Fish Bird

Fish Bird

Chapter 7: Beautiful Madness

* * * * *

Yumi takes a detour on route to Naruto’s apartment. The sky is just getting dark and the cicadas are chirping as she heaves the bags over one shoulder and then the other. She’s curious as to who was the caller on the phone and jumps across the cracks in the pavement, tucking some stray strands of curling brown hair behind her ear. The moon is rising just beyond the mountain as she makes it towards the twirling steps that lead up to the apartment on the fourth floor.

It’s a nice place this apartment, Yumi thinks, as she runs her hands across the iron-railing bar. Poor Naruto though, living here all alone, waiting for his Sakura-chan to come back… or not come back as the case may be.

She’d heard rumours that they’d had an argument just before Sakura had left. Something about marriage, a friend had told her. Yumi personally had never been able to stand Sakura much: all that short strawberry hair, green eyes and that attitude. But regardless, Naruto had been besotted with her ever since Yumi had known him.

Silly boy. Very silly boy. Yumi however was one of many basing views on the relationship on general gossip.

Other people younger than her, found the blue eyed, blonde haired wonder attractive- especially after he grew out of that annoying habit of saying “Believe it!” every two and a half seconds.

Yumi jogs up the last steps and stands on the welcome mat, punching the doorbell. She has this funny feeling she’s being followed, but every time she turns her head to check, she’s corrected. Although on one occasion she did see a wisp of trailing white hair disappearing behind a building… but she assumed it to be the neighbour’s small terrier dog.

A few seconds later she hears someone clatter down the stairs and skid into the hallway.

“Delivery!” she calls through the door, and out of habit she runs three fingers through her dark curls and licks her lips in apprehension of the mysterious character inside Naruto’s apartment.

The door opens and Yumi holds both bags in front of her, opening her mouth to chant the accustomed: “Ichiraku, thank you very much! We look forward to doing business with you again!”

…But she only gets over the first few syllables of ‘Ichiraku,’ so it sounds more like “I-chi-u-huh?” as someone with beautiful dark hair that sweeps across his face, a slim dark figure and pale skin, like torn ivory, bleeding contradiction up to almond shaped and slanted ebony eyes.

The young man places some money in one of her stunned outstretched hands and then, from within the doorway, reaches out for the Ramen bags.

Yumi’s mind whirrs, fizzles and calculates. She never forgets a face, not one as distinctive as this, and as the young man’s eyes reluctantly meet hers, the truth dawns.

“Uchiha…” she stammers and takes three short steps backwards, “Sasuke Uchiha!” Yumi’s voice rises into a short strangled scream.

An S-level criminal! What the hell was he…? Had he killed Naruto? What was he doing here!? God was he going to kill her?

“I-urgh,” the man burbles, giving her an alarmed look as if something very obvious has just dawned on him. He looks a little sick as she points a finger at him and screams:

“What have you done to Naruto? Why are you here? Everyone said you were dead!”

The young man swallows. If possible his skin turns even paler as Yumi drops the Ramen bags and prepares to pelt down the stairs.

“I- I’m not Sasuke Uchiha!” he yells at her, panicking at the ruckus she has begun to make, eyes darting left and right to see if she had caused any of the neighbours to peer curiously out of their bedroom windows.

“I JUST LOOK LIKE HIM!”

Yumi stares at him, dumbfounded at the top of the stairs, murmurs, “Oh right…” not without her own ample dash of sarcasm, and flees down the spiralling steps. Her footsteps clang and clatter, and then echo into the gathering darkness before they fade out altogether.

“Oh shit,” mutters Sasuke Uchiha, leaning grumpily against the doorpost. The Ramen bags have been dumped no less then half a meter away from Naruto’s front door. Tentatively he pokes his little finger half a millimetre outside the boundary, and snarls as the condensation of blue sparks descends painfully on the tip.

What the hell was he supposed to do now?

* * * * * *

If he ever thought before that he had done something ridiculous, this must surely bake the cake and eat it too, Sasuke judges moodily. His ears are burning with the very indignity of it. “Just wait!” he mutters, “just wait until Naruto wakes up. I’ll kill him!”

He jams his back in harder against the lintel of the doorpost, giving the umbrella another aggressive swing; finally catching the food bags by their plastic handle loops.

//Hah! Victory…. //

With a careful tug the bags come sliding across the smooth wooden walkway and Sasuke prays that no one on the street below is watching him doing… doing whatever the hell this is.

//Fishing for Ramen with an umbrella, that‘s what//

With his luck, Sasuke imagines it likely someone in the apartment opposite is leaning out their window, binoculars in hand and incredulous gawping expression on their face, like a wet fish. And Sasuke’s had enough of that expression for one day.

As soon as the bags are over the lintel of Naruto’s front door he drags them fiercely inside and slams the door shut. A little too vigorously as some of the paint cracks and falls onto the welcome mat, only to be snarled at before the Uchiha turns and stomps (there really is no other way to describe it) all the way up the stairs and into Naruto’s bedroom. He forgets he’s still holding the umbrella in his left hand like a sword, and swinging the plastic bags as if they are bludgeons.

As the door opens Naruto shifts and rises into consciousness as the dream he‘s been having bursts. His head feels as though it’s made of cotton wool and his tongue rasps like sandpaper over the roof of his mouth. He winces painfully as Sasuke brings light into the room with him, standing for a fraction of a second in the archway, and Naruto thinks its an almost nervous expression that lingers there for a moment.

Ideas and thoughts begin to bubble in his mind, linking with memories. Wait, hadn’t they just been arguing? Not that that was new… but outside, in the hallway? And then later down the stairs? Why was he in here? Semi-naked? …and in… in Sasuke Uchiha’s bed?

Naruto scrambled head ringing like a bell, to get up and out of the covers: but finds himself cornered and almost speared on the end of an umbrella - a purple umbrella at that. It looked suspiciously like the one downstairs in his umbrella stand.

“Don’t you dare,” the Uchiha growls down at him, dark eyes glimmering but cheeks retaining a blush of pale pink, as though he’s flustered about something.

The umbrella pushes him unmercifully in the chest, backwards and downwards, and Naruto - facing umbrella skewering - meekly complies.

As he licks his lips tentatively and backs down, cornflower blue eyes slightly glassy and somewhat bleary, he asks in a cracked voice:

“How-how did I get in here?”

Sasuke puts the umbrella down and dumps the plastic bags on the dresser, tossing black hair out of smoky grey eyes. He fiddles in the bags for something and a delicious smell fills the room. Naruto sits up, feeling suddenly better. He knows that smell. Oh, he knows that smell certainly- Ramen!

“You’re hungry right?” Sasuke asks him, ignoring the question, and gives the baffled blonde a raised eyebrow as if to say ‘Yes moron, this is real’.

It’s a funny thing to consider a bowl of Ramen as a peace offering, especially when Sasuke Uchiha is holding it just out of reach, and the tempting aroma is wafting over you in delicious waves. Naruto unconsciously follows it with his eyes, his mouth watering on reflex.

Sasuke thrusts the plastic container at him. “Take it,” he says bluntly and breaks the chopsticks apart before he hands them to Naruto.

The Kitsune accepts unhesitatingly, and proceeds to stuff his face with the noodles and soup. Within seconds the bowl is empty and Sasuke is pulling out another one and handing it to the blonde. All for the contents to be hoovered up in a matter of seconds. Sasuke has to fight hard to suppress the smile that’s trying to creep it’s way up to his lips.

“You’re an idiot,” he can’t help saying as he pulls open a portion for himself and sits down on the floor to eat. Naruto just gives him a grin as he swallows down a huge bite of noodles.

“Ichiraku right? It’s so good!”

“There’s more in the bags if you’re still hungry after eating all that.” Sasuke watches, chopsticks hovering against his lips, as the Uzumaki tilts the bowl to his lips and ingests the contents with a faint gurgling sound. Sasuke looks away and forces himself to regain some appetite.

The recently unconscious blonde leans over and fiddles around in the bags, pulling out one dish after the other, a gleeful expression on his face like a child receiving Christmas presents.

“God Sasuke, there’s a lot,” is the gracious comment Sasuke receives after Naruto has placed meal number twelve on the floor and is picking out thirteen and fourteen. “I know you think I’m a pig, but there’s only so much even a pig can eat.”

Sasuke quietly chews the contents of the salty noodles in his mouth, swallowing after the twenty-sixth chew exactly before he answers: “I didn’t know what type you liked. I’m hardly an expert on Ramen. I just asked for one of everything.”

Naruto chokes halfway through swallowing something and puts the bowl down on the dresser (not caring for marking the woodwork, despite the fact that Sasuke winces when he does it.) He slams a closed fist into his chest before spluttering out:

“What? You mean Kiba or Shikamaru didn’t… they aren’t downstairs?”

The incomprehensible look is back again and Sasuke feels his spine bristle slightly under his flesh.

// What, am I not good enough for you then//

“No, nobodies downstairs.”

“Not even Hinata?” Naruto asks desperately blinking those damned wide cornflower blue eyes as if Hinata doesn’t count as a full person to Sasuke.

The expression he is presented with is not un-akin to someone sucking lemons as icy sarcasm floats back to the surface; Sasuke rolls his eyes: “Well if you’d like to check….”

“But- but!” stammers Naruto, looking pained, then frantic and then aghast and all very suddenly, he runs his hands through his blonde hair, ironing out the tangled sunlight gold tresses.

“Who opened the door then? Who took the delivery?”

Sasuke’s expression immediately switches to something Naruto fathoms to be agitation, and the dark haired youth visibly flushes. Looking down at the floor, he blinks before quickly recovering himself, and admitting in a half sheepish tone of voice that doesn’t suit him: “I did.”

// Well, it wasn’t exactly the brightest idea was it//

The words drop and roll as he watches Naruto bring his fingers up to his eye sockets, pressing his lids shut and murmur between the forefinger and thumb: “Oh God, no, you didn’t.”

“Yes I did,” Sasuke snaps back, cheeks flushing darker. It’s embarrassing to admit that he’s stung by Naruto throwing the gesture right back in his face. “What else was I supposed to do? Give her the money through the letter box and tell her to leave it on the side walk?”

“She?” Naruto sat up straighter and leans over the side of the bed to look down at the other, trails of yellow flopping round to curtain the sides of his face in tangled wisps. “A girl about… this high? Dark curly hair? Kind of oval shaped face?” he made a gesture with his hands trying to re-enact her.

Sasuke gives an almost invisible nod and watches with apprehension as Naruto’s expression sort of falls and then looks close to tears:

“It was Yumi, wasn’t it? She saw you, didn’t she? Oh Sasuke!”

He flops backwards, and the Uchiha is filled with the crushing feeling of absolute conviction that he’s let him down.

“She’s the biggest gossip I’ve ever met. That’s even including Ino. Really nice, but… oh why? Why did you do it? They‘ll all know! It would have been better if you had just let me starve to death! This is exactly the sort of thing that old hag Tsunade warned me not to let you go and do… or else…. I mean no one else is supposed to know about this, and, oh SHIT. I just don’t understand you; do you not want another shot at all of this? They wanted to kill you, you know. The council did, didn’t think it was worth the risk to see if you’d come round again and maybe behave yourself. Missing S-class, left and took the secrets of Konoha with him! They thought that you had the potential to go… to go mad like your brother did and just kill everyone and no one would be able to stop you. Tsunade argued for hours about it, and so did Shikamaru Nara, do you remember him? I think he hates your guts but he vouched for you- they like him because he’s got a great record and he‘s nearly always right. He thought it would be an injustice to kill you just because that you might go and do what Itachi did; and that in your condition there was no real threat. And even then, they were all for an underground cell with ANBU surveillance twenty four-seven and white walls and sterile ceilings and drips for god sakes, with needles! Is that what you want Sasuke? Is it?!”

Somehow they were close now, the Kitsune’s eyes crinkling in the corners as he continued to rant despairingly, arms moving up and down and up and down as his mouth depressed even more as time went on. The lead balled pit in Sasuke’s stomach seemed to grow even heavier, if it were possible.

“I-no-I mean-I didn’t-” Sasuke tries to interject between Naruto’s furious yells of: “She’s going to tell everyone!” and “Oh god, we are in so much shit!”

“Look, I’m SORRY all right?” Sasuke suddenly bursts out, grabbing Naruto by both of his wrists and yanking him forwards so that their noses bump painfully against each other.

They both look thoroughly shocked by it, and Naruto’s whole body seems to calm as he falls onto his knees off the bed, absolutely stoic as he simply stares at Sasuke, his mouth very slightly parted as he sucks down air.

Sasuke Uchiha stares back at him for a moment, determined, steady gaze but not without his fair share of embarrassment. He drops Naruto’s wrists as if they have scolded his pale skin and looks again at the floor. Jet-black hair shields his face so the Kitsune can’t read the expression; Naruto just continues to gape at him, taken back.

“I-uh…you’re what?!?!” he sputters, allowing his arms to fall to his sides. He tilts his head, already close to Sasuke’s, even closer, so he can almost feel every little shudder the body makes when it breathes in and out. The Uchiha meets his eyes again, a hot look. He’d rather bite off his own tongue then say it again.

“You heard me,” he says bluntly, stubborn jaw locked, as if willing Naruto to choke on the word too… but he owed him the word at least. Then again he owed Naruto a lot of things he’s never going to admit to.

They both look away simultaneously in opposite directions, both horribly aware that something rare and mysterious has just occurred.

// Sasuke Uchiha just apologized to me… to me! I didn’t even know it was possible for those words to cross his lips without him turning into stone! The universe is still moving; the world hasn’t been sucked down into the atomic abyss of a swirling black hole. //

Naruto takes a deep breath and wiggles his feet. “What did she say when she saw you?” he asks, keeping his face turned carefully to the wall.

“She- well…first she screamed, and then she sort of… backed off and ran away.” Sasuke admits, with a slight tilt of his head.

Naruto can’t help the quick burst of laughter that bubbles from his lips at this statement. He grins to the air, and feels Sasuke bristle behind him.

“You caused a girl to go screaming in the opposite direction from you? At sight? I think that must be a world first, don’t you think Sasuke?”

Sasuke, whose fingers are fiddling absently with the chopsticks on his knees, says in a sarcastic tone of voice that Naruto is wonderfully comfortable with: “Well, I am talking to the expert here on that, aren’t I?” And he catches the blue eyed youths expression as it splits into a wide grin and response the of “Touché.” The youth smirks and Sasuke grunts, shaking his head.

Naruto pushes the food bowl towards Sasuke and gets up to put some clothes on. He wanders for a moment back into his own room where the enraged cry of “This is not my mess!” can easily be heard through the wood panelling, as well at the clicking he makes with his tongue as he inspects the floor boards they broke earlier.

He pokes his head round the door again, slightly frowning, dusting splinters from his hands. “I’ll speak to Tsunade about it tomorrow,” he mumbles and looks speculatively at Sasuke, gnawing at his bottom lip. “I suppose it would be a bit of a tall story to swallow.”

“Very tall,” Sasuke agrees, “seeing how I’ve been gone for seven years. Besides, I never knew her- I’ve never even seen her before.”

“Yeah,” replies Naruto, sitting opposite Sasuke on the floor and allowing himself to get comfortable in the jeans and white t-shirt he was now wearing. The Uchiha eyes the clothes from between a mouthful of noodles and prays Naruto won’t ask him how the other set came off in the first place. The only excuse he can come up with involves raccoons, and somehow he doubts even Naruto would swallow it.

“But she knew you though. Everyone always did. Especially the girls, and that my friend is the difference.”

“Well it was annoying, whatever the hell it was. Following me everywhere, hassling me when I didn‘t even know who they were. Let alone care.”

“You could have been polite to them at least, all they wanted was some of your attention, Sasuke.”

“Huh!” followed by a disgusted snort, and then “Why the hell should I have been attentive? It was their fantasy not mine. I couldn’t have cared less if they lived or died.”

Naruto let out a stifled sort of sound, stuck out his tongue over the tip of his lips, withdrew it back again and let his face crumple into a small frown as he watched Sasuke very slowly consume the rest of the bowl.

“You’re always like that,” he said eventually with some substantial bitterness that surprised himself. “Everyone acknowledged and accepted you, and you never ever seemed grateful for it. You threw it all away in the end. When I was younger I wou-” but he bit his lower lip before he could finish the sentence, for fear of admitting to Sasuke that he had had wanted nothing more then to be like him. How he would have given up anything for that dream. A dream to be a person that everything came so easily to: love, strength, admiration and empathy. When had he ever had that without pushing for it until the stubs of his fingers bled and he could hardly move but to drag himself across the floor?

Sasuke noted the bitterness in Naruto’s blue eyes, the way he had drawn his knees up to his chest, one arm encircling the other under his chin. He waits until he’s full before he decides to answer. He finds his own voice to be icy cold.

“Do you think I ever wanted all that attention? All those expectations? It almost drove me mad. Whatever I did there was a certain standard I had to achieve; ever since the second I was born. I had to be better than everyone else. I was an Uchiha, I had standards to maintain and a future I had to succeed in. I was never free; you at least had the option of doing what you wanted, when you wanted to.”

“I don’t let people control me,” Naruto bites back, his voice firm and level. But there’s something dark in the way he opens his mouth to say it, pink tongue touching the brilliant white of his teeth. It feels like there’s a secret he’s holding back.

“Neither do I,” Sasuke responds, eyes narrowed, and unconsciously his spine straightens.

“Yes you do, you always have done Sasuke. Ever since I first met you although I didn’t realise it at first. But you’re like a hand puppet, acting on someone else’s actions, your whole existence governed by someone else.”

Sasuke really is unbearably furious now. His hands are shaking as he keeps them folded in his lap, and he clenches his fingers over each other and lets the nails bare down into the skin. The pain relieves the pressure in his voice somewhat as he responds in low dangerous tones: “He killed my mother and father, my clan, my happiness and most of my soul. Of course I’m going to kill him. If not just for my sake then for theirs!”

“By any means possible then?” There is something carnal about the way in which Naruto says this, a look of a wild animal in his eyes, infinitely distrusting and savagely beautiful.

To Sasuke it feels as if he’s raising invisible hackles along his back. But he won’t allow himself to be dragged down into an argument about morals, when he knows Naruto is lumping his own set of values onto him.

“And what would you have done? Rolled over and played nice so people would simper and smile over you and scratch your stomach! Don’t make me sick Naruto. I did what I had to do!”

“Yeah you did!” Naruto snarls back at him just as venomously as Sasuke feels but won’t let show on his face. “You stabbed everyone in the back who cared about you and lov-”

Sasuke interrupts, hot tongue in contrasting volition with his brain, which orders him to stop this right now: “This is not about you and you sycophantic need to recreate a nice cosy happy family around you. For God Sakes, how old are you? Do us all a favour and just GROW UP!”

It’s a low blow, but it’s at the very core of the matter, and its effect is instantaneous. Naruto withdraws like a wilting flower, body becoming defensive, shoulders drawn up around his ears as he speaks to his knees.

“You had parents, you knew what it was like to have unconditional love, that no matter what, or how much you went for something - even for those few years- someone believed in you. Someone was always there. They were there when you were afraid, they were there to encourage you and tell you that you were worth something. Even when… even when you felt like you weren’t. When-” his voice became a little hoarser and he refused to meets the Uchiha’s hard, direct gaze.

“When you’re born into a world where people seem to hate you for no fathomable reason. When there seems to be an invisible fence between you and happiness. When no one thinks you are worth Jack Shit, no matter how hard you try, and when you are assured almost constantly that you are in fact worthless, that you’d be better off dead, because guess what? You are the thing that killed your parents and God knows who else and what else. When that happens to you Sasuke Uchiha, you can call me immature then. But forgive me for thinking you sound like a pampered brat when I ask you why it would be unnatural for me to want to be with somebody who at least at the end of the day won’t recoil if I touch them and tell them that I love them? Or am I not worthy enough to deserve human affection?”

“So that’s what Sakura is to you then?” Sasuke blurts out, not quite sure if it’s any of his business or even relevant. He just knows that his voice has a bitter edge to it that he tries to swallow down and almost gags on. His stomach burns with indignation at how important Sakura probably is to Naruto, not that anyone could blame him for it, but that’s not the point. He’s still angry about it.

Naruto tilts his head at this odd question and glares at Sasuke, incredulous.

“I love Sakura, you arrogant prick. I love her more then I think I’ve ever loved anyone else. She’s stuck by me and through all of this insane shit, through all of it, she’s still here and she- she-”

“Accepts you?”

“Yes, yes she does!” Naruto shouts back at him, furious that Sasuke could simplify it to such an extent.

“And because she does so you’ve decided to spend the rest of your life with her because you believe that she’s the only one who’s got the stomach for it.”

Naruto’s face is a portrait of incredulity and angry bewilderment.

“She loves me Sasuke, no one has ever done that before.”

“Or you think she’s the only one that’s ever loved you, and you’ve never even considered the fact that other people might have loved you too? Except maybe they expressed it differently?”

Naruto swallows. “Sasuke,” he asks, “what exactly are you saying?”

Sasuke Uchiha blinks, lets out a long heated exhalation of breath before he admits that he has no idea, and then adds, “You always leap for the obvious choices.”

Naruto replies, suddenly calmly: “When you’ve had nothing, you tend to grab onto what you can see right in front of you and never let go.”

“Is that what you are doing with me then?”

Naruto falls back against the bed at this and regards the dark eyed, pale skinned man sitting directly across from him almost languidly. “I find myself wondering if you actually enjoy being alone; and it’s not just something you do because you’re actually afraid of letting people in.”

Nothing for an instant, and then, with a short brittle reply: “Nobody likes being alone.”

Naruto scowls at him, giving a probing, wandering look. “Then why do you insist on-”

“Because-” Sasuke snaps, pushing away from Naruto and jerking his head back to expose his neck, hot and flushed. He hated being truthful about things like this, and yet somehow he found himself unable to lie about it. It was those damned blue eyes, infinitely wide and trusting, they seemed to call out and drag on the deep rigid recesses of his soul and hold it under the light for examination. Killing him softly with gentle words and open arms.

“…Because it’s easier then letting people down. Because I might have forgotten how to let people in, and because I’m afraid-” but he bites down on his tongue and brings up blood; he’d choke on his own flesh first before he actually admitted to himself, let alone Naruto, that breaking those barriers might mean the end of him. That if he let someone in he’d become dependant on them, and if he lost them… if he lost it all again, lost someone dear and precious to him, he’d go mad.

Honestly, truly, absolutely.

He’d just loose it.

To be fooled once, to let it happen… shame on them.

But to be fooled twice? …Shame on you. He’d have no one to blame but himself.

“You think you’re afraid of being alone, Naruto?” Sasuke grinds out from between his back molars, choking on the blood, wishing he didn’t have to compete against that innocently bright blue focus.

“Everyday I realise,” he continues, “the fact that I am probably going to die alone, somewhere far, far away from the place I was born and grew up in. Miles away, lives away from the people I loved and cared about, and no one will know or even give a damn. You think you were alone? Well, I am alone Naruto Uzumaki, and I can’t help that. It’s just the way things have to be.”

“You don’t have-” he began, but Sasuke cuts him off not wanting to hear it. Prizing and holding Naruto’s hands to either side of his head and shaking him lightly so he should understand and hear it properly this time:

“But I will, and you can’t change that. I’ll die alone, without any family that I care to speak of, friends or… lovers. Because I am an Av-”

“So no one will miss you? Is that what you really think?! Don’t you think that I’d miss you in every single one of those ways?” his fingers scrabble at the place where Sasuke is firmly holding his wrists in place and looks indignantly back at him.

“You’re not my lover, Naruto.” Sasuke states this flatly; watching as the blonde colours, snub nose dusting with a light sprinkling of pink flush.

“I know I’m not your lover in… that sense. But I’m probably the closest thing to it right now. Don’t you think I’d miss you if you did something as stupid as to die all alone like that? You were the closest thing I ever had to a brother and a best friend.”

“Was Naruto, past tense.”

“Well that doesn’t stop me from still feeling it, does it Sasuke? Up until your last living breath I’ll hate you and love you, regardless of whether you feel anything for me at all! Until the second that I die I’ll still feel it, and I’ll never forget you. And in death-” he gulped, “it will be just the same, but eternal.”

“Well, you’re a fool then.”

“I know I am Sasuke. I always was more of a fool when it came to you then I ever was for anyone else. I was so desperate to impress you, to try and get you to acknowledge me. I wasted a lot of energy obsessing over you.”

There is a silence, in which they sit close, almost on top of each other. Naruto no longer fighting Sasuke’s restraints, they seem to breathe and feel at the same time, and then it comes: “…Why are you telling me this?” Sasuke murmurs curiously, without breathing.

“Because, if you do slip away again- when you do go after Itachi again as I know you will do-” Sasuke opens his mouth to interrupt, but Naruto presses on. It’s important to say it. It’s important to let him know.

“He was always more important than I was, and he always will be in your eyes. I can’t change that, but you’ll know. You’ll know that somewhere, somehow I’m here, willing you alive, and wishing you’d come back- come back to what you’ve left behind.”

//To me, come back to me…. //

Sasuke just looks at him with an unfathomable expression. Burgundy lips slightly parted but not in sound, the tongue darts out and wets them so they glisten slightly as Naruto watches. Is it in astonishment that he‘s looking at him like that? Or perhaps confusion?

“I think I’ll always want you back Sasuke Uchiha.”

There isn’t very much he can say to that, as he looks down at his knees, a little flustered and a little confused, He drops Naruto’s wrists very slowly, which he had been holding gently against the sides of his neck, now unsure of where to look and how to respond.

“Thank you.” he says, and feels the blonde peering at him. He’s thankful for the two curtains of hair either side of his face as he blushes, for what seems the umpteenth time that evening.

Nothing happens for moment, but the intensity pulses and stretches between them like electricity before Naruto breaks away. His hands touching Sasuke’s for an instant. An accidental movement, forefingers touching his thumb and tracing the back of his knuckles before contact is lost and the tiny warmth is withdrawn.

Out of reflex, he looks up and after Naruto who moves across the room and stands for a moment in the doorway.

“Uzumaki,” he asks haltingly not sure why it matters, why he feels he needs to know what Naruto is doing, where Naruto is going and what Naruto is thinking. “Where are you going?”

The Kitsune gives him an inquisitive look, the expressive mouth firm and almost doubting. “Downstairs, I was going to go sleep on the sofa, ‘cause my rooms a total tip.” He gave that easy, ‘it’s not problem’ smile and started to head out of the door.

“Wait!” Sasuke scrambles in an oddly clumsy motion to his feet. He feels out of sync and breathless: “You should sleep in here idiot, it‘s your house! And it’s probably my fault that you got sick in the first place, I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

“I don’t think you’d want to,” Naruto replies softly and he runs his hands over the tops of his arms to his elbows. “You won’t be able to move your neck come morning, the springs you see, they stick out and are pretty darn painful.”

They stare at each other for another moment, and then Sasuke, slowly as though he’s encroaching on something that’s a forbidden taboo, starts the sentence that Naruto finishes:

“You can…”

“…Sleep in here?”

* * * * *
‘So now you’re sleeping together?’ the nasty little voice in his head jibes, as it prods and pokes Naruto with tiny, cold, invisible fingers.

“I’m not sleeping ‘sleeping’with him,” Naruto insists to the bathroom mirror as he brushes his teeth. “I happen to be sharing the same bed as him, that’s all. And you know something, he probably wears shoes and socks to bed anyway. So I don’t know why you’re making such a big fuss about it.”

His reflection looks unimpressed, and Naruto, gulping guiltily, accidentally swallows the last of the toothpaste and sticks his head underneath the taps, noisily glugging down water. When he remerges, hair sopping wet and plastered to his forehead, he once again glowers at his mirror image before eventually bursting out furiously: “Look, nothing is going to happen alright? And even if it did, who would know?”

The answer comes back to him, sickeningly swift as he reaches over to turn off the light and dry his hands on the towel:

‘God will know, and so will you.’

Naruto grimaces, showing all of his teeth. If God was going to know, he could be sure Kiba and Shikamaru would not be very far behind him.

* * * *

“Okay,” Sasuke reiterates very slowly. He has that look on his face, the deeply foreboding look of someone who has proposed something that they do not quite like or have not thought through properly.

“This is my side, got that block-head? You don’t put so much as a toe over onto this side of the mattress. Do I make myself clear?”

Naruto nods, wide-eyed and slightly fearful. He had forgotten quite how pedantic the dark haired youth could sometimes be, especially now, as he stands at the end of the bed clad in a simple cotton t-shirt over loose shorts, with his two index fingers pointing at the four poster and repeating at Naruto several times over: “My side. Your side. You got that?”

Naruto nods, simply because he was afraid of what Sasuke might do if he did not. …Probably strangle him with a pair of orange socks he concluded, as he jumps onto the mattress so that everything bounces and the pillows soar into the air.

“Don’t do that!” Sasuke shouts at him, watching as Naruto fell back laughing into the covers.

“Can’t touch me Sasuke, I’m on my side of the bed!”

“You are such a child,” he is told scornfully as Sasuke presents his long slender back to Naruto and sits on the rim of the bed, elegant hands splayed out behind him.

// I cannot believe we are actually doing this. //

Naruto props himself up on his elbows as he watches Sasuke move one leg under the covers- he peers at it as it slips cleanly out of view. Well he couldn’t see any shoe on his foot or dark knee-long socks. But the idea of Sasuke wearing knee-length socks in any form or manner is slightly ridiculous anyway. The shoes maybe, but not the socks.

“What are you doing?!” Sasuke demands, glaring at Naruto who has of course totally forgotten the meaning of the word discretion, and he swallows air and hiccups in his haste to reply:

“Nothing, nothing at all. Um…” he withers a little underneath the full onslaught of ‘The Glare’ and asks in a higher pitch then he normally uses, “Shall I turn off the light then?”

Sasuke doesn’t say anything.

Taking this as leeway for a polite ‘yes,’ Naruto jumps out of bed so that everything bounces again, causing the Uchiha to groan in frustration. He makes a clattering journey over to the light switch before killing the light, and an even noisier journey back to the bed again.

Sasuke, as he suspected he might have, has actually stuck his head underneath the pillow rather then listen to the ruckus: hands digging deep into the fluffy endowment of the eiderdown, knuckles clenching almost white as he presses it over his ears.

Naruto can’t help chuckling as he gets back into bed again. He would have jumped had it not been for the warning look Sasuke had shot him from underneath the pillow as he prepared to do it. The look had promised disembowelment and a slow and painful death, and Naruto, for once, saw sense enough not to challenge it.

He wriggles around for a moment, trying to find the best possible position in which to sleep, and every time he tosses and turns Sasuke lets out the dramatic sigh of a long suffering person who cannot see the end of this interminable torture.

Finally he rolls onto his stomach, and resting his chin on his folded arms, he opens his mouth:

“Sasuke, can I ask you something?

The person who in the dim gloom is nothing more then a dark and smeary shape groans once again. “If you must, but only one question,” he grinds out irately from his back molars.

“I was wondering, you know, earlier? I always meant to ask you at some point but I never got round to it. I always thought you must hav-”

“Naruto,” the shape sounded exasperated, “if you’ve got something to say, say it. If not, shut the hell up and let me get some sleep.”

The Kitsune licks his lips, draws in breath and takes the plunge. “When you were younger, not now obviously… but… did you ever… fall in love?”

A brief pause.

“Why does it matter?”

It’s the sort of enigmatic response that Naruto suspected he would answer with if he were guarding a secret like that, and he wishes that he could see the expression on Sasuke’s face at this moment. Sasuke would have no second thoughts about bluntly denying something he’d never done, even if most people would consider it to be an abnormal thing not to have done.

“Who was it?”

Silence.

And then Sasuke rolls over so Naruto can feel his back facing him, and the covers are pulled away from him.

“Go to sleep Naruto.”

“Sasuke, who was it?”

But he’s not to expect an answer and neither is he given one. As he lies there on his side of the bed, the question burns within him uncomfortably. He supposes it’s because he’s curious; he wants to know because it’s Sasuke. But even as he slips into a troubled and agitated sleep, a tiny part of him suspects its because he’s jealous.

On the other side of the bed Sasuke Uchiha listens to the sounds of Naruto’s heavy breathing and light snores. His eyes flicker from the floor to the ceiling as he bites his lower lip and considers the fact the question is more: “Who is it?” than “Who was it?”

* * * *

::He Dreams::

The fox pads silently in amongst the blackness, sharp claws raking the fragile earth and leaving footprints a mile wide in its wake.

Reverberations pool and collect in Naruto’s spine as he lies there feeling the warm wings of a fragile creature flutter past his ear. Or at least it feels like that through the dark muzzy curtains of sleep that cloud his consciousness. Odd incoherent thoughts bubble and merge together into a string of incomprehensible words that twist and whirl on eddies without meaning.

The fluttering continues… insect wings maybe? Like those of a dragonfly, crystal clear and rustling as they beat up and down, up and down- more than he could count inside of one infinitesimal second, blurred into the incredible monotony of a shapeless contortion of the air.

The sound- or is it more of a feeling? It flutters, brushing teasingly against the upturn of the tip of his nose, tickling gently, pulling and rousing his mind and filling his head with a light humming.

Naruto stirs, moving limbs that seem to be dragged down by lead and weighted with all the oceans. Slowly, achingly, he opens his eyes…

“Hey, sleepy,” murmurs soothing tones. Well known, they slide across Naruto’s back like melted butter and he doesn’t have to think.

“Sakura,” he murmurs back. Everything is out of focus and his senses are reeling slightly as he stretches his mind back to recollect what on earth it was he was doing before. But there’s nothing there, nothing at all.

The back of his mind stays shut, the door bolted and closed for some reason he can’t, doesn’t understand. There is some old magic lingering around the hinges. Dark red in colour and clotted, it seems to cluster as he probes into it: pushing him out again, back to a conscious state where he can’t seem to move his body or open his eyes properly.

The cool press of fingertips against his temple and then hands around his shoulders, gripping firm and secure, push him onto his back. It’s uncomfortable like that. He can’t breath properly, his lungs contracting and expanding awkwardly and he tries to tell her. But the words tumble out of his mouth garbled and chewed, so it sounds more like a moan. As if his tongue has been turned to mush and throat rubbed down with sandpaper, he chokes as he tries to form sound and something cool is pushed against his forehead, wet and flopping onto the skin.

“I’ve been gone a long time, haven’t I?”

The voice is close, somewhere either immediately above him or to his left, he can’t quite pinpoint where. But her fingers interlace with his own, and despite the fact that he can’t move, despite the fact that he can’t quite see, for the first time in a long while he’s happy. Happy without trying, without caring: full of a knowledge of being wanted without reason, that being there is just enough for both of them.

“Hey,” he tries to say back to her, but the words are slurred and trip across his mouth and doesn’t really sound like anything in particular.

There is the sound of her laughter above him, and he wants to reach up and pull her closer, wind his arms around her neck and tell her that he loves her:

“I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do…”

“You should wake up soon,” she tells him simply. He can almost see the expression on her face through all the fuzz: wide green eyes, curling wide lashes and arched, bow like smile.

“Then you can see it.”

See? See what?

His mind reels as panic bubbles up inside of him, bleeding through his senses, and the press of fingers against his hand becomes much more insistent. He clutches back at them, something solid, something real, desperate to keep a hold.

Why can’t he open his eyes? Why can’t he move?

And then he realises, and it washes over him in an icy iron bucket of rusting dread: Something is very, very wrong.

Naruto’s eyes jerk wide open, and his body seemingly contracts and he feels like he’s falling into a void whilst Sakura still clutches onto his hand.

“What’s going on?” he asks over the smell of smoke and burning wood, soot clouds his eyes and makes them water. Is the apartment burning down around him? Where is the fire?

And then he realises everything is alight, everything is filled with hot orange flames, everything is burning.

Everything.

The walls, the bricks, the roof, the ceiling, the building, the street, the roads, the libraries, the shops, the towers, the village… the village is burning like a huge monstrous Katherine wheel, sending up golden glimmers and dancing globular sparks up into the night.

Smouldering columns of fluted ash whirl skywards in sickeningly fast eddies of hot air, lost in a tundra of stormy grey as the wind blows dry and scorching against his skin.

“W-hat-how… What’s going on?” Sakura’s fingers are unnaturally cold inside of his grasp, her flesh feels almost transparent, it feels like he’s slipping and sliding through her body as he desperately tries to hold on.

“Don’t you know?”

He doesn’t know why the tone of voice fills him with dread. Part of him understands- some innately wise fraction of his mind comprehends it’s all over, and slowly, he turns to look over the humming, the distant humming that fills his ears.

Her smile is cracked, her green eyes are hollow, like lime marbles. Her hair falls in sticky clumps across madly pale skin and her body- oh god her body- it’s broken. Her spine is snapped in two. White silver membrane and nerves dribbling out of the gaping gash that splintered the vertebrae, disconnected from the soul. Neurones and synapses fire from nowhere to nowhere, but with no internal highway system present the body is useless.

Dead.

“SAKURA!” Naruto yells, heart pounding in his chest as he grips her by the shoulders, not caring for the blood she wretches out of useless sagging lungs.

The insect wings are back, hundreds upon thousands of them, lights flickering in and out of smoke and flame, bringing dazzling colours into the grey darkness.

The fox rumbles, low and melodic, infinitely threatening.

Sakura’s hands fumble for a moment, loosing his; they reach up and touch his temple, gracing across his matted locks, and a faint smile appears before she slides out of focus.

Naruto’s mind isn’t function properly- he’s scrabbling around on his hands and kneecaps, fingers probing into the treacle like gunk that drags and sticks to his limbs as he fumbles in the darkness.

Sakura’s gone. She’s gone. Where did she go? She has to still be here. With him. She can’t- won’t… ever leave him.

“What’s going on? What’s happening? Sakura! Sakura!?” he yells over and over again until his voice is lost, and his oesophagus grates like a razor blade over the muscle of his throat.

He drops to his knees, sobbing, shaking all over.

“Who did this?” he chokes out, “I’ll kill them. I swear I’ll kill them.”

Somewhere in the distance he can hear a child screaming. A baby, crying at the top of its lungs.

But the sound is drowned out again by the incessant humming and he puts his hands over his ears and doubles over as if in agony as the drone hit’s a peak and screams into his eardrums. The sound of rustling wings as thin as cellophane, cracked hard cartilage rimming the edge of clear scabby membrane, as they beat over, and over again.

Sense seems to topple over and stop as the answer comes back to him, smoothly:

“You did.”

“Where is she?” Naruto finds himself shouting to no one in particular, finding his legs to be stuck in the glutinous substance.

“Gone.” the voice answers back, tones elegant and foreboding: “Why would you care? It’s all your fault after all.”

“I didn’t-I-I never- How could I!?” Naruto yells back, fighting tooth and nail to break the restraints he’s under, he twists and writhes but cannot pull loose.

“You did all of it,” is the reply, voice like alcohol, slowly intoxicating.

“When? How did I? I don’t believe you, I don’t believe you at all!” Naruto chokes out, gagging on the thick coils of smoke and ash that drench across him and rake down his throat. “I don’t understand any of this!”

“You never did, fool.”

The floor shifts, a heaving eruption of black butterflies rupturing from the ground like the mass blooming of some ethereal rose, shedding it’s ghostly petals into the night.

“You let the plague in, you made the choices, and you fell into it. Now deal with the consequences of your actions.”

Naruto looks straight back into Sasuke Uchiha’s ivory skinned face; the fox growls, low and rippling.

“Go to hell!” he bites back, lips pulled into a snarl, and his stomach writhes in fury as he watches Sasuke give a low chuckle.

“Where do you think we are?”

Out of sight and out of mind, the fox waits, as a big cat waits in the savannah for the antelope to forget its existence in the blissful heat of the African sun. The golden sea of grasses osculates and ripples around it in the slight wind. Blending perfectly in the stippled honey coloured shadows it waits. Death incarnate, veiled in beauty and power. It lies there, waiting for them to make the move. For them to forget.

“Let me go!”

Sasuke leans down further, impenetrable eyes sleek and merciless as they dip across his lips and over his face, travelling last up into his cornflower blue eyes.

Naruto considers the fact that Sasuke could take him right here and now, that it wouldn’t matter to Sasuke if Naruto did or didn’t want it. The pain wouldn’t matter; the blood, the agony, the violation, the boundaries had been crossed and intermingled with the enemy until the division line of where one stopped and the other began had been fuzzed over. Like ink lines left out in the rain, the black smearing and running into each other, twisting and meandering into different patterns. Another level of being.

He’s done it before, why should it matter now?

“I’m not the one keeping you here Naruto,” is the only reply. He receives a flash of a smile: triumph? Sarcasm?

The glimmering lights dance closer.

He won’t trust anything Sasuke says, so he closes his eyes tight and tries to ignore the voice as it starts again, timbre soft and earnest, almost like a plea.

The fox tosses it’s monstrous head in savage greedy hunger: it’s going to rip them apart and score their flesh, smite them and skewer the bones from their crimson bodies.

Sasuke pulls away, eyes heavy and looking directly into Naruto’s cornflower blue irises, half lidded and intoxicated.

“Naruto,” Sasuke says gently, his eyes deep, and Naruto fears he’s going to fall into them, that his mind will buckle and break and the restraints will fly in all directions. “You’re obsessed with me. You’ll never leave this place.”

The door breaks down and the fox, from behind the clack and rattle of iron, throwing charms and broken sealing spells in all directions, plunges as an unstoppable force forwards. It’s jaw snaps open, glimmering white fangs and hot putrid breath, ready to engulf them both as the lights flare and dazzle into a blinding brilliance that obscures reality.

****

“Naruto… Naruto! Wake up!”

Blue eyes open into a dim confusion of tangled sheets and writhing bodies, his skin is soaked with cold sweat and his mind still reels a kaleidoscope of different images in front of him, most of which end up drenched in blood. He claws at the cold fingers weighing his torso to the mattress and fights down the screams that threaten to tilt and spill through his oesophagus. All of his limbs seem to jerk and twitch on their own and just behind the cage, plucking at the bars, he feels the Kyuubi stalk. Behind his eyelids he feels the panic stir inside of him.

“Nobody’s dying!” Sasuke is telling him but he might as well be speaking to a brick wall for all the coherent response it provokes. Naruto’s actions are almost feral; like a wild cat dipped in the ocean he claws at the places where Sasuke is pinning him down. Mouth open and snarling and long glinting white canines glimmering, Sasuke wonders vaguely if Naruto will bite him if he gets the chance, and decides not to let him.

They fall, limbs still locked to the floor, and its like trying to hold onto electricity. The hot urgent taste of chakra seems to fizzle and whirl all about him; it climbs up the walls and festers in boiling pits between the floorboards.

“Naruto!” he yells again, “Snap out of it!”

But Naruto won’t, or can’t, and suddenly Sasuke can see the pictures too, the bloody ones, dripping in entrails and gore, the things that no one likes to see, the parts that people keep hidden.

The worst part is he knows that Naruto thinks the pictures are real, and the more he slides into panic, the more the Kyuubi pries forwards.

He fights to bring both hands to either side of Naruto’s face, slamming his skull into the wooden planks, sweat and tears stream from around eyes stained with mauve but the pain makes the panic worse.

He stays in the half nightmarish state of dark shadows that flicker on the outskirts of reality, ghostly figures stalking him, prying apart his ribs and cutting out his bleeding heart to burn the flopping thing in front of him.

Sasuke tries to talk, to get through, and to tell comforting thoughts to a person suffering the onslaught of mental pain: but it’s useless.

The choked sob breaks from the Kitsune’s chest, low and painful, like something fragile is breaking, and Sasuke takes action, he does the only thing he can think of doing to stop that awful rise of chakra.

He kisses him.

The effect is immediate: Naruto lies still, and for perhaps the second and a half that his own lips press against Naruto’s, Sasuke can feel the dull lub-dub of his own heart beating in his chest, see eyes through a blurry focus widen in shock and then…

Naruto twists his head away, pushes Sasuke with a violent force from his body so he falls heavily to the floor.

He grabs the Uchiha by the collar of his shirt as he kneels over his body, but in the darkness, Sasuke, whose breathing is heavy and agitated, cannot see his expression. He half expects Naruto to start pounding his face into a bloody pulpy mess. But not for Naruto to lurch forwards like that, yank Sasuke up and attack his mouth with his own, covering it with one glib and untamed movement.

Something inside of Sasuke soars, his stomach seemingly disappearing as teeth clack and grate against his own. Hard and fast a tongue pushes bruisingly against his lips, parting and demanding entrance. Naruto’s fists are still curled around his neck as Sasuke brings his own hands to unpeel them from where they are slowly choking him.

His fingers snake up into the nape of Naruto’s neck, cradling the back of his skull and pushing him forwards deeper into the kiss. The moist sound of Naruto sucking against Sasuke’s tongue fills the air, and the Uchiha growls into their mouths, the sound reverberating into Naruto as he is pushed over and onto his back.

His hands fisting the material at Sasuke’s shoulders, entwining fingers around his neck, bringing all of the long warm hardness of Sasuke’s body against his own. His hips arch of their own accord as Sasuke plays with his tongue, toying with it, dancing a possessive game inside of his mouth.

He runs his own tongue across the tip of Naruto’s canines, careful not to cut himself on the sharp edges, one hand deeply entrenched in the blonde’s hair as he pulls his head back, breaking the kiss so his lips linger teasingly just over Naruto’s.

Close enough for them both to feel the heat not close enough for them to feel the pressure. The warm tip of Sasuke’s tongue glances over Naruto’s lower lip, and then his upper lip, licking the corners, exploring it thoroughly.

Naruto becomes impatient, and bucking against Sasuke, opens his mouth begging for entry. He wants the heat and the pressure back again, but Sasuke just laughs, and bites on Naruto’s lower lip gently, not puncturing the skin. Dragging the lip down, and then sliding his tongue smoothly inside as he hears Naruto gasp and give a little needy sound, he lets his mouth connect completely over the Kitsune’s again. A hand makes its way from Naruto’s neck, down the knobbly junctures of his spine. And it’s Naruto, Naruto who moves his head back, who grinds his hips into Sasuke’s: wonderful, hard, delightful pressure as Sasuke moves back with him.

Feeling he can’t go in any deeper, none at all, tasting and feeling Naruto all that he can with all these damned clothes.

Salty warm taste in his nose, his eyes, his hair, coating his skin.

// Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Naruto… //

Naruto pulls away first, eyes heavy and looking directly into Sasuke‘s dark marble orbs, half lidded with intoxication; tongues leaving contact last, essences that intermingled now being dragged apart.

He feels the hand in his hair, the way one of his legs is intertwined with Sasuke’s. He feels how urgently he’s pressing his body to him, and the hard laboured breathing of moist breath against his ear.

They stare at each other, and then…

“What the hell are we going to do?”

* * * *

つづく (To be continued.... sorry on a Gundam Wing nostalgia kick