First Days of School
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Author's Note: It feels good to be going back to karate on a regular basis again. I missed it so much.
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"Art is pictures straight from the heart." Ben, Los Cerros Middle School, 1999
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This was such a quiet place. Naruto didn't often find them. The high school was certainly not quiet, and he liked to get out of his house. It wasn't that his parents were bad, it was just that there was only so much time someone could spend at home.
Someone passed underneath his spot on the tree and Naruto smiled. It was a kid, probably not much older than one or so, with charcoal hair and ashy eyes. Behind him was a person he recognized, Kurenai-sensei. She'd left on maternity leave last year. So that was her Asuma-sensei's kid? Interesting. Asuma was a counselor at their high school, something that Naruto could never understand. Wasn't his job to disapprove of smoking, yet he always seemed to have a cigarette on him.
A familiar chin on his shoulder made him half-turn. "How'd you find me?"
"Did you not want me to?" Sasuke asked.
"I don't mind. I just thought this place was pretty inconspicuous."
"Not to me. What's in your lap?"
Naruto shifted the notepad from view. "Nothing."
The thin, dark eyebrows rose. "You're a terrible liar, ya know. Lemme see."
Naruto felt a hand pass his waist to reach around and grab the pad and let the pad slip from his fingers. Sasuke scooted a little closer to Naruto so he wasn't as in danger of falling from the tree and flipped open to the first page. An elegant sight met his eyes.
Obsidian colored eyes stared straight back at him, rippling muscles under dark fur defined. The tail was hanging lowly off a branch, paws folded under a feline head.
"You drew this?"
"I gotta be good at something if you're so good at guitar."
Sasuke hm'ed in response as he continued to flip through. There was some schoolwork (Key word being 'some') and always there was doodles everywhere. Flowerpots, shoes, kids, houses, the sky. Panthers and foxes, usually together, were recurring and drawn in patient loving detail. The drawings got more childish as he continued through, more hesitant. There were pictures in a neighborhood that Sasuke didn't recognize and of forests and deserts, all from high places.
"The air's cleaner the higher up you go." Naruto explained when Sasuke asked why. "And there's a different perspective of things up there."
The next few were darker, like doorways in alleys and of lonely bridges, snow falling gently. The trees would be more barren, the streets icy.
"Something wrong?" Naruto enquired, not being able to see over the dark spikes.
"No, not really. But I've never seen some of these places."
Naruto squirmed a little. "We lived there years back, when I was a kid. We used to hang out in places like that all the time."
Sasuke turned to look at him, before wrapping his free arm around the blonde's waist. "Not so cold here, is it?"
A smile broke on the whiskered face. "No, it's not."
They sat in silence for a while, the notepad closed in front of them.
Sasuke smirked and Naruto felt that there was going to be some revenge extracted from the scuba incident. "So what's with all the panthers and foxes?"
"Nothing." Naruto's answer was a little too fast.
The smirk widened. "Suuure it is."