A/N: I've sat on this plot for a while now, and I've only just now decided to write it properly. Beware, people – this story is long, probably the longest One-Shot (Two-Shot? Three?) I've attempted ever, but hopefully that won't mean it loses its impact.
Dedicated to: My scrumptious reviewers for Not Ever. Thanks for giving me over 300 reviews so far! You guys are fantastic.
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs not to me. This story is intentionally reminiscent of Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain, Sonia Orchard's The Virtuoso, and David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars.
THIS STORY CONTAINS YAOI. It also contains a very healthy (or unhealthy, depending on how you look at it) dose of angst. Read on at your own peril.
Please review! If you do, I'll... give you cookies. Somehow. o.O
Sargasso
0-0-0
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table...
(T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)
0-0-0
It had never been the right sort of love, and when he was alone he would often reflect on this.
On the surface they never admitted this to each other; to be truthful, they never admitted much to anyone. To the world at large they lived separate lives. Neither had really made much of themselves – had each scored small successes in life, but with enough time in between each to almost downplay the fact they were successes at all, so that neither really knew who they were or who they weren't, whether they were moving on in the world or whether the world was simply leaving them behind.
They only saw each other once every month. Sometimes even less than that. It hinged on Sasuke – he was a pianist of sorts – and every now and then he'd have to fly interstate, or overseas, for weeks on end. Once he'd been booked for a tour by his manager and he'd disappeared from Naruto's life for a year and a half. When he'd returned – without warning, just turned up on Naruto's doorstep – neither had spoken a word, had gone upstairs immediately and within five minutes were slamming the headboard of the bed.
Afterward, Naruto had said, "Bastard, you better not do that to me again. I'm getting married to a girl in a month and a bit."
"In a month," Sasuke had repeated with his black eyes closed.
And then they'd gone on as they had always been, as if that admission meant nothing to either of them. It had seemed easier that way – pretending, asking no hard questions of each other, so that Naruto only found out why Sasuke had been gone at all from a newspaper article the very next morning, when he'd gone into the City for stationery supplies.
And it seemed – he'd often reflect on this too – that, with all things considered, he really didn't know much about Sasuke at all. He knew all the surface things: what job he did, what he liked best on his toast for breakfast, the brand of hair gel he used, the peculiar way he had of doing his tie.
He knew those. Almost back-to-front.
But about the things that mattered –
– what he felt about the two of them together, why he never smiled or laughed, why he preferred to turn up unexpectedly in person instead of phoning ahead to give Naruto time to prepare; why he never mentioned his family, the fact that he rarely spoke, why whenever they made love there was always this sense of urgency, desperation, a raw, choked feel that almost (but not entirely) offset the pleasure –
About those things, he knew nothing at all.
Because he'd never asked – he'd never been quite brave enough to ask. Each question had piled up like bricks between them and Naruto was too scared to breach the wall.
0-0-0
If he thought back hard enough he could always remember the way they'd first met, at the orphanage down South many years ago.
He'd been six and Sasuke had been only seven. Strictly speaking, they'd met many times before this, but each time had been fleeting and so didn't quite count. On this day – and he could still imagine it very clearly – it had been raining, very heavily, so that in the playground and the back gardens there were great grey puddles that reached ankle-high whenever you stepped in them with bare feet. It had been cold, too, a thin, wheedling wind that hissed its way through the lavender beds and screeched the old wind vane right and left.
He'd been crying. His father had only just died in hospital. He'd been there for over a year now, stuck in a coma, and only that morning his heart had given out.
Sasuke had found him behind the kitchens.
At that time, Sasuke had been far from good-looking. The main features were there but the nutrition wasn't. Thin, tall for his age, with large, Asiatic black eyes – too large for the thin face – and dark hair uncombed, rough, plastered through with dirt.
The voice, too – not yet mature, still young and slightly thin, as if to echo his face. But then again, it might have just been the wind.
"What are you doing here?"
He'd been too immersed in his own private grief to be friendly or even remotely considerate.
"Go away," he'd said. "Just go away."
"You're crying. Look, you have dirt on your face."
"Go away."
Sasuke had sat down beside him on the kitchen steps. "You're Uzumaki, aren't you?"
"Yes." A sniff. And then the unfortunate reality of owning his father's name hit him and he started crying again, his tiny shoulders shaking a little.
"Stop crying. Boys shouldn't cry. It's not right."
"Go away, then," through a lungful of tears. "I never asked you to stay here and watch me. Just go away, whoever you are."
"I'm Sasuke."
"I don't care. Just go away."
Sasuke had looked at his face very closely. "What's the matter?" he'd said.
"Just go away!"
And he remembered it clearly – the fact that Sasuke had obeyed him; had simply stood up from the step beside him and left, crisply and cleanly, hadn't even looked back. He'd been so surprised that he'd actually stopped mid-sob and peered up under his blonde hair to watch, and had watched until Sasuke had rounded the corner and disappeared completely into the house.
No-one had ever listened to him before.
And this he remembered, clearly, as well – that it was only when he'd finally picked himself up to leave, that he saw the small bar of chocolate (slightly squashed) that someone had placed on the step beside him.
0-0-0
They hadn't had much chance to talk after that.
At first it was because Naruto was too shy – kindness was too unfamiliar, too strange, for him and he didn't quite know how to act in the face of it.
Later on it was because circumstances had changed. In the everyday Sasuke carried himself differently; more distant, less familiar, less inclination to talk. Once Naruto had approached him after Arithmetic with the intention of thanking him but had gotten no more than an impassive stare, a blank look on the pale, thin face. He'd backed away feeling slightly confused, but had left it at that. No need to push things further than they already were.
Every now and then they'd pass each other in the dormitory corridors, and there'd be no choice but to speak to each other. When they did they spoke briefly, as if they were afraid of getting caught. Naruto had never quite understood why.
"Geography was a pain," he'd say. "I got the Arctic and the Antarctic mixed up again."
"Hn."
"What about you? I heard Rutherford's a beast."
"He's alright."
And then they'd smile at each other, move away, and retreat back into their own separate spheres.
For the first year or so that was how they'd proceeded, not encroaching on each other, simply acknowledging the other's existence. As time went on they learnt to enjoy these little moments together. Neither really understood why they never spoke to each other outside of those moments – they just knew it was so, and that was how things were.
Once, Naruto had tripped down the stairs carrying a chair he'd snuck out of the orphanage attic and had landed on his right arm, breaking the bone. The doctor had come from the City to set it. It had hurt, hurt terribly, and for the second time in his life, he'd cried.
Sasuke had sat beside his bed for a week.
Neither of them said anything about it – and neither of them had brought it up ever again. It was just something unspoken between them that had happened; as natural as water running down and not running up, as natural as candle-flame pointing towards the sky.
But Naruto remembered, sitting there in bed at night, with the cumbersome new cast on his broken right arm –
– that despite the pain he'd never felt happier: to see Sasuke sitting there in a chair beside him, dark eyes closed and fast asleep.
0-0-0
Three years passed.
In the fourth year a man had come to the orphanage and stayed for a week or so without explanation. Nobody knew just who he was. On the last night of his visit the Headmaster had lined all the boys up in the dining hall and told them to hold out their left and right hands for inspection.
The man had walked down the line, Headmaster at his side, looking at each set of hands in turn.
Every now and then he'd stop in front of one of the boys. He'd reach out a pale, spindly hand and lean in closer, dark eyes glittering coldly like sea glass, probe with spider-like fingertips over an outstretched palm. If he was satisfied with what he saw he'd look at the Headmaster.
And the Headmaster would say, "Tojo Muramatsu", or "Hiroko Ueda", or "Ryu Sugiyama".
And then the man would look irritated, the side of his thin mouth twisting down, and the two of them would move on to the next boy in the line.
Naruto remembered that they'd stopped in front of Sasuke.
By that time Sasuke had been eleven, twelve, maybe. He'd filled out more, but only slightly. The dark eyes no longer bulged out of proportion from his face. The planes of his cheekbones had broadened somewhat, lent a smooth curve down to his jawbone, and then another smooth curve down over his throat.
The man with the cold eyes had looked down at Sasuke's hands – the fingers long, straight, and alabaster-smooth – and the Headmaster had said, without waiting to be prompted:
"That is Sasuke Uchiha, sir."
His companion had blinked. Naruto had watched him from down the line. And then out had come the twin pale spiders, taking hold of Sasuke's fingers and bringing them closer to black eyes. "Did you say Uchiha?"
"Yes, sir."
"Is he somehow related to Itachi Uchiha? Unless of course their surnames are just a coincidence."
"Itachi Uchiha is his brother, I believe."
The sea-glass eyes had widened just slightly, the spiders tightening their twin clutches so that Sasuke's mouth stiffened – in anger or in pain, Naruto hadn't been able to tell. From his own place in the line he'd felt his own hands clench so that his fingernails had bitten deep crescents into his palms.
He'd watched as the man let go of Sasuke's hands and nodded with a slithering smile at the Headmaster.
The next morning, both the man and Sasuke had gone. Naruto had run twice around the orphanage to check. Nobody else had thought too much about it, because Sasuke hadn't made many friends, and at any rate now there was more food to go around. But Naruto alone had felt – hollow, somehow. As if something precious had been taken from him and he didn't know how to fill the space it had left, and on that first morning without Sasuke he'd gone to the back garden and retched and retched into a patch of weeds.
For almost ten years, that hollow feeling stayed with him. He never lost it, let alone forgot it; and by the time he was old enough to know what it was, it was too late anyway, Sasuke was long gone.
0-0-0
On his twenty-first birthday, Naruto had received a card – Happy birthday. Sasuke. The address was London.
He'd written back immediately, not understanding his own urgency, and the letter he'd written had been well over four pages. Not all of it had been coherent – since leaving the orphanage, Naruto had taken to drinking – and he was a writer by profession, so naturally none of what he'd written made sense. The letter's tone had fluctuated between accusatory and pleading. A day after sending it, Naruto had wished he hadn't.
The reply had come late. Almost a month had gone past. Naruto had been sitting his living room with his pencil tucked between his teeth – reading Swift and annotating – when the letter had landed on his lap.
The girl – Sakura Haruno – was young, quite pretty, and sat on the arm of his chair as he blinked at her.
"It's for you," she'd said, kissing the side of his face.
He'd looked at the return address and then, with his heart galloping in his chest, he'd tucked the letter behind his book, mumbling something about reading it later, he was busy, and anyway it couldn't be anything important.
Later that night he'd slipped out of bed, taking care not to wake the girl sleeping next to him, crept out into his study and – not waiting to turn on a light – opened Sasuke's letter in the dark.
Sasuke hadn't written anything. But there had been a plane ticket in the envelope, and a ticket to a piano recital in London. Naruto had stared at both, hardly daring to breathe, before shuffling towards a window so that he could read everything again, and again, and again, and again, his fingers shaking, until he'd almost memorised every scrap of writing on anything that Sasuke had sent to him.
When he'd gone back to bed Sakura had sat up next to him and switched on a lamp.
He'd smiled at her confusion and – still shaking a little – leaned forward to kiss her once on the mouth.
"Sorry," he'd said. "I thought you were asleep."
And that had been the extent of it. Sakura was not the type to press things and Naruto had chosen her because of that.
And so, a week later when Naruto left for London – without any explanation, just a sharp kiss on her cheek and a "I'll call you when I get there, sweetheart" – there had been no questions, no wondering why. She'd just smiled at him, nodded, told him to remember his suit jacket. She'd still been smiling when he boarded the plane. And funnily enough, when he came back three months later, that was exactly the image presented to him again, like a movie that had simply been rewound to one spot: just a smile, and a nod, and a glance at his coat.
0-0-0
Over the years Sasuke had become more polished, like a piece of black marble worn smooth by friction. At the age of twenty-two he had lost most of his youth, grown old exponentially, so that the dark eyes were now cold and perpetually jaded, every movement brooding on the movement that had preceded it before.
They had met at the airport in relative silence. Over the long plane trip Naruto had lost most of his excitement, so that only a shuddering confusion remained.
Sasuke had led him silently to the taxi ranks outside.
"I didn't bring a lot of luggage," Naruto had said then, just to say something, anything.
"Hn," the reply had been, and then Sasuke had disappeared inside the car.
The drive had been silent. About ten minutes in it had started to rain, thick grey water that came in horizontal sheets, made the outside sky almost invisible. Every now and then an approaching car would send faint shimmers of yellow light up from the wet bitumen. They weren't travelling very fast – a crawl at best – and it was possible to follow individual water droplets down the passenger window, watch as they rippled in the wind, merged with other drops, then were whipped into nonexistence by the onslaught of more water.
Naruto had looked at Sasuke once or twice – just out of the corner of his eye – but the dark eyes had been bent away, turned outside, the smooth face expressionless.
"I still have the wrapper," Naruto had said eventually.
Sasuke hadn't even turned to him. "Hmm?"
"I still have the wrapper."
"Of what?"
Naruto had cleared his throat, a little awkwardly, knowing that even the taxi driver was watching him now.
"That chocolate bar," he'd said. "Remember?"
The answer had been flat and very toneless: "No."
It was then that Naruto had really started to regret ever writing his letter at all. It had not made much sense when he'd been writing it – and it certainly didn't make any sense now. It was not really that what he'd written was stupid (although it certainly had been); it was more that he'd forgotten how much time had passed, how very long ten years actually was.
And he'd never felt it more acutely than he did now: that although that single moment of kindness meant the world to him, to many others it probably meant nothing at all, as everyday and as common as a raindrop in a storm; just another small nuisance to be swatted aside to make way for the greater view of things.
"You saw me on the kitchen steps. At the orphanage. I'd been crying. Surely you must – "
"I don't remember," Sasuke had cut in then, and Naruto had been too afraid to continue.
They'd reached the apartment in half an hour. The rain had thinned but not disappeared entirely, still fell in fat drops on the waterlogged pavement, made blades of grass twitch on boggy side lawns.
They'd gotten out of the taxi and Sasuke had paid the driver, not hurrying even though he was getting wet, and then they'd made their way to the front door.
"Watch your step," Sasuke had said mechanically as he'd unlocked the door.
"It's a nice place," Naruto had said mechanically in return.
Once inside the rain had muted, drumming distantly on the building's roof. The lobby had been small and cramped. Pale, wet light filtered in slowly, as if it had been dragged up unwillingly from the bottom of the sea.
The apartment was on the fourth floor, and because the elevators had broken down they'd had to use the stairs. Sasuke had picked up Naruto's suitcase without a word and trudged up with it, dragging it up each step, and the whole staircase had resounded with the thwack, thwack of suitcase wheels on tile.
Halfway up Naruto had tried to take it from him.
"It's alright," he'd said, reaching out for the handle. "I'll do it."
"I've got it," Sasuke had snarled suddenly at him then, jerking the suitcase out of the way.
It had stunned him. It had stunned him so much he'd stopped in his place on the stairs, just staring at Sasuke's back. And it was only when Sasuke had reached the floor above him that he'd finally come to again, restarted his climb on the stairs, followed the thwack of his suitcase up onto the fourth level.
Once there he'd looked out of a grimy high window and noted to himself that it had started raining heavily again, the entire sky puckered up and weeping.
The apartment in itself was clean and tidy; just the sort of place he'd imagined Sasuke in. The kitchen was tight and cramped in beside a dining area and a living room, the latter taken up mostly by a giant piano. Large glass windows facing the apartment's entrance let in a slow trickling of sickly light. The view was indistinct in the rain, but if he squinted Naruto could make out cars. To the right was a doorway, Sasuke's bedroom; and on the living room wall hung a great steel-framed mirror, bland in the non-light, still and grey.
Sasuke had already set his suitcase down. The carpet seemed almost blue-washed in the rain.
"Close the door behind you," Sasuke had said then, not looking at him. "And lock it."
He'd had a bit of trouble finding the lock but in the end had managed it, slid the bolt (click, clack) across. When he'd turned back Sasuke had disappeared.
He'd cleared his throat nervously and gone to his suitcase. "Can I use your phone?" he'd called.
"It doesn't work."
"Why not?"
"I can't pay the bills. They cut it off last month."
And sure enough when he'd picked it up the tone was flat, dead, no reception at all. He'd set it back down again slowly.
Sasuke had reappeared from his bedroom then, his suit jacket off, folding the shirt cuffs back on his wrists. The grey light had run in streams down the muscles in his neck. Naruto had watched him, thought strangely that he'd never seen anything in the world so beautiful.
Sasuke had brushed past him. "How long are you going to stay here?"
"I don't – well, the plane ticket you sent me was one-way, so I – "
"You can't stay longer than three months," sharply. "And you'll have to pay for your own ticket home."
The thought of three months had struck him silent at first. It had seemed such a very long time to him. Later, he would realise that it wasn't very long at all – compared with ten years of separation, it really was nothing – but at the time he'd felt a bubbling excitement, something wild that grew in him and threatened to emerge. The notion of three months alone with Sasuke made Naruto feel reckless, strangely light-headed.
"Three months?" he'd breathed as Sasuke busied himself in the kitchen. "That's until – until September!"
Sasuke had said nothing, poured the water in silence.
Naruto had been too exhilarated to notice.
"Three months – damn, that's great! – but hang on, you haven't told me how you are yet. It's been – ten years? Ten years. Sasuke, you bastard, you never wrote. Or phoned, for that matter. After you left it was if you'd dropped off the surface of the earth. And then when you sent that birthday card – I was so shocked – I thought you'd forgotten me or something – "
"I hadn't," Sasuke had put in then, very calmly. Later Naruto would reflect that he'd been too calm.
"Well, you sure had me convinced that you had. You bastard!" and he'd laughed, throwing himself onto Sasuke's couch. "Great view, by the way. Pity it's raining."
"It rains too much."
"I like rain. It always makes me feel – fresh, or something."
Sasuke hadn't replied to that either. Instead, he'd brought the two mugs of tea over and set them on the carpet beside the couch. Both mugs were old and slightly chipped. And then he'd sat down opposite Naruto, one elbow on the armrest, leaning his chin on his knuckles.
Naruto had cracked open one eye and grinned. "Where do I put the suitcase then?"
"There's only one bed," Sasuke had said.
"That's alright. I'll sleep on this couch."
"It gets cold at night. The windows don't close properly."
"If that happens then I'll snuggle up with you on the bed to keep warm. How does that sound?" he'd said playfully, too full of boyish happiness to let anything dampen him.
To his surprise Sasuke had stood then, rather abruptly, gone and picked up his suitcase from where it sat on the carpet. He'd sat up just in time to see Sasuke turn for the bedroom.
"I'll sleep on the couch," Sasuke had said coldly.
"No, no, I was just kidding," Naruto had said then, jumping up and grabbing at the suitcase handle. "Don't stress, I'll – "
For a moment then, Naruto's hand brushed the back of Sasuke's. And then suddenly – to Naruto's surprise – Sasuke had yanked himself away, a repetition of what had happened on the stairs, except this time it was so pronounced that the suitcase banged back into the living room wall, making a sound like a thunderclap.
They'd stopped and stared at each other for a very long time.
"I'll sleep on the couch," Sasuke had repeated at last, and this time his tone had been colder than ice.
There had been something in his voice that had warned Naruto not to argue. And for once in his life Naruto hadn't – just sat back on the couch in silence, listening as Sasuke put his suitcase away. Later he would wonder what it was he'd done wrong, but he never managed to come up with a plausible answer.
When Sasuke had come back they'd changed the topic. Both were determined to speak of something else.
No need to push things further than they already were.
0-0-0
As the days went by slowly Naruto's excitement wore away, in spits and spatters so that he never noticed it was fading, until at last after a month he looked at himself in the mirror and realised with a kind of jarring surprise that it had disappeared, all of it, not even a crumb was left.
It had not entirely been Sasuke's fault. The piano recital they'd gone to in the first week, but Naruto didn't know music, so it had all flown over his head. In the end they'd left the concert early, both knowing there was no point in pretending any further.
That night they'd walked back home in the rain.
They rarely talked. When they did, Naruto did most of the talking. Afterwards, he'd always feel foolish however, as if he'd opened his mouth too much and too soon. Sasuke seemed capable of a religious silence, not even breaking it when confronted with blatant questions. More than once Naruto found himself envying that flawless self-control, and yet at the same time despairing of it thoroughly.
Sometime in the second month, the beginning of July, Naruto had gotten a letter from Sakura.
It was mostly template – how the weather was, how their friends were, how good it was to see the flowers coming out. She was missing him, terribly. When was he coming back? And why on earth hadn't he called her yet?
He'd written back cursorily, explained the lack of telephone line. Added that he missed her as well, he'd be back as soon as he could, but not yet; and signed his name after writing "I love you".
Sasuke had stood behind him as he wrote.
When he'd finished he'd turned to find an envelope and stamp and Sasuke had been there, dark eyes watching, not saying a word.
He'd smiled and in response Sasuke had looked away.
"I'll find you an envelope," Sasuke had said, very evenly. "I'll post it for you when I go out tomorrow morning."
But that night Naruto had woken to the sound of wind rushing, and had gotten up out of bed to peer into the living room. Sasuke had opened all of the glass windows and was staring out into the grey-lit sky. Naruto had thought it strange, but hadn't said a word – because down those pale cheeks were two wet trails of silver, silent in the way that Sasuke always was.
0-0-0
Sometimes, in the afternoons when the sun came syrupy and thick through the apartment windows and cast a soporific air over everything, Sasuke would play the piano.
Naruto never listened. He knew deep inside that although Sasuke had never told him not to, nonetheless it was expected of him anyway. As a writer he knew how irritating it was to have someone sitting there watching while he worked. As a matter of principle, on those quaint afternoons, Naruto would go out of the apartment silently and wander London until the sun went down.
He had discovered many things that way. Standing at a sidewalk newspaper stand, he'd found Sasuke's picture in The London Times. It had seemed to him then, thumbing through the copy, rummaging around his pockets for spare change, that it was almost frightening how little he knew of this man; and wondered, briefly, whether Sasuke felt the same towards him.
Regarding Sasuke's piano career, Naruto had only enquired about it once.
It had been at breakfast sometime in the second week. Watching Sasuke fry bacon in a pan, he'd said, "So you've been playing the piano all these ten years?"
Sasuke had turned from him to get plates without saying a word.
Used to this by now, though it had never ceased to make him uncomfortable, Naruto had leaned against the counter and tried again.
"I mean, you never told me who that man was. Do you remember? That man who came to the orphanage and took you away. Who was that, anyway? He looked like a creep."
"I don't remember."
Naruto had stared at his back. "What? What do you mean, you don't remember?"
"It was ten years ago, Naruto." The back straightened, and two plates were placed neatly on the bench-top. "I don't remember everything that's happened since then."
"I'm not asking about everything. I'm asking about – "
Sasuke had not looked at him, had slid the bacon out of the pan in the fastidious manner Naruto had come to expect. "He taught me piano for two years, that's all. I don't remember his name."
"You have a pretty selective memory."
That had earned him a glare. He had not been expecting it, and somehow the gesture had made him smile. He'd stood there in Sasuke's kitchen, grinning crazily, until finally Sasuke had turned away again and taken the two filled plates to the dining room table.
He'd followed. The early morning light had spilled out from the windows onto Sasuke's hair and he'd noted this silently to himself as he'd sat.
They'd eaten quietly. Afterwards, putting their dirty plates in the sink, Naruto had pressed the issue again.
"Where did he take you, then? After you left. Did you come here? To London?"
"Hn."
"Is that supposed to be a yes or a no?"
Sasuke had stepped around him carefully and headed towards the bedroom. "Why do you want to know, Naruto?"
"Because I'm curious, that's why. I've told you everything about what I've done these ten years, now it's your turn to tell me what you've done."
"I never asked you about anything. You volunteered the information yourself."
"Yes I did, I know that. I told you because I wanted to tell you, Sasuke."
"Why?"
Naruto had felt slightly frustrated that such a question even needed to be asked.
"You know why, Sasuke. Ten years – that's a long time. I've missed you."
At those three words Sasuke's shoulders had stiffened, just imperceptibly, and after that had refused to say anything more. During the entire course of the remaining morning he had not uttered a single syllable, despite Naruto's attempts to coax out more answers. In the end, it had become a battle of wills; and Naruto had not been trained in such warfare. In the afternoon he'd given up, brought up other less sensitive things, and gradually Sasuke had warmed again.
And so, standing on the sidewalk with The London Times under his arm, squinting into the rain that hurled against his eyes and made the entire world grey and indeterminable, Naruto had thought to himself that, strangely, ten years had somehow managed to reverse things.
Ten years ago, on the orphanage kitchen steps, it had been Sasuke trying to reach an understanding of his heart. And now, ten years later, it was him that was reaching; but every time he tried his fingers closed around nothing, just the empty space where Sasuke's heart should have been.
0-0-0
In the end it had been the rain that had saved them.
The last week of Naruto's three-month stay had been impossibly wet, so that even at night the storm-clouds stayed furrowed in the fading sky, waiting for a new day to renew the assault. Even the light from the sunsets had become diluted, the orange beams swimming in the humid air. Laundry took several days to dry. When they did they retained the smell of the rain, stifling and sour, present in everything.
On the Wednesday the two of them had sat together on the living room couches, waiting for the water to boil. The leaking windows had left wet patches on the carpet.
The rain had made Naruto feel restless. He'd found it very hard to sit still. With the weather so wet it was impossible to go out, but staying inside the apartment had made him feel suffocated.
When the water did boil it was with a loud, wailing shriek. Sasuke had left to take the kettle off. And out of a compulsion to do something other than just sit there, Naruto had followed him, then changed his mind halfway and sat down at the opened piano instead.
Sasuke hadn't noticed until Naruto played the first note.
Then he'd looked up sharply. Given that glare again.
"Don't touch that," he'd snapped, manoeuvring the kettle. "You'll break it."
"What, the piano?" And in defiance Naruto had pressed the same key again. "How do you break a piano, anyway?"
"By playing it in the wrong way."
"But I'm not playing it in the wrong way. I'm just pressing one key."
"Then don't press it."
"Can you teach me a tune? I don't mind what. Greensleeves, even."
The steam from the tea cups had risen and swirled for a moment around Sasuke's neck, dissolved like grey sashes into the air. Sasuke had put the kettle down irritably.
"I don't know Greensleeves."
"Then teach me something you know."
"They're too difficult. You won't be able to play them properly."
"Then I'll just keeping playing your piano in the wrong way, and if it breaks then it'll be your own fault, so don't blame me."
Sasuke had come to the piano then, still with the irritable look on his face, and taken one look at Naruto's hands splayed out on the keyboard before moving away quickly as if something had burned him.
"I can't teach you," he'd said then, abruptly.
Naruto had stared. "Why not?"
"I just can't."
"I'm not that stupid," Naruto had said, misunderstanding. "I learn quickly. Just show me what to do."
Sasuke had stood with his back to Naruto for a long time, not moving. With the rain behind him his figure had glowed an eerie blue-grey. And then finally he'd turned back around, perfectly composed, and moved to stand beside the piano.
His eyes had been strangely shuttered, as if to keep something buried within them.
"Fine," he'd said briskly. "Put your hands on the keys. No, just the right hand. Now curl the fingers – not that much – imagine that your hand is a spider, with your palm sitting on a tennis ball. No, you're arching too high. Now your wrists are too low. You've got to keep them above the keybed."
"Like this?" Naruto had said, his five fingers scrunched up over only four keys.
"No," Sasuke had snapped. "Spread your fingers out a bit. Your natural reach should be about five or six keys. Not four."
"I thought you said I had to keep my wrists up."
"I did."
"But if I spread out my fingers my wrists go down."
"There's such a thing as an intermediate, you know," Sasuke had pointed out, gesturing with an irritable jerk of the head.
"But then I can't lift any of my fingers, Sasuke."
"Don't flatten your palm like that, then. And I said five keys, not eight. You don't need to stretch your fingers out like that."
"I don't know what you're talking abo – "
"Oh, here, you idiot."
And then Sasuke had leaned over and, with ivory-cool fingers, adjusted Naruto's wrist into position. Skin had met skin for about two seconds. (Naruto could still remember this clearly.) And at the slight touch he remembered too that he had frozen momentarily – unprepared – Sasuke's fingers had felt so strange – and it had only been later, replaying the scene over in his mind, that he'd realised why.
It was because that moment – two seconds, as it were – had been the first time in the entire two-months-and-a-bit that he'd been there, that Sasuke had actually physically touched him.
Before there had been near misses. Naruto, with his flinging limbs, moving through the apartment like a localised hurricane; and Sasuke, subtly but still ever-so-noticeably, dodging each potential touch, each graze of the fingers. It had gotten to the point where Sasuke had even stopped passing things to Naruto directly, preferring to place teacups down on tables for Naruto to pick up himself instead.
Over the three months, Naruto had gotten used to it. Had accepted it in the same way that one must accept bad weather, must accept an approaching thunderstorm: something undesirable, but ultimately something unalterable as well.
Accepted it – as just another change that ten years apart had created; just another instance of widening water.
That first bridging touch had shot through him like fire.
Afterward, they'd gone on pretending that it hadn't happened at all. Sasuke had retreated back to his original position near the piano, arms folded tightly across his chest, as if to consciously prevent a relapse in judgement.
"Now your hand's in the right place," he'd said. "Now you can – now you can play."
But for the next ten minutes or so Naruto had felt giddy, almost delirious, rooted to the earth only by the keys beneath his fingers. At times he'd almost felt sick, the way his heart had threatened to leap out of his throat; and something deep within him had been beating too, not quite his heart but something similar, so loudly that he could hear every rush of the blood in his ears.
And he'd wondered – if Sasuke had felt the same.
Wondered if – somehow, somewhere, buried behind the black eyes – there was something beating as well, something that wanted what he himself wanted, that felt the rightness of who they were, and what they were to each other –
– was it even possible to hope that way?
"Sasuke," he remembered saying at that moment: "Sasuke, I – "
But what he'd meant to say ("Sasuke, I think I love – ") had not happened; had not survived to meet the air. The lights had blinked out short of it. A tree in the suburbs had fallen on some powerlines, and plunged the city into darkness again; and Naruto had been too afraid to take the chance, which by then had passed beyond him anyway, washed away and diluted by the rain.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and, 'Do I dare?'...
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
(T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)
In the distorted, lurid way a dream or a memory which has been revisited too often will appear to a mind, so did Naruto's thoughts of that night fold in upon itself, become technicolour and vague, impossible to pin down.
When the power had shorted out, the two of them had just stayed there – Naruto with six precious words withering silently on his lips – the storm raging outside, throwing itself against windows, so that the view from their apartment showed a heaving, black, lightless maze of buildings, with the confused and stuttering headlights of cars in between them, weaving like creatures forgotten their place in the world; and the entire apartment changing, grey transient outlines of everyday objects (a couch, a lampshade, the handle of a cup) becoming eerie echoes of other undisclosed things, so that the black and the white on the keys of the piano merged into one and could not be told apart –
It had not been possible, in that alien world, to speak.
Instead, Sasuke had tipped his head; just once; at Naruto's fingers on the keys: wordless, because it had not been necessary to say it.
Play.
And Naruto had. Just one note – the keys foreign beneath his hands – and it had come out flat, a little deadened, too blank; gone sour by the stifling heat of having been kept within his heart for so long.
Play.
Again: but Sasuke had moved closer this time, and the note that rang out had had a little more hope, a little more light, a little more colour; but still not enough to keep it from fading.
Play.
And Naruto remembered thinking – how different Sasuke had looked in the dark; how the shuttered look he'd always had now resembled something closer to pain, something sour and stifled and yearning as well, that same something (two wet trails) that had run down pale cheeks one moonlit night –
Play...
Sasuke had moved behind Naruto, standing so that his stomach pressed against the other's back.
And then, in the dark, he'd placed his hand on top of Naruto's – slowly pressed a single key – and the note, the result of two hands placed together, had rung clean in the air, excruciatingly beautiful, but terrifyingly brief.
They'd kissed.
Soft and warm; and then they'd pulled apart, stared at each other, and in silence (because no words needed to be said) they'd come together again, kissed a second time.
Later, when they'd moved to the bed – not rushing, keeping every movement slow, as if by doing so they could make the moment of weakness last longer – they'd sunk into the mattress together without ever uttering a single word.
The rain, cold and non-judgemental, had passed them by and left them to love in silence.
0-0-0
Although afterward neither had brought up the subject again, both had known exactly how things were to be from then on.
In the few remaining days left to them they'd stayed in the apartment, not venturing out even when all the food was gone, preferring to lie entangled on the sheets and sleep the hunger off. The sex they'd let happen, never acknowledged it openly; both knew that what they had was so fragile that one misplaced word would sever it entirely. It was better to pretend. Better to linger on things that could be reversed, dole out words that could easily be taken back again.
The night before Naruto was to fly out of London Sasuke had sat on the mattress of the bed, watching as the other packed silently into the suitcase.
And he'd said, so quietly Naruto had almost missed it: "This is nothing."
Naruto had turned. "What did you say?"
"This is nothing. What happened – it's nothing, there's nothing between us."
"Of course," Naruto had said then, a little too quickly. "We just hadn't seen each other in ten years, that's all. Just something that happened. From tomorrow on we'll never speak of it again. It's nothing at all."
"Of course," Sasuke had repeated. "It's nothing at all."
And then Naruto had gone back to his packing, and neither had said a single word more; just left things as they had always been between them, another silence that had swallowed up everything that the two of them were.
Yes; it was infinitely better to just pretend.
0-0-0
Naruto had left Heathrow Airport the next morning with a terrible weight in his stomach and a feeling that he had not been true to himself. Sitting in the window seat and looking down onto a diminishing London, he'd felt for the first time how small he was, how impossible to guess where Sasuke now was in the laid-out labyrinth that was London City.
Sakura had been waiting for him when he landed.
She'd had Starbucks in one hand and a bag in the other. The coffee she'd passed to Naruto without a word. He'd taken a sip. It was already cold.
"How was the trip?" she'd asked when they were in the taxi.
"Great," he'd said. "Yeah, it was really great."
"You only called me once, and you only wrote me twice. I figured you must have been very busy."
"Yeah," Naruto had said, not quite listening.
"Where did he take you?" And she hadn't looked at him the entire time, was now fixing her lipstick in the rear-view mirror. "You must have seen all the tourist spots. Trafalgar Square, perhaps."
Naruto had thought of the piano and the relentless rain, the arch of two bodies on a tiny, cramped bed.
"No," he'd said. "It rained too much."
She'd looked at him then. There was a blandness in the pretty green of her eyes.
"I hate rain," she'd said then. "What did you say your friend's name was, again?"
"Sasuke Uchiha," Naruto had said.
She'd nodded cursorily. Not quite listening. Her fingers had dug about in her bag for something.
"A nice name," she'd said, aimless. "Sasuke. Quite nice."
And then she'd set about applying mascara to her eyes, while Naruto had sat silent in the taxi beside her.
A/N: I'm aiming for an atmosphere of... silent despair, if that makes sense. A disturbed sort of silence. The feeling that I get when I read Brokeback Mountain – that's the emotion I'm aiming to bring out. Did it work? I wonder...
Anyway. Review! Please review, or else I'll never get this finished...