Kaminari.
a 6a.m. drabble
by hachico.
Disclaimer: "Naruto" and all characters derived from said series are the creation and thereby intellectual property of Masashi Kishimoto. No profits are being made from the creation of this work of fiction.
Naruto's eyes opened gradually to the myriad small, plosive sounds of the rainfall outside his window. With a grunt and a low moan, he rolled over slightly onto his side, enough so that he could read the luminous red LED light of his alarm clock.
6:10.
Lying face up in his bed, he caught a glimpse of weak grey-blue light reflected on the side of the building directly adjacent to his apartment and sighed. Inside his room it was still pitch dark, darker than the pre-morning world outside.
Knowing that he had a few hours before he would need to get ready, he lay there for a while, ears growing attuned to the aggressive sounds of the deluge outside. It was raining very hard. The gutter directly above his apartment had a leak in it, causing what sounded like a miniature waterfall just outside his window as the rainwater failed to complete its full circuit to the rain spout. After a another few moments, he could also feel and hear distant thunder.
Naruto shuddered as a particularly close clash of lightning rumbled through his bones, causing the little hairs on his forearms and other sensitive areas to prickle and stand on end.
He knew it was just his imagination, but as the room was momentarily filled with light from a nearby electrical surge, the shinobi perceived a human form. It was distorted at first, dark and indistinct—jagged on the edges. But with each progressive crack and roar it began to take on more and more familiar shape. Pale, opalescent flesh, stark in the illumination of nature's fury, tapered by shadows. And as he looked on, he imagined that those shadows were hair and eyes, mellow and jaded and soft compared to the sharpness and severity of the infrequent light. When the light receded, even more suddenly than it had appeared, that darkness swallowed up everything in his familiar little room, swathing it in an uncertain shroud, as though all those familiar things might never have really been there to begin with.
The darkness had a smell too. It was damp and heavy with ozone, a little earthy with a slight tinge of metallic bite that marked the accumulation of the tiny minerals and natural chemicals in the air. Naruto opened his mouth wide and breathed it in, clacking his teeth together around it as the scent brought an odd forlorn feeling into his chest. Not a tightening, nor a tense constriction of the muscles in his forehead, the hallmark pressure that had characterized a lapse into memory these past few years. Instead it was an odd sense of weightlessness that descended over him, wherein he was very acutely attuned to the tiny sensations of his still unmoving body, the uncanny, weighty air that filtered through his lungs and the ever-so-subtle tingling of his own flesh as the slight cross-ventilation of the air currents in his bedroom lulled him in and out of a state of near-sleep.
Absently, his hand traveled to his face, where his fingers lingered on dry, chapped lips, and his tongue darted out once or twice and touched them, perhaps to remind himself that he was really all there. The other hand laid at rest atop his stomach, where for reasons unknown his index finger took up tracing the invisible seal there, his fingertip surprisingly cool against his belly's warm flesh. As he lay there, he swore up and down that the shadows on the wall moved differently now, as though to take on the life that his imagination had bestowed them in his half-restful repose. They reached out as though to close in on him, coming closer with each strike of the lightning outside. At the same time, the thunder's soft baritone resounded in his ears, eliciting a little bit of a shiver along his spine, originating in his lower back. Another glance outside his window told him that the rain had gotten stronger and the sky had gotten lighter outside. A glance at his clock revealed that he had lain like that for over half an hour.
6:47, it taunted him.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, the part of him that wanted to forget the thunder and the storm outside told him that it was not too early for him to get up and make breakfast. That it was not too far fetched for him to go out and try to get some practice in despite the rain. And if he was reasonable with himself, he realized that he only had two hours before he would have to leave and get ready to face the day anyway.
But Naruto could not force himself to overcome the part of himself that wanted to lie there in the dark a little bit longer and imagine that those really were pale tapered fingers reaching out to him, to rest cool palms on his cheeks and forehead. That the shadows that stretched across his room were in fact soft dark tresses, cut jagged and bold into the bleary white walls of his reality. That the rumbling that surrounded him and thrummed subtle sonic energy through his limbs was in fact a voice, muttering his name in the dark.
It was the sudden and jarring sounds of the birds that nested in the creeping vines outside his window that thrust him from his reverie, a thousand tiny chirping cries that startled the sleep from his eyes and reminded him of why he had to get up. Morning was not far off.
Author's Note: Lots of allusions to Sasuke's absense in this one. I wouldn't exactly say it was fun, but writing it was very soothing -- nostalgic and sad.