A/N: A different story from my AtS story (which I'm not even sure I'll finish or even continue, for that matter...I'm just disliking how I wrote it.) It's not going to be a long one, a couple of chapters at most, but I've had this story in my head for a while and I needed to get it out.
Hope you enjoy! (Contains language, but that's about it)
I do not own Naruto, but I do own half of Sakura. The good half.
Chocolate cigarettes
The rich smell of tobacco filled the dreary autumn afternoon air in the alleyway just off the main road. Lit only slightly by the sunset as the ominous buildings blocked out most of the light, Sasuke sat motionlessly in the small alleyway, back leant against one of the archways and head rested against the cold stone surface behind him. After a few moments, he brought the cigarette that was balanced neatly between his index and middle finger to his lips. Inhaling deeply, Sasuke felt the smoke fill his lungs in a familiar sensation before pulling his hand away and exhaling slowly, savouring the taste. Sasuke rested his right arm on his knee that was bent up towards him. He checked the time on the watch that was fastened around his left wrist. 6:12pm, it read. The raven haired boy sighed and closed his eyes.
"Sasuke!" The boy of said name winced inwardly at the sudden loud noise. The voice echoed across the alleyway, ricocheting off the stone walls. Sasuke lifted his head off the wall behind him lazily and looked up at the source of this noise through half lidded eyes.
Only one person had a voice that loud and irritating.
"Oie, bastard! Guess what I have for you!" Naruto came bounding down the alleyway cheerfully, left arm holding the strap of his backpack and the other arm flailing randomly in the air. Sasuke watched the blond's right arm move quickly through the air and noticed a small box clasped between the boys tanned fingers. Deciding to ignore it Sasuke rested the back of his head against the cold wall again, already exhausted from Naruto's unnecessary amount of movement.
Naruto ran up quickly and dropped himself down on the pavement next to Sasuke and crossed his legs in front of him.
"Guess what this is!" Naruto said excitedly, holding out the little paper box he had in his right hand while struggling to shrug off his backpack at the same time.
Sasuke, who had closed his eyes in an attempt to ignore his obnoxious friend, opened them slightly and glanced down blankly at the box that was being gestured towards him.
It looked like a cigarette box only to a slightly smaller scale. The box was red and white with the words "King Lion" written boldly across the front. The entire box was completely enclosed in a loose sheet of folded plastic.
Sasuke looked up at Naruto's beaming expression. "A car," he said simply.
Naruto's face dropped a fraction, "No you sarcastic bastard, it's the answer to our problem!"
Sasuke raised an eyebrow, questioningly. Naruto noticed the look on the pale boys face.
"You know, your smoking problem!" Sasuke let out an almost inaudible scoff.
"My 'smoking problem'?" Sasuke said in mock disbelief, "I never recall ever having a smoking 'problem'."
"That's because you're in denial! The first step to beating a problem is admitting you have one," Naruto stated, pointing his finger at Sasuke. Sasuke swatted Naruto's hand away nonchalantly.
"I like to smoke; you do not like to smoke. So unless someone forces a cigarette in your mouth then I see no problem here." Sasuke took another long drag from his cigarette to illustrate his point.
Naruto made a grunting noise not unlike that of a pig's. "But you're slowly killing yourself with those things!" Naruto motioned towards the cigarette Sasuke was pulling away from his mouth. "At least give these a go," the blond boy grinned, holding the box out to Sasuke again.
"No," Sasuke replied simply and immediately, closing his eyes and resting his head back against the wall in a sign of finality.
"Okay, now, come on Sasuke, that's not even fair!" Naruto spluttered in annoyance, leaning toward the raven haired boy. "You never even try to help me find a compromise to this!" Naruto placed the box on the floor next to his bag and folded his arms across his chest, apparently annoyed by the lack of praise his plan was receiving.
Sasuke sighed, his eyebrows furrowing faintly as he felt a twinge of anger and irritation surface in his mind.
Everyday it was like this. Sasuke would finish his day at college around 5:30. He would walk a short distance and sit in the empty alleyway, relaxed by the faint sounds of the cars travelling on the road at the end of the lane, and escape, if only for a few minutes, the harsh reality of life with a cigarette to calm him. At 6:00, Naruto got off work and travelled from his job working in a restaurant to the alleyway to meet with Sasuke. Since high school had finished, the two found it was the only time outside their now separate lives to meet with each other and discuss anything and everything – well, Naruto would speak, Sasuke would listen and make humming noises mostly. However, ever since Sasuke had taken up smoking, one topic of conversation seemed to be the only thing on the blond boy's one-track mind; getting Sasuke to stop.
It was innocent at first; Naruto would mention that he didn't like the smell or that he wished Sasuke wouldn't smoke when he was around. But before long Naruto began trying to persuade Sasuke to stop entirely, by any means necessary: bribes, threats... Recently it had turned to compromise and substitution. "Start doing this instead of smoking," Naruto would say. And when that didn't work, the next day would bring with it a new idea.
Sasuke had initially found Naruto's constant need to rid him of his 'sin sticks' amusing, seeing it to be an interesting way to spend one's afternoon; listening to Naruto trying to explain his plot-holed logic. But after the first couple of weeks, Sasuke's patience began to wear thin as Naruto refused to give up on his escapade.
It seemed that today his patience would finally snap.
"'Help you find a compromise'?" Sasuke said bitterly. "Why should I help you make me stop something that I like to do?"
Naruto paused only for a second, contemplating whether to continue pushing the subject due to Sasuke's sudden change in tone. He continue speaking despite his better judgment.
"Because all they're doing is killing you!"
"What do you care if they're killing me?" Sasuke said sternly, holding the bridge of his nose between his thumb and fingers of his left hand, trying to remain composed. "In case you hadn't realised, Naruto, this is my body and I can do whatever the hell I want with it. And, despite what you're saying, they don't only 'kill me'; they also help me relieve stress from having to deal with you pestering me every afternoon about my health choices."
Naruto was taken aback but the sudden and out of character outburst and felt a slight sting from Sasuke's words. But, instead of becoming upset and silent, Naruto immediately became defensive. An unexpected rage, mimicking that of Sasuke's, rose in him suddenly.
"Well I'm sorry, bastard, for trying to help you stop damaging yourself internally!" Naruto shifted himself into a knelling position, hands balled into fists by his sides in an attempt to hold himself back from punching the pale boy who was looking at him so smugly. Why is he getting so angry all of a sudden? Naruto thought. All I'm trying to do is help the bastard and instead he's having a go at me? Well, I won't go down without a fight, teme!
Sensing the thought process Naruto was having, Sasuke smirked cruelly at Naruto and picked up the discarded red and white box that was lying next to Naruto's backpack. He studied it mockingly.
"With these?" He asked, looking at Naruto in a self-righteous fashion. "Chocolate cigarettes? So your plan here is to, not only make me fat by replacing my appetite depressant with chocolate, but also to force feed me a food item that I find disgusting and unappetising in a lame attempt to convince me to stop smoking?" The dark haired boy shook his head slowly, cynically. "Jesus Uzumaki, give it a rest." Sasuke shifted his eyes from the box to Naruto's face, which was now burning with rage at Sasuke's below-the-belt hit on the blonde's intelligence.
Suddenly, Naruto noticed a strange emotion dart across the pale boys' onyx eyes but refused to react to it. He stubbornly continued to try to stare down Sasuke.
Sasuke's dark eyes met Naruto's deep blue ones. "Why do you care so much about whether I quit anyway?" Sasuke asked slowly, taking a final inhale from his cigarette and, without exhaling, rubbing the nub of it into the concrete ground.
Sasuke turned to Naruto, who, still dwelling on Sasuke's proclaiming of the blonds lack of intelligence in the situation, looked about ready to tackle Sasuke and punch him in the face. Naruto glared harshly at Sasuke as the pale boy leaned in close to him. "If it were the smell you hated, you wouldn't be sitting here putting up with this every weekday afternoon," Sasuke said, blowing the remainder of the smoke in his throat directly into Naruto's face. Naruto narrowed his eyes but didn't move, apparently holding his breath.
"And I don't buy all that health shit, Naruto," Sasuke put his arms behind him and used them as support as he lent back and looked away at nothing in particular. Sasuke continued speaking monotonously. "No one cares about anyone else's health but their own. The only reason people would care about that crap was if there was something in it for them. And—" Sasuke stopped short as the wind was taken out of him unexpectedly. Sasuke hit the cold cement of the alleyway floor hard and immediately looked up to see a flurry of blonde spikes and a pair of glaring blue eyes above him. Ignoring the sudden ache on the back of his skull, Sasuke tried to push himself up but realised the impossibility of this as Naruto was pinning him down. The boy was straddling him, holding him down with his hands around Sasuke forearms and pushing all his weight down on the pale boy. Sasuke looked up at Naruto, only managing slightly to hold back his look of confusion.
"The fuck, Uzumaki?" Sasuke asked angrily, squirming under the blond grip as he tried to push away from the cold sensation that was seeping through the back of his clothes.
"Don't," Naruto said suddenly, furiously, "you ever say that again, you bastard." Sasuke attempted to plaster on his notorious blank expression. However, the spite in Naruto's words made it difficult, even for Sasuke, to hold back his look astonishment at the amount of malice the boy was currently spitting at him.
"You may be a selfish prick but that doesn't mean everybody else is!" Naruto continued, growling angrily at Sasuke. He pushed his nails into the boy's forearms as he spoke. Pale crescent shapes formed under his nails and turned the already white skin even more ivory around Naruto's fingertips. Sasuke vaguely registered the stinging sensation in his arms but opted to ignore it. He looked up at Naruto. Having regained his composure, he simply lay under Naruto submissively listening as the blonde spoke quickly and angrily.
"I've known you a long time bastard, but even I can't believe how little concern you seem to have for others! Or how close minded you are about others concerns for you!" Sasuke noticed that Naruto wasn't looking him in the eye anymore. Instead, he was looking at Sasuke's forehead, apparently unable to look the dark haired boy in the eyes as he spoke. "Of course I know it's your body, you bastard, but that doesn't mean that I don't care about your health! People care about other people Sasuke, even if you don't care about anyone but yourself!" Sasuke's mouth twitched subtly at that comment but he recovered quickly.
"I wish for once in your life," Naruto continued, "you would take into consideration that I actually care whether you're hurting yourself! Because if dying early is all you want out of this newly formed smoking habit of yours then I'd be happy to help you with that without the need of tobacco!" Naruto managed to make eye contact with Sasuke again, searching the dark orbs angrily for some understanding.
Sasuke started up at Naruto for a moment then looked to the side. "You moron, what would you know?" He said, seemingly indifferent. "You can believe what you want to but you can't yell at me and expect me to miraculously change because of your fantastic words of wisdom," Sasuke said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "It's not that simple, you fool. So why don't you give up and go play nurse with someone else and let me continue my habit in peace, okay Uzumaki?" Sasuke finished unpleasantly, trying to push Naruto off him and sit up. But as Sasuke brought his shoulders off the ground, they were forcefully shoved down again, his shoulder blades hitting the concrete painfully. He winced and glared up at the blond, annoyed by his suddenly violent antics. Naruto brought his face down, meeting Sasuke's stare within a very close proximity that made Sasuke uncomfortable.
"'Nurse'?" Naruto spat out, "You think that's what I'm doing? You think that I walk around finding people who smoke and try to persuade them to stop? Is that what you think, bastard?" Sasuke didn't say anything, so Naruto continued his outburst. "No, you prick, no. No, no, no," the blonde repeated, shaking his head roughly from side to side, seemingly unsatisfied with saying the word only once, "I could care less about other people smoking, they can do what they want. It's none of my business."
Sasuke tried to push Naruto off again as a sudden surge of rage and adrenaline coursed through him but only managed to free one of his arms which he promptly grabbed the front of Naruto's shirt with. Sasuke pulled the boy down close to him. "Then why don't you get the hell out of my business? I shouldn't be different from anyone else you see smoking out there on the street," Sasuke growled, motioning towards the direction of the main street by tipping his head slightly.
Naruto, unfazed by Sasuke firm grip on his shirt front, shifted his hand that remained on Sasuke's other forearm. Mimicking the pale boy, he grabbed a hold of the front of the boys' dark dress shirt. "Because with you it's different!" he suddenly blurted out. "With you, I've made it my business! Those other people can die before me, but not you! I won't let you leave me like that! I can't lose you!"
Sasuke, for the first time in a long while, looked genuinely surprised by what Naruto had said. He stared at the blonde incredulously. Naruto grip on Sasuke's shirt faltered and he rushed his hands to his mouth, as though the motion could shove all his previous words back in. For what seemed like minutes the two looked at each other in awed and shocked silence.
"Shit!" Naruto unexpectedly leaped off of Sasuke, almost tripping himself in the process, and turn sharply around towards the main road. Sasuke watched as the blond scooped up his bag and ran panic stricken down the alley. He watched until Naruto disappeared around the corner of the alley. He sat motionless for a few moments, trying to make sense of the incident that had just occurred before slumping back down onto the ground. This time he relished the cold sneaking through his clothes as his body suddenly felt very hot. After lying inertly for a few minutes, staring up at the now darkened sky, Sasuke rubbed a hand across his face and sat up slowly. His head still had a dull ache from when Naruto had tackled him into the pavement. Looking down as his forearms, Sasuke saw the nail shaped marks that remained indented in his skin. As he was looking at the marks, he caught sight of something red in his peripheral vision. The box that had started this mess was laying just a couple of meters away, apparently forgotten and discarded by Naruto.
Sasuke, having finally successfully regained his composure, stood and walked towards the box. He picked it up and lent against the archway, tearing off the plastic covering and examining it properly. The smell of the chocolate inside the box rose from the packaging when Sasuke removed the plastic and the pale boy scrunched his nose up slightly as the uncomfortably sweet smell hit his nostrils. He looked at the box for a minute more, considering what Naruto had said only minutes earlier. He dropped his hand to his side and rubbed his other hand across his face exasperatingly.
"Man," he whispered, "I really need a cigarette."
TBC.