Hello, welcome to the second chapter of my adaptation of a book whose name I don't remember. I hope you enjoy this chapter.
This is a SasuNaru story meaning boy x boy if you are against this than please stop and don't go any further. Also this chapter is long well at least to me it seems long. I don't own Naruto.
Never Mine
Chapter 2
"I am pleased to make your acquaintance," Naruto finally says.
"And I yours," He says, releasing his hand. "I see you have met my children Martha and Randall."
Naruto nods.
"Do you swim?" Martha asks besides him, her voice breaking through the warm bath of Sasuke Uchiha's greeting like a spill of ice.
"Yes I do," Naruto says.
"Are there shells upon the beach?"
"Many," he answers.
Naruto wants to suddenly leave the porch, and the watchfulness of his mother who has not moved over the threshold of the doorway nor spoken a word.
"What kind?"
"What kind of what?" Naruto asked distractedly.
"Shells," Martha says with some impatience.
"Well there are oysters and muscles and of course clams."
"Do you have a basket?"
"One can be found for you," he says.
Sasuke Uchiha walks away from them. He leans against the railing of the porch and studies the view.
"Where?" Martha asks
"There are several in the kitchen," he says.
"What are you working on?"
Naruto at first does not understand the question. Martha points to the sketchbook under his arm.
"A picture," He says. "It's not very good."
"Let me see it."
Although he doesn't want to, Naruto can find no reason to refuse Martha this request.
"No, it is not," Martha says in a forthright manner when she has looked at the drawing.
"Martha," Sasuke Uchiha says. "We should not detain Mr. Uzumaki any longer. Walk with me please."
Naruto watches as Sasuke Uchiha and his daughter descend the wide front steps of the porch and make their way across the lawn, Martha not reaching his shoulders. Naruto turns and looks at his mother who is regarding him thoughtfully. Naruto moves towards her and makes as if to brush past her, and asks (he can hear the false tone in his voice) if he should take the younger children out for a walk along the seawall. Naruto answers himself before his mother can say anything. "Let me just change my boots," he says slipping past her. If she said something to him, he does not hear it.
Naruto's room is soothing to the eye; he is not unlike his mother that within his four walls, he often seeks refuge. It has been prepared in a pale azure that echoes the sky. The room is only large enough for him, a small bedside table, dresser, and a writing desk and a chair. Naruto has pushed the writing desk against the window so that he might enjoy the view of the ocean. He finds that the dim light in his room will often give him tranquility once he shuts the door and he realizes he is alone.
But on this day, there is no peace to be had in that room or in any other. He walks to the window and away again. He lies on the bed and then is immediately up and pacing. He walks over to the glass over his dresser and peers at his face, turning his face from side to side to observe it, trying to imagine how it might be seen in the first few seconds of a greeting. He soon notices the slight blush on his face, and he is certain that his mother must have seen it too. He then wonders about his mother, who is probably waiting for him to descend with the boots to take the children for a walk on the beach, as he has promised. And at that moment, as if in answer, there is a knock.
Composing himself as best he can, Naruto moves to the door and opens it. His mother stands across the threshold, her arms folded, her mouth open in a question that does not entirely emerge. It is fortunate that Naruto looks as ill as he professes to be. He lies to his mother and tells her he has an uneasy stomach, possibly from something he has eaten. He does not feel feverish, he adds, but he has been resting for a moment.
"I see," his mother says though Naruto notes the doubt lines in the cast of his mother's mouth. Naruto has lied before, white lies to protect his mother from discovering some small truth that might worry her needlessly, but Naruto is not aware of his ever having lied to protect or excuse himself. He can tell that his mother is discomfited by Naruto's agitated state as he is.
"You will not come down to dinner," his mother says, and Naruto hears in her voice that it is not a question, but a statement.
After she leaves, Naruto lays on his bed. He stares at nothing instead tries to calm himself by focusing on the sound of waves breaking against the sand. After a while, this effort begins to pay of as he is able to regain his regular breath. So much so that he gets up and searches the room for an occupation. On his bedside table he sees the book his father gave him to read the day before. He picks it up and runs his finger through the slightly raised letters of the title. He takes the book with him, to the room's only chair and begins to read.
That afternoon, Naruto reads Sasuke Uchiha's entire book, not to educate himself, or to understand its contents, but to search for clues as to another's mind in the specific combination of words, as if the structure of the sentences and the words therein were formulas that once deciphered might reveal small secrets. But he is, as he reads, despite his true intentions, absorbed in the matter of the book. In Life in Lowell Mills, Sasuke Uchiha presents to the reader seven stories, or rather, Naruto thinks portraits that are extraordinarily detailed and drawn with objectivity, of people associated with the mills at Lowell. He sees that the reader is given a depiction of the daily struggles of these workers. He wonders about his father's motivation on exposing him to this material, although this is not the first time he has given him difficult or questionable subject matter that other teachers might suppress. He has always encouraged Naruto, in theirs dialogues, not to turn away from the painful or the ugly, at least not in print. After reading the book he feels as though he has known Sasuke Uchiha at length when, of course, he has not.
After reading the book he is able to convince himself that he has somehow managed to trade an unacceptable set of feelings for an acceptable set, namely, to have spun respect from confusion, admiration from agitation, and that this alchemy permits him to contemplate descending for the evening meal in an almost normal state.
Naruto make the decision to go to supper and confront the reality of his unkempt appearance in the mirror over the dresser. Naruto decides that he will not bother Iruka with the small task of helping him find something to wear. He has an unpleasant half hour deciding what to wear, he has no idea what to wear, is this a formal dinner? should he try and tame his wild blonde hair? He decided on a simple white shirt, his black trousers and nothing else, but just as he was about to leave his room he looked at himself in the mirror and realized he looked like nothing more than a tall lanky child, not a young man, so he turned back and frantically searched for something else. He then finds his striped vest throws it over his white shirt, this time as he heads out the door he wisely avoids looking in the mirror.
He can hear muffled voices in the direction of the porch and so takes a detour to the dining room, unwilling yet to enter into the conversation. Since it is the first supper of the season, the table is set more elaborately than usual, with cloisonné china, his mother's crystal goblets, and masses of miniature cream roses strewn seemingly haphazardly, upon the damask of the tablecloth. Beyond the door to the butler's pantry, she can hear raised voices and the sound of metal clanging upon metal. And than he hears another sound, the sibilant rustling of skirts in the doorway.
"You must be Naruto."
Naruto notices first, the woman's wide green eyes, green and transparent as sea glass. Sakura Uchiha advances, and Naruto is surprised to discover that the woman is not tall, and that she has an almost imperceptible limp.
"What a lovely room," Sakura says, removing her hat and letting free her long pink hair.
"You must be Mrs. Uchiha," Naruto responds, finding his tongue.
"I can never get used to the beauty of Myrtle Beach, no matter how many times I come here," she says attempting to pin her hair back in a knot at the back of her head. Naruto is struck by her smile, which is not a smile of self-satisfaction, but seems rather to be one of genuine contentment.
"I hope the children have not been pestering you," Sakura says. "Have you met them? I know Martha will have been charmed by you and will want to question you about all manner of things, and you must send her away whenever you want."
"Oh not at all," Naruto says, thinking that Martha was not in the slightest charmed by him. "I have hardly seen them, except to meet them, as I have been in my room all afternoon."
"Really? On such a fine day? Whatever for?"
Instantly Naruto regrets having confessed confinement in his room, and he sees as well that he cannot tell this woman that he has spent the entire afternoon reading her husband's essays. Although Naruto cannot articulate precisely why at that moment, the idea feels ill-mannered and intrusive, as if he had been studying an album of private photographs.
"I have been resting," he says
"Oh, I hope you are not unwell."
"No, I am very well," Naruto answers in confusion looking at his feet.
"Sakura," the woman says, slowly, pronouncing her name in three syllables. "Please call me Sakura. Otherwise you will make me fell too old. Do you suppose I might have time to slip up to my room and change into another dress, one that has not been dragged along the sand and the sea moss?"
It is not really a question, and Mrs. Uchiha leaves the room with the same sibilant swishing of her skirts with which she entered.
That night they are seven at dinner, with the addition of Jiraiya, who owns hotels and boarding houses in town, as well as Neji Hyuga, a poet from Quincy who is having a holiday at the Highland Hotel. Mr. Jiraiya is a husky man with pure white hair; he has on a striped jacket and cream trousers. Cote, whose poetry he has sampled and set aside, his saccharine (over sentimental) and sorrowful images where not to her liking, is a handsome man with dark long hair, astonishingly white teeth, he was most intrigued by his lavender eyes.
He forms quick judgments about the guests. He sees that Neji Hyuga, in his gestures and conversation, is too eager to please her father, who has not yet decided whether or not publish his poetry. He finds that this eagerness is more pathetic than charming. He prefers Jiraiya's gruff demeanor, in his odd striped suit, with his sharp-tongue replies to his father's queries, for these in turn produce joviality in his father.
Sasuke Uchiha is seated at the far end of the table, and from time to time Naruto can hear his voice. He is inattentive until such time as the lamb medallions and the rice croquettes are served. That night he observed that his father seems to be more than usually animated, he thinks this must somehow be attributable to the double beauty of Mrs. Uchiha and his mother. Naruto discovers, as he looks around the table that all the other men are well positioned in regard to the double mirrors and thus are recipients of an infinite multiplication of the charms inherent in a certain tilt of a head. While in the course of his drifting thoughts, he glances over at the opposite end of the table, he sees that Sasuke Uchiha is not gazing not at the charms of his wife or of Kushina Uzumaki, either in the flesh or in the double mirrors, but at him.
Dun Dun Dun. So this was it I wrote this really late hope you liked it. I just went to the rally for Obama and I came back fired up so OBAMA 2008 CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN IT. Well back to the topic at hand, please review ask me questions if you are confused, but just don't go crazy and flame me I get enough of that from my professors. I will more than likely update tomorrow since I have absolutely no life. Also before I get murdered by Sakura fans I would just like it noted I don't hate her its just that this is the way it worked out, this was the only way I could include her in my story.
