Summary: When they first meet, Gaara threatens him with an ice cream cone. Naruto believes it was meant to be.
Warnings: mental health issues; anxiety, social anxiety, panic attacks, PTSD, depression, suicidal thoughts, bullying (not hardcore, more like a trigger to the mental issues)
Tags: (besides the warning ones) introspection, dark past, slow burn, enemies to friends to lovers, angst, fluff, mental healing
Ratings: M - possibly violence and smut.
Length: can't tell yet.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. I do enjoy creating works in its universe though.
One's mirth, another's nightmare
He hated interacting with people.
He was indifferent, to people, as individuals, but that only lasted as long as he didn't have to get involved with them.
He lived by his own pace; be it school or home, he mostly kept to himself with minimal exposure to the human interactions and he was fine with it. It was the safest way for him to live. And while most of the time his wishes of being left alone were being respected, there would come a time when he would be forced to have a face-to-face with humanity.
A moment like this one.
He could feel the back of his tank top clinging to his body from the cold sweat his body had produced the moment he stepped foot in the hell place that was Akatsuki Amusement Park.
There were people everywhere.
Left and right crowds upon crowds of people were rushing about, skipping and laughing, loudly, while he couldn't make his foot move past the barrier of the entrance gate.
This was hell. And he only had his siblings to blame for this torture.
If it had been his choice, he would have never stepped foot in a place like this, but apparently his older brother forgot to bring his inhaler with him before leaving and his sister wasn't asnwering her phone. He was adamant on staying home but then his father threatened to remove the lock from his bedroom doors and that was a more terrifying thought than he could handle.
So here he was, frozen in place, staring at the bright lit words and cursing the world around him.
"One ticket," he muttered in a quiet deep voice, standing by the cashier. The flinch he got in return when the young lady brought her eyes to him was nothing new. When he was younger, he could get away with being a moody creepy kid. Nowadays, as a teenager of fifteen years he closely looked like a drug dealer, if not someone involved in murder.
He narrowed his dark coal painted eyes at the girl's shaky hand as she passed him the ticket.
As long as she didn't touch him, he didn't care.
Snatching the ticket, he scurried away, weaving thorugh the crowds of people until he came out in a clearing of sorts.
As a shriek reached his sensitive ears, he had to suppress the initial body shiver. He hated being here. He wanted to leave. Now.
Taking a few calming breaths, that usually did little to calm him, he looked around to get a better sense of the overall place. When he said he avoided crowds, he was being truthful. The last time he was in a place even remotely similar to this, was when he was six. A lot had changed since then, and he felt, unsure how to even proceed to search for his siblings in a mass of people like this.
He opened his phone once again and pressed on the call button as his eyes spotted the map.
He was nearest to the place called The Forest of Death. What a morbid name, he thought. He decided to start there, since it was also close to the stage with the shows and he knew his sister loved that glittery nonsense.
Surprisingly (not really) he found his siblings by the ice cream cart. His thumb pressed on the call button from spite as he watched his oblivious sibling flirt with the raven haired punk kid by the counter.
He snapped the phone shut with a force.
Marching towards his siblings, he watched how the crowd slightly parted where he went, allowing him reach the duo without awkward stumbling into strangers.
"Temari," he called her in a low voice. He startled her, he knew, but he couldn't care less.
"G-Gaara! What're you doing here, lil bro?" she asked in a semi-cheery voice. The pretence was making him sick. His eyes darted at the raven boy who was back to serving his other customers with a bored look on his face. This was stupid. He wasn't even looking at her.
Before he could open his mouth, though, ice cream cone was suddenly thrust into his hand. He stared at the object owlishly, while his sister went to exchange a few last words with the raven punk. Glaring, but still stubbornly holding onto the ice cream, Gaara regarded his brother.
"Inhaler," he simply said. He thought it unneccesary to elaborate because as soon as the word left his mouth, Kankurou started patting his pockets and, of course, finding them empty.
"Seriously? How could you forget your inhaler, Kankurou?" Temari said in a chidding voice while also backhanding the back of his head.
"Aww, Temari. You were in a rush so I didn't notice."
"Don't push your failure on me, idiot."
Having about enough, Gaara pulled the offending item from his pocket and pushed it straight into Temari's arms. She barely managed to keep hold of it. "I'm leaving," he announced and turned to leave before suddenly his siblings blocked his path.
He glared at them.
"Eh, Gaara, you could stay you know? It's going to be fun. And thank you for bringing Kankurou his inhaler. I know how hard it must have been for you-"
At those words he snapped. "I didn't do it for you," he said, darkly. "The next time you don't asnwer your phone, I'm going to pretend I don't see as your suffocate to death."
There was a stunned silence as his siblings' faces blanched.
He didn't wait for their response, he made a circle around their frozen forms and sprinted from the hell place as fast as was possible without actually running.
He should have left. That's what he wanted from the start. But somehow the tacky words sparked a momentary interest in him. Not many knew of this, but for him being interested in something was not only rare but also only lasted about half an hour at most. He used such moments as experiments on his body, searching for ways it had affected his daily life.
It never did.
As soon as the expected time passed, he would go back to being impasive and not caring if the thing that interested him a few seconds ago ceased to exist for ever.
He pushed his hand against the gate of The Forest of Death and walked in.
Judging by the faraway shouting he supposed the fun was located further in, and he somehow managed to find the more abandoned side of the forest. He looked up at the tall trees swaying from the wind and could only think how meaningless and boring it all looked.
He averted his eyes and scanned the place for something to do.
His hand twitched and suddenly he remembered that one of his hands were occupied. Looking down at the dripping strawberry ice cream he could only scowl. He thought about dropping the thing right there and then but then realized he didn't have any tissues and somehow having a dripping ice cream in his hand seemed more logical than a sticky empty hand. It was a flawed logic, but he refused to question himself on it.
It was then, when he spotted a rusty old pair of swings; only one of them in a good enough state to be sat on.
Perfect. It looked miserable enough for him to make use of it, he thought, and went towards it.
He felt awkward. The ice cream was starting to slide down his thumb and disappear somewhere inside his sleeve. It was disgusting. Still, he refused to move from his spot on the half-broken swings as he stared emptily at the shadows of the forest.
The occasional faraway yells ceased to bother him the moment he realized they wouldn't be coming close to him.
As he sat there, a part of him was waiting, as always, for something to happen and wisk him away from the miserable existence that his life was but another part of him fiercely fought to silence any upcoming change. He didn't need change. He needed peace. Something he never got, because as much as he wanted to create a bubble against himself, there were always people stumbling in his path to remind him of how different his life could be, if only he tried.
Well, he didn't.
He knew something was wrong with him. Something engraved deep inside him. Something he had slowly nurtured since the fateful incident when he was six years old and only gotten worse through the years, but he had no energy in him to fix it. His father didn't care. His siblings avoided him without his own promting – he didn't need them. He didn't need anyone.
A brach snapped nearby.
Tensing, he felt his grip on the cone tighten as he waited for the inevitable living being to disturb his peace.
One moment, two and then there was a short yelp, a rustling of something tumbling and Gaara's eyes witnessed just in time as a ball of orange came crashing from the slope of the small hill somewhere on the near vicinity of his right.
The lump of orange stayed still on the ground.
Then it breathed and quickly sat up. "Awch, that hurt!" the loud shriek pierced sharply through his ears and Gaara had an unmistakeable need to shut it, violently.
While the orange suited boy was still distracted, Gaara eyed him warily. The jumpsuit was hideous. He couldn't remember ever seeing anything like that in the market. Not like he was a casual customer himself to really know, but… Then was the hair. Spikes of yellow did him no more favours than the tacky outfit. Add to that his obnoxious voice and Gaara was certain he wanted nothing to do with him, ever.
Using the opportunity while the boy was still distracted by his scrapes and bruises, Gaara let himself fall from the swing and proceeded to leave.
He didn't get far.
Out of nowhere there was a hand clamping on his shoulder and he felt dread pool in his stomach. Waves of fear and panic started to consume him when suddenly the spell was broken by a voice spoken in his ear. "Hey, do you know where the bathroom is?"
It worked like a trigger. Somehow the words broke him free from his seizing panic and he swirled around, taking the boy by surprise as he twisted his arm and slammed his cheek into the swing rod, a weapon poking him in the vein on the neck.
He saw red. He couldn't hear. His breathing got laboured as he kept his firm hold on the blond. While he wasn't physically strong, he knew he had a raw survival's strength. His nails must have punctured the boy's skin because he felt the body undernearth him shift. Then suddenly his hearing was back and he had to flinch back at the indignant shouting of the blond. "Let me go, you bastard! Face me head on."
Black eyes narrowed at the struggling blond, then suddenly he was flailing and falling face down on the ground as the redhead abruptly let go of him.
Huffing, he twirlled around. "What the hell is your deal!? Oi-"
He didn't know why the other boy suddenly stopped his yelling.
While it was a blessing, his widened azure blues made him feel awkward to be stared at that intensely. He shifted on his feet. He wanted him to stop doing that. He tried to glare him into submission but the boy seemed immune. He kept staring.
It was unnerving.
Just when he thought he couldn't feel more awkward, the blond had to open his mouth. "Hey.. is that an ice cone… the one you were poking my neck with?" He touched his neck to where Gaara's pathetic excuse of a weapon had been a few moments ago, and grinned.
Gaara had a sudden urge to test out the limitations of physics by proving he could shove the ice cream cone into the blond's neck if he so wished to.
His hand, the one which still occupied the now mostly empty cone, was soaking wet.
It was humiliating. The blond was laughing at him. He wanted to wipe that smirk off his face, but as luck would have it, the only thing he posessed on him right now was the stupid ice cream his sister had absentmindedly shoved in his hands. He was going to murder his sister later for this but before that he had to do something about the still happily grinning boy.
Glancing at the cone, then back at the blond, he made a quick (horrible) judgement call, and threw the cone in the blond's face.
It bounced back and fell on the ground.
There was a moment of stunned silence where both set of eyes just watched each other in astonishment before the grin on the blond' face grew impossible wide and he started chuckling then outright guffawing while holding onto his stomach.
He wanted to disappear. At that moment he really wanted the ground to just swallow him whole and without further thought he turned and made to dash out of the forest.
Unfortunately, the blond's voice still reached his back. "Hey, tell me your name! I'm Uzumaki Naruto."
"Not interested," he managed to say through gritted teeth before his back finally disappeared through the gates.
His father threw a short glance at him as he returned home, asking if he passed the inhaler to Kankurou. He hated his father for creating this situation for him. He barely muttered an affirmitive before dashing upstairs in the safety of his own room.
As soon as his feet led him inside the room, he quickly made his way towards his desk, to the chair which held Mr. Cuddles; he grabbed it. With the plushie in hand, he then scanned the room, taking a moment to stare at the left corner by the window, after quickly rejecting it, he then pulled the blanket straight from the bed, bunching it into a ball and stood there.
He took a breath in. One. Two.
He felt the blood starting to rush to his head, his hands clamming up.
He needed a safe spot. Somewhere where he could calm down. But the corner by the window no longer provided him the usual comfort. It had expired its use.
Clenching his eyes shut he stood in the middle of the room for a few minutes longer until his eyes drifted away towards the wall pillar, protruding from the otherwise even wall. His breath stopped for a moment. And then he was moving straight for the narrow space between the wardrobe and the back of his bed. He slid his back down the wall. It was a perfect fit.
He could breathe again.
to be continued...
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