Four Calling Birds

~*G*O*L*D*E*N*~

"What is that sound?" Sasuke exclaimed as the door to the elevator opened to her floor.

There were a bunch of her neighbors standing around her apartment murmuring.

"Oh, no," Sasuke mumbled. "This better not be a perverted gift."

Sasuke pushed her way through the crowd trying to be as unnoticeable as possible. When she reached the front of the crowd, she thankfully just saw four electronic parrots sitting on the ground. They were programmed to say "call me" in Naruto's voice.

With a sigh, she opened her door and grabbed the birds and the envelope posted on the door. Once inside, she closed and locked the door. It was a good thing most of her neighbors were just as antisocial as her and did not ask many questions. The gift was generic enough that as long as she kept a low profile for a while, her neighbors would not bother her.

First thing she had to do was figure out how to turn off the annoying electronic voices of the parrots. When she could not find an off switch, she just pulled out the batteries. Hearing one Naruto voice was more than enough, but four was downright torture … sort of.

Three of the parrots she shoved into the coat closet, but one she picked up along with its batteries and placed it on her desk just in case she maybe wanted to hear it sometime for some strange reason. She probably would not … but just in case she ever did … however unlikely.

After she had put all her books away, she sat down at her desk and opened the envelope that came with the birds.

To my quiet true love

On the fourth day of Christmas,

My true love gave to me

Four calling birds

P.S. Call me

XXX-555-X2X4

Sasuke fingered the note gently. She considered whether or not she should really call him. They had parted ways kind of awkwardly. She did not know whether they had had a fight or what.

Besides, he did not seem to want to answer any of her questions, so what use would calling do. I could hear his voice. The thought startled her. It had come to her head so naturally. Why?

…

Well, he did not seem to want to talk to her anyway, so why should she call?

She threw the note in the trash can next to her desk and pulled out her books for tomorrow's final. But, for some reason, she was not able to focus. So much for her amazing ability to focus.

"Are you guys hungry?" she asked the turtles in order to distract herself from thinking about calling Naruto.

After going to the fridge and pulling out some of the containers Naruto had bought her for the turtles, she started feeding the turtles. It was kind of disturbing to feed them worms, but Naruto had been thoughtful enough to get small containers that she just had to open and put in the cage without having to touch the worms directly.

Naruto may not have known Calculus or how to predict an acid-base reaction or the history of the French Revolution, but he knew about people. He could easily pick up on the hearts of others, what they hated, what they needed, what they loved.

On Sasuke's first visit to the café, Naruto had brought over a drink before she had ordered and it had been exactly what she had been wanting. Sasuke had not asked anything and Naruto had not told her anything on that visit, but her unspoken curiosity had brought her back the next day and the day after and the day after.

A week passed. Sasuke would come in and sit down, Naruto would bring her a drink, Sasuke would pay, and then leave all without a single word exchanged between the two. On the eighth day, Sasuke finally built up the courage to ask, "How do you do that?"

Naruto just smiled. "Different coffees are for different things. You needed something to warm you up without too much sugar or caffeine to make you jittery so you can focus on your schoolwork."

Sasuke was only momentarily impressed. "You saw me carrying my school books," she reasoned.

"Yup," he agreed. "You like to be in complete control of your actions. Your bag is perfectly organized and your clothes are always neat and straight."

Sasuke scowled and left the café without even paying. She did not like being examined like that. However, the guilt over not paying made her skulk back to the café the next morning.

"Here," Naruto said right as she entered the door. He handed her a steaming cup of some darkish liquid. "Yesterday was on the house. I'll start you on a tab. That way you can just pay once a month. That should be easier for a busy student like you. Although I'm sure a smart person like you can handle anything."

Sasuke took the cup without thanking him, but Naruto did not seem to mind and just continued to smile. She sat down in the corner of the café facing away from Naruto … and smiled.

Over the next weeks, Naruto slowly started to talk to her. At first, it was just a 'hello' or 'how was class today." He waited until Sasuke seemed comfortable with answering those small talk questions before asking her anything serious about her life.

In hindsight, Sasuke knew that the reason she had opened up to Naruto was because he had allowed her to make the first move so that she felt in control of the situation. Even when Naruto messed up and said something stupid, he always had a weird way of making her feel better. He let her insult him and make him feel stupid because then it felt like whatever he had done wrong was not a big problem.

Naruto always let her come to him with anything that she wanted to know about him or anything that was bothering her. He had always answered any of her questions before no matter how embarrassing or trivial. It had become natural for her to always get an answer from him, so when he did not answer her earlier, she felt annoyed.

But, maybe he deserved some leeway after three years of answering every single question she had asked. Maybe he had a good reason for not answering. After all this time, she figured she owed him the benefit of the doubt.

Her eyes wandered over to the parrot. As another distraction, she tried to figure out how to work the thing. "Really, Naruto," she sighed, "you should have at least left me with the instruction manual."

After turning the thing over and over a couple of times, she spotted a small switch on the underside of the left wing. She switched the parrot off before putting the batteries back in. The parrot did not make any noise, so it must really be off.

She stared at it. Slowly, she lifted the wing and switched the thing on.

"Call me!"

"Call me!"

As she listened to Naruto's electronic voice, she seemed to become hypnotized by it. Before she had realized it, she had picked up her cell phone and dialed the phone number she had already committed to memory.

The phone rang five times before Naruto answered the phone, but he did not say anything.

"Call me!" They both were startled by the sound of the parrot. Naruto started laughing on the other side of the phone and Sasuke scrambled to turn off the parrot.

"So *chuckle* you got the 'calling birds' I left you," Naruto said between his laughs.

"Yeah," she said, smiling widely (since he could not see her face).

They fell into silence again.

"Naruto." ~ "Sasuke." They said at the same time.

"Let me go first," Naruto said. "I think I know what you are going to say anyway."

"Okay," she agreed.

"I'm sorry I left you hanging," he said slowly. "I know you are curious about why I am doing this, especially since I never gave you gifts for Christmas or your birthday or anything before this, but I want it to be a surprise. I want to get through with my whole … plan before I … explain it.

"You know how the song goes. There are eight more days until Christmas and I worked really hard to set this up. If I tell you what I am doing … or why, then it will ruin all the surprises I have planned. Can you just wait until Christmas?"

Sasuke thought about it for a moment. On one hand, she hated surprises. She liked knowing what was going to happen and spent a lot of time and energy making sure she would be well prepared for anything that was coming up in her future.

Her brother had given her gifts before, but she was always fairly certain of what he would get her and knew he would never get her anything offensive or scary or unusable. Naruto was different. He was such an unpredictable person and she had no idea what she was in for if he was left to his own devices.

On the other hand, it was definitely exciting. Before she had met Naruto, her life had been very dull. She had just gone through the motions of what an Uchiha did. Normally, she would never drink anything without knowing what it was, but when Naruto had started bringing her surprise drinks, she had liked discovering each new flavor he brought her.

The gifts so far had been … strange at the very least, but they had made her feel, even if it was anger or frustration or embarrassment that she had felt. Uchihas were not supposed to be emotional and after the death of her parents, it had been easy to repress her emotions. Naruto had slowly been drawing out her emotions and if she allowed him to continue with his crazy plan, he would certainly draw out even more emotions.

The only uncertainty was whether or not she really wanted to start feeling again. Could she give Naruto a chance to change her?

"Yes," she answered quickly and then hung up the phone.

Naruto had no idea what she was really saying 'yes' to, but he was happy anyway. She had called him and had even listened patiently to all he had said. Her voice had given him hope that maybe they really could become lovers.

~*A*N*G*E*L*~
P.S. The next chapter will involve a reference to the Grinch movie with Jim Carey, so you might want to go look it up if you haven't seen it before.