Warnings:
—Brutal treatment. It's not awful, but it's there (in the censored part).
—Gay buttsex right off the bat, first scene and everything. However, I'm trying this new thing where I actually abide by the site rules. So what I have here is the censored version. The explicit version is on my AO3 profile, which you can find in the links section on my main profile page.
Moving Memories
17: Lovelust
~ (^.^) (^.^) ~
"Let go," Naruto demanded softly.
The man currently attached to his neck did as instructed and peeked up at Naruto expectantly.
Naruto smirked. "Yeah, yeah. Roll over then," he commanded.
Without hesitation, the man did as instructed and positioned himself on all fours. He looked back at Naruto over his shoulder, compelled to maintain eye contact with the blond. Even if Naruto wasn't looking at him, he still felt the urge to be gazing at the other. It was really beyond desire though. It was an intense, burning need.
Naruto took the man relentlessly.
"You're still hard," he pointed out when done.
The man nodded. "I am," he said softly.
"Should I help you with that?" Naruto offered. The man's face lit up completely, but Naruto only snorted derisively at him. "Yeah right." He pushed the vampire aside and stood from the bed. As he dressed himself, he spewed out instructions. "Do not stalk me. Do not contact me. Only come if I call your name." He paused before adding stiffly, "Otherwise, don't respond to our bond at all."
"But will I see you again?" the other asked earnestly, causing Naruto to pause at the door.
He glanced over his shoulder. The man was attractive enough and he'd given Naruto what he wanted. He was a good specimen. "You're mine now," he replied. "You have no choice." Then, he left.
~ (^.^) (^.^) ~
Naruto was about to unlock and enter his apartment, but he paused at the last moment. Keys dangling at the ready, he pressed his ear to the door and listened intently. He could sense Kiba on the other side, fretting. If he listened close enough, he could slightly hear the shuffle of feet as Kiba paced too. A grumble of a curse was thrown into the mix every few shambles. Naruto groaned softly in dismay, turning and pressing his forehead against the door. He absolutely did not want to face Kiba, especially since he had no idea how long Kiba had been fuming and just waiting to lay into him.
Kiba was always giving Naruto that look that said "you just wait til I get your ass cornered", but talking just wasn't Naruto's thing as of late, at all, ever, about anything. Silence had become his friend, so of course he'd been avoiding Kiba. No avoiding it now though. His hand dropped to his side in dread, inadvertently jingling the keys in his hand. He realized his mistake only after making it. Suddenly, the scuffle of pacing turned into the soft stomp of a march that grew steadily louder until it reached the door in just a few short paces. Naruto had already braced himself with both hands against either side of the door frame, so he wasn't disturbed when Kiba wrenched open the door.
"We're talking," Kiba informed firmly.
Naruto released a heavy sigh, as if weary beyond belief. He heaved his body into motion, lumbering past Kiba like a child forced to do his most-detested chore. He was just about to protest, his tone at the ready with an exaggeration of his exhaustion—a ploy, of course, to get Kiba off his back. Kiba wasn't going to stand for being evaded any longer though. Oh. Hell. No.
"This is the third time this week," Kiba pointed out before Naruto had a chance to say anything. He closed the door behind himself with force, enough to express his displeasure but not quite a slam. "Naruto, this week," he repeated emphatically as he stepped down from the slightly elevated entrance landing. "Week," Kiba stressed once more.
"I get it," Naruto groaned, stopping his advancement into the apartment and turning to face Kiba and lean against one side of the frame for the open doorway into his room. He crossed his arms across his chest, a telling sign of immediate defense.
He'd suspected that his activities as of late were what Kiba would address, but he hadn't been positive. He thought he might have been being sneaky enough that Kiba didn't even know. That, obviously, wasn't the case though. Nonetheless, he couldn't see why Kiba was making it a concern in the first place.
He added in a grumble, "Dunno why you're in such a tiff about it anyway."
Kiba balked at that. "I'm worried about you considering yourself a bijuu before, y'know, Naruto, your own self."
"You think I'm losing sense of my own self?" Naruto asked, looking at Kiba with a bored expression. As if to say, 'Really? This is what you're keeping me up for?'
"Have you seen yourself lately?" Kiba asked rhetorically. "I don't even wanna know how many of those marks—" Kiba gestured to the fresh bite partially visible on Naruto's neck. "—you have hidden all over your body."
"And it's none of your business," Naruto added.
"None of my business?" Kiba repeated. Naruto could feel the crackling in the atmosphere before Kiba even opened his mouth to respond. "Well, you sure didn't mind getting involved in my business with Gaara. That had precisely nothing to do with you, yet you stuck your nose in every crevice possible."
"And for the better," Naruto pointed out. "I got you two back together, didn't I?"
Kiba just stared at Naruto for a long moment, his face utterly unreadable. That was unlike Kiba. He was usually very expressive, even overly so. That intrigued Naruto enough to urge him to try deciphering what lay just beyond that uncharacteristically schooled visage. Kiba recognized that concentration on Naruto's face though, so he quickly diverted the attention back on to Naruto, doing it in a way that didn't so blatantly change direction that it'd alert Naruto to his covert shenanigans.
"You don't even know what you're doing," Kiba said evenly. He gestured to Naruto in general, adding, "—with any of this. You hardly know how to work your own abilities. Hell, you hardly even know what you are to begin with. You're floundering, Naruto."
Naruto's brow twitched with irritation. "Kankuro explained things to me well enough."
In fact, Kankuro had given a long, long, long speech about what Naruto was and how that would affect him from here on out.
"You obviously didn't listen," Kiba countered.
"I've got special blood. Vamps think it's extra tasty. I can control em," Naruto recounted, rolling his eyes. "Simple."
"No," Kiba disagreed. "Not simple, Naruto. Like I said, you don't understand at all."
"Then why don't you explain it to me," Naruto challenged.
Kiba could tell by the tone in Naruto's voice and its sarcastic edge that the blond wasn't really inviting Kiba to make an in-depth lesson of this conversation. Still, Naruto truly was lacking understanding, so Kiba chose to take the challenge literally.
"Your blood deformation isn't simply special," Kiba began.
Naruto groaned intolerantly. "Kiba, I don't really wanna hear it."
"It's life-changing," Kiba went on, ignoring Naruto's complaints.
Naruto pushed away from the door frame and turned his back to enter his bedroom.
Kiba moved to follow, explaining all the while, "Type X isn't just a simple change in blood type. It's what makes you a bijuu. It makes you more than human."
When Kiba entered the bedroom, Naruto was picking up a pair of sleeping pants from the floor. Realizing what Naruto was about to do, Kiba sprang forward and snatched the blond's wrist as the man turned toward the bathroom. He yanked to force Naruto to turn back and face him.
"Listen to me!" Kiba demanded. "This is important, Naruto."
Naruto narrowed his eyes but said nothing and made no move to try escaping.
"Your scent is extremely potent, and you know it's at least 10 times worse when your blood is spilled," Kiba went on. "As if that's not enough, you're even more attractive being the kyuubi. Off all the 10 bijuu, you're the one associated with the fox. You're literally supposed to be the depiction of seduction. The kyuubi in you is tempting enough as you are, but the kyuubi is supposed to be cunning and witty too. So I'm confused about why you keep letting these vampires puncture your skin. I mean, are you trying to make yourself a vampire magnet?"
"You're forgetting who has the real power between vampires and me," Naruto pointed out.
"Don't be so smug!" Kiba snapped, though his eyes took on less of an irritated gleam and slipped into the realm of worry. For a moment, he studied his friend. Then, he sighed, shaking his head and turning his eyes away. "It's happening to you," he murmured. "Just like I said. You're more of a bijuu than you are yourself."
"What does that even mean?" Naruto demanded and snatched his wrist from Kiba's loosened grip. He didn't understand, but he felt insulted nonetheless.
"It means you're letting the hunger take over your mind," Kiba informed. His eyes drifted back to Naruto's. "It really is amazing, Naruto, being a bijuu. Being the kyuubi has to be twice as fun too. Your blood is pretty magical. Hell, you're magical. It's no wonder they come flocking to you. You could, and probably do, have any vampire you choose under your spell. But what'll you do when you meet someone who's actually a danger to you?"
Unable to answer, Naruto simply said bitterly, "All vampires are dangerous. I'll have the experience."
"Really, Naruto? You're gonna tell me that all your pets didn't come to you willingly? They put up a big fight?" Kiba leveled Naruto with an intolerant stare, and Naruto could only look away. "Exactly. They're attracted to you because they wanna feed off you. They just want your blood. They just wanna be bonded to you, and you let them. But you and I both know there are vampires out there dedicated to killing bijuu for whatever reasons. If you let yourself think you're invincible, then you're making it way too easy for them to get to you."
Once Kiba's point had been absorbed, Naruto lifted his eyes and said surely, "Doesn't matter what the intent is. Any vampire is powerless to me."
Kiba huffed in exasperation. "And what if they don't even bite you, Naruto?"
"No vampire could fight the temptation," Naruto said without hesitation. "Kankuro said that."
"No," Kiba devoutly disagreed. "Kankuro said that vampires would be extremely tempted by you and it would take a lot of will to not let the bloodlust get to their head. And he only said that to explain why vampires would be so drawn to you, not why you should consider yourself invulnerable. Not even Kankuro knows all the vampires in the world, Naruto. There are bound to be some out there skilled enough to resist even you and your magical blood."
But let's just say that no vampire ever could resist you," Kiba mused. "Who's to say they couldn't control their own venom? I know for a fact that there must be tons of vampires out there who can, at the very least, keep themselves from infecting you with their venom. Your blood might be amazing, but you need an exchange to have any control. You need their venom as much as you need them to have your blood. No venom, no bond. No bond, no control. Then what?" Kiba paused before repeating almost menacingly, "Then what, Naruto?"
"Okay," Naruto grumbled in begrudging defeat.
"And even if you do make an exchange," Kiba went on, undeterred, "there's no guarantee the bond will mean anything. Did you know that? Bonds don't always work."
Kiba paused, waiting for Naruto to admit his ignorance.
Naruto would do no such thing though. He just narrowed his eyes into a glare.
"I'll take that as a no," Kiba decided. "Bonding is something that vampires have done since the beginning. The bond between mates is strong enough to defy even a bijuu. Yeah, any vampire who makes an exchange with you will technically be bonded to you, but your will isn't the only will that matters. A vampire with a strong enough bond can ignore you. You can try your damnedest to make em do what you want, but they don't have to. Bijuu learned to bond from vampires, and they did it to fabricate ties of loyalty. Do you really think something so fake could trump pure, honest love?"
"Okay," Naruto growled, his eyes straying away again. "I get it."
"Do you?" Kiba asked, unconvinced. "Really, Naruto? Do you?"
Another silence passed between them, in which Kiba noted how deeply agitated Naruto had become. He wanted to make his point, but he didn't want to take away all of Naruto's glory.
"I have seen you using your abilities more easily as of late," Kiba pointed out, gingerly nudging Naruto toward more positive territory.
Naruto just shrugged.
"Did you hear me at the door?" Kiba asked. "That why you paused?"
Naruto nodded silently.
"So your hearing is getting better then," Kiba pointed out.
"Yeah," Naruto confirmed. "My sight too. But it's too slow."
"Oh, be patient," Kiba said, his attitude lightening. "You didn't even know you could use these abilities until recently. Better to have them come to you slowly than to bombard you at once and cripple you. Wouldn't you rather train your body to slowly acclimate?"
"Vampires don't have to train," Naruto pointed out sardonically.
"Not true," Kiba immediately disagreed. "In fact, it might be worse for them. Their senses are too much when they're young. It takes alotta practice for them to hone em. Picking and choosing when to use their abilities is a skill they learn as they grow. Until they can temper themselves, they just sorta function outta whack. It's kinda funny, to watch one of their senses suddenly flare up without warning as they fumble around trying to make sense of it." He chuckled lightly, even getting Naruto to raise his eyes and smirk. "Then again, it can also be really miserable for them too. But at least you don't have to deal with that. It doesn't come on so abruptly for bijuu, but it is all in there. Just keep being patient."
Naruto nodded. "I guess you're right," he conceded.
"Vampires are no more perfect than you," Kiba reassured. "I didn't mean to make you out to sound like a lamb for the slaughter," he added apologetically. "Even though your life is in constant danger, I know you can protect yourself. I do have faith in you."
Naruto watched Kiba closely for a moment before saying evenly, "Do you? Because all you've done lately is disapprove."
Kiba shrugged innocently. "Can I be blamed? I mean, you've sorta been giving yourself away too easily." He paused, choosing his words with care. "I know what you're doing with them. I could understand if the reasoning was tactical like decommissioning as many as possible to save the streets of the city some grief, or even something as absurd as building a vampire army, but you're not. You're just making bonds for nothing, for distraction, for play. There's a name vampires use for that, Naruto. It's called lovelust, and it's not as sweet as it sounds. It's what vampires use to describe bijuu they consider, more or less, whores." Kiba's word choice had, obviously, been poor because Naruto was quickly offended. "I'm not calling you a whore!" Kiba exclaimed quickly.
"I'll sleep with who I want," Naruto snapped indignantly.
"Like I said, I'm not calling you a whore," Kiba replied. "I'm just saying you're only adding to the stigma, and you're sorta becoming less of the person you used to be too. And I know you're not making innocent bonds. I know you've been taking them to bed too." Kiba could see his words getting more and more offensive to Naruto, so he chose to simply end with, "I'm not discriminating against who you choose to sleep with. I just can't agree with you visiting so many beds."
"Good thing you don't have to," Naruto said sharply, eyes glaring. "Because it's my body."
Kiba had no counter for that. He just held Naruto's challenging gaze. How base of Naruto to stoop to such a display of dominance. Staring contests were so... brutish. But Kiba was participating, wasn't he? He was staring back, waiting for Naruto's will to be the one to break. Naruto had only been getting more calloused as the days passed by though, so he wouldn't break. He'd stare Kiba down until the brunet submitted, and it was stupid to fight this way. Kiba didn't want to compare egos at this point. He was coming from a place of true concern, but all Naruto saw was the challenge. In the end, all Kiba could do was break the gaze.
Ever since Kankuro had told Naruto the truth about what kind of being Naruto actually was, Naruto had been acting more fragile than an already fractured egg. Then again, Kankuro's choice of timing had been poor too. It probably wasn't the best time to lay something so heavy on Naruto only days after his falling out with Sasuke. It'd been weeks now since Naruto had learned the term that changed his life, and all he'd done since then was get worse on every frontier. But his world had shifted entirely. So could Naruto really be blamed for acting this way? He was just trying to adjust, and he was failing miserably.
The term was bijuu. Kiba only knew so much about it himself because he'd had to learn vampire history along with his brothers, since he'd been married into a vampire family. The legend of the bijuu was well-known among the vampire community no matter where one went. It was common knowledge among all. It was a lore that dated all the way back to the very first vampires. In short, the bijuu were created to rival the vampires.
Just like the vampires, the bijuu were nearly immortal. They could be killed, but they would not perish easily on their own. So long as they kept their bodies nourished, they could survive for eternity. Both vampires and bijuu could live extensively longer by just sustaining themselves with a substitute for food and water. For vampires, this substitute was blood. For bijuu, the substitute was chakra, the spirit or soul, lifesource, energy. So long as the substitute was consumed steadily by the creature, both bijuu and vampire could survive for extended periods of time. There came a point, though, when both would deplete the nourishment faster than the substitute could provide it. Thus, the substitute could only sustain them for so long.
Each bijuu had sensing abilities just as sharp as the vampires. The basic senses were on par, but the way bijuu processed emotion differed from the vampires. While the vampires notoriously only practiced empathy among those they bonded to very closely, the bijuu were highly empathetic things. This was what kept them pure and ensured that they would not kill without due cause. Bijuu felt the emotion of other beings naturally. Vampires, however, had to first become close to the being before they transcended a simple recognition of what that being was feeling. Each could, essentially, shut the mechanism of empathy off, but bijuu were inclined to utilize it naturally while it was a more uncommon thing among the vampires.
Despite the many similarities, the bijuu also had abilities to rival their adversaries. While vampires had exceptional speed, the bijuu had a third eye that allowed them to see beyond the physical world. The bijuu were able to remain in the physical world while projecting themselves into the spirit realm too. They could then communicate with each other via the spirit realm, a place which souls could not typically reach unless they were to pass eternally. The third eye also allowed the bijuu to see whatever wavered in the "in between". In this space, the past, present, and future were created. Thus, the bijuu could recall the past at their whim and see into the future at their need. This allowed them to act on par with their vampire counterparts. Exceptional speed meant nothing if your foe could predict your every move.
History played out as expected. Bijuu and vampires alike were killed. The vampires began to reproduce and infect humans in order to make up for their losses. The bijuu were simply reborn. Each of the 10 bijuu had defining qualities of character about it, including tactics it would use to subdue its prey. These traits were carried on as a bijuu spirit passed into another body. However, the body would initially be weak, as a children tend to be. So the abilities would have to grow at a rate that the body could handle. This left the bijuu vulnerable until about their late teens. By then, they'd at least evolve beyond being sitting ducks. Their mid-20s was about when they'd reach their peak. And once peaked, neither bijuu nor vampire would age any further.
Bijuu in modern times had come to exist at varying ages and levels of expertise. Some bijuu never reached full power before dying. Others lived for centuries. It wasn't the lifespan of the bijuu that concerned Kiba though. It was the power. Or, rather, where they were lacking in power, their weakness. Even immortal beings have faults. Uncannily like their vampire counterparts, bijuu struggled with their own lust. Vampires were slaves to their thirst, and bijuu were really just the same in a way. A vampire's poison was blood, and a bijuu's poison was bonding.
Bonding was something that vampires had done since the very beginning. The first 5 pairs were bound to each other as couples, and they were bound as a coven as well. One might even say they were likely to be bonded to whoever caused them to be. Bonding has always been an important part of establishing relationships and hierarchy among vampire communities. For bijuu, being able to force bonds upon any vampire that exchanged blood and venom with it was a weapon of peace. Any vampire loyal to the bijuu would devoutly not do whatever the bijuu told them to not do. It was as simple as that. With such unwavering loyalty, a bijuu could easily change the nature of a vampire. No killing necessary. That was the tactical use for the ability, but the bijuu developed a personal use for it too.
The bijuu couldn't reproduce the way that vampires could. They weren't created in pairs, so they didn't have their own concept of what the vampires considered a mate. But it became obvious that the mate was the sole creature that a vampire would answer to, the one being that they would express what bijuu saw to be the truest depiction of love to. The bijuu were jealous of this. Yes, they could fall in love with and marry and have children with each other and any human, but it simply was not the same. The vampires had something special in bonding, and the bijuu wanted that too. Their jealousy fueled their lust for love. Hence the term lovelust. They thirsted for the devotion of a bonded creature, so lovelust became a common term for what motivated a bijuu who became addicted to bonding vampires to them. It was inevitable that one was not enough. The lust demanded more, and more, and more. Not only was it a product of jealousy, but the bijuu were simply bored.
Once the vampires had their own form of law enforcement, VSAF, the balance of the world became fairly level. So what was there left for a bijuu to do? With nothing to do but analyze the world around them, they couldn't help but find the beauty in the world of the vampires and their bonding abilities. Thus came their jealousy. But with no definite need to control the vampire population, the bijuu were left without a sense of purpose. Unavoidably, there began to open up an emptiness in their chests. This was when lovelust became a widely recognized thing. This emptiness, they knew from observation, could be filled by one thing: a mate. But bijuu weren't created that way. In the end, all they could do was replicate what they'd seen flowing so beautifully between their destined rivals. So they sought out vampires and reveled in the sense of love their loyalty could provide the bijuu with.
This was the sketchy territory that Naruto was bordering, if he hadn't already jumped headlong into it. Sasuke had made a mate of Naruto. With Sasuke there to fulfill that emptiness in his bijuu heart, Naruto had been complete. But Sasuke was no longer there feeding Naruto's needs. With no Sasuke to occupy his heart, Naruto instinctively sought the one thing his people had always known to cause a primal sense of ease: bonding. It didn't matter to Naruto who the vampire was. He simply enjoyed their faithfulness as much as they enjoyed sucking his blood. Plus, he'd let himself deteriorate into such a malnourished state that Naruto probably wouldn't be alive if he didn't have bonds to feed off of.
Kiba was resigned to defeat. He couldn't pretend he didn't understand, because he understood so deeply why Naruto was acting this way. It was his instinctual way of acting out against the emptiness Sasuke had instilled in his chest. All Kiba could do was walk away from the fight, so walk he did. He turned away from Naruto and left the bedroom.
With Kiba out of his line of sight, Naruto's face relaxed. He was glad to win the argument, but he wasn't really feeling triumphant at all. Something was off about Kiba, but it had nothing to do with the argument. Naruto could tell. He just could. And he was intrigued. So he tossed the pants he'd chosen onto his bed and went after Kiba. He emerged from his bedroom and lingered near the doorway, looking into the living room, which had become Kiba's living space since the brunet had been spending so much time at Naruto's place.
"Kiba..."
"What?" Kiba asked as he started rummaging through one of his bags of clothing, his back toward Naruto.
"Just now... were you thinking about Gaara?"
Kiba faltered in his movements but regained himself quickly and began rummaging through his clothes with more vigor. "No," he answered truthfully. "I was thinking about how sad your circumstances are."
Naruto's attitude took an aggressive turn for the worst, so Kiba opted to squash the competition before Naruto could even ignite it again. "I'm not trying to attack you or offend you, and I'm not trying to compare dick sizes to see who comes out on top either," he said candidly. "I'm not interested in who can stare who down more easily. I just want you to be okay, Naruto. So don't puff out your chest or put on your 'scary face', because I'm not intimidated and you aren't gonna convince me to back down that way."
"Well, it worked before, didn't it?" Naruto pointed out haughtily.
"This is all it comes to with you anymore Naruto," Kiba replied. "I swear, you're worse than living with a fucking bull on steroids."
"Then go home," Naruto suggested simply.
Kiba paused then. Naruto just barely heard his breath hitch before the brunet suddenly started undoing everything he'd just done. He started grabbing all the clothes he'd been pulling out of his suitcase and threw them back inside.
"Fine," he said, his voice tight, "if that's what you want."
He zipped the suitcase up furiously before grabbing an armful of clothes from another pile on the floor and shoving them in a laundry basket.
"I'll fucking leave."
Naruto was taken aback by the intensity with which Kiba replied. His voice was restrained, but nothing else about him was. His movements, his heart rate, his breathing, his energy. He was a total frantic mess. He was nearing one of the two extremes he tended to snap between at the drop of a dime lately, and Naruto had done that. He hadn't actually meant to upset Kiba.
"Kiba," Naruto sighed, walking into the living room. "Don't do that. You can stay. Don't overreact," he said, reaching down and gently grabbing Kiba's arm to stop his frenzied packing. To Naruto's surprise, Kiba snatched his arm out of Naruto's grip so forcefully that Naruto thought it a feat that the appendage didn't simply snap off Kiba's body too.
Kiba bolted upright and then turned and shoved Naruto hard in the chest, putting a couple feet of distance between them and leaving Naruto breathless. "Don't tell me I'm overreacting!" Kiba snapped. He balled his fists in an attempt to suppress his emotions more effectively. "I'm sick and tired of hearing that. I'm not a drama queen." He turned his eyes away and said softly, and yet so begrudgingly, "Maybe if you all weren't so fucking stupid that you always put yourself in terrible positions, I wouldn't react in such extremes. Is it so bad that I fucking love you?"
"This isn't just about me?" Naruto asked, beginning to catch on.
Kiba said nothing, just pushed his emotions back into the box they were leaking from.
"Tell me why you're here, Kiba," Naruto requested.
"It's obvious," Kiba claimed automatically. "I've told you already. I wanted to be there for you. I thought it'd be easiest if I lived in your living room."
Naruto shook his head solemnly, unconvinced. "I know that's a lie."
"How?" Kiba asked, eyeing Naruto carefully.
Naruto shrugged. "I just do. It's in my heart," he tried to explain. "When I really tune in to you, I can feel all sorts of wobbly things going on in your heart too. There's something really wrong with you, and I know it. You know you can't lie to me, so tell me the truth." Kiba's eyes wandered away again, and he just waited for Naruto to figure it out for himself. "Did you come to me because you had nowhere else to go?" Naruto eventually asked.
"No," Kiba refuted softly. He had other places that he could go. Then again, in a way, there was really nowhere else that he could be.
"There's something you're trying to escape," Naruto added, as if Kiba hadn't denied. "Are things with Gaara bad again?"
"You accusing him of something?" Kiba asked, his tone warning and his eyes alight with a fire, but Naruto could see that it was weak.
"You can't hide from me," Naruto reminded. "I feel your everything right here." He touched his chest, over his heart, and suddenly it ached very badly, so much so that his face pulled into a slight grimace.
Kiba averted his eyes, neither willing to confirm nor able to deny what Naruto was uncovering. Instead, he grumbled, "Damn your empathy."
Naruto huffed loudly, suppressing an uncomfortable groan. "Kiba, is he hurting you so badly?"
A silence fell between them as Kiba stubbornly refused to incriminate his lover and Naruto tried to understand the situation from inside. He listened to Kiba intently, utilizing his heightened senses to get inside both Kiba's heart and mind. He hadn't soaked up much from Kankuro's lecture about bijuu and their third eyes, but he'd listened enough to know that he had psychic abilities. He only had to try hard enough. He watched Kiba until he began to feel like he was actually going in to Kiba's body.
He looked down at his hands. They were trembling. Furiously. His heart was pounding a million miles a minute, his stomach churning so violently that he thought for sure he'd be sick. His sight traveled inward from his hands toward his body, and he began to see his skin bruising lightly. It quickly escalated into heavy blotches of abused flesh. By the time his vision got to his shoulder, he wasn't sure there was any untarnished skin left to behold. His heart began to pound faster still as tears spilled from his eyes. He faintly heard the softer whimper of a sob, recognizing that it was his own voice. But it didn't matter, because he was home alone. And the worst part was that he was thankful. He was thankful to be left alone.
Naruto's vision started to refocus on a blurry Kiba, who was watching him carefully. Naruto quickly looked down at his own hands, and they were indeed trembling. He assessed the state of his body—heart pounding, breathing uneasy, stomach churning. There was one thing missing though. No bruising. Slowly, he looked back up at Kiba. One look into the man's eyes and he knew what he'd just seen. It'd been Kiba's brutalized body.
"What has he done to you?" Naruto breathed, partially because he was still out of breath, partially because the situation was so delicate he thought more than a breath would fracture it completely, and partially because he was too shocked to even do something so subconscious as use his vocal chords properly.
Naruto didn't need visual confirmation to know the state of Kiba's body beneath his always-so-conservative clothes. He shook his head in slow disbelief, asking, "Why did you stay with him? Why didn't you talk to me?"
Kiba's eyes were full of misery. "How could I?" he whispered back.
"It woulda been easy," Naruto replied. "You coulda texted, emailed, called. Hell, you coulda just shown up at my door and knocked. You shoulda come to me."
"I did," Kiba answered softly.
Naruto knit his brows in an obvious display of confusion.
"I'm here, aren't I?" Kiba added to clarify, gesturing generally to his various things scattered all around. "I've been here a week."
"But you didn't say anything," Naruto pointed out.
Kiba shrugged weakly. "I didn't think I had to."
Naruto tried to find something to say, but Kiba was right. Naruto had just been able to tune in to Kiba so easily, but he hadn't used his abilities to focus on Kiba at all since learning he even had abilities to use. He'd neglected his best friend, and Kiba had rightfully expected Naruto to just know. The old Naruto would've been as nosy as could be. Naruto's natural curiosity had gotten them into a couple of fights, like way back when Naruto had made a big deal of wanting to know about Ren and accidentally instigated a family-wide argument in the middle of Itachi's bar.
As annoying as his curious tendencies could obviously be, it was also an important tie in showing that he was interested in his friends' lives, especially for Kiba. The two were so alike. Kiba secretly enjoyed Naruto's desire to be in on everything, just like Naruto would enjoy it too. It was the feeling of being cared for, of being watched after, that they liked. Naruto had offered none of that though, not since he'd become too absorbed in his own grief to even notice that his best friend was suffering silently on his own. There was nothing to be said. All Naruto could do was apologize.
"I-I'm so sorry," Naruto said, his voice tiny.
Kiba just shook his head. "I don't even blame you."
"No, blame me," Naruto insisted. "This is my fault."
Kiba laughed morbidly. "Naruto, you're not responsible for me. I understood what you were going through with..." He trailed off, unwilling to speak the name so easily, lest it further wound Naruto's tender heart. Naruto got who Kiba was referring to anyway. "I decided to just... fall back. I did this to myself."
"No," Naruto disagreed firmly, finding his voice again. "Gaara did this to you." Kiba could say nothing, so Naruto expressed a hard truth. "Kiba, you need to leave him."
Kiba immediately shook his head no. "I can't."
"You already did," Naruto pointed out.
"I did not!" Kiba exclaimed. The emotion slowly built inside his body, causing his chest to heave slightly as his breathing grew heavy. "He says the same thing, but I can't. Why doesn't anyone understand that? I can't. I love him."
For an excruciatingly long moment, Kiba just sought understanding in Naruto's gaze. But Naruto had no understanding to give. He couldn't agree with Kiba's decision on this one. Eventually, Kiba turned his eyes away and focused on stilling his trembling lips.
"Just give it space," Naruto suggested softly. "Maybe Gaara's been right about that. Let each other breathe until you're strong enough to—"
"Strong enough?" Kiba repeated sharply, looking at Naruto with eyes finally overflowing with the emotion Kiba was known for.
"That's not—" Naruto began.
"Is that you're professional opinion?!" Kiba snapped.
"Kiba, I—"
"Is my suffering worth shit?" Kiba interjected. "No. I am strong! It's not like I haven't been enduring it all this time anyway. I'm plenty strong enough!"
"I'm not trying to downplay your strength," Naruto said hurriedly, trying to get a word in. Kiba gave him space to speak freely again. "Like you said to me earlier, I'm not interested in comparing sizes and seeing who's the most manly. I'm genuinely worried about you."
"He doesn't mean to hurt me," Kiba insisted.
Naruto shook his head grimly. "No, Kiba, you're wrong. He does," Naruto disagreed. "He's squashing you like a bug to prove a point, and you're staying to prove your own. He wants to prove how terrible he is. I'm starting to think all vampires have that complex. And you just wanna prove that he's not beyond loving. And that's noble of you, but he just doesn't care. Trust me, I know this one from personal experience. He doesn't wanna hear what you have to say about him. Doesn't mean he doesn't love you. In fact, he's only hurting you to force you to leave. And why would he do that unless he loved you deeply? He just wants you safe, and so do I. So I'm afraid I have to side with Gaara on this one Kiba." Naruto's brows scrunched together in an apology, even as he finished with, "Leave him."
Kiba was left momentarily speechless in the wake of Naruto's perspective. He knew the situation from the inside out. He knew what he experienced every day, and he knew what it looked like to anyone on the outside. He couldn't refute Naruto, because Naruto was right. He and Gaara were dancing around each other in the worst way, encouraging each other to be the worst parts of themselves. Neither of them were doing the other any service at this point. But as objective as Kiba could be in analyzing his situation, there was no way to detach the feelings he felt as a result and make them logical. Emotions simply were what they were, and his emotional response was that he couldn't leave. It wasn't even an argument, because logic had no place in his heart.
"I'm not leaving," Kiba said certainly, and yet with not an ounce of certainty left in his heart.
Naruto's only reply was to stare on with a mixture of sadness and sympathy. This infuriated Kiba, because it made him feel small and weak. He didn't want to be pitied. He wanted to be loved, by Gaara. Naruto was doing nothing but making him face the rawness of his emotions by making him realize just how pitiful he'd become, but that was not something Kiba was ready to face.
"I'm not leaving!" Kiba said even more loudly, as if being louder would change the situation.
Again, Naruto only felt more empathy for his friend. This time, he opened his arms in an invitation for a hug. He didn't necessarily wait for Kiba to decide to fall into it either. He just moved forward and hugged his friend. Kiba angrily tried to shove Naruto off, but to no avail. The blond squeezed tightly to restrain him.
"No!" Kiba screamed. "I'm not leaving!" Somewhere in between, his voice morphed into a sob. "I don't wanna leave."
When Kiba's legs buckled precariously, apparently unable to support his weight any longer, Naruto carefully guided them to the floor and simply continued to comfort the brunet where they'd dropped.
"Shhh," Naruto cooed, and he would coo, and coo, and coo until his voice box itself gave out.
To be continued...