The Warm Bride
Chapter two: Warm Embraces
Author's note: -blink- Wow. Thank you all for your reviews. I hate being cliché, and I felt like the last chapter was cliché x2. I wasn't so enthusiastic because well—I dunno, it was cliché and trite and all the things that make my organs shut down. I adore my laptop, ooohh I could just melt into it. Yay! More smut time…or minor smut. Um, how about—Hardly-smut-but-leading-to-it-could-be-foreplay-could-be-charater-development. Please review!
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Avoidance. A very un-cheery and quite bleak word that is literally defined as 'the prolonged act of avoiding.' Naruto had been for the past three days living his life in this 'prolonged act of avoiding' and he found avoidance a rather lovely word. Except for the few instances he had been confined to covering in moldy trashcans, avoidance was really working out for him. He complacently concluded that he had to be good at this whole 'hiding' thing; he had only been unveiled a couple of clumsy times, but even then—he had simply bolted leaving his raven-haired assailant with scarcely anytime to figure out just what that strange orange blur was.
Yes, he decided as he ducked into the black mouth of an alley and crouched behind several bulbous trash bags, I am amazing at this. No, not just amazing. He was the master—The undisputed champion of keeping away from gross perverts and—
"Naruto!" A strident voice reverberated off the dank, brick walls. Suddenly, one of the vital trash bags guarding him soared through the air and a perturbed Sakura stood in its place, smiling sweetly down at him. Naruto felt a chill rush his arms. To the amateur's eye, the delightful, well-mannered girl would seem to be grinning kindly down at a fallen friend; but Naruto was trained. He saw the corners of her mouth twitching madly to maintain the saccharine smile and her eyes which were squinted terrifyingly into two jade needles, ready and willing to pierce. She was pissed and he felt, all of a sudden, vulnerable.
"Where the hell have you been? You're an hour late!" She bellowed, swooping down, seizing his ear and pulling him up by it.
"Sakura-chan!" The lively blonde whined as he swatted hopelessly at his aggressor.
"Gah, you're even worse then Kakashi. He hasn't showed up either." She stated more calmly as she tugged him out of the alley and into the swarming Konoha streets by his reddening, tender ear.
It was the busiest time of the day; the market vendors were switching their dark signs on to flash 'open' ostentatiously, hoping to catch the eye of someone with a pocket flooded with cash; older ladies hobbled down the road in round, saggy clumps, clasping weaved baskets close to their bosoms, fearful some ninja punk would thieve their freshly acquired products. Ninja teams trekked through the bright village they protected with half-bored, half-determined eyes, clearly on their way to foresee a mission. A couple of stray, grungy-looking children chased after one another until their eyes connected with the sight of Naruto's struggle. He was compelled to pummel them when they pointed and laughed at his obvious disadvantage but Sakura only tugged harder and he was forced to obey for the price of his sensitive ear.
"Even though I've enjoyed the alone time with Sasuke-kun, it was really starting to bother me. Kakashi-sensei really needs to start setting a better example for us, especially having someone as impressionable as you on our team. What were you doing in that alley anyway?"
Naruto narrowly comprehended the words through his stinging ear. All that seemed to stick and envelop his mind, like thick honey, was the word 'Sasuke-kun'. He groaned as they reached the bench where they always met and felt his insides chill over as if they were stuck in the freezer for too long. There, sitting like a pampered prince on his ornate throne, was Sasuke. The Uchihia's eyes shimmered as they landed on him Struggling to hide his nervousness, Naruto glared hastily back.
Sakura proudly exclaimed, "Got him!" And finally released his ear which he quickly latched unto to ease the throbbing.
"I see that." The almighty ass-prince stated, leering at Naruto like a wolf eyes a free slab of red dripping meat.
Confrontation… Confrontation! He was definitely not ready for confrontation! What was he to say? What if Sasuke said something first? The blonde's head began speeding with anxious thoughts. Why is he grinning at me like that? Why can't he be normal? What the hell is wrong with him? What did he mean by bride exactly? What is Sakura going to think when he spits out something icky? What am I going to do? What can I do? Oh god, what can I do?
Firstly, he decided he'd attempt to calm down, but that stare. Damn that stare! That unwavering, haughty black gaze that examined him, measured him, and summed him up. He wanted to destroy it; Shatter it—so no one could see it and guess that he was the shameful object of a loner's perversion. Abruptly, his mind flashed an image of a few nights before when he was sprawled beneath Sasuke's warm weight with a tepid whisper flickering through his ear.
What the—The bastard!
It only took a matter of moments for Naruto to launch at his rival, a curled fist prepared to deliver a livid punch across his stupid, pale cheek. However, he was suddenly halted by a hand that grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. Kakashi had arrived, once again, infuriatingly, in the knick of time.
"Yo." He piped, examining Sasuke then Naruto with a lethargic gray eye. "Isn't it a little early to be fighting?"
"Yes, I didn't even say anything yet." Declared Sasuke, crossing his arms and standing up. An impish, familiar glint glossed over his teammates eyes. Naruto knew this spark—He had recognized it whenever Sasuke said something weird.
Please don't say anything—Please don't say anything--!
"It seems just by my presence he's filled with the need to be close to me."
DAMNIT!
With a strength not even he knew he possessed, he retched himself from Kakashi's suddenly limp grasp and flew forward, flinging Sasuke down to the ground. There was a scrabble; the two rolling and twisting so fiercely, for a moment they appeared to be an orange and navy tornado, but in the end, Sasuke reined victorious, straddling Naruto beneath him.
"You don't have to pine so hard for my attention." Sasuke panted, smirking widely. Leaning forward, the tips of their noses scarcely away from touching, he said a bit softer. "If you want to be in this possession without the scuffle, you can just tell me and I'll be more then happy to oblige."
"Teme…"
This time, Sasuke was lifted up and off the fox-boy by the scruff of his neck. Naruto scrambled swiftly to his feet.
"Naruto, control your temper." Kakashi chastised lightly. He then rounded on Sasuke and instilled him with a sparkling gaze, as if he was hiding something very amusing under his ninja vest.
"Sasuke, save it for later." Before the blonde had any time to but irately in, Kakashi continued listlessly. "We have a mission."
Naruto's entire grumpy demeanor changed quickly. He absolutely loved missions, with the exception of those categorized in the d-class. They still were paid of course, but weeding an old obese woman's onion garden didn't strike him as very heroic. He enjoyed seeing what he was capable of and with the completion of every mission, he felt stronger and slightly wiser.
"What is it? Huh? Huh?" Naruto chirped, bobbling on his toes.
"A B-class mission."
Suddenly, an ecstatic thunderous howl echoed across Konoha as Naruto leapt three feet into the air. B-Class meant they were engaging into something important. An excited elation scuttled down his veins—He was going to get a chance to be valiant and daring! And to show Sasuke-- the dumb perverted bastard--up!
"Eeee! What are we doing? Ne? Ne?" The blonde boy piped.
Kakashi smiled at the fox-child's bubbling zeal while Sakura scowled at his childish nature. Sasuke on the other hand, looked like he was restraining very hard from doing something completely naughty and inappropriate for the current time and place.
"We'll be protecting a priestess from a couple of missing ninjas." He stated plainly. "We will be gone for a few days, but pack lightly. Meet you at the front gate in an hour. Ja!" Then, he disappeared as suddenly as he had arrived.
This was his ideal mission, Naruto realized while piling some clothes into his ninja pack. It had all the ingredients to make it perfect, but mostly, it held the one, central glowing fact that the priestess was a girl. He had no idea how to respond to Sasuke's –ehm- proposition (other then 'hell no!' of course) , but maybe if he and this hopefully striking girl happened to hit it off, the bastard would realize that he wasn't like a girl himself. How could another boy even like another boy? It just didn't make sense. They couldn't get married...
His heart sank somewhere down into his knees as a sinister realization crawled slowly into his mind .Come to think about it, just last year the village had celebrated the marriage between two ninja males and wasn't Kakashi and Iruka…?
No, damn it all, no. He would not even begin to begin thinking about Sasuke's proposal, which honestly, didn't seem like a proposal at all so much as a conceited command.
He was going to have to be discreet if he was to pull this ludicrous scheme off. Naruto still remained unconvinced that Sasuke wasn't just toying with him. It just seemed like the vile and devilish thing he was very much capable of. If he knew that Naruto thought he was possibly being serious and he really wasn't… He could never look Sasuke in his stony black eyes again.
There was also the possibility the bastard was an imposter.
Shaking his head, clearly weary of thinking, he slung his pack over his shoulder and set out to the gates where he was exceptionally pleased to see Sakura and just Sakura waiting, tapping her foot lightly and glancing at her watch.
"Why can't anyone in this team be on time?" She asserted crossly as Naruto waved vivaciously at her.
"What?" The fox-boy checked his own watch and scowled slightly. "I'm on time!" He whined.
"We're on time." A wintry voice corrected from behind him and the blonde spun reluctantly on his heels to distinguish the impassive, pallid face that currently bandied a self-assured leer. Glaring, Naruto huffed and immediately turned back around. Avoidance. He concluded he would pursue that divine route once again; it had worked for three days before.
As Sakura knelt to rummage through her pack, however, while mumbling something under her breath about grabbing the right color underwear, the raven haired nuisance situated his intense stare at the back of Naruto's head. He could almost feel it singeing the tips of his hair.
"Once we're back from our mission," Sasuke's voice softly wafted into his right ear, "we need to discuss a couple of things."
Hell yes we do! Naruto almost blurted furiously, but uncharacteristically, he kept his words to himself.
Avoidance.
Seemingly becoming bolder with his teammate's silence, Sasuke stepped closer to his turned back. Naruto could feel his hot breath tickling the tiny hairs on his neck. A foreign, sturdy hand latched unto his hip and the blonde restrained from whipping around and slugging him.
"About our wedding—" Sasuke leaned his head forward so his every humid breath could be felt and heard in Naruto's susceptible ear.
Avoidance. Avoidance. Avoidance. Avoidance. Avoidance.
"—What're you going to wear?—"
Avoidance—Avoidance—Avoidance—Avoidance--Avoidance!…
"—And where we're going to go on our honeymoon—"
AvoidanceAvoidanceAvoidanceAvoidanceAvoidance!
A deep chuckle trickled down the blonde's ear that made him quiver, goose bumps cropping up as the rumbling sound seemed to journey straight towards his toes.
"—And what we're going to do there—"
Confrontation.
He snapped. Planting a firm, furious foot, he lashed around with a punch tingling in his fist when—
He was, once again, halted from massacring the idiot pretty-boy by a brawny hand on his collar.
"Yo. This is your second physical fight of the day." Kakashi, the frustratingly always-late man that could not halt the brawls from happening, but always kept them from escalating, said, waving a scathing finger.
"Whatever animosity there is needs to be alleviated. We are on a mission." He sighed. "In front of our client too."
Expectantly, Naruto whirled his eyes to the figure behind him with one thought streaming through his mind:
I hope she's pre—
But all thought capacity was lost at the mere sight of her. Naruto had seen lots of people in his lifetime and half of those faceless beings were women, but none could compare to her.
She was the most hideous creature he had ever seen. Being of an optimistic nature, he attempted to find her good spots, but he just couldn't get through the globs of horrible. She had a large, beak nose that kind of reminded him of a ski jump, with two brown squinty eyes that made her appear as if she was in a perpetual state of bliss. Even though she boasted a lumpy double chin, she was not fat, merely thick. Her cod lips, which she moistened several times, puckered to speak when no one would.
"It's wonderful to meet all of you." Her delicate, sweet voice seemed like a paradox to her awful looks. "Please protect me."
Kakashi remained composed and smiled. "Of course." He then rounded on his shorter teammates, eyeing them sternly.
"There are two notorious, though not all too dangerous, missing ninjas currently trying to assassinate Kumiko-san. If they faced us as a team, we could easily defeat them. Though, they specialize in duo attacks, so we must never go anywhere without a partner. Sakura, Kumiko-san, and I will always remain together, while you two must stay with one another."
"Kakashi-sensei!" Wailed Naruto, suddenly collapsing to his knees while clasping his hands together as if in prayer. "Please! Put me with Sakura! You know he and I—"
"Sorry, Naruto—" The fox child could plainly see a grin looming behind his teacher's mask. "But I believe the incentive of being unjustly mauled to death by two people will keep you and him together."
Naruto looked helplessly from Kakashi's smirking face, to Sasuke's supercilious mug, and finally to Kumiko-san's contorted nose.
He was screwed.
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Fifteen miles down the winding, dusty road, Kakashi suddenly felt a hesitant tap on his back. With his superlative ninja skills, he didn't even have to turn around to know just who it was.
"What's wrong Naruto?" He interrogated as the fox boy matched his stride beside him. Seizing a glance over at him, he could easily decipher from his disgruntled face what the nature of his business seemed to be.
"Don't you think Sasuke has been acting ehh—strange lately?"
Kakashi had to squeeze his lips together to keep his laughter from barreling out. Strange was an awfully interesting word to describe 'insanely horny'. But, of course, Naruto was utterly dense.
Opting for some convenient fun since the arid path could be no more tedious, he decided he'd play along.
"What do you mean?"
Naruto thought for a moment, his face scrunching in on itself in doing so, and then after finally seeming to grasp the most ambiguous words he could discover in his vacant mind, he put them to sentences.
"He's been saying crazy things and asking me weird questions."
Oh, this is just too fun, Kakashi thought.
"What sorts of questions?"
He was pleased to see the bright, rosy blush that had harvested on his cheeks.
"Just—Weird questions. Trust me."
"Really, Naruto, I can't help you unless you tell me—"
Abruptly, Naruto scowled at Sasuke, who was strolling elegantly in front of them.
"I think he's an imposter." He interrupted heatedly.
Please, you just can't be this—well, I guess you can. Sighing, his fun obviously over for the sake of the mission (he couldn't have Naruto half-helping Sasuke because he thought he was a vile actor), he clearly defined, "no, I would have sensed that."
Naruto huffed, evidently unimpressed. Fine, the languid teacher would just have to affirm the obvious. It appeared to be the only way he would understand what was going on so blatantly around him.
"He wants to sleep with you."
Kakashi expected a revolted howl that would exceed a vocal pitch not even a girl could reach, or at least a flabbergasted expression shortly tailed by a furious curse, but—nothing. The only sliver of emotion that slid over his face was confusion.
"But, I don't understand! We sleep together all the time."
W-What?
Kaksahi stopped, completely forgetting the imperative mission at hand and simply ogled the blond boy, astounded. Halting as well, Naruto turned around and inquired if he was alright.
"But I thought—"
"Kakashi-sensei, you should know better then anyone else."
"I should?"
"Yeah! We take so many out of town missions Sasuke and me have to share a tent. We have to sleep together. Where else would I sleep? The ground?" Shaking his head at his elite sensei's sudden bout of stupidity, he continued on up the road leaving Kakashi alone to his own workings.
You can't be that—Kakashi decided it was best if he left his sentence incomplete and began walking again.
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After spending eight hours on the lengthy, hot path, the sun finally retreated beyond the trees and the sky grew a dark shade of lavender. Kumiko-san had latched unto Sakura because she seemed to be from a shrine that only allowed women and so the two decided to pitch a tent together. Kakashi always slept alone, which left Sasuke and Naruto to awkwardly assemble theirs.
When inside, it took only 30 seconds for the hyperactive boy to wind down and plop over unto his side, asleep. Sasuke didn't have that luxury of instantaneous sleep; in fact, he highly suspected he wouldn't get a wink at all.
He was worried; worried that another sunny, sweaty dream would drift into his ears while he slept and cause him to wake up with a—very shameful problem. Even though Naruto was his future bride, he couldn't scare him (yet) with these sorts of issues. It was no cryptic secret that his fiancé was horribly dense and wouldn't understand him even if he attempted to explain. For all Sasuke knew, he could wake up to a sobbing, helpless Naruto whom was being vigorously humped by his sleep-walking self. No, tonight he would content himself in watching his bride toss slowly in his sleep.
One a'clock sauntered by, which was followed closely by two and then finally three. He had been laying down, with his hands curled comfortably behind his head, gazing up at the tent's ceiling and praying that his eye lids didn't plummet when suddenly, a warm hand landed softly unto his chest. His eyes wide now, he looked down and discovered the sun-kissed, petite appendage belonged to Naruto. Stealing a glance to make sure he wasn't awake, he gently tried to pry the fingers away but was matched with an irritated, groggy groan.
Fine, Sasuke smirked evilly, if Naruto wanted to put his hand on his chest and keep it there—Who was he to question? He was just about to relax in the touch when suddenly a furry mass fell unto his chest, preceded by a leg curling around one of his. Naruto was—well, cuddling with him.
Sasuke had always known that Naruto was the type of person whom slept with a large teddy bear or pillow at night simply because he always awoke latched unto something. Some mornings the Uchiha heir would wake up with his fiancé clinging desperately to his ninja pack, his jacket, sometimes even to him. It had never truly meant much, until now.
Now, Sasuke realized just how adorable he looked with his cheek pressed to the raven haired boy's bare chest, his lips slightly puckered and his sun-kissed hand contrasting with his own wan skin. In these drowsy hours, Naruto was completely compliant—He was completely his own. Just the way he wanted him, all the warmth to himself.
Hesitantly, Sasuke placed his arm around the snoozing boy's neck, which allowed Naruto to snuggle closer towards the heat. On his chest, he could feel his bride's sluggish, delicate breathing tickling his nipple though he had no naughty thoughts. Not one perverse reflection slithered into his mind because—tonight wasn't about that.
This was what it was like to hold Naruto; the boy seemed to meld perfectly into his side, as if Sasuke was missing a part of himself he hadn't known he misplaced. His hand tentatively plunged underneath the hem of Naruto's shirt and he grazed the boy's back gently, his tender fingers tracing swirls on his backbone. His skin felt soft and untouched and so blessedly warm. This was what it was like to hold Naruto. This was what it was like.
Sasuke Uchiha knew in that second that no one else could make him as warm as Naruto did. There was no better fitting bride anywhere.
A hasty and frantic author's note: FORGIVE ME! FORRRGGIIIVVVEE MMEEE! I'm so sorry it took forever to write this and then I decided I didn't like what I had at first and dumped it and so la-de-la. I didn't even decide to even continue this story until I got all the kind review and concluded I couldn't be one of those dumb prick-assess that just leaves a story to one chapter (-hesitantly looks away, knowing two others exist on her profile-) Thank you all so much by the way— Please review, I will continue faster then this I swear. (Summer sucked my drive away but the school year is back with a vengeance.) I love you!
-Jane.