Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. I'm making no profit in writing this.
Summary: 15 minutes in Tokyo. What if there's something like perfect communication? They're flirting. They're struggling. They're fighting against the curse of postmodern life.
Pairing: Naruto and Sasuke.
Rated M in order to be on the safe side!
a/n: The first version of this story was posted on a German fanfiction site in May 2010. This is the English version of it, and I'm happy that I'm finally able to post it here. Thank you so much to E and J. for beta'ing!
For Rasengan22
Rush Hour
Look at me.
Make me feel alive.
Every day, more than three million people take the popular Yamanote line's trains, which connect Tokyo's most important stations in a great loop, in order to get to school, work, university, or shopping. Although the line is quite usable for holiday traffic at the more relaxed times of day, it belongs all to the commuters at rush hour. More precisely, if its wagons with their characteristic green varnish weren't made of resistant materials like iron, steel, and hard plastic, they would literally burst at the seams due to the sheer mass of people squashing in, like sardines in a tin.
Naruto was on his way to work. He sighed loudly when he finally joined the waiting line on platform one at Shinagawa station. Even though the last train had departed just a minute ago, the platform had again filled with so many people that it had taken him what felt like an eternity to get to his queue, squeezing through the crowd under ceaseless apologies. Here, the doors of the wagon closest to Naruto's exit in his destined station Shinjuku would come to stop.
When he had first come to Tokyo he had quickly gotten used to the fact that no one would make way for him if he didn't force his way through the crowd. Politeness and respect went a long way in all other parts of daily life, but a few friendly words seemed uncalled for in the insanity of Tokyo's local traffic. If you weren't at least a little rude, if you stood aside and waited courteously for others to pass, you didn't get far and certainly not where you wanted to go. It was downright vital to give one's own advancement top priority, especially if you had a petty boss who showed zero tolerance towards being late.
"Gomen. Gomen. Sumimasen."
Naruto didn't have a problem with shoving people out of his way with his shoulder, but he didn't have the heart of doing so without saying excuses were loud and clear. Maybe it was a sort of defiance against reality, but he couldn't just act as if he didn't notice the other five hundred people on the platform, could he? They were pretty hard to ignore after all.
The well-known melody signaling the incoming train of the outer ring blared from the speakers, and a flood of passengers spilled out of the train. Slowly, Naruto's queue moved with minuscule choppy steps. As usual, the lack of response to his words had given him the strange feeling of one-upping an explicable meanness – that is to say, ruthlessly edging his way through – by also bothering people with his excuses. By now he had been through sufficient repeats of this daily ritual to notice that he was stepping out of line with this. He failed to see what should be wrong with being a little unconventional, though.
After one of the train company's employees had shoved them in forcefully with white, glove-clad hands, pushing the passengers who stood closest to the doors as far as possible into the wagon and thereby pressing the crowd even tighter together, the train started moving.
Naruto had been shoved in so far that he wasn't standing in the entrance area anymore, but found himself kitty-cornered to one of the benches that were fixed parallel to the wall. Turning a little, he could see over the heads of the few lucky people on the bench and out of the window. He even got a hold of one of the gray looped straps for better footing, which made him grin a little to himself. So far, today wasn't half bad!
Automatically, his free hand moved into the pocket of his jeans to grab for his mp3 player, but then froze. His grin faded as quickly as it had come. He had totally forgotten about the empty battery. The fact that it had run out shortly before he had changed trains had completely slipped his mind. Annoyed, he drew back his hand.
Great. That meant eight stations to go without music, and he was already bored to death. He could see out of the window, but the view outside wasn't especially inviting with its low clouds filled with rain, reminding him of how uncomfortable the city could get in February. He would have to entertain himself with examining the passengers in the crammed full compartment instead. The man next to him had put his wrist through the holding strap, head placed on his outstretched arm, eyes closed. Without a doubt he was able to sleep in this position. The people on the seats in front of him provided a similar sight: The forty-something guy who was seated directly in front of him was snoring with his head tilted back and his mouth open, while the sleeping girl's head to his right lay intimately on his shoulder. It didn't have to mean that they were traveling together. They probably weren't.
Naruto bounced on his toes impatiently. Because he lived in Yokohama, he had been on his way for more than one hour already, and was in urgent need of some killing time activity. Sleeping like the people his eyes kept skimming over was out of the question, though. He slept like a log at night and felt so rested and wide awake in the morning – at least after he managed to groggily get in the shower and make himself some breakfast without tripping over and stabbing himself to death with his chopsticks – that it would be almost impossible to fall asleep again. The train ride made him more fidgety than sleepy.
Besides, he was almost sure that he lacked something crucial to even risk sleeping here: the so-called automate gene, by Naruto's own standards a wide-spread ability among soundly sleeping passengers, which he had witnessed often enough with astonishment. Despite their minds being completely elsewhere, they managed to suddenly wake up and exit when the announcement of their destined station came – as if a switch in their minds had been flipped, navigating them safely out of the train. If he fell asleep, however, he'd probably stay just where he was like a complete idiot and ride on until the terminal stop. Well, if a loop line even had something like that!
He pulled a face at the prospect of him going around Tokyo three times without waking up, causing him to be so horribly late for work that he'd get fired for sure. He was a mere temp, not a permanent employee, after all, and – as is generally known –, as such he was bound to be treated like shit. He'd lose his job, wouldn't be able to afford his apartment anymore, would end up on the street, and then, sometime in the near future, his miserable existence would perish, mugged and face stained with filth. And all that just because he lacked the automate gene? No, he would never let things go this far!
Naruto let his eyes wander from the passing skyscrapers to the snoring man in front of him.
What about flipping spitballs in his mouth and counting the hits!That was actually something he hadn't tried yet. His hand went to his front pocket, the one he could reach most easily. There weren't any spitballs though, he noticed with disappointment. Why exactly had he thought the day promising?
"Tsugi wa, Gotanda," said the friendly female voice over the speakers. That meant seven stations to go – the ride was dragging on unpleasantly.
To his left, a woman was surfing the internet on her cell phone. The student who sat left of the snoring man, easily recognizable by his dark gray uniform, was also typing something on his lilac phone.
As he didn't have anything else to do, Naruto started counting the people who were holding cell phones, and concluded by extrapolating that at least half of the compartment was busy like that, seemingly unaffected by the crowd. In a way it made sense; in a situation where 70 percent of one's body surface were pressed against strangers, staring intensely at the display seemed to create an illusion of privacy. Naruto felt uncomfortable too, it was so fucking cramped. When Gotanda station came, only a few people got off while even more pressed in. Yearning for a distraction, Naruto took the effort of fumbling for his own phone in his back pocket.
In that instant his eyes, not even focused on his surroundings for the moment, fell on him. Naruto stopped in his movement. He swallowed. Any desire to distract himself was reduced to nothing.
How he had missed the bold features of the man's face, matchlessly pale and framed by chin-long black bangs, was beyond him. Maybe it was because he'd been counting people with cell phones, and this guy wasn't holding one. Instead he was wearing a pair of huge metallic earphones, which looked like a blatant change in style against the black suit and the elegant shoes, which Naruto could just get a glimpse of. A volitional change in style that made him look quite nonchalant, not to say damn cool. The man, who had to be be around Naruto's age – 24 or 25 at most –, sat just a few steps away and was impassively looking straight ahead, completely neglecting his surroundings. Naruto was intrigued against his will. His gaze lingered on the stranger a lot longer than was common courtesy.
A little surprised by his own reaction, he noticed that he was staring, but he just didn't seem to be able to take his eyes off the clueless man. Why in all the world was this person so fascinating? It had to be the way everything seemed to roll off him, like a droplet of water off a lotus leave – the oppressive narrowness, the passengers' bustling activity. His way of sitting there and dealing with the stressed, hectic atmosphere, with other peoples' distress and resigning in the aggravating situation, was beyond comparison.
Despite the cool weather outside, it was quite hot in the train, and Naruto had seen some people sweat, like the woman in her mid-thirties standing close to the door, who'd discretely mopped up her forehead.
Not this guy.
He was neither looking around surreptitiously, like the fashionable boy who had probably just graduated from school and seemed to be trying to figure out how his choice of clothes caught on, now that he didn't have to wear a school uniform anymore. Nor could he be compared to the office workers, who were nervously picking at their neckties as if they were about to die of asphyxia and wouldn't admit it, faces already marked by stress so early in the morning, going through their agendas for the day, preparing for a meeting with respective co-workers, focusing on the late finishing-time like a mantra.
All this didn't apply for the man Naruto rudely kept staring at. This guy looked as if nothing got through to him, as if he carried an invisible shield around him that not only made others involuntarily stay away from him, but also protected his own perception from any displeasing view or touch. This guy was in possession of the perfect repelling surface. Naruto could see it in the unaffected look on his face and his indifferent countenance.
He couldn't help but swallow again, hard and a little painful. His throat felt suddenly very dry. This guy was fucking handsome. The well-proportioned face with its pale skin and high cheekbones, this fine curve of his eyebrows, the unconventional—if not eccentric—hairstyle, even and long in the front, at the back just wild. If there had ever been someone Naruto would want to call 'my type', he had to look exactly like him.
Naruto felt a low growl rise in his throat. Why? Why did that guy have to look so damn good? Why was there someone in this train who was so...so perfect? Just by looking at this stranger he felt like instantly falling into teenager with a crush mode and like he'd been stabbed between the ribs at the same time. Behind the alluring appearance, this guy made him see red just by sitting there in the way he was. He could have shoved him away harshly with his bare hands just as well. By his display of cold indifference he painfully reminded Naruto of how uncalled-for and rejected he actually felt below the surface of daily life.
He felt like an outsider among the other commuters as it was, which was only partly due to his favorite, fiercely colored clothes, that clearly stood out from the business mens' black and grey suits. With his bright eyes, blond hair, and a face very similar to his Canadian father's, which in Japan usually was denoted by 'western', he was always considered a foreigner even though he was born and had grown up in this country, spoke Japanese as fluently as English, and even had Japanese citizenship due to his mother, who had been half-Japanese.
But that wasn't really what it was all about. It was about everyone traveling exclusively in their own bubble, completely isolated from each other. No one was interested in establishing contact with the outside world while on their way through the city.
He'd been told once that looking a stranger in the eye for more than one or two seconds was generally considered as rude and obtrusive. But here people didn't look at all. If by some miracle his eyes met with someone else's, those eyes barely touched him before immediately floating away again, making him feel like a piece of seconds being put back on the storage rack because it wasn't deemed good enough. His own curious gazes seemed to alienate people more than anything else. They would retreat into their shells and never keep eye contact even for the briefest of moments, and that made him angry and frustrated beyond belief. It gave him the feeling of not even being there. He wasn't real. He didn't exist.
If he just gave up and acted like all the others, if he stopped being curious, loud, and a little indiscreet, then maybe one day he would feel like a true part of this randomly composed crowd. Yet it was a crowd whose members didn't see and didn't want to see each other, and that he didn't like at all.
Sometimes he wasn't sure if he wanted to belong to them or if he hated all of them. Maybe it was a little of both.
And now he had stumbled upon this intriguing guy with that passive expression. If the other faces were closed-off, his was a fortress sealed away by seven heavy iron gates – like the most private room in the Forbidden City, the Emperor's most sternly guarded chamber, whose entering was prosecuted with death. Not one of the other passengers carried their mask, their defense against the invasion of their personal bubble as masterly as this guy. He didn't have anything to stare at, no newspaper, no manga, no cell phone in his hands, the only accessory being his overly large earphones. Yet his eyes were unoccupied, his core lay open, but it was so cold and out of reach as though he resided on another planet, in a distant solar system.
Naruto gulped uneasily. This man was like all the others who made him feel like he was trapped in a solitary cell, only worse: he sat there like the embodiment of this coldness, he was carrying the same mask, playing the same game, only playing it better still, more skillfully like an art of its own – he played it perfectly.
So what! Naruto's grip on the holding strap hardened. Why should he even care if that guy was an ice block? Why should it bother him that he was just another of those people who threw him covert looks at most, and then put on their impervious masks again? He was sick of this stupid game anyway! Why would he even want to mix with someone like him? Obviously, this guy was the incarnation of all the things that annoyed him.
When he'd lived in his home town Kōchi, situated at Shikoku's Pacific coast, Naruto had loved public transportation. He had discovered the fun of his new 'hobby' as a teenager, after he'd changed to junior high, a school inaccessible by bike. Back then, the people he'd met on the bus had all appeared to be incredibly interesting. Everyone seemed to be exciting, everyone carried a thousand stories in themselves, and he took it as a challenge to make them talk to him. Even in a town as small as Kōchi, he had met different people every day, which meant the chance to get acquainted and make friends – be it students of his age, the old woman on her way to the beach, or the bus driver with that weathered face. Naruto's slightly offbeat appearance attracted attention and made people react to him, and he was more than willing to respond and start talking like a waterfall. For his younger self, situations like riding the bus, relaxing in the hot water of an onsen, or simple shopping – whenever chance dictated who you encountered –, were a bit like unwrapping shiny presents. Yet he knew by now that he'd been naïve for thinking that this new city would feel just like home.
Tokyo, the buzzing, crackpot mega-city, was in fact completely different from home. While it had so many more inhabitants that it seemed ridiculous to compare the two cities at all, and while the chances of making friends seemed to be much higher, it had turned out to be incredibly difficult to find someone to talk to. The situation in the railway was just a concentrated image of the whole megalopolis. Naruto had been commuting in this abounding throng for years now, first when he went to university, and then when he had started working. He'd been doing the rush hour round-trip six days a week, and no one had acted responsive to him ever. Then, at some point, he had realized that all these people were depressing him because there was no one there for him to actually be close to. The more people got on and off the train pretending the other passengers weren't there, the more he felt utterly alone.
It had been his decision, though. He wanted to live here, he loved the never ending pulse of this city! But it was devouring him from the inside nevertheless.
Subtly, he had become immune against the squeezing and the strangers around him, whether or not he wanted to. Shreds of conversations, public address announcements, and the cacophony of signals, jingles and the banging of the doors only added to the buzzing in his head. He had tried not to listen to the sounds, and after several months in the capital, he really didn't hear them anymore. He clung to the strap to keep his balance, and let the monotone sounds of the rail on the tracks lull him into a strange, moody state of mind, just like everyone else did. Stations passed by, anonymous crowds moved, changed. There were unapproachable faces everywhere, a whole sea of suits, neckties and briefcases, students fooling around with their group, dressed up girls checking their make-up.
He saw all this every day, and somehow he'd grown accustomed to the fact that everyone was trying to flee from the unbearable physical proximity. People took refuge in their own minds, stubbornly running straight on, their eyes fixed between the blinders of their working life. They were shutting out their environment, cutting themselves off, pretending not to be there. They completely withdrew to themselves.
When Naruto had realized what it was that frustrated him so much, he had thought that at least he never would become like that. But, if he was completely honest with himself, – wasn't he already a bit like them?
With his earphones in place, he wouldn't have paid much attention to the other passengers. He would have retreated into his snail shell, just like this outrageously attractive guy on the bench. Exactly that was the purpose of bringing music: it helped him to pretend that he didn't care about the fact that he shared one square meter of floor with six other people and still felt isolated.
In the past, he would have sought eye contact with the other commuters, but now he wasn't looking anymore. He was certainly still curious, but he just couldn't put up with the insurmountable walls around everyone anymore. The faces he saw didn't offer any answers, telling him nothing, and finding nothing in them was worse than if they hadn't been there at all. For this reason, he had started to overlook them as well. He'd been forced to.
Finally, he managed to look away from the guy whose presence caused such contradictory feelings in him, and found the reflection of his orange hoodie sweater in the window glass. What a great start into the day, with him brooding about that again...
Hadn't he long since accommodated to life in Tokyo? This life included bearing with the jostle, period. So what was wrong with him? It was just a route of transport, nothing more and nothing less. A necessary evil, an empty, dead period of time one had to pass through on a daily basis, without getting anything out of it. Was there even a reason to feel so downcast?
He had a job, a small apartment, and good friends, albeit living a long way from him. Granted, maybe he should take care of himself more. Lately, he rarely made it past the conbini around the corner, and his kitchenette was in need of some dusting, with him living completely off instant ramen and hot water. Most evenings were spent in the fitness center in the vicinity of the office. But there wasn't anyone waiting for him anyway, and it was a good way of releasing some aggression. Everything worked out somehow, didn't it? All in all, his life was still okay. He was okay. And on days like this, he simply had to endure the seemingly endless train ride and get it over with.
He cast his reflection a determined look. Whatever it was that irritated him so much today – he wouldn't let it get him down. He wasn't one to just give in and let himself be psyched out, especially not by a guy that made it impossible to decide if he wanted to screw him senseless or punch him in the face for his arrogance! Did he have a problem with people ignoring each other so skillfully? No, definitely not. They could look past each other as much as they wanted, for he would do just the same. Fuck them all!
Suddenly, the vibration alarm of his cell phone, still tucked into the back pocket of his jeans, went off.
Even though he stood right in front of the prohibition sign, Naruto attempted to push his hand through to his pocket. Of course he knew that breaking the rules was frowned upon, but he was also sure that no one would outspokenly complain. People would turn a deaf ear when he spoke, and pretend the incident didn't exist, while he'd be rude enough to ignore any discreet side glances. He was simply jumping at the opportunity to distract himself from this monotony – talking to someone was better than being bored after all. Unless it was his boss, of course.
He swung open his phone, and noticed with a sinking feeling in his stomach that it was his boss. Not exactly his favorite first phone call in the morning. This had to be one of those meaningless control calls, as if his whole life belonged to the stupid company!
"Hello," he said in Japanese, trying not to sound too irritated.
"Un. But I'm sorry, I'm still on the train." Obviously, his boss didn't care about his situation, because he didn't apologize for putting him into a tight spot with his call – well, it would have been a tight spot if Naruto actually had minded the prohibition.
"Un." There was a tingling sensation in his neck, which made him absentmindedly rub the spot behind his left ear while he concentrated on the call.
"Un, I can do that, of course." Damn, he should have known that his boss wanted him to bring coffee, which he naturally was expected to pay from his own money, again. He frowned in annoyance. As small as these special requests seemed to be, they really started to get on his nerves. Wouldn't it be a good idea to also make him repeat his wishes, just to make sure he didn't forget anything essential in this oh-so-important order? It wouldn't be the first time.
His boss seemed to read his mind. "With soy milk, two and a half sachets of sugar, size extra large. A green or blue straw is fine, but by no means a red one. Understood."
There it was again, this feeling of being strangely exposed, though it was overlapped momentarily by his restrained anger at his boss and his pedantic orders.
"Yes, of course," Naruto almost growled. "Definitely." Gathering his composure, he tried to dissemble his growing irritation. He had to live on something, and for that he needed a job, even if he had to force himself to play gofer. That was all there was to it.
Sighing soundlessly, he rolled his eyes. They touched upon the guy on the bench. The one with those big earphones.
With how Naruto stood, facing the window, he could barely see him from the corner of his eye, but he thought... he thought the guy had looked at him. The time it took him to start moving and turn his head in surprise was enough for the other to look away again. His composure didn't change at all. Only his eyes had moved, and Naruto had the impression that they'd curtly missed the point where their eyes would have met. He could almost watch the other's eyes glide back and resume their even staring.
For a short moment, palpable through a strange lag of time when the event that had caused his sudden feeling of awareness was already over, it felt as if the other guy had looked directly at him. Not with one of those coy, weak gazes that became empty in the moment he accidentally met them. It must have been much, much more, because suddenly Naruto felt the prickling sensation in his neck, so strong that he forgot everything else, including the phone in his hand.
All of this happened in a split second, though. In the blink of an eye, Naruto's conscious mind caught up to his gut feeling. One moment, he'd been positive that he had seen something extraordinary, the next his certainty had degenerated into an unsound glimpse, a mere impression which could just as well have been a product of his imagination. The guy hadn't been looking at him. After all, he was the one with the perfect untouchable mask, sitting with his hands in his pockets, inward-looking. Someone who made a face like that, a face as if he didn't belong to this world, simply couldn't have broken an unwritten law just one second ago by staring at another passenger so intensely, that the latter felt his neck tingle.
There was always a transition period, the time it took to even one's facial features, to calm down one's heartbeat, to concentrate on something else, or simply to stop thinking. Naruto had learned to watch people a little in the long time gazes had slipped off him, only to become emptiness. He recognized this retreat into one's own mind.
It was impossible. He must have imagined things.
He felt a kind of dull disappointment he couldn't really explain. What had he been expecting? Why would he expect anything at all? Absent-mindedly, he shut his phone, and the sound made him snap out of his sorry musings. His boss' last words had totally escaped him, but he didn't care – suddenly he knew quite well what he'd been expecting. Even a killing glance for the rude phone call would have been better than people sealing themselves off, not only this pale guy on the bench, but everyone!
His fist clenched around his phone. Now he deliberately gave the man a stare, even though he knew that most people didn't like to be looked at so directly. This one probably even less. Until a few moments ago, he'd thought he'd come to accept this fact.
But suddenly, he didn't feel like accepting anything anymore. He wanted a damn reaction, and he didn't want it from anyone but from that guy over there, that demonstratively cool guy with his stylish hair and that aura screaming 'fuck off'. Because he handled this cowardly game more perfectly than anyone Naruto had ever met. Because his disregard was like a slap in the face.
Because he was everything Naruto wanted and couldn't have.
Glaring at the stranger in the blunt attempt to provoke him, he suddenly realized something.
This guy seemed so different because he looked perfectly relaxed. Maybe his mask wasn't a mask in the true sense of the word. Could someone simply be like this? The coolness, the untouchable air, none of that seemed like he forced it. Yes, that must be it. Nothing around him could really touch him, nothing in this compartment, nothing on his way God knows where, maybe nothing on this entire planet.
He was like a creature from a ghostly world on its journey through the realm of humans.
That was complete nonsense, of course. Naruto was sure the white, translucent thing he had seen as a teenager, hovering between the trees on the other side of the haunted pond where he used to hang out with his friends sometimes, had been a ghost. Although none of the others had seen it. They'd been laughing at him for months after Naruto's supposed encounter, but he knew what he had seen. He knew what a damn ghost looked like, and this guy definitely wasn't one.
He wanted to stir him up. What would it take to make someone like him admit his connection to the outside world? To acknowledge that there were other people on this planet that mattered? Thirty five million in Greater Tokyo. Two million changing trains in Shinjuku every day. One hundred and twenty in this compartment. Something in the guy's demeanor seemed to provoke Naruto without end, something in the way he looked straight ahead and ignored him.
Ten others standing so close that he could have touched them. Naruto was one of these ten. To grant significance to just one other person–
"Meguro, Meguro desu."
An elbow suddenly stabbed him painfully in the back. Lost in thought, Naruto had failed to notice that the train had entered the next station, and the jostle had started again. Annoyed by the hard pressing against his spine, he turned around, only to set eyes on a wispy elderly man clutching a huge pink suitcase covered in Doraemon stickers. Being so short, he was almost swiped off his feet in the melee. It was totally beyond Naruto, why someone would travel with a suitcase he barely could carry, at rush hour, with this line. Still, he couldn't help but grin. The man seemed weird in an oddly likable way.
When he turned back, the smile still lay on his face. And the guy he'd just all but mistaken for a ghost was looking at him. Not at the oddball with the oversized suitcase, but at him. Naruto.
His heart jumped a mile high.
The guy with the earphones was looking at him, and something moved in his face. He was smirking. An ironic expression on his face, he seemed to comment on the scene behind Naruto, or maybe the scene with Naruto. Maybe it pleased him that Naruto had been hit. Maybe it was malicious joy, or an expression of his amusement about certain peoples' infinite idiocy. It didn't matter. He was looking directly at him, and the corners of his mouth were twitching. Was that a reaction? To him, Naruto?
Later, Naruto wouldn't be able to tell if the grin on his face stayed frozen where it was, or if it narrowed until it disappeared. Honestly, he had no idea what he looked like in this moment.
Was the guy really looking at him? He almost couldn't believe it, but here they were. His eyes, jet black and deep–
The smile was gone as quickly as it had appeared. They both looked away at the same time. Naruto swallowed heavily. He had to be dreaming, he really had to be seeing ghosts.
The stranger had looked at him, though. Naruto had looked at him as well, by the way. It didn't have to mean anything.
But hold it. What could it have meant, anyway? Naruto had wanted to provoke him, so why was he suddenly feeling so nervous? Was it because he hadn't really expected it to work?
Again their gazes met. And this time, they kept looking for too long to pretend that their eyes had just wandered a bit. They were looking at each other for so long that in a few seconds a million things seemed to happen.
The guy wasn't looking from the corner of his eyes anymore, but had turned his head towards Naruto. He had turned his head to face him directly.
Naruto let out an involuntary gasp. The heat in the guy's eyes, black as night, hit him like a blow from a dead corner. Those eyes were on fire, burning with ire, fervor, craving for something, for more, he couldn't tell what. He knew but one thing: he'd been completely wrong. This person wasn't from a higher sphere. He wasn't out of reach. On the contrary, he was more in the here and now than Naruto currently felt. He was as real as something could be. His gaze held him in an uncompromising grip, energetic and straightforward. It gave him the feeling that he'd somehow be fought off or replaced with something else if he didn't watch out.
They were downright wrestling with each other. But I won't back down, you're not going to intimidate me. Intoxicated, he stared back even though he felt a kind of flight instinct sweat the palms of his hands.
And there was more. The guy ruthlessly ripped the clothes off his body and threw him into the ice cold sea, just to stretch out a friendly hand, pull him out again, and wrap him into a warm blanket, by the force of his stare alone. Cold and hot goose flesh covered Naruto's body from head to toe, every single tiny hair raising and shivering excitedly. The hard grip that the other was holding him with gave him an unexpected swirling feeling in his stomach, an expectant trembling that was almost overwhelming in its intensity.
Their locked eyes lingered without either of them releasing the other.
Naruto soaked up the visual stimulus like a sponge. Unconsciously, his tongue swiped over his lips. He felt too hot in his hoodie all of a sudden. Those jet black eyes, which looked upon everything else with frosty indifference, but revealed the burning fire living inside them to him, only him, were the most erotic thing he'd ever seen. The man they belonged to had to be like a dormant volcano under an icy glacier. He surely knew how to hide his true nature from the rest of the world very well. No one ever saw the streams of lava seething deeply inside, but they were there and they wanted to be unleashed. Naruto wanted to be the one to unleash them.
His blood rushed from his head directly into his groin. Hot, he thought dizzily, you're hot as hell. You're like – pure sex!
He stared, gulping. They were still looking at each other. How long was this supposed to last? Where did this lead to? Were they really in a train, not rather in some arena made for fighting and passionate lovemaking?
He didn't want to look away. Not only because he didn't want to be the first to look away, but also to not destroy the explosive mix of rivalry and eroticism that turned the air between them into pure electricity. Yet for this exact reason he had to. If he looked the man in the face for one more second, his hard-on would be so prominent that it was impossible to overlook, even with an immense amount of good will. His face was burning anyway. He must look like a tomato, and his eyes seemed about to pop out. Mustering all the willpower he had left, he tore his eyes away. They came to a rest on the rubber gasket between the wall and the window. It was exactly what he needed to come down a bit: lifeless and neutral.
When the sticky air in the compartment forced its way back into his lungs, it almost hurt. He hadn't even noticed that he'd held his breath, but now it felt as if he'd only barely escaped suffocating. What the fuck, the guy had almost killed him!
But he wasn't mad at all. He was excited and aroused.
The train stopped, and more people pushed in, impossible as it seemed. Naruto fought for keeping his place, and again their gazes went out to look for each other. It was as if they both were afraid that the crowd would tear them apart. And there it was: an elderly man in a light grey suit interrupted their renewed eye contact by shoving himself in front of Naruto, effectively blocking his view on the other guy. The one that had unmistakably looked at him.
Naruto put his weight onto his right leg and rolled his head a little. He'd been standing in a rather uncomfortable angle, which had made his neck hurt, but his heart was pounding fast in his chest.
What exactly had he seen in the other's eyes? Was it what he hoped it was?
Maybe it sounded silly after their wordless exchange of blows, but it didn't have to mean that the other was attracted to him as well. It could have meant anything, really. Maybe he thought of him as a tourist, and had simply watched him out of curiosity?
But no. No. Something much bigger and deeper had flashed up in those eyes, it had been a kind of... provoking invitation.
What if he really thinks I'm hot.
The mere thought of it made Naruto's mouth dry while his pants became tight again.
The stranger was a handsome guy. No, more than that. He was breathtakingly beautiful. Naruto had no problem admitting that. He couldn't lie about his own reaction to him anyway, to the pale skin, which looked like porcelain, and those intelligent, belligerent eyes. Already, his picture was indelibly burnt into his retina.
Together, we would totally kick ass. Naruto just knew it. We'd overcome anything that comes into our way, we'd blow away anything that's against us.
After a small eternity, which Naruto spent imagining how this pale skin would feel against his lips when he caressed his body, the graying suit who had interrupted them turned to stand a little differently. Maybe he intended to exit at the next station. The moment had finally arrived.
Of course Naruto wanted to look again. He couldn't help feeling that he had to. Yet wasn't he doing this against better knowledge? He knew that irritating people like this usually led to them looking away stoically. He also knew that it just kept frustrating him. Honestly, he'd be more than just a little affronted if he came upon a wall again, now that he'd already dared to hope. This guy seemed to be the type for such a thing. First tease him a little, then drop him like a hot potato. Naruto grimaced. He wouldn't put up with that. If he got the stoic face again, he'd give a shit on public etiquette, force his way through, and shake him until he admitted that he accepted him as an equal.
The view on the seat in front of the window finally became clear again. Naruto held his breath, then almost choked.
The guy wasn't there anymore.
He blinked his eyes in confusion, yet the picture didn't change. In the place where his man had been, an elderly woman dressed in a dark gray hat and similarly muffled-colored clothes was sitting, holding a brown handbag on her lap.
What?
Naruto forgot to close his mouth in shock. Where had the stranger gone?
For the first time in what felt like minutes, he looked around to detect where they were, eyes wide. Since his first eye contact with Mr. Fucking Hot Sex, there hadn't been anything on his mind beside the both of them. The train leaving the station where he'd gotten elbowed in the back hadn't registered in his brain at all. Skyscrapers, huge advertisements, and power lines had flown by without him noticing even a single detail. As long as the stranger with the onyx eyes had been there, the importance of everything else had shrunk into nothingness. And now he was gone. Naruto gulped heavily when he realized that the train was standing in a station. Shibuya. Shit.
His body went limp on his holding strap. The guy had fucking stepped off, just like that. It felt a little similar to earlier, when he had thought he'd been mistaken in thinking that the other had looked at him. Only now it was worse, much worse. Suddenly not knowing what he should occupy his eyes with, Naruto looked down, trying to suppress the mind-numbing disappointment. He'd known something like this was likely to happen. But then why even go so far in the first place? That look, that smile... that intensity that had thrown him completely off guard...
He knew that he was telling himself things, though. Wasn't this one of these situations he'd sworn to avoid in the future, exactly because he had been disappointed a little too often in his first months in Tokyo?
He had bet on someone he didn't even know against better judgment, and surprisingly got screwed. It was hard to admit, but what had happened was exactly what everyone to whom he had confided his daydreams about world-changing chance acquaintanceships had told him would happen. It was a sobering thought. It made him sway a little. Somehow he felt as if the other had dumped him.
Sure, after our 90-seconds relationship. It was ridiculous. There must have been something wrong with his ramen yesterday, for him to have crazy thoughts like this. 'Relationship', really? Come on, Uzumaki! He wanted to smack his forehead for being so stupid. Looking a bit at each other on the train is not a relationship, he told himself sternly. Neither is it a solid basis for one. It's not even a real contact, much less a fl–
Oh damn, damn, but that had been some sort of contact, and he would rot in the pits of hell forever if that hadn't been a flirt as well! Chopping one of his legs off wouldn't make up for his idiocy. Why was he getting it only now? That had been a flirt as explicit as it could be, given the circumstances! In a situation where people not only didn't talk to each other, but didn't even look!
This guy probably wouldn't even stir if a yakuza came jumping at him from a dark corner with a gun in his hand. But he had reacted to Naruto.
For some mysterious reasons, he had chosen him to not be invisible. Yes, he was a bastard for mocking him, but his almost-smile had kind of made up for that. And then... There had been too many confusing things in that long, burning look for Naruto to be able to sort out what exactly that had been. But it was definitely not nothing. It was the opposite of 'nothing' – it was something, something exciting and consoling at the same time. By looking at him, the stranger had told him something, told him that he knew Naruto was there. As trivial and insignificant as that might sound – he hadn't felt so lonely anymore.
Damn it.
Deeply lost in depressing thoughts, Naruto was chewing on his bottom lip. When someone bumped into him, he didn't fight to keep his place close to the window. In the bigger stations like Shibuya, the force of the people pressing in was especially nasty, and he just let himself get pushed farther in until he couldn't even move his little finger.
He hoped his backpack wouldn't be ripped off, but his heart wasn't into the thought. He just couldn't let go of that guy – OK, that dead sexy guy, face it –, but it was his own dumbness that bothered him most. If he'd caught on to what really was going on between them, he'd just talked to him at once! That's what he was famous (or rather, infamous) for in his small home town, after all: he would talk to about anyone he found remotely interesting, regardless if he embarrassed his 'victims' or not. Granted, he hadn't even thought of what to say, but that he would have dealt with spontaneously. Now he was sure that the other wouldn't have turned him down. Contritely, he noticed that he could barely see anything beside the age-spot decorated head on his immediate right and the dandruff strewn shoulder on his left. Maybe this was the fucking universe's punishment for him being too slow-witted in the one moment when he could have put his impulsiveness to good use.
To his defense he had to say, though, that he'd never met anyone like that guy before, making him hold his breath like that by just gazing at him.
On the other hand, wasn't it unjust that he'd have to be the one to make the first step? Why did it have to be Naruto to talk to him first? Why hadn't the other just said something if he was interested? It was totally unfair that he'd waited secretly and quietly to be talked to by Naruto, just to leave a second later! They both would step off sometime, of course, but how should Naruto have known that the other had to leave before him! If he'd known, he'd done something for sure! And now it was too late, because chances for them to coincidentally meet again were worse than one in a million. The guy was a fucking bastard for teasing him like that and then up and leave!
Yeah, an arrogant bastard. He'd known from the start, hadn't he! He was still pissed over the missed chance. But the other definitely didn't deserve the satisfaction of messing with him like this. He wasn't that great anyway.
Naruto decided to just forget about the whole thing and be done with it.
It was boiling hot in the wagon. The air was stale, and a dry cough was to be heard from somewhere behind him. Naruto recognized the first signs of claustrophobia, when his chest suddenly felt painfully constricted. Sandwiched between people as he was, he couldn't do much but try to breathe as even as possible, praying that this terrible ride would finally come to an end. Even though it was only three stations to Shinjuku, time seemed to be creeping, now that it was so aggravatingly cramped.
Back to reality, baby...
Naruto couldn't stand the view of that spotted head and the white flakes anymore and closed his eyes. Bereaved of one of his senses, the others seemed to work threefold, making him even more aware of the diverse body parts pressed against him. Stubbornly, he kept his eyes shut, trying to imagine a place in himself where no one else could reach, regardless of how close people stood, focusing on his angry stomach and the regular pulse of his abdominal artery below. The place where there was nothing but warm, dull blackness and his pulse.
One of the doctors at his university's health center had recommended he learn this trick. Back then, he'd been living in Tokyo for just a few months. His home town was 600 kilometers from there, and seemed like a mere village in comparison to Japan's capital. Even though it was kind of hard to admit, Naruto had suspected that the change might have affected him. He didn't sleep well and felt a little sick: weak, losing his appetite, being out of sorts. And that even though he never got sick, he just didn't!
After weeks of whining, he'd finally given in and went to the doctor, who'd surprised him by stating that he was just fine. Physically, at least. He'd suggested that maybe it was the change in environment, which would make the problem a psychological one.
Naruto had gone on a rampage against this diagnosis. Was that supposed to mean he was some sort of psycho? He wouldn't hear bullshit like that about himself. He wasn't a freak, period. So he had writhed and suffered a few more weeks, and then he came back, hands folded angrily in front of his chest, and asked what they could do about it. After he'd started mental training, with meditation and stuff like that, living in Tokyo had become gradually less upsetting, and at some point almost normal.
Concentrating on his own pulse while breathing slowly and deeply was supposed to cause a kind of inner calm, protecting him in moments like this, when he felt too overwhelmed by the intrusive closeness. It was a last resort against this paradox body-contact-loneliness-thing he'd been fighting since he'd moved. Lately, he hadn't needed it quite as often as in his first time in Tokyo, but today he felt about to suffocate. It didn't help, didn't help at all, for there on the inside he didn't find his hoped for peace and calmness, but a thick troubling knot of lurking remorse. The image of black eyes in a smirking face kept flashing up. So the bastard had advanced this deep. Fantastic. He couldn't even do this simple exercise anymore.
There was some jostling around him. Probably some people panicking that they wouldn't make it to the exit in time if they didn't push through right now, even though they were half-way between two stations. Naruto stayed like he was, eyes closed, and stood his ground. It was impossible to move anyway.
Suddenly, the pressure against his right arm disappeared. For a moment, there was only emptiness. Then he felt someone shove themselves in front of him. That person didn't just take the place of the passenger to his right, but pushed all the others who were somewhat in front of him harshly out of the way. Naruto felt the touch on his whole front side, on his chest, belly, and the arms.
His first reflex was to draw back and close his eyes even tighter. But then he noticed something wasn't right. He could feel the heaving and lowering of the other's ribcage. Someone was standing face to face with him, so close that even their faces couldn't be far from each other. He heard him breathe.
Naruto's heart jumped. No one stood like this, not even in a cramped train compartment. In a club, yes, in some dark joint, in a secluded corner cut out for a make-out session... but not on the train. Regardless of how crowded it was. You just didn't stand chest to chest and laid your head against the other's temple. Didn't gently blow warm air into their ear, sniff their hair. That was too pushy, that was harassment...
Naruto was too perplexed to comprehend what was happening. He didn't know what it meant that he suddenly could breathe again as if he'd stepped out-of-doors because of this heady scent in his nose. He didn't understand how it was possible for this scent to run deep into his lungs and flow with the oxygen in his breathing air all the way down to the tips of his toes. But one thing he knew even before he opened his eyes again: his stranger was back.
And he was pressing his body against Naruto's own.
A warm shiver ran down Naruto's spine, caused by the fire on his front where he felt the other's pressure on his body. With the way the guy was slightly bowing forward, Naruto could feel the fine hairs on his cheek sweep over his own. The headphones were gone. Blue-black hair touched his face, tickling and shimmering in a tantalizing way.
He wanted more of this, God, he needed– By impulse, he wanted to bury his hands in this fascinating raw-shining hair, to ride his fingertips over his scalp. He wanted to stroke it and cause the same shivering he felt. His hands were pinched to his hips, though.
Without even thinking, he leaned forward and returned the pressure. It felt good, leaning against each other like this. It was arousing. Naruto tilted his head a little, breathing in this wonderful hair, and he felt a shiver go through the other's body. What he had wanted to do with his fingers, he did with the tip of his nose instead: gently sweep over the hairline behind the soft, slightly reddened ear. Naruto imagined how the same pinkish color had to grace his stranger's alabaster face. He heard him breathe a little sharper. As if giving an answer to his caress, he felt the other's lips softly stroke his ear.
It made his hackles raise. God, what was happening with him? With them? This wasn't normal. Why, how, could he feel this immense pull to the other, when they hadn't even exchanged a single word?
Had he not wanted to talk to him? Naruto had been angry, and there were a lot of colorful things he could have yelled at him. His throat was awfully dry, though. As much as he tried to clear it and get rid of that coarse feeling on his voice cords, he couldn't make a single sound.
Where had all the words gone? Lost, erased, forgotten. Everything he could have said was mixed up in such a way that he didn't even know what kind of language it was supposed to be. His brain was completely frozen. He couldn't have spoken for the life of him – and he didn't have to. The way they were clinging to each other, almost hugging each other, said more than a thousand words.
I wasn't wrong. Naruto thought it again and again in this inapt-to-speak condition, bereaved of any sentence coherence. He didn't think in words anymore, either. It was all wordless, immediate certainties and feelings. It was like a dream, where you just know things instead of consciously thinking them.
We were flirting and he didn't just leave. He stood up to get to me while we couldn't look at each other. I was carried away to this place, he followed. I've got no idea how he did it, but it doesn't matter. He's special. There is only one like him in the whole world. And this One has come to me to bury his face in my hair, to stand in front of me like we've always belonged together.
Naruto pressed into the stylish, expensive suit. The neatly fabricated seams, the accurate pattern of the cloth, were no cut goods. The crease-resistant collar. Was he wearing anything under his shirt? Would Naruto be able to feel his nipples, if the buttons of his blazer were open, and he huddled against his chest?
He was hard again, and painfully so. His jeans felt much too tight. Yet he didn't try to fight it back anymore, for he wasn't the only one who'd given up any remaining self-control. The other's erection pressed against his hips, enticing and teasing.
This guy...this audacious, ballsy guy and I, we..., Naruto stretched out his fingertips and landed somewhere in the region of the other's belt, we're equals. He isn't cold and untouchable, not on the inside. On the inside, he's glowing and hoping for more...and he's impatient...just like me.
He didn't really notice the crowd anymore, even though he kind of knew that their behavior didn't go unnoticed. They stood out. They got funny looks, covert ones. They were two people who took private things into the public sphere. They didn't have any control, and they didn't care about anything but themselves.
And that's how it was. They did private things. They didn't have control over themselves. And nothing held any meaning to them but this inexplicable attraction against which they both were defenseless.
Naruto felt the other's arms around him as if he wanted to embrace him. That wasn't entirely possible in their cramped position, but the intention was enough. Naruto still couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that this person had given up his perfect façade just like that. Would he himself have had the guts to approach him like that? Yeah, of course he would! Only he hadn't talked to him like he'd wanted to.
But the other didn't talk, either. Maybe his thoughts were as chaotic as Naruto's.
When the train stopped and an opening was created behind Naruto, he made an involuntary step backwards. The other followed as if they were glued together. Naruto had hooked his fingers into his belt and pulled him with him, while the other held his arm and let himself be dragged. The intimate contact between them never broke. They were pushed around like one, and whenever they were about to be pulled apart, they held on as if their lives were at stake. They never looked at each other, though. During this long, incredibly complex look they seemed to have said enough already. Naruto's head was turned slightly to the left, resting on the other's shoulders. The face of the man he already seemed to know like his childhood friend never left its place at his right ear and temple. With the crowd shoving them from here to there, it was as if they were dancing. They were nothing but two leaves in the wind, carried without conscious will or aim, sometimes moving, sometimes still.
Naruto could breathe again, really breathe. The anxiety cutting off his air was gone. Somehow, he had been drawn into a magical circle that shielded him against everything outside. It must be the same circle that had made him so mad earlier, the one standing like a fortress. Only now it surrounded them both. He had become a part of it, they were together in it, sharing a protection zone.
It's as if..., Naruto felt a strange turmoil in the pit of his stomach, it's as if together, we're so much stronger than alone. Nothing can harm us. Nothing.
Suddenly there was a huge lump in his throat. He gulped heavily. What was he about to hope here, exactly? There were millions of singles around, but the chance to find someone in a mega-city were paradoxically smaller than at the countryside. The story always went like this: work, common friends, and partner agencies offer the best chances. You do cooking classes or languages, hoping to meet someone with similar interests. You define the lowest common denominator. You are realistic and detached. Naruto wasn't hoping to find someone who would change his life on the way from A to B anymore, was he?
No, you don't meet your soulmate on the train. You meet a partner, and you meet them in the fitness center, through acquaintances, on the internet. Grow up, Naruto. You believe in destiny? You think it's something like fate that you're on this train and not on the next? Don't be naive. That you stood by the window, not with your back to it? That today of all days you didn't have your music, which makes you forget the things around you? I can tell you what that means: besides the fact that you're a quixotic and silly person, it means nothing.
To believe that you've met because you were meant to is superstition. There is no fate, and there is no thing as love on first sight. Things like that are things you tell yourself afterwards, after you missed the opportunity, after you didn't have the guts to address the other because you're not so innocent anymore and you're afraid to be disappointed, after you broke eye contact and don't dare to look again, and then the other is suddenly gone and then you think, who knows what could have been, maybe I've just missed the chance to find the love of my life...
–But I'm standing here, with him! I have found him! I fucking did look again!, Naruto cried against the malicious voice in his head, shaking the belt between his fingers. I'm not afraid–!
He broke away to look the guy in the eye again.
In this exact moment, the hectic scramble started again. Lost in their touch, which was almost an embrace, and in his inner monologue, Naruto hadn't noticed that they'd been shoved directly in front of the doors. That he was standing with his back to the exit. His mind was with his counterpart with the porcelain skin and the hard as bone erection pressing against Naruto's own through the cloth of his trousers. As for the outside world, it was more unreachable than if he'd been in deep sleep. His mind didn't have a clue where they were, and what kind of calamity was waiting for them if he didn't pay attention.
But that little black hole in his brain knew it.
"Shinjuku, Shinjuku desu."
The little black hole that all automates have because they can't function without it. That is taking over when all other instances have decided that they don't want to function, because beyond the rift there's the glimpse of a different, better life lighting up. The little black hole that will take control over the body when the rest of the mind is off duty.
In a knee-jerk reaction, Naruto's hands left the belt when he heard the fatal announcement, and he jumped out backwards. His legs stumbled automatically onto the platform, aiming for the exit, before he could even comprehend why this warmth and the heartbeat against his chest suddenly were gone.
When he realized what he had done, they'd long since been torn apart, the maelstrom of people rushing to the exit taking him with them. Utterly shocked, he tried to stop and turn around. Shouting loudly that he had to go back, he threw himself against the crowd, feverishly trying to find his nameless stranger in the masses. He searched desperately, but already other people had pushed themselves into the train. Pure horror grasped him when his eyes couldn't find him. He couldn't lose him like that–!
The doors slammed shut. When Naruto had fought himself back to the edge, the train had started rolling. He ran beside it, screaming and banging against the window glass, thinking he was going to die, for he already understood that he had lost.
Millions of people set out for their given destinations every day, in Tokyo or elsewhere in the metropolises of the world. In the fleeting time off from daily life's uniformity, don't they all believe sometimes that their lives might have taken a different course, more exciting, more fulfilled, not only in the unchangeable past but also concerning the future? They all want to be embraced, and loved, and feel they are special and precious. And don't they all long for one important person to walk through life by their side like a twin star, to hold them up and breathe new life into them when they've forgotten their dreams and closed their eyes?
Naruto was just one of them.
Yet when he was standing at the edge, staring after the long since departed train, he sincerely didn't know if he should laugh or cry because he had found his One. Just a moment before, he had thought that his life was going to end, since they'd been torn apart so abruptly and irrevocably. But however hopeless it might seem, it wasn't over, not at all.
The powerful beating of his heart couldn't lie. It was possible. Those who had experienced too much reality to renounce its rules, those who knew they had the shattering voices of probability and soulless empiricism behind them wouldn't believe in someone like him. But Naruto had no intention of listening to them. All those voices became quieter and quieter until just one remained, the one that came from his very core and went in tune with his heartbeat. It was a voice of happiness. He knew who he was now, and what he was going to do. He would stand up, be himself and fight.
"I know you're out there", he whispered, determination lighting a fire in his eyes, "somewhere out there. And I'm going to move heaven and earth to find you again."
His gaze never left the spot where the train had run out of sight, eyes moist and glowing, hands clenched to fists. He was awake now, as if he'd been dreaming his life before. The real life was just about to start.
Owari