Fish Bird
By The Eternity Dragon
Disclaimer: I love you Kishimoto, I honestly, honestly do. Naruto is not my work of art, I'll have my own work of art someday after I've run this out of my system. Now I'll just bask in the contentment of knowing who Naruto's parents are.
A/N: Chapter dedicated to Katie, because despite however late or urgent your paper for you professor may be, you appendix is, will forever be and lastly will prove that it's more important then you think it is. Also, thank you for the recs and the song!
Warning: Lemon
Chapter 12: Dream Catch Me (when I fall)
UNBETA'D
The front door banged open slamming into the wall and sending tremors down Shikamaru's small but tidy one bedroom flat. Shikamaru Nara sat in the kitchen, stooped over a mug of hot black coffee (no sugar) and winced as the sound reverberated in his ears and sliced slowly down his skull. There was only one person in the world who opened his front door like that, came running across the front porch kicking their shoes wildly off one foot and then another, he wasn't disappointed when Kiba Inzuka stuck his head around the door frame and yelled "Oi, you!" at him with an accusatory index finger.
"Do you ever think of knocking?" Shikamaru asked patiently, raising the mug of coffee to his lips and taking a long draught so the caffeine assailed his senses giving him a momentary kick. Outside the sun was sliding slowly behind the horizon, slipping the world into a curtain of seamless darkness.
"For all you know I could have been doing something indecent."
Kiba stood there for a moment, his face oddly flushed and huffing and puffing through his mouth.
"I wouldn't care if you had your trousers round your ankles and were about to hump Ino into the kitchen counter Shikamaru." He announced tartly, puffing out his chest and drawing himself up to full height.
The statement worried Shikamaru more then anything else, he opened his mouth to point out that every relationship, including theirs had limits but he never got past the first syllable because Kiba exploded with the question he had obviously jumped out his hospital window to find the answer to.
"Well, what did the council say? Are they going after Sasuke and Naruto? Are they going to let them go, or…" he gulped and swallowed audibly, "Or are they going to send assassins after them and kill them?"
"I think you'd better sit down." Shikamaru told him simply, deciding to draw the scene out and shuffling the scrolls that were lying on the table in front of him.
Kiba sat.
"The decision the council arrived at, at approximately quarter past five this afternoon was to kill both of them." Shikamaru said austerely getting up to add sugar to the coffee in his hand.
The statement took thirty seconds or more to register in Kiba's brain, he stared at Shikamaru expectantly during the time frame as if waiting for Shikamaru to say more until the silence drilled the statement into fact and the levers of realisation, dread, panic and absolute outrage slotted neatly into place one after the other.
Shikamaru was convinced he heard the thudding clunks of each.
"I-You-WHAT?" Bellowed Kiba, scooting back from the table so the chair clattered to the floor and rolled behind him, "How can you just say it like that?! How can you just sit there and-sit there and…Mother of God what are we going to do?"
"'We' in that term of voice, mind and frame are going to do nothing Kiba, nothing at all." Shikamaru said firmly but softly, spooning another pile of soft golden brown sugar into the dark liquid mix and stirring the brew contemplatively.
Kiba actually stamped his foot at this, mouth flapping like a sheet on a washing line on a blustery Wednesday morning.
"But they'll be killed, Naruto- you can't… Naruto- don't tell me you're still sore about him bringing Sasuke back, you wouldn't have left him there anyway for all your yammering about sense and other bullshit. I know you, you just wanted to say the right thing but you didn't mean it, you didn't mean it at all. You don't mean it now, we have to do something, we can't just let them die…"
Shikamaru surveyed Kiba analytically; his auburn haired friend was flailing his arms about, jumping up and down on the spot and making half formed arguments as to why the both of them together should go looking for Naruto and Sasuke. Shikamaru of course had already come up with a thousand different scenarios and a thousand reasons why each one of them wouldn't work, he swirled his coffee round the cream coloured mug which he didn't remember buying, but suspected either Ino, Choji, Naruto or Kiba had snuck into his china cupboard because he was too lazy to buy his own.
"Well if you won't go," Kiba all but shouted at him, turning to leave a look of hurt and disbelieving on his face, "I'll go and rescue them myself!"
"No you won't." Shikamaru said gently, his words more effective then bucket full of ice, Kiba stood frozen and then slowly turned on the spot.
"I what?" he said in measured and deliberately dangerous tones, it was frightening how much like a wolf he could look sometimes, it was his pupils, dark and dangerous, slit with the anger clouding his face.
"I think it was ten minutes after their decision to kill them, which I'll have you know involved me arguing with everyone in sight and being threatened with permanent prohibition for any promotions into council membership."
"What did you say to that?"
Shikamaru gave him a wry smile, "I told them to shove it up their fat buttocks, and some other things I don't care to repeat, what do think?"
Kiba grinned at him.
"It was at that time anyway that a messenger came in carrying this," and Shikamaru strode over to the table and handed Kiba a photograph of a black and white object about the size of a large cat.
"What is that?" Kiba asked perplexed, turning the photo around in his hands and gazing at it from all angles.
"It's a plaque, can you read the writing?"
Kiba squinted at the photograph, and then said slowly, his words tripping over and into each other as he spoke: "The People of Konoha Are Respectfully Requested to Rethink Their Position In the World Before the End."
He looked back up at Shikamaru again, baffled.
"What the hell does that even mean?" he asked in a tone, which sounded like he found the whole thing rather amusing, " 'Are respectfully requested,' and 'In the End' who the hell would write a message like that?"
"Its not who," Shikamaru said darkly, "its what. That thing just turned up on the Northern Tower without anyone seeing who put it there or why, and you know that place is swarming with guards, literally popping at the seams with them. And there it was sitting like a birthday present for them to find it."
"I don't understand," Kiba said slowly turning the picture over and over again in his hands, "what this has to do with Naruto and Sasuke."
Shikamaru gave him another smile, the type of smile you might give someone to brace them for the worst, the type of nerve steadying smile that comes with the death of loved ones, or the fact that your most beloved set of pants have inexplicably self combusted in the washing machine.
"The thing is," Shikamaru said slowly, motioning for Kiba to sit down again as if this would lessen the pain, "this isn't the first 'message' of this type that we've seen. There have been others, three so far to be exact, one to each of the countries that have been attacked. It's not a message, or an invitation Kiba, it's a warning, a warning that we are next."
Kiba sat, but forgetting that he had previously knocked his chair on the floor beforehand hurtled straight through where he thought the chair was and landed with a loud 'Oof!' on the floor.
Shikamaru watched the auburn head disappear behind his kitchen table with a small smile on his face, Kiba was an idiot there was no question about it. His idiot none-the-less, and he put his cup of coffee in the sink and walked round the table to help Kiba Inuzuka who was looking both startled and white, up from his puddle on the floor.
"Now," Shikamaru said simply, "they want Sasuke back, they want Naruto back because they are convinced that he can get Sasuke to talk and he's seen them before. Sasuke's withholding information I have no doubt about that, but what the 'whatever-it-is' has come from the Land that Sakura is in now, the council is making a mistake not to send Nin out to bring them back, or just explore the land of the waterfall."
"But-but I thought," Kiba stuttered, still coming to grips with things like imminent and painful death, and invasion and oh what was it? Death?!
"I thought it came from Sound and moved out?"
"Oh it hit Sound first," Shikamaru conceded, nodding his head in agreement, "but if you examine the documents the Land of the Waterfall has been having these complaints for years now, it's almost legend. In fact it is Legend, about monsters and a demons caves, under ground networks and mysterious but gruesome-" (Kiba blanched.) "Deaths. But people of course have put it down to accident and rogue ninja, but I think now there might be more truth to the case then just some shadowy 'giant monster' devouring flesh and souls. The way these people died is unusual, very unusual, Jiraiya was right it is almost unnatural."
"So…so…" the auburn youth said slowly, shaking his head and swallowing down the sea of panic that was bubbling away beneath his skin, sloshing against his insides and threatening to drown him.
"Who are they sending to retrieve Naruto?"
"Me," Shikamaru said simply, and then he looked at Kiba hard, "and I'm asking you how far you'd go for a friend."
"I'd die for both you and Naruto." Kiba said fiercely, brows descending in a knot of concentration over his eyes.
"What about Hinata?"
Kiba went bright red at this and muttered that he didn't think it was a very appropriate question to be asked especially when Hinata was getting married in six months time.
"It's an arranged marriage," Shikamaru reminded him once again, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the wall, "and you're a fool from not sweeping her off her feet and making passionate love to her."
Kiba gave Shikamaru a look as if he'd been slapped across the face; his friend tilted his head and narrowed his angular eyes at him.
"Unless you already have of course." He said with mild amusement in his voice at the way Kiba jumped.
"Don't be ridiculous!" Kiba Inuzuka managed to splutter finally untying his voice box in order to speak, "I might have been confused when I woke up in the hospital after you gave me those drugs but-"
Shikamaru raised an eyebrow at him, "How's your head by the way?"
"Awful, it feels like it's been hacked in two by a blunt meat cleaver."
"Well that's your fault for taking so much."
"You hid it in cake!" Kiba yelled at him indignantly, "How was I supposed to know how much drugs you put in the goddamned thing? I was enjoying the creamy icing and the buttery goodness!"
"And when you started grinning inanely and began hallucinating it didn't strike you that perhaps you'd taken an overdose?" Shikamaru asked with mock teasing politeness, "You were supposed to eat one slice Kiba, one slice. In that way the effects would be harder to trace and slow acting. I meant for you to be confused not-not…" he passed a weary hand over his face, "Not to pass out, albeit it was dramatic and amusing, with all the 'pretty lights' and all that. No one suspects you took it on purpose, in fact general gossip is that Naruto slipped you Morphine, although God knows how he would have managed that when he's mortally afraid of needles. I suppose you could have tripped up and landed on one, you're certainly clumsy enough."
"Shut up!" Snapped Kiba, colouring a dark shade of crimson, "I was still confused when I woke up this morning and found both Shino and Hinata sitting in my ward with me, because for the life of me I could work out how the hell I got there." He gave Shikamaru another accusatory look to which Shikamaru answered by saying with more then a little exasperation "I, of course, having dropped in earlier to make sure you were still alive. Then had to go again and make arrangements for this rescue team."
Kiba snorted.
"My head was still somewhere not attached to my body and Hinata might have been holding my hand, but Shino went out the room to speak to his father and I might have said something stupid to her…" his voice got smaller and smaller and softer and softer.
"You told her you loved her didn't you?" Shikamaru said, almost triumphantly trying very hard to keep the grin off his face and not succeeding very well.
"I don't know what I said, but then she leaned across the bed and…and…kissed me…" And Kiba looked at his feet as if he'd done something very, very sinfully wrong, liking murdering infants or talking at the theatre.
Shikamaru actually made a whooping noise followed by a triumphant punching gesture in the air.
"Then I passed out," Kiba very quickly added, "so don't crow over it, it means nothing. She probably was feeling sorry for me, or she was sick or something, and it was a pity kiss or I could have hallucinated the whole thing. God knows I was high enough to do that. She still has to marry Neji, Shikamaru you know that, and have intelligent children with him and have a happy and secure life, not me Maru so for god sakes STOP GRINNING AT ME LIKE THAT."
"I'm not grinning," Shikamaru, said smugly, "this is just what my face looks like, I can't help it if my face looks like it's grinning."
"This is all one big mess," Kiba said pathetically into his hands and slumping across the kitchen table, "what am I going to say when I see her next time? What am I going to do…It won't matter, you and I are going on this rescue mission and she'll forget all about it."
"I wouldn't count on it." Shikamaru said pleasantly putting two sandwiches on a plate for Kiba to eat and going to the sink to fill a glass of water, "Hinata's going too."
"What?"
"But I'd keep your libido in check if I were you," was Shikamaru's simply and somewhat amicable reply as if the bastard was enjoying this.
"Because Neji's coming as well, now don't look at me like that."
Which was bold of Shikamaru to say especially when Kiba was looking as if he might leap across the table and throttle Shikamaru into a near death state.
"I have the feeling that this mission is going to need more then trackers, we need people with physical power in order to defend ourselves and Neji is both another set of good eyes and he'd be one person on my list I'd rather not piss off. So I'm warning you Kiba, don't get carried away with love proposals."
"I WON'T BE PROPOSING ANYTHING YOU DIC-"
"So I've asked Choji to come as well, because you and him pack the largest amount of raw power, then there's Lee, Taijutsu I know, but we don't know if these creatures feed of the chakra lost when casting Jutsu so it's a precautionary measure. Then there's Ino, because we need a medical nin-"
"How on earth did you convince Ino to come?" Kiba asked suspiciously, looking at Shikamaru as he suspected him to rip off his clothes at any second to reveal a brightly coloured superman outfit underneath.
"I got Choji to ask her." Shikamaru replied briskly walking once again into the kitchen. "The real mission behind all of this is to rescue Sakura's team but I can't get it authorised directly from the council, it's kind of a loop hole."
The auburn haired youth raised both of his eyebrows at this, putting the sandwich to his mouth and taking an enormous bite out of it and licking his lips.
"Meaning Tsunade agrees with you but the council won't let her do it right?"
"Exactly," Shikamaru said nodding, "the orders are to find Sasuke and Naruto as soon as possible, but if we find them in the Land of the Waterfall we are also authorised to look for Sakura as well, and I'm betting we can get to the bottom of some answers there. It's just too suspicious not to yield answers."
"You are unbelievable." Kiba said slowly, holding the sandwich in mid air and letting some of the filling drop out and slide across the plate, "You organised a heist, you're organising a rescue mission in which you will be delaying everyone in order to get what you want. What if someone finds out it was you that switched the shifts for the ANBU guard outside the room where they were keeping Sasuke in? And that it was you that told Naruto all the inside information…they'd…they'd I don't know. They'd hang you."
"Doubtful," Shikamaru said shrugging his shoulders, "I fudged up the evidence about the shift change and there's nothing leading back to me or you, and besides even if there was we both have alibis. So unless you are going to dance around Konoha pointing your finger at me, I highly doubt anyone is going to know."
"We-you…you could be exiled for this."
"Something's are worth taking that risk for." Shikamaru said with a snapping note of resolution in his voice, Kiba was so awed by this he didn't know what to say and sat there for a moment opening and closing his mouth as if imitating a fish.
Shikamaru's face softened somewhat and picked up a sandwich from the plate and took a small bite of it himself.
"I need to put some more things together before I go to sleep, but we're leaving a 5 o'clock tomorrow morning. You can sleep at the end of my bed if you like seeing as how you've still got some of the drugs running through your system. I'm warning you though, the second you put your feet on my face I'm going to kick you out of bed."
Shikamaru didn't get a chance say much after that, because Kiba sprang up from his side of the table and launched himself at him in a bone crunching hug, they both fell to the floor completely winded. And even though Shikamaru was not a 'hugging person' he tolerated if for over a minute and a half, recognising that it was an 'I love you' hug, and a 'I'm scared' hug and a 'I trust you' hug and 'I'll follow you anywhere' hug.
Sometimes Shikamaru wondered if Kiba would follow him willingly into death, he spent most of that making silent pacts with faceless deities, partly because his insides were being eaten up by guilt and worry and partly because Kiba snored too loud for him even to consider sleeping.
"That was the dumbest thing you've ever done Naruto, and you've done a lot of dumb things in your dumb life!"
"Me?" Naruto hissed right back at Sasuke, doing his best to keep his voice down, his hair was dark brown and trailing down the small of his back, he blinked his blue fathomless eyes and tossed his head angrily, hands on hips.
"This was all your stupid idea in the first place, hell you didn't even tell me what we were doing! Just made up your mind all on the spot and dragged me here, made me-made me change into a girl and then pretended we were a goddamned couple and…and…"
"And it worked out fine." Sasuke snapped back at him, silvered grey eyes seemingly boring holes into the back of Naruto's head, "Apart from you signing your name backwards, nice alias by the way Ikamuzu, no one is going to think that was you."
Naruto flushed, breaking the henge and turning round to the back of the room so he could pick up his rucksack.
"I can't help it if I forgot that ridiculous name you said I was supposed to use, what was it Yuzu?"
"Yuzuki, I said call yourself Yuzuki Nikure! But as usual you had to go and mess that up, thank god I convinced that woman we were secretly eloping otherwise I'm sure they would have chucked you straight in a mental asylum for not remembering what your name was."
"I was under pressure, besides Yuzuki is a ridiculous name, it sounds like fruit not a persons name. I mean I might as well been called Apple or Lemon. And then they would have both thrown us in the loony bin, me for thinking I'm a fruit and you for marrying one."
Sasuke gave him a very dry look at this, crossing his arms and becoming more stubborn and petulant looking (if it were possible) then ever before.
"It was my mother's favourite name." he said quietly and opened the door to the small on suite bathroom to Naruto's right and closed the door with a brisk snap behind him.
Naruto sighed, his shoulders relaxing and then drooping. They had been on the run for three days straight so far. Three days without proper rest or food, both covered in mud, tired, exhausted and hungry Sasuke had eventually drawn the line saying stubbornly that if Naruto pushed him anymore in 'their' current 'condition' he'd simply lie on his back until the perusing Ninja caught up with them and to hell with the consequences.
The Kitsune had yelled at this, stamped his foot and tried to persuade Sasuke (violently) to keep going. Sasuke had stubbornly and logically refused, pointing out the obvious reasons as to why they couldn't just press on. Naruto didn't have enough supplies to keep going at this pace, they didn't have a map, they didn't have up-to-date information, they didn't know who was perusing them or how far behind they were and also there was a slight concern to the 'condition' they were in.
By 'condition' of course Sasuke meant the binding Jutsu, or 'the Leash' to which he was now calling it.
"Naruto," Sasuke had said in the middle of day two when he and the blond had been walking behind a waterfall in order not to leave any tracks, "the Leash's getting shorter."
So it was, the more tired and exhausted Naruto became, the angrier, the more stressed, the sadder and the hungrier made the distance between them get shorter and shorter. By the end of the third day Sasuke was having to walk directly behind Naruto doing the best he could to avoid touching him with any part of his body. It didn't matter what Naruto thought or meant, or even apologised to Sasuke, Sasuke on the inside was seething with both intense jealously, envy and a generous side helping of deep self-disgust. On the one hand if Naruto hadn't --wasn't-- trying to rip the universe apart to find Sakura again that would make him a monster, but at the same time some small part of his brain, some small voice seemed to say: "He chose her over you. He chose her."
Of course Naruto was going to choose Sakura over him, wouldn't he have in Naruto's position? He'd made the blond's life a living hell ever since he'd met him again and all this-this mess was his fault anyway, he didn't deserve to be shown any affection from Naruto, friendship or love. Not that he thought it was love anyway, it was too twisted, too half head, too utterly soul consuming for it to be love. But it didn't stop Sasuke from wanting to rip Naruto's eyes out of his skull for merely looking towards someone else.
// He was going to marry her…//
You can't walk out of someone's life for six years and expect to be let back in again, you can't tell them what to think, what to feel, what to say, what to except. You can't want to hold them or touch them or tell them that you need them and that they're the only thing in the universe you suspect is holding you together.
Sasuke bit his lip and let himself slide down the bathroom door, he needed to be practical, he needed to think clearly, he needed to find a way out of this that wouldn't get them both killed.
// Hang Sakura. //
No, that wasn't fair, that was the jealousy and the competition, she had been a childhood friend and she had loved him for all that was perfect and visible and she loved Naruto for all that was invisible and imperfect. Naruto himself had asked the question: "Don't I deserve to be loved?"
He certainly didn't deserve to, everything he had succeeded in he had got there by lies and manipulation, including this backed up and twisted relationship he had gotten himself into with Naruto…Naruto.
He had looked so beautiful, rain spattering thick and heavy on his face, eyes screwed up panting, calling his name "Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke…"
// You said once.//
// I still want him.//
// You said once
// That was before, I was leaving, it's different now, it's different.//
// How so?//
// It's hard, I'm with him and I want him, I want him to look at me. Just me, forever.//
// How is that fair on him?//
// It's not fair…there's no excuse. But I can't help but feel that way. //
"Am I in love with him?" he asked quietly, to no one in particular, his voice too quite for even himself to hear. On the other side of the door he could hear Naruto shuffling about, pulling kunai and bandages out of the pack as well as emergency rations. They had a compass, rope, energy pills, soldier pills, pills for blood loss, painkillers, sedative and a type of disinfectant that made his eyes water and skin burn.
"This is all Shikamaru's doing." Naruto had said proudly when he had taken Sasuke to a secret hollow to show him the hidden rucksacks, "Planned this all in advance."
The Uchiha had looked bitterly at the backpacks and thought privately that it was the beginning of their undoing.
// People must make things difficult by interfering.//
"Sasuke," Naruto said evenly, he was standing in front of the door, his hair was messy and his eyes were tired, almost dull.
"Sasuke I'm going to go downstairs and get us both something to eat, you're not being sick in there are you?"
"No!" was the snappish reply through the wooden door frame, was he sitting beside the door or was Naruto just imagining him to be sitting so close—close enough to touch…
"Remember to go down as a girl."
"Oh, yeah. I forgot." Naruto muttered sheepish, he already had one hand on the door handle; "I'll leave the key in here…so, umm, I'll knock or something when I come back."
There was a negligible sound that came through the door which Naruto guessed to be a grunt of agreement, whatever it was, it was enough allowance to let himself out of the room and almost run down the hallway of that shady little inn.
How had he got himself mixed up in this? He looked like a pretty young woman, dressed in plain travelling clothes with dark curling brown hair and large innocent looking blue eyes.
He didn't walk like a young woman though-or at least no young woman he'd ever met, he sort of strode like a man and spent most of the time with his shoulders hunched forwards and a sort of absent expression on his face. He must look like an idiot, why Sasuke had insisted he turn into a girl and not his usually Sexy no Jutsu transformation either.
"No," he had said cuttingly, "that's far too obvious. You want to throw them off the scent, not lead them right to us you fool!"
Sasuke had been in a bad mood ever since they'd started this ill-fated journey, or 'quest' as Naruto kept referring to it as in his mind. It was a good plan, it would work, they'd cross the river, traverse the ravine until they found the bridge and cross the mountain range into the back border of the Land of the Waterfall and somehow rescue Sakura. It was a good plan; there was no other plan. It had to work.
The snag or proverbial Gordian knot in the works was that the plan relied heavily on Sasuke helping him do this, Sasuke who knew what these things were, Sasuke who wasn't telling him anything, Sasuke who was being as stubborn as hell and being purposefully unhelpful as possible. It didn't help by the fact that the binding technique that Shikamaru had taught him seemed to be fast becoming more of a hindrance then any help. The more exhausted and tired Naruto became the shorter the 'Leash' became, and after three days of extensive travel, keeping under cover and hidden at all times, and only taking short half an hour meal breaks and giving neither of them a good opportunity to sleep. Had in short produced a very ratty, very irritable, very unpleasant Sasuke to be around. And Naruto had to be around Sasuke, because he was quite sure without this binding Jutsu, forbidden though it maybe, Sasuke would have run off and left him. Left him for the horizon of uncertainty and whatever it was that was lurking in the shadows.
Naruto didn't even want to think about it.
He kept closing his eyes and seeing flickering dark creatures beneath his eyelids, dark staring eyes and unhinging jaws, dark evil faces watching him from the branches of trees and the whisper of death on silent wings flying towards him when his back was turned.
He was terrified, but he wasn't letting Sasuke know. Oh no, not Sasuke, for all his bad moods, sultry tongue and black temper like molten slag bubbling away in a cast iron pot. He was being wholly impossible right down to the last fibre in his stubborn unswayable being, and when Sasuke stood up and made an effort at being thoroughly unpleasant it was a good idea to be as far away from him as was humanly possible. Another planet, as far as Naruto was concerned would have been preferable.
Let Sasuke sulk in the bathtub, Naruto thought bitterly taking the stairs two at a time and walking in the inns small dining area.
// He can sit in there all night for all I care, as long as he doesn't drown. //
He needed Sasuke to read the map; Naruto had always been awful at map reading.
As he sat down at a small two-seat table and ordered food from the pretty young girl who was of the owner of the inn, she asked Naruto where 'her' alleged 'husband' was.
Naruto had stared at her blankly for a moment before realising who she was talking about, "Oh, him!" Naruto had burst out with, looking surprised and the waitress had laughed. He was quite unable to stop himself from grinning insanely at the idea of Sasuke being married to anyone because he was such a sullen and uncaring human being.
"He's so handsome," she had chirped, colouring prettily. She had golden ringlets falling over her shoulders and warm hazel eyes, Kiba would have liked her was Naruto's immediate thought.
"I've never seen anyone with such pale skin and such dark smouldering eyes, you two must be terribly in love. He was standing so close to you all the time, you really are lucky."
// Smouldering eyes?
Sasuke?
What on earth?//
Eyes that could peel paint, yes.
Eyes at could probably given half a chance kill you, absolutely.
Sasuke Uchiha certainly had intense brooding eyes, it was a Uchiha trademark as far as Naruto knew, he remembered (distantly it's true) looking into Itachi's eyes and feeling the same over whelming surge drawing him in.
But they certainly weren't smouldering in the wildly romantic way of paperback romance novels in which the heroes with rippling muscles sweep damsels in distress off their feet.
It wasn't that Sasuke didn't have enough substance; it was just that Sasuke didn't have a romantic bone in his body.
He was cruel, he was ambitious, he was determined, oh he could be passionate Naruto knew that right through his body and against his lips and mouth but smouldering…?!
The waitress did not quite understand why Naruto dissolved into such giggling hysterics, she began to laugh too, and Naruto quite unintentionally held the attention of all the male customers in the bar.
"Well he might look impressive," Naruto finished resting his chin on his hands and trying to settle the laughter in his stomach, "but after one round beneath the bedcovers he's out like a light, you know? Talks big, but is-" he gave a suggestive grin (did girls talk about this sort of thing? To hell if they didn't it was fun) "let's just say average sized in that department."
The girl laughed again, and Naruto caught himself thinking again how she pretty she was.
"So you two have eloped, is that right? How romantic…"
"I suppose you could say that," Naruto replied musingly, wondering if it was all that romantic.
Eloping, defying one's family and friends to be with someone like Sasuke? That wasn't really a romantic thought, it brought vivid images to mind of Shikamaru yelling at him to stop being such a fool, of Kiba's worry, Hinata's warm strength and of Ino's suspicion.
But then again he really didn't have any idea of what romance was, in the classical feminine way, which he supposed, was the only way.
Whenever Sakura had talked about things like weddings he'd always switched off, allowing his mind to travel to places like 'Ramen Land' or other more 'Adult Themed' realities which he'd never admit to but jacked off to when he thought he was quite alone.
"My uncle did not approve at all." He found himself saying thinking about Jiraiya's reaction to Sasuke.
"Although we were living together before we left, my Aunt's idea…and it worked for a time…" his voice trailed off and he smiled vaguely at her, thinking about something else entirely.
Why had it stopped working? Because they'd kissed? Because they'd argued? Because things had become too out of hand?
"Still," Naruto finished brightly, "it's my first marriage, but also probably my last at this rate anyway."
"Why is that?" the waitress asked curiously, tossing her bright blonde hair, ringlets jumping like beads of gold.
"Because he's ruined all other men for me, but him." Naruto admitted, feeling somewhat embarrassed because it was true. His stomach gave a particularly loud rumble at this and he covered his flush with a feminine laugh.
"Would it be entirely too much to ask if I could have some of that stew that everyone else is eating? I could eat cow I'm so hungry."
The trouble really started when he started eating.
The waitress, who kept finding small periods of time to come over to Naruto's table and talk to him for a spare five minutes before she was called away again brought over on one occasion a glass of wine.
"I didn't order that." Naruto said suspiciously running one hand through his long curly brown hair, (it was really rather disconcerting having long hair, it was so heavy!) "I didn't order it did I?"
"The man at the bar there ordered it, Ikamuzu-san, he says it's for you."
"Oh did he?" Naruto replied happy for free food whenever it was offered to him, he turned round and gave the man at the bar a cheerful wave and a grin.
"That's awfully nice of him."
And so the evening progressed.
By the end of it Naruto had a small group of good looking young men gathered around his table hanging onto every word he said. Naruto couldn't work out if it was simply because he was tired, or perhaps everyone in this particular town was especially boring. It was nice because everyone was paying attention to him, and to a certain extend it was like holding a conversation with Shikamaru, Kiba, Choji and Lee those times when they'd head out to the bar together only to get themselves into a ridiculous scrape later on that same evening. The next morning they'd wake up together, clothed or semi-naked on a good day and wholly naked on a bad day, look at each other and say: "Let's never do that again."
Of course they always did.
The trouble was people would insist on buying him drinks, his head was muzzy from it all and he felt comfortably warm if not a little sleepy. He kept laughing, blue eyes half closed, feeling for the first time in a long time relaxed as he had been before Sasuke had driven a train crash into his life.
"You tired darling?" Someone asked him putting a warm broad hand on the small of his back.
That felt nice, that felt really nice.
"Mmm, a little." Naruto laughed realising he'd been falling asleep at the table, "I should really go back to my room now. Sa- I mean my husband, he gets ratty if I'm away too long." and he began to stand up but forgot his body was slimmer and daintier then it was when he was a guy, that and the alcohol went straight to his head making the world spin unpleasantly. He tottered for a moment, then fell against someone's chest and felt someone's arm about his waist.
"Keeping you all to himself like that, selfish bastard. How come we haven't seen you before huh? You're gorgeous you are, would have liked to marry you myself."
Naruto blinked, groggy though he was that didn't sound like something the guys would say to him on a Friday night.
"You what?"
"Perhaps not marry you, but I'd have liked to have got to know you better. I'd still like to get to know you better…very much so in fact."
A handsome young man was talking to Naruto perhaps in his late twenties, he had dark curly hair and eyes the colour of Lavender. Naruto recognised him as the one who had bought him the drink in the first place, and that they were walking somewhere…somewhere that was definitely not to his and Sasuke's room anyway.
Oh god, he was a fool.
"Uh," began Naruto feeling the upsurges of panic prickle down his spine, "I don't think that's a very good idea…"
"…Since the moment you walked in the door," the man was saying, "with that smile and those eyes. I've never seen such beautiful eyes in all my life, like blue glass marbles, like the sky, like the ocean, like a thousand of droplets of rain."
// Oh no, this man fancied himself a poet…//
"I want to know you better Ikamuzu-san."
If nothing before had set alarm bells off inside Naruto's head then that did, lots of alarm bells, he looked around wildly to find that they were in some secluded place outside the inn and that the warm night air was misting in front of his mouth. The handsome young man was giving Naruto such and intense look, perhaps it was even a smouldering look Naruto thought almost hysterically.
"Look you," he began firmly placing both his hands against this man's chest, "there will be no knowing here."
But his words were cut off as the young man backed him up against a wall placed two hands either side of his head and leant in to kiss him.
Naruto's first reaction was that of surprise, being a guy and usually straight to the point of fact that was not usually hit on by men, he had no prior experience of being forced into kisses, or any such other compromising situations. It was a horrible experience of someone trying to force their tongue into his partially open mouth.
Naruto gave a small whimper of panic and disgust which the young man took as a whimper of desire and using one hand to pin both of Naruto's hands over his head used his other hand to…his other hand to… oh God NO!
Naruto was nano-seconds away from breaking the henge and beating this guy to within and inch of his miserable life when the kiss (if you could call it a kiss, more like eating face) was broken and the man went staggering backwards.
"Don't you ever," snarled Sasuke withdrawing one fist and punching the man square in the face "touch anything of mine ever again!" there was a crunching of bone and a thick spurt of blood as the man fell backwards onto the cobblestones and moved no more.
"Is he dead?" Naruto asked, breathing heavily, adrenaline jumping round his system like a jackhammer.
"No," was the short cold reply he received as Sasuke nudged the man's unconscious form with one shoe, a look of snarling contempt on his face.
"Well you should have killed him!" was Naruto's passionate response, "Ugly great smarmy bastard, that was disgusting."
"Really?" there was that sardonic tone of voice again and those cold, cold eyes.
"You seemed to be enjoying it."
Naruto gaped at Sasuke, there was no other word for it. He stood there with his mouth open so the pink tip of his tongue could be seen splayed straight touching the white of his teeth.
"I-I….what?"
"You heard me." Sasuke replied in the same arctic tones, arms crossed and body so perpendicular you could have used him as a ruler. His body language was dangerous, his voice was dangerous, god damn his eyes were dangerous, and to top that all off he was being irrational.
"Sasuke," Naruto said, not quite understanding but coming closer anyway.
He looked like a young woman Sasuke thought, a beautiful young woman with long brown curling hair, but at the same time he looked like Naruto, Naruto because of the way he talked, because of his mannerisms, because of that stride and most of all because of those eyes. Innocent blue eyes…the colour of Sasuke wasn't really sure what, he could probably spend his whole life searching and never find something that exquisite, or pure.
"Sasuke," Naruto said firmly, "you're insane."
Sasuke Uchiha didn't want to repeat how horribly jealous he'd been, he didn't want to reiterate how he'd wanted to yank that young man's throat out of his mouth and watch him choke on the blood. He didn't want to tell Naruto that he was so close to being obsessively in love with him…was obsessively in love with him. That it frightened him.
Instead he grabbed Naruto by the wrist and yanked him closer, Naruto stumbled because he was drunk and fell against Sasuke and closed his eyes breathing in the smell. Thinking it was like coming home, Christmas, childhood and years gone by all wrapped up in a sea of memories.
"You're insane." He muttered again, "Absolutely insane."
Sasuke shut him up by kissing him.
It was a fierce kiss, all about tongues and teeth clacking together and Sasuke passionately demanding (that's what Sasuke was through and through, he never did anything by half measures) that Naruto was filled by him, that there was no part of Naruto he hadn't tasted, hadn't touched.
His fingers traced delicate lines on Naruto's cheeks where his scars were to be found underneath the transformation Jutsu, he cupped Naruto's jaw, tilting his head so the kissed deepened. Underneath him Naruto gave a small murmur, then a whimper of desire.
Sasuke broke away then, loving the fact that Naruto's eyes were half closed and hazy with lust, looking up at him lips flushed and swollen. He leaned down to take his bottom lip teasingly between his teeth.
"Back to the room," he said throatily, between nips and kisses, "now."
"I can't walk." Was Naruto's sluggish reply, fingers digging into Sasuke's shoulders. Drunk on Sasuke's kisses, smell and touch, there was a familiar pang of need deep inside his abdomen and as Sasuke ground his hips against Naruto's slowly, teasing and playing, Naruto threw back his head and moaned.
That was it for Sasuke, he picked Naruto up and threw him over his shoulder. He was thrown from there some short time later onto the bed, and lay there breaking the henge, a young blond man in simple travellers clothing. He forgot completely about being a ninja, lost for an endless moment in Sasuke.
Sasuke who covered his face in kisses, Sasuke who crawled up his body and whispered urgent secrets in his ear, Sasuke who made the sky and the horizon falter with his touch and his beautiful slim body.
"Naruto you're mine, you're mine, you're mine."
Naruto laughed, and he smiled, and his kissed, and he arched and he moaned, finger entwining in Sasuke's beautiful dark hair, dark like silky jet, dark and mysterious and beautiful just like Sasuke.
"I had dreams about you kissing me," Naruto murmured, very naked with Sasuke's hot mouth pressed against his naval, tongue dipping in and swirling.
The Uchiha growled against his pectoral muscles sending shivers of anticipation throughout Naruto's body.
"I had dreams about you fucking me too…" Naruto said in almost a wondering voice bent over on his hands and knees Sasuke behind him, in him, pressed hot and sweaty against his back. Naruto was pressing back into him, small growls and moans within his own throat, Sasuke bit his shoulder hard, hoping to leave some trace he could brush his finger over later before it disappeared forever. Just like how all the marks he left on Naruto disappeared.
There were things that Sasuke said that he hoped Naruto wouldn't remember later, delicate things like "Only you." And "My whole life" and even "So much it hurts."
They lay next to each other afterwards, naked entwined, Sasuke confused and at ease at the same time, and clutching onto Naruto hard whilst he slept head buried in the crook of Sasuke's shoulder, slow deep breathing, love marks on his neck, chest and shoulders.
"Naruto," Sasuke said slowly to the darkness, knowing that within a few hours they have to be gone, "Naruto do you think you can forgive me for what I've done wrong?"
The silence was the only answer to his question, but Sasuke was sure as he lay listening to his and Naruto's heart beats mingle that the answer would be no.
A/N
First of all I demand that everyone look at this: ryuusei-illusion(dot)deviantart(dot)com/art/Fish-Bird-Chp10-60203110
(just replace the (dot) bits with you know what I mean)
You must worship this artist because she is a sasunaru lover and her sketches are down right SEXY
That and it's just.. wow...wow
Okay, chapter scratch that and put a bow on it, that this there here is one of my favourite chapters. Just because I was giggling insanely all the way through it .
Okay, now seriously guys, back to business. You are all CLOSET READERS, I can see the stats on this thing and I happen to know each chapter gets over a thousand views, so if I were to sit here and do the math I can say a heck of a lot of you read this all the way through but don't tell me what you think. I love writing Fish Bird, I really do, but I'm writing fanfiction to improve my own writing style and venting my SasuNaru need in the process. Feed back makes me write faster, because I the feed back gives me new ideas and new perspectives on what I'm writing and also on what you guys enjoy best about by style. I'm not a review whore really (reviews are very very sexy though !!!) but I really do want to know what you think, I WANT TO KNOW. TELL ME DAMNIT!!
Much love as always, hoping to hear from you guys-
(T) ED