As they drive slowly through rush hour traffic, Naruto sinks into the car seat. It wasn't always like this: he wasn't always psychotically desperate, and Sasuke wasn't always so damaged.

He steps into the memory of the last summer they were really kids, onto a dirt road in June sunshine.

Standing there in memory, Naruto knows the moment he sees him: Sasuke Uchiha will be trouble.

If it were just Sakura up ahead, he could slip away easily – she's used to his weirdness, might even wait for him. But Sasuke isn't like that, with nothing easy about him. Naruto knows from experience that those keen fuck-off eyes will follow him if he leaves the road.

Surely it's not normal, he thinks, eyes so dark that iris becomes indistinguishable from pupil. Naruto discovered this during an Art assignment in kindergarten, when he was forced to lean very close to Sasuke's disgruntled face to make out the difference, which is one of nuance not of colour.

He'd apparently gone on about it, because eventually Iruka told him he needed to stop talking about it, that it was "culturally insensitive", which Sakura had to translate to "racist". He'd have said he was sorry, or that he didn't mean it that way, except either Sasuke already knew that or he didn't give a shit, because he never brought it up. When Naruto finally asked him straight out, he got a snort and a baka gaijin.

Now Naruto scuffs his feet, giving himself a moment of hesitation, and Sasuke's eyes are still strange, in ways that have nothing to do with being Asian, and they still stare without blinking – that too was something Naruto noticed at once, that Sasuke's eyes remain almost perpetually open, like those of a snake – which is too bad but doesn't relieve Naruto of the need for a little off-road excursion. Something smells wrong, and Naruto's decided that it's a demon and that he'll take care of it.

"Go ahead!" he calls to Sakura, waving her on, not without disappointment: she's exceptionally pretty in that pink dress. "I'll catch up!"

When she says, "But Naruto…" he's already jumping over the ditch, and she's not yelling so she won't expect him to hear.

"Ruin of my social life, God damn bad-timing bastard…" Naruto grumbles. Sasuke had better not take this opportunity to notice how pretty Sakura is, sunlit and smiling in the sudden summer… although Sakura's less relevant here, in the dappling shadows of a forest where she'll have never set foot. "Come out already, arsehole!"

It doesn't. Naruto supposes maybe that's a good thing, because the only demons who come when you call are supposed to be the ones strong enough to beat you. Then he'd definitely be stuck here until long after Sakura's patience runs out.

None of which makes the thorny hedge in front of him more inviting, and just, "Oh fuck off, I'm gonna kill you so damn hard."

People say only exorcists can do that, maybe super strong shifters working together, but Naruto's going to prove them wrong. All the exorcists sneering down at him, and all the humans scorning him too, and how he can't even fight back against the humans without breaking them…!

Two steps later the first thorn scrapes into his arm, deep enough to bleed: time to shield the shirt. He's out of clean school clothes, and Iruka will go spare if he shows up in what his teacher only stopped referring to as trailer trash fashion after finding out that Naruto's actually spent most of the spring in a trailer park.

Mum's busy with work and Dad's sorting things out with the bigwigs, so Jiraiya's taken charge of Naruto and decided to slum it a bit. Also it's safer out here, safer from the war. It's left their part of the country mostly untouched, but sometimes there are attacks in the city. Terrorists like crowded places, and so do bomb strikes. A lot of kids have been evacuated, including Sakura and Sasuke and Kiba and stuck-up Neji Hyuuga and his weird cousins.

It's funny, though. Sasuke's relentless about everything else, but he never bullies Naruto for the white trash spring. Just for things Naruto actually does: for things he can help, has some control over.

While he saves the shirt from tearing, the cuts on his arms bleed all over it before they scab over.

Then in the sudden sunlight on the far side of the hedge, he looks up from the messy shirt at…the feeling of wrongness, the source of which he can't really see, no matter how much he strains his eyes.

He could so have left this for tomorrow.

Only Naruto is tired to people leaving everything for tomorrow, for later, for fucking never.

He stares at the thing he can't see, pointing an accusing finger at it. "You!"

There's something like – he thinks it hisses at him.

Naruto hisses right back.

Kyuubi's energy breaks through his skin like a sudden sweat, so hot the air steams around him. The claws, barely visible back on the road, just badly cut nails, brand his hands with their presence, a burn that feels bone-deep.

His jaw distends as his fangs, Kyuubi's fangs, push up through his gums and his whole mouth fills with scalding blood.

Tsunade says he hasn't really awakened yet, that he's just twitching a little in his sleep. Jiraiya says he'll be strong one day.

He needs to be strong now.

And he can totally handle this, except – oh God damn – the sound he hears now isn't hissing, but distinct human footsteps approaching. For a moment he contemplates running away.

But Naruto's never been in the habit of running from Sasuke Uchiha.

"Naruto?" comes Sasuke's voice, and by the time he too steps through the hedge, Naruto is just that, only Naruto. Kyuubi has receded back under his skin.

"Yeah, bastard." He notices firstly that Sasuke, inexplicably and entirely expectedly, has not been mauled by the thorns, and secondly that for a long, long moment Sasuke looks right at the thing Naruto couldn't see. "What are you doing here?" Naruto demands, his voice oddly quiet, breaking over the need to be careful all the time – with demons, with humans, with the fucking exorcists. Everything's messed up at home, and still he wants to go home, back to Mum and Dad who should be together.

Kyuubi simmers right under his skin, hotter than the sunlight on his face, and caught between Sasuke and the demon he wants to forget being careful, wants to forget every cautious thought he's ever had and every careful movement he has never made.

It's Sasuke's turn to look awkward, which on him is easily mistaken for annoyance or constipation. "You ran towards a ward breach."

"A ward breach," Naruto repeats, defeated. Not a demon at all then, just a tiny weakness in the shielding.

Sasuke shrugs, looking away from him for a moment. Right at the place the breach must be. "What are you doing here?"

Naruto shrugs too, barking out a laugh. "Just had to take a leak. You know how it is." Because no way is he telling Sasuke fucking Uchiha that he came here to fix a problem he can't even see. He still has that childhood insistence that he can handle any demon perfectly well on his own.

"Are you done? Get out of my way."

"I'm not – what."

"I'm going to repair it," Sasuke says impatiently.

"No way! I'm going to repair it!"

"How?"

"I, ah. I'll come up with something."

"Uh huh." Sasuke pushes past him, moving his hand and mumbling Latin under his breath. His hand maybe glows a little, if Naruto squints. Sasuke smells weird suddenly, an inhuman kind of smell entirely unlike that of a shifter. Naruto breathes it in, scrunches up his nose, and feels gooseflesh break over his arms. "Let's go."

"You are not the boss of me," Naruto tells him, but it's not like he's going to stay here like some weirdo. "But fine. Oh, is Sakura still waiting for me?"

Sasuke lifts an eyebrow. It's a twitchy, angular movement, more a jerk than anything else. Sasuke tries to look so dignified all the time, but he moves in sudden spasms. Like there's something inside of him too, waiting to break out into the world. Possibly it's the stick up his arse grown so enormous that it's become sentient. "She was still waiting for the bus when I left, yes."

"Come on then!" Clothes already messed up, he's much faster through the hedge this time.

Sasuke's not far behind but, frustratingly, stops right outside the hedge and –

"What are you doing?"

"Hmm?" Sasuke finishes pulling his jumper over his head, holding it out towards Naruto.

"Wha – no – wha."

Sasuke's eyebrow climbs back up under his fringe. "Were you planning to try and get on the bus all bloody?"

"I – oh." Looking down, he rediscovers the dark red splatter covering most of his front. He must've wiped his hands on it without really noticing. "It's manly. Heroic." He keeps himself in motion, rubbing at the back of his head, so Sasuke won't notice how unsettled he feels. Everything's a mess – the war, what Iruka calls his home situation, the demons, and Naruto needs to do something. For a long, long moment he doesn't know how to stop himself randomly jumping Sasuke.

"Yes," Sasuke says dryly, and the moment breaks, everything once more everyday and ordinary, "I'm sure the driver will think so."

"Probably," Naruto agrees, preening. Then it comes to him that the driver in question is the crankiest old lady with the worst breath in the county. "Okay, you convinced me!" He snatches the jumper from Sasuke's hand, dives into it. "Why would you even give me your shirt?"

Sasuke looks away. "I was raised right," he says in a snotty voice.

Naruto slows down a little, letting his head emerge from the jumper only slowly, so Sasuke has time to get his face under control again. He often needs that, when his family's come up.

Naruto's never worn Sasuke's clothes before. Of course he hasn't. It's dark blue and quite warm, about same size Naruto would've picked for himself.

Back up on the road Sakura's still sitting in the bus shed, and Naruto chooses to forget that really this will be because she's waiting for Sasuke. "Sakura!"

She does smile back, and scoot away a little so he can perch beside her on the bench. It's taken him a long time to become her friend and he relishes the possibility of being close to her, pressed side to side in the overwhelming smell of her shampoo. Stomps down the vicious unfair disappointment that it's not – not what it was supposed to be, what he'd thought, hoped – that it's not everything he's ever dreamt.

He also stomps down on the memory of one of those uncomfortable moments of self insight, of understanding that he wanted Sakura because she's sweet and easy and normal, is human acceptance, and because she couldn't have left, wouldn't be strong enough to leave if he held on to her. The realisation that that just means she'd break in his grasp.

Sasuke remains standing, a little apart. Without the jumper there are goose bumps rising up his arms, and Naruto's about to say something, feels the words heavy and unwieldy in his mouth, a bastard tripping on the barrier of his lips and falling back down his throat into silence when the bus rolls in.

With the heroic blood splatter safely hidden, he dares to grin at the driver.

He needn't have bothered, of course – she only has eyes for the nice kids, pretty Sakura and stuck-up Sasuke, only pays attention to Naruto when she feels he needs to be glared into quiet submission. He's cheated his way onto the bus too many times, hidden under the seats back in the days before Jiraiya remembered to buy him a bus pass, which was also the days he smelled weird and was never really clean, and sometimes stole from the other passengers. Before Kakashi stopped by, and had word with Jiraiya, who remembered afterwards to make Naruto shower and to make him dinner.

Also he and Kiba have maybe played a few too many pranks on the bus.

"Shut up," Sasuke says, and at Naruto's confused and affronted blink adds, "Idiot."

"I wasn't even saying anything!"

Sakura smiles a little, looking mostly embarrassed but a little fond, as well. "You were humming."

"No, I – oh. Huh. Guess I was." He smiles back at her, keeping his eyes carefully on her face so he won't tip Sasuke off, and then kicks him in the shin. Not many people do that, not to Sasuke. People pick fights with him sometimes, although almost everyone has learnt better by now, and a lot of the girls cling to him, but nobody just kicks him. "I hum better than you!"

"Naruto," Sakura objects, swatting at him. "Sasuke's in the choir!"

Naruto supposes he did know that, vaguely, and takes the opportunity to give Sasuke the dirtiest smirk he can manage. "Guess not all of us can be such good little altar boys." It's a funny mental picture, not as incongruous as it should be, Sasuke in one of those old-fashioned priest dresses. Kakashi, he knows, finds the whole thing hilarious.

"No," Sasuke says, dead-pan. "Given the state of your English, you'd never manage the Latin, that's for sure."

"Hey, I could totally…" While he's busy protesting, Sasuke takes the opportunity to kick him back. Hard, too. "Bastard."

Sasuke smirks.

"Bet you don't even know any Latin, you stuck-up little –" Absorbed in ranting, in the challenging glint in Sasuke's eye, he doesn't notice the bus braking abruptly for the 10th Street stop until his face is already smashed into the seat in front off him and he's halfway on the floor.

"Veni, vidi, less of the vici," Sasuke snorts, slipping off of the bus before Naruto can reply, and certainly before he remembers about returning the stupid jumper.

"Arsehole!" he yells after him, but it's less satisfying when Sasuke's a solid metal door away from hearing him.

In comparison Sakura, hushing at him, is so soft. She remains on the bus when Naruto gets off, is staying with relatives slightly closer to the city.

The trailer park Jiraiya's chosen for them is on the outskirts of the outskirts. It's basically a reservation, land that's been in Namikaze and Sabaku possession for generations, on which displaced shifters take refuge. Big and run-down, the building that was once some sort of fancy summer house stands guard over acres of mostly uncultivated land.

Rather, it was uncultivated. Naruto takes the well-trodden dirt path towards the house, waving at the people in the tents and trailers. There are a lot of those, now, and clothes lines and vegetable patches have sprung up between them. Kids chase the hens and dogs, under the not-so-attentive eyes of the adults occupying several sets of plastic patio furniture.

Naruto sidesteps Inari and then has to catch his shoulder to prevent a full-frontal collision with the ground.

"Eheheheh, thanks Naruto!"

The brat is off again before Naruto can decide to steal his no doubt stolen pear in reprimand, and Naruto looks back towards the adults. Most of them are just talking, but some are drinking, some are playing cards, and he has to stare at old Mr Jen and his friends for a bit to make sure everything stays calm after the deck's been thrown among hisses of cheating.

"No trouble, Naruto, no trouble. Although he is a cheating bastard…"

Naruto laughs and says he's sure. They always say that, no trouble Naruto no trouble at all, but then when his back's turned there's sometimes trouble anyway.

It's new and weird and sometimes incredibly frightening, to be in a place where the adults are so lost that they look to him to take charge.

These are the people Mr Sabaku never looks at, when he's talking about being superior and beating the humans at their own game.

They are however the ones he points at when he talks about the exterminations in the west and those fucking exorcist bastards, and never again

Naruto has never particularly liked Mr Sabaku, who's mean to his children and keeps fighting with Dad. Make something of yourself, he sneers at Kankurou, who's always been the weak link among the siblings. Ranting about keeping to shifter culture, honouring their traditions, and reminding everyone he bankrolls a lot of shifter activity. Insisting they should keep to themselves, both because humans are inferior and because the bond usually happens with someone you're already connected to in some way, so minimising human contact means minimising the risk of a human mate.

Mum always stayed out of his way, and now that she's moved out – temporarily! It's just temporary, no matter what she says, and Naruto's going to make her see that – Naruto doesn't need to try and get between them anymore. These days it's Kushina who snorts at Mr Sabaku about how he's happy enough with human technology and about how isolation like that usually just leads to inbreeding. Also maybe we should have the kids put to bed, they don't need to hear this. That too was something Mum said sometimes, but much more softly: Kushina has never been intimidated by Mr Sabaku.

Maybe they do, he always snarls. Maybe we all need to hear this.

All they hear, Kushina tells him, which Mum never did, is adults fighting.

But Mr. Sabaku isn't here, would never set foot here.

"I'm home!" Naruto calls, kicking off his shoes in the crowded hallway.

The place is dirty and nobody answers him, but it's still easier in some ways to be here than in the Hokage building, where he has to pass by what is still Mum's room, will maybe always be Mum's room. It's definitely more homey than Mum's new place, in the strange human suburb.

He sneaks up the stairs to Chouji's room. Chouji looks all right today. The matesickness has hollowed him out, hallowed him somehow: he's like one of those carvings of martyrs in old churches, twisted and burnt out.

This is why everyone's so worried about getting a human mate instead of another shifter, why the entire house simmers with quiet panic over Chouji and his human boy.

Naruto overheard Tsunade telling Chouji, It can work out. You spend time with your human and they grow used to you, and everything's fine. That can happen. There are things they don't know, that they can't understand, and they can leave while you can't, but sometimes they want to stay. That happens.

Gaara says, Just lock him up and consummate when you have to, it's not like he could stop you.

That's part of why Gaara isn't here right now.

"Naruto." Chouji smiles. It's a real smile, a grin really, it's just it looks small in between the wrinkles like trenches. Chouji is sixteen. "Good day?"

"Yeah," Naruto decides, and proceeds to tell him all about it.

xxxxx

It's still the same childhood summer when he ventures into a church, partly because Sakura's talked about it, mostly because it's one of the few places in town that boasts free toilets with no queue. Stuffing his sun glasses down his pocket, he's stopped short by the practicing choir.

Much to his disappointment, Sasuke isn't wearing one of the priest dresses. In fact they're all in their normal clothes, jeans and tshirts under the stained glass windows, Sasuke with Neji beside him and Sakura with Ino and the Hyuuga girls.

When did she join the choir? It makes sense, though, he supposes. The director doubles as their music teacher, which makes it an easy and oft-trod road to higher grades, and Sakura's very concerned about her grades, maybe even more than about being close to Sasuke.

Really Sasuke's is the less expected presence, despite Naruto knowing all the exorcist kids go, partly because Sasuke never deigns to try for good grades, partly because his voice is noticeably deep and not exactly suited to singing.

All the same, they don't sound too bad, despite psalms definitely not being Naruto's musical preference.

Finished in the bathroom, he sneaks back into the main hall and sprawls in one of the pews. It's sort of cosy, or what he imagines went for cosy in Medieval times, when there was no real way to avoid drafts or uncomfortably hard seats. Maybe he should join, his grades could definitely use it… if they even accept shifters, which is doubtful. Three thousand shifters died last week, up in River county, because the human hospitals wouldn't treat them after the bomb raid.

He realises he's almost fallen asleep when the advent of someone sitting down beside him wakes him up.

"Kakashi!" Naruto says too loudly, crawling back into a sitting position.

Kakashi smiles benignly. "Hello. You seem a little young to be waiting to pick up your spawn."

Naruto laughs, also a little too loudly. "Yeah, no, I was just lazying. You here to pick someone up?"

"Ah, yes. I'm here to fetch dear little Ducky."

"Ducky? Who's…"

The inquiry is interrupted by an icy, "Kakashi!"

Kakashi smiles again, never quite stopped. "Ah, Ducky, there you are."

"For the last time," Sasuke sneers, "stop calling me Ducky."

"But you're such a darling little duckling," Kakashi argues, reaching up to ruffle Sasuke's hair.

Or that must have been the intention. In practice he reaches up only to get his hand caught. "Enough."

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you prefer Princess?"

Naruto's happy to notice he's not the only one snickering, even if it's mostly in shock.

Sasuke sighs. "Was there something you wanted, aside from embarrassing me?"

"That is a talent of mine," Kakashi agrees. "I'm supposed to get you boys home. Or Neji at least, but I figured I might as well get you too."

"How touching," Sasuke grumbles, but he doesn't protest when Kakashi joins them leaving the church. Neji's silent as always, but Naruto figures he can more than make up for that – especially when Sakura catches up with them, smiling and rosy from hurrying.

He distracts himself from the disappointment of her clinging to Sasuke's arm instead of his by further musings on Princess Ducky. "Oh! Now I remember!"

There are a number of raised eyebrows: Sasuke's sceptical, Kakashi's anticipatory, Sakura's anxious, Neji's disdainful.

"It's what your brother called you! When he'd come get you from preschool, he'd always call you Ducky! I guess because of your hair?"

Sasuke mumbles something that sounds like, give me strength, but it's Kakashi who says, "Why, that's true! And did you know about the princess?"

He does not, and so it's revealed that Sasuke broke his leg two years ago, and had to be carried around quite a lot – often in what amounted to a dress, since the injury made trousers tricky. Apparently he was a very cute, too.

Sasuke bears these embarrassments with the impressive patience of long, arduous practice, which is hilarious until the idea strikes Naruto of what Jiraiya could say about him, should the old pervert ever find an audience like this. Naruto certainly wouldn't be able to keep himself from yelling right back…

In contrast, Sasuke's composure, cracked as it is, doesn't break until Kakashi leaves the past well behind. "Sakura? Oh, my, I've heard so much about you."

Her cheeks go pink again. "Really?"

"Oh, yes, of course. Your sweet face, and your beautiful eyes, and…"

"Shut up!" Sasuke hisses, but of course if that worked they'd have never got to the princess part.

"…stupendous nose…"

That's where Naruto starts laughing, a great big roar of a laugh. "Yeah, right!"

Kakashi looks mildly disappointed. Whatever expression Sakura has, it's not discernible through her blush.

"Enough!" Sasuke snaps. "Take Neji and go!"

They're in the parking lot now, so Kakashi does stop, and Neji too, even Sakura. Sasuke keeps walking, fast belligerent steps, but doesn't protest Naruto's company.

They don't slow down until they reach the bus stop, where Sasuke's stuck pacing on the platform, which he gives up on soon enough, slumping against a pillar.

"Kakashi's kind of a freak," Naruto says.

"Hn. He doesn't have a little brother of his own to torment, so Itachi-niisan generously shares me."

"Lucky you," says Naruto, with only a little jealousy: Naruto who's always wanted siblings, all the family he could get. Konohamaru's so little yet, he hardly counts.

Of course, in so many of the ways that matter, Sasuke's missing both a mum and a dad.

It's not something anybody ever mentions, but they all remember the long awkward silences when his parents came to pick him up from school, how much better everything suddenly got when it was Itachi or Kakashi instead.

"Yeah," Sasuke snorts, quite lightly. "Anyway, how'd you… how'd you know?"

"How did I… ? Oh, oh, right. Well, isn't it obvious?" Under Sasuke's impenetrable gaze, it doesn't seem to be. "You're not like that."

Sasuke keeps staring in that way of his, with those strange stabbing eyes.

"It's like, either you don't like her, in which case you'd never talk about her that way. Or you do like her, in which case you'd – never talk about her that way."

Sasuke nods, seeming cautiously pleased. Anything he says is swallowed by the noise of the incoming bus. Naruto follows him onboard, sprawling over three seats while Sasuke sits primly upright in one, his bag tucked neatly between his knees.

It's funny because only yesterday Naruto watched him tackle Kiba so hard they both rolled through several meters of mud during P. E. Sasuke doesn't like to lose, anymore than Naruto does.

Speaking of, Naruto takes the opportunity to give him a friendly kick.

"Idiot," Sasuke mutters, but two stations later, when he liberates a packed lunch from his bag, he only smacks Naruto's hands away after Naruto's stolen a few bites, so he can hardly mean it.

"This is awesome," Naruto exclaims around a mouthful of fish. "No way you made this."

Sasuke only looks a little like he wants to die when he discloses, "Kakashi did."

"Guess he's good for something. Although to be honest I would've expected him to make duck."

"Fucking die." A piece of fish hits him square in the forehead, which is totally worth it because then it falls into his lap and he can scoop it up and eat it.

Sasuke of course makes a face at him, because he can be a prissy bitch like that, and Naruto makes sure to chew with his mouth wide open.

"Do you, by the way?" he eventually asks, when the train is mostly empty so his voice comes shriller than he meant it to.

"Hmm?"

"Like Sakura. I mean, I mean! You've been – around her more. And I wanted to ask her to the picnic but there's no point until she's given up on you asking her and, and, are you going to? Cause if you are I – I still totally wanna go and I'll ask someone else. As friends. So are you? Do you?" He realises he's leant forward when Sasuke's fingers meet his forehead and push him back.

"I wasn't going to."

"Great! No, wait, wasn't? Now you are?"

"You're making it more tempting by the second."

"No fair!"

"I don't even like picnics."

Naruto wants to say something about how Sasuke doesn't know how to picnic, but he knows: if Sasuke doesn't do something, it's because he chooses not to.

"Why not? But you have to go! Everyone'll be there, it'll be way awesome!"

Sasuke sighs. "Now that Kakashi's here, I've no choice. He'd drag me there by main force."

Naruto snickers, realising he's missed his stop but not much caring. Might as well keep Sasuke company until he gets off at South Central and change there instead.

"It'll be awesome," he repeats. "A bunch of us were talking about meeting up before, dunno if Sakura told you?"

"She did," Sasuke allows. "Also Ino, and Tenten, and –"

"Fine, jeez," Naruto laughs, kicking at him again. "I'm sure they wouldn't be so excited about you if they knew you were actually Princess Ducky."

Sasuke kicks back bloody hard. "Then maybe you should tell them."

"Maybe I will!"

Sasuke smirks. "Have at. No one would believe you."

"Augh! No fair!"

Snorting, Sasuke stands up, and Naruto scrambles after him off the bus.

Smiling like a madman, even waving at them, Kakashi stands waiting for them on the platform.

"Oh, great," Sasuke mutters.

"Ducky! Finally! When I explained to Itachi how you'd stormed off in high dudgeon, he completely agreed that there must be something upsetting you, and I should come meet you and find out. Are you feeling – pressured? Bullied? Lovesick?"

"Sick of you, that's for sure." Sick enough of him to hurry rudely forward, although that's pretty standard Sasuke behaviour.

"Mmh," Kakashi says noncommittally. "Oh, that's right, Sakura – lovely girl, by the way – told me about the picnic. I take it you haven't asked her yet? You know, I could help you with that, I'm quite the expert. In fact, she seemed quite amenable to a lot of my brilliant ideas…"

"No," Sasuke interrupts. "No, look, that's enough. Stop it."

"But Ducky dearest…"

"Enough. I mean it. I'm – going with Naruto."

Naruto finds himself brought to an abrupt halt, as Sasuke's fingers close around his wrist. They're long, thin fingers, cold and unexpectedly strong.

A slow, terrible glee lights Kakashi's face as he turns towards Naruto. His arm falls around Naruto's shoulders much like a descending executioner's axe. "Oooh, secret boyfriend intrigue! How romantic! Now, Naruto, of course you must tell me all about it…"

Naruto stares in despair as Sasuke basely abandons him.

In revenge, as he informs Sasuke in a great number of pugnacious Skype messages that evening, he feeds Kakashi what is at once the strangest, dirtiest and most absolutely ridiculous love story of the century.

Would be more impressive if the century wasn't less than two decades old, idiot.

:p:p:p!11111! U dont get 2 talk! U abandoned me 2 dat freak how cd u?!

You got out in under two hours, you've nothing to complain about.

While recognising that having to actually live with Kakashi would be an unimaginably worse torment, the mere memory of those two hours makes Naruto shudder down to his very bones.

Kakashi can be nice. Kakashi can be awesome. But Kakashi can also be the worst teasing tormentor in the history of mankind.

Feeling strongly that the keyboard is unequal to expressing his trauma, he gives the Call button a try. Rather to his surprise, Sasuke actually answers – maybe he feels guilty after all, the traitor.

"He asked me when did I first feel you up in public! Who asks that? Does he know we're kids?"

"I find it telling," Sasuke says very dryly, " that your question isn't, who does that."

Sasuke's voice is different like this, disembodied and slightly tinny because Naruto's speakers aren't that great. There's so much less to distract from it, and how it doesn't exactly feel like talking to a friend, which rather makes sense because Sasuke isn't exactly a friend, in the usual sense of the word.

"You could've just told him you were going with Sakura," he whines.

"No."

"Why not? She'd have loved it."

That last isn't something Naruto usually likes to think about, but it's late evening after a truly harrowing interrogation, and somehow he seems to have pulled the pretence off along with his wet socks, thrown it away towards the laundry pile.

Though really it's more like pulling off a scab.

After a while of silence Sasuke says, "She's my friend."

Sakura's careful about that too, about never encouraging Naruto, never suggesting they're anything more than friendly.

"But me you just threw to the wolves?!"

The quality of the silence indicates that Sasuke shrugs. "You can take care of yourself."

"Damn right!"

xxxxx

Still the same summer, back in the trailer park house. "Chouji? Hey, you okay?"

With the words a meaningless background noise, Naruto hurries forward into the room. Chouji's room, with Chouji's bed, on which Chouji is sitting slumped and sweaty, shaking a little. "It'll pass," he gasps. "Fuck, I hate this fucking mate sickness, why the fuck couldn't I have got another shifter?"

Naruto's never once heard Chouji swear before.

"Because then it wouldn't be a challenge," Naruto reminds him, crouching next to him on the bed so Chouji can support himself on his shoulder without having to ask, to admit. "And you'd hardly be the Don Juan of the tribe if you were spooked by a challenge!"

"It's just – so bloody unfair."

It is bloody unfair, not least because Chouji's nobody important: because nobody will intervene for him, especially not when they're finally getting somewhere close to successful peace negotiations.

"Yeah," says Naruto, quieter than he'd have liked. Get another shifter, and you're safe. Maybe you won't like each other all that much, though most people do, maybe you'll fight a lot, have some other lovers, but you'll have each other, the need will be mutual and understood. Get a human, get sick. "But he'll love you. He just needs a little – a little more time. You'll win him over!"

Naruto's seen matesick people before, but those were adults: not his upperclassmen, someone not even ten years older, the experience close suddenly and raw.

Seeing Chouji, in perfect health six weeks ago, reduced to this wreck of twisted, hollowed yearning – it makes it really real, for the first time, what they must have been like, before the sickness hit them, all those other people who've died like this.

There are so many stories, always so many stories, about when they were strong and young, all dreams and hopes and the power to back them up. Before they wind up like this: trailer trash, refugees, society's refuse.

"He's gone from not knowing my name to cursing my name," Chouji wheezes. "I'm fucked."

"That's the idea," Jiraiya says from the doorway. "Naruto, get out."

"Talk to you later," he says to Chouji, the words clumsy, just vessels for the boneheaded, bone-strong belief behind them. "We'll come up with a plan and you'll sweep him off his feet!"

"Yeah," Chouji says, weakly but he says it.

On the far side of his closed door, Naruto sinks to the floor.

He sits there until Anko comes to get him, to drive him and Kiba back to Dad's.

"Are you scared?" she asks, in that chilly laconic voice of hers. "It'll be your turn soon enough, after all."

"Keep driving like this," Kiba yells from the backseat, to which he and Naruto have been relegated, "and we'll be dead long before we're mated!"

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," Anko says, taking a curve so fast she almost takes them straight into a ditch.

Theoretically Naruto knows that she can drive perfectly well. It's just that in practice she never does, not when she has the opportunity to fuck with them.

"I'm not scared!" he insists.

"Oh really."

"Oh really!"

Kiba snorts beside him. "You can't even get Sakura to like you. If you wind up with a human, you are so fucking screwed."

"That's different!"

"Why? Even if she was your mate, she wouldn't know. It wouldn't make any difference to her."

Naruto…for some reason chooses not to mention that he's never thought of Sakura in mate terms. Instead he shrugs, trying to settle the tense cast to Kiba's shoulders, his own elevated pulse, "Almost everyone gets another shifter, anyway."

"Yeah," Anko agrees, with something like pity. "Almost everyone falls in love with each other, too."

She didn't, they all know. She and Hayate are mated, she and Hayate get along, she and Hayate exude that familiar sensation of power and belonging when they're close.

She's currently involved with an entirely human Ibiki Morino, and Hayate has about four girlfriends.

It's not what Naruto would want, but she's never seemed exactly unhappy about it.

"So," she says, "this boy of Chouji's. He goes to school with him?"

"Yeah," Naruto says. "He should just tell him. If he explained…"

"I'd imagine," Anko says dryly, "that that wouldn't exactly help with the delusional stalker impression."

"But! He'd hardly just let him die!" Naruto wrote the boy a letter saying approximately this and put it in his locker, but he never received an answer. Chouji's mate will know about bond craving in theory, though some humans insist that's just fake, but Naruto tried to explain in a better way, a realer way.

Anko shrugs. Sighs, from deep inside. "Maybe Gaara was right."

Gaara, who said, Just take him, not like he could stop you.

There are no words that can be said to that, or no words that Naruto has, or Kiba either apparently: yelling back at Gaara was easy, but this is different, Anko's tired voice and the long grey hours of sitting watch over Chouji backing it up.

The motor gives a last roar before falling abruptly silent, Anko deciding they need some fresh air before driving on, and they slip out of the backseat and into the woods. Naruto and Kiba share a grin, in spite of everything.

With Chouji back in the house going to pieces, and Dad trying to keep everything together and mostly failing – with little Inari already headed for juvie and Jiraiya wasting himself on booze that hasn't aged enough and girls that haven't either – Kyuubi doesn't think like that. Lives in a world of instinct and impulse, with very little place for anything else.

Kiba talks about shifter magic as gentle, compares it to wind and water. Naruto has always felt Kyuubi like a potential volcano eruption in the depths of him, and lets the energy overflow him now like lava. It breaks across his skin like fever sweat, hot and sticky and he can almost smell it.

Runs through the forest and its scents, with the sensation of as yet imaginary tails twisting around the trees.

He catches onto a scent, at once familiar and absolutely alien, that impression of something pure…

Kyuubi's so absorbed in it, he doesn't notice anything else until Kiba stops him, hanging on to his arm and hissing, "Horses!"

"The hell?" The words are rough, scraped raw against his canines and coppery on his tongue: talking doesn't come easy to Kyuubi.

Neither really does thinking, but horses mean people: mean pushing Kyuubi back down, into the depths.

He doesn't want to go, clings to awareness so that Naruto feels him like a shadow in his eyes, like a primal red filter, for a long time after.

Back in fully human state, with the recognisable but suddenly much fainter smell of horses trotting up his nostrils and Kiba beside him, he hurries towards the clearing by the pond. Grace left him when Kyuubi did, and twigs and roots trip him up, scratch him, but it's only a kilometre or so.

Then they come upon the visitors – intruders, that red filter wants to paint them as – Sasuke and Neji Hyuuga, mounted on ridiculously large and increasingly hysterical horses.

And now there's Naruto, bursting out of yet another bloody hedge and apparently scaring the living hell out of Sasuke's horse.

"Shit! Sorry!"

But Sasuke masters the horse so quickly, Naruto barely has time to hope to see him thrown off on his arse before all is calm.

"Naruto," Neji says in that colourless voice that only vaguely indicates surprise, peeking out from under the disdain. "And Kiba. Naturally."

"Hi to you too." But his eyes are on Sasuke, a moving contrast to Neji's freaky stillness. The horse is still nervous, Sasuke's letting it walk it off in circles.

Kyuubi salivates, his hot hunger washing through Naruto before he shuts him down, slams layers of restraint and control and humanity between beast and boy.

Despite Tsunade's worrying to the contrary, he's been aware since he was very, very small that few shifters – no shifters, really, she says, no sane ones – are so interpersonal with their magic. For a long time they all talked about Kyuubi as a pretend friend, before Dad and Tsunade realised that to Naruto there had never been any pretence about it, and got scared.

"I'll go on ahead," Neji says, to Sasuke exclusively even though Naruto's standing right there, close enough to be hit by the warmth from his horse.

"Let's," Sasuke agrees.

"I think," Neji starts, glancing meaningfully and pompously at the pond, "someone should stay and keep an eye on them. We don't want any more accidents."

"Fine," Sasuke snaps, stilling his horse at least with a sharp pull at the reins and a sharper look Neji's way.

"Sasuke…"

"Whatever. I said it's fine. Go."

"Sasuke," Neji says again, only this time he says it like please rather than like oh come on, brat.

Whatever he's asking for, Sasuke clearly doesn't give, because Neji turns his back without another word and trots away.

And there it is, the reason they're not exactly friends except when they're best friends: that terrible way Sasuke has of staring through people – only now he turns from Neji to Naruto and he sees him.