Fight!

Frequency - - 87.5 FM

Sweat and stink and smearing blood. Cement walls and cement floors, dull-gray slabs giving no quarter to the weight of a body - a slab of meat in a warehouse. It was elemental in that respect, a place that demanded the same privy tossed up to the church - - pennies in the box, prayers in the row, spit balls and gum wads on the Virgin Mary. It was under someone's building somewhere, graffiti (Chacko + Genie 4 - eva) pipes and chains, dripping, dripping, like blood. Only sometimes it was, and sometimes it wasn't.

At night they came with their cherry drops orange in the darkness, flicking ashes - the smell of smoke and booze. At night they came and lines were drawn, bets were made and the strongest and skill-iest bared themselves.

And fought. Fought like everyone's movie hero. Fought to distraction.

They fought like they had something to prove.

Except they didn't. Sun bleached hair and shards of broken dreams in his too-blue eyes - a wisher's eyes - the-boy-in-the-corner saw the sandpaper truth (scritchity-scratch across the ugly gash). Bend over, suck-em-off, open those so-many-time-opened legs.

(Ya nothin' more 'n entertainment, kid.)

Cynicism rode bitter on his tongue - hot acid flushing his throat - but in the end money made the world go 'round. It couldn't be a sin, not when the money wasn't there and the rent needed to be paid, food needed to be bought, and clothes needed to be fixed. Because there wasn't enough to get new ones. Hand me ups and Hand me downs, the way of life in his rather extended family.

"You ready then?"

The guy with the dark hair and unimpressed eyes had won the last three fights, his breathing still calm, still strangely focused. He looked Korean but they said his name was Japanese. Too-blue eyes saw the humor swimming there - in the wavy heat and stink.

Jap versus Jap. Where's the Kung-foo? Hey, c'mon! Do it up like Bruce Lee!

The cement block might've been closer to their neck of the woods - he wasn't ignorant of the shifty eyes and barely concealed tats - but the gaijins had a way with their loud mouths to supersede everyone - everything - in the room.

It had become boring and passé to explain the differences between countries and peoples to the obviously uninterested. And unconcerned.

"Yeah! Here comes an old crowd favorite! Naruto Uzumaki!"

Skin to skin, hand to hand - it was the only way to go. Naruto stomped out a butt beneath his heel - hiss and burn - bare feet slapping the floor as he strolled into the circle. Cargos wrapped tight, no belt, orange florescent to attract the eye. He'd always been rather flashy, and why not?

It was his shit to flash.

"A hundred on Kamikaze! Wha hahahah!"

"Twenty on the new kid!"

The divine wind had blue eyes and blonde hair, but the short ones were always suicide bombers. He stretched his arms - tense after three fights - and pushed back a couple longish strands of dark hair. Perhaps he'd get it cut tomorrow. Or maybe he'd get it cut today.

A blob of sandy-yellow spit splattered on the floor.

Punch, kick, block. Knee to gut. Bruised fists, cracked ribs. Naruto began hacking after a viscous punch to the solar-plexus, frothy blood dribbling from his mouth and nose. Snot and blood bubbles. The Korean - Jap (?) peered from one bloodshot eye and one swollen red-and-blue eye. He cracked his jaw back into place, snarling.

Naruto merely grinned and drop kicked his jaw out of place once more. Perfect, straight, aristocratic nose - he hoped it was busted beyond recognition.

Hiss and burn.

The man came back with an elbow to the stomach, knocking the breath out of the Kamikaze - a wheezy-rattling discharge of air. Sun and moon crashed to the earth in an impossible because-one-or-the-other-had-to-be-up sort of way.

One bubbly wheeze.

One scratchy rattle.

One on his knees.

One on his ass.

"Fuck! What the hell happened?"

"Who won?! Shit!"

Anger and jeers because they failed to sell themselves - Naruto knew the deal and his 'pimp' wasn't going to be happy about it. But somehow, someway, he couldn't stir up the concern that was required. He'd fought someone good. The sensation was delicious, as much as it was throbbing in every place the guy had hit. A missing piece of the staid equation - 'fighters, you fight for masculine glory!' It was as good as rough sex.

Hm.

No, not quite as good as that.

Vanilla and blood he smelled on himself, when the familiar arms of a familiar man helped him up and away. He smiled, bloody, gap-toothed, and resting in that gentle curve was a promise – 'we draw,' it whispered, 'there will be a next time.'

The Jap (Korean?) coughed up something red and sticky, before he smirked and re-split his lip. 'Yes,' it affirmed, 'again.'

And they heard something in the drip, drip, drip of the cement cistern somewhere - heard the voices that weren't jeers. Because they'd given them something good to watch.

"Rematch! Rematch! Rematch!"

000

"You really messed yourself up this time, Naruto!"

Nothing like sisterly affection, especially for a guy who'd been put through the meet grinder. He blinked blood shot eyes - blue threaded with red fingers - and looked blearily up at the pink blob. The shine of a huge forehead.

It focused, and became - - ah, Sakura.

A stinging dab, soft gauze and wrap – one, two, seven times – he grunted at the painful tug. He wondered if there was such a cure for a thing called bitch.

"Well, that's what you get you moron."

Rowr.

"H-hey! Did you get that guys name? The one I was fighting?!"

She sighed - it was a long suffering, angry at the world-herself-men-women-children sigh. And it bothered him in his heart.

"…How much did we get? I did seven rounds before That Guy."

She went about the motherly thing and blew on a nasty cut above his eye, before clinically – fiercely, apologetically – pinching the skin together with a butterfly tab. Stinging, it didn't feel much like a butterfly (orange, red yellow, gold).

"We got enough for a couple weeks. Please…Naru-chan, look for another job!"

Apologies languished in the back of his head – 'I'll try, I swear,' then 'promise, never again' – but they all seemed empty, hollow. Like his wallet, their fridge, the shoes for the others and nice jackets for winter. She worked – twelve hours on her feet, 'yes sir,' 'no sir,' 'right away sir,' cop-a-quick-feel – it was never enough though, not like the kind he made selling the fight.

C'mon Ching, Chang, Cho, show them the moves that made your country awesome! Not like you're worth much 'cept cheap electronics and shirt washin'.

Peasants. Peasants. Peasants.

He wasn't a fucking peasant. So he didn't say anything, and knew she wouldn't say anything, and there was this huge hole of didn't-say-anythings between them, glaring. Glaring.

"His name was…Sasuke. They didn't give a last name."

Sasuke. He'd remember that, because there would be a next time and a next time and a next time until he could stop. But the sad thing was, he'd never stop.

"How 'bout we pick up some fish, tonight? I'm sure Konohamaru would like some."

She sighed, and it was that you're-lucky-I-love-you-and-thank-you-for-everything sigh. He liked this one better.

"…Sounds fine."

000

Sasuke limped (one-step, two-step, three-step, four-step) to avoid the pain, but it was unavoidable - like a thunder clap in his blood. Every jarring step was a mile. Fucking fight, stupid (worthy, talented) blonde – divine wind indeed – oh, they'd go at it again. He tasted his own blood for fuck's sake - a kind of silent ecstasy in itself. Because maybe then he was real. A little. Sort of.

As a kid he'd scraped his knees and chewed his tongue 'till it bled, just for that most perfect affirmation. Looked up the word masochistic and found his sick preferences spelled out in English – 'no Japanese, because we're not living in Japan!' screaming in his damn ear.

Yet it was still a word, not a practice.

Then he'd found the lot fights. Beat 'em, bang 'em, kick the shit out of 'em - for a few moments the world held an almost blinding color, the color of back street lighting, and skinned knuckles and lots of angry spitting blood. In all his sixty-five successful bouts he'd never broken his nose.

He'd pay Blondie back for that one.

"You know those stories of 'falling down the stairs' are only going to go so far."

"...They'll go as long as I want them too."

A quiet laughter and Sasuke felt his arm being lifted and draped across a helpful shoulder. Silent, introspective boy, two years older - sometimes three - good family, good breeding. Friend was such a rare word for both of them.

"You know the Hyuuga name is not to be involved in such sordid affairs, right Uchiha?"

Ha, ha, fucking ha.

"Fuck you."

"In your wildest dreams...Sasuke."

Sasuke coughed through his laughter and spat a broken tooth out on the sidewalk - roll and bounce, click-clack stick. He wondered if Neji had a smoke.

"Fucking queer."

"...I'm not the one with a boner for the opponent."

And he would've replied - wounded masculinity after all - if he hadn't felt his elbow throb all the way down to his finger tips and promptly blacked out. But he'd definitely said his piece - 'asswipe, fag, no way in hell!' - across the blank annals of his mind.

Neji raised a brow, a what-the-fucking-hell gesture and adjusted the dead weight hanging off of him. Seven blocks for a decent taxi - probably equated four bum attacks, two propositions, and five or six possible muggings. Loyalty, another 'rare word.' He really should leave the idiot to rot.

"But it seems that is not your fate this day, Uchiha."

Draping blue blazers, gold circles inscribed letters 'T.A.' - flap, flap in the balmy wind, it was going to storm pretty soon. But money didn't make the world go 'round - for them the next thrill did. Neji would deal with this latest storm as he'd weathered the others, cooly, almost-but-not-quite detachedly. Sasuke hadn't said anything about his obsessive cleanliness stage, so they wouldn't speak of this.

At least, not in the regular manner.

Frequency - - 97.9 FM

A/N - Please Review. No negative comments on the writing style please, it's meant to be choppy and just a little ambiguous. I know it seems more violent then romantic (crosses fingers) but like everything with our favorite duo I think 'rough and violent' describe them to a T.