first things first, i'll eat your brains, then i'ma start rockin' gold teeth and fangs
Next part of the This Old Ficbit series and I think it's the longest portion I've posted to date. Not that that says much, really, as it's just under 1400 words but I'll take it as an accomplishment anyway. As always, previous bit is here.
Previously on This Old Ficbit
It was odd being here, he thought, remembering the circumstances that led to his being hundreds of miles from Jiraiya, the only non-family family that he had and the first real home he’d ever lived in.
“Get it together, Naruto. This isn’t the worst thing to ever happen to you.” He choked down a laugh. No, it really wasn’t.
Then he got up in search of a bathroom.
There was one just off to the side, tucked back in the hallway between the living room and kitchen. It was tiny and cramped with floral patterned wall paper and what he’d heard of once before as being called ‘doilies,’ (but never having had seen them for himself, he was a little unsure) covering every surface-but it had a toilet that flushed when he flushed it and a sink that ran water both hot and cold when he turned the knobs so it was enough. He used the john, washed his hands and face and attempted to rinse the morning funk out of his mouth. He also made a mental note to see if he could drop by the general store they passed the evening before, to pick up a few things.
*
Deciding not to take the chance of waking up an irate Kakashi, Naruto skipped out on visiting the kitchen and the possibility of breakfast even though his stomach was grumbling and wandered outside.
It was hot, was the first thing he noticed. Hotter than the city, for sure, but that made sense since the city was a couple hours north of here.
It smelled different, too. Like animal shit. And dirt. And something else he couldn’t decipher underneath all that. The air smelled thick and heavy with all the heady scents piled on top of each other. He caught a whiff of some earthy aroma or another with every breath he inhaled.
It was funny, he thought. Being able to look out on the horizon and see... nothing. No buildings or skyscrapers or anything he was used to but acres and acres of trees and crops and flat stretches of land with only a few small farmhouses spread out in between. Gone were the crowds of people you could often find at any time of day milling about the streets in the city in droves. Gone were the familiar sounds (cars, dozens of voices, shouting, laughing, talking, living, the noise of the construction that was somehow always going on in a city) and sights (concrete and glass everywhere the eye could see, the shiny chrome of cars driving on cramped streets or parked like sardines in a can at a curb, the corner bodegas and food carts and the smells their images evoked), people of every culture and walk of life. Naruto loved it. So many different people to meet, so many different things to learn about them all. It had been up till now, one of the greatest pleasures in his life. And look where that got him.
He grunted and forced himself not to think about the situation that led up to his being exiled from his home. Instead, he tried to come up with a list of things that could actually be good about living here. In Buttfuck, Nowhere; the farmtown hell hole also known as Konoha.
Naruto rubbed his hands all over his face when he couldn’t come up with a single damn thing. He had a feeling it was gonna be a long day.
*
By the time he got to the fork in the road, Naruto was lost. After having waited around for an hour in the hopes that Kakashi might finally roll out of bed to no avail, he decided to go into town to buy his much needed necessities on his own. It didn’t take more than half an hour to walk from the house back to where he vaguely remembered the shops to be. Besides, it wasn’t like there was much out here in the first place, how hard could it be?
*
Pretty damn hard, it turns out.
Naruto must have taken a wrong turn through one of the million and one cornfields or something because he’d been walking for an hour and he definitely didn’t remember taking this dirt road when they’d come from the town the night before. Not that he could be entirely sure as it had been pretty dark... Naruto scratched the back of his head and grumbled under his breath. He tilted his head to one side and squinted in both directions down the seemingly, endlessly long dirt road but there wasn’t much to see, just more dirt and row upon row of leafy, green cornstalks. Dammit.
Deciding to head back to the farm house he’d stayed at the night before, Naruto turned around...
And ran face first into a wall, or rather, a broad chest, that he could’ve sworn hadn’t been there moments before.
He rebounded off the solid mass of flesh and bone much like a basketball would off the backboard of a hoop and landed flat on his ass in the dirt, staring up at... well, he didn’t know who. It was some guy who looked a year or two older than him, probably. He was a few inches taller than Naruto but pale - paler than Naruto would’ve thought it possible for a person to be out here in all this sunshine. He had black hair with some weirdo hairstyle that looked like the tail end of a duck but his face was a blank slate, devoid of all expression - like one of the robots he saw in that big blockbuster last spring, he thought idly - and he was carrying... a pitchfork? What the f-
“Who the hell are you?” The stranger said abruptly.
“Uh,” Naruto’s eyebrow rose half an inch. “How ‘bout a hand up first?” Naruto stuck his hand out for a lift. He was a bit weirded out by this guy who’d appeared out of nowhere but he tried to be cordial and gave the guy a winning smile anyway.
A muscle in the guy’s face twitched but he didn’t move otherwise. Naruto frowned and pushed himself up, wiping at the dirt on his hands and clothes.
“I said,” the guy looked annoyed and likely to start waving his pitchfork - pitchfork, oh my god, I’m in Farmville’s version of hell, Naruto thought - soon. “Who the hell are you?”
“Who the hell are you?” Naruto retorted and now he was irritated. Who the hell did this jerk think he was?
“I asked you first.”
“So? I’m not in the habit of giving my name out to asshole’s who knock me over and then don’t even bother to give me a hand up.”
The guy’s face got this real constipated look on it for a second and then he took a step forward into Naruto’s personal space. Naruto snorted, like this weirdo farm boy with a friggin’ pitchfork was gonna intimidate him. He’d really had enough of all this farm shit, to be honest; first, he’d been waiting for hours for that freak of a “guardian” to wake up so he could find out what he was gonna do next, and then he got lost in fucking corn jungle hell. Shit. Naruto didn’t have any patience left in him after the morning he had so if this jerkoff wanted an ass whupping, Naruto was definitely willing to oblige; but when he opened his mouth to say so he was interrupted by another, more familiar voice.
“Sasuke.” The guy, Sasuke apparently, backed off and looked behind them at Kakashi.
“This idiot with you?” Sasuke asked, and that just pissed Naruto right the hell off.
“Who the hell are you calling an idiot, asswipe?” Naruto shouted.
“Yep,” Kakashi replied succinctly.
Sasuke smirked and it was the first real expression Naruto’d seen on his face since he met him. “Babysitting, Kakashi? I’d have thought that was beneath you.”
“Fuck you,” Naruto spat at Sasuke even though both men were effectively ignoring him.
Kakashi frowned but didn’t reply. He turned to Naruto instead.
“Naruto.”
“What?” Naruto answered a little more loudly than he intended but he was still too pissed at this mentally defective farm boy to be polite.
“Is there a reason you’re out here in the middle of Sasuke’s family’s cornfields?”
“What?” The unexpected question jerked him out of a daydream of dunking Sasuke’s head in a bucket of tar and feathering his head like the duck’s ass it really was. “Oh. I need to pick up some stuff. I was trying to get back to town but I got turned around in this goddamn corn-infested hell hole and for fuck’s sake. Would it kill you guys to put up a road sign or two? Trying to navigate around here is worse than the time I got stuck in the suburbs after a house party. I swear, they build those places like a maze on purpose but at least they had signs and shit.” Naruto trailed off when he noticed both men looking at him with raised eyebrows. “And then, uh, this asshole showed up,” Naruto ignored the glare. ”And that’s when you came in.”
Kakashi tilted his head and looked down at him for a long, silent moment. Then he turned around in the opposite direction and without another word started walking away.
“Hey, hey!” Naruto shouted, running to follow and attempt to catch up with the man’s long strides, completely ignoring the grumble that came from the man they were leaving behind.
A/N: The city Naruto considers home is based on New York City. It's really the only big city that I have knowledge of first hand and I hope I was able to pare it down to its most basic so someone who's never been to a large urban city could get the overall impression of Big City and not just NYC. The farm bits... haa~ Well, you've seen Smallville, haven't you? Smallville (though not a show I really watched past Season 1) has impressed upon me the need for cornfields on every country farm. I cannae help it. I'm sorry. *is shamed* Also, regarding the age discrepancy between Naruto and Sasuke. It's not a mistake, I put it there intentionally. You'll see why eventually and it's not a big deal, anyway but... FYI. :P And Sasuke's voice. I'm not sure I nailed it (in fact, I'm pretty sure I didn't but I'm okay with that) but I tried. Hopefully when I get to the parts where he's more heavily involved I'll be able to write him better. *crosses fingers*
Previously on This Old Ficbit
It was odd being here, he thought, remembering the circumstances that led to his being hundreds of miles from Jiraiya, the only non-family family that he had and the first real home he’d ever lived in.
“Get it together, Naruto. This isn’t the worst thing to ever happen to you.” He choked down a laugh. No, it really wasn’t.
Then he got up in search of a bathroom.
There was one just off to the side, tucked back in the hallway between the living room and kitchen. It was tiny and cramped with floral patterned wall paper and what he’d heard of once before as being called ‘doilies,’ (but never having had seen them for himself, he was a little unsure) covering every surface-but it had a toilet that flushed when he flushed it and a sink that ran water both hot and cold when he turned the knobs so it was enough. He used the john, washed his hands and face and attempted to rinse the morning funk out of his mouth. He also made a mental note to see if he could drop by the general store they passed the evening before, to pick up a few things.
*
Deciding not to take the chance of waking up an irate Kakashi, Naruto skipped out on visiting the kitchen and the possibility of breakfast even though his stomach was grumbling and wandered outside.
It was hot, was the first thing he noticed. Hotter than the city, for sure, but that made sense since the city was a couple hours north of here.
It smelled different, too. Like animal shit. And dirt. And something else he couldn’t decipher underneath all that. The air smelled thick and heavy with all the heady scents piled on top of each other. He caught a whiff of some earthy aroma or another with every breath he inhaled.
It was funny, he thought. Being able to look out on the horizon and see... nothing. No buildings or skyscrapers or anything he was used to but acres and acres of trees and crops and flat stretches of land with only a few small farmhouses spread out in between. Gone were the crowds of people you could often find at any time of day milling about the streets in the city in droves. Gone were the familiar sounds (cars, dozens of voices, shouting, laughing, talking, living, the noise of the construction that was somehow always going on in a city) and sights (concrete and glass everywhere the eye could see, the shiny chrome of cars driving on cramped streets or parked like sardines in a can at a curb, the corner bodegas and food carts and the smells their images evoked), people of every culture and walk of life. Naruto loved it. So many different people to meet, so many different things to learn about them all. It had been up till now, one of the greatest pleasures in his life. And look where that got him.
He grunted and forced himself not to think about the situation that led up to his being exiled from his home. Instead, he tried to come up with a list of things that could actually be good about living here. In Buttfuck, Nowhere; the farmtown hell hole also known as Konoha.
Naruto rubbed his hands all over his face when he couldn’t come up with a single damn thing. He had a feeling it was gonna be a long day.
*
By the time he got to the fork in the road, Naruto was lost. After having waited around for an hour in the hopes that Kakashi might finally roll out of bed to no avail, he decided to go into town to buy his much needed necessities on his own. It didn’t take more than half an hour to walk from the house back to where he vaguely remembered the shops to be. Besides, it wasn’t like there was much out here in the first place, how hard could it be?
*
Pretty damn hard, it turns out.
Naruto must have taken a wrong turn through one of the million and one cornfields or something because he’d been walking for an hour and he definitely didn’t remember taking this dirt road when they’d come from the town the night before. Not that he could be entirely sure as it had been pretty dark... Naruto scratched the back of his head and grumbled under his breath. He tilted his head to one side and squinted in both directions down the seemingly, endlessly long dirt road but there wasn’t much to see, just more dirt and row upon row of leafy, green cornstalks. Dammit.
Deciding to head back to the farm house he’d stayed at the night before, Naruto turned around...
And ran face first into a wall, or rather, a broad chest, that he could’ve sworn hadn’t been there moments before.
He rebounded off the solid mass of flesh and bone much like a basketball would off the backboard of a hoop and landed flat on his ass in the dirt, staring up at... well, he didn’t know who. It was some guy who looked a year or two older than him, probably. He was a few inches taller than Naruto but pale - paler than Naruto would’ve thought it possible for a person to be out here in all this sunshine. He had black hair with some weirdo hairstyle that looked like the tail end of a duck but his face was a blank slate, devoid of all expression - like one of the robots he saw in that big blockbuster last spring, he thought idly - and he was carrying... a pitchfork? What the f-
“Who the hell are you?” The stranger said abruptly.
“Uh,” Naruto’s eyebrow rose half an inch. “How ‘bout a hand up first?” Naruto stuck his hand out for a lift. He was a bit weirded out by this guy who’d appeared out of nowhere but he tried to be cordial and gave the guy a winning smile anyway.
A muscle in the guy’s face twitched but he didn’t move otherwise. Naruto frowned and pushed himself up, wiping at the dirt on his hands and clothes.
“I said,” the guy looked annoyed and likely to start waving his pitchfork - pitchfork, oh my god, I’m in Farmville’s version of hell, Naruto thought - soon. “Who the hell are you?”
“Who the hell are you?” Naruto retorted and now he was irritated. Who the hell did this jerk think he was?
“I asked you first.”
“So? I’m not in the habit of giving my name out to asshole’s who knock me over and then don’t even bother to give me a hand up.”
The guy’s face got this real constipated look on it for a second and then he took a step forward into Naruto’s personal space. Naruto snorted, like this weirdo farm boy with a friggin’ pitchfork was gonna intimidate him. He’d really had enough of all this farm shit, to be honest; first, he’d been waiting for hours for that freak of a “guardian” to wake up so he could find out what he was gonna do next, and then he got lost in fucking corn jungle hell. Shit. Naruto didn’t have any patience left in him after the morning he had so if this jerkoff wanted an ass whupping, Naruto was definitely willing to oblige; but when he opened his mouth to say so he was interrupted by another, more familiar voice.
“Sasuke.” The guy, Sasuke apparently, backed off and looked behind them at Kakashi.
“This idiot with you?” Sasuke asked, and that just pissed Naruto right the hell off.
“Who the hell are you calling an idiot, asswipe?” Naruto shouted.
“Yep,” Kakashi replied succinctly.
Sasuke smirked and it was the first real expression Naruto’d seen on his face since he met him. “Babysitting, Kakashi? I’d have thought that was beneath you.”
“Fuck you,” Naruto spat at Sasuke even though both men were effectively ignoring him.
Kakashi frowned but didn’t reply. He turned to Naruto instead.
“Naruto.”
“What?” Naruto answered a little more loudly than he intended but he was still too pissed at this mentally defective farm boy to be polite.
“Is there a reason you’re out here in the middle of Sasuke’s family’s cornfields?”
“What?” The unexpected question jerked him out of a daydream of dunking Sasuke’s head in a bucket of tar and feathering his head like the duck’s ass it really was. “Oh. I need to pick up some stuff. I was trying to get back to town but I got turned around in this goddamn corn-infested hell hole and for fuck’s sake. Would it kill you guys to put up a road sign or two? Trying to navigate around here is worse than the time I got stuck in the suburbs after a house party. I swear, they build those places like a maze on purpose but at least they had signs and shit.” Naruto trailed off when he noticed both men looking at him with raised eyebrows. “And then, uh, this asshole showed up,” Naruto ignored the glare. ”And that’s when you came in.”
Kakashi tilted his head and looked down at him for a long, silent moment. Then he turned around in the opposite direction and without another word started walking away.
“Hey, hey!” Naruto shouted, running to follow and attempt to catch up with the man’s long strides, completely ignoring the grumble that came from the man they were leaving behind.
A/N: The city Naruto considers home is based on New York City. It's really the only big city that I have knowledge of first hand and I hope I was able to pare it down to its most basic so someone who's never been to a large urban city could get the overall impression of Big City and not just NYC. The farm bits... haa~ Well, you've seen Smallville, haven't you? Smallville (though not a show I really watched past Season 1) has impressed upon me the need for cornfields on every country farm. I cannae help it. I'm sorry. *is shamed* Also, regarding the age discrepancy between Naruto and Sasuke. It's not a mistake, I put it there intentionally. You'll see why eventually and it's not a big deal, anyway but... FYI. :P And Sasuke's voice. I'm not sure I nailed it (in fact, I'm pretty sure I didn't but I'm okay with that) but I tried. Hopefully when I get to the parts where he's more heavily involved I'll be able to write him better. *crosses fingers*