---Welcome to JLH---

If you were looking for a story by VanityWantsYou, search for Just like Heroin. :3

Without the cute little 'e' at the end.

(For those of you who want to contact me for 'stealing' someone else's title, please, compare the publication dates of either fanfiction before you do this. Thanks!)

Jlh!!!

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto… -sniff-

Chibi Gaara: You SICK people! Making a girl cry like this! You should be ashamed of yourselves!

Me: Hello all!

Chibi Naruto: -waves and eats a bowl of ramen-

Me: This is my first fanfic! Yaaay!

Crowd: -silence-

Me: oo Tough crowd…

Crowd: -cricket chirp-

Me: -falls off stage-

Crowd: -applauds-

Chibi Naruto: Anyway, on with the fic! Hope you all like it!

J L H 1

It was dark, and Sasuke liked it.

There was more than one thing he liked about darkness. The absence of light was a peaceful thing. In the darkness of his penthouse he could hear himself think. Most often that was a good thing. Gloom granted him solitude, a thing he couldn't seem to grasp while out in the sun amidst screaming crowds of fan girls. Darkness was quiet. The hum of electronics and cars seemed to fade away when his curtains were drawn. What was the thing he liked most about it?

Darkness was cheap.

He had no financial problems to speak of. Quite the opposite actually. Nevertheless he refused to spend more money than he had to. He found he needed it more and more to indulge in his own interests.

He sat on the blue-carpeted floor of his bedroom with a tragic, detached look in his eyes. Strewn before him were a needle, a few empty or half empty bottles of beer, and a little plastic bag full of something white. He glanced down at the powdery substance with an expression akin to shame and contempt on his face.

He hated heroine. He hated it, but no matter how much he hated it he could not stop the terrible itching feeling he had in his arms or the snickering voice in his head commanding him to shoot himself full of the demonic thing. The very thought of it made him want to scream and throw himself out a window, so why was he still alive? He gave it a thought. Perhaps he was afraid of dying? No, that couldn't have been it. Everyone had to go in some way or another. Maybe he should have thrown himself out of a window, but that nagging voice in his head told him to go on. He long ago decided that he would be the bitch of his inner self, so he withstood each passing day wanting whatever God to strike him dead and end his pain. There was also another thing that kept his tired heart beating.

Vengeance.

His blood boiled when he thought of his older brother. He destroyed the entire Uchiha bloodline, save for Sasuke and himself, in one night. People everywhere told him that his brother committed suicide after that night, but Sasuke had a nagging feeling in his chest. He felt that somewhere his brother was hiding, just waiting to strike like a viper in the grass.

Hate and confusion were the only emotions Sasuke felt for him since his brother slit his neck and left him for dead. He supposed he could go on living if only to avenge the death of his family.

He couldn't stand it anymore. His arms itched worse than ever and he hastily snatched up the needle and the bag of powder. He was so full of rage that is arms shook as he thought of punching a hole in his wall. He refrained from doing so. Uchihas never lost their cool.

Tomorrow was the first day of high school. Oh, lovely, another reason to leap out of a window. Konoha High School if he remembered correctly. Oh well. School was just another obstacle on his path of suffering. He wondered apathetically what the day would be like. Maybe he'd meet that teacher his deceased uncle used to like.

He cracked a sardonic smile as he felt the sharp prick in his wrist. 'I wonder what I'll wear…' were his last thoughts as everything went black.

----

The little blonde boy panicked. Well, he used to be a boy until by some mistake he was changed into a little blonde fox. He raced through the forest, glancing behind him every so often to see if his pursuer was still chasing him. The fox sensed rather than saw the shadow following him through the underbrush. No matter how fast he ran, the shadow was faster. No matter how many tricky zigzags he performed, the shadow was trickier. 'Come back little fox,' the phantom pleaded in its sickeningly pitiful voice, 'be my friend!' The fox would not be fooled. Who knew what pain this thing could inflict on his poor little furry hide?

Then disaster struck.

His paws suddenly felt like they were made of lead. As he got slower and slower the shadow got closer and closer. The forest walls were beginning to cave in on him. His feet were locked in place as he gazed in horror at the phantom's rapid approach. 'Thank goodness I caught you,' the thing said with good humor, 'You were just about to run off a cliff!'

The fox looked over his shoulder. Not five feet away, a massive hole had opened up in the forest floor. Odd, it wasn't there a minute ago, was it? 'You're such a cute puppy,' the faceless ghost crooned, 'You'll be my puppy forever… and ever… and ever…'

'…Naruto'

"NARUTO!!!"

A pair of cerulean eyes popped open, unevenly cut blonde hair stood on end, short, clumsy limbs flailed and an inhumanly large, pink mouth opened wide in a surprised scream. Naruto fell out of bed with a muffled thud.

"NARUTO!!!"

"What?!?" he screeched back at the voice that had awoken him.

"Get up, lazy ass! You'll be late for school!"

'Shit!' he cursed as he flew down the stairs. His feet padded against the vinyl

floor of the small kitchen as he rummaged through the cabinets, the fridge, and the dish washer looking for something to eat and something to eat it with. He poured an excessive amount of the generic brand 'X' sugary cereal into a half washed bowl and poured milk onto it until the bowl overflowed. He grabbed a filthy spoon and devoured the mountain of unwholesome sweetness with the manners of a starved baboon. "Don't eat like that. You'll give yourself a stomach ache."

Naruto's head snapped over to the place where the living room joined his kitchen. A tall woman with flame red hair and blue eyes was leaning against the off-white counter that bordered the kitchen. "Oh, hey mom," he waved as cheerfully as he could at her. He tried his best to look excited and happy, but he knew she was going to pop the question he hated most. 'Wait for it…'

"Naruto, sweetie?"

This was it.

"You know what you're going to wear?"

Yep. The question to end all questions. His clothes were torture, but he learned to live with them.

"Not really, no," the blonde said sheepishly.

"Well!" a glimmer appeared in her eyes, "Let's dress you up then!"

Now, anyone not related to Naruto's mother would have mistaken that little gleam in her eye as a normal, over-anxious need to help her child make a good first impression. Naruto, however, knew this as an eager self-invitation to make his life a living hell. In a flash she sped to the laundry room. He was past the point of no return now. Not even God could save him. She was utterly hell-bent on having her way. All retaliations against her were crushed and any attempt at escape was doomed to failure. Naruto was convicted to wear what his mom wanted him to, and it was bound to be awful.

She emerged from the laundry room carrying a pile of orange, black, and navy blue clothing. She motioned him to follow her and he reluctantly complied.

"Well," she said after countless combinations of countless different clothes, "Look in the mirror, sweetie. You're fabulous!" Naruto slowly turned to the mirror, steeling himself for the worst. He stared at his own reflection. He would be less horrified if he was staring into a stampede of charging rhinos.

In the mirror he saw himself. That much was obvious. Yet, at the same time he was not himself. He'd gotten used to his treatment since the day he was born.

In the mirror he saw a tight, black spaghetti-strap tank top with an orange swirl in its center. Around his neck he saw the glass dolphin necklace his mother got him when he was two. And his pants… no… skirt was a blue, medium short, jean thing. The scary thing was that he didn't look half bad in it. In his hair he had a decorative orange flower barrette which was unraveling around the edges. He peered at what he believed to be his face with cleverly disguised horror. His eyes had a tad too much eyeliner on them, reminding him of his friend's. Gaara always did have a weird sense of style. Naruto's cheeks were covered in blush and his lips shimmered with cheap lip gloss.

"Like it?" his mom piped up a bit too excitedly. "It's nice," Naruto lied, "But you've gone on overkill with the eyeliner and the blush." His mom mentally smacked herself, "Here, let's just fix that up a bit…"

----

Sasuke growled as he fumbled for the sleep button on the alarm clock. When he finally found it, the damn thing still wouldn't shut up. He hissed at it and knocked it off his bedside stand. The evil, nightmarish ringing still didn't stop. He just had to go buy one of those alarm clocks where the sleep button only worked once. Oh, Sasuke, you're a smart one aren't you? He finally rose from his bed and the alarm clock uttered one last squeal before it was permanently silenced by the World Encyclopedia set of the mighty Uchiha Sasuke.

He triumphed over the clock for a minute or two, and then decided to grab something to eat. He swept up his needle and heroine off the floor, discarded the needle, and stored the bag of white powder in a secret compartment underneath his top dresser drawer.

For some reason unknown to him, Sasuke's living room curtains were wide open and the sun was streaming in. He went back to his bedroom and covered his head with one of his pillows, muttering something about how the sun was too loud. He stumbled back into the sunlight, closed the curtains, then threw his pillow on the couch.

Sasuke had a hangover. The empty bottles of beer on his bedroom floor were proof of that fact. The little voice in his head also seemed louder and more obnoxious than ever.

It wasn't legal for Sasuke to drink. Did he know this? Yes. Did he care? No. Neither did the man on the corner of Spencer and Main as long as he didn't get caught. He seemed to love tainting youth with alcohol.

Sasuke was in the middle of choosing what leftover Chinese takeout he should have for breakfast when he decided he didn't feel so good. His stomach lurched and he made a mad dash for the bathroom. When he'd flushed the contents of his now empty stomach down the drain he took one look in the mirror and decided he needed a shower.

The rest of his morning went by rather monotonously. He picked out his favorite navy shirt and khaki shorts to wear to school. He took more than one pain reliever to stop the blood pounding in his head. He took one last look in the mirror, adjusting his hair around his old headband and slipping a pair of arm-warmers on his arms to hide his scars.

Just when he thought he was ready to leave, he noticed that a piece of hair wasn't where it should've been. He licked his thumb and his index finger and smoothed the unruly piece of hair into its place. It only popped out again. He repeated himself only to see the damned lock of hair reappear in front of his eyes like a fly that refused to go away. He tried again and again in a vain attempt to keep the bothersome piece of hair where it belonged. "To hell with it!" said the Uchiha after ten minutes of fooling around. He grabbed his backpack, slung it angrily over his shoulder and charged out the door.

----

Naruto walked four blocks from his house to his first day at Konoha High School. He whistled and skipped all the way, despite the ridiculous clothing he wore. Today was going to be a good day. His good friend Gaara was being transferred from Suna, where he was supposed to go to school, to Konoha. Apparently the majority of the parents there had filed complaints about poor, innocent Gaara harassing and beating up their kids. Gaara would never beat him up though. Gaara was his friend. He used to be Naruto's next door neighbor once upon a time. He had a weird obsession with waxing his eyebrows. He waxed them too much. He waxed them off. Oh, well. Everyone had their tastes.

He walked through the glass doors of the large brick building and was amazed at how many people were already there. He took a crumpled up piece of paper out of a pocket in his skirt. It said his homeroom for the first day would be room 213. He folded the piece of paper back up and hurried up the stairs. The bell was going to ring any second.

He raced into his homeroom, tossing his book bag on the floor by a nondescript school desk and sitting down tiredly. He felt more than a little winded after running up and down the stairs, through crowds of people, slipping on a puddle of an unknown detergent-smelling liquid and bumping into some ugly looking seniors only to discover from a silver-haired guy that all 200 rooms were on the second floor. Needless to say he felt like an idiot.

He glanced about the room to notice a group of girls sitting in a tight circle in the corner of the classroom. Naruto noticed two people immediately. Sakura, a strawberry haired girl he knew from his theatre camp, and Ino, a blonde prep from his old school. They were talking about something. 'She' this and 'she' that. They seemed to be looking at his general area of the room. He looked behind him, to the right, and to the left. There were only a couple of guys sitting behind him talking about the engines they had in their cars. There was no one else.

Then it dawned on him.

They were talking about him.

"Hey, blondie!" he heard one of them say, "Come here!"

Naruto went obediently to the group of girls. They looked at him like they were going to eat him alive. A bead of sweat appeared on the side of his head. The one known a Sakura came up to him with a devilish grin on her face.

"I remember you!" she said, pointing a finger at the blonde boy, "You were at acting camp last summer weren't you?"

Naruto nodded.

"And you got to play Juliet in the final play, didn't you?"

He nodded again.

"INSTEAD of me."

Once again, Sakura received a curt nod from the blonde boy.

Sakura opened her mouth as if to say more but she was interrupted by the opening of the homeroom door just as the bell rang.

"SAAASUKE-KUUUUUN!!!!"

----

Chibi Naruto: Oh. My. God. -falls backwards-

Chibi Sasuke: Kami-sama… -grabs a bottle of vodka-

Chibi Sakura: Yay! I'm a whiny bitch again!

Me: Well? Love it? Hate it? Praise if you like. Constructive criticism is appreciated from those who don't like. Hate it completely? Go ahead. Flame me. I could use a good laugh.

Chibi Gaara: If you're nice enough, she just might update! Review! Review! Review!