Chapter Five
By: Ember
-
Did you notice I was afraid?
I thought I'd run out of things to say
Two more hours until today
Burns this away
And it starts all over again
The sky will never look the same again
Till you show me how it could be
The sky will never look the same again
Till you show me how it could be
-
Konoha was a huge town, when you thought about it; not like it was crowded or particularly rich but it sprawled over the hills at the foot of Mt. Hokage and climbed partway up the massive, carved cliffs. A smattering of buildings even perched on the Hokages' heads, dots of civilization against the rock, looking out over the expanse of rooftop and building.
Naruto didn't really blame anyone who moved up here. The air was clearer, it was cooler, it was cleaner. He gulped it down in gasps once he had left the less good-tasting air of the actual city behind until he started feeling a little light-headed, and then he had only leaned back and enjoyed the scent. Sakura was right, spring did smell nice, like cherry blossoms in bloom and grass growing and... well, spring.
He came up here to think. It was easier, here, like he didn't have to prove anything to anyone or pretend like he didn't care what they thought or what they said. He was just... alone. Too much of it and he went insane, but after a couple of weeks of being down there, just another dot moving about in its day-to-day life, milling in the crowds of other dots, conversing and pretending and covering up, he began to want his own company again.
It was still a couple of hours until noon so he didn't have to meet Kakashi for a while. He might even be early, and see if he could meet Sakura before Sasuke got there, and they could talk and maybe she would give him a chance instead of chasing the god-damned bastard she seemed to be obsessed with...
He didn't like staying up here for too long so after a while he got up and started heading for the road. If he walked right by the fence that had been built to keep people from tripping down the mountain, and looked straight down, he could see the last few markings of paint he had splattered onto the noble stone faces so long ago.
None of you could ever do anything this horrible!
The memory lit up his face and burned away even thoughts of Sakura chasing Sasuke. He had been right, of course. No one else could ever challenge his record, ever do anything like he'd done, and he had earned the grudging respect of anyone who'd ever pulled a prank before in their lives, and the near hero-worship of everyone who'd wanted to but never had the balls. A lot of the people who Naruto knew couldn't even walk this close to the fence, couldn't look straight down like that, and could never, ever hang off a rope to deface the faces of their superiors.
But I can! I'm incredible!
Those had been his exact words and he wouldn't now change them for anything.
He stopped by the little candy store on the way down to buy rice-cakes, three palm-sized candies, and ate them on his way to where he was to meet Kakashi and Team 7. The old-ish lady, in her early sixties or late fifties or something like that, glared at him as he left, the sweet syrup on the rice pancake stretching from his mouth to the cake as he chewed that perfect first bite, but he wasn't really that bothered by it. The old ladies hated him more than anyone else hated him, less because of any demons (though they had been there to watch kyuubi's rampage and maybe had lost people they cared about, or knew, or when they died at least wished they had liked more, to him, for all Naruto knew) but more because he was a teenager with a deep knowledge of shinobi skills and a reputation for teenager-like activities, and that was precisely the type of people old ladies tended to hate. She looked like she had a hand on the counter and one around a broomstick just in case he decided to steal something, but despite the fact that she was a stuffy old bitch who hated him without even knowing him and wouldn't lend him money for buying candy with even though he came here at least once a week and thus was precisely the type of person Naruto tended to hate, he wouldn't stoop so low as to steal from the elderly.
Or so low as to give the bitch the satisfaction, he thought, blue eyes narrowed grudgingly, refusing to admit that he was a little hurt by the whole thing. She'd be fucking thrilled to be right, I bet, and I'll bet she's been disappointed that she could never got the excuse to chase me down.
Bitch.
He still had an hour or so before he had to meet the others; he slowed down and enjoyed his lunch, savoring the chewy squares. He thought about saving the other two squares for Sakura and Sasuke but his stomach was growling and Sakura would just give her's to Sasuke-bastard, and the dark-haired shinobi hated sweet things, anyway. Not surprising. Sasuke hated pretty much everything.
That was another reason Naruto liked going on missions: Sakura didn't hate him, Kakashi liked him, and if Sasuke hated him, hell, Sasuke hated everyone. Even if the rest of Konoha hated him at least he had three people who didn't or at least didn't have anything else expected out of them.
Not a lot, precisely, to hold him over, but it was something.
Kakashi had asked him the day before if he really wanted Sasuke dead. The words themselves hadn't been all that impacting, not as dramatic as the sensei doubtlessly wanted them to be, but thinking about them Naruto felt a shudder travel down his spine. He had almost killed Haku but he didn't think he could ever actually kill someone, not really, not on purpose. Especially not someone he knew. Not even Sasuke.
He remembered holding a limp, "dead" body in his arms and remembered what it felt like to lose a friend, so much as Sasuke was, remembered the anger and the mourning that threatened to overwhelm him, remembered the way the Bad Chakra inside of him, the kyuubi's power, had risen in response to his emotions as his hands had tightened over pale skin.
Remembered the quiet, warm brush of his mouth against the other shinobi's, the feeling of ants crawling over his lips as if the skin knew something daring and frighteningly different had happened before the rest of his mind had established itself. Maybe especially not Sasuke.
Another, entirely different, shudder shot down him. I don't like him like that! he told his own thoughts.
I don't like him at all!
Maybe he wouldn't be early. He didn't think he really wanted to see Sasuke again, at least not alone. Why not? the annoying little voice inside of his head (not precisely like the kyuubi, the voices were different, but they had the same tone) asked probingly. You don't like him. You know he doesn't like you. No one does.
It had a valid point. He might, he replied to it, surly, not because he really wanted to be molested by Sasuke (urgh!) but because the world did not by definition hate Naruto.
The world, no. Konoha, yes. That's life.
Why did the single logical portion of Naruto's brain have to be his subconscious?
He finished his rice-cake lunch, promised his still-growling stomach a bowl of ramen later (such promises always placated his stomach) and walked into the main part of Konoha. He didn't have anything else to do for the next half-hour, and he contemplated going to visit Sakura, but Sakura was completely insane over Sasuke and Naruto didn't really want to sit around and listen to the girl he really liked listing off the list of Sasuke's first words. That same thought crossed pretty much every girl off his list, including Ino, and really shortened the people Naruto could go see. He wasn't in the mood for a verbal sparring match, which crossed out Shikamaru and Kiba, and crossing out Shikamaru killed the option of visiting Chouji because where you found one you generally found the other. Shino creeped him out and he wasn't such a huge loser that he would go hang out with Iruka-sensei or Kakashi; they were his teachers and even if Iruka was the first person to ever accept or acknowledge him, he wasn't his age or even his generation. That left only one person who was guaranteed not to piss him off or scare him away.
Hinata was not at home. Naruto had to walk a ways before he found her, sitting quietly on a bench behind the school, staring into space between the twining branches of the cherry blossoms growing in their squared off patches of earth. He grinned, wondered if he could actually coax the weirdo into talking today, because he really had to talk to someone or explode, and waved to her. She didn't appear to notice. "Hinata!"
She looked up, white eyes going wide, and stammered out, "Na... Na... Naruto!"
The thing about Hinata, aside from her intense attention and way of staring at his feet or over his head, never at him and constantly making him feel like his fly was open, was that she made him feel like some sort of archangel that had landed in front of her. Every time she saw him she acted like she'd been told he was dead. Then again, with Kiba as a teammate, that wasn't impossible.
The weird smile she wore and the way she stared at the pavement at his feet made him immediately regret his decision to come talk to her. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad to listen to Sakura or Ino drivel on for twenty minutes about Sasuke's favorite flavor of ice cream...
On second thought, Hinata was still his best bet for sane conversation.
After a second the dark-haired girl seemed to come to her senses and moved a little over for Naruto to sit next to her on the bench. Then she proceeded to stare at the flowers in the tree while her pale face slowly turned the precise color of the petals. "So," she whispered, shyly, "N- nice weather we- we've been having, yeah?"
Naruto smiled, a little sympathetic; Hinata, he knew quite well, was really bad at starting conversation. The weather was her best topic. She liked clouds. "Really nice," he agreed, finally. "It really has been."
That was the next twenty minutes. They talked about the weather. They talked about training. They talked about teammates. Naruto talked about Sasuke. Hinata listened. She was really good at listening. Naruto didn't really hear her talk a lot, but Kiba told him she talked to the blonde when he wasn't around, talked conversationally to nothingness she called Naruto. (The canine-shinobi didn't mention it, but Naruto assumed she did so with everyone, not just him; that'd be kind of creepy).
He was still pretty relieved when the clock hands began nearing twelve and he had to go to meet Kakashi; he liked Hinata well enough but she got tiring really fast. "I have to go," he said, pointing to the clock so that she didn't think she'd chased him away. "I don't want to be late."
She nodded, then looked away, smiled, and replied, "I... guess I should go, too. Have to meet Kurenai at one.."
"Bye, Hinata."
"B- bye, Naruto."
She didn't leave, though. White eyes trailed the kyuubi vessel, staring after him, lost in thought. She talked to Naruto as often as she could get up the nerve to and she had never heard him talk like this. He sounded out of it, as if he, like her, was off in his head, but then she'd made a comment about Kiba and he'd started talking about Team 7 and it had been like he'd woken up; suddenly he was talking like she had to know about their last mission and there's-an-empty-spot-here and what a bastard Sasuke was and how the fight wasn't Naruto's fault but he'd been about to end it and there's-something-left-out-here-too and then how he'd seen Sasuke the next day and the bastard hadn't apologized and another-blank-spot-here and how they'd worked without talking and you didn't talk about one person this long because you hated them.
Hinata didn't talk and she didn't keep a thought train for too long and she preferred simple contemplation, but she was pretty far from blind and could connect the dots to solve for the empty spots in Naruto's dialogue. Then he'd bolted down the road like he had somewhere to be when Kakashi wouldn't show up for Team 7 for at least another twenty minutes. Hinata felt the weight of the only possible conclusion fall onto her shoulders like bags of cement.
The cherry blossoms smelled nice this time of year.
-
Sakura, Sasuke was dimly aware, was talking again. Of course, he was in the same spot waiting for Kakashi and the slightly-whining monotone was quite expected in the situation. There was comfort in familiarity and he could forget recent thoughts and emotions and some that had occurred all along but had been brought out by recent events and lose himself in oh-my-gawd what Ino did last week with her hair.
At least, he could for a while. The problem with trying to think in public places was that interruptions were commonplace even ignoring the stares that people, especially girls, his age would cast for lingering moments in his direction and the occasional giggling calls of "Sasuke!" Sakura, for her part, showed remarkable dignity in ignoring all of these yells, aside from a few girls who she chose to glower at with burning green eyes, hands folded behind her back. He had just gotten comfortable, beyond these stupid distractions and lost in serious shinobi contemplation when two things happened at once.
The first was a set of familiar footsteps running up, slowing as they drew near, and a familiar voice gasping for air. Inside, Sasuke winced, and shied away from his own thoughts; the voice dragged in air and shot it back out, raggedly. There was the soft sound of hands running over cloth and the dark-haired Genin could almost hear his teammate's heart hammering from where he stood, could almost feel the beat tattooed in the air. He opened his eyes and looked slightly past Naruto; the reality of the situation was a lot more bearable if greatly disappointing in comparison to the scenario his mind had concocted.
His mouth parted, slightly, tongue flitting out to run down the line of Naruto's neck. The kyuubi vessel tasted like... cinnamon. Who would have thought he would taste like cinnamon? Slightly-curled fingers were running down his sides, smoothing out the loose cloth of his shirt, running lower and lower so that unconscious shudders ran through him, uncontrolled. He noticed vaguely that he had lost control of his hands to pure impulse and their own range, down the inner thigh of Naruto's leg and slightly higher, along the bulge in the orange fabric he had the satisfaction of knowing he had put there, were causing quiet gasps to escape from between slightly-pointed teeth. Sasuke leaned in and ran his tongue over parted lips, feeling the blonde's breath pulling him deeper into the kiss...
Urgh.
Something of the last bit of thought must of shown on his face, a flicker of disgust at his own gutter-mind or maybe just a flash of longing, because Naruto gave him an odd look and turned to Sakura. "What's his problem?"
A quiet voice whispered, moaned his name into his lips...
A flash of heat traveled through him and, terrified that he might actually blush Sasuke pried his eyes from the blonde and stared, arms crossed over his chest, at the sky. The passive blue helped, a little, to calm him down, but it wasn't quite enough to chase off the heat or the mental image.
The second simultaneous event Sasuke took longer to notice. He wouldn't have noticed if Naruto hadn't glared at him, crossed his own arms over his own chest, and proceeded to completely ignore his black-haired teammate. Sakura turned to snap at him and Sasuke caught a glimpse of the white-haired man standing behind her.
"You're on time," he said, quietly. He hoped he wasn't blushing.
Kakashi seemed very amused. Sasuke felt like every thought was spelled out on his face, was very aware of the powers of the Sharingan, and understood for perhaps the first time why Kakashi had kept the skill a secret for so long, even to his students. Would there ever have been a thought I would have felt safe thinking around him if I'd always known about it?
Then Naruto and Sakura noticed their sensei and turned to stare at him in disbelief. "Hey!" Naruto exclaimed, sounding quite amazed. "You're not late!"
"I overslept," Kakashi replied, cheerfully, then turned to lead his confused students down the road, talking over his shoulder as he went. "Today we're going to practice the seals I taught you yesterday, so I hope you practiced last night. I asked the technicians yesterday and they think they can get us something that's not just menial labor..." He waited but the response he'd expected didn't come. Without moving his head from the half-turned position, he flicked his eyes over the three Genin behind him and smirked quietly to himself. Sasuke was pretty much himself, staring at the ground, his thoughts veiled behind dark eyes. Naruto was glaring at the sky, arms folded behind his back, but he was so obviously not looking at his teammate that if Kakashi could see his mind and one's brain had eyeballs he was certain Naruto's would be leaning out of the blonde's ears and staring overtly at the other boy, pressed forward, unblinking. Sakura looked unexpectedly sad, which might have been more due to the fact that Sasuke and Naruto were so out-of-character and she was entirely shut out.
Kakashi did so much love drama. It was the biggest reason he'd taken this job, after all.
-
"You idiot." Sakura, impatient, tightened her hold around Naruto's gut, her fingers digging into flesh. The kyuubi vessel squeaked, and shifted, almost falling from the coil of his teammate's arm. "What were you thinking? You always do this to yourself, don't you, and I'm left to drag you home..."
Naruto pouted and wriggled a little when Sakura's fingers bit again into his side. "That's not fair," he whimpered, and she almost dropped him onto the road. Sasuke, walking beside them, shook his head, slowly. "I was trying to help you, unlike some people..."
"You tried a little hard, Naruto, and like always ended up flat on your ass. I have to put you down." The pink-haired shinobi lowered her burden with more-or-less gentle care onto the road and collapsed cross-legged down beside him. Naruto struggled and managed to sit up; Sasuke contemplated keeping on the road and leaving them behind but Kakashi had demanded that both Sakura and Sasuke get Naruto home, and he didn't trust Sakura to do the work herself. So effortlessly he folded down onto the road, making a skewed triangle with the other two.
Sakura looked from one to the other and repressed a sigh. Babysitting Konohamaru and a cluster of his younger, brattier relatives should have been B-ranked at the very least. There had been twelve of them, a large ring of their Jounin and Chuuin parents having gone on some sort of day-mission to hunt down a missing-nin or bandits or something like that (she wasn't clear on the details; Genin are rarely given the detailed daily journals of their superiors) and the whole gang of drooling, sticky, wailing, screaming, running, puking, fighting, biting, scratching, shrieking worms had been more than she could handle alone. Unfortunately, with Naruto exhausting himself trying to keep shadow-clones enough to keep tabs on all of them, and Sasuke watching from the branch of a tree and refusing to touch the revolting creatures, it had been Sakura's responsibility to handle alone. She was torn between being annoyed at Sasuke and being pissed off at Naruto, but she couldn't be annoyed at Sasuke for too long so she took it all out on the blonde. Life wasn't fair. Tough.
If life had been fair, not only would the boys have helped, but Sakura could have used what she liked to call, when her parents made her babysit for younger cousins or the kids of their friends, 'restraining measures'.
"I did not end up flat on my ass," Naruto protested, lifting a hand in feeble resentment. "I kept an eye on Konohamaru and a few of the others..."
"Because they were laughing too hard to do anything else that would get me into trouble when your clones exploded and you collapsed!" The rose-haired girl laughed shortly then bit her lip at the look on Naruto's face. Great. She takes on the Future Genin of Konoha and then crushes Naruto's feelings trying to vent a little, and Sasuke's staring off into space like he's all alone and everything's different and weird and changed, somehow, and now to drag a whining blonde another two miles and shut him up in his house without passing out on the way. What a lovely day.
Naruto looked away and bit back his frustration. It hadn't been fun to lose face in front of Konohamaru, who wasn't the top priority for People Naruto Wants to Impress but it was always nice to have his respect and admiration if he couldn't get anyone else's. Nor had it been fun to wipe himself out while Sasuke-bastard watched and smirked in his show-off-arrogant-asshole way. Nor had it been particularly fun to listen to Sakura-chan's bitching. Nor had it been a particularly fun or pleasant mission in any way. He didn't need to be yelled at like the whole damn thing was his fault. "I tried, though," he protested. Why wasn't Sakura pissed off at Sasuke? "And I kept them in line for a while! Not like some people, who sit around all day and do absolutely nothing!"
"No, you try and help and become more of a burden than- Sasuke?" Sakura looked over Naruto's shoulder and watched the blonde pivot to stare at the darker shinobi. Sasuke was keeled over himself and shaking, his shoulders trembling, hunched over the top of his head. Her voice shook with concern. She'd never seen Sasuke like this before. "Sasuke?"
It took a second before the other Genin responded; then his head shook, slowly, twice, and she heard a soft string of sound come from his huddled form- he was laughing. Sasuke was laughing madly, uncontrollably, in a complete and utter hysteria she'd never seen him in before. It was the kind of fit actual people had, never Sasuke, and he was obviously trying desperately to quelch it but without success.
"What?" Naruto sounded half-concerned and half-amused. Like seeing his rival like that was almost amusing enough to get him started. He shifted in place, visibly torn between reaching out and trying to stabilize Sasuke and backing away and clearly without the energy to do either. "What is it?"
Sasuke only shook his head and kept laughing for another minute. How to explain this to his teammates? Everything was spiraling out of control. Everything was leaving their control. It was all tied into him deciding to fall for Naruto which was revolting but so deeply amusing in context because with the completion of the triangle they were suddenly entirely helpless. He swallowed twice and forced the laughter to subside long enough to choke out, his voice controlled but not as cold as normal (he couldn't keep it cold, not while he thought about it) "After the defeat of Zabuza and Haku and three or four tons of fish-" here he choked again and had to regain control- "afterwards, Team 7 is defeated by a gang of twelve-year-olds."
And he lost control again as the thought renewed. But what did it matter? There was no control anymore. They weren't powerful twelve-year-olds, but just as they all decided to love each other they lost all teamwork and all former bonds of friendship vanished and they were left as floating forces that were individually completely defenseless because of their unequal feelings and together just as scrambled for the same reasons. Sasuke knew, now, why Kakashi had come early to get them started early on their mission and why both he and Sakura had been told to help Naruto. But it hadn't worked, and now they were sitting in the road whining and arguing and blaming and the heavy irony was just too much for the moment.
He had expected the irony to be lost on his teammates, but to his surprise he saw Naruto's face grow clear and light with his brilliant Naruto-laugh, and heard a muffled giggle escape from behind Sakura's palm.
Then they both dissolved and joined him in the renewed hysteria.
It wasn't that funny and analysis rendered it to something not really funny at all but they laughed a couple of minutes; every time one of them would slow down the other two laughing would set him off again. Only when Sasuke had sobered and stayed sober did the other two slow down then stop, and Naruto, still grinning, fell backwards onto his back and folded his arms under his head. Sasuke almost unconsciously inched slightly closer to him, then leaned back onto his palms and leaned his head back. There was nothing up there but a couple new leaves and endless blue, not even clouds. Sakura, watching them, stayed where she was, chewing on her lower lip. She thought, maybe, she was beginning to understand.
Naruto smiled to himself, staring up at the sky, letting the last of the good cheer carry him over the next few moments. The tension that had remained ever-present since Haku was gone from the air for the moment and it left behind an almost comradery, as close to comfortable friendship as the Team had ever had. He was acutely aware of the warm feel of the sun rays on his face and the smell of spring that floated omnipresent in the air. It preserved the good feeling and he glanced over to his left to see Sasuke leaning backwards onto his palms beside him, looking into space. He was in shockingly calm contrast to his previous demeanor but he didn't seem entirely unaffected and the cold isolation seemed to be temporarily lifted. He was almost- almost- smiling.
Stupid Sasuke. This is as cheerful as he gets. Naruto frowned. Sasuke annoyed him. He'd let him and Sakura take the entire mission themselves but when something fun popped up he got all the glory. He refused to acknowledge Naruto and refused to accept Sakura. And sitting there, waiting for the last vestiges of laughter to drain from him, watching the first traces of good humor to grace Sasuke's face in all of his time as a Genin, Naruto wanted very badly to kiss him.
He tore his eyes off of Sasuke's face and glared forcefully at the sky, but the impulse still hammered in his stomach like a kyuubi drum set. He'd never felt anything that strong before, at least not... Not since he'd tried to kill Haku, what seemed like a long time ago. Not since he'd saved Iruka, a long time before that. But there it was. He felt completely sobered and at the same time a little bit high of something entirely different. It was a cliché metaphor he'd heard a million times before, the whole 'high off love' thing, and not very good to begin with, but who knew it was so accurate...?
Sasuke, for the first time in who-the-hell-was-keeping-track-anyway, was sitting right beside the fucking blonde and was perfectly content to keep things the way they were, perfectly content to just sit there with him, feeling the last of the humor fading away and thinking about nothing in particular. He wasn't especially happy- when had been the last time he'd actually been happy- but he was content, and he wasn't thinking about any situations involving naked Naruto and a swimming pool of chocolate syrup, or the death of anyone particular, or anything really but the here-and-now and the spontaneous moment of closeness that Team 7 wouldn't even really remember tomorrow.
He avoided looking at the blonde right beside him but glanced further right towards Sakura, wondering at her silence.
She was gone.
Sasuke sat up and looked around, surprised, but the pink-haired shinobi had disappeared. Where did she go?
"Sakura?" Naruto apparently noticed it at the same time as Sasuke did and he clumsily pushed himself up, struggling to sit upright, and found himself a lot closer to Sasuke than he had thought he was. He inched backwards, trying not to breathe in and trying not to meet the other's eyes, fighting the simultaneous urge to press forward and the flush of heat that traveled from his stomach to (thankfully) his face.
Sasuke heard Naruto moving behind him and felt the sudden plume of breath on the back of his neck as Naruto inched back, and, turning slowly, realized just how close together they were. Well, of course they were. They had been inches apart while they had sat quietly and now that their heads were on the same level they were close enough that he could smell ramen on the blonde's breath, could feel the heat that emanated from him, could hear the rustle of movement as the kyuubi bearer pulled his legs closer and pushed himself back, slightly, hesitantly.
Sasuke felt and tried to fight down a similar flash of heat but his did not travel upward...
So much for feeling fucking content.
Nakedswimminginchocolatesyrup...
Naruto was blushing and avoiding his eyes and they were so close and Sakura was gone and they were so close and he smelled like a weird but strangely enticing blend of scents that could be nothing but Naruto and they were so close...
Their first kiss had been a complete accident. Their second kiss was open for translation.
Their third kiss, for the record, was entirely intentional.
Sasuke buried his fingers into the blonde's hair, threading the soft tangles in his right hand, and tilted Naruto's head back, just short of forcefully, his left hand tracing up the line of the blonde's throat while he leaned in to press his mouth against the other's. His tongue ran along the limply-parted lips and flitted in and out of Naruto's slightly-open mouth, running lightly along the other Genin's tongue. Naruto's palms were pressed against his chest but they neither pushed him away nor actually responded to what he was doing; he couldn't force himself to shove Sasuke away but he couldn't kiss him back, couldn't think, couldn't process, couldn't react. His mind kept screaming to him that he didn't like Sasuke, not like that, not at all, but if that was true why was he letting the darker Genin open his mouth with his tongue and play tonsil-tennis with him?
Because this isn't real. Because he was dreaming, of course. Because if this was real he wouldn't be burning from the inside out, uncomfortably tight from the waist down, his whole body hammering with his own pulse. If this was real he wouldn't be breathless with the need to kiss the bastard back, to feel familiar hands tracing down his sides and his legs, that slightly-forceful tongue moving down his neck... Because if this was real he wouldn't be enjoying it. Because if this was real then Sasuke wouldn't be kissing him in the first place. This only happened when he dreamed and even then it wasn't like this, it could never, ever be anything like this.
In real life, Sasuke was a distant friend on a good day, an intolerable bastard on a bad day, and an arrogant rival any other time. If this was- Naruto gasped against Sasuke's mouth as the dark-haired Genin ran the tip of his tongue down the roof of the blonde's mouth, an unbearably intense feeling- if this was real life then something was- something was...
Sasuke's left hand dropped down to run across Naruto's side and even through his jacket and shirt Naruto shivered at the contact. His own hands closed over the black fabric of the other boy's shirt and he finally reacted, crushing his lips against Sasuke's, his tongue running down the wet-velvet side of the other Genin's, his mouth working into Sasuke's.
If this was real life then something was working out after all.
He wanted... Hell. He didn't know what he wanted anymore. (He would not, however, have said no to naked swimming in chocolate syrup at that particular moment.) He felt like he was burning alive and his world narrowed down to that one impossibly clear moment where his arms tightened around Sasuke, slowly twining around his chest, and they kissed each other in a wordless moment of spontaneous... honesty.
Then, at the same moment, they both realized what exactly they were doing.
Naruto collapsed onto his back, and Sasuke drew back suddenly, quickly, his palms hitting dirt when he fell backwards to hold himself up with his arms.
Sasuke's mind experienced a single moment of insane dischord, every thought running in different directions, baseless, groundless, soaked through with sharply contrasting emotions that mixed into a gray-green ambivalence. Foremost were shock and disappointment, though had heat been an emotion that would have taken the prize because it soaked through every inch of his body, dripped from every pore, coalesced into beads of sweat that trailed slowly past his temple. He wanted to lie there until the world crumbled away. He wanted to go back in time and make that particular moment never happen after all. He wanted it to happen again, wanted to kiss Naruto again and feel the blonde kissing him back, feel wide and just-less-than-clumsy hands running along his chest, wanted to pin him on the ground and fuck him until his eyes popped out of their sockets.
Or just jump off a cliff. Either way.
Naruto choked, gagging exaggeratedly. "What the fuck was that?" he asked, blue eyes narrowed at Sasuke. "I mean, fuck, I know all about animal magnetism but I didn't know even you were driven to distraction by me, Sasuke..."
The black-haired Genin spat out the last of the Naruto-taste from his mouth, contriving to screw his face into a disgusted mask. "That, you idiot, was the perfect reason not to do drugs." He dragged the collar of his shirt along his tongue, feeling a slight burning on the dried flesh. "Revolting."
There was a lot of blank space in their collaborative story (which was less of a story than a half-hearted and half-joking excuse, but what would one expect), and they were both pretending to hate it but neither believed themselves or the other Genin for a second. For the sake of their respective sanity, however, they both pretended to. "Sakura bailed on us," Naruto said, wondering, for a second, if their pink-haired teammate had done it on purpose. He tried to follow this thought train but it involved Sakura sensing emotions he was pretending didn't exist so he decided, rather than risk confusing himself, to drop it and ignore Sakura's absence.
Sasuke looked down at him for a second, then sighed and stood in one fluid motion. "Of course she did," he replied, his voice a little more biting than he'd intended it to be. Sakura had left him alone with this bastard and forced him to drag the fucking blonde home on his own and all in all he supposed he could blame the entire incident on her.
Naruto rolled his eyes at the darker shinobi and struggled to get to his feet. After two failed attempts, Sasuke sighed, grabbed the blonde's elbow, and lifted him to his feet. Naruto grinned sheepishly, pulled his arm back, walking determinedly forward.
He had fallen twice when something long and brown landed at his feet. Naruto lifted the massive stick, fully as tall as he was, with arms that seemed to have lost every bit of their strength. Fuck babysitting. "What the hell is this?"
Sasuke passed him without so much as a nod. "That," he drawled over his shoulder, "is called a 'crutch.' After all this time of using me as one, I assume you know how to use it." Then he had strode ahead and vanished into the dusk.
Naruto ground the thicker end into the dirt and scowled. Fuck you, Sasuke. Leaning his weight on it, he hobbled forth a step and then swung the limb ahead of him again. This was going to take a while. You arrogant little prick.
And, shoving away all other thoughts of thinking and all other plans for the night, he shuffled forward.
end chapter five