Fish Bird

Fish Bird

By Acacia-Brown

Chapter four: Better when you’re not here

Warning: Limey Lemon thinger
††††††


// Walking dead? What on earth//

The air is filled with such contempt that it’s practically touchable.

Sasuke wonders why Naruto is smiling at him like that, like it’s all okay, like the figure to his left isn’t about to spring up and over table and bite him.

//Simple, he’s obviously delusional….//

“You guys were just leaving weren’t you?” he says cheerfully, cornflower blue eyes skimming the table, looking into everyone’s cynical expressions. There’s something about the whole genuine twist of his mouth that makes everyone soften slightly. It’s a fantastic smile, flirtatious, reassuring and gratifying all at the same time.

The Hyuga girl gets up first, blinking her pale eyes and brushing dark hair from around her face. She taps the feral looking one on the shoulder, who twitches slightly, blinking: amber eyes sliding narrowed between him and Naruto, not giving an inch.

There is another one leaning back on the far sided chair near the door: he has an expression of lazy dislike clawing up one side of his mouth. But he moves, nodding curtly at Naruto, moving through the door that the Hyuga girl is holding open for him.

“Kiba,” the girl says again. A softly authoritative voice, gently persuading tones punctuating it: “you promised you’d walk me home today.”

She smiles warmly at Naruto as Kiba glances back at her, head cocked to one side in a lightly inquisitive expression. “I did?”

They both nod, Naruto moving to open the door a little wider, “Yeah you did, it’s a long walk and it’ll get dark soon.”

“Well if I promised,” Kiba says somewhat pompously throwing out his chest and leaping up from the table (not before giving Sasuke one of the filthiest looks he has ever received - Kiba’s impressive at those) “let’s go shall we?”

And he bounds out the door to join Shikamaru in the hallway, babbling about ‘taking-Hinata-back-by-the-long-route-because-it’s-so-much-prettier-that-way-and-will-you-please-hurry-up-Maru-you’re-like-an-old-man!’

Naruto shakes his head as Hinata giggles, sending a pretty flush over the pale creamy complexion of her face, making her seem suddenly much more vivacious and somehow alluring, but innocently so.

“Thanks…” he murmurs quietly as Sasuke watches them, his own eyes narrowed. He doesn’t know why, but he’s feeling slightly hot as he watches Naruto leaning against his kitchen wall. All of his long limber body slanted as he supports his body with one outstretched hand so that he’s leaning on an angle, his mouth close to Hinata with which he seems to be having a whispered conversation because she’s laughing again. Sasuke doesn’t know why he wants to watch the way Naruto’s mouth moves, he just does… he’s never seen a mouth quite like it before, wide and tasty and beautifully expressive.

Kiba sticks his head around the door again, not missing the opportunity to throw Sasuke another dirty look, and asks ‘if-they’re-leaving-this-year-or-next-because-he-wants-to-know-what-the-hell-they-have-to-talk-about-anyway-and-Naruto-will-you-please-stop-taking-up-Hinata’s-precious-time?’

Naruto and Hinata exchange a look at this, and Naruto suggestively raises his eyebrows and leans forwards to kiss Hinata on the cheek. Closing his eyes so his dark disarming lashes flutter across her skin, then pulls back again grinning like a fox as a delicate, rosy pink spreads across her face. He winks at her as Kiba flares his nostrils indignantly; snaps: “That’s not funny!”; and snorts, grabbing her by an arm, muttering obscenities under his breath, dragging Hinata out into the hallway.

Naruto follows, still smiling, pausing by the door and giving Sasuke a quick glance over his shoulder as if in after thought: “Do you mind just waiting for a quick second?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer, and the door clicks shut.

Sasuke finds himself looking at green oak panel work that clashes horribly with the bright orange stripe that lingers messily over the door-frame.

He blinks, and feels almost uncomfortable, which is a huge feat for him because he makes it a habit never to feel uncomfortable: he’s trained himself to make other people feel that way.

Vaguely he supposes that Naruto ‘and co.’ must be outside discussing him. The rabid one had certainly been giving out enough ‘I hate you’ and ‘go die’ vibes for him to choke on. He vaguely recognizes all of them, although of their names he only has a fuzzy recollection. Not that it matters anyway, they’re not really important.

He thinks he can hear Naruto protesting that ‘it’ll be fine, that everything’s fine and that everyone should just relax… yes tomorrow morning is okay, just you know… not too early.’

Sasuke rolls his eyes. Out of habit he bites the tip of his tongue between his teeth, and it gives him an angry look that’s reflected in the straight line of his mouth, as he pulls his shoulders unnervingly straight and takes a seat in one of the kitchen chairs.

The front door clangs shut, and after half a moment’s pause the door opens again, and Naruto comes through, a sort of easy distant smile on his face as he looks at Sasuke.

There’s more then half the room between them as Naruto stops. It feels like several miles, and a slight chill descends. Tossing his head to the side slightly, so that choppy golden trails of hair move out of his eyes and gather about his forehead; Naruto licks his lips, looks down at his feet, and then up again at Sasuke and shrugs his shoulders as if he’s at a loss for what to say.

He blinks instead, meeting Sasuke’s interrogating glare head on.

// Were his eyes always that blue? Or had I just forgotten…?//

“So, I guess you’re hungry, yeah?” he asks after an uncomfortable silence. The rhythm of nothingness seems to pulse between them: Sasuke can feel it throbbing in his fingertips, and starts to tap them across the table top.

// Who the hell would have thought it would be this hard//

Slowly, his eyes not moving from Naruto’s, Sasuke Uchiha nods.

Naruto turns round to the sink, presenting all of his broad wide back to dark young man’s analytic gaze. “You know,” he continues, absolutely determined to keep the conversation flowing, “I made you breakfast earlier. I came up to tell you but I think you where asleep because you didn’t answer. Mind you,” he adds - laughing suddenly as he sees his reflection in the soapy water of the basin: fuzzy and distorted - “you always used to ignore everything I said when we were younger, so I don’t know why I’d expect you to listen to me now.”

Sasuke doesn’t say anything in return to this, and where Sasuke can’t see him, Naruto pulls a face: not quite of annoyance, but of hard, gritting determination.

He will do this: he won’t be cowed in any form or manner.

“Mind you,” he presses forwards, “you always did sleep like the devil on a Sunday morning, and I don’t suppose you’ve moved since you got here yesterday evening. I didn’t hear you get up anyway. Sleeping off the sedative I suppose.”

He gives a glance over his shoulder at this, steam rising and swirling around his neck as he raises the lid off the stew pot.

Sasuke’s gaze slips from the high point on Naruto’s shoulder that he had seemed to fix on. Smoky black eyes will not meet his own, the flushed petulant mouth is drawn down into a slight curve.

“They said it might take a couple of days to wear off,” he says, turning back to the pot again.

“Is that all they said?”

//… //

Naruto blinks. Fingertips halt mid-stretch for the wooden ladle.

It’s the first time Sasuke’s spoken to him for six years.

//Six years… six goddamned years….//

And this is really the first time they’ve been in the same room together, with both of them conscious, coherent and able to partake in the conversation. Those times… those dreadful times in the hospital don’t count. Not the ones where Sasuke had been lying strapped down to the bed, oxygen mask fastened to a face so pumped full of painkillers and tranquillizers that he had probably not known what his own name was… let alone Naruto’s.

For some reason, Naruto feels like crying and has to wrestle down a lump, which forms fast and spontaneously in his throat. He blinks furiously, teeth grating and bruising against the soft flesh of his lower lip.

It’s not so much the cold voice, riddled with anger: he was used to that. It was that the voice has changed so much that gets to him. It’s lower. Richer, somehow, like cold creamy coffee mixed with strong alcohol: so that it burns, searing hard and fast down your oesophagus.

// Don’t think about that now… now is not the time. //

He lets his fingers fumble for a moment in midair, hand curling over nothing. He briefly brings it over his heart before leaning forward again to begin dishing out the ramen. He uses that easy false smile he’s learnt as he turns round again, pushing chopsticks and a steaming bowl of noodles towards Sasuke, and takes the seat opposite, careful to draw the chair far out from under the table.

Sasuke looks at the bowl but doesn’t touch it.

// Where- no- When, the hell did he learn to cook//

He looks expectantly at Naruto: he’s not going to do anything until he gets what he wants.

// Absolutely bloody typical of him. //

Naruto runs the tip of his flexible tongue over his teeth, slouching slightly in the chair and rocking backwards. The leg makes a squeaking noise against the floor tiles as it does so. Sasuke’s lip curls slightly at the sound in what Naruto assumes is annoyance.

// Well, it’s his bloody house: he’ll do exactly what he wants with his furniture.//

“Well, yeah but, you already know the rest don’t you? So there’s no point in me repeating it to you like a parrot when you know exactly what I am going to say.”

Sasuke glares at him; his face is utterly deadpan. His features seem to become a mask of irritation and heady dislike; it’s only the glittering of his dark smoky eyes that reminds Naruto that he is in fact a living and breathing being.

The blonde youth finds himself exhaling impatiently through tensed nostrils.

“God,” he mutters, “you are just so… obstinate… do you know that? I think I liked you better when you were upstairs sleeping.”

// Sticky substance that you are, got stuck in my hair and fingertips… and somehow in my mouth.//

Sasuke doesn’t reply. He doesn’t have to. His face screams his unrelenting will power: ‘Don’t like it? Then get in line to bite me,’ it says.

Growling in his throat Naruto clicks his jaw, one hand raking through his messy tangled stands of hair, ruffling them forwards and backwards, giving him that distinctly bedridden look.

For some reason the sudden slight change in appearance strikes Sasuke like a physical blow. He realizes for the first time that Naruto is older. And along with that comes the sexual awareness. His eyes skim across the stubborn jaw line that’s flexing as his mouth pouts slightly, those blue eyes half lidded for a moment in thought before they open wider. For a brief second, Sasuke finds himself wondering how often he looks like that, and… who makes him look like that.

“They told me… well, they told me a lot of things I don’t understand, because a lot of it didn’t make sense. But they told me that they couldn’t do anything further for you… and that there were these.” He pointed here to both of his wrists, and then to the centre of his chest: “And- and that they tried to remove them… but it… it nearly killed you… and that was when you wouldn’t stop screaming….” His voice trailed off, because he couldn’t keep eye contact any longer, and his gaze fell to the table top as he contemplated the painful churning of his stomach that seemed to be turning cartwheels and somersaults at the memory alone.

There is a silence, and slowly Sasuke reaches out across the table - determinedly not looking at Naruto as he does it - and takes the bowl of ramen, and breaks the chopsticks apart, and tentatively takes a bite.

By the small fact that he doesn’t expel the contents right back out of his mouth again like projectile vomit, Naruto takes it as a compliment that his food is in Sasuke’s opinion at least adequate.

It’s a thank you… of sorts.

Naruto takes it as encouragement to keep talking. “Sakura likes it when I make that for her too, and she’s always careful about how much ramen she eats because she goes on and on about how it’s going to make her fat, or something ridiculous like that. I remember I made it the first time at her apartment on her new cooker.”

He laughed here easily for the first time, closing his eyes, a secret dimple revealing itself in his left cheek.

“It was so awful she threw contents of the bowl at me and accused me of trying to poison her. But don’t worry: I’ve sorted it out now. I made that today only because Kiba wanted it, well that and to shut him up because he wouldn’t stop yapping on about you.”

Sasuke let himself look up at Naruto as he spoke, glad to see that he wasn’t looking at him as he prattled on and on about nothing. He wasn’t really listening to the words, part of him was basking in the feeling the warm words were giving him. Part of him was puzzled, part of him didn’t understand why. With all the reasoning in the world it was only the logical conclusion that this should not be happening. It simply did not make sense to be this open with a person who had, well… proven themselves to be beneath deserving this attention from anyone. Even less the person he had screwed over and left as good as dead all those years ago.

But then the words caught, and Sasuke stopped eating, the feeling suddenly becoming bitter, then hot, and then livid.

“I mean, I understand why they’d think that,” Naruto was saying, looking at the fruit bowl and rearranging the apples, “but like I said, you really aren’t that much of a threat if you can’t use chakra. It would be a bit like trying to beat a piñata with a deflated balloon: it’s just silly! I mean I doubt you could take out a twelve year old in this condition, which is a laugh really seeing as you left of some ridiculous mission to get stronger anyway, and imagine, you end up back here again weaker then you were before. I guess it’s what Kiba calls ‘bad karma’ full circle right?”

He stops a word half formed on his tongue because he suddenly catches Sasuke’s expression. The violent explosion inside those dark, intoxicating inky eyes wash over him like a thunderstorm. The look jars in his mind, and he feel like the hunted facing the predator again, and fear roots him to the spot. His hands clench the rim of the chair very tightly and his heart beats frantically in his chest as Sasuke stands up, in a violent and swift movement. How is he so tall? He towers over Naruto, as he picks up the ramen bowl… and hurtles it at him.

Naruto has barely enough time cover his face with his arms and hands before the hot soup and noodles burn into his skin and soak into his clothes. His body seems to drip adrenaline and his insides feel slightly lucid, as he lowers his arms from his face a fraction, only to see Sasuke glaring down at him with such hostile intent that Naruto has no doubt that Sasuke would kill him then and there.

Slowly, too sinisterly to be elegant but smoothly, Sasuke leans so his face is close to Naruto’s, those arching quixotic eyes seem to burn into his skull seeing right through to the other side.

Naruto can feel the tickling hot rivulets of Sasuke’s breath colliding with the soft skin of his temple and forehead.

For a brief second as Naruto looks up, he finds himself thinking how beautiful Sasuke looks when he’s angry: he’s always thought so. Skin like molten marble radiates rage that’s reflected in pitiless eyes, eyes he could never quite decide the colour of. They’re so much more angular than his; thick lashes like the dark wings of a raven, feathered and branched. The expression is like that of a wild animal… like a panther, rippling muscles flexing, ready to leap and strike with all the precision and merciless violence of something hungry for carnage.

Sasuke’s lip draws back in a savage snarl as he hisses down at Naruto, who reacts as if he’s been struck. The words echo around the walls.

“Fuck off.”

Naruto feels the clang of the door in his ribcage as Sasuke slams to door behind him and listens for the ascent of footsteps. It’s a full two minutes after Sasuke has gone, that Naruto’s body relaxes out of it’s tensed position.

Slowly, mind a bit numb to what has just happened, he lowers his arms which have been hovering around his chest. The sockets in his shoulders ache.

Absently he picks a noodle from his hair, and the bridge of his nose, looking down at the floor at the broken blue china that lies scattered around the legs of the table and chair.

Sakura had done this too, Naruto admits to himself. “But at least,” he says out loud no nobody in particular - there where a good deal of kitchen utensils that could be listening - “at least she said ‘sorry’.”


††††††

It’s a two-floor apartment, with only six rooms and that’s including the entrance hallway. So really it shouldn’t be that easy to avoid someone inside the walls of it! Quite the opposite in fact, at least, Naruto imagines so.

He is of course wrong.

Sasuke Uchiha is more stubborn than he had initially given him credit for: since the disaster with the ramen he’s taken to ‘his’ bedroom, and not stepped a foot outside it.

They haven’t spoken, haven’t walked past each other - hell they haven’t even made eye contact since! Not for want of trying though. Naruto has stood outside the door, calling in, (because he knows Sasuke’s in there: he can‘t really go anywhere else at present.) He wants to say he’s sorry but the arrogant prick won’t answer him. Yesterday he shouted himself hoarse, although why he was shouting he’s unsure: he knows that Sasuke can hear like a bat. Standing with hands on hips in the hallway, tapping his feet irritably and asking Sasuke if he could come in (into his own bedroom in his house!) to apologize. Although why he‘s apologizing is beyond him.

No reply, no Nasty Sarcastic Demeaning Comment, no nothing.

Until eventually he slammed out of his apartment in a burning rage, and walked around the outside of the building, glaring at Sasuke’s window, slightly open, curtain fluttering in a gentle breeze.

//Oh yes he would…//

Fuming, and ignoring the bemused looks from passers-by, he climbed up the wall. If that was necessary for them to start talking again, he would just have prize the window open, jump into the room and beat the crap out of Sasuke.

What had actually happened was that Sasuke waited until Naruto’s finger tips were clinging onto the sill for support… before slamming the window shut on them.

The screaming could be heard on the other side of Konoha.

Naruto spent the rest of the day with his hands in a bowl of ice water, each finger supported by an individual splint just so he wouldn’t keep knocking them on everything and anything, being fussed over by a worried Hinata. Much to Kiba’s displeasure. But Kiba was fuming anyway, having been denied his request to go “Rip-Sasuke’s-Head-from-his-Shoulders-It-Will-ONLY-TAKE-A-MINUTE.”

In truth Naruto believed Shikamaru was inclined to this idea as well, although he seemed disapproving: he had been aiming fearsomely dark looks at the ceiling whenever he thought the blond wasn’t looking.

It had been a long day.

That evening Naruto had sat in the kitchen alone after the others had gone back, his eyes fixed on the clock. The minutes ticked and the hands chimed the hour, but Sasuke didn’t come down for food. Snarling to himself about Stubborn Jackasses, Naruto had irritably slammed his food onto a tray, (rice balls this time,) swearing creatively all the way up the stairs. He kicked on Sasuke’s door, once, twice, three times.

He yelled, “Your stupidfood is outside your stupid door!” and slammed off into his own bedroom to fume not-so-quietly about his housemate.

He had been lying on his bed reading a comic when he had heard Sasuke’s bedroom door open - a fraction at first, then slightly more, before it swung open and someone stepped lightly into the hallway.

Naruto didn’t need to strain his ears for the sounds as the fox gave him better hearing than most. His fingers paused in turning the page of his comic. He was tempted, sorely tempted to rip open his own door and go charging down the corridor and call Sasuke several… immature names. But he shouldn’t, and he resisted the urge, however powerful it may have been.

The door clicked shut again and Naruto let out a long exhale, unaware that he had been holding his breath. He rolled off the bed, landing expertly on his feet and tossing his comic somewhere on the floor.

He found himself sitting by the side of the bed, head propped back against the side of the mattress, humming absently.

There’s a picture in a frame propped up on the windowsill, light stippling across it from underneath the blinds.

They took it on his eighteenth, which would explain why it’s slightly lopsided, having being set up on self-timer with a not-so-sober Kiba. Strictly speaking, it had been a hula-hula-dancing Kiba with sake still dripping from his hair.

Naruto finds himself staring at it for a moment. He recalls clearly how Sakura had dragged him back to her apartment after he was no longer in a fit state to walk, and he had fallen asleep like some deformed tree trunk across her hallway.

//Sakura…//

He still feels a little numb when he thinks about her. It’s been a little over three weeks, and he’s been finding it hard to sleep recently. Although that might be for a number of reasons as Shikamaru aptly keeps pointing out: “such as stress, anxiety, or simply (and his favourite one) stupidity.”

Kiba suggests, a little more -or less- helpfully, Naruto doesn’t quite know, that he is of course sexually frustrated.

He does miss Sakura. He’s known her since he was twelve, and it’s weird to not get up in the mornings to run out the door and find her waiting a few streets away. And it’s weird to not then be bashed over the head for either being late or looking like he’s just rolled out of bed. (…Technically he has. But she doesn’t need to know about the little details now does she?)

He likes is best when he can turn over in the middle of the night to find her sleeping, forehead pressed against the turn of his shoulder, thumb close to her mouth. He’s caught her sucking it a few times although she never admits it. (But it‘s so cute!) Oddly enough thinking about it now, he even misses it when she kicks him out of bed with her foot on his ass (which hurts like hell!) and then tells him to make her breakfast with an impish grin on her face, as she rolls snugly underneath the covers again. And he, Naruto, is left lying naked on the floor like some weirdly deformed clam, shell-shocked, with his legs up over his head.

What Naruto likes about being with Sakura is that he’s completely comfortable around her. With Sakura there’s never the feeling that the world might collapse in on itself tomorrow; no pretending he’s like someone else. With Sakura he never has the feeling that he’s alone.

He’s never… it’s not a… passionate relationship. Yes, he was and still is sexually attracted to her, she’s Sakura, she’s beautiful.

He’s always known that.

They weren’t always so close. He thinks she despised him at one point, prior to Sasuke leaving. But then a lot of things were different before Sasuke left.

A lot of things have changed.

Naruto lets himself slip further down onto the floor.

Things are confusing now. There’s an uncomfortable hole of guilt in the pit of his stomach because he’s made his ever-so-pissy-and-ever-so-sensitive-housemate… well, pissed off.

//And that’s putting it, well, somewhat bluntly. //

He really shouldn’t be worried about it. When they were kids and he and Sasuke would blow up at each other about once a week, often more, Kakashi-sensei would just look at them nonchalantly whilst they tried to punch each other’s brains out and turn a page of his book. Until things got bloody that is. Then he was legally required to step in. Not because he was a responsible adult or anything conscientious like that.

Naruto finds himself grinning at that distant memory… in his minds eye he can see himself and Sasuke yelling at each other from opposite ends of the room until they were both hoarse:

“I hate you!”

“Well… I hate you more!”

“Oh please, you couldn’t think of a creative insult if it came up when you were naked and bit you on the ass!”

“Shut up!”

“See? You only prove my point every time you open your stupid mouth… stupid!”

Naruto laughs, drawing his knee’s up to his chest and resting his chin snugly on his caps. He knew how to deal with that Sasuke. Try to knock him for six, end up on his back, blood in his mouth and staring up into gloating inky grey eyes… ‘til one of them gave in and began to laugh.

He doesn’t know how to deal with this version of Sasuke. It‘s like he‘s jumped the stream and landed in the ocean chugging down salt water (which he‘s only ever done once before and it’s friggin’ unpleasant) …way out of his depth.

Now he is older and no longer boyish. If there was ever an innocence about Sasuke Uchiha he’s lost it, or at least Naruto thinks so: there’s no hint of a smile about his beautiful mouth and his eyes are cold and as unyielding as a stone statue. He might as well be made out of wood from the way Naruto can read him, and about as bendable as a china stick that’s been rammed up into the wee crevasses of his ass.

How are you supposed to connect with someone who gives you as much leeway as a pebble?

It’s not that he’s giving up. It’ll take far more then this to push Naruto Uzumaki away, believe it! But it’s more the fact that no matter how he looks at it, he just can’t see a way around it. When Sasuke was in the hospital, at least then all Naruto could do was hope that things would get better, that when he was properly conscious they could at least, you know, talk.

But they can’t, won’t… haven’t.

“Vocal obstruction,” Naruto mutters to himself frowning. It’s a word that was thrown at him a week before, along with an x-ray scan that he didn’t really understand: “Vocal obstruction and memory location.” But that’s as far as he can remember, as the rest is lost in a blur of coffee, messy hair, stubble and very, very bossy friends.

He sighs, wondering vaguely what Sakura would do in his position. It’s rather depressing to think that everything would probably be a lot easier. For example she would have known not to natter on about inconsequential obscenities, and he doubts very much that Sasuke would have blown up at her. He never blew up at Sakura, because he probably had a soft spot for her or something disgusting like that.

Naruto finds himself frowning darkly at the idea of this, a quick spike of something flaring in his stomach that he supposes to be anger. Sasuke never picked on Sakura the way he did on Naruto, never ever, despite the fact that in their youth she used to hassle him much more then he did.

//Jerk. //

He lets himself slip down even lower, so he’s practically lying on his back, forced to stare up at the slats of his bedstead.

He really should write to Sakura… she’ll be pissed otherwise, and he did promise. Even if she’ll probably write back along the lines of “Naruto, your handwriting is akin to that of a drunken penguin, in the dark with the vocabulary of a pre-schooler. I can’t understand a single line of it! And even if I could, I must tell you again that it was far too short!”

If he writes her a very long letter she’ll take great joy of picking everything out that’s wrong with it and drumming it into his head that he should separate out his sentences with a comma (“because comma’s are you friends!”) and something very tedious about grammar…. And then inserted subtly at the end, something about the cute ninja who asked her out the other day. You know. Just for fun.

For some reason thinking about this now, Naruto doesn’t think he can tell Sakura about Sasuke. It would just be too complicated. She’d probably, most likely, come charging back from wherever the hell she is, despite the fact she made such an enormous fuss about going in the first place. She’d kick his ass, then Shikamaru’s ass, then Kiba’s ass... and then she’d turn on Sasuke and… and….

Naruto doesn’t like to think about it really. She’d probably tell him he “only did this because she was away,” …which might in a sense be true, but Naruto won’t admit it to himself. He’s not going to admit that to anyone how afraid he is of ending up alone again, least of all to Sasuke.

//This really, truly does suck. //

He lets himself doze for a moment, thinking about nothing in particular.

It’s pleasantly warm on his bedroom floor and he can hear the pipes for the central heating whistling away downstairs in the airing cupboard, and for a while it seems like his apartment is singing to him.

He smiles for no reason: a curious, disarming expression that makes him simultaneously older as it does younger.

Then he hears the door across the hallway open, very quietly as if the person opening it doesn’t want the noise to be heard, and Naruto sits up abruptly.

A little too abruptly, because the top of his head collides with the wooden slatted bedstead and brilliant flashes of white stars go sporadic before his eyes as he yelps.

Ignoring the prominent throbbing, he jumps up and crosses the room, yanking the door open and sticking his head cautiously out of the door. The only thing that has changed since he last checked is the fact that the tray is now empty.

Naruto feels the first hot sparks of anger fizzling through his chest. He doesn’t know why he’s so irritated, he just is. He really, really, really is.

Maybe it’s just the audacity of someone who’s staying in his house when he doesn’t have to, out of his own courtesy, and is just being so goddamned rude about it. Maybe it’s the fact he’s eaten the food and not said thank you.

And maybe, most likely of all, is the fact that it’s Sasuke doing all of this to him.

//Got it coming doesn’t he? //

//HELL YES. //

Naruto storms out the room, barely containing himself; he feels like he’s going to explode all over the place, in one huge messy splodge, everywhere. He wants desperately to vent, and suddenly it seems a wonderful idea to implant his fist through the wall. Except that would be stupid because Sakura’s not here to yell at him to clean it up and then magically fix it herself.

He slams his foot against Sasuke’s door, not caring if the neighbours hear; god the whole goddamned village can hear it for all he cares at this particular moment!

Naruto opens his mouth as his foot connects with the wood, preparing his throat for more yelling, when the door shudders and flies open. It crashes ear splittingly into the opposite wall. The brass handle connects with the plaster at high-speed and the two mesh together. It causes a gaping indent in the paintwork.

//Whoops. //

Naruto freezes, hands still stuck adamantly in pockets, eyeing up the wall and feeling suddenly guilty. He didn’t intend for that to have happened. He had thought the door to be still locked, like it was all of yesterday and this morning! He feel’s rather cheated.

A little on edge and somewhat startled, he steps into the room.

His first thought is that it isn’t as dark as it was before. The curtains are drawn but the blinds are pulled all the way up. It also strikes him that the room is obscenely tidy, unnaturally so in fact: all the surfaces are empty, the draws of the dresser firmly closed and the wardrobe shut. The mirror too, sits at an exact angle, reflecting the opposite wall.

Naruto gulps. He had tidied, or rather Hinata had tidied the room for him, when he’d originally proposed that Sasuke should stay with him. But she hadn’t put everything away. There had been a print on the wall that Iruka had given him for his seventeenth birthday of a mountain landscape, (along with some appreciated ramen vouchers,) but it looks like it’s been ripped from the wall. Several things like that strike Naruto as he looks about him. There was a bowl on the dresser full of interestingly shaped pinecones that he, Hinata, Kiba and Sakura had all found one day when out on a mission together. The bowl and the pinecones seem to have disappeared somewhere.

Naruto opens his mouth to ask why when he finds himself searching for Sasuke: Sasuke whom he’d imagined standing in front of him looking angry, hissing venom and ready to kick him the hell out again.

But instead he finds Sasuke lying on the bed, in a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans, looking up at the ceiling as if he hasn’t noticed that Naruto has entered at all.

All of a sudden, Naruto can’t decide whether the emotion sprawling through his gut is anger or fear.

//…Shit. What the hell do I do? //

He licks his lips and chances it. It’s the only tactic he knows; he might as well try it.

“Why are you such an pig-headed asshole?”

There. No preamble, no pretend niceties, no looking headways or sideways before he plunges straight in.

Sasuke’s head moves a fraction. Not enough to see him, but movement at least is a slight acknowledgment. He’s still however staring at the ceiling, hair in rumpled thick strands around his face, as if he’s been running his fingers through it over and over again.

Naruto notices the bandages around his wrists are no longer present, and he frowns. The skin is red and irritated as if he’s been scratching at those Things, and sharp little stabs of panic claw at his insides.

“Hey,” he continues, and this time he advances again, wooden floorboards creaking slightly under his feet. “I’m talking to you.”

//Wait. Wasn’t he supposed to be apologizing? //

Smokey grey eyes find his, cold and flat, and the mouth moves, working to an expressionless face. “Are you now?”

Sasuke doesn’t move from the bed, in fact his body doesn’t move at all, not in the slightest. His long legs are tilted slightly at an odd angle, as if the heels and ankles are too painful to put weight on.

Naruto finds himself biting his lower lip. He feel anxious for a reason he’s not too sure of, but it feels dangerous, like he’s wading waist deep through quick sand that could drag him under at any second to suck him down into dark inescapable depths.

He swallows his pride, or what’s left of it anyway.

“I wanted to, you know… about the other day.”

Sasuke’s gaze doesn’t flicker, and Naruto has this horrible feeling that he can see right out and through the back of his head. Gaara once looked at him in that way, and the consequences weren’t at all pretty.

The words loose themselves on the tip of his tongue as he begins to form them, skidding into nothingness; and he backtracks and fumbles, changing the subject.

Why does Sasuke have this uncanny ability to always make him feel so goddamned clumsy? Like a proverbially obese hump-backed whale, in a china shop.

“What are you doing?”

For some reason he’s rewarded with a snarl and Sasuke turns his head so he’s once again staring at the ceiling, ignoring Naruto.

But Naruto won’t be pushed off so easily. He pulls out the chair from beside the wardrobe, spins it backwards and then sits on it, arms folded over the back.

Sasuke doesn’t even look at him as in quiet dangerous soft tones he warns Naruto to “Get the hell out of his sight.”

Naruto squares his shoulders and tells Sasuke to “Stuff that, because it’s his apartment, and this is technically his bedroom anyway.”

“Fine, I’ll leave then.”

And he makes to get up, even though it looks like it costs him some effort to do so, but he hides it well. It’s only by the unhealthy paleness of his skin that Naruto can tell this: fairer then ivory and twice as cold.

“You can’t leave,” Naruto tells him simply. “There are boundaries outside the windows, the doors, the whole building… you can’t cross them because you know… you can’t use chakra.”

For an instant Sasuke looks at him, and his eyes flash suddenly with an intense… something, before everything goes still again and there’s only the dull throbbing of his heart inside his chest as the valves open and close to the same monotonous rhythm.

Then that cold condescending smile forms all the way across the beautiful flush of Sasuke’s lips, and his eyes narrow as he laughs. The tones chill Naruto as he sits, maintaining his cool, but it’s costing him effort.

“So this is it, is it?”

Naruto frowns at Sasuke, genuinely not really understanding the question.

“So what is what?”

Sasuke sits on the edge of the bed, feet touching the floor, and again Naruto marvels at how pale he is. Like torn ivory, he seems to bleed away into the black he wears slung loosely over his physique, as contrasting as blood against snow.

He leans forwards a fraction from the hips, those eyes with thick feathery lashes seeming to extract Naruto’s soul and examine it at his leisure.

“You and me. What is this? Some sort of game?”

“Game? You think this is a game? What are you, sick or something?”

“Maybe, but I’m wondering why you brought me here in the first place. Why with you? Surely you should have learnt after last time Naruto, you can’t change people. You can’t stop them from becoming what they are.”

“And I suppose you think you’re a living example of this do you? Just because you gave up Sasuke, that doesn’t mean everybody does, just because you were w-”

Naruto bites his tongue. He was about to say because you were weak, but that would have gone down as successfully as a ton of bricks. Yet he thinks… no, he knows Sasuke can second guess his movements as well as predict them, he was always oh, so very good at that.

Sasuke raises his thumb to his mouth. He bites the tip of the nail, mouth forming something that Naruto wouldn’t, can’t call a smile, because it’s far too ominous. It’s almost debasing but for some reason he can’t tear his eyes away from it. Like a spiral, he’s falling straight down.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Sasuke says, and the words are phrased softly like the calm before the storm; and Naruto’s cursing his short explosive temper. Sasuke’s drawing his own rage out with a frightening amount of patience, like a spider spinning silken threads to make a deadly web. Sasuke is angry, and he can see it in every line of his body.

“You sitting here, judg-”

“I’m not judging you Sasuke.” Naruto interrupts him quickly, he doesn’t want this to turn into an argument, but it’s hard to defend against it when his own temperature seems to be soaring and the Uchiha is attacking him from every side and every possible angle with lethal accuracy.

“Then what is this? Pity? Because if it is, Naruto, I’ll tell you what you can do with it.”

“Why,” Naruto asks, standing up now, skin flushed, “must you turn everything into an argument, or a threat, or something equally horrible? Why must you look at everything like that? You can see that I don‘t want to do it, I don‘t want to go there!”

//Maybe he enjoys seeing me trapped. //

“Because that’s how everything is.” His eyes are perfectly indifferent when he says it. He believes the words - Naruto can tell he’s not lying, he’s not even goading him. This is how in his mind, in his world, things work.

“There’s no such thing as happiness. People get what they want from the suffering of others, happiness is a very selfish thing,” he scoffs. “You know that Naruto, better than most I should imagine. People blame and ignore what they don’t want to see, because it makes them feel better.”

“No they… well they don’t anymore. It’s different… it’s changed.” The words are spoken in defence, heatedly; teeth gritted and jaw clenched.

“Really?” and it’s laced with a lazy sarcasm. “Do they now? Do all of them think differently? Do none of them hold it against you Naruto? All of this, this silly pretence of friendship and independence… this… this place?” and he jerks his head to the side indicating the apartment.

“It’s all changed has it? For the better? And what about Sakura? She hasn’t been round has she? What’s the matter Naruto, afraid to tell your girlfriend the truth, that you let the traitor back into your life again? Or afraid that I’ll tell her the truth about you?”

“How do you know…how do you know about me and Sakura?” Naruto asks, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth and he’s unaware of the fact that his hands are clenched, knuckles white and shaking.

“Your friend has a very loud mouth.”

//I knew it, he does hear like a bat! //

“Or are you,” and this bit is accentuated nastily, “afraid that if she sees me, she’ll forget all about you? She always did have a thing for me now that I think about it. A stupid school girl’s crush.”

“Shut up.” Naruto’s so angry he can hardly see straight. He has to blink back bubbles of white-hot rage that seem to be popping and colliding inside his mind.

// You never realized how lucky you were to be so easily accepted… so easily loved… and you never tired. You never tired, not even once. //

“So tell me…” He lets the words fall and rise on the heavy silence between them, words sizzling between them like millions of tiny needles.

Sasuke pushes them in deeper, because he can, because he’s angry at himself and all the world, but mostly at Naruto for being so blind and thinking after all this time that he can still change things. That at the end of the tunnel there is still light.

“What’s it like fucking her then?”

Naruto goes pink and then goes white with rage which is infinitely more dangerous. “Shut up,” he manages, but it’s hardly above a whisper, so great is his concentration to not launch himself at Sasuke and drive him head first through the wall.

“You wouldn’t- you’d never know, you never ever loved anyone besides yourself, you’ve never had-have any friends. You have no right to ask me that- or see her… ever. And why anyone would want to see you is beyond me.”

//Seems he’s getting the point, finally.//

“And so,” and Sasuke’s still smiling that haunting smile, like death in flesh and supple fingers, “she swapped the traitor for the monster did she?”

// I pity the fool who brought me back.//

The silence is so heavy it crashes over both of their heads.

//Monster….//

Naruto stands there for a moment, swallowing what he feels is his tongue, before he turns blinking out of the room, feeling light headed. He stands in the corridor, hand on the wall, heart pumping frantically in his chest as he waits for the world to come back into cohesion again.

The door swings shut by itself and Sasuke finds himself slipping down onto the floor where he puts his head between his legs, and tries to swallow down the bile that his stomach is threatening to hurtle up through his oesophagus.

Desperately, with every fibre of his being he wants to go after Naruto: he wants to tell him that he was lying, that he didn’t- never meant it…. That he’d never considered him a monster and neither, to his knowledge had Sakura. But he can’t, he knows he can’t, reason pulls him down and forces him to sink, and he gulps down a human impulse to suddenly start crying.

If Naruto never speaks to him again it will make everything much easier.

If Naruto never looks at him again it will be much better.

And it would be much simpler if he didn’t miss it already, or hate himself for doing it.

Much, much easier.

††††††


Naruto wrestles stubbornly but it’s no good.

Sasuke pushes him down and under him, back forced roughly against the hard solid stone beneath them. He’s smiling down at him, strands of hair trickling around his face, framing the slender shape.

“Got you,” he murmurs quietly, mouth close to Naruto’s ear, and it sends shivers up his spine.

Naruto doesn’t know how the game started but he knows how it ends: already Sasuke is making his way down from his neck to his collar bones, a hot searing trail that causes his breath catch jerkily in his throat.

For some reason, he rolls. He moves his body up and over, so that he’s lying on top; long legs and hips pressing into his abdomen as he brandishes his own fox like smile. The whisker-like scars in his cheeks are dark and deep in the dim light.

“You suppose too much,” Naruto hoarsely replies, cornflower blue eyes half closed. His heart is racing and he’s exhilarated; he can’t remember when he felt this perfect. This goddamned… good.

Sasuke’s fingers, pale, elegant and long, ghost across his chest. A possessive, engulfing gaze is locking onto every atom in his body, and Naruto’s breath hitches again. His body prickles in anticipation as Sasuke pulls him forwards, tongue and teeth clicking and colliding together. Hot wet mouths: pushing and feeling, tasting, being tasted, fighting and surrendering, merging, connecting. The tip of Sasuke’s tongue strokes the insides of Naruto’s mouth, which lets out a gentle moan into the kiss.

He can’t care about anything anymore as a hand, fingertips cold, brushes as close as a whisper across the smooth skin of his back, gliding up underneath his t-shirt.

Sasuke leans back from the kiss and Naruto finds himself groaning at the loss, turning his face into Sasuke’s jaw, taking in the smell, slightly sweet, slightly sharp, like citrus. His fingers curl around the lean arms in front of him and he finds himself rolled over, being pushed under again, someone coaxing him to spread his legs.

Except he doesn’t. And the warm feeling he’s chasing after seems to flicker and fade, and he wants to sit up, wants to stop, because he suddenly realizes how ridiculous this is. He’ll end up being hurt again, lost and pushed aside.

He pushes against Sasuke’s chest, and lifting his face finds vibrant grey eyes, slivered like a mirror and twice as smooth, looking down reflectively into his own. It’s the look that reads him, reminds him, controls him; thrusts him down harder, faster, over and over again.

He’s trapped.

“No.” he says and he’s surprised at how normal his voice sounds on the thick tepid air. He watches the flushed mouth above him, red and parted from all the kisses. It draws back slightly and he can see the tip of canines sparkling and white inside of the gloom.

“No?” and the word is pushed back at him like a question. Sasuke leans in lower, powerful muscular shoulders like a great cat’s, covering him. Warm hands are moving over his own where they push against Sasuke’s chest, no longer firm, almost limp, feeling the heat of naked skin against hard fingertips.

His arms are thrust up and over his head, making him gasp, pinning their bodies together. Flat on his back, wide eyes looking up, damn straight up, into orbs that hovers inches above his own.

Naruto swallows his heartbeat.

Sasuke’s eyes seem to laugh into his own, an unfathomable laugh, teasing and dangerous.

One hand slips down to Naruto’s abdomen, delicately touching sensitive skin that shudders; and Naruto follows, hips lifting slightly as Sasuke toys. The neck of the blond flexes back into the firm ground beneath him. His eyes roll back as the hands ghost lower… and lower… cold fingertips burning his flesh.

Sasuke places his mouth against the hollow behind Naruto’s ear, hot breath like a steaming breeze, voice silky and deeply melodious, as he tells Naruto that he wants it… he wants it.

It’s Naruto’s realization. The realization is that exactly. He does want, and he wants all of it. He wants Sasuke right now with an addictive craving that seems to grip and scrape at the hot seething of his insides; inside his chest, inside his stomach…. Everything’s so strange, he doesn’t know anything but he feels it. He feels it when his body arches into Sasuke, hard, muscular, graceful and beautiful and yet masculine. Common sense goes sprawling to place that doesn’t exist, and everything is dark red and blurred. He can’t think straight with those hands on him, devious and doing things he never thought to be possible; and it feels so….

Very.

Good…

Sinfully so.

And then, as he turns his mouth, seeing clearly for the first time as Sasuke traces the line of it with his tongue, he sees exactly how it is, and what he wants. And more to the point what he doesn’t want.

He looks up, hair sticking sweaty across his forehead, tanned skin flushed and blood pumping so fast inside his veins. “I want you,” he murmurs, and the words cost him no effort and no reflection. He watches as Sasuke’s mouth moves into a line of something not unlike triumph, followed by carnal pleasure.

Fingers move up into Naruto’s hair, releasing his wrists, which fall limply to his sides to feel the ground beneath him as it seems to move.

Naruto opens his mouth, eyes closed as butterfly kisses trail over his temple and forehead. His tongue darts out and wets his lips, and he inhales deeply, taking in the smell, musky, sharp and sweet all at once.

“Sasuke,” he breathes, before he looses his mind, before the world goes out of focus into a multicoloured haze:

“I want you, but I don’t need you.”

There is a pause… a stinging silence, and then the fingers in his hair become painful, applying pressure as his head as it is wrenched upwards, so he’s staring into the eyes of a predator, dark, deadly and enamouring.

Neither smoky grey or inky black.


Fear itches across his body as Sasuke withdraws a hand and hits him.

††††††

At two o’clock in the morning Naruto sits up in bed abruptly, body covered in a cold film of sweat with his heart jumping erratically in his chest. He can still feel Sasuke’s body against his own, his hands, his limbs, his touch, and he shivers from the base of his spine. He stumbles blindly out of bed in the darkness, hands fumbling for the bathroom door, which he opens and closes noisily behind him again.

He's going to take long cold shower… and maybe drown himself in it.

††††††

A/N Sasuke’s a dick, Naruto is sensitive to certain words, I love KibaHina and I finally gave this chapter a name!