Selectively mute sasuke who communicates exclusively via sign language
-Sasuke has been almost entirely mute since the massacare. He went mute before that too, but he really hasn’t spoken since
-everyone at school thought it was just him being an asshole and ignoring him. And it was! to be fair! but also even if it wasn’t he couldn’t have said anything
-Kakashi, who was also semi-selectively mute for a few years, makes it a top priotity to teach the team Konoha Sign, and the rules of rotating signs so that other villages can’t interpret it. Sakura takes to it like a fish to water, half desprate to comunicate with Sasuke and half desprate to be allowed to do something with her hands.
-Naruto’s like ‘why can’t he just? talk? Like I didn’t think someone so smart would be too dumb to talk’ because he doesn’t know anything about anything but then he sees how upset everyone is with that and then Sasuke doesn’t look at him for a week and Kakashi kind-of-explains and he doesn’t bring it up again, but he tries really hard to learn sign as an aplogy.
-Naruto never quite gets the hang of sign, but it’s mostly made up for by his uncanny ability to just read Sasuke’s body language to get his mood or his message or whatever, even when Sasuke isn’t trying to say anything
-Sasuke is mostly mute, with one glaring exception; he vocally stims a lot by humming and clicking his tongue and stuff, but only when he feels safe and relaxed and trusts the people around him. Team 7 gets really confused when it starts happening, and he gets sorta nervous but explains it, and then gets tackle-hugged and purrs and then winces because it makes his idiot teammates squeal
-out of the Konoha-12, only HInata understands sign (Hanabi goes mute on really bad weeks), and tries to act as a translater (cause team 7 kinda just got in the habit of communicating via sign and they’ll be damned if they ever explain themselves, much less notice they’re doing something odd or confusing) but she stutters too much and she’s too quiet and straight up refuses to repeat some things because they’re rude (all three of them are like. fundementally kind but also assholes don’t lie) and she doesn’t want to say them, so she isn’t the most effective, but she tried.
-Team 7 being known as the unhinged silent team, which is somehow scarier then the unhinged obnoxious team. It gives the unsettling (if inaccurate) impression that they actually have their shit together
