Lord Hokage's Dog—Part 4

Walking out of Ichiraku's, Sasuke stared up at the star-studded sky as Naruto stretched. A small frown slid across his face and he turned to face Naruto, who was waving him in another direction. "C'mon, you'll be staying in Hokage tower tonight until the Uchiha place is cleaned up a bit. I knew you wouldn't wanna stay in the barracks, so I had it restored to its former dark glory." Sasuke raised an eyebrow at Naruto's dramatic description but had to admit that he agreed with it. Void of its prior inhabitants, the Uchiha Estate had been falling apart, even when it was under Sasuke's care.

They walked a ways more, Naruto telling Sasuke of the changes to the housing district as they sauntered down the street. Sasuke only half-listened, grimacing slightly at the shrieking rips of pain that flowed through his leg. Fighting with Sakura and Shikamaru had torn open the fragile stitches, and a warm trickle of blood slipped across his calf. Trying to concentrate, Sasuke discretely slipped some of his chakra down to the gash to secure the wrappings, but Naruto made an unannounced stop, sending Sasuke careening into his back. He turned around to look at the taller man, and gave him a disapproving frown.

"If you're injured, just tell me next time", Naruto mumbled, "instead of trying to hide it. It makes things more complicated."

Grumbling, Naruto grabs him by the arm, and when Sasuke thinks that Naruto's going to drag him to Hokage Tower, he feels his feet come off the ground.

"Naruto, what the—"

"I'm carrying your sorry butt, teme! Just how many brain cells did you lose while you were on that mission? Trying to stand while you've got an open wound the size of Kohona…"

So, he's on Naruto's shoulder now, and he should be fighting this, but he's too drained to argue. Besides, Sasuke's lost whatever honor he had left, and getting off that leg is fantastic; having to listen to Naruto's lecture is worth it.

But does Naruto really have to carry him like this in the middle of town?

Breathing a sigh, Sasuke notices women at the late markets snickering and giggling behind their palms. He rolls his eyes, but a fierce blush is attempting to work its way to his cheeks. Naruto's got him like a sack of potatoes across his shoulder and the indignity of it all is almost too much. The fact that Naruto's a couple of heads shorter than him doesn't help as his hands dangle at the man's lower back.

What really irks Sasuke though is that Naruto is going faster than before, as if he knew Sasuke was injured the entire time, and was just waiting for him to say something.

If Sasuke wasn't so tired, he'd insult him or knock his block off, but that would probably mean falling, and they're almost to Hokage Tower already. His eye twitches again as Naruto effortlessly takes out his keys to the door and without even stopping to put Sasuke down, he's walking up the stairs to the living quarters, fixing water to make tea, and calling Iruka-sensei.

This is getting chronic; Sasuke needs Naruto to put him down. Now.

And before Sasuke knows it, his head is slapped against a pillow, with Naruto crouched over the side of a mattress. Naruto knows just how much humiliation Sasuke can take, and when it comes to moments like these, he doesn't mess around.

Looking around, Sasuke realizes that they're in one of Hokage Tower's many bedrooms, and he's lying on a bed so soft that he is convinced that it is air. It's so good to be down, and that pain in his leg is subsiding a bit because Naruto his healing it.

Wait.

Naruto? Healing?

Warm, tan hands are palm-faced to his bare leg, and the chakra radiating off of them is slowly reconnecting tissues and removing splinters of steel and wood from when Sasuke tried to stint the wound. Engaging his Sharingan, Sasuke realizes that this particular chakra is limited because it's not Naruto's at all, but he recognizes it as Sakura's.

Craning his head to look at Naruto, Sasuke's voice sounds foreign as he murmurs, "How?"

Naruto just shrugs, stretches as he finishes his task, "I knew that my chakra sends your seal on edge, so I just kinda… um… remolded it to feel like Sakura's."

"You remolded your chakra."

"Well… yeah."

If there was ever a moment where Naruto's utter cluelessness is striking, this is it. The man doesn't even realize just how big the thing he has just done is, and Sasuke's too fed up with him to even try to explain.

"Dead last, you don't even realize, do you?"

Naruto's innocent confused expression turns on a dime, and he elbows Sasuke's renewed (but still very sore) thigh, firing off a look of such irritation, that despite his pain, Sasuke has to fight not to laugh out loud. He thinks of something though and his humor is negated immediately.

All the chunnin were at the meeting—but Iruka wasn't, and for some reason, this irritates him, along with the fact that he hasn't seen Kakashi since he arrived. The fact that Naruto isn't forthcoming with this information puts him on edge.

Oh, and the fact that Naruto's stolen his pants.

Yeah, that's a real kicker. Sasuke's underwear has been hoisted up so high; he's beginning to question whether he's wearing boxers or a G-string. He spots his ripped pants hanging from the frame of a wastebasket, and he knows he's going to kill Naruto if what he thinks Naruto did is true.

"You ripped my pants off, didn't you?"

Sasuke says this with a straight face, but once the words are out he has to fight to keep it. A heavy blush and a convoluted look overtake Naruto's face, and he knows those were the wrong words to use. Nevertheless, the blonde man hops off the bed and motions jerkily to a set of new clothes in the corner. Stammering, he informs Sasuke that there are new clothes over there, he'll be out front, oh, when did he become such a pervert, and take a shower, the bathroom's over there, and man oh man he smells.

He leaves Sasuke with wearing only a shirt and boxers and an amused look on his face.

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Sasuke showers and feels the world go right again. The creak in his muscles is gone, along with the smell, the grime, and the caked blood. It's been a long while since he's had an opportunity to clean himself at all, what with the running, the hard undercover work, and with the constant, urgent needs that have been bang-banging at the back of his head. He's a little ashamed that he's come scrambling back to Kohona for what he needs, but one of his needs he can only get here.

Sasuke needs food—or at least money for it. Naruto's missions are long exhausting things that drain him of energy, and he couldn't keep working side jobs in order to get more money because of that injury.

Sasuke also needs rest, sweet, blessed rest. He could get that almost anywhere, but Kohona was where he was headed.

Sasuke needed that leg fixed, and he still ponders about that thing Naruto did with his chakra as he dresses himself.

Most importantly, however, Sasuke needed more of Naruto's chakra.

He hisses in disgust as he spots the long jagged scar on his stomach, then wrenches on a shirt, his mind flooding with memories of how he came this low, grumbles at the fact that he ran when Naruto came after Akatsuki, scowls that Naruto beat him not once, but twice. Cursing quietly, he leans against he bathroom wall as he recalls the final moments of their second fight.

When Naruto finally found Sasuke after his first defeat, they were about to duke it out again. In retrospect, Sasuke should have realized this was a bad idea. After a week of fighting, it came down to which one of them had enough chakra to keep going, and Naruto wins that contest every time.

Sasuke knew he was going to lose, so in a last ditch attempt, he goes for the classic approach—sticking a Chidori wherever he can find on Naruto's anatomy. However, because he's so drained, it misses, and he's almost dead; there's barely enough chakra to keep breathing.

Stumbling, Sasuke crushes his hands into the forest floor, wishing he could summon his snakes, could dredge up some sort of defense, but Naruto's coming like a train that he cannot stop. The evening air is thin and cold, and stings Sasuke's lungs as he takes another shuddering breath, one of his hands to his stomach to hold in the blood and organs that slip warm across his fingers. Sasuke coughs, and a tremolo of pain ricochet through his torso as he digs violently into the ground.

He's got to keep going, has to, or Naruto will find him, and he's sure by now that he will kill him. His eyes are burning now, searing into his skull—he's had his Sharingan engaged so long that he's convinced that this is what normal sight is like, and it doesn't help that it's dark outside. Sasuke hates this; this hiding, this weakness that Naruto is putting him through, but if he comes out he knows he's dead, or worse—stuck in some Kohona prison, rotting underneath the village he hates.

He wishes that Karin was here with her intelligence and constant support. He wishes that Juugo were here so he could let him take over long enough for him to recover. He wishes that Sugietsu were here to distract Naruto somehow, because Naruto is coming, coming, coming.

Amateseru licks the top of the trees and slowly burns down as Naruto just barely avoids getting touched by the flames and is so close that Sasuke can hear it when his sweat from the heat falls to the ground just to his right. And Naruto is coming, coming, coming!

Sasuke silently balks at just how afraid he is now of the man that used to be his best friend and the dead last beneath him. Underground now, he's reminded that the rest of his family is underground too, and that he may be coming to permanently see them soon.

But Sasuke doesn't want to die, is desperate not to, and tries his best to suppress the small beacons that the miniscule amount of chakra left in him give off. Despite his fear he's fading in and out of consciousness and hoping that Uzumaki either finds him or leaves soon, because his below ground burrow is running out of air and space. Dizziness overtakes him, because his chakra is so low, and is rapidly dwindling.

Just as Sasuke's heartbeat begins to die off, a hand rips through the soil and pulls him out the ground by the hair, dragging him to the surface and dragging him through the dirt, ripping open his stomach wound to allow his organs to steam in the fall air. Sasuke is so sure he's going to die, is absolutely certain that the chakra poised in Naruto's hand is to kill him that he tenses his entire body and shuts his eyes.

When Naruto brings his hand down, Sasuke experiences a relief so deep that he nearly cries, but also confusion; he's not dead, and neither is he unconscious. In fact, he feels more alive than he ever has before. There's a hot tingle that is flooding his body, and makes his whole being flutter with something akin to ecstasy. He opens his eyes and the world pours into his head like a tub of hot water being funneled down his nose.

Everything is in intense color; the sky is a darker black, the dusky moon a creamier yellow, and Naruto's hair looks like a halo of gold. Sasuke gasps at this, and can taste the air; the consuming taste of nature almost makes him sick. Until he smells it, and it is an intoxicating concoction of musk, Naruto's scent, his own smell, grass, and the wet of decomposing plant matter.

He takes a shuddering breath in, overwhelmed.

And concentrates just enough that he can feel Naruto giving him more of… of—whatever that stuff is—chakra, yeah. But his heart is pumping like a piston, and Sasuke is enamored with the feel of his own blood rushing through his arteries and veins.

Then the pain comes.

Sasuke knew he was injured, but it's alarming when all his sensations are cranked up to their maximum abilities, and he can't bite back the scream that rips out of his throat, and he feels the skin on Naruto's hands against his chest pushing him down.

Sasuke's brain overloads, and plunges him into vivid images. He thinks he sees his mother wearing a rainbow colored dress dancing with his father on one of the tree branches, Kakashi arguing with a toad as big as he is, and the sun colliding with the moon in a spray of rice and hot oil. He then realizes that his is a hallucination, because his father burnt that dress when his mother and he had a fight a long time ago.

So instead of pondering on it any further, Sasuke blacks out.

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