Helloo my lovelies!
So, I'm in my summer break and as I said in my epilogue for No Middle Men...It's my intention to publish a new story!
This is a story focused heavily on addiction, SAD TIMES!
Please comment and follow, it makes my day xxxx
Much love! xxx
'Not all those who wander are lost'
–
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
The Hokage Rock Inn
It was with a certain sluggishness that Naruto watched the wiry haired Somali, lick salt off the bar nuts. He was aware that he should stop Kurama: that much salt wasn't good for a twelve-year-old cat, and Kurama's tongue wasn't good for the punters. It was the same kind of awareness that had him polishing the same pint glass for the last quarter of his shift – utter disinterest.
"Pull your weight, lad," his dad sailed passed him, his barman's grin fixed in place.
Naruto watched Minato working the taps, talking the talk, doing the dance of a professional. But he was boring. He bored Naruto. He loved his mum and dad, but this place – the pub – these people that they served, this town…It was all boring.
"Konohamaru can cover for me," Naruto glanced at his cousin, sat at one of the tables with his headphones dangling around his throat, looking gormless and over privileged as was his speciality.
"Konohamaru isn't old enough to work the bar," Minato turned to face him looking curious, "why?"
Naruto turned his back on his dad, adjusting the taps on the Jack Daniels bottle, which seemed to leak perpetually.
"Nothing really," he shrugged evasively, "I just need to pop into uni."
Naruto said the word 'uni' under his breath, as though hoping his dad wouldn't pick up on the word. Minato made a noise of dissent through his slim nose and dropped his bar-rag pointedly.
"I see," he said tonelessly, though the sentence rang with a hundred implications.
"Dad, it's my graduation year…This is my final major project," Naruto tried, knowing his words would fall on deaf ears.
"Oh no, you swan off Naruto, leave me and your mum in the lurch," Minato fixed him with a hard stare and Naruto blew out unsteadily.
"It's not…" Naruto trailed off, there was no point trying to explain to his dad.
Later that night, Naruto was brushing his teeth in the narrow upstairs bathroom, gazing out of the crown glass window. The blownpipe and pointil marks distorted the world outside, until they looked like a wave of oil colour; all bold strokes and marks of hazy colour. Naruto watched, as he did every night, as Kurama wound sinuously along their garden fence.
Movement caught Naruto's eye. He released his toothbrush and let it hang from his mouth where it dripped a minty spume onto the porcelain tiles. He couldn't make much out from the window, but two shadows seemed to be stirring below on the backstep of the pub. Above that step a sign hung that read: 'Private Access.' That part of the pub wasn't open to the public.
"Oi, Dad?" Naruto yelled thickly, "Dad!"
Stumbling across the landing into his mum and dad's room, the décor of which had last been in vogue in 1960. His father was stretched on their double bed, which was a confection of salmon pink flannel frills. His mother, Kushina, was whisking her long red hair up into a bun, sat at her dressing table. The dusky mushroom coloured silk of her shift pooled between her raw knees.
"Knock," Minato told Naruto in a bored voice, but smiled to show him he wasn't really cross. "What's up – has Ealing been hit by rabies?" He indicated the froth dripping from Naruto's lips.
"No," Naruto shook his head, scrubbing his mouth with the back of his wrist. "Dad, someone's in the courtyard, did Konohamaru stay late to lock up or…?" He could tell from the abrupt stillness of his dad's face that this wasn't the case.
"Fucking smackheads," his father hissed, rolling towards his jacket which was cast down beside the bed. He fumbled for the pocket and pulled out his mobile phone. "There's been an influx of them targeting small bars; you know Sakumo Hatake? He owned The White Fang of The Leaf Tavern, dealers trashed the place – they're like roaches," his dad looked livid as he spoke.
"Is Sakumo okay?" Naruto queried, moving towards his parent's window and twitching the net curtains.
"He's dead," Minato told Naruto flatly, "Suicide." Naruto watched his dad shake his golden head, "I'm calling the police."
"I heard that Sakumo's son inherited the building and is moving back from Kövra to turn the place into a cyber clothes shop." His mother climbed onto the bed and pressed her ear to his dad's, intruding on the call.
"I'm going down there," Naruto announced.
"Don't you dare," his mum hissed, jade eyes blazing.
"Naruto don't you…Oh hello police…"
Naruto turned his back on both parents and made his way downstairs.
The October breeze was biting: never let it be said that inner-city pollution keeps a man warm. Naruto tucked his chin into his Arsenal shirt and wished he owned a more threatening pair of slippers than his old tartan set Unlatching the back door, he stepped into the courtyard.
The courtyard was like an outdoors corridor: long and narrow. There was no grass on the floor, this was a borough of London and grass was a rarity, instead the ground was patched with sandstone slabs. Hither and thither, between the cracks in the slabs, gnarly looking dandelions erupted.
Naruto's gaze swept the courtyard until…
One person. There was just one intruder, their head bent low as they thumbed through a fan of crisp twenties. Naruto eyed the person from his vantage: they were slight, with narrow legs and bird-bones. They were dressed darkly in a hoodie and drainpipes; the uniform of the infantry of obscurity.
"Hey," Naruto spoke gruffly, trying to sound tougher than his slippers made him.
The person turned, and Naruto's voice died. He didn't know what he'd been expecting.
A face full of tattoos? Missing teeth? Popping eyes?
He hadn't been expecting this fairy-tale vision: the boy looked like a Victorian illumination of a fairy or a pixie. His profile was one drawn from romantic lines, the same loving detail that had given birth to Venus. The person's skin was snowy and set with two doe eyes, which were nebulous and reflected the constellations above in a way that made him look empty. His thin mouth was set in a hard line around a hand-rolled cigarette, and he turned his aphotic gaze to Naruto.
Naruto tried to guess the person's age and placed him in his late teens or early twenties. Maybe that was what shocked him. A smackhead the same age as Naruto.
"What are you doing here?" Naruto asked stupidly.
The boy pulled a face, there was an arrogance twisting his heart-shaped countenance. He drew the cigarette from between his lips and cast it down at Naruto's feet. Naruto watched the arc of sparks the butt sent up.
"Where'd the guy you were selling to go?" Naruto pressed, and the boy laughed – the sound struck Naruto. It was soft and trilling, like running your fingertips down a harp. "You need to go," Naruto sighed and the boy fixed Naruto with that cavalier stare, it said 'make me.' It was the saddest thing Naruto had ever seen. Somebody so young had already rejected the world and wore that rejection in this cocky, imperious mask. "The police are coming."
A glimmer stirred on the boy's face, a ray of fear. He shifted his weight onto the foot positioned behind him and Naruto nodded encouragingly.
"Go, go now," Naruto murmured.
With that, the smack-dealing pixie turned and sprinted into the night.
The Broadway
"Akamaru, stop!" Naruto and Kiba raced down The Broadway as Akamaru hared after a squirrel.
"I thought you were sending him to dog school!" Naruto snapped as they careened past an ice cream pallor and showered sundaes with dog hair and gravel.
"I am – I didn't say he was doing well!" Kiba barked back, digging his heels in.
It was as they staggered down part of The Broadway populated by restaurants and cafes, that Naruto ground to a halt. He had just glimpsed a familiar someone through the window of a café called Green Banks.
He hesitated by the lamppost, watching the boy with wild dark hair, taking orders on a small yellow notepad. Though he looked harried due to the customers demanding his attention, somehow the boy still looked haughty. He watched as the boy ducked behind the counter and tied an emerald apron behind his back: smackheads could be baristas, Naruto felt like he was evolving.
"Table for one?" A girl with flaxen hair greeted Naruto the moment he pushed through the door.
"Err – nah, I'm just here to see the guy over there," Naruto nodded towards the dark-haired boy who was watching a Frappuccino blend, looking ready to drop dead of boredom.
He was surprised when the girl's face morphed into a look of horror and she shook her head almost imperceptibly.
"Oh, for God's sake, not again!" A man rose from the table closest to the door, looking furious.
Naruto saw that he had a name badge on but couldn't make out the name.
"Sasuke, get yourself over here!" There dark-hared boy – Sasuke – glanced up from the drink he was making. When his eyes fell upon Naruto, his already wintry skin drained until he was an unhealthy ashy colour.
"I can explain…" He was already saying by the time he joined them.
"I've said it before, Sasuke, I don't give a shit what you do to fund whatever you get up to, but I'm fed up of half of Ealing's smackheads turning up in the café! You've already had ten warnings!" The man fumed and Sasuke bleated desperately, trying to plead his case. "No, no more chances, you're out! Get some help kid!"
This was not the way Naruto had envisioned this conversation going. Then again, he really hadn't envisioned this conversation at all.
"Fine, fuck this shitty job," Sasuke's temper seemed to snap, and it was like watching something implicitly sweet…Snap. "I'm sick of filling mason jars with milk, it's not creative and it's not original, it just looks like every other Pintrest douche!" Sasuke slung his apron over his head and cast it down on the floor. Flipping the man the finger, he breezed out the door.
Naruto realised that he was holding his breath and glanced between the blonde girl, whose name badge said Ino, to the man, and then to the door Sasuke had just stormed out of. With an apologetic gesture to the pair, Naruto dashed after Sasuke.
"Yo, wait!" He called to the boy's back, "Wait up!"
Sasuke stopped and spun, stood in the centre of the pavement.
"At least if you'd let the police arrest me, I would've had a nice cell to sleep in, how the fuck am I supposed to pay my rent now!? I'm gonna be on the fucking streets!"
YAY! First chapter - review if you enjoyed lovelies xxx