Chapter 5: Four Years Later
Naruto POV
"Hey!" I yell at my friend and roommate Kaoru and his girlfriend, Yuki, who are making out on his bed. "Fucker! Clear out!"
"Oh shove it, Uzumaki," he says, giving me the finger. "Just because you want to masturbate doesn't mean we have to get out."
"I'm not masturbating," I say exasperatedly. "I'm going to be talking to-"
My computer starts to chime with the Skype ringtone.
"…Sasuke," I finish with a groan.
Kaoru's eyebrows rise.
"Go talk to your boyfriend elsewhere," he says. "I was here first."
"We scheduled this, Kaoru," I snap, clicking the icon. "This happens every time before he calls. It's on the board right behind you. Every other Saturday night you get the fuck out so I can talk to my fiancé in private. Sorry," I apologize to Sasuke, who looks amused. "Kaoru's being a dick."
"I've got one, but it doesn't define me!" Kaoru retorts.
My boyfriend sighs.
"So is Jonathan. You'd think he'd have better things to do, like go hang out with his boyfriend. As it stands right now he doesn't want to leave. I don't know why."
I hear muffled speaking from offscreen, and then laughter. Sasuke turns his wheelchair around irritably.
"I don't care that you're lazy," he says in English, and I marvel that he says it with very little accent. He sounds almost like an American. "You know Saturday morning is the time that I usually talk with Naruto."
There's more muffled speaking, and this time my petit fiancé picks up a pen and throws it. There's more muffled laughter, and the sound of running feet. In the background, a door slams. I clap.
"Pure genius," I say. "I should try that with Kaoru."
"What did you say, cocksucker?" says my friend.
"Wow, you finally got it right," I say, rolling my eyes. "And we've been roomies and friends for what, three and a half years?"
Sasuke laughs.
"Fuck both of you sideways," says Kaoru.
I roll my eyes and pick up my computer, taking it out into the hall.
"Have fun with the mutual masturbation!" my friend calls after me.
"I'll take your dick and shove it up your ass, bitch," I say threateningly. "How's that for masturbation?"
I hear him roaring with laughter as I walk down the hall.
"So how are things?" I ask as I walk into the common room and set the computer down on a coffee table.
"Relatively boring," Sasuke responds as I walk a little ways away. "The classes I have this semester aren't as bad as they were last semester."
"Do tell," I say, making a cup of black tea in the common room kitchenette and coming back to sit down.
"Well, last semester my Forensic Psychology professor was a balding jerk who needed to get laid. I was one of only three people out of thirty who passed the course. I mean, passing is great and all, but he really grades harshly. I almost didn't pass."
I press a hand over my heart and gasp theatrically.
"Uchiha Sasuke almost failed a class?" I say. "The horror!"
Sasuke smirks at me.
"I had to get a tutor, as you should know if you've been paying attention to me when I speak during our Skype sessions," he says, rolling his eyes. "That was incredibly embarrassing."
I fall over on the couch and pretend to have a seizure.
"Your maturity level will never increase, will it?" Sasuke groans.
"Never," I say, grinning. "That's why you love me."
"That and the awesome sex whenever I come home on vacation," he says, grinning cheekily. I give him my best "aww shucks" expression.
"By the way, how is physical therapy going?" I ask in a more serious tone.
"It's not bad," says Sasuke, sighing. "As you well know from our sexual exploits, I've regained full feeling in my lower body, but I still can't walk very far without experiencing excruciating pain."
"Well still," I say comfortingly. "The doctors told us you wouldn't walk again or regain feeling in your lower body, so you're a little over halfway to proving their stupid asses wrong. It may take a while, but you're getting there, koishii."
"I know, I know, but it's moving so slowly! It's been four years, for the love of all things sacred!" He growls in frustration. "I hate being confined to a wheelchair for most of the day! It's uncomfortable, and it's embarrassing and annoying having to be ferried around by Jonathan or his boyfriend Fritz all the time! Not only that, but it's frustrating because when I'm in Advanced Fashion Design I can't reach the top of the mannequin, and so I have to stand with the help of crutches or I have to have someone hold me up!"
"Well, obviously you've got good friends over there," I say dryly. "I thought only I had the stamina to put up with your bitching all the time."
Sasuke rolls his eyes.
"Yeah, well, at least they're not as annoying as you," he says.
I clutch at my chest again.
"You wound me, Sasuke!"
"I'm sure," he says, smirking. "Speaking of wounding, are your parents still giving you a hard time about the sadomasochism?"
"Is the sky blue?" I ask, groaning.
"Actually, it's gray here a majority of the time," says my boyfriend with a straight face. "And foggy. And rainy. It's a wonder the United Kingdom hasn't drowned in the water that comes down on an almost daily basis."
"Oh shut up," I say irritably, and Sasuke laughs. "You know what I mean. Dad says no self-respecting couple would do the things that we do to each other. I tell him that we're twenty-two, we can take care of ourselves, and what we do in bed is none of his business. Of course, that results in Mom throwing all manners of things at me for talking that way to my father whilst my deadbeat older brother laughs maniacally and Naruko shakes her head and wonders how in the hell she got stuck with such a crazy family."
He snickers.
"'Crazy' is an understatement," he says. "Naruko seems to be the least 'crazy' of the bunch, despite the necrophilia. Sometimes I wonder how she got stuck with all of you."
"Hey!" I say indignantly. "I resent that!"
"Whatever, dobe. Has Kyuubi still not gotten a job? You would think that with his skill set your dad would take him on as his head of public affairs."
"Tcheh," I snort. "Kyuubi only cares about his artwork. It's not even artwork! It's just a bunch of garbage glued together that he calls fancy names!"
"Wow, tell me how you really feel," says my fiancé sarcastically. "Have he and Itachi gotten into any fights?"
"Not that I know of," I reply. "Of course, I haven't talked to him in a while, so Itachi could've killed him and hidden the body somewhere. If that's true you know I will personally take great pleasure in torturing your brother for the whereabouts of the remains."
"Of that I have no doubt," says Sasuke. "I also have no doubt that if you torture my brother I will pay you back tenfold the next time we have sex."
I raise an eyebrow.
"Is that supposed to be a punishment?" I say cockily. "It sounds more like a reward to me."
"I never said it was a punishment in the first place," he smirks.
"You implied it," I say in an accusatory tone.
"No," he corrects me, "I inferred it. You implied it."
"Well excuse me, Mister Brainiac," I say, sticking my tongue out immaturely. "The point is, it's still not a punishment, because I would enjoy every second of whatever hellishly delicious torture you have in mind for the next time we have sex."
"Not if it involves no sex at all," Sasuke says, grinning smugly.
"Really?" I whine. "You're an asshole, Sasuke."
"I do have one, as does every other person on this planet," he shoots back.
I give him the finger.
"Well, we can't very well do it right now, seeing as we're thousands of miles apart."
"Well, in a few months we both graduate, so that solves that problem!" I grin.
"Solves what problem?" says someone from the background on Sasuke's side. He groans.
"I taught Jon Japanese," he says. "He does quite well when it comes to understanding it, unfortunately for us. His accent is atrocious though. I thought you were with Fritz!" he adds to Jonathan.
There's muffled speaking and then a guy's face invades the screen. I assume it's Jon. According to Sasuke, Jon is either Scottish or Irish, I can't remember which. He has flaming red hair, blue eyes, and major freckles.
"So I'm finally meeting the famous Naruto!" he says. Beside him Sasuke is looking resigned and annoyed. "I've seen pictures of you before, but never actually gotten a chance to talk to you! How are you?"
I blink.
"Sasuke's right," I finally say. "Your Japanese is atrocious."
My fiancé smirks, and Jon gapes indignantly.
"I'd like to hear you speaking English!" he says. "By the way, are you full Japanese? I don't think I've ever seen a Japanese person with naturally blond hair."
'I'm half Japanese," I say, slightly taken aback. "My mom's half Irish, and my dad's half German."
"Ooh, what part of Ireland?" squeals Jon.
"Uhm, I dunno?" I say bemusedly.
"This has been really nice, Jon," says Sasuke, pushing his overenthusiastic roommate out of the way of the screen, "but seriously, get out. I'm trying to talk to Naruto."
"But-"
"Out!"
"Naruto, does he treat you like this?"
"Only all the time," I say, rolling my eyes and smiling in mock sympathy. "To think that I get to deal with it twenty-four-seven once we get married just fills me with a joy I can't describe. The only consolation I have is that he's not a girl, or it would be much worse."
"I'll kill you both," growls my boyfriend, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers and closing his eyes as Jonathan laughs uncontrollably. A vein throbs in his forehead. "Yeah, keep it up, asshole!" he yells at Jonathan.
"Uh-oh," I say, "you'd better stop before he goes into Hulk Mode."
"Ahahahaha, I'm so sorry," comes Jonathan's voice from the background. The laptop moves as Sasuke picks it up, and I hear "Okay, okay, I'm leaving!"
When his laptop is back on the desk, he sighs in irritation.
"You two are such children," he says tiredly. "I am never going to let you two be together in the same room unless I have you under heavy sedatives."
"I'm sorry, S'uke," I say sincerely. "I couldn't resist messing with you. I guess it was too much…"
"You guess?"
"Fine, it was too much," I amend. "Now what were we talking about before Jon interrupted?"
"Honestly, I don't remember. It must not have been that important. How are your classes going?"
"Not too bad," I say. "This year I'm one of the senior 'international' and Op. Ed. columnists of the campus paper, and the Tokyo Shinbun saw some of my work and offered me a job with them when I graduate."
"Oh my god," says Sasuke, "that's great, Naruto! What was the piece about?"
"It was a humorous editorial skewering the 2016 presidential race in the United States, which I've been following like a hawk. Seriously, you'd think most Americans would have more sense than to go for the people on the extreme ends of the political spectrum. That Rick Santorum guy seems just as Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs as he was in 2012; I don't know why he's on the ballot again after his disastrous run in the last presidential election."
"I'm positive that he is Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs," he says, rolling his eyes. "I can't believe he's stayed in the race for so long when his views are so far off the mainstream Republican platform that there's little hope of him getting the American Independent voters. And that Sarah Palin woman? She's a joke! Personally, I'm more partial to Hillary Clinton."
"I totally agree," I say, "but I didn't know you were following it too."
"I watch the BBC World News every night over Jon's objections, and I have an online subscription to the Tokyo Shinbun as well as paper subscriptions to the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and La Monde Friede, dobe," Sasuke tells me. "Would you expect anything less?"
"No, because it's you we're talking about," I say, grinning. "I'd be shocked if you didn't follow it with an almost anal obsession."
My computer beeps, and I look up in the upper corner. My battery is almost out.
"Dammit," I groan, picking up the computer and beginning my tip up the stairs back to my dorm room. "Sasuke, I have to go. The battery is dying."
"When was the last time you plugged it in?" he asks.
"Last night," I say irritably. "I think there's something wrong with my computer, because the battery was at seventy-five percent when I started talking to you, enough for at least two hours of power without the chord. We've been talking for only about half an hour and it's at ten percent. How in the fuck do you explain that?" As if to punctuate my irritation, the computer beeps again, showing me I'm down to eight percent. "This is a useless piece of shit," I mutter as I stop in front of my dorm room door. "I'm considering getting a new computer if I can't figure out what is wrong with this one."
I open the door, and my first thought is, 'Why the fuck is there someone on my bed?' Then I realize who it is and what is happening.
"Dude, what the fuck are you thinking?" I yell. "Do that shit on your own bed!"
Kaoru jumps and pulls out of his girlfriend. Yuki shrieks and covers herself with my Bleach blanket. Sasuke went on a foreign exchange program to Germany for a semester last year, and he went to a local anime convention on a day off and got it for me. When I get lonely at night (not in that way), I wrap myself in it and inhale his lingering scent, which is going to be gone now because I have to wash it, because it's probably going to be stained.
Yep, I'm gonna murder Kaoru.
"Your bed's more comfortable!" he whines. "And there's shit on my bed!"
"I don't care!" I snap. "When have I ever given you permission to use my bed? Especially for those purposes? If you want to do that, clean off your own bed!"
He and his girlfriend look sheepish and start cleaning themselves up.
"If I find stuff on my bedsheets or my Bleach blanket, fuckface," I snarl, "I will have your dick and ballsack on a silver platter. I have to go now," I add to Sasuke.
"What happened?" he asks worriedly.
"My friend and his girlfriend are…" I shut the door and shudder. "Or were… You know what; I'll tell you the next time we get a chance to talk, when I'm not freaking out and wanting to kill Kaoru."
My fiancé's face turns pale.
"No way!" he says, disgusted. "That's sick…"
"I know," I say. "I'll murder the bastard if he gets cum on anything you've given me, I swear. Aishiteruze, utsukushii."
"You're just so cute when you get all overprotective," he teases me with a wink. "Aishiteruze, koishii."
Smiling, he kisses the tips of his fingers and presses them to the screen. I do the same, and then the screen goes blank as my computer dies.
"All right, bitch," I yell irritably, "you'd better be off my bed and fully clothed before I count to ten, or I'll kill you both where you lie! The same goes if you got any cum on the bear at the end of my bed! That was an anniversary present from Sasuke!"
I hear a muffled "shit," and I growl angrily.
"I'm gonna kill you, Kaoru!" I yell.
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Sasuke POV
Two Months Later…
"Zo vere are you two planning on getting married?" Fritz asks me as he rests his head in Jon's lap. In his tired state, his German accent has become thicker.
"Well, now that Japan's legalized gay marriage, we're doing it at home," I say. "As for the honeymoon, I don't know. Naruto's partial to spending two weeks in Germany, but I'm more partial to a road trip across the United States."
"Vy America?" he says indignantly.
"It's nothing personal, Fritz," I say. "I've just never been to the United States before."
"Never?" says Jon, shocked. "I thought that since your family's rich you would travel everywhere!"
"I never said we were rich," I say with a sigh, "I just said we were well-off. And Mom's been having financial problems since the messy divorce from Fugaku."
"Vait, you call your vater by his first name?" says Fritz. "If I ever did dat to eizer of my parents dey vould gib me a hiding."
"Yeah, well Fugaku lost the right to be called 'Father' around the time I turned ten," I bite out.
"Wow, Sasuke, tell us how you really feel," says Jon, and I laugh, turning the desk chair back around to face my laptop, on which my Forensic Psychology final essay is slowly taking shape.
"Can you blame me?" I ask rhetorically. "He tried to shove his stupid Christianity –no offense meant, guys- down my throat from the time I was ten until he finally got locked up and treated me, Mom, and my older brother with contempt because we refused to convert. When he learned that I was gay, he freaked out. And when I told him that Naruto and I were engaged, he tried to kill both of us. Luckily for us, he was too drunk to aim the gun properly, but he still did a lot of damage, as you can see. Yeah, I have no respect or pity for someone like him."
"Well, at least your folks know about you," Jon says. "I'm still terrified of telling mine about me and Fritz. They're hardcore Roman Catholics who adhere strictly to the Bible. Me mam goes to confession every day, and me dad strictly observes the Sabbath. Their house is filled with statues of the Virgin Mary and hanging crucifixes. And they're huge homophobes. If they found out they'd ban me from their house and never let me talk to my little sister Maire again."
"Ugh," I say sympathetically. "Luckily Mom refused to let Fugaku bring his work home, or our house would have looked the same way your parents' house does. The only difference would be the architecture."
Jon snickers.
Just then the Skype ringtone chimes.
"What the hell?" asks Jon. "Don't the people back home usually call on Saturday mornings?"
I check the Skype caller ID.
"Yeah," I say, confused. "It's Naruto. It must be an emergency for him to be calling me so early in the morning on a Wednesday."
I click on the icon, and immediately the screen is filled up by Kyuubi's face. I start.
"Kyuubi?" I ask, shocked. "Where's Naruto?"
"He's in the hospital," says Kyuubi.
My heart stops. Suddenly the air is very hard to breathe, and my body feels ten pounds heavier. Behind me on the bed I hear a shocked gasp from Jonathan, and Fritz asks "Vot?" bemusedly.
"W-why?"
"He got into an accident, Sasuke-chan," says Naruto's mom, coming into the frame beside Kyuubi. "From what we've gathered he had developed a fever earlier today, but after classes he went to a bar with his friend Kaoru, drank a couple of beers, and on the way back to their dorm he stepped out in the road, not paying attention to where he was, and got hit by a car. The driver was some old man in the beginning stages of dementia that had gotten lost and ended up on campus."
"How bad is it?"
"We don't know. The doctors haven't come out to give us any conclusive summary of his injuries. He's in surgery at the moment."
"Oh my god," I say faintly. "Oh my god."
Naruko appears in the screen and begins to sign to me. Luckily, since I left for Oxford I've become much better at reading and speaking Japanese Sign Language.
"Don't worry, Sasuke-kun, he should be fine," she says. "It might postpone your wedding though…"
I almost laugh. I completely forgot about the wedding in light of the horrible news.
"Naruko," I sign, "I'm coming back on the first flight I can get. Whether it's tomorrow or the next day, I'm not sure. What hospital are you at?"
"He's at the hospital near Tokyo University," says Kushina-san. "Tokyo Regional Medical Center. When can you get here?"
"Well like I said, I don't know," I say, also signing my words. "I'll be there as soon as I can. I've got to get a flight and pack a bag, so I'll call you or email Naruko when I get a flight."
"All right," says Kushina-san worriedly. "Safe travelling, Sasuke-chan."
"Thank you, Kushina-san," I say, disconnecting the call.
"Vat happened, Sasuke?" asks Fritz, sitting up.
"Naruto was hit by a car last night Tokyo time," I say numbly, still trying to wrap my head around the news. The last time I talked to him, four days ago, he was absolutely fine, or at least seemed that way.
Oh god, Naruto… The idiot! He should not have gone drinking! At the very least, Kaoru should have noticed something was wrong beforehand and stopped Naruto from drinking.
"How bad is it?" Jon asks, his green eyes filled with worry.
"They…" I murmur, and I hate the way my voice cracks. "They don't know yet…"
"Oh, honey," he sighs, reaching over and hugging me. I hug back, bury my face in his shirt, and cry. Cry because I'm scared. Cry because I don't know what I'll do if this turns out to be worse than anyone thought. Cry until I have no more tears left. Finally when I'm done, I wipe my eyes and look at my friends.
"Do you need any help getting back?" says Fritz. "I can try to find a nonstop flight for you if you vant."
"That would be helpful," I sniffle, trying to smile a little. "Could… could you two come with me?"
They both look at me, and I think they're going to say no, but then their faces light up in smiles.
"Of course," says Jon. "You don't have to pay for us," he says, seeming to read my mind as I open my mouth. "Fritz and I can pay for our tickets and lodging. You just focus on Naruto, honey."
I smile in what I hope looks like a grateful manner.
"Thanks, guys…"
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Well, hi there! Yeah, the last part of this chapter –the Sasuke POV part- was written while I was on a double dose of Vicodin (I had my wisdom teeth taken out and it hurts like a bitch), so I'm afraid it's not very good. However, there is one more chapter, so hopefully it will redeem the ending of this chapter.
I also have noticed that I'm acting stranger than I usually do. And that's saying something if I notice that I'm acting weird and am actually bothered by it, because I'm already pretty fucking weird as it is. And it started after the removal of the wisdom teeth. I'm wondering if it's the Vicodin or the aftereffects of the anesthesia, or if somehow the nerves were damaged so as to make me act weirder than usual. God I hate Vicodin. I think the shit killed a few brain cells. I hate wisdom teeth even more. This was a complete non-sequitur. You will not speak of it to anyone. Good night.