Art and Artifice

Art and Artifice
chapter 21

Itachi circled around a group giggling teenage girls, situating himself before the pictures that he had seen his brother poring over and found himself staring at a collection of pictures of Naruto. His eyes widened in surprise and interest. A memory came up of Naruto talking about a series of photos that he had posed for, back when they'd first met. The shots were very well executed. He had to mentally applaud the photographer. She'd done a most excellent job for a high school student and of course Naruto looked beyond gorgeous. An irritating sliver of possessiveness dug in at the realization that Sasuke had been staring so hard at half naked pictures of his boyfriend. Why had he looked so freaked out though? Unless... Itachi wrenched his gaze away from the pictures to look over at the information tag, and his suspicion was confirmed. Sasuke had just discovered who Kyuubi was, which meant that it was Naruto that he had run off looking for. Now there was no way of really knowing what the boy's reaction would be. Suddenly Naruto's extreme reluctance to place himself in exactly this situation was making perfect sense.

Itachi hurried off in the direction that he had seen Sasuke take. He swerved in and around the people choking off the aisles keeping a look out for both Naruto 'and' Sasuke now. Only a couple of minutes later he caught sight of his brother moving purposefully towards the door on one side of the room. He immediately set to the task of catching up but it was easier said than done. Slipping between two older men he glanced up again and saw Sasuke disappear through the door.

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Sasuke rushed through the door and spotted a despondent Naruto trudging wearily down the empty hallway. Without thinking he called out 'Kyuubi' and the hooded boy turned automatically. For a moment both froze. Naruto knew instantly that Sasuke had figured out the truth. When he had planned for this moment he'd pictured himself in a crowd, with his boyfriend by his side, but he'd been so busy worrying over Itachi today that he'd forgotten all about Ino's pictures. Now he'd let himself get caught alone, 'again'!

"Tell me right now. Are you Kyuubi?" There was no response, as usual. Sasuke was feeling desperate and becoming frustrated quickly. "Tell me who the hell you are!!" he demanded, his volume just short of yelling. He began to move forward, slowly stalking the figure before him and Naruto dropped into a defensive stance like a threatened animal.

"Stay away from me!" he hissed, Sasuke caught it, barely, and was shocked into stillness for a moment at hearing the boy in the hood actually speak for the first time.

"Take off the hood," he ordered as came back to himself. Naruto hesitated for just a second before his body tensed. Sasuke could tell he was about to bolt.

"Wait!" he shouted but Naruto spun around suddenly and took off running in the other direction. With a curse Sasuke immediately jumped to the chase. For a short guy this kid could really run fast, but Sasuke was still gaining on him.

The exit was in sight and Naruto wasn't about to spare the time and energy to look back. He could hear the pounding steps behind him growing closer though and he put on a little extra burst of speed. It wasn't quite enough. He felt a pull at his hoody as Sasuke's hand grabbed the material but this time he wasn't going to let that be his downfall and as he figured the gig was up anyway, he quickly reached to unzip the damn thing. The slight falter in his step was all Sasuke needed however. With a final lunge he tackled the boy and they both went crashing to the floor. Naruto landed awkwardly on his wrist and gasped in pain. Sasuke was already working to try and roll him over. Naruto scrambled desperately to pull himself out from under the bigger boy but he could only properly use one hand. Despite his best efforts he felt himself being flipped and pinned.

"Get off me!!" he screamed. "Just leave me alone!!" Sasuke stopped at the note of fear in his voice. There was a momentary pause where the heavy panting of both boys filled the corridor.

"I just want to see your face," he explained as he determinedly reached up to tug at the hood.

Suddenly Sasuke's eyes flew wide open as he felt himself being lifted up by the back of his shirt and pulled off of the hooded form. He kicked and flailed helplessly as a hand reached out and gave his head a shove that sent him spinning around, his toes barely scraping the floor, his shirt tightening and riding up as the fabric twisted. He found himself face to face with a 'very' scary looking Itachi.

"Get the hell off my boyfriend!" the older boy growled dangerously. The hand that wasn't holding up his brother clenched into a tight fist. Itachi was seriously tempted to blacken Sasuke's other eye but his gaze flicked over to Naruto who was still on the floor and carefully holding his wrist. He still had to talk to him and he'd already made the mistake of not taking care of him once. He gave his brother another warning growl and tossed him aside none too gently. Sasuke stared as Itachi got down on his knees and gently took the boy's hand to look over his wrist.

"It looks like it's just a sprain. We'll wrap it up for a bit," he said quietly. He looked up at Naruto but while the blond's sweater was unzipped his face was still shadowed by that ridiculous hood. Smirking in amusement, he reached for it and then paused, silently asking permission.

"Go ahead," said Naruto. "I knew he'd find out with everyone else today anyway. I just didn't want you running off to confront him right then when you were so pissed off."

"So I can kick his ass now?" They both turned to look at Sasuke who was still in a heap on the floor where he'd landed.

"Go for it," said Naruto dismissively. Itachi grinned evilly at his paling brother.

"I think I'll let him stew in it for a while and then attack when he's not expecting it." Sasuke scowled, unsure of whether Itachi was serious or not.

"Naruto, I'm sorry about what I said. I should never have jumped to such a stupid conclusion." Itachi pulled the hood back and saw the blond smiling tearily.

"I thought you weren't coming," he whispered.

"I can only act like an idiot for so long," Itachi answered wryly. "Besides, I wouldn't have missed seeing your entry for the world. Very impressive piece of work by the way. Wherever did you get your inspiration?" Naruto blushed and giggled sheepishly.

"Forgive me?"

"Yeah" the blond grinned. Without any warning Itachi picked him up, cradled to his chest. "What are you doing?" Naruto squeaked.

"Taking you home."

"Itachi, I only hurt my wrist! I can walk just fine!"

"I'm supposed to take care of you," Itachi airily informed him.

A still speechless Sasuke watched them go. In his rush to find out if Kyuubi was Naruto, he had completely forgotten about his brother 'dating' Naruto. Now he knew. The boy under the hood was his Kyuubi... 'His brother's' Kyuubi, who had every reason to hate his guts. There was no excuse for it. He had brought this on himself. He couldn't even begin to 'count' all the terrible things he had done to Naruto. He had spent three whole years tormenting someone and never given a thought to what kind of an impact he was having on his life. He had acted as though the second he walked away from the scene, it was all over. Never once had he contemplated what happened to the boy 'after' Sasuke had left and already forgotten the incident. Only now after having learned what kind of a person 'Kyuubi' was and a little bit about the life he led outside of school, did it occur to him that the boy didn't just disappear when Sasuke was finished with him, and had to continue to deal with the consequences of 'his' actions long after the fact. It was truly sickening to realize what kind of a person he, himself was. How many times had he stolen the smile from that innocent face? Sasuke had never actually thought of himself as a bad person before. Now he was forced to really consider what he had done, and it was all the more disgusting that he had chosen the nicest, sweetest, most adorable person he knew of, to dump all of his shit on.

"Because, let's face it," the Uchiha thought to himself. "all that time I was bugging him at work he could have been so much more hateful. He couldn't bring himself to be truly mean to me even if he hated me."

Kyuubi hated him. Suddenly he wondered how many other people might hate him. He may have only been his absolute meanest to Naruto, ( and God, he was getting that nauseous feeling again ) but he had been... not exactly nice, to a lot of people... most people... ok pretty much everyone. How many of them had he affected more severely than he'd thought? Did 'anybody' actually like him? Because he was finally realizing that he 'cared'.

Part of him was really pissed off that his brother had just waltzed in taken the blond right out from under his nose, but he wasn't stupid enough to think that he would have had a chance anyway. He had screwed up big time and now Kyuubi would forever be the impossible dream.


A/N; I've been so busy writing that I hardly had a minute of free time left to draw up those pics, but I've done a couple of them and I'm working on some more. If you'd like to see them, drop me a line at: dagget_has_mail@yahoo.com Just type out a 'hey send me some pics'. lol Maybe I'll post them somewhere later, when I've got them all finished.