Summary: AU. Naruto is trying to get Gaara out of the mental asylum; Sasuke is trying to keep him in, and Neji is supposed to write all this down in his criminal assessment report.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of its characters.
Warnings: Yaoi, boy x boy, some gore and violence, and possibly a bit of cussing ahead.
"Just For a Long While"
By CloveeD
Prologue - A Window Now
They were a quiet bunch, the prisoner transfer guards. He didn't mind the silence that much, though. The leather mouth guard fastened over his mouth made sure of that anyway.
When he stepped passed the yellow line that had the power to divide the ouside world and the mental asylum, the security guards that had ridden the transfer truck with him immediately switched the prison handcuffs on his wrists with a strange set of restrains that he himself had never seen before. It was a bit heavier in weight than the set he had in his prison time, stainless steel around his wrists and two sets of leather belts bounded up to his elbows, and it had a bright red line across the place where the keyhole usually was. The asylum guards, six of them in greyish blue uniforms, each swiped a small red card across the bright red line on his new handcuffs, and then silently led him toward his supposed future cell at a cautious pace.
Apparently, it was an unsaid rule at the mental asylum to walk along the black line on the floor whenever a patient walks on the main hallway that led to the only gateway out of the asylum.
Well, he didn't know, since Gaara had never been to a mental asylum before this. However, one of the rougher looking asylum guards had not seemed to think much of his unsaid excuse, and had whacked him clean and quickly across the thigh with his security staff when Gaara had started to walk a little to the left.
"...that hurt." Gaara mumbled against the mouth guard, quite unperturbed, and then watched with disinterest as the guards seemed to tense around him the instant he had made a sound. Their shoulders uplifted a little, muscles tensing up, and fingers tightly gripping their security staffs in silent alarm. They glanced at each other fleetingly, each assessing the situation in their heads as to whether or not this mentally disturbed criminal would risk causing something on his first day of transfer.
They were expecting a ruckus. They're nervous, Gaara oberved. Was he really that scary?
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The room he had been assigned to was actually better than he had imagined.
Unlike prison cells, which had only thick cement walls, poor lighting, and cramped spaces, this room in the asylum actually had its walls painted white (It was still thick cement underneath, just...nicer), and the bed (beds, Gaara noted, there were two of them) was a lot more comfortable than the thin mattress back in his prison cell. Gaara allowed himself a small inner smile, and then began checking out the iron bars in front of the window.
It was nice to have a window, even if it was barred.
After they had removed his mouth guard and adjusted the leather bounds on his arms so that he could move his arms just enough to use meal utensils, they quickly gave him a run down of the rules and scheduled activities for his stay. It was a pretty long list, but Gaara thought that it could all have been narrowed down to three basic rules. No escape. No violence. One meal every six hours. Other than that, if you replace all the character settings of 'prisoners' with 'mental patients', there really wasn't that much difference on a general level.
Naruto really did a good job on getting him to a better place. Not that this room was a five-star hotel look-alike, but having a cell that could actually be called a 'room' was a true luxury. Naruto had worked hard for him to receive this treatment. Gaara himself had worked hard, also, to keep the administrator's records clear of his violent actions back in prison. Violence was unavoidable in that place, considering the nature of prisoners' interactions were to survive between gang allies and the worst of bullies.
Gaara had not stayed in prison for long, only a year and a half. It was because of the long trial over his crimes that he had to stay for that long. Prison life had been a little worse than what he had expected. First and foremost, his red hair was an easy attraction for attention. In the evening of the first day that he had stepped into that prison, men had ganged up on him in a remote corner, and had attempted to force him. To gang rape him.
He was more surprised than scared, since he had underestimated the frequency of these kinds of things happening in prisons. He quickly berated himself in his mind for being careless, and then proceeded to rip out the nearest butch's eyeball with two fingers. And then it was easy. Because the surrounding prisoners were shocked for a second or two, he had the chance to break another man's wrist in order to take the steel pipe from the man's hand.
He knocked two more prisoners out, and then he started to laugh.
For all that, he had to enter into an isolation cell for a whole month. Eight other prisoners spent the same month in the hospital, some had to stay even longer due to broken bones.
In that timeless, complete darkness, Gaara conversed with the sneering, teasing voice in his mind.
-
"I...I don't know how to help you if you keep doing this...!" Naruto's voice had came from the other side of the glass after the month of isolation was over. The man had an energetic way of talking, a little more dramatic than Gaara would've put it, but it was a change of pace. It was interesting to listen to Naruto talk. "Look, Gaara, Gaa-chan, I believe you. I know that you must have had a really good reason to start something, but if something like this is ever recorded down by the administrators, there is just no way I can get you out of here within a year!"
As some sort of apologetic response, he had lowered his head a little at the time, soft, red hair falling over his lowered eyelashes.
Naruto's attempted stern expression didn't stand a chance. Quickly a worried look replaced whatever the blonde had in mind to 'lecture Gaara into listening to him', and Naruto quickly adjusted, "Uh, er, maybe that was a little harsh, but it was the truth...Aww...don't look so sad, Gaa-chan...want me to tell you a joke?"
Ah, there, the idiot was back. "No." Gaara said quickly, and offered the nervous blonde a small, rare smile in hopes of calming him down. The smile worked, in a way, leaving Naruto more stunned than calmed, but that was also fine with Gaara.
It was fine.
It was all fine with Gaara, as long as he got to see Naruto. As long as he knew that Naruto was waiting for him in a better, safe place.
The blonde was, in all aspects, a star. One of the top, hottest current rock music singer in the music circle. (Which suited him just fine, Gaara thought, since the idiot had nothing if not his energy bursting through his voice.) Successful enough at his young age, enough for somebody else to want him dead. And so, naturally, Gaara was hired.
Naruto was a really easy target. The blonde was spontaneous, loved to run all over the place whenever he had the chance, and did not always like to let his security guards tail him like annoying police dogs. Gaara had easily found many chances to take the singer out with a sniper, or slit his throat walking by, or poison his next bowl of ramen -- but at the same time, to his surprise, Gaara found it a little difficult to go through with the killing.
He would've liked to use 'love at the first sight' as an excuse, but the client would have looked at him funny.
So the killer took his time, using the excuse of 'getting close to the target', he bumped into Naruto in one of the more-often-visited ramen shops as if it was a pure accident, and started talking about the rainy weather recently. Naruto had no trouble continuing the conversation after that; it was the singer's nature to use his voical cords whenever he had the chance and the person to talk to.
"For a redhead, you're pretty shy!" Naruto had laughed and said on their first date, two days after their first meeting, and Gaara had proceeded to steal the slice of beef from between the blonde's chopsticks coolly. "No I'm not."
"Not a true redhead, or not shy?" The tall blonde purred, grinning seductively as he lightly touched his own lips with the chopsticks he held.
Gaara peered at him for a bit, and then let a small smirk grace his lips, "You'd like to know, wouldn't you?"
-
The new patient uniform was a pale grey; nothing was remotely interesting about the shade, or the lack of color. The top and bottom were both thin in fabric and loose in cut. Not terribly attractive, but attraction was probably the last thing one wanted in places like prisons and mental asylums.
They had plead mental disorders and brain-washing at the court. When Naruto's manager (now fired, of course, and in place was a new, eccentric guy called Scarecrow or something along those lines) had found out about Naruto's new boyfriend, Gaara's, true identity, the normally composed business woman had panicked and called the police on Gaara, who had just woke up in Naruto's arms, a little gruggy and sleepy, rubbing his eyes as if he was the new species of lazy kitten on the market.
Naruto had offered to go into hiding with him.
With him.
Gaara, still rather sleepy at that moment, was visibly stunned by the blonde's declaration. It was a lot that the singer was offering. It was serious. It was almost as if Naruto was...He didn't continue that thought, because then the police sirens could be heard from the ground floor of Naruto's apartment.
"No." Gaara had said quite calmly, causing Naruto's rare serious expression to turn into a puddle of hurt and pouts.
"Why---?"
"It's a good chance." The killer had said quietly, almost shyly, "I can use this to excuse myself..."
"From what?"
Gaara rolled his eyes at the blonde, "You know...this business I'm in..."
"But you'd have to go to jail!" Naruto cried, despite being taller than Gaara, he was the one nuzzling the redhead's neck in childish denial, "You'd have to LEAVE me! I don't want you to go to jail! There are BAD people in there!!"
"Naruto, I am one of those bad people, in case you haven't noticed."
"But you're different!!" Naruto protested, hugging him tighter.
"That's just because I'm in love with you." Gaara stated rather coolly, leaving Naruto struggling between smiling like an idiot at that statement and pouting at Gaara's cool attitude about it all.
Leave it to me. I'll take care of you.
...To Be Continued...
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Author's Notes: Sasuke and Neji will each appear one by one in the coming chapters. I was reading a prison manga when I was writing this, so it turned out feeling more depressing than I wanted it to. Maybe the mood will change when I get to the next chapter or something, hopefully.
I also want to warn people ahead: In my mind, Gaara is the uke. The bottom bishonen in the yaoi relationship if you want me to spell it out for you. Although it might seem like he's the seme in the relationship, it's just because he's a controlling, cool-headed, complicated guy. And I like the ukes to be like that.
And last but not the least, please tell me what you think. I have no solid cookies to give, but virtual chocolate cakes are not a problem.
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