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: June 29th 2007, Friday
second version: December 16th 2008, Tuesday

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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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59: Ganged up on me

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Naruto awoke with a start from a sleep with no dreams. He found himself looking up at an unfamiliar ceiling and for a moment wondered where he was. On his back, he realized; under a blanket, naked except for his underwear. He blinked slowly and found the same ceiling when his eyes opened again. Then he yawned. Then he remembered.

He sat up quickly and the blanket fell from him.

“The bastard!” he yelled, threw the blanket off him and jumped out of bed. He didn’t bother looking for his clothes, even though a small voice in his mind asked if it really was such a good idea running around almost naked in someone else’s house. Apartment. ‘The parents should have returned by now, shouldn’t they?’ that small voice said and carried worry with it. ‘Good!’ the rest of him mentally shouted. ‘It will serve that Shikamaru-bastard right’. Naruto couldn’t believe the guy had been so evil!

His mind wasn’t fuzzy at all. He remembered everything. The funny tasting juice, Shikamaru showing him those sad pictures of Sasuke and trying to talk Naruto into giving up on his boyfriend. As if true love was that easy to give up on. These days Naruto wasn’t so sure that true love was as... well, true... and simple as he had thought it would be before he really got to know Sasuke. There were so many things to this relationship, to them, that Naruto never would have expected. It hadn’t been simple or easy anywhere; a struggle since they started, since that first Sunday when they met. How many weeks had passed since then? How many weeks had they struggled?

As he stalked through the apartment and vaguely noticed by the light and the special quietness that it was early morning, Naruto found himself wondering, not for the first time this weekend, if all relationships were this difficult or if it was just a relationship with Sasuke. Maybe the difficulties had increased because of Sasuke and what had happened to him. Naruto remembered what the Shikamaru-bastard had said on the phone yesterday, that things like this just happened with Sasuke. He remembered Sasuke’s story about him running away from Kakashi, hiding in a shelter for bikes and getting a horrible cold. Maybe they did just happen, things like this, with Sasuke. Had that running away been like this running away?

‘I thought that the world would feel that I cared and take him away from me.’

Naruto’s fists clench and his teeth gritted as he grew cold and warm at the same time. If a day and two nights had passed when Sasuke ran from Kakashi then... Naruto didn’t even know where Sasuke was!

“You drugged me, you bastard!” Naruto yelled when he reached the kitchen, even though his eyes had blurred in the wind as he walked so he couldn’t make out who was sitting there.

“I told you he’d wake up before noon,” a quiet voice said. But... That sounded like...? Naruto blinked quickly to rid himself of the blur so he could see. It was.

“Gaara?” he asked, anger whiskered away by utter confusion. “What are you...?”

Then his eyes snapped to a smiling, waving dark-haired guy sitting next to Gaara.

“Lee?”

“Good morning, Naruto,” his friend since first grade said, like this was his kitchen and not one in the city where he wasn’t supposed to be. “Shikamaru-kun called and said you needed some backup.”

At that Naruto’s eyes moved again to land on the last person sitting at the table, opposite Gaara, looking kind of sorry and kind of tired. Naruto’s eyes narrowed.

“Yeah,” the Shikamaru-bastard said and sighed. “I drugged you. Sorry. I also confirmed my suspicions about Sasuke’s location while you were out, and called your friends.”

“He still hasn’t told us how he got our number however,” Gaara said.

“I told you,” Shikamaru sounded whiny for a second. “I’ve got a friend with skills.”

“More skills than he should have,” Gaara sipped at the content of a cup wrapped in his hands. Coffee, judging from the smell. “Or is it a she?”

“It’s just a guy, alright? Not involved in anything. Forget about him already.”

“So a he.”

“Come now, Gaara,” Lee said, diplomacy in his voice. “Shikamaru-kun had good intentions and good reasons. I’m sure he wouldn’t...”

“No, he didn’t,” Naruto interrupted and two pair of eyes turned to him. Gaara kept his away. “He didn’t have good reasons. I don’t need backup.”

The kitchen was quiet for a moment, except for the clock ticking on the wall and Gaara sipping at his coffee.

“Go home,” Naruto said.

They should never have come. They should never have been involved, should never have known.

Yes, part of him felt so relieved that they were here. He hadn’t had time to think about it before, it had been nothing compared to his missing boyfriend, but... it had been slightly scary to be here in this place he didn’t know, with nothing but the company of thousands of strangers and a guy he’d only met once before. It was like his heart sighed with relief to have his friends with him.

But he wanted them to never have come. For the same reasons he hadn’t called them before he left for the city and for the same reasons he hadn’t wanted to tell them about the sex-plans. This was not their business. This was between him and Sasuke. Naruto refused to make decisions on his own but when those decisions caused problems run and cry to his friends.

Shikamaru could help because... because he wasn’t there for Naruto’s sake. He wasn’t there to be emotional support; he was there to find Sasuke. He knew more about Sasuke and his life in the city than Naruto did. Lee and Gaara however, they knew as much as Naruto. He loved them as friends, but they couldn’t tell him where Sasuke was.

“You can’t do this alone, Naruto,” Lee said, his eyes were both serious and sorry.

“I’m telling you to go home!”

Gaara placed the cup on the table then and looked at Naruto. His eyes were angry and it caused the anger inside Naruto to lose its strength. Gaara was not supposed to be angry these days. He could be grumpy sometimes; less sociable and talkative than he usually was. He could be in that evil, frustrating mood when he messed with Naruto’s head until Naruto just wanted to scream and go home and to bed. But Gaara wasn’t angry. Not these days. Naruto found his heart beating and his insides cold.

“You don’t know me very well, Naruto,” the red-haired friend at the table said, his pale green eyes refusing to let Naruto go. “If you think I would let you get yourself killed because you’re too stubborn to admit when you’re in over your head, or because that boyfriend of yours has got privacy issues.”

This silence that followed was heavier than the first, the sound of the clock somehow having been erased by Gaara’s eyes.

“I just...” Naruto started but his voice sounded wrong and it failed him. His mind failed as well. For a moment he didn’t know what to say, not even how to think. Then, in the silence and sudden darkness of his being came one thing.

“Where is he?”

And his voice didn’t fail him.

-

“We’ll go in through the service entrance to draw as little attention to us as possible,” Gaara said. “They’ve got a few guys outside, but nothing we can’t handle.”

“Take the stairs when you first get in, rather than the elevators,” Shikamaru said.

“Yes. More options. We’ll use the service elevators when we get higher.”

“Don’t cause too much trouble.”

“I won’t have to if Sasuke has the influence you say he has.”

“He... should have.”

“You will have yourself a war if he doesn’t,” Gaara said and heaved a wooden case, large enough to contain a grown man, onto his back. “I will do what I have to do to get these two out of there alive.”

“Three,” Naruto said and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not leaving without Sasuke.”

“It will be fine, Gaara,” Lee said, his smile filled with confidence.

“Yes, it will,” Gaara said. The ‘I will make sure’ didn’t need to be said.

Then they left.

-

Naruto wondered how many hours of this weekend he had spent on buses. There had been the trip to the city, the trip to Neji, the trip to Shikamaru’s apartment afterwards and the trip now. And there would be at least four or five trips after this one, before they got home. He found himself thinking about the second night of the sleepover when Sasuke first kissed him, remembered thinking that he’d probably never experience a more surprising and eventful weekend. He was tempted to think the same again, but was afraid of what the world would do next time if he did.

The trip now was taking him, Lee and Gaara to the city central station. There they would change buses to one that would take them to another part of the city, the part where Sasuke was; if Shikamaru was right and for the sake of his life, Naruto hoped that he was. His brain was still a little messy from the encounter with angry Gaara. While the redhead has calmed down pretty quickly afterwards and Naruto’s logic said that this angry Gaara was very different from the other angry Gaara, that he hadn’t been unfortunate enough to meet for years now, Naruto was still a little shaky.

The things that had been talked about before they left Shikamaru’s apartment also helped to keep the feeling of befuddlement present. The strategy talk in the hall, he still didn’t want to really accept what it meant, and the talk about the past in the kitchen. Naruto had heard things about Gaara and his family before they moved from the city, things about Shikamaru and Neji and things about Sasuke. If Naruto’s life had seemed like a movie before, it was a movie now.

Naruto’s friend and his friend’s siblings were ex-gang members, Naruto’s boyfriend’s friend was a gang member and Naruto’s boyfriend’s ex was a gang member too. While Naruto’s boyfriend himself was not technically a gang member, he was close enough that he could take shelter at a gang leader’s place. The story hadn’t been very detailed; no real ‘why’s or ‘how’s, just that Gaara, Temari and Kankuro had been involved in the gang business before (but had cut off most of the ties with it when they left the city), that Shikamaru and Neji were involved now (with another gang) and that Sasuke had been involved before (though not as involved as the others had been), not with just one gang but two, and that he still kept contact with one through Shikamaru and the other through its leader (that owner of that music store Shikamaru had mentioned to Naruto while he was in the process of drugging him). Seriously. If someone had told Naruto before he left school on Friday that he would soon learn all these new things about his friends and his future bride, he would have laughed himself silly. Naruto hadn’t laughed today though. It had been too serious for that, despite the strangeness of it all. It had been serious and messed up and scary.

He had remembered that time Sasuke had asked him about Gaara in Naruto’s kitchen before he passed out. Naruto had known nothing, but now he wondered if Sasuke had. He was filled with thoughts and part of him wanted details and more information. He knew nothing about these things, besides what he’d seen on TV and in the movies and heard from Iruka’s horror stories about the dangers of the city and why Naruto should not ‘go there and check it out.’ Shikamaru seemed a little... well, too normal to be in a gang, didn’t he? Okay, so he drugged his guests, that was evil, but still. He lived in normal apartment and had a normal room. He didn’t have the bad ass attitude that Naruto had always thought gang members had to have. The same went for Temari and Kankuro. They didn’t have the bad ass attitude either. Sure, Temari could be a little edgy sometimes... And Kankuro was a little weird. But being a bit edgy and weird didn’t make you a gang member. They didn’t have the whole ‘beat people up and have tattoos’ thing that Gaara had. Naruto could understand how a gang would have liked Gaara as their member, but the rest of his family? No. And definitely not Shikamaru. Except for the drug thing.

Maybe Temari and Kankuro had something like that too, somewhere. Like an inner gang member. Maybe everyone did. Well, everyone except Iruka. Iruka did not have an inner gang member. To Iruka gangs equaled being shot by your friends when you were twelve while taking drugs, or something like that. If the man found out that Naruto had followed a gang member home (and been drugged!), Naruto would be grounded for life. Sneaking off to the city and having sex and not eating the food in the freezer would be nothing at all compared to getting drugged by a gang member.

There had also been questions. How come Gaara and his siblings had been allowed to quit the gang? Weren’t gangs supposed to be all evil to members that wanted out? How could Sasuke be friends with two gangs?

But the thoughts and the questions had been just whispers in Naruto’s mind compared to the location of Sasuke and the importance of getting him back. This music store owner slash gang leader was supposed to be friends or whatever with Sasuke, but Naruto remembered how the expression on Neji’s face had changed when Shikamaru had mentioned the ‘other places’. If that wasn’t enough, Gaara was here and he had been angry, for possibly the first time since he got better, because Naruto had wanted to go to that place where Sasuke was alone.

And then there was that burning hole of worry inside Naruto’s heart that seemed like it wanted to swallow up everything that he was. That burning alone would have been enough to numb out the desire to ask pointless questions that would only waste time. It had been there ever since he woke up alone, but never been this strong and painful. He wanted Sasuke home and back in his sight, back at his side. He wanted to have Sasuke in his presence again.

The details could wait.

-

They got off the bus when they reached the station and Naruto found that he was starting to recognize things there. He wasn’t sure whether he liked that fact or not, but he couldn’t ignore it. He noticed the green signs Shikamaru had told him to follow yesterday and remembered where he had gone. He saw and recognized the board where Sasuke had searched for the right bus when they were going to see his brother, and the shop where they had met that nasty Takuya guy. There was no Takuya guy in sight this day though; only a cute girl with long hair in a high pony tail like Ino used to have, only this girl’s hair was red.

The station wasn’t as crawling with people as it had been those other times Naruto had been there. It came with the Sunday morning, he assumed; had been in the streets and on the bus they had left too. The world wasn’t empty, but it felt like it was. It felt strange with so much space in the city. Gaara knew his way around the buses much better than Sasuke had, there was no hesitation or stopping to check any boards.

Naruto’s inside was swirling with emotions, all sorts of emotions that all seemed to contradict themselves, but... maybe because they were so many, too many; maybe because he had more important things to worry about and needed to focus... it felt like they weren’t really there. They were swimming frantically underneath the surface of a lake while he himself was walking on the water. There was only that hole of biting worry as Naruto walked with his friends through the almost empty corridors of the station.

‘If I don’t get to him soon, I think it will eat me.’

The ease with which Gaara carried the man-sized case was... creepy. Naruto was curious and wanted to know what was inside, but also wanted it to never have shown up at all. Gaara had brought it. Naruto had never seen it before, but it was obvious. He had kept it behind his seat in the kitchen, on his shoulder or his back when they were walking, on the seat between him and the window on the bus. It was had to be heavy, but Gaara carried it like it was nothing; like he’d done it all his life.

It was just the three of them. Gaara, Naruto and Lee. Shikamaru had only come with them as far as to the hall of his apartment. He had done as much as he could for now, he had said. He would wait for them to return and have that sleepover. Lee and Gaara were invited too. Because of his involvement with his own gang, if Shikamaru were to come along, he would apparently stir up things he didn’t want to stir up and only make things more difficult. He had both looked and sounded frustrated about it. Gaara had said that Shikamaru shouldn’t worry. ‘That’s why we are here.’

Naruto had felt like, he supposed, a prince in a story about a kidnapped princess would feel if he had needed an escort to the dragon’s tower. He had wondered if there was an actual part for him in this or if they just had him tag along because they had run out of drugs and didn’t think they could convince him to stay behind (they would be right). It felt wrong in a way. Like he should have added some lines when he told Sasuke that he would bring him back. ‘Oh, and I’ll bring my personal army along so I don’t get eaten by the dragon.’ Very brave.

The bus heading towards Sasuke was blue and white and almost empty (like everything else). There was the driver and a kid sitting in the seat behind her, smiling and looking like he was mentally disabled in some way. He waved and shouted ‘good evening!’ when they stepped on and gave the driver their tickets. Naruto couldn’t help but think of Sasuke and that first grade he said he had spent in the hospital. Naruto still wasn’t sure it hadn’t been a retard class. They took seats in the middle of the end section of the bus. Naruto by the window, Lee next to him and Gaara and the case in front of them.

The redhead hadn’t been talking much. Not after they had left the apartment and not in the apartment. He’d only said what was necessary, nothing more. Gaara wasn’t much of a talker usually either, but he talked more than this. He hadn’t asked how the sex had gone, hadn’t mentioned anything about it. Well, it was kind of obvious how it had gone, with the way things were now, but the Gaara from that stupid Thursday before the awful day before yesterday would have thrown himself all over it anyway; wouldn’t spoil an opportunity to torment Naruto. It was a different mood to Gaara this day. More serious, colder, more distanced.

“You knew, huh?” Naruto leaned over and asked Lee as they waited for the bus to take off. “About... you know.”

“Yes,” Lee said and looked sorry. “I did. He asked me not to tell you.”

“Since when?”

“A year back or so. I overheard him talking to Temari one evening and by the time they noticed me I had heard too much. He explained, even though he didn’t want me to know.”

“Okay,” Naruto said. He glanced at the seat in front of them but if Gaara had heard, he didn’t show it. He tried to think for a moment, even though his brain was still kind of messy, and gnawed at his lip. He didn’t know what to say. What did you say?

The bus engine started and soon the vehicle was moving, into the daylight. Winter had arrived during the night and brought snow. The clouds had scattered already, but the air was cold enough that the sun made little difference. The ground was white.

“It... doesn’t change anything,” Lee said, as if he had searched for the right words for a long time before he had found them, really wanted to make it sound right. “It’s still him, same old Gaara.”

“Yeah,” Naruto said, smiled weakly. “And same old Sasuke.”

“Are you... okay? I understand if you don’t want to talk about it, but...”

“I’m fine. Sort of. I mean...” Naruto sighed. “He’s not though. He’s not okay. I didn’t think...”

Naruto realized that the last time he had seen his boyfriend, he had been wiping pale pleasure (though how much pleasure had it been?) from his stomach, tossed a used condom in the trash, cuddled close and said he would try harder next time. And ‘I love you.’

He found he was embarrassed. It felt like ages and lifetimes ago. He had been such a clueless idiot that time, in that life. Such a child. He had known nothing, seen nothing, understood nothing. He could have stopped this from happening if he had been a little smarter, a little more aware. They would all be home and no one would need an escort to be safe from the dragon. It felt like he had grown several hundred years since that evening one day and two nights ago.

It made him nervous about seeing Sasuke again. What would he say? ‘I’m sorry I was such a child’? Would Sasuke be angry? Because Naruto had been a child and lured him into doing things without knowing anything? Why hadn’t there been anything about this in that book?

‘Caution:’ it could have said, in a little square box at the end of one page. ‘Sex is not a plaything. Be careful with your partner and make sure you are both ready and without doubts. Watch your partner closely and if anything seems to be wrong, stop. Try again in the morning. Or when you’re older.’

Naruto hadn’t known that he was such a child. He remembered what Iruka had said.

“It might look bad today,” Lee said, again as if he’d been thinking for a long time before speaking. “But you know, I still think it will be okay. I’ve told you before, haven’t I? You have a way with people, and you’re a good guy. He could wish for no better boyfriend.”

First Naruto’s eyes blurred and stung and he had to squeeze them shut. Lee was always so... He didn’t know what a child Naruto had been and how much he had screwed up by not seeing what he should have seen. But... eventually Naruto had to obey the pulling at the corners of his lips and the stirring of ‘really...?’ in his heart.

“What?” he said. “You’re saying I’m like... his medicine?”

Lee hummed for a moment before answering.

“Yes. You are.”

And even though it was really stupid and mushy and Sasuke would have groaned and rolled his eyes, Naruto did feel better.

-

The world passing by outside the window did not get dirtier and slummier and more gang like the further the bus went, as Naruto had assumed it would. Quite the opposite really. The buildings got fancier and taller, the streets cleaner and the few people that was out this early fancier. He thought for a moment that maybe it would pass, that they would drive through this cool district and come to the real gang parts, but then Gaara pushed the button next to their seat and the ‘stopping’ sign in the front of the bus lit up.

“Here?” Naruto leaned over and whispered, in his surprise forgetting that Gaara was different today.

“Yes,” Gaara said and he didn’t sound that different. “Follow me closely. Don’t stop and don’t fall behind.”

When the bus slowed down and stopped next to what looked like a mall for rich people, they stood up, Gaara heaving the case onto his back again, and got off. He seemed to know where they were going. Naruto felt his stomach get fluttery with nervousness. Were they in the ‘you could get killed at any moment’ zone yet? It didn’t seem like it. This place didn’t look much different from the places where Iruka had taken Naruto to the city for shopping now and then, on special occasions. It was just a normal street with normal shops, only a bit fancier. Naruto had found his coolest robots in places like this; the now deceased Vulpes Automaton 3000, Space Mission version (these days called the Sasuke robot) for example.

When Gaara left the street for an alley, Naruto’s worry that maybe this whole gang thing had just been a really bad joke disappeared. This was more like it. While this alley here seemed to be pretty clean and not very slummy (no burning trash cans and newspapers; the morning light made it seem pretty cozy actually, doves could be heard), it was still an alley and alleys were gang territory. At least according to Iruka’s horror stories.

They turned once, twice, and in the middle of the third alley, Gaara stopped and turned. His eyes were narrower than normal.

“We’re unnoticed so far,” he said. “When we get in, follow me. Don’t look at anyone, don’t talk to anyone, don’t stop unless I do and don’t fall behind.”

There was a short pause and Naruto took that as his cue to nod and say ‘okay’. Lee said ‘yes’ the same way Naruto had heard him say it during practice. It was his serious tone. Nervousness swirled.

“When we reach the top floor we need to locate Sasuke,” Gaara continued. “If we’re lucky he will talk the Sound into letting us leave again and if he can’t or won’t, I will get us out. If it comes to that, stay close to me, no matter what happens. Naruto?”

“Ah, yes?” Naruto swallowed. His heart was beating. It was too unreal. Too damn unreal. The Sound. That was the gang Sasuke was with. He knew that. He had heard it in Shikamaru’s kitchen.

“If your boyfriend decides he’d rather stay there, do you still want to bring him back with us?”

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation and afterwards Naruto feel a little more focused and a little less scared. There was a reason for all this. Naruto had said he would get Sasuke back, so he would. He had never said anything about ‘if you want me to’.

“Very well,” Gaara said. “Then don’t argue when I sedate him. Lee, you will carry him. I will need my hands free.”

“Of course.”

“Thank you. That’s it. Let’s go.”

Gaara turned around and then he was moving again. Quick determined steps that said he wanted this over with. Lee put a hand on Naruto’s shoulder and said ‘it will be fine’. Naruto wanted it over with too.

-

It had been a long time since Naruto saw Gaara fight seriously. It had been a long time since he saw Lee fight seriously too, but Gaara... Gaara was different. You didn’t want to see Gaara fight at all.

Naruto had always been impressed by Lee’s fighting. Even though he wasn’t over-muscled or anything like that, he was strong and it showed. Because of that some guys figured he was slow, strong, but slow. The ones thinking that were always quickly brought back to reality however. ‘Quickly’ being the keyword, because Lee was speed incarnate. He was like a flurry of enthusiastic violence. He liked to show-off.

Lee was faster than Gaara; he was. Not because Gaara was slow, but because Lee was so fast. For some reason though, it didn’t matter. Where Lee was fast and enthusiastic, Gaara was precise and lethal. Gaara seemed to always know. He knew where his opponent was and he knew where to strike to do damage. There was a reason behind everything he did. It was like he had already seen the fight a thousand times before and knew exactly when he should be where. If Lee was a flurry, Gaara was a current; a current of cruel and precise pain. If Gaara had been the kind to show off, his show would have been stomach-turning.

There had been four typical ‘we’re in a gang’ like guys (smoking, tattoos, messy clothes and hair styles) sitting around the steps leading up to the door. They had had the badass gang attitude. They had also barely figured out that their opponents were serious before they were lying unconscious on the ground. At least Naruto hoped they were just unconscious. He didn’t have time to ask or check or do anything really, because Gaara opened the door and went inside.

The inside of the building was fancy in a ‘white rather than gold, clean rather than curled details’ kind of way. Iruka would have probably really liked it, ironically. He was a fan of cleaned up, stripped down and modern interior design. He had never made a real effort to turn their house into something like that (fortunately; Naruto preferred normal to ‘naked’, as he called it), but always took a liking to those homes on TV.

Naruto guessed that if they were to move through the more official parts, not just the backdoor stairs, the place would be even cooler. But what Naruto saw most of Sasuke’s “little” hideout (wasn’t this an upgrade from a shelter for bikes, by the way?) was the stairs. He had seen the place from the outside and assumed that it would be a pretty tough climb, but... seriously!

The only good thing about it was that it helped Naruto take his mind off the steadily increasing nervousness about seeing Sasuke again. He still hadn’t decided what he wanted to say. Should he go for the ‘sorry for being such a child’? Maybe he could improvise with what Lee had said before and say something like ‘your medicine has arrived’? Or maybe not. It would be a nicer reunion if Gaara didn’t have to sedate Sasuke before ten seconds had passed, and while the guy loved exercise and getting down the stairs would probably be slightly easier than getting up had been, Naruto was pretty sure Lee would prefer it too.

When Gaara finally left the stairs and found them an elevator, Naruto’s lungs were ready to flee from his body, along with his heart and his legs, and he could have kissed whoever invented the elevator. There had been nothing leisured about Gaara’s pace, despite the burden on his back and judging from the numbers above the elevator door they hadn’t come halfway.

The design on this floor followed the same pattern as what Naruto had seen on the first floor; clean and white. It seemed to be an archive of some sort, at least where they were at. Completely deserted.

Except for the actual climbing, the climb hadn’t been nearly as much trouble as Naruto had assumed it would be, with how much fuss there had been from everyone. If the first guys outside the building didn’t count, they had met almost no one. There had been man in a suit on the first floor just before they reached the stairs and a cleaning lady somewhere in the middle of their climb, but no one else. Maybe it was that whole Sunday thing.

Sasuke seemed to have picked a good day to run away on. Or maybe they had just picked a good day for a rescue. It was a bit frustrating though. If there was going to be nothing more than this, Naruto could have done it on his own; if he had managed to get past the first guards. No need to involve Lee and Gaara and his ominous oversized backpack.

Without the usual ‘ping’, the elevator slid open and let them come in. Naruto slumped down on the floor, knees pulled up and arms resting on them, eyes closed.

“I thought you guys said this would be difficult,” he huffed.

“The climb was never the biggest problem,” Gaara said. “Getting to Sasuke is. And getting out again.”

Naruto opened his eyes. The elevator floor was cold.

“It will be fine,” Lee said.

The top floor were decorated (or not decorated) like the first and middle floors had been, only this looked much fancier for some reason. The corridor had a darkness about it, even though there were windows and daylight. It was quiet. Their footsteps echoed.

There were a few doors, but one were bigger than the rest. There was no doorbell beside it and no sign with a last name, but Gaara stopped outside it.

“They know we’re here now,” he said softly. “This floor is closely watched.”

Naruto swallowed. His heart was pounding again, hard. He had forgotten that he didn’t know what to say. A strange feeling had formed inside his chest and made it feel like... like Sasuke wasn’t here. Sasuke wasn’t here, but he wasn’t anywhere else either. It was like he had never been at all. If Naruto turned around and went home now, that house where Sasuke and Kakashi were supposed to live would be still for sale and there would be no used condom in Naruto’s trashcan. It was like during the time Sasuke had been away, he had grown out of reach. He had grown into an unreachable thing that was a fantasy. There was no real Sasuke.

But Gaara knocked on the door.

It took many heartbeats before it opened and Naruto thought that each and every one of them would kill him.

A tall man had opened the door. At least Naruto thought it was a man. He looked kind of girly. It could be the hair. There was something... scary about him, though if someone asked Naruto what it was that made the man scary, he wouldn’t be able to explain. The girly man looked surprised at first. Then he looked amused. His smile was scary; so much that it almost wasn’t a smile at all. He looked at Gaara for a long time before his eyes moved to Lee and Naruto. They didn’t stay away from the redhead very long though.

“Gaara of the Sand,” the man said and for some reason his voice reminded Naruto of the Hag. He didn’t look that old, but maybe he was. “I haven’t seen you since the funeral.”

It was quiet for a moment. What funeral? Gaara said nothing. Eventually the man’s smile faded.

“I assume you’re responsible for the headaches downstairs.”

“Only two of them,” Gaara said.

“Really?” the man raised a brow and his eyes swept over Lee and Naruto again. He had weird eyes, like there was some ‘possible with contacts only’ effect to them. He looked interested for a moment, then seemed to grow bored.

“Tell me why you’re here then,” the man said and sighed. “Surely you didn’t come just to stand here and wait for my men come and execute you for trespassing.”

“I’ve got a bomb,” Gaara said.

Naruto’s eyes snapped away from the tall girly man at that.

“You’ve got a what?” he hissed.

There had been nothing in the hall tactics discussion about a bomb. It was important enough that it should have been mentioned in the tactics discussion, right? How the hell could a bomb be useful? What happened to getting to Sasuke and have him do the diplomacy thing? Though... really, what kind of a diplomat would Sasuke make? Who had come up with that plan and how much sleep had he had before coming up with it? And why hadn’t Naruto thought of this before? He should have thought of it the moment someone (who had it been?) mentioned Sasuke and diplomacy in the same sentence.

Did Gaara really have a bomb? It couldn’t be... Okay, so Naruto knew nothing about bombs in real life, but in the movies a bomb the size of a normal suitcase could take out a whole lot of things. A bomb the size of that thing on Gaara’s back... Naruto did not want to think about it. Someone needed to wake him up pretty damn soon. Preferably Sasuke, with a kiss.

“A bomb,” Gaara replied.

‘Stop saying it!’ Naruto’s mind screamed.

“Vengeance?” the girly man said. He sounded more annoyed than scared, like Gaara was a fly that had landed in his glass of expensive wine. Yeah, he seemed like a wine guy. “Did you suddenly develop a heart and a need to pay me back for your father?”

What about Gaara’s father? Gaara’s father was... Naruto’s eyes widened and his eyes moved back to the man in the doorway. No way...

“It’s not about my heart,” Gaara said.

Then Naruto felt his collar get grabbed and his body pulled closer to Gaara’s, placed in front of Gaara; like a shield between him and the girly man. Naruto swallowed. He felt warmth radiate from Gaara’s body and for a moment the man in front of them looked amused. Until Gaara finished.

“It’s about Uchiha Sasuke’s.”

The amusement dissolved and Naruto found himself run through by eyes that surely could kill. Not hastily run through though; slowly, surely, no need to rush and have it over with. How long the moment lasted couldn’t be said.

“This is the boyfriend,” the voice rasped at Naruto’s mind like a knife against bones. Not a question. Then the mouth spread in a smile again. Would there be nightmares about that smile?

“A bomb indeed,” the man said and chuckled. “Unfortunately, I must say, it will be useless. Sasuke-kun left earlier this morning.”

But it was a lie.

“He said he had to go home.”

It had to be a lie. Naruto supposed that was what repeated in his head when he screamed Sasuke’s name.

.
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