Disclaimer: I don't own Sasuke, Naruto, or any of the musical pieces mentioned.
A/N: Title was inspired by something I was thinking about the other day…about the numerous anime/manga whose creators seem to enjoy throwing out multiple hints of shounen ai – but never actually establish an official couple. And I apologize for any weird verb tense mistakes, this is the first time I'm trying to write in the present. Also, it's been a while since I've studied music theory, so I might use some terms wrong.
Summary: Quick one-shot, SasuNaru. An AU situation in which Naruto simply does what he does best – briefly bringing a little joy to Sasuke's cheerless life, whether he wants it or not.
-What Could Have Been-
His life is music. It isn't something by choice, really, but rather a fate decided for him the minute his older brother finally cracked and abandoned his studies to engage in criminal activities. Mourning for the loss of such potential, his parents had forced the role of a musical prodigy on him, and as a young boy, he had no say in the decision.
Now it is all he has – even if he wishes to quit, there is nothing he can turn to. No other direction he would know of to take, no other talents, no other abilities…his academic studies have long been put aside as a priority, as evidenced by his current state studying under the private instruction of the most well-respected professionals in his field, rather than applying for college like any normal 17 year old.
Glancing at the rows and rows of awards and honors, Uchiha Sasuke inwardly sighs as he continues to flawlessly play his current piece. What is it again? Opus 6? 7? Nth symphony? His concert is two whole days away, and yet he has been ready since only the second time he has even looked at the sheet music. It has definitely been a long while since he has come across a piece that has been truly stimulating.
A sudden noise makes him start, pale slender fingers halting their fluid movement over the black and white keys. The black haired teen glances sideways to the huge window his piano stands next to, and blinks as his gaze meets curious, clear blue eyes. For a few seconds he is frozen, unable to think of anything to say.
Fortunately, he doesn't have to. Those impossibly blue orbs suddenly narrow as the boy suddenly grins an impossibly wide smile. "Heya, watcha doin'?" He chirps.
Sasuke only continues to stare.
"Uh, hello? Are you deaf? No way can you be deaf, I mean how can you be deaf if you're playing the piano? Hello, mister? Come on, stop staring at me like that, I don't look that bad, do I? Well, I guess I might, I mean, I haven't been able to shower since last week, but that's better than the time I couldn't wash my hair for like, a month because we had to lay low for so long after the police found out we were the ones-"
"Why would you ask what I'm doing if you already know?" Sasuke quickly interrupts, beginning to feel overwhelmed. He'd pretty much stopped comprehending after the word 'mister' (which by the way, is insulting…he isn't that old).
The boy shrugs, scratching his mess of bright, blonde hair. "I dunno, guess I wanted to know what song that is."
Scornfully eyeing the boy's scraggly appearance, Sasuke replies coolly, "You wouldn't know."
Immediately, the bright smile turns into a scowl. "How would you know, arrogant bastard? You don't even know who I am!"
"So who are you, then?" Sasuke is curious to know, at this point.
"My name's Naruto!" The blonde announces proudly, grinning again. "And I'm the number one loudmouthed member of the Aka-aah, crap!" Naruto yelps as he slips backwards, disappearing from view.
It is only now that Sasuke realizes the boy has been hanging from his window, clinging to the ledge to keep himself from falling. The stupid idiot had fallen when his excited movements made him lose his grip, allowing gravity to work its magic. Not only that…his window had been opened. FORCED open.
The black haired teen wonders for a second if he should be concerned for this Naruto (Fishcake? What kind of name is that?) considering it seems like the kid is a common thief, trying to break into his house…but then again, he is on the third floor, and the fall down no doubt couldn't have been anything less than painful. Sighing at this unexpected interruption, Sasuke gets up from his seat and walks over to the window to peer down to the ground below.
Well, the ground is void of a splattered mess topped with bright yellow hair…so it seems the kid got down alright. Walking back to his piano, Sasuke waits for a few minutes before playing, wondering if Naruto would come back.
When he doesn't, the teen shrugs and begins playing again.
This time, he is indulging himself…upon digging through his old music books in his boredom, he came across one that contained easier, children's versions of famous classical songs. Right now, he is trying to improvise Fur Elise – improv is the only thing that might qualify as something fun to do on the piano.
"Hi again!"
Sasuke winces as he hits an unintentionally dissonant chord. Before he even turns his head to look, the black haired teen already knows who it is.
"I'd appreciate if you'd stop forcing my window open." Sasuke deadpans, glaring.
"Well, I don't really give a damn what you appreciate." Naruto stuck his tongue out, brandishing his lockpick rather cheekily. " 'Sides, s'not like I'm trying to come in to steal anything."
Sasuke sighs. "What do you want?"
"Didn't I just say, bastard? I don't want anything!"
"Then why are you here, bothering me?"
Naruto shrugs, scrabbling up to pull his body completely into the house. Sasuke eyes the blonde warily, but all the boy does is shut the window, stretch his legs out with a sigh, and lean back against the warm glass with a contented look on his face. "Just hidin'. And might as well come some place where there's entertainment." He finally answers.
Sasuke snorts, about to make a derisive comment on what the blonde would consider entertainment. A closer look at the other boy, however, makes him stop and stare.
On each cheek are three distinct scars, giving him the appearance of having whiskers. It is definitely a strange sight, especially with the apparently precise symmetry the scars are place on those tan cheeks. Some kind of extraordinary birthmark?
Shrugging, Sasuke decides it's not really worth his attention, to know any personal details about this stranger. And it seems like nothing he says would make the kid leave, so he might as well continue his playing as if the other wasn't there. "Whatever. Just don't interrupt me while I'm practicing."
Naruto nods quickly, apparently eager to hear him play. Dismissing the question of why such an obviously uncivilized ruffian would want to hear sophisticated music, Sasuke begins to play.
As his fingers resume their dance across the ivory keys, Sasuke soon becomes aware of something…different. It is a very subtle change, so subtle that he doesn't know exactly how to describe it. Somehow, it is as if he is hearing his own music for the first time, and for once, caring about how it sounds. Why…?
The answer to that question comes in the form of intense blue eyes, which he can practically feel drilling into him. It makes him feel self-conscious, which is confusing – since when has he ever cared what his audience thinks of his music?
When he finishes, the loud clapping makes him blush for some reason. Mortified, the black haired teen struggles to regain his emotionless exterior, which had never been hard to sustain before. Why does the sound of a single person clapping affect him so much, when the roar of a thousand people cheering for him only makes him draw into his shell even more?
"Cool, that sounded awesome! Hey, can you play like, theme songs? Like from movies, or tv shows or…OOH! What about anime songs?" Naruto jumps up excitedly, bouncing over to the piano and nearly knocking the other teen down.
The slight twitch in his eyebrow is the only indication of Sasuke's instinctive reaction to shove the filthy boy away. "No. I don't play theme songs." He answers scornfully.
"Why not? I bet they'd be fun…lemme try!" Without even waiting for an answer, Naruto eagerly sticks a grubby finger out to hit the middle C…and leaves a dark, dirty smudge on the expensive ivory.
Feeling his eye twitch again, Sasuke slowly counts to ten, forcing calm on his irritated nerves. He would NOT let this...this nobody get to him.
The black haired teen suddenly realizes he is not hearing the random banging of keys as he expected. He is startled to realize that Naruto is actually playing something…albeit, a simple something with only one hand, but a melody nonetheless. He watches as the blonde boy sticks out his tongue in intense concentration, amused despite himself.
Now curious, Sasuke forgets the fact that his over 80,000 dollar grand piano is being soiled by a common thief to ask, "What song is that?"
Naruto stops playing to turn to him with a comical look of disbelief. "You're kidding me. KIDDING me."
"Obviously not, since I'm asking you what it is." Sasuke grumbled, beginning to feel irritated again.
"How can you not know the theme song to Harry Potter? How?!" Naruto yelps, waving his arms around excitedly. Sasuke ducks to avoid getting socked in the nose. "Man, you have got to get out more."
"Shut up." Sasuke mumbles under his breath, feeling yet another blush rise to his cheeks. God, what was wrong with him?! In an obvious ploy to change the topic, he asked in a slightly accusatory voice. "How do you know how to play piano?"
Again, that annoyingly cheeky grin. "Wouldn't you like to know."
What an annoying answer. Typical.
Catching a glance at the clock hanging on the wall, Naruto withdraws his hand from the piano to walk back to the window. "Whelp, gotta go…maybe I'll come back tomorrow to show you more of my awesome talent."
Sasuke snorts. "You wish." He watches with amusement as the other boy struggles to open the resisting window, loudly cursing the panel of glass.
Throwing him one last grin, the blonde haired boy launches himself off the ledge and disappears from view.
It has been weeks, and the annoying kid keeps coming back to his window. He'd hang from the same spot so much that there are now dark smudges on the white window sill that the servants couldn't get out. And it certainly annoys Sasuke ever single time, having his cemented routine interrupted so much, especially since the other boy doesn't come at the same time every day. Plus, Naruto is just so damn chatty – whether it's talking about food (always ramen, disgusting stuff), current trends (which the blonde snidely commented on Sasuke's ignorance of such things), and other randomness.
From such one-sided conversations, Sasuke learns that Naruto is actually 16 (a LOT older than he looked, which he does not fail to point out), had learned a tiny bit of how to play piano from his parents before they died, and has been living in foster homes since. And although he hasn't directly said it, Sasuke could glean that the other teen is somehow involved with a local gang.
Yes, Naruto is annoying. But he is also something…different. Until he'd met Naruto, the black haired teen hadn't realized how much he had craved a change in his life, even one as little as a pesky visitor constantly hanging from his window like a leech. And a leech he is…a few days, the blonde would come right into the house like the second day and even have the gall to occasionally wander into the rest of the house in search of food. Sasuke had protested the first few times, but eventually stopped when he realized how futile his arguments were. Plus, it seems the blonde is rather adept at becoming invisible to anyone else in the house…although his dirty track marks are definitely visible. The cleaning maids certainly weren't happy about that.
His instructors seemed to notice something different as well. They now compliment him on his playing, saying some nonsense about the pieces finally sounding like they have soul in them and that they are more lively. What nonsense…he plays them no different than before, as he'd done for years.
One day, a sudden thought occurs to him and Sasuke confronts the other teen about it. "How long have you been watching me?"
Naruto looks up, startled from the light doze he had fallen into from listening to an improv version of Canon in D. "Huh?" He responds stupidly.
"Have you been watching me long before the first time I talked to you?" Sasuke asks suspiciously. "How else would know not to come on the days my instructors or my parents are home?"
Stunning blue eyes disappear behind a foxy smile. "You can be pretty oblivious when you play. I'd been watching ya for a couple of weeks before you finally noticed. It was fun to listen to, y'know?"
"That's creepy. Stop stalking people, that's illegal." Sasuke responds monotonously, a sharp contrast to the rapid notes of Flight of the Bumblebee. He ignores the tongue now sticking out at him and wonders exactly what the other teen had found so interesting about watching him. Sasuke doesn't bother to ask, deciding to chalk it up to yet another weird aspect of Naruto's character. And no, he is not blushing, again, upon finding out how much more often the blonde had watched him…he is simply feeling righteously indignant that he hadn't noticed it right away.
Catching a glance of the time, Sasuke is not surprised to hear the other teen bid him goodbye.
Two weeks.
It has been two weeks since Naruto last showed his cheeky face in his window.
Not that he cares or anything. But the blonde's visits had been incorporated into his routine, and he feels just a tiny bit of a loss when that routine is not followed.
He can't concentrate. His pieces are messy, his fingers fumble, his coordination off. His instructors are confused, asking him what is wrong, urging him to get ahold of himself before his biggest performance yet in only a few days. But Sasuke realizes…he doesn't really care, because really, no one is there to hear it. Naruto isn't there to hear it.
Sasuke starts. Since when has his playing become so dependent on the other teen? He had become a musical prodigy long before meeting Naruto, so why does he feel the way he does now? Why does he feel that if it's not that certain blonde listening to him play, it simply isn't worth playing at all? He shouldn't care about how those blue eyes always shone with admiration and…something else he couldn't identify, every time he finished playing a piece. He would get no rewards, no trophies, from the adoration of a money-less street rat. So why…
Sasuke stares at the piece he had again failed to play, as if it could answer his question. Then he stares some more as he realizes, it does answer his question.
Johannes Brahms' Intermezzo Op. 118, No 5.
Well then. The next time Naruto shows up if he shows up he will tell him of this revelation. After all, he has always been a direct person, and has never found any use in dilly-dallying about anything, least of all emotions.
One month later, Sasuke hears on the news about the mass capture of nearly all the members of the infamously ruthless Akatsuki gang. There were four casualties on the Akatsuki side, and their photos were displayed in a line on the TV screen.
Dark eyes first land on the photo labeled as the Akatsuki leader, and he marvels at how different the man looks from what he remembers, with the baggy eyes and blood red contacts. Only the smallest ounce of regret barely runs through his heart. His gaze then drifts to the left most image, where it stays until the line of photos are replaced once more by the news announcer. Sasuke turns away and continues playing, seeming to shrug off the fact that the whiskered, cheerful blonde would never grace his window again. Would never annoy him with his grubby fingers banging on his precious keys, nor leave dirty track marks on the floor like a disobedient pet.
Inside however, the musical prodigy feels the searing pain for what could have been.
A/N: If your curious about the last piece mentioned, it's also known as 'Romance,' by Johannes Brahms. Actually, I think it is first known as Romance, second as Opus but myeh… I wanted to use a piece that meant 'Love' but I couldn't find one, boooo.
Referenced Music:
Fur Elise by Beethoven
Canon in D by Pachelbel
Flight of the Bumblebee by Rimsky-Korsakov (VERY fun to play )
Romance (Intermezzo Op. 118, No 5.) by Brahms