2. Hey, I Just Met You
One week later, Tenzou woke to Kabuto's irritating voice in his ear.
"Have you really fallen asleep again? You big idiot."
Tenzou reached out and tapped the top of Kabuto's head. Snooze button.
"Tenzou! Our citizenship test is tomorrow and you've barely done anything!" Kabuto said angrily, swatting Tenzou's hand away. Groggily, Tenzou opened one eye and fixed Kabuto with a sleepy glare, squinting hard in the brilliant light pouring in from the window opposite.
"I been readin' all week," he crowed, gesturing vaguely to the book that lay open on his chest, precisely where he'd left it before dropping off.
"Really? Because all I've seen you doing is eating, sleeping, and wasting your time on those God-awful houseplants -"
"Don't be mean about my plants," Tenzou said menacingly, and Kabuto rolled his eyes before storming across the room and throwing himself down in the armchair he'd staunchly occupied every waking hour for the last week. He took a fat book from the end table beside him, cracked it open, and resumed his studies where he'd left off.
Tenzou stretched out, and a cord of pleasure ran up his legs and spine, down his arms and through to his fingertips. It was a lush, lazy Saturday afternoon, and he would've much rather been napping in the sun than studying. He sat up, rubbing one eye as he looked around the apartment.
On the day that they'd arrived, Tenzou had been pleasantly surprised to see that the place was actually pretty high-end - the front door opened into the vast, airy living room, with its polished beech flooring and pale cream walls. A couple of navy blue armchairs and a sofa gathered around a coffee table that groaned under the weight of fifty of more books on Konoha's history. On the opposite wall, an enormous glass door, whose pale green curtains drifted in the wind, opened onto a narrow balcony, which was crowded with flower boxes and plants in ceramic pots that Tenzou had developed a healthy obsession with.
"Dishes are dirty," Tenzou noted, staring across at the kitchenette in the corner of the room. Kabuto gave an ambiguous sort of grunt.
"Does that mean I'm doing them?"
Another grunt.
"Fine."
Teenage boys, Tenzou thought bitterly, dragging himself off of the sofa and padding across the hardwood. He cast a loving glance at the spider plant that sat atop the fridge, its mass of leaves tumbling off the edge and tickling the countertop. The apartment had been barren when they'd arrived, but it had taken Tenzou less than a day to fill it with greenery to his liking. The windowsill above the sink was packed with pots of brightly coloured flowers; Tenzou admired them as he let the tap run.
Suddenly, he realised that, save for the bubbling of the tap running, it was weirdly quiet.
"Where's Azami?"
"She went to get groceries, seeing as you ate everything," Kabuto said, not looking up from his book, "She's been gone for about two hours."
"That seems weird," Tenzou said, now scrubbing at a plate. "Do you think she got lost?"
"Doubt it. She probably got distracted in the porn store at the end of the road," Kabuto said. Tenzou frowned, but finished the dishes in silence.
Once they had all been stacked to dry, Tenzou returned to the sofa, which was beginning to develop a Tenzou-shaped dent in it from all the time he spent lying there. He retrieved the book he'd been reading from where it had dropped unceremoniously to the floor, and opened it where he'd folded over a corner.
He stared blankly at the page in front of him: thousands of words in tiny, cramped font, no pictures, and no line breaks. He had no chance.
"Do you know this stuff, Kabuto?" he dared to ask - but he already knew the answer.
"More or less," Kabuto replied. "I'm still slightly shaky on the intricacies of the clan warfare during the Third Shinobi World War, but judging from the past papers I found in the public library, it's not something that's very heavily examined."
Tenzou shut his book. He was doomed; he slumped sideways into the sofa, head against the armrest. Suddenly the front door burst open and slammed hard against the opposite wall.
"Whoops!" Azami chirped, kicking it shut - her arms were wrapped around an impressive number of grocery bags, which she dumped on the floor before bounding across the room to sit on the sofa next to a wilted Tenzou. "Cheer up, little oak, I've got some good news."
Azami had been calling him 'little oak' since they were tiny. It made no sense, because he was significantly larger than she was, and it was humiliating, but that was Azami's style.
"What is it?" he grumbled. Kabuto had looked up from his book.
"You know how the cherry trees are in bloom?"
"Yeah…"
"Well, there's a party in the park starting in about an hour. To celebrate!" Azami beamed, and Tenzou blinked at her.
"A party? So what?"
Azami gave him a little shove, so that his cheek rubbed up against the upholstery. "Free drinks is what!"
Now his day was picking up.
The cool night breeze wafted the honey-sweet scent of blossom around the park; plump canopies in blush pink shivered overhead, spilling precious petals to the ground. Tenzou found himself sweeping through his hair with his free hand a little over-frequently, anxious that the blossom would stick and make him look even more of an idiot than he already did - standing under a cherry tree sipping a plastic cup of warm beer, alone. There were over a hundred people here, arranged in groups and pairs, but none of them seemed to think Tenzou was worth talking to.
They'd arrived about half an hour ago (leaving Kabuto at home, much to his disappointment) and Azami was already drunk; she emerged from a crowd of people and staggered over to him, giggling about something that was probably stupid. She had a bottle of beer in each hand.
"You look lonely," she said, and Tenzou shrugged. He stuffed his free hand into his pocket, conscious that he looked like a freak because he couldn't keep his hands off his hair. "Wanna play a game?"
"What kind of game?" Tenzou said warily. Her toothy grin probably meant it was something horrible. She presented him with a bottle of beer, pushing it into his chest - he took it, then raised his eyebrows.
"Competition. Chug it. Loser has to do a dare," she chuckled, and Tenzou smirked. He wasn't the type to back down from a challenge… especially not when it involved drinking.
"Alright. Three… two… one…"
Foam frothed up his nose as the soapy tang of cheap beer hit his tongue; he sloshed a splatter of it down his front but he managed to messily glug the rest down. The bottle popped from his lips and he wiped the back of his mouth with his sleeve only to find that Azami had beaten him by a significant time margin.
"How did you -"
"I'm a pro," she said, smirking, and then dabbed at the spill on his front. He was lucky that he was wearing black, and so nobody would be able to see it… but they could definitely smell it. Azami took his empty cup and bottle, and then cocked her head in the direction of a few people a little way away. "You see that guy?"
Tenzou saw. He looked like even more of a social reject than Tenzou himself did, if that were even possible. He was leaning against a tree, face hidden by a book, and he was flanked by two other guys who appeared to be talking around him, rather than to him. All Tenzou could see of him was that he had a lot of poufy silver hair, and he was wearing the standard Konoha shinobi outfit.
"Yeah," he said, smirking. What a loser.
"Go say hi," she said, and then winked at him. Tenzou snorted. He had enough beer in him to make that no big deal. He and Azami separated - she disappeared back into the crowd, and Tenzou strolled further into the trees, hands pocketed. As he neared them, the two guys around the silver-haired stranger looked up and smirked at him.
One of them was wearing a bandana and had a brown side fringe that covered most of one half of his face; the other had a mop of black hair and a bandage across the middle of his face. They looked about as freaky as the guy with the book.
"Hey guys," Tenzou said, but they just stared at him blankly. The ninja with the silver hair hadn't even looked up from his book.
He could feel his drunken bravado slipping away by the second. After a few excruciating moments it became obvious that none of them were going to offer him a greeting, and he felt like even more of a loser than the book-faced freak in front of him.
"I'm new in town."
The two guys who had bothered to lift their heads caught each other's eye and grinned. Tenzou felt his ears start to burn.
"That's cool, that's cool," Bandageface said, finally. "You got… uh, you got something in your hair there, pal."
Mortified, Tenzou brushed the petals out of his hair as they both snickered.
"Thanks," he snipped, and, unsure where to settle his gaze, stared at the cover of the book that was evidently ten thousand times more interesting than he was. He'd never seen anything quite so hideously orange… wait… maybe he had… it seemed weirdly familiar. His brow furrowed: he'd definitely seen it before.
The words fell out of his mouth before he could stop them.
"Leather and Cuffs?"
Creating the perfect awkward silence was something of an art, and Tenzou had just become the master. However, it'd been enough to force the silver-haired stranger to tear his gaze away from his book; he was now staring at Tenzou, looking unimpressed.
"That's not really my scene," he said coolly.
Dying inwardly, but with a flawless poker face, Tenzou turned and shuffled away. He wasn't too sure what had just happened. His brain was already trying to repress the memory.
He met up with Azami again, who must've realised he looked humiliated, as she pulled him into a protective crowd of people.
"Was he hot?" she said. "I tried talkin' to him earlier but he wouldn't even put down his book."
Then Tenzou realised. That was the reason she'd sent him. Her own attempts to get to know him had crashed and burned, so she had sent him to go and embarrass himself on her behalf, but all he'd proved was that he was the worst wingman in the universe.
"He wears a mask," Tenzou recalled, "So I have no idea."
"Shame. Um, why do you look so…" she trailed off, gesturing to his face.
"Dead inside?"
"Yeah."
"Well. I may have tried to invite him to a bondage session."
"I thought you weren't into that?" Azami said, sipping from a cup that looked to be mostly full of lather.
"I'm not, it was an accident!" he snapped. "I thought his stupid book was 'Leather and Cuffs' and it just… slipped out."
"Tenzou, that's so dumb," said Azami, grinning merrily at him. "Let's get more drinks."
The next few hours spiralled by, and the drunker Tenzou got, the more easily he could convince himself he was having a good time. The silver-haired guy was still lurking around - his friends had gone home -, but Tenzou chose to ignore him (which he thought was probably a wise move), sticking close to Azami and the well-intentioned stream of alcohol she was pouring into him.
"He'sh checkin' you out now, you know," she slurred at one point close to midnight, and Tenzou peered over her shoulder to see that the stranger was just peeking over the top of his book with his single exposed eye.
"I don'care," Tenzou mumbled, narrowing his eyes in the stranger's direction before pouring another shot for each of them.
By the time the party was over, the sun had already started to rise - Azami and Tenzou staggered home, casting lurching shadows onto the dim, dusty streets. Azami unlatched their apartment door as quietly as possible (which was to say, not very) and they sneaked inside a little clumsily - Tenzou stubbed his toe on the coat stand - to find Kabuto asleep in his chair, a book lying open on his chest.
"Ishn't he preshious?" Azami managed, fumbling with the lock on the door. Tenzou smiled a little tearily.
They both separated into their bedrooms and Tenzou collapsed on top of his still-made bed. Coddled by alcohol and with bleary memories of having a good time, he nodded off into a peaceful and happy sleep.