Title: The Subway Diaries 4/?
Rated: M
Summary: The city is cold and empty, and the subway runs through it. In a world where the city lights blind you to everything real, Uchiha Sasuke tries to impress an empire, and meets a boy running from his own. AU.
---
Uzumaki Naruto was in the middle of a beautiful alcohol-induced dream.
He wasn't entirely sure of what it consisted of, being unconscious and still slightly drunk. But it made him tingle in all the right places, and there was a certain sense of euphoria that had started at the tips of his toes and was now running up his spine. He thought it had something to do with the field-and-sunshine type setting, or perhaps the fact that he was chasing a bra-and-panty clad Sakura, but for whatever reason, it was a good dream.
It got a little bit weird when they ended up sitting across from each other, Sakura knocking on his suddenly very achy head with her knuckles (which were usually empowered in the process of punching him, so it was still something of an improvement on real life) as she grinned and leaned close to him.
"Sasuke and Neji are having sex in the next room," Dream-Sakura said, conveying a bit too much delight for someone whom Naruto had thought completely devoted to bearing Sasuke's children only hours before. The news quite extinguished Naruto's high despite Sakura still being half-naked, and he groaned when he found himself faced with Neji's closed door, the rapping seamlessly shifting from his forehead to the wood paneling. Sakura was giggling as she reached for the doorknob.
Naruto covered his eyes as the door was opened. As fate would have it, his eyelids and hands appeared to be entirely translucent, and just as the door pushed forward enough to reveal even the smallest hint of furniture (Naruto was too horrified to care that it wasn't Neji's at all, but his own four-poster) Naruto shrieked ("No I don't want to see Sasuke naked!") and found himself sitting up on the living room couch, a painful band of sunlight shining in his eyes.
There was a knock at the door, and Naruto nearly jumped out of his skin.
Slipping off the couch and neatly into a pile, Naruto swore never to drink again. His head was aching and his stomach felt as if he'd run it through a blender. Not to mention the fact that he never, ever wanted to have a fucked up dream like that again. No way he needed that shit going through his mind.
As he pulled himself to his feet, Naruto half-wondered where the dream had come from and attributed it to the group's naturally drunken escapades and the fact that he was aching for some action and it would figure that Sasuke would be getting some since Naruto hadn't. For weeks. And Neji would have made a pretty girl, so the whole thing was almost all right. Almost.
The incessant pounding started up again just as Naruto finally reached the door. He flung it open, expecting to see Sasuke with a smug look on his face or Sakura looking for her shirt (which Naruto distinctly remembered hiding within the couch cushions sometime the night before). In either case, he had the perfect retort.
It wasn't Sasuke or Sakura.
Two men, pale and scowling and vaguely familiar, stared at him with a single stormy gaze that came on very much like a bulldozer. Naruto's head throbbed and he wondered if he was being audited—a ridiculous thought, he didn't notice, as he wasn't even in management of a business (or any substantial funds at all).
"Uh, yeah?" he squinted out, the bright sunlight behind the two men making him want to curl up under a rock and die.
"We're looking for Hyuuga Neji," one or the other responded. Naruto couldn't tell. They looked the same, and neither mouth seemed to have moved at all.
Unsurprisingly, Naruto had a rather unpleasant flashback to the dream he'd just had, and in combination with the hangover, found himself clutching at his stomach in hopes that the action would stop him from dry-heaving in front of the two men that were standing on his porch.
Nausea pushed aside for the time being, Naruto studied the two a bit more closely. They had the same colorless gaze as his roommate with almost the same air about them—neither looked particularly amused or any variant of the word, and Naruto was more than willing to bet that they were relatives of the silent boy he lived with. Naturally, he invited them in.
"So, who're you guys?"
"Cousins," one grunted while the other watched Naruto cup his chin and nod knowingly. Just then, the door of Neji's bedroom opened, revealing a half-dressed Sasuke, generous enough to offer free looks of disdain all around.
"What's this, dobe?" he asked, walking into the room wearing the face of one who had, no doubt in Naruto's mind, laid his roommate the night before. Oh, God.
"Neji's cousins," Naruto said abysmally. Sasuke smirked.
"Neji's not here," he said, directing the words to the two men who seemed to be eyeing him with some form of scrutiny. Unsurprising, Naruto thought. Pretty much anyone could see how big of an asshole Sasuke was by just looking at him. "He went out last night while you idiots were drunk." This, he said to Naruto.
And then he shot him a look.
Naruto swallowed, translating that look far too easily. It was physically equated with Sasuke shoving a knife to the small of his back and whispering in a very rude voice, Follow my lead.
"Oh yeah?" he finally squeaked, rubbing the back of his aching head and acting like it was news to him. Because it was. "Bastard."
"You won't mind if we take a look around then," one of them said to Sasuke, not sounding convinced. Unaffected, Sasuke shrugged and moved to the door, slipping on his shoes.
"Whatever. Talk to him, it's his apartment."
And then, with little gesture to Naruto, he left the blonde in a cinch with that look and more questions than Naruto would have preferred to deal with.
Bastard.
---
The subway car rattled as it began to pick up speed.
A handful of early travelers lined the sides of the car, spaces like mountains between them as each one seemed to sink into the thin cushioning, amorphous. Sasuke allowed his eyes to roam over each, though his gaze hardly lingered on one face or the other. His attention would be wasted on them, anyway—that figure, the one he'd come for, he kept targeted in the corner of his eye as he moved to the next car. Empty, except for Neji.
The cab had been quick—quicker than Neji could run, though Sasuke had already known where he'd been going. He'd identified in Neji from the very first a certain kind of flight, or maybe struggle. Sasuke didn't know much about the Hyuuga as a family (a system his mother's voice reminded him), but he refused to believe that the trait Neji had exhibited in slipping away so swiftly (before even a knock at the door) was cowardice. Such a thing didn't sit in the aristocratic set of shoulders, in the calm, serene gaze that stared unbroken out the window despite there being nothing to see.
"Your curiosity really is insatiable," Neji said from across the isle without turning, his voice carrying some hint of a burden though Sasuke kept himself from trying to identify it. Instead, he slipped his hands into his pockets and leaned against one of the upright support poles.
"Are you sure it's my curiosity?" he replied, smirking at Neji's back.
Neji turned around, moved first with his head, and then with his body as a bird does. The movement was so slight it almost wasn't there, but suddenly Neji was facing him. His face was hard and closed, his expression nonexistent though his eyes glowed faintly in the bright, florescent lighting of the car. Had he not been made of fire, Sasuke felt he may have been frozen by such a stare.
"Didn't I tell you to mind your own business." Never a question. Always a statement. Sasuke filed it away.
"Are we really going to go through this again?" Sasuke said after a moment, adopting a bored tone and expression. He took a few steps until he was standing next to Neji, and looked out at the blank grey walls that seemed to meld into one slick line of liquid storm under his gaze. Neji remained seated as he had been, staring at nothing.
"Are you really doing this," Neji said after a moment, turning his luminous gaze upward. The angle and set of dark brows gave him a particularly fierce look that affected Sasuke not at all.
"What?"
"Wasting my time. And yours," the Hyuuga turned back to the window, his expression as mild as his body language. Whatever fear had arrested him, whatever tension he may have felt at being pursued either by his family or Sasuke, was stowed somewhere safely away where the Uchiha could detect no trace of it. "Haven't you something you could be doing. Studying, perhaps. Learning from warnings," he paused, voice carefully casual.
"Maybe something that would make your father proud."
The words were so coldly calculated that Sasuke almost didn't notice that calculation, that distinct poise that Neji had used to lay his web. He felt the anger rising within him again, just as it had when Neji had delivered his previous blow, so carefully phrased. I didn't know that the Uchiha had a second son.
His fist clenched audibly in the empty car, the noise twisted and tense. And then Sasuke relaxed. Neji really was good at getting away, but Sasuke was better at chasing than the Hyuuga appeared to be.
"You like to see me angry, don't you?" he asked, sitting down so that Neji's back was half-turned toward him.
"I think it makes you more interesting," Neji replied patiently, as if talking to a particularly slow child. His position didn't change. It looked perfectly comfortable, one elbow against the back of the seat, free hand resting softly in his lap. He almost looked like he belonged, but Sasuke knew he didn't. Maybe he was the only one that knew, though---after all, the difference between what did and didn't belong had compacted itself to the point where it almost didn't exist. Had Neji listened to him, all those weeks ago on the porch when he'd said that the Hyuuga just didn't fit in?
"You think it'll make me leave you alone. It won't work, Hyuuga."
Neji scoffed and turned to look at him, the position no less awkward than his chosen facial expression, which was caught between irritation and surprise, though as usual barely constructed. "If you think that taking a shot at the greatest clan in Konoha will get you ahead, you're—"
"This isn't about that " Sasuke hissed, fingers aching from fisting in the material he'd found in his pockets. Neji raised an eyebrow and Sasuke mustered a sneer through his irritation, "Tch. I thought you would think this was about you."
"I'm not stupid, Uchiha. I doubt you'd bother chasing me down if it didn't have something to do with personal gain. It's about you."
Sasuke grunted and looked away, shoulders curling in as he crossed his arms and stared harshly at the cracked seating across the isle. He would have offered a rebuttal, but there was no real reason he could think of for this—this whim he'd taken on. He hadn't even thought twice about it, and that wasn't like him, not being sure of what he was doing. But Neji was there, a solid presence beside him that offered nothing, and Sasuke could feel himself being wrapped up in the whole thing just as he was wrapped up in the empire that his brother had created.
This was just a detour, though. A curiosity. Nothing so important than a few days' investigation couldn't sort out. Sasuke ignored the fact that he'd been entertaining Neji's mystery for more than just a few days, and shifted down slightly on the seat.
"Where are we going, anyway?"
As expected, Neji offered nothing.
---
"I don't know, Sakura-chan They were like, they were like---! Goonies."
"…Goonies?"
"Yeah…you know?"
"Naruto, I think you're thinking of the wrong film."
Naruto rubbed his temples and fell back onto the couch, lamenting the fact that the way Sakura was staring at him now was not at all similar to how she'd been looking at him upon their previous meeting. In his dream. Not to mention the part about how she didn't seem to be getting the point, at all.
"Look, all I know is that Sasuke and Neji were having sex, and then I opened the door, and there were these two guys standing there, and they were unhappy, and they asked me all these questions---"
"Sasuke-kun and Neji what? " Sakura shrieked, her voice a good octave above anything Naruto had ever heard before. He realized the misspeak slowly, and hastened to correct it in the only way that he had ever found effective.
"No. Nonononononono! That was my dream. I mean. That was in my dream. You were, too. Not having sex, but---in my dream. You see---I…can we just forget about that part? " Naruto's hands were in his hair by this point, and between trying to assure Sakura that a mental breakdown was not on the horizon and trying not to get eaten by his couch, he was having a bit of a time.
"Okay," Sakura breathed out, her stance stiff as she regarded Naruto almost like one would a ticking time bomb.
"Okay. So these men, they came in and they asked me all these questions that I didn't know the answers to," not that such an occurrence was abnormal, "and they looked all over the apartment, and in my room, and in Neji's room, and they gave me a card. That's why I called you."
"A card?"
"Yeah. They said, Why don't you give us a call when Neji gets back? We were hoping to surprise him."
Sakura was snapping her fingers and holding out her hand, like Naruto was supposed to know what the gesture meant. Then, her eyes rounded and she jutted her head forward slightly, as if to enunciate the begging and air-grabbing.
"Well! Let me see it, moron!"
Naruto produced it like a man in need of a good fix produces cash, and Sakura snatched it away just as quickly. Naruto watched her read the business card carefully, though her expression was blank for the most part. She walked over to the only light that was turned on in the room---a small lamp that emitted a dull, yellow glow, and the only thing that didn't add to Naruto's splitting headache---and studied it for a few moments more.
"This is bad, Naruto," she said, turning back to him. Her expression was worried, and when Naruto met her eyes, they expressed that concern. "Did you know that those guys were yakuza?"
"They were Neji's cousins!" Naruto defended, crossing his arms as his mind began to race. He was conjuring up images of The Godfather and bloody horse heads before he realized that these people were Japanese and there weren't any horses around for miles and miles. It soothed him slightly, but didn't begin to abate his growing anger.
After a moment of careful contemplation, Naruto looked up.
"That bastard!" he shouted, looking as affronted as he could possibly manage without causing himself more pain.
"Naruto," Sakura said tightly, looking as if she were about to launch into some tirade. There was a knock on the door, though, quite suddenly—three quick and precise raps. Sakura looked startled. Naruto grabbed his head and would have ran around the living room in agitated circles if his right leg hadn't been asleep.
"Oh shit, they're back!"
"Calm down," Sakura sighed, slipping the card Naruto had handed to her into her back pocket as she moved to the door. She was about to open it when Naruto hissed at her to look through the peep hole, a command which she blithely ignored.
"Oh—hello." Naruto heard Sakura say, though her body was blocking whoever was standing behind the door. "May I help you?"
Naruto groaned and wilted at Sakura's sudden lack of foresight. He would have thought that at least she would be smart enough to turn a headhunter away. But no. She had to be polite. She wasn't even that polite to him.
Limping up behind her and peeking over her shoulder, Naruto's expression changed from one of anticipated horror to confusion. Instead of the two aristocratic men he'd been faced with before, there was a single thing smiling and sparkling in sunlight that was slowly waning due to clouds gathering on the horizon. It—the thing—glowed at Sakura and completely ignored Naruto, who somehow couldn't stop staring at its two massive eyebrows.
"Yes you may—! If you could! My name is Rock Lee and I'm looking for a friend. He was supposed to meet me somewhere but must have forgotten."
The voice was booming. And what the hell was a Rock Lee?
Naruto poked his head under Sakura's arm and squinted threateningly at the guy—the it. He wasn't having the blinds pulled over his eyes anymore. If this guy was looking for Neji, he was getting tied to one of the kitchen chairs and interrogated by the might of Chinese water torture. Naruto had a how-to book.
"Who's asking?" he gruffed.
"...Rock Lee," Sakura said out of the corner of her mouth, elbowing Naruto in the stomach. "What's your friend's name, Rock-san?" she said courteously to the boy, who seemed to be eyeing her with a certain amount of awe.
"Oh, just Lee, please. I couldn't have a fine young woman such as yourself at so great a verbal distance! His name is Neji, and we were meeting to spar but—" and here, he sidestepped a sudden tackle-attempt from Naruto, never taking his eyes off of Sakura, "as I said, he never showed. I asked around and was directed to this general area which, if you don't mind me saying, is a little bit in poor taste for my friend, but I suppose he is under some strange circumstance—is he all right?" The Eyebrow Monster said with pause in Naruto's direction. Naruto could hear Lee sparkling at him, but was currently hanging over the porch railing and trying to regain his breath.
"He's fine," Sakura said offhandedly. "Actually, it's rather coincidental that you showed up today, Lee-san. Why don't you come in? I'll make us some breakfast and we can talk. This is Naruto, by the way," she made a vague gesture to Naruto, who was holding his stomach and glowering behind Lee, "he's Neji's roommate."
"Oh, wonderful!" cried The Grinch That Stole Sakura.
"What Don't let the fuzzy eyebrows in!" Naruto wailed just as the two disappeared into his apartment.
---
They exited the subway at the edge of the city, though they'd changed lines so many times Sasuke wasn't entirely sure which edge of the city it was. He had been convinced for a time, if not consciously, that the subway never really ended. It wasn't, he had thought, like the veins of the circulatory system, turning and twisting back on itself but always contained within one single body, though this was very much true. It suddenly put things into perspective for him---made him realize exactly where the boundaries to his world lay.
When they boarded a train, Sasuke registered just how much wider the scope of Neji's own world was. He didn't hesitate though, in following the Hyuuga up the steps, in sitting across from him in the empty car.
Sasuke hadn't been on an actual train since he was a boy. It made him remember just how much he hated the subway, and that part of him was enjoying this little excursion was slightly aggravating.
"You never told me where we're going," Sasuke said, watching Neji slowly relax into the atmosphere. Each time they'd stepped into the harsh lighting of a new terminal, Neji had thrown furtive glances like daggers about him, a startled and skittish cat. Sasuke could feel edginess not only in the other boy's silence, but simply through the tension that seemed to hang about him in heavy curtains. But Neji seemed to fit into this changing world like the moon in a cloudless sky.
"It's a long ride," Neji said, having apparently accepted the fact that Sasuke would be traveling with him. You might want to sleep.
"No entertainment from you, then."
"So the Uchiha does learn."
"Tch," Sasuke snorted, lips curling, "they do call me a genius."
"You were bred to be a genius," Neji muttered softly, his eyes looking past Sasuke and into a widening vista that they were swiftly cutting their way through. His tone was solemn, and held as much emotion as Sasuke had ever heard from Neji, even when angry. "Don't act as if it's something to be proud of."
"And what were you bred for, Neji?" Sasuke asked, keeping his gaze even and refusing to allow the slow lick of flame inside him to ignite at those words. Neji was the pristine counterpart of what he never had been; collected deep into the very pit of him, a block of sheer ice. Sasuke wondered if there was a phantom river flowing beneath that hard layer. Fording such a thing would be treacherous—already had been, but Sasuke, as always, found himself well-equipped.
"Obedience," Neji said after a long moment, and then he turned away from Sasuke and became a marble statue, gaze directed toward the blossoming scenery.
"Tch," Sasuke whispered again, unable to pull his eyes away for a long moment, incapible of offering what should have been a cold shoulder.
When he shifted and looked out his own window, it was to find himself face to face with a world that he had never really been a part of. The city had given way to a countryside full of green, blossoming orchards that stretched until they disappeared into a backdrop of deep mountains and blue, blue sky. On the horizon, clouds were growing in peaks of white down, each one building upon itself as if exponentially. Sasuke had never seen colors so vivid outside of a painting.
The difference between this and the life that was ruled by the mechanisms of the subway, of time and order, seemed to sink into Sasuke slowly and achingly. Despite the rows of trees that fled into rice paddies, what was contained here as they broke away was nothing but a natural order. It was freeing, lighter than all the pieces of the city pushing down on him, reminding him what he had to be and what strength he had to uphold. He sighed, and for the first time the gesture actually felt as if it relieved something. Not everything, but at least those constraints that he had not put on himself.
The setting became more rural. Houses became scattered, paved roads turned to dirt. The sky further filled with clouds and there was a promise of rain. The mountains and forests that had once been only background took on a shape sharp enough for Sasuke to distinguish without aid of imagination. He realized he'd fallen asleep only when the train jolted to a stop (much more abrupt than those of the subway line) and Neji brushed past him in a whisper of purpose and cloth.
What should have been a station was nothing more than a platform of dark brown wood and a single pole supporting a softly glowing lamp. Steps descended to a dusty road that crossed the tracks and curved away between rice paddies parallel with a dark, lush forest in the near distance. Sasuke couldn't bring himself to scorn it all, and the alien qualities seemed to relax rather than disturb him. He fell into step alongside Neji as they set off down the road in an almost companionable silence.
When their destination became apparent in a small house flanked by rice paddies, Sasuke felt something in his chest tighten. He wasn't sure if it was apprehension or a response to how picturesque the place looked with the last rays of sun glancing off the water of the fields through the clouds; either way, Sasuke disapproved. He was neither an anxious nor sentimental person, and following Neji as he frolicked through the countryside would not change that.
"What is this, Hyuuga?" he asked finally, lagging slightly behind as Neji kept his pace. An archway over the road read Hyuuga, and Sasuke was stricken with the fleeting thought that Neji might be turning himself in. But to what? He still didn't really know.
"I don't know," Neji replied in a thoughtful tone, "It looks like a house."
"Fuck you,"
"No, really," the Hyuuga persisted, throwing Sasuke a look that he couldn't decipher. It was almost playful, and the Uchiha suddenly realized with that look just how much Neji had relaxed. Neji's mouth was no longer drawn in such a hard line, his eyes didn't flickered about them like a butterfly caught in a jar, his shoulders held only an arrogant rigidity as opposed to one that was on edge.
Smirking softly, Sasuke glanced away before he could be caught staring, and they continued through the archway.
From what Sasuke could see, the house was large, but not elaborate. It was open to the cooling day and a line of laundry was strung across the porch, behind which lay a row of noren in dyes of deep hues across the open doorways. Light glimmered from behind windows and a soft line of smoke found its way to the sky from the roof.
Someone was standing on the veranda hanging laundry. A slim, slightly stooped figure whose details Sasuke could hardly make out through the distance, she worked methodically, absorbed in her task.
They came closer and she turned at the sound of their tread. Dressed in a dark kimono with her hair pulled back into a sensible bun, she reminded Sasuke of the women in old cultural paintings. The lines in her face, though, spoke of years of hardship not found in such an elegant setting.
"Oh," he heard her whisper as Neji stopped abruptly several meters from the house. Hands came to cover the woman's mouth in a portrait of surprise, and Sasuke could feel Neji waver slightly beside him as he came to a stop.
"Tadaima," Neji said. His voice suddenly sounded very worn, and Sasuke tore his eyes away from the woman to find Neji bowed at a 90-degree angle, hair fallen over his shoulders and hiding his face from view.
She was off the porch in a matter of seconds, had descended the steps so quickly and gracefully that Sasuke wondered if he had assumed her elderly in error. She drew closer though, and her face was clearly that. Her hands were wrinkled as they pulled Neji straight and cupped his face in order to see his eyes, in order to see the smile that was almost there, almost visible. Sasuke did not look away, though he felt like an interloper.
"Okaerinasai, Neji-kun," she said in a voice that sounded like clouds breaking open. Then she kissed Neji's bandaged forehead and turned her eyes to Sasuke.
---
"Do you know how to cook, Sasuke-kun?" Neji's grandmother asked him later, after Neji had disappeared into the rice fields as the clouds rolled and dry thunder shook the sky. Sasuke looked up from the portrait he had been staring at for the last three minutes and nodded once.
"Some."
"Aa," she said, eyeing him with a knowing look as she dried her hands on the apron she'd just tied. She fit into the home as if she were an accessory in it and not its master. "Mikoto must have taught you, hm?"
Sasuke's eyes, which had once again been wandering, snapped to the woman's face. Her gaze was cool, but not trained like Neji's was. It was open, but calculating, yet beneath that careful discernment, warm. Despite himself, Sasuke felt his body relax. "You know my mother?"
"A bit," she replied, walking over to where Sasuke had placed himself after stepping out of the genkan—not far away, a stranger.
Her eyes stayed on his face for a moment before she stopped next to the table and picked up the framed picture that had so kept his attention. "She was from the east side. My boys knew her growing up... she's only a few years younger, I think. A smart girl." The gaze she had fastened to the picture was almost misty, and it preempted Sasuke's surprise at her knowledge of his family. It made him question just how much his mother had not told him about Neji's, but that thought he pushed aside for what information he could gain here.
"Neji's parents," he stated after a moment, watching her expression. It was easy to tell; Neji was hardly an original creature. Most of his features had been stolen from his father, but were softened in the son. His nose was his mother's, his slight frame. Even the pale skin that could have been naturally gained from anyone in the Hyuuga line had been lightened further by the woman standing next to the Hyuuga male (white-eyed, but not stony-faced).
Sasuke though, had been most interested in the imprint of a helix on both their foreheads.
"Mm." Neji's grandmother put the picture down carefully. When she looked up, her gaze was a bit more Hyuuga, brown where it should have been white. "I'm surprised Neji brought you here, Uchiha Sasuke."
"He didn't," Sasuke admitted with no sense of remorse. Despite the fact that he felt very much on enemy ground, he had followed Neji for a reason, even if it had been half-baked.
"Hyuuga is a closed world that draws people in unwillingly, sometimes. But it's a dangerous place even if you really want it, Sasuke-kun."
"I've been warned to mind my own business," Sasuke said with a slight smirk. Warnings were just challenges in disguise, and Sasuke didn't back down from a fight.
A moment passed and she smiled. One hand worn soft from years of use found Sasuke's cheek and patted it in a motherly way. It was so familiar and expected that Sasuke didn't move away.
"My grandson doesn't mince words, but if he really wanted you gone, you wouldn't be here. Now, come help me get this dinner started. They'll be out until after dark, but I'd like to eat before I'm too old to enjoy it."
---
The house was quiet and dark, and Neji's ears rang in the silence after the crash of rain outside. Even after his grandfather had gone in and to bed, Neji'd found himself standing on the edge of a field staring into the blue darkness as the sound of thunder rumbled in the distance, arms limp at his sides as he felt the sweat from several hours' planting soak into him.
It had begun to rain and he'd picked his way quickly through the fields, not fast enough to avoid being soaked through. Drops fell and collided like those of a waterfall, and when Neji had arrived on the veranda, his chest was heaving from the convergence of the storm. He could feel the stillness of the house behind him, the flowing, painful cacophony before him—and suddenly it all seemed far too muddled as to where he was supposed to fit within it.
The feeling had passed as he allowed the water to drip from his clothing and onto the cool, dark wood beneath his feet. He'd thought of the house and of the silence that was safe for a short time, but most of all he thought of favors and debts, and the price of freedom. He'd gotten what he'd come for, but he wondered not for the first time if the path he'd chosen was truly a divergence from Fate.
Shadows moved as a breeze accompanying the rain shifted through the house, stilling Neji's bare feet and halting the breath in his throat. Even here, safety was an illusion, but one that Neji would abide by for a time.
The room that his grandmother had prepared lay behind a sliding shouji door. Neji paused outside to listen for anything that may indicate awareness from beyond, but heard nothing of the shallow breathing of the room's only occupant. Sasuke.
He slid the door open and closed it behind him, a ghost in a house that had never been his own, but had welcomed him all the same, even when it shouldn't have. Neji's clothes shifted wetly, belying his presence as he crossed the room to where Sasuke lay asleep on one of two futons.
Dropping silently to his knees beside the other, Neji pulled wet hair where it stuck in ringlets to his face and held it away as he leaned in to study the Uchiha's features, unconstrained by a smirk that was usually all too prevalent. Sasuke had spent all evening with his grandmother in this house alone, an allowance Neji had made consciously though it had worried him slightly at the time. There was nothing he could have done to prevent the exposure—he'd needed to speak to his grandfather, and Sasuke had insisted on following him here.
With his free hand, Neji traced the features of Sasuke's face mere centimeters above the skin. He could feel the unnatural heat that the other boy seemed to emit from such a close distance, and as his fingers paused over Sasuke's lips, Neji recalled their press on his skin. In memory, he felt them. His skin heated in the darkness, an odd contrast to the cold clothing. Sasuke was beautiful in a pride-infused way. A force that demanded Neji step up and parry each move piece for piece. Made Neji want to.
But Sasuke couldn't really be following him through worlds as dangerous as these for some simple gratification, Neji thought. He seemed too intelligent for that, and as Neji had known similarly in his brother, too motivated to waste his time. Unwilling to abandon his previous assessment but confused by Sasuke's own actions, Neji let out a sharp breath.
"What do you want with me, Uchiha...Sasuke," he said to the silent room. Sasuke shifted as if troubled in his sleep, turning so that Neji's hand was almost cupping his face though he offered no answers.
Frowning, Neji stood and walked to the open window. A wind thick and heavy waxed over his damp skin and some mystery rumbled its warning in the distance. A line of lightning lit his face, but Neji refused to give into the temptation to see what such a glow would do to Sasuke's complexion.
Irritated with himself for dwelling on such things, Neji closed the window and pulled at his shirt, soaked heavy. It dropped with a thick plunk on the tatami near Sasuke's head, but Neji felt no worry over waking him. His breathing had shifted moments earlier, indicating that he had already been roused.
It didn't stop Neji from continuing. His shorts followed, then boxers before Neji draped the wet clothing over a line strung the length of the room. He felt his skin prickle as it dried and then grow hot under Sasuke's sudden gaze. When he'd finished, Neji slipped into the prepared futon, his naked skin warming at the friction. He closed his eyes, feeling stormy and agitated as he catalogued the way his body was reacting to Sasuke's eyes. The Uchiha shifted nearby, movements sounding oddly wanting, and Neji turned away from him, toward the wall.
"Go to sleep," he whispered. He thought he felt the ghost of Sasuke's fingers brush over his exposed arm like a lover's caress, but whatever answer was offered there was lost to unconsciousness and the dull ache of a need left undefined.
---
"Anyway, so," Lee said the next day over lunch, one hand stretched out across the table to dip into the half-gone bag of french fries, "Gai-sensei was standing at the end of this alley, his arms around these three roughed-up kittens with this...this gang of hooligans cowering in a corner, and he just...let the boys go. He said he'd felt a change in their spirits. It was beautiful."
Sakura nodded cluelessly, but Naruto was done smiling and nodding at this crazy. He was pretty sure he'd already gotten whiplash from the night before, and had probably slipped a disc too, what with how many games of twister he'd played—and lost. Naruto was really, really over it.
"These are really good," Lee said, waving a few fries around, "I've never had fast food before."
They sat in an awkward silence for a few moments more. Naruto looked at Sakura, still managing to keep herself prim and proper with her hands folded neatly in her lap, and she looked back at him, eyes speaking of some unidentified pain. Crowds moving to and fro throughout the food court surged around them, providing background noise for Lee's merry munching.
"So," Naruto grunted, "about Neji."
"Oh—oh, he knows what he's doing, I do hope " Lee responded optimistically, "Tenten would have notified me if he'd shown up over east. He's probably just moved on..." At this point, Lee's voice dropped slightly, and Naruto detected a hint of worry.
"What," he said, putting both hands on the table and leveling with the eyebrow monster, "that bastard owes me rent." Not to mention an explanation. And there was also that tiny fact that was slowly becoming more and more apparent to Naruto. He kind of, might have, enjoyed Neji's brand of silent company. Or had at least gotten used to it.
"Neji's gotten himself into a bit of a position with his family, as I'm sure you've seen," Lee responded, "He was trying to...well, I'm sure it's hard, anyway."
"Trying to...?" Sakura asked.
"Neji never tells me much of anything," Lee said, for the first time seeming not so candid, "If I haven't heard from him in a week, I will find him." Something burned in Lee's eyes, and Naruto swallowed.
"Err," he said, "and where are you planning on staying for a week?"
Both Sakura and Lee looked pointedly at him. Some cold chill seemed to have snuck up Naruto's back and was sinuously stroking his spine. One eye twitched.
"Oh, hell no."
---
Neji and Sasuke stayed three days at that house.
When they weren't bent over water and mud transplanting the fledgling rice to a more permanent home, they slept on the veranda or looked for cooler places beneath the line of trees in the distance. Mostly, they disappeared from one another, but found each other again during the hottest part of the day. Neji, lying in the shade of a giant oak or Sasuke stretched out along the brook that made its way through the hills at the back of the property. Neji wasn't sure how it had happened, but he'd slowly found himself acclimating to Sasuke's presence.
"He's never said it," Sasuke said during their last full day visiting, "but silences are heavier than words in my family."
"Hn," Neji grunted softly in understanding, not quite wanting Sasuke to continue, but not wanting him to stop, either. He was on his back with his face under the shade of a tree watching clouds drift quickly overhead. Sasuke was mere centimeters away, looking up at the sun. Neji wondered if that was the difference between them, and closed his eyes. He wasn't sure when they'd begun talking to one another.
"Tch," Sasuke said after a moment, "like preaching to the choir."
"It's important that your family expects something of you," Neji said, pressing the back of his hand to the bandage at his forehead. "When there's no one there to expect growth it's like..."
"What." Sasuke's retort was quick, surprised. Almost agitated, and Neji felt the line of his own mouth draw long and blank. Sasuke hadn't expected him to reply, hadn't liked that answer.
"It's like being dead," he continued anyway.
There was a rustle in the grass as Sasuke moved, and Neji felt a shadow slide across his face.
"What happened to your parents, Neji..."
"They died," Neji said, feeling his throat tighten. He didn't open his eyes.
"I asked what happened."
"In my family, you owe a life debt to the main house," Neji said slowly, feeling the soft whisper of Sasuke's breath. "They paid."
"No wonder you're such a bastard," Sasuke said after a moment. The words were as carefully chosen as the tone, and Neji was surprised to feel his heart crash against the bars in his chest at that. He was glad that there was no pity there, only a whispered sense of understanding.
"What's your excuse."
Sasuke snorted and blew his dark bangs up in a puff of hot air, his expression exasperated. The strands landed back on his forehead softly, and Neji didn't resist the urge to slip his fingers up and brush them aside. His fingers were cool against Sasuke's too-hot skin, and though there was no look of surprise written on the other's face, his eyes widened minutely. Neji shot him a smug look.
"My brother. My father. Everything." It was an admission Neji had not expected to receive, but the words out of his own mouth had not really been commonplace, either.
"Not footsteps I would want to follow," Neji said after a moment, voice bordering on judgmental. Sasuke's eyes narrowed and his face contorted, distorting peace into anger.
"My father is the chief of police," he hissed.
"I know. He wasn't who I meant."
They sat in silence for a moment, Sasuke propped up on one elbow as he looked out across the landscape. Neji watched his features, soft, relaxed despite the conversation. And he suddenly realized what this was—conversation. He hadn't exchanged so many words with someone for years, and he knew he would be going back to that, back to the cage as soon as they left this place. A cage, even if it was of his own making.
"Why did you follow me here," Neji said.
Sasuke looked down, "I want to have sex with you," he said smoothly.
"And."
"And...I wanted to see what was making you run," Sasuke said after a minute, making the hesitation seem natural. A dark cloud drifted behind his head, and it took a moment for Neji to realize that Sasuke was leaning over him.
"Still putting the pieces together, aren't you,"
"Not for long, Hyuuga," Sasuke replied with a smirk, his expression borrowed from the devil. Neji pushed himself up, his eyes on the clouds though his face was near Sasuke's. Close enough to feel him, if Neji used his imagination.
"It's going to rain again," he said. Sasuke looked up and Neji caught him in that moment, slipped his fingers into Sasuke's hair and pushed up against him, their lips meeting between Sasuke's breath of surprise and his understanding. By the time Sasuke had slipped his tongue into Neji's mouth, Neji had pushed him into the grass and pinned him to the ground.
His heart was beating painfully in his chest, and though he was sure of what he was doing, Neji wasn't really sure why he was doing it. Making things complicated. He didn't, after all, take detours.
But Sasuke's lips were firm beneath his own, the way he moaned softly, remorseless and all too wanting. Sasuke slipped his fingers up the back of Neji's shirt and then down, fingernails raking until he pushed his hands beneath the band of Neji's pants and grasped his ass. Hands strong and purposeful, Sasuke pressed Neji's hips against his own and arched up. They parted and Sasuke hissed with unrestrained delight as Neji threw his head back, hair having obscured his vision.
"You could have warned me," Sasuke said, though it sounded more like a purr.
Neji smirked and lowered his head, lips brushing Sasuke's moist ones as the Uchiha pressed a finger into the cleft of his ass. "I did," he gasped, just before it began to pour.
"Fuck—you bastard," Sasuke yelped, surprising Neji at how quickly he pulled away and yanked them both to their feet. As they sprinted between the rice paddies, rain pelting them both in the face, Sasuke looked back. "You did that on purpose—!"
Neji felt the line of his mouth soften at Sasuke's unguarded manner, his arousal slipping away with the rain as it was replaced by something else entirely. Even as he ran through the rain, the Uchiha was smiling.
They broke through a curtain of golden sunlight and came out on the other side, freedom painted in each feature, in every crevice that the rain found. For once, Neji was chasing Sasuke, though they both had the same destination. They arrived there breathlessly, stumbling onto the veranda only to slip off their muddy shoes and collapse into their own puddles.
"Asshole," Sasuke grumped again, though it sounded half-hearted at best. His fingers were trying to find skin beneath Neji's wet clothing.
Neji smirked and was about to issue a reply when the low murmur of a voice wafted through one of the open windows. It was curt and though low, had an edge to it that was distinctive enough not to be just a mere rumble. Neji's breath caught in his throat and he seamlessly and silently rolled to his knees, creeping over Sasuke and to one of the half-open sliding doors. Neji felt Sasuke's head lift, the Uchiha's body suddenly on guard like an animal with a nose for trouble. Neji's hand planted in the middle of his chest was the only thing that kept him from rising.
"What is it?" he asked.
"My uncle," Neji responded in a whisper, fingertips barely balanced on the wood of the outdoor hall. His heart was in his throat for a moment, and though there was nothing to focus on with the position he was in, Neji couldn't make his eyes see straight.
Sasuke, understandably confused and half-drawn, curled his fingers around Neji's wrist. "Neji..."
But Neji was up like a flock of birds, his movements sudden as the beat of wings against a previously still sky. The door felt brittle under his fingers as he pushed it open, and each sound, each movement was like a crash against his ears as he found his way rather blindly to the voices. Sasuke, he could feel behind him, a burning presence flickering steadily at his back.
What was he doing? He should be running. But he had to see this—had to face it.
All conversation stopped as Neji entered the room. His grandmother was standing with her back to him, hands clasped loosely before her, position erect as she looked calmly at her eldest son. She did not turn when Neji stopped a step behind her, but Neji's grandfather did. He looked particularly old standing next to Hiashi.
Hiashi, the man with the face of Neji's father. The face Neji's father had never gotten to wear.
It had been over a month.
"Neji," his grandfather said, the word sounding like regret.
"So our wayward prodigal son has returned," Hiashi said, and Neji could tell that he was attempting to keep his voice calm, his expression trained. One corner of his mouth flickered up, as if he found the situation amusing.
"I am not your son," Neji said. His knees felt like bending. His forehead ached for the floorboards, and at the same time, his back muscles shouted in rebellion. It was the same song his body sang whenever he found himself bowing before Hiashi, but this time, his body refused to bend. He should have been looking at the floor by this point.
"Nii-san's wet and muddy, Otou-san. I wonder what he's been doing since he's been gone," Hyuuga Hanabi said at her father's shoulder, voice and words too easy to misinterpret as innocent. Behind her stood two nameless, faceless Hyuuga that Neji recognized only because they were related.
"On your knees," Hiashi uttered.
Neji remained standing. Sasuke smirked audibly beside him, the expression loud in the chilling silence.
Hiashi took two heavy steps toward Neji before Neji's grandfather stepped between them. Neji, who had been prepared for violence, felt his eyes widen at the movement. Higure had been clan head once. Neji had not been reluctant to ask him for aid—he'd been almost frightened. Even though he'd received it, he'd never expected something like this.
"Not under this roof, Hiashi," he said. Hiashi seemed startled. "The law will handle this matter."
"That is not the way of this—" Hiashi lowered his voice, "you know that."
"There was a reason I retired from my position," Higure said. He looked tired, and placed a solemn hand on his only remaining son's shoulder. "You'd do best to remember that when next we meet."
Hiashi grunted, his cold eyes still fixed on Neji, who refused to waver under such a gaze. Pulling out of his father's grip, Hiashi motioned the three Hyuuga onlookers to follow him through the door.
The room was quiet as the sound of a motor rumbled through the floorboards.
---
The train ride back to the city had been silent. Unpredictably, Sasuke remained silent throughout the whole affair, though the expression on his face spoke more loudly than any words he could have. He was contemplative, deep in thought. Neji knew he was tying up loose ends, making some assumptions, filling in gaps.
It didn't much matter anymore, Neji supposed, at least not on the whole. He still wanted his secrets, though. Was afraid of Sasuke's understanding.
It was difficult to escape that, however. Sasuke was intelligent, and perhaps already knew more than he had seen or heard from Neji. When they'd reached a point to part in the terminal, Sasuke had grabbed Neji's wrist, his gaze expressive and demanding.
"You'll stay at my apartment until we can file the paperwork necessary to get you under witness protection—"
"—I don't need witness—"
"—at my house."
People had milled about them like rats in a sewer. Neji's gaze on Sasuke had been perfectly blank.
"Are you on something."
"My father's the chief of police."
"Are you on something."
Sasuke had smirked. Neji had grimaced.
The Uchiha's apartment turned out to be to his liking. Everything was streamlined, sleek, had a place. It turned away from Neji's more traditional tastes, but he couldn't deny that it fit with Sasuke, that it fit in the city. A loft, the place was high and open, each room connected not by doors or walls, but by the absence of them. Neji took a look around, and returned to where he'd left Sasuke at the steps leading to the bedroom.
The tour was an amusingly false pretense for the both of them.
"Couch, or bed?" Sasuke asked, beginning to unbutton his shirt with a vaguely hidden expression.
"Bed," Neji replied, one eyebrow raising loftily, wondering how the Uchiha was going to play this. After all, they had been chasing each other in one form or another since their first meeting. There was no excuse now, no heated anger to blame their lust on, no alcohol in their systems or the teasing promise of rain.
Neji could see Sasuke's canines, though his expression was hardly a grin. Something darker than that, it made Neji's skin crawl and the hair on the back of his neck stand straight up in anticipation.
"Morning or night?"
"Evening." It was seven-thirty. There was no time like the present.
Sasuke smirked, dropping his shirt to the floor. He closed the space between them in two steps, and as Neji's eyes slipped closed, he felt Sasuke's teeth nip at his earlobe. Sasuke's fingers undid Neji's belt, then began unbuttoning his pants.
"Top, or bottom, Hyuuga?"
No response.
"Shall we begin?"
---
Author's Notes:
The original line before typo correction: "If you think that taking a shot at the greatest clan in Konoha will get you head, you're---" absolutely right.