Thanks for the reviews and things. =] Merry Christmas.
C H A P T E R N I N E
Naruto had finished with the counter. He stood by the refrigerator on the other side of the kitchen, one hand grasping the heavy garbage bag at his side, staring at Sasuke and chewing his lower lip.
"Well." He pulled at the drawstrings of the bag in mild frustration and perhaps anxiety when Sasuke finally lifted his eyes from the floor. "I guess we just cleaned Gaara's kitchen for nothing."
Sasuke looked at him impassively for a moment, and then turned his head to stare just as blankly out the small window, the light glowing onto his profile making him almost ethereally pale. He cracked the thumb of his right hand under his fingers so that his hand was fisted for a moment and then relaxed. "I guess we did."
Naruto grimaced in lazy acknowledgement of their predicament and stared down at the garbage bag in distaste. "I'm just going to leave this here," he decided, making a show of letting go of the drawstring and watching as it slowly collapsed onto its side. He looked back up at Sasuke with a rueful grin. "Let's go crash Gaara's emo party." Sasuke leveled him a contemplative glance and then began making his way to the door, letting his gaze trail along the floor tiles. Naruto stepped around the bulging mass of bagged cans and met Sasuke at the doorway, stuffing his hands somewhat restlessly into his jeans as the other boy passed through first and left his hand on the handle just long enough for Naruto to follow him. "Sank youu," Naruto hummed in a faux Japanese accent, a lop-sided smile tacked to his face as Sasuke shot him a what-the-fuck look over his shoulder but neglected to comment, instead turning to tread his way down the hallway towards the foot of the stairs. It was all quiet along the wooden floorboards. Light shone in angular strips, the color of warm afternoon embers, and it was dim.
Sasuke put a hand the newel post and swiveled around onto the staircase, starting up the steps two at a time and then one by one in a brisk gait. He watched the steps directly before him, and listened to the soft thudding of their feet. Naruto was close behind, grabbing the banister ever so often to boost himself forward in lanky strides. On the landing, Sasuke paused and looked towards the right in the direction of the music that had grown louder and clearer as they'd ascended the stairs. He glanced sideways at Naruto who had begun to inch past him, seeing as he was blocking the way. Naruto nodded down the dark hallway that extended beyond the landing. "That way," he informed, and started off towards the one room whose door hung slightly ajar. They passed the lone wooden stand and a useless-looking armoire that inhabited the landing and made their way down the pale gloomy blue walls of the hallway. The music pounded louder and louder from within the visible crack of an equally gloomy room, a harsh deep growling in what sounded like German and the dirtiest, heaviest, and most relentlessly punishing bass line Sasuke had ever heard. It was utterly stygian.
Naruto hesitated for a moment at the doorway, raising an arm and knocking twice before pushing it open; Sasuke doubted it made a difference, the music was so deafeningly loud. The room was dark—darker than the hallway even. Although a little messy and suggesting a generally unwholesome atmosphere it was done up with as much taste, or at least visual concordance, as the rest of the house. In this case a morose, muted red turned shadowy with the heavily curtained window (is there even a window behind all that red?) and the detached, analytical glow of an open laptop, the sole source of light in the room. Sasuke wasn't one for disorder but he was almost relieved that the crimson duvet was wrinkled and unmade, that clothes were strewn about the hardwood floors, disappearing into the darkness under the bed and within the cluttered closet, and that band posters were chaotically tacked to the oppressive walls. It made Gaara seem human, even if the clothes were a uniform shade of pitch black (like his soul), and the band names could be found on one of the extreme ends of the political correctness spectrum.
The angst-ridden adolescent in question sat cross-legged and rigid on a desk chair. He would have melted into the darkness if not for the unearthly paleness of his skin, tinged blue in the artificial luminescence of the screen at which he was unemotionally staring. Sasuke had the strange impression for a moment that the tormenting, grating, indistinguishably clashing grunge was not coming from the laptop at all but from the stoic boy himself. It seeped through the pores of his marble face, his essence fully occupying the room like an iron will in particulate form that beat against the walls in rhythm to the martial chords of his music, leaving little room for anything else. Next to him, Naruto was trying to get Gaara's attention. "Gaara! Hey Gaara!" Scarlet hair shifted and the boy turned at the intrusive sound, pallid eyes gleaming eerily like a cat, his features appearing emaciated in the high-contrast obscurity. He did not blink at their presence. Naruto stepped over a jacket on the floor, approaching the foot of the bed. "Hey, why the hell is it so dark in here?" he shouted over the music, squeezing past Gaara's chair and reaching the deeply draping curtains on the other side of the bed. He raised a hand up and yanked them open in a single swift motion; terrific, jarring brightness flooded into the room. There was light beyond the blood-red gloom, and for a moment Sasuke was surprised. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, though, so he dismissed the notion as ridiculous.
Suddenly the anguished screeches of pounding electric guitars seemed far too loud and out of place, and in the presence of natural sunlight Gaara didn't seem nearly so inscrutable or sinister. He was just a boy, sitting a little hunched on his chair and gazing at Naruto with the smallest, most miniscule of frowns pulling on the alabaster of his face. In normal people emotive-speak, that meant he was growling in raged indignation, but Gaara will be Gaara. Naruto turned towards said boy and grimaced as if the music were a physical entity threatening to gouge his eyes out, striding over to the desk and bending over—one arm tensed on the surface supporting him, a foot slightly raised off the floor as he leaned—to squint at the monitor. "Hanzel und Gretyl?" he shouted disbelievingly, probably unable to hear himself think. Sasuke could have sworn Gaara flinched just a little. "You still listen to their crap?" He reached blindly for the mouse and turned down the volume so that the heavy industrial beat faded into the backdrop. No one spoke for a moment, as if the new quiet required some time to fully settle into the corners of the now bright-lit room.
Naruto straightened up and beamed down at his strange friend who was staring at him with that unsettling X-ray gaze of his. "Hello Gaara," he said calmly, genially. "Thought we'd drop in for a visit." He grinned across the room at Sasuke once and turned back to Gaara, rubbing his eye and letting his hand run down his cheek as he dropped it to his side again. He looked tired, for once. "So we checked downstairs and it wasn't there. We're just going to look around in your room, and if we don't find it in here…" he bit his lip and glanced at Sasuke, who was still standing by the door with his hands in his pockets. "Then we'll take someone in off the street and hold them hostage until it appears or something because I have no idea where the fuck it'd be otherwise."
So that was it, then. Again no one said anything at the blunt admission and Naruto brought a hand up to rub his nape, bowing his head down and sideways to give the unmade bed a weary, pensive look. Gaara turned silently back to his computer after a few seconds of eerie Naruto-gazing and minimized a window. He opened another one.
"Too bad Uchiha can't remember a thing," he droned suddenly in the direction of his monitor. His gaze lingered for a moment on the screen and then slid away to stare at Naruto, slow and heavy like honey. Naruto didn't answer but he dropped his arm and looked down at him, a certain anxiety present in the stillness of his eyes. Gaara turned placidly towards his computer again. "Too bad Uchiha," he continued in the same strange, monotonous voice, "has forgotten all about it." The statement hung in the quiet room (faint thrums of music keep playing in the afternoon light, obtuse). It hung deliberate and simple and thus implicative, so Sasuke narrowed his eyes.
Naruto looked pissed. "What the hell are you trying to say, Gaara?" he demanded angrily, voice harsh. He mussed up his hair in frustration and then gestured forcefully in Sasuke's direction, scowling at the ruby head of hair in front of him. "It's not like—it's not like Sasuke deliberately forgot all of last night!" He glared up at Sasuke for a moment; his hand drifted back to his side, forgotten. "It's not like he could help it," he continued, but with less vehemence, eyes searching the boy slouching glumly by the door.
His brows were creased. He was framed by the light from the window and it softened the edges of his figure, his messy mop of hair glowing incandescently before the background of a tree-shaded, quiet street. Was he actually thinking that Sasuke was lying? That he'd really waste an entire day on a wild goose chase—for what? Sasuke almost smirked and let his gaze flitter over Naruto's tense visage. "You're a moron," he muttered at length, a dismissive murmur of admonishment. He zeroed in on Gaara again and stepped further into the room "Let's get this over with."
Gaara observed Sasuke over his shoulder for a moment, a clinical stare. He turned back to his computer like a shrug and ignored them both as Naruto sighed, approached his bed, gripped the duvet, and shook it out as if expecting the ring to just magically fall from an inconspicuous fold. When it didn't, the bed was wordlessly deemed the safe zone and both boys began to pile misplaced clothes, school bags, CD cases onto its ruffled cotton surface. After a few seconds of this, during which a particularly aggravating song strained out of the tinny speakers, Sasuke began to scowl openly at the fact that he was cleaning Gaara's room for him; as if reading his mind, the boy announced in his statuesque, socially-deprived way (eyes eternally glued to the screen): "Remind me to tip you Uchiha. Even though you fucked yourself over of your own accord."
Sasuke straightened up stiffly, a deconstructed bit of black denim in hand (where on the body does this go?) and glared at the back of Gaara's head. "Hn." Naruto, who'd been scuffling around on the floor on the other side of the bed, hoisted himself up by the edge of the mattress and scoffed.
"Shut up, Gaara," he said, irritated on Sasuke's behalf, and made his way purposefully around the foot of the bed and past Sasuke towards the open door of the closet. Sasuke watched as he bent slightly to kick at the heap of clothing that threatened to tumble out at its base, elbow propped on the doorframe near his head and thumb absently massaging his scalp. "Hey Gaara, your closet reeks. Didn't you say you have cleaning ladies or something?"
Gaara shifted his head slightly to the side at Naruto's smothered accusation. "They don't come in here," he informed ominously. And turned back to whatever emo activity he was partaking in online.
Naruto craned his neck to glance at Gaara over his shoulder, snorting disbelievingly in amusement. He leaned back into the shadows of the closet to commence dragging out clothes by means of his foot, shaking his head. "Scary, Gaara. Really just terrifying." He snickered loudly and crouched to pick through the inchoate pile of clothing articles boasting varying degrees of hygiene. "I'm sure the cleaning ladies just go running in horror at the sight of your tightie-whities from Hell."
Sasuke paused and stifled a snort. He passed the laugh off as a strangled cough when Naruto turned to grin widely at him. "What do you think, Sasuke? Are Gaara's tightie-whities nightmare worthy?"
Sasuke glanced at Gaara (who was doggedly, austerely ignoring them), something that looked suspiciously like a humored smile on his normally severe lips. He muffled another snort of laughter that slipped out at the sight of the boy, ending up with a small but very existent grin. "Idiot."
Naruto mock-cackled and stood up. Sasuke had been squinting under the bed in a casual squat, one arm resting loosely on his knee and the other holding aside the bed skirt. He looked up at the stretching Naruto, arching a lazy brow as the boy peered down at him through a yawn. Naruto jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, still in mid-yawn. "Well," he announced in an indistinct mumble as soon as he could manage, his nose crinkling as tried to close his mouth, "I don't see how it could have made its way into the closet anyway." He shrugged and looked to the side along the wall, bringing a hand up to run it thoughtfully through his hair. Next to the door there was a wooden bookcase with a very distinct lack of books and, in the corner, an electric guitar leaning haphazardly against its stand. Naruto moved to it with mild interest and attempted to strum a couple of strings; it made no noise. "When was the last time you actually tried to play this thing Gaara?" he asked, glancing behind him when Gaara didn't answer. "Gaara?" The sociopath in question seemed unwilling to un-stick his eyes from the screen.
"I don't know," he answered finally, without inflection or emotion. Naruto grinned mischievously.
"Hey can I, uh, try my hand at it? See how fast my fingers can fly?" He wiggled his fingers, palms upward like some evil maniac, and leered. Sasuke stood up, having completed his thorough interrogation of the monsters under Gaara's bed, and threw a moldy sock at Naruto's face. Naruto grimaced and flung it away. Sasuke smirked.
Over at the emo-desk, Gaara had finally turned around. He looked Naruto up and down as the boy glared at Sasuke, and let his gaze travel slowly to his arrogantly entertained counterpart standing by the bed. "Don't touch it," he droned robotically.
Naruto broke the staring contest with Sasuke and tsk'd at Gaara. "What!" he muttered in pretend outrage. "You would deny an artist his only pleasure in life, you cruel man?"
Gaara's lips quirked oddly, and Naruto could only watch helplessly and in complete horror as that quirk grew into a full-blown smirk. "I don't think that's your only pleasure, Naruto," he stated blandly, read: evilly. [Sea-green eyes flit very obviously to the third boy in the room for the briefest of milliseconds.]
Naruto choked on air, his eyebrows reaching for his shaggy hairline. "What!" he exclaimed again, but with all the feelings behind the outrage this time.
Gaara stared. "I said, I don't think—"
"I know what you said! Shut up already!" Naruto yelped, scratching his shoulder in irritation and discomfort. His disgruntled gaze flickered on Sasuke as well, but he didn't seem to realize it because a few seconds later he sort of stilled and awkwardly moved his eyes away, scowling at the bed sheets.
Not that Sasuke hadn't been staring right back. He arched his brows somewhat curiously at Naruto, regarding him in amusement as the other boy suddenly groaned and flopped backwards with a downy poof of air onto Gaara's bed and all the dirty laundry that had found its way there. Politely, he inquired: "So what the fuck crawled up your ass and died?"
Hair askew and spread-eagle on the bed, Naruto squinted reproachfully up at his sarcastic friend. "Silence, noob. This is entirely your fault."
"I wouldn't say entirely," came an infuriatingly listless voice from Gaara's direction. Apparently, he'd decided to add his two cents, good soul that he is.
Naruto lifted his head and slammed it back into the mattress, arching a little and adjusting his hips to get comfortable on the lumpy, uneven piles of sheets and clothing. "You!" he growled at the ceiling. "You really need to shut up, Gaara."
The hem of Naruto's shirt rode up as his pulled his arms up to clasp them behind his head for support and settled into the wrinkled duvet, the loose white cotton contrasting with the tone of his abs. His chin tilted back lithely as he frowned at the ceiling, the corner of his mouth wrinkling, and he shifted his shoulders again.
Sasuke propped himself up against the glossed wood of the footboard, gleaming white in the light of the window, and observed the street below. "How are your random issues with anger management my fault?" he demanded, the smirk audible in his voice.
At that Naruto sat up indignantly, legs slightly spread and knees bent outwards as he shifted balance and leaned back on an arm (hand burying into the soft folds of fabric). His shirt hugged the lean lines of his torso. "Hey, I'll have you know," he jabbed, eyes narrowed on Sasuke, "that I am doing a great job at handling my issues. You, on the other hand…" he looked to the side and snorted, bringing a hand up to scratch lightly at his stomach.
Sasuke watched as the thin white cotton snagged softly on the fingers and after a few seconds Naruto's eyes stilled and slowly roved back towards him, not in question but maybe wariness and a vague anxiety. The fingers fell back to the red of the duvet and clenched minutely, so that the tips dug into the richness. The slim stomach curved in a casual slouch moved discreetly in and out in time with Naruto's slow breaths. Naruto and breathing should have been some sort of athletic art; amazing how it was a body like any other, but a body that in its careless, carefree, stubbornly physical presence reminded everyone around him that they were all very much alive. Magnificent, fragile, infinitely complex composites of veins and nerves and pumping hearts. His skin was bleached pale where the glowing outdoor light settled around him, the regular shadows seemed darker and blue-tinged where it didn't. The blankets that coiled about him looked cool and soft in the way that Sunday mornings are.
Sasuke inhaled suddenly and brought his eyes back up to Naruto's striking blue ones, opening his mouth to speak but finding with some confusion that his tongue had no idea what to say. Quite uninvited, Gaara spoke for him:
"Have you finished? Take your sexual tension elsewhere."
Naruto whipped his eyes towards the much unappreciated comment, growling "What the fuck, Gaara!" and grabbing a balled-up t-shirt in order to throw it violently at the back of the boy's head. His efforts were ignored; the statue in residence didn't even flinch as the shirt slipped off his shoulder and landed soundlessly on the floor.
Sasuke, for his part, was undergoing a minor, contained aneurysm. (Does he even know I'm gay?). And so he glared but said nothing and his jaw clenched while his back stiffened.
Naruto ran a hand roughly down his face, fingers harrowed into his skin, and he groaned tiredly so that his hair and expression were as disheveled as the sheets around him. "God," he moaned at nothing in particular, unless maybe the knobbly knees poking in the straining denim of his skinny jeans had suddenly offended him. "Fuck this, Sasuke. If Gaara's going to be a dick all afternoon, let's just go." He began to shuffle feet-first off the bed, ignoring the couple of clothing articles that slipped off the edge with his brusque movements.
Sasuke gave an annoyed huff of breath and scowled coldly. "Not that I'm dying to continue this little social but I still need to find my ring. We're not going anywhere."
Naruto glanced up at him from under slightly arched brows, still on the edge of the bed. He frowned and looked at his shoes, settling his elbows on his thighs and exhaling so that a few stray fringes of hair puffed upwards. Turning his head left he studied Gaara's back for a moment before straightening up. "Well what do you want to do? If it's not here, it's not here."
Sasuke scowled out the window, drumming his fingers tensely against the wood of the footboard. He stopped suddenly and gripped the round post head viciously. After a few second he unclenched his hand. Then clenched it again. "It's somewhere." He roved his gaze over blankly and studied Naruto's resigned frown. "We missed it somewhere." Sasuke let his eyes drift shut momentarily and dragged a weary hand through his hair. He was so fucking exhausted, which was to be expected seeing as he was running on three hours of sleep and a hangover—
Unless. He snapped his head up and stared at Naruto, hand suddenly gripping a fistful of his hair as a surge of something that might have been hope but was more likely serotonin and endorphins worked its way through his body. "The pool."
Naruto's mouth slackened, blue eyes wide, and he sat up straight. The moment of surprise, then the echo: "The fucking pool!" An expression of eager relief dawned on his face and suddenly he was on his feet. "Dude, of course!" He strode past Sasuke towards the door, not looking at Gaara who'd surprisingly deigned to award their departure an actual glance. "Gaara, see you later, man. Sorry about this whole thing." Gaara simply let his gaze flicker over to Sasuke, who nodded at him stiffly and not without some disgruntlement as he turned and began to follow after Naruto who'd already disappeared into the hall. He reached the door and stepped out.
"Don't try too hard, Uchiha," Gaara's voice called from inside as Sasuke pulled the door closed behind him. He paused; but only for a second before shutting the door more roughly than was necessary. He was far too tired and otherwise occupied to be concerned with the fact that, as per usual, he didn't know what the hell Gaara was talking about.
Naruto looked at him over his shoulder as they made their brisk way to the head of the stairs, businesslike and admittedly jittery with anticipation. "Can't believe we didn't think of this." He swiveled and started shuffling down the stairs, a hand lightly skimming the railing.
Sasuke hurried down after him. "It's not necessarily there, moron, quit getting your hopes up." Naruto ignored him, his shoulders clearly defined through his shirt from this angle as they loped down the steps. At the bottom they turned and moved purposefully down the warm lit hall, past the table and the impersonal decorative accents, past the kitchen, towards the glass door leading out back. The clean cut, meticulously pruned green of the yard hovered indistinct through the glaze. Naruto pushed it open and the image cleared, the heavy warmth of the afternoon hitting them like a wall.
Sasuke squinted in the glare and stepped out after Naruto into the back patio, letting the door swing shut behind them. Naruto jogged down the treated wooden planks of the porch steps onto the slate pathway and made a beeline for the violent blue of the pool, sun-scattered glints of white rippling its calm surface. A line of dark hedge bushes ran along an extension of the house on their left, curtained windows blankly peering down at them from head level. Where the house ended a raised deck began, a neat set of steps on the far end curving down onto the pool area. The lawn was green in a U.S. Open sort of way, tall hedged walls closed off the whole half-acre in a manifestation of the American preoccupation with privacy, more pool chairs than would ever be needed by the inhabitants of the house rested in perfect alignment along the sleek swerve of the water's edge. And Naruto was taking off his goddamn shirt. Back towards Sasuke as he bent and peered into the water, he practically tore it up and over his head with a healthy lack of qualms or self-consciousness, dropping it carelessly by his feet onto the rugged stone pattern of the pool deck.
"Well, I can't see a fucking thing." Naruto looked back and grinned at Sasuke, squinting lopsidedly in the sun. "But we'll just have to look for it, I guess."
Sasuke stared back wordlessly, his exhaustion hitting him at an odd time. He was thinking about the curve of shoulder blades, the casual slouch of diehard punky teenagers. The summer induction of lazy smiles. The way hipbones fit in jeans. He blankly turned away and stared off into the benignly looming oaks along the edge of the yard, green against the quiet afternoon. He moved a quarter ways up the pool edge, turning listlessly to look down through the Clearasil distortion of cool water at the spotty and somewhat mottled pool floor. Objects in leafy chlorine-water are farther than they appear. A dead bee was washing up against the pool wall with the soft repetitive weight of surface undulations, closer and closer to the circulation outlet.
Naruto was looking at him. "You okay with swimming, bastard?" Sasuke flicked an annoyed gaze on the idiot. "Or should I do all the work? Though I don't think Gaara wants you puking in his pool, Sasuke. Maybe you should sit out." A stupid grin.
"Stop being a moron." And Sasuke took off his shirt too, arms crossed, two hands, up and over. Naruto shrugged, turned away slowly and with an amused smile on his lips. He kicked off those dumb loafers of his while unbuttoning his jeans and yanking them down (should someone get the butter?), bent over and hopping a bit on one foot to keep balance as he shook off the leg. Straightening up in nothing but black boxer briefs now he flashed Sasuke a sunny grin and without further ado dived headfirst into the water; careless, carefree, and yet with flawless form in a way that suggested he was a person to whom the physical came naturally. His silhouette streamed a blurred trajectory towards the far side of the pool, breaking the surface near the deep end. Naruto swiveled his neck around with a spray of drops, his hair darkened and plastered to the side of his face, his mouth open for air. His eyes fell on Sasuke.
"Fuck, it's cold!" he shouted, laughing as if that was supposed to be a good thing. He stared at Sasuke a bit, breaking into a couple of strokes towards where he was standing at the edge. "If it's always so fucking hot, why the hell are pools so cold?"
Sasuke shrugged, frowning, and looked off at the oaks again. It was still very much day, though the light had a different timbre to it, a slightly warmer one, a quiet length to the shadows that spoke of the encroaching evening. The sun burned a little on his bare shoulders and he squinted.
"Well? You getting in or what, Hangover Man?" Naruto flicked icy water at him, the droplets landing like needles on his torso. Sasuke turned and glared down at him, bringing an absent hand up to rub at the afflicted skin. Naruto had propped his arms up on the pool edge and was staring up at Sasuke with his head supported on his knuckles and an expression like he found something very funny about the whole situation. He grinned at Sasuke's scowl.
"Moron," Sasuke muttered and bent to undo his laces, Naruto watching him quietly as he did. He straightened and toed off his chucks, unbuckling his belt and zipping down his fly, suddenly flicking his eyes up to level Naruto a rather mocking stare. He let his pants drop and stepped out of the denim that had gathered around his ankles. He was wearing boxer briefs as well, navy blue ones. Naruto squinted up at him, treks of water trailing down the side of his face and dripping off the tips of his sopping hair. He lowered his gaze and looked past Sasuke towards the house. After a moment he pushed off the pool wall into a smooth backstroke, flipping over after the first few, and swam towards the center of the pool. He stopped where the floor began to incline and treaded water for a bit. Then he sucked in a breath of air and ducked underwater, pushing down to the bottom like a frog, the soft drifting pause between each stroke speaking of the weight of water. Sasuke stepped forward and toed the edge of the deck, standing thin and hunched as he peered down into the cool eight feet of the deep end. He looked back up at the empty and immaculate lawn, the mute trees, the blundering heat of the monotonously blinding sky. Summer days so sunny they're tragic. He thought of Itachi.
Stepping out as if onto some unseen ledge, back straight, he let the water swallow him.
--nostratic
ps. i actually quite like hanzel und gretyl. *is slightly abashed*
and they're satirical by the way. just a disclaimer.