Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.
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go outside and shut the door

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Sasuke had stopped accompanying him to the dungeons after the first year, but he'd begun doing it again in the last few months. It was sporadic at first, once every couple of weeks, but now he found the teenager waiting around the entrance almost every time he went to make his rounds.

Even though Sasuke never spoke, the reasoning was so obvious that it almost made Kabuto tired. But it wasn't his life rapidly coming to an end, so he humored it and made small talk as they crossed from one cell to another, though Sasuke's replies were rarely more than wordless noises.

"That's all," Kabuto said, stepping out of the second communal cell and locking it behind him.

Sasuke turned away, toward the entrance, but then paused a few steps later when he noticed Kabuto was walking the other direction. "What's left?"

"Just some work in one of the labs," Kabuto answered, not bothering to look back as he spoke. When he heard Sasuke start to follow, though, he glanced over his shoulder. "I don't think Orochimaru-sama has a reason for you to see it."

". . . And he has a reason for me to be here?"

Kabuto shrugged a shoulder. "He never told me to send you out." He gave Sasuke an annoyed look when the teenager caught up to his side and kept pace, but Sasuke only returned it with more vehemence.

Kabuto considered stopping and standing there until Sasuke left, but he didn't really want to waste the time; and the consequences would fall much harder on Sasuke than on himself, given his attitude of late.

Kabuto pushed his glasses back up, and turned down the corridor with the individual cells, before unlocking the door at the end. He shifted the keys to the hand farthest from Sasuke when he was finished, and pushed it open without bothering to hold it afterward.

The door led to a small room with a concrete floor, a few empty hooks--the smocks were being laundered--and a shower in the corner. Kabuto passed by it all as Sasuke glanced around, memorizing, and unlocked the second door.

Once it was open, he put the keys in his pocket, shielded his eyes, and slid his hand along the inside wall until he found the light switch.

Even with a hand half-covering his eyes, Kabuto had to squint briefly; this lab was brighter than most of the rooms in the entire complex, and the white walls and steel equipment didn't help matters. He noticed Sasuke grimace and glance at the room's floor.

Sasuke looked up sooner than he should have; Kabuto knew the light had still been blinding him, because it took the teenager a few seconds to start violently.

Most of the place had been wiped down, thankfully. The worst area was the main table where the corpse was still lying--the smell wasn't too bad yet, but sterilizing everything was going to be a bitch.

"Since you insisted on joining me, Sasuke-kun," he said, stepping into the room, "could you bring me one of those bags over there?"

Sasuke just glared at his back. Kabuto hadn't actually expected him to do anything, but he knew that speaking so casually when there was a body that been opened and nearly emptied from sternum to groin just a meter away would unnerve the teenager, even after over two years in the Sound. He got the bag himself, as well as a pair of long plastic gloves.

Sasuke hung back by the door as Kabuto shoved the bag under and around the corpse until he could zip it, and once again wished to himself that Orochimaru would just sometimes leave his experiments a little easier to clean up.

He had to drop the body in the outer room; Sasuke finally moved further in, out of his way.

Kabuto stripped off the gloves and dropped them on top of the bag, and then went to get a fresh pair and the sterilizing supplies.

"What was he doing?" Sasuke muttered, half-looking at the door to the outer room, but not actually inside. He was starting to understand Kabuto slightly, or at least to understand what actions the man considered signs of weakness and others just of humanity.

"I don't ask," Kabuto replied, scrubbing down the top of the table.

"That doesn't mean you don't know."

He let the corner of his mouth curl up.

"You're really pushing it these last weeks, Sasuke-kun," Kabuto said congenially. "You should be more careful."

"Why?" Sasuke replied, folding his arms.

"If he's angry, he might stop teaching you," he answered, offering the most innocuous possibility.

". . . He won't," Sasuke said, defensively. "You think I don't--I know it's just for muscle memory."

"'Skill memory,'" Kabuto corrected, straightening up and rolling his shoulders back a few times. "Or 'procedure memory.' There's no such thing as muscle memory; learning stimulates neurons."

Sasuke made a noise in the back of his throat. Kabuto returned to scrubbing down the tabletop.

He shifted his feet a few minutes later; just barely, but Kabuto noticed it anyway.

"If you're uncomfortable," he offered, not looking up, "you can leave."

"I'm not," Sasuke replied harshly.

"I won't hold it against you," Kabuto said, dropping the sponge and flexing his fingers. "I threw up the first time I cleaned one of these rooms."

The convenience of creating a personality that lent itself to constant distrust was that Sasuke had a very difficult knowing when he was telling the truth. The teenager watched him work for a little while longer, and then left silently.