Narusasusaku Team-7 fluff/angst/friendship/romance. This is the first of six. Let me know what you guys think! =)
Sometimes Naruto needs Sakura.
They failed. They didn't bring Sasuke back.
He watched Sakura cry and he almost cried a little too. He was angry, he was hurt. He felt a dull hatred...For himself. And he thought she should hate him too because he let her down.
They got back to Konoha in the middle of the night. It was silently decided somewhere along the journey that they weren't going to wake Tsunade to report their failure, that it could wait until morning, even if they got chewed out for it.
When they reached the point where Sakura's house was one way, Naruto's apartment another, and Kakashi would go wherever he would go they all slowed down until they were stopped, forming a sad little triangle. Yamato had taken Sai and they were gone, so it was only the three of them. They didn't feel awkward, they'd all shared too much. So it was worse; It was a resonating group feeling of "I'm sorry-Yeah, me too, but it doesn't do any good-I know, that's why I'm not saying it."
Naruto spent a few minutes glaring at images in his mind, replaying the way Sasuke got away like he had been the whole trip back. Sakura was squeezing her arms around her body so hard she was leaving bruises-Naruto was too wrapped up to notice yet, and if Kakashi did he knew better than to say anything. Finally, the two of them glanced at Kakashi long enough him to give them a look, and make a little gesture as if he sort of wanted to touch them-pat them on the back, squeeze their shoulders, maybe even hug them-but decided he didn't know how to, so he didn't. There was just a little twitch in his cheek, barely detectable underneath his mask, and he let his half raised hand slowly fall back to his side, before nodding and turning to walk away. Naruto was fairly certain they were being given permission to follow if they felt the need to…But neither of them did. So they watched him walk away.
Sakura didn't say anything, and neither did Naruto. It was strange for both of them, and they both knew it…But it didn't really matter at the moment. Sakura turned to walk toward her house and Naruto let her go because stopping her to apologize wouldn't do any good. He wanted to fix it, not apologize because he couldn't.
When she was a little ways away he started walking home too, mostly because he didn't care to stand there and think about whether or not he should. He felt numb, and wanted to stay that way as long as possible because he could already feel it slipping.
He passed Ichiraku like he always did, and was glad it wasn't open for the first time in his life. Ramen didn't sound good; food didn't sound good. He was glad it was the middle of the night, because the streets were empty and for the first time in a very long time he didn't want anyone around to see him, or talk to him, or expect him to talk back; he didn't want attention, he wanted to be left alone to sulk.
The thought brought a wry twist to his lips—He sounded like Sasuke.
When he opened the door to the messy little apartment he'd lived in since he was a child it felt unfamiliar…It really had ever since he came back with Jiriaya, but before it had still somehow been comforting. Tonight it felt lonely and cold and he hated the fact that it looked like a guy lived there all by himself and had nothing to come home to.
…Maybe it's because he failed to bring someone home with him. Somewhere along the way he figured when he brought Sasuke back he'd babysit him at his place until they were satisfied that he wasn't going to run off…He'd even taken one of the blankets off of his bed and thrown it on the couch—Which is stupid, he realized now, because even if that ass had come back with us Tsunade probably would have locked him up, or Sakura-chan would have made her just so he couldn't leave again.
Still, the blanket sitting innocently on the couch was suddenly mocking, vicious, and he felt unreasonably volatile toward it. He sort of wanted to tear it to shreds just for having the nerve to not have known to disappear. Instead he just turned around, didn't bother to shut the door behind him, walked down the stairs and back out onto the street.
When he reached the spot where he'd left Sakura and Kakashi he stopped. They weren't there. They were sleeping…Or maybe not, probably not. They were probably still awake like he was. Maybe Kakashi was sitting around with a bottle of sake; as much as he hated to admit it if he were old enough he might be too. He vaguely wondered if Sakura had picked up the habit from Tsunade the way he had from Jiriaya. He wondered if Orochimaru drank like his teammates, but couldn't see it; alcohol was a drink for the guilty and the broken hearted, not the heartless.
Whatever Kakashi was doing Naruto didn't really want to see him anyway. So he walked the way Sakura walked. He figured he'd walk by her house and see if the light was on in her window and then…Do nothing, say nothing? He didn't know. He just knew that as much as he didn't want to be around people his apartment was proving he couldn't be alone either.
As he walked he watched his shadow slide around him as he passed street lights, from front to back and back to front, and decided that at some angles his hair looked like it was sticking out in the back and it looked a little bit like it could be someone else's shadow. He would have stopped looking at it, except that catching glances at it peripherally caused it to look more like someone else than looking at it directly did.
He accidently walked passed Sakura's house, and had to double back three houses down. Her neighborhood had changed in the three years he'd been gone: One of her neighbors had put an extension on their house to make it bigger, another had taken down a fence and her parents had painted their house, which is why he didn't recognize it at first. He stood outside of her house for a second before nonchalantly walking into the yard, not even stopping to think about security that might be set up.
There were no lights on in her house, so maybe she was asleep. He stared at the window he knew was hers, or at least had been hers when they were kids—I wondered if that changed too? He fiddled with a rock he'd found in her yard and considered throwing it to get her attention…But once again, what would he say? He didn't have any reason to be here.
So why was he here?
He climbed up to her window…He'd never climbed into a girl's bedroom before, and figured it was probably a good thing her mother was a civilian and her father…Well, he didn't know anything about her father but he must be a civilian too because he was quite sure it would not have been this easy to get into the bedroom of a girl whose parents were nin.
He slid open the window as quietly as possible—if she was asleep he didn't want to wake her, he'd just sit in her room with her and watch her. It was nice knowing where to find her and knowing she would be there to come back to if he had to leave the village for a mission and would be gone for a few days. She was Sakura-chan, and she was dependable, and he'd never quite thought of it like that before, but she was the first person in his life who was a constant. And he smiled.
He also was too busy thinking about the novelty that Sakura was to notice the picture frame on the window ceil before he knocked it over and it made a loud crashing noise on the ground, shattering into glimmering jagged shards that flew off in every direction.
Naruto winced, and quickly hopped inside; hoping that the noise somehow didn't wake her up and that he could either fix the frame or find an identical one before she woke up in the morning. He was completely still for a minute waiting to hear some sort of movement to indicate that she'd noticed, but when he heard nothing he let a breath out and turned to the bed just to make sure.
She was wide awake sitting on the bed with her back against the wall, her arms hugging her knees to her chest, looking at him like he was crazy and she would have been annoyed if she wasn't already crying and too tired. She was covered in bruises that were somehow accentuated by the dark instead of hidden by them, her head band was off, and her hair was falling freely, around her face, and spread out over her shoulders, making her look young and delicate.
Naruto couldn't help but stare at her a second too long.
He stopped picking up glass and set what he had collected on the window ceil before quietly creeping over to the bed and softly sitting down on it. He wanted to ask her why she hadn't healed her bruises, but realized he already knew the answer—The same reason he didn't want her to heal his.
"Sakura-chan," He mumbled, looking into her eyes, shinny from tears and brilliantly green from crying for as long as he'd been trying not to.
She tried to smile, but it turned out more like a grimace, and more tears just dropped down her cheeks and into her lap so he reached out across the bed and grabbed her hand.
They stayed like that for a minute, just looking at each other, and feeling each others' unmoving, but very solid hands, at first tentatively touching, but soon clinging. Naruto thought about how he'd spent nights fantasizing about sneaking into Sakura-chan's room when they'd been at the academy. This wasn't at all how those fantasies ever went.
Sakura was the first to break eye contact and Naruto thought that meant it was time to leave, but when he started to pull away she held on and pulled back. She let go of her legs with her other hand, and let them slide out in front of her, shifting so she was leaning against a pillow instead of just the wall.
He tentatively shifted his weight back onto the bed, one leg folded under him. He wanted to ask but, for once, thought it was better to probably not say anything at all. He kept staring at her, and the more her eyes dried, the wetter he felt his becoming. He really didn't want to cry. Crying never did any good. But the tears were coming and he really wasn't sure how to stop them this time. He hoped she couldn't tell but when the first one fell she reached out to catch it and her smooth thumb brushed it across his face, and that sort of caring gesture—the type he'd never received before—sent him over the edge and he couldn't do anything but keep letting tears fall and hope she'd catch those too.
He caught her hand in his to stop her though, and reached out; grabbing her by the waist like a man stranded at sea grabbing onto a floating log. He half pulled himself toward her and half pulled her toward him until they were both lying down and he was curled around her with his face buried in the crook of her neck, inhaling her hair with every increasingly frantic breath he took.
For some reason, wrapped up in body heat and the dark he didn't even want to stop himself from crying anymore, so he didn't, he just kept crying. It came harder and harder until his whole body was worked up in it. His back ached and his stomach felt sick, his muscles felt weak and his head felt light, and he wasn't sure he'd ever cried like this before. He felt broken. Completely broken.
And the only thing making him feel like he might be able to be glued back together was the same thing that made it okay for him to break: The long gentle fingers soothingly and repetitively running through his hair, and the firm hand cupping the back of his neck, making him feel protect, no matter how stupid it was, and the chest he could feel rising up and down as his eyes soaked her white tee-shirt in tears and her legs entwining between his without him even meaning for them to.
She didn't say anything and neither did he…It wasn't like when he was a kid and he'd dream about crawling into her window and kissing her and she'd tell him she loved him. Unlike in his fantasies they were fully clothed and he was sure neither of them felt happy right now. And unlike in his fantasies she wasn't falling asleep in his arms; he was falling asleep in hers. She didn't say she loved him, but she let him cry himself to sleep on her, which is something he'd needed, and hadn't known he needed, and no one else could give him. She'd kissed the top of his head, just as he was falling asleep and his breathing was finally stable and the sobs had stopped, and he'd felt, even in his state of tired deliria, all the words the pressure in her lips meant.
So he clung to her. Sakura-chan. Solid and dependable and real in a way he'd never appreciated or known how much he needed before. But now, as he's falling asleep, with his head on her chest, and her hands in his hair, and his tears in her shirt he does know, and will always remember and appreciate that she is here and she always will be... which is good, because sometimes Naruto needs Sakura.