I N S I D E R

Insider; gossip central of Fire Country's rich, famous, bitchy, and shameless. News just in; Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha caught on camera for your viewing pleasure! Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show; a tornado just met volcano. SasuFemNaru, ItaSaku, slight KakaFemNaru, KakaRin.

CHAPTER 10
~:: FACE IT LIKE A GROWN-UP ::~

It's too cliché – I won't say I'm in love!
I thought my heart had learned it's lesson;
It feels so good when you start out.
My head is screaming: 'get a grip girl,
Unless you're dying to cry your heart out!'

"What's wrong?" Sasuke asked, turning around as the footsteps behind him grounded to as sudden halt in the middle of the car park.

"I-Is that your car?" Naruto asked in a shaking voice, pointing to the black Katon Kagutsuchi parked a few meters in front of them; he wondered if he should be alarmed by the mania that was slowly edging into her face.

"It's a rental, wh-"
"Please let me drive it! Please! I've been dying to get behind the wheel of that thing for months!" she begged, grabbing the front of his shirt and staring up at him with – there was no other way to describe them – the eyes of a puppy.

There was obviously some key detail about the black vehicle that he was missing, because he didn't see anything amazing that could have made Naruto stare at it with such desperate longing. It was just a damn car wasn't it? It looked okay and drove fast, so that was what he had arranged for driving around in.

Naruto though, was almost salivating; she turned back and shot him a pleading look, both hands clasped in front of her in a pleading gesture. It was actually amusing, in an odd sort of way – she was hopping with excitement in just being in the presence of the thing.

There really wasn't any harm in letting her drive the thing – he knew she had the SPHERE-S back in Konoha, so she would be used to the controls of such a fast car. That was how Itachi had crashed his grandfather's older version of the thing – even the accelerator on that clapped out old thing had been too sensitive for his then fifteen-year-old brother to handle.

He sighed, as if in resignation, and dug the keys from his jacket pocket before holding them out in front of her stunned face; she slowly took them from his fingers, as if they were some sort of holy object, then the air was knocked form his lungs.

Naruto was probably yelling some sort of thanks for the entire car park to hear, but all her could concentrate on was that smell, and the fact she was pressed against him for the second time in one day. He absolutely froze.

Thank god she was too excited about the driving privilege to notice his momentary pause, breaking away from the sudden embrace to dash for the drivers seat. After shaking himself from the daze, he slipped into the passenger seat beside her; she was already fiddling around with buttons on the dashboard. Buttons he wouldn't have dared touch.

She twisted the keys in the ignition, and the engine roared into life with a long loud growl, and Sasuke was certain she was close to fainting dead away for a moment. Then they were moving, and as soon as they hit the main road, Sasuke realised the terror of being Naruto Uzumaki's passenger.

He felt his hands actually clinging to the leather of the seats in anxiety as she swerved amongst the traffic, giggling manically as she missed some poor soul's bumper by mere centimetres; she was having fun dodging death! He couldn't remember getting insurance on the thing... did he get insurance?

Thankfully he didn't have to find out – Naruto had pulled up oust side the main Maelstrom branch in the centre of Kumo. He fought the urge to kiss the pavement as he hurriedly pulled himself from the passenger seat, Naruto reluctantly leaving the drivers side and dancing a little jig as she locked the car.

It was at that point that he snatched the keys back.
"No. More. Driving." he informed her pointedly.

For some reason, he didn't like the smirk on Naruto's face as she walked into the shop she had just parked in front of. There was no way she had don't that on purpose... was there? He decided not to dwell on it, and followed her inside.

The shop was one of those clean-lined modern ones. It was all sleek and full of neatly dressed assistants, a few staring at Naruto with wide eyes as she plucked a few things from the selves or hangers after examining the size tags.

He noticed that most of the items that she picked out were ones that her brother had designed, and that the clothes that had come from her mother's mind were blatantly ignored. He wondered, not for the first time, what exactly happened with her mother for her to avoid mere clothes.

There had to be some pretty strong hatred there for her to avoid woven fibres. His mind wandered back to the group introduction the newly reverted-blonde; something her mother had said there bugged him...

"Did you really learn to walk in there?" he asked as she slung a pair of dark skinny jeans on top of the pile on her arm.

Several hangers were hung over her wrist itself, but she seemed to have run out of space thanks to the bulky wooden hangers these places were so fond of. It seemed like an awkward set up, so he took half the pile into his own free hands; she paused long enough to raise an eyebrow before turning back to her task.

"Walking, first word, first tooth out, first prank, first failed 'intervention'..." she replied absently.

He didn't know if she was avoiding a more in depth answer or was more concerned with the pile of clothing. It wasn't a lot, enough for seven days, but she was still looking for something she was missing; she scanned her eyes around the room, before letting out a sight of resignation and heading toward the back at the room.

His mind instantly told him to run, far, far away, but his pride just wouldn't let him, so he had no choice but to follow her towards the underwear section; it wasn't that the clothes themselves made him uncomfortable, they were just bits of fabric after all.

What bothered him was that Naruto was in the same general vicinity as them; it was very hard to concentrate on talking (not that they did much of it) when his imagination kept supplying him with very accurate depictions of what she would look like wearing some of the things.

"31... 37... oops, too far, 33! 33... 33... uh... oh bugger, what was it again?"

Naruto continued to mumble to herself as she flicked through a row of black bras, her face frowning in consternation as she tried to remember what he presumed was her size. He chanced a glance at one of the tags, and raised an eyebrow in confusion at the mismatch of letters and numbers before stowing it away again with a wrinkle nose.

"Sasuke, do me a favour and check the tag on the back of my bra – I can't see the damn thing!"

He actually dropped a couple of the articles of clothing on his arm when that request reached his ears; she wanted him to do what?
"Excuse me?"

"Check the tag on the back! I need to know what my size is! I don't shop often so I can't remember which one it is in here!" she replied, jerking one thumb over her shoulder at her back.
"You can't seriously be asking me that..." he groaned.

The awkwardness that had been there on the plane was gone now, but even he had his limits! She was completely oblivious to his discomfort though, muttering away to herself.

"Oh for gods sake, not like you haven't seen the show, so what does it matter? You just need to look at the back and tell me what the tag says!"

Exactly; that was exactly the problem, but did that bother her in the slightest? Not a fraction; she had a very strange, frank attitude towards the whole situation. She was completely unruffled by it, and thus, there was nothing he could say to argue point against her.

It was a good thing that most of the people in the shop were up at the front, or there would have been a very awkward moment when he grudgingly pushed up the back of her shirt to glance on the tag on the plain white fabric.

"33C..." he muttered, removing his eyes as quickly as he could.
"Thank you! Geez, that wasn't that hard was it?" she asked, rolling her eyes as she began to snatch the offending items from the rows.

Was she really so at ease with this that she really didn't care if he was seeing skin again? It was weird, but he felt offended by the idea for some reason. He thought he was safe after that – she certainly kept to herself as she hunted through the shelves of the various different species of bras – but it was not to be.

"Oi, you're a guy, which one?"

"You're asking my opinion now?" he asked incredulously, turning to stare at her – she was holding up a red and a purple one in one hand, other trying to juggle all the miniature hangers balanced on the other.

Her face took on an irritated expression, one that amazingly had nothing to do with him.
"Look, I know its weird, but Sakura usually does this stuff with me... I hate shopping! I don't want to look completely stupid in the things though, so just humour me!"

Was she even listening to herself? The last time she had told him to humour her the night had ended with the night club fiasco. Well not directly, but she had said it before!

Why was he even standing here? He was in the middle of a shop, arguing over bras with a girl who, only two weeks ago, he had simply been trying to coax into bed; he had succeeded (in two separate locations), but he still hadn't moved past Naruto.

Hell, he had been half-set to have another go earlier that afternoon, and now he was offering her use of his hotel suite and arguing over bras. He didn't know where, but somewhere along the line, he had abandoned his own rules! Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong somewhere; that was the only explanation he could think of.

Giving up on his internal assessment for the moment he gave the two pieces of fabric an assessing glance, not caring that he picturing her wearing them for the moment.

"Purple" he muttered.

After leaving the main branch shop, they stopped off at a supermarket for the rest of the things she needed to get through the week; Naruto also went around the food shelves, muttering to herself again, examining the back of cheese packets.

Then they were back at the hotel where he was staying, and Naruto found out about the sleeping arrangements, and for the first time that day, he caught a glimpse of just how agitated she really was. She was most irritated about that lack of detail since she (he) hadn't bought anything to sleep in.

He was left to contemplate that as she began to mess around in the kitchen; it seemed to be half-cookery, half the ventilation of frustration on poor unsuspecting vegetables, but Sasuke was too caught up in trying to figure out why she was even there to give the matter any close detail.

He wasn't so dense to realise, by now, that Naruto was a little bit different in his mind to all the other people he had screwed into the mattress. He really would have to have been a complete moron to miss it at this point.

But what did that mean? It wasn't a simple friendship – they had been heading on that direction before the première fandango had risen it's ugly head, and he knew it wasn't the same as that. It was... a bit more.

There was of course an explanation for it; attraction. He hadn't been attracted to someone to someone since high school, but he did know what it was, and he would grudgingly admit to himself now that it was attraction that stood in front of him.

There were different types of that though; Naruto was hardly a street urchin, and the now-dulling marks on his wrists were testament to the fact that she was more adventurous than most of the girls he involved himself with in the bedroom.

But of course that nagging thing in the back of his mind wouldn't let him pass it off as a simple physical lust; he liked Naruto's company. She was irritating on occasion, loud often, and constantly caught him off guard, but he did enjoy it. He had inadvertently gotten to know her in the past two weeks without realising it, and...

"Here."

He was jerked from his musings by the bowl of... uh... by the bowl shoved under his nose; he guessed it was supposed to be food, and it did have a slight tomato tang if he really concentrated, but it sure as hell didn't look edible.

"It's soup moron!"

He caught the look in Naruto's eyes, the one daring him to say something about her apparent lack of cooking ability, and hesitantly took it from her hand.

"What this for?" he asked, hesitantly running a spoon through the liquid.

It was almost like gazpacho in consistency, or tomato juice, but it was still bubbling from the pan on the edges of the bowl. Well, at least it still held the qualities of soup, even if they weren't strictly speaking fulfilled.

"I owe you, so I made you food... its all I could really think of till I can get my cards back" she replied, plopping down on the sofa beside him, legs crossed.

He could think of something, but he shooed the though from his mind, instead taking the spoon and loading it with a tentative amount of the so-called soup, and shoved it in his mouth – it was the polite thing to do really, since she seemed so adamant on repaying him for the use of his hotel room.

It tasted... it wasn't actually as bad as it looked; the boiling liquid seared at his gums, and there wasn't much taste to it, but it was actually kind of... good. Naruto watched with wide eyes as he started to finish the bowl, but a call on her mobile distracted her.

She jumped up from the sofa to answer it out of his earshot, and he watched her as she paced the kitchenette, continuing to consume the imperfect soup.

Now that she was out of the way he was left back with his musings; now he was eating soup? He'd never shared this experience with anyone before either, but why was it so impossible to do that with Naruto? Two weeks with the girl and he couldn't get away from her!

It was infuriating! Even when she wasn't nearby, she was plaguing his mind in one way or another! And what the hell had he been thinking earlier, kissing her like that? Why had it been so easy? Why had it been so hard to...

Much to his horror, he was drawn back to the varieties of attraction again, and to the fact that he enjoyed talking to her as much as he had liked the sex. He was not dense; he knew that that wasn't plain old lust, but by conclusion that meant he...

Oh, hell no...

"Naruto! Where the hell are you?" Sakura demanded, panic clear in her voice.

She must have been driving Itachi mad with her panic mode, and Naruto wasn't too fond of it either – Sakura was her best friend, but she was very highly strung – so she was quick to answer her.

"Sakura, calm down okay? I'm in Kumo..."
"What? But you hate Kumo!"

"My mother had a fit and wouldn't take no for an answer this time – I still can't believe you didn't stop me from going home with him!" she hissed quietly, so to avoid Sasuke overhearing the conversation.

She held nothing against him, otherwise she never would have taken up the refuge offer, but she was still somewhat shocked she had let it happen in the first place, and Sakura normally stopped her before she did things that would end up a front-page scandal...

"I'm sorry! I really am, but I was busy! By the time I could check on you, you were already on top of him!"

Naruto sighed in frustration; she tried to look at the positive – she had succeeded in trying to hook Sakura up with someone. Itachi too – that guy would never get laid if you didn't push him when he wasn't looking.

"What's the news like there?" she asked, hoping to god something had happened to distract the media from her mess of a life for a few minuets - Sakura made a nervous sounding noise that did nothing to bolster those hopes.

"I'm not really sure... They're still freaking out about it, but they can't find you at the moment. I doubt that'll last though, there's always a few reporters hanging around at airports... Where are you staying? With your mother?"

Naruto could have lied, but Sakura would have found out eventually anyway, and then the girl would have skinned her.

"I did last night... but I'm sort of staying with Sasuke now..."
"What? Naruto that's insane...!"

The shouts from the other end of the call were deaf on her ears; Naruto was having enough problems digesting the information her self to acknowledge Sakura's shocked exclamations.

Why exactly had she agreed to this? Things with her mother were definitely as low as ever, but she had lived through it before. She didn't have to take up Sasuke's offer like that. In it's own way, it was just as crazy as trying to reason with her mother was.

To her disbelief, she had actually wanted to stay with him when he mentioned it; she had been eager to accept under her skin, despite her original protests and after the initial shock had passed. It was completely irrational!

"...That's like baiting the devil! Once was bad enough, why the hell are you throwing yourself into the dragon's den for seconds...?"

And where did he get off with kissing her like that? Oh sure, he'd probably say it was her fault for hugging him in the first place, but he'd been the one groping her ass! It was hardly her fault for being grateful... not that she didn't get her revenge in the shop though.

Seeing him so ruffled had been so much fun. It was nice to see instead of that blank exterior that he had as his default emotional setting.

"...Oh my god, you're attracted to him, aren't you?"

The question made her nearly drop the phone in both surprise at the loud pitch, and at the question itself.

"Of course I don't! I'm paying him back once I get my hands on my cards again! Besides, he offered, and I'm not putting up with that crazy woman if I don't have to!" she replied.

The words felt like a lie, and Sakura's snort of derision told here she didn't believe a word coming out of her mouth either.

Sasuke rummaged through his hold all-for a spare shirt in complete confused irritation.

He couldn't believe this. This was a complete and utter disaster! This was supposed to have been a one time-thing! How on earth had he ended up... interested in her?That didn't happen to him! What on earth was he supposed to do now? What use was this predicament to him?

He stuck his hand through the gap in the bathroom door and the shirt in his hand was removed from his grip, and then Naruto came out – and god, he couldn't help but stare at her, and it pissed him off. Bad enough she had the lingers-of-the-shower look, but wearing his t-shirt?

It didn't drown her, but he felt a irrational sort of glee as she wandered back to the sofa to resume watching the racing channel she had switched it on to; why did it matter that she was wearing his clothes?

His face remained a blank as he dug a couple of cans of beer out of the fridge, throwing one at her as he sat down to watch with her, but inside he wondered if he was loosing his mind.

The more he tried to come up with other reasons, other excuses, for his odd behaviour where Naruto was concerned, the more he realised he was trying to argue a moot point against himself; no matter how much he was trying to fight against it, Naruto interested him.

He didn't want someone to interest him, he was perfectly happy when no-one interested him, but now he was, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do about it.

For the moment though, he decided to try finding out why her relationship with her mother was so frosty. He had only seen them interacting once, at the airport, but even he had been able to tell that Naruto hated the woman with almost every strand of DNA inside her.

It might even be a solution to his whole problem; if he talked to Naruto about the things he didn't know about her, then by logical reasoning discovering those things should end his interest, leaving the physical side of things to plain old lust; Sasuke ignored the nagging voice that (sounding suspiciously like Itachi) screamed denial.

"Why do you hate her so much?" he asked, not bothering to name the person in question.

Naruto looked away from the screen, taken off guard by the question; there was an obvious conflict on whether to broach the topic or not on her face, and he wondered if he should take it back, before she let out a sigh of resignation.

"She never stops working, never has and probably never will; she never paid the lightest bit of attention to me, or Kyuubi for that matter. Dad tried to make up for it but he worked away a lot, and they ended up divorcing when I was eight..." she started.

They were both staring at the TV screen, but even Naruto wasn't watching it ash she continued.

"...He tried to take me along with Kyuubi, and I wanted to go, but she started in about lawyers, and he didn't want to go through that drama, so I was stuck with her; once I started high school, it was pretty much my aim in life to make hers as problematic as I could."

Naruto pulled her bare knees up to her chest, still keeping her gaze fixed on the television, but his own flicked towards her from the corner of his eye in raised curiosity.

"Just think of all the things you wouldn't want a kid to do, and I'll check them off... go ahead."

He turned back to the screen, lining up all the things he had done that had made his mother mad in his head; most of them were stupid childish things, or accidental, but there were a few instances in which he had been deliberately rebellious.

"Joyriding?"
"Crashed two of her cars before I hit fifteen."

Damn, that was one of his bigger faults, and technically he hadn't been doing the driving, but he had still been in the car with Itachi when he crashed their grandfather's car.

"Fights?"
"Almost every other day in high school."

He wasn't getting anywhere with that method of questioning; he had a feeling that if it continued it would go on for several hours.

"This is a long list right? Tell me the main ones; I'll just assume you were a complete hellion to fill in the gaps" he suggested, fully turning his gaze from the TV screen.

Something in his voice must have tripped some sort of calming button in her brain, because when she turned to face him instead of the screen, she had a smug grin on her face.

"I got these done when I was twelve; the school had a fit when I came in for the afternoon classes and they dragged her out of some meeting..." she informed him with a tap on one of her whisker-tattooed cheeks.

Twelve? Where on earth had she found a tattoo parlour that would even let a twelve-year-old inside?

"...Kyuubi told me where to get them done, if that's what you're wondering... I guess the next thing was Omoi – she didn't like him on principle, but he was four years older than me too, so I took an interest..."

Her face faltered a little before she continued.

"...That didn't really work properly though; I got myself sent home and dragged him along with me when I was fourteen. I figured it would give her a heart attack if she walked in on us, but she sent Kyuubi along instead... I hadn't actually told him we were going out at that point, so he sort of... had a meltdown."

Fourteen? That would have put Omoi at eighteen if he was four years older. No wonder Kyuubi didn't like him if that was his introduction to her first boyfriend; it made him wonder how he had reacted to Kakashi.

Why did she have such an interest in older guys? Kakashi was ten years older than her, and this Omoi guy would have been dancing the line of dubious consent. It made him the first guy close to her own age she had been involved with in any shape or form.

"After that, the last... I don't really know if you could call it a conversation, but I decided to drop out of school early, and she dared me to try living away from her, so that's what I did."

It was definitely skipping over the details, but he was beginning to see where her dislike of the woman came from; as far as he could tell, Kushina differed from his mother in that, despite still working herself, Kushina wasn't willing to arrange her work around her family, but rather the other way around.

"Is that the only reason you left?" he asked – something seemed to be missing from the explanation.

Naruto raised an eyebrow, and them smirked at him.
"That's another skeleton for another time."

Please don't shoot me! My laptop died, and I'm using college computers, and they don't even acknowledge the existence of the centering button on the text editor! Seriously, my laptop isn't even a year old yet, and it had to be sent away after I got it two months to get the fan fixed already! Now my battery connection is dead; I have to hold the charger in place with electrical tape!

Except two weeks ago, it went clunk, whir, whizz, band, poof, kaput! It isn't functional anymore. My old laptop doesn't even have the internet, and the home computer died at the same fricking time! What are the freaking chances of that? What are they? Gaaargh! I gots a stomachy bug thingy too, so this is a cheer up...

Mini quote; 'I Won't Say I'm In Love'by Susan Egan (AKA Meg from Hercules). I thought it fitted both Sasuke and Naruto for this chapter, and it was a funky song. Sasuke is beginning to let realisation dawn - not that he wants it to - and so is Naruto. Not for long though; this is the last nice chapter. Next chapter Sasuke gets his bastard stripes back out of the cupboard. Freshly laundered and even ironed!

Look forward to that - hope you liked the chapter!
Nat.
xxx