Fish Bird
By The Eternity Dragon
Disclaimer: I am now glad I don't own Naruto because as far as I am concerned the whole plot is full of crack and is quite frankly smoking it as well. Yes, I love it, but it kills me a little inside every time I read a manga update, but damnit... KIBA WHY MUST YOU BE SO SEXY?
Chapter Nine: Within Striking Distance
A/N: UNBETA'D VERSION, beta'd version may take a while to be posted.
SPECIAL NOTE: This chapter is dedicated to Penguinsteps who is amazing, and special thanks to Heeythatsmybike for taking a look at the rough draft of this and giving me some wonderful suggestions as how to finish off the chapter. (Smooches)
Sasuke looked at him with very dark, impenetrable eyes, face moody and pale, seamless complexion like molten marble as he opened his mouth to answer….
"Like I'd tell you." He answered very simply and slammed the bathroom door shut behind him.
Kiba remained stock still on the stairs, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, mouth dry like sandpaper as he tries to swallow and had the unpleasant feeling of his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.
// You could at least disguise it better…//
Kiba's feet propelled him into action and he bounded up the steps and came to an abrupt halt outside the bathroom door hand outstretched nanoseconds from opening it and hauling Sasuke Uchiha out of it.
But, generally hauling Sasuke out of anywhere was a bad idea, lord knows what would happen if Kiba tried to drag him out of Naruto's bathroom. The whole apartment complex could explode or he could be strangled to death by toilet paper.
He recollected, wide auburn eyes under a mop top of spiky brown hair and tapped his fingers across the wood of the door. He felt Sasuke as prickled away in the bathroom, angry vibes seeped under the door like a drowning vapour.
Kiba took it calmly, step by step feeling his way into new territory. The priority is simple, if Sasuke is important to Naruto, then, Sasuke by default is important to him. He allowed a little exhalation of breath and sat outside the bathroom door and waited.
On the other side of the wall Sasuke Uchiha watched at his reflection in the mirror, his breathing slowed as the ghost of lips touching his own and the invisible hands still clutched against his shoulders. Unwanted delicious things, Naruto smiling at him, sunflower yellow hair in blue eyes, against the torn pale ivory of his own skin, Naruto arching into his own arms, spine dipping and curving as Sasuke's hungry teeth meet his neck. They were perilous thoughts and he was uncomfortable with them. Too fresh, too new. Like skin that had been ripped open to bleed. The edges ragged and throbbing. It was like part of his mind had been cleaved open, hot white fire assailing his senses as his mind rose and fell into a transcendent state. He felt out of body, utterly unreal, strange, beautiful and awkward.
Naruto was dangerous, he was as addictive and as appealing as a drug and already as Sasuke traced the line of his mouth with the tip of his forefinger he remembered how the feel of Naruto's tongue had been.
He already wanted more.
Sasuke put both of his hands on the rim of the sink and fought down the childish urge to scream at Kiba to just "Go away!", he turned the hot water tap on and watched as the hot steaming liquid rushed, swirled and gurgled down the plug hole. The noise distracted him for a minute, but then a rhythmic tap-tap-tapping emanated from outside in the hallway and an angry twitch developed beneath one eye.
"What-do-you-want?" he snarled, spinning round and facing the bathroom door, towering temper dripping from his words a blue and purple bruise blossoming beneath one of his eyes which throbbed and stung, warning him of a coming headache.
"Are you okay?" Kiba asked him, in an annoyingly calm voice, in fact Sasuke decided the Inuzuka is annoying, full stop.
Was he okay? What sort of a question was that? There was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing for the pest to get worked up about…except…
// I did just kiss him. // the nasty little voice in his head pointed out, the same one that told him he was a coward for letting his parents die like that over and over again.
// But that was…I haven't-I've never….I'm not….He's just…he's Naruto.
That makes it different //
// Exactly. // the nasty little voice continued, // That's what makes it different, because you know you- //
"Sasuke?" It was Kiba again, and the dark haired youth didn't know if he was annoyed or grateful at the disruptions of his thoughts.
"You okay in there?"
It was a dumb question and it deserved a dumb answer, Sasuke gave it neither, he just glared at the door, as if the handle would convey his feelings of displeasure and anger over to the idiot on other side and shut him up once and for all.
The handle however did not bite Kiba, no matter how much he willed it.
He wanted to push the thoughts of Naruto away, all the delicious temptation, the rebellious antics and the perilous words.
"Do you want to talk?"
// Do I want to….What?
"No I don't!" he said with hostility in his voice, his back almost arching like a cat's, hackles raised all on edge at the sheer audacity. What the hell was this guy thinking? He didn't talk, not like that anyway. It was beneath his pride and far below his reason. He was an independent person and no one in no way was allowed to take pity on him because he was locked up and bodily violated. What was he going to do anyway? Remind him about safe sex? Ask him if he was gay? Threaten him? Taunt him? Try to drive him away?
// He wouldn't have to try very hard…//
"There's nothing to talk about." Sasuke said simply, voice aloof and clipped, a tone that usually had an inbuilt 'leave-me-the-hell-alone' warning sign strapped into it.
"I think there is." Kiba told him, his voice deadly serious but a smile on his lips, he rapped his knuckles on the wooden frame of the door again, "Do you want to know what I think Sasuke?"
Sasuke Uchiha rolled his eyes at the bathroom mirror and blew the loose strands of hair away from his face, he was definitely going to have a bruise on the side of his face come morning, and a big one at that.
// I'm not holding my breath. Here comes the usual: You're a jerk. You're screwing around with him. He'd be better of if you'd never come back. You're mucking up his life.//
Kiba warranted the silence emanating from under the bathroom door as consent enough to continue in his train of thought, he hugged his knees to his chest and looked gravely at the light seeping out from the inch gap between the floor and wooden panel.
Did he dare say what was on his mind? What he thought? Or, what he knew? And what would Sasuke do if he said it? Kill him? It would be hard for the Uchiha to do it effectively without chakra that was for sure, but still possible he was in no doubt of that.
And worse still what if Shikamaru found out?
Kiba swallowed, and fought down images of his friend slicing him open with a meat cleaver and feeding his liver to Akamaru on a silver platter.
He'd never been wrong about this sort of thing.
"I think you're in love with him, Sasuke."
// What on earth…?
The doorbell rang, loudly and suddenly at 1:30 in the morning. This seemed to be exactly what Kiba had been waiting for, because he sprang up deftly from his position outside the bathroom door, ran three fingers through his hair, pranced around on the stairs for several seconds and then ran down to the door, pausing for a second before opening it.
The person who opened the door looked extraordinarily like Sasuke Uchiha. Striking, tall, dark hair, unnaturally smooth pale skin and deep moody soul searching eyes. Except this person was definitely not Sasuke Uchiha, the girls standing at the door knew that much. The roguish lopsided grin, the messy bedridden hair and clothes that bore creases, the wear of age and the slight stink of tobacco and alcohol.
"Is that him?" one girl asked doubtfully, pretty curvy red head, eyebrows raised almost into her hairline.
"He doesn't really seem coldly aloof, and neither do his eyes pin me down and ask if I would like to be shagged."
Kiba waggled his eyebrows suggestively at her and she frowned at him as if lost in thought, "In fact," she said slowly, "he seems awfully familiar."
"Yumi told me it was definitely Sasuke Uchiha." the brunette to her left said in a boldly confident voice, taking a step towards the ninja in disguise.
"But you're right, something's not quite-"
"Am I not living up to your standards ladies?" Kiba asked, he couldn't stop the grin from sliding across his face, his eyes sparkling almost manically.
"If you want we could all go roll about in the hay for a little while and then you two would definitely get your answers to whether I'm irresistibly sexually overcoming or not."
He raised his arms in the air, "Anyone for that option?"
The red head gave him another scrupulous look, "I know that tone of voice," she said slowly, "I've had the misfortune of dating that tone of voice."
She punched him quite hard on the shoulder and there was a small poof as the jutsu unbound at the seems like sand slipping through cupped fingers.
"Kiba Inuzuka!" she said triumphantly taking a step back, "I knew from the moment you opened your mouth and started making sleazy propositions."
"Arisa," Kiba said mock politely back to, " as charming, flattering and lovely as ever I see, still sucking the life out of the living to keep your un-dead soul alive? Well now you know our little secret you can tell the rest of the spectators to go on home now, nothing and no one to see here, except me."
He hesitated, before adding once again the devilish rogue, "Although of course the rolling around option is still open, minus the hay."
Arisa wound her long fingers into the fiery red hair of her mane and gave Kiba an assessing look, "You scared Yumi senseless? You? You couldn't even scare a new born kitten let alone a person."
"Like I said, always the charmer."
The brunette touched Arisa lightly on the shoulder steering her towards the stairs, saying softly, "Looks like there's nothing to see after all."
"There's always me." Kiba shouted after them, leaning against the doorpost now thoroughly enjoying himself, "I give quite a show, ask Arisa."
"I seem to remember you were all talk Kiba, couldn't even get it up on the last occasion."
Kiba's eyes were half closed with mirth as he uncrossed his arms and put one hand on the edge of the door, and leant out across the threshold of Naruto's front steps.
"That's because Arisa, you're just so terrifying when you're horny you scare the living day lights out of every red blooded man in the vicinity."
And then he closed the door with a slam before she got close enough to ring his neck.
That had been way too much fun.
"What are you doing?"
Kiba looked up from where he had been in a happy little puddle euphoria and saw Sasuke Uchiha peering at him from the middle of the hallway, face childishly curious and inky dark eyes wide.
"Pretending to be you," Kiba responded jovially, jumping to his feet "couldn't you tell?"
"No, not really." was the dry and sarcastic comment that flopped back at him, "And if that was your best attempt at being me, you suck."
"That's only because I was smiling when I opened the door!" Kiba shot back petulantly, "You should try it someday, unless of course you've got some allergy to it. Like your face will fall off and explode if you even attempt one."
Sasuke's face remained absolutely deadpan, "I don't smile because I don't find you acting like a moronic idiot remotely amusing."
Kiba felt his eyebrows descend in a knot over his eyes, "No, you don't smile because you have a stick rammed so hard up your ass you can't even bend over to yank it out. Either that or you don't have a sense of humour."
Sasuke's hard penetrating gaze dropped to below sub zero temperatures and his upper lip curled in a sneer.
Kiba glared right back at him, feeling the hairs on the nape neck prickle and stand straight up, "Pity, because I think smiling might suit you."
Kiba was playing with fire and he knew it, Sasuke could turn round any second and send him spinning through the kitchen wall before he'd even had time to blink, and yet provoking him seemed to be the best method of wriggling the truth out of him. In his slightly agitated state the Uchiha was having greater difficulty in constructing the hollow mask he usually hung above the muscles on his face. A puppeteers master work, flesh working to a formulated routine, no truth, practiced smiles and sneers, no genuine reflection on the inner workings on the mind…and yet.
Somehow Naruto had dug a chink, a small cranny in the seamless defence and a small glimmer was peeking through, if Kiba could get his fingers in and dig, dig carefully, he might be able to prize it open wider.
He was concentrating so hard he clamped down on his tongue between his front teeth and almost gnawed it off in his frustration.
Did he dare repeat what he'd said upstairs? Sasuke Uchiha was staring him down, it was somewhat unnerving that look, thick and intense like churning cement, it seemed to pour through his sockets and fill the crevasses of his mind with a wet gloopy substance.
"I'm not going to stand here and listen to this." Sasuke said painfully slowly, his voice was sharp and metallic like a knife's edge, almond shaped eyes narrowed.
Kiba ran his tongue over the cracked surface of his lips, his body tensed and shivering from the clenching of all his muscles, he opened his mouth and felt himself preparing as if for a physical blow.
"Sasuke, you have to tell me. Are you just fucking around with Naruto for the hell of it? I know you're pretty pissed and all about him keeping you here but he just wants to-"
His voice trailed off as he received a disgusted look and a slow graceful movement that presented him with a broad stubborn back. Kiba snarled suddenly outraged, he wasn't playing Damnit! This was important!
"You know he was going to propose to her, don't you Sasuke? Naruto was going to ask Sakura to marry him, two weeks before we unfortunately stumbled across you!"
This called a halt in the movement, and the Uchiha turned his head a little, eyes as sharp as a knife's edge.
"Why didn't he?"
If this information was new and unexpected to Sasuke he wasn't showing it, if anything his demeanour had become colder and more impenetrable in the last thirty seconds.
"He got cold feet, last second. He bought the ring and everything. Pulled double shifts, collapsed on my doorstep a few times, other times Shikamaru and I would have to go pick him up because he was too exhausted to make it home by himself."
Still nothing, Kiba ground on thoroughly protective of Naruto's actions and his convictions, "He loves her you know. He's under the deluded idea that no ones ever going to do that again as long as he lives. He always thinks he's all alone when he never is, he looks around for people to like and respect him when he already has our respect. It's you, you're the-"
"The outsider?" Sasuke finished, Kiba had his full attention now, but there was a nasty cynical expression twisting itself across the seam of his mouth, too sinister to be called a smile but it was twice as smooth. Almost mocking in its intensity.
"The problem? The one that Naruto always goes running after? Despite the fact that I told him not to, despite the fact that I never ask, I never wanted-"
"He wanted you!" Kiba yelled at him, loosing his cool completely and yelling himself hoarse for all the world to hear, "He still wants you!"
"Naruto doesn't know what he wants." Sasuke announced in cold clipped tones of someone who has had enough, "He's a child, he runs after one thing blindly and ignores everything else. He still thinks he can fix me, and if that's not deluded I don't know what is. He should marry Sakura, if she'll have him, and I rather wonder if she couldn't do any better then him. Surely even Rock Lee would be a better-"
Kiba's pupils almost dilated to slits as his spine curved and bent as he sucked in breath, feeling the anger bubble and rise inside of him. He'd always been impetuous, primal instincts like an animal, he knew right now all he wanted to do was solidly smack Sasuke Uchiha's pretty face into a bloody pulp. He clenched his hands and pretended he was smushing Sasuke's dark eyeballs between his digits.
"Don't," was the dangerously soft reply on his behalf, "lie. I don't care if you insult me, I don't care if you yell at me and curse each and everyone of my descendants. But don't say things like that about Naruto as if you know him so well-"
"I do know him 'That Well'you utter moron!" The cool suddenly broken, Sasuke Uchiha was standing in front of Kiba, in the same towering temper he'd had when he was twelve years old.
"You think anyone knows him better than I do? You think I don't know what motivates him? You think I can't see where his ideals of me lead him to? You don't think I realise how much he's built me up in his mind into some sort of idol, some part of himself, something I don't want to be. I don't want to drag him down with me." his fingers ran over the glassy onyx stubs on his wrists and his expression suddenly became detached and distant.
"You are in love with him aren't you?" And Kiba's tones were once again calm and perfectly at ease, in fact Sasuke thought the capricious youth was smiling at him, there was a certain sparkle in his amber eyes.
"Yet here you are, fighting him tooth and nail."
Sasuke set his jaw, and responded coldly down the straight slant of his impossibly perfect nose, "You just said he wanted to propose to Sakura, surely he's in love with her then."
"Yeah, he is in love with her."
Sasuke's felt his stomach sink, and then was disgusted with himself for even feeling….feeling what? Resentment? Regret? Anger? Jealousy? Disappointment?
"But he's obsessed with you, and he always has been."
Sasuke snorted derisively, he was tired, he was agitated, he was cold, he was hungry he didn't want to be having this conversation now or at any other point in his life for that matter. Mentally he pictured sticking Kiba full of pins and throwing him out of the upstairs window for the crows to eat, it sounded like a good plan to him.
"There's nothing-" Sasuke began, not quite understanding why he was trying to explain it anyway, or even what he was trying to explain.
"Oh sure," Kiba snapped at him, "so you guys just made out because you felt like it. Don't insult my average intelligence Sasuke, you have a hickey on your neck and Naruto was standing in the hallway dripping and almost naked. Either he jumped you, or you jumped him, which ever way round it was both of you enjoyed it, and you both participated in it. Which means you find each other sexually attractive as well, which….which…." Kiba's arms flailed for a moment and his mind clunked and processed what was attempting to flit through it, all it gave him was the answer: Therefore they want to have sex. Except, Kiba knew that if he helped Sasuke come to that decision in anyway or form, Shikamaru would know, and Shikamaru would kill him. Kill him very slowly, with a spoon.
And that was something he wanted to avoid at all cost.
Sasuke regarded him now with a keen mixture of curiosity and hesitation, as if he wanted to ask something but hadn't the courage to ask.
// Here it comes,// Kiba thought//he's going to say he is. Is it too late to pretend it's just the hormones? No, Naruto is just one big hormone anyway, that would never work!//
The doorbell rang again and Kiba almost fell over in shock, he shooed Sasuke down the corridor and into the living room closing the door behind him before bouncing to open the door.
More girls, as expected, five this time, all looking at him with interest.
But before he even opened his mouth one of them announced tartly, "That's not him." to the rest of them, to which they all nodded, eyes narrowing. Kiba felt the back of his spine prickle and curve. It was like having one's body parts out on display and he distinctly disliked the feeling.
"He's still pretty cute though," another one commented, bold with curly blonde hair this time, "wanna come out with us?"
Kiba's mouth flapped for a moment not knowing whether to shout with glee or to bang his head against the wood with frustration, finally he stuck his hand on the edge of the open front door and almost shouted: "Sorry girls, I'm gay." and then slammed the door shut again.
After meandering in the corridor for a brief thirty seconds, wondering if he'd gone completely barmy not to have swung out the door and thrown himself into the throng of good looking women, Kiba regained enough sense to go back and look for Sasuke.
His mind was still running around with thoughts of sex, and who was having sex, who wanted sex, and how everyone seemed to be currently getting some apart from him.
Especially Shikamaru for that matter. The man whore, as Kiba privately called him in his head. There was a guy who got laid by a perfectly beautiful woman at least once a week, and was still permanently grouchy.
Some people didn't know how good they had it.
Sasuke Uchiha sat with his back to the wall, his gaze following the cracks in the floorboards as the living room door opened and Kiba walked in. He set his jaw, determined to lock it, but found this very difficult to do once Kiba had squatted down in front of him and grinned. As if this was the happiest moment of his life.
"Five girls wanted me to hang with them," he said smugly, almost bursting at the seams with barely repressed pride, "and they even knew I wasn't you." Sasuke could see all of his teeth, right to the back molars.
"Still," he added, visibly deflating, it was like watching a tyre with a puncture become more and more flabby, "they didn't know it was me either, so maybe it doesn't count."
"You think?" Sasuke bit back, almost choking on the sarcasm that came coughing up and out of his throat.
"It's alright for you," Kiba responded, resting his chin on the knuckles of his clenched hands, "you've always known you were attractive to other people. Girls flocked around you." He wrinkled his nose as Sasuke glowered at him, perfectly shaped mouth once again close to something resembling a sneer.
Why did they always think that sort of attention was a good thing? When no one really knows you but just expects? And expect something he was sure he didn't even possess anyway. After all you have to have a heart to care don't you? And he was suspiciously lacking in the caring department.
"That must have been horribly annoying actually."
Sasuke blinked, but Kiba continued unobservant, "Still, you wouldn't have had any problem getting laid now would you? God, I bet girls would have queued up just to suck you off, lucky Buggar. You could have given out tickets or something and they would have turned up in droves."
He gave a slightly cynical bark of laughter and continued, "I'm still jealous of you though, maybe if I'd have been better looking….maybe if I'd told her…" his mop of brown hair swung across his eyes for a moment before he answered. Oddly serious expression on his face as he continued, "If you don't tell someone that you like them Sasuke, you'll lose them, and you'll be stuck with "What if?" for the rest of your life.
I…there was…" he paused again, licked his lips and then bit his thumb, "I didn't tell her, and now she's getting married. Which is good." he insisted, suddenly fierce again, "Because I can't give her what he can give her, he's stronger than I am, and it would make more sense. Re-unite the family branches and all that, and he's a genius as well so you know if she ever had kids she wouldn't be risking gene pollution for her babies by having my stupidity genes mixed in there too. I've dated a few girls that look like her, and then stopped because it was an insult to the other girl. Then I dated Arisa who was her polar opposite." he gave a low wolf's whistle.
"Let me tell you, that was a disaster."
Sasuke's mouth twitched a little, just a fraction, but it was enough, more than nothing and definitely a something.
"I'm lucky though," Kiba said quietly, almost a whisper, "I get to see her everyday, and talk to her, and be her friend…and it's enough. It's enough to know that I can be there for her and make her laugh when she feels down, and offer a shoulder to cry on if she needs me."
"So there's no tension between you?" Sasuke asked, not so much curious as demanding.
"I-uh…" Kiba began, feeling suddenly uneasy, this was very unlike Sasuke to be interested in him, in another persons problems that had little to do with his own agenda. Sasuke Uchiha wasn't after all known for being a generous soul.
He had a bad feeling about this.
"What if there was sexual tension?"
Kiba Inuzuka was horrified, this was exactly the sort of conversation he knew Shikamaru would find out about if ever Naruto and Sasuke ended up in the sac together (heaven forbid) and somehow it would be all his fault.
Kiba looked around carefully considering all possible answers he could give, he looked at the floor then back up at Sasuke again. Sasuke who fixed him with an intentionally determined stare like that of a crouching Tiger.
"You, erh… I mean….What?" Kiba asked him, although he already knew what was coming.
"What do you do," Sasuke repeated slowly, unblinking gaze never moving from Kiba's face, "when there's sexual tension in a relationship?"
Kiba's face, if it was possible, went into a rigid state of shock, his mind wildly spinning things like: "I knew it, I was right! I was right!" and "Crap what do I say? What do I do? Will he kill me if I don't answer him?!"
"I mean," Sasuke pressed on, his expression clean, analytical and hungry, "do you act on it?"
"Sometimes," Kiba blurts out unable to stop the words from spilling over his tongue, "but maybe not…it depends…I wouldn't do it with- but it's up to you….I don't think…….Maybe!"
//Oh god…
"So," Sasuke says very slowly, "you think I should?"
Kiba backed into the wall.
Shit, Shikamaru was going to annihilate him when he found out about this.
// STUPID HORMONES//
Kiba runs his hands distractedly across his face, "Look," he said eventually, resigned to this cruel fate life had dealt him, "have you ever done it before?"
Sasuke gave him a look, it spoke of disgust and outrage.
Kiba took it for pride, "Oh sorry," he muttered, "you went off with that guy who had a tongue fetish didn't you? So, of course you have."
// And he probably took some as well come to think of it. //
Kiba wriggled around on the floor a bit trying to find a comfortable position whilst Sasuke looked almost frantically at the door wondering if he could sprint there fast enough before Kiba was fool enough to open his mouth and…but it was already too late.
Kiba was obviously one of those people who had no problem in regurgitating every small and intricate detail about his own experiences and personal explorations and exploits.
Sasuke however, was not.
"I think everyone experiments a bit." Kiba was saying, quite ignoring the most chilling sneering stare the Uchiha could muster and it was having absolutely no effect whatsoever, in fact it seemed only to stir the eager embers of Kiba's exuberant and ever perky spirit.
"I did." Kiba announced even louder this time because Sasuke had actually put both of his hands over his ears, alas, it was not enough to drown out the piercing tones of the barbarous youths voice.
"It's very different doing it with a guy then it is to do it with a girl." he annunciated, taking deliberate pleasure in saying every word as slowly as possible.
As if this wasn't already obvious.
"I mean you have to pick the right moment," Kiba continued grinning from ear to ear, Sasuke wanted to interject things like "Stop it." and "Stop it or I'll smash your head into the wall." or "I'll cut out your tongue if you say one more word."
But even as he thought this, he heard Kiba say: "And it's all awkward at first, and your thinking what the hell am I doing? The trick is to not over think it you know, just go with it and it'll be fine."
'It'll be fine.'
Is that what Naruto wanted? For everything to be fine again? A perfect fairytale ending?
It would never be fine.
Naruto wanted things he couldn't give, he always had done. He asked too much. Loyalty, a life long companion, family and love. He wanted Sasuke to want him in the same what he wanted Sasuke, whatever that was. Sometimes Sasuke thought he came very close to it. After all it was an obsessing soul consuming love between the two of them, souls unbodied and laid bare. There had been times when he was younger when he had almost felt like Naruto was a part of him. Where one essence ended and the other began, actions and thoughts so predictable so second nature.
There was no doubt that Naruto was a problem, like some hot metal barb splicing through his heart and drawing blood with a steady drip, drip, one day it might kill him. One day there would be no more blood in his veins to give and then he'd die, but not before…unconsciously Sasuke traced the onyx knob on his left wrist, he had mistakes to right before he died. A stupid, stupid mistake, and a deal with the devil to fore fill first. He didn't have the time to die just yet.
"And then you start doing your thing, and it's like Shazam!"
Sasuke blinked, the voice suddenly jerking him back down into reality once more, he raised one dark arched brow and asked with all his usual cold sarcasm, "Shazam?"
Kiba smiled at him, "That's what I say when I'm getting some, Shazam." and he wiggled his fingers above his head as he said it to accentuate how good it felt.
Sasuke would have laughed then, he might have even told Kiba that if he ever said 'Shazam'in a moment of heated passion he'd admit to being a frigid cold ass jerk to Naruto and there was a stick rammed so far up his ass he could rotate on it.
But he said none of this, partly because he the words seemed unable to make it past his tongue, and secondly because at that exact moment the front door opened and Naruto and Shikamaru came stomping into the front hall.
From the moment Naruto moved across the threshold of the apartment everyone inside the building knew he was in one hell of a bad mood. It was something to do with the way the hell hit the floor, less of a 'Clack' of leather onto wood and more of a 'Ker-thunk' as someone drove not just their heel but their entire sole onto the wooden planks.
Kiba twisted up from his position on the floor, ears suddenly pricked and looking eager, as a dog will do as their master pulls open the front door. Suddenly excited and raring to go within the blink of an eye, he would have jumped up and leapt all over Naruto too, despite whatever mood he had been in, except Shikamaru intervened.
He grabbed Kiba by the collar, and hauled him out the door so fast it was all over in a heart beat. Kiba had barely the time to wriggle round and give Sasuke the thumbs up before he was thrown out across the threshold of Naruto's house.
"What the hell gives?" He hissed at Shikamaru who had the exhausted expression of someone who simply wished to crawl into bed as soon as possible.
"What did they say? What's going on Maru?" he continued to pester as his friend elbowed him down the stairs.
"You do not," Shikamaru began, the flat of both of his hands on Kiba's back as he applied pressure to make him hurry up, "want to get in the middle of that fight. Believe me."
Kiba craned his neck to look over his shoulder and his stomach wrenched at the deadly serious expression on his best friend's face, "W-what did they say?"
His words fell heavy into the velvet inkiness of the dark.
Naruto didn't say anything for a long, long moment. The front door clicked shut and the indignant sounds of Shikamaru pushing a dazed Kiba down the stairs faded into the background noise of the pressing gloom. The light was out in the corridor and the shadows crept from the hallways into the artificial lamplight of Naruto's sitting room, illuminating the shabby corners of the sofa and the wooden chairs.
Sasuke said nothing, obstinate and on edge all at once again, he wasn't going to be the one to break the silence. But the look was annoyed him, it was the look Naruto had given him when he'd left. The 'I-don't-believe-you've-done-this-to-me' with impossibly wide blue eyes, except the eyes were darker this time, pits of deep indigo splashed with cornflowers framed by impossibly dark lashes for one with such fair hair. He looked….hurt…hurt and angry. Like a fox cornered by a hunter, leg broken but the gleam of some ancient savagery alive in its eyes.
It began quietly, the large things always do.
"They tell me," he said, in tones that were unlike Naruto's all the time his gaze, his expression never moving, never changing a bit. As though he wanted to hear it from Sasuke before he accepted it, he needed to hear it from Sasuke before he accepted it. Before it plunged his world into darkness and sent him spiralling through it lost and alone.
"They tell me that the Village of Sound was destroyed a little over nine months ago."
Sasuke's heart momentarily stopped in his chest, panic rose and began to bubble inside of him, veins and arteries dilated as blood rushed tempestuously hither and thither about his body.
// How much do they know? Surely not…there was no way…it was a secret between 'The devil' and myself… //
Naruto keept looking at him, he couldn't break away, "They tell me all the remaining members of Akatsuki, including from what I'm told, your dearly beloved brother…are dead."
Sasuke didn't say anything, his expression remained completely stoic, his body language stiffened as he rose to his feet, eyes level with Naruto, unyielding impenetrable demeanour. Terrifying, beautiful and sad beyond thought and reason.
Yet, all that Naruto saw is a person he's lost hold of, someone he loves, might even be in love with, but someone who is, or might as well be an utter stranger to him.
As only silence was his answer Naruto pressed on, his own conscious, his own needs, his own justification, part of him slipped and slid on reality as it spiraled and things began to shake loose and fall. Things he'd always believed in, like when Sasuke was strong enough, strong enough to….
"You didn't mean…to come back did you?" Naruto asked, there was a slight rise to his voice here, the wide generous mouth twisted a fraction, oddly firm line, more carnal, glinting teeth and white canines.
"It was all an accident, if you'd meant to…you'd have come back already. If you'd wanted to, but you didn't…you-"
"Did you expect me to?" Sasuke asked, his eyes are cold and pin Naruto against the wall he's standing in front of, limbs heavy like tombstones.
"Did you expect me come back?"
"This is your home…"
Sasuke Uchiha laughed, if you could call it laughter, it's a hollow mocking sound, much like his smile and it sent waves of desperation and anger up Naruto Uzumaki's spine.
"Home? You think this is my home? I burnt my bridges to the past when I left this place the first time Dead-Last. The Village hidden in the Leaves can no longer contain me, you fool. I've out grown it, I'm too dark, too twisted, too dangerous to be kept here. Do you honestly think these thin plaster walls can hold me here for long? You're sitting on a time bomb Naruto, you keep underestimating what I'll really do to get what I want."
Sasuke licked his lips, and a shadow flitted across his face, a whisper of things to come, "There are worse things than death you know."
// He's outgrown me, that's what he's saying. Ero-sennin why did you have to be right//
"How did they die?"
The question caught Sasuke off guard for a fraction of a second, but he never lost his composure once, the ice mask drips poison that seeps into the air and gags both of them.
"Didn't they tell you?"
Naruto's face worked only to form the next word, the only thing alive in the mask are his eyes, a brilliant blue that flashed as they became steadily angrier and angrier with each passing second.
"Intelligence says the whole place has been flattened, completely wiped out. It's all gone, there's nothing left. Not even a blade of grass, or a standing tree. It's a wasteland now, barren and completely bare."
There was that look again, the strange hurt look of child, "No person could have done that, Sasuke."
"Are you saying I'm not human?" There was the sneer again.
"I honestly don't know anymore…" Naruto's voice trailed off, "You tell me nothing but lies. I can't trust you."
"So you're finally catching on are you?" It hurt a little to be say it, it hurt Sasuke a little to say it to Naruto. Naruto who believed in him blindly. He had always left Naruto behind because Naruto had kept on looking for much longer than all the others had done, Naruto who had continued to trust despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It was something precious and fragile that Sasuke was trying to kill, a white innocent thing smoother than stardust and infinitely more dear that he was hacking away at. He could see it in those blue, blue eyes and he longed to crack it forever, to be completely free and clean of the past altogether.
// I can't die here…I can't stay here…there's a foolish mistake I made, and I have to fix it before it's too late. //
"I don't care about you Naruto, I never will do. I just use people to get what I want, I use you. Don't you understand? Everyone else does."
"Shut up Sasuke." The syllables were ground and the voice impossibly rough, he was close to breaking.
"You were always dumb, you never understood, you couldn't understand. You've never had a family, you've never lost like I have so you don't know the pain. You don't know how to suffer, and you implant your silly, idealistic-"
"Shut the hell up."
The anger was closer now, like steam rising from a kettle it began to whistle, almost ready to erupt, ominous clouds to swirl.
// What will it take for you to stop forgiving me//
"Is it because you're in love with me Naruto? Is that why you can't let me go? Because I was your one and only love, and Sakura keeps the bed warm but she's not me now is she?…"
He walked slowly across the room towards Naruto, Naruto whose legs were locked, rooted to the spot unable to move.
"Because you want me don't you Naruto? You're a fool because you want me and you always will, you can't break the cycle, I'll always have you at my beck and call…"
The blond flinched as Sasuke brushed the tips of his fingers against his cheek, and traced the three vertical scars whisper light, "My poor, ugly, monstrous demon…"
Naruto's eyes were still looking at him, angry, hurt, disbelieving, such a deep and trusting and unfeasible blue, Sasuke's hot breath was against his ear and his heart fluttered and jittered at the heat that radiated from the supple body before him. His body wanted, whilst his brain recoiled, he's drunk on Sasuke Uchiha.
His eyes, his smell, his touch, the way he talks, the way he whispers, the way his mouth moves as the words come spilling over his tongue.
So what if they hurt? So what if they pull him apart inside? Sasuke's here, isn't that enough? Touching him, so close to holding him.
Sasuke Uchiha tilted Naruto's face up to look up into his own, the rigidity in Naruto's body had gone, he was like a limp fish, he moved easily and responded easily to Sasuke's touch and Sasuke felt himself become darkly excited as cornflower irises meets his half lidded and in pain, but somehow still asking for him.
Like he needed him, like he couldn't exist without him.
"How could anybody ever love you?"
There it was, that small whimper of pain before Sasuke's lips crushed against Naruto's and the Kitsune was holding onto Sasuke as if he was going to drown. As if he was going to choke and never come up for air again, as if he was going to die and he simply didn't care. Feverish, delirious kisses, hot and tempting hands, it doesn't seem to make sense, nothing made sense, he was pressed against the wall with his fingers curled deep into Sasuke's ebony dark locks and gasped for air and sucked in breath and hated…hated himself for it. Hated every single second, hated his need, hated his urge, hated the way that Sasuke said all these malevolent manipulative things as he caressed and touched him and all Naruto could do was agree. Agree and hold himself close to Sasuke because he was afraid of letting go, because he couldn't accept losing him. Because if he lost Sasuke, he'd fall apart at the seams and unravel and slip through everyone's fingers like countless grains of sand.
So when Sasuke did stop, did allow Naruto to sink to his knees, mouth flushed and swollen from the rough kisses and biting, gasping for oxygen but given no time to think as Sasuke pushed him to the ground and straddled him and Naruto knows he means to do it this time. Not because he wants to, but simply because he can, and he wants to prove to both of them that Naruto won't…can't stop him.
Then Naruto in a moment of cold clarity, staring up at the ceiling as Sasuke reached down unclasp the catch on his trousers.
"I bet you wanted Itachi to do you like this didn't you? Fuck you raw naked up your ass. That was all you really wanted from him, wasn't it?"
Sasuke didn't reply, in fact his expression barely changed but his fingers run up the length of Naruto's body and clench and span the extent of his neck and slowly began to choke him.
That was when Naruto Uzumaki knew he'd gone too far, knew as he kicked and clawed at the fingers around his neck that he was gonna die, right then if Sasuke could manage it. Little white dots bobbed and careered over a darkened background as Sasuke pressed down directly on his jugular and held it there. Things faded into black and white and then became fuzzy. Sasuke's fingers were cold and unrelenting as they bit into his neck, he was not even sure Sasuke is in complete control of his own actions at that moment in time, if it was his body performing something on reflex of anger, deadly soul consuming anger that overrode his brain.
Naruto would die for Sasuke, they both know it. But as oxygen is cut off to the rest of the body his brains receptors screeched into overdrive and the Kyubbi's chakra exploded inside of him. Suddenly the fear of death overwhelmed, red energy surged and then expelled and Sasuke went flying. Naruto went flying too. Both in opposite directions, and hard into the floor.
There was a pause, a realisation, and utter horror.
Sasuke looked at his hands and then again at the red spanning marks on Naruto's neck and the way Naruto coughed and swallowed down air through a raw trachea, then he looked like he's going to be sick and walked wordlessly out of the room.
Naruto heard the sound of footsteps going up the stairs and a door slammed shut, but all he can do is lie on the floor and gasp like he's dying. He didn't go upstairs again that night, he didn't even move from where he lay, curled up in a foetal position and shaking from the cold.
When he falls asleep, he'll wonder how he got onto the sofa with the blanket draped over his body, he'll have forgotten the person who came down later and said over and over again that he was sorry whilst he slept, and he doesn't know about the kiss in the dark. The light, loving one that Sasuke gave him as he lay on his back exhausted and fast asleep, he might think the dried tears on his face are his, he might think he wept them, but he didn't….
A/N (2)
AND THE ANGST CAME BACK AND IT WAS OH, SO NICE! I was actually not planning on this ending, it ended up popping into the final version and I rather like it. Most of this chapter was written to the album Frengers by Mew, which I love. Sorry if this chapter was a bit annoying, and took a long time to come about...plot bunnies and -tears out hair- just generally work and things like that.
OHOHO, what should happen next you ask? x3 Come on guys, I'd like this to reach 100 reviews at least before I post chapter 10, do you think you can do thatfor me? Purlease?
As Penguinsteps, Pandarosi and myself are about to do our A-Level exams, I'm reluctant to ask either of them to Beta as well as having less time to write myself chapters probably not be posted until mid July, so you're gonna hate me DX CLIFFY I KNOW AM SORRY!
