Fish Bird
魚鳥
Naruto stood there for a moment, and then panicked. Seriously panicked. Full throttle adrenaline rush, flushed through with fear.
"Sasuke," he said in horror, his voice husky in his own throat. The thoughts 'please don't have killed anyone' ran around and round in his own head like a carouselling train.
That was, until he realized that it was his reaction Sasuke was looking for above all else: his dark eyes viciously curious. Not the look from someone who had just finished slicing and dicing some poor unsuspecting neighbour.
Naruto breathed slowly out and his blood stilled, leaving room for collection and for emotions to stop swirling inside him. He found his emotions resided in an odd tangy aftertaste of bitter resentment and anger—briefly he tried to swallow it down.
After a calming breath he switched his attention to the sink: there was blood on the white porcelain, blood because Sasuke was bleeding.
This time, Naruto looked instead of assuming and noticed how his hands were filled and criss-crossed with tiny delicate cuts. Too small, too neat, too exact to have been done by accident—or even by Sasuke's own hand.
As Naruto stood against the door, his expression changed and the power swing shifted as the ball rolled into his court. He braced himself, muscles tensed for an explosion of energy as the atmosphere veritably crackled with tension. The only sound was of the water gargling down the plug hole, swirling down the old pipes into depths below.
"Oh," he concluded, voice deep and growling. He moved away from the door, footsteps slow and confident, and his cornflower eyes were a deeper blue than Sasuke thought he'd ever seen before. They smouldered almost lazily, like an animal's in the shadow: watching for its prey to stumble, waiting to leap for the kill.
He watched as Naruto folded his arms, smiling, self-assured and somewhat calculating. Sasuke analysed the unexpected reaction, pushing trails of dark hair from his forehead, 'that is new' was the thought that rang through his head.
"I can't leave you alone for a moment, can I?" Naruto's voice sounded as if he was berating a naughty child.
The Kitsune knew this would annoy Sasuke, and it was not unintended.
He wasn't a fan of having his life turned topsy-turvy, inside out. Neither was he a fan of having his feelings yanked up and spin-dried into a tangled confusing web, that didn't know which end was up.
So he attacked where it hurt the most—the Uchiha's pride—and watched contemplatively as Sasuke turned to twist the taps off, his expression as expressive as a boulder.
"So, you know all about it?" Sasuke asked simply, and he held out his hands so Naruto could see where the skin had been ripped in thin symmetrical lines. Over the knuckles, in between the fingers to graze sore and painful across the thicker skin of the palm.
"I set the damned thing up," was Naruto's chiding reply.
He didn't mention 'with line-to-line instructions from Tsunade' who had badgered him incessantly all the way through his trial-and-error experiments that he was taking far too long.
"You suck as a house guest Sasuke Uchiha. You're rude and you're pissy, you don't say thank you and even worse you've always been better looking than me, so I can't pity you for being uglier than I am."
"Your cooking makes me sick," was Sasuke's flat and petulant reply, but there was a sparkle of something in those dark eyes… satisfaction?
"Then make your own food!" Naruto hissed back, quite stung by this, he wasn't that bad of a cook anymore.
"It would be easier on both of us if you just let me go."
Naruto's eyes narrowed: the cornflower blue was eaten at the corners by an intense, thicker, bloodier colour as a creature called Temper rose inside his core. It seemed to flood down his tongue into words, oddly indolent, as he leaned forwards.
Inches separated their mouths from one another.
"Oh, I think you at least owe me a thank you, don't you?"
The space between them felt like it was slowly being swallowed. Indeed, it narrowed when Sasuke took a step towards his sentinel, quixotic eyes and dark lashes like a crow's wings noticeably murky with danger:
"Don't play games like this Idiot, you'll just end up losing to me, like you always did and like you always do. Just like when we were kids."
"I'm not a child anymore Sasuke, and I was never the sore loser."
Sasuke's acid smile almost melted his teeth as he retorted, "You're still a child with your foolish wants, hopes and dreams. I want out Naruto."
The blond shrugged his wide shoulders, but his expression remained intense. "Giving up so soon? Now why doesn't that surprise me?"
"Take down the barrier." It was not spoken. It was snarled.
Naruto paused for a moment as if considering the demand…
"Not likely," he finally wrapped up with a grin. "And don't think any hissy-fit you throw will change my decision Sasuke."
The frustration escalated like steam inside a glass tumbler, hot white searing clouds that clung to everything they touched. Sasuke looked down at his hands again and Naruto could make out the lines around his mouth, grim and determined, like he was backed into a corner and running out of options. Slowly the lips parted and the talk began. The words were slow and considered, as if he'd been thinking about them for a long, long time:
"When I open a window, or the front door, nothing happens. I would have thought that you'd have stopped me from doing that. So, I'd have to break the door down, or create a hole in the wall to get out, which would cause me a lot of stress and pain. You might be an idiot, but you're not blind, you'd notice if I hurled your couch across the room and through the opposite wall. But you wanted me to open the door and windows, but even if I do, you have made it impossible for me to leave. There's a barrier across every point of entry, it's invisible to the naked eye. It follows me about when I move, doesn't it? It's held in place with your Chakra, isn't it? You created it that way."
He brought his palms up to the ceiling light, inspecting the cuts there.
"It's very clever, people can come and enter as they please, but I can't leave because you don't want me to, it's your will power that keeps me in place, your prisoner in other words, because you want to keep me here."
He turned his hands over and looked at the bleeding knuckles.
"I put my hands against it and it threw me five meters back against your kitchen door and into the cupboard where that… that thing is living. In other words," he looked back up at Naruto, eyes suddenly much harder than a moment ago, "I'm fighting against your psyche."
Naruto blinked, he'd be a fool to underestimate Sasuke's powers of scrutiny, but that didn't mean he had to like them. He found them damn annoying actually.
"I want you to take it down." Sasuke stated, knowing full well this was a tall order.
"No." Naruto replied bluntly without an infringement of false politeness, and his eyebrows had shot up all the way into his hairline. They were in danger of flying right off the front of his face.
"Take it down."
"How about… no?"
"Take-it-down!"
"Please don't make this so boring."
"Naruto!"
"I don't take orders from you Sasuke!" Naruto found himself shouting very loudly, "or anyone else I don't particularly respect for that matter! Now, if you'll excuse me."
"Naruto, I have to leave here, if you don't willingly let me, so help me I'll-"
"Or you'll what Sasuke? You'll what?" Naruto jibed back knowing he was straying into dangerous territory. Arms firmly crossed, nails digging into the forefront of his elbows, riling the skin and digging it up.
Sasuke was silent, watching Naruto like a shocked panther: tensed and horribly alert, sensing as Uzumaki's temper slipped closer and closer to the edge as he continued: "You threw everything away once, I'm not letting you run off to Orochimaru again."
"Can't-" said Sasuke abruptly as if the word caught in his throat and he'd just avoided coughing up his own tongue. He placed one finger to his flushed burgundy lips and looked thoroughly shocked by the utterance.
Naruto frowned and watched perplexed as Sasuke blinked and recovered and murmured: "If you won't let me go willingly Naruto Uzumaki, I'm warning you now, I won't let you stand between me and what I have to do. I'll… kill you… if I have to."
The blond youth merely glanced at him with unconcerned blue eyes; the look probed everywhere and over every inch of Sasuke's body.
"You- you can't fight my battles for me," Sasuke snarled, feeling peculiarly seen by his blue eyes.
He felt anger crawl under his skin as Naruto moved towards him with an irritating laziness, confident with his movements, and Sasuke leaned backwards from his spine for the first time feeling threatened.
A wide, beautiful, poised smile thrumming along the arching curve of Naruto's sensual mouth.
"Someone has to, because you certainly can't," Naruto followed smoothly, flirting quite boldly with Sasuke's rage and confusion, and stood back to examine the white-hot emotions spill over on the Uchiha's face.
Naruto (unwisely) pushed him further. Why not after all? What did he have left to lose?
Frankly he felt like a fight and he'd been on tender hooks for far too long without venting.
Almost on animal instinct Sasuke spat out the utterance: "I'll kill you."
"With what? The toothbrush?" Naruto jibed, pushing really close now to the white-hot all-consuming anger. Their noses were centimetres apart, his own eyes as turbulent as deep lake water stained bloody in a crimson sunset.
Naruto's grin widened like a Cheshire cat, and his eyes flickered coquettishly to Sasuke's mouth and then up again to eyes that were neither inky black nor smoky grey but a shade just between.
Sasuke, he noticed, flushed: just slightly, barely noticeable, a pink tinge to ivory skin.
Leisurely Naruto reached into his pocket and pulled out a kunai, holding it idly between his middle and forefinger, swinging the blade back and forth.
Then he threw it forwards and it landed, embedding itself deep into the plaster and wood in the wall just beside Sasuke's left temple.
The grin got impossibly wider, yet every inch a fox's grin, low and seductive, pulling forwards and teasing. Deviously tempting and bewitchingly alluring.
"Go on then—try."
The unspoken word was 'again'.
With that, Naruto turned his back in one fluid movement and walked out the door. Pausing in the archway, he looked casually back over his shoulder.
Sasuke stood stunned in the middle of the bathroom tiles.
Naruto's grin turned to something wicked, he winked and just strolled into the hallway.
Sasuke remained motionless, seething for what seemed an age, fingers trembling as they curled and uncurled from the palm of his hands. He glowered at the doorway Naruto had just so confidently strolled through and turned back to the kunai embedded in the wall behind him.
His fingers glanced against the cold handle, corrugated iron bled against his fingertips as he slid them across the surface. It was real alright.
As if by its own convulsion, his hand snaked out, settling the weapon in a deathly firm grip. Muscles flexed as he pulled it lithely out of the wall in a single yank. Wood splintered and plaster crumbled to a white pile on the slated floor.
Sasuke… in all truth, he wasn't quite sure of what he was going to do with it. Something raw and throbbing he needed to know and identify, some urge he had to see through.
Maybe it was because he wasn't used to Naruto getting the better of him, argumentatively or verbally. But it might have been the fact that… it was something he was used to. He was used to their conflict. He was on familiar ground here, ground he knew he could win.
He flicked dark hair from his eyes, flexing his limbs, drawing the shoulders back as he slipped deadly and silent out of the door. Pale skin contrasted starkly against the bottomless black of his eyes.
Naruto was, as expected, waiting for him, down the other end of the corridor, face drawn into an eager and savage expression. Sasuke was caught for a moment as the blood pumped harder and faster in his ears by those intense blue eyes waiting… just waiting for him.
"Taijutsu," Sasuke announced, and his voice rang hard and cold down the corridor. It reverberated against the walls before slipping down, deadly and silent to the floor like an encompassing cloak.
It was too narrow to fight properly—Sasuke found himself thinking as he braced himself, setting his feet slightly wider apart, that someone had a high probability of going smashing through a wall. But even as he thought it, he knew Naruto didn't give a damn how much they wrecked the apartment as long as it blew the tension straight out the window.
Naruto looked impatient as he shrugged his jacket from his broad shoulders and tossed it carelessly behind him.
"That's fine with me," he replied bluntly. The intense gaze Sasuke noticed never once shifted from him: there was no break in concentration and the whole air seemed to pulse with how much they both wanted this.
Sasuke rolled the iron of the kunai in his hands, feeling the weight of it. He let his eyes linger for a moment on Naruto's hitai, and stated, "I mean it, Uzumaki."
The blond youth didn't answer.
Instead, he came at Sasuke in a blinding forward tackle—or rather, what Sasuke interpreted as a forward tackle until Naruto completely disappeared from in front of him. Caught off guard and cursing himself for letting his attention wander for the briefest instant, he jumped backwards: arms flying back for balance as he landed skidding across the smooth wood. The friction made the floor screech, a burning smoky tinge behind him.
His eyes scanned the walls above, to the front and at the sides, his body in simple reflex automatically clenching to summon his Sharingan. Except Sasuke knew by the dull throbbing in his chest and wrist, that this was not going to happen.
It was on the third step backward that caused alarm bells to ring like thunder inside his mind, primal instinct in its most refined form—
—and he ducked, falling flat onto his palms as Naruto aimed a blow for the space that his head had been occupying.
The lunge created a moment of weakness: Naruto hadn't been expecting Sasuke to drop and he fumbled for a moment, providing the second the Uchiha needed to surge up from the floor. He twisted his arms behind him as he rushed skyward, gripping Naruto's wrists, slamming his back so hard into Naruto's chest that bone crushed against flesh. Temporarily winded, Naruto went flying: a hard solid something collided with his crown and the world burst into bubbling white stars.
But he was down for less than two seconds.
A beautifully fluid body in a seamless motion arrived to drive its foot through Naruto's skull—but Naruto would have none of it, shaking the sparks of distorted light from his mind and using them to increase his determination. His upper torso contracted and dodged the limb, blocking as Sasuke effortlessly shifted equilibrium, using muscular forearms to balance solely on powerful hands. His second foot swung towards Naruto's temple—in slow motion, the image was insane: a whole body propelling contorted torso and legs in a circular motion through the air.
Naruto was grazed and had to forcibly bend his spine in a way he knew it wasn't really supposed to go. He was expecting Sasuke to continue with his hands, flipping out of the upside-down position he swung from. The spinning lion strike perhaps or something equally lethal—what he didn't expect was the whole torso to just shift like that. Sasuke lifted his body weight upwards, arching his back, before curving back down onto his feet.
The angle of Sasuke's drop allowed him to catch Naruto with a roundhouse blow that glanced across his nose. Naruto instinctively backed away as fast as he could, body lowering to the ground, shoulders raised, causing his hands to come into play with his movement as much as his feet did.
Parallel to the ground, one foot stretched out behind him and one bent against his side—prepared to fly in any direction. It was a defensive and animalistic position, something he inherently adopted when the demon inside of him sensed a challenge. Eyes fiercely alert, adrenaline pumping like a drug through his blood, as he licked his lips to taste a little metallic blood and the salt of sweat, he watched Sasuke intently.
Sasuke was breathing hard: he wasn't quite fully recovered from his ordeal, if he ever would. Without Chakra, Sasuke's physical skills were still as strong as ever. Naruto pondered on this as he skidded backward: the Uchiha came for him again, but he was ready now.
Rolling and dodging, he spun, and his fist, spinning with him, crashed into Sasuke's stomach. The acid and bile that Sasuke spit up was noted with some satisfaction.
But he had no time to take further pride as Sasuke, coughing like he was going to die, aimed a double-handed blow at his head (popular place today). Naruto was quick enough but only just, gripping Sasuke's approaching wrists and slamming them with force downwards. Wood splintered from the floorboards and fragmented into dangerous rugged edged spikes right beside his left temple.
Well fuck, now there was another bloody huge hole in the place.
Naruto suspected Sasuke could probably crush his skull like an egg with his bare hands if he was allowed to get a good enough grip. Bone and muscle could only withstand so much after all and this was not an experiment he wanted to see through to the end.
Even trapped inside the eye of the fight, Naruto couldn't help but be fascinated by his opponent's gliding and subtle style. His movement had always been alluring, speed morphing him into deadly silent shadows, fluid as water and twice as strong, he cut through space like a knife, brutally efficient and to a deadly point.
As Naruto jumped back on the balls of his toes he found himself laughing at the thought of death, as he'd never done before.
Enjoying it as they circled each other, plaster and paneling pressing against his back, and for a moment, the tiniest moment, he could see what it was about Sasuke Uchiha that made all the girls crazy about him. The intensity that was now focused on him, Naruto Uzumaki: totally, entirely concentrated, and on nothing and no one else.
For a fleeting second, he realised it was only Sasuke, and Sasuke alone who made him feel this way. There was not another soul in the infinite universe of time and space that charged him with emotions the way that Sasuke did.
For some unknown reason, it made his body thrum with pleasure.
"Is that the best you've got?" the blond jibed, sunny smile flashing white teeth and blue, blue eyes.
"You're a lot of talk, Naruto," Sasuke snapped at him, petulant mouth turning into a firm smile, the first proper, beautiful, funny, delightful, implausible smile that Naruto had seen him form since their reunion.
It made him look human suddenly, a brief glimpse of someone from years ago… and someone he could have been.
"You always talk like you're the best. But can you prove it?"
Sasuke thought the expression on Naruto's face once again became seductive as they continued to circle, and it felt like they were dancing, perfectly in rhythm, effortlessly.
Sasuke could sense the slightest tensioning of muscle, bone, and cartilage in Naruto's physique; the pause he made with his left foot as his mind stumbled across a thought; the way his hands clenched when he got excited and the way his smile tugged his lips up at the corners to reveal passing smirks and the flash of teeth.
It was the smile that Sasuke was really watching… it took him.
"This coming from a guy who's got black and white streaked hair?" The blond joked back, "You're prematurely aging from fright Sasuke!"
Sasuke let out a short sharp burst of laughter, it sounded almost like a cough.
"Your stupid wardrobe idiot, it wouldn't wash out. And even if I was a hundred I could still take you out."
"Ah," Naruto paused, "an old man up against a young whippersnapper like me, when you were taken down by a piece of furniture, Uchiha? What hope do you have against the next Hokage?"
As he yelled the last two words, he dashed forwards, feinting right, left, then right again. Playing with distraction. He was never as fast as Sasuke was in their youth. In his absence, he'd gained distance on him, closing the gap but not close enough. Yet Sasuke only half avoided the attack, and it was no surprise to either of them when they fell forwards together in an awkward tangle of limbs.
Staggering backwards, there was a loud 'crack' as something that sounded like the dull crunch of bone slammed against the wall. Naruto's legs in between Sasuke's legs, and he couldn't stop them from toppling off and down those stairs, the whole flight of stairs, right down to the very bottom.
Was it the idea that Sasuke was wounded?
The fact that he might have started this fight?
Or maybe the remembrance that he was always better off being hurt than Sasuke was?
Later he'd realize that it was because the idea of Sasuke getting hurt like that in any way, form, or manner, when he couldn't protect himself, when he was at a disadvantage, because of him, made his head ring and his stomach convulse as if he was physically going to be sick.
It was at that moment, when he subconsciously pulled Sasuke on top of him, so his spine and his head took the brunt of the hard 'nackety-thump' of the steps as they went hurtling down them.
With each jolt, Naruto could feel the sharp stinging edge of the kunai pressing into his collarbone, raking against the skin, scoring flesh in small lumps.
As they tumbled down the last steps together, Naruto's cranium collided with a sickening 'crunch' with the corner edge of the wall, he watched multi-coloured explosions die down before his eyes. And dimly registered the pressure of another body over his as he lay on his back. Thick blood leaked up from his mouth where he had bit his tongue— and he gagged.
"You win," Naruto said, darkly, voice hoarse and rugged as his lungs convulsed and wracked. Through the pounding in his brain, bitter resentment and futility seeming to flood him suddenly as he looked callously up at the ceiling. He recalled for a moment Sasuke's beautiful smile and closed his eyes, swallowing down the emotion that seemed to be fighting to free itself from the darkest confines of his soul.
Sasuke didn't say anything. He seemed to be drawing long shuddering breaths. From Naruto's fuzzy vision, there was a bloody stain under the arch of one of his eyebrows and his bottom lip was torn—he couldn't quite make out the expression but he pre-supposed it to be a sneering ugly thing.
"Why—why did you do that?" were the only words Sasuke could think of saying, staring at the blond with incredulous incomprehensibility lying in his eyes.
"Stupidity."
Sasuke was told, cornflower blue stained darker from exhaustion, ribbing deepest maroon around the edges of the pupil.
"Aren't you going to kill me?"
Sasuke wondered for a moment at the anger apparent in the youth's voice, mind still spinning reels from the stairs. He straddled Naruto slowly, considering, and pressed the kunai to his throat. He kept the blade just below the hyoid bone, watching the Adam's apple bob as he swallowed.
"So, go on then, do it. Kill me."
Black eyes blinked, but no movement, no killing strike, no malevolence, no hatred, just blind confusion.
"Wasn't fair," Sasuke mumbled, and he began to sit back, "Didn't win. I can't…won't."
Naruto snarled, exposing overly long canines in a mouth of human teeth. He didn't want the Uchiha to act noble, not now of all times, not when he was trying to convince himself that there was nothing left there to save.
"You swore on it Sasuke."
Part of him wanted Sasuke to strike down, to prove the cynical part of him right. The part that was worn ragged from the demon fox inside of him.
Sasuke licked his lips, but his hands didn't move. They seemed frozen in place and he was suddenly very aware of the fact that he was straddling Naruto.
Naruto… who wasn't twelve anymore, Naruto who was now an adult, mature, and strangely masculine—or at least it seemed this way to Sasuke, the idea of sexuality pulsing at the back of his throat, and he shifted uncomfortably.
This was Naruto.
Naruto who drove him mad, who made him want to scream, who made him want to cry, whom he wanted to lie down next to and fall asleep with because no other place on earth was so safe.
His wrist flexed, and he made to draw the kunai away, to throw it behind him and get up and walk away with his remaining dignity.
But Naruto—his Naruto, Naruto who was looking up at him with a curious mixture of self-loathing, bitter resentment, and hate, stopped him. The hand clamped down unmercifully tight on his wrist, holding it there; eyes, those cornflower eyes slipped with deep mauve blemishing and tarnishing the iris, keeping him there.
"Go on, Sasuke, do it. Finish what you started."
Sasuke didn't move. He could smell dust and crumbling plaster on the air mixed with the aroma of their perspiration. It was rich and thick on his tongue and he seemed to swallow it down his throat: life essence, something he associated with living, breathing bodies.
His heart raced, and he blinked again, forcing himself to think outside the walls, wrenching thoughts away from Naruto. Listening to the rain pattering against the window as the storm clouds rolled in, grey and thick. Listening to lightning darts striking the earth, leaving trails of ozone meandering in the air, drawing it closer and making it warm and muggy.
Sasuke's eyes fixed on where Naruto's fingers laced and fastened against his own.
Their heartbeats seemed to mingle.
To his horror, Naruto pulled the blade and his hand down to his clavicle and up to the soft flesh, unguarded by hard bone, all pulsing tissue, malleable to the touch.
He applied pressure against Sasuke's hand. All the time his eyes never moving from Sasuke's face, watching as it contorted in surprise and then terror as the clean sharp edge dug a smooth line into the skin, drawing blood.
The harder Naruto pressed against his hand, the deeper it went in. A swelling of crimson blossomed across the line of the cut, and dribbled on the sheen of smooth iron, jolting Sasuke out of his stunned reverie. He ripped his hand back, kunai clattering bloody to the floor.
"Stop it!" he yelled, enraged that Naruto simply lay there and watched him do it.
Naruto opened his mouth lazily and responded: "Maybe I was hoping you'd follow something through for once."
"Don't give me that bullshit!" Sasuke snarled, more panicky than he thought he could be, hands shaking and heart pounding like it would skip out of his throat. "How can you become Hokage if you die first? Or do you enjoy pain, you masochist? In which case-"
And he drew back his fist and punched the blond youth beneath him, fist recoiling back and up again like a piston, body flooded with cold icy rage, rage that burned when Naruto just turned the other cheek and laughed bitterly back at him.
"And what about you? I thought you meant to kill me? Or was that all an act? Like everything is? Like every word you say ends up being, either a lie or a broken empty promise," he spat out the words like bullets.
"I'm not playing with you, Naruto, you idiot. I meant what I said."
"Oh did you—so when you've killed me, where will you go?"
"It has nothing to do with you."
"Like hell, it does!"
"You shouldn't care!"
There was an edge of desperation to Sasuke's voice as he yelled this, eyes glittering and intense, hands firm against Naruto's chest as he leaned down, looking directly into his eyes.
"But I do!" More anger from the blond, mouth curved down, stubbornness and rigidity built and wielded into every line.
It drove Sasuke crazy.
"You're an idiot, you shouldn't…don't!"
The world lurched as Naruto surged up and pinned him down easily beneath him; a drop of blood splattered onto Sasuke's neck from Naruto's, and slid down his skin to pool beneath his hair. Those dark whisker-like scars were sunken in his cheeks radiating the mysterious magic of the possessed man, and for a fleeting instant, Sasuke had the urge to trace them with his forefinger and run his fingertips across Naruto's cheekbones.
"Why did you think all your actions existed in isolation? Why didn't you understand that it affected me?! Why didn't you understand that when you left, you ripped me - us! …Sakura… she was so lonely…I didn't want her to be alone- I… didn't want to be… I'm… it's… it hurts, it still hurts."
Naruto's voice cracked, and pain, physical pain and meaning were communicated in each vocal movement and syllable; breathless on the out breath, body shivering.
"It hurts so much, and you just kept pushing and pushing!" he was yelling now, palms a raw and throbbing pressure on Sasuke's shoulders. The hard weight of the floorboards and iron nails were pushing painfully into his skull.
"You just don't care, do you? I do- I do- I can't stop caring and hurting…" his voice trailed off and he squeezed his eyes closed, burning. His body dropped an inch lower so he was almost lying on top of Sasuke, awkward odd angle, jutting elbows and scraping knees, but Sasuke tolerated it, for Naruto.
"I'm so tired of bleeding all over the place and having to avoid thinking about you. Justifying and defending you… over and over to others and then myself… even when I know you're just going to let me fall all over again. When you came back… I thought, this is it! We can finally go back to the way it was before. But we can't even stand to be in the same room together, can we? It's so hopeless! It's so hopeless. Why have I not given up on you? Why do I still… feel… this way… so strongly?"
His whole face flushed, blush creeping up onto his cheeks as he pressed fingers to his forehead and then his mouth, as if to hide the words that were overflowing.
"Why can't I just learn to let you go?"
It was a little less than a murmur, but then he fell and the strength of the sound was inconsequential to Sasuke, as it echoed in his head, and he found Naruto collapsing on top of him, nose pressing against the junction of his neck, eyes… closed.
"Naruto?"
Sasuke Uchiha lay rigid under the blond dead weight atop him, ruler straight in panic.
He lay slack for a moment, not even daring to breathe. His head turned a fraction to the left, and he said in low growling tones into Naruto's ear, "Get off me."
There was no response.
For a brief moment, Sasuke thought about how highly uncomfortable this all was, with Naruto's hip jutting into his lower abdomen. A slightly red strand of hair hung across Naruto's eyes, and the tang of blood ebbed in Sasuke's mouth. But he could smell the blond boy's hair, and his skin: soap mixed with the fresh scent of sweat and earth. He could feel the muscle definition of Naruto's legs and upper torso through his clothes.
"Stop it. That's enough."
Sasuke twisted and rolled, throwing off the dead weight, so that Naruto slid onto his back. His eyes remained closed, his breathing somewhat laboured and ragged. Licking his lips, Sasuke got to his knees and stretched out his hand, brushing against the Kitsune's forehead, and then recoiling like he'd been stung.
"Why do you have a fever you idiot?", and he glared at Naruto as if he'd done it on purpose.
Sasuke rocked back onto his haunches and considered.
Did he leave Naruto here?
He really was perfectly defenceless in this position, unconscious, probably dehydrated, starving, and running a temperature that could melt ice.
He poked Naruto experimentally with his foot in the ribs. The fool just groaned, a deep noise right from his stomach, mouth contorted into a line of pain.
He leaned down now and shook Naruto by the shoulders, figuring it couldn't be good that he'd passed out. Sasuke's hands came away damp with sweat. The blond youth simply lay limp and placid, like a sack of wet noodles, bones seemingly slipping and sliding inside a casket of flesh.
"Listen, you didn't hit your head that hard," Sasuke stated whilst wondering if the fluttering in his stomach was due to repressed nerves. "I'm warning you, Uzumaki, if this is some kind of joke…"
There wasn't so much as even a quiver of a response from Naruto, and Sasuke found himself rather missing that idiotic, blithe smile. He allowed himself a brief moment to think, leaning back, fingers drilling against his temples and sliding through the front curtains of his hair.
"What's wrong with you?" Sasuke asked himself, knowing full well he wasn't going to get an answer but asking it anyway because it needed to be said.
The slight panic, he concluded, was from his own knowledge that he was never very good when it came to looking after other people. By nature, Sasuke Uchiha was not very empathetic to the needs and wants of others; he was far too self-centred. Sakura was always good at that sort of thing, the best out of all of them.
Maybe, Sasuke thought, that was the reason why Naruto chose a life with Sakura, someone who understood him: riddled as he was with thousands of little misgivings, doubts, and plights, bubbling under the constant determination of 'I have to get better, so that people will like me.'
"Who is going to accept me for who I am?"
Sakura accepted him, she accepted both of them, and Sasuke thought, frowning, that she probably loved the fool too, in her way- different from the way he knew she loved him.
How could she not love Naruto?
In the face of losing to Sakura, the Uchiha grimaced, baring his teeth and the pink slip of his tongue in a dark mouth.
This empathy, this touchy-feely, delicate nonsense was not his forte, and even as he bent down, bracing his knees and fidgeting before he started, he recollected the fact that he really had no idea of what to do.
He hoisted Naruto up, so his head leaned flopping against his shoulder, muttering: "Idiot-idiot, dumb ass, moron, blockhead, twit…" and an assortment of other variations on this theme. He pulled his torso up so that he was standing, and Naruto was leaning fully against him, legs dragging across the floor.
Sasuke bravely pushed down the panic that was swelling up inside as he tried to navigate the youth so he could wind one arm around Naruto's shoulder as they approached the stairs. He staggered slightly under the weight—he eased him gently up the stairs, or as gently as could be humanly managed, which in retrospect Sasuke had to admit wasn't very gentle at all.
Navigating with a dead weight was much harder than it seemed to be, especially when Sasuke slipped at one point and the weight caused him to impale his stomach on the banister. Naruto slid down his shoulder and almost fell all the way back down the stairs again. Cursing his clumsiness and Naruto's bone-headed testosterone-driven stupidity, he eventually managed it, only to pause on the landing as he recollected briefly that he couldn't put Naruto in his own room because of… ah… 'The Mess'….
Sasuke could see around the side of the half-open door and quickly retreated from it. No, he was definitely going to have to go in the room he had been using. It wasn't too much of a big deal; he'd just have to sleep on the floor.
Dragging and hauling Naruto across the bedroom, he tossed him with glorious relief onto the bed, stretching out his shoulders and working out the kinks in his neck that had formed.
The mattress creaked, the springs sagging and bouncing with the broader weight, and Sasuke looked critically at Naruto who did nothing more than lie there breathing shallowly. Little rapid breaths and eyebrows clenched together as if in pain.
First things first, he couldn't sleep in those clothes.
If Sasuke had come across Naruto lying in the hallway with a fever a few days earlier, he realized he probably wouldn't have gone to the effort of caring whether damp clothes would make the Fox's condition worse.
Would he even have carried him upstairs?
Would he have cared at all?
But Sasuke tactically avoided such thoughts.
"Naruto," Sasuke said again, "I'm going to need you to take off your clothes for me."
It sounded wrong.
But the blond was about as responsive as a rock. Sasuke leaned down across him and tried again: he wasn't going to do this unless he really, really had to.
"Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Naruto, Naruto!"
Absolutely nothing. Becoming more desperate, Sasuke used the back of his hand to slap him across his cheeks once in order to get himself some sort of response.
The Kitsune gave him nothing in return, not so much as a flicker of a reply to acknowledge that he was here, alive and still breathing.
Sasuke found himself analysing the face as his stomach clawed down unexplained panic. There was a slight discolouring of the skin around the eye socket from where Sasuke had punched him earlier. If the Fox's metabolism was working, it was working slower than usual: he'd expect a mark like that to not even register on Naruto's complexion, seeing as how lightly he'd punched him.
Sasuke ground his teeth and considered the penalties on his own conscience if he just left Naruto here to get better by himself. Little flames of indignation burst up and down his system at the mere thought of it.
It was a dishonourable thing to do, here he was alive—something he hadn't expected to still be—and here Naruto was ramming himself up against a mountain-wide brick wall, because… because….
He sighed noisily and clicked his teeth together. Fingers flexed as they moved haltingly in little jerky movements to Naruto's stomach, running smoothly under the material of the white t-shirt he was wearing.
He pulled it up over Naruto's torso. Naruto's body flopped awkwardly and more to the point unhelpfully backward against the motion, so that Sasuke had to fight to get it past his shoulders, then over his head—nearly scraping off both of his ears in the process—and finally pulling Naruto's arms out—all the time with a dark scowl on his face.
"I shouldn't be doing this," he mumbled, actively keeping his eyes on Naruto's face once the supple flesh of his torso had been exposed. He could half feel the milky cappuccino skin thrumming with heat just beneath him. His face stupidly felt as if it was burning.
He threw the shirt on the floor somewhere; he'd pick it up in a minute after he was… finished with this.
Sasuke sat for a moment, breathing as if he'd just run a marathon. Now to that question of 'does he throw Naruto under the covers wearing those trousers?' Did he dare think about taking them off him, and if he did… was Naruto wearing anything underneath them?
Sasuke found himself resisting the urge to slam his head against the wall and repeat the motion over and over again several times. Or, more satisfyingly, slam Naruto's.
Here's another thing he'd never thought he'd do, blushing heavily, he even closed his eyes as he laid pale fingers over the lower half of Naruto's stomach. The blond twitched slightly in his state of unconsciousness and mumbled something incoherent, as one does in the middle of a high fever.
It wasn't really helping anything.
His fingers brushed lower and lower until they touched the top of Naruto's trouser waistband and the Uchiha hesitated. He gathered the rest of his nerves and slid his thumb underneath it, just a fraction. He tried to ignore the half of his brain that was screaming at him how unbelievably weird the whole thing was, whilst the other half in clumsy determination steadied itself to finish what he had started.
Eyes squeezed shut, not daring to move any lower, he rubbed the digit of his thumb in a smooth circle on the skin down there, keeping firmly to the far right: he couldn't feel anything except burning flesh, and so very slowly he moved a little lower. Barely a centimetre until the pad brushed against something above the skin, soft like cotton.
Sasuke jerked his hand out from Naruto's trousers as though stung by a wasp, and opening his eyes caught sight of himself in the mirror. He considered the simple fact that he could probably fry several large eggs on his face right now if he really dared to try.
After removing Naruto's last articles of outdoor clothing—which Sasuke discovered was actually quite hard when you're trying to do it with your eyes closed and your hands trying desperately not to touch anything important—he muttered something dripping with sarcasm, as he actually had to wipe his brow. He had had to wrestle Naruto's trousers off his legs and feet, before, in his flustered state, he'd seen the sense in removing the shoes.
He had to admit to himself, he hadn't really thought it through a hundred percent.
He acrimoniously threw the covers over the blond and fought the urge to shuffle sheepishly out of the room and wash his skin with bleach.
Instead, he went down to the kitchen, rifled through several drawers for a clean dishtowel, and opened the freezer—to his great misfortune, as the frozen contents proceeded to rain down on him. Sasuke glared inwardly at the mocking feeling of deja-vu. Showering his skin were frozen peas and a square block of ice that looked as though it might contain a dead fish.
He trudged back into Naruto's room and thrust the iced towel onto the Kitsune's forehead, dumped a bucket of ice by his bed, sat down heavily in the middle of the floor, flopped backward, and considered what on earth to do next.
Sasuke closed his eyes sick people need sustenance right? He kneaded his forehead with his knuckle, and gave a long-suffering exhalation of breath. One flaw with this brilliant plan: he couldn't cook… anything. Well, this was a lie, he could cook toast, but he burned it until it was almost inedible. Naruto needed something at least resembling vegetables and some kind of protein and complex carbohydrates, he figured.
He couldn't do that, and he outright, point blank, refused to give him that instant Ramen nonsense he happened to know Naruto had hidden underneath the sink… piles of it. He drummed his fingers against the floorboards and meditated. So, he couldn't cook and Naruto could not move.
Sasuke's stomach made a mournful, rumbling sound.
There was a simple solution to this really, Sasuke decided, getting to his feet and brushing off his hands as he walked out of the door.
Get someone else to cook for you.
There was steam coming up from the backroom that wafted delicious, succulent, and tempting aromas out into the front of the shop and seating area. A few customers were sitting on stools, chatting and eating their full bowls of noodles, soup, meat, and vegetables.
The head chef was leaning on the counter, chatting with a longtime customer. He cleaned his greasy hands on the front of his apron as he conversed, one elbow propped up on the smooth wood: "Oh yes, had them here for years now. Funny thing, it went very quiet that way about two weeks ago, spooked people I heard. Like the whole island disappeared, a huge great hole I was told appeared about five miles west of there as if someone had carved a great scoop out of the earth."
A man in his fifties with long grey hair over a fierce face that was streaked with red paint looked up interestedly at this. He peered over the top of the book he was reading, slurping a great mouthful of noodles.
The phone rang on the wooden wall behind the chef, who yelled over his shoulder for Yumi. A pretty girl in her early twenties emerged from the kitchen, bringing out swathes of steam with her. Short, dark, curly hair in her eyes and piled on top of her head, she picked up the phone in one hand and a notebook and pencil with her other. She pulled a face as she balanced the phone on her shoulder and prepared herself to write at the same time: "Ichiraku, how can I help you?"
Jiraiya went back to his book and eating as the subject turned to the weather, keeping an eye on the girl out of the corner of his eye: he liked the way she stood, feet firmly planted apart, confident position.
"Now… is that two or three servings you're asking for, sir? …Oh, I see, you're not sure how much he eats. May I ask if you're going to eat as well? …What would I recommend? What do you usually like to eat? …No, I'm afraid I've never heard of that. No spices? And… you don't like sour, not too salty either… Okay, something bland then for you? Alright, I'll put you down for Shio soup Ramen then, shall I? Oh! …Alright, one of everything- are you very sure? Deliver to where? …Oh …OH! That's Naruto's apartment, isn't it?"
Everybody turned around and looked at her as she grinned: "Yes, we make deliveries there all the time, don't worry. I could make it there blindfolded. Fast? Absolutely." She winked at the chef, who smiled fondly at the receiver as she put it down.
"So he's alive then, is he?" the chef rumbled, readjusting his hat. "He hasn't been in here for a little over a month," he told the restaurant in general. "We were all starting to worry he'd fallen off the face of the earth!"
Jiraiya flipped another page of the book he was reading and finished his bowl.
"Lady friend was it, ordering for him?" continued the chef.
Yumi grinned as she put the pad and paper back in her pocket. "Guy actually, didn't recognize the voice, apparently Naruto couldn't get to the phone."
A stunned silence fell, and Jiraiya, suddenly interested all over again, peered over the top of the book, grinning from ear to ear.
The chef laughed, and then he whistled: "Was it indeed? Young devil, you'll just have to go see and report back here and tell us—won't she?" he asked the customers, all of whom nodded and some applauded.
Well, thought Jiraiya, pushing away the empty bowl and standing up to leave. This just became all very interesting all of a sudden. He chuckled to himself and left the waitress a tip. Interesting enough to maybe, drop a look in on….