Pain's Stoic Pleasures
Chapter Nine: Live Your Way
Orochimaru stomped into his house at nearly three in the morning. He was furious with what had just happened at the Auction House. Soukyuu had been bought by that little Uchiha snot for four whole years. The boy was seventeen soon, meaning that Orochimaru would never be able to get his hands on his pet again.
Kabuto was there, waiting for him like always. "Orochimaru-sama?" he asked, noticing that the man's mood was strange and he was obviously angered.
"What is it?" the pallid man barked, striding past Kabuto. The younger man followed him quickly.
"You got a phone call from Uchiha Itachi about an hour ago," Kabuto began. Orochimaru stopped immediately, making his subordinate crash into him.
"Sorry, Orochimaru-sama," the man said as he bowed. Orochimaru waved his hand, showing that it didn't matter. Kabuto fixed his glasses while waiting for his master's response.
"What did he want?" Orochimaru asked him.
"I'm not entirely sure," Kabuto reported. "He refused to leave a message."
Orochimaru looked thoughtful at this. "Kabuto," he stated.
"Yes, Orochimaru-sama?" was the younger man's answer.
"Call him back, send him over to my line once you have reached him and put it on the visual, understand?" the pale snake snapped.
"Yes, Orochimaru-sama."
Orochimaru made his way to his home office, which was a lavish décor. He strode over to the expensive wooden desk, shined to perfection by his servants and sat in the large, comfortable chair. He typed a code into the desk keyboard, which turned on the computer monitor for a video conference. He watched as the face of Uchiha Itachi came onto the screen.
"Orochimaru-san," the man said in his dead voice. Orochimaru had always secretly admired Itachi. The man was younger than him by about fifteen years, yet he was about as powerful as him. It was known that Uchiha Itachi had done all of it on his own.
"To what do I owe this pleasure?" Orochimaru asked, leaning back in his chair, never moving his eyes from Itachi's.
"I need to confer with you on a matter regarding my brother," Itachi responded.
"Oh?" Orochimaru asked. It was known by Itachi that Orochimaru was Sasuke's physics teacher (which was one of his side jobs. Orochimaru was actually the CEO of a major corporation dealing with music called Hibiki Studios.)
"Yes," Itachi confirmed. "I have reason to believe that he has taken a former… distraction under his name. My sources have informed me that you know this distraction."
"If you are speaking about Soukyuu, the slave from Gatou's, I would very much rather the boy be at my house than your brother's," Orochimaru snapped.
Itachi just stared at Orochimaru coldly. "Believe me, Orochimaru-san, I would much rather have that than what it is right now," Itachi said.
"Why would you not want a whore at your brother's house?" Orochimaru wanted to know.
"I wouldn't care for a whore," Itachi sneered. "It's more of an Uzumaki that I worry."
"Uzumaki?" Orochimaru repeated, furrowing his brow. Something about that name made him remember something that he wasn't entirely sure what.
Itachi nodded, looking complacent. "Yes, 'Uzumaki'. Are you sure you don't remember the name?" the Uchiha asked, staring at the other man through the computer with his scary red eyes. It wasn't strange to see Uchiha Itachi with red and black eyes that could spin whenever he wanted to. It was old news to Orochimaru that the man had dabbled with a laboratory's experiments in his early teenage years. Now, in his mid-twenties, the man seemed stuck with red eyes.
They were scary, but Orochimaru knew that those eyes would be much worse if the man wasn't scary as well. It was a strange concept, but one that worked for the likes of Uchiha Itachi.
Orochimaru shook his head. "Nothing comes to me about the name," he told the other truthfully. "Would you care to fill me in?"
Itachi thought about this for a moment. "I suppose so," he said. "Fifteen years ago, there was a well-known laboratory that was called the Center of Genetic Control which specialized in DNA testing, including mixing mutations of cells within the DNA to ultimately change it. This laboratory is the reason for my eyes. Uchiha Corporation funded them for a while, but when they would not do as we said; we killed the founders – Uzumaki Arashi and Uzumaki Shouko. Now do you remember them?"
Orochimaru looked stoic at the news. Now he remembered the name, as soon as it was partnered with the first names. Well, at least he had gotten his revenge on Arashi for what the blonde man had done to him when they were in college. He stole nearly everything from Orochimaru and the man had sworn vengeance on him.
He hadn't known back then that vengeance would be this… tasteful.
"So why have you contacted me with this information?" Orochimaru looked at Itachi, concentrating to the matter at hand. If he thought of Arashi too much, he would get angry and he didn't want to lash out at Itachi for reasons that Itachi wasn't the cause of.
"I want you to get the child of Arashi and Shouko back from my brother's mansion," Itachi told him. "I don't care how you do it – but you are not allowed to kill any of the personal of the Uchiha Mansion as you retrieve the Uzumaki."
Orochimaru leaned back in his chain, fingers intertwined in front of his face. He lightly rested his nose on the fingers. "So, besides the boy, is there anything else that I get out of this deal?"
"Why would you want anything else?" Itachi sneered.
Orochimaru smirked. "Because I'm a greedy old bastard, as I heard you once say so yourself," he said. "Why would I just be satisfied with one boy – why not take Sasuke-kun instead. That boy has been annoying me lately and he does need something to just shut him up."
Itachi's eyes narrowed slightly. Orochimaru smiled evilly when he saw this. "Ahh, I have something else to attend to Itachi-san," he said. "I shall think on you offer and give my answer whenever I reach one. It's been a pleasure."
With that, Orochimaru ended the transmission.
Haku walked into Naruto's room the next morning, wondering where Sasuke was. He had looked in Sasuke's room and had found the boy missing. The manservant looked at the bed and smiled, seeing Sasuke and Naruto actually cuddling while they were asleep.
It was just so cute!
Silently, he left, returning soon afterward with a camera. He snapped a photo, the flash waking Sasuke.
"Haku?" the Uchiha asked groggily.
"Welcome to Mars, Sasuke-kun," Haku smiled.
Sasuke just looked at Haku as if he were insane. He yawned before asking his next question. "What the fuck are you going on about?" he growled out.
"Women are from Venus, men are from Mars, haven't you ever heard that?" Haku asked, gesturing towards the person next to Sasuke.
Sasuke looked down, eyes widening as he saw Naruto there, hugging his chest.
Haku giggles at the surprised look on Sasuke's face. How he wished he could have snapped more blackmail photos of his employer but the boy had woken up.
"Where the fuck am I?" Sasuke snapped at Haku.
"Soukyuu's room," was the reply he was given.
"How the hell did I get in here?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, Sasuke-kun."
There was a slight groan which brought an end to this conversation. Both men looked at the blonde who was unconsciously cuddling up to Sasuke. Those azure eyes – the eyes that he was named for – opened slowly, hazed over with a blissful dream, the first one the boy had had in what seemed like years. After the scary dream about Orochimaru, Naruto had dreamt of Sasuke telling him that he was welcome to stay the next four years at the Uchiha Mansion rather than go back to being a one-night rental whore at Gatou's place.
Naruto looked up blearily, noticing that he was clinging to Sasuke. When he saw the strange look on the other boy's face, he scrambled back.
"I-I'm s-s-sorry, Sasuke-sama," he apologized quickly, bowing to the other boy. "I won't d-do it again."
Haku looked at the boy strangely. Sure, being an ex-whore himself, he had seen his fair share of bad things and things he didn't want to remember, but he still managed to retain his personality throughout it all. Naruto, however, seemed to switch from being the blonde that Haku once knew and the slave that Orochimaru had made him to be.
Sasuke seemed to be at lost for what to do. If it had been any other situation, Haku would have laughed at the startled look on Sasuke's face, but he knew that laughing was not the right thing to do at the moment.
Naruto stayed in the bow that he had done. He just knew he was going to be hit for this. He just knew that something bad was going to happen. Something bad always happened… it was the way that his life was – he had learned to accept that fact a long time ago. It was just what he did.
It was all he could do, especially after learning from Orochimaru, the hard way, that there was no escape and that he would be stuck in this hell until he was killed, which would probably be soon.
The blonde wondered about in which way he would be destroyed… would it be a bullet? Drugs? Slow, torturous death? He didn't know, and in his masochistic mind, he imagined all of the scenarios that he could until he heard his name called.
"Naruto, stop bowing," Sasuke grumbled.
The blonde looked up at his new master. Not bow? But… that was almost blasphemous! He was always told to bow. It made his masters feel stronger and made him seem more submissive.
"Look, Naruto," Sasuke was saying, his back turned towards the boy. Naruto slowly got up, sitting on his heels instead of bowing to the floor. "You won't be forced to do anything you don't want to while you're in this house. You are a guest here – don't make it seem like you're a prisoner."
Maybe by letting this happen this way, Sasuke thought, I can find redemption.
Haku shook his head, silently leaving. Perhaps, he thought as he went, he should bring breakfast up to Soukyuu's room for today.
Back in Naruto's room, the blonde was completely confused. He didn't know what Sasuke was saying. Sasuke seemed to be lost in thought for a moment, as there was a tense aura around him. It was as though the boy was sifting through the chained parts of his mind, trying to figure out what was going on, why his heart was showing itself now of all times.
What was it about the whore behind him that made him feel this way? The brunette didn't know – didn't need to think about it. Maybe it was exactly as he had told Haku yesterday. Naruto reminded him of someone he once knew, a long time ago… but could not remember.
"Live here, with no cares or worries," Sasuke whispered, and Naruto had to strain his ears in order to hear him. The brunette stared up at the ceiling, not daring to turn around. He didn't want to face the mirror image of the face from the picture in his pantry. To face that would mean… he would become lost in the sunshine that emitted from the boy. Naruto… he was so much like the boy that had been destroyed by Itachi.
So similar. Sasuke shook his head. He didn't need to dwell on thoughts like this at the moment. In fact, he wanted not to dwell on them!
"Sasuke-sama?" Naruto asked, thoroughly puzzled by this point. The Uchiha seemed so… off… today that he couldn't exactly pinpoint the teenager's personality and how far he could go. Naruto was usually good at reading this type of thing, but Sasuke eluded him.
It intrigued Naruto, though he didn't want to seem so bold. He was still until the deception that what had happened in the early hours of the morning had just been a dream, even though proof sat before that said it was not. Still, Naruto couldn't trust anyone. Everyone betrayed them… hadn't they?
"Drop the 'sama', Naruto," Sasuke said, turning back to the blonde. Naruto tilted his head a little, scrunching up his eyebrows. He was most definitely confused. "I won't give you many commands or orders. I brought you here because of a request from an acquaintance that wouldn't leave me alone about it."
Before Naruto could question Sasuke, which was what he was about to do, Haku came into the room with a tray of food. "Breakfast!" the former Sparrow chirped.
Both Naruto and Sasuke stared at Haku for a moment in complete silence. Haku bustled over with the breakfast tray to a table that was in the large room. He set the tray on the table and pulled over two chairs.
"Join us, Haku," Sasuke invited. Haku raised an eyebrow. This was strange. It wasn't Sunday. It was only Saturday. Haku always took brunch with Sasuke-kun on Sundays, but he shrugged it off, retrieving another chair from a random place around the room. Sasuke and Haku sat down while Naruto remained on the bed, eyes wide. He had no idea what to do.
"Come on, Soukyuu," Haku waved the boy over. Slowly, the blonde slid off the large bed and made his way over to the chair.
"Am I supposed to sit here?" he asked in a small voice.
Haku nodded kindly. Stiffly, the boy sat down in the third chair. Sasuke looked at Naruto, more questions running madly across his mind but he didn't wish to voice them.
"Ah!" Haku said as he was pouring tea for the three of them. "I almost forgot. Sasuke-kun, you have a riding lesson at three today. Would you like Soukyuu-chan to accompany you?"
"Sparrow?" Naruto asked softly, not looking at the older man.
"Hmm?" was Haku's reply as he stared at the blonde's hair, not able to see the boy's face.
"C-could you not call me by that name?" the boy whispered.
Haku exchanged a puzzled glance with Sasuke. "Then what do you want to be called by?" was his reply.
"Naruto! I'm Uzumaki Naruto, not… not Soukyuu," the boy murmured.
There was silence at the table for a moment before Sasuke turned to Naruto. "Would you like to come with me this afternoon?" he asked the boy.
Naruto looked up, confused. "Huh?" he asked.
"Riding lesson," Sasuke replied. He sighed. "According to my father, a gentleman must know how to properly ride a horse, so I'm given weekly lessons. It's a pain in the ass – literally."
Naruto giggled at the expression on Sasuke's face and the Uchiha granted the boy a tiny smile.
"S-Sure," Naruto responded. He had never seen a horse before, but he remembered Neji complaining about the same thing only a few months before. He looked back down at the pancakes Haku had brought up, finishing them at a ravenous rate.
Haku stared at the speed the boy was eating at. Perhaps I should have thought to bring him some food last night, he thought to himself.
Sasuke didn't have any thoughts as he ate his pancakes at a slower rate than Naruto.
It was around three that afternoon when Sasuke, dressed completely in breeches and a coat like any professional rider (with the knee-high boots and the brooch on the scarf around his neck) appeared in Naruto's room. The blonde was just nosing around, wondering what everything was and where all of "his" things were. He still believed that this couldn't be real, that there was some kind of catch to it, but he couldn't help bit like it here.
After all, here he was treated like he was something more than just a whore.
"Need help finding your riding clothes?" Sasuke asked.
Naruto stared at him. "You mean… there's more than one set of clothes that I'm supposed to wear?" he asked incredulously. That was ludicrous! Why should a person have more than one set of clothes? Though… now that he thought about it, he had seen Neji-sama wear several different outfits. Gatou-sama had different colored suits and Orochimaru-sama was always in different clothes too.
Naruto suddenly felt strange, as though he was touching somewhere that he didn't belong. He looked down at his feet, trying to squish the feelings that were overcoming him. He didn't belong here, in this rich place. He belonged in the sewers, where all of the other garbage and trash and whores were. He belonged in the slums, where no one was a virgin and sunlight was denied to the occupants.
The blonde didn't really know why he was being so depressive at the moment. He knew that something just wasn't right about this entire picture. He was Soukyuu, number two whore at Gatou's Auction House. Why was he being treated like a human?
Very few people had been even remotely kind to Naruto in the past. Yet what Sasuke was doing know was beyond kind – it was practically unbelievable.
The Uchiha was handing Naruto a new life, one without Orochimaru, Gatou and the name of Soukyuu. The boy felt as though he were being reborn from the torments of the Auction House.
It was just like a dream – or a fairy tale. Naruto didn't know which term would better describe the situation. He wasn't given time to try and decipher this either.
"Naruto?" Sasuke asked, looking concerned at the boy.
"Huh?" was the ever-intelligent reply from the blonde.
"Do you want me to help you with your riding uniform?" the Uchiha asked.
After processing what the brunette said, Naruto stared at him. He was utterly baffled at the moment, and no matter how much he tried to remember what the other teen was talking about, he honestly had no idea.
"Riding uniform?" he asked softly, not sure what Sasuke's reaction would be.
Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Yeah," he answered. He opened his arms, moving his torso around a little bit to emphasize what he was wearing. "You said you wanted to try riding when Haku asked earlier, didn't you?"
Naruto nodded dumbly, still not exactly sure what was being said.
"Well, in order to ride at the stables I'm assigned to, proper uniform is required," the Uchiha explained. He went over to the closet in the room, pulling out a white shirt and a black riding jacket. After laying these on the bed, he went over to the dresser and opened one of the bottom drawers. He sifted through the many clothes in the drawer before finally pulling out a pair of tan breeches. Returning once again to the closet, the boy retrieved the boots that were there. He sighed.
"I just remembered that I must attend to something," he told the other boy in a somewhat apologetic tone. "Haku will be by in a moment to help you dress."
Naruto only nodded as he watched Sasuke disappear. When he was sure that the brunette was gone, he went over to where the clothing was on the bed. Carefully, afraid of damaging the cloth, Naruto ran his fingertips lightly over the silk white shirt. It was soft, and he liked the feeling of it.
Do I really deserve this? The boy wondered. Am I worthy to wear this? After all, I'm just a whore…
The blonde was unable to dwell on this matter any longer as Haku entered the room.
Sasuke was looking through the latest statistics of his branch of the Uchiha Corporation. The life of a businessman, much less the boss of a multi-billion dollar company, did not appeal to the teenager in the least. However, he knew that he had a duty to his family, namely his elder brother. In some ways, Sasuke wished that he wasn't an Uchiha, but pride that was hammered into him for his entire life would never allow such doubts to completely reach his conscious mind.
Obsidian eyes scanned over the numbers on the papers in front of him. Something was bothering him about these figures. He didn't know exactly what was bugging him so much, but it lingered in the back of his mind. He sighed, wondering if he would ever be able to figure out what that feeling meant.
There was a knock from the doorway, making the Uchiha look up from his desk. When he realized that the door was closed, Sasuke called for whomever was out there to enter. In stepped Naruto, completely changed from the way Sasuke had seen him last.
The Uchiha's eyes widened.
The uniform that Haku had picked out for the blonde fit him perfectly. Naruto wasn't very broad-shouldered, but his narrow frame held some type of strange aura about it that Sasuke found very fitting. The scarf around his neck, held together by the brooch made Naruto seem to be much older than he really was. The jacket was in perfect size with the boy, as were the breeches and the boots. Sasuke would have asked Haku how he had known what size to get Naruto, but he supposed that Haku had met Naruto before and would therefore know, relatively, what his size was.
Sasuke stared at Naruto's face when he saw the younger teen shift uncomfortably. "Something wrong?" he asked the other.
"It feels weird."
"What?"
"Clothes," was the boy's soft reply. Sasuke shook his head, sighing to himself. Naruto was certainly a piece of work – that much he could hand to the boy.
The room was draped in a thick silence that could be cut cleanly by the edge of a knife, if one had been handy at this moment. Both occupants wanted to break the tense atmosphere created by Naruto's statement, but neither knew what to say. It was the Uchiha who managed the first words.
"How long…?" he wondered, speaking in a slow tone, as though thinking what his question was as he spoke the words. "How long were you at Gatou's?"
There was a flash of pain through those cerulean orbs, but it was hidden quickly – subconsciously placed behind the mask that had saved Naruto many times. The expression that crossed his slightly tanned features now was a thoughtful one, as he tried to calculate the years in his head. Having never been properly taught any type of math, it wasn't working very well, but one could not blame the boy for lack of trying.
"I don't know," Naruto finally answered. "Really long time."
"Naruto – how old are you?" Sasuke asked, wanting to know a few basics about his houseguest.
Naruto shrugged. "I don't know."
"Your birthday?"
"What's a birthday?"
"Your parents?"
Here, there was a rush of something across his face that Sasuke caught, but couldn't identify. There seemed to be anger, sadness, pain, familiar, knowledge and emptiness all at once.
"Don't know," Naruto said. "They're probably dead or something."
Sasuke silenced the rest of the questions in his mind for the time being. Naruto wasn't in the mood to answer them – especially since he didn't seem to know anything about himself as it was. This complicated things a little bit.
I suppose I'll have to ask Neji at school on Monday, Sasuke thought to himself. He was about to say something – though he had no clue what he was going to say, when Haku burst in.
"Sasuke-kun, Naruto-kun!" Haku shouted at them, glaring. Naruto looked at his old acquaintance as though the manservant had grown horns a pointy tail. Sasuke was used to this side of Haku, but it still scared him nonetheless.
"What?" he snapped, happy that he had been saved from whatever he was about to say. He wasn't entirely sure it was a good thing to blurt out things without thinking.
"It's two forty-five! You two are due at the stables in fifteen minutes!" Haku yelled. He grabbed both of them by the collar of their shirts and started dragging them to the car. Normally a servant would never be able to do this to Sasuke… but he was Haku. Haku got away with almost everything!
It was scary, but it was true.
Haku managed to get them both shoved into the car before following them in the limousine. He knocked on the window for the driver to start the car rolling. Naruto was looking out the window. It was the first time he had been inside a limousine without a collar on.
Sometimes, it was things like that that made all the difference in the way one could feel in a certain environment. Sasuke watched the blonde, unknowingly smiling a tiny grin at the look of happiness and wonder on the boy's face.
The boys came home after the lesson. Sasuke was helping Naruto into the house because the blonde had fallen off the horse and landed on the fence. Something had spooked the horse he had been riding and the mare had taken off. Naruto didn't mind though. He just smiled a smile that hurt Sasuke to look at. He didn't know why it hurt.
And so he didn't dwell.
Sorry, its my fault, the blonde had said as he walked over to the mare, who had now calmed down. He mounted up, but Sasuke could tell that his ribs were bothering him. Did he, perchance have a broken rib or something of the sort? Shaking his head, Sasuke led Naruto to his room, laying him down on the bed.
"I'm going to send for Haku to call a doctor," Sasuke told the blonde.
Naruto looked at him strangely. "Its okay, Sasuke, just a cracked rib or two, I swear!" the boy tried to protest. His voice was breathy from the injury.
"Dobe," Sasuke snapped. "If you had an injury, you should have told me sooner. I wouldn't have let you ride with a cracked rib."
The boy pressed the button that called for Haku on his cell phone. It was connected to Haku's beeper, which the manservant was supposed to carry around with him at all times.
Haku appeared ten minutes later, looking quite angry, and a little hassled. "What do you want, Sasuke-kun, I was with Zabuza, dammit!" he snapped at his employer. Sasuke couldn't help smirking. Zabuza was Haku's fiancée. Well, it explained his unruly appearance, at least.
"Haku, I need you to call the doctor and have him come over here," he told Haku.
"You could have gotten Elsa to do this!" Haku yelled, smashing his elbow down on Sasuke's head. "You know this is when Zabuza and I have our hours off – dimwit!"
Sasuke shook his head. Haku hated when he was interrupted during sex or foreplay, which Sasuke unintentionally did from time to time. "Bitch later," he told Haku. "Naruto might have a broken rib, maybe two. I need a doctor's examination."
Haku gave Sasuke one last harsh glare before nodding and walking out of the room. It was only then that Sasuke realized Haku had been dressed in nothing but a pair of boxers. He shook his head. He really didn't want to know the details of what Zabuza and Haku had been doing.
All your insults and your curses make
Me feel like I'm not a person
And I feel like I am nothing but
You made me so do something
'Cause I'm fucked up because you are
Need attention, attention you couldn't give
I sit here locked inside my head
Remembering everything you said
The silence get us nowhere!
Gets us nowhere way to fastStaind, For You
Kyuubi-kun's Korner!
Yeah, originally I had this huge scene with them at the stables and all, but reading over it, I thought it was too boring and was unnecessary, so I deleted it. Anyways, I hope people liked this chapter. It took me over a week to write. I'm trying not to make short chapters, but that means that updates will be slower. Anyways, review if you will.