What You Have Tamed
AN: This one is pretty meta: if La Belle was all about fandom cliches, Tamed is all about the trends and cliches in the discussion in and of fandom. Namely the characters, while preoccupied with their own neuroses and relationships and lives, have been transported to a world where SJ issues are a pretty big deal, which is one of many things they have to deal with. General TW for some pretty dark stuff; if you have specific questions or concerns about the content, please feel free to contact me.
Chapter One
Whoever said sixteen is sweet? Was a fucking liar.
Sitting on the school steps in the dusty late-summer sunlight, Naruto feels damp and dumb with heat, and very far from sweet. It's going on three weeks since her birthday, too, so the sweetness should have had time to settle in, if it were going to. Instead everything is gritty and grimy with frustrated heat, this last week of August when the thermometers jump towards thirty degrees.
She leans forward over her knees, fingers rubbing over the flaking scabs and catching in the stubble. She's been in shorts since the term started and so far the lack of shaving has only got her eight "ape" and twelve "gross" – you can tell it's a posh school, that she's clawed her way up to one of the higher levels of high school hell.
"Hi," an uncertain voice says above her. "Naruto, right?"
Naruto tilts her head to the side, squinting, and doesn't point out that Sakura knows perfectly well who she is. "Yeah, hi. You wanna…?"
"Right. Thanks." Smoothing her skirt, Sakura gingerly sits down beside her, arranging an armful of folders in her lap. She's so tasteful, so appropriate, and Naruto's hands itch for her the way her feet ache for the new snow every winter. "So, Iruka asked me to help manage his anti-ism thing, and I see you signed up on the volunteer list?"
"Yeah, I did."
"Right. Great. Well, we've got people to cover the anti-racism, but far fewer are interested in working with feminism, so I thought maybe you…?"
"Sure," Naruto says with a grin just shy of shit-eating. "I'm in. What are we doing? Like, mass meetings? Carnivals? Kick-Arse classes? Self defence, I mean, but really, you know, the best defence is a good offence!"
Sakura sighs and pushes hair out of her face before speaking, the movement revealing dark half-moons under her arms, which is oddly sexy: a flash of body in the prim dress. A year ago Naruto would have been crushing on her, would have been crushing so hard on normal and pretty and kind.
Then normal cut up her face in a school toilet while pretty giggled and kind looked the other way.
Naruto squints until all she can see is the grainy, sun-drenched pink of Sakura's failed dye-job.
"I believe Iruka was thinking more along the lines of arranging seminars and helping him administrate the whole thing, really. Also, um. Perhaps you could try to be a bit more–" Sakura cuts herself off, waving and calling, "Sasuke! Over here!"
For such a tiny person, Sasuke has a blissfully large shadow; soaked in it Naruto can sit back, watching the school's requisite ice princess lean unmelted against the railing.
You're such a stereotype, she told Sasuke once, outside the headmistress' office during her fourth lunch break at Sannin Academy.
I prefer archetype, Sasuke said, then took her raised eyebrow and perfect poise and left.
She watches Sasuke's grating beauty, the waifish shoulders and enormous eyes and the breasts which are really about the same size as Naruto's own but look radically bigger on Sasuke, and doesn't hear the words in the mumble of voices until suddenly the conversation clicks and she has to pipe up: "You're supposed to be a feminist?"
Even Sakura has been careful not to use that kind of direct language, preferring to say she's working with a wide range of anti-discrimination issues including but not limited to sexism.
"Do I look like I enjoy being on the wrong end of oppression?" Sasuke shows impressive facial dexterity by once again raising a single eyebrow, adding, "I guess some people really are as dumb as they look."
"Well," Naruto says, more curious than pissed. "You certainly don't look like a feminist." Actually Sasuke looks like the kind of person who thinks there's a right end of oppression, and enjoys being on it.
"Impressive stereotyping you've got there. Just because I, unlike your cavewoman self, have the technical skills to master a razor."
Naruto makes a sound of baffled outrage and something that could have been laughter, once, back when the world felt safer. "Yeah, I'm so sorry I'm not buying into sexist beauty ideals enough to deserve equality. Fuck you."
"I do think," Sakura says, eyes carefully on her knees, "it is problematic to imply that one has to be – well, be pretty white cis-straight middle class, to qualify for equality. Or that one has to reject being any of that to be a feminist."
"What she said," Naruto says, blithely ignoring that last bit, and Sakura gives her an extremely reproachful look.
Resting her elbows on top of the railing, Sasuke looks at her and her alone with amused contempt and lights a cigarette. Her cut-glass accent grates on Naruto's ears like fucking glass splinters when she says, "Unlike me, you are white middle class. Admittedly, the dykeness comes through loud and clear."
"I'm bisexual," Naruto snaps. "Get off your uppercrust arse and look it up."
Sasuke's eyes are marginally colder, half-lidded, or maybe she's just squinting, sun-blind. "Which is basically gay-speak for slut, right?"
"Yeah, no. Actually it's gay-speak for I'm not a stupid bitch too narrow-minded to like people for who they are instead of for their bits. Hope that helps." At this point grin is PC for showing teeth but Sasuke seems coldly, calmly amused.
"Do watch the sexist insults there, Ms Feminazi."
"Right," Sakura interrupts. "This isn't constructive." Not looking up at Sasuke, she uncurls enough to rearrange her files, pressing them to her chest as she stands. "Look, I'll get back to you when I've got everything planned out, but – I can count on you both, okay?"
"Of course," says Naruto, smiling at her until the whisker scars pull, because Sakura is pretty and kind.
"I suppose," says Sasuke. She drops the cigarette butt and lights a new one, adding, "Someone has to make up for all the bad press you're sure to garner."
"Shut up, jerkarse," Naruto snaps. It's just the two of them now, but strangely she feels calmer, heavy with warmth.
"Whatever."
"Great comeback." She eases back down again, too heat-struck to fume. "Also, smoking kills, you know."
"Yeah, well." The cigarette breaks the line of her smile, makes it somehow the most Sasuke-ish expression Naruto has yet seen.
As Sasuke keeps smoking and the sun keeps burning, Naruto lies back, resting her head on her balled-up shirt and studying the area covered by Sasuke's shadow: her own hand, an empty bottle, Sasuke's feet. Clearly Sasuke is ice princess enough to be immune to tanning, because her skin is anaemia pale in the sandals. Naruto freckles in one day, burns in two, bakes in three, to the point where the freckles have become bright spots on her arms and face.
Sasuke shifts, flicking the cigarette butt away, and Naruto discovers her feet aren't virgin white after all. There are marks beneath the heel slips of her sandals and between her big and index toes, nasty dark little circles.
Eventually Sasuke orders, "Scoot over."
If Naruto could raise an eyebrow without its twin going along for the ride and her entire forehead scrunching up, now is when she'd do it, but she shuffles to the side to leave sitting room. Oddly, Sasuke, who stands and walks with easy adult poise, sits like a little girl who can't quite decide whether she'd like to be a ballerina or a contortionist, chin on her knees, her toes curling around the edge of the step.
"Have you ever thought about working as a circus princess?"
Sasuke gives her a level stare half obscured by her fringe. "I'd ask if you'd considered working as a clown, except that might give the impression I care."
Naruto has little idea what new madness her mouth would have released in response to that, but is distracted by the advent of Gaara, who nods in passing when she waves – nods at both of them, two slow but sharp individual movements, and Sasuke nodsback.
"You know Gaara?" she demands, turning on Sasuke with newfound energy.
Sasuke shrugs, her tiny shoulder rising white and emaciated, not unlike a shark fin. "He was in our class before he got held back."
"You don't acknowledge half the people who are in our class now. And actually, Gaara's even worse, I've seen him talk to like two people."
"He nodded at you, didn't he? And much as I regret it, I'm actually talking to you. Clearly our standards aren't that high." Her voice has gone a little thinner, smoky.
"Look, I know I'm irresistible, it doesn't explain why you two anti-social jerks would be all cosy with each other."
Sweat rolls down Naruto's face in the silence while Sasuke doesn't answer and then keeps not answering until eventually, carefully, she remarks, "It'd take some real irresistibility to wave at Gaara and keep the hand. Irresistibility being one of the many qualities you lack."
"Was that a question? Are you actually showing interest in something not you-related? Wow. All right, fine, Gaara and I obviously found each other via freakdar."
Sasuke looks annoyed to the point of twitching, but she doesn't leave. Why doesn't she leave? She says, "What?"
"Freakdar! Like gaydar, except for finding fellow freaks instead of gays."
"Most people wouldn't need social radar to identify you two as freaks." Her lips curl rather nastily, but it's still marginally more of a smile than a sneer.
Is this a candid camera style try-out for She'sAllThat, or are they sort of bonding? Naruto would ask, but Sasuke's mouth is terribly fascinating. It's a BirthofVenus mouth, not quite smiling, so fucking beautiful.
"Gaara," she says instead, tongue speeding nervously to keep ahead of thought. "What's up with that?"
Because Sasuke will know. Kiba doesn't, and Sakura doesn't, maybe even Gaara doesn't, but Sasuke must. She might be tight-lipped or she might lie, but she will know.
"According to popular opinion, only that he's a kitten-tormenting, drug-crazed matricidal rapist."
Naruto blinks. Sasuke doesn't. With heavy unblinking lids she keeps staring at Naruto like a creepy snake.
"A drug-crazed what rapist?"
"Matricidal. Oh god, you imbecile. Mother-murdering?"
"Huh."
"To be fair, the kitten part is true," Sasuke adds, rising. It's a gradual process, a slow, stretchy straightening of the queer lines of her circus princess pose.
"Hey, where are you going?"
"Class."
"Oh. Right. Wait up!" Naruto stumbles upright and jogs after her. Sasuke's pace doesn't change, and Naruto ambles along beside her towards the classroom. Iruka said last week that they needn't bring books this time, they were just going to talk, which is probably why the truancy ratio, although bolstered by late Tuesday lassitude, hasn't reached epic levels.
She remembers what Headmistress Tsunade said, during their first terrifying interview on school grounds: At Sannin Academy we are concerned with results.
Dad was quick to remind her that while the school might not much care whether she cut class as long as she aced the work, he certainly did. Besides, it's not as though Naruto would manage any acing if she cut.
What's odd is, Sasuke probably could, whether because she's rich enough or smart enough – a quick glance shows she's wearing her classroom face, exuding bored superiority from every pore, and no teacher has ever called her on the smugness – but her attendance record is perfect.
Well, Sasuke is odd altogether; Naruto would've assumed she sticks around for the attention of various minions and admirers, except she obviously doesn't want it.
And then there's today's exciting mystery, the Gaara Nodding Incident.
While tortured kittens would certainly explain Kiba's aversion to Gaara, Kiba's also soft-faced around that shy, pretty Muslim girl who probably would not appreciate Gaara's derogatory remarks on religion…
"All right, settle down," Iruka intones, and Naruto hurries after Sasuke towards their table. In an effort to 'avoid cliques and promote an open and friendly social environment' Iruka, who has clearly consumed a few too many pedagogical texts, forces them to group alphabetically.
Sasuke, who come to think of it probably knows Naruto's name thanks only to this arrangement, is already seated, pen and notebook in front of her, one leg slung primly over the other, and Naruto nods at Ino and takes the last free chair.
"Okay," Iruka says, shutting the door. "Capital punishment – right or wrong? Everyone in favour of it, hands up. This means if you keep your hand down, you're against it, guys. There's no middle ground today. All right, show of hands."
Naruto is jolted awake from her half-doze by Sasuke calmly raising a hand, stares, and for a moment isn't sure why, because it's not as though it's unexpected for Sasuke to have right wing nut opinions. But, she realises, she'd have never expected her to be so brazen about it, would've thought her far too politically correct for this bland frankness.
"You can take down your hands," Iruka says. "Now we get to the interesting part: why? Sasuke?"
There's no hesitation, her voice soft and clear and cold as she says, "I think some things should be unforgivable."
"All right. Naruto, you look surprised, and I saw you didn't raise your hand. Why?"
"Er, because killing people is obviously wrong?"
Iruka glances at Sasuke, who says, still so calm, "And locking them up isn't?"
"Oh please," Naruto interjects, "you of all people are not arguing against the inhumanity of prison."
"Well, no. I'm not." That smile-sneer hybrid is back, although Mona Lisa enigmatic in its subtlety.
"Looks like we're going to have an interesting lesson today," Iruka interrupts. "Everyone discuss within their groups, I'll be circulating."
Naruto looks across the table at Sasuke, energy like a buzz trying to break out through her skin.
"Did you have an opinion, Ino?" Sasuke asks, and Naruto feels abruptly doused in cold water.
It's true Ino didn't get much say last week, though.
Ino shrugs, shifting uncomfortably to her flip hair over her shoulder. "Not really, I guess. I mean, I'm not sure."
"How unusual," Sasuke says dryly. "Moving on. I take it the extent of your argument is 'it's wrong'?"
"Well," Naruto says. "It is wrong, so yeah."
"That's not a rational argument."
"If you actually were rational, you wouldn't need any arguments to understand why it's wrong to kill people."
"Really?" Sasuke says, relaxing against the backrest of her chair. "Because rationally speaking, certain offenders should be executed, not as punishment, necessarily, but simply to prevent them from committing further crimes."
"There are other ways of doing that," Naruto insists. "Besides, killing criminals wouldn't prevent more crimes being committed, because hello, killing someone is still murder even if you call it execution." She's intensely aware of her own pulse, irrationally sharp and agitated and sweet, and of Sasuke fiddling with the topmost button of her shirt. This is irrelevant, but slowly it dawns on her that Sasuke has the most astonishingly beautiful hands, child-sized but woman-shaped, skilled and pretty and immaculate like in an old painting, and Naruto has the most astonishingly embarrassing thing for hands.
"Killing a criminal is not the same as killing an innocent," Sasuke says, managing to be unbelievably condescending while keeping her face and voice neutral, ignoring that Ino has picked up her mobile and now starts texting. "In order to be recognised by society as a person, and access the rights that come with that, one must accept certain responsibilities, certain rules. If you break them, you've forfeited your rights. In other words, by killing other people, you've stripped yourself of your human rights, and as such killing you isn't murder."
"That's insane," Naruto objects.
"On the contrary," Sasuke says smoothly. "If by sane you mean rational then actually it's the opposite of insane."
Naruto jumps at the abrupt yell from across the room, "Better death than fat camp!"
Ino looks up from her texting. "Seems Shino got to him again, huh."
Everything looks amiable over at Chouji's table, though, Iruka now presiding over the mumble of jeers and laughter, so Naruto – well, she'd have liked to think of it as turning back towards Sasuke, but truthfully she never really turned away. She says, "Look, killing someone is wrong, obviously, but doing it doesn't mean you stop being a human."
"I never said it did. I simply said you can't have rights without responsibilities. I think the basic difference is that you insist on a fundamental equal worth which I don't accept." She shrugs, one-shouldered, her hand falling from the button. "For example, I think that my not torturing children makes me better than anyone who does. And if you agree that someone can be a better person than someone else, then you don't really believe in equal worth, do you?"
"Someone being a better person doesn't mean they get to kill other people! Doing that would make them not better people."
The corner of Sasuke's mouth curls, in what would be a grin on Kiba but a smirk on Gaara. On Sasuke, Naruto isn't sure what it is. "So, plainly itching to murder me, does that make you a bad person?"
"Itching to slap some sense into you, maybe, you psycho arsehole." Her voice comes out odd, in a tone she couldn't identify if asked. The tension shifted so abruptly with the quirk of Sasuke's lips.
"But that's what I said. People aren't the same, they shouldn't be treated the same. Even if she'd said the same thing, you'd never hit Sakura."
"I," Naruto says. "That doesn't mean I think you should die."
"Okay, class," Iruka booms, talking over anything Sasuke might have said in reply. Naruto blanks the rest of his speech, looking across the room at Sakura, polite and attentive, then back to Sasuke, who has really creepy fascist leanings and is beyond wrong about glorified murder, but utterly right about Naruto.
Sakura is… well, she's Sakura, and Naruto has, or thinks she has, a pretty good idea of what to expect. If Sakura did sprout crazy shit, that'd be disappointing and it'd suck, but it wouldn't change anything.
Sasuke's something else entirely.
xxxxx
The wind has finally picked up a little, although it's currently shuffling the heat around more than dispelling it. Standing one-footed on the porch, scratching at her knee with her toes, Naruto tugs a tank top down over her head and shakes out her hair. It's longer now, not enough for a ponytail but about right for two rubber-banded tufts to keep it out of her face, dripping residual shower water down her neck.
Not unusually, Iruka kept them late, and she barely had time to nod to Kiba before sprinting towards the bus. It was a good run, despite the weather, the kind when the ground stops being central and becomes only something with which to implement the running. Too bad the following hour locked in the bus, with the air so dry it burned her lungs, was decidedly less pleasant. She got stuck beside Mrs Finn again, a nice lady to talk to but not to be crushed up against, especially now that stealing half of someone's seat also means sweating all over them.
But today was good.
She stretches forward contentedly, catching her toes.
Hell, today wasn't good, today was, like, official Sasuke day. Which is really something quite different from good.
Lured by the promises of the fridge, she pads back inside just in time to hear the front door opening. It still sounds wrong; she's got used to the looks of the new house, but her ears are more conservative than her eyes, insisting that the old sounds of her childhood home are what should be heard.
"Hello," Dad calls out. "Anybody home?"
"Right here. Juice?" Not bothering to wait for a yes, she fills two glasses and downs them both.
"Hey now," Dad protests, slouching down on a chair. "I thought one of those was mine."
"It was, before I got really thirsty. Here you go." She jumps to sit on the counter, feet dangling from the unfashionable height of it. "You're home earlyish?"
"Yeah, well, it's not that much to do yet, I figured I might as well enjoy being my own man and get out of the heat."
On a bad AC day the garage is actually even hotter than the bus, but it's not the relative chill of inside that makes something cold cramp in her stomach.
"Are we, I mean, are we okay?"
Not all car owners stay faithful to their mechanic when he suddenly moves towns, no matter how good he is. Things got pretty messy and abrupt, towards the end of last term, much of which she spent hospitalised, and then when she was released she discovered Dad had reconciled with her previously unknown Gran Tsunade to get Naruto transferred into a school he trusted, outside of the old district, and Mum had got a new job and applied to a new university, and they were looking for a new house and a new garage.
"We're fine, honey. It isn't accident season yet, but just wait for the autumn storms and I'll have more work than I ever wanted, don't you worry."
"Good. So. Can I have a puppy?"
He smothers a grin, laugh lines wrinkling light against his tan. "No."
"Aww, come on. Akamaru's sister just had her litter, they're the cutest things ever!" Warm and cuddly, happy to be with you, and she's not bullied here so surely it's not just a pathetic defence mechanism to want one?
"You've already got Kiba, we don't need two dogs in the house."
Well actually, Naruto doesn't say, at present there are no dogs at all in the house, seeing as Kiba has been persona non grata since the somewhat less than sober Saturday evening he and Naruto high-jacked a Chevy Dad had mostly fixed.
While the bruises have faded, they're still working off the cost of repairing the resultant buckles.
"So, how was school?"
"Okay, I guess." She shifts, made uncomfortable by the sudden tension straightening his shoulders. He won't ask again, can't, but she has to give him more. It's just the happiness is so jittery, it's awkward to make it into words. "We had Philosophy, and, well, Iruka obviously only teaches because there's no counsellor job for him. I mean, he's not a bad teacher, but all the PC babble, you know? And now he's throwing this anti-ism thing and it's going to be nothing but talk, talk, talk."
"I think it's nice he's promoting tolerance," Dad tries in a light tone. There's a continuation to that, from overheard conversations, and it goes: after all shouldn't you be grateful, he's being pressured to take care of your issues…
"I don't want to be bloody tolerated!" But she does know that Dad has never said that, would never say that; bites back a yelp as her heel impacts with the counter, turns it into something like a smile. "Look, I mean, it's not that I don't appreciate not being beaten up, but…"
"I know, honey." His large hand fits over her own where it's rubbing at the back of her neck, her knuckles snuggling into the calluses. "That's not how I meant it. I don't think that's how Iruka means it either."
She doesn't have to say anything before the door whines in the wrong way again, admitting Mum who's glowing with post-seminar happy agitation. There are the customary hugs, and dinner-making and dinner-eating, and Mum talks about all the interesting aspects of the Master Program, showing the truly terrifying scholarly zest that has apparently forced a confession of classmateship from a patient. When eventually she asks did anything interesting happen today sweetie, Naruto is flabbergasted and grateful to choke on an over-large mouthful of chilli, because interesting would have to mean the complicated expression on Sasuke Uchiha's very pretty, very versatile mouth when she said the kitten part is true, and there aren't any words to translate Sasuke's presence to people who haven't experienced her, or not any words that Naruto knows.
She might say something along the lines of, Imagine taking a bunch of stereotypes and mixing them all together so that when you think you've got it, that you've got her, then she does something and everything changes and suddenly nothing makes sense anymore.
Mum was right, probably, when she said stereotypes become stereotypes for a reason, the reason being that there's something tantalising about the concept, and after awhile also something soothing and familiar to rest in, something comfortable and safe to make it easy to throw yourself recklessly into loving it. There's nothing wrong with that, she said, the only problem is, after a while it becomes predictable and then it goes from safe to boring.
That's when the stereotype analogy stops making sense, unfortunately, because whatever adjectives you might try and catch Sasuke in, boring isn't one of them, so she cheats the whole idea by being utterly unpredictable yet retaining the fascination, which – well, which is actually exactly the sort of unfair play one would expect from a pseudo-fascist bitch queen.
xxxxx
Wednesday is painfully dull, dusty and hot and anticipatory. Kiba is mending things with Shino, who is far too creepy for Naruto to join in the argument regarding whether Akamaru trashing a terrarium was premeditated murder or self-defence. Letting the discussion wind down to an uneasy compromise about justifiable manslaughter on its own, she sets out to corner Gaara to… not talk about kittens.
She'd have assumed Sasuke was lying, except Sasuke is just about the only person who'd have no qualms greeting a known torturer of baby animals. Possibly it's a shared interest.
She catches him outside the canteen, his hair a stoplight-red shock against the beige walls.
"Why are you here?" he asks. It's not the belligerent demand it was the first time they met, when she stumbled over him on the way home from the shops and insisted on carrying some of his far too many bags for him, but the words are as flat and cold as his expression.
Naruto shrugs, beams at the progress of Gaara warming up towards human temperature and plops down next to him. If he didn't hit her the first time, he won't do it now. "I need a reason to talk to you?"
"Most people do most things for a reason."
"Yeah well, I'm not most people." She stretches, wriggling her shoulders against the wall.
"I suppose not." He looks away from her, staring blankly at nothing, and Naruto relaxes, shifting idly through her mind for a suitable subject of conversation. Then Gaara's head tilts sideways, birdlike, to face her: "I take it I am the less enticing, less risky substitute for Uchiha?"
"The fuck?"
"Come on."
"No, really, what?" she says, feeling the frown and the residual jolt, reaching behind her to explore how badly she scratched herself up, jumping with her back too close to the damn wall. "How in hell is Sasuke riskier than you?"
"Ah, right." He grins, all irony and really no pain at all, alluding without discernable movement to the facial tattoo and the sleepless bags under his eyes. "I admit I'm curious: what did she say about me?"
"That you're not an addict and you're not a rapist and you didn't kill your mother." She shrugs. "Which, not news."
A sort of wary surprise softens the sharp angles of his face. "Oh."
"Yeah," Naruto says, licking a ghost-trail of blood off her fingertip and, pulling her legs up closer to her stomach, deciding that if she bleeds through anything today, it won't be the top. She'd understand hating periods except it's whiny and contributes to the societal crap pile of dislike and disdain for women's bodies. Shifting her hips to surf on the cramps, she grins at Gaara and launches into easy chatter about how they should totally hang out this weekend, and how does he feel about RockBand? because he has that drummer look going for him.
There aren't a whole lot of words coming out of Gaara, but the little twist to his mouth and the way he lets his knuckles brush against the love tattoo convey a damn lot more of substance than what follows, which is Iruka preaching about open-mindedness and golden rules and the struggle against prejudice. It's not that Naruto doesn't agree with most of it, it's just talking about it never did anybody any good, save for the bullies who learned how not to sound like bullies.
There's not a second of doubt that Sasuke could give this sermon every bit as well as Iruka, and with a good deal more rhetorical flair, and it doesn't need telling that Sasuke's quite astonishingly capable of cruelty. Just because it hasn't been directed at anyone, not really, not yet, doesn't mean it's not there, almost-tangible like the mist diffusing your breath on frosty evenings.
Then finally it's P.E., which Naruto has always pronounced as 'pee'. Abbreviations are tricky when you're only just learning to pair up letters with each other, and never let it be said Naruto was not a creative matchmaker, which in retrospect is probably why her parents didn't correct 'pee class'.
Besides, while she'll buy the physical, it's hard to find anything terribly educational about sweating and cramping and managing to keep breathing only because you'll be damned if you stop cursing Gai.
Come to think of it, maybe Iruka would get the student attention and make the lasting impact he so obviously craves by putting on some neon spandex and engaging in push-ups – the phrase springtimeofyouth has been forever engraved onto Naruto's mind, and at this point it's really no more or less nonsensical than Iruka's phrases, seeing as Iruka's mouth is the place words come to… well, not to die perhaps, but to fall into a long hard coma.
Eyes glazing over, and mercifully so, she idly wonders if the stiltedness of Gai's grin is due to Botox. When a bloke's said "youth" fifty times in less than three minutes, you've got to wonder.
Presently he gives them a double thumbs-up and sends them running the five kilometre track as warm up.
"The man's insane," Kiba wheezes beside her. "Not even Akamaru runs in this weather, we don't need fucking warm up!"
"Excuses," Naruto tells him. "You're just scared you won't be able to keep up."
"Fuck you," Kiba says, shaking hair out of his face and lengthening his stride. "You're on."
They bicker and jog, leaving the slow-pokes trailing further and further behind them, hounded by Gai's exuberant yelling. It's not that you can't take it easy, although the proximity to Gai increases when you do. If you want to make good grades, though, you run.
More importantly, if you're not a quitter, you run.
Shortly before the halfway mark Kiba starts lagging, waving at her to go on ahead.
"Sucker!" she calls, still keeping pace with him.
Although he twitches, he manages a grin. "Nah. Only a loser would keep running."
She scrunches her face up, tosses him a grimace over her shoulder, and accelerates. This is something she can do, can do well, and running is great and winning is great, and there are people to catch up to.
Rock Lee is visible far in the distance, skirting an apparently unconscious Shikamaru to begin his second lap because he is a crazy person (or maybe he's a changeling, an alien implanted in a human home by his fearsome leader Gai? Because that'd actually explain a lot), but exempting the insane aliens… The heat drags, but Naruto has spent ten years running from bullies year round and grabs an easy lead.
Or so she thought, before she spots someone just ahead.
What Sasuke has to run from she doesn't know, but she keeps up.
Were she not so out of breath, Naruto'd say something, do something, but words are hard-won in Gai's classes and Sasuke, also silent, whether because of the ice princess code of conduct or lack of air, tosses her a challenging look, and after that there's only running.
A hundred meters, two hundred, three hundred, and Sasuke's still keeping pace, four hundred, five hundred, and suddenly Naruto's the one not keeping up.
Worse, she's on her arse with a broken shoe lace.
Instinct has her hand rubbing at the back of her neck as she looks up, glad she was already as red-faced as she can get.
Running in place, Sasuke looks enviably cool and collected. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Fine."
By the time Naruto's fixed the stupid shoe and got back on her feet, Sasuke's long gone and way ahead.
TBC