Huh, I actually got this up today. Don't be surprised if you see part three pop up here, I've actually had this shiz written for awhile. (I'm worming my way through part four and five, both being written at the same time for...reasons.)
Part Two: Dinner
Your Mom? That's good. How about dinner tomorrow? We'll have a lot to talk about.
Temari knew. He was more than sure that she knew, of course she did and she was going to tell him. But in the end, she must have figured it was best if he learned from his Mom.
She was right.
He tried to be angry, but the feeling wouldn't come. His temper was as cool as the breeze numbing his face. All he could think about is how the whole thing must be a practical joke. A car crash taking out Sasuke? That sounded like a tiger getting eaten by a rabbit.
"Can you get my ball?" The small push of tiny fingers in his side forced him down from his clouded thoughts. A kid with light brown eyes and orange hair stood in front of him, pointing under the picnic table where a large blue ball was resting beside Naruto's left foot. "Please."
Naruto picked up the ball, holding it out to the child with an age old grown up warning on his lips, "You shouldn't talk to strangers." Especially strangers in the park.
"You're not a stranger, you're Naruto! I know who you are!" The kid insisted, bouncing the ball once and running after it.
"Hey!" He called after the kid, but the little guy kept running, Naruto started to chase after him, grumbling about how he was getting too old for things like this, "Come back here!"
His lungs taught him of two things as he chased after the kid- he was out of shape and now understood perfectly why someone would put a leash on a child. The little kid started to slow his pace as he approached an old woman sitting on a bench, sewing something.
Naruto watched as the little boy pointed him out to the old lady. To his surprise, she waved a hand in greeting with a small smile gracing her face. Whoever these people were, he sure didn't remember them.
"Hello Naruto, it's been a long time." The woman set down her sewing materials as the kid bounced the ball against the sidewalk, "You don't remember me do you?"
"Uh-No." He laughed nervously.
"It's okay,I'm an old woman now." She smiled, "Nothing like your Mother, she hasn't aged a day. I'm Sasuke's Mom, Mikoto."
"Oh." Naruto crossed his arms, "Uh, sorry."
"It's okay." Mikoto scooted over on the bench, a non-verbal invitation to take a seat. He decided to take it, while in reality he would rather not deal with this right now and run away, there might not be another chance. Not to mention that he couldn't exactly turn down the Mother of his first true love.
Honestly, only true love.
"So.." Naruto decided to trace the outline of his shoe with his eyes, "What happened with Sasuke after I left?"
"Hm." She stared at me for a moment, before turning her attention to the boy, "Tunaro, will you go fetch me that big green box from the car?"
They only watched as the kid, Tunaro, ran to the car and struggled to carry a medium sized box toward the two. "It belonged to Sasuke, he left it to you."
"Me?" Naruto turned to her in disbelief.
"Yes, you." She reassured, "I think he wanted to tell you all he did with his life by himself."
That would be like him wouldn't it? He started to rise to offer the boy help but by that time, the green box was sitting at his feet. Why was it that he was alway too late? "Thanks."
"Anytime, don't be shy, come over whenever you like." Mikoto started to gather her things, "Your Mom knows my address, you can get it from her."
"Okay." He watched them leave, wondering who the little boy was. A part of him already had an inclination, but on a much closer level he did not want to know.
The more distance he kept, the better.
The stupid green box was abandoned in the corner of his hotel room, seated in a chair next to the small dinner table, as Naruto got ready for the dinner with Temari's family in about an hour. They lived just across the street from the hotel in a two story blue house with three cars and a trampoline sitting in the front yard.
To top it off there was still Gaara lingering in the next room. Did he know that Sasuke died too? Is that what's keeping him from coming over? Naruto ran his hands over his face, Sasuke's death was a place he didn't want to go.
He never got over Sasuke to begin with, sometimes he told himself that he was just a stupid teenager and should get over it already. Other times, he wondered if that stupid teenage self was on to something real and ruined it all by being prideful and unforgiving.
Most of the time he just hated himself for thinking about it.
"Come in." Shikamaru opened the door before he could even knock, "Watch out for Temari."
"I heard that!" Temari roared from somewhere in the house, Shikamaru visibly cringed for a split second before pulling Naruto through the house with a muttered complaint. "Closer to the due date she just get's harder and harder to handle."
"Did you just say handle?" They both jumped at the proximity of her voice, she was standing by the front door with her arms crossed, glaring. Naruto decided to take a moment and observe the Nara household's living room. Conclusion? There were far too many breakable objects in here. "Am I a dog?"
"No." Shikamaru shook his head, adding an afterthought of, "...honey."
"Sit!" Both men scrambled for a seat on the couch, avoiding her glare. Shikamaru was not afraid of non-pregnant Temari, especially after being in the military. Pregnant Temari was a whole other story, pregnant Temari once stapled him to the floor. "Naruto."
"Yes Ma'am!"
"Thanks for coming, dinner will be ready in about thirty minutes."
"Uh-okay." Naruto gave her what he hoped looked like a genuine smile and not a mixture of fear and apprehension. No matter what the smile looked like, Temari seemed satisfied with it and left the room all smiles. "Dodged a bullet?"
"For now." Shikamaru answered ominously, "I heard your Mom was in the hospital."
" practically dragged me down here." He was really hoping this wasn't going to lead into a conversation about Sasuke, since everyone and their Mother probably knew that his Mom broke the news to him by now. "I like your hotel, it's simple but comfortable."
"Thanks." and that is where the conversation pretty much ended, Shikamaru flipped on the TV and did not mention a thing about Sasuke, death, or ask about his feelings in any way shape or form.
Thank God.
He allowed himself to escape into whatever cop show was playing with the occasional outburst of "It's him! Are you that stupid?" and then Shikamaru would agree and change the channel to another cop show.
"Dinner!" Temari called after several repeats of that exact cycle.
Shikamaru practically bolted from his seat, sparing Naruto a glance as he warned, "Don't eat the cookies." The question was why not eat the cookies? Shikamaru wasn't the type to hoard food.
There was only one person he knew that would hoard a cookie.
"Son of a bitch." Naruto groaned, Gaara was here. He'd forgotten all about Gaara! Awkward moments where knocking on his future and he had no choice but to open the damn door. "A snails pace" had never before been used in a description of how he walked, but for the first time Naruto was the snail. The gooey, slimy, slow snail.
It sucked that the kitchen had to be so close to the living room.
Gaara was already sitting at the dinner table, talking to a boy who looked like Shikamaru's carbon copy, only about ten. The bratty teenaged girl from his check-in was seating on the other side of Gaara, glaring at the food in front of her.
Across from her was another little girl-who looked like a healthy mixture of the two other children-around five talking about her day at school with a pace that Naruto couldn't follow. He decided to take a seat next to her, even if that put him right across from Gaara.
"Are you Naruto?" The little girl snapped into instant interrogation the moment his butt touched the seat, he opened his mouth to answer but she only cut him off, "Can I paint your nails?"
"Shut-up Aiko, he doesn't want you to paint his nails." The bratty teenager-Karura, if he remembered correctly- gave her little sister a warning glare.
"How do you know?!" Aiko stuck out her tongue, turning her attention back on Naruto immediately, "Is she right? Do you really not want to paint your nails?"
"Uh..." Naruto found himself trapped between his man card and the big green eye gaze of a little girl with hope.
"He's a guy! He doesn't want to paint his nails!"
"Daddy lets me! And he's a boy!"
"Okay!" Shikamaru intervened as he took a seat at the head of the table, in-between his two daughters. "That's enough."
"But-"
"Enough." Naruto got the feeling that Shikamaru was directing his order towards him and not his daughters. He couldn't help it, Naruto just had to try checking Shikamaru's nails with an amused smirk on his face.
Temari was right about things changing around here.
"Hey." Green eyes met blue for the first time in more than a decade. To Naruto, it felt like a blink.
"Hey." Naruto smiled back.
"You guys are weird!" Aiko giggled, and from there everything proceeded as a normal Nara family dinner-complete with children's chatter,adult jokes, and embarrassed teenage groaning.
It was nice to breathe for a while.
"Damn-it Gaara! Where are the cookies?"
"He already left Temari." Shikamaru didn't bat an eyelash as his wife growled to the ceiling and stalked off to hunt for something sweet to satisfy her cravings.
"Thanks. I had a good time." Naruto and Shikamaru shared an awkward handshake for the first time in their lives, he'd never actually shook anyone's hand outside of work before?
"No problem." Naruto gave him one last-less awkward-wave from the bottom steps of the porch and started to move across the street.
"Wait." "Can I walk with you?"
Naruto clutched his heart, fake gasping for air, "I think that's the most polite thing you've said to be ever Gaara!"
"I'm legally accountable now." He smirked back, falling into step beside his old friend. "My ex-husband is a lawyer, met him in court they day I turned nineteen." (1)
"Seriously? That must have been one hell of a divorce."
"Yeah it was." The two fell into silence as the Midnight Hotel got closer, for a moment Naruto thought they might just end up saying a few quick good nights and going to sleep. Gaara must have been afraid of that, "I'm sorry about-"
"We were all stupid back then, if anything I'm the one that should be sorry." Gaara chuckled, stopping Naruto in his tracks. "Out of all the jokes I've ever heard you make, you choose now to laugh at one of them?!"
"You've never been very funny." Gaara's face was stoic but his eyes blazed with an old familiar flame that threatened to burn Naruto alive and eat his descendants.
"I missed you, Gaara." His tone must have sounded more sorrowful than he intended-he didn't know why, maybe it was because they were already their rooms-because Gaara took his hand.
"Here." Gaara pressed something into his palm, holding his hand tightly. "I saved it from the beach. Thought you might want it back someday."
A simple necklace chain dangled helplessly in his grasp,and he knew exactly what is was without unclasping his hand.
Without a doubt, that was an orange seashell engraving itself in his palm.
1. I am currently writing a fic about this right now XD I'm not sure if it will be posted or not, we'll see. (more news in future updates, plus I want to work on "I'm a Lady" more)
I've been working on my original work SOOO much lately, which is great but I need a break :P All my writing mojo is getting sucked up!