A/N: For DingDongDenied, who, it must be said, deserved to have this moved to the head of the list. He shared something with me, which wasn't easy, so I owed him. Besides which, he's my personal happy-maker. Got me through some rough spots, though he probably doesn't know it. Makes me laugh harder than anyone else. Hope this meets with his approval.

To my knowledge, there's no coffee shop at the intersection of W. 34th and 6th.

Him

Saturdays were pretty much the only good thing in life. Sundays sucked for being the last gasp of freedom he had before plunging back into the seven levels of hell he called school. Sundays also happened to be the time he realized his homework wasn't done. Usually between 10 pm Sunday night and 3 am Monday morning…while trolling Tumblr, of course. Fridays were likewise a rip-off because they were the only evening during the week he could take art classes. So, though his weekend should have lasted a good two whole days and part of a third, he really only had Saturdays to kick back, relax, and not stress about anything.

And he could watch him uninterrupted.

Catching the L train to Broadway Junction, then the A to West 34th street took no time at all. This early in the morning, the trains ran smoothly. People were out, they were always out in New York City, but nothing crazy. Getting out at Penn Station, he walked down to 6th Avenue turned the corner, and entered the coffee shop.

-oOo-

The sight of him working behind the counter hit his nervous system quite as powerfully as the aroma of freshly ground beans. There was one woman being serviced, he saw. He went and stood behind her, forming a short line, while staring at him as discreetly as possible. Even as he did this, the woman turned from the counter with her little brown bag of coffee. He was called up with a quiet 'next' from him. He stepped up, hiding his excitement and nerves by shoving his hands deep into his pockets. And not making eye contact.

His eyes dropped instead to the beige name tag worn above the left pectoral, but he already knew the name. Sasuke.

"The usual?" Sasuke asked. Low, casual voice. Always calm.

"Yeah."

"One large steamed milk, whole, with cream, whipped cream, and hazelnut flavoring." There was a pause. "Buck ninety-eight."

He fished two wrinkled bills out of a back pocket and set them on the low part of the counter separating them. His eyes fell to Sasuke's hands as they plucked up the money, and he had to swallow. Half his entire enjoyment in coming to this place was Sasuke's hands. He was watching when those same hands pulled a large cup off the stack kept on the back counter. Walking parallel to the counter now, he matched Sasuke's steps and arrived at the other side of the steaming pitcher, where his milk was being heated.

"Will there be anything else?" Sasuke asked, handling the pitcher with nimble dexterity. He always asked.

"No." All he ever wanted was the milk, and to drool over those hands, and the rest of Sasuke, in peace.

The way those hands moved left his face tingling. How they handled the steaming wand, the whipped cream, then the hazelnut syrup, before finally fitting a cover over the cup and coming back to the low part of the counter, where he was waiting. The cup was held but not handed to him, until he was forced to look up and see what the problem was.

The black eyes were waiting for him. It was like having a load of bricks dropped on one's shoulders, the impact of those eyes. Especially since full knowledge of his staring sat in their dark depths. The cup was handed across the space separating them, and he nearly dropped it in taking it. Usually the cup was set on the counter and left for him to pick up. Then again, someone other than Sasuke himself usually served him. His fingers brushed Sasuke's hand as he took the cup. The contact sent a small, electric zing up his arm.

He turned, walked on shaky legs, and found a corner to sit in, feeling those eyes on his back the entire way.

For a wonder the coffee shop was relatively quiet this morning. Not enough people to obscure his view, but enough to mask the fact that he'd been sitting in his little corner by the window for a couple of hours now, milk long gone. No one asked him to leave. Besides, he had to figure they were used to seeing him by now.

Sasuke was wiping down one of the recently-vacated tables with a rag. Over the weeks he'd been coming here, he'd noticed that about Sasuke. How, unlike the other employees, he didn't bitch about doing something around the shop that didn't fall into his job-description. He simply did what needed doing. He didn't stand around gossiping with the other employees, or get short with the customers. In fact, he rarely spoke to customers, despite several specifically requesting that he be the one to pull their espresso shots. Sasuke was a favorite, that much was clear. He seemed to be the glue that held the shop together and kept it running efficiently.

He admired the quiet authority Sasuke displayed, he realized. Admired the fact that Sasuke managed to remain private and contained in a city fully of noisy, irritated people. Part of the reason he came here every Saturday, he supposed. Something about Sasuke settled the anxiety and gloominess he lived with during the rest of the week. Left him feeling peaceful and…worthy. Strange as that seemed, Sasuke's quiet presence made him feel like less of a loser.

Sasuke switched to a different table, one closer to his corner.

Up close, the man was…he didn't have a word for it. He was definitely handsome, but perfectly ordinary at the same time. Nothing exceptional about his looks, really. Black hair worn a bit long, and partially tamed by the tan employee cap. Worn backwards the way it was, it was infinitely cooler than the normal way the other employees wore it. The matching tan apron was flush against Sasuke's body, just as the long-sleeved black tee was. Both garments were snug against a physique that managed to be both lean and muscular at the same time…emphasis on the muscular. Each time his arm stretched to wipe the far side of the table, the muscles in his back rippled beneath that shirt. But it was the hands that got him. They were thick, but smooth. Hairless. The nails short and neat. The fingers broad but deft, even when doing something so mundane.

And then Sasuke veered toward him and set that rag directly on his table, moving his empty cup in the process.

He nearly shit himself. As it was, he couldn't stop himself from cringing back in his chair when the rag plopped onto his table.

His eyes skipped up once. His flinch had been noted, he saw; the dark eyes –Jesus, those eyes!- were staring down at him with a slight frown between them. A few swipes of the rag, and Sasuke was done. Sauntering back to the counter to take someone's order.

It couldn't be normal, he decided, to be left shaking and sweating in the wake of such a relatively minor incident. Except, up close, there was really nothing minor about Sasuke. His presence had seemed like an invisible weight on his chest, and those eyes... Staring at his table, it was as if Sasuke still stood over him. One strong hand fisted around the rag, the other reaching for his empty cup. And because he didn't dare look up just then to see if Sasuke was looking his way, he pulled the sketchpad he'd brought with him from where he'd set it on the next chair. Flipped to a clean page, and withdrew the pencils he carried in a pocket.

-oOo-

Sketching was a passion, he supposed. Art was. He didn't consider himself good, not yet, but he had skill. And he had a thing for hands. Normally, he sketched isolated scenes from 6th Avenue when he wasn't staring at Sasuke, but he could see those hands as if they were still right in front of him. Selecting his 2H, he set it to the paper, and frowned a moment. He didn't usually do hands, despite his secret fetish for them.

Wrists first, he decided. He set to work.

Sketching, more often than not, had the same effect on him that Sasuke did. It was one of the few things he could do with some competence. Possibly the only thing that gave him any validation at all. Usually sketching was a calming activity, but for whatever reason today was an exception. Maybe it was because he'd never deigned to sketch Sasuke before. He could admit to himself that he had an obsession with the guy. And sketching was incredibly personal to him, another minor obsession. Apparently joining the two produced the opposite of calm and peace; his pencil wasn't quite steady.

Yet, as he reached for the 4H, adding the extensor tendons, then switching to his 6B to shade, the familiar actions steadied him. Undeniably, rendering Sasuke put a knot of nerves in his gut, but by some sick twist it also excited him.

He lost himself to the sketch, seeing the bones beneath the flesh he was shading. Seeing the knuckles under the skin, and incorporating all into the gesture of the hands themselves. His mind's eye produced every detail as if he was seeing it right at that moment. The precise shape of Sasuke's thumb, how each finger was simultaneously long but blunt, and overwhelmingly masculine. The faint crescent shape of each nail, and how the nails themselves were more square than rectangular.

It wasn't enough, that one sketch of Sasuke's hands. As if drawing them had unlocked some door in his psyche, he recalled other visits to the shop, other times he'd seen Sasuke's hands doing some task. Each image was perfectly preserved, and each one left an extra buzz of awareness sizzling in him, so that soon he lost all track of his surroundings. The coffee shop fell away entirely, as he flipped to another page, filled it, and flipped to yet another.

Somewhere in his trance, it dawned on him that he wasn't just obsessed with Sasuke. He saw the man's torso taking shape with his strokes and realized that Sasuke's image was something he lived with all week. It was what he thought about during class, what he dreamed about at night. Sasuke was like some ever-present apparition that lurked behind him. There, but unseen, until he could make it to the coffee shop on Saturdays and relieve the tension. It hadn't occurred to him before now that the source of the anxiety he lived with was Sasuke.

He paused in his sketching.

Sasuke's eyes stared back at him, filling the page. Brilliant in their darkness. They seemed to know things about him. His unvoiced attraction, the longing –sharp and deep- that sat inside him. Everything he'd never say out loud was reflected in those eyes. As if the dark orbs had sucked the words out of him through his pencils. It was like seeing the secret part of himself, his feelings for Sasuke, exposed and laid bare. A lot more than pencil had been used in the expression of that black gaze; he'd poured himself into the sketch. And seeing it, this tangible evidence of his desire, he knew a moment of fear.

A shiver passed over him. He looked up for the first time in hours and noticed that the entire day had passed. Dusk had fallen, and new employees were coming on to take the evening shift. Sasuke was nowhere to be seen.

Leaving his sketchpad on the table, he got up and went to the bathroom. It was empty, he was happy to see. When he was done, he stood at the sink and studied his reflection as he washed his hands.

He was as different from Sasuke as it was possible to be. Blond hair instead of black. Blue eyes. Average build and height. Definitely younger than Sasuke's twenty-something. He'd be nineteen in a few months. All the insecurities of being eighteen stared back at him from the mirror. Looking down at his hands, he saw them smudged with graphite. He took an extra few moments to scrub them hard, trying to scour away the knowledge that he was in love with a guy who didn't even know his name.

After, he leaned his hands on the sink and hung his head. He didn't want to see the misery on his face. The confirmation in his watery eyes of just how pathetic he was. He squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his jaws until they ached and breathing through his nose. Better. The knowledge still sat in him, eroding what little confidence he had in himself, but he was able to leave the washroom and head back to his table.

His sketchbook was gone, he saw. And a young couple was sitting in his corner, sipping lattes. For a moment, he considered asking one of the employees behind the counter if they'd seen his book, then decided to just forget it. And to forget Sasuke. He wouldn't be coming back to this coffee shop anytime soon.

Pedestrian traffic was heavy this time of the night. He stood outside the shop for a good twenty minutes, just letting the humanity swarm around him. It helped. Seeing people, knowing each one was probably as screwed up as he was, it helped remind him that junk existed besides his own set of issues. That he was a small part of the world, and thus, in the grand scheme of things, so were his emotional aches and pains. Eventually, when he felt the heartache in him had settled enough, he turned left onto 34th Street to begin his walk back to Penn Station.

Sasuke was standing ten yards from the corner, shoulder propped against the coffee shop's side window. He saw, with a fascinated thrill of horror, that his sketchpad was firmly tucked under Sasuke's arm, and that the hands he'd spent a large part of the day drawing were shoved into the pockets of his jeans. Sasuke was looking at him. Waiting for him, apparently, and he couldn't help looking at the sketchbook again. This was all about that, he thought. For the moment, he was able to completely ignore this unprecedented confrontation between them in favor of thinking up an excuse, any excuse, for the sketchbook and its contents. But then Sasuke pushed off from the window and strolled over to him. He didn't stop until they were a couple of feet apart. This close, he could see that Sasuke had a good six inches on him. Probably more. And that he smelled like Fierce. Those black eyes stared down at him without blinking, and suddenly there was no air at all to be found.

"You're known as him at the coffee shop," Sasuke said quietly. "I tend to refer to you that way myself. Wondering if I'll see him on any other day besides Saturday. I sort of hope I will, but then again once a week gives me something to look forward to. Got a name?"

He did. To his shame he needed a few seconds to recall it. "Naruto."

"Naruto." Sasuke said it as if tasting one of the rich roasts he brewed for a living, rolling it on his tongue. "Naruto."

He couldn't stop looking up at that face. Or noticing how Sasuke took a step closer, and how his eyes never looked anywhere but down at him. A nervous flutter took wing in his mid-section, growing and expanding the longer he held that stare. The same knowledge that had been in his sketch of those eyes was in the actual eyes themselves. Gone was any hope that Sasuke had picked up the sketchpad without looking at the drawings. He'd looked, and known, and understood. It was all there in his steady gaze.

There was a moment of utter stillness between them, wherein the city and all the people in it ceased to matter or be heard. Questions were in those black eyes, and he knew the answers were all over his face, and in the helpless, naked way he gazed back. He realized he was chewing his bottom lip only when Sasuke's eyes finally dropped to his mouth.

"I could chew that for you if you like," Sasuke whispered.

He stopped chewing. Held his breath. Waited. And then he managed a smile.

Sasuke closed the distance between them.