Viva Forever

Edit: 22nd Feb 2008 @ 12:34 P.M. within 24 hours - Accidentally used 'close italic' to close 'Bold' tab.

~ Chapter 2 ~

“Cut, cut, CUT!” the director screamed while gesticulating wildly by swinging his arms in the air. “What the hell was that?” he asked one female dancer in particular and the woman cowed before him, preparing herself for another barrage of insults.

The other dancers stepped as far away from the victim as they could, cruelly leaving her to fend for herself because they didn’t want to be caught within the line of fire and the stage crew expressed their exasperation with heavy sighing, rolling of eyes and shaking of heads.

“I’m going for a smoke,” the camera man muttered angrily. He’d gone without a stick for six hours straight now and the withdrawl symptoms were already rattling the chain-smoker’s nerves. His colleagues followed suit and either headed towards the snack table for sustenance or made beelines towards the dancers for a little flirting.

They had time, the director could rant for hours on end once he got on his high horse and if he was successful enough in bringing the girl to tears then that would only help extend their much needed break.

Naruto exhaled on an audible puff and the air unsettled the unruly, yellow locks that dangled in front of his forehead. ‘Not again,’ he grumbled to himself as he watched the man chew out the poor girl whose only mistake was that she agreed to participate in this video shoot by signing a legally binding contract, and the director was probably only picking on her because she turned him down for sexual favors.

‘One,’ he mouthed the words to a group of college interns who were treated as nothing more than cheap labour and gofers for the crew. Naruto could image how discouraging it must have been for them to be talked down to by everyone else as if they were always in the way but at least they were gaining experience from all of this.

Of the five students, two were female and when Naruto made his request known to them they broke into a little tussle over who would be the one to give Naruto his bottled water. The boys had had just about enough of their swooning over the superstar and, knowing how important it was to maintain a professional image under this probationary period, one of them reached into the cooler and tossed a cold Evian to the J-pop singer who dexterously caught it with one hand.

“Hey, hey! Where are you going, Naruto?” asked his agent, Jiraiya who was sandwiched between two, beautiful women.

The boy tapped his neck, a sign that usually meant his throat was sore and the silver-haired man nodded in understanding. “Take a breather and come back here in fifteen. Remember: Time is money,” he guffawed.

Naruto made a rude sound by sucking on his teeth before uncapping the bottle to let its refreshing liquid soothe his burning vocal cords. The only thing more important to Jiraiya than pretty women was money. Lots of money. He equated more money to more women and proved that theory accurate time and time again by sporting a new pair every week. Most of the time it wasn’t because of his fat wallet that they endured his perverted jokes and lecherous come-ons but because they hoped that they would get to be near Naruto and even now they were beckoning the young man over, asking him to come sit with them.

He politely declined, as always, and quickly left the disappointed women in the busy hands of his manager.

He acknowledged the crew as he made his way out of the studio. Just because he was a star didn’t mean he shouldn’t have any manners, but he was also careful not to get too familiar with them. Jiraiya warned him constantly about counterfeit companions and false friends who would so much as sell information to tabloids or blackmail him once they got ahold of the tiniest speck of dirt about his life.

That was why he kept his nose clean.

That didn’t stop him from clubbing or getting drunk like other normal people did, but he never risked it without having Sasuke there to watch his back. He was the only person he could trust in this business besides Jiraiya and if it wasn’t for the Uchiha he never would have got his big break in the first place.

And speak of the devil…

“SASUKE!” the exited youth yelled, completely forgetting about his sore throat. He waved madly at the dark, BMW as it pulled into the studio lot and he didn’t even wait for it to come to a complete stop before he ran over to it and started knocking on the tinted windows like a crazed fan.

He had to fight the urge to shove the door open to slam it into the over-active idiot but Jiraiya would probably sue him for everything he was worth if he’d hurt Naruto in any way. That disappointed him immensely since he’d gotten so accustomed to beating on the dumbass before he made a name for himself.

“Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke,” he chanted his name over and over while bouncing restlessly on his heels and when the dark driver finally emerged he threw his arms around his neck and rocked him back and forth.

“Ugh, Naruto, get off me,” he growled, grimacing at the feel of the boy’s clammy skin. He’d worked up quite a sweat during the multiple takes.

“I’m so glad you’re here. It’s so boring doing the same stuff over and over again,” he confessed to his confidante for what was probably the thousandth time in this month alone.

“Yes, I know, you’ve told me this before,” Sasuke sighed and tried to maneuver with the heavy man draped around his neck so he could shut his car door and activate the alarm before shoving his keys in a pants pocket.

Naruto finally released him then but not before tousling his hair, an act that he knew the Uchiha hated with a passion. “You come to watch the master in action?” he grinned.

Sasuke glowered and combed his hair back in place before smoothing out the creases in his dark-blue, polo shirt. “No, I came to make sure you were where you said you were going to be.”

The other boy’s mirth vanished and his countenance became weary once again. “Well, as you can see…,” and he broke off on a deep sigh that made his shoulders sag.

Sasuke nodded his understanding. It wasn’t the first time Naruto had to be called away from his life and break off personal engagements to perform and as much as the free-spirited youth loved to travel, meet his fans and see himself on television, he hated the late-nights that ran into early mornings. It wasn’t so bad. He loved his trailer and it was well-stocked with many amenities to make him feel right at home, but to Naruto it never felt like a home and he found he always had trouble sleeping in it.

The singer yawned loudly, a testament to how exhausted he really was and Sasuke made a face. “Don’t you ever cover your mouth?”

“How wus duh pardy?” he asked groggily while wiping at the tears that formed in his eyes from such a large yawn.

The Uchiha shrugged. “You didn’t miss anything,” he said softly then leaned back to support himself against his vehicle.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Naruto agreed and joined him on his left. “Those shindigs are usually just an excuse for the wealthy elite to flex their financial muscle.” He stopped to take another chug of water before giving a refreshed exhale and continuing. “Any bet that, a few weeks from now, someone else is gonna host a party and it’s gonna be more lavish, cost more money and held at a more expensive hotel. And a few weeks after that someone else is going to try to out do that until it goes on and on and on.”

“Well one thing’s for certain, I won’t be attending any of them,” Sasuke replied with a vehement scowl. The tiresome cycle hadn’t even started yet but he vowed he was not going to be a part of it.

Naruto cocked his head to one side and crossed his arms over his chest. “Something tells me that party wasn’t as bland as you make it out to be,” he pointed an accusing finger at the brooding man next to him with the bottle in that same hand. “What’s the matter? Was someone from Akatsuki invited and began a smear campaign against you?” Naruto laughed.

His response was a low grunt. Akatsuki was the company that his brother, Itachi, had formed and managed, all on his own. The eldest Uchiha prodigy was an entrepreneurial genius and their father was eagerly awaiting the day he would finish his studies in college and come run their family business by his right hand. But Sasuke’s morale had been bitter ever since Neji’s departure and his mother had talked her husband into bringing on their youngest son instead.

She only did it because she hoped that it would cure his lonely heart by spending additional time with his father outside of their home environment. She was also counting on the hectic business life to keep his mind occupied but her well thought out idea backfired and only made Sasuke feel guilty because he’d ‘cut’ his brother out of the position their father had reserved for him.

Itachi was furious by their last minute decision, at first, but instead of taking the short end of the stick, he declined his father’s pitiable offer as an Executive Assistant to him and set out to carve his own niche in the business world.

And for someone of his economic intellect, it wasn’t at all difficult.

While they were still family and Itachi had long forgotten the spat between them, they were still competitors and their mother had to make a ‘no discussing business in the house’ rule to prevent the many arguments that her three favourite men kept breaking into. She even went so far as to cancel their newspaper and magazine subscriptions and told them plainly that they would have to buy their own and read them anywhere but on the property.

“No, nothing like that,” Sasuke said with a shake of his head and stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets.

Naruto frowned. He could tell something was bumming his friend and was probably the only one who could because, by default, Sasuke always looked like he had something lodged up his butt. As far back as Naruto could remember, he’d never seen the Uchiha crack a smile, not even once and the creative prankster had tried everything from lame knock-knock jokes and dirty limericks to elaborate shenanigans and convoluted monkey-shines, but he never got anything more than a dissatisfied groan or a beat-down.

They’d been friends since high-school but Naruto was the only one who considered them as ‘friends’. If anyone asked Sasuke, he would deny having any but Naruto was always the first person he’d call when he had a bad day or needed an ear and he was the only one Naruto could count on to drop whatever he was doing to come get him out of a jam, and Naruto always wondered if that wasn’t the definition of a ‘friend’ in Sasuke’s book then what the hell was?

He knew the boy had been hurt irreparably in the past. It was easy to tell the first time he saw him at their first day in school. He had a blank, listless look on his face, as if he weren’t really living; only barely existing. His eyes were always empty and devoid of any emotion, unless you counted depressed as an emotion. His thin lips were always in a tight, white line or a deep frown as if he were constantly cogitating upon the purpose of being and Naruto remembered that expression well because it was the same expression he was wearing right now.

“Hey Sasuke, what’s bugging you?” he asked and poked the man hard against his arm. He either poked him a little too hard or Sasuke was too deep in his thoughts because he toppled and almost fell to the asphalt.

Sasuke regained his balance just in time and muttered a ‘nothing’ but the dazed look on his face alerted Naruto to his fib and the young man opened his mouth to call him on his B.S. but a boorish yell cut him off and drew his attention towards his agent who was standing at the studio entrance with both women still hooked in his arms.

“HEY, NARUTO. GET YOUR ASS BACK IN HERE!”

“GIMME A SEC, OLD MAN,” he shouted back but twice as loudly and the sound nearly jumped Sasuke out of his skin.

“I THOUGHT YOU HAD A SORE THROAT,” Jiraiya pointed out with an angry glare. “GET BACK TO WORK YOU LAZY SHIT.”

“I’M TALKING TO SASUKE, JUST GIMME A MINUTE.”

“Che,” the old man sucked his teeth in exasperation. “FIRST YOU WANT A SECOND, NOW YOU WANT A MINUTE? I’M WARNING YOU PUNK, DON’T PULL THAT DIVA ATTITUDE WITH ME. YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES, YOU HEAR ME? FIVE!”

“Beh!” the overworked star sneered and swatted his hand at him in a rather ‘don’t carish’ manner but Jiraiya was already gone… and Sasuke was temporarily deaf.

‘Can’t those two have a conversation without creating so much noise pollution?’ he sincerely wondered as he tried to pop his ears. The car wasn’t parked that far away from the studio and would it have killed the old pervert to walk the, what? Ten meters towards them?

Jiraiya’s voice was bad enough when he was talking at his normal pitch, but whenever he yelled, that gravelly sound easily grated on everyone’s eardrums. Naruto, on the other hand, was naturally loud but his unique voice was a lot more tolerable and Sasuke supposed that was what made him such a successful singer. He could belt out all kinds of notes without making the listener want to put a bullet to their radio and his looks really reeled in the female, pre-teen demographic. Which was ironic because, in high school, Naruto was always written in SLAM books under the ugliest or goofiest-looking category.

For the entirety of his high school year, he’d been ridiculed and made fun of by his peers. Well, Naruto was the one having the last laugh now since he was voted Cosmo Teen’s Hunk of the Month and had a center-page poster in Seventeen Magazine and his adoring fans would not have agreed with his class mates that the flaxen mane and sapphire eyes he inherited from his Netherland father made him a ‘freaky, little gaijin’. In fact, it was those said same features, that the handful of students made him feel so self-conscious about, that the rest of the world found so exotic. The cat-like whisker marks on his cheeks helped concrete his unusual identity as well.

Sasuke logged onto Naruto’s blog once and his brain almost suffered major hemorrhaging after wading through piles upon piles of the same, mindless, drivel from drooling Naruto fans who could either be filed under: Those who wanted to dive into his sparkling blue eyes, those who wanted to play with his soft, messy hair, those who wanted to run their fingers on his playful tattoos and those who wanted him to fuck them silly.

He never made that mistake again and promptly blocked the web page in his security settings should he feel the temptation to view it later on. He did get a sadistic chuckle though when he recognized a few of the names as students who used to attend the same school they did and felt that that somehow made them feel more prestigious than his other ‘lowly’ fans.

Naruto took another gulp to quickly lubricate his throat before he started vocalizing and getting his voice into key.

“Lean on me… when you’re not stro-ong, and I’ll be your friend. I’ll help you ca-rry ooon, for. It won’t be lo-ong. ‘Til I’m gonna need. Somebody to lee-an on.”

“Can’t you just say ‘A penny for your thoughts’ like normal people?” Sasuke snapped. He hated whenever Naruto broke into song as if life was one big musical and he hated it even more whenever he felt the need to serenade him to try to get him to share his troubles.

The blond flashed him a pearly grin before pushing himself off the car and holding the bottle up to his mouth like a microphone. “So just call on me, Sasu-ke, when you need a hand,” he clapped one of his tanned palms upon one of Sasuke’s tense shoulders and gave it a brotherly squeeze. “We all need sum-boday to lee-an on. And I know you’ve got a problem, and I’ll understand. You just need, my should-ah to lee-an on,” and he grabbed his head and pulled it down into the crook of his neck.

“Please, swallow your pri-ide. But don’t choke and die-”

“Get off me,” the brunette growled and elbowed him in the side. He didn’t find his jest the least bit humorous, but Naruto did and he laughed for a good ten seconds before he noticed the pain in his side.

“Sorry, sorry,” he apologized but it didn’t appear that sincere with that goofy grin on his face. It melted away just as soon as it appeared and he was suddenly very serious. Well, as serious as Naruto Uzumaki could get anyway. “Come on Sasuke. I know something’s bothering you and I know you’re going to tell me anyway so spit it out ‘cuz I only have a few minutes to kill before I gotta get back to work.”

The Uchiha sighed and looked down at the ground, toeing his Nike sneakers against the hard ground. “You’re good with friendships, right?” he asked, getting right to the point. He didn’t want the other boy to get in any further trouble with Jiraiya.

Naruto blinked a few times, not sure where he was going with this but wondered if he was finally going to propose promoting their ‘companionship’ to the rank of a full-fledged ‘friendship’. “Well, I’m no expert,” he said with a scratch of his chin. “But I imagine I know a lot more than you do.”

Sasuke wasn’t even the least bit offended by that scathing reply. It was the truth, wasn’t it?

“Well… say you had a hypothetical friend-”

“You have a friend?” Naruto screeched angrily. “Then what the hell am I? Chopped liver?”

“Hypothetical, Naruto. Hypothetical.”

Naruto seethed but decided to give the other man the benefit of the doubt. “So you have this… ‘hypothetical’ friend,” the blond repeated nastily.

“And say you’ve been close childhood friends for a while but he had to move away. He never kept in contact with you and you didn’t know if he was still alive or dead, but then,” he had to swallow hard to dispel the tightening in his throat at the memory of seeing Neji again for the first time after so many years and the emotions that came rushing over him all at once made him feel like collapsing. “Then, you meet this old friend of yours… and he doesn’t remember you.”

Naruto had to lean closer to hear the last part and he expected more to follow but when the other man remained silent after that he raised a confused eyebrow.

“Is that it?”

Sasuke’s head flew up so fast Naruto feared it would have flung clean off his neck. “What do you mean ‘is that it’?” he echoed furiously.

Naruto wasn’t at all intimidated by Sasuke’s sudden change in attitude. “So, your old chum didn’t recognize you? Big deal!” he replied, not completely understanding what the problem was.

Sasuke gave him a look that was something along the lines of a pout and something along the lines of ‘I’m going to kick your ass if you don’t take that back’. He straightened from the vehicle as well and turned so that he could fully confront the other. “It’s not that he didn’t recognize me,” the dark-haired one elaborated. “He didn’t remember me. He remembered nothing about the times we spent together or the- the games… we used to play,” and he hated himself for using the same word Neji used to describe the wedding that meant so much to him, but Naruto would not understand and he didn’t feel like explaining it to him.

“Okay, so you had a little friend who used to play with you and what not. Then he moved away and you haven’t seen him until last night at that party, I’m guessing, and that’s what’s got you in such a foul mood today,” he deduced and surprised Sasuke by actually managing to put two and two together. “Man, and to think I didn’t believe people when they said you were emo,” Naruto tsked with a wry shake of the head.

“Naruto, this guy meant a lot to me back then. We were really close,” Sasuke argued his defense.

“Yeah but, Sasuke, that was a looong time ago and just because you remembered him doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s going to remember you. Hell, I’m lucky if I remember half the people that had a positive impact on my life whether directly or indirectly.”

“Yeah well my childhood friend and the anonymous women you spend one-night-stands with are two completely different things so don’t even compare them.”

Naruto stiffened at the insult. He knew Sasuke was just blowing off steam but he didn’t have to grossly exaggerate Naruto’s sex-life. The blond chose to ignore his hissy fit this time but only because he was in ‘bitch’ mode and needed to rant.

“Man, you’re being really unreasonable,” the younger man scoffed. “You do know that, right?”

Sasuke pouted again and crossed his arms over his chest.

“NARUTO,” Jiraiya returned. “GET YOUR ASS IN HERE!”

“GOD! FUCK… OKAY, JEEZE, I’M COMING,” he yelled back in exasperation. “A hundred- no a thousand dollars and I bet you when I get in there that that pissy, little director’s still gnawing on that girl’s leg.”

Naruto gave a heavy sigh and composed himself. He knew better than to get before the camera in an angered state so he turned to bid his farewells so he could rush inside and read a quick page from one of Jiraiya’s novels to get him in the mood but the sullen look marring the Uchiha’s face only put him in a suicidal frame of mind.

“Hey, Sasuke… I gotta go,” he admitted sheepishly. He didn’t want to leave his friend like this but he was duty bound to his calling in life. The brunette nodded solemnly and fished his keys out of his pocket to get into his car.

Feeling torn, Naruto searched hard to find something, anything he could say to cheer his friend up because he knew this was going to be on the back-burner of his mind and it was going to affect his performance.

“You asked for my advice on friendships,” he spoke up then and Sasuke paused in mid-turn of the ignition. “You say this guy is important to you, and consider him a real friend, well… if he considered you half the friend you think he is then he never would have forgotten you.”

Those words sank deep into the Uchiha’s mind and he just sat there, staring at his hand on the key and Naruto wondered if he’d suddenly lost all understanding of the English language. He eventually snapped out of it and gunned the engine with a quick flick of the wrist and as the powerful roar of the engine filled the car-park he checked his rear-view mirrors and shifted the vehicle into reverse. He didn’t move yet, just stared straight ahead, as if gazing into the future and when he finally spoke, Naruto wasn’t sure if he was addressing him or someone he’d managed to conjure up in that portal of his.

“Yeah,” he rasped softly after giving his head a few quick bobs. “I guess you’re right.”