Title: Clatter
Summary: The cell phone tower is a popular haunt for Naruto's revelations, as well as the mysterious. Hinted SasuNaruSasu.
Pairing: Hinted SasuNaruSasu.
Author(s): doodlelover (mostly) and Heaven Cobra.
A/N: This is... the first thing me and HC have copulated together on for our joint account. I feel all happy and fuzzy inside. YOU SHOULD TOO. So, without further ado... I give you...
Clatter
He walked with light steps across the cement plane, sighing contemplatively. The harsh bite of late October air nipped at the fringes of his shirt and hands, yet he bore no coat or sweater. The air was heavy with a dense fog and the air cooled slightly as the sun dipped below the horizon; the clouds hung low to the ground and reached far as the eye could see. Strangely transparent, spying the night was easy as the dying sun cast ghostly shadows over the muddy scene.
That is the dark, but he vaguely remembers something different waiting for him. What is this feeling?
The yellow haired man leaned his arm onto the metal railing bordering the large building he was loitering in. The city sounds of morning traffic remained filtered and quiet from his high altitude and resounded as a dull hum in the echo of the metal surroundings. The railing he was perched on was cold, but it didn't seem to reach through to his skin; the cold was something odd and misplaced in the current situation. Even the heavy dampness in the dense air was null to him—nothing seemed to be deterring his senses, yet he felt them all the same. Even the thick cigarette smoke that had usually greeted him barely tickled his nose.
Lifting his hand to see it properly, he noted the cracked skin and dry feeling deep in the pads of his fingers. Like paper, he rubbed the coarse pads softly against each other. In such foggy weather, was dry skin acceptable? Even heard of? His entire being seemed unfazed by everything around it, but he knew he was there. He could feel the cold of the metal, see the texture of the ground beneath his feet. The heavy stench of cigarettes coated his mouth and invaded the back of his throat, his damp shirt clinging desperately to his biceps.
A tick went off in his mind; a thought buzzed.
He withdrew the hand from his face and redirected it downward into his pocket. He had to rifle through the lint and coins to finally pull out what was bothering him, but when he finally had it within his grasp he smiled broadly. The light blaring from the screen illuminated his thoroughly deflated happiness and lit a reflection in his eyes.
He shifted on his other leg whilst turning around, facing the inside of the structure he was centered in and looking out the other end of the open building. The same scenery met him, but it didn't cause him to frown. The sound of his shoe scuffing the dirty, cold floor met his ears and he slowly tapped his foot to an unknown rhythm.
The cell phone was flipped open, a grin catching on the LCD screen. The text inside was of few words and direct, but enough to get him punching out his own reply as if it were his lifeline. The text, though short enough to be read in a few seconds, sent a shiver running through his spine as a sense of familiarity crept in on him. Even though small, this letter was more important to him than any silver dollar or a pay check that came as a result of his own two hands. He felt a strange consolation whilst gazing at he screen and thought of how his hopes soared when he read the reply over and over, though it ticked a strange feeling of emptiness in his head.
The message he had received was robotic; short and concise, but the one he sent back had many more characters though the lack of content didn't bother him. His sender was just a quiet personality, and Naruto the same. He liked the attention he got just ten times more because of the lack of it. He was special in the eyes of this person and at the moment he couldn't care for more than just that.
One more letter and a smiley was all it took for the message to be complete. He kissed the screen of his phone and pressed the 'send' button, waiting for the programmed memo to appear to tell him his reply was being sent. It never came.
Appalled, he checked his message again to see that he was sending it to the right person with the right spelling.
Everything was right. He'd checked twice—more than twice—and still it would not send. A mere moment of unconditional panic swept by before he realized his mistake; he had no signal.
Sighing, some shifting occurred before he pushed off the railing and scudded around a bit, trying to regain the lost signal. He went high and low, near and far but still it wasn't found. For the first time, he noticed the laughing couples sitting on each other's laps and the smiles that emanated. He felt a pang go through his chest and grimaced slightly, but could not find the courage to meet any of their eyes.
What was wrong?
Respectively, the south end of the room also had nothing to provide the man with as he walked around aimlessly, looking at the artificial luminescence of his phone while tripping over the flat surface of the ground. The car horns down below became subdued and, as if it were being filtered through a translucent screen, the light came under the same spell. He reached the device above and below his head, not detecting even a residual signal. It seemed he would never find what he was looking for.
There never was a signal.
He looked around the vacant scope, noting that there were no people, no tourists as there usually were at this time of day. A faint memory trickled into his brain, telling him that the couples that were here had left, one by one, hours ago. This worried him but the feelings didn't stay, as did the light. Soon the sun began to peek up into the horizon in the same manner it had that evening, only reversed. The fog remained, motionless.
The change in atmosphere didn't change the weather. The same cold scraped along his skin, raising goosebumps and causing sneezes to erupt from his nose. A shiver raced up his spine when his back collided a little too suddenly with the railing for support, causing him to withdraw from it jerkily and hunch over while trying to rub heat into his arms. The warmth from his hands had all but dissipated with his will to search for his lost signal. Strangely he wasn't worried so much about the person he was sending it to, but more about the signal itself. He had lost it, but did not know how to get it back.
The air is cold.
--
His mind reels when something slams shut—something metal. It's loud and pierces his ear drums, making his head pound. The air reverberates around him and everything seems to slow with the echo rumbling around the space he's being engulfed in so suddenly. Nothing seems right anymore, nothing seems real. And even more oddly—he's being attracted to the sound that makes him cower.
A strange pull makes his legs move; his willpower giving him the energy to stand upright. His arms lay slack at his sides while his body moves of its own accord across the large, too large, plane of the building that so suddenly seems to be imprisoning him. He feels chained to the metal pillars that keep him from being crushed and the balcony calls to him hauntingly. He feels it asking him to come bear its burden, to share his suffering with it some more. He refuses.
Those chains break, the wailing continues to screech into his ears - unwavering for seemingly centuries. The screaming is deafening, drowning his thoughts and making his eyes water until he reaches a door, a plateau.
His hands become more pliant, reaching out with complete ease as they chafe against the cool bar of silver jutting from the surface. After little hesitation, he grabs onto it and pulls. It gives with relative ease, as if someone were pushing to aid him on the other side. As it is, someone was.
Eyes bore through him and he stills. His hand stays glued to the handle.
As if breathing were impossible, his eyes don't stray from the person in front of him, but he's happy. That sad realization of what he was missing dawns like a needle stabbing through flesh repeatedly, painfully. It seems like dawn to him; the beginning of a new realization and along with it, new pain.
He smiles. His eyes land on the small something the other is holding and the writing engraved on it. That smile fades.
He's not there to the other person; that much is clear when he is bypassed like air and the other is walking toward the balcony—the one he was just pushing and struggling against to get away from.
He doesn't turn.
Running would do nothing to prevent the cap from being untwisted, nor would it do any good to scream out loud for the other to stop. To stop from pouring out what lies in that gray urn, and he doesn't.
His long fingers lay slack on the opened cap and the top layer of gray floats away soundlessly. The man looked aged, mature, as if something had forcefully pulled him out of the fresh new bearings of what would be his childhood. There are lines on his pale face signifying that cruel change. His mouth has been made more austere without something to smirk at constantly; no one to make him laugh, no one to call names. His brows furrow in an effort to keep his eyes from closing, but they do anyway. His anxiety is so prominent through the knots in his shoulders, and the thought dances in his head that he may never have relaxed his posture in the years.
The one forced to watch this sobs once before realizing that he can't be heard, has never been heard. There's no way to stop the other's suffering.
The cell phone clatters to the ground, but the one in his hand is still there. It feels as light as he is, no longer a lead weight in his palm. He opens it a sliver and then closes the device, not able to bear the sight. There is one on the ground; waterlogged and screen crackling. The remainder of his message, still open, remains on the distorted screen. Where the phone came from, it was not apparent—lying in a rain gutter above? The rusted metal of the device lit an eerie fire of desperation in his soul, and he squirmed uncomfortably.
When the other turns, he sees nothing; only the watery scenery of what he missed waits for him and he wishes that it would have waited just a little longer. He finds that nothing matters any longer and the streets, the balcony beckon to him gently. The air caresses him quietly and whistles, heavy with the sounds of traffic. The moment he passed through the door to this balcony, he had lost the signal on his phone, only to find it flickering like a candle late at night. A cell phone—the cell phone—lays on the ground and beckons to him. His hair moves in dark tendrils about his face, quite a bit longer than when he had last seen that rusted phone. He grimaces; the incident had left him unable to cut it any shorter than what it was originally.
He sets down the burgeoning urn and scoops up the device gently. The screen lights feebly and dies as he reads the message, snapping it closed and watching as water droplets cascade off of the slick surface. The bright and gaudy color of the face, the cute stickers half-peeling burn his eyes until he realizes that it isn't the colors or decorations—it's the memory of whose it was. Feeling a cold but familiar hand on his, he relaxes his fingers and allows them to be touched. He squeezes gently, and lets the feeling go until the wetness on his face is no longer there. He returns to the urn and runs his fingers through the contents, the ash coating his fingers and forming a light gray paste on his fingertips. He watches as his sun blows it away into the wind, the gray speckling the brightness of the rising fire in the sky. The signal he had lost flickers again and dies. He buries the rescued phone in the now-empty urn and seals it, tucking it under his arm. Only when he leaves the tower does his signal come back, but it never stayed for longer than a few minutes.
Fishing the phone out of his black slacks, he turns it over in his pale palm. The black phone soon joins the rusted silver, clattering emptily in the polished urn.
We hope you enjoyed it! :D