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: July 1st 2008, Tuesday

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This is a whole new chapter that I added when I wanted the beginnings to take some more time and involve some more... action!

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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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06: Hands on communication

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Surprised girls screamed high-pitched screams that only girls could pull off and a guy yelped and jumped out of the way. Then the school corridor was silent.

Naruto couldn’t remember the last time he’d been punched that hard in the face. Lee never punched that hard in his face. Lee never punched that hard anywhere. It must have been someone from training; you weren’t supposed to aim for the head, but sometimes accidents happened.

The very taste of violence exploded inside his head, along with pain and stars, as he instinctively put his hand where the punch had landed. His back connected with a wall and he stumbled backwards. When his eyes snapped up Sasuke’s were there to meet them. Anger was flaring in those dark gorgeous things, dancing, like sparks. Even snarled up in rage, the guy was beautiful. His hair looked angrier now than it had looked ten seconds ago, but that had to be just Naruto’s imagination.

“Stay away from me,” Sasuke growled slowly. There was apparently no need for bad language when you had already used violence. He was tense, his fists shaking.

Naruto gave the words a second’s thought, for the sake of thinking before acting. Then he leaped at his as infuriating as he was beautiful future wife and Sasuke’s eyes widened with surprise just before the fist found his face.

-

Naruto was sure that if he and Iruka, the car and the drive to school had been in a cartoon, they would have taken the turns on two wheels, the whole vehicle bending impossibly out of shape. You shouldn’t drink and drive everyone always said, but no one ever mentioned not driving when you were angry. Someone should mention that to Iruka. Though Naruto supposed he might not remember it when it mattered, or care.

“I cannot believe this!” the man yelled, hands gripping the steering wheel. “I told you to be nice to him! Since when does being nice include fist fighting!?”

The library flashed past the window, along with the town center traffic lights that had just turned red. Naruto closed his eyes and held on to the car door harder. A disapproving fellow car driver honked.

“Oh! Like you ever stop when it’s yellow!” Iruka yelled.

“It was red,” Naruto muttered, low enough that it wouldn’t reach the driver’s seat. He dared to open his eyes again. The world was still flashing by outside the window.

Naruto’s teacher had called Iruka at work. She had called Sasuke’s foster dad too. They were having a meeting after school to talk about what had happened. They had already talked about what happened, of course, but would do it again when their parents were present. ‘We take physical violence very seriously at this school,’ their homeroom teacher had said, aiming it mostly at Sasuke, though Naruto got his share of glare as well. After Gaara, what school wouldn’t take physical violence seriously?

“You’ve been bullying him!”

“I... I have not!” Naruto exclaimed, because that was just ridiculous and ‘just ridiculous’ had a tendency to distract Naruto from his survival instincts.

“They say you’ve been bothering him since he arrived!”

“I’ve been nice! He’s been an asshole, I have been nice!”

“If someone tells you to leave him alone...” Iruka turned the steering wheel so hard to the left that Naruto was pressed to the door. “...You leave him alone! You do not start fighting in...!”

“He started it!”

“You kept going!”

“What was I supposed to do? Let him beat me up!?”

Okay, so Sasuke probably would have walked away after that first punch if Naruto hadn’t punched him back, but Iruka didn’t know that. The man took the car for a flight around one last turn, onto the nearly empty school parking lot. The vehicle came to a screeching stop and Iruka turned to Naruto.

“Yes,” he hissed. “You should have let him beat you up. Then you should have apologized for whatever it was that you did to him, because I know you did something, and then you should have left him alone. If you had done that, I would have known that you’re at least somewhat capable of listening when I tell you to do something and you wouldn’t have been nearly as grounded as you are now.”

Iruka unbuckled his seat belt and left the car. For a moment Naruto sat shaking with hundreds of arguments why just thinking the thought of such a response to a punch in the face was atrocious. Sometimes Naruto wondered if he had an adoptive father or an adoptive mother.

“Get out of the car!” Iruka yelled from half a parking lot away. Naruto grumbled, unbuckled himself and got out. As if they were late instead of twenty minutes early.

-

Naruto had left Lee’s house on Saturday two days earlier even more frustrated than when he had come. Most of the rest of the weekend had been spent in front of the Playstation because fighting games were good distractions. Iruka had taken him shopping on Sunday, saying he should get out of the house for a bit. ‘You need more friends you can spend time with,’ he had said. It was a semi-clever disguise for ‘make sure you make friends with Sasuke-kun’. Iruka had asked Naruto several times during the week that had passed, about how things were going with Sasuke. Naruto had tried to say as little as possible, he didn’t want to lie but he also didn’t want Iruka to start worrying. He already knew Iruka’s opinion on the matter anyway. ‘Be nice, no pushing.’

Naruto had managed to oversleep on Monday, his three hours too early awakening messing up the entire morning. He’d made it to the bus just before the doors closed, panting and shoe laces untied. Sasuke had already been seated, a pretty girl on one side of him and the window on the other. Naruto had thrown a ‘morning, Sasuke’ between pants at him as he slumped down in an empty seat and Sasuke had thrown a murderous glare back, forcing Naruto to shift in his seat and look away. How a murderous glare could be so hot was a mystery.

In the question of reason versus guts and hormones, Naruto had decided to trust his guts, while trying to make sure the hormones didn’t boss him around too much. Reason and intellect just wasn’t his thing he had realized, around the time he saw the pretty girl flirt with Sasuke on the bus.

Before first class and during it Sasuke had ignored Naruto, a nice change from the curses of the previous week, but at the same time frustrating. Why did Sasuke have to be so damn stubborn about not liking Naruto? Didn’t he get tired of being pissed off all the time? Or at least find some other way to express himself?

On the break between first class and second, in the middle of Naruto asking Sasuke if he’d had a nice weekend, Sasuke found a new way to express himself. The fist had come so suddenly that Naruto hadn’t had a chance to avoid it.

They had rolled around on the school corridor tiles for a good long time. A few guys had tried half-heartedly to stop them at first but given up; probably thinking it was about time. It had been a fairly even fight too; Sasuke, despite being skinny and gorgeous, had really known how to punch, would probably land somewhere between Lee and Naruto on the skill chart; but Naruto had made up for his lack of technique with fierceness and creativity.

It hadn’t been until two teachers came and dragged them apart that their bodies had stopped touching; but their eyes had still been glued together, Sasuke for once not the only one glaring. Naruto’s heart had been beating hard with adrenaline and he had barely noticed the aches of his body. They had both been bleeding from small wounds here and there, clothes and hair disheveled. There had been a tear in Sasuke’s shirt.

They had been steered to the nurse’s office first. The biology teacher, a tall and big guy, stayed to make sure they didn’t start fighting again while the school nurse looked them over. She had clearly been angry, asking what had happened and muttering as she batted their wounds clean, poked around to check for more serious injuries and patched them up. ‘You’re supposed to be a good kid, Naruto,’ she had said while pressing a large band-aid hard to his head.

Having been seated next to him on the bed draped in hospital paper, Naruto had felt the heat waving off Sasuke’s body. He had thrown angry glances in the frustrating, beautiful guy’s direction and Sasuke had answered them with equal fury. Surprisingly, but fortunately, impure thoughts and hard-ons had been far away.

Their homeroom teacher had come in half way through their examination, demanding to know what had happened. ‘He punched me!’ and ‘he pissed me off’ had not been explanation enough. She had told biology teacher to bring them to classroom B6 for a talk when they were done.

Classroom B6 had been empty at first. Apparently they had been deemed calm enough not to relapse because biology teacher had given them a semi-serious ‘behave yourselves now’ and a wink before he left. He hadn’t seemed nearly as distressed by the fight as the others. Naruto had always liked that teacher.

For a minute or so, they had been alone. ‘Fucking moron,’ Sasuke had muttered. ‘Bastard,’ Naruto had muttered, leaving out any embellishing adjectives because he had worried ‘frustrating’ might come out as ‘gorgeous’. Because even with the violence and Naruto’s now aching body, Sasuke was still gorgeous. Maybe even, even though it didn’t make sense, even more gorgeous, if that was possible.

Then the homeroom teacher had showed up with the school counselor and they had spent half an hour asking again what had happened and explaining how serious and unacceptable this kind of behavior was. At the end Naruto and Sasuke had been informed that the school would call their parents and that they would all meet again to talk more. The school counselor had said that they were welcome to come by her office if they wanted to talk alone. The homeroom teacher had added that they were going to have to do that anyway, talk to the school counselor.

Talk, talk and talk. All the words and promises of more words had made Naruto itchy. The physical had been much easier. The physical had been... There had been a quite strange feeling among the aching muscles and forming bruises and burning wounds. A good feeling. It had felt like they had talked about something when they had rolled around in the corridor. As others had conversations or arguments, they had spoken with their fists. And it had worked! As in, it had served its purpose. It had done what conversations usually did. It was like where the words, Naruto’s being nice and Sasuke’s being an asshole, had misfired, their hands had come out right. It had felt like Naruto’s struggle for a relationship with Sasuke had taken a leap forward with those punches in the corridor.

It hadn’t felt like they were two enemies that need to make peace, sitting in classroom B6 listening to reasons why violence was never a solution to a problem; it had felt like they were allies and the world around just didn’t understand what they were doing. Like they had started a secret club with only two members, and while they hadn’t worked out all the details about what kind of club it was or what they would be doing in it, they had agreed they wanted to have a club together. Sasuke wanted to have a club together with Naruto.

Naruto’s brain had tried to tell him that that was just wishful thinking, insane optimism because he didn’t want to face what was really going on, but his guts hadn’t listened. Sasuke had felt closer than ever before in that classroom.

The feeling had stayed with Naruto all day. Through classes and breaks; through girls telling Naruto with their eyes that they wanted to beat him up and guys congratulating Naruto for finally breaking out of his wimp act; through Gaara making dirty connections with ‘rolling around on the floor’ and ‘hands all over each other’. There had been something new in Sasuke’s murderous glares; Naruto’s brain failed all its attempts to convince Naruto otherwise. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was that had been added, but it was something and it was good. Murderous mixed with... ‘We’re in the same secret club’. Naruto had liked it. He had glared back when Sasuke glared at him, but behind the glare and his arms crossed over his chest had been a smile. They were in the same secret club.

-

Hours after they’d left it the first time, Naruto and Sasuke were back in classroom B6, now with Iruka and Kakashi to back up homeroom teacher and school counselor. They sat opposite each other, with the parents opposite each other next to them and homeroom teacher and school counselor next to each other at yet another side of the table.

They were going over the whole thing again; what had happened, what would be done to correct whatever had gone wrong and make sure it never happened again. Iruka and Kakashi agreed more or less wholeheartedly with the teachers. Sometimes they asked Naruto or Sasuke something, sometimes Naruto just couldn’t keep quiet (when the bullying accusations came up, for example), but mostly the grownups talked with each other. There was plenty of time for letting the eyes wander.

Sasuke was beautiful despite band aids and bruises, despite dark blue skin around one of his eyes. His arms were crossed over his chest and he was scowling as usual, not looking at Naruto most of the time. There was next to nothing between them. If he wanted to Naruto could kick Sasuke’s legs under the table.

Kakashi didn’t look nearly as angry as Iruka did, not angry at all actually. Except when the teachers or Iruka looked at him, waiting for agreement that this kind of behavior was unacceptable; then he put on a stern mask of ‘oh, yes, definitely, completely unacceptable.’ Naruto was sure that Sasuke wasn’t grounded.

This was Naruto’s fourth time meeting the man. First had been that very first time when Naruto had met Sasuke and found out what his future had in store for him when it came to marriage. Naruto hadn’t paid much attention to Kakashi that time. Second time was Tuesday or Wednesday, a week earlier; the man had come over and given Iruka a box of homemade cookies as thanks for the cinnamon buns on Sunday. They hadn’t been homemade by him, the cookies, but it had said homemade on the box. Third time was just yesterday, when he had come over to pick up Iruka because they were going shopping.

Kakashi was a pretty cool guy, much friendlier than Sasuke. He didn’t seem to be nearly as demanding as Iruka was, about school and brushing your teeth and such things. Sasuke was smoking, wasn’t he? And he wasn’t hiding it. Naruto didn’t even want to think about what Iruka would do if Naruto started smoking. And fighting in school! Kakashi didn’t seem at all angry. Maybe enough years around Sasuke got you used to things like that.

Kakashi looked Naruto’s way then and winked; cheerful, his stern mask gone in a second.

Sasuke gave a snort-sigh that sounded more embarrassed than angry and Naruto glanced his way. Their eyes met and for a half-second or so, though it felt like much longer, Sasuke indeed did not look as angry as he had looked a moment before. There was something in his eyes and it was not just because of the bruising.

“Oh, it won’t happen again, I assure you,” Iruka’s angry voice pulled Naruto away from Sasuke. “If I hear anything more about you bullying anyone, I swear, you will be grounded until you’re thirty.”

“I told you,” Naruto whined, feeling his cheeks flush as the stupid bullying idea came up again. “I have not been bullying him! Have I been bullying you!?”

He turned to back to the future wife opposite him, but Sasuke just snorted and looked away. The guy had been awfully quiet the whole time; no curses, no insults, no nothing. When he had to reply to something he just grunted as few words as he could.

“Even if you don’t feel you have been bullying him,” school counselor said. “Sasuke-kun might feel that you have.”

“But I haven’t!” Naruto yelled. “And he doesn’t feel that! He’s been...!”

“Sit down, Naruto,” Iruka hissed and yanked at Naruto’s shirt to pull him back to his chair, Naruto first then aware that he’d stood up. “And stop screaming.”

Naruto grumbled and crossed his arms over his chest.

“If I’ve been bullying him then he’s been bullying me back,” he muttered, sent another glare in Sasuke’s direction. “I feel bullied too.”

Sasuke snorted again and glared back.

-

Naruto really hadn’t expected what happened on Tuesday. Monday evening, after cleaning the bathroom so thoroughly he could eat his breakfast off the tiles behind the toilet and before falling asleep Naruto had decided that this time he should definitely try the brain plan, no matter what the girls did. Not even if they stripped and threw themselves at Sasuke would Naruto try to be nice to him. They were already in the same secret club, despite the glares. Huge accomplishments had been made. Naruto wouldn’t risk screwing that up, he would be saint from now on. No one would ever be able to call him a bully again.

So what had happened that Tuesday morning on the bus? Naruto had no idea. His body had moved on its own. His mind had screamed in protest, but his legs just wouldn’t listen. His vocal cords or facial muscles wouldn’t listen either.

It could have been innocent. He could have been nice about it, said it differently and left out the teasing grin that he knew had been decorating his face. But no. Maybe it was the embodiment of stubborn stupid male pride that had possessed him.

Naruto had been slightly late that morning too, Sasuke again already seated when he climbed up the short stairs onto the bus. None of the girls had had time to take the seat next to him though, unfortunately. Male pride possession or not, Naruto probably wouldn’t have pulled someone away to get that fated seat next to Sasuke. He could have been saved if the girls had been a bit faster.

Sasuke had looked pretty much the same as the day before, black eye and bruises and scowl, but he had lost the band aids. His eyes had narrowed dangerously as Naruto had come sauntering. Yes, possible male pride possession made guys saunter to their grave. He had been taller than ever before, or so it had felt like, as if his muscles aching only made him stronger.

The whole bus had gone quiet, with only the sound of Naruto’s feet against bus floor and the humming of bus engine left. Everyone knew exactly what had happened the day before.

Sasuke hadn’t said anything, had just burned his dark gorgeous eyes into Naruto as the distance between them had shortened. In the back of his screaming mind Naruto had thought of western movies.

He had sat down in the seat next to Sasuke, his eyes never leaving the dark ones. For a moment only the bus engine could be heard. Then the teasing ‘I’m asking for it’ grin had come. Naruto’s vocal cords had done the rest.

“How’s the eye, Sasuke-bastard?”

A few gasps and a couple of seconds of more silence had separated those words and their second fist fight in less than twenty four hours.

-

“So you’re really in love, huh?”

“Yeah,” Naruto muttered between pants. “I’m gonna marry him.”

It was Tuesday evening and Naruto had been kicked out of the house for a run with Lee, as punishment for his second fight with Sasuke.

Everyone had been very disappointed, probably hadn’t expected another fight this soon after the first one. Iruka would have probably road killed the entire town if Kakashi hadn’t suggested they go together. ‘No point in taking two cars,’ he had said, waiting outside on the sidewalk with his car when Iruka came home from work. Naruto owed the man his life.

But even Kakashi had looked less cheerful this day. Sasuke had been his usual grumpy self, only with some more bruises and new band aids. The drive had been quiet, except for an occasional growled apology from Iruka to Kakashi. Naruto had glanced at Sasuke, sitting next to him in the back seat, but Sasuke had looked out the window the entire time.

The police had joined homeroom teacher and school counselor in classroom B6 this time. They had brought a distasteful slideshow and explained the seriousness of violence. Despite the fact that this situation with Sasuke was completely different, Naruto hadn’t been able to help remembering Lee and it had sent his mood plummeting, made arguing difficult. He had spent the second meeting saying just as little as Sasuke.

Naruto had felt even guiltier when Lee had been waiting on the porch. He knew it was different, but... He had been happy when Iruka chased him off to run.

‘Have him run until you have to carry him home,’ he had told Lee. ‘Maybe that can get rid of whatever it is that’s crawled under his skin.’

Pfft, wouldn’t that be a miracle? Naruto running curing Sasuke’s personality. But it had been a relief to get to be alone with his friend and just move. Running was physical and therefore simple and good.

“Probably not before we’re fifty though,” Naruto continued. “He’s so damn frustrating!”

“You really can’t help yourself?” Lee asked.

“No! It’s like my head disconnects from my body, it’s crazy! If this keeps up I’ll be grounded when I die of old age.”

Lee chuckled.

“I can’t wait to meet him.”

“Oh, you can,” Naruto muttered. “He’s nothing you wanna meet, trust me.”

They ran past the school for the second time for the evening. Naruto wasn’t sure if they were really going to run until Lee had to carry him home.

“Gaara says he’s just sad,” Lee eventually broke the silence.

“What?” Naruto frowned.

“He didn’t really want to move here,” Lee continued. “He misses his home, so he’s sad.”

“Gaara said that? When?”

“Today.”

“How does he know? Why didn’t he tell me? Has he been talking to Sasuke without saying anything to me?”

“I don’t know, I’m sorry,” Lee said. “That’s all he said.”

Naruto watched Lee as they ran but his friend didn’t say anything more. Eventually Naruto snorted and faced the road in front of him instead.

Sasuke was sad? Pfft. Like you punched people that tried to be nice to you just because you were sad. And... And even if you did, that didn’t make you any less of an asshole. Just because you had a reason didn’t mean you could get away with just anything. Naruto knew that. Naruto had plenty of reasons but he was still grounded.

“So what do I do?” Naruto grumbled.

“You’re good at making friends, Naruto,” Lee said. “Even if... Even if maybe you don’t understand it yet, I think you know what you’re doing, somewhere. You’re good with people. It will be fine, just give it some time.”

Naruto sighed.

“I’m gonna be grounded when we get married,” he muttered.

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