Chapter Fourteen: Afterglow
by Ember
A/N: I am very, very thankful to have wonderful reviewers with generous spirits that do not kill writers who spend manymany moons on each shortshort chapter.
I have, like, a buncha excuses for why this took me more than four months to update. But, as a mature writer who hates to make excuses for herself, I instead will nobly say "Look over there! A blimp!"
Fleeee!
Huge thanks to blissfulldarkness, Fullmetal Guitarist, ST, Tris the Weatherwitch, Gothangel123, Mou, MeowMeow Man, Koril Draconic, blue-genjutsu, Turtle-Kid, YaoiWriter2500, avila7989, Kanemoshi, Mrs-ishida, Heavenly Saint, Assassin of the Shadows, Ravenbolt, jubes jubes, Tsumetai Taiyoukai, Raven, PaperAce, Solo Maxwell-Yomato, and Buchmanseme for y'all's wonderful reviews.
--
The comb hit another tangle, and Naruto unflinchingly pulled until the plastic teeth, along with a little mat of blonde hair, ripped out of the wet mess that topped his head. He carelessly dropped it in the same motion, the comb hitting the counter by the bathroom sink with a clatter. Picking strands of hair from the teeth absently, Naruto glared at his reflection through the veil of steam condensing against the mirror. A boy of seventeen stared back, skin flushed from a hot shower that had washed Kiba's pale stain off his tan, scored Kiba's heady scent off of his, and heated out some of the ache in his lower body.
"Fag," he sneered at himself, then sighed and leaned forward, his forehead tapping against the mirror.
He wasn't going to start crying, dammit.
He'd fallen asleep on that stupid, ugly couch, swallowing tears. When he'd woken up, it was half-past-eleven, Kiba was gone, the sun was bright, the birds were singing, and he was lying naked on the couch, almost too sore to move. He'd managed to hobble into his bedroom, swallowing stupid hot tears, grab some clothing, and take a shower- which left him here, head against the mirror, not crying.
Where was Kiba?
He'd told Naruto he was in love with him- that was stupid; not even girls liked Naruto, so why the hell would Kiba?- he'd started... the whole thing, last night; he was gone in the morning. Wasn't this the time they were supposed to sit and talk and shit, and make stuff better, and make it all make sense?
He knew it was beyond making sense.
But where was Kiba?
Did he really give a rat's ass about Naruto? Obviously not, 'cause he wasn't around now, and Naruto could really use someone who gave a damn around now.
This was all just a game to him.
He heard the front door open and snatched up his clothes, getting dressed in a hurry without even bothering to wipe the last beads of water from his back, where droplets were running down from his hair. They soaked in dark circles through the cloth.
"Kiba?" he asked, surprised at how quiet his voice was. The air outside the foggy bathroom hit cool against his face, but he ignored it as he scanned the house. Louder, if still a little uncertain, he yelled, "Kiba?"
There was no response.
Walking, he found to his delight, no longer hurt, so he took the stairs two at a time as he thundered down towards the kitchen. Halfway down, he leaned over the railing and inspected the kitchen, the living room (skipping over the couch), and the front hall. Kiba was no where to be seen. "Anyone there?"
"Arf," said Akamaru, sitting in the hall and looking irritated.
"Nice to see you, too," Naruto said to the little dog, who glowered at him with beady little eyes. He walked up to the foot of the stairs and stared up at the fox, speculatively. Naruto folded down to sit on the stairs and folded his arms across his knees. "How'd you get in, anyway?" The front door was slightly open; Kiba must not have closed it all the way. That wasn't much like the territorial Kiba, but Akamaru didn't have a better situation to propose.
"Arf," he said, instead.
"Listen, Akamaru," Naruto told him, tiredly, his arms crossed defensively over his chest and his elbows resting on his knees, "you don't much like me. Which is fine, 'cause you're a stupid mutt and I don't like you, either."
"Arf?"
"But you don't have to deal with me. I don't care what Tsunade says, I'm going home."
"Arf."
"Don't bullshit me. He won't miss me at all." Akamaru's only response was to whine, so Naruto continued as if he had held up his end of the conversation. "He was standing me up the whole time. He was trying to win a bet."
Akamaru yawned, and trotted past Naruto up the steps.
"You're right," Naruto said, his shoulder slumping in desolation despite himself, "I'm hopeless. I should just go pack."
--
Kiba watched, awkwardly, as his- whatever Naruto was, friend or rival or lover or victim- curled around himself and went to sleep on the couch, and wondered, once again, what exactly he was supposed to do.
He took a shower, right then in the middle of the night, and went for a walk in the darkness, leaving the blonde stretched out and naked and, despite being sullied with all sorts of things looking amazingly, beautifully innocent, tussled and twisted as he was.
I have to find Akamaru, Kiba told himself as he ran, fled, bolted at a serene and sedate pace away from his own house and memories that threatened to give him wood all over again. Memories that made him sick, to his mind and his stomach and his heart.
He was in love.
He wasn't sure how to take it.
He'd always wanted to fall in love- something secure and solid to hit against after every mission, something to call permanently his own, the completion to a two member pack that would be the center of his life, like his father's pack was the center of himself. He'd always assumed it would be a good thing- a partner for life, someone who would always love him, someone who would have his back.
He found, quite to his surprise, that love hurt, in every sense possible. He'd managed a disjointed partner in crime (at best), a lover who hated him and a dude who was probably right now dreaming about his torturous death.
He'd mistreated Naruto. He knew that, and he felt that if he could pull that particular strain of guilt out of the mess of emotion that was boiling in his gut and had been for some time, now, that particular one would likely be the most painful. How could he do that? How could he stab someone in the back who had been his friend, mostly; his roommate, his crush and then his lover? He wouldn't have even done that to a stranger- the public aura emanated that it was alright to do it to Naruto; he was Naruto, but damn it, Kiba didn't want to hurt anybody.
He was buried in the bowels of love, but there were no answers here.
"I'm sorry," Kiba muttered under his breath.
He spent the entire night wandering, and was shocked to see the gray dawn rise sluggishly over the mountains lining Konoha's horizon. Lead lightened to silver and then was washed out in blue, and Kiba, chewing his lip, wondered why people always raved over the beauty of the sunrise. Some things, he supposed, were just never as beautiful as 'people' said they were.
"It's pretty, isn't it?"
The voice startled Kiba; he'd been walking all night and had been completely alone on the dark streets; he found, to his surprise, that he was right near the schoolyard and it was already a little after six. Shikamaru lay in the grass, watching the lights and tracing the silver-stained clouds with sharp, brisk motions of his forefinger, like an impressionist kindergartner fingerpainting the sky.
"I thought you slept in on Sundays." Kiba lingered, aloof, for a moment before folding to his knees on the dew-damp grass beside the shadow-nin.
The Chuunin grinned. "Nah," he said, batting sleep out of his eyes with a series of rapid blinks. "Watch the sky on Sunday mornings. I sleep in the other days."
Kiba snorted, and pulled his fingers up a wet stalk of grass, listening to it squeak under the pressure. "I don't watch the sunrise," he said, finally. "Why would I? The sunset's more colorful, anyway."
Shikamaru shrugged. "I guess so," he said. It was early, and it was so troublesome to talk, but he continued anyway. "I lot of people think like that. I like the gray, I guess."
"Shadows."
Shikamaru shrugged and gestured towards the sky. "Light, too." On the inside, he was wincing. Ino needed to find someone better to write her dialogue. After all, she'd found some people to carry out the roles she wrote.
Kiba grunted and looked up at the sky. The light had strengthened and the sky had been stained a pale blue and, while he wasn't certain, he suspected sunrise was over.
"I guess it's because," Shikamaru continued after the timed pause, "sunset is flashy and colorful and bright, but once its over it fades away and goes dark, and then it's gone. Sunrise starts off gray and dim, but it just gets stronger from beginning to end, and always ends brighter than it began."
Kiba stared at Shikamaru for a moment in surprise, then, incredulously, asked, "Are you trying to give me romantic advice?"
Shikamaru only laughed, but it was strange-sounding and nor particularly convincing.
"Ino put you up to this, didn't she, Shikamaru?"
The shadow-nin shrugged. Kiba glared at him for a minute or two, and, eventually uncomfortable enough to shift his weight in the grass, he looked back up at the sky and studied the clouds.
"Tell her to fuck herself," Kiba snarled, finally, and staggered to his feet again, wiping the backs of his pants legs off where the dew had soaked through the denim. Shikamaru watched out of the corner of his eye as the irate canine-ninja briskly strode back into the street.
What the hell was that? Ino had implied that this would be the first huge step forward in her so-called brilliant, foolproof plan to reconcile the two shinobi and create an idealistic relationship between them. It had solved absolutely nothing, and served no purpose other than pissing Kiba off even more at Shikamaru's teammate.
What, exactly, was Ino thinking?
"You made things worse, you idiot," he muttered under his breath. And here he was, wasting his time for a plan he should have seen through in the beginning. He'd just gotten on Kiba's bad side, probably screwed Naruto over again, and, worst of all, he'd woken up at five thirty on a Sunday. He never woke up early on Sundays.
But, despite everything, the sunlight kept getting stronger.
--
Ino sat on the fence beside Konoha's main road, and smiled.
Shikamaru was the smartest shinobi the girl had ever met, and, so far, no one had ever surpassed him in brains or skill so far as she was aware. He knew strategy like the unholy love-child of Genghis Khan and a super-computer, had once employed complex trigonometry in a formula to figure out the number of alien twinkies it would take to amass the weight necessary to significantly alter Earth's orbit around the sun in order to justify his neglect of a homework assignment, could recite the calorie content of pretty much every food item Ino would ever come into contact with in order to make her life slightly easier, and couldn't tell a human emotion from a sick potato.
All in all, he might have been much, much smarter than she was. He might have combined street-smarts, book-smarts, Einstein-smarts, and a certain apathy for it all into one compact package. But, in the end, he was entirely concrete-smart, action-smart, numbers-smart. He wasn't people-smart; he didn't know what people were feeling, he wasn't entirely cognizant of emotional impact at all. Perhaps he understood the intricacies of warfare and combat, but he certainly didn't understand the pathways of the human heart, and he certainly didn't understand the complexities of an Ino-crafted plan.
Nor was he, as the smartest person in the class and accustomed to the assumption that if he didn't understand, no one could and there was something wrong, entirely willing to trust Ino's common sense and good judgement on the matter.
He looked like he was both puzzled and frustrated, lying on his back as he was, studying the sky. Like he was wondering what, exactly, Ino had planned, and whether or not, by pissing Kiba off even more than he was already pissed, he had screwed it up before it had begun.
"Don't worry so much," Ino purred, even if, across the street, he couldn't hear her. "You did everything perfect."
And then she jumped off the fence and hurried to watch her brilliant scheme unfold.
--
Sasuke stood by the door outside Kiba's apartment, and waited.
His job was fairly basic, and completely boring, and he was annoyed before he'd even begun.
"The problem is," Ino had told him, "that they have a million things to say, and they need to hear every word of it."
"So what you're saying is," Sasuke had drawled in response, "that they'll figure this whole thing out themselves."
Ino had only laughed; a bell-clear laugh that had honest-to-God scared Sasuke. Only afterward did she realize who she was laughing at, and rubbed at the back of her head apologetically. "That's the logical thing to think, of course," she said, but then grinned. "Please, Sasuke. Just make sure he gets here." She hadn't said 'please' to Shikamaru, but, since this was Sasuke's game as much as Ino's game, now- although it was her mess from the beginning and he thought she should fix it herself, and not drag others into it- he couldn't back out now.
He was, however, still incredibly annoyed.
--
Akamaru barked a couple more times, but Naruto was clearly not up to holding on more of a conversation. It was a shame- from what the terrier had gathered, it should have been easy to let the blonde rile himself up enough to go looking for his master, but whatever- he could always play the traditional 'dog' card.
The first thing he grabbed happened to be a pair of fluffy white bunny ears.
Naruto glanced up from where he was grabbing handfuls of dirty clothes to dump, wrinkled and unfolded, into his suitcase. "Seriously, dog," he muttered, sounding just as miserable as he had when Akamaru first walked in. "Drop those."
Akamaru slowly, deliberately, jumped off the bed (from where he'd been sitting beside Naruto's suitcase, watching the kitsune pack) and waited on the floor.
"I don't have time for this!" Throwing a t-shirt down on the ground in frustration, Naruto started for the little dog- who bolted out the door as fast as he could run. Rolling his eyes, Naruto started after him, swearing when the little monster darted out the still-open apartment door.
Sasuke was standing in such a position that when Naruto swung open the door to charge after Akamaru, its width obscured the dark-haired shinobi. Naruto, intent on running down an innocent animal, didn't even notice he was there.
And, with a sigh, Sasuke followed after him.
--
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E/N: I'm not fond of the ending of this chapter. .. But, I like the beginning. So, I hope you lot do, too.