Although he would've tried to kill anyone who mentioned it, Sasuke loved the park. He loved all the pretty colours of the park equipment (even though most of them were a mass of boring grey metal). He loved the flying fox and the monkey bars (which he could get over from one side to another faster than a monkey) and most of all he loved the slippery slopes. Some went straight down in a diagonal line, however some coiled around a pole coloured like a candy cane and he would put his hand out and just touch the smooth, cold metal.
Most kids his age liked soft things, like warm blankets and the downy fur of baby animals, but not Sasuke.
Sasuke liked metal. He admired how strong and enduring it was, how it could be so many shapes and sizes, how it could join itself to other materials and still be so useful. Quite frankly, Sasuke was fascinated by it. Had it not been for his mother's adamant refusal, Sasuke would've hugged that annoying, pink little girl in front of everybody just to have everything he owned replaced by things made of metal.
He would've hugged the girl with the blonde hair, too.
Blonde hair.
Blond hair.
Naruto's awe-inspiring blond hair. Hair that went up in spikes in so many different directions that surely couldn't be natural, but they stayed up of their own accord. Sasuke had secretly compared Naruto's hair to that of the spikes on a porcupine's back, but decided that no matter how much the porcupine evolved it could never compare against Naruto's almost sun-like glow.
Naruto, however, adored the swings. He could swing by himself before his doting father allowed him to, and loved swinging his short legs back and forth to propel himself higher and high up into the sky. Sometimes, when the Yondaime Hokage wasn't watching, he would take one hand (just one; he wasn't quite brave enough to remove both hands) off of the chains that connected the seat of the swing with the bar above and reach for the white, puffy clouds and the endless azure sky that stretched on and on and on and on...
Sometimes Naruto believed that he could touch it. He told Sasuke, and Sasuke believed him too, because Sasuke thought that, if anyone could tame the wild stallion that was the unpredictable sky with its forever changing weather, it was Naruto. Looking at his golden hair and amazing cerulean blue eyes made Sasuke think of the sky and the sun itself. Surely someone like Naruto who was like day itself would be allowed to touch the sky?
When Naruto reached the crescendo of his swing forward, he pretended that he was a bird. A great, majestic (and powerful, of course, he confided in Sasuke) bird that had a wingspan of gigantic proportions and a steely beak and sharp talons and beautiful feathers that could fly over the seas and oceans of the world with the speed of light, and at the end of its journey, become a ("AWESOME") phoenix, one that could save the world.
So while Sasuke slid down his slippery slopes, Naruto rode his swings.
And sometimes, as Sasuke watched Naruto yell out to the sky like a crazy person, he decided that he'd also like to ride the swings, and swing as high as Naruto, and pretend he was a magnificent bird too, and fly alongside Naruto as he swooped over the seven seas and oceans of the world like a proud phoenix.
