I'm happy that you guys like this story. I loved the reviews, every single
one of them. They definitely made my day better. As for those wondering
about my other story, I am still working on it, so don't worry. It's just
that this story has me by the ankles and won't let go for some reason..
Anyway, I hope you guys like what I wrote here.
Warnings: There will be angst. This is a love story, after all, what's love without that miserable angst? But still, Naruto POV, bit of language, smart-assness. Grammar spoofs, perhaps.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Thank my therapist for that admission.
--
Chapter 3
Sometimes, things happen that challenge my complete lack of belief in a benevolent divine being. Or at least, spur me to find Lady Luck and kick her unnecessarily interfering ass. So, what is making me want to pummel a deity held in high regard by most and the non-existent lady worshipped by gamblers?
The fact that Sasuke and I actually talked. That's right, we talked, with words. English words.
You're thinking, oh that's good, you should be happy. But oh no, there's nothing to be happy about. You want to know what I'm yammering about?
Let's back up and see what the hell happened, shall we?
Anyway, after school one day, not too long after that Sakura mess, it could be a Tuesday or even a Wednesday, they all blur together in a mess, I went over to Gaara's house to hang. Usually, we hang at his place because it is massive. Mansion massive. Like, I got lost there one day looking for the bathroom and had to use a planter while ignoring the maid's scandalized screams. Yeah, he has maids. And butlers who wear those tuxedo things and talk to you with that upper crust Brit accents. I guess you got the correct impression that Gaara, or at least, his father, is loaded.
So it's more fun to haunt his house than mine. He has the house all to himself, minus all the servants and cooks and gardeners and some such, so no one yells at him. His father is a big business guy who travels all the time and for the near three years Gaara and I've been friends, I have yet to see they guy. His older brother, Kankuro is at college and his older sister, Temari, moved out when we were in our sophomore year to live with her boyfriend. Gaara's kind of lonely because he's there all by himself, so I kind of invade his home as often as possible. He doesn't mind at all, he even said if I wanted, I could just move in with my guardian, Iruka. Cool, huh?
I did ask Iruka if we could, to which he replied in various choking noises and bulging eyes. I took that to mean 'no,' but hey, the idea was awesome. Living with my best friend and my guardian in a house the size of Texas, fully loaded with electronics, basketball court, swimming pool, you name it, it has it. Too bad Iruka doesn't think it's a good idea. I mean, I like our house, it's small, always in a mess because neither of us likes to clean, and got that cozy feeling, but come on!
Okay, off that tangent and back to the story of how Sasuke and I came to have a conversation. Where was I? Oh yeah, hanging out with Gaara and playing video games. And I'm trying to convince him, between the messy ways he's killing me in yet another game, that I do not have a crush on Sakura.
"She's got pink hair, Gaara! Pink isn't my color at all."
The little shit smirks, like he doesn't believe me. Which he doesn't.
"You know," he murmurs, his voice a low hum, "you have been telling me how and why you do not like Sakura for.. oh.." He glances at the mantle clock above the immense television entertainment set, taking his eyes off the video game but still kicking my sorry ass. "An hour and forty minutes now."
"That's because you won't believe me!" Yeah, I can whine. "What kind of best friend doesn't believe me when I say something like that?"
"The kind with a brain." Oh lord, the fucking irony.. "and besides, you heard of the phrase, 'thou protests too much'?"
"Stop that! That's from something I haven't read, isn't it?"
In case you want to know, Gaara likes to toss in cool and intellectual sounding phrases into his speech pattern. Why? Who the hell knows? Half the time, I don't know what he's thinking and the times that I do, I wish that I didn't.
See how we get along so well?
"Fine, fine." Gaara stands, and I see that I have been completely annihilated, again, in the game. Then he stretches, his arms stretching way above his head, and tosses me an amused grin. "You don't like Sakura. I believe you."
Liar, liar, pants on fire. Or at least, the pants will be on fire when I get some gasoline and matches!
"Since you don't like Sakura," he continues, apparently not noticing the way my thoughts have turned to imminent pyromania, "you should prove it to me."
Heh? "You believe me, but I have to prove it?" Isn't there a contradiction in there somewhere?
"By proving it, I will consider this subject matter closed."
This once again proves that my best friend is a twisted, sadistic bastard who knows how to torture me. On one hand, I can have him continue to make fun of me over Sakura who I do not like. Or, I can see what he means by proving it.
I asked him to give me some time to think on it. A big decision like this, I need to sleep on it, you know, read that as avoid it.
So, next day in school, which I attended, I was preoccupied with Gaara's 'prove it or lose it' challenge. That does not mean I forgot to stare at Sasuke nor that I put my project on hold. Just.. I had other things on my mind. It just felt like I was lying to my best friend somehow, by letting him think that I liked Sakura. But hell, I did not have the guts to tell him the absolute truth. Geh, me and my stinking ethics.
I do have them, you know.
Preoccupied as I was, I was actually early to a class. Gym. You know, where they turn you into an impressive specimen of teenaged goodness of muscle and balanced diet, otherwise known as 'bullcrap.' In the past, before my Sasuke obsession, I never attended gym. I got enough exercise running from the jocks whose lockers I vandalized or car tires I'd punctured on a daily basis. I seriously did not need gym. Then I started attending, due to Sasuke being there and all, but always went late because the first day I was there, I realized that I won't do so well with Sasuke undressing about three feet from me.
Uchiha and Uzumaki. Alphabetically, very, very close. Makes lockers very close. Makes horny, hormone driven, in love blonde boy of short stature (that's me) very, very, very, very stupid. As in, I stared. Really couldn't help it. Then, I dehydrated from drooling out my body's water supply. Third, right next to the mantra 'he's so hot, nice abs, oh god, his arms, holy crap, he wears boxer briefs,'.. was my constant reminder of 'down, erection, down!'
See, bad situation. One I learned to avoid after that first potentially embarrassing day in the locker room even though I so wanted to stare more at Sasuke's undressed form. I wanted to be his friend, not creep him out by leering at him like a pervert. But thanks to Gaara, I forgot and went to the locker rooms early, before anyone else had made an appearance.
Except for Sasuke.
There he was, standing there with his shirt half off, and I just about lost my thought processes. I almost turned around and left, but he saw me, scowled slightly, and I saw that if I did leave, it'd be even stranger, so I went to my locker, fighting down the blush and the staring impulse. I opened my locker as slowly as possible, suppressing the urge to crawl into it and hide. We were alone, in a locker room, getting undressed.
One of my wet dreams? Damn straight. A premise for many, many porns? Whoa, yeah. Jerk-off material for tonight? You betcha.
Safe to say, my mind was swimming in the gutters, various scenes of.. hell, use your imagination, because I certainly used mine. Then, as I was in the middle of a particularly spectacular scene involving Sasuke and the bench I was sitting on, he spoke to me.
Yeah, he, Sasuke, talked to me first. So began the conversation that I so curse.
"I hear that you have a crush on my girlfriend."
See what I mean by not liking the whole situation?
I'm sorry to say, for full three seconds, I gaped. Like a fish. A carp, or perhaps, even one of those sea bass things. Then, my brilliant come back.
"I do?"
Funny, how 'I certainly do not like your girlfriend, though she is a nice person, and more importantly, I was hoping we could be friends' came out so short. And as a question.
"Whatever." He smirked. Gorgeous. "You do know you have no chance, right?"
"I don't?" Okay, brain, engage. NOW!
"Just to let you know." He finished dressing into his gym uniform, complete with those shorts that just had no right to look so damned sexy. I guess he finished as I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Still haven't figure it out, and he was leaving!
Then, whoosh, he was gone and I was left sitting on the bench, my mouth still open like a barn door, holding my gym clothes in a grip that could have turned coals to diamonds.
What the.. Did he just.. How the hell..
Let me untangle my thought processes and explain it to you.
One: What the hell did he mean by that?
Two: Did he just talk to me about having a crush on Sakura?
Three: How the hell did he hear that stupid, untrue piece of gossip?
See why I'm cursing the gods and wanting to chase down Lady Luck with a sawed-off shotgun? I was supposed to talk to Sasuke and woo him into being my friend by being witty and amazing, damn it! How had this happened if not for those cursed gods and that thrice damned bitch called Luck?
That's when I gave up being in school for the day and high tailed it out of there. I was lucky to have enough presence of mind to put my normal clothes on before I did or I would have been in a whole different kind of trouble. Man, when plans go down the crapshoot, they really go fast, don't they?
So that's how my first actual encounter with Sasuke involving words of the English kind occurred. Afterwards, when my brain finally decided to join the party, I blamed the gods, I blamed fickle Luck, and to be fair, I blamed Gaara. If it wasn't for him telling me to prove that I didn't like Sakura, I would not have gone to gym so early and I would not have had that ridiculous talk with Sasuke.
Sasuke thinks I like Sakura. And he taunted me about it, smirking in that sexy way, using his bedroom voice to let me know that indeed, I was quite far beneath him.
And you know what? It had.. hurt.
Argh, maybe this is a sign that I should not be in love with him, but the heart is a dumb-ass organ, bent on doing things its own, stupid way.
Well, no use being depressed, because I'm thinking, it can't possibly get any worse.
Oh shit.. I just challenged the power of worse. Excuse me while I crack my skull open, pull out my completely useless brain and nail it to the wall.
--
TBC
Anyway, I hope you guys like what I wrote here.
Warnings: There will be angst. This is a love story, after all, what's love without that miserable angst? But still, Naruto POV, bit of language, smart-assness. Grammar spoofs, perhaps.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Thank my therapist for that admission.
--
Chapter 3
Sometimes, things happen that challenge my complete lack of belief in a benevolent divine being. Or at least, spur me to find Lady Luck and kick her unnecessarily interfering ass. So, what is making me want to pummel a deity held in high regard by most and the non-existent lady worshipped by gamblers?
The fact that Sasuke and I actually talked. That's right, we talked, with words. English words.
You're thinking, oh that's good, you should be happy. But oh no, there's nothing to be happy about. You want to know what I'm yammering about?
Let's back up and see what the hell happened, shall we?
Anyway, after school one day, not too long after that Sakura mess, it could be a Tuesday or even a Wednesday, they all blur together in a mess, I went over to Gaara's house to hang. Usually, we hang at his place because it is massive. Mansion massive. Like, I got lost there one day looking for the bathroom and had to use a planter while ignoring the maid's scandalized screams. Yeah, he has maids. And butlers who wear those tuxedo things and talk to you with that upper crust Brit accents. I guess you got the correct impression that Gaara, or at least, his father, is loaded.
So it's more fun to haunt his house than mine. He has the house all to himself, minus all the servants and cooks and gardeners and some such, so no one yells at him. His father is a big business guy who travels all the time and for the near three years Gaara and I've been friends, I have yet to see they guy. His older brother, Kankuro is at college and his older sister, Temari, moved out when we were in our sophomore year to live with her boyfriend. Gaara's kind of lonely because he's there all by himself, so I kind of invade his home as often as possible. He doesn't mind at all, he even said if I wanted, I could just move in with my guardian, Iruka. Cool, huh?
I did ask Iruka if we could, to which he replied in various choking noises and bulging eyes. I took that to mean 'no,' but hey, the idea was awesome. Living with my best friend and my guardian in a house the size of Texas, fully loaded with electronics, basketball court, swimming pool, you name it, it has it. Too bad Iruka doesn't think it's a good idea. I mean, I like our house, it's small, always in a mess because neither of us likes to clean, and got that cozy feeling, but come on!
Okay, off that tangent and back to the story of how Sasuke and I came to have a conversation. Where was I? Oh yeah, hanging out with Gaara and playing video games. And I'm trying to convince him, between the messy ways he's killing me in yet another game, that I do not have a crush on Sakura.
"She's got pink hair, Gaara! Pink isn't my color at all."
The little shit smirks, like he doesn't believe me. Which he doesn't.
"You know," he murmurs, his voice a low hum, "you have been telling me how and why you do not like Sakura for.. oh.." He glances at the mantle clock above the immense television entertainment set, taking his eyes off the video game but still kicking my sorry ass. "An hour and forty minutes now."
"That's because you won't believe me!" Yeah, I can whine. "What kind of best friend doesn't believe me when I say something like that?"
"The kind with a brain." Oh lord, the fucking irony.. "and besides, you heard of the phrase, 'thou protests too much'?"
"Stop that! That's from something I haven't read, isn't it?"
In case you want to know, Gaara likes to toss in cool and intellectual sounding phrases into his speech pattern. Why? Who the hell knows? Half the time, I don't know what he's thinking and the times that I do, I wish that I didn't.
See how we get along so well?
"Fine, fine." Gaara stands, and I see that I have been completely annihilated, again, in the game. Then he stretches, his arms stretching way above his head, and tosses me an amused grin. "You don't like Sakura. I believe you."
Liar, liar, pants on fire. Or at least, the pants will be on fire when I get some gasoline and matches!
"Since you don't like Sakura," he continues, apparently not noticing the way my thoughts have turned to imminent pyromania, "you should prove it to me."
Heh? "You believe me, but I have to prove it?" Isn't there a contradiction in there somewhere?
"By proving it, I will consider this subject matter closed."
This once again proves that my best friend is a twisted, sadistic bastard who knows how to torture me. On one hand, I can have him continue to make fun of me over Sakura who I do not like. Or, I can see what he means by proving it.
I asked him to give me some time to think on it. A big decision like this, I need to sleep on it, you know, read that as avoid it.
So, next day in school, which I attended, I was preoccupied with Gaara's 'prove it or lose it' challenge. That does not mean I forgot to stare at Sasuke nor that I put my project on hold. Just.. I had other things on my mind. It just felt like I was lying to my best friend somehow, by letting him think that I liked Sakura. But hell, I did not have the guts to tell him the absolute truth. Geh, me and my stinking ethics.
I do have them, you know.
Preoccupied as I was, I was actually early to a class. Gym. You know, where they turn you into an impressive specimen of teenaged goodness of muscle and balanced diet, otherwise known as 'bullcrap.' In the past, before my Sasuke obsession, I never attended gym. I got enough exercise running from the jocks whose lockers I vandalized or car tires I'd punctured on a daily basis. I seriously did not need gym. Then I started attending, due to Sasuke being there and all, but always went late because the first day I was there, I realized that I won't do so well with Sasuke undressing about three feet from me.
Uchiha and Uzumaki. Alphabetically, very, very close. Makes lockers very close. Makes horny, hormone driven, in love blonde boy of short stature (that's me) very, very, very, very stupid. As in, I stared. Really couldn't help it. Then, I dehydrated from drooling out my body's water supply. Third, right next to the mantra 'he's so hot, nice abs, oh god, his arms, holy crap, he wears boxer briefs,'.. was my constant reminder of 'down, erection, down!'
See, bad situation. One I learned to avoid after that first potentially embarrassing day in the locker room even though I so wanted to stare more at Sasuke's undressed form. I wanted to be his friend, not creep him out by leering at him like a pervert. But thanks to Gaara, I forgot and went to the locker rooms early, before anyone else had made an appearance.
Except for Sasuke.
There he was, standing there with his shirt half off, and I just about lost my thought processes. I almost turned around and left, but he saw me, scowled slightly, and I saw that if I did leave, it'd be even stranger, so I went to my locker, fighting down the blush and the staring impulse. I opened my locker as slowly as possible, suppressing the urge to crawl into it and hide. We were alone, in a locker room, getting undressed.
One of my wet dreams? Damn straight. A premise for many, many porns? Whoa, yeah. Jerk-off material for tonight? You betcha.
Safe to say, my mind was swimming in the gutters, various scenes of.. hell, use your imagination, because I certainly used mine. Then, as I was in the middle of a particularly spectacular scene involving Sasuke and the bench I was sitting on, he spoke to me.
Yeah, he, Sasuke, talked to me first. So began the conversation that I so curse.
"I hear that you have a crush on my girlfriend."
See what I mean by not liking the whole situation?
I'm sorry to say, for full three seconds, I gaped. Like a fish. A carp, or perhaps, even one of those sea bass things. Then, my brilliant come back.
"I do?"
Funny, how 'I certainly do not like your girlfriend, though she is a nice person, and more importantly, I was hoping we could be friends' came out so short. And as a question.
"Whatever." He smirked. Gorgeous. "You do know you have no chance, right?"
"I don't?" Okay, brain, engage. NOW!
"Just to let you know." He finished dressing into his gym uniform, complete with those shorts that just had no right to look so damned sexy. I guess he finished as I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Still haven't figure it out, and he was leaving!
Then, whoosh, he was gone and I was left sitting on the bench, my mouth still open like a barn door, holding my gym clothes in a grip that could have turned coals to diamonds.
What the.. Did he just.. How the hell..
Let me untangle my thought processes and explain it to you.
One: What the hell did he mean by that?
Two: Did he just talk to me about having a crush on Sakura?
Three: How the hell did he hear that stupid, untrue piece of gossip?
See why I'm cursing the gods and wanting to chase down Lady Luck with a sawed-off shotgun? I was supposed to talk to Sasuke and woo him into being my friend by being witty and amazing, damn it! How had this happened if not for those cursed gods and that thrice damned bitch called Luck?
That's when I gave up being in school for the day and high tailed it out of there. I was lucky to have enough presence of mind to put my normal clothes on before I did or I would have been in a whole different kind of trouble. Man, when plans go down the crapshoot, they really go fast, don't they?
So that's how my first actual encounter with Sasuke involving words of the English kind occurred. Afterwards, when my brain finally decided to join the party, I blamed the gods, I blamed fickle Luck, and to be fair, I blamed Gaara. If it wasn't for him telling me to prove that I didn't like Sakura, I would not have gone to gym so early and I would not have had that ridiculous talk with Sasuke.
Sasuke thinks I like Sakura. And he taunted me about it, smirking in that sexy way, using his bedroom voice to let me know that indeed, I was quite far beneath him.
And you know what? It had.. hurt.
Argh, maybe this is a sign that I should not be in love with him, but the heart is a dumb-ass organ, bent on doing things its own, stupid way.
Well, no use being depressed, because I'm thinking, it can't possibly get any worse.
Oh shit.. I just challenged the power of worse. Excuse me while I crack my skull open, pull out my completely useless brain and nail it to the wall.
--
TBC