4. Two O’Clock Bird

It wasn’t because of the blankets carefully pooled around him, concentric circles deformed by folds and ridges. It wasn’t because of the soft mattress sinking underneath him, molding against his legs and feet. It wasn’t because of the heavy, even breathing that could have been heard from behind him, continuing like a slow clock whispering sighs. It wasn’t because of the empty din and promise of the world outside, a wispy silent voice speaking. It wasn’t because of the fluttering moths with their indistinct paths, going every which way.

It wasn’t because of that that he couldn’t fall asleep.

It was the two o’clock bird.

He had named it the two o’clock bird.

And here, perched against the side of the open window, his hands grasping the sill, not paying heed to the dust that had collected there after years of neglect, he sat. His fingers would be brown with dirtiness.

He sat with his eyes closed and his mouth slightly open, tongue curled at the tip as if tasting the song of his secret lover. His blond eyelashes fanned out against his cheeks and he pressed his eyes together tighter, feeling amused by the feeling. Slowly, his relaxed lips twitched upwards.

The moon was a thin thread in the purplish-navy blue fabric of sky. Stars stood by her, as if the needle that had sewn the moon in had punctured the fragile cloth, leaving pinpoints of nothingness.

And it was two o’clock in the morning.

The song was never-ending; a forever song, a listen-to-me-and-sing-with-me song, a stay-with-me song. The notes that trilled, fell and twirled, dipped and skittered, cracked and froze over… an illusion of something physical held. It was a song pieced together by the two o’clock bird by carefully eavesdropping on the twittering and griping tales of the day birds.

It had bossy, angry chattering. It had soft coos and purrs. It had shrieks and laments. It had sharp attacks and war cries.

It was a dream of the day sounds.

He never saw the two o’clock bird, but only listened. Listened to it change and perfect his song, repeating bits and fragments, singing, singing, singing. He imagined that the two o’clock bird would be dark and drab, nothing out of the ordinary. He imagined that he would be large and a mess of browns and beiges dabs of acrylic on thin paper, smearing and tearing.

So he pressed his eyes closer together and imagined.

Suddenly, the deep breathing behind him quickened slightly and there was a following silence.

He opened his eyes and turned around slowly.

“Sorry,” he murmured quietly. “Did I wake you?”

Sleepy dark eyes stared back. There was not a response for a while. “No,” came the low, rumbling voice. It came from deep in his chest and reverberated. He breathed in deeply and let the air rush out. Heavy eyes blinked languidly at the dark silhouette in front of him. “What are you still doing up? It’s late.”

A bright grin, gentle and reassuring, was given. He didn’t respond but turned back to the window instead.

The bed shifted, creaked a bit as one of them sat up and wrapped his arms around the blond’s naked torso. “Naruto,” he mumbled into his neck.

“Shh,” he responded, shushing him gently. He placed his hands, chilled by the night wind lured in by the open window, onto the warm ones encircling his body. “Listen,” he commanded, leaning back on the bare chest behind him for support.

The two o’clock bird twittered gleefully, making his notes dip and fly, reminiscent of small chickadees swooping down a pool of water for a brief drink. He wasn’t aware of his new audience, but continued to do what he loved doing most: sing.

“No one ever listens to him,” he said, resting his head against a mop of tousled black hair. He couldn’t see it right now, but he was sure his lover’s hair was sticking up on the side where he was sleeping on. Wispy bangs that usually hid black eyes splayed out on his shoulder, tickling his skin. “But—”

“You do.”

The blond smiled lightly and chuckled. “Aah.” He lifted his right arm and reached back until he could tangle his fingers into the blue-black hair he was so accustomed to. “I do….”

When he felt rough fingers pull and yank on his hair gently, he leaned in to the touch. He lifted his lips from the blond’s neck and opened his eyes.

“Go to sleep, loser,” he muttered, the deep tenor travelling through their touching bodies. Then he simply dragged the blond down and with his arms, not allowing any more reaction to come out of the blond than a small cough that was the result of him being pushed back onto the mattress forcefully. He prevented any further movement by falling asleep with half his body crushing the other man’s.

His breathing was a bit more difficult now that his lover was sleeping on him. His scars were stretched minutely as he smiled more to himself than anything. His fingers were still rubbing small circles in the brunet’s scalp as he began to fall asleep.

The two o’clock bird had stopped singing.

5. Voice of Reasoning (Spinoff from Phone Calls from Nobody )

“My name is Uchiha Sasuke.”

Listen—the voice of reasoning. Of everything.

“There are tons of things that I dislike but I don’t really like anything.”

Does he lie?

He can’t hear anything but that voice…. That voice he had heard for many years and grown accustomed to—only to have it disappear forever.

It was accompanied by a malicious darkness. And he couldn’t see, or feel, or taste, or smell. Only hear. Hear everything with a clarity that seemed artificial.

“Are you okay… scaredy-cat?”

Yes. He was.

But he couldn’t admit to that. No way in Earth. In Hell. Or in Heaven.

No way.

“Naruto—I want to fight you too.”

Sometimes he wondered what was going on in that head of his.

But he was so excited in that moment. To be considered an equal was…. But there were no words to describe it. It was like a goal he had been thriving to reach since forever had finally been fulfilled.

Acknowledgement.

Look at me! Notice me!

But from who, he always wondered.

“I used to hate you, too.”

It was like a plague that never left him. A drifting cloud of uneasiness. Used to? But should that mean anything? Should it have any other meaning? Were they friends?

Friends?

… what are friends?

“Naruto… I—”

Had he ever heard this before? It was like the thin drumming, strumming, humming of rain falling down from a too-bleak, too-white, too-cold sky. The fragment he never heard. But he dreams of it.

What was the rest of the sentence?

“Naruto, huh?”

He couldn’t help but notice that it had grown a lot deeper than he had last heard it. And he couldn’t do anything but stand and stare.

How could he stand there like that? Like he didn’t care?

Did he care?

“I’ll never go back.”

It stung.

It stung like no wound he ever received. It didn’t even sting as badly as the time he had his chest punctured straight through. No less by his hand.

He didn’t want to believe those words.

But as the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months… years—trickled by, he could do nothing else than to believe those words.

And now he couldn’t remember if he had cried coming back home and picking up the phone—

to be greeted by silence.

How come he could still remember a voice he had not heard for so long? He could still recall the deep rumbling of that voice as clear as if he had been whispering in his ear. Not as if he had ever done that….

However…. However, it was so perfectly there. A voice he doubts he could ever, ever forget.

Never.

And then came the creeping sensation of remembrance.

The cobwebs of something.

Anything.

“Congratulations. Dead last.”

“Sasuke!”

He bolted upright in his bed, shirt sticking to him wetly. His hair was plastered messily over his forehead as he gasped and clutched at his chest. It hurt—

And suddenly, there was the faint, veiled sounds from his real world reaching his ears.

A soft feminine voice and the shrieking, wailing, crying of a child.

But he couldn’t hear those. It felt like cotton was shoved in his head and prevented him from hearing all those things in his real world.

All he could hear was the low voice of someone that had left him.

Left him and everyone else.

His eyes were wide but unseeing. His subconscious saw the thin trickles of the early dawn peeking through the translucent drapes, the baby crib in the corner of their room, the concerned green eyes of his wife, the soft pink hair that clung worriedly to her face.

“Naruto—Naruto, are you okay? Naruto, you’ve scared the baby awake now….”

And he started to sob and grasp emptily as if his hands could pull back the tendrils of dreams he had so long ago.

“Naruto… I—I’m sorry.”