In the Mountains

Beta'd now! By mystical spirits; she was just late.

Chapter 7

The next morning, I watched for the hundred and twenty-fifth time how Sasuke scowled at Gaara and me, dragging a giggling Hinata (that part was a bit odd, or am I just crazy?) out of the dojo, when Tenten knocked to ask if I was willing to go on a walk with her, Lee, and the kids. It was a great idea, I thought, a good way to get rid of all the extra energy. I told her I would be right down, leaving to change my clothes.

When I stepped into the lobby, there was apparently a fight going on, judging by the edge in all the voices. The kids were all ready, sitting near the door and waiting for the adults – Tenten, Lee, and Sasuke – to straighten things out.

“What’s going on?” I asked them, stopping the racket for a moment.

“Nothing,” Tenten said brusquely. Sasuke turned to the other side.

Lee frowned at their impoliteness and explained, “Sasuke heard on the radio that there will be rain today. Tenten insists we go anyway.”

“There isn’t a single cloud in the sky!” Tenten said, and I had to agree. The sky was clear and bright, as if it never even heard about such a thing as rain.

“You’re acting as if this is your first time in the mountain,” Sasuke told to her, much calmer now than before, when I first heard them arguing. “Storms come and go very fast here, and you want to take a bunch of kids into the woods when there is a very good chance there will be rain.”

Since both Tenten and Sasuke apparently wanted to fight some more, Lee volunteered to suggest a compromise. “I don’t think there will be any problems as long as we don’t go very far. We could even race back!”

That race idea on the side, I thought he had a point. Sasuke was the one against it, so I looked at him for his opinion. Do you think it was very, very wrong and in many ways sick that I felt a little jealous he wasn’t mad at me?

“I will go with you if you insist on going, but don’t expect me to carry anyone back. Or to give my jacket to anyone,” Sasuke added, a little to me but more so to Lee.

“Of course not,” Tenten sneered, twisting her pretty face. Why is she so hot-headed about this anyway? I had to wonder. “No one expects you to think about anyone but yourself.”

“Unlike you,” Sasuke said, his voice dripping sarcasm.

“I care about the kids. I’m spending every day with them.”

“You’re doing this because Neji asked you to. Very unselfish.” She blushed violently. “It won’t make him like you, you know. Nothing ever will.”

Before Tenten managed to open her mouth to answer, because I really didn’t want to hear whatever she had in mind (especially if it was about Hinata), I interrupted, feeling very angry about the whole thing. How could they fight about nonsense like this in front of the kids?

“That’s enough,” I said quietly, with the best Iruka-scolding face I could manage. Louder, I asked, not giving them a chance to protest, “Kids, do you have your jackets with you?”

Sasuke looked at me as if he regretted how he kept things civil yesterday. Tenten gave me a scowl that said she had met every kind of peacekeeper there was – some kinds twice – and that she hated my kind most of all. I ignored them both firmly and waited for an answer.

Some kids had their jackets, but most of them didn’t, so I told them to get them and come back right away. If there was the possibility of rain, they had better hurry if we were going to do this.

“I’ll also go and get mine. The three of you should too.”

Sasuke already had his jacket with him, so he made a show of putting it on. Lee fetched his and Tenten’s. She refused to take it, so Lee decided he should bring it, just in case. If it was Sakura who acted that way, I would have let her go without the jacket, I was thinking.

That, of course, was not the truth. Sakura had me well-trained, but it felt nice thinking I would do that. I really didn’t understand girls.

When we were all ready, I said loudly enough for all to hear, “We won’t go too far, and if a single cloud appears on the sky, we’re heading back.”

Then Tenten took it from there and delivered all the usual warnings: do not split up, do not eat anything you didn’t get straight from her hands, do not throw garbage around, and so on. After that, we finally took off. Shikamaru didn’t come with us; he apparently wasn’t feeling very well. Sasuke rolled his eyes a bit when he said the boy was ill, so Shikamaru was probably faking it so he didn’t have to walk with us.

It was a little too warm. We all ended up caring our jackets in our hands. Chouji was walking in the back, often letting us leave him far behind. I decided to go to the back of the little line we made to walk with him. He was making awkward little steps, reeling oddly. Because I never had that particular problem myself, it took me quite some time to realize he had a friction rash, but once I did, I changed my tactic and instead of making him hurry, I walked as slowly as he was, making enough noise so our co-travelers didn’t forget about us.

Tenten led us to the nearby viewpoint, which had a nice gazebo where we had a picnic for lunch. Some smart kid brought a ball, so they went a little further down from the edge to play. We, the adults, had our own fun: Lee and I made a mini arm wrestling contest, and Tenten and Sasuke made a mini glaring contest. Adult fun, yay!

The view was really worth seeing. It was slightly weird to see the hotel from above; it looked even bigger, like a huge Lego experiment with many red roof layers. It was like a little parkour haven in the middle of nowhere.

It turned out Sasuke’s radio was right. The clouds, heavy and gray, were starting to gather after only a few hours, so we called the kids back, picked up all we had with us, and headed back.

The sky darkened so fast, it was frightening to watch. Among the trees, the shadows grew thicker and darker. It was as if it was the middle of the night. We could barely see where we were stepping. There were quite a few people tripping and falling down. One kid hurt his leg – Sasuke thought it was just a case of a sprained ankle, but he couldn’t say for sure in these conditions. The kid was crying in pain. Lee took him in his arms, determined to carry him back. I am ashamed to say it, but I completely forgot about Chouji until we reached the first meadow halfway back.

He was nowhere, as far as I could see. Chasing away a mild panic, I yelled, “Stop!”

There must have been something in my voice that fought through to be heard in the loud raging of the wind, because everyone stopped and turned to me.

“Where’s Chouji? Did anyone see him?”

Lee shook his head, and Tenten’s eyes widened so much, I was sure she was just as much on the edge of a panic attack as I was. The kids were murmuring something among them and avoided looking back at me.

Feeling that Konohamaru’s friend was about to burst into tears behind his glasses, I approached him.

“I don’t have all day. Where is he?”

After some stuttering and mumbling (I hadn’t hit anyone, I’m proud to say), the kid finally explained how Chouji wasn’t able to play the game with them because he couldn’t run, so he was mostly watching from the side. Nobody saw him after that. Maybe he went to take a walk on his own?

Damn, I knew he had a friction rash. I knew he couldn’t walk fast, and I forgot completely to check on him. Mad at myself and at the whole world, I yelled over the group of children at Tenten.

“I’m going back. You take them to the hotel!”

She shook her head and yelled back. “Naruto, no! You don’t know these woods. You’ll get lost!”

Lee was watching the boy in his arms, not sure if he should try to make him walk again or not, and then gave me an apologetic look.

“You know the area, don’t you?” I asked Sasuke.

“I do, but I’m not going back. I told you not to expect me to help you get out of this mess. I warned you to avoid it.”

Damn him, damn them all! We didn’t have time for this!

I grabbed the sleeve of Sasuke’s jacket and tugged him to follow me.

“Shut up and let them get those kids back!”

Not willing to wait a single second longer, I turned and ran in the direction we just came from. I hoped it would be okay as long as I went straight up to the top, but Tenten was right: the woods were dark and confusing.

I was completely sure Sasuke came along, but only when I felt him tug at my jacket to follow him.

“You moron!” he said into my ear, making me lean into him, into the little oasis of warmth his presence provided. When did it become so cold? And when did the rain start? “You should have let her go back herself, not me. She was the one insisting on doing this.”

“It’s my fault,” I explained, letting him drag me somewhere to the left. “I knew he had a friction rash, and I forgot completely to check on him!”

Sasuke huffed, but didn’t let go of me. Sharp, nasty swoops of the wind ware making my clothes cling to me. They found their way under my shirt, shockingly cold against my sweaty skin. Trees were swaying left and right, some bending very low by our heads, not breaking, but looking as if they would as seconds passed. Smaller branches were popping when the bursting air whirled through them. The drops of rain were tiny and dense, making a veil of mist swirl over the forest.

Sooner than I thought, we reached the viewpoint and the gazebo. If my jacket wasn’t waterproof, I would have been soaked. As it was, it was only my hair, my pants, and my sneakers that were.

As I laid my eyes on the slouched figure in the gazebo, every single wet part of my body felt warm despite of the cold mountain rain.

Chouji’s face lit when we approached him.

“I thought you forgot about me,” he said.

Before I could manage to open my mouth to answer and apologize, Sasuke said, “You were told not to separate from the group. What were you thinking, wandering around on your own?”

Chouji refused to answer, looking down at his shoes.

“Can we go back in this rain?” I asked, trying to get the mud off my pants.

“No. We’ll wait for rain to stop. It shouldn’t be too long.”

I took a seat next to Chouji, Sasuke moving across from us. We were all quiet, the two of them acting the same as always. I was feeling too guilty to try to start conversation. It was raining even harder now, and I could smell the wetness, roots, and earth with every deep breath I took. After a while, Chouji fell asleep, probably from boredom, so I took my jacket off and spread it over him.

“You’ll freeze,” Sasuke informed me, looking at my orange shirt, as if I couldn’t feel the bitter wind in my bones already.

“Better me than him. Besides, if you’re so concerned,” I said, moving to sit closer to him, “warm me up.”

Sasuke let me lean on him without changing his expression. “He already had a jacket on.”

“You’re warm,” I told him, refusing to discuss my decision. If Chouji got a cold, it would be my fault, not that I expected Sasuke to understand that.

We were sitting like that for some time, listening to Chouji’s light snoring and the bashing of the wind. The warmth I got from Sasuke on my left side only made me colder where the wind had free access, and pretty soon I was shaking violently. Even Sasuke was coldhearted enough to watch me in that miserable state only for so long before wrapping the hem of his jacket and an arm around me.

I looked up at him. His hair, if possible, was even darker against the gray of the sky behind him and just as wet as mine, and it was sticking to his temples. There was a single drop of rain on that place where cheek solidifies into chin. I had an impulse to lick it off, a mad urge so strong it seemed I could feel the freshness of the liquid on the tip of my tongue. I closed my eyes, but the image was already firmly imprinted in my mind.

Dear god, he smelled good. He was also warm, like a happily lit furnace in the middle of nowhere. I was sure you could bake bread under his jacket if you tried. I snuggled even closer, and said, not even thinking about it, “Damn it. I usually hate being so close to others.”

He stiffened for a moment and then said into my hair, “You’re cold.”

“Mhm,” I said, letting my forehead rest on his cheekbone. “That too.”

A sharp intake of air was the only answer for a moment. Then Sasuke took my hand in his. “You should take your jacket back. This is a very bad idea.”

His words and voice were firm, but he wasn’t letting me go. If anything, his grip fastened around my shoulder tighter, and he entangled our fingers.

Chouji was sleeping. How many times do you get an opportunity to watch the rainstorm from a gazebo with a brilliant view with someone you actually like? How often can you brush their eyelashes free of rain? I decided to let the wind blow away my mind; I could blame it all later on temporary insanity.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly and climbed right into Sasuke’s lap. “I know I shouldn’t be doing this.”

I expected him to push me off, to say something scathing and insulting, but Sasuke was looking up at me with a resigned face. It was as if he went through a huge, hard fight and saw no way of winning. Where was I when this battle happened?

He wrapped loose ends of his jacket around my sides, covering my bare arms and embracing me at the same time. I let my head fall back down on his neck, but instead of leaning my forehead in the crook, I dragged my open mouth across the soft skin there, replacing the cold wetness there for a warm trail. He stiffened for a moment and let an incoherent murmur in response.

I had fun with noting that where I would have shivered and arched, he’d lock his spine as if trying to make a board from it.

“Look,” I said after a bit, more to myself but loud enough for him to hear. “It’s just a storm. It’ll go away soon.”

I could feel his chest shaking from the laughter. “If that’s how you want to think about it.”

Making sure for the last time he wouldn’t dump me on my head, I pressed my mouth to his, kissing lightly, with a childishly closed mouth. The response was immediate and earnest - he opened his mouth and followed me as I drew back, as if he couldn’t wait for this to happen just as much as I couldn’t.

Feeling playful, I didn’t let him distract me. His lower lip was silky and soft, so I licked it slowly with the very tip of my tongue and nibbled lightly, taking my time to taste and imprint the shape of it. He was patient, letting me do what I wanted, but I couldn’t hold back for long.

When I finally sealed our mouths together, it was nothing I expected it to be. There was nothing urgent, desperate or violent about the way out tongues met and danced together. It was sweet and it did not take my breath away. Instead, I felt as if I was falling down, taking him and the world around us along with me. It was like I never kissed anyone before, as if I was never kissed in my life, as if I didn’t even know what a kiss was until that moment.

I could feel Sasuke’s fists on my chest where he was clutching my shirt, as if to prevent the wind from blowing me away. I took them in my hands, not allowing the kiss to break, and enclosed them around me. We were pressed together, kissing like that, with his and my arms both around me, implicated together for some time. When he squeezed firmly to let me know he got the message, I let go and brought my hands up to move the hair that was falling in his face with every lash of the air.

When it ended after who knows how long, I rested my forehead against his. I could feel stray drops of rain on my cheek, Sasuke’s hot breath on my nose. I could hear the wind raging even harder than before and light snoring from behind us. Thoughtful, light-minded, and still a little dizzy, I said, “Not so different from kissing a girl after all.” Only much better. Or was it just kissing Sasuke like that, and it had nothing to do with the fact he was a guy?

I realized implications of what I just said when surprise and anger flashed at me from Sasuke’s eyes. “No, wait, that’s not what—” It was all I managed to say before he pushed me back as far as I could go, until the hard edge of the table behind me was almost touching my bellybutton.

Now it was Sasuke kissing me, and this was how it was supposed to be from the beginning between us: livid and heated, with rage and irritation burning right under the skin. He bit me, I bit right back. He pushed me even more into the desk, pressing his erection against my lower stomach and crotch – which was a solid proof he was not a girl; all that anger was pointless – and I pushed right back, gasping at the contact, and wishing I could tear our clothes apart.

If the first kiss was like the solid, flawless moving of the Earth, this one was like an earthquake – overwhelming spasms of desire and need. It was breaking the rules of physics all around us, making me want to mew and bark, and call the almost frantic movements of our bodies’ foreplay.

He pulled my shirt up, laid his palms on my skin, and I had just enough time to register that it felt good, so very good. It was skin-on-skin contact and I was not drawing away. I wanted more. He got high enough to reach, rub, and scratch at my left nipple. I broke the kiss so not to growl in his mouth, then dragged my head to his neck. Wet kisses solidified into bites, and Sasuke tried to jerk his head away. “Don’t!”

That reminded me of what we were doing, that he was cheating on his wife here. I hated her right then, that stupid, stupid bitch. She had him every day, and she would not take this away from me before I was willing to let it go myself. I reached and grabbed his hands that were weakly trying to push me away and did a little, tricky lock around his fingers, automatically disabling him from moving an inch unless he wanted his thumbs broken. Not waiting for him to find the way to stop me, I found the most gentle skin high on his neck and bit down, sucking hard, determined to leave a bruise the size and color of the red acre cabbage so everyone could see.

Sasuke bent his head to give me the better excess, apparently done with the protesting, and he let out a small desperate sound that could have been a moan. I let him go. His hands were in my hair in the instant, tugging but not trying to push me away any longer. Sighing when I gave the final lick to the sore spot, he said in a shaking, uncharacteristic whisper, “Naruto!”

I looked up, and for the first time since this madness started, I could see his eyes clearly.

And god, how I wished I hadn’t. The raw emotion in them matched the longing and pain in my chest perfectly. It was like looking at my reflection in a mirror that somehow mixed the colors. I wanted to say something, anything, but all I could do was stare at him for a while. Then his expression closed and his eyes flickered to where Chouji was suspiciously not snoring behind me, and I felt the icy stab of fear in my chest. How did I manage to forget myself like that?

“He…” I said quietly. “He’s not awake, staring at us wide-eyed and being traumatized for life, is he?”

Sasuke checked again, titling his head to see better around my shoulder. “He’s asleep.”

“Oh, thank god!” The exclamation earned me a scorn.

“I don’t see what is so traumatizing about this.”

“Are you kidding me? Just imagine when you were his age, how would be like it if you woke up from a random nap and found Kakashi in Iruka’s lap.”

“…I see your point,” Sasuke said, but I was sure he was hiding a smile. I slid off his lap to the hard, chilly bench.

The wind wasn’t as hard as it was before, but it was still raining. We fell silent after that, Sasuke turning slightly to the left, and I looked to the right so we couldn’t catch each other even in our side-vision. There was an earthworm on the concrete near my foot, and I was entertaining myself watching it.

When the tension was just getting intolerable, Chouji stirred and opened his eyes. He blinked at us several times before looking around. “It’s still raining. I’m hungry.”

I picked up that worm from the ground and announced, “I made dinner!”

Identical looks of horror were glued on the thing in my hand.

“No, thank you,” Chouji said.

“You go ahead,” Sasuke added.

Silly things, weren’t they? I looked around and found a relatively sharp rock.

“Are you sure?” I asked them, showing them my find. “We could take this and slice it in three.”

“…No,” Sasuke said.

“Is it tasty?” the boy wanted to know.

What? He’s asking me? What did this kid think, that I ate earthworms every day, twice on Wednesdays?

“How should I know?” I demanded.

“Well, try it. If it’s tasty, I want some.”

“It looks tasty,” I assured him.

Chouji pulled a face on me. “No, it doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean anything. Onions don’t look tasty, either.”

Smart ass.

“I’m sure it’s tasty if you’re hungry enough.”

He looked like he was thinking hard about it. Then he said slowly, “I don’t think I am.”

Oh, thank god! I was thinking, and I got rid of the worm before the kid could change his mind about it.

After a pause, in which both of my misfortune companions clearly expressed their intention to not talk at all, I had to start again. “What kind of doctor are you anyway?” I asked Sasuke. “You’d just let him eat that?”

“I’m not his mother,” Sasuke said.

“My mother is dead,” Chouji informed us. You’d think a horrible thing like that would invoke some sympathy, right? Not with this asshole, it didn’t. Sasuke was in a foul mood. Oops?

“Since I am very much alive, that is just another proof I am not you mother.”

Then again, I would expect every kid to burst into tears under that hard glare. “I don’t know. You kind of have the same haircut as she did.”

The glare darkened further, and I almost jumped between them just in case. Before Sasuke decided to say or do anything too horrible to Chouji, I interfered, repeating again, “You would have let him eat that?”

“Yes.”

“And what if he got sick?”

“Then I would stick my fingers up his throat until he threw it up.”

I gaped. “You’re responsible for him!”

“No, actually. If he isn’t sick, you are. You volunteered for this. And, if I may point it out, you were the one offering him to eat a worm. A live worm.”

Okay, so he had a point there. But it wasn’t like I would have actually let the kid eat it!

“He was joking,” Chouji said.

Great, now the kid had to protect me. My mood was suddenly foul as well. “The rain’s stopped. We should go back.”

The rain didn’t stop completely, but it was much lighter now. The sky was clearing up in the distance. It took us a very long time to get all the way back down to the hotel. Wet earth was sticking to our shoes, making our steps very heavy and slow.

Chomaru, with his bush of red hair that was soaked and sticking in all directions without his cap on, was waiting in the garden. I expected him to grab his kid in a bear hug, but he just checked silently for any wounds and dragged him inside. Looking at the big muddy footprints Chouji left behind him, I decided to find some branch or something to at least try to scrape the mud off me. Sasuke had the same idea, so we both sat on the entrance step that was covered and dry.

My lips were hurting me. I thought it was a joke, an urban legend of some kind, when people said not to kiss in the wind. I pressed them a couple of times in the pauses of scraping my shoes with the back of my hand, and I was trying hard not to lick them because that would made things worse.

“Honey,” Sasuke said.

The silence that followed was not because I lost my tongue – my tongue was happily splattering an incoherent bunch of not fully formed “W”s and “P”s. It was because the crucial part of my brain stopped working. I know I sent a “Sasuke just called me honey?” thought to be processed in my brain, and to get back to me on possible replies for the situation, but there was nothing but the big, stunned silence up there.

After many seconds of opening and closing my mouth, my brain and tongue finally agreed that we needed more information, so I managed to shriek, much like a baby banshee would, “What?”

Sasuke frowned at me. Apparently, there was something confusing about my reaction. I hoped he wouldn’t think it was okay to call me that when his wife was around.

“You should put some honey on your lips. It should help,” he said, going back to the task at hand. I mean, his left shoe at hand.

Oh, that. Why didn’t he just say that in the first place? Damn it, I almost had a heart attack!

“You two are funny,” Said an unfamiliar voice right from above our heads, not sounding amused at all.

I shrieked again, earning an annoyed look from Sasuke, and turned as fast as I could to look at the guy behind us. He looked right back at me.

“Do you want me to do a painting of you, how it would look like if you died out there in the rain all alone?”

“He wasn’t alone, Sai,” Sasuke said, and he got rid of the branch he was using to clean his shoes. “What are you doing here?”

“Itachi wanted to take my car to come and see you. I offered to drive him instead.”

Sasuke closed his eyes. “Itachi is here?”

Sai didn’t answer. He didn’t have time to even try. In the next moment, Sasuke was marching to the entrance door. After Sai gave a single-shouldered shrug as the only answer to my questioning look, we quickly followed.