Well then, back into Naruto once again! Writing fanfiction for this anime never gets old. Kishimoto has truly created a complete universe.
Thank Pokekid 25 for inspiring me to actually start posting this story up! This one had been rotting in the reservoir for quite a while (one…two years?) and I haven't actually gotten around to actually writing it until the request popped by! So thank you so much Pokekid 25 for making me get onto the computer with a blank Word document to start writing!
Cheers, kid (no pun intended), I now dedicate this story to you!
Yamato had never pegged Kakashi as the type to go out and drink—mostly because Kakashi was infamous for his unforgiving mask. So he was very surprised when the older man tapped him on the shoulder one spring morning.
"Have a drink with us tonight, Tenzou."
"Who's 'us'?"
"You know, the other jounin. Think of it as a rite of welcoming. I know you're ANBU and not like the rest of us, but hell, you've trained Sakura, Naruto, and Sai for quite some time."
Yamato seemed to ignore the reasoning. "Is this something you guys always do?"
"Usually," and Kakashi turned his head to the side, "But I only go occasionally."
Yamato wasn't the type to drink—ok, no, that as a lie—he had been trying to lay of alcohol for a while; there was a period in his life where he drank alcohol like water, if not more.
"I'll pass."
"I'm pretty sure you don't have anything important to attend to."
"No, I'm good."
"I'll pay for the drinks?" Kakashi offered, knowing Yamato's frugality. "Consider it payback for your treat at Ichiraku that time back."
But a social event wasn't going to bring him back to his old drinking habits, was it? It was just people and drinks; it wasn't just drinks and the clock staring back at him alone in his apartment. It should be fine, right?
"Alright, I'll go," Yamato confirmed, and Kakashi nodded.
"Meet me in front of the dango shop around 9," the silver haired jounin added before stepping away.
"Sure, 10 it is then," Yamato agreed, in reference to Hatake's dilatory habits, and Kakashi threw him a middle finger from behind his back.
encoder
His body had to be here somewhere.
Yamato was pretty sure he was only partly unconscious, maybe half drunk, but he felt like he was completely wide awake, because he only saw everything so vividly, his vision switching back and forth from past to present, from memory to reality.
His body had to be here somewhere.
Yamato looked down at the black water, which was now up to his waist, looked at his wet hands with starlight glinting off the drops of sweat on the palms of his hands, looked out at the horizon where the night sky fused with the rough ripples of the dark ocean, interrupted by a silhouette of an island in the distance.
That was the island.
The island of timeless hours, endless nights, unforgiving screams, relentless torture…
His body had to be here somewhere.
Yamato pawed through the salty water, as if his struggling would actually get him anywhere. Again and again he broke surface to breathe before diving again into the water that just got denser each time he dipped his head below.
He was looking for a body, and he thought he spotted it: a pale and rotted hand reaching out.
Save me, said the corpse.
So Yamato stretched out his arm to rescue the dead body. His hand gripped the wrist, but both it and the rest of the arm it was attached to disappeared into a watery grave.
The realization only hit Yamato when he strained his eyes to see the last of the dissolving features of the corpse, a wisp of jet black hair, a plastered smile on thin lips, a stare of steel gray eyes lingering on Yamato's gaze...
The body wasn't here.
It wasn't even real.
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Of course with Kakashi, they arrived the scene later than all the other jounin, most of whom already had a few drinks.
"Kakashi!" Asuma greeted, the first to notice Kakashi stepping into the private tavern room that the jounin had rented out for the night and subsequent morning.
The rest of the jounin swiveled heads to nod or wave at the fashionably late jounin and Kakashi pulled his arm back to gesture towards Yamato.
"Fresh blood," Kakashi briefly explained before the two were welcomed in, the Hatake moving aside to make room for the two. "I think you guys all know Yamato by now. I thought it was good time to call him into our gatherings."
Yamato sat between Kakashi and Kurenai, facing Asuma, and looked around the long rectangular table to take a look at the rest of the members. A few faces he recognized and others that he didn't.
"Here," Kurenai slid two small glasses in their direction, and Asuma fetched a bottle from behind, placing it on the wooden table quite audibly.
"You do drink, don't you?" Asuma asked with a smile as he poured Kakashi and Yamato the first drink. "Most ANBU I know don't give themselves the pleasure."
That forced a laugh out of Yamato. "Oh yeah, of course," Yamato chuckled, a bit nervously, in anticipation of the drink.
"That's not true," Genma cynically retorted, the senbon in his mouth jumping. "Drunk is the only way the ANBU could have failed the last espionage mission into Sound."
A few deep laughs and feminine giggles, and even Yamato cracked a genuine smile to the sardonic comment. Yamato looked down at his glass of shochu, clear as the glass that held it, the sour acrid fragrance of the drink tickling his nose.
He wasn't sure whether to actually drink it, or just play along with the game and raise the glass to his lips to take pretend gulps.
It had been a few years since Yamato had alcohol in his cup. It was strange to be holding any drink besides water but in a few minutes of inhaling the intoxicating and seductive aroma, the alcohol grew more and more familiar in his hands.
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Gasping for air, Yamato knocked himself out of his delusions and swam, thrashing back onto shore, inhaling and exhaling deeply to return the oxygen to his body, having lost his breath under fear and under surprise underwater.
"God," he whispered to himself and pulled himself together upon getting up and starting to walk back home. He almost forgot where he was, thinking he was lost, but when seeing the light of his apartment complex, still shining bright, from the distance, he followed it like a famished man would chase the smell of beef.
Not expecting his door to be unlocked, he pushed a bit too hard on the door handle and collapsed into his home, falling with the weight of his wet pants and soaked shirt, trails of water pooling onto his wooden floor. A grunt, and then he rose from his fall and closed the door shut before returning to his table, where an empty bottle lay on its side, its cap thrown somewhere else on the floor.
Being thirsty, the first thing he did was to fetch another long slim bottle in his hands, curse it open and meet drink to mouth before stepping into black oblivion once again.
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"Huh," Asuma suddenly remarked, bringing Yamato back to his senses, and the other conversing jounin back to focus on Yamato. "Well if this ANBU isn't drinking, then maybe the ANBU really aren't too efficient as a task force out there." A few laughs followed.
Before Yamato could sound a 'what', Hayate stated, "It's been ten minutes and you haven't even taken a sip yet."
The chuckling diminished by now, and the silence indicated to Yamato that he should either drink or pass, since the other jounin were waiting on Yamato's actions.
Yamato took a quick look at Kakashi's glass, but as Yamato had predicted earlier, Kakashi was actually not a drinker, and was swirling the shochu around in his still full cup instead.
To drink or not to drink? And Yamato pondered a moment.
Well it was just a social event that happened to have drinks. Drinking now wasn't going to pull him back into—
He took a sip. Slowly, like he would wine, its nutty earth flavor running gently over his tongue.
Pronounced cheers erupted across the table. "Ehhhh! The ANBU do drink! The ANBU's ability as a task force is re-legitimized!" Gai exclaimed.
"Tsch, that's nothing," scoffed a musical voice all the way down the table to Yamato's right.
"Calm down, Anko, it would take him a few bottles just to reach your sober levels," Kurenai joked.
Yamato snapped his head over to the female that was brought into the conversation.
The purple-haired kunoichi stuck her tongue out at Kurenai. "I don't drink that much, Lipstick."
"Right," Kakashi blurted. "Just half of our drink funds."
"Shut it, Ojii-san," she shot back. "I drink for your lack."
"Fiesty as ever," Genma muttered to Yamato, from across the table. "Only gets worse per drink."
Said kunoichi's head shot up. "Who was talking about me?" her shrill voice snarled.
"Even she doesn't deny it," Kakashi sighed under his breath.
She whipped her head around to face the other direction, on Yamato's side of the table and scanned each of the jounin's eyes to search for the guilty insult written on their face.
He met brown eyes after Kurenai was deemed innocent.
He froze like the memories that were locked in his mind. That shade of brown was much too familiar for him to let her eyes go.
Was she—
Anko scowled, and having found the guilty one, returned to her drink, chugging the rest of her glass down. "We'll settle this later in private, Genma."
"My bed or yours, Anko?" Genma mocked.
"You know what I mean," she clarified, irritated.
"Oof, the shower is even hotter."
The room filled with laughter and while the rest of the jounin awaited Anko's retort, Yamato retreated to figuring out if that was the same brown that he saw those years ago.
The story has't quite started yet but... :3 review?
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