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Moving Memories
18: Kyuubi

~ (^.^) (^.^) ~

Naruto shifted in his sleep, faintly wondering why his bed suddenly felt so uncomfortable. And where was his pillow? He stirred again, patting around for the fluffball. Finding nothing, he rolled onto his back to check behind himself, realizing then that his blanket was missing too. Confused, he cracked open his eyes, thankful that the room was forgivingly dark. Kiba had made himself comfortable enough to put curtains up over the blinds a few days ago. It didn't take Naruto long to decipher that he was lying on his living room floor. He looked to his other side, the direction his body had originally been facing, and saw the hand of a dangling arm in his direct line of sight. He followed the line it created up to Kiba's serene face, resting against the very edge of the couch cushion and totally at ease. At least the brunet could find peace in his dreams.

Naruto recognized what had become his norm as of late. He was totally drained. He wasn't a morning person. He'd always found his energy once the sun was shining bright and warming his face, but anything prior to that was pretty much just pure misery as far as he was concerned. Waking up had always been one hell of a process for him, but his attitude today was far different from that. It wasn't just that he wasn't a morning person, or even the fact that his interaction with Kiba the night prior had been exhausting. There was something physically off about him. In truth, even before this whole situation with Kiba had come to his attention, Naruto had generally been exhausted. His body, his mind, his very soul—he'd just been so weary for the past few weeks.

He knew that he'd been neglecting his health so severely that he was reduced to the point of hardly hanging on by a mere thread anymore. He hadn't been sleeping particularly well lately, or really much at all, but he still opted to laze around in bed as much as possible anyway. He hardly ate anything substantial these days either. In fact, hunger had become a foreign thing to him. He could, and would, go great stretches without putting even a shred of food in his body or even feeling the need to. Even when the hunger pains did finally arise, his appetite was usually so shot to hell that he could hardly become motivated enough to even eat anything. Not even ramen appealed to him anymore. He could acknowledge all of this and generally decipher how it could be fixed, but he just couldn't manage to actually fix it.

He hadn't known what to blame it on exactly, but he was figuring it out slowly for himself. It was connected to his newfound power of a bijuu for sure, which he was finally starting to see wouldn't be all rainbows and butterflies.

He knew that a bond for him was like blood for a vampire. He'd rationalized so far that one, good bond would be enough to energize him for weeks on end. As long as the connection was solid and thriving, he could literally convert that into sustenance to keep his body alive. Just like a vampire, he didn't need food or even water. He could survive off of the energy from his bonds. In his case, though, that was all that it was—just surviving. There was no quality of life to it, not the way that he was going about it.

It would, certainly, be much more rewarding and sustaining if he'd actually had any substantial bonds to feed off of, but he didn't. Every bond that he'd created lacked all of the essential elements of a true bond—a mental understanding, an emotional connection, a physical longing, a spiritual infusion. As weak and meaningless as they were, created out of no true emotion at all, they did little for his health. It was just the sheer number of bonds he'd created alone that was even keeping him going anymore. With no appetite for food, which he was willing to attribute to being rightfully depressed, he'd starved himself of nutrition. To battle that starvation, he'd needed to create a lot of bonds just to stay alive.

It was more complex than that though. His need for bonds evolved over time.

At first, he was just curious. He was interested in his abilities, in figuring himself out as both a bijuu and the current kyuubi. That was natural enough. It sort of progressed into a distraction too though. It was a good way to keep his mind off of Sasuke while simultaneously acting out against the raven too. Then, things changed and he recognized that he was making them based on need. The bonds were there for sustenance more than they were for entertainment. Still, Naruto was okay with that because they kept him functioning productively. When they slowly stopped doing even that, though, he had to realize that he, perhaps, wasn't looking at the situation deeply enough. That was thanks to Kiba. After Kiba had finally fallen asleep last night, Naruto had lain awake for a couple more hours thinking deeply.

He wasn't functioning productively anymore. Hell, he wasn't at an even semi-productive level. He was useless, a couch potato. Sometimes he didn't even get up for school. He would literally lie awake in bed and just internally complain about how much he didn't want to go. Kiba would never let him laze though. The brunet was stretching himself thin, what with his own silent struggles, but he'd gotten Naruto to at least continue committing to things that could not be ignored, like school. Without Kiba, however, Naruto knew that he'd be little more than a vegetable.

If he had to label himself as anything, he'd call himself depressed. And, sure, he really was, but that wasn't all that Naruto was. He knew his spirit and he'd been down before, but he always got back up. His parents dying had been more painful than losing Sasuke, yet Naruto had gotten up. Twice. That was the truth of his soul. He was bright and lively. He didn't simply lie down and give up. Yet, here he was, lying on the ground and feeling as if he'd given up weeks ago.

His quality of life had totally deteriorated, and he wasn't even worried about making any changes. He hadn't wasted a single thought thus far on getting back up and reclaiming his life. He was perfectly content to stay where he was and keep living this way. Well, as content as he could manage to be, as pushing himself past total apathy was beginning to be difficult for him lately. To anyone, it would seem as if Naruto was just wallowing, but Naruto knew that it was far beyond that. He couldn't keep blaming everything on Sasuke and what the raven had done to his heart. This was way beyond Sasuke.

Like he'd already recognized, a bond for Naruto was like blood to a vampire. That meant that the act of bonding must be a lot like the act of drinking blood. He remembered being told once that just smelling blood could be like getting high for a vampire, and drinking it could be as good as being drunk. If Naruto made it a point to be objective, he could attest to the fact that he felt more sated than ever in his life when he was asserting one of his bonds. He enjoyed the pure devotion. It was almost euphoric in and of itself. Kiba had called it lovelust. Sounded a lot like bloodlust, probably because it practically was. Naruto had to recognize the truth for what it was.

He was an addict, and he looked like one too. He'd lost a good amount of weight. His skin was sallow and dull, almost appearing yellowish instead of his normal sun-kissed glow. His eyes were totally lifeless, even when he was trying to express actual emotion. Any fire that he could manage to ignite was weak and delicate, able to be blown out with ease. The biggest thing missing was his most defining quality: his thirst for life. He'd lost his desire to not just survive, but to be alive. He didn't care to experience anything. He'd become content with just watching life slip by, as long as he had a vampire on the standby who would let him steal their vitality. That was enough to continue to delude him into thinking that feelings like enjoyment and euphoria and fulfillment were still real. They weren't though. In the way that he attained them, they were absolutely fake.

He'd come to exercise an uncharacteristically cynical view on life. Life as he'd used to know it seemed like a joke these days, like a fable he'd been childishly deluding himself into believing as real. Life was hardly more than a series of disappointments, and any semblance of happiness along the way was but an illusion. It was just the calm before the storm. All there really was to life was surviving. Why waste energy on anything more than getting by on the mere basics when it was all meaningless in the end?

That frame of mind took its toll on the body. All Naruto was up for anymore was barely scraping by with what little he could actually glean from the pathetic bonds he'd built in all the nooks and crannies of the city. He recognized all of this, all of what he'd become, plainly. He looked at himself very pragmatically, but there was just no fire in his heart telling him to change. He understood that the view he'd come to adopt was wrong. Who he had been before this lifeless shell of a man was who he truly was, and that was who he wanted to be again. He guessed he just didn't want it enough.

And what could he do about that? He just wasn't motivated enough to care all that much, so it was a hard task to get himself motivated enough to even get off the floor, but he did. As he clambered up from his position on the floor, he inadvertently bumped into Kiba's dangling arm.

Kiba stirred in his sleep, his brows crumpling together as he grumbled, "Whas a time?"

"Too early," Naruto sighed. Depleted as he felt, Kiba needed the sleep more than he. "You sleep in this morning," he said, since Kiba was always the one having to drag Naruto out of bed. "I'll wake you when I'm done getting ready."

Kiba stretched out his legs, though it was obvious he was still largely asleep. "M'unna wake up," he promised sleepily. "You jus sleep."

Naruto crouched down, enamored by Kiba's sweetness. "So devoted to me," he murmured softly, brushing some of Kiba's hair from the brunet's eyes reverently. He internally recognized that this devotion was free. While all of Naruto's vampires had submitted to him willingly, if only for the prospect of getting to taste the sweetness of bijuu blood, their loyalty didn't meant half as much as Kiba's. Both were voluntary, but only one was worth anything really, and it made his heart swell with its purity.

"S'what friends er for," Kiba replied, yawning and cracking open his eyes to peer drowsily at Naruto. Even as he insisted, "M'unna get up right now," his eyes fluttered shut again.

Naruto smiled, gently ruffling Kiba's hair. "I'm already awake. Just sleep, okay?"

Kiba nodded lazily, humming in cooperation. Just before drifting back off into sleep, he mumbled softly, "You stink."

Naruto couldn't help but smile widely at his friend as he stood and headed for the bathroom, his mind inevitably falling back to the topic of how blurry the line between true emotions and the ones he'd been fabricating with his vampires had become.

During the past few weeks, he'd realized that his body was acting on pure instinct rather than his personal wants and desires. Although, what with his life essence sapped from his being, his wants and desires always coincided with his body's instincts anyway. He wanted nothing more and nothing less than what he simply needed, and his body always steered him toward what he simply needed. He'd noticed that his body always charged itself up when the prospect of a "meal" presented itself—a meal meaning, from a bijuu's perspective, the energy he could extract from a bond. His body seemed to have trained itself to expect this sort of frivolous behavior of him hopping from one vampire to another tirelessly instead of relying on one, single bond.

Naruto had become so good at commanding himself this way that a great deal of vampires had actually come to him asking to be made his, and not the kind you find in back alleyways either. Those back-alley types were the ones that he never slept with. Even if sex always made him feel better, he still had some standards. He didn't want to turn himself into the village whore, so the most he would do with those sketchy types was set them on standby.

Something he'd learned about himself was that he could manipulate his bonds however he wanted. Kankuro had probably told him all about this, but he surely hadn't been listening. It was something he'd had to learn from experience on his own. His bond to a vampire was him having the ability to control their will, but he'd learned that there were lots of degrees of control he could exercise. There were two major settings, which he'd decided to consider active and dormant.

Active bonds were bonds he currently exploited. As the quantity of his bonds grew, Naruto began to realize that he couldn't have that many bonds active at once. As time went by, the number slowly grew, so he deduced that the amount of bonds he was able to exploit at once must grow with his skill level.

He was still fairly new to his abilities as a bijuu. He knew that they only came to him consciously. He wouldn't develop if he didn't actively try, which was why they were never overly present in his childhood. At 19, he was already closing in on the age at which he would plateau and stop growing completely. In other words, he'd become immortal soon. Since he was so close to being totally mature, his body was able to handle a lot at once. When he first recognized that he had abilities, they seemed to come to him out of the blue. His senses sharpened and his empathy peaked, and he could feel them honing more and more by the day. His psychic abilities weren't coming along so easily though.

Nonetheless, despite how quickly he seemed to be learning, Naruto was still just a baby for a bijuu. He'd hardly been living this life a couple of months. As he grew more and more experienced, though, he acknowledged that his ability to utilize more and more bonds at once would grow too. For now, he was limited to 2 to 4 active bonds at once.

Active bonds had two extremes—a vampire being entirely at Naruto's mercy, and a vampire having complete control of their own will. These two extreme weren't all there was to bonding though. There were endless degrees of devotion in between, and Naruto could choose any one of them that he pleased. He could manipulate a bond to give a vampire as much free will as he wanted to, and he realized that his state of mind at the time of the exchange made a difference in how the bond was created too.

During the first couple of weeks after losing Sasuke, Naruto hadn't been able to just forget the raven so easily. This distraction kept him from really committing too deeply to the bonds, even as he made them. He realized that in that state of mind, the bonds weren't created at very strong levels. Only when he focused on what he was doing and consciously noted that he wanted to control the vampire before him did the intensity crank up. As he thought less and less of Sasuke, he realized that the bonds were being made stronger and stronger as his will focused on them more intently. This was how he'd learned that he could make bonds at varying degrees of intensity. But beyond that, even after they were already made, he could manipulate them to all these degrees too. He had complete free reign over the vampires under his spell.

At the top of the active spectrum was one extreme, the extreme where a vampire was entirely at Naruto's mercy. At this extreme, the vampire's will was entirely taken away. They were more like drones than anything. Whatever Naruto said would be like law to them. They treated him like the only thing that existed in the world. He could manipulate their emotions, making them think and feel however he wanted them to. This was the sense of loyalty and love that bijuu became obsessed with.

At the bottom of the active spectrum lie the other extreme, the extreme where a vampire had complete control over their own will. These bonds would be considered the other setting. Rather than active, they were dormant. It was almost like a dormant bond didn't exist at all. The vampire would have total control over themselves and could do as they pleased, not even thinking twice about what Naruto had to say about it.

Naruto had noticed, however, that they would still feel some sort of connection to him. They'd feel inclined to protect him and he'd noticed from experimenting that they would still seek his opinion on things, although he wasn't sure if that was their choice or the bond speaking. After all, every vampire he indulged in was dedicated to him of their own free will. They chose to submit to him. They wanted to be under a bijuu's spell. While it seemed like they always had some ingrained connection to him, Naruto noticed that his vampires were able to ignore his demands if they wanted to as well.

Naruto knew he could only assert himself in 2 to 4 active bonds at once—2 if they were both at the highest degree of intensity and 4 if they were at the lowest, which would be one step above dormant. That meant that almost all of his bonds were in a constantly dormant state of being. But it didn't matter if a bond was active or dormant, each blood bond provided him with sustenance anyway. Thus, the vampires he had on standby with dormant bonds still supplied him with some energy just by being bonded to him. They also served as a sort of backup stock in case he ever grew tired of the ones he actually did get in between the sheets with.

This method of creating bonds had been working quite well for Naruto, but that was only because he'd become complacent with something so pathetically shallow and underwhelming.

He mused as he scrubbed the smell of sex from his previous night's encounter off his body that maybe he could actually find a way to integrate some vigor back in his life. He understood bonding for vampires. It didn't always have to be a blood bond. Vampires could be bonded to others emotionally too, but it seemed like that would only happen between family or extremely close friends. Nonetheless, though, it was a bond, and it could potentially be very strong. Naruto had to wonder if he was capable of that too. Was the only way he could bond by making the exchange with a vampire? Or was he capable of bonding emotionally too?

Little as he'd absorbed from Kankuro's explanation on bijuu, he remembered Kankuro saying that the ability to bond was something the bijuu had developed not only as a method of subduing vampires but as a way to recreate something they themselves didn't have. Bijuu were, apparently, empathetic beings, but they didn't seem to think themselves capable of the same kind of love they saw between vampires. So, then, did bijuu think the only way to feel love was through creating blood bonds? Perhaps they had been confused. Perhaps they hadn't known about the emotional bonds that vampires could make. Maybe for all this time they'd been lusting after something they were already capable of doing. After all, making an emotional bond wasn't strictly a vampirous thing. Humans did it between each other all the time. It was just caring for someone the way Kiba cared for Naruto.

So could Naruto extract the same energy from Kiba that he extracted from his blood bonds? It seemed like a plain enough answer, but it wasn't. Easy and simple as it seemed to be, it'd been escaping bijuu for centuries. It might have been easy enough for humans to feel energized by their connections to their friends and family, but bijuu weren't human. They were more complex, more sensitive. There was a certain kind of distance that settled between the bijuu and other beings. Being able to feel someone so irrevocably with their natural empathy, bijuu were too emotionally sensitive to be close to people so flippantly. It was simply over-stimulating. So maybe that was why they'd always thought they were incapable of love.

As the only other being that bijuu could commiserate with on that level, it was only natural that the bijuu looked to the vampires for a sort of guide on how to become close to other beings. As far as the bijuu knew, vampires became empathetic only when they grew very close to another being. At that point, the vampires were just like them. They, too, would struggle with being close to someone who could not balance out the sensitivity, but the vampires' solution was ingrained into their instincts. The first vampires had come in 5 pairs of mates. It was within them to instinctively seek a mate within their own race, but bijuu didn't have that within their community.

There was only 10 bijuu, and 10 there could only ever be at any given point in time. They didn't come in pairs like the vampires originally had, so it wasn't in them instinctively to mate to each other. It wasn't even in them to mate at all. The desire had only risen once the bijuu became more and more unnecessary in the pursuit of balance for the world. Naturally, they grew bored. All they really had to do with their basically immortal lives was to watch and see, so they'd watched the vampires with curiosity, and they'd become jealous and thus developed their lust for finding that same kind of love.

The bijuu had come to view bonding as a substitute for love, but they'd totally missed the fact that vampire mates didn't create blood bonds. Vampires mates were bonded together completely emotionally.

Naruto could see now why bijuu had come to believe that the only way to find love was by creating bonds. As far as they knew, blood bonds were the only type of bonds that they could even create. If that was the case, then there was only one creature that the bijuu could bond to, and that was vampires. With that kind of misguided thinking, it was no wonder his lovelust was so hard for Naruto to even recognize as a problem to begin with. Well, he recognized it as an issue. He just didn't care enough to... well... care.

This was an easy solution though. If he had this right, then all Naruto needed to do was connect to his friends again. If he could manage to do that, then he'd be able to take his energy from them. Part of him was hesitant in accepting this ideology, mainly because he didn't want to start sucking the vitality from his friends. It was fine with the vampires. They could just go drink some blood and be instantaneously fine. Humans weren't like that though. They were more delicate. Naruto didn't think it would be that hard for him to end up putting a friend in a coma just from taking too much energy from them.

The other part of him hesitated because, put simply, he was addicted. A dark part of him enjoyed this way of life, and it just didn't want to let the vampires go. Then again, he rationalized, if he could switch to feeding off of humans he was genuinely close to, then the payback would be greater. That meant less bonds were necessary and he could go on getting the same satisfaction of his lovelust, just in a new way.

The logical, objective half of Naruto's brain was unable to accept what he was currently thinking. Instead of theorizing a way to just be normal again, to not need anyone's energy but his own, Naruto was simply shifting prey. Then again, he could utilize this as a stepping stone. If he truly pursued this plan of depending on emotional bonds he already had around him, then he would, without doubt, return to an energy level he hadn't been at in ages. With more will and conviction in his bones, maybe then he'd be able to make the full change and stop needing bonds at all.

In the end, Naruto could only run with the idea. If he questioned it too much, he'd talk himself back into a lack of motivation and just become resigned to giving up again. Maybe Kiba had already given him a slight energy boost with his unsolicited loyalty, because Naruto felt like this was his one chance at getting out of the hole he'd dug himself in. He had to commit now, or else he didn't think he'd ever pull himself out. But he had to. He had to change.

"Naruto," Kiba said loudly, knocking on the shower door simultaneously. "C'mon, get out. We're gonna be late."

Naruto jumped out of his head. "Huh? Kiba?" he asked. He must have zoned out. "Has it been that long already?"

"Yeah, doofus," Kiba answered. "I've made breakfast and everything. Get out and eat so I can get in."

Kiba left it at that and walked away, likely to go gather his clothes for the day. Naruto rinsed out the shampoo that had been just sitting in his hair but left the water on, grabbing his towel off its hanger and stepping out of the shower with it around his waist just as Kiba was walking back into the bathroom. He didn't bother acknowledging Naruto. He just shouldered past him and started to undress, grumbling to himself about how wet the floor was. Just about to leave the bathroom and enter his bedroom, Naruto paused and looked back at Kiba.

"You're the one who rushed me outta the shower," he defended.

Kiba didn't say anything. He just glanced at Naruto over his shoulder and shrugged. Naruto frowned. Where had Kiba's personality gone?

"You gonna stand there and watch me or get dressed?" Kiba prompted, tapping his foot at Naruto impatiently.

Naruto just closed the door to his bedroom and left Kiba to be. He was in an awfully prickly mood. Naruto decided to just let it be and dressed himself in a red shirt, old jeans, and black and red shoes. Satisfied with his outfit, he threw a towel on his head and started drying his hair as he walked out into the kitchen. On the counter was a plate of one scrambled egg, a piece of bacon, and half a piece of toast. Naruto frowned at the sight. So little food. Nonetheless, he ate it, realizing once he was done that it was enough. His appetite was quickly sated. In fact, it might have been more food than he'd eaten in days.

Just as Naruto was finishing his last bite of bacon, Kiba came out of the bathroom. They glanced at each other at the same time, Kiba still rubbing his hair and Naruto's towel just sitting atop his head. Kiba's eye brows rose high as he slowly came to a stop, his eyes now fixed on Naruto's plate. They shot up to Naruto's face.

"You ate," Kiba pointed out, pulling the towel off his head and using that hand to point at the empty plate.

Naruto shrugged. "Well, you cooked," he said simply.

"I always cook."

"Okay, I'm sorry?" Naruto offered uncertainly, assuming Kiba was alluding to the fact that Naruto never seemed to mind rejecting his food, no matter how hard he worked on it.

"No, it's fine," Kiba assured. "I just..." His eyes flicked back to the plate and his brows crumpled together. "You ate," he said again, seeming to revert back to the same mixture of shock and wonder he'd begun with.

Naruto snorted a laugh, causing Kiba's shock and awe to intensify. "Yes, Kiba. I ate. It was good."

His light attitude faltered when Kiba didn't respond in turn. Seriously, what was Kiba's problem?

Kiba just shook his head, disbelieving. "That's the most emotion I've seen on your face in ages," he said, his lips slowly curving into a smile. "Other than last night of course, but none of that was particularly good emotion."

"Yeahh..." Naruto scratched the back of his head sheepishly, a characteristic he hadn't displayed in a long time either. "About that. I'm working on a change," he began to explain.

~ (^.^) (^.^) ~

Naruto laughed heartily as Kiba finished an especially cheesy joke, his arm draped around the back of the brunet's chair, establishing constant contact with the man's back. Kiba looked over at Naruto, laughing the loudest at the table of their friends, and smiled softly.

"Too much," he whispered so that only Naruto would hear.

Naruto's laughter awkwardly died out. As he toned himself down, he shifted uncomfortably under the tension of the situation. He moved his arm from behind Kiba's chair and, instead, anxiously gripped his friend's knee under the table, managing to look casual nonetheless.

He couldn't help it if he was nervous. It'd been so long since he'd last seen his friends, and they weren't being too welcoming either. He'd really isolated himself after Sasuke, from everyone. Though still disturbed, Kiba had managed to step out of his own depression enough to slightly compensate for Naruto's absence in their group. He could see on their faces that they were concerned, and if only to allow Naruto the space he needed to grieve, he made himself retract from his shell and become more social again. He'd thought that maybe if he'd participated more actively, then he could keep everyone from focusing too much on Naruto. Naruto had done Kiba the same courtesy before too, so it was only fair that Kiba do the best he could for his friend.

That had worked, but it hadn't kept their friends completely placated. They'd still wondered about Naruto, talked about him, created theories. Some of them were more absurd than others, and once they grew tired of Kiba's constant nagging of them to stop talking about Naruto so often, they just stopped bringing the conversation to Kiba at all. They started talking behind Kiba's back too, innocently trying to explain the sudden shift in the group's dynamic. That left Kiba just as clueless as Naruto about what their friends were thinking about him, so Kiba wasn't surprised that Naruto was so deeply anxious. All he could do was tend to that uneasiness, so he reached under the table and reassuringly placed his hand atop Naruto's, relaxing himself and hoping that Naruto's would absorb his aura and relax too.

Once Naruto had explained his plan for change that morning—which had taken their entire ride to school and then some, making them late in the end—Kiba came to understand that what Naruto wanted to do was test out his ability to live off of emotional bonds. Kiba knew that the lovelust would still be the same, but at least it was better than Naruto going out and giving himself so willingly to all those vampires. Trusting only himself to encourage Naruto properly, Kiba had eagerly offered himself up as a test subject.

His main reasoning had been that being a part of this experiment meant he had to stay living with Naruto semi-permanently. That was good for both of them, even though the past week had proven to be tense and tumultuous at best. For Kiba, it was his way of, as Naruto urged, "leaving Gaara" without really feeling the guilt and pain of leaving. He could stay with Naruto for Naruto's benefit, and then some day he would graduate to accepting that he and Gaara were no longer a thing. For now, this was the perfect transitional phase and Kiba was going to take this bull by the horns, for the both of their sake.

Naruto had returned to his old self with amazing ease. He was figuring out how to convert Kiba's energy into his own rather easily. Kiba could tell upon reuniting over the course of the day that Naruto was having great struggles with his mood though. He'd come back to Kiba irritable and scowling, or else just totally apathetic. Physical touch reverted that pretty quickly. It was a pretty straightforward way to exchange energy. Naruto just wasn't advanced enough to use Kiba's bond the way he used the vampires. There was no way to extract energy without the physical touch yet.

Naruto was naive and still in the throes of learning something new, but at least he was able to take some energy from Kiba and smile and laugh again. That warmed Kiba's heart to an immeasurable degree. Kiba could see that the more he felt for Naruto in his heart, the more lively Naruto seemed to be. As a flourish of affection and pride and swelled inside Kiba, Naruto's eyes seemed to practically glow with life. This only further intensified Kiba's emotions, further intensifying Naruto's vitality.

And then things quickly turned sour. Kiba suddenly swayed in his seat. Some eyes strayed to him questioningly, but he just smiled at his friends to ease their worry. But then he almost fell right out of his seat. Luckily, Naruto reached out and caught him just in time. Everyone quickly began to question what was wrong as Naruto pulled Kiba up into a properly sitting position and stabilized him with one arm around his shoulders and the other gently holding his elbow. Naruto's eyes were dimming though, filling with guilt. He understood immediately and began to pull away, but Kiba only huddled closer to his friend.

"It's okay," he assured everybody, smiling and waving one weak hand dismissively. "I'm just a little sick," he said as an excuse.

"Tell me your symptoms," Sakura immediately suggested, concern warming her eyes, which had been icy all day.

"No offense," Naruto began before Kiba could reply, "but you're not a real doctor, Sakura."

The woman snapped intolerant eyes to Naruto. "And you're not a real friend," she retorted sharply, "but you don't see me bitching at you about that all the time."

Naruto was taken aback by the sudden venom in her voice as Ino slapped her friend in the arm and murmured something in a hushed tone to her. Sakura haughtily looked away from Naruto and Ino smiled apologetically at him.

"We're gonna go," Ino said timidly, standing and pulling Sakura up by the arm.

"I can walk on my own," Sakura growled, grabbing her bag and stomping away.

Ino forgot her manners and stomped after her friend, inciting their typical bickering as they walked away, gesturing at each other wildly as their voices faded. Naruto watched them in slight astonishment, confused about Sakura's sudden attitude. Well, it wasn't that sudden. She'd been treating him with a cold shoulder since they first saw each other at the start of the day.

"Don't let it bother you," Chouji said, reaching out to pat Naruto on the arm spiritedly.

Unintentionally, Naruto shied away, not wanting to steal anything from Chouji too. He could see that his action bothered Chouji, if only because he thought it was weird for Naruto to react that way to a friendly gesture. Though, he was partially stung by the feeling of rejection too. He was the only one who had been trying overly hard to make Naruto feel comfortable, but Naruto didn't seem to care all that much.

"You're obviously still not in your right mind," Shikamaru pointed out. "Neji might've been right about you."

"What?" Naruto asked.

He was both genuinely confused and slightly wary of what Neji might have had to say about him. Last time he and Neji had interacted, things were still pretty tense between them because of Naruto's treatment of Hinata at the Halloween party, and then Sasuke's subsequent treatment of Neji too. Naruto couldn't imagine that Neji had anything positive to say about him.

Shika shrugged. "He said you were outta your mind, and that's why you just sorta disappeared on us." He paused, appraising Naruto. "I don't think you're crazy, but he also said it would be a long time before he trusted you enough to hang out with you again. That's why he refuses to eat lunch with us as long as we sit with you, forbids Hinata and Tenten from it too."

"But they told us to tell you they missed you," Chouji added, trying to make Naruto's suddenly very sullen eyes spark up again. There was no use.

Shikamaru stood from the table then, nudging Chouji and prompting his friend to do the same. "I think you guys have some sorting out to do before the group is comfortable together again," he pointed out. "Neji's right on that part."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Naruto snapped, thinking that was another allusion to the allegedly unstable mentality his friends had come to believe he was suffering from.

"You look like a couple," Shikamaru said bluntly, causing Naruto's irritation to fumble and morph into surprise.

Naruto looked down at Kiba, who was nestled against his side and seemingly fighting the urge to just stay awake. He quickly pulled away, partly to avoid the stigma of them dating and partly to keep from sucking out any more of Kiba's life. Kiba had to brace himself with both hands on the table to keep from falling over.

Shika looked confused about why Naruto would rather let his friend almost face plant into the table rather than continue supporting him and run the risk of looking like a couple. Shikamaru liked to analyze things, but Naruto was becoming a conundrum. In the end, the brunet shrugged.

"You are what you are. I don't care. I just think you need to get some things straight in your life before you come to us again Naruto," Shikamaru pointed out. "Clearly, Kiba is the one to help you with that."

With that, Shikamaru started walking away. Following, Chouji called back to Naruto over his shoulder, "But we're still your friends!" He smiled and turned away with a thumbs up lingering in the air.

Once they were all gone, Naruto sighed and buried his face in his hands, choking down emotion. Kiba reached over to touch Naruto, but Naruto shifted away.

"Don't," he said tightly. "You can't handle it right now."

"Naruto," Kiba beckoned softly, waiting until the blond peeked out at him. "You can't handle anything less."

Naruto revealed his full face again, unashamed of the tears pooling in his eyes. He'd thought he could just assimilate back into his old life, that he'd be accepted. He thought he'd rekindle all his lost bonds and they'd be strong again. He'd thought he'd master this whole taking energy thing quickly, and then he'd be able to rely on true loyalty and companionship to fuel his body. But he'd been wrong. He had no bonds now. He just had Kiba.

Defeated, Naruto scooted over and dropped his head on Kiba's shoulder, closing his eyes when the brunet gently patted his face.

"Just a little," Naruto conceded.

~ (^.^) (^.^) ~

Naruto released a slow, tense, steady breath as he tried to keep his concentration. After a few moments, he reached out and touched Kiba's arm. Nothing seemed to happen, so he huffed and threw his hands up dramatically in defeat.

"It's useless!"

"It's not," Kiba soothed, patting Naruto's leg in comfort as they sat facing each other cross-legged on Naruto's bed.

"It is!" Naruto snapped, slightly irritated. He fell back onto his bed with a huge sigh. "Bijuu just aren't meant to do this."

Kiba walked his hands up the bed on either side of Naruto's body until the knees of both their crossed legs touched and his face was in Naruto's view.

"Not true," Kiba said seriously. "Naruto, you came up with this theory, and it's good. I know a lot on the subject, so trust me when I say it makes sense. There are no loopholes. You're capable of it. You just don't know how, because apparently no bijuu has ever tried this before."

"But how can you be sure?"

"Well, we already know that emotional bonds can work," Kiba began. "And you've gotten really good at tempering yourself too. Who's to say you're not capable of more?"

Naruto was now capable of taking a determined amount of energy from Kiba and then doling it out in whatever factions he chose at any time. It was amazing how much he'd changed. He was almost able to keep his bright attitude sustained throughout the whole day now. There were pockets of wavering, but that was expected since he'd been breaking his vampires bonds steadily too. With the numbers beginning to dwindle, Kiba had sort of been expecting Naruto to revert back to just surviving. He didn't though. He valiantly fought to remain strong.

In all, Naruto was doing a good job of keeping his spirits high. He wasn't settling for anything less than happy these days. He wouldn't let himself be just complacent or content or alright, and neither would Kiba. The brunet only ever relented when he saw true mirth mingling in Naruto's eyes. Naruto was becoming more responsible for his own self though. His determination and drive were returning to him. When he felt those swings of apathy coming on, he'd remedy them with a little dose of Kiba energy. He'd gotten amazing at storing it up inside himself and taking it in small doses when necessary, making him more pleasant to be around all the time and not just when attached to Kiba's hip.

The only thing left really troubling Kiba was the amount of energy he could give Naruto. They no longer had the problem of Naruto not being able to moderate himself. The problem now was that Kiba just physically didn't have enough energy in him to sustain Naruto for much longer. The appetite for energy that Naruto had created with his various blood bonds was so great that it was becoming too much to take from one single human being, no matter how much positive emotion Kiba could manage to churn up in his heart. He found that pure love was the most fueling emotion, and it wasn't hard to feel that. Kiba felt it for Naruto every day, and it seemed to be growing as they spent more time together. For Kiba, it was instantaneous to generate energy for Naruto. It wasn't a lack of will that put them at this stone wall. It was a lack of ability. Kiba just physically wasn't able to satiate Naruto.

Within the next few days, something was going to have to change. Naruto would just have to fight off his appetite. He'd just have to learn to live with the lovelust and not give in, like vampires had to live with their thirst for blood. Or else he'd just have to make some more strong emotional bonds. Naruto didn't like those suggestions though. He'd thought he had a better idea, so Kiba heard him out. Naruto theorized that if he could just manage to be able to transfer energy from himself, the he'd be able to send it back into Kiba. It'd crossed Kiba's mind already that such was a fruitless endeavor. Even if Naruto could manage to do this, which Kiba was sure that he could, it would just be Naruto passing energy he needed back to Kiba. It was silly, to give Kiba the energy Naruto would just take right back. It was pointless, actually.

But Naruto had suggested it so eagerly, his eyes so sparkling and hopeful, and Kiba understood why. He was still so fragile, so fractured. He was operating under such delicate circumstances, because the wound that had incited all of this still remained. Sasuke was gone, and Naruto needed to close that wound before he would ever be able to stop relying on bonds entirely. And as far as making new bonds went, it was obvious that Naruto just wasn't emotionally prepared to be that vulnerable to anyone else yet. If Naruto wasn't ready to face these things, then Kiba wasn't going to make him. If Naruto needed to go through this trial and error before he was ready to finally start the real healing, then Kiba would play along earnestly. Anything for Naruto.

A thought had occurred to him anyway, a new solution that neither of them had touched on yet. Maybe a change in the way they transferred energy would work too. It wouldn't be a permanent fix, but it might help extend the period of time before they had to face making a change in the way they were doing things. Or maybe it could be permanent. Maybe this could change things for the better, for the both of them, forever.

Kiba smiled at Naruto. "I have an idea," he said, causing Naruto's eyes to cautiously perk up.

"What is it?" Naruto asked warily.

Kiba uncrossed his legs so that he was positioned more securely over Naruto's body. For a moment, he just stared at Naruto, who returned his gaze inquisitively. Kiba smiled, affection swelling in his heart at the ever-innocent twinkle to Naruto's eyes. No matter what the man faced, Naruto always had this air of purity around him, as if he could never be truly tainted by anything. No wonder people were drawn to him. It was the same reason people said they were drawn to Kiba too, except when Kiba looked at an alleged mirror image of himself, he saw everything that he didn't have but needed. He wondered if it was the same for Naruto. He wondered what it would feel like to explore Naruto's aura, what he would find inside.

Without warning and driven by a need to be closer, Kiba leaned down and kissed his friend.

To be continued...

Author Note: This is the point at which things really take a turn from the original plot. I mean, heavy rewriting here.