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Chapter Text

Sasuke told himself he didn’t mind the mandatory contract breaks. Really. He didn’t. They gave him the chance to go home to the GTA, remember how much he hated the GTA, visit his family, remember how much he hated visiting his family, and come back to Ottawa in a timely manner.

No. The problem wasn’t the mandatory contract breaks, even if they were just a sly way of keeping him off the employee benefit plan and withholding paid vacation and sick days.

The problem was his manager.

“Why did you schedule the co-op interviews for last week?” Sasuke demanded. “You knew I was gone!”

Only one of Kakashi’s eyes was visible above the cover of his latest book, which depicted a beefy, shirtless man carrying a swooning woman with truly horrible 80s hair, bridal-style. That one eye gazed at Sasuke sleepily. Kakashi’s free hand typed away at his keyboard. “Honestly, I had no idea. You should give me some warning, Sasuke. It’s rough, losing my very favourite junior policy analyst for two weeks without notice. I had to draft my briefing notes all by myself.”

Sasuke resisted the urge to point out that Kakashi was meant to be doing that anyway. There were larger issues at hand. “You’re the one who told me I had to take the time off! You gave me the dates! It was in my Outlook calendar! ”

Kakashi’s one-handed typing ceased as his fingers moved to the mouse. Click. Click. Click. His eyebrows lifted a centimetre or so, then drifted back down, as if maintaining an expression of surprise required too much effort. “Oh, so it was. Would you look at that. Eh, so I did the co-op interviews without you. They’re my direct reports, so once you’ve shown them the ropes, you won’t really need to worry about them.”

“But—!” Sasuke began, and quickly stopped himself. He knew that was complete bullshit. The instant those new students stepped through that door, Kakashi would offload all the work of managing them to Sasuke, just like he did with everything else. He knew Kakashi knew that too, and he knew Kakashi knew that he knew it. But he didn’t quite have the guts to accuse his manager outright of being a lazy son-of-a-bitch who couldn’t even be bothered to proofread his two-sentence emails before sending them. Especially not when Kakashi had been hinting of late, in his own vague, infuriating way, of landing Sasuke a longer-term contract, the kind that included benefits and covered costs for French training.

“I’ll send you their resumes. They don’t start till September anyway,” Kakashi said, in what he probably thought was a soothing tone. “Why worry?”

***

Another mandatory contract break, three weeks of sleepless nights over the prospect of looming unemployment, and one miraculous and excruciating last-minute negotiation with HR later, September 3rd rolled around, and with it, the influx of co-op students. Despite having over three months of warning, IT and accommodations were, as usual, unprepared. No matter how many pointed emails Sasuke sent them, cc’ing Kakashi—even cc’ing their director Jiraiya, the ultimate power move—both teams irritably pleaded a backlog and insisted they couldn’t have computers or email accounts set up for Kakashi’s students (his kiddos, as Kakashi had taken to calling them) until the day after tomorrow at the very earliest.

“Oh well,” Kakashi said mildly when Sasuke arrived in his office to deliver the news, a mere fifteen minutes before the new students were supposed to arrive. “They have to do their orientation anyway.”

“That’s only an hour! What am I supposed to do with them for the next two days?”

“Show them around the office?” Great. Another fifteen minutes. He could push it to twenty if he went into great detail explaining the trick to working the finicky microwave in the kitchenette. “I know, you can teach them how to use GCDocs. Oh, and the shared drive. Maybe show them some of your cute PowerPoint tricks too.”

Sasuke resisted, barely, the urge to stare heavenward at the ceilings banks of bland fluorescent lighting and pray for patience to any god who cared to listen. Every single day of his life he regretted his foolish decision to show Kakashi how to make bullet points slide onto the screen one at a time. “Kakashi. They’re students. I guarantee you they know how to use PowerPoint.” Outside Kakashi’s office, someone’s phone started to ring.

“Well, you’ll figure something out.” Kakashi glanced at the time on his computer and sighed. “I guess I’d better go. I have a meeting with risk management that started ten minutes ago. You don’t mind handling this for today, do you?”

“I—”

“Great. I knew I could count on my very favourite junior policy analyst. We can all go for lunch together on Friday. My treat.” Still nose-deep in his garish romance novel, Kakashi rose to his feet and ruffled Sasuke’s hair—actually ruffled his hair—on the way past.

Someone’s phone was still ringing. Neji poked his head from his cubicle and said irritably, “Hey, would you get that already?”

Sasuke swore under his breath and sprinted over to his desk, just in time to grab the phone off its cradle before voicemail kicked in. “Hello, Sasuke Uchiha speaking—”

“Some kids here for you,” said a gruff Quebecois voice on the other end of the line. “Give us some warning next time, eh?”

“Excuse me? I sent you three emails—”

Click.

Sasuke muttered another curse and made for the stairs. Three of the four elevators were out of service again. Tenten had once expressed to Sasuke the opinion that Public Works kept them on the fritz deliberately to promote employee health and, by correlation, lessen usage of the employee health benefits. Not that Sasuke would know anything about that . Damn short-term contracts.

Down at the security desk, Kotetsu and Izumo were conversing in rapid, drawling French—Sasuke was irritated to find that, as usual, he could only pick out a few words—and were completely ignoring the two people standing in front of them. These were definitely the co-ops. No mistake. The girl—Sakura Haruno, Sasuke recalled—was impeccably dressed, in nondescript heels and a pencil skirt tailored so appropriately it would have given the vice president a run for her money—but her hair was a bright, bubble-gum pink. Yep, student for sure. Liberal arts, probably. He couldn’t remember the degree listed on her resume. The boy—

Sasuke swallowed, and tried not to stare. Compartmentalize, just like Itachi always told him. Yes. He could do that.

Blond hair—messy, like it hadn’t seen a brush in a few days too many. Sasuke could forgive that; his hair had a will of its own too, so maybe that wasn’t just sloppiness. The lurid tropical-print blazer over a t-shirt, paired with wrinkled khakis and running shoes—that was another story. Sasuke’s lip curled. This was the government of Canada, not some hip tech start-up. Sasuke was willing to bet all the money Phoenix still owed him that this was the guy’s first office job.

There was also the fact, which Sasuke was doing his best to ignore, that this guy had the figure and features of the kind of A-list actor who landed leading roles in big-budget superhero movies and appeared shirtless and glistening in advertisements for men’s cologne. To put it frankly, even his highly questionable fashion sense couldn’t disguise the fact that he was hot. Three-chilli-peppers-on-a-Thai-food-menu hot. Downtown-Toronto-in-July hot. Molten-cheese-scalding-the-skin-off-the-roof-of-your-mouth hot—

But that was incidental.

Sasuke forced himself to focus on the girl again. She looked familiar; according to her resume, she’d done a previous work term here with a different team. “You must be Sakura,” he said. “I’m Sasuke. Pleased to meet you.”

He extended his hand. She shook it. She had an excellent handshake. Firm, but not too firm.

“Pleasure,” said Sakura. “You’re in operations too?”

“That’s right.” Well, no putting it off any longer. He turned to the boy and pasted a smile on his face. “And you must be Naruto—”

“Yeah, believe it!” Naruto grabbed Sasuke’s proffered hand and used it as leverage to pull Sasuke in for a manly hug, complete with a hearty thump on the back. “Man, this place is swanky! Security guards and everything! Do we get badges? That’d be sweet. Hey, where’s that old guy who did the interviews?” His voice was husky, vaguely pubescent, as if it had started breaking at thirteen and never quite stopped.

Sasuke just stared at him. He had a horrible suspicion his face was going tomato-red. It had been a tight hug.

Kakashi… Kakashi had interviewed this guy. Kakashi had sat in the boardroom with this guy across the table from him and looked at him and listened to him speak and he had actually decided to hire him . Sasuke had read Naruto’s resume: half an MA in poli sci, work experience as a landscaper and a camp counsellor. Nothing special. So what the hell had Kakashi been thinking ?

This was why Sasuke so loathed those mandatory contract breaks. He needed to be there at all times to manage his manager. Otherwise, Kakashi went and hired unprofessional hyperactive weirdos who dressed like they’d walked right out of the pages of Toronto Life profiles, the kind that discussed their million-dollar downtown Toronto condos and their promising careers as innovation gurus at up-and-coming companies that would be bankrupt within the next two years.

Luckily, Sakura stepped in for him. “You mean our manager? He’s not that old. It’s just the hair.”

“He’s thirty-six,” Sasuke said stiffly. “And he’s in a meeting right now. I’ll be showing you around.”

“Oh, no shit?”

Sasuke elected to ignore that. He signed the forms on the security desk and slid them across; without breaking off from his conversation with Izumo, Kotetsu spared them the briefest of glances and handed Sasuke a pair of visitor passes. Naruto and Sakura fell into step beside him as he headed for the stairs, Sakura’s heels clicking on linoleum, Naruto’s runners squeaking.

“So are you a co-op student too or what?” Naruto asked, somewhere between the third and fourth floors. Sakura was out of breath, although she was managing the stairs better than Sasuke had expected in her heels; Naruto, to his annoyance, didn’t sound winded at all, as if he made a habit of racing up and down five flights of stairs every day.

“I was.” Sasuke tried to control his own breathing. He was in decent shape, but the last two flights always killed him. Damn Public Works and their terrible elevator maintenance. “I graduated last spring. I’m contract now, being bridged in.” Bridged in, yes. That was what he told himself. Bridged in, just… slowly. Excruciatingly slowly. At the approximate speed of a retreating glacier, or a hungover sloth running a marathon. At this rate, he’d be lucky to land a permanent position before Kakashi retired.

Fifth floor. Sasuke tapped his badge against the sensor by the door and pushed it open. “So, your workstations aren’t set up yet—”

“Typical,” muttered Sakura.

“—but I’ll show you around before your orientation. This is the p—” He managed to catch himself right before he said “the pit,” which was the name everyone on the floor used to refer to the student seating area, where accomodations and IT had somehow managed to cram eight computers into a space that could comfortably seat, at most, four people. To Sasuke’s irritation, he also had the misfortune of sitting here, even though he wasn’t technically a student anymore. Accomodations kept saying they were working on it. “Ah. I mean, this is where you’ll be sitting.”

“Do we have our own extensions, or are we sharing?” Sakura asked, eyeing the phones.

“You’re sharing, two to a line.”

“Secure filing cabinets?”

“Down there. I’ll get you the combinations for them.”

“Those are for anything classified Protected B or higher?” Okay, she was… pretty good. Prepared. Or at least good at giving the impression of being prepared, which was mostly what counted here anyway.

“Right. Now—” Sasuke sighed. “You don’t have to raise your hand, Naruto. This isn’t a classroom.”

Naruto laughed, and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Right, sorry. Is there a bathroom around here or what?”

“No,” said Sasuke.

Naruto stared at him, mouth open in bewilderment. Sasuke rolled his eyes. Idiot. Of all the people Kakashi could have hired…

“Yes, obviously . Men’s is down the hall and to the left—”

“Right on. Back in a sec.” Naruto dumped his backpack unceremoniously on the nearest desk and took off, and Sasuke wrangled his face back into a smile so he could pretend not to be annoyed. The problem with students—and he was fully aware of his own hypocrisy in thinking this, having been a student himself until a few months ago—the problem with students was that most of them came in here with no sense of professionalism. He glanced sideways at Sakura. The other problem with students was that they were either spectacular all-stars, single-handedly more capable and efficient than half the senior staff combined—or they were duds. He had a feeling Kakashi had managed to land him one of each.

Sakura had already found the desk labelled with her name and set her purse down. She smiled. Sasuke smiled back. He liked her instinctively, but seeing her standing there in her heels and pencil skirt and modestly cut blouse, asking about shared phone lines and Protected B files, exuding an air of competence so heady you could bottle it and make a small fortune selling it as an elixir at corporate wellness retreats, he also felt his metaphorical hackles rise. Yes, he liked her, but he also couldn’t help regarding her as capital-C Competition. Sure, he had seniority—but Kakashi had said one of the students was bilingual, and Sasuke was willing to bet it was Sakura. Everything he’d seen of Naruto in the ten minutes they’d known each other suggested that Naruto was the kind of person who didn’t know a preposition from a pronoun in one official language, let alone two.

“Good Morning, Hatake Junior!” Rock Lee’s voice cut through the ambient office chatter like a foghorn. Sasuke cringed a little. Kankuro from audit had called him that once in a meeting—a sarcastic little joke about how Sasuke was always shadowing Kakashi, ha ha, so funny. Lee seemed to think it was meant as a compliment, and took every opportunity to shout it down the hall at Sasuke or yell it out whenever they passed each other in the streets outside their building.

Lee came bounding along the aisle between cubicles to join them. He was clutching the mug Gai had given him at the operations branch Secret Santa last year, the one that said #1 JUNIOR POLICY ANALYST!!! on it in aggressive orange type. Sasuke’s smile winched a few degrees tighter.

“Ah, Hello!” said Lee, skidding to a halt in the middle of the pit and spotting Sakura. She looked startled, but she offered a polite smile and held out her hand. Lee wrung it enthusiastically.

Obligatory introductions. Great. How long was this meeting of Kakashi’s supposed to last anyway? “Sakura, this is Lee. His team does urban social housing. Lee, Sakura. Our new co-op.”

Sakura opened her mouth, probably to go through meaningless pleasantries, but Lee beat her to it. He beamed. He was still shaking her hand. At this rate, she’d have a dislocated shoulder well before she’d even made it to her first lunch break. “Oh! A Bright Young Mind! The Bountiful Blossoming of the Next Generation is Indeed a Great Thing to Witness!”

“Oh!” said Sakura. “Um. Thank... you?”

Lee beamed at her before turning back to Sasuke. Sounding—for Lee—slightly calmer, he asked, “Did you see the email from Jiraiya? EXCOM needs Board Room B all afternoon, so the student orientation has been postponed. But! Never Fear!” He raised his mug, as if in a salute. “For the Orientation Shall Be Rescheduled for Tomorrow!”

“Great. Thanks,” Sasuke said weakly. To his relief, Gai shouted for Lee from across the office, and Lee flashed them one last winsome smile before taking off through the cubicles at a sprint.

“Was… was he flirting?” Sakura asked hesitantly. “Or is he just… like that?”

“He’s just like that.” Either that, or he was always flirting, with everyone. Sasuke hadn’t considered that possibility before. It was disconcerting. “Anyway, I guess your orientation is cancelled.”

“That’s fine, I did one with the innovation branch last year.” Her phone buzzed in her hand, and she glanced down. “Actually, if you don’t have any work for me to do, is it alright if I head down to the third floor now?” Seeing his blank expression, she added, “Oh, sorry, I thought Kakashi explained—he hired me because Jiraiya owed Tsunade a favour, and she didn’t have the funding for a student this term. I’ll mostly be working with her. Obviously I’ll do whatever Kakashi needs too, but since my computer’s not ready yet…”

No, Kakashi had not explained, which was just typical. Hmm. Tsunade… she was the director of research and innovation. Sakura made it sound like she’d be working right under her. No, more than that, Sakura made it sound like Tsunade had pulled some strings to make sure she’d have Sakura working right under her, funding be damned. That was. That was. Sasuke had spent ten entire months here before Jiraiya had even managed to learn his name . And Sakura—Sakura was—

“Sure,” said Sasuke. He sincerely hoped his seething jealousy wasn’t painted all over his face.

It wasn’t until she’d left already that the true repercussions of Sakura’s position sunk in. If she was going to be gone all day doing laudable, noteworthy things with Tsunade—in both official languages, too—then that left Sasuke stuck with Naruto.

***

“So the shared drive is where everyone stores their documents across all the branches. You can encrypt confidential documents. Obviously secret and top secret documents shouldn’t be saved here—not,” Sasuke couldn’t help adding smugly, “that you have the clearance to be working on anything classified that high.”

“Uh huh,” Naruto said vaguely. He was fidgeting with a spot on the seat of his chair where the pleather had started to wear through, digging his finger in to make the hole bigger.

“Most people just make a file with their name so that everything they’re working on stays in the same place. It needs to be organized so other people can find documents related to their projects. See, this is Kakashi’s.” Sasuke clicked through Kakashi’s folder to display orderly subfolders and documents, all clearly named and versioned. He was very proud of that folder. It had been a nightmarish dumpster fire of a disaster when Sasuke started working for Kakashi, but two days of extensive overtime and way too many espressos had fixed that. Kakashi still just stuck every new document he created in the subfolder labelled “stuff,” but Sasuke made sure to go in at least once a week to file everything properly.

“Uh huh,” said Naruto. Now he was staring at the door to Kakashi’s office, currently closed, where a cluster of dog photos were taped up under the label bearing Kakashi’s name.

Slightly irked that his exceptionally organized folders hadn’t elicited the admiration they were due, Sasuke clicked out of the shared drive and opened another icon on his desktop. “And this is GCDocs. It’s our new electronic records and documents management system. Jiraiya—that’s our director—wants us to migrate everything below Protected B here by the end of the month.” If memory served, Jiraiya’s exact words at their last branch meeting had been I honestly couldn’t care less, but IT’s going to keep hounding me until you jokers start using this bullshit, so get a move on. In truth, Sasuke was much further behind on the document migration than he’d wanted to be—between migrating all of Kakashi’s documents, arguing with HR over his contract, and occasionally doing his actual job, he just hadn’t had the time. But Naruto didn’t need to know any of that. Instead Sasuke explained, “It’s useful for audit trails but its error messages are totally incomprehensible, it crashes a lot, and sometimes the edit lockouts really screw you over.”

“Uh huh,” said Naruto. He was craning his neck to watch Tenten toasting a bagel in the kitchenette, not even pretending to look at Sasuke’s screen anymore.

“Are you listening?” Sasuke demanded. “This is important.”

“What? Oh—yeah, totally. Edit lockouts. Protected E. Got it.”

“Protected B.”

“‘S what I said. Hey, so, what time’s lunch?”

Sasuke forced himself to take a deep breath. In. Out. Once more. Just like the meditation exercises Gai was always making his team do. He told himself that it was fine. It was all fine. For unknown reasons, probably in a fit of temporary insanity induced by Sasuke’s absence, Kakashi had decided to hire this moron, and now Sasuke was stuck babysitting him, but that was fine. His only responsibility here was to cover the basics. If Naruto couldn’t be bothered to listen, well, that was also fine. Let him fuck himself over. It wasn’t Sasuke’s problem.

***

“ Sweatpants. He’s wearing sweatpants today! Varsity sweatpants!”

“Well, it is casual Friday,” Kakashi pointed out. He turned a page. The well-worn creases in the spine of today’s bodice-ripper suggested that it was an old favourite. Maybe Kakashi was feeling sentimental.

“That doesn’t mean you can show up to work dressed like a—dressed like a—” Some primal self-preservation instinct flared deep in his brain, telling him to stop and observe his surroundings carefully.

It was indeed casual Friday. Kakashi, sitting slouched at his desk with his romance novel drooping in one lazy hand, was wearing jeans covered in dog hair, a purple Toronto Raptors hoodie also covered in dog hair, and—just visible under his desk—what appeared to be… crocs. With athletic socks.

Sasuke peeked again at his manager’s feet. The crocs didn’t even match. One was pink, one was green. The pink one had a gaudy rhinestone jammed through one of the holes.

“Dressed like a…?” Kakashi prompted.

“Never mind,” Sasuke said quickly.

“Did you actually need something, or did you just come in to complain about our precious little kiddo’s sense of style? Because I have a meeting starting in”—Kakashi glanced at his computer screen—“oh. Fifteen minutes ago. Guess I’d better get going.” With a sigh, he unfolded his lanky frame out of his office chair—watching him stand always made Sasuke think of someone trying to set up an unnecessarily complicated and slightly broken beach umbrella—and stretched his long arms over his head. Novel still in hand, Kakashi picked up his mug and ambled out of his office.

“I just think it’s unprofessional,” Sasuke said later to Tenten, during a chance meeting at the coffeemaker in the kitchenette. Tenten was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans for casual Friday. Sasuke was also wearing a plaid shirt and jeans for casual Friday. Just about every single public servant in the National Capital Region was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans for casual Friday. It was practically enshrined in the dress code. From where he stood in the kitchenette, Sasuke had an excellent view of the offending sweatpants as he watched Naruto shoot a rubber band at one of Gai’s co-op students.

“What,” said Tenten, “you mean the fact that he’s dressed like a—”

“Gym rat? Yes. Exactly.”

“I was going to say like a frat boy who dug through a Value Village donation bin blindfolded. But now I feel bad.”

Sasuke snorted. “Yeah, that’s about right. What a moron.”

“Hey now. He’s not that bad. Really friendly.”

“Tch.”

“Look, if you really think he dresses so inappropriately, you should talk to him about it. You’re his supervisor, aren’t you?”

“Technically, Kakashi’s his supervisor.”

“Oh, right . Kakashi’s about as likely to do any supervising as he is to learn how to use the photocopier himself.”

This was, unfortunately, true. Sasuke had been doing all of Kakashi’s photocopying for him since the day he started his first work term as a co-op student himself. In fact, he wasn’t entirely sure Kakashi even knew where to find the photocopier on his own.

“Still…” Sasuke said vaguely. To hide his sudden discomfort, he grabbed the coffee carafe and topped up his mug. Telling Naruto he dressed inappropriately would be an admission that he noticed what Naruto wore, which would be tantamount to saying he looked at Naruto, which—

Well, it was like Anko from credit assessment, who never wore a bra. Everyone knew she never wore a bra. You could see her nipples. More accurately, you couldn’t not see her nipples. But you couldn’t just say Anko, please wear a bra, Public Works is blasting the AC in here and the only way your nipples could be more obvious is if you took your shirt off and circled your areolas in Sharpie . You couldn’t say that, because that would mean admitting you’d been looking at her nipples instead of watching her PowerPoint presentation. You especially couldn’t say that if you were a man, sexual orientation notwithstanding, which was why Sasuke, Kakashi, Gai, Neji, and Lee spent every meeting with her staring at the charts and figures in her slides with the intensity of staked-out RCMP officers preparing for a major drug bust.

“I’m just saying, he’s probably not going to clue in on his own. You need to take him under your wing, like a baby bird.” Tenten glanced at the pit. “A six-foot-six baby bird who eats instant noodles for lunch every day and can bench, like, three hundred pounds.”

Oh, so she had noticed that too. Well, at least he wasn’t the only one.

“It’s fine,” he muttered. “I don’t even care.”

“Uh huh,” said Tenten. The look she gave him as he hurried back to his desk was far too perceptive for his comfort.

***

On Monday morning, Sasuke arrived half an hour early, as was his custom. Gai and Lee were the only other ones in this early, but from the melodious sounds of gongs and sitar music emanating from the other end of the floor, they were busy doing their sun salutations together. Sasuke made his first cup of coffee and set it down on his desk, where it would languish forgotten until it had transformed into cold sludge, which he would then choke down before his nine o’clock meeting with comms. He put on his headphones to block out the sounds of Gai bellowing yoga poses, and settled in to work.

For the next two hours, he updated spreadsheets, replied to emails, drafted memos for Kakashi, drafted fact sheets for Jiraiya, worked on his deck for the executive committee, worked on Kakashi’s deck for the executive committee, reviewed Neji’s latest draft of their new environmental building materials policy, and, in an effort to develop his vocabulary, struggled through two CBC articles in French.

Vaguely, he registered the office filling around him. Sakura arrived fifteen minutes early, checked her email, and then took off, probably to see Tsunade on the third floor. Kakashi showed up, eating a vanilla dip donut and looking (as usual) as if he’d just wandered back into civilization after living in the wilds of Gatineau Park for three months. Gai’s students (Shikamaru, Choji, and Ino—Sasuke suspected Gai had hired three for the sole purpose of one-upping Kakashi’s two) came in one after the other. Naruto—wearing an absolutely garish green polo shirt patterned with pink flamingos, and clutching some sort of fancy coffee that gave Sasuke heartburn just looking at it—arrived late, as usual, and greeted everyone boisterously, also as usual.

Sasuke gritted his teeth and turned up the volume on his music.

Just before nine, someone leaned over and tapped his shoulder. Sasuke jumped, his concentration snapping like a snipped rubber band, and looked up from his spreadsheet. Naruto had scooted his chair over to Sasuke’s desk, beside Sasuke’s. Right beside Sasuke’s. Sasuke scooted backward a few inches and slipped one of his headphones off his ear.

“Hey!” said Naruto. He was grinning and rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Yeah, so. Uh. I think I accidentally deleted the shared drive?” He laughed. “Is that bad?”

“You what,” Sasuke said flatly.

“You know that drive where everyone stores all their files—?”

“I know what the shared drive is,” Sasuke snapped. “What do you mean, you deleted it? Let me see.”

The brief, abyssal moment of existential terror Naruto’s words had provoked was quickly assuaged by reason. Naruto couldn’t have deleted the shared drive. He was a co-op student. He didn’t even have the permissions to view all of the shared drive. He must have deleted the drive icon from his desktop, or unmapped it from his file explorer, or something equally mundane, harmless, and reversible. Sasuke slid his chair over to Naruto’s computer. He clicked. Clicked again. Clicked a third time, panic now starting to buzz around his brain like static. Click click click.

“Hey!” Ino said suddenly. “I can’t access any of my files!”

“Me neither!” said Choji.

“Same here,” said Shikamaru, sounding supremely bored by the whole affair. “What a drag.”

“You guys too?” said Tenten, poking her head up over the wall of her cubicle. Someone—it sounded like Neji—started cursing, and across the floor, Lee let out a howl that suggested he had just watched someone disembowel three generations of his family right in front of him.

Sasuke stared at Naruto. Naruto laughed again, nervously, and said, “Oops?”

***

“He deleted the shared drive! The fucking shared drive, Kakashi!”

“Eh, everyone makes mistakes, Sasuke. Why, I remember a certain little kiddo hitting reply-all on an all-staff email…”

Even now, two years later, Sasuke flushed hot with shame at that memory. “That was different! I’ve lost months of work!”

“Well, IT’s working on restoring the backup, so not to worry. You know, Sasuke, I’m surprised at you. If you’d been more proactive about migrating your files to GCDocs…”

Sasuke’s blush flared a few degrees hotter. Humiliation at being called out for falling behind mingled with an emotion perhaps best described as seething fury. He was behind on migrating his files to GCDocs because he’d been busy migrating all of Kakashi’s files to GCDocs. And fixing all of Kakashi’s Excel formulas. And showing Kakashi how to set up a Facebook account, because apparently Kakashi still lived in the 90s. Sasuke still wasn’t sure how he’d let himself get roped into that one.

“Timbit?” offered Kakashi, gesturing to a box on his desk.

“No! I don’t want a fucking Timbit!” Seething fury abated temporarily in favour of sudden suspicion. “Hey—aren’t these the Timbits Gai brought in for his students this morning?”

“These Timbits? You must be mistaken.” Kakashi contrived to look so innocent that Sasuke knew for sure he had to be guilty.

***

In the end, IT did manage to restore the backup, and Sasuke only lost a few days’ worth of work. But the damage was done. It had settled in Sasuke’s cold, dead heart a virulent, simmering vendetta, the likes of which Sasuke hadn’t known since grade three, when Itachi had broken Sasuke’s new scooter. It was a vendetta even greater than the intense resentment he harboured against the internal audit team, who always seemed to have it in for operations and made a habit of unjustly criticizing them for reckless spending.

He hated Naruto. He detested—no, he loathed Naruto. He loathed Naruto’s stupid, tacky outfits. He loathed how Naruto was always fidgeting with pens and paperclips and other miscellaneous office supplies at his desk. He loathed how Naruto was always jiggling his leg in meetings. He loathed Naruto’s loud, obnoxious laugh. He loathed the crunching sound of Naruto breaking up the noodles in his instant ramen every single day for lunch. He loathed watching Naruto trying to flirt with Sakura on the rare occasions she was actually at her desk, although he did take a certain vindictive satisfaction in watching Sakura roll her eyes and immediately shut him down. He loathed how Naruto tapped on the arrow keys over and over and over again to adjust the position of graphics in PowerPoint instead of just dragging them with his cursor like a normal human being. He loathed how Naruto grinned and waved and said, “Heya, Sasuke!” every time he saw him, like they were friends or something.

What he loathed most, though, was that everyone else—everyone else—seemed to… like Naruto. The other students liked him—even Sakura, when Naruto wasn’t trying to hit on her. Tenten gave him hiking recommendations. Lee had started going to the gym with him. Gai liked him, but then Gai liked everyone. Kakashi showed him his dog pictures, but then Kakashi showed everyone his dog pictures. Jiraiya said once—jealousy and bitterness had burned the words into Sasuke’s mind like a brand—that Naruto’s slide decks were “flashy” and “packed a damn good punch up at EXCOM.” Sasuke had even caught Neji, who was usually reserved and short-tempered, sitting with Naruto at lunch one day, the two of them deep in a conversation about the Canadian Olympic women’s curling team.

“Well, the execs are always saying they want disruptors,” said Tenten, when she and Sasuke were cabbing back downtown from a meeting at INFC. “And Naruto’s definitely… disruptive.”

“Please,” said Sasuke. “When the execs say they want disruptors, they mean they want people who’ll suggest a centralized system for ordering office supplies instead of doing it team-by-team.”

Tenten acknowledged that this was true. “Still,” she added. “He’s fun, don’t you think? I even saw him sitting at Bridgehead with Gaara from audit yesterday.”

“You did not,” Sasuke said in disbelief. The whole internal audit team was a blight upon their Crown corporation, the meanest and most spiteful dregs of accounting and finance programs across the country, a coven of veritable hellspawn intent on bringing about institutional Armageddon via a thousand petty roadblocks and accusations of minor financial misconduct—and Gaara was the very worst of the lot. Sasuke and Kakashi had spent a harrowing four hours with Gaara five months ago, staring into those dead, expressionless eyes as Gaara made them pick apart every single tiny misstep they’d made in their northern rural housing development initiative.

“I did!” Tenten insisted. “Gaara was even smiling! Or I think he was. He wasn’t frowning, anyway…”

But the real kicker came on a Thursday, at approximately 3:00 p.m., when Sasuke was hurrying back into the office for a 3:15 teleconference with the Atlantic regional office, trying to inhale spicy Italian sub while also jotting down speaking points on the back of his Subway napkin. He strode past the security desk, where someone had stopped to chat with the commissionaires in French, and hip-checked the badge clipped to his belt against the sensor for the door. As the sensor beeped and lit up green, some tiny, subconscious flare of recognition prompted him to glance back towards the security desk.

The door clicked open.

The door clicked closed.

“ Naruto? ” Sasuke said in disbelief.

The guy hanging out by the security desk broke off his rapid French and turned. Just in case the disorderly blond hair and the blinding orange-and-turquoise t-shirt weren’t identification enough on their own, he grinned, waved, and said, “Heya, Sasuke!”

To Sasuke’s dismay, Naruto said a few more words in French to Izumo and Kotetsu, then jogged over to join Sasuke. “You mind tapping your pass?” asked Naruto. He pointed to the sticker bearing a large red V plastered across his chest. “I forgot mine again. Third time this week. The guys were gonna buzz me in, but if you’re going up anyway—”

Wordlessly, Sasuke bumped his hip against the sensor again. They went down the hall to the elevators, all four of which were actually functional for once. Naruto tapped on the up button about fifteen times in rapid succession.

“So. You, uh. Speak French,” said Sasuke. He stared unseeingly up at the screen above the elevator in front of them, flashing through numbers as the elevator moved between floors.

“Yep. I did French immersion,” Naruto said cheerfully, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Oh, and then I did a semester in Lyons in my undergrad. I sound Parisian as fuck, though.”

“How terrible,” said Sasuke. He was definitely not thinking about how he had to run every email he got from Deidara in risk management through Google translate. He was also not thinking about how he had to run every email he wrote back to Deidara in risk management through Google translate, after which he had to get Tenten to proofread. He was especially not thinking about how he’d only scored ABA on his last French test, not the BBB his position required.

So Naruto was bilingual. Well, that explained why Kakashi had hired him. Bilingual co-ops were hot commodities, hotter even than spots on the jury for the annual GCWCC corporate chili cook-off. It also explained why Kakashi had stopped asking Sasuke to send meeting minutes, slide decks, regional emails, and other miscellania to the translation bureau. Naruto could do it probably faster and definitely cheaper.

Well. That was… good. Yes. It was good that Naruto, otherwise a complete disaster, served some function—added some benefit—to the team. That was good.

God, Sasuke hated him.

***

Sasuke was not having a good day.

It had started at six-thirty a.m., when some lady on the jam-packed 44 bus had elbowed Sasuke in the face and blacked his eye. As his eye slowly began to swell shut, he’d walked from the bus stop to the office in the rain, only to discover he’d forgotten his ID badge at home. He wasted valuable minutes arguing with Izumo and Kotetsu, who seemed grumpier than normal, until they finally gave him a visitor’s pass and buzzed him in. He headed straight for the kitchenette for a much-needed caffeine hit and immediately dumped half a carafe of scalding hot coffee all over his pants.

He spent fifteen minutes writing and proofreading a clear, detailed, and logically organized multi-paragraph email to Kakashi summarizing the current status of the team’s major files. Then his Outlook crashed, devouring his carefully crafted draft. He wrote it again, proofread it again, and hit send before Outlook could try to sabotage him a second time. An hour later, a notification popped up in his inbox, and he opened Kakashi’s response:

To: Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: Monthly Progress Report

k sounds good

kh

---

Kakashi Hatake

Manager

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

No good job. No thanks for all your hard work. No you’re the backbone of this team, Sasuke, and without you we would all founder on the sharp, unforgiving rocks of policy management . Nothing. That was just typical. Normally it wouldn’t bother him, except that he’d personally watched Kakashi walk out of his office and into the pit yesterday to compliment Sakura on the succintity of her latest briefing note. Sasuke swallowed a surge of irritation, and tried to distract himself by biting into his apple, only to accidentally sink his teeth right into the skin on the inside of his cheek, hard.

Around eleven, Karin, their admin assistant, stopped by his desk to try to flirt with him. That was bad enough, but she also delivered a funding proposal of his that had been rejected by EXCOM, as well as a docket marked URGENT, the due date for which was two days ago. Just as he was scrambling to get started on it, an email popped up in his inbox from Jiraiya:

To: Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: thx, see attached

pls return by thurs

---

Jiraiya Saito

Director

Operations Branch

Why, Sasuke wondered for the millionth time, did no one at the managerial level or higher know how to write a proper email? He opened the attachment. It was a four-page document Sasuke had drafted, which now contained seventy-six pointless and conflicting revisions from five different people.

In the afternoon, he sat through three back-to-back hour-long meetings. All of them ran over, and all of them covered issues that could have been easily resolved via email in under five minutes. The last one involved three people calling in from regional offices, all of whom kept forgetting to mute and unmute themselves appropriately.

By the time four o’clock rolled around, in short, Sasuke’s mood was borderline nuclear. Headphones on, volume cranked, he hunched over his keyboard. Eyestrain in the one eye that hadn’t swollen shut made his screen blur before him; a tension headache was starting somewhere in the back of his skull. All he wanted to do was put his fist through his computer screen (or at least power it down), leave the damn office on time for once in his godforsaken life, jam himself onto on overcrowded bus for forty minutes, and lie down on the floor in his apartment, where he could watch reruns of House Hunters International until his brain melted right out his ears—

Something connected, not very hard, with the back of his head, then fell to the floor. He looked down. A pen. He looked up.

“Ahhh!” said Naruto, his voice muffled slightly by the hand clapped over his mouth. “Sorry!”

“Wait to go, Naruto,” said Shikamaru, rolling his eyes.

“Geez, you’re clumsy,” said Choji. Ino giggled, as did Sakura, the traitor.

“Oh, I’m clumsy?” said Naruto. He pointed an accusing finger at Choji, his face splitting into a grin. “You’re the one who—”

“ Cut it out ,” Sasuke snarled. All five of them fell silent, staring at him in shock. “This is an office, not a fucking preschool, and some of us actually have work to do. If you’re just going to mess around, go home.” His eyes lingered over Naruto, whose wide, blue eyes were fixed on him. There was a word on the tip of his tongue, pressing against the back of his teeth. He knew it was a bad idea. He knew it was unprofessional. He muttered it anyway: “Moron.”

As if Sasuke’s professional misconduct had triggered some managerial sixth sense, Kakashi chose that moment to poke his head out of his office and call, “Sasuke? You got a sec?”

Still fuming, and already regretting losing his temper, Sasuke got up and skulked over to Kakashi’s office. He resisted, just barely, the urge to slam the door behind him like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

Kakashi was slouched over his desk, the end of a pen clenched idly between his teeth. Sasuke entertained a brief and extremely satisfying fantasy in which the pen’s ink capsule explode all over Kakashi’s face. Kakashi gestured for Sasuke to sit, and set his latest romance novel face-down on his desk, the spine splayed to hold his place. Oh boy. This was serious.

“Sasuke,” said Kakashi. “You seem stressed.”

Sasuke bit back a sarcastic retort. Sassing a subordinate was unkind and irresponsible, but sassing a superior—even one as laid-back as Kakashi—was probably a good way to guarantee he never landed another contract again. So was admitting to the fact that he was severely overworked, lest Kakashi start thinking he wasn’t up to his job. Instead he said, “I’m fine. Not stressed. Everything’s fine.”

“Sure? There’s nothing troubling you? Work matters? Financial troubles? Personal...”—Kakashi hesitated for a fraction of a second—“... affairs?”

What the hell was this? Was Kakashi… concerned… for his… wellbeing? Or something? Whatever it was, it was fucking weird. “I’m sure,” he insisted. “Everything’s fine.”

“Well, alright. Oh, I have something for you.”

Sasuke sighed, expecting another overdue docket or a Treasury Board sub that needed rewriting—but Kakashi dug something small out of his drawer and tossed to Sasuke, who caught it. It was a tube of lotion, something labelled arnica cream.

“Uh… thanks,” said Sasuke, wondering if the effects of the office’s overactive HVAC on his naturally dry skin were that obvious.

“For your eye,” said Kakashi. “It’ll help the bruising. Trust me.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Anything for my very favourite junior policy analyst.” Kakashi’s eyes crinkled like he was about to smile, but then he just yawned. “Gai’s also offered to perform some crystal healing on you to speed your recovery. He tells me your aura suggests your chakras need serious realignment.”

Sasuke stared at Kakashi, trying to figure out whether or not he was joking, but Kakashi just gazed serenely back. “I—I think I’ll be okay. But I’ll, uh. Keep that in mind.”

Something tapped at Kakashi’s window, and Sasuke, in his high-strung state, nearly fell out of his chair—but it was only a pigeon perched on the window-ledge, pecking idly at the glass. Actually, there were a lot of pigeons perched on the window-ledge. They seemed to be eating…

“Did you put birdseed out there?” Sasuke asked.

“Hmm? Oh… more or less. Gai gave me some of his homemade granola.” Kakashi’s chair spun in a lazy circle as he turned to look at the pigeons. “Cute, aren’t they?”

The pigeons’ beady little eyes bored into Sasuke as if they could see right through his body and into his soul. Sasuke tried not to shudder. The pigeons around the government buildings in Gatineau had evolved to become bigger, stronger, and more ruthless those across the river in downtown Ottawa. One had stolen a French fry right out of Sasuke’s hand once when he was having lunch on the lawn by the Museum of History. Cute was not the first word that came to mind.

“Is that all?” Sasuke asked.

He was still half-expecting some form of discipline for snapping at the co-ops, but Kakashi just said, “Mm hmm,” and picked up his romance novel again.

Sasuke had almost made it to the door when Kakashi said, “Oh, hold on…”

He froze, anxiety quickening his pulse—was this it—?

“I have to present the low-income credit file to risk management tomorrow,” said Kakashi. “Could my very favourite junior policy analyst spare a few minutes to jazz up my slide deck a little for me?”

Sasuke’s shoulder sagged with relief. He knew from experience that when Kakashi asked him to “jazz up” a slide deck, what he actually wanted him to do was create the slide deck from scratch based on a handful of vague bullet points in an email he’d sent two weeks ago and a three-hundred-page policy binder that neither of them had read. But that was better than a reprimand, as far as he was concerned. “Sure,” said Sasuke. “Just send it over.”

“Stellar. Have a good night. Oh, and Sasuke?”

“Yes?” said Sasuke, already halfway out the door.

“Play nice with the kiddos, will you?”

Sasuke muttered something vague and surly and slunk out the door before Kakashi had a chance to say anything else. Somehow a mild yet targeted comment from Kakashi stung more than an outright telling-off.

***

After that, Sasuke deemed it prudent to avoid Naruto, inasmuch as he could avoid someone who dressed primarily in neons and spent eight hours a day sitting at a desk less than five feet away from his. All things considered, it was surprisingly easy. Sasuke had suddenly found himself caught in a flurry of meetings and presentations and training sessions, in addition to which Kakashi had had the bright idea to sign him up as a branch representative for the annual Government of Canada Workplace Charitable Campaign. Between doing all of Kakashi’s work for him, attending meetings to discuss the logistics of inter-branch bake sales, and occasionally fulfilling some of the actual responsibilities of his job, what little time Sasuke did spend at his desk was spent hyperfocusing until his eyes throbbed and drinking so much coffee he sometimes felt like the room was thrumming around him.

He still talked with Sakura on the rare occasions their paths crossed, and he got along alright with Gai’s students, but he figured Naruto probably wanted to interact with him just about as much as he wanted to interact with Naruto. And he had bigger problems. The majority of employees were opting out of making GCWCC donations via payroll deductions, wisely wary of having Phoenix further mangle their pay, which meant fundraising was down. And, even though the next year’s federal budget wouldn’t be unveiled until March, EXCOM was already getting antsy about the corporation’s federal funding, which meant the pressure was on from Jiraiya for Gai and Kakashi to start demonstrating the importance of their projects.

“Hiruzen says the word is science and tech are going to be big this year,” Jiraiya told Gai, Lee, Kakashi, and Sasuke during one of their strategy meetings. They all nodded; it wasn’t the best news, but it also wasn’t unexpected. The previous government had been progressively clawing back science funding every year; the newly elected prime minister would want to invest more heavily to make a public show of reversing that. It was all politics; Sasuke doubted the new PM cared any more than the old one about funding caribou mating surveys and antibiotic resistance research, but it could still mean trouble for their work.

“We Must Triumph on Behalf of Residential Infrastructure!” said Lee, his face ablaze with righteous passion. Gai, who appeared to be on the verge of bursting into manly tears of pride over Lee’s fervour, clapped him heartily on the shoulder.

“Uh, yeah, that,” said Kakashi. He was slouched over the boardroom table, more scarecrow-like than ever, warily eyeing the greenish-brown smoothie Gai had brought with him to the meeting as he nursed his own double-double. “I was thinking we can push the environmental angle on some of the work we’ve been doing with NRCan and the Ontario MECP. Kind of science it up.”

“Uh huh. Then pick some small fry to throw in too,” said Jiraiya, nodding. “Project budgets under six hundred grand, deliverables in a few months. You guys got stuff like that?”

“Of course.” Gai flashed the group a winsome smile. “I’ll get my team working on fleshing out proposals right away. We won’t rest until those slide decks are in your hands.”

“Great. Kakashi?” said Jiraiya.

“Sasuke?” said Kakashi.

“We’ve got stuff,” said Sasuke. He took the wave of panic rising in his chest and punched it right back down, hard. He did have files that would fit the bill, but they were all early stages, continually put on the backburner as he dealt with emergencies of varying scales across their current projects. For each of them, he’d still have to develop the briefing notes, and flesh out the policy drafts, and meet with risk management and finance and legal, and—

He punched the panic down again. Compartmentalize. Compartmentalize. Compartmentalize. He could do this. He just had to focus on one thing at a time. And also maybe start bringing a sleeping bag to the office so he could more easily work twenty-hour days. He could set up camp in that corner by the photocopier. Shower at the Goodlife down the street. Live off day-old bran muffins from Marcellos. No big deal.

“Okay. Let’s see some drafts by the end of the week,” said Jiraiya.

Sasuke, still drifting in a haze of anxiety and mild hysteria, wondering if anyone else had ever suffered a heart attack at twenty-three or if he would be the first, walked out of the boardroom and right into Naruto.

“Oh, sorry,” said Naruto, stepping quickly out of his way.

Sasuke made the mistake of looking at him. He didn’t mean to glare. Really. It was just habit at this point, combined with the natural instinct to protect his eyes from the pylon-orange of Naruto’s shirt.

Naruto looked away. “Uh. Kakashi, Tsunade’s looking for you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, she says you’re squandering Sakura’s talents on menial gruntwork again, or something? She looked pissed.”

“Ah. Well, in that case, I’ll be working from home for the rest of the day. Email if you need anything,” said Kakashi. He started meandering purposefully off towards the elevators.

Aside from that small incident, though, Sasuke thought he'd done an admirable job of minimizing contact with The Enemy. On the unavoidable occasions when they did need to communicate for business purposes, they did so exclusively through email and track changes. Sasuke thought they could very easily maintain this for another few months until Naruto's term was up, at which point they never had to see each other again, and Sasuke could return to quietly self-destructing in peace.

That was what Sasuke thought. Until Naruto hit him with his bike.

It was approximately 6:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, and Sasuke was jaywalking across O'Connor Street, hunching his shoulder to keep his phone pressed to his ear while he fumbled in his bag for his water bottle, balls-deep in an argument with Neji over the draft Ts&Cs for the proposed low income mortgage default assistance program. "Look," he was saying as he stepped out into the street, "If that's your opinion, fine, but you can't just put that in an email. If the project gets ATIP’d—"

"AHH LOOK OUT—"

The words registered a split second too late. Sasuke looked up just in time to see the cyclist who, an instant later, ran him down.

Because the universe apparently harboured a personal grudge against Sasuke and delighted in making him suffer, the cyclist was, of course, a blond boy in his early twenties, wearing an aqua shirt patterned with yellow pineapples under a truly awful orange bomber. Naruto.

To Naruto’s credit, he'd tried to swerve to avoid hitting Sasuke full-on, and the unholy squeal that had threatened to pierce Sasuke's eardrums as he was knocked to the ground suggested Naruto had also slammed on the brakes. Neither had done Sasuke any good. But Naruto had tried.

He was also already off his bike—it fell over onto the sidewalk with a crash—and crouching beside Sasuke, saying, "Holy shit, I am so—Sasuke? "

Inexplicably, Sasuke found himself fighting the urge to laugh. That was worrying. Did he have a concussion? Shit. He couldn't have a concussion. He didn't get paid sick days, and even if he did, he had way too much work to do. Kakashi had broken two of his spreadsheets again, and he was supposed to have briefing notes on those project outlines to Jiraiya in two days, and he had that preliminary meeting with risk management tomorrow, not to mention that call with the Prairies regional office about their upcoming rollout, and—

“Hey, are you okay?” Naruto asked. “You’re breathing kinda funny.”

Sasuke groaned, and touched the back of his head. His fingers came away dry—no blood. Good, good. He didn’t actually think he’d hit his head, but he’d gone down so fast it was hard to tell. He’d skinned the hell out of both elbows—torn right through his shirt—and his tailbone was throbbing, but otherwise everything seemed to be in order.

“I’m fine,” Sasuke snapped. “Watch where you’re going.”

For the briefest instant, the concern vanished from Naruto’s face, replaced by a scowl. Huh. Sasuke had never actually seen him get angry before. “Hey, you’re the one who was—” But Naruto stopped himself. “I mean, look, geez, I’m really sorry. You sure you’re okay? I can get you an Uber to the Civic or something—”

“I’m fine,” Sasuke insisted. Ignoring Naruto’s proffered hand, he pushed himself upright. “I just need my phone—”

Naruto ran a hand through his hair. No helmet. What kind of moron biked downtown without a helmet? “Oh, uh, right, your phone. Like, that phone?”

He pointed to a pile of plastic and metal that could plausibly, at some point, have been a phone. Sasuke’s stomach did something akin to stepping down an empty elevator shaft from the fifteenth floor. Shit. Shit, shit shit. Neji was going to think Sasuke had hung up on him in a blind rage. More to the point, that was his phone . His phone. His personal phone. IT still hadn’t assigned him one of the corporate Blackberries. They kept saying they were working on it. And what if someone called? What if someone emailed?

“Uh, maybe if you put it in rice…?” said Naruto.

What happened next Sasuke could only attribute to temporary insanity, brought on either by the trauma of being run down by a bike or the accumulated stress of doing a job meant to be split between three people. In retrospect, even he could acknowledge that it might have come off as slightly unhinged.

He grabbed the front of Naruto's shirt, pulled him in close, and hissed into Naruto's startled face, "You're dead to me, Uzumaki."

"Whoa, whoa," said Naruto, who looked a little alarmed. He grabbed Sasuke's hand and tried, gently, to pry Sasuke's fingers away from his shirt. "Dude, it's just a phone. You want me to get you a new one? I mean, you were the one jaywalking, but if it's that important to you—"

Naruto’s hand was warm against his wrist. All at once, the righteous fury evaporated, and Sasuke’s whole body sagged. He let go of Naruto’s shirt and rubbed his face. God, he was tired. “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay, good, ‘cause I’m gonna be real, I couldn’t afford it right now anyway. Know what I got on my last paycheque? Six fifty. Like, I don’t even know why they bothered. Everyone warned me before I started that I’d get screwed by Phoenix, but seriously—huh? What’d you say?”

“I said we’re blocking the bike lane,” Sasuke lied. He was pretty what he’d actually mumbled, in a final bout of temporary psychosis, had been something along the lines of shut the hell up you fucking idiot . But that was, perhaps, unduly harsh.

“Oh yeah, right.” Naruto stood and hauled his bike up onto the sidewalk. Sasuke stood too, doing his best to brush the worst of the street grime off himself. He scooped up the remains of his phone and stuffed them in his bag. Maybe the SIM card would be salvageable, at least.

“Well—” he began, preparing to bid Naruto a cool yet cordial goodnight.

“Aw, shit, your shirt.” Naruto pointed to the holes torn in Sasuke’s elbows, beneath which the skin was raw and oozing. “Geez, that looks nasty. You want a Band-Aid? I think I got a couple in my bag—”

“I’m fine. I should go—”

“You headed south? Hey, me too, I’ll walk with you.”

And so, to Sasuke’s great dismay, Naruto fell into step beside him, using one hand to wheel his bike.

“Hey, can I ask you something kinda personal?” Naruto said after a minute.

“Uh,” said Sasuke, caught off guard. “I guess.”

“How come you hate me so much?”

Sasuke fiddled with the strap of his bag and looked away, suddenly uncomfortable. They’d made it all the way to the Nature Museum now. He watched the giant inflatable jellyfish in its glass tower change colours, blue then green then yellowish-orange. “Tch. I don’t hate you.”

“Really? ‘Cause at work you sorta act like you do. And also, you just said I was dead to you, like, ten minutes ago. So, y’know.”

“Well,” said Sasuke, feeling not unlike the human equivalent of the greenish scum that formed along the surface of the Rideau Canal, “I don’t.”

“Okay. Good.” Naruto’s face suddenly split into a grin. He prodded Sasuke in the arm, and Sasuke resisted the urge to slap his hand away. “‘Cause I’m gonna be your boss one day.”

“What,” Sasuke said flatly.

“Yeah, believe it! Give me five years and I’ll be the deputy minister!” said Naruto, and he punched the air as if already celebrating the victory.

Sasuke just rolled his eyes. “We don’t have a DM, moro—uh—Naruto. We’re a Crown corp.”

“A what now?”

“A Crown corporation. The government has departments—Justice, Ag Can, the big ones—and it has agencies—like Parks—and it has Crown corps. Like us. Only departments have DMs. We have a CEO.” Which Naruto would already know, if he had bothered to look at the organizational hierarchy chart Sasuke had given him in his welcome binder on the first day. Honestly.

“Oh. Geez.” Naruto brightened again almost instantly. “Well then, I’m gonna be the next CEO!”

“Tch.”

“Just wait. You’ll see.”

“Why do you want to be the CEO anyway? You’ll just spend all your time going to meetings and getting roasted by CBC reporters.”

Naruto laughed, and shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. I just feel like I could really do something, y’know? Make sure people like you and Sakura and everyone can actually focus on doing your jobs without dealing with too much bullshit. Just seems like there’re all these great ideas and cool projects and awesome people all over the place that could really do a lot of good and they just sorta get squashed by corporate stuff. I guess it’s, like, idealistic, or whatever, but, eh. Hey—what’re you looking at me like that for?”

“Like what?” Sasuke jerked his head away so fast he felt something in his neck crunch. He had definitely been staring. For one transient moment, he’d almost felt that he was seeing Naruto for the first time—seeing something beyond the annoying laugh and the loud voice and the equally loud shirts, like there was an actual person with actual complex emotions somewhere underneath all of that. It made him uncomfortable.

“Like that weird look you were giving me just now.”

“I wasn’t giving you a weird look,” Sasuke snapped. He glanced up, and realized they were right in front of his building. He’d never been so glad to see it in his life. “This is my apartment. I’m going home now. Goodnight.”

Chapter Text

Karin handed him the docket first thing in the morning. It was an ATIP. A big one. The Lethbridge file. Well, he’d suspected it would be coming sooner or later. Sasuke sighed, skimmed it, and headed to the pit.

“How many of you worked on Lethbridge?” he asked. Naruto, Choji, and Ino all raised their hands. “Okay, well, it’s been ATIP’d.” Met with three blank stares, he translated, “Someone’s made an Access to Information and Privacy request. I’ll send around the details, but we’ll need to release anything related to the file that’s below Protected B. Documents, emails, everything. I’ll make a folder in the shared drive—”

“Wait, emails?” said Naruto. “Like, uh… all of them?”

“Yes.”

“All of them,” Ino repeated.

“ Yes , all of them. That’s what I said.” Sasuke hesitated. Naruto, Choji, and Ino all seemed to be conspicuously avoiding looking at each other. “Is that a problem?”

“Nope! No way. No problem,” Naruto said quickly. “We’ll just. Do that, then.”

“Good. I’ll send you the filepath,” said Sasuke, and thought no more of it until two days later, when Kakashi called him into his office.

“Sasuke. About this ATIP,” said Kakashi. He was wearing a pink tie with a pattern of tiny corgis running all over it. Probably a gift from Gai.

“Yes?” said Sasuke, and sniffled. He’d woken up this morning with his eyes watering and his nose running and his head feeling like someone had jammed it full of used cotton balls. Allergies, probably. Very inconvenient. He sneezed.

“Gesundheit. Have you looked through all of the emails?”

Sasuke sniffled again and grabbed a Kleenex from the box on Kakashi’s desk. The box was encased in one of those novelty holders, this one designed to make it look like you were pulling a tissue out of the mouth of a cartoonish pug. “All five thousand of them? No, I just skimmed them.”

“Hmm,” said Kakashi.

He set aside today’s romance novel ( Halloween Knight , a fitting nod to the season). A sense of foreboding began to settle over Sasuke, who shivered. That, or someone was messing with the thermostat in here again. He’d been vacillating between too hot and too cold all morning. “Is something wrong?” he asked. He’d told Neji not to put anything touchy in writing—

“Honestly, I’m not sure,” said Kakashi. He turned his monitor so Sasuke could see it too. “Do you know why Choji signs off on all his emails as “Cool Ranch”? Or what this means?" He pointed to an email:

To: Naruto Uzumaki, Choji Akimichi

Subject: Fwd: Re: Lethbridge Site Contamination

tfw no environmental assessment

༼ つ ಥ_ಥ ༽つ

---

Ino Yamanaka

Co-op Student

Urban Social Housing Team

Operations Branch

It was difficult to tell for sure underneath his congestion, but Sasuke was fairly certain he felt his soul leave his body, squeezed out slowly like the last bit of toothpaste in the tube, propelled by the weight of existential dread suddenly crushing him.

“It’s… a joke.” He must have been a serial killer in his previous life, or a mafia boss, or a corporate lawyer, or something equivalently awful that had made some higher cosmic power intent on punishing him. Otherwise he wouldn’t be here right now, sitting in his manager’s office, trying to explain internet culture to a man who had only recently discovered that you could have multiple tabs open in your browser at once. “TFW means that feel when . So it’s like, when the developers start construction without doing an environmental assessment first, it feels … it feels like…”

“A collection of random symbols?”

“They’re supposed to be a face.”

“I see,” said Kakashi, who clearly did not. “Is this… a meme?”

“Yep.” Mucus was starting to drip down the back of Sasuke’s throat. He took another Kleenex and blew his nose.

“And this picture of a robot?” Kakashi opened an email from Naruto to Choji.

“Probably.” Sasuke frowned. “Wait, did you say a robot? That’s a Teletubby.”

Kakashi looked at him blankly.

“You’ve never heard of the Teletubbies? Seriously?” Kakashi continued to look politely vacant. Sasuke sighed and said, “You know what? Never mind. I’ll go through the correspondence before it gets compiled and take out anything extraneous.” And, perhaps, also have a little chat with the co-ops about email professionalism.

***

When he hauled himself out of bed the next morning, aching all over, barely able to breathe, wracked with feverish chills, throat swollen, head pounding, Sasuke was forced to admit he was sick.

“You look awful,” Itachi said when Sasuke shuffled into the kitchen. Itachi was already dressed for work, his briefcase packed, halfway through a mug of tea and a plate of fried eggs. Sasuke muttered something incomprehensible and started making coffee.

By the time Itachi had finished his breakfast and brushed his teeth, Sasuke had gone through what had to be at least a third of a box of Kleenex and had been forced to change his shirt twice after sneezing some truly revolting substances into his elbows, as per Health Canada’s recommended method for controlling the spread of germs. Itachi watched him blow his nose for the three hundredth time and said, “Not to sound like our mother, but maybe you should call in sick.”

“Can’t. Stuff to do.”

Itachi nodded. He worked for the Department of National Defence, and pulled even longer hours than Sasuke. Sasuke still wasn’t sure exactly what he did, except that it involved a lot of travel and he seemed to get paid a lot of money, even in spite of Phoenix. “Well,” said Itachi, “I think there’s some DayQuil in the medicine cabinet.”

Sasuke dragged himself into the bathroom, carefully measured out a dose of cough syrup, and knocked it back, grimacing at the taste. Then he looked at the bottle. “Oh, come on— ”

“What’s the matter?” Itachi asked, poking his head into the bathroom.

Sasuke showed him the bottle. “I’m fucked. I took NyQuil by accident.”

“Oh, I’ve done that before. Just drink a Rockstar or two. They’ll cancel each other out.”

“Really?”

“Really. Trust me.”

It made sense. Sort of. Anyway, he didn’t have much choice; by the time he was waiting for the bus, the drowsiness had already started to hit him. He had to keep pinching himself to stay awake. He got off one stop earlier to go to the depanneur by his office, where he dutifully bought two Rockstars. He tucked one in his bag as a contingency and choked down the other as he walked to the office.

By the time he got in, his heart was racing, and he—or maybe the building itself?—appeared to be vibrating, but he’d also been struck by an incredible burst of raw, manic productivity, on top of which his sinuses had started to clear. He took the stairs at a run, slid into his chair, and started firing off emails at a breakneck pace. Hey, this was great. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it sooner.

Unfortunately, after about an hour, the drowsiness hit him again like a transport truck barreling down the 417. Itachi had promised the Rockstar would cancel out the NyQuil, but something seemed to have gone wrong; he was sleepy, but he was also jittery, so that every time the screen blurred in front of him and he began to nod off, he’d immediately jerk awake again, his heart pounding so fast it nauseated him.

He’d been staring at the spreadsheet in front of him for an indeterminate amount of time, trying to force the numbers to stay in focus and arrange themselves into some form of coherent meaning, when someone tapped his shoulder. He leapt up so fast his chair went over backwards, and Sakura stepped hastily out of the way. She and Naruto were both on their feet, notebooks tucked under their arms, looking at him expectantly.

“What?” he said.

“Um, I just asked if you were ready to go,” said Sakura. She smoothed a stray piece of hair behind one ear. She was particularly put-together today, in a heather-grey skirt suit that paired nicely with her pink hair.

“Go where?”

“The meeting? With Shizune’s team?”

Shit. The meeting. With Shizune’s team. He fumbled for his own notebook and trailed after them. He didn’t notice Naruto smirking at him until they were in the stairwell. “What?” Sasuke demanded.

“Dude, are you high right now or something?” Naruto asked.

“Wha—no! Don’t be stupid,” Sasuke snapped.

“Okay, okay, I was just asking. It’s just, you seem kinda fucked up. No offense.”

“ You seem kind of—tch. Whatever.”

The meeting itself was hellish. Sasuke threw every watt of his willpower into staying focused, but his brain felt like mush and an inexplicable creeping dread kept making him twitch. He forced himself to focus on Shizune’s round face, staring intently at her mouth as she spoke, as if that would help him make better sense of what she was saying. She passed around a deck. The first page had a graph on it. The bars seemed to wobble in front of him. Sakura said something, and then Naruto, and then Shizune was speaking again, and paper rustled as everyone turned their pages, and… funny, the light in the room seemed to be dimming…

The sound of someone snickering woke him. He twitched. His eyes blinked blearily open, allowing him a dazed view of a table full of people staring at him. Several of them had their hands pressed over their mouths, the crinkles around their eyes suggesting they were attempting to hide smiles. Where the hell was he?

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” said Naruto, on whose shoulder Sasuke’s head was currently resting. Naruto was grinning the grin of a small child who had just been brought into a candy shop, handed a hundred-dollar bill, and told to go wild.

Sasuke grabbed the table and jerked upright. His heart seemed to plummet downward, rebound off his stomach, and shoot up to flutter in his throat like a panicking chickadee. Holy shit. The meeting. He’d fallen asleep in the middle of the meeting. No. Worse. He’d fallen asleep in the middle of the meeting snuggled up against Naruto’s shoulder.

Now that Sasuke was awake—awake, and flushing the hot scarlet of molten lava—Naruto wasted no time in collapsing into shouts of laughter. “Please tell me you got that, Sakura—”

“Sure did,” said Sakura, who had her phone out. “This is going right to National Geographic .”

“Public servant at rest,” Shizune suggested. Even she was grinning.

Eventually everyone settled, the meeting got back on track, and Sasuke somehow managed to make it through the remaining forty minutes without dying of humiliation or taking another impromptu nap. When they wrapped up, Sasuke stalked ahead of Naruto and Sakura, who were still snickering, and returned to his desk, where he continued trying to update his some of his spreadsheets through the haze of influenza, fading antihistamines, sugar, and caffeine swilling around in his head. Annoyingly, none of his formulas were working properly. It seemed Kakashi had gone in and broken everything again. And speaking of Kakashi—

“Yo,” said Kakashi, strolling over to Sasuke’s desk. “How is my very favourite junior policy analyst doing today?”

“Fine,” Sasuke replied automatically. His eyes were still glued to his computer. Stupid goddamned formulas.

“And what are you doing right now?”

Sasuke thrust down a surge of irritation and with it the urge to answer your job for you, you lazy son-of-a-bitch . “I’m inputting this week’s data sets in the national mortgage and debt tracking chart.”

“Oh? Really? That’s funny. Because it looks like you’re typing numbers into a text box on a PowerPoint slide.”

Sasuke blinked, and frowned.

He was not inputting this week’s data sets into the national mortgage and debt tracking chart.

He was, in fact, typing numbers into a text box on a PowerPoint slide.

At least that explained why his formulas hadn’t been working.

“I’m driving you home,” said Kakashi.

“But—”

“I don’t think so. I’ll take care of anything urgent here for you. Come on, get your coat. Your coat. No, your coat. No, that’s Ino’s—you know what, never mind, you can get it later. Let’s go.”

Kakashi had given Sasuke a ride home a few times before, during tornado watches or truly torrential downpours. He drove a nice, nondescript SUV—silver body, leather seats, tinted windows. A pug bobblehead nodded sagely away on the dashboard; some threadbare blankets, all coated in a thick layer of dog hair, covered the back seats. As far as Sasuke knew, Kakashi didn’t have kids, so he could only assume Kakashi needed the eight seats for chauffeuring all his dogs around. Sasuke collapsed into the front seat and let his face rest against the window. It was wonderfully cool.

“Our delightful kiddos told me you seemed a little under the weather. In fact, they showed me some very interesting photographic evidence,” said Kakashi as he reversed out of his parking spot and started to nose out of the underground garage. Sasuke groaned. Of course they had.

“I took NyQuil by accident this morning,” he mumbled. “My brother told me to cancel it out with an energy drink.” Somehow, it had sounded more reasonable when Itachi had said it.

“Ah. Well, we’ve all been there,” said Kakashi, nodding sagely.

After that, they lapsed into silence. The Chaudiere Falls roared under them as they crossed the bridge back into Ontario, the water white and frothing. They were waiting at the lights at Wellington and Lyon when Kakashi spoke again.

“Sasuke. How often do you work overtime?”

Sasuke froze. He was feeling a little more lucid now—lucid enough to know that this was a trap. Definitely a trap. Either he told the truth and Kakashi thought he was a brown-noser trying to make himself look good, or he lied and Kakashi thought he was a slacker who wasn’t pulling his weight. He needed to find the balancing point, the fulcrum, the average. Three days a week. No, too much. One day? No. Two days. That felt right.

“Two days a week,” Sasuke lied.

“Hmm. And how many extra hours do you work on those two days?”

Another trap. What was the right answer here? Three hours was excessive. One hour was hardly worth mentioning. Two hours? Or was that still too much?

“An hour and forty-five minutes,” Sasuke lied again. Belatedly, to make it sound less contrived, he added, “Approximately.”

“Hmm. You know, I didn’t think it was possible, but you’re actually an even worse liar than Gai. Congratulations.”

Sasuke bristled. “I’m not—”

“Stop,” Kakashi said sharply, and Sasuke fell silent. Kakashi’s voice had an edge to it that he’d never heard before, an edge completely at odds with his usual infuriating chill. Kakashi sighed. “Listen. I won’t pretend I don’t appreciate it. With the hiring freeze, we’re seriously understaffed. But if you don’t look after yourself, you’re going to burn out.”

“Tch.”

“I’m serious. Besides, you’re too young to be spending all your time holed up in an office with a bunch of boring old people. You should be out enjoying the springtime of your youth, as Gai would say. Going bowling. Doing blockchain. Whatever kids do for fun these days.”

“ Doing blockchain? Who taught you—do you even know what blockchain is?”

“Sure. It’s like ‘the cloud,’ right? Jiraiya says EXCOM’s very excited about it.”

“I—well, it’s—that’s not really—” Some antediluvian survival instinct warned him that attempting an explanation would only bring him pain and suffering. He gave up. “Yeah, it’s like the cloud.”

Kakashi nodded, looking pleased with himself. Then his expression turned serious again. “Well, if you’re going to work so much overtime, at least track it so you get paid.”

“Alright,” said Sasuke, too surprised to argue.

They had reached O’Connor by now. Kakashi pulled into the driveway of Sasuke’s apartment; Sasuke sneezed, muttered a thank you, and dragged himself out of the car. Kakashi rolled his window as Sasuke shuffled up towards the front door and called after him, “If I see you at the office tomorrow, I will personally pick you up and carry you out.”

Sasuke snorted. “Like you could take me, old man.”

“Try me,” said Kakashi, as he waved goodbye.

***

As much as he hated to admit Kakashi might be right, the time off from work left Sasuke feeling significantly better. He spent it lounging around the apartment semi-comatose, dosing up on NyQuil and Neocitran, streaming home improvement shows on his laptop, downloading Tinder, realizing Tinder was too much work, deleting Tinder, watching videos of cats skateboarding instead. His body composition shifted to approximately 70% Campbell’s Chunky Chicken Noodle soup. He looked at the profiles of the cats on the Ottawa Humane Society’s website and began assembling a persuasive case for adoption to present to Itachi. The case was presented, and summarily rejected. He watched more cat videos.

During his second day of quarantine, Sasuke made the mistake of logging into Facebook, and spent the next few hours stalking all of his colleagues in as much depth as their privacy settings allowed. Gai’s pictures all showed him touring India, doing yoga, jogging in the countryside, attending meditation retreats, eating artful vegan food, and doing other things that made him look like the author of a moderately successful wellness blog. Lee’s profile featured photos of him running marathons and also contained, in fact, links he’d shared to posts on Gai’s moderately successful wellness blog. Neji was tagged in a lot of family photos filled with enough relatives to rival the Uchihas. Tenten had lots of pictures of herself working out and drinking wine with other smiling girls. Choji and Ino just seemed to reshare memes. Shikamaru’s profile hadn’t been updated in six years. And Sasuke was somehow unsurprised to find that Kakashi didn’t appear to have updated his profile at all since Sasuke helped him create it. His picture was still the blank default silhouette and the only piece of information visible was his gender.

Sasuke tried Sakura next, and nearly dumped his soup all over his laptop in shock. She had all the usual pictures girls posted, but she was also tagged in dozens of pictures from martial arts tournaments: mid-spar, being awarded trophies, grinning alongside competitors and coaches. She’d posted a few training pictures as well, and holy shit , was she ever jacked. Sasuke would never in a million years have guessed that all those modest blouses concealed biceps the size of his calves.

After Sakura, he hesitated. He typed in Naruto Uzumaki , then deleted it. He spent a minute or two staring at the place on the living room wall where he and Itachi had scratched the paint carrying Itachi’s bedframe into the apartment when they first moved in. He typed Naruto Uzumaki again. He poked at the rubbery noodles in his soup. For some unfathomable reason, the prospect of picking through Naruto’s profile made him cringe with guilt. Which was stupid. At this point, he’d worked his way through just about every contact in his Outlook. In the interest of equality, it was really only fair that he go through Naruto’s profile too.

He hit enter .

Naruto’s profile picture showed him canoeing with an older guy who had a ponytail and a big scar right across his nose. The rest of his profile showed the same level of thought and consideration he displayed whenever he opened his mouth, which was to say none at all. There were dozens of photos, most candid, many blurry, all featuring that distinctive oversized grin. Playing ice hockey, playing road hockey, playing baseball, snowboarding, biking--he was always doing something—pitching a tent, climbing a tree, pretending to kiss a statue of Sir John A. MacDonald right on the mouth. Someone had captured a particularly good shot of the exact moment he got smacked in the face with a frisbee.

Naruto also seemed to have trouble keeping his shirt on. Shirtless playing soccer, shirtless playing basketball, shirtless playing volleyball--was there any sport this guy didn’t play?—shirtless doing a cannonball off a dock, shirtless playing video games in someone’s living room, shirtless in the middle of what looked like the YMCA, shirtless holding a hot dog in each hand with ketchup on his face, shirtless and sweaty and covered in dirt with a sack of gardening earth slung over one shoulder as if it weighed no more than a pillow. Sasuke found himself transfixed by that last one for a moment, probably due to some lingering dopiness from his last dose of cold medicine. He forced himself to snap out of it and move on. It was fine, the shirtless thing. Sasuke didn’t care. He’d hardly noticed it, really. Only in the objective way one observed patterns in data sets, as a passing curiosity.

With the same sense of scientific objectivity, Sasuke also observed that Naruto was nicely tanned, and very fit. He didn’t give off the same sense of raw nuclear power as Sakura, but he looked—well—he looked—

He looked like someone who spent a lot of time outdoors and led an active lifestyle that allowed him to maintain good physical fitness. That was all.

“Are you online stalking people from work?” Itachi asked when he got home from work that evening.

“What? No,” said Sasuke, hastily clicking out of a series of photos from Naruto’s middle school graduation.

“I think your weirdo manager was right. You need a hobby,” said Itachi. “If not for your own sake, then for mine.”

“Tch. You’re one to talk.”

“Or you could start dating. That would at least get Mom off our backs for a while.”

“Or you could start dating,” Sasuke muttered. An uncomfortable heat had started to spread across his cheeks and down his neck. Maybe he was getting feverish again.

At any rate, he felt well enough on the following day to go back into work, which resolved the issue, or at least postponed it. He was relieved to settle back into his regular routine—wake up, make lunch, get on the bus, arrive early—until he met with Kakashi to catch up on what he’d missed.

“You did what,” said Sasuke.

Kakashi didn’t bother looking up from today’s bodice-ripper. “Assigned some of your work to Naruto. Your little plague didn’t damage your hearing, did it?”

“No, I—but—why—what about Sakura?”

“She had work to do for Tsunade. I’m sure Naruto did a good job.” Kakashi hesitated. He flipped a page. “Well, I’m sure he did an enthusiastic job, anyway. He can catch you up.”

***

“You missed a formula here. That’s why the breakdowns are off. And these cells are linked to the next sheet, so those numbers are going to be off too.”

“Aw, shit. My bad.”

“It’s an easy fix.”

Sasuke snuck a sideways glance at Naruto as he highlighted the cells and put in the correct formula. Naruto had, as usual, rolled his chair over way too close to Sasuke’s. He was chewing on his lip, jiggling his leg nervously, obviously waiting for Sasuke to pass judgment.

Sasuke looked back at the screen. He closed the spreadsheet and opened the summary Naruto had put together from the latest meeting transcript of the parliamentary standing committee on transport, infrastructure, and communities. It was… not the worst. Succinct. Clear. Mostly grammatical. Sasuke would have to compare it against the transcript later to make sure Naruto hadn’t missed anything important, but it seemed solid enough.

“We’ll need speaking points on this too, so Kakashi can talk about it on Friday’s RO call.”

“I did those,” Naruto said quickly. He reached over, leaning in so close their shoulders were nearly touching— personal space, you attractive, athletic moron! Sasuke wanted to scream as he went rigid with surprise—and pointed to a file. 

Sasuke opened it. Read it. Snuck another glance at Naruto, who had started drumming his fingers on Sasuke’s desk, and thought of all the shirtless pictures he’d clicked through yesterday. God. Fine. No sense denying it. Naruto was hot. So hot. So annoying. But so hot.

Naruto met his gaze, his blue eyes wide with anxiety as he waited for Sasuke’s verdict. Sasuke jerked his head away to look at the screen again. “Quebec’s going to be on the call, so we’ll need these in French too.”

“I did that too, if you scroll down—”

Sasuke scrolled down, and stared at the French. Based on his limited comprehension, it looked… adequate.

“Not bad,” he admitted grudgingly.

“Ha! Really? Yes! In your face! ” Naruto let out a wordless whoop of jubilation and leapt to his feet, punching the air in some sort of ridiculous victory dance. All the other students turned to look, and Tenten and Lee poked their heads over the tops of their cubicles to see what was going on. Even Gai, leaning over Neji’s cubicle to talk with him, glanced up, grinned, and gave Naruto two big thumbs up.

“Okay, calm down,” said Sasuke, rolling his eyes.

Naruto settled, as much as Naruto ever settled, sitting again and continuing to bounce his leg. The size of his grin suggested Sasuke had just presented him with a Public Service Award of Excellence. “So what’s next?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, Kakakshi said you’d have work for me…”

Of course he did. Sasuke mentally rifled through his to-do list. “Fine. You can help me with this TB sub.”

“Sweet! What’s that?”

“Treasury Board submission.”

“Sweet! Um…” Naruto rubbed the back of his neck. “So… what’s that…?”

Sasuke sighed.

***

In the middle of their regularly scheduled RO catch-up call on Friday, when Kabuto from the Prairie regional office was in the middle of a long-winded and self-righteous explanation of why the affordable housing project he was supposed to be working on in Porcupine Plain was delayed, Kakashi put their speaker on mute and said, “So what’s everyone feeling for lunch today?”

“Kakashi!” said Sakura, scandalized. Her pen was still moving, taking neat, precise notes at a furious pace.

“Vodka,” said Sasuke, who had spent most of his morning trying to format an urgently requested fact sheet according to Karin’s exact and outrageous specifications while GCDocs crashed on him over and over again.

“Thank you, Sasuke, but I was more thinking something that won’t get us written up by HR for unprofessional conduct.”

Naruto’s eyes lit up. “There’s this new ramen place on Bank Street—”

“Naruto!” said Sakura. “We only have an hour for lunch, we can’t go all the way down there—!”

“Eh, why not?” Kakashi shrugged. “The network’s down for schedule maintenance this afternoon, so everyone’s going to go home early anyway. Think of it as a team-building activity, Sakura, if it makes you feel better. Oh, one minute…”

“... can you do on your end, Kakashi?” Kabuto was asking.

Kakashi tapped the mute button again and said, with a smoothness that gave no indication that he’d been tuning out Kabuto to talk about ramen only a second earlier, “Yeah, we’ll look into it. I might be able to find some funding this quarter. Can you send Sasuke the project files? Great. Quebec, qu’est-ce qui se passe?”

“I can’t believe you want to go out for ramen when you already eat ramen for lunch every single day,” Sakura grumbled when the call was over and they were heading back to their desks.

“It’s totally different!” Naruto protested. He was practically shaking with excitement. Sasuke had never seen anyone get so worked up about lunch before—nor had he realized one person could have enough to say about ramen to fill all the time it took to walk down to Kakashi’s car, drive across the river into downtown Ottawa, walk to the restaurant, wait for a table, place their orders, and wait for their food to arrive, as Naruto had proceeded to do.

“For real, though, it’s the best in Ottawa,” Naruto insisted as their waitress arrived carrying the last two of four steaming bowls. He’d already broken his chopsticks apart and was rubbing them together in anticipation. His leg was bouncing again, shaking the table.

“As long as it gets you to shut up for five seconds,” said Sasuke. But even he had to admit as he dug in that it was good, really good. When he ate out at work, it normally involved running down the street to Subway and inhaling his sub on the way back to the office before his next meeting. It was nice for once to actually taste his food as he ate it.

Sakura excused herself to go to the bathroom when they’d finished; and then Kakashi’s phone started buzzing, and he excused himself too to step out and take the call, and that left Sasuke alone with Naruto. The terrible anxiety of having to make forced conversation with a colleague outside the workplace began to mount, exacerbated by the fact that Sasuke suddenly couldn’t look at Naruto without feeling a compulsion to confess to seeing his naked and shapely pectorals all over Facebook.

“So?” said Naruto, who didn’t seem to share Sasuke’s horror of forced inter-coworker social relations. He was sprawling lazily in the booth, fiddling with his chopsticks. “What did you think? Was that amazing or what?”

“It was fine.”

Naruto’s grin turned smug. “Yeah? Fine enough to take Karin?”

“Why would I take Karin anywhere?” Sasuke asked stiffly.

“Aw, come on, don’t be modest. It’s so obvious. She liiiiikes you.”

“She does not.”

“She does. She thinks you’re cuuuuuuute.”

“Well, I’m not interested.”

“Why not? Wait, let me guess, you’ve already got some crazy cool girlfriend. I bet she’s a lawyer, or a doctor, or she works for the UN, or something. Right?”

“Close. She’s an astrophysicist.”

Naruto’s eyes widened. “Holy shit, really?”

“Tch. No. I don’t have a girlfriend.” And, on an impulse, he added, “Anyway, I’m gay.”

He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d said that. It was true, but he usually only brought it up at work when he was in a bad mood, knowing it was an effective way to make his coworkers uncomfortable. Not uncomfortable in an intolerant Bible-thumper sort of way, but uncomfortable in the way of middle-aged straight people whose closest contact with gay culture was watching the occasional episode of Queer Eye. Most of them would let out a startled, “Oh!” and then immediately launch into a hasty diatribe about how their niece had been a lesbian once and how they thought the whole gay marriage thing was so great. They would get more and more flustered under Sasuke’s blank stare as they struggled to demonstrate how they cool and laid-back they were.

Kakashi had been a notable exception. He’d just glanced up from his romance novel and said, vaguely, “Oh? Is that why you’re so good with PowerPoint? By the way, could you take a look at my computer for me? I think I uninstalled the internet.” Sasuke had resolved the internet issue (Kakashi had accidentally removed the Chrome shortcut from his taskbar), all the while trying to work out what the hell being gay had to do with PowerPoint and whether or not he ought to be offended.

Anyway. Sasuke didn’t really know what he’d expected from Naruto, who wasn’t old enough to have a niece who was a lesbian. Maybe some awkward backpedaling. Maybe a mildly distasteful joke. What he certainly had not been expecting was for Naruto to say, “Oh, deadass? Me too,” and raise his hand for a high five.

Sasuke stared at him.

“Or, like, bisexual, or whatever. I’m not really sure,” Naruto amended, still grinning. He wiggled his fingers. “Come on, man, don’t leave me hanging.”

“Forget it.”

“Come on, pleeeease?”

Sasuke relented, and gave him the slowest and most reluctant high five in the history of high fives.

“So, d’you have boyfriend or what?” asked Naruto, whose disregard for boundaries apparently extended from the physical to the social.

“No,” Sasuke said shortly. “Do… you?”

He didn’t care, really. He was just asking to be polite. That was all.

“Nah,” said Naruto. He looked right at Sasuke. His eyes widened. Sasuke suddenly found that he’d lost the ability to move. Or breathe. Or blink. What—Naruto wasn’t possibly going to—

Naruto surged upright. “Holy shit, there’s a lady on rollerblades pushing, like, five weiner dogs in a stroller outside,” he said, his phone already in hand. “I need to get a picture—Kakashi’s going to lose his mind—”

Ah. Right. Of course. He’d been looking out the window. Not at Sasuke. Obviously.

***

To: Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: u suck??

hey!!!! sakura says u don’t want to do the costume thing for halloween????

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Naruto Uzumaki

Subject: Re: u suck??

No, I don’t. It’s childish.

---

Sasuke Uchiha

Junior Policy Analyst

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: u suck??

by childish i think u mean HILARIOUS right

come on u have to do it itll be so frickin funny

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Naruto Uzumaki

Subject: Re: u suck??

No. Please stop emailing me unless it’s related to work. I have a lot to get through this afternoon.

---

Sasuke Uchiha

Junior Policy Analyst

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: u suck??

well what else am i supposed to do when ur ignoring me

come on pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease u know u want to

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: u suck??

sasuke

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: u suck??

SASUKE

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: u suck??

U CANT IGNORE MY EMAILS TOO THATS NOT FAIR U BASTARD

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: u suck??

i tell u what. if u promise to do it ill buy u subway for a week. i know how much u love ur spicy italians

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Naruto Uzumaki

Subject: Re: u suck??

Fine. Just stop emailing me.

---

Sasuke Uchiha

Junior Policy Analyst

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Sasuke Uchiha, Sakura Haruno

Subject: OPERATION SILVER FOX IS GO

OKAY TEAM KAKASHI MEET ME BY THE 3RD FLOOR BATHROOMS TOMORROW. 7:30AM. BRING UR COSTUMES. SAKURA I HAVE A TIE U CAN BORROW.

love u bye

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Operations Branch (All Employees)

Subject: Reminder - Halloween Potluck and Pumpkin Carving Contest

Hi everyone,

Just a reminder that tomorrow is the OB Halloween potluck. The signup sheet is on the bulletin board by the photocopier if you have not signed up yet. Please remember that one of our colleagues does have a serious nut allergy so keep your dishes nut-free and make sure to include a list of ingredients. Costumes are encouraged!

OB will also be participating in the company-wide pumpkin carving contest in support of the GCWCC. Carving will take place in the morning and you will be able to view all entries in the fifth-floor boardroom from 12:00-1:00 p.m. You can vote for your favourite by purchasing a ballot by donation ($5 recommended). Naruto and Lee have volunteered to carve our branch’s pumpkin, so please come out to support them!

Sincerely,

Karin

---

Karin Tanaka

Administrative Assistant

Operations Branch

***

“You guys awe sewiously cweepy. I can’t get ower it,” said Ino. She spat her vampire fangs out into the palm of her hand, setting them down on top of a pack of blue Post-Its so she could take a sip of her coffee. “Like The Shining or something. But with triplets. And the triplets are old men covered in dog hair.”

Naruto set down his romance novel. He’d bought one for each of them, all truly terrible artifacts of the 80s: Wild Scottish Embrace for himself, A Passion for Glory for Sakura, and, for Sasuke, something called Corporate Affair, which Sasuke was definitely not reading into as any sort of innuendo, at all. “Eh, Ino, I’m not that old. Why, I’m barely eighty-five. The youths these days have no sense of perspective. Say, can you teach me how to turn on my computer?”

Ino snorted with laughter, and Sasuke had to press his lips together, hard, to keep from smiling. Alright, it was kind of funny, the three of them all dressing up as Kakashi for Halloween. It had actually been Sakura’s idea, inspired by Lee’s use of Sasuke’s unfortunate office nickname. Naruto had done a good job planning the costumes, and his Kakashi impression was eerily true to life. And even Sasuke hadn’t been able to keep a straight face when Kakashi had come in that morning. He’d walked through the pit, paused at the door to his office, and walked back to blink in bewilderment at the three mini Kakashis typing diligently away at their desks.

For the record, Sasuke still thought it was childish. But. It was also kind of funny. Kind of.

“Naruto!” said Lee, skidding to a halt at the pit. He was wearing an Indiana Jones costume, the same one he’d worn for at least the past two years. “Are You Ready To Create The Most Splendid Jack-O-Lantern The National Capital Region Has Ever Witnessed?”

“Yeah, believe it!” Naruto leapt to his feet and charged for Lee. The slap their high five generated resounded throughout the pit, loud enough to make Sasuke’s palm ache sympathetically.

“Do you take constructive criticism?” Sasuke asked Naruto an hour and a half later, when he and Sakura went to the boardroom to view the results of the pumpkin carving contest. He had to move closer to Naruto to be heard over the noise in the room as other public servants wandered around the exhibition. At least a quarter of the room’s decibel level could be attributed to Lee and Gai, who were having a loud, excited conversation nearby about trick-or-treating.

“Yeah! Hit me,” said Naruto. He tore open a pack of Smarties—not his first, judging by the heap of assorted candy wrappers sprinkled around their pumpkin—and poured the whole thing into his mouth.

“That’s the ugliest pumpkin I’ve ever seen. A toddler with a plastic spoon could have done better.” It was, indeed, an astoundingly ugly pumpkin. It looked as though Naruto and Lee had tried to carve it with a chainsaw.

“D’you take you constructive criticism on your constructive criticism?” asked Naruto, crunching his Smarties. “‘Cause your constructive criticism sucks.”

“So does yours,” Sasuke pointed out.

“Whatever. I love our pumpkin. I call him…” Naruto’s grin turned sly. “Sasuke 2.0. Pretty good likeness, right?”

***

To: Sakura Haruno,  Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: forgot my pass again can one of u pls come get me SOS

hey so important question do u think neji is more of a khakis kinda guy or a jorts kinda guy i can’t really picture either tbh. please discuss

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: forgot my pass again can one of u pls come get me SOS

What are jorts? Also why are you thinking about this right now?

---

Sakura Haruno

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Sakura Haruno, Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: forgot my pass again can one of u pls come get me SOS

how do u not know what jorts are u heathen look them up

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: forgot my pass again can one of u pls come get me SOS

I LOOKED THEM UP. NARUTO. WHY WOULD YOU TELL ME TO LOOK THAT UP AT WORK. GAI WAS RIGHT BEHIND ME. I’M GOING TO DESTROY YOU.

---

Sakura Haruno

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Sakura Haruno, Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: forgot my pass again can one of u pls come get me SOS

ur missing the point sakura which is neji hyuuga: khakis or jorts

personally im a jorts man myself, khakis are comfier but jorts have that certain je ne sais quoi

sasuke u bastard jump in on this. i can see u opening all these emails i know ur reading them. u were here over the summer what did neji wear

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno

Subject: Re: forgot my pass again can one of u pls come get me SOS

He wore slacks every day. Kakashi wore jean shorts sometimes for casual Fridays, though.

Have you prepared the graphs with the latest mortgage default assistance program numbers yet? I need them for Jiraiya’s EXCOM presentation tomorrow. Make sure you subdivide by province as well as giving national averages.

---

Sasuke Uchiha

Junior Policy Analyst

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: forgot my pass again can one of u pls come get me SOS

Kakashi in jorts? Yikes. I’m appalled, but somehow not surprised?

---

Sakura Haruno

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

To: Sakura Haruno, Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: forgot my pass again can one of u pls come get me SOS

OF COURSE KAKASHI WEARS JORTS LOL

i hope he wears them with his crocs

also here u go sasuke u big graph nerd

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

***

“I mean, he must do something for fun. Right?” Naruto said dubiously. He blew on his instant noodles to cool them, sending the steam swaying across the unpleasantly green table. Part of the Workplace 2.0 reno had included updating all the shared spaces with trendy, modern, brightly coloured furniture, as if that made up for the fact that people were now crammed into cubicles and offices like corporate sardines.

“Well, he has a lot of dogs,” said Sasuke. “He probably walks them. And… pets… them…?” He’d only ever had cats before. He wasn’t exactly sure what one did with a dog. “I also ran into him at the Bank Street KFC at two in the morning once. So. He does that, I guess.”

“And what were you doing at the Bank Street KFC at two in the morning, huh?” Naruto nudged him knowingly. “Right across the street from Babylon? You party animal.”

“It’s not right across the street,” Sasuke muttered. In actual fact, he had been on his way home from the library after a nineteen-hour essay-writing marathon in his last semester, but somehow admitting to that felt worse than letting Naruto think he’d been getting trashed at an overpriced nightclub.

“He spends a lot of time training,” Sakura said around a mouthful of turkey sandwich. “Kakashi, I mean.”

“Oh yeah? For what? Speed-reading erotica?” Naruto asked, grinning.

“Becoming worse at Excel?” Sasuke suggested with a smirk.

“No, he does jiu jitsu. He’s actually really good. I think he’s ranked fourth or fifth internationally in his division for the amateur circuit.”

Miraculously, Sakura managed to say all of this with a straight face. Naruto laughed; Sasuke snorted. Kakashi, a world-ranked amateur martial artist? Sure, and Sasuke was earmarked to be the next Governor General. Yeah, right.

But Sakura didn’t laugh. “I’m serious,” she insisted. “I knew him a little before I started here. We train at the same dojo.”

“Wait, wait. For real? You’re not just messing with us?”

“I’m not, I swear.”

“Kakashi,” said Sasuke, in a tone of profound skepticism. “Kakashi Hatake. Our Kakashi Hatake. Kakashi who falls asleep on regional videoconferences. Kakashi who eats two Pizza Pockets for lunch every day.” Kakashi didn’t even put them on a plate, just microwaved them and ate them scalding hot out of his hands like an animal, or more accurately, like an animal-robot hybrid programmed to be invincible to molten sauce and cheese. Variety being the spice of life, Kakashi switched up the flavour every week or so. This week’s was Canadian Extreme Bacon. “ That Kakashi?”

Sakura nodded, and as one, all three of them craned their necks to peer out of the lunch room. From here, they had a clear view through the pit and right into Kakashi’s office, the door to which was currently open. For once, he wasn’t reading one of his romance novels. In fact, he didn’t appear to be doing anything. He had his feet propped up on his desk and he was leaning back in his chair, hands steepled on his chest, staring aimlessly up at the ceiling. It was hard to tell from this distance whether his eyes were open or not. He might have been asleep. Or dead.

Sasuke tried, and failed, to picture Kakashi violently wrestling an opponent into submission. Kakashi. Who looked permanently hungover. Who had, only yesterday, been so absorbed by his latest romance novel that he’d dropped his car keys right in his coffee. From the look on Naruto’s face, Naruto was currently experiencing the same reality-shaking cognitive dissonance as well.

“Really, you didn’t know?” said Sakura. “He’s got that picture on his desk…”

Sasuke knew it well, the one of Kakashi wearing what looked like black pajamas. He saw it every time he went into Kakashi’s office, nestled in between the two hundred shots of Kakashi’s dogs and a photo of Kakashi and Gai on vacation together in Barbados, both wearing Hawaiian shirts, both holding electric blue fishbowls with cocktail umbrellas and twirly straws, both sunburnt lobster-red.

“I always thought it was a Halloween costume,” Sasuke admitted.

“Nope. If you Google him you can find a ton of videos. And not only that, but…” Sakura leaned in closer, prompting Sasuke and Naruto to do the same. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Well, it feels weird saying this about our manager, but he’s, like, totally shredded.”

Sasuke and Naruto both whipped around to stare at Kakashi again. One of his abnormally long arms had slipped from his chest so that it hung down beside him, his fingers trailing on the floor. Definitely asleep.

Aside from one or two slightly disturbing dreams, which Sasuke had attributed to high stress levels and too much questionable Chinese takeout late at night, Sasuke had never tried to imagine what his manager might look like naked. Now he found that, to his horror, it was all he could think about. Naruto seemed to be in the same predicament. Only Sakura was calm, taking another bite of her sandwich and checking her phone as if she hadn’t just dropped an earth-shattering bombshell on them.

“Guys,” said Naruto, leaning in close again. His eyes shone with a manic gleam that made Sasuke instantly nervous. “ We have to see .”

Sasuke bristled. “ What? No way! That’s completely—”

“—don’t say unprofessional— ”

“—unprofessional, and—well, it is!”

“So what? This is important. No, no, no, shut up for a sec, Sasuke. Listen, okay, I have a plan. Here’s what we’ll do, we’ll buy a meatball sub, and then Sakura, you spill it all over his shirt, and Sasuke, you offer to lend him your spare, and then—”

“Shut up. Please. Every single word that just came out of your mouth was idiotic—”

“Well, let’s hear your plan then, smartass—”

“Guys,” said Sakura. She set her phone down on the table and pushed it towards them. Sasuke and Naruto grabbed for it at the same time, resulting in a brief tussle, which Sasuke won. He stared at the image on the screen while Naruto screeched and tried fruitlessly to wrestle the phone away from him.

It was a picture of Sakura in a sports bra, standing in the middle of a room covered in red and blue mats. She was flexing and looked, frankly, terrifying. Whoever had taken the photo had caught a few people in the background—two girls mid-strike, doing taekwondo or something; some guy sprawled on the mats; and there, talking to a trainer, glistening with sweat, wearing sweatpants slung low over his hips, his shirtlessness showing off some truly spectacular muscle definition, was Kakashi.

“Holy shit,” muttered Sasuke. He zoomed in.

“Let me see, let me see, let me see—”

“What are you kids doing?”

All three of them jumped. None of them had seen Kakashi leave his office and wander over to the lunch room, where he was now towering over them, radiating his usual somnolent benevolence. Sasuke could feel his face starting to flush. It took a great deal of willpower not to stare at Kakashi’s baby-blue button-up (covered, as usual, in dog hair) and reflect on the fact that those flimsy plastic buttons were the only thing standing between Sasuke and the kind of abdominals that he had always assumed could only be achieved through the generous application of Photoshop.

“Is this another one of those meme things?” asked Kakashi. He leaned in. Panicking, Sasuke thrust the phone at Naruto, who dropped it.

Sakura caught it deftly just before it hit the floor. “Actually,” she said. “I was just getting second opinions on some of my Tinder matches.”

 “Oh,” said Kakashi, looking vaguely puzzled. “Right… social media. Well, you kids have fun.” He wandered over to the fridge, removed a half-finished iced cap, and wandered off again.

When he’d gone, Sasuke said, “I don’t think he knows what Tinder is.”

“Oh, he does,” Sakura said grimly. “Tenten told me her mom matched with him.”

“I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that,” said Sasuke.

Chapter Text

The email notification popped up in the corner of his screen, and Sasuke clicked it so fast he nearly knocked his coffee all over his keyboard.

It was stupid. It was embarrassing. In one of his undergrad courses he’d read about neurochemical rewards and learned associations. For example, he’d spent so much of his life since he moved to Ottawa waiting for the bus, often in temperatures below minus thirty, that something in his chest now fluttered with conditioned joy every time he saw a bus trundling down the street, even when he wasn’t waiting. The sight of that excessively Canadian red-and-white paint job and those digital orange numbers punched the metaphorical gas on his neural reward centre the same way the sight of a slot machine would hit a gambling addict.

And now the same thing was happening at work, with his email notifications. It started with an initial acceleration of his pulse when the notification popped up in the corner of the screen, and then morphed into either a moment of dizzying breathlessness or a disappointed lull when his eyes snapped to the notification a millisecond later. It all depended on the name of the sender. It depended, to be more specific, on whether the email was from Naruto, or not.

It was stupid. It was embarrassing. It wasn’t even like he enjoyed reading Naruto’s emails. They were ungrammatical, unprofessional, annoying, and usually off-topic. All Sasuke ever did was open them, roll his eyes, shake his head, and send off a scathing reply.

He opened this latest email, resigning himself to whatever stupid joke or ridiculous idea had happened to float through Naruto’s hyperactive mind this time.

To: Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: 1988 mortgage assistance program policy

hey sasuke do u know where i could find a copy of the 1988 version of the mortgage assistance program policy i need to check something for that moosejaw grant application p&p sent over

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

Oh. It was an actual work email. Well—good. That was good. This was how it was supposed to go. Sasuke wrote back to Naruto, telling him to check the archives. He returned to revising the policy draft Tenten had sent him.

A minute later, another email notification popped up, and he went through the same thing all over again. He opened it.

To: Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: Re: 1988 mortgage assistance program policy

k cool thanks

also do u want to go to bridgehead i want a caramel latte so bad

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

Sasuke’s mouth twitched. It was definitely a small muscle spasm and not the beginnings of a smile. He glanced at the clock on his computer and made himself wait six minutes before he wrote back.

To: Naruto Uzumaki

Subject: Re: 1988 mortgage assistance program policy

Fine, I guess. 

---

Sasuke Uchiha

Junior Policy Analyst

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

***

“It’s November 18th,” said Kakashi. They were sitting in his office, passing a box of Timbits back and forth. Sasuke suspected the box was, once again, courtesy of Gai, but he was past the point of caring. His TB sub had been due two days ago and people were still making changes to it, on top of which Lee had cornered him by the shredder this morning and spent a good twenty minutes trying to convince Sasuke to add him on GCConnex.

“Yep,” said Sasuke. He picked out a chocolate glazed and bit it in half. It was slightly stale and mildly disappointing, just the way a good chocolate glazed ought to be.

“Our lovely kiddos only have a month left in their contracts.”

“Yep,” said Sasuke. He’d been trying not to think about that. In one month, they’d take Naruto and Sakura out for lunch, and then Sakura would go to her parents’ place in Stittsville for the holidays, and Naruto would go home to Thunder Bay. They’d come back to Ottawa in about two weeks, but then they’d be in school again, and Sasuke would return to being the sole member of Team Kakashi, with no one to email him annoying questions or distract him from his work. It would be… good. Yes. That was what he kept telling himself.

“What do you think of Sakura?” Kakashi asked.

“She’s amazing,” Sasuke answered immediately. Professional jealousy still simmered in him at the thought, but he knew she was good—efficient, competent, smart, friendly. She’d even been working on her French. Worst of all, he’d realized he liked her.

Kakashi nodded approvingly. “Good. I think so too. So does Tsunade. She’s got a year of school left, so I’d like to get her in part-time through FSWEP during that and then try to bridge her in.”

Sasuke nodded, and tried not to feel threatened. A year was plenty of time for him to land an indeterminate position. Or at least a longer contract. He hoped. “What’s she doing in school, anyway?”

“Film studies, apparently.”

“Really ? ”

“Mm hmm. I believe she told me she specializes in, uh... images of the feminine grotesque in late twentieth-century Japanese horror.”

 “Huh. That’s… huh.”

They both took a moment to digest this. Kakashi picked out a honey cruller Timbit and studied it contemplatively.

“And what do you think of Naruto?” He popped the Timbit in his mouth and added, “Professionally, that is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just a question. The same one I asked about Sakura.”

“Yeah, but—whatever. Naruto’s…” What? What could he say about Naruto? Naruto was Naruto. He was loud. Irritating. Overly enthusiastic. He ate way too many instant noodles and drank way too many lattes and stood way to close to people and forgot his pass all the time and fidgeted constantly and had the absolute worst fashion sense and biked recklessly without a helmet and, infuriatingly, despite all of this, he was... not bad… at his job.

Alright, fine. He was good at his job.

And. Well. It was stupid. It was ridiculous. It was totally irrational. But, inexplicably, Sasuke didn’t want him to leave.

“Well?” Kakashi prompted.

Sasuke was struck by a sudden wave of paranoia. This felt like another test. If Sasuke was too complimentary, Kakashi might think Sasuke actually liked Naruto, which would be terrible and completely false. But if Sasuke wasn’t complimentary enough, Kakashi might decide he didn’t want to keep Naruto on, which was unthinkable.

“He’s… pretty… alright,” Sasuke said carefully. There. That should do it.

“Just alright?”

“He’s… good.”

Kakashi nodded, satisfied. “I’d like to do the same thing with him. He’s set to finish his master’s at the end of the summer. You three work well together, although I’m sure Tsunade will keep stealing Sakura from me every chance she gets. Some of your recent projects have the potential to generate income for us, and Jiraiya thinks that if EXCOM likes them, he should be able to get the CEO to sign off on the staffing requests.” He cleared his throat, and directed his gaze away from Sasuke, staring vaguely at his collection of dog photos. “Ah. Then there’s also the matter of seniority. Obviously, you’ve been here the longest, and you have the most experience. You’re a little young, but I think you’d make a good supervisor. If that’s something that interests you.”

“Really? I—ah, yes. Yeah.” Staffing sign-off. Supervisor. Wow. He’d get a raise, which Phoenix would immediately screw up. And paid vacation. And benefits. Holy shit, he’d get benefits. He could finally go to the dentist again.

“You understand that you’d continue supervising both Sakura and Naruto. It might be a few years before either of them moves up to your level.”

“Okay…?”

Kakashi picked up a picture of his bulldog and stared at it intently. “Having them as your direct reports could interfere with any… interpersonal relationships… that might be… developing.”

“Excuse me? What’s that supposed to mean?” Sasuke demanded. So they were about the same age, and they ate lunch together sometimes. So what? Did Kakashi think that just because of that, Sasuke wouldn’t be a good supervisor? Did he think Sasuke wasn’t doing a good job supervising them now?

“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Just something to think about. There are other options, if anything… changes.”

“It won’t,” Sasuke assured him.

***

“Hey, Sasuke. Sasuke. Sasukeeeee.”

Sasuke slipped off his headphones and turned away from his computer to glare at Naruto, who had rolled his chair over Sasuke’s desk. “What do you want? I’m busy.”

“Aw, come on, you’re always busy. What am I s’posed to do, just leave you alone?”

“Ideally, yes.”

Naruto grinned and scooted his chair a little closer. “So. My intramurals got cancelled tonight—”

“That’s nice. I don’t care.”

“Hey, hey, I wasn’t done. My intramurals got cancelled tonight, so I was thinking, d’you want to, y’know, go get a burrito with me?”

“A burrito.”

“Yeah, we could go to that place in the Byward, or, like, we could get tacos, if that’s more your thing…”

Naruto’s mouth kept moving, which suggested he was still speaking, but Sasuke had tuned him out in favour of staring at him uncomprehendingly. Naruto had never asked him to hang out outside of work before. It was. It was. It was…

It was a thing that had happened. Sasuke didn’t really care. It was annoying that it had happened today, when he was stuck working on three urgent dockets and would probably have to work late into the evening—but, of course, he didn’t want to go anyway, so really that didn’t matter. He already had to spend eight hours a day reading Naruto’s stupid emails and feeling the desks in the pit vibrate as Naruto bounced his stupid leg and staring at Naruto’s stupid blond head as he made coffee in the kitchen.

“I can’t,” said Sasuke.

“Pleeeeeease?” Naruto wheedled. “Come on, my roommate’s having all his weird art friends over tonight. Don’t make me hang out with them. They’re gonna talk about fine-tipped pens and Fauvism and shit.”

“I can’t,” Sasuke said again. “I have too much work to do.”

He eyed the stack of dockets Karin had given him, suddenly bitter. Stupid dockets. And stupid Kakashi, going to Kingston for leadership training with Gai, leaving him at the mercy of the avalanche of urgent requests that always materialized whenever management was out of the office. To be clear, he still didn’t want to go or anything. He didn’t. But. It would have been nice to have the option. And, okay. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, going down to the market together, making snide remarks at each other over burritos, mocking Naruto for spilling salsa all over his pants, which Sasuke was absolutely certain he would do.

Naruto looked at the dockets too and made a face. “Ugh, that sucks. Hey, d’you want help? I could do one of those for you.”

“It’s fine. They’re big. You’d have to stay late.”

“I don’t mind,” Naruto said cheerfully. “Weird art friends, remember? Hit me.”

“I—uh—well—that’s—” Sasuke was suddenly very aware of the rest of the students in the pit. They all appeared to be working away very diligently at their computers, but they were definitely also listening in. Gai’s team could probably hear them too. In the time since the office’s Workplace 2.0 renos, Sasuke had come to know far more than he’d ever wanted about the intricacies of such matters as, for instance, Lee’s overly complicated workout routine, Tenten’s tumultuous on-again-off-again boyfriend, and Choji’s Dorito preferences. The office’s new layout was designed for spontaneous collaborative brainstorming sessions, not frivolous workplace luxuries like focusing on your projects in peace or trying to schedule a doctor’s appointment without informing every single one of your colleagues about your embarrassing rash.

Not, obviously, that Sasuke cared whether or not anyone overheard this particular conversation. It was hardly private. All Naruto had done was ask him to get burritos and then volunteer to stay late to help Sasuke with his dockets. That was all. Sasuke’s face was slowly flushing pink right now for entirely unrelated reasons.

“Fine,” Sasuke said shortly, to hide his discomposure. He picked a docket off his pile at random and thrust it at Naruto. “Try not to mess it up.”

***

To: Sasuke Uchiha

Subject: ghosts??

wow being the only ones here is weird haha do u think this place is haunted

---

Naruto Uzumaki

Co-op Student

Rural Housing Development Team

Operations Branch

“Naruto. The office is literally empty. If you have something stupid to say, just say it to my face so it won’t clutter up my inbox.”

“Sorry,” Naruto whispered.

“Why are you whispering?”

“I don’t know.” He was still whispering. “This place is creepy at night. For real, d’you think it’s haunted?”

“Tch. I didn’t realize you were such a scaredy-cat. Do you need someone to hold your hand?”

“Well, if you’re offering—” said Naruto, grinning. He rolled his chair over and started reaching for Sasuke’s hand.

Sasuke snatched his hand away and snapped, “Don’t be stupid. Obviously it’s not haunted—”

The lights went out. Naruto yelped. Sasuke, who had spent enough late evenings here to know most of the building’s quirks, just sighed and waved his arms around. The lights flickered back on. “It’s just a motion sensor, idiot. Relax.”

The office was sort of creepy at night, though, with all the desks empty and the lights shutting off if you sat still for too long. Sasuke had spent plenty of evenings here on his own, forcing his tired eyes to focus on his screen, jumping every time something clunked or clicked or thudded somewhere in the building. Having company was… not the worst. Even if that company was only Naruto.

They worked for a while longer, until Naruto announced he was done. He sent his documents to Sasuke for review and proceeded to hover around Sasuke’s computer, chewing on his pen and staring intently at Sasuke as he watched Sasuke look over his work.

“Not bad,” Sasuke admitted. “Th…” He gritted his teeth. He could say it. It was just one word. “Th… anks.”

“Ha! Yes! I’m the best, believe it!” Naruto surged up out of his seat and stretched. Sasuke heard Naruto’s spine pop, and then felt his own chair dip backwards as Naruto leaned his arms on the headrest. “So, what are we gonna do now?”

“Well, you could go home,” Sasuke suggested pointedly.

“Aw, don’t be so boring. We have the whole office to ourselves.” Sasuke’s mind did not stray to inappropriate fantasies inspired by the chapters of Corporate Affair he’d peeked at on Halloween. It absolutely did not. “What d’you usually do when you work late?”

“I work. And then I go home.”

“Wow. You really know how to show a guy a good time, huh?” And, while Sasuke was spluttering indignantly, willing the lights to flicker back out to hide the fact that he was turning red for what felt like the hundredth time that day, Naruto slapped his chair and said, “I know. I’ll race you up the stairs to the top floor. Loser buys the winner’s burrito.”

“Tch. No way. That’s stupid. Anyway, I still have to finish this.”

“Oh yeah? You have to finish this? This here?” Naruto picked up the docket. The bright red folder containing the instructions for the request clashed horribly with Naruto’s pink-and-orange-striped shirt.

Struck by a sudden sense of foreboding, Sasuke tried to snatch the docket back, but Naruto held it out of his reach. He took a step away from Sasuke’s desk.

“Naruto. Give that back.”

“Okay, okay, sure. I’ll give it back—if you can catch me,” said Naruto, and he took off sprinting towards the stairwell.

Sasuke swore and leapt to his feet so fast his chair went over backwards. Ahead of him, the door to the stairwell slammed as Naruto darted through; a split second later Sasuke yanked it back open and started tearing up the stairs, the concrete amplifying everything—the clatter of their footsteps, Naruto shrieking with laughter, Sasuke yelling profanities after him—into an unintelligible cacophony.

Sasuke had always thought of himself as a good runner. He’d done track and field in high school, placing modestly well at the provincial level. Plus, having spent much of his life as the baby in an unreasonably large cohort of first, second, and third cousins, he’d become excellent at escaping whenever Itachi, Shisui, Obito, or any of the others got that gleam in their eyes that suggested they were planning to use him in some unpleasant scheme. But either he was out of shape, or Naruto was an experimental metahuman with godlike speed and stamina, because by the time Sasuke reached the eighth floor—gasping for breath, clutching at the stitch throbbing in his side—Naruto was still ahead of him, and still leaping up the stairs two at a time as if this were nothing more than a relaxing warm-up.

Fine. If Sasuke couldn’t beat him with speed, he’d have to outsmart him. That shouldn’t be hard. He saw his chance as Naruto rounded the landing between the eighth and ninth floors; Sasuke put on one last burst of speed and lunged forward, just in time to catch one of the belt loops on Naruto’s pants and haul him backwards. Naruto was taller and bulkier than Sasuke, but he was also mid-step and off-balance. He stumbled back onto the landing, where Sasuke used Naruto’s own momentum to slam him against the wall. Naruto let out an  oof as his back collided with the concrete.

“Are you done now?” Sasuke demanded. He reached for the docket, still clutched in Naruto’s hand.

“Not yet,” said Naruto, and kicked Sasuke’s legs out from under him.

As a younger brother, Sasuke had plenty of experience wrestling someone bigger and stronger than him. It was the only chance he’d had to fight back when Itachi tried to cheat at Mario Kart, or to escape with his life when Itachi discovered Sasuke had snuck into his room to borrow his purple nail polish. Even now that Sasuke and Itachi were both adults, and had theoretically matured, they still found that some arguments—such as whose turn it was to clean the bathroom, or whether to watch Property Brothers or Beach Front Bargain Hunt— could best be resolved by resorting to violence.

Mostly what Sasuke had learned from Itachi was that there was no such thing as a dirty fight, and that he should never hold back, because Itachi wouldn’t. Confronted with the six-plus-foot mass of muscle that was Naruto, he did the same thing.

“Ow, ow, ow!” Naruto yelped as Sasuke pinched Naruto’s bicep, digging in his nails. “What the hell, man? Cut it out!”

Naruto dropped the docket and grabbed Sasuke’s wrists. Sasuke struggled to break free, but it was useless; Naruto had a good grip, and he was just too strong. Sasuke gave up and headbutted him instead.

This was a mistake. Naruto did let go of Sasuke’s to clutch at his forehead, but Sasuke’s hands were immediately occupied by grabbing his own head, which was pounding as if he’d sprinted face-first into a brick wall.

“Why is your head so hard?” Sasuke demanded.

“ My head? You’re the one who headbutted me!”

Sasuke put a hand down to steady himself. It occurred to him, for the first time, that he was sitting on Naruto’s stomach, in a position that could reasonably be described as compromising. His face was very close to Naruto’s, and Naruto’s chest was heaving underneath him as he struggled to catch his breath. The collar Naruto’s shirt came down in a modest V that showed a triangle of tanned collarbone and sternum, and Sasuke found himself staring at it, suddenly transfixed. His traitorous gay hindbrain chose that moment to remind him, in graphic detail, of all those shirtless pictures he’d combed through so diligently on Naruto’s Facebook.

Naruto groaned and let his arms sprawl on the floor. “Bastard. You’re nuts. That hurt .”

“Good,” said Sasuke. He dragged his eyes away from Naruto’s exposed sternum and up to Naruto’s face. This was another mistake. Naruto was staring at him. Sasuke stared back.

“Has anyone ever told you,” said Naruto, “that your hair looks stupid as hell?”

“At least I don’t dress like a colour-blind Ivey Business dropout—"

And then, somehow, they were kissing.

***

It was 3:47 a.m., and Sasuke was lying in bed, wide awake, staring intently at the ceiling. He was having… feelings.

He didn’t like it.

When it came to emotional management, Sasuke took inspiration from the arms’ length relationship between the Government of Canada and its Crown corporations, which were fully government-owned but independently operational. He preferred to let his feelings do their own thing while he did his, with minimal interaction, like a pair of amicably divorced parents. And if there was one thing he disliked more than dealing with feelings, it was—well, alright, it was dealing with ATIPs, getting funding proposals rejected, being stuck in the elevator with Gai, having GCDocs crash on him for the fourteenth time in one hour, being screwed over by Phoenix six paycheques in a row, et cetera. But if there was one thing he hated more than all that, it was dealing with complicated feelings. The ones that went beyond the pure and blissful simplicity of good, traditional emotions such as blind rage and exhaustion.

These feelings definitely fell into the complicated category. Helpfully, his mind insisted on replaying the events of that evening over and over and over and over and over in his head on an infinite loop, allowing him to cringe and squirm anew each time.

After Naruto had kissed him—or maybe he had kissed Naruto, he wasn’t really sure—it had taken Sasuke's brain several minutes to catch up with his body. In that time, Naruto's fingers had managed to twist their way into Sasuke's hair; Sasuke had discovered one of his hands clutching at Naruto's terrible shirt, the other cupping his jaw; and, even more mysteriously, their tongues seemed to have found their ways into each other’s mouths.

When the numbing haze of unadulterated shock had started to flag and he’d regained the self-awareness to comprehend exactly what he was doing—namely, kissing Naruto ( Naruto ) on the slightly grimy terrazzo landing between the eighth and ninth floors of his government office—Sasuke had done what any rational human being would have done in his place: he’d panicked.

He’d shoved himself away from Naruto, both of them breathing heavily. Naruto had grinned at him, looking slightly dazed, his terrible shirt crumpled.

“I—I’ve just remembered I have to do laundry tonight,” Sasuke had blurted out.

Naruto had blinked at him, and started to say, “What—?”

But by that point, Sasuke had already taken off running. He’d sprinted back down to the fifth floor; Naruto had shouted something after him, but his voice echoed off the concrete and mingled with Sasuke’s frantic footsteps, making his words inaudible. Sasuke had slammed his badge against the sensor on the fifth floor. He’d grabbed his backpack from his desk. He’d raced to the elevator. And he’d gotten the hell out of the building, as if the CEO himself were hot on Sasuke’s heels, brandishing a stack of Excel sheets that needed reformatting and asking Sasuke to add him on GCConnex.

And now Sasuke was here, in bed. Agonizing over it instead of sleeping. His alarm was set to go off in just over two hours, at which point he would have no choice but to get up, brain-dead, jittery, and slightly nauseated from sleep deprivation, and go back into work. There he would have to look Naruto in the face and pretend they hadn’t been heatedly making out in the stairwell only the previous evening.

Sasuke rolled over and tried to punch his lumpy pillow into submission. It wasn’t like he’d wanted to kiss Naruto. He didn’t even like Naruto. Naruto was annoying . His stupid handsome face. His stupid tasteless clothes. His stupid nice arms. His stupid off-topic emails. His stupid enthusiasm for everything, literally everything, translating meeting minutes into French, doing ATIPs, going to Bridgehead, everything . His stupid idealism, the way he went around befriending everybody, always wanting to help out, believing in their corporate mandate . His stupid laugh, his stupid refusal to write grammatical emails, his stupid insistence on teasing Sasuke all the time, the stupid way he grinned and rubbed the back of his neck when he’d messed something up, all the other three thousand stupid things he did and the stupid way they made Sasuke’s stomach flip over and his pulse pick up—

Fuck. He did like Naruto, didn’t he. That was—that was—that was just— terrible . When the hell had it happened? How the hell had it happened?

Through the wall, he heard the springs of Itachi’s bed shift, followed by a resigned sigh, and the creak of the floorboards as Itachi got up. Just like dark hair, dark eyes, a penchant for home improvement shows, and a tendency toward workaholism, insomnia seemed to run in the Uchiha family. Sasuke, busy slowly self-destructing, spent a few minutes listening to Itachi move around the apartment—turning on the tap in the kitchen, opening the fridge, wandering into the living room, settling on the couch, all done with the care of someone trying not to disturb his little brother, who was supposed to be asleep.

Sasuke checked his phone. 4:15 now. Ugh. He tossed aside the covers and went into the living room, where he threw himself down on the couch next to Itachi, who was eating the slightly congealed leftovers of a Hogtown poutine and doing sudoku.

“Fancy seeing you here,” said Itachi. He tapped his pen against his page and then, with confidence and care, filled in six boxes, one after another.

“I did something dumb at work,” said Sasuke.

“How dumb? Dumber than the time you called your manager dad in front of your entire branch?”

Trust Itachi to make him feel worse about himself. “I wish I’d never told you that.”

“But I’m so glad you did. So? Dumber than that?”

“Maybe. I, um. I might have…” Itachi was watching him expectantly. Sasuke picked at the loose threads where his pajama pants had started to wear thin, and mumbled, “I might have… made out with one of the co-op students.”

“Goodness,” said Itachi.

“Yep.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“How was it? Is he cute? Do you like him? What’s his name?”

“ What? I—that’s—it’s not—why should it— obviously I don’t— are you texting Mom? ”

“No,” said Itachi, setting his phone aside. “Just Shisui.”

Sasuke groaned. Entrusting Shisui with a secret was about as effective as using a colander as a rain barrel. Shisui would tell his mom, who would tell Sasuke’s mom, who would tell every single Uchiha on the face of the planet, probably via a celebratory announcement over their family WhatsApp group chat followed by a preemptive invitation to Sasuke’s wedding.

“I hate you,” said Sasuke.

“You wound me. So, did you ask him out?” said Itachi.

“No, I, uh. Panicked.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I. Well, I told him I had to do laundry. And then I, uh. Ran out of the building.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh dear.”

“Yeah.”

Itachi reached for his laptop, which was sitting on the coffee table. “Well, I think I was done sleeping for the night anyway. Do you want to watch Love It or List It, or Love It or List It Vancouver ?”

***

“Oh, if it isn’t my very favourite junior policy analyst. Come on in. You can move the books.”

Sasuke entered Kakashi’s office and, as Kakashi had instructed, carefully moved the stack of romance novels occupying the spare seat. Kakashi had clearly been getting in the holiday spirit; the one on top was called It’s Cold Out, Cowboy. Sasuke sat, and tried not to stare at his manager’s festive Christmas sweater, which was the baggiest, gaudiest, ugliest garment Sasuke had ever had the misfortune to behold.

“Nice, isn’t it?” said Kakashi, following Sasuke’s gaze down to his chest, where a misshapen reindeer with bulging, psychotic eyes appeared to be roundhouse-kicking a snowman. “Gai knitted it for me himself.”

“It’s definitely… unique,” Sasuke said diplomatically.

“And how are the preparations for the Christmas—sorry, the seasonal party going?”

“Fine,” said Sasuke. Kakashi had had the bright idea to volunteer Sasuke for the branch’s social committee several months ago, which was how he had found himself spending most of his morning hanging strings of tinsel and paper snowflakes all over the office with Lee and Karin. He was pretty sure he’d have silver glitter caked under his fingernails for the next five years.

“So? What can I do for you?”

“Uh. Well.” Sasuke found his eyes drawn inexorably back to Kakashi’s sweater. It was like walking past a squashed raccoon on Anderson Road: revolting, but also weirdly hypnotic. “I was just wondering where, uh. Where Naruto is today.”

Casual, he reminded himself. He had to look casual. It was a perfectly reasonable question and he had perfectly legitimate professional reasons for asking it. He just had to remind himself that the large billboard flashing I KISSED NARUTO IN THE STAIRWELL LAST NIGHT AND NOW I THINK I HAVE A BIG DUMB CRUSH ON HIM in bright neon colours over his head was only a figment of his own self-conscious imagination and had no corporeal presence in the material plane.

“He has it off, remember?” said Kakashi. “He asked a few weeks ago. I think he said he has a friend in town.”

“Oh,” said Sasuke. Shit. He’d forgotten all about that. Of course the only day Naruto had taken off all semester would be today. Of course . “Right.”

“Did you need him for something?”

“What? No! Why would I—no. It’s nothing. It’s fine. Never mind.”

Kakashi gave Sasuke a look that was far too shrewd for his comfort. Sasuke tried not to squirm. “While you’re here, I wonder if you might be able to help me with a little mystery.” Kakashi slid something across his desk for Sasuke to see, and Sasuke experienced an unpleasant sensation not unlike standing up on a moving bus at the exact moment the driver slammed on the brakes.

It was the docket. The one Naruto had grabbed from him. The one they’d wrestled over in the stairwell. Sasuke had forgotten all about it, which was unfortunate, since it had technically been due that morning. He hadn’t noticed at the time, but the docket’s contact with Naruto had definitely left it looking a little shabby. A sharp crease cut through the folder, and one of the corners was torn. The red cardstock also bore, right in its centre, an almost perfect print from someone’s shoe—Sasuke’s, judging by the tread pattern.

At a certain point, one went straight through shame and emerged out the other side. Sasuke looked Kakashi right in the face and said, “I have no idea.”

“Pity. It looks like an interesting story. Well, you’d better finish that up before Karin comes after us. Try to keep an eye on it this time, will you?”

***

“Well, well, well, well, well!” crowed Hidan, towering over Sasuke’s desk. He slapped his hand down on the cardboard box sitting beside Sasuke’s computer tower. “What do we have here? I sure hope you weren’t planning on plugging this in . Because that would be in direct contravention of our workplace Small Appliance Policy .”

The box contained a toaster. It was a replacement for the twenty-year-old toaster Sasuke and Itachi had inherited from their grandmother, which had finally reached the end of its life that morning, giving out with one last, peaceful clunk as Itachi tried to toast a strawberry Pop Tart. On his lunch break, Sasuke had taken a brief break from stringing Christmas lights around all the cubicles to run out and buy this new one, which had been the second-cheapest model in the store. Due to Phoenix-related pay complications, he was only slightly less broke now than he had been as a student, but it was still nice to feel like he was an adult with options.

“Hi, Hidan,” said Sasuke. “Yeah, actually I was going to plug this toaster in right here at my desk, even though the kitchen is literally ten feet away from me, because I have nothing better to do with my time than toast five hundred bagels a day. Is that okay with you?”

“Well! I suggest you take a nice, thorough look at our small appliance policy then, because—”

“He’s being sarcastic, Hidan,” growled Kakazu, who was lurking behind him, glowering. “Let’s go.” They stalked off towards Jiraiya’s office.

“What’s their problem?” asked Sakura, wrinkling her nose in distaste at their retreating backs.

“They’re on the risk management team,” Sasuke said bitterly. He’d gotten to know risk management all too well since he’d started here. They were nearly as bad as audit.

“Do we seriously have a small appliance policy?” Shikamaru asked.

“We do. It’s on the intranet.” The co-op students stared at him in disbelief. Sasuke sighed, opened the intranet home page, and clicked to the section on workplace policies. The co-op students crowded around his desk.

“No way!” said Ino. “That’s so—hey, are you okay? Sasuke?”

Sasuke barely heard her. He was staring at the workplace policy directory. He’d seen it before, of course. He’d even read through some of the policies, back when he was a bright-eyed go-getter co-op student himself, paralyzingly terrified by the prospect of being fired over some small corporate misstep. At the time, none of the policies had seemed particularly relevant to him, so he’d more or less forgotten all about them. Now, though—after last night—well—

“Sasuke? Hello-o-o?” Ino waved her hand in front of his face, and Sasuke blinked.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought, uh. I thought I saw a typo.”

“Wow, you’re worse than Sakura,” said Choji.

“Hey!” said Sakura.

The four of them dispersed back to their desks, where they all proceeded to pull up the small appliance policy themselves and read aloud the most outrageous lines to each other. When he was certain they were thoroughly distracted, Sasuke returned to staring at the policy directory. The bland sans-serif font of the Interpersonal Relationship Policy stared accusingly back.

Sasuke swallowed. His throat seemed suddenly to have gone sandpaper dry.

***

The thing about working for a Crown corporation with nearly 2,000 employees was that December became one long string of seasonal parties, party after party after party until, as Sasuke had discovered last year, the thought of eating one more nondenominationally shaped gingerbread cookie made him gag a little. There was the HQ-wide party, which was a formal evening affair at the CEO’s exorbitant Ottawa River estate. There was the branch potluck party, which they were having today. Later, Kakashi’s team and Gai’s team would have their division party, which normally involved laser tag; and, finally, there would be a team party. Last year Kakashi and Sasuke had just gone out to get smashed on whiskey sours together at some seedy Gatineau bar, but Sasuke suspected that might change now that Naruto and Sakura were on board, at least if Sakura had anything to say about it.

The branch seasonal potluck party was traditionally about as much fun as getting a dental cleaning: it wasn’t painful, per se, but it was the sort of thing people did out of obligation, not because they actually enjoyed the experience. Sasuke’s personal highlights from last year’s party included making forced conversation with his coworkers, spilling coleslaw all over his shirt despite his best efforts, hoping no one would notice the coleslaw stain on his shirt, tanking at seasonal charades because he still couldn’t understand his francophone colleagues’ accents, and desperately praying he didn’t look as awkward as he felt.

But at least the party would finally give him a chance to talk to Naruto. After spending three-and-a-half months plagued by Naruto’s constant chatter and incessant emails, on the one day Sasuke had actually wanted to catch him alone, the powers of corporate bureaucracy conspired to keep them apart. Sasuke had had a meeting in the morning that ran over, and when he’d come back to his desk, Naruto was by the photocopier talking to Jiraiya—because of course Naruto had just casually befriended their branch director—and then Sasuke had had that call with the Atlantic RO, and then Naruto and Sakura had been meeting with Kakashi, and just as they were finishing that , Karin and Lee had corralled Sasuke again to finish prepping for the party.

“I hate this,” Sasuke muttered to Neji once they’d started the year-in-review slideshow and stepped back to let it run. Irritating holiday music jingled along with photos of the Operations Branch taken throughout the year. For some inexplicable reason, Sasuke and Neji—perhaps Operation Branch’s two least personable members—had been elected the party’s MCs. Sasuke could only assume it was the result of some practical joke, though whether the joke was on them or on the party’s attendees was difficult to say. “Do you hate this as much as I hate this?”

“Absolutely,” said Neji. “If they ever make me run a game of charades again, I’m giving notice. Screw my pension.”

The picture of Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke dressed up as Kakashi for Halloween, posing with the man himself, popped up on the slideshow. From somewhere in the crowd of public servants, Naruto cheered, and Sakura shushed him.

It wasn’t till the slideshow had wrapped up and people had started drifting around—eating, talking, the most misanthropic branch employees already heading back to their desks—that Sasuke finally got a break. He spotted Naruto, Sakura, and Ino hanging around by the nondenominational SEASON’S GREETINGS banner Karin had bought at Dollarama, and started squeezing his way through the crowd to get to them.

Sakura spotted him first. Her eyes widened, and she looked between Sasuke and Naruto before grabbing Ino’s arm. “Ino, come get some more quiche with me.”

“No thanks, I’m stuffed,” said Ino, and then, “Hey, stop pulling! Can’t you get it yourself?”

“No, I really think you want more quiche. Remember? You were just saying how much you loved that quiche. Right?” Sakura said pointedly.

“I don’t even like—” Ino spotted Sasuke too. “Oh. Um. Right. Now that you mention it, I think I could maybe eat one more piece…”

And the two of them disappeared into the crowd. Which left Sasuke alone with Naruto.

“Hey,” said Sasuke. He tried to wipe his palms on his pants surreptitiously. They’d started to sweat. He wished he’d taken Tenten up on the glass of wine she’d offered him earlier in the party.

What would Naruto say? What were you supposed to say after you’d made out with your coworker in the stairwell after hours? Would he play it off? Maybe he did this sort of thing all the time, at all his co-op placements. Or would he think it meant something, that they were— together , now, or something, and Sasuke would have to let him down, even though—

“Hey,” said Naruto, who was wearing light-up reindeer antlers. He had a paper plate that was bowing under the weight of all the food he’d piled on it, including two enormous peppermint nanaimo bars. He picked one of them up now and took a bite. “Did you know your fly’s undone?”

Sasuke looked down. His fly was indeed undone. He yanked it up hastily, his face flushing hotter than the curry Lee had brought in for the potluck. “Was it—?”

“Yep. Whole time you were up there with Neji.”

Well, that was just… wonderful.

“So, did you get your laundry done?” Naruto asked, grinning.

“Yes,” Sasuke said stiffly.

“Nice. Hey, have you tried this stuff?” Naruto picked up the plastic cup he’d set down on someone’s desk, which contained something cloudy and orangish.

“That’s not Gai’s homemade kombucha, is it?”

“Sure is. It kinda tastes like compost, but like, in a good way?” And, to Sasuke’s immense horror, Naruto actually put the cup to his mouth and knocked back a sizeable swallow. “Anyway, you still good for that burrito? My treat.”

Sasuke narrowed his eyes. This felt like one of Kakashi’s traps. “But I didn’t beat you to the top of the building. That was the deal.”

“Can’t a guy just buy his cute coworker a burrito once in a while?”

“I—what?”

Naruto grinned and set down his cup. “I’m trying to ask you on a date, dumbass. ‘Cause I like you. In case you didn’t get that already. So?”

Sasuke looked at Naruto—that cocky grin, that holiday sweater garish enough to rival Kakashi’s, that small smear of chocolate at the corner of his mouth. He wanted to say yes. Or rather, he wanted to say eh, fine, I guess so that Naruto didn’t get the mistaken impression that Sasuke was too keen, or actually liked him, or anything like that. He wanted it just about as badly as he wanted to land an indeterminate EC-02 Step 2 position, salaried, with benefits and vacation and sick time and relative job security and a projected track for career growth. But therein lay the problem.

“I can’t,” he said, and tried not to sound bitter.

“Right, let me guess. You “have to work.” Well, how ‘bout Saturday? You can’t tell me—”

“I can’t ,” Sasuke insisted. “I’m your supervisor. Our Interpersonal Relationship Policy—”

“Prohibits relationships between supervisors and direct reports, yeah, yeah, I know the dumb policy too. But technically Kakashi’s my supervisor, even though you do all the actual work. I already checked.”

“You… checked.”

“Yeah, see, I asked Kakashi if there were any rules about dating coworkers, and he said to read the policy, so I did, and then I went back and asked if you were actually my supervisor, and he said no.”

Sasuke closed his eyes. He resisted the urge to go up to the secure filing cabinet behind Naruto and bang his head against it. “So basically, you went up to our manager and told him you wanted to date me.”

Naruto rubbed the back of his neck and had the good grace to look somewhat contrite. “Heh, I guess sorta, yeah. But don’t worry,” he added quickly, “I was really subtle about it.”

Naruto. Subtle. Right. Suddenly that conversation he’d had with Kakashi the other day about onboarding Naruto and Sakura made a whole lot more sense. There are other options, Kakashi had said, if anything… changes. Oh, hell, and when he’d gone into Kakashi’s office yesterday to ask where Naruto was, Kakashi must have thought—

Sasuke was going to kill Naruto. He was going to kill him.

… right after he let Naruto buy him a burrito, though. And maybe after Sasuke kissed him again.