When the kitsune comes out to play... Sasuke and Naruto, rated for repressed-sexual-rivalry-tension! Woo. Note: chronologically impossible, I think, but please ignore ^^;;. Also, inspiration comes from the one and only sunfreak—love the concept, implausible though it may seem, but that's okay, 'cause I'm a fangirl and fangirls are by rule shameless. [November 28th, 2003]
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Funny, Sasuke thought, how chocolate always managed to leave a bad taste behind in his mouth.
The autumn woods were a warm, close darkness. Every few moments a wind would trickle by from around the bend, rustling branches and sending leaves skittering downwards in bare black shadows. The same breeze curled in his hair, warm and invasive, ghost-winds smoothing against his neck like inquisitive fingers. The trees reared black outlines against a lighter black sky, this place where things could hide in the dark and the green and the deep. Ghostly wildflowers grew from out of a spread of moss and twisted tree branches, so near he could've reached out and picked them off one by one. It was a beautiful night, really, no clouds or fog or the freakishly bad weather that'd been plaguing Konoha for the last several weeks. There was a moon up there too, only a sliver in the sky. Sasuke couldn't see it from his spot on the tree branch and nor did he particularly care.
The taste would not leave, no matter how much he rubbed at his mouth. It'd been sweet, at first. Then after he'd left them—Kakashi-sensei and Sakura-san and Naruto too, the chocolate had soured, almost like bitter almonds.
He couldn't figure out why he was bothering with chocolate, though. Stupid silly matters; if his mouth tasted bad then he'd just go get a breath mint. No need for the hass—
"Uchiha," a familiar voice said.
Later he would tell himself that he'd known, had felt the other boy there all along. For now he could only conceal his faint surprise. "Naruto."
"Yes," he said, and then a form melted out from the shadows to Sasuke's right, shielded by thickets of branches and leaves. It was Naruto, he could tell, the voice and the hair and the clothes that still managed to be this side of too-bright orange in the dark.
"Why are you calling me that?" he asked, and half-rose. "Uchiha, I mean."
There was silence, and the distant song that was the wind. He stood up fully and found that his hands were fists. "Naruto? What's wrong with you?"
"Or Sasuke," Naruto said. For the first time Sasuke looked down and saw him stepping across the whip-thin branches, casual as if he were walking on solid ground. His face was closed, quiet, stance non-threatening. There was nothing physically wrong with him that he could tell, and his voice was calm, too, but there was something, something he couldn't quite put a finger on. Something off.
"Would you prefer Uchiha over Sasuke?" he asked, and it was curious. "Your pretty family blood passed down from generations and generations...so old..."
"Baka," he said. "Stop this."
"Stop what?" He was closer now, closer than he'd been a second ago. Close enough. "I'm not doing anything."
What he was doing was creeping him out, but Sasuke could barely admit that to himself, much less say it aloud. "You're not acting like yourself." A thought occurred to him. He frowned. "Kakashi-sensei, he didn't spike your drink or give you something after I left, did he—"
"Kakashi-sensei would have no reason for that," he said.
"Or you're just getting a kick out of fooling me."
Naruto shook his head. For a long moment and a short eternity Sasuke watched him watching him back.
He started laughing, a sound that ached in his bones and prickled along the skin on the back of his neck. It felt wrong. When Naruto laughed, he laughed open and spontaneous, happy-go-lucky or just annoying, depending on Sasuke's moods. His laughter now held something deeper, darker. It didn't fit him but at the same time it did, as if the borderline between whatever kept him in its grasp now and Naruto himself was blurred and all too close to gone.
"What are you?" he asked, tense. The metal of his kunai was cold against his fingertips. "Where's Naruto?"
"Naruto," he said, "is right here."
"You lie."
"Ah, but you know I speak only truth."
"I don't know anything," Sasuke said carefully. "Except that maybe you've possessed him."
Naruto—the thing was Naruto—looked amused; considered him with eyes a little too inquisitive for comfort. A small smile curved the corner of his lips. Sasuke leaned against the tree trunk, pressed fingertips against rough bark and fought against the shivers that tried to ease down his spine. "Possessed," he finally said, and his voice might have been pleased. "Yes, I suppose you could say that."
"Leave him."
"And if I don't? Will you make me?"
"Yes." The word was hissed out. He had meant for it to sound cool, unemotional.
"Would you kill me?" he asked, and now Sasuke could only swallow and tell himself it wasn't Naruto, only a demon that Naruto had been weak and stupid enough to let possess him, the dobe, a demon or a spirit or something. Anything.
"Would you?" he repeated.
Sasuke opened his mouth, but the other boy only continued onward as if he'd not asked a question in the first place. "You know you couldn't. You look at this face and think of Naruto. He's a teammate. You wouldn't willingly kill your teammate."
"A teammate is just a teammate."
"You almost died for this teammate."
It was a simple statement of fact, devoid of pity, triumph, malice. Sasuke near-flinched. "You stay the hell out of his memories."
Naruto—no, it was an it, or a thing, not Naruto—took a step towards him. The leaves barely rustled, and what did move might have been just the wind. There was no chakura use he could detect, no effort expended into staying so finely balanced. Naruto himself had never been that good.
"Memories are the only things I have that don't bore me," it said. There was no laughter in his words now; he sounded almost childish. "You try being me and see how well things would come off as."
"But I'm not you."
"No," it said. "And that wouldn't be a wise thing to do, Sasuke-kun."
Sasuke's fingers stilled, hooked through kunai holds but not moving at all. He kept himself that way until the sweat ran down the back of his neck and evaporated too. It left him shivering, damned uncontrollable quivers in his hands and his legs and his lips, numbing from the breadth of Naruto's power as it rippled out. Oh, he'd felt it once or twice—the otherworldly glow and more than anything else the destruction it left behind—but never like this, a smothering heat wave that breathed the smell of ashes and thick, close fur into the forest grounds, sweeping away the pine-musk of the trees. The taste of something unidentifiable sat thick on the back of his throat, almost as tangy as spice and as smooth as cream, though neither, really. He found he could still move, even as the thing that was Naruto took another step towards him. He shifted back—not stumbling, nowhere near stumbling as his thoughts darted around cold and clear—he moved back until the branches of the tree thinned so that he could move no further.
They stared at each other for the longest time, until, finally, Naruto said, "I'm not going to hurt him."
"Of course you're not," he said. "You're not about to damage your precious host."
It made a frustrated sound at that. "He's right. You are a block-headed idiot."
"Can you blame me for being cautious?"
"...No."
"You could be a ninja from the sound or the sand or any one of the other countries. Assassinations aren't all that uncommon, and illusion is a lower level jutsu that most know."
"But I'm not."
"No," Sasuke said. "You don't feel like an illusion or a clone."
The thing smiled, and moonlight made his teeth gleam dully, distinct shadows of black against white. "I'm real. I just happen to be sharing bodies, is all."
"Your intention," Sasuke said, softly. "Are you here to kill me?"
He did not answer for the longest time, and when the words finally came they did not answer anything at all. "Naruto," it said, "thinks about you often. No. Don't look away. Look here at me. I'm telling you this, you think you can just pretend I'm not saying anything? Damnit boy, look at me."
And he did; force his eyes back, not even realizing he'd moved them away in the first place. Except in the place where Naruto'd been standing was nothing, just shadows cast by the canopy of pines and brush-needles drifting down as the wind tugged them away.
His blood slowed to a crawl in his veins, slowly, slowly; three knives were drawn and ready as soon as he'd realized he was alone. He crossed them in front his chest in a ready position; backed up with his breath steady and his thoughts clear. He had to keep on the look out—listen—protect his back—
He had backed up so far that he'd bumped into the tree trunk, or what he'd thought was the trunk. Except the actual tree trunk was on the other side, and he could see it, there in his line of vision. And even if he had reached the trunk, no wood was supposed to feel this warm, this close, this alive; no wood, living or magical or otherwise, could place its grip around his wrists and twist just hard enough so that the knives dropped from his suddenly numb fingers.
"Don't," Naruto said, and even though he was not holding anything to Sasuke's throat or threatening him in any other way, just the light brush of fingertips against his wrists, Sasuke didn't.
He nearly flinched when the other boy's fingers tapped against his shoulder. "Naruto seems to think this is odd."
Carefully, carefully. "...What is?"
"That you're not fighting back."
"I'm not stupid," he said, calm as he could make himself. Naruto's fingers drummed their gentle rhythm against his shoulder, then moved just a little in so that they played against his collarbone. Near his neck and near his pulse.
"I won't hurt you," he said. Sasuke let out a breath. "Is that what you want to hear?"
"Then let me go," he said, and they both knew he wasn't referring to his hand on his wrist.
"I just..."
"What?"
"Listen," he said. "Naruto, he...and I too..."
His breath was too warm against his neck, stirring hair like wind. Sasuke stood very, very still.
"He thinks about you often," he said, very clearly. "You're his teammate, his partner. You've fought for each other and guarded each other and you nearly died for him. That frustrates him. It confuses him. He's never been confused about you—oh, a lot of things make him scratch his head but never simple things, and never you. He's hated you since before the academy, since you were children. Hate is simple."
His breath was steady when he let it out. "I know," he said.
"And then all these circumstances..." he trailed off, tilted his head as if listening to music only he could hear; then snapped his eyes back to Sasuke again. "The fighting and the exams and all of you forced to work as a team. It's confusing him. All of a sudden he can't hate you anymore, because if he does how is he supposed to work with you and train and travel with you without driving himself crazy? He can't. And then he thinks, you went and acted the part of a dumbass and near got yourself killed, and he...he..."
Sasuke tensed when the fingers curled into his hair, tugging his head to the side. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Naruto, eyes an uncertain hazy color and close enough that he could feel his breath cool against his neck.
"The Uchiha clan," he said, and then suddenly his hands were on both Sasuke's shoulders, firm but not painful, not yet. "I knew them before Naruto even did. Are they still strong?"
His breath when he let it out this time was shaking. "We can find out."
Naruto laughed a gentle little laugh. "Fight me."
"Yes," Sasuke said. The hands lifted off his shoulders. He turned around to find nothing there at all.
"Here," the voice came, and he jerked to the right. The flare of chakura was distant, warm as embers. Where his feet slapped into the branches little burn marks were left behind. Damnit. He had to be careful. He crouched, a release of tension; leapt for the nearest branch—caught, swung, held, crouched again. A rustle sounded in his ears, like dead leaves crunching underfoot. "Here," Naruto said again, this time from directly above. Sasuke shifted back three steps as a knife came whistling down to embed itself into wood, where he'd been standing a second earlier.
"I thought you said you weren't going to hurt me," he said, addressing the shadows above.
"An Uchiha would never let down his guard so far that he'd get hit by one of those," Naruto chorused from behind him. The fist that descended barely grazed his cheek; he caught it and twisted—cursed, when his fingers slipped and he was left holding onto nothing again. The other boy was pressing in now, too close and enjoying this far too much, feral and smiling and forcing him back. Farther away from the trunk. The path the branches underneath him provided narrowed, slowly at first, but now quickly, quickly. He could barely duck and block, let alone counter. His breath came out in bothered pants—maintaining the chakura required to stay balanced atop tree branches and fighting hand to hand was more than he could handle at this point. Don't slip—whatever you do, don't slip—
And don't, he thought, let Naruto trap you into an arm lock either. The thought was tired, not so much physically as inside his head; that Naruto!—a spirit of some kind but still Naruto in a sense—had crept past his guard, seen the holes and the blind spots and darted in.
Now his fingers were curled gently around Sasuke's neck. The smile quieted. "Sasuke-kun."
He hissed. "Don't call me that."
"Naruto thinks you hate him like he used to hate you," he went on, as if Sasuke had not said anything. "When he trains with you he's always a little nervous. Oh, he'd never show it," and he flicked his fingers against the curve of his jaw, laughed a little as Sasuke repressed a growl. "He fights you and sometimes he beats you, but mostly you win. He hates that," he was whispering now, lips almost touching the skin at his neck but not quite, "And I hated it when your Uchiha clan hounded one of mine own into near insanity, but neither of us," and now he grabbed Sasuke's chin, forced his head around until he could see the odd light in his eyes, "Neither of us really hate you."
He kissed him, softly. The press of his lips was warm, surprisingly non-invasive. When Sasuke kissed him back he could taste the aftertang of chocolate layered onto his tongue—enough to make him realize this was the Naruto of an hour ago who'd forced him to just eat the chocolate cake damnit, Naruto who'd hounded him and fought with him and just made a general ass of himself since day one; Naruto whose cheek he was touching, scratchy-rough from being out practicing too long. There was no other; neither of us, he'd said, and Sasuke nearly jerked away, what was he doing—only Naruto kept him there, pulled away just this much to whisper, "Don't fall, Sasuke-kun," and then he touched his mouth to his again, a delicate pressure that stirred uneasiness inside his chest; he couldn't accept this when even the feel of lips against lips felt wrong, because Naruto would never kiss like this.
In the end, the thing pretending to be Naruto stepped away. Sasuke was left to wonder where in the seven hells that thought had come from. "Did I help?" he asked.
Sasuke could still taste him there, something faint over bitter almonds. "You helped nothing." It was the truth.
For a moment they regarded each other. Sasuke didn't move. When Naruto did it was to give a shuddering jerk, a sharp intake of breath—and then he was stumbling backwards, eyes shiny with panic. Just like that, Sasuke thought. "W-what did he tell you?!"
He arched a brow, cool like nothing had ever happened at all. "'He'?"
"Yeah—no—oh shit, I didn't—"
"...Not nearly enough."
"—mean that-whaaa—?"
"Not nearly enough," he repeated. "I trust you'll fill me in on the rest?"
Naruto sputtered, then gave a violent start when Sasuke caught the back of his neck. He had only a moment to appreciate the shock on the other boy's face before his mouth met his. Quick, he thought, quick and rough enough to give him a little scare; nothing too gentle like before. This time it was Sasuke who moved away, far enough to murmur into his mouth, "Don't fall, Naruto-kun."
And then he gave the other boy a tiny shove with his index finger.
"Sasuke, you dirty-aggghhhh—"
The yell trailed off, followed by a loud crashing noise, as if Naruto'd fallen into a bush and torn apart some branches on the way down, too. My mistake, Sasuke thought. He wondered if he'd pushed a little too hard, maybe he should've caught him just in time—
But then almost immediately after came a loud whump whump whump sound, like the other boy was tearing his way back up the tree again. "I'm gonna get you back for that, asshole, you think you're the only one who can play dirty, you just wait—"
Sasuke settled back and did just that: waited. A small, reluctant smile curled his lips.
It was going to be a long night.
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~fin~
Note: ...Told ya I'm shameless. ¬_¬