In a way, Naruto supposed, he ought to be grateful to that Orochimaru bastard.
Since that whole mess, Saki-chan had been a lot more willing to come out and about, just because.
(Sometimes he wonders what Sasuke might have done if he hadn't had Saki-chan to come over and be so unwilling to let Naruto undo anything that he'd wound up tying her to the living room table. But Naruto's not the sort of person to waste his life thinking about what would have happened, and Saki-chan had really liked being tied up. He ought to do it again for her birthday -- damnit, when was it? Same as the bastard's, or the day Kakashi first dressed him up as her, or the day she first came over on her own, or what?)
People's reactions to her had been... really interesting, too. He didn't think most of the civilians even recognized her, and he was fairly sure some of the shinobi still didn't. Those that had, though, almost always did a double-take the first time, or a spit-take if they'd happened to be eating or drinking at the moment.
Ino had looked twice and thrice -- rather like Sakura-chan, actually, although Sakura-chan at least had known about Saki-chan since the second or third time a mission had called for her. (The pink-haired girl had still looked rather as if she were sucking on a lemon the first time she ran into Naruto and Saki-chan wandering around Konoha-gakure, though.)
The Naras had shrugged their collective shoulders and gone back to cloud-watching (or whatever).
Iruka-sensei had done a gorgeous double-take, been perfectly polite to Saki-chan (whom Naruto had used the moment of jaw-dropping to introduce), and invited Naruto over that evening to read him a lecture full of compound words that boiled down to "some people like or need to dress up as something they aren't in order to let out a part of them they usually keep chained up in a box. The same way some people like to play bondage games during sex," all of which Naruto had already figured out on his own.
Although he was Absolutely Sure he never wanted to find out how Iruka-sensei knew anything about bondage sex games.
Gai-sensei had been loudly (and lengthily) appreciative of modern youth's willingness to ignore outmoded boundaries in favor of personal expression. Or something. Naruto and Saki-chan had nodded politely and slowly backed away.
Jiraiya-sensei... snerk. That had been priceless.
Hinata-chan had smiled and said she was h-happy to meet Sa-saki-chan, really, and run away crying. That had been bizarre; he'd actually thought Hinata-chan was the only girl in his year who didn't think Uchiha Sasuke was all that and a bag of chips. Guess it just went to show, you never knew anyone.
For instance, on first meeting Sasuke-that-jerk, he'd never have dreamed that Saki-chan would be sitting in a meadow plaiting flower chains with the tip of her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth.
"Enjoying yourself, baby?" he asked, dropping into a seat beside her.
She nodded, brow still wrinkled charmingly.
Well, he just had to kiss her after that.
"Let me finish, Naruto-kun," Saki-chan said a few minutes later.
"Mnhm. Came out here to get away from the festivities?"
Saki-chan nodded, examining the flower chain that had sort of been mashed in the proess with a dissatisfied eye.
"Kurenai-sensei's cousin, honestly -- I say, you'd think nobody had ever gotten married before."
Saki-chan hummed in agreement, finally picking the squashed portion out and starting to refashion that part of the chain from scratch.
"All that party and bother, when all she really needs is to go round and register."
"...I'd like to add you to my family register," Saki-chan said quietly.
"Yeah, baby, that'd be nice," Naruto agreed, sliding an arm around her waist and watching her clever short-fingered hands.
+
"I haven't done ANYTHING recently!" Naruto protested two days later, fidgeting in front of Tsunade's desk. "Well, except for -- "
"It's not what you've done, brat," Tsunade interrupted him, fortunately before he could bother her with a few little trivial things that didn't need to be brought to the attention of the Number Five Hokage, really. "It's Uchiha."
"What -- Sasuke?!" Naruto yelped, mind frantically running through all the Really Stupid Shit that Sasuke might consider a good idea at the time, up to and including Let's Throw Myself In Front Of The One Who Heals Like A Bitch and Why Yes, I Could Rent Headspace To Creepy Bastard.
Tsunade slammed a form down in front of him.
Naruto looked.
It appeared to be a document of adoption, in which one Uchiha Sasuke (acting head, Uchiha clan) formally declared one Naruto (also known as Uzumaki, dumbass, dead-last, that brat, demon vessel [when the hell had Sasuke heard about that?], little monster, and a very sweet boy, really) to be henceforth a member of the Uchiha family, with all the rights and responsibilities thereto, with an annotation that he was stupid as shit and twice as annoying but that in the tight and the bad and the crazy, there was no one else Sasuke would rather trust at his back.
Holy FUCK.
"I take it you didn't know about this?" Tsunade said.
Naruto nodded dumbly. He had -- well, he'd agreed with Saki-chan, but he'd started thinking that Sasuke was deliberately Not Noticing anything his otherself did --
"You're an emancipated minor without relatives," the Hokage went on. "It's up to you whether you want to do this or not."
Holy. Fuck.
He'd been an Uzumaki all his life, and maybe it wasn't much of a name but it was his, and nobody in the entire village would think he was anything like what an Uchiha ought to be except maybe for people like Iruka-sensei who were biased anyway --
"Naruto-kun?" Shizune asked, putting her head round the door. "Do you want to belong to Sasuke-kun's family?"
Did he want... to belong?
To Sasuke-that-jerk, or Saki-chan, or whoever the hell his teammate was when he wasn't all tied up in layers of tatemae?
"Oh fuck yeah," Naruto said.
Tsunade rapped his head for language with her seal before stamping the paper with it.
END
(Sasuke's written opinion of Naruto, by the way, was inspired by Bel Thorne's
spoken opinion of Auson in Lois McMaster Bujold's The Vor Game.)