Conquest

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Chapter 8
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Naruto was staying at Sakura’s apartment; reasons for this were many-fold. Firstly, when Kiba had been in the process of moving out, Naruto had woken up in the middle of the night and had started unpacking everything. That included putting away all his clothes, handling Kiba’s dog print underwear with a pair of tongs, re-gluing all his random posters of animals and Judge Dredd with superglue and tying Kiba to the bed. He had then happily left for class, feeling confident that Kiba would be home when he got back (Naruto had a few abandonment issues).


Akamaru had watched Kiba all day, probably confused as to why his owner kept comparing him to Lassie. He had taken to curling up asleep on Kiba’s chest, memories of being a young pup floating through his mind.


After a few nights of this happening Kiba had taken action, he didn’t want to kick his friend when he was down and understood that the core of Naruto was to be around his friends, so he had blackmailed Sakura into helping out. What had he blackmailed her with? Well, with one of her deep dark secrets of having had a period of her life which was buried deep away where she had had a crush on Naruto the blond bombshell. Had Naruto found out about this he wouldn’t have shut up about it, ever.


So, while Kiba moved out in between his job, his classes and running away from Hinata’s father/Neji (he couldn’t tell the difference from afar) who appeared to be stalking him, Naruto had been manhandled into staying with Sakura for a few days. This meant threatening Naruto with her ‘fists of fury’ and dragging him out of the apartment by the ear.


...


Day 1:


Naruto had walked in on Lee in the shower. He had been woken up from his niche on the couch, shuffled towards the bathroom to take a piss and had found out that Lee showered while wearing his green spandex suit. Not that he wasn’t grateful for that fact, but the way the wet, black, shiny hair had shook from side to side and how the droplets had caught on Lee’s lower eyelashes had mesmerised Naruto. He couldn’t help thinking that Lee was beautiful and that small passing thought had disturbed Naruto so thoroughly that he had ended up curling up in corner rifling through his porn collection to remind himself of how much he enjoyed the sight of boobs and cock.


Sakura had simply smirked, completely forgetting to be affronted by the porn and told Lee to stop apologising.


Day 2:


It wasn’t Lee that Naruto found in the shower this time, it was his counterpart. Sakura had screamed so loudly that Naruto couldn’t even enjoy the view of her pert breasts covered partially in soap suds and the fact that she was pink down there too. Sakura had chucked the razor she’d been using to shave her armpits at Naruto’s face; he had managed to dodge it, but slipped in the process. He had woken a few hours later with miraculous selective amnesia.


Day 3:


This time the bathroom had been completely empty much to his relief and somewhat disappointment (Lee’s beauty now gave him disturbing nightmares) however, being out of loo roll, he’d wandered into Sakura’s room asking loudly where she kept it. This had been a mistake because Sakura and her fuzzy browed lover were in the middle of an expression of their love. Now professional porn is all very nice to watch and salivate over but seeing a live show is horrifying. Lee was revealed to be the most flexible person ever, a good view of his alarmingly large balls caused Naruto to shriek and continue in this manner until Sakura (her skin the exact pink of her hair from the exertions of before) had covered them up while throwing a lamp at Naruto. Later they had the, ‘what mommy and daddy do behind closed doors and why you should always fucking knock, you retard!’ talk.


...


That talk had happened a few hours ago, Naruto now stood outside his apartment, key in hand, and desperately wanting to not go in. He had lived with Kiba for over 5 years. During his last few years of high school he had moved in with him when at the young age of sixteen his ‘guardian’ had up and left. Kiba was his brother and his best friend, a bond that had instantly formed. Although Kiba wasn’t gone entirely Naruto didn’t want to live alone again, he had already felt the ache of an empty home. However Naruto understood that Kiba needed space and time to develop his relationship with Hinata. Discovering just how serious they were about each other had worried Naruto and so it had been pushed to back of his mind to worry about later. Except later was now.


Naruto pushed the key in and the door was half open before something large impacted into the middle of his back toppling him forwards into the room.


“NARUTO!”


The lump on his back screamed into his ears, arms had tightened around his waist and he was having difficulty moving. He groaned, feeling the soreness in his knees already and attempted to turn around


“MY NARUTO!” Came the high pitched screech. Naruto was now trying desperately to crawl away, if he was being attacked by some freaky alien human hybrid he needed to warn the others.


Finally being able to extract himself from the arm tentacles he found that his would-be attacker was actually Gaara. He attempted to raise any eyebrow at the out of character expression on the pale man’s face.


Gaara was now sitting cross legged in his door way, looking at Naruto in adoration and a little coyly. It didn’t even look like Gaara anymore, the usually narrowed kohl lined eyes were now opened wide to match the sappy smile that had replaced the colourless stiff mouth. Naruto began to edge away; he wanted to poke it but thought it might attack.


As Naruto shuffled across the floor, with varying paces in speed, the Gaara look-a-like matched him, all the while babbling at him about what he had for breakfast.


“That’s where he went,” a female voice from above spoke, Naruto looked up to see Temari watching in amusement the scene before her.


“WHAT DID YOU DO TO GAARA?! I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!” Naruto let out his stream of confusion and, to be frank, his fear in the outburst.


Temari narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth to give a scathing reply when Kankuro appeared leaning against the door in his semblance of cool.


“Oh good,” Kankuro rolled his eyes as Gaara climbed in Naruto’s lap and started to stroke his hair.


Naruto’s eyes almost popped out of his head as Gaara started to what could only be called groom him. He turned these eyes on the other siblings and wordlessly demanded an answer.


“He’s doped up on his crazy meds,” Kankuro explained in an irritated manner.


“They’re not crazy meds!” Temari snapped in response, and thus an argument began. Amidst the yelling of, ‘it’s your fucking fault,’ and other profanities that the siblings employed as words of endearment and nicknames for each other, Naruto was able to discern what had happened.


“He still seemed so fucking grumpy, so I gave him a little more!” It was a now a full-out screaming match. Naruto had stopped listening though; Gaara’s hands were wandering all over his face.


“Naruto,” he sighed happily. What Naruto had managed to gauge was that Gaara was on a high from his antidepressant pills.


Naruto chucked a cushion at Temari to get her attention, “Erm, shouldn’t we take him to a hospital or something?”


“Nah, his therapist says the effects will wear off in a few hours,” Kankuro grinned.


Naruto sighed as Gaara’s hands began to wonder over his torso, still firmly placed in his lap with no signs of moving while happily repeating “Naruto” over and over again.


“How did this happen?!” Wide pleading blue eyes were turned on Temari who shrugged before launching into an explanation, littered with huffs and grunts from Kankuro.


The story that Naruto had managed to piece together was that Gaara had seemed to have become particularly depressed and homicidal (more so than usual) since Naruto’s departure. After finding several rat heads in his room accompanied by hand-written death threats in what could either be blood or ketchup by his pillow in the morning, Kankuro had insisted that Temari do something. She had turned to Gaara’s therapist who had prescribed some stronger medication. The problem came when the medication hadn’t had much effect initially and so Kankuro had gotten him to take some more, unaware that Temari had done the same only a half hour before. So now Gaara was overdosed on three times the recommended dose and was terrifyingly happy.


“He’s also got diarrhoea,” Kankuro was listing the side-effects. “But I’m sure you can handle him for a while.”


“Hey! Wait! Where are you guys going?!” Temari and Kankuro were now walking towards the door.


“He only wants you anyway and we need a break from babysitting. Take him to the park or something, he likes sunlight now. Try not to kill him ‘kay?” And with that the elder siblings made their exit leaving a confused Naruto who absently patted the being in his arms on the head.


...


Sasuke glared, infuriated, at Kakashi. They were in the staff room having a very much one-sided argument.


“I did offer him my help,” he ground out.


“Mm,” was the non-committal reply.


“I don’t see why he’s supervising the first years with me; I can handle them fine by myself.” Sasuke continued to speak in his forced tone.


“Ah,”


“He’ll just waste more time and give me extra work to deal with,” Sasuke continued as if reading between the murmured sounds.


“Maa...”


“Besides, he’s got too much work to catch up on anyway. He can’t afford to give up the studying time.”


“You underestimate him,” Kakashi spoke actual words this time causing Sasuke to pause. When he searched Kakashi’s face he found no sign that the other had actually said anything.


Sasuke’s mouth twitched, he was surrounded by morons. He had offered to help Naruto, to tutor him and get him back on track, and had been rejected. Uchiha Sasuke had never once been rejected in his life. He had lived a pampered existence despite being largely devoid of the acceptance and love he desired subconsciously; still, it hadn’t contained any outright rejections.


However it wasn’t the rebuff that caused him to think a little harder, that frown line to mar his smooth skin at random times over the last few days. No, it was something else in Naruto’s blue eyes that had demanded more from him. That he could give him more. Sasuke wasn’t entirely sure how the moron had wormed his way into his mind and life so thoroughly and it gave him a headache just thinking about it. What his personality should be was so ingrained into him from his parents and the influences of Itachi that at times he didn’t know whose thoughts he was thinking.


Sighing, he stood up from his position aware that the one eye that was apparently sleeping was actually tracking his every movement. “I’ll give him a try.”


“Mmm, good because I’d like you to show him around in about fifteen minutes.”


Sasuke raised a brow.


“I have to go help Gai with his charity bake sale,” Kakashi’s eyes twinkled as Sasuke’s expression indicated just how much he bought the excuse. “Anyway, bye-bye,” Kakashi somehow managed to melt out of visibility much like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.


...


Naruto was running. It was so typical. His first day of working for the Professor and he was late already. It hadn’t been his fault really; Kiba had come round to see how he was settling in. He had bought 50 different kinds of ramen with him to placate Naruto. Which had worked marvellously, they had played games, drank beer (they were students, they could do this in the middle of the morning) until it had come to Kiba leaving.

He had learnt his lesson from before, besides strapping Kiba to the bed while he was conscious wouldn’t work. So he had locked him in the bathroom and extracted extravagant promises from him, such as never leaving and buying him even more ramen. A few hours later had found both boys sitting either side of the door bawling their eyes out with declarations of love and promises and this was how Hinata found them. Both were quite prone to drama and it took a while for Hinata to calm them down.


It wasn’t until Naruto’s internal stomach clock began ticking that he realised it was gone lunchtime. He was meant to meet Professor Kakashi a little before two o’clock so he could be given instructions and shown around the lab. This wasn’t really necessary as he had performed the same experiments in his first year but it was protocol as he’d actually be in charge this time.


It had rained earlier so he was jumping into puddles, most of the time not on purpose. He had decided to take the job because he couldn’t afford to keep the apartment otherwise. He was secretly hoping that Kiba would move back and that was why he was so reluctant to let it go. He could see how happy Kiba and Hinata were, even though Kiba seemed to have become slightly paranoid as of late, checking behind all the doors as he walked through and scanning the area outside the window etc. It was difficult for Naruto to be optimistic about the situation.


He pulled at the back of his T-shirt which was stuck to his back with sweat and searched his pockets for his university ID. Finding it, he flashed it to the security guard while shooting him a beaming smile. The guard gave him a suspicious look before nodding him through.


He skidded down the hallways and ran down the stairs. He could not be late. Professor Hatake was a confusing man, sure he seemed nice, but he could switch personalities quite easily. Besides Naruto was looking forward to the job. He remembered the amount of fun he had during first year labs, completely forgetting how much of a pain he had been to the supervisors.


Pulling out his phone he took a quick glance at the time, he was going to make it, the finish line was in sight. He only needed to be there ten minutes before labs started. The grey-haired professor hadn’t seemed too fussed, but when Naruto set out to do things he did them with all his heart (and a fair amount of whining, an odd combination but it made things interesting).


...


Sasuke tapped his foot against the back of the door waiting, in impatience, outside the lab for Naruto to arrive. The moron was late as usual and the longer that Sasuke was made to wait the more uneasy he became. Their last meeting hadn’t gone particularly well and Sasuke was unused to feeling so out of sync with his thoughts and emotions.


A yellow/orange/black blur rushed past him through the other side of the door. Sasuke smirked three… two… one….


Naruto walked backwards out of the room to do a double take.


“You’re late, Naruto,” Sasuke’s smirk remained in place, any anxiety he had had a few moments ago vanished at the adorable, confused expression on the Naruto’s face. The look was soon replaced by a hardening in the clear blue eyes. Sasuke felt slightly disappointed and he could taste the bitterness in his mouth.


Naruto’s face was still blank. “You’re helping me supervise the first year labs, right?” Sasuke took a deep breath and gave Naruto a questioning look, the awkwardness was starting to build a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach.


Naruto’s blankness vanished as he took in the words; Sasuke caught the morphing of inner rage to the easy going smile he received.


“Yup!” and with that Naruto walked back into the lab.


Sasuke lent his head back to hit lightly against the door behind; this was going to be a long evening.


...


He had shown Naruto around the lab, pointing out where all the solutions were kept, the general procedure and the fire safety rules. Most of the time he was certain that Naruto wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention but every time he turned to look at him his eyes were locked with piercing blue that, if he was honest, sent shocks running down his spine.


“Pay attention Naruto, this is a trial run, I will be reporting back to Kakashi on how well this works out,” Sasuke felt the need to re-establish his authority over Naruto. He didn’t like the way flashbacks of their last encounter in the labs kept flashing at random times as he spoke. He remembered the harsh dry kiss, the domination and sudden lack of control and tremors ran through him as his body recalled the memories also.


Naruto shot him a forced grin, well, what Sasuke thought was forced anyway because the harshness in the eyes remained. The conflict of wanting to be a little softer and harder on the Naruto at the same time made things unnecessarily complicated.


“Now what?” Naruto wasn’t looking at him, glancing around the lab to take everything in.


“Here’s the protocol, familiarize yourself with it, that’s the experiment the first years are carrying out today,” Sasuke handed over the stapled sheets. “It’s all standard, you should have done them all already,” Sasuke offered, with a smile that no one saw.


“Yeah, I’ve done this shit already, I know how,” Naruto growled.


Sasuke sighed internally. Well it’s your own damn fault. He was going to be spending the next four, possibly five hours with the man who was still so pissed off at him. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to help him, and it certainly wasn’t his fault that Naruto had insisted on that date and holding his bag hostage. This was very aggravating to Sasuke, the worst part was actually having to realise that he cared that this twenty something thick-headed student was upset with him. Uchiha Sasuke didn’t give a flying fuck who he upset, except now, apparently, he did. That’s because we want to fuck him, why won’t you let us get laid?! It disturbed him that the voices spoke in plural.


“Look, Uchiha…” Sasuke looked up to see Naruto’s eyes slightly narrowed. “I don’t care about what happened between us before, why don’t we try to be friends, or you know, you stop being such a bastard, at least until the end of this thing.” Naruto spoke lightly but there was an underlying flash of red in his eyes that made Sasuke think before he spoke.


“Whatever you want, Uzumaki, now if you’re done with your drama…” Despite actually trying to be considerate his words still came out callous. It didn’t matter though, Naruto had stopped listening at ‘Uzumaki’ and was now on the other side of the lab receiving an enthusiastic greeting from Gai.


Sasuke felt the great urge to smack his forehead. He was surrounded by morons.


He watched with a certain amount of amusement as Naruto and Gai talked animatedly. His eyes widened when he saw Gai removing his lab coat. Oh, god, not the spandex. Please. Anything but the spandex. Sasuke’s usually quick reflexes didn’t work as fast as he would have liked; his sharp eyes got a full view of every outline of Gai’s body. He watched torn, between horror and enjoyment, as Naruto squealed over the outfit.


Gai’s booming laughter reached across the lab. “Ah, Naruto! Pupil of my rival! By the end of the session we will see if you are worthy of the green beast outfit!”


Sasuke found his spirits oddly lightened to see Naruto smiling genuinely, but cringed when he had a vision of Naruto wearing the outfit.


“Wow! It has so many pockets!” Naruto walked around Gai, he took one look at the view from behind and his enthusiasm evaporated instantly; Sasuke’s smirk reformed.


The first years began to trail in, grabbing seats, the girls insisting on sitting with their friends and the boys causing a general chaos. He walked over to Naruto and shoved half the protocols into his hands with a sharp, “Hand these out,” and receiving the reply of “Anything you want, bastard!”


After Gai gave his deafening speech about what they would be doing that afternoon, instilling the youth of springtime within their fresh young minds etc, he pointed out a very put out Sasuke (who was only now wondering where Kakashi was if Gai was here) and a beaming Naruto who gave everyone two thumbs up, and instructed them that they were here to help. The green beast was not staying; he had left Kakashi alone at the bake sale.


...


The lab session was in full swing now, Naruto had memorised the protocol and was having a stupid amount of fun playing teacher.He went around from student to student chatting happily with them, showing them all the easy tricks.


“Oh god, this is so gross, Sir!” Naruto wasn’t about to prevent anyone from calling him, ‘Sir’.


“Nah, you see most of the, erm, faeces, yeah, that, they form in the colon! So what we’ve got in this little guy’s ileum is really just mashed up food.” The girl looked at him with large adoring eyes as he helped her string up the piece of tissue in the organ bath.


“See, all you do is just tie it with a reef knot, that way we don’t rip it,” Naruto looked up as he spoke and caught Sasuke’s dark unreadable eyes watching him a few metres away, they held his briefly before breaking the contact.


Naruto pushed his warring thoughts to the back of his mind. He had spent two hours trying to ignore the prickling he felt every time Sasuke looked at him. It was so hard dealing with all the crap going on in his life currently that the soft looks he had caught on the TA’s face only translated to looks of pity. It didn’t help that his libido was clawing at him. Standing next to Sasuke during Professor Maito’s talk had unnerved him because all his muscles tensed from wanting to feel the warmth inches away.


“Ah, Sir?”


“Huh? Oh! Right!” Naruto carried on explaining, his words coming out jumbled.


There was a crash next to him and he was sufficiently dragged out his thoughts at the breaking of the glass beaker.


“Here, don’t worry about it, we all do that,” Naruto shot the girl a reassuring smile and started to turn away to clean up the mess until he saw the large gash running across the side of her palm. He quickly got the first aid kit and gently took her arm to start cleaning the wound.


“Hey, its fine, look it’s stopped bleeding now,” he gave her his best good guy smile, and received a watery smile in return.


Again he looked up to see Sasuke, whose mouth was twisted in a harsh line this time. He grinned brightly in return, showing his canines, and went back to helping the student. After mopping up the mess with some paper towels he spent the rest of the time entirely ignoring the bastard.


However it was difficult to avoid Sasuke when around 7pm the lab was completely cleared of students and the lab techs were in the process of leaving.


“So… erm… what now?” Naruto looked at what he had termed in his head, ‘The Bastard’.


The Bastard looked up and The Dagger twitched. Figures.


“I just need to clear up a few more things, you’re free to go,” Sasuke spoke in clear dismissal.


Naruto sighed, if they weren’t going to sort things out, things would get awkward. Well, more awkward.


“Look, Sasuke, how about we try this friends thing?” Naruto walked over to where Sasuke was yanking at rolls of recordings on the chart machine and wasn’t particular listening.


He automatically placed his hands over Sasuke’s, standing behind him to help him with freeing the paper stuck there. It wasn’t until he heard Sasuke’s slightly shuddering breath that he realised how inappropriate what he was doing actually was. Also that it had seemed all too natural for him to always be this close to the man.


Naruto stepped away, hand reaching to rub at the back of his neck, “heh, sorry, so yeah? Friends?”


...


Sasuke looked at Naruto’s extended hand, his eyes travelling up the limb to catch at Naruto’s blue, sincere eyes; he nodded, dark hair falling to hide his eyes and then took the hand in his. The tingles from the touch made his heart beat just a little faster, blood pounded in his ears.


He held on for a moment longer, shook it before speaking, “Friends,” in agreement.