Purple

On a quest to find a major, he’d taken a course or two in psychology. Intro to Psychology I and II, then Forensic Psychology, before he’d crammed in the biology and chemistry classes, and put himself on the path to a degree in physical therapy. The pre-meds he’d spent most of his time with were in the possession of several ice picks finely tuned to seat themselves a good three feet up their asses, and he chose not to go the university’s brother school to get his PhD. No, he’d chosen to finish it off several states from here, several refills of gas down a long stretch of turnpike, a lot of bottles of Dr. Pepper, many bags of Planter’s roasted peanuts, several packets of sunflower seeds, the rinds spit out to skitter along the black road.

He’d taken several courses in psychology. He remembered the visionary and perception section of the unit, perhaps six weeks into his very first semester. The teacher subjected them to several optical illusion tests, having them tilt their heads this way, close one eye and focus with the other, hold their finger up and move it forward slowly. One image was displayed on the overhead, demonstrating that the brain was, in fact, like the Photoshop Microsoft wish it had. Showing how things in the distance were automatically resized. One was a sketch of a highway, a car standing just at the end of it. The way it was pointed was like a triangle sans the top angle.

“The way the world around you hits your retina,” the professor had explained, “is upside down, is missing a huge chunk at the bottom center, is speckled, and is completely flat… and your brain has to fill in the gaps for every nanosecond. It’s the most complicated form of Photoshop anyone could possibly imagine. It can flip your vision around, show you color, and more importantly, give your world depth. It gives you your three-dimensional world.”

“The world is flat,” he whispered to himself. He narrowed his eyes against the red sun, so close to dipping below the mountain range, but he was too close to campus to just stop now. And the blazing spot looked very much far away. His fingertips reached up, buffeted by the stream of air flowing around his car, silhouetted again the burning sun.

“Flat,” he repeated, weighing the heavy word on his tongue and grimacing. “What a load of bullshit.”

Six scar marks almost black in the bleeding sunset, tousled blond hand flying back over his forehead with the air pressure flowing in from four open windows, and blue eyes flashing like violet sapphires in the scarlet light. Naruto Uzumaki drove on, one hand hanging out the window and his foot heavy on the gas pedal, towards Konoha University.

Part II

“All alone he turns to stone while holding his breath half to death. Terrified of what’s inside, to save his life, he crawls like a worm from a bird.
Crawls like a worm from a bird.”

--The Bird and the Worm, The Used

--

Naruto didn’t own much. He made it a goal in his life to have as little as possible in his possession so that, should the house ever burn down, no tears would be shed. It was stupid, he reasoned, to be so materialistic when there were so many more better things he could focus hs affections on.

He had several things he cherished, all of which were placed in the two medium-sized boxes in his truck. He had a small speaker system to plug into his iPod, a lightweight laptop, a small collection of photo frames, a stuffed fox that Iruka had firmly shoved into the box the night before his departure (“They’re memories, Naruto! Everyone there probably has one.”), and along with those his clothes. He planned on picking up a few potted plants to put into his window after he’d gotten everything settled. His garden was the only thing, besides his guardian, that he missed and was unable to bring with him. He planned to start his own miniature version of once he confirmed that his roommate wasn’t a crazy asthmatic.

The campus was huge, but quiet. There were oak trees lining a cobblestone path that wound between tall, chrome buildings. Yellow-tinted grass bent awkwardly in the warm air, and Naruto swiped at his forehead with the back of his hand to get rid of the film of sweat there and shifted the strap of his duffel bag to a different spot on his shoulder. The tail ends of summer fluttered across the windows, a blazing red hot match head glaring with a thousand orange faces glittering in the glass panes. Forecasters foretold a bitter drop in temperature starting the following Sunday, lasting for about a week before climbing right back up. Naruto was content to enjoy the lingering warmth before the cold brought orange and red leaves tumbling to the ground.

He checked the postcard-sized piece of off-white people in his hand, listing emergency contact information on the campus, and a barred off section on the top left listing his building, section, and room number. Buick, Heinz, Room 7. Buick was close to the parking lot Naruto had parked at, and he found the name of it engraved into a stone slab in front of a tall chrome building. Naruto knew from his new student orientation that the bottom six floors of the dorm buildings were comprised of dorm rooms, while the top two and ground floor were recreation rooms, lounges, a small café, and group study areas. It was convenient, and it was expensive.

Full-tuition scholarships were a beautiful thing, the blond man thought.

Naruto had held this dream of his for five or six years. He always knew he’d end up at med school. The debate lay within whether or not it would end in his sitting in a therapists’ lounge chair or in scrubs with his hands coated in blood. But after the first year or so in college, he realized that if he couldn’t sort his own mind out, then he had a snowball’s chance in hell of fixing others’.

The move had been easy enough. Naruto had only moved one other time in his life, and that was to a small town house a state away from his previous home. Iruka didn’t have any living relatives in the immediate vicinity anyway, so the jump wasn’t so much of a leap as it was a pleasant change in scenery. For Naruto it meant something slightly different, however…

He used the key card he’d picked up last Friday to unlock the door, and he heard a clean shifting of metal. He grasped the handle and pushed, the door swinging as if it were made of paper. He stepped over the threshold and found the inside of it pleasantly cool. The lower floor, he knew, contained the expansive laundry room, as well as one of the several lounges. New students and parents littered the uncomfortable chairs or leaned against the freshly painted walls. Some people were attempting awkward conversation as they strove to mark their place in the social status of the area. Having no interesting in mingling with the masses quite yet, Naruto instead trudged up the stairs that were through the double doors on the right.

He passed the first floor, and then the second, before topping his sixth set of steps and coming to the third landing for dorms. Shifting the bag once more to rest in a more comfortable position, wondering how he’d gotten the bad luck to end up on the fourth floor, before pushing the doors one more time and stepping into a hallway that had an almost palpable scent of fresh paint. Wincing, he checked his card one more time. Room 7, it said. To his right was the number 2, and just ahead and to the left the number 1. He walked down the hallway, noting the spacious corkboards with start-of-the-year notices and a few flyers describing special classes, and wondered how long it would take to think of this place as ‘home’.

The door to his room was already open, and he could hear muffled curses and thumps from inside. Cocking an eyebrow, Naruto stepped in and took a look around, grinning a bit. It was exactly the way he’d thought it would look. It sounded stupid, but one of the reasons Naruto had chosen this school was because of the living arrangements. The dorms were huge, spacious, and came with their own bathrooms and miniature kitchenettes. Iruka had told him that it wasn’t a materialistic way of thinking when he’d voiced his thoughts, that it was good to factor in the dorm rooms.

“You’ll work harder the more comfortable you are,” Iruka had assured him. And with that in mind, he turned to meet his new roommate.

His bag slid to the floor.

The other man looked up, eyebrows raised in curiosity. His hair was messy and tousled, probably from the wind, although it looked like it had a bit of gel in it that kept it that way. His brown eyes were wide and wild, practically dancing in their sockets. He had tanned skin and a rugged face, looking like he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. He wore tattered jeans, a loose-fitting white shirt and a denim blazer over top of it. His hands, which were pushing the heavy-looking box off his foot, looked large and as if they’d seen a recent fight; the knuckles were scabbed over, and scars marred the backs of his hands.

Naruro raised his now-free hand and gave a small wave, sliding one hand into his pocket and grinning. “Hey. You must be my new roommate.”

The brunet grinned, and Naruto noted how white and somewhat pointed his teeth were. “Guilty.” He had a rough, boyish voice, one that probably drove librarians crazy; this man looked like the type who didn’t know the meaning of “indoor voice”. He strode forward, holding out a hand for Naruto to shake, which he did with genuine earnest. “I’m Kiba. Kiba Inuzuka.”

“Naruto Uzumaki,” the blond replied, his grin widening. The brunet was a few inches taller than him (but then again, Naruto thought bitterly, so were most) even without his shoes on. Hell, he didn’t even have socks on.

A no-shoes kinda guy, Naruto thought. I like him already.

“How are ya?” Kiba asked, but before Naruto could reply, he nodded his head at the discarded duffel bag Naruto had dumped on the floor. “Tell me you have more shit than that.”

Naruto laughed. “I do, I do. I just wanted to find the place first.”

Kiba nodded, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning more on one foot. “So what brings you here? Your accent’s kinda strange; you’re not from the West coast, are ya?”

“Nah, East,” Naruto affirmed, slightly surprised by how astute the man was. “I’ve been moving steadily West for around a decade, so I thought, Why not go all the way?”

Kiba let out a loud laugh. Not one that symbolized total amusement, but perhaps of happiness, and maybe a bit of relief that so far, his roommate didn’t seem to be a total jerk.

“What’s your major?” he asked.

Naruto shrugged, scratching the back of his head a bit nervously. “I’m not sure, exactly. I’m still fiddling with a few ideas.”

“That’s cool,” Kiba said. “So am I, and so are most people around here.” He paused. “This actually isn’t my first med school. I went for two years to another one before transferring.”

“Oh,” Naruto said, blinking. “I thought they tried to stick classman with classman?”

“They do, they do,” Kiba replied. “But the bastards wouldn’t accept the other school’s credits.” Before Naruto could ask why, he said, “It was a school specializing for veterinarians.”

Naruto hummed, and glanced at what must have been the bed his roommate had claimed as his own. Over it was a throw with the pattern of a wolf on it, and on the side table was a picture frame with what looked like Kiba and a colossal dog. “Why’d you drop out? You seem like the animal type of guy.”

Kiba grinned. “Exactly, man. My reasons for not being a vet are the same reasons why doting adults don’t become pediatricians. I don’t want to see the animals I love get hurt, and I sure as Hell couldn’t put one of them down.”

Naruto chuckled and grinned brightly. He understood. “I definitely like you,” he said in a relieved tone of voice.

Kiba let out another bark of laughter before slapping Naruto twice on the shoulder and yanking him forward, one arm slung around his neck, and pulling him deeper into the dorm. “Same here, man. You have no clue how relieve I am I didn’t get stuck with a stiff.”

Naruto snorted. “Lucky us. This place is crawling with them.”

“It’s med school, what can you expect?” Kiba asked.

Naruto walked over to the window that over-looked the center of a small section of the courtyard and Kiba’s arm slid away from his shoulders. “So what do you think of the campus, huh?”

“It’s awesome!” Kiba said, wild eyes flashing. “I’d love to take my dog around here, Akamaru.”

“Is he the one in the picture?” Naruto asked, nodding his head towards the photo frame.

“Yeah. He’s four.”

“Four!?” Naruto exclaimed. “He’s huge!”

Kiba laughed. “That’s what everyone says, but honestly, I’ve never noticed.”

Naruto was about to ask how anyone could fail to notice--he was sure that Kiba could see tickets for pony rides on that beast--when he noticed a third presence in the room. While Kiba began on a small rant about his dog’s antics when he’d started to pack up all of his things for college, Naruto cocked an eyebrow at the boy who was setting a large box on the floor and setting up a rolling suitcase to stand on its plastic feet. He was pale, sickeningly so, with dark sunglasses, a short, fuzzy brown afro, and a face besmirched by an assortment of skin problems. “Hey, can I help you?” Naruto asked.

The pale man looked blandly at him. “I was unaware that this was a three person dormitory.”

“It isn’t,” Kiba said, coming to stand beside Naruto. “Who’re you?”

“Shino,” he said shortly. He held out a card that Naruto realized was the same type as his. “And I live here.”

“What?” The two strode forward, and Naruto took the offered card. Room 7. “That’s weird… Could it have been a typo?”

“Naruto,” Kiba said, “let me see your card.” The blond fished it out, unfolded it, and handed it to Kiba. After a moment, the brunet sighed and smacked Naruto lightly over the side of the head. “You idiot, you’re on the wrong floor. This says that you’re on the fourth floor.”

Naruto frowned. “I know that. I am on the fourth floor.”

“No you’re not; you’re counting the lounge area. The floor numbers started with the first level of dorms.” He handed the card back with a dejected look on his face. “You’re one floor up, Heinz. This is Kelmett, the third floor.”

“Oh,” Naruto frowned, and then looked over at the boy who’s introduced himself as Shino, who hadn’t spoken another word. “Sorry man.”

Shino shrugged, and Naruto gave Kiba an apologetic look, feeling disappointed as well. “I’ll come down and visit once I get my stuff up to my room, then,” Naruto promised.

Shino turned and walked to grab his suitcase, and Kiba winced at the stoic man’s bag. “Please, do,” he said. “Please.”

Naruto laughed. “It was nice meeting you.” He stuck out his hand, which Kba shook rigorously, before he turned and walked to the door, grabbing his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. “Nice meeting you too, man. Sorry ‘bout the confusion.”

“It is fine,” Shino sad passively. “It was nice meeting you… Naruto.”

Naruto grinned and shook his head, and with a wave of his hand, left the two and headed towards the stairs once more.

--

The room was around two feet wider to each side, reaching a greater depth of around a yard going the other way, and Sasuke’s hair was still black and look soft and silky as a freshly spun spider web.

It took the older man a few moments to look up from the book and to meet the gaze of his new roommate, and when he did, Naruto knew time had stopped. No one should sit that still. Not a strand of hair moved from atop his head. The only thing that ruined it was the rapid beating of his heart, which held no promise of a ceasefire any time soon.

I’ve missed something, Naruto thought blankly. I fell asleep at one point, I think. Because I haven’t done anything, anything, to deserve this. I’m asleep.

I must be asleep.

He took his time in observing the dream. Most night visions of Sasuke involved not ever seeing his face, just hearing his voice, panting and moaning and groaning behind him, always ending in the whispered mantra of, I’ll make sure you never will.

He waited for his dream to speak. When it didn’t, the blond spoke for it. “What are you doing here?” he asked. Why are you out of place, he meant. Why do I have to see your face, that hasn’t changed a bit? Can’t you stick to your kitchen and on your own floor, with your head silhouetted against your own fucking ceiling? There was no reason, no reason at all he knew, for him to be changing spots all of a sudden. This wasn’t musical chairs. You picked one nightmare and stuck with it.

Sasuke stared at him, blandly, for a long stretch of time. The look in his eyes was a familiar one, the one he’d spent so much time in his sleep pondering over, the emotion always nameless and yet so transparent. He knew what it was, but he didn’t know. He could pick it up and examine it and find it a sight he’d seen before and had become accustomed to, but didn’t know what it was or meant. Sasuke blinked now and then, and Naruto copied the motion a split-second later, so as to not miss a beat. If he shut his eyes and Sasuke were gone, Naruto knew exactly where he would end up. Right behind him, right up against him, cursing in a foreign language and pushing aside his clothes, pressing his face against the carpet by a firm grip in his hair. He would smell dust and copper and taste ash, and he would wake up screaming and frighten Iruka.

And then, Sasuke spoke. “What happened to your face?”

Naruto couldn’t help it. In the next moment, he saw red.

--

“Dude, fight in Heinz!”

“That didn’t take long at all.”

“This isn’t high school. This isn’t even college. The fuck do they thing they’re doing?”

Kiba and Shino heard these snippets of conversation outside the cracked door of their shared dormitory, the former taping a picture of a wolf’s head embedded in an arctic landscape, the other propping up the deep picture frame containing several specimens of different kinds of beetle.

“What idiots,” Kiba commented, snorting before climbing off of the bed and back to the floor, tossing the roll of scotch tape in his hands to the already cluttered bed side table. “What do they think this is? Kindergarten?”

Shino answered with another question, as was his annoying habit. “That is Sasuke and Naruto’s floor, is it not?”

“Who’s Sasuke?” Kiba asked.

“Naruto’s new roommate.”

“You know him?”

“Not well.” He finished lining the bottom length of the dram to exactly an inch from the edge of the table and stepped back to observe it. “We finished pre-med together.”

“What kind of guy is he?” Kiba asked, not altogether curious but willing enough to keep an awkward silence from reigning. He was still slightly put-off that Naruto turned out not to be his roommate.

“Quiet.” Shino knelt down next to the open box by his feet. “Reserved.” He withdrew another one, this with a dozed colorful butterflies dead and frozen in time. Kiba winced at the sight of them. Bugs bothered him, sure, but still, to pin them up… “And an old friend of Naruto’s.”

“What? Really? He told you that?”

“He mentioned him once or twice,” Shino replied, now aligning up the two frames. “I believe they were in somewhat of a relationship prior to high school…”

“Shit, you’re not kidding?” Kiba breathed, finally intrigued. “Fuck it’s a small world.”

“Hm.”

“Still…” Kiba chuckled. “Experimenting when they were so young… Not a lot of good comes out of that. Unless you count some good laugh---”

Thud

“What’re they doing up there?”

“The brawl,” Shino said shortly.

“Oh, yeah. Geez, people just need to calm the… fuck….”

“Are the layouts of the floor not the same?”

Silence, in which Kiba eyed the ceiling with a cocked eyebrow, wondering if his new roommate enjoyed fucking with his head and drawing out the realization of what exactly was going on up there, or if Shino truly didn’t care.

And before Shino could finish say, “I do not believe that the reunion is going well,” Kiba was out the door and flying towards the stairs.

--

Kill him, his mind hissed. No one would miss him. Make up for those years ago. Grab his throat and strangle it until his eyeballs roll out.

In what Naruto surveyed as a most ungracious attitude, Sasuke refused to let himself be thwarted. He moved with genuine grace (just like I remember). With every punch that made its mark, whether it be the ribcage or his face, Sasuke would move with it, leaning back with the force and swerving around it to clip Naruto in his side or on the side of the head. From the moment he’d yanked the taller man off of the bed with his fist furled in a collar, followed by a fist to his cheek, to the here and now, nearly a minute later, Naruto was fueled with what he would compare to nitro glycerin. Every second was another fiery explosion going off in his head, every scrape of tan skin against pale skin was another electrifying memory that he’d tried to suppress for years. Every week, or every month, was a detail of the afternoon that he tried to cover up with worries over school work, the teenage depressions of one-week girlfriends, of the constraining rules Iruka put on him that were no constraining at all, over the real troubles of having to see a therapist once a month for an hour in a stuffy room.

He felt like he was picking up where he’d left off the last time they’d met, with free arms and a more focused mind. He could barely see the other man’s face, but he could catch glimpses of black eyes submersed in pale skin. But he could barely hear around the words kill him floating around in his head, shrouding away all other thoughts. He heard shouting, noises that didn’t come from the two of them, somewhere behind him, and shadows moved like stringless puppets across the walls; disjointed and shuddering, waving in and out of focus.

He felt sick, undeniably sick. He felt like he was fighting a tiger and the only way to keep it from eating him was to keep on fighting back. He felt a swell of hate and pain bubbling over his insides, and his vision slowly became distorted as if through a thick, foggy purple piece of glass. Nothing looked quite right anymore, and for the second time in his life, he felt like he had the power and the will to take another person’s life, the will to sacrifice his heart just to destroy another’s.

I truly am a monster.

A pair of hands appeared out of thin air and encircled his chest, and another hand clutched at his shoulder, causing him to jerk awkwardly. He didn’t realize he was on his knees whilst trying to pin Sasuke down, just to beat his face in until it would never be recognizable again, until he was yanked to his feet and dragged back. His muscles tensed and sprang within his body, and his eyes still couldn’t properly see. He wouldn’t just kill Sasuke, but those people behind him, too. He’d kill them all, whoever dared to stop him would fall to the ground. But first he had to get to Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke,

“S-Sasuke!”

He went to jelly in supporting arms he did not recognize. His mind was buzzed with memory and the present. He heard a faintly recognizable voice--Kiba. He was shouting at the people behind him. The other, who also had a strong hand on his shoulder, wasn’t talking, and Naruto’s eyes drew up to look at him blandly, if not to identify him then to not have to look at the raven who lay have-sprawled across the floor. He had a bored looked face, a bit broad, with a slight widow’s peak. His slightly bushy brown hair was pulled back into a lazy ponytail. Nothing special brown eyes viewed him as they might paint drying on a wall, and yet the grip on his shoulder said otherwise.

The others were slowly singling out of the room, many of them young adults, some not-so-much, and the door stayed open. Naruto was aware that his pulse had begun to slow, and his breath began to even out. His vision cleared, and out of the corner of his eye he saw movement. But Naruto refused to look at him. Hands were gently guiding him to sit down on the bed, and that was enough of a distraction with him.

“Hey, are you all right?” Kiba was whispering into his ear. “My asshole of a roommate said you knew this bastard. Was he picking a fight with you?”

Sasuke and the mystery man were talking in hushed tones, and Naruto heard the words “misunderstanding” and “fine”, along with several others, thrown into the mix. He clamped his eyes shut, and was a hair’s width away from pressing his hands over his ears, as well.

“Naruto? Naruto!”

“Naruto….”

“Wh-what?” Naruto murmured, finally opening his eyes and setting his gaze on Kiba. “What?”

Kiba frowned. “Shino knows Sasuke, and he said you two--knew each other or something. Was he right?”

“Yeah,” Naruto murmured. “We know--we’ve met.”

Kiba snorted. “Met right.” He frowned. “Dude, if you want, I’d be cool if you wanted to bunk with Shino and me until we found you a new place. People switch dorms all the time. You don’t have to stay with this ass if you don’t want.”

Kiba was right, Naruto knew. People did switch dorms all time… in college. In college where you went to socialize and brush aside all the requirements until you got down to what you really wanted to study. Switching dorms like a coward, like traveling back four years in his life. This was medical school, not an episode of Dr. Phil. He was here for one purpose, and for one purpose only: to learn to save people’s lives.

It’ll be pretty hard learning how to save people’s lives when I’m gonna be so busy trying to save my own, Naruto thought bitterly. Just as he knew the difference between med school and college, he knew that his fate was set the moment he stepped foot through the dorm’s threshold. When he was fourteen, he made the stupid mistake of not marching right back up to the apartment building and beat the Uchiha within an inch of his life. Like a beaten puppy with its tail quivering between his legs, he’d run away.

And he was so, so sick of running.

Why here? Naruto thought desperately. Here, of all places in the United States, how the fuck did he end up here? It’s not even remotely close to where we used to live, and it’s a fucking universe away from Japan! Can’t he stay where he belongs for once?

“I’m good,” Naruto mutter belatedly. “I was just surprised to see him is all.”

Kiba wasn’t convinced. “You seem more than surprised.”

Naruto chuckled weakly. “No, really, I’m good.” He attempted to smile, but it felt wrong on his face, and from the look Kiba gave him, it didn’t look much better. “I am, trust me. Me and him will work it out.” He couldn’t even say his name. He wasn’t going to survive this, there was no way…

Kiba frowned, and then glared to his right. Naruto didn’t follow his gaze. “All right, if you’re sure.” He turned back to Naruto, clapped him once on the shoulder. “I’m right downstairs, all right? Stomp on the floor if you need me.”

Naruto grimaced again. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You do that.” Kiba stood, stretched, and then walked away from the bed without a word. “C’mon, Nara.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.”

There was silence. The door clicked softly shut, and still there was silence. Naruto could hear muffled voices and thumps as people moved things into their rooms and met with new neighbors. Nothing in the room shifted, and the air seemed stale and stiff. Everything, Naruto realized, everything was just as it was eight years ago. The tiles in their small nook of a kitchen, the hard and flat carpet that smelled faintly of dust, the bare walls that looked like no one had ever set foot inside. The room was filled with a burnt orange tinge, illuminating the glass panes of the window as the sun began to die. Naruto wondered, not for the first time, what he’d ever done to deserve this. Was he the reincarnation of Hitler and in for some serious retribution? Or did bad luck truly stick to him as if by magnet?

For a few wild moments, Naruto wondered if Sasuke had followed Kiba and whoever ‘Nara’ was out the door. Perhaps it was less wondering that it was wishful thinking. Like he could feel his hands attached to his wrists, and his feet to his ankles, and the throbbing mantra growing louder and louder in his head that running away wasn’t cowardly but smart, he could feel Sasuke in the room. He wondered if this was how Stockholm Syndrome victims felt; so bonded to their captives that they couldn’t feel right, feel whole, unless they were close by. He now realized that for eight years he’d been a glass half empty, and Sasuke’s presence brought him bubbling over and spilling across the table.

Quiet footsteps were the only warning Naruto got before he caught a glimpse of black in his peripheral vision. As if scolded by hot water, Naruto couldn’t help but recoil. He brought his feet up to the mattress and pushed himself back until his shoulders met the wall, and even then he didn’t stop pushing. The balls of hit feet were tense and aching with the effort required to attempt to push a hole into the wall.

“Naruto?” murmured a nearly unrecognizable voice. It was deep and clear, very quiet, and nearly devoid of any accent. Naruto was sure that any stranger wouldn’t be able to pick it up, but he could. He noticed the strong emphasis on the ‘r’ part of the name and knew it to be because Sasuke put more effort in pronouncing it, to get it right. He had the voice of someone you could hear all the way across the room even if they were whispering. Who spoke so quietly into the phone you had to press the earpiece hard into your ear just to hear it. He sounded patronizing, almost, as if trying to soothe an injured and frightened animal.

“Naruto.” A hand reached out, tentatively, and Naruto felt it softly cup his shoulders through the suddenly too-thin t-shirt. He flinched away from it, but didn’t reach up a hand to bat it away. The fight inside of him had flared up and then died once Kiba had dragged him away. Now he was tired and wanted the joke to be over so he could go back to sleep.

“Naruto?” The question was back in his voice.

“Go away,” Naruto croaked. He curled his legs up and circled them with his arms, training his eyes on his knees. He felt rooted there, too afraid to move and try to brush past him.

No, I’m done running, I tried it before and it didn’t work and I’m not doing it again….

“I-”

“I don’t care. Get out.”

“Naruto, I live here.”

“I can’t. This my apartment.”

“I can’t believe this…” Sasuke murmured. “You’re… really still upset about that, aren’t you?”

What?

Just like that, Naruto’s thoughts derailed and his mind went into a stunned state of emptiness. Anger was replaced by confusion, shortly followed by anger. Upset? Naruto wasn’t upset, he was livid, and Sasuke had about ten seconds to correct himself before the blond went in for the kill.

The door was shut. No one would hear, at least not in time to stop him. Screw saving peoples’ lives. He had his own to protect first.

“When you didn’t call me,” Sasuke murmured, “I thought that maybe you lost the number.”

What?

What the fuck is he trying to pull?

“But that didn’t make any sense either. I gave you everything… my number, my address, even the school I went to.” Naruto couldn’t see his face, but he was too afraid to look and see if the raven truly did believe in what bull shit he was spouting. “You could have found me easily if you had wanted. I lived two towns over from your new place…”

Naruto’s gaze snapped up at first, and for a short moment, he forgot what made him do it or what he’d wanted to say. He hadn’t gotten a good look at Sasuke’s face before, but now he got an eye-full. It was long and ovular, a pointed and smooth chin beneath a gently frowning mouth. He had fine eyebrows arched with confusion over glassy black eyes. At so close a distance, he noted that they were gray, albeit an incredibly dark gray. He had a long, slender pale neck, half of his sharp collarbone hidden by the neck of a light gray button-up t-shirt. His shoulders were broad, his chest deep and his sides slanting down to hide below the bed. For the first time, Naruto noted that Sasuke was kneeling on the floor, one hand leaning on the mattress, the other limp on Naruto’s arm. Naruto shook the aforementioned appendage, and Sasuke’s hand slid down to rest on the bed beside him.

“How did you know where I lived?” Naruto asked, snapping out of his reverie.

Sasuke eyebrows furrowed slightly. “Are you playing stupid on purpose?” he asked. “You told me in my apartment, remember? You came over and told me you were moving…”

“No,” Naruto denied blankly. “I came over to give you homework….”

“Homework?” Sasuke blinked with equal confusion. “Why?”

“Because you missed school!”

“Naruto, I’ve never missed a day of school since I came to the states,” Sasuke said quietly, chidingly. “You came over in pieces because Iruka told you that you were moving…”

“In pieces?” Naruto echoed. “Why the fuck would I be in pieces? I hated that place! I hated that school! I wanted to move you crazy, fucked-up--”

“Stop lying!” Sasuke hissed. “You were upset that you were leaving. You told me you didn’t want to go--”

“I didn’t!” Naruto insisted. “I didn’t even find out until two weeks after… after you---”

“After I what? After I left? Naruto, that’s not possible. You told me so and I wanted to stay longer, but you insisted I go.”

His head hurt, Naruto realized, and his tongue felt swollen in his mouth, staring at the man before him with alarm written clearly upon every line of his face. Sasuke was insane, he realized with a spark of dread. His mind was completely fucked over, from what Naruto didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

“But…” The crease between his brows smoothed out slightly. “You said you’d miss me.” Was Naruto seeing things, or was that a ghost of a smile playing on the edges of Sasuke’s mouth? “You said that I was different.” He chuckled. “It was true, wasn’t it? You and I were the only different ones in that prissy school.”

Lost. He was lost and confused and frightened. Words bubbled painfully on the tip of his tongue, and he was just waiting for his nerve to catch up to him so that he could spew them out.

“I started to worry a week after you didn’t call…” Sasuke murmured, eyes distant, lost in a memory. “When you didn’t write. You said that you’d call me when you got the new number for your house, but…” His eyes drew down, to the side, then back up. “I thought that maybe you were mad, or lonely, or…. Maybe you were busy with new friends. Maybe you’d forgotten about me.

“I went to the town that you said you’d live in, but it was huge and I was sixteen. No one helped me and I had school starting again in two weeks… I looked you up in the phone books, I checked for you name in different public schools… and I couldn‘t find a thing. I waited for you to contact me during the school year, after you’d gotten settled, but nothing. I transferred in the middle of the year to a different state, and you hadn’t called or written or anything, so I just… gave up.”

Naruto stared, dumbly. What was this? Was this even the right Sasuke? Was there some other Japanese man with the same name with a childhood friend who had the same name as Naruto?

“But what happened?” Sasuke asked. “What happened after you left my apartment? You knew I was there for the rest of the week, I invited you to come back, but you didn’t… And, where did you get those scars?”

It was odd, Naruto thought, to hear him speak so much. It was almost like he’d had this so well-rehearsed for such a long time that he felt compelled to let it all out now. But when Sasuke’s hand returned, this time to gently cup his cheek, Naruto reacted.

“You gave them to me,” he whispered, disbelief dripping from every syllable. “You fucking gave them to be, you bastard. Whatever kind of sick mind game you’re trying to play won’t--”

Sasuke cut him off and drowned out the rest of his sentence. “I have them to you?” he asked, narrow eyes widening slightly. “What--”

“You gave them to me,” Naruto repeated. He felt his anger, felt his fight, come back and spring inside of him, erecting itself into a hot, thick surge of pure rage. “You carved them into my face with a steak knife.”

“Do you even know what you’re saying!?”

“You did, don’t fucking lie to me!” He didn’t even register the fact that Sasuke’s fingers had dug slightly harder into his skin. “You gave them to me right after…. Right after you…”

“Right after I what?” Sasuke persisted, edging closer, too close for Naruto’s comfort level, penetrating into his personal space on a whole new level.

“After you raped me.”

Sasuke’s hand slid from his face. He didn’t pull away, but his face did fall, and his jaw slackened enough so that his mouth hung agape by an inch. His eyes grew as round and seemingly large as dinner plates, and there was such a chaos of confusion and hurt that Naruto felt himself drowning in a sudden wave of guilt. As if someone had gotten him a kitten and he’d thrown it against the wall. The giver’s face probably would have resembled something close to Sasuke’s right now.

A pregnant pause, long and tense, in which neither of them spoke a word. And then, in a hiss like from a King Cobra, Sasuke snarled, “How dare you.”

When were our roles reversed? Naruto thought frantically, shrinking further back against the wall while Sasuke slowly drew up and stood at his full height, towering over him. Naruto couldn’t tell without a tape measurer, but he felt sure that Sasuke must have been a full head taller than him. It was a frightening sight.

“Quit cowering like a kicked dog!” Sasuke snapped at him, black eyes alight with a raging fury that Naruto thought might very well rival the one that was now quailing inside of him. “And don’t you dare belittle what we did! Do you even hear what you’re saying?”

“I know what I’m saying, you mother-fucking asshole!” Naruto snarled back. ‘You. Raped. M--”

“Don’t fucking say that!” Sasuke roared, eyes clenching and unclenching as if they’d love nothing more than to throttle the blond until he was blue in the face. “I had your full consent! You wanted to! I must have asked you at least a dozen times--”

“How would I even be able to answer, huh!? You had me gagged and tied on your kitchen floor!”

“I didn’t!” Now Sasuke looked scared, eyes switching from narrow and dangerous to full and platonic. “Naruto, you know I didn’t. I’d never--you know I’d never--”

“You never fucking asked me,” Naruto growled, shaking all over. He wondered if the room itself was shaking, because there was no way his body could produce on its own tremors this strong. His teeth chattered in his mouth, and his skin felt cold and clammy. “You had my face in the damned floor and you wouldn’t stop when I asked you and I begged you--I fucking begged you, you Godforsaken asshole--and you just kept going and kept on moving and you wouldn’t stop--” He felt tears begin to well up in his eyes and his voice cracked several times. He clamped his jaw tightly shut to avoid making a further fool of himself. It was just like that time, nothing had changed. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t fight, all he could do was cry and cry and damnit, why can’t I ever stop crying!?

“Naruto,” Sasuke whispered, backing away and slowly shaking his head, disappointment and that foreign emotion flicking and flitting across his eyes and his face, shown in the way his eyebrows puckered together and his lips tightened and dipped downwards. “If you didn’t want to see me again… if you’re that mad… all you had to do was say so. You don’t need to insult me like this.”

“I’m not--”

“I understand.” And to his relief, and partly to his dismay, Sasuke turned around and walked back to his bed. He began to shuffle through the box and pulled out a stack of books on what looked like organic chemistry. “The policy regarding dorms is to wait three weeks to try and resolve any conflicts. I’ll put my name in to switch dorms. Until then,” he shot Naruto a look that tore his heart into thin, bloody slivers, “please try and deal with your rapist of a roommate. Or if you’d like, go and room with Kiba for a while. I heard the offer.”

Naruto remained silent as Sasuke continued to unpack the rest of his books and sort them into different stacks on top of the mattress. His thoughts were too muddled, too chaotic, to sort through right now. He simply sat and studied, watching Sasuke’s shoulders as they shifted beneath his shirt, the way his long pale fingers sometimes swept down the spine as he read the title before sorting it into a category. This continued for another few minutes, with Naruto’s quiet observation and Sasuke’s blatant ignoring of it, and Naruto jolted when there was a knock on the door. Sasuke didn’t so much as blink, merely opening a book to read the inner flap.

After another long moment, Naruto cautiously slid off the bed and gingerly stood on his feet. He was starting to feel the aches and pain of the impromptu brawl that occurred not even fifteen minutes ago, and he worked his sore jaw, before padding softly to the door. Opening it, he was met with the wild brown eyes of who was supposed to be his roommate.

“Hey man,” Kiba said, obviously disgruntled. “Shino’s being an ass and I needed a break. You wanna talk a walk around the campus with me? We can get the rest of your stuff.”

Naruto paused, gnawed on his lower lip for a moment, before replying, “Sure. Why not?”

“Awesome.” Kiba grinned wolfishly and stood to the side, allowing Naruto to pass by him on the way out. Before he shut the door, he asked, “So, what about it? You change your mind? I could use the company; you can kick Shino out of his bed. It shoulda been yours anyway.”

Naruto glanced into the room, quickly, just once--running, running, I’m always and forever fucking running--”Nah, he and I are cool now. It was just a misunderstanding.”

The brunet rolled his eyes and said, “Yeah, whatever. If you ask me, I can see how Shino and that ass know each other. Two of a kind, they are.”

And while Kiba strode past him, Naruto reached to shut the door to quickly pull it shut. But he wasn’t fast enough to miss the last look Sasuke shot him through the gap of their door.

He didn’t look hurt, or angry, or upset or sad. Again, the emotion Naruto couldn’t pinpoint. He couldn’t understand.

The click of the door as it shut was resounding, and he trailed after his new friend.

--

The way their room was built, Naruto realized as he surveyed it in the dark, was very much the same as Kiba’s. It seemed larger, perhaps because of the lack of mess, but the structure was the same. It was rectangular for the most part. At least, it was longer than it was wide from the perspective of the door. Stepping in and looking to the left was a small nook with a bare TV stand, a small circular coffee table made of oak, and a three-seater sofa. Straight ahead from the door, past the island that separated it from the living area, was a kitchenette. It too was built into a corner. A large refrigerator and a sink made up one side, and a set of cabinets and drawers dovetailed with the oven made up the other. A half-wall separated it from an oak door that led into the bathroom. From there, the wall was built out, and then dipped back in to form the largest section of the dorm. Two twin beds, one laying under the window and nudged into the corner while the other ran parallel to the wall adjacent it. The window was large, a two-panel affair with off-white blinds, emitting in soft light from the lamp posts outside. The whole miniature-apartment was covered in a rough blue carpet dotted with flecks of forest green, and the fabric of the sofa matched it. All-in-all, a nice enough dormitory. And Naruto had already found over a dozen places in which he could easily kill himself. Hang himself from the fan that slowly revolved above their “bedroom”, or even in one of the two closets that were built into the far wall where the bathroom was. Drown himself in the bathtub. Stick his head in the open oven door. Open the double-paned window and launch himself through it and pray that a seven-story drop was enough to finish him off.

“Mine.”

Like a song he remembered from childhood, it remained stuck in his head, and he knew it wouldn’t leave until he heard it again. And again, and again, until he tired of it.

“Tell me you are mine.”

If I told you that, Naruto thought, shrunken back against the wall, thoughts gyrating out of control. If I told you that belonged to you, and only you, just like you wanted to hear then, would that make this any better? Would you let me go if you thought I loved you? Would it get boring, eventually, and you’d back off?

Or would you become even more of a monster?

“You truly are a monster.”

He shuddered and shrank back further against the wall.

The pillow was too warm, damp with sweat, under his flushed cheek but he didn’t dare move. He wouldn’t move in fear of waking the beast that was curled up in the bed not six feet from him. And he didn’t dare turn to face the wall; what if Sasuke were to sneak up on him? He couldn’t close his eyes, and he kept his blinks as infrequent as possible. His breathing was even, slow, and near soundless. But he was paranoid that his rampant heartbeat made up for all of that with its great, galloping pounding. He could hear it and rushing blood in his ears. If it was so loud to him, surely Sasuke had to hear it, too.

How could he forget?

Naruto felt two types of angry, one healthy, the other one he’d very much like to not dwell upon. Firstly that inner-hate harbored within him had exploded again in an explosion fit to give Pearl Harbor a run for its money. Seeing that man’s face made him feel several sorts of frightened and angered at the same time, and the blood in his veins throbbed and roared just with the thought of it. The other anger was that Sasuke had forgotten, or chose to forget.

He’d forgotten.

Was it really so unimportant to you?

It didn’t mean anything!

Then why so broken?

He’s forgotten all about it.

Am I really not worth remembering?

He dissected himself for hours, curled up by the wall, arms encircling his legs and cupping his calves. It was a warm night, but he wore long sweatpants with the drawstring tugged tightly and knotted twice, sure to leave an angry red indent by morning, thick socks, and a baggy sweatshirt that he kept covering his hands. His chin was slightly tucked into the neck of the sweatshirt, and if he’d had a scarf, he surely would have worn that too. For now, he was content with having the hood pulled up and over his head. When Sasuke had emerged from the bathroom (he‘d been showering by the time Naruto returned to the dorm), he’d been wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs (Naruto was ashamed to admit that his first thought was, He’s fleshed out, before turning his face back to the bright screen of his laptop) and had promptly crawled into bed. Neither spoke a word to each other.

“What happened to your face?”

What happened to your heart?

Naruto would have been content with a smirk. A, “Do you remember me?” A string of confusing Japanese spoken in a sardonic tone. Broken English. Anything, anything but those hurt words, that concerned look that made him feel like a runaway from a psychiatric clinic, betrayal, and that horrible stare Naruto felt like Sasuke had practiced he did it so well.

And yet could not name.

Sasuke shifted in his sleep, and Naruto’s eyes narrowed. All of a sudden, something came to his notice. Sasuke’s breathing was even, but it was too deep. It was like it was being purposefully suppressed so as to not alert the other, and no person should sleep looking that tense. And he hadn’t changed positions in--Naruto checked the alarm clock on the bedside table--five and a half hours. No one slept like that…

Unless Sasuke wasn’t really asleep.

Naruto tensed at the thought, and then even further when Sasuke shifted again, this time to curl into himself more as if under the assault of rapid pistol fire.

His breathing isn’t right, Naruto realized. Maybe he’s choking on his sleep. Wouldn’t that just solve everything?

The breathing hitched once more, and Sasuke curled up into a fetal position on the bed, face planted firmly in the pillows and opposite Naruto’s direction. And as if by medication, Naruto’s eyes slowly started to droop. His body relaxed further against the wall, and his eyes were drawn to the pillow. How nice it looked, how soft, how stiff his back was. It would be possible, he thought, to stay awake while laying down. People did it all the time. So why not him?

His flushed cheeks met with the cool linen of his new pillowcase, and it was the most wonderful thing he could remember feeling. His posture loosened as Sasuke’s tightened, and his breathing began to slow. His mind was wrung dry and not even a drop of fear was left now. Nothing left to feel but the cool sheets, and nothing but the soft sounds of Sasuke’s crying to lull him into a deep sleep.

“I’ll fine you somewhere, show you how much I care. Know that there is no escape from my snow brigade.”

--Snow Brigade, Mew