Sasuke locked the bathroom door behind him and exhaled, for once not caring if it came out shaky. The steam in the air felt like punishment, clinging to his skin and crawling up his spine, hot and suffocating. He let the towel drop to the tiles and turned the shower knob to its most frigid setting. The pipes rattled with protest before surrendering a spray of cold water that beat against his scalp, stinging his eyes and erasing the heat—at least from the surface.
He scrubbed himself raw, hands moving over every inch of his skin, but nothing banished the heavy, animal sweetness of Naruto's scent from his mind. Not his own—the rough cedar and ozone tang of Alpha—but the honeyed, desperate slick that lingered under his nails, behind his teeth, in the pit of his brain. Even the soap, harsh and institutional, couldn't touch it.
Sasuke leaned against the shower wall, braced by both hands, and allowed the cold to knife through the last remnants of his body's fever. For a moment, he shut his eyes and just listened—to the slap of water against tile, to the memory of gasped moans and the ugly, wanting sounds that had torn from both of them. He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached, knuckles whitening as he pressed against the ceramic. The urge to hit something, to break the world back into sense, flared up and then guttered out.
He'd lost control.
No, worse than that—he'd wanted to lose control. The line between helping Naruto and possessing him had blurred so fast that, looking back, Sasuke wasn't sure when he'd even stopped pretending.
He thought of the way Naruto's body had arched beneath him, the way his hands had clawed at Sasuke's hair, the taste of sweat and salt and surrender on his tongue. Every flash of memory made his gut twist with a sharp, guilty pleasure.
Fucking idiot, he told his reflection in the fogged glass as he stepped out, hair dripping. You're no better than the bastards you hate.
He wrapped the towel around his hips, swiped condensation off the mirror with one arm, and forced himself to look. The face staring back was pale, feral, eyes ringed in red and blue, lips bitten raw. He wanted to spit at it, to scrub it away, but all he did was stand there until the urge faded.
What was worse, he was jealous—jealous of a mutt Beta who'd never even gotten a whiff of what Naruto really was. Jealous of anyone who could make Naruto laugh without feeling the instinctual pressure to destroy or dominate. He tried to rationalize it—concern for the mission, for the investigation, for the fragile truce between them—but that was a lie, and he knew it. Sasuke didn't even know what he wanted anymore.
He opened the door a crack, letting out a billow of steam and letting in the clammy dorm air, which instantly felt too cold against his skin. Inside, Naruto was stripping the bed with the focus of a soldier defusing a bomb. His face was blank, careful. He gathered the soiled sheets in a tight, practiced bundle, using the clean side to avoid touching the mess. For a second, he looked up, and their eyes met—Naruto's still bloodshot, still glassy with the crash. Then both looked away, as if by agreement.
Sasuke found his sweatpants on the desk and pulled them on, still not bothering with a shirt. He sat on his own bed, arms crossed, and watched Naruto fumble with the fitted sheet. The silence was so loud it nearly drowned out the radiator's rattle.
Naruto broke first. "Hey," he said, voice flat but not unfriendly. He sat on the edge of his mattress, hugging the sheet bundle to his chest like a shield. "You didn't have to… do all that. I mean, you could've just left. I would've dealt." He shrugged, then ducked his head. "But… thanks. For helping. It—worked."
The tension in Sasuke's shoulders eased, just barely. Naruto hadn't figured it out that he had caused the heat. Relief flooded through him, even as guilt coiled tighter in his gut. "It's what I said I'd do," he muttered, his gaze fixed on a point just past Naruto's ear. "No need for thanks." His hand rose to his damp hair, pushing it back from his forehead while his other hand clenched and unclenched at his side, the memory of his own pheromones—the ones that had started this whole disaster—still fresh in his mind.
Naruto glanced up, the corner of his mouth twitching. "Yeah. Can't argue with that..." He released his grip on the bundle, letting it collapse between his knees. The dark patch on the fabric lay exposed, but he didn't bother covering it. "When the suppressants wear off like that, it's hell. But release—" His voice dropped as he studied a spot on the floor. "Clears my head better than any medication. Like fog lifting, you know?"
The confession hung there, impossible to ignore. Sasuke's jaw clenched tight enough to ache. He pushed off the bed and crossed to the laundry basket, dropping his towel in with a casual flick that belied the tremor in his fingers. The sheet bundle sat between them like evidence at a crime scene. He reached for it, throat dry, needing to erase what he'd done—what they'd done. Naruto didn't flinch away as expected, but handed the bundle over with both hands, eyes tracking Sasuke's every movement.
"I'll take care of it," Sasuke said, clutching the sheets so tightly his knuckles whitened. "You're not exactly equipped for public laundry right now." The words came out gentler than intended, a softness he couldn't suppress any more than he could the memory of Naruto writhing beneath him.
Naruto opened his mouth, closed it, then gave a small nod. "I can handle my own—" he began, but the words died as Sasuke slipped through the doorway, dirty sheets draped across his shoulder like battle spoils.
The door clicked shut behind him, sparing Sasuke from whatever expression crossed Naruto's face.
-
Naruto let the water run until the pipes threatened to rattle loose from the wall, chasing the last of the night's chill from his skin. The shower in the dorm was less a proper spray and more a reluctant trickle, half-clogged and temperamental, but with enough coaxing it could fill the air with steam thick enough to erase the rest of the world. Naruto stood under the hot flow, hands braced on the tile, and scrubbed himself until his skin stung red.
Eyes shut tight against the spray, Naruto focused on the percussion of water hitting his skin, the steady plink-plink from his chin to the shower floor. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand... he lost count around thirty and started again, desperate for any distraction from the memories still burning in his muscles. Worst wasn't how his own body had turned against him, but that single clear moment after—looking up to find Sasuke's expression neither smug nor revolted, but something dangerously close to pleased. Heat crawled up his neck at the thought.
What was he supposed to make of a guy like that?
He pressed the loofah against his skin until it hurt, leaving red trails across his chest. The soap couldn't mask it—that sticky-sweet smell that reminded him of artificial cherry and something darker underneath, something that made his stomach twist with shame. Worse was the other scent that wouldn't wash away: sharp like the air before lightning strikes, woody and burnt at the edges, lingering in the creases of his neck and the soft skin inside his arms like a brand he couldn't scrub off.
He ducked his head, letting the water pool in his hands before splashing it over his face. The heat left his muscles loose, but he still felt tight on the inside, like something coiled in his chest was waiting to snap.
Sasuke's voice still clung to him like the steam—"You don't have to beg"—the words rough-edged and too intimate. Naruto's fingers had curled into fists even as his body surrendered, that contradiction still burning under his skin.
The water shut off with a metallic groan. He stood motionless, letting the steam rise from his shoulders in ghostly sheets. His forehead found the cool tile, a small mercy against his overheated skin. His shoulders slumped, the mask of defiance sliding away where no one could witness its fall.
When he finally toweled off and pulled on fresh clothes, he checked the mirror. His face was flushed, eyes rimmed with red, but otherwise he looked like himself. That was both a comfort and a disappointment.
Back in the room, Sasuke was gone. The bed was made, the comforter perfectly squared, but there was an empty patch on the wall where the sunlight had started to creep in. Naruto shut the door behind him and crossed to his desk, dropping into the creaky chair with a little more force than necessary.
The stillness inside was total.
He breathed in, then out, trying to clear the taste of adrenaline from his mouth. He opened his textbook to the page they'd covered that morning—something about receptor proteins, about how small changes in chemistry could set off a chain reaction that rewired the whole cell. The irony wasn't lost on him.
He lined up his pencils, clicked each one to expose a perfect point, then stacked his notebooks in a neat pile. He opened the first to a blank page and wrote the date in the corner, then underlined it twice. The rest of the room faded as he copied notes, eyes darting back and forth between the book and the page, the rhythm of pen on paper a small, hard comfort.
But every time he tried to focus, his mind drifted. He thought about Sasuke at the laundromat, standing perfectly still while the machine did all the work, probably counting down the seconds until he could slip back into the room without saying a word. He thought about the way Sasuke's hands had moved—brutal and sure, but careful, too, as if he was trying to hold back something that would wreck them both.
And he thought about the way his own body had responded, helpless and greedy, like every cell had been waiting for someone to just give in.
Naruto shook his head, forcing himself back to the words on the page. There was too much to do, too much to risk, to let himself get distracted. He needed to find his brother, needed to prove he wasn't just another Omega waiting for someone to save him.
He dug out his phone and typed up a to-do list: Classes. Assignments. Follow up on Shukaku. Message Kiba. Check on the missing files. Each task was a step, a way to build a wall between him and the thing that threatened to swallow him whole.
He looked up at the ceiling, then at the empty bed across the room, and wondered what would happen when Sasuke came back. If either of them would have the guts to say anything, or if they'd just go on pretending.
Probably the second.
He grinned, a little bitter, and went back to his notes.
Outside, the radiator knocked against the wall, a steady, dull heartbeat. Inside, Naruto worked in silence, the tension twisting tighter with every word he wrote.