Chapter Six

By Ember

-

And everything else is irrelevant

To the story so far

A coincidence that you look like her from afar

Is it true that you like to sleep alone?

Or is it what you just tell everyone?

-

Amazing how one's morning routine can seem so different two days in a row while in fact being completely the same. Every morning Sasuke woke up because the faint predawn light made the minuscule change that had him wide awake and moving before anyone else his age could even reach the climax of their dreams. This morning, it also happened to interrupt a rather questionable dream involving ballet rhinoceroses, epic horse-back duels between large, green-brown frogs and black-scaled snakes, and, of course, Naruto coming on to him from his position tied naked to the wall with large leather bands. The rhino-dance and jousting all occurred without incident, but just when the bondage was happening his eyes flew open and he sat up after a moment of disorientation.

He was hard, horny, and bitter, and his day was just getting started.

Second on his schedule was usually getting out his clothes for the day- an easy task; his monotone clothing was folded away in his drawers, waiting for him, boxers, shirts and shorts separated to keep him from having to flail around in the morning.

He piled the clothing beside the sink, on the marble surrounding it, and slid out of his nightshirt and the day before's boxers. They lay in a crumpled pile on the floor as he turned the faucet on and took care of his teeth and face, then turned on the shower and stepped in. The water, almost too hot, slid over his skin and down his spine, steam already clouding the world around him. Hot water always brought some strange level of clarity to his thoughts, the rain of water on marble drowning out the outer world and leaving him along with his mind.

Which made a bad day, worse.

His mind had been wiped perfectly clear of all thoughts that didn't have to do with soft lips crushed against his, a velvet tongue stroking the side of his mouth, half in his imagination and half painfully real. Arms wrapped around him. What had possessed the idiot to do that? They had been closer than they'd ever been before, pressed against each other, while the fox had turned his head, just slightly, changing the angle, making it more carnal, delving into his teammate's mouth.

Shit. Shit shit shit. Not a good thing to think about. The water seemed hotter, boiling, when it hit his skin, and fire that made the rain seem like ice boiled inside of him, rising through his chest, settling in his waist where it stretched out painfully, and he gasped at the feeling...

Slightly clumsy hands running down his chest, wrapping around him, sliding down his spine, an unexpectedly passionate kiss turned into something else entirely, the wet warmth of the kyuubi vessel's tongue trailing down his neck...

Longer, more graceful, less passionate fingers curled around himself, his own ragged breathing loud in his ears.

..across his collarbone, the surprisingly soft lips closing over his chest, the tongue making little wet, warm circles around his nipple...

He nudged his shoulders under the faucet of the shower, eyes closed tightly at his own touch, pretending with the remnants of his imagination that it wasn't his own. A pretense that made him want to be sick even as he fucked himself to it.

...down his stomach, pausing above his groin, trailing down the little line between his crotch and leg...

He jacked off to his friend's face and his almost-real memories of the day before and watched with revulsion the end result spiraling down the drain. Had it not contrasted so severely to the Uchiha Way of Life, he might have broken down and cried right there, standing ankle-deep in shower-water and worse, leaning against the gray tile of the shower's inside. The hot water was starting to run out and he didn't even care. It took a moment before he had regained enough composure to get angry at the whole situation, but the anger came. He twisted the shower off so voraciously he almost removed the knobs then stepped out and slammed his fist into the bathroom wall.

"This is such bullshit," he snarled, knocking the towel rack out of the wall when he snatched the white fabric from its hold. He wrapped it around him, then slammed backwards into the wall and let his head fall with a thunk into the tiles. If there was a god, if there was anything at all to regulate the irregularities of life and make it all work out, then rejection wouldn't hurt this much.

It would all make so much more sense. You're rejected before anything can really happen out of a relationship, chances are fifty-fifty you're going to be rejected, but while you know it could happen and you know it might happen and you might, in some cases and this was damned enough one of them, know it'll probably happen, why in hell should it actually hurt? If things worked out the way things should and you could shrug rejection off and keep walking then there wouldn't be risk in taking these fucking chances and that would be the better scenario than pretending and ducking and lying out of fucking fear.

But now Naruto knew what he felt and now Sasuke knew without hope of being able to shrug it off again and now everything was fucked up beyond hope of repair.

Of course, there were other things to consider- for starters, the fact, pure and simple, that Naruto had kissed Sasuke back. But the dark Genin was in no condition to start contemplating all the possible implications of that, if it meant anything at all. His hands clenched and he glared at his misty reflection in the fogged mirror, biting back a snarl at the bitter thoughts the sight called up- Some shinobi. Protecting the honor of your gods-be-fucked Clan, now, by jacking off to some idiot's face and... fucking... letting... him... know... That was the worst shame of all of them. He hadn't been in control, then, he'd let his guard down for two seconds and that had happened, and he'd ended up making out with the blonde imbecile and feeling unexpected tremors when the asshole had responded, and he'd been left fucking breathless.

Fuck.

He brought the comb through his hair viciously, attacking the tangles the hot water had left in the black lengths. When it was wet it hung loose, in great dripping locks, down to his shoulder blades. When it dried he would go at it with the hair gel, until then it weighed wet down the back of his neck. When the locks had been smoothed and it was starting to dry, he pulled his clothes on; boxers, shorts, wide-collared shirt, then the wrappings around his arms and legs. He combed his hair into its spike then threw the towel back onto its fallen rack and slammed the bathroom door closed behind him, snatching his forehead-protector from the bedside table as he walked past his bedroom and trotted downstairs.

Gods take it all and shove it up their asses. He had a mission today.

Fuck fuck fuck. He was not in the mood to put up with Kakashi's smiling I-know-everything-ness, Sakura's clingy crushing, or Naruto's... however the fuck Naruto chose to act today. He wouldn't be able to stand any doses of Narutoness today but he thought he could stand it better than a change in the blonde's character, a wake-up call that this had happened and everything's screwed up.

Fuck it. He was sick.

He bit his lip as he contemplated it and realized that course wouldn't work. Kakashi generally knew what dictated sick- in fact, after Naruto had taken a few unscheduled holidays and blamed them on ridiculously obscure diseases he probably made up, Iruka had written up a list of acceptable sicknesses to miss school for. The first one was genital herpes, the last was death. In between were various other illnesses- cardiac arrest, glaucoma, lead poisoning, teen pregnancy (second trimester and beyond). They had naturally assumed he was kidding until Naruto sauntered in late claiming he had come down with a devastating case of acromegaly, healed only through diligent prayer in a homemade shrine, burning incense to the wish to shrink back down to an appropriate size for attending class. Then Iruka had led him to the Sick List, posted proudly on the wall, skimmed down, reported the genetical disease absent, and gave Naruto detention for the week.

Sasuke had never read the damned thing in-depth, but he was pretty sure a nasty case of the butterflies was not one of the posted. And after Kakashi's lecture after their fight he didn't really want to piss off the white-haired Jounin by skipping and lying. It all came down to a narrow choice- risk being kicked out of Kakashi's training or confront the blonde idiot.

The choice was painfully obvious. But that didn't mean, as he closed the door to his house behind him and locked it with the key around his neck, hidden by the huge flaring collar, he didn't complain to himself in muttered undertones.

-

Hinata was always quiet but Kiba could always tell when she was moping-quiet, when she was simply unable to work up the courage to speak her mind and when she had actually shut herself inside her head. It worried him when she went like this; she didn't even talk to him anymore and he'd made it amply clear in all their time as teammates that if she ever, ever needed someone to talk to he'd be there. He'd listen. He'd be completely silent through everything she had to say and then talk to her, as non-judgmental as he could be. Hell, he'd listened to her talk in soft tones about Naruto so many times it made him sick to think about it but he'd always been there, always.

Now, she refused to talk to him. He'd asked Shikamaru to talk to her, and nothing. He'd even talked Shino into a sort of near-silent conference but even the bug-shinobi had been unable to pry anything from his quiet teammate.

Now she stared up at him with an expression torn between timid puzzlement at absolute, hysterical depression and Kiba was forced to consider that cornering her by the Ninja Academy on their way to meet Kurenai, pressing her against a wall, and asking her in barely-growling tones what was wrong with her was perhaps not such a perfect idea.

But what could he do? He was a canine-nin, subtlety was really more of a cat thing than a dog, and it wasn't really Kiba's highest trait. "Hinata," he said, trying again, clearing his voice of anything threatening and even releasing a great deal of pressure to the girl's wrist, "what's wrong?"

Akamaru- always useful in picking up girls; who could say no to a puppy- whimpered and reached out of Kiba's jacket to nuzzle Hinata. She wasn't like any other girl but no one could stand up against that. She smiled, slightly, then looked up at Kiba, his face forced to gentle, understanding, supportive.

She blinked, once, twice. Her hands curled up for a moment, then relaxed, and she broke into tears.

Kiba, in true male fashion, stood stupidly for a second, letting Hinata sob into her hands. Akamaru whimpered. Hinata's shoulder shook.

Then, Cupid, God of Love, flew from his heavenly cloud, raised his golden bow, and smacked Kiba soundly over the head with it. The canine-nin blinked, then reached out and gathered Hinata's shoulders in his arms, pulling her to cry into his chest, whispering comfort into her hair.

"Hinata, what is it? What's wrong?"

She was still for a second, then gasped raggedly and continued shaking. He held her, firmly but gently, trying to keep both Akamaru and Hinata braced against his chest without hurting either of them. Because both seemed content to lean against him, he supposed he was doing a good job.

After a long time like that, Kiba standing like a rock, letting the tears flow into his jacket, Hinata took in a trembling breath and whispered, "Na- Na- Naruto will nev- never love me."

"Don't be stupid, Hinata; you're a wonderful girl, pretty, nice. He'll notice you soon enough. He just can't see past Sakura right now because he thinks he has to-"

"It's not... it's not Sakura." He felt her hands clutch at his jacket and had to swallow to keep from crying himself. How could a girl with such powerful eyes be so completely blind- not about Naruto; she was probably right that he would never see Hinata as he should- but about Kiba? "He's... he doesn't love her, not- not really love."

"So why can't he love you?" She seemed perfectly content to stay where he had put her so he relaxed his grip and let his fingers trail through her short hair. She had such cute hair. Too many girls let their hair grow long in desperate hopes that Sasuke would notice them. Stupid, really.

That was when Hinata really shocked him. "Na- Naruto loves Sasu- Sasuke." And then she cried again, and kept crying while he tried to get over that particular hurtle. He hadn't been expecting that.

God dammit, everyone loved Sasuke. Kiba felt unexpectedly angry at Naruto for breaking Hinata's heart though he had been wanting Hinata to see she didn't have a chance with him for a long time. "He's not good enough for you, Hinata," he told her, quietly, while she shook with anguish in his arms.

"No- no one lo- loves me. No one- no one ever will."

That- that was absurd.

"Hinata." His voice was always rough; there were no tears in his eyes and he wasn't choking on the next words. If he told himself that enough times he would believe it himself and really machismo is just a series of self-deluding lies anyway. He blinked, twice, as the small girl pressed against him sobbed again. "Hinata. Open up your eyes."

The shaking stopped slowly, and Hinata shifted to lift her face to his, white eyes wide. He didn't want to kiss her, kissing her would scare her and he didn't want to make a bad situation worse for her. Kiba contrived to show everything he was feeling in his own eyes, straining to show the girl everything in his heart. He knew it worked when pupil-less eyes widened in sudden understanding and Hinata stuttered, "Ki- Kiba!" before burying her face into his coat again.

He wrapped his arms around her again and bit back a sigh. Well. He'd either managed to make everything right or break Hinata's heart forever. Right now, however, he couldn't really think around the small, frail, female body against his chest and he was starting to think he could stand here and hold her forever, until Naruto and Sasuke and everyone else fell off the earth. Love, he decided, greatly daringly placing a kiss into Hinata's hair, was ridiculous.

-

Kakashi was late. That was expected.

Sasuke was late, and that was not.

Naruto shifted from one foot to the other, feeling uncomfortable around Sakura like he'd never felt before. For the fourth time- he was keeping count- he tried to start a conversation but this time neither of them were in the mood for it.

Sakura had meant to apologize to Naruto for bailing out on them the day before but she couldn't force herself to do that. She had to admit to herself that she didn't have a chance and leave so that Naruto could ravish her Sasuke-kun alone and she didn't feel the least bit guilty, just a little sick with the disappointment and a little light-headed with her own personal sacrifice. As well as a little bitter. She'd expected to see Naruto and Sasuke approaching her with their arms around each other or at least together, not individually and completely silent. She had been steeling herself against that, not this complete and total denial of everything she had done for them.

Maybe they don't really like each other, maybe Sasuke does love me...

And maybe Naruto's love turned Sasuke into a mermaid and he swam cheerfully into the sea. She hated to admit it- second place to Naruto, imagine that- but both prospects were pretty much bullshit. She saw how they looked at each other. She'd seen how they would look at each other for years, now, it had only just recently become clear what they meant. She had seen how Naruto's face had lit up and how he had tried to hide his tears of relief when Sasuke had gotten back up so long ago when the dark-haired shinobi has supposedly 'died' and had seen how Sasuke's eyes softened when they met the blonde's.

And she'd had to admit that not only did Sasuke feel nothing like that for her, but she'd never felt anything that strongly for anyone before in her life. She was a girl; moreover, a flirty, emotional, teenage girl and her love-radar was going off in full.

That didn't mean she hadn't almost cried last night when she'd finally gotten home. She'd curled up on her couch, eyes squeezed shut, a quiet mantra repeating in her head- I'm a shinobi, I can't die by broken heart. I'm a shinobi, I'm a ninja, I'm not going to break down because of something like this!

Not quite Naruto or Hinata's daring exclamations of their 'ninja ways', but it was something. She'd gone the whole night without crying and had actually felt a little better this morning, able at least to confront Naruto and Sasuke no matter what had happened, able to see their stares again but more open, readily answered by the other, soft and deep and in love.

She hadn't been expecting what she had gotten. She refused to think that her giving up her chances at a life forever with Sasuke would be completely wasted by this blonde idiot.

"I wonder where Sasuke is?" she tendered quietly.

"Who cares?" Naruto had asked; not snarling or snapping but the bitterness apparent in his voice, staring intent on the ground.

Sakura bit her lip. Stupid Naruto; this was getting annoying! She hadn't sacrificed her chance at love so that he could be all huffy and moody...

She caught sight of Sasuke wading through the crowd and turned to meet him; he acknowledged neither her nor Naruto, giving both a silent glare before retreating into the store's shadow and bracing his shoulders against the wall.

Sasuke, you bastard, you're late! Naruto should have said. Instead, he turned his head silently and slowly away from the dark-haired ninja, his arms folded over his chest, more like a frail and pathetic shield than a defiant gesture.

Shut up, you annoying idiot, Sasuke should have replied. But there was nothing to reply to, so he just stared blankly at blonde locks and said nothing.

Sasuke-kun! I missed you! Are you excited about our mission? But Sakura kept her mouth shut, watching the two Genin. After a while, Sasuke looked away from Naruto, down the street; Naruto kept staring at Mt. Hokage. Sakura ground her teeth in frustration. She wanted to ask what was going on but she had the sinking feeling it was long and complicated and drawn-out and emotional and not likely to come out of either boy's mouths any time soon. She would like to know, however, whether her selfless and noble sacrifice was going to be completely wasted.

"Hi, guys!" Kakashi's arrival had gone surprisingly unnoticed and he seemed as surprised by their surprise as they were by him. (It was unlikely that he actually was but he made a good show of it.) "No mission again today; they were letting the students in the Academy help with the easier D-ranked missions so they could see what it's like being a ninja." He grinned, visible eye closing for a moment under the crinkles of his smile. "Asuma didn't have anything else to do so I figured if you all wanted to you could spar with Team 10."

Sakura's shrug, Naruto's smile, and Sasuke's nod were not precisely what Kakashi had expected. Well, maybe from Sasuke; he wouldn't be too happy because of course he didn't think any of the three members from Team 10- or, for that matter, any Genin in Konoha- was his level or worth his attention, but he'd expected Naruto to exuberate at least a little and maybe some kind of emotional reaction from Sakura. She usually hated sparring but they were talking about Ino, after all, and the final chance to prove once and for all (in theory) which one of the two was worthy of the honor of Sasuke's attention, so one way or another some kind of expression would have been more... expected.

He didn't know what was wrong with Sakura. Looking at the lines in Naruto's forehead, he guessed the blonde'd had a long night. Looking at Sasuke, he guessed it wasn't a long night spent with a good friend, for which both might be a little bitter.

Either way, they had a while to walk and he figured they should get started. With a broad grin on his face (he really did, you know, love the drama of teenage love-triangles), he led the way.

-

To be perfectly honest, Sasuke didn't know how the hell he'd ended up halfway up Mt. Hokage, leaning against the rock, with the very Genin he'd steeled himself to ignore completely and entirely all day. He hadn't talked to the blonde. He hadn't made any prolonging eye contact. He hadn't acknowledged Naruto's existence in any way. He hadn't made any of the fatal mistakes that always led to this sort of confrontation, so it led to reason that, defiant of any pattern he'd worked to avoid or any train of logical thought, the exact sort of confrontation he'd made to avoid occurred anyway.

Sparring had been... fun. In a word. They'd drawn lots, at it would have it, rather than just being paired up by logic, a member of Team 7 against a corresponding member of Team 10. And so that was how Naruto and Sasuke had been paired up for their second fight in one week, to the great chagrin of Kakashi. (Their sensei'd asked to redraw but Sakura, who'd been paired against Ino, had refused and no one really wanted to change their partners.)

They'd gotten a little painted ring, a circle of red paint over dirt and sticks, set apart from Shikamaru and Chouji's and Sakura and Ino's rings. Kakashi had lost himself in the clever innuendos making up Come Come Violence and so Asuma gave them the rules. "No-holds barred sparring. Advanced weaponry not allowed, and remember-" the bearded man glared at Naruto and Sasuke, dark eyes narrowed, "this is sparring. Not real fighting. The goal is to incapacitate your opponent, not decapitate him."

Sasuke had given Naruto his first reaction since they'd seen each other for the first time that day. Nothing but a brief, silent glare, a wordless warning against jeopardizing Sasuke's claim to Genin-hood.

Naruto had replied with a scowl of his own, a wordless reminder not to tell him what to do.

Then the fight had started.

It had ended almost half an hour later, after Shikamaru had pulled a decisive victory over Chouji, ending the fight with a half-hearted shrug, (Chouji would have won but Shikamaru wasn't allowed to forfeit) and after Sakura and Ino had slowed and stopped their match and the older of the two was struggling to comb sweat and blood out of her blonde ponytail. It would have ended a lot sooner if Sasuke had actually tried, but it was a matter of pride and he refused to regard Naruto as someone worth the effort. He refused to acknowledge him enough to actually fight. He blocked more hits than he gave, didn't use seals, dodged more hits than he blocked, didn't use any more weapons than one or two kunai, refused to meet the blonde's eyes or use his Sharingan against him. Naruto's response to this, when he realized what his teammate was doing, was to fight harder, determined to prove himself; his frenzy silently screamed at Sasuke to acknowledge him but the black-haired boy refused to. So the fight took a long time.

And then, after half an hour of fighting when Naruto was breathing hard and even Sasuke had broken a sweat, Shikamaru and Chouji were sharing the blanket of Chouji's spread jacket and Ino and Sakura were kneeling in the grass, watching, Sasuke managed to get behind the blonde and slammed his elbow into Naruto's back. Gasping, the kyuubi vessel staggered forward, his legs swept from under him by Sasuke's low kick, falling forward onto the ground. He rolled and got up, but unsteadily, and in a heartbeat the darker Genin's arm had coiled around his throat and chest, the glint of his kunai's point pressed against the side of Naruto's neck.

There was a moment of silence, Naruto fighting against his teammate's grip, but they remained frozen in that position for a long time until Asuma said, dutifully, "Sasuke wins."

"No," Naruto snarled loudly, writhing harder; the grip around him tightened for a second, then suddenly released, and he sprawled out on the ground again.

"Are we done for today, sensei?" Sasuke growled, not even bothering to insult his fallen foe.

Kakashi studied his pupil, a little shaken by what he saw. Sasuke had violent mood swings, it seemed, where Naruto was concerned. "Yeah," he replied, after a second. "We're done."

The black-haired Genin nodded and vanished into the leaves above their heads, running along the tree branches, sticking to them with chakra as he put as much distance between himself and Naruto as humanly possible.

"What the fuck is his problem?" Shikamaru asked, reclining against the tree the jacket was next to. Not that, looking at the blonde staring after him, the shadow-nin couldn't guess. The question was formality.

"Sasuke-kun?" Ino took a step forward but even she recognized it as a lost cause.

"Crazy," Chouji remarked, pulling a red apple from his pocket and starting into it.

Naruto slowly staggered to his feet, obviously having a little trouble finding his equilibrium. Sakura took a step towards him, hand outstretched to help him, but he was already walking forward. "You bastard!" he screamed after his teammate, and took off after him at a half-limping run.

"Crazy," Sakura agreed under her breath.

-

And that, at least, was how he ended up halfway up Mt. Hokage, out of breath and out of control, throwing rocks at the stone with so much force that they embedded into the side of the mountain. He felt sick, sick with guilt and sick with a whirling feeling in his stomach that could only be the butterflies he'd had this morning, evolved into some nasty being with massive teeth that shredded at his intestines with the ferocity of a being of unrequited love, and he tried to justify the subtle ways he'd worked to humiliate his friend by telling himself at least he hadn't wanted to bang him at any time during the fight.

No, I didn't. I just exhausted myself to hurt him and then ran away as soon as I was done. The road up the mountain was pretty much empty; it was the less-traveled by road, the other side having fewer trees and more buildings, stores and traffic, and he relished in being left alone, even though he was tired of the company of his own damn thoughts.

"Sasuke!"

Between his thoughts and the blonde, however, he would choose his thoughts. Eyes narrowed, he neither slowed down nor turned around, but kept walking as though he hadn't heard Naruto's voice.

"Sasuke!" The kyuubi vessel was running to catch up but Sasuke refused to literally run from him; he kept his eyes plastered forward, completely ignoring the other Genin. "Sasuke! Sasuke you fucking bastard, turn around and look at me! You arrogant prick!" All-too-familiar hands closed around his shoulders and spun him around, hot blue eyes glaring up at him. Sasuke tried to turn back around but Naruto's fingers dug into his upper arm hard enough to leave bruises.

"What are you doing?" he asked, tonelessly, pulling away from the blonde's grip.

"You asshole! You didn't even look at me that whole fucking time- don't!" Before his teammate could walk away again Naruto grabbed his wrist and pulled him back. Sasuke looked down at him and was hit, hard, by every impulse he had been trying to ignore. Like a rubber band pulled too far back, it snapped forward with enough force to hurt.

"Get off of me." He couldn't keep the anger from tinting his voice, the measured words clipped with tension. Naruto's fingers dug tighter.

"You weren't even fighting me, you fuck! You pretended like I wasn't there!" Sasuke pulled even more voraciously away, turning for another escape attempt. "You didn't even look- don't ignore me!" For the second time that day his hands closed tightly around Sasuke's shoulders and this time, Naruto didn't give his teammate the chance to pull away. The blonde shoved him against the stone of the mountain side, hard enough to knock the breath from Sasuke's lungs, and pressed his mouth against the darker Genin's, a quiet but forceful demand.

One thought repeated in Naruto's head: he would not let Sasuke ignore him. He wouldn't let the arrogant, black-haired bastard touch him and kiss him and turn everything upside down and then walk away like nothing had happened, like this was nothing to him, a giant joke at the blonde's expense. He wouldn't let that happen, he couldn't let that happen, because he couldn't let it go that easily.

Sasuke tried to writhe away for only one second, then something broke inside of him; it wasn't worth giving this up for the sake of giving it up. It wasn't worth it to try and get away, not when he was perfectly content to let things finally go his way.

Their fourth kiss was entirely different than their third kiss, and their second, and, obviously, their first. Naruto had never known that one action could be experienced in so many different ways. While their first had been an embarrassing accident, their second pure impulse and their third some sort of carnal experience, this was different, new; an explosion of some wild and weird emotion that fluttered in both of their stomachs like a trapped bird, spread through their bodies like an unexpectedly pleasurable shock. Naruto's hands tightened around his teammate's shoulders as Sasuke kissed him back, arms slowly twining around him, fingers burying into his hair.

He pulled away, not when he realized what he was doing or when he got scared or when Sasuke pushed him away but when he wanted to, sliding away in the darker Genin's embrace. For a second, they stood and breathlessly watched one another, searching for an affirmative that the emotional reaction had happened to the other, too, and not just to them; whatever they saw in the other's eyes had to suffice because neither wanted to let the other go.

"Don't ever ignore me," Naruto murmured, and it was halfway between a sharp demand and a plea. Sasuke looked down at him, surprised both at the words and at the strength of what he felt after them. Ignoring the blonde was the last on his to-do list at the moment. But he wasn't certain he could handle deflowering the blonde at the moment so it would have to suffice to pull him back into the circle of his arms, holding onto him and pressing his mouth into the blonde mess of the kyuubi vessel's hair.

The demon-fanged butterflies seemed to have calmed down- perhaps devoured by the newborn bird- and he, for the first time in a couple of years, was perfectly happy.

Naruto had three words on the tip of their tongue, but they scared him so he didn't say them. He had images floating around in his head but they terrified him so he shied away from them. He wasn't so shocked at the images of what he wanted to do to Sasuke, but more what he wanted the black-haired Genin to do to him in return, images that while he was so close, held against the idol of his affections, were almost unbearable.

Three words, and he couldn't say them. Three words on the tip of his tongue. But he couldn't think, couldn't do anything beyond letting himself be held to and trying to hold on himself while fireworks of feeling exploded in his gut.

end chapter six