Behind the Sun

Chapter 4: Love

"Ramen! Ramen! Ramen!" Naruto invented a tune as he danced in circles down the street.

Gaara followed silently, keeping to the shadows on the west side of the boulevard.

"Ramen! Ramen! Naruto wants ramen now!"

Ichiraku chuckled as the hyper blonde leapt onto a stool at his ramen bar. "Welcome back! What will you order today, Naruto?"

"Pork!"

"Coming right up!"

"Yatta! Sit next to Naruto, Gaa-chan!"

Gaara sighed softly as he complied. It had been a long day. Without Temari and Kankurou to divide Naruto's attention Gaara was left to feel the full force of the hyper blonde. Gaara hoped the boy could make friends with some Konoha people soon so he could dump him on them for at least part of the day.

"Ramen! Ramen! Ramen!" Naruto started up again, this time to a different tune.

"Naruto? I heard a rumor you were back in town."

Naruto paused in his singing to glance at the owner of the voice on the bench beside him. "Who're you? Hey! Do you like ramen, too?"

Shikamaru stared at him with his usual glazed look.

"Hey, Naruto!" Chouji waved from around his slouching friend. "It's been a while! Did you eat any good food while abroad?"

The blonde's eyes sparkled as his entire face lit up. "YES! Naruto ate lots of good stuff! Like rabbit! Gaara let Naruto eat lots of rabbit! And deer! And even rattlesnake!" He smacked his lips. "But Gaara doesn't like it when Naruto tries to catch rattlesnake, so Naruto couldn't have too much."

Chouji didn't even blink. "That sounds great! I've never tried rattlesnake!"

Shikamaru leant forward, his head almost parallel with the table, to look at the scowling redhead on the other side of Naruto. "Sabaku no Gaara, huh?"

Naruto took that as a change of subject and jumped on it. "Yeah! Gaa-chan is Naruto's favorite person in the whole world!"

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow.

Gaara twitched, but not from annoyance or killing intent for once. Brain-impaired or not, Gaara's damaged ego always appreciated a well-meant compliment.

"So, Naruto, what's my name?"

The boy's smile faltered as he studied the lazy ninja and contemplated the question. "Etou..."

Shikamaru hummed. "So the rumor about the amnesia is true."

"Where'd you hear that, Shikamaru?"

"Temari, I believe," Gaara smirked inwardly as Shikamaru sent him an irked look for letting loose that tidbit of information. Heehee! Oh, small evils...

Temari-neechan!" exclaimed Naruto. "Will Naruto see Temari-neechan?"

"Temari is in Suna."

Naruto paused.

"We are in Konoha." Gaara clarified.

"Oh!" the blonde twisted excitedly in his seat. "Naruto knows where Suna is! Naruto knows!"

Gaara smiled through his eyes. Despite the fact that Naruto could be painfully oblivious even without brain damage, he was still very much aware of the fact that there was something— quite a few somethings even— that he was missing. So when he found he knew something more than his own name and that he liked ramen, the boy was ecstatic.

"Wati, but what did you mean about a rumor, Shikamaru?" wondered Chouji.

"Tch," the genius sipped his drink. "He has amnesia."

Chouji blinked. "Eh?"

"Will Gaara take Naruto to see Temari-neechan? To Suna!"

"No," Gaara pushed the overly enthused blonde back into his seat with a hand on his shoulder. "Eat your ramen."

"Ramen!" he cheered as the newly brewed broth was delivered to him by a smiling Old Man Ichiraku. "Itadakimasu!"

"So you mean..." Chouji munched a chip to help him think. "That he can't remember stuff?"

Shikamaru nodded.

"Like... how? He remembered the food he had eaten, hadn't he?"

"It's troublesome," Shikamaru mumbled. "Didn't you notice? He didn't recognize us."

"Oh..." Chouji glanced over at the ravenous blonde. "Now that you mention it... isn't it kinda odd that he's been talking in third person?"

Shikamaru gave him a slightly annoyed look.

"More, please!" Naruto held his empty bowl above his head.

Ichiraku chuckled as he placed the new bowl in front of the blonde. They had learned long ago that it was a good idea to cook a huge batch of ramen just for Naruto whenever he came.

The good-natured cook smiled at the redhead accompanying his hungriest patron. "I take it you'll be paying again? Would you like anything?"

A curt nod, no answer for the second question: Ichiraku too that for a 'yes' and a 'no.'

"Naruto," the blonde looked up, his cheeks bulging. "Is it true you have amnesia?"

Naruto stared at the Akimichi, squinting, before swallowing, and looking at Gaara. At the redhead's half-assed nod, he said, "Yes!"

"So, like you... what can't you remember?"

Naruto thought about that for a moment, his chopsticks poised over his ramen. "Eh..." he shrugged. "Naruto can't remember."

"Oh..." Chouji thought for a minute, tapping his chin as Naruto dived back into his ramen. "Wait, do you remember me?"

Naruto swallowed his mouthful and glanced at Gaara. "Eh... is Naruto supposed to?"

"I'm Chouji! Y'know, we took the Chuunin exams together!"

The blonde bit his lip, glancing between Chouji and an unresponsive redhead. "Ahh... Naruto is sorry. Naruto has never met Chouji before."

The Akimichi blinked and sat back on his stool. "You don't even remember the Chuunin exams? Do you remember Shikamaru?" The boy gestured to his friend beside him. "The three of us played around in the Academy sometimes."

Naruto hesitated. "Um... um... Naruto is very sorry." His shoulders drooped and he slouched over his cooling ramen. "Naruto doesn't... remember anything."

"Naruto! Your ramen's getting cold! Hurry up, we brewed plenty for you!" exclaimed Old Man Ichiraku as he came back from the kitchen beyond.

"Naruto isn't hungry..." the boy mumbled.

"Not hungry? You're never not hungry! What's on your mind?"

The blonde looked desolate, staring blankly into his ramen. "Naruto can't remember anything."

Ichiraku kept smiling. He had figured out the gist of Naruto's situation just the day before when the boy had arrived at the stand and had simply looked at him dumbly when he greeted him as their best customer.

"But Naruto's never been here before..." he had looked so distressed. "Naruto... Naruto doesn't know you!"

"That's alright," the ramen cook found himself saying. He hated to see this usually bright and happy boy, whom he had grown fond of over the years, looking so down. "it'll all come back to you eventually."

The boy gave him a half-hopeful, half-suspicious look. "Old Man really thinks so?"

"I know so," he smiled as big as he could.

Naruto bit his lip and stared into his ramen for a minute, seemingly contemplating the noodles in the broth.

"Naruto has a headache..." he said after a while, sounding like a child ashamed and demoralized.

Gaara sighed and stood up slowly, letting his spine adjust to the weight of the gourd on his back being repositioned.

"We'll be leaving now." he said, throwing down a wad of bills on the table.

Naruto whined softly and grabbed Gaara's hand as the redhead led him away from the ramen stand.

"... Do you think he's okay?"

"The Kazekage is taking care of him." Shikamaru didn't appear to care.

"Yeah, but... what do you think happened to him to make him like that?" Chouji waited almost a full minute for his friend's answer.

"There's a rumor... that Gaara did it."

"You don't actually believe Kiba's theory, do you?" Chouji rolled his eyes. "I don't even believe Kiba's theories."

"Yeah..." Shikamaru frowned. "But that Sand guy obviously knows something. What I don't get is why the Kazekage would go to all the trouble of taking care of a foreign nin of genin status? Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't make sense unless Gaara is directly related."

Chouji leant forward. "So you think Gaara really did do it?"

Shikamaru picked up his cup. "No... it makes even less sense that way."

"Well... do you have any theories?"

Instead of answering, Shikamaru changed the subject. "Y'know it's kinda weird... you know with Kiba and that bear thing last night..."

Naruto continued to whine occasionally, clutching his head, as Gaara dragged him down the street.

His mumblings of "Naruto doesn't feel good," and "Naruto's head hurts," soon turned into a guttural rumble of "Naruto is hungry."

Gaara glanced back to find he was being watched with slitted red eyes. Gaara picked up the pace.

Why did Ichiraku's have to be right smack dab in the middle of town? On such short notice, Gaara doubted he could just walk out the main gates. Even if he was the Kazekage, the guards would want to ask some questions, and stopping to talk with Naruto working himself into a frenzy... would only result in more questions to be answered. Gaara hated questions.

Therefore, his best option, if he didn't want to unleash a half-crazed, bloodthirsty bag of trouble on Konoha, was to sneak out.

Easy as pie.

Not that Gaara particularly liked pie. He just happened to understand that the expression applied to how incredibly effortless it was to sneak over the outer wall and into Konoha forest without detection. Even with Naruto clawing at his sand-hardened hands in an attempt to unclasp his gritty palm from his mouth.

When he finally did release his hold on the boy's face, Gaara found he had latched onto the indent between this thumb and forefinger with sharpened teeth.

Gaara grunted softly as he shook his hand out of the blonde's grasp. His sand armor protected him from puncture of his skin, but Naruto's jaws were surprisingly strong and the pressure of his fangs on the pressure point in his hand was painful.

Naruto growled at him, and crouched on the ground. His red eyes flashed over the forest scenery as he quickly lost interest in the stoic redhead— for he didn't favor the taste of sand.

Gaara waited.

And then he had to run to keep up as Naruto rocketed off into the undergrowth ahead of him. This would have been a much easier task if Naruto were still himself, then he would have been crashing loudly through every obstacle and leaving a very obvious trail. But with Kyuubi orchestrating his movements Naruto was not only much, much faster, but far quieter, and more subtle.

Gaara was indeed a top-notch shinobi, but he was neither an expert tracker or extraordinarily fast. Though he would willingly admit this, Gaara was still surprised when he burst into a clearing and didn't know which way to turn next.

He had never lost Naruto in the desert, but apparently Gaara's lack of experience with more covered terrain was showing, for he had just let loose a half-insane, half-demon ninja with an appetite, and subsequently lost him about four miles from a large town full of civilians. Whoopsie.

It was barely a minute before he picked up the trail again. The blood-curdling scream of anguish helped a little.

Gaara frowned as he ran. With Kyuubi so close to the surface, Naruto was unusually efficient and silent with his kills for a normally hopelessly loud shinobi. So, unless the scream came from Naruto, Kyuubi was much closer to the surface than was safe. Gaara dreaded the latter, especially since that scream had come from a decidedly feminine voice box.

Naruto had found an ANBU squad, if the broken porcelain mask was anything to go by.

It looked like he had plowed through the first three in a matter of seconds, taking out the rearguard and then moving up through the formation.

It was the pained moans of the half-dead that alerted Gaara to Naruto's whereabouts. He left behind a trail of ravenous sand to dispose of the corpses of the ANBU. It wouldn't do to have those discovered.

He grimaced when he found Naruto barely ten yards from the first ANBU. Gaara, of course, had seen many atrocities in his life, many of them committed by Gaara himself. However, he did not look forward to tomorrow when he would have to take care of the boy as he puked up his victim's small intestines.

"Naruto," Gaara sighed, relieved that at the very least he hadn't doubled back towards Konoha. The ANBU squad, by averting the boy's hunger, had quite possibly saved several civilian lives.

The boy barely spared him a glance, his eyes slitted and still bleeding red at the edges. At least the Kyuubi had receded somewhat; Naruto's episodes tended to be thankfully short.

Gaara stepped forward slowly, his sand already returning to him from cleaning up their trail and flowing around his feet. "Naruto," he repeated.

He blinked as a slab of bloody, purple flesh was thrust under his nose.

"Eat," Naruto said. Whether it was a request or an order in that gravelly voice was indiscernible.

Gaara stared at the offered flesh and recognized it as a liver. Naruto knew he liked liver. When it was cooked.

Gaara had to bed backwards to avoid a facefull of organ as Naruto suddenly jerked his hand forward.

"Eat," he repeated.

Gaara took the liver. Arguing with Naruto in this state was a bad idea, even for him.

The redhead stared at the warm, slimey organ in his hand. It was incredibly fresh. He glanced at Naruto, who had returned to slicing choice bits of meat form the pulsing body of his meal and eating said bits with a self-indulgent smirk.

Pulsing. It— she— was still alive.

Gaara grimaced. He wasn't as sadistic as he used to be.

He stepped forward, sharpening the sand of the hand not holding the liver into claws. He knelt carefully opposite Naruto, wary of any sudden movements from him. Sometimes Kyuubi could be rather selfish when it came to its kills.

When Naruto appeared to ignore him he reached down, and with a few flicks of his newly formed claws he had cut out the exposed heart.

Naruto's bi-colored eyes flickered to Gaara's hand as blood flooded the cavity he had formed in the girl's ribcage. His lips twisted into a grotesque cross between a smirk and a grimace as Gaara lifted the organ and offered it to him in a manner similar to how he had offered the liver.

If Gaara hadn't had a lifetime of experience with a crazed, bloodthirsty demon in his own mind, he might have found if difficult to meet Naruto's eyes. Gaara found his gaze locked within mesmerizing red and blue as Naruto leant forward, and ate the heart in its entirety right out of his hand.

If Gaara hadn't had that same look on his own face before, he might have shuddered as Naruto grinned at him, eyes full of malice and the evil of a thousand, thousand years, and licked his lips of blood.

"You haven't been eating." the voice of Kyuubi said. He imagined he could hear the smaller voice of Naruto saying the same words in tandem with the deeper one of inhuman harmonics.

And suddenly the hand with the liver was in front of him, his wrist grasped painfully tight in a clawed hand slick with redness.

Naruto kept their gazes locked as he bent forward again to bite into the fatty flesh. And then he leant farther until he pressed his lips against Gaara's own, forcing them open with his tongue. A hand at the base of his skull kept Gaara from retreating, so he was forced to endure the tang of hot iron in his mouth, then the bitter slide of uncooked flesh over his tongue.

He swallowed.

Naruto pulled away, Kyuubi's smirk in his eyes and grin. "Good boy."

Gaara resisted the urge to wince as Shukaku started up an incessant pounding in his head at the first taste of blood. More, more! he urged.

Naruto's mouth on his own again. Another bite, swallow.

He had one free hand and an entire lake of sand if he wanted it. He could have pushed himself away, maybe even have escaped if he was lucky. But he refused to leave Naruto alone, and resisting the Kyuubi's whims would only bring them both more grief.

The entire liver was eaten in this manner, and Naruto licked the leftovers from his palm. Gaara could already feel a stomach ache coming on, and he knew he would be puking it all back up later. Shukaku's metabolism or not, that much fat in one sitting simply did not agree with him.

Naruto leant forward again, this time to lick away the blood that ha dribbled down Gaara chin.

It took all of Gaara's willpower not to jerk away when he felt teeth bite into his bottom lip where the armor was thin. Naruto licked the blood there away, too.

Shukaku screamed in the back of his mind. The demon didn't take well to injury.

Naruto smirked, his eyes half-closed in a vulpine expression of dominance.

Gaara sometimes wondered if he could hear Shukaku.

Their glances had yet to falter, so Gaara could see the gradual change as blue was flooded with red again.

"Such a good boy," commented the Kyuubi.

A single claw brushed his cheek, and Gaara was forced to bend his head back as it continued downward to trace is jugular.

He couldn't suppress the whimper as fanged teeth descended sharply into the junction between his neck and shoulder.

Naruto spat, flicking his tongue in and out to rid if of the grit. "Stupid sand..." The hand still at the base of Gaara's neck sent a shockwave of Kyuubi's chakra down his spine and throughout his entire body. Gaara spasmed as his sand armor convulsed and flaked away.

Naruto grinned. "Well, that takes care of that."

Gaara panted, his entire chakra system singing with pain. Shukaku was temporarily quieted with the sudden chakra burnout, though he was probably cursing his vessel somewhere for allowing such a thing to happen.

"Gaara..." he was caught in those red amber, animalistic eyes again. "... isn't it?"

Over the throb of every muscle and vein in his body, Gaara became aware of claws dragging thread of ice down his spine. He arched backwards instinctively. Next to the fire in the rest of his body, the clean incisions being raked down his back were a welcome distraction.

"I think..." the Kyuubi's voice in his ear, "you don't have a name." The bite right below his ear in the sensitive area behind his jaw almost didn't hurt. Something warm and wet licked his blood away. "You are mine. And no name but my own shall adorn you."

Gaara trembled against the brush of air over his sensitized skin as his shirt fell away, torn to shreds by rapacious claws.

The rest of his clothes didn't last much longer.

Naruto chuckled, raking claws down a newly exposed thigh. "I will give you no pleasures, child," the Kyuubi mocked. "But you want this don't you? You could run..." this tone was slightly softer.

Gaara allowed himself to look up to find a hint of blue again shined through in the boy's eyes.

"If you ran I would not follow you. Why don't you run?" Lies. The Kyuubi would never allow that, and even so, Gaara doubted he could make it three steps without collapsing into a quivering, exhausted heap. But this was Naruto talking.

Even overshadowed by the Kyuubi, Naruto didn't want to hurt Gaara.

His muscles still didn't seem to want to listen to his brain, as they continued to spasm randomly, sending a new jolt of pain through Gaara each time they did. But with some effort Gaara managed to push himself forward into Naruto's arms, the cuts on his front stinging as he pressed himself against the other's body.

In doing so, Gaara could feel Naruto's own need press against his abdomen. This was why Gaara stayed; not the reason he did not run, but the reason he stayed.

The bijuu were incorporeal creatures, and as such they were sexless. They knew the thrill of violence and gore but felt no lust other than that for blood. There wasn't even anything to define the difference between a male and female bijuu, if there was in fact a difference at all.

The Kyuubi felt no sexual desire for Gaara. It would prefer ripping him to shreds rather than fucking him, if his vessel only allowed it. But at least with some things Naruto stood strong. And Naruto wanted him.

The Kyuubi drew his blood with wandering claws and bit into his flesh hard enough to make him scream. But Naruto was the one who kissed him tenderly, and supported him in his arms to stop him from falling as his muscles shuddered under his skin. And it was Naruto's hand that brushed over his manhood to rub it to life.

For this Gaara stayed. For Naruto, Gaara would stay no matter the consequences as long as Naruto wanted him... and needed him.

So, as Naruto gently pressed him into the grass, Gaara willed himself to ignore and forget about the pain of his wrist being twisted in a purposefully painful position behind his back. And as Naruto gripped his penis in a soothing rhythm Gaara imagined he couldn't feel the pain of sharp claws being dragged along his inner thigh.

Even as Gaara couldn't hold back his cry as he was entered hard enough to rip and tear his unprepared opening, he could only relish the way Naruto sighed in his ear and moaned with hot puffs of breath on his cartilage at the way Gaara gasped. Naruto could ignore the pain, too, as long as he didn't see the agony that rippled across Gaara's face he could interpret the screams and groans as expressions of pleasure. For surely, with the almost desperate grasp Gaara had on his shoulders his lover wanted him, loved him, needed him.

And Kyuubi urged him on, a crazed impatience that bubbled with urgency. The smell of Gaara's blood, and Gaara's sweat, and Gaara was in his nostrils and Kyuubi wanted more and faster of this enticing thing that made its vessel tremble with need.

And Naruto moved, retreating and ramming forward with enough force that Gaara slid backwards along the earth with each thrust.

And Gaara gasped and winced and screamed at each new jolt as liquid fire lined his anus with increasing intensity and it felt as if he was being stabbed so deeply that surely, surely something was broken inside him.

But all that was okay. Because Naruto was above him and Naruto's lips were on his ear, his neck, and though he couldn't hear the words he could feel them in Naruto's hands in his hair and the pattern of his breath on his skin.

Naruto loved him.

Naruto loved him and that was all he needed.

A/N: Ah! I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get that last part out, for a while I was stumped on how to write Gaara being practically raped by Kyuubi-Naruto. Now we see why I put the M rating on this fic. Well... that was really fun, difficulty aside. But just because this rape/sex scene was all blood and pain, doesn't mean the later ones will be like that. (wink, wink)