Fireworks Chapter 8: Priorities, a naruto fanfic

Chapter Eight

by Ember

Dead leaves and the dirty ground

When I know you're not around

Pop rocks and soda pop

When I hear your lips make a sound

Thirty notes in the mailbox

Will tell you I'm coming home

And I think I'm gonna stick around

For a while so you're not alone

After a while, they figured out that Sasuke wasn't coming back.

Kakashi, sitting in a low branch of a tall tree, and Sakura, sitting on the ground and leaning against the trunk, had been there for maybe an hour before they realized that either Sasuke had spent the last quarter of eternity looking for Naruto or circumstances had changed in Konoha, keeping the two Genin there; either way they weren't coming. Kakashi frowned, running his fingers through his white hair.

"Remind me not to treat Naruto to ramen for a while, will you?" he asked, stretching out the muscles that had cramped in the long wait of perching on the tree branch and reading his erotica. Not buying ramen was probably the most extreme punishment one could concoct for Naruto that didn't break any assault or abuse laws. Sasuke, of course, was harder than that, because he tended not to care. "He's late on occasion (lazy) but he never just... doesn't show up."

Sakura used the tree to help support herself as she got to her feet and ran her fingers through her long hair. Kakashi dropped to the ground beside her and raised a white eyebrow at the quiet smile on her face. She braced her hands behind her back and stretched her arms and shoulders, shaking the kinks out of her neck, deep in thought and obviously proud of something. Catching her mentor's eye she grinned sheepishly, caught with her head in the clouds, and struggled for a reply.

"No," she managed, fighting to keep the grin off her face, "he doesn't." She then busied herself with tying a loose shoelace (she was trying out sneakers instead of sandals, today; you can never have too many shoes), trying to smother the smile as she tied a double, tripled, then a mass of knots without thinking.

"And what are you so happy about?" The voice was close enough to her ear to startle her; she straightened and her shoulder caught Kakashi's chin. He seemed unphased. "Do you know something special about the graffiti on Mt. Hokage?"

Sakura blinked in surprise. "Graffiti?" she asked, dumbfounded. She had assumed Naruto and Sasuke were doing something in love, not that the idiot blonde was pulling one of his juvenile stunts and Sasuke was still looking for him. "What did Naruto-"

Kakashi stepped back, giving his student a little room, and smiled like the little perverted kid he was deep inside. "Confessions of love," he announced proudly, holding his book in one hand and gesturing with the other. "Scrawled across the mountain."

Her sugar-glazed mood restored, Sakura squealed and jumped into the air in a little dance of victory. She always won. Always.

After a second of watching Sasuke, with his uncharacteristic half-smile on his face, leaning over the fence and staring, Ino got distinctly uncomfortable. It wasn't hard. Shikamaru, if anyone had been saying anything, would have said that Sasuke had left the Garden, that he was somewhere else, that his mind was completely detached from his body. Kiba would have laughed loudly and Chouji would have snickered and Ino would have clubbed him over the head.

The silence was a little suffocating. Ino lunged forward, suddenly desperate to break it, and latched onto Sasuke's arm, smiling up at him as his half-trance was quickly broken and he staggered a step away from her and back. "Who do you think he was talking to?" she asked him, half frantically, gesturing at the mountains's lettering; she was getting the same sinking feeling she'd gotten once when her brother told her that her puppy had died and she refused to believe him. She had gone to talk to her parents and they kept talking in really slow, quiet, soft voices, like they were comforting her without even telling her why, and it slowly dawned on her now, like it had back then, that the dick had been right.

Sasuke pulled away from her, looked from Ino to the others in turn, and seemed to realize that he was caught. His face flushed for a second, then he straightened and glared down at them, looking as constructed and collected as was normal, but though the moment had passed it was still echoing, not quite gone.

"Like I know," he snarled. It even sounded lame, hypocritical, to him. With the silence broken, Kiba snickered loudly. Sasuke was obviously an inch from impaling him with a kunai. Ino backed up a pace, blinking.

"Sasuke?" she asked, quietly; but what did she expect him to say? I'm not gay, Naruto was leaving a message for Sakura! Hahah! I tricked all of you! Yeah, that sounded like Sasuke. And then the sing-a-long would start.

"Shut up," the Uchiha growled, turning around and starting to walk away. Ino took one step after him, then stopped, watching his retreating back. Kiba snickered again; this time, Sasuke ignored him, walking quickly like he couldn't stand being around his peers.

"Hey, Sasuke!" Kiba called after him a second time, waving again to the black-haired shinobi. Akamaru whimpered at the motion, and Sasuke hesitated and shot a pointed glare over his shoulder. The canine-nin, seemingly unaffected, grinned and said, with all evidence of sobriety, "Good job."

Sasuke studied the other Genin, then gave a minimalistic shrug that would have suited Shikamaru as well. A few more steps and he had vanished around a corner.

Shikamaru looked at the mountain out of the corner of his eye. The words glared at him, bright scarlet across the dust-colored rock. He couldn't imagine going through all that trouble just to tell one person three words; go through all that trouble and possible humiliation and bother just for another person. He'd had a crush on Ino back when they were first teammates (that hadn't lasted very long, actually; she really was a frightening person after you got to know her for too long, and he had been forced to face the fact that he could never get married if the person he lived with spent as much time on their hair as she did, and while when she wanted to move out but couldn't afford her own place he and Chouji had agreed to be roommates, he wasn't sure how long he could take her if it lasted indefinitely) but he had never considered going through all that work to tell her that he liked her. He had always just assumed that if it was going to work out she would tell him she liked him and they would get together and go on dates and all of that crap, or not. He guessed love, real love, the sort of stuff people wrote pop songs for, required work, commitment, input, in which case he was not meant for true love. But whatever.

He glanced at his stricken teammate and grinned wryly. "So?" he asked, lazily, leaning back on the fence.

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Shikamaru. You're too lazy to gloat!" She smiled but it was wane and fragile and she was obviously hurt by the loss of Sasuke. "Damn."

Hinata smiled, another frail smile, and the two girls met eyes and giggled. "Men," Ino sighed exaggeratedly. "Damn them all."

Hinata nodded, but she was standing a little close to Kiba for the agreement to carry weight. Chouji finished the rice-cake he'd been eating and shoved the metallic wrapper into his pocket; Shikamaru tossed him another that he'd picked up on the way home the day before. The slightly-chubby ninja's smile was aimed with equal affection towards both his new food and his teammate. (He had never gotten over amazement at how well the shadow-nin knew him; how did he know that this type was Chouji's very favorite kind of rice cake?) With every possible expression of enjoyment, Chouji tore into his third snack since breakfast, stuffing the crinkling wrapper into his pocket with the other. Hinata sighed and Kiba carefully, almost subtly, put his arm around her shoulders. She blushed and stared at the ground.

Shikamaru rolled his eyes, catching sight of the red wording again. I love you.

Troublesome.

He wasn't certain what to think, so he didn't think at all.

Uchiha Sasuke, the single heir to the Uchiha clan, genius shinobi, one of the top fledgling Genin, was almost home before he stopped feeling his own throbbing pulse. He was actually inside before he could see anyone or anything without seeing red lettering overlaid over his vision. He was lucky that he had recovered his breath before then because for a second there he had honestly thought he wouldn't ever be able to breathe again.

And when had the strongest Genin in his class- probably, in a couple dozen years, at least from Konoha- let his guard down so much that one person with one three-word sentence could completely and utterly bowl him over, scatter his thoughts, shatter his self-perception?

He didn't know when, exactly, but it had happened. And he wanted it to happen again. And again and again and again because even being near the blonde idiot was enough to make him happier than he had been in longer than he could remember, and for the life of him he didn't know why.

Ah, hell; yeah he did. He knew exactly why, had quite a few reasons- because he had finally, after years of not looking and not caring and pretending it didn't matter, found someone who liked him for who he was, not who he tried to be or pretended to be; liked him because he was Sasuke, not the cool, dark, silent kid in the back of the room. He felt that way because the fucking dolt was so endlessly cheerful, because he seemed incapable of being angsty or dark, because he could physically knock people over by force of personality alone. He felt that way because Naruto saw things perfectly clearly, clear enough to brag about the distant future and his dreams for it, clear enough to quote the moral code of the Shinobi from heart.

He felt that way because he loved the fucking idiot. And he felt that way because Naruto loved him back. For something that seemed so exceedingly simple it was mind-boggling and he sat for a second just marveling over it, thinking it again and again, holding the realization in his mind. He loved him. Did it matter which 'he' pertained to which Genin? It was interchangeable.

Uchiha Sasuke, solo heir to a genius Clan, did not believe in love, at least not the emotional kind, in any way, shape or form. But it took more willpower than Sasuke had, more denial than possessed by the entire Uchiha Clan in the history of Konoha as a whole, to refute the existence of loud, cheerful smiles or shouted challenges and it took more fortitude than any shinobi had ever possessed to deny what it all did to him.

For a second, a quiet tap at the door went almost unnoticed, then it shattered Sasuke's thoughts. He kept from jumping by form alone. Rigidly composing himself, setting his face, curbing the reactions of his various innards in response to speculation on who might be there, waiting for him, he rose and walked. Took some deep breaths. Reached the door. Another deep breath. He was composed.

It was Naruto, but he'd guessed. He managed not to really react at all, to look out like nothing had happened even though deep inside a voice inside of him was screaming in frustration, damning him to hell for his pride. He wanted to grab the blonde and pull him, screaming or fighting or laughing or whatever, into the relative privacy of his home, wanted to stand there with him and kiss him and never let him go, wanted to sit and tell him everything he'd thought and felt for the past week, the past month, the past year, until he finally got to the three words he'd just thought a couple minutes ago, the same three words to be repeated again and again and again because they were the only words guaranteed to never lose their meaning no matter how much they're used.

But he was Sasuke, and so he stood there, unable or unwilling- or something- to do anything. Naruto watched him, slightly-pointed canines worrying his lower lip. There were a few seconds of silence; a couple people walking by the house cast them looks as they moved by.

"Don't you have anything to say?" Naruto asked, quietly, but he didn't sound angry or judgmental or anything. It was weird, to hear him talking quietly. Like a police siren smothered with steel. "I'll start. I'm in love with you, Sasuke." Another moment of silence. Sasuke unconsciously beat down a smile. He wanted nothing more than to just grin like the lovestruck idiot he was but he couldn't let himself; it was beyond instinct to hide it, it was ingrained into who he was. "I don't know that there's anything left to say. I don't know..." Frustration flashed for a second in the blonde's face as he struggled to articulate what he was thinking. He was bad at serious moments like this. He was better when it was just them, and they were just friends, and all he wanted was someone to spot him a cup of ramen. "I just... damn it, Sasuke. I just want to be with you." There. He said it. It sounded like the last line in a chapter in one of Kakashi's novels but there it was, and at least it was out. He stood, and waited, and for a long time Sasuke didn't move, just watched him, but that was okay because he'd have stood out there all night if he had to if only to prove that he'd wait forever for the other boy.

The dark-haired boy took a step forward and hesitated, then walked completely out of his house and let the spring door snap closed behind him, settling into the latch carefully at the end of its swing. Naruto didn't know whether he wanted to stare at the ground like Hinata did or risk openly staring; but then, he decided there wasn't much left to hide so he went for the latter.

They stood, a couple feet away, then one foot, then only a few inches, doing nothing but watching each other. Naruto wondered if he'd always breathed in that weird, rhythmless way. He was starting to wonder if Sasuke felt alright when the taller boy's hand slid along his jawbone, tilting his face up, and the other's face drew closer. For a moment the blonde thought they were going to kiss but at the last second Sasuke moved past his mouth and brushed his lips against Naruto's ear.

"I love you, too," he replied, quietly. Then, "Idiot."

Then they kissed.

Something like lightning ran up Naruto's spine, tightening his arms around the black-haired boy's shoulders, tilting his head to the side as his kissed the other Genin back. Sasuke's arms were around his waist, holding them almost plastered together, a single contour. They stood there, holding each other, kissing each other, ignoring what the idiots passing by muttered under their breath to one another or yelled out loud, because the fact that they were in love couldn't really get more public than it already was.

Anyway, Sasuke didn't really want to keep it a fucking secret. He was himself, what other people thought about him didn't matter.

Most other people, at least. But that went without saying.

I guess we should go meet Kakashi, the remaining rational portion of his brain told him quietly.

He drew one hand out of Naruto's shirt and fumbled for a second with the doorknob. Priorities, he told it, pulling the blonde inside with him. Naruto's jacket was already off.

The door snapped shut behind them.

end chapter eight