A/N: My Gaara/Naruto! I have been working on this fic since the summer of 2013, and it is finally finished! Wow!
I put all my efforts into finally finishing this as a birthday gift to my perfect little sister, Suncaught! Please let me know what you think! I've worked on this for so long I can't wait to hear what people have to say about it.
This is a two-part fic, so the second half will be uploaded soon!
Warnings: Sexual content. Mental instability. Attempted Suicide. Use of Narcotics. Naruto is a punk.
-Lute
Your Wholeness Cascades Into So Many Shapes
X
Oh won't you stay with me,
Because you're all I need.
This ain't love it's clear to see,
But darling, stay with me.
X
This was the thing about Naruto.
This was the thing Gaara had known this from the beginning, the very beginning: Naruto would always be too much.
He is too much for Gaara, too much for Suna City, too much for the world. There are some people who live like exploding roman candles, who look at the world and laugh it away, and it is because they know there is more than this to reach for.
Gaara has reached for addiction, and he's reached for things that burn his mouth and sear his veins. He's reached for cruelty, and for ecstasy and for destruction, but he's never reached as far as his bright, shining time with Naruto.
You can only go so high before falling, but Gaara knows for awhile Naruto must have somehow kept him in the air.
Just for a short while really, hardly more than a year, but it had been like flying and dying and fucking and laughing and crying, all at once, and now when Gaara sees a pale, tall summer sky, he can taste that height on his tongue.
Being with Naruto is like staring at the sun; simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. If you stare for too long, you feel yourself almost take flight.
X
The problem, Gaara had decided, was that Suna City made everything the same.
Suna was colorless, metal-proofed. It was sandy yellow, pale brown and washed out grey, sand getting into the cracks of the sidewalks and searing welts onto the window-panes. Maybe it was the reflection of the sun; spangles of light in your eyes and dancing spots along the edges of your lashes. Maybe it was the harsh wind that blew constantly, stripping layers and sediment away until all that remained was bare rock, weathered stucco, buffeted and stubborn skyscrapers.
The desert that surrounded the Suna city-state was mean and unforgiving, with wind storms racketing along its slopes and whistling songs of forgotten old. New-Suna didn't listen to the wind often.
New-Suna was interested in economy, in industry, in GDP and market-share and interest rates. They built tall office buildings in the upper sector and brought in CEOs from around the world to advise their parliament. New-Suna leaked excitement, prosperity, a shining sun emblem of ruby and gold gracing their stock market and the newest technologies of the day hissing on their factory lines.
Suna City absorbed them. Her people sucked the future down into its' old tunnels, deep into aquifers built generations ago by Old-Suna powerhouses.
Old-Suna, which still had the tinkling blown-glass market, the lower sectors where women wore head-veils and foreigners were not trusted. Old-Suna with its traffic-jammed winding streets and chaotic black markets. Old-Suna, oozing tar into its' reservoirs and dealing in back alleys where adobe is crumbling, still holding corrupt officials in high places.
Suna City absorbed everything; the clash of the future and past, the newly imported steel and weathered yellow sandstone. Suna leeches the world into sand-grains blown away in the wind, burned rich hues of color away under its harsh rays of sunlight.
In Suna everything continues in unwavering shades of brown and grey and yellow despite its age, everything milky and diluted under a vast sky. In Suna City everything is the same.
This was Gaara's analysis.
Really, this was all the excuse Gaara needed to buy the little box of hair dye that sat quietly on the shelf of the convenience store.
Outside, cars melted their wheels into the streets and horns honked abrasively. New-Suna business men and bright-future corporate interns' angled sunglasses against the glare and hurried to their destinations on sidewalks that melded with the sky to form a wash of cracked and eroded grey. Outside the tiny corner store Gaara stands in there is a world that demands he follow form and function, demands he press himself against the stucco and become invisible. But inside Gaara selects the box of deepest, bloodiest red hair dye and slams it down on the checkout counter with one fluid movement. He levels a steady glare at the cashier from under his eyeliner, as if daring him to comment.
In Suna, Gaara's hair was beautiful; the palest blonde-brown you could see, a wild silky tangle that blends so well into the adobe around him he sometimes thinks he can drown himself in it.
This was the ideal concept of beauty in Suna. Invisibility. Unnoticeable color. The ability to blend into a perfect picture, to refrain from drawing attention. To enhance its overall excellence by strength in numbers. It was a custom that echoed everything in Suna; society, education, government, attraction. Passerby were quick to admire Gaara's chameleon effect.
Old wives murmurs echoed in the streets; Suna City's best trait is her adaptability, by her teeth it is, and look at that handsome boy with the pale hair walking by! Such a credit to his City. Why, he's a true child of the desert, by her teeth he is.
Of course there are rebels, new thought-thinkers, punks and delinquents and naughty school-children, reckless young adults with rock-bands and imported drugs and vibrant colors popping up in their clothes, but they were disapproved of with such force they tended to stick to their own underground society, partying under the cover of deep night.
Gaara was breaking the mold. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen anyone with this hair color in Suna. Frankly, he was surprised they sold the dye at all. His purchase paid for, Gaara breezed out into the street, his heart thumping inexplicably.
Naruto would like it, he was sure.
X
Water is a valued resource in Suna City, but nevertheless, Gaara scrubbed until his shower was hot and steamy enough to trace patterns into the glass with his painted nails. The water tasted like the Suna aquifer, a thick cloying taste with chemical afterburn. When Naruto had first come to Suna and tilted his mouth up to taste the water from Gaara's showerhead, he'd made a face. "Gross! Man, what do you guys put hin this stuff?"
Gaara had turned the water off, thrown a towel at him. "That's not for drinking, stupid."
"All the water here tastes like that though, all grimy. I don't know how I could drink this stuff my whole life."
Gaara had raised an eyebrow. "I've never had any other kind."
Naruto had chuckled incredulously, like bubbles bursting from his throat. He'd wrapped his arms around Gaara, heavy and bracing and smelling like Gaara's shampoo, Gaara's laundered towels. He'd pressed his wet face against Gaara's neck and rumbled like a furnace, voice laughing; "Someday I'll bring you some."
Now, Gaara stepped out of the shower and eyed his reflection in the tiny mirror above his cracked sink with a smirk. His hair shined crimson even when wet, stark against his skin and red as blood, as roses. It was obvious, violent, and visible. Naruto would be ecstatic. Suna would be scandalized.
X
Gaara took the tube-train to the stop nearest to The Dunes and walked the rest of the way. At night the air of Suna was cold, icily dry, and his jacket flapped in the wind. With thick eyeliner dramatically edging his lids and the pale hollowness in his cheeks, Gaara has already drawn a few sneering looks on the train. He scoffs.
The Dunes swelled before him, a despot for the rougher inhabitants of Suna. 'The Dunes' was actually the name of a club chain in the area, but over time the entire sub-district of the city had picked up the title. Raucous and dedicated to rebellion, it barely resembled sand dunes. Instead, it was a scooped out underground industrial playground, a well hidden red-light sector that glittered with street graffiti and gyrated out thumping music from its covered windows.
There were black market deals in drugs here, acid-pop electronica nightclubs and sex bars, prostitutes rouged and oiled on the streets. Gaara shook off a skinny man wearing gold lamé paint who blew blue smoke into Gaara's face and wrapped an arm around his hips, and then ground his cigarette butt under his shoel, scanning the crowd of moving bodies in their usual club for Naruto.
Finding Naruto is always easy. Even though he's hardly an inch taller than Gaara, the dip- dye orange-tipped strands of his wild blonde hair never fails to catch the flashing lights in the club and bounce straight into Gaara's eyes. Naruto is in the center of the dance floor, his body moving fast and dangerous and slick, hips gyrating with something that isn't elegant at all, which always gives Gaara a little thrill.
Naruto doesn't dance beautifully, or even with alot of skill, but there is something there, something in the tilt of his chin or the looseness of his back and shoulders, something that is exciting.
He's shirtless, glitter streaked down his chest, dancing with a slim slip of a girl with pale pink hair and heavy black combat boots, who Gaara knows must be foreign because no one that age in Suna can get away with fucking pink hair, no matter how ill-reputed their cram school. She must be one of Naruto's uni-exchange friends.
Gaara is maybe a little bit possessive, always has been, so when he pushes his way through the dance floor he pointedly waits a few feet away from Naruto until the other man takes his head up from Pinky's neck long enough to glimpse him.
When Naruto glances up he does a double take, and a grin splits his face in half. Then he drops a kiss on the girls cheek and moves away, sauntering towards Gaara. Her eyes are mint-green and intoxicating, but when she sees Gaara she smiles like she knows exactly who he is and melts away into the crowd without a murmur.
Gaara supposes he should be a little concerned about the reputation they have started to build because of that, but Naruto's eyes are on him right now, blown wide and blue and beautiful, just drinking him in, so he can't be expected to think about anything else.
Naruto grabs Gaara's hand, gets in real close. "Damn, babe."
"What do you think?" He tilts his chin up, lets some bloody-red bangs fall into his eyelashes. Naruto's mouth is open.
"You're like a firecracker, Gaara-it's hot as hell." Naruto pulls Gaara flush against his hips, runs his hands through Gaara's newly dyed locks like it's precious. Gaara smiles. Heat is rising up his ribcage, like joy and sweetness.
He loves how Naruto gets excited about this, this seemingly innocuous thing, just a hair-do, that Gaara knows will make Naruto laugh and smile and talk all week long.
"Yeah? You like it, huh?"
Naruto starts to dance with him, fingers still curled tight and pulling into his hair, all his skin pushed warm against Gaara's, his mouth starting to roam over Gaara's neck, wet heat along his earlobe.
"I love it."
Gaara closes his eyes, the heavy thrum of the music like a heartbeat shuddering through his veins.
"Tell me how much you love it."
Naruto laughs in his ear, kisses his hair, kisses his eyelids. His body pulls Gaara into that off-kilter, not-quite-perfect rhythm.
"I fucking love it, babe. Fucking love it."
X
Gaara met Naruto earlier that year, sometime in January.
It doesn't snow in Suna City, but every winter there is an extreme amount of ice, and the wind blows harsh and cold, burning your fingers bloodless. Gaara had been skipping a University class seminar, smoking a cigarette and blasting music into his headphones instead, tucked away into a handy alcove of adobe near his lecture hall that sheltered him from the stiff gusts of wind blasting down the street.
His music thunders warmly in his ears, bites some color back into his lips with a slow, scorching beat. His fingers shook when he tried to light another cigarette, and he cursed under his breath. It was too fucking cold.
He accidentally dropped three consecutive cigarettes into the slushed ice at his feet, and was about to give up when someone extended out a lighter, it's thin flame steady and unwavering.
There, bundled up in an horrific and all-encompassing orange parka, with a tangled crop of sun-bright hair and the flame of the lighter dancing in front of his sparking, devilishly wide grin, was Naruto.
"Hey there, gorgeous."
Gaara had never liked pet names before they started slipping from Naruto's lips.
He lights the cigarette with a muttered thanks, and then pointedly stepped back. When he met Naruto, Gaara had been interested in slightly dangerous, vicious fucks tossed from strangers more than actual commitment.
He'd never meant to start up anything long-term with Naruto, but that's the way Naruto liked to operate, of course, and Naruto was the kind of person where you barely realized you were doing things his way until it's been quite firmly established in your brain as what you most wanted to happen in the world.
Naruto had looked distinctly crazy, dressed so flamboyantly in Suna's blandly colored world, and his accent is thick when he speaks. Like most born and bred Suna City natives, Gaara disliked foreigners.
Naruto didn't seem to realize the hint of disinterest, even when Gaara put his headphones back in with an irritated flick of his wrist. He chattered incessantly to Gaara, leaning close to him the entire time, his accent rough and thick like the sharp, tangy crust of an orange peel.
"You must be a second-year right? I'm here from the continent, to study. Don' really know what I'm studyin' though, kinda got this scholarship from a friend-"
"Your coat is an eyesore."
Naruto had done a double-take, mouth hanging open partway through his sentence, and then his eyes crinkled into a smile. He leans in close to Gaara, and his warm breath on the numbed shell of Gaara's ear sents a sudden tingle up Gaara's fingertips.
"Yeah? Well it does it's gotta do it's job anyway, because I ain't got on nothin' under it."
Gaara swallows a splutter. "The hell? Look, I'm clearly not fucking interested."
Naruto backs away from him, back out of the alcove and into the sweeps of wind on the open street. He smiles at Gaara, and there is something like surprise in those blue, blue eyes, surprise and then slow consideration.
"No problem darlin'. See you around, huh? My name's Uzumaki Naruto"
Gaara didn't respond, but when searching for his cigarettes later, he discovers Naruto slipped his lighter into Gaara's pocket. There is a number written on it in a messy scrawl. Gaara jammed his headphones deeper into his ears, sighing.
When he caught sight of Naruto again, it was at the house party of some vague acquaintance, and Gaara is mostly drunk.
He glimpsed Naruto across the room, making out aggressively with a man who has a shock of spiky black hair and lazily dark eyes. The man is shoved up against the wall, and Naruto is loud and powerful and entirely shameless. The stark geometric swirl of Naruto's shoulder tattoo over the shifting muscles in his back made Gaara's head spin.
He doesn't remember how, but the next morning he wakes up naked, with a nasty hangover, and Uzumaki Naruto boldly splayed next to him under the sheets of a bed that smelled like sex.
Naruto spent about fifteen minutes laughing at the picky pale-eyed guy who'd turned him down a month ago, and then made Gaara breakfast.
It was absolutely delicious.
When Gaara wakes up in Naruto's bed for the tenth time two weeks later to Naruto casually greeting him with a slice of buttered toast and a sticky kiss- "Good mornin' lover,"-he decides that perhaps this is an arrangement he can be comfortable with, at least for a few months.
Since then, they've been together in every sense of the word for over a year.
X
One of Naruto's more harmless little quirks was that he liked to wear nail polish. It was shiny on his fingers,glinting in colors like pale indigo and minty white, deep black-viridian and sticky chartreuse.
It wasn't that unusual of a thing for the group that they hung out with; the pocket of punk delinquents in Suna that lashed against conformity in any fashion, but Gaara had been surprised that Naruto took part in it, and seemed to do it more for himself than for any notions of rebellion. He painted them every week or so, on the kitchen counter with an array of tiny glass bottles before him and a concentrating frown on his mouth.
Gaara hated the acidic smell of the polish, but he loved seeing the vivid colors that popped on Naruto's nails, colors so rarely seen in Suna City flashing when Naruto gestured wildly in some passionate speech, standing out bright when he ran a rough, long-boned hand down the column of Gaara's neck. It was one of Naruto's little eccentricities, like the odd, off-kilter scars on his cheeks, the way he slept on the roof sometimes or occasionally talked to himself.
Gaara watched from the other side of the counter as Naruto leaned over his hand while painting. He was so comically focused that Gaara couldn't help but reach out and tip over one of his bottles.
Naruto indignant face was ridiculous, all open mouth and furrowed eyebrows, as he looked up at Gaara's amused expression. "Oi! What the hell Gaara!"
Gaara reached forward and flicked over another one. The idiot shouldn't leave the caps off if he didn't want them spilled. Naruto made a horrified squeaking sound, and Gaara laughed out loud.
"That's it, c'mere you little—"
Naruto manhandled him onto the couch, smile huge with gleeful retaliation. He shoved Gaara down, sat on his stomach, and proceeded to sloppily paint his toenails an unabashed shade of candy apple red.
"Hey hey, no! Wait a minute!"
"Too late now, Gaara-chan! It suits you." Naruto's grin is completely evil as he finishes the last nail and blew on them briskly. Gaara gave up escape and covered his face with a pillow in defeat.
"You should let me do your hands next."
"No fucking way."
Naruto turned around on his stomach, tried to tug the pillow off of Gaara's face. "Aww C'mon! You like the way mine look, I know you do. Don't even try to deny it Gaara, don't even try."
Gaara sighed. He flung the pillow off, grabbed one of Naruto's newly painted and dried hands, and caught a colorful finger up into his mouth, sucking thoughtfully as Naruto became still and his eyes zeroed in on Gaara's lips.
He released the finger with a vicious bite on the nail and smirked. "Maybe I do."
Naruto grinned, his free hand sliding down Gaara's stomach to his belt buckle. "Y'know really, on second thought, why don' I just paint your nails some other time, huh?"
"Good plan."
Later, when Gaara starts occasionally wearing polish on a few fingers of each hand, Naruto doesn't bother to contain his gloating.
X
Naruto and Gaara spent days lazing in bed, drawing patterns into each others skin and counting the freckles that scattered over Naruto's shoulders. They made piles of pancakes at three in the morning, drowning them in chocolate syrup because Naruto had a bigger sweet tooth than anyone else Gaara had ever met. They forget which day of the week it is, waking up in foggy early-morning light and peeling oranges in bed, letting juice dribble stickily over their fingers. Naruto's hands smelled like citrus and Gaara liked to lick them clean, the sharp, powdery flavor coating his tongue with a bitter, intoxicating residue.
Gaara and Naruto did silly things, like spending a whole afternoon seeing who could build the most elaborate and complicated castle-fort from the silverware. (The winner was actually Gaara, even though Naruto claimed that his tea-cup turret tower was in fact an inch taller.)
They did stupid things, like going down to one of the darkest black market squares Suna had to offer and trying to sell Naruto's prized guppy goldfish with the guise of it being the rare and extremely expensive "baby gold-finned angel skipper, one of a kind from the Cailouh Isles! Get it now, while it lasts!" (Gaara is still traumatized by the experience, and Naruto is now banned from that part of the district.)
Naruto was notorious at the grocery store for buying enough cup ramen to feed a small army, and then returning within the week for more. Gaara was partial to boiled eggs, and always kept at least three pre-boiled and labeled in the fridge next to regular ones. (Naruto rarely reads the labels, but Gaara perseveres anyway.)
Naruto and Gaara would go sand-surfing out on the city borders and stay until the sun hovered in the sky and illuminated the whole city in a dazzling yellow light, skimming along the surface and spraying dirt particles up into the air that caught in their eyelashes and mouths and tasted like smacks of freedom. Naruto was surprisingly good at it, which was disgruntling because it took Gaara ages to get even marginally proficient at basic tricks, but Naruto would angle his board into impossible stunts, swooping from the crest of a dune to fly across the sky, doing twist jumps that landed on the heavy metal tracks of the magnetic train rails that eventually coasted them back into the city.
Naruto broke his wrist in landing once, with a sickening crunch and then a weakly nonchalant chuckle, and Gaara had to drag his protesting ass to the hospital. Sand-surfing isn't technically legal either, especially without a permit and on the city rails, which meant a lot of sidelong looks and muttered excuses and eventually bribing the hospital nurse.
Naruto thought it was hilarious.
And then, of course, were the nights upon nights Naruto and Gaara spent out, locked into a nightclubs gyrating beat, swaying drunkenly through a mass of constantly moving bodies. The parties they went to were wild, crazy, a blur of lights and bodies and sounds that washed over Gaara's ears and flashed in his eyes. They were always a little gritty, a little circumspect, but Gaara liked it like that.
The rebellious 20-somethings of Suna explored farther every night, pushed the boundaries a little bit further with every new trend, every fleeting amusement, and Gaara loved it best when someone pressed something new into his palm, with a whisper and a smile. Something better, something more, something that was fresh, hot off of the streets, and everyones talking about it, the feeling is the best. It takes you to a whole new world.
Naruto would wink, put the pill on his tongue and clink their shot glasses together. "Here's to trying new things!" The grin on his face is huge, shining brightly even on the back of Gaara's eyelids.
They danced and laughed and sang with people Gaara had never seen before and rarely saw after, faces passing glazed before him. Naruto was quick to gather a crowd, a group that varied every time, cheering and chattering, kissing his cheeks, linking his arms, telling him their closest secrets and then disappearing into a hungover haze. They would begin the night on one end of town and end in the other, waking curled together, missing clothing and covered in glitter and sweat. Naruto would stretch his arms over his head and yawn luxuriously.
"That was a good one, Gaara."
They broke into old warehouses, packed into clubs or flat parties, jumped city tubelines and swung on the power grids, laughing uproariously. They fucked on the dancefloor, against alleyways, in a bed that wasn't theirs in a house they didn't know who owned.
Gaara felt exhilarated, floating and easy and sweet-candy-mouthed. Naruto's hand pulled him along, wrapped around the back of his neck possessively, hung across his chest protectively. Whenever he turned around, Naruto was there with his face crazy under the lights, his skin hot, and his laugh wild. Gaara couldn't help but throw himself into it all, because Naruto was there, right there, and suddenly things were easy, beautiful, effortless.
Sometimes they were separated, and when Gaara woke up Naruto would be nowhere in sight. He'd pick his way out of the unfamiliar house, cross the city with dogged steps, make his way back to his apartment to unlock the door and find Naruto, rumpled but looking like he'd had the time of his life, making eggs. Naruto loved scrambled eggs in the early morning, and the smell of whites sizzling in the pan made Gaara want to throw up, but he would eat them anyway, with Naruto's voice rambling and babbling about the night before humming like a mantra in his ears.
X
Naruto woke Gaara up by kissing him, morning breath and scrunched up smile, cheek-stubble tickling his nose.
"Ughhhh. Get off..."
Gaara blinked himself awake, pushing Naruto off of him.
"Good mornin' sleepyhead!" Naruto looked entirely too awake to have consumed the amount of alcohol he had last night. Really, just entirely too chipper. It was like a mutation of his.
Gaara looked around, pushing himself up on his elbows. They were once again in an unfamiliar bed, at an unfamiliar house. It was a good sized room, which meant it was probably a rich-person flat. Suna just didn't have the space to accommodate many people anymore, unless of course, you had the means. There was a small window with curtains blocking the sun, a few other people passed out against the wall or stretched out on the floor half out of the closet. The bed was low to the ground, fitted with blue sheets. There were books on a shelf, a few cracked pictures on the nightstand of some unknown boys with black hair.
Not anyone Gaara knew. He shifted, pulling closer to Naruto, nuzzling into his scent and the smoothness of his bare skin. He had no clue where his clothes were, but didn't particularly care. "Any idea where we are then?"
Naruto made a humming noise. "Nope." His lips popped the 'p' sound exaggeratedly, grinning.
Gaara rolled on top of Naruto, kissed him despite the morning breath and hangover stink because, well, what the hell. It's too nice a bed, too groggy a morning, and too good an opportunity to pass up. Naruto chuckled, ran his hands up Gaara's back to tug him closer, tangled their tongues together.
When Naruto flipped their positions, his lips clever against Gaara's chest, along the curve of one hip, Gaara curled fingers into the dirty strands of Naruto's hair, breathless and frustrated and-
"...Ahem."
There was a creak from the door as someone leaned against it's frame. A disgruntled cough came, as though irritatedly amused. Naruto twisted around, and Gaara closed his eyes, simultaneously slightly embarrassed and ridiculously annoyed.
It looked like Mr. Rich-boy-who-owns-the-flat was home. Now they get to be kicked out. Wonderful. Gaara reached around off the bed to try and look for his pants.
A mistake, as it turned out. Naruto had turned at the sound of the cough, and now suddenly his eyes light up.
"What..?! You bastard! What the hell are you doing here!?"
The huge, shit-eating grin on his face is completely at odds with his words as Naruto jumped out of the bed, entirely naked, and proceeded to tackle hug the man leaning against the door. Pillows went flying.
Gaara found himself in a mild state of shock.
He scrambled the sheet around his hips, watching incredulously as the dark-haired man struggled, rather half-heartedly, to get out of Naruto's chokehold.
"This is my flat that you've been fucking in, loser."
Naruto's expression got even brighter. "Fuck no!" His hands ruffled the already mussed hair excitedly. "Fuck no it's not! I thought Itachi wasn't gonna let you come to Suna anymore? Somethin' about how a certain Uchiha has to crack down on his studies or risk gettin' cut out of the will?"
The man grimaced a bit, finally disentangling himself enough to stand face to face with Naruto. He was maybe an inch or so taller, with finely cut aristocratic features and the same slightly twanging accent that Naruto had, although his speech was softer, more restrained.
He sounded expensive.
He was also smiling, a quirked upward lip that seemed to contain a lot more hidden happiness than he was letting on.
"Let's just say I convinced Itachi. I've been here about a month." He raised an eyebrow at Naruto. "I can see you've been doing the usual. Maybe you should put on some clothes?"
Naruto didn't seem to care. "Maa, It's nothing you ain't seen before." A wink. "Maybe a little more ink than last time I got to see you. I can't believe you didn't let me know you were here, bastard." Naruto gripped the man's head between both hands and kissed him firmly.
Gaara's eyes widened. Naruto was friendly, but he didn't usually go around kissing people. It was a quick kiss, a friendly kiss. It barely lasted long enough for the other man to kiss back, but Gaara still felt like perhaps he had suddenly woken up in an alternate version of reality.
He sat up a little straighter, about to do something stupid like clear his throat or make a commotion, when Naruto suddenly turned around, one arm still around the dark-haired man's neck, his face glowing and the smooth planes of his skin golden in the morning light through the curtains.
"Oi, sorry Gaara! This piece of shit is Uchiha Sasuke, old friend of mine."
Sasuke's wry smile widened, once again prying his way out from under Naruto's hands. He had the tail end of a swirling tattoo peeking from under his shirt, a line of studs up one ear, and Gaara noticed that, like Naruto, he painted his nails. A small hoop glistened on one corner of his lip.
It was all extremely attractive, and Gaara felt increasingly uncomfortable. He wished Naruto would put on some fucking clothes.
"Sorry to interrupt. Pleased to meet you." Sasuke sounded like he could've been meeting a foreign dignitary with the amount of carefully disguised neutrality in his voice, instead of a guy who by all accounts and purposes had been about to get sucked off by his 'old friend'.
Naruto laughs harder.
"Well, I guess it is your bed. Sasuke, meet my boyfriend, Gaara." Naruto's smile is contagious.
Amend the previous conclusion to about to get sucked off in his bed. Gaara suddenly imagines Sasuke sleeping here. Every night. Splayed over the covers, sweating from the heat, pierced mouth hanging open. Which side of the bed did he sleep on?
Gaara shifted uneasily. He really does not need this mental image right now, half-hard under the flimsy sheet anyway and already annoyed with the awkwardness of this morning.
He manages not to flush, nodding awkwardly to Sasuke instead. "I wasn't planning on running into one of Naruto's old friends quite like this." Naruto snickers into his palm in a really obvious way and Gaara feels like slapping him.
"It's nice to meet you. Thanks for the bed."
As he spoke, Gaara let his voice get a little bit smug.
He hadn't quite recovered from his boyfriend laying a wet one on someone else yet, and felt the need to claim some territory here, okay, despite rich-boy-old-friend-Sasuke being the most hospitable person yet to walk in on Naruto and Gaara about to start banging.
Sasuke blinks, raises one eyebrow in a thoughtful way for half a second before tilting his head graciously. (Seriously, Gaara thinks the guy knows how to be a diplomat with those manners, considering the situation.)
Naruto smirks, comes back to the bed and slides a warm hand over Gaara's shoulder, almost like a reassurance. Gaara relaxes a little, tugging Naruto down and crossing his arms over the other man's chest possessively. Naruto turns within the hold of Gaara's arms to watch as Sasuke, determining introductions to be over, decided to busy himself with systematically kicked out the other party-goers who had crashed in the room, and then walking into the bathroom to apparently brush his teeth.
"God, I missed him." Naruto's voice is quiet, a sort of peaceful wistfulness lingering under his words.
Gaara strokes his hair. "How does he know you?"
It was clear that Sasuke knew Naruto, evident from the way Sasuke had immediately responded to Naruto's kiss, as though expecting it.
Naruto always seemed to know everyone, but someone being close with him in return is far less common. Naruto sighed a little. "We were kids together. The bastard. I've always had to cover his ass."
A toothbrush still dangling from his lips, Sasuke reappears at the words and throws Naruto's jeans at the bed. "More like I've always had to save yours. Get dressed, I was out all night and want to sleep."
Naruto pouts. "Well, so do I! Gaara and I had to hit double just to have a good time."
Gaara can't stop a slight half-groan escaping his lips, suddenly becoming aware of his splitting headache.
Sasuke smirked. "Not my problem, loser. By all means, stick around. But you gotta share the bed."
Gaara stiffens without even thinking about it.
"Tell your charming boyfriend to relax." Sasuke's bored look was a little too understanding. "I'm fucking exhausted and I paid for this flat. You're used to begging anyway, Naruto."
Naruto bundles himself over to one side of the bed, taking Gaara with him, who fees nonplussed by all this conversation that seemed to hold some sort of dialect that he didn't understand, an undercurrent of banter which only comes from familiarity.
Sasuke strips his shirt off, revealing an intricate black-ink dragon tattoo that coils around his sternum and makes Gaara catch his breath in surprise, and collapses on the other side of the mattress with his back towards them.
Naruto snorts.
"Sure, sure you paid for it. Don't try and tell me you didn't get all this from big brother Itachi. Stop trying to sell drugs Sasuke, you suck at it. "
"Shut up, fuckwit."
With much maneuvering of limbs, Gaara manages to get himself untangled from Naruto's arms and out of the bed. He is massively uncomfortable, but Naruto seemed completely ready to relax back into a lazy morning in someone elses bed. (Not that this isn't abnormal, but usually the owner of said bed is assuredly absent.)
Ignoring the half-question, half-whine noise Naruto makes, Gaara grabs his jeans and a pack of smokes and slips from the room. Naruto would just go back to sleep anyway.
On the roof things smell a little better, Suna winds sweeping away the smell of vodka and party-vomit that Sasuke's whole apartment reeked of.
Gaara smokes cigarettes for breakfast and waits for Naruto to groggily wake up in a few hours and come to find him. The sun is steadily inching it's way up over the horizon, a faint hazy-white smog hanging heavy over the city and getting caught in whorls on the spires of New Suna skyscrapers. The air feels like dust and flame and the slow rise of heat.
Gaara waits. He is shaking off the image of Sasuke and Naruto, the way Naruto's hands fit against Sasuke's face. There have been plenty of people Naruto knows in their life together.
He waits patiently for Naruto to come, smelling like a mixture of warm exhaustion and cheap booze, dribble-dripping his brown-sugar morning kisses up to Gaara's lips.
It takes a long time, too long for Gaara, who likes to think of himself as patient but should really know better. When the sun has burned away the white haze in streaks of sizzling concrete and car horns, Gaara walks back into the flat to see Naruto and Sasuke still asleep on the bed, facing towards each other.
There is about a foot of space between them, and Naruto is dreaming deep enough that he isn't even muttering in his sleep, but Gaara finds himself unsettled by the picture.
X
He stays unsettled for a while.
Sasuke is with them often now. Gaaa gets increasingly more possessive and snappish-snide remarks and sarcastic comments are a special talent of his-until he realizes Sasuke doesn't seem to give two fucks about what he thinks. After that, it is more a matter of Gaara nursing his wounded pride rather than actually repairing their interactions.
Sasuke and Naruto are never more than friendly, but it is a friendly that tickles Gaara, slips its fingers over the knobs of his spine like it's meticulously testing the strength of each vertebra.
It's a childhood-friend-forever friendly, mixed with hints of the lingering intimacy of past lovers. Sasuke knows how to move around Naruto, the way they weave on the sidewalk together and take up space together unthinkingly, even with Naruto's fingers interlocked in Gaara's, drawing stares from the passer-by.
Gaara takes the time he has with Naruto when Sasuke isn't around feverishly, gobbles it up and demands more of it, all of it, all Naruto has to give. He grabs Naruto's chin between his fingers, jerks the other man's head up forcefully to lock onto his gaze and bathe himself in all the love he knows Naruto keeps for him there, shining from his eyes with touching sincerity.
Naruto is insufferably oblivious as usual, someone who can easily balance so many people in his heart at once that the idea of someone being selfish with love isn't one he can really quite wrap his head around, although he tries, for Gaara's sake.
Sasuke stays an impenetrable, unerringly diplomatic enigma, managing to project a slightly snobbish air of confidence even while kicked up out of his mind on drugs, even when caught being fucked on his hands and knees on the floor by someone who makes Naruto curl his lip in vague disapproval. He is devastatingly attractive, all cold angles and dark eyes, licking his lips nonchalantly whenever he catches Gaara staring at him.
Gaara tried to not look too hard, or for too long.
X
Their bedroom is slow and silent, as if holding it's breath under the heaviness of the air. Gaara feels like he is waiting desperately for something. His tongue is dry and papery in his mouth, a clump of sand. He can't move fast enough—
He held Naruto's face in his hands; stroking his cheeks, kissing his eyelids, his chin, his scars with lips that trembled with anticipation. Naruto tenses, his muscles seizing up, and then hisses under his breath and relaxes, lids sliding open.
His eyes are blown out and beautiful, dilated until the blue was only visible in thin shining rings. A little groan escapes his lips as the burn of the drug pushes through his system, cheeks hollowing at the sting, and then he sighs deeply, tongue poking between his teeth.
He runs his hands up Gaara's neck, clutches handfuls of his hair.
"Ahh yeah. Niiice." The words rumbled under his breath.
Gaara's throat is like padded cotton. The bedroom is so heavy, so silent, its colors muted in shades of blue and black he can hardly see through. He whines a little as Naruto mouths at his neck.
"C'mon Naruto…"
Naruto laughs. He flicks the needle out of his skin, grabs a clean one. Gaara sighs at the sting of it sliding into his arm. "C'mon, come on…"
It hits like a live wire heat in his veins, like popping in his skull, wetness in his mouth. He stumbles forward to chase his hands down the sparkles that appear blinking along Naruto's bare chest, threading his stomach. Lightheaded, Gaara's feet and arms tumble over themselves, landing him breathless and laughing with Naruto on the unmade bed. They push their lips together messily, wrestling on the sheets, until Gaara's head suddenly lolls loosely on his neck like a lifeless, useless doll.
Naruto pulls away, his eyebrows coming together in a slow furrow of concern.
"You alright?" He sounds worried. Gaara vaguely thinks he's being silly. Stupid Naruto.
"Is that too much? Gaara…" Naruto reaches for the needle but Gaara slaps his hand away, kissing him instead. He rolls himself over the warmth of Naruto's stomach, presses his forehead into Naruto's track-marked arm.
"Its okay, its okay…I'm okay…"
X
Naruto didn't often talk about his past. Gaara only knew the basics; that Naruto was an orphan since a young age, lived with a stream of relatives until around the time he was 11, until he stuck with one guardian who seemed to be a family friend.
He knew Naruto came from the other continent and was here to study at University. But that was it. And that wasn't much to know really, when you lived with a person, knew them so well that you finished their sentences and bought the 2% milk without needing to be told, knew their skin like a well-read book and trusted them implicitly.
That fact that Naruto was rather tight-lipped about his past in a way he wasn't at all tight-lipped with literally anything else would have bothered Gaara more, but he didn't especially get a huge kick out of reminiscing his own childhood.
He didn't press the issue very often, because Naruto was terribly blasé about prying into every other aspect of Gaara's business, but he rarely asked Gaara questions about his past, out of some sort of unspoken understanding. Gaara felt it was only fair to return the favor.
This must be the reason why, after Sasuke's unprecedented emergence with his startling familiarity with Naruto, Gaara felt a little blown away. Naruto knew everybody, knew them extremely well. He knew everybody's hopes and aspirations and friends and fathers and sisters, but not many knew him especially well in return.
Sasuke was like the appearance of a specter, a sudden tangible fragment of Naruto's past, his childhood, that Gaara hadn't expected to exist. (Why hadn't he expected it? Gaara didn't like to think about it, but this pocket of rebellious existence with Naruto, with all of its gritty anti-glamour and flashing strobe-light beauty, was like a soap bubble Gaara didn't know could be popped from the outside.)
Sasuke aside, Gaara could count on one hand the number of times Naruto talked openly with him about his childhood, his family, and once and only once, the scars on his face. It usually happened when they were really a bit too high, so tripped out that Gaara rarely remembered everything that was said; sentences and secrets lost in the moments between moments where time lost her footholds and fell blankly through space.
Naruto talked to himself more than Gaara ever noticed. Mostly, he muttered giggling conversations where he would convince himself to actually attend a class seminar, and then talk himself out of it again. Reminders to pick up food, mumbled bits of music, criticisms of his hazy artwork and tattoo designs. Gaara often answered the questions Naruto asked himself just to remind Naruto he was there. The other man would blink, pause for what always seemed like a second too long, and then laugh and continue on. When Gaara teased him about it, he would blush a little, scratch his head in abashed embarrassment.
"Ehh, it got lonely as a kid y'know? I was always by myself. What's a guy to do?" The pout on his face was like a child caught raiding the sweet drawer.
Sometimes though, Naruto's inner conversations were darker, more intense, almost violent.
He would murmur unintelligible words to himself that slipped up in the stream of his sentences, shuttered the vibrancy of his smile.
"-Don't, don't please…Kyuubi!…I'll fuck you, I'll fuck you up so hard…I don't know…little baby crying like a stuck pig…Don't!..."
Naruto would scratch at his face when this happened, punch walls and knock over chairs, scream at Gaara with a hoarse, guttural voice, leaking from bloodshot eyes tears he didn't even seem to know he was crying.
Gaara didn't really know how to act when Naruto got like that, but from the beginning Naruto had utterly accepted Gaara's own idiosyncrasies, and so Gaara did the same. When Gaara's insomnia came, Naruto would follow him about as he wandered the tiny apartment late into the night, keep him safe on the streets. When Gaara had periodic bouts of fragile, moody silence that lasted for up to days at a time, Naruto chattered enough for the both of them, uncaring of the lack of response.
They were both messed up, but Gaara felt stupidly more safe with Naruto than he'd felt with anyone else in his entire life ever, a blanket sort of safety that stayed firmly anchored, despite what they did and didn't know about one another.
X
When Naruto told him about his scars, it was just the two of them late in the night in their tiny flat. Naruto ran the backs of his fingers slowly over Gaara's cheeks as they sat across from each other cross-legged on top of the kitchen table.
They were once again probably a bit too high, trying out a new drug one of Sasuke's contacts had picked up. It was potent and sweet like sugar, making everything hazy and back-lit somehow in black and white shadow. Everything seemed terribly new and old at the same time, and Gaara wondered at the textures against his palms, the feeling of wood grain under his legs and fabric from his loose shirt over his chest. His hands explored Naruto's skin like it was new again.
Naruto had been crying for some reason, because Naruto cried easily, spilling tears silently over the scars on his cheeks like stars. Gaara found himself watching the way they slid over the scarred grooves in his skin, dark and prominent over Naruto's face. He leaned forward and, feeling curious and uninhibited, licked one.
Naruto shuddered under his tongue.
"Gaara-" and his murmur was horse and small. "Gaara...?"
Gaara moved to the other side of Naruto's face, mouth pressing open kisses on the skin.
"Mhmm?"
"Gaara, sometimes I hear scary things in my head."
Gaara didn't stop moving. He was just too high.
Well, he heard things too. Heard them now, nibbling along his mind like they were waiting to get in, eat through the epidermis. Monster-things like a faceless woman consumed with guilt, a father that didn't deserve the name, clicking and crawling around like sand fleas in his skull. They were there for Naruto too. But that was okay. Everything was okay now.
"You're not the only one."
Naruto sighs
His lips are soft, like balm and honey, and in comparison his scars under Gaara's mouth feel ripped, ragged, raw and open.
This new drug was good, really good. It made Gaara feel open, aimless and liberated. He dragged his tongue up along one scar boldly.
"…How'd you get these?"
Naruto stiffened for a moment. Then his words were very slow.
"Kitchen knife... I was eleven years old."
"You did it yourself?"
Naruto chuckled at that, low and almost cruel.
"Nahh. M' Uncle Kyuubi. Some of my family members weren't very nice." Naruto's voice is harsh now, full of derisive malice. "Used to beat me up a lot. One day he held me down and carved up my face. Would've done more, but I wouldn't stay still."
Naruto seemed like he didn't know how to stop talking, his words coming faster, harder. "That's why they're crooked y'know. Crooked scars. He was fucked up. In the head."
Gaara's head is reeling. Naruto is still crying, silent but angry now, his hands gripping Gaara's shoulders like they are a lifeline, eyes looking at something else.
"He kept calling me a little baby to scream. A helpless little baby. Stupid, just fuckin' stupid...
...Sasuke found me."
Gaara imagines Sasuke, Sasuke with his wry half-smile, looking for Naruto after school, finding him with a bloody face on a dirty kitchen floor. Blood everywhere; blood in his eyelashes, blood on his teeth. Really fucking red blood, standing out against the yellow of his hair.
He kisses the scars, hands fisted in Naruto's shirt.
"Naruto.."
Naruto twitches, like he was coming back into himself. "I don't want any pity, Gaara."
Gaara shook his head, mouth still on the scars.
"...No, it's just...My...My dad is a corrupt sadistic criminal. I think he forced himself on my mom." His whole life was in that sentence, unsaid things tumbling out from under his tongue, from somewhere he always tried to ignore.
"It's because I'm a bastard. He's in the city council, I can't prove... and... fuck."He shut his mouth tight before he could say anything else, before he could say anything else about the horror, the guilt, the unwanted monster-child who had never been wanted, never wanted by anyone at all.
A pause. A sigh.
"Not because you're a bastard Gaara." Naruto's voice was soft again, and time is slow and seeping, black and white shadows around their faces and lights blurry on the edges. Gaara feels weightless and tingling. "Not because of you."
Gaara laughs a little like crying.
Naruto leans forward, kisses Gaara slow and heavy. "We're pretty fucked up together huh."
X
Naruto slept on the roof sometimes, after a particularly bad episode. He used to say it made him feel safer.
That night Gaara followed him up, when they had kissed on top of the kitchen table until their lips were swollen. Still tripping, the ladder up out of the tiny skylight looked impossibly high, like a sudden pretentious gateway to the heavens.
On top of the roof, flat adobe and dry-ice heat, They wrapped themselves in blankets and huddled together. Suna City before them was huge, glowing black and white under the starless sky, cloudy from factory smoke.
Street signs and traffic signals winked at them like tiny yellow eyes dotting the landscape, headlights of cars winding their way along the streets below, endless wavering lights in the darkness meandering along the fringe of the world. Each one was a weary, lonesome traveler of the deep night, waiting to evaporate under the harsh steam of sun.
Gaara felt tired, stretched thin with kisses and drugs, like his limbs were too long for his body and his ribs were too tight on his chest. Like strings coming loose from the sleeve of a sweater.
Naruto tucked around him, blankets a tight wad despite the heat, his chin nestled into the hollow of Gaara's neck.
"No stars then."
"Guess not."
"Ehh screw it, Gaara. They can't see us anyway. We're not fucking important."
Gaara thought maybe he was still irrationally high, because Naruto's careless statement made him sad. Sad enough to read back through the wad of blankets and stroke one of Naruto's scars with a calloused thumb.
"You're important enough, y'know."
Naruto pushed his nose into the dark curls of Gaara's hair, red like blood and guilt.
"Love you too, babe."
Gaara stayed awake long after Naruto started to snore softly, desert wind chapping his cheeks raw. He stared up at the empty blue-black sky, crying a little like laughing.
X
End First Half. Continue reading on for the second half!
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