Fish Bird

By EternityDreams

Disclaimer: Unfortunately I do not own Naruto or any of its character, this story is an entirely non-profit work by me, but I guess I just enjoy writing what I would do with the characters if I was in charge. (Thank goodness I’m not X3)

Chapter one

Out of the thicket and into the woods

//Note: the title and theme  is based on a Greek children’s fairy tale about a turtle dove and a carp that fall in love. Due to the circumstances of their relationship the two have to deal with the insurmountable problem of how they are going to be together. Sappy?  Yes (I can’t help myself), but I thought it was cute when I read it. It inspired me to write this.//

// Also when you see this, it’s some bodies inner thought process, usually Naruto’s…although not now because it’s mine… actually just instructions but you know what I mean…sorry I’ll let you read now! //

There are little rivulets of blood streaming down his body, and every time his feet strike the ground a jarring pain snaps up his spine ringing in his head. Sasuke Uchiha is moving himself forwards by sheer force of will power, his heart pumping explosively against his chest as he sucks in dry cold air. The blood is beginning to clot against his ivory skin, staining a brown sticky mess across his arms and down into a bloody pulp down about his toes.

It’s rendering most of his limbs heavier then usual, like walking with two logs of ice that melt and slip under foot, burning the bare soil in a meandering trail of guilt.

This really isn’t good.

Part of him suspects he’s being followed, looking over his shoulder, eyes impenetrable inky black, or…or…but that’s ridiculous…unless Itachi thought that he couldn’t…wasn’t able to do it. Was that it? Sasuke laughs, but whether in defeat or in defiance even he doesn’t know.  The sound catches in his throat and he coughs up a sticky black substance that trickles like coagulated treacle across his tongue.

Shit its working fast.

            Numbly he moves his hands to his face; part of him doesn’t want to believe it’s possible, that it is  true, but even as he forms the signs with his numb fingers, pale and pallid in the light like torn ivory, the usual thrub of energy doesn’t spool.

            Something in his wrist glints coldly up, as he tries again, and again…and again.

            Nothing happens.

Slumping to the ground, boldly aware that he’s bleeding everywhere, there’s a disgustingly strong taste of copper in his mouth, he tries to ignore it but he thinks he just might be sick. His stomach wretches as he holds down the bile in his throat.

For a moment he considers giving up, closing his eyes and calling hell’s dark angels to drag back down into the smouldering sulphur pits, but a face flashes before him.

A touch, and a smell, a memory brushed up from long…long ago, loud noises and garish orange flickers, and hair guttering vividly gold haunts him,  close enough to touch…… and despite everything he smiles. Tiny, faint, almost non-existent, and his heart beats, lub-dub in his chest, valves opening and closing with monotonous rhythm that quickens very slightly.

But it’s something at least, a little more then nothing at all.

His mind presses him further, damn pride, it got him this far didn’t it? It’s not about to let you lie down now. If he’s going to die, he’s going to die fighting…and not before him.

He presses one wrist to his mouth, licking away the blood and spitting out the congealed dried clod onto the grass somewhere beside him, teeth clamping down hard on that small oval sphere jutting out of his skin. The thing that stinks of metal, and acid and a little ammonia, it makes his skull ring like a bell and his eyes water the second his canines come into contact.

Then comes the pain, white hot and blinding, so hot, so sudden that for a moment he passes out. Blistering bubbles exploding inside his ears and across his tongue, tapping on his teeth.

            He wakes up only  to cough again, and more of the thick treacle travels up his throat and he chokes on it, lungs wracking as his stomach heaves aggressively from his abdomen and he falls onto his elbows, eyes streaming thick clear water.

            “This won’t…” he thinks, as he wretches, “get the better of me…I won’t…I have to… I have to tell him…”

            Sasuke makes an effort to get up, but the black things glint again as he tries to summon chakra to his feet, it slices through his brain wielding pain like a scythe that shatters bone into dust.

Dimly, he’s very aware of how cold he is, and how his breath is crystallising on the cold night air, and somehow he’s on his back, staring up into a dark canopy over his head. He doesn’t know how far he’s got to go, but he’s under the vague inclination he can’t go any further, not like this.

            Never like this.

He arches a little from the hips, tilts his head back and closes his eyes, creamy smooth expanse of the neck exposed in the dim light, as his mouth forms words almost silent, over and over again, a mantra prayed into earless dark.

            “Naruto…I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

                                                *          *          *

There’s a slight film of dirt covering Naruto Uzamaki’s skin as he licks his dried lips and brushes strands of hair sunlight bright out of wide inquisitive eyes.

He’s sitting high up in the crook of a huge branch running parallel to the ground, blood rushing hard and fast in his ears as he peers down behind a curtain of leaves.

// It’s been an hour and still nothing… I wonder…no… not again. They wouldn’t do it again. //

 He’s looking for signs of movement, the sudden movement of a bush or even the crumbling slide of a dirt clod. Not that he knows for sure there will be movement, but he’s pretty sure he there would be. Most likely the type of enemy that’s invisible, the sort that lurks in the shadows and then springs as silent and deadly as a panther, claws of steel raking into flesh drawing rivers of blood.

            He shifts a little uncomfortably on the branch, he could sit here for hours more if he really had to, and that’s if he really had to though, although he thinks he’d rather take the danger over watching grass grow, but that’s just his opinion.

As it is his minds beginning to wander off the mission, simple as it is and completed…just keep a look out, maybe we’re being followed?

// Maybe, maybe not… Is it wrong that I want us to be in danger just for sheer amusements sake? //

Sitting idly by and watching the world go by is not how he likes to live his life…or at least how he’s tried to live his life. All nineteen years of it, it’s not a particularly long stretch of time he knows and he’d prefer it if the numbers continued to increase. But hey, at least he’s reached double digits.

He feels his age sometimes (rarely even he admits), although Sakura frequently tells him he should act it more often (but kids have so much more fun then adults do!), he looks it to an extent. But not very many things have changed.

His hair is certainly as untameable as it has ever been, growing upwards sideways and then as if in delightful consideration down, although it’s longer now framing his face, a sort of choppy cut that falls into his eyes, which are still the same cornflower blue that they’ve always been. He blows away an irritating strand now; the muscles of his jaw seem to ache from the inactivity, there’s an itch starting on the tip of his toe…

            “Oh god please don’t, please don’t…!!” he mutters barely audible, Kakashi-sensei would laugh if he could see him now. He’d never quite been able to see how you where supposed to get around this particular problem, Kakashi had always told him if worst comes to worst he would volunteer to cut the damned thing off.

Naruto thinks this is a little extreme, Kakashi asks him what’s better, being disembowelled by a group of hungry cannibals or loosing your toe?

            Naruto asks why cannibals but Kakashi won’t ever answer; does Kakashi have a thing for cannibals? Maybe they’re in that book he’s always reading.

            He sits for another half an hour in silent agony, willing his toe to stop itching, for it to just go away. But no such luck, in fact it spreads, moving stealthily across his entire foot. His foot obviously does not understand the importance of not moving. But he doesn’t think a mental lecture on cannibals would do it any good…although if someone started nibbling on his foot now at least it might resolve the itching problem.

Naruto sneaks a furtive glance about him, he’s quite hidden and can’t see any sign of movement in the area, cussing quietly to himself he leans towards his foot, unaware of the fact the whole of his lower body is asleep, then he wobbles, slips, yells something unrepeatable and falls head first to the floor with all the grace that he had when he was twelve.

By the time he has finished blinking all of the tears from his eyes a shadow falls across his face and he looks up through the blur of pain his nose is creating to see Shikamaru and Kiba looking down on him, a slightly rueful expression on Kiba’s face as he appears to be handing something over to Shikamaru.

            “Couldn’t you have stayed up there a little bit longer?” he asks hauling Naruto somewhat abruptly to his feet, “Ten more minutes and I would have won the bet!”

            A bet? He’d been stuck up in that tree all that time for absolutely no reason at all?

            “Hey!” he shouted, outraged, nose stinging like the plague, “What happened to all that duck and cover shit you guys where going on about before? You know the mission and oh god they’re after us!”

            “Well,” Shikamaru began somewhat slowly, hands in his pockets looking quite as lazy and unconcerned as he always did, “it was a false alarm. We completed the mission early, we aren’t expected back for another day, and I was tired.”

            “So all this time you’ve been sleeping?” Naruto asked somewhat incredulously, he didn’t know why he was knocked for six, really he didn’t, it’s just they always got him every time.

            They didn’t have to answer, Kiba was grinning quite fiercely like he always did looking like a wolf as he did so, and Shikamaru had that faint detached smile, as if they where seeing the end of a particularly good practical joke performed on a younger brother.

            “I hate you.” Naruto projected fiercely locking his jaw stubbornly, he had leaves in his hair and his clothes stank of wood bark thanks to them, he would have stalked off if his leg hadn’t been hurting so bloody much.      

            “No you don’t,” Kiba assured, wrenching him up by the elbow as he tried to turn away, only succeeding in wobbling a very short distance before he staggered, “it was revenge Naruto. You heard of that? For tattling to Lee about what happened last month.”

            Naruto snorted, “But it was your idea you son of a bitch, I took all that crap when you high tailed it out of there.”

            “It’s wasn’t my idea, it was yours.”

            “I was drunk Kiba, don’t ever listen to me when I’m drunk. Besides, you dared me to.”

            “Well I was drunk too, and it was damned funny you little fox!”

“Why, what happened?” Shikamaru cautiously interjected, and then thinking about it breathlessly added: “If-it-has-anything-to-do-with-getting-Lee-naked-in-the-middle-of-the-side-walk-and-singing-the-Kohona-national-anthem-backwards-please-spare-me.” Lee naked was not something he wanted to even contemplate…ever.

Naruto and Kiba both blinked at him simultaneously, “We should do that one day…” one mutters to the other and they both nod.

Shikamaru clears his throat.

“Well,” Kiba explained in undertones, “he went hulk on us.”

“He went what?”

“Hulk Maru. He really did, he’s not lying! I thought he was going to kill….well me at any rate. We were only trying to shave off his eyebrows, you’d think we’d insulted his family and set fire to his house and underwear the way he was carrying on.”

 “When Lee gets drunk he sort of gets out of it, you know?” Kiba adds knowledgably “Well basically we got halfway there and he sort of came to and realised exactly what the hell we where doing to him.”

            “It wasn’t pretty.” Naruto agreed nodding his head over Kiba’s shoulder.

            “Neither was your face after he got through with you.”

            “Excuse me for not high tailing it out of there the second things got slightly dangerous.”

            “Slightly? Did he knock the remainders of your brain out too then? I wasn’t the one splayed out cold on the floor with a foot mark on my face, was I? No, do you know why? It’s called animal instincts my friend.”

“He was wearing clothes when you did this right?” Shikamaru asked, his fore finger and thumb pressed against either side of the bridge of his nose.

“Erh, yes…why?”

“Good…because I wouldn’t want to contemplate the idea of a drunk Lee without clothes…OR without eyebrows.”

Naruto giggled, “Imagine Lee without clothes and eyebrows.”

They all blanched.

“I feel sick!” Kiba told them, his eyes somewhat poppy, “I think I need to sit down.”

            Shikamaru let out a small burst of laughter and shook his head deciding to change the subject.

            “I bet Sakura was pleased to find her boyfriend had toe imprints across his forehead.”

            Inwardly Naruto grimaced, he had hoped they could have steered clear away from the topic of Sakura for the entirety of the mission, apparently not.

// The nosy busybodies that they are, of course they can’t! //

His stomach clenched uncomfortably in his gut as if it where trying to wriggle out of his throat.

            “Actually they where across my chin,” he said with an easy smile, “and no, she wasn’t very pleased at all really, quite the opposite.”

            “Yeah, well, women they don’t really understand the principles of a good prank now do they?” Kiba pointed out placidly, watching sceptically as Naruto did a spectacular balancing act on one leg as he eased off his supporting arm, arms flapping wildly. He looked like he was having some sort of epileptic fit.

Both he and Shikamaru watched with a detached sort of interest as he fell again to the floor.

            “But that’s why she’s going out with you right? So she can get a little less poker straight.”

            Naruto, whose head band had slipped down across his eyes, said with a hint of irritation stabbing through his chest, “Are you suggesting Sakura has a stick shoved up her arse?”

            There was a pause, and then “Are you?” but this time the question was thrown at him by Shikamaru to both he and Kiba’s surprise.

            //What did you say!?//

“No,” he admitted with something resembling a grimace, “but I think it’s part of the reason why I like her. But I mean it’s nothing compared to Sa-… I mean compared to some other people.

Opposites attract you know and all that stuff.”

Although in truth he didn’t really think it, he had done at one point…but that had been before he had met him and well…anything else in comparison just seemed to falter at the memory, touch, sound and smell.

There’s really no replacing the gaping wound left by the remnants of an obsessive love now is there?

 Naruto flushed wondering whether or not his thoughts had surfaced in his face, stumbling over the words somewhat as he said “It’s in there knee high isn’t it?”, and as if to distract himself, pulled his head band and emblem back over his forehead once more.

But neither Kiba or Shikamaru seemed to notice this and inwardly he blew a great sigh of relief, but saw then they were exchanging coveted looks.       

            “So,” Kiba asked once again helping Naruto up as he tried to shake the kinks and creases of pain from his leg, “ seeing as your in there up to your knees. Your girlfriend she’s still you know your girlfriend?”

            “Oh my god,” Shikamaru said, shaking his head in stunned disbelief, his thin mouth in his angular face pulling a line of complete exasperation, “could you be anymore obvious if you tried? Why don’t you get a banner and a sign saying ‘Reveal all personal secrets, and Naruto have you popped the question yet?’ You said you’d be subtle about it!”

            “Well next time you ask, mister, and I’ll stand there making sarcastic comments, okay? Besides, I know you, you’d make it too subtle and then he’d never pick it up.”

            Naruto watched them bicker, or at least Kiba ‘try’ to, but it was as about as productive as trying to establish an interesting conversation with a brick wall, Shikamaru wasn’t giving an inch and was ignoring all of his attempts, rolling his eyes and looking straight up at the forest canopy.

            Maybe they’d forget the question if they continued like this.

            // Good idea to perhaps get away? //

 He began to slowly edge away, this was really one subject he absolutely didn’t want to engage on.

            He made it to the line of trees before Kiba jumped him from behind in a suffocating headlock and dragged him backwards by his ears.

            “Don’t think we forgot about you, not for an instant buddy, besides you can’t leave me with him for the rest of the way back, I’d kill myself for something better to do.”

Shikamaru had obviously decided the remark was below his dignity to answer because he only looked expectantly at Naruto, as did Kiba, looking somewhat like a puppy, ears pricked and excited.

            //Go on then! Tell me, tell me, tell me! Oh go on please!!//

//Why not?//

            “Did I ask her?” Naruto repeated, slowly, he stuck his hands behind his head, and turned forwards, and looked down at the forest trail they where following, pine needles that lay scattered like green fingernails. He examined the patterns they made in the dirt with his eyes.

His mind travels back seconds, minutes, hours, to a few days ago, a night when warm drizzle had been spattering on the white windowsill of Sakura’s apartment. It had been an oddly peaceful evening, no long drawn out conversation which picked at one of Naruto’s faults, which had been assured that had many. Instead it had been a scene lulled with wine and a moonlit dinner. Oddly romantic for Naruto, oddly thoughtful, but she hadn’t thought about it for long enough. Not nearly long enough.

“You didn’t ask her did you.” Shikamaru says as perceptive as ever, suddenly breaking the silence that had drifted in between them. It’s an uneasy hollow sound that emanates after that, and it spirals horribly until Naruto turns about again, that same easy characteristic expression he always wears when he doesn’t want to face up to something.

            “Nope.” No preamble straight in.

He’d expected them to both shrug their shoulders, or at least stand more awkwardly for another thirty or twenty seconds but instead they both look at him with unguarded disappointment and even a little frustration.

            “What do you mean ‘nope’?” Kiba asks before Shikamaru can elbow him in the ribs again, “You wouldn’t stop talking about it last week, we thought-” he looked pointedly at Shikamaru here who raises both his eyebrows as if to say ‘whose we?’, and then continued, “hell everyone thought that you would have popped it to her. Hell especially with that mission she’s gone on, she’s gonna be away for..what…four months?”

            “Six actually.” Naruto told them flatly, he didn’t know why the words echoed in his head so loudly, or didn’t stir up as much pain as he had thought they would. In fact the horrifying truth of the matter was that they didn’t stir up any pain. Spirals of nothing rose and fell through him as he thought about six months without Sakura.

            Six whole months, that was twenty four weeks, one hundred and sixty eight days, four thousand and thirty two hours and two million forty one thousand nine hundred and twenty minutes. Why wasn’t the prospect of that chilling him right down to the bone and leaving him in a place where the sky was grey and the sun no longer knew how to rise.

            The idea of waking up, day after day alone in his bed should be echoing in coils that clung mistily, like a dark fog about his soul. He’d be alone again, as alone as he hadn’t been in years, before he had met the others. He hated it, more then anything else in the world…if you had to be alone, surely wasn’t death better?

He should be chilled, desperate for her to come back. But it wasn’t, it just wasn’t. The more he tried to reason the more his mind told him that he’d been alone for a long long time. His soul had felt empty, he’d been incomplete like this for such a long time he didn’t know what right felt like anymore.

            Besides Sakura never slept over at his apartment anyway that was normal right?

She said it gave her a headache, that it looked as though a small band of monkeys had crept down the chimney and played ‘toss the banana’ in every single room.

Naruto thought she’d used the monkey analogy because he had bought a monkey head night cap the previous week and worn it to bed despite her protestations (his head got cold easily), although he’d certainly never played ‘toss the banana’.

But he did love her, he had loved her ever since he had first met her, when he was twelve he’d been absolutely crazy about her. But she hadn’t been crazy over him, quite the opposite in fact, she had thought him a nuisance, something obstructing her path to Sas-…

            Well, let’s just say he had been in the way.

It wasn’t for lack of trying that he hadn’t asked her, he’d gone to all the trouble of cooking that three course meal, learning how to cook something other then ramen was a huge achievement in itself. It had been a simple gesture of what he’d be willing to do, what he was willing to do for her. She was his Sakura, his partner, his…his companion. He’d gladly turn himself inside out for her if he had to without a second thought, because he loved her.

            Because he loved her so much.

                        Didn’t he?

            He’d even brought a ring, from the money he’d gained working all those double shifts, extra odd jobs that brought him back at two o’clock in the morning, utterly spent with only enough energy to drag himself into bed without so much as a smile or recognition to the angry growling in his stomach as it begged for food.

And the ring wasn’t even the one he had wanted, the one with the pink crystal in the shape of a cherry blossom had been sold by the time he had finally got to the jewellers on a rainy Saturday afternoon, drenched through to the skin and sneezing.

            He’d had to make do with the strangely shaped red stone that shone bloody whenever it caught the light, set in plain gold. It had been the closest colour to pink that he had been able to find. On second glance when he had looked at it, he had thought the stone had been the exact same colour as…well as somebody’s eyes had been once upon a time, before he had gone as if he had never existed. It had been like the ring was laughing at him, mocking him, all that deep crimson had made his fingers go slightly numb as he had traced the gold over and over again sitting on the end of his bed in the dark.

            His mouth contacting in the words “Will you marry me? Will you marry me? Will you marry me? Will you marry me?” Until the image had blurred and he was not, as intended proposing to Sakura at all, but there where strong white limbs curled over his own, and the smell of burning flesh scarring straight into his nostrils and a cold hand dragging back through his hair and down his spine so he gasped. Breaking into a light film of sweat, avoiding to look at face, the face he knew it would be…and it wasn’t Sakura’s.

It had ruined it in the end, given him sleepless nights, in which he felt he had been unfaithful when he hadn’t. They where just dreams after all, the subconscious playing tricks. But to have the same sexual fantasy over and over…and with him of all people…with him! The inner crevasses of his mind, the ones he kept shaded from reality and truth knew the whole secret, of how he begged and how he pleaded and how he groaned for more. As of late it had become more frequent…more…certainly more explicate.

Despite his own efforts to push it to the side, to concentrate on something that didn’t threaten to destroy him, to put his own best wishes first it had destroyed those dreams

he had been building on.

            As he had faced Sakura over a bottle of champagne with little bubbles of nervousness creeping up from his gut and throughout his body he had lost his nerve. She had looked so pretty, her silky hair tucked absently behind her ears as she hummed some tuneless song to herself, wearing that little dress that he liked so much.

            // And I suddenly realised I wasn’t even seeing her at all. //

He had lost his nerve, right then and there, opening his expressive mouth to say- anything, but his throat had swallowed up the words before they could breach. Instead, blushing slightly, he had made an excuse to get up from the table, walked (clumsily as he had tripped over a chair in his haste to get out) into the kitchen opened up the window out onto the warm rain and stuck the ring in it’s little box outside in the wet soil of the plant pots outside.

            Naruto had stood there for a moment before he slammed it shut again.

            Maybe he was depressed? It’s odd, when you’re depressed; you usually get sad don’t you?  Not that he could have burst into song at any given second, but he didn’t feel different either. The same old Naruto Uzumaki, the same prankster, the same guy, a little easier on the eyes then he had been when he was younger maybe, but some things change with age don’t they?  

// Drift back into the present…//

            “So you are…or you aren’t going out?” Kiba asks tentatively, and he looks like he’s chewing the inside of his cheek as he waits for the answer.

            It’s quite a bizarre sensation when you simultaneously want to thank somebody and knock their lights out at the same time.

            Naruto tries hard to swallow down the latter half.

            “She’s still my girlfriend.”

//Just.//

            “Ah.”

//That’s not even a word Kiba.//

            Naruto falls into single step beside Shikamaru, nobody says anything for a while, the light stipples and fades in different sections, ebbing as the flow of canopy thickens and dilates.

            Kiba clears his throat, apparently signalling Shikamaru to say something here (something sensitive quick!), Shikamaru however doesn’t respond to this, much to Naruto’s relief, but he does give him a long look out of the corner of his angular eyes as if summing up Naruto in the way he walks.

            Finally, he said, “I doubt she’d say no, she could do a lot worse.”

And Naruto grins, and then laughs the frostiness in gut melting away like ice on a sun kissed window pane as Kiba says in undertones “Like bushy brows…I mean semi-bushy brows.”    

The wind sighs contentedly through the leaves, rustling dryly against each other as they whisper together unmentionable secrets.

They walk together comfortably after that, every now and again Naruto finds himself smiling for no reason at all, it’s as if a huge weight has been lifted from his shoulders, and he scuffs his shoes against the ground sending pebbles skittering across the path.

            Kiba feels it first.

He halts suddenly; sticking out an arm to stop the advance, the glinting tips of canines raking over his bottom lip, dark brows framing his amber eyes, like two glowing coals.

            “Blood.” He say’s hoarsely, turning his head slightly from left to right and then back again, “On the wind.” He points one long fingered hand, slightly hooked like a claw, in an easterly direction that doesn’t lie on the path ahead, leather jacket scuffing gently against his wrist as he circles his finger in a round about sort of way.

            “Can you tell if it’s just one person?” Shikamaru asks quickly, pulling something out of his back pocket, what looks like a small compass with a needle point, “Still alive or dead? And if so for how long?”

            He makes a motion with his head for them to move back into the shade of the trees and off the path, Naruto is bouncing on the balls of his feet, his spine pressing against the knobbly skin of an old oak, fingers clenched, hot adrenaline zipping up and down his spine.

            “One person,” Kiba says, slowly, and his face contorts into a frown, and he shoots Shikamaru a dangerous look, “still alive I think but just.”

“We’re not really equipped to be dealing with casualties.” Head tilted slightly as he tries to read Kiba’s wide eyed alarmed expression, “Besides, there’s always the likely chance of whatever got them could get us, and taking an invalid would seriously slow our progress down.”

“But,” Naruto interjected, looking with curiosity Kiba who seems to be trying to form some silent word on the tip of his tongue, “you just said we were a day earlier then expected. Besides where we are now, there aren’t any nearby villages, not within walking distance anyway. They’ll die if we just leave them here….Kiba, what on earth is wrong with your face?”

To Naruto it seemed that the appropriate line of bees in your bonnet was suddenly applicable to friend, or perhaps the more accurate description of a person looking like they had just swallowed a beehive.

            “Erh?” Shikamaru said expansively, whilst the golden tousled haired youth peered over his shoulder.

            “Do we go, or do we leave it?” Naruto pestered, looking with a sort of amused interest as Kiba seemed to be trying to swallow his tongue.

            “He’s going a funny shade of purple isn’t he?”

Kiba choked at this, glared furiously at Naruto before turning to the only one in his opinion with any sense and said forcefully, “It’s just got one of those bad feelings about it, you know?”

            “Meaning your too chicken to go and check it out I suppose?” Naruto responded grinning, dodging as Kiba sent a fist towards his head, “Come on, not so tough are you? Ohhh careful Kiba-chan Lee might be out to get you!”

            Shikamaru felt he really could have done without this, his two team mates dancing around him in a wild dance of tag, Kiba snarling something along the lines of “Say that to again you dumb fox!” and Naruto, blue eyes sparkling and laughing like they hadn’t heard him do in weeks as he stuck out his tongue.

            “Don’t do that,” Shikamaru told him sternly, sticking his hands behind both of their heads and bringing their foreheads together in a bone crunching smash (‘Ouch! Maru, that frikkin’ hurt!’), “what if you got stuck like that forever? Then we’d all have to look at it.

            “So here’s the plan okay, Naruto you want to go look? Alright then, well move towards it, but you can go on ahead approximately two hundred meters and scope it out. And I mean scope, when I say scope Naruto…not ice cream scoop moron so get that glazed look off your face…look at me when I tell you this. Concentrating? Okay, what did I ask you to do?”

Naruto blinked, focusing on the two dusky brown eyes before him, “Scope head, no dairy products included, don’t do anything interesting and then come back.”

            “And if you see anyone else?”

            “I should…”

            “Not engage, and slip back as quickly as possible without being seen, got it?”

            “Got it! Run like a dog with my tail between my legs, no offence Kiba.”

And with that dry wind rustling through his hair and dancing across his skin as he jumped into the dry boughs of a leaning tree, melting into the shadows like a ghost.

                                                *          *          *

            Naruto moved through the clot of trees ahead, counting mentally how many meters he was moving and just how far he ought to go. Here and there he looked down to see the forest floor flowing beneath him like a thick green river. No sign of anything, no blood, no corpses, no signs of a battle. Nothing of interest at all….

            Except Kiba’s never been wrong about this sort of thing, so he ploughs on, due east.

After a while his skin starts to tingle and he slows down, blinking his cornflower blue eyes, he shakes his head as if to dislodge a fly from between his ears, he comes to a complete stop. Some cold trail of ice trickles down the extent of his spine, moving over the knobbles right down into his gut and pelvis, his muscles contract and suddenly he’s on edge. Suddenly he knows someone….or something is here.

            Silently he slips from the tree, hands touching the ground first, fingers splayed taught, inherently his body knows the sounds of the forest. It’s innate knowledge, one that’s not part of his memory but the Kyubbi’s as strong and ancient as the mountains. A little to his left he realises how the ground has been slightly disturbed as if someone earlier dragged a foot through there, disrupting blades of grass as the went. Look how some of them are bent…and there…against the tree, see how the moss is flattened? Some one placed a hand there, a left one, look at the indent made by the thumb.

And there, to the right, the rocks have been disturbed, someone fell maybe? He edges closer, noticing how on the shiny cuticles of the leaves a dark cracked substance lingers, and he rubs it off with his finger and tastes it.

                        Blood.

            Some one was here within the last twenty four hours.

He follows the trail further, all the time aware of how silent the forest is, and how pressing the gloom is against his eyes.

            And yet in the dim light he sees a pale figure, lying spread eagle beneath a huge old tree, massive curling roots sending up tendrils hither and thither. Even he can smell the blood stink now, it’s so strong, and he wrinkles his nose and hides it behind his left wrist. Edging slowly, inch by inch towards it. Curiosity hungry and adamant inside him.

            Then he stops, his arm falls away from his face, and he feels vaguely stiff, breathless and then dizzy, very dizzy, and then sick.

            He knows that person…oh god he knows that person.

Slim figure, pale ivory skin, long legs, slender arms and long elegant hands, like a fallen swan, neck bent at an odd angle and eyes closed.

            It’s then when the world swims that Naruto wonders vaguely in the last resort of coherent thought, if Sasuke Uchiha is breathing.

                                                *          *          *

            Kiba gave Shikamaru a small side look and shuffled his feet, the other ignored him, until Kiba unable to keep his silence any longer said:

            “You know what this is going to be right?”

            “Troublesome? Of course it is, I got signed up with you two didn’t I?”

Kiba looked thoroughly disappointed at the fact that Shikamaru had just denied him the pleasure of later pronouncing “I told you so.”

                                                *          *          *

A/N Some of the dialogue above was inspired by a very funny msn conversation I had whilst touching this up, and thank you to my beta/editor-sama for agreeing to edit this!

First time at writing a Naruto actual fiction (be gentle with me okay?), *face palms* I went all incoherent after seeing about 60 episodes on the same day and I nearly keeled over from all the Sasuke smut and angst…and oh…oh … oh!!!

Now if you have complaints about why I put the NaruxSaku relationship in here, let me assure you, I don’t like that pairing either, in fact that’s why I wrote it in. You’ll just have to wait and see…also I’m sorry Lee fans, I do love Lee I really do, but…it’s just so easy to take the piss out of him!

Reviews are food

I would love to get feed back on this, and general recommendations, bits you liked, bits you didn’t etc…erh, and if you flame me, please be at least constructive about it!

Thank you for reading!

Fish Bird

Chapter two:  The Skeleton Bridge

Note: // text // whenever it is seen indicates a thought process, not always Naruto’s but always a thought process. It’s mostly Naruto’s however.

Thank you to my beta/editor for bashing this about for me (somehow making it good!) and to my extra beta/beta who assailed me with *weep!* “Why do you not know how to use comma’s properly?”

                                                            *          *          *

//Okay Naruto breathe, breathe- it’s just…it’s just a bad dream. That’s all, it isn’t happening, this can’t be real. Quick close your eyes and pinch yourself! //

Amongst the bubbles of incoherency this foremost thought thrusts itself to the surface, as he stands there shivering from shock, cornflower blue eyes squeezed closed as he falls forwards onto his knees, all the blood seemingly gushing from his ears. As his hands grit the earth beneath his finger tips, he inhales the damp smell of crushed grass and soil up into his brain.

Naruto gently lets his forehead rest on the hard indents of his knee caps and pulls numb fingers towards his lower wrist, forefinger and thumb closing together like a vice.

            “Ouch!”

//That really hurt! //

So he’s not dreaming. He keeps his eyes closed for a moment: the key to it is not to panic- maybe when he looks up again it’s going to be someone else, maybe there wasn’t anything there at all… it might have just been that food he stole out of Kiba’s pack when he wasn’t looking. The liver and kidney biscuits or whatever the hell it was… it might be having repercussions now and just playing with his senses.

It really can’t be Sasuke… not now, not ever, it’s not allowed to be.

Naruto Uzumaki stands up, a little too fast because everything swims blotchily, there’s an awful bitter taste of acid gargling up the back of his throat as though he’s going to be sick. He bites down hard on his tongue, and ignoring the fact that his knees are shaking, he takes small tentative steps forwards, without really looking anywhere.

Then he looks back again, at the figure lying on the ground, hoping against all hope that it’s not what it first seemed to be. But life, cruel and cynical as always, laughs at him. Breaking glass seems to flash and splinter and hope shatters, the jagged pieces lying across something he’s struggled to mould and maintain, some cracked thing that’s holding itself together with duck tape and paper clips, but it is still holding… barely.

He’d never forget that face, even smothered in dirt and clots of blood; burned into his brain, he sees it in his dreams, like the imprint of a ghost haunting him.

            “Sasuke Uchiha…” he breathes slowly on the out breath. His hands are so numb as he pressed them against his eyes, he’s hardly aware of the sensation in his finger tips.

// What do I do? What the hell do I do?! //

He can’t hold down the bile this time, he turns, half coughing, stomach wrenching right from the bottom of his gut. It’s the smell, it’s that goddamned awful smell! It’s clinging to his nostrils and carpeting the inside of his lungs and throat with blood; and that higher, metallic smell that’s burning his eyes slightly and making him wince.

// I need to get a grip. Come on Naruto, get a grip. Deal with this. //

Naruto spits out the last glob of acid lying behind his molars; he places his shaking palms together and grits his teeth. He’s on a mission, treat it like mission, like something on a piece of paper, totally meaningless, a set of rules and obligations to be followed.

Had Kakashi-sensei been here, he probably would have taken over by now, but he’s not here, he’s not twelve anymore, he can look after himself, of course he can do this, he’s more then capable of it.

Naruto squares his shoulders and moves forwards, the stippled light glances across his skin casting deep dark shadows around his eyes, as tentatively he walks the earth. This after all could be some sort of an illusion, some sort of trick, someone pretending to be Sasuke after all. If he’s going to walk into a trap headfirst, he might as well do it with his head held high and go down fighting right?

The ground seems to creak slightly beneath his foot, rocks rubbing against the rough skin of tree roots that penetrate this place like huge dark creepers. It’s when he gets closer that he realises the grass is all withered and burnt in a rough circle around the body, little blackened stumps peeping out of the scarred soil here and there. Frowning, and hairs prickling at the back of his neck, Naruto presses forwards, licking his lips, feeling so apprehensive as he slowly kneels down; for the first time in years face to face with Uchiha.

            Hesitantly, hands fumbling like a child, he remembers what to do, standard procedure. Sasuke’s head is lying at an odd angle, eyes closed, skin terrifyingly pale. Too pale: almost bloodless underneath all that muck and grime. Maybe he’s dead- God is he dead? Is he? He’s clumsy as he tries to move the head so it’s at a less jarring angle from the rest of his body, fingers skimming the jaw line. His flesh is cold and Naruto begins to feel sick again, breaking out in a cold sweat as he fumbles for a pulse.

            // Oh God. Damn. Help! //

There’s the powerful urge to vomit up those biscuits again, seconds tick away like hours as he waits for it… for a long time there’s absolutely nothing… and then… something, very faint, almost nonexistent. Like movement in a spider’s web: a slight twitch and then a release and Naruto breathes out, air rushing out cold and fast in sudden glorious relief.

            It’s there at least.

He can’t help grinning, something that travels all the way up to his eyes. A light seems to sparkle behind the cornflower irises, while subconsciously his hand travels up to span the rest of Sasuke’s face, taking in the changes. His hair is still raven black, so dark that any falling light it catches turns indigo blue; the face has changed slightly. Older, longer perhaps, more angular: still beautifully formed. The mouth is the same as it ever was, slightly parted as it is now flushed and full and slightly pouting as the body draws in air. Naruto feels a fleeting stab of something in his chest thinking the face inhabits a space of melancholy beauty.

Absently he moves his fingers to brush the dark strands of hair away from Sasuke’s face, his digits rubbing against cuts and bruises that curdle against the milky flow of his skin. He leans down a little, his middle finger tapping gently against Sasuke’s cheek almost wonderingly. He wants him to open his eyes, to look at him, to say something.

Naruto opens his mouth, words forming and falling on his tongue; but he shakes his head feeling foolish. If Sasuke really did wake up, what would he have to say to him? What would Sasuke care? He’d already walked off once. What would stop him from walking off again? What if this was some sort of very ill spirited practical joke?

He… Naruto could walk away now, leave him here, go back to Shikamaru and Kiba and pretend that nothing had happened. That the person was lying in so many pieces there wasn’t even any point in them going to check. Case closed, moving on please.

He’d probably die if he did that….

Probably… most likely….

Definitely.

            When did life become so complicated?

All he wants to do is go home, curl up in bed, and pretend this is a really, really crap dream. The sort he’ll wake up from shivering, and lie there for a moment thinking “shit.” Before getting up to devour yesterday’s cold ramen for breakfast.

Reality, he realises as he opens his mouth to say something, anything: Reality really sucks. It really, really… does.

It turns around at the oddest of times and just punches you, right there, right in the gut, fist clenched tight; and then strolls away with a sexy sort of smile on its face, as if to say: “Got ya darlin’!”

He thinks maybe he’s a little afraid, a little unsure of what to do, because he’s standing, obstinately not saying or doing anything but licking his cracked lips and tasting the sordid salt of his skin rough and bitter against his tongue.

            There isn’t really very much he can say. Not enough to be put into words. It’s been closed off for such a long time he’s not quite sure of where to start. The funny thing is that a long time ago he used to dream of this. He had in his head rehearsed so many lines, so many actions. Practised entire speeches in those timeless hours of the night, when only the walls and moon could hear him. He had planned it all, actions and words. How it would end happily-ever-after, and everything, finally… everything would be back to normal.

            A child’s ideal, a child’s game that he’d given up a long, long time ago. No one lives ‘happily-ever-after.’ Not a soul.

Naruto wonders briefly at the chasm that seems to be laid out between them, him and Sasuke: deep, dark and bottomless. He couldn’t possibly breach that, could he? Even back in the days when he was willing, now it’s a concept beyond the impossible - living in the absurd.

He smiles a little for no reason at all, head tilted slightly to the left, so that dusty blonde trails of hair fall across his forehead.

It would be the understatement of the world to say that this situation was just uncomfortable.

He blinks long thick lashes, as he always does when he’s nervous, and it makes him look like a child. In a curiously stubborn and oddly attractive motion that completely disarms him, Naruto takes a deep breath in, clenches his jaw and looks straight upwards.

 “So Sasuke, long time no see, huh?”

            It’s not as if Sasuke can hear the words and it’s not as if there was any point in speaking at all; yet the statement is simply a genuine reflection of the different paths they’ve followed and the time that’s travelled like grains of sand between them.

To Naruto the words are so blunt, they hurt.

                                                *          *          *

Kiba and Shikamaru have been standing in the same position for what seems to be hours. In reality it’s only been ten minutes and thirty seconds. The reason why it feels like an eternity is the fact that Kiba has been trying to remember something for these past ten minutes, and this is slowly driving Shikamaru crazy.

            “Will you just spit it out?” he mutters between clenched teeth, eyes alert, as his mind he adds the words, “Before I throttle you!”

Kiba ignores him, face pensive. There’s definitely something familiar about this, something ominous. And it’s not just the smell of blood, it’s the type…. He’s smelt it before, and there’s something nagging at the back of his mind. Something assuring him that this just isn’t natural, that it isn’t right. There’s a bitter taste of acid on the air, a little ammonia maybe? It’s making his nostrils sting and his eyes water.

Kiba’s been taught from birth to always trust the gut feeling: “It’s a sign,” he’s been warned, “You’d be a fool to ignore it.”

Only he can’t work out what the sign is….

“He’s been gone too long,” Shikamaru continues to himself seeing as Kiba isn’t listening. In fact he’s had both his eyes closed, face screwed up and his fingers stuck in his ears, trying desperately to remember whatever-it-is for, oh yes, the last ten minutes.

// How did I end up with these idiots again? //

He was really going to have to talk to Tsunade after this was all over.

            “I think we should move closer in. I don’t like the fact he hasn’t reported back yet, it’s not that far ahead—”

Shikamaru never had the opportunity to finish this sentence however, as a proverbial lightening bolt fell from the sky, lifted levers of realisation and swung open a door in Kiba’s mind. In truth this realisation is not quite so holy; it’s more the sort that rams its foot right up your backside and then cackles callously.

“Crap, crappity, crappity crappity CRAP!” Kiba yells suddenly, and Shikamaru nearly falls out the tree in surprise as Kiba jumps on him, shakes him by the collar and ignores all protests of  “What the hell? Stop it now!”

“Fuck-a-duck Maru! I know that, I know that!” and without illustrating his point further, he tears off in the direction Naruto had formerly galloped.

Shikamaru allows himself to think a rational “They’re all lunatics,” and a “We Are All Going to Die,” before jumping to his feet and rushing after Kiba, cursing creatively under his breath as he goes.

He only has a few seconds to wait anyway: they move fast, terrifyingly so in fact, and as they stumble on the clearing, tripping around the vast wedges of tree roots that snake out of the ground like insanely huge earthworms, Shikamaru suddenly realises what is wrong.

            That person, the man that their Naruto is leaning over, shaking slightly, is supposed to be dead.

Sasuke?

He doesn’t even bother to yell at Kiba as he rushes blindly to Naruto: there could be traps, there could be landmines underneath them, there could be anything. The whole situation reeks of something absolutely abhorrent and intangible. It’s like walking straight through death and staggering right out the other side. This just isn’t supposed to happen, not now, not ever.

Kiba’s already there, shaking Naruto gently by the shoulders, trying to snap him out of his reverie. There’s a bloody hand print on his face and dried clots of blood in his hair, as if he’s run his fingers multiple times across his scalp. His skin is oddly pale and his lips cracked and bleeding as if he’s been biting them.

            The relief is, the blood on his face and clothes isn’t his, it belongs to the person lying next to him. The person with their eyes firmly closed and mouth slightly parted, the way that you do only if you’re…

            “He’s not dead.” Naruto says suddenly, his voice is hoarse against the soft flesh of his mouth. “I don’t understand why he’s bleeding, there’s blood everywhere…” he rubs his nose against his wrist, without looking up at either of them.

Kiba is sending Shikamaru one of those looks that communicates that he understands nothing of what is going on and that Maru should do something… now.

Naruto is talking to Kiba saying something which Shikamaru presumes to be mildly frenzied because Kiba has that snarling confused look plastered to his face, as if to say, “What the hell?”

The world could have turned itself upside down and things might have made more sense.

The primary source of thought that Shikamaru allows himself to flow from, ignoring Kiba’s startled gasps of “Why isn’t he dead?” and “What the hell is he doing here?” is that he doesn’t like it, not one bit, and it seems to stink of a set up. He won’t forget what happened last time he partook in anything involving the Uchiha prodigy. People had ended up hurt… and hurt badly.

“We have to get him back, now.” Naruto is saying, standing up and turning to Shikamaru, “Fast Maru, I can’t seem to get him warm again, and I’m afraid if he stays that cold for much longer… he’s going to die, so you’re gonna have to help me carry him back.”

“No.” Shikamaru starts unthinkingly, staring at Sasuke as he says it, unaware of the frantic hand gestures Kiba is making behind Naruto’s back. Naruto, who is now facing him, broad shoulders, arms crossed with a slightly disbelieving look on his face, as he looks from Kiba to Shikamaru, and back to Kiba.

// Well, I just stuck two feet in my mouth there didn’t I? //

Naruto tilts his head mimicking a politely enquiring position, his eyes softly dangerous; Shikamaru locks his jaw, whilst Kiba shuffles nervously from one foot to the other looking uncomfortable.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me Uzumaki, I said no.”

“What do you mean ‘no’?”

“Well, which bit don’t you understand: the middle or the end?”

Naruto’s face contorts in anger; he can never stand being mocked, not when he’s trying to protect something important to him.

“Don’t play games!” he snarls, “What does that mean? ‘No’ you’re not going to help me? Or ‘no’, you’re not allowing me to take him back with us? ‘Cause you better think again before you say that Shikamaru, because hell will freeze over before I just let you leave him here to die.”

Shikamaru looked absolutely undaunted by the sudden fizzling anger radiating from his friend, while Kiba glanced back and forth, kneeling by the unconscious Sasuke, until his attention slips, eyes moving and frowning at Sasuke’s wrist.

            “Is your headband on too tight something? So you forget what happened last time?” Shikamaru bites back, hands in pockets, jaw muscles flexing as he keeps his face completely impassive. “People died. You nearly died, I nearly died, Kiba nearly died, we all nearly died, and some weren’t that lucky. Because of him, Uzumaki! I’m not willing to risk my life for someone who betrayed us for their own personal gain; or yours for that matter. It’s not worth it, he’s not worth it.”

            “I’m not leaving him here!” Naruto snarled back. He was smaller then Shikamaru by about three inches, but it was amazing how anger seemed to give him an extra foot in height. “He’ll die.”

“Do you listen to anything I say?” Shikamaru asked incredulously, “How do we even know it’s him anyway? It could be an impostor for all we know-”

            “It’s him alright,” Kiba interjected quietly not looking at either one, rubbing a red sticky globule of blood between his fingers. “You can’t fake the smell of a person’s blood. Not when there’s this much of it.”

            “He’s going to bleed to death isn’t he?” Naruto asked, turning his attention away from Shikamaru, body language immediately shifting into the less defensive, seeming smaller, loosing the fox’s ferocity. The look that ghosted across his face was the sort that arose when he and Sakura where arguing: lonely, lost and slightly bewildered.

“Kiba, you agree with me don’t you?”

“Naruto…there might not be enough time to-”

“But you agree with me,” Naruto cut in hotly, ignoring Shikamaru’s derisive snort of disgust, “don’t you Kiba?”

            Kiba looked like someone had turned a spotlight on him on a darkened stage in front a multitude of people he didn’t know, and had somehow mistakenly misplaced all of his clothes.

            “I..ugh…well.”

            “Don’t you Kiba?”

This last part was expelled so forcefully that as it was yelled the sound reverberated from curling tree root to tree root. Kiba licked his lips and looked at his feet with fascination before opening his mouth to say:

“You know sometimes when things are a Bad Idea? Well this isn’t on that level… no, no, this is on the level of Naruto if you do this you’ll get such bad karma you’ll die, like, you’ll get squashed to death underneath a mountain of punishment paper work.”

Naruto glowered at him, “So that’s it then? You won’t help me?”

            “Of course I’ll help you you moron!” Kiba responded so fast he seemed to do it without drawing breath, “We’ll both help you, don’t think we’re going to do anything else!”

            “Excuse me?” Shikamaru interjected, raising both his eyebrows so high they where in danger of flying straight off his face, “No we aren’t, I’m certainly not helping him to hurt himself again.”

Naruto rounded on Shikamaru and Kiba, reading warning sparks, darted up, ready, just in case things got ugly to (…to run the hell away…? Of course not!) to help.

            “What the hell gives you the authority to just presume that’s going to happen again?” Naruto’s tone, low and angry: “How can you just treat it as decided that that’s what will happen?”

“Oh, let’s not pretend for a moment that you don’t believe it too Uzumaki,” Shikamaru snarled back,

//Damnit he was angry now//

“but you just can’t leave things alone, can you? You never listen! You know, I bet if I looked hard enough I could see my words actually drifting into one ear and straight out the other again….” He made hand movements and stifled Naruto’s beginning words as he opened his mouth to argue back, continuing “Look, there they go! Shush now: maybe we can hear the faint whooshing sound they make as they drift on by.”

Naruto swore at him, “You know I’ll do it anyway, don’t you? Why are you even bothering to argue with me about it?”

“No, you won’t.” Shikamaru told him softly, his eyes narrowed dangerously. A worried Kiba began nibbling his thumb in a rather over enthusiastic manner.

            “What do you… shit, Shikamaru! Stop that!”  Realisation began to dawn in Naruto’s eyes.

“We’re walking all the way back alright, and when we get back then we can tell Tsunade about this and she can send a group of ANBU here and they can take care of it.” Shikamaru took a step forwards, and shaking with rage, gritting his teeth, so did Naruto,

“Stop it Shikamaru, I swear- I told you, I’m not… stop it! I’m not leaving!”

Shikamaru took another five steps forwards, and Naruto, cursing and yelling, followed.

Kiba, with the cold trickling feeling that his team-mates had gone insane, aimed a coherent “Huh?” at his golden haired friend who seemed to be fighting some heated internal battle with his feet.

“Shadow bind technique,” he was told somewhat curtly, “we are going. Come on.”

“Maru,” Kiba said softly, coming forwards with his back to Naruto. “If you do this, he’ll never forgive you. Even if he’s still alive when they find him again,” Kiba nodded towards Sasuke’s still form, “he’ll never forgive you for it.”

“At least he’ll be alive to hold a stupid grudge. It’s a bit difficult to hold any when you’re dead, isn’t it, which he’ll end up being at some point if we let him do this!”

Kiba seemed to be chewing the inside of his cheek again as he looked from Shikamaru’s stubborn face, to Naruto who was glowering heatedly at both of them, beads of frustration working down his forehead as he fought to break the full body bind.

Placidly he put forwards, “Hey, a lot’s happened between then and now. He’s got older and matured a bit you know? I mean that’s what happens when people grow up right?”

            “Kiba,” Shikamaru bit out between clenched teeth, “let me firmly and once and for all shake this deluded idea from your head. All people do when they get older- and this is a universally accepted fact- they just go crazier; in fact they jump the train and go absolutely insane. The only difference is they just get really good at hiding it.”

Slightly side tracked by this piece of information Kiba faltered, allowing Shikamaru to plunge on, “If he got hurt, because I allowed him to do this, I’d never forgive myself. I swore I wouldn’t let this happen again… I swore it. Not after last time, I don’t want to make the decision that will lead to the biggest mistake he ever made.”

            “Listen, I find it best to envisage Naruto as a type of cockroach-”

“I can hear you, you idiot! And it’s not up to you to decide my so-called ‘mistakes’ for me!” Naruto spat at both he and Shikamaru, his eyes dancing a furious dazzling blue.

“Ugh… See, when I said that in my head… it sounded a whole lot better. Anyway, come on Maru, it’s your call, I’m thinking it would be pretty bad karma if you just left a fellow ninja from the leaf village to just die out here.”

            “An ex-leaf village ninja, let’s not forget that.”

            “But a leaf village ninja, none the less. You can’t protect people, from themselves, no matter how hard you try, you know that.”

Shikamaru releases his grip somewhat, the words knocking to some effect on the inside of his skull. He runs his tongue over his teeth inside his mouth, and meets Naruto’s gaze head on for the first time throughout the entire argument.

“You have to promise me… if I let you do this Naruto, you have to do everything I tell you to? I want you to swear to me, that you will.”

For a moment Naruto doesn’t say anything, ragged snippets of hair trailing messily across his eyes in a ringing silence… and then,

“I swear.”

Nothing happens.

“Maru,” Kiba says in a hoarsely audible whisper, “you’re supposed to let him go now.”

Shikamaru glowers and ends up staring into the canopy above as he thinks about the troubles that have been forced into his head because of these two twits; and gently, inch by inch, lets the jutsu slide.

Naruto falls to the ground, massaging his neck, trying to work out the kinks that seemed to have formed in his spine. He’s still furious, anger bubbling throughout his nerves and popping in hot little bursts. Why does everybody feel they have to protect him in some way, manner or form? Hasn’t he proven himself enough times now? He’s so sick of people looking down at him.

“You never know,” Kiba is saying helpfully to both of them, grabbing Naruto by his shoulders and yanking him up, “it might all work out happily ever after.” Shikamaru’s voice is laced with icy sarcasm and he has a tick pulsing under one eye when he responds to this zealous statement, “Of course it is, you know just after hell freezes over.”

It’s beneath anybodies dignity to respond to this.

“Help me get him up,” Naruto says hoarsely his voice catching painfully in the back of his throat, “I’ll carry him over my shoulder; I don’t care about the weight-” But Shikamaru cuts across him with a brusque “Don’t be ridiculous.” Inclining his head for Naruto to come and help him, he murmurs: “We’ll both carry him; I’ll show you how we can make a stretcher.”

                                                *          *          *         

It’s cold. The thrumming sounds of machines, whirring against white-washed walls seems to dig right into the back of Naruto’s teeth, as he stands against the panel of glass looking down into the room below. He’s on his fourth cup of coffee this hour; the Coffee beans are mixed with the aroma of his own sweat, curling nauseatingly up his nostrils as he grimaces at the taste that’s washing down his tongue.

“N…Naruto?” the words are spoken softly, but no ones been in here apart from him for the last few hours.

He jumps, spilling most of the coffee onto the floor, narrowly missing his shirt.

“Naruto, I-I’m sorry!”

He laughs, that easy smile sliding easily across his face as he steps away from the dark brown puddle he’s just created on the floor.

“No, I’m sorry Hinata, that’s completely my fault.”

He turns and grins at her, watching as she flushes, long dark hair being drawn like a curtain across her face as she looks down, bashful and anxious as she always is around him.

“Hmm, Naruto, don’t you think you ought to get some sleep? You haven’t slept in... sometime. Well not since you brought Sasuke-kun back.”

“Three days yeah,” he stifles a yawn, still smiling. “Did Kiba tell you to come and gently chastise me because he knew I wouldn’t get mad at you?”

“Chastise you?” she looked somewhat puzzled, blinking her large eyes and biting her lower lip, “I wouldn’t ever dream of… I didn’t mean that…”

Naruto just continues to smile at her, elbows propped up on the metal bar that ran before the glass panel. He steals a glance down before winking at Hinata:

“Excuse me,” he murmurs -she flushes this time down to the roots of her hair- and strolling across to the other side of the room, he pauses before yanking the door wide open in one deftly aggressive movement.

Kiba fell forwards, glass held to ear; Shikamaru standing behind him looking somewhat guilty as Naruto glared at both of them hands on hips-

“You could at least have the guts to come do it yourselves!” he snapped irately at Kiba who was fumbling to hide the glass behind his back. He nodded his head in the direction of Hinata, “that’s not fair.”

“Look,” Kiba began, shoving the glass at Shikamaru, “we’ve tried asking you nicely, we’ve tried not asking you nicely, we’ve tried forcibly removing you, thanks to which I now have an extremely painful bruise on my ass. You need to sleep.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, no you’re not, you’re insane, you can’t keep going like this, eventually you’ll snap, think your middle finger is talking to you, and start referring to yourself in the third person as Johnny.”

//Right…//

“Hinata,” Shikamaru interrupted before Kiba could get any further with embarrassing himself, “could you get us all another cup of coffee please? I think this might just be another long night.”

                                                *          *          *

“Shouldn’t… shouldn’t he have woken up by now?” Naruto asks, more to himself than the others. Kiba is snoring loudly in his sleep, sprawled across three collapsible chairs; Shikamaru is glaring with intent hostility at him as if seriously considering ripping off one of his socks and stuffing it down his throat.

It’s late: the light that comes in from the window is hazy moonlight, which flows ebbing between gaps in the clouds. It falls on sterile hospital floors, dipping into the cracks between the slates. Naruto’s eyes are still locked on the glass panel before them, looking down into the room below where somebody is lying attached to a life support machine, the constant ‘bip, bip, bip,’ pulsing rhythmically into the silence. There are people in that room, some wearing white coats, others lined up wearing masks, backs pressed flat against the white cold walls.

            “He lost a lot of blood, besides we don’t know how long he was out there for.” It’s as though you can hear their inner thoughts of ‘I just hope he doesn’t wake up….’

Naruto yawns again, the fifth time in the past five minutes. He can feel his conscious friend’s penetrating stare boring into the back of his skull.

“Go to sleep right?” he asks, playfully, although in truth he doesn’t feel much like laughing. His stomach feels clenched, doubled up and knotted tightly in figures of eights inside him.

He doesn’t think he could sleep even if he wanted to. This is something bordering on obsession, and he just can’t let go.

            “Why…don’t you just rest you eyes for a moment?”

Naruto finds himself smiling despite himself: you’ve got to give them credit for being persistent, he has to at least give them that. He nods in accordance, he’s so undeniably tired that his only other option is to prop his eye lids open with match sticks anyway, at least if he falls asleep he’ll still be here.

//He won’t get away so easily.//

            “He’s not going anywhere Naruto. You know that, don’t you?”

Naruto lets himself slip a little down the chair, so the top of his head is leaning against the back. “Thanks Maru.” There’s a pause.

            “For the other day…you kn-”

            “Naruto, just stop babbling. Go on, go to sleep before I have to concuss you.”

His eyes skate closed before he’s even aware of it, his head rolls back and his breathing slows down a mere fraction, becoming rhythmic… and he begins to dream.

                                                *          *          *

Here it’s ice cold, a pressing black against his eyes, someone’s fingers smooth and supple. He’s lead forwards by a strong grip on his wrist and spun round. Spun hard and fast, so he falls, and the world is still black. Because he can’t, he won’t, open his eyes, because he’s been here before… he knows this dream too well.

Someone is laughing at him, just above him, standing over his body, looking down. Through the blindfold he raises his head and clenches his jaw, exposing his throat to the predator, and it is a predator because it stalks all the way around him, assessing him from every angle. It doesn’t miss an inch, it never does. He waits for it to settle over him, straddling his hips as it always does. He doesn’t fight it, he’s done so before of course, but to no avail, it only laughs, resistance amuses it, it makes it rougher, harder, faster, until it’s spent and he’s shattered, mind and body numb and splintered.

Besides, he knows it wants that, and he’s not going to pander to it’s pleasure. It starts slowly, teasing down from his collar bone, hot tongue trailing up his neck to his ear, tracing the outer shell. He can feel it breathing, hot against his skin and he fights to suppress the quickening of his own heart as it nips the lobe of his ear, applying pressure to his lower abdomen with its body.

The mouth trails across his face, tongue hot and sweet, he swallows and feels fingers trace the movement of his Adam’s apple, as it grins against his skin, murmuring, “Naruto,” that voice so similar and yet so alien, “come, love…stop resisting me.”

He turns his head away from it, fingers raking into the ground beneath him as the mouth travels down, whispering incoherencies against his skin. He bites his tongue to stop the sound that tries to burst forwards when it leaves a trail of hot saliva down to his navel, sticking it’s tongue directly into the small hole, and he gasps, he can’t stop himself. It laughs again, hands against his hips, this is stupid, where are his clothes? Why does he feel so naked? Why does he always feel so naked?

Teeth grate teasingly against the lower part of his abdomen tasting the skin there, he smells of beeswax and tastes slightly salty, and again there’s the pressure, hot and grinding this time, edging between his legs and spreading them.

            It’s getting much harder to think now, as a mouth comes to capture his own and he’s letting it, but keeps himself firmly closed, at it sucks at his lower lip, hot tip of the tongue tapping against his teeth, as it kisses his lips, then his eyes, his cheeks, following the line of his jaw. It’s head moved to his neck again, nibbling the skin lightly at the junction of the collar bone, kissing the hollow. It’s muttering something against the bone, he doesn’t know what, it might as well be in another language as everything turns to gibberish inside his head.

When did it get so hot? He can feel teeth again against the place where his shoulders meet his neck, sharp canines in a human mouth, bruising as they rake painfully over the tender skin that resides there, tongue sucking the slight blood spill the teeth leave, greedily, until there isn’t enough blood left and in hunger it bites down. Down into his flesh, tearing skin, and he screams and arches and it’s pressing down onto him hard, so there’s more pressure and this delicious feeling of being possessed. It’s teeth leave his shoulder, and he’s whispering thoughts, as they come to him, as it moves to his mouth, plunging in through slightly parted lips, no longer shut, hot, wet and trembling, sucking on his tongue and filling him completely. It pulls back, to gaze at him, hands firm and hard against his shoulders, pressing him down beneath it, applying pressure between his legs so hot white shoots of sensation sizzle up and down his lower abdomen, making his toes curl and his body stretch.

For some reason he opens his eyes, for some reason he looks up into the face he knows will be staring down at him, eyes dark and insatiable, neither inky black or smoky grey. And suddenly the ‘it’ has a name, and is no longer so alien or frightening, and- 

            “Sasuke…” Naruto says breathlessly, from between parted bleeding lips, before the head lowers, swallowing the sound completely, as Sasuke begins to demonstrate what a prisoner Naruto’s body really is to him.

                                                *          *          *

Someone kicks Naruto’s chair over in their sudden haste to get up; he lies sprawled on the floor, blue eyes flying open, looking dazed, unsure of why there’s so much noise around him or even where he is. There’s yelling, someone yelling his name, and screaming from down below, the sound of something being broken. Naruto scrambles to his feet; finger tips first, almost ripping muscles in his haste to get towards the window, tripping on his own feet, he smashes his shoulder against the metal bar, grunting at the pain and looking down.

            What he see’s makes him feel as though somebody has knocked a hole in his stomach.

The room has been smashed, broken glass and equipment lying scattered across the floor in chaos, the bed is empty, sheets tossed and ripped and thrown half way across the room. The occupant is standing some feet behind it, back to the wall, three masked men facing him down; there are needles in one arm and the flash of something dark and metallic looking as he yells; face dark and dangerous like a panther. One of the men move; and out of reflex Sasuke hurtles the bed at them, the object splintering, catching one of the men off guard, colliding with his chest and sending him slamming to the floor.

Sasuke stands breathing heavily, while from up above Naruto can hear his own blood rushing tempestuously in his ears like a river. The movement of the dark-haired youth below is slightly jagged, as if he’s lost motor control, and his eyes are pitch black as he looks to either side of him judging the distance to the door or window.

Naruto doesn’t know why he shouts Sasuke’s name when he does. He thinks it might have been to do with the fact that when one of the ninja moved, Sasuke didn’t seem to see it, and as the blow connected with his spine, his own hands only just stopped him from falling. Sasuke’s foot connects with someone’s head in a beautifully fluid movement, and for some reason Naruto realises that there are hands on his shoulders and around his waist, dragging him backwards from the ledge of the window and back onto the floor again.

He’s still yelling Sasuke’s name, because Sasuke’s standing there, still breathing heavily, face almost savage, facing down the last man, not seeming to noticed that the one he knocked down before is getting up, moving behind him. He just doesn’t seem to realise.

            Why?

An arm encircling Sasuke’s neck, driving his vision sharply upwards, so he gags and gasps for air, he sees the panel of glass, the silent watchers looking down on him. At the opposite ends of the room the two young men are both being forcefully restrained, both pulling forwards. Pressure is being forced on Sasuke’s knees as he buckles, but somehow he manages to keep his vision locked on the panel as hands press against his back and someone’s yelling for the doctor and the sedative. He doesn’t want to go back to sleep again because then there will be more of the nightmares. There’s a jabbing pain between his shoulder blades, and he keeps staring desperately up, searching for a way out.

Except there is no way out, not really, not anymore. From the word go, he knew he’d end up in this situation, stuck between the sulphur pits of hell and the bottomless abyss of space. He’s sealing his fate right now, in his mind, as his eyes lock into Naruto’s, turbulent blue meeting shores of burnt ash riddled with smouldering embers, and both of them can feel it, the connection. It’s a sharp jolt of electricity. For Naruto, it’s the beginning of something, something long coming. But for Sasuke, it’s the very end of hope.

            The world blurs and slips….

// Now the nightmares will come….//

                                                *          *          *

A/N would love to hear any feed back or criticisms you have on this, also thank you to a very kind reviewed who suggested what the title of this chapter should actually be! Ha-ha ever so slightly limey…*gasps!*

Fish Bird

Chapter 3: Dying, Living, Waking, Lying.

The digits flash in the semi darkness, a neon lime glow.

5:59.

The nine continues to flicker casting moving shadows on the sloping walls.

A little to the left someone makes a noise in their sleep: a sort of gurgling snore into the soft fabric of a pillow, that smothers it into a fluffy sort of sound. Almost absolute silence…. ‘Almost’, because there’s the sound of slight pressure outside the door, as if someone’s standing right outside it, fingers on the handle, listening intently for movement inside. Seconds pass and nothing happens. The void spirals, dripping anticipation. Smoothly, the handle bends and the door- seemingly from its own accord- swings open a fraction.

There is no light in the hallway, only pitch black and swallowing shadows as the door continues to swing, sinister and smoothly.

Somebody is standing there in the darkness.

The digits flash 5:59 for the last time, and as the number jumps to 6:00am the alarm starts its awful high-pitched ring.

Naruto yells as the machine screams into his ear, and promptly falls straight out of the side of his bed onto the cold unyielding floor. Groggily he sits up and turns on the light, and then frowns: he doesn’t remember having left the door open before he went to sleep. Shrugging his shoulders and thinking nothing of it he yawns, arms up and over his head, tonsils exposed to the world. He falls groggily backwards in a dead stupor.

            The alarm rings again.

//Damn machine…//

                                                *          *          *

The key slides in the lock, giggling a little as levers lift. It’s slightly rusty and gets jammed sometimes. Irritably Naruto wedges his shoulder against the door, using his weight as an added incentive for the hinges to swing open.

It bursts somewhat abruptly into his corridor and he trips in astonishment over the welcome mat and lands sprawled like a beached whale all over the front step. The contents of the shopping bags he was holding go rolling all the way down the wooden floorboards. Cursing his enormous feet- he’s always been ashamed of them ever since Sakura mentioned it once in bed, giggling that they reminded her of clown’s shoes and that they amused her. Naruto frowns.

//Hardly the most flattering attribute of my general appearance, thank-you. //

He scrambles after the cartons on his hands and knees- he thinks he might have lost half the broccoli shoot but he can’t find it. Most of it at least has been recovered. He thinks he dropped both of the shopping bags, although, he’s sure he brought three…?

            He makes his way into the crampt kitchen whistling cheerfully. It should be noted that the kitchen isn’t crampt because it’s small; it’s crampt because it’s untidy.

//And untidy is putting it very lightly…//

A quick glance reveals there to be coat hangers sticking out of some the utensil draws; a stash of comics in the bread bin; a blown light bulb in the sink and a spatula stuck into the door of the microwave. The walls are liberally splashed with a multitude of different colours, mostly liberating oranges and yellows alternating sometimes into a deep rich shade of vivid red.

            Naruto likes his kitchen. It has a cheerful friendly environment that seems to welcome him in, greeting him. Sakura loathes his kitchen. It’s far too noisy in her opinion, and the fact that it looks as though some alien creature slithered all over it does not lend itself to the furnishings. After a small learning curb, Naruto had decided that on the rare occasions Sakura would agree to sleeping over at his apartment - only ever in the time of a dire emergency, like when her flat had flooded and she’d had to stay with him for an entire week - that it was easier just to order take out, eat in one of the bedrooms and put an ‘Out of order’ sign on the kitchen door.

Although if he was bored it was always fun to lead her in there and watch her go from a ‘good’ mood to having miniature kittens in under thirty seconds flat.

 As he deposits the shopping onto the counter boards, still singing to himself, he pauses to say a caring “good morning” to the spiky potted cactus sitting in the windowsill.

He begins to noisily clatter about, putting things away and leaving things out for later. He wants breakfast soon and he’ll be damned if he got up early this morning for nothing. It’s when he opens the fridge that a slight predicament surfaces in the form of an interesting, large green fungus growing at the back of the vegetable draw….

//Well that doesn’t look very appetising//

There’s also an unpleasant sour smell coming from an open carton of milk. He knows better about the milk though: he’s not about to spend another day running back and forth to the toilet, oh no, not after last time. Not if he can possibly help it.

            The carton goes straight in the bin along with the entire contents of the vegetable draw, which seem to be transforming into various fluffy forms. After some thoughtful consideration, which involves Naruto frowning at the bin for some time, contemplating whether or not spoiled milk and mouldy vegetables could possibly be the formulae for producing carnivorous man-eating mutant plants, he takes the rubbish bin outside. Just to be safe.

            You can never be too careful.

Still humming as he comes back in, he rubs his hands together and starts to cook a godly breakfast, otherwise known as ramen.

                                    *          *          *

Half an hour later Naruto slowly traverses the stairs, hands in pockets, his footsteps strangely muted as he climbs the top steps, and pauses licking his lips.

It’s odd. He lives alone but has a two-bedroom apartment each with a separate bathroom, and a spare room that he doesn’t use. Kiba used to ask why when he first moved in promptly after he and Sakura had just started going out together. Naruto used to grin at this, that easy laid back smile, and say he “didn’t read the fine print”. Kiba would look confused and open his mouth to say something else until he was kicked by Ino- as much out of satisfaction than as a hint- or more discretely Shikamaru. The truth of the matter was however, Naruto had brought the two-bedroom apartment because he had wanted Sakura to move in with him. He had hated living alone as a child; and as an adult, or at least a child playing adult, he hated it even more. But the bold light of reality had been that Sakura had had no intention of moving in with Naruto, and had her own modest, neatly furnished apartment the other side of the village. It hadn’t been out of conscious thought she had done this, just something that sensibility had dictated to her. Usually five nights out of seven Naruto would sleep over at her place: sometimes more, sometimes less. He was welcome as long as he didn’t touch the décor and brought his own toothbrush. Neither was he allowed to touch her kitchen, which was, perhaps, understandable…. The mere thought of her own kitchen being in that… state… was enough to bring a cold sweat to her forehead.

For Naruto, his own apartment felt somewhat empty, especially at night. Alone in his single bed pushed up against the wall, which he still manages to fall out of every single morning.

The room he sleeps in is actually supposed to be the guest room. It’s the room next door with the double bed that’s the master bedroom. But he can’t sleep in there. There’s nothing more depressing then waking up in a double bed, alone.

It’s to this bedroom he’s going to now.

He walks down the corridor, feet making minimal noise on the wooden floorboards. He pauses outside the door, hands frozen over the wood, fist clenched and hovering. He licks his lips again and blinks his cornflower blue eyes.

//Oh for god sakes, just knock already! //

Once more he steals a glance down the corridor. The sunlight is streaming clear and strong through the double windows, leaving golden criss-crossed patterns on the floor.

Gently he knocks, and the sounds seem to slip and slide into nothingness as the inside of the room swallows it entirely. He knocks again, feeling awkward all of a sudden and slightly embarrassed. Should he wait? Should he go in? Should he leave?

There’s no answer from inside, so nibbling at his bottom lip he decides to chance it.

//It’s his bloody place after all isn’t it? //

 He has all the right to dance in there, wearing nothing but a fig leaf and singing the theme song from the Lion King! …Not that he’s going to, but he could nonetheless. The possibility is there.

Cautiously he opens the door a fraction. Inside the curtains are drawn, and the light creeps drably from under the thick material, dissipating after a few centimetres into the overwhelming darkness.

//Maybe he’s sleeping? //

He opens the door a little wider, fully expecting it to be slammed back hard in his face.

            Nothing happens.

            The tension seems to mount to a climax in Naruto’s stomach. He exhales through his mouth, swallows, and then chances it and sticks his head through the gap between the door and the wall he’s just opened up.

            The murky gloom of the room casts sombre greys across the walls and floor. It creates obscene shadows on the ceiling: he can see curling fangs and the stippled image of a cave entrance beneath the fan mounted in the corner. Slowly his vision shifts, moving towards the bed and its occupant, whom he can’t see but knows innately to be there. His gut seems to tingle as he opens his mouth, voice slightly hoarse:

“Hey… are you awake?”

His whisper is just audible, but the form on the bed doesn’t move. It has it’s back to him.

            “…Sasuke,” Naruto persists, in that same tone of voice as though someone is dying: “I made you breakfast, are you hungry?”

            Nothing.

Not even an insult.

Which he might have even welcomed.

            //Might… //

So either Sasuke is ignoring him, which is highly probable; he’s actually asleep, which is equally likely; or… he’s dead.

            With the last one, Naruto isn’t too sure of what to do. The other two are relatively simple to sort out: just leave him alone, he’ll get up when he wants to. Naruto closes the door again and leans against it, thinking if Sasuke really is dead he’ll start to smell after a while, in which case he’ll be able to call Iruka up in hysterics and blackmail him into removing said dead body from his apartment.

            Smiling to himself Naruto walks back down the corridor again, and slides down the banisters.

                                                *          *          *

“He’s crazy. Didn’t I tell you he was crazy?” Shikamaru proposes from the hallway, hands in pockets, slipping off his sandals. He’s talking to Kiba, in Naruto’s kitchen with Hinata, who is meanwhile asking why there is a broccoli stalk in the umbrella stand.

            “I thought the term you used before was Irresponsible Git-Head?” Kiba replies, watching with interest as Naruto takes the vegetable from Hinata and drops it promptly in the sink.

            “Yes, that too, but my main point was that he’s crazy,” Shikamaru corrects, taking his usual seat by the door. He swings back lazily in the chair, angular head tilted slightly to the left as he surveys Naruto critically.

            The tousled haired youth is glaring at both of them, head on the palm of his left hand as he sits at the table, brows raised incredulously.

“Do you guys even feel it when you chip away piece by piece at my self esteem?”

            “No,” they both answer simultaneously.

            Naruto chews his tongue, caught between amusement and annoyance. In truth it’s very difficult to stay irritated with either of them for any long period of time outside of a day. That doesn’t mean to say that they’re forgiven, but it’s an excuse.

 “Is the only reason you decided to drop by to insult me?”

As a matter of fact Kiba does this about three times a week, almost always on a Wednesday morning, sometimes with Shikamaru in tow, most other times just by himself or with Akamaru. Kiba seems to have a sixth sense for when the best or worst times to drop by are: either just as lunch is being served, or like that disastrous time he got hit with a pineapple after he let himself in through the backdoor.

            “Well, as tempting as that may be,” Kiba says, grinning his wolfish grin and rubbing the tip of his nose, “it wasn’t the only reason. Dear Maru here has been worrying over you like a mother hen. So we thought we’d drop by and just check if you where still alive, in case poor old Maru’s heart just gave up completely from the suspense, dear old lady that he is.”

              “I beg your pardon,” Shikamaru cuts across, “I do remember someone trying to persuade me to break into this very apartment last night, just to make sure he was still alive. That’s all very well, when you’re woken up by someone’s hypoglycaemic rant at a normal time, but at three in the morning, that’s just… well, that’s just not polite.” He raises his eyebrows poignantly.

            Kiba throws an arm out over the back of the chair and squares his shoulders.

“You sayin’ you weren’t the tiniest bit anxious too?”

Shikamaru moves his mouth slightly forming a thin line as if contemplating an answer, and then thinking better of it, looks up at the ceiling; swinging back on his chair.

// Can’t really argue with that now can you? //         

Kiba grunts, an eye narrowed, and makes a low clucking noise. Which is ignored.

“So… Naruto?” Hinata asks, her voice quiet but at ease. There’s the comforting pressure of Kiba’s foot against the base of her chair as she sits up a little straighter. Unlike the boys she has the sensibility to get straight down to the point, and Naruto is looking at her kindly with his beautiful blue eyes, head on his folded arms now, mouth in a distant sort of smile that gives her a warming sensation which bubbles in her stomach.

            “How’s it been with Sasuke-kun?”

Kiba and Shikamaru who had at this point been obstinately looking in opposite directions from each other, both turn their heads, exchange a brief glance and subtly (or unsubtly in Kiba’s case) pay greater attention to this change in conversation.

            “Sasuke?” Naruto laughs, he didn’t pretend for a moment not to know this was the real reason they had been round, and last night too, and yesterday morning although technically Sasuke hadn’t actually been relocated to his until the afternoon. They had all been sitting with him on the front steps of his apartment helping him to swallow down butterflies of nerves.

            “I haven’t seen him actually, he’s been erh… sleeping, I think, since he got here. In fact I don’t think I’ve heard him move from the bedroom. Well he might have this morning when I went out to do the shopping.”

            “Do you know how stupid that was?” Shikamaru cuts across looking slightly irritated again, dusky angular eyes narrowed, as he settles his chin onto his open palm.

            “What?” asks Naruto genuinely confused, “Going shopping?”

            “Yes, well no, not just that, everything really. You’re just a huge idiot when it comes down to it so I don’t know why I didn’t presume this would happen before. I obviously didn’t factor the complete extent of your idiocy into the equation.” He paused trying to remember where he had been going with this. Ah, yes-

            “You left a shopping bag in the store you moron.”

            “I did? Oh..... Yes I did! How did you know?” He frowns at them suddenly, blue eyes narrowed, even giving Hinata an accusatory glare. “You haven’t been stalking me again have you? Because I warned you last time to nev-”

“Oh don’t be ridiculous Naruto, we only did that the one time, and it turned out to be an entirely pointless exercise.”

“It was intrusive!”

            “I don’t know about intrusive,” Kiba interjects mildly, leaning across the table to give Shikamaru a provocative waggle of his eyebrows. “…More like Intensely Disturbing on our behalf.”

            “Yes… well, what you saw will never leave this room.” Snaps Naruto, flushing a little, the whisker like scars on his cheeks seeming to deepen.

            “So… no speaking about Virginia?”

            “Virginia? Whose Virginia?” Hinata asks, non-plussed.

“His cactus!” Then both males burst into simultaneous laughter. “We kept hearing him talking to someone called Virginia. Except he doesn’t know a Virginia, so we thought maybe,” Kiba sniggered, “he had a secret girlfriend or something like that. So Maru and I followed him round for a bit.”

            “After a while,” -the other took over as Kiba collapsed into helpless giggles- “we realised he was only ever talking to ‘Virginia’ in the kitchen,” -Shikamaru’s eyes too are glistening- “Then we burst in on him one day, only to find him… well, deep in conversation-”

            “With a pff-plant!” Kiba manages to choke out through tears, fists clenched and slamming onto the table top.

            “You guys,” Naruto says between slightly clenched teeth looking up at the ceiling lamp, “you swore you’d never tell anyone.”

Kiba waves his hand in an airy manner, and replies with not a little irony:

“This is Hinata for god sakes Naru, don’t choke on your boxers. Realistically? Would she ever tell anyone?” And then adds after some consideration, looking at Hinata as though in a whole new light, “Would you?”

            Hinata looks aghast, but this might be for a number of factors, one that so bad are her friend’s intercommunication skills that they resort to stalking in order to ascertain the truth. Two that Kiba would ever suspect that she would tell anyone. And three that Naruto is currently in a long-term relationship with a particularly knobbly cactus.

            “No.” she says, as close to outrage as Hinata can ever get, a sort of mild disapproval. Kiba grins fondly at her, exposing his sharp canines, and props his head back on his folded arms and sticks his other foot on the base of her chair.

            “So,” Shikamaru continues to press on with a matter that actually has some consequence, “about Sasuke?”

            “I know you guy’s simply think I’m inept or something like that, but it’s really not such a big deal.” Naruto tells them simply, massaging his temples, and blowing messy strands of bright gold hair from his eyes.

            “Yeah, but you guy’s have ‘History’,” Kiba points out, slightly over-emphasising the ‘history’ part with his fingers. Shikamaru looks pained. “Surely that counts for something awkward, doesn’t it?”

// I would have thought so too…isn’t that odd? //

What Kiba is trying bravely to avoid saying is “remember what happened last time? When he walked off, remember how badly torn up you where about it?” You’re still torn up about it now. That’s the funny thing about scars, although new skin may form over the hurt, you’re never quite the same again. There’s always some sort of indent, or impression left, sometimes an old scar may ache if it went in deep enough. Naruto remembers very well what the pain was like, the sort that hurts every time you breathe.

“On a more practical strand,” Shikamaru interrupts as he picks up an apple from the fruit bowl and bites into it, “how do you know he won’t try to kill you?”

// Blunt as a spoon as always, huh? //

Naruto picks three apples up from the fruit bowel and begins to try and juggle with them. He tosses one up and lets it fall back into his receiving fingers again, before trying with two. It seems to work well enough: he chances the third.

            “Oi, moron, stop showing off and answer!”

Naruto grins, keeping his eyes fixed on the apples as they fall after each other, his hands constantly in motion. He knows in a second one is very likely to fall, but he can’t help and keep the game going. He’s going to end up with a face full of very bruised apples in a minute.

            “Don’t you….think…that will….be a ….little difficult…in his….current…whoops!...condition?”

He asks in between the rise and fall of the apples.

“It would be more difficult if he where dead.” Shikamaru says tartly, looking at the apples in distaste.

Naruto’s concentration slips at this and he fumbles with an apple, so Hinata speedily leans across the table and plucks the apple out of thin air before it lands in his face.

“Wow…” Kiba says lowly, whistling between his teeth and looking at Shikamaru with undisguised horror, “you just don’t give a damn about bad karma now do you?”

Shikamaru spares him a single dirty look.

“Maru…” Naruto says very slowly, “are you suggesting I kill Sasuke?”

From the opposite end of the table Kiba shivers, rubbing his arms as though apparently cold muttering, “That’s just inviting it now….” Shikamaru sticks his tongue between his teeth inside his mouth, his dark eyes surveying Naruto. He should have known from the beginning anything involving this idiot would eventually reach him and drive him slowly insane.

            Between him, Choji, Ino, Kiba and now to his great displeasure Sasuke, all the stress was going to turn him prematurely grey.

            It must have been some sort of conspiracy.

                        // Very clever.... //

“Well, not in so many words. I’m just saying, you know, that if he were dead, and if you guys had listened to me, we’d all probably be a whole lot better off.”

“Shikamaru!” Both Hinata and Kiba say simultaneously looking appalled.

“Can you hear yourself when you talk Maru?” Naruto asks, he’s trying hard to mask the smile that he can feel creeping up his lips, Kiba just stares, jaw open.

“Or is it just some buzzing sound? Because all I can hear is yadda yadda something you know I disagree with, yadda yadda…and I’m right you’re wrong.”

He laughs when he meets Shikamaru’s gaze to find it half serious, half teasing, he knows what his friend is trying to do, reminding him to stay on his guard. He knows perfectly well that if Hinata weren’t here they’d do what they did last time he’d nearly got himself killed on a mission. Shikamaru would have Kiba pin him to the floor, then pour a tumbler of water all over him and have Aukamaru sit on his head.  He had turned several shades of blue and nearly suffocated to death before they had decided to let him up again. Not a pleasant experience.

            “I’m hungry,” he says, changing the subject and pushing his chair back towards the kitchen sink. “I’ll make lunch, shall I?”

            “Yum,” Kiba interjects enthusiastically, bouncing up. “Make Tonkotsu again, yeah?” He looks about eagerly for something to do; Hinata’s already moving to help. (They know better then to ask Shikamaru: the earth could be under invasion from aliens from the ninth moon of Zeptar and he wouldn’t shift a finger to help.)

Hinata begins quite logically, by trying to clean up one of the counter tops, which is covered with empty bowls and a used saucepan. She takes these all over to the sink which she fills with warm soapy water and dunks the dirty dishes in, having no problem herself with washing china.

            She turns about, lifting a tea towel to find a bowl full of cold ramen underneath it, unused chopsticks lying by its side.

            “Naruto,” she says in some confusion, turning round to find Kiba and Naruto in a heated argument about who ate who’s packed lunch the other day, (“they were dog biscuits you moron!”) and Shikamaru taking the opportunity to thumb through Naruto’s mail.

“…Are you going to eat this?”

“Uh?” His eyes fall on the china bowl, and he frowns looking for the first time slightly depressed.

            “I made it for Sasuke this morning, but he didn’t eat it.”

“He refused?”

“No, he just… I dunno, when he wants to eat he’ll eat I guess. I’m not going to run around after him and force him to digest my cooking...I’m not going to force him to do anything actually. I’ve never met anyone who can sulk as well as Sasuke Uchiha.”

// So very very true. //

“Yeah but,” Kiba salivates eyeing up the bowl, “that’s just rude to put food like that to waste.”

“Leave it,” Shikamaru say’s from the table in his no nonsense voice. “Sit down.”

Kiba sits down looking disappointed, his ears seem to droop slightly.

“Good boy.” Shikamaru mutters without looking up from what seems to be Naruto’s electricity bill from the way he’s grimacing, “So are you going to hurry up and feed us or what?”

                                                *          *          *

            Slowly there is a rise from the subconscious, breaking the thick film that separates a world of shadows from the realm of reality. The layer flickers, wavering for a moment before breaking completely. Like ripples on the surface of a pond, spreading surely outwards, connecting and diverging into something else much wider.

            From beneath it Sasuke Uchiha shifts, mind whirring in slow circles as he begins to wake. His eyelids feel insurmountably heavy as he looks up at the ceiling of a room he doesn’t recognise, studying it with his eyes. Light trails from cracks in the curtain behind his head and he winces as it falls across his face, stinging his eyes. Slowly he leans out of the bed: he feels vaguely sick, dark strands of hair are sticking to his pale clammy forehead as he staggers to his feet, and everything swims. His hands clutch the rim of the mattress to keep him from falling as he slams ungracefully against the bedpost.

            Thoughts are whirring in his mind at break-neck speed, colliding and fragmenting, too fast to process, and he grimaces. Placing one hand to his forehead he wishes they’d all stop. He’d wish for the silence again if it didn’t remind him so much of death; he’d ask for sleep if it meant escape, but it doesn’t. If he sleeps, he’ll see it. Over and over and over and over again, he’ll see it without pause. He doesn’t ever want to dream again, or sleep for that matter, but his body defies him. It keeps him as a human, limited, useless, worthless thing; and it’s proven itself as such, he thinks bitterly.

            Sasuke grits his teeth and stares hard at the floor, grey eyes focusing as he wills everything to be still.

            Collecting himself, he briefly he allows his mind to reflect on past and current events, where he is now is… Naruto’s apartment, because they don’t think he can really…. He laughs, but the sound that comes from his throat sounds more like a violent cough as it catches wrenchingly in his chest.

            It’s because they’re bored of prodding him with needles and sticking him in some machine, strapped down and sedated until he’s out of his mind for hours on end like some lab experiment. They’ve looked, they’ve analysed and their conclusion is he’s no threat, oh no… not anymore thanks to….

            Sasuke opens his mouth experimentally, cold dry air rushing to the warm insides of his mouth he tries to form a word. No sound comes out, and his smoky eyes flash with anger as he tries again. The same result, the silence falling deadpan onto him, and he feels like he’s being mocked. Laughed at. Things start to crumble to pieces in front of him and he has to fight down the overwhelming urge to start smashing things up again. Violence has been a way of coping for him over the previous years: he can channel thoughts and memories and feelings through it without having to think.

            The worrying thing is that he likes it too.

            Slowly he lets himself slide to his knees, cool fingers pressed over the hot sockets of his eyes. He knows full well that destroying things won’t help him now. He has to get a grip, he has to think, and think clearly.

            Briefly he looks down at his wrists, both of which are bandaged heavily, and an ugly sneer flickers up one side of his mouth. It is followed by a powerful surge of concentrated hate and anger searing through his abdomen.

// So they’re hiding it like that, are they? //

            He slips his shirt up and over his head, removing the soft fabric into a pile on the floor and allowing the cold air to assail his skin; he draws in a short hiss of anger as he sees the bandages across his chest too. His fingers itch: he wants to pull Them off, wants his nails to dig into the skin underneath and drag the damn Things out. Except he knows that it’s useless, and that he’s tried it before, to absolutely no avail. All it creates is more pain than he knows how to deal with.

            Slowly, Sasuke stands up, ignoring the world as it wobbles slightly.  He’s hungry, and he postulates that something is supposed to be done about food. He makes his way to the door, fingers brushing the handle. He considers the fact that he’s semi-naked, wearing god-knows-whose clothes, because he certainly doesn’t like them; and that his skin smells vaguely of antiseptic and bleach.

            It’s when he turns and looks at the closet with some scepticism that he notices the pile of clothes on the chair beside it. Pinned to the top there’s a note scrawled in untidy handwriting, that reads:

‘Hey, thought you might want these.

Your bathroom is just next door.

Oh, and you’ve got your own toothbrush, right?’

            For a brief moment Sasuke stares at the note, something swirling through him that he doesn’t understand, before he shakes it off and heads wordlessly through the door.

                                                *          *          *

// Oh for God’s SAKE! //

This really is quite ridiculous. Sasuke has been standing at the top of the stairs now for a whole twenty minutes, and still hasn’t moved.

            It’s not like he’s been routed to the spot or anything, he just… he just… he surmises at least, that he just doesn’t want to go downstairs.

            Noises are drifting up from the rooms below: laughter and the clattering sound of china mingling with the babble of people talking.

            Sasuke allows himself to slump against the wall, taking into account the messy wallpaper and the bright pictures on the wall. Somewhere down by the bottom steps, someone has placed a hand covered in purple paint on the wall. Either by accident or on purpose Sasuke really can’t tell. It strikes him as an odd thing to do… wait, take that back: the whole thing seems an odd. He finds himself slipping further to the floor, knees pulled up to his chest, back against the wall, still perched almost timidly like a child on the top ledge.

            What is this anyway? He vaguely remembers people telling him things, but the information is a blur. It slips in and out, told in times when he was heavily sedated to moments when the pain was so bad he couldn’t even remember his own name, let alone what he was doing here.

            Why have they stuck him here of all places? With that fool Naruto?

// Naruto…//

            Sasuke smiles.

            That’s if you can call it a smile: he tilts his head back as he does it, cruel twisted line working up the sides of his flushed and pouting mouth. It’s not quite a sneer: it’s too elegant for that; and yet somehow it’s demeaning.

            So, this is the older Naruto’s life is it? Sasuke almost feels like laughing. It’s ironic how normal, how bright, how cheerful it all is. He surmises from the general chaotic décor that he hasn’t changed much. He’s still that naïve idiot he always was… but mind you that’s a given isn’t it? Seeing as how he’s here in the first place. Only a fool would have given him a second chance after what he did. He wouldn’t have given himself a second chance if he were in Naruto’s position. He would have looked at himself clear in the face and told him where he could fuck off to. But Naruto’s not him. He’s clueless in comparison and he has no conception of what this could eventually lead to.

            What this will eventually lead to.

            Not because he wants it to, but because there is no other choice.

            Images flicker through Sasuke’s mind, and it’s like he’s watching a spin reel of flickering orange and turbulent gold and those laughing blue eyes. All the naivety, all the motion, all the joy and all the energy seems to flow: and without acknowledging it, Sasuke’s lips curve at the corners very, very slightly.

            Then he sees again what he did in that circular white room, the one with the high window. He sees the person standing far, far above him, arguing against restraints, face and expression so familiar and yet so altered.

            It hadn’t been… well it was…. Of course it was… time had past…. Just because it wasn’t what he remembered… it was still Naruto.

Wasn’t it?

His…old… no…ex?

Yes, that’s it.

His ex-best friend.

The one he threw away, because he couldn’t get what he wanted.

Because he wasn’t strong enough.

The one he had traded in.

// Screw you. //

And again that smile, that’s not really a smile, but a sort of grimace. Not exactly self-pitying, not as much as it is self-loathing.

// Fool that you are, fool that you always will be. //

            From the gap beneath one of the closed doors a babble of conversation ascends, accompanied by more laughter, some male and one female Sasuke surmises. Vaguely he wonders who’s in there, and why. ANBU checking that he hasn’t killed Naruto yet? He doubts it somehow.

            “You are unbelievable,” he can hear Naruto snapping, and he tilts his head slightly, drawing his knees closer to his chest, listening.

A chair scraps back and there’s more laughter: “I turned my back for one minute and it’s gone.”

            “Ahh, well time wasted on one man is time gained for another!” A voice he knows but cannot place.

                     “That was awfully profound for you,” someone else says suspiciously: this voice too vaguely familiar, less so than the other one.

               “Regardless,” the first continues, sounding pleased, “I still think we should stick with the previous proposal. That we all spend the night here.”

               “You know, that’s really not necessary. Greatly appreciated, but still not necessary.”

This time the voice is Naruto’s, and Sasuke recognises the timbre: gentle yet stern and highly inflexible.

“I do think I can take care of someone, in his urh… condition. I mean it’s hardly a threat. He was here last night and nothing untoward happened.”

               “Last night,” the unfamiliar voice puts forward again, “he was sedated and quite frankly to put it another way: high. But odds are he’s going to be more active and more troublesome as time passes.”

               Sasuke sits up, expression slight and dangerous. He doesn’t like being discussed behind anybodies back: much less when he can hear it.

               “Maru,” -and it’s Naruto again- “you guys can’t move in with me. There’s not enough space.”

               “Yes there will be!” The lower, more animalistic one chime’s in: the voice sounds like the mouth is grinning. “We’ll use your bedroom and you can sleep in the living room.”

               Sasuke releases the grip on his legs and swings his feet onto the second-to-top step,

// They’re doing what? //

               “But, I don’t want to sleep on the sofa!” Naruto protests, “It’s lumpy and uncomfortable!”

               “Well you wouldn’t have to,” the laconic one interrupts, “if you’d been sensible and said no, like everyone thought you’d do. Because, God, we can only dish out so many second chances to those who-just-don’t-deserve-them now can’t we? I mean what idiot does that? Willingly? After he’s been screwed over, tossed aside, and… well, leached off.”

                “You’re very long winded, did you know that?”

               “Shut up.”

               “Leached off?” someone else asks, a girl’s voice, softly, “What do you mean ‘leached off’?”

               To Sasuke it sounds as if the two young men laugh derisively, “What I say,” the other replies: “Naruto was surpassing him and he couldn’t handle it.”

               “Hey.” This time, it’s Naruto’s voice sounding defensive and slightly hot: “Don’t degrade him like that. There was more-”

               “But it was a part of it: a major part of it I’m sure, and he deserves nothing better Naruto. Especially this. You amaze me sometimes, you really do. But not in a good way.”

               Sasuke doesn’t really know why it angered him so much to hear it. Maybe because it was spoken in such a matter of fact way. Maybe because he’d never wanted to admit to himself that that was the truth, and he didn’t like it. It was like looking at your reflection and despising it; trying to smash the mirror with your fist, only to find it wouldn’t shatter and left shards of silver splinters in your skin.

               It was before he even realised that he was doing it: walking down the stairs, hands in pockets, eyes dark as he heard the voices falter at the footsteps outside the door. As it swung open as aggressively as he felt, slamming into the wall and juddering, then it clicked. And he was once again aware of a room full of people, staring at him, with surprise intermingled with a little fear and dislike.

               He was tall. Probably taller than all of them by an inch or two, his pale features strangely accentuated by the black polar neck and trousers he wore. The whole of his body, still slender and darkly powerful stood commanding and authoritive in the doorway. His eyes slid with apparent disdain across all of its occupants, finally coming to rest on the one the furthest away. The only one who looks back without any hostility, animosity or even fear: which is what he expects.

               He doesn’t know why the look echoes so much inside his own mind. Perhaps it’s not what he thought it would be. Perhaps it’s because it’s whole, unaffected: almost emotionless towards him, with no opinion.

               Perhaps because it was from him, he wanted the greatest reaction.

               Naruto taps his fingers pleasantly on the table, sucking in a breath as he feels the suddenly awkward and to some extent hostile atmosphere that has settled over like a thick fog. 

               “Sasuke,” he says, breaking the silence. For some reason he feels like it’s just the two of them in the room alone, without another soul.

               “Do the walking dead get hungry? I’m afraid I simply don’t know.”

Fish Bird

By Eternity Dreams

Disclaimer: If Naruto was well and truly mine, I'd well...want to do some unspeakable things to some of the main characters and would probably abuse Itachi to the point of sin, and have Orochimaru's evil minions call him 'Oreo cookie' in their spare time...Aren't you glad I'm not?

Chapter Four

The air is filled with such contempt that it’s practically touchable.

Sasuke wonders why Naruto is smiling at him like that, like it’s all okay, like the figure to his left isn’t about to spring up and over table and bite him.

“You guys were just leaving weren’t you?” he says cheerfully, cornflower blue eyes skimming the table, looking into everyone’s cynical expressions. There’s something about the whole genuine twist of his mouth that makes everyone soften slightly. It’s a fantastic smile, flirtatious, reassuring and gratifying all at the same time.

The Hyuga girl gets up first, blinking her pale eyes and brushing dark hair from around her face. She taps the feral looking one on the shoulder, who twitches slightly, blinking: amber eyes sliding narrowed between him and Naruto, not giving an inch.

There is another one leaning back on the far sided chair near the door: he has an expression of lazy dislike clawing up one side of his mouth. But he moves, nodding curtly at Naruto, moving through the door that the Hyuga girl is holding open for him.

“Kiba,” the girl says again. A softly authoritative voice, gently persuading tones punctuating it: “you promised you’d walk me home today.”

She smiles warmly at Naruto as Kiba glances back at her, head cocked to one side in a lightly inquisitive expression. “I did?”

They both nod, Naruto moving to open the door a little wider, “Yeah you did, it’s a long walk and it’ll get dark soon.”

“Well if I promised,” Kiba says somewhat pompously throwing out his chest and leaping up from the table (not before giving Sasuke one of the filthiest looks he has ever received - Kiba’s impressive at those) “let’s go shall we?”

And he bounds out the door to join Shikamaru in the hallway, babbling about ‘taking-Hinata-back-by-the-long-route-because-it’s-so-much-prettier-that-way-and-will-you-please-hurry-up-Maru-you’re-like-an-old-man!’

Naruto shakes his head as Hinata giggles, sending a pretty flush over the pale creamy complexion of her face, making her seem suddenly much more vivacious and somehow alluring, but innocently so.

“Thanks…” he murmurs quietly as Sasuke watches them, his own eyes narrowed. He doesn’t know why, but he’s feeling slightly hot as he watches Naruto leaning against his kitchen wall. All of his long limber body slanted as he supports his body with one outstretched hand so that he’s leaning on an angle, his mouth close to Hinata with which he seems to be having a whispered conversation because she’s laughing again. Sasuke doesn’t know why he wants to watch the way Naruto’s mouth moves, he just does… he’s never seen a mouth quite like it before, wide and tasty and beautifully expressive.

Kiba sticks his head around the door again, not missing the opportunity to throw Sasuke another dirty look, and asks ‘if-they’re-leaving-this-year-or-next-because-he-wants-to-know-what-the-hell-they-have-to-talk-about-anyway-and-Naruto-will-you-please-stop-taking-up-Hinata’s-precious-time?’

Naruto and Hinata exchange a look at this, and Naruto suggestively raises his eyebrows and leans forwards to kiss Hinata on the cheek. Closing his eyes so his dark disarming lashes flutter across her skin, then pulls back again grinning like a fox as a delicate, rosy pink spreads across her face. He winks at her as Kiba flares his nostrils indignantly; snaps: “That’s not funny!”; and snorts, grabbing her by an arm, muttering obscenities under his breath, dragging Hinata out into the hallway.

Naruto follows, still smiling, pausing by the door and giving Sasuke a quick glance over his shoulder as if in after thought: “Do you mind just waiting for a quick second?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer, and the door clicks shut.

Sasuke finds himself looking at green oak panel work that clashes horribly with the bright orange stripe that lingers messily over the door-frame.

He blinks, and feels almost uncomfortable, which is a huge feat for him because he makes it a habit never to feel uncomfortable: he’s trained himself to make other people feel that way.

Vaguely he supposes that Naruto ‘and co.’ must be outside discussing him. The rabid one had certainly been giving out enough ‘I hate you’ and ‘go die’ vibes for him to choke on. He vaguely recognizes all of them, although of their names he only has a fuzzy recollection. Not that it matters anyway, they’re not really important.

He thinks he can hear Naruto protesting that ‘it’ll be fine, that everything’s fine and that everyone should just relax… yes tomorrow morning is okay, just you know… not too early.’

Sasuke rolls his eyes. Out of habit he bites the tip of his tongue between his teeth, and it gives him an angry look that’s reflected in the straight line of his mouth, as he pulls his shoulders unnervingly straight and takes a seat in one of the kitchen chairs.

The front door clangs shut, and after half a moment’s pause the door opens again, and Naruto comes through, a sort of easy distant smile on his face as he looks at Sasuke.

There’s more then half the room between them as Naruto stops. It feels like several miles, and a slight chill descends. Tossing his head to the side slightly, so that choppy golden trails of hair move out of his eyes and gather about his forehead; Naruto licks his lips, looks down at his feet, and then up again at Sasuke and shrugs his shoulders as if he’s at a loss for what to say.

He blinks instead, meeting Sasuke’s interrogating glare head on.

“So, I guess you’re hungry, yeah?” he asks after an uncomfortable silence. The rhythm of nothingness seems to pulse between them: Sasuke can feel it throbbing in his fingertips, and starts to tap them across the table top.

Slowly, his eyes not moving from Naruto’s, Sasuke Uchiha nods.

Naruto turns round to the sink, presenting all of his broad wide back to dark young man’s analytic gaze. “You know,” he continues, absolutely determined to keep the conversation flowing, “I made you breakfast earlier. I came up to tell you but I think you where asleep because you didn’t answer. Mind you,” he adds - laughing suddenly as he sees his reflection in the soapy water of the basin: fuzzy and distorted - “you always used to ignore everything I said when we were younger, so I don’t know why I’d expect you to listen to me now.”

Sasuke doesn’t say anything in return to this, and where Sasuke can’t see him, Naruto pulls a face: not quite of annoyance, but of hard, gritting determination.

He will do this: he won’t be cowed in any form or manner.

“Mind you,” he presses forwards, “you always did sleep like the devil on a Sunday morning, and I don’t suppose you’ve moved since you got here yesterday evening. I didn’t hear you get up anyway. Sleeping off the sedative I suppose.”

He gives a glance over his shoulder at this, steam rising and swirling around his neck as he raises the lid off the stew pot.

Sasuke’s gaze slips from the high point on Naruto’s shoulder that he had seemed to fix on. Smoky black eyes will not meet his own, the flushed petulant mouth is drawn down into a slight curve.

“They said it might take a couple of days to wear off,” he says, turning back to the pot again.

“Is that all they said?”

Naruto blinks. Fingertips halt mid-stretch for the wooden ladle.

It’s the first time Sasuke’s spoken to him for six years.

And this is really the first time they’ve been in the same room together, with both of them conscious, coherent and able to partake in the conversation. Those times… those dreadful times in the hospital don’t count. Not the ones where Sasuke had been lying strapped down to the bed, oxygen mask fastened to a face so pumped full of painkillers and tranquillizers that he had probably not known what his own name was… let alone Naruto’s.

For some reason, Naruto feels like crying and has to wrestle down a lump, which forms fast and spontaneously in his throat. He blinks furiously, teeth grating and bruising against the soft flesh of his lower lip.

It’s not so much the cold voice, riddled with anger: he was used to that. It was that the voice has changed so much that gets to him. It’s lower. Richer, somehow, like cold creamy coffee mixed with strong alcohol: so that it burns, searing hard and fast down your oesophagus.

He lets his fingers fumble for a moment in midair, hand curling over nothing. He briefly brings it over his heart before leaning forward again to begin dishing out the ramen. He uses that easy false smile he’s learnt as he turns round again, pushing chopsticks and a steaming bowl of noodles towards Sasuke, and takes the seat opposite, careful to draw the chair far out from under the table.

Sasuke looks at the bowl but doesn’t touch it.

He looks expectantly at Naruto: he’s not going to do anything until he gets what he wants.

Naruto runs the tip of his flexible tongue over his teeth, slouching slightly in the chair and rocking backwards. The leg makes a squeaking noise against the floor tiles as it does so. Sasuke’s lip curls slightly at the sound in what Naruto assumes is annoyance.

// Well, it’s his bloody house: he’ll do exactly what he wants with his furniture.//

“Well, yeah but, you already know the rest don’t you? So there’s no point in me repeating it to you like a parrot when you know exactly what I am going to say.”

Sasuke glares at him; his face is utterly deadpan. His features seem to become a mask of irritation and heady dislike; it’s only the glittering of his dark smoky eyes that reminds Naruto that he is in fact a living and breathing being.

The blonde youth finds himself exhaling impatiently through tensed nostrils.

“God,” he mutters, “you are just so… obstinate… do you know that? I think I liked you better when you were upstairs sleeping.”

Sasuke doesn’t reply. He doesn’t have to. His face screams his unrelenting will power: ‘Don’t like it? Then get in line to bite me,’ it says.

Growling in his throat Naruto clicks his jaw, one hand raking through his messy tangled stands of hair, ruffling them forwards and backwards, giving him that distinctly bedridden look.

For some reason the sudden slight change in appearance strikes Sasuke like a physical blow. He realizes for the first time that Naruto is older. And along with that comes the sexual awareness. His eyes skim across the stubborn jaw line that’s flexing as his mouth pouts slightly, those blue eyes half lidded for a moment in thought before they open wider. For a brief second, Sasuke finds himself wondering how often he looks like that, and… who makes him look like that.

“They told me… well, they told me a lot of things I don’t understand, because a lot of it didn’t make sense. But they told me that they couldn’t do anything further for you… and that there were these.” He pointed here to both of his wrists, and then to the centre of his chest: “And- and that they tried to remove them… but it… it nearly killed you… and that was when you wouldn’t stop screaming….” His voice trailed off, because he couldn’t keep eye contact any longer, and his gaze fell to the table top as he contemplated the painful churning of his stomach that seemed to be turning cartwheels and somersaults at the memory alone.

There is a silence, and slowly Sasuke reaches out across the table - determinedly not looking at Naruto as he does it - and takes the bowl of ramen, and breaks the chopsticks apart, and tentatively takes a bite.

By the small fact that he doesn’t expel the contents right back out of his mouth again like projectile vomit, Naruto takes it as a compliment that his food is in Sasuke’s opinion at least adequate.

It’s a thank you… of sorts.

Naruto takes it as encouragement to keep talking. “Sakura likes it when I make that for her too, and she’s always careful about how much ramen she eats because she goes on and on about how it’s going to make her fat, or something ridiculous like that. I remember I made it the first time at her apartment on her new cooker.”

He laughed here easily for the first time, closing his eyes, a secret dimple revealing itself in his left cheek.

“It was so awful she threw contents of the bowl at me and accused me of trying to poison her. But don’t worry: I’ve sorted it out now. I made that today only because Kiba wanted it, well that and to shut him up because he wouldn’t stop yapping on about you.”

Sasuke let himself look up at Naruto as he spoke, glad to see that he wasn’t looking at him as he prattled on and on about nothing. He wasn’t really listening to the words, part of him was basking in the feeling the warm words were giving him. Part of him was puzzled, part of him didn’t understand why. With all the reasoning in the world it was only the logical conclusion that this should not be happening. It simply did not make sense to be this open with a person who had, well… proven themselves to be beneath deserving this attention from anyone. Even less the person he had screwed over and left as good as dead all those years ago.

But then the words caught, and Sasuke stopped eating, the feeling suddenly becoming bitter, then hot, and then livid.

“I mean, I understand why they’d think that,” Naruto was saying, looking at the fruit bowl and rearranging the apples, “but like I said, you really aren’t that much of a threat if you can’t use chakra. It would be a bit like trying to beat a piñata with a deflated balloon: it’s just silly! I mean I doubt you could take out a twelve year old in this condition, which is a laugh really seeing as you left of some ridiculous mission to get stronger anyway, and imagine, you end up back here again weaker then you were before. I guess it’s what Kiba calls ‘bad karma’ full circle right?”

He stops a word half formed on his tongue because he suddenly catches Sasuke’s expression. The violent explosion inside those dark, intoxicating inky eyes wash over him like a thunderstorm. The look jars in his mind, and he feel like the hunted facing the predator again, and fear roots him to the spot. His hands clench the rim of the chair very tightly and his heart beats frantically in his chest as Sasuke stands up, in a violent and swift movement. How is he so tall? He towers over Naruto, as he picks up the ramen bowl… and hurtles it at him.

Naruto has barely enough time cover his face with his arms and hands before the hot soup and noodles burn into his skin and soak into his clothes. His body seems to drip adrenaline and his insides feel slightly lucid, as he lowers his arms from his face a fraction, only to see Sasuke glaring down at him with such hostile intent that Naruto has no doubt that Sasuke would kill him then and there.

Slowly, too sinisterly to be elegant but smoothly, Sasuke leans so his face is close to Naruto’s, those arching quixotic eyes seem to burn into his skull seeing right through to the other side.

Naruto can feel the tickling hot rivulets of Sasuke’s breath colliding with the soft skin of his temple and forehead.

For a brief second as Naruto looks up, he finds himself thinking how beautiful Sasuke looks when he’s angry: he’s always thought so. Skin like molten marble radiates rage that’s reflected in pitiless eyes, eyes he could never quite decide the colour of. They’re so much more angular than his; thick lashes like the dark wings of a raven, feathered and branched. The expression is like that of a wild animal… like a panther, rippling muscles flexing, ready to leap and strike with all the precision and merciless violence of something hungry for carnage.

Sasuke’s lip draws back in a savage snarl as he hisses down at Naruto, who reacts as if he’s been struck. The words echo around the walls.

“Fuck off.”

Naruto feels the clang of the door in his ribcage as Sasuke slams to door behind him and listens for the ascent of footsteps. It’s a full two minutes after Sasuke has gone, that Naruto’s body relaxes out of it’s tensed position.

Slowly, mind a bit numb to what has just happened, he lowers his arms which have been hovering around his chest. The sockets in his shoulders ache.

Absently he picks a noodle from his hair, and the bridge of his nose, looking down at the floor at the broken blue china that lies scattered around the legs of the table and chair.

Sakura had done this too, Naruto admits to himself. “But at least,” he says out loud no nobody in particular - there where a good deal of kitchen utensils that could be listening - “at least she said ‘sorry’.”

* * *

It’s a two-floor apartment, with only six rooms and that’s including the entrance hallway. So really it shouldn’t be that easy to avoid someone inside the walls of it! Quite the opposite in fact, at least, Naruto imagines so.

He is of course wrong.

Sasuke Uchiha is more stubborn than he had initially given him credit for: since the disaster with the ramen he’s taken to ‘his’ bedroom, and not stepped a foot outside it.

They haven’t spoken, haven’t walked past each other - hell they haven’t even made eye contact since! Not for want of trying though. Naruto has stood outside the door, calling in, (because he knows Sasuke’s in there: he can‘t really go anywhere else at present.) He wants to say he’s sorry but the arrogant prick won’t answer him. Yesterday he shouted himself hoarse, although why he was shouting he’s unsure: he knows that Sasuke can hear like a bat. Standing with hands on hips in the hallway, tapping his feet irritably and asking Sasuke if he could come in (into his own bedroom in his house!) to apologize. Although why he‘s apologizing is beyond him.

No reply, no Nasty Sarcastic Demeaning Comment, no nothing.

Until eventually he slammed out of his apartment in a burning rage, and walked around the outside of the building, glaring at Sasuke’s window, slightly open, curtain fluttering in a gentle breeze.

//Oh yes he would…//

Fuming, and ignoring the bemused looks from passers-by, he climbed up the wall. If that was necessary for them to start talking again, he would just have prize the window open, jump into the room and beat the crap out of Sasuke.

What had actually happened was that Sasuke waited until Naruto’s finger tips were clinging onto the sill for support… before slamming the window shut on them.

The screaming could be heard on the other side of Konoha.

Naruto spent the rest of the day with his hands in a bowl of ice water, each finger supported by an individual splint just so he wouldn’t keep knocking them on everything and anything, being fussed over by a worried Hinata. Much to Kiba’s displeasure. But Kiba was fuming anyway, having been denied his request to go “Rip-Sasuke’s-Head-from-his-Shoulders-It-Will-ONLY-TAKE-A-MINUTE.”

In truth Naruto believed Shikamaru was inclined to this idea as well, although he seemed disapproving: he had been aiming fearsomely dark looks at the ceiling whenever he thought the blond wasn’t looking.

It had been a long day.

That evening Naruto had sat in the kitchen alone after the others had gone back, his eyes fixed on the clock. The minutes ticked and the hands chimed the hour, but Sasuke didn’t come down for food. Snarling to himself about Stubborn Jackasses, Naruto had irritably slammed his food onto a tray, (rice balls this time,) swearing creatively all the way up the stairs. He kicked on Sasuke’s door, once, twice, three times.

He yelled, “Your stupid food is outside your stupid door!” and slammed off into his own bedroom to fume not-so-quietly about his housemate.

He had been lying on his bed reading a comic when he had heard Sasuke’s bedroom door open - a fraction at first, then slightly more, before it swung open and someone stepped lightly into the hallway.

Naruto didn’t need to strain his ears for the sounds as the fox gave him better hearing than most. His fingers paused in turning the page of his comic. He was tempted, sorely tempted to rip open his own door and go charging down the corridor and call Sasuke several… immature names. But he shouldn’t, and he resisted the urge, however powerful it may have been.

The door clicked shut again and Naruto let out a long exhale, unaware that he had been holding his breath. He rolled off the bed, landing expertly on his feet and tossing his comic somewhere on the floor.

He found himself sitting by the side of the bed, head propped back against the side of the mattress, humming absently.

There’s a picture in a frame propped up on the windowsill, light stippling across it from underneath the blinds.

They took it on his eighteenth, which would explain why it’s slightly lopsided, having being set up on self-timer with a not-so-sober Kiba. Strictly speaking, it had been a hula-hula-dancing Kiba with sake still dripping from his hair.

Naruto finds himself staring at it for a moment. He recalls clearly how Sakura had dragged him back to her apartment after he was no longer in a fit state to walk, and he had fallen asleep like some deformed tree trunk across her hallway.

//Sakura…//

He still feels a little numb when he thinks about her. It’s been a little over three weeks, and he’s been finding it hard to sleep recently. Although that might be for a number of reasons as Shikamaru aptly keeps pointing out: “such as stress, anxiety, or simply (and his favourite one) stupidity.”

Kiba suggests, a little more -or less- helpfully, Naruto doesn’t quite know, that he is of course sexually frustrated.

He does miss Sakura. He’s known her since he was twelve, and it’s weird to not get up in the mornings to run out the door and find her waiting a few streets away. And it’s weird to not then be bashed over the head for either being late or looking like he’s just rolled out of bed. (…Technically he has. But she doesn’t need to know about the little details now does she?)

He likes is best when he can turn over in the middle of the night to find her sleeping, forehead pressed against the turn of his shoulder, thumb close to her mouth. He’s caught her sucking it a few times although she never admits it. (But it‘s so cute!) Oddly enough thinking about it now, he even misses it when she kicks him out of bed with her foot on his ass (which hurts like hell!) and then tells him to make her breakfast with an impish grin on her face, as she rolls snugly underneath the covers again. And he, Naruto, is left lying naked on the floor like some weirdly deformed clam, shell-shocked, with his legs up over his head.

What Naruto likes about being with Sakura is that he’s completely comfortable around her. With Sakura there’s never the feeling that the world might collapse in on itself tomorrow; no pretending he’s like someone else. With Sakura he never has the feeling that he’s alone.

He’s never… it’s not a… passionate relationship. Yes, he was and still is sexually attracted to her, she’s Sakura, she’s beautiful.

He’s always known that.

They weren’t always so close. He thinks she despised him at one point, prior to Sasuke leaving. But then a lot of things were different before Sasuke left.

A lot of things have changed.

Naruto lets himself slip further down onto the floor.

Things are confusing now. There’s an uncomfortable hole of guilt in the pit of his stomach because he’s made his ever-so-pissy-and-ever-so-sensitive-housemate… well, pissed off.

//And that’s putting it, well, somewhat bluntly. //

He really shouldn’t be worried about it. When they were kids and he and Sasuke would blow up at each other about once a week, often more, Kakashi-sensei would just look at them nonchalantly whilst they tried to punch each other’s brains out and turn a page of his book. Until things got bloody that is. Then he was legally required to step in. Not because he was a responsible adult or anything conscientious like that.

Naruto finds himself grinning at that distant memory… in his minds eye he can see himself and Sasuke yelling at each other from opposite ends of the room until they were both hoarse:

Naruto laughs, drawing his knee’s up to his chest and resting his chin snugly on his caps. He knew how to deal with that Sasuke. Try to knock him for six, end up on his back, blood in his mouth and staring up into gloating inky grey eyes… ‘til one of them gave in and began to laugh.

He doesn’t know how to deal with this version of Sasuke. It‘s like he‘s jumped the stream and landed in the ocean chugging down salt water (which he‘s only ever done once before and it’s friggin’ unpleasant) …way out of his depth.

Now he is older and no longer boyish. If there was ever an innocence about Sasuke Uchiha he’s lost it, or at least Naruto thinks so: there’s no hint of a smile about his beautiful mouth and his eyes are cold and as unyielding as a stone statue. He might as well be made out of wood from the way Naruto can read him, and about as bendable as a china stick that’s been rammed up into the wee crevasses of his ass.

How are you supposed to connect with someone who gives you as much leeway as a pebble?

It’s not that he’s giving up. It’ll take far more then this to push Naruto Uzumaki away, believe it! But it’s more the fact that no matter how he looks at it, he just can’t see a way around it. When Sasuke was in the hospital, at least then all Naruto could do was hope that things would get better, that when he was properly conscious they could at least, you know, talk.

But they can’t, won’t… haven’t.

“Vocal obstruction,” Naruto mutters to himself frowning. It’s a word that was thrown at him a week before, along with an x-ray scan that he didn’t really understand: “Vocal obstruction and memory location.” But that’s as far as he can remember, as the rest is lost in a blur of coffee, messy hair, stubble and very, very bossy friends.

He sighs, wondering vaguely what Sakura would do in his position. It’s rather depressing to think that everything would probably be a lot easier. For example she would have known not to natter on about inconsequential obscenities, and he doubts very much that Sasuke would have blown up at her. He never blew up at Sakura, because he probably had a soft spot for her or something disgusting like that.

Naruto finds himself frowning darkly at the idea of this, a quick spike of something flaring in his stomach that he supposes to be anger. Sasuke never picked on Sakura the way he did on Naruto, never ever, despite the fact that in their youth she used to hassle him much more then he did.

//Jerk. //

He lets himself slip down even lower, so he’s practically lying on his back, forced to stare up at the slats of his bedstead.

He really should write to Sakura… she’ll be pissed otherwise, and he did promise. Even if she’ll probably write back along the lines of “Naruto, your handwriting is akin to that of a drunken penguin, in the dark with the vocabulary of a pre-schooler. I can’t understand a single line of it! And even if I could, I must tell you again that it was far too short!”

If he writes her a very long letter she’ll take great joy of picking everything out that’s wrong with it and drumming it into his head that he should separate out his sentences with a comma (“because comma’s are you friends!”) and something very tedious about grammar…. And then inserted subtly at the end, something about the cute ninja who asked her out the other day. You know. Just for fun.

For some reason thinking about this now, Naruto doesn’t think he can tell Sakura about Sasuke. It would just be too complicated. She’d probably, most likely, come charging back from wherever the hell she is, despite the fact she made such an enormous fuss about going in the first place. She’d kick his ass, then Shikamaru’s ass, then Kiba’s ass... and then she’d turn on Sasuke and… and….

Naruto doesn’t like to think about it really. She’d probably tell him he “only did this because she was away,” …which might in a sense be true, but Naruto won’t admit it to himself. He’s not going to admit that to anyone how afraid he is of ending up alone again, least of all to Sasuke.

//This really, truly does suck. //

He lets himself doze for a moment, thinking about nothing in particular.

It’s pleasantly warm on his bedroom floor and he can hear the pipes for the central heating whistling away downstairs in the airing cupboard, and for a while it seems like his apartment is singing to him.

He smiles for no reason: a curious, disarming expression that makes him simultaneously older as it does younger.

Then he hears the door across the hallway open, very quietly as if the person opening it doesn’t want the noise to be heard, and Naruto sits up abruptly.

A little too abruptly, because the top of his head collides with the wooden slatted bedstead and brilliant flashes of white stars go sporadic before his eyes as he yelps.

Ignoring the prominent throbbing, he jumps up and crosses the room, yanking the door open and sticking his head cautiously out of the door. The only thing that has changed since he last checked is the fact that the tray is now empty.

Naruto feels the first hot sparks of anger fizzling through his chest. He doesn’t know why he’s so irritated, he just is. He really, really, really is.

Maybe it’s just the audacity of someone who’s staying in his house when he doesn’t have to, out of his own courtesy, and is just being so goddamned rude about it. Maybe it’s the fact he’s eaten the food and not said thank you.

And maybe, most likely of all, is the fact that it’s Sasuke doing all of this to him.

//Got it coming doesn’t he? //

//HELL YES. //

Naruto storms out the room, barely containing himself; he feels like he’s going to explode all over the place, in one huge messy splodge, everywhere. He wants desperately to vent, and suddenly it seems a wonderful idea to implant his fist through the wall. Except that would be stupid because Sakura’s not here to yell at him to clean it up and then magically fix it herself.

He slams his foot against Sasuke’s door, not caring if the neighbours hear; god the whole goddamned village can hear it for all he cares at this particular moment!

Naruto opens his mouth as his foot connects with the wood, preparing his throat for more yelling, when the door shudders and flies open. It crashes ear splittingly into the opposite wall. The brass handle connects with the plaster at high-speed and the two mesh together. It causes a gaping indent in the paintwork.

//Whoops. //

Naruto freezes, hands still stuck adamantly in pockets, eyeing up the wall and feeling suddenly guilty. He didn’t intend for that to have happened. He had thought the door to be still locked, like it was all of yesterday and this morning! He feel’s rather cheated.

A little on edge and somewhat startled, he steps into the room.

His first thought is that it isn’t as dark as it was before. The curtains are drawn but the blinds are pulled all the way up. It also strikes him that the room is obscenely tidy, unnaturally so in fact: all the surfaces are empty, the draws of the dresser firmly closed and the wardrobe shut. The mirror too, sits at an exact angle, reflecting the opposite wall.

Naruto gulps. He had tidied, or rather Hinata had tidied the room for him, when he’d originally proposed that Sasuke should stay with him. But she hadn’t put everything away. There had been a print on the wall that Iruka had given him for his seventeenth birthday of a mountain landscape, (along with some appreciated ramen vouchers,) but it looks like it’s been ripped from the wall. Several things like that strike Naruto as he looks about him. There was a bowl on the dresser full of interestingly shaped pinecones that he, Hinata, Kiba and Sakura had all found one day when out on a mission together. The bowl and the pinecones seem to have disappeared somewhere.

Naruto opens his mouth to ask why when he finds himself searching for Sasuke: Sasuke whom he’d imagined standing in front of him looking angry, hissing venom and ready to kick him the hell out again.

But instead he finds Sasuke lying on the bed, in a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans, looking up at the ceiling as if he hasn’t noticed that Naruto has entered at all.

All of a sudden, Naruto can’t decide whether the emotion sprawling through his gut is anger or fear.

//…Shit. What the hell do I do? //

He licks his lips and chances it. It’s the only tactic he knows; he might as well try it.

“Why are you such an pig-headed asshole?”

There. No preamble, no pretend niceties, no looking headways or sideways before he plunges straight in.

Sasuke’s head moves a fraction. Not enough to see him, but movement at least is a slight acknowledgment. He’s still however staring at the ceiling, hair in rumpled thick strands around his face, as if he’s been running his fingers through it over and over again.

Naruto notices the bandages around his wrists are no longer present, and he frowns. The skin is red and irritated as if he’s been scratching at those Things, and sharp little stabs of panic claw at his insides.

“Hey,” he continues, and this time he advances again, wooden floorboards creaking slightly under his feet. “I’m talking to you.”

//Wait. Wasn’t he supposed to be apologizing? //

Smokey grey eyes find his, cold and flat, and the mouth moves, working to an expressionless face. “Are you now?”

Sasuke doesn’t move from the bed, in fact his body doesn’t move at all, not in the slightest. His long legs are tilted slightly at an odd angle, as if the heels and ankles are too painful to put weight on.

Naruto finds himself biting his lower lip. He feel anxious for a reason he’s not too sure of, but it feels dangerous, like he’s wading waist deep through quick sand that could drag him under at any second to suck him down into dark inescapable depths.

He swallows his pride, or what’s left of it anyway.

“I wanted to, you know… about the other day.”

Sasuke’s gaze doesn’t flicker, and Naruto has this horrible feeling that he can see right out and through the back of his head. Gaara once looked at him in that way, and the consequences weren’t at all pretty.

The words loose themselves on the tip of his tongue as he begins to form them, skidding into nothingness; and he backtracks and fumbles, changing the subject.

Why does Sasuke have this uncanny ability to always make him feel so goddamned clumsy? Like a proverbially obese hump-backed whale, in a china shop.

“What are you doing?”

For some reason he’s rewarded with a snarl and Sasuke turns his head so he’s once again staring at the ceiling, ignoring Naruto.

But Naruto won’t be pushed off so easily. He pulls out the chair from beside the wardrobe, spins it backwards and then sits on it, arms folded over the back.

Sasuke doesn’t even look at him as in quiet dangerous soft tones he warns Naruto to “Get the hell out of his sight.”

Naruto squares his shoulders and tells Sasuke to “Stuff that, because it’s his apartment, and this is technically his bedroom anyway.”

“Fine, I’ll leave then.”

And he makes to get up, even though it looks like it costs him some effort to do so, but he hides it well. It’s only by the unhealthy paleness of his skin that Naruto can tell this: fairer then ivory and twice as cold.

“You can’t leave,” Naruto tells him simply. “There are boundaries outside the windows, the doors, the whole building… you can’t cross them because you know… you can’t use chakra.”

For an instant Sasuke looks at him, and his eyes flash suddenly with an intense… something, before everything goes still again and there’s only the dull throbbing of his heart inside his chest as the valves open and close to the same monotonous rhythm.

Then that cold condescending smile forms all the way across the beautiful flush of Sasuke’s lips, and his eyes narrow as he laughs. The tones chill Naruto as he sits, maintaining his cool, but it’s costing him effort.

“So this is it, is it?”

Naruto frowns at Sasuke, genuinely not really understanding the question.

“So what is what?”

Sasuke sits on the edge of the bed, feet touching the floor, and again Naruto marvels at how pale he is. Like torn ivory, he seems to bleed away into the black he wears slung loosely over his physique, as contrasting as blood against snow.

He leans forwards a fraction from the hips, those eyes with thick feathery lashes seeming to extract Naruto’s soul and examine it at his leisure.

“You and me. What is this? Some sort of game?”

“Game? You think this is a game? What are you, sick or something?”

“Maybe, but I’m wondering why you brought me here in the first place. Why with you? Surely you should have learnt after last time Naruto, you can’t change people. You can’t stop them from becoming what they are.”

“And I suppose you think you’re a living example of this do you? Just because you gave up Sasuke, that doesn’t mean everybody does, just because you were w-”

Naruto bites his tongue. He was about to say because you were weak, but that would have gone down as successfully as a ton of bricks. Yet he thinks… no, he knows Sasuke can second guess his movements as well as predict them, he was always oh, so very good at that.

Sasuke raises his thumb to his mouth. He bites the tip of the nail, mouth forming something that Naruto wouldn’t, can’t call a smile, because it’s far too ominous. It’s almost debasing but for some reason he can’t tear his eyes away from it. Like a spiral, he’s falling straight down.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Sasuke says, and the words are phrased softly like the calm before the storm; and Naruto’s cursing his short explosive temper. Sasuke’s drawing his own rage out with a frightening amount of patience, like a spider spinning silken threads to make a deadly web. Sasuke is angry, and he can see it in every line of his body.

“You sitting here, judg-”

“I’m not judging you Sasuke.” Naruto interrupts him quickly, he doesn’t want this to turn into an argument, but it’s hard to defend against it when his own temperature seems to be soaring and the Uchiha is attacking him from every side and every possible angle with lethal accuracy.

“Then what is this? Pity? Because if it is, Naruto, I’ll tell you what you can do with it.”

“Why,” Naruto asks, standing up now, skin flushed, “must you turn everything into an argument, or a threat, or something equally horrible? Why must you look at everything like that? You can see that I don‘t want to do it, I don‘t want to go there!”

//Maybe he enjoys seeing me trapped. //

“Because that’s how everything is.” His eyes are perfectly indifferent when he says it. He believes the words - Naruto can tell he’s not lying, he’s not even goading him. This is how in his mind, in his world, things work.

“There’s no such thing as happiness. People get what they want from the suffering of others, happiness is a very selfish thing,” he scoffs. “You know that Naruto, better than most I should imagine. People blame and ignore what they don’t want to see, because it makes them feel better.”

“No they… well they don’t anymore. It’s different… it’s changed.” The words are spoken in defence, heatedly; teeth gritted and jaw clenched.

“Really?” and it’s laced with a lazy sarcasm. “Do they now? Do all of them think differently? Do none of them hold it against you Naruto? All of this, this silly pretence of friendship and independence… this… this place?” and he jerks his head to the side indicating the apartment.

“It’s all changed has it? For the better? And what about Sakura? She hasn’t been round has she? What’s the matter Naruto, afraid to tell your girlfriend the truth, that you let the traitor back into your life again? Or afraid that I’ll tell her the truth about you?”

“How do you know…how do you know about me and Sakura?” Naruto asks, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth and he’s unaware of the fact that his hands are clenched, knuckles white and shaking.

“Your friend has a very loud mouth.”

//I knew it, he does hear like a bat! //

“Or are you,” and this bit is accentuated nastily, “afraid that if she sees me, she’ll forget all about you? She always did have a thing for me now that I think about it. A stupid school girl’s crush.”

“Shut up.” Naruto’s so angry he can hardly see straight. He has to blink back bubbles of white-hot rage that seem to be popping and colliding inside his mind.

“So tell me…” He lets the words fall and rise on the heavy silence between them, words sizzling between them like millions of tiny needles.

Sasuke pushes them in deeper, because he can, because he’s angry at himself and all the world, but mostly at Naruto for being so blind and thinking after all this time that he can still change things. That at the end of the tunnel there is still light.

“What’s it like fucking her then?”

Naruto goes pink and then goes white with rage which is infinitely more dangerous. “Shut up,” he manages, but it’s hardly above a whisper, so great is his concentration to not launch himself at Sasuke and drive him head first through the wall.

“You wouldn’t- you’d never know, you never ever loved anyone besides yourself, you’ve never had-have any friends. You have no right to ask me that- or see her… ever. And why anyone would want to see you is beyond me.”

//Seems he’s getting the point, finally.//

“And so,” and Sasuke’s still smiling that haunting smile, like death in flesh and supple fingers, “she swapped the traitor for the monster did she?”

// I pity the fool who brought me back.//

The silence is so heavy it crashes over both of their heads.

//Monster….//

Naruto stands there for a moment, swallowing what he feels is his tongue, before he turns blinking out of the room, feeling light headed. He stands in the corridor, hand on the wall, heart pumping frantically in his chest as he waits for the world to come back into cohesion again.

The door swings shut by itself and Sasuke finds himself slipping down onto the floor where he puts his head between his legs, and tries to swallow down the bile that his stomach is threatening to hurtle up through his oesophagus.

Desperately, with every fibre of his being he wants to go after Naruto: he wants to tell him that he was lying, that he didn’t- never meant it…. That he’d never considered him a monster and neither, to his knowledge had Sakura. But he can’t, he knows he can’t, reason pulls him down and forces him to sink, and he gulps down a human impulse to suddenly start crying.

If Naruto never speaks to him again it will make everything much easier.

If Naruto never looks at him again it will be much better.

And it would be much simpler if he didn’t miss it already, or hate himself for doing it.

Much, much easier.

At two o’clock in the morning Naruto sits up in bed abruptly, body covered in a cold film of sweat with his heart jumping erratically in his chest. He can still feel Sasuke’s body against his own, his hands, his limbs, his touch, and he shivers from the base of his spine. He stumbles blindly out of bed in the darkness, hands fumbling for the bathroom door, which he opens and closes noisily behind him again.

He going to take long cold shower… and maybe drown himself in it.

* * *

Naruto trudged heavily down the stairs, yawning. He’s in a bad mood this morning, hair in delightful disarray as he slams against the hallway wall, shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. He grunts, scowling heatedly, and then jumps down the last few steps.

He had no sleep after that… none at all. After the… dream if that’s what you would call it.

Naruto thinks, stretching long limber arms over his head, fingers curling into streams of morning sunlight. The funny thing is that he can still feel parts of it- the indents on his skin from Sasuke’s fingertips, and his lips feel slightly tender this morning, rubbed raw and bitten.

But he knows, flushing, that this is entirely impossible. It’s his imagination being more then slightly overactive. And yet it’s nagging away at the back of his mind, and he stops before he opens the door, and peers into the hanging mirror to check there isn’t a black mark around his eye from where Sasuke recoiled his fist and struck him.

But there’s nothing.

Wide cornflower blue eyes peer anxiously back at him, blinking lashes and knowing full well he’s staring his own ignorant innocence right in the face. He lets out a long sigh, and his stomach recoils somewhat as relief floods through him in a tide. It’s beyond absurd to think that Sasuke would actually… it’s not… what he means is… he’s so asexual!

He finds himself looking worriedly over his shoulder, as if by thinking these thoughts the Uchiha can hear him. But he shakes it off, frowning:

In a few minutes he finds himself shuffling blearily around his kitchen, hands following an automatic routine; and presently is seated, bowl of cereal and glass of milk nearby. He’d been trying to break the habit of eating ramen for breakfast (or every meal, solidly,) when he had started spending the nights over a Sakura’s apartment. She had told him somewhat bluntly it is true, that if he continued to do it, she’d shove his chopsticks up certain unmentionable orifices, and that they’d never ever have sex again.

He still sneaked a few every once in a while, hoping that she wouldn’t find out (she always did, and sometimes he wondered if Sakura could honestly read minds.)

Naruto looks glumly at his food. He doesn’t feel much like eating (not even ramen!) He doesn’t feel like doing anything much really. His stomach is churning away like old dusty coals in a furnace, bringing old heat back up to the boil again.

He feels… what does he feel? It’s a good question.

Angry, nervous, Insanely Infuriated?

Maybe, and perhaps foremost, disappointed.

Because he so badly wanted to avoid this.

Naruto rubs a closed fist over his eyes, and feel somewhat strained. There’s no dignity in this, no dignity at all. But he won’t- he can’t forgive Sasuke for what he’s done and said, it’s beyond his morality to pretend it never happened. He’s rammed the nail straight in and now the point is sticking out between his shoulder blades, jarring, bloody, sudden and painful every time he moves.

Unenthusiastically he swirls his spoon about the cereal bowl, watching the contents glob, reform and cluster. He looks at his glass of milk (yes glass, not carton, try not to faint) and he still feels listless, like limp salad left out in the sun to curl and brown about the edges. It’s an admission of defeat as he pushes away from the table and takes the bowl over to the windowsill and pours the glass of milk into Virginia’s plant pot. He murmurs a muted: “Good morning and how are you?” to her. She looks prickly today he thinks, spines almost quivering in the early morning light; Naruto supposes she must feel the tension and sighs heavily.

Naruto braces his hands against the sides of the kitchen counter and looks down into the soap-suds of the basin. His distorted image frowns up at him. His whisker like scars seem to be etched deeper then ever into his skin, little linear discolorations, all jagged and wry.

What had he thought when he was younger? That these were the marks left by some savage beast? The thing that had left him and devoured his parents? Naruto finds himself laughing, although there’s nothing remotely humorous to laugh at. It’s the foxes outward claim on the vessel he is contained in, somewhere inside of him, in this universally close space of atoms, molecules, cells, tissues and organs that make up his body: an infinite chasm with impenetrable walls and hooked iron spikes exists, keeping this creature in.

Part of him hates it, part of him excepts it, and another piece just doesn’t seem to care.

As long as he keeps it subdued and under control, no one will mind. As long as it doesn’t get loose they won’t be afraid of him. He used to have nightmares, a long, long time ago about what would happen if the fox got loose while he was sleeping, how it happened to Gaara. What if he woke up one morning amongst blood, rubble and chaos and it would all be his fault?

What if he had killed everybody in his sleep?

What if he found Sakura lying next to him, her neck broken in half because… because…

What if…?

Naruto shudders at the memory, runs his cold fingers over his hot eye sockets and finds himself exhaling loudly.

He’s come a long way since then- nothing is going to pop out unexpectedly. He finds himself pouring the dirty water down the drain, watching as the last swirls of liquid are sucked down into the dark mouth of the plug-hole.

Sasuke… Sasuke never really says anything unless each thought has been weighed, calculated and measured against a long list of possible outcomes, gains and losses. Very rarely does he ever act on impulse, Naruto thinks, taking a step back and glowering at the ceiling. Not ever. He’s never had a moment of passion when half unguarded words come tumbling from his mouth, mingled with fear, simplicity and truth. Everything’s evaluated, preordained and edited. It’s like talking to some self-processed machine, utterly inhuman, inevitably frustrating and totally pointless.

It makes what he said worse, because if it was an act of senseless anger it would be much easier to forgive, but the fact is- the fact is simple: it is not a random slip of the tongue.

Naruto shakes his head, still scowling, and makes his way towards the door. He opens it, meaning to leave for work, the unappealing call of paperwork is looming ahead, and he can see that old hag grinning at him from behind piles and piles of things he’s neglected to do.

He hasn’t set out breakfast for Sasuke.

For a while he considers whether or not he should bother. Sasuke is ill after all, even if he is the world’s biggest Pain In The Ass- a small sneaky smile trails up the side of Naruto’s expressive mouth as he thinks about it.

And he pulls open the cupboard and fetches out the cereal box, a china bowl, a spoon, the milk and then- his hand lingers for a moment over what seems to be white sugar bowl. But one can swear that his blue eyes are sparkling too merrily for this to be the entire truth. He carefully sprinkles a spoonful of it quite liberally all over the cornflakes, reasoning to himself that the Uchiha is probably too busy sulking anyway to eat this.

Probably.

Might as well get caught red handed, trousers down and ass-raped for something he has done, than something he hasn’t done on purpose, right? That’s the general idea anyway.

Naruto walks out his front door whistling, slamming it loudly behind him. Before he leaves he checks the house boundaries, and it seems to be as if he’s feeling for an invisible line that runs along the perimeter of the building. As everything seems to be in order he turns briskly about, shows a wide satisfied grin that reveals the sharp top tips of his canines glinting in the morning light, and he laughs, arms up over his head, before he seemingly just… disappears.

* * *

The door slams hard shut, and Sasuke Uchiha take time to reflect that this time the idiot didn’t even take the time to yell a hurried “Goodbye.”

Not that it matters, nothing matters of that element anymore, not to him anyway.

He’s been reasoning with himself since the day before yesterday, exactly what he’s got to do… but the problem is he just doesn’t know how to do it. Normally, if he were able to use Chakra, this job, this mission he had set himself would have already been completed. Minus the paper work. But now, instead of a fallen tree blocking his path, someone has relocated mount Fuji. And he doesn’t even know where to start climbing.

He has to… the objective is to….

Again, Sasuke opens his mouth and tries with the delicate slip of his tongue to form a word. Although the thought registers, something actively prevents him from annunciating it. The syllables are swallowed violently and it’s like he’s fighting with a burning moth inside his head and throat. He grits his teeth and snarls in fury, trying hopelessly to grind the words from between his molars. But all that comes forth is a wrenched cry, like someone in anguish, which he supposes to an extent he is. The black things on his wrist and the one dead centre of his chest pulse, and burn coldly into his flesh and he hisses at the dull pain. Sasuke can feel himself flooding with a self-hatred of his body and it’s limitations, and forces himself to stand up.

For a start he can begin with exploring the whole apartment undisturbed now that Naruto will be gone for a few hours. The idea of a task lightens Sasuke’s mood somewhat, reducing the odd collision of thoughts and memories inside his mind. Reducing everything into pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle, something that he can assemble and disassemble with the view of a clear logical outline. It takes the human element out of it, and it’s something he can handle, easier then breathing and twice as natural.

He begins by opening the door and stepping lightly out into the hallway. The boards creak underneath his weight, and he winces at the noise despite the lack of anyone else around to hear it. It’s out of habit that he treads lightly, as if every movement is being followed and tracked by some invisible eye.

He moves methodically, trying in turn each door handle and cautiously looking inside. Sasuke is more than surprised to discover that Naruto’s room is unlocked and unprotected from his invasion… he doesn’t know why he’s slightly perturbed by this. Because he expected resistance maybe? Some concern, to keep objects from his clearly prying nature? But there’s no such barrier.

The second cause for surprise is at how small the room is, it must be half the size of the one he’s sleeping in, and as untidy and cluttered as he’d imagine it to be. There are empty bowls on the floor as well as comics sprinkled liberally every few feet; a t-shirt sprawled in a puddle of absent material, forlorn and miserable in the middle of the floor. Sasuke has to try hard not to squash the impulse to march straight in there and clean it all up, to give himself piece of mind. He can feel it gnawing away in the back of his skull even as he forces himself to concentrate on things above floor level.

But this doesn’t help: inevitably, Naruto’s room is filled with what Sasuke can only describe as nostalgia. There are… pictures everywhere, not always in frames, but sort of scattered about here, there and everywhere and subconsciously his expression changes to become something very ugly.

It’s a weird thing, Sasuke thinks absently as he steps artfully across the floor, feet finding spaces between the comics and scattered socks. He doesn’t quite know why he’s possessed by an interminable desire to search around here in the first place. He wouldn’t like to think he was nosy (Sasuke dear, you are in denial here,) it’s more like an objective: know your enemy and you can never be caught off guard.

He’s known- or he did know Naruto, for a long time. But, though few of their encounters so far have shaken him… he feels the blonde haired idiot has some hold on him: an invisible grip on his arm that no matter what he does he just can’t shake off. It keeps him awake, wondering and puzzling over it, teeth grinding in annoyance.

After testing the drawers any sort of secrecy spell, he rifles through each one in turn. It’s not too pleasant (Naruto’s underwear, he believes, isn’t fit for anything with eyes,) but there are only inconsequential clothes here, and rather puzzlingly a fork. Sasuke firmly shuts them all, with a self-satisfied ‘I knew it’ look bobbing curvaceously on his lips. It’s about the closest thing to a flirt he can form and he’s not even aware when he’s doing it or what on earth the look is.

Sasuke thinks, something interesting… where are the ‘naughty’ magazines? The porn? The condoms? The alcohol? Something like that. He expects it from Naruto, as he peers speculatively under the bed- hastily withdrawing his head and wishing he hadn’t looked.

Sasuke pushes himself back on his haunches, glancing speculatively at the wardrobe, head tilted to the side like a calculating bird.

It’s simple old stained oak panelling, pushed firm against the wall, with small, iron loop handles: an antique minimalist look. Sasuke’s eyebrows rise up his brow without command: it’s oddly… tasteful for Naruto. He is instantly suspicious. He moves an outstretched finger towards one handle, but millimetres away from the cold corrugated iron… the air prickles slightly.

He lets his mind probe… something surges down his arms, rippling down the flesh and through the skin, until it’s stopped, sucked into a spinning black orb and then away into nothingness with a sickening swoon of faltering energy. Sasuke snarls, teeth grinding back, narrowly missing his tongue. He pre-supposed in his irritation that Naruto, being an idiot, will not have thought of protecting whatever is in said closet. On this point he is of course, proved wonderfully wrong. As his fingers make contact, the wardrobe seems to slip back into the wall, sensing intrusion without permission and it’s defences are riled.

Something bitter and chalky billows over Sasuke, forming a choking, suffocating cloud. There seems to be an endless supply of it, and he’s coughing and sneezing inside the swirling veil as it clings and settles onto every surface it can find.

He catches sight of himself in the mirror opposite.

During his sneezing fit, eyes watering, he watches the wardrobe slide casually out of the wall again. As Sasuke stretches out his hands, he registers the fact that his body is covered in a particularly sugary layer of frosting. Naruto’s choice of protection ward is most definitely not without personal humour.

A change of clothes later, Sasuke is suitably annoyed not to give a damn what the hell the apartment looks like after he’s done with it. He’s decided to leave Naruto’s room well and truly alone however, after the chalk covering the floor started to clump together to form several rude words along the politest version of: ‘Got you good, Nosy GIT!’ He couldn’t quite get all the chalk out of his hair. To his great annoyance, the more he washed it the more it seemed to stick. But he’s hoping (more accurately, wishing for a miracle,) that the grey streak isn’t that noticeable.

Sasuke resumes exactly what he was doing before Naruto’s room attacked him, (Sasuke point-blank refuses to acknowledge even the slightest hint of amusement,) but now he doesn’t bother with subtly. He slams open doors and twists handles in a most unforgiving manner, yanking open the door to Naruto’s bathroom most fiercely.

He begins mercilessly poking around, opening up cupboards and bottle lids, knocking things aside in the medicine cabinet. The only things present a few aspirin, several years over their sell by date, so Sasuke bins them. If he takes those he thinks he’ll probably pass out… stupid fox. There’s also a tube of orange toothpaste, an orange toothbrush, an orange razor, a bottle of orange cough mixture and a half empty bottle of – thankfully not orange- sleeping tablets. Sasuke has to stare, vaguely bewildered and eyebrows raised, before he can quite register the ubiquitous colour.

He finds himself staring at the bottle of sleeping tablets for a long time, until he pulls it down and shakes it about a bit. The bottle looks quite new, and is a high dosage. It’s obviously used quite often. He puts it back, frowning, not knowing if he’s slightly disappointed or not. He didn’t really expect to find a bottle of chloroform, poison or (heaven help him) Viagra. But there’s nothing really unusual at all about… well, any of it. His hunger is slightly lessoned by the fact that the finds a bag full of make up under the sink and decides to reserve judgment when he thinks about whatever possible use Naruto could ever have for it. It’s too… weird for his brain to compute the idea of him wearing it.

Sasuke spends most of the morning and early afternoon thoroughly exploring every nook and cranny of Naruto’s apartment that he can find, and it is much more dangerous then it would seem to be.

The closet in the dusty unused room at the end of the hall, for example, should-never-be-opened-EVER, because when it is the clutter descends like a waterfall all over and on top of said opener. Or rather, victim. Sasuke spent the better half of an hour wiggling and dragging himself out by his elbows to save himself from being crushed to death- all the time wondering how the hell Naruto had got all that stuff in there in the first place. There are also sharp objects in the coat and umbrella stand where he was sure he was going to loose an eye, as well as some sort of carnivorous, blood thirsty bat living in the broom cupboard the size of a -and Sasuke will swear this on his life- a baby elephant.

By the end of it all he’s furious with Naruto and even more so with himself because he’s exhausted and hungry, and he’s betting after yesterday that there won’t be any nicely prepared food for him, barely edible or otherwise.

As he ambles, hands in pockets down the stairs, dignity still intact… somehow: his stomach revolts at how absurdly normal the whole set up is. It’s so goddamned complacent, so homely, so fitting in, and he hates it. He hates it with every solid fibre of his being, which is saying a lot because it takes a lot for Sasuke to hate something: he’s lazy to an extent. He works on impulses of brilliant focused concentration on something that consumes him and just doesn’t give a damn about the rest.

He pushes open the door to the kitchen with one hand and stands in the archway, naturally eyeing up the place were he had thrown the ramen bowl at Naruto. For a moment he can see the idiot now, looking up at him, blue cornflower eyes reflecting something very close to terror as Sasuke had bent down close to him. It had occurred to Sasuke then and there, as he whispered those two words in that tone laced with venom, that Naruto wasn’t, really, very unlike the rest of them. Naruto had held Sasuke at arms length, not because he chose to but because he didn’t know what else to do. He was, in short, afraid of him.

Sasuke finds himself smiling again, the expression that is anything but a smile. Fear can be manipulated, channelled and warped into things that control and master a person. He considers for a moment what he could do to Naruto with it, and his mind wanders, eyes scanning the room, vision falling on the bowl of cereal as his stomach gives a particularly loud growl.

As he moves towards it, ravenous despite his resolve not to eat anything the idiot has had a hand in making, he finds it odd. It’s too nice a gesture, far too nice, considering everything. His hand hovers over the spoon as he sits down, craning over the bowl and scrutinizing it from all sides. But he can detect nothing wrong with it from it’s general appearance, golden cornflakes sprinkled with a generous helping of sugar. He takes the carton of milk, checks the sell-by-date, which seems fine, and eyes still narrowed he pours the milk over the cornflakes.

The cornflakes act as anyone would expect them to. Nothing explodes, it doesn’t change colour or start to smell like dead rotting fish- and that’s something. Knowing Naruto… anything could happen.

He dips the spoon in, waiting…. Absolutely nothing.

He opens his mouth, pink tongue dipped and curved as the spoon goes in and he tastes the cold metal and then… and then…

He wretches, gags and spits back into the bowl again.

Ample helpings of salt. Not sugar.

Sasuke Uchiha thinks he might very well be sick now, and if he is, he’s jolly well going to do it all over the idiot’s bed.

* * *

Naruto walks towards his desk, peering over the huge pile of papers he’s cradling in his arms. He blows blonde trails of hair out of his eyes and snaps irately:

“Why is there a giant needle on my desk? There’s a giant needle on my desk!!!! GIANT NEEDLE! I have to do paper work people. Paper work! Why do none of you understand this simple fact?!”

He shouts the last part, slamming the wobbling stacks down on one corner as Ino wanders over and picks up said evil needle. He glowers at her as she sticks it into her long blond hair and blinks her wide eyes at him.

“Hair ornament,” she states flatly, looking him up and down as if she suspects he just might have something contagious. Naruto snorts at her, slamming behind the desk, and makes a fuss about something else: muttering and scowling at anything and everything within ten meters.

Ino turns to the closest person behind her which happens to be Neji and asks “Is he okay?” to which Neji gives her a pained please-don’t-ask-me look, replying “he’s

been like that all morning.” Neji moves promptly off before Ino can say anything else. She puts both hands on her slim hips, and her mind clicks and whirrs into a meddling mode. Her sensibilities tell her that approaching Naruto at this point in time would be encroaching on a subject knows as Suicide, especially since he seems to be oozing a black cloud of ill-will over the surrounding area. All passing Jounin scuttle past looking wary.

Pushing her light blonde fringe from her eyes, she moves gracefully around the area and walks down the hall. She waves at Hinata who walks out of an adjacent room- followed closely by Neji, who is regarding the shy girl with a curiously soft look. Ino finds herself grinning, thinking that if Kiba doesn’t hurry up soon he’s going to have some serious competition on his hands.

She beckons Hinata to her, and waves Neji off with a dismissing hand movement- which is something because Neji can look quite foreboding in full ANBU get up. But he seems to take little notice of it, and walks collectedly past Ino after saying something to Hinata, who looks surprised and then a little confused.

“Your cousin,” Ino says, mouth milky pink and half-cynical, half-smiling as she says it, “is rather formidable, isn’t he?”

Hinata looks embarrassed as she bites her lip and tries to nod and shake her head at the same time. She looks, again, utterly confused afterwards. They stand in the corridor for a minute chatting, until Ino grabs Hinata by the collar when no one is looking and drags her into a nearby cupboard, where she hisses: “What the hell is wrong with Uzumaki?” Hinata looks stressed, although neither can really see as the cupboard door closes in on them. She’s stuck in the dark with a mop poking into her back and a bucket stuck on one foot.

“Wrong? Wrong… why should anything be… wrong?”

She is a hopeless liar and they both know it. Ino smiles like a cat cornering it’s prey and leans in a little closer.

“I know when Shikamaru’s keeping a secret from me. I know when Kiba’s in on the secret and for some reason I’m still clueless. I also know, Hinata, when you know something, and I don’t. One thing, which you are all going to ridiculous lengths to cover up! Naruto’s been acting weird ever since he came back from that last mission, and to be frank Shikamaru has too… he keeps talking about Naruto all the time, and yet he refuses to tell me why! He thinks I don’t know anything! HA!”

Ino gives a loud derisive laugh and ploughs on, her eyes glinting:

“I know the Hokage’s in on the whole thing, and that Iruka doesn’t know why Naruto spent two hours and forty five minutes in there with her and a council of elders being quizzed about whatever the hell it is.”

She crosses her arms and sits on another upturned bucket, narrowing her eyes accusatorily. The look gives Shikamaru shivers whenever he sees it, because it’s Ino being at her bossiest. Hinata quails somewhat and shrinks as far back into the corner as she can manage. She likes Ino, she really does, but she isn’t half a handful at the best of times and she’s been particularly crabby ever since Sakura left. Even though she acts like she doesn’t miss her.

“Who did they bring back with them, Hinata, on that mission? Who was the extra passenger? Why was that ward all blocked off in Kohona hospital for the entirety of two weeks? And medical-nin had to be escorted down with ANBU guard? Who are they keeping all locked up? What are they hiding? Hmmm? What? Tell me!”

Hinata is quite sure that if she doesn’t answer the question, Ino will simply crack her mind open anyway and read the information that is in there. She finds her hands scrabbling madly by the handle; she only found out by accident anyway! She’d rather die then betray Kiba’s trust in her.

She is, however, saved from Ino’s thorough inquisition when the cupboard door is tugged open and Shikamaru is revealed- Kiba peering curiously over his shoulder, sipping coffee.

“I thought I detected your high pitched shrieking tones,” Shikamaru says, looking down, one eyebrow raised. Ino looks disappointed and a terrorised-looking Hinata scrambles towards Kiba as fast as she can. “What on earth are you two doing?”

“Talking…” both Ino and Hinata say haltingly.

Kiba and Shikamaru exchange looks… “In the broom closet?”

Ino dusts dirt from her forearms and doesn’t answer, sniffing disdainfully as she rises from the up-turned bucket with surprising dignity. “Why aren’t you working?”

“I was working. Your voice just grinds so gratingly on my nerves I find it impossible to do anything, until I’ve found you to tell you once and for all to just shut up.”

“Go on, be rude, how very unsurprising and thoughtful of you, just come out here and yell at me in front of everyone? You have no respect for me at all do you?”

“Ino, that is a gross understatement. I have a healthy respect for you which is why I try to keep as far away as possible from you at all times. And as far as shouting goes, we all know it’s usually the other way around. I can’t ever hope to be half as annoying as you are.”

Ino’s chest swells as she crosses her arms and leans back a fraction. Tossing long blonde hair over her shoulder, mouth down and scowling, she licks her lips and prepares to spit back hellfire at the man who stands lazily in front of her. Dusky, angular, somewhat teasing, hands in pockets and spine slouched.

“Should we… stop them?” Hinata asks, whispering into Kiba’s ear by standing on tiptoe.

“Whatever for?” he responds. Without looking, Hinata knows Kiba to be smiling. She can hear it in his tone of voice: “It’s just getting to the good part!”

True to Kiba’s thoughts, Ino did look as though she was about to rip Shikamaru Nara limb from limb in her fury with her bare hands. But she was, sadly for Kiba, stopped- as Iruka who happened to chance walking down the hallway at this point spied the up-and-coming commotion and had the sense to break it up.

“Oh no!” he told them, irately shooing them back down the corridor again and through into one of the many office rooms.

“You guys are not doing that again, not after last time. I still haven’t regained hearing in one of my ears thanks to you lot.”

He looks pointedly at Ino, who seems to pretend not to hear him, merely sticking her nose stubbornly in the air. Kiba looks thoroughly disappointed.

It’s an odd thing to know that you’re a higher rank then your former teacher; it’s even odder to know it, and yet for the fact not to matter: they all stand there for a full ten minutes and receive the scolding full on from their former academy teacher. This is until Iruka, confident that they’ve been berated enough, suddenly seems as though he’s lost something. He peers at them, although he’s about the same height as Kiba and Shikamaru:

“Where is Naruto?” he asks suspiciously, as though someone is hiding him beneath their shoe. “If he’s not here causing trouble with you… then where is he causing trouble?”

Iruka is giving them the exact same look of last month when he found Naruto sprawled unconscious on the sidewalk with toe imprints on his forehead. The sort of, “I-don’t-believe-it-what-have-you-done-now?” expression.

“He’s doing paperwork.” Ino says placidly, sniffing disdainfully as Iruka gives a small snort of laughter.

“No really, where is he?” he enquires again. Naruto hates paperwork- he has to be dragged in by the ankles kicking and screaming before he’ll consider doing it.

“No really,” Shikamaru states back, nodding his head towards the direction Naruto is working in. Iruka peers around the corner sceptically, wondering if it’s some sort of elaborate joke, and then asks genuinely: “What’s wrong with him?”

“Lots of things,” says Kiba, sipping his coffee in the same way you would take a sip of cola at the cinema and reach for your tub of popcorn. “Where do I start? He likes to dance when he thinks nobodies watching, mostly in the kitchen and he forgets to close the blinds, and he has a mole on his left hip which I keep telling him to get checked out because it could be cancerous, but will he listen? No! He says that’s only if it’s hairy, and it doesn’t count if it’s a weird shape. And I say it does but he doesn’t believe me, personally I think it’s because it looks exactly like a-”

… But Kiba never gets to finish saying exactly what Naruto’s mole looks like because Shikamaru, for dignities sake, claps his hand over the his mouth. He gives a very strained smile and concludes with as much composure as possible: “We’ll go talk to him, don’t worry.” Which is a feat because Kiba, stopped in mid sentence, has yet to draw breath and begins to turn slowly purple.

Iruka looks disbelievingly at them for a minute but seems to think the better of it, because he turns to leave only adding “I’ll be back to check,” in rather ominous tones. Shikamaru removes his hand and lets Kiba slide to the floor in a dizzy pile to resume breathing again, eyes spinning whilst Ino taps her feet, looking accusatorily at all three of them.

“Well?” she asks: “Shikamaru Nara, aren’t you going to explain to me what’s going on?”

Shikamaru stretches and links his fingers behind his head, his look no longer playful but somewhat business like. “Nothings going on,” he says very simply just as a muffled cry of anger drifts out of the room behind them.

“He sounds like a strangled crow,” Kiba comments from his pile on the floor.

Ino raises both of her long pale eyebrows over her dewy eyes, and she plants her hands on her hips. “And tell me why I’m supposed to believe that Shikamaru, give me one good reason?”

“Because I’m not going to tell you.” Shikamaru replies, rolling his eyes. “Why do insist poking your nose in everywhere, Ino? Especially when it’s not wanted. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me?” Ino protests looking somewhat hurt and then angry, “he’s my best friends boyfriend- of course it has something to do with me you huge great lump of an excuse for a human being!”

“And that’s why!” Hinata suddenly interjects, and then looks startled at her own boldness for speaking so loudly. They all stare at her and Kiba jumps to his feet.

“Erh… what I mean is… it’s well…” she bites her lips, and forefingers and thumb come together as she blushes furiously. “He’s upset because he hasn’t got a letter from Sakura yet.”

“It’s been over three weeks you know,” Kiba finishes for her, and stands protectively in front of Hinata, shielding her from Ino’s accusatory glare. “They parted and, well, it wasn’t on unfriendly terms but he wanted a bit more than what he got.”

“Oh,” Ino suddenly breathes out very slowly and seems relieved, “is that all it is? I thought he was having an affair or something from the way you guys were carrying on. I mean, he’s acting like he’s had a lovers spat or something along those lines.”

Shikamaru and Kiba exchange fast uncomfortable looks of // I really hope not. //

“Why don’t we,” Hinata suggests, soft fingers curling around Kiba’s elbow and pushing them down so she can side step and move in front of him, “go see if he has any mail from Sakura? He’s bound to get letters because it’s a mercenary mission into a neutral zone and she’s just helping treat the casualties brought about by that flood. He might even be able to gain visiting access if he applies early enough. Do you want to come with, Ino?”

Ino raises her hands behind her head, links her fingers and pushes back, unclenching the knot in her spine and making her seem about two inches higher. She can’t disguise the look of relief that passes over her milky pink lips as she gives a small start of laughter.

“Yeah, I think that would be a great idea.”

Hinata smiles, walking forwards and taking her by the arm. As they walk off down the corridor together both boys can distinctly hear Hinata saying, “Maybe we could write her letter too?”

“I have no idea how she does it,” Kiba says, smiling fondly after the Hyuga girl- his eyes half closed, watching until they disappear around a corner.

“It’s called tact,” his friend states somewhat bluntly, hands still in pockets.

“Well I ain’t got none of that,” Kiba agrees with a wolfish grin. “I was just gonna sit and watch whilst your girlfriend ripped you limb from limb.”

“She not my girlfriend,” Shikamaru tells him and his tone is sharp as he turns about and begins walking towards the room Naruto is occupying. Funny muttering sounds are leaking out and drifting down the hallway.

Kiba bounces up and down behind him, “You still fancy her though,” and he can almost see Shikamaru rolling his eyes through the back of his head. “Had it not have been for Iruka, you guys would have totally gone for each other. It would have been great to watch,” he adds somewhat remorsefully.

He is ignored.

In a great display of courage Shikamaru approaches the desk that wobbles heavily with pile upon pile of paper. The mountains tremble somewhat, shielding their occupant securely from view. Both he and Kiba can feel the bad mood spooling behind it, oozing and trickling, swelling against a high-fastened wall and pounding to get out.

“Naruto?” Shikamaru asks, hoping his voice does not sound overly cautious. He has not as of yet dared to put his hands on the desk, having a looming fear of them being smashed by a bad tempered fist. There is a grunt from somewhere in the paper pile and a few sheets move in a seething mass of white, but apart from that nothing. Shikamaru swallows and licks his lips and looks imploring at Kiba, who sighs dramatically.

Kiba takes a swallow and a gulp like a deep-sea diver about to embark on a long airless plunge, sticks his head right in amongst the piles and shouts:

It takes courage because they all know what will happen next. There is an enraged yell from somewhere in the mass of paper as it seems Kiba was expelling right into Naruto ear, there is a thick thump, from which the flashing vision of a fist can be seen, and a yelping Kiba falls backwards, rubbing his nose which sports an ink splotch at the tip.

Shikamaru seizes the chance to dodge around the edge of the desk, the commotion causing the papers to spill like a white tide over the floor, and suddenly the air is filled with a tumultuous confusion of dancing white papers like Lilly petals swirling and dashing on eddies.

Naruto stands, looking outraged and thoroughly angry as he catches sight of Shikamaru around the corner of his desk, laughing at him and the mess. In blind anger he moves at him, guided only by his feet, and this is the moment Kiba has been waiting for. He jumps up and over the desk, batting papers from the air, seizes Naruto about the middle and sends him crashing to the floor (unfortunately) on top of Shikamaru. They all lie there, breathing heavily, absolutely breathless, uncomfortable and covered in paper cuts.

“Good afternoon Uzumaki,” Kiba says into Naruto’s shoulder. His hands are on some bodies upper thighs and he wiggles them experimentally. Shikamaru twists to knee him in the chest.

“You guys,” Naruto hisses in his best I-am-so-pissed-at-both-of-you-right-now-you-just-wouldn’t-believe-it voice. “I am seeing stars.”

“I can’t feel my feet…” Shikamaru says in a half wondering voice, “so I can’t really help you there.” A solitary piece of paper flutters over-head and settles neatly on his face.

“Oh bollocks.” They hear him mutter from beneath inky scrawled handwriting. “Naruto, you filled this out all wrong.”

“I-DON’T-CARE-ANYMORE!” Naruto announces fiercely, turning a sentence into a grossly over-syllabled word; meanwhile trying to wriggle out of Kiba’s pinning grasp. The wolfish boy’s arms are still linked like a vice around his hips as if he’s never ever letting go.

“What is it anyway?” Kiba muffles, now talking into the blonde haired youths stomach.

“A form of some sort.” Shikamaru (with effort) reaches up and picks it from atop his nose and blinkingly inspects it.

“Don’t look!” Naruto shouts; he kicks at Kiba harder but those arms must be held on by something stronger then superglue because he doesn’t yield in the slightest. If anything the grip gets tighter and they all get more tangled up as Naruto reaches forwards, sprawled flat on his stomach like a lame cow with a huge limpet stuck to it’s back. Shikamaru meanwhile leans back, trying to read the whatever-it-is underneath the combined body weight.

He wonders vaguely, if he’s ruptured his spleen.

They all wiggle for a moment longer before it turns into a full-fisted brawl, and it’s a very odd sight to behold. Choji ambles in halfway through to pick up something he’s left behind: in the confusion nobody notices and in the shouting nobody hears his exclamation of “What in hell?” before he turns promptly and marches straight back out the way he came again, shouting after Ino: “He’s doing it again!”

“It’s an ANBU form!” Shikamaru shouts down to Kiba after another minute of struggling. Naruto slumps down, sweating and swearing into the hard wooden tiles. It’s entirely too much activity for Shikamaru: he’s going to skive the rest of the day off, find a tree to sit under and go to sleep.

“A what?” Kiba asks, and he sits straight up from his waist, relinquishing his super-human grip and snatching the paper out of Shikamaru’s hands.

“You told us you weren’t going to…”he says in an accusatory tone of voice. “You talked to Kakashi-sensei about it and he said you just weren’t cut out for this sort of thing! They‘re looking for a much more violent type then you are… Naruto… Naruto? Are you listening?”

“Yeah well,” the blonde snarls from the floor, one arm draped over his blue eyes so they can only see his mouth, twisted back into an expression of inner revulsion. “Maybe you guys don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

Kiba blanches, “You know bullshit makes me sick- Maru, what the hell is he talking about?”

Shikamaru kneads his forehead with his knuckles and lets out a long sigh. This is entirely too bothersome for his liking- all he really wants to do is watch the clouds pass over-head and maybe doze off for a while, but he knows it’s not an option. It’s not integrity that’s calling him to act; it’s a friend, and a close one at that.

“Naruto Uzumaki,” he says in an even, patient voice, “what did he say to you?”

“Didn’t say anything,” comes the muffled, awkwardly stubborn reply.

“Who said what?” Kiba asks, looking confused.

He is again ignored. Shikamaru’s not playing this game, he’s not a fan of having his time wasted by entirely pointless things that take up his energy. “Naruto, either you tell me or I’m never treating you to ramen again.”

There’s a pause.

“Ever.” For extra effect.

Then a quick silence.

“What happened, Naruto?”

“We’re not…” the words come slowly and with some difficulty, lying on top and underneath him, both Kiba and Shikamaru can feel Naruto tense, every muscle in his body seems to clench as he sucks in air. “I’m not really speaking to him.”

“Really?”

“No,” Naruto says, and his voice is rather distant as his memory travels backwards, seeming to hitch and replay over and over again. “Not until he apologises.”

“Oh…” says Kiba helpfully, “so you guys will never speak again then?”

Once again the penalty for stupidity is to be kicked painfully in the ribs. “What’s he apologising for?” Shikamaru asks curiously as Kiba writhes around for a bit, thoroughly winded.

“It was- I was… It’s stupid really.”

“Stupid enough to make you mad?”

“Maybe… I don’t know. Silly thing is most of it… all of it’s probably true anyway. I thought maybe I was hiding things from myself or hiding in things and I just hadn’t realised. I’m an idiot, I’m just too stupid to see it.” He removes the hand from his face and they see in his expression, something that makes them worried, a self-defeating look that slips down the sliding slope into nothingness and despair. They hang on tender-hooks now they can see him falling closer inch by inch.

“You can’t change people I guess, they’ll always stay the same… no matter how much you… how much or how hard you try…”

“Oh Gawd.” Kiba snorts and he punches Naruto hard on the shoulder so his head slams forcefully into the floor. “You sound just like Neji!”

“You’re being ridiculous, listen, how do you think you got here anyway? By luck? If it was then you sure as hell used up all the luck there is in the world because through all logical thinking now, you really should be dead.” Both Shikamaru and Kiba shake Naruto firmly by the shoulders as if trying to dislodge his brain and smash some sense into it. “Stuff whatever Sasuke says, do you hear? He doesn’t even have to stay with you much longer, you heard Tsunade! Another month and if he’s not dead then he’s clear to be moved and Kakashi will be back and everything will be back to normal again!”

“We can only hope he dies…” mutters Shikamaru, looking dreamily up at the ceiling. Kiba shivers and counts on his fingers, “One bad Karma, two bad karma, three bad karma four. Five bad karma, six bad karma, seven bad karma more….” It’s a nervous habit.

It’s weird, Naruto thinks, to have your two best friends simultaneously trying to cheer you up in two dynamically different ways. Like paint and glue it sticks and coats him until he’s fighting down something in his throat and biting his tongue hard to stop himself from saying something stupid. Whatever Sasuke says, he’s not alone… he’s just not. Not now, not ever. Never ever again.

“Naruto?” the voice from above, it’s Kiba and he sounds worried, “You’re not…you know…crying are you?”

“No,” Naruto says entirely too defensively to be believed, as he takes a extended shuddering breath in, “of course I’m not.”

“You’re a damned girl.” Kiba mutters, his hands still firmly putting pressure on his shoulders and somewhere behind them Shikamaru collapses into a limp lump on the floor and closes his eyes scattering sheets like snowflakes. (Damn it got messy in here.)

Naruto raises his arm from his eyes which are dry and a clear unyielding innocent blue, and knees Kiba in a certain unmentionable place who gives a small “Oh!” before collapsing all over Naruto’s left shoulder and moans that he wants to die.

“Whose crying now?” he mutters, grinning.

* * *

Sasuke Uchiha freezes as the front door clangs open. His heart begins to beat marginally faster as he bids a sudden and hasty retreat into the nearest bathroom and wishes that the air didn’t seem so thick.

He turns on the taps and sticks his pale hands under, watching as the substance goes swirling down the drains and yet more seeps back up to the surface again like a molten eruption. He bites down savagely on his lower lip, his mind feels a little hazy and slightly disorientated but his thoughts are as keen as ever. He’s spent the day searching for a way out and he thinks now he just might have found one, but it’ll be no good if the idiot just walks in here and sees him like this because… because….

Sasuke tenses as he hears footsteps on the stairs, and strains to listen for how many: if it’s Naruto and co. he’s in big trouble, but Naruto himself, by himself, he can handle. For a moment the footsteps dwindle and then stop. Sasuke wills them to continue: “We’re not talking,” he mutters, “You’re angry with me, just leave me the hell alone.”

And for a while nothing happens and Sasuke wonders why Naruto just doesn’t keep on walking until he realises by looking at the medicine cabinet that shit it’s not his bathroom.

At the same time he moves to the door to lock it shut it’s shouldered open, and the blonde tresses framing that bold face with remarkably pure blue eyes moves in, mouth frowning, displeased. “Get the hell out!” form on his lips before he registers… and then halts, and does so completely, because he suddenly panics, and falls back against the door which swings shut behind him, clicking solidly closed.

“Sasuke,” he says on the out breath, in tones below a whisper, “what the hell happened?”

The Uchiha looks down at the basin. The white tiles are covered in thick clots of deep crimson, and little pools of blood slide in carmine rivulets down the sides, and the water is turned a deep pink.

He gives a smile, the sort you might see from a snake before it bites you: slow, unfathomable and infinitely dangerous, inky black eyes impossibly dark and somewhat devouring. Naruto presses his spine back flat against the door.

“…Are you sure you want to know?”

The question hangs.

Chapter Six: We used to be friends

Disclaimer: If I owned Naruto I wouldn’t be writing this, I’d be drawing it.

Naruto stands there for a moment, and then panics. Seriously panics. Full throttle adrenaline rush, lets head for the sky- flushed through with fear.

That is, until he realizes that it is his reaction Sasuke is looking for above all else: dark eyes viciously curious. Not the look from someone who has just finished slicing and dicing some poor unsuspecting neighbour.

Naruto breathes slowly out and his blood stills, leaving room for collection and for emotions to stop swirling inside him. They reside in an odd tangy aftertaste of bitter resentment and anger- briefly he tries to swallow it down.

His attention now focused on the sink: there is blood on the white porcelain, blood because Sasuke is bleeding. This time, Naruto looks instead of assuming, notices how the hands are filled and criss-crossed with tiny delicate frisking cuts. Too small, too neat, too exact to have been done by accident- or even by Sasuke’s own hand.

As Naruto stands against the door, his expression changes and the power swing shifts as the ball rolls into his court. He braces himself, muscles tensed for an explosion of energy as the atmosphere veritably crackles with tension. The only sound is of the water gargling down the plug hole, swirling down the old pipes into dank depths below.

“Oh,” he concludes, voice deep and growling. He moves away from the door, footsteps slow and confident, and his cornflower eyes are a deeper blue then Sasuke thinks he’s ever seen before. They smolder almost lazily, like an animal’s in the shadow: watching for its prey to stumble, waiting to leap for the kill.

He watches as Naruto folds his arms, smiling, self-assured and somewhat calculating. Sasuke analyses the unexpected reaction, pushing trails of dark hair from his forehead.

“I can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?” sounds Naruto’s voice, as though berating a naughty child. The fox-boy knows this will annoy Sasuke, and it was not unintended. He’s not a fan of having his life turned topsy-turvy, inside out. Neither is he a fan of having his feelings yanked up and spin-dried into a tangled confusing web, that doesn’t know which end is up. He attacks where it hurts the most- the Uchiha’s pride- and watches contemplatively as Sasuke turns to twist the taps off, his expression as expressive as a boulder.

“So you know all about it?” Sasuke asks simply, and he holds out his hands so Naruto can see where the skin has been ripped in thin symmetrical lines. Over the knuckles, in between the fingers to graze sore and painful across the thicker skin of the palm.

“I set the damned thing up,” is Naruto’s chiding reply. He doesn’t mention ‘with line-to-line instructions from Tsunade’ who had badgered him incessantly all the way through his trial-and-error experiments that he was taking far too long.

“You suck as a house guest Sasuke Uchiha. You’re rude and you’re pissy, you don’t say thank you and even worse you’ve always been better looking than me, so I can’t pity you for being uglier then I am.”

“Your cooking makes me sick.” Is Sasuke’s flat and petulant reply, with a sparkle of something in those dark eyes… satisfaction?

“Then make your own food!” Naruto hisses back, quite stung by this, he wasn’t that bad of a cook anymore!

“It would be easier on both of us if you just let me go.”

Naruto’s eyes narrow: cornflower eaten at the corners by an intense, thicker, bloodier colour as a creature called Temper rises inside his core. It seems to flood down his tongue into words, oddly indolent, as he leans forwards.

Inches separate their mouths from one another.

“Oh I think you at least owe me a thank you, don’t you?”

The space between them feels like it is slowly being swallowed. Indeed it narrows when Sasuke takes a step towards his sentinel, quixotic eyes and dark lashes like a crow’s wings noticeably murky with danger:

“Don’t play games like this Idiot, you’ll just end up loosing to me, like you always did and like you always do. Just like when we were kids.”

“But I’m not a child anymore Sasuke, and I was never the sore looser.”

His acid smile almost melts his teeth as he retorts, “You’re still a child with your foolish wants, hopes and dreams. I want out Naruto.”

The blonde shrugs his wide shoulders, but his expression remains intense. “Giving up so soon? Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Take down the barrier.” It is not spoken. It’s snarled.

Naruto pauses for a moment as if considering the demand… “Not likely,” he finally wraps up with a grin. “And don’t think any hissy-fit you throw will change my decision Sasuke.”

The frustration escalates like steam inside a glass tumbler, hot white searing clouds that cling to everything they touch. Sasuke looks down at his hands again and Naruto can make out the lines around his mouth, grim and determined, like he’s backed into a corner and running out of options. Slowly the lips part and the talk begins. The words are slow and considered, as if he’s been thinking about them for a long, long time:

“When I open a window, or the front door, nothing happens. I would have thought that you’d have stopped me from doing that. So I’d have to break the door down, or create a whole in the wall to get out, which would cause me a lot of stress and pain. You might be an idiot, but you’re not blind, you’d notice if I hurled your couch across the room and through the opposite wall. But you didn’t want me to not be able to open the door and windows, but you have made it impossible for me to leave. There’s a barrier across every point of entry, it is invisible to the naked eye, it seems to shift and move and sort of gather like it‘s alive. It follows me about when I move, doesn’t it? It’s held in place with your Chakra, isn’t it? You created it that way. ” He brings his palms up to the ceiling light, inspecting the cuts there.

“It’s very clever, people can come and enter as they please, but I can’t leave because you don’t want me to, it’s your will power that keeps me in place, your prisoner in other words, because you want to keep me here.”

He turns his hands over and looks at the bleeding knuckles.

“I put my hands against it and it threw me five meters back against your kitchen door and into the cupboard where that… that thing is living. In other words,” he looks back up at Naruto, eyes suddenly much harder than a moment ago, “I’m fighting against your psyche.”

Naruto blinks, he’d be a fool to underestimate Sasuke’s powers of scrutiny, but that doesn’t mean he has to like them. He finds them damn annoying actually.

“I want you to take it down.” Sasuke reiterates.

“No,” Naruto replies bluntly without an infringement of false politeness, and his eyebrows have shot up all the way into his hairline. They are in danger of flying right off the front of his face.

“Take it down.”

“How about… no?”

“Please don‘t make this so boring. No.”

“Naruto!”

“I don’t take orders from you Sasuke!” he shouts very loudly and all of a sudden, “or anyone else I don’t particularly respect for that matter! Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Naruto, I have to leave here, if you don’t willingly let me, so help me I’ll-”

“Oh you’ll what Sasuke? You’ll what?” Naruto jibes back, arms still firmly crossed, nails digging into the forefront of his elbows, riling the skin and digging it up.

Sasuke is silent, watching Naruto like a shocked panther: tensed and horribly alert, sensing as Uzumaki’s temper slips closer and closer to the Edge as he continues: “You threw everything away once, I’m not letting you run off to Orochimaru again.”

“Can’t-” says Sasuke abruptly as if the word catches in his throat and he’s just avoided coughing up his own tongue. He places one finger to his flushed burgundy lips and looks thoroughly shocked by the word.

Naruto frowns and watches perplexed as Sasuke blinks and recovers and murmurs: “If you won’t let me go willingly Naruto Uzumaki, I’m warning you now, I won’t let you stand between me and what I have to do. I’ll… kill you… if I have to.”

The blonde youth merely glances at him with unconcerned blue eyes; the look probes everywhere and over every inch of Sasuke’s body.

“You- you can’t fight my battles for me,” Sasuke snarls, feeling peculiarly taken advantage of and… embarrassed by the look… it goes everywhere.

Anger crawls under his skin as Naruto moves towards him with an irritating laziness, confident with his movements, and Sasuke leans backwards from his spine feeling threatened. Wide, beautiful, poised smile thrumming along the arching curve of Naruto’s sensual mouth.

“Someone has to, because you certainly can’t,” he follows smoothly, flirting quite boldly with Sasuke’s rage and confusion, and examines as the white-hot emotions spill over. Naruto (unwisely) pushes him further.

Frankly he feels like a fight and he’s been on tender hooks for far too long without venting.

“I’ll kill you,” Sasuke grits out between his back molars, more a grunt than a sentence.

“With what? The toothbrush?” Naruto pokes, pushing really close now. Their noses are centimeters apart, his own eyes as turbulent as waters stained in a crimson sunset.

He widens the grin like a Cheshire cat, and his eyes flicker coquettishly to Sasuke’s mouth and then up again to eyes that are neither inky black or smoky grey but a shade just between.

Sasuke, he notices, flushes: just slightly, barely noticeable, a pink tinge to ivory skin.

Leisurely Naruto reaches into his pocket and pulls out a kunai, holding it idly between his middle and forefinger, swinging the blade back and forth.

Then he throws it forwards and it lands, embedding itself deep into the plaster and wood in the wall just beside Sasuke’s left temple.

The grin gets impossibly wider, yet every inch a fox’s grin, low and seductive, pulling forwards and teasing. Deviously tempting and bewitchingly alluring.

“Go on then- try.”

And with that, he turns his back in one fluid movement and walks out the door. Pausing in the archway, he looks casually back over his shoulder.

Sasuke stands stunned in the middle of the bathroom tiles.

Naruto’s grins turns to something wicked, he winks and just strolls into the hallway.

* * *

Sasuke remains motionless, seething for what seems an age, fingers trembling as they curl and uncurl from the palm of his hands. He glowers at the doorway Naruto has just so confidently strolled through and turns back to the kunai embedded in the wall behind him.

His fingers glance against the cold handle, corrugated iron bleeds against his fingertips as he slides them across the surface. It’s real alright.

As if by its own convulsion his hand grabs out, settling the weapon in a deathly firm grip, muscles flex as he pulls it lithely out of the wall in a single yank. Wood splinters and plaster crumbles to a white pile on the slated floor.

Sasuke… in all truth he’s not quite sure of what he’s going to do with it. Something raw and throbbing he needs to know and identify, some urge he has to see through.

Maybe it’s because he’s not used to Naruto getting the better of him, argumentatively or verbally. But it might be the fact that… it’s something he is used to. He’s used to their confliction. He’s on familiar ground here, ground he knows he can win.

He flicks dark hair from his eyes, flexing his limbs, drawing the shoulders back as he slips deadly and silent out of the door. Pale skin contrasts starkly against the bottomless black of his eyes.

Naruto is as expected waiting for him, down the other end of the corridor, face drawn into an eager and savage expression. Sasuke is caught for a moment as the blood pumps harder and faster in his ears by those intense blue eyes waiting… just waiting for him.

“Taijutsu.” Sasuke announces and his voice rings hard and cold down the corridor. It reverberates against the walls before slipping down, deadly and silent to the floor like an encompassing cloak.

It’s too narrow to fight properly- Sasuke finds himself thinking as he braces himself, setting his feet slightly wider apart, that someone has a high probability of going smashing through a wall. But even as he thinks it, he knows Naruto doesn’t give a damn how much they wreck the apartment as long as it blows the tension straight out the window.

Naruto looks impatient as he shrugs his jacket from his broad shoulders and tosses it carelessly behind him.

“That’s fine with me,” he calls back bluntly. The intense gaze Sasuke notices never once shifts from him: there’s no break in concentration and the whole air seems to pulse with how much they both want this.

Sasuke rolls the iron of the kunai in his hands, feeling the weight of it. He lets his eyes linger for a moment on Naruto’s hitai, and states: “I mean it Uzumaki.”

The blonde youth doesn’t answer.

Instead, he comes at Sasuke in a blinding forward tackle- or rather, what Sasuke interprets as a forward tackle until Naruto completely disappears from in front of him. Caught off guard and cursing himself for letting his attention wander for the briefest instant he jumps backwards: arms flying back for balance as he lands skidding across the smooth wood. The friction makes the floor screech, a burning smoky tinge at the introductory abuse.

His eyes scanning the walls above, to the front and at the sides, his body in simple reflex automatically clenches to summon his sharingan. Except Sasuke knows by the dull throbbing in his chest and wrist, that there is no hope in hell this is going to happen.

It’s on the third step backwards that causes alarm bells to ring like thunder inside his mind, primal instinct in its most refined form-

- and he ducks, falling flat onto his palms as Naruto aims a blow for the space that his head had been occupying.

The lunge creates a moment of weakness: Naruto hadn’t been expecting Sasuke to drop and he fumbles for a moment, providing the second the Uchiha needs to surge up from the floor. He twists his arms behind him as he rushes skywards, gripping Naruto’s wrists, slamming his back so hard into Naruto’s chest that bone crushes against flesh. Temporarily winded, Naruto goes flying: a hard solid something collides with his crown and the world bursts into bubbling white stars.

He’s down for less than two seconds.

A beautifully fluid body in a seamless motion arrives to drive its foot through Naruto’s skull- but Naruto will have none of it, shaking the sparks of distorted light from his mind and using them to increase his determination. His upper torso contracts and dodges the limb, blocking as Sasuke effortlessly shifts equilibrium, using muscular forearms to balance solely on powerful hands. His second foot swings towards Naruto’s temple- in slow motion, the image is insane: a whole body propelling contorted torso and legs in a circular motion through the air.

Naruto is grazed and has to forcibly bend his spine in a way he knows it isn’t really supposed to go. He is expecting Sasuke to continue with his hands, flipping out of the upside-down position he swung from. The spinning lion strike perhaps or something equally lethal- what he doesn’t expect is the whole torso to just shift like that. Sasuke lifts his body weight upwards, arching his back, before curving back down onto his feet.

The angle of Sasuke’s drop allows him to catch Naruto with a roundhouse blow that glances across his nose. He instinctively backs away as fast as he can, body lowering down the ground, shoulders raised, causing his hands to come into play with his movement as much as his feet do. Parallel to the ground, one foot stretched out behind him and one bent against his side- prepared to fly in any direction. It’s a defensive and animalistic position, something he inherently adopts when the demon inside of him senses a challenge. Eyes fiercely alert, adrenalin pumping like a drug through his blood, as he licks his lips to taste a little metallic blood and the salt of sweat, he watches Sasuke intently.

Sasuke is breathing hard: he’s not quite fully recovered from his ordeal, if he ever will do. Without Chakra, Sasuke’s physical skills are still as strong as ever. Naruto ponders on this as he skids backwards: the Uchiha comes for him again, but he is ready now.

Rolling and dodging he spins, and his fist, spinning with him, crashes into Sasuke’s stomach. The acid and bile that Sasuke spits up is noted with some satisfaction.

But he has no time to take further pride as Sasuke, coughing like he’s going to die, aims a double-handed blow at his head (popular place today). Naruto is quick enough but only just, gripping Sasuke’s approaching wrists and slamming them with force downwards. Wood splinters from the floorboards and fragments into dangerous rugged edged spikes right beside his left temple.

Naruto suspects Sasuke could probably crush his skull like an egg with his bare hands if he was allowed to get a good enough grip. Bone and muscle can only withstand so much, and it’s not really a very pleasant thought.

Even trapped inside the fuel of the fight, Naruto cannot help but be fascinated by his opponent’s gliding and subtle style. His movement had always been alluring, speed morphing him into deadly silent shadows, fluid as water and twice as strong, he cuts through space like a knife, brutally efficient and to a deadly point.

As he jumps back on the balls of his toes he finds himself laughing at the thought of death, as he’s never done before.

Enjoying it as they circle each other, plaster and panelling pressing against his back, and for a moment, the tiniest moment, he can see what it is about Sasuke Uchiha that makes all the girls crazy about him. The intensity that is now focussed on him, Naruto Uzumaki: totally, entirely concentrated, and on nothing and no one else.

For some unknown reason it make his body thrum with pleasure.

“Is that the best you’ve got?” he jibes, sunny smile flashing white teeth and blue, blue eyes.

“You’re a lot of talk, Naruto.” Sasuke snaps at him, petulant mouth turning into a firm smile, the first proper, beautiful, funny, delightful, implausible smile that Naruto has seen him form for such a long, long while.

It makes him look human suddenly, a brief glimpse of someone from years ago… and someone he could have been.

“You always talk like you’re the best. But can you prove it?”

Sasuke thinks the expression on Naruto’s face once again becomes seductive as they continue to circle, and it feels like they’re dancing, perfectly in rhythm, effortlessly. Sasuke can sense the slightest tensioning of muscle, bone and cartilage in Naruto’s physique; the pause he makes with his left foot as his mind stumbles across a thought; the way his hands clench when he gets excited and the way his smile tugs his lips up at the corners to reveal passing smirks and the flash of teeth.

It’s the smile that Sasuke’s really watching… it takes him.

“This coming from a guy whose got black and white streaked hair?” The youth jokes back, “You’re prematurely aging from fright Sasuke!”

Sasuke lets out a short sharp burst of laughter, it sounds almost like a cough, “Your stupid wardrobe idiot, it wouldn’t wash out. And even if I was hundred I could still take you out.”

“Ah,” Naruto pauses for thought:

“Up against a young whippersnapper like me, when you were taken down by a piece of furniture, Uchiha? What hope do you have against the next Hokage?”

As he yells the last two words, he dashes forwards, feinting right, left, then right again. Playing with distraction. He was never as fast as Sasuke was in their youth. In his absence he’s gained distance on him, closing the gap but not close enough. Yet Sasuke only half avoids the attack, and it’s no surprise to either of them when they fall forwards together in an awkward tangle of limbs.

Staggering backwards, there is a loud ‘crack’ as something that sounds like the dull crunch of bone slams against the wall. Naruto’s legs in between Sasuke’s legs, and he can’t stop them from toppling off and down those stairs, the whole flight of stairs, right down to the very bottom.

Is it the idea that Sasuke is ill? The fact that he might of started this fight? Or maybe the remembrance that he’s better off being hurt than Sasuke is?

When he considers it later, Naruto glides across the fact that he couldn’t stand the thought of Sasuke breaking open his skull and spilling his brains across his clean varnished oak wood steps.

Much, much later, he’ll realise that it’s because the idea of Sasuke getting hurt like that in any way, form or manner, when he can’t protect himself, when he’s at a disadvantage, because of him, makes his head ring and his stomach convulse as if he’s physically going to be sick.

It’s at that moment, when he subconsciously he pushes Sasuke on top of him, so his spine and his head take the brunt of the hard ‘nackety-thump’ of the steps as they go clumping down them. Teeth clamped down hard in terror that they might slice off their own tongues.

With each jolt Naruto can feel the sharp stinging edge of the kunai pressing into his collarbone, raking against the skin, scoring flesh in small lumps.

As they tumble down the last steps together, Naruto’s cranium colliding with a sickening ‘crunch’ with the corner edge of the wall, he watches multicoloured explosions die down before his eyes. He dimly registers the pressure of another body over his as he lies on his back. Thick blood leaks up from the back of his throat from where he bit his tongue- he fears he might choke on it, and he gags.

“You win,” He says, darkly, voice hoarse and rugged as his lungs convulse and wrack. Through the pounding in his brain, bitter resentment and futility seeming to flood him suddenly as he looks callously up at the ceiling.

Sasuke doesn’t say anything. He seems to be drawing long shuddering breaths. From Naruto’s fuzzy vision, there’s a bloody stain under the arch of one of his eyebrows and his bottom lip is torn- he can‘t quite make out the expression but he pre-supposes it to be a sneering ugly thing.

“Why- why did you do that?” are the only words Sasuke can think of saying, staring at the blonde with incredulous incomprehensibility lying in his eyes.

“Stupidity,” he is told, cornflower blue stained darker from exhaustion, ribbing deepest maroon around the edges of the pupil. “Aren’t you going to kill me?”

Sasuke wonders for a moment at the anger apparent n the youth’s voice, mind still spinning reels from the stairs. He straddles Naruto slowly, considering, and presses the kunai to his throat. He keeps the blade just below the jugular, watching the Adam’s apple bob as he swallows.

“So go on then, do it. Kill me.”

Black eyes blink, but no movement, no killing strike, no malevolence, no hatred just blind confusion.

“Wasn’t fair,” Sasuke mumbles, and he begins to sit back, “Didn’t win. I can’t…won’t.”

Naruto snarls, exposing overly long canines in a mouth of human teeth. He doesn’t want the Uchiha to act noble, not now of all times, not when he’s trying to convince himself that there’s nothing left there to save.

“You swore on it.”

Sasuke licks his lips, but his hands don’t move. They seem frozen in place and he’s suddenly very aware of the fact that’s he’s straddling Naruto.

Naruto who isn’t twelve anymore, Naruto who is now an adult, mature, and strangely masculine- or at least it seems this way to Sasuke, the idea of sexuality pulsing at the back of his throat, and he shifts uncomfortably.

This is Naruto.

Naruto for fuck’s sake!

Naruto who drives him mad, who makes him want to scream, who makes him want to cry, whom he wants to lie down next to and fall asleep with because no other place on earth is so secure.

His wrist flexes, and he makes to draw the kunai away, to throw it behind him and get up and walk away with his remaining dignity.

But Naruto- his Naruto, Naruto who is looking up at him with a curious mixture of self-loathing, bitter resentment and hate, stops him. The hand clamps down unmercifully tight on his wrist, holding it there; eyes, those cornflower eyes slipped with deep mauve blemishing and tarnishing the iris, holding him there.

“Go on Sasuke, do it. Finish what you started.”

Sasuke doesn’t move. He can smell dust and crumbling plaster on the air mixed with the aroma of their perspiration. It is rich and thick on his tongue and he seems to swallow it down his throat: life essence, something he associates with living, breathing bodies.

His heart races, and he blinks again, forcing himself to think outside the walls, wrenching thoughts away from Naruto. Listening to the rain pattering against the window as the storm clouds roll in, grey and thick. Listening to lightening darts striking the earth, leaving trails of ozone meandering in the air, drawing it closer and making it warm and muggy.

Sasuke’s eyes fix on where Naruto’s fingers lace and fasten against his own.

Their heartbeats seem to mingle.

To his horror Naruto pulls the blade and his hand down to his clavicle and up to the soft flesh, unguarded by hard bone, all pulsing tissue, malleable to the touch.

He applies pressure against Sasuke’s hand. All the time his eyes never moving from Sasuke’s face, watching as it contorts in surprise and then terror as the clean sharp edge digs a smooth line into the skin, drawing blood.

The harder Naruto presses against his hand the deeper it goes in. A swelling of crimson blossoms across the line of the cut, and dribbles on the sheen of smooth iron, jolting Sasuke out of his stunned reverie. He rips his hand back, kunai clattering bloody to the floor.

“Stop it!” he yells, enraged that Naruto simply lies there and watches him do it, he opens his mouth lazily and responds: “Maybe I was hoping you’d follow something through for once.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit!” Sasuke snarls, more panicky that he thought he could be, hands shaking and heart pounding like it will skip out of his throat. “How can you become Hokage if you die first? Or do you enjoy pain, you masochist? In which case-”

And he draws back his fist and punches the blonde youth beneath him, fist recoiling back and up again like a piston, body flooded with cold icy rage, rage that burns when Naruto just turns the other cheek, and laughs bitterly back at him.

“And what about you? I thought you meant to kill me? Or was that all an act? Like everything is? Like every word you say ends up being, either a lie or a broken empty promise,” he spits out his words like bullets.

“I’m not playing with you Naruto you idiot. I meant what I said.”

“Oh did you- so when you’ve killed me, where will you go?”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“Like hell, it does!”

“You shouldn’t care!” There seems to be an edge of desperation to Sasuke’s voice as he yells this, eyes glittering and intense, hands firm against Naruto’s chest as he leans down, looking directly into his eyes.

“But I do!” More anger, mouth curved down, stubbornness and rigidity built and wielded into every line. It drives Sasuke crazy.

“You’re an idiot then, you shouldn’t …don’t!”

The world lurches as Naruto surges up and pins him down easily beneath him; a drop of blood splatters onto Sasuke’s neck from Naruto’s, and slides down his skin onto the floor Those dark whisker-like scars are sunken in his cheeks.

For a fleeting instant Sasuke has the urge to trace them with his forefinger and run his fingertips across Naruto’s cheekbones.

“Why do you think all your actions exist in isolation? Why don’t you understand that it effects me?! Why didn’t you understand that when you left you ripped me -us! …Sakura… she was so lonely…I didn’t want her to be alone- I… didn’t want to be… I’m… it’s… it hurts, it still hurts.” Naruto’s voice cracks, and pain, physical pain and meaning is communicated in each vocal movement and syllable; breathless on the out breath, body shivering.

“It hurts so much, and you just keep pushing and pushing!” he was yelling now, palms a raw and throbbing pressure on Sasuke’s shoulders. The hard weight of the floor boards and iron nails are pushing painfully into his skull.

“You just don’t care do you? I do- I do- I can’t stop caring and hurting…” his voice trails off and he squeezes his eyes closed, burning. His body drops an inch lower so he’s almost lying on top of Sasuke, awkward odd angle, jutting elbows and scraping knees but Sasuke will tolerate it, for Naruto.

“I’m so tired of bleeding all over the place and having to avoid thinking about you. Justifying and defending you… over and over to others and then myself… even when I know you’re just going to let me fall all over again. When you came back… I thought, this is it! We can finally go back to the way it was before. But we can’t even stand to be in the same room together, can we? It’s so hopeless! It’s so hopeless. Why have I not given up on you? Why do I still… feel… this way… so strongly?” His whole face flushed, blush creeping up onto his cheeks as he presses fingers to his forehead and then his mouth, as if to hide the words that are over-flowing.

“Why can’t I just learn to let you go?” It’s a little less then a murmur, but then he falls and the strength of the sound is inconsequential to Sasuke, as it echoes in his head, and he finds Naruto collapsing on top of him, nose pressing against the junction of his neck, eyes… closed.

Sasuke Uchiha lies rigid under the blonde dead weight atop him, ruler straight in panic. “Help!” he says to the ceiling in a little under a whisper.

He lies slack for a moment, not even daring even to breathe. His head turns a fraction to the left, and says in low growling tones into Naruto’s ear, “Get off me.”

There is no response.

For a brief moment Sasuke thinks about how highly uncomfortable this all is, with Naruto’s hip jutting into his lower abdomen. A slightly bloody strand of hair hangs across Naruto’s eyes, and the tang of blood ebbs slightly in Sasuke’s mouth. But he can smell the blond boys hair, and his skin: soap mixed with the fresh scent of sweat and earth. He can feel the muscle definition of Naruto’s legs and upper torso through his clothes.

Sasuke twist and rolls, throwing off the dead weight, so that Naruto slides onto his back. His eyes remain closed, his breathing somewhat laboured and ragged. Licking his lips, Sasuke gets to his knees and stretches out his hand, brushing against the Kitsune’s forehead, and then recoils like he’s been stung.

And he glares at Naruto as if he’s done it on purpose.

Sasuke rocks back onto his haunches, and considers. Does he leave Naruto here? He really is perfectly defenceless in this position, unconscious, probably dehydrated, starving, and running a temperature that could melt plastic.

He pokes Naruto experimentally with his foot in the ribs. The fool just groans, a deep noise right from his stomach, mouth contorted into a line of pain.

He leans down now and shakes Naruto by the shoulders, figuring it can’t be good that he’s passed out. Sasuke’s hands come away damp with sweat. The blonde youth simply lies limp and placid, like a sack of wet noodles, bones seemingly slipping and sliding inside a casket of flesh.

“Listen, you didn’t hit your head that hard,” Sasuke states whilst wondering if the fluttering in his stomach is to do with repressed nerves. “I’m warning you Uzumaki, if this is some kind of joke…”

There’s not so much as even a quiver of a response from Naruto, and Sasuke finds himself rather missing that idiotic, blithe smile. He allows himself a brief moment to think, leaning back, fingers drilling against his temples and sliding through the front curtains of his hair.

“What’s wrong with you?” Sasuke asks himself, knowing full well he’s not going to get an answer but asking it anyway because it needs to be said. The slight panic, he concludes, is from his own knowledge that he’s never been very good when it comes to looking after other people. By nature, Sasuke Uchiha is not very empathetic to the needs and wants of others; he’s far too self-centred. Sakura was always good at that sort of thing, the best out of all of them.

Maybe, Sasuke thinks, that was the reason why Naruto chose a life with Sakura, someone who understood him: riddled as he is with thousands of little misgivings, doubts, and plights, bubbling under the constant determination of ‘I have to get better, so that people will like me.’

Sakura accepts him, she accepted both of them, and Sasuke thinks, frowning, that she probably loves the fool too, in her way- different from the way he knew she loved him.

How could she not love Naruto?

In the face of loosing to Sakura, the Uchiha grimaces, baring his teeth and the pink slip of his tongue in a dark mouth.

This empathy, this touchy-feely, delicate nonsense is not his forte, and even as he bends down, bracing his knees and fidgeting before he starts, he recollects the fact that he really has no idea of what to do.

He’s half inclined to take a bucket of ice water and dunk it all over the blonde’s head, but that might cause Naruto to have a heart attack that really would kill him, and this, for the moment is not Sasuke’s intention.

He hoists Naruto up, so his head leans flopping against his shoulder, muttering: “Idiot-idiot, dumb ass, moron, block head, twit…” and an assortment of other variations on this theme. He pulls his torso up so that he is standing, and Naruto is leaning fully against him, legs dragging across the floor.

Sasuke bravely pushes down the panic that’s swelling up inside as he tries to navigate the youth so he can wind one arm around Naruto’s shoulder as they approach the stairs. He staggers slightly under the weight-

- and he eases him gently up the stairs, or as gently as can be humanely managed, which in retrospect Sasuke has to admit wasn’t very gentle at all. Navigating with a dead weight is much harder then it would seem to be, especially when Sasuke slips at one point and the weight causes him to impale his stomach on the banister. Naruto slides down his shoulder and almost falls all the back way down the stairs again. Cursing his clumsiness and Naruto’s bone-headed testosterone-driven stupidity, he manages to make it up the stairs, only to pause on the landing as he recollects briefly that he can’t put Naruto in his own room because of… ah… ‘The Mess’….

Sasuke can see round the side of the half open door and quickly retreats from it. No, he’s definitely going to have to go in the room he’s been using. It’s not too much of a great deal; he’ll just have to sleep on the floor.

Dragging and hauling Naruto across the bedroom, he tosses him with glorious relief onto the bed, stretching out his shoulders, and working out the kinks in his neck that seemed to have formed there.

The mattress creaks, the springs sagging and bouncing with the broader weight, and Sasuke looks critically at Naruto who does nothing more then lie there breathing shallow. Little rapid breaths and eyebrows clenched together as if in pain.

First things first, he can’t sleep in those clothes. If Sasuke had come across Naruto lying in the hallway with a fever a few days earlier, he realises he probably wouldn’t have gone to the effort of caring whether damp clothes would make the Fox’s condition worse. Would he even have carried him upstairs? Would he have cared at all?

But Sasuke tactically avoids such thoughts.

“Naruto,” Sasuke says again, “I’m going to need you to take off your clothes for me.”

It sounds wrong.

But the blonde is about as responsive as a rock. Sasuke leans down across him and tries again: he’s not going to do this unless he really, really has to.

“Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Naruto!”

Absolutely nothing. Becoming more desperate, Sasuke uses the back of his hand to slap him across his cheeks once in order to get himself some sort of response.

The Kitsune gives him nothing in return, not so much as a flicker of a reply to acknowledge that he’s here, alive and still breathing. Sasuke finds himself analysing the face as his stomach claws down unexplained panic. There’s a slight discolouring of the skin around the eye socket from where Sasuke punched him earlier. If the Fox’s metabolism is working, it’s working slower then usual: he’d expect a mark like that to not even register on Naruto’s complexion, seeing as how lightly he’d punched him.

Sasuke grinds his teeth and considers the penalties on his own conscience if he just leaves Naruto here to get better by himself. Little flames of indignation burst up and down his system at the mere thought of it. It’s a dishonourable thing to do, here he was alive-something he hadn’t expected to still be- and here Naruto was ramming himself up against a mountain-wide brick wall, because… because….

He sighs noisily and clicks his teeth together. Fingers flex as they move haltingly in little jerky movements to Naruto’s stomach, running smoothly under the material of the white t-shirt he’s wearing.

He pulls it up over Naruto’s torso. Naruto’s body flops awkwardly and more the point unhelpfully backwards against the motion, so that Sasuke has to fight to get it past his shoulders, then over his head- nearly scraping off both of his ears in the process- and finally pulling Naruto’s arms out- all the time with a dark scowl on his face.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he mumbles, actively keeping his eyes on Naruto’s face once the supple flesh of his torso has been exposed. He can half feel the milky cappuccino skin thrumming with heat just beneath him. His face stupidly feels as if it’s burning.

He throws the shirt of the floor somewhere; he’ll pick it up in a minute after he’s… finished with this.

Sasuke sits for a moment, breathing as if he’s just run a marathon. Now to that question of ‘does he throw Naruto under the covers wearing those trousers?’ Does he dare think about taking them off him, and if he does… is Naruto wearing anything underneath them?

Sasuke finds himself resisting the urge to slam his head against the wall and repeat the motion over and over again several times. Or, more satisfyingly, slam Naruto’s.

Here’s another thing he’d never thought he’d do, blushing heavily, he even closes his eyes as he lays pale fingers over the lower half of Naruto’s stomach. The blonde twitches slightly in his state of unconsciousness, and mumbles something incoherent, as one does in the middle of a high fever.

It’s not really helping anything.

His fingers brush lower and lower until they touch the top of Naruto’s trouser waist band and the Uchiha hesitates. He gathers the rest of his nerves and slides his thumb underneath it, just a fraction. He tries to ignore the half of his brain that is screaming at him how unbelievably kinky the whole thing is, whilst the other half in clumsy determination grates itself to finish what he has started.

Eyes squeezed shut, not daring to move any lower he rubs the digit of his thumb in a smooth circle on the skin down there, keeping firmly to the far right: he can’t feel anything except burning flesh, and so very slowly he moves a little lower. Barely a centimetre until the pad brushes against something above the skin, soft like cotton.

Sasuke jerks his hand out from Naruto’s trousers as though stung by a wasp, and opening his eyes catches sight of himself in the mirror. He considers the simple fact that he could probably fry several large eggs on his face right now if he really dared to try.

After removing Naruto’s last articles of outdoor clothing- which Sasuke discovers is actually quite hard when you’re trying to do it with your eyes closed and your hands trying desperately to not touch anything important- he mutters something dripping with sarcasm, as he actually has to wipe his brow. He had had to wrestle Naruto’s trousers off his legs and feet, before, in his flustered state, he’d seen the sense in removing the shoes.

He has to admit to himself, he hadn’t really thought it through a hundred percent.

He acrimoniously throws the covers over the blonde and fights the urge to shuffle sheepishly out of the room and wash his skin with bleach.

Instead he goes down to the kitchen, rifles through several draws for a clean dishtowel and opens the freezer- to his great misfortune, as the frozen contents proceed to rain down on him. Sasuke glares inwardly at the mocking feeling of deja-vu. Showering his skin are frozen peas and a square block of ice that looks as though it might contain a dead fish.

Later, when Sasuke is quite sure he’s suppressed the god-awful-scream that threatened to skewer his system and rise through his lungs at realisation of just what had been in that ice block, he trudges back into Naruto’s room. He thrusts the iced towel onto the Kitsune’s forehead, dumps a bucket of ice by his bed, sits down heavily in the middle of the floor, flops backwards; and considers what on earth to do next.

Sasuke closes his eyes, kneading his forehead with his knuckle, and gives a long suffering exhalation of breath. One flaw with this brilliant plan: he can’t cook… anything. Well this is a lie, he can cook toast, but he burns it until it’s almost inedible. Naruto needs something at least resembling vegetables and some kind of protein and complex carbohydrates, he figures. He can’t do that, and he out right, point blank, thrust the gun against my forehead, refuses to give him that instant Ramen nonsense he happens to know Naruto has hidden underneath the sink… piles of it. He drums his fingers against the floorboards and meditates. So, he can’t cook. Naruto cannot move, let alone cook.

Sasuke’s stomach makes a mournful, rumbling sound.

There is a simple solution to this really, Sasuke decides, getting to his feet and brushing off his hands as he walks out of the door. Get someone else to cook for you.

* * *

There is steam coming up from the backroom that wafts delicious, succulent and tempting out into the front of the shop and seating area. A few customers are sitting on stools, chatting and eating their full bowls of noodles, soup, meat and vegetables. The head chief is leaning on the counter, chatting to a long time customer. He cleans his greasy hands on the front of his apron as he converses, one elbow propped up on the smooth wood:

“Oh yes, had them here for years now. Funny thing went very quite that way about two weeks ago, spooked people I heard. Like the whole island disappeared, huge great hole I was told appeared about five miles west of there as if someone had carved a great scoop out of the earth.”

A man in his fifties with long grey hair over a fierce face that is streaked with red paint, looks up interestedly up at this. He peers over the top of the book he is reading, slurping a great mouthful of noodles.

The phone rings on the wooden wall behind the chief who yells over his shoulder for Yumi. A pretty girl in her early twenties emerges from the kitchen, bringing out swathes of steam with her. Short, dark, curly hair in her eyes and piled on top of her head, she picks up the phone in one hand and a notebook and pencil with her other. She pulls a face as she balances the phone on her shoulder and prepares herself to write at the same time:

“Ichiraku, how can I help you?”

Jiraiya goes back to his book and eating as the subject turns to the weather, keeping an eye on the girl out of the corner of eye: he likes the way she stands, feet firmly planted apart, confident position.

“Now… is that two or three servings you’re asking for, sir? …Oh I see, you’re not sure how much he eats. May I ask if you’re going to eat as well? …What would I recommend? What do you usually like to eat? …No I’m afraid I’ve never heard of that. No spices? And… you don’t like sour, not too salty either… Okay, something bland then for you? Alright I’ll put you down for Shio soup Ramen then shall I? Oh! …Alright, one of everything- are you very sure? Deliver to where? …Oh …OH! That’s Naruto’s apartment, isn’t it?”

Everybody turns round and looks at her as she grins: “Yes, we make deliveries there all the time, don’t worry. I could make it there blind folded. Fast? Absolutely.” she winks at the chief, who smiles fondly at the receiver as she puts it down.

“So he’s alive then is he?” the chief rumbles, readjusting his hat. “He hasn’t been in here for a little over a month,” he tells the restaurant in general. “We were all starting to worry he’d fallen off the face of the earth!”

Jiraiya flips another page of the book he’s reading and finishes his bowl.

“Lady friend was it, ordering for him?” continues the chief.

Yumi grins as she puts the pad and paper back in her pocket. “Guy actually, didn’t recognise the voice, apparently Naruto couldn’t get to the phone.”

A stunned silence falls, and Jiraiya, suddenly interested all over again, peers over the top of the book, grinning from ear to ear.

The chief laughs, and then he whistles: “Was it indeed? Young devil, you’ll just have to go see and report back here and tell us- won’t she?” he asks the customers, all of which nod and some applaud.

Well, thinks Jiraiya, pushing away the empty bowl and standing up to leave. This just became all very interesting all of a sudden. He chuckles to himself and leaves the waitress a tip. Interesting enough to maybe, drop a look in on….

* * *

A/N

I want to say thank you to my reviewers, I did take on the advice of switching between tenses, and I apologise if that was annoying. I had no idea I did that, I hope this chapter is all in one tense (checks) It should be...

Now, I feel I am compelled to show you a review that really peeved me off, and I am sorry to hold it up as an example but I have to express my disgust at it:

Here is what the actual extract says: 'There’s a slight film of dirt covering Naruto Uzamaki’s skin as he licks his dried lips and brushes strands of hair sunlight bright out of wide inquisitive eyes.

Now, I can accept criticism of my work, and my style to an -extent- but this, this was just rude, quite clearly by the fact you dare to mock me by putting a 'contact me at: BLANK that this is a flame and you are too afraid to leave your email so I can reply to it. This is a shame because I would have been nicer about it if you had. The fact is, what really got at me was the corrected version. It doesn't hold the same meaning, or even SOUND as good as the original does. Oh, and your corrections on my grammar (Failing Mentally you are wonderful with your grammar tips, please keep giving them to me, they are a wonderful help and anyone else for that matter who did it constructively) well sorry, but as my good friend puts it: 'when they started griping about "lolzl i didnt read the rest of it cuz yer teneses sucxor."i was like "wtf."' Yes, well you see my point, I know I slip up, but I think I can use the present tense to write with thank you very much. After all, things do happen in the present now don't they? And my repetition, if I say things twice, but differently every time, then it's NOT the same thing is it then? It's part of my style and a technique used by wonderful and well known authors such as Diana Wynne-Jones and Agatha Christie, so don't give me that crap, of course it's done on purpose, I happen to ENJOY using it. I happen to feel it makes the reader think a bit more. Also, I have a beta darling, and she's great okay? So when things are double checked, they are double checked.

(Takes a deep breath out) can you at least see where I am coming from with this? It's not like I'm going to cry and slit my wrists or KILL OFF A CHARACTER BECAUSE IT HAS MADE ME SOOO ANGRY AND YOU HAVE RUINED MY LIFE!! But just...why would you think I would want to read this crappy attempt at a flame? At least leave me your email so I can anihilate you for god sakes.

To everyone else, thank you and goodnight!

(P.S review? Please???? I'm 18 soon, think of it as a birthday present to me x3 )

* * *

Yumi takes a detour on route to Naruto’s apartment. The sky is just getting dark and the cicadas are chirping as she heaves the bags over one shoulder and then the other. She’s curious as to who was the caller on the phone and jumps across the cracks in the pavement, tucking some stray strands of curling brown hair behind her ear. The moon is rising just beyond the mountain as she makes it towards the twirling steps that lead up to the apartment on the fourth floor.

It’s a nice place this apartment, Yumi thinks, as she runs her hands across the iron railing bar. Poor Naruto though, living here all alone, waiting for his Sakura-chan to come back… or not come back as the case may be.

She’d heard rumors that they’d had an argument just before Sakura had left. Something about marriage, a friend had told her. Yumi personally had never been able to stand Sakura much: all that short strawberry hair, green eyes and that attitude. But regardless, Naruto had been besotted with her ever since Yumi had known him.

Silly boy. Very silly boy. Yumi however was one of many basing views on the relationship on general gossip.

Other people younger than her, found the blue eyed, blonde haired wonder attractive- especially after he grew out of that annoying habit of saying “Believe it!” every two and a half seconds.

Yumi jogs up the last steps and stands on the welcome mat, punching the doorbell. She has this funny feeling she’s being followed, but every time she turns her head to check, she’s corrected. Although on one occasion she did see a wisp of trailing white hair disappearing behind a building… but she assumed it to be the neighbour’s small terrier dog.

A few seconds later she hears someone clatter down the stairs and skid into the hallway.

“Delivery!” she calls through the door, and out of habit she runs three fingers through her dark curls and licks her lips in apprehension of the mysterious character inside Naruto’s apartment.

The door opens and Yumi holds both bags in front of her, opening her mouth to chant the accustomed: “Ichiraku, thank you very much! We look forward to doing business with you again!”

…But she only gets over the first few syllables of ‘Ichiraku,’ so it sounds more like “I-chi-u-huh?” as someone with beautiful dark hair that sweeps across his face, a slim dark figure and pale skin, like torn ivory, bleeding contradiction up to almond shaped and slanted ebony eyes.

The young man places some money in one of her stunned outstretched hands and then, from within the doorway, reaches out for the Ramen bags.

Yumi’s mind whirrs, fizzles and calculates. She never forgets a face, not one as distinctive as this, and as the young man’s eyes reluctantly meet hers, the truth dawns.

“Uchiha…” she stammers and takes three short steps backwards, “Sasuke Uchiha!” Yumi’s voice rises into a short strangled scream.

“I-urgh,” the man burbles, giving her an alarmed look as if something very obvious has just dawned on him. He looks a little sick as she points a finger at him and screams:

The young man swallows. If possible his skin turns even paler as Yumi drops the Ramen bags and prepares to pelt down the stairs.

“I- I’m not Sasuke Uchiha!” he yells at her, panicking at the ruckus she has begun to make, eyes darting left and right to see if she had caused any of the neighbours to peer curiously out of their bedroom windows.

“I JUST LOOK LIKE HIM!”

Yumi stares at him, dumbfounded at the top of the stairs, murmurs, “Oh right…” not without her own ample dash of sarcasm, and flees down the spiraling steps. Her footsteps clang and clatter, and then echo into the gathering darkness before they fade out altogether.

“Oh shit,” mutters Sasuke Uchiha, leaning grumpily against the doorpost. The Ramen bags have been dumped no less then half a meter away from Naruto’s front door. Tentatively he pokes his little finger half a millimeter outside the boundary, and snarls as the condensation of blue sparks descends painfully on the tip.

What the hell was he supposed to do now?

* * *

With a careful tug the bags come sliding across the smooth wooden walkway and Sasuke prays that no one on the street below is watching him doing… doing whatever the hell this is.

With his luck, Sasuke imagines it likely someone in the apartment opposite is leaning out their window, binoculars in hand and incredulous gawping expression on their face, like a wet fish. And Sasuke’s had enough of that expression for one day.

As soon as the bags are over the lintel of Naruto’s front door he drags them fiercely inside and slams the door shut. A little too vigorously as some of the paint cracks and falls onto the welcome mat, only to be snarled at before the Uchiha turns and stomps (there really is no other way to describe it) all the way up the stairs and into Naruto’s bedroom. He forgets he’s still holding the umbrella in his left hand like a sword, and swinging the plastic bags as if they are bludgeons.

As the door opens Naruto shifts and rises into consciousness as the dream he‘s been having bursts. His head feels as though it’s made of cotton wool and his tongue rasps like sandpaper over the roof of his mouth. He winces painfully as Sasuke brings light into the room with him, standing for a fraction of a second in the archway, and Naruto thinks its an almost nervous expression that lingers there for a moment.

Ideas and thoughts begin to bubble in his mind, linking with memories. Wait, hadn’t they just been arguing? Not that that was new… but outside, in the hallway? And then later down the stairs? Why was he in here? Semi-naked? …and in… in Sasuke Uchiha’s bed?

Naruto scrambled head ringing like a bell, to get up and out of the covers: but finds himself cornered and almost speared on the end of an umbrella - a purple umbrella at that. It looked suspiciously like the one downstairs in his umbrella stand.

“Don’t you dare,” the Uchiha growls down at him, dark eyes glimmering but cheeks retaining a blush of pale pink, as though he’s flustered about something.

The umbrella pushes him unmercifully in the chest, backwards and downwards, and Naruto - facing umbrella skewering - meekly complies.

As he licks his lips tentatively and backs down, cornflower blue eyes slightly glassy and somewhat bleary, he asks in a cracked voice:

“How-how did I get in here?”

Sasuke puts the umbrella down and dumps the plastic bags on the dresser, tossing black hair out of smoky grey eyes. He fiddles in the bags for something and a delicious smell fills the room. Naruto sits up, feeling suddenly better. He knows that smell. Oh, he knows that smell certainly- Ramen!

“You’re hungry right?” Sasuke asks him, ignoring the question, and gives the baffled blonde a raised eyebrow as if to say ‘Yes moron, this is real’.

It’s a funny thing to consider a bowl of Ramen as a peace offering, especially when Sasuke Uchiha is holding it just out of reach, and the tempting aroma is wafting over you in delicious waves. Naruto unconsciously follows it with his eyes, his mouth watering on reflex.

Sasuke thrusts the plastic container at him. “Take it,” he says bluntly and breaks the chopsticks apart before he hands them to Naruto.

The Kitsune accepts unhesitatingly, and proceeds to stuff his face with the noodles and soup. Within seconds the bowl is empty and Sasuke is pulling out another one and handing it to the blonde. All for the contents to be hoovered up in a matter of seconds. Sasuke has to fight hard to suppress the smile that’s trying to creep it’s way up to his lips.

“You’re an idiot,” he can’t help saying as he pulls open a portion for himself and sits down on the floor to eat. Naruto just gives him a grin as he swallows down a huge bite of noodles.

“Ichiraku right? It’s so good!”

“There’s more in the bags if you’re still hungry after eating all that.” Sasuke watches, chopsticks hovering against his lips, as the Uzumaki tilts the bowl to his lips and ingests the contents with a faint gurgling sound. Sasuke looks away and forces himself to regain some appetite.

The recently unconscious blonde leans over and fiddles around in the bags, pulling out one dish after the other, a gleeful expression on his face like a child receiving Christmas presents.

“God Sasuke, there’s a lot,” is the gracious comment Sasuke receives after Naruto has placed meal number twelve on the floor and is picking out thirteen and fourteen. “I know you think I’m a pig, but there’s only so much even a pig can eat.”

Sasuke quietly chews the contents of the salty noodles in his mouth, swallowing after the twenty-sixth chew exactly before he answers: “I didn’t know what type you liked. I’m hardly an expert on Ramen. I just asked for one of everything.”

Naruto chokes halfway through swallowing something and puts the bowl down on the dresser (not caring for marking the woodwork, despite the fact that Sasuke winces when he does it.) He slams a closed fist into his chest before spluttering out:

“What? You mean Kiba or Shikamaru didn’t… they aren’t downstairs?”

The incomprehensible look is back again and Sasuke feels his spine bristle slightly under his flesh.

“No, nobodies downstairs.”

“Not even Hinata?” Naruto asks desperately blinking those damned wide cornflower blue eyes as if Hinata doesn’t count as a full person to Sasuke.

The expression he is presented with is not un-akin to someone sucking lemons as icy sarcasm floats back to the surface; Sasuke rolls his eyes: “Well if you’d like to check….”

“But- but!” stammers Naruto, looking pained, then frantic and then aghast and all very suddenly, he runs his hands through his blonde hair, ironing out the tangled sunlight gold tresses.

“Who opened the door then? Who took the delivery?”

Sasuke’s expression immediately switches to something Naruto fathoms to be agitation, and the dark haired youth visibly flushes. Looking down at the floor, he blinks before quickly recovering himself, and admitting in a half sheepish tone of voice that doesn’t suit him: “I did.”

The words drop and roll as he watches Naruto bring his fingers up to his eye sockets, pressing his lids shut and murmur between the forefinger and thumb: “Oh God, no, you didn’t.”

“Yes I did,” Sasuke snaps back, cheeks flushing darker. It’s embarrassing to admit that he’s stung by Naruto throwing the gesture right back in his face. “What else was I supposed to do? Give her the money through the letter box and tell her to leave it on the side walk?”

“She?” Naruto sat up straighter and leans over the side of the bed to look down at the other, trails of yellow flopping round to curtain the sides of his face in tangled wisps. “A girl about… this high? Dark curly hair? Kind of oval shaped face?” he made a gesture with his hands trying to re-enact her.

Sasuke gives an almost invisible nod and watches with apprehension as Naruto’s expression sort of falls and then looks close to tears:

“It was Yumi, wasn’t it? She saw you, didn’t she? Oh Sasuke!”

He flops backwards, and the Uchiha is filled with the crushing feeling of absolute conviction that he’s let him down.

“She’s the biggest gossip I’ve ever met. That’s even including Ino. Really nice, but… oh why? Why did you do it? They‘ll all know! It would have been better if you had just let me starve to death! This is exactly the sort of thing that old hag Tsunade warned me not to let you go and do… or else…. I mean no one else is supposed to know about this, and, oh SHIT. I just don’t understand you, do you not want another shot at all of this? They wanted to kill you, you know. The council did, didn’t think it was worth the risk to see if you’d come round again and maybe behave yourself. Missing S-class, left and took the secrets of Konoha with him! They thought that you had the potential to go… to go mad like your brother did and just kill everyone and no one would be able to stop you. Tsunade argued for hours about it, and so did Shikamaru Nara, do you remember him? I think he hates your guts but he vouched for you- they like him because he’s got a great record and he‘s nearly always right. He thought it would be an injustice to kill you just because that you might go and do what Itachi did; and that in your condition there was no real threat. And even then, they were all for an underground cell with ANBU surveillance twenty four-seven and white walls and sterile ceilings and drips for god sakes, with needles! Is that what you want Sasuke? Is it?!”

Somehow they were close now, the Kitsune’s eyes crinkling in the corners as he continued to rant despairingly, arms moving up and down and up and down as his mouth depressed even more as time went on. The lead balled pit in Sasuke’s stomach seemed to grow even heavier, if it were possible.

“I-no-I mean-I didn’t-” Sasuke tries to interject between Naruto’s furious yells of: “She’s going to tell everyone!” and “Oh god, we are in so much shit!”

“Look, I’m SORRY all right?” Sasuke suddenly bursts out, grabbing Naruto by both of his wrists and yanking him forwards so that their noses bump painfully against each other.

They both look thoroughly shocked by it, and Naruto’s whole body seems to calm as he falls onto his knees off the bed, absolutely stoic as he simply stares at Sasuke, his mouth very slightly parted as he sucks down air.

Sasuke Uchiha stares back at him for a moment, determined, steady gaze but not without his fair share of embarrassment. He drops Naruto’s wrists as if they have scolded his pale skin and looks again at the floor. Jet-black hair shields his face so the Kitsune can’t read the expression; Naruto just continues to gape at him, taken back.

“I-uh…you’re what?!?!” he sputters, allowing his arms to fall to his sides. He tilts his head, already close to Sasuke’s, even closer, so he can almost feel every little shudder the body makes when it breathes in and out. The Uchiha meets his eyes again, a hot look. He’d rather bite off his own tongue then say it again.

“You heard me,” he says bluntly, stubborn jaw locked, as if willing Naruto to choke on the word too… but he owed him the word at least. Then again he owed Naruto a lot of things he’s never going to admit to.

They both look away simultaneously in opposite directions, both horribly aware that something rare and mysterious has just occurred.

Naruto takes a deep breath and wiggles his feet. “What did she say when she saw you?” he asks, keeping his face turned carefully to the wall.

“She- well…first she screamed, and then she sort of… backed off and ran away.” Sasuke admits, with a slight tilt of his head.

Naruto can’t help the quick burst of laughter that bubbles from his lips at this statement. He grins to the air, and feels Sasuke bristle behind him.

“You caused a girl to go screaming in the opposite direction from you? At sight? I think that must be a world first, don’t you think Sasuke?”

Sasuke, whose fingers are fiddling absently with the chopsticks on his knees, says in a sarcastic tone of voice that Naruto is wonderfully comfortable with: “Well, I am talking to the expert here on that, aren’t I?” And he catches the blue eyed youths expression as it splits into a wide grin and response the of “Touche.” The youth smirks and Sasuke grunts, shaking his head.

Naruto pushes the food bowl towards Sasuke and gets up to put some clothes on. He wanders for a moment back into his own room where the enraged cry of “This is not my mess!” can easily be heard through the wood paneling, as well at the clicking he makes with his tongue as he inspects the floor boards they broke earlier.

He pokes his head round the door again, frowning slightly, dusting splinters from his hands. “I’ll speak to Tsunade about it tomorrow,” he mumbles and looks speculatively at Sasuke, gnawing at his bottom lip. “I suppose it would be a bit of a tall story to swallow.”

“Very tall,” Sasuke agrees, “seeing how I’ve been gone for seven years. Besides, I never knew her- I’ve never even seen her before.”

“Yeah,” replies Naruto, sitting opposite Sasuke on the floor and allowing himself to get comfortable in the jeans and white t-shirt he was now wearing. The Uchiha eyes the clothes from between a mouthful of noodles and prays Naruto won’t ask him how the other set came off in the first place. The only excuse he can come up with involves raccoons, and somehow he doubts even Naruto would swallow it.

“But she knew you though. Everyone always did. Especially the girls, and that my friend is the difference.”

“Well it was annoying, whatever the hell it was. Following me everywhere, hassling me when I didn‘t even know who they were. Let alone care.”

“You could have been polite to them at least, all they wanted was some of your attention, Sasuke.”

“Huh!” followed by a disgusted snort, and then “Why the hell should I have been attentive? It was their fantasy not mine. I couldn’t have cared less if they lived or died.”

Naruto let out a stifled sort of sound, stuck out his tongue over the tip of his lips, withdrew it back again and let his face crumple into a small frown as he watched Sasuke very slowly consume the rest of the bowl.

“You’re always like that,” he said eventually with some substantial bitterness that surprised himself. “Everyone acknowledged and accepted you, and you never ever seemed grateful for it. You threw it all away in the end. When I was younger I wou-” but he bit his lower lip before he could finish the sentence, for fear of admitting to Sasuke that he had had wanted nothing more then to be like him. How he would have given up anything for that dream. A dream to be a person that everything came so easily to: love, strength, admiration and empathy. When had he ever had that without pushing for it until the stubs of his fingers bled and he could hardly move but to drag himself across the floor?

Sasuke noted the bitterness in Naruto’s blue eyes, the way he had drawn his knees up to his chest, one arm encircling the other under his chin. He waits until he’s full before he decides to answer. He finds his own voice to be icy cold.

“Do you think I ever wanted all that attention? All those expectations? It almost drove me mad. Whatever I did there was a certain standard I had to achieve; ever since the second I was born. I had to be better than everyone else. I was an Uchiha, I had standards to maintain and a future I had to succeed in. I was never free; you at least had the option of doing what you wanted, when you wanted to.”

“I don’t let people control me,” Naruto bites back, his voice firm and level. But there’s something dark in the way he opens his mouth to say it, pink tongue touching the brilliant white of his teeth. It feels like there’s a secret he’s holding back.

“Neither do I,” Sasuke responds, eyes narrowed, and unconsciously his spine straightens.

“Yes you do, you always have done Sasuke. Ever since I first met you although I didn’t realise it at first. But you’re like a hand puppet, acting on someone else’s actions, your whole existence governed by someone else.”

Sasuke really is unbearably furious now. His hands are shaking as he keeps them folded in his lap, and he clenches his fingers over each other and lets the nails bare down into the skin. The pain relieves the pressure in his voice somewhat as he responds in low dangerous tones: “He killed my mother and father, my clan, my happiness and most of my soul. Of course I’m going to kill him. If not just for my sake then for theirs!”

“By any means possible then?” There is something carnal about the way in which Naruto says this, a look of a wild animal in his eyes, infinitely distrusting and savagely beautiful.

To Sasuke it feels as if he’s raising invisible hackles along his back. But he won’t allow himself to be dragged down into an argument about morals, when he knows Naruto is lumping his own set of values onto him.

“And what would you have done? Rolled over and played nice so people would simper and smile over you and scratch your stomach! Don’t make me sick Naruto. I did what I had to do!”

“Yeah you did!” Naruto snarls back at him just as venomously as Sasuke feels but won’t let show on his face. “You stabbed everyone in the back who cared about you and lov-”

Sasuke interrupts, hot tongue in contrasting volition with his brain which orders him to stop this right now: “This is not about you and you sycophantic need to recreate a nice cosy happy family around you. For God Sakes, how old are you? Do us all a favour and just GROW UP!”

It’s a low blow, but it’s at the very core of the matter, and its effect is instantaneous. Naruto withdraws like a wilting flower, body becoming defensive, shoulders drawn up around his ears as he speaks to his knees.

“You had parents, you knew what it was like to have unconditional love, that no matter what, or how much you went for something - even for those few years- someone believed in you. Someone was always there. They were there when you were afraid, they were there to encourage you and tell you that you were worth something. Even when… even when you felt like you weren’t. When-” his voice became a little hoarser and he refused to meets the Uchiha’s hard, direct gaze.

“When you’re born into a world where people seem to hate you for no fathomable reason. When there seems to be an invisible fence between you and happiness. When no one thinks you are worth Jack Shit, no matter how hard you try, and when you are assured almost constantly that you are in fact worthless, that you’d be better off dead, because guess what? You are the thing that killed your parents and God knows who else and what else. When that happens to you Sasuke Uchiha, you can call me immature then. But forgive me for thinking you sound like a pampered brat when I ask you why it would be unnatural for me to want to be with somebody who at least at the end of the day won’t recoil if I touch them and tell them that I love them? Or am I not worthy enough to deserve human affection?”

“So that’s what Sakura is to you then?” Sasuke blurts out, not quite sure if it’s any of his business or even relevant. He just knows that his voice has a bitter edge to it that he tries to swallow down and almost gags on. His stomach burns with indignation at how important Sakura probably is to Naruto, not that anyone could blame him for it, but that’s not the point. He’s still angry about it.

Naruto tilts his head at this odd question and glares at Sasuke, incredulous.

“I love Sakura, you arrogant prick. I love her more then I think I’ve ever loved anyone else. She’s stuck by me and through all of this insane shit, through all of it, she’s still here and she- she-”

“Accepts you?”

“Yes, yes she does!” Naruto shouts back at him, furious that Sasuke could simplify it to such an extent.

“And because she does so you’ve decided to spend the rest of your life with her because you believe that she’s the only one whose got the stomach for it.”

Naruto’s face is a portrait of incredulity and angry bewilderment.

“She loves me Sasuke, no one has ever done that before.”

“Or you think she’s the only one that’s ever loved you, and you’ve never even considered the fact that other people might have loved you too? Except maybe they expressed it differently?”

Naruto swallows. “Sasuke,” he asks, “what exactly are you saying?”

Sasuke Uchiha blinks, lets out a long heated exhalation of breath before he admits that he has no idea, and then adds, “You always leap for the obvious choices.”

Naruto replies, suddenly calm: “When you’ve had nothing, you tend to grab onto what you can see right in front of you and never let go.”

“Is that what you are doing with me then?”

Naruto falls back against the bed at this and regards the dark eyed, pale skinned man sitting directly across from him almost languidly. “I find myself wondering if you actually enjoy being alone; and it’s not just something you do because you’re actually afraid of letting people in.”

Nothing for an instant, and then, with a short brittle reply: “Nobody likes being alone.”

Naruto scowls at him, giving a probing, wandering look. “Then why do you insist on-”

“Because-” Sasuke snaps, pushing away from Naruto and jerking his head back to expose his neck, hot and flushed. He hated being truthful about things like this, and yet somehow he found himself unable to lie about it. It was those damned blue eyes, infinitely wide and trusting, they seemed to call out and drag on the deep rigid recesses of his soul and hold it under the light for examination. Killing him softly with gentle words and open arms.

“…Because it’s easier then letting people down. Because I might have forgotten how to let people in, and because I’m afraid-” but he bites down on his tongue and brings up blood; he’d choke on his own flesh first before he actually admitted to himself, let alone Naruto, that breaking those barriers might mean the end of him. That if he let someone in he’d become dependant on them, and if he lost them… if he lost it all again, lost someone dear and precious to him, he’d go mad.

Honestly, truly, absolutely.

He’d just loose it.

To be fooled once, to let it happen… shame on them.

But to be fooled twice? …Shame on you. He’d have no-one to blame but himself.

“You think you’re afraid of being alone, Naruto?” Sasuke grinds out from between his back molars, choking on the blood, wishing he didn’t have to compete against that innocently bright blue focus.

“Everyday I realise,” he continues, “the fact that I am probably going to die alone, somewhere far, far away from the place I was born and grew up in. Miles away, lives away from the people I loved and cared about, and no one will know or even give a damn. You think you were alone? Well, I am alone Naruto Uzumaki, and I can’t help that. It’s just the way things have to be.”

“You don’t have-” he began, but Sasuke cuts him off not wanting to hear it. Prizing and holding Naruto’s hands to either side of his head and shaking him lightly so he should understand and hear it properly this time:

“But I will, and you can’t change that. I’ll die alone, without any family that I care to speak of, friends or… lovers. Because I am an Av-”

“So no one will miss you? Is that what you really think?! Don’t you think that I’d miss you in every single one of those ways?” his fingers scrabble at the place where Sasuke is firmly holding his wrists in place and looks indignantly back at him.

“You’re not my lover, Naruto.” Sasuke states this flatly, watching as the blonde colours, snub nose dusting with a light sprinkling of pink flush.

“I know I’m not your lover in… that sense. But I’m probably the closest thing to it right now. Don’t you think I’d miss you if you did something as stupid as to die all alone like that? You were the closest thing I ever had to a brother and a best friend.”

“Was Naruto, past tense.”

“Well that doesn’t stop me from still feeling it, does it Sasuke? Up until your last living breath I’ll hate you and love you, regardless of whether you feel anything for me at all! Until the second that I die I’ll still feel it, and I’ll never forget you. And in death-” he gulped, “it will be just the same, but eternal.”

“Well, you’re a fool then.”

“I know I am Sasuke. I always was more of a fool when it came to you then I ever was for anyone else. I was so desperate to impress you, to try and get you to acknowledge me. I wasted a lot of energy obsessing over you.”

There is a silence, in which they sit close, almost on top of each other. Naruto no longer fighting Sasuke’s restraints, they seem to breath and feel at the same time, and then it comes: “…Why are you telling me this?” Sasuke murmurs curiously, without breathing.

“Because, if you do slip away again- when you do go after Itachi again as I know you will do-” Sasuke opens his mouth to interrupt, but Naruto presses on. It’s important to say it. It’s important to let him know.

“He was always more important than I was, and he always will be in your eyes. I can’t change that, but you’ll know. You’ll know that somewhere, somehow I’m here, willing you alive, and wishing you’d come back- come back to what you’ve left behind.”

Sasuke just looks at him with an unfathomable expression. Burgundy lips slightly parted but not in sound, the tongue darts out and wets them so they glisten slightly as Naruto watches. Is it in astonishment that he‘s looking at him like that? Or perhaps confusion?

“I think I’ll always want you back Sasuke Uchiha.”

There isn’t very much he can say to that, as he looks down at his knees, a little flustered and a little confused, He drops Naruto’s wrists very slowly, which he had been holding gently against the sides of his neck, now unsure of where to look and how to respond.

“Thank you.” he says, and feels the blonde peering at him. He’s thankful for the two curtains of hair either side of his face as he blushes, for what seems the umpteenth time that evening.

Nothing happens for moment, but the intensity pulses and stretches between them like electricity before Naruto breaks away. His hands touching Sasuke’s for an instant. An accidental movement, forefingers touching his thumb and tracing the back of his knuckles before contact is lost and the tiny warmth is withdrawn.

Out of reflex, he looks up and after Naruto who moves across the room and stands for a moment in the doorway.

“Uzumaki,” he asks haltingly not sure why it matters, why he feels he needs to know what Naruto is doing, where Naruto is going and what Naruto is thinking. “Where are you going?”

The Kitsune gives him an inquisitive look, the expressive mouth firm and almost doubting. “Downstairs, I was going to go sleep on the sofa, ‘cause my rooms a total tip.” He gave that easy, ‘it’s not problem’ smile and started to head out of the door.

“Wait!” Sasuke scrambles in an oddly clumsy motion to his feet. He feels out of sync and breathless: “You should sleep in here idiot, it‘s your house! And it’s probably my fault that you got sick in the first place, I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

“I don’t think you’d want to,” Naruto replies softly and he runs his hands over the tops of his arms to his elbows. “You won’t be able to move your neck come morning, the springs you see, they stick out and are pretty darn painful.”

They stare at each other for another moment, then Sasuke, slowly as though he’s encroaching on something that’s a forbidden taboo, starts the sentence that Naruto finishes:

“You can…”

“…Sleep in here?”

* * *

‘So now you’re sleeping together?’ the nasty little voice in his head jibes, as it prods and pokes Naruto with tiny, cold, invisible fingers.

“I’m not sleeping ‘sleeping’ with him,” Naruto insists to the bathroom mirror as he brushes his teeth. “I happen to be sharing the same bed as him, that’s all. And you know something, he probably wears shoes and socks to bed anyway. So I don’t know why you’re making such a big fuss about it.”

His reflection looks unimpressed, and Naruto, gulping guiltily, accidentally swallows the last of the toothpaste and sticks his head underneath the taps, noisily glugging down water. When he remerges, hair sopping wet and plastered to his forehead, he once again glowers at his mirror image before eventually bursting out furiously: “Look, nothing is going to happen alright? And even if it did, who would know?”

The answer comes back to him, sickeningly swift as he reaches over to turn off the light and dry his hands on the towel:

‘God will know, and so will you.’

Naruto grimaces, showing all of his teeth. If God was going to know, he could be sure Kiba and Shikamaru would not be very far behind him.

* * *

“Okay,” Sasuke reiterates very slowly. He has that look on his face, the deeply foreboding look of someone who has proposed something that they do not quite like or have not thought through properly.

“This is my side, got that block-head? You don’t put so much as a toe over onto this side of the mattress. Do I make myself clear?”

Naruto nods, wide eyed and slightly fearful. He had forgotten quite how pedantic the dark haired youth could sometimes be, especially now, as he stands at the end of the bed clad in a simple cotton t-shirt over loose shorts, with his two index fingers pointing at the four poster and repeating at Naruto several times over: “My side. Your side. You got that?”

Naruto nods, simply because he was afraid of what Sasuke might do if he did not. …Probably strangle him with a pair of orange socks he concluded, as he jumps onto the mattress so that everything bounces and the pillows soar into the air.

“Don’t do that!” Sasuke shouts at him, watching as Naruto fell back laughing into the covers.

“Can’t touch me Sasuke, I’m on my side of the bed!”

“You are such a child,” he is told scornfully as Sasuke presents his long slender back to Naruto and sits on the rim of the bed, elegant hands splayed out behind him.

Naruto props himself up on his elbows as he watches Sasuke move one leg under the covers- he peers at it as it slips cleanly out of view. Well he couldn’t see any shoe on his foot or dark knee-long socks. But the idea of Sasuke wearing knee-length socks in any form or manner is slightly ridiculous anyway. The shoes maybe, but not the socks.

“What are you doing?!” Sasuke demands, glaring at Naruto who has of course totally forgotten the meaning of the word discretion, and he swallows air and hiccups in his haste to reply:

“Nothing, nothing at all. Um…” he withers a little underneath the full onslaught of ‘The Glare’ and asks in a higher pitch then he normally uses, “Shall I turn off the light then?”

Sasuke doesn’t say anything.

Taking this as leeway for a polite ‘yes,’ Naruto jumps out of bed so that everything bounces again, causing the Uchiha to groan in frustration. He makes a clattering journey over to the light switch before killing the light, and an even noisier journey back to the bed again.

Sasuke, as he suspected he might have, has actually stuck his head underneath the pillow rather then listen to the ruckus: hands digging deep into the fluffy endowment of the eiderdown, knuckles clenching almost white as he presses it over his ears.

Naruto can’t help chuckling as he gets back into bed again. He would have jumped had it not been for the warning look Sasuke had shot him from underneath the pillow as he prepared to do it. The look had promised disembowelment and a slow and painful death, and Naruto, for once, saw sense enough not to challenge it.

He wriggles around for a moment, trying to find the best possible position in which to sleep, and every time he tosses and turns Sasuke lets out the dramatic sigh of a long suffering person who cannot see the end of this interminable torture.

Finally he rolls onto his stomach, and resting his chin on his folded arms, he opens his mouth:

“Sasuke, can I ask you something?

The person who in the dim gloom is nothing more then a dark and smeary shape groans once again. “If you must, but only one question,” he grinds out irately from his back molars.

“I was wondering, you know, earlier? I always meant to ask you at some point but I never got round to it. I always thought you must hav-”

“Naruto,” the shape sounded exasperated, “if you’ve got something to say, say it. If not, shut the hell up and let me get some sleep.”

The Kitsune licks his lips, draws in breath and takes the plunge. “When you were younger, not now obviously… but… did you ever… fall in love?”

A brief pause.

“Why does it matter?”

It’s the sort of enigmatic response that Naruto suspected he would answer with if he was guarding a secret like that, and he wishes that he could see the expression on Sasuke’s face at this moment. Sasuke would have no second thoughts about bluntly denying something he’d never done, even if most people would consider it to be an abnormal thing not to have done.

“Who was it?”

Silence.

And then Sasuke rolls over so Naruto can feel his back facing him, and the covers are pulled away from him.

“Go to sleep Naruto.”

“Sasuke, who was it?”

But he’s not to expect an answer and neither is he given one. As he lies there on his side of the bed, the question burns within him uncomfortably. He supposes it’s because he’s curious; he wants to know because it’s Sasuke. But even as he slips into a troubled and agitated sleep, a tiny part of him suspects its because he’s jealous.

On the other side of the bed Sasuke Uchiha listens to the sounds of Naruto’s heavy breathing and light snores. His eyes flicker from the floor to the ceiling as he bites his lower lip and considers the fact the question is more: “Who is it?” than “Who was it?”

* * *

“Naruto… Naruto! Wake up!”

Blue eyes open into a dim confusion of tangled sheets and writhing bodies, his skin is soaked with cold sweat and his mind still reels a kaleidoscope of different images in front of him, most of which end up drenched in blood. He claws at the cold fingers weighing his torso to the mattress and fights down the screams that threaten to tilt and spill through his oesophagus. All of his limbs seem to jerk and twitch on their own and just behind the cage, plucking at the bars, he feels the Kyuubi stalk. Behind his eye lids he feels the panic stir inside of him.

“Nobody’s dying!” Sasuke is telling him but he might as well be speaking to a brick wall for all the coherent response it provokes. Naruto’s actions are almost feral, like a wild cat dipped in the ocean he claws at the places where Sasuke is pinning him down. Mouth open and snarling and long glinting white canines glimmering, Sasuke wonders vaguely if Naruto will bite him if he gets the chance, and decides not to let him.

They fall, limbs still locked to the floor, and its like trying to hold onto electricity. The hot urgent taste of chakra seems to fizzle and whirl all about him, it climbs up the walls and festers in boiling pits between the floor boards.

“Naruto!” he yells again, “Snap out of it!”

But Naruto won’t, or can’t, and suddenly Sasuke can see the pictures too, the bloody ones, dripping in entrails and gore, the things that no one likes to see, the parts that people keep hidden.

The worst part is he knows that Naruto thinks the pictures are real, and the more he slides into panic, the more the Kyuubi pries forwards.

He fights to bring both hands to either side of Naruto’s face, slamming his skull into the wooden planks, sweat and tears stream from around eyes stained with mauve but the pain makes the panic worse.

He stays in the half nightmarish state of dark shadows that flicker on the outskirts of reality, ghostly figures stalking him, prying apart his ribs and cutting out his bleeding heart to burn the flopping thing in front of him.

Sasuke tries to talk, to get through, to tell comforting thoughts to a person suffering the onslaught of mental pain: but its useless.

The choked sob breaks from the Kitsune’s chest, low and painful, like something fragile is breaking, and Sasuke takes action, he does the only thing he can think of doing to stop that awful rise of chakra.

He kisses him.

The effect is immediate: Naruto lies still, and for perhaps the second and a half that his own lips press against Naruto’s, Sasuke can feel the dull lub-dub of his own heart beating in his chest, see eyes through a blurry focus widen in shock and then…

Naruto twists his head away, pushes Sasuke with a violent force from his body so he falls heavily to the floor.

He grabs the Uchiha by the collar of his shirt as he kneels over his body, but in the darkness, Sasuke, whose breathing is heavy and agitated, cannot see his expression. He half expects Naruto to start pounding his face into a bloody pulpy mess. But not for Naruto to lurch forwards like that, yank Sasuke up and attack his mouth with his own, covering it with one glib and untamed movement.

Something inside of Sasuke soars, his stomach seemingly disappearing as teeth clack and grate against his own. Hard and fast a tongue pushes bruisingly against his lips, parting and demanding entrance. Naruto’s fists are still curled around his neck as Sasuke brings his own hands to unpeel them from where they are slowly choking him.

His fingers snake up into the nape of Naruto’s neck, cradling the back of his skull and pushing him forwards deeper into the kiss. The moist sound of Naruto sucking against Sasuke’s tongue fills the air, and the Uchiha growls into their mouths, the sound reverberating into Naruto as he is pushed over and onto his back.

His hands fisting the material at Sasuke’s shoulders, entwining fingers around his neck, bringing all of the long warm hardness of Sasuke’s body against his own. His hips arch of their own accord as Sasuke plays with his tongue, toying with it, dancing a possessive game inside of his mouth.

He runs his own tongue across the tip of Naruto’s canines, careful not to cut himself on the sharp edges, one hand deeply entrenched in the blonde’s hair as he pulls his head back, breaking the kiss so his lips linger teasingly just over Naruto’s.

Close enough for them both to feel the heat, not close enough for them to feel the pressure. The warm tip of Sasuke’s tongue glances over Naruto’s lower lip, and then his upper lip, licking the corners, exploring it thoroughly.

Naruto becomes impatient, and bucking against Sasuke, opens his mouth begging for entry. He wants the heat and the pressure back again, but Sasuke just laughs, and bites on Naruto’s lower lip gently, not puncturing the skin. Dragging the lip down, and then sliding his tongue smoothly inside as he hears Naruto gasp and give a little needy sound, he lets his mouth connect completely over the Kitsune’s again. A hand makes its way from Naruto’s neck, down the knobbly junctures of his spine. And it’s Naruto, Naruto who moves his head back, who grinds his hips into Sasuke’s: wonderful, hard, delightful pressure as Sasuke moves back with him.

Feeling he can’t go in any deeper, none at all, tasting and feeling Naruto all that he can with all these damned clothes.

Salty warm taste in his nose, his eyes, his hair, coating his skin.

Naruto pulls away first, eyes heavy and looking directly into Sasuke‘s carved of dark marble, half lidded with intoxication; tongues leaving contact last, essences that intermingled now being dragged apart.

He feels the hand in his hair, the way one of his legs is intertwined with Sasuke’s. He feels how urgently he’s pressing his body to him, and the hard laboured breathing of moist breath against his ear.

They stare at each other, and then…

“What the hell are we going to do?”

Fish Bird
Rating: NC-17
Chapter 8: Better Luck Next Time
Warnings: SasuNaru make out and groping, yes it comes with fanservice.
Main Pairings: SasuNaru,
Other/Implied pairings: NaruSaku, ShikaIno, KibaHina, NejiHina

A/N: I found this chapter really hard to write actually, and considered scrapping it on several different occasions, but in the end this version managed to work it's way through till the end. The plot bunnies didn't help either and god I hate those SO MUCH- but there has been plot altering so watch out now.

Chapter Summary: In which it's Kiba's idea to try and get Lee drunk again, Shikamaru helps out but instead ends up confessing that he might have some problems with his personal life, more specifically reading and understanding women. Lee and Kiba try to be sympathetic and fail, repercussions from Ramen noodles are felt as a big secret involving Sasuke and Naruto is blabbed in a very public place and Naruto is caught in the act. Or technically, just after the act with a certain someone else and a messy, violent and somewhat stupid cover up is thrown into action.

2nd A/N : I really wanted to squeeze the joke Lee, Choji, Shikamaru and Kiba walk into a bar. Ouch.
But that would have been lame.
Is sadly laughing on the inside...

Chapter 8: Better Luck Next Time

The bar was small, one main room filled with smoke and the wafting scent of fried food filtering out from the greasy pokey little kitchen at the back of the building. The jukebox rattled out another song whilst clunking gently, and there was the clink of glasses over the murmuring babble of talk that spooled throughout the entire place.

“Do we have to listen to this music?” a young man with auburn hair and fresh bloody streaks of paint striping each side of his face.

“I feel it’s rather inspiringly energetic,” the man on the other side of the table exclaimed enthusiastically, thick black eyebrows raised into a pudding bowl hair cut.

Shikamaru raised the cup of Sake to his lips sighed and kicked the jukebox which whirred clunked a little more and then changed track. In the dim light from the overhead light-bulb the smoke stung his eyes and he coughed as the smell of tobacco and nicotine swirled down his oesophagus.

Shikamaru gave a tired and withering look in the general direction of Choji and Kiba who were currently engaging in a vivacious peanut eating competition and told the both of them quite curtly, that if anyone choked he would not be the one performing mouth to mouth.

Lee looked on, wistful expression on his face as Kiba guzzled down what he counted to be the 94th peanut and leant forwards for a handful more.

It had to be said, for all of Kiba’s fine gallantry, Choji was definitely winning.

“It almost makes me wish,” Lee began with a pleading look at Shikamaru, his hands twitching as Choji de-shelled his peanut with an expert flick of his thumb, “That I too-”

Shikamaru put the Sake cup down and gave Lee a deeply beseeching gaze as Kiba bit into something that was definitely not a peanut.

“Oh no,” he began in tones of panic, “you promised Lee. You promised that you at least would stay sane. No nuts, remember?”

Lee nodded reluctantly, although his lower lip wobbled and he could not help but add “And yet in the spirit of youth…”

This was just as Kiba held the thing that was Not-A-Peanut up to the light and asked the bar in general if it looked like his tooth.

“Too much youth,” Shikamaru replied in darkly foreboding tones, “is a bad thing.”

“C’mon Maru.” Kiba said playfully, flicking an empty peanut shell at his grumpy friend, “We all got together because you were down and all you do is complain about it.”

Lee shot Shikamaru a puzzled as the bar door swung open, jangling the bead curtain that lay like a cloth before it to allow a flood of new comers from the dark shadows of outside street into the smoky atmosphere. They all noticed Shikamaru glancing nervously over his shoulder as a girl with long blonde hair took a seat on a bar stool close to them.

“It’s not her.” Choji told him somewhat reassuring between a mouthful of peanuts as Kiba let out a laugh like a dogs bark and gave a delighted grin.

Shikamaru frowned at all of them.

“You are a big yellow bellied scrap of a coward aren’t you?,” the auburn youth told him as Shikamaru griped that he’d: “Never pretended not to be.”

Kiba’s grin widened to something almost feral in its broad intensity, “Have some fun why don’t you?” he urged.

“If that is what you define as ‘Fun’,” was the tart reply as he looked at the peanut pile, “you can count me out.”

And he pushed the Sake bottle at Lee who politely declined, muttering something about “Never again.”

“Besides,” he added, slumping back in the seat and reaching to pull something out of the top pocket of his jacket that was small and cylindrical, “someone has to be sane enough to carry all of your sorry asses home.”

Both Lee and Kiba looked at Shikamaru disapprovingly as he began to roll the something on the table top using his forefinger and thumb, Choji meanwhile continued to eat.

“It really is a most heartily felt shame that our friend Naruto is not here with us on this occasion.” Lee interjected suddenly into the conversation, looking wistfully at the empty seat to their left.

“Where has our spunky blonde companion gone recently?” Lee finished, thick eyebrows knotted together in a frown of bold perplexity.

From across the table, Shikamaru and Kiba exchanged a well rehearsed look, instigating one of them to spin out the already formulated lie.

“He’s been a little antisocial lately,” was the evasive answer, “you know with Sakura gone and everything. He’s pining, romantic bastard.”

“He should get out more then.” Choji said seriously, he had devoured the last of the peanuts much to Kiba’s displeasure, “Although he didn’t seem to be pining to me when I last saw him- well relatively speaking I couldn‘t quite see very much of him underneath the both of you.” there was a significant pause here in which Lee gave both Shikamaru and Kiba a wondering once over before Choji continued, “He seemed more like he was in an argument with someone close to him, and by that I don‘t mean a woman someone.”

Shikamaru glowered at Choji, slanting eye brows over his narrow tilted eyes and hastily changed the subject: “Anyone else for a drink?” and poured Sake out for everyone else and pushed one rather forcefully at Lee and tilted his head and drunk another himself.

“Careful,” muttered Kiba in growly undertones, sharp canines glinting in the murky light, “I’ll be the one hauling your sorry ass back if you don’t put on the brakes.” He paused for a second, crumpling his nose into a soft grin. “Not that I mind of course.”

Shikamaru gave a slight disgusted sort of snort, “Unlike you and Naruto, I can hold my liquor.”

In all honesty however, his head did feel ever so slightly muzzy and his tongue thicker than normal. A sure sign that he wasn’t too far away from grinning for no reason, possibly he would be intoxicated enough to even sing something suitably trashy with Kiba and then slump into an a customary dead stupor. Perhaps he’d better stop soon, despite the foul mood he was in. It was no reason to make a further fool out of himself.

As they began an interesting conversation about who in Konoha had the nicest shaped legs the situation quickly swerved into something that Shikamaru had spent all day trying to avoid. It was given by the subtle signal of Choji kicking him painfully hard beneath the table, causing Shikamaru to bite down hard on his tongue to prevent himself from yelling cuss words and then trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible without giving up altogether and diving underneath the table which he did consider but decided (only just) against.

Lee regarded Shikamaru as if he had just lost his mind, and then looked at Kiba, who rolled his eyes and jerked his head towards the door.

Two girls were standing at the brink of the bar entrance pushing the bead curtain to one side as if deciding whether to venture in or not. One, a small lithe girl with dark brown hair tied in two buns over the top of her head, each pierced with ornamental chopsticks the same colour as the simple pink silk shirt and trousers she wore. As Ten-Ten looked across the bar, she spotted Lee, who was waving cheerfully at her, and turning to her tall blonde haired companion motioned for them to walk over.

The tall blonde however, looked at the table and it’s occupants with verdant aqua marine eyes, pursed her milky pink lips when she spied Shikamaru and said something to her friend with such a look of violent revulsion that it could only have been a swear word and stormed out.

Ten-Ten gave Lee a little apologetic shrug of her shoulders, and ran out after her.

“You’re a dick head.” Kiba told Shikamaru conclusively and swung back in his chair with a slight crunching noise as some peanut shells splintered beneath the shifted weight.

“Oh not this again.” Lee said, as Choji nodded critically, “What deplorable thing have you gone and executed now?”

“I have no idea why,” Shikamaru said, staring determinedly into his Sake cup, his face a mixed mask of depression and annoyance.

“But it happens every time we ever do it.” he frowned more and ran one hand through his hair and slumped back into the chair again, closing his eyes.

“It doesn’t take a genius to work out that you should stop doing it then.” Kiba told him bluntly, to which Choji patted Shikamaru comfortingly on the shoulder.

“Oh, it’s not like I planned to!” Shikamaru snapped back defensively, “I was lending her a gas heater because her boiler blew this week.” he shrugged his shoulders,

“I was leaving you know, by the front door putting my shoes back on when she comes in from the kitchen wearing an apron, puts her hands on her hips, and looks at me like this…” and he proceeded to do a fairly accurate imitation of what Ino looked like when she was being demanding and bossy all at the same time.

“And then she asks me in this funny tone of voice: ‘Is that all you came over for Shikamaru Nara?’

So I said ‘Why, did I forget something?’ I thought in all seriousness she meant the boiler when….she comes at me.” His voice trailed off and he put both hands over his face.

“You know something I’m a guy, I have hormones too, I am not responsible for my actions if she was perfectly willing to- I mean it was her idea. I came over to fix the central heating for Christ sakes, not to do it on the kitchen table, or on the stairs, or even in the bedroom.

Then she gets all furious because I had to leave because I was already late for a meeting and Tsunade was going to eat me alive and she literally blew her stack. I give up with her, I really do. It’s just too much of a hassle to even speak to the woman let alone-”

“I’m sorry,” Kiba asked his mouth slightly slack as he rolled his empty glass from one hand to another, “how many times did you do it?”.

Shikamaru gave him a pokerfaced death glare.

“Well she’s quite mad you know.” Choji said factually, to which even Lee nodded to, “But you know, you do lead her on Shikamaru, so it’s your fault for being-”

“You know something,” Nara said very loudly so the whole bar could hear this time, “I would appreciate it if someone did not just assume I am an evil lecherous hump.” (1)

“Nobodies saying that.” Lee interjected quickly, but he was smiling quite as cheekily as Kiba picked up the empty Sake bottle and gently tapped it over his tired friend’s head, “I do pronounce you and idiot, sir idiot because we all just think it instead. Now you may rise.” and he waved the bottle in the air in a mysterious sort of way before getting up and ordering them more drinks.

“So this makes it time number…?” Lee asked as delicately as it is imaginable for Lee to possibly ask someone with one hand cupped around his mouth, as if this gave the act some more digression.

Choji started on the bowl of Nachos.

“I’ve lost count.” came the miserable reply, chin now on his hands as Kiba made his way back to the table and chucked Shikamaru’s empty wallet at him.

“So have I mate,” was the wolfish friend’s response, “but I tell you what, no more talking about that. After this round, we’ll go off and do something fun, yeah?”

Lee gave the drinks a deeply suspicious look, “I happen to know,” he said slowly, “the last time you and Naruto proposed something fun, you both woke up naked in a field of cows.”

“Indeed we did.” Kiba responded proudly, “Good times.” he gave a long sigh, “Except this time it would be nice, instead of just cows we woke up in a field full of cows and strippers instead.”

Shikamaru snorted out the alcoholic beverage he had had the misfortune to try and sip that exact moment, “Male or female?” he had to ask, a bizarre mental image dancing around his brain and wiping his nose on the back of his hand, shaking his head disbelievingly.

“Well, that’s the surprise!” Kiba told them, and continued to grin.

They all sighed at this, and Shikamaru was halfway to giving into his friend’s bizarre enjoyment for peculiar choice of entertainment when a distraction once again passed in through the bar door. It walked right across the room and stood directly behind their table.

It happened to look and indeed was a highly enraged Ino, tossing long blonde hair over her shoulder as she flared her nostrils, grit her teeth and then swiped Shikamaru furiously across the back of his head.

Shikamaru let out a yell of pain as his forehead collided with the wooden table top, Kiba made a sound that resembled a dog being strangled as the glasses on the countertop leapt several inches in the air, Lee looked thunderstruck an impressive expression on his animated face and Choji toppled backwards on his chair.

“Don’t hit me you evil woman!” Shikamaru yelled at her, getting up from his seat, one hand on his nose the other on the lump that was forming at the back of his head, “Jeeze, what the hell have I done in the last twenty-four hours to deserve that!?”

Ino’s look breathed pure fire as she slammed both of her fists onto the table so that the legs wobbled, creaked and skittered in their posts, the rest of the bar had become deadly silent as she leant forwards and snarled at Shikamaru, “You fucking lied to me you piece-of-Shit.”

Her ferocious gaze then flew to Kiba, who wondered how he could have possibly become mixed up in their turbulent love affair, and wilted, and blanched under her gaze, seemingly sinking into his chair, whilst Shikamaru glared right back at her, unequalled but never the less very sore in several places.

“Have you gone completely mental? What the hell are you talking about woman?” his eyes narrowed, now not as angry as he was curious.

He recognised the way her face was screwed up, how her knuckles were clenched chalk white so the bones almost popped straight through the skin and how her creamy pink mouth twisted down.

A little dart of something painful white and red hot moved through his chest as he wondered what the hell had happened to make her this upset.

“You said there was nothing wrong, that it was all fine. Oh, oh no Ino you’re just making it up. You told me it was just my imagination and that I was looking for things that weren’t there, even fucking Hinata knew and I didn’t!”

She sent Kiba another murderous look here. Kiba tried valiantly to look innocent by distracting himself with another peanut.

It failed miserably, as instead of feigning an innocence expression whilst he de-shelled the nut, it looked instead as if he was leering at the peanut as he stripped it’s outer layers away.

“We’ve had this discussion,” Shikamaru said slowly, sucking sinking feeling pulling from his stomach right down to the bottom of his feet.

“We told you-”

“Stop lying!” She shouted at him, almost crying she was so angry, “Oh, you told me alright, you had them spin off lies right front and centre, and I knew something weird was going on. Everyone’s been talking about it,” she leaned in close to Shikamaru now, so only millimetres separated her face from his.

“So tell me now Nara, how come Sasuke Uchiha was just seen at Naruto’s apartment?”

It was at this moment that Kiba who had unfortunately tried to swallow the peanut, choked.

Everyone stared at them.

There was a split nanosecond in which Shikamaru considered all options here, evaluated each ending and course of action involved and picked the best track for him to take.

He started laughing.

One of the good secrets of becoming an elite ninja in any state, country or providence trusted with valuable information is of course the knowledge of how to lie convincingly. Shikamaru had discovered a long time ago that it wasn’t just lying credibly that mattered, a good alibi always came in handy for sure, but acting the part was just as important as the actual lie itself.

He was surprisingly good at it.

“I-he-there’s what?” He managed to squeeze out, doubled over, one hand on the table top for support, wide grin splitting his face, “Ino- you don’t expect me to believe that do you?”

He shook his head and doubled over again still laughing, “Sasuke Uchiha?!”

Someone else in the corner of the bar began to laugh as well, and like a ripple effect with a few stuttering guffaws and hearty chuckles and the whole room became a raucous collision of laughter and people slapping each other on the back at the idea of such a ludicrous proposition.

No one seemed to notice that Kiba was turning slowly purple.

“I-but-it made…Yumi said!” Ino began flustered, turning a light shade of crimson that didn’t suit her as she took a step backwards, “I mean she was telling everyone how she was delivering Ramen and-”

“And how the tooth fairy turned up and whisked all the noodles away?” Shikamaru interrupted, he felt mean for ridiculing her like this, especially with the way her green eyes were focused on him as if she had trusted him not to do this, and asking him to stop now. He wanted to, he really wanted to, and he swallowed his mouth dry.

But he couldn’t, there was more at stake here then just their fragile and awkward relationship.

“People don’t just turn up from the dead you know.”

“Nobody ever proved Sasuke-kun was ever dead.”

Shikamaru waved his hand, suddenly noticing the little wheezing noises Kiba was making as he began to go from mauve to indigo and slapped Kiba hard on the back and they all watched as the peanut went shooting out of his mouth and hit the barman on the back of the head.

“So he’s harbouring other S-class criminals there as well is he? I suppose Orochimaru is hiding under the bed and he’s holding a tea party- sorry a Ramen party for all the other Bingo book candidates that are soon to slide down his chimney?”

Lee and Choji laughed at this whilst Ino pursed her lips and looked at the floor, someone at the back of the bar by the pool table called out that it was probably just Naruto having a laugh and spooking Yumi just for the hell of it. Ino turned her back on Shikamaru for a instant to answer to this and in the moment’s distraction he took the opportunity to grab Kiba by the back of his collar and drag them both into the men’s restroom.

As Kiba Inuzuka looked round and wondered why they were standing in a little cubical that smelt unpleasantly of piss and vomit and other bodily stenches, he felt the painful solidity of Shikamaru wrenching himself up onto his shoulders so he could open the dirty little window that opened up into a small crooked alleyway next to the bar.

As they followed each other, squirming out from the frame to land with a little ‘Plop’ onto the wet dirt, Kiba launched himself on Shikamaru as his brain whirred into action and threatened to implode as he whispered in hoarse undertones, “He’s killed Naruto hasn’t he? He’s killed our Naruto!”

Shikamaru pulled a very sour look as he peeled Kiba from around his neck, placing one hand firmly over his mouth in an effort to keep him quiet and said in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “Yes, Kiba. He killed Naruto and then ordered take out Ramen.”

Kiba gasped, his eyes popping, wrenching Shikamaru’s hand from his mouth, “The fiend!”

Sometimes Shikamaru wondered why he even bothered.

Together they jumped over the alley wall, and scrambled across rooftops, they’d leave Choji to pay this time seeing as he owed them at least six free dinners and that was just counting this month.

“What we want to know is the reason why Naruto didn’t open the door!” Shikamaru called back to Kiba, arms out as he landed precariously on a brick wall, whilst Kiba scrambled up the vertical slab of the wall beneath him using only his feet and his momentum for purchase.

As he came to the top slightly breathless he screwed up his face as they set off again to pelt down another side street, “So you don’t think Sasuke…?”

Shikamaru rolled his eyes and wondered vaguely if there was any possible way you could pull those muscles from overuse, “Somehow I think the idea of Sasuke Uchiha ordering take out Ramen as a celebration of Naruto’s demise is kind of out of the question.” he yelled over his shoulder as they shimmied up the side of an apartment complex and leapt from someone’s balcony to the next row of roofs.

“Whatever the hell the reason,” he finished, “we’ve just got to clear this mess up. You do know what’s going to happen now, don’t you?”

Kiba made a pained face as he scrambled from one wall to the next, using his hands as his body twisted round and as he flung one leg over the top and used the other to spring to the adjacent wall.

“People are gonna turn up…well…girls will turn up, cause he’s a bit too good looking for an asshole.”

“This being exactly what we don’t want.” Shikamaru reminded him as they shot through someone’s back garden.

“So…what are we going to do?”

“We? No. You Kiba, you’re going to be our wonderful decoy.”

Kiba stopped mid jump, with the words: “I-don’t-like-the-sound-of-that.” on his lips and fell flat on his face.

As he scrambled up and pelted after Shikamaru’s smeary black silhouette in the gathering darkness spitting dirt from between his teeth he panted, “I-what? Who-WHY? When did I agree to this exactly?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Shikamaru yelled back at him over the slope of his shoulder, “you’re still being the bait whilst I take Naruto to see Tsunade about this, before she finds out some other way and kills him, and then me, and then you. This was honestly the last thing in the world that I wanted to do tonight!”

“Well this was hardly on the top of my list.” Kiba mumbled, gaining level with Shikamaru again and casting him a dark brooding look, “We almost had Lee drinking alcohol again.”

“Your fascination for getting Lee drunk escapes me,” was his friend’s curt reply, “I don’t know why I agreed to help you do it.”

“Because you weren’t there when we did it last time Maru- you’d understand then that it was the funniest thing-”

They pelted up the spiralling steps and up to the fourth floor, their footsteps crunching and clattering onto the concrete as metal and heel and shoe connected with the floor.

“I have the key!” Kiba said brightly, fishing around in his pocket for it.

Shikamaru licked his lips and kicked the front door with his left foot, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted: “Uzumaki Naruto, you had better be alive in there! Because we are going to kick your ass!”

* * *

As Naruto sits up, he dimly tries to make sense of it all. Using his elbows for support, he slowly murmurs into a mouth that’s hot and raw like burnt marshmallows: “What the hell do we do now?”

Sasuke, Sasuke Uchiha with his dark hair and even darker eyes just looks at him. Expression keen, lips gently parted as he leans down, he ignores the question and presses against Naruto’s own yielding embrace.

They both fall down together, a tangle of arms and legs- Naruto’s spine pressing hard against the floor as Sasuke plays with Naruto’s tongue, tracing the insides of his mouth, reaching right down deep inside so he can touch his back molars.

Naruto groans, and Sense bubbles and pops… not that there was much anyway. All his sense has gone. The Kyuubi purrs inside his mind, a great monster clawing at his chest, momentarily sated with carnal pleasure. It flexes as Naruto moves his head back to allow Sasuke to draw the rough flat of his tongue down the smooth column of his neck, in slow meandering circles. Sasuke moves little by little: teeth nipping at light cappuccino stained skin, up to the lobe of Naruto’s right ear before his tongue rims the outer flesh before slipping, almost gliding in. Naruto gasps, moans and wriggles as Sasuke pushes hard on his chest with his one hand, his other fingers snaking up to cradle the back of his neck to prevent him from turning his head to meet Sasuke’s tongue and teeth.

The Uchiha grins, a hot moist breath against Naruto’s ear as he withdraws his tongue. He listens to the blond’s laboured, ragged breathing before he moves again to capture Naruto’s mouth; drawing Naruto’s tongue all the way into his own, to suck on it himself.

He loves the way Naruto arches into him, knees bending, hands skittering to the back of his neck, his spine, his waist, his pelvic bone and then lower… much lower.

Gluttonous hands wanting more, hounding for pressure and release… he can feel his own hardness pressing down and into Naruto’s lower stomach, and Naruto’s arousal pushing painfully into his thigh.

Sasuke pulls back from the kiss slightly, glancing across the Kitsune’s full lower lip with barely the tip of his tongue. He watches as cornflower blue eyes, muzzy and clouded with desire, look up at him. Head cradled in threads of shadowed gold against dark wooden floorboards; eyes that see him, Sasuke Uchiha, without pretence and niceties. They’ve seen him scream, seen him bitch, seen him snarl, seen him threaten, and now they fall open so wide and innocent beneath him.

Nothing stopping, calling all forward with wide open arms.

Sasuke leans down and tastes the flesh of Naruto’s collar bone, fingers tugging down the blond boy’s white t-shirt, teeth scratching at the protruding flesh. He tastes of salt, his mouth and his skin, different kinds of salt though. His mouth tastes like sea salt dyed deep indigo blue and dried in the hot summer sun, and his body tastes like sweat, blood, tears and sex.

“Naruto…” Sasuke growls into his shoulder, licking along a vein underneath the skin. He feels the blond give a little whimper of frustration as he attempts to reclaim Sasuke’s lips, but feels them brush only lightly and teasingly against his own as Sasuke moves across to his other shoulder.

It doesn’t seem- doesn’t feel- real. Dreamlike, the Uchiha slides his hands underneath Naruto’s t-shirt, feeling, counting each rib, climbing slowly up over hot sensitised skin. Watching every movement of Naruto’s face as he shudders, bites his lip and crinkles his eyes shut as Sasuke tickles a sensitive area. Hardly even touching with the finger tip of his forefinger as he brushes against one of Naruto’s nipples- but the Kitsune can’t help but cry out. The loss of control for that one split second lights fires of dominance in Sasuke’s chest.

He moves, plunging his tongue between Naruto’s firm but pliable lips, lips that are flushed pink and swollen from the kisses, the nips and the biting.

The taste of him sharpens Sasuke’s tongue and he tingles all over, suddenly anxious to feel more, to strip Naruto lest this blissful dreamlike reverie should fade. He wants to get right in there, beneath the skin, inside his body, as close as he can to his soul. Somewhere that will envelope him totally but will never shatter, and he wants him, oh god he wants him so much it hurts.

“Naruto,” he says again, his voice rough and husky. He drags his body lower, hands slipping under the blond’s back and moving them both to sit up. His fingers scrape at the white material of the blond’s t-shirt until Naruto, shaking whether from the cold of the long wet kisses or from anticipation, lithely draws it up over his head. Keeping eye contact he leans, within the same movement, back onto Sasuke.

Sasuke finds himself pinned and grinning up into the fantastic, beautiful, insanely flirtatious face that is Naruto. Yes, he’s grinning: because in this singular moment the world does not revolve around the sun, there is no solar system or even a universe. There is no need, there is just them, right here within this speck of time. No other reason is considered as Sasuke pulls Naruto onto him; he feels no shame in being so sexually aroused by another person, a man at that.

His heart skips, flutters and thuds inside his throat as his fingers slide down to that hot forbidden place, as Naruto watches with heavy lidded eyes. Sasuke pushes Naruto over again, with another tumbling of legs and knees which causes them to grunt and hiss.

If Sasuke thought about it, really thought about it, he wouldn’t do it. At least, not like this he wouldn‘t. He’s not thinking, he’s not himself, he’s too relaxed right now, with him, all that blond hair against his nose.

Naruto pushes his forehead against Sasuke’s shoulder and moans. He bucks his hips, pushing deeper into Sasuke’s hand as he cups him, rubs against him, hot urgent and needy. It’s a wanton display of lust as his eyes roll in his head, which tilts to face the skin under Sasuke’s chin.

Sasuke feels teeth grating rigid against his larynx and then at the junction where his neck meets his clavicle, hard and pressing with an awful pressure as sharp canines pierce into the skin. He cries out in pain and desire, a sick, kinky passion, whilst Naruto holds onto his head to move in deeper. Sasuke can feel the blond sucking and lapping at the blood he draws, pulsing like water until it runs clear.

Naruto moves his head back, licking his lips so that they glisten.

Sasuke’s deep breath comes in erratic judders, his stomach writhing as he leans forwards to leave his own teeth marks on the tender skin below Naruto’s jaw. He returns to lick the seam of a panting Naruto’s mouth as his neck throbs. Sasuke Uchiha licks his lips, and then his teeth, savouring the taste of Naruto’s mouth and skin. He feels drained with Naruto, like it’s flooding every essence, ever fibre of his body and he wants… needs more. Salt in his eyes and between his fingers.

Naruto will let him do it, he’s sure of that. The blond’s body yielding unspeakable liberties as it rocks, grinds, yearns against him, intimate hardness as his weight shifts, and the sky seems to lower.

Naruto watches his partner move down, across his lower stomach, tongue dipping across his navel and tracing the spiral of his seal-mark in a careful line.

Sasuke hesitates, for a fraction of a second, just before he reaches to pull down the waist line of Naruto’s boxers. In that fraction of a second, it’s all over.…

Downstairs there is a loud audible knock on the door making it shudder in it‘s hinges, then a shout, someone cupping their hands and sound waves penetrating through wood, metal and plaster: “Uzumaki Naruto, you better be alive in there! Because we are gonna kick your ass!”

Naruto, whom seconds before had had his eyes screwed up and panting heavily through his mouth, snapped cornflower blue irises wide, wide open and came to his senses.

He yelled, wrenching his body up as though someone had jabbed him with an electric poker, his knee colliding with Sasuke’s jaw bone and sending tumbling to the floor in an explosion of white dancing stars.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! We did not just do this, we didn’t not just-oh-my-GOD!”

He stared down at his groin in utter horror as the sounds of a metal key scraped nosily in the lock downstairs, leapt over a semi unconscious lump of Sasuke, who groaned as Naruto’s feet pounded past his face.

Naruto threw himself into the bathroom as he heard the sounds of the door giggling about as it stuck in the frame, (thank god he hadn’t gotten that seen to yet) as he turned the shower on full blast and stepped with his underwear still on (thankfully or unthankfully will be later addressed) into the icy downpour and let out a yell as a sluice of freezing cold liquid drenched every last pore of his body. The sweat, the heat, the smell vanished instantly in a few precious seconds and as fast as he got in, he got out, shivering, not even thinking to get a towel as he heard footsteps coming up the stairs and ran straight out into the hallway and proceeded to drip onto the clean floorboards.

“Oh, Shikamaru, Kiba. Hey!” he said in his I-am-not-being-suspicious-in-any-way-form-or-manner and gave that easy carefree grin.

Kiba looked gob-smacked and Shikamaru gave him the best So-this-is-what-turning-insane-feels-like look he had ever seen.

“It’s a funny time to drop over.” he said conversationally gallantly placing his hand on the wall behind him where he proceeded to make a wet patch on the wallpaper, “How‘s the weather?”

Shikamaru at this point seemed to be beyond speaking, his mouth rotated and flapped in mid-air as he slowly shook his head. Then Kiba said in a soft but wondering voice, “You’re making puddles Naruto, small puddles….”

“Oh yes, so I am.” the grin got wider but the beginnings of panic seared up through his veins.

“Why…” Shikamaru began, regaining his ability to speak, “why are you all wet?”

//Umm…//

“Because I just took a shower.”

There was an impregnated pause.

“In your underwear?”

Naruto floundered and then countered with, “Yes, don’t you?”

This reply all too much for Shikamaru, he’d gone from depressed to stressed and now to bordering almost on the insane with this strain of conversation, he finally snapped.

“HAVE YOU GONE MAD? HAS EVERYONE GONE MAD?! THERE ARE RAMEN NOODLES TELLING PEOPLE THEY’VE SEEN SASUKE, AND HERE YOU ARE BATHING IN YOUR UNDERWEAR!”

Both Naruto and Kiba stared at him as he continued, tick pulsing in his forehead skin almost purple, “ALL I WANTED TO DO WAS DRINK ALCOHOL AND MAYBE PASS OUT BUT KIBA WANTED TO GO SEE COW STRIPPERS AND LEE’S NOT DRUNK, CHOJI WAS EATING PEANUTS AND GOD DAMNIT I HATE HAVING SEX WITH IRRATIONAL WOMEN!”

Shikamaru thus spent, let out a very long exhaling breath, slumped against the wall and slid all the way down it into a sitting position at the base of it.

“Now,” he said slowly, massaging his temples, “you are going to come with me to see Tsunade, you are going to keep why you are you are like this to yourself and I never want to hear the reason why. But you are going to dry off and put some clothes on first.”

Tongues glued to the roof of their mouths they both nod, looking somewhat dumbstruck by it, as Naruto backs up into the bathroom and Kiba sidesteps into the closest bedroom meaning to find Naruto some clothes in order to avoid Shikamaru blazing glare of absolute irritation. He gets halfway across the room before he trips over a solid warm something lying across the floor, a solid breathing something that has two hands over its face and smells rather like Sasuke….except Sasuke with Naruto on him, all over him, like his face, his neck, his back, his torso, his legs….and sweat, and saliva and…oh.

Oh.

Crap.

Kiba whirls himself towards the chest of draws and whips the clothes out as fast as he can possibly do without ripping off the tops of his fingers.

He sprints, half on his hands as much as his feet, out of the door and slams it shut as he hears Sasuke Uchiha behind him let out a loud groan and sit up.

Shikamaru gives him another withering look as Naruto comes out from the bathroom towelling his hair dry and is hit in the face with more underwear and tops and bottoms.

Naruto gives Kiba a little desperate look as if to say “You too?” and is met with his friend’s slightly mad widening of amber eyes and non-too subtle head jerking towards the closed bedroom door and they both know that they know that Shikamaru doesn’t know and they know they know it.

Naruto’s arms shake a little as he slips the shirt up and over his head and worms his way into black slacks, he avoids Shikamaru’s gaze and he quietly asks Kiba what the situation is, all the time his blue eyes wide asking Kiba not to tell Shikamaru, because he won’t understand, because he doesn’t understand himself and it’s complicated.

Kiba watches silently as they walk down the stairs together, and sees them out of Naruto’s front door, he knows ‘The plan’- Shikamaru told him ‘The plan’ before in case things went wrong as they have surely done now, he’s not going to do it unless he really really has to…but that’s not the point. He’s acting decoy right now, and as such it’s his duty to sort out Sasuke, Sasuke whose emerging from the bedroom right now, hulking great bruise forming on his jaw and some sort of red purple mark on the side of his neck. It’s the discolouration that he’s rubbing with one hand, eyes squinted almost shut as he looks about him, Kiba would have to be blind, nose-less, deaf and unconscious for him not to inherently know it to be a hickey, and a big godamned one at that.

There’s a pause as Sasuke stops, and sees Kiba standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up at him, wary, mouth dry as he rolls up his sleeves and takes the plunge.

It’s an absolute dive, and who knows where it’s going to lead to.

But Kiba will do it, on pain of certain death, he’ll do it for Naruto absolutely.

“Sasuke Uchiha, you just made out with my best friend didn’t you?”

Sasuke looks at him with very dark impenetrable eyes, face moody and pale, seamless complexion like molten marble as he opens his mouth to answer…

Sasuke looked at him with very dark, impenetrable eyes, face moody and pale, seamless complexion like molten marble as he opened his mouth to answer….

“Like I’d tell you.” He answered very simply and slammed the bathroom door shut behind him.

Kiba remained stock still on the stairs, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, mouth dry like sandpaper as he tries to swallow and had the unpleasant feeling of his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.

Kiba’s feet propelled him into action and he bounded up the steps and came to an abrupt halt outside the bathroom door hand outstretched nanoseconds from opening it and hauling Sasuke Uchiha out of it.

But, generally hauling Sasuke out of anywhere was a bad idea, lord knows what would happen if Kiba tried to drag him out of Naruto’s bathroom. The whole apartment complex could explode or he could be strangled to death by toilet paper.

He recollected, wide auburn eyes under a mop top of spiky brown hair and tapped his fingers across the wood of the door. He felt Sasuke as prickled away in the bathroom, angry vibes seeped under the door like a drowning vapour.

Kiba took it calmly, step by step feeling his way into new territory. The priority is simple, if Sasuke is important to Naruto, then, Sasuke by default is important to him. He allowed a little exhalation of breath and sat outside the bathroom door and waited.

On the other side of the wall Sasuke Uchiha watched at his reflection in the mirror, his breathing slowed as the ghost of lips touching his own and the invisible hands still clutched against his shoulders. Unwanted delicious things, Naruto smiling at him, sunflower yellow hair in blue eyes, against the torn pale ivory of his own skin, Naruto arching into his own arms, spine dipping and curving as Sasuke’s hungry teeth meet his neck. They were perilous thoughts and he was uncomfortable with them. Too fresh, too new. Like skin that had been ripped open to bleed. The edges ragged and throbbing. It was like part of his mind had been cleaved open, hot white fire assailing his senses as his mind rose and fell into a transcendent state. He felt out of body, utterly unreal, strange, beautiful and awkward.

Naruto was dangerous, he was as addictive and as appealing as a drug and already as Sasuke traced the line of his mouth with the tip of his forefinger he remembered how the feel of Naruto’s tongue had been.

He already wanted more.

Sasuke put both of his hands on the rim of the sink and fought down the childish urge to scream at Kiba to just “Go away!”, he turned the hot water tap on and watched as the hot steaming liquid rushed, swirled and gurgled down the plug hole. The noise distracted him for a minute, but then a rhythmic tap-tap-tapping emanated from outside in the hallway and an angry twitch developed beneath one eye.

“What-do-you-want?” he snarled, spinning round and facing the bathroom door, towering temper dripping from his words a blue and purple bruise blossoming beneath one of his eyes which throbbed and stung, warning him of a coming headache.

“Are you okay?” Kiba asked him, in an annoyingly calm voice, in fact Sasuke decided the Inuzuka is annoying, full stop.

Was he okay? What sort of a question was that? There was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing for the pest to get worked up about…except…

// I did just kiss him. // the nasty little voice in his head pointed out, the same one that told him he was a coward for letting his parents die like that over and over again.

// Exactly. // the nasty little voice continued, // That’s what makes it different, because you know you- //

“Sasuke?” It was Kiba again, and the dark haired youth didn’t know if he was annoyed or grateful at the disruptions of his thoughts.

“You okay in there?”

It was a dumb question and it deserved a dumb answer, Sasuke gave it neither, he just glared at the door, as if the handle would convey his feelings of displeasure and anger over to the idiot on other side and shut him up once and for all.

The handle however did not bite Kiba, no matter how much he willed it.

He wanted to push the thoughts of Naruto away, all the delicious temptation, the rebellious antics and the perilous words.

“Do you want to talk?”

// Do I want to….What? //

“No I don’t!” he said with hostility in his voice, his back almost arching like a cat’s, hackles raised all on edge at the sheer audacity. What the hell was this guy thinking? He didn’t talk, not like that anyway. It was beneath his pride and far below his reason. He was an independent person and no one in no way was allowed to take pity on him because he was locked up and bodily violated. What was he going to do anyway? Remind him about safe sex? Ask him if he was gay? Threaten him? Taunt him? Try to drive him away?

// He wouldn’t have to try very hard…//

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Sasuke said simply, voice aloof and clipped, a tone that usually had an inbuilt ‘leave-me-the-hell-alone’ warning sign strapped into it.

“I think there is.” Kiba told him, his voice deadly serious but a smile on his lips, he rapped his knuckles on the wooden frame of the door again, “Do you want to know what I think Sasuke?”

Sasuke Uchiha rolled his eyes at the bathroom mirror and blew the loose strands of hair away from his face, he was definitely going to have a bruise on the side of his face come morning, and a big one at that.

Kiba warranted the silence emanating from under the bathroom door as consent enough to continue in his train of thought, he hugged his knees to his chest and looked gravely at the light seeping out from the inch gap between the floor and wooden panel.

Did he dare say what was on his mind? What he thought? Or, what he knew? And what would Sasuke do if he said it? Kill him? It would be hard for the Uchiha to do it effectively without chakra that was for sure, but still possible he was in no doubt of that.

And worse still what if Shikamaru found out?

Kiba swallowed, and fought down images of his friend slicing him open with a meat cleaver and feeding his liver to Akamaru on a silver platter.

He’d never been wrong about this sort of thing.

“I think you’re in love with him, Sasuke.”

The doorbell rang, loudly and suddenly at 1:30 in the morning. This seemed to be exactly what Kiba had been waiting for, because he sprang up deftly from his position outside the bathroom door, ran three fingers through his hair, pranced around on the stairs for several seconds and then ran down to the door, pausing for a second before opening it.

The person who opened the door looked extraordinarily like Sasuke Uchiha. Striking, tall, dark hair, unnaturally smooth pale skin and deep moody soul searching eyes. Except this person was definitely not Sasuke Uchiha, the girls standing at the door knew that much. The roguish lopsided grin, the messy bedridden hair and clothes that bore creases, the wear of age and the slight stink of tobacco and alcohol.

“Is that him?” one girl asked doubtfully, pretty curvy red head, eyebrows raised almost into her hairline.

“He doesn’t really seem coldly aloof, and neither do his eyes pin me down and ask if I would like to be shagged.”

Kiba waggled his eyebrows suggestively at her and she frowned at him as if lost in thought, “In fact,” she said slowly, “he seems awfully familiar.”

“Yumi told me it was definitely Sasuke Uchiha.” the brunette to her left said in a boldly confident voice, taking a step towards the ninja in disguise.

“But you’re right, something’s not quite-”

“Am I not living up to your standards ladies?” Kiba asked, he couldn’t stop the grin from sliding across his face, his eyes sparkling almost manically.

“If you want we could all go roll about in the hay for a little while and then you two would definitely get your answers to whether I’m irresistibly sexually overcoming or not.”

He raised his arms in the air, “Anyone for that option?”

The red head gave him another scrupulous look, “I know that tone of voice,” she said slowly, “I’ve had the misfortune of dating that tone of voice.”

She punched him quite hard on the shoulder and there was a small poof as the jutsu unbound at the seems like sand slipping through cupped fingers.

“Kiba Inuzuka!” she said triumphantly taking a step back, “I knew from the moment you opened your mouth and started making sleazy propositions.”

“Arisa,” Kiba said mock politely back to, “ as charming, flattering and lovely as ever I see, still sucking the life out of the living to keep your un-dead soul alive? Well now you know our little secret you can tell the rest of the spectators to go on home now, nothing and no one to see here, except me.”

He hesitated, before adding once again the devilish rogue, “Although of course the rolling around option is still open, minus the hay.”

Arisa wound her long fingers into the fiery red hair of her mane and gave Kiba an assessing look, “You scared Yumi senseless? You? You couldn’t even scare a new born kitten let alone a person.”

“Like I said, always the charmer.”

The brunette touched Arisa lightly on the shoulder steering her towards the stairs, saying softly, “Looks like there’s nothing to see after all.”

“There’s always me.” Kiba shouted after them, leaning against the doorpost now thoroughly enjoying himself, “I give quite a show, ask Arisa.”

“I seem to remember you were all talk Kiba, couldn’t even get it up on the last occasion.”

Kiba’s eyes were half closed with mirth as he uncrossed his arms and put one hand on the edge of the door, and leant out across the threshold of Naruto’s front steps.

“That’s because Arisa, you’re just so terrifying when you’re horny you scare the living day lights out of every red blooded man in the vicinity.”

And then he closed the door with a slam before she got close enough to ring his neck.

That had been way too much fun.

“What are you doing?”

Kiba looked up from where he had been in a happy little puddle euphoria and saw Sasuke Uchiha peering at him from the middle of the hallway, face childishly curious and inky dark eyes wide.

“Pretending to be you,” Kiba responded jovially, jumping to his feet “couldn’t you tell?”

“No, not really.” was the dry and sarcastic comment that flopped back at him, “And if that was your best attempt at being me, you suck.”

“That’s only because I was smiling when I opened the door!” Kiba shot back petulantly, “You should try it someday, unless of course you’ve got some allergy to it. Like your face will fall off and explode if you even attempt one.”

Sasuke’s face remained absolutely deadpan, “I don’t smile because I don’t find you acting like a moronic idiot remotely amusing.”

Kiba felt his eyebrows descend in a knot over his eyes, “No, you don’t smile because you have a stick rammed so hard up your ass you can’t even bend over to yank it out. Either that or you don‘t have a sense of humour.”

Sasuke’s hard penetrating gaze dropped to below sub zero temperatures and his upper lip curled in a sneer.

Kiba glared right back at him, feeling the hairs on the nape neck prickle and stand straight up, “Pity, because I think smiling might suit you.”

Kiba was playing with fire and he knew it, Sasuke could turn round any second and send him spinning through the kitchen wall before he’d even had time to blink, and yet provoking him seemed to be the best method of wriggling the truth out of him. In his slightly agitated state the Uchiha was having greater difficulty in constructing the hollow mask he usually hung above the muscles on his face. A puppeteers master work, flesh working to a formulated routine, no truth, practiced smiles and sneers, no genuine reflection on the inner workings on the mind…and yet.

Somehow Naruto had dug a chink, a small cranny in the seamless defence and a small glimmer was peeking through, if Kiba could get his fingers in and dig, dig carefully, he might be able to prize it open wider.

He was concentrating so hard he clamped down on his tongue between his front teeth and almost gnawed it off in his frustration.

Did he dare repeat what he’d said upstairs? Sasuke Uchiha was staring him down, it was somewhat unnerving that look, thick and intense like churning cement, it seemed to pour through his sockets and fill the crevasses of his mind with a wet gloopy substance.

“I’m not going to stand here and listen to this.” Sasuke said painfully slowly, his voice was sharp and metallic like a knife’s edge, almond shaped eyes narrowed.

Kiba ran his tongue over the cracked surface of his lips, his body tensed and shivering from the clenching of all his muscles, he opened his mouth and felt himself preparing as if for a physical blow.

“Sasuke, you have to tell me. Are you just fucking around with Naruto for the hell of it? I know you’re pretty pissed and all about him keeping you here but he just wants to-”

His voice trailed off as he received a disgusted look and a slow graceful movement that presented him with a broad stubborn back. Kiba snarled suddenly outraged, he wasn’t playing Damnit! This was important!

“You know he was going to propose to her, don’t you Sasuke? Naruto was going to ask Sakura to marry him, two weeks before we unfortunately stumbled across you!”

This called a halt in the movement, and the Uchiha turned his head a little, eyes as sharp as a knife‘s edge.

“Why didn’t he?”

If this information was new and unexpected to Sasuke he wasn’t showing it, if anything his demeanour had become colder and more impenetrable in the last thirty seconds.

“He got cold feet, last second. He bought the ring and everything. Pulled double shifts, collapsed on my doorstep a few times, other times Shikamaru and I would have to go pick him up because he was too exhausted to make it home by himself.”

Still nothing, Kiba ground on thoroughly protective of Naruto’s actions and his convictions, “He loves her you know. He’s under the deluded idea that no ones ever going to do that again as long as he lives. He always thinks he’s all alone when he never is, he looks around for people to like and respect him when he already has our respect. It’s you, you’re the-”

“The outsider?” Sasuke finished, Kiba had his full attention now, but there was a nasty cynical expression twisting itself across the seam of his mouth, too sinister to be called a smile but it was twice as smooth. Almost mocking in its intensity.

“The problem? The one that Naruto always goes running after? Despite the fact that I told him not to, despite the fact that I never ask, I never wanted-”

“He wanted you!” Kiba yelled at him, loosing his cool completely and yelling himself hoarse for all the world to hear, “He still wants you!”

“Naruto doesn’t know what he wants.” Sasuke announced in cold clipped tones of someone who has had enough, “He’s a child, he runs after one thing blindly and ignores everything else. He still thinks he can fix me, and if that’s not deluded I don’t know what is. He should marry Sakura, if she’ll have him, and I rather wonder if she couldn’t do any better then him. Surely even Rock Lee would be a better-”

Kiba’s pupils almost dilated to slits as his spine curved and bent as he sucked in breath, feeling the anger bubble and rise inside of him. He’d always been impetuous, primal instincts like an animal, he knew right now all he wanted to do was solidly smack Sasuke Uchiha’s pretty face into a bloody pulp. He clenched his hands and pretended he was smushing Sasuke’s dark eyeballs between his digits.

“Don’t,” was the dangerously soft reply on his behalf, “lie. I don’t care if you insult me, I don’t care if you yell at me and curse each and everyone of my descendants. But don’t say things like that about Naruto as if you know him so well-”

“I do know him ‘That Well’ you utter moron!” The cool suddenly broken, Sasuke Uchiha was standing in front of Kiba, in the same towering temper he’d had when he was twelve years old.

“You think anyone knows him better than I do? You think I don’t know what motivates him? You think I can’t see where his ideals of me lead him to? You don’t think I realise how much he’s built me up in his mind into some sort of idol, some part of himself, something I don’t want to be. I don’t want to drag him down with me.” his fingers ran over the glassy onyx stubs on his wrists and his expression suddenly became detached and distant.

“You are in love with him aren’t you?” And Kiba’s tones were once again calm and perfectly at ease, in fact Sasuke thought the capricious youth was smiling at him, there was a certain sparkle in his amber eyes.

“Yet here you are, fighting him tooth and nail.”

Sasuke set his jaw, and responded coldly down the straight slant of his impossibly perfect nose, “You just said he wanted to propose to Sakura, surely he’s in love with her then.”

“Yeah, he is in love with her.”

Sasuke’s felt his stomach sink, and then was disgusted with himself for even feeling….feeling what? Resentment? Regret? Anger? Jealousy? Disappointment?

“But he’s obsessed with you, and he always has been.”

Sasuke snorted derisively, he was tired, he was agitated, he was cold, he was hungry he didn’t want to be having this conversation now or at any other point in his life for that matter. Mentally he pictured sticking Kiba full of pins and throwing him out of the upstairs window for the crows to eat, it sounded like a good plan to him.

“There’s nothing-” Sasuke began, not quite understanding why he was trying to explain it anyway, or even what he was trying to explain.

“Oh sure,” Kiba snapped at him, “so you guys just made out because you felt like it. Don’t insult my average intelligence Sasuke, you have a hickey on your neck and Naruto was standing in the hallway dripping and almost naked. Either he jumped you, or you jumped him, which ever way round it was both of you enjoyed it, and you both participated in it. Which means you find each other sexually attractive as well, which….which….” Kiba’s arms flailed for a moment and his mind clunked and processed what was attempting to flit through it, all it gave him was the answer: Therefore they want to have sex. Except, Kiba knew that if he helped Sasuke come to that decision in anyway or form, Shikamaru would know, and Shikamaru would kill him. Kill him very slowly, with a spoon.

And that was something he wanted to avoid at all cost.

Sasuke regarded him now with a keen mixture of curiosity and hesitation, as if he wanted to ask something but hadn’t the courage to ask.

// Here it comes,// Kiba thought, //he’s going to say he is. Is it too late to pretend it’s just the hormones? No, Naruto is just one big hormone anyway, that would never work!//

The doorbell rang again and Kiba almost fell over in shock, he shooed Sasuke down the corridor and into the living room closing the door behind him before bouncing to open the door.

More girls, as expected, five this time, all looking at him with interest.

But before he even opened his mouth one of them announced tartly, “That’s not him.” to the rest of them, to which they all nodded, eyes narrowing. Kiba felt the back of his spine prickle and curve. It was like having one’s body parts out on display and he distinctly disliked the feeling.

“He’s still pretty cute though,” another one commented, bold with curly blonde hair this time, “wanna come out with us?”

Kiba’s mouth flapped for a moment not knowing whether to shout with glee or to bang his head against the wood with frustration, finally he stuck his hand on the edge of the open front door and almost shouted: “Sorry girls, I’m gay.” and then slammed the door shut again.

After meandering in the corridor for a brief thirty seconds, wondering if he’d gone completely barmy not to have swung out the door and thrown himself into the throng of good looking women, Kiba regained enough sense to go back and look for Sasuke.

His mind was still running around with thoughts of sex, and who was having sex, who wanted sex, and how everyone seemed to be currently getting some apart from him.

Especially Shikamaru for that matter. The man whore, as Kiba privately called him in his head. There was a guy who got laid by a perfectly beautiful woman at least once a week, and was still permanently grouchy.

Some people didn’t know how good they had it.

Sasuke Uchiha sat with his back to the wall, his gaze following the cracks in the floorboards as the living room door opened and Kiba walked in. He set his jaw, determined to lock it, but found this very difficult to do once Kiba had squatted down in front of him and grinned. As if this was the happiest moment of his life.

“Five girls wanted me to hang with them,” he said smugly, almost bursting at the seams with barely repressed pride, “and they even knew I wasn’t you.” Sasuke could see all of his teeth, right to the back molars.

“Still,” he added, visibly deflating, it was like watching a tyre with a puncture become more and more flabby, “they didn’t know it was me either, so maybe it doesn’t count.”

“You think?” Sasuke bit back, almost choking on the sarcasm that came coughing up and out of his throat.

“It’s alright for you,” Kiba responded, resting his chin on the knuckles of his clenched hands, “you’ve always known you were attractive to other people. Girls flocked around you.” He wrinkled his nose as Sasuke glowered at him, perfectly shaped mouth once again close to something resembling a sneer.

Why did they always think that sort of attention was a good thing? When no one really knows you but just expects? And expect something he was sure he didn’t even possess anyway. After all you have to have a heart to care don’t you? And he was suspiciously lacking in the caring department.

“That must have been horribly annoying actually.”

Sasuke blinked, but Kiba continued unobservant, “Still, you wouldn’t have had any problem getting laid now would you? God, I bet girls would have queued up just to suck you off, lucky Buggar. You could have given out tickets or something and they would have turned up in droves.”

He gave a slightly cynical bark of laughter and continued, “I’m still jealous of you though, maybe if I’d have been better looking….maybe if I’d told her…” his mop of brown hair swung across his eyes for a moment before he answered. Oddly serious expression on his face as he continued, “If you don’t tell someone that you like them Sasuke, you’ll lose them, and you’ll be stuck with “What if?” for the rest of your life.

I…there was…” he paused again, licked his lips and then bit his thumb, “I didn’t tell her, and now she’s getting married. Which is good.” he insisted, suddenly fierce again, “Because I can’t give her what he can give her, he’s stronger than I am, and it would make more sense. Re-unite the family branches and all that, and he’s a genius as well so you know if she ever had kids she wouldn’t be risking gene pollution for her babies by having my stupidity genes mixed in there too. I’ve dated a few girls that look like her, and then stopped because it was an insult to the other girl. Then I dated Arisa who was her polar opposite.” he gave a low wolf’s whistle.

“Let me tell you, that was a disaster.”

Sasuke’s mouth twitched a little, just a fraction, but it was enough, more than nothing and definitely a something.

“I’m lucky though,” Kiba said quietly, almost a whisper, “I get to see her everyday, and talk to her, and be her friend…and it’s enough. It’s enough to know that I can be there for her and make her laugh when she feels down, and offer a shoulder to cry on if she needs me.”

“So there’s no tension between you?” Sasuke asked, not so much curious as demanding.

“I-uh…” Kiba began, feeling suddenly uneasy, this was very unlike Sasuke to be interested in him, in another persons problems that had little to do with his own agenda. Sasuke Uchiha wasn’t after all known for being a generous soul.

He had a bad feeling about this.

“What if there was sexual tension?”

Kiba Inuzuka was horrified, this was exactly the sort of conversation he knew Shikamaru would find out about if ever Naruto and Sasuke ended up in the sac together (heaven forbid) and somehow it would be all his fault.

Kiba looked around carefully considering all possible answers he could give, he looked at the floor then back up at Sasuke again. Sasuke who fixed him with an intentionally determined stare like that of a crouching Tiger.

“You, erh… I mean….What?” Kiba asked him, although he already knew what was coming.

“What do you do,” Sasuke repeated slowly, unblinking gaze never moving from Kiba’s face, “when there’s sexual tension in a relationship?”

Kiba’s face, if it was possible, went into a rigid state of shock, his mind wildly spinning things like: “I knew it, I was right! I was right!” and “Crap what do I say? What do I do? Will he kill me if I don’t answer him?!”

“I mean,” Sasuke pressed on, his expression clean, analytical and hungry, “do you act on it?”

“Sometimes,” Kiba blurts out unable to stop the words from spilling over his tongue, “but maybe not…it depends…I wouldn’t do it with- but it’s up to you….I don’t think…….Maybe!”

“So,” Sasuke says very slowly, “you think I should?”

Kiba backed into the wall.

Shit, Shikamaru was going to annihilate him when he found out about this.

Kiba runs his hands distractedly across his face, “Look,” he said eventually, resigned to this cruel fate life had dealt him, “have you ever done it before?”

Sasuke gave him a look, it spoke of disgust and outrage.

Kiba took it for pride, “Oh sorry,” he muttered, “you went off with that guy who had a tongue fetish didn’t you? So, of course you have.”

Kiba wriggled around on the floor a bit trying to find a comfortable position whilst Sasuke looked almost frantically at the door wondering if he could sprint there fast enough before Kiba was fool enough to open his mouth and…but it was already too late.

Kiba was obviously one of those people who had no problem in regurgitating every small and intricate detail about his own experiences and personal explorations and exploits.

Sasuke however, was not.

“I think everyone experiments a bit.” Kiba was saying, quite ignoring the most chilling sneering stare the Uchiha could muster and it was having absolutely no effect whatsoever, in fact it seemed only to stir the eager embers of Kiba’s exuberant and ever perky spirit.

“I did.” Kiba announced even louder this time because Sasuke had actually put both of his hands over his ears, alas, it was not enough to drown out the piercing tones of the barbarous youths voice.

“It’s very different doing it with a guy then it is to do it with a girl.” he annunciated, taking deliberate pleasure in saying every word as slowly as possible.

As if this wasn’t already obvious.

“I mean you have to pick the right moment,” Kiba continued grinning from ear to ear, Sasuke wanted to interject things like “Stop it.” and “Stop it or I‘ll smash your head into the wall.” or “I‘ll cut out your tongue if you say one more word.”

But even as he thought this, he heard Kiba say: “And it’s all awkward at first, and your thinking what the hell am I doing? The trick is to not over think it you know, just go with it and it’ll be fine.”

Is that what Naruto wanted? For everything to be fine again? A perfect fairytale ending?

It would never be fine.

Naruto wanted things he couldn’t give, he always had done. He asked too much. Loyalty, a life long companion, family and love. He wanted Sasuke to want him in the same what he wanted Sasuke, whatever that was. Sometimes Sasuke thought he came very close to it. After all it was an obsessing soul consuming love between the two of them, souls unbodied and laid bare. There had been times when he was younger when he had almost felt like Naruto was a part of him. Where one essence ended and the other began, actions and thoughts so predictable so second nature.

There was no doubt that Naruto was a problem, like some hot metal barb splicing through his heart and drawing blood with a steady drip, drip, one day it might kill him. One day there would be no more blood in his veins to give and then he’d die, but not before…unconsciously Sasuke traced the onyx knob on his left wrist, he had mistakes to right before he died. A stupid, stupid mistake, and a deal with the devil to fore fill first. He didn’t have the time to die just yet.

“And then you start doing your thing, and it’s like Shazam!”

Sasuke blinked, the voice suddenly jerking him back down into reality once more, he raised one dark arched brow and asked with all his usual cold sarcasm, “Shazam?”

Kiba smiled at him, “That’s what I say when I’m getting some, Shazam.” and he wiggled his fingers above his head as he said it to accentuate how good it felt.

Sasuke would have laughed then, he might have even told Kiba that if he ever said ‘Shazam’ in a moment of heated passion he’d admit to being a frigid cold ass jerk to Naruto and there was a stick rammed so far up his ass he could rotate on it.

But he said none of this, partly because he the words seemed unable to make it past his tongue, and secondly because at that exact moment the front door opened and Naruto and Shikamaru came stomping into the front hall.

From the moment Naruto moved across the threshold of the apartment everyone inside the building knew he was in one hell of a bad mood. It was something to do with the way the hell hit the floor, less of a ‘Clack’ of leather onto wood and more of a ‘Ker-thunk’ as someone drove not just their heel but their entire sole onto the wooden planks.

Kiba twisted up from his position on the floor, ears suddenly pricked and looking eager, as a dog will do as their master pulls open the front door. Suddenly excited and raring to go within the blink of an eye, he would have jumped up and leapt all over Naruto too, despite whatever mood he had been in, except Shikamaru intervened.

He grabbed Kiba by the collar, and hauled him out the door so fast it was all over in a heart beat. Kiba had barely the time to wriggle round and give Sasuke the thumbs up before he was thrown out across the threshold of Naruto’s house.

“What the hell gives?” He hissed at Shikamaru who had the exhausted expression of someone who simply wished to crawl into bed as soon as possible.

“What did they say? What’s going on Maru?” he continued to pester as his friend elbowed him down the stairs.

“You do not,” Shikamaru began, the flat of both of his hands on Kiba’s back as he applied pressure to make him hurry up, “want to get in the middle of that fight. Believe me.”

Kiba craned his neck to look over his shoulder and his stomach wrenched at the deadly serious expression on his best friend’s face, “W-what did they say?”

His words fell heavy into the velvet inkiness of the dark.

* * *

Naruto didn’t say anything for a long, long moment. The front door clicked shut and the indignant sounds of Shikamaru pushing a dazed Kiba down the stairs faded into the background noise of the pressing gloom. The light was out in the corridor and the shadows crept from the hallways into the artificial lamplight of Naruto’s sitting room, illuminating the shabby corners of the sofa and the wooden chairs.

Sasuke said nothing, obstinate and on edge all at once again, he wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence. But the look was annoyed him, it was the look Naruto had given him when he’d left. The ‘I-don’t-believe-you’ve-done-this-to-me’ with impossibly wide blue eyes, except the eyes were darker this time, pits of deep indigo splashed with cornflowers framed by impossibly dark lashes for one with such fair hair. He looked….hurt…hurt and angry. Like a fox cornered by a hunter, leg broken but the gleam of some ancient savagery alive in its eyes.

It began quietly, the large things always do.

“They tell me,” he said, in tones that were unlike Naruto’s all the time his gaze, his expression never moving, never changing a bit. As though he wanted to hear it from Sasuke before he accepted it, he needed to hear it from Sasuke before he accepted it. Before it plunged his world into darkness and sent him spiralling through it lost and alone.

“They tell me that the Village of Sound was destroyed a little over nine months ago.”

Sasuke’s heart momentarily stopped in his chest, panic rose and began to bubble inside of him, veins and arteries dilated as blood rushed tempestuously hither and thither about his body.

// How much do they know? Surely not…there was no way…it was a secret between ‘The devil’ and myself… //

Naruto keept looking at him, he couldn’t break away, “They tell me all the remaining members of Akatsuki, including from what I’m told, your dearly beloved brother…are dead.”

Sasuke didn’t say anything, his expression remained completely stoic, his body language stiffened as he rose to his feet, eyes level with Naruto, unyielding impenetrable demeanour. Terrifying, beautiful and sad beyond thought and reason.

Yet, all that Naruto saw is a person he’s lost hold of, someone he loves, might even be in love with, but someone who is, or might as well be an utter stranger to him.

As only silence was his answer Naruto pressed on, his own conscious, his own needs, his own justification, part of him slipped and slid on reality as it spiraled and things began to shake loose and fall. Things he’d always believed in, like when Sasuke was strong enough, strong enough to….

“You didn’t mean…to come back did you?” Naruto asked, there was a slight rise to his voice here, the wide generous mouth twisted a fraction, oddly firm line, more carnal, glinting teeth and white canines.

“It was all an accident, if you’d meant to…you’d have come back already. If you’d wanted to, but you didn’t…you-”

“Did you expect me to?” Sasuke asked, his eyes are cold and pin Naruto against the wall he’s standing in front of, limbs heavy like tombstones.

“Did you expect me come back?”

“This is your home…”

Sasuke Uchiha laughed, if you could call it laughter, it’s a hollow mocking sound, much like his smile and it sent waves of desperation and anger up Naruto Uzumaki’s spine.

“Home? You think this is my home? I burnt my bridges to the past when I left this place the first time Dead-Last. The Village hidden in the Leaves can no longer contain me, you fool. I’ve out grown it, I’m too dark, too twisted, too dangerous to be kept here. Do you honestly think these thin plaster walls can hold me here for long? You’re sitting on a time bomb Naruto, you keep underestimating what I’ll really do to get what I want.”

Sasuke licked his lips, and a shadow flitted across his face, a whisper of things to come, “There are worse things than death you know.”

“How did they die?”

The question caught Sasuke off guard for a fraction of a second, but he never lost his composure once, the ice mask drips poison that seeps into the air and gags both of them.

“Didn’t they tell you?”

Naruto’s face worked only to form the next word, the only thing alive in the mask are his eyes, a brilliant blue that flashed as they became steadily angrier and angrier with each passing second.

“Intelligence says the whole place has been flattened, completely wiped out. It’s all gone, there’s nothing left. Not even a blade of grass, or a standing tree. It’s a wasteland now, barren and completely bare.”

There was that look again, the strange hurt look of child, “No person could have done that, Sasuke.”

“Are you saying I’m not human?” There was the sneer again.

“I honestly don’t know anymore…” Naruto’s voice trailed off, “You tell me nothing but lies. I can’t trust you.”

“So you’re finally catching on are you?” It hurt a little to be say it, it hurt Sasuke a little to say it to Naruto. Naruto who believed in him blindly. He had always left Naruto behind because Naruto had kept on looking for much longer than all the others had done, Naruto who had continued to trust despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It was something precious and fragile that Sasuke was trying to kill, a white innocent thing smoother than stardust and infinitely more dear that he was hacking away at. He could see it in those blue, blue eyes and he longed to crack it forever, to be completely free and clean of the past altogether.

“I don’t care about you Naruto, I never will do. I just use people to get what I want, I use you. Don’t you understand? Everyone else does.”

“Shut up Sasuke.” The syllables were ground and the voice impossibly rough, he was close to breaking.

“You were always dumb, you never understood, you couldn’t understand. You’ve never had a family, you’ve never lost like I have so you don’t know the pain. You don’t know how to suffer, and you implant your silly, idealistic-”

“Shut the hell up.”

The anger was closer now, like steam rising from a kettle it began to whistle, almost ready to erupt, ominous clouds to swirl.

“Is it because you’re in love with me Naruto? Is that why you can’t let me go? Because I was your one and only love, and Sakura keeps the bed warm but she’s not me now is she?…”

He walked slowly across the room towards Naruto, Naruto whose legs were locked, rooted to the spot unable to move.

“Because you want me don’t you Naruto? You’re a fool because you want me and you always will, you can’t break the cycle, I’ll always have you at my beck and call…”

The blond flinched as Sasuke brushed the tips of his fingers against his cheek, and traced the three vertical scars whisper light, “My poor, ugly, monstrous demon…”

Naruto’s eyes were still looking at him, angry, hurt, disbelieving, such a deep and trusting and unfeasible blue, Sasuke’s hot breath was against his ear and his heart fluttered and jittered at the heat that radiated from the supple body before him. His body wanted, whilst his brain recoiled, he’s drunk on Sasuke Uchiha.

His eyes, his smell, his touch, the way he talks, the way he whispers, the way his mouth moves as the words come spilling over his tongue.

So what if they hurt? So what if they pull him apart inside? Sasuke’s here, isn’t that enough? Touching him, so close to holding him.

Sasuke Uchiha tilted Naruto’s face up to look up into his own, the rigidity in Naruto’s body had gone, he was like a limp fish, he moved easily and responded easily to Sasuke’s touch and Sasuke felt himself become darkly excited as cornflower irises meets his half lidded and in pain, but somehow still asking for him.

Like he needed him, like he couldn’t exist without him.

“How could anybody ever love you?”

There it was, that small whimper of pain before Sasuke’s lips crushed against Naruto’s and the Kitsune was holding onto Sasuke as if he was going to drown. As if he was going to choke and never come up for air again, as if he was going to die and he simply didn’t care. Feverish, delirious kisses, hot and tempting hands, it doesn’t seem to make sense, nothing made sense, he was pressed against the wall with his fingers curled deep into Sasuke’s ebony dark locks and gasped for air and sucked in breath and hated…hated himself for it. Hated every single second, hated his need, hated his urge, hated the way that Sasuke said all these malevolent manipulative things as he caressed and touched him and all Naruto could do was agree. Agree and hold himself close to Sasuke because he was afraid of letting go, because he couldn’t accept losing him. Because if he lost Sasuke, he’d fall apart at the seams and unravel and slip through everyone’s fingers like countless grains of sand.

So when Sasuke did stop, did allow Naruto to sink to his knees, mouth flushed and swollen from the rough kisses and biting, gasping for oxygen but given no time to think as Sasuke pushed him to the ground and straddled him and Naruto knows he means to do it this time. Not because he wants to, but simply because he can, and he wants to prove to both of them that Naruto won’t…can’t stop him.

Then Naruto in a moment of cold clarity, staring up at the ceiling as Sasuke reached down unclasp the catch on his trousers.

“I bet you wanted Itachi to do you like this didn’t you? Fuck you raw naked up your ass. That was all you really wanted from him, wasn’t it?”

Sasuke didn’t reply, in fact his expression barely changed but his fingers run up the length of Naruto’s body and clench and span the extent of his neck and slowly began to choke him.

That was when Naruto Uzumaki knew he’d gone too far, knew as he kicked and clawed at the fingers around his neck that he was gonna die, right then if Sasuke could manage it. Little white dots bobbed and careered over a darkened background as Sasuke pressed down directly on his jugular and held it there. Things faded into black and white and then became fuzzy. Sasuke’s fingers were cold and unrelenting as they bit into his neck, he was not even sure Sasuke is in complete control of his own actions at that moment in time, if it was his body performing something on reflex of anger, deadly soul consuming anger that overrode his brain.

Naruto would die for Sasuke, they both know it. But as oxygen is cut off to the rest of the body his brains receptors screeched into overdrive and the Kyubbi’s chakra exploded inside of him. Suddenly the fear of death overwhelmed, red energy surged and then expelled and Sasuke went flying. Naruto went flying too. Both in opposite directions, and hard into the floor.

There was a pause, a realisation, and utter horror.

Sasuke looked at his hands and then again at the red spanning marks on Naruto’s neck and the way Naruto coughed and swallowed down air through a raw trachea, then he looked like he’s going to be sick and walked wordlessly out of the room.

Naruto heard the sound of footsteps going up the stairs and a door slammed shut, but all he can do is lie on the floor and gasp like he’s dying. He didn’t go upstairs again that night, he didn’t even move from where he lay, curled up in a foetal position and shaking from the cold.

* * *

When he falls asleep, he’ll wonder how he got onto the sofa with the blanket draped over his body, he’ll have forgotten the person who came down later and said over and over again that he was sorry whilst he slept, and he doesn’t know about the kiss in the dark. The light, loving one that Sasuke gave him as he lay on his back exhausted and fast asleep, he might think the dried tears on his face are his, he might think he wept them, but he didn‘t….

Fish Bird

Chapter 10 : Comforting Sounds

Disclaimer: I love Naruto, I can't
help loving Naruto, I had a dream in which Sasuke and Naruto made out in front
of me and I wish I had a dream camera but alas I do no. I don't own it though
thank goodness, because then I'd have to be responsible for the bitch that
Sasuke is.

Warnings: Lemon (you tease ED? No
I'm not, LEMON I SAY) Angst, strong language

Important note: Looking for Betas!
Two or three would be nice, so I can double and triple check work and you can
throw suggestions at me as both of mine have gone away (one to Cuba and one to
Canada...COME BACK TO ME SOON MY LOVES!)

If you are interested please drop
me a comment and I'll give you my MSN, Y! or Gtalk address and we can discuss
it, although I would love to bounce not just Fish Bird, but Muse and this other
lemony NaruSasu Naruxeveryone orgy thing I've been working on.

So interested? Drop me a line! 3

Written for Hippo, because I love
her and she made me write this till 3 am last night so she could take it on the
plane with her this morning at 5 am... YOU BETTER HAVE ENJOYED THIS CHAPTER YOU
COW!!!

Unbeta'd...obviously.

Now it was awkward again. Or at least that was how Naruto would have liked to describe it, had he’d had the courage to face Sasuke down, but he hadn’t. He’d taken to avoiding him instead, and if that didn’t work ignoring worked just as well. A cowards approach maybe, but the emotions Naruto was feeling wouldn’t give him a straight answer, part of him kept pushing to kick down Sasuke’s door and beat the crap out of him until through the blood and the tears he’d feel better. He’d beat Sasuke into humility, and in the process himself. Then they’d cry, swear at each other, cry a little more and fall asleep, and when they woke later it would all be over, everything would be back to how it was before. The brother and best friend he’d had once, and had always wanted.
Had this been all of what Naruto felt for Sasuke there wouldn’t have been a problem at all, life would have been a virtual walk in the park, but the fact remained that a portion of Naruto, a strong portion wanted to walk into Sasuke’s room, strip off his clothes and touch, taste, feel, devour and be devoured until there was no sense left in anything, until he couldn’t move, or passed out. Until he was so spent he collapsed, Sasuke in his eyes in mouth, drunk, euphoric and sated fully and utterly.
He wasn’t sure, if it was love or lust either. Had it been love…had he known it was love, he would have moved hell and high water by now, but as it was…it wasn’t the same type, the same kind of emotion he’d felt for Sakura. His emotions ran like a knife-edge dangerously high and perilous, one moment he was walking the blade, the next he was falling to crash and splinter himself to pieces on the silvered metal.
When he was with Sakura, he felt at peace. He could sit and lie, if he closed his eyes he was confident of the fact that she’d be there when he woke up, whether it was shouting at him for not doing the laundry or combing her fingers softly through his hair with that tender smile of hers and green eyes.
He’d spent at least three days avoiding Sasuke, whether it was ignoring him entirely as was necessary when they had to inhabit the same room for any period of time together, such as the kitchen when mealtimes came around. It was quite an art to pretend not to hear Sasuke when he sullenly asked to pass the Soy Sauce, and have to accidentally on purpose use it yourself and then knock it with your elbow across the table so it conveniently rolled towards Sasuke’s open and outstretched fingers. Other times he had just slipped silently out of the room, apart from the incident the morning after when Kiba had turned up at some God forsaken time in the early morning, with the excuse of having left his irriplacible-socks-underneath-the-couch-that-he-was-unable-to-live-without-and-by-the-way-how-are-you-and-Sasuke-doing?
Naruto had been amazed by the fact that as Kiba and himself had stood in the sitting room talking, that Sasuke whom had actually stirred himself from what Naruto had supposed to be sleep after not giving a fuck about whether or not he’d strangled Naruto last night and just leaving him to die on the floor, until he’d (at some point he couldn’t remember) crawled onto the couch. The hurt and the pain in his neck was still too raw, too new, too painful to be considered. He’d given one look at Sasuke whom had stood there, looking for a moment as if he didn’t know what to say. A rare moment for Sasuke whom always seemed to know what to do to piss other people off if all other attempts of social interaction failed.
The blank look of what Naruto assumed to be arrogance had been far too much for Naruto to deal with, with a shout like an angry lion he’d slammed the door shut forcefully whilst the pain throbbed dully in his neck and Kiba wrung his hands, blinking fast but said nothing.
The news had obviously gotten back to Shikamaru as fast as Kiba could sprint when he got out of the house because low and behold fifteen minutes into Shikamaru’s lunch break as Naruto sat in the archives at the bottom of the Hokage Tower, determined not to go back to the house unless there was some dire emergency, say for example his apartment burst into many colourful flames, otherwise he wasn’t going to go back until late.
A bag of donuts descended onto his lap out of nowhere, the sort he liked, with a custard cream centre and sprinkles on the top. Looking up he saw Shikamaru looking down at him across the mild descent of his nose.
They hadn’t talked about it; Shikamaru never did unless Kiba was there to bluntly poke him with a preverbal stick into talking about feelings and other such emotional topics, and even then he did it grudgingly. Shikamaru had him eat the last donut though, and as Naruto, tired had rested his weary head on Shikamaru’s pointed and somewhat bony shoulder and tried very hard to swallow down the hiccupping, stupid little noises his body was insisting on making because he was emotionally and physically drained. Shikamaru had obligingly skipped whatever it was that he was supposed to be doing and had helped Naruto with the tedious job of sorting through dusty archive volumes after dusty archive volumes. Despite the fact that Tsunade had only given the job to Naruto because he’d begged and pleaded for something to do, and she point blank refused to send him on anything dangerous or potentially risky after the ‘take out Ramen’ incident. Although that hadn’t strictly been Naruto’s fault. She’d also denied his application to ANBU before his resume and skills had even been assessed any of the ANBU team Captains. Arguing that he wasn’t ready, he wasn’t the right type that now was the wrong timing. She was blowing smoke over the fact that no one had heard from Sakura’s team for over a month now. Naruto was getting tetchy about it, that and the fact that Kakashi was still not back yet from his mission of checking up on them. He’d been gone for a little under a month; something, which should have taken two weeks, had taken up so far three and a half weeks. Every time someone mentioned the name Sakura in Tsunade’s presence she developed a twitch under one eye and threw things across the room. Much to Shizune’s dismay, because she was often the one left to deal with the aftermath and the mess.
Naruto missed Sakura, he’d gone to her apartment the other night, when he’d been unable to sleep due to the fact that Sasuke had kept pacing up and down his room, up and down, up and down, at three o’clock in the morning and Naruto hadn’t trusted himself to go in there not knowing if he’s simply kill Sasuke, or cover his mouth with his own and pull him hard down and fast on top of him.
Sitting in her apartment, in her kitchen, at her neat and tidy kitchen table, he’d found himself, if it were possible, at a greater unease then before. The place seemed to whisper at him “Hurry, hurry…” and other things like “Liar.” And “Cheat.” Which Naruto supposed he was, but at the same time, he knew inherently that Sakura would have understood more than anyone, because she too, had…maybe did feel the same sort of emotions that he felt for Sasuke.
He’d fished around for a bit in her plant pots until he’d found the ring in its small blue box, sitting exactly where he’d left it, the box slightly damp, covered in earth, but the ring itself as blood red and as beautiful as it had ever been. Naruto had pocketed it, knowing full well this time of whom and what the ring had reminded him of, and why it hadn’t struck him before seemed something of massive blunder on his behalf.
Sasuke…the ring reminded him of Sasuke.
It occurred to him then that he’d been having the dreams…the sexual dreams about Sasuke for a long time now. Haunting, odd, morbid and yet erotic images clinking through his mind as he had sat there rotating the ring about his fingers and silently wondering what it all meant.
He didn’t love Sasuke…like that did he? Yes did, he always had done, Sasuke had been such a powerful obsession to him that he hadn’t known when the obsession ended and the love began. Or was the love another part of the obsession, where his mind projected all the ways that he could in fact have him. Except in the dreams it was always Sasuke taking from him, taking what Naruto gave grudgingly. Part of him recognised the fact that he didn’t need Sasuke, part of him argued that Sasuke was another part, an amputated leg that he was trying to sow back on again when he knew the stick he had been using to walk served just as well. It was too late to back out now, he knew that, despite what everyone had said and told him he’d gone and done it anyway. Because he was sick, because Sasuke was his weakness, because he…Naruto Uzumaki was lost when it came to Sasuke. He wanted strong arms to wrap around and touch his body, he wanted the taste of Sasuke flowing across his tongue, and the pressing hardness of Sasuke’s chest, abdomen and legs twisting and sliding across his own. But did he want to wake up and find Sasuke lying next to him? Did he want to wake up and smile at Sasuke, run his hands through ebony dark locks and tell him that he loved him. Did he want to spend his life joined to Sasuke and whatever dark roads entailed, or did he want to heal Sasuke and set him free. And if that was the case was there ever a plan with less hope of success?
Naruto didn’t even know what he wanted anymore.
Or even what Sasuke needed from him, not that Sasuke needed anything from him, he’d made that quite clear in their last conversation. Naruto felt like he didn’t know anything about Sasuke anymore, he didn’t know who the person who was living in his house, the person whom he had let kiss him, touch him and oh-so willing to let him to do much, much more, was.
He was as lost as he had ever been, on a long winding road where the dirt trail disappears into what could be a multitude of directions, Naruto heard the voices of the other day ringing loud and clear as he chased the echoing memory through his own head.

“They’re all dead?” Naruto could hear himself repeating after Tsunade whilst Jiraiya had looked on grimly at him from behind the Hokage’s chair.

“Just like that? It’s amazing he was that strong! He took down Sound and Akatsuki all by himself?!” Naruto had been laughing, blue eyes flashing. But Tsunade had shaken her head, slowly.

“It wasn’t like that Naruto, from what reports say, it wasn’t in a way that any human could have done.”




Naruto had been silent for a moment before speaking again, “…What do you mean nothing human?”

It was pointless really, all pointless. His optimism was run out, he was facing a brick wall and didn’t know how to make head nor tails out of it. Sasuke was a closed book to him, and he was leaning open, pages fluttering in the wind and ink smearing in the torrential rain. He needed…he needed out, he needed release. He wanted something, some sign, some way to help, some little word. Something to tell him this was all okay, that they’d make it through. Naruto had never doubted for a moment that Sasuke would save himself, that Sasuke would find a way through and find a future, but now Naruto wondered if that future necessarily included him.
He walked back through the rain, droplets of icy cold liquid dripping across his fringe and into his eyes, his jacket was soaked through and clinging to his skin as he opened the front door shivering. Lashes stuck in thick dark blond clumps about his eyes, and he sneezed, reminding himself it would hardly do the world wonders if he got sick again. Who knows what could happen this time, the whole house might explode. Naruto smiled as he slipped off his shoes, imagining the mess and rubble that Sasuke would undoubtedly make, he took a long inhale, slicking his wet hair back against his head and smelling smoke.
Yeah, there would certainly be smoke if Sasuke blew the house up; he took a few steps forward noting how the smell of smoke got stronger the closer he got to the kitchen. He was just shaking his head and telling himself that Sasuke would probably blow the house up trying to cook when he twigged that this might actually be the case happening right now at this very minute. Yelped like a stung cat and threw himself at the kitchen door and tumbled down onto the floorboards on the other side of the door.

Had Naruto not been so busy panicking that his apartment might burn down and destroy all the instant ramen he kept in the cupboards underneath the sink he might have very well laughed. In his panic however he ran into the table and fell under and over two chairs in a clumsy attempt to get to Sasuke as quickly as possible.
It was quite embarrassing for the Uchiha actually, it had seemed that in the process of cooking egg fried rice that Sasuke had poured too much oil into the pan (not being adept at cooking or even having the slightest understanding to how the gas stove worked) the pan had lit up like a firework and throwing water onto the mess had only made the flames jump higher until they were licking and convulsing in a heated contusion high in the air.
Sasuke heard the kitchen door bang open and guessed it to be Naruto, his suspicions proved to be correct as a wet and dirty blond collided with his back and tried to yank the pan off the stove and dump it straight into the sink which was filled with soapy water. Unfortunately the handle at this point was burning hot, and Naruto let go mid yank with a yelp of pain and the frying pan slipped slightly setting the dishcloth on fire which was painfully close to Naruto’s face and Naruto yelled something obscene that sounded like “Mother fucking hermit snake bollocks!”
In the face of Naruto setting all of his hair alight Sasuke grabbed the basin of soapy water in the sink and threw the contents at Naruto and the pan. The flames went down in a hissing sullenly slump that spit out copious amounts of dirty grey smoke and ash, and Naruto was left in a drenched sloppy mess of orange, black and dirty yellow hair, and eyes that blinked and looked slightly stunned.
Sasuke took one look at Naruto’s singed eyebrows smiled, he couldn’t help himself, it was just so damned ridiculous he couldn’t do anything but smile.
Naruto walked squelchily over to the kitchen taps and ducked his head under it, letting the cold water bring him back to his senses again. He looked up to find Sasuke still smiling, and then smiled himself, and then he began to laugh. To his amazement so did Sasuke.

“You call me an idiot?” Naruto managed to wrench out, he was holding the countertop for support, shaking the water from his hair like a wet dog.
“You were about to cause a national disaster, and for what? Egg fried rice?!”

“This,” Sasuke found it within himself to retort, that damned supercilious superior look on his face and one haughtily arched brow, “from someone who has half of each eyebrow burnt to a crisp on their gormless face?”

“I do not have half eyebrows, dickhead!” Naruto yelled back at Sasuke, still shaking from laughter but never the less running his forefingers across his eyebrows just to make sure that they were still there.

“Next time let me make the food!”

“I would have done, but I was hungry and I didn’t see why I should damned well wait for you to make some food in your own sweet time, you’ve been out all day!”

// He knew that because he’d been waiting for him //

“Next time try making the instant stuff, it’s obvious you’re an unspoken kitchen catastrophe waiting to happen.”

“I don’t like that instant shit you have in there, it tastes like sawdust and smells even worse.”
Naruto huffed and puffed at this, feeling his insides swell in indignation.
“Well then your highness, you’ll just have to wait for me to cook for you won’t you?”

“And starve in the meantime I suppose, not that you really give a damn about whether I live or die-”

“Oh cut the crap Sasuke!” Naruto hissed at him, taking a threatening step forwards, sodden and wet and utterly terrifying with water dribbling from the hair flat against his temples and down the sides of his cheeks.

“Well,” the Uchiha answered him icily, not moving an inch, “isn’t that why you’ve been avoiding me all week?”

Naruto floundered slightly at this, then spun back “I seem to remember someone with their fingers around my neck and trying to end my all too short life span with their own hands not so very long ago Sasuke. So I’d check your tongue and your memory before you start firing blind bullets about me avoiding the issue.”

Sasuke’s heart flickered a moment, before it seemed to stop, his tongue felt thick and useless inside his mouth as Naruto glared up at him. Naruto on his part didn’t know if Sasuke was forgiven, he didn’t know if he’d already forgiven Sasuke directly after the act, or even before the act when he’d begged and pleaded to bring Sasuke back to his apartment rather than leave him in the hospital. Naruto didn’t know when he’d forgiven Sasuke for using him, pushing him aside, stepping on him, under appreciating him and taunting him. But he knew he had done, because the reality of Sasuke loving him was so great he’d push the universe aside for it.
So when Sasuke opened his mouth, shut it again and looked down at the floor unsure of himself, Naruto didn’t know why he started apologising, started babbling on about all these silly useless things that he had done, saying things like, “I wanted to help you.” And “I didn’t know what else I could do.” Or “He’s Itachi, it’s always Itachi, I always loose Itachi.”

Naruto found himself laughing at his own backtracking; he ran fingers through his hair distractedly, “For once I’d like to win against your brother.” He said softly, “Even if he’s dead he’s still winning against me, lucky bastard. But then again, I always am the ultimate looser aren’t I Sasuke? You used to call me that, Dead-Last.
I suppose that’s what I am. You’d probably be happier, much happier if you got away from here, got away from me. I’m so stupidly hung up on you, you see.”
He looked towards the window and away from Sasuke.
Sasuke with that impossibly dark hair and smoky eyes unbearably dark and yet so silvery grey when it caught the light, like polished mirrors faded with age. Sasuke had such high cheekbones and such a perfect mouth beneath an impossibly straight nose. It was odd when Naruto found himself pinned to the wall with both his hands above his head, he was almost crying himself he was so exhausted, so tired, so bloody tired.
“You’d…you just want to go don’t you?”
Sasuke’s mouth was close to his, and Naruto could feel the hot puffs of breath sliding across his scarred cheeks.
“I have to…” there was a slight strain to the voice, deep and sultry as it was, but Naruto had difficulty deciphering what it was with all the desire and lust that was spinning about in his own mind. Being close to Sasuke was a mistake, he could smell and feel the dark haired youth and it sent blood to all the wrong places, diverting blood from parts of him that needed it more, like his brain for example. Pitiful underused organ as it already was.
But Naruto was lost as Sasuke’s tongue slid across his mouth, and he found himself obligingly opening his lips and inviting Sasuke in.
“You’re going to let me out?” Sasuke said breathily teasing like a cat, turning his attention away from the desire embedded within him to ravage Naruto’s hot mouth, so alluring and tempting as it was.
“I don’t…Ahh!” Naruto began, and then couldn’t finish as Sasuke slid his hands under the wet and sodden material of the black jacket the blond was wearing and placed his hot palms and searching fingers against the hard flatness of Naruto’s taut stomach.
Naruto turned his head to the side and snarled, hating the fact that Sasuke could just touch him, simply touch him and the world span and his legs threatened to buckle under him.

“Just for a second,” Sasuke was whispering into his ear, nudging the shell with the tip of his nose, fingers stroking from the bottom of Naruto’s ribs to the top of the waistband of his trousers. Naruto kept hissing every time Sasuke’s fingers traced the rim of the waistband teasingly, knowing full well Naruto wanted him to put his hand lower. Half of his mind screamed at him to take Naruto right here and then against the kitchen wall, wrap his legs around his waist and bury himself so deep in him and make Naruto scream out his name over and over again. He wanted to have Naruto, to keep him, he wanted to tell Naruto that he had been the only thing he had been thinking about these past three days, and had not done something so abominably stupid he would have had him by now. He would have completely stolen his heart and left all thoughts of Sakura blowing a distant and bitter wind.
But if Naruto…if they…it was an impossibility.
“Just let me out, just for a moment, it’ll just take a second, I want to feel the wind on my face, the rain and the sun. Just one second Naruto…”
Small strangled reply, almost a hollow laugh, “You’ll leave.”
Sasuke stopped, heart jumping in his mouth, he felt one of Naruto’s hands curl into his hair pulling him closer, and he was met with those impossibly blue eyes again.
“What if I don’t want you to leave?”
Sasuke closed his eyes because it was easier to do it this way, so he wouldn’t have to look at all that broken innocence in the face again, he could shatter Naruto now, unleash sharp cruel things onto his psyche that would break him in half. But knowing Naruto it would probably only give the blond another incentive to chase after him again after he’d put himself back together again. Naruto was good at piecing himself back together again, and the words were too reminiscent of Valley of the End anyway to hold any real fortitude. Instead he’d have to settle by breaking Naruto’s heart piece by piece and sowing it back together in a way which didn’t include him.

He pressed the right buttons this time.

“What about Sakura?”
Naruto’s face went through a rainbow of emotions at this, from anger to betrayal, to confusion and then to sadness.
“Sakura would…she’s…she always…”
But Sasuke could feel Naruto’s determination wavering somewhat, the boundary felt it, the thing around the house wavered and fluxuated for a second. They felt the chakra of it flickering throughout their bodies and were filled with it for a second.

“Let me out, Naruto.”

It wasn’t a demand this time, it wasn’t a threat, but spoken as if to a lover and it wrenched at Naruto’s heart just beneath his ribs, as if he was splitting slowly in two.

Naruto let him, all the while Sasuke kissed him, his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his cheeks, his forehead. Lips and teeth lingering on his skin, as Naruto felt the breath in his throat come short and stick in his chest. He made a mistake with the hand signs a few times, his fingers trembling with the adrenaline and high sickness running through his system. He remembered shaking his head and gasping as Sasuke took his hands in each of his and raised them to his mouth, gently teasing the tips of each fingers with his lips and sliding them slowly across his tongue, all the while looking at Naruto with such dark deep bottomless eyes it seemed impossible to think of anything but Sasuke. It was like being overpowered, filled from the inside out, he didn’t understand all the loving motions Sasuke made as he unbound the Jutsu, like the way Sasuke rubbed his cheek against the inside of Naruto’s wrist after he’d let his hands fall away after the first unbinding was done. Sasuke said so many little, meaningless wonderful things as he did it, unaware and yet aware at the same time that they were slowly walking away from the kitchen, moving gently into the hallway. Naruto pressed so close to Sasuke so he could hear Sasuke’s heart beat thumping against his ribcage.
The window was already open making it easy for Sasuke to slip out of, one long fingered hand testing and then out, and then the other, before he swung his whole body across the sill and stood in the rain and the wind and turned his head to the sky and let the water slide and sluice across pale skin and opened his mouth and drank in the raindrops.
Then he laughed, ashen grey eyes turning to Naruto. It wasn’t the sneering mocking smile that he gave Naruto, but something of freedom and things to come. The truest smile that Sasuke had given Naruto since before Valley of the End perhaps, and in that second Naruto panicked, struck suddenly by loss and abandoning sense he ran after Sasuke, jumping onto the roof top with him, sliding across the tiles, forgetting everything about the art of being a Ninja. So like and yet at the same time, unlike their childhood, everything so familiar and so distant.
Familiar in the way Sasuke stood, smelt and looked. But the way they crushed their lips together, Naruto fighting for something, anything, he didn’t know. He was afraid, he didn’t want to…not able to loose Sasuke, and yet wanting to let him go, like opening the doors of a golden gilded cage and hoping the caught bird will fly back to you of it’s own free will.
Sasuke was going, he’d let him go, he was going to leave him, again.

Sasuke Uchiha ran his mouth down the length of Naruto’s neck, biting the junction to where the collarbone met the muscles of the neck, he tugged Naruto’s hands towards him, filled suddenly with childlike excitement.

“Chase me,” he muttered, not needing to give Naruto the incentive more than once, hell the reflex must have been second nature to him at least by now, if not maybe even his first.

Then he was off, as fast and faster still then Naruto remembered him to be, still a manipulative bastard as always but this time Naruto didn’t even question it. He ran after Sasuke, blessed for the dark and gloomy sky and the evening light that cast shadows everywhere and obscured faces.

Everyone would be mad, his life would be topsy turvey, more so after this, but he cared not at this moment. Sasuke weaved in and out of buildings, taking deserted backstreets and waiting for Naruto down back alleys. Waiting for the blond to run to a place where he’d been previously and then vanished from and whilst Naruto stood there dumbly, panting and looking round, licking his lips, Sasuke would pounce. It was like some erotic fantasy where the world was their dream and Naruto would let Sasuke beat him to the ground, where they’d grind against each other, grit against their hands and painfully, almost agonizingly hard. A mouth would descend across him torturing him with small, brushing kisses, nipping, teasing, trailing, fingers cold and wet raking over hot and searing skin. Fingers pressing into Naruto’s mouth as he arched and yelled out, the familiar rocking motion Sasuke would create as he pushed his own hips against Naruto and the blond could do nothing but follow it.
But every time Naruto tried to make Sasuke go lower Sasuke would pull away disappearing off for Naruto to chase down again in some other god forsaken dirty corner, at the back of a derelict shop, a broken down housing estate, and the rickety wooden fence in front of someone’s front yard.
Gradually the buildings broke away to trees and the ground turned to grass and the wall was jumped and Naruto realised they were outside of Konoha. Outside it, and he’d let Sasuke out and it was probably the stupidest thing he’d ever done as he stood in the middle of a clearing of trees after chasing down Sasuke’s shadow.

Except there was nothing in the clearing.

Not even Sasuke’s shadow.

Naruto didn’t even remember yelling, but he did, long and hard, so it ripped his throat and tore at his voice box, and Sasuke came down from the line of trees he had been hiding in, (he’d always been so awfully good at doing that) sitting on a branch and swinging his legs. His eyes devouring Naruto from head to toe, savage looking, like a predator, then Naruto asked, asked because Sasuke had come when he’d called for him and he’d never done that before.

“Please?”

He was even more surprised when Sasuke gave.

In retrospect Naruto didn’t know if it was just the sex that Sasuke wanted, part of him argued that Naruto had wanted to know what sex in the rain would have been like. It wasn’t sound reasoning, but in nine months time he’d convince himself that this would be the reason why, and not because he loved Sasuke, and Sasuke hadn’t given it to him because he’d loved Naruto too.
Naruto would learn to turn the situation on its head.

They stripped each other of clothes and Naruto felt Sasuke’s tongue lick and work at his navel and struggled to keep his legs from buckling beneath him, tilting his head up to the rain and feeling the water slide sensually across his hot lips, drinking it in and gasping as fingers dug into his abs and ass, digging into the taught muscle there. He sank to his knees then, wanting to find Sasuke’s mouth with his own then, groaning and snarling as Sasuke’s tongue merely touched his own, the tip playing, dancing, duelling with his own before darting away to slip around the shell of his ear which left both of Sasuke’s hands free to pull down his trousers.

“We’ve waited so fucking long,” was Sasuke’s dark and husky murmur into Naruto’s ear as he pushed him forcefully down and beneath him. The blond wriggled and squirmed beneath him, soil getting into his hair and his skin, blinking out the rain and listening to the thunder, why was Sasuke always so fucking gorgeous?
Why must he always be so gorgeous, even when he wanted to pound his face into the ground for being so arrogant, so assuming.

“Why must you always talk?” he panted out, his voice slightly strangled by the amount of frustration contained within it, lust and desire all culminating at once. His hands slid down to Sasuke’s waistband and slid it down towards his ankles, regarding his erection with his eyes with deliberate slowness, taking in the size, cornflower blue then rising to look at Sasuke’s eyes again to find them half lidded, almost lazy looking with lust.
Naruto smiled at him slowly, generous wide mouth and Sasuke caught himself thinking of all the wonderful and dirty things he could make Naruto do to him.
He made Naruto kiss him again slowly, pushing his knees between Naruto’s spread legs pushing them wider apart. Teasingly stroking lightly across what Naruto so obviously wanted him to touch, and he watched fascinated, loving it as Naruto rolled, arched and whimpered beneath him, he could feel fingernails scraping across his back, digging in hard, leaving hot scorching red marks behind them.
Naruto ground up into Sasuke and Sasuke found himself panting, hissing, biting, scratching back, hot tension spearing and coiling in his abdomen, he could feel himself pulsing with desire and wanting and knew he wasn’t going to last long at this rate. Wet with all the rainwater and mud, Naruto gazed up at Sasuke with hazy eyes, mouth flushed and full with kisses, red mark on the side of his face where Sasuke had given him the beginnings of a love bite.
God Sasuke wanted to fuck him, fuck him now, because he wanted Naruto, and only Naruto and had wanted this for a long…long time coming.
He coated his own fingers with saliva whilst Naruto watched him through thick wet clumps of lashes and put one of his legs over Sasuke’s shoulder, his body arched as he felt the intrusion. Sasuke’s fingers were cold and it was a somewhat unpleasant and tearing sensation, he wasn’t sure he could be touched that way, new altogether being touched from the inside.
And then the fingers were gone and ah, fuck! It hurt! The tight ring of muscle forced to give way and his eyes opened wide as Sasuke came full into him, much thicker, wider, hotter than the fingers had been, and Naruto found himself wondering if he’d ever be able to get over this, if after everything he’d just be able to let Sasuke walk away.
“Once.” Sasuke was saying against his mouth breathily, almost panting, and going half mad with desire and want. He was so fucking tight, so fucking hot, so fucking perfect. He felt as if he was slowly loosing him mind as Naruto arched underneath him, hooking his other leg around Sasuke’s waist and pulling the dark haired youth in even deeper.
“Once…” he repeated back, rasping, hoarse, tears or rain leaking from the sides of his eyes he couldn’t tell.

// So much, I want this, I need this. I want you…//

He heard the sounds of the rain pattering on the ground before Sasuke moved almost out of him and he cried out, wanting the warmth and the fullness back again, and then wanting to bite the satisfied smirk from Sasuke’s face, as he grinned down at him and thrust back in again. The yell it elicited from Naruto’s lips was almost enough to have Sasuke’s cumming right there and then like a school boy, the tension and desire in his body had lasted for too long. It was a minute maybe, a minute and a half before Sasuke reached his limit rocking, pushing, tilting harder and faster and heard Naruto…his Naruto call out for more. Finding that secret electric place that made Naruto scream like that over and over, making him writhe, making him want, completing him entirely then and there, he’d ruin him for anyone else. Biting, marking, claiming, owning, telling Naruto he’d never allow, never let him love and be loved again. Listening to Naruto crying out beneath him and the erotic sound of skin sliding on skin, and flesh slapping against flesh drove him over the edge. As Sasuke heard his name on Naruto’s lips and collapsed on top of him, breathing hard, spent, wet, hot and cold from the rain, utterly exhausted, he paused, looking down at the drained figure of the blond beneath him.

Once, he had said. But even now he knew that to be a lie.
Once, if he walked away now, once if he never looked back.

Sasuke meant to, but somehow he knew it wouldn’t go how he meant.

The problem was he didn’t realise how wrong it would all go.



Once, they had both said, but the barrier was down and dark things knew where he was now, and stalked ever closer.