Like even in that page Naruto's like "I just knew we were friends even though we never talked about it or spent much time together outside of work". Like friends eventually talk and hang out

Kishimoto not even being interested in that stuff is the issue. After Pain the story shifts focus towards the mythological. There was a heavy military fiction element to early Naruto. It was closer to something like Metal Gear Solid in the early chapters.

Having an unspoken connection with someone and being a friend are different things. Being a friend is an intentional practice. Sasuke is bad at that practice in comparison to people like Lee, Shikamaru, and Sakura.

Naruto decided Sasuke was his best friend before he knew a single thing about him. He learnt the trauma at the Valley of the End, hundreds of chapters into chasing him. My point is it makes no sense for him to be so fixated when in those first 5 months in Team 7 they had a hostile relationship. Naruto had a toxic fixation, not a trauma bond. No trauma was exchanged until WAY LATER. Media literacy is when you can't tell the difference between exposition we know and dialogue the characters don't exchange.

Sasuke went on a journey and refused his prosthetic arm for his crimes against Konoha. But Orochimaru got a condo. Okay!!