Those Boys Are My Boys
last chapter. yes, it's short, I know... but still, I finished it. that's an accomplishment for me, I hope you know. thanks everyone for reviews, you're beautiful creatures with beautiful features. longest chapter so far... and the cherry on top of the cake.
-X-
CHAPTER 4
-x-
The day was offensively bright – the kind of bright when you can't lift your head outside because the sun has decided that instead of shining its rays all over, it might just focus on you instead, and no amount of tint on your shades can defend against it. The kind of bright where you just want to shake your fist at the sky and go, "Can you not?"
It had a very satisfying effect when I stripped open the curtains in Naruto's bedroom at 10am on his day off. He squawked and veered back as if he were a vampire and the light had physically pained him, falling out of bed and onto the floor with his legs in the air, entangled by the blankets.
"Ouch! What the…?"
I smiled but quickly covered it up when Naruto's shocked eyes met mine. He blinked a few times to gather his bearings, eyebrows furrowing skeptically, as if he didn't quite believe I was there.
"Uh… Sakura? Is that you?"
I almost laughed. "Do you know any other pink-haired girls with the capacity to break into your house?"
His face lit up like a fireworks display. One moment he was on the floor, confused as a monkey who'd peeled a banana and found apple inside, the next he'd tackled me with a loud cheer.
"Nope, none as pretty as you!" he laughed. "Sakura, we missed you so much!"
After Naruto had sufficiently messed up my hair and crumpled my freshly ironed clothes (and I'd spent so much time gussying up that morning, too), I pried him from my body, patted him on the shoulder awkwardly, and that's about when he grasped I was still mad and he ducked his head. I knew he had no idea why I was so worked up, but Naruto in all his goodness and grace knew that I would tell him eventually. Now that I look back on it, I'm really very grateful for his patience.
He didn't mention me lashing out. Not a word. We both acted as if nothing happened, though I knew we were both thinking about it; there was a gap between us that was tangible even when he smiled, joked and acted like everything was fine. I decided to make breakfast while I waited for him to shower and get dressed, wandering into the kitchen – I knew Naruto's apartment like the back of my hand and didn't need him to tell me where to look for all the bits and bobs needed for cooking. The majority of Naruto's diet consisted of fatty foods like instant ramen, pizza and essentially too much takeout, mostly because he couldn't cook (neither could I, but I could make a basic meal like bacon and eggs, which he was always stocked with). I was so accustomed to the kitchen I thought I knew, that when I opened the fridge and saw lots of green, leafy, substantial foodstuffs inside I thought I must have accidentally stumbled into an alternate universe compacted neatly inside.
I stared for a moment before slowly closing the door and opening it again. I blinked. I rubbed my eyes. I shook my head. The contents did not change, there were no smoke and mirrors here; Naruto had vegetables and fruit and milk and cheese in his possession. Not only that, they were fresh, days to weeks before their expiration date, and looked as if some of them had been partly used, recently, too. I must have been staring dumbly at the shocking display for a good ten minutes, because before I knew it, Naruto had appeared over my shoulder dressed in his hideous orange jumpsuit, hair still wet and dripping down his neck.
"Hey, whatcha doin'?" he asked as he settled into a stool by the counter which was uncluttered. Now that I looked, the entire apartment was tidy. Not just tidy, but really clean, free of roaches, mould and the stench I was so used to it stopped bothering me years ago. A stench I was so used to I didn't even notice it was gone. I couldn't even think of what to say, all that filled my mind was a long stream of grammatically incorrect question marks and exclamations that couldn't be found in any dictionary.
"Uh…" I blinked a few times as I turned to face him. "It's clean in here. Also. You have fruit."
"Yup."
"And… milk?"
"Well, yeah."
"It's not soiled?"
"Uh… no?"
"But… where's the bacon and, you know, all the old stuff?"
Naruto's cheeks flushed and he brought a hand to the back of his neck, scratching, squinting his eyes, looking as if he'd just been caught stealing a cookie from the jar.
"Sasuke's a vegetarian," he said, giving no further explanation.
Ah... yes. This sanctions a brief flashback interlude in our story.
Sasuke's Summoning, as you may know, is a giant hawk. Naruto and I kept bugging Sasuke to name it because he hadn't when we first met her, and because Sasuke's a dick he just called the hawk 'Bird', and now, tragically, it responds to that name only.
Anyway, Bird mysteriously disappeared for a couple of weeks at some point and Sasuke became quite distressed, because even though he won't admit it, he loves Bird very much and probably would die of loneliness and self-pity if she didn't return, so Naruto allowed Sasuke to go looking for her by giving him a Roaming Pass.
A Roaming Pass is something that only came into action when Naruto became Hokage. It's a pass that is given to people who would otherwise not be allowed to leave the village and permits them temporarily to do so, with an official Konoha stamp of approval and the Hokage's signature for authenticity. The papers used for a Roaming Pass have chakra signatures running through that are checked by officials, so there's no faking one. Since Sasuke wasn't allowed to leave the village by law for the next two and a half years, it was a pretty big deal at the time. A lot of villagers were outraged. More villagers had come to like Sasuke since he saved so many lives in the war and didn't mind, but were still wary of him.
Anyway, off topic. Sasuke was allowed a week to find the hawk, and exactly one week later he returned with Bird… along with five little Bird babies. Turns out Bird had gone off to build a nest for her eggs, and since Sasuke found them all and brought them home, he had been almost constantly surrounded by these five little bird things that couldn't fly but could still flap and make annoying tweeting noises. He acted like it annoyed him, but Naruto and I had never seen Sasuke so pleased to be around other living beings besides us. He fed them and played with them and even talked to them, and I guess birds in general decided that Sasuke was like God or something, because now whenever Sasuke is out in public every bird in the vicinity goes quiet and watches him pass like vultures stalking their prey, only the silence is sort of awed, reverent. It's creepy to no end. After much speculation, we've concluded it has something to do with the hair.
Naruto and I dubbed him The Bird Lord, but we only used this incredibly humorous nickname when he wasn't around. Sasuke gets bitchy and would probably sulk at us until we gave in to his cute but not deliberate puppy-eyes and showered him with apologies and tomatoes and our undying love, which he still doesn't understand but accepts anyway (Sasuke always accepts things he knows he doesn't deserve – like loyalty, copious amounts of anonymous love notes, boxed chocolates, singing cards on his birthday). Not long after the bird freaks started flocking together, Sasuke converted to vegetarianism and never seemed to struggle with his sudden lifestyle change.
I hadn't thought that Naruto and Sasuke's relationship was already so far along that Naruto needed to accommodate for his meals. The thought of Sasuke waking in the morning to the sunlight streaming through Naruto's flimsy curtains, stretching his arms and rolling over to peck his lover on the cheek, because the first thing he would see that morning would be Naruto's peaceful face and he might sigh and stare at it for a moment or two. Maybe whisper something in his ear, admire the way his eyes flutter when he dreams, then get up, have a shower – together if they were feeling up to it – and then have everything he possibly needed already waiting for him: extra clothes, a bottle of his favourite shampoo, a toothbrush that would sit next to Naruto's, vegetarian breakfast…
I felt a bit sick again and had to turn away. The Grief wrung my heart over and over. I was sure that if I looked at Naruto any longer, he would see the truth of knowledge in my eyes.
So I said, "Oh, I see," and dropped the subject entirely. Naruto seemed relieved.
We decided to pick up breakfast along the way at Ichiraku (which I ended up paying for). Going out with Naruto can be a very difficult thing, because everyone acknowledges him now, as he is the Hokage. Villagers feel the need to ask him how his day has been, or how Sasuke is, or how I am when I'm right beside him, or offer him something they baked personal or ask for an autograph for their son who just loves him, and it would mean the world to my little boy, please? Once we pried ourselves from the nosy grasp of Konoha's citizens, we made it in and out of Ichiraku with plenty of stunted and uncomfortable conversations. After Naruto had finished his ninth bowl, I quite literally dragged him from the stall in order to collect Sasuke. However, Naruto stopped me and said he'd already forwarded a message to him to meet us at Training Ground 03, acting all suspicious, like he didn't want me to know something. How nice of him to have done that without telling me a thing.
I swallowed my irritation and gave him a strained smile. "Great, we'll go there now," I said.
We did, but Naruto trailed behind me, the distance not yet crossed, pushing us apart. I kept glancing over my shoulder to check and make sure he hadn't disappeared. I felt as if I were walking beside a complete stranger rather than my best friend. Or a retarded inbred cousin, but he's been estranged for years and just returned from abandoning his family after a long quest to find himself. I dunno. Being with Naruto had never felt so forced.
We didn't talk the whole thirty-minute walk to Training Ground 03. Perhaps, on any other day, in the past, this would have counted as companionable silence. However, even Naruto could feel the difference between a comfortable silence and an awkward, drawn-out one that was hoping to be filled or interrupted by just about anything at this point.
I could feel Naruto's shoulders sag in relief when we finally made it and Sasuke could be seen leaning against one of three wooden poles secured in the dirt, his arms folded, eyes closed, looking innocent and not like he was having a secret love affair with Naruto. Maybe I should suggest an acting career to Sasuke, or another one that entails lying convincingly to be a skill. Then I remembered that technically, shinobi did that all the time, plus neither boy was lying about anything. They just weren't telling me the truth.
He cracked an eye upon sensing us approach. I didn't exactly expect a reaction from Sasuke. He always tries so hard to cover up his emotions, wants everyone to think he doesn't care. That's why I was surprised to see his eyes widen as he straightened up, glancing between Naruto and I, as if this were some prophesied confrontation he'd been waiting for years gone by that would determine the future of the world.
"Hey!" Naruto said brightly, his face exploding into a feral grin.
Naruto ran ahead to Sasuke, his arms open, and I looked away. It was more a reflex. I flinched, because, well, maybe Naruto and Sasuke were going to kiss or something? I don't know, but I recoiled when I saw them approach one another, smiling and looking like love-struck goofballs, and they noticed. The boys paused mere inches from one another, faces falling. I blushed.
"Hello," Sasuke said, taking a very pointed step away from Naruto, walking far around him, and towards me.
"Uh," I replied.
Sasuke stopped far from me, too far. Farther than my arms could reach. It was probably for the best, because right seeing their faces reminded me of the bliss in Naruto's office, and I felt as if I might punch them right off. Not only that, I still didn't know what I was going to say to them. At first I thought I would be coming here to chew their ears off, but now I remembered that I was trying to ward off conflict. How long had it been since I saw them? I missed the boys so much, even in their presence. Is it possible to miss someone while you're with them?
I tried to start talking, finish what I came here for, but my tongue had decided to take the day off and was limp and useless. Words would not form, so I stood there gaping between them like a brain-dead zombified replica of myself. Sasuke clapped his fists together, fumbling for something to say.
"So, feeling better then?" was what he came up with.
"Ashjagfjh," I confirmed.
Which could be interpreted in many ways: "Ashjagfjh," as in 'I'm sorry for what I said', "Ashjagfjh," meaning 'I know what you've been doing and I do not approve', "Ashjagfjh," as in 'God, can things please just go back to how they used to be, when we were all young and didn't know why we fought, but we did know that we would always fight together…'
"Are you really alright, Sakura?" Naruto asked.
His face showed concern, for my outburst, my wellbeing, my all. I almost started crying right there because being mad at them for being in love seemed foolish. So childish, something the old, weak Sakura would do. It's not like they could help it, after all! What was I doing? Screaming and saying horrible things to them when they had no idea what they'd done wrong? They hadn't done anything wrong, that's why they didn't know. They just happened to fall in perfect love and it just happened to inconvenience me.
I swallowed the lump forming swiftly in my throat before tears could well in my eyes and gave them a soft smile. The boys looked tense, like they expected me to flog them.
"I'm okay," I said. And I would be. Soon. "You two go on and start, I'll just be over there on the sidelines."
The boys looked at each other with something I couldn't read. Naruto seemed to decide it was okay to start. They nodded in silent understanding that the games had begun and soon Sasuke disappeared, vanished, there and gone he was that quick, barely stirring up the dust leaving no trace behind. Naruto's eyes were sharp as they roamed the clearing of trees, skipped past the three logs of wood that had once determined our future as Genin when Kakashi was still the one we called sensei and didn't make us hang our heads in our loss. The logs were lucky to have survived this long, what with the carnage the boys dealt to these training grounds on a daily basis. Naruto avoided the logs because they were Kakashi, and came to Training Ground 03 for the same reason.
Before getting comfortable, I hovered to watch them a little closer, searching. I wasn't sure what exactly I was searching for – lingering touches. Warm looks. Hesitancy in their attacks. Something to hint towards their attraction to each other. There was nothing.
Sasuke moved with his usual grace, an elegance refined to the point he didn't look human anymore, he was something dreamlike and unattainable. When you can actually see him, you can't help but really see him. He doesn't run, he glides, and when he goes for a hit it's smooth. Naruto's limbs are choppy and wild; there's a calculative poise to Sasuke's spinning, flippy, acrobatic kicks that make him look boneless, and no matter how many times Sakura sees it, she knows that it's not possible. Sasuke has a spine and cartilage and organs that should not move that way, as if he's just jelly wrapped in skin. Yet here she stood, witnessing the impossible. Sasuke was an abstract painting in motion, Picasso and Van Gogh's ultimate collaboration with the face and body of a Michelangelo. He generally made being on the receiving end of his blows a much more artistic experience, almost pleasant, a nice final beauty before the darkness of death.
Naruto was Sasuke's ultimate juxtaposition. He was force, ferocity and hardened passion, just a mixture of random limbs. He moved on instinct, practised kinaesthetic response. There was no room for thought or calculation in his moves. It was his greatest weakness and strength. He was completely unpredictable, to the point even Shikamaru found it difficult to read him and the Sharingan couldn't predict his movements. He couldn't flip or bend like Sasuke, but he sure could pack a punch. The chakra emanating from him was thick in the air, a drinkable liquid that could suffocate you if you got too much of it. He reeked of power, the kindest and most beautiful person Sakura had ever known, capable of destroying the world. Naruto was the only person responsible enough to hold that much power. He and Sasuke would obliterate anything in their path, yet they couldn't overcome each other. Sasuke was an obstacle and a friend.
I wandered over to a tree and sat by the stump, leaning onto the trunk because this would take a while. Usually, when I'm out here with the boys, I would bring a book with me (something educational, informative, or work-related, of course) to help pass the time until I get my own practice – the only practice I really needed anymore was with my medicine and healing jutsu, which was always looking to be expanded upon. That didn't mean I couldn't fight, though, and when I sparred I was a force to be reckoned with, even for Naruto and Sasuke. We could tear each other apart, and we could forget about it the next day, only to do it again. That was us. Depending on the boys' moods, it could take up to an hour before one of them was fatally wounded. Still, I could always count on some gashes to mend, some skin and muscle and bone to convalesce, when the boys sparred.
This time, however, nothing happened.
When I say nothing happened, I mean nobody almost died. I didn't have to lift a finger. A few dents were left in the dirt, some holes, some craters that would need to be filled in or someone might fall through and wind up on the other side of the planet, but not one single direct hit? The earth was shaking when they were done. It was uncanny, unheard of, unbelievable. Naruto and Sasuke, the new Legendary Sannin, the Hokage and his right hand man, the formidable duo feared by anyone who ever crossed their path, the boys who would do Tenten proud when it comes to accuracy, missed? More than once? Neither of them showing off a new jutsu? Breaking some bones? Trumping and winning, fighting for the other's recognition even though it's been given ten times over? When I tried to figure out why, I saw that their moves had gotten sloppy; their heart wasn't in it. Sasuke had dark puffy bags under his eyes that weren't there before. Naruto was sluggish and his little cuts didn't heal so quickly.
Was it my fault? Had I actually worried the boys so much they'd lost sleep, stamina and motivation? Of course, I'd only been thinking about myself until this moment, not them, not really. Just how this all affected me – I completely forgot that perhaps the boys missed me, too. It hadn't crossed my mind, the thought that saying I hated them might give them restless nights, dull mornings and dreary evenings. They might miss me leaving them little notes in their desk drawers to help the day shine a little brighter, treating them to dinner, taking walks in the park. Smiling coyly as we pass each other in the street, in the halls, because when everyone else was sleeping we went skinny dipping in the dark, shameless and young and just living. I tried to think what I might say to them once they were finished, but my mind was having a complete blank.
I was so lost in thought that when the boys stopped sparring and hobbled over to me, still on two feet, without assistance (a rarity), I didn't notice. Naruto flopped down beside me on the grass with a heavy sigh that I couldn't discern the emotion behind, making me jump. His face was serious and tight as he closed his eyes, head cradled in his arms. He didn't speak. Sasuke walked past us and unzipped a mysterious bag that had been out of sight until now to retrieve his drink bottle, which he took time swigging from. It wasn't one I recognized, mostly because Sasuke was a minimalist and believed strongly in only carrying what he needed, which was often nothing but his weapons and headband. We had no conversation, no jolly teasing, no laughter, no friendship.
Had I done this to us?
We sat under the only tree left intact in the entire training ground. Our training ground, I should say, as nobody else used it. We claimed it. This tree was left standing on purpose because it's on a hill, with big flat leaves that shelter us when it rains and shade us when it suns. The number seven had been burned into the trunk, surrounded by our initials like the points of a triangle. We wanted to leave our mark, even though the damage we'd done to the earth was more than enough for people to remember us by. Being strong was so much fun, I always thought in this moment. It had taken everything we had to get this far, and we'd reached greatness so young. We would always strive for more, but we'd passed possibility years ago. Since the ground was lifted, we could see over the tips of the trees and watch the sunset. It never got old.
But there was no sunset today. They'd barely sparred an hour, or maybe a little more, before quitting. It was still only the middle of the day.
The boys were cautious. I knew they wanted me to make the first move, show them it was okay, but I was scared. Scared, because what was I even going to say to them? We'd never had a proper fight before. Well, not me against the boys. Naruto and Sasuke fought all the time. I fought with Naruto, I fought with Sasuke. But I had never fought with Naruto and Sasuke. I still didn't know if they had any room left for me in their life. How could I know if I had become their burden? Their weak link? Someone they could toss away? Unimportant?
Just when I was considering leaving, getting up and going without another word because I was terrified and I didn't think I was ready, a hand was shoved into my face. I blinked and followed the hand up an arm, then up a shoulder and up a neck until I saw a face with pretty black eyes that were turned away in embarrassment – embarrassment! Sasuke Uchiha, shameless, always bold, embarrassed! – and next to it, another face that looked sheepish, jittery and reflected my own fear in its pretty blue eyes, sparking enough of a response deep down in my empathy for me to decide that I should stay and explain myself. Not for me, for them. My boys.
When Sasuke impatiently cleared his throat and made a show of acting like the object in his hand weighed more than Naruto's ramen order, I shook myself and looked down to see a little box wrapped in Winnie the Pooh's Piglet pink wrapping paper that matched my hair like it matched Tonton's skin, garnished with a sloppy white bow. I could tell they'd wrapped it themselves; nobody lacked craftsmanship like my boys.
"Take it," Sasuke said impatiently, pushing the box into my hands.
I looked up at their expectant faces, then back down at the box. My fear was replaced with curiosity as I tugged at the ribbon, giving them a curious raised eyebrow before pulling apart the wrapping paper eagerly. I opened the box and looked inside.
"Happy 10th Friendship Anniversary!" Naruto yelled, pulling out a party popper from somewhere in his jacket pocket and exploding little bits of confetti streamers into the branches of our tree.
It took me a moment to respond because at first I wasn't sure what I was holding. It was sparkly, covered in glitter and three-dimensional stickers that had no relevance to anything whatsoever (like handbags, lipsticks, shoes, sunglasses and basically just lots of pointless accessories I didn't care for). It was bordered with pinks, blues and oranges - our colours - and had the number seven all over it. I realised I was holding some sort of book, bound together by ribbon identical to the one they used to wrap my gift. In the middle of the front cover was an indented photo frame that had a picture of Sasuke and Naruto standing next to a stick figure drawing of me (poor quality), making smiley faces.
"We didn't have a recent enough picture of the three of us to put on the front so we had to improvise," Naruto explained. "I'm the one responsible for the masterpiece, of course," he beamed.
Sasuke snorted and I laughed once, looking back down at my gift unsurely. I didn't want to ask them what it was because that might sound rude or ungrateful. They had clearly put lots of thought into this, so I opened it to the first page.
Oh my god, there was me: a chubby baby, sitting in the middle of a cuddly blanket decorated with giraffes. I don't know why. And my pink hair was sprouting in awful little tufts with bald patches all over because my hair grew out weird as a child, so it looked like someone had scribbled on my head with markers. My wrists didn't even exist amidst the flab. Worst of all, I was completely naked, the only thing covering my flower was a flower – a cherry blossom that someone had placed over my shame thoughtfully to reserve some form of modesty. Just under that was a tag that read 'Sakura Haruno – Aged 1 Years' in Sasuke's smooth handwriting.
"Where did you get this picture?" I asked incredulously. I was sure I'd burnt it a long time ago.
"Your parents gave it to us," Naruto told me. "They said it was the best one they were willing to part with."
The boys chuckled over my shoulder as a blush spread quickly over my face. I made a mental note to talk to them about that later, mainly to instruct them not to hand out embarrassing photos to my friends, anybody, in future, without my permission first.
I saw on the next page was another baby photo, this time labelled 'Sasuke Uchiha – Aged 1 Years' in the same neat hand. He was also chubby and puffed out and looked more like an amoeba than a human being, which left me marveling at how a shapeless blob like that turned into the lean muscle he was today. There was someone next to him in the picture, someone I didn't recognize but could guess was his mother, though her face wasn't visible and it was just Sasuke being carried over her shoulder. His hair was somehow already prominent – little black spikes just waiting to grow into fearsome bird feathers. His hand was stuffed into his mouth and he was drooling as he slept sucking it, eyes clamped firmly closed. He looked so stupid and fat that I burst out laughing, slapping my knee, scrunching my nose, honking like a novelty horn.
It felt so good to laugh. I mean really laugh, to let go completely. Soon the boys were laughing with me and they flanked my sides, watching my expression as I turned over the page.
The picture of Naruto was what really made me go berserk. He said it was the only picture of him as a baby, and it was literally just him captured right in the middle of falling backwards out of a chair, his eyes wide, mouth open, a look of unadulterated distress so open and bare that my sides were hurting when I finally got over it. It was a bit blurry but my god, it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen in my life. Naruto wasn't even embarrassed; he just laughed and got really excited when he told me to keep going.
The next page had a poem that I wrote to Sasuke in my early crushing days – the single most horrid piece of writing to ever exist, and Sasuke had kept it for years. It went:
To the beautiful rose,
I think that those,
With a nose,
As perfect as stone,
Deserve a throne,
And with eyes,
Like fireflies,
Burning black ones,
Deserve suns,
To be named,
And claimed,
Famed,
Maimed (I didn't know what this word meant),
Those as perfect as you!
From your secret admirer, Sakura (clearly I didn't know what a secret admirer was supposed to be either but it sounded romantic).
What an imagination I had. Burning black fireflies? Sasuke informed me between gasps that my poem was 'very original' and was 'definitely A+ material'. I pinched him.
The next page was a group shot of our academy class, and beneath that, our original Team 7 photo where Naruto and Sasuke scowled at one another and Kakashi rested his hands on their heads. I was oblivious to the tension between the boys and smiled my cutest smile, excited for what was to come. Taped next to that were two small metal bells that tinkled when I flipped the page.
I was still laughing but now my eyes prickled with tears. They had kept all this stuff, pointless, dumb stuff, for years – a wilted, brown, flat pressed flower I picked for Sasuke eons ago; an icy pole stick covered in dirt from some time so vague in my memory of when Team 7 wrote in the dirt on a hot lazy day waiting for their sensei to arrive; a four-leafed clover we found at our first festival together; a picture of the Great Naruto Bridge, when Naruto and I went back to Wave country once it was fully built; a shard of Haku's ruptured mask; my registration form for the Chunin exams the first time I tried out; a get-well card I made for Sasuke when he was in the hospital; a picture of Naruto and I at the Shinobi Alliance Awards, when Sasuke was still being bombarded by the press, back when he first returned; a bit of fabric from my deep red dress that night; a sneaky picture of the one time I tried dancing and ended up looking like a moose having a stroke; a page torn from the back of Kakashi's Icha Icha Paradise, seemingly insignificant until you saw that he had written something in the bottom left corner – just a memo that he needed to buy more milk, but the reminder that once, years ago, Kakashi still breathed and he thought and he needed to remind himself to buy milk, that once he did little, menial things, broke a dam and my tears began to flow. Still I turned the pages, more and more precious, forgotten, hilarious memories, until I reached the end where the boys left me a message.
"One book, two idiots, three comrades, four teammates, five days, six hours, seven embarrassing photos, eight distractions and nine cups of ramen later, we finally added up ten years of a friendship that will never die, for the best friend two morons could ask for."
I let the book fall closed in my lap, still shaking with laughter and tears, still shaking my head. After reliving the last ten years, I was crying for myself, laughing at my idiocy, shaking my head at how dumb I was because you can't just erase ten years of a bond like ours. Had I even questioned whether or not the boys still wanted me? Any doubts I had about our friendship were now forgotten – in fact, with all the laughing and crying and head-shaking I couldn't even remember why I was mad at all. I never knew it, the thought never crossed my mind, but those boys, who were my boys, needed me, too – I was their girl, I was theirs.
Wow.
"We knew you weren't feeling so good, and even though we didn't know why, we decided to give you your anniversary present three days early because we thought it would cheer you up," Naruto said, scratching the back of his head and giggling like a kid.
"Also because we knew you wouldn't remember unless we reminded you," Sasuke felt he should add. Naruto nudged him with his elbow. I laughed even more.
Now I was laughing and crying the Ugly Cry that you can only accomplish when you're so happy and miserable at the same time that somehow you don't feel anything anymore, though you know inside your heart, by some sort of instinct that what you should be doing is crying or laughing, one of the two, so you do both. I noticed, that in feeling nothing, I didn't feel misery – The Grief was gone. The boys did this to me, in an instant.
"Thank you," I said finally, wiping my tears and snuffling.
Sasuke shrugged and Naruto beamed so cute and content I pulled him into a hug and Ugly Cried onto his shoulder. I thought my body would have run out of tears days ago, but here I was, soaking his shirt with boogers and saliva.
I moved away after he gave me a 'that's enough' pat on the back, pretending I didn't see him wringing out his shirt when I turned to Sasuke and pulled his reluctant body into mine, making sure to rub my face extra hard onto his shoulder until his skin was wet beneath with my excrements.
"Ah…Okay," he said, clearly uncomfortable, and I laughed again, really loud.
By now I could tell the boys were quite worried about me, but I didn't care to explain myself. It had been too long since I laughed like this. Why had I put off meeting up with them until now? Oh yes, that's it, they'd kissed or something. How dumb. I ignored them because they were in love? Wow, I thought, that's really, really dumb.
Wiping off what I could from Sasuke's soaked shoulder guiltily, I stepped back and pressed my gift to my chest, giving them a huge smile – not the brusque, practiced smile I give my patients, not the friendly, self-conscious smile I give Ino – I smiled my friendly, big gummy Sakura smile that made my face look like a wrinkly pug and my nose look like a pyramid. I showed them just how much I absolutely loved the scrapbook they made, even though it looked like a kindergartener's first assignment.
"Thank you, guys, I love it," I said again, because I truly meant it. They shared a look that showed they hoped this marked the end of our conflict, and I remembered why I came here today in the first place. "I have something I need to say."
The boys stood to attention immediately, as if listening would help them understand, but I knew that even if I tried to tell them everything they never would. So I figured I might as well just tell them what was most important of all.
"I love you guys. I really, really love you both, so much." They exchanged another glance I didn't try to read. "And that's why it hurts so much when you lie."
A flicker of panic, quickly replaced by feigned confusion, that I wasn't going to hold against them. I was sticking to what was important, what they needed to know.
"But no matter what, no matter what choices you make, I want you to know you don't have to hide anything from me. I'm not saying that the kind of way a parent has to say to their child because they're related, I'm choosing to spend time loving you. And because I love you so much, it sounds crazy even to me, but I'd be happy just to know that after everything life has given us, the two of you have managed to sift through the dregs of the cards you were dealt and find something good… in each other. I'm probably not making any sense right now. What I'm trying to say is, as long as you're still my boys, I'm still your girl. I love you unconditionally. You guys are like the brothers I never had… only more annoying," I added with a smile.
They visibly relaxed with that smile, and the gap between us was crossed, I knew it. We didn't talk for a while after that, just sat under our tree, side-by-side, listening to the sounds of life around us nobody appreciates when they're emotionally sober. It was actually a nice day; this day was a good one and it wasn't trying to fool me this time. I felt terribly lucky to have people as precious, unique, beautiful and utterly human as the boys, to know that no matter how bad things would undoubtedly get, no matter how impossible it may seem, it would always be us struggling, fighting, breathing and prevailing together; they would always be my boys.
"It's good to have you back… Piglet," Naruto felt it necessary to say. Sasuke drew a sharp breath and smacked him over the head.
I turned to him with a tight smile. The sounds of life faded into white noise. I was going to send him flying, but then I thought, why? Why break the peace. I shook my head, and decided to appreciate that this was Naruto and no amount of beating and breaking would change that (at least not on the inside). That was when I decided to call this day, "The Day I Grew Up".
"I saw you guys making out."
Two very high-pitched, strangled noises filled the silence, and the boys both looked at me, stammering.
I may have grown, but I was still a child at heart.
The end.
-x-
thanks everyone, for everything. Love you guys.