A/N: Hey, mina-san! I'm good with the update this time! ^.^ One reason is that Kishimoto has not crippled my source of inspiration in the last issues, though I am pretty skeptical about the going-ons... the other is that xox-'.'-K-A-G-O-M-E-'.'-xoxis abandoning me to go visit Japan ::is green with envy:: and I kind of busted my butt to get it done as a farewell-but-get-your-butt-back-soon-and-safely gift. So she's the one to thank for my consistency. ^.^ Now many many thanks to all you guys that stick with the story and extra bear huggies to my reviewers who make me melt into a puddle often. Love you guys!

My anon readers. Mo - Iwao will be explaining what he was doing there, probably in the next chapter. I know I may disappoint in this way, but my stories are really not action based. I have the utmost respect for people who DO write action, but sadly, I know I'm not one of them. Iwao is a vessel for the story and an OC- and I generally try to stay away from OC..- so I will be fleshing him out, but only for the purpose of what happens and why. You know? I hope to explain things a bit better next chappie. Thank you for the feedback and I hope you enjoy this one. Kiki – Woot~ there's another one! ;-) Hope you enjoy. ^.^ Kakashi's Dog - Here I was thinking that you abandoned ship. ;-) Thank you so much! … I think. I don't think I like this "I'll blame you" aspect.. lol I hope you enjoy the new chappie as much. ::coughbrilliantcough:: ^.^

Disclaimer: I wish I owned a little tool that could help me pull out the headphone jack that I somehow pushed into my laptop… I was probably having a cow, but in any case speakers won't work. Owning Naruto could have bought me a new laptop, but- alas- I don't.

The Sun and the Rainfall

Of Cats and Bags

Tossing and turning was not fun. Not fun at all. In fact, it severely agitated him. The more agitated he got, the more he tossed and turned- and so on and so forth. It wasn't that fatigue wasn't enough of an issue either. Kakashi had been training with him all day- quite literally, as he had no idea what his old self would do with what felt to him like infinite spare time. Maybe he was just overtired and adrenaline was kicking in, having his body burning on empty. It had to be one or the other, because it couldn't be the vacant space on the other side of the bed. It couldn't be that the bed sheets were still neatly tucked on that side- and cool, very cool with the absence of a certain someone.

Sasuke flopped on his back and rested his forearm over his eyes, as though some blinding source of light was staring straight at him. Even though it was night. Even though he wouldn't do that facing the sun itself. He did do it though at the thought that he was missing Naruto- missing that guy that he didn't remember, missing how it had felt to be around him, to be held close to him. Every minute, of every hour, of each of the four days that Naruto had been away, the emotion had only grown stronger, until he no longer knew what to do with himself.

"Shit…" he cursed and propped himself up, knees coming to his chest- a new place to rest his forearms.

The view out of his window had been permanently imprinted on his blank mind by then, as he had spent several hours each night just looking out, at the dark outline of the mountains, the starry sky and the pale moon, waxing its way to that brilliant grin that seemed to mock him. Paranoid some? Better that than oversensitive.

The first time that the emotion had crept up on him, he let it perish without a second thought- because it was obviously absurd, obviously he had more important things to figure out than going on this mental merry-go-round. The second time he had blushed, finding that he was coming to terms with it very fast. What was it? What had been in his heart for the blonde that had survived this state and made each thought of his gravitate towards him?

"Shit." He cursed again, bounding out of his bed, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides as he paced the room like a caged animal.

Charcoal eyes moved to the pillow next to his, where, each of these four nights that Naruto had been away, he would place the note he had left him- because his sleep was restless and shallow and he often awakened to look at it. A silly, naïve part of him would be reminded of the promise scribbled on the paper- which wasn't a promise really, but Sasuke had come to view it as a binding contract between him and the other boy. The paper was now wrinkly with wear, as Sasuke carried it with him wherever he went, including training, which had resulted in an asinine accident. During one of Kakashi's more advanced attacks, one of the kunai would have torn into his pocket- and most likely the note- if he evaded it- last minute as it were- so he didn't. Instead, he brought a hand up and caught the blade proficiently enough- though not entirely as it cut into his palm. He had refused to see the Hokage about this, so Kakashi had bandaged it for him, gibing that Naruto would beat his ass when he came back. That was a joke, right?

Ri-ight. He brought his bandaged hand up for inspection. It didn't even hurt anymore- that should earn him some brownie-points, right? Ri-ight.

Disgusted with himself- with all this- he took off his pajamas and pulled a black shirt- that again had the Uchiha crest, begging the question of whether he had any clothes that didn't have it- and black pants from his closet, getting dressed quickly. He needed some air- badly. Half-way to the door he realized that he had left without the note- for the first time in four days. Bothered as he was, he shook his head, deciding that that was fine. A step later found him doubling back to the room and retrieving it with a groan at himself. Passing by Kakashi's door, he heard the other ninja snore quite loudly- so much so that Sasuke had to wonder what the chances were that he was faking it. With a shrug he continued on his way- out, anywhere but that room whose four walls were closing in on him, suffocating him.

The moment he stepped on the stone patio, two thoughts occurred to him. One was that this would be his first time going anywhere unescorted since he had woken up. The other was that he had no idea what to do with this newfound freedom. With a shrug at himself, he started walking idly, letting his feet carry him towards familiar paths from the previous days. He walked past Ichiraku's Ramen, now dark and closed down, the grocery store, a bookstore and then further towards houses that he hadn't seen in his short visits for lunch or dinner. He had been about to continue towards what Kakashi had called the Hokage Tower, when his feet came to a halt and a strange sensation coursed his body.

Right in front of him all he could see was an apartment complex that seemed a little bit run down, but the feeling was unmistakable- he had been there before. His heart raced- was this a memory? There were three floors to it and he started climbing each one, passing in front of doors with the hope that behind one of them there'd be memories, chasing that strange feeling of recognition. It was one such door- plain and white- that he had almost passed by, but instead stopped. Sasuke faced it, pressed his ear to it to listen for any sound from the inside, but all he heard was his own heart beating. After a moment, in which he forced himself to forget how late it was, he knocked on the door and waited. He knocked enough times and waited long enough to feel confident that no one was inside, before he looked for the window.

The window, located on the side of the building, was creaked a little open and easily let him in a small bedroom. A shiver ran down his spine as he stepped inside and he didn't know if his heart came to a stop or simply exploded in his chest when he saw the two picture frames on top of the dresser to his right. In slow steps, he walked closer and picked them up. In the first one he could see himself, Kakashi, Naruto and Sakura- they were young, but his old self was making an unfamiliar gruff face whereas the bothered look, directed at him no less, on the blonde's face didn't surprised him. Naruto did seem like the type to have a stupid expression like that on his face. The other one was of him and Naruto in mission gear. They had their backs to whoever had snap the picture, but he was smiling at the blonde's hidden face.

"Who are you?" he asked the boy in the picture.

By then he knew that it had been Naruto's apartment that had beckoned him. Frame in hand, he walked to the small closet, checking to see if he had left articles of clothing there as Naruto had at his place. There were some solid colors there that didn't permanently damage one's eyesight, but it was a box that caught his attention- a carton box in the bottom of the closet that was neatly tucked in the back corner. Sasuke picked it up and examined it- nothing on it, no hint of its contents- before taking it with him. He settled on the bed, set the picture of him and Naruto beside him and placed the box on his lap. After a moment's consideration to the blonde's privacy, he opened it and skimmed through it.

It was nothing but notes. I'll be back in a week. He blinked, his mind drifting to the note in his pocket. There's food in the fridge, don't let it rot while I'm gone. The handwriting wasn't the same as on his note- wasn't Naruto's. Why would you even try (underlined twice) to get away with last night? My place. Tonight. A strange, new feeling bubbled up inside him- possession. The familiar tone in the notes was getting to him. Most of them were 'see you in x days' or some kind of arrangement. But then- Sakura said that you and Lee have another bet coming up. You learned nothing from Kakashi, Usuratonkachi. Sasuke blinked. Usuratonkachi. That word had drawn a reaction. Without thinking, he fished a pen from the nightstand and scribbled on the box- "Naruto"- then compared it with the note.

It was his own handwriting. The author of the notes had been none other than him. "I'll be damned…" he muttered.

"Only if you don't have a good reason for being here."

His head snapped up to the doorway, where Naruto stood in full gear and not looking particularly happy either. What was the expression about the cat and the bag? He was not supposed to have been caught during his little reconnoiter expedition. As it were, he figured that the only thing worse than being mortified, was looking mortified.

"That's my handwriting." He said matter-of-factly- and quite lamely. "There must be hundred of notes here."

Naruto dropped his backpack on the floor. "Just over a hundred, actually." He corrected quite evenly, while watching him cautiously. "What happened to your hand?"

His hand. Right. "A small cut." He said as haughtily as he could muster. "Kakashi tried to play rough."

It didn't sound entirely right but had been uttered with enough conviction. The blonde nodded after a moment, eyes narrowing a little. "What are you doing here, Sasuke?"

Sasuke considered his situation. There was a box of private notes on his lap. There was a picture of the two of them beside him. Above all, he was in Naruto's apartment, pretty late at night. Even trying to make something up was ridiculous and would only make him look worse- which was a stretch, considering the circumstances, but nowhere near impossible. Wet cat out of the bag? "Looking for answers." He responded honestly.

His honesty was not too compelling though, because the other boy frowned at him, tensing. "To what questions?"

What questions… The older woman had told him to trust his instincts, not his reason, so it had been instinct that he had allowed to bring him inside the small apartment- instinct that had draw him to the blonde, who had been so terribly cautious around him since his release. That had troubled him because it seemed to him that Naruto had been the person that everyone turned to for a reaction each time he had so much as opened his mouth.

"Who are you?" he asked- with frustration, with a sinking feeling of inadequacy.

The blonde sighed and rolled his eyes. "I thought your problem was memory loss, not going senile." He muttered. "I am Naruto. I am your friend and teammate. I-"

"No." he cut. "Who are you- to me?"

The question hang in the air for a moment that those blue eyes studied him- that same way that they had his first night out of the hospital, searching for something in his. "I brought back the ninja who did this to you. Baa-chan is already with him, so maybe we will have some answers tomorrow…" he said absently, before blinking back into focus. "Until she says otherwise, you need to remember on your own." He paused. "I don't know what you were thinking, but this isn't like you."

That little trailing comment made something snap inside him. He set the box beside him and got to his feet. "How am I supposed to know what is like me?" he asked, taking a step closer with each word until he stood in front of Naruto, who now seemed nervous, even as he didn't back away. "How do I know what I've told you-" he met those cobalt eyes and his breath caught at just how beautiful they looked in the faint light of the moon- "and what I've kept secret?"

Even as the other boy held his gaze, his voice became quieter as he replied. "I suppose you'll have to decide, if finding out is worth the risk."

They stood there, facing each other and then, without thinking, Sasuke did the unthinkable- he reached over and cupped the tan face in his hands. Naruto gasped and tried to move back almost as though as his touch was burning him, but Sasuke's pale hands held firmly in place. When the fighting stopped and those blue eyes met his again, he continued, "Why doesn't this feel wrong?"

Naruto released a ragged breath, a tan hand curling around the Uchiha's wrist and pulling half-heartedly. "Teme-"

"I was told to trust my instincts and just looking at you is a battlefield." He ignored the faint effort, finding that his courage to press on was waning. He hadn't been sure what he had expected to find, but it had definitely not been the fear he was experiencing. Desire, yes- that strange, thoroughly unwholesome desire- but crippling fear too. "Who are you?" he asked again, more than merely frustrated, "Why do you have so much power over me? Whatever it is, you can only help me by giving it a name, a history…"

The blonde closed his eyes for a moment and when he looked back they were surprisingly veiled and guarded. "You want to hear the happy end of the story, Sasuke, but that's not all there is to it." He said quietly, this time moving away and Sasuke letting him. He breathed deeply. "You tried to kill me."

That felt like something sharp just stabbed into his heart. There was no way… No… "No." he repeated out loud. There was simply no way that he would have-

"More than once." He continued in a level tone. "You betrayed Konoha- is that the history you're looking for?"

Sasuke just frowned at him. Was he angry at him? Was that his defense against the answers to his questions? He felt like a petulant child, who blabbered nonsense without any regard to what his words meant to the receiver. Maybe he had hurt the blonde terribly, maybe he had done so many things that were wrong that he had never found the nerve to make things right and what he was feeling- all that he was feeling- had been sealed in a place inside him and him alone. Maybe he deserved it.

Naruto sighed- something almost knowing crossing his gaze as though he could tell what the Uchiha was thinking- and sat on the bed, his eyes trailing to the picture and the notes. "There's a lot to remember Sasuke… and a lot of it only made sense to you." He picked up a random note, fiddling with it.

Sasuke chanced a step closer, his hands falling into his pockets- like he had noticed himself doing a lot- and finding Naruto's message. "Where are your notes to me?"

The blonde boy looked up surprised at the question. "I keep them." He said simply.

That made him blink a couple of times. It made no sense. "What-?" he started, then figured that the better question was, "Why?"

"Why..?" Naruto shrugged as though as he had never thought about it before. "You give them to me after I come back. You always say that they don't matter to you after that."

"Oh…" Again, he was surprised with his older self. If how he had felt about this last note had been any indication, he had to have lied. Or maybe the truth was that each of those notes was the same kind of binding contract as the one he had and once Naruto honored them with his return, they were meaningless. Or maybe he had been too much of a coward to confess how much they really did mean to him."So why do you keep them?"

That drew a smile from the other boy who pulled another box from under the bed- identical to the one from the closet- and took the lid off fishing a piece of paper. It looked miserably worn. It looked- "Because they always look like this…" he said with some amusement, wagging the small note in Sasuke's field of vision. "I get a kick out of imagining you fidgety and pissed off."

It looked exactly like it. In fact, all of Naruto's notes to him looked exactly like the one in his pocket. "… Like this?" he said, daring to show it to Naruto, like it was a piece of a puzzle.

Cobalt eyes widened in the darkness of the small room and lifted to meet his gaze for a speechless moment. "Yeah…" he said, his voice coming out thick as though struggling past a lump in his throat. "Exactly like that."

There was hope that he swore not to crush this time- he was in there dammit. Inside his head, trapped and lost, but in there. Sasuke chanced another step ahead, bringing himself right in front of Naruto, who was still watching him. Truth- only the truth would do. "I'd say that it's because I carried them around everywhere with me… that they look like that."

The intended effect of his confession had not been that surprised arch of brows, but at least this time he didn't find dejection in those eyes. Maybe it had been the right thing to say, because Naruto made room for him beside him on the bed. "You… I… I didn't know that." He said quietly, eyes focusing on the wrinkled note on his palm. Suddenly he looked up again, this time his gaze steady and demanding. "Do you want to remember, Sasuke?" he asked grave serious. "Because there's more bad than good there… and you have the chance to be free…"

It was his turn to look surprised. Sasuke sat down beside him and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his mouth on his intertwined fingers. It drew a smile from Naruto, interrupting his thoughts. "What?"

"You always do that when you think." The blonde said twiddling his thumbs.

"Is that so..?" He arched a brow, but smiled a little. He was in there. "I don't feel free…I feel…" he started and sighed, "… lost. I feel half and I don't even know what part I'm missing." He admitted, feeling lame, afraid of saying too much or too little. Truth was that with each moment he had spent around Naruto, with each day that he had spent missing him, he had formulated a pretty good idea what he had been missing. Dark eyes darted to the boy beside him as he added, "I don't even know if I ever had that missing half… even before. But if I did…" he noticed that Naruto's artery was pulsating at the side of his neck with a strong, hard heartbeat at his words, "And even if I didn't… the answer is yes, I want to remember. I'll take the good with the bad."

Saying all that filled Sasuke with a sense of accomplishment- again, in spite of how lame and sappy it all rang outside the confines of his brain. That mental pat on the back was short lived when he realized that Naruto was staring back at him like he had popped a second head. He frowned and folded his arms- which made the other boy chuckle softly. Who the hell was he to him? Who were they to each other? Uchiha Sasuke swore that the day he found out, sort of remembering that he had molested Naruto's pet parrot, the blonde was in so much trouble.

Aggravation quickly gave way to a new question that he asked with some hesitation. "Do you want me to remember?"

All amusement drained from the tan face as Naruto closed his eyes for a moment. "Yes… I want you to remember." He said evenly, then a small smile faltered at the curve of his mouth. "But even if you don't, it's enough that you're alive. That you're here."

What could he possibly say to that? Sasuke had run out of sappy and intelligent things to say so they sat there in companionable silence amidst boxes of old notes. It was comfortable and undemanding, enough that he found himself just leaning against the bedrail a little more comfortably. Quite literally, he could not remember when he had last slept soundly and there was something about the place that just allowed his fatigue overwhelm his limps- a feeling of safety. The place oozed of Naruto's presence. He closed his eyes for a moment.

Next moment he thought he heard garbled words and felt arms moving him. He mumbled something in protest, but then his head was settled on a soft pillow that smelled a little of honeysuckle and sunflowers- and he was just too content. And it was his sleeping mind that he blamed for the lack of filter between his brain and his mouth. "Ne… Naruto…"

The blonde was in the process of covering him and paused only for a moment. "Sleep, Teme… you look worse than I do." He paused then added. "And you have some explaining to do about your hand tomorrow. Don't think I'll just buy into your crap."

The concern in his voice and manners made Sasuke smile a little for a moment and there was a hazy, cotton-like sensation in his mind that numbed his hesitation in uttering his next words. "Have we ever done… anything inappropriate?"

The other boy froze. "…Inappropriate?" he repeated slowly.

Sasuke opened his eyes a little bit and found that guarded expression on Naruto's face. The blonde knew perfectly well what he was being asked. "As in… something that shouldn't have happened."

Naruto shook his head at that. "Never."

"But something has happened between us." He pressed, moving towards the wall, allowing inviting space between them. "Something that the rest don't know about."

He sat down, accepting the quiet invitation, for whatever it was. "A lot has happened between us that they don't know about."

Wasn't that cryptic. He closed his eyes again. "More serious than me almost killing you?"

Sasuke could easily hear the smile in Naruto's voice. "Maybe… I had never thought of it like that."

Another quiet moment passed between them, before Naruto started to rise. The Uchiha creaked an eye open. "Don't make me invite you to your own bed."

The blonde's right hand flew to his messy hair, scratching the back of his head nervously. "Uh… Teme-"

"I'm not looking to have a conversation right now either." He cut, this time not bothering to open his eyes and sounding sufficiently aggravated- though he wasn't- as he pulled down the covers. "Get in."

Naruto scoffed. "What's next? Tying me down to make sure I stay put?"

Sasuke smiled a little at the thought. "Only if I have to." He muttered sleepily.

It took what seemed like several moments before Naruto stopped sitting there, tense and indecisive, but eventually he lay down. At first he had to have quite miraculously found a way to balance on the frame of the bed just to have some distance, because, though the bed was small, there was enough space between them. Not ample by any stretch of the imagination, but quite a bit of it taking into account both their bodies. As the night progressed though, Sasuke realized that there was a soothing kind of warmth emanating from very close to him- from a body that had matched his position comfortably, almost spooning against him.

He smiled a little, his body telling him that this was alright- that this was right- and closed his eyes drifting back to sleep with a single thought, Such an Usuratonkachi…, and knew he had decided on his pet name for Naruto.

And this is chappie 9. ^.^ Assuming that all goes well, there should be another 2 or 3 chapters to this story… Thank you all in advance for reading and I hope you enjoy!

Smooches! Ja, ne?

M.