Notes On Lockers

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...This is supposed to be a chapter story, but I don't know if I'll ever get around to finishing the rest. xD; Anyway, if anything else, enjoy this as a one-shot? xD;;

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

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"No!"

"But—"

"God no!"

"What's the matter with—"

" Go change into something better, yeah!"

"Bu-but this is my fifth outfit change!"

"Yeah, and you'll keep changing your clothes until you come out wearing something acceptable!"

"Deidara, there is nothing wrong with what I'm wearing! Now, I'll be late for school if you hold me up any longer—"

"Hn… you and I are around the same size…I think I have an outfit that you can borrow today, yeah!"

"But—" Kabuto didn't get a chance to complain; his older brother had grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back upstairs before he could do so.

Deidara was quite aggressive when need be; stronger than he looked, definitely.

The blond led Kabuto into his room, which was as unkempt as ever, and then began to rummage through his closet, tossing out a few things now and then. "Take of your clothes, yeah." He instructed Kabuto.

The silver haired boy gave a heavy sigh and rolled his eyes as he shoved his glasses up his nose a bit. "This is ridiculous…there is nothing wrong with my clothes..." But he began to unbutton his shirt anyway, knowing that his brother wouldn't take no for an answer.

"Pfft. Please." Kabuto could practically hear the eye roll his brother was making. "Who picked those pants you're wearing? Honestly, it looks like you're ready for a flood, yeah… And such an ugly colour!"

Kabuto glanced down at himself self-consciously. He really didn't see anything wrong with what he had on now. The pants were a bit on the short side around the ankles, sure, but that wasn't anything bad. The fabric was a dark, forest green kind of colour; he wouldn't call it an 'ugly' shade…

Actually, he had liked the brown pants that he had tried on earlier a lot more.

Deidara had taken one look at those pants, however, and gagged. The blond was quite strict when it came to laws of fashion. He wouldn't so much as let Kabuto out to check the mailbox if he were wearing his sandals and socks at the same time.

"Here. Wear these instead." Deidara said as he inspected a pair of his own pants; they were slim, black, and ripped around the knees.

"They're torn." Kabuto stated as he narrowed his eyes at the pair of jeans in distaste.

"Oh for God's sake…" Deidara sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He threw the slacks at his younger brother, and then began to look through his closet again for a shirt. "Just wear it."

Kabuto grumbled to himself a bit, wrinkling his brow as he gave in once more and slipped his pants off, managing to shimmy into Deidara's jeans just as his brother made a brief 'aha' sound as he found a shirt to go with the pants.

"Ngh…The pants are kind of tight…" Kabuto stated to his brother as Deidara stepped out of his closet and looked him over with his one visible eye.

"They look great on you, yeah!" The blond exclaimed, ignoring the comment of how tight they were. "Now, take off that gross looking shirt and spare me from burning my eyes later. Please."

With a grunt, Kabuto slipped the white sweater and black undershirt over his head in one movement, letting Deidara take them out of his grasp.

"Here." The blond said, pushing a white shirt into Kabuto's grasp. "I decorated that one myself, yeah." He all but beamed as his brother slipped it over his shoulders.

"I…I can tell." The whole shirt was a canvas of colours straight from the artist's easel. Deidara must have just slapped the paintbrush over the white fabric at random and then deemed his creation 'art.'

"Ah, you look so much better, Kabby."

Finally! The monster was pleased!

"Thanks..." Kabuto muttered to himself. He looked himself over in Deidara's full-length mirror and pushed his glasses up his nose once more. He coughed awkwardly, then glanced towards his elder brother. "Are you sure it's not too much--"

"It's fine. You look great. Go to school." Deidara turned Kabuto around by his shoulders and gave him a push towards the door. He urged him down the stairs and once they'd hit the bottom, he spat into his hands and then smoothed down his brother's gray hair, much to Kabuto's horror.

"Ugh! Gross!" He complained, wiggling away from Deidara's grip and frantically combing his fingers through his hair.

"Your hair is always so boring when you have it in that ponytail, yeah..." Deidara sighed, ignoring Kabuto's complaints. He slapped his hands onto his hips. "I wish you'd let me do something with it..."

"You're not dying it." Kabuto said firmly. He grabbed his bookbag and swung it over his shoulder. He headed for the door, and Deidara padded after him, needing to be at work in just a matter of minutes.

"But it would look so nice if it were red..." The blond mused, giving a heavy sigh. Honestly, his fetish for redhead's was just a tad on the obsessive side.

The blond grabbed his bike out of the garage and hopped onto it, pushing the kick-stand up with his heel. "Oh well. See you later, Kabby!" He waved to his brother, then took off down the street, pedaling like a mad man as he tried to get to work on time, for once.

Kabuto sighed and headed off in the opposite direction towards his school. Damn his brother; he knew that Kabuto's bike had blown a tire the week before...he was going to be late for sure, after wasting so much time changing his clothes.

With another annoyed sigh, the silver haired boy gripped his book bag tightly and started to jog towards his school, hoping that he'd make it on time.

- - -

"Kabuto?"

"Ack!"

Without stopping the hard run he'd entered into, Kabuto made the mistake of trying to look over his shoulder to see who had called him. Anyone who knew Kabuto would know that his coordination was bad, and that this wasn't going to end well.

The silver haired boy managed to tangle his feet together, and do a very ungraceful dance in the middle of the school hallway as he tried to catch his balance. He failed in the end and took a horrendous tumble to the floor, where he lay on his belly for a long while, refusing to move. He groaned, his face pressed against the linolium.

"Kabuto! Are you okay?" Hearing that voice a second time, Kabuto realized that he recognized it. He rolled himself over onto his back just in time to see a head of striking white hair whiz in front of his line of vision.

"Kimimaro..." Kabuto coughed. He sat up and straightened his glasses, since they'd fallen crooked on his face. "I'm okay..."

"Are you sure?" Kimimaro asked, his green eyes bright and worried. "You took a hard fa--...what on earth are you wearing?"

Surpressing a groan, Kabuto only pushed himself to his feet and dusted off his clothes. "My brother's latest masterpiece." He said shortly. He grinned sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders. "He wouldn't let me leave in any of my clothes."

Kimimaro laughed quietly and shook his head. "Your brother is strange." He concluded. Kabuto had to nod in agreement to that.

With a quick glance around, Kabuto was glad to see that he and Kimimaro were the only two left in the hall. Good. That meant no one else had seen him face-plant.

"Aren't you supposed to be in class?" Kabuto asked as he remembered his reason for rushing into the building. He had to be at least five minutes late already.

Kimimaro gave a faint nod, and grinned softly up at the silver-haired boy. "Yes. But you weren't in class when I got there, and you never miss school, so I was worried." He shifted his eyes to his shoes. "I came to wait for you."

Kabuto felt his face warming up slightly. Kimimaro had been his best (okay, only) friend ever since third grade. By the time they had gotten into high school together, Kabuto had slowly come to terms with the realization that he had developed a crush on the other.

Ever since then, he had grown into this annoying habit of blushing at nearly everything Kimimaro did.

He covered up the small flush with a cough and another small push of his glasses to set them further up on his nose. "Thanks, Kimimaro. You didn't have to..." He grinned softly. "Anyway, let's get to class."

Smiling, the albino nodded and followed after Kabuto to their Math class; it was the the first of two classes that they had together. The next, History, was at the end of the day.

"Kabuto?"

"Yes?"

"Those pants look too small for you."

Flustered all over again, out of embarrassment this time, Kabuto just sputtered a few excuses of how it was all Deidara's fault, and then just led the way into their math class.

- - -

Besides the fact that Kimimaro was brilliant in History, Orochimaru was their teacher in that class.

Orochimaru was Kimimaro's adopted father. And though he insisted that he treated all of his students equally, it was obvious he favoured his son as a student since he almost always called on him to answer questions and such.

Kabuto had to marvel at his best friend's memory; sure, Kabuto was good with History, himself, but Kimimaro was better. He had quite the photographic memory, and it seemed that once he read something from his text book, it stayed with him permanently.

Kabuto envied that ability, yet he knew it was only one more thing he liked about Kimimaro.

With a sigh, Kabuto realized once again that he really was hopelessly head-over-heels.

When the bell rang to dismiss the students, the silver haired boy began to gather up his books and push them back into his shoulder bag. Kimimaro was already waiting for him by the door when he had gathered everything and was standing up.

"Hey, you want to come over to my place and hang out for a while?" Kabuto questioned as he approached the other.

Kimimaro shook his head. "I want to, but I have an appointment at the hospital today. Me and my dad are supposed to go right after school."

"Oh." The taller boy blinked in surprise. "The hospital? Are you going because of your cough?"

"Unfortunately." Kimimaro had developed a chronic cough over the last couple of months, and he'd been taking all kinds of allergy medicine for quite a while. If he was going to the hospital for it, then there was obviously something else wrong.

"Well, that's okay. We can hang out some other time." Kabuto assured, smiling faintly as he slowly stepped out of the classroom. He assumed Kimimaro would stay behind to wait for his dad since they were leaving together.

"Sure." The albino nodded his head. He gave a faint grin. "I'll call you tonight."

"Okay." Kabuto lifted a hand in a departing wave, and then turned and began to walk down the hall to get towards his locker and put away some things. He heard faint coughs from behind him and winced; he hoped Kimimaro would get whatever medicine he needed to get rid of that cough.

- - -

Kabuto blinked.

And stared.

And blinked harder, just in case he wasn't seeing right.

There was a note on his locker. Just a simple white sheet of notebook paper, stuck to the outside of his locker with a strip of clear tape.

Kabuto had never gotten a note from anybody. This was surprising. But what surprised him even more were the words written on the paper. Three simple words, written in blue ink:

"I like you."

No reason given, no name to show who'd written it. Just a statment. I like you.

"...Huh." Kabuto muttered as he carefully peeled the paper off of the locker and held it in both hands. His eyes ran over the words again and again, and still he couldn't make sense of it. Who on Earth had left this here? Someone liked him? Who? Why!

Absently, the silver haired boy dropped off some text books inside of his locker before he closed it up again and slowly turned to leave the school building completely. He still studied the note, studying everything about it; the straight line of the letter L, the curves in the letter Y...

He sighed, disappointed for not being able to tell whose handwritting it was.

Folding the note carefully, Kabuto slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans and shifted his shoulder bag into a more comfortable position as he awkwardly shuffled home.

Just wait until his brother heard about this.

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Deidara and Kabuto as siblings is hilarious. xD And Orochimaru as Kimimaro's daddy is adorable. 8D

Anyway...wish me luck. Hopefully I'll be able to get the rest done sometime. xD;

R&R? 8D