Fish Bird

Fish Bird

by Acacia-Brown

Chapter 6: We used to be friends


***

Naruto stands there for a moment, and then panics. Seriously panics. Full throttle adrenaline rush, lets head for the sky- flushed through with fear.

//Oh GOD who did he kill//

That is, until he realizes that it is his reaction Sasuke is looking for above all else: dark eyes viciously curious. Not the look from someone who has just finished slicing and dicing some poor unsuspecting neighbour.

Naruto breathes slowly out and his blood stills, leaving room for collection and for emotions to stop swirling inside him. They reside in an odd tangy aftertaste of bitter resentment and anger- briefly he tries to swallow it down.

His attention now focused on the sink: there is blood on the white porcelain, blood because Sasuke is bleeding. This time, Naruto looks instead of assuming, notices how the hands are filled and criss-crossed with tiny delicate frisking cuts. Too small, too neat, too exact to have been done by accident- or even by Sasuke’s own hand.

As Naruto stands against the door, his expression changes and the power swing shifts as the ball rolls into his court. He braces himself, muscles tensed for an explosion of energy as the atmosphere veritably crackles with tension. The only sound is of the water gargling down the plug hole, swirling down the old pipes into dank depths below.

“Oh,” he concludes, voice deep and growling. He moves away from the door, footsteps slow and confident, and his cornflower eyes are a deeper blue then Sasuke thinks he’s ever seen before. They smolder almost lazily, like an animal’s in the shadow: watching for its prey to stumble, waiting to leap for the kill.

He watches as Naruto folds his arms, smiling, self-assured and somewhat calculating. Sasuke analyses the unexpected reaction, pushing trails of dark hair from his forehead.

//That’s new. //

“I can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?” sounds Naruto’s voice, as though berating a naughty child. The fox-boy knows this will annoy Sasuke, and it was not unintended. He’s not a fan of having his life turned topsy-turvy, inside out. Neither is he a fan of having his feelings yanked up and spin-dried into a tangled confusing web, that doesn’t know which end is up. He attacks where it hurts the most- the Uchiha’s pride- and watches contemplatively as Sasuke turns to twist the taps off, his expression as expressive as a boulder.

“So you know all about it?” Sasuke asks simply, and he holds out his hands so Naruto can see where the skin has been ripped in thin symmetrical lines. Over the knuckles, in between the fingers to graze sore and painful across the thicker skin of the palm.

“I set the damned thing up,” is Naruto’s chiding reply. He doesn’t mention ‘with line-to-line instructions from Tsunade’ who had badgered him incessantly all the way through his trial-and-error experiments that he was taking far too long.

“You suck as a house guest Sasuke Uchiha. You’re rude and you’re pissy, you don’t say thank you and even worse you’ve always been better looking than me, so I can’t pity you for being uglier then I am.”

“Your cooking makes me sick.” Is Sasuke’s flat and petulant reply, with a sparkle of something in those dark eyes… satisfaction?

“Then make your own food!” Naruto hisses back, quite stung by this, he wasn’t that bad of a cook anymore!

“It would be easier on both of us if you just let me go.”

Naruto’s eyes narrow: cornflower eaten at the corners by an intense, thicker, bloodier colour as a creature called Temper rises inside his core. It seems to flood down his tongue into words, oddly indolent, as he leans forwards.

Inches separate their mouths from one another.

“Oh I think you at least owe me a thank you, don’t you?”

The space between them feels like it is slowly being swallowed. Indeed it narrows when Sasuke takes a step towards his sentinel, quixotic eyes and dark lashes like a crow’s wings noticeably murky with danger:

“Don’t play games like this Idiot, you’ll just end up loosing to me, like you always did and like you always do. Just like when we were kids.”

“But I’m not a child anymore Sasuke, and I was never the sore looser.”

His acid smile almost melts his teeth as he retorts, “You’re still a child with your foolish wants, hopes and dreams. I want out Naruto.”

The blonde shrugs his wide shoulders, but his expression remains intense. “Giving up so soon? Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Take down the barrier.” It is not spoken. It’s snarled.

Naruto pauses for a moment as if considering the demand… “Not likely,” he finally wraps up with a grin. “And don’t think any hissy-fit you throw will change my decision Sasuke.”

The frustration escalates like steam inside a glass tumbler, hot white searing clouds that cling to everything they touch. Sasuke looks down at his hands again and Naruto can make out the lines around his mouth, grim and determined, like he’s backed into a corner and running out of options. Slowly the lips part and the talk begins. The words are slow and considered, as if he’s been thinking about them for a long, long time:

“When I open a window, or the front door, nothing happens. I would have thought that you’d have stopped me from doing that. So I’d have to break the door down, or create a whole in the wall to get out, which would cause me a lot of stress and pain. You might be an idiot, but you’re not blind, you’d notice if I hurled your couch across the room and through the opposite wall. But you didn’t want me to not be able to open the door and windows, but you have made it impossible for me to leave. There’s a barrier across every point of entry, it is invisible to the naked eye, it seems to shift and move and sort of gather like it‘s alive. It follows me about when I move, doesn’t it? It’s held in place with your Chakra, isn’t it? You created it that way. ” He brings his palms up to the ceiling light, inspecting the cuts there.

“It’s very clever, people can come and enter as they please, but I can’t leave because you don’t want me to, it’s your will power that keeps me in place, your prisoner in other words, because you want to keep me here.”

He turns his hands over and looks at the bleeding knuckles.

“I put my hands against it and it threw me five meters back against your kitchen door and into the cupboard where that… that thing is living. In other words,” he looks back up at Naruto, eyes suddenly much harder than a moment ago, “I’m fighting against your psyche.”

Naruto blinks, he’d be a fool to underestimate Sasuke’s powers of scrutiny, but that doesn’t mean he has to like them. He finds them damn annoying actually.

//Why can’t he just leave well enough alone and concentrate on getting better//

“I want you to take it down.” Sasuke reiterates.

//That’s a tall order. //

“No,” Naruto replies bluntly without an infringement of false politeness, and his eyebrows have shot up all the way into his hairline. They are in danger of flying right off the front of his face.

“Take it down.”

“How about… no?”

“Take-it-down!”

“Please don‘t make this so boring. No.”

“Naruto!”

“I don’t take orders from you Sasuke!” he shouts very loudly and all of a sudden, “or anyone else I don’t particularly respect for that matter! Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Naruto, I have to leave here, if you don’t willingly let me, so help me I’ll-”

“Oh you’ll what Sasuke? You’ll what?” Naruto jibes back, arms still firmly crossed, nails digging into the forefront of his elbows, riling the skin and digging it up.

Sasuke is silent, watching Naruto like a shocked panther: tensed and horribly alert, sensing as Uzumaki’s temper slips closer and closer to the Edge as he continues: “You threw everything away once, I’m not letting you run off to Orochimaru again.”

“Can’t-” says Sasuke abruptly as if the word catches in his throat and he’s just avoided coughing up his own tongue. He places one finger to his flushed burgundy lips and looks thoroughly shocked by the word.

Naruto frowns and watches perplexed as Sasuke blinks and recovers and murmurs: “If you won’t let me go willingly Naruto Uzumaki, I’m warning you now, I won’t let you stand between me and what I have to do. I’ll… kill you… if I have to.”

The blonde youth merely glances at him with unconcerned blue eyes; the look probes everywhere and over every inch of Sasuke’s body.

“You- you can’t fight my battles for me,” Sasuke snarls, feeling peculiarly taken advantage of and… embarrassed by the look… it goes everywhere.

Anger crawls under his skin as Naruto moves towards him with an irritating laziness, confident with his movements, and Sasuke leans backwards from his spine feeling threatened. Wide, beautiful, poised smile thrumming along the arching curve of Naruto’s sensual mouth.

“Someone has to, because you certainly can’t,” he follows smoothly, flirting quite boldly with Sasuke’s rage and confusion, and examines as the white-hot emotions spill over. Naruto (unwisely) pushes him further.

//Why not//

Frankly he feels like a fight and he’s been on tender hooks for far too long without venting.

“I’ll kill you,” Sasuke grits out between his back molars, more a grunt than a sentence.

“With what? The toothbrush?” Naruto pokes, pushing really close now. Their noses are centimeters apart, his own eyes as turbulent as waters stained in a crimson sunset.

He widens the grin like a Cheshire cat, and his eyes flicker coquettishly to Sasuke’s mouth and then up again to eyes that are neither inky black or smoky grey but a shade just between.

Sasuke, he notices, flushes: just slightly, barely noticeable, a pink tinge to ivory skin.

Leisurely Naruto reaches into his pocket and pulls out a kunai, holding it idly between his middle and forefinger, swinging the blade back and forth.

Then he throws it forwards and it lands, embedding itself deep into the plaster and wood in the wall just beside Sasuke’s left temple.

The grin gets impossibly wider, yet every inch a fox’s grin, low and seductive, pulling forwards and teasing. Deviously tempting and bewitchingly alluring.

“Go on then- try.”

//Again. //

And with that, he turns his back in one fluid movement and walks out the door. Pausing in the archway, he looks casually back over his shoulder.

Sasuke stands stunned in the middle of the bathroom tiles.

Naruto’s grins turns to something wicked, he winks and just strolls into the hallway.

****

Sasuke remains motionless, seething for what seems an age, fingers trembling as they curl and uncurl from the palm of his hands. He glowers at the doorway Naruto has just so confidently strolled through and turns back to the kunai embedded in the wall behind him.

//It is not your goal, not your intention. //

His fingers glance against the cold handle, corrugated iron bleeds against his fingertips as he slides them across the surface. It’s real alright.

//Why am I doing this? This won’t help anything. //

As if by its own convulsion his hand grabs out, settling the weapon in a deathly firm grip, muscles flex as he pulls it lithely out of the wall in a single yank. Wood splinters and plaster crumbles to a white pile on the slated floor.

Sasuke… in all truth he’s not quite sure of what he’s going to do with it. Something raw and throbbing he needs to know and identify, some urge he has to see through.

Maybe it’s because he’s not used to Naruto getting the better of him, argumentatively or verbally. But it might be the fact that… it’s something he is used to. He’s used to their confliction. He’s on familiar ground here, ground he knows he can win.

He flicks dark hair from his eyes, flexing his limbs, drawing the shoulders back as he slips deadly and silent out of the door. Pale skin contrasts starkly against the bottomless black of his eyes.

Naruto is as expected waiting for him, down the other end of the corridor, face drawn into an eager and savage expression. Sasuke is caught for a moment as the blood pumps harder and faster in his ears by those intense blue eyes waiting… just waiting for him.

“Taijutsu.” Sasuke announces and his voice rings hard and cold down the corridor. It reverberates against the walls before slipping down, deadly and silent to the floor like an encompassing cloak.

It’s too narrow to fight properly- Sasuke finds himself thinking as he braces himself, setting his feet slightly wider apart, that someone has a high probability of going smashing through a wall. But even as he thinks it, he knows Naruto doesn’t give a damn how much they wreck the apartment as long as it blows the tension straight out the window.

// He’d be a fool to underestimate me… and I’d be a fool to underestimate him. //

Naruto looks impatient as he shrugs his jacket from his broad shoulders and tosses it carelessly behind him.

“That’s fine with me,” he calls back bluntly. The intense gaze Sasuke notices never once shifts from him: there’s no break in concentration and the whole air seems to pulse with how much they both want this.

// Playing fairs this time//

Sasuke rolls the iron of the kunai in his hands, feeling the weight of it. He lets his eyes linger for a moment on Naruto’s hitai, and states: “I mean it Uzumaki.”

The blonde youth doesn’t answer.

Instead, he comes at Sasuke in a blinding forward tackle- or rather, what Sasuke interprets as a forward tackle until Naruto completely disappears from in front of him. Caught off guard and cursing himself for letting his attention wander for the briefest instant he jumps backwards: arms flying back for balance as he lands skidding across the smooth wood. The friction makes the floor screech, a burning smoky tinge at the introductory abuse.

His eyes scanning the walls above, to the front and at the sides, his body in simple reflex automatically clenches to summon his sharingan. Except Sasuke knows by the dull throbbing in his chest and wrist, that there is no hope in hell this is going to happen.

It’s on the third step backwards that causes alarm bells to ring like thunder inside his mind, primal instinct in its most refined form-

//Behind you//

- and he ducks, falling flat onto his palms as Naruto aims a blow for the space that his head had been occupying.

The lunge creates a moment of weakness: Naruto hadn’t been expecting Sasuke to drop and he fumbles for a moment, providing the second the Uchiha needs to surge up from the floor. He twists his arms behind him as he rushes skywards, gripping Naruto’s wrists, slamming his back so hard into Naruto’s chest that bone crushes against flesh. Temporarily winded, Naruto goes flying: a hard solid something collides with his crown and the world bursts into bubbling white stars.

He’s down for less than two seconds.

A beautifully fluid body in a seamless motion arrives to drive its foot through Naruto’s skull- but Naruto will have none of it, shaking the sparks of distorted light from his mind and using them to increase his determination. His upper torso contracts and dodges the limb, blocking as Sasuke effortlessly shifts equilibrium, using muscular forearms to balance solely on powerful hands. His second foot swings towards Naruto’s temple- in slow motion, the image is insane: a whole body propelling contorted torso and legs in a circular motion through the air.

Naruto is grazed and has to forcibly bend his spine in a way he knows it isn’t really supposed to go. He is expecting Sasuke to continue with his hands, flipping out of the upside-down position he swung from. The spinning lion strike perhaps or something equally lethal- what he doesn’t expect is the whole torso to just shift like that. Sasuke lifts his body weight upwards, arching his back, before curving back down onto his feet.

The angle of Sasuke’s drop allows him to catch Naruto with a roundhouse blow that glances across his nose. He instinctively backs away as fast as he can, body lowering down the ground, shoulders raised, causing his hands to come into play with his movement as much as his feet do. Parallel to the ground, one foot stretched out behind him and one bent against his side- prepared to fly in any direction. It’s a defensive and animalistic position, something he inherently adopts when the demon inside of him senses a challenge. Eyes fiercely alert, adrenalin pumping like a drug through his blood, as he licks his lips to taste a little metallic blood and the salt of sweat, he watches Sasuke intently.

Sasuke is breathing hard: he’s not quite fully recovered from his ordeal, if he ever will do. Without Chakra, Sasuke’s physical skills are still as strong as ever. Naruto ponders on this as he skids backwards: the Uchiha comes for him again, but he is ready now.

Rolling and dodging he spins, and his fist, spinning with him, crashes into Sasuke’s stomach. The acid and bile that Sasuke spits up is noted with some satisfaction.

But he has no time to take further pride as Sasuke, coughing like he’s going to die, aims a double-handed blow at his head (popular place today). Naruto is quick enough but only just, gripping Sasuke’s approaching wrists and slamming them with force downwards. Wood splinters from the floorboards and fragments into dangerous rugged edged spikes right beside his left temple.

// Now there is another bloody huge hole in this place. Great. //

Naruto suspects Sasuke could probably crush his skull like an egg with his bare hands if he was allowed to get a good enough grip. Bone and muscle can only withstand so much, and it’s not really a very pleasant thought.

Even trapped inside the fuel of the fight, Naruto cannot help but be fascinated by his opponent’s gliding and subtle style. His movement had always been alluring, speed morphing him into deadly silent shadows, fluid as water and twice as strong, he cuts through space like a knife, brutally efficient and to a deadly point.

As he jumps back on the balls of his toes he finds himself laughing at the thought of death, as he’s never done before.

Enjoying it as they circle each other, plaster and panelling pressing against his back, and for a moment, the tiniest moment, he can see what it is about Sasuke Uchiha that makes all the girls crazy about him. The intensity that is now focussed on him, Naruto Uzumaki: totally, entirely concentrated, and on nothing and no one else.

//Not another soul apart from you… do I ever get this feeling with…. //

For some unknown reason it make his body thrum with pleasure.

“Is that the best you’ve got?” he jibes, sunny smile flashing white teeth and blue, blue eyes.

“You’re a lot of talk, Naruto.” Sasuke snaps at him, petulant mouth turning into a firm smile, the first proper, beautiful, funny, delightful, implausible smile that Naruto has seen him form for such a long, long while.

It makes him look human suddenly, a brief glimpse of someone from years ago… and someone he could have been.

“You always talk like you’re the best. But can you prove it?”

Sasuke thinks the expression on Naruto’s face once again becomes seductive as they continue to circle, and it feels like they’re dancing, perfectly in rhythm, effortlessly. Sasuke can sense the slightest tensioning of muscle, bone and cartilage in Naruto’s physique; the pause he makes with his left foot as his mind stumbles across a thought; the way his hands clench when he gets excited and the way his smile tugs his lips up at the corners to reveal passing smirks and the flash of teeth.

It’s the smile that Sasuke’s really watching… it takes him.

“This coming from a guy whose got black and white streaked hair?” The youth jokes back, “You’re prematurely aging from fright Sasuke!”

Sasuke lets out a short sharp burst of laughter, it sounds almost like a cough, “Your stupid wardrobe idiot, it wouldn’t wash out. And even if I was hundred I could still take you out.”

“Ah,” Naruto pauses for thought:

//Sasuke in his room? In his wardrobe? Why//

“Up against a young whippersnapper like me, when you were taken down by a piece of furniture, Uchiha? What hope do you have against the next Hokage?”

As he yells the last two words, he dashes forwards, feinting right, left, then right again. Playing with distraction. He was never as fast as Sasuke was in their youth. In his absence he’s gained distance on him, closing the gap but not close enough. Yet Sasuke only half avoids the attack, and it’s no surprise to either of them when they fall forwards together in an awkward tangle of limbs.

Staggering backwards, there is a loud ‘crack’ as something that sounds like the dull crunch of bone slams against the wall. Naruto’s legs in between Sasuke’s legs, and he can’t stop them from toppling off and down those stairs, the whole flight of stairs, right down to the very bottom.

Is it the idea that Sasuke is ill? The fact that he might of started this fight? Or maybe the remembrance that he’s better off being hurt than Sasuke is?

When he considers it later, Naruto glides across the fact that he couldn’t stand the thought of Sasuke breaking open his skull and spilling his brains across his clean varnished oak wood steps.

Much, much later, he’ll realise that it’s because the idea of Sasuke getting hurt like that in any way, form or manner, when he can’t protect himself, when he’s at a disadvantage, because of him, makes his head ring and his stomach convulse as if he’s physically going to be sick.

// To think I was nearing the point when I might have been able to make you admit to me that I am in fact your equal. //

It’s at that moment, when he subconsciously he pushes Sasuke on top of him, so his spine and his head take the brunt of the hard ‘nackety-thump’ of the steps as they go clumping down them. Teeth clamped down hard in terror that they might slice off their own tongues.

With each jolt Naruto can feel the sharp stinging edge of the kunai pressing into his collarbone, raking against the skin, scoring flesh in small lumps.

As they tumble down the last steps together, Naruto’s cranium colliding with a sickening ‘crunch’ with the corner edge of the wall, he watches multicoloured explosions die down before his eyes. He dimly registers the pressure of another body over his as he lies on his back. Thick blood leaks up from the back of his throat from where he bit his tongue- he fears he might choke on it, and he gags.

“You win,” He says, darkly, voice hoarse and rugged as his lungs convulse and wrack. Through the pounding in his brain, bitter resentment and futility seeming to flood him suddenly as he looks callously up at the ceiling.

// Damn, I was so close, he was smiling at me…. //

Sasuke doesn’t say anything. He seems to be drawing long shuddering breaths. From Naruto’s fuzzy vision, there’s a bloody stain under the arch of one of his eyebrows and his bottom lip is torn- he can‘t quite make out the expression but he pre-supposes it to be a sneering ugly thing.

“Why- why did you do that?” are the only words Sasuke can think of saying, staring at the blonde with incredulous incomprehensibility lying in his eyes.

“Stupidity,” he is told, cornflower blue stained darker from exhaustion, ribbing deepest maroon around the edges of the pupil. “Aren’t you going to kill me?”

Sasuke wonders for a moment at the anger apparent n the youth’s voice, mind still spinning reels from the stairs. He straddles Naruto slowly, considering, and presses the kunai to his throat. He keeps the blade just below the jugular, watching the Adam’s apple bob as he swallows.

“So go on then, do it. Kill me.”

Black eyes blink, but no movement, no killing strike, no malevolence, no hatred just blind confusion.

“Wasn’t fair,” Sasuke mumbles, and he begins to sit back, “Didn’t win. I can’t…won’t.”

Naruto snarls, exposing overly long canines in a mouth of human teeth. He doesn’t want the Uchiha to act noble, not now of all times, not when he’s trying to convince himself that there’s nothing left there to save.

//Monster… You deserve to die… You don’t deserve to live. //

“You swore on it.”

// Die//

Sasuke licks his lips, but his hands don’t move. They seem frozen in place and he’s suddenly very aware of the fact that’s he’s straddling Naruto.

Naruto who isn’t twelve anymore, Naruto who is now an adult, mature, and strangely masculine- or at least it seems this way to Sasuke, the idea of sexuality pulsing at the back of his throat, and he shifts uncomfortably.

This is Naruto.

Naruto for fuck’s sake!

Naruto who drives him mad, who makes him want to scream, who makes him want to cry, whom he wants to lie down next to and fall asleep with because no other place on earth is so secure.

His wrist flexes, and he makes to draw the kunai away, to throw it behind him and get up and walk away with his remaining dignity.

But Naruto- his Naruto, Naruto who is looking up at him with a curious mixture of self-loathing, bitter resentment and hate, stops him. The hand clamps down unmercifully tight on his wrist, holding it there; eyes, those cornflower eyes slipped with deep mauve blemishing and tarnishing the iris, holding him there.

“Go on Sasuke, do it. Finish what you started.”

Sasuke doesn’t move. He can smell dust and crumbling plaster on the air mixed with the aroma of their perspiration. It is rich and thick on his tongue and he seems to swallow it down his throat: life essence, something he associates with living, breathing bodies.

His heart races, and he blinks again, forcing himself to think outside the walls, wrenching thoughts away from Naruto. Listening to the rain pattering against the window as the storm clouds roll in, grey and thick. Listening to lightening darts striking the earth, leaving trails of ozone meandering in the air, drawing it closer and making it warm and muggy.

Sasuke’s eyes fix on where Naruto’s fingers lace and fasten against his own.

Their heartbeats seem to mingle.

// I couldn’t kill you then... why should I be able to kill you now?//

//…This might be your only chance, Sasuke. I’m willing; go ahead…what have I got left to loose//

//…I won‘t kill you…//

// Just do it, don’t make me wait, end it now but don’t let it linger… don’t you dare toy with me… don’t you dare. //

// Let me go, let me leave. Please… please, please, please…//

// The worst part was when you called me a monster… I know you weren’t lying… I could forgive a lie Sasuke Uchiha. //

// I can never tell you what I want to out loud… I can never say… Please… understand. //

// This game ends now. //

To his horror Naruto pulls the blade and his hand down to his clavicle and up to the soft flesh, unguarded by hard bone, all pulsing tissue, malleable to the touch.

He applies pressure against Sasuke’s hand. All the time his eyes never moving from Sasuke’s face, watching as it contorts in surprise and then terror as the clean sharp edge digs a smooth line into the skin, drawing blood.

The harder Naruto presses against his hand the deeper it goes in. A swelling of crimson blossoms across the line of the cut, and dribbles on the sheen of smooth iron, jolting Sasuke out of his stunned reverie. He rips his hand back, kunai clattering bloody to the floor.

“Stop it!” he yells, enraged that Naruto simply lies there and watches him do it, he opens his mouth lazily and responds: “Maybe I was hoping you’d follow something through for once.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit!” Sasuke snarls, more panicky that he thought he could be, hands shaking and heart pounding like it will skip out of his throat. “How can you become Hokage if you die first? Or do you enjoy pain, you masochist? In which case-”

And he draws back his fist and punches the blonde youth beneath him, fist recoiling back and up again like a piston, body flooded with cold icy rage, rage that burns when Naruto just turns the other cheek, and laughs bitterly back at him.

“And what about you? I thought you meant to kill me? Or was that all an act? Like everything is? Like every word you say ends up being, either a lie or a broken empty promise,” he spits out his words like bullets.

“I’m not playing with you Naruto you idiot. I meant what I said.”

“Oh did you- so when you’ve killed me, where will you go?”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“Like hell, it does!”

“You shouldn’t care!” There seems to be an edge of desperation to Sasuke’s voice as he yells this, eyes glittering and intense, hands firm against Naruto’s chest as he leans down, looking directly into his eyes.

“But I do!” More anger, mouth curved down, stubbornness and rigidity built and wielded into every line. It drives Sasuke crazy.

“You’re an idiot then, you shouldn’t …don’t!”

The world lurches as Naruto surges up and pins him down easily beneath him; a drop of blood splatters onto Sasuke’s neck from Naruto’s, and slides down his skin onto the floor Those dark whisker-like scars are sunken in his cheeks.

For a fleeting instant Sasuke has the urge to trace them with his forefinger and run his fingertips across Naruto’s cheekbones.

“Why do you think all your actions exist in isolation? Why don’t you understand that it effects me?! Why didn’t you understand that when you left you ripped me -us! …Sakura… she was so lonely…I didn’t want her to be alone- I… didn’t want to be… I’m… it’s… it hurts, it still hurts.” Naruto’s voice cracks, and pain, physical pain and meaning is communicated in each vocal movement and syllable; breathless on the out breath, body shivering.

“It hurts so much, and you just keep pushing and pushing!” he was yelling now, palms a raw and throbbing pressure on Sasuke’s shoulders. The hard weight of the floor boards and iron nails are pushing painfully into his skull.

“You just don’t care do you? I do- I do- I can’t stop caring and hurting…” his voice trails off and he squeezes his eyes closed, burning. His body drops an inch lower so he’s almost lying on top of Sasuke, awkward odd angle, jutting elbows and scraping knees but Sasuke will tolerate it, for Naruto.

“I’m so tired of bleeding all over the place and having to avoid thinking about you. Justifying and defending you… over and over to others and then myself… even when I know you’re just going to let me fall all over again. When you came back… I thought, this is it! We can finally go back to the way it was before. But we can’t even stand to be in the same room together, can we? It’s so hopeless! It’s so hopeless. Why have I not given up on you? Why do I still… feel… this way… so strongly?” His whole face flushed, blush creeping up onto his cheeks as he presses fingers to his forehead and then his mouth, as if to hide the words that are over-flowing.

“Why can’t I just learn to let you go?” It’s a little less then a murmur, but then he falls and the strength of the sound is inconsequential to Sasuke, as it echoes in his head, and he finds Naruto collapsing on top of him, nose pressing against the junction of his neck, eyes… closed.

// Oh God… he’s unconscious//

Sasuke Uchiha lies rigid under the blonde dead weight atop him, ruler straight in panic. “Help!” he says to the ceiling in a little under a whisper.

He lies slack for a moment, not even daring even to breathe. His head turns a fraction to the left, and says in low growling tones into Naruto’s ear, “Get off me.”

There is no response.

For a brief moment Sasuke thinks about how highly uncomfortable this all is, with Naruto’s hip jutting into his lower abdomen. A slightly bloody strand of hair hangs across Naruto’s eyes, and the tang of blood ebbs slightly in Sasuke’s mouth. But he can smell the blond boys hair, and his skin: soap mixed with the fresh scent of sweat and earth. He can feel the muscle definition of Naruto’s legs and upper torso through his clothes.

// Stop it! Stop it! That’s enough//

Sasuke twist and rolls, throwing off the dead weight, so that Naruto slides onto his back. His eyes remain closed, his breathing somewhat laboured and ragged. Licking his lips, Sasuke gets to his knees and stretches out his hand, brushing against the Kitsune’s forehead, and then recoils like he’s been stung.

// Stupid idiot; he has a stupid fever. //

And he glares at Naruto as if he’s done it on purpose.

Sasuke rocks back onto his haunches, and considers. Does he leave Naruto here? He really is perfectly defenceless in this position, unconscious, probably dehydrated, starving, and running a temperature that could melt plastic.

He pokes Naruto experimentally with his foot in the ribs. The fool just groans, a deep noise right from his stomach, mouth contorted into a line of pain.

He leans down now and shakes Naruto by the shoulders, figuring it can’t be good that he’s passed out. Sasuke’s hands come away damp with sweat. The blonde youth simply lies limp and placid, like a sack of wet noodles, bones seemingly slipping and sliding inside a casket of flesh.

“Listen, you didn’t hit your head that hard,” Sasuke states whilst wondering if the fluttering in his stomach is to do with repressed nerves. “I’m warning you Uzumaki, if this is some kind of joke…”

There’s not so much as even a quiver of a response from Naruto, and Sasuke finds himself rather missing that idiotic, blithe smile. He allows himself a brief moment to think, leaning back, fingers drilling against his temples and sliding through the front curtains of his hair.

“What’s wrong with you?” Sasuke asks himself, knowing full well he’s not going to get an answer but asking it anyway because it needs to be said. The slight panic, he concludes, is from his own knowledge that he’s never been very good when it comes to looking after other people. By nature, Sasuke Uchiha is not very empathetic to the needs and wants of others; he’s far too self-centred. Sakura was always good at that sort of thing, the best out of all of them.

Maybe, Sasuke thinks, that was the reason why Naruto chose a life with Sakura, someone who understood him: riddled as he is with thousands of little misgivings, doubts, and plights, bubbling under the constant determination of ‘I have to get better, so that people will like me.’

// Who is going to accept me for who I am//

Sakura accepts him, she accepted both of them, and Sasuke thinks, frowning, that she probably loves the fool too, in her way- different from the way he knew she loved him.

How could she not love Naruto?

In the face of loosing to Sakura, the Uchiha grimaces, baring his teeth and the pink slip of his tongue in a dark mouth.

This empathy, this touchy-feely, delicate nonsense is not his forte, and even as he bends down, bracing his knees and fidgeting before he starts, he recollects the fact that he really has no idea of what to do.

He’s half inclined to take a bucket of ice water and dunk it all over the blonde’s head, but that might cause Naruto to have a heart attack that really would kill him, and this, for the moment is not Sasuke’s intention.

He hoists Naruto up, so his head leans flopping against his shoulder, muttering: “Idiot-idiot, dumb ass, moron, block head, twit…” and an assortment of other variations on this theme. He pulls his torso up so that he is standing, and Naruto is leaning fully against him, legs dragging across the floor.

Sasuke bravely pushes down the panic that’s swelling up inside as he tries to navigate the youth so he can wind one arm around Naruto’s shoulder as they approach the stairs. He staggers slightly under the weight-

// The idiot is pretty heavy after all…. //

- and he eases him gently up the stairs, or as gently as can be humanely managed, which in retrospect Sasuke has to admit wasn’t very gentle at all. Navigating with a dead weight is much harder then it would seem to be, especially when Sasuke slips at one point and the weight causes him to impale his stomach on the banister. Naruto slides down his shoulder and almost falls all the back way down the stairs again. Cursing his clumsiness and Naruto’s bone-headed testosterone-driven stupidity, he manages to make it up the stairs, only to pause on the landing as he recollects briefly that he can’t put Naruto in his own room because of… ah… ‘The Mess’….

Sasuke can see round the side of the half open door and quickly retreats from it. No, he’s definitely going to have to go in the room he’s been using. It’s not too much of a great deal; he’ll just have to sleep on the floor.

// Let’s hope he grew out of that sleep talking habit. //

Dragging and hauling Naruto across the bedroom, he tosses him with glorious relief onto the bed, stretching out his shoulders, and working out the kinks in his neck that seemed to have formed there.

The mattress creaks, the springs sagging and bouncing with the broader weight, and Sasuke looks critically at Naruto who does nothing more then lie there breathing shallow. Little rapid breaths and eyebrows clenched together as if in pain.

// What do I do with you then, huh//

First things first, he can’t sleep in those clothes. If Sasuke had come across Naruto lying in the hallway with a fever a few days earlier, he realises he probably wouldn’t have gone to the effort of caring whether damp clothes would make the Fox’s condition worse. Would he even have carried him upstairs? Would he have cared at all?

But Sasuke tactically avoids such thoughts.

“Naruto,” Sasuke says again, “I’m going to need you to take off your clothes for me.”

It sounds wrong.

// …I… NO. Mind… thoughts… no. Don’t get ideas. //

But the blonde is about as responsive as a rock. Sasuke leans down across him and tries again: he’s not going to do this unless he really, really has to.

“Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Naruto!”

Absolutely nothing. Becoming more desperate, Sasuke uses the back of his hand to slap him across his cheeks once in order to get himself some sort of response.

The Kitsune gives him nothing in return, not so much as a flicker of a reply to acknowledge that he’s here, alive and still breathing. Sasuke finds himself analysing the face as his stomach claws down unexplained panic. There’s a slight discolouring of the skin around the eye socket from where Sasuke punched him earlier. If the Fox’s metabolism is working, it’s working slower then usual: he’d expect a mark like that to not even register on Naruto’s complexion, seeing as how lightly he’d punched him.

Sasuke grinds his teeth and considers the penalties on his own conscience if he just leaves Naruto here to get better by himself. Little flames of indignation burst up and down his system at the mere thought of it. It’s a dishonourable thing to do, here he was alive-something he hadn’t expected to still be- and here Naruto was ramming himself up against a mountain-wide brick wall, because… because….

He sighs noisily and clicks his teeth together. Fingers flex as they move haltingly in little jerky movements to Naruto’s stomach, running smoothly under the material of the white t-shirt he’s wearing.

// Well… here goes nothing. //

He pulls it up over Naruto’s torso. Naruto’s body flops awkwardly and more the point unhelpfully backwards against the motion, so that Sasuke has to fight to get it past his shoulders, then over his head- nearly scraping off both of his ears in the process- and finally pulling Naruto’s arms out- all the time with a dark scowl on his face.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he mumbles, actively keeping his eyes on Naruto’s face once the supple flesh of his torso has been exposed. He can half feel the milky cappuccino skin thrumming with heat just beneath him. His face stupidly feels as if it’s burning.

He throws the shirt of the floor somewhere; he’ll pick it up in a minute after he’s… finished with this.

Sasuke sits for a moment, breathing as if he’s just run a marathon. Now to that question of ‘does he throw Naruto under the covers wearing those trousers?’ Does he dare think about taking them off him, and if he does… is Naruto wearing anything underneath them?

Sasuke finds himself resisting the urge to slam his head against the wall and repeat the motion over and over again several times. Or, more satisfyingly, slam Naruto’s.

// Okay…so…just check first//

Here’s another thing he’d never thought he’d do, blushing heavily, he even closes his eyes as he lays pale fingers over the lower half of Naruto’s stomach. The blonde twitches slightly in his state of unconsciousness, and mumbles something incoherent, as one does in the middle of a high fever.

It’s not really helping anything.

His fingers brush lower and lower until they touch the top of Naruto’s trouser waist band and the Uchiha hesitates. He gathers the rest of his nerves and slides his thumb underneath it, just a fraction. He tries to ignore the half of his brain that is screaming at him how unbelievably kinky the whole thing is, whilst the other half in clumsy determination grates itself to finish what he has started.

Eyes squeezed shut, not daring to move any lower he rubs the digit of his thumb in a smooth circle on the skin down there, keeping firmly to the far right: he can’t feel anything except burning flesh, and so very slowly he moves a little lower. Barely a centimetre until the pad brushes against something above the skin, soft like cotton.

Sasuke jerks his hand out from Naruto’s trousers as though stung by a wasp, and opening his eyes catches sight of himself in the mirror. He considers the simple fact that he could probably fry several large eggs on his face right now if he really dared to try.

After removing Naruto’s last articles of outdoor clothing- which Sasuke discovers is actually quite hard when you’re trying to do it with your eyes closed and your hands trying desperately to not touch anything important- he mutters something dripping with sarcasm, as he actually has to wipe his brow. He had had to wrestle Naruto’s trousers off his legs and feet, before, in his flustered state, he’d seen the sense in removing the shoes.

He has to admit to himself, he hadn’t really thought it through a hundred percent.

// Not that he had wanted to in the first place anyway. //

He acrimoniously throws the covers over the blonde and fights the urge to shuffle sheepishly out of the room and wash his skin with bleach.

Instead he goes down to the kitchen, rifles through several draws for a clean dishtowel and opens the freezer- to his great misfortune, as the frozen contents proceed to rain down on him. Sasuke glares inwardly at the mocking feeling of deja-vu. Showering his skin are frozen peas and a square block of ice that looks as though it might contain a dead fish.

Later, when Sasuke is quite sure he’s suppressed the god-awful-scream that threatened to skewer his system and rise through his lungs at realisation of just what had been in that ice block, he trudges back into Naruto’s room. He thrusts the iced towel onto the Kitsune’s forehead, dumps a bucket of ice by his bed, sits down heavily in the middle of the floor, flops backwards; and considers what on earth to do next.

// Sick people are supposed to eat right? Make him something to eat, and make yourself something to eat while you’re at it. //

Sasuke closes his eyes, kneading his forehead with his knuckle, and gives a long suffering exhalation of breath. One flaw with this brilliant plan: he can’t cook… anything. Well this is a lie, he can cook toast, but he burns it until it’s almost inedible. Naruto needs something at least resembling vegetables and some kind of protein and complex carbohydrates, he figures. He can’t do that, and he out right, point blank, thrust the gun against my forehead, refuses to give him that instant Ramen nonsense he happens to know Naruto has hidden underneath the sink… piles of it. He drums his fingers against the floorboards and meditates. So, he can’t cook. Naruto cannot move, let alone cook.

Sasuke’s stomach makes a mournful, rumbling sound.

There is a simple solution to this really, Sasuke decides, getting to his feet and brushing off his hands as he walks out of the door. Get someone else to cook for you.

***

There is steam coming up from the backroom that wafts delicious, succulent and tempting out into the front of the shop and seating area. A few customers are sitting on stools, chatting and eating their full bowls of noodles, soup, meat and vegetables. The head chief is leaning on the counter, chatting to a long time customer. He cleans his greasy hands on the front of his apron as he converses, one elbow propped up on the smooth wood:

“Oh yes, had them here for years now. Funny thing went very quite that way about two weeks ago, spooked people I heard. Like the whole island disappeared, huge great hole I was told appeared about five miles west of there as if someone had carved a great scoop out of the earth.”

A man in his fifties with long grey hair over a fierce face that is streaked with red paint, looks up interestedly up at this. He peers over the top of the book he is reading, slurping a great mouthful of noodles.

The phone rings on the wooden wall behind the chief who yells over his shoulder for Yumi. A pretty girl in her early twenties emerges from the kitchen, bringing out swathes of steam with her. Short, dark, curly hair in her eyes and piled on top of her head, she picks up the phone in one hand and a notebook and pencil with her other. She pulls a face as she balances the phone on her shoulder and prepares herself to write at the same time:

“Ichiraku, how can I help you?”

Jiraiya goes back to his book and eating as the subject turns to the weather, keeping an eye on the girl out of the corner of eye: he likes the way she stands, feet firmly planted apart, confident position.

“Now… is that two or three servings you’re asking for, sir? …Oh I see, you’re not sure how much he eats. May I ask if you’re going to eat as well? …What would I recommend? What do you usually like to eat? …No I’m afraid I’ve never heard of that. No spices? And… you don’t like sour, not too salty either… Okay, something bland then for you? Alright I’ll put you down for Shio soup Ramen then shall I? Oh! …Alright, one of everything- are you very sure? Deliver to where? …Oh …OH! That’s Naruto’s apartment, isn’t it?”

Everybody turns round and looks at her as she grins: “Yes, we make deliveries there all the time, don’t worry. I could make it there blind folded. Fast? Absolutely.” she winks at the chief, who smiles fondly at the receiver as she puts it down.

“So he’s alive then is he?” the chief rumbles, readjusting his hat. “He hasn’t been in here for a little over a month,” he tells the restaurant in general. “We were all starting to worry he’d fallen off the face of the earth!”

Jiraiya flips another page of the book he’s reading and finishes his bowl.

“Lady friend was it, ordering for him?” continues the chief.

Yumi grins as she puts the pad and paper back in her pocket. “Guy actually, didn’t recognise the voice, apparently Naruto couldn’t get to the phone.”

A stunned silence falls, and Jiraiya, suddenly interested all over again, peers over the top of the book, grinning from ear to ear.

The chief laughs, and then he whistles: “Was it indeed? Young devil, you’ll just have to go see and report back here and tell us- won’t she?” he asks the customers, all of which nod and some applaud.

Well, thinks Jiraiya, pushing away the empty bowl and standing up to leave. This just became all very interesting all of a sudden. He chuckles to himself and leaves the waitress a tip. Interesting enough to maybe, drop a look in on….

***

TBC