Chapter 8

The doctor's office as a terrible place in Kiba's opinion, he would almost have preferred going to the a public clinic in the lower part of town. It was closer, and everyone that went there was poverty-stricken and mostly kept to themselves. Very unlike what was happening now, fancily dressed patients - and medical professionals - were staring at his scarred and tattooed face with such scrutiny, children hid behind their parents and stared at his disfigurements with such awe, something between interest and disgust. Not a soul spoke to either of them, Naruto was following directly behind him, probably out of courtesy, and partly out fear of getting scrutinized as well, not because he was traveling with Fang, the disfigured freak, but of what he was personally. He wasn't rich like the other patients here were, and he feared that they could just smell his poor, or something. So he hid behind his friend, and let him take most of the attention. He didn't want to seem like a coward, it just happened, reflex or instinct or something maybe even shame. Naruto continued to hide through the tour of the small facility, Kiba was following a nurse, Naruto could see the scrubs once he dared a glance over Fang's shoulder, the scarred teen held a sneer the entire time they walked down the hallway. For once, Naruto didn't notice the disturbing smell of bleach, it smelled well, it really didn't have a distinctive smell, but it was clean at least, or looked clean anyway.

Naruto nearly bumped into Fang once the teen made a sudden stop, well, he did run into the scarred teen, but Fang's balance seemed perfect since neither of them were sent spiraling to the ground, he didn't even seem to notice, he was too busy listening to the nurse speak, telling them that the doctor would be in a moment. They both knew it was a lie, but ushered themselves into the small room. The observation bed took up most of the floor space and the counter and cupboards pressed against the walls, making it even smaller. Naruto had a small moment of panic when Fang decided to desert him by taking a seat on the observation table, he avoided eye contact with the blonde, who just stood there like an idiot, as if expecting Fang to just abandon his paper covered perch so Naruto could hide behind him. It stung a little when he didn't though, so he walked around the observation table and started to lean against the wall, still trying to hide his figure behind Fang's, with little success.

The doctor came in almost an hour later, looking relaxed - perhaps a bit annoyed as well - like they had woken him up from a nap just to work. Naruto watched as Fang spread his shoulders out wide, straightened his back from its slouched position, Naruto imagined that the scarred teen was glaring, or sneering, maybe even both. Naruto just shrunk against the wall, letting his feet slide away from each other so he got shorter, hiding from the obviously imposing man, especially if Fang were intimidated by him.

Kiba wasn't intimidated by the doctor, just annoyed, but his manners forced him to use proper posture in the presence someone with more authority than he had. Kiba silently cursed his father's conditioning on him, despite his absence throughout his life. The scarred teen watched closely as the doctor approached him, looking for any signs of disgust or a facial twitch that proved he was covering up his disgust. Kiba was slightly pleased at the lack of reaction, other than slight disinterest.

The doctor pushed his glasses up on his narrow nose, and pushed back some blue-silver bangs before leaning closer to Kiba, invading his too-personal space. Kiba held back a recoil and a slight shiver of fright, people's faces tended to look very strange up close he decided, especially people he wasn't used to seeing up close, or at all really.

The doctor didn't seem to react to nearly kissing his patient, they were close enough, he was too interested on puling Kiba's cheeks, spreading them far apart, checking for any signs of hypersensitivity. Kiba's reaction was to stay stoic and half-glaring at his doctor through stretched eyelids.

The doctor cleared his throat, swallowing a clog that was jammed in his windpipe, "Are you experiencing any pain?" he asked, trying to hold up the disinterested tone his voice, but failing to hide his complete interest.

Kiba let out a half-scoff, "No" he answered shortly, sounding older than he looked with the gruff pitch he had taken on.

The doctor hummed in Kiba's face and leaned in even closer, pushing his glasses further up on his narrow nose until the nose protectors were almost embedded into the bridge of his face.

Naruto watched, slightly interested, and maybe a bit jealous, he hadn't gotten to see Fang's scars and tattoos - even if the doctor was using near force, and Fang did look uncomfortable with the way he was being observed - he attempted to get a look at the doctor around Fang's head, while trying keep up his incognito status. He seemed successful so far, or the doctor was just ignoring everything else in favor of staring at Fang's face.

"Remove your shirt" The doctor let out, letting a gruff tone take over his own voice, making it sound more of command than a doctor's suggestion. Naruto let a shudder strike through his system, he recalled seeing Fang nude, why would see him just shirtless bother him now?

He had pinned his feeling of discomfort on the doctor, Naruto watched with such rapt attention, he wiped his palms on his jacket, then on his jeans, he let out a silent breath and ignored the feeling of warmth that started to spread through his face. He glanced nervously around Fang's arm as he reached his arms back, pulling on the material around his shoulder blades.

Naruto watched Fang's arm contract as he folded his muscles, and stared as they spread out and the small of his back was revealed, his arms kept moving until his entire torso was nude to the doctor, and his broad back exposed to the silent blonde behind him.

Naruto gaped silently at Fang's back, he was completely speechless, Fang's back held miles of spiraling ink and scar tissue, tan-pink lines wound around his back and Naruto was left dumbstruck, out of idea of what could have happened to the other male for him to end up this way. The longer he stared, the more things he crossed of his list until he was left with dumb things, like magic, or getting trapped in a meat slicer. He was pretty sure that one of his tattoos, or scars or something, moved, but before he could squint his eyes to get a closer, it was gone.

Fang's doctor didn't seemed fazed by the sheer quantity of marred skin, he didn't seem intrigued either, no gesture showing that he had acknowledged the oddities in the teen's skin. His latex coated hands roamed down Kiba's chest, pinching apart certain areas where the scar tissue had amassed, looking for any nerve reactions.

Nothing.

That's when the doctor made a noise, a click of his tongue, almost like a snap of eureka. Only the opposite in this situation. "Your nerve endings aren't working..." He muttered more to himself than to let his patient know that he was indeed dysfunctional. Kiba, not knowing how to respond to the news kept silent, Naruto did as well, though he gaped. Just a tad. Fang couldn't feel anything where the scars covered his skin, which was mostly everywhere, Naruto felt for him. He would never be able to feel a comfort, a hug, a caress, over most of his body.

Kiba sat there, and waited. There was nothing he could do about the damage his body had taken, and he couldn't tell the doctor the real reason they were there. He'd get thrown in a psych ward, and the curse would never get broken. It was a shame he couldn't feel anything on most of his skin, but there was an upside as well, he wouldn't be able to feel pain, in theory anyway. Which means he could get spectacularly trashed and wouldn't feel it in the morning when he woke up after a fight. That probably wouldn't slide off cool with Blondie, but Kiba couldn't really care less as long as they made up and broke the curse.

After another agonizing look over from the creepy surgeon, a quick check of his skin was all that was left before he would go into surgery, the doctor, blue-grey hair shining under the incandescent lights of the hospital room pulled a scalpel out of his pocket, Kiba thought that was really creepy, but didn't comment, instead he followed the shiny metal with his eyes until he couldn't see it anymore.

"Huh..." He uttered, having just plunged a scalpel into his patient's cheek, but with no results, not even a scream, he was sightly disappointed at that, but the real trouble came not with the sounds he made, but the lack of puncture to make these sounds, the Inuzuka's skin absorbed the sharp tool, Kabuto tried to wiggle it, attempting to puncture the scar tissue, or just break through it. Nothing. The tiny blade refused to go through his patient's skin.

Odd.

He walked casually over to a gleaming tray of tools, pocketing his personal scalpel, he pulled a large syringe off the tray and pushed the nozzle down so it was empty of all oxygen, he walked back over to the patient and jabbed the thing into his jaw. Once again, it refused to go through and the doctor was left astonished, and mortified that he hadn't gotten the reaction.

Multiple sharp, pointy, and ordinarily deadly tools later, Kabuto pushed up his glasses and practically sneered at his patient,

"You're inoperable" he grit out, sounded very annoyed that he wouldn't be able to cut someone's face open.

Naruto let the relief show on his face when he followed Fang out of the doctor's office, they didn't speak the entire way back to their car - which was parked some ways away.

They both climbed in and the chauffeur started the vehicle and pulled into traffic. The automobile held a dark silence, Kiba wasn't sure why he was disappointed the surgery wouldn't work when he knew the whole time that it wouldn't.

He spent the rest of the car ride looking out the window at the blur of traffic, nothing but horns and the blasting of wind as they pushed against the breeze towards their part of town.

The rest of the day was uneventful, Kiba stayed with Naruto in a silent agreement that his dad needed time to cool, and Naruto's dad was just gone, leaving the two teens to fend for themselves. Naruto had went to bed early, just after their pizza dinner. The blonde had rinsed his plate off and disappeared into the bathroom.

The scarred teen listened to the rhythmic sound of teeth being brushed and subconsciously rolled his tongue over his teeth, wishing he had grabbed a bag of his things before he had run away from home to live with the guy that could break his curse.

Naruto emerged some minutes later, but didn't sit down, he was clad in pale blue pajamas, shirt only three quarters buttoned, leaving his neck free to move and arrange in the too big material. He thrust his fist up, thumb pointing backwards, towards the hallway he had just appeared from.

"There's an extra toothbrush in there, if you want..." Fang had given him no response that he had actually heard him so he continued speaking "It's the white one..." Again, no words on Fang's part, Naruto put it off as being upset about the doctor being a bust. With nothing left to say, Naruto went back into the hallway, Kiba could hear him muffle a yawn, then close his bedroom door behind him. He wondered what made Naruto go to bed so early, then looked at the clock, conveniently placed on a table by the window that overlooked the street. Crimson LCD told him Sun. Sunday. Tomorrow was Monday. Which meant school. Fuck. Kiba hissed and sighed and moaned for a few minutes before deciding that he wasn't going to go. But went to sleep on the couch so he didn't keep Naruto awake, there wasn't much he could do in the apartment that wouldn't attract noise anyway, so sleep seemed like the best way to pass time. He turned out the dim over-head light and blindly maneuvered his way back to the couch, kicking of his shoes, but deciding to keep his socks on just in case it got cold. He curled his arm under him and used it as a pillow. The rest was a blur as he finally slept.

Ino had made a reappearance in his dream, the usual mocking and scolding had passed slowly, along with some 'Friendly' taunting on her side. With a blur of purple smoke Kiba woke up, he didn't make a big show of it, just moaned and flicked an eye open to look over at the clock near the window. Surely he couldn't have slept that long, but the sun was blocking his view, and Kiba figured he had slept long enough since the sun was peaking over the tip of his old home and right into his face. With a long string of moans, groans and curses, he ended up on his feet. His vision swam with streams of black blurs as the blood rushed back to his eyes and was flowing through his body properly. He lifted his hands up towards the sky, ignoring the way they grazed against the ceiling once he pushed himself onto his tip-toes. His ankles and elbows pop and mellowed in the pleasure.

Once he had popped nearly every joint in his body Kiba set out for food, or Naruto, which ever worked. The smell of bacon - albeit burning bacon - was lacking in the air, he wasn't that disappointed though, living with his care-taker and cook, had taught him some things, which included basic food preparation. He stumbled into the kitchen and thanked the lord for the un-opened package of bacon in the fridge. He pulled it out and pulled the seal tab off, leaving it on the counter in his frenzy to cook the meat finished. He pulled the skillet Naruto had used to destroy something holy and hoped that he would be able to do better. He hadn't had that much practice with cooking food, but with his constant supervision, he was sure that it wouldn't burn.

He turned the knob on the range and sparked a small fire on the large burner in the front. He shimmied the pan over before settling the metal on the middle of the burner. Kiba grabbed the bacon package from the other side of the range and opened the flap, separating one of the thin slices of heavenly goodness and placed them carefully on the left side of the pan and continued the process until a line of pork was spread out across the diameter of the pan.

Kiba was almost finished when his mind drifted to Naruto, he'd nearly burnt a piece of the bacon when his mind was wandering off. He dared a glance at the corridor where the blonde had left him alone last night. The scarred teen piled a stack of paper towels on one of clean plates from the dish pile and started shoveling the semi-crispy meat onto it. He had cooked the entire package and had accumulated a large pile of sweet-smelling bacon when he got worried. Maybe Naruto had gotten kidnapped by the goons from the shop, maybe he had overdosed when his father had come home. He gulped. Finding a dead body would probably ruin his pretty good morning. He waited another minutes, fanning the bacon aroma out of the kitchen and towards Naruto's bedroom. Nothing. Kiba sighed, long and deep, and nerved himself to find Naruto's corpse. He slowed to creeper speed and approached Naruto's door, tensing once his hand resting on the cool chipped-chopper of his bedroom door.

Kiba turned it.

Walking into an empty room was a relief, sort of, proving his first theory correct possibly that Naruto could have been kidnapped. He knew that he was probably over-reacting, but he still couldn't help but be worried. Didn't tell him, didn't leave a note. Kiba growled at himself, he wasn't Naruto's mother so he should stop acting like it.

He walked back into the living room where had slept last night and then over to the table by the window, he picked up the clock that had told him that school was going to occur the next day. School. School. He realized that Naruto was more than likely at school, and not dead sitting in the alley outside of his house, or he hoped at least.

The alley was empty, so school seemed like the most likely candidate for where his curse-breaker was. He on the other hand had no intention of chasing after the blonde, even if he turned wolf in his absence. There was no way he was going to be seen with all of his scars and disfigurement, nobody would even recognize him. But it didn't matter to him, even a one percent chace of getting caught not being the coolest and most attractive person in his school was too much for him.

He went back inside of Naruto's apartment and grabbed the trench coat and sneaked back into his own house. He pressed his ear against the door.

Silence.

He figured everyone was still asleep, so he reached up and took the spare key from the top of the door and slipped into the pent-house.

His dad was probably somewhere, probably off with some woman, or working, or both at the same time. It didn't really matter, as long as he wasn't here. He grabbed something from the fridge, a sandwich covered in cling wrap. It was probably made for him, but he felt childish satisfaction knowing that he had stole something that his father could have made. Even though it was probably Rose that had made it. He smirked wickedly all the way to his old bedroom and finished the sandwich before he made it to his bed. He didn't get on the mattress though, he leaned down on the floor and reached under it. Grabbing a brand sports' bag that he had whined about during the ninth grade.

He filled it with clothes and left the puffy bag on his bed, waiting for Rose to find him, to talk or whatever it is she does these days.

It took fifteen minutes before Rose's door open, her bear-bathrobe was tied in a knot loosely on her waist, the hem reached down to her bear slippers, that were actually bear shaped. It's plastic eyes gleamed creepily in the sunlight that seeped through his bedroom window.

She approached him, and took a seat next to him on the bed. Her robe spread out as she lifted her legs to rest them on the edge of the bed-spring, exposing her bear pajama bottoms. Kiba sighed. "Where do you get all this stuff?" he scoffed, even though he was slightly impressed by her creepy fascination with the animal-wear. Rose smiled up at him, it looked sad, something that Rose seemed to do more often than Kiba liked to think about. "It was a gift from my son.. Sent all the way from home" she let out softly, sighing showily and cuddling deeper into the material like it was a link to her child. "Oh..." Kiba looked down in slight shame for not remembering about Rose's birthday, that was the only reason her child would send anything, Rose sent her family a message every year telling them not to send her any gifts, that they had to save their money so they could get a ticket over here. They never stopped sending gifts though, so Rose would send something back, a watch, a picture, sometimes stuffed animals - but never the bears, the bears were hers - her child didn't share her love for bears, which Rose found really weird considering how much she loved them. She patted Kiba on the shoulder and he stiffened under the touch. Rose barely touched him, and Kiba barely allowed it, they hadn't hugged since his mother had died. Kiba intended to keep it that way too.

He leaned away subtly away from his caretaker and looked at her. "I won't be coming back for a while..." Rose knew that, and he knew that she knew that. But he had to get it off his chest. The tension released in his chest, for some reason he had always felt that Rose had to know everything he was doing, even if it didn't concern her. Well, except for the partying. She never heard about the parties.

Ever.

It was more of an unspoken rule, she probably wanted to know what Kiba would get into on nearly a daily basis, but Kiba knew that she would pull on the ultimate form of 'You-should-be-ashamed-of-yourself' so Kiba never mentioned anything.

"I'll miss you." Rose sounded choked up, but she spoke softly so it was hard to tell. Her eyes seemed more glossy than usual in Kiba's opinion, but he hadn't paid that much attention to the Jamaican woman's eyes. Instead he looked down, he knew that Rose wasn't mad with him, and that he shouldn't care as much as he did. But Rose had grown to be his- No. His mother was dead, she could never be replaced, not with cheap golddiggers that his father dated, and not with his care taker. She was just like them, just in a different light.

With that mentality, Kiba stood, shrugging Rose's hand from his shoulder and picked up his bag. He hoisted it over his shoulder and walked towards the door in silence. Rose said nothing, and he wanted to keep the silence, even if it was a little over-dramatic, and slightly uncalled for. He had to keep up his manly persona and attitude, couldn't show weakness. He wouldn't allow his childish fears to control him. So he kept walking. Out of the penthouse, and out of the lobby.

Kiba wasn't aware of how long he had sat with Rose, but with the darkness was an indicator that it had been too long. He scanned the dark street around him, squinting his eyes as headlights glared at him as they sped past him dangerously.

The wind ruffled his jacket, sending gusts of wind that picked the hem up and fluttered it like wings for a moment before it died down. Leaving him enshrouded in shadow. He looked up at the sky, just to look for a glimpse of the sun. The remnants of the light's claws were scratching down the horizon slowly and soon faded behind a building. The sun was floating ominously above him, watching him from behind the cover of a cloud formation. A mere silver disk in the sky that lit Kiba's path ominously.

He hadn't realized he had stopped walking until he looked down at Naruto's apartment building, which still looked so far away, casting a glance behind him he realized he hadn't moved from his own home's steps. Kiba moved forward slowly, something seemed weird about the darkness, it was never this dark around this time of night. It's usually when the creeps come out to party and sell drugs. Or listen to creepy music in a dark alley, in Naruto's case.

Naruto.

Kiba looked up towards the approximate point of where Naruto's apartment would be. The lights were on. Kiba continued walking, but stopped, and was nearly killed by a speeding car when he heard it.

A scream.

In Naruto's voice.

Bam. Chapter Eight is DONE. D-O-N-E. Done. I'm so proud of me.

So, I just wanted to thank all the peeps that read this story or whaver, and if they would kindly leave a review I'd be very pleased.

Would you kindly?