a/n: For the movie they're watching, I don't know why, I haven't quite been able to stop thinking about Spiderman today (the Amazing Spiderman- Andrew Garfield will always have a special place in my heart), so let's somehow pretend Spiderman is an actual thing in the Naruto world? lol
. . .
you're out of my hands, i'm out of my head (II)
Summary of the chapter:
"Hey, so, I've actually thought about this."
"About what?"
"Oh, you know, what curtains would match with your living room–about the reason why I'm here. Obviously."
. . .
These next two days, like the rest, follow in a linear but imprecise chain of events. The majority of it is unclear, but the moments framing the haziness—those are crystal.
After the...eventful soak in his tub, Naruto finds himself at the hospital.
Naruto's agreed upon and at times impromptu visits at the hospital aren't always related to his team teacher, there is one other patient he takes the time to pay a call to every now and again. Or, really, whenever he can.
Some time ago he happened to meet an outsider, in every sense of the word—he has absolutely no business with the shinobi world, didn't have the slightest clue who 'Pain' was and the destruction he brought to the village, and still doesn't now, and that is...exactly what is so refreshing to Naruto, a wave of normalcy sent his way.
The man always has tales of a lifetime to tell, and he does tell them, he can talk and talk his way through most anything. According to him, the reason why he currently is in the hospital is lightning, nothing more and nothing else to it. He has also been struck by lightning eleven times in his life, which is the reason why the number eleven is his favorite number. A funny little old man, this one.
Naruto and Sakura grew attached to him soon enough, to the point they spend time in his hospital room even after visiting hours are through. Sakura calls him Oji-san, while Naruto calls him Jii-Jii.
"Jii-Jii." Naruto greets once he is through the door, mindlessly closing it behind him with the heel of his foot. "I brought you some decent food."
As of late, 'smuggling' food inside the hospital has come to be a 'requirement', Naruto just can't stand the food in here. And even if he doesn't eat it himself, he is magnanimous enough to spare others of the dull—sometimes even horrid—taste.
And the habitual raucous chuckle welcomes him. "Food's good enough here for these ole bones."
Naruto takes his usual seat by his bedside, passing the warm container in his hands. Choppy silver strands fall short over the man's skin, wrinkled with age and experience, as he carefully takes the lid off and a swirl of vapor wafts into the room.
"Don't say that, you're still young in spirit. Kakashi-sensei's the real old one."
Jii-Jii hums, taking his time to reply. "Flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long, son."
Sometimes he talks in riddles, sometimes the meaning behind his words is plain enough, and other times it seems like he doesn't have a clue what they're talking about. Naruto simply goes along with it, or takes the conversation in a completely new direction.
Jii-Jii also never calls him by name—to the point where Naruto has even wondered if he might have just forgotten about his actual name altogether—but he has taken to calling him either 'boy', or 'son', it's always a tie between the two. The man doesn't have offspring of his own, but for any reason treats him with the same warmth a father or a grandfather would.
And it somehow feels familiar in a nostalgic sort of way to Naruto, even if he has never known the warmth of a family shared by blood.
"Oh, Jii-Jii, you're the only old man cool enough to outclass Kakashi-sensei."
The man lets out a jovial, contagious bout of laughter and Naruto almost answers in kind, a genuine smile plastered across his face.
"Hey, so, I've actually thought about this." Sasuke starts pretty ordinarily, and, as of late, completely out of the blue.
Naruto lifts his head up, the blades of grass a light tickle between his unfolded fingers. "About what?"
Sasuke stares at him as if the inquiry is the most ridiculous thing to have ever graced his ears. "Oh, you know, what curtains would match with your living room–about the reason why I'm here. Obviously."
Naruto spares him a glance, clicks his tongue. "Drop the sass."
"Drop the stupid questions."
He glimpses at him through his lashes, lifts his shoulders. "Iruka-sensei says there are no stupid questions out there."
Sasuke deadpans.
"...Okay, fine, there are definitely stupid questions out there."
He would know, he has quite a few he has asked in between the years.
"So?" He prompts, impatient in an idle sort of way. His muscles feel stiff and lax at the same time, like he has been stretched too hollow.
"Alright." Sasuke goes on, holding up his forefinger. "Theory number one."
Oh, so he has beaten his brain out about it. With the way he always seems to downplay the predicament, Naruto feels he almost has the right to be proud of him.
"You think of me and..." Sasuke pauses, most definitely for effect. "...poof. I appear." He says, without the barest hint of disbelief such a piece of information would deserve.
Naruto opens his mouth. And closes it. And opens it again, not unlike a fish.
"...Sasuke."
"Yeah?"
"...What the hell."
Sasuke appears almost, almost offended. "What, that doesn't sound too far-fetched."
Naruto is the one to deadpan now.
Sasuke doesn't back down from the stare off, until Naruto does.
"...As if I even think of you. The last time I even–it's been ages." It has surely been ages since the last time he thought of him—before he...well, 'materialized' inside his room, almost giving him a heart attack in the process—and his 'Sasuke-related-thoughts' over the years certainly haven't been pleasant, that's undeniable.
"That so?" The boy's lips quirk up in a curve a little too smug. "Isn't it that maybe you just can't stop thinking about me?"
Naruto's eyes narrow into an irritated glare. "Hardly."
"And maybe it's because you think I know more than you think."
Naruto pretends the simple sentence doesn't throw him for a loop the first couple of seconds.
"Or maybe I can say the things you're so afraid to think?" Sasuke keeps putting forth, a bit too casually.
Naruto's eyes widen a fraction, mental walls rising with the topic breaching a little too closely home. Fortunately he can count on Sasuke's apparent need to keep outlining his specific train of thought.
"Theory number two–"
"Wait." Naruto is stopping him before he can even think about it. "Shouldn't this be theory number three?" His confusion keeps growing, too. "Or, um, four?"
"Nope, those were just extensions of theory number one."
"...Right." His eyes narrow in bemusement, while it seems to make perfect sense to the other boy it doesn't make much sense to him, not at all actually.
"As I was saying, theory number two." And now Sasuke is wearing an impish look, raising both brows at him in a waggish, pointed way. "Maybe I'm...the better part of you?"
His face pinches slightly, lips lightly parting in a disbelieving gape. He almost finds it funny. "Please. Only Kiba would believe something this stupid."
Sasuke rolls his eyes and mumbles something under his breath.
Naruto ignores that part.
"Well then, on to theory number three." But Sasuke gives the impression to swither at this one. He picks up with an uncertain lift of his shoulders. "Who knows, maybe we'll never find out why I'm actually here."
Naruto's features crumple with a frown, the sentence leaves behind a bad aftertaste that he feels the need to wash off that very minute. "That's not an option."
Sasuke turns to gaze in the distance, eyes going half-lidded from the delicate sunlight blanketing vast swathes of the field in lacklustre golden. His low voice is a pensive hum. "...Isn't it, though?"
Naruto's attention is quickly snapped to the opposite direction by Yamato calling him over a couple dozen feet away. When he gets up, he's alone again.
Naruto still has Sasuke on his mind as he gets up from the couch, still halfway to dozing and trying his best to avoid tripping over air itself on his way to answering the door. A few friendly faces await him on the other side, he has to blink a number of times to put them into focus.
"You were sleeping?" Kiba asks, surprised and slightly apologetic.
"Takin' a nap." Naruto replies, trying to hold down a yawn. "Mmh, forgot. M'sorry." He mumbles, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with a loose fist, much like a child.
"It's fine dude, we can do this another day–"
"No, no, s'okay, promise." He opens the door and steps away, letting his friends in.
One of the new additions to his current apartment was a television, which he didn't know if he should have even accepted in the first place. It felt a little superfluous, but somehow the allied villages pitching in and helping Konoha had done so offering surplus comforts at times.
Even now he doesn't use it often—the cinema has always been a so much better option to him, but since reconstruction is slow in that department in the end he had taken what he'd been given—except for these small get-togethers, which Sakura calls 'sleepovers'. But truly, they are simply a way to avoid having Naruto being alone for too long.
The movie is mostly about action and the quick-witted main character throwing out quips as quickly as he takes out the bad guys, and Naruto finds himself laughing at a few bits and talking over others, and discussing where the plot is going from time to time.
With arms thrown around him, his vision goes blurring with a mesh of washed out colors growing dimmer, ears picking up toned down timbers of voices growing distant, and he is too burnt out to feel anything but warm and worriless for once.
Halfway through the movie he falls asleep on Kiba's shoulder.
"Oops. I might have forgotten to mention this little detail." Sasuke is disclosing, not apologetic in the least.
As if he didn't just cut in two splintering halves the barren trunk of a charred tree with a simple wave of the hand, the violent rush of air breaching through like an invisible force. And it all happened right in front of Naruto's eyes.
"...Holy shit!" He can only think to exclaim at the sight, thoroughly gobsmacked.
Sasuke is sporting one mega watt grin, like a little kid showing off a brand new toy. "Cool, isn't it? Heh, I guess being a 'ghost' sure comes with its perks."
Naruto's slack jaw is practically hanging on the floor. "How the..." He trails off, unsure, shaken...and a little impressed, also. "You didn't...not even..."
"Nope." Sasuke answers, like he knows exactly what he's floundering about.
"No...techniques?" Naruto tries to give voice to his discombobulated thoughts. "Something to do with your, you know..." With a jerking motion he gestures in the general direction of his eyes.
"Nuh-uh. Not one ounce of chakra, no sharingan, no technique involved here." And he even sounds like he's bragging.
And, well, if Naruto knew how to do...that—was it an invisible force, a magnetic pull, what even was that—without any kind of help from an external source, then he might have half a mind to brag about it too.
"You know what they say, it's all in the flick of the wrist." Sasuke pauses, shaking his head once. "Though I can do this without moving my hands at all, I just thought pairing a random hand movement to go along with it would've added a bit more effect, you know."
Bypassing the spoof and Sasuke's apparent 'show off' tendencies, Naruto is locked in a back and forth between the boy in front of him and the poor bark, still hanging for dear life by literal threads and—oh, no, it just fell apart. "...And you say this isn't magic?!" He snaps, and, alright, he is panicking just a smidge.
"I know you're still pretty hung up over the black magic voodoo kinda stuff and what not. But I can most definitely assure you this has nothing to do with wizards." Then he adds, a little more unimpressed. "Or witches. Again, not one."
Naruto is positively reeling, palm squashing against his forehead in his see-through and utter shock, heart a wild race inside his chest at the sheer absurdity of the unfolding, dicey events he was witness to mere seconds before.
"Is this..." He wracks his brain for the right term, he may have heard it once in a movie. "Te...what do they even call it, tele...uh, pathy?"
"I think the word you're looking for is 'telekinesis.'" Sasuke corrects promptly. Then, not so promptly, he continues. "And..."
"And?"
Sasuke rubs at the back of his head, smirk morphing into a small, upward line of uncertainty. "I, um...don't know?"
Oh, so now he has the gall to look sheepish.
"You..." Naruto doesn't even blink, can't even think what the concept of blinking one's eyes entails as he turns his full, unreserved attention towards him. "You don't know?"
"No?"
His dubious expression is, admittedly, almost funny. But not reassuring.
Naruto combs quick fingers through his hair, mystified into an awestruck bout of silence. Which only lasts a few seconds.
"Are you real?"
"Do you see me?"
He certainly didn't expect to be hit with the rhetorical question of all things.
"...and if I see you it means it's not all happening in my head?"
"And if it's all happening in your head it means it's not real?"
He was not expecting this one either.
"I...You..." He can't help the reiteration of this same concept—for the millionth time it feels. "You're...confusing me!"
"Well, it's not like I'm an answering machine and you just need the push of a button to have all the universe's secrets revealed. 'Cause if I was I'd have asked my fair share of questions a long time ago, believe that." Then he's back to staring straight into his eyes with an unfeigned smile. "For all it's worth though, this feels real enough to me too."
...Well, this blatant confusion sizzling him from the inside out does feel real enough, he has to give him props for that at least.
Naruto's eyes fall to the earthy ground, as if it's about to split open too and maybe swallow him whole in the process. "What the actual fuck..."
"Heh, knew you were going to say it often." Sasuke shakes his head to himself. "I really shouldn't be enjoying this as much as I am."
Naruto would bring himself to glare if the shock gripping him relented just a little. Sasuke seems to be reading the look for what it is all the same.
"What, seeing you panic at every little thing I do is pretty amusing to me, I'm not about to deny that."
Through his amazement, Naruto scowls—though it presents as more of a pout—and grumbles to himself.
The padding of the chair might make it less uncomfortable, but that does nothing for the uneasiness—although that too seems to be sleeping under his skin, at least for now.
This room is always as stifling and unexpectedly open as the last few times he has been here. It must be the sun, Naruto is sure of it, its glaring rays trickling in and enveloping the space make everything...brighter. More bearable.
She has already asked her prompt question, and the trajectory of the conversation (question-few words answer-question, and repeat) has wended its way into, somehow, delving into his sleeping habits.
"Sometimes I just can't...sleep." He mumbles, not particularly inclined to the effort of building up a lie, but not up for breaking down a truth either. "But it's nothing serious. I'm fine."
The sound the pen makes when she places it on the smooth surface of the desk reverberates amid the four walls, for one moment it seems every other noise has been sucked out of the room. Her voice is laced with professional kindliness when she, after another soundless moment, speaks again.
"Naruto." She says, slowly. "Why do you think you're here?"
There has to be one specific reason for that, or maybe a multitude of those, all crushed together into a tangled mess that cannot possibly be extricated without any hope of help from an external source, but the bottom line is...
Naruto looks up enough to hold eye contact, for a couple of seconds, then looks back down. He gives a noncommittal shrug.
"I don't know."
A blaze of lights adorns the open space, seemingly woven through to the stretch of night sky, hanging in swirling arcs of diffused and opaque colors, and getting lost in the twinkle of the stars overhead, mellowing out the atmosphere, illuminating this corner of peace.
It's a small restaurant they booked for the joyful occasion—and luckily managed to find too, since more than just a handful of businesses, especially small-scale enterprises, are struggling still—and the air is thick with the scent of different dishes from the hefty buffet to choose from, whilst the atmosphere is rich with elation, harmonious from the good company. A few faces Naruto recognizes, a few he doesn't, but one in particular that stands out from the bunch is Gai's.
The man with the bowl haircut marches his way towards the small crowd like he is walking through war, leading with laden steps toward the protagonist of this night.
"Kakashi." Gai greets with a stern expression and a curt nod. "It's good to have you back."
And Kakashi is almost surprised into silence by the modest, unobtrusive approach. "...Ah, thank y–"
In a split second Gai is dropping his stone facade, hastily drawing—crushing—his best friend into a hug. "We can finally get back on track with our competition!" And, apparently forgetting the man was just discharged, he is soon spinning him around like a rag doll, while Iruka's concerned, '–he's turning blue!' goes unheard.
"...think I'll need a longer stay at the hospital." Kakashi barely manages to utter the stifled whisper.
"Oh, Kakashi-sensei, you can be such a jokester sometimes!" Sakura exclaims with one of her saccharine smiles, not doing anything whatsoever to help her dear teacher out of the suffocating hold. "Come on, Iruka-sensei, I'm sure there are a few people you haven't said hello to yet, let's let these two catch up!" She adds in a sweet voice, dragging a panicking Iruka away by the arm.
"…remind me to never get on her bad side." Kiba mutters, standing by the side and witness to the whole scene.
Shino nods, Naruto does too and he wonders what his teacher might have done to get on Sakura's nerves this time—most probably having something to do with the poor efforts he puts into looking after himself and his health. But he only spares the man a sympathetic thought, not doing anything whatsoever to help either.
Some could even swear they hear a bone or two pop above Gai's rambunctious laughter.
"Yo, Kakashi-sensei." Well into the night, Kiba is leaning over towards the man, reaching for something to his right. "I'm gonna have a sip of this, that cool?"
Kakashi sweeps up the nearest bottle with a quick motion. "No."
"It's cool, I'm under 'adult supervision' here, with you and Iruka-sensei and Gai-sen–" He halts mid-sentence when they hear a loud crash. Instead of turning around to find out what just occurred, there is a small, collective sigh lifting from most. Kiba is quick to rephrase. "...well, maybe not him. But hey, since you're here it's totally fine. 'Cause you're old."
Kakashi blinks once his visible eye. "...Excuse me?"
"He's not wrong." Naruto agrees beside him, clearly sharing this train of thought. Sakura shakes her head to herself, but doesn't add anything.
"Uh, I mean, you know, old in..." Kiba's face scrunches up in deep contemplation, treading carefully in search of the just words to utter. "...an 'adult' and, er, 'wise' kind of way, yep, that." It's what he comes up with.
Kakashi's eyebrow twitches in irritation with every added word. "Right." His eye is now narrowed, completely unconvinced. "You're not touching a drop of alcohol. I'm drinking water, and so are you."
"Oh come on!"
"Sensei." Choji manages to articulate through a mouthful. "Just say you're scared of his mother. If she ever found out you let him drink, who knows what she'd do..."
Kiba is suddenly nodding in a firm, far-reaching way (seemingly in an imitation of Kakashi himself) as his voice lowers to a conspicuous whisper. "I've already told you, haven't I? My mom's actually the reason why dad ran away, she can be...scary."
"I...don't find that hard to believe. At all."
Only a small distance away, leaning back on his chair with his arms crossed over his chest, Shikamaru sighs. "...Kiba's normally zonked out as it is, imagine if he actually got drunk..." He mutters under his breath with a shake of the head, making Ten Ten almost snort-spit the water she had just been taking a gulp of.
Kakashi listens to a few more of Kiba's pleas—some a little less polite than others—and shakes his head with a fond, concealed smile. "Ah, youth. Naive, ignorant youth."
"Huh, I feel like he just insulted all of us somehow." Choji whispers to his teammates.
"That's because he just did." Ino whispers back, sipping on her iced tea.
Shikamaru just keeps shaking his head.
Ten Ten leans her shoulder against Neji's, and he shifts until she is comfortable, letting her rest her head in the crook of his neck.
"They look cozy." Sakura remarks with a little smile as she looks at the two a few feet away.
"Mmh?" Naruto hums, puzzled since they're practically in their same position. "Aren't we also?"
Sakura looks up at him with a diverted little chuckle. "No, I mean cozy cozy."
It takes quite a bit for him to figure it out. "Ooh...I think I just got it."
She snorts. "That's fine, your obliviousness is mostly adorable."
"Heeey." He weakly protests, gently shoving her shoulder with his, drawing a laugh out of her.
The hours fly by with people chatting the night away, little groups have formed and scattered everywhere while Naruto—after reassuring Sakura, time and time again, that he is undoubtedly okay and can be left alone for more than five minutes—is sitting on his own, one of the few still at the table.
The conversation around him dwindles to a buzz, white noise in the back of his mind. But there is this nagging sensation that won't leave him, there is something amiss, he knows, but he can't quite place what it is.
"Not enjoying yourself out here?"
A silent gasp gets pushed out of his mouth and his head is snapping to his left, and all of a sudden he is looking at Sasuke, who is sitting one chair over.
"Isn't it astonishing how lonely you can feel even in the middle of a crowd?"
Sasuke's voice is low enough he has to strain his ears to catch it.
"The worst thing is, it happens when you actually want to be part of that crowd...but just can't bring yourself to enjoy it no matter how hard you try." He continues, arms crossed over the table and heavy-lidded eyes watching the ongoing celebration happening uninterrupted in front of them.
As an unconscious reaction, Naruto's eyebrows draw together in a delicate, saddened little frown, but it's an expression he is not aware to be sporting as he keeps looking over at him. "...I don't know what you're talking about."
Sasuke's eyes flit over, first from his peripheral then he is turning his full attention on him. "Right." There is a disbelieving ring to the word he exhales, a heaviness to it.
Their eyes cross paths, and for a moment Naruto is seeing walls crumbling, a glimpse of despair that has nothing (and everything) to do with his own. But the shard of desolation is quickly replaced by one of Sasuke's more signature looks; neutrally spiteful, dimly lenient, still indulgently glazed with thin-coated arrogance.
"Let me ask you something, then."
It's as if time itself slows down, the view surrounding them grows into a backdrop of unfocused dapples of light and life. In this slow motion swivelling, the sensation of weightlessness grips him, suspending him in the folding of a moment, in the hidden crease between neat lines.
It's somewhat like being able to break out of the frozen surface of a bottomless ocean. Only to find out once you've come up for air, your lungs are filled up with water to the brim.
"If you're so content with your life, if you've got everything under control, if you're out with your friends, enjoying yourself and everything is as fine as you say it is..."
A beat, then another, his eyes catch the stringing glow and the blaze of the moonlight, row of teeth glinting in the swell of his simper, toeing the treacherous seam dividing levity and dire.
"...then why are you still thinking of me?"
Naruto's mouth falls open a sliver, because he wants to refute the preposterous notion, because he wants to cry out his aversion at such a ridiculous, such an unfounded claim—but right as he is building up to it, on the brink of it, he's shocked into faltering by a dawning realization that can't be nothing else if not his own conviction coming dismantled, striking out the words bubbling in his chest.
And after it he doesn't know how to possibly respond.
