The rest of the way back to the tower, Team 7 didn't leave each other's sides. Naruto attempted to convince them several times he should be the one to scout ahead and find supplies, but both Sakura and Sasuke remained stubborn on the issue.

They almost ran into Kabuto, the strange Nin from the examination halls, but Naruto had almost immediately recognised the scent covering the mysterious nin's clothes like a second skin. He had taken a sharp detour in their direct path, Sasuke and Sakura immediately dropping silently beside him in question.

"What is it? The Tower is that way." Sakura says, pointing in the direction they were headed.

"There are hostiles that way, we should detour," Naruto explains plainly.

"How do you know they are hostile? What if Orochimaru has attacked someone else, they might need our help-"

Naruto's lip twitches, restraining the instinctual demand to display sharpened teeth. "He wouldn't. He's not after them."

"But-"

"No. Naruto is right. We should avoid anyone else and just get to the tower." Sasuke interrupts her, frowning with seriousness. The muscle of her jaw tightens, but a tentative glance over his shoulder has her reluctantly agreeing.

It takes an extra hour on top of their original estimated time, but they eventually get to the tower.

Peeling open the scrolls with quivering apprehension, Umino Iruka pops into existence. Instead of the expected grin of pride, the Chunin almost trips over himself as he steps towards them with haste.

"Oh thank Kami, you're all okay. I knew something had gone wrong when Kakashi didn't come home, he looked ready to combust when I found him. Are you all alright? You two look so pale, do you need medical assistance? Come, come in, I bet you're all so tired, there's still a day left until the exam ends so you can rest here." He gushes, scanning critically over them several times with his eyes before herding them into the medical ward.

Sasuke and Sakura are both sat down to be assessed by nurses, being handed a food pill to help restore energy and assist any aches and pains. Naruto freezes up when a third nurse approaches him, squirming away from her hands in an ungraceful fashion as a low disgruntled sound dismantles in his chest.

The door slams open in tandem with a clack of his teeth as they make a threatening snap before her fingers.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura and Naruto pipe in sync. Naruto sends the assisting nurse a stinkeye as he easily clears the distance between him and Kakashi. Stares of shock follow when the Jonin leans down to enclose his sleeved arms around Naruto's shoulders. It takes a second before Naruto outwardly sighs, melting into the comforting hug as a large homespun tug grazes through the back of his hair.

"I'm glad you're all okay." He says, sending them each a look of relief as he stands. His deep, assuring voice leaves them with no doubt in his words.

The nurses do a final look over before quietly leaving them in the privacy of the otherwise empty sickbay. Like a bad odour, Naruto recognises the heavy scent of guilt permeating the fabric of Kakashi's clothes.

"We...need to talk. We knew that Orochimaru, the one that attacked you- had infiltrated the exams shortly after you did." he admits solemnly.

"Why didn't you come to save us?" Sakura asks quietly, a shake in her voice looking downcast.

"I couldn't. Interrupting the exams would have been a matter of national security. The Leaf can't afford for the exams to be cancelled at such a delicate time. Scouts were sent out to assess the situation and found that Orochimaru was gone, and no one mortally wounded or killed. The council has decided to continue." He sends Naruto a finishing look, both knowing it was Kyuubi's chakra that had actually thrown investigations off-kilter.

"But someone did die, sensei! He had pawns, they went after us after and he did something to Sasuke-"

"The girl that came after us under Orochimaru's order, I killed her. But it wasn't- It wasn't me."

A grim shadow falls over Kakashi's face, wise and distrustful eyes tracing the crook of Sasuke's neck as he sits down in a visitors' chair. "We suspected as such. For now, try not to use your chakra. We know very little about Orochimaru's Cursed Seal, but we do know that the more you give it access to your chakra, the more powerful it will become."

The boy looks pale, sickly. He moves to cover the tattoo with his palm as if hoping he could physically trap the unbed power with his bare hands.

"You want me to drop out." He says, matter of fact.

The column in Kakashi's neck tenses as his chin dips ever so slightly, confirming the boy's suspicions. "Sasuke-"

"-I'll do it."

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura shouts, as stunned as the rest of them, turning to look at him.

He sighs deeply, avoiding their eyes. Standing abruptly, he roughly tugs the IV out of his arm as he goes, a forced "—Whatever," under his breath.

"But Sasuke-kun—" Sakura tries to yell after him, but Kakashi interrupts with a quiet,

"—Sakura, let him go."

Her face goes red, blood burning at the heat of frustration, the steam rising to her cheeks. She stays like that, stubbornly fixating on an insolent scuff mark across white floors as Kakashi draws back the curtain, making his exit with Naruto in toe.

When they arrive at the Hokage's makeshift office, he resists the urge to shuffle his feet closer to Kakashi-sensei. In this room, in front of the Hokage, Naruto was a standalone weapon. He was no teammate, child, or student. He forces his features to relax, shoulders dropping into the practised posture built like a concrete wall, a gaze of the stone revealing nothing.

"Kitsune, Report." The gruff old voice moves like a whetstone over Naruto's willpower.

He gives his report simply, dulled monotone delivering news that they were attacked by Orochimaru, Sasuke was marked, and the same mark drove him crazy when they were hunted by the Sannin's henchmen. He even tells him about how his seal was attacked, and how it seemed to disrupt his chakra system, warping his body uncontrollably.

He doesn't even pause when he glides straight over the part where he officially met Kurama-sama. Naruto doesn't lie. Selective truths, rather. He doesn't even entirely know why, but the stagnant feeling pooling in his gut can't be a good sign.

They're given a day to rest before the preliminary matches. The rooms are small and simple, but they have beds off the floor and after hardening it out in the forest for days, they feel like sleeping on clouds in comparison.

Ino has surprisingly heavy steps for a Kunoichi and girl her size, and when she barrels down the hallway to their room they have plenty of notice before her arrival. She swings open the door with little abandon, uncaring to knock.

"You made it!" She exclaims.

"Of course we did, Ino-pig." Sakura throws over her shoulder, voice muffled from where she had flopped herself facedown into the pillow of her bed.

"You probably slowed Sasuke-kun down, slowpoke! Get up, come on, this place has hot springs!"

Sakura makes a deep groaning noise into the fabric, her hips rising comically as if someone had lifted them upward by strings. She stays like that until Ino impatiently grabs her foot, zipping off a single shoe and lobbing it at the buried head of pink hair.

"-Ow!" Sakura whips around, looking more tired than angry.

"Come on, Forehead!"

While she busies herself dragging the limp noodle of Sakura's body away from her bed, Naruto turns to Sasuke with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. In a moment of confidence, he grabs Sasuke's hand in his own, and the other boy physically jolts in surprise. He instantly tries to tug his hand back, but Naruto gives him no such indulgence as he leads them out of the room with his stronger grip. "Oye-! Hey, idiot, let go."

"I've never tried a Hot Spring before." Naruto quips, as if it were a sound enough excuse.

"That's not my problem— Let go, you dolt." He replies unimpressed as he continues to focus on reclaiming his fingers. He refuses to get caught going to the hot springs hand-in-hand with- with this uncivilised idiot.

Naruto's steps slow to a stop in the middle of the empty hallway and the vibrant orange sunset paints him in colour, making his hair look as if it were made of gold, and skin glow. Sasuke can't see the expression on his face and his fingers are starting to tingle from pins and needles between Naruto's insane grip.

"Do you hate me?"

Sasuke has to double-take to make sure he heard right. No one has asked him that since he was 8 after he'd declined an offer to share a girl's lunch. He's stumped. Of course he doesn't hate him. Sure, he's annoying, weird as hell, unpredictable and occasionally unnerving, but he's not-

"No." He replies with certainty, Naruto giving no indication he'd heard him.

He waits too long before hesitantly, and uncharacteristically- whispers, "Am I...bad?"

Sasuke's never heard the blonde ever do anything that hesitantly. It was nauseating to hear the level of vulnerability being laid bare in that single, three-letter question.

The snap and pop of bones and flesh echoes like a heavy drum at the back of his mind. The bob of his throat dips as he forces himself to swallow the thought.

"We're Ninja, we don't get to make that call for ourselves, idiot."

Naruto's chin falls toward his chest as he nods, his clutch on Sasuke finally loosening. As if it were the strength falling from the strings haphazardly tying Sasuke's fractured heart together, his own grip reflexively clenches around Naruto's surprisingly soft fingers before he could catch himself.

The moment Naruto's shock of blonde hair shoots up to look at him, a bellowing "Hey, Uchiha-brat!" echoes off the compound walls. A purple-haired, tall woman struts towards them, her heels clapping loudly against the floorboards. Her hips sway and unbuttoned beige coat floats down to her knees, leaving nothing to the imagination as her outfit beneath sits tight.

His eyebrow twitches at the name, and reflexively goes to drop Naruto's hand as if scorned. But Naruto looks almost more annoyed that he does, and his grip is back to try and crush Sasuke's bones. His pupils have constricted to slits, shoulders now flexed into a high-strung defence that puts Sasuke on edge as the stranger approaches, despite her clear Leaf headband.

She evaluates the blonde calculatedly, and he'd say her effort to remove her bare hands from her pockets was a sign of attempting peace despite appearing casual.

"So tense, Dandelion." She jibes, and Uzumaki gives no indication he understood the nickname.

"You. Sasuke, right? I'm Anko, Chunin Exam Proctor, I'll need you to come with me." She waves a finger at him, voice commanding the order in a way that leaves little room to dispute. He hesitates, and Naruto's grip on him doesn't budge an inch.

When she notices they aren't following, she gets annoyed. "Oye, we gotta get that thing on your neck sealed, get a move on!"

Sasuke doesn't know a lot about the cursed seal searing into his skin, but he has a feeling it's not something that should be common knowledge or shouted across the open halls.

"How do you-"

"Kakashi asked me a favour, so I'm doing it, now get a move on before I tell the old crow to shove it where the sun don't shine!" She yells, visibly irritated. It seemed enough to convince Sasuke, and he tries once again to take his hand back before the blood flow is totally cut off. "Let go."

Naruto frowns at him, glancing warily at the woman once more. Sasuke clicks his teeth together inside his mouth.

"You're hurting me, idiot." The unhappy look remains carved into pale brows, but the deadlocked grip drops. When Naruto silently follows them through the maze of dark pathways of the tower, Anko making no attempt to stop him.

When they finally arrive at their destination- a secure and faraway room from where the genin were staying- Sasuke's curiosity tears at his lips to ask Anko how she knows about the mark.

"I know more about that mark than anyone else, save Orochimaru himself. I was the first success, after all." She admits, tone dropping into something grim.

"At this point in time, we have no way of removing it. This brat, is permanent. You, me, and your seal are going to be well acquainted." As she finishes, the pale room lighting glistens over a clear film moving over her eyes. Sasuke thinks he's going to be sick.

He swallows shallowly. "You talk like it's a person."

"Not a person, per-say. But it is living. Tell me, Uchiha, do you believe in demons?"

"Folklore." Sasuke replies quickly, too fast. He can't help sinking into the memories of Naruto's endless pools of glowing crimson, swallowing him in the howls of something colossal. Can't help the repressed memories growing up - the ever constant sensation of being watched. The alluring pull towards the shrines behind the compound as his toddler self told stories to his mother about how he played tag with the other children. How the children didn't grow taller like Sasuke did, how when the clan was massacred they stopped appearing at the shrines. How he swore the shadows didn't match his steps, and how his skin moved as something within him cackled with amusement.

"You won't be able to deny them to yourself much longer, brat. You've officially got the worst roommate ever. It's just up to you how much of the house it gets. When you killed that girl, when you fractured her teammate's spine, did it excite you?"

His expression bunches up, revolted by the implication. "No, no, I didn't-"

"Ah, but you did, and you liked it. Just because you don't want to feel something, doesn't mean the feeling isn't yours. The curse is weak on its own, with no host, it's simply a mass of energy, it has no emotions of its own. So it feeds on your feelings, on your energy in all forms, and amplifies them. If you let it, it will consume you completely."

Sasuke's nails dig into the skin of his palms. "I won't let it."

Anko looks amused at his claim. "Good. Now let's seal that sucker."

His eyes darted to meet hers. "You said there was no way-"

"No way to get rid of it, anyway. We can seal it so that you feel it less, but don't get cocky, it's no less active, and if you don't take your time learning how to work with and without it, it will fuck you up. Bad. Now sit your arse down and sit still." He casts a look at his teammate, who looks no less happy than what he did when they left the hall.

The sealing takes much longer than expected, and Sasuke looks ready to pass out, sweat dripping off his shirtless dewy skin. His hair is slicked to his forehead, and Naruto sits tucked in a corner, claws embedded in the floor— long gone from angry to worried.

He tries to help Sasuke to his feet, gingerly and carefully holding onto his bare arms, but the other boy still stubbornly attempts to shove Naruto away with a grunt. "G't away, id'ot."

"Bastard." Naruto hooks one of Sasuke's arms around the base of his neck, and the Uchiha is too tired to protest when they trudge back to the room. Sasuke slumps heavily into his bed with a sigh of relief, cringing at the smell of body odor. Naruto steps away from the bed to get comfy in his own, almost missing the idea of sleeping against his teammates.

Sasuke's voice cuts through the darkness, "C'me back."

Confused at the unusual request, Naruto eats the space between them quickly.

An unsteady pale hand reaches up to snatch a harsh grip of Naruto's hair and he hisses in surprise, head bowing quickly to ease the sharp pain. Their faces are so close he can feel Sasuke's exhales against his skin. Dark eyes swallow the darkness of the room, hazed and delirious with exhaustion from the excruciating pain. His grip releases on blonde stands, but neither of them makes an effort to move away. Uncoordinated fingertips brush over the curve of Naruto's earlobe, as if asking permission. Fine hairs at the back of Naruto's neck stand alert, shimming off the henge to unveil the large animalistic ears beneath. Toughened calluses glide over the impossibly soft fur lining the shell of a single ear, hypnotised by the fine satin texture. Fingertips follow the curve until the cartilage meets Naruto's head, and the entire ear flicks with hypersensitivity. Naruto says nothing about the Sharingan boring into him, the concentration urging him to fidget. Sasuke says nothing about the rosey blush that stained otherwise unblemished skin, from the peak of his cheekbones to the bob in a tanned throat.

The night gradually consumes them both.

"Oh my god, you two smell like shit. How did you even manage to summon smells this bad?" Sakura's voice wakes him up as she leans over Sasuke to open the glass window, sun shining through the shades indicating morning's presence. He groans in protest, his whole body feeling like lead, sluggish in every movement.

One hand is weirdly warmer than the other.

" Should I be worried? You two left together yesterday and showed up at ass-o'clock sweaty and half-nude. And you two snore, by the way." She adds, voice nasally as she pinches her nose in comical disgust.

"Do not. Sakura-chan's snoring is worse." Sasuke replies in deadpan, squishing his face into his pillow as his eyelids drag themselves shut again. He's awoken a hundred years too early to even decipher what she's hinting at.

"Did you just call me Sakura- chan?" She gasps melodramatically, still managing to sound genuinely happy as she clasps her hands together.

He doesn't bother replying as sleep threatens to pull him back into her grace. Then, the weight over his body moves, and then yawns.

His eyes shoot open as his sleep-muddled brain registers that he fell asleep on top of the covers, in nothing but his shorts. Naruto had moved from the side of the bed to sprawl on top of him in a mess of limbs. One of Sasuke's hands is looped around a pair of narrow shoulders, fingers buried in greasy blonde strands. Sasuke scowls in disgust at the dirt-filled sensation under his nails. Sakura's words from just now finally aligning in his sleep-muddled brain, he lifts a single knee from under Naruto's solid weight and shucks the boy clean off the end of the bed with a swift movement. Naruto lands with a small yip of surprise— rarely ever caught off guard.

"Wow, rude." Sakura comments, receiving a glare from their dark haired teammate. She throws a towel at him in return, and he barely catches it before it hits him in the face. "I'll save you guys' a seat at breakfast. Go bathe before the smell of you puts me off mine, damn."

Sasuke grunts, looking around lazily to try and spot his shirt. He isn't comfortable with the concept of public bathing. The Uchiha were a conservative bunch, and every household had their own bathrooms. He's not self-conscious, but certain things— like the giant black cursed seal on his shoulder— aren't exactly something he's comfortable flaunting around in public view.

Naruto, on the other hand, seems completely adverse to the concept of modesty altogether. They'd all realized this during the first mission that required them to camp outside. After Kakashi advised them to wash up in the river, Sakura had went to wash up first and it was only after ten minutes of her being gone that Kakashi had made the horrifying realization that Naruto was gone too. Seconds after an ear-piercing screech shook birds from their perches, Naruto reappeared, nursing an impressive lump on his head.

They all could tell that Kakashi had not ever mentally prepared himself to explain to a child why girls and boys had to bathe separately, and after hopelessly giving in under Naruto's numerous "but why s," Sakura bravely took over the conversation. Sasuke studied the ant trail up a nearby tree.

He is pleasantly surprised when the locker assigned to team 7 in the change rooms has a change of clothes for both of them. Iruka, probably. They all have spares at their sensei's apartment from the amount of nights they spend there. His embarrassment over having someone sift through his underwear doesn't even compare to the sheer relief of clean clothes to wear. The baths are empty, and he actually groans in pleasure when his sore muscles sink into the hot water.

The soothing atmosphere of droplets on title doesn't last long when an evident "pap, pap, pap" of wet feet slapping against the floors is the only notice he's given to Naruto's entrance. A tidal wave of hot bath water hits him in the face as Naruto dives into the oversized pools. He pops up shortly, blonde hair flopping over his eyes as he grins cheek-to-cheek at Sasuke, who looks very unimpressed- and very wet.

"Oye, come here." He baits, an evil glint in his eye as one side of his face twitches.

Naruto's smile drops slightly, and he goes strangely pink as he sinks a little further into the water.

Sasuke doesn't give a fuck, and surges forward quickly to dunk Naruto straight into the water, grinding his knuckles into a greasy scalp as the other boy flails.

A grip on his ankle is the only warning he gets before his balance— and a desperate gasp of air, slips out from under him by Naruto's grasp.

He hopes Naruto drowns.