Chapter Five: Reaching
Night shift was perfectly miserable at this time of year, Neji thought, still holding his heavy cloak closed as he walked quietly through the dimly-lit hall towards his and Naruto's room. Late winter at Konoha didn't bring snow, and spring was very near, but it was still frigid whenever the sun went down.
The fourth night of this chore rotation and he was well and truly sick of shuddering across the bowl from the infirmary. He didn't mind the duty—that was tolerable, and he enjoyed the company of Lee and Tenten—but the trip back in the dark was cold and windy. He could have stayed inside, using the halls around the bowl, but it was easily twice as long, and his bed was calling. At least tonight it wasn't raining as it had been the past two days. The sky was clear, stars bright.
Still, he felt fortunate to have been freed early this night. The infirmary was unusually empty, following a tremendously lucky week of 'falls, and he was released from his duties, the healers on duty not requiring extra bodies for the few patients in residence, and it was only a couple of hours after midnight.
The long walks across the bowl were routine now (though not the night-time ones). Four months here at Konoha Weyr, his flayed back and burned limbs now well healed, and he now thought of this place, and of his and Naruto's room, as "home." He no longer blinked at the mass of noise that was the midday dining hall. He had let himself start to become a part of the Weyr.
He reached the door of their room with anticipatory relief, and opened it quietly with one hand while he unhooked the fastenings of his cloak with the other.
He swung the cloak off and over his arm as he slid into the room, but halted abruptly when the sounds of shifting cloth and ragged, heavy breathing reached his ears. He felt his face heat. Perhaps he should have knocked, Naruto hadn't been expecting him back until near dawn, and now it sounded like he was… the mental image was immediate: Naruto sweaty and shifting rhythmically among tangled sheets, one hand sliding below his waist—Neji was transfixed for long seconds, warmth rising through him, until disgust and apprehension welled violently up and he bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. His face felt as though it had caught fire.
To his horror, he still felt heat gathering elsewhere, lower, He was about to back out of the room, stomach knotted with disgusted shame at his mind's perverted invention, but he couldn't stop himself, and he turned just enough to see out of the corner of his eye.
Naruto, as was usual since Neji had begun the night shift chore rotation, had fallen asleep with the glowbasket half open, so Neji would be able to see when he got back. Now the dim yellow light was more than enough to see Naruto shifting in the painful clutches of a nightmare, and not self-pleasure. It was not what he had expected, and the shame fell away in favour of worry and an ambivalent mixture of both relief and something that Neji refused to believe was disappointment..
The covers were a mess, half off the bed and shifted sideways. One of Naruto's fists was fastened around a thick fold, a swath of cover pulled across his stomach, leaving his bare arms and legs exposed. He was moving in feeble struggles against nothing, lips pulled into a grimace and brow knitted in distress.
Neji approached his bed and, after a moment of nervous uncertainty, he gave himself a contemptuous snort and reached for Naruto's shoulder, the fabric of the sleeveless nightshirt not wide enough to keep Neji from touching bare skin, hot and damp under his hand. He shook him gently, and that was enough.
He meant to pull back when Naruto's eyes snapped open, but he didn't get the chance. Naruto's hand snapped up and fastened around his wrist in a deathgrip, and he sat up in a convulsive jerk, his entire body wound tight. He stared about, groggily afraid, and his free hand groped outward from where he sat, as if he was unsure how much room there was. His grip on Neji's wrist was tight. The heat and dampness of his strong fingers and broad palm felt like a brand on his skin..
Neji was frozen, too surprised to try and break the grip that pressed his hand to Naruto's shoulder. He could feel the muscle and bone under his fingers, overly warm from the stress of the dream, slightly tacky with drying sweat. Then Naruto grabbed him bodily, both fists closing around handfuls of tunic at Neji's waist, pulling him close so Naruto's forehead fell against his belly. Neji gasped and pushed himself immediately free with a violent shove at Naruto's shoulders, stumbling backwards across the space between their beds, struggling to pull some kind of calm up over the rolling heat and fear that wrestled inside him.
Naruto blinked, staring at nothing, and wrapped his arms around himself instead. His face was strained, dread etched into his features. He shuddered, and Neji saw his eyes slowly focus, then snap to meet Neji's. Vague surprise skittered over his face, relief, then embarrassment, and then finally an apologetic expression and a "see you later" wave as he got unsteadily off the bed and went out the door without a word.
After a moment of blank confusion spent staring at Naruto's rumpled bed, Neji still felt the phantom of Naruto's hot palm on his hand, the weight of his head against his stomach, and he swallowed, mouth dry. What was wrong with him? And how could that terrible feeling persist at a time like this? Naruto was clearly in a bad way, hadn't even known what he was doing. It was stupid that Neji even react with such filthy feelings.
He hurriedly looked out the door, and only just saw Naruto turning down the corner at the end of the hall, which was ridiculous. The only thing down that corridor was a door out to the bowl. And Naruto hadn't even taken his boots.
Neji picked up his cloak again and swung it back on, and pulled Naruto's off its hook. He picked up the boots by their laces and headed down the hall.
He'd seen Naruto turn the corner, but Neji was still not quite expecting him to be outside.
Yet there he stood, perhaps twenty feet away from the door when Neji opened it, a dark shape in the dark bowl. The cold chilled away the last of Neji's unwanted arousal as he stepped through, and he could concentrate again on the trouble at hand.
Naruto had his arms crossed over his chest, his only defense against the chill. He was standing barefoot on the icy stone of the bowl, tilted slightly back, face turned upward to the sky. He was so focused on looking up that he started when Neji came near, staring in surprise at the cloak and boots in Neji's arms.
The surprise was vulnerable, uneasy, uncertain, and he seemed like an entirely different person. Naruto was only ever defiant, confidant, and loudly happy or amused or angry, and this was a strange contrast.
After a moment, Naruto took the offered clothing, stepping into the boots with a grateful sigh and wrapping the cloak firmly around himself. He looked upward again almost right away.
"Why did you come outside?" Neji asked. This wasn't safe. If Neji hadn't come with the extra clothing, would Naruto have stayed outside until he became ill? This strange behaviour, this haunted, hesitant demeanour was unsettling.
"Just needed to get outside a bit, be able to look up," Naruto said. Neji looked up too. The moon was near-full, hanging over the western lip of the bowl, and its light edged a few scattered clouds with a soft white glow. The stars were twinkling in their multitudes in the clear areas, the cold making their light feel sharp and distant.
"Are you… ill? Do you need a healer?" Neji ventured.
Naruto laughed at that, and brought his gaze downward to meet Neji with a brief look of happy fondness that faded when he looked up again. "They said they can't do anything about dreams without a shitload of sleepy drugs. It's not a big deal."
"Does this happens often?" Neji asked. Something in the way Naruto had spoken seemed to indicate this wasn't all that rare.
"Nah, not now. But when it does I just come outside and it's fine." Naruto shrugged. "No big deal," Naruto smiled as he repeated the words, but it wasn't like the brief grin from before. It wasn't spontaneous, but only for show, the unsettled look about him making the expression completely unlike normal. "Doesn't happen when there are other people around, so don't worry, I won't wake you up."
Neji frowned slightly. He was a light sleeper, and he would have noticed if this had happened in his presence. But he would rather be around to be woken when this happened, he realized. Even with that appalling lust to suppress, he was bothered more that this was happening when Naruto was alone.
When Naruto was alone. Neji narrowed his eyes. "Is this the only time this has happened this week?" he asked.
"Uh." Naruto shrugged again, and Neji wondered why he was belittling his own difficulty when he was so vehement about getting involved with other people's. Especially given his normal constant crowing for attention. "No."
"Not every night?" Neji felt his frown intensify when Naruto's shoulders rose and fell in yet another shrug, along with an affirmative but dismissive head-tilt. Then a sudden, disturbing thought struck him. "Before I arrived..?"
Naruto's face darkened at that, old hurt clouding his features, and he looked away, upward. "No… I mean, yeah, but I had another roommate when I moved into that room, at first, so it was only after he, uh, left. Just a couple months."
Another roommate. Neji felt a pang of... something odd… at the idea, but it was minor compared to the knowledge that Naruto hadn't had a night of uninterrupted sleep for the months between his former roommate and Neji.
He wanted to ask what could possibly cause this, but it wasn't his place to ask. His mind wasn't too polite to silently speculate, however. This was some kind of claustrophobic reaction, perhaps? But there was also more. Naruto had held onto him so tightly, before Neji had fought free of his grip, a memory that struck him with guilt, now, instead of that frantic fear.
What could have happened to Naruto?
Neji came out of his thoughts to see that Naruto was watching him. His speculations must have shown, from Naruto's self-conscious expression, and he cursed himself for not maintaining a calm exterior, schooling his face right away, ordering his thoughts along with it.
"Don't…" Naruto said with the tolerant exasperation that Neji was very used to seeing whenever Naruto thought he was being stiff, "You don't have to be polite. It makes sense you'd wanna know after seeing this. It's not very interesting anyway," once again, that shrug. Neji couldn't make himself refuse in favour of Naruto's privacy, and so he kept silent.
Naruto's next words where uncharacteristically self-effacing, as though what he was about to tell was news of little interest. "You know games kids play… Well, I was kind of, uh, on the fringe, as a kid, right, back at Konoha Hold," he said it as though it were a joke, and rubbed absently at one marked cheek, "but I wanted to play anyways. I did get into games now and then, I bet just so I'd stop asking," he chuckled, but there wasn't any of the amusement Neji could hear him trying to pretend. "So… one day it was hide and seek. There was a whole group of holdbrats, and I wouldn't leave, so they let me play." He rolled his eyes. "I found a little cabinet in a storage room, and then I got myself locked into it. And they didn't look for me." Naruto's mouth quirked, and then widened in a poor imitation of humour at his own expense, "Since I couldn't get out, I was there till the next day, when someone who came into the storeroom noticed the, uh, smell."
Neji frowned, then realized that a day inside a cabinet didn't stop one's bodily processes, and he couldn't completely suppress a wince. Naruto's mouth was tight for a moment, then he gave Neji a grimace that was probably supposed to be silly. "Yeah, I know! But that's all it was, see? Just a dumb accident, nothing horrible, except now, there's just, you know, stupid dreams, then I just come out here to let'em wear off. It's all over quick, and I go back to bed."
Liar, Neji thought. Yes, Naruto had fled their small room to the open bowl, but he seemed to be ignoring the other part, the fact that it only happened when he was alone, the desperate reaching out when he'd woken to another person nearby. Or maybe he didn't even realize himself what that meant, why he had nightmares only when no one else was around. No one came for you, and when you're alone you remember that.
Neji wondered how much of that also contributed to Naruto's rather tactile nature. That was something Neji had thus far been spared, because Naruto had avoided touching him while his wounds had been healing, and that seemed to have become a habit. But Naruto tackled, hugged, pounded on the back, and purposefully knocked into everyone else he was friends with.
"Sorry you had to bring this stuff out here," Naruto twitched the cloak so one edge rippled, the words and motion dislodging Neji from his speculation, "Go on, go back to bed," he added, sounding almost normal, and evidently ready to drop the previous subject.
"It wasn't a bother. It's too cold out for you to be here in your nightclothes," Neji answered solemnly, "and I would be awake for another hour if the shift hadn't ended early." He looked over his shoulder at the door, then back at Naruto. "I'll wait here unless you would prefer to be alone."
"Oh. Sure." Naruto smiled at him briefly, and this time there was real happiness in the expression. Gratitude and warmth as well. Neji felt a little glow of unexpected contentment at that, and found himself returning the smile.
Naruto turned his eyes back to the stars after a few moments, and Neji copied him, though his mind was elsewhere.
Silence let his mind work, though, and gradually the warm feeling of Naruto's gratitude was edged out by the unsettling memory of Naruto's hand on his wrist, Naruto's grip on his waist—and his own hand on Naruto's shoulder. The sensations came back to him with disturbing strength, along with the memory of what he'd thought had been going on in their room, that Naruto had been… except he hadn't been, not even close, but still, an echo of the idea rippled through Neji now. Rushing warmth, quickening pulse… No, he thought anxiously, no, stop.
The memory was lingering only because he wasn't used to people touching him. That was all, that was it.
That doesn't explain how you came up with that first thought all on your own, though, does it?
Neji dug his fingernails into his palms and firmly banished the subject, concentrating on the stars overhead, the constellations he could see.
When Naruto finally moved, ready to head back to their room, Neji fell in next to him. Naruto flashed him a wide grin that was promptly distorted by a huge yawn. He shook his head to dispel it, eyes amused at himself. "Yeah, bed," he said, and yanked open the door. "let me at it!" Neji closed it behind them with rather more restraint and followed Naruto down the hall. Back to normal already, Neji marvelled. Naruto didn't spend much time feeling bothered about his own troubles.
No, Neji thought, feeling the gratitude he had yet to know how to convey to Naruto, he's too busy bothering with everyone else's.
Back in bed, Naruto dropped off instantly. Neji was reassured by that—apparently Naruto truly did get back to normal reasonably quickly. But Neji remained awake, unable to even start the slow doze to sleep.
His mind kept replaying what he'd first thought he'd heard, and Naruto's every slow breath only added to the torturous—and false—recollection. The lust he only wanted to be rid of spread farther through him, and he swallowed a whine of protest as he felt blood gathering, thickening. He rolled onto his side, his back to Naruto in a pointless rejection.
He lay perfectly still, flushed with heat and his body's growing desire for pressure, friction, contact, far more aware of himself than he'd ever been, every inch of his skin itched for a touch. His mouth went dry as he fought off memories that made everything worse. Naruto's careful fingertips, from all those months ago, treating his wounds, Naruto's heavy, warm hand closing around his wrist from not even an hour before—Neji twisted his hands into the bedsheet and held on, refusing to give in.
Naruto slept on, oblivious and untroubled, and apparently in no danger of more nightmares, with Neji in the room, and for that Neji managed to be glad, but for himself, he felt only trapped. This wasn't supposed to happen to him, he wasn't like that. Misery flooded over the surface of his filthy lust, reaching beyond his current predicament to all the days he had ahead. He was happy here. Why did it have to be ruined?
He had come to appreciate Naruto's company, he didn't want to lose it, but this… this was not something he knew how to bear.
Seconds stretched into the dark, and it took a very long time for Neji to fall asleep.