Disclaimer: I don't own nor have I contributed to Naruto in any way! Nope! None!

IMPORTANT: Well, it's certainly been a very long time. I feel compelled to tell you all that my heart really isn't in this story as much now, although it's been getting more involved in it lately. But after seeing the large influx of reviews during the time that this story was on hiatus I knew that I couldn't just cancel this- it needs to be finished the right way. You see, I submitted this fic a very long time ago right when I had signed up for fanfiction. Since then my writing style has changed a lot, and for me this plot is pretty flat. I was able to salvage stories like Unshed and Love Me Not, but thus story is so far along that I hope it isn't too late to save it.

Chapter 14: Rain

Gaara had never expected to open his door to find a bandaged blond standing there with glassy sapphire eyes. What he had expected was green spandex and humongous eyebrows.

Not that he was complaining or anything…

"I-is this a bad time?" Naruto said, a slight blush tinting his cheeks.

"Cute…" Gaara thought, then shook his head.

"No, it's fine," he said, opening the door wider to let Naruto in.

Naruto looked around as he entered.

Every dorm must have been the same, Gaara and Lee's matching his own except for a few different things on the tables and a few more posters on the wall.

"Naruto?"

Naruto blinked.

"Huh? Oh, sorry!" he said, scratching the back of his head. "I kinda spaced out I guess…"

"So what did you want?" Gaara said, sitting down on the couch.

Naruto followed suit and sighed.

"I…I just need to talk to someone I guess."

Gaara waved a hand for him to continue, and Naruto took a deep breath.

"Itachi kissed me."

Gaara blinked.

"…what?"

"I mean, I kissed him first before, but it was just-!"

"Naruto, calm down. Tell me from the beginning so I actually understand, all right?"

"Hey Sai, you comin'?" Kankuro said, taking a loud bite out of his apple.

A pale brunette sitting cross-legged on the back veranda of the school didn't look away from his sketchpad as his roommate called him.

"No. You go on ahead," he said, pausing to glance at the rain that spilled over the terrace roof in sheets circulating between heavy and light.

"Suit yourself," the other brunette said, munching on his fruit as he exited the veranda.

Sai looked up at the rain again, then sighed and tore out the paper he was drawing on, crumpling it into a ball and throwing it behind him haphazardly.

"Inspiration…" he thought to himself. "I never needed it before, but with this hell of an artist's block, I don't think it would make a difference."

He listened to the pattering noises the rain made against the rooftop.

"At this point it would take a miracle to get me inspired."

Naruto took a breath as he finished his retelling of the past two hours.

Gaara sat beside him, looking at nothing in particular as he digested what Naruto had told him.

"You saw…" he said, and Naruto looked over at him. "You saw your father? You remembered him?"

Naruto nodded.

"I know that it probably sounds stupid to get worked up about something as meager as a memory, but-"

"No. It doesn't."

Naruto blinked as Gaara turned his eyes to him.

"It really doesn't. You loved your parents. To loose them physically and mentally in one fell swoop…it would make it seem like even a fraction of a memory would make you closer to feeling for them again."

"Gaara…"

"I know what you're going through," Gaara said. "My mother died giving birth to me. My father saw me as the cause of her death and hated me. He disappeared and was never seen again. I was sent to live with my uncle, who two years later tried to kill me. I was passed around to different foster homes. I stayed with one family for a while before they sent me here. So basically this is like my home now. My father was very wealthy, so it's not hard to continue attending this academy."

Gaara's scratched the back of his ruby locks.

"But sometimes I wish I could remember my mother. To know if she loved me at all in those few minutes while she was still alive and able to hold me before she died. Then again, sometimes I wish that I didn't because it would cause me so much pain to remember, but not be able to really feel it."

Gaara looked at Naruto to see silent tears cascading down his whiskered cheeks.

He reached out a pale hand and cupped one side of the blond's face, brushing away a tear. He traced his thumb over one of the whisker-like scars.

"Did you get these from the fire?" he asked.

Naruto nodded.

"It's hard not remembering, isn't it?" Gaara said.

Naruto shut his eyes tightly, and Gaara gasped a bit as the blond hugged him around the waist tightly, crying into his shirt silently.

His shoulders quivered as his tears flowed, and he felt a warm hand on his shoulder.

Gaara wasn't sure of what to do, never having had to be in one of those "comforting" positions before, so he awkwardly placed a hand on the blond's shoulder.

They stayed like that for a few moments until Naruto's sniffles faded, and he pulled away from Gaara.

"Thanks," he said, trying to muster a smile.

Gaara nodded.

"You said when you kissed Itachi you saw someone else?" Gaara said. "Who?"

Naruto scratched the back of his head abashedly.

"A-a friend from back home…well not a friend, I mean...uh…"

Gaara watched in amusement as Naruto's face gradually escalated to a deeper shade of red until his whole face looked like a whiskered tomato.

"Ok, I get it," Gaara said, saving the poor blond the trouble. "He was someone close."

Naruto nodded.

"His name was Neji. I miss him a lot. Before I left we…well we kind of got…closer…I don't know what we are now, but I know that I miss him."

"I see," Gaara said. He felt a spark in his chest when he heard that Naruto was already "close" to someone.

"You probably just missed him so much that you mistook Itachi for him, that and you might have been dizzy from passing out."

Naruto nodded.

"If you miss him so much, then just call him."

Naruto blinked for a moment, then resisted the urge to bang his head against the wall, and settled for smacking himself on the forehead instead.

"Man I'm stupid! Why didn't I think of that earlier!"

He shook his head and stood up, heading to the door. He paused and looked back at Gaara still sitting on the couch.

"Hey, thanks," he said, smiling genuinely before he shut the door.

Sasuke looked up from the book he was reading on the bed as Naruto entered the room, a small smile on his lips.

He walked over to his own bed and lifted the pillow, frowning when his orange and black phone wasn't lying where he had left it.

He got on his knees and looked under the bed to see if it had fallen off, but didn't find it. He lifted his head and almost smacked himself again when he found it lying on the covers.

"Could have sworn I left it under the pillow…" he thought absently, flipping open the phone. Disappointment lodged in his throat when he saw that he didn't have any messages.

What if Neji didn't want to talk to him? Wouldn't he have called already if he did…?

"Hey dobe." Naruto practically jumped out of his skin as his musings were broken.

"What teme?" he said, glaring at the raven half-heartedly.

"We still watching a movie tonight?"

Naruto's glare faded.

"Oh, uh…sure?"

Sasuke resisted the urge to say 'dobe' again to the blond. He was focusing on trying to be nicer, and calling Naruto a name after a simple response wouldn't exactly win him the Nobel Peace Price.

Naruto looked at the phone in his hand again, still debating on whether or not to call Neji. He was once again broken from thought as Sasuke threw a balled up piece of paper at him.

Screw the Nobel Peace Price.

Naruto pouted a little and picked it up off the floor.

"H.S.O.Y?" he thought. As his eyes scanned further down the page his fingers dug into the paper tighter and his eyes widened

"Oh hell no!"

He crumpled up the piece of paper like it was on fire and proceeded to stomp on it as if trying to mesh it into the floor.

Sasuke raised a delicate eyebrow.

"I'm not doing it! I refuse the nomination!" Naruto huffed, kicking the poor mutilated paper across the room.

"Good choice," Sasuke said.

"How would you know!"

"Because I was nominated last year."

Naruto fell on his back on his bed, a deflated sigh escaping his lips. He turned over on his side.

"This school is freaking ridiculous. Why do these guys all want to be around me so much?" Naruto knew that he wasn't the brightest bulb in the box when it came to relationships, but at this point even he could notice the lovesick pattern that several of the students were displaying towards him.

Naruto shook his head.

What the hell did they know about him? He didn't belong in this richy school. Hell no one there would probably even spare him a second glance were he not attending the school.

Naruto flipped open his phone as it suddenly buzzed, and smiled weakly at the screen.

"How you holdin' up?"

-Kiba

Sasuke shifted his eyes over to Naruto as he heard the clicking noises from his phone as he typed a reply message.

"I want to go home."

-Naruto

"Yea, all of us too. We miss ya, not to mention Neji has been berserk since you left."

-Kiba

Naruto's eyes widened.

"He hasn't called me at all though."

-Naruto

"He said he just did."

-Kiba

Naruto went to the message section of his phone under received messages and his eyebrows shot into his head as he saw Neji's name plain as day appear in bold at the top of the list.

Sasuke looked over from his laptop as Naruto shut his phone harshly.

"Sasuke," Naruto murmured.

"Hn," Sasuke replied, staring at his screen apathetically.

He looked up when a tan hand abruptly pushed down his laptop screen until it clicked into place.

Sasuke glared at the blond. "Do—"

"Why did you pick up my phone?" Naruto practically hissed.

"Shit," Sasuke thought, mind racing for an excuse as he maintained a cool exterior.

"What the hell are you talking about dobe?" he scoffed, opting for the innocent-jerk approach.

"No one else can get in this dorm but you." Naruto narrowed his eyes to Sasuke, who remained abidingly blasé. After thirty seconds of silence, Naruto spun around, back rigid as he headed for the door.

"Forget about the movie," he growled before slamming the door.

Naruto panted from anger as he stormed down the main hall.

What kind of place was this where even your personal cell phone calls were no longer an off-limits zone?

Naruto stopped as he reached the back veranda of the building, the rain outside slipping over the roof in sheets of water.

Shaking his head, Naruto walked off the veranda and into the rain unburdened. He walked until he reached the outskirts of the property, and abruptly slammed his fist against a tree, causing a shower of multiple raindrops to fall on him from the wet leaves.

"I fucking hate this place!"

"That makes two of us."

Naruto looked up at the sudden voice to see an enormous bright green umbrella sitting among a nook in the tree he had struck.

Naruto felt himself droop.

"Great, now I'm talking to a colorblind umbrella."

The umbrella shifted, and a pale hand lifted the corner, revealing a short-haired brunette.

"What did you call me?" he said, and Naruto ran a wet hand over his face.

"Sorry," he grumbled. "I thought I was alone."

The brunette studied him with unflinching coal eyes before lifting up his umbrella a little more. He sat cross-legged in the tree, a sketchpad dry as sand laying across them.

"…you're wet," the young man said.

Naruto had been so caught up in his thoughts that he hadn't even realized that he was drenched to the bone, his body quivering from the cold rain.

"Yea…" Naruto eventually said as the student in the tree kept examining him. "I suppose you wouldn't have a towel under there."

"No," the brunette said, before disappearing under the umbrella again. Naruto rubbed his arms as his body shivered uncontrollably. He looked back the way he came, then up at the high-and-dry brunette's umbrella.

"Can I get under there until the rain lightens up?" Naruto called up over the hammering raindrops, and the young man's head peeked back out from his shelter.

"…ok." He reached out a hand below, grabbing Naruto's and heaving him up to the nook he had settled in until they both disappeared under the umbrella.

"Thanks," Naruto said, shaking out his drenched hair. He grinned sheepishly at the brunette, only to see that his gaze was not on him, but at the sketchpad below him. Naruto looked down, and his grin faded when he saw the dozens of water droplets he had flung onto the canvas, dripping color everywhere.

"Oh, I'm really sorry," Naruto said, his voice growing quieter. The brunette stared at the ruined piece of work, before tearing it out of the pad and beginning to crumple it in his hand.

"Hey, stop!" Naruto said quickly, snatching the paper away from the man. He opened the piece back up and examined it. He chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully before using his thumb to smudge the colors on the canvas around, coal eyes watching his every move.

Naruto stopped after a minute or two, studied the piece again, and handed it back to the man with a wide grin.

The brunette looked down at the sloppy smudges and shaky strokes spreading the color everywhere, eyes wandering over the paper.

"Now you can make it into a new masterpiece," Naruto said, still grinning. "You've already got the colors there." He reached forward and grabbed the brunette's pale hands, placing the man's fingertips on the canvas. "And you've already got the tools. What's stopping you?"

The brunette looked up as the blond removed his hands, a goofy smile still plastered into place.

His lip twitched a little before spreading into a soft smile.

"Yes," he said quietly.

Another indefinite wait for the next chapter unfortunately. This will be put on an informal hiatus.

Sky-eyed Kitsune