The Academy From Hell (2/?) by pitfalls
Disclaimer: Don't own.
See end of Chapter for notes.
CHAPTER TWO
When I think back to how I managed to clear my head that night, there's not a lot I can honestly remember. I suppose the guy (Sasuke, although I didn't know it at the time) was heaving me out of the room at that point– he had a supportive arm around my waist and the other one was pulling mine over his neck. I'm not sure what happened to Zabuza – I'm guessing he was removed by the security team, and I hope they decided to be a little lenient in their professionalism whilst handling him. The bastard should have gone to jail. Anyway, back then I could only really drudge up is this hazy feeling of relief, that I was safe and warm and there were no more weird guys trying to rape me. A load of people were moving past us as Sasuke was dragging me along, and fingers kept plucking and snatching, trying to push me off him. There was a vibration in his chest, nice and deep (I assume he was talking), and the questing hands stopped. I stumbled, tripping over my own feet and the arm around me tightened, his palm pressing hot into my stomach. My bare stomach, I should add. Every minute shift of his fingers sent a spark downwards, and I couldn't work out if it was just the drug or if was sexually frustrated.
Probably the latter.
Anyway, we ended up entering another room towards the back of the building, the door resolutely slamming shut behind. I was pushed towards a comfy but expensive looking sofa chair and handed a cold bottle of water from the fridge.
"Drink." Sasuke quietly commanded, eying me warily from where he was leaning against the bar top. I complied, blinking once before tilting my head back and gulping it down, ignoring the ache in my teeth and throat from the cold. Hopefully it would wake me up – if nothing else if gave me something to do so I didn't have to suffer through the awkward silence I knew was coming. Out the corner of my eye I thought I could see his gaze traveling down my chest and snagging on my hips. I had managed to pull my board shorts by then, but they still rested dangerously low on my hips. I knew that… but I still didn't pull them up. I quite enjoyed the attention I was getting – it's not like I got checked out frequently or anything, so I might as well have enjoyed it while it lasted.
I downed the rest of the water quickly, hoping the pain in my head would start to recede and it would enable me to start thinking clearly. The entire time, Sasukes expression gave nothing away; and as soon as I'd drained the bottle, he handed me another one, unscrewing the cap like he thought I wouldn't be capable of doing it myself. Shaking my head a little, I got started on drinking.
I went through four bottles before Sasuke had judged I'd had enough. By then I had started to regain cohesion, enough so that I was more than slightly embarrassed to be caught in a situation like this. I mean, the guy probably thought I was some kind of easy, pathetic lay who couldn't pick men worth shit. And he was annoyingly hot as well.
Someone had brought me a t-shirt with the club's logo on it, as mine had been ripped back in the other room, and it was lying on the arm of the sofa. I slipped it on, slightly ashamed of the marks peppering my abs and collarbones, and sank back into the chair cushion. I was suddenly exhausted, and my arms were beginning to ache from where Zabuza had gripped down.
The atmosphere was uncomfortable and I could feel his dark eyes intent on me. There was this weird pressure in the air, like the metallic taste you get right before a storm. I don't know, like a build up or something. Stupid thoughts kept running through my mind, like wow, I wonder if he's gay and Kiba is gonna screw oh shit he's going to kill me, and eventually I just had to push it all out my head and focus on my surroundings. The room was, thank God, air conditioned, and there was a massive over head fan on the ceiling. It was quite spacious, with a private bar at the far end of the room, a snooker table and an array of furniture scattered all around the floor. Everything was so posh – you could tell this was exclusively for those who had money and weren't afraid to spend it. I bet a coke in that place would be at least £5.
The only noise was the whirring of the fan, the drumming sound of the guy's long fingers on his knee and my own heartbeat in my temples. Not going to lie, it was getting pretty awkward.
"What?" I asked nervously after a couple of seconds of the intense staring. I felt like I had to fill the silence in someway. I cleared my throat.
"I really appreciate you helping me out, man, I mean, you didn't have to, but you stopped him and I am so grateful you did. I don't even want to think about what could have happened if you hadn't – I feel like such an idiot for not watching my drink. I know they say you should never take your eyes off it in the adverts and stuff but it was literally a couple of seconds and I think the barman was trying to warn me anyway…pretty sucky that I can't speak French, I guess, considering I'm in France and all-" I cut myself off in full flow, feeling my face flush slightly even though I tried to tamp it down. The guy didn't need my life story.
Sasuke sighed.
"Hey, has anyone told you you're really gracious at accepting a thank you?" All of a sudden I felt a flash of anger at his utter emotional incompetence. I'd been through shit, still had all the drugs and alcohol in my system, and I really just wanted to get out of this fucking club. Not sit here and be silently interrogated by some public school boy with a superiority complex. Yeah, ok, he might have been hot, and I wasn't complaining about the view, but nothing gets me more than people who think they're better than others, just because of a superficial thing like money.
"You are such a moron." Each word was pronounced in that beautiful, posh accent of his (he sounded like bloody Daniel Craig), and I was so captivated by his voice that (embarrassingly) it took a while for the words to sink in.
"Excuse me?"
"Are you deaf as well as stupid?"
I sat there stunned into silence for a few seconds. In just two sentences, this guy had completely destroyed any attraction I first felt for him. What a…what a complete dick! I felt my temper flare.
"I'm neither. You know, taking some fucking unknown drugs and nearly being raped tends to affect my recognition of complete wankers. I really should have identified you sooner."
Sasuke raised one perfectly arched eyebrow at my outburst and got up. He walked over to the bar, reaching over and taking a pre-made drink off the side. It was a Martini, I think, complete with olive on a stick and all. I tried to muffle my snort – that's such a typical London posh boy drink. I mean, even fucking James Bond drinks it. (Maybe I was annoyed because I could never make holding a martini look anything but girly, but come on - it was still cliché). I don't think I quite managed it from the annoyed look he shot in my direction. He swallowed a mouthful, and my stupid, traitorous eyes locked onto his adam's apple bobbing up and down. No, that was not sexy. No, that did not make me think about him swallowing around my dick.
Shut up self. Remember his personality, don't think about how soft those lips look and how much better they'd look wrapped around my-
"Oh come on." I muttered under my breath, forcing my eyes down and away. I was already starting to fidget – I suddenly felt like I had all this energy to burn off. You know, that invincible feeling you get when you're drunk.
"Oh come on what?" Oh shit, he'd heard me. I couldn't exactly say 'oh, nothing, just berating myself for imagining you going down on me, happens a lot, you know.' I looked around wildly for something to blame it on. Inspiration was sparse, I tell you.
"Uh, that olive is ridiculous. What's the point of it?" You go brain. Way to make yourself sound absolutely stupid. And completely irrelevant.
His brow furrowed as he looked down at his drink and then back up at me. "My olive?"
Once I start lying I can't stop. Really, it's ridiculous.
"Yeah, I mean, that's such a fucking sterotype. You're nineteen and you're drinking martinis. Where has your youth gone, man?"
He looked at me like I was nuts. I looked at me like I was nuts. Setting the drink down lightly after taking another gulp, he slowly stalked over to me.
"Let me get this straight: you have a problem with my drink? When I just saved you, from all accounts, from getting arse raped, and you sit here bitching about my olive?" I agreed with him. He made perfect sense. The music from the club was still faint enough to be heard, and the track change floated up from underneath the floor. The beat was increasing in tempo, sort of like my heart. He was only standing less than half a meter away; he smelled like sweat and cinnamon, but less sweet more peppery - like allspice. It was making my mouth go dry.
"It's not your olive, it's your cliché-"
"Naruto. Shut the fuck up." Yep, sounded like a completely solid argument, I wasn't going to argue with that, Naruto commencing shutting up—
Wait.
How did he know my name?
"You really don't remember me?" He asked, voice deepening, leaning forward and placing both hands on the arms of my chair. I felt like face palming – I must have spoken out loud.
"…Remember you?" I asked, confused. Sasuke kept inching closer, bring his body closer and closer over mine, until his lips were mere inches away from my face. His smell was invading my nose, settling over me like a blanket. It was familiar, I just couldn't place it. I was getting too hot too flustered by the proximity, and he knew it. I couldn't understand what he was playing at, the last thing I needed was to be crowded and set on edge again.
"I…uh…" My eyes were fluttering closed against my will, and I felt his body heat through the thin t-shirt. The faintest brush on my lips, and then he was gone, retreated to the door and holding it open for me.
"Okay, you're sober enough. No longer my problem. I'm sure your friends are anxious about you – go down and show them you're alright." His voice was no longer a rumble, more a patronizing dismissal. It pissed me off: did he kiss me to tell if I was sober or not? Who does that?!
I got up, albeit less smoothly and with more swaying that I would have liked, and headed towards the door, my lips curled back into a snarl.
"You're such a wanker." I bit out as I walked out the doorway. "It seems like you haven't quite grasped the concept of 'manners'." Yes, it may have been hypocritical.
His nostrils flared and his dark eyes just flashed hotter. "Just get the fuck out." He said, sounding bored. What a bi-polar jackass.
I stepped out of the door, the customary heat of France becoming a bit more apparent. Outside in the hall there was security officer ready to escort me back downstairs, wearing a black suit, ear piece and sunglasses. He must have been boiling in it, but at least the sunglasses were actually useful in a country like this, instead of being prattish. I was still fuming, even shaking slightly from the adrenaline of what had nearly happened to me. Getting down the stairs was a bit of a problem, but I refused help from Mr. Sunglasses , finding that the more I walked around, the clearer my head became. As we drew closer to the main stage of the club, the music steadily increased in volume until it was just a cacophony of noise and a throbbing in my head. It was painful. I needed to find one member of the gang so I could tell them I was going home – we'd been here for a good three hours, so I guessed everyone should be ready to leave anyway. Heading back to the bar in case Shino was still there, I noticed Kankuro shouldering his way through the crowd towards me. I paused, waiting for him to reach me.
"Where the fuck have you been, Naruto? We couldn't find you for like a whole two hours!" He sounded worried, which made me feel slightly guilty. The guilt abated, however, and turned into something slightly more uneasy when Kankuro caught sight of a hickey on my neck, and his face spread into a wide smirk. "Ah. I see. Can't exactly reprimand you for that, can I, my man? Have you seen Shino – I didn't even think he liked girls." Kankuro gestured to the end of the bar, where Shino had been when I last saw him. He was still there alright, but his face was covered with the girl he'd been chatting with before. Literally. It was pretty funny actually – the area around his mouth was a faded red of smeared lipstick prints. I chuckled.
"I feel mean trying to drag him away from the only action I've ever seen him get, but my head is killing me. Let's bounce?" I tried to make my tone as light as possible and Kankuro nodded.
"Never thought I'd say this, but I'm getting pretty tired too. You should go outside and get a taxi, and I'll go find the others." With that, he turned and shoved his way back into the seething mass of people, leaving me to locate the door and stumble outside into humid night air.
...For a first meeting, it was pretty special. Well, I say first. The first I can properly remember that is. And I never thought I'd be seeing Sasuke again – in my opinion, that was it. I'd met a complete (albeit fucking pretty) dick who owned a club in France, and that was that. Inconsequential. The irony is, I couldn't have been more wrong. About all of it.
In terms of France… well, I enjoyed the rest of the holiday. Clubbing didn't hold so much of an appeal to me as it did before I nearly got date-raped though, and I was meticulous about my drink – to the point where the others teased me about it, but I was still pretty freaked out for a couple of days afterwards. At least until all the hickeys and marks faded. We did all the touristy things, went to see a couple of bands, got horribly sun burnt. The whole she-bang.
I guess the next major incident was the 15th August. Otherwise known as results day, oh, and the worst day of my life. I'm not one of those people who wake up ridiculously early to check my results on the website. Truth be told, I was up until about 2am the night before playing Halo with Kiba. I don't know, I thought I'd done pretty average – not amazingly, but not terribly either, so I wasn't really that worried about it.
On the actual day, I woke up at around 10am with a that horrible feeling like your stomach's about to fall out of your mouth, and it took me a couple of seconds to work out why. Iruka (my guardian) was downstairs yelling at me to hurry up and get up so I rolled out of bed and booted up my computer. I didn't want to check my phone just yet, because I knew Shino and Ten-Ten and everyone would have gotten all A*'s or whatever so I left it off. Our internet is ancient, and so every web page takes an age to load. It was sort of all building up inside me, the sudden worry and concern and that slight numbingly stupid excitement.
I checked the website.
And refreshed the page.
And refreshed it again.
And again.
The results didn't change: I still had three blank D's staring back at me. My heart sped up and I felt like I was going to be sick. I think I was in denial, thinking they'd somehow messed up the marking, or I'd logged into someone else's account. How had this happened? I wasn't exactly an A student, but I should have at least been scoring B's or even C's! Shit, Iruka was going to be furious. No, wait, it was worse. He was going to be disappointed. I can't stand Iruka when he's disappointed. It just makes me feel so guilty and shit about myself for making him feel that way.
And that's when the worst of it hit me – all my grades were way to low to get into any of the Uni's I'd applied to, so...I wouldn't be going to uni like the rest of my friends. I'd be the one stuck at home, like they all said I would be. I'd be proving all of them right when they said Iruka wasn't qualified, was too young to bring up a child. It wasn't just me I'd failed. It was him, and Kankuro and Lee and Shino and Ten-ten and Kiba.
It took me another 4 weeks of depressed moping and bitterness before the letter came through.
Apologies about the length/the crappiness/how long it took me.
I will reread this in a bit and sort out how utterly awfully it was written.