Part 5: Pillow Talk and Ramen Raids

"Oh. So that's a 'real kiss.'"

Later, Naruto would claim temporary brain damage as a reason for why those were the next words out of his mouth.

"Sasuke-kun? NARUTO?" That was a shrill, familiar female voice at the door, though Naruto's mind still wasn't processing well enough to place it, exactly.

"Ow. Jeez. Eardrums." Unfamiliar male voice.

Naruto glanced around, and suddenly, the whole scene became horribly, crystal-y crystal clear.

Sasuke had--

Flinch. No, start somewhere else. Sakura was standing at the door to the recovery room, a daffodil crushed in one fist, a look of...something on her face. Naruto wasn't sure what the something was, but he didn't think it was good. She was livid, that much he could tell, but that emotion was almost drowned in the shock and disbelief and faint hurt.

At some point, once he got over his own shock and disbelief, he would feel horribly horribly guilty. Then he would immediately blame it on Sasuke, and this time he would be right.

And Sasuke--

Twitch. No, not yet. Who else was in the room?

Hiei was standing right beside Kurama's bed, bent over him a little, one hand lightly touching Kurama's cheek. The redhead was staring up at him with a look of shock on his face.

An expression that Naruto guessed was much like the one on his own face at the moment. Because Sasuke had kissed him.

Part of him was panicking in a way that most boys would have if they'd found themselves suddenly lip-locked with toads, dogs, old women, or other boys--icky gross things that should never be found kissing. That was normal. That was fine.

Part of him was raging because this meant Sasuke had saved him. Again.

I'm going to kill him. And then I'll kiss him back to life. See how much he likes that. ...wait.

It was the other part of him that disturbed Naruto, that made him feel uneasy-hot and off-balanced. It was watching him with a smirk that was a little evil and a lot knowing, and it was showing him what it might have been like if Sasuke hadn't stopped at just a kiss. The images would have probably been a little racier if Naruto'd actually had any experience with what exactly boys did with other boys past kissing. Most of the nude-y magazines he'd managed to beg, borrow or steal had predominantly featured girls.

And this was pretty much where his brain stalled.

Yuusuke and Kuwabara (who had just finished doing the heebie-jeebies dance from seeing two sets of boys kissing and had slingshotted directly into slightly hysterical amusement) were standing at Kurama's bedside wearing identical somewhat sickly but determined grins.

"We should've sold tickets," Yuusuke drawled.

Sakura turned and fled the room. Kuwabara smacked Yuusuke upside the head.

"Ow! What the hell was that for?"

Naruto's mind focused almost desperately on a thought that didn't have to do with Sasuke. Sakura was hurting, and Naruto couldn't stand that. He made a lurching effort to get out of bed, brought up short when Sasuke caught his arm. The touch was enough to ignite his temper, and the blond swung around, eyes alight with an anger that was just shy of fear.

"Let go of me! Why the hell did you have to do that, anyway?"

Sasuke scowled, expression caught somewhere between embarrassment and scorn. "If I hadn't you'd be dead, you moron."

Naruto flushed, annoyance pushing confusion further into the back of his mind. "Shut up! I would've found someone else--anyone else! Neji, even!"

Sasuke's scowl deepened, and his grip on Naruto's arm was almost painful. "Neji?"

"Yeah! He could see me. I bet he would've..." Well, no, really. Naruto couldn't see Neji lowering his dignity so much, but at this point he was on a roll and did care. "Or he could've found Hinata. Hinata would've been much better than you."

With a final yank, he pulled away from Sasuke, got tangled in the sheets, and promptly fell on his head on the hard tile floor. This time, Sasuke didn't try to stop him.

"You didn't think to come to one of us?" That was Yuusuke's amused voice, somewhere beyond the ringing in Naruto's ears. "You know, the people who know what's going on? ...Sort of, anyway. More than most people in your village."

Actually, it hadn't occurred to Naruto to find one of the strangers. The blond grumbled and growled as he fought free of the sheets and managed to get to his feet, not answering directly. It would probably have been the first thing Sasuke would have done. That thought didn't make Naruto feel any better.

"How was I supposed to know?" he demanded finally.

"An idiot could've figured that out," Yuusuke chortled.

Naruto swung around, ready to yell the dark-haired boy's ears off, but stopped when he noticed the incredulous looks the rest of his team was giving him.

"I really don't think you have call to mock someone else for lack of observational skills, Yuusuke," Kurama said dryly, and the others nodded in solemn agreement. Well, actually, Kuwabara was grinning, but that didn't make his agreement any less firm.

Yuusuke bristled. "Shut up!"

The ensuing brawl between Yuusuke and Kuwabara brought the nurses in to scold them. When they saw that Kurama and Naruto were awake there was a flurry of surprised activity, wherein Naruto was poked and prodded and asked a lot of (what he considered) stupid questions which all boiled down to he was fine and they didn't know how he'd survived impossible odds again. Kurama was also given a clean bill of health.

Then the guests were promptly kicked out, with stern reminders that it was well past visiting hours, and the two patients were told to sleep, because there would be a round of follow-up tests tomorrow, and paperwork if they were approved for release.

And sometime, shortly after the last nurse had gone, turning the light off as she left, Naruto stared at the ceiling waiting for his eyes to adjust and realized that Sasuke had gotten away without getting his ass kicked for the shit he'd pulled and that was just wrong.

Naruto sat up. Then he envisioned the face of the head nurse on duty, her hair pulled back in a severe bun, her eyes as hard and sharp as kunai… and he flopped back down in frustration. She didn't wear the uniform, but he could swear she was Jounin. In any case, he didn't want to cross her.

Unfortunately, he was completely not sleepy. So not sleepy, in fact, that he could actually feel the seconds dragging by, like trickles of sweat down that hard-to-reach ticklish spot on his back.

How many hours until respectable people would let him get up again?

He glanced at the clock and noticed that Kurama wasn't sleeping, either. Faint light gleamed off the redhead's open eyes and his lashes twitched as he blinked.

"Cool water in the quiet."

The soft voice drifted over from Kurama's bed. Naruto glanced over. "Huh?"

"What?" was returned through the dark.

"Did you say something?"

"No." There was a note of confusion in Kurama's voice, the kind a person got when asked a strange question seemingly out of nowhere.

Naruto frowned and decided to let it go. The seconds crawled slowly into minutes. After a while of Not Sleeping, he bounced his head against the pillow a few times, trying to fluff it into a new shape without moving too much. The cloth and fluff in his ears muffled the next words, but they were distinctly words, even if they didn't form a coherent sentence.

"Feet gone. Bruised. Dying."

"What?" A little alarmed, Naruto jerked his head around to look at Kurama more closely. When the other shifted to look at him, his face was lost in the shadows.

"Excuse me?"

Well, he didn't sound like he was dying. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I...haven't said anything."

"So loud, now. Annoying."

"Look, I'm not hearing things." Naruto sat up, glaring into the darkness, stretching out with every sense that had been honed to sharpness over the years of training. He still couldn't find anyone else in the room, but that didn't mean much, considering there were dozens of shinobi in Naruto's village alone who could hide themselves from him completely if they tried.

Naruto tested the air, tongue flicking out as he inhaled slowly. His sense of smell was sharp enough that even Kakashi-sensei had trouble deceiving it if Naruto were focusing.

Cotton sheets, smelling of sunshine and green-sy outside, having been air-dried on the roof of the hospital. Oils, ink and parchment, from the salves and the scrolls the medical nins used in their healing. The faint burn of electricity from plugs and wires. Kurama was a strange mixture of earthy wood and metallic fire, traces of ozone, blood from the cut on his arm that was bandaged and hadn't healed, and overlying warm, human scent. The sharp-sweet smell of Sakura's daffodil, which someone had picked up off the floor and put in a vase on the table beside his bed. There was the lingering scent of the doctors, orchid perfume from one of the nurses, Sakura's strawberry sweetness, Sasuke's pine tree coolness. That was all.

"All right," Naruto growled, still not convinced. "Who's there?"

There wasn't a response. Kurama was watchful in the next bed over, but didn't look particularly anxious if the lack of real tension in his body was any indication.

"Listening?

"I'm listening," Naruto said, shifting toward the voice. It definitely wasn't Kurama's, though there was something in the inflection of the words, a similar accent and tonality. It was coming from somewhere between the two of them.

"Understand?"

"Oh, I understand." Which wasn't quite a lie. He didn't know what was going on, but he did recognize the words as they were spoken.

"You understand?" This from Kurama, who sounded rather surprised, but no longer in a way that indicated he had no idea what was going on. He was just a bit startled at the turn of events.

Had Naruto been anyone else, this might have made him suspicious. As it was, he was just annoyed. "Yeah. I've been saying that I heard something--"

"Hearing and understanding are two separate things. You understand what you're hearing?"

"What's so hard to about it?" Confusion made Naruto twitchy. "I mean, the sentences are kinda screwy, but the words make sense..."

"Interesting, many-tails."

Before Naruto could replay, a babble of voices swelled from the darkness, like a thousand people had gathered outside Naruto's window as the breeze shifted, lifting the curtains. There were so many jumbled sounds, that they blurred into staccato syllables and light laughter. He couldn't make anything distinct out in the din, and he clapped his hands to his ears. He'd keyed his senses up to search for the intruder, and the noise crashed against him.

"WHAT THE HELL IS--mmph!"

He jerked and fell back in a defensive roll as a hand clapped over his mouth. Kurama tumbled with him--when had he moved?--and pinned him with an ease that would be insulting as soon as Naruto's instincts let him think of anything besides the threat.

"Stop!" Kurama's quiet but forceful voice brushed against his ear. Since he really didn't have any choice at the moment, Naruto relaxed. "It's just the trees."

The hard hand lifted from his mouth and Naruto blurted. "The wha--mmph!"

This close, Naruto could read Kurama's reproachful expression, even in the darkness. When the hand lifted away again, the blond remembered to keep his voice low.

"The what?"

"The trees. Outside. That's what you're hearing. They're chatting in the wind. They do that."

Naruto considered that for a few minutes. Nope. Still not making a lot of sense. "Okay, what?"

"The other voice--that was the daffodil."

Feeling kinda stupid, but unable to come up with a better response, Naruto said, "What?"

There was a soft sigh, ticklish breath against his skin. "I think it has something to do with the binding."

"...I'm just going to repeat myself again."

"If I let you up, you're going to behave?"

That was too insulting not to answer. "Behave?" He struggled, trying to throw the redhead, and only succeeding in tiring himself. Apparently he really wasn't fully recovered. "Fine," he huffed, finally.

"Good." Kurama eased off and sat up. The wariness was back in his body, along with some real tension. Over what? He'd been fine with flowers or whatever talking to him, but now he was nervous about Naruto?

Recovering his dignity and scooting back so there was room between them on the bed, the blond fixed his strange companion with a look. "So, what about binding? And why does it make trees talk?"

"That's not really an effect. That's more of a...side-effect. The purpose of the binding was to seal your demon." Naruto jerked in an automatic flinch. Kurama continued without a pause. "But in the process our ki seems to have...mingled a bit."

All he can seem to do is ask questions like an idiot, which makes him feel a bit resentful. "Ki?"

"Er..." Kurama seemed to grope for a definition that wouldn't be more confusing. "Spirit energy?"

"Oh! Chakra." That, at least, he knew. "And the talking trees?"

"It's not that they've just started talking, it's that you can understand them, now. That's...my influence. It's a...skill I have. To hear them."

"They talk to you all the time?" That sounded annoying.

Kurama smiled, moonlight highlighting the curve of his lips. "No. Mostly they just have conversations around me, and it's almost second nature by now for me to filter out those sounds."

Naruto frowned. If he listened, he could still hear the sound of the trees talking outside, their voices rising and falling with the wind, but at least it didn't sound as if a bunch of people were all yelling at each other any more.

"Understand now? Mind as slow as the spring in mountains."

Despite not being well versed in flower-ese, Naruto understood an insult when he heard one. He found the shape of the cheerful yellow flower in the dark--now cool gray as everything else under the moon--and glared.

"Hey, are all plants so annoying?"

Kurama followed Naruto's gaze and shook his head. "Well, it's dying. Also, it's a daffodil. They're surprisingly profound, but you'd never know because they're pretty sarcastic."

So, daffodils were like Shikamaru in plant form. It was easier to wrap his mind around the idea of plants with personalities if he could assign them to people in his head. But oh man, Shikamaru wouldn't take him seriously ever again if Naruto blurted out that he'd thought of the other boy while looking at a flower.

"Hey, so...what do I do?"

"You don't have to do anything. This is a temporary effect. It will fade on its own."

"No, I mean...what do I contribute? I get to hear plants, what do you get?"

At that moment, both their stomachs gave distinct, "I'm empty, so fill me, dammit!" sounds. They both ducked their heads, a bit embarrassed, and then caught each other's eye across the bed and broke into grins.

"Well," Kurama said, "I do have an overwhelming urge to eat ramen. Is that you?"

Naruto gave his best foxy smile--mostly teeth. "That's me! And I'm hungry." He declared this while he shifted up onto his knees, hands folding into the familiar beginning seal.

"What are you doing?" Kurama asked curiously.

"Well, I want ramen, and you want ramen, right? If we hurry, we can catch last call at Ichiraku."

"The nurses check every half hour. We'll be caught." Despite the words, the tone itself wasn't discouraging. Instead, it was considering, as if working through how to get around this obstacles.

Naruto, however, was already one step ahead. "Got it covered."

His hands flew through formations that were almost automatic by now, chakra sparking in a small, controlled surge. "Kage bunshin no jutsu!"

When the smoke cleared, Kurama made a small sound of surprise as two more Narutos grinned at him.

"Okay, you guys. You know what to do," the original said.

Kurama slid off the bed, out of the way as the first copy scampered up to take Naruto's place under the light covers. The second performed henge no jutsu and then smirked with Kurama's face as the first redhead blinked. Naruto waited gleefully for his response to staring at a mirror image of himself.

"It's a little on the short side," Kurama said finally.

"Shut up," Naruto grumped, a bit disappointed. Most people who weren't used to kage bunshin were at least a little thrown off, which always amused Naruto's inner prankster. "Transformations aren't my specialty. It's close enough. Just be grateful it's not female."

Copy Kurama stuck his tongue out in a childish show of pique that was quite out of character and then climbed into the other bed, settling in. Satisfied that everything was in place, Naruto hopped out of bed, bare feet hitting the cool floor.

"Okay, let's go!"

He turned toward the door, and nearly ran head-long into Yuusuke, who was standing in the hallway wearing the loose cotton shirt and pants that were patient standard in the hospital.

"Hey," Yuusuke said.

"Yuusuke," Kurama's voice was soft, and not all that surprised, considering.

"What are you doing? Sneaking out?" The dark-haired boy's eyes lit up. "Can I come?"

"What are you doing here?" Kurama demanded, ignoring the questions.

That earned him a shrug. "We're just down the hall. It's not like we have anywhere else to go right now. The old guy with the funny hat said he'd find somewhere to put us, but until then, it's free room and board at the hospital." Then, not to be deterred for long, Yuusuke pressed, "So where are we going?"

"Food," Naruto summarized succinctly. "We're hungry."

"Food sounds good," Yuusuke agreed. "I could go for food."

A new voice joined the conversation. "What kind?"

Yuusuke stepped out of the way to make room for Kuwabara as the taller boy stepped up next to him.

"Ramen!" Naruto answered. "But we have to sneak out and do this quickly, or else the nurses will catch us. I can't keep the clones active forever."

"Oh! So, like a raiding party! We're like frat boys from a college. Only with ramen, and not panties."

"It's not a raiding party," Kurama insisted with a long-suffering look.

"And you never went to college," Kuwabara pointed out.

"So?"

"You know, we're going to attract attention standing around like this," Kurama said casually.

Kuwabara shook his head. "The nurses on duty are flirting with one of the night janitors."

"Thank you, Mr. Psychic."

Kuwabara glared briefly at Yuusuke, but didn't take the effort to pursue.

"Even so," Kurama said pointedly, "we should go."

"Out the window!" Though Naruto considered that to be the obvious answer, Yuusuke was shaking his head.

"Where's your sense of adventure?" he demanded. "If we're going to do this, we do it right. We're going out the front."

Naruto waited for the other two to shoot that idea down, but Kurama only smiled, and Kuwabara muttered a half-hearted, "You're crazy." But otherwise seemed willing to go along. Well, they weren't shinobi, so the path of least resistance didn't have to be their prerogative. Being in a team with Sakura and Sasuke had beaten some sense of stealth into Naruto, but through the front was still much more his style. He found himself grinning.

Twenty minutes later, they were at Ichiraku, breathless and laughing, and placing their orders. Kurama and Naruto both ordered extra large pork ramen with extra nori and milk to drink.

"That would've worked a lot better if Urameshi hadn't insisted on humming mood music." Kuwabara placed his order and shot the dark-haired boy an aggravated look.

"A little help from Naruto's clones, and we were fine," Kurama said as he smiled sweetly at the serving girl, who blushed in response.

"You have to teach me that." Yuusuke was leaning his arms on the bar counter, the words finishing the end of a laugh. He'd been mischievously impressed by the kage bunshin, which Naruto had shown off again in their mad escape from the hospital.

"Never teach him that," Kuwabara countered fervently, sitting on Kurama's other side.

"Why not?" Not that Naruto had much intension of teaching a stranger a forbidden technique.

"Just...trust me. You don't want to deal with the consequences. One Urameshi is enough."

Yuusuke smirked. "You're just pissed because I used your head to vault over the wall, aren't you?"

"I've seen you jump thirty feet straight up! The wall was maybe seven. Seven, you asshole!"

Kurama almost choked on a mouthful of milk, trying to laugh and swallow at the same time, which only swung Kuwabara's ire in his direction.

"Stop laughing, Kurama!"

The redhead made a piece offering of one of his pork pieces, which Kuwabara grumbled over until Kurama added another, and then looked far too triumphant about the transaction. Kurama was in the process of poking an apology for playing off his compassion out of the taller man, when a clear, ringing female voice interrupted them.

"NARUTO! What the hell did you do to Sakura?" Ino was standing behind them on the street, her finger pointing accusingly at the blond. Then, in an afterthought, she added with a slightly bewildered look. "And why are you awake and out of the hospital already?"

"Wouldn't she know he was awake if she knew he did something to Sakura?" Kuwabara asked no one in particular, voice low. Both he and Yuusuke had more or less instinctively withdrawn in that Guy-Who-Knows-How-To-Stay-Off-of-Strong-Women's'-Radar way, hunching over in their seats and concentrating their eyes on their meals, though they kept their ears on the conversation.

"I didn't do anything!" Naruto yelled back, though without his usual force. The guilt he'd felt when he'd seen the Look on Sakura's face was back with reinforcements. Her bruised daffodil was insulting him as it died by his bedside. "It was Sasuke's fault!" And it was, the bastard! Why the hell did Naruto have to deal with this?

"Don't you bring him into this, Uzumaki Naruto." Ino's voice was frosty and her eyes were the kind of dangerous that only happened when anyone hinted that her crush might be less than perfect. "Sakura wasn't very coherent when she was telling me about whatever happened, but I got enough of it to know that it was something you did."

"I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING! SASUKE KISSED ME!"

In the ensuing silence, there was a stir from the other boys at the counter.

"Oh my god!" Yuusuke said as if something had finally just sunk in. He was staring at Kurama with a shocked expression. "Hiei kissed you!"

Author's Notes: I finished this just in time to Not Post It, as FFdotnet did upgrading whatnot. Grumble.
Wow. This chapter got stuck for a while there. Um, also, I went to Yaoicon and it was good, and then I spent a lot of distracted time looking at all my pretty merchandise that I spent so much money on. Excuses, excuses. (Sorry sorry for the delay.)

I never meant to influence Naruto's world with this fic. I just meant for the YYH boys to drop in, have some fun while Naruto and Sasuke fumbled their way toward a relationship in their cute dysfunctional way, and then leave. It looks as if those plans are changing as the plot grows details and whatnot. Next chapter is still supposed to be relatively light hearted, though. We'll see how well that goes.

Now--onto that part that amuses only me!

Replies to comments: (You know I adore all of you comment-leaving people. I do. Even if I don't reply to you directly.)

- mkh2 - You requested a list of defined terms, and though you later came back and proved you didn't need one, it's still a good idea, as I'm just sort of writing this as if everyone knows what I'm talking about, which them might not. I'll probably post a list of terms next part. Or, at least a link where some key titles and YYH vocabulary are defined.

- Sierra-Falls - Thank you! Yes, I know that these two series are a bit of a stretch to cross. It was part of the challenge (and the sheer joy I get when I announce what I'm writing to friends; of course, I think I desensitized them a little with my YYH/Rurouni Kenshin crossover Utena fusion)! Thanks for not letting the strangeness weird you out too much.