill bottle rattles, the synth drones, the city below drags its subway artery through wet tunnel.  No other human sounds: just them and the ghosts of everything they won’t articulate.

Naruto draws his knees up, arms slack around them, spine a question mark against the peeling wallpaper; he watches smoke furl from Sasuke’s parted lips, watches it rise to meet the damp rafters, watches it vanish like promises neither of them made.  The sight hurts in a place language doesn’t reach.  Sasuke, still naked, leans hip to sill, window glass fogging where his shoulder hovers—he doesn’t open it farther, doesn’t close it either, just lets rain spatter his bare collarbone, bead in the hollow of his throat, trickle down the pulse that Naruto once bit hard enough to bruise.  Cigarette between two fingers, other hand clutching the windowsill, he looks carved from midnight stone: something worshipped, something abandoned in the same prayer.

Minutes spill.  Rain intensifies, drumming a syncopated heartbeat.  A siren wails, Doppler-slides into oblivion.  And still the air refuses to settle, thick with unvoiced words, pill-bottle confessions, the echo of a bedframe that hasn’t yet realised the song is over.

Sasuke’s body rises from the windowstill the way smoke lifts from a snuffed candle—slow at the edges, then all at once—muscles bunching beneath skin that is shock-pale where moonlight hits and fever-flushed everywhere Naruto’s hands dragged moments ago. He barely exhales.  Sasuke stoops to retrieve the black trousers puddled on the floor—damp at the knees from rain that sluiced in earlier—and pulls them up in one practiced motion, hips rolling with unconscious elegance. He pauses with the button undone, as though modesty is an afterthought he might not bother reclaiming.  Fingers—long, tremor-edged—dig at the prescription bottle on the sill, the amber plastic rattles like cheap maracas, lid clattering to concrete, two chalk-white tablets leaping into his palm.  He dry-swallows, throat bobbing, no water—narrows his eyes against the bitter film, tilts his head back so moonlight spears the planes of his neck, the cigarette burn at his clavicle, the bruise flowering violet where Naruto’s teeth found pulse.

Ink coils across his ribs: an abstract corridor of black lines arrowing down his flank, disappearing beneath waistband and the V of taut hip.  As he bends, muscles flex; the tattoo seems to breathe, almost pulsate, until fabric devours it—a silk shirt snatched from the floor, wine-red once, now dark as dried blood in the low light.  He doesn’t put it on, merely throws it over one shoulder, letting the sleeve trail down his spine like a careless scarf.  Naruto props himself on an elbow, blanket sliding to expose the fuck-mess of his own chest—bite marks purpling, scratches bead-bright with blood—tongue bar clacking thoughtfully against a canine, eyes following every staccato twitch of Sasuke’s fingers.  He watches the way Sasuke’s hand hovers at the trouser button but chooses the belt first, threading cracked leather through loops with a rasp that sounds indecent in the hush, buckle ringing against metal like the opening hit of a snare.

No dialogue. Only small noises: rain on glass; pill bottle rolling in slow arcs until it thuds against the skirting; Naruto’s breathing, ragged and wet. Sasuke’s hand stutters as he clips the belt, tremor betraying the buzz of benzos colliding with residual adrenaline. He mutters a silent curse, drags knuckles down the hard plane of his abdomen—smearing a thin serpentine trail of blood where Naruto’s nail raked him in the last thrust.  He doesn’t register the wound, or maybe registers and dismisses, he merely wipes fingers on trouser thigh, rubs thumb to forefinger like erasing a smudge of graphite.  Rings—two silver, hammered flat, heirlooms maybe—are scooped from the windowsill and jammed onto one finger, weight stacking, metal clicking in quick succession.  He exhales smoke through pursed lips, shoulders rolling as if shrugging back into armor no one can see, and for a second he stands half-lit and ruin-beautiful: silk shirt sliding down sculpted back, belt hanging but unbuckled, trousers unbuttoned, hipbone gleaming wet with blood and sweat and rain-beads.

Naruto thinks, wildly, that Sasuke looks like a half-dressed confession—tight at the throat, raw at the seams, useless without context—then swallows the thought because context is conversation and conversation never survives daylight between them.  He taps tongue-bar against tooth again, metallic clink that drowns the thump of his own pulse,and shifts just enough that the mattress groans.  Sasuke reacts: gaze flicking sideways, not at Naruto’s face, but at the shadow his body makes against peeling wallpaper—like he can only acknowledge evidence, not source. The loft fluoresces briefly with lightning, the cicatrix of water stain across the ceiling flashes bone-white, the jagged seam where the plaster once split during a storm no one remembers to fix. Thunder follows—low, belly-deep, rattling the loose windowpane; Naruto’s nipple piercings spark cold under the burst of static and he hisses, more surprise than pain.

Sasuke finally buttons the trousers. Slow, deliberate, as though the act itself is an invocation of distance. Shirt still untended, he bends to fish for something—lighter, phone, stray pick—fingers brushing the peach-sticky floor and coming away sugared.  He wipes them on the back pocket, straightens, hair curtain-dark around his cheekbones, cigarette pinched dead between lips.  For a moment the tremor subsides.  Beneath it loiters exhaustion so thick Naruto can almost smell it—sour like over-steeped tea left on a radiator.

Naruto sits up fully now, sheet pooling at hips, the star-pinned jacket still lying like roadkill on the boards. He thinks about asking Sasuke to stay—thinks about whether stay means anything, whether he even wants the weight of Sasuke’s silence for another hour—but the thought is raw meat in his throat and he’s too afraid to chew.  Instead, he watches the smear of his own blood drying rust-brown on Sasuke’s hip, the single droplet racing downward until it disappears beneath waistband leather. That is his proof: they happened.  He will never photograph better evidence.

Sasuke retrieves a half-empty plastic water bottle from under a chair, swishes it, doesn’t drink, presses it to the back of his neck in a small act of mercy. Condensation streaks down his spine, finds the swell where tattoo meets waistband, and Naruto’s stomach flips because water never touched him like that.  The synth in the other room decides to whine louder, feedback squeals, glass on the bedside rattle.  Sasuke twitches, flicks ash from cigarette, finally shrugs into the silk shirt—doesn’t bother buttoning, just lets it hang open, a blood-dark whisper against pale chest.

He looks like a sin that refuses confession.  Naruto looks like someone who keeps volunteering for communion. Outside, the siren Dopplers back, maybe ambulance, maybe police, rain keeps up its percussion.  Neither of them speak.  Silence, broken only by the click of Sasuke’s lighter closing, swells until the loft feels submerged.  Somewhere below, the subway grinds its teeth under riverwater and concrete. The building shivers, shaking dust from rafters into Naruto’s tangled hair like grey snow. Sasuke stands amidst it, unmoved, his smoke curling around a face carved from distance, hip wound drying, pills dissolving, shirt whispering open to the storm-light as if daring the rain to press another mark upon him.

Naruto can feel the question fermenting behind his teeth long before it escapes, a fizzing sting not unlike no-name whiskey rasping down the wrong pipe; he coughs on silence twice, swallows once, counts three heartbeats that hurt worse than the bite marks feathering his ribs, then drags in a breath that tastes of ash and damp drywall and every time he’s promised himself not to do this.

Words tumble out anyway, raw and graceless, voice husked by smoke and orgasm and the indelible ache of wanting something that keeps walking away:

“You gonna say anything?”

The syllables scrape the loft’s rafters bare and splinter, echoing off rain-slick brick—too loud, too human—and Sasuke stiffens as if they were a knife slipped between vertebrae. He does not turn.

He stands half-lit in the window’s dying glow, spine a ruler’s edge, cigarette poised at lip level, lighter already sparking with that trademark economy of movement that makes every gesture feel like a verdict.  The flame hisses against the soggy filter end, a muted protest. Ember ignites tiger-bright, haloing his profile for the heartbeat it takes to inhale.  Smoke fills the cavity between them in fractal ribbons, veiling the bruise flowering at Sasuke’s pulse point where Naruto’s mouth had pressed minutes earlier.

Naruto watches that smoke and thinks, stupidly, of prayers rising. Thinks of how prayers are just demands—quiet, desperate, mostly unanswered.  His palms open against the edge of the mattress, as if testing for splinters that could explain why everything stings.

Sasuke exhales through nostrils, shoulders’ motion slight—no bigger than a shrug, no smaller than contempt—and answers without looking:

“No.”

A single syllable, low and flat, but it carries finality like a loaded chamber. It bangs through Naruto’s ribs louder than the thunder that chooses that moment to roll overhead, rattling panes and sending fresh rivulets snaking down cracked glass.  Naruto’s laugh bursts out, unplanned, a single bark of sound that tastes of rust and defeat and the backwash of liquor still lingering in molars.  It hangs there, joyless, mocking both of them, and dies as quickly as it was born.

“Didn’t think so.”

He does not mean for the words to wobble.  His gaze drags over Sasuke’s silhouette—the open silk shirt hanging off shoulder like the beginning of a confession, the belt finally fastened but askew, the red half-moon scratch Naruto left across hipbone now drying rust-brown on pale skin.  All these details proffer themselves as footholds to an argument—Stay. Explain. Anything—but Naruto’s throat seizes, his tongue grows heavy, and what spills out instead is a silent plea neither of them has the vocabulary to honour.

Rain slants harder, wind knifing it sideways so droplets pepper the loft through the cracked sash. Sasuke holds cigarette between forefinger and thumb, flicks ash with surgeon precision into a green-glass beer bottle perched on the sill, the bottle already brims with drowned filters, a constellation of repeated capitulations.  Ash meets staling rainwater with a hiss, tiny funeral pyre extinguished.  Another drag, the ember lights his cheekbone, his lashes, the faint tremor still echoing in his hand.  Naruto notices the tremor and hates how much hope it birthing in his sternum, like evidence that Sasuke feels anything is still a prophecy worth clinging to.

Sasuke’s voice, when it emerges, sounds like velvet laid over broken mirrors—soft texture, lethal edges:

“You talk too much.”

Four words, a verdict, an autopsy. They dissect every bleeding thing Naruto failed to swallow, slice away the tender underbelly of desire and leave it pulsing in the open air. Sasuke doesn’t wait for reply.  He drops the cigarette into the beer bottle—hiss, sputter, lifeless—and steps toward the loft door, shirt still unbuttoned, rainwater catching on his collarbones like mercury beads.  The soles of his boots kiss the warped floorboards with measured devotion, the same rhythm he kept inside Naruto minutes before; only now each footfall is receding percussion, a drumline of abandonment.

Hand on the knob, he pauses, breath ghosts in chill.  Naruto imagines—in the half second before the door moves—that Sasuke might turn, might speak something fragile and monstrous like stay or sorry.  Moonlight dangles on the edge of that possibility, a silver noose waiting to snap.  Sasuke spares him nothing. The knob rotates, mechanism clicks, the door eases shut with surgical softness, a sound so gentle it feels violent.  No slam, no anger, just the final bow of a set nobody asked to end.

Smoke ribbons behind him through the narrowing crack, then even the smoke is gone, sucked into hallway dark.  Silence rushes back, thick and oil-slick; it coats Naruto’s lungs, his eyes, the raw grooves of his fingernails where they dig into the mattress seam.  He thinks he should shout, or chase, or break something, but the only motion in his body is the twitch of a tongue stud trapped behind clenched teeth, tapping out four syllables against enamel:

You talk too much, you talk too much.

Outside, a siren wails toward some other tragedy; inside, the synth in the next room sustains its lonely note, vibrating glass, vibrating bone.  Naruto sits in the aftermath of both songs, naked in cooling sweat, watching the door that clicked but never slammed, and tries to decide which silence hurts worse—the one Sasuke left behind or the one still screaming in his own skull.

The loft seems to inhale the moment Sasuke leaves, stretching its ribs until every rotted beam groans, until the air grows thinner and sharper around Naruto as though the absence has sucked all the warmth out and replaced it with the metallic chill of a backstage corridor after last call, lights half-killed, crowd noise fled.  Floorboards creak in slow sequence, expanding under damp rain that insists against the pane in a harsher cadence, each drop amplified by the hush that follows a door too softly closed.  The mattress beneath him sags in the shape of two bodies that failed to become one—hollows where hips slammed, where shoulders pushed dents into padding already cratered by nights exactly like this—and the twisted sheet is a gray wreckage knotting his calves, damp with sex, sweat, and the window’s relentless spatter.

Naruto rubs a palm across eyes that still sting from smoke and unshed something, swings half-numb legs over the edge, feet finding scuffed hardwood sticky with peach syrup and crushed cigarette filters.  The cinderblock nightstand lists under the weight of an overflowing ashtray and a chipped mug going furry with forgotten tea, on its cracked melamine surface—a kind of urban altar—lies the stub of the joint he rolled hours earlier, nothing left but a soggy roach flattened into the tarnished coin edge.  He pinches it, sparks the Zippo that lives in a doll-sized coffin of dents, inhales, waits for the acrid bloom of cheap resin and slow-burning tobacco to sear regret out of his lungs.  Nothing manifests beyond the aftertaste of disappointment, the ghost of Sasuke’s smoke still ribboning the room.  He drags again, deeper, until his vision plates over in watery grey, but the knot behind his breastbone only cinches tighter, a hitch in the machinery of breath that no chemical can grease.

Dragging the frayed blanket aside, he spots metal glinting like a dropped secret—slender silver chain snarled in the weave, pendant absent, too delicate for Sasuke’s aesthetic, too polished for Naruto’s thrift-shop chaos, could belong to Ino or Temari or one of the faceless mouths that found him in club bathrooms when he was too drunk to say no or care.  Rather than untangle it with intention, he yanks once, hard, until the clasp gives and the links slide free, coiling in his palm like a private question.  He winds the necklace around knuckles—one, two, three turns—until it bites into flesh, mirror-bright against bruised skin, a self-forged set of brass knuckles delicate enough to bleed him if he makes a fist.  He flexes, watches metal press crescent moons into the meat between fingers, tells himself pain is tactile proof that he’s still here, that all of this just happened and isn’t some recurring fever dream stitched from junk food, stage lights, and too many shots backstage.

His gaze drops to the battered spiral notebook resting facedown on the amp-head beside the mattress, its cover is warped from beer, corners frayed like a touring van seatbelt.  He flips it open to a blank page already ghost-inked by pressure from earlier entries—snippets of lines, chord charts, the half-finished setlist he never follows.  The Bic pen on the floor rolls under arch of foot. He catches it, flicks cap off with teeth, tongue stud ringing enamel.  Words come in a cough, harsh, unstoppable:

I keep singing in the rooms you leave hollow / I keep choking on the smoke you leave behind

Ink feathers on the cheap paper, the ‘s’ of smoke spidering where a drop of condensation from his hair lands, and for a pulse-length he imagines an entire verse chasing those lines, fistfuls of vowels and fury tumbling out until the page is a bruise of confession.  But the vulnerability felt in the act of writing is a sudden open wound, too exposed under the flicker of that lone bulb, so he flips the joint, brand still embering, presses the cherry to the wet ink.  Sizzle.  The blue flame licks black across the lyrics, curling fibers inward until the sentence contracts on itself and dies an ashy death, smoke puffing into his face like cerulean judgement.

He snaps the notebook shut, notes the silver chain imprinting deeper crescents along finger bones, and wonders—just for a fraying instant—if the marks will still be visible when the sun lifts its apathetic light over the river in a few hours.  Wondering if Sasuke will notice them the next time, or if by then new bruises will have overwritten tonight’s scripture.  The synth in the other room pulses its lonely sustained note, the benumbed heart of a machine refusing to shut up, and Naruto laughs under his breath—one hollow beat, then none—because even broken electronics refuse silence more gracefully than people who claim to love him.

The stairwell smells like piss and last week’s fireworks. Sasuke’s boots are still wet from the rain, soles squeaking as he pushes open the building door with a shoulder. His pulse has already slowed, but the burn in his thighs hasn’t. Smoke leaks from his lungs like he never left that mattress. The street below hums with bass from some closed window—someone else’s party.

By the time he reaches the third floor, the rain has soaked through the back of his collar. The hallway light flickers once. He doesn’t check his phone. He doesn’t think. Just slides the key into the lock of an apartment that smells like rosewater, vinyl, and every decision he never made on time

The door creaks open without urgency. Sasuke steps into low light.

The loft is cleaner than Naruto’s, but not by much. Vinyl racks lean, unfinished moodboards pepper the walls, a tripod capsized near the window. Ino’s boots are in a puddle by the door—patent leather, red—one heel scuffed raw from city sidewalks.

Then the freight elevator growls, a metallic protest that echoes up the building’s ribs. Footsteps follow—heels on concrete, fast and staccato like gunfire. A key in the lock.

Sasuke doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t fix his shirt, doesn’t unclip the rings still crowded on the wrong finger. He exhales toward the ceiling, spine against drywall, fingers finding the pill bottle in his back pocket again out of habit, not need.

Ino’s voice slices through the door first—laughing into her phone, sugar-laced and venomous, like she’s never been touched by silence.

“Yeah, no, the stylist nearly cried—’cause I told her mesh doesn’t count as a fuckin’ outfit unless you wanna get arrested,” she laughs, then pauses. “No, I’m not drunk. Yet.”

Keys jangle. Door clicks open.

She enters mid-call, umbrella closed, makeup intact. Her gaze lands on Sasuke in the dim, shirt wrinkled, belt loose, jaw taut. She pauses. Something flickers across her face. She says nothing. Just lifts her brow and keeps talking.

Sasuke turns away. Walks past her, drops the cigarette into an empty coffee mug on the table.

Her voice drifts on behind him, steady, unaffected.

Chapter Text

Now Playing: "Stabilisers For Big Boys" – by Panchiko

"Half the way to Earth
Do you feel my worth?"

Early-morning gray oozes through the rusted blinds of the Crow’s Nest like smoke that forgot to be warm: a thin, metallic light that dusts the hardwood in silver and makes the apartment’s scattered glamour chrome makeup cases, vinyl sleeves, half-empty wineglasses—look abandoned rather than chic. The rain has slowed to a slow, old-clock drip, but each hesitant drop still clinks the corrugated roof, echoing down into the single wide room where Ino Yamanaka balances on the edge of the kitchen counter in nothing but a cream-lace bralette and matching panties, knees drawn up, bare feet resting on the open door of the fridge as if it were a footstool meant for backstage divas.

The refrigerator hum casts a faint blue halo over her thighs, condensation pearls along the milk carton balanced between them. She’s spooning cereal out of a chipped ramen bowl-rice-flake dust swirling in a lazy cyclone every time she stirs while scrolling her phone with lacquered nails the color of bruised petals. Her hair is still shellacked in set curls from the shoot, soft near the roots where humidity has wilted the spray, hard at the tips where product refuses to yield. The chain of one hoop earring taps against her collarbone each time she lifts the spoon, a gentle metronome that syncs to no song but her own pulse.

Sasuke steps in from the hallway with rain still stippling the shoulders of his half-buttoned silk shirt, the fabric clinging to cooling skin. He doesn’t announce himself, the apartment is too small for that, and anyway Ino always knows when the elevator rattles its way to their floor, she’d texted him once, “the cables groan like they’re tired of carrying every lost boy you bring home.” Now she just glances up from the glow of her phone, gaze tracing the smear of eyeliner no longer rimmed around his eyes, the faint red crescent scoring his inner wrist where Naruto’s grip had slipped. Her stare lingers, catalogues, then flicks back to the screen without comment.

“Morning,” she says around a mouthful of cereal, voice honey-rough, pleasantly unapologetic. The word lands somewhere between sarcasm and resigned greeting, like she isn’t exactly sure which time zone his body’s been living in but isn’t surprised it isn’t hers.

Sasuke grunts a reply, something vowel-thin and unwilling to form a real greeting, then kicks off water-logged boots by the door. One of them lands on its side, spilling a dribble of rain across the floorboards that will warp if left to soak, he doesn’t pick it up. He crosses the living space, all long bare feet and damp trouser cuffs, ignoring the way Ino’s gaze skates after him. The synth station in the far corner—desk buried under tangle of cables, cigarette burns on the veneer, tiny LED screens blinking like insomniac eyes—calls to him louder than conversation. He taps the power strip with his toe; every device clacks awake with a complaint, neon digits cycling through 00:00 before stabilizing. A low, pulsing sub-tone bleeds into the room, the sort of frequency that rattles the glass in the windowpanes and makes loose coins on the counter tremble.

“Really?” Ino mutters, spoon paused halfway. “My ears are still ringing from strobes and you need reverb at—” she checks the stove clock, “—eleven-something?”

“It’s ten fifty-two,” Sasuke corrects, adjusting a knob until the synth’s drone sinks a shade deeper, satisfying as a bone slotting back into place. The blue LCD glow knifes across his cheekbones, turns rain beads into quicksilver. He keeps his back mostly to her, shoulders a tense line under silk, but he feels the weight of her eyes scraping across each fresh bruise like sandpaper.

“Ah, forgive me,” she says, sliding off the counter with feline carelessness, bowl clasped in one hand, phone still glowing in the other. Her feet land silent on the boards, ankles rolling with dancer grace; lace waistband hugs the curve of her hip. She pads toward the ashtray by the window, plucks a cigarette from the half-empty pack balanced there, and lights it with one practiced flick, inhaling deep enough the ember flares bright red against the morning’s gunmetal haze. On her exhale, smoke ribbons up, curls past the rusted blinds and into the crack between slats. She leans hip to frame, one shoulder pressing the cold pane, watches Sasuke skimming through patches on the synth like he’s flipping through excuses.

Silence sprawls: thick, slightly dissonant from the low-grade rumble of oscillators warming under his fingers. Ino taps ash into an empty espresso cup perched on the sill, scrolls her phone again, thumb pausing now and then—group chat gossip, maybe, or a booking confirmation for another shoot she’ll be too tired to enjoy. She blows out a stream of smoke, forceful through pursed lips, and lets the unasked question hover with it: You still smell like him, are you going to shower that off or pretend I can’t tell?

Sasuke nudges a slider, flooding the speakers with a spectral chord that vibrates air so thoroughly the cereal in her bowl ripples. He lets it wash over the room, vibrating through his ribs, erasing every lingering echo of heartbeat that doesn’t belong solely to him. Blood trace on his wrist pulses, dries. He pulls one ring off, rolls it between thumb and forefinger, metal still hot from body heat it touched on another mattress.

Ino’s eyes narrow, catlike, but she exhales a small dismissive huff—like flicking a thought off a table—and turns away, no further comment. She crunches cereal loud on purpose, the brittle sound competing with synth drones, tiny rebellion in a room that rarely hosts overt fights.

Neither name the third presence stinking up the morning. Neither asks. They never do.

Outside, rain gutters cough and choke, then lull. Inside, LED lights blink steady in a tiny constellation across the synth’s interface, a private night sky that only answers to Sasuke’s fingers. Ino finishes her cereal, sets the bowl in the sink, cigarette dangling forgotten from crimson lips. She doesn’t leave the window, but she looks away from him, daylight just starting to slice across her cheek.

Sasuke lowers the volume a fraction, enough that his next breath actually sounds human. The gesture might almost read as apology if either of them believed in that currency. They don’t.

They stand inside separate silences—Ino’s laced with smoke and leftover sugar, Sasuke’s thick with bass wash and sore muscles—until the sun tips fully over the skyline and the apartment’s metallic haze turns gold around them, revealing every fresh bruise, every smeared line of eyeliner, every secret neither intends to share.

Now Playing: "Soundcheck" – by Catfish and the Bottlemen

"I wanted everything at once
Until you blew me out my mind
Now I don't need nothing"

Naruto surfaces to consciousness the way a record drags itself out of dead wax—slow, scratchy, the first sound a low buzz reverberating across his pillow: phone, face-down, vibrating like a trapped moth.  He blinks past the swamp-green haze of a hangover half earned, half inherited from the sweat still cooling on his skin, reaches without looking, thumb swiping the cracked screen until Sakura’s message pulses into view, her name a neon warning light in the pre-dawn gloom:

SAKURA 05:11

Where are you? Soundcheck’s in two hours. Please tell me you’re sober.

He stares at the text long enough for the screen to dim, for his own blurred reflection to float there—a ghost with swollen eyes, eyeliner smeared to exhaustion bruises—then drops the phone back into the sheets.  It thuds against the mattress like a verdict he refuses to hear.  He rolls onto his stomach, face buried in the pillow that still reeks of Sasuke’s cigarette-sweet breath and the colder note of rainwater dried on silk, and breathes until his chest stops hitching, until the ache of last night’s fingers on his hip folds into a tolerable pulse beneath the skin.

The loft is bluish in the hour before neon billboards blink awake, the only light leaking from a roadside lamp outside, its filament dying in a soft stutter that paints the scattered debris of gear cables and torn flyers in morse-code dots.  Naruto forces himself upright, joints crackling like a snare hit, blanket peeling away from sweat-tacked thighs.  He finds jeans—no idea whose. Maybe Gaara’s, maybe a thrift score he forgot—pools them over bare feet, stands too quickly.  Room tilts.  He breathes seawater and dizziness, steadying on the cinderblock nightstand where the ashtray is still overflowing: twisted filters, lipstick marks he doesn’t recognize, one burnt match warped into a small black question mark.

The bathroom door yawns open on rusty hinges. Inside, the tile is Arctic underfoot, the fluorescent tube overhead flickering a jaundiced halo across cracked grout. The mirror—spider-webbed from a fist he threw months back—reflects a triptych of himself: left shard shows swollen lip, center shard captures the red scratches curling down his collarbone, right shard frames the bruise blooming at his throat in lazy violet.  Water spurts from the tap in a shock-cold torrent that smells faintly of rust, he splashes his face, gasping, shoulders hitching as droplets arc across the mirror and mingle with the fractures.  For the flicker of a heartbeat the glass seems to hold another set of eyes—dark, indifferent, ringed in kohl—that watched him from the doorway last night, half-second of contact so intimate it felt like teeth on bone, a benediction and a goodbye.  He slams the memory out with another splash, blinking water from lashes until the mirror shows only him, unromantic, tired, still breathing.

He gropes for a towel and finds a T-shirt instead, faded print flaking off, probably Sakura’s lecture shirt from two tours ago. Dries his face, scrubs at the scruff on his jaw, smelling the ghost of detergent and stale weed.  Digs through a mound of clothes by the sink and settles on skinny black jeans crusted at the cuffs with venue mud, and a grey tank that once read “Loud Hearts Die Young” but now just says “Loud Die.”  Tugging fabric over head tugs a wince from bruised ribs.  He locks eyes with mirror again, studies the wet grooves his fingers left on glass, then swipes them away as if erasing evidence might rewrite the night.

Phone buzzes once more in the bedroom—another message, probably Sakura again, maybe Shikamaru playing mediator.  He doesn’t check.  He towels his hair with the tank he discarded, shoulders popping, and exhales a long stream that smells like joint ash and last night’s peach liquor.  In the distance a subway rumbles, vibrating the plumbing until the faucet rattles a staccato he could almost tap into a beat.  Rain gutters cough once, then fall silent.  Somewhere above, a neighbor’s radio crackles to life—city-final, early-AM talk show—but the words blur into static before reaching his ears.

Naruto breathes, counts four heartbeats, and straightens, rolling shoulders back until the ache sharpens into something that feels like readiness.  He gathers phone, pocketful of picks, battered lighter, none of them comforting—just talismans that mean the day is starting whether he wants it or not.  The loft smells less like Sasuke now, more like him: stale sweat, regret, and the gasoline spark of anticipation—because in two hours the stage lights will blind him just enough to forget everything except decibels and the way a crowd’s roar fills the hollows Sasuke keeps leaving behind.

Afternoon sunlight leaks through the cracked stained-glass transom of The Casket, a dive bar that moonlights as a venue when the rent’s due and the owner needs fresh graffiti on the bathroom doors. Yesterday’s spilled stout still varnishes the floor in sticky patches, and every step rips a soft Velcro sound from Sakura’s boots as she coils XLR cables into neat figure-eights. The air smells of disinfectant that never quite overpowers sour beer, of electrical dust shaken loose as the stage amps warm with a low, hungry hum. Motes drift where light cuts through neon haze; an unplugged “PABST ON TAP” sign flickers sporadically like a dying firefly, painting her knuckles pink each time it sputters alive.

Outside the loading door, Shikamaru leans against sun-warmed brick, one foot braced to the wall, cigarette dangling between index and middle finger. He’s half-shadowed by an ancient fire escape, hoodie unzipped over a vintage tour tee he picked for irony more than style. A delivery truck grumbles curbside, bass from its idle engine vibrating rusty dumpsters. Somewhere up the block a street vendor bangs metal tongs in rhythm to a radio Naruto once sampled for transitions. Shikamaru thumbs a message to Ino—«Crow’s Nest status?»—watches the ellipses appear, vanish, reappear. He flicks ash to concrete, inhales. Smoke coils around tattoos on his wrist: a small constellation only Naruto and Sakura know the meaning of.

Inside, Sakura yanks the next coil tight, jaw tense. Sweat pearls at her hairline though the PA isn’t even live yet. She calls through the yawning stage door, voice sharp enough to scrape rust:

“Bass still in the van?”

“Napping in the back,” Shikamaru answers without looking up, voice the lazy drawl of someone who slept, smoked, and may never stress again. He pockets the phone before the dots resolve into a reply and steps into the threshold, smoke curling behind him. “Gaara said he’ll lug it once he’s finished his make up.”

Sakura snorts. “Great.” She loops the cable over her elbow, heel kicking an empty bottle to the gutter outside. “What the fuck is he up to?”

Shikamaru lifts a shoulder. “Guess.”

The single word lands like dust on glass—soft, but it marks everything. His gaze drifts to the stage where Naruto’s mic stand already waits, duct tape wound round the clutch like a bandage nobody bothered to change. He imagines Sasuke’s silhouette there instead—motionless, lit by strobes that make every unsaid thing look holy for half a second. He doesn’t say that; he just drags from the cigarette again, the ember flaring a tired red.

Sakura straightens, fingers tight on the last coil. Muscles in her forearms flex, the subtle quiver she gets just before a show. “If he comes in drunk as fuck again, I’m gonna shove that Strat up his—” She catches Shikamaru’s faint smirk, exhales through her nose. “What?”

“Nothing.” Smoke streams from his nose like resignation. “Just picturing the logistics.”

The corner of her mouth twitches despite herself. Old reflex: laugh before you scream. She hurls the wrapped cable into a battered flight case, metal clacking sharp. “Logistics are my problem. Your problem is getting him here sober.”

“Troublesome,” Shikamaru murmurs. He stamps out the cigarette against the door frame, watches a filmy wisp spiral up, vanish. He holds up his phone when it buzzes: Ino → «Synth at max volume. He’s alive.» Another buzz.«I think they fucked tonight.»

He pockets it before Sakura can read. “He’ll make soundcheck. Probably.”

“Probably isn’t good enough,” she shoots back, but the edge softens—because she knows Shikamaru’s promises are the only ones Naruto keeps. She scrubs sweat off her brow with the hem of her flannel, leaves a smear of eyeliner on her wrist, and nods toward the humming amps. “Get inside. I need ears while I line-check.”

He steps over the threshold, smell of stale beer swapping for the ozone thrum of live power. Neon buzz hits his teeth like static. “You know that bass cab’s gonna blow if he cranks the low end again.”

“Then let it blow,” Sakura says, twisting a gain knob until the channel peaks red. “Maybe the shock’ll wake him up.”

They trade a look—sharp, conspiratorial, threaded with years of fixing things before they collapse. Behind them the venue creaks like it can already feel tonight’s crowd pushing against its old bones. Outside, the delivery truck pulls away, leaving exhaust and the low whistle of city wind. Inside, Sakura counts to three and flicks the main breaker; stage lights stutter on, flooding the empty space with bruised purple and blood-warm gold.

“What key?” Shikamaru asks, settling onto a monitor wedge, knees drawn up, cigarette smoldering again—second of the day, or maybe the fourth.

“Doesn’t matter,” she answers, drumsticks tapping a phantom beat against her thigh. Her eyes flick to the doorway, just once. “He’ll change it.”

The side door creaks open on a wind-gust that smells of wet asphalt and fried noodles from the lunch cart two blocks down. Gaara slips through the gap like a draft that learned to walk upright—silent, narrow, wrapped in the same black bomber and threadbare tee he wore onstage the night before. A pair of knock-off Wayfarers clings to the bridge of his nose even though the venue lights are still dialing themselves awake, and the lenses catch a wash of sickly lavender from a gel bulb overhead, turning his eyes into blank lilac mirrors.

He doesn’t bother to close the door. Doesn’t greet anyone. Just crosses the warped floorboards with that soft, predatory tread—heel never quite touching wood—lugging his battered P-bass by the neck the way most people carry a nearly empty grocery bag: an afterthought, a weight too familiar to notice. The body of the instrument thumps his thigh with each step; fresh blood smears on the pickguard where yesterday’s cut reopened, but Gaara either doesn’t feel it or refuses to.

Sakura clocks him from the stage, mid-tap on the snare mic. She raises one eyebrow—half relief, half reprimand—and flicks a drumstick toward the set list gaffer-taped to the monitor. Gaara inclines his head a degree, acknowledgement without apology, and sinks onto an amp crate to restring the low E that snapped in his bag. He works one-handed, the other rummaging through the bomber’s inside pocket until it finds a tiny pill case; he palms it closed again untouched. No one mentions it.

The air changes when Naruto finally stumbles through the main entrance, shouldering past a stack of empty kegs with a grin that’s all enamel and no warmth. He wears bruises like stage makeup—faint thumb-shadows blooming purple up his left tricep, a bite mark hiding under the collar of a ripped tank. Damp hair sticks to his temples, still smelling of industrial soap from whatever gas-station sink he baptized himself in on the walk over. He is fifteen minutes late and sixty percent swagger: arms flung wide, voice already cracking with forced cheer.

“What’d I miss? Please tell me the sound gremlins haven’t eaten the PA again.”

His joke ricochets off plywood walls and dies somewhere near the merch table. Shikamaru, perched on a monitor wedge, doesn’t smile; just exhales smoke in a ribbon that climbs the stage lights, eyes narrowing as he inventories every new bruise on Naruto’s skin, every tremor lurking behind that grin.

Gaara offers a single nod in Naruto’s direction, sunglasses still on, finger sliding the new string through a tuning post with surgeon steadiness. He plucks the open E—low, resonant, a pulse that trembles the beer-sticky floor. The note hovers, fades. He says nothing.

Sakura hops off the riser, wipes hands on ripped plaid, and plants herself in Naruto’s path. Her glare could sand paint. He tries a smaller smile, she doesn’t return it. Instead she hooks a thumb toward the mic stand with its tape scars and waits until his shoulders sag an inch—silent confession—and he trudges past her, muttering something that could be thanks or fuck-off depending on how the room bends the vowels.

From his crate, Gaara watches them with the distant curiosity of someone studying strangers at a bus stop. When Naruto reaches his pedalboard, Gaara’s lenses tilt: almost a question. Naruto gives the faintest shake of his head—don’t ask. Gaara nods once, like filing away a weather report: storm still incoming.

Shikamaru flicks ash into an empty Red Bull can, eyes following the non-conversation. He already knows why Naruto’s limping, why the smile doesn’t touch his eyes, why his hands tremble when they hover over tuning pegs. He knew before Naruto walked in. Still, he watches. Keeps inventory. It’s what he does.

On stage the amps crackle, feedback squeals a quick hum, and the house lights flare to full white for a heartbeat before dimming to bruised violet. In that glare everyone’s secrets show—bloodstains on Gaara’s pickup guard, sweat map on Naruto’s back, Sakura’s knuckles pink from cable burn, Shikamaru’s pocket vibrating with a new text he won’t read yet. Then the light softens, and the band returns to silhouettes: four figures pretending quiet is enough to hold the roof up.

Nobody mentions the blood.

Nobody asks about the bruise.

The only sound is Gaara’s newly strung E, thrumming like a fault line waiting for the first hit of the set to crack wide open.

House lights drop as if some god yanked the breaker, for two heartbeats the room is pitch, only the syrup-thick scent of spilled lager and the impatient rustle of bodies pressing closer to the barrier. Then a single flood snaps on—low, hell-red—bleeding across Sakura’s crash cymbal and turning Gaara’s bass strings into razor slashes of copper. Feedback yawps through the monitors, a wounded-animal keen that makes everyone flinch and grin at the same time, and Naruto steps to the mic like he’s arriving at execution day, fingers flexing over the battered Telecaster, tongue stud clicking against his teeth.

Sakura counts them in with four rimshots that crack like gunfire, and the band detonates.

Gaara drops an open-E that shudders the floorboards, Shikamaru, half-hidden behind the back-line, punches the gain on Naruto’s amp so the first chord hits hard enough to peel paint. The crowd reacts like nerve endings: a single forward surge, hands in the air, plastic cups flung upward to rain lukewarm beer that instantly mixes with the stage fog hissing from a machine wedged behind a monitor wedge. A strobe kicks in—dirty yellow pulses that freeze Sakura mid-strike, hair wild, mouth snarled over the count—ghost-image after ghost-image stacking until she looks like a broken film reel.

Naruto’s voice tears loose on the downbeat, sharper than he’s ever let it be, a raw scald that slices through the mix: “You keep my name on your teeth / like the taste won’t wash out—” It’s not the lyric they rehearsed; it’s something new, half-birthed in a notebook he burned hours ago, and the vowels crack on the edges, splintered glass riding on smoke. The front row feels it first—shock flickers across faces lit by strobes—then the whole pit absorbs the change, energy twisting tighter, a coil ready to snap.

Second verse, lights shift to gutter-blue. Naruto’s gaze skims the writhing bodies—pierced kids in thrifted leather, girls in platform boots, a couple making out against a pillar—until it snags on a silhouette near the bar: black hair, profile sharp, one hand steadying a cigarette just so. For half a breath the room tilts; every cymbal crash recedes, the smell of beer and sweat and rosin drops away, and all he feels is the phantom heat of last night’s breath on his throat. He hits the chorus late, voice dipping an octave into gravel, pouring everything he can’t say into a held note that claws at the rafters before ripping apart.

But when the strobe rolls again the figure is wrong—jaw too soft, posture unfamiliar, smoke curling from a disposable vape not a hand-rolled Seven Stars—and the floor slants back to normal, leaving Naruto hollowed. He plays like the ghost is still there anyway: strums harder, pick shredding strings, sweat throwing sparks off the tuning pegs each time he jerks the neck skyward. Sakura feels the tempo edge faster, meets his eyes across the kit, something like slow down flashing in the whites; he just bares teeth and leans harder into the mic.

By the bridge his voice is more howl than melody; Gaara fires eighth-note hammer-ons that rattle light fixtures, and Shikamaru coaxes a banshee wail from the lead line, volume knob wide open, pedalboard lights blinking like an ambulance parade. The pit responds in kind—bodies crash, elbows catch ribs, someone tumbles but pops up grinning, blood already drying at the corner of a mouth. A plastic cup arcs over Naruto’s head, shards when it hits a monitor, showering him in flat beer that evaporates instantly against the stage lamps’ furnace heat.

Final chorus: lights flare white, blinding. Naruto bends backward, throat exposed, cable yanked taut like it might strangle him if he leans one inch farther, and screams the last line until vocal cords rasp into silence. The band punches a closing hit—one unified, concussive chord—then lets every instrument ring. Feedback pours off the cab stacks, a single high note spiraling upward, drilling at the light grid. Naruto’s mic drops limp in its clip, he doubles over, palms on knees, chest sawing for air while sweat rains off his hair in silver threads.

In that suspended second everything smears: the fog, the spill of LEDs, the reek of ozone from over-worked transformers. Sakura’s snare still vibrates, Gaara’s fingers hover just off the fretboard, Shikamaru’s hand floats above the volume pot ready to kill the noise but not yet. Feedback screams. Naruto’s throat is nothing but ash and copper. The crowd roars back, the sound of a hundred unmet wants ricocheting off beer-sticky walls.

And that’s the last clear image before the lights snap to blackout—feedback swallowing itself, sweat cooling to salt, and smoke hanging where the music used to be, thick enough to blur the line between stage and pit, between memory and morning.

Chapter Text

Now playing: “Love It If We Made It” – The 1975

“Modernity has failed us, but I’d love it if we made it.”

Naruto wakes to the soft metallic rattle of blinds clacking in a breeze that smells like puddle water and fried batter from the street stalls two floors down. The ceiling above him is the wrong color— nicotine yellow instead of mildew white—mapped with rosettes of peeling paint that look like islands drifting on a toxic sea. He blinks, tongue thick with last night’s whiskey and motel soap, and for a moment can’t place where the bed ends and his body begins, every sheet seems to cling where dried sweat welded cloth to skin.

He rolls onto an elbow, elbow meets carpet instead of mattress, and pain lances through his temple like a snare hit pushed through the monitors too hot. Head splitting, throat raw, stomach teetering on the cliff-edge between nausea and emptiness. The room is an afterthought of furniture: mattress on the floor, a coffee table made from a door balanced on milk crates, Polaroids pinned crooked along one wall, faces he doesn’t know, mouths open mid-laugh, all red-eye and smudged eyeliner. A lava lamp bubbles cold in the corner, casting the space in bruise-purple pulses.

On the futon adjacent, someone has cocooned themselves in a thrift-store comforter printed with faded cartoon clouds. The only visible part of her is an arm dangling over the edge, a chipped black polish, tiny crescent-moon tattoo on her ring finger. From the galley kitchen, a voice hums an off-key melody that sits in his chest like déjà vu until he realises it’s the chorus of a demo he tracked three months ago and swore never to release. The girl—same one, presumably—lets the tune drift in soft half-notes while a kettle clacks crimson on an ancient gas burner. He tries to remember her name: something with a J? Maybe no name at all. They met after the show, in the crush by the merch table, she said the line about hollow rooms in his new song “felt like chewing glass.” He laughed, she licked tequila off a lime wedge, and everything after that blurred to the colour of stage lights and the taste of salt.

Naruto gropes for his phone, finds only a dead rectangle on the floorboards, screen spider-cracked anew. No charger in sight. His denim jacket is missing, instead he’s wearing an oversized flannel that smells like patchouli and borrowed cigarettes—definitely not his, definitely not hers. He wonders if Sasuke might notice the swap, then buries the thought under a cough that rasps like torn paper.

He pushes to his feet. World tilts. A pair of glitter-laced boots block the path to the kitchenette; he steps over them, crosses sticky linoleum to the window. The sash sticks halfway up, grating like an amp being dragged across concrete, but the city air that rolls in is wet and cold and welcome. A fire-escape ladder squeals under his weight as he climbs out, bare toes gripping rusted rungs still slick from dawn rain. He perches on the landing, forearms on knees, staring east where the skyline stacks in uneven LEDs office towers like dead monoliths, neon signs sputtering over ramen shops that never close, cranes frozen mid-gesture against a bruised-peach sunrise.

The kettle whistles inside, sharp as feedback. The girl fumbles, curses lightly—he catches only the last word, “shit,” soft and amused—and the hum of his unreleased chorus falters, resumes. Naruto drags a palm down his face, the stubble rasp a reminder he hasn’t slept properly in days, and exhales until lungs ache. The cold sinks into bruises on his ribs, into the crescents Sasuke’s nails left on his hip. He presses knuckles to the metal rail, ring click echoing down the fire-escape spine.

Lyrics bloom unbidden behind his eyes—ones he burned last week, page to flame, watching ink twist into smoke because the words were too raw, too much like begging. He mouths them now, taste ash-bitter but intact: “I keep finding your voice in rooms you never entered / I keep choking on the smoke you leave behind.” The morning swallows them, sirens rise somewhere near the river, gulls wheel overhead like trash-picking angels.

Inside, cupboard doors thud, spoon against mug. The nameless girl laughs at something on her phone, bright, unaffected. Naruto tries to recall the softness of her mouth, fails. All he can taste is the ghost of last night’s cigarette passed between his lips. He tilts his head, lets the breeze cut under flannel, and closes his eyes against sunrise glare he’s not ready to meet.

Behind him, kettle steam curls past the half-open window, carrying the warm malty scent of over-steeped tea. A door down the alley slams, a motor revs, somewhere a radio blares the weather—“chance of thunderstorms past midnight.” Naruto thinks: Of course. He thinks: I should call Sakura. He thinks: We scheduled a meeting at the warehouse in a few hours. His phone is dead. His head is splitting. His jacket—complete with setlist notes, unfinished lyrics, everything he is supposed to remember—is gone.

He digs in jeans for the last cigarette crushed flat, rolls it between fingers until tobacco crumbs fleck away in the wind, and sparks it with a borrowed lighter scuffed to silver. First drag scorches throat rawer than any lyric he could scream. Smoke drifts skyward, past the skeletal cranes, into cloud-clotted blue, and he watches until it breaks apart—like every promise he keeps making to himself about staying clean, staying clear, staying away.

Behind him the kettle stops screaming. The city doesn’t. In two hours he’ll stand under lights again, voice outpacing heartbeat, singing to faces that never know which ghosts he’s chasing. But for now there’s only rusted iron beneath his feet, tea steam on the wind, and a fire-escape view of a skyline that looks just cracked enough to bleed if dawn presses hard enough.

Now Playing: "Call It Fate, Call it Karma" – The Strokes

"Can I waste all your time here on the sidewalk?"

Iron-blue morning light seeps through the windows of the Crow’s Nest, diffused by years of grime until the beams land in soft, bruised rectangles across the concrete. Dust motes hover like stalled snowfall, caught in the low drone coming from the corner where Sasuke has coaxed a tangle of modular synths to life. Cables curl across the floor like veinwork: patch cords in faded neon, power strips scarred by cigarette burns, everything humming at a frequency you feel more in the teeth than the ears.

Sasuke sits barefoot on a metal stool, silk shirt from last night still unbuttoned, damp collar clinging to the back of his neck. He hasn’t slept—eyes red-rimmed, wrists sticky with dried stage fog residue and rain—but the machines obey him anyway. His left hand scrolls a rotary encoder, right hand ghosts across keys that emit a brittle, glass-edge arpeggio. It sounds like shards tumbling in slow motion, beautiful and vaguely threatening, exactly how he feels.

Behind him, Ino moves through the loft with an energy that arcs between frantic and feline. She wears an oversize men’s shirt—black satin, sleeves rolled once, hem grazing upper thigh—hair pinned in a loose topknot that sags as humidity creeps back in. The shirt belongs to nobody in particular. She steals fabrics the way other people steal attention. A garment rack wheezes under the weight of chiffon, PVC, denim distress dreams; she flicks through hangers with chipped nails, muttering color temperatures under her breath. On the scarred kitchen counter sits an open Pelican case: palettes, lip brushes, rolls of gaffer tape, a bag of camera gels in bruised purples and migraine yellows. Two memory cards glint in the weak light like teeth.

The kettle clicks off, forgotten; steam ghosts upward and disappears beneath an exposed beam. Pill bottles (his and hers) line the windowsill in a plastic skyline. One is already in Sasuke’s hand—amber cylinder, label half-peeled. He taps two benzos into his palm, slides one back, dry-swallows the other, and returns to the patch bay without comment. The synth responds by deepening its drone a semitone, as if it heard the swallow and adjusted the soundtrack of his bloodstream.

Ino’s phone vibrates against a stack of Lookbooks. She snatches it mid-buzz, traps it between shoulder and cheek while knotting a leather harness across a mannequin torso with the other hand. “Yeah, I’m alive,” she says in a voice bright as cut glass. Pause. She glances at Sasuke—gauges the tension by the set of his shoulders, the tremor in his left knee—and then steps deeper into the kitchenette, away from the machines’ ring.

Her bare heel crushes a stray guitar pick; she winces but keeps talking. “Tuesday shoot moved up—magazine wants neon-noir, lots of bounce, nothing cheap. I need fresh lighting rigs.” A pan clatters as she rests an elbow on the stove. “You still babysitting Naruto’s hangovers or can you sweet-talk Temari for me? Promise her new cymbals or dirty martinis, I don’t care.”

She listens—Shikamaru’s tone is too low to hear, but whatever he says makes her mouth curve half amusement, half threat. “Don’t act bored,” she purrs, stirring air with lacquered fingertips. “You owe me for that PR miracle last spring, remember?” Another pause, her eyes flit to Sasuke again. He hasn’t looked up; still sculpting sine waves into something that sounds like a nervous system shorting out. “Cool. Noon call sheet, Foxfire lot. Kiss.”

She ends the call without waiting for a goodbye, tosses the phone onto a stack of unpaid invoices, and rifles a protein bar from a shoebox labeled Cables / Maybe Food. She tears the wrapper, takes one obligatory bite, grimaces at the taste of engineered vanilla, and places the rest quietly on the edge of Sasuke’s synth table.

He pretends not to notice, but the corner of his mouth twitches— acknowledgment or irritation, impossible to tell. The arpeggio drops into silence, a new patch blooms beneath his fingers: low, heartbeat kicks filtered until they sound distant, underwater. Ino leans against the table’s corner, cigarette already balanced between lips, lighter spark rasping. She inhales, lips curling around smoke, and exhales through her nose toward the LED glow. They share air, not words.

Finally Sasuke speaks, gravel faint: “Photo set?”

“Cover plus eight-page spread,” she answers, tapping ash into an espresso cup scabbed with lipstick rings. “New designer wants ‘industrial intimacy.’ Think steel cables and chiffon. Temari’s hands on the strobe and Shikamaru tweaks grids. I shoot. You”—she nudges the protein bar an inch closer to his elbow—“stop forgetting food is not optional.”

He lifts one eyebrow. “You’re one to lecture.”

She shrugs, smoke rising around her like stage haze. “I’m hypocritical, not blind.” She glances at his wrist, where last night’s scratches peek beneath the cuff. “Eat. Or at least pretend so I don’t feel like your coroner.”

The synth patch splinters into static, Sasuke kills the volume with a flick. He takes the bar between forefinger and thumb, lays it beside the keyboard but doesn’t open it. His eyes flick up—dark, unslept, unreadable. For a breath the only sound is the building’s skeletal groan as the freight elevator lumbers somewhere below.

Ino meets the stare head-on, cigarette ember glowing like a small war between them. Then her phone buzzes again—confirmation from Shikamaru, presumably— and she smirks, blows smoke toward the ceiling. “Great. We’ve got lights.” She flicks ash, turns, and strides back to the garment rack, hips swaying with unconcern that fools no one.

Sasuke watches her a moment longer, then breaks the wrapper seal with a sigh that could be defeat or gratitude. He takes one mechanical bite, chews while powering the synth back up. Low-frequency pulses return, syncing with the throb in his temples, with the city’s distant sirens, with the hush of Ino murmuring color temperatures to herself as she arranges a row of body harnesses against the window’s drowned grey light.

Outside, rain begins again—soft at first, then harder, drumming the glass like a metronome that doesn’t care who keeps time. Inside, neither of them speaks. They just keep moving, side by side, inside the storm of each other’s damage—Ino wrapping tattered tulle around a mannequin, Sasuke feeding sine waves into reverb—until the loft feels less like a room and more like an agreement to keep breathing in the same weather.

The Crow’s Nest answers the elevator’s clatter with a low, structural groan—iron joists flexing, glass panes shivering dust—as Shikamaru shoulders the cage open and steps into the loft’s half-lit sprawl. He exhales smoke that’s mostly exasperation, heel scuffing the threshold so a thin fan of cigarette ash drifts across concrete already freckled by paint drips and glitter. Temari follows, suitcase thunking on the landing, desert-tan boots squeaking just once before she stills and takes in the room with a frown that’s equal parts amusement and fatigue.

Everything smells of ozone-warm circuitry and stale peach liquor. Synth pads throb from a corner where Sasuke sits hunched over patch cables—shirt still half open, headphones haloing the damp stripe of hair at his nape. Ino has transformed the center of the floor into a chaotic atelier: harnesses dangling from a rolling rack like captured mythic beasts, chiffon puddled across a battered sofa, ring-lights leaned against a subwoofer as if deciding whether to commit to the aesthetic. Her cigarette glows fox-orange beside an open laptop that cycles references—warehouse alleys shot in fever-green gels, models drowning in ultra-violet haze.

Shikamaru pinches his joint dead between finger and thumb before Temari can sniff and lecture. “Mini invasion,” he calls toward the studio corner, voice a lazy slide. “Try not to stab us with reverb.”

Sasuke’s only acknowledgment is a single slider drop that quiets the drone to a steady subterranean pulse. He doesn’t turn.

Ino pops up from behind a dress form, bleach-blonde bun askew, satin shirttail flashing thigh. “You made it,” she sings—too bright, too sharp—then clocks the suitcase. “And you brought accessory number one.” She shoots Temari a grin. “Good to see you, sandstorm.”

Temari raises two fingers in a half-salute. “Your text said ‘emergency lighting’ and ‘free booze.’ I assumed that translated to ‘Shikamaru’s place, coffee first.’ But here works.” She drops the wheeled bag, its plastic shell spider-webs another crack.

Shikamaru drifts toward a toppled barstool, rights it with his boot, lands on it backward, forearms folded over the seat-back. “She needs you to make neon look like foreplay. Wednesday shoot got bumped to tomorrow.”

Temari whistles. “Quick turnaround. Gear?”

“Not enough,” Ino answers, shoving a bundle of backdrop fabric into Temari’s arms—its texture somewhere between latex and morning fog. “I have two Nanlites, one broken softbox, gels in cruel colors, and Sasuke’s spare fogger if he’ll let us steal it.”

Sasuke’s fingers pause on the keyboard; he flicks a glance over one shoulder, eyes smoky-rimmed. “It’s not calibrated for standing sets. Overheats.”

“Everything in this city overheats,” Temari mutters, shrugging into the backdrop to gauge weight. “I can baby it. I’ll need stingers and a dimmer rack.”

“No problem,” Shikamaru says, though everyone hears the implied troublesome. He scratches his scalp, ponytail loosening like a question mark. “We’re tagging along to Naruto’s warehouse session anyway. Yamato’s place has three dimmer packs and more extension cords than sense.”

Ino perks, eyes shining through smoke. “Perfect. Lighting test, then straight into rehearsal. Two birds, one dumpster fire.”

Temari flicks a takeout soy-sauce packet off the couch before sitting. “Speaking of fires, Naruto sober enough to record?”

Shikamaru shrugs. “Sakura’s on babysit detail. Gaara’s there too. Worst case? They get one usable vocal before he implodes.”

Ino’s smirk falters for a half-breath—Sakura’s name a quiet bruise in the air—but she reboots, crossing to Sasuke, plucking the headphone cup off one ear. “You coming, ghost boy?”

He slides the ear back into place. “Returning Yamato’s patch cables. After that, depends.”

Ino taps his shoulder—a soft double-knock that means eat later. “Fine. But if you bail, at least send the fogger.” She brushes invisible lint from his collar and saunters away, leaving the faint smell of cedar perfume in her wake.

Temari watches the exchange, reads it faster than most. “So, no exclusivity clause, huh?” she drawls at Shikamaru.

Shikamaru exhales a tired laugh. “In this group? Exclusivity’s a myth. Staying alive is the only rule.”

“Same old.” Temari stands, flips open her suitcase: coils of cable, grip tape, a battered pelican with strobe bulbs. “All right. Fifteen minutes to rig what I can here, then you two lug this carnival to the warehouse.”

“Carnival’s apt,” Ino says, rifling through gels. She hands Temari a roll the color of arterial blood. “We’re going full circus. I want the model drowning in neon like she’s confessing under a police siren.”

Sasuke’s synth swells, bass fluttering hearts. He half turns, flicks ash from the protein-bar wrapper he finally finished,and offers no protest as Ino tugs the fog machine’s power cable from his rack. Their fingers brush—static snap, quick inhale—and then she’s back at her rack, calling light ratios and shutter speeds.

Shikamaru flicks the joint butt into an empty coffee cup, wipes charcoal-smoke from his thumb, and mutters to no one, “Someone’s gotta keep the idiot alive,” but his eyes settle on Sasuke.

Temari hoists the fogger. “Then let’s move before the idiot burns daylight. Warehouse in forty?”

“Thirty,” Ino corrects, slinging a harness over her shoulder like a bandolier. She reaches for Temari’s sleeve, nails bright against worn cotton. “Thank you.”

Temari smirks. “Pay me with good stuff.”

The freight elevator complains open again, swallowing fogger, suitcase, coil after coil of cable as they load out. Sasuke stays on the stool, synth murmuring beneath his hands—eyes on the door until it rattles shut. Only then does he reach for the cable Ino left dangling from the rack, wraps it tight, and tucks it into his coat pocket like a promise he hasn’t decided whether to keep.

The freight elevator slams open on the third floor of Red Moon’s Annex, disgorging a coil of cable first—Shikamaru’s—followed by the fog machine in Temari’s grip and Ino’s rolling garment rack wobbling on one bent caster. The hallway outside Studio B is a gutted textile mill: brick flaking rust, windows bricked in with plex that shivers each time the Metro roars under the river. Sodium lights hiss overhead in gutter-orange, roasting the lingering tang of floor varnish and aerosol lacquer into something that tastes like hot pennies at the back of the throat.

Inside Studio B, Yamato has already tuned the room to near-silence. Thick baffles hang from chain winches, every surface underfoot is carpet scrap stapled onto plywood. The only glow comes from a string of Christmas lights thumb-tacked to the console—Kakashi’s habit, a joke about “holy nights” that no intern’s removed. Yamato stands barefoot at the SSL board, hair still damp from his dawn run, nodding along to a tempo only the LED meters know. He looks up when the newcomers clatter in, expression flicking from serene to triage in a heartbeat.

Sakura is crouched by the drum kit in the live room, tightening a lug with hands that tremble from three coffees and zero food. Her hoodie is speckled with rain and blood-brown rust from the fire escape stairs she took two at a time. Gaara squats nearby like a red-haired gargoyle, sunglasses still on, bass across his lap. He fingers a muted fifth over and over, letting the note sink into the damp insulation. No one’s spoken for five minutes. The air is surgical—the hush before the first incision.

The crash of Temari’s fogger hitting the ISO-booth floor ruptures that peace. “Delivery,” she announces, chewing bubble gum with the calm of someone who slept on an overnight bus and liked it. Steam from her breath halos under cold HVAC draft. Ino barrels after, rack jammed with neon mesh and chainmail lingerie squealing across rough concrete, the hangers chiming like wind bells at a funeral. Shikamaru follows, hood up, dragging the last of a cigarette and a coil of DMX pinned under one arm.

Yamato’s voice slices through. “Nice of Red Moon’s circus to visit.” He takes the return cable Sasuke produces—black Mogami, meticulously coiled, smelling faintly of his cologne and burnt ozone. Sasuke offers no apology for lateness, just a curt incline of chin before slipping past the console to plug a power brick into the modular rack like he owns oxygen.

Ino drops to her knees beside Sakura. “Fashion emergency: need the kit an inch left, cymbals reflect like shit in violet gel.”

Sakura side-eyes her but obliges, dragging the kick drum with a grunt that sounds like an insult. Sweat beads at her temples, Ino reaches to tuck a stray pink strand behind Sakura’s ear, then thinks better, dusts rust from her fingertips onto her own thigh. Temari has already yanked a Nanlite from its case, popping barn doors with a metallic clack that makes Naruto, hunched over a pedalboard in the corner, look up like a startled stray.

Naruto’s eyes are too bright—hangover adrenaline or something powdered, nobody asks. His hoodie’s missing its zipper, bruises bloom like storm clouds along his jaw. When Ino’s rack screeches past him he flinches, but his grin stabs through anyway. “Morning, apocalypse crew.”

Shikamaru drops the DMX at his feet, flicks ashes into an empty Red Bull can. “Plug in before you burn out.”

Sasuke kills the reverb tail from his synth with one tap. The silence that sprawls after feels personal. He doesn’t look at Naruto, but Naruto’s gaze drags across Sasuke’s ribs—the silk shirt now buttoned, hiding last night’s fingerprints—and something raw flickers behind the smirk.

Kakashi slides in then, half mask, half thrill, clutching two flat whites like peace treaties. “House rule,” he says, handing one to Yamato. “No one dies before the red light goes on.” He claps Sasuke’s shoulder, nods to Ino—eyes linger a tick too long on Itachi entering behind her.

He’s as silent as brake dust, hair in a low tie, carrying a pelican of spare pre-amps and a takeout bag that smells of miso soup and rice crackers. Ino’s mouth opens, but instead of greeting she just lifts a brow. He answers by setting the bag on the console beside her gels. “Eat first, design later,” he murmurs. She rolls her eyes, but the corners of her lips dent in something almost like gratitude. Temari watches the exchange, index finger tapping a rhythm on the Nanlite yoke.

Yamato flips the TALKBACK. “Drums ready?” Sakura snaps a stick against the rim—sharp, perfect. “Bass?” Gaara’s low D rattles coffee in its cups. “Guitar?” Naruto stomps a fuzz pedal, the room caves in then recoils. Sasuke layers a sepulchral pad on top, and even Ino stops threading gels to listen: the chord sounds like streetlamps crying.

Kakashi dims the Christmas lights. Temari cues fog, a thin snake of mist slithers off the floor, curling around Gaara’s boots. Red LEDs ignite above the studio door. RECORD. The first loose take begins—no click, just heartbeats.

Naruto sings too soft at first. Sakura kicks him back into his lungs, Sasuke’s pad wails, thick with reverb that tastes like winter metal. Ino crouches by her monitor, smoke curling from her cigarette, eyes shining glassy. Itachi stands behind her, hand on her shoulder—but casual, easy, as if reminding her of gravity.

Halfway through, Naruto flubs a verse, laugh-curses, tries again. No one stops. Yamato is nodding, eyes closed, fingers ghosting faders. Shikamaru smokes the filter to paper, exhales toward the overheads, then kills the butt against his boot heel.

By the outro Sakura’s toms boom like distant ordnance. Temari tilts the Nanlite up, casting shadows that make everyone look rubbed in wildfire. Naruto’s last note tears, dies. Feedback takes its place—a keening infant wail. Kakashi hits spacebar. Silence sucker-punches the room.

Fog swirls, dissipates. The red LED goes dark. No one speaks.

Coffee steams between Yamato’s fingers, Sasuke unplugs a patch cord with surgical exactness. Naruto’s chest heaves, sweat dripping from his chin onto pickguard plastic. Ino stands, jaw flexing, takes the whole broth container from Itachi’s bag, sips without the spoon. Temari wipes condensation off the Nanlite lens with her sleeve, evaluating the last shot in her head.

Outside, freight trains groan across river bridges, echoing the drum resonance still peeling off the walls. Inside, everybody breathes the same damp air but in different rhythms, a roomful of lungs trying not to sync because syncing would acknowledge something none of them are ready to name—yet.

Phones have an uncanny knack for shattering sacred after-silences, and the one buzzing now—an ancient, spider-webbed Samsung abandoned on a side table—vibrates so violently it rattles an empty sake cup, sending thin ripples of miso broth across the console’s steel lip just as Yamato exhales the last of his approval and Sakura wipes drying sweat from her clavicle, the screen flashes KIBA: GET YOUR SCRAP METAL HEARTS UNDER THE BYPASS—POP-UP IN THIRTY—FREE TAB IF YOU CAN STILL WALK.

Naruto reads it first, shoulders still heaving from the take, and a grin cleaves his exhaustion clean in half—teeth white under studio LEDs—as he turns to the room with that manic spark crackling in eyes bloodshot from sleeplessness. Temari clocks the glint and, before anyone voices doubt, she pops her gum so loud the sound ricochets off the baffling, slaps Gaara’s shoulder with the flat of her palm, and declares, “Aftercare means smoke machines and bass drops—doctor’s orders.”

Shikamaru sighs a single plume of smoke that seems to rise from his bones rather than the crooked cigarette now ash-stubbed between two fingers, mutters a halfhearted “troublesome” to nobody in particular, yet has already begun coiling the last instrument cable with numb precision, because the gap between good sense and peer pressure has always been about five millimetres in this circle.

Sakura’s mouth shapes the beginnings of No—a thin slash of disapproval—but the word never finds oxygen. Naruto catches her eye, brittle smile warring with sagging shoulders, and in that moment she calculates blood-sugar levels, dehydration risk, and the impossibility of leaving him unsupervised in a city that sells whiskey by the litre at corner kiosks and decides the only controllable variable is proximity, so she slings her damp hoodie over one drum case and grinds out a tight, surgeon-steady “Fine, but I’m holding the keys.”

Ino, who has spent the last minute wiping stray fog condensation off her knee-high vinyls, swivels toward the back of the control room where Itachi lingers in half-shadow, hands pocketed, expression unreadable under hair that’s come loose from its tie. She closes the distance in three hip-sways of satin shirttail and, without prelude, slides both palms up the lapels of his coat, fingers kneading just hard enough that knuckles whiten against black fabric, nails scraping the subtle bass-line of his heartbeat.

“It’ll take ninety minutes, an hour tops,” she lies, voice sugared smoke, chin tipping so her mouth nearly grazes the shell of his ear, “and if the lighting’s garbage I need you—only you, genius—to tell me why the shadows won’t behave.”

Itachi’s answer is first a breath—inward, reluctant, tasting of incense and stale coffee—then a slow exhale that ghosts across her cheek. His hands rise, hovering as if unsure whether to push her away or draw her closer, finally settling on the small of her back, thumb tapping once against vertebrae in a silent code she’s learned means I see you.

“You eat first,” he says, voice quiet enough that it folds into the hum of the power amps, and with his free hand he plucks the protein bar wrapper off the floor, presses it into her palm before closing her fingers around it like a secret.

Ino rolls her eyes, but she bites the bar, chews, swallows. Transaction complete.

Across the console, Sasuke snaps his patch cords free, coils them with militant exactness—pretending every motion is about returning borrowed gear, not about measuring the distance between Naruto’s thrumming presence and his own damp isolation, he announces to Yamato, “I’ll drop these by your office,” a line that means I’m coming whether anyone invites me or not, and Yamato just nods, eyes already scanning dB meters for signs of clipping, because producers know better than to referee heartbeats.

The studio devolves into soft chaos: stands clatter into cases, fog machine sloshes as Temari yanks the fluid tank, Gaara shoulders his bass coffin like it weighs nothing and pads to the freight elevator without a word, Shikamaru herds cables into a milk crate while Sakura double-checks the first-aid kit shoved into her backpack, and Naruto is everywhere at once—helping, hindering, half-laughing, half-limping—energy sparking like exposed wire.

Outside, night has deepened into a noir palette of sodium streetlamps and rain-gloss asphalt. They spill from the elevator into this glow, breaths puffing white as they load gear into Kakashi’s dented panel van—Ino’s garments hung from the roof cage, Temari’s lights strapped beside cases, Sasuke’s modular bag wedged between Gaara’s bass and a crate of miscellaneous cables labeled DON’T TOUCH – S in Sakura’s furious marker.

When the van finally rattles away—Naruto riding shotgun, window down, rain needle-kissing his face, Sakura at the wheel muttering GPS coordinates—Itachi and Ino follow on foot, umbrellas forgotten, water beading on satin and silk alike while Shikamaru and Temari trail behind, sharing a cigarette that’s mostly filter, Shikamaru exhaling a curling thought: “He only invited us because first round’s free.” Temari shoulder-checks him gently, gum popping. “And because we’re the best disaster audience money can’t buy.”

Under the bypass the city changes dialect: pillars tagged in ultraviolet graffiti rise like ruined cathedrals, the underbelly of the expressway throbs with sub-bass so deep it rattles fillings, and every puddle mirrors strobe flashes in toxic pink; Kiba’s pop-up rave beats at the concrete, a living organ pumping sweat, vape fumes, and cheap glitter into the night.

The van’s headlights sweep the crowd—pierced mouths, mesh dresses, bare chests painted in phosphor—before Sakura kills the engine; a roar leaks from the corrugated warehouse door each time someone slips in or out, wet steam pouring like the building is exhaling fever.

Naruto is first to hop out, sneakers skidding through rainbow oil slick, hoodie flapping like a tattered flag; he throws both arms wide, grin feral in the neon bleed, and shouts to no one, everyone: “Let’s make new mistakes!”

Gaara shoulders past, silent sentinel. Sakura locks the doors, fingers already checking for Narcan in her pocket. Temari swings the lights case to her hip, eyes glittering. Shikamaru sighs but his pulse taps fast in his throat. Ino slips her hand into Itachi’s coat pocket, nails tapping that back-of-vertebrae code again, and for once he doesn’t move away.

The warehouse door yawns open on a blast of sound—guttural bass, glass-shatter hi-hats, a scream of synth—and the group steps into the throbbing dark as a single, fractured constellation, swallowed by smoke and strobe before any of them can decide whether tonight is about forgetting or remembering.

And outside, rain keeps falling, unbothered, washing ghost notes off the loading dock and into the storm drains where last.

Chapter Text

Now Playing: “People = Shit” – Slipknot

“Too fucked to beg and not afraid to care.”

00:37 a.m. under the bypass, and the venue has shed its daylight desolation to become a living organism of fog and pulse, every concrete pillar a vertebra, every sweat-slick body a blood cell pushed along by the chest-caving bass that Kiba is pumping from a wobbling DIY riser of milk crates and road cases; the speakers, wrapped in chain-link and hazard tape, spit sub-frequencies thick enough to make the puddles on the cracked floor tremble like anxious mercury, and each strobe burst—fuchsia, poison-lime, bruise-violet—freezes four hundred dancers in exorcism poses before darkness reclaims their limbs and lets the rhythm swallow them whole again.

Sakura threads through that strobe jungle like a medic in a war zone, ponytail damp, hoodie sleeves shoved past bruised elbows, counting exits—loading dock left, fire door right, roll-up gate wedged halfway by a toppled trash barrel—and every time the lights flash she mentally tags hazards: an exposed rebar hook at shoulder height, a slick patch of leaked fog fluid near the bar, the just-visible silhouette of Kiba perched above the decks, shirtless, coke-glitter shimmering across his collarbones as he hammers the cross-fader and howls something unintelligible into a dead mic.

Gaara, impervious, has folded himself into the negative space beside the nearest pillar, bass flight case serving as throne and emotional barricade; one knee bounces micro-millimetres to the kick drum, mirrored lenses of his cheap sunglasses reflecting a kaleidoscope of jittery laser dots, fingers tracing an invisible fret pattern on his thigh whenever the bassline dips low enough to mimic the open D he loves, his silence a kind of gravity field that keeps more enthusiastic dancers from colliding with him even when the crowd surges.

Above, Temari hangs thirty feet up on a corroded catwalk, wrench between teeth, ponytail whipping sweat as she secures a salvaged theatre strobe with a length of climbing webbing, every flash catching the copper of her eyes and the smear of black grease on her cheek—then yanking the DMX lead Shikamaru tossed her earlier. She slaps the fixture, laughs when it crackles to chaotic life, and the sudden flood of pale-green light slices through the fog like a surgical blade opening a new pocket of air on the dance floor.

Shikamaru himself is draped lazy-boned across that same catwalk rail, one knee hooked, one Doc-clad foot dangling over nothing, ghosting a thin joint he rolled from the tail end of his stash, exhaling up so the smoke disappears into the hungry exhaust fan overhead; every so often he tilts his head to check on Temari’s rigging or to scan the sea of bodies for Naruto’s mop of blond hair, a glassy curiosity more than concern, the flicker of paternal habit he pretends not to have.

Near center bar, Naruto already glows with that too-bright sheen that means the pills have stung him awake quicker than the booze could drag him under; his hoodie is half-unzipped, dog tags cold against his sternum, and he keeps craning his neck over shoulders and sequined jackets, searching the flux of silhouettes for one particular negative space that feels like absence more than presence—Sasuke—but every time the strobe hits he catches only strangers’ faces melting into prismatic smear before darkness blinks again.

Ino is a comet’s tail of laughter and perfume, orbiting the dance floor in mesh and rhinestone straps, fingers grazing mouths and biceps as she moves, occasionally spinning back toward the perimeter where Itachi stands just outside the splash radius of sweat and laser, black coat collar up, hands in pockets. He doesn’t pull her in, doesn’t push her away, just tracks her with eyes the colour of burnt incense, and when she stops to blow him a kiss he merely inclines his head, a tilt carrying more gravity than most embraces.

And Sasuke—Sasuke keeps to the liminal edge by the bathrooms, half-lit by a flicker bulb, cigarette perched behind ear, shirtfront open far enough to show the new bruises blooming across his ribs like midnight roses. He watches Naruto’s frantic scan with something unreadable bordering on tender cruelty, lifts the unsnorted line on his phone screen in a silent toast, and slips through the graffiti-tagged doorway into tiled darkness just as the next bass drop hits, leaving the strobe to flash on an empty spot where his shadow used to lean, a negative imprint that drags Naruto’s gaze like a magnet toward the corridor humming with possibility and ruin.

1:13 a.m. and the bathroom corridor is a throat of sour air and flicker-white fluorescence, a narrow concrete artery funnelling steam from overworked fog machines into the tiled bowels of the warehouse, every step echoes wetly, soles peeling from puddles where condensation drips in slow metronomic taps from exposed pipes above, and the walls are skinned in overlapping graffiti—fluorescent tags, lipstick phone numbers, jagged Sharpie confessions—half of them scrawled by hands too wired or too broken to bother with legibility.

Sasuke slides along that grime-slick wall with the casual glide of a shark among reef fish, shoulder brushing chipped paint that flakes off like dandruff, until a bouncer-sized raver in PVC steps aside to let him reach the tiny alcove between the last women’s stall and the out-of-order urinal where three bodies huddle like acolytes worshipping at the church of self-annihilation. One of them—lank hair, nose ring crusted with blood—tilts a phone screen up, the cracked glass glittering beneath the strip-light, its shattered surface reflecting three immaculate rails spaced with the kind of symmetry only desperation measures: two already ghosted into the air, one still perfect, one half-razored, one barely disturbed.

The lank-hair nods, a wordless benediction, and Sasuke takes the device with surgeon fingers, the faint tremor betraying that the benzos swallowed hours ago are losing their quieting grip. The phone’s fractured reflection shows him in a spider-web of lines—cheekbones rendered in shards, eyes pupils huge and hungry— a reminder that control is a mirror you can smash but never quite sweep clean. He inhales through one nostril, sharp as a broken bottle’s edge, the first line evaporating up the bridge of his nose with a cold burn that spike-zips down his spine and blooms behind his eyes like flashbang poppies. Nothing, not even the ghost of euphoria, just thin chemical clarity that tastes faintly of acetone and regrets left too near an open flame.

Control, he thinks—control is rationing oblivion, measuring the crumble of a gram against the weight of tomorrow’s shame, choosing to feel nothing when feeling everything would be easier. He tips the screen, eyes the second line— longer, promising numbness or headache— deliberates the mathematics of restraint for almost a full heartbeat, then bows again, left nostril this time, drawing the powder with slower deliberation, as though dragging a bow across a single violin string: the noise is internal, static rasp behind the sinuses, heartbeat stuttering, but still no rush, no warmth, only a sharpening of edges until the corridor’s grime becomes high-definition and he can read the smallest scrawl on the stall door I LOST GOD IN THIS TOILET—FINDERS KEEPERS.

His phone buzzes in his left pocket, once, twice, three staccato pleas that rattle through the bones of his hip. He knows without looking: Naruto → where are you? Naruto → hey, you here? Naruto → need you. He exhales, powder-dusting the back of his throat bitter and metallic, wipes the residue from his upper lip with the pad of a thumb already grey with ash from an earlier cigarette, then taps the screen awake just long enough for blue notification glow to confirm what he already feels vibrating under skin. Three dots waiting, another message forming.

Thumb slides: Do Not Disturb. Buzz dies instantly, as though nerves have been cut. He locks the screen, smears remaining residue into the graffiti-marred drywall, and hands the cracked phone back to its shakier owner, who is too busy jaw-grinding to thank him. The corridor tilts a fraction—lights flick once, twice—and Sasuke realises clarity is not silence but a louder version of the same noise; the bass from the main room hammers through cinder block, syncing with the pulse at his temple, and each thud seems to say you left him alone you left him alone you left him alone until the mantra becomes crowd-chant.

He steps away, boots sliding on slick tile, and the bathroom door at the corridor’s far end swings open right then—white light spilling like stage glare, sweat-fog rolling out in a humid wave—and in that framed rectangle stands Naruto, hoodie askew, eyes glassy coins under the strobe that bleeds from the dance floor behind him. Need shines off him like neon sweat: wild, searching, desperate, and it locks onto Sasuke with gravitational inevitability.

Sasuke’s heart lifts an inch then drops like lead—he tastes the chemical bitterness again, wonders if even cocaine counts as feeling—and without thinking crushes the leftover shards of powder on his gums where they dissolve into electric numb. He straightens the lapel of his silk shirt, wipes a final speck from the corner of his nostril, and walks toward the bathroom door as Naruto staggers forward, collision-path inevitable, the air between them ripe with bleach, stale vodka, and every apology neither knows how to voice.

The stall door bangs inward hard enough to rebound on its hinges, and the narrow cubicle fills with two bodies and not nearly enough oxygen. Tiles sweat; the metal divider trembles under the sub-bass throb leaking from the dance floor. Sasuke has just finished wiping coke dust from his nostril—thumb still smudged white—when Naruto careens in, shoulders first, hood half off, pupils so wide they eat the dim light.

For a heartbeat they simply stare: Sasuke, caught mid-sin, spine pressed to graffiti-carved door; Naruto, chest heaving, sweat and vape haze clinging to the torn collar of his hoodie. The stall smells of industrial bleach, stale piss, and someone’s blood-orange vape cloud that refuses to dissipate. Fluorescent tubes overhead strobe irregularly, turning every breath into slow-motion flash photography.

Naruto’s voice comes out as gravel. “Why’d you run?”

Sasuke searches for something dismissive, something surgical, but all he finds is the ache under his sternum and the cocaine’s metallic echo coating his teeth, so instead he murmurs, low enough to be lost under bass, “Thought you’d be busy.”

Volleys like that used to buy them time. Tonight they only ignite. Naruto crowds closer, fingers curling in the sheen of Sasuke’s unbuttoned shirt, yanking until pearl snaps scatter against the bowl lid and clatter to the floor like panicked insects. Their mouths crash—wet, brutal, teeth scraping—Naruto tasting the ghost of powder on Sasuke’s tongue, Sasuke tasting peach-rot liquor and whatever pill Naruto dissolved on it an hour ago. Kiss turns to bite, bite to breathless drag. The door behind Sasuke rattles against the latch from the force, hinges protesting like a hi-hat caught in feedback.

Clothes lose arguments. Sasuke’s shirt hangs from one wrist like a broken promise; Naruto’s hoodie bunches at elbows, baring a landscape of fresh bruises that bloom violet under the flicker-light. Hands map: Naruto’s nails rake the healed ink along Sasuke’s ribs. Sasuke’s palm slams against cool tile beside Naruto’s head, the other slipping under waistband elastic with rough precision.

Outside, a queue forms—a girl laughing, someone banging on the adjacent stall—every knock reverberates through thin metal, but the world has shrunk to five by three feet and the roar of blood in their ears. Bass from Kiba’s set hammers the plumbing, making the water in the bowl ripple in syncopation with Naruto’s heartbeat. Inside this pressure cooker Sasuke whispers, voice cracking like a vinyl skip, “You should hate me,” the confession half-strangled by shame and need.

Naruto’s answer is a growl against his pulse: “Shut up.” He punctuates it with a harder kiss, hips arching, words ground between teeth. Sasuke’s breath hitches, a soft curse swallowed by Naruto’s mouth. Sweat drips off Sasuke’s fringe onto Naruto’s tongue; bleach sting rides the back of their throats. Door rattles again—someone shouts to hurry the hell up—but the demand dissolves into the cavernous drop of the next track and another roll of strobe light bleeding through the ceiling vent.

They move in frantic sync—Sasuke’s belt buckle clanging, Naruto’s rings clacking tile—until the tension coils too tight to hold. Bodies jerk, muscles lock, and the stall fills with the low, guttural sounds muffled against skin. For a suspended second there is only breath: hot, animal, fogging the narrow gap of air between their mouths. Naruto’s head thuds back to the tiled wall; Sasuke’s forehead rests in the crook of his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut as coke rattle his rib cage.

Somewhere beyond the partition a toilet flushes; laughter erupts, feet shuffle away. The party’s pulse surges louder, reminding them the door has no lock worth trusting. Naruto’s hands, still shaking, smooth sweat-wet hair from Sasuke’s brow, a gesture too gentle for the filth of the stall. Sasuke catches the wrist, holds it—brief, possessive—before stepping back, pulling his shirt up over bare shoulders with trembling fingers.

Buttons gone, he knots the tails at his waist. Naruto tugs hoodie down, zips most of the way, wiping his mouth with the back of one bruised hand. In the harsh light they are twin wrecks gawking at each other’s cracks, heartbeat still syncing to the muffled four-on-the-floor outside.

Without meeting eyes, Sasuke reaches for the latch. “We should—”

Naruto cuts him off with a rough peck to the jaw—soft apology shaped like defiance—then twists the knob himself. The door swings open to the corridor’s humid glare. Coke-smeared stranger in line glares; Naruto breezes past, grin already sharpening, Sasuke a step behind, wiping condensation off his phone screen where three new texts from Sakura glow like siren lights.

They vanish into the strobe thunder—secret stuck to their skin like dried salt—while bleach, vape-sugar, and the echo of slammed hinges linger behind, a confession locked in cracked tiles and ghost bass.

The corridor is a busted artery of fluorescent glare and sour humidity, bodies jammed in a shuffling queue that parts for Naruto’s momentum the way water parts for a falling stone; he shoulders past a glitter-dusted rave kid, sidesteps a couple pressing against cracked tiles, ignores a shouted “watch it, blondie!”—heat shimmering off him like fumes off asphalt—while Sasuke ghosts in his wake, shirt knotted at waist, pupils broad and glassy, breathing in shallow drags that taste of bleach, coke drip, and the after-sting of Naruto still slick on his tongue.

Past the stalls the hallway kinks left, dead-ends into a maintenance door stencilled ELECTRICAL—NO ENTRY where the latch hangs busted from too many illicit break-ins; Naruto palms it open with a grunt, hinges screeching over bass, and yanks Sasuke inside before air from the dance floor can chase them—door slams, darkness falls—and for a heartbeat the only light is the phone glow still trembling in Sasuke’s fist.

Naruto snatches the phone, kills the notifications with a thumb press so hard the handset squeaks, then pockets it in Sasuke’s own shirt like a dare, whispering, “No one else gets us right now.” The room is coffin-small, walls bare concrete sweating condensation, conduits snaking overhead, the hum of transformers bleeding into the music’s distant thump so the whole space vibrates like a muffled speaker cab. It smells of wet plaster, mold, and the coppery ghost of burned wiring—an afterthought of a room no one lingers in unless they need to hide or sin or both.

Sasuke takes a breath meant to steady himself but the coke has sharpened every nerve to wire; his shoulders jitter under the silk where it sticks to damp skin, eyes tracking the silhouette of Naruto pacing back to him through strobe slivers leaking under the door. A single work light dangles above an open breaker box. Naruto flicks it on, sodium glare splashing across their wrecked clothes, painting bruises ochre, sweat silver.

“Still busy?” Naruto murmurs, voice raw ribboned with laughter and something darker, backing Sasuke against the cinder-block wall until knock-off pearl buttons dig into spine. his palms land on either side of Sasuke’s head, rings clacking cement. Sasuke tilts his jaw, mouth parted as though words might surface, but what breaks free is not language—just a shaky exhale that sounds suspiciously like want. The drug wants friction, wants heat, wants anything louder than blood in the ears, and Naruto is all heat, crowd-noise and cheap deodorant and the nicotine bite of recent panic.

Hands rake down Sasuke’s sides, thumbs skating the grooves of ribs, possessive as cuffs. Sasuke’s nails catch in Naruto’s hair, drag scalp-deep till the blond breathes a curse into his throat and bites back harder. Lights overhead flicker as if the building’s pulse skips, and Sasuke feels internal gears slip same moment—the coke-rush cresting into raw hunger that eats patience whole. He grabs Naruto’s hips, yanks him close, belt buckles grind a spark, the wall bangs once from the collision, dust motes shaking loose like silent applause.

Naruto laughs low, a noise bruised with affection and triumph, then slides a thigh between Sasuke’s legs, pressing until fabric friction bites. “Needy,” he says, half-tease, half-reverence. Sasuke’s reply is a swallow of air, then, “Shut up and touch me,” voiced like a prayer gone rotten.

They kiss again—sloppier, deeper, tongues tasting battery acid and leftover beer foam—before Naruto turns him bodily, chest to concrete, hand flat between shoulder blades in blunt command. Sasuke goes easy, coke making muscles fizz; he braces forearms on freezing block, breath fogging grey, hears zipper rasp, feels fingers slick with sweat trace down the curve of spine to the knot of his shirt tails, jerk it free. Metal buckle clacks floor, denim skims thighs, his own hands fumble at Naruto’s waistband, desperation mirroring desperation, but Naruto pins one wrist against stone, shoves a knee to spread stance, murmuring, “Let me.”

Naruto’s palm presses flat to Sasuke’s sternum, knuckles whitening as he feels the flutter in the bone cage beneath—shallow, clipped, like a trapped sparrow fighting to escape.  He holds it there, just breath and heartbeat between skin and cloth, until the drum of Sasuke’s pulse begins syncing with the bass bleeding from the floor above.  His thumb strokes once, slow, over the salt-slick plane of a collarbone, collecting the sweat bead forming there and smearing it in a short, possessive line toward the hollow of Sasuke’s throat.

Sasuke’s eyes flutter shut on contact, lashes trembling in the low sodium glow, and Naruto watches the lashes quiver as if they’re tiny antennae registering every tremor of need.  He leans in, teeth hovering a hair’s breadth from that sweat-sheened collar, inhales the mingled scents of coke throat, stale citrus vape, and the darker iron note of nightclub grime.  When he finally closes the gap, he does it with the flat warmth of his tongue—one slow, languid stroke from collarbone to pulse point, tasting mineral and heat—then closes his mouth over the same path, nursing a bruise into the skin until a half-stifled hiss spills between Sasuke’s teeth.

Sasuke’s hand slides to Naruto’s nape, fingertips burrowing into sweat-damp blond hair, tugging just enough to tilt his face up. The other wanders, deliberate, across Naruto’s waistband, thumb tracing the metal of a belt stud, body rocking once—barely—to wordlessly command proximity.  They find each other’s gaze again, pupils blown, mouths parted enough that breaths mingle, and for a moment there is no music, no party, no memory—only the microscopic distance where wanting teeters into taking.

Naruto moves first—always the one to strike spark against tinder— pressing his mouth to the underside of Sasuke’s jaw, teeth grazing lightly, lips dragging down the line of tendons until he reaches the place where clavicle becomes shoulder.  He sets his teeth there harder, not enough to break skin but enough to claim ownership of the sudden, shaky gasp that breaks past Sasuke’s guard.  Sasuke retaliates by sliding his palm beneath Naruto’s hoodie, nails skimming a raised welt on his side—last night’s bruise, still tender—eliciting a sharp inhale that turns into a growl vibrating against Sasuke’s throat.

The room is hot, though the single flickering bulb overhead throws an anemic light that paints everything in sodium sick-yellow.  Sweat blooms faster now: beads along Naruto’s hairline, damp patches spreading across the silk at Sasuke’s waist knot.  Naruto’s other hand joins the first, slipping between shirt and skin, fanning out over the lean dip of ribs, fingertips mapping each ridge like braille.  He drags them lower inch by inch, following the slight tremor in Sasuke’s frame—chemical nerves firing under calloused fingertips.

Sasuke’s breath stutters again as Naruto touches the top edge of low-slung denim—pauses there, a teasing hover, feeling the way Sasuke’s abdomen tightens under anticipation.  Their mouths meet—finally—in a softer reprise of earlier violence: slow slide of lower lips, a wet brush of tongues, shared breath that smells like adrenaline and sugar and something burnt.  Sasuke tilts his head, deepens the kiss, pace languid yet intent; each second stretches like hot tar, every subtle movement magnified—the scratch of Naruto’s stubble on Sasuke’s chin, the faint click of ring metal against incisors, the low gravel hum Naruto makes when Sasuke sucks gently on his tongue.

Naruto’s hand moves then, he cups Sasuke through denim, pressure firm enough that Sasuke breaks the kiss with a hushed intake, forehead resting against Naruto’s temple while he exhales ragged around a broken laugh—half disbelief, half white-hot gratitude.  Naruto murmurs something—lost under the transformer hum—but the shape of it is reassurance, and Sasuke answers by pressing forward, seeking friction.  Naruto obliges, palm kneading a slow circle, thumb rubbing teasing arcs until Sasuke’s hips cant of their own accord, chase the pressure, plead without words.

The world outside shrinks further.  Sweat beads roll down Sasuke’s spine, get caught in the waistband of jeans that Naruto now unsnaps with a practiced flick, zipper sliding open in a low metallic sigh.  He cups Sasuke again through thin fabric, feeling heat pulsing, and Sasuke’s groan this time is unrestrained, eyes fluttering closed as breath leaves him in a single-syllable prayer: “God—.”  Naruto’s response is to kiss him again, swallow that prayer, hands working slow firm strokes that pull soft, needy sounds from Sasuke’s throat—each sound pitched higher than the last, as if coaxed up a staircase that ends in freefall.

Sasuke’s hands wander again—tugging Naruto’s hoodie over his head until blond hair sticks up in wild damp tufts; skimming nails over the taut plane of stomach revealed by the tee rucked up beneath.  He traces old scars—thin, pale lines like forgotten chords—then leans in, mouth at the curve where shoulder meets neck, biting down soft then harder, marking flesh with a bruise that will bloom midnight purple by morning.  Naruto’s answering shudder ripples through both of them, momentarily stealing his rhythm. His next stroke falters, grip tightening as though anchoring himself to the heat, the need, the now.

Breaths grow ragged, synced to a drumline only they hear.  Naruto angles his hips, aligning them, sliding against Sasuke through thin layers—denim on denim, fabric damp and slick—each grind sparking friction hot enough to blur vision.  Sasuke bites back a moan, but his hips move, chasing again; nails score shallow crescents across Naruto’s back, dragging down until fists bunch the tee.

They fit their mouths together again, kiss turning messy—the wet click of tongues, sharp nip of teeth, spent breaths panting ragged.  Naruto’s strokes quicken, Sasuke’s hips jerk in time, and the edges of the room start to dissolve into waves of heat.  Sasuke’s free hand scrabbles at Naruto’s waistband, yanks jeans open, palm sliding under fabric to wrap around heated flesh, the angle awkward but desperate.

There’s a heartbeat of fumbling adjustment, hissed swear from Naruto, then their hands find complementary rhythm—one up-stroke, one down-stroke, friction building in counterpoint, slick heat pooling, muscles tightening.  Sasuke’s head falls back against concrete, eyes squeezed shut, lips parted around wordless moans that rise each time Naruto twists his wrist just so. Naruto’s forehead presses to Sasuke’s collarbone, teeth gritted, breath punching hot against damp skin.

The crescendo is slow but inexorable—every stroke, every grind, every stuttered breath stacking tension like bricks until one more touch will topple the structure.  Sasuke reaches it first—body tensing, breath locking; he buries a strangled cry in Naruto’s shoulder as pleasure arcs bright white behind his eyelids, pulse thundering through every vein; Naruto follows a heartbeat later, hips jerking forward, a low groan vibrating through Sasuke’s sweat-slick skin as release rushes over him, warmth pulsing between their palms.

They sag together, foreheads touching, inhaling each other’s heat, gulping air thick with electricity and disinfectant.  Hands loosen, Naruto strokes once, gentle, coaxing aftershocks while Sasuke trembles against the wall, lashes clumped with sweat, mouth soft and open.  Silence expands— the transformer hum, the distant bass, the faint slap of a pipe dripping— and within it, the sound of two erratic heartbeats slowly winding down toward something like equilibrium.

Naruto’s palm slides up Sasuke’s chest, finds his heartbeat, rests there. Sasuke covers it with his own hand, fingers lacing once, a fragile clasp, held just long enough to say this happened, we are still here.  Then they break apart—carefully, gingerly—fixing clothing with shaky efficiency: Sasuke smoothing shirt knot, Naruto tucking himself away, zipper rasp harsh in quiet.  They wipe hands on their own shirts, shared warmth cooling to memory, they breathe until breathing feels ordinary again.

Finally, Naruto tilts Sasuke’s chin with one knuckle, kisses him—soft, almost chaste— tasting salt and distant sweetness, sealing the riot back under skin. Sasuke whispers something that might be thank you, might be sorry, and Naruto answers with a tiny nod before killing the work light. Darkness settles, soft as velvet, stitching their silhouettes to the hush as they pull open the maintenance door and step back into a corridor bright with strobe spill and heavy with pounding bass, the roar of the party swallowing all traces of confession—but never, ever, erasing it.

Now Playing "Oblivion" – Grimes

"It's hard to understand
'Cause when you're running by yourself
It's hard to find someone to hold your hand"

02:20 a.m.—Ino’s world is a kaleidoscope whose center has slipped, everything tilting a few degrees into wrongness the moment she loses sight of Itachi’s black coat threading through the crush of bodies toward the far stairwell where Yamato keeps a pop-up comms desk; rumor skitters along the rave’s underbelly that cops have parked two cruisers at street level, lights killed but engines rumbling, and every time someone whispers “badges,” the bass seems to tighten like a fist around her ribcage.

She tries to follow—it’s instinct, orbit—yet the dance floor swallows him whole, fog cannons belching peppermint-scented vapor that clings to skin like frost.  LED strobes shift from migraine magenta to deep-sea cyan, washing faces to masks; strangers blur into luminous smears, shoulders crash her hips, and her anxiety spikes sharp and chemical, the familiar taste of an emptied stomach and a heart hammering too near the surface.

That’s when the stranger appears: tall, lithe, jaw dusted with silver glitter that catches every light filament in the room, making his half-smile glitter like a razor edge.  He steps into her path with the ease of someone used to crowds parting, one palm upturned.  Nestled in the vee of his lifeline sits a translucent capsule loaded with dusky violet crystals, a single fleck of holo foil swimming inside like a trapped star.

“Helps you float,” he says—low, intimate, perfectly audible over the lash of sub-bass—and the timbre of his voice is hot wax poured straight into her ear canal.

Ordinarily she might bat him away, demand to know dosage, brand, filler ratio. Tonight she only thinks I need quiet inside my own skull. She plucks the Molly capsule with two lacquer-chipped nails, tilts her head, bare throat flashing under chain harness, and dry-swallows.  Bitter resin kisses the back of her tongue; she chases it with a swig from a stranger’s abandoned energy drink—warm, flat, electric-green—grimacing as syrup coats her teeth.

The come-up begins in the time it takes to blink: LEDs elongate into comet tails; fog becomes iridescent milk; bass unhooks from speakers and hums directly against her breastbone, re-tuning her pulse.  Her skin discovers new languages: the caress of air-current over the sweat pooling in the hollow of her spine, the micro-snag of mesh skirt on the stubble of her thighs, the cold spot where Itachi’s hand was an hour ago now aching like phantom limb.

Glitter-jaw sees the pupils blow wide, offers an elbow like a decadent ballroom escort, and she drapes herself along his side, lets the beat carry them deeper into the throng. Every strobe captures them mid-shape—her mouth glossy, parted; his hand spanning the low curve of her back; bodies arched like they’re being drawn toward some magnetic north only they can sense. She laughs, a bright chime fracturing into echoes; he answers with lips at her ear, breath carbonation-cool.  Words dissolve in vapor but the vowels feel like compliments.

When he turns her, hands firm at her waist, pulling her flush, she doesn’t resist.  Pressed chest to chest, she can feel the bassline vibrating through cartilage and bone, syncing heartbeats until it’s impossible to tell if the throb in her sternum is from speakers or blood.  She hooks her fingers into the loops of his harness, arches to meet his mouth.  The kiss is immediate—wet, open, tasting of spearmint gum and club smoke—his tongue running slick across the seam of her teeth, hers sliding past, eager, starved.  Applause of unseen hands slapping skin mingles with the kettle-drum roll of MDMA uncurling fire along the wires of her nervous system; every exhale is a moan she tries to swallow and fails.

Lights smear.  Cyan melts to ultraviolet, and suddenly each drop of sweat on his neck glitters like mercury; she licks a line from collarbone to jaw, feels the rasp of day-old stubble spark against her tongue, and the friction shoots down her spine like lit magnesium.  He laughs, low, clamps a hand on her hip, grinding them together as though dancing is a euphemism neither of them need explained.  Her head tips back—hair sticking to damp shoulders—and for one suspended frame she catches, through spinning strobes, a shape like a charcoal sketch of Itachi on the mezzanine: coat collar up, face three-quarter turned, attention fixed on her with the stillness of a sniper mapping angles.

Heat floods her cheeks, the capsule surges through blood, translating anxiety into brighter light, sharper texture.  Instead of retreating, she leans harder into silver-jaw’s kiss, lets her hands map unfamiliar skin, fingernails skating his ribs until he hisses gratitude.  She is all appetite now—mouth, fingertips, the hot pulse between her thighs—and the stranger becomes mirror more than partner: reflecting want back at her, affirming existence through touch.

Below the mezzanine, crowd shifts and Itachi’s silhouette vanishes.  She tries to care—some small rational piece bangs on the inside of her skull—but MDMA rewires that worry into sensation, rewrites don’t leave me into make them watch.  Her hand slips under the stranger’s shirt, palm skimming a ladder of sweat-slick abs, nails drawing pale tracks that raise gooseflesh. He rewards her with teeth at her earlobe, with knuckle-hard grip on her hip that bruises just shy of pain.

Music jolts—Kiba’s cross-fader slam, new track barked into life—and the entire warehouse lurches as if airborne; lasers flicker, fog cannons belch; someone sprays champagne overhead and droplets rain cold as mercury over her bare shoulders.  Stranger raises both hands, whooping, and Ino uses the space to spin under his arm, letting harness chains bite into sternum, skin lit by strobes. Nearby dancers cheer, flash phone cams; attention floodlights her, and she bathes in it, high on warmth seeping from each gaze.

But high, too, on the prickle that crawls her spine—a sixth sense that even if Itachi’s eyes have shifted off her body, they remain tuned to her frequency.  She imagines him halfway across the room, jaw set, watching this make-out morph into something hungrier.  The thought sparks electricity at every synapse, pushes her to catch the stranger’s mouth again, deeper, her hands guiding his to clutch her backside, her leg hitching over his thigh so the mesh of her skirt rises, light painting a thousand eyes up her skin.

Somewhere, behind the sheen of ecstasy and performance, anxiety still ticks like a metronome: cops, Itachi’s disappointment, whatever fallout will land with sunrise—but the Molly smooths each spike into soft curves, promises there is only now, only neon soaked pleasure, sweat, the crowd’s animal roar, and the honey-heavy certainty that she is still wanted, still visible, still incandescent under someone’s hands even when the person whose coat she wears like armor disappears into the dark.

Itachi slips back onto the main floor like a shadow metastasizing at the edge of the strobe wash, coat still buttoned against the warehouse damp, Yamato’s half-finished conversation about police scanners and noise-ordinance loopholes discarded the moment his gaze snags on a familiar constellation of rhinestone harness and platinum hair thirty feet deep in the crowd.  From a distance Ino is pure motion—hips rolling slow figure-eights to a half-time breakdown, fingers tangled in a stranger’s silver-glitter collar, eyelashes sticky with neon mascara that catches every black-light pulse.  At first Itachi catalogues the scene with clinical detachment: crowd density high, exits behind her partially blocked by toppled barricade, stranger’s hands low on her hips but not yet bruising.  He thinks, let her have the high, steps sideways to let a dancer spill beer across his boots, and reassures himself she’ll drift back when the music crests.

Then the strobe flicks white and he sees the pin-dilated pupils, black saucers drowning blue irises, and the way her knees soften on each offbeat, micro-staggers she disguises as dance but which any medic would clock as impending collapse. Detachment drains. He moves.

The crowd parts for him without quite knowing why—maybe the steadiness of his stride, maybe the cold perimeter that seems to shimmer off black wool and tied-back hair. He reaches them just as the stranger—taller by a head, sweat gleaming on rave paint—slides a hand from Ino’s waist to trace the thin strap of her under-bust harness, fingertips dipping beneath until thumbs brush undercurve of rib.  Ino tilts her head, lashes fluttering, mouth open on a breath that could be laughter or a plea.

Itachi plants one palm flat against the stranger’s sternum—no shove, merely pressure calibrated to halt motion, the hand of someone who knows joint locks but doesn’t need them—and speaks in a voice colder than the industrial AC draft slicing through fog: “She’s leaving.”  No raised volume, yet the command slices through sub-bass like a scalpel.  The stranger’s pupils dart, assessing danger, find none in posture but plenty in stillness. He raises both hands in wary surrender, backing a step before melting into the throng’s anonymity.

Ino’s gaze snaps into focus, pupils still cosmic, smile glassy.  “Not your keeper,” she slurs, half-laugh, half-dagger, swaying closer on reflex.  She reaches for his lapel, fingers grazing the fabric, seeking the ground wire of touch.  Itachi shifts just enough that her hand slips off empty air. The negation is gentle, precise—a master fencer parrying without a blade.

“Then keep yourself,” he answers, tone flat but not unkind.  From his coat pocket he produces a squat bottle of electrolyte water—room temperature, label peeled— unscrews the cap and offers it.  She huffs, rolls glossy eyes skyward, but the Molly is cresting into jaw-grind territory and thirst claws her throat. She snatches the bottle, takes a swallow too big, lips catching on the rim so water spills down her chin and darkens the mesh neckline.  She wipes it with the back of her hand, then reaches again, this time for his wrist, nails half-moon denting skin.  “Stay,” she murmurs, the single syllable thick with pleading, with the fear that he’ll vanish back into shadow like earlier, like always.

He allows her grip but doesn’t return it, merely stands as anchor while she steadies. Up close she reeks of club smoke and sour citrus energy drink, and beneath that, the faint acetone tang of an empty stomach cannibalizing itself.  He scans: pulse racing at jugular, sweat banding hairline, slight tremor in fingers even as they clutch.  “You need sugar,” he says, slipping a foil-wrapped protein cookie from the same pocket, trading it for the water bottle.  She groans exaggerated protest—“Calories are sin, Tachi”—but the pill says otherwise, so she rips the foil with teeth, gnaws a bite, chews slow as drywall.  Each swallow seems to steady her axis a degree.

The second drop of bass hits, lights cut to blackout for two beats, and in that darkness she tries again—palms flatten to his chest, seeking refuge or friction or both. The lights flare red; he catches her wrists lightly, lowers them to her sides.  “Later,” he says.  Not promise, not refusal—just a timestamp beyond the party’s horizon. Her bottom lip wobbles; she hates later, lives for now, but the Molly rewrites protest into warmth curling behind her ribs.  She nods, glossy hair sticking to perspiration lacquered across clavicles.

He stays beside her like a monolith—hands never quite touching, body heat a shield against accidental collisions—while she finishes half the cookie, drains the water, and regains enough vertical equilibrium to sway to the next track without knees buckling.  Around them strobe-washed bodies continue to riot, oblivious to small dramas at their periphery, but those closest feel the temperature dip, sense the invisible perimeter that now halos Ino: a boundary drawn not by force, but by the certainty in Itachi’s stillness—permission revoked until she can stand without reeling.

When she finally murmurs, “I’m good,” voice softer, clearer, he releases her wrists, steps back exactly one pace—no further—crosses arms, and resumes silent vigilance, eyes twitching toward exits, toward police rumors, toward any new threat.  She misses the warmth immediately, but the pill swirls glitter through her veins, muting ache into a distant echo, and she throws her arms overhead, body rolling with the beat once more.  Even then, every third stroke of strobe finds her gaze flicking left to ensure the silhouette in black is still there, and every time it is, immovable as a promise she pretends she doesn’t need.

Now Playing: "Club Bizarre – U96"

03:45 a.m.—Kiba vaults onto the riser like a coyote leaping chain-link, one sneaker skidding across plywood, the other already stomping a half-drained long-neck that someone left too close to the edge; glass starbursts, lager spray catches strobes and turns to glitter, and the current DJ—some vinyl purist flown in from Sapporo—spins away in a huff, headphones yanked off, protest drowned by the roar that goes up as Kiba slams both palms on the controller and shouts into a dead mic: “Time for something fucking real!”

Temari, perched on the catwalk, feels the energy spike through the truss before she sees why; her finger hovers over the grand-master fader for her DIY strobe bank, instinct hitching her breath a fraction as Kiba’s laptop lid slams shut, USB dangling like a throat-cut artery, and in its place he rams a thumb-drive wrapped in medical tape—Naruto’s handwriting scrawled across in silver Sharpie: DO  NOT  FUCKING  PLAY.

Below, Shikamaru’s spine straightens against the catwalk rail, smoke forgotten between his fingers, pupils hardening from half-mast boredom into cold equation as he watches Kiba’s grin stretch wide enough to crack.  The wavform that blooms on the CDJ screen is unmistakable—he’s watched Naruto build that file layer by layer in motel rooms, humming raw melodies through scratchy interface mics while Sasuke twisted synth patches to match— and Shikamaru’s mouth shapes the words oh, shit just as Kiba presses play.

The kick drum is wrong first—too naked, unmixed—then Naruto’s vocal slams in: un-mastered, bare, every rasp and crack intact, lyrics still placeholder vowels, but heartfelt in that way only demos can be.  The crowd freezes for half a bar, like an animal scenting storm, then erupts: a howl of recognition they shouldn’t have, hundreds of hands shooting up in crooked praise as if they’ve stumbled on some secret feed.  Phone screens bloom like bioluminescence, recording icon pulses red.

Temari’s fight-or-flight defaults to fry them: she punches GO on her strobes, unleashing white-hot lightning that syncs to each ragged snare in the demo—filters cycling, shadows jerking across walls like torn-film ghosts—while patch cables thrash above her head.  She shouts for Shikamaru over the din. He’s already moving, dropping the joint, sprint-crawling across the truss toward the ladder.

On the floor, Sakura catches the first vowel of Naruto’s raw vocal and knows instantly: that track was never meant for ears beyond the band.  She powers through bodies, elbowing neon-mesh torsos, ducking raised phones, the whole time stabbing delete, delete in her head like she could backspace reality. The riser seems a kilometre away, Kiba’s silhouette head-banging as he punches filters, bleeding raw reverb that makes Naruto’s voice echo like a confession in an empty stadium.

Naruto hears it too—mid-stride back from the maintenance corridor, shirt half-tucked, hair sticking damp to his forehead—and it stops him dead.  His jaw unhinges, comprehension flickering like bad wiring: first shock, then horror, then molten fury igniting along every nerve.  He plows forward, shoving past dancers filming, past a couple grinding oblivious, grabs the riser’s edge and hauls himself up with a feral grunt.

Sasuke, steps behind, feels the heat of that rage like a furnace blast and curses under breath, surging after.  Crowd noise swells—half cheering, half confused—phones pivot to capture the spectacle as Naruto storms Kiba, shoulder checking him sideways, hands clawing for the crossfader.  Kiba laughs—wild, coked grin, nose still dusted—shouts “THE PEOPLE LOVE IT, BRO!” into Naruto’s face, then tries to pivot back to the decks.

Sakura reaches them then, slams her palm onto the master volume knob, twisting to zero; the monitors screech protest, then die, leaving an instant hush that feels like baited breath before avalanche.  Feedback moans as Kiba yanks the headphone jack out and waves it like a weapon.  “Play it, you coward,” he slurs at Sakura, at Naruto, at everyone; “Song’s fucking gold.”  Naruto answers with a fist, catching Kiba’s shoulder, momentum spinning him, they grapple, knocking controller sliders, a sample stuttering on loop—love, love, love love—Spasmic.

Shikamaru drops from the ladder, knees flexing, slides across slick plywood to kill the channel power, unplug thumb-drive, but fingers hesitate a split-second—copyright spiralling in his strategist brain—even as chaos unfurls inches away.  Temari’s strobes mis-sync without the audio clock, firing random blasts that turn each motion into epileptic snapshots: Kiba’s snarl, Naruto’s teeth bared, Sakura’s fist gripping Naruto’s hoodie to hold him back, Sasuke’s hand fastens like a vise on Naruto’s wrist just as Naruto cocks for another swing.

Sasuke drags him half-spin, breath harsh, eyes coal-black unblinking: “Not worth it,” hissed like a secret; Naruto bucks against restraint, veins loud under skin, but Sasuke’s fingers dig deeper, nails welting flesh—pain wiring into clarity—and after two heartbeats Naruto’s shoulders sag, chest heaving, fury channeled into a growl bitten off behind clenched teeth.

Kiba stumbles, wiping blood trickle from split lip, laughing manic—“Marketing, baby!”—but Shikamaru steps between, face void of humour, thumb-drive pocketed, a single flat warning: “You’re done.”  He nods at security brute edging through crowd with flashlight; Kiba scowls, but bassist Gaara materialises beside him, silent and immovable as obsidian, hand closing on Kiba’s elbow with glacial intent.  Momentum dies.

Microphones squeal, then nothing but distant sirens, maybe real, maybe track bleed.  Phones lower, murmurs skitter, someone restarts generic EDM filler through fallback iPod.  In the new dim blue wash, Sakura pulls Naruto off the riser. Sasuke stays glued to his side, hand ghosting wrist pulse until heartbeat calms. Temari kills her strobes, darkness sighs.

Public shame hangs like electrical smell after lightning.  Naruto’s eyes glisten rage and humiliation; he can’t look at the crowd, can’t look at Sasuke, focuses instead on the shattered beer bottle at his feet scattering amber reflections.  Sasuke squeezes his wrist once more, a silent breathe, then releases, stepping back just far enough to be near without crowding.

Shikamaru pockets the thumb-drive deeper, already calculating press fallout, while Sakura rounds on Kiba, voice low and lethal as she orders security to dump him backstage until she decides if she’ll kill him or just break his decks.  The party lurches back to life in wounded disco colours, but for the inner circle, the night’s pulse has shifted—trust fractured, nerves frayed, every eye now hunting exits and rumours of flashing blue lights at the curb outside.

04:07 a.m.—The strobe fireworks screech into silence the moment Yamato storms into the center of the warehouse, leaning through the drifting fog like a tactical beacon, voice raw as a beaten mic: “Guys—noise complaints. Five minutes till badges hit the curb.” He’s not shouting so much as alerting, and the words fall hard enough to quiet the mid-beat chatter, the laughter, the clash of bottles.

The seizure of sound is immediate: the DJ’s drop dead, subs die, stage haze hangs thick as the air loses momentum. Temari’s finger flats the fog switch—silence leaves it rattling cold like a cannula, icing out the last smoke bellows. Red exit signs flare unevenly, sodium tubes stutter, then the fluorescent grid above hums back to life, buzzing daylight into the electric gloom. The warehouse goes still, too bright but too quiet, each flicker of backlight drawing new scars on walls once soft with neon.

In that suspended moment, panic fragments into motion. Sakura whips her ponytail free, scans faces like traffic clearance tape, voice clipped and strategic: “Gaara, you and Shikamaru grab cables and cases—exit left. Ino—get out with Itachi. Naruto, back to the van. Sasuke—stash synth, keep him from moving.” Orders—spoken but almost telepathic, adrenaline articulating grammar. Everyone snaps to shape.

Shikamaru tosses half-smoked joint to floor, boots it out of the way, and drops into crouch to yank cables from the riser like an emergency extraction specialist. He coils them swift, looping into a milk crate Sasuke had brought in earlier, eyes flicking to the loading dock as if calculating response time.

Gaara, still headset-quiet, moves like applied force—silent, forearm-clocked, clearing blurry couples blocking the route. Each person yields; some look Hesitation. He looks like a sentinel too tired to care, drag-shoving bodies aside with apologetic eyes that don’t apologize.

Itachi is by Ino’s side before she realizes he’s left the stranger. He lifts her elbow, guides her up the ramp toward the freight elevator. She’s swaying—cheeks flushed, hands trembling—and he supports her under both arms without a word, tactile instruction in quiet: Move faster. She squeezes his arm, once. The grip says thank you and don’t leave me, both at once.

Yamato strides to the control board, flicking power switches for sound, lights, and fog in swift sequence. Each click kills another layer of atmosphere, and the warehouse exhales emptily. The stage fades from kaleidoscope to raw reflection, glitter and grain backing to dull chrome.

Kakashi appears at the ramp, backpack strapped, handing Yamato USBs and lyric sheets. “Quick registers—they won’t know what’s missing till morning,” he says, eyes scanning for exits too. He palms a business-card for a contact at Third Precinct, it’s laminated, reflective. At least one backup plan is breathing.

Naruto stumbles toward the service door, knees loose from the aftershock bathroom release and the adrenaline still throbbing in his veins, shirt tangled on one arm, voice thick as gravel: “What if they block the van?” Shikamaru curses under breath, gestures left. “North alley—zip in and out,” he says, eyes darting to his phone in the haze-light.

Sakura hustles Gaara toward the exit, hand looping through his harness strap: “Go,” she says, clipped but caring. He nods once—sync to her pace—and follows, back straight, eyes forward, tiptoeing on rattled tile.

Sasuke’s fingers hover over his walker board. He looks to Sakura for direction—phone glow sealing cerulean shadows under eyes—then plunges cables into the board’s pouch. His breathing tightens, back pressed to the riser’s plywood shell, as if going still makes him disappear. Naruto’s at his side, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. Sasuke blinks, nods, pack-snap seals shut.

The hum of footsteps drains upward toward the mezzanine. The crowd fractures, peeling off the dance floor in small desperate clusters, their skin washed with harsh real-light. A speaker or two still pulses, but they sound like drum corps collapsing on their own mass; the room’s heartbeat slows. Overhead, the exit lights battery-click, shifting from steady luminous bleed to urgent blink.

Ino and Itachi reach the elevator panting; he drapes Ino’s slender arm across his shoulder, baton ready if she falters, while she strokes his back, silent relief echoing louder than music. She leans into him without reaching—just gravity, just proximity.

Sakura circles back, glances at Sasuke and Naruto. Sasuke meets her look and blurts: “We’re going.” Sakura runs a hand through her hair. “Good.” She wants to ask You okay? but there’s no room for it; the ambulance whistle is half a mile off—or maybe just session bleed to hype. Doesn’t matter.

In the heavy pause before the metal doors close on the elevator, sunlight or moonlight begin to leak underneath—cool wash, fresh air. Everyone holds one last inhale: fog, sweat, fear, relief. Sirens bloom.

The van engine coughs to life, dash lights blink. They’re ghosts spilling roadward. The warehouse locks itself in silhouette, silent but for the hum of a new track starting in the back—someone’s phone, maybe. Ino glares across seat backs toward Itachi, a whispered thank you not needed—he’s already glanced out the window, expression unreadable.

But inside the van, every pair of eyes flicks to the front mirrors. Police lights converge, splatter on rear window—inverted projection of consequences chasing them: crunch of guilt, drumbeat of next decision, pulse memory. On everyone’s sleeve, you can see who forgot nothing.

Chapter Text

Now Playing: “New Slang” – The Shins

“Turn me back into the pet I was when we met

I was happier then with no mind-set”

The first thing she registers is not light but weight —a heavy, sour lurch at the base of her throat, like her stomach has turned inside out and filled with cement, and it drags her upright before her mind even catches up. Her hand shoots out blindly, catching the edge of the coffee table just as her knees buckle off the couch. She’s already halfway down the narrow hallway before the vomit rises, sour and relentless, a punishment in liquid form. Her bare feet slip on the parquet—Sasuke’s floors are too clean, too cold—and the bathroom door is ajar just enough for her to shoulder it open before she collapses, elbow cracking tile, head over the bowl.

She retches hard, again and again, until there’s nothing left but acid and shame.

The sound bounces off the walls, clean white tiles, backlit mirror, a towel still damp from someone else’s shower. Her mascara has melted sideways. She tastes last night’s mistakes: synthetic fruit from someone else’s vape, vodka that should’ve been water, the faint trace of that Molly tab with the minty coating. Her temples pound. Her stomach trembles. Her spine feels too long for her body. The fluorescent light above flickers like it’s judging her, and maybe it is.

When it’s over—when her body has wrung itself out like a rag and she’s panting, cheek pressed to the side of the cool porcelain—Ino doesn’t cry. She hasn’t cried in years unless it was strategic, unless someone was watching. Instead, she lays there for a moment, eyes half-lidded, as the nausea drains from her limbs and leaves only emptiness in its place. A terrible, gnawing blankness, like she’s been hollowed out to make room for every version of herself she doesn’t want to look at.

This is her apartment.

Oh, the mail says her name. It’s taped to the entry intercom. They split rent, she buys the plants and kills them one by one. She leaves her lip gloss in every drawer, her shoes in the hallway like landmines. There’s a photo booth strip magneted to the fridge—one of them’s smiling, the other isn’t—but Sasuke only ever calls it “the apartment,” not “home.” And when he’s not here, like now, the silence rings like it wants her gone.

She wipes her mouth with a hand towel that smells faintly of him, cologne and laundry soap and cigarettes he only smokes on the fire escape, and drags herself up to her feet. Her reflection looks worse than usual: collarbone jutting like a weapon, pupils still slightly dilated, eyeliner like bruises from a prettier death. She stares too long, pokes her cheek like it might bounce back, then laughs, sharp, ugly, hollow laugh.

“Charming,” she whispers to no one.

She pulls her hair back into a messy twist, ignoring the mats and tangles from sweat and strangers’ hands. One of her earrings is missing. There’s glitter on her neck and no recollection of how it got there. Her phone is blinking from the cracked bathroom counter, half-charged and mocking.

A text from Temari:

u still breathing or should we plan the funeral 💀

Another, timestamped 8:05 a.m., unread until now:

From Itachi: Are you okay?

She blinks at that one, thumb hovering, but doesn’t respond. She doesn’t want to know if he’s disappointed. Not yet. Not while her ribs still feel like they’ve been steamrolled, not while her skin is too sensitive for kindness.

She stumbles out into the main room. Sasuke’s door is shut, has been all morning, probably. Maybe he came in after she passed out, maybe he hasn’t been home at all. She can’t remember. She tries to, squinting through the haze of fragmented party flashbacks: strobe lights. The stranger’s mouth on her collarbone. Itachi’s voice, flat and sharp. The taste of her own fear as she realized the floor was swaying. The sound of someone shouting near the booth. The moment the lights went out and her stomach dropped with the beat.

God, she’s a mess.

A beautiful, venomous, spectacular mess.

And worse than all of it, worse than the pills and the puke and the blood-orange vape clinging to her lungs, worse is knowing she’ll do it again. Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, but it’s always waiting. The spiral. The stage. The sticky affirmation of someone else’s hands saying you still exist .

Her bones creak as she lowers herself onto the edge of the couch again. She grabs the throw blanket draped over the arm, not for warmth, just something to clutch, and exhales like it might reset her lungs. Her phone buzzes once more.

Sasuke [7:03 a.m.]:

Left early. Don’t forget your call with Kakashi at noon.

Just that. No greeting, no emoji, no sharp edge. Just the way he always texts her: clipped but careful. The kettle was probably already boiled. Maybe he paused a beat longer than usual before leaving, debating whether to wake her or not.

She doesn’t answer, just stares at the message until the screen fades to black. Then she sets the phone on the rim of the sink and leans over it again, bracing herself with both hands. She can still taste acid in her throat. Her hair clings to the sweat at the back of her neck, and the mirror catches the ruin of her eyeliner like bruises smeared under her eyes. The makeup is from last night. Or yesterday. Or before that.

He still remembered her call.

Sasuke always remembers. Even when he forgets meals or lets dishes pile up or disappears for days in his own head, he remembers her . She knows she’s the one person he lets stay too long, the one who’s seen him sob on a bathroom floor and curl in on himself with shakes that medicine can’t reach. And she knows it’s not pity that keeps her here, not charity or indulgence or obligation. If it were, she would’ve packed up weeks ago.

He lets her stay because she belongs , in a way that’s hard to put words to. In a way that makes her want to peel her skin off just to make sure she hasn’t ruined it. The thought makes her sick all over again. She slumps to the floor, legs folding beneath her, back against the cold tile wall. She hates this part, this empty morning clarity, the soft scrape of guilt under her ribs like something nesting there. Her body’s still tingling with chemical aftershock and her mind is trying to string sense together, but her chest already knows the rhythm: she wakes up, she regrets, she swears she’ll fix it, and then she doesn’t. Again and again.

There are people who care. That’s what breaks her. Sasuke. Itachi. Shikamaru, on his better days. Kakashi in his own weird way. Even Yamato, when he’s not annoyed. They orbit her, letting her cling, steadying her at the edges—people who check in, who offer her water bottles and clean towels and rides home even when she’s blackout, even when she snaps at them or spirals or disappears.

She doesn’t know how to deserve that kind of loyalty. She doesn’t know how to be someone who deserves it. And it builds up, slow and sharp and relentless, until she’s holding her own breath just to dull the shame of being —of still being here, still demanding space, still dragging herself out of a mess she crafted with her own hands. Sometimes, she’s amazed they haven’t all left. Sometimes, she wishes they would, because then she wouldn’t have to watch herself fail them again.

The thought coils tighter in her chest. She pulls her knees in, rests her chin on them. The tiles are cold. Her stomach’s hollow. Her pulse is too fast.

Somewhere in the apartment—probably Sasuke’s room—a speaker hums faint static from a half-dead AUX connection. The silence after parties is always brutal. There’s too much space, too much air, too many questions she doesn’t want to answer. She presses her forehead to her knees and counts down from thirty. Her eyes sting, but she doesn’t cry. Crying means there’s something left to release. Right now she’s just stuck in herself, in the cramped quiet between disappointment and survival.

She’ll shower. She’ll put on mascara. She’ll answer Kakashi’s call with her perfect PR voice like nothing happened. Like she didn’t almost collapse. Like she didn’t throw up her lungs thirty minutes ago. She’ll text Sasuke back something dumb, probably just an emoji, and he’ll ignore it and buy groceries on his way home, and they’ll pretend they don’t see each other flinch anymore.

She’ll keep going. That’s the curse.

Because she knows she’s not alone, and somehow, that makes it worse.

Now Playing: "Jupiter" – Rival Consoles

Sasuke’s room is a cave in the afternoon grayscale, thick with shut blinds and low haze, the air a mix of candle wax gone cold and something fainter, more metallic, like the leftover sharpness of last night’s sweat and the ghost of nail polish remover. The floor is littered with empty water bottles, tangled headphones, two crumpled t-shirts that never made it to the hamper, and one black hoodie turned inside out—Naruto’s, probably, though Sasuke hasn’t looked too closely. It still smells like heat and bergamot, the faint synthetic citrus clinging to the collar.

He hasn’t moved in twenty-seven minutes. Just sits cross-legged on the edge of the bed, shirtless, forearms slack on his knees, spine slightly hunched forward like his body hasn’t caught up to the weight of his own head. There’s a single ashtray on the windowsill, but he hasn’t smoked since the sun started rising. The silence presses in. Not comforting silence, not emptiness, but compression —something pressing its hands to the sides of his skull and whispering, you were supposed to be smarter than this.

The phone buzzes once on the nightstand. Then again. Then again.

He doesn’t need to check. He already knows.

Naruto’s contact photo is a blurry crowd shot from the first time they ever played a real venue—Naruto in mid-shout, tongue out, sweat in his eyes, fingers flashing some obscene gesture toward the camera. It’s not even his photo. Ino sent it. Said it looked like Sasuke was watching him like he mattered .

He doesn’t look at the phone, but his eyes flicker toward it anyway, like they always do. The screen pulses again:

Naruto: “Can we talk?”

Naruto: “I’m sorry. I just need to see you.”

Naruto: “I don’t feel right.”

There’s no notification sound—he keeps it on silent for reasons he doesn’t unpack anymore—but each buzz hits like a pin driven into the soft meat of his sternum. The kind of hurt that’s both ache and echo.

He doesn’t respond.

Instead, he pushes his hands through his hair and lets his fingers tug, hard, at the roots. He wants to feel something, maybe the jolt of pain, maybe the shame curling like smoke under his ribs. The night before isn’t even a blur, it’s still playing in high definition. The bathroom stall. The taste of pills on someone else’s tongue. The way Naruto said “shut up” like it meant “don’t leave.” The way Sasuke didn’t.

He stands, slowly, limbs stiff with sleep-deprivation and come-down tremors, and pads barefoot toward his desk in the corner. The blinds split a sliver of light across the surface, sharp as a scar. He opens the third drawer down, the one that sticks slightly on the left rail, and pulls out the notebook he doesn’t let anyone see.

It’s not labeled. Nothing about it is neat. There are sketches, some barely started, some smeared with graphite or folded over to keep them from curling. Most of them aren’t finished. Most of them won’t be.

But there, on page seven, is him . Not some faceless muse, not an abstract shape of desire, but Naruto —mouth open in mid-laugh, eyes scrunched, forehead lined with too much sun and too many late nights. Sasuke’s linework is hesitant, more shading than form, but it’s unmistakably him. The edges of the drawing curl slightly inward, as if trying to close around the subject and keep it hidden.

He stares at it for too long.

And then, without ceremony, he shuts the notebook and shoves it back in the drawer.

This is not the morning to be weak. This is not the morning to spiral. And yet he can feel the beginnings of it like a storm building in the edges of his vision, too much space, too many questions, too many fucking messages. His phone buzzes again.

Instead of answering, he reaches for his jacket. Checks the inner pocket. Nothing.

Then the jeans from the night before. Still nothing.

Finally, the small metal box tucked under a stack of receipts in the bottom drawer of his dresser. He pulls it out without blinking, flips the lid open. Inside: a single folded paper packet, half-empty baggie, razor blade, card.

He stares at it. Doesn’t move.

His hand hovers there—knuckles pale, veins showing blue under skin stretched too tight—and for one second he thinks maybe this is where it stops. Maybe he’ll text Naruto back. Maybe he’ll leave the apartment. Maybe he’ll go downstairs and make coffee and eat something for once and be someone who can exist in daylight without collapsing.

He shuts the box.

Locks it.

Slides it back into the drawer.

And then he grabs his lighter, his denim jacket, and his silence.

Now Playing: "Andromeda" – Weyes Blood

Andromeda's a big, wide open galaxy
Nothing in it for me except a heart that's lazy

Shikamaru’s cigarette burns halfway down before he remembers to flick the ash. It trembles at the tip, orange-white and stubborn, clinging like the night still clings to the undersides of his eyes. They’re on the fire escape outside Temari’s place—cold rust against warm knees, city drone in the background like a half-hearted threat. Morning hasn’t broken cleanly, it’s smeared sideways across the buildings, caught in that soft, gritty lull where no one’s fully awake but too much has already happened to pretend it’s still night.

Temari hands him a thermos without asking. It smells like burnt chicory and overboiled bitterness, which is more or less how his chest feels, so he accepts it. No cream. No sugar. Just heat and edge.

She leans her elbows against the railing, hair still tied from last night’s mess, eyeliner smudged just enough to make her look more dangerous than tired. Her voice, when she speaks, comes slow and measured like everything else she does when the adrenaline’s gone.

“You think they’ll come back from it?”

Shikamaru exhales smoke sideways. “Who?”

Temari’s glance is razor-sharp, but she doesn’t clarify. She doesn’t need to. They both know what it is.

He rolls the thermos between his palms. The metal warms his fingertips. “They always do.”

“That’s not the same as saying it’ll be fine.”

“No,” he agrees, and that’s all.

Below them, the city pulses soft: someone yelling two streets over, tires splitting puddles, a glass bottle tipping over on concrete and not quite shattering. The sort of morning after that never feels like penance, just logistics—find your shoes, find your ride, forget the things you said when the bass was too loud to lie.

Temari shifts, pulling a leg up onto the ledge, heel hooked against the grating like a threat or a challenge. “Naruto looked wrecked.”

“So did Sasuke,” Shikamaru mutters. “But he always does.”

She looks at him then. Long. Measured. “And you?”

He shrugs. The kind of shrug that’s too practiced to be careless. “I didn’t go there for revelations. I went because the music was decent and Kiba doesn’t ask questions.”

“That song leak wasn’t decent.”

“No,” he admits. “But it was inevitable.”

Temari sips her own coffee, a softer sip than usual. “He’s gonna kill Kiba.”

“Let him. Maybe it’ll snap something useful into place.”

Her laugh is a single breath through her nose, dry and unimpressed. “You always do this.”

“What.”

“Detach. Float over everything like smoke. Watch the wreck and call it weather.”

Shikamaru doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. Because it’s not detachment, not really. It’s awareness. Of cycles. Of patterns. Of the futility in pretending this group isn’t built like a slow-motion car crash with too many drivers and no one willing to hit the brakes.

“They’ll forget,” he says, finally. Voice low. Almost kind. “They always do. That’s how we survive each other.”

Temari doesn’t argue. Just drinks her coffee, then pulls her hoodie tighter around her shoulders and watches the morning split open across rooftops like a wound that never bleeds, only stings.

And beneath the easy silence that settles between them—companionable, careful, almost nostalgic—Shikamaru feels the distant pulse of everything coming undone. Again. Like it always does. Like it always will.

Now Playing: "Sodium Choride" – Panchiko

The sun filters in crooked through the blinds, turning the room into a narrow box of pale gold and stale air. It’s too quiet. The kind of quiet that presses in behind the eyes and amplifies everything that shouldn’t be loud—heartbeat, throat swallow, the faint electric tick of the mini-fridge. Naruto lies faceup on the futon without a shirt, one sock half-off, the other curled beneath his heel, skin sticky with the sweat of half-dreams he didn’t want and can’t remember. His head throbs, but it’s a shallow, nagging throb—less pain, more disorientation. A lingering taste of something chemical and peachy sits on his tongue, as if last night’s decisions are still trying to digest their way back out.

His phone glows faintly somewhere on the floor, and he doesn’t have the strength yet to reach for it. He already knows what it’ll show. A half-sentenced message to Sasuke, three drafts of “can we talk” that got deleted before they were ever sent, and the final version that actually did go out. No answer.

Naruto turns his face into the pillow, inhales the rank mix of faded cologne, weed, and whatever he puked near the edge last night. It makes his stomach coil again, but nothing comes. Just the echo of nausea, dry and cruel.

He forces himself to sit up after a while. The world tilts. Not in a dramatic way, just enough to remind him that his body has limits, that maybe he crossed them, that maybe he always does. The water bottle on the crate beside the futon is half-empty and room-temp, but he drinks it anyway, grateful for the way it doesn’t taste like vodka or bile. His throat clicks with every swallow. The silence yawns wider.

By the time he stumbles to the shower, the light has shifted further west, slicing low across the cracked tile like some kind of judgement. He leans against the wall while the water heats, forehead resting on the peeling grout, fingers drumming against his thighs, twitchy, unfocused. When the stream finally turns warm, he steps in and lets it hit him full-force, shoulders first, then chest, then the crown of his head. Hair flattens. Bruises bloom as the water wakes his skin.

He doesn’t scrub. Doesn’t shampoo. Just stands there until the water goes lukewarm and his fingers wrinkle and the steam starts to choke. Then he steps out, towels off in slow, methodical swipes, and wraps the towel around his waist like armor.

He eats cereal next. Not because he wants to, but because he knows he should. It tastes like cardboard, like memory foam, like something that isn’t food but pretends to be. The crunch is loud in the silence. His hands shake on the spoon.

That’s when his phone buzzes.

Not Sasuke.

Never Sasuke.

It’s Gaara.

[1:46 PM] “You home?”

That’s it. Just the bare minimum to signify care.

Naruto stares at it for a while. Thumb hovers. He doesn’t answer right away.

Because he’s not sure what yes even means today. Because he’s not sure if Gaara will want to see him the way he is now—still fucked up from the bathroom, from the sex, from the way Sasuke tasted like powder and guilt. Still haunted by the way Sasuke said “You should hate me” like it was a prayer, not a plea. Still spiraling into the hollow where connection used to live.

He gets dressed slowly. Hoodie over the bruises, sleeves pulled long, zipper tugged to the top even though the room is stuffy. He opens the windows a crack and sits cross-legged on the floor with his back to the wall, phone in his palm, staring at Sasuke’s last seen time like it holds meaning. Like if he watches long enough, Sasuke will blink blue again and say “come here.” Like that would fix anything.

He finally replies to Gaara with a single word: “yeah.”

And then waits.

The seconds crawl.

Outside, a dog barks. A siren starts and fades. Inside, Naruto’s stomach growls like betrayal.

He wants someone to hold him. To shake him. To tell him that last night wasn’t real or was real enough to mean something. He wants Sasuke’s hands or Sasuke’s voice or Sasuke’s silence wrapped around him in a way that hurts less. But all he has is this: an echo, a draft, the soft click of a locked door in a too-quiet room.

The knock isn’t loud. It never is with Gaara. Just two soft, mechanical taps like punctuation—measured, unobtrusive, and inevitable. Naruto doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. By the time he’s moved toward the door, Gaara’s already letting himself in with the key Naruto gave him a month ago and tried to pretend didn’t exist.

“Hey,” Gaara says. No questions. Just a nod, his voice a low drone of unspoken assessment.

Naruto nods back. He’s not sure if it’s relief or dread pooling in his ribs. Probably both. The silence between them isn’t uncomfortable, it’s just weighted. Like fog resting on old glass.

Gaara scans the space in that eerily quiet way he always does. The room reeks of dried sweat, unwashed clothes, and last night’s stench that clings like regret. The futon’s a crumpled mess in the corner, grey hoodie twisted like a body left behind. Cereal bowl half-full with congealed milk sits next to a water bottle cap and a lighter. A crushed pack of gum and three empty pill shells huddle near the corner of the floor.

“You’re eating,” Gaara observes. Just noticing.

Naruto shrugs. “I guess.”

Gaara doesn’t reply. Instead, he kicks off his shoes and starts moving. Quiet, efficient. He crosses to the window and opens it wider. Then he pulls the hoodie off the futon like it offended him, sniffs it once, then drops it into the laundry pile without another word. It’s a rhythm they’ve fallen into before, Gaara cleaning the battlefield after Naruto’s emotional implosions, like he’s still trying to clear sand from the inside of someone else’s wounds.

Naruto watches him without speaking as Gaara stoops to gather trash from the floor, working with the slow, deliberate grace of someone who knows what he’s doing matters more than talking about it. His movements are unbothered, calm, almost priest-like in their detachment. Except he’s not detached. He just doesn’t believe in dramatics.

Naruto tries to speak. “You don’t have to—”

Gaara cuts him off, not unkindly. “I know.”

Sheets stripped next. Gaara peels them back from the futon like skin, revealing the tangled mattress beneath. He glances once at a suspicious stain, frowns, then turns to Naruto. “You have a spare set?”

Naruto hesitates, then nods. “Closet. Top shelf.”

Gaara retrieves them, arms laden with crumpled fabric, then crouches beside the futon and starts folding fresh corners over. The fabric rustles like memory. Every so often, he glances at Naruto without saying anything, just anchoring him with those pale, sea-glass eyes. Like he’s trying to keep him tethered to the present, one bed sheet at a time.

“Do you want to sit down?” Gaara asks eventually. “Eat something real?”

Naruto scoffs, soft, dry. “Define real.”

“You know what I mean.”

Naruto lowers himself onto the floor beside the crate table, legs crossed, fingers twitching against his knees. “I already ate.”

Gaara looks at the cereal bowl. Says nothing.

The quiet stretches, not uncomfortable but taut.

“You saw him last night?” Gaara finally asks, low, like he already knows the answer.

Naruto’s throat tightens. He nods.

Gaara doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t ask for details. Just says, “You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

Naruto stares at the wall. “I’m not.”

“You are.” Gaara’s tone is neutral, but beneath it hums a dull ache. “You’re hurting. And he’s not helping you.”

“I don’t need help.”

“You do.”

The words hang heavy. Naruto swallows around them, but they don’t go down easy.

“He gets it,” Naruto mumbles finally. “Even when he doesn’t say anything. Especially when he doesn’t.”

Gaara sits back on his heels. “And do you get him?”

Naruto’s head snaps toward him, eyes raw. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Gaara doesn’t blink. “I mean—do you understand what it costs him to be near you when he’s like this? When you’re like this?”

Naruto looks away again. His throat clicks. “We kissed.”

“And then?”

“And then we had sex.”

Gaara nods slowly, like he was expecting that. Like it’s just another item on a long, painful list.

There’s another silence, then Gaara speaks again, softer this time. “You’re going on tour in three weeks. Have you thought about that?”

Naruto’s stomach twists. “I can handle it.”

“You couldn’t even answer your phone this morning.”

Naruto bristles. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Gaara sighs, stands up. Dusts off his hands. “I’m not trying to fight with you.”

“You’re trying to fix me.”

“I’m trying to keep you from breaking.”

Naruto’s mouth presses into a line. His hands are curled into fists on his thighs, nails digging into the seams of his pants. “I’m trying,” he whispers. “I swear. I’m trying.”

Gaara looks down at him, something unreadable in his expression. “I know.”

He crosses the room, picks up the cereal bowl, dumps the remnants into the kitchen sink. Then he returns, holds out his hand.

“Come on. Your room smells like the floor of a club.”

Naruto almost laughs. Instead, he lets Gaara pull him up.

They move together in the small apartment, tidying, folding, opening windows. Gaara doesn’t press any further. He just stays. Grounded, quiet, familiar.

And in the stillness that follows, Naruto starts to remember how to breathe.

Now Playing: "Nightcall" – Kavinsky

"I'm gonna show you where it's dark, but have no fear"

By nightfall, the quiet has thickened over the city like silt at the bottom of a drained lake—too heavy to rise, too old to move. Itachi sits where he always does at this hour: window open, light low, sleeves rolled past forearms, the cold edge of the sill beneath his wrists and the faint hum of the street far below, muffled by the pane’s lazy tilt. There’s no wind, just stillness, the kind that builds only after everything else has burned through—sunlight, traffic, people, argument, heat. Now all that remains is the blue hush of absence.

The studio is clean in that sterile, intentional way only he can keep it. Not minimal—he doesn’t pretend he’s above sentiment—but precise. One ceramic mug with an ink stain near the handle, a closed notebook with dog-eared pages from months ago, a phone charger coiled like a sleeping animal. The scent of old espresso still clings to the air from when he reheated the dregs an hour ago. He didn’t drink it.

His phone lights up on the desk once, flickering with a message from Yamato. Logistics. Police aftermath. Nothing urgent, nothing emotional, nothing worth tapping open right now. He silences the vibration. The city outside glows faintly, neon diluted by smog, by fog, by time. Somewhere a siren wails, not fast, not loud. Background noise. The kind no one reacts to anymore.

He scrolls past the last thing he sent: a photo attachment—last week’s progress file for a client—and lands instead on her thread. Ino . Her contact name isn’t cute or disguised, no emojis or code. Just Ino. Plain. Brutal in its familiarity.

The last message he sent her, this morning, was at 8:03 a.m.

She hadn’t replied. But he knew Sasuke probably made sure she didn’t hit the ground at some point. Knew, too, that she probably vomited her lungs out and then crawled back into her own skin like a snake desperate to shed what she’d done, what she keeps doing, every time she reaches for something that looks like attention but feels like rot. He doesn’t blame her. But he’s not going to make excuses either.

His fingers hover over the screen. He doesn’t call. He just records the voice note and sends it straight through, before he can overthink it and gut it down to silence.

“Hope you got water and Ibuprofen. You know better.”

He pauses, then adds, quieter:

“Did the call with Kakashi go okay?”

No apology. No check-in disguised as comfort. Just care—unflinching, undiluted, spare.

He doesn’t expect an answer. That’s always been the shape of their bond: a thread, thin and sharp and tensile as piano wire. He gives enough to hold her steady, but not enough to bleed. She’s the one who needs to climb out. He just makes sure the door isn’t locked from the outside.

Still, after hitting send, Itachi sets the phone down on the ledge and lets it sit there like an open invitation. He doesn’t look away. Doesn’t move to light a cigarette, though the box is right there. Doesn’t scroll. Just leans forward, elbows on knees, spine loose, head tilted as if he’s listening for something beneath the stillness—some invisible echo that might answer back.

Across the city, her apartment lights are probably off. Or too bright. Either way, he hopes she’s lying down by now. Hopes she took the damn Ibuprofen. Hopes she listens to his voice and doesn’t mistake it for anger, or distance, or failure. Just boundary . Just balance .

The studio is silent again.

He exhales slowly through his nose. One hand drags through his hair. And then, with no ceremony, no drama, he closes the window against the night air and rises, crossing the room with soft, soundless steps. There’s still work to do. Always. But for now, the silence is an answer in itself.

[Voicemail | 3:42 a.m.]

wind distortion, city noise

“—you don’t have to call back, I just… I don’t even know if you’re up. Or if you care. I just needed to hear myself say it, I guess. That it wasn’t supposed to go like that. I didn’t mean to— long exhale, cars passing —never mind.”

deleted before it ends

[Draft | unsent text, saved at 5:09 p.m.]

to: Temari

don’t hate me for leaving early.

I couldn’t stand the way he looked at me.

Like I broke something. Maybe I did.

idk

you’d tell me if I was unbearable, right?

delete this.

[Studio Post-it | stuck to the espresso machine]

don’t forget to eat

(and don’t lie about it)

—I.

[Screenshot | blurred, dimly lit]

Message from Naruto → Sasuke

i meant it

even in the fucking stall

call me back

please.

Timestamp: 01:52 a.m.

[Envelope back | graphite sketch, hurried lines]

A profile—messy hair, mouth open slightly in sleep, chin tucked to shoulder.

Underneath, in Sasuke’s script:

wish I didn’t still look for you in everyone’s mouth.

[Voicemail | 12:08 p.m.]

muffled piano, Itachi’s voice steady

“Ino. I talked to Kakashi. He’s giving you space. But this thing—this unraveling you’re doing—you have to stop pretending it’s noble. You’re not a martyr, you’re just tired. Let someone help.”

pause

“Drink something. Text me if you can stand it.”

click

[Studio Post-it | corner of mirror]

you disappeared again.

[initial circled twice, underlined once.]

[Napkin | torn, grease-stained, Temari’s messy print]

lighting cues for bridge drop:

1. blackout — then pulse white strobe

2. mirrorball kick after Gaara’s bass loop

3. NO FOG or Shikamaru dies

[Text Thread | Group Chat: “Kiba’s Dumbass Redemption Arc”]

Kiba: yo did we get banned or nah

Shikamaru: if you’re texting, I didn’t kill you.

Temari: you almost made it a good set

Naruto: can we never speak of this again

Ino: what set?

Ino: I wasn’t even there

Ino: [message deleted]

Gaara: [audio file sent] (no one plays it)

[Draft Email | never sent | Itachi’s desktop]

Subject: Submission – Archive Project

Body:

Attached is the preliminary edit. I couldn’t finish the second part. The subject moved. Or I did. Doesn’t matter. I’ll send more if I get a version of myself I recognize.

[Handwritten scrap | found inside Sasuke’s sketchbook]

Folded three times, a single phrase in dark pencil, smudged:

“what if I never get clean?”

Next to it, lighter, almost erased:

“what if he loves me anyway?”

The overlay ends without punctuation, like a breath held too long or a song cut before its final note. There’s no neat bow—just the weight of all they couldn’t say pressed between paper, pixels, silence.

Chapter Text

Now Playing: “No Below” – by Speedy Ortiz

"True, I once said, I was better off just being dead
But I didn't know you yet"

The apartment was already lit, not by the sun, which was muffled behind high smog and the condensation trail of a departing plane, but by the hard white pulse of overhead fixtures Temari had rigged months ago when the dimness of early spring mornings began to needle her skin like static. There was no clutter, no scent of last night clinging to bedsheets or stuck to the inside of her mouth, just the faint, antiseptic tang of floor cleaner and the sharper bite of instant espresso powder slipping into boiling water.

She stirred with a flick of her wrist, sipped before the heat could settle, then set the mug down beside her phone—face up, full brightness. News alerts popped like insect wings across the lock screen: Unlicensed Warehouse Rave Shut Down After Noise Complaints, Three Cited for Public Disturbance, City Council Renews Push for Underground Scene Crackdown. No one she knew was named. No one ever was. Their talent, perhaps, was knowing just how to hover below consequence. Or maybe the system just didn’t care enough to learn their names.

Temari pushed a finger against the screen until it stopped glowing. She didn’t want to read the comments. They never said anything new. She padded barefoot across the slick floor, tying her robe tighter at the waist, hair still damp from a rinse that hadn’t quite shaken off the bass or the memory of Naruto’s outburst or Ino’s face, wide-eyed and dragging against a stranger’s shirtfront like she’d forgotten where her body began. Her jaw flexed. Temari didn’t dwell. There was always another thing to plan.

At the small desk in the corner—no bigger than a carry-on suitcase, white lacquer chipped at the corners—her laptop blinked to life. She logged into her mail. The inbox was a split of club promoters, set designers, and techs who owed her timing confirmations, everyone already onto the next event, like the world had no patience for aftermaths. She opened one thread and started typing:

Need to rerun that lighting sequence from 0:17 to 0:29 — sync issues with bass drop. Bring the strobes two clicks up and lose the amber filter. Cool white only next set. Not in the mood for sentimentality.

Her fingers paused. She deleted that last line. She wasn’t sure who it was for. The mug of coffee sat cooling to her left, but she didn’t reach for it. Her eyes drifted to the wall, where a crosshatch of silver tape marked angles from past experiments. The rig above the desk was dormant now, five lights positioned like sentinels, waiting. She stared at them, eyelids heavy, but her mind already parsing through spreadsheets, upcoming venues, the logistics of folding herself into another controlled chaos where no one could accuse her of feeling too much or not enough. The rhythm of responsibility numbed.

It kept her upright.

Her phone buzzed.

A new message, not from Kiba, not from anyone in the crew. Just a system notification. Her thumb hovered over her messages anyway. She hadn’t heard from Kiba since the fight. She hadn’t tried. She told herself it wasn’t distance—it was grace. He needed space. Or maybe he just needed someone else entirely.

She opened a new message, tapped the name she always did when the silence got a little too heavy.

“Still wanna ghost everyone tonight or wanna pretend to be functional?”

She hit send, no emoji, no softener. Then she leaned back and stared at her lighting rig again. It didn’t blink back.

Now Playing: "Wave Function" – VOLTAIRE

Kiba had been at it for hours before he realized he hadn’t blinked in too long.

The room was warm, thick with the faint scent of solder and burnt plastic—the scent of a too-old interface still limping along through thirdhand adapters and one bad grounding cable he kept forgetting to replace. A half-drunk energy drink sweated onto the edge of the desk, the can leaving a rust-colored ring that would eventually stain the wood permanently, but he didn’t move it.

Didn’t move much at all.

He was hunched over his setup in a hoodie with the sleeves bunched at his elbows, hair tied back badly, dry from too much bleach and too little care. The playback bar blinked again. Another file loaded: Raw_Capture03_finalmaybe.wav. The optimism in that filename felt like a cruel joke now.

The waveform looked promising until you pressed play.

Then it collapsed.

Too much feedback, too much crowd noise bleeding in from the floor monitors—someone had jostled a mic, probably during the fight, and the last chorus warped like melting tape. The bass cracked through the top end like a gunshot underwater. He scrubbed back. Tried isolating frequencies. Toggling filters. Nothing salvaged what mattered. Every time he managed to clean a section, the next measure came in hotter, more distorted, like the audio itself was mad at him for existing.

He sank back in his chair, chewing at the inside of his cheek, eyes burning.

It wasn’t the file. It was him.

He’d spun chaos. Hijacked the deck. Thought it would be a power move, slap his name on something unforgettable. Instead, he’d made noise. Messy, slurred, unmastered noise. And Naruto’s track, the one he threw on like some kind of challenge, had made everything around it look even worse. That raw demo, rough and imperfect, had punched through the reverb like a heartbeat through a stethoscope.

He hated that it still played in his head with such clarity. He hated more that it was good.

Kiba dragged the cursor back to the clip labeled Naruto_demo. He’d copied it before the warehouse night, almost as an afterthought, Naruto had left it on a shared drive without password protection, a move so typically trusting that it felt like an invitation. Or maybe Naruto hadn’t thought Kiba would care enough to open it. That stung more than he’d admit.

The room filled again with Naruto’s voice, unpolished but weirdly magnetic, the kind of voice that didn’t need effects or layering because it carried something beyond technique—like a splinter in your throat, or an old bruise behind the ribs. The lyrics weren’t even complex. It was the delivery: the break on the third note of the second verse, the way the vowel dragged long, like a secret too sharp to swallow.

Kiba exhaled through his nose, slumping forward. The hiss of the speakers filled the silence between tracks. Outside the window, the neighbor’s dog barked once, twice. The sun was too bright for how fucked up everything felt.

He minimized the session and opened a blank project. Stared at it.

Chapter Text

Now playing: "The Last Day of Summer" – by The Cure

"All that I have, all that I hold
All that is wrong
All that I feel for or trust in or love
All that is gone"

Late afternoon filtered in through the windows in muted strokes of color, draining the once-white walls into pale, bruised hues of gray and ash. The plants by the sill were overwatered and leaning, like they’d given up pretending they were decorative. The apartment wasn’t cold exactly, but it had a strange stillness to it, one that settled over the furniture and into the bones, the kind of atmosphere that made even clean surfaces feel dusty.

Sasuke sat at the kitchen counter with a bowl of something lukewarm in front of him—plain rice, maybe, or eggs that had cooled into rubber. He wasn’t really eating, just mechanically lifting the fork every few seconds, chewing like his body had learned the motion but forgotten the purpose. His back was slightly hunched, hoodie slipping off one shoulder, hair damp and pushed back like he’d only just gotten out of the shower but hadn’t thought to dry it fully. The hum of the fridge was the only sound, the low mechanical breathing of an appliance that didn’t care whether anyone lived here or not.

Ino stood in the narrow hallway between the kitchen and the bathroom, barefoot, one foot curled slightly against the cold tile, her oversized shirt barely clinging to one shoulder. Her eyeliner was smudged in a way that didn’t look deliberate. She had lip gloss on but hadn’t reapplied it since last night. There was a faint red mark on her neck, not quite a bruise, more like the memory of one. Her phone was in her hand, screen lit, thumb scrolling, scrolling, scrolling—but her eyes weren’t following the motion. The screen’s blue glow washed over her face like hospital light, and her lips moved occasionally as if reading something silently, or maybe just mouthing something she’d never actually say out loud.

Every few minutes she moved. Not far—just a step or two, aimless—then stopped. A jittery rhythm to her pacing, like a song only she could hear. She kept tucking her hair behind one ear only to let it fall again. Her fingers were twitchy, like they were meant to be holding a cigarette or a wine glass, and denied both. The bare pad of her foot caught on a crack in the tile and she swore under her breath—not at the floor, but at herself, like even gravity had found her exhausting.

From his stool, Sasuke glanced at her once but didn’t say anything. She could feel it, the weight of his stare—not judging, but almost counting. Like he was measuring how far along the spiral she was this time. She hated that look. Hated that he knew her well enough to not ask if she was okay. Hated that he didn’t try to fix it. But she hated more the fact that she wanted him to.

He forked another bite of cold rice. Swallowed like it cost him effort.

“You’re wearing yesterday’s shirt,” he said flatly, voice low, dry.

Ino didn’t look at him. Just laughed tight, almost musical, but with no real amusement. “How poetic of you to notice,” she murmured, thumb still dragging across the screen, eyes still unfocused.

“Not poetic,” Sasuke replied, still not looking up. “Just hard to miss.”

There was no tone in it. No concern, no disdain. Just observation. And maybe that’s what made it worse.

Ino walked to the bathroom without answering. The mirror greeted her like an old rival—unforgiving, sterile, backlit by the exhausted buzz of the overhead bulb. She looked at herself the way one might look at a bloodstain on the hem of a borrowed dress. Not startled. Not ashamed. Just resigned.

From the other side of the apartment, the clink of metal against ceramic broke the quiet. Sasuke setting his fork down. Her stomach turned not from guilt or hunger, but from the absurd intimacy of it. Sharing silence was worse than sharing a bed. Silence meant you stayed.

She reached for her toothbrush, changed her mind halfway, and instead leaned over the sink without turning the faucet on, just breathing—mouth open, eyelids fluttering, neck curved like she might tip forward and never pull back up.

The mirror caught her eyes again.

She mouthed something to herself.

A joke, maybe. Or a prayer.

From the kitchen, Sasuke spoke without turning around, his voice flat but not absent, a low exhale shaped into words that had clearly been waiting at the back of his throat for hours, if not days.

“If you’re not gonna call Kakashi,” he said, fingers loosely wrapping around the rim of his water glass like he didn’t trust his grip to hold, “call Yamato. Or Itachi. Anyone.”

There was no emphasis. No spike of irritation, no tremble of concern. Just a line delivered like a weather report—inevitable, factual, emotionally bleached.

Ino froze, toothbrush still dry in her hand, neck angled toward the mirror but eyes now flicking past it—toward the open bathroom door, toward the half-sound of him just sitting there, calling her out in the same breath he didn’t bother to follow up with a glance. Her pulse skipped once. The way it did when you almost tripped down a step in the dark.

The laugh that slipped out of her mouth came too sharp, too fast—chipped glass masquerading as humor, the kind that tried to sound above it all but came off like someone clutching for altitude in a room with no windows.

“Wow, you rehearsing interventions now?” she said, not even trying to mask the acid. “Let me guess, next you’ll bring up how I should hydrate and get some sun.”

Sasuke didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. That was the worst thing about him sometimes—how he could make silence feel like a boundary, like he’d drawn a line in salt and dared her to cross it.

She turned back to the mirror with her teeth clenched, lifting the brush again just for the sake of motion. Her knuckles were white on the handle. The laugh still echoed a little behind her ribs, even though it had already died.

Then his voice cut in again, this time lower, slower. And though the words weren’t new, they held a different weight now. Not anger. Not condescension.

Just exhaustion.

“I’m not doing this again, Ino.”

She didn’t answer. Not right away.

Because something about the way he said it—like someone turning a key in a door they were too tired to lock again—peeled her smile back. Just slightly. Just long enough for the mask to crack.

Her shoulders dropped the way someone might drop a cigarette just before the flame burned their fingers. Not surrender. Not even agreement. Just a momentary glitch in her performance.

She looked down at the sink, at the toothpaste she hadn’t opened, at the glass she’d left there from last night with red wine dried at the bottom like blood in a basin. The mirror didn’t move, but it felt like it did. Felt like it was waiting.

So she grinned again, too wide this time.

“Okay, Dad,” she muttered with a sneer that didn’t quite stick.

But even she could hear it that it didn’t land. Not the way she wanted it to.

Not this time.

Somewhere behind her, Sasuke finally stood. The sound of the chair legs dragging against the floor, deliberate. The soft thud of his bowl settling into the sink. Water running.

It was all too domestic. Too practiced. Too much like routine.

And routine meant this had happened before.

She opened the fridge with the thoughtless instinct of someone just trying to fill the space with motion, not purpose — her stomach didn’t hurt exactly, but there was a low ache behind her ribs, that hollow hunger that came not from food but from forgetting to eat for long enough that the body stopped asking nicely.

There it was the magnet. Still stuck to the freezer door like it had been welded there by a former version of herself who still believed in permanence, in careers, in the power of image. A glossy print — her smile laminated in the fluorescent haze of backstage lighting, half-shadowed by the photographer’s arm, her own eyeliner wing sharp enough to slice glass. A promo piece from that editorial.

The one that never got published.

Or maybe it did — in forums. In threads. In sidebars next to links tagged “EXCLUSIVE” and “YOU WON’T BELIEVE.” In places where people didn’t care if your cheekbone caught the light or if the runway had gone well.

She blinked once. Twice.

Her fingers didn’t reach for the magnet, but her breath did — stuttered in her chest, caught on something small and sharp just behind her sternum.

The memory slammed into her like something physical. Like a door she forgot to brace.

The buzz of her phone had been relentless, wild — the vibration against the glass makeup counter at the shoot almost rhythmic at first, then frantic, then unbearable. Her manager’s name. Then the agency. Then five texts from a girl she’d blocked two months ago. Then unknown numbers.

The assistant stylist whispering, “Hey, you okay?”

Then the noise of it all flooded out.

Her mother’s voice in the hallway, just beyond the room — angry, shrill, not even curious, just disappointed in that way that made it sound like she’d been waiting for this.

The laptop screen open to a forum — not even a headline, just a series of messages.
“Is this her???”
“That’s definitely Ino Yamanaka.”
“Bro she’s such a slut lmao”
“Leak is in the comments 👇👇👇”

The video thumbnail burned into her retinas: a still frame, a sliver of her shoulder, her bare body, the way she came undone into someone’s hand, someone’s mouth, and it didn’t matter who filmed it or how it got out.

She’d already lost.

Her father’s voice — not a shout, not even raised. Just dry and metallic like coins in a cold pocket:
“What did you expect?”
“Look at how you dress.”

And her fingers stuttering, tapping on her phone, trying to delete the messages as they came in faster than she could blink, faster than her heart could process.

“Whore.”
“Yo I saw that vid.”
“Nice tits lol”
“My boss forwarded this to our group chat.”

Her hands had gone cold first. That was what she remembered clearest. Not the panic. Not the burn of humiliation crawling up her neck. Not the breathless ache between her ribs like she’d been punched.

No.

Just her hands, white and useless, fingers moving too slow to matter.

Her mother wouldn’t look at her.

Her agent ghosted within twenty-four hours.

The job was canceled “for creative redirection.”

The bank account froze.

Her name trended.

And somewhere in the blur of the next forty-eight hours, Shikamaru had shown up — hadn’t knocked, hadn’t called — had walked in from her balcony and found her on the floor behind the couch or maybe under the table, the curtains still drawn, vomit crusting under her nails and mascara dried in sharp rivers along her jawline.

He didn’t say anything. Not then. Not until she tried to laugh it off with some brittle joke like, “Guess I finally made headlines.”

He’d crouched down, grabbed her wrist — not cruelly, just firmly enough to matter — and said:

“This is when we go. Not talk. Go.”

And she had.

But even now, standing in front of the fridge, a magnet pressing that whole day like a splinter under her skin, she wasn’t sure she ever came back.

Not really.

Now Playing: "Best For You and Me" – Helado Negro

The office smelled faintly of black coffee gone lukewarm and the ghost of cedarwood incense, the kind Kakashi always claimed helped him “focus” even though no one had ever seen him do anything that looked remotely like concentration. The walls were matte charcoal with bolts of steel support exposed deliberately, not out of necessity — design meant to look undone, industrial, modern, but oddly lived in. There were framed records layered behind faintly scratched glass, notebooks stacked haphazardly on a high shelf, and a half-eaten protein bar resting beside an unopened file folder marked with a red tab that none of them wanted to ask about.

Sakura paced the floor in worn boots that made a soft thud on the unfinished concrete, the soles scuffed to hell from studio nights and god knows what kind of late-hour damage control.
Her hands were clenched into anxious fists around the hem of her shirt, tugging at it like she could iron out the folds in her gut if she pulled hard enough, if she moved fast enough, if she did something — anything — to keep from splintering into guilt or fury or both.

Shikamaru sat cross-legged in one of the leather chairs, slouched low, arms folded loosely across his chest like he didn’t want to be there but had already resigned himself to the weight of it. His face was unreadable but not blank, not cold, removed. Like he’d already seen this exact moment play out before and was just waiting for everyone else to catch up.

Kakashi leaned against the edge of the desk, one hand in the pocket of his tailored pants, the other swirling what was left of his cold brew with a metal straw that clicked gently against the glass. His tone wasn’t sharp, but there was no softness in it either — only that particular gravity he wielded when the moment dropped out of banter and into something surgical.

“If the press finds out about that fight,” he said, voice casual like he was ordering a sandwich, “or the label’s habits—any of them—you’ll all go down together.”

Sakura stopped pacing. She stared at him like she’d misheard, then narrowed her eyes, jaw tight.

“We’re not talking about strangers,” she snapped. “We’re talking about friends.”

A beat. The low hum of the street outside barely audible through the high studio windows. Shikamaru didn’t move, didn’t blink.

“Exactly,” he said, like the word had more resignation than agreement. Like he wasn’t arguing. Like he’d just accepted what that meant.

Kakashi straightened slightly, the glass clinking down onto the desk beside him with the softest of thuds. He looked between them — her fire, his fatigue — and shrugged.

“Friends don’t pay your lawyer.”

It landed like an open palm across the face.

It stung.

Sakura folded her arms across her chest too, mirroring Shikamaru’s pose without meaning to, but everything about her was louder, tighter, coiled like a fuse already burning low.

“We’re doing the best we can,” she muttered, but it didn’t sound like she believed it.

“So is everyone,” Kakashi replied, not unkindly. “But at some point, someone has to be the adult in the room.”

Shikamaru exhaled, slow and deep through his nose, like he was trying to keep something inside his ribs from cracking wider.

“And that someone’s supposed to be who, exactly?” he asked without looking up. “Me? Her? You?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kakashi said. “Just means someone has to do it.”

There was silence after that. Weighted. A quiet acknowledgment of how much rot had already set in. Of how long they’d let the roof leak without fixing it. Of how inevitable this moment had been. And of how tired they all were of patching things with duct tape and late-night promises.

Sakura finally moved, shoulders shaking off some invisible tension as she stepped closer to the desk, not quite ready to sit, but no longer able to pace.

“What do you want us to do?” she asked, voice low. Tired.

Kakashi tilted his head.

“Start with telling the truth,” he said. “To each other. Then maybe we can worry about the rest.”

Shikamaru finally looked up at that — just for a second, his eyes dark with something that might’ve been guilt or maybe just the echo of a thousand conversations he’d dodged.

But he didn’t speak.

Because truth wasn’t a song lyric you could smooth into rhythm.

And in this studio — this graveyard of half-mended chaos — it didn’t sound like music at all.

The pause that followed wasn’t long, but it buzzed like a low voltage current running beneath the skin of the room, humming between exposed beams and the heavy fabric of things unsaid, slinking down the spine of every memory they’d shared in these four walls. Sakura stood there with her arms still crossed, but the edge of her stance had dulled not out of defeat, but out of something closer to grief.
A kind of mourning for the version of this group that used to function without someone constantly falling off the edge, for the nights when the music came easy, when laughing didn’t feel like treason.

Her voice, when it came, was quieter than before, but there was something sharp threaded into it, a sobering calm like the one that settles after crying until your body’s too tired to keep up the panic.

“They’re not fine,” she said. No emphasis, no accusation — just the fact laid bare between them. “And pretending otherwise is just slow-motion collapse.”

She didn’t look at either of them when she said it. Just past them, maybe at the vinyl sleeve half-slid from the shelf, or at the faint crack in the floor that always caught the sunlight around five. Maybe she was trying not to look at Shikamaru’s face, or at the subtle twitch Kakashi always made when something hit too close to home.

The older man didn’t reply at first. He rubbed a thumb along the edge of his jaw, then pushed away from the desk in one smooth motion, stepping into the full frame of the room with the same restless weight he always carried — like a man who’d seen too many versions of this same mess and knew exactly how it played out.

“Then decide,” he said finally, glancing at Shikamaru now. Not cruel. Not kind. Just clear. “Decide if you want to lead a group…”
A pause.
“or babysit a bomb.”

The sentence settled between them like dust on a mixing board, unavoidable and fine-grained, impossible to wipe clean without smearing everything worse. Shikamaru let out a slow breath and leaned forward in the chair, resting his forearms on his knees, his fingers laced loosely like he was bracing himself against the weight of being right too soon.

“Sometimes,” he muttered, “it’s both.”

Sakura didn’t speak. Her phone buzzed once in her pocket — maybe Naruto, maybe not — but she didn’t check it. She was staring at the scuffed spot on the concrete just in front of her boot, where someone once dropped a cymbal stand hard enough to leave a dent.

Where things cracked quietly before they broke.

Outside, the sun dipped low behind the glass, a band of light stretching across the floor like a line waiting to be crossed.

The sky had tipped fully into indigo by the time the studio door swung shut behind them, swallowing the soft murmur of voices and the dry clink of glass from inside. Out in the parking lot, the world felt suspended in one of those strange, in-between hours where nothing moved unless you moved it, and even the hum of city life dimmed beneath the slow stretch of nightfall. The asphalt still held onto the heat of the day, radiating it upward in thin waves that shimmered faintly under the streetlamp glow, and for a moment neither of them spoke, footsteps quiet and unsynchronized as they made their way toward the faded white lines of the lot.

Sakura stopped first, somewhere between the rear of Shikamaru’s car and the studio wall, the motion instinctive more than intentional. She reached into the deep pocket of her bomber jacket — soft pink satin frayed slightly at the cuff — and pulled out a pack she almost never touched, one of those things she carried more out of old habit than present necessity. She tapped a cigarette free with a flick that spoke of college rooftops and nights when everything felt too big to name, then lit it with a steady hand, the flame briefly illuminating the crease between her brow and the faint shine at the edge of her lower lip.

She exhaled slowly, eyes squinting against the smoke as it curled upward, dissolving into the bruised colors overhead. Her voice came out low, wry but with a softness that felt scraped clean at the edges.

“You ever think we’re holding this all together with duct tape and denial?”

The cigarette balanced between her fingers, glowing faintly with each drag. She didn’t look at him when she said it, didn’t need to. It was the kind of thing you say to someone who’s already thinking it.
Shikamaru, standing a few feet off with one hand in his coat pocket and the other wrapped around the worn strap of his gear bag, didn’t answer right away. He tilted his head back to look at the sky not to admire it, not really, but as if trying to locate something just out of reach in the silence. His breath was visible now, a thin wisp in the cooler air, and he scratched his jaw absently before finally replying.

“Yeah,” he muttered, deadpan.
“And I’m the duct tape.”

The delivery was dry, but it didn’t land like a joke. It landed like a resignation. The kind of line you toss into the dark because it’s easier than admitting how often you think about walking away, and how you probably won’t, not out of hope, but because you’re too damn tired to start over somewhere else.

Sakura huffed something like a laugh through her nose, but it caught on the inhale and turned sharp. She took another drag, thumb brushing the seam of her jacket, and let the silence stretch. Somewhere across the street, a bottle rolled lazily along the curb, pushed by wind or maybe just a late commuter kicking debris.

They stood like that, two silhouettes paused between motion and retreat, faces worn but not entirely closed, beneath a buzzing streetlamp that clicked occasionally, like it might flicker out if they waited long enough. Neither said they were worried. Neither asked how the other was really doing. They didn’t have to.

Because they both knew the tape was peeling. And that denial only held so long before the seams split open and the whole damn thing came apart in your hands.

Now Playing: "A&W" – Lana Del Rey

The cold from the fridge pressed faintly against her fingertips, the thin edge of the door still open just enough for the interior light to cast a dull white glow across the tiled floor. The magnet clung where it always had, a curling photograph from the editorial, glossy and shallow, a lie sealed in color and cropped to frame only the surface: long legs, windblown hair, a look over the shoulder that had once been called iconic. But now, it was just another relic—mocking in its silence, too sharp at the edges. Ino didn’t move. Didn’t breathe for a long second. The memory hadn’t just surfaced, it had bloomed like a bruise beneath the skin, all color and throb and no way to look away.

She stood there, still barefoot, the pads of her feet chilled by the floor and her eyes burning with that dry ache that comes after the kind of crying you don’t remember doing. The kind that hits behind the eyes and folds into your jaw, into the hinge of your spine, into the part of your chest that stops trusting the next inhale. Her hand, palm-down against the fridge door, finally dropped slow and disconnected, like even that small movement took negotiation. The door thudded shut softly behind her.

The kitchen was quiet. Too quiet.

Sasuke was gone.

There was no sound of water running, no idle movement from the living room, no shifting shadow across the slatted hallway light. She didn’t remember hearing the door close, didn’t know how long she’d been still. But it was unmistakable now — the absence had shape, had weight. And it was heavier than his silence.

Ino walked to the counter, knees faintly trembling from nothing she could name, and reached for her phone with hands that still remembered how to shake. She slid her thumb across the screen out of muscle memory, unlocking it, ignoring the messages she hadn’t answered and the notifications she couldn’t bring herself to delete. Her reflection ghosted faintly in the black glass before the home screen lit up.

She didn’t scroll. She went straight to his name.

Itachi.

His name sat there like it always had, not pinned, not favorited, not buried. Just there. Simple. Steady. Waiting. That was the worst part of him. He never chased, but he never vanished. He didn’t demand updates. Didn’t send threats masked as concern. He just waited. And that made the guilt sharper, like failing him wasn’t loud — it was silent, steady, long-form erosion.
She tapped his name and began typing, the letters appearing with more hesitation than speed, her thumb hovering between each word like she was bargaining with it.

I’m trying. I swear I’m trying. But I’m not good at…

The blinking cursor waited for her to finish. It blinked like a pulse. Like someone holding their breath.

She stared at the message.

Then backspaced.

One stroke at a time, until the screen was clean again — sterile and blank and full of all the things she didn’t know how to say out loud. She could already hear his voice in her head: calm, neutral, direct. She hated that it never got angry. That he could stay composed even while watching her fall apart. Like he knew she’d always get back up — and if she didn’t, he’d just keep stepping over the damage and organizing the wreckage.

She closed the text window. Didn’t send anything.

Set the phone face down on the counter.

And stood there for a while, not really knowing if she was waiting for him to call, or just for the silence to solidify into something she could crawl inside of.

Now Playing: "Lazuli" – Beach House

The room was dim, not dark—light from the hallway lamp leaked in through the door he hadn’t fully closed, casting a low golden strip across the hardwood floor and up the edge of the bed. It smelled faintly of dry shampoo and last night’s clothes, and the air felt like it hadn’t moved all day. Naruto lay curled on top of the sheets, not under them, not beside them—just draped across the mattress in his hoodie and sweats like he’d never bothered transitioning from day to night. His body hadn’t decided which one it belonged to. His thumb moved in slow, lazy circles against the screen of his phone, not really scrolling, just cycling. One photo to the next. To the next. To the next.

Most of them were blurry. Off-angle. Taken without care, or maybe taken with too much.

A shot of Sasuke, passed out on a green leather couch backstage, mouth just slightly open, black long-sleeve pulled over his fingers even in sleep. There was a half-drunk bottle of water near his head and a sharpie mark on the inside of his wrist — something Kiba had drawn on him, probably. Naruto had forgotten until now. He remembered trying not to laugh too loudly when he took that photo, afraid he’d wake him.

Swipe.

One of Ino, holding a powder brush mid-air, mouth open in something between a threat and a joke. Her arm was around his neck to keep him still, and her nails were neon orange in the frame, and he remembered how she’d clicked her tongue and said, “If you flinch again, I’m going straight for your tear duct.” His eye had twitched anyway. They’d both laughed. He missed her when she was like that—sharp, present, alive in a way that made you want to follow her into whatever was next.

Swipe.

A group shot from last spring. Kiba was flipping off the camera, Gaara half-smiling like someone had bribed him to try, Temari in sunglasses despite the shade. Naruto’s own grin stretched wide across the frame, but he didn’t remember what they were celebrating. Or maybe they weren’t celebrating anything. Maybe they’d just been there.

Swipe.

He paused.

Backed up.

Swiped again.

Sasuke asleep on the couch.

His thumb hovered over the screen. He could hear his own breathing, not because it was loud, but because everything else was so quiet. Outside, someone honked—twice, frustrated—and a dog barked down the block, but none of it reached him. It just passed through, like radio static behind glass. He sat up slowly, hoodie bunched at the shoulders, and tapped the little microphone icon on the message screen.

He didn’t speak right away.

There was a beat of silence, captured silence, the kind that always came before he broke his own rules and reached out again.

“…I’m not trying to fix you.”

His voice was low. Raw, but not weak. Not pleading. Just honest in that soft, dangerous way that always got him hurt.

“I just…” He stopped. Exhaled. “I just want to talk. Please.”

He let the voice note end there. Didn’t listen back. Didn’t rerecord.

Just hit send. And stared at the screen as it delivered.
Then set the phone down face-up beside him, the blue bubble now hanging there like a heartbeat no one answered.

The silence returned, softer this time. He didn’t cry. Didn’t scream. Just leaned back against the headboard, eyes flicking to the ceiling, lips parting slightly like he was going to say something else aloud—but he didn’t.

He just let the room swallow it.

And stayed very still.

The hum of the studio was not silence, not entirely. The faint, mechanical breath of the soundboard on standby pulsed low through the floorboards, and somewhere in the wall behind him, one of the ancient pipes gave a slow, rhythmic tick, like a heartbeat too tired to rush. Itachi sat cross-legged on the worn rug, spine leaning against the couch’s edge, arms draped loose over his knees. His blazer was folded on the armrest, shoes left at the door, sleeves rolled halfway to the elbow as if he’d meant to finish something and then simply didn’t.

The room around him smelled like dust and something synthetic—old velour, maybe, from the couch cushions. A few wires trailed across the floor toward the nearest rack of equipment, half-coiled like someone had started tidying but got distracted mid-thought. No music played. Not even a demo looping quietly in the background. Just that low electrical hum and the occasional creak of the building settling.

His phone, discarded beside him near the leg of the table, vibrated once against the hardwood.

Buzz.

He didn’t flinch. Just opened his eyes.

The screen lit up long enough to show Yamato’s name. Then went dark again, leaving behind a shallow breath of blue light that faded like a thought not acted on. Itachi stared at it. He didn’t reach for it.

Above him, the pinboard was dense with colorless clutter: white printer paper, half-torn envelopes, sticky notes in pale yellows and greys. The center held a clean schedule printout—meticulously annotated with red pen—flanked by rows of post-its in descending urgency. His handwriting, sharp and clean, traced in black ink.

“Ino – check-in.” Underlined twice.

“Label Event – schedule conflict (Yamato?)” in the top right.

A new note, crooked and fresh, held by a single bent tack.

“Sasuke ???”

Just that. No context. No time or task or resolution.

Just the question.

He stared at it. The paper seemed almost louder than the room—brighter in the dim lamplight that fell from the overhead fixture, casting angled shadows against the wall, soft enough that the edges blurred. He tilted his head back slightly, let it rest against the couch behind him, eyes tracing the pinboard’s edges like they held something vital. He didn’t blink much.

He looked tired. But not in the usual way.

Not like lack of sleep. Not like overwork.

He looked like someone slowly forgetting how to breathe through the weight of everything he wasn’t letting fall.

The light flickered once, almost imperceptibly. He closed his eyes again.

Just let himself exist there, in the absence of urgency. In the soft static of a night that didn’t demand anything new. The messages could wait. The event could wait. The calls, the fights, the press. Even the hurt could wait.

For a few more minutes, there was nothing but the hum, and the floor beneath him, and the faint blue halo of a screen that didn’t ring again.

Chapter Text

Now playing: “Circumambient” by Grimes

"Oh, baby, I can't do
Oh anything to help you
'Cause I am working to the bone
And you know, and you know
You're gonna have to play alone"

The fog had rolled in heavy, the kind that didn’t just press itself low against the streets but seemed to soak into them, curling around steel stairwells and fire escapes, blurring edges, dulling sounds, turning the industrial bones of the neighborhood into something shapeless and soft. Sakura stood with her back to the wall of the train station, where old posters peeled like sunburnt skin and the cement beneath her boots was still slick from the early condensation. She’d been standing there for ten minutes already, maybe longer, the cardboard coffee cup in her hand slowly giving way to the heat of her fingers, warping just slightly as steam kissed her knuckles with every breath of wind.

Her coat hung open over her clothes, the collar turned up, not for style but for shelter. She hadn’t bothered with makeup—there hadn’t been time, and even if there had, she wasn’t in the mood to make herself look like she had anything together. The city was too grey this morning. Too honest.

She shifted her weight, toeing a discarded cigarette butt into the crack of the pavement, watching as it smudged into ash. Her jaw ached with tension. She told herself it was just the lack of sleep, but that wasn’t true. Not entirely. She’d slept before worse meetings. And yet her chest felt full of cold static, something that sat between unease and anger, between relief and wariness. The kind of emotion you couldn’t name without biting into the memory that shaped it.

Not since the thing with Ino.

Not since the night it all spun sideways, since Neji had vanished like it hadn’t happened at all.

He hadn’t said goodbye. Not to her. Not to Ino. Not to anyone who mattered.

She hated how much that still got to her.

Across the street, the harsh exhale of a delivery truck punctured the hush, its lights blinking briefly through the mist. A few early commuters passed her by, earbuds in, eyes vacant. Somewhere behind her, the train doors groaned open and shut again, a low mechanical sigh.

She looked down at her phone, locked screen dim, cracked at the corner from that night it slipped out of her hand—not worth fixing, like too many things lately—and resisted the urge to text someone. Anyone. Shikamaru. Kakashi. Hell, even Kiba. Just to say: he’s late.

But she didn’t. She waited.

When she finally heard the footsteps, she knew it was him before she saw him.

They were slow. Measured. Not the hurried gait of someone catching up, but the quiet momentum of someone who had already decided not to apologize.

There he was—tall, grey scarf wound neatly around his neck, jaw clean, hair longer than she remembered, pulled back loosely at the nape like he didn’t care about fashion anymore, or maybe like he cared too much and was pretending not to. A wheeled suitcase behind him and a black folder under one arm. No rush. No phone in sight. No smile.

Neji Hyūga, calm as a ghost and colder than the morning air, stepping out of the fog like he’d only stepped away for a minute, not years.

Sakura blinked once and took a sip of coffee, bitter and lukewarm now, before speaking.

“You’re late,” she said, voice low.

Neji’s eyes met hers, unreadable, always unreadable, but he gave a small nod, just once.

“There was construction near the bridge.”

A pause. Tighter than it needed to be.

Sakura snorted, sharp. “Now it's called construction, huh.”

“I’m here now,” he said.

And god—god—how she hated that he was right

The silence between them was its own kind of weather—thick, slow, cold in that specific way only familiarity can be when it turns sharp around the edges. They stood there on opposite sides of a conversation that hadn’t yet begun but had already been bleeding out for months, maybe longer. Sakura tightened her grip on the coffee cup just to give her fingers something to do, to stop them from curling into fists or gestures that might betray more than she wanted him to see. Neji, as always, carried nothing in his posture except stillness, like he belonged to a slower world, one where time folded neatly and never spilled over.

“You didn’t say why you agreed,” she said at last, and her voice came out flatter than she meant. It wasn’t a question so much as a push, a dare to make him say it out loud.

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. He just stood there, letting the weight of it pass through him like wind through tall grass.

“You didn’t ask,” he replied.

Of course.

Of course that would be his answer.

Sakura exhaled sharply through her nose, the sound more bitter than the coffee she’d half-finished. Her shoulders rose and fell once, a slow, measured motion that tried to pass for calm.

“Right,” she muttered, and then her tone sharpened with something old and metallic. “You always liked watching people ruin themselves from a distance.”

And maybe that was unfair, and maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe it was a wound she’d kept cauterized so long it stopped feeling like one, just scar tissue she’d learned to work around, built language and friendship and loyalty on top of. Until he left. Without warning. Without even the decency of a cold goodbye.

Neji’s gaze didn’t change, but something in him did. The light caught his irises differently for a second, less distant, more deliberate. He looked at her like someone examining a cracked pane of glass, deciding whether to replace it or let it shatter.

“You don’t call a surgeon,” he said quietly, “until there’s a wound.”

That silenced her, not because it landed, but because it hit too clean and precise.

And that was the thing about Neji. He didn’t throw stones. He held scalpels.

Sakura looked away, not down but past him, toward the glass-paneled building down the block. Kakashi’s studio. Three floors up, dim light probably already on, and somewhere behind it, the threads of this whole mess stretched taut—press releases and bookings, missed calls and fading trust, a band teetering at the edge of something neither fame nor friendship could fix.

She didn’t say another word. Just started walking, boots loud on the wet pavement, the fog wrapping itself around her ankles like it wanted her to stay still.

Neji followed a step behind, suitcase wheels whispering along the cracks.

The side office looked like it had been alive once—bright and full of movement, a space where things were decided and undone at equal speed—but now it breathed in the way backstage halls do after everyone’s gone quiet: half-spent and flickering at the edges. Tour posters from past years lined the wall like fading ghosts of ambition, curled slightly at the corners from too many summers and too little reverence. An open box of cables sat under the coat rack, one sleeve of a hoodie drooping over the side like it had tried to escape the conversation. Empty energy drink cans stacked like war trophies on a windowsill. The faint thump of bass bled through the wall—nothing distinct, just the low pulse of something being built or broken in the next room.

Neji’s bag was slung open on the guest chair, neat but worn, like it had been packed and unpacked too many times in too many cities without ever fully settling anywhere. Sakura didn’t look inside on purpose, but her eyes caught the contents in peripheral flashes: the exposed edge of an external hard drive labeled in precise ink, a laminated Fashion Week pass half-tucked into the leather organizer, the sharp spine of a planner folded open to this month’s dates, already crowded in a sharp, slanted hand. He had a way of making chaos look like form. Always had.

He was leaning against the desk now, fingers scrolling methodically through his phone with the kind of calm that made her irrationally annoyed. As if the last years hadn’t happened. As if he hadn’t disappeared.

“You freelance now?” she asked, trying to make it sound like a joke, but it came out more like an accusation, sharper than she’d intended.

Neji didn’t look up. “Logistics mostly. PR cleanup. Fashion consults when I’m bored.”

Sakura raised an eyebrow. “So basically: bridging egos and damage control.”

A faint smirk twitched at the corner of his mouth. “You say that like it’s not your entire personality.”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t hide the way she let her weight relax slightly against the wall. It was easier to breathe when she could be snide about it. Easier than talking about why it felt like relief to see him again—or why it stung that it did.

“Let me guess,” she continued, pushing off the wall and pacing toward the desk, eyeing the open planner like it might give her more answers than he would. “Kakashi called you in because the label’s about to implode.”

Neji finally met her gaze. “I volunteered.”

That gave her pause. Her brows lifted, a moment of genuine confusion breaking through the practiced banter.

“You what?”

He reached down to adjust one of the cords near the console without breaking eye contact. “I heard about what happened at the warehouse. And before that. The fights. The press. The spiral.”

Sakura crossed her arms. “You kept tabs.”

“I didn’t stop caring,” he said, simply, like that explained anything.

And maybe it did. Maybe that was the most he’d ever give her. They both knew what it had meant, the way he’d dropped out of orbit when Ino went under, when everything started shifting. He wasn’t built to chase collapsing stars, just to document the burn. But here he was now, notebook tucked beside his laptop, sleeves rolled to the elbows like he’d never left.

Sakura sighed, dragging her fingers through her hair. “So, what now? You’re part of the tour?”

“Eventually,” Neji said. “Officially, I’m coordinating fashion contacts in a few cities. Smoothing venue transitions. Cleaning up what the press might say.”

She narrowed her eyes. “And unofficially?”

A pause.

“Watching.”

It hung there between them—neutral but not empty. A vow with its edges dulled, something cautious but not cold.

Sakura turned away before she said something honest. She looked down at his open planner instead, scanning the names and dates, the symbols she didn’t recognize. Little things tucked between appointments—initials circled, cities underlined, arrows between dates. She wondered how many other stories were scribbled in those margins.

“You’re not the only one watching,” she muttered, half to herself. “You’re just the only one who shows up in nice shoes.”

Neji didn’t argue.

Outside, someone shouted for a mic check, and the walls trembled faintly with laughter. But in the small office, it was just the two of them again, caught in that familiar balance, never quite aligned, but still orbiting.

Sakura stood by the cracked window now, one hand wrapped around her lukewarm coffee cup and the other tucked beneath her crossed arms like she could physically hold herself back from saying too much. The noise outside the studio—the shuffle of equipment cases, the impatient hum of someone testing a snare in another room—bled in through the old frame, but it felt oddly distant, like she and Neji were moving through air that was just slightly thicker than the rest of the world.

He hadn’t said much after settling into the chair across from her. Just nodded when she started talking. Tapped the edge of his planner shut with a soft click like he was sealing it off—not to dismiss her, but to clear the space, as if to say: I’m listening. Go ahead.

So she did.

She started slow, her voice low but precise, like she was laying out evidence instead of memories—Kiba’s brawl at the warehouse, the way the footage was already circulating in small forums; Naruto’s quiet disappearances and the day they thought he might not wake up; how Gaara’s been sleeping on his floor lately, folding his clothes, like that might fix anything. She skimmed past Sasuke’s last spiral, but didn’t sugarcoat it. She mentioned the bruises on his hands and the way no one could get through to him anymore—not even Naruto, not even Ino. Especially not Ino.

And Ino… she hesitated, just slightly, before speaking her name. It lodged in her throat differently.

Sakura didn’t mention the recent events she’d found her mid-shutdown from, the ones that left her pacing barefoot at 3AM and whispering to herself in the hallway mirror. She didn’t bring up the voicemail she’d overheard by accident, the one Ino never meant to send. But she did say enough. That she wasn’t eating properly again. That her eyes kept looking through people instead of at them. That her hands had started to tremble when she tried to hold mascara wands or chopsticks or lighter flames still.

“She says she’s fine,” Sakura added, flatly, the bitterness slipping out before she could clean it up. “But I know that kind of fine. I’ve said it too.”

She expected something—anything. A flicker of a reaction. Neji was always too quiet, but he wasn’t unreadable. At least, not to her. Not when it counted.

But nothing.

He didn’t lean forward, didn’t arch an eyebrow, didn’t even look away in that way people do when they’re trying to process something too big to say aloud. He just sat, legs crossed neatly, one thumb brushing over the edge of his coffee sleeve, face unreadable in that infuriating Neji way she’d nearly forgotten—stone-still, painfully elegant in restraint.

And that — that — was what bothered her most.

She turned, finally, pushing herself away from the windowsill, her cup knocking against the ledge louder than she meant it to. “You don’t have anything to say?” she asked, more accusation than question. “You said you kept tabs, but now I’m spelling it out and you’re just what? Observing?”

Neji looked up then, slowly, and his expression wasn’t empty. Just composed. Too composed.

“I’m listening.”

“That’s not the same thing as giving a damn,” she snapped, the words coming out before she could soften them, and then she hated herself for needing to see him hurt a little. To react. To prove he still cared in a way that left bruises.

He blinked, slowly. “And what would you like me to do, Sakura?” His tone was gentle but sharp underneath, the way scalpels were—refined, deadly, cold. “Cry? Shout? Break something? Does that validate what you’re telling me? Or just make it more palatable?”

Sakura felt heat rise under her collar. Not because he was wrong. But because she didn’t know what she wanted from him—only that she needed to see it. Needed.

“Forget it,” she muttered, brushing past him toward the desk, fiddling with the edge of a half-stuck poster on the wall.

Neji didn’t move. He just turned his head slightly, watching her now. Not pitying. 

“Your version of care,” she said after a beat, “has always been a little too clean.”

That one landed. Not visibly. But she felt it in the shift of the air between them—like static built up too long and about to snap.

Neji sat up straighter. “And yours,” he said softly, “has always been about control.”

She turned around slowly, met his eyes, and didn’t look away. But she didn’t argue either.

Outside, a laugh cracked through the hallway, loud and sudden, then faded just as quickly.

They stood in the echo of it, both quiet. Not reconciled. But not at war either.

Just two people who’d seen too much of each other to pretend not to.

The office wasn’t really an office—not in the conventional sense. It was half rehearsal room, half tech den, walls cluttered with guitars that hadn’t been tuned in months and shelves holding hard drives like they were sacred artifacts. On one side, there was a threadbare couch that had probably been slept on more than once during an overnight export job, and across from it: two desks pushed together and groaning under the weight of open laptops, half-drunk coffees, and papers strewn like wind had moved through at some point and nobody bothered to clean it up. The blinds were half-drawn, streaking pale morning light across the clutter, and the only real sound—besides the hum of overloaded equipment—was Yamato typing, slow and methodical, in a way that always felt vaguely threatening.

Neji stood in the doorway for a moment before entering, taking in the place like it was a battlefield he’d once fought on—one he didn’t know whether to approach with reverence or calculation. His bag hung loose from one shoulder, and he looked every inch the professional he was pretending not to be today: crisp collar, hair tied back low, planner tucked tight under one arm like a shield.

Kakashi didn’t bother to look up when Neji stepped in. Just gestured vaguely toward the empty chair with a chopstick still stuck into a half-eaten takeout container resting on it. “Move the noodles. Sit.”

Neji did. Gracefully. With a flick of his wrist and no visible distaste. He crossed one leg over the other and placed the planner on the edge of the desk, careful not to disturb the chaos.

Yamato glanced up from his screen, his expression unreadable but not unkind. “Thanks for coming in early.”

Neji inclined his head, polite. “Of course.”

“Still freelancing?” Kakashi asked, and finally looked up, the corner of his mouth lifting just enough to suggest humor—or warning. Hard to tell with him. “I thought you’d be deep in some fashion house by now, pretending to care about hem lines and brand synergy.”

Neji’s lips didn’t curve, but the look he gave him carried just enough wryness to register. “I still care about brand synergy,” he said, deadpan. “I just also care about not watching this entire operation combust in public.”

Kakashi leaned back, folding his arms. “So that’s a yes.”

Neji said nothing.

On the central monitor behind them, a paused video thumbnail displayed an article headline: ‘Local Band Brawl Draws Concern Over Label Oversight’ — next to it, venue calendar tabs blinked open, overlapping with spreadsheets that looked far too red for comfort.

“They trust you, right?” Kakashi said suddenly, the tone casual but knife-sharp underneath. “That’s why we brought you back. Because you can walk into that greenroom and they won’t freeze you out. At least, not all of them.”

Neji tilted his head slightly. He didn’t blink. “They did,” he said. Not softly. Not bitterly. Just like fact. “That’s different from now.”

Yamato made a small sound behind his teeth—somewhere between agreement and regret—but said nothing.

There was a beat of silence in the room, full of everything they weren’t saying.

Neji reached forward, flipped open his planner to a page already filled with scrawled notes in sharp, architectural handwriting. Names. Cities. Timelines. There was even a section in the corner boxed off in red: Crisis Protocol — Tour Prep.

“I’ll do my part,” he said, finally. “But if you’re asking me to babysit ghosts, you’ll need someone better with religion.”

Kakashi gave a dry laugh. “No. Just someone who can keep a lid on a bottle that’s already cracked.”

Neji didn’t smile. “That’s not how pressure works.”

Yamato hadn’t said much during the earlier exchange—not really. He sat slightly offset from Kakashi, laptop balanced on his knees, the glow of its screen bleaching the edges of his face in pale, cold light. But his eyes were sharper than usual, not blank the way they sometimes got when he slipped into task-mode; they tracked Neji’s every move as though waiting for a tell, as though reading tension like seismic vibrations in a room always three seconds from rupture.

He finally broke the silence, his voice even and stripped of embellishment. “You have experience stabilizing talent.”

It wasn’t a compliment. It was a statement of record. Like citing a patient history before emergency surgery.

Neji turned his gaze toward him, and the corner of his mouth lifted just slightly in acknowledgment—not smugness, not warmth. Just… recognition. The dance of professionals who knew the real weight of euphemisms like talent and stabilizing when what they actually meant was: this group is coming apart at the seams and no one wants to be the first to admit it.

Yamato didn’t blink. “This group is a sinkhole.”

Neji let the silence stretch a beat too long, long enough that even the hum of the audio equipment seemed to lower its pitch. He tapped his pen once on the planner before him, then said, dryly: “I’ve worked with worse.”

He flipped a page—casually, purposefully—his thumb smudging the ink slightly in the corner where he’d made note of the band’s projected media cycle. “But I charge hazard rates.”

Kakashi, who’d resumed leaning against the edge of the desk with that irritating air of effortlessness only men who’d survived both war and rock PR could manage, raised his brows, amused. He didn’t hesitate.

“Double it,” he said, “if you make it to week two.”

It landed without irony.

No one laughed.

Neji closed the planner and tucked the pen into its spine. His nod was barely perceptible—closer to the way a surgeon might agree to a difficult operation than a yes-man signing on for another campaign. No handshakes. No contract. Just a mutual acknowledgment of stakes too precarious to put in writing.

Yamato pulled open a drawer and slid a beat-up keycard across the desk. “It still opens the lower floor office,” he said. “You’ll need it for sync meetings and—whatever this becomes.”

Neji picked it up without looking at it. Slipped it into his bag.

It was unofficial. Undefined. No welcome packet, no official announcement, no ceremony. Just a silent agreement between men who’d done this before: he’d be their on-call tour logistics handler, client liaison, and internal damage control. The fixer they didn’t want to admit they needed. The last person they called before everything burned.

And maybe it was already burning.

But Neji, true to form, didn’t blink.

The hallway carried a different kind of silence than the offices—less composed, less filtered by responsibility. It smelled faintly of scorched wires and vinyl polish, and deeper underneath, the trace of someone’s cologne long since faded into drywall. Studio light bled in from one cracked door near the far end, a flicker of shifting color patterns from some low-budget lighting test, and Neji’s boots moved softly over the cement floor like they were echoing against something hollow. A place designed for sound, now filled with nothing but it.

He turned the corner without fanfare.

She was already there.

Leaning against the wall like it owed her a favor. Hair pinned up in that recklessly glamorous way that made her look like she hadn’t slept in three days and liked it that way. Smoke curled from between her fingers, a thin strand of rebellion in an otherwise sterile corridor. The window at the end of the hall lit half her profile in dusty blue—light that softened nothing. Her heels were off. One was pressed lazily against the opposite wall, her balance impossibly casual for someone clearly not sober. Or maybe she was. With Ino, it was never just one or the other.

She didn’t look at him at first. Just inhaled again, slowly. Exhaled even slower.

Neji stopped a few feet away, silent.

The air between them felt stretched—not tense exactly, but not yielding either. A suspended thread that hadn’t been cut, only forgotten. It was the first time they’d stood this close in nearly a year. Not since—

She spoke before the thought could finish itself in his mind. Her voice a little rough, but more from tone than tobacco.

“You still only wear navy, huh.”

It wasn’t a question. More like a quiet slap across the face of time.

His mouth twitched—somewhere between a smirk and something heavier—but he didn’t answer. He’d stopped wearing anything else after Tokyo. After her, some said. He’d always said it was about focus. Simplicity. But she’d seen him when none of that held.

She pushed off the wall with the heel of her bare foot, the toe ring on her middle toe glinting faintly in the artificial light. The silence lingered as she tapped ash directly onto the concrete floor like she wasn’t standing in a building wired with alarms and rules and the quiet shame of too many labels protecting too many fragile assets.

Neji tilted his head slightly. Still didn’t speak. 

Ino finally looked at him then—really looked. And there it was, the glint that hadn’t dulled: that infuriating mix of pain and poise and performance that meant she was halfway to unraveling and still ready to pose for the flashbulb.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she said. Her voice didn’t tremble. It didn’t have to.

He studied her face for a beat longer than necessary. Then finally replied, low and even.

“I didn’t plan to.”

She blinked once. That was all.

Then turned away slightly, shoulder brushing the wall again, as if the weight of the moment couldn’t be worn all at once. Her cigarette had gone down to the filter.

Neji’s eyes dropped to the burned mark on the studio wall just behind her. A ghost of a night no one talked about. A memory not quite buried.

The silence didn’t demand more. That was the thing with Ino—it never needed to boil over to sting. It just sat there, thick and unfinished, like smoke clinging to velvet. She didn’t follow up with a second line, didn’t try to bridge the gap or widen it, didn’t give him the satisfaction of a smile or the cruelty of a wound. She just looked away first, and that was the sharpest cut.

Her shoulder stayed resting on the wall for a breath longer, the last drag of her cigarette caught between fingers that trembled just barely, too subtly for anyone who hadn’t once watched those same hands thread mascara in a mirror after crying for hours. She glanced down at the butt, crushed it against the drywall like it wasn’t already marred—ashes dusting the scuffed baseboard like punctuation. Then she stepped off the wall with a kind of lazy grace that only someone like her could carry while barefoot and vaguely ruined.

She didn’t say goodbye.

Just walked away—slow, deliberate, almost catlike, as if daring him to stop her but knowing he wouldn’t. Her back was bare in the dress she hadn’t changed out of yet, straps slipped too low on one side, spine a portrait of practiced defiance, of vulnerability she never gave away for free. Her hair bounced once when she turned the corner. The hallway swallowed her.

His eyes stayed fixed on the space she had just occupied, like it still held her shape. And maybe it did.

He hadn’t expected resolution. Not with her. Not ever. But that unspoken thing—the static hum that lived between them—hadn’t dimmed. If anything, it felt more alive now, more aware of itself. Not a conversation, not a wound reopened, just a slow inhale of something they’d buried but never burned. Not quite grief. Not yet forgiveness. Just memory, dressed in cigarette smoke and unfinished thoughts.

He finally looked away.

And the hallway, once again, was empty.

The rehearsal space had that peculiar scent shared by every room where art was made in excess and sleep was sacrificed too often — the sticky musk of caffeine gone stale, resinous wires heating beneath cheap power strips, the ghost of cologne clinging to jackets flung across folding chairs. Air thick with static and breath that didn’t quite clear. Neji stepped inside like someone testing for rot in the foundation, eyes grazing each fractured element of the room — the scuffed linoleum tiles warped near the humidifier, the warped sound panel on the left wall that had clearly been punched or kicked, the stack of broken picks in a plastic cup labeled “DON’T” in smeared black sharpie.

It was the kind of room built for unraveling, but not for breaking. Like the people inside it.

Sasuke stood near the far corner with his back to him, spine sharp beneath the drape of a faded black tee, one hand adjusting the gain knob on the analog board with mechanical precision — no headphones, no metronome, just gut instinct and that cold-blooded patience that Neji remembered too well from years past. The dim track lighting above flickered, one bulb struggling to hold its pulse, casting a stuttering halo over the chords that snaked across the floor like veins pulled too tight. Sasuke didn’t flinch at the flicker. He didn’t flinch at anything.

Neji didn’t make his presence known. Not verbally. Not yet. He just watched.

Watched the way Sasuke tilted his head slightly to the left after a frequency shift, as though listening for ghosts in the mix. Watched the way his fingers, ink-stained and long-since calloused, moved with surgical ease over dials that someone else would’ve considered outdated. Watched the way his body held tension in the shoulders but none in the hips — unrooted, restless, like if he let himself settle, something dangerous might take hold.

There was no music playing, just that brittle hum of electric anticipation, the kind that built before a string snapped. Sasuke tapped the fader once, pulled a few seconds of a demo track, let it loop twice — Naruto’s voice, rough and cracked with too much truth — and then killed it mid-word, like it had said too much. The silence afterward wasn’t empty. It was loud.

And still, Sasuke didn’t look at him.

Neji knew better than to take that personally. He’d seen men like him before — burning at both ends, but somehow still cold to the touch. It wasn’t arrogance. It was armor. And somewhere underneath it, Neji could feel the fractures. No one tuned a board like that unless they were trying to mute something inside themselves. No one edited in total silence unless the words felt like weapons.

Neji leaned his shoulder against the edge of the doorframe, the industrial paint cool against the fabric of his coat, and let his gaze settle — not on the board, not on the looping wires or the dog-eared notebooks bleeding half-finished lyrics, but on him. The space Sasuke took up wasn’t large. It was measured. Diminished, even. But there was a gravity to it, like everything he didn’t say filled the room more than any amplifier ever could. And from this angle — slightly behind, slightly above, slightly removed — Neji saw what most people missed.

This one didn’t spiral like the others.

Kiba’s destruction spun outward — noisy, flailing, looking for something to crash into. Naruto wore his unraveling on his face like a wound, loud and bleeding, impossible to ignore. Even Ino, with her smoke and glitter and stillness like a storm cloud trying to behave, gave you signs.

But Sasuke — no, Sasuke compacted. Pulled in, layer by layer, folding sharp edges under polished control until what was left was too clean to touch and too quiet to question. He compressed emotion the way you would a song file to fit in a device not built to carry the weight. You wouldn’t see the damage unless you knew what distortion looked like before it screamed.

And Neji did. He did.

He saw it in the pause between breaths, the millisecond too long that Sasuke held his jaw clenched even when alone. In the precision — not perfection, precision — of the gain levels, the way they hovered just under clipping. In the way he turned off the track mid-word. That word had meant something. That voice had meant something. But it had come too close, and Sasuke had chosen silence instead.

Neji’s eyes narrowed slightly.

This one’s not breaking yet. He’s condensing. He’s waiting for a reason.

He’d seen it in hospital rooms. In afterparties gone too long. In prodigies who burned the candle inside the wax, leaving no mess — just absence. It was more dangerous than self-destruction. Because it passed as coping.

Sasuke adjusted the board one last time, shoulders twitching minutely — as if he sensed, not the presence, but the observation. Neji made no move. He didn’t speak. Not yet.

But in his mind, he logged the pattern. Noted the pressure points. You couldn’t confront compression head-on. It would only densify. You had to introduce something unexpected — a dissonance, a crack in the casing, a pulse off-beat enough to make the control slip. Not for the sake of chaos.

But to make space for air.

And in that moment, Neji understood his role more clearly than any title could’ve suggested.

He stepped back out of the doorway eventually, soles not making a sound against the concrete. He didn’t need to say anything. Sasuke already knew he’d been watched. That was part of the game.

Later, he would log it in his notes — not just about the board or the room or the budget. But about him.

“Uchiha’s holding everything too tightly. Watch for rupture.”

You can’t save people like that from the outside. You have to wait for them to turn around.

The air had that kind of weight to it — the kind that settled on your skin without a breeze, thick with the humidity of city breath and something more silent than quiet. Sakura’s hair stuck to the nape of her neck, the heat trapped in the collar of her jacket even though the rooftop was supposed to be cooler, clearer, open. They hadn’t said anything since they stepped out. Just leaned against the metal railing like two ghosts sharing the same vantage point. Like it was easier to look at the skyline than at each other.

Beneath them, the city throbbed—slow, rhythmic, pulsing with sirens and muffled subwoofers and late-night lives they weren’t part of anymore. Streetlights spilled amber onto cracked sidewalks. Some window in the building across blinked static-blue with an old television looping reruns no one watched. Somewhere, a couple argued faintly behind thin walls. Somewhere else, laughter rose like it wasn’t trying to prove anything.

Up here, it was just them and the sound of everything falling apart beneath their feet in slow motion.

Sakura broke it first, her voice flat but not unkind.

“You think you’re here to fix this?”

The question didn’t require clarification. This was all-encompassing. This mess. This group. This decay that kept rearranging itself like it didn’t want to be solved, just survived.

Neji’s fingers curled around the edge of the railing. The metal was cold where the night finally reached it. He didn’t answer right away. Just watched the path of a blinking airplane far above them trace across the sky like a wound that hadn’t closed right.

“I think I’m here to decide if it’s worth trying.”

His voice was low, even. Like someone who had seen enough lost causes to know the shape of one, but also knew that some things broke loudest right before they asked to be saved.

Sakura didn’t nod. Didn’t disagree. Just reached into the inner pocket of her coat and pulled out a cigarette, even though she wasn’t smoking tonight. She didn’t even light one for herself. Just held it out between two fingers, silent offering, bridge or peace or maybe just habit.

Neji took it without a word. Lit it with a silver lighter that glinted too brightly for a moment in the dark. The flame caught briefly on his knuckles — clean, deliberate, practiced — and then vanished into smoke.

They stood like that a while. Nothing else to say. Nothing else to name.

From the street below, someone shouted. A train passed, far off and barely audible. The city blinked like a machine that didn’t care if they watched it burn.

And Neji, exhaling slowly, eyes on the distant lights flickering over rooftops and late-shift intersections, thought —

Some things you don’t fix.

Some things you just don’t let go under alone.

The first ping wasn’t loud, but it cut through the air like a needle through worn fabric — a high, impersonal chime from a studio desktop left open overnight, the subject line glowing unread across multiple screens:

Tour Confirmed – Final

• Sent from: Red Moon Records
• CC: All artists, management, venue techs
• Attachment: PDF with highlighted dates and city codes

It was 8:47 AM when it hit inboxes. The time stamp betrayed no urgency, no celebration. Just sterile finality.

A .pdf file, neatly titled, containing color-coded dates, venue codes, logistical fine print — flights, bus schedules, load-ins, tech call times. Cities blurred into one another in block letters: LDN / MIL / PRA / BER / CHP / OSL / AMS. Beneath it all, a single header in gray italics:

No further edits will be accepted.

Across the city, across different rooms, eyes flicked to phones at uneven intervals. Not together. Not synchronized.

Fractured like the group itself.

In Naruto’s apartment, a takeout container half-eaten beside him and his hoodie still on from last night, he stared at the screen with a slowly forming grin, thumb hovering over the keyboard before he tapped:

wait what? like for real??

No punctuation in the voice inside his head — just wide, reckless hope, the kind that hadn’t shown up in a while.

Back in the dim corner of a rehearsal space, Sasuke’s phone lit up where it sat face-down beside a tangle of cables. He didn’t touch it. Just tightened the gain knob on his mixer like nothing had happened. The screen went dark again.

(no reply)

Shikamaru’s response came exactly six minutes later — no emoji, no capitals, just a dry acknowledgment typed with one hand while the other dragged a cigarette from his mouth:

Guess it’s happening.

Ino saw the message at 9:03. Her phone buzzed once on the makeup table while a stylist curled strands of hair she hadn’t asked to be curled. She read it. Didn’t blink. Locked the screen.

(seen, no reply)

Temari replied from a different timezone entirely — a rooftop balcony with wind blowing through her short sleeves and a beer sweating in her grip:

Lmao we’re gonna implode halfway through.

No one could tell if it was a joke.

Kiba, still wired from a 3 a.m. demo session, voice raspy from too much yelling over beats, launched into the thread with the chaos only he could carry:

YOOO CAN WE OPEN W THAT BANGER FROM LAST NIGHT

Somehow he managed to break the thread’s aesthetic with six emojis. Two were fire.

Sakura’s name appeared with the kind of controlled frustration that said she was already sipping her second espresso and compiling a logistics spreadsheet:

We need a real setlist before we talk about opening anything.

Then the real shift came 

Yamato added Neji to the chat

The notification blinked like a ghost being pulled back into a haunted house. And before anyone could joke, type, or protest—

Yamato: Tour support.

Followed by a pause. Maybe just a breath. Maybe hesitation. Maybe nothing at all.

Neji: Hello.

His profile picture was the same it had been a year ago. No one knew if he ever changed it.

And just like that, the countdown began.

Twelve days.

Chapter Text

Now Playing: “Why Am I the One” – Fun.

Never been one to hold on

But I need a last breath

The week begins with tape.

Not the kind that fixes things — not adhesive in the healing sense — but thick, utility-grade, splitting at the teeth, meant to seal things that might otherwise burst open. It screeches as it peels from its roll, a jarring sound in a room that’s otherwise still, save for the faint hum of Sakura’s speakers playing some lo-fi ambient loop she’s already forgotten the name of.

She sits cross-legged in the middle of the studio floor, a sharpie clutched too tightly in one hand, the other pressing down the cardboard flap of a box labeled “DRUM MICS.” Her handwriting is still neat, careful, block letters drawn with the same obsessive precision she’s always used, but her lines shake now. Not enough that anyone else would notice, maybe, but enough that she does.

Enough that she keeps uncapping and recapping the marker as if the ink itself might run steadier if she just starts over. Again.

All around her, the studio is disassembling itself. Cymbal stands folded and leaned against the wall like tired bones. Spare sticks rubber-banded together in uneven pairs. Her kit is already loaded into the van, but the peripherals remain cables looped too tightly, setlists from the last show still taped to the floor. She hasn’t had the heart to peel them off yet. They feel like footprints from another version of herself.

She breathes shallowly and tapes the box shut.

Across town, Naruto’s room looks like a storm passed through without a sound.

His duffel bag lies open on the bed, half-full with folded band tees, most of them soft from years of wear, none of them particularly clean. He’s not thinking about what he’ll wear on stage. He’s not thinking about much of anything at all, really. His hands move, pick up a shirt, fold it in the way he was taught (military corners, even when it doesn’t matter), stuff it into the bag, but his mind is somewhere else entirely.

It drifts until it catches on scent.

He pulls a faded, oversize tee from under a heap, not part of the planned packing pile, just something crumpled near his pillow. It’s dark gray, the collar stretched out, the hem torn on one side. He lifts it to his face without thinking, and the smell hits him hard. Smoke and Sweat. Faint, but unmistakable.

Jiraiya.

He hasn’t cried in a while, but something caves inward in his chest, the way it always does when that smell catches him off-guard, like some old muscle memory of grief twisting itself into a new shape.

He doesn’t pack it. He just holds it in his lap for a while, staring through it like it’s going to tell him something. It doesn’t.

Ino’s room is lit only by vanity bulbs — too bright, too soft, like everything’s been overexposed. The mirror reflects too much.

She’s sitting at her desk, zipping up her makeup kits one by one, each pouch filled with compacts, tubes, brushes, all curated like armor. She works in silence. No music’s on. Not even her usual hum. The only sound is the click of zippers, and the occasional crinkle of plastic packaging being replaced just so.

She catches herself looking at her reflection, and the way her eyes narrow isn’t vanity, it’s suspicion. There’s something about her own face lately she doesn’t trust. Like it’s lying to her. Like the version of her that people see isn’t the one that moves through her body.

There are bruises under her eyes she didn’t cover today. A split in her lip that’s not healing right. When did that happen? A week ago? Last night? She honestly can’t remember. Everything blurs.

Her phone vibrates once and she doesn’t check it.

She runs a finger down the center of her chest, tracing the zipper of her crop hoodie like she’s not sure if she should open it or pull it tighter.

Then she zips the last pouch shut and stands, fast, like if she doesn’t move now, she never will again.

Sasuke stands in front of his closet for thirteen minutes and doesn’t move.

His room is silent, dim, everything in grayscale. The walls are white. The bed’s unmade. There’s a flickering from the old lamp in the corner that he hasn’t bothered to fix. And the closet — wide open — is a row of uniform black: jackets, shirts, more jackets. Pants. Everything indistinguishable from everything else.

He stares like he’s trying to find the difference. Like something in there might shift, might wink, might say: You know who you are. Pack this one.

Nothing does, of course.

His hand hovers over a hanger, but he doesn’t touch it.

Instead, he closes the door again.

He doesn’t pack.

He stands by the window for a while and listens to the city breathe without him.

And somewhere beneath the cardboard, the zippers, the silence, there is movement. The week keeps happening. The tour date doesn’t shift. The bus is booked. The amps are rented. The bags are halfway packed. People are pretending.

They wake up at noon, eat half a protein bar, scroll for hours without seeing anything. They show up to meetings and forget what they said. They laugh at the right jokes and nod at the right people and write things down they don’t remember the meaning of later.

It all looks so normal from the outside.

But no one is well. They just don’t say it.

They never do.

The studio doesn’t feel like theirs anymore.

Too clean, too quiet — like someone gutted it of noise and left the bones behind, neat and stripped of memory. No cables strewn across the floor. No cracked water bottles. No Gaara sleeping in the corner with his hoodie pulled up like a shield. Just the stale scent of soundproof foam and sweat long dried, and the low hum of the fluorescent lights overhead, buzzing faintly like a question no one wants to answer.

They gather slowly, like survivors in a church basement — not quite seated, not quite standing, the tension in their limbs betraying how little any of them feel like meeting anyone new. There’s the stiffness of performance in all of them. Sakura adjusting the strap of her top like it matters. Naruto scratching the back of his neck with too much force. Sasuke leaning against the wall, arms crossed, gaze unfocused, pretending to read a setlist tacked to the bulletin board even though he hasn’t looked at it in hours.

Then footsteps are approaching.

She walks in like she doesn’t want to take up space.

Camera slung across her chest like a second heartbeat, worn strap fraying at the edges, hands folded neatly in front of her stomach the way children are taught to wait in line. She’s dressed in earth tones — soft and muted. Like someone blurred the saturation on her, like she’s already part of the background and fine with it.

“Everyone,” Neji’s voice carries from the doorway, calm but firm. “This is Hinata. She’ll be documenting the tour.”

He looks at her the way only family does, watchful. Like he’s prepared to step between her and the world, just in case. She doesn’t seem to need it. But it’s there anyway. A quiet pact, unspoken.

“Hi,” she says, barely above the fluorescent hum.

Sakura offers a soft “Hey,” first, tone warm but a little surprised.

Gaara doesn’t say anything, just nods.

Naruto, half-sprawled on a flight case, blinks like he knows that name.

He does. Sort of.

She was at a house party years ago, maybe someone’s birthday, too many people, loud music in a too-small kitchen. She was by the fridge, picking labels off her bottle, not drinking. He remembers that. Remembers the way her eyes flicked to him and away, like she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words fast enough. Or maybe didn’t want to. He didn’t think about her again after that night. Not until now.

And now — now he really looks.

Her cheeks are pink, just barely, and her lips part when their eyes meet like maybe she’s going to say something, maybe even hi, but then she looks away too fast. He feels it in his chest. A soft little drop, like water in an empty room.

She fidgets with her camera strap.

“I’ve… um. Followed your band’s work for a while,” she says, this time a little louder. “Your last set — the one at Scythe Bar — it was… really emotionally paced. The lighting wasn’t flattering, but it didn’t matter. You still looked like a myth.”

Naruto blinks. So does Sakura. Even Sasuke’s eyes twitch in her direction.

Myth. She’s an observer. The kind that sees things without needing to touch them.

Neji tilts his head. “She’ll be cataloguing both live sets and behind-the-scenes. Everything we use for tour promo, press kits, archives.”

“Cool,” Naruto says, the word dry in his mouth, and then—softening— “You shoot analog?”

Hinata nods. “When I can. Depends on what I want to remember.”

He doesn’t know what that means. He wants to.

And then, like a whisper behind the door, a shadow drifts in.

His presence barely registers at first. He’s slim, light-footed, pale in a way that’s not weak but desaturated. His clothes hang too perfectly, his expression unreadable but not vacant, but as if he’s perpetually listening to something inside himself no one else can hear.

He appears behind Kakashi without fanfare, holding a flat folio of sketches and mockups, posture relaxed, eyes sharp like charcoal smudged just enough to blur the emotion out.

“This is Sai,” Kakashi announces lazily, as if no one needs convincing. “He’ll handle visual direction and aesthetics. You’ll learn to like him.”

Sai nods, then speaks — monotone, practiced, a bit unnerving:

“The current typeface on your posters is four years outdated. The kerning on your main logo is asymmetrical. But your visual cohesion from set to set is excellent. The use of color-coded wrist tape during instrument changes, smart. We’ll lean into that.”

He says it like it’s weather. Like none of it means anything.

Sakura exhales sharply. “Okay then.”

Ino is the only one who hasn’t spoken. She’s perched on a folding chair, legs crossed and head tilted. Watching him like he’s a museum piece she half-remembers dreaming about. He doesn’t look back.

There’s something about him — something glassy, still, unbothered. The kind of calm that doesn’t crack, not even when the room around it shudders. And she doesn’t trust it. Not because it feels fake. But because it feels too familiar. Like what she used to be before the collapse. Like dissociation personified.

She tilts her sunglasses up — barely — and says, “Let me guess. You don’t smile much either.”

Sai looks at her. Doesn’t blink. “I could, but people usually find it unsettling”

She almost laughs.

Kakashi claps once. “Great. Everyone’s friends now.”

No one laughs.

But something in the air shifts just a little, like gravity has realigned. The new faces don’t smile. They don’t demand attention. But they balance something, a quiet the group didn’t know they were missing.

And maybe they won’t fix anything. Maybe they’ll just witness it all as it unravels.

But sometimes that’s what pillars are.

Not things you lean on.

Just things that stay standing when everything else shakes.

Now Playing: “Nude” – Radiohead

You’ll go to hell / for what your dirty mind is thinking

The room doesn’t smell like her anymore.

There’s a candle lit on the nightstand, something vanilla-based, meant to cover the ghost of smoke and unwashed linen but it’s already lost the fight. The air clings heavy to the sheets, to the corners, to the folds of clothes scattered in half-hearted piles across the floor. The curtains are half-drawn, framing the soft orange of streetlight outside, casting a blurred lattice of shadows across the walls. It should feel warm. It doesn’t.

It feels like a place that’s been lived in too hard and too fast. A place where someone tried to crawl out of their own skin and left pieces behind.

Ino sits cross-legged on the edge of her bed, oversized hoodie bunched at the elbows, the zipper half-undone. She’s not wearing makeup. Or maybe she wiped it off too quickly, the edges of her eyes are raw. Her knee bounces once, then stops. A twitch she pretends didn’t happen.

On the other side of the mattress — not near the headboard, not near her, just not close — Itachi sets down a chipped ceramic mug. Steam curls upward. He brought the tea in silence, and she didn’t thank him. Didn’t need to. That wasn’t the point.

It’s there between them now, untouched.

“I didn’t want you to see me like that,” she says after a long stretch of static air. Her voice doesn’t tremble. It sounds like it’s been scraped clean.

He doesn’t move.

“But that’s who I am.”

A blade she turns on herself:

“You think I’m disgusting, don’t you?”

She doesn’t say it like a challenge. She says it like she already knows the answer, and she just wants to hear it said out loud. Wants the confirmation. Wants the sentence.

But Itachi doesn’t give her one.

He studies her, slowly, seeing her in a way that makes her want to claw at her own face and ask why the fuck he’s still here. Why he hasn’t walked out yet. Why he always waits her out like she’s some storm he’s agreed to get drenched in.

“I think you’re tired of performing,” he says, finally. His voice is low. Measured like always.

That makes her laugh — too hard, too suddenly. A sound like glass cracking.

“Oh, that’s what you think?” she spits. “That I’m just tired?”

She drags a hand through her hair, tugging the strands like they might come loose. “I am the performance, Itachi. There’s nothing under it.”

He lets that sit, doesn’t argue.

She hates him for that — how he never takes the bait, never lets her explode properly. Everyone else gives her a mirror or a rope. He gives her silence.

Eventually, he leans forward slightly. His fingers trace the rim of his own mug.

“I talked to Kakashi and Yamato.”

She stiffens immediately.

The silence changes color, she can feel it becoming sharper. More serrated. She shifts her weight like she’s ready to get up and walk out, even if the conversation hasn’t technically started yet.

“No,” she says flatly. “Don’t do that.”

He doesn’t stop.

“They asked me if I’d talk to you about some things,” he says calmly. “Not to threaten but to translate. Because they don’t know how to say it without sounding like suits.”

“I don’t care if they sound like suits,” she says, already defensive. “They are suits. And I’ve already been through this rodeo, remember? When they told me to shut up and smile? When they threw me under the bus because of someone else’s choices?” Her voice is rising now. “I didn’t ask for a fucking second dad to play nice on their behalf.”

“No,” he agrees, without flinching. “You didn’t. And I’m not here to police you.”

“Then what the fuck are you—”

“I’m here to tell you,” he cuts in, quiet but unshakable, “that this time, it is your choice. And that means you can choose not to do it this way.”

Her limbs go still.

Not because she agrees. But because it hits something she doesn’t want to admit exists. The idea that maybe this is her fault — not all of it, not the legacy, not the press fallout, not the old trauma — but the now. The bruised knuckles. The blackout nights. The missed shoots. The thousand-yard stares. The damage done in her own name.

She looks away. Her throat works once. She says nothing.

Itachi exhales through his nose, gaze unfocused now, as if turning this into something procedural will make it easier. As if he can parent her into survival. And maybe that’s what this is — some sick parallel to everything he failed to do with Sasuke. Some reparation built too late, too sideways.

“They’re worried,” he says. “Not because you’re flawed. Not because of the past anymore. But because you’re branding yourself as unrecoverable. And that sticks even when you don’t mean it to and especially in this industry.”

She winces.

“But maybe I am,” she says, teeth tight. “Maybe it’s easier if I am.”

He leans forward, hands braced on his knees. The motion is slow, deliberate while  trying not to look like pity.

“You’re not.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

Silence blooms again, thick and unnatural.

Ino folds in on herself, her knees pulled up. Head lowered slightly, like she’s waiting to be struck. Not physically, emotionally. Just the final blow that will let her stay curled up like this and not have to defend herself anymore.

“You’re trying to fix me,” she murmurs.

“I’m not,” he replies. “I’m just refusing to forget you.”

That one lands differently but she doesn’t react at first.

Then she reaches for the tea he brought her. It’s still warm when she wraps both hands around it, not to drink, just to feel something that’s not her own skin.

And after a long, bitter minute, she says — so low it’s almost inaudible:

“I wouldn’t know what to do with a future if it stopped looking like punishment.”

Itachi swallows. He looks at her, and for a second, his mask slips. Just for a second. Enough to show the fear under his restraint. The guilt.

His voice comes out almost too softly:

“I’d help you carry it. If you let me.”

Her eyes lift slowly, not like she’s searching for something in him, more like she’s surfacing from something darker, something inside herself she hasn’t named in years and doesn’t want to, but she meets his gaze anyway, dulled and emptied, as if it costs her nothing, and maybe it does. There’s nothing fragile in the way she looks at him.

Her pulse ticks just beneath the hollow of her jaw and there’s blood at the corner of her mouth where her lip has been chewed raw, the last remnants of gloss clinging to the cracks like the idea of glamour she keeps performing out of spite.

She doesn’t shift like she’s unsure. Ino moves like gravity has asked too politely, enough to tilt her weight forward, enough to make the question physical. Her hand lifts and it doesn’t shake as her fingers drag the edge of his collar like she’s tracing a seam in reality, something she might slip through if she tugs hard enough. The cotton of his shirt is warm, worn thin, barely clinging to his frame, and her touch isn’t testing anything—it’s mapping.

Ino doesn’t give a warning before kissing him.

She only tilts her head and leans up, unhurried, lips parting just enough to press fully to his. It isn’t sloppy or rushed or insistent. It’s precise, too precise—the kind of kiss that has nothing to do with him at all. Her mouth moves against his with the full weight of calculation and collapse, like she wants to know what it feels like to be touched and untouched at the same time.

And he doesn’t pull away fast enough, because he understands the language of undoing. Because he’s seen this version of her before or maybe in someone else’s body, someone else’s wreckage—Sasuke maybe, or himself. He knows this kiss isn’t about contact. It’s about absence. About losing something on purpose.

His breath catches once, sharp but not surprised, and his hands stay where they are loose and unmoving, not rising to stop her but not answering either. He lets it burn through him. The shape of her mouth. The air between them going tight. The knowledge that she isn’t really kissing him, not entirely.

Then he does pulls back with the slow motion of someone dragging themselves out of wreckage they almost didn’t name in time. His hand comes up between them, palm against her shoulder only to mark the line she already crossed.

She exhales once, laughing under her breath like the joke wasn’t supposed to land.

The second kiss is harder, and it’s met halfway from both of them.

It’s not because it’s lustful or hungry, that would be easier. That would be a clean excuse to strip this down into something transactional, physical, actually meaningless. But this is worse than that. It’s laced with the aftertaste of everything they’re not saying. Of every bruised memory she hasn’t metabolized, every ghost he’s still trying to outlive, every ache neither of them has language for.

She clutches the collar of his shirt in one hand like she’s holding herself together by his neckline. Her teeth graze his lip but not with heat. Her other hand slides up to his jaw and holds it too tight to steady herself. Her whole body is vibrating.

Ino kisses like she wants to be ruined, he thinks.

Her mouth opens like a dare, her hands slipping up beneath the back of his shirt again, nails catching at the skin just above his spine, not enough to draw blood, but enough to threaten it. She shifts closer, knees straddling one of his thighs now, her weight not fully committed but tilting forward like a fall she wants him to be responsible for. Her breath is hot against his jaw when she mutters, “You don’t have to pretend I’m fragile.”

The sound of her voice scraping its way out like it’s been clawing at her throat for hours. There’s no seduction in it. It’s stripped of performance, all bark peeled back.

It’s the sound of a plea disguised as defiance, the kind of sentence you deliver when you want someone to hurt you right and tenderness feels like cruelty, violence like mercy.

Her fingers climb higher, dragging the hem of his shirt with them, until the fabric bunches and gathers in awkward folds halfway up his ribcage. She presses her mouth against his again, tongue pushing past his teeth this time, her movements almost violent in their precision. Like she’s trying to overwrite her own memory. Like she’s asking him to hurt her just enough to make her feel something she can recognize.

It’s practiced, but not in the way of lovers, it’s the practice of dissociation, of reclaiming something from oblivion trying to rewrite the last twenty times this went differently.

Itachi doesn’t meet her aggression. Instead lets her move as she wants, crawling forward across the line neither of them have drawn clearly. He lets her press against him, dictate every inch of the moment. His hands stay exactly where they were before she reached for him, one curled loosely on the edge of the bedspread, the other braced behind him like he’s holding up the weight of something he isn’t sure he can carry.

When she finally pulls back to breathe, her eyes are hooded, pupils wide from whatever she took earlier and the ache that never quite leaves her system. Her mouth is damp, raw, the color of warning, and she looks at him like she wants him to explain, waiting for him to offer a justification for why he didn’t ruin her when she asked him to.

And he has none.

“Are you just gonna sit there?”

She wants to snap the thread he’s hanging from, the one he’s wrapped so tightly around his restraint, and watch him fall.

“You think I don’t know what this is?” she asks. “You think I haven’t done this before? That I haven’t used this body to get someone to look at me like I’m not—”

She doesn’t finish the sentence. Maybe because she doesn’t know the ending. Maybe because it’s the same every time.

Used. Forgotten. Replaceable.

And then she leans in again, slower this time, pressing her forehead to his and whispering, “You can treat me like that, too. It’s fine. I won’t ask you for more.”

Itachi closes his eyes.

Not because he’s aroused. But because this is the kind of moment that makes people into monsters. The kind where someone hands you the knife and says it’s okay if you cut them, because they’ve already decided they’re bleeding anyway.

He doesn’t move for a long second. Just breathes in her scent — faint perfume, sweat, the stale ache of tequila still in her pores — and then he reaches up, very gently, to touch her jaw. His thumb brushes the edge of her mouth to remind her where she is. That she’s still here. That she still exists as more than what she’s offering to be.

“You’re not a thing,” he murmurs.

She flinches.

“Don’t,” she whispers. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Make this nice.”

He exhales again, long and slow, and finally lets his hand slip behind her neck, into her hair. His fingers spread wide, just holding there.

She’s trembling slightly now, not in a way she can hide nor control and she hates that he can feel it. Hates that she can’t make her body lie.

“I’m not going to hurt you to prove you’re right,” he says, low enough to get lost in the space between them.

She tries to shove him back. “You don’t get to—”

But he catches her wrist before she can move away.

“Ino,” he says, her name thick in his throat, “I know what you’re doing. And I’m still here.”

That’s worse than any slap.

She collapses against him, a wave collapsing on itself, all tension drained from her spine, her body folding forward until her head falls against his shoulder. Her lips brush his neck, barely there, just breath and heat and surrender.

He moves then. Like she’s glass that’s already been dropped. He guides her back with hands that never push, never take. Just shape the space around her helping her lie down. Her body yields, she parts her legs but he doesn’t press forward.

They stay there, suspended in that space between surrender and refusal, breathing into each other’s skin.

“You’re worth more than this,” he says, pressing a kiss just beneath her ear. “But if this is what you need—”

She twists the front of his shirt in her fists, eyes squeezed shut.

“I don’t need it to be tender,” she hisses as if tenderness itself is a threat.

And he murmurs, “That’s the only way I know how to give it to you.”

Then he kisses her again, and this time he does touch her, with reverence.

He drags his mouth down her neck, pausing at the hollow of her throat, his breath feathering against skin like an apology. His hands slip under the hem of her hoodie and rest at her ribs, unmoving, just there. She arches faintly into him, confused by her own craving, not for dominance, for once, but for something that feels warm and gentle and she hasn’t let herself want in years.

And it’s too much.

So she bites his shoulder. Hard. An attempt to interrupt the unbearable kindness Ino doesn’t deserve.

His breath catches, but doesn’t push her away. The pain settles into like another kind of truth.

She pulls back, lip trembling now, and says, “Don’t you fucking dare try to fix me with softness.”

He looks at her memorizing this version of her — mascara streaked, teeth bared, caught between fight and collapse — She looks feral and so human.

“I’m not trying to fix you.”

“I don’t deserve this—”

“It’s not about what you deserve,” he says, hands cradling her waist now, thumbs drawing invisible circles into her skin. “It’s about what I choose to give.”

The softest interruption of breath, the kind that barely makes a sound, like something too tired to cry out, catches in her throat and lingers there, weightless and suffocating all at once

He doesn’t speak again while undressing her slowly, without the language of desire or haste or even performance. Each movement is unhurried. A sleeve eased down. A seam unfastened. The fabric lifted away not like he’s peeling her apart, but like he’s trying to uncover something that’s been buried too long beneath the weight of expectation and memory.

She pulls him down over her like a blanket she’s not sure she deserves, and the space between them becomes smaller than breath.

The act itself is quiet. It’s a slow unraveling of tension, a meticulous threading of contact. Their bodies move in increments with fingers tracing skin like old paths, mouths barely brushing before finding purchase, hips shifting only when they must.

He moves as though he’s writing her back into herself with his hands.

When he finally sinks into her, she doesn’t gasp, but a strangled sound forms a specific sentence:

“Don’t stop until I forget who I am.”

He presses his forehead to hers, and answers:

“Only if you let me remember you after.”

Everything falls silent except their breathing.

She moves beneath him like someone caught in undertow, aware that she could slip under with one wrong breath. And maybe she wants to. Maybe that’s the point. Her body has never really been hers, not in the way people pretend ownership exists — it’s always been a vessel, a tool, a theater — so letting him touch it like it matters feels not only foreign but wrong. Not wrong because of him — he’s too still, too deliberate, too careful — but wrong because she doesn’t know how to be in her body when it’s not being used.

He’s treating her like someone to be witnessed, not consumed. Someone whose skin isn’t just skin but memory, nerve, origin — a collection of living proof that she survived. His hands don’t grope or demand, they explore like they’re tracing a map with invisible ink, slowly revealing cities she thought had long since burned down.

She hates it.

And she wants more of it.

“Stop,” she says suddenly, sharply, voice cracking like a whip, like the last defense she can still summon. “You don’t have to pretend this means something.”

He freezes.

He’s inside her now, his breath shallow, chest heaving just barely against hers but even with that closeness, he doesn’t let the moment unravel into something cheap.

“I’m not pretending,” he murmurs, barely above a breath.

She pushes at his shoulder again, though it’s weak now, more instinct than intent. “You don’t have to make it sacred.”

And he still doesn’t move.

Because maybe that’s exactly what he’s doing.

Not to convince her of anything. But for him, this act — this choice to stay, to offer presence instead of performance — is the closest thing he has left to faith. Not in god, in the possibility that people can touch each other without breaking further. Sometimes, the most radical thing left is to stay.

“Ino,” he says again, and this time her name sounds like surrender, not control.

She doesn’t look at him.

She turns her head to the side, eyes fixed on a crack in the ceiling, lips parted like she might say something else, but the words die before they rise.

Instead, she clenches around him just slightly, reflexive, and her hands slide to his waist, nails curling into his skin just to feel something.

He gets it. Understands it without needing to be told. He begins to move, his body folding into hers like breath under fabric, his chest rising against hers, their sweat-slick skin catching in subtle friction with each slide forward. He never pins her. Only settles against her with the kind of patience that feels like disbelief.

And she hates how quiet it is.

How soft.

She wants it to be messy. Fast. Punishing.

But he’s giving her something worse. Something that feels like recognition.

His mouth finds her collarbone, just resting there. One kiss. A pause. Another. And then his tongue, tracing the edge of her shoulder like a question.

Her body stutters under him in confusion.

This is a language Ino never learned, this is not how men have spoken to her before. It feels like mourning the version of her that once hoped for this and stopped asking years ago.

“I don’t know what to do with this,” she says, voice cracked and wet and not even angry anymore.

He lifts his head, his voice arrives stripped of its usual scaffolding.

“You don’t have to do anything,” he tells her. “You just have to let yourself feel.”

She shakes her head, barely, but doesn’t push him away.

Some part of her, deep and buried beneath old armor and thick with sedimented doubt, wants to believe him. Wants to believe that it's possible to receive touch without cost, to be held without debt, to exist in closeness that isn’t conditional. That this contact doesn’t have to mean owing something back.

But that part of her has rusted over. It has starved in silence for too long. So instead of reaching for the belief, she presses her face into the curve of his neck, her breath damp against his skin, and whispers the only thing she can manage.

“Don’t be gentle with me.”

There’s no hesitation in his reply, “I don’t know how else to touch you.”

This tenderness is the only survival instinct he has left, and she’s asking him to abandon it.

He thrusts once, deeper. Slower.

Her breath catches.

He does it again. His hand slides under her thigh, lifts it, presses closer, tethering a connection. The way their bodies fit now feels like something ancient being discovered.

She makes a sound in the back of her throat.

His mouth finds her chest, the center of her sternum, the arch of her neck, each kiss soft and unscripted, as though his lips are searching for pieces of her story in the skin. She tastes like sweat and exhaustion and salt. And beneath his mouth, her skin reacts like it doesn’t understand what to do with this kind of attention. Not objectified.

When her breath trembles into something broken, the kind of shiver that rides the edge of a cry, he doesn’t falter. He slows, almost imperceptibly, sinking deeper, his body anchoring hers without enclosing it. One hand rises, brushes her hair back from her temple, then rests against her cheek, thumb just beneath her eye, soft as breath. He holds her like he knew this moment was coming, like her tears had always been part of the choreography.

Like he’s not afraid of her.

For the first time all night, Ino’s body softens in realization.

Because maybe this isn’t punishment. Maybe it’s not reward either.

Maybe it’s just what it is: two ruined people choosing, for a moment, not to make each other worse.

Maybe that’s the most dangerous thing of all.

Something pulses underneath it all, a current strung taut between their ribs.

It happens gradually like a tide cresting after a long, silent pull.

The air in the room feels warped now, full of something suspended and electric, like thunderclouds before rain, the atmosphere taut with a tension that can’t be named. She shifts again, hips tilting up to meet him halfway, and something in her gives, something underneath, something brittle and long-resisting, splintering just slightly at the edges.

Itachi feels it in the change in her body. The way her muscles ease, even if just momentarily. The way her hands, once clawing, once braced to shove or scratch or drag him down, now slide over his back with something that almost resembles intention. Not surrender — she’d never call it that — but permission. To stay. To continue. To touch.

And he does.

Every shift of his hips is a phrase spoken not to her body, but to whatever lives just beneath it—whatever part of her still remembers how to hear without fear. Her hands tremble again. One of them finds the back of his neck, anchoring there, not tight but not loose either, as if she’s still deciding whether to pull him in or push him away.

Instead, she just keeps breathing. Her eyes flutter shut. Her mouth parts in need, her body is learning a new vocabulary, one she thought she’d forgotten, or maybe never been taught in the first place.

And he keeps moving steady, unwavering, his body a tether against the drift she’s so used to giving in to. His mouth finds her temple. Her cheekbone. The hollow behind her ear. He doesn’t whisper anything — no praise, no reassurances — just breathes her in, grounding her in silence, in presence, in the unbearable honesty of being held like someone who still matters.

It aches.

Not in her body. In her memory. In all the times this moment was twisted into something else, something performative, something empty, something that left her colder than before.

And now here he is, this quiet, infuriating man, refusing to play the part she’s offered him. Refusing to use her even when she asked him to. Refusing to give her an ending she could condemn herself for.

Her body tightens again, this time involuntarily, this time in panic. Her breath catches. Her fingers dig into his back like she might push him away after all.

But he’s there. Still there. Unmoving in his conviction.

“You’re okay,” he murmurs, and it’s the first thing he’s said in a while, and it nearly breaks her. “I’ve got you.”

Her eyes fly open. She glares up at him like he’s said something cruel. Like he’s cracked open the center of her shame.

“You don’t know me,” she hisses.

“I don’t have to,” he replies. “To care.”

She jerks her hips once, harder, angrier, a last attempt to turn this into something else, to reclaim the power she swore she gave up the second she let him touch her.

But he doesn’t match her pace.

He softens again, slows down, presses himself deeper into her with that same unbearable tenderness, he knows what she’s trying to do and won’t let her. Like he’s holding up a mirror to the parts of herself she’s spent years trying to erase.

Her head falls back into the pillow. She lets out a breath like defeat.

Or maybe it’s relief.

His hand finds hers on the mattress beside them, he doesn’t entwine their fingers, just rests there, the warmth of his skin close enough to feel but not insistent.

Her whole body locks up in release. A shudder passes through her, then another. Her breath breaks in his ear, fractured and gasping, her legs wrapping around him like she doesn’t remember telling them to. She presses her face into his shoulder, and when the climax hits with a tremor, she doesn’t make a sound.

Just her body curling in on itself like a closing fist.

And he stays with her through it, grounding every motion, anchoring her in that rhythm even as her heartbeat stutters and her chest rises with something closer to grief than pleasure.

Perhaps could be both, she thinks. She didn’t know what she needed until she got it.

She still doesn’t know if she wants it.

When she comes down, it doesn’t feel like landing.

She’s stunned. Dizzy. Like something has been stolen from her and she can’t figure out whether it was a burden or a shield. She lies there, quiet and blinking, the ceiling overhead too distant, too white, too unknowable. Her limbs are slow to return. Her breath tastes like smoke. Like the inside of her own mouth when she forgets not to bite the lining. There is a high, whirring silence in her ears, like a held note. Her pulse is in her jaw, her wrists, the backs of her knees. Her face is damp, though she can’t quite tell from what.

Itachi moves only to brush the hair from her damp forehead, the way someone might tend to a fever. His lips press once to her temple, with no expectation in the touch, just the presence of it.

She feels him still inside her, the heat, the weight, the closeness that feels more like truth than anything she’s heard in months.

He hasn’t finished yet, but he’s not chasing it. He’s waiting for her.

She swallows once. Then her mouth opens — to say something? To apologize? To tell him to leave?

“I don’t know how to be loved if it isn’t a transaction.”

He doesn’t say anything.

But he curls his hand into hers, this time gently, fully.

And that’s the first time she cries in front of him.

Because she doesn’t know what else to do.

Now Playing: Swallow Me - Cocteau Twins, Harold Budd

The room is clean. Too clean. The kind of cleanliness that doesn’t signal order but avoidance, as though he’d scrubbed everything in it with the intention of scraping himself out of it. The floor is bare. The walls are bare. The bed hasn’t been touched since yesterday, maybe the day before, he’s not keeping track anymore. His guitar is propped against the window. His phone is face down on the desk. The air smells like dust and leftover static, something unmoved and unfinished.

Sasuke sits on the edge of the chair in a loose hoodie, one leg bouncing out of habit, not urgency. His fingers curl instinctively around the neck of the guitar, thumb pressing against the frets like muscle memory’s all he has left. He plucks a few notes — aimless, discordant — then settles into a riff. Not new. Familiar. Too familiar.

It’s the same one he started writing weeks ago. Months? The one that never made it past the chorus. The one he’s been trying to destroy and rebuild in equal measure.

He plays it. Stops. Tries again.

The sound doesn’t fill the apartment so much as haunt it—a thin, brittle thing that slips out of the strings and drifts, unresolved, into corners already worn down by time. Reverb catches in the corners like dust. There’s no resonance. Nothing lands. It just lingers, half-formed and indifferent, then disappears like it never mattered.

He lets the last note die. Not a choice, not a decision. More like his fingers forgot what they were doing.

The silence that follows presses in, familiar and unkind, settling over his shoulders like a weight that won’t shift. It’s not peace. It’s not even stillness. It’s absence with a pulse—reminding him, without malice, that he hasn’t left. That he probably won’t. He leans back, slowly, like gravity is something he has to negotiate with. Tilts his head up. The ceiling stares back, blank and distant. That crack in the plaster still hasn’t spread. The hallway light seeps in under the door like it always does, a soft flicker pretending to be warmth. The air smells faintly metallic, like it’s been circulating too long in a room without change.

He shouldn’t have looked at Naruto like that.

Not that day in the studio. Not the week before. Not the way he still does.

He shouldn’t remember the way his hair fell over his face, the way he chewed on the tip of a pen while scribbling lyrics into his notebook like it was the only lifeline he had left. He shouldn’t remember how Naruto swore under his breath and laughed at nothing, laughed in that short, hollow way he does when something hurts but he’s pretending it doesn’t, and Sasuke had stood there, watching from the threshold, pretending he didn’t want to speak. Pretending he didn’t want to walk in and ask what the hell he was writing with that kind of focus, that kind of desperation, like if he didn’t finish the verse the whole song might vanish from memory.

Sasuke had walked away.

Of course he had.

Because what the hell would he have said?

And what would he say now?

He plays the riff again. Slower this time. Like dragging a hand over bruised skin. It’s good. It’s fine. It’s clean. It’s meaningless.

He stops and sets the guitar down without care. Lets it lean precariously against the desk, one string still humming quietly into the air like a held breath.

His eyes flick to the suitcase in the corner of the room.

Packed. Precise. Every shirt folded the same way. Black, black, maybe dark gray, maybe something washed out enough to pass for color but not enough to call it a choice.

He hasn’t touched it since yesterday.

He hasn’t opened it since he zipped it shut.

He doesn’t know why he packed at all. As if pretending he’s ready might make it true.

His gaze drifts toward the window.

The city outside is hollow. Night traffic, scattered lights, a dog barking somewhere in the distance — all the usual noise of a place pretending to sleep.

He leans his forehead to the glass and it’s cold, it’s all he can feel.

He lets his eyes fall shut.

He remembers Naruto’s voice again.

That one night, just after rehearsal, months ago, when they’d stayed too long at the studio and everyone else had left. Naruto had been hunched over the soundboard, flipping through lyrics, and Sasuke had hovered, pretending to be uninterested. And Naruto, without looking up, had said, “You ever write something you don’t wanna hear out loud?”

Sasuke hadn’t answered back then, but the question stayed.

Because every time Sasuke writes a song now, every time he touches a string or plugs in a synth or scrolls through old recordings, he thinks about that question.

And about how much he’s avoided answering it.

There’s a kind of guilt that comes not from action but inaction. Not from betrayal, but from refusal. He didn’t lie. He didn’t hurt anyone. He didn’t make a scene.

But he knew.

And he still didn’t show up. He still didn’t say what needed to be said.

Not to Naruto.

Not to himself.

And that’s what keeps him up now.

The awareness that the window of forgiveness is still cracked open — and he’s choosing to keep his hands in his pockets.

3 years before

They had just finished playing a set — not a big one, not some pivotal debut, just a smoky bar somewhere outside of town with a broken AC unit and a too-small stage, all elbows and cables and adrenaline. The crowd had been louder than expected. Naruto had been buzzing, the kind of high that only came after performance, that spun off his skin in sparks and sweat, wild-eyed and beaming in a way that felt dangerous to look at for too long.

Sasuke had watched him from the corner of the greenroom, towel still slung over his shoulder, water bottle clenched in his hand like a lifeline. He hadn’t said much. He never did. Not when Naruto was like that — lit up, laughing, vibrating with motion. He always felt like if he spoke, he might interrupt something sacred. And then Naruto would look at him like he had — like Sasuke had broken the moment just by not being able to match it.

But that night, something different had happened.

The others had filtered out slowly — Sakura dragging Gaara to find food, Kiba yelling something about a 24-hour diner, Ino already half-asleep in the backseat before they could say goodbye.

Naruto had stayed.

And Sasuke, for some reason he didn’t remember now, hadn’t left.

They’d ended up on the rooftop of the shitty motel next door, backs against the cracked concrete ledge, one shared beer passed silently between them. The air had been too warm for night, and Naruto had pulled his shirt off halfway through his third sentence without thinking, skin still flushed from the stage, arms stretched behind his head like he needed to crack open his chest to breathe right.

Sasuke had looked away.

Then looked back. Then kept looking.

Naruto had caught him and smiled. Not the grin he gave crowds, or the smug half-smirk he used when he knew Sasuke was annoyed. Just a small, tired smile

“Y’know,” Naruto said eventually, voice soft, almost slurred from exhaustion more than anything, “I used to imagine what it’d be like. If it was just the two of us on tour.”

Sasuke didn’t move. Just watched him.

Naruto continued, staring up at the night sky like it might give him permission. “Like, no label. No team. No setlists. Just driving. Playing wherever. Gas stations, garages, someone’s basement.”

Sasuke let the silence stay for a beat longer, then asked, “Why?”

Naruto had chuckled. Not his usual loud. Not like he was brushing it off. More like he was embarrassed that it still meant something to him. “I dunno. Just feels like maybe we wouldn’t mess it up that way.”

Sasuke wanted to tell him to shut up, tell him to stop being a sappy bitch.

But he didn’t. Not that night.

Instead, he shifted slightly closer, the edge of his shoulder brushing Naruto’s bare arm.

“When we’re not fighting, I don’t know what to do with us.”

Sasuke could feel it — the trap inside the sentence. The ache. The ask. But also the fear. Because they were never quite better than when they were hurting each other, at least that way the rules made sense. The roles were clear.

This wasn’t fighting. This was something tender, therefore something dangerous.

“I know,” Sasuke said.

And that was it.

But Naruto had leaned his head back against the ledge then, eyes fluttering shut, and Sasuke had watched the tension ease out of his shoulders in slow waves.

That night stuck with Sasuke in a way that no argument ever did. Because it was a moment when he could’ve chosen something different.

And he hadn’t.

He’d just memorized it. Filed it away in the part of his brain reserved for things that couldn’t happen twice.

Now, in the dark of his apartment, with the guitar humming behind him and his bag zipped by the door, Sasuke still feels that night like it’s unfinished.

Still feels the weight of that silence.

Still hears the words that never got said.

And maybe that’s why he can’t sleep.

Because part of him still wonders what would’ve happened if he’d leaned in just a little more that night — not for the kiss, not for the thrill — just to ask:

What do you want from me?

And if Naruto had said everything—

Would he have given it?

Would he have even known how?

Now Playing: "Big City Life" - Mattafix

The sky was the kind of dark that made the city feel both infinite and incredibly small, like a box with holes poked through the lid. The moon hung low, swollen and yellowed by pollution, barely cutting through the haze, and the air carried the weight of something not yet named. Heat from the day still clung to the rooftop cement, a sticky film of humidity and leftover sun, though the hour had long since turned quiet.

Naruto hadn’t planned to come up here.

He didn’t sleep much the night before anything important. Always claimed it was excitement, sometimes even believed that himself. But really, it was the silence, how loud it got when the noise stopped. How the ghosts came to sit beside him when the amp cables were coiled and the mic was packed and nobody needed him to say anything anymore. That was when it crept in: the ache, the weight, the unspoken expectation that he’d have something true to say tomorrow. On stage. In photos. In front of them all.

So he walked.

Shoes unlaced, t-shirt wrinkled, knuckles scraped from a clumsy encounter with a gear case earlier. He wandered up the stairwell half out of habit and half out of some gut-deep restlessness he couldn’t name, like he needed to be under the sky for just a second before the whole world changed again.

The door to the roof creaked open.

Hinata was already there, pressed near the ledge with both hands on her camera, her body curved like a question mark, silhouetted by the city light, for a moment he nearly turned around.

But he stood there anyway.

She turned halfway, lips parted as if to speak, but he only raised a hand, palm out — it’s okay, you don’t have to say anything — and stepped closer slowly, careful not to crowd her.

“What’re you shooting?” he asked, voice lower than usual.

She blinked, the lens still between her fingers, and then turned the camera screen toward him.

The photo was simple: skyline blurred at the edges, a thin strip of orange still clinging to the horizon behind black silhouettes of antennas and rooftops.

He give her a smile — a real one, not the kind he gave interviewers or fans or Shikamaru when he needed him to stop worrying.

“This is… really good,”

Hinata’s eyes widened slightly. Her grip faltered so much so that the camera nearly slipped from her hands.

She caught it just in time, fingers trembling for half a second, and he could see the flush rising in her cheeks, even in the half-dark.

“I– I’ve been doing it for a while,” she murmured, voice like breath over glass, fragile but not weak. “It helps me… see things clearer. When everything feels…”

He nodded, understanding in a way he didn’t know how to explain.

The silence settled again, for a while they stood there, shoulder to shoulder but not quite touching, facing the same horizon with different weights in their chests.

She adjusted her strap. He watched the way her lashes caught the light.

“Do you ever…” she started, then stopped. Bit her lip.

He turned slightly.

She tried again. “Do you ever get scared on stage?”

It came out so quietly he almost missed it. Not scared of anything in particular — not death, or the stage, or even himself. Just scared. Like the world was bigger than his voice. Like no matter how loud he screamed into the mic, it wouldn’t drown out the silence.

He didn’t want to lie, and the truth was too raw.

So instead, he tilted his head, looked at her like she was saying something sacred, and said, “Can I keep one?”

She blinked. “One?”

“One of your photos.”

He scratched the back of his neck, trying to make it sound casual. “Just, I dunno… to have. For the tour. Might be nice to look at something real.”

She stared at him.

Then, without a word, she reached into the back pocket of her bag.

Folded there, worn slightly at the edges but carefully preserved, was a single printed photo — one he hadn’t seen. A rooftop shot from some older city, different skyline, softer light, but there was something about it that echoed this moment — the hush, the stillness, the way things could be lonely and beautiful at once.

She handed it to him with two fingers, hesitant, like she might pull it back.

He took it gently.

been carrying it for months.

He just looked at it and then at her, smiled again — this time smaller, quieter, like he knew whatever this was, didn’t need words yet.

“Thanks.”

Now Playing Disorder – Joy Division

“I’ve got the spirit/ but lose the feeling”

The sky was too bright for how everyone felt — that particular late-morning sun that doesn’t ask for permission, just burns its way down onto pavement that still remembers the night before. The parking lot shimmered faintly with heat haze, and the rows of tour crates and dusty vehicles stretched long and flat under the light, giving the morning the illusion of space — of freedom, even — when in truth it felt more like a cage. A beginning and an end, collapsed into the same rectangle of cracked asphalt.

They arrived in staggered silence.

First was Yamato — clipboard in hand, already halfway through the second coffee of the day, expression unreadable behind his sunglasses, mouth set in that neutral tight line that meant don’t test me today. His steps were efficient but not rushed, he checked the trailer hitch, jotted something down, frowned at the load manifest again. Beside him, Kakashi leaned lazily against the side of the van, his hair a mess, scarf pulled up around his jaw as if shielding himself from the morning, one eye scanning the group text thread without interest. When Yamato muttered, “Route change after the third stop,” Kakashi just hummed in response. He didn’t look like he’d slept, but then again, no one did.

The bus was already idling, engine grumbling low, expelling thin fumes into the otherwise quiet air.

Then came Gaara, silent as smoke, sleeves rolled to the elbow, his bass case already strapped to his back like a burden he was used to carrying. He didn’t say anything, didn’t look at anyone, just started hauling gear, one crate at a time, eyes on the ground, movements careful and practiced. Every step measured. Every box placed perfectly in the puzzle of amps and cables and emergency kits. He worked like someone trying to disappear into utility, like he’d rather be mistaken for one of the crates himself than a person with a face. No one disturbed him.

Sai followed next — not walking so much as gliding, somehow. He moved with that surreal, near-weightless gait that made it seem like he was being filmed at a different frame rate than everyone else. Pale shirt tucked in too precisely. Bag slung over one shoulder. His tags were already clipped to the crates, labeled in clear, immaculate handwriting. He knelt to secure one last stencil to the inside of the merch box and then stood again, gaze drifting over the group like he was cataloguing them, not joining them. His eyes lingered on Kakashi for a moment with that strange, expressionless respect he seemed to reserve only for people he couldn’t fully predict. No one said hello. He didn’t seem to mind.

Shikamaru arrived in a cloud of cigarette smoke and quiet complaint, dragging two tangled extension cords behind him and grumbling about overpacking. His shirt was only half tucked in, and his wristwatch blinked red where the battery was dying. Temari trailed behind him, hair scraped into a high knot, sunglasses perched low on her nose, barking instructions into her phone. She barely glanced at the others before tossing a clipboard onto the bus dash and starting to help Gaara with the heavier gear, both of them falling into an old rhythm born of years and fights and silence.

Ino emerged from the far end of the lot like she’d been walking for longer than she should’ve, like the sunlight was something she’d forgotten how to step into. Her hoodie sleeves hung low past her fingers, and the glasses she wore were too dark for the hour, the kind that weren’t for fashion anymore, just shielding. Her hair was pulled into a half-effort bun, and there was a faint smudge of mascara at the edge of her temple, like she’d started to wipe it off the night before and then stopped.

Itachi was near the door of the van, when her eyes caught his, something passed between them. Like a shared wound. He held out a bottle of water without a word and she took it.

Naruto was already there, had seen her before anyone else did. He stepped toward her instinctively, didn’t say anything, just took her duffel from her shoulder with the easy, unconscious motion of someone who’s done it before. Like that’s how things went, she carried what she could, and he carried the rest.

Hinata stood beside him — smaller in frame, but no less present — her camera bag crossbody, her fingers gripping a printout she hadn’t meant to bring but hadn’t thrown away either. She was dressed plainly, but cleanly, everything about her neat, precise, a kind of quiet armor. She wasn’t trying to take up space. But her presence still shifted the air.

Naruto said something low to Hinata, too soft for anyone to hear, but whatever it was made her blink, her mouth curve at the corners, one hand rising unconsciously to her collarbone.

Behind them, leaning back against the shaded side of the trailer, Sasuke lit a cigarette.

His hands weren’t shaking, but they might as well have been — the flick of the lighter too quick, the drag too long. He didn’t say a word. Just watched them. Naruto. Hinata. Ino. The flicker of closeness between them that wasn’t his, never had been. The shift in gravity, the way things moved around other people now. He held the smoke in his chest until it stung, then let it go without blinking. No one looked back.

Neji stood at a distance.

His suitcase rested by his side, but his arms were crossed. His jaw was set. He wore the kind of expression that made people think twice before asking him anything. He looked at the bus like it was a test. Or a mirror.

This was it, the last moment before motion. The last breath before noise. Everyone felt it, even if no one said so.

Kakashi ticked the last box off the clipboard.

Yamato handed him a spare route sheet.

Temari shouted for someone to grab the backup tuner.

Gaara stacked the final crate.

Sai stepped up into the bus, ghost-silent.

And slowly, one by one, they all began to follow.

(rustling, then silence. A click.)

“I just… I didn’t know you’d leave like that.”

(overlapping audio, distant traffic)

“…you said we’d keep this between us. But now you’re pretending it didn’t mean anything. That’s worse.”

(female voice, low and shaking)

“I told you, I can’t be that girl again. I won’t.”

(laughter, then static)

“…you always laugh when you’re scared. I used to think it was cute.”

(male voice, clipped, tired)

“If you needed me, why didn’t you say something?”

(breath caught in throat, pause)

“…I shouldn’t be calling. Forget this. Just—forget it.”

(barely a whisper)

“You don’t even know what you took from me.”

(a voice sharp, tired)

“You think this tour’s gonna fix it? You think playing louder makes it go away?”

(click. hang-up. then another voice, clearer, too calm)

“You’re going to lose them. One by one.”

(Distorted, almost sung)

“If I break onstage, don’t stop the show.”

Chapter Text

Now Playing: “London Calling” – The Clash

London looks like a bruise just beginning to bloom.

From the upper deck of the tour bus, the city unfolds in shades of ash and neon, dull-washed skies backlighting rows of buildings that lean into each other. The windows are tinted, fogged in places from breath or weather or both, but the band watches anyway, scattered across seat backs and duffel bags, shoulders half-touching in a silence no one bothers to address.

The streets are crowded in that distinctly London way: everyone moving, no one speaking, umbrellas clashing as the sky presses low overhead.

Sakura rests her forehead against the glass. She’s chewing a gum she stopped tasting five minutes ago, one leg bouncing in time with the potholes. Her earbuds are in, but she isn’t actually listening she’s watching a man in a camel trench coat stop mid-sidewalk to light a cigarette.

Sasuke is three rows back. He’s sitting alone, his headphones are on.

Naruto leans in the stairwell at the front of the upper level, hoodie sleeves pulled over his hands, nose practically pressed to the glass. He’s fidgeting — tapping a coin against the railing, mouthing lyrics he won’t remember in twenty minutes. His breath keeps fogging the window in short bursts. He wipes it away every time with his sleeve.

Ino is downstairs, legs crossed on the side bench, smudging silver glitter into her eyelids with two fingers and a mirror the size of a matchbook. Her makeup kit is open across three seats, powder brushes, rhinestone palettes, bandaids, and menthols. She looks tired, but perfected.

Sai has a sketchbook on his lap and a marker between his teeth. He’s just holding it there, unmoving, as if the motion of the city outside is a better line than any he could make.

Gaara sits by the emergency exit, hoodie up, eyes closed.

Neji’s on his phone. Three screens open at once — logistics, press check-ins, emergency contacts. He doesn’t look up when they pass the river. He’s already seen it. He’s already seen everything.

They pass the venue at some point.

It appears like a cathedral dragged into the modern world, all rusted scaffolding and LED signage, black-painted bricks catching the dim late-afternoon light like they’ve been soaked in sweat. There’s already a small group outside: early fans in patched jackets and glossy boots, smoking against the barricades, one with Naruto’s lyric tattooed in sharp cursive across their collarbone: you called it living, I called it not dying yet.

Naruto sees it, his fingers freeze on the rail.

Sasuke sees Naruto see it.

Ino sees both of them and closes her mirror.

The venue disappears behind the bus in seconds as they reach the private only entrance.

The bay doors at the back of the venue hang open like a gaping mouth, cold wind curling in from the alley and pulling cigarette smoke sideways. The smell of beer-soaked plywood and spilled paint from past set designs clings to the cinderblock walls. Somewhere, a door slams. Somewhere else, a fuse box buzzes. And Neji, standing at the top of the short metal ramp that leads down to the loading floor, watches the chaos unfold like he’s staring into a disaster zone he can’t evacuate.

He taps the back of his clipboard with one ringed finger, quietly recording time markers in his head: 8:43, van one not unpacked. 8:51, bass rig still not located. 9:02, first feedback spike from Sai’s channel. None of this is unusual, he’s done enough tour rotations to know the first city always bites.

Sai is already locked in a low, terse argument with a venue tech wearing a laminate pass three days out of date. “If you don’t recalibrate the limiter, your subwoofers are going to fry mid-set,” Sai says, emotionless, clipped, like he’s diagnosing a failing heart. The tech mutters something about standard policy, and Sai’s mouth flattens into that eerily blank expression he wears when irritation threatens to pierce the surface.

Gaara stalks past them both, a coil of XLR cables looped over one shoulder, eyes sharp but silent. He doesn’t even glance at Sai, just disappears into the side stage with the quiet violence of someone who doesn’t believe in second warnings.

Kakashi, late as usual, walks in sipping a coffee like it’s a casual Tuesday in the office. He surveys the loading bay with one raised brow, then says, half to himself, half to whoever’s closest, “This looks… fine. Mostly.” Neji doesn’t even react.

He moves through the space like a shadow in pressed black, his tablet finally flickering on as he makes note of which crew members are on-site. Half the cables are untagged. The monitor mix isn’t set. The front house engineer hasn’t even arrived.

But Naruto is already there— bouncing on the balls of his feet on the empty stage like a kinetic battery waiting to discharge. He sings into a dead mic, makes faces at Sakura, taps the top of Gaara’s amp like he’s trying to summon momentum by sheer force of movement. Neji watches the drummer’s snort of laughter, the way Naruto makes people crack open even when the room is rotten with pressure.

It’s a strange kind of magic.

Temari walks in five minutes later than she should, arguing into a headset, one hand dragging a crate of promo materials. She drops it with a clatter and says, “Where the fuck is the signage we approved?” No one answers, Shikamaru dares to raise his shoulders in defeat.

He finds a chair off to the side, sits, and opens his notebook. Not the digital one, this one is real paper. He stares at the blank page for a moment, letting the noise of the room become texture. Then, neatly writes:

DAY 1 – CITY 01

• Load-in delayed
• Tech miscommunication
• Personnel tension rising

Now Playing: “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” – The Smiths

The green room isn’t green, not really, more like a faded, nicotine-stained gray with a faint halo of fluorescent headache pooling above them from the overhead lights. The walls pulse faintly with bass from some other band’s soundcheck bleeding through layers of cinderblock. The couch is too low, the fridge too loud, the mirror cracked at the top corner like someone had thrown something into it once and no one bothered to replace it. It smells like a hundred bands have sat in here and none of them cleaned up after themselves. Sweat, stale beer, cheap deodorant. It clings, but Naruto barely notices.

His knee’s been bouncing for fifteen minutes straight.

He tells himself it’s adrenaline. He tells himself he’s amped. He tells himself this is the best version of the dream. First stop, full set, decent crowd, decent venue, big enough to matter but small enough to still touch the sound. This is what they wanted. This is what they worked for. Right?

He grips the setlist like it might try to float away if he lets go, crumpling the edge between his fingers, running through the order again for no reason at all—he knows it by heart, muscle memory and breath count, downbeat and lyric shift.

Sakura is cross-legged on the floor, tapping her sticks in the air, mouthing fills to herself with her hair tied up messily and two strands falling stubborn over her cheeks. She’s focused in the way only she gets before a show, entirely still except her wrists, pinky tapping rhythm in time with her pulse. She doesn’t look at him much, doesn’t have to. They’ve done this enough times to speak in gestures, unfinished phrases, shared nerves vibrating between them like tension wire.

Sasuke’s on the other side of the room, calibrating his rig, adjusting sliders, muting channels, loading a new patch with fingers too precise to look casual. He hasn’t spoken since they walked in. Not even an insult to make him stop producing odd sounds, Naruto glances over once and catches him glancing back. The eye contact lasts less than a second, but it’s enough to thread that familiar ache through Naruto’s chest. He swallows it.

He wants to say something funny. Something to break the static in his own head, but the words don’t come, and instead he just taps the setlist against his thigh until it starts making that annoying little flicking sound, plastic brushing denim over and over.

And then Gaara walks in, quiet as ever, hoodie half-zipped and his bass over one shoulder, and says, “You good?”

That’s what does it, that’s the moment the buzz in Naruto’s skull goes from manageable to sharp.

It’s the way he says it—not the words, but the softness. The you good? like it’s not rhetorical, Gaara means it. He already knows the answer and is just giving Naruto space to lie.

“I’m great,” Naruto says too fast, too bright, grinning with all his teeth and making his voice spike just enough to sound like someone trying to drown out doubt. “Show day. Let’s go.”

Gaara doesn’t answer. He just nods, disappears behind the rack case again, pulling cables like he never spoke. And Naruto’s grin fades before anyone even sees it drop.

He stands. Paces. Comes back. Rereads the setlist. Counts to four. Counts again.

He tells himself this is just the start, that he’s supposed to be jittery, that energy is good, that they’ve done this a dozen times and they’ll do it a hundred more. That whatever’s crawling under his skin isn’t fear.

But it is.

And he knows it.

Because the thing about being onstage—the thing no one tells you when you’re the frontman—is that no matter how loud the room gets, you’re always listening for the silence underneath it. The split-second between verses when your voice catches. The moment when you forget the line even though it’s tattooed into your lungs. The second someone in the crowd looks away and it makes you forget why you started screaming in the first place.

He rubs the back of his neck.

Wonders if he remembered to eat.

Wonders why it suddenly feels like his ribs are too tight around his lungs.

He smiles at Sakura, she doesn’t look up. He tries again with Sasuke. Nothing.

And so he pulls his hoodie over his head, presses his hands together until the bones crack, and tells himself again, louder this time, that this is the dream.

It just doesn’t feel like one.

In the hallway outside the green room, under lighting that flickered like it couldn’t decide whether to reveal or hide them, the band pulled themselves into costume — or what passed for one.

Ino knelt in front of Sakura first, brushing foundation across the curve of her jaw, tightening the straps on her black crop top so they wouldn’t slip mid-fill. Her look was sweat-proofed punk: black mesh under a bomber jacket, matte red lip, silver rings across every knuckle like punctuation.

Naruto was harder to pin down. He’d stripped his hoodie off three times, tried a denim vest, ditched it. Ended up in a ripped white tank, necklaces layered, eyes rimmed in burnt copper. Ino added one silver slash across his cheekbone — just enough to catch the light when he threw his head back.

Gaara had done his own face, of course. Dark, brutalist strokes across his browbone, cheekbones almost sculpted in kohl. His hair was slightly damp. Black oversized tee, scuffed boots, leather cuffs. A look that said don’t ask and meant it.

Sasuke sat last. He always waited. Not as submission, but as control. Ino approached slowly, met his eyes in the mirror, didn’t ask permission. She drew a single thin line of eyeliner beneath both eyes. It wasn’t pretty. His outfit was nearly monochrome — deep navy layered under black, asymmetric zippers, half-gloved hands. His synth gloves were tight, customized, silver-threaded. He didn’t speak as she fixed the collar of his jacket.

“You all good?” Neji’s voice at the door, low and even.

Now Playing: “Jesus of Suburbia” – Green Day

The stage doesn’t come alive all at once, it ignites in increments.

A flicker of house lights dimming into shadow, followed by the sharp click of a pedal board. A pulse of bass that tests the foundations of the venue. Then, silence—a breath held by the crowd, collectively, unknowingly—

Sound.

It crashes in like a wave breaking a dam, lights tearing open the dark in strobe bursts as Naruto explodes from the side of the stage, his tank already half off, mic caught in his fist like it’s something alive. He doesn’t walk, doesn’t jog. He basically launches into it—airborne for a split second, boots crashing against floorboards, teeth bared in a grin that borders on manic. Sweat is already slicking the back of his neck, and it’s only been six seconds.

The crowd answers instantly—roars rise like combustion, layered, uneven, imperfect in the best way, hands reaching up like they could touch the noise itself if they just screamed hard enough.

He sings, but it’s not just singing. He throws the lyrics, spits them out like they’re something he’s trying to get rid of. Each line punches the air like it wronged him. Every word echoes back at him from the pit like an accusation—louder, meaner, almost personal.

It becomes a chant, a shared breakdown. He lets them take the chorus. They scream it back like a threat. Like a promise. Like they were all waiting for this exact five-second stretch of their lives to feel seen.

Gaara plays like the stage is holy ground, his bass line threading through the chaos like the bottom note of a hymn. His eyes barely move, no sweat on sight. Doesn’t flinch when Naruto slams a monitor with his boot mid-line. He just anchors the set, one low rumble at a time, like tectonic plates holding the rest of the band in place.

Sakura is pure muscle and snarl behind the kit, face locked in a look of total focus, hair tied back so hard it looks like a battle crown. She hammers the beat like a body against a locked door, and every downbeat lands like a heartbeat, relentless and tribal. Her toms are tuned to sound like fists, the crash hits like the aftershock of something collapsing. She’s counting in fours, but it feels like counting down to detonation.

Sasuke is off-center, half-shadowed, positioned just left of Naruto but turned slightly away from the crowd, like the mass of screaming bodies means less to him than the one right beside him. He plays with fingers that dance across pads and trigger keys like pressure points — measured, brutal, almost surgical. His left shoulder stays slightly tilted in Naruto’s direction, and even when the spotlight catches his eyes mid-verse, it’s Naruto he’s watching—never the crowd.

His solo isn’t a shred, it’s a layered drop: bass so deep it bruises, overlaid with distorted samples that feel like a scream folded into silk. like he’s bleeding something through the strings that he refuses to say out loud. The crowd screams louder and Naruto looks back at him mid-line. They don’t speak but for a moment, there’s something electric between them—just under the feedback, just under the stage wash, just in that flicker of silence between verse and chorus. A breath that never lands.

Hinata stands in the pit, camera in hand, shutter catching every second like it’s precious. She moves like mist, ducking between heads and speaker stacks, never intruding, never seen. But her lens is relentless—snapping the twitch of Naruto’s jaw mid-scream, She catches Sasuke between pulses of light, one hand hovering above his rig, shadow pooled under his eyes, hair clinging to his cheekbone, the light hitting Gaara’s temple like a halo. She captures Sakura mid-yell, arms a blur, cymbals exploding around her in silver fire. Every frame is a war cry dressed as memory.

The light rigs shift, strobes rotating across the crowd like searchlights. Naruto leaps into the breakdown, sweat pouring, eyes wide, shirt twisted around his ribs like a second skin. He’s raw now, breath hitching between lines, but he never stops, doesn’t give in. Not even when his throat breaks a little on the last chorus. Especially not then.

The crowd is chaos and worship all at once, bodies moving as one pulse, one heave, all of them broken open in different ways but yelling the same lyrics with the same cracked mouths. No one’s alone here. Everyone is. Both truths coexist, loud and undeniable, tangled in the distortion.

Naruto collapses to his knees at the final chord.

Now Playing: “I Can’t Handle Change” – Roar

The hallway is colder than it should be.

Not objectively—there’s no breeze, no draft from the loading bay, no busted AC vent whistling through the ductwork—but Naruto feels it like an ache under his skin. Like something peeled off mid-set and didn’t grow back. The walls are concrete, unfinished, a dull industrial gray with old tape scraps stuck in lines across the surface from past tours, past signs, past names. He recognizes none of them but knows exactly how it feels to be just another taped-over thing.

His back hits the wall and he lets it, hoodie clinging to the sweat still slick along his spine. He slides down until he’s half-crouched, half-folded, palms splayed against the wall as if it’s the only thing holding him upright. His breath saws through his chest like glass.

The hallway bends slightly toward the green room, but it’s empty now—no sound, no scuffed boot steps, no post-show banter or someone shouting about missing drumsticks or a broken pedal or whatever tech nightmare they’re drowning in tonight. Even the crowd feels far off now. The roar’s gone. The adrenaline’s gone. His throat is scorched raw, his hands are still twitching, and his heart won’t stop trying to crawl out of his chest.

He can’t move.

He doesn’t know how long he stays like that. Seconds? A minute? Maybe longer. Just breathing sharp, bent over his knees, hoodie drawn down low over his face like if he can just make himself small enough, maybe the night won’t see him anymore. He doesn’t want to be frontman right now, doesn’t want to be anything.

That’s when he hears soft footfall. The slightest rustle of fabric.

“Naruto?”

It’s barely louder than the hum of the overhead lights, but it breaks something cleanly inside him all the same.

He shifts his head just enough to see Hinata, standing a little unsure at the edge of the hallway light, camera still hanging from her neck like a pendant, her sweater sleeves pushed up unevenly, like she forgot about them halfway. Her eyes catch on him—his posture, the mess of sweat through his hair, the way his fingers dig into the wall like he’s trying to hold the building together.

“Sorry,” he rasps. His voice is wrecked. Not cool-wrecked. Not rockstar-wrecked. Just pathetically broken. “Just—needed air.”

She doesn’t move immediately. She just looks at him with this soft, steady stillness that makes him want to both bolt and stay exactly where he is.

Then, slowly, Hinata kneels down beside him.

She pulls a small bottle of water from the side pouch of her camera bag, unscrews the cap, and offers it without a word.

He stares at it.

It’s the first thing anyone’s handed him all day that wasn’t an expectation.

His hand shakes when he takes it. She doesn’t mention it.

He drinks too fast, water spilling a little at the corner of his mouth, wiping it away with the edge of his hoodie sleeve, embarrassed, half-muttering a thanks that doesn’t feel big enough.

She still hasn’t said much.

And that, somehow, is the kindest part of all of this.

They sit like that for a while. Or crouch, really. Her eyes fixed on some point on the floor like she knows not to look at him too directly right now, like she understands that some people can only unravel in side profiles. The silence isn’t heavy. It stretches out between them in soft threads—space, not distance. And the longer it lingers, the more he can breathe.

Finally, he says, voice low, “That sucked.”

She looks over.

“You didn’t,” she replies.

No hesitation.

He lets out a half-laugh, half-sigh. “I kind of did.”

Hinata tilts her head. She’s quiet a second longer than most people would let it be, and then: “You looked like you meant every word.”

He doesn’t know what to do with that. It knocks him a little off balance in a way that has nothing to do with the show or the exhaustion or his lungs still not pulling full air. Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? He did mean every word. That was the problem. He meant them too much. Felt too much. Shouted too much. And now there’s nothing left except the echo in his chest and the hum of hallway fluorescents.

But she’s still here with her camera strap creaking quietly as she shifts her weight, and in a way that no one has all day—not Sakura, not Sasuke, not even Gaara—she makes him feel like a person again.

Just a boy in a hallway, tired and cracked open, being seen without being devoured.

He tips his head back against the wall.

Closes his eyes and breathes.

Now Playing: “Hide and Seek” – Imogen Heap

The green room is a mess of color and caffeine and noise. Foundation dust floating through the air like cheap glitter. The low thrum of a bass riff bleeding from someone’s Bluetooth speaker. A makeup palette cracked open like a surgical tray on the dressing table in front of her, shimmer shades smudged with half-dried pigment, brushes stained in other people’s undertones. Ino’s hand moves in autopilot — buff, blend, line, gloss — her fingers steady even when everything else feels tilted, as if the floor itself has begun to slide at a microscopic angle.

The girl in front of her is pretty in a generic way: sharp brows, lavender liner, mouth parted just enough to catch the light when she talks too loud. She’s the vocalist for one of the opening acts, some hyperpop duo with dramatic eyeliner and three viral TikToks. She keeps glancing at her reflection like she’s waiting for it to do something, be something, but Ino doesn’t ask questions. She just touches up the lips, a little more highlighter on the cupid’s bow.

Someone behind her — she doesn’t know who, doesn’t care — lets out a sharp, amused breath, and says, “Shit. That’s cold.”

The phone’s held just high enough. The screen glows like a punchline. The headline is there in big, ugly letters, half-lit by the vanity mirror:

“Backstage Barbie: Ino Yamanaka’s Return to Chaos?”

The girl in the chair says something, maybe what’s that about, maybe do I look okay, but it warps in her ears, underwater and distant, because everything inside her stops. Stills. The headline is scroll-bait garbage, some low-tier tabloid site with recycled venom and no byline, nothing real, nothing confirmed. But they don’t need truth. They never did. The piece mentions her old scandal by the third sentence — that tape, that party, that exit. Now they’re implying she’s disruptive again, citing vague “tour insiders,” calling her “a liability to the crew’s image.” And there it is: a return. As if she never left it. As if this has always been who she was, no matter what she tried to build since.

Kakashi sees it and doesn’t say anything, but she catches the brief flinch in his expression, the way his eyes skim over it and then quickly look anywhere else, like maybe he’s trying to will it away. Sai, just across the room, doesn’t blink. Just stares at her with that unreadable stillness he’s perfected, as if watching her unravel is a case study.

Ino’s spine goes rigid.

She finishes the girl’s lip gloss with surgical precision, then sets the wand back in the tube so softly you’d never know her knuckles are screaming white beneath the skin.

“Done,” she says.

The girl doesn’t thank her. Just flutters her lashes and leans into the mirror again like Ino never existed.

Ino turns away before she throws something.

It’s like her whole body’s vibrating. Not visibly, not quite, but she feels it in the marrow — the way humiliation doesn’t burn at first, it buzzes, prickles, floods her blood with something thick and hot and unsayable. Her fingers twitch toward her kit but change direction halfway. She needs air. She needs—

Sakura approaches, soft-voiced. “Hey, do you have the set of lashes from—”

“Not now,” Ino snaps, voice slicing the air so sharp it startles them both. The words don’t feel like hers. They taste like metal.

Sakura recoils slightly, blinking, then steps back without comment. That makes it worse.

Gaara, of all people, notices. He’s holding a bottle of water — the fancy kind, expensive glass — and extends it wordlessly. His face is calm, there’s no judgment in it. But even that—especially that—feels unbearable.

She flinches like he’s handed her evidence.

“No,” she says, too fast.

The bathroom door clicks shut behind her like a trigger.

Inside, the light is too white, too sharp, too real. The tiles feel like mirrors. Her reflection in the glass looks smudged and stretched, as if even the mirror is too exhausted to catch her cleanly.

She leans over the sink.

Her hands are shaking now. She wants to scream, to sob, to punch a hole in the wall just so she can feel something louder than this. Instead, she opens her bag with clinical speed, takes out her concealer, and begins dabbing it under her eyes with the kind of practiced detachment that makes it feel like someone else’s face.

This is the story they want, isn’t it?

Fractured girl, too pretty for her own good, lashes curled like claws, venom in stilettos, ruin on two legs.

She gives it to them.

At least in here, no one’s watching.

The bathroom smells like old perfume and cheap cleaner. There’s a crack in the corner tile near the base of the wall, hairline and brown-edged, like even the floor has its own quiet rot. Ino’s legs are bare, knees pulled up to her chest, a hoodie — not hers, someone else’s, maybe Shikamaru’s from months ago, maybe she doesn’t even remember — bunched at the wrists as she hunches near the frosted glass window, which it’s cracked slightly open. Cold air slides through like judgment.

She exhales smoke, slow and deliberate, as if she could shape herself out of it and disappear through the glass.

She hasn’t cried. She won’t.

Mascara holds. Lipliner is clean. Eyeliner cat-sharp, predatory. Nothing breaks unless she wants it to. That’s what she tells herself — what she’s always told herself.

Until the soft shuffle of footsteps outside interrupts her delusion.

The door opens with the practiced silence of someone who’s done this too many times — not barging in, not asking permission, entering the wreckage with steady hands.

Itachi doesn’t say anything at first.

He closes the door behind him, leans his back against it, like a final, quiet click sealing them off from the rest of the world. He’s dressed too neatly for a night like this — black button-up rolled at the sleeves, shoes too clean for this venue’s floor, hair falling just-so across his cheekbone like a shadow sculpted by regret.

“Don’t say anything,” she says before he does.

He doesn’t

Another drag of the cigarette. The end burns orange, soft against the harshness of her mouth.

“You knew about it.” Her voice is hollow, but not dead. “The article. You already knew.”

It’s not really a question.

He nods.

Of course he knew. Of course Kakashi showed him the press alerts, the early email ping, the threads of gossip turning into wildfire backstage. He doesn’t lie, never does.

But he doesn’t apologize either.

“You should’ve told me,” she adds, even though she’s not sure that’s what she means. “Or maybe not. Maybe I’d just— I don’t know.”

He moves then, few steps slowly across the small room, movements measured but not hesitant, and kneels beside her, the cold tile groaning under the shift in weight.

“You still get to choose,” he says quietly, “what story they tell next.”

The words are calm. Not soft — measured. That way he speaks like he’s talking to himself just as much as her. Like he’s been through this fire before and walked out scarred.

She huffs a laugh, but it dies bitter in her throat.

“Shut up. You still think I get to choose?”

She turns to face him now, finally, smoke curling up into the air between them like something alive. Her expression is painted in exhaustion and eyeliner. She looks dangerous, and exhausted, and twenty-three, all at once.

“I’m a headline with legs, Itachi. A walking controversy. They don’t need facts. They need blood. And I keep fucking giving it to them.”

“You didn’t write that article.”

“No, but I gave them the pen.”

He watches her for a beat longer. Then he leans back against the tile wall beside her and wordlessly reaches into his pocket. Pulls out his own cigarette — one of the good ones, the kind with clean paper and heavy filter — and lights it with the match she left behind on the floor. He doesn’t offer a speech or a scolding, not even a solution. Just lights up and exhales beside her, two slow plumes of smoke curling upward in tandem, their silences syncing the way only theirs ever do.

She watches the line of his profile, the shadow of his throat moving as he swallows, the faint smudge of ink on his wrist that disappeared under a rolled sleeve years ago. He smells like cedar and control and that cologne she once stole from his bathroom. He still uses it. She hates that she notices.

“You’re not who you were then,” he says after a long pause. “But you’re not above breaking again, either.”

That lands harder than she expects. It’s a truth, and one that, somehow, doesn’t cut as much as it grounds.

Her mouth opens like she wants to argue, but no words come out.

Instead, she lets her head fall lightly back against the wall. Then, slowly — without looking — lets her shoulder brush his.

He reaches one hand up and tucks a stray strand of her hair behind her ear. He does it like it’s habit, like it’s allowed. The pads of his fingers feel warm.

The silence between them swells, not heavy but full of memory and the thousand fractures in her she’s spent years covering in glitter and steel.

Now Playing: “I Know It’s Over” – The Smiths

The stairwell was cold in that hollow, fluorescent way only hotels could manage — blank walls washed pale blue under half-dead lighting, the smell of synthetic lemon cleaner failing to mask the layers of something older: concrete, mildew, traces of bodies who’d passed through without leaving names. Sasuke didn’t remember walking there. He just registered the concrete under his boots and the way the reverb in his chest wasn’t from the show but from the silence after it.

He carried his soft case tucked under one arm, synth pads and cabling tucked neatly into the side pouch, knuckles white on the zipper like he was holding something fragile that bit. He hadn’t even taken off his outer shirt — black-on-black, sticky with sweat at the back of his neck where the collar clung. One hand found the cool metal of the railing, but he didn’t grip it. Just hovered. Breathing. Not catching it — just tracking it, like he didn’t trust it not to stop.

He’d left immediately after the last note fell. Not even the whole note — before the cymbals decayed, before the house lights came up. Just unplugged, slung the case on, and disappeared through the side exit, through a back corridor no one watched. The stage door clicked shut behind him.

He thought, for a moment, that he liked this silence.

But that wasn’t true. He just didn’t know what else to do with himself anymore.

A bittersweet reminder that he’s the same sore lonely loser he was during his teenage years.

He was fifteen. No, maybe sixteen. He looked older then — or tried to. Too sharp, too angry, all black eyeliner and disdain, a permanent sneer he wore like armor because his brother wouldn’t speak to him unless they were on opposite sides of a stage. He’d been allowed to tag along on Itachi’s band’s first major run. No one told him what to bring or where to sleep.

They didn’t talk to him. Not the band, not their crew. He was the ghost of nepotism, the dead weight dragging behind them in silence. He vomited every night after the set, head down in gas station bathrooms or venue back rooms, never loud enough to be caught, never weak enough to admit it. He said it was the food. It wasn’t. It was the sound. The crowd. The pressure of being near Itachi without being seen.

One night, maybe the third or fourth — he couldn’t remember now — he’d slipped out behind the venue, palms still damp, shirt collar stretched from where he’d yanked at it in the green room trying to breathe. He didn’t even get to light the cigarette he stole. He just sat on the curb, elbows on knees, counting the cracks in the pavement like they might keep him from falling through it.

He had deleted that memory. Intentionally. The same way he deleted every photo from that era, every text he never responded to, every burned CD Naruto made him that he swore he never listened to but did, quietly, when no one was around.

His fingers twitched. Not from adrenaline, that had long since burned off. From a kind of phantom grief. A throb for the version of himself he never figured out how to carry forward.

He wasn’t sixteen anymore. But sometimes it felt like he hadn’t aged out of that silence, like everything in him had just calcified around the noise.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees, let his head dip low — forehead to fist, eyes shut against the brutal hum of the light above.

Somewhere down the hall, the buzz of post-show chaos still echoed faintly: doors opening, voices shouting, the scrape of crates, the too-loud laugh of some local tech.

None of it reached him here.

This was where he existed.

The stairwell between versions of himself he never wanted to be.

Now Playing: “1/1” – Brian Eno

The hotel desk was too narrow for proper posture, a small, lacquered thing wedged into the corner of the room like an afterthought, its drawers empty, its lamp flickering slightly from the socket like even it wasn’t sure it wanted to be awake. Neji sat stiffly before it, one leg folded over the other, shirt collar still buttoned despite the hour. He hadn’t unpacked. He never did, not on the first night. There was a superstition to it, maybe. Or a discipline. Or just an avoidance he’d dressed up as method.

The glow of the screen made the room feel colder, light blue bleeding into the blank walls, the untouched bed behind him cast in stark, sterile shapes. Outside the window, the city murmured low and disjointed — truck wheels in the alley, the soft electric hum of signage flickering across the street, the half-laughter of someone walking by on their phone. Detached, like a dream retold secondhand.

He opened a new document. The cursor blinked, steady, patient, expectant. He let it blink five, six times before typing anything. Then, with clinical fingers:

“Subject: Condition of touring members, Day 1”

He hit return.

The bullet points followed.

• Naruto’s stamina irregular.

He remembered watching the boy fold at the knees outside the green room, posture crumpling like a puppet unstrung. He hadn’t intervened — not because he hadn’t cared, but because Hinata had already been there. She had crouched beside him with the kind of gentleness that didn’t trip alarm bells. Neji had watched from a distance, a ghost behind the backstage curtains, jaw locked as Naruto braced himself against a wall like the performance had stripped something essential. And maybe it had.

Another return. Another line:

• Ino unstable under media pressure.

He’d seen it on her face — the switch, the split. That sharp flash of eyes when the headline lit someone’s screen nearby. She’d snapped at Sakura. Flinched when Gaara, surprisingly, offered her a drink. Vanished into the bathroom, smoke trailing after. He’d seen Itachi follow. He hadn’t followed them. That wasn’t his place. But he clocked it. Catalogued it. She was unraveling in sharp, performative fragments — beautiful in the worst way. He knew that brand of chaos. And he knew what it cost to hold it together for public consumption.

Return again. He hesitated on this one. Then typed:

• Sasuke

The dash hung there for a moment. 

He thought of the shadow in his posture. Neji hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t wanted to. Sasuke never looked like he wanted to be found, even when he was clearly leaving breadcrumbs. There was something in his expression tonight — something far older than the years he wore, something sullen and hollow, like grief left too long in the cold.

Neji stared at the screen.

The cursor blinked again. Once. Twice.

When the screen was dark, he sat back. Exhaled and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm and felt how dry they were. How long it had been since he blinked like a human instead of a camera.

The room felt closer now — not smaller, just nearer to him. Like it knew.

He didn’t send the report.

Just closed the lid of the laptop with a quiet, decisive snap and let his fingers hover above it for a breath longer than necessary. He could write it tomorrow. Or not. Maybe there was nothing to write yet. Maybe knowing was enough.

His reflection waited in the dark window, pale and silent, a ghost of a man trying to keep things tidy while the edges bled.

He wouldn’t sleep. But he’d lie down.

And sometimes, that was all anyone could ask.

PitchRiot Magazine

“Vocals hit hard, but by encore, he looked two breaths from collapse.”

“Sasuke Uchiha returns to the stage colder, sharper and unreadable.”

Echoes & Static Magazine

“Turned his back on the crowd at least twice. On purpose? Artistic choice?”

Fan tweet (@soundstruck13):

“still can’t believe I saw THEM. I sobbed during ‘friction burn.’ Naruto is a god. Sasuke was possessed. Sakura’s arms???”

Reddit thread /r/altour2025:

“Was at the show tonight. Wild energy and tight performance. Weird vibes backstage tho? Anyone else see the stylist crying?”

IG Story (deleted):

— blurry photo of Ino, cigarette lit, mascara smudged —

“Barbie meltdown before the encore 😬 she’s BACK lol”

“Ino Yamanaka’s Comeback or Collapse?”

 “Once a fashion it-girl, now a liability? Rumors swirl as press photo goes viral.”

Tumblr post (13k notes):

“hinatashoots is literally a genius. that rooftop photo of Naruto?? haunting. intimate. she GETS it.”

Kakashi to Yamato (text):

“Next city’s stricter on curfews. And media access. We need to get ahead of this.”

— Yamato replied with just a 👍

Fan tweet (@ninelivesleft):

“feel like this tour is gonna break someone. just don’t know who yet.”

Chapter Text

Now Playing: “No Ufo’s (Instrumental)” – Model 500

The club was folded in on itself, dripping in strobing red light that bled down walls like molasses. The ceiling cracked with pulses of sound rather than plaster. Everything breathed, even the shadows. The bassline wasn’t a song, it was a structure, low and pulsing beneath the ribcage of the night like scaffolding built from heat. Somewhere above, neon flickered behind smoke machines and the gleam of wet lips, and below it just off-center from the worst of the crowd, he danced.

Not like he wanted to be seen. Not like he even remembered that anyone could.

Sasuke moved like a silhouette losing form, every muscle trailing behind its own intention. His hands didn’t know what his hips were doing. His spine was an afterthought. He was leaning into air that didn’t hold him. Somewhere near his feet, the floor forgot to exist.

It started in his teeth, the way the bass cracked through them like some distant firecracker. A hot shiver ran up the curve of his jaw, behind his ears, leaking into the space between skin and skull.

And then the synths came in.

Not just into the song, into him.

They tasted like silver, like static, like childhood dreams of drowning under ice and not minding the cold. Each time the pitch curved up — sharp, warbled — his breath caught before it landed. His shoulder jolted. His fingers twitched. The lights blinked, and when they came back, he wasn’t sure he was real anymore.

There was a smear of color beside him. A shoulder. A man? He didn’t know. It could’ve been an outline, it could’ve been his own hallucination. A mouth said something into his ear and he laughed not because it was funny, but because the sound fell in the right place inside his head.

Someone’s hand was on his back.

It wasn’t a body to him, it was a suggestion of pressure, the kind that confirmed he hadn’t disappeared.

The lights stuttered and flared again — red, then white, then green like fever dreams of traffic signals and hospital rooms and moonlight through vinyl blinds. The crowd was an animal. Everything was teeth and perfume and heat. He closed his eyes and kept moving, hips slow, almost obscene in how they curled forward into nothing, like he was tracing a rhythm from memory, not from sound.

He didn’t feel high.

He felt like he’d passed beyond it. Past the part where you know your name. Past shame. Past craving.

He felt like a ruined cathedral, lights bouncing off stained glass windows no one prayed beneath anymore.

He let his fingers skim over his own chest like he was checking for something under the fabric. A truth. A wound. He smiled, barely. Teeth gleaming under sweat and fog. His other hand rose behind his neck, raking through damp hair as if he could scratch the ghost of touch out from his scalp.

Around him, bodies blurred and reformed. He didn’t care. He leaned into the sound, forehead tilting back, and for one suspended second, he thought he saw the ceiling melt.

It shimmered the way dreams stutter at the edge of waking.

There was a synth squeal — thin, high — and he moved his mouth like he could kiss the note.

He felt beautiful, not in the way the mirror lied to him at 3am, but in the way fire looks beautiful right before it eats through a roof. He didn’t know who was watching. He didn’t know who he was anymore. He raised both arms and danced like the song had asked something of him, and this was his offering.

A boy leaned in close. Brown hair, maybe. Broad chest. Grinning. Sasuke let him stay there. He turned — just slightly — and their hips brushed. A whisper shared between bass hits. A drag of breath over jawbone. The boy’s hand lingered on his waist, thumbs teasing the edge of Sasuke’s shirt. Sasuke didn’t respond, he just let himself be held, weightless and crooked in the light.

This was how he disappeared, by dancing himself into something else.

Not a boy. Not a brother. Not a lover.

A nerve ending with no skin.

He could’ve been anyone right then.

He let the synths tell him where to go.

Now Playing: “Starboy” – The Weeknd feat. Daft Punk

He’s been staring too long without blinking, and the lights have carved halos into his vision — green, red, white, green again, like someone’s screaming stop go stop go into the sky with their fists and the sky’s too tired to answer. There’s sweat down his back and the collar of his shirt sticks to the back of his neck like another hand trying to pull him down. His mouth tastes like battery acid and something sweeter, something almost syrupy, like if sex had a flavor and it was left too long in the sun. His lips are chapped, his tongue’s numb, and the only thought echoing through the spongy folds of his brain is that this beat might be the only thing still keeping his heart in rhythm.

It’s too much, this place. Too hot, too loud, too bright and too dark at the same time. Bodies grinding like machines in heat. The reek of spilled liquor mixing with cologne and artificial smoke, everyone too close, everyone too alive. And somewhere in the haze he started laughing but doesn’t remember why, just that it had something to do with the way his own fingers had looked when he lifted them under the strobe and they blurred at the edges like his body couldn’t finish rendering itself.

He blinks again, hard this time, and that’s when he sees it.

At the center of the dance floor — if there is such a thing as a center in this war zone of limbs and breath — there’s movement that doesn’t match the others. It’s not syncopated. It’s not sexual. It’s not even human, not really. It’s reverent. Liquid. The kind of movement you see in dreams you don’t tell anyone about because they felt like prophecies.

Whoever it is, they’re bent half in shadow, the back of their shirt damp and clinging, shoulder blades lit like glass knives under the heat. They’re moving like they’re alone, like the music is pouring through them, not around them, as if the entire song had been written just to pull that motion out of their spine.

Naruto’s fingers clutch the side of the bar so hard the edge presses into his palm and he doesn’t notice. His breath hiccups, gets caught in the crook of his ribs.

He watches the dancer lean back, head tipped toward the ceiling like they’re waiting for something to fall out of it. Their arms are up, body swaying with that same slow violence as a candle in a room with no windows. Someone touches their waist and they don’t seem to care. Their lips part as if to taste the stuttered synths still crawling up from the speakers into the air.

Something in Naruto’s chest clenches.

There’s this holy feeling rising in him now. Like he’s looking at a fever dream he once had under a fever he didn’t survive. Like every hallucination he’s ever had about desire and loss and something close to salvation is standing there under the light, glowing, sweating, breathing like sin. The air around that body looks thinner, hotter, more electric. And for a second, Naruto thinks — this is it — this is the closest thing to meaning he’s going to get.

Then the dancer turns.

His name doesn’t even register at first, it’s a shape, not a sound, a punch of breath Naruto forgets how to take. The rest of the world blurs around the outline of his body. A pulse thrums at the base of Naruto’s skull, violent and sudden. He realizes, dimly, that he’s stopped breathing. That he’s staring.

Sasuke’s eyes are half-lidded, his mouth slack, glitter along the edge of his cheekbone catching light like teeth. There’s a guy beside him, older, maybe broader, hands low on Sasuke’s waist, leaning in like a promise or a claim. Sasuke doesn’t move away.

Naruto does.

Stumbles, almost.

His head spins — not from the drugs, not from the lights — but from the image searing into the soft tissue of his brain like a cigarette burn. He doesn’t remember moving, doesn’t remember the glass in his hand crashing down to the floor or the flash of startled eyes around him. He doesn’t remember the words he mutters, half-swallowed and ruined by his own throat. He only remembers the way his own skin suddenly felt too small, too hot, too unwanted, like he could peel it off and still never touch that version of Sasuke.

Naruto’s heart is trying to climb up his throat. He wants to throw something. Wants to grab him. Wants to kiss him. Wants to break his fucking jaw. He wants to scream. He wants to cry. He wants to be in that body, in that moment, inside whatever fire Sasuke is burning himself through — or at least close enough to feel the heat.

Instead, he stays still for one second longer, dizzy, vibrating, seething — and watches as Sasuke leans closer to the guy and lets him say something against his ear, lets their hips align, lets the music cradle them like a secret.

That’s the second Naruto loses it.

Now Playing: “Jealous” – Eyedress

She had only just arrived and already regretted coming.

There was too much static in the air, not the electrical kind but the kind that lived inside the back of her throat — a nervous crackle, thick and tasteless, the warning that something in her body was beginning to twist in on itself. Not yet panic, but close enough to taste it.

She was at the bar, or what could loosely be called a bar, since most of it had been drowned in stickers and old carvings, sweat-stained flyers, and corners that peeled up like paper that had been soaked and dried too many times. The drinks here didn’t come with names, just gestures — a nod, a jerk of the chin, a hand slid across the counter, and the bartender poured something too bright to be safe into a glass that smelled vaguely of soap and rust.

Sakura gripped the edge of the counter with both hands, her rings cold against the lacquered surface, and exhaled like she could bleed some of the tension out through her teeth. She was still too sober for this place. Her skin felt too present. Her clothes too structured. Her heartbeat too fast, too sharp, too aware. All around her, the world pulsed in threes: light, bass, breath. Light, bass, breath. Her body hadn’t found the rhythm yet. Her mind refused to let go.

The club had narrow halls and ceilings too low. Walls that shimmered not from paint but from layers of sweat and heat and old strobe residue. There were mirrors in strange places, cracked and stained, framed by neon tubing that flickered with no real consistency, like someone had tried to stitch beauty onto a wound and let the sutures rot. The dance floor was a pit, lowered half a step, surrounded by uneven platforms and velvet ropes that served no real purpose anymore except to catch at people’s ankles and remind them they were still being watched.

Everything here was damp — the walls, the air, the people — and the scent of it clung like perfume made of mold and ash and synthetic pheromones. Somewhere in the crowd someone screamed out of joy or pain or nothing at all, and the lights answered in staccato bursts.

Sakura wasn’t dressed for this kind of chaos. She had tried, of course she had, pulling on one of the outfits Ino had laid out earlier with the kind of care usually reserved for funerals or war. Something dark and slinky, metallic threading at the hems, her eyeliner smudged deliberately, her lips tinted a shade that looked like it had been bitten out of a bruised plum. Her hair was twisted up in pins she was already regretting. Her boots were too tight. Her shoulders were bare. Every time she moved, she could feel the eyes of the room crawl over her and not settle.

She ordered a drink. Something clear. Bitter. It burned going down, not enough to soothe her nerves but just enough to prove she was still in her own body. The bartender barely looked at her. She liked that.

She didn’t know where the others were yet. Maybe that was the worst part, the not knowing. She had seen Naruto disappear into the thicket of bodies at the edge of the floor, had caught a glimpse of Sasuke earlier near the corner, talking to someone she didn’t recognize with that faraway look he wore like armor when he didn’t want to be told who he was. Ino had vanished entirely, probably toward the booths in the back where the shadows were thicker and the music slower. And Gaara — well, she never expected Gaara to announce himself. Sai might have been with him, or might have gone home already. It didn’t matter. They were all spiraling out into their orbits, and she was here, static in the center of the storm.

She tapped her nails once, twice, three times against the glass.

The music shifted — barely — but she felt it. A drop in tempo, a slither of melody that felt like something crawling up the back of her neck. Synth-heavy and hollow. Beautiful in the way broken neon lights are beautiful, all fracture and flicker and something just shy of dangerous.

She didn’t want to feel left behind.

So she drank again, deeper this time, and forced herself off the barstool.

The ground felt different beneath her feet. Not unstable, exactly, but loose, felt like walking on something that had been suspended just above the real floor. A floating layer of sound and sweat and light. Her boots clacked against the old wood like she was announcing herself to no one in particular.

She moved slowly toward the dance floor but didn’t step in. She stood just at the lip of it, watching the bodies writhe, the arms stretch, the heads thrown back in ecstasy or pain or the desperate mimicry of both.

She was still sober. But not for long.

Now playing: “Heroin” – The Velvet Underground

She should’ve known from the beginning that tonight would split her open in all the wrong places.

She hadn’t taken her pills. Or maybe she had, maybe just one, maybe too early, maybe it was yesterday, maybe she only dreamed the swallowing. Her bag had been dumped upside down in the van hours ago, and when she’d finally clawed through the mess of makeup kits and backstage passes and half-smoked lipsticks and unlabelled vials she kept in velvet pouches like jewelry, the orange bottle hadn’t been there. Not even the sound of it. No calibration point to pull her back from the edge. Just noise.

Now the edge was here, pressing behind her ribs. Digging sharp against her teeth.

The booth she found was near the back, tucked beside the bathroom stalls that flickered with a red light that made everything inside them look sticky and haunted. There were coats piled on the vinyl, drinks melting into rings, wrappers and plastic bags caught under heels, someone’s jacket with fake fur that shimmered like oil. The table smelled like sugar and sweat and the faint metallic tang of something more illegal. It was safe, in the loosest sense of the word, safe in that this was where the wrecked ones gathered. Safe in the way a burning car might still be called shelter if the night was cold enough.

Ino dropped into the corner like she belonged to it, and maybe she did.

Her mouth was dry in the wrong way. The I-forgot-my-meds way. The things-are-about-to-unravel way. She tilted her head back against the sticky booth wall and exhaled through her teeth as if that could trick her lungs into calming down. It didn’t work. Nothing was working tonight. Not her body. Not her brain. Not the buzz that wasn’t strong enough yet to mute the part of her that still wanted.

She tapped a rhythm against the pleather bench — thumb, ring, pinky, tap tap tap — and tried to remember the exact shape of her breath when she was properly dosed. How it used to sit inside her chest without rattling. How the floor never tilted. How people’s voices didn’t echo or bend.

Her phone was dead. Her lipstick was half gone. Her mascara had smudged at the outer corners of her eyes where she’d rubbed too hard, trying to make herself cry and failing.

A man slid in across from her. Sharp smile, too clean, she knew better than ask his name.

Ino leaned forward while pulling her hair over one shoulder like a curtain and let her eyes do the asking. It wasn’t elegant, but it worked.

He slid something under the table, she palmed it without looking. She just wanted something, an answer she didn’t have to spell out. Her hand trembled, but she steadied it with the other. Swallowed dry and waited for the spark.

It wasn’t what she was looking for.

But it would do.

The moment it kicked in — and she never knew exactly how long that was, only that time folded in on itself, like too much silk in too small a drawer — she felt herself go. Not all at once. This was more like loosening the thread on a wound that had been stitched too tight for too long. A slow unravel, a soft goodbye. The bad kind. The kind she used to fear. The kind that, by now, tasted like home.

The lights inside the booth blurred at the edges. Someone brushed against her leg and she didn’t flinch. Her pupils were too wide. Her thoughts too thin. She laughed — once, short and breathless — at something no one said, and pushed herself to stand.

She was going to find Itachi.

He always knew when she needed to be stopped.

And sometimes, he didn’t.

Tonight, she wasn’t sure which one she wanted.

The bathroom hallway throbbed like a hallway in a dream — too long, too narrow, doors always just out of reach, music behind her like a voice she used to trust. She felt untouchable. She felt too touchable. She felt like someone had turned the world inside out and she was finally seeing the part they weren’t supposed to look at.

She saw him immediately. Of course she did. Like gravity.

He was near the back, off to the side, drink in hand, watching. Always watching. His posture too controlled for this place. His collarbone sharp under the low light. Something in her cracked.

She went to him.

Now playing: “Pink Maggit” – Deftones

He looked at his hands like they weren’t his.

The bones beneath the skin felt too sharp, knuckles blooming red, skin stretched too tight over the heat that pulsed in his wrists. There was a ringing in his ears that didn’t come from the music and for a moment he could barely remember what had come before this instant, what had happened first, what word or motion or breath had been the last straw in a room where everything was already snapping.

The guy was on the floor. Still breathing. Not bleeding, but shaken, the kind of shaken that made people scatter, made the edges of the crowd peel back like a wound, just far enough to let the tension buzz louder between the neon and the sweat-slicked air. Naruto hadn’t even seen his face properly. He’d just seen Sasuke—head tilted, mouth half-parted, dancing like his body wasn’t attached to anything anymore, like he was floating just far enough out of reach to make Naruto want to tear the whole room down just to anchor him back.

He didn’t remember moving. Didn’t remember crossing the floor. Didn’t remember the push.

Now he was here. Hands open. Heart pounding so loud it felt like it lived in his throat. And Sasuke was standing in front of him with his jaw tight and his eyes shining with that glassy, venomous heat that only ever made sense between them.

“Are you fucking serious,” Sasuke said, flat. Not a question.

Naruto couldn’t answer. Or maybe he didn’t want to. Maybe it was better to let it hang. The silence between them always said more anyway. It scratched louder than words.

The music behind them didn’t stop — some guttural loop of synths and bass snarling underneath the chaos — but it felt far away now, like it was bleeding through water or thick glass, something distorted, something not meant to be heard this way.

Sasuke stepped closer, his shoulder barely brushing Naruto’s. Not enough to be contact. Just enough to remind him what proximity could mean.

“You’re high as shit,” Sasuke murmured. “You don’t even know what you’re doing.”

Naruto flinched. “I know exactly what I saw.”

“What you saw?” Sasuke laughed once, sharp and bright and bitter, like he’d swallowed glass. “You mean the part where I was minding my own fucking business and you came in like a dog off-leash?”

Naruto’s jaw clenched. He didn’t know if it was guilt or the rush or the weight of the vodka still burning in his stomach, but something inside him twisted hard and fast, and he wanted to scream or break or fuck or cry — he didn’t know which one, maybe all of them, maybe none. Maybe it didn’t matter.

“You were grinding all over him like you wanted me to fucking see it,” he spat. “You think I didn’t get it? You think I don’t know what you’re doing?”

Sasuke blinked, slow, dangerous. “And what exactly am I doing, Naruto?”

“Trying to forget me.”

It was quiet then. Not the room — that kept throbbing, pulsing, strobing — but between them, for just a second, like a vacuum had swallowed the tension mid-breath.

Sasuke’s lip curled. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

Naruto stepped forward. Too close now. His breath smelled like smoke and the sweet rot of whatever he’d swallowed behind the green room curtain. “Why not? You fuckin’ liked it when I kissed you.”

“You’re still thinking about it.”

Sasuke didn’t deny it.

They were inches apart now, breathing each other’s ruin, high off different poisons but matching in burn. The air between them felt like static held in the mouth — crackling, sour, hot.

Naruto’s hands curled again. Just the want of something to hold that didn’t slip.

Sasuke didn’t flinch. He tilted his head, like it was all so obvious it bored him now — the tantrum, the pattern, the heat. Like he’d already read this script a thousand times and still liked hearing it fall apart in someone else’s voice.

“Maybe I wanted to fuck him.”

It wasn’t said with venom orr malice. It was casual, cruel by design.

Like offering poison in a champagne glass just to see if you’d drink it.

Naruto went still.

The words didn’t slap, they sank. They filled his mouth with something metallic and sour and unbearably familiar, like betrayal twisted up in its favorite skin: honesty.

“You’re such a fucking liar,” he said, voice too soft.

Sasuke only smiled, but it didn’t reach anything human. “No, I’m really not.”

And that was it.

Naruto grabbed him by the front of his shirt.

It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. But this time felt worse, because they were high, and the walls were sweating, and the music was splitting down the middle like it was bleeding neon, and everything that should’ve been real felt fake and everything that was fake felt like it had teeth.

“You do this shit because you want me to lose it,” Naruto said, too close now, forehead almost pressed to Sasuke’s, breath rank with heat and vodka and pills he couldn’t name. “You fucking love this, don’t you? You love pushing and pulling until something breaks.”

Sasuke didn’t back away. He probably didn’t even blink.

“You’re already broken.”

The laugh that ripped out of Naruto wasn’t a laugh. it was a wound. A fucking open wound that sounded like a joke someone tried to make while bleeding out.

And then they were shoving, not the way you fight. The way you fuck up the air between you because touching hurts less than not. Because every atom was screaming now and they didn’t know where to put it.

Naruto’s hand hit the wall behind Sasuke, palm flat, breath hitching as the space between them shrank into nothing. His other hand was still twisted in Sasuke’s shirt, but he wasn’t pulling anymore — he was holding. Holding like someone trying to catch a ghost, or maybe like someone realizing the ghost never left.

“You wanna fuck someone else?” he hissed. “Go ahead. You want me to beg you not to?”

Sasuke didn’t speak.

But his hand came up and gripped Naruto’s wrist just to feel his pulse under his fingers.

They stood there like that, locked in something ancient and toxic and beautiful in the ugliest way, pupils blown, hearts somewhere in their throats, every ounce of anger laced with the kind of need that never got named in the daylight. And outside their moment, the party kept spinning — bodies moving, lights flickering, the beat still pounding like a distant war — but inside the circle they’d carved, there was nothing else but heat.

Now playing: “Heaven or Las Vegas” – Cocteau Twins  

She was sweating through her shirt and didn’t care anymore by now.

Her mouth tasted like sugar and gin and she couldn’t remember what she ordered last, only that it had been cold and sweet and fast and that it didn’t burn on the way down. Her limbs had that soft delay to them now, as if movement passed through a filter before reaching her, as if sound got caught in her ribs before it made its way to her ears, as if the music was moving her and not the other way around. Her skin was flushed, high-colored with effort and alcohol and the electricity that came with no longer having to manage everything.

And she was smiling.

It wasn’t even meant for anyone.

It was the kind of smile you wore when something inside you clicked loose and you didn’t reach for the wrench this time. The kind of smile that had been waiting.

The girl had asked to dance maybe five minutes ago. Or ten. Or thirty. Time was fucked in places like this. But Sakura had said yes. She’d said it without overthinking, without scanning the room first, without wondering who was watching or calculating what she had left to do for the band tomorrow or reminding herself that her body was not for pleasure but for function, for support, for holding the rest of the group together when no one else did.

The girl was tall. Glitter at her collarbones, smudged liner at her eyes, lipstick half-faded from whatever her last drink had been. Her hands were warm. Her nails were chipped. Her grin was loose around the edges like she didn’t care who you were if you felt good against her.

Sakura hadn’t let herself want this in years.

Not since her second year of med school when she’d slept with a girl in the back of a campus show and pretended afterward that it had been a mistake. Not since she told herself that she didn’t have time to be this kind of person—the one who stayed out late, who let her hips move for the sake of it, who took pleasure like it was allowed.

But tonight had started differently.

She was tired. But not in the usual way.

This wasn’t the exhaustion of carrying everyone’s schedules on her back, of managing Shikamaru’s silence and Naruto’s chaos and Ino’s spirals and Sasuke’s fucking moods. This wasn’t the kind of tired that made her brittle.

It was the good kind.

The kind that made her soft.

The kind that opened doors.

They were pressed close now, the girl’s thigh between hers, breath sticky with beer and synths, and the lights above them flashing like they’d been dipped in something edible. Sakura let her hands trail up the girl’s back and felt her laugh against her mouth, and it hit her all at once.

She was allowed this.

She was allowed to want.

She was allowed to dance with a stranger in a foreign city under stage lights meant for someone else, knowing that tomorrow the weight would be waiting again, but tonight — just tonight — she didn’t owe anyone her sense of duty.

She could be sweat and blush and rhythm.

She could be just her.

The girl leaned in, teeth near her ear, and said something low and filthy in a language Sakura didn’t quite catch, and Sakura laughed — really laughed — head tipping back, pink hair stuck to her neck, cheeks burning from the heat and the music and maybe the adrenaline of the show still twitching in her bloodstream like the last pulse of something sacred.

She didn’t care what time it was.

She didn’t care who was watching.

She was allowed this.

She was allowed.

Now playing: “Glory Box” – Portishead

She wasn’t walking so much as drifting, her limbs syruped, her brain threaded with fuzz, like sound had sunk beneath her skin and now pulsed there, deeper than her blood. Everything was too bright and too far away. Except him.

He hadn’t noticed her at first. Or maybe he had, but Itachi always had this way of looking through the chaos like he wasn’t part of it, like he was watching a world he didn’t believe in. He stood near the edge of the booth, one arm tucked behind his back like he was listening, like he was thinking too hard, like he hadn’t realized yet that her body had already made the decision for both of them.

Her hands were already on his chest before she realized it. The fabric beneath her palms was soft and dry and too expensive for this room. His cologne—god, he wore it like silence, like things that didn’t belong in a place with this much sweat in the air—but she wanted it on her, all over her, in her hair and behind her knees and under her tongue.

She leaned in, mouth too close, too sudden, too much, and before her name could even surface on his tongue, she kissed him.

She shoved her tongue into his mouth like she’d forgotten every rule about being wanted, like hunger could be a language if you mouthed it loud enough.

For a second—still caught by surprise—he kissed her back.

It wasn’t like last time. That time he’d touched her like she could break. Held her hips like apology. Pressed his mouth against her ribs and murmured something she pretended not to hear.

This kiss wasn’t tender.

It was startled, reactive. A spark.

But even in his surprise, his hands found her waist like muscle memory, like she was something fragile he didn’t know how to handle without gloves. And that made her laugh—low and breathless against his mouth—because fuck, she was tired of being touched like a prayer when all she wanted was to be taken like a sin.

She kissed harder. Pulled at his jacket. Dragged her body up against him like friction could substitute for love, for safety, for whatever it was she kept forgetting how to ask for. Her breath hitched with something close to a sob, but she swallowed it, replaced it with heat. With pressure. With want.

But he was already pulling back.

She felt it before she saw it.

The way his hand hovered at her wrist. The way his mouth stilled beneath hers. The pause and hesitation.

“Ino, please.”

He said it like a breath, like a warning.

And that only made her want to dig deeper.

“You said you cared,” she mumbled, trying to find his mouth again, her fingers fisting the edge of his coat, her legs already shaking and she didn’t know if it was from the pills or the adrenaline or the way she kept losing time.

“I do,” he said quietly.

But he was holding her now, not touching. Holding like you hold fire—loose and alert and unsure of the damage it might do.

“Then fuck me,” she snapped, and the tremor in her voice made it more of a plea than a threat.

“Ino,” again, and this time his hand came to her jaw, too gentle, infuriatingly gentle, the pad of his thumb against her cheekbone like he thought she’d cry.

She might.

She might’ve already done it and missed it.

“I forgot my pills,” she blurted, suddenly. “I forgot them, I fucking—” she laughed again, high-pitched, a little manic, but her body was sagging against him now, her spine curving like she didn’t have the energy to hold herself up anymore. “I feel so fucking weird.”

“I know,” he said, and his voice wasn’t distant or cold or angry. It was grounded. Like a rope she could grab if she still remembered how to climb.

Unfortunately she didn’t.

Instead, she buried her face in his neck, breathing him in and trying not to shake.

The bassline behind them rolled on like a heartbeat. The lights stuttered and moaned. Someone somewhere was screaming with laughter or maybe with want, but it didn’t matter. Because here, in this tiny silent pocket of noise, she was held.

She didn’t deserve it.

But god, she needed it.

Now playing: “Fade Into You” – Mazzy Star

Reality had softened at the edges like wax under a flame, melted slow enough she hadn’t noticed at first, until suddenly the outlines of things blurred gently, pooling around her like colors spilled into warm water. She didn’t fight it. Couldn’t, really—her muscles had stopped cooperating sometime after her second kiss, sometime before the air became syrup-thick, dripping down the walls, soaking into the fabric of Itachi’s jacket, into the heat of his chest beneath her cheek.

She was folded into him now, her limbs no longer entirely hers, but extensions of the chemicals and the shadows and the ache that nestled itself inside her bones; she felt liquid, weightless yet impossibly heavy, like the only thing tethering her to the ground was the pressure of his heartbeat, a steady rhythm that pulsed through his clothes and into her skin. His heart—she’d almost forgotten he had one, guarded as it was behind iron ribs and silence she could never quite breach. But here it was, drumming calm and steady beneath her ear, speaking in a language only bodies knew.

For a minute, or maybe longer (she could no longer measure things in minutes, only sensations, only breaths, only shifts in pressure and temperature) she let herself stay like that. His hand rested lightly at the base of her spine, not holding exactly, just existing in the precise space between permission and restraint. The warmth of his fingers seeped through her dress, through her skin, and for once she didn’t feel like running, just absorbing, breathing, dissolving.

But then she shifted slightly, restless and searching, her body remembering patterns her mind had long since forgotten how to name. Her knees bumped into his, and suddenly she was moving, climbing onto him with a softness that surprised even herself—knees sinking into the booth cushions, legs awkwardly folded over his thighs, hips settling against his lap, seeking contact, warmth, something closer to shelter than she’d known in years.

He stiffened for half a breath. Her hands, trembling slightly, found the sides of his face, fingertips tracing the line of his jaw, pressing against the tension held there like she could smooth it away if she just held on long enough.

“Don’t pull away,” she whispered, and her voice cracked like something thin and porcelain dropped too softly to shatter but enough to fracture, enough to reveal the fragility beneath the gloss. “Please.”

He breathed out slowly, deeply, and just as slowly his hands rose to her hips, carefully, deliberately, steadying her. She exhaled sharply at the relief of that contact, eyes fluttering shut, the room spinning gently behind her eyelids in hues of amber and violet and smoke, all the colors she imagined his heart must be when no one was watching.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured without opening her eyes, the words slipping out unbidden, roughened by guilt and intoxication. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

He didn’t answer immediately—maybe he didn’t need to, because the weight of his palms on her body spoke a forgiveness that words would cheapen, a silent assurance that didn’t absolve her exactly, but acknowledged her brokenness without punishing it. She pressed closer, dropping her forehead into the hollow between his neck and shoulder, breathing him in like he was oxygen after too long underwater. He smelled clean and dark, like something rare she was afraid of losing, like cedarwood and safety and distance always held carefully in place.

“You’re the only one,” she said, barely audible now, her voice fragile as smoke on glass, “the only one who doesn’t use me.”

The admission bled into silence, her words hanging thickly in the space between them, suspended by the tangled threads of the room’s muffled chaos. It was a confession, not something she’d planned to say, but something her body demanded be spoken, desperate to let it out before it could burn her any deeper.

Itachi’s hands tightened to let her know he heard, that he understood, that he would carry this truth without hurting her with it. And then he let his cheek rest softly atop her hair, closing the last whisper of distance between them.

She felt tears come then, sharp behind her eyelids, though she didn’t let them fall, holding them fiercely back as if they’d betray her if they spilled. Instead, she breathed him in again, deeper this time, filling her lungs with the steadiness of him, the impossible comfort of someone who refused to ruin her even when she begged him to.

For just this one moment, she felt held not by obligation or control or expectation, but by someone who simply chose not to let her go.

The room continued to sway, thick and dark and dizzy, pressing gently on all sides, but in this small pocket of space, nested in his lap and hidden beneath his heartbeat, Ino felt something dangerously close to safe.

She knew it wouldn’t last.

But for now, she let herself pretend.

Now playing: “Gulliver 2” – Tavito Nanao

The night cracked open like a ribcage.

One second there were lights—red, violet, strobe white like some kind of stuttering god watching from above—and then there were hands on his shoulders, Sasuke’s voice curling like smoke beside him, and the heat of too many bodies pushing against his back, and something snapping, though maybe that was just his own laugh echoing off the marble-tiled floor.

He didn’t remember the hit. Just the hands afterward. Pulling. Shouting. The drag of his boots against the slick pavement outside the side entrance of the club. The door slamming shut behind them, too final. The cold biting his sweat-damp skin. The way Sasuke’s arm jerked free from the bouncer’s grip as if it’d burned him, followed by a string of curses like venom with a velvet drawl.

They stumbled out into the half-lit alley behind the club, the kind of place that always smelled like piss and forgotten cigarettes, where broken things went to cool down, where fights went to rot.

Naruto was laughing again. It didn’t sound right. His hands shook as he pressed them to the concrete wall, chest heaving, not from exhaustion, but because his body didn’t know how else to stay upright, like maybe if he kept breathing hard enough, it would keep him from caving in entirely.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Sasuke said behind him, voice low, sharp, cutting the way only he knew how to. “You realize you just assaulted someone in the middle of a goddamn club? They’re gonna plaster your name on every fucking headline by morning.”

Naruto didn’t turn. The cold air was scraping the back of his throat, and his hands were already curling into fists again, not because he wanted to hit something this time but because he didn’t trust what else they might do.

“You danced with him,” he muttered, words slurred just enough to feel like betrayal in his own mouth. “You fucking—Sasuke, you let him touch you.”

“Oh my fucking god,” Sasuke snapped, the venom in his tone sharp enough to split glass, and now he was pacing, always pacing, like something caged, like something cruel. “Grow the fuck up. What, you gonna start swinging every time someone so much as breathes in my direction? You think this is about you?”

“I don’t know,” Naruto said too loudly, spinning around, breath fogging in the night, teeth bared in a grin that had too much grief behind it to be anything but manic. “You tell me, Sasuke. Is this about me? Or are you just trying to fuck your way into forgetting I ever mattered?”

The words hit. He saw it. Just for a second—there, in the flicker of the club’s red neon bleeding out across Sasuke’s cheekbones like warpaint, in the way his mouth pressed into a flat line too fast, too careful.

And just like that it was gone.

“I should’ve let him fuck me,” Sasuke said, voice flat, cruel in its lack of cruelty, like a blade that didn’t need sharpening to cut. “Would’ve been easier than dealing with this.”

Naruto saw red. Not metaphorically. Literally. His vision bloomed scarlet around the edges like burst capillaries or heatstroke. He crossed the space between them without thinking, just moving, body tilting forward like gravity had grown bored of keeping him grounded.

Sasuke’s back hit the wall, hard. Naruto’s hand was on his chest, fingers curled into the fabric of that expensive shirt he always wore to remind people he wasn’t like them.

He was still talking. Something bitter, something poisonous.

“—you always think this means something it doesn’t—”

Naruto kissed him.

It wasn’t anything people wrote songs about unless those songs ended in overdose or a fire no one put out.

It was teeth and heat and hunger, the kind of kiss that wasn’t meant to be survived, the kind that came from the same part of the brain that made you drive too fast or jump from too high or reach for something burning just to feel it destroy you.

Sasuke’s fingers curled into Naruto’s jacket like he wanted to rip it apart, or maybe like he wanted to anchor himself. His mouth parted, breath hitching, and for a second there was no fight, no noise, no nothing, just pressure and friction and that awful, perfect ache that always lived between them.

Naruto’s breath broke against Sasuke’s mouth, hands clenching like if he let go he’d disintegrate entirely.

Their mouths moved against each other in a rhythm neither had learned, just remembered, like muscle memory from a past life where they must’ve been crueler gods than this, gods who hurt what they loved because they couldn’t bear the weight of it.

Naruto’s fingers clawed at Sasuke’s jacket, dragged the zipper down too fast, too loud in the stillness between their ragged breathing. Sasuke didn’t stop him. He stood there with his mouth open and his eyes half-lidded, chest heaving as if he couldn’t get the air to stay inside his lungs, as if Naruto’s touch was vacuuming the oxygen straight out of him.

“You always—” Naruto started, and then stopped, because Sasuke had grabbed his face with one shaking hand, the other pulling at the hem of Naruto’s shirt like it had personally offended him, like he was trying to rip it off just to prove a point. Their teeth clashed again, lips already raw, already bruised, and it didn’t matter, it didn’t fucking matter, because they weren’t trying to be careful, they were trying to feel, they were trying to get something out of each other that words couldn’t reach.

“Say it,” Naruto gasped against Sasuke’s mouth, his voice so hoarse it was almost broken, and his hands were under Sasuke’s shirt now, palms flat against feverish skin, fingers shaking with restraint he didn’t understand. “Say you want me. Say you fucking see me.”

But Sasuke shoved him instead of answering.

Naruto stumbled back into the wall, and Sasuke followed, mouth on his throat now, biting, sucking, licking, like he wanted to leave a map of his rage behind on skin. His hands pushed up Naruto’s shirt, dragged it over his head and flung it aside.

“You think this means something?” Sasuke said, voice low and shaking, like he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh or scream. “You think this fixes anything?”

“No,” Naruto answered, and then grabbed him by the back of the neck and kissed him again, this time slower, deeper, like drowning on purpose. “But it’s all I fucking want.”

Sasuke made a noise, low in his throat. He pressed himself flush against Naruto, and Naruto could feel it—the desperation, the hard edge of need that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with losing control. Their hips ground together through layers of half-peeled clothing, friction sharp and hot, and the moan that slipped out of Naruto’s mouth was all salt and tremble.

They dragged each other down to the pavement like they were trying to anchor themselves to something, knees scraping, elbows bruising, fingers fumbling at belts and zippers and skin. Sasuke’s hands shook, not with fear, but with fury, with grief, with the ache of being touched where he didn’t want to want it but did. He yanked Naruto’s jeans down hard enough to leave a mark, shoved his own low enough to make it possible.

They moved like animals. Like addicts. Like people who’d been trying not to want this for so long that the wanting had curdled into something toxic, something that couldn’t be extracted without violence.

Naruto buried his face in Sasuke’s shoulder, teeth grazing skin, breath loud and ragged in his ear. Sasuke’s fingers dug into his spine, pulled him closer, closer, like he needed every inch, like anything less than full contact would shatter him.

There were no words left. Only breath and movement and the scrape of skin on skin, the rough rhythm of bodies trying to break and rebuild each other in the same motion.

Naruto didn’t stop moving and every time their hips ground together it was another punch of heat that knocked the breath out of them both, sweat making their skin slip and stick, the damp fabric of their shirts clinging to their backs while the night air cooled the wet line of spit and salt down Sasuke’s throat.

“You only want me when it’s too late,” Naruto muttered, and his voice cracked somewhere near the end, like he hadn’t meant to say it, hadn’t realized it was true until it fell out of him, warm and raw and trembling in the tiny space between their mouths. “You don’t look at me unless I’m bleeding for you. You don’t touch me unless I’m already breaking.”

Sasuke’s head tipped back against the alley wall, the rough edge of brick biting into his scalp, his breath hitching as Naruto’s hand moved harder, more insistent, more reckless, and still he said nothing for a second too long, like he was holding something in his mouth that would ruin them both if he let it out.

Then finally, quiet and hoarse and low like it had to fight its way through a throat full of ash, Sasuke breathed, “I hate how much you know.”

Naruto grinned at that, something ugly and bright behind his teeth, and leaned in to bite the words off his tongue, kissing him so hard it felt like punishment or penance or both, and when he pulled back, he whispered, “And I hate how much you don’t say.”

He dragged his lips across Sasuke’s jaw again, slower now, teeth catching on the curve of it, like he wanted to brand him just for surviving this long without admitting it. Then, lower, against the line of his throat: “You keep pretending I’m just some fucking mistake, but you never leave. You never actually leave.”

Sasuke’s hands, until now clutching fists of Naruto’s waist like he couldn’t decide whether to shove him away or drag him closer, finally moved — slid rough and shaking up under his stomach, palms flat against Naruto’s ribs, so warm they burned, and Naruto almost sobbed from the contact, from the pressure, from the way it felt like the truth lived in Sasuke’s touch more than his voice ever allowed.

“You don’t know what I’d do for you,” Sasuke murmured, and this time it was broken, like he’d cracked a rib open and let it fall out without meaning to.

Naruto’s head dropped to his shoulder for a second, mouth open, breathing too fast, too sharp, and then he looked up again, glassy-eyed and flushed, and said, “I’d give you everything if you asked.”

Sasuke’s eyes snapped to his, and that was what made Naruto pause — not the cold, not the hate, not the games — but the look in his face when he heard that. Like it landed somewhere deep and unprotected.

And maybe that was why Naruto said the next thing too, maybe it was because he was too high to lie anymore or maybe it was just time, but he moved his hand between them again, pressed against his crotch, stroked him once, slow and deliberate, and whispered, “I’d let you kill me if it meant you finally held me after.”

Sasuke choked on a sound — could’ve been a breath, could’ve been a laugh, could’ve been a sob — and then he grabbed him by the collar and kissed him again, this time all teeth and spit and bruising want, and Naruto moaned into it, filthy and wrecked and wide open. His hand didn’t stop, not even when Sasuke bit into his bottom lip hard enough to taste blood.

“I don’t want to love you,” Sasuke rasped, his voice nearly gone now, lost somewhere between the drugs and the night and the feeling of Naruto dragging him out of himself. “I don’t want to need this.”

“But you do,” Naruto said, panting, forehead pressed to his. “So fucking say it. Say it. Say you want me.”

Sasuke didn’t.

But he pushed into his hand like he was starving. He clung to his shoulders like he was falling. He leaned into his mouth like it was the only place he knew how to breathe.

And Naruto understood.

They said everything in the way they moved against each other, in the grip and the friction and the mess, in the whispered obscenities and the open-mouthed gasps, in the press of thigh to thigh and heat to heat and the way they both trembled when it crested. Sasuke came first, breath caught in Naruto’s collarbone, hands clutching too tight, and Naruto followed after, head thrown back, fingers digging into Sasuke’s hips like he was anchoring himself to the only thing that made sense.

Because this was how they said it.

Because they didn’t know how to say it any other way.

Chapter Text

The air in Milan is dry and gold-edged, but the room is dimly lit, the screens are too bright and the silence between bandmates loud enough to drown the bassline outside.

On every phone:

“SASUKE UCHIHA STORMS OUTSIDE CLUB AFTER ON-STAGE LOVER’S BRAWL?”

(Vice Noise | 4.2k shares)

“Uchiha and Uzumaki: Are They Okay? Are They Ever?”

(Fanzine caption over blurry photo of the kiss, Naruto’s hand tangled in Sasuke’s shirt, one shoe missing)

“FLESH, SYNTH, FURY: NARUTO UZUMAKI PUNCHES CLUBGOER, MAKES OUT WITH BANDMATE AFTERWARDS.”

(Daily Noise | tagged: #meltdown #performanceart #gaychaos)

“SHOULD THIS BAND STILL BE ON TOUR?”

(Op-ed from a concerned parent blog. Tagged: #rolemodels #drugs #decline)

“WHO IS THE MYSTERY MAN SASUKE WAS DANCING WITH?”

(Zoomed-in Instagram story from a fan account)

“INO YAMANAKA SPOTTED DRAPED OVER FORMER BAND LEADER ITACHI — ARE THEY TOGETHER?”

(Anon tweet. 53k likes. Top reply: “They're not a thing. She’s just a whore.”)

“GAARA SAYS NOTHING. INTERNET STILL THINKS HE’S THE ONLY SANE ONE.”

(Quote tweet. Liked by Sai.)

Now Playing: “Loose Ends” – Imogen Heap

The morning felt like someone had scraped the residue of last night off the club floor and stirred it into the hotel coffee. Milan’s sun was high already, unbothered and cruel through the half-shuttered windows of the hotel breakfast room. It caught the edge of a spoon, the gloss of spilled marmalade, the shiver in Sakura’s hand as she raised her cup again and again and still didn’t drink.

No one said much at first. The only sound was cutlery against porcelain, the occasional grind of a phone unlocking, a brittle flutter of another headline sliding up someone’s screen like a wound being peeled open.

Naruto’s hoodie was on backwards. His eyes were bloodshot, one knuckle bandaged, the other purpled. He hadn’t showered, let alone spoken. He was nursing a third espresso like it might explain something. His phone screen was cracked — it had been stepped on, maybe thrown, maybe dropped — and it kept catching on the light, throwing warped reflections of him back at himself.

Across from him, Gaara stared flat into his plate, untouched toast and eggs congealing under the muted light. His rings clicked against his glass once, a sound so deliberate it made Sakura look up.

“Someone wanna tell me what the fuck happened last night?”

It wasn’t barked, more like restrained in the way something only is when it’s close to snapping. She didn’t look at anyone when she said it — not directly — but her gaze was sunburn. She was hungover and livid, wearing the band’s merch hoodie with nothing underneath, and her voice had that rasp it always did when she hadn’t slept enough.

Gaara didn’t answer. He wasn't the one that needed to address the previous night circumstances.

“Sasuke’s not here,” Sai said flatly from the window seat, sketchbook open but blank, pencil held over the page like he was waiting for someone to bleed onto it.

“No shit,” Sakura finally snapped. She bit into the edge of a biscotto like it had offended her. “And no one else is going to address it? We made fucking headlines, again. And not for the music.”

Naruto shifted in his chair, but didn’t say anything. Shikamaru finally stirred near the back, where he was half-slouched against the wall with a crumpled rehearsal setlist in his lap. He looked like he hadn’t slept either, but with him it was hard to tell — he was always unraveling slowly, from the inside out.

“You’re mad we made headlines?” he murmured, voice flat. “I thought that was the point.”

“The point was to tour,” Sakura said, sharp now. “To play, to show up. We were supposed to get it together.”

Naruto looked at her. “We did show up.”

She laughed, brittle and humorless. “Did we? Really? Because I’m pretty sure someone forgot the backup tracks in London. And I’m pretty sure we had to borrow a fucking amp last minute. And now we’re trending because two of our frontmen are punching each other in a club and fucking in the street.”

That stung, he flinched but didn’t look away.

“And where’s Sasuke now?” she asked, softer. “Hiding?”

Naruto’s voice was a scrape. “I don't think he's hiding.”

“Oh? Then where is he?” She leaned forward, eyes lit with a different kind of adrenaline now. “What did you do last night?”

He looked at his hands. One still shook faintly. The bandage itched. “Nothing I didn’t want to.”

“You almost got us kicked off the lineup.”

“He almost kissed someone else.”

Sakura blinked. “Are you fucking serious—?”

“I shoved one guy,” Naruto cut in. “One. And he deserved it.”

“Jesus,” she whispered, sitting back like the air was too hot. “You’re not even sorry.”

Naruto let the silence answer for him.

Gaara finally lifted his fork. “They’re not going to fire us,” he said quietly. “Not yet at least. We’re a mess, but we’re loud, they like loud.”

Sakura turned to him, disbelief edging into her fatigue. “That’s your standard now? Loud?”

“Loud sells.”

She looked like she wanted to throw her cup. Her eyes felt heavy and her throat did, too.

From the corner, Shikamaru exhaled long and slow, a sound like smoke curling in the dark. His setlist was creased in his hand. His knee bounced. He didn’t speak again, just dropped his phone onto the table where the rest could see it — the headline still glowing across the screen.

“Are We Watching a Band Burn in Real Time?”

Hinata entered quietly a moment later, camera bag over her shoulder, soft footsteps absorbed by the rug. She looked at Naruto once, long enough to note the redness in his eyes, the bite mark just under his collar. Her lips parted, but she didn’t speak.

Sakura stood up.

“I’m not covering for you anymore,” she said, low. “Not for any of you. If you’re late to soundcheck, we don’t wait. If you don’t show, we play without you. I’m done being the net you all fall on when you break.”

She said while leaving, without looking back.

Naruto stayed seated, his fists clenched on his knees. He could feel the bruise blooming behind his ribs, where Sasuke’s mouth had been, where words had hit harder than hands. The espresso was cold now, his voice was gone.

The day was just beginning and Milan was already watching.

Now Playing: “Machine Gun” – Portishead

The venue didn’t hum so much as throb — a low, cavernous tension threading through rigging and cables and poorly ventilated air. Everything smelled faintly of sweat, glue, and dust that hadn’t been disturbed in a decade. The kind of place that had seen too many breakdowns in dressing rooms, too many overdoses in locked bathrooms, too many basslines burned into its floor like ghosts. Milan was showing its bones.

Kakashi leaned against the corner of the steel truss with a clipboard under his arm and a venue coordinator mid-monologue in front of him, all words about crowd flow and safety exits, fucking updated fog machine protocols. He blinked slowly behind his surgical mask, nodding once every three seconds, just enough to look engaged. He wasn’t listening, his attention was fixed on Yamato pacing around the other side of the stage.

Yamato was on his second phone call in ten minutes. The first had been PR, the second was now legal.

“No,” he was saying, voice taut and low enough that only Kakashi caught it. “If the footage circulates, we strike, but only if. We don’t draw more fire than we have to. Limit your acions about monitoring TikTok, especially Italian fan edits. Get me the original source if they post again, I don’t care if it’s from a burner.”

A pause in a sigh found place.

“No comment for now, we should be able to create just enough fog to make it look aesthetic.”

Another pause, longer this time. Yamato closed his eyes. “No, I’m not joking.”

He hung up without saying goodbye and exhaled through his nose, then shoved the phone into his back pocket with too much force. Kakashi finally turned to the venue rep.

“Thanks,” he said, one eye crinkling in a lazy smile. “We’ll keep the fog machine under lethal.”

The rep didn’t know if that was a joke. He proceeded to leave.

Neji had yet to speak, since the room was already heavy with the unspoken.

He was standing near the corner where the stage met the loading zone, half-lit by a yellow floor lamp with a busted filter, flipping slowly through the latest iteration of the setlist. His gaze trailed over names, timings, and margin notes in Sakura’s handwriting. He didn’t seem angry, e didn’t seem anything, the usual. But his fingers were clenched just slightly too tight around the page, and he hadn’t turned it in over a minute.

Typed two sentences and sent the text without a second thought.

Tell Ino to keep her shit together today, and a good amount of make-up.

Kakashi saw the screen over Neji’s shoulder but didn’t care to comment. Instead, he finally broke the silence between them.

“They’re imploding faster than I thought,” he murmured, brushing imaginary dust off his hoodie sleeve. “Think we make it to Berlin?”

Yamato snorted once. “Define ‘make it.’”

Neji tucked the setlist into his back pocket and finally looked up. The venue lights haloed off his cheekbones, catching the glassy flicker in his eyes that hadn’t faded since before the start.

“They’ve already bled on each other,” he said, voice so soft it barely registered under the sound of an amp thumping in the next room. “Now they’re bleeding on stage, as sad as it may sound people eat that shit up.”

Kakashi raised a brow, mask slipping just enough to show the edge of a grin. “You’re more cynical than me today. That’s rare.”

“I’m tired,” Neji said simply.

Yamato was already pulling out his phone again.

“Let them play loud tonight,” he muttered. “Let them scream. It’ll sell more tickets in the next venues.”

Kakashi’s phone buzzed next, a new text from Sai read on the screen.

Naruto and Sasuke are here. Sakura is not speaking to either. Ino’s in hair, don’t even ask how she looks.

Kakashi read it, sighed almost immediately. Then tapped something back — something dry, something vaguely encouraging, something meaningless.

“We’re holding the shape,” he said aloud, as much to himself as the others. “Even if the middle’s cracked.”

Neji didn’t reply. His gaze moved from the scaffolding, then the stage. At the cables coiled like veins.

And he couldn’t stop wondering how long they could keep pretending the blood wasn’t staining all their clothes.

Now Playing: “Shut Up” – Savages

The backstage doors swung open too loudly, heavy metal edges striking against scarred concrete walls and ricocheting echoes through the cavernous, too-empty space, announcing Sakura’s arrival like a storm warning an already drenched city to brace for more rain. She strode in carrying the battered black equipment case by one handle, her knuckles whitened, fingers gripping the weight like it was personally offending her, jaw locked tight beneath skin still flushed hot from an argument that hadn’t yet ended in her head.

She crossed the distance to the folding table by the sound booth, past coils of cables and discarded setlists and empty cans of energy drinks crushed into thin aluminum stars. The soles of her shoes were heavy on the floor, her hoodie unzipped and sleeves rolled to the elbows, pink hair half-twisted, half-fallen loose over one shoulder. Sakura was trying, unsuccessfully, to bury the anger, to keep it from leaking out in every muscle and every step, but the simmering heat of frustration was etched into the tightness of her eyes, the firm press of her lips, and the harsh slam of the synth pedal case onto the scratched surface of the table.

The impact reverberated like a gunshot, a brittle echo reverberating off walls already saturated with tension, exhaustion, and too many unsaid apologies. Everyone backstage went still for a second too long, eyes flicking in her direction before quickly looking away, like they had witnessed something not meant for their gaze, an intimacy too raw to acknowledge.

“Someone forgot the synth pedal in London,” Sakura finally said, her voice quiet but edged, each syllable landing sharp and accusatory as she glared at the cracked sticker-covered case. Her fingers flexed and released slowly, a deliberate attempt to quell the tremor still running beneath her skin.

A few feet away, Shikamaru sat slouched on a battered plastic chair, elbows resting on knees, wrists dangling loosely in the space between. He had spent the past hour quietly rewiring the mess someone else had left behind, fingers adept and precise even when his mind was somewhere else entirely, tangled in worries he wasn’t sharing. He lifted his head slowly, blinking as though emerging from a sleep he’d never actually gotten, dark circles bruised beneath his eyes, exhaustion shadowed heavily across his cheekbones.

“It’s okay,” he said softly, voice scratchy from lack of rest and cigarette smoke, the words meant to soothe but coming out hollow and thin, barely above a whisper, slipping uncertainly through the strained quiet. “I wired a workaround.”

He held her gaze steadily, offering sympathy without pity, understanding without intrusion. Shikamaru was too tired himself to fake optimism or false cheerfulness, but he could offer this—the simple act of reassurance. He didn’t pretend the cracks weren’t there; he merely smoothed a thin layer of duct tape over them, holding things in place just a little longer. Sakura stared back at him, some of the fire in her eyes flickering uncertainly, a brief hesitation betraying the exhaustion and vulnerability she refused to name.

Behind the soundboard, Temari was meticulously adjusting knobs, calibrating lights and shadows, her presence silent and unobtrusive yet somehow deeply felt. Her fingers moved precisely over the board, amber lights reflecting off polished nails, features cast in the glow of the soft illumination spilling from stage lights half-covered in colored gels. Her expression was tightly controlled, betraying only the faintest hint of tension in the subtle press of her lips and the careful, deliberate way she moved.

Temari was watching the edges of the band’s unraveling, quietly observing the frayed seams where everyone’s patience had worn thin, threads pulled taut enough to snap. She didn’t speak, because nothing she could say would ease the pressures everyone had imposed on themselves, the chaos they’d willingly swallowed, the impossible expectations they wore like second skin. Instead, her silence was deliberate, her worry hidden in the careful adjustments of light, the attempts to soften shadows and mask bruises. She felt like a silent witness at the edge of a collapse, aware that the band was losing control, balancing on a knife-edge she couldn’t pull them back from.

The moment hung suspended, stretched taut like wires pulled too tightly, waiting for something to break or give way. Sakura’s breathing slowed, measured, the anger receding like a wave drawing reluctantly away from shore. Her gaze shifted from Shikamaru’s exhausted eyes to Temari’s tense shoulders, and back to the synth pedal case, battered but somehow still whole.

In the fragile silence that followed, Sakura’s hand settled lightly, almost unconsciously, on the scarred surface of the table beside the equipment case, fingertips pressing against the cool metal edge. She exhaled once, sharply, and it felt like surrender and relief and resignation all at once.

“Fine,” she murmured, the single word brittle but genuine, her voice softer now, resigned. She nodded at Shikamaru, something like gratitude briefly flickering in her eyes. “Fine.”

Then she turned away, stepping out of the stark illumination of the worklights into the deeper shadows beyond, shoulders squared, the tension still there but less immediate, less pressing. Sakura carried it with her, always, but she wouldn’t let it break her—not yet, at least.

Temari exhaled quietly, eyes briefly closing, fingers stilling over the controls. Shikamaru leaned back into his chair again, hands loose, gaze turning back down to the floor. For just a moment, everything backstage felt too close to fracture. The soundcheck was less than an hour away, the show just a heartbeat after that.

And no one was quite sure how much longer they could pretend that any of this was still under control.

Now Playing: “Liability” – Lorde

The tiles were too white, not clean, sterile in that way hotel bathrooms always are, where the grout lines pulse with secrets that bleach can’t kill, and the cold beneath her bare thighs bit at the skin as if trying to wake her faster than her mind could catch up. The lights overhead buzzed faintly, casting a too-honest glow across the cracked mirror and the cheap chrome fixtures, and Ino blinked once, slowly, her lashes heavy with sweat and whatever mascara hadn’t dissolved in the hours her face had been pressed into her own arm, half-curled beside the toilet, legs splayed out like a broken doll discarded by something too old to remember how to play.

Her mouth tasted like blood and peach-flavored liquor, her tongue dry and stuck to the roof like something synthetic. She felt stuck in the stillness of someone half-there and not ready to return. Her pulse was slow in the wrong way, deep in her wrists and temples like a drum underwater, and her breath stuttered out as she sat up slightly, the cotton of her dress clinging to the sweat still damp across her back, her neck sticky with hair and perfume and the aftertaste of a night that didn’t belong to her anymore, like many as of lately.

The first thing she registered was the ache in her wrist—sharp, pulsing, nerve-deep—reminding her of being pulled or twisted or maybe just slammed too hard against something on the way down. The second thing was the lipstick, smeared across her cheek and the line of her jaw, the same color she wore onstage, only now it looked wrong—like warpaint blurred by tears, or a mouth pressed too desperately against another that didn’t answer. Her reflection in the mirror was a stranger bathed in blue light, eyes rimmed with shadow, mouth parted slightly like she was still asking for something she didn’t get.

She reached into her purse with fingers still trembling, nails chipped and ring twisted sideways from where someone—Itachi? Herself?—had caught her by the hand last night. She didn’t remember undressing, walking back here, she didn’t remember how it ended.

The pill pouch made the soft rustle of betrayal as she pulled it open with practiced motion, a motion that had become a ritual, a promise she kept to herself even on nights when she couldn’t keep anything else. It fell open like the hinge of something sacred, and it was empty.

No pink half-tablet. No bitter mouthful to push her back into the right shape.

Was this a fucking joke? Was this emptyness a fucking metaphor about her life?

She stared at it for a long time, like it had lied to her, like it had vanished by magic. It took her quite a while to realize: of course, Itachi had.

She could see him, almost too clearly—the way he looked in the hotel hallway last night, standing just inside the dim glow of the sconce light, eyes not pleading nor scolding, unbearably steady as he took the pouch from her hand and didn’t speak a single word, holding her wrist long enough for the tension to leave, and then walked her backwards through herself.

She pressed her head to the cabinet door behind her, forehead cold against lacquered wood, and closed her eyes.

His mouth took shape in her mind, the taste of something unsaid. The way her voice cracked when she said don’t pull away, please, and meant it in every language she’d never learned to speak.

She exhaled, and it came out too loud in the silence, and somewhere beneath the static in her skull and the trembling in her jaw she felt the sharp edge of shame begin to rise—because of how small she’d become in the wanting.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and sat there a while longer, cheek pressed to her bruised wrist, the empty pouch still clutched in her fist like a rosary she no longer believed in. The tour would start again tonight, they’d expect her to paint herself into something bright, sharp, impossible to touch.

She didn’t know yet if she could ever again.

It was almost time for her, so she sat still, staring into the gleam of the mirror like it might remember her, like it might lie and say: you were never that girl.

The faucet screeched alive with a metallic groan that made her flinch, the sound too sharp against the hollow quiet of the tiled room, like it had no right to interrupt the dead air she’d sunk herself in. Water gushed cold—too cold—but she didn’t twist the temperature, just cupped her hands and let it pool between her palms, the tremble in her fingers rippling the surface like a fault line threatening to split. She brought it to her face and pressed it hard against her skin, the first touch like needles, the second like glass, her breath catching as it slid down her cheeks and caught in the corners of her mouth, salt and soap and something coppery.

She didn’t allow herself a single sob, that would’ve been a kind of softness she couldn’t afford this morning. What she did was rinse, over and over, until her cheeks were flushed from the sting, until the smudged liner bled into the water, until the girl in the mirror looked less like something lost and more like something disguised. She pressed the rough hotel towel to her face, scrubbing, as if she could scrape off last night, as if she could peel the memory from her skin and fold it up in the cloth and leave it in the bin for the cleaning staff to throw away.

Her fingers went to the corner of her eye, catching the last of the mascara clotting in the lashes, and for a moment her hands stilled, resting on the edge of the sink, elbows locked, her reflection staring back too honestly.

She couldn’t act like it meant anything, it’s something she already told herself one too many times. She couldn’t act like he held her like she mattered. She knew better, she always had, knew better than to mistake warmth for permanence, knew better than to think safety wasn’t something rented by the hour and paid for in obedience. Whatever Itachi had done last night—whatever that was—it wasn’t hers. It was just a moment lent to her like a coat over bare shoulders, warm only until morning.

Ino didn’t want it to mean anything.

Because if it did, if it had, then she’d have to look herself in the eye and admit just how badly she needed it.

That was the crueler thing, and Ino had learned cruelty by heart.

She turned away from the mirror. The routine that came after was muscle memory: black tights pulled up her legs like armor, dark miniskirt zipped into place. A loose white shirt, cropped and unbuttoned low enough to draw attention, tight enough to keep it. Over it all, her stylist’s apron—half satchel, half holster—full of brushes and pigment and palettes scraped raw by use. Her tools were already packed, she traveled with a kit like surgeons carried scalpels: precise, sterilized, weaponized. She painted her lips red. Earrings went in, boots hit the tile.

By the time she stepped out of the bathroom and into the dim hotel room with its curtains still drawn, her stride had returned, her back straightened itself the way it always did when people were watching—or when she needed them to be. The scent of rosewater and nicotine followed her like perfume and prophecy. She didn’t look at the bed once, she would have began wondering  what it would’ve felt like to wake there instead of against the tiles.

Instead, she walked to her phone and flicked it on. Saw the headlines all over social media, saw her name.

Then turned the volume down and got to work.

Now Playing: “Everything is embarrassing” – Sky Ferreira

The mirror was already fogged despite the AC humming low in the dressing room, thick with hair spray and the static tension of a second show no one felt ready for. Ino stood in the center like a ghost made of silk and caffeine, clutching her brush roll like a scalpel kit. Her back was straight. She didn’t smile when Sakura sat down, didn’t move when the stool creaked, no single question about how she slept or if her throat was still raw from shouting at Gaara two hours earlier about the misplaced pedal and the sheer audacity of being this tired with no one else noticing.

Sakura didn’t offer a greeting either this time. She took a seat with her knees slightly apart, elbows on thighs, eyes closed like someone waiting for ibuprofen to kick in. A breath left her chest that sounded almost like surrender.

Ino unscrewed the lid of a gel pot and dipped the thinnest brush in with a movement so fluid it looked rehearsed. She tilted Sakura’s chin and drew the first wing in silence, the brush dancing from inner corner to temple with the same reverence she’d use tracing a scar that meant something. Her fingers never trembled even when her mind whispered insults at herself.

Sakura exhaled again, this time with a hitch, and opened one eye. “Am I twitching?”

“You’re fine,” Ino said, voice low, smoothing the next line with her thumb. “Close.”

She wiped the corner clean, traced the next line, adjusted the symmetry like it was math and not exhaustion that made it uneven.

When she was done, Sakura didn’t say thank you, she flexed her jaw once and left to lace her boots.

Next came Naruto.

He stumbled in already in half costume — his jacket askew, the collar inside out, his mouth pink from biting the inside of his cheek raw. His knuckles were bruised where the bone pushed too close to the surface, the tremor in his fingers made him drop his mic pack twice before she took it from him wordlessly and looped the strap herself.

“Inhale,” she said.

He did. Shaky and unstable.

She reached behind him and clipped the receiver to his back, then cinched the strap around his ribs, tight. He hissed but she didn’t loosen it anyway.

“You want it to fall off mid-song?”

Naruto shook his head, hair messy enough to cast shadows over his lashes, and stared at the wall beside her. “No.”

She still didn’t look at him while brushing the sweat off his brow with a powder puff, covered a forming bruise along his temple with airbrushed concealment so weightless it looked like he hadn’t been bleeding at all. Then tightened the cable down his spine and patted his chest twice in cue.

“You’re set,” she muttered.

He lingered like he wanted to say something. Maybe apologize or maybe ask what the fuck happened last night after the bodyguards dragged them out and the lights outside the club turned red and someone cried in the alley, maybe it was him. But she was already turning away, already unpacking the next brush, already reapplying her lipstick in the corner mirror like her mouth hadn’t been pressed to a man’s jaw in desperation and silence less than twelve hours ago.

Naruto left without a word.

The door swung open like an afterthought, quiet enough to almost slip beneath notice if not for the heavy, too-familiar tension carried in behind him. Sasuke stepped inside slowly, as if the entire dressing room—walls, mirrors, scattered bottles of setting spray and pigment—owed him an explanation for existing. His posture was sharp-edged exhaustion, the bones of his shoulders stark beneath the thin fabric of his black shirt, sleeves rolled high enough to expose pale wrists marked faintly with ink and last night’s blurred fingertips.

Ino didn’t turn immediately. She felt him, instead: the cool drift of air that moved with him, the quiet sound of the stool scraping against tile, the gentle creak of his weight settling, and the silence that opened between them as palpable as touch. She counted her breaths, deliberate, controlled, her pulse fluttering like the wings of something trapped in her chest as she wiped her brush clean on the back of her wrist, then turned toward him in a practiced pivot that revealed nothing.

He was staring forward into the mirror, his reflection distorted slightly by flecks of makeup and streaks of glass cleaner. His eyes were dark-rimmed, smudged beneath with half-removed liner from the night before, shadows of violet and gray and bruised navy, a gaze that held too many secrets and not enough apologies.

She dipped her brush into the ink-dark pigment again, fingers steadying the angle of his jaw, tipping his chin upward slightly with the ease of habit rather than invitation. Her touch was clinical, indifferent, despite the heat that rose along her wrist at the feel of his pulse beneath her fingertips, slow and defiant as ever, as if the world waited on him and not the other way around.

The liner traced his lower lash line like an admission—precise, careful, intimate in a way neither acknowledged—yet neither flinched at the closeness. Ino’s hand paused briefly, just long enough for the tremor to surface, a tiny slip, nearly imperceptible, but Sasuke caught it.

His eyes flicked toward her face, heavy-lidded, lashes brushing darkly against his skin as he spoke in a voice that carried nothing but the faintest hint of mockery softened by exhaustion.

“Your hand is twitching.”

Ino’s mouth pressed into a tight, controlled line, irritation blooming faintly beneath her ribs as she exhaled softly through her nose, leaning back to appraise her work without meeting his eyes.

“It’s your brother’s fault,” she said flatly, voice quiet yet pointed, each word sharpened carefully into a blade she handed him handle-first.

Sasuke’s eyes darkened minutely, lashes lowering a fraction as he glanced sideways at her, bitter humor curving the edge of his mouth, the barest hint of a smirk flickering into something familiar and self-destructive.

“Tell me something new,” he replied, tone velvet-soft and resigned, like a confession he’d made too many times to care anymore, his voice bruised by years of repeating the same old ache, wearing grooves into the space between anger and resignation

Ino’s fingers tightened momentarily around the brush handle, lips thinning further, eyes briefly narrowing as something sparked dangerously beneath her composure, a sharp, reckless edge cutting cleanly through her careful indifference.

“At least I’m not making headlines for fucking someone else’s disaster,” she murmured, gaze deliberately lowered, almost casual as she added the final dark line along his lash, the words slipping free before she could even consider holding them back.

She felt Sasuke tense, subtly, beneath her touch, a slight stiffening in his shoulders, a breath hitching silently behind clenched teeth, his reflection hardening like stone in the fractured glass between them. He said nothing, but his silence spoke louder than words, a bitter retort swallowed whole, choked down behind a jaw locked tight.

She stepped back, snapping her brush kit closed, eyes finally rising to meet his fully. They regarded each other in the mirror, the air charged and brittle, each daring the other to flinch, to break first, to give away more than they’d already surrendered.

But neither did.

Sasuke stood, chair scraping softly behind him, eyes unreadable, jawline sharper beneath the stark contrast of fresh liner. His fingertips lingered briefly at the edge of the makeup table, drumming lightly, once, twice, and then stilling again.

“Funny,” he finally murmured, voice low and edged in quiet irony as he turned toward the door, “Thought I saw your name on the list too.”

She didn’t respond, just watched as he slipped from the room, the weight of his warning settling in her chest as she stared at her reflection in the fogged mirror, and wondered silently whose headline she might become next.

The stage felt like a half-lit cathedral beneath the dull glow of rigging lights and half-powered spots, a shadowy cavern filled with cables snaking across the floor, loops of wire wrapped too loosely, buzzing amplifiers humming in a discordant drone that settled like static at the base of everyone’s spine. The air was charged with a tension thick enough to taste, bitterness lingering on the tongue, coppery and electric as if a storm had already rolled through and left the space waiting, poised for the lightning that would inevitably follow.

Sakura stood at the center of it all, gripping her sticks like weapons, her knuckles were white, her patience visibly unraveling in the way her shoulders bunched beneath a torn denim jacket, sleeves frayed at the edges, expression hardened into something sharper than anger. Her gaze cut across the stage to Sasuke and Naruto, standing opposite each other like two halves of a chemical reaction already beginning to spark, volatile and inevitable. Naruto fidgeted, fingers wrapped too tightly around the mic stand, eyes glittering and dark from the edges of a bruise he’d half-heartedly tried to conceal, while Sasuke leaned casually against his synth, arms folded, gaze icy, unconcerned, holding back words with an effort that showed in the set of his jaw, the tense muscle at his temple.

Finally, Sakura snapped, her voice breaking like glass against concrete, each word brittle with exhaustion and barely-restrained fury, echoing sharply through the empty auditorium:

“We go on in four hours and no one knows if you two are going to play or combust.”

Silence pressed in quickly afterward, not empty but expectant, tense, waiting for impact. The static hum from the amps grew louder, a strained buzz filling the silence they couldn’t bear to break immediately, until Sasuke shifted slightly, eyes narrowed in a lazy, detached defiance, shoulders lifting in a gesture that suggested irritation and boredom and a quiet kind of disdain he reserved for moments like this.

“Does it matter?” he murmured, voice velvet-soft yet edged in ice, his eyes locked unblinking with Sakura’s, lashes shadowing the bitter gleam behind his stare, each syllable punctuated by a quiet venom. “We do both every night.”

Naruto exhaled sharply at that, something closer to a laugh than a breath, eyes flicking toward Sasuke with a sudden dark amusement that burned hotter and brighter than anger, mouth twisting into something between a smirk and a grimace, and when he spoke his voice held the rawness of something just beneath the skin, blistering and impatient to break through.

“At least we don’t combust in silence.”

His words landed with the force of a slap, rippling visibly across Sasuke’s expression as he tensed slightly, jaw tightening, eyes darkening further, fingers pressing subtly harder against the keys as though fighting the impulse to either turn away or close the distance and start another war. But before he could respond, before Naruto could escalate, before Sakura could raise her voice again and shatter what little patience remained, another voice cut through the room—steady, quiet, but firm enough to still the restless tension momentarily.

“Can you both shut up for once?” Shikamaru’s voice rang through the cavernous space, surprising even him, the words emerging sharper, louder, heavier than he intended, a sudden burst of long-contained frustration that left everyone motionless in the aftermath.

The air froze instantly, each of them turning slowly, eyes wide or narrowed, shock rippling silently through the air like something physical, something heavy enough to choke on. Shikamaru stood slightly back from the rest, his guitar slung loosely over one shoulder, dark circles shadowing eyes that looked older than they should, lined with exhaustion deeper than just this tour, just this city, just these fights. His gaze shifted from Naruto to Sasuke, finally settling somewhere between the two, a middle ground that seemed impossible to hold.

The quiet afterward stretched uncomfortably, broken only by the faint buzzing hum still emanating from the amps, tension vibrating invisibly between them all, something fractured and raw hovering in the silence. No one dare to speak and break the fragile, unspoken truce that had just settled.

Then Sakura exhaled slowly, audibly, sticks lowering to her sides, shoulders sagging slightly as she finally broke her rigid stance, gaze softening in quiet apology toward Shikamaru. Sasuke looked away first, chin tilting down subtly, eyes shadowed by dark strands of hair, something like grudging acknowledgement softening the hard edges of his mouth. Naruto stared at the floor, expression hidden, mouth pressing into a thin line as he released a breath he’d been holding, hands finally unclenching from the mic stand.

Shikamaru stepped back, quietly adjusting the tuning peg on his guitar, not meeting anyone’s eyes, retreating into the neutrality he’d perfected, his expression carefully blank, detached, shoulders tight, his exhaustion now audible in the muted rasp of his fingertips brushing strings in quiet distraction.

And still the silence held, fragile yet charged, carrying the weight of words left unsaid, grudges unspoken, apologies withheld.

Somewhere far away, in the distant echo of the hall beyond, a door slammed, a reminder that outside this stage, the world still moved forward, indifferent to the quiet fractures opening up between them.

Now Playing: “Silver Tongues” – Louis Tomlinson

Hinata crouched low in the pit, legs folded beneath her like a prayer, the camera a steady extension of her gaze, an optical third eye she’d trained to listen harder than she spoke, to see what most people missed — moments too soft or too sharp for the naked eye to hold. The venue was a husk of echo and reverb, half-lit by sharp white fluorescents catching in the dust that danced lazily in the beams, and the band was mid-soundcheck. Naruto stood front and center, sleeves rolled, sweat already dampening the collar of his shirt, the mic loose in his grip like a half-smoked cigarette. His voice cracked open the quiet not with the rehearsal lines they’d run last minute but with something new, unfiltered, drawn straight from the hollows of his chest — a lyric not quite whole, spilling from his mouth like a wound blooming:

“If I say I never meant it, does that mean I did?”

It was something like an apology, or maybe a dare, maybe both. The words cracked out over the empty seats, dissolved into the lighting rigs and vacant air, and for a second, the stillness on stage was louder than the sound.

Sasuke didn’t miss a note.

His fingers stayed on the keys, eyes fixed on the wires, but something in his spine went taut — a tension like lightning being stored just below the skin. The knobs beneath his hand clicked softly as he adjusted the reverb, but the motion was mechanical, distracted, like his body was going through it while his mind went somewhere else, somewhere distant and too near at once. And then he looked up — sharply, like he’d been yanked to the surface by a sudden current — and locked eyes with Naruto.

Hinata clicked the shutter just then.

The photo froze the second between breath and backlash. Sasuke was backlit by a narrow cut of stage light, the edges of his damp hair haloed with cold blue lights, skin sharp with shadows. His hand hovered above the synths, like he’d paused mid-motion — not from hesitation, but from the impact — and his eyes were locked forward with such pointed gravity that they blurred everything else in the frame. He looked like he was about to speak — lips parted, breath shallow — but there was no sound coming, and maybe there never would be. He looked like someone bracing for collision, or delivering one.

She stared at the preview screen for a long time after that.

No one had noticed her in the pit, not really — not even Naruto, who sometimes winked at her when he caught her lens mid-chorus — and she didn’t call attention to the shot. She turned the screen off and lowered the camera gently to her lap, as if it were a secret breathing in her hands. Her pulse beat fast in her throat.

Some moments weren’t captured for display, some truths were only meant to be witnessed once and then kept.

The venue cracked open like a ribcage the moment the lights went dark.

For a breathless instant, Milan held still — a kind of collective made of anticipation so loud it blurred into something cellular, something ancient. The minute later the stage bled red, a strobe-drenched arterial red, pulsing like the throb of a migraine or a memory you can’t shake. The crowd surged as if pulled by tide or instinct, a wall of screaming heat and hands and teeth and sobbing sweat-soaked devotion, louder than London by miles, louder than guilt, louder than headlines, louder than what anyone had whispered into their pillows the night before. Here, they weren’t real. They were noise, gods in rupture.

Naruto hit the stage like a thunderclap, his body soaked already beneath a loose netted tank shredded at the edges and clinging to him like a second skin, black tape crisscrossed over his ribs like broken wings. His pants were torn velvet, blood-dark, barely clinging to his hips with the weight of the mic pack slung behind him, and he moved like he had something to burn. The first chorus split from his throat like a scream, the kind of sound that forces your lungs to match its rhythm just to survive it. His mouth twisted open wide around syllables that landed like spit and the veins in his neck taut as wire, the sweat catching on his lip ring like a glint of defiance.

Behind him, Sakura was killing the drums. No grace to spare tonight — no smooth transitions or measured rhythms — she was pounding the kit, as if the percussion were the only thing left she could control, hair tied back in a high braid that whipped with every snare hit, heavy eyeliner smudging at the corners, a slash of purple lipstick she’d let Ino choose just before going on. Her top was sleeveless, silver foil and fishnet over a black bandeau, and her leather pants were so tight they looked painted on, glinting under the lights like bruises. With every crash of the cymbals, she looked more and more like someone releasing months of frustration in four-four time — eyes half-closed, mouth parted, sticks like weapons.

Gaara stood to her right, a pillar of molten restraint, fingers sliding along the neck of the bass with a precision that felt ritualistic, like he was pulling sound from marrow rather than string. He wore all black — always — but tonight his jacket was cropped and studded along the sleeves, his collar high, his pants lined with metal eyelets that shimmered with the red lights, his boots were unzipped at the ankles. His eyes were still, unreadable, and yet his pulse was audible in every low tremor that crawled under the synths and held the set together like scaffolding.

Sasuke was flaring, his silhouette cut sharp under the lights, body arched behind the synth table like something coiled and cracking open. The shirt he wore — if you could call it that — was a translucent, torn mesh stitched haphazardly down the chest, the sleeves shredded up to the shoulder like claw marks. Chains laced one side of his pants, the fabric barely hanging straight over his hips, and his boots were laced all the way up but loose, undone at the top as if he’d never meant to finish dressing. His eyeliner was smeared into something between glamour and violence, thick enough to be ritualistic, and his hands —

God, his hands were alight.

He wasn’t playing notes. He was conjuring them, pushing the synths into spirals of sound that stabbed through the bassline and echoed beneath Naruto’s voice, loops and flares and twisted distortion pulsing like seizures beneath melody. He moved like he didn’t care who was watching, except that he moved like someone who knew everyone was, like someone who wanted them to.

The air in the venue was thick with heat, fog and obsession. Every song bled into the next, a seamless carnage.

The crowd screamed as if they understood.

As if they’d come here to be destroyed, and they were being given exactly that.

Each song deepened the gravity between them, pulling like undertow, slow and merciless, not just a pattern but a spiral, drawing them closer with a weight neither of them tried to resist. At first it was just a brush of shoulders — accidental, maybe, but no one believed that, not really, not when it happened three times across two verses, not when the skin of Naruto’s bare arm slid against the shredded mesh sleeve clinging to Sasuke’s frame like smoke, daring him to do it again.

Naruto shifted with the mic in both hands and leaned too close, head tilted like he might scream straight into Sasuke’s collarbone instead of the crowd, lips parted around a note that trembled into something unrecognizable by the time it hit the speakers, and Sasuke didn’t turn to meet him, but the corner of his mouth pulled tight — almost a smirk, almost a wince — and the synth behind his hands flared brighter, sharper, distortion ringing like teeth against glass.

They turned away again. Just before it became too much, before it spilled over, but each retreat was slower than the last, each parting more reluctant, as if they were gravity-drawn bodies pulled into orbit, incapable of maintaining distance for long before the tension snapped them back into proximity like a rubber band across the skin.

Naruto, drenched in sweat and thunder, breath shaking at the end of a verse that felt like confession or threat or both, stepped off the edge of the chorus and toward the synth rig with no preamble, no theatrics. He grabbed the mic stand by the neck — not gently — and dragged it across the stage floor, cords trailing like veins, metal scraping just audibly under the crash of drums and shrieking feedback, his mouth already moving even before he reached the console. He stopped with his back to the crowd, eyes locked to Sasuke’s profile, jaw clenched, chest heaving under the translucent tank that now clung like a second skin, sweat pooled at the hollow of his throat.

Sasuke’s fingers stuttered once on the pads.

Naruto said something no one heard as he leaned close enough that their foreheads might’ve touched. The crowd behind them — watching only their backs, their proximity, the way their silhouettes blurred into each other — exploded. It didn’t matter what was said, they could’ve been spitting venom or whispering grief, the crowd would’ve believed it was a love song.

The synths changed after that, getting somehow dirtier.

Naruto’s voice cracked open around the next lyric, the line dragging too long, too raw.

They were bleeding.

And Milan watched them do it.

Screaming for more.

Chapter Text

Now Playing: “Hide and Seek” – Imogen Heap

The dressing room reeked of sweat and varnished metal, like something fermented beneath stage lights and mascara. Fluorescents buzzed overhead, muted and cold, flickering against the smeared fingerprints left on every mirror, the cheap velvet stools dragged out of alignment, half-drunk bottles of electrolyte pisswater crowding the counters between smudged foundation compacts and abandoned mic tape. The air was thick with what they hadn’t said onstage — like their silences had a scent, sour and static, caught in the vents and clinging to the soaked fabric of the walls.

Somewhere deeper in the venue, fans were still screaming — not names anymore, just residual hysteria bleeding through concrete, muffled as if they were underwater or behind glass, the kind of noise that never really stopped ringing once it settled in your jawbone. A snare drum echoed down a stairwell two corridors away, someone doing inventory maybe, the metal click of cases shutting like distant gunfire.

Sweat streaked the linoleum. Sakura’s drumsticks lay abandoned near a cracked stool, one tip warped from how hard she’d hit. Naruto’s mic had been tossed, not placed, cable still slithering across the floor like a line someone meant to cross. The scent of rosin and blood and peppermint vape clung like wet laundry. The couch was slumped in the corner, cushions torn, someone’s jacket half-hanging off the back like a throat not fully covered.

They moved like ghosts in the aftershock — steps too light, voices too hoarse, all adrenaline drained and no place for it to go. Even the lights felt hesitant, as if they knew they weren’t welcome anymore.

Sakura was the first to walk in, the kind of arrival that happened when your legs kept moving because stopping felt like admitting collapse. Her eyes were lit blue-white by the dying light of her phone, thumb moving over a notification with the same sharp tension she used to check pulse points, to adjust cymbal height. She didn’t read the whole thing — just enough to see the words “chaotic set,” “emotional instability,” “unprofessional” — and then the plastic rectangle hit the makeup table with a clatter, skidding between open foundation pots and an unwrapped protein bar that no one had touched all day.

“I assume you have a plan for tomorrow’s look?” she asked, her voice too tight to be casual, but coiled just enough.

Ino was already hunched in the corner chair, one thigh tucked beneath her, laces of her boot half-undone, the mirror in front of her fractured at the edge so it cut her face into mismatched angles — lip too high, cheek too soft, like a puzzle with missing pieces. Her wrists twitched once, like the ghost of movement she hadn’t finished.

She ran her tongue along the inside of her molars like she could taste her own mood, like bitterness was something physical she could grind down if she pressed hard enough.

“Didn’t take my pills,” she muttered, the syllables more breath than voice, like smoke curling off a dying match. “So maybe ask someone who gives a shit.”

She didn’t mean it to land that way, but her jaw was tight, and the shadows under her eyes were shaped like blame, ultimately it didn’t matter what she meant. It mattered that she said it.

The silence that followed curled in on itself, dense and breathing, something feral between them that neither of them fed but that kept growing anyway — off the damp tension of sweat-soaked fabrics clinging to skin, off the metallic tang of adrenaline that hadn’t yet drained from their tongues, off the bitter, frayed thread of too many nights like this, stretched across hotel rooms and green rooms and silence after silence after silence.

Sakura’s hands were still twitching from the drums, from the cold grip she’d kept on herself all night while everyone else spiraled outward like broken meteors. She stepped forward once, arms crossed, chin tilted like she was trying to keep her words behind her teeth, but they had splintered too far up her throat to hold back.

“You know what?” she said, voice sharp with something that had fermented far too long. “It’s always something with you, isn’t it?”

Ino, now fiddling with the loose thread on the hem of her ripped tights, half-lit by the bulb above the mirror that flickered every few seconds like it was mocking her. The smudged eyeliner made her eyes look bigger, darker, like a raccoon caught under headlights.

“You miss your pills. You didn’t sleep. You drank too much. You’re not eating. You’re stressed. You’re high. Whatever it is this time, it’s you. It’s always you.”

“And somehow,” Sakura went on, quieter now, meaner because of it, “you still manage to walk around like the world owes you a standing ovation just for being able to stand.”

The thread tore between her fingers.

“You want people to see you,” Sakura said, and the words had the weight of something that had been marinating in her chest for weeks, maybe months — “That’s all you want. Doesn’t matter what for. Pretty, tragic, messed up. Hot. Just so long as they’re looking.”

Ino’s gaze rose slowly to the mirror, not to meet Sakura’s eyes — no, not that — but to look at herself the way someone watches a car wreck on the side of the road. Her reflection had gone flat, dulled at the edges.

And Sakura, not nearly done, couldn’t stop the next one from spilling out, sharp and brittle and lodged between cruelty and exhaustion.

“I mean—hell—if it’s not the outfits, it’s the breakdowns, right? Must be nice, always getting to be the center of the fucking universe. You don’t even need a mic to get the whole room watching.”

It was not that she said an offensive word per se, but it was every syllable around it.

Everything wrapped in sequins and performance and flesh, in smirks and lipstick too red and skirts that rode high without apology.

Everything Ino had always known people whispered.

Everything Sakura had never said until now.

Ino didn’t manage herself to move, her fingers curled slightly on her thigh, slow and clawed like something primal tightening in her gut. But her voice, when it finally came, wasn’t loud.

She let out a laugh. One note, empty. Then another, shorter. A breath that was almost a sigh, then a scoff that could’ve been a sob if you bent the light a little differently.

“Fuck off,” she said, softly, like she was bored. But something in her chest pulled inward, quiet and irreversible, like a door slamming shut deep inside a house no one had visited in years.

Sakura stood there for a second longer — just long enough for the heat between them to thicken, rot — then she turned and walked out with stiff shoulders and the kind of silence that didn’t feel like retreat, but like a wound.

The door clicked behind her.

Ino stayed sat there, blinking at her reflection, but her hand drifted to the side of her mouth, where some of her lipstick had cracked.

Maybe if she looked long enough, she’d find whatever part of her Sakura thought the world was watching.

And tear it out herself.

Now Playing: “Vienna” – Billy Joel

And you know that when the truth is told
that you can get what you want or you can just get old

The corridor was half-lit and narrow, the kind of industrial backstage stretch that looked like it had never meant to hold a person in it for long — just to shuffle gear, voices, wires, the weight of something loud bleeding from the stage out into the bones of the building, but Naruto had ended up here anyway, slumped against a wall where the peeling paint stuck lightly to the back of his sweat-soaked shirt, one boot still untied, the mic tape still biting faint red rings into his neck where Ino had fastened it too tight and he hadn’t bothered to loosen it. He was still shaking, buzzing, or maybe just unraveling. It was hard to tell the difference lately.

There was a heat under his skin that had nothing to do with the lights or the stage or the alcohol, though that had all played their part — it was deeper than that, a slow-roiling fever that built behind his ribs and pulsed in his palms, the kind of high that had no peak, just plateaus of noise and crowd blur and the friction of his own heartbeat thudding against things he couldn’t fix.

He hunched forward, hands on his knees, tried breathing through his mouth — too dry — tried blinking through the pinprick lights at the edge of his vision, but they just got brighter, sharper, like glass splitting in his eyes.

Then his body lurched without warning, a deep twist in his gut like something had finally broken free, and he staggered sideways toward the trash bin in the corner — the kind that was half-crushed from being stepped on, its liner already shredded — and heaved into it with a sound that felt like it tore straight out of his spine. Again, and again. Acid and air. There was barely anything left in him to lose.

He gripped the rim of the bin like it was the only anchor left in the room, knuckles white, his face flushed and clammy, jaw trembling with the effort to stay quiet even as the muscles in his back seized up with each convulsion. His body was screaming at him to slow down, to stop, to fucking rest, and all he could think about was the way Sasuke hadn’t looked at him tonight unless it was on stage, unless it was from the shadows of the lights where no one else could hear the way their names kept bruising each other’s throats mid-song.

He hated that he needed it — the attention, the collisions, the back-and-forth that felt like being seen even when it hurt. He hated that without it, he felt like he was dissolving into noise no one was listening to anymore.

On top of that the band was falling apart.

He’d felt it the moment they stepped off stage — the silence between Sakura and Ino, the vacant look in Shikamaru’s eyes, the way Sasuke had disappeared before the last chord even finished ringing, and Naruto, who had held them together with jokes and shouting and sheer, desperate noise, suddenly didn’t know what else to do but throw up his own stomach lining and hope that somehow, the bile would wash out the ache sitting in his lungs.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, it came away wet.

When he tried to stand up the heaviness of his limbs had the best over him.

The hallway swayed all around his figure.

He pressed a fist to his chest like it might hold something steady inside him, like it might stop whatever it was that had started to splinter after his recents rendez-vous with Sasuke — that stupid, brutal kiss outside the club, under flickering neon and half-spilled headlights, the taste of venom and want still lingering on his lips, his fingers still remembering the way Sasuke had pulled him close and then let him fall.

He still wanted him, even now, even sober.

Especially sober.

He squeezed his eyes shut. The lights buzzed as his stomach twisted again, and a small sound slipped out of his throat before he could stop it, it painfully looked like the sound of being too fucking tired to pretend anymore.

From the alley where he stood Naruto could hear light footsteps approaching. A pang of shame nestled in his stomach, right next to the ache, he was still on his knees in front of a trash bin, arms shaking outside of his control.

Of course part of him — the part that still hoped, still burned, still reached — whispered please, let it be him.

Under the dim, washed-out corridor lights, that buzzed slightly overhead like old electricity chewing through cheap wiring, she found him — a bent shape at the far end of the hall where the night had drained all its color into concrete and residue, his knees splayed too wide, one palm braced against the wall like he had to anchor himself to stay upright, the other limp in his lap, trembling faintly. He looked like something left behind, not quite collapsed, not quite whole — the afterimage of someone who had tried to hold too much for too long and now sat quiet in the wreckage, shoulders trembling in his oversized jacket that clung to him like a second skin damp with sweat and stage fog.

She didn’t speak when she knelt, her knees touched the linoleum without hesitation, the hem of her hoodie brushing the sticky edge of the wall where a poster had once hung, now just fragments of glue and peeled paper. Her presence moved like breath, the quiet re-entry of oxygen into a body that hadn’t realized it was suffocating.

She reached out, her movements were careful, practiced in the art of not startling anyone too frayed to be touched, and wiped his mouth gently with the corner of her sleeve. The gesture wasn’t maternal, not even soothing in the obvious way — it was something softer, stranger, a kind of presence that didn’t demand response or explanation, just the bare acknowledgment that she had seen him, and hadn’t turned the other way.

Naruto tried to laugh — the sound cracked in his throat like a dry match flicked too hard against damp stone — and he shook his head, as if he could knock the shame loose from his spine before it settled. “Bet I look hot,” he muttered, his voice hoarse, lips curling upward with a flicker of the boy he had always been, that wild sunlit energy stretched thin now, fraying at the edges, but still trying to perform even as his insides were screaming. “Real rockstar moment.”

He wiped his own mouth again, slower this time, the backs of his fingers grazing the sharp rise of his cheekbone where the skin looked flushed and raw.

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore.”

The words came out too fast, pulled from somewhere bitter and honest at the same time, honesty that only surfaced in the aftermath, in the moments when the noise had died down and the mask slipped sideways and no one was clapping anymore.

Maybe in that breathless silence between vomit and spotlight, between hurt and performance, between the ache of being seen and the terror of being left, that was the only thing that counted — someone who didn’t ask to fix.

Now Playing: “The Wolves (Act I and II)” – Bon Iver

And the story's all over you
In the morning I'll call you
Can't you find a clue when your eyes are all painted Sinatra blue

The hallway corridor was colder than expected, colder than Milan ever felt even in late hours. It was late — past two — and the hotel had sunk into the muffled hush of post-tour fatigue.

Sasuke was already there, his frame half-folded against the corridor wall just beneath an open window, where the air hit sharp with the scent of diesel and early bakery fires and leftover beer from some late bar across the alley. One leg was drawn up, bent at the knee, the other stretched out too long in front of him like he didn’t care if someone tripped, his head tipped back so the column of his throat caught the light from the exit sign overhead, casting a sharp-edged glow against skin that looked waxen, overused, underfed. His eyes were open but blurred, pupils dilated too wide, unable to blink enough. He hadn’t smoked — not that, anyway — but there was something in the stiffness of his jaw, the slack in his hands, the slow roll of his shoulder as he leaned into the wall like it was the only thing keeping gravity from turning against him, that made it clear: he was not sober.

Space stretched around him, the left door was closed and the walls were humming faintly with the life of strangers asleep inside, the kind of anonymity he used to crave and now wore like armor. He was dressed still in half the performance, sweat-dark shirt unbuttoned low over his chest, necklace twisted at the base of his throat, one ring missing from his left hand — maybe flung off, maybe pocketed or never worn in the first place — and his hair hung damp and uncombed over one eye, stuck to the side of his cheek. He looked like he hadn’t breathed out since stepping off stage.

Itachi didn’t announce himself when he came around the corner. He could always find his brother, not with his eyes, but with an old strange compass buried somewhere in his ribs, the one that had been turning toward Sasuke since they were kids, even when Sasuke didn’t want it and used to spit at it, cursed it, buried their relationship under noise, needles and denial.

He came to a stop about a meter away, close enough to block the window if Sasuke tried to climb out of it..

Sasuke’s lips parted, slow and dry. His head lolled to one side, and when he finally blinked, it looked like it took effort — like his eyes didn’t want to wake back up.

“Oh,” he muttered, voice grainy, the syllable drawn long and flat like something left in a gutter. “The good brother.”

Itachi looked at him for a long time, his mouth set in that infuriating stillness that always made people talk more than they meant to. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his coat, and there was nothing aggressive in his posture, nothing accusing, but still his presence landed like the weight of consequences, a moment finally arriving.

“You’re high,” The shape of a fact neither of them was pretending to ignore anymore.

Sasuke’s laugh came like a splinter “Wow, look at that. Big brother wins a prize for intuition.”

He wiped his nose with the back of his wrist, then let his hand fall limp again, fingers twitching against the seam of his pants. There was something almost boyish in it, in the slump of his body, the tilt of his mouth, but it was the boy who never got to stay one, the boy who survived too much and learned too early how to make numbness look like rebellion.

“I told you this would happen,” Itachi said, his voice low “You knew what it would cost, being on this tour like this.”

Sasuke didn’t answer, he rolled his head back again, staring at the ceiling with glassy eyes, mouth barely moving. “I’m fine.”

Itachi took one step closer, careful not to touch him. “You’re not. And you know it.”

Sasuke’s hands curled, slow, restless. “You think this is about the fucking drugs?”

Itachi didn’t respond.

Sasuke turned his head sharply toward him, and for a second — just a second — something furious flickered there, too raw to name. “It’s not. This is what I am.” His voice broke a little on that word, not like crying — never crying — but a string pulled too tight, a fault line showing under the surface. “You don’t get to fix this, Itachi. You don’t get to show up now and—”

“I’m not here to fix it,” Itachi said quietly. “I’m here because no one else is going to say it out loud. You are unraveling. And if you keep spiraling like this, you’re going to drag everyone down with you.”

Sasuke’s jaw clenched. “So let me.”

“No.”

That landed harder than any slap ever received from their father.

“No?” Sasuke echoed, like he was mocking the word, like he couldn’t believe it still applied. “You’re still doing that? Still thinking you’re the one who gets to decide?”

Itachi finally looked away — that meant yes, even when he wouldn’t say it.

“I told you I didn’t want this,” Sasuke muttered, “I told you a hundred times.”

“And you showed up anyway,” Itachi replied, just as quiet. “You stood on that stage. You followed him and chose this.”

Sasuke’s hands lifted to his hair, gripping it suddenly like he could tear the ache out through his scalp. “I didn’t choose this. I didn’t choose to fall apart in front of everyone.”

“No,” Itachi said, his voice was almost too soft to be heard over the distant siren below the hotel windows. “But you’re choosing to stop caring”

They stood like that — one upright and still, the other unraveling on the floor, the air between them thick with things unsaid, old wounds reanimated by neon and stage lights and exhaustion. Somewhere far below, the city kept breathing, unaware.

Probably for the first time in years, Itachi felt afraid, for what might finally break if Sasuke didn’t stop pretending he was a lost cause.

Sasuke pushed off the wall with the kind of graceless force that betrayed how far gone he really was — raw inertia of pride too bruised to stay sitting down, arms dragging behind him like a marionette cut wrong, knees wobbling under the weight of a body that had been too long without proper rest, real food, anything softer than chemicals or clinging voices. He stumbled the moment his heel landed flat, caught himself barely, one shoulder lurching forward as if momentum alone could turn this into something threatening, something upright, something that might pass for confrontation.

His breath was shallow, one hand pressed flat to the wall behind him for balance. The hallway tilted, not sharply but enough that the lights above flickered in his periphery like insects, buzzing with that fluorescent hum that always made him nauseous. Still he squared his jaw and glared like he meant to go through with it, like somewhere in the haze he still remembered how to fight and argue, how to look at his brother and forget that it had ever hurt to do so.

“You think I give a fuck what you think now?” he said, voice too dry to carry weight, like smoke trying to be fire. “You show up with your neat fucking coat and your quiet concern and you think you know what this is? You don’t know shit.”

“You think this is about me?” he asked, voice low, smooth in the way rivers are smooth right before they drown you. “You think I care if you scream at me? Collapse in a stairwell? Keep pretending you’re just wired this way, like that’s the only story left to tell?”

Sasuke took a staggering step closer, fist half-curled but never raised, the motion more instinct than threat — like the old rhythm of violence wanted to return, but his body had no idea how to carry it anymore. He was shaking, the movement showed in the line of his shoulders, the twitch in his fingers, the way his spine swayed when he stood too still.

“You’re not the one on stage with him every night,” he spat, the word him landing like a slip of something too personal and therefore already regretted. “You’re not the one he looks at like—”

“Like he’s waiting for you to ruin him?” Itachi cut in.

That shut Sasuke up.

“You don’t get to make a mess of this and pretend no one’s watching. Naruto’s not a drug you get to disappear into when you can’t stand your own skin. He’s a person, he’s the one still waiting for you to mean what you say. Still looking at you like he sees the version of you I tried to protect once, the one I used to believe could walk away from this shit before it swallowed you.”

Sasuke opened his mouth then closed it immediately after.

“Don’t talk to me about protecting people,” he whispered, barely audible now. “You disappeared before I ever knew how to stand up.”

There was a pause, a shift so microscopic it felt tectonic. Itachi exhaled once through his nose, like he was biting back something with teeth.

“I did,” he said. “And I regret it every day. But don’t you dare use me as the reason you keep burning him down just to feel something.”

Silence cracked open between them like a void, something cavernous and echoing and full of all the years they had spent not saying the things that hurt, not naming the addictions that bled through their veins, nor acknowledging the fact that no matter how far they ran, they were still made of the same blood, the same broken glass and love buried in ash.

Sasuke’s lips parted as he breathed in too sharply then proceeded to cough, as if his lungs remembered they weren’t invincible. His legs bent slightly, realizing that standing was too much again, but pride kept him from collapsing fully.

“I didn’t ask him or anyone to care,” he muttered.

“You didn’t have to, he always did. We all still do. And if you don’t start caring about that, you’re going to wake up one day and find out you destroyed the only thing that ever loved you without asking anything back.”

Under the heavy filter of neon-bleached hallway air and the residue of too many nights spent climbing into substances instead of silence, Sasuke’s breath stilled but never deepened, caught somewhere between the ragged edges of panic and the cold burn of a come-down that hadn’t arrived yet, just lingered at the back of his tongue like smoke trapped in his teeth. He couldn’t look at Itachi now, not when his brother’s words landed too close to the parts of him he kept locked inside a vault, the words that twisted under the surface like something rotting sweet beneath the skin, syrup-thick and sickening with how close they came to recognition.

“You say he doesn’t ask anything,” Sasuke said, and the words came out slowly, “but he does, you know. He asks me to stay.”

The impossible command. The small, fragile request that rang louder than any cry for help. Stay in the room. Stay after the show. Stay when the high wears off and the guilt bleeds in and the noise goes quiet and all that’s left is your hands shaking and his eyes watching you like he still believes you can be something more than what’s already broken.

“He asks me to stay like I’m not made of smoke,” Sasuke whispered, the words barely clinging to his lips now, like breath turning brittle in the cold. “Like I don’t run the second it feels like a real thing. Like presence is something I ever knew how to offer without drowning in it.”

He leaned against the wall again, let the back of his head hit the plaster, stared up at the ceiling like it could offer some answer, something besides the low thrum of his pulse trying to escape him

 “You think he doesn’t want anything, but he fucking does. He wants a version of me that can stand still, and I can’t.”

There was no venom in his voice.

“You say I’ll destroy him,” he continued, more softly now, “but I already did”

Sasuke didn’t give him the space to speak again.

“You weren’t there,” a fact he’d been choking on for years. “You weren’t there when the house started cracking from the inside. When they were playing happy and I was standing in the middle of it all, watching you turn your face away to become a rockstar. You let it all fall, and you called it protection.”

His eyes dropped, finally, to the floor.

“You did nothing for me back then. And now you want me to be better.”

That word — better — hung in the air like a wound. His mouth twisted, just slightly.

“He wants someone who can show up every day and mean it. Someone who won’t get high just to shut the feeling up. Someone who knows how to hold without bruising.”

He shook his head, just once, slow and bitter.

“We’re not that. We never were. We never will be.”

It wasn’t just about Naruto as much as it wasn’t just about Itachi. It was all of it — the childhood that never had safe rooms, the family dinners that reeked of performance, the silence that followed bruises that were both physical and emotional. That he never learned what it meant to stay because staying was never a safe option. That even now, when he wanted to, his body recoiled, his hands shook, his mouth soured with the urge to disappear before anyone saw too much.

“I don’t get to play the good part,” he said finally, quietly, like confession. “I never did.”

“And neither did you.”

He pushed off the wall again, body swaying from the weight of too much still in his bloodstream, but this time his spine held itself like a blade when he said it.

“Oh, come on,” he murmured, voice thinned to a razor edge, lips curling in something too bitter to be called a smirk. “Don’t start preaching like you know what’s best for me now, when all you’re really doing is trying to balance the scales on someone else.”

“Go play the attentive father with Ino,” he said, slow like poison, every syllable deliberate, jagged. “Go hold her fucking hand, make sure she eats, clean up her mess while pretending it isn’t the exact same kind of mess you used to be. Pretend she’s a way out of the guilt you can’t name, like if you save her, maybe it means you didn’t let me drown.”

“I know what you’re trying to do” The disdain was recognizable in his voice “Trying to fix her like it undoes the fact that you stood still while everything around us fell apart.”

“It’s pathetic.”

He was already turning away.

“You didn’t know how to fix me then. You don’t know how now. You missed your chance.”

He left Itachi standing there, under hotel lights that made both of them look older, washed-out like men shaped more by what they failed to protect than by what they’d ever managed to save.

Now Playing: “I Bet on Losing Dogs” – Mitski

Will you let me, baby, lose on losing dogs?
I know they're losing, and I'll pay for my place by the ring
Where I'll be looking in their eyes when they're down
I wanna feel it

The hallway felt too narrow for her skin, every door she passed seemed to pulse at the corners like a wound trying to close, and the fluorescent lights overhead weren’t helping—sickly yellow and shaking like they were on the edge of giving out completely, flickering in that rhythm that felt a little too close to the way her hands twitched now as she reached into her bag for the fourth time. Her fingers met the lining, the cheap rustle of empty foil blister packs, the absence of what she already knew wasn’t there, and still, she checked again—because maybe if she just wanted it badly enough, it would appear. Maybe if she lied to herself for another half-minute, something would change.

But the pouch was still hollow, and she felt like it had tricked her, promising some version of herself she could manage, someone dressed sharp and mouthy and in control of her own temperament, someone who didn’t bruise like a peach on the inside of her wrists or flush at every sideways glance like her skin belonged to someone else. She stood still for a second in the corridor, inhaled through her teeth, and stared at the grain of the plaster wall like it might offer some kind of clarity.

She drifted past a mirror mounted crooked over a utility sink—just a maintenance wing of the venue, not even meant for the artists—but it caught her anyway.

The venue perimeter stretched into another dark spine of halls and unused spaces, stairs that led nowhere, cigarette ash crushed into cement corners. She walked it feeling like a ghost looking for a door back into her own life, hands stuffed into the inside pockets of her jacket like she might find something there. But there was only the sharp silence of the pills that weren’t coming back.

She caught someone’s eye at the edge of a loading dock—someone who looked a little too clean for this kind of place, too slick in the way he leaned on the railing and nodded at her like he’d been expecting someone to find him. She stepped closer.

“Got anything?”

Anything that could shut her up from the inside.

Tonight, she just wanted to disappear without anyone noticing the shape she left behind.

She didn’t meant to flirt, not really. It wasn’t for him, it was for the mirror he represented, for the way her voice could still curl soft and her laugh could still make someone look twice, for the way his eyes dragged down her bare collarbones like she was something on a menu and he was still hungry enough not to ask questions. He had one of those mouths that said dangerous but not too dangerous, and that made it easier—because she just needed a proof that she could still bait a hook, reel something in, even if she’d already swallowed the hook herself a long time ago.

Milan’s air was sharp against her teeth, the kind that tasted like perfume, piss and someone else’s leftover cigarette. She walked fast enough not to think and slow enough to be noticed, somewhere in the back of her mind she thought—Sakura’s right, maybe I am the kind of girl people whisper about.

He knew what that meant. She followed him around the corner without asking a single question. The headlights of his parked car flicked once when he unlocked it, and she slid into the passenger seat like it was the most natural thing in the world, she absolutely hadn’t sworn to herself just weeks ago she’d never do this again. The door clicked shut behind her.

The inside smelled like fake pine and old gum wrappers. She crossed one leg over the other and rested her elbow on the window, staring at the street like it was miles away. He handed her a little zip pouch without ceremony. She opened it, thumbed the plastic like it was rosary, and didn’t care enough to ask what exactly it was. He said the name—some amphetamine, or maybe just something laced and stupid—but it didn’t stick. The words fell off her like rain on wax. She handed him cash with nails painted the same shade as the bruises blooming on her legs.

The thought of Itachi glimpsed through her mind, she couldn’t escape the way he’d taken her pills like he was saving her, or the way his arms had felt like a safety net made of knives, how she’d curled into him like a child and he’d made it mean something, that was the worst part of it all—because she hadn’t asked for meaning. For a moment she truly believed she might hit him next time she saw him, palm sharp against his cheek, just to prove she could still make someone feel something back.

In the silence of the car, with the pill packet hot in her hand, she didn’t feel sexy, Ino just felt gone.

Maybe that was the whole point.

Now Playing: “Venus in Furs” – The Velvet Underground and Nico

Tongue of thongs, the belt that does await you
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

The cigarette was burning unevenly between Neji’s fingers, soft trail of smoke curling upward into the washed-out yellow light above the venue exit, the night had scraped him thin. Yamato was speaking beside him, something clipped and low about PR cycles and narrative leverage, about how the label was already spinning the Sasuke-Naruto fallout into something poetic and erotic enough to sell tickets in four languages. Neji wasn’t really listening, the rhythm of this kind of chaos was too familiar, too easy to let wash over you without getting soaked anymore.

His eyes drifted toward the alley before his mind could catch up to why. A shape he’d know even if years had passed — posture slouched just enough to say I don’t want to be noticed but stride sharp like a razor slipping between ribs. Ino’s silhouette vanishing into the side street like the rest of them weren’t still trying to clean the blood from the floor.

Her hands had been shaking when she pushed through the side door, that was the first thing he’d noticed. The second was the way she didn’t look back. He let the cigarette burn a little closer to the knuckle.

The last time he’d tried to help her, he’d left.

When her life imploded and her name started flashing through forums and group chats and whisper threads like wildfire, the tape hit and the pity twisted into disgust with all the judgment that came from all angles like shrapnel, he hadn’t stood beside her, some twisted part of him had already classified her as ruined, even before the rest of the world did.

You built the silence she lives in.

Yamato paused, finally noticing the way Neji had stopped responding. He followed his gaze, then looked back at Neji with a frown that didn’t quite reach concern.

“Everything okay?”

Neji let the last inch of his cigarette crumble to ash between his fingers, stared at the empty space where she’d vanished.

“No,” he said quietly. “Not really.”

He wasn’t ready to call out her name, that would have meant admitting how much of this was his fault.

Now Playing: “Cherry Wine” – Hozier

The way she shows me I'm hers and she is mine
Open hand or closed fist would be fine
Blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine

The gear room was half-dark, lit only by the spill from a backstage corridor light and the quiet, pulsing red of an emergency exit sign overhead, throwing their shadows long and spliced across the stacked flight cases and amp crates like ghosts trying to crawl their way out of the walls. The smell was of dust and metal, the rubber tang of worn cables and the faint leftover heat from the stage tech’s hands hours before. The door clicked shut behind her with a finality that made Shikamaru’s shoulders tense before he even turned.

Temari didn’t raise her voice.

“You’re doing it again.”

He exhaled, kept his hands stuffed in his hoodie pockets, gaze pinned on the coil of gaffer tape abandoned on a stool in front of him like it held some secret instruction he hadn’t figured out.

“Doing what?” he asked, not exactly trying to deflect — more like buying himself the smallest inch of delay.

“You’re detaching,” she said, stepping closer, boots crunching faintly on grit as she crossed the space between them. “Just like you always do when things stop being manageable. When people start bleeding in ways you can’t patch with logistics and checklists. You watch everything break and pretend it’s just another part of the plan.”

“I’m trying to keep things functional, trying to keep us on the road. So no one ends up dead.”

“And how’s that working?” she asked, arms crossing over her chest, but the edge in her tone was duller now, more warning than accusation. “Because Naruto just collapsed on a hallway floor, Ino’s gone off somewhere with her veins screaming, and Sasuke’s trying to dissolve himself with whatever the hell he’s taking. Sakura’s snapping, Gaara’s shutting down. And you—”

She stepped in closer, enough for her breath to skim his collarbone, for him to smell the faint citrus in her shampoo and the sweat of the show still clinging to her neck.

“You’re standing in the middle of a house fire pretending you’re just here to fix the wiring.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, unsure about having anything left to offer. “We’re not a band anymore. We’re a goddamn demolition site.”

“Then stop sweeping up the rubble like it’s your job to make it look clean,” she said, exasperated but more intimate too — like she was reaching past whatever shell he’d built and tapping on the glass. “You used to care when people got hurt. Now you just keep track of how deep the cuts are.”

There was a long, thudding silence. A distant speaker echoed with some tech’s shout.

Shikamaru looked her in the eye, he was scared.

“I care,” he said, barely more than a whisper. “That’s the problem.”

Temari didn’t have it in her to offer one of those dry, dismissive remarks she was known for when things got too close to cracking.

“I know you care, I know that’s the part of you no one ever gets to see, not the way I do. You think you’ve gotta carry the collapse on your own just because you’re the one who sees it coming before everyone else. You think you’re supposed to calculate the exact moment when it all stops being salvageable and just start managing the fallout like that’s all you were ever built for.”

Her arms uncurled from her chest slowly, like she was peeling herself open inch by inch.

“But you’re not alone in this, I’m here. I’ve been here, even when you pretended not to notice. Even when you did that thing you do — where you act like letting someone in would only slow you down, like needing help is a flaw in your design. It’s not.”

Her gaze was now locked with his in that narrow red-lit room like nothing else outside of it mattered, not the chaos or the noise or the unraveling of everyone they called theirs.

“You don’t have to run triage on everyone’s mess alone,” she murmured, and the warmth in her voice was worn at the edges, “If you’d just let me — I’m right here, Shikamaru. You don’t have to fix this whole fucking tour by yourself. You never did.”

His breath stuttered once, caught somewhere between relief and shame, for a second he looked like he might say something — anything — but the words didn’t come. Just that look in his eyes, raw and unguarded and unbearably tired, of a man who’d been waiting for someone to say exactly that without knowing he needed it until now.

The only answer he could offer her was the exhausted drop of his forehead to hers, he was asking quietly, through skin and sweat and the scent of rusted amps, if it was still okay to fall apart like this. Her hands rose without hesitation, sliding up the back of his hoodie where it clung faintly damp to his spine, her fingertips finding that familiar place just under his shoulder blades where the tension always built like a fault line and stayed lodged until someone reminded him he didn’t have to carry it alone.

He kissed her, the only honest thing left was to give in — forehead to forehead, then lips to lips, slow but full of everything he didn’t know how to ask for, everything he’d tried to bury under rationality and exhaustion and the relentless need to keep things moving forward even as everything bled sideways.

Temari’s fingers threaded up into his hair, pushing back the strands that always fell over his eyes, smoothing him like she’d done a thousand times before, like muscle memory, devotion disguised as habit. He melted into it in increments, every breath shaking a little looser, every inch of posture collapsing until he wasn’t standing anymore so much as resting in her — head tilted into the crook of her neck, arms sliding around her waist without rush, like it had been years since he let himself be held and he didn’t know how to start without trembling.

She stood firm, the hand splayed between his shoulder blades drawing slow, grounding arcs. Her grip was steady, present.

In the other rooms, people were shouting, pacing, breaking. Ino was gone, Naruto had thrown up, Sasuke hadn’t come back from the purgatory. The entire night was folding into itself, beautiful and brutal and off tempo, but here, in this red-glow gear room stilled by breath and old affection and something like quiet love, Shikamaru let his mouth press against her shoulder and didn’t pretend he had to solve the world before the next setlist.

Now Playing: “No Surprises” – Radiohead

The rooftop was quiet in the way only rooftops can be at night, when the city spills itself in layers below, all the lights flickering like cigarettes half-burned and forgotten in some stranger’s ashtray, all the noise muffled by concrete and altitude, as if being above it made the chaos feel smaller, more manageable, less like a tidal wave and more like background static. Gaara sat cross-legged near the edge, back against an old ventilation unit that hummed warm behind him, his bass resting across his lap like something sacred. The cleaning cloth moved slow in his hand, methodical, tracing the curve of the strings, the smooth matte of the neck, the small dings from years of silent battles.

Naruto had looked like that tonight. All fire and unraveling skin, too much energy in too small a frame, like he was trying to sweat out grief and guilt and hunger all at once under the lights, every note another confession he didn’t know he was making. Gaara had seen it in the way his jaw clenched between lyrics, how his eyes searched the crowd but never landed anywhere, how his hands trembled after each chorus like they were still waiting to hold something that wasn’t there. He hadn’t touched his water bottle once. Hadn’t looked at Sasuke except when they were practically on top of each other.

It felt too much like watching someone die out loud.

Gaara lowered his eyes, watched the glint of silver on the bridge of his bass catch the rooftop light. He ran his thumb along the edge again, slower this time. There was a mark there, new. A faint nick in the finish from when they’d nearly missed that soundcheck in London, the moment Sakura had almost cried and Naruto had laughed too hard.

He didn’t speak often, not even to Naruto, not the way the others did — but he knew. God, he knew.

Naruto was slipping.

He looked at Sasuke not like he wanted to kiss him but like he wanted to unzip their bodies and crawl into his chest, curl up next to whatever was left of warmth and stay there, unbothered and unseen.

On the other hand, Sasuke gave him nothing, or gave him too much and then vanished. It was hard to tell. The two of them were a language Gaara never learned to speak, but he recognized the weight of it nonetheless. The pull of someone who might be your salvation and might be the final stone in your pocket when the water gets too high.

He wiped the cloth down the last string, set it aside, exhaled slow.

He’s going to disappear if no one pulls him back.

Naruto, who gave his energy to everyone and left none for himself. Naruto, who once looked Gaara in the eyes at a party where nobody remembered his name. No one else had looked past the makeup and the muteness and the odd silences between jokes and seen the part of Gaara that still, after everything, wanted to be known without being touched.

He didn’t know what he’d do, he wasn’t the one to shout or confront to drag people back from their own wreckage, but maybe — if it got worse — he’d find a way to reach a hand out without needing words. Maybe just being there would be enough.

He picked up the bass again, tuned it by ear, string by string, until the notes rang clean and bitter in the cold air.

Chapter Text

Now Playing: “Tailwhip” – Men I Trust

I’m happy as I am

‘Cause I’m leaving

The bus arrived without ceremony, the brakes hissing like a smoker’s last exhale, its frame groaning as it slouched toward the curb of an unfamiliar street that glittered too cleanly in the pale, silver-filtered morning. Prague greeted them in quiet blue tones, the sky already brushing against noon but carrying no warmth. Instead, surgical llight that revealed everything, that punished hangovers and peeled back the glamour that late nights and stage shadows painted over tired bodies.

Inside, the bus was still a low tide of sleep and sweat — guitar cases wedged into corners, someone’s crushed can rolling gently beneath a bench with each subtle shift of gravity, the air thick with residue: perfume layered over cigarettes layered over whatever the hell Naruto had vaped at 3am.

Sakura stepped off first, long legs stiff with the kind of soreness that crept into muscle when you’d screamed behind a drum kit like your bones depended on it. She pushed on her oversized sunglasses and tugged her jacket tighter across her chest, fingers twitching slightly when her phone buzzed — a new notification she didn’t read before she tossed the device into her bag like she already hated what it might say. The sharp click of her boots on the sidewalk sounded too decisive for someone who hadn’t slept in twenty-three hours.

Ino followed, moving with that careless, feline grace that wasn’t as effortless as it looked. Her mouth was set, the corner just slightly bitten raw — habit, not thought — and her makeup was heavier than usual, the liner winged out like she needed something sharp on her face to warn people off. There was a stain on her cuff and bruise on her forearm she forgot to cover. She blinked hard against the light, then pulled her hood up.

Naruto trailed behind them, hoodie zipped all the way up to his jaw, the drawstrings dangling like exhausted arms. His hands were deep in his pockets and his posture curled in that way it only ever did when he thought no one was looking — not a slump, but a recoil, like he’d woken up too raw and hadn’t quite managed to find his skin yet. There was a tremble in his left hand he tried to hide by gripping the strap of his bag. When the single ray of sunlight hit his face, he flinched.

Gaara barely acknowledged the city, his boots hit the concrete with the steady beat of a funeral drum, and his bass case knocked gently against his hip. His eyes didn’t flick up once, he moved like he was underwater, or maybe just submerged in some private thought that made the rest of them fade into smudges.

Sasuke was the last off the bus.

He appeared at the threshold like he wasn’t part of the group at all — like he’d gotten on by mistake and was now stepping into a world that didn’t expect him. His sunglasses were matte black and mirrored nothing, and his jaw was set so tightly it looked like it hurt. There was something in his mouth — not gum. The movement was too slow, too deliberate, maybe a dissolving tab. He paused for one long second at the top of the bus steps, eyes hidden but neck tilted like he was already calculating the escape routes, and then he descended like gravity was optional and he just happened to let it win.

The city loomed around them, windows gleaming like eyes that didn’t blink, alleys too narrow, the air clean but too still, Prague had taken a deep breath and was waiting to see what kind of disaster had just rolled into its lungs.

And the band, fractured and glittering, simply followed the handler inside.

The room was colder than it should have been, the kind of artificial chill pumped in through narrow vents that made everything feel too controlled, too sterile, like even the air had been curated for broadcast. Fluorescent ceiling panels buzzed quietly with a low hum, and beneath them, the carpet was the color of wilted sage, worn flat where chair legs had scraped back and forth too many times. The walls were lined with soft acoustic padding in a tired, industrial gray, dimpled like old upholstery — soundproofed. There was an edge of stale coffee lingering just beneath the lemony tang of studio sanitizer, and a faint metallic buzz from a cracked auxiliary port that no one had bothered to replace.

At the front of the room, anchored like a shrine, was the console — all blinking lights and smooth sliders and coiled wires, its surface smudged with fingerprints and fast-food grease. Behind it, a woman with bleached hair cropped close to her scalp adjusted her mic stand with one hand while sipping from a chipped mug with the other. She wore headphones too big for her face and a lavender blazer that didn’t match the jeans underneath. Her accent curled gently over her consonants — local to Prague, but softened by too many hours of pop culture and global interviews — and her energy was all sunshine and caffeine, the kind of forced ease that made people suspicious even when she was being sincere.

“Dobré ráno!” she chirped, voice bright as she tapped the desk twice like that meant something. “We are live in three… two…”

Her name was Lucie Vondráková, though she’d introduced herself only as “Lu” backstage, with a wink and a handshake that was warmer than expected. She had been doing this for years — interviewing up-and-coming grunge revivalists and trap prodigies with equal enthusiasm — but there was a slight tremor of excitement in her fingers as she checked her notes again, because this band, had already been a blood-drenched headline before they even entered the building. And Lu, for all her practiced cool, had the distinct feeling she was about to handle a live grenade with a glittering fuse.

Opposite her, the band sat in a neat, visibly unnatural row. A stretch of black chairs against a backdrop printed with the station’s name, Rádio Letní Bouře, looping like static poetry behind them.

Sakura crossed her legs and leaned back, sunglasses swallowing half her face, her hands folded with too much control in her lap. She was the one to had spoken since they entered the building. The drumstick tucked behind her ear looked more like a blade than an accessory.

Next to her, Ino chewed the inside of her cheek and blinked multiple times— slow, theatrical, like she wanted to appear more alert than she was. Her lips were glossed, her jacket furred at the collar. She looked like a polished rendering of herself, and for a second, no one would’ve guessed that only hours before, she’d tried to disappear in a stranger’s car.

Naruto bounced his knee too fast, the movement sending ripples down the row. His hoodie was half-zipped now, revealing a sweat-stained shirt beneath it, and he kept tugging the hem down like it was supposed to make him look less exposed. He smiled when Lu looked at him, but it was brittle around the edges, and when the host turned away, his fingers balled into the armrest so tightly his knuckles whitened.

Gaara sat like a statue, hands resting lightly on his thighs. There was a scuff on the side of his boot and as always, no one knew what he was thinking, but the way his jaw ticked once every few seconds suggested he was counting the minutes, or maybe the cracks in the wall.

Shikamaru looked like he hadn’t wanted to come. His legs were sprawled lazily in front of him, one arm draped over the back of his chair, and yet there was a tension in the line of his mouth, in the way his eyes flicked toward the camera lights every now and then, like he was watching something burn in the corner of the room that no one else had noticed yet.

Sasuke was a ghost wearing a flesh costume, slouched low in his chair, his sunglasses obscuring the ruined orbs beneath. His fingers tapped a steady beat against his knee, something syncopated, erratic, not quite in time with anything else in the room. He didn’t move beyond that pulse, but when Lu said his name during the opening callout, his mouth twitched like a bad memory was trying to surface and he bit it down before it could.

They looked like a lineup, not a band.

The “ON AIR” sign clicked to red, a light hum rose through the monitors. Lucie leaned into the mic with a grin sharpened by tension and turned her voice to sugar.

“So,” she said, cheerfully oblivious or brave enough to fake it, “how’s Europe treating the infamous Stay Myth tour?”

The silence that followed dragged its feet for half a second too long.

The microphones caught everything — the scratch of denim against vinyl chairs, the static of overcorrected breathing through cheap pop filters, the low rustle of movement beneath the table that sounded louder than it should have, like paper tearing in a quiet church. The air in the studio was thick with the smell of burnt coffee and the synthetic tang of fabric deodorizer, the kind that clung to skin like a cheap disguise. The overhead lights buzzed with sterile consistency, but beneath the desk, the real stories were unraveling one twitching leg at a time.

Sakura, now poised with the kind of perfect, media-trained posture that photographs well even from bad angles. Her voice, was crisp, well-modulated, basically textbook measured: the kind of voice that had coached itself into civility, shaved all the barbs off before delivery. She praised the fans in Milan, mentioned the venue acoustics with the precision of someone who had learned what phrases got picked up in quotes, and nodded at Lucie with a polite smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

But there was a rawness around her mouth, a subtle dryness in her tone that made the cheer sound hollow if you listened too long. Halfway through her second answer — something about adapting to the European crowd’s energy — she reached back and retied her ponytail in one sharp motion, the elastic snapping once around her wrist before she dragged it tighter, like if she didn’t reinforce it, something else might come undone instead.

Naruto, seated just next to her, leaned into the mic like he was trying to fight gravity. There was a slight tremble in his shoulders, he looked like it might’ve come from adrenaline or lack of sleep, probably both. His hoodie hung open now, revealing a band tee gone soft from wear, and his voice carried the kind of humor that made people laugh because they didn’t know where else to put their discomfort.

“Creative differences?” he said, grinning too wide. “That’s a nice way to put it.”

He scratched behind his ear, sniffed once, and ducked his chin before Lucie could press further about the headlines from Milan — the fight, the rumors, the photos of him slumped against his other bandmate. Instead, he flicked his eyes to Sasuke, who hadn’t spoken yet, and chuckled under his breath. “We’ve had worse.”

Lucie smiled nervously and pivoted, but the room felt colder for a moment, like someone had opened a window.

Sasuke sat draped in his chair like he didn’t owe the world a single breath. The sunglasses didn’t come off, not even once, and the way he was chewing on something — the corner of his lip, maybe, or the last of a dissolving tab tucked under his tongue — made his jaw look too sharp in the studio’s flat light. When he finally answered a question about the band’s process, it was with three clipped words: “We don’t plan.”

That was it.

He didn’t elaborate further his words, didn’t even look up, his eyes kept staring at Lucie’s chipped ceramic mug like it held some kind of judgment he was trying to beat in a staring contest.

Ino took the question about the band’s aesthetic and styling like she’d been waiting for it. Her voice was velvet and razors,  effortless and just a little smug, the way she always sounded when she was pretending everything was under control. “We don’t do cohesion,” she said, swirling her words like perfume. “We prefer impact.”

Her lashes were heavy with mascara, liner flicked to dangerous precision, lips glossed with a crimson edge that left smudges on her thermos every time she took a sip. And she kept sipping, over and over, like the heat of the metal in her hands was the only thing tethering her to the seat, as if without it she might float straight out of her body. Her fingers trembled once — a flicker that only Sasuke might have noticed, and he said nothing.

Then came the question they’d all known was coming.

“All the drama,” Lucie said, her voice still sweet, but hesitant now, carefully balanced. “How do you keep the music pure when everything else seems… well, not?”

Ino’s grip on the thermos tightened.

 Naruto leaned forward and took control, the mic was  close enough to catch the dryness in his throat before he spoke.

“We play like we live,” he said simply.

Under the table, Naruto’s hand drifted without thinking, jittery fingers tapping once against the leg of his chair before brushing against Sasuke’s thigh — just a graze, almost apologetic.

Then the tapping resumed, softer now.

Behind the scenes, behind the cameras and lighting and strategically placed bottled water, Hinata stood near the far corner of the room, half-shadowed beneath a hanging light. Her camera was quiet, the shutter softened, catching them not as stars but as artifacts — bones under stage light. She snapped photos when no one was looking. And when Sasuke’s gaze flicked toward her — just once — it held no reaction, no sharpness, only that same unreadable distance. Like he was seeing through her, or maybe just seeing what he couldn’t admit out loud.

Ino coughed once and didn’t speak again for the rest of the interview.

Sakura flexed her fingers under the desk, then clenched them.

Lucie cleared her throat and moved on, the rest of the questions felt like filler.

Now Playing: “Better” – sign crushes motorist

The mirror was too clean. That was the first thing Sakura noticed when she closed the bathroom door behind her and slid the lock into place with trembling fingers, the metal clicking shut like a verdict. The overhead light buzzed, a sterile halo that made her skin look paler than she remembered, drawn too tight across the angles of her cheekbones, and her eyes — her eyes didn’t even look like hers anymore. They looked tired. Not just from the interview or the tour or the lack of sleep that had left permanent bruises beneath the concealer, but from the inside, like the shine behind them had been scratched out by something smal, mean and unrelenting.

She leaned over the sink, both hands pressed flat to the cold porcelain, and tried to breathe. Tried to shake off the image of Ino’s face when she said it — or almost said it, because it wasn’t the word itself, not really, but the space around it, the jagged silence she’d carved when she let the implication hang there like smoke in a closed room.

“I didn’t mean it,” she whispered, but it didn’t sound right. Not when her mouth tasted like rust and regret, not when her voice broke on the second word like a snapped string. “Or maybe I did. Or maybe it’s worse — maybe I didn’t care if it hurt.”

She gripped the sink harder. The cold edge bit into the bones of her fingers.

Ino had looked away after, not even angry — at best she looked  empty, like Sakura had taken the last thing she had left and held it up to the light like a flaw in glass. And Sakura had stormed out because it was easier, because she couldn’t stand how fragile she felt in that moment, how every mask she’d built — the control, the professionalism, the always-knowing-what-to-say — had fractured the second her voice rose out of line, venomous and trembling and loud.

She hadn’t been like this, she knew that. She wasn’t always so sharp-edged, so ready to snap, to punish the people closest to her for the chaos unraveling inside. She’d always prided herself on being the one who held things together, the one who remembered everyone’s meds, who double-checked the logistics, who knew the name of the venue manager and the Wi-Fi code and the backup charger location. But lately, that role had become a cage, and she couldn’t breathe inside it. She couldn’t breathe at all.

She had looked at someone she loved — because she did love Ino, in her own bitter, coiled way — and carved a wound she knew exactly how to make.

Sakura turned on the faucet, the sound helped drown her own heartbeat, which was crashing too loud in her ears, erratic and panicked like it was trying to get out. She splashed her face, once, twice, then stared back at herself as the droplets clung to her lashes, her jaw, the hollow beneath her cheekbones. Her lipstick was gone. Her mascara was smudged at the corners, but not in a glamorous, post-show way. In a tired, post-something else way. Post-breakdown. Post-lashing-out. Post-being-a-person-you-don’t-recognize.

She pressed her fingers to her mouth and tried to steady the tremble. It didn’t work.

“You’re unraveling,” she said to her reflection. “And you’re making everyone bleed for it.”

Outside the bathroom, she could still hear muted voices in the hallway. Naruto’s laugh — too loud, too empty. The soft pad of Hinata’s shoes. Maybe even Sasuke’s low murmur, or maybe she imagined it. She didn’t know anymore. She was losing track of what was real, what was forgivable, what was fixable.

She leaned back against the door and let herself slide down until she was sitting on the cool floor, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapping around herself like armor that didn’t work anymore. Her phone buzzed once in her jacket pocket.

She closed her eyes and tried not to picture the way Ino had looked at her, like a stranger.

Tried not to remember that she’d once promised herself she would never become this version of herself — brittle, weaponized, drowning in control just to feel something solid under her feet. But maybe that was the scariest thing.

Maybe she hadn’t become someone else.

Maybe this had always been waiting inside her, quiet and ready to come out at any stronger inconvenience.

Now Playing: “PPP” – Beach House

It won't last forever
Or maybe it will
The white clothes they gave you
You wear them so well

Someone once told me
In love, that you must
Place all you're given
In infinite trust

The door had been left slightly ajar behind him, as if even the act of closing it fully would’ve demanded a kind of finality he wasn’t ready to offer — a full stop he didn’t believe in anymore. The balcony was narrow and half-shadowed, railings still warm from the press of the sun earlier, though now the night had come heavy and thick and scentless. The air clung to his skin like a second shirt — humid and without wind, just the dead breath of a city that hadn’t yet decided whether to sleep or riot. Below, the traffic moved in restless loops, glittering red and white, alive but untouchable, like blood cells under a microscope. He didn’t look down for long. He wasn’t interested in metaphors tonight.

The cigarette glowed soft between his fingers, orange and alive for the second it flared before it dimmed again, smoke trailing up in a thin, delicate line, curling over his knuckles and dissolving into the air like something shy. He hadn’t smoked in weeks — some nameless morning blurred out by meetings and spreadsheets and the way people looked at him like he had answers just because he remembered what responsibility felt like. But tonight it had pressed into his chest, the weight of it, and the lighter had been there in his coat, waitin  patiently, the way memory was.

He leaned against the railing,, the city’s distant sounds slurring into each other behind the thick glass of the balcony doors. A muffled bassline from someone’s room. Laughter that didn’t belong to any of them. The hotel lobby’s bell dinging like an afterthought. He didn’t hear any of it properly. It was background texture to something else unspooling, something that had begun in a hallway hours ago when Sasuke wouldn’t meet his eyes but still spat poison with every breath, when his voice cracked on the word “family” and made Itachi feel, all over again, like he had missed some vital checkpoint in being a human being.

He looked out, past the blur of lights. Thought about how Sasuke used to climb trees when they were kids, how he’d scale the lowest branches with small, furious hands and pretend he didn’t want anyone to watch him, even though he always paused at the top and looked back, waiting for approval he never asked for. He thought about the first time he saw Sasuke cry and how he hadn’t known what to do with it, how he’d stood there frozen like grief was a foreign language only children could speak. How later, much later, he would see Ino curled up like something shattered after her drugged escapades  and feel the same sick helplessness crawl up his throat — that same useless, belated urge to go back and do it differently.

The smoke burned his throat a little, he let it.

The past was not a clean thing in his mind. It was broken glass and blistered wood, sticky concert halls, nights on tour when he’d drink too much and sleep too little, people who touched him for the wrong reasons, and crowds who screamed his name like it meant something. He used to be someone else, louder, wilder. The kind of person who let chaos rot his insides as long as it made the music better. But he had changed — hadn’t he? He told himself he had. It was necessary to believe that, or else all the silence he chose now would mean nothing.

And yet, when Sasuke had said it — that he hadn’t been there, that he was compensating, that this need to fix Ino was nothing more than retroactive guilt strung up in prettier language — it had landed with too much precision. Too much accuracy, because  hadn’t he been? Hadn’t some part of him seen the way she unraveled, the way she let people ruin her and called it survival, and recognized it as a mirror? Hadn’t he taken the job of caring for her — gently, distantly, without claiming it — because he couldn’t bear the idea of failing another person who looked like him when they cried?

He closed his eyes, he saw flashes sometimes, without warning. Not hallucinations, just memories triggered too fast — Sasuke at seventeen, black eyeliner and bloodied knuckles after his first real fight. Ino on the bathroom floor with pills in her hand and venom in her mouth. The version of himself that had once lit stages on fire and then thrown up in alleyways after, too numb to name it addiction, too proud to stop. He had lived many lives. Too many. And now, somehow, he was everyone’s anchor — the most put-together man in a band of falling stars. And he didn’t know what to do with that, not  when he still felt the burn of old music in his fingertips, not when he didn’t know if he was helping or just holding the knives steadier.

Another drag, the smoke curled tighter.

He heard a door slam, somewhere far below. Laughter, again, but this time too loud, edged with something wild.

He thought again of Sasuke’s eyes — glassy and sharp, familiar and hateful. He thought of the way Ino looked at him when she thought he wasn’t watching. He thought of Naruto’s hoarse voice breaking on stage, and Sakura’s silence tightening like a wound. He thought of all the people he couldn’t fix. And all the ways he kept trying anyway.

He flicked the ash off the edge of the railing and watched it scatter, faint gray snow in the dark.

He didn’t go back inside. The air was too heavy. And the guilt — that old, precise instrument — was still tuning itself inside his chest.

He had been untouchable back then, a silhouette of sweat-slicked divinity cut against seizure-strobe lights and walls that throbbed with bass, every breath he took fed through a microphone like scripture. There had been a time — so many lifetimes ago it barely felt real now — when the world bent around his voice, when every downward strum on his guitar felt like lighting a match in the throat of the universe. Itachi remembered that version of himself the way one remembers a fever dream: too vivid, too colored in heat and movement to be a lie, but impossible to inhabit now without the edges tearing. He hadn’t eaten for entire days on those tours, hadn’t slept for longer. He’d lived off adrenaline and pills and adoration — equal parts applause and amphetamine, eyes rimmed in charcoal and nights painted red behind his lids.

Sasuke had watched it all from backstage shadows, from the crowd, sometimes. From the cracked-open gap in a green room door, crouched down small, pretending not to exist. He had been so young. Too young and too quiet — always too quiet. Itachi hadn’t known the full extent of what he saw, or maybe he had and just didn’t care, too lost in the echo chamber of his own mythology to imagine what it meant to be seen like that by someone who still thought he hung the stars.

It wasn’t just the music, It was the vanishings between. The silences after the encore where Itachi would sit with his legs stretched out on a hotel floor, wrist bleeding from a shattered glass he didn’t remember throwing, a joint burning down between two fingers he couldn’t feel. The way he could walk into a room and make everyone laugh — and then walk out without a sound. The way he disappeared not just physically, but emotionally, methodically, deliberately. How charm became armor. How honesty was something exchanged only in performance. How you could break and still make it look beautiful. Sasuke learned all of that. Absorbed it through skin and smoke and observation, the way kids learn shame or fear: wordlessly, instinctively, without knowing they’re learning anything at all.

Back then, Itachi had been a god but not the holy kind, and not the quiet kind either. The kind that consumed offerings and left people wrecked in his wake. He could command rooms with a single glance, break hearts with half a lyric. He kissed like a threat and laughed like he knew secrets that would kill you. He was everything Sasuke admired. Everything he wanted to be. Everything that ruined them both.

Now, standing on a balcony watching the Prague lights blur like smeared makeup across glass, Itachi could feel the shape of all his old mistakes pressing back against his skin like a second skeleton. He had taught Sasuke how to perform — yes. But worse, he had taught him how to disappear. How to ghost himself in real time, to leave people even while staying in the room. How to wrap silence in bite and bitterness, how to run from softness like it was fire. He had taught him that care was a trap and love was dangerous. That the only way to survive being adored was to destroy the version of you that people loved before they could do it first.

There was no unteaching that. No way to rewind time and drag the kid with the wide eyes and clenched fists back into safety. He had let him watch and learn. Now Sasuke was falling apart with the same elegance Itachi once did — a different medium, maybe, but the same choreography. The same collapse.

He exhaled, slow. The smoke twisted and vanished before he could follow it with his eyes.

It wasn’t just guilt anymore. It was grief, of the kind you can’t bury because it lives with you, grinning, in the mirror.

Now Playing: “Human Sadness” – The Voidz

And I never wanna spell it out
I just wanna say that it is all my fault
I could never spit it out
I don't wanna fix your tie
Never wanna say we're sad
Thankful that we got some chance
I know you won't get back your time
I wish that you could take it back

The rooftop was quiet in the way only height could offer, a sort of atmospheric detachment, like even the noise of the city below had to pause and breathe before climbing this high. The concrete beneath Sasuke’s spine was colder than he expected, slick with a film of humidity that hadn’t quite dried since the late afternoon drizzle. Prague stretched out beneath him in soft glimmers and uneven skylines, all burnished domes and gothic silhouettes, baroque stone facades slouched against one another like they too had grown tired of keeping their posture. Somewhere below, the hotel was still lit in patches — someone’s bathroom window glowing like a lantern, the lobby buzzing faintly with residual movement. But up here, it felt like none of it mattered.

The ledge cut sharp behind his back, pressing through the cotton of his shirt, and he let his weight rest into it like an afterthought, his head tilted just enough to watch the haloed smoke from his cigarette vanish into the haze. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there. The air smelled faintly of rust and soot, a scent like city breath — metallic, wet, alive. His fingers were numb from the wind and whatever was pulsing through his bloodstream, though he couldn’t remember exactly what he’d taken. Not that it mattered, the point wasn’t remembering, the point, in fact, was quite the opposite.

Everything felt too far away to touch, the magic of rooftops, he’d decided. You could still see the world clearly, you could even hear its tremble — the muted rumble of tram tracks, the occasional thrum of laughter bleeding from a bar — but none of it could reach you. You could rot slowly in peace, your insides folding in like paper left in the rain, and no one down there would notice.

His shoes scraped lightly against gravel as he shifted, the sound grating and small. He stared at the flare of the cigarette tip between his fingers, watching the burn tunnel slowly down toward the skin of his knuckle. He wouldn’t feel it.

He could hear his breath but not feel it, that was the worst part about being this high, your body kept proving it was still there even when you were trying to leave it behind. Even when you wanted it quiet, gone.

The wind curled up and licked at the back of his neck.

Somewhere behind him, a rooftop door creaked open a soft, distant hinge

The city twinkled like a trick mirror — too much shine for anything real. He closed his eyes and let it vanish.

He caught them in a slant of gold too soft for this hour, too undeserved — as if Prague had decided, just for this moment, to forgive them all and pour its last warmth into a quiet pane of hotel glass where they stood, unaware they were being watched. The world below hissed and churned as always, but here, above it all, behind glass that didn’t fog no matter how close they leaned, Naruto and Hinata became part of something unbearably calm, a living portrait in motion, framed by thick velvet curtains drawn aside and the warm hush of a hallway lamp casting just enough light to make the room feel touched by something safe.

He hadn’t meant to keep looking. The rooftop’s edge was supposed to offer blankness, not some sorto of narrative. But there they were — the boy with a voice like sandpaper and sunlight, the girl with hands like prayer, like silk worn down by devotion — and they were laughing, something shared between only them, and the moment was so gentle it made Sasuke nauseous.

Hinata’s fingers rose to brush his collar, that damned hoodie he always wore zipped up to his jawline like a wound he kept from healing, and she tugged it flat, not like she was fixing him, but like she’d already accepted he wouldn’t fix himself. Naruto looked at her, eyes not quite amused and not quite grateful, just entirely and devastatingly there.

Sasuke blinked too slowly, too late, the moment seared onto the inside of his skull like a flashbulb photograph, too bright and too soft to mean anything but ache. The wind at his back sharpened, cut through his shirt and his skin like it had grown teeth, but he didn’t shift his weight from where his hip pressed against the rooftop ledge because he knew if he did — if he changed anything — the moment would shift and he wouldn’t see it the same way again, or worse, he’d still see it and feel nothing, and that was more terrifying than pain.

For a fraction of a second, something flickered, a thought not entirely his, or at least not entirely invited. A breath not his own, rising like steam in a poisoned bath: Naruto looks more beautiful when he’s away from me.

The sentence arrived fully formed, as if whispered into his mouth by some god that didn’t love him anymore. And once it settled there, it was impossible to unhear, because it was true.

Naruto’s features looked softer when not folded by arguments, when not split open by shouting matches backstage, when not gasping from too much heat or too much skin or too many nights they said nothing while tangled up in each other like addicts. Away from him, Naruto was whole in a way that Sasuke had never known how to hold. He smiled easier, stood straighter, gave pieces of himself gently, without having to be asked.

I never learned how to be soft, he thought.

He tilted his head back to the sky, but it wasn’t a gesture of surrender, it was just to keep the tears from spilling.

Naruto laughed again, and Sasuke stood alone in the wind, high as hell, bones vibrating with something far crueler than withdrawal, and wished for a moment he could unfeel.

Maybe that’s what he needs, not the hunger, not the heat, not the fucking tectonic trembling that came every time they locked eyes too long or stood too close or said nothing at all because saying anything meant peeling skin back. Maybe he just needs someone whose ribs don’t rattle every time he breathes near them, someone whose gaze doesn’t flinch when he starts to unravel, someone who doesn’t splinter on contact like glass scorched too quickly by flame. Someone who isn’t him.

The thought grows the way mold grows behind walls, the way rot spreads beneath lacquered floors.

The marrow-deep, bile-colored thing that never left his chest even on the best days: I’m the one who splinters everything I touch.

It’s as mundane to him as breathing, as blinking, as the gentle tremor of his fingers when the high tips too far into the cold edge and everything feels like it’s sliding backward, folding in on itself like lungs collapsing in a drowned man’s chest. But tonight—on this rooftop that smells like exhaust fumes and cigarette ash and the stale sweetness of someone else’s perfume left to die on his collar—it arrives with the weight of inevitability, like something that had already been decided a long time ago, somewhere far beneath language.

Maybe it’s time I go.

A vanishing act performed too slowly to be seen in real time, just one city too far, one fight too many, one look across the stage that doesn’t meet his eyes anymore.

It isn’t the thought of leaving that makes him sway, that makes his pulse skip or the nausea roll back over his ribs like a tide that never stops taking. It’s the fact that no one would be surprised or not even hurt, maybe they would even feel relieved.

He thinks of Naruto laughing in soft light, the way Hinata hadn’t needed to hold him to ground him. The way his presence had been enough. He thinks of Ino too, somewhere in this building or out in the night, cracked open by a dozen wounds she’s too exhausted to bandage, and for a second he sees her face instead of his in the mirror of what he’s become, another high, another apology that comes too late. Another person he couldn’t love.

He wants to scream. It builds low, deep, something volcanic in his gut—not a scream made of fear or pain or even rage, but something worse. Loss. A scream made of loss so old it had become untranslatable, like a childhood nightmare nobody ever validated.

But he doesn’t scream, instead, he leans forward and presses his forehead against the wall. The concrete is merciless. It’s slick with condensation, cold as breath on steel, and it bites into his skin without apology. He stays there—still, spine curled inward, like if he makes himself small enough the guilt might forget where to find him. He lets the chill soak into him until the edge of the high dulls, until the tremor in his jaw stills, until the voice in his head stops whispering leave and starts whispering hide.

The venue hums like a breathing thing, wires pulsing under floorboards, stage lights flickering to life one by one in the low amber of pre-show quiet. No voices rise above a murmur, this is not the silence of calm, but of something thick and stagnant that has settled across the backstage corridors like dust in an abandoned room, untouched and unwilling to be moved. It smells of heat and hairspray, of sweat pressed into velvet curtains, of metal-tang anticipation curdling in the air long before the crowd even files in.

In the mirror-lined corner where makeup kits sprawl like surgical trays, faces are painted back on. It’s a ritual now—war paint over exhaustion, blush over bruising, eyeliner traced with the unsteady hands of people pretending their limbs aren’t shaking. Ino curls her hair without looking in the mirror, her reflection only something peripheral, as if it’s grown too confrontational to look at directly. The iron hisses as it wraps another piece of her, tendrils of smoke rising like ghost limbs. Sakura leans into her own reflection, lashes dusted thick, mouth set hard, fixing a false steadiness into place with every swipe of gloss. The scent of melting product clings to them both, saccharine and chemical.

Microphones are tested, checked, re-checked, levels balanced and voices counted off like heartbeats. Naruto strums a loose chord into the void, but it sounds hollow, like something pulled from underwater. His hoodie’s still zipped up to his jaw even in the heat, eyes half-lidded not from peace, but from the exhaustion that keeps returning like something loyal. There’s a stiffness to his motions, as if each limb must be reminded of how to perform.

Shikamaru kneels under a tangle of cables stage-left, fingers threading through them with mechanical precision, tracing current and fault lines like he’s trying to map a way out of his own head. The strip lights above him hum, flicker, hum again.

Hinata loads her camera battery without a word. Her station is the quietest—just a black bag unzipped, compartments neatly arranged, a lens cloth folded beside her phone. She moves like a ghost through the corridors now, never in the way, always watching. Her eyes hold more than they speak.

Gaara tunes his bass by feel rather than ear, fingers slow and attentive, each string coaxed into compliance like a wounded animal being led back into the cage.

Their outfits tonight gleam in the dim light—metallic accents catching gold along their shoulders, eyeliner sharp like cracked glass, boots laced like restraints. The look is curated, striking, ready to command a stage. But none of them look like they believe in it.

The stage calls and the crowd is starting to roar beyond the blackened curtains. The door clicks shut behind one of them, someone else flicks a cigarette out into the alley, a bottle rolls somewhere under a bench and clinks to a stop.

They move toward the wings like soldiers who’ve memorized their deaths, stepping forward because they always do, the machine doesn’t stop for ghosts. Pretending to be alive is easier when the lights are too bright to show the cracks.

The others have gone—soft footsteps swallowed by curtains and cables, voices already thinning into distance—but Sasuke lingers behind, a shadow stretched too long in a room that has begun to empty of sound. The mirror sits across from him, dim bulbs flickering just enough to paint hollows where light should fall, to catch the edges of decay the makeup didn’t quite erase. The smell of everything left behind clings to the air—sweet powder crushed into wood grain, the metallic tinge of microphone breath, the faint ghost of cologne from a shirt he hasn’t washed since the last stop.

The lights buzz above him, a low and annoying sound, but his body doesn’t register it anymore, it’s too full of other frequencies now.

He lifts his eyes.

The figure in the mirror doesn’t quite feel like him. The pale cast of his skin looks borrowed from someone colder. His eyeliner is smudged—one streak feathering downward like a falling tear, but not beautiful or cinematic, just careless and almost dried. His hair is pressed too flat on one side, sticking up on the other, and there’s a cut near his lip he hadn’t noticed until just now. The veins at his temple are visible under the harsh overhead bulbs, faint and blue, mapping the path of everything he’s let inside.

There’s a line perched on his tongue, something venom-laced and sharp, maybe a joke, maybe a curse, maybe nothing at all. The kind of line he might’ve thrown at Itachi a year ago, or muttered at Naruto after a kiss that felt too much like hope. But there’s no one here to throw it at, the room has gone still around him, like it’s waiting.

He just stands there, still, as if daring his reflection to break first.

Chapter Text

Now Playing: “Scott Street” – Phoebe Bridgers              

Do you feel ashamed
When you hear my name?

He paced once, around the back edge of the room, then leaned against the wall near the exit with his arms crossed and his head slightly lowered. The earbuds were still in, his gaze never landed anywhere long enough to register. Every time someone glanced toward him, they found only the outline of someone avoiding being seen.

The tray lids had been taken off and the steam was thinning. The food would go cold, the same way the dinner had happened—or was happening—but it felt more like a held breath than a meal, like the thing everyone had gathered for hadn’t been served yet.

The hallway’s floor was scratched linoleum, dull under the flickering emergency light that cast everything in jaundiced yellow. A set of rusting double doors at the far end led to the fire escape, propped half-open with a plastic wedge, letting in the faintest sliver of night air and the distant drone of a tram gliding down Prague’s wet streets. Outside, the metal stairs clanged faintly with the wind. Inside, it was too quiet.

Ino stood by the open door with her back against the frame, one heel pressed flat to the concrete ledge, the other resting behind it like a dancer forgetting the choreography. Her jacket was thin, something she’d thrown on for the sake of movement more than warmth, and it hung open in front, revealing the fine tremble of her collarbones as she breathed in slow, stretched rhythms. Her fingers held the cigarette barely remembering to bring it to her lips. The smoke curled away from her face, thin and bitter, catching in the fringe of her hair. Her makeup was a little smudged, not enough to ruin the look—just enough to mark time.

Sasuke was slouched against the opposite wall, seated on a folding amp case someone had left behind, his body folded inward slightly as if to shield something no one could see. His hair was messy, the fringe falling into his eyes, and his shirt was stained dark at the hem like he’d leaned into something wet earlier and hadn’t noticed. One hand rested loosely between his knees, fingers twitching in time with nothing. The other held his vape, unlit. His pupils were too wide for the light in here, the irises swimming with something that made everything look slower than it was.

There had been a time when Ino would have rolled her eyes at him first, nudged his leg with the toe of her boot and forced something stupid into the quiet just to make it feel human again. There had been a time when Sasuke would’ve looked up at her without flinching, and the shape of her mouth alone would’ve told him everything he needed to know.

But that wasn’t now, now her jaw was too tight, and his eyes kept flicking sideways instead of holding. Now there was something splintered in the air between them, something not-quite-said for too many nights in a row, and it hung low like a gas leak.

“You’re shaking,” Sasuke said eventually, not looking at her.

Ino blinked, her hand paused halfway to her mouth, cigarette ash trembling but intact.

“I know,” she said, voice low, not self-conscious but self-aware, like someone naming a stain they didn’t intend to clean. Her other hand reached into her coat pocket, pulling out a crumpled wrapper of gum or a half-melted lip balm she forgot to put on. She tucked it back in without doing anything with it. “It’ll stop in a minute.”

Sasuke nodded, more to himself than her. His jaw worked slightly, tension blooming just under the surface, the kind that came with too many nights awake and not enough clean breath. His hand raised the vape to his mouth, paused, then dropped it again. The click of the plastic against his ring scraped the quiet.

“You shouldn’t be smoking in this condition,” he muttered, voice flat but weirdly not cruel.

“Neither should you.”

The cigarette burned steadily in her hand, she didn’t take another drag.

The sounds outside were muffled—someone shouting drunkenly in Czech a block away, the distant grind of something mechanical, a gull’s cry pulled too far inland. Inside, the only sound was the buzz of the emergency light above them, like it was trying to remind them the room still existed.

“I miss when you used to tell me things,” Ino said, finally, her voice the soft kind of slurred that comes from being high and exhausted at the same time, not fully grounded in her body, not trying to be. She didn’t look at him. Her gaze stayed angled toward the alley below, where a flickering sign half-glowed against the side of the building like a glitch in a dream. “Even the boring stuff, like what you ate, or if your headphones broke.”

“I tell you things,” he said eventually, but it sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than her.

“No. You don’t.” She exhaled through her nose, a laugh that never reached her mouth. “You show up looking like this and expect people to guess.”

He lifted his eyes. There was a flicker of something there, something sharp, but it dulled before it surfaced.

“You stopped asking.”

“And you stopped answering.”

Another silence, this one harder, thicker. Not a wall but a mirrored hallway of reflections, endless and wrong.

Her cigarette burned to the filter. She dropped it, crushed it out with the toe of her heel. Her fingers reached for another without thinking, then stopped. She leaned her head back against the cold metal frame, eyelids lowering halfway.

“You know I’d still die for you, right?” she asked.

Her voice wasn’t fragile. It was said the way someone might say the water’s boiling, or the light’s turned green, just a fact that might or might not change anything.

Sasuke’s head dipped. His eyes found her face for a moment, then the space beside it, then the floor. He looked like he wanted to say something honest and couldn’t remember how to use his mouth. He rubbed a hand over his eyes and didn’t answer.

The tram passed outside. The emergency light blinked once and kept buzzing as the hallway held them like a bruise held pressure, tender, aching, and still too far from healing to be touched.

Ino didn’t say goodbye but stubbed the second cigarette out against the rim of the fire escape with a soft hiss and flicked the filter over the ledge, watching it fall without watching it land. Then she pushed herself off the metal frame with a slow, graceless shift of weight, her boots scraping slightly as she turned. Her jacket slipped a little off her shoulder as she walked back into the dim backstage corridor, steps echoing with a careless rhythm that told him she wasn’t going far but wouldn’t be looking back either.

He didn’t watch her go.

The air tightened when she left, like the hallway had been holding its breath and suddenly remembered how to exhale, but the release wasn’t comforting. It left Sasuke hollowed out, the corners of the walls sharper, the light above colder. He sat motionless for a long time, not counting the seconds but feeling each one press against him like weights piling on. The silence wasn’t clean—it buzzed behind his eyes, in the blood under his skin, in the bone-deep ache that came with a high already beginning to sour.

His fingers flexed once on his knee, then stilled. He leaned his head back against the wall, let his eyes slide halfway shut, and let himself drift in that thin space where nothing was real enough to touch, but everything still hovered.

Now Playing: “Cool About It” – Boygenius

But I'm trying to forget about it
Feelin' like I'm breaking a sweat about it
Wishin' you would kindly get out of my head about it
Tellin' myself one day I'll forget about it
Knowin' that it probably isn't true

There was a flicker of memory he didn’t summon. It came on its own, like a glitch in the air, triggered by the angle of the hallway or the way the outside chill had caught beneath his shirt. It was soft-edged and poorly lit, like film left in the sun too long, colors warped at the corners. But Naruto was there, not the one he avoided looking at now, not the one with clenched hands and a voice that broke around the edges. No, this one was younger, less armor. Somewhere between seventeen and twenty, wearing some awful hoodie he never took off, hair messier than usual, sweat at his temple like he’d just run to get wherever he was.

He was smiling, beaming really—mouth open, eyes too bright, face so wide with feeling that it hurt to look at now. There was a half-laugh tangled in his voice, like he was trying not to make it sound too serious.

“You always disappear right when I need you most.”

He’d said it like a joke, but Sasuke had known better even then.

He felt it now more than he had before, the way it had landed, the way it had stuck into his head. The way it hadn’t been said in anger or accusation, just the truth, bare and blinking in the daylight. Naruto had looked right at him when he said it, tried to make it sound light, but he’d meant every word.

Sasuke had looked away, just like now.

He opened his eyes and stared at the floor, where a scuff mark dragged across the tiles in a wide arc, like someone had spun a speaker case too fast. There were cigarette ashes ground into the seam, his own boots looked grey in the bad light. His throat was dry.

The walls felt closer. He just let the thought sink in, heavy and slow: I’m doing it again.

This time, he wasn’t sure he would stop.

Now Playing: “Into Dust” – Mazzy Star

Like two strangers
Turning into dust

It was late again, one of those indefinite hours that blurred somewhere between the end of night and the start of nothing, when the venue lights had all been dimmed except for the working ones, those flickering strips above the rear tech corner, the sad kind of glow that made everyone’s skin look worse and every object seem older.

The storage crates had been half-unpacked and left where they landed, the cables were a mess, again, and Shikamaru was crouched behind one of the subwoofers, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, coaxing a frayed wire into compliance with the same kind of concentration someone else might’ve saved for surgery.

He had the same hoodie on from the night before, one with the cuffs permanently stretched and one shoulder stained with something unidentifiable, his hair was loose at the crown, half-fallen from the tie. His eyes were drawn, not tired exactly, but strained around the edges like whatever he was carrying didn’t quite belong to him anymore.

That’s how Sakura found him, she was just walking, or avoiding walking anywhere that would require pretending she had something to offer.

“What should we do, Shika?”

The question had been waiting inside her chest and finally slipped free.

Shikamaru didn’t look up right away, he twisted the wire, checked the signal through the console, let out a slow breath through his nose. Only then did he sit back on his heels, hands falling into his lap, gaze lifted to her like he was already tired of the answer he hadn’t given yet.

“I don’t know,” he said, voice even. “You think I’ve been rewiring this same monitor input every day for fun?”

Sakura let out a short sound, she lowered herself to sit on the edge of a gear case, letting her arms fall to her sides. Her boots made a muted clack against the metal.

“I’m tired,” she said finally. The words felt small. Real. “Like… not just tonight. Just. Tired.”

Shikamaru nodded once. His shoulders slumped more like agreement than exhaustion.

“Figured that out a while ago,” he said. “You’re not the only one.”

There was a pause, just enough space for the truth to settle in the room without needing to fight for space.

“They don’t listen to us,” she said, not as a complaint, just a conclusion. “Not really.”

Shikamaru rubbed the side of his face, palm dragging across stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave. “They’re not supposed to,” he said. “They’re not built to.”

He looked at her more directly.

“I figured out a long time ago,” he added, “that we’re powerless in front of them. All of us. You think it’s hard to stop a fire when it’s already burning, try stopping one that wants to be.”

Sakura tilted her head, eyes trailing over the dark corners of the backstage area.

“That’s the thing,” she said, after a while. “I used to think that if people were self-destructing, and you didn’t pull them out, then you were part of the reason they crashed.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “But I’m not pulling anyone out.”

The quiet came again, but it carried something heavier this time.

“I think—” she began, then stopped. Her throat tightened. She ran a hand through her hair, rougher than she meant to, then tried again. “I think I’ve become the kind of person I used to hate. The ones who stand around saying ‘they’ll figure it out’ when someone’s bleeding all over the floor.”

Shikamaru exhaled. “You’re not that.”

“Aren’t I?”

“C’mon, you’re just tired.”

She looked at him, eyes narrowed like she wanted to believe it but couldn’t quite. “So what, that excuses it?”

“No,” he said, shrugging. “But it explains it.”

They sat like that a while, both of them bent under the same weight, not leaning on each other, not confessing in any dramatic way, just letting the edges fray a little. Letting the pressure release in small cracks.

Shikamaru leaned back against the wall, legs stretched out now, head tipping to the side to rest on the concrete.

“I don’t think we’re built for this either,” he said, not looking at her. “Holding them together.”

Sakura pulled her knees up slightly, arms resting across them.

“I think we tried,” she said.

“Trying’s not enough sometimes.”

“No,” she agreed. “But it’s all I’ve got.”

He nodded, she watched the way his eyes slipped shut for a few seconds at a time, like someone stealing rest without asking permission.

Now Playing: “If You Lie Down With Me” – Lana Del Rey

Once, twice, three times the guy, I
Ever thought I would meet, so

The hallway was barely lit, one sickly bulb stuttering above the emergency exit like it couldn’t quite commit to staying alive. The shadows were deep here—cool and uneven—and the air had a strange taste to it, something like dust and disinfectant and the cheap metal of backstage rails. Ino’s heel caught on a folded cable as she stumbled out, coat slipping off her shoulder, one strap of her dress digging into her collarbone like punishment.

The cold bit at her knees, bare and bruised from nothing she remembered. Her breath fogged faintly in front of her as she leaned her shoulder against the wall, eyes glassy, pulse stuttering in her throat. Her fingers—clumsy from whatever she’d taken, she’d lost track—couldn’t find her lighter, so she gave up. It wasn’t what she needed anyway.

Neji was already too close, somehow—like he’d been following her steps before she took them. He wore all black again, collar up, the edge of his coat brushing her arm like a ghost of something she’d forgotten she missed. He watched her for a moment, eyes heavy and unreadable, before tilting his head slightly like he was waiting for her to decide what kind of silence this would be.

Her voice cracked when she finally said it.

“Can you walk me?”

He nodded, and that was it.

She didn’t say she was dizzy, but she knew he could tell, her weight shifting in small lurches, her shoulder brushing the wall more often than not, the way she kept blinking too long like her eyes were trying to reset. Her coat dragged on one side. Her lipstick tasted like metal and she didn’t really know if her mouth was shaking because of the cold or the comedown.

They didn’t talk on the way to the stairwell alcove. The light above them was warmer here, but still too low, casting everything in yellow tones that made her feel sick if she looked at Neji for too long. He sat beside her on the bench like he had once before, in another life, when they weren’t wreckage.

She didn’t mean to say it, it just slipped out, slow and bitter-soft.

“Why’d you have to leave me that way?”

The words hit the space between them like a drop of oil in water, dark and spreading. She didn’t even look at him when she said it. Her hands were in her lap, tangled and unstill, nails red half-flaked off. Her knees knocked slightly.

Neji took longer than he should have to answer, but when he did, his voice was quieter than she remembered ever hearing.

“I was scared.”

That didn’t sound like him, not the version of him that left.

“I told myself it was about boundaries,” he went on, eyes somewhere at the floor. “That I didn’t want to sink with you. That I wasn’t the right person to help, but it was mostly cowardice.”

Her stomach twisted, but she didn’t move a limb.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he said, lower now. “So I disappeared like that would make it cleaner.”

She didn’t breathe for a second.

“You could’ve said that back then.”

“I didn’t know how.”

She looked at him now—finally—and he was doing that thing again, that Neji thing, where he looked calm except for the part of his mouth that was always trying not to shake.

“You always know how.”

“Not with you.”

Her throat burned but not in a romantic way. Her hands curled tighter in her lap.

“I hated you for a while.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t want to. But I really, really did.”

“I’m sorry.”

The silence that followed wasn’t clean or comforting. It was ugly and sore and still alive, but she didn’t get up, and neither did he.

 “You know,” she murmured, voice dry like her mouth hadn’t caught up to the rest of her, “I used to think I was hard to love.”

“Like, not just dramatic-broken-girl stuff,” she went on, her fingers picking at a thread on the hem of her sleeve now, nails scratching at the fabric like they didn’t belong to her, “but really—like, maybe I was the kind of person that only looked pretty from a distance, or fucked right. That if someone stuck around too long, they’d see how much I need. And I always… need.”

She let out a breath through her nose.

“And I used to hide it better. Back then, when we were… whatever the hell we were.”

 “You know what’s funny? I don’t even blame you for leaving. I mean—I do. God, I do. But I get it. You saw what was coming, you saw me getting messier, and you were smarter than me. You always were.”

Her voice cracked a little there.

“I always wait too long to ask for help,” she said, eyes glinting now, unfocused. “Like I think if I keep being good, if I keep holding it together with duct tape and compliments and mascara, someone will just offer like they’ll see it, see me. And then… when they don’t…”

Her lips pressed together, her knuckles were white against the edge of the bench now.

“When they don’t, I get loud, or cold. I kiss someone I shouldn’t, I disappear for three days. And everyone just lets me because they think that’s what I do, like it’s my thing. It’s like I’m supposed to fall apart in a way that’s beautiful and poetic, at least worth talking about over drinks.”

 “And you—” she said, “you were supposed to be different.”

She turned toward him fully this time, shoulders curling inward slightly, like she didn’t trust her voice to carry if she didn’t aim it right.

“You didn’t want to use me, you didn’t look at me like I was breakable, you talked to me like I had weight, like I wasn’t just skin. And for a second—a second, Neji—I actually believed I was safe. I believed that you could hold it.”

Her hand lifted, not to touch him, just to gesture toward the invisible thing between them, the weight she’d been dragging all this time.

“But you didn’t. You left, you fucking left like the rest of them. As if it would hurt less if you didn’t slam the door, but it still fucking closed.”

Her throat tightened, the rim of her eyes were glass now, but nothing spilled yet.

“And the worst part is—” she breathed in, sharp and ragged, “I just let you go, I thought that maybe that made me stronger, maybe if I didn’t beg, I wouldn’t seem like the kind of girl people leave.”

She fell silent for a moment, long enough for her pulse to slow and for the edges of the world to dull.

“I’m so tired of being left right at the moment I need someone to choose me.”

The light above them flickered again.

“I don’t even know what I’m asking,” she whispered. “I think I just wanted someone to know.”

The story had run out of tape, the air had thickened around her shoulders, maybe if she didn’t breathe too deep, the truth wouldn’t cut her all over again.

Neji sat beside her the way only he could: still, alert and quiet in a way that always made it seem like he heard more than anyone wanted him to, but something in his posture had changed by the time she was finished, something minute, like the angle of his body had tilted just slightly toward hers without crossing the invisible line she’d drawn.

When her voice went quiet again and her fingers stilled and her shoulders dropped just a little too far to hold themselves up, he exhaled.

“You never needed to ask for help.”

His hand came to hover for half a second at her elbow—not touching, just there, a suggestion—and then he pulled it back.

“Come on,” he said, quietly. “Let me walk you.”

Ino nodded, eyes burning without spilling over, and stood like her body had remembered how to move only by watching his. She didn’t fix her coat but walked beside him like a ghost of herself, silent except for the soft drag of her heels and the quiet rhythm of his boots.

They took the longer hallway, the one that wrapped behind the stage, where the light was even dimmer and the plaster was peeling in strips beneath an old mural that no one had bothered to repaint, the kind of hall you only noticed when you had nothing else left to do.

Neji didn’t say much. He didn’t have to fill the space with reassurances or apologies.

Ino glanced at him once, eyes unfocused, her voice rough like it had been filed down from the inside.

“You don’t have to do this out of guilt.”

“I’m not.”

Her room wasn’t far, just one of the smaller ones the venue had assigned for overnight stays, bare and impersonal, the kind of place where the sheets always smelled like bleach and someone else’s perfume. She reached into her coat pocket with shaking fingers, fumbled the keycard once, caught it against the wall. Neji didn’t move to help but gave her space to fail and recover, like he always had.

The door clicked open and the room behind it was dark, she stepped in, stopped just over the threshold.

She didn’t turn around at first, just stood with her back to him, fingers still gripping the keycard like it might melt if she let it go.

“Will you stay?”

“For a while,” he said.

She stepped back, just enough to let him in.

For once, she needed someone to choose her.

Now Playing: “Your Hand in Mine” – Explosions In the Sky

 [Voicemail – 2 years ago]

“Hey. It’s me. I know it’s late. I just—never mind. Hope you’re doing okay.”

[Unsent text – draft folder]

do you think if i disappeared this time

anyone would bother knocking

[Voicemail – 1 year ago]

“I saw something on the street today that reminded me of you. That bench we used to sit at, I don’t know why I’m saying this. I guess it’s just… I don’t talk to anyone who remembers that version of me.”

[Unsent voice memo – muffled wind, her voice shaking]

“I tried being soft again and it didn’t work, thought you should know.”

[Text – never delivered]

still remember what your hands felt like the night you left.

i don’t blame you, not anymore.

maybe just a little.

[Voicemail – recent, distorted]

“You said you weren’t the right person to help me. Maybe that was true, but you could’ve at least stayed until the worst part passed.”

[Voicemail]

“Neji… I think I just wanted you to see me. Not fix me. Just—see me.”

[Unsent text – 3:41am]

you don’t have to say anything, just come back and sit down. I’ll be quiet this time.

 [Voicemail – from Neji, never sent]

“I don’t know if this is what you want. I don’t even know if I should say anything, but I think about that night more than I let myself admit. I think about what I could’ve done if I’d stayed, you asked me once why I left. The truth is—I thought if I stayed, you’d see how bad I was at loving people who need something real. I didn’t think I could hold it and I was right, but I still wish I’d tried.”

(...)

“I’m sorry I made you feel like leaving was inevitable.”

Chapter Text

Now Playing: “These Days” – Nico

Berlin felt like walking into something half-built and already crumbling.

The sky was grey without drama, low and colorless, the kind that didn’t promise rain but still managed to get under your clothes. The air smelled like cold metal and old cigarette smoke, filtered through layers of concrete and tramlines and breath. The van door stuck on the first pull—Naruto swore at it, then kicked it open with his heel, stepping down into a stretch of pavement littered with crushed leaves and someone’s receipt blowing in a spiral near the curb.

It was early enough that no one had eaten, late enough that everyone was too wired to admit they were starving. The street was quiet, but not still—low sounds, tires moving slow over wet asphalt, a dog barking two blocks away. The building in front of them looked like every other venue they’d rolled up to: square, ugly, tagged to death. One side of it was covered in scaffolding, plastic netting strung halfway up like a makeshift lung.

Sakura was the first to get out, hoodie pulled over her mouth, dragging her overnight bag behind her like she already regretted being vertical. Sai followed, still sketching something in his palm with a smudged pencil stub. Shikamaru lit a cigarette and offered it to no one.

Naruto looked around and said, “Wow. Love what they’ve done with the vibe.”

Temari shot him a look. “You say that every city.”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “And I always mean it.”

Inside, the venue was still locked. Gaara sat down on a nearby amp case without asking, hoodie up, eyes already closed. Ino leaned against the van door, arms crossed, chewing her lip. She hadn’t spoken since they crossed the border that morning. Itachi was on the phone with someone—maybe the venue manager, maybe Yamato—his tone clipped, too quiet to track.

Sasuke hadn’t gotten out yet, he was still in the backseat, eyes closed, headphones in, though nothing was playing. Naruto leaned against the van door and knocked once.

“You dead back there?”

No answer.

He waited, then knocked again lighter this time.

“Come on. We’re here.”

The door opened slow, Sasuke stepped down with his hoodie half-zipped. He looked like he hadn’t slept, Naruto didn’t ask.

The others started unloading gear. Voices blurred—half-invented plans about breakfast, a fight over which room had better wifi, Sakura insisting she was going to nap for twenty minutes and not a second longer.

Berlin had that effect, everything felt temporary and unspecific like you’d woken up in the middle of someone else’s week.

Naruto rolled his shoulders and looked up at the flat sky. “Feels weird here.”

The venue wasn’t much, not at first glance, just another converted hall with too many wires taped to the floor and a slightly crooked banner peeling from the back wall, the corners curling inward like the room was exhaling slowly.

Outside, the air tasted like static and bus exhaust. Inside, it was still waking up with cables being dragged, lights humming as they warmed to life, the smell of metal and floor polish and yesterday’s noise still clinging to the corners.

Itachi stood near the side entrance, shoulder grazing the edge of a half-unloaded amp case, arms folded loosely across his chest. His phone buzzed once in his back pocket, then stopped. Across the main floor, Sasuke was walking a line—head down, checking something on his phone, earbuds slung around his neck, unreadable in that familiar way that made Itachi feel like he was watching a reel of something looping behind glass.

Yamato was beside him “How bad is it really?”

Itachi exhaled slowly, the air leaving him too easily.

“Worse than it looks,”

Itachi was watching Sasuke drift toward the far speaker rack, pausing to respond to Naruto, maybe—he didn’t turn enough to show it. His hands moved while he spoke. Brief, sharp gestures, half impatient, half too tired to finish a sentence.

How many funerals, he thought, does it take before you stop hearing the snare hits in the eulogy?

That’s what it always came back to—someone’s song played too loud over a black suit and a grief that never stayed inside the key. Someone’s face too young in a photo frame. Someone’s brother at the back of the room, not looking at the casket, but at the floor.

He let his eyes follow Sasuke’s outline, sharp shoulders, too-thin frame, the way his left sleeve was bunched where it had been tugged too many times.

He had just already buried too many of them.

Now Playing: “Dreamers Wake” – Rival Consoles

The venue didn’t echo with lively sounds like others had. Maybe it was the velvet drapes tacked to the side walls or the thick old carpeting under the stage risers, none of it pristine, but all of it heavy with sound. Berlin’s bones were old, Itachi thought, the kind of old that swallowed noise instead of bouncing it back, which made everything feel quieter than it really was. As if the room already knew too much and didn’t need to be told again.

The band was in the middle of setup, but it wasn’t moving the way it used to.

Shikamaru was on his knees by the pedalboard, checking every port like he didn’t trust the lights, jaw tight, not speaking unless someone asked something twice. Temari hovered nearby, scrolling through a setlist on her phone, flipping back and forth like the right order could hold them all together. Her nails were bitten down, that was new.

Sakura tapped her mic once, then again, then gave a sharp glance toward the tech at the board. “Still cutting,” she said, voice flat, the way she spoke when she’d stopped hoping it would be fixed. There was eyeliner smeared at the corner of one eye, no one told her.

Ino was seated on the edge of the low stage wall, one leg dangling, the other bent up to her chest, heel against the wood. She hadn’t said anything since they arrived, just nodded when asked where she wanted her monitor. Her lips were slightly parted, like she might ask for a cigarette and then forgot why. Her eyes didn’t move much.

Naruto was moving too much, plugging and unplugging his guitar, checking the same dial four times, adjusting the strap like it was new. His hoodie was wrinkled, his hair still damp from a rushed shower, his voice louder than necessary—but not in a joyful way. There was a shine behind his eyes that hadn’t been there before, or maybe it had, and it just wasn’t hiding anymore.

“You good?” Gaara asked him quietly once, from the other side of the amp stack.

Naruto nodded, said “Yeah,” but it came out automatic, like a formality he didn’t believe in.

Sasuke was already set up, already wired in, his synth tested, volume leveled, earbud cords trailing down his back like thread he didn’t want anyone to follow. His head was slightly bowed, adjusting something on the interface, maybe nothing at all. His foot tapped once every few seconds, barely audible.

Itachi sat near the edge of the crowd seats, arms crossed, watching without blinking. Yamato leaned beside him on the railing, murmuring something about blown channels. Kakashi was quiet, lips pursed behind his mask, eyes tracking the way Sakura’s shoulders had curled inward like a box shutting itself.

Someone had spilled energy drink on the vinyl couch.

They were each tuned to a different key, and for the first time in a long time, no one was adjusting.

They didn’t file onstage so much as drift fragmented, out of sync, each pulled by something separate but still walking toward the same flood of light. The Berlin crowd roared up to meet them, not loud enough to swallow anything, but loud enough to pretend they didn’t notice how off everything felt. Lights spun overhead, not dramatic, just warm and amber, like dusk caught in motion. The room was packed, thick with sweat and anticipation and the ghost of smoke.

Naruto stepped up first, as always, not because he was ready but because someone had to. He offered a grin to the crowd that didn’t reach his eyes, said something off-mic to Sakura. She half-nodded anyway, twisting her drumstick between fingers that hadn’t stopped tapping since they arrived. Her bangs were flat against her forehead with heat. The tension in her neck betrayed the strain—she was here, but not comfortable, not like she used to be.

Sasuke took his place wordlessly, settling at his station, shoulders curved inward like he was folding into himself before the first note even hit. The cables at his feet looked tangled, even if they weren’t. His fingers hovered just above the keys, still, like they were waiting to remember what they used to do without thinking.

Gaara adjusted his bass strap. His presence was its own quiet storm: unmoving, unreadable, grounded. His eyes flicked over the others as they moved into place, and for a brief second, they caught Naruto’s. That was enough. They were still doing this, they hadn’t quit.

Ino stood off to the side of the wings, barely visible from the stage, but present. Metallic threads stitched into the hem of her dress caught the light like static. One arm crossed her middle, the other cradled a bottle of water she hadn’t touched, her eyes stayed locked on Sasuke’s back for a long time, but when he adjusted the synth’s modulation and never turned, she shifted her gaze toward the crowd instead.

Now Playing: “Identikit” – Radiohead

A chord, low and droning, steady as breath. Sasuke, eyes half-closed, fingers already building a soundscape like he’d never left it. Naruto followed a beat later, thumb brushing the strings in a slow, dragging arc, the first riff raw and loose, like memory being pulled out too fast.

The drums came soft and staggered, Sakura holding herself back, restraining the power she usually threw in from the start. There was a delay between her thoughts and her hands, but it worked, oddly—it gave the track an unstable sway, like a floor that shifted under your feet depending where you stepped.

Naruto stepped forward to the mic, his voice cracked on the first line. He laughed, just a little—barely more than a breath—and tried again.

The rhythm caught, his voice smoothed into something low and weathered, strained in all the right places, edges frayed but still melodic

He wasn’t performing so much as letting it bleed.

Sasuke played with his head tilted, like listening to something only he could hear. Occasionally his eyes flicked up—once toward Naruto, who was sweating through the back of his shirt already, veins bright against the strings of his neck.

Sakura’s sticks slipped from her hands once. She caught one before it hit the floor.

By the fifth track, the room was vibrating, the heat pressed against their backs, poured down their arms, lived in the creases of their elbows and behind their knees. The floor pulsed beneath their boots as the crowd was rising with them, shouting, dancing, matching pace, and for a moment it almost felt like it used to.

Then Sasuke missed a cue, it was small, a synth loop that came in half a beat late. No one in the crowd would’ve known, but Naruto did. His head turned, just barely, enough for their eyes to meet.

Sasuke looked away too fast.

The moment passed and the lights faded slowly, like dusk bleeding into night.

When they left the stage, there wasn’t much celebration, just clothes sticking to skin and hands too numb to hold water bottles.

Naruto gave the crowd a wave, then walked off sideways, like he didn’t want to turn his back on them.

Sakura set her sticks down gently, like she was afraid they might snap if she let go too fast.

The side stage was half-dark, lit only by the overhead rigging left on low, casting long, angled shadows that moved sluggishly along the walls like ghosts trailing the last crash of sound. Gaara sat alone on the tuning bench, back straight despite the weight in his shoulders, the bass across his knees like something too heavy to let go of just yet. He held a cloth in one hand and wiped down the strings with slow, deliberate strokes, not out of care but out of habit—like his body hadn’t realized yet that the set was over.

The bench creaked under his stillness. His shadow shifted when he did, long-legged and narrow-limbed, stretching out along the scuffed floor until it merged with the crates of cables and the edge of the curtain.

Through the narrow split in the curtain, Gaara looked out, he watched the far corner where Sasuke was already walking away, hands jammed deep into the pockets of his jacket, the hood up even though there was no wind indoors.

Naruto stood a few meters behind him.

Gaara saw it as it happened: the shift in Naruto’s frame. He folded in on himself, like something soft collapsing under too much weight. His spine dipped as one shoulder tilted lower than the other. His head bent forward, not enough to draw attention, but enough for anyone looking close to know exactly what it meant.

Gaara looked down at his strings again, pressed his thumb flat to the thickest one, it didn’t vibrate anymore.

Now Playing: “Black Milk” – Massive Attack

The hotel was a hollow kind of quiet that followed them all the way from the lobby to the elevator—dim light caught in the carpet fibers, heavy shadows under artificial sconces, the kind of silence that didn’t comfort so much as expose every unsaid thing. Naruto kept his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, fingers fidgeting with a cigarette he hadn’t lit yet. Sasuke walked a few steps ahead, shoulders pulled in, face unreadable under the washed-out lights that passed over them floor by floor.

They didn’t speak in the elevator, the low hum of the old motor filled the silence, a framed evacuation map buzzed slightly on the wall. Naruto glanced at it but didn’t read it. He was watching Sasuke’s reflection instead—slouched, closed-off, his gaze locked somewhere in the middle distance like he’d forgotten what direction he was going in.

When the doors opened with a tired sigh, Sasuke stepped out first without looking back, and Naruto followed, the kind of space between them that could’ve been filled with anything if either of them knew how to start.

The stairwell door had a broken lock, the handle stuck a little when Naruto pulled it open, scraping against the metal frame before giving way with a hollow clank. The stairs wound up one more flight, concrete edged with rusted iron and old gum stuck to the corners. He didn’t say anything when Sasuke pushed ahead, just climbed behind him, the narrowness of the space pressing them into the quiet.

The rooftop was flat and unfinished, patches of gravel and tar-paper catching the faint shine of the city lights. A few ducted vents and satellite dishes stuck out of the surface like forgotten limbs. There were no chairs, no railing—just a low ledge that overlooked the maze of Berlin streets below, all car noise and neon blurs muted into distance.

Sasuke leaned back against the ledge with one foot up, head tipped slightly toward the sky. He lit his cigarette with the wind shielding his lighter, the flame kissing the paper quick before disappearing into the dark again.

Naruto stayed near the center for a second, then moved closer, not directly beside him but close enough that if he dropped something, it’d land between their feet. He lit his own cigarette slower, a sharp inhale before the fire caught, then exhaled hard, smoke trailing past the mess of his hair.

“I’ve been thinking,” Naruto said, voice a little hoarse, like it had taken too long to push it past the knot in his throat. “About the set tonight.”

Sasuke didn’t respond right away. The city flickered in his eyes, he drew in another breath, held it, let it out like it meant nothing.

Naruto kept going, the words tumbling now, too fast to catch all the edges. “You felt it too, right? The way we all—we keep looking past each other. Like we’re pretending the cracks aren’t showing.”

Still silence from Sasuke, but it wasn’t absent. He was listening, that much Naruto could tell.

“We’re good at it, you know,” Naruto said, turning his cigarette between his fingers. “The pretending. The performing. But the songs—they’re starting to sound like we don’t believe them anymore.”

“And that scares the shit out of me.”

Sasuke’s mouth shifted, just barely. He glanced sideways, flicked ash over the ledge, “What do you want me to say?”

Naruto looked down at his feet, the gravel shifted when he moved his heel. “I don’t know. Something? Anything.”

He laughed, but it came out brittle. “Tell me we’re gonna figure it out.”

There was a long breath where Sasuke’s fingers brushed his mouth, cigarette burning low between them, smoke curling upward like something trying to escape.

“Yeah,” Sasuke said eventually, but he didn’t look at him. “We’ll figure it out.”

The quiet that followed wasn’t peaceful. It was that awful, raw thing that clung to skin like humidity—something unrelieved, unrelenting, a silence made up of everything they’d stopped themselves from saying.

Naruto let the wind take his smoke. He leaned back against the ledge too, shoulder nearly brushing Sasuke’s.

“You’re a shit liar,” he muttered.

Sasuke huffed a breath through his nose, maybe a laugh, maybe not.

The rooftop was quieter now, the wind softened into something more like breath than weather, just the air exhaling around them in long, tired waves. The lights of Berlin blinked beneath them like a city dreaming with one eye open—red tail lights, the pale glow of late-night traffic signals, the yellow rectangles of lit windows smeared by rain that hadn’t fallen yet.

Now Playing: “Nothing is gonna hurt you baby” – Cigarettes After Sex

Naruto shifted, leaning his elbows behind him on the concrete ledge, head tilted up just slightly, cigarette forgotten in the crook of his fingers. The smoke curled thinly, barely visible now, almost pointless. It burned down anyway, like everything else.

Sasuke hadn’t said another word. He stood with his arms crossed, one foot hooked behind the other like he was halfway between staying and walking away, eyes fixed on something Naruto couldn’t see—maybe the skyline, maybe the shape of his own doubt inside it. He was always like that when he got quiet, like he was staring past the world into something he wasn’t ready to name.

Naruto watched him from the side. His chest ached in that way it sometimes did when he felt too much at once, too fast, too close to breaking. There was no clear thought behind it, no decision, just a weight in his throat and a heat that reached all the way up to his eyes without turning into tears.

And maybe it was that—maybe it was the way the air suddenly felt too thin, or the way Sasuke hadn’t looked at him in minutes, or maybe it was just the way something inside him suddenly screamed that this could be the last time, that this was the last time and neither of them had realized it yet.

So he turned his face slightly, enough to look at Sasuke—not with that desperate edge he sometimes carried in moments like these, but something quieter, a little more worn out.

His voice came out low, like it didn’t want to interrupt the silence too loudly.

“…Can I kiss you?”

He didn’t know why he asked. He never asked, he’d kissed Sasuke a hundred times before this, maybe more—on instinct, in the backseat of vans, in motel stairwells, behind venues with sweat still drying on their necks—but he had never asked, not like it was something fragile, something he might not be allowed to want.

Sasuke turned to him, a slow glance, eyes meeting his in the dark like he’d been waiting for the question without realizing it.

His face didn’t shift into anything easy, didn’t soften the way Naruto sometimes hoped it would. He just looked at him for a long moment—his mouth a quiet line, his hands tucked under his arms, his shoulders slightly curled like he’d been protecting himself.

Naruto’s throat worked and nothing came out, the part of him that made noise slipping under the surface and staying there, so he leaned into the palm without tilting too far, careful not to crowd, careful not to make a demand of it, and he let the scent find him, ash and clean cotton and that colder thing that always clung to Sasuke after outside, the metallic rind of winter air, a promise that never sounded like one. They were close enough to hear the small mechanics of each other, the click of a swallow, the fragile wet sound at the corner of a lip when breath can’t decide whose mouth it belongs to, and when Sasuke finally closed the distance it wasn’t a claim, it was a slow, exact alignment, a half-second of uncertainty that pressed its shape into Naruto’s chest and stayed there.

The first touch was hardly a kiss, more a question laid against him, the careful meeting of mouths that do not want to miss, and Naruto answered with the lightest tilt, a breath given rather than taken, so precise it felt like balance, and then there it was, not sharpened by hunger, not ruined by hurry, just the soft press that asked only to be allowed to exist. Sasuke tasted faintly like smoke dampened by cold, like the slice of lemon they never finished at dinner, like something that would fade if you tried too hard to hold it, and Naruto kept still the way you keep still under a hand that might go, the way you keep still when the body beside you thinks leaving is the only way it knows how to love you without breaking you.

Sasuke’s mouth parted a little and then closed again, a tiny correction against the corner of Naruto’s lower lip, and in that adjustment was everything he never said out loud, the apology tucked into patience, the promise he didn’t believe he was allowed to make, the warning that he would not stay and did not know how to say he was sorry for that yet, not here where the night could hear him. Naruto let his own mouth answer with softness rather than depth, the smallest give of lips that understood how to listen, and he felt it, the tremor through Sasuke’s fingers where they held his face, the nearly-there pressure at his jaw that could have pulled him closer and didn’t, restraint laid over want like gauze.

They kissed again, not deeper so much as surer, a second that lengthened slowly, edged with warmth and the hush of breath slipping between teeth, Naruto’s hand finding Sasuke’s wrist and holding it just above the pulse, not pinning, just keeping the moment from floating off the edge of the roof, and for a few breaths there was nothing but the small movements that keep tenderness alive, the careful turn of a head, the quiet exhale into another mouth, the soft wet of a lip caught and released, the way a body leans without falling. Naruto felt the place where Sasuke would end this and did not push it, he pressed his thumb where bone meets tendon, a steadying touch, and thought ridiculous things like this is what home must feel like when you have never had one, this is what yes sounds like when no has been living in your ribs for years.

Sasuke broke first, not abruptly, just enough for daylight to slip between their mouths, his breath a thin white ribbon in the cold that touched Naruto’s cheek and disappeared, and he stayed close, forehead not quite resting against Naruto’s, like the contact might undo him if he allowed the extra inch, like he needed the geometry to be exact or he would start telling the truth. Naruto could see the damp at the corner of Sasuke’s lower lip and the fine quiver of it, the way his lashes blinked too slowly, as if time had thickened around them, and he swallowed the words that rose, the easy ones and the dangerous ones, thank you and stay and I know, because he understood that saying anything would tip the moment into a shape it could not hold.

When Sasuke kissed him one last time it was briefer, a seal rather than an opening, a soft press at the corner of his mouth like you do when you cannot afford a bruise, his hand sliding down from Naruto’s jaw to the collar of his hoodie, catching for a second on the fabric as if to be sure it was really there, and then falling away. The cigarettes kept smoking where they had been forgotten on the ledge, the ash long and near collapsing, a thin gray spine that would break if the wind asked it to, and below them the city turned the light of distant windows over in its mouth and said nothing at all.

They stood almost touching, faces slanted toward each other as if to hear a sound only they could make, and Naruto felt the shape of absence gathering at the edge of the night, quiet as weather, patient as habit, already learning the route out of this moment and into the next. He simply breathed until the taste of Sasuke faded from his tongue and stayed behind his teeth instead, a warmth that would keep and keep until it didn’t.

Now Playing: “If I had a heart” – Fever Ray

The bass hits before the door even closes behind her low and pulsing, like it’s pressing against her ribs from the inside out, a second heartbeat that doesn’t belong to her but demands to be felt anyway. Ino doesn’t flinch. She walks through it like she’s walking through rain, letting it soak her, letting it pound into her chest until her own pulse has to follow its rhythm just to keep up. Strobe lights fracture the room into jagged pieces of movement, everyone smeared in flashes of pink and ultraviolet and electric green, laughter caught mid-motion, bodies losing their outlines in the dark.

The glitter on her cheekbones catches the light when she turns her head, sharp enough to look like glass in the wrong angle, and her dress—if you can call it that—is all cling and shimmer, silver-blue and skin-tight, like she wanted to look ungrabbable and ended up looking irresistible instead. It sticks slightly where her thighs touch, where sweat is already blooming at the bend of her knee. She doesn’t pull it down. Doesn’t tug at the hem. Just lets it stay exactly where it settled, like it’s meant to hug her like a second skin, like a lie whispered into the dark.

She checked herself in the bathroom mirror for too long before she left. Her eyeliner smudged a little on the left eye, and she could’ve wiped it clean, could’ve started over. But she didn’t, there’s something almost honest about a flaw you choose to wear.

Now, she moves like smoke through the crowd, light catching on the curve of her shoulders, her collarbones gleaming like marble beneath museum lighting. She’s high—definitely high. The vodka Red Bull she downed on the way here doesn’t mix well with whatever pill she crushed up and chased with a tic-tac. Her head feels loose, like it’s floating slightly above her body, and her mouth is dry, but she doesn’t slow down.

Movement is easier than thought, so she sways, her hips answering the beat on a delay, her head tilted to keep the room from spinning. Some bloke hands learn her waist in the confident way of men who have never earned things gently, his mouth comes too close to her ear and puts wet heat where she does not want it, and she presses her nails into his shoulder to steady the animal in her chest that keeps asking ‘what if we stop and feel this.’

They find a wall, of course they do, the club is made of walls, and he touches her face with the entitlement of someone promised a prize, so she parts her lips and angles her chin in the way that helps strangers believe they are winning, and the kiss feels flat, all pressure and no heat, she watches it from the back of her skull where the lights are quieter. Her body is cooperative, that is one of her talents. Fingers at his shirt, thigh lifting just enough, the easy choreography of consent, the ritual of being here and letting this happen because I cannot bear to be only in my head. The thought arrives that she could puke and still be pretty if she did it right, and she smiles against him because the thought is a little funny and a little sad, which is the flavor of the night anyway.

The wall at her back is sticky where a hundred other nights have dried and peeled, his cologne crowds her breath until it stings and the laughter she pushes up is too bright, too hard, the kind of sharpness you use to cut off feeling before it can name itself. Her nails bite his shoulder and she tells herself it is proof she is here, that the half moons she leaves on him mean something about the limits she still owns, but the proof slides as soon as she reaches for it, like sweat on painted skin.

The third-person voice keeps talking while he presses more of himself into the space she is trying to vacate. Ino Yamanaka leans, Ino Yamanaka breathes, Ino Yamanaka helps, and the verbs are so small they almost vanish. He thinks he is winning because she is obliging and she thinks she is winning because she is disappearing, the logic of a bad night that has all the elegance of a slow bruise.

When his hand slips higher her body allows it with the smooth precision of a trick well practiced, a hollow trick, a reflex that answers need with noise, and she understands even as it is happening that she is not protecting herself from pain so much as choosing where to stand and which muscles to tense, it keeps you from hearing the other pain that has no map and no end.

It is not erotic, not even in the way damage sometimes masquerades as hunger, it is administrative, paperwork stamped in sweat, a transaction she has chosen because it is simpler to be transacted than to be loved, it is the old lesson resurfacing that if the body is busy then the mind can rest, and the rest is rotten and false but it is rest all the same.

She tilts, she opens, she lets his wrist be guided, somewhere in the back of her head a door swings on aching hinges and she does not close it, she watches herself from that threshold as if she were a scene to be edited, a take that will never be used, and the watching becomes its own drug. This is what relapse looks like when you are pretty, she thinks, the careful return to the worst thing you know how to do gently.

The room thins around them, the crowd compresses into heat and elbows, someone jostles her and says sorry and she nods, she thinks of the sink in her bathroom with glitter dried around the drain, the stubborn little planets that will not go, the way she scrubs them until the skin on her fingers hurts and still they hold on.

She feels like those flecks, bright and cheap and proof that she was there even when she hopes she was not.

Now he wants her eyes open. He says look at me, and taps two fingers under her chin until she tilts enough for the light to catch inside her pupils, she keeps them open even when the kiss closes over her breath, a stubborn, glassy stare that feels like a trick she is playing on herself. He wants her quiet, he leans too close and tells her to save it, good girl, and she is not a girl and not good but the words slide in anyway and smooth the edges of her nerves.

He wants her mouth soft and compliant, so he presses his thumb to her lower lip until it gives and says open and she does, she parts for him the way a door gives when you lean correctl. He wants her hands placed, so he takes her wrist and sets it on his shoulder like a decorative thing and then lower, guides her palm flat to his ribs and says feel that, she feels nothing she wants to keep, only the damp heat of a stranger’s shirt and the slick glide of her own pulse trying to climb out through her fingers.

He wants her posture exactly, he turns her toward the wall and steps her backward with a press at the hinge of her hip, one, two, until her shoulder finds sticky grit, then he lifts her knee with his thigh and stays higher, there, and she hooks the heel automatically because the body remembers even when the mind refuses to, because precision reads as control and control is the lie she came here to buy. He wants her to hold still while he maps the edges of her. His nose drags along her jaw where perfume sits heavy, his teeth try the delicate place beneath her ear.

When she leaves, she peels off his hands and gives him a smile with no teeth, she does not offer a number and he is relieved not to be asked, the two of them practicing a politeness that keeps the night from having to admit what it is.

Air outside tastes thin and sour and she takes off her heels because the ground is less dishonest when it bites, a sharp little language of cuts and grit that says you are walking, you are animal, you are bleeding a little on the way home and that is at least real.

The city mutters at a volume that sits under thought and she lets it, the streetlights smear in her eyes and she does not wipe them clear, there is glass somewhere she does not see that teaches her arches the lesson again, and she carries the shoes by their throats and counts the blocks like beads, a rosary for the god of bad habits.

Now Playing: “On the Nature of Daylight” – Max Richter

He hears the lock before he hears her, the small metallic rattle he knows too well, a pause that stretches just long enough to turn into worry, the key fumbling against the bite of the mechanism as dawn begins to thin the night at the edges of the blinds, a pale gray that softens the room without warming it. He is sitting where he must have lowered himself hours ago, one ankle crossed over the other, a folder open and unread on his lap, the television dark and reflecting a ghostly version of the coffee table, and there is a second where he is not sure whether he turned it off or whether the room muted itself around him while he waited.

Ino stands in the doorway with the night clinging to her like static, hair tangled in a way that has nothing to do with sleep or joy, glitter melted into uneven islands that catch the weak light and make her look both luminous and ruined, the dress twisted as if it has been negotiating with too many surfaces, one strap losing its argument with her shoulder. She carries her heels by the thin straps, delicate things throttled in her fist, and the dark grime along the pads of her bare feet betrays the route home more honestly than any story could.

The smear at her collarbone that could be lipstick and could be something else, the dust on her shins, the way her body moves as if the angles have been borrowed from someone larger or smaller and do not fit quite right. When she tucks her chin there is the new shadow along the jaw, the bruise not yet decided on its depth, and at the turn of her hip another bloom, purple just beginning to speak through skin, not placed like an ornament, not hidden with strategy, only present, evidence in a language people pretend not to read.

Beneath it the thing that has always been there, the bright kernel that refuses to go out, shows itself in the smallest twitch of her mouth, the almost-comment she chooses not to spend. She skims past with that studied carelessness she wears when the night has touched her wrong, a shoulder acknowleding the wall as if the wall is old company, and her shape slips down the hallway with the silence of something both alive and not entirely here.

He waits until she is gone before he exhales, a slow release that finds ache along the way, and the folder slides a little on his thigh and comes to rest against his knee, the paper weightless and irrelevant.

He thinks of what speaking would require, the distance between the chair and the hallway, the necessity of a knock that she might not forgive, the first sentence that could either open a door or stamp one shut. There are words he could use, simple ones he has taught other people to lean on, but none of them feel clean in his mouth because he knows the shape of promises and the weight of breaking them.

He has, over years, reduced his faith to repetition and small acts of usefulness, the inventory of what can be done without drama, water, food, a ride, a chair in the doorway when sleep is dangerous, the measured voice, the refusal to abandon. Yet the hour between night and morning loosens old reflexes, the mind reaching for futures the body knows it will not choose, the wish to believe in the version of himself who knocks now and bears whatever follows, the wish to halt the slow unmaking he can hear when she walks, the wish to break the habit of arriving a heartbeat too late.

Chapter Text

Now playing: “Cherry Wine” by Hozier

Itachi balanced the paper bag in one hand and knocked with the other, the quiet, measured kind of knock that left room for refusal. The corridor was muted at this hour, carpet swallowing most sounds, only the distant whir of the elevator and the faint buzz of a vending machine giving the hotel its thin, anonymous pulse. For a moment there was nothing, then he heard the soft scuff of boots against carpet and the chain in his chest eased a fraction, because at least she was moving.

The lock clicked. Ino opened the door just enough for her face and shoulder to appear, hair still up, eyeliner smudged at the lower lash line, jacket zipped halfway. She did not bother with hello, only held his gaze for a second that said too many things at once, then stepped back without ceremony.

“Can I come in,” he asked anyway, because he preferred the confirmation to the assumption.

Her mouth moved into a tired almost smile. “Yeah. Of course.”

He entered, letting the door fall closed behind him. The air inside was warmer and smelled faintly of leftover hairspray and something floral from her products, mixed with the stale neutrality of hotel fabric cleaner. A single lamp near the bed threw a cone of yellowish light that made the walls look less white and more quietly stained.

He set the paper bag on the small table by the desk, taking his time unrolling the top so the contents would not spill out. The plastic of the takeout containers had fogged slightly from the heat. He could still feel it through the thin cardboard, a soft promise that the food had not yet given up. There was plain rice, the portion pressed neatly into its box, miso soup in a lidded cup, grilled vegetables with char marks that still smelled faintly of sesame, and a simple piece of steamed fish, unadorned, soft and salty. Nothing that would fight her stomach.

Ino sat down on the desk chair without being asked, the wheels giving a tiny protest before settling. She folded her hands inside the sleeves of her jacket and tucked her ankles behind one another. He saw the way her shoulders were held just a little high, that fraction of an inch that spoke more clearly than words about what the day had cost.

He took the electric kettle from its base and filled it from the bathroom tap, listening to the rush of water and the quiet click when he set it back. The kettle’s red light blinked on. For a moment the room was nothing but that low hum and the whisper of the heating system behind the walls.

He unpacked the food onto the table, opening lids, letting the steam rise. There was a small stack of hotel plates, thin and white, and he used two, deciding without having to think that she would not remember to serve herself if everything stayed in its boxes. Rice first, a modest scoop, then a few pieces of vegetable, the fish cut into smaller sections so it would be easier to eat without effort. He placed the chopsticks beside the plate, close enough that she could reach them with minimal movement, but did not press them into her hand. The decision would be hers.

She watched him move with that quiet, intent stare he had come to recognise, the one she used when she was too tired to perform anything more elaborate than existing. Her mouth parted once as if she might speak, then closed again, and he let the silence stand where it was, unthreatening.

He poured miso into a cup, not filling it to the brim, just enough that it would not spill easily. Then he turned toward her and nudged the plate slightly in her direction.

“Eat a little,” he said, voice low but firm, the kind of tone he used when giving stage notes he knew would not be negotiated.

Her eyes dropped to the food, lingered, then rose back up to his face, searching for something he had not chosen to hide. He could see the way she swallowed before lifting her hands out of her sleeves and taking the chopsticks, the small tremor in the fingers that were not entirely steady yet.

“I missed this,” she said quietly, the words landing without decoration. “Your care.”

He let himself hold her gaze fully for a moment. There was a lot in that sentence that did not require unpacking tonight.

“I am always here,” he replied, and meant it exactly as much as it sounded, no more and no less. Presence was what he had to offer, he would not pretend it was more when it was already not little.

She took the first bite like someone testing an unfamiliar texture, chewing slowly, eyes half unfocused. The rice, then a piece of vegetable, the salt of the fish. There was a brief flicker in her expression, not pleasure exactly, but recognition that her body was being given something it had been quietly asking for. Apology did not come out in words, but he saw it in the way she glanced at the plate between bites, as if to say she should have done this herself, should not have needed someone to bring it to her. He shook his head once, a small gesture that dismissed that thought before she could try to voice it.

She kept eating. That, he thought, was enough for now.

The kettle clicked off with a small metallic sigh, steam ghosting up from the spout. He reached for the mugs, two mismatched ceramic things with the hotel logo starting to fade, and dropped a peppermint tea bag into each. The smell of it cut gently through the hairspray and the exhaustion, clean and sharp without aggression. He poured the hot water, watching the color bleed into the liquid in slow ribbons.

Instead of handing the mug directly to her, he set it on the desk within easy reach, turning the handle toward her. The ceramic was hot enough that he could feel the warmth through his fingers for a second before he let go.

Her hand moved, almost on its own, fingers slipping from the safety of her sleeves to curl around the mug. The skin of her knuckles looked pale and thin against the glazed surface. When the heat met her palms, he saw something loosen in her face, the minute release at the corners of her mouth, the shift in her breathing. She brought the mug closer, not yet to drink, simply to feel it resting there.

She exhaled, a long, quiet breath that seemed to come from somewhere much deeper than her lungs, the kind of sound the body makes when it has been holding itself too tightly for too long and finally remembers that there are other options.

He watched that, more than the food or the tea, and let the silence sit between them, thick but gentle, something that did not need filling or explaining. Feeding the body was always the first step. Words, if they came, would be less sharp with something warm inside her. He took his own mug then, standing close enough that they shared the same small circle of lamplight while still giving her space. The hotel room hummed around them, muted and ordinary, and for the first time that day, he felt the atmosphere in his chest shift from braced to quietly, cautiously present.

Ino gathered the plates and the empty soup cup, the soft scrape of ceramic on wood oddly loud in the small room, then walked toward the sink. Itachi watched her go, the set of her shoulders, the careful way she balanced everything in her hands, and followed at a measured distance, giving her time to decide whether she wanted him there beside her or not.

She turned on the tap, let the water run until it came clear and steady, then reached for the tiny bottle of dish soap. The artificial lemon scent bloomed into the air. She squeezed a thin line onto the sponge and began to work it over the first plate, movements slow, almost absent.

“May I help,” he asked, stopping just in her peripheral vision.

She looked up at him, hair falling forward a little as she tilted her head. There was a small, tired softness at the edges of her eyes, the kind that comes when someone is too worn out to pretend.

“Yeah,” she said, handing him the next plate and a second sponge from under the sink. They slipped into a rhythm without discussing it, shoulder to shoulder in front of the small stainless basin, Ino soaping, Itachi rinsing. The water ran warm over his fingers, bubbles sliding away down the drain. The ordinary nature of the task made the hotel room feel briefly less like a stopgap and more like a place people lived in, even if only for a night.

For a while they said nothing, letting the sounds of running water and ceramic and the quiet hum of the bathroom fan fill the space. Then, as she slid another plate toward him, something shifted in her posture. She drew a breath that seemed heavier than the others.

“You know,” she said, eyes on the sink, “with Sasuke, it has never been about me being better than him. Or him being better than me.”

Itachi glanced sideways, but kept his hands moving, rinsing the plate, placing it in the drying rack. “No,” he said, keeping his tone neutral enough that she could step back if she wanted. “I did not think it was.”

“It is not that kind of friendship,” she went on. “It is more like… we both ended up in the same ditch, and we tried to build a house there instead of getting out.”

He let the water run over his knuckles, listened.

“We did not meet whole,” she said. “We met already cracked. My stuff, his stuff, all of it. It just got tangled. He would say something, I would hear it through my own mess, answer wrong, then he would hear that through his, and suddenly we are arguing about nothing, or we are not talking for three days, or we are fucked up and pretending that counts as honesty.”

Her mouth twisted. She rinsed the sponge, watched the foam collapse.

“Then you add the drugs,” she said quietly, “and language just goes. You know this. You have watched it. You try to say, ‘I am scared for you,’ and it comes out as, ‘you are pathetic.’ You try to say, ‘I want to help you,’ and it comes out as, ‘you are ruining everything.’ You try to say, ‘I love you,’ and it comes out as silence.”

The words made a knot in his chest. He focused on the plate in his hand, on the way the water beaded and ran off the clean surface.

“I love him, Itachi,” she said then, and the directness of it made him look at her fully. “Not the myth, not the cold bastard he thinks he is supposed to be. Him. The idiot who forgets to eat when he is working. The one who pretends he does not care about birthdays but remembers every date anyway. The one who laughs on the third try because the first two, he is still checking if you deserve to see his teeth.”

Her voice stayed low, even, but he could hear the strain at the edges.

“I love him exactly like that,” she went on. “Not despite all of it. With it. He hates himself for things that I do not even put on the list.”

She let out a small breath and shook her head once.

“It is unconditional,” she said. “That is the word. I am not going to pretend it is not.”

The word sat between them, unadorned. Itachi felt it land in the middle of his sternum, heavier than it had any right to be in a simple hotel kitchenette.

“I have spent years running after his shadow,” she said, one hand braced on the edge of the sink. “Waiting outside bathrooms. Dragging him away from people who only like him when he is not quite there. Sending texts he does not answer, then answering when he sends one three weeks later like nothing happened. And he has chased me too, in his own way. Found me on floors. Sat with me when I was not making sense. Fucked up every apology and tried again the next day without even realising it was an apology.”

Itachi could hear Sasuke in all of it, the same patterns he had seen from a different distance, translated through someone who had chosen to stay close.

“Neither of us knows how to stop when the other starts falling,” Ino said. “We jump in after. It is stupid, I know, but it is what we do.”

She passed him the last plate. He rinsed it, placed it on the stack, turned off the tap. The silence that followed felt different from the earlier one, thicker, but not suffocating. It held something that had been named now, and could not go back to being unnamed.

“I have never expected him to be easy,” she said finally, drying her hands on a small towel. “He is not built that way. I never wanted him to change into some simple version of himself. I have only ever expected him to stay alive. That is the line. I want him to live long enough to figure out who he could be if he did not hate himself so much.”

Itachi stared at the water droplets clinging to the metal of the tap, at the way light caught in each one.

She looked over at him then, eyes clearer for having said it.

“I cannot be angry at him for being himself,” she said. “I can only be angry that he will not let himself be loved.”

He met her gaze. In that sentence he heard not only her, but echoes of his own years with Sasuke, the late nights, the slammed doors, the quiet victories no one else saw. Something inside him shifted, a slow, difficult movement, like a door that had been stuck for a long time finally giving a little.

“I know what that looks like,” he said, and his voice was softer than he expected.

A small, sad smile touched her mouth. “I know you do.”

There was no accusation in it, only understanding, and that made it cut a little deeper.

She folded the towel, set it aside, and walked back toward the bed. The lamplight caught on the loose strands of her hair, softening the sharp edges of her features. She sat on the edge of the mattress and turned back to him, patting the space next to her with a small, almost shy gesture he was not used to seeing from her.

“Stay a bit more,” she said. “I do not feel like being alone yet.”

His first instinct was caution. He felt it lift in his chest like a hand raised to say no. Sharing space like this could blur lines he was used to keeping very clear. He knew how easily care could turn into another job, another weight. The thought must have flickered across his face, because she rolled her eyes, something lighter moving through her expression.

“Relax,” she added. “I will not bite.”

Despite himself, he felt the corner of his mouth twitch. He exhaled, slow, and let the raised hand inside him lower again.

“All right,”

He crossed the room and sat where she had indicated, the mattress dipping under his weight. For a moment they simply shared the silence, the two of them facing the same wall, the same lamp, the same neutral painting above the headboard that had probably been chosen to offend no one and comfort no one either.

Then she lifted her arms and reached back for the elastic that had held her hair in place all night. The band snapped free with a faint sound and her hair spilled down around her shoulders. She brought her fingers up to her scalp and winced slightly.

“Too tight,” she muttered.

He could see the places where the style had pulled at her, the reddened line along the parting, the tension still locked into the muscles at the base of her skull.

“Here,” he said quietly, shifting so that he was sitting just behind her, close enough to reach, not so close that she could not change her mind.

She stilled for a heartbeat, then tipped her head forward a little, exposing the back of her neck in a gesture that read, to him, as trust more than anything else.

He placed his fingertips at the base of her skull, feeling the warm, taut skin under his hands, and began to work slow, deliberate circles into the spots where he felt the most resistance. The muscles protested at first, then began to soften by degrees. He followed the line of her neck down to the tops of her shoulders and back up again, the motion steady, grounding.

Under his palms, he could feel her breathing deepen, her shoulders dropping a fraction at a time. The bright, sharp Ino he knew from rehearsals and crises, the one who held everyone together with makeup brushes and jokes and a spine of steel, was still there, but now he could feel the human weight beneath all that, the tiredness, the stubborn loyalty, the quiet refusal to give up on the people she loved even when they made it nearly impossible.

“You do not have to be unbreakable right now, Ino,” he said after a moment, the words arising from that awareness more than any conscious decision.

She let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh, soft and frayed.

“Then let me be plain for a minute,” she said.

He could picture her expression without seeing it, the way she would be looking at the floor, hair falling around her jaw, eyeliner half gone.

“Stay plain as long as you like,” he answered.

He meant it more than he expected to. Not as a dramatic vow, just as a simple, steady offer: this room, this night, this space where she did not have to present a version of herself for cameras or crowds or even their friends.

As he kept working the tension out of her neck, something inside him loosened as well. He realised that he was not only listening to her talk about his brother, or managing another crisis, or fulfilling an unspoken obligation to keep everyone functioning. He was sitting with Ino, specifically, this fierce, infuriating, generous person who had just laid out the map of her heart with an honesty he did not often see from anyone, least of all from people who had been hurt as much as she had.

He found himself wanting, not in any dramatic way, but in a quiet, persistent way, to keep being someone she could talk to like that, someone who could be there when the unconditional love she had for Sasuke and the mess that came with it became too heavy to carry alone. The thought settled into him with surprising ease, as if it had been waiting for an invitation.

She sank back a little more, their shoulders touching now, her head a fraction heavier in his hands. The unmade version of her, without the armour, without the jokes, leaned into him as if she believed him when he said she did not have to be unbreakable here.

He treated that belief the only way he knew how. Carefully, attentively, like something that deserved to be held.

Itachi then let his thumbs draw one last slow circle at the base of her skull, then eased the pressure, ready to move away if she pulled forward.

Instead, her hand came back, searching without looking, and found the fabric of his sleeve near his wrist. Her fingers curled there, light at first, just a point of contact, as if she needed proof that he was still where she thought he was. She did not tug, did not cling, only rested her hand there, the weight of it small and steady.

He let it stay, made no attempt to adjust or withdraw, and felt something in his chest answer that trust with a quiet, surprised warmth. There was no demand in her grip, only permission, both given and asked.

After a moment she straightened, slipping out from under his hands, and turned to face him fully on the bed. The mattress dipped with the shift of her weight, bringing them close enough that he could see the details that got lost from a distance, the faint redness along her lash line where she had rubbed at her eyes, the smudged shadow of eyeliner, the tired pull at one corner of her mouth.

She looked at him, and he met her gaze without any of the careful deflections he usually used. In her eyes he saw the things he expected, the sadness that had settled there long before tonight, the exhaustion that went deeper than simple lack of sleep, the thin film of hopelessness that people like them carried when too many nights blurred together and nothing seemed to change fast enough. All of that was there, clear and unhidden. He also saw, with a clarity that caught him off guard, how fiercely alive she still was in spite of it, how much stubbornness and loyalty sat just beneath the surface, how much of her beauty had nothing to do with the sharp lines she painted on her face for the world and everything to do with the way she refused to stop loving people who gave her every reason to. It was the kind of beauty that did not flinch under this close light, that did not crack now that the makeup was half gone and the hair was loose.

They stayed like that for a long heartbeat, looking at each other in the quiet, the low hum of the room receding until it felt like the only sound left was the mingled rhythm of their breathing.

She shifted first, a small lean that shortened the distance between them. He did not overthink it, for once, did not run through a list of reasons to step back. He leaned in to meet her halfway.

Their mouths touched in a kiss that was more an answer than a question, soft and unhurried, almost chaste in how little it asked. There was no urgency in it, no attempt to pull something more out of the moment than what it offered. He tasted the faint salt of tea on her lips, felt the slight tremor of tired muscles trying to remember how to relax, and allowed himself to simply be there, to feel the way her hand tightened a little on his sleeve as if to anchor herself.

He drew back slowly, eyes opening to find hers already on him. Whatever passed between them in that look was not easily named, but it did not feel like a mistake.

She let out a quiet breath, then shifted her weight again, lying down on the bed without ceremony, body landing with the kind of heaviness that comes when sleep has been circling for hours without finding a way in. She reached for him almost immediately, fingers catching his sleeve again, giving it a small, insistent tug.

“Lie down,” she murmured, the words more suggestion than order, but she did not let go.

He hesitated for a second, the old instinct knocking once, asking if this was wise, if this blurred things that ought to stay sharply defined, and then he let that thought pass. The room was small, the night was long, they were both too tired for pretense.

He shifted, stretching out beside her on top of the covers, keeping the blanket between his clothes and the sheets as a small line he could keep for himself. The mattress dipped in a new pattern, their bodies now parallel, close enough that he could feel the warmth coming off her in steady waves.

She did not seem satisfied with parallel. With a slow, instinctive certainty, she moved closer, closing the remaining gap bit by bit until her side pressed lightly against his. One arm slid across his middle, folding around him with the easy familiarity of someone reaching for a pillow they had slept with for years, not a person she was still learning to hold this way. There was nothing performative in the gesture, no calculated seduction, only a tired human being looking for a place to rest.

He felt the weight of her forearm settle across his waist, the curve of her hand resting against his ribs. His own body answered by relaxing in places he had not realised were tense. He lifted one hand and took hold of the edge of the blanket, raising it enough to pull over both of them, covering her shoulders and his, tucking it gently around her back so the borrowed warmth would not escape too quickly. Her head found its way to his chest, cheek pressing into the hollow just under his collarbone. He could feel the faint brush of her breath through the fabric of his shirt, the steady, slow in and out as her body began to yield to fatigue. The hotel lamp painted a soft circle around them, everything outside that circle blurring into shadow.

He lowered his chin slightly and pressed his lips to her forehead, a small, lingering kiss that tasted of skin and a long day finally giving in. It was an instinctive act, almost automatic, the kind of gesture he had often imagined giving and rarely allowed himself to follow through on. Here, with her, it felt not only permissible but right.Their breathing began to find the same rhythm, an unplanned synchrony that soothed something in him. He adjusted his position just enough to fit her more comfortably against him, one arm curling around her shoulders, his palm coming to rest at the back of her head, fingers threading lightly into her hair without pulling.

Her legs shifted, careful and slow, until they ended up entangled with his in a cautious knot, not tight enough to trap, not loose enough to be only accidental. Neither of them seemed inclined to move away or untangle it. The contact was simple, solid, a confirmation that they were, in fact, both still here.

He let his eyes close, listened to the rain against the window, the muted hallway noises fading to a distant murmur. In the quiet, he felt the weight of her against him, the trust it implied, and allowed himself, for once, to rest inside that, without cataloguing all the ways it could complicate tomorrow.

Her face stayed tucked into the hollow beneath his collarbone, his hand stayed at the back of her head, and the steady, shared rhythm of their breaths carried them, inch by inch, into sleep.

Now playing: “Luxury Problems” by Andy Stott

The room had that hotel quiet that pretends to be silence but isn’t, the vent ticking a tired rhythm in the corner, the blackout curtains breathing around the window like lungs that won’t quite seal, the carpet holding onto other people’s nights, and Naruto sat on the edge of the bed with the minibar open on the desk as if he were airing out a wound, little glass bottles lined up like a parade he had already lost. The first swallow was sharp in the throat and clean in the nose and he waited for the old trick to kick, the thin electric lift at the base of the skull, the kind of heat that pushes the air out of your chest so you can laugh even if nothing is funny, but he could feel immediately it wasn’t going to land, the warmth breaking apart before it reached him, like he had built a door and the handle wouldn’t turn.

He tried again, the second bottle hissing like a small animal when he twisted the cap, sweeter this time, a fruit note that felt wrong in this dry room. It went down, it stayed cold, it did not bloom. He swore into the glass without sound, then took off his shirt and tossed it at the chair and it missed and dragged along the carpet and stood there with his hands on his hips, feeling the stink of the day coming up through his skin, the dry salt at his collarbones, the sourness where the strap of the guitar had lived for hours, the kind of smell that would make someone laugh and shove him in a kinder world, you’re gross, get in the shower, but he was alone and the joke had no place to go.

He drank like a person drinking water after a run and waited for the click of the old machine turning on inside him, the hum, the sparking edge that used to make even the ugly parts feel like they were his, and he got instead a bright headache at his temples and the knowledge that he had missed it, he had misjudged the timing, the rush had left without him.

He lay down, shoes still on, and the duvet gathered itself into a damp geography under his back, fabric sticking to the line of his spine and the bend of his knees, and the room narrowed into the rectangle of ceiling light that the curtains couldn’t kill, city sodium coming through in a thin gold that made everything look like the last hour of a bad day. He closed his eyes and the light stayed in there, red now, pulsing, and he could hear the building speak to itself in pipes and clicks, a far elevator bell, a cough through the wall, the quiet far hum of other televisions. His body felt too full of the wrong electricity, a slow buzzing that made his fingers twitch against the sheet, and he had the thought, not for the first time, that the good part was gone and what was left was the part he pretended he could handle.

Sleep came like tripping over nothing, a forward drop where his stomach lifted and then he was somewhere else, not a place exactly, more a texture, wet air and hot light and the metal taste you get when you bite your cheek and don’t stop.

His mother was in the kitchen and wasn’t, her voice the shape of what he recalled was her voice, he reached for it and his hand came up with a microphone that wasn’t plugged in, cable snaking away into a floor that looked like water but hit like concrete when he tried to move. The stage lights were wrong, too low, pale and full of dust, and every face in the front row had no eyes and still watched him, a tight little sea of mouths that did not open, and when he tried to sing he heard himself from far away like a recording sped just a little too fast, a thin boy voice cutting through a much bigger room.

He ran until he was in a hallway that belonged to no hotel he had ever stayed in, wallpaper the color of old blood, doors too close together, numbers repeating as if the building didn’t want him to leave and wanted him to notice, 417, 417, 417, and behind one of them a low animal sound, breath and weight and the scrape of a chair, and he knew if he opened it the person inside would be himself except not, except meaner, and so he tried the next one and it was locked and then the next one and it opened on a rehearsal space with no corners, all mirrors, a room that made his body too many, and in each reflection he was a step behind, moving late, mouth open on a note he could not catch.

He tried to find the amp to turn it off and his hands were covered in something dark and tacky that pulled his fingers together, he kept wiping them on his jeans and the jeans wouldn’t take it, it kept shining wet on his palms, and then there was a hand at the back of his neck that felt like a blessing and a threat, familiar, steady, don’t look back, and because he knew that voice he did, he looked, and there was no one.

The dream turned fast, like a car that forgets a road is ending, and he was under a stage instead of on it, ribs against grate, the underside of plywood pressing the oil from his forehead, cables hot, dust choking, the stomp of feet above him like someone trying to kick him awake from another life. He tried to crawl toward the light and a boot heel came down inches from his hand, another and another, a rhythm like a heartbeat that had lost track of its job, and he shouted until his throat tasted like coins and no sound came out that any person would recognize as such.

The fear found him cleanly then, and it opened its hand as he fell through it like a trapdoor.

He woke wet, hair plastered to his temple, sheets adhered to his chest in a way that made him tear at it with clumsy fingers until it came free with a soft stick, the room tilted a few degrees and then correcting, the vent still ticking, the curtains moving a fraction, the stink of himself now loud and whole, sour and human and a little sweet with the alcohol sweating out, the glass on the desk had gone over at some point and made a slow lake that was licking the corner of a folded city map, blue ink bleeding into pale islands, and the cap he had dropped was under the chair shining like a little lost tooth. He sat up and the bed gave the defeated sound cheap mattresses make, he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until stars lit and drifted and grabbed for his phone on the nightstand because he always did, because the screen was the only steady light that did not argue with him.

He thumbed the unlock and stared at the names he knows too well, the one he can call without looking, the one he won’t, the one he promised himself he would leave alone tonight, and his thumb made a slow path over glass that picked up his sweat and left it there. He told himself to get water and stood and did not make it past the desk, he told himself to shower and looked at the bathroom door and felt the particular laziness that lives inside certain kinds of panic, the one that makes you heavy and fast at once, and he sat again because sitting was a decision he could finish. Outside someone laughed and the sound came up through the fake quiet like a memory of a joke he might have told, and the thin gold light at the edge of the curtain did not change, and the smell in the room was his and not his and he let it be, he put the phone face down to stop it from reflecting his face back at him, he breathed until the breath stopped doing that catching thing, and he waited for the next thing without admitting what he wanted it to be.

Now playing: “The Only Thing” by Sufjan Stevens

He did not know when exactly sleep had taken him, only that at some point the steady drag of exhaustion had pulled harder than habit and he had stopped counting the shifts of her breathing against his chest. There was a memory of the lamp being on and then it was not, a memory of the rain louder and then distant, and between those two thin points his mind must have slipped.

He woke before the alarm.

For a moment he did not move. The room was dim, curtains drawn but not perfectly, a thin line of city light seeping in at the edge and cutting the dark into two soft halves. His neck felt the faint stiffness that came from sleeping in a position he had not planned to keep, but the rest of him felt held rather than bent.

Ino was still pressed into him, her face tucked in the hollow beneath his collarbone, breath warm through the fabric of his shirt. His hand was where he remembered leaving it, at the back of her head, fingers threaded into her hair, palm curved to the shape of her skull. Their legs were still tangled, not tightly, just enough that he could feel the small movements of her muscles when she shifted in whatever dream she was having.

He lay there and listened to her breathe, counted four of her inhales before he let himself look toward the bedside table. His phone screen was dark. He lifted his wrist carefully, enough to see the time glow faintly on the cheap hotel clock.

Too early for the rest of them. Not early enough for him to trust that closing his eyes again would be anything except pretending.

He felt the familiar weight of responsibility settle back into his chest, that quiet, steady pressure that reminded him there were other lives to shepherd through another morning. It did not erase the warmth of her, but it did ask politely for space.

He shifted his hand from her hair to her shoulder and gave the lightest pressure, not to wake her, just to test if she was already half there. She made a small sound, something between a sigh and a hum, and her fingers, which had been curled in the fabric at his side, tightened briefly and then relaxed again.

He could stay, he thought, for another minute, another two. The bed was warm, her weight against him was an anchor he had not expected to like this much. The thought of peeling himself away from it felt oddly difficult, like stepping out of a hot shower into a cold room.

But the minute stretched and did not change the fact that there were calls to make and times to set, and if he did not do it now, he would resent himself for it later.

He moved slowly, as if the air around them were thick. First he slid his hand fully out of her hair, fingers untangling one by one. Then he shifted his leg back, easing the knot of their ankles until his foot found the mattress without dragging hers with it. When he finally began to roll onto his side, away from her, she stirred more visibly, a small frown creasing her forehead even in sleep.

Her eyes did not open, but her hand groped forward blindly, catching his sleeve again.

“You leaving,” she asked, voice rough with sleep, barely more than a breath.

He paused, looking down at her. In the faint light her face was stripped of everything she usually used to prepare herself for the world. No sharp lines, no practiced angle, just a woman who had given too much of herself and was still here anyway.

“I have work to do,” he said quietly. “Bus call.”

She made a small noise that sounded like disapproval softened by understanding.

“Mmpf” she murmured. “You always do.”

He reached with his free hand and brushed a strand of hair away from her face, fingers gentle against her temple.

“Go back to sleep,” he told her. “You can still have a few hours.”

“See you later?,” she asked, eyes still closed.

“Yes,” he said. “Early.”

She seemed satisfied with that. Her hand slid from his sleeve down to the bed, relaxing, and the small frown smoothed out. He bent and pressed another light kiss to her forehead, staying there for a heartbeat longer than was strictly necessary.

“Thank you,” she said suddenly, eyes still shut, words drifting up from somewhere near sleep. “For last night.”

He felt the words land somewhere he usually kept very closed.

“You are welcome,” he answered, and let all the sincerity he could spare sit inside the simple phrase.

He pulled the blanket up higher around her shoulders, tucking it in lightly so the warm air would stay. When he finally stood, he did it in one smooth, practiced movement, feet finding the floor without making the bed shake. He picked up his shoes and jacket from the chair, carrying them to the door so the sound of laces and zippers would not disturb her. At the threshold he looked back once. She was already sinking deeper into sleep again, curled on her side, the imprint of his body still visible in the mattress beside her. The room smelled faintly of peppermint tea and her shampoo, the lamp casting a low, safe glow.

He stepped out into the hallway, closing the door until the latch caught without the lock clicking. The carpet swallowed his footsteps as he walked back toward his own room, shoes in hand, jacket over his arm. The transition from that small warm space to the anonymous corridor felt more abrupt than usual.

Inside his room, the air was cooler, less inhabited. He set his shoes down by the bed, placed his jacket over the chair, and sat for a moment on the edge of the mattress, listening to the building’s slow, mechanical pulse.

He knew from experience that if he lay back down, he would not find the easy, shared sleep he had just left. The particular calm of that bed belonged to the way she had been curved into him, the way their breaths had lined up without effort. Here, alone, his mind would start counting instead. Times, tasks, names.

So he did what he knew helped more than pretending.

On nights when the bus had an early call, sleep came late or not at all, a thin skin that tore if you breathed too hard, and he had learned to stop fighting it. He reached for his phone, for the rooming list, for the familiar routine of alarms and messages and carefully arranged mornings, and began, one small action at a time, to make the day ahead hurt a little less for everyone.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Group Therapy Availability for Touring Band

Hello,

My name is Kakashi Hatake. I manage a small touring band, and I’m seeking group therapy for the members. We’re looking for a trauma-informed clinician (or co-facilitators) experienced with high-stress teams, creative collaborators, and substance-use boundaries.

A few details to help you assess fit:

• Participants: 4–6 adults all over 21.

• Focus: communication under pressure, conflict de-escalation, relapse/trigger management on tour, grief/acute stress, and practical repair tools between shows.

• Format & cadence: 90–120 minute weekly sessions for at least 6–8 weeks, with the option for targeted crisis check-ins.

• Modality: In-person preferred when we’re in town, otherwise secure telehealth. We can provide a quiet, private space on our end if needed.

• Scheduling window: Late afternoons/evenings on weekdays; limited weekend availability. We are hoping to start as soon as possible.

• Confidentiality and logistics: We’ll need clear group confidentiality guidelines, emergency protocols, and consent forms. If you have a standard NDA for public-facing clients, please share.

• Administrative: Please include your fee structure (and sliding-scale, if applicable), cancellation policy, and whether you offer a brief consult call before intake.

If this is within your scope, could you send a few intake slots over the next two weeks, plus any pre-session questionnaires? I’m happy to provide a brief overview call to align on goals and ground rules.

You can reach me at +44 7457518843 or reply here. Discretion is appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,
Kakashi Hatake

Chapter Text

Now Playing: “About Today” — The National

“Hey, are you awake?
Yeah, I'm right here
Well can I ask you
About today?”

Morning rose, a thin unkind light crawling along the tiles and up the van’s side panels, reminding the metal of its shape, and the tired air that it could be colder.

The van idled by the service entrance like a patient beast, breath low and steady in the grill, a soft tremor moving through the bumper into the concrete. Naruto stood with his hands in his hoodie pocket and felt it in his knuckles, that low shiver, recalling the way a stage sometimes hums before the first note when the desk is already on and the monitors have begun to breathe.

No one was talking yet, which was fair because they had to leave their rooms at the Berlin hotel too early in the morning, the soundscape was small and ordinary in the way bad omens like to be. A cough snatched by wind, zipper teeth dragged through thick cloth, Sakura slid a cymbal case beneath the bench with the stubborn grace of someone who has spent too many nights awake. Temari’s lighter clicked and failed once, then found flame, her body turned into the breeze so the smoke would blow back into her mouth.

Shikamaru read nothing on a lit screen and scrolled like it might spare him a thought.

Naruto blinked heavy, hair flattened wrong against his skull in places, hoodie hood half up, a sleepy ache lived at the base of his jaw where he had clenched in the night without knowing. His stomach was the kind that noticed every smell, wet asphalt, coffee from somewhere else, too distant to help, perfume ghost from last night he hadn’t washed away, the sweet chemical kind that clung to carpet and shame. The van’s heat reached for him, then pulled back, undecided.

His eyes moved on instinct, the way they always did. The shape of the group looked like a gatherig only at a glance, it didn’t feel unified so much as a loose collection of people pretending to move in the same direction. This one, that one, that hat over there, that jacket, someone forgot something.

Sasuke would be last, because he was always last or first and never sensibly on time. A familiar irritation rose, like a spark that wanted to be useful, Naruto waited for the shape of a black sleeve at the edge of his vision, for the lean body sliding toward him with a stupid careless beauty that made people forgive him before he spoke. He waited for the sunglasses, for the unbothered mouth, for the glance that meant nothing to anyone else and meant too much to him.

Nothing moved.

He said it aloud before he could think of a better way to hold it in. “Where’s Sasuke?”

No answer reached his ears, a zipper finished his sentence.

The little sting in his gut arrived like a reminder, without sparing a single look, he turned back into the building with a speed that wanted to pass for practicality. The lobby had the soft, lukewarm odor of pooled radiator heat and overused cleaner, citrus so faint it felt tired. The carpet held last night’s footprints the way a mouth holds an apology it will not speak. The coffee thermos on the counter was full and unpoured and watching no one. The elevator stood with its chrome mouth half open, overly polite, and he ignored it, because he felt better if his legs were the ones solving the hour.

Up the stairs, his breath found the thin chill that lived on each landing. Third floor, right side, the hallway a tunnel of quiet at this time of day. The ice machine hummed like a bug in a jar, his palm left a damp crescent on the handle of 312 and came away cold.

The door opened just enough to admit his body and the small gust of air that followed him in. The room had the stillness of a mouth that has just decided not to speak, it was heatless. The curtains met too neatly in the middle, a narrow, disciplined seam.

For a moment he stood and let his eyes do it again, that counting, to prove to his body that it had been wrong in the parking lot and could be right now.

What he found was absence, methodical and patient, the drawers were clean, the bottoms showing their cheap laminate woodgrain with the scrubbed, impersonal innocence of dishware at a church kitchen. The suitcase not under the luggage rack because there was no suitcase. The little glass on the bathroom counter rinsed and upside down, a square of water trapped beneath it like a pressed insect wing. No toothbrush by the tap, the towel folded with the exacting edges Sasuke gave to things when he needed control more than comfort.

It had the look of an apology to a future stranger.

How funny he was the stranger in question.

The bed was made but not hotel-made, Sasuke-made, the blanket tucked in like a task done against anxiety, not for sleep. The sort of carefulness you build when the rest of you will not listen.

Against the wall near the desk the carpet pile showed a faint diagonal crush where the synth case had leaned, an afterimage.

The desk lamp flickered once with the indifference of old bulbs. The white charging cord lay coiled and useless, a small, stupid comma at the edge of the table, the kind of object that you notice when it is alone.

He heard the van in the distance through the window glass, that slow engine breath. He did not hear the voice he wanted, which was ridiculous because he had known for months what a room felt like when Sasuke was not inside it. He knew, and still there was the hitch in the throat and the hot sting under the eyes and the shape of a word forming in his chest that he did not want to name yet. He put his hand on the door frame and pressed, fingers whitening at the edges, his skin itched with sweat, somewhere behind his sternum a very old feeling woke like an animal. Hospital corridors in midnight light, Jiraiya’s little apartment when the air grew tender and wrong, that stillness that comes before a sentence nobody wants to hold.

He tried to be practical, he looked again for anything forgotten. A sock behind the leg of the chair, a receipt in the bin with something written on it that would give him a single clue. Nothing. Sasuke’s carefulness had been a method, his absence had intention. Naruto’s mouth tasted of utter shit.

He tried to imagine Sasuke in motion, not the leaving itself, which his mind refused to picture, but the small gestures that build a departure when no one is watching. The circle of a hand along the case handle, the glance in the mirror he would not admit to taking, the way he always checked the pockets of his jacket twice even when it made him late, the small frown that never made it to his mouth. Naruto saw those things suddenly with a precision that hurt. The private grace of a person you have looked at too long.

It should have made him kinder, it made him want to be unkind to the world instead.

The silence had all the power now, he stepped backward as if the floor had become unreliable. The corridor outside was the same light as before, that indifferent morning milk. His heart had crawled higher, trying to climb into his throat to look for him, he pressed his fist against his chest to keep it where it belonged, a stupid gesture, but the body needed a wall to stand against to.

Now Playing: “Doomed” – Moses Sumney

“Am I vital

 If my heart is idle

 Am I doomed?”

They stayed close to the vehicle the way people do when they’re pretending to be in a hurry, hands on handles, feet shifting, the small choreography of almost-leaving that keeps everyone from asking the one question that would make a lot of them roll their eyes. Sakura could feel it collecting between them, the quiet, and she kept glancing at the side door of the hotel as if looking hard enough might accelerate elevators or convince stairwells to spare a set of knees.

Shikamaru had folded himself into that familiar slouch with his back against the van’s flank, arms crossed, hood up to the chin, and somehow he made stillness look like work, eyes at half-mast and yet counting something only he could see, every few seconds his thumb hovered over his phone like muscle memory might call a number by itself, then thought would catch up and he’d let his hand fall, a slow breath leaving him in a ribbon that disappeared into the cold.

Temari toyed with a lighter she had no intention of using yet, cap flick, cap close, the little metallic click a metronome she wasn’t aware of, the cigarette waiting behind her ear, its paper edge catching a sliver of light like a decision she would postpone until it made itself for her.

Hinata had tucked herself into the open side door, knees drawn in, camera strap looped twice around her wrist, she cleaned the lens with a folded square of cloth, the tender, circular patience of it telling Sakura more than words would have dared, and when Hinata lifted her head to check the hotel entrance her eyes softened like she was looking through glass, shy of her own worry and unwilling to hand it to anyone else. Sai had found the least obstructive place to stand and occupied it with the concentrated nonpresence of a person who does not wish to intrude and so becomes a lighthouse, sketchbook closed for once, fingers worrying the elastic like a habit he had borrowed from someone and forgotten to return.

Yamato and Itachi stood off to the side in a pocket of shadow that the overhang carved from the wall, voices low enough to register as vibration rather than information, and even from the distance Sakura could tell the shape of logistics in the way their shoulders were angled, that practical exchange of how long can we wait or who do we call first and at what point does leadership become cruelty, and she tried not to resent the steadiness their faces wore because she knew someone had to carry that expression for the rest of them. She pulled her jacket closer. The zipper teeth caught halfway and then yielded with a small surrendering sound that felt louder than it was.

Naruto had gone in quickly and he had not been gone long. She repeated that to herself like a soft plank you test with a heel to see if it will hold a person’s weight. He’s not been gone long. It’s still early. Maybe Sasuke forgot his charger, maybe he is in the shower rinsing the chemicals and smoke from his hair, maybe he’s playing stubborn and making a point about call times. Her body was unconvinced, even as her mouth prepared the little sentences you use when boys come down late, those throwaway scolds measured to land like teasing and nothing else.

“Ten minutes,” Yamato said to Itachi, not loudly. It wasn’t a reprimand so much as an attempt to draw borders around the air. Itachi answered without looking at his watch, the barest incline of his head, and that restraint, as always, made Sakura want to shake him and also borrow his calm, a childish contradiction she swallowed because she knew it was hers, not his.

Kakashi stood a little apart, collar up, phone at his ear, voice even in that way that moves trucks and holds doors without letting the worry show, eyes flicking from the lobby glass to Yamato’s screen to the street and back. Neji kept station by the van door like a polite boundary, shoulders squared, hands bare to the cold, offering Yamato clipped reassurances he could barter for mercy.

Each time the engine dipped he pressed his thumb white against his pocket seam and looked, just once, toward the bus where Ino sat, then forced his gaze back to the entrance as if self-control could bring a body through glass.

Shikamaru cleared his throat as if waking himself, not eager so much as dutiful. “He could have bummed a coffee off reception,” he said into the space where optimism belongs, the sentence carefully unweighted, the kind of line you drop for the benefit of whoever needs it more than you do. “Or stopped the elevator for someone with luggage and we’re being dramatic.” He offered a small, self-mocking smile that insisted on being a shrug, then let it fail before it formed; his eyes kept flicking to the door regardless, traitor to his own script.

Temari let the lighter finally snap shut and tucked it into her pocket as if she had decided to be reasonable. “I’ll give them three more minutes before I go in and drag both their asses out by the hair,” she said, tone soft enough to pass for warmth and just loud enough to be heard by the people who required that kind of promise to remain upright. She lifted a hand to her ear and touched the unlit cigarette like a charm, then thought better of it and removed it, sliding it back into the pack with more care than cigarettes usually receive.

Itachi moved then, not far, just enough to shorten the distance to the van, the air around him always feeling slightly colder as if he carried the night with him by habit. “If they’re not down in a moment, I’ll go up,” he said, and Sakura nodded before she realized she had, because it soothed something in her to have that outcome exist in the world, a door that could open onto stairs and momentum, and yet she found her mouth shaping a reply that would keep them all from sprinting. “Let me go if you do,” she said, attempting lightness and almost finding it, “Naruto listens when I threaten to smack him with a drumstick.” It earned the smallest huff from Shikamaru, which in their language meant agreement, and Temari allowed herself an eye-roll no one would mistake for contempt.

The van’s engine roared, the low animal murmur that set little vibrations in the metal beneath her palm when she rested it there, and she realized she had been tapping a slow pattern onto the door without noticing, her knuckles counting beats the way drummers do when they are pretending not to count at all.

Itachi had already shifted his weight, Sakura matched him without speaking, that small forward lean that turns worry into movement, when the lobby door sighed and Naruto came through in that pale square of light like someone who had walked a very long time inside a hallway no one else could see, his face emptied out in that dangerous way that is not calm at all but the absence you choose when the real thing would floor you, he misjudged the last step, caught himself with a small jerk, and kept coming, breath too high, hands without a place to land, and for half a second nobody spoke because the shape of his mouth already knew what the words would be and there is a moment before a sentence where everyone you love tries to stop time with their eyes.

Sakura said his name the way you put a hand out to steady a person on a moving train, low and there if he wanted it, and he shook his head once, not at her, at the world, and when his voice came it was scraped clean of everything but fact. “He’s gone.”

The sound hit the group like a dropped amp, a thud that traveled up through the soles and into the ribs, and then everything that had been held in good manners blew open at once, Temari’s mouth already forming a swear that slid into the cold air whole, “No, absolutely not, what do you mean gone?,” and she was pacing without noticing, hand in her hair, fucking up the cigarette while lighting it and not caring, turning on her heel as if sheer kinetic offense could pull someone back down a stairwell, while Shikamaru stood up hard enough to make his ears ring and said too fast, all in one breath, “We call him, we call him again, we call every number he ever used, we check the lobby, we check the fire stairs, we ask reception, we split the floors, someone takes the elevators, someone the stairwell, we search the alley, we do not accept the premise,” and he was already thumbing his phone with that grim cleverness that looks like apathy to strangers but is in fact a kind of rage with a map, which cracked a second later because he hissed, “Damn you, Sasuke,” under the breath he thought he had under control.

Hinata made a sound that was half prayer and half breath catching on a curse, “Maybe he went for air, maybe he is around the corner, maybe he is buying water and a headache pill,” and she was looking at the corner like she could conjure him with courtesy.

Yamato had his phone out already, the manager face on, the one that turns chaos into lists, “We need to notify venue, to delay load-in by thirty minutes, fuck we need to do a statement.” and he looked at Itachi for the finality, the permission to act as the adult who makes cold calls while the children bleed, and Itachi gave it with the smallest nod even as his jaw set, because leadership in this family was pain disguised as logistics, because he had seen this before in a different sauce and a different boy and he knew the choreography of leaving, the neat room, the heat gone from the air, and still he mastered his voice and asked Naruto for the only detail that mattered, “Was there a note? Blood? Some more details?” and Naruto’s breath hitched in the middle, “No note, I-I don’t think there was anything else beside an empty room. He made his own bed, that I can assure you.”

Sakura moved closer and then caught herself, hands on the van door like she could press the metal until her hands bled, eyes bright with that hot helplessness that loves so hard it wants to fight a wall, “He would not do this to us, not like this, we are mid-tour, we are held together with tape and a gooddamn prayer, he would not cut the last thread, right,” and she was talking to Naruto and to herself and to the boy on a rooftop with his back turned, the refusal to be pulled back by love, the way the wind had kept the last word, and her voice went hoarse at the end because she remembered the first time she begged and the consequential humiliation of hope.

Naruto took a step like he might fall forward and make the ground hold him out of pity, he scrubbed at his face with both hands and spoke fast now, his voice broken, the dynamism of an animal in a trap that will bite the metal rather than sit still, “The bed was made the way he makes it when he is trying to be a good person, his case gone, his boots gone, everything fucking gone, like he thought if he cleaned the grief I would swallow it better, like he thinks leaving is a gift we deserve from him, and I swear to whatever you want me to swear to, I am going to find him and I am going to tell him what he is wrong about and then I am going to hit him and then I am going to hold him until we all get old.” The words tumbled into each other while tears were spilling out and losing into his mouth. the last ones cracked, and he laughed once without humor, the sound a cut, “He thinks he is the one who walks away and survives it, but he is ours and he is sick and I am not letting him fucking die.”

The bus door clattered and Ino came down fast, bare legs goosepimpling, oversized hoodie hanging off one shoulder, eyes already wide from the way the quiet in the lot had felt from inside, “What is it, what,” and she saw Naruto’s face and she knew before anyone said it, because she has always known the shape of absence, she reached him with arms out and then stopped just shy because his body said no touch yet, not now, and her mouth twisted with rage that looked like love, “You’re joking, tell me this is a cruel bit, tell me he is around the corner smoking and being dramatic” and when no one did she swore, the old kind, the kind you learn when you have been thrown away and had to teach yourself how to be mean to the world until it gave you back your name, “He would not leave you like this, Naruto, he would not leave me like this, he would not leave us,” and then softer, crushed, “Please do not let him be his worst self again.”

Itachi’s restraint faltered in a way only people who know him could see, a tightness at the corner of the mouth that meant every muscle wanted to run up three floors at once, tear rooms apart, demand an explanation from furniture, and he flexed his hands and made his voice calm again, “Yamato, route and delay, I will go to the desk, Shikamaru, you go upstairs and keep calling him, Ino, stay with Naruto,” and that last instruction had the softness of an apology because he knew telling Ino to stay anywhere was like telling a match to consider not being fire, and she stared at him with wet eyes and said, “I will do both, I will sit with him and I will rip the sky if I have to,” and then she turned to Naruto with the kind of wild gentleness only she can hold when the pain is shared and said, “Look at me,” and he did, as much as he could with tears swelling his eyes, and she told him what he needed in the exact rhythm he could swallow, “Breathe in, breathe out, , if you need to throw up I will hold your hair, if you need to scream I will make everyone else shut up”.

Naruto was having a panic attack.

Sakura, who had been trying to choose a shape for her fear that would not hurt anyone, failed and let it come through her voice because the alternative was a kind of lying she did not want to practice today  “I do not care how many times he thinks absence is noble,  we are going to fight for him even if he decided not to, and if he hates us for it he can hate us while alive,” and the words steadied Naruto the way drums steady a song that is about to fall apart, his shoulders came down half an inch, his throat opened enough to let air move.

They exploded into tasks because love for a missing boy has to live inside city traffic and venues and airline timetables and the simple fact that soundchecks have times, but under the calls and the plans and the footsteps there was the other thing, the one Naruto could feel like a second pulse, the vow that tasted like copper and youth, the old story retold with grown hands.

He tried to stand inside the work of the hour the way you brace a door with your shoulder when the frame is wrong, breathing in the smell of exhaust and wet stone and a sweetness from a bakery that did not belong to them, watching Itachi and Shikamaru vanish through the glass with the calm of men who turn panic into errands, watching Yamato talk times into a phone he hated and Kakashi’s small clean sentences appear and disappear like rules on a whiteboard, and somewhere under the calls and the plans and the footsteps he felt that other thing begin to thump, an extra heartbeat slightly out of time with the one he trusted, a thin fast rhythm under his tongue that tasted of metal and old fear and the kind of summer that made you older without making you wiser.

He kept his hands on his knees the way you do when you are pretending to sit by choice, tried to count the cracks on the sidewalk to trick his vision into staying wide, tried to listen to Sakura’s breath across from him because he has always found it when the room tries to take his, tried to be grateful for Ino’s hands where he could see them and Hinata’s quiet grip on his phone and Sai’s stillness that felt like a wall holding, and yet the space inside his chest kept shrinking by degrees, as if someone had begun to tighten a strap he could not reach, a bit more with every new piece of information that lived and died in Yamato’s ear.

For a second he believed, very sincerely, that if he stood he would be better, so he did, his palm sliding on the edge of the seat, his knees trying to remember what knees do, and the entire van seemed to tilt a polite inch to the left without actually moving, the way a boat leans when another boat passes at a distance.

Sakura said his name, once, the sound skilled and anchoring, the act of moving his head to find her face pulled the floor another half inch away, his skin cooled very fast and the sweat found strange places, the back of his neck, the small notch over his collarbone, the hollow where his throat meets the sternum, and his fingers did not belong to him for three heartbeats because they were busy trying to open and close around nothing.

The faces he loved were moving away as if down a hallway, soft and alarmed and unable to reach him through the glass that had just appeared. His knees bent without permission, Sakura moved fast enough to catch his elbow, Ino’s hand found his shoulder, he kept his eyes open because closing them felt like quitting but then they closed anyway, a quick shutter, a white flicker behind the lids like stage lights testing, and the last thing he could hold was the taste of metal at the back of his tongue and the faint sticky sweetness of bakery air that did not belong to them, the thought, ridiculous and true, that he would stand up in a second, of course he would, he always does, he just needed one more breath, just one, he only had to lift it from where it had fallen and then he would be fine, he would be fine, he would be—

Now Playing: “Looking for Something” – Paolo Nutini

The van moves like a low tide pulling at her ribs and Ino lets her forehead rest against the glass, the cold gives shape to a body that feels borrowed, the parking lot was already behind them, the word Copenhagen sitting somewhere near the driver like a promise she cannot afford paying attention to, Naruto sleeps the way children sleep after the world has taken too much from them, mouth soft, breath steady, his jacket pulled up like a fort, and the quiet of him does not soothe her so much as remind her that there are states of mercy she cannot enter, not today nor ever, not with her chest full of loose wire and every wire humming with the same thin note that states that he is gone and she is still here.

Shikamaru and Itachi have done the only decent thing left, they collected what could be collected without raising a fight, even though she would have, they came back with a checkout time on a printout, a polite refusal about cameras, a few clear sleeves picked up from the trashbin of his room that once held powder and now only hold some leftover, the information sits in her lap without weight because none of it is surprising, it only confirms the dull map she already carries, the one where doors open in the middle of the night and the air they leave behind smells like goodbye, and she wants to be angry that this is ordinary for them but what she feels is the slow sinking that follows an earthquake when the plates stop shouting and the house is still standing but you realize you do not have a safe place to stay in anymore.

Ino thinks of every room where a man sat and taught her that love has conditions written in very small letters and of every morning she has made herself neat and bright and useful so that someone would choose to stay, and the tally is not a list so much as a bruise the size of a life, father, first lover, the men who promised guidance and meant distraction, the ones who liked to be seen taking care of her because it looked like goodness, the ones who wanted her hunger because it tasted like proof, and now the boy who made hope feel like oxygen has stepped sideways into the familiar dark and she does not even have the luxury of rage, only the exhausted knowledge that she was not enough to keep the door from opening, that she is never enough to make anyone reconsider their favorite form of caring.

Her hands remember the bottle before her mind does, the small rattle answering the engine’s hum, palm closing not because she wants oblivion but because she wants a floor that does not tilt, she wants the volume turned down on the scenes that replay without her consent, the hotel hallway, the clerk’s careful voice, the unslept hours stacking on her spine, and it strikes her with clean cruelty that so much of survival is paperwork and travel and other people’s politeness while inside she feels like a burnt field where nothing grows, and still the van keeps its line on the highway and still the light gathers and still she has to perform the act of being a person among other people who are also trying not to break out loud.

She looks once at Sakura who has folded herself into the smallest possible space, at Gaara’s profile turned to the window like a saint on a coin, at the empty seat that should not be empty, and she understands with a clarity that frightens her that grief has changed temperature, it is not sharp anymore, it is a cold that settles and stays, it moves into the rooms of a body and switches off the lamps, it teaches you to speak quietly so no one notices you fading, and if she closes her eyes now she can see the next hours and the hours after that, the press, the drive, the stage lights washing everything in a false warmth, her mouth saying the words she always says, her hands doing the work they always do, while inside there is only a long corridor and at the end of it a door she has been walking toward for years.

She tips two pills into her mouth and swallows without water because the swallow is practice, not surrender, and the second follows the first like footsteps, the bottle disappears into her bag pocket, her breath fogs the glass and clears and fogs again, and she thinks that if there is a soul in her, it is tired of being called back to service, if there is a heart, it has learned to beat around holes, if there is a future it will arrive whether I am ready or not, and none of these sentences help, they only arrange the ache into tidier shapes, so she closes her eyes and listens to the tires unspool the road, and she tells herself to make it to noon, and then to soundcheck, and then to the hour after that, and beneath those small directives something heavier settles, a wish to be put down for a while, to be lifted out of herself and stored somewhere quiet, a wish so ordinary and so dangerous that she cannot look at it directly, and the van carries her forward because that is what vans do, and because she has not yet figured out how to refuse motion without vanishing altogether.

Now Playing: “Once More to See You” – Mitski

“If you would let me give you pinky promise kisses
Then I wouldn't have to scream your name”

The seats have always been too close, fabric warmed by other people’s heat and the kind of air that remembers last night, and Sakura folds herself sideways with her knees up and her arms around them not to disappear but to keep the pieces of herself in one place, her forehead on the cold of the window so the chill can speak to her nerves in a language that is simpler than fear, earbuds in without sound because silence wrapped in plastic is easier to manage than the kind that arrives naked.

The van settles and shivers as everyone finds their version of stillness and somewhere behind the row a jacket brushes the seats and a zipper takes a breath and then there is the quiet rattle that is almost nothing unless you know the vocabulary of it, the brief conversation of plastic and pills and a palm, and Sakura does not lift her head and does not open her eyes and does not alter the shape of her body at all, she only tightens her jaw the way a surgeon closes a suture, neat and exact, because hearing is a muscle you can either train or pretend you do not own and she has trained it for years on click tracks and count ins and the whisper before the downbeat where everything that matters is held.

She knows that sound, they all do by now even if some of them prefer to turn nouns into fog for a while, and for her it is not only recognition but a door that opens onto a room she keeps locked, the summer heat held outside by a tired fan, the blinds closed, Ino on the edge of the bed with her eyes very dry and her hand very steady and the bottle making that same gentle shake as if the contents could be rearranged into mercy if you moved them long enough, and that time Sakura spoke and it changed something for a week or a month or maybe only for a night and she has learned to be careful about what she tells herself counted, because counting is another way to bleed.

There is the crisp flare that means a cigarette lives now where there was only intention, a small bloom of orange cupped away from the vents, and Sakura keeps her face to the glass and she thinks this is not about chemicals, this is about the discipline of carrying a band inside your body when the band is tired of being carried, about watching Naruto sleep with the pure gravity of someone who fell through fear and landed in a pocket of safety, about hearing the word Copenhagen float forward from the driver like a destination and a deadline in the same syllables, about knowing that Shikamaru will hold the schedule together with string and Itachi will turn questions into answers no one can contest and still there will be a gap where Sasuke should be, a negative space that rings like a struck bowl.

She looks once and only once, a glance that would not register as concern to anyone who did not know the catalogue of her looks, and Ino is beautiful in the way that makes people think the word will save them from saying anything harder, her lashes clean, mouth glossed, posture lazy enough to imitate indifference, and the hands betray the whole performance, a tremor that is not visible unless you tune yourself to it, the thumb pausing a fraction too long at the filter, the shoulders holding a line like a wire pulled taut between two unseen posts, and in that split second Sakura feels the old gratitude rise like a tide, the memory of a night when she had no words left and needed none and Ino made space without asking for a story, a glass of water by the mattress, the fan turned on low, the quiet that says I will not press you, and she wants to repay that debt with a sentence that will land gently and still have weight.

She does not speak, not because she is afraid of the eye roll or the laugh they both know how to perform when the subject is care, not because she believes denial more than she believes her own senses, but because she understands the difference between a moment that can be turned and a moment that must be carried, because there is a kind of plea that only hardens the surface it touches, because sometimes the kindest act is to keep the rhythm when the others cannot, and she is the drummer which means she is the metronome which means today she will be the spine even if her own feels like glass, she will look for them at lunch, she will watch Naruto’s hands when he fumbles a chord and feed him the beat he needs to find the path back, she will mark the space where Sasuke is not and hold it steady so the song does not collapse around the missing.

She presses the drumstick into her palm until the skin warms under the wood, a small pain that belongs to her alone and is clean and obedient, and she thinks about the things she can keep from breaking, cables coiled properly, setlist taped where the wind cannot find it, water bottles refilled before anyone remembers to ask, interviews managed with answers that will not grow teeth later, and she accepts that this is the shape of love she can give without asking permission, the mundane architecture that keeps the larger structure from leaning, and it is not heroism and it is not enough, but it is something that will still be standing in the aftermath.

If she speaks now what changes, she asks herself without drama, and the honest answer is that it would only move the ache into the space between them and make it loud, and loud is not what Ino can carry this morning, so Sakura keeps the silence and refuses to call it failure, she watches the ash tip off and fall and finds a slow breath and lets it out, she turns her face back to the window and counts to eight twice and again, she listens to the van find its pace on the road, she hears someone’s phone offer a song she does not take, and she tells herself the work is to be here without announcing herself as savior, to witness without turning the witnessing into a performance.

The van begins its long glide north and the day puts its weight on the glass and she thinks of all the rooms ahead and the lights and the microphones and the faces and the way grief has cooled in everyone until it sits low and constant, and she accepts that she cannot fix what is broken, not in a morning, not with a sentence, not with a steady beat, and she promises something smaller instead, that she will be the quiet that does not abandon, that she will keep time until they remember how, that she will ask later when later can hold it, and for now she will sit with her knees drawn in and her earbuds empty and the stick marked into her palm like a line she refuses to drop, while beside her Ino’s profile burns softly and Naruto sleeps and the road writes its long clean measure toward a city that will ask more than they have and receive what they can give.

Now Playing: “Heavenly” – Cigarettes After Sex

“Needing you now to come into me
Feeling it slow, over this dream
Touch me with a kiss, feel me on your lips”

He remembers the night by the way his skin refused to calm, a slow brightness still running under it like a second circulation, the stage where their first sold out performance happened emptied and yet the building kept echoes of people as if it had learned their pulse and could not put it down, and when they climbed the last narrow stairs to the roof of his apartment, the air met them with the kind of cool that november air carries, his ears ringing with the afterimage of distortion and his voice rough in the soft quiet as if he had been shouting truths he had not meant to name, legs swinging over the ledge with a paper cup of ramen nested on his knees like a small domestic fire, salt and steam making the night look a little less sharp at the edges.

Sasuke sat beside him in that posture he had for victory nights, elbows behind him, the heavy black hoodie unzipped to the sternum as if he could not decide between warmth and the need to feel the air, a cigarette lit with the careful movements of someone who had been taught to hide any want that could be recognized, smoke moving off his fingers in small ribbons that did not rise so much as think about rising, each exhale marking time more than it sought pleasure, and they stayed with the quiet because silence between them had always been a room they could both live in for a while, not empty at all, more like a blanket that remembered their shapes.

The city threw its tired lights at the low clouds and turned the sky to a deep bruise with threads of gold caught in it, and somewhere a siren stitched a line through the distance and then unstitched it again, and Naruto thought about the front row and the way faces had opened like doors and the sound had lifted him out of himself until the only thing he knew how to do was keep going forward, chord into chord, breath into breath.

“We did that,” he said, chopsticks paused over the cup. “The front rows lost it. I thought a shoe was coming for my head.”

Sasuke’s mouth almost lifted. Not quite. The smallest flicker at one corner, quickly filed away.

“You did that,” he said, voice low, the smoke passing his lips like punctuation. “They were screaming your name.”

Naruto shook his head and let the noodles fall back. “You wrote half the set,” he said. “Maybe more. If it sounds like anything it is because you built it.”

“It does not matter,” Sasuke said. “You are the face.”

The words slid under Naruto’s ribs and lodged there, not pain yet, only a new sharpness, so he did what he always did when the floor looked like it might tilt, he reached for him in the way he knew would not startle him. He set the ramen down and leaned back until his shoulder found Sasuke’s shoulder. The touch was light and true.

“We did that,” he said, chopsticks paused over the cup. “The front row lost it. I thought a shoe was coming for my head.”

Sasuke’s mouth almost lifted. Not quite. The smallest flicker at one corner, quickly filed away.

“You did that,” he said, voice low, the smoke passing his lips like punctuation. “They were screaming your name.”

Naruto shook his head and let the noodles fall back. “You wrote half the set,” he said. “Maybe more. If it sounds like anything it is because you built it.”

“It does not matter,” Sasuke said. “You are the face.”

The words slid under Naruto’s ribs and lodged there, not pain yet, only a new sharpness, so he did what he always did when the floor looked like it might tilt, he reached for him in the way he knew would not startle him.

He set the ramen down and leaned back until his shoulder found Sasuke’s shoulder. The touch was light and true.

Naruto laughed once. “Tonight it changed my life.”

Sasuke’s gaze did not waver. There was something already breaking inside it and refusing to make a sound.

The wind shifted and Naruto felt how cold his hands had grown, the steam from the ramen thinning until it vanished, the cup going soggy at the rim, and it occurred to him with a sudden bright clarity that there were only a few ways to name what lived between them and most of them would ask for a promise, and he did not want a promise that would turn to rust in daylight, he wanted proof, he wanted warmth, he wanted the thing you cannot counterfeit. He breathed in, slow, and let himself lean that last deliberate inch.

 “Come here,” he said.

Sasuke did not ask what he meant, did not turn the words into a question with his eyebrows or with a breath, he only leaned in with the careful certainty of someone stepping into water he has tested with his hand, and when their mouths met it was not a collision but a long, deliberate press that slowed the whole night by degrees, Naruto’s lips warm and a little salted from the ramen, Sasuke’s cooler at first and then giving, both of them finding the same patient rhythm as if they had rehearsed it in the quiet kept between songs, the first pass simple and unornamented, the second a shade deeper when Naruto tilted his head and felt the soft drag of Sasuke’s lower lip catch and release, a sweetness that tasted like steam and smoke and something bright that had no name yet.

Sasuke’s hand rose as if from underwater and settled along Naruto’s jaw with the care of a person handling a fragile instrument, the thumb stroking once where bone meets skin, and the touch steadied him more effectively than any word ever did, Naruto’s fingers answering by catching the edge of the hoodie and gathering a fold of fabric into his fist, not to pull him closer but to hold onto the warmth itself, and the kiss lengthened in that quiet believing way that asks nothing but presence, a slow exchange of breath where they learned each other’s timing, a brief graze of teeth that made Naruto exhale into Sasuke’s mouth and made Sasuke answer with a sound so small it felt private to the space between them.

They paused without parting, foreheads leaning lightly together, noses brushing as they adjusted to the new fact of it, the city’s tired gold lifting and falling on their faces, and Naruto felt the first tremor of laughter try to rise because joy always did that to him, then found that it softened into something else when Sasuke’s other hand slid to the back of his neck and settled there, the warmth of his palm spreading like a promise along tense muscles, the heel of his hand anchoring him while fingertips learned the short hairs there, and Naruto let his eyes close because the world was better like this, a brightness behind his lids and the clean metallic taste of the roof cutting sweetly through the smoke.

“Again,” Naruto said, quietly. It did not sound like a demand so much as an invitation to return to the same shore, and Sasuke came back to him with a precision that made Naruto’s chest ache, the second kiss gentler and somehow more devastating for it, the kind that smooths rather than sparks, a careful mapping of an upper lip and the curve of a corner, a patient answering where one mouth waited for the other to choose the pressure, Naruto’s hand leaving the hoodie to touch the line of Sasuke’s throat with two fingers that felt clumsy and reverent at once, feeling the quickened pulse there and thinking, uselessly, stay.

They broke only far enough to breathe and Naruto pressed a small open kiss at the angle of Sasuke’s jaw, then another just under his ear where the skin warmed immediately, a gratitude he did not know how to speak loosening his mouth into tenderness, and Sasuke’s breath hitched almost invisibly as his fingers tightened at Naruto’s nape and then eased, the smallest surrender, the kind that says yes without changing a single future fact.

Sasuke shifted then, careful and sure, a knee folding between them as he guided Naruto back until shoulder blades found the cool grit of the rooftop, the paper cup nudged aside, and in that quiet choreography he settled astride him with his weight distributed like a secret he had learned to keep safe, palms braced to either side of Naruto’s ribs so that nothing felt trapping, only held, the hoodie falling forward to curtain their faces in a darker pocket of night where the city could not reach.

Naruto’s hands found the back of him through cotton and he felt the heat of muscle and breath layered under fabric, fingers tracing a slow line along the spine as if counting would keep time from breaking its own rules, and Sasuke met his mouth again with a patience that undid him, a kiss that deepened not by force but by trust, the kind that begins as shelter and becomes a new way to speak, the lower lip caught and released, the careful press that asked for more and then waited, the soft sound in Sasuke’s throat when Naruto answered, their chests aligning and separating with each breath until the rhythm felt shared. Sasuke tipped his head to change the angle and the world narrowed to warmth and the clean taste of wind and the faint salt at the corner of a mouth, his thumbs sliding forward to the hem of Naruto’s shirt only to rest there, not lifting, only learning the heat of skin through thin cotton, Naruto felt something gentle move through him like light underwater, the sense that the body can be a place to rest rather than a field where victories are counted.

He let his hands travel to Sasuke’s waist and stopped where hip meets fabric, a quiet hold that said do not hurry and do not go, and Sasuke understood without being told, lowering until their foreheads touched and their noses brushed, the kiss loosening into smaller touches that felt like the softest language, the mouth to the corner of a smile, the breath shared and given back, the slow grazing along a cheekbone that had learned to carry too much, and when Naruto turned his face to place a kiss at the hollow of Sasuke’s throat the pulse there answered against his lips in a quick staccato he wanted to memorize. Sasuke exhaled and bent further, chest to chest now, his hands leaving the rooftop to spread over Naruto’s ribs as if to map them gently, and for a long moment they moved in the simple rocking measure of breath and presence, nothing asked that could not be given, nothing taken that would require an apology.

The city sitting wide and glittering around them, and when he kissed him it was not the careless rush they sometimes fell into but a long, open slide of mouth and breath that sharpened everything, the scrape of a zipper tab against knuckle, the small hush of fabric shifting, the damp at the corner of Sasuke’s lip that Naruto chased with an unembarrassed sound that lived somewhere between gratitude and want.

“Here,” Naruto breathed, the word hardly a word, and he tipped his head to let Sasuke mouth along his jaw, the skin there thin and sensitive, veins close enough to feel each soft press as if it were happening inside him. Sasuke traced him with lips and the barest hint of teeth, a careful pressure that didn’t threaten to bruise but promised it could, the restraint itself an intimacy, and when his tongue settled, warm and patient, in the hollow at the base of Naruto’s throat, Naruto’s spine arched without thought, pushing his heartbeat against Sasuke’s mouth like an offering that was accepted without fanfare.

Sasuke’s mouth left Naruto’s to move along his jaw, then down, teeth catching on the tendon at his throat, a delicate bite that didn’t mark but warned, a place Naruto always went pliant, and Sasuke felt it, hummed lightly against skin, palms flattening at Naruto’s ribs to steady him when his chest arched.

“Fuck, that,” Naruto said, a rasp that lived between plea and praise.

Sasuke answered without words, mouth open, heat and spit and patience through the thin cotton of Naruto’s tee until it clung, the fabric briefly a second skin before he lifted it, slow enough to make the breeze feel cool when it touched wet. He took a nipple into his mouth, looked up while he did it, eyelids heavy, and the sight alone made Naruto’s stomach drop, his hand sliding into Sasuke’s hair out of habit before he remembered what he wanted tonight and gentled, just petting, just combing through, thumb rubbing slow circles against scalp.

“Good,” Naruto said, voice shaking on the word, “you’re so good,” and Sasuke’s mouth curved around him, a smile that felt like it belonged to both of them.

A belt slid, a button gave, the cotton dragged in a swift motion, and Naruto hissed when Sasuke freed him, the shock of cooler air and warmer hand at the same time, the long attentive stroke that said I remember, show me again. Sasuke went down between his thighs with a softness that did not diminish the greed of it, one hand braced at Naruto’s hip, the other curling around the base to hold him steady, and when he took him into his mouth it was deep enough to make Naruto’s breath break but not so deep that it asked him to be anything but present.

“That’s it,” Naruto murmured, fingers stroking through black hair, the praise unguarded, the kind that didn’t try to be clever. “Feels perfect. Fuck, baby, perfect.”

Sasuke answered with his throat, a quiet swallow around him that made Naruto’s hips jerk before he forced them to still, free hand gripping the roof edge for leverage, breath coming hard. The mouth worked in patient rhythms, long pulls that weren’t about show, just sensation, spit starting to slick his fist where he held the base to keep himself from giving up and thrusting, because the cadence was so good, the night smelled like tar and rain and Sasuke, and Naruto could feel the want and the care braided together in every slow bob, every breath through Sasuke’s nose warm against his skin.

He cupped the back of Sasuke’s head and kept petting, thumb tracing the curve of an ear, murmuring little nothings between sharper sounds, “yeah, like that, take your time, I’m here,” and Sasuke’s eyes lifted once, dark and steady, and Naruto felt something in his chest pull tight and gentle at the same time, a tether that had never fit anywhere else.

When Naruto’s hand trembled and his breath shortened into fragments, Sasuke eased off with a final slow drag that left Naruto wet and throbbing, then pressed an unembarrassed kiss to the damp head like a seal on a letter. Naruto’s fingers tightened in his hair for a heartbeat before softening again.

“Come here,” Naruto said, chest rising hard, “want you on me.”

Sasuke climbed him in a single fluid motion and found his mouth again, letting Naruto taste himself, letting the kiss go languid for a few beats, and then they worked together without words, the soft click of lube from Sasuke’s bag, a practical grace that made Naruto’s mouth curve against Sasuke’s as if gratitude could be passed back that way. Sasuke prepared himself with quiet focus, fingers slick and patient, breath moving in the same circles as his wrist, and Naruto’s hands steadied him where it mattered, inside thigh, hipbone, waist, touch light enough to soothe and firm enough to ground.

“Ready?” Naruto asked, just a check even though he already knew the answer.

Sasuke nodded, hair falling forward, and guided him in with his own hand, a slow seated push that made both of them groan, the first stretch hot and careful, the fit that always felt like relief and shock at once. They sat in it for a long breath, foreheads together, then found a rhythm that did not belong to anger or jealousy, not tonight. Sasuke set the pace with a patient rock, hips tilting to find the place he wanted and staying with it, thighs quivering from control, devotion visible in the care he took with his own pleasure, in the way he chose to savor what he could have rushed. Naruto’s hands stayed open at his waist, not steering, only holding, the kind of hold that said mine without taking, the kind of hold that let Sasuke take what he wanted without having to ask.

Sasuke kissed him through it, little open-mouthed brushes that carried breath more than words, and Naruto kissed back with greedy tenderness, grateful for each pass of tongue and never trying to pull more than was given. The wet slap of bodies rose and fell with their pace, slick heat building and then sharpening when Naruto lifted into him a little harder, and Sasuke answered by sinking down to claim it, a soft noise breaking in his throat that Naruto caught with his mouth.

“Take what you want,” Naruto said, voice rough, “Please,” and Sasuke did, pace tightening, angle shifting, pleasure running up his spine in a tremor that Naruto felt under his palms. Naruto slid a hand between them and wrapped him, slick and hot against his stomach, thumb drawing a slow arc over the head that made Sasuke’s eyes go loose and honest.

“Don’t stop,” Sasuke said, breath catching, and Naruto didn’t, stroking in time with the push and pull of their bodies, devotion turning into the exact rhythm he knew Sasuke loved. The minutes stretched, not long for the sake of it but long because they refused to hurry what was good, because the sweetness that lived unspoken tonight asked for patience, because the need that usually burned like a fuse decided to burn like a steady wick instead.

Sasuke broke first, a quiet, helpless sound against Naruto’s mouth, thighs tightening around his hips, cock pulsing hot over Naruto’s knuckles, his release painting belly and hand in sticky warmth. Naruto stroked him through it, slowing when the sensitivity hit.

“Good,” Naruto murmured, rough with it, “so good, baby,” Sasuke, shivering around him, clenched in pulses that dragged Naruto after, the tight, wet heat and the sight of Sasuke slack and honest in his lap knocking something loose. Naruto’s hips stuttered, and he spilled with a low broken sound, hands fisting against Sasuke’s waist before he remembered to stroke down, to soothe, to hold, the spill pulled from him felt like a prayer not meant for language. His hands tightened and then softened, palms smoothing down Sasuke’s back in slow lines, apology where none was needed, comfort because that is how he loved.

They stayed joined for a while, foreheads pressed together, air moving between their mouths in shallow passes, then Sasuke eased off with care and Naruto handled the mess in practiced motions that felt new under the way Sasuke watched his hands like the watching itself was a kind of touch. Sasuke came back down to lie along Naruto’s body, cheek to his chest, arm slung low around his waist, not an embrace so much as a vow. Naruto’s fingers found the crown of his head and returned to their slow petting, no urgency left, the animal calm that follows being seen naked that way.

After, when the air cooled against their damp skin and the hum of the city seemed to draw closer as if the buildings themselves had leaned in to listen, Naruto watched the way Sasuke blinked slowly and let his gaze move past the streetlights to a distance the skyline could not explain, the cigarette he had lit more for his hands than his mouth held too carefully between two fingers, the silence settling with a weight that was not the usual ease of their after, and he felt the floor tilt in that old way that had nothing to do with heights or the edge of the roof and everything to do with the fact that some nights offered doors you did not know you had been walking toward. He did what he had always done when that feeling came, he moved closer to the person who steadied him as much as he shook him, hip to hip now, shoulder to shoulder, breath to the same small weather, and he let his voice find a line without bravado, soft and exact like something placed on a table between them rather than thrown across a room.

“Please, do not ever disappear on me.”

Sasuke turned at the speed of someone who had heard the plea before the mouth formed it and had already counted what honesty would cost, eyes steady and tired and, maddeningly, beautiful in that particular way that makes a heart believe it can still be learned if you keep showing up for the lesson, he said it in a tone that would echo for years without ever turning cruel or louder, “do not ask for what I cannot promise,”.

Naruto felt all his ready replies come apart in his throat because anything he could say would either break against that quiet fact or try to force a pledge that would turn to rust by morning.

They did not look away and they did not stare each other down, they shared that narrow band where shoulders meet, his brushing Sasuke’s with intention and without insistence, and when Sasuke did not move the contact became punctuation, I heard you and I am still here even if here is a place with a clock already running, and the cigarette burned down to a soft red eye and went out between Sasuke’s fingers, and somewhere below a bus sighed at a stop and pulled away, and the city dimmed one star at a time until what remained was roof and breath and the low sound their bodies made settling back into themselves, and the quiet did not fix anything, it simply held it the way cupped hands hold water, leaking a little, warming a little, enough to count as care.

Later, halfway down from the roof with the door propped by a sneaker and the stairwell smelling like dust and dirt, Sasuke unzipped the hoodie the rest of the way and shrugged it off with one hand, not looking, the gesture practical rather than theatrical, then set it across Naruto’s lap as if it were a spare towel and not a piece of himself he never lent, “you are always cold after a show,” said in that offhand voice he used for gifts that cost him something, and Naruto did not put it on because it felt like the kind of thing you save for the last night of the world, so he kept it close instead, palms flattening over the heavy cotton like a person touching a reliquary without knowing why yet, and he would fold it later with care and bury it in his suitcase and never wear it once, because it meant warmth and promise, and shelter and warning all at once.

Memory does its work in the rooms it is carried through, and years later with his head pressed to a van seat and a notebook pinned to his chest as if paper could hold a person in place, he would finally read what had been written across Sasuke’s quiet that night, not pride, not peace, but the grief of someone who already knew the geography of leaving and was trying to leave gently, the kind of grief that stops a mouth from asking for what it will not be allowed to keep, the kind that speaks softly to avoid waking hope, and he would understand that he had trusted a silence that had never been empty and had mistaken its warmth for permanence, that he had been loved in a language with an ending folded into its first word, and that the understanding, flawless as it was, had arrived too late to change anything but the shape of the ache.

If he had the roof again he might fill the quiet differently, not with a joke about the front row or the arc of a flying shoe, but with the stubborn sentence that does not bargain, “stay as long as you can and I will be here when it hurts,” a sentence that does not fix the future so much as put a chair inside it, and he knows even that might not have turned the clock, yet some part of him returns to the image of their shoulders touching while the city took the light back, returns to the weight of that hoodie on his knees like a small animal asleep and trusting, returns to the way Sasuke’s eyes had already said goodbye in a voice too tired to raise, and he lets the memory run until the present sharpens again, the road naming a city he does not want to reach without him, the van air thin with sleep, the space beside him a clean outline that every breath tries to fill.

Now Playing: “Elegy” – Lisa Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy

Itachi counted bodies the way a medic counts breaths, not to reassure himself but to confirm what he already knew, and tonight the knowing felt like grit beneath his tongue, abrasive, inescapable. The van door slid on its track with that soft hydraulic hush that always sounded to him like a full stop placed where a comma might have fit better, the engine idled in a patient thrum that had nothing to do with the weather in the chest of the people it carried, and one by one they folded into the rows with the resigned choreography of professionals who have learned how to sit around a wound. He stood just off the curb where the concrete sloped and lifted in hairline fractures, a small geography under his boots that asked for attention and did not deserve it, the scent of old rain lifting from tarmac, oil, a trace of cold ramen salt from a takeout bag forgotten against a wheel. He did not move when Yamato came to stand beside him, their shoulders almost aligned and deliberately not touching, he did not move when a shard of sun glanced off the rearview and knifed clean across his vision, he did not move when Naruto let his head fall against the glass and opened his eyes with the careful finality of someone setting down an instrument rather than dropping it.

Absence is not an idea to Itachi, it is a set of measurable phenomena, a silhouette missing from the second row where it should be, a bag not abandoned in the aisle in a way that invites cursing and forgiveness, boots that have not tracked the day’s city dust into the thin carpet, a laugh that has not happened, a complaint that has not been issued, a question that will not be asked. The numbers line up with brutal clarity, Sasuke is not late, Sasuke is gone, and the body receives this like a bruise taken days ago and discovered only when a thumb presses, not panic, not fear, the dull reverberation of something that has been true for a long time and is only now fulfilling its observable conditions. He notes the thought as it arrives and hates that he notes it, he stands inside the hatred and lets it pass through as if he were a sieve built for such currents, the way he has always done with feelings that would drown another person and in him only become sediment.

A breeze moves the way a surgeon’s hand moves a curtain, precise and impersonal, it slips into his coat and under his collar and puts its fingers where warmth has collected, and because there is nothing to be done with the air he does not react, he places his own hand where it has wanted to be since the night before, inside the inner pocket, around the folded square of paper whose edges have already softened from being held. He had not opened it in front of anyone and he does not open it now, he does not need the visual confirmation of letters he has already memorized by this morning, by slope, by the engraved pressure of a pen that obliged the paper to accept what the mouth could not say. He reads in his mind the single line anyway, not with eyes, with the part of the mind that keeps tally, “take care of them”, and he hears the voice in the script, not trembling, not pleading, merely tense, a restraint that is more terrible than any declaration, a syntax that belongs to someone who has decided that mercy is to be absent rather than insufficient.

There is an accounting he cannot stop himself from performing and it begins as always with himself, the ledger he keeps on the inside of his ribs where interest compounds without anyone having to sign, entries that read like itineraries of refusal, the nights when explanation would have been an investment and he chose efficiency instead, the mid-tour meetings he took because systems do not hold if you skip steps and in skipping he left Sasuke to practice falling alone, the hotel corridors where he stood with his ear to a door and convinced himself that silence granted dignity when in truth it withheld witness. He hears the refrain in the same neutral tone he uses to carry coffee on too little sleep, he thinks disappearing is mercy, he always did, he made him think that, he showed him, and the objectivity of the statement is the part that disgusts him most because it turns guilt into a solved problem when it is only a truth that continues to do harm.

Memory obligingly produces an image at the prompt like a well-trained dog that should have been rescued and never was, Sasuke at seventeen on his couch with rain in his hair, shaking without shame because there was no one else to be steady for, fists around nothing, the sentence thrown like a coin that did not ask to be caught, “I didn’t ask you to take care of me, you just did,” and the absence of gratitude had felt right then, correct, a proof that they were not performing something sentimental but enacting a contract neither of them had signed, and Itachi had nodded as if a vow had been exchanged when all that had been exchanged was weight from one bone to another. He does not deserve thanks, he does not deserve absolution, what he deserves is irrelevant and yet the mind brings the verdict anyway, blank and stamped.

The van door opens once more, a quick corrective because someone has forgotten something ordinary, a cable, a charger, a bottle, and the small sound in the track makes a flinch happen in his shoulders before he adjusts the movement away, too late to pretend it did not occur, just in time to turn it into breath, the body reminding him it is not a machine even when he instructs it to be. He has been good at this, compartmentalization, endurance, the performance of competence that lets others fail in proximity without contagion, and still there is a delicate fracture spreading somewhere under the sternum with the slow insistence of ice across a pond at night, he would like to categorize it, to name the stressors and the vectors, and all he has is the shape of glass beginning to remember it was once sand.

He presses the note deeper into his coat as if distance in fabric could correct for proximity in meaning, he is aware of the childishness of the gesture and does it anyway, the mind that analyzes and the body that pleads occupying the same frame without consulting each other. Yamato speaks in a tone Itachi recognizes from his own past usages, procedural, not unkind, a verbal handrail installed where stairs grow uncertain, “you okay?” and the usefulness of the question is not in its answer but in its proof that someone is monitoring system integrity. He blinks, slowly, a count built into the motion to keep anything worse from surfacing, and he thinks of Ren, his old bandmate, and of sentences uttered in rooms where the lights were too soft for the content.

He was right, maybe some grief cannot be managed, it has to be mourned, and the words drop into him without ripple, stones meeting water.

He closes his eyes because sight is an indulgence he can relinquish without penalty, the darkness provides a corridor along which images file themselves in obedient sequence, a hotel hallway that smells of detergent and late television, a younger brother sitting against a door with his back making a small mountain under a soaked hoodie, a promise neither of them spoke because promises spoken in their family have historically failed to become true, and when he opens his eyes the van has grown louder or he has grown thinner around it, he cannot tell which. The space to his right is the space Sasuke would have filled without touching him, a negative imprint that still manages to press against his arm, and he stands inside the geometry of that absence and admits that there is no calculus he can perform that returns a different solution.

He waits until the driver checks mirrors and the brake lights bloom and dim, until Yamato has said his necessary names and made his necessary counts, until Naruto’s reflection in the glass has stopped trying to be stone and accepted the softness of skin, and only then does he move, one step back from the curb to let the van take its lane, one step into a day where the plan has holes that will not be patched with effort. He breathes, shallow first, deeper after, and lets the engine note recede into a general city hum, the sound a blanket at a distance that neither warms nor smothers. The door is shut now, the sentence has ended, he will read it again in every silence until there is a newer silence to replace it.

Now Playing: “Everything I Wanted” – Billie Eilish

They took the back table before the café woke, laminate still smelling of cleaner, chairs stacked along the wall like a warning, one pot of coffee sending up thin steam no one touched. Outside the fogged window the van idled in a slow, steady tick that felt like it belonged to another life.

Inside, the fluorescents came on hard and white, the kind of light that makes skin look tired and decisions look simple when they aren’t.

Kakashi sat with the laptop canted low, the screen’s glow kept to himself, phone facedown, a pulse of notifications he ignored running under his palm like a second heartbeat. Hands folded, motionless, as if the stillness could keep the room from tipping. Across from him Yamato leaned over his thermos, sleeves shoved to the elbow, thumb tapping a quiet pattern that held back the shake everywhere else.

They didn’t speak. They had the muscle memory for mornings like this, for the hours after a crash, after a disappearance, after a bad decision punched through bone. You move the calendar, you patch the story, you keep the lights on. Later you bleed in private.

“This isn’t a fucking joke,” Yamato said finally, eyes on the window. “This is a cut that won’t close.”

Kakashi kept his gaze on the cursor, then lifted it. “Cancel two nights. Call it a loop PR.” The keys answered, a dry clatter that passed for progress.

“He’s not dead,” Yamato said, even, not bargaining, just refusing the slide.

“No,” Kakashi said, “but if we don’t speak, someone else will.” He didn’t add that sponsors don’t care why, that venues buy reliability, that rumors breed when fed silence. He didn’t need to.

“What’s the story,” Yamato asked. “Lead producer gone after the show, details pending.” No lift at the end, no punctuation, the sentence as bare as it could be.

“It already killed something,” Temari said from the doorway. She stood with an lit cigarette caught between two fingers, eyes raw from the anxiety that eats you from the inside, jaw set to stop anything soft from getting out. Kakashi didn’t look up.

“I’m not doing this with you,” he said, voice flat as paper.

“Good,” she said, “because it’s not about me.” She left without noise, and the door’s quiet felt heavier than any slam.

Yamato poured coffee. No sugar, no milk. He drank and it didn’t help. The room listened to the hum in the lights.

Kakashi shut the laptop, reached for his phone. A draft formed in his head, tight and clean, delay the announcement, call it technical, confirm the next city, shift rehearsal roles, have Sai line visuals in case we need a post, and he let it stay in his head where it couldn’t be forwarded. The screen dimmed and went black.

“You’re holding a machine together,” Yamato said, softer now, “and the people inside it are coming apart.”

Kakashi’s face did not change. He let the words settle where they landed.

He thought, this is what machines are built for, to keep moving while we fail and mend and fail again, to keep a beat when no one can count.

He pressed the side button on the phone until it showed him nothing, and the three of them, the man at the table, the man with the cup, breathed the same cold air while the choice sat between them, heavy, present, refusing to turn into language.

Hinata → Naruto (Voicemail, 00:12)

“Hey. Just… let me know you’re okay, okay?

Or don’t. Just—

I’m here.”

Shikamaru → Itachi

“Should we file a missing person report?”

Kakashi → PR Team

Subject: RE: Tour disruption protocol

“Delay the announcement.

Say it’s technical delays.

Buy us time.”

Ino — Outgoing Voicemail

“Hi. You’ve reached Ino Yamanaka.

If this is press, don’t.

If this is personal—well.

You’re late.”