Author's Note: Thanks to all who've reviewed - especially to the kind person who pointed out the error. You're very right; I'll fix it soon. Thanks. And also, uh, sorry if the creepy part was too detailed, but I did intend to freak you out, so... it was sort of on purpose.
This part is NC-17 Sasuke/Naruto. As you know, ff.net doesn't allow NC-17 fiction to be posted here. I've edited the explicited smex out, but if you're lookin' for it, I've posted the link to the full shebang on my profile.
A brief warning: if you don't like two males getting very close to getting it on, I would suggest not reading.
----
Naruto's summer days settled into a lazy pattern. He woke up to train his genin, putting them through fire and water, making them camp and survive on their own in the forest, teaching them chakra control and any jutsus they were focused enough to learn, and refining the jutsus they already knew. He always asked them to fight him, giving them time to think up strategies, and admitted that they'd pulled some pretty good ideas out of their hats even when he beat them every single time. Halfway through the first month, they began taking missions. At the end of the second month, Naruto's tan was darker and bronzer and all of his genin had a few small scars they sported proudly.
June came and went, and Kaiki learned how to walk on water; Nagi hung upside down from a tree branch. Hikaru beat them all and was able to create a tiny Rasengan in her hand. He taught them the seals for the summoning jutsu, promising he would teach them how to summon frogs when they were stronger. He thought, briefly, about trying to teach them the Chidori, but he'd never been very good at the move anyway and with good reason - only two people in this world knew how to really use the Chidori to its full potential.
The middle of July creeped up, slow and hot. Naruto's genin had tried to beat him, and failed again. Now they lay spread out in the clearing, panting and sweat-soaked, eyes glazed more with heat than the sting of failure. Naruto checked to make sure they were all still breathing, then walked up the trunk of a tree, hung from a branch and retrieved a bag of chocolates from his leg pouch.
"Naruto-sensei," Kaiki said suddenly, pitching his voice for Naruto to hear. "When are you going to teach us how to summon the frogs?"
Naruto unwrapped a chocolate and gnawed on its tip, tasting: it was good stuff, all the way from the Rain Country where they made the best and sweetest chocolate. "When you're ready," he replied, sliding his tongue further down the chocolate. "And not if you keep bugging me."
He turned his head and saw Nagi roll over, so the kid could see him. "Who taught you how to summon, Naruto-sensei?"
Against the chocolate Naruto smiled, paused to consider his answer. "A very nasty, haughty, impatient guy."
"Oh, like you," Kaiki shouted, laughing.
"Ha ha." Naruto aimed a kunai, and it landed spare inches from Nagi's and Kaiki's faces. "You can keep your thoughts on that to yourself. Jeez, you're brats."
"Only a few steps from brat to jounin, just like you!"
"I bet the summoning jutsu is easy, anyway," Nagi said. "We could probably figure it ourselves, without your help."
"Oh?" Naruto lifted his eyebrows. "Is that a dare, Nagi-kun?"
"If it is, I ain't takin' it," said Kaiki. "You're on your own, Nagi."
"Well - maybe it is." Nagi leaned forward on his elbows, frowning up at Naruto. "What could be so hard about it? We already know the seals. You just do them and call up the frog, right? Put a little chakra into it and how hard can it be?"
"Okay. Okay," Naruto said, swinging himself upright and dropping to a lower branch, closer to the genin. "You don't think it's hard? That's cool by me. You go ahead and try it. Go on," he lifted his lips when Nagi hesitated. "Doing a few hand seals never killed anyone, kid."
"Cripes, fine, I will." Nagi sat cross-legged, shook out his hands, popped his knuckles; keeping one wary eye on Naruto, he formed the hand seals - slowly, Naruto noted, so slowly he'd get his ass killed in combat before he could squeeze out one 'tiger' - then raised his four fingers and pressed them together, eyes sliding shut as he called up chakra. Naruto wasn't Neji, he didn't have a Byakugan and he couldn't see anyone's chakra system, but he could tell from the sweat on Nagi's forehead and the shaking in his fingers that he was calling forth a good deal, maybe enough to do maybe three fair-sized Kage Bunshins. "Summoning no Jutsu!" he said, fingers pressing tight together, so tight all the blood drained out of them.
A short pause, and then Kaiki said, "Ah, it didn't work."
"Correct," Naruto said, standing as Nagi collapsed on his back, face white with effort. "And I'll tell ya why. First of all, all summoning jutsus need the ninja to make a blood deal with whatever animal he wants to summon. I cut my thumb, I let it bleed like crazy and then I make the deal in blood, and now I'm the master of the frog summons. With me so far?"
"You could have told me it wouldn't work without this frickin' blood thing!" Nagi yelled at him. He could barely sit up, but he lifted his middle finger at Naruto anyway. "Fuck, that was a waste of chakra, you bastard."
"Oh, please. Writing your name in blood doesn't mean you can summon creatures." Naruto sighed and rubbed at his headache again, the spot right above his eye these brats always seemed to make throb. "That puny amount of chakra you just summoned wouldn't get you anywhere. Maybe a tadpole, but I wouldn't bet on it. Depends on how your luck is, I guess."
"A summoning jutsu," said Hikaru, who Naruto secretly thought had read half the Konoha library, "requires a huge amount of controlled chakra expenditure, plus the blood contract. That's why most people who summon creatures are jounin masters, thirty or forty years old."
"Bingo!" Naruto raised a finger. "Chakra none of you have, right now. Or, maybe you have it, but you sure as hell ain't calling it up. So that, my young ninja friends, is why I haven't taught you the summoning jutsu yet. Are we all clear?"
Kaiki raised a thumb, Nagi his middle finger. Naruto rolled his eyes and reached in his pouch for another piece of chocolate. God, kids did him in.
"So you're the frog master," Kaiki finally said, after a long pause. "Then we can't summon frogs while you're - you know, ehh - still alive, right?"
"Nope." Naruto almost dribbled out a mouthful and caught it just in time, then licked his fingers clean. "You can summon them, you just aren't their master. Which means," and he snorted here, remembering, "you'll have a damned time trying to get them to do what you want. You're pretty much screwed if one of them doesn't take a liking to you."
"Why even bother, then?"
"Because," Naruto said, patience beginning to stretch, "one of them might take a liking to one of you. What, would you rather not learn the jutsu? You don't wanna be able to call up huge amounts of chakra? You want to stay a genin all your life?"
Kaiki sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose in a weirdly adult way. "No, Naruto-sensei. You're right."
-----
Orochimaru took control of Sasuke's body on his fifteenth birthday - gave him enough time to grow properly, to mature into the type of body Orochimaru wanted. Naruto met him in a bar the night before, in a hot, sweltering gambling town, and by silent agreement they didn't fight as they usually would but sat in a booth, drinking sake and sampling the bar's ramen.
Sasuke never got to be too tall - his body had been used too hard - but he was tall enough that Naruto had to look up at him, and that always irritated him. Sitting down, though, the difference wasn't so obvious, except that Sasuke's fingers were longer than this and his legs, cramped in the small booth, brushed against Naruto's every so often. Neither said anything, but a bit of heat would touch Sasuke's neck and he would sit up straighter. They were both keenly aware that any wrong move could trigger a fight, end up in broken noses and bloody hands for the both of them.
Sasuke asked how Sakura was doing; Naruto told him about Lee, and after that Sasuke didn't ask about anyone else. They kept delicately away from the topic of Kakashi. Once the conversation strayed to Jiraiya, and Sasuke unbent long enough to ask who Naruto thought was stronger, Orochimaru or Jiraiya.
"Dunno," Naruto had replied, running his finger over his sake cup. "It's different, fighting a friend. I don't know who'd win."
A sardonic smile lifted Sasuke's lips and twisted them to one side. "You never have trouble fighting me."
"'Cause you're a dick," Naruto said, but he didn't say Sasuke wasn't his friend. Sasuke's twisted smile stayed in place, but he reached over and poured Naruto another cup and slid it across the table to him.
The bar closed, and the owner leaned over their table and told them, apologetically, that they had to clear out; looked at their flushed cheeks and heavy eyes, and asked them if they could get home all right. Sasuke stood, slinging Naruto's arm over his shoulders, and dropped some money into the owner's hands and told him they'd be perfectly fine.
They stumbled, cursing and tripping over each other's feet, into Sasuke's hotel room; Sasuke dumped him on the bed and fell on it beside him, and the room was heavy and moist with the sounds of their breathing. Naruto turned his head, pillowed it on his wrist and stared at the good side of Sasuke's face, the one with pale unmarked skin and a heavy-lidded eye, pupil clear and iris coal-black. Then he closed his eyes, concentrating on breathing.
Something cool touched his neck, at his jugular, and his eyes came open again to find Sasuke's face crowding his, eyes lit with moonlight. Silver shafts of light played over the curse marks on the side of his face; they twisted flaming fingers down his neck and Naruto could almost feel the heat of them. He looked down at the knife pressed to his neck and, in a few seconds, felt the warm heat of blood gathering on his skin.
"I could kill you now," Sasuke whispered, warm breath raising the hairs on Naruto's arms. "I should. And then you'd be gone... stop bothering me, forever. Dead last. Useless. Stupid. I'd never see you again...."
He moved the knife to the side, and the blood ran down Naruto's neck to his chest. Naruto kept his breathing even and his eyes open, staring up at the black-and-white boy in his face, straddling his waist. His arms had gotten twisted together behind his back, somehow, with Sasuke's hands holding his wrists together in an iron grip.
He was very uncomfortable, but also very drunk, so the blade pressed tight against his skin - a little tighter and it'd be goodbye, kyuubi - didn't bother him too bad. Hell, Naruto thought fuzzily, wouldn't be too sad if he did it - if he killed him - he'd only be doing what everyone had been afraid to do when he was a baby, and were even more afraid to do know that his and the kyuubi's chakra had all but fused.
"Orochimaru would thank me," Sasuke said, this time against Naruto's neck where the knife had left a long, thin red mark. Breath against that mark made Naruto jerk a little, not quite from pain but - "And then I could do what I have to do and you'd have nothing to say about it, you wouldn't be looking at me like I'm something disgusting - fuck you, Naruto, I'm only doing what I have to do." He pressed his open mouth to the cut and his tongue flicked out, touched and tasted blood as he spoke: "And I'd finally be better than you, like I was in the first place, like I should be.... damn you, damn you, damn you to hell...."
Naruto swallowed, skin jumping against Sasuke's mouth. "Fuck you," he said dizzily, "it's my turn to be good at everything."
Sasuke's mouth on his neck, Sasuke's hand holding his tightly together and the other hand sliding up his waist - Sasuke slithered up Naruto's chest, mouth sliding from his neck to his jaw and then to his mouth, brushing open-mouthed against Naruto's lips. His hand released Naruto's, and Naruto raised his hip off them and lifted them to Sasuke's shoulders, then slid them into Sasuke's hair as Sasuke's tongue pried his lips open and slipped into his mouth. He pressed Sasuke's face closer, forcing his tongue deeper into his mouth.
He'd only kissed someone two times - first Hinata, and that had been her initiative, shy as she was. It was nice and all, but a little clumsy because they didn't really know how to use their tongues. Second had been Shikamaru, because they were drunk and good friends. That was better because damn, did Shikamaru know how to use his tongue.
But this kiss was different, because they were really drunk and Sasuke's hips were already starting to move against his. He'd never had someone on top of him like this and he'd never heard these noises, these soft wet sucking noises as Sasuke touched his tongue, tangled with it, forced their jaws together because he was going so far into Naruto's mouth. And he'd never had someone touch him like Sasuke did now, sliding a hand down his back, under his shirt, and then slipping under Naruto's pants and touching - Naruto jerked up, moaning into Sasuke's mouth, and felt Sasuke's lips spreading into a smile.
"Don't smirk at me, motherfucker-" he said, and Sasuke kissed him again, hard and deep. His hand tried to move, but Naruto reached down and grabbed his wrist, held him where he was. Sasuke smiled again, let go of his lips and touched his tongue to the strand of saliva connecting their mouths.
"I've never," he said, muffled against Naruto's neck, "done this before."
He was moving his hand and Naruto's eyes were rolling back in pleasure, hips seeming to move without his control, but he looked up at Sasuke anyway, seeing his rival hazily through a film of desire. "Doesn't he-?" he started to say, then his words turned into moans again and he couldn't finish.
"He doesn't count."
----
And he went still, breathing hot against Naruto's neck, one arm tucked under Naruto's back and the other flung across the bed. Hesitantly, Naruto wrapped his arms around Sasuke's heaving back. He stared up at the ceiling, at the colored lights on the ceiling from the gambling houses and brothels outside. Eventually, while he stroked his back, Sasuke's breathing evened out and he fell asleep; Naruto stayed awake and spent the night running a hand over the curse seal, again and again and again.
----
In the morning Sasuke was gone, and the next time Naruto saw him the body, face and voice were Sasuke's, but it was Orochimaru smiling behind Sasuke's mask.
He went home and began dating women.