Chapter Text
Part 1: What just happened?!
Uchiha Sasuke viewed the box in his left hand. It didn’t even have the decency to be small! It was the size of perhaps three normal boxes for engagement rings together (what kind of box did you think it was – his lunchbox?) and the blue satin was covered with little red and white jewels on the top, forming the Uchiha fan. He hated it. It had been in his possession approximately 12 hours now, given to him by his dear grandmother last night, and this was the first time he’d taken it out to view it.
Yes, he thought, it’s irritating, ostentatious and has way too much smug pride, describing the Uchiha family to its very core. He sneered at it. And he was supposed to present this to his future fiancé? He shuddered at the thought. The kind of girl his father and mother had in mind for him would probably gush over it, all teary eyes and whatever girls looked like when they were proposed to. Yes, he loved his grandmother, but her so called dying wish to see him happily married felt like he’d just gotten his death sentence. Suffocating. And there were two obvious faults with her wish: ‘dying’ and ‘happily’. Because in no way was the Lady Uchiha dying, she was probably healthier than most teens of today, and he would bet the family fortune that she would live to see at least another ten years. Which might have been cause for some relief on his part, if it weren’t for the fact that she pretended to only have one of them left, two at the most.
He glared at the oh-so-innocent looking box again, and opened it with a frown of distaste. The rings were, if possible, worse than the package they came in. They were made of white gold, with an intricate pattern of yellow gold and then red rubies to top it off. On the female ring, the pattern met at the top and rose intertwined around the large ruby, whereas on the male one there were three smaller ones embedded in it. Maybe they were fashionable a thousand years ago when they were most likely made, and they were of course worth a horrible amount of money, but all the same Sasuke hated them. He hated that not only would he have to give away one of them and spend a lot of his life (no way his whole life) with the person carrying it; he would also have to actually wear one of them. And he hated it.
When he’d sat on his bed long enough just staring at it, he decided he might as well try out how loathsome a mock proposal would feel. Today could hardly get worse, could it? He kneeled appropriately on the floor, stretched out his left hand in front of him, and said:
“Oh, I’ve loved you for so long my darling, please do me the honor of marrying me.”
He raised his eyes to look into the ones of his imaginary bride, and felt himself freeze in shock when he actually found himself staring into a pair of blue eyes, giving him a blank stare. How the hell did Naruto sneak into my room without me noticing it?! And WHY didn’t he say anything?
Before he had time to explain himself though, the blond in front of him put his hand on his chest and looked down at Sasuke in mock happiness.
“Why Sasuke! This was a truly wonderful surprise! With the way you’ve been acting so cold lately I thought something was wrong, and then it turns out you were just nervous about this!” He bent down and quickly snatched up one of the rings and put it on his finger. “I’d just love to spend the rest of my life with your pale bastard ass!”
When the ring was fit securely he raised his hand with spread fingers as if to admire it, and continued talking in his normal, annoying (to Sasuke), voice.
“Haha damn, bastard, this ring actually fits pretty good! It’s ugly as fuck though, I pity the poor girl having to wear it!”
“Idiot, that’s the guy’s ring,” was the only thing Sasuke could choke out in his surprised and embarrassed state.
Naruto looked at the box again, and snatched up the whole ugly thing.
“Aha! I see, but this ring would be way too small for me, you should have taken it to a jeweler and had the size changed or something,” he said as he took the smaller ring between his fingertips and examined it. “And it’s even uglier than this one.”
He proceeded to waggle his ring-clad hand in front of Sasuke’s face, which was now slowly being morphed into an angered expression. But before he had time to say anything to make the moron stop, Naruto did the very thing that would seal their fate without them knowing it. He grinned and promptly put the smaller ring on Sasuke’s finger, and amazingly enough it fit.
For a while, all that the two of them could do was stare at Sasuke’s pale hand, held in Naruto’s obviously larger tanned one, the ring standing out like fresh blood on a white floor. Terribly wrong and morbidly fascinating. Naruto lifted his gaze to observe Sasuke’s dark eyes, framed by darker bangs and even darker eye lashes. He waited calmly for Sasuke’s outburst that he knew would come, it always came when Naruto annoyed his flat-mate to the point of breaking through his perfect Uchiha barrier, the one that pointed at you with a stick saying “Hn, you’re so low beneath me that I won’t even bother reacting to your dumb actions”.
He counted silently to himself, but when he came to five he started to worry a bit. He’d never gotten to five before. Usually he managed to reach two, on some rare occasions he would get to four and then get one hell of a beating, so five was quite alarming. And six? He hastily decided to stop counting and backed away slowly, Sasuke still having his gaze transfixed on the ring decorating his finger. He swallowed nervously, and scratched the back of his head.
By now he had reached the door. If he needed to run, he wanted a good head start, but Sasuke had yet to move and that made him hesitate in the doorway. He cleared his throat, and finally Sasuke reacted. However, he didn’t do any of the things Naruto expected. He didn’t yell at him, didn’t launch himself forward to rip Naruto’s heart out, hell he didn’t even look at Naruto! Instead, he slowly reached forwards with his right hand, took a hold of the ring and attempted to pull it off. Attempted being the key word here. It seemed that the ring was of the size that lets you put it on, but gets caught when you try to take it off. For another minute that felt like an eternity they both remained still, simply staring dumb-founded at the not-so-cooperative piece of gold. And then the door bell rang.
“Ah!” Naruto exclaimed, snapping his head up as if suddenly released from a daydream. “That’s what I was supposed to tell you when I came in, Kiba’s here to pick us up, we’re heading down to Ichiraku’s!”
He looked at Sasuke expectantly, as if he’d already forgotten the predicament they were in, and most likely he had. He was never one to dwell on stuff for long anyway. When Sasuke didn’t respond, he huffed and retraced his steps to pull the still shocked bastard to his feet and proceeded to drag him out the door and to an awaiting Kiba. At least he let Sasuke put his shoes on, which he did, clearly still in shock.
Part 2: What does he think he’s doing?!
When Sasuke came to, he found himself sitting in a chair, surrounded by annoying people. He felt as if he was in the middle of a bad hangover. That means not good for those of you fortunate enough to never have experienced one. It seemed as though they had just arrived, and were placing orders. He looked up at the waitress, ready to order, when Naruto interrupted him.
“I’ll order for him, he’s a little out of it right now,” he said. Sasuke glared at him.
“I can order for myself you moron, and if I’m out of it it’s your fault so I wouldn’t look so carefree if I were you.” The sentence was bit out rather harshly and accompanied with another lovely glare, before he turned to the waitress once again. “And you’re paying,” he added.
Naruto laughed a little and scratched his nose. With his left hand. Anybody not blind would notice the ring still there, glittering in the cozy light from above their table. A united gasp ran around the group, save Naruto and Sasuke of course.
“OH MY GOD Naruto, is that an engagement ring on your finger?!” Sakura almost yelled from beside Sasuke, looking at Naruto with sparkly eyes.
“Dude that’s totally unexpected, I mean you’re like the village whore!” Kiba exclaimed, clapping Naruto’s back soundly, making him wince a little.
“I am NOT a whore, I just get a lot of game and you know that dog-face! And Sasuke has the other one.”
Sasuke waved his left hand for everyone to see, resting his head in his right one and looking bored. He expected people to laugh and take it as a joke, asking how the hell Naruto managed to convince Sasuke to wear something like that. His expectations were, sadly, not met.
“Wow Sasuke, when grandmother gave you those rings yesterday you didn’t exactly look happy about it, who knew you’d been waiting for a chance like this? And with dickless none the less.”
Oh no. Sai was here, his goddamn cousin. How come he didn’t notice him? His perceptive skills today were embarrassingly bad. He opened his mouth to deny this crazy assumption, when Naruto opened his and responded in his stead. Again. Was he making a habit out of this?
“I know right? I just walked into his room and there he was, on one knee telling me how much he loooves me, giving me this ugly-ass ring but I thought, hey, if it doesn’t work out I can probably sell it for a bucket-load of money.” And he grinned, that shit-eating grin of his that never failed to make Sasuke grit his teeth.
“Damn it Naruto that is not what happened and don’t you dare-“
But his angry shout fell on deaf ears. Ears belonging to people way too busy congratulating Naruto, and shouting and crying and god knows what. Lee yelled the waitress over, demanding celebratory drinks, and she left to get them after she too had congratulated the both of them. In his shocked state Sasuke vaguely heard disbelieving comments mixed with “I knew it!” and “It was soo obvious”, and he let his head fall to the table, letting out an uncharacteristic groan. That complete asshole!
He knew Naruto was just messing with him, like he’d always done, ever since they’d started living together just before Sasuke’s second year at university two and a half years ago. Of course Sasuke could have moved, but he liked his apartment and Naruto refused to leave it. So he’d been stuck with the moron and unfortunately he’d gotten somewhat used to him, letting him force him into socializing with said moron’s friends. And see where that got him. He sighed, and decided to just get drunk and wait until Naruto saw fit to explain how their ‘engagement’ came to be to his less than intelligent friends. Had he known what would follow, he would have never let Naruto run his little joke through. But as it was, he just sat and glared at the offending people at the table insisting on grabbing his hand too often to admire (or snicker at) the ring there. And if Naruto was bothered by the Uchiha’s death-promising glares, he didn’t show it.
Part 3: Happily what now?!
The next morning found our favorite Uchiha sporting a real hangover. It also found him not in his own bed. Now, don’t jump to conclusions here, Sasuke would never lose control even while drunk and Naruto would never take advantage of a drunk friend, so nothing sexual had happened. Well, Sasuke had a hazy memory of Naruto dragging him into the orange bedroom in their apartment, pushing him onto the bed, mumbling something about how ‘fiancés should sleep together’, giving him a sloppy kiss on the cheek and then falling asleep on top of him. And since he was too drunk and tired to roll the idiot off, he fell asleep as well. And now something had woke him up.
What was it? Ah, his phone, its low ringtone vibrating through his pocket. Sasuke didn’t like loud things, and so naturally he had an almost silent ringtone. Unfortunately he woke up easily. He struggled to get it out, having to partly ease himself out from underneath the snoring body next to him, and answered it. Oh, how he wished he hadn’t. His biggest wish after that conversation would be to fall asleep again and then wake up yesterday, before any of this had happened.
“Good morning little brother, how are you feeling today? Happily engaged I presume.”
Sasuke furrowed his brows. What the hell did his brother mean?
“What the hell do you mean?” he asked while rubbing sleep from his eyes, trying to ignore the headache behind his eyebrows.
“I must say I was a little surprised, you haven’t exactly given any hints that you were in a relationship of that level, but grandmother is overjoyed of course.”
A sinking feeling of dread crept through Sasuke at this point. He recalled yesterday, and with a silent curse he dropped the phone and buried his face in his hands. How the hell had his grandmother heard of his accidental proposal – that wasn’t even real damn it! – to Naruto? As he groaned, he noticed that he still had the stupid ring on his finger. He glared at it, as if it would help, and ignored the amused “Sasuke?” from his phone. Even his brother laughed at him!
Squaring his shoulders he picked up the phone again and explained what had happened the day before. When his evil brother had stopped laughing, he let Sasuke know that it was Sai who had called this morning to tell the news. Apparently Naruto had failed to let his friends in on the truth yesterday.
“But you know Sasuke, even if it was just a joke there is no way you can tell grandmother that. She’s already started to make preparations. She even cried when Sai told her!”
Grandmother crying was about as believable as Itachi not stealing candy from kids, but still. This was one fucked-up situation.
“But Naruto’s a guy! Surely she would object?”
“No, she just said ‘I always knew my sweet Sasuke-kun was special’ and demanded pictures of Naruto. Sai already gave her some and she seems to approve.” The amusement in Itachi’s voice was painfully obvious. The reason why was explained with his next sentence. “And I heard you’re wearing the girl’s ring?”
He seemed to take Sasuke’s angry silence as the yes it was, and started chuckling. Itachi never laughed out loud, as the true Uchiha he was, but had he been a normal person he would now be rolling on the floor screaming and clutching at his stomach. Sasuke grit his teeth and mentally counted to ten, very slowly, before he asked the question he would have nightmares about for a long time onwards.
“Is there any way I can get out of this?” He waited, eyes closed and a painful lump in his throat. Itachi seemed to collect himself for a bit before he answered, and actually managed to sound apologetic.
“I’m sorry little brother, but not if you want to keep your dignity and Naruto alive.”
And that is how Uchiha Sasuke found himself engaged to Uzumaki Naruto.
Part 4: But it was just a joke!
When Naruto woke up, he found himself in his own bed as (perhaps not considering his reputation) usual. He was tired, a little hung over perhaps, nothing out of the ordinary. He scratched, yawned, and it wasn’t until he stood in the bathroom, about to relieve himself, that he noted the ring. And when his memories came back to him he laughed out loud. He sure got that bastard back for setting fire to his ramen collection last month! He’d call Sakura and the others later to clear things up (like he really wanted them to think he was in love with the bastard, he’d rather marry a squirrel! At least squirrels were cute) and then Sasuke would punish him and life would go on as it had throughout their university years so far.
So when he finally reached the kitchen, since his stomach demanded he stop stalling, he expected something very different from the contemplative silence that Sasuke greeted him with. Sasuke wasn’t out of it like yesterday though, no, quite the opposite. He looked sharply at Naruto, calculating, as if trying to find the best way to say whatever he wanted to say. When Sasuke looked like that, it meant it was serious. Naruto gulped. He didn’t look angry, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Slowly, he made his way to the fridge, all the while feeling the bastard’s gaze following him as he took out his milk and peanut butter. It followed him as he sliced a piece of bread, spread the peanut butter on top of it, and poured milk into a large glass.
He sat down at the table, all of his movements slow and careful, as if he was ready to bolt any moment should Sasuke indicate any violent urges. But Sasuke kept looking at him, like he was memorizing his very being, seeing him clearly for the first time. And then Sasuke started talking. A conversation that Naruto would remember his whole life followed, despite him forgetting so many other important things.
“Remember how I told you that one day one of your so called jokes would back-fire and you’d find yourself in a pretty messy situation?”
Naruto gave Sasuke a tentative look. He wasn’t sure yet if this was a good or bad reaction from Sasuke, but the hard gaze that met him made him think that yeah, it was probably bad.
“U…huh?” he intelligently answered.
“Well, it has finally happened. And of course it had to involve me. Is your life’s purpose to annoy me?” All of this was said very calmly, almost as if the dark-haired man was thinking out loud to himself. Naruto decided that this was really really bad.
“I’m sorry! It won’t happen again!” The desperate apology didn’t even manage to make Sasuke raise an eyebrow. He just kept staring at Naruto, although now he looked more exasperated.
“Engagements are not things to be taken lightly, do you understand this?” When Naruto just stared at him he continued. “Repeat after me: Engagements are not things to be taken lightly, and I will take responsibility for the mistakes that I have made.”
Naruto’s eyes widened comically in fear. Fear of what he didn’t know yet, and he wasn’t very eager to find out.
“Engagements are not things to be… uh…”
“Taken lightly,” Sasuke repeated patiently.
“Right, taken lightly, and I will take responsibility for the mistakes that I have made. So, exactly what have I done?” he asked with a grimace.
“You,” Sasuke started slowly, “have managed to make my family believe, that you and I, are engaged. For real.”
Naruto could only continue to stare. What the hell was Sasuke on about?
“But it was just a joke!” he responded, flustered, unable to believe that Sasuke’s family would actually believe something as ridiculous as their engagement. But, he remembered with a sour taste in his mouth, their friends had believed them too…
“Naruto, I have said this before, and perhaps now you will finally understand. Do. Not. Joke. With. Uchihas. Uchihas don’t like jokes, they do not understand jokes, and they will either take you seriously or think that you are mad. Sai is a very good example of that. And unfortunately, my family chose to take Sai seriously this morning when he called to tell them ‘the happy news’.”
He narrowed his eyes, now letting his irritation leak through.
“You, have managed to make sure that we,” here he pointed between himself and Naruto, “are forced to get married.”
Naruto couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Sasuke saying that they were going to get married? Either this was some sick joke or he was still asleep. Uh oh, that thing about Uchihas never joking… So he must be asleep! He pinched his arm and yelped when it obviously hurt. Sasuke kept watching him, his less than amused expression screaming at Naruto that this wasn’t some sick joke. It was the truth. Sasuke’s family really thought they wanted to get married, and Sasuke seemed intent on following their wishes. So he did the only sensible thing; he smacked his forehead down on the table, groaning at the pain. That didn’t wake him up either. Fuck.
Part 5: Just how long did you say?!
Sasuke watched the blond moron groaning into the table. This was whom he had to marry? He had never expected to marry happily, but still. The idiot? Really? He felt no sympathy towards the mumbling mess on his table – yes, his table that he bought and graciously let Naruto use – because if anybody was the victim here it was clearly Sasuke. And then Naruto managed to annoy him even further.
“This is your fault!” he yelled at Sasuke, barely lifting his head from the dark brown surface and pointing. “Just tell your stupid bastard family that it was a mistake and Sai got drunk and dreamt it up or something!”
“Do you think I WANT to marry you or something!? Trust me moron, if there was any way to get out of this without inflicting shame on my family name, losing half my fortune and the position in Uchiha Corps that I expect and desire we wouldn’t be having this conversation!” He stopped his yelling, pausing to catch his breath. The idiot was causing his headache to return. Naruto raised an eyebrow.
“Lose half your fortune? What the hell?”
“You heard me. I would be mocked for the rest of my life if the truth came out, as my dear brother so nicely put it. The laughing stock of my family.”
Sasuke now glared with utmost hatred at Naruto, and he winced. Sasuke’s family was really important to him. He’d do anything to please them and look good in front of them, making them proud. Even to the point of marrying the blond moron he hated so much apparently. Naruto groaned in half-defeat. What could a lowly citizen like him do in front of the powerful Uchiha-clan anyway?
“But Sasukeee,” he whined, “we can’t be expected to spend the rest of our lives together, can we?”
Sasuke looked at him steadily for a while. “No, that is definitely out of the question. But two years as married is the minimum, plus approximately half a year as fiancés. Or until my grandmother dies, although I expect her to hold on more than two years.” Which might cause some troubles further on he mentally added to himself. But no point in worrying about that yet.
“You expect me to spend two and a half years together with you?” Naruto asked dismayed. This is even worse than the years I spent chasing after Sakura, getting beaten up once a day. Or twice.
“You’ve already spent two and a half years with me. And I’m not expecting us to be some sort of lovey-dovey couple.” Sasuke looked as if he was about to puke just by saying those words. “You will behave in front of my family, attend family gatherings, and I won’t kill you. That’s the deal.”
Naruto gave him a disbelieving look, as if he doubted that that deal would work out as well as finding some faults in it, but he couldn’t really think of anything to say. Because really, what were you supposed to say to a person you’ve accidentally been forced to marry?
“Get dressed,” Sasuke said suddenly.
Oh, apparently that’s what you said. “Why?” Naruto replied.
“Because, I have to introduce you to my family. Of course, the formal engagement party will be held in a couple of weeks, but you get what I mean. Try not to embarrass me too much.”
And with that, the Uchiha heir stood up and quietly left the room, probably to do his hair. If anything screamed ‘gay’ about Sasuke it was the amount of time he spent on his appearance, except Sasuke was actually straight, or so he claimed. Although, Naruto was gay and he barely cared about such things. His natural charm got him laid anyway. But certainly not often enough to deserve Kiba’s comment from yesterday.
Oh shit. He just realized something. Two and a half years with Sasuke, would that mean two and a half years without sex? The thought made his stomach clench uneasily. He definitely wasn’t the village whore, but celibacy? He ferociously vowed to never, ever mess with the Uchihas again. If he could help it.