The art of friendship
On a Tuesday morning, a week later, he finally managed to sneak out of the house before either Kankurou or Temari could take notice of his absence. Needless to say he had to leave the premises of their neighborhood at nearly six in the morning. Considering he hardly slept, he didn't feel like he was missing much.
He took a bus to the southern outskirts of the town, where he knew an old pharmacy to be. He was running out of his herbal sedatives. And while he could easily get them resupplied somewhere nearby his neighborhood, it was fairly apparent to him that the herbs were helping just this much. More times than not, the herbs posed like a placebo and any other stronger medicine that he'd rather get, required a prescription by the doctor and he'd rather steal than let anyone of his immediate human contact know of his real condition.
Labeling him as mentally unstable would be easy, and he wasn't taking any chances on that.
As the bells rang above his head with his entering of the shop, he began doubting the probability of his success rate to take the medicine from the shelves unnoticed. He briefly glanced at the clerk, who eyed him suspiciously but said nothing else, and then noticed the security camera on the faraway corner, which power seemed to be off.
He sighed in relief.
Walking through the shelves, he pretended to scan the merchandise, which probably only looked like him glowering at the mint flavored mouth wash. His palms were starting to sweat and he wondering if this was a good idea after all. Forget not getting the pills, if he managed to get caught, the attention he would be given would drive him straight to insanity. He would rather bet on his chances at the railroad than live to experience the repercussions of a failed theft. He closed his eyes and really thought about giving up but then his eyes landed on the packet he had read about on the internet and it was just there and he knew there would be no other chance and… he grabbed it. It was a matter of seconds before the packet was tucked beneath the lapels of his waistcoat and with hands crossed he went straight for the doors.
He could do it. The clerk wasn't paying him attention. He was nearly out. He was almost out, when his front bumped straight into a person ahead of him. As he kept his eyes on the floor, he witnessed the exact moment when the packet fell out of its confines inside his waistcoat and just bounced on the floor.
He stared at it, frozen in time, failing to notice until the last moment as a tanned hand picked it up and then the wide blue irises were staring at him in wonder and he never wanted to murder someone as much as him in that moment. He felt his teeth clench in frustration as his eyes stung at the sheer unfairness of it all.
To make matters worse, the blond having no tact or sense of perceptiveness at all, just casually blurted out, "Gaara, are you stealing?"
He felt like he swayed a little backwards as the words registered in his brain and then it was all kind of a blur as he snatched the packet away from the tanned hands, threw it at the corner of the dumbfounded clerk and grabbed the said offending tanned hand to run out of the shop as fast as he could.
They ran a few blocks until his lungs seemed to almost crawl out of his rib cage and he was forced to stop. He chose the shadiest alley for that.
Breathing heavily he worked on getting his heart rhythm back to normal as he heard panting of the blond. Now that they were out of the immediate danger, the redhead straightened up, and before the blond could even call out his name, growled in his face. "Do you even realize what you just did?" The flinch he got in return had never been so satisfying. "I nearly had it, I had it in my hand and you ruined it." He darted his eyes away as he felt his eyes sting at the corners.
"I… was just trying to prevent you from doing a bad thing," the blond muttered weakly, shifting on his feet.
Gaara could only stare at him in defeat. A bad thing? Of course, his decisions were always labelled as such. Nobody ever spared a thought of what he needed. Feeling the fight drain out of his body, he slumped against the cold wall. "What were you doing there?" he asked, because he had to know if the blond didn't purposely follow him to torment him.
"Oh, well, I live around here," he said and the sheepish look on his face was a familiar sight.
He gave up. Getting angry at someone who was more trouble than worth would only fuel the fire further. It was time he returned to his former self and just stopped noticing the blond. Pushing himself off the wall, he turned to walk away.
"Oi, Gaara, let's go together," the blond said cheerily, while all Gaara wanted was for him to disappear. He glanced over his shoulder, a disinterested look on his face. "The next time you decide to bother me, I'll make sure to put you in a hospital bed," he warned. "Don't follow me."
The day went by awfully slow, but at least the obnoxious blond heeded his warning and disappeared somewhere on every break. Gaara refused to think that what he was feeling was disappointment but somehow the absence of the blond only further ruined his already gloomy mood. Needless to say, nobody even dared to approach the dark aura of the back of the classroom.
It was passing onto the second half of the classes when a pair of snickering voices nearby took his attention. As he blinked, he noticed that the duo, the names of the students he didn't bother to know, were not threatening his own peace but were rummaging through the things of the desk in front of him. His dark ringed eyes narrowed as the two discussed the possibility of implanting a cheat sheet in the blond's desk.
He tried to tune them out by looking through the window. Even as they laughed that Naruto would make a scene and this way would get everyone out of the upcoming test for the day, he still pretended not to notice.
It wasn't often when sulking seemed like the only thing he was capable of doing the whole day, but everything had exceptions and such was a day for Naruto. He was ashamed of how he reacted with Gaara and could hardly beat his stupid head enough of times to make their failing disappear, but the redhead's disdain filled face kept creeping up on him and he just kept banging his head against the cafeteria's table.
"What're you doing, Naruto?" his pink-haired best friend asked from the side.
"I messed up," he confessed and started to pull onto his hair as images reoccurred before his eyes.
"Tell me something new…" the muttering wasn't low enough for him not to hear, and he knew it was purposeful. He whined at his best friend, "You're not helping, Sakura-chan."
Sighing, the pinkette placed the half-eaten toast on the plate, turning to Naruto. "Is this about Gaara?"
His pinking cheeks were enough of a confirmation. "He hates me, what do I do, Sakura-chaaan?" The moment he took a good look at the redhead, he knew he had never seen someone like that before. While it was fairly easy for him to make friends with people, most of them were part of groups of their own. Gaara was different. He didn't seem like anyone he was familiar with; the sharp contrast between his beautiful outer appearance and fiery spirit mesmerized Naruto into experiencing what he always thought as fairy tale nonsense spoken by the bored elderly people – love at first sight. Not to say that Gaara didn't scare him a little, intimidated him, but the overall picture of a person that was Gaara, fascinated him, and he yearned to learn more things about the redhead. Which now looked fairly hopeless because now his existence didn't seem worthy of notice to the redhead.
He buried his head in his hands as he banged his forehead against the table a few more times. He vaguely heard his friend's annoyed huff before he got pinched in the cheek. As the pinkette chided him on behaving unlike himself and giving up so soon, Naruto thanked the stars for giving him Sakura for a friend. Sometimes he needed wake up calls like that.
With mood slightly lifted, Naruto skipped back towards the classroom, hoping to catch Gaara when a sudden scream echoed down the hallway and then he was sprinting, jumping past the laying around people, anything, in order to get there faster. Because while he didn't immediately recognize the source of the screaming, his hearing was good enough to know it came from the southern area where his classroom was located at.
Breathing heavily, he leaned against the door sill only to stop still at the sight ahead.
The first thing he saw was blood, dripping down on the floor. Then there was wailing and curses and in a moment of panic he feared it all belonged to Gaara but to his relief Gaara was standing on his two feet, perfectly intact. The relief was short lived, when he noticed that the two students that were clutching one another with another's bleeding fist against his chest, were facing Gaara with fear in their eyes. "What the hell, you freak!?" one shouted, and while Naruto wanted to interfere, because who the hell were they calling Gaara a freak, the redhead just regarded them calmly, and coldly said," I told you not to provoke me."
Chills went down his spine.
He stood frozen, watching the scene as conflicting thoughts swirled inside his head. Why? Why would Gaara do something like that? As he watched the whimpering student, he could see it must have hurt a lot. He couldn't understand. He was brought back to reality by a pair of threatening curses. "You're dead the next time we see you."
The smirk on Gaara's face was something unfamiliar and sinister. "I'd like to see you try."
The pair flinched and scurried away, nearly colliding with Naruto as he evaded them just in time. He glanced back to the classroom, where Gaara took a deep breath, exhaled and folded a piece of paper in tiny bits before hiding it away in his backpack. Then he just calmly sat down and went to stare through the window.
Utterly lost, Naruto didn't know what to do. He supposed he should ask what was that about, but where would he even begin? And didn't he get the same kind of warning as the other two if he were to bother him? Was he willing to risk a broken wrist for a few seconds of conversation with the redhead? He eyed his hand warily in contemplation.
Before he could come with an insane decision, someone poked him on the shoulder. He blinked as he was met face to face with a timid looking purple haired girl. She seemed to fidget with her fingers, glancing at his face, before hiding them away. "Gaara-kun wasn't at fault," she said softly, and Naruto had to blink at her to hide his shock. "The boys were trying to put a cheat sheet into Naruto-kun's desk, so Gaara-kun called them out and then the other two started a fight." She glanced back up at him and he just couldn't hide a huge beaming grin on his face. He startled the poor girl by slapping her shoulders several times while beaming in delight.
"You're a good person, Hinata."
"O-Oh, I…" the girl stammered but by then Naruto was already moving inside the classroom…only it was void of Gaara. Or any of his things. "Oi, where did Gaara go?" he asked loudly for anyone that could hear. A few sets of eyes pretended not to hear, but some less involved in the class' politics pointed him towards the principal's office direction.
Feeling the upcoming doom, Naruto quickly raced towards the office, and before he could think things through, loudly announced as he barged inside. "I'm the one who cheated!"
Gaara refused to take responsibility for the stupidity that was a constant factor of Uzumaki Naruto. If discovering that he was capable of getting into a fight for someone's else sake, not exactly directly, wasn't frightening enough, then the blond just had to ruin it all by stumbling on his words while trying to explain what happened with the cheat sheet and in the end getting suspended alongside Gaara.
Why was he even bothering with him?
Sighing, Gaara stood outside the gates of the school, glaring at the parental notice in his hand.
"Are you gonna get in trouble?" the blond asked sheepishly. A part of him wanted to make him feel guilty, but there was no point in that, so he replied honestly, "No. My father won't even notice what he's giving a signature for."
As he folded the paper to fit in his pocket, he thought it was it, but then his stomach gurgled and he had to hide his will to disappear into the ground. His cheeks burned and he pointedly ignored Naruto's prompting until he was physically yanked by his arm. The contact burned him.
"What?" he asked, irritated. The blond was looking at him with a too bright blue eyes for someone who had just gotten suspended. "Let's go get some food."
He was tempted to refuse, but he doubted there would be anything left for him at home, and he couldn't really come back home this early if he wanted to preserve the charade of this incident never happening. He reluctantly nodded and followed after the skipping blond.
As soon as they reached the place, he knew he made a wrong judgement call, again.
"No."
"But, Gaara, this is like the best place ever, you know!"
"I said no," he repeated and crossed his arms as he stood outside the busy ramen shop which the blonde idiot took them to. No way was he getting anywhere near a place that crowded…and loud.
"Pretty pleaaase," the blond then resorted to pleading and sneakily tried to take his hand in his own, but Gaara recoiled at his touch.
"I'm not going in that place, Naruto."
The fiery look in his eyes seemed to stop Naruto for a moment to reconsider. He tilted his head, curious. "Why?"
Folding his arms around himself, Gaara looked away as he reluctantly spoke, "Too many people."
There was a moment of silence where he felt prickling sensation of being stared at, then the magnetic pull of it forced Gaara to lock the teal orbs with the azure blues. He didn't expect to find something serene in them. He certainly didn't expect to find understanding. Before he could ask, the blond was back to smiles and laughter. "How about I get some take out then and you wait outside?"
Gaara glanced at the cramped place once, then gave him a swift nod.
Pumping his fist in victory, Naruto rushed inside, leaving Gaara to wonder why hadn't he left yet.
He was slow in getting back, but somehow Gaara managed to wait for his return, and when asked where they should go to eat, the redhead only answered that it should be somewhere dark and hidden. He ignored the shudder that went past the blond's body.
While it wasn't his main choice, they somehow found themselves underneath the bridge, sitting on the plastic bags to save their asses from getting frozen. Surprisingly, as they ate together, Gaara didn't mind his chatter as much, probably because he made sure for his mouth to always be occupied, thus preventing being asked personal questions. The blond did all the talking on his own.
He talked about all and nothing and only seemed to quiet down when the topic went to families. At Gaara's quirked eyebrow, the blond seemed to hunch into himself a little as he sheepishly told him that he was actually an orphan. Gaara only blinked at him and let him talk. "Actually Iruka-sensei is, was, sort of my guardian until I turned sixteen but then I emancipated. Didn't want to burden him more with my care. He already did enough." There was a serene look on his face as he talked about his teacher, guardian, and probably life savior but then Gaara noticed a little curious detail in his story.
"Sixteen? How old are you now?" he asked and Naruto seemed caught off guard by his sudden interest in him. He wasn't alone. The redhead wasn't sure what prompted him to actively seek answers. He watched the blond brush the back of his head with his hand.
"Uhh, well, I'm sixteen and five months now. I repeated a year." A shade of pink covered his whiskered cheeks, and that made Gaara wonder about another thing.
"You're older," Gaara stated. He didn't know how he felt by that fact. Maybe because of Naruto's natural carelessness he imagined him, if not younger, then at least the same age, but knowing he was, in fact, older than him suddenly gave him some growth in the redhead's eyes.
It probably was just his imagination.
Darting his eyes back to his half-eaten food he was content to finish their conversation. Then Naruto leaned in towards him, making the redhead freeze and stare at the blinking azure blues. "Hey, can I ask you something?" he said, and Gaara weighted the pros and cons of indulging the blond's whim.
"Depends," he said, dark eyes narrowing.
The blond pouted but then the grin was back. "I was just wondering how did you get that tattoo on your forehead. It's super cool!" He thumbed up towards him in encouragement.
He felt himself unconsciously touching the long since dried ink on his forehead, flashes of memories passing through his mind. "It's to cover a scar," he absentmindedly said. He barely heard Naruto's amazed cheering as his mind dwelled deeper into the memories of iron gripping hands on him, the feeling of being helpless, the terror for his own life and the sheer knowledge that nobody would be coming to your rescue because your life mattered to nobody else but you.
He clamped his palm onto his mouth, as he felt bile rise up in his throat.
"Gaara…?" unsure voice asked but at that moment he already wanted it gone far away. He quickly stood up, gathered his things and swayed on his feet from too long period of sitting in one position. A hand caught him on his elbow and he could feel it, the touch of another, stronger in strength, the danger. His body started to shake and before he could have been asked more questions he shoved the blond away from him.
The blond fell on the ground hard on his back.
He didn't apologize.
He ran back home.
to be continued...