Purple

Author’s Notes: Because, yes, I do read the reviews and, yes, I do take advice to heart.

Disclaimer: Despite events taking place in this story, situations pertaining to rape should not be taken lightly. It is not an act of courage to not go to the police or to someone if you or someone you know has been raped and/or assaulted. Sexual harassment is a crime and should be treated as such, and reported to the proper authorities, no matter how little you or anyone else thinks can be done about the situation. Do not assume that your story will be taken lightly, or that you will be labeled a liar.

There. A bit of a serious note for a fanfic, but I agreed with the reviewer who sent me the request so, hey, what can you do.

Sorry for the lateness of the chapter. Also, the story is now five parts instead of four. If it was four, this wouldn’t be out for another month. So there.

-Kodak

--

Is it strange that I’ve missed this?

Is it wrong that I’ve missed this?

Or is it only normal to miss what you’ve always had?

Whether it be good, or bad?

Things were as Naruto remembered them so well. The fuzziness of the carpet, like the white snow on a television screen, swerved in and out of focus as a torrential downpour of agony and shame wrapped him in a suffocating tight cocoon, safe as it was in its normality. Safe that it remained the same. So soft was the feeling, so harsh and demanding the friction, Naruto began to lose himself to routine. He rested his forehead against the floor and let himself be rocked. Back and forth, back and forth, it hurt but he knew it so well that it didn’t really hurt anymore--

The carpet was so soft under the flushed skin of his face and he felt his bound hand reach up to stroke its cheek, feeling eyelashes flutter against his fingertips, and he smiled when a sweaty, but warm, hand cupped the back of his and pressed it more firmly against a pale face.

He opened his eyes, smiled up into dark ones that met his with so much understanding, so very full of the acceptance he’d missed for all of his life and now it was shoved in front of his eyes like a vast feast before a starved man. He drank in those eyes, the tilt of the lips that told him the smile was exclusively for his gaze, for him, only him.

As they moved, hips rising and falling in an uneven pattern but was so perfect in imperfection, as their lips crashed with the subtly and gentleness of a gentle wave in a bay, Naruto whispered his name. And his was whispered back.

No.

It was shouted back.

“Naruto!”

His veins were instantly alight with liquid electricity and his back flew up from the bed, neck snapping with the action, his forehead nearly colliding with Sasuke’s in the process. His roommate dodged backwards, arching his chest so as to allow his one knee to remain on the bed, hands gripping the mattress to keep himself steady. Naruto fought to steady both his gaze and his breathing, eyes trained on Sasuke, not allowing the boy out of his sight.

There were dreams, Naruto knew, that faded from his memory an hour after waking. There were some he couldn’t remember at all, even upon the moment his eyes opened in the morning. Than there were those dreams, more likely than not nightmares, that stuck with him for days, if not weeks. He had a sneaking suspicion that this would be one of them. But what depressed him more wasn’t the idea of a new memory to torment him, but the idea that he couldn’t categorize it as either a dream or a nightmare.

Drawing his thoughts away from the matter for a moment, he focused on the concerned glint in onyx eyes, the odd tilt to the man’s head, and the fact that their faces were all of a foot apart.

And that he was shirtless.

Naruto was sweating. Was he sweating from fear, or was he sweating because he was currently wearing a hoodie, heavy sweatpants and thick socks?

Nevertheless, he narrowed his eyes into a sharp glare and snapped, “Get the hell off of my bed.”

Sasuke ignored him. He even crept forward another inch or so, inky stare warming his blood and making his muscles feel stiff. Naruto felt the strong urge to stretch, to release the mounting pressure that swallowed his entire body, but at the same time he felt frozen in place.

“What was that?” Sasuke muttered, voice gritty from lack of use, deep and resounding, the voice of many years ago only a bit older, more rich, like aged wine. “A fit? Or did you have a nightmare?”

Naruto swallowed, and it hurt. He needed a glass of water, anything to get the sudden and awful taste out of his mouth. It was like he swallowed a clot of chalk dust and it had settled in one large clump at the back of his throat.

“How about a drink? I can get you a drink, if you wish.”

“Y-yeah… thanks.”

“It’s none of your business!” Naruto meant for his words to sound strong and firm, but like a sharp hook to his jaw a fresh memory slammed its way into his mind, and it took every ounce of will power to keep their gazes locked without remembering.

“It was a dream, right?” Sasuke pressed, leaning closer, and a dozen escape plans popped into Naruto’s head, each and every one of them as useless and pathetic as the next. “I heard your murmuring in your sleep.”

A sudden idea popped into his head, and an uncharacteristic sneer spread across Naruto’s lips. “Actually, Uchiha, yeah, it was a dream. A nightmare, actually.” His smirk grew. “Wanna hear about it? You might remember a part or two.”

Parts, only parts, the first part, the first was a memory, the second was a dream, that was the nightmare, that was the nightmare…

Sasuke froze and, slowly, expressionless face never twitching to betray an emotion, he began to lean back until he was standing on his feet. He wore only sweat pants, Naruto noted, his feet bare a stark contrast to the navy color of the floor.

“No, I don’t,” Sasuke told him. “I’ve never been one for fiction.”

Naruto’s jaw dropped, and he watched in mute silence as Sasuke turned around, walked to his bed to pick up a neatly folded towel and pair of slacks, and then make his way to the door to their shared bathroom.

“I’m showering,” Sasuke informed him, one hand on the doorknob. “You should feel better with your rapist out of the room, right?” Naruto was silent, and Sasuke waited for a long moment, appearing to expect some sort of reaction. When he got none, he snorted, and Naruto felt another corner of his mind crack and cripple in on itself. He’d just woken up, but he suddenly felt so tired. After jolting awake so quickly, it felt like his consciousness was receding just as fast.

“How can you make a joke out of this?” Naruto hissed, leaning forward so that he knelt on the bed. “It isn‘t something you should fuck around with!”

And Sasuke turned around. A moment later, those powerful eyes were boring into his once more and Naruto wished himself anywhere else right now. He wished it even harder at the next words out of Sasuke’s mouth.

“You‘re right,” Sasuke told him. Disappointment, thick as cold molasses, fermented the icy words and they struck Naruto’s chest like a rusty dagger, his stomach plunging down somewhere below his abdomen, weighed down by an anvil of guilt. “It isn’t something you should make a mockery of.”

Click

Naruto didn’t even see Sasuke retreat back into the bathroom until he was, once again, alone in the room, staring dumbly at the closed door. He sat there in silence for a while, the only movement he made being when he slowly sat back down, legs slowly crossing before him Indian-silence. A minute later, he heard the spray of the showerhead. Almost simultaneously, he heard a shrill ringing coming from somewhere by his bed. He listened to it for a few moments before jerking to life, the last remains of a tormenting dream and betrayed eyes flitting quickly from his mind in order to make room for Iruka, Iruka, shit, I forgot to call Iruka he‘s going to kill me…

After wrestling with the tangled pair of jeans that slumped in a shapeless jump on the floor, he twisted his wrist and retrieved his cell phone which continued to ring and vibrate in his palm. ‘IRUKA” flashed across the LSD screen in bold, accusing letters and, after swallowing back the thick surge of guilt, he flipped it open and pressed it against his ear.

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

Naruto winced and habit made him scratch at the back of his head with his free hand, a sheepish smile unconsciously crossing his lips. Keeping on ear open to the sound of water that continued to trickle from the shower not too far from his bed, he said, “Hey Iruka.” He heard a sharp intake of breath and, before Iruka could get one more word in edgewise, Naruto was blurting out whatever lie came into his mind first. “Sorry, Iruka. I know I promised to call, but I was dead tired, and as soon as I got to the hotel I collapsed. I would’ve called you in the car, but you’re always telling me you’ll rip off my ears if I talk on a cell in the car--”

“Wait--you stayed in the hotel for the night?”

At least he isn’t doing the whisper thing, Naruto thought before remembering that he had a story to tell. “Yeah. There was a big back up on the turnpike; they had fifteen miles of bumper-to-bumper parking, I swear. By the time I got through it I just pulled off the nearest exit and crashed at the hotel. I didn’t wanna fall asleep while going seventy, heh.”

Whatever was in his tone, Iruka seemed to buy it. There was a long pause, and then a resentful, “You could have at least called before you went to bed.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry!” Naruto rushed, smelling an easy victory. “I’ll call next time, I swear.”

A sigh crackled like white noise for a second. “Yeah, yeah. Did you have enough to pay for the room?”

“Yeah, I paid sixty in cash.” Naruto relaxed his back and leaned against the wall, settling himself in for a long conversation.

“What time are you leaving for the university?”

Naruto debated in his head quickly, and, deciding to skip the further complications of making up a time and going through imaginary directions, he said, “I left two hours ago, actually. I was only forty minutes away. I’ve got my room and everything, Iruka, you should see it--”

“Wait, you left two hours ago?”

“Yeah?”

“…you left at five in the morning?”

Blinking, Naruto drew his phone back and tapped a random key to illuminate the screen. What time had Sasuke woken him up, anyway?

7:14

Fucker.

“Heh, yeah, well…. I was supposed to get there yesterday, and I was kinda excited.”

“But I’ve never seen you voluntarily wake up so early for anything… you’d oversleep the day of your own funeral.”

“Iruka,” Naruto groaned, tilting his head back and cupping his neck with a clammy palm, rubbing the skin that was, for some reason, cold. “It’s med school. You know it’s important to me.”

Iruka chuckled. “I know,” he said, and Naruto zoned in on the twinge of pride he heard in that voice. He soaked it up, held the exact tone, and replayed the words in his head a few times, the line falling into a comfortable silence. That was when Naruto realized why his skin was crawling.

He couldn’t hear running water.

Just as Naruto was beginning to panic, Iruka said genially, “So, have you met your roommate yet? You said you had a double-suite.”

No one can finish a shower that quickly. Maybe he forgot his shampoo on the sink or something. Maybe he’s just climbing out to get it.

The door creaked open.

Or maybe my luck really is as bad as I thought it was.

“Naruto?”

Sasuke was exiting the bathroom slowly, lingering beneath the threshold, one hand holding the knot of the towel that was twisted around his waist. His chest was pale and dripping with the water from his quick shower, his hair plastered to his scalp and beginning to stick up at the back, bangs hung over his eye until an impatient hand reached to sweep them away. It missed one single lock, the strand so small Sasuke probably didn’t even notice it, and it made the fingers of Naruto’s hand itch.

“Naruto?”

Naruto started. “Sorry, Iruka,” he apologized. “He just walked in.” And then he winced at the slip of tongue. Oops.

“So you’ve met him?” Iruka said, sounding cheerful. “What’s he like? Are you two getting along?”

Naruto sighed again, breath rattling the reception. He could make up a character easily enough, he knew. He also knew that Iruka would undoubtedly be here in a few week’s time with the last of the things he’d forgotten at home, and would have the full intentions of meeting the person Naruto described to him now.

Well, Naruto thought, it’s not like they aren’t going to meet sooner or later anyway. And Iruka probably wouldn’t remember him anyway.

“We’re getting along all right,” Naruto said cautiously. “He’s a bit quiet.”

Iruka snorted. “Good. I hope he rubs off on you. What’s his name?”

Can’t make up a name, either, damnit, Iruka. “Sasuke.” The aforementioned man cocked his head to the side. Naruto glared at him from the bed, and Sasuke shrugged, crossing the room to his dresser and shuffling through the contents, throwing out clothes onto his neatly made bed.

“Sasuke?” Iruka repeated, sounding surprised. “Uchiha? Sasuke Uchiha?”

“You remember him!?”

“Yeah, of course I do! He’s your friend from middle school, isn’t he? The one you wouldn’t shut up about?”

Naruto sputtered indignantly before hissing, “He isn’t my ‘friend’, Iruka.”

Sasuke was looking oddly at him, but this time, when Naruto glared at him, he refused to look away. He fixed Naruto with a bland stare, one hip leaning against the side table only a few feet from him. Naruto could smell the soap wafting from his skin.

Iruka, to Naruto’s great dismay, was laughing at him. “Sure he’s not. Which is why you two were all over each other in school.”

“We were not all over each other!” Naruto practically screamed, the grip he had on his mobile making his knuckles go bone white. His face was burning. Sasuke was still watching him.

“You were,” Iruka insisted. “I’ve never seen two people so in-tuned with each other. Where one of you was, the other would be there in five minutes. It was kind of funny.”

“We weren’t in-tune or whatever,” Naruto snapped. “I fucking hated him. I still do.”

“Naruto!” Iruka said sharply. “I hope you didn’t say that while he was in the room.” Sasuke was standing up straight now. Perhaps it was the height difference cause by the two different positions, but he seemed a little closer, too.

“No, he just left, actually,” Naruto said, eyes narrowing in warning, in pleading for Sasuke to do just that. To leave. To the bathroom, to the common area, to the school ground, to a different continent…

Sasuke murmured, “Iruka remembers me?”

Naruto shook his head, lips pulled taught in a thin line, listening as Iruka rattled on about some story of the two of them in middle school. He wasn’t catching too much of it, too focused on the fact that Sasuke was walking too close to him for comfort. He stopped when his knees were brushing the mattress. And then, to Naruto’s horror, he climbed on top of the bed.

Naruto cupped a hand over the bottom half of his cell. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Get off!”

Sasuke wasn’t listening, and Iruka was calling his name again. “Yeah, Iruka,” he said in a manageably calm tone. “I’m here. Sorry. My books are falling off my bed, I was just trying to catch them.” He lifted a hand to thrust against Sasuke’s chest in an attempt to push him off. His hand retreated a fraction of a second later. Sasuke’s skin was still wet from the shower, and it was warm. Too warm, too real, and too reminiscent of--

--pressed his hand damply over his chest, listening to the thudding heart, thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to stay until he wakes up, gets up and gets dressed with half a conscious, half a heart, half of everything, leaving his other half sleeping soundly on his floor while he walked away, shutting the door behind him--

--things he didn’t care to remember. Naruto considered punching Sasuke with his free hand, but before he could that hand was trapped by a pale hand, pressed into the mattress by his wrist with a gentle, but forceful pressure. Sasuke rubbed the vein of his wrist with a calloused thumb, and cocked his head to the side, awaiting a violent reaction, eyes knowing and curious, face mingled and warped with that damn emotion, the feeling that Naruto still couldn’t name.

“I’m here, Iruka,” Naruto repeated, leaning back as far as he could. Sasuke leaned in further, one leg swinging over to straddle his lap, and Naruto just knew that that towel was five seconds from falling and he could see a faint trace of black hairs travel from his belly button to dip below the band of the towel, his shoulders had filled out and so had his chest, his arms, had other parts of him--

“Are you all right? What’s wrong?”

“N-nothing. I’m just trying to get dressed. My friend Kiba’s outside the door, we’re gonna go get breakfast together.”

“You… made a friend at seven in the morning.”

Naruto winced, and smelled mint. Mint and smoke, he was getting too close, this was a sick joke but it didn’t feel sick, just playful and teasing and familiar as Sasuke’s face loomed inches from his own, onyx eyes cold in their inky blackness but with a slightly warm expression.

He had to hang up now, whether it was to end this conversation before it grew to be even more irreparable or to free up his options to beat Sasuke within an inch of his life. He suspected it to be a bit of both.

“He’s right across the hall from me.” He’s down a floor, but what’s the difference? Naruto thought “He’s gonna head to get breakfast with me. I’m sorry, Iruka, can I call you a bit later?”

“Yeah, all right.” Naruto tried to squash down the guilt he felt at cutting his guardian short. This was made easier by the fact that Sasuke, sensing that the door was closing on his chances, had moved in even closer, face brushing his chin as it dipped down to his neck, free hand reaching for his hip, fingertips searching for skin as they dipped underneath his hoodie. Naruto’s arm was full of pins and needles, refusing to move, not even to swat at the questing hand. It was pathetic, it was a bit sad, and if that towel dropped just one more centimeter--

Why am I thinking this?

Gritting his teeth, Naruto shoved Sasuke away with a hand pressed against his clavicle. The Japanese man grunted, but relented, scooting back with an annoyed look on his face. Naruto didn’t look down. He knew the towel had fallen off. He didn’t want to look.

As Sasuke began to climb off the bed (leaving his towel, Naruto noted with vague panic, on the mattress) Naruto said, “I’ll call around noon, all right? I have to get all my books for my classes.”

“I’ll talk to you later, then,” Iruka said, sounding slightly more cheerful. “Oh, and Naruto?”

“Yeah?” Naruto was tracking Sasuke’s movements out of the corner of his eye, the rest of his sight filled by the innocent white towel draped over his bed.

“I’m proud of you.”

Naruto froze. Every now and then, the person he knew better than anyone else, and who knew him better than anyone else--kissing Sasuke was like swallowing ash--said something that threw him completely off-guard. This was one of those times and, after a pregnant pause, he said in a much warmer tone, “Call ya later, Iruka.”

“Good-bye, Naruto.” The line went dead.

And then his eyes came alive with a fiery anger that would peel paint. His teeth, and he heard a deep rumble like a stuttering engine. He was growling.

Sasuke looked up with minimal interest, one arm in the short-sleeved shirt he had in his hands. “What?” he asked coolly.

Naruto snapped.

--

Really, Kiba didn’t know what he was thinking on his way up from his room to Naruto’s. He’d just finished his morning jog (with Sasuke, of all people, who he’d met on the track) and had taken a quick shower to rinse the sweat off of his skin. Sasuke had mentioned getting breakfast after this, and had promised to wake Naruto up and ask if he wanted to go.

“Are you two cool now?” Kiba asked as they walked back to the dorm building.

“Yes, we’re fine,” Sasuke had said. “Just a small misunderstanding.”

It didn’t seem that small to Kiba, but he let it slide, watching Sasuke’s back as he retreated back up the steps to his and Naruto’s shared room. And now, he stood outside that room, once again wondering what he’d really been expecting as he listened to the sounds of heavy breathing, of things being knocked over and probably broken, of grunts and yelps of pain. For a moment, he stood outside the door, wondering if he should interfere. Then his mind tracked back to earlier that morning, when Sasuke had looked him in the eye and told him it was all just a small misunderstanding.

Sasuke didn’t strike Kiba as a liar, and Kiba thought of himself as a fairly good judge of character. Even Shino had told him last night that he’d never known Sasuke to lie needlessly before. That aside, Sasuke and Naruto didn’t seem to be too hostile towards each other. Sure, Naruto was quick enough to punch the other man, but he seemed constantly on the verge of apologizing for it. Sasuke seemed to be much on the same page, but with a look in his eyes that said he wanted something Kiba didn’t want to think on too much.

“Ouch! You under-handed fucker, I’ll kill you!”

“Hn!”

Kiba sighed, dawdled for a few seconds, thought of what he would be thinking in Naruto’s position. Deciding, he abandoned the door and went back down to his own dorm, thinking along the way that he could always drag Shino down to the cafeteria if he was so desperate for company.

--

“Argh, let me up!”

“No.”

“LET ME UP!”

“No. Not until you promise me that you’ll regain that minute semblance of sanity that I know you have somewhere in that pea-sized brain of yours.”

“Bastard!”

Sasuke had Naruto pinned to the floor in a manner that was entirely too familiar. Naruto could sense that Sasuke knew it too, and it only made him angrier that Sasuke merely tightened the grip he had on his roommate’s wrists. His elbows flapped uselessly against the floor, and he made his first and last attempt to buck the man off; the collision of hips against hips was too intimate to make a useless bid for freedom.

“What do you want from me?” Naruto finally snapped, although he was none too sure he wanted the answer.

Sasuke frowned. His legs shifted so that his thighs were more comfortably suited along the insides of Naruto’s legs before asking, “Iruka remembers me?”

“Obviously, weren’t you listening?”

“Have you told him the same fantasy you’ve been telling me?”

“Fantasy?” Naruto echoed, confused for a moment before catching on angrily. “Why the fuck would I fantasize--”

Sasuke snorted. “Shut up,” he ordered, and Naruto found his lips automatically sealing shut, and his eyes drawn to Sasuke’s mouth. If he closed his eyes now, Naruto realized, he would be able to remember the taste. Just looking made him remember the feel, the unadulterated hunger that had torn him to pieces and then ravaged the shredded remains.

“I’ll let you up if you answer for me one thing.”

“I don’t know where you left your brain, fucktard. Probably in the playroom in kindergarten.”

Sasuke silenced him with another glare. “Truthfully.”

Naruto rolled his eyes. “What?”

Mid-eye roll, Sasuke gripped his wrists tighter and then brought them up above his head. “Hey!” Pinning them with one hand, Sasuke used his free hand to cup Naruto’s cheek. Naruto twisted his face away, but the hand was persistent, pressing hard enough o bruise. When Naruto’s face was as hard pressed into the carpet as he could make it, Sasuke relented the pressure and began to trace one of the long, thin lines on his face with a careful thumb.

“These aren’t tattoos,” Sasuke muttered, eyes transfixed on the scars while Naruto’s remained on him. “Tell me how you got them.”

Naruto couldn’t tell what annoyed him more; that it was more of a command than a question, or that Sasuke was continuing to force the whole… ordeal into a more consensual light. “I got them after you knocked me the fuck out.”

Sasuke scowled. “Knocked you out?”

Naruto rolled his eyes. “Knocked out, passed out, there’s no difference.”

“There’s a big difference.”

“You carved them into my face with a butcher knife.”

“I never owned a butcher knife.”

“You did! Or a steak knife, some kind of knife--”

“Look at you, you can’t even keep one simple part of a story straight.”

“You carved them into my fucking face while I slept!”

“I thought you were passed out. You’d make a shitty novelist.”

“Shut up, shut your fucking face!”

They were talking over each other and even though Naruto knew he had the louder voice, but he could still feel himself being drowned out. It was growing more and more disturbing how it seemed like Sasuke was really believing his own story, how it was becoming more of an actual insanity than a cruel joke. It tilted Naruto off kilter, and like many years, ago, his reactions slowed and he didn’t know what to do anymore.

Sasuke waited a few moments for his captive to calm down before asking, “Did they catch the people who did this to you?” He was stroking his cheek again with warm fingers, and Naruto was too prideful to shrink back again. “Or did you do it yourself, just to make your ludicrous tale more real?”

The tension threatened to snap his whole being in two. “I don’t know what the hell happened to make him such a fucked-up dick, but he is currently straddling me when he belongs in the farthest mental institution from this spot.”

They were both silent as they glared at each other. Naruto could feel his arms going numb, so before the pins and needles could settle in, he yanked them sharply twice. Sasuke gave in and let go, but he didn’t get off of his hips. Naruto made no move to shove him off, although his eyes made it clear that he’d do much worse if Sasuke tried another move. He remembered the scene on the bed, and his body tensed.

“Did you give those scars to yourself?” Sasuke murmured. “Never mind who did them. I just want to know… was it you?”

Naruto glared, and, slowly pronouncing each syllable, he grit out, “You. Should. Know.”

Sasuke remained above him for a few moments before disappointment set in. “Ch,” he snorted, finally rocking back on his heels and standing. “Whatever, dobe.” He offered a hand up, which Naruto didn’t take. The blond man shuffled to his feet on his own, retreating back a few feet under an incredulous, mystifying watch.

“I’m going to go get breakfast.”

“Good. Get out.”

His jaw clenched, frustration clear in his eyes, but Sasuke didn’t make another retaliation. Instead, he swept from the room without so much another word, leaving Naruto to stand there and stare at the door with open anguish written all over his face, confusion and stress making his shoulders drop, and confusing guilt making the contents of his stomach boil. Just like it did the next day, and the next, and the next week. Even after classes started and soaked up his time, his attention, just like his dreams did when their haunting memories, and the unremembered flaws in them, saturated with warmth and a longed-for familiarity, and they stuck to each other disjointedly like pieces from different puzzles.

That emotion, the power of that feeling, in dark gray eyes haunted him in every mirror, in every flashcard he read from. Memories, both familiar and foreign, were tucked into every corner of every room Naruto was unfortunate enough to stumble into. Every new person he met, every new friend he made, fit with him just as poorly as his memories did.

Because he still felt like his other half was off sleeping, deeply buried in an apartment some many miles away, stained with his blood.

--

When Naruto entered the room one evening two weeks later, satchel swinging and thunking against his hip with every step, he found Sasuke to already be there. It had become a routine. Neither greeted each other, although Sasuke would glance up at him for a flash of a moment upon his arrival before going back to whatever he was doing. It was an uncomfortably comfortable set-up, a mutually agreed-upon, unspoken armistice. He sat cross-legged on the bed, reading notes printed in tiny, cramped handwriting, one hand flipping them forwards to backwards, the other digging at one looked like a deep red rock to his side, plucking up small seeds that Naruto could only compare to small, ruby kernels of corn. As Naruto crossed silently to his desk, he saw, out of the side of his eye, Sasuke spit with sickeningly perfect accuracy three white, bare seeds back onto the plate.

As the blond set up his laptop, he felt curiosity begin to gnaw at him. He was a simple (ha) man and when he thought of a simple question, such as, What the fuck are you eating? his mind ordered him to simply ask. He was able to defend himself against the powerful urge for all of ten minutes, but finally, the gentle click and tap the seeds made against the plate drove his restraint to snap cleanly in half.

“Whatreyoueating?” he asked, the words sounding nowhere near English or any other knowledge Naruto could care to remember. They were spoken in a low pitch, but any wild hopes that Sasuke had mistaken it for a bizarre cough were dashed when obsidian eyes flashed to his, hand halting half-way to the plate.

“What?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow and frowning slightly.

Naruto scowled. “You don’t have to be so rude.”

“And you don’t have to speak to me in gibberish; I speak English just fine now.” A beat. “And I wasn’t rude. I’m asking what you want.”

Gulping against the half-formed words, Never mind, Naruto repeated himself, more slowly. “I asked what you’re eating. Bastard,” he tagged on the last word in case he didn’t sound quite rude enough.

Sasuke picked up the half-eaten rock thing and tilted it in Naruto’s direction, showing him the inside of it. He saw what looked like split-open pods, all framed and separated by a spongy, off-white web. Tiny scarlet seeds clumped along the walls of it, glittering like tiny rubies.

“It’s a Chinese apple,” (1) Sasuke explained. He thrust the fruit slightly towards his roommate. “Did you want to try it?”

Yes. “No, I’m good.”

Sasuke snorted. “I--it won’t bite you.”

It’s not the fruit I’m worried about, asshole. “I’m good,” he repeated. “You can keep your nasty fruit thing to yourself.”

“Just try it, you coward. It won’t hurt.” He thrust the thing towards him again before gently tossing it. Naruto caught it in one hand, holding it gingerly as if it were a grenade. Sasuke sighed. “It isn’t poisoned, either.”

Naruto frowned suspiciously. “It looks bitter. Is it?”

“How can something look bitter? Just try it, idiot.”

Rolling his eyes, Naruto dug out three of the crimson seeds, noticing a tiny pin drop of burgundy juice had pearled on his finger.

“Don’t let it get on the bed sheets,” Sasuke warned him, putting down his flashcards in favor of propping an elbow on his knees and resting his chin on an upturned palm, smirking slightly. “The stain will never come out.”

With just one more moment of hesitation, Naruto popped them into his mouth. He swirled them around his tongue for a moment, not tasting anything, until he gingerly bit into one. It burst inside his mouth, and the blond was reminded of the taste of cranberries, Nowhere near as tart, much sweeter, but the two clicked nonetheless.

“It’s good,” Naruto admitted, throwing the apple back towards Sasuke before spitting the seeds into the trashcan by his feet, noting with vague satisfaction that they all made their target. “I didn’t peg you as someone who liked sweet stuff, though.”

Sasuke shrugged, plucking a single seed from the inside and popping it into his mouth. “I don’t,” he agreed. “But I like these.”

“And orange soda,” Naruto added, then winced. Had he really just said that? Hadn’t they made a silent agreement, him especially, to not so much allude to it?

But Sauske’s smirk merely grew, and Naruto bit back a groan. “Yes,” he practically purred. “And orange soda.”

Naruto went back to ignoring him, pulling up the web browser on his now-powered laptop. The room was silent for the next half hour save for the clicking of computer keys, the gentle dry sounds of flash cards being flipped from their stack, and the occasional pit as another seed core hit the plate. When the small clock on Naruto’s desk read 1:31, he heard Sasuke move behind him. The raven had a class at two, he knew, from weeks of careful observation.

Naruto ignored him as he slid on his shoes and put the rest of his snack into to the mini-fridge by his bed. He continued to stare at the screen, not at the black text but the clear reflection of the other on the screen. He disappeared from the reflection’s view, and Naruto didn’t move when he felt the presence of another directly behind him; too frozen to move an inch, the earlier bout of light-heartedness gone and replaced with sickeningly cold dread.

Pat

Naruto blinked at it, half an ear listening to the door as it clicked shut behind Sasuke, full gaze locked on the small section of Chinese apple the raven had placed on his desk.

--

And so it went on for weeks, and those weeks melded together until the leaves turned color and fall began to set in. The calm, clear surface of his mind was constantly reflecting new light and churning into small tendrils as his psyche was bounced back and forth, each new memory, each new dream, like tiny rain drops that nevertheless created expansive ripples.

Iruka had visited once a month back, a time in which Sasuke conveniently chose to be absent. He’d given him the grand tour, introduced him to Kiba, Shino, Shikamaru, Sakura, Lee, every person he could label as a friend. Showed him where he took his classes, plastered a smile on his face, and prayed that it would be enough. And for now, it was.

“Take care of yourself, all right?” Iruka had ordered him when he was about to leave, with a look in his eyes that said, “You aren’t fooling me.” The hug he gave Naruto before he climbed into his car told him there was an open ear, and the way he hesitated to close the door told Naruto that he could give up and would never be looked down upon for it. That whatever was bothering him was important, and if he wanted to forget about it, all he had to do was climb into the car, too, and he’d be going home.

But he couldn’t. Every day was a constant battle to do that. It was his fear and cowardice versus his unprecedented pride and inferiority complex that was larger than the West coast. He couldn’t leave, not when someone important, even if it was the bad sort, continued to look down at him with pity in their eyes, with such bitter disappointment Naruto was on the verge of breaking down and apologizing every second he was in the same room as him. Naruto didn’t wake up to hear Sasuke crying again, but with the way things were going, he would’ve rather slept through the sounds of muffled sobbing than the horrible, empty silence. It was like he was in a graveyard; breaking the silence was a sin in itself, and no amount of sunlight or bright music could make the dorm room any less dismal.

And Naruto had another item to add to his list of reasons as to why he couldn’t just throw in the towel and transfer to another school. He was beginning to think that, on some level, that he was being driven insane.

Seven years ago he was haunted by horrendous, livid nightmares every night, whenever he shut his eyes, for months. The same replaying of the same afternoon, over and over, and it was almost enough to make him sick. And sometimes it did make him sick, and he’d blnk his eyes and realize that he was hunched over the side of his bed, a pool of sick puddle on the floor, the curdling stench of it making his eyes run and the dream that much more real.

He could still feel his fingers. Every shadow on his skin looked like a finger-shaped bruise. His injuries were mostly healed after the first month, the lacerations on his cheek angry red scars, still slightly puffy from their freshness, and it hurt to look at himself so much that he started to take his showers and brush his teeth in the dark. During his first year of having the scars he wore cover-up, just to make them lighter, but he could feel them with every facial expression he made, every sharp object he saw made his cheeks tingle.

Sometimes that made him sick, too.

And he was denying it.

The thought made him sick almost every morning for the first two or three weeks on campus. Now it became a constant, throbbing ache that no amount of asprin could help.

Naruto stood in line at the school store now, hands curled up in the pockets of his windbreaker, bouncing on his heels slightly in his impatience. His professor had informed him that the book they all had was outdated as of this summer, and that new versions had been deliver to the school store over the weekend. When he reached the register ans inquired about it, he got a wince. Never a good sign.

“We must’ve gotten dozens of requests for that book since yesterday,” the teller told him. “I’m sorry, but we only got a small shipment of them two days ago and we’re sold out.”

Naruto sighed. He was having all sorts of good luck at this school. “Do you know when you’ll be getting more in?”

“We’re putting an order in for more to come in with the next shipment. Would you like me to add your name onto the list?”

“Yeah, please…”

A few minutes later, after Naruto had purchased a bottle of Coke (he refused to leave a fifteen-minute line empty-handed), he was heading out and into the brisk wind. It was Sunday, and a lot of people had left the campus to head home for the weekend. Naruto sighed, watching a sponge of vapor dwindle in the air before dissipating into nothing. Sasuke never left for weekends, so going back to the dorm was out of the question. His friends were either gone or were studying, which left him with another boring trip to the library.

Might as well get my ethics paper done, Naruto thought blandly, shuffling off in the opposite direction of his dorm building and towards the library. He found himself doing this a lot, trips to the library. There was nothing wrong with working with his laptop. That is, if Sasuke counted as nothing.

He’d been unconsciously walking towards the dorm when he decided to go to the library, and it was when he passed by the doors to the school store that he saw an odd sight. A man was leaning against the building by the door, a book opened in one hand from which he was reading, the other hand with another book, this one shut and being held out to him.

Cocking an eyebrow, Naruto stepped forward cautiously. The man made a waving motion with the book.

“Take it,” he said, not looking up from the book in his hand. “They make me buy a new one every time they come out with a new edition, but I never use it. Take it,” he repeated. And Naruto did, holding the heavy book in his hand for a moment before slowly sliding it into his shoulder bag.

“You don’t mind?”

“Obviously not,” he muttered. “I have no use for it. Instincts are better.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. A doctor who didn’t go by the book? He must be a professor, then.

And he looked like one, too. He was dressed in a business suit with a laptop case slung over his shoulder. He looked to be in his early forties with graying hair. The only thing off about him, besides his flippancy for code apparently, was the eye patch he wore over his left eye, and the fact that the book he was reading appeared to be porn.

“You’re a professor here?” Naruto asked.

The man hummed in response. “And you, too?”

“Err, no, I’m a student.”

“Ah. So you are.”

He didn’t say anything else, seeming to be completely at ease to pay Naruto the barest minimum of attention while the blond-haired man hung in awkward silence.

“So, erm, what subject do you teach?” Naruto asked, feeling the need to fill the silence. He twisted open the cap on the bottle of soda and took a long swig of Coke to clear the dryness in his throat.

“Psychology.”

“Psych, huh? I took a few courses in it during my undergrad years.”

“Did you,” Kakashi muttered, looking more absorbed in his book than he was in their shared conversation.

“Yeah. But I didn’t know they taught Psych in med school, though.”

“Most majors require it,” Kakashi informed him. “Just wait. You’ll probably have a class with me, or with Professor Phillips, sooner or later. Probably in your second semester if you don’t have it now.”

Naruto nodded, at a loss of what else to say. This man had just saved him over a hundred dollars. He felt like he should do something. Buy him coffee. Provide a decent conversation. But all Kakashi seemed to want to do was read the most awkward book in the most awkward place.

He was just constructing an excuse to get him away without seeming too obnoxious when a thought entered his head.

“It’s the most complicated form of Photoshop anyone could possibly imagine.”

I wonder… if…

…does that go for memory, too?

“Professor K--”

“’Kakashi’ is fine.”

“Ah… ‘kay. Um, Kakashi, something’s been bugging me for a bit and you’d probably be able to answer it.”

“Don’t assume, Naruto. It makes an ass out of you and me.”

“That’s why I said ‘probably’!” Naruto barked, grinning. Kakashi’s one visible eye crinkled in mirth. “And how did you know my name?”

“How did I know you needed that book?”

“You’re psychic?”

He was definitely smiling now. “I heard it in the store.”

“Oh. Whatever. Anyway, I had some questions about memory.”

“What about it?”

“Well… how easily can it be reconstructed? Especially about something… really important. And I don’t mean a little detail or two, I mean the whole damned thing. Can you remember an event completely different after, I dunno, a decade or so?”

“Memory, hm?” Kakashi flipped the page in his book, although his one good eye didn’t seem to be taking in any of the words anymore; it remained stationary in its socket. “Let me ask you this, then. Where were you nine-eleven?”

“Nine-eleven? With the twin towers?”

“Yes. Where were you, what were you doing--who were you doing--what were you eating, that sort of thing.”

Naruto blushed a bit at the ‘who’ comment, but said anyway, “I was in school that day, during study hall. We were watching a nature documentary in my science class when the loudspeaker came on telling us that we were going home early. Everyone was… really happy. I didn’t find out what happened until I got home and Iruka told me.”

Kakashi nodded. “Yes. That memory is pretty vivid, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Do you know what it’s called?”

Naruto thought for a moment. “Flashbulb memory,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “When shock makes you recall everything in a memory?”

“Right again. Want to know something else?” Kakashi grinned, eye twinkling in mirth. “That story you just told me? It’s complete and total bull shit.”

“What?” Naruto snarled. “No it’s not! I remember everything about that--that day. Everyone does.”

“No, everyone does not. And if you’ll shut up, I’ll tell you why.” Naruto’s teeth clicked as his mouth slammed shut. “Good boy.” Blue eyes narrowed into a glare, but he remained silent.

“A month or so after September 11th, 2001,” Kakashi said, now flipping his book shut and tucking it into the leather laptop case he carried over his shoulder, “researchers embarked on a slightly unethical study of memory. More specifically, flashbulb memory. As you and most people would think, 9-11 was a very life-altering event in a person’s life. You would assume that a person could remember, in exact detail, the events of that day.

(2)“The researchers wanted to test that theory. They brought a wide, random selection of people of different ages, races, and genders into the lab, sat them down, and had them write down the events of that day as specifically as possible. The researchers prompted them to list obvious things such as location, what they ate, the company they were in, but also small things, like how they wore their hair that day, what clothes they were wearing, what the weather was like, if they were worried or happy about anything at the time. After all, if flashbulb memory worked, they should be able to remember it all.

“And they did. Each person gave a very detailed personal recollection of the day, and were sent home. Four years later, just four years, they were brought back in and asked, once again, to give a recount of the event. They were prompted to answer the same exact questions based on what they wrote down in 2001. The answers were then compared, and do you know what happened?”

“They were right, I’m guessing.”

“No. The answers, all of their answers, could not have been more off chart. If a man was coming in from a walk with his dog to see the news on in his house in 2001, he remembers attending his great aunt’s birthday party in 2005. When the experimenters gave the people back their answers from both 2005 and 2001, what do you think they did?”

Knowing he’d be wrong but feeling it would be stupid not to say anything, Naruto replied, “Realized that they were wrong?”

Kakashi’s grin grew wider. “No. They got angry, offended even. How, they asked, could I possibly not remember? It’s my memory, not yours. That was one of the most horrific moments in United States history, how dare you come to my doorstep and tell me I made it all up? They called the researchers liars, con-artists, anything to displace the idea that they were wrong. They remembered the events strongly in their minds, and I have no doubt in my mind that they truly believe in what they remember. But solid proof remains that they were wrong, very, very wrong.”

“Why?” Naruto murmured, disbelief coloring his tone and his face. “How could someone forget like that?”

Kakashi sighed, smile slipping from his face. “Because, Naruto, as much as we’d like to think that it will stay with us forever, memory decays. No, perhaps ‘decay’ is the wrong word. Memory cannot decay. More like… if the conscious is a lake, then what’s above the water is what you can consciously remember, and what’s below the water is the long-term memory. Little triggers can bring it back up to the surface, but you can’t remember it by just wanting to. Trying to recall a particularly monumental event in life puts so much strain on the brain that it begins to make things up, just to put itself at ease. One day, if we should ever witness the election of a black or female president, people will remember where they were and what they were doing a week later to the T. In ten years, however…” Kakashi shrugged.

He trailed off when he noticed Naruto wasn’t really look him in the eye anymore. He was boring holes into the ground at his feet, shoulders shaking slightly, fists clenched. Curious, but not enough to question it, Kakashi patted him on the shoulder. “Best not to think too much of it while you’re sober,” he advised. “It’s too depressing. This is a conversation best held an hour or two into a bar visit.” That made Naruto’s mouth crinkle into a slight smile, and Kakashi grinned back. “We’ll discuss it more in class. Make sure you take my class and I’ll try and slip the 9-11 case study in somewhere.”

Naruto’s response was to grin a bit wider, and with a nod and a flippant, “See ya,” Kakashi was gone, once again digging into his bag for his book, burying his nose in its pages.

And like a soldier who’d taken a bullet to the heart, the smile dropped from Naruto’s face in the blink of an eye, worry dragging his face down and a horrible, empty ache in the pit of his stomach, squeezing him from the inside out and threatening to push him over the bring of insanity.

--

(1) Chinese Apple- another term for a pomegranate. If you don’t get the connection, go to Google and type in “pomegranate”, “Hades”, and “Persephone”, and see what you come up with.

(2) An actual experiment; I studied it in college. If anyone is interested, I can dig up the PDFs for the original case study and send them to you.

Sorry for the long wait. I don’t know whether I’ll update this or Teeth next. The next chapter of this story will be a bit short, followed by a much longer chapter, and then it’ll be done.

Comments, questions, or flaming bricks can be directed through review, e-mail, PM, or IM.

-Kodak