(Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews! Remember, if you're reading, please review! Warnings and disclaimers apply to all chapters.)

And the Beat Goes On
Chapter 30: Don't I Know You

Her words meant nothing, just soft whisperings, like the soothing sounds of the sea that she remembered, from when she was small, when she'd gone on vacation with her family, and she'd spent all day playing on the beach, with the tide roaring in and out, the water grabbing at her feet, begging her to go play, but she never could.

She remembered the light had been bright, but never brighter than this, and the noises of people and gulls and just the roar of everything had been deafening, but nothing had ever sounded louder than this and yes, the water had tickled, but this tickled so much it hurt.

And sure enough, there was the sea, roiling inside of her, her body feeling the sensation of those waters rising and falling and parting and crashing in an intricate dance, and with every passing second it got tighter and tighter, the whirlpool becoming smaller and smaller, until it drove her mad.

Up, up, up the waves swelled to the sky and then, let her crash back down, and left her on the beach, stranded and desperate, before they grabbed her back and took her higher than she had ever previously been. Just when she thought she couldn't get any higher, they let her down again, and then, built her up once more, higher and higher, and she thought she might touch the white specks behind her closed eyelids. Were those clouds?

And then, she got too high and she came back down, screaming, and then, she could think again, breathe again, and that terrible sea, the one that had been raging only seconds ago, was calmed to its slow, lazy ebb and flow.

The beach became the bed beneath her, and the world was night outside, no longer bright and sunny and the only sound was Temari's voice, but her words still meant nothing to her ears, even without the gulls, the people and the sea.

Temari was speaking, but she wasn't hearing, and so, whatever Temari said wasn't heard, and was consequently lost to the silence. So what did it matter what she said? She could have said anything, and it wouldn't matter, because Ino didn't know what she said, and really, at that moment in time, didn't care.

She wasn't really sure she'd care later, either. When everything was done and over with, and she left and never came back, would she really care what Temari had said about her? She simply couldn't fathom that, fifteen years down the road, she would be timid and shy, because lord knew what some blonde floozy she'd laid with once might have said something about the way she performed.

The sea wasn't gone, she noticed, not yet, not entirely. Temari's gentle touch was like those calm waters, caressing her and easing away all her tension, all her worries and laying her down to sleep forever on the seabed. And the wind was whispering to her still, Temari's breath against her ear, forming those whispered words, was her tropical breeze, and it was singing her a soft song, from the sky, which helped to lull her to sleep.

She went to sleep, linking this forever with paradise.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Don't I know you?"

That was what Iruka wanted to say, but he bit his tongue, kept quiet, unsure of the truth of his accusations to the woman who was standing, just a few feet away from him, with her back turned to him.

He knew her. He knew that much. He knew he knew her, all too well, because that woman there, he was absolutely sure, was his stepsister. He had yet to forget a student, and he knew he wouldn't forget someone so close to him, even though they had never really been all that close, in the truth had to be told.

Unconsciously, he tightened his grip on Konohamaru's wrist. Both the boy and Kakashi were looking at the brunet strangely now, and he knew they were, but he couldn't help but gawk. Konohamaru was blind, apparently, because he couldn't see who was standing there. Then again, maybe he couldn't blame the boy for not recognizing his own mother.

She turned around, and he saw her face, and he knew in an instant that yes, this was her. Half of him felt like running up to her and greeting her, because they hadn't seen each other in so long, but they had never got along, so half of him wanted to remain hidden in the masses of passerby that would forever have no name for her.

He met her eyes, and she looked at him, and for a second, she didn't know him - he could tell, her eyes were blank and uncompassionate. Then, there was a spark of shock, followed by recognition and then, replaced by jealously, and a narrowing of the eyes that directed to him a glare.

She passed by him, and went away, without a word, and he wanted to turn around and follow her with his eyes, to at least speak to her, but she was gone. He looked at Kakashi, who made a motion he had come to recognize as meaning 'we'll talk', and then, he looked at Konohamaru who was pointing in the direction of a toy store.

Iruka smiled distractedly at him, and a quick glance at Kakashi told the silver-haired man that it was his turn to play the parent. Kakashi, luckily, caught on and took the lead in taking Konohamaru to the store.

Iruka receded into his thoughts. He followed the troublesome duo, but he paid them no mind, thinking back.

Seeing his stepsister reminded him of all sorts of things that had happened in the past. They shouldn't really have bothered him all that much, but they did.

He remembered that Anko had been the daughter of his mother's second husband. He remembered that the girl had been a year younger than him, and when he met her, eleven years old and the brattiest child he had ever met. She was spoiled, and he resented her for that, because he'd always learned to make due with what he had. Anko, well, she had everything.

Anko was jealous of him though, but he didn't know why. He wasn't sure what there was about him to be jealous about - he got average grades, had only one parent, had a modest life, and he certainly was not popular. But the fact remained, Anko was jealous of him.

They'd fought a lot. Anko was a wild child, and she loved to do everything she was told not to, and as he was older, he was constantly telling her what to do, or reinforcing things their parents had said.

As they'd gotten older, Anko had become the socialite. She was someone who wasn't really liked, but she liked to party and she seemed to know everyone, so she went to every party she could. Iruka didn't exactly know the exact details of the things Anko had done, but he did know that her list of drug experiments was extensive, and that the number of men she had slept with was probably twice as long as that of her drugs.

Konohamaru was the end result of all of this erratic behaviour, and the family, on both sides, had been relieved and thought that maybe, a baby would calm Anko down, domesticate her. But they were wrong. Anko had handed off her child to the first relative she could, and ran off, and then, Konohamaru had been sporadically passed from relative to relative, and on rare occasion, to his mother.

Iruka felt sorry for Konohamaru. He hated to sound so pessimistic, but he had always known, deep inside himself from the day he had known, that Anko would never be much of a mother. It seemed just a sort of fate, so to speak.

He glanced at his nephew, who was eagerly pointing at some toy on the shelf, and Iruka felt a terrible twisting guilt in the pit of his stomach - the kind that made him sick. He felt so sorry for Konohamaru right then. There was little wonder he was so much of a brat - what else could he do for attention? He had no stability in his life, with his mother just up and leaving him, leaving him in the hands of others and then, those others passing him to others still.

It reminded him a bit of how Naruto seemed to be - how all orphans seemed, but most specifically of Naruto simply because the blond was an intricate part of his life. Naruto had always been a bit of a brat, and a loudmouth, but he was incredibly sweet if you knew how to handle him. Of course, first, you had to win his trust. It had been an incredibly hard task for Iruka to accomplish, because Naruto was wary of everybody, especially adults, at that time. Later, the blond had confided in him that this had been because he had seen too many come and go, and he just felt that in the end, everyone went away.

Iruka wondered if somewhere, in the depths of himself, Konohamaru felt the same as Naruto had when he was younger. He couldn't say he blamed him if he did, because after all, he had been treated in a similar manner.

Konohamaru was coming back his way now, gloating about the new toy that Kakashi - idiot - had bought him. Iruka shook his head, both in dismay and to clear away his cobwebbed thoughts, and took Konohamaru's small hand in his own, intent on taking him home - to stay.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Kiba was thinking. He'd been thinking for a long time now, though he couldn't really remember when he'd started thinking, but he half-expected that it was on the night of the damn Hyuugas' damn party.

Why did people always . . .look down on him like that? Why did they treat him like some sort of animal, no like dirt. Why did people always think of him as inferior, as something less than human?

He felt, didn't he? He felt the hurt of their stares, of their whispered insults, of their bold words and their generally snobby attitude toward him, so goddamnit, wasn't that human enough for them!

No, not really, because they found it fit to treat him as less than them, less than human. The only way he was human was if they were superhuman, and he refused to give them that status, the position above all else. In fact, for treating them like that, they deserved to be placed even lower than him, the spineless worms.

He remembered, once upon a time, when he was very small, his father telling him how the Inuzukas had been very powerful, and very well-respected among Konoha. He had always pretended to be a brave knight of that ancient clan, in that ancient place, while all the while detached from them, except by name and watered-down blood.

He wanted that respect then, he wanted it back. It surprised him how far one could fall from grace, how one could fall so far from favour. Sure, maybe that had been so long ago, back in the ages of endless wars and warriors and damsels in distress and all the things from his fairy tales, but the family name had been so soiled, somehow, that it was nothing that should be respected in some small way. It was something no one would hesitate to let a dog urinate on.
Hinata had some respect for him, but she was a wimp, a shy thing that could never hold her own against anything. He hardly doubted that she'd go somewhere in the world, simply because of her heritage, because of her last name, while his kept him tacked and chained to the soil other people spat on.

Beyond that, he couldn't picture her as anything else, anything beyond the shy, married wife of some well-respected person, a lawyer, maybe, or someone from another historically respected family. She could never go forward on her own, or so it seemed to him, because she was too fragile and too trapped by everything around her. And maybe that was where they shared a commonality.

He was bound to be disgraced by his surname, and she, bound to greatness that she did not deserve by her name, and her name alone. Maybe, he thought, vaguely, they were together, because their names clashed, and in that clash, was a sort of rebellion against tradition. By being with her, he fought against his oppression, against his disgrace, by earning her respect and making noble friends. She, in turn, disgraced her noble name by respecting something others deemed unfit to respect and associating herself with it, made herself unrespectable as well.

It was some sick sort of analysis, he decided, caused by far too much thinking, especially for someone who didn't like to think, as he did. He'd never been much of a thinker, more of a doer. He was a man of action. He loved to plough ahead, and knock everyone off their feet because they'd expected him to retreat and take the time to think ahead, make a plan. The problem always came afterwards, when he had no plan, and they recouped their strength, and their brains to conspire against him.

He glanced to his left and looked at Akamaru, who was sleeping, peacefully in the corner of the room, his flanks heaving and falling with his breath. Kiba sighed and looked back at his ceiling, wishing sleep would come to him as easily as it did to his puppy.

It must have been great to be a dog. There were no confusing thoughts, and no thoughts of honour, or names, or breed. It was more a matter of do or die, and then, there was no thought with it, none of this depression or deep thought, or meditation that Kiba despised so very much. He would have, at that particular moment in time, very willingly traded places with Akamaru.

But he was presented with no such opportunity, and he was left to deal with his thoughts, while Akamaru slept on, into the night, peacefully.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Naruto woke, and immediately noticed that he was somewhere he hadn't been in a while. The walls of his room weren't painted blue, nor was his door on his left, nor was his bed placed on the wall opposite the window, looking out at the front lawn. His curtains weren't a deep navy blue, his carpet wasn't a strange grayish colour, and his sheets weren't a pale stonewash. There were two or three things he could conclude from this early morning analysis of his surroundings. One, he was in the room of one Uchiha Sasuke, who was sleeping noisily next to him. Two, Sasuke liked blue, a lot. Three, the room looked like night, even though he could see the bright sunshine through the damper of the curtains.

"Psst," he whispered, half-turning to be on his side, and prodding Sasuke. "Sasuke."

The dark-haired boy stayed asleep, curled in a fetal position and breathing noisily, as though there was something wrong with his lungs, or that there was no air in the room. Naruto prodded him harder, and managed to get a little whine out of the boy, who then turned over, presenting his back to the blond. Naruto frowned in annoyance, and in an act of spite, let his hand snake down to pinch the sleeping boy's rump.

Sasuke, in the mere blink of an eye, turned over, and slapped him, hard, then, rather smartly, sat on his rear, and glared at the wounded blond, with intentions of murder. "What the hell are you doing in my bed!"

Naruto wriggled his eyebrows suggestively. "I think the question is: who am I doing in your bed?"

Sasuke's glare increased tenfold. Naruto tried his best to keep smirking, but ended up looking rather nervous. "Eh heh?" he offered, shrugging and looking nervously from side to side. "Truce?"

"Get. Out. Of. My. Bed," Sasuke ground out, his eyes never once leaving Naruto's.

The blond was pretty sure the other boy didn't even blink in the space of a minute. "Aw, c'mon, you know it was a joke! I didn't do anything, and you know it, you jerk!"

Sasuke turned away, huffing. "I don't care what you did. Just get out."

Naruto stuck his tongue out at the older boy. "Asshole," he muttered, looking away, a frown settling on his face.

He looked at Sasuke's alarm clock. He knew if he didn't start moving now, he was going to be late for school, but somehow, he really just. . .didn't care anymore. Sasuke looked less like a corpse in the morning light, but Naruto couldn't so easily shake the feeling that his ex was, indeed, a corpse.

He let his eyes wander. Every time he glanced back at Sasuke, he quickly looked away, because the other boy had glanced at him. He looked at Sasuke's pristine desk, which was so neat and tidy, and at how the carpet was so clean, and all the books on the shelf were just sitting there, organized beyond belief, collecting dust. It felt as if this room wasn't lived in. He shuddered.

He found himself looking over the names of the books on the shelf, and one in particular struck a very sore note with him, and he bit down hard on his tongue to stay tears of sentiment. He tore his eyes away from the words on that title and looked at the floor directly beside the bed.
Besides the rumpled sheets, there was the only other sign someone had ever inhabited that room - the magazine he'd nearly tripped over last night when he'd first come rushing in, eager to reclaim his territory there.

He glanced at it now, in passing, noting the title, and how there was a woman pictured on the cover, which made him cringe. Had Sasuke been playing him all along? He frowned again, staying his resolve, and then, he lifted the corner of the sheet and threw the magazine under the bed. He was about to let the sheet drop, when the dumb thing slid back out, mocking him by staying in sight.

He grumbled and tried again, with no better results. Growing annoyed, he stuck his head under the bed to see what the hell was preventing him from throwing this whole stupid thing away. And he stared at what that was. And he stared, and he stared, and he stared.

"Sasuke," he said, in a very small voice.

"Aren't you gone yet?" the other boy asked huffily, before turning to look at him and nearly falling off the bed in shock. Damn Naruto and his haplessness!

"What are these?" the blond said in that same, small voice.

He came up with several of Sasuke's naughty literature, staring at them disbelievingly. What was worse, was that there was a consistent mix between the focus of the things, varying from guys, to girls, to both, to orgies, and Naruto wasn't sure whether to be aroused or to be sick.

He glanced at Sasuke, who was blushing fiercely. "Um. . .um," he said, and looked away, unsure of anything else to say.

Naruto let the things drop from his hands, shaking his head slowly. He crawled across the not-so-considerable expanse of the bed to kneel beside Sasuke, and then, playfully touched his hand to the other's cheek, mock-slapping him. "You horny, horny bastard," he chuckled.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Lee felt his mouth go dry as he glanced at Sakura. Sometimes, one could swear the pink-haired girl was hell incarnate, or something of that sort, and that particular moment in time just so happened to be one of those not-so-rare moments.

To be rather truthful, Sakura scared him.

"What did you just say?"

Lee froze hearing those words, and ever so slowly turned around to face Sakura, who looked like some sort of hell spawn, with her right eyebrow twitching, her mouth pulled up into a strange, angry smirk and her eyes blazing with fury.

She made her left hand into a fist, and cracked her knuckles against her right palm. "Lee, did I misunderstand you?" she said, menacingly, which meant there would be no denial of what she had heard.

Lee swallowed nervously, and scrambled for a statement which wouldn't cost him his life. "W-what are you talking about Sakura?" he asked, trying to sound as innocent as he possibly could.

She tilted her head to the side a bit and smiled more. "I think you know what I'm talking about, Lee."

He shook his head. "Really, Sakura, I have no idea what you're talking about!"

Sakura let the smirk drop to a right out frown. "Don't lie to me, Lee. I know what I heard."

"Sakura! You've got to believe me!" Lee cried desperately.

Sakura curled her lip in disgust at him, then, on a second's hesitation, walked by him, kicking snow about, kicking it at him as she went. "I'll deal with you later, you jerk."

She walked off, leaving Lee standing there, wondering what had just transpired. He watched Sakura's retreating back, then sighed, wondering why he even bothered to continue to like the girl. After all, it was pretty well known that she would never, ever feel for him, and he was just there as something to amuse her, for her to abuse, and for her to use.

It wasn't as if she did that intentionally, or anything such as that (well, maybe the using part, but aside. . .), it just came off that way. When she yelled at him, it was as if she was yelling at him for dragging down her popularity, or because Sasuke had blown her off yet again and it was as if she was getting revenge for being put down all the time. Really, it was just as much his fault as hers, because if he left her alone, she wouldn't have him to yell at, now would she?

Ah, but that was his downfall - goddamn his persistence. He endured and endured and endured, and in the end, he had to ask himself, 'for what'? All his endurance got him was a few pity sighs of, "poor Lee. When will he ever learn?" or the distasteful and drawling, "Doesn't he ever give up?"

It made him want to give up, to show them that he wasn't just a blind idiot, like they all thought him to be. It wasn't because he was blind that he let Sakura treat him the way he did, it wasn't blind at all.

It was simply devotion. He had felt that he and Sakura were alike in more ways than she cared to acknowledge. They were both good people, hard-working and smart, in their own ways respectively, but everyone else rejected them for stupid reasons.
Lee looked like a loser, so he was. Sakura's forehead was big, so the other girls' teased her. Sakura had been miserable at the point he'd first met her, and he had wanted to tell her, to show her that she was a beautiful person, inside and out, even if her forehead was just slightly larger than normal. To Lee, it didn't really matter.

Ino had been there, however, and she had taken away his dream, by befriending the friendless Sakura. Nobody ever teased Ino, for she could be downright wrathful, in more ways than one. And so, by befriending Sakura, she had told everyone that the teasing would stop, and it did. And, Lee suspected, that somewhere down that road of friendship, Ino had told Sakura that she was beautiful.

Lee was jealous of that. He had wanted to tell Sakura that she was beautiful. He had wanted to help Sakura be more esteemed than she was, he had wanted to be her knight in shining armour. But, he supposed, things weren't supposed to work out that way.

Still, he wanted to prove to Sakura that more than one person in the world thought she was beautiful. Ino's opinion was very highly valued in Sakura's world, but Sasuke's was even higher, and as he kept bluntly rejecting her, Lee knew that Sakura's ego must have been suffering some mighty wounds.

So, it was up to him, no matter how low his opinion ranked on Sakura's list of "opinions to be valued", or whether his name was even on that list or not, he made it his duty to show Sakura that someone thought she was wonderful, beautiful and all those other things. He wanted to show her that she was capable of being loved, even if Sasuke didn't love her.

Things had gotten confusing for awhile, however, and now, Lee wasn't exactly sure what was going on anymore. He definitely was not sure of what had just happened between himself and Sakura, except it wasn't a good thing, and nothing good would flower from it.

Lee sighed again, then realized it was cold outside and headed home.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Konohamaru did not like it when the adults shooed him out of the room and left him to sit in bed, wide awake, because it was far from bedtime. He hated it when adults had "grown-up" things to talk about. He hated it even more when he knew those things concerned him.

He knew Iruka was downstairs, right then, talking to Kakashi, about him. He knew Iruka was doing the talking, because his uncle had been pensive and quiet all afternoon, when he should have been happy, and smiling and chattering.

He knew Iruka was talking to Kakashi, because Kakashi was there, and Kakashi was an adult, and these were adult things they were talking about. Also, Naruto didn't quite count as an adult, more of an almost-adult, and he wasn't even there.
Konohamaru knew that Iruka was talking to Kakashi about him, because they'd kicked him out of the room, and adults never shooed a child they weren't talking about out of the room to talk. Secondly, Iruka had been looking at him funny all day, since they'd gone into that toyshop. It was funny, perse, just weird and kind of. . .sad.

So, he sat in the dark, waiting and listening, catches the soft murmuring of the voices far below him in the kitchen, but never hearing what they said. He expected that Iruka was planning on sending him away. He'd been through this countless times before. He'd be staying with someone - grandma, grandpa, auntie, uncle, cousin so-and-so, and then, they'd shoo him and away and talk. The next morning, they'd make him get up and pack all his stuff into his suitcase, and then, they took him on a long drive to meet auntie so-and-so, and then, they drove off, conveniently forgetting and he never saw them again.

So, as he sat there, in the dark, he swore to himself that he wasn't going to go to sleep, because in the morning, he'd be going somewhere new. And the morning never came if you never went to sleep, right?

Right?

- - - - - - - - - - -

Itachi stirred in his chair, just slightly, then lazily opened an eye. It was morning now. He sat up, feeling the muscles in his back and neck pull and protest the fact that he'd just slept in a chair. He ignored them.

He stifled a yawn, and rubbed at his eyes a little, wondering how messy his hair was. He blinked once or twice, then looked at the reason he'd slept in a chair all night long. Who was now sitting up.

Orochimaru, though looking paler and slightly tired, and a little scathed from his ordeal of going through a window, gave him a weak sort of half-smirk. "Were you comfortable?" he asked, his voice sounding odd, weak and raspy.

Itachi just looked bored. "No," he returned, dully. "Not really."

"Then why didn't you wake up sooner?" the older boy asked, then turned away, placing a hand to his throat, as if it hurt him.

Itachi found this curious, but did nothing to belay that he thought so. Orochimaru coughed a little, then cleared his throat. He looked back at Itachi. They looked at each other for a moment or two, before Itachi looked away, his face sour and angry.

"Don't get the wrong idea," he said. "It's not like I -"

Orochimaru, however, cut him off, laughing a little, although he winced because of it. "I've already got the wrong idea," he jibed, in good spirits for having fallen out of a window. Ah, the wonders of morphine. "Why else would you sleep in a chair?"

Itachi said nothing, and glared rather vivaciously at Orochimaru, and was, as Orochimaru hypothesized, hoping that either he or the other would burst into flames at that very second. As it was, neither of them spontaneously combusted, but Itachi was probably about as close to blushing as he'd ever be, with a pale, pale hint of pink shyly colouring his cheeks.

And Orochimaru understood exactly why he was privileged enough to see that.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Sasuke was glaring at Naruto. Really, he was old enough, and capable enough to fend for himself, and even if he wasn't, he had two, count them, two, older, more-knowing females to dote on his sickness. They were certainly more knowledgeable than Naruto was in that respect.

Like that you shouldn't force a sick person to take a bath, get them out of their clothes, and then run the bath, only to find that there's not hot water, but force them to get into the cold water anyways, simply because "it might get warmer".

And when said sick person gets out of that cold bath, you should have a warm, fluffy towel waiting for them, not leave them there to shiver while you try and find one, and then come up with a ragged thing that barely passes for tatters, let alone a towel.

Or how you shouldn't dress the now clean sick person back in the clothes they were in before they took their bath, because they'll just feel dirty and sweaty and disgusting again. And most certainly, you should not feed a sick person ramen and candy for lunch. Soup, fine. Ramen, no.

Naruto really was a blond idiot, but Sasuke supposed it was just Naruto's nature to try and be nice, or helpful, when all he could be was a bumbling idiot. Though that was rather amusing in itself.

But Sasuke really did not want Naruto's sympathy, his pity, or his kindness, because well. . .He didn't know. He didn't like those things from other people, so why should he like it from Naruto? Besides, they were over, and Naruto wasn't his friend. He just wanted Naruto to go away. All of Naruto's well-meaning intentions were making him feel. . .funny.

He wasn't exactly sure just how to describe it, but he was pretty sure that this was what infatuation felt like. Or at least sort of like this. He wasn't sure, because he'd never really been infatuated with anybody.

Except Naruto. And he really did not want to face the idea that he might be infatuated with Naruto again. It made him grimace.

He sighed and decided that though it was one of those things, like dying, he was going to have to face the idea of liking Naruto sooner or later, and if he was sick and incoherent when he faced it, well, maybe he could make his screwed up logic make sense. Medicine never did help him think.

He glared down the end of his nose at the chopsticks Naruto was holding out to him, resisting the urge to let his lips twitch in disgust at the instant noodles twirled tightly around them, like -

'Okay,' he thought to himself, still glaring at the ramen, though the glare had been increased tenfold now. 'Stopping that train of thought now. No more of that shit, Uchiha.'

Maybe it was just medicine that was making him think this way. Yeah. That was it. Medicine always made his head spin, and his thoughts were always very, very fuzzy when he was on something. So, yeah. He didn't like Naruto at all. It wasn't Naruto making him feel fuzzy and warm and tingly all over, it was just the stupid medicine.

The only problem with that theory, he realized a second or two later, was that he hadn't had any dosage of anything in over eight hours.

He kept glaring at those noodles, never noting how Naruto was glaring back at him now, trying to tell him to be a good boy and eat his lunch. 'Shut up!' he was screaming at his mind busily. 'Just shut up!'

Honestly, he didn't need or want logic to ruin his perfectly logical excuses. He needed those excuses, needed them in the way a drug addict needed drugs, and he needed them to keep eluding himself, for if he could elude himself, he could elude everyone else, including Naruto.

A cold hand to his cheek made him jump and he looked at Naruto who was sitting beside him now, having abandoned the noodles, leaving them to cool and go cold. The blond would probably eat them anyways, Sasuke mused.

"Is something wrong?" Naruto was asking him, tucking his unruly bangs behind his ear. Sasuke glared sideways at him.

"You spaced out," the blond continued, ignoring the way that Sasuke was glaring at him for touching his hair.

Sasuke was planning on saying nothing, but somehow, his tongue and mouth decided it would be a good time to revolt against his reign, and the words just slipped out, into the open air. He really hadn't wanted for those words to escape. Those words were supposed to stay locked down, inside of him forever and ever. They weren't for anyone to hear, especially not Naruto. Not Naruto, never Naruto. . .

Naruto wasn't supposed to hear him say that. He wasn't supposed to let Naruto hear him say, "You're making me feel funny."
And of course, trust the blond moron not to get it. Naruto cocked his head to the side and looked at him strangely, blinking a couple of times for good measure. "What?" he asked, his voice denoting his complete and utter lack of understanding.

Sasuke sighed, and he told himself that he wasn't going to repeat what he said. He was going to rectify that mistake and not say anything at all to Naruto, and he was simply going to say, "Never mind."

But since when did "never mind" sound like "I said"? And when did he ever follow "never mind" with "you're making me feel funny"? Naruto looked at him strangely, still not understanding, and Sasuke went scarlet and felt very stupid, because he'd just promised himself he wouldn't repeat his words, and now, there was no way to deny that he had said what he had said.

"I'm making you feel funny?" Naruto asked, cautiously, taking his hands off Sasuke. "Am I doing something wrong?"

'Yes,' Sasuke decided in his head, but he shook his head, indicating to Naruto that everything he was doing was perfectly okay, even if it wasn't.

Naruto sighed, looking relieved, then realized that there must be something else wrong then. His eyes snapped open and he looked directly at Sasuke. "Then why. . ."

And then, Sasuke supposed it dawned on him, because he smiled. He smiled widely and broadly. "Oh, Sasuke. . ," he murmured, then leaned forward, embracing the other boy, who tried to pull back, and only succeeded in making them a muddled heap on the bed.

"You make me feel funny too," Naruto said, his voice muffled by Sasuke's chest.

Sasuke hurt at that particular moment. He hurt, not physically, but in his soul, in his heart. He wanted to cry. He wanted to push Naruto away, wanted to cry, wanted to scream and half of him just wanted to sleep.

He moved a bit, gently at first, signalling to Naruto to move. The blond obliged and he sat up a bit, more as Naruto slid off him.

He shivered a bit. He couldn't believe how much he'd missed that. He had wanted Naruto to touch him, to hold him, and he couldn't believe just how much he'd been craving that affectionate touch.

It scared him that he'd missed Naruto that much, and they'd only been apart a short time. He wasn't sure as to cry, laugh or throw up for being so needy. He could only abstractly understand why he might be that way.

He's shut out touch and love and laughter when his parents' died, and he'd tried to shove away the entire world. He'd tried to shut them out, and he'd repressed the part of him that told him he was a human being with needs and wants, and one of those was affection.

And then, lo and behold, there was Naruto give him that affection and that love, and then, that little part of him that had withered in the corner from years of neglect and disuse had been resurrected and it had taken over him.

That was what he had been scared of in the first place. He had been scared of never having anyone to fill that void he needed filled and then, falling in and falling through it, forever, and ever, until he drowned in his absolute need for affection.

Was he that weak? Had he always been that weak and just trying to hide it?

"Hey, you're spacing out again."

He looked at the blond, who was smiling somewhat sadly at him. "Hey. . .yanno, when I said. . .that, I didn't mean to scare you or anything. . ."

"I wasn't scared," he whispered, feeling the need to be quiet, and the need to be closer to Naruto.

"Well, whatever," Naruto said, clearly not sure as whether or not to believe his ex, looking away from the boy practically in his lap, a slight pout forming on his lips. "I was just saying what I felt."

Sasuke said nothing, for a long while, then shrugged and said, "It doesn't matter."

Naruto stared at him for a moment or two, looking insulted and indignant, and then, a strange little half-smile lit his features. "You're right," he said. "It doesn't matter."

What Sasuke had meant by that was not that it didn't matter that Naruto loved him, but rather, that Naruto had said it in the past. It did not matter, because the past was full of things that could not be changed, because they'd already been done. It didn't matter if Naruto had loved him in the past.

It mattered if Naruto loved him now. Determined to prove so, and no, he didn't care if Sasuke was sick or not, because dammit, he might never get another chance to prove himself, Naruto went down on Sasuke.

But somehow, he couldn't bring himself to go farther than petting and necking. Maybe he was just scared that if he went farther, and got Sasuke out of his clothes, he'd have to face just how much his moonlight had faltered and failed. He'd avoided looking at Sasuke when he'd made the other boy take a bath specifically for that reason.

So, they kissed and licked, and touched and nuzzled. They cuddled and caressed and fondled and canoodled. In general, they were fairly satisfied with that. They might have gone farther, had they had half a mind to, had they really wanted to. Oh yes, sex was nice and such, but Naruto was timid of it, because Sasuke wasn't well, and really, would he want to? Besides, they'd only newly become "together" again, and he didn't want to drive at it, if Sasuke didn't want to drive at it too.

What was the point if they both weren't into it? Naruto knew he'd only worry about Sasuke if they went ahead, and he'd wonder if Sasuke only said yes because he wanted to make it up to Naruto for doing something he'd done wrong. Naruto forgot what Sasuke had done to him the second he'd kissed the other boy. Sasuke was like candy, something a parent bought you to make you forget that they'd done something you'd deem was wrong. Not that Sasuke could be bought like candy, of course. Nor had his parental given him Sasuke.

So, they stuck with what they were doing. The touches weren't meant to invoke desire, or anything like that, they were simply to touch and to feel, something that was rare among boys their age, or so they thought at that particular time.

They cuddled afterwards, when touching grew not quite so fascinating any more, and Sasuke fell asleep in Naruto's arms, and Naruto was quite content to have him there. The moon and the sun had fallen back into their proper routine.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -