Almost Sucks

Almost Sucks
by Mashiro

Naruto fandom, series, no spoilers
AU, BOYS LOVE: Naruto x Sasuke, Kakashi x Iruka, Lee x Gaara

first version: August 27th 2006, Sunday
second version: October 3rd 2008, Friday

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DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the rights to the Naruto series or characters and I make no money writing this. I’m just a fan. This is fan fiction.

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34: Practically no sound

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“Come on! Pull over, I really have to go!”

“We’ve been driving for twenty minutes, Naruto! We’re barely even out of the town yet! I told you to go before we left!”

“Well, I forgot! Sorry! Now pull over, you can’t just leave me like this!”

Sasuke was relatively sure that half of all Naruto’s squirming was just for show. Iruka sighed loudly and pressed a palm over his face, the other hand holding the car steady.

“Alright!” he snarled and pulled over so fast Sasuke was glad he wore his seatbelt or he would have been tossed into Naruto’s lap. The blond yelped and threw himself out.

“The door!” Iruka yelled, but Naruto jumped over the small ditch running alongside the road and scampered off into the forest. Fortunately there was a forest; they had just left the fields behind them. The already angry man started growling as he twisted in his seat and reached to slam the door shut.

“Come now, Iruka…” Kakashi tried, sounding nervous, but Iruka threw a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back.

“Not now!”

He sighed and drummed with his fingers on the steering wheel. Cars swished by them on the road. Kakashi threw a glance at Sasuke through the rear-view mirror and made a ‘save me!’ face. Sasuke rolled his eyes. Iruka punched Kakashi’s shoulder.

“Don’t give me those looks! I’m not being unreasonable. He should have gone before we left.”

They were late, half an hour, and Sasuke had no idea how it had happened. It had seemed just fine. Everyone had had everything packed, everything had been in order. All logical reason said they should have been an hour early, at least. Then some things had needed fixing and some things had been forgotten. Even Sasuke, who was so sure he had thought of everything and probably packed too much, had had to run back to his house to fetch his toothbrush. His toothbrush! It wasn’t reasonable. No way was it reasonable.

Sasuke had heard about this phenomenon though; how family trips almost never started on time. No matter how many hours you set aside for unforeseen events, no matter how carefully you planned things, you would never leave on time. It was like nature was trying to tell the family to stay home. ‘Don’t go!’ But did anyone listen? At least, not this family; stubborn idiots all of them. Sasuke included. He should have jumped on a bus and fled to the city when he had the chance. Why did he have to meet Iruka’s aunt anyway?

Iruka sighed loudly again, then opened the door to yell.

“Naruto! Get back here!”

“I’m coming!”

Soon branches snapped and Naruto came back out again, jumping the ditch and running back to the car. As soon as the door closed, Iruka stepped on the gas and the car set off again with a screech in the tires. Naruto made a face in the direction of the driver’s seat and buckled his seatbelt before pulling up the zipper on his pants. Sasuke didn’t blame him one bit. This was exactly what he meant by bottling things up by trying to be polite all the time and then releasing them in the wrong situations. Sasuke wasn’t surprised at all, just hoped the man wouldn’t get them killed. Though he supposed that he preferred unhinged Iruka to the faked polite Iruka and the ‘I’ll make sure you stay chaste forever’ Iruka.

Naruto leaned over and pushed his mouth close to Sasuke’s ear.

“He’s like a girl during that time of the month,” he whispered and then his tongue darted out to lick a quick trail along Sasuke’s ear. Then he giggled and it sounded weird because he was so close (or maybe because the tongue for a second had disrupted Sasuke’s world).

“I heard that!” Iruka snarled. “And don’t lick your brother in the car.”

“He’s not my brother!” Naruto yelled back, before Sasuke had the time to. “He’s my boyfriend.”

“Yeah, yeah… Sorry,” Iruka muttered, but it really did sound like he was sorry. “Just stop. I want none of that in public.”

Naruto sniffed and sat back in his seat, crossed his arms over his chest. Sasuke did his best to get over hearing ‘lick’ and ‘brother’ in the same sentence and being reminded that Iruka still would rather see them as brothers, even though he tried to avoid the word.

The world outside ran so fast that it blurred. Sasuke was looking out the window, his chin in his hand, and saw trees and trees and more trees. There were two main roads leading out of the town, one towards the city and one towards nothingness. They had taken the latter. Sasuke felt like he guessed you felt if you were claustrophobic and stuck in an elevator, just not as panicky. He felt like a claustrophobic person stuck in an elevator that had accepted his fate. And he wouldn’t get a smoke for hours. Stupid rations and ‘no smoking in the car’ rule.

Sasuke wanted music, but for the cause of saving his batteries he was going to hold on for as long as he could. How could he have remembered that he’d forgotten the toothbrush and but not remembered that he’d forgotten the battery charger? Maybe all this being around Naruto had rubbed off on him in bad ways. Was stupidity sexually transmitted? The thought had him glance toward Naruto’s fingers where they rested on the seat between them, more interesting than blurry trees. Did having someone jerk you off count as sex? Did jerking someone off count? Or did you have to really... do it? Was stupidity an STD? Sasuke wanted a smoke. He looked back out the window.

‘I want him to touch me.’

The forest cleared up and left room for a few minutes of field and then it alternated. Forest, field, forest again; dark green to soggy dirt yellow striped with dirt roads. Most of the fields were small, but some stretched as far as Sasuke could see, merging with the sky like it was a depressing dirt yellow ocean.

In the first hours there were many houses and farms along the road, and pastures with horses, cows or sheep. Now and then they went through a small town or a bigger town. One time Sasuke even saw what looked like a smaller city in the distance, but no matter how much he wished they could turn and go toward it they left it behind.

Eventually Sasuke had to get his music out, when Iruka had calmed down enough that Kakashi could turn on the radio. Commercial pop hurt Sasuke’s ears. He also needed a distraction because Naruto kept making up excuses to touch him. He would lean over to Sasuke’s side of the car and shout ‘look at that!’ at silly things like overly hairy cows and houses painted in weird colors. Then he would put his hand, or hands, on Sasuke’s legs or between them and look at Sasuke with those eyes that forced Sasuke to swallow. Or he would pretend to whisper something again and just breathe in Sasuke’s ear or lick him again; or he would actually whisper something, but it would be something Sasuke didn’t want to hear in the car with Kakashi and Iruka when he knew he’d be there for some time yet.

‘I want to touch you; on that spot on the inside of your leg, you know? I want to bite it.’

He had never bitten the inside of Sasuke’s legs before, but Sasuke supposed it was easier to want some things when you knew you couldn’t do it. Or maybe Naruto just said it because he knew it would make Sasuke’s stomach swirl and his skin tingle.

The towns got smaller and the distances between them longer, houses got rarer and farms more common, the road got smaller and the cars they shared it with fewer and fewer. The landscape got hillier and when the road peaked to turn down into a valley Sasuke could see more than he wanted to, how far into the nothingness they really were. Dark clouds hovered in the horizon and Naruto said he wondered if there would be snow. Iruka said maybe and smiled. It was November.

When the car slowed down and Iruka turned left onto a dirt road, Sasuke wondered if a place could really be this isolated and still inhabited. It was a small, bumpy road with too many sharp turns and Iruka drove like a mad-man it felt like, at least for the road. Sasuke was sure that if they met another car they were dead; but they didn’t. For a long time the road went upwards and the forest was mostly thick. They passed no fields, but sometimes the trees grew slightly thinner and Sasuke could catch a peek through them and guess they were up high. He also suspected there was nothing that would count as civilization anywhere near them. And then, suddenly, the trees disappeared on Naruto’s side of the car and Sasuke got his suspicions confirmed. They were up high, and there was nothing to be found.

Naruto pulled him over, almost into his lap and pointed as he yelled.

“Look, look! Isn’t it beautiful?”

Sasuke mumbled a ‘yeah,’ because it sort of was, for a place of so much nothingness you could drown in it; beautiful and horrible at the same time. Sasuke couldn’t take his eyes off all the trees; he’d never seen so many gathered in one place before in his life. The vastness of the forest became so much clearer when you saw it from above.

“We’re almost there now,” Naruto continued. “Aw, I can’t wait to stretch my legs!”

Soon Iruka made a turn again and the road he had found was so small that it felt like they went straight into the woods. This one was even bumpier and there was a stream of dirt yellow grass in the middle of it; fortunately Iruka had eased up on the gas. It felt like hours that they bumped further into the woods, but logically, judging on how many tracks went by on his CD player, Sasuke knew it was ten minutes at most.

The road ended by a house on a yard surrounded by thick forest. Sasuke noticed red sheds in different sizes, a tractor that looked like it was dead, a row of cars that were most definitely dead, a greenhouse and a small group of people waiting; a kid, a girl and a woman.

“We’re here!” Naruto explained, delighted.

-

The woman was Sachiko-baachan, and she wasn’t a very old baachan. She didn’t look much older than Iruka really, had a tanned, weatherworn face, a firm handshake and a typical I-live-in-the-nothingness accent.

‘Hey, you!’ she had said to Sasuke and grinned when she grabbed his hand. ‘Sachiko, nice to meet you!’

Without letting go she had turned to Iruka.

‘Oh, he’s gorgeous, isn’t he? Bet he’s got all the girls lined up!’ Then she had laughed and turned back to Sasuke and apologized for embarrassing him. ‘You must get that all the time,’ she had said. Sasuke had wondered if it was a subtle hint to the girl, her daughter. Ino was the same age as Naruto, Sachiko-baachan had said, a long-haired blonde that had instantly been infatuated with Sasuke (he had been around enough girls for a long enough time to notice). The kid was Konohamaru, a brat with a voice that was too loud and overly developed big-brother-feelings for Naruto. Sasuke hadn’t been around that many brats in his life but there was no doubt that this was one. And that seemed to be the family. There had been no mentioning of any father to the kids, or any husband or boyfriend (or girlfriend), and none had been seen either.

-

Sasuke sat on one side of the kitchen table and Naruto and Konohamaru sat on the other. Konohamaru kept glaring at Sasuke, as if he had broken his favorite toy or stolen his birthday presents. They hadn’t said anything about Sasuke and Naruto dating (Sasuke had made Naruto promise before they left, completely against sharing his personal stuff with strangers; and it wasn’t like Iruka would talk about it if he could avoid it (Kakashi would have loved to, if two weeks of playing family hadn’t whipped his will to nonexistence), but maybe the kid could sense it. He seemed seriously too hung up on Naruto.

Naruto was working on fixing some kind of broken toy robot (a lot less fancy than the one Sasuke had killed) for the brat and Konohamaru was clinging to Naruto’s arm, watching intently (when he didn’t glare at Sasuke). Sasuke wanted a smoke, but wanted to save his rations more; he’d gone off and had one not too long ago anyway and the thought of running out while here was horrifying.

When the overly happy introductions were finally over (Sasuke’s had been bad, but it was nothing compared to Kakashi’s), they had been shown to their rooms. Kakashi and Iruka got the guesthouse (one of the sheds) and Naruto and Sasuke got to share Konohamaru’s room; to Iruka’s horror. He had tried to make Sachiko-baachan reconsider; Sasuke could take the couch, Naruto could take the mattress in Konohamaru’s room and Konohamaru could keep his bed. The brat had loved that idea, but Sachiko-baachan had just laughed. ‘Don’t be silly!’ She had said. ‘Konohamaru loves the couch.’

Then it had been time for the early dinner that Iruka had driven like crazy to make it in time for. It had been nothing special, just food. Everyone had been happy and smiling (Ino and Naruto mostly at Sasuke, Konohamaru mostly at Naruto) and Iruka and Kakashi had told the cute story about how they had first met at that seminar and all the cute family feelings fluttering around had made Sasuke itchy.

Now Sasuke and Naruto with appendage were watching the oven, or more specifically the pie inside the oven. Sachiko-baachan had brought Kakashi and Iruka along with her to do some shopping and Ino had been chased off to the stables by her mother. The girl had blushed when the stables were mentioned and glanced anxiously at Sasuke, as if worried she’d just lost her chances (unaware that she’d never had any); Sasuke had just yet again been reminded of how far away the city was.

“He looks really weak,” Konohamaru muttered, again glaring at Sasuke. “Naruto-niichan, are you sure he almost beat Lee-san?”

“Eh?” Naruto frowned, attention drawn from the toy as he glanced at the brat. “Yeah, that’s what I said. Lee said he was really good. What do you mean he’s weak-looking? He’s not weak-looking.”

“He is very weak-looking,” Konohamaru said and this time when he glared, Sasuke glared right back, even though he had promised himself only minutes ago he would not get childish. Not that it seemed to have any effect on the brat. What had happened to brats and their respect for elders?

“I definitely don’t want him dating neechan,” Konohamaru grumbled. “He is not her type.”

“Sasuke dating Ino?” Naruto frowned. “Ha! As if I’d let him.”

Konohamaru frowned.

“Ah… I mean…” Naruto stammered. “It’d be bad, since… Since they live so far apart! Yeah, that’s it…”

Sasuke sniffed only to realize that the brat sniffed too, at almost the same time. Highly annoying.

“Besides!” Naruto continued. “Sasuke doesn’t need a girlfriend, he’s got…! um... err, he... He’s already dating someone else!”

“No way!” For some reason Konohamaru looked offended. “He looks like a girl, who’d wanna date him? A lesbian?”

He put extra weight on ‘lesbian’, as if it was the worst thing he could think of.

“What, your sister is a lesbian?” Sasuke snorted and raised a brow, even though he had definitely promised himself not to verbally answer stupid questions or stupid statements, and that definitely counted. The nothingness had to be getting to him. Konohamaru gaped and stared wide-eyed.

“She is not! You’re the lesbian! Lesbian!”

Naruto thundered down a fist on Konohamaru’s head and the kid wailed.

“Ow! Naruto-niichan!”

“Don’t be rude to Sasuke! And he can’t be a lesbian because he’s a boy!”

“But he looks like a girl!”

“It doesn’t matter! And he doesn’t! Now stop bothering him or I won’t fix this for you.”

Konohamaru grumbled and his glare probably got ten times more hostile, but he didn’t say anything more. Still Sasuke sighed and got up, wondering why he hadn’t left already.

“Ah, S-Sasuke?” Naruto sounded like he’d done something wrong. “Where are you going? We have to watch the pie.”

“I’m taking a walk,” Sasuke said, putting on his shoes. “You can handle the pie.”

“Oh, um... Alright... Just... don’t get lost!”

Sasuke glanced over his shoulder and smirked.

“Don’t forget the pie.”

“I won’t forget!”

Before Sasuke closed the door to the house he could hear Konohamaru mutter ‘I think he’ll get lost...’ and Naruto say that he wouldn’t. ‘I wouldn’t let him.’

Sasuke took the same small, barely-a-road they had arrived on and it was scary how quiet it was. He had thought that the town was horribly quiet when he got there, but it was nothing compared to this place. The lack of wind and birds singing only made the silence more pressing. Sasuke had forgotten his music too. He wondered how people could live like this. What kind of lives did they have? What did they do? Eat, sleep, work, repeat? It was interesting as well as horrible and gave Sasuke a whole new perspective on how uncivilized things could get. Compared to this, the town was like the city. How many hours would it take for Kakashi and Iruka to get back? How far away was the nearest store? Sasuke had to admit that it was an experience, being in this place.

He had made it to the end of the dwarf road and walked some five minutes or so on the bigger one when an odd clatter against the road started echoing. Sasuke stopped and frowned until the earlier mentioning of stables came back to him. Sure enough, soon, from around a turn of the road, came a horse. It was dark and looked somewhat bigger than what Sasuke had imagined was a standard horse size. The long ponytail falling out from under the helmet made the rider easy to recognize, even though Sasuke had just met her. There was horror in her eyes at first when she saw him, and the horse’s pace slowed down; then she seemed to make up her mind and with a short sound she urged the animal to speed up again.

“Sasuke-kun, hi!”

The sound of the hooves was even more impressive when the horse came closer; Sasuke could almost feel the weight of it. Fortunately it slowed down before his nerves forced him to jump off the road. Ino was smiling.

“Hi,” she said again. Her cheeks were red but Sasuke didn’t know if it was his fault or if it was the riding. He remembered having heard somewhere that riding was a pretty demanding exercise. The horse was breathing hard, chest heaving and fur gleaming. It was standing a bit too close but Sasuke’s pride talked him into staying where he was. Sure, it was big, but it wasn’t like it was a carnivore, right? Right?

“Are you taking a walk?”

Before Sasuke could answer, Ino laughed and rolled her eyes.

“Of course you are,” she said. “Sorry for being stupid. Where are you going?”

“Just walking,” Sasuke said and looked around. Trees, road, more trees, sky.

“I would have said ‘don’t get lost’, but I’m sure you won’t.”

She smiled; the flirty smile Sasuke had had girls aim at him so many times it was ridiculous. When Sasuke had first met Ino she had seemed like a city girl trapped in the country; she had had the hair, the clothes, the makeup, the style and the attitude; completely different from her mom (though that could have been the age, of course). When he saw her now though, Ino seemed to fit in quite nicely here. She had the same makeup but it looked different from under a helmet and together with those clothes.

Sasuke couldn’t help but feel... a kind of kinship with the girl, or maybe it was just the potential for a kinship. It was like she had found something, and when he saw her with it there was a stab of something inside him that seemed a whisper of ‘I want that too...’ He didn’t quite know what it was, or what it meant, but Sasuke felt a sudden urge to ask Ino how she liked it here. But his thoughts and his question were interrupted as the horse snorted violently and Sasuke’s instincts had him step back.

“Hey!” Ino raised her voice at the horse and pulled its head to the side before looking back at Sasuke; looking sorry and anxious but at the same time trying hide it. “Sorry about that, he’s not housebroken. Completely harmless though, wouldn’t hurt a fly. His name’s Ursa.”

The horse took some steps to the side and threw his head in the air, foam flying from his mouth.

“We should get going,” she said and the horse started moving around in semi-circles. “He doesn’t like standing still. But I’ll see you later, you guys were staying until tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah,” Sasuke said.

He could feel the heat radiating off the large animal as it passed, strong muscles moving under its skin. It really was quite impressive this close up, the horse’s weight and power obvious, at the same time as its movements were light. When she had put some distance between them Ino stopped the horse again and turned in the saddle.

“Sasuke-kun?” she said, her voice raised to almost a shout, and Sasuke frowned. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

His frown deepened and he thought for a moment before answering.

“No.”

Ino’s smile grew and she glanced quickly at the ground before she looked back at Sasuke.

“Lucky,” she said and turned back, the horse setting off again in a jog. Sasuke remained where he was for a while, watching them disappear behind the next turn of the road. He knew how it sounded, but there had been odd reluctance within him to lie to her. Besides, Naruto didn’t count as a girlfriend.

-

“I hate Ino,” Naruto said. “She was in the bathroom before me and when she got out she told me how gorgeous you are, like I don’t know, and how happy she was that Iruka had met Kakashi-san. You know, she really thinks she’s got a chance with you, said she couldn’t believe you don’t have a girlfriend. You told her you didn’t have a girlfriend?”

It was evening, but Sasuke was as tired as if it were night. They were in Konohamaru’s room surrounded by the brat’s toys and kid posters. It smelled different here. Sasuke was on Konohamaru’s bed and Naruto had flopped down on his back on the mattress on the floor beside it. He was looking up at Sasuke and Sasuke was looking down on him.

“I don’t have a girlfriend, do I?” Sasuke raised a brow.

“You have me!”

“You’re not a girlfriend.”

“But I’m me! You could have told her you were taken!”

“I don’t have a girlfriend, but I’m taken?”

“Yeah! Why not!?”

“It’s none of her business,” Sasuke muttered, turned around and shifted a bit closer to the wall. He wondered how long it had been since he slept in a kid’s bed. It was really small.

“It just pisses me off,” Naruto said, his voice slightly less clear now that Sasuke had moved. “She shouldn’t go around saying things like that about you.”

“You think she’s the only one saying things like that about me?”

“But you’re mine!” Naruto said and Sasuke could hear that he sat up.

“I’m not yours,” Sasuke said without turning around, because come on... This wasn’t a badly written love song. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

Naruto sniffed and Sasuke knew he was pouting.

“But…” He sounded pathetic really. “But you’re… mine.”

Naruto’s head fell on Sasuke’s side, between his ribs and his hipbone and he nuzzled his face into the skin. For a moment it was fine.

“I’m not yours,” Sasuke repeated.

Then it got ticklish and Sasuke twitched without wanting to.

“You’re my boyfriend,” Naruto mumbled into Sasuke’s skin. Sasuke twitched again and muffled a snorted laugh but couldn’t stop the smile.

“Cut that out,” he said. “It…”

“What?” Naruto mumbled in just the wrong place and this time Sasuke couldn’t stop the snort of laughter from escaping.

“You’re tickling me!”

The face lifted up and Sasuke tried to glare over his shoulder. Naruto looked surprised, then he grinned.

“What is tickling you? This?”

Naruto quickly gathered air in his lungs and before anything could be done to stop him he had lifted Sasuke’s shirt and charged back onto his side, blowing the air out against his skin with a loud, embarrassing sound. Sasuke instinctively curled up and choked out laughter before making a grab for Naruto’s head and pulling him away.

“Yes! That!” His glare completely failed this time; they were both shaking uncontrollably with laughter.

“What about here?” Naruto pulled Sasuke’s hands away and attacked the skin again, producing a new instinctive curl and more choked laughter and Sasuke threw his legs out to help ward off the offender.

“Yes! Can you stop?”

“Here?”

“Naruto!”

“What about...?”

“H-Hey! That’s cheating, you stupid re-…! Ah!”

“Ha ha! Found your weakness, didn’t I?”

“No, no..! N-Naruto! Not there…! Come on!”

“You can’t escape now!”

Just as Naruto was climbing up on the bed for better leverage, a loud series of hard knocks on the door startled them so much they both fell down on the mattress below.

“What are you doing in there?” Came a hiss that could be no one but Iruka. Naruto panted hard in Sasuke’s ear and they were both trying to stop laughing.

“N-Nothing!” Naruto got out and Sasuke muffled his laughter in the blond’s neck. Yeah, so he was hurting; his pelvis had ended up catching the full weight of Naruto (a little more to the left and he might have ended up sterile); and this was not a position he wanted to be found in if Iruka decided to open the door. This wasn’t funny at all, but he just couldn’t...

“It doesn’t sound like nothing, Naruto,” Iruka sounded murderous. “People are trying to sleep out here! You be quiet now! And no… no fooling around, no… No sex in Konohamaru’s room!”

Sasuke had almost managed to gather himself enough to lift his mouth off Naruto neck, but the comment set him off all over again; set off Naruto too, by the sound of it.

“O-Okay!” Naruto said, barely containing his own laughter. “We’ll be good. Good night!”

It was quiet for a moment, before Iruka huffed angrily.

“Good night!”

When the stomping of footsteps had died out Naruto broke down, laughing into Sasuke’s chest until tears ran from his eyes. Sasuke laughed too; he couldn’t match Naruto in intensity and completely let go, but he laughed more than he could remember having laughed in years, until his sides and his face hurt as much as his pelvis.

Even when the laughter had died out, Sasuke was still smiling. Naruto was holding him close, his nose pressed to his throat. His breathing was a soft, close sound and a steady, soothing rise and fall on Sasuke’s chest. The warmth and the scent of Naruto wrapped around him.

“You shouldn’t complain about Ino,” Sasuke said, watching the ceiling and holding onto Naruto’s shoulders. “That brat is all over you all the time.”

Naruto shifted slightly, sniffed and swallowed.

“Who is all over me?”

“That brat,” Sasuke said. “Konohamaru.”

Naruto lifted his head and frowned, amused.

“Konohamaru?”

“Yeah.”

“But he’s a kid.”

“I know that,” Sasuke sighed. “You just... shouldn’t complain.”

Naruto’s frown changed to a grin and he cuddled closer again.

“I didn’t know you were jealous,” he said like it was the most wonderful thing in the world. “I love it.”

Sasuke shook his head and sighed, and kept watching the ceiling.

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