And:Reboot, editted
At a reader's request, I have finally created an editted version of both And:Reboot and its sequel, Stand by (me). By editted, I mean less explicit, which means I really only had to tinker with Part 3 of both of these stories. However, the stories have also gone through a sort of makeover in that I cleaned up the numerous inconsistencies, spelling and grammatical errors that still resided within these two fics. Ka-ching.
I don't know why, but it took a hilarious amount of time. I was like, this'll be easy; I'm just cutting out huge chunks of smex. But it wasn't easy. I had to sit there and think about what needed to stay, what had to go, and the questionable stuff that just might go either way. 'Twas interesting, shall we say.
In the end, the entire Part 3 wouldn't fit within one post, so this is only the explicit scene onward (it's explained in further detail in the actual Part 3 on FF.net.)
Either way, here they are!
And:Reboot - Part III
//
I was fooling myself if I said I didn’t expect what was coming the moment we stepped foot into the apartment. We had said nothing on the way over, but we walked much closer together than was necessary. Our shoulders and arms and hands continually brushed, and I knew Naruto was aware of it, because he had a strange look on his face, like he was trying to stop himself from doing something he might regret.
Naruto unlocked the door, walking in behind me, and when I raised my hand to turn on the light in the front room, he placed his hand over mine, flattening it simply against the wall. I turned to ask him what was up, and he pushed me to very same wall he had my hand against, so that I could only see what was over his shoulder, and even that was difficult to see in the dark.
Naruto’s breath was warm and measured, but it didn’t smell of alcohol, so I couldn’t attribute his actions to that. I could only figure that he was finally taking me up on his conquest of curiosity. But that was fine with me. I was tired of beating myself up over it all, and maybe I wanted it, too. I think there was a part of me that always wondered what it would be like to be with Naruto like this.
I turned toward him slightly to ask him a question, and my lips brushed his neck a bit causing me to forget whatever I was going to say for the second time that night. I felt him uncover my hand, bringing both of his own up and over my back, before sliding them back down. Though there was a layer of fabric between his hands and skin, the gesture was still enough to make me go a little weak in the knees. I gripped my hands on his hips, and he pulled back to look with a scared look in his eyes. As I turned my head to stare back at him, I realized it wasn’t so much fear as it was a silent entreaty to go further. I still couldn’t seem to bring myself to actually say anything, so I simply reached down and traced a random trail toward his pants. He might’ve smirked a bit, I couldn’t be sure, but he pulled my hands away, pinning them to the wall with a gentle show of force, before he slowly unbuttoned the three buttons of my shirt-well, his shirt, but I forgot the details during the actual exchange.
It was weird, because we remained silent during the beginning stages of it all, but I supposed that that was because people usually kissed during the undressing parts, and what we were doing was based simply on the act and not the emotions, so lip-contact was unnecessary. That didn’t stop it from being weird, though.
When Naruto pulled my shirt off, discarding it somewhere on the floor, I could tell it was probably weird seeing an upper body without breasts, like he didn’t quite know what to do with it. This was more of an experience for him than me, so I let him just stare at me for a while, despite the fact that it made me uncomfortable. I thought he was about to turn tail and run, when he placed his hands on my stomach and slowly dragged them upwards.
Naruto brought his left hand to rest on my shoulder, while his right pressed gently across my sternum. Even in the dark, I could tell he was smiling. “Your heart’s beating fast,” he whispered gently, and suddenly his eyes were that beautiful, moonlit cobalt. Taking one of my hands, he slipped it under his shirt, sliding it up his bare skin to rest in roughly the same area. The rhythmic thump-thump of his heart beat on beneath my palm, even faster than my own quickened pace. “Mine, too,” he told me, voice almost an inaudible whisper.
I wanted to tell him he was stupid, but again the words just wouldn’t come out. Removing my hand from his shirt, I took hold of his hand and pulled him over to the couch. I really didn’t know how much longer I would be able to remain standing. Would Naruto really go all the way? When he took a seat beside me on the couch, and a small uncomfortable silence fell between us-each refusing to look in the other’s eyes, I really thought it was over. And then Naruto leaned over and kissed me.
I can’t say that I’ve ever been more caught off guard by something. Naruto leaned toward me a little, putting his hand on one side of my face and tilting it toward his, and then his lips were on mine, pressing with the smallest amount of force before he pulled back to look me in the eyes. I’m sure I must’ve looked a little shocked, a little confused by what he was doing. It was the first time he had kissed me in a moment of lucidity. This was not supposed to be part of the plan, so what was he trying to accomplish with it?
Naruto put his hand on the side of my face, thumb gently caressing my cheek. “Maybe I have some things I don’t want to regret either.”
A cross between a frown and look of uncertainty passed over my face, but Naruto silenced anything I might’ve said with another kiss. The first few were simple presses of our mouths together, nothing more, as we sat together in silence on the small couch. Then, by degrees, and very gradually, the kiss deepened. Naruto was the one who did it, slowly coaxing my mouth open with his tongue, and I realized that this was Naruto’s second French kiss with a another boy. But my gender did not seem to hinder him. I didn’t even fight as I usually did to take the lead; I didn’t even care. I didn’t even like kissing, but I could’ve kissed him forever. There wasn’t even anything overtly erotic about it. There was just something about the way his tongue moved in and out of my mouth that nearly turned me to putty in his hands. I clutched feebly at his shirt, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to grip it, and Naruto pulled my hands away again, leaning me back onto the seat of the couch.
I can’t explain how unreal it all felt. His slow and steady kiss seemed to make time stop, and one of his hands was still on the side of my face, while the other was raking down my bare side and trying to find a place to rest. It just didn’t seem like it could be happening, a kind of daydream blurring the lines between true and false.
When his fingers brushed my belt buckle, it became real. The clink of his fingernails of cold steel seemed to draw us both harshly from the simplicity of kissing and into some bigger realm of possibility and reality. Naruto pulled back, looking hesitantly at me again, and I just stared at him before saying, “You don’t have to,” and Naruto told me, “I want to,” and suddenly I was pulling his mouth back down to mine. I think I threw caution to the wind in that moment, and so did he, because suddenly he was kissing me, and I felt his fingers unfastening my belt and undoing my fly, and then his tongue was in my mouth again nearly driving me insane, and the kiss was suddenly becoming more fast-paced, more passionate, more urgent, and suddenly so was my heartbeat as Naruto finally undid my pants and slipped his hand under my boxers and onto bare skin.
“Is this…okay?” he asked, voice nearly a whisper. There was enough of a waver in it for me to know he was just as scared as I was about all this. All I could do was nod my head against him.
“God,” he said, not so much to a particular god, but more out of a kind of awe. “I think-well, I don’t know what to think.” His smile was bittersweet. And then I was really puzzled when my leg brushed against his pants. My biggest concern about the whole sleeping with a guy thing was how Naruto would bring himself to actually be turned on enough to do it. In my mind, the thought of sleeping with a girl was a serious turn-off, so I could only imagine that for Naruto, sleeping with a guy would be the same. But he was aroused. Somehow, he had been sexually stimulated by all this, but I could only conjecture that it was the foreign element of it all, the unknown.
Looking at him then, he really was one of the most important people to me in the world. I don’t know what that said about me, because looking at the two of us, well, one would only have to look to see that we probably wouldn’t be compatible. And we probably wouldn’t have, were it not for Naruto. He could be really stupid, and clueless, and even childish, but he didn’t give up on me. He never once gave up on me.
I’ve had sex before. A choice few times, things led to other things, and before I knew it, I was either in someone else, or they were in me. But with Naruto, it felt like I was making love for the first time. There were a million reasons why; it was in the way he held me, the way he spoke to me through it all, the way his hands seemed to be all over me. I felt him moving, felt his thumping heart against my back, and that mounting tension within myself that seemed to build continuously through it all. There was also that lingering fear in the back of my mind, that ever-present caution sign that told me to be careful, because honestly, what in the world were we doing? There was no way we wouldn’t regret this later. But for now, I was content.
When I came, I bit my lip so hard it almost bled. Naruto would not stop shaking. For a long time, he just lay on top of me, face buried in the nape of my neck and arm curled around one of my shoulders. I thought he was asleep, until he slowly disengaged his body from mine, eliciting a drowsy moan from the back of my throat. The moonlight was spilling in through the blinds, throwing vertical spears of light across the room, and I would’ve been content to sleep face down on the couch had not Naruto dragged me around, curling my arms around his back. I mumbled something, some weak protest, but he kissed me again, and I wondered what he was doing, because he had already slept with me and got what he had wanted. But the kiss was nice, a fitting end to it all, and when his lips left mine, and he put a hand into my hair, gently massaging my scalp and lulling me toward sleep as he pressed another kiss to the top of my head, all I really wondered was just how long I had been in love with him and not known it.
That was my biggest regret.
//
It’s weird to realize you’re in love with someone, or at least to finally accept it. When I woke up the next morning, a vertical spear of gold shining directly into my eyes, that was the first thing I could think about. But I didn’t feel any different, didn’t feel as if a large weight had been taken off my shoulders, didn’t feel like I was lifted up to where I belonged, as some weird song proclaimed; I just felt blasé, because if I wasn’t blasé about it, I knew I would only feel sad, because I had gone and fallen in love with someone who was fated to forget all about me. How does someone cope with that? How long does it take to erase someone from your heart willingly? It just seemed so cruel that it took so long to get to know someone, but only an instant to forget them. Maybe Naruto would wake up and have already forgotten. Just how long would I remain a part of his memories, before I, too, faded away?
Naruto’s naked body sprawled on top of mine was the second thing I thought about. His ear was pressed to my chest, but his face was turned a little so that the corner of his mouth just barely touched my skin. I was curious as to what time it was, but at the same time, I didn’t care. It was Sunday, so I had the day to both think about how stupid we both were for having done what we had done, and how on earth I would finish my homework before tomorrow. But for now, Naruto was on top of me, and I was beneath him, and I was all right with that.
It wasn’t long before Naruto woke up, stretching a little until his hands registered that they were touching someone else’s skin, and that alone seemed to snap him to full awareness. He looked up at me, and I thought he was about to freak out, but he just smiled and cross his arms on my chest, tilting his head a little to the side as our eyes locked.
“You could have woken me up,” he said, sleepiness still in his voice and in his lidded eyes and in his unkempt hair, all these elements molding together and making him an extremely attractive person to wake up next to. “Were you up long?”
“Not long,” I looked away.
“How do you feel?”
“Fine,” I said quietly. A little angrier, I faced him and said, “I’m not a blushing virgin, you know.”
He laughed, the rumble transferring onto my chest, and when he sat up, I was cold. “I know, I know,” he said. Picking up his button-up from the floor, it took everything in me not to protest when he put it on me, fastening a few buttons in front. “Believe it or not, I am.”
“What?”
“Well, was,” he continued. “Sex is sex, no matter who it’s with, so I’m not a virgin anymore.” I think I stared at him for a good sixty seconds before he pinched my cheek and smiled. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Last night.”
And I was mad again. “Did you get what you wanted?”
He looked shocked for a minute, before that kind smile was on his face again. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m glad my first time was with you. Weirdly enough, I can’t think of a better person who I would’ve rather been with.”
I think my face fought between any number of expressions before settling with one of subtle surrender. “Me either,” I told him, voice quiet as my eyes left his face, and suddenly his hand was on my cheek again, and his mouth was slanting over my own as he pressed our lips together. It felt like goodbye. When Naruto pulled back, his fingers were resting on my neck, and his thumb was gently smoothing over my cheek. There was a really big lump in my throat that I kept trying to swallow, but it just kept coming back, and I felt that stupid prickling behind my eyes, and I really could’ve slapped Naruto in that moment.
“That’s a more proper thanks, don’t you think?” Naruto inquired, messing up my hair and smiling at me. And then I watched as his smile faded, until it was nothing, and he was no longer looking at me, and the room may as well have been cast in darkness. “I don’t know…exactly how I feel about you,” he said quietly. “I know I love you as a friend…I’ll always love you like that, but I don’t know if it’s something more.” He looked at me, and the sadness in his eyes was overwhelming. “I know it’s unfair to tell you this,” he smiled a little here, “especially considering the circumstances, but I think it’s only fair that you know, maybe, why I did what I did. I don’t even really know.” Resting his hands on my shoulders, he pulled me against his chest. “Just know that you’re one of the most important people in my life. I’m so happy I met you.”
I don’t know how I prompted myself to speak, but when I did, my voice was shaking, and it only made the lump in my throat bigger. “Why are you doing this?”
“Better now when I can…than never. I’m going to start forgetting a lot here soon, if what the doctors said is right. I just don’t want to have any regrets.” He let out a soft laugh that made me want to cry. “Especially not about this particular crazy redhead I know.” That was just like him, trying to find the good in a situation that could only be described as bad, trying to make sure that others didn’t have to hurt…at least not as much as he had. “Just know that I love you, okay?”
“Yeah,” I managed to say.
After a moment, Naruto was laughing quietly again and rubbing me on the back. “What about me,” he faked a pout. “You love me too, right?”
“Yeah.” The tears started rolling down my cheeks again and I couldn’t stop them. “I love you.”
I don’t know that Naruto knew the full extent of what I was saying when I told him that, but that was all right. Maybe he knew that if we talked about it, it would just make it more difficult for the both of us. But that was fine with me. Thinking back, that was the last day that Naruto was so much himself, laughing and teasing me all day, and actually coercing me to put my homework off so we could just spend time together. It was like any other normal day, but it was also one of the best days of my life, because it would be seven months later, to the day, that Naruto would forget about me. But we had those seven months.
There’s not really much to say about the time that passed between that moment and the last time I saw him. For the most part, things were the same, and some days were better than others, but other days, I could see Naruto struggling to remember things, like how to answer a complex math problem or where the light switch was. It was tough. I started driving him to school because I was worried he might forget how to walk, but the doctors told me that was a long way off. I just wanted to be careful. He was still pretty much himself when the year ended and we said our goodbyes to head home for the summer, but I found myself calling him at least once a week, if he didn’t call me first, and we were sure to stay in touch. He always told me he was all right, but I knew better, and I’m pretty sure he knew I knew, too.
When I saw him at the start of our senior year, he told me he probably wouldn’t be able to finish off the term. I just looked at him like he was speaking gibberish and told him I would help him as much as I could, and that things would be fine. He just smiled. He stopped making breakfast on Saturday mornings, and that was tough, because I knew he had forgotten that he had always done it. Likewise, he didn’t meet me at the library on Tuesdays and Thursdays anymore, but I told myself this was all right because I would just work with him in the apartment. I told myself a lot of things during those seven months. Most of them were lies, but they made it possible for me to face each new day with confidence. Still, some days I would just be really mad, and other times, most often than not, I would be irrevocably sad.
During one of these moments, Naruto looked at me and said reassuringly, “It’s not like I’m dying.”
“You may as well be,” was all I said in reply.
I really felt like he was dying, except it was worse, because he was dying right in front of my eyes, everyday, losing a small part of himself. Losing me. Sometimes I was just mean, and I knew it was wrong, but I would occasionally ask him about a moment he couldn’t remember, and he would tell me he didn’t know what I was talking about, so I would just keep asking and asking until finally he grew upset and left the room. I don’t know why I did it. Maybe I felt that if I asked him enough, he really would remember.
One of the worst days was the day he actually looked at Iruka, his foster father, whom I knew he had cared very deeply for, and asked him who he was. I was there when it happened, and Iruka could only look at me with a small smile, telling me quietly, “Take care of him for me,” before he left with a pained expression.
But if he could forget about Iruka, I knew it was only a matter of time before he forgot about me. And I was right. The doctors, whom I had come to know quite well during our senior year, took me aside during one of Naruto’s checkups and told me that Naruto was holding onto me. I didn’t know what they meant until they informed me that Naruto was subconsciously holding onto memories of me, something that rarely happened, but it was causing him to lose memories of other people and things faster, thus tiring him and his brain out. They seemed to look at me very slowly, as if unsure of what to say.
“So what do you want me to do?” I flatly asked, crossing my arms and trying not to glare too openly.
One of the lady doctors put her hand on my shoulder and smiled compassionately. “Try and help him to forget.”
Why did it have to be me that kept the memories? Why did it have to be me that made him forget? I just couldn’t understand it; I just couldn’t understand anything anymore. But I did what I could, because I didn’t want Naruto to hurt anymore than he already was. We were slowly drifting apart anyways. I had Sakura start alternating with me to watch him when, at one point, he stopped going to school; he just couldn’t keep up, and I started seeing him less and less, but when I did, he would always get really excited and call my name and ask why I was avoiding him. I didn’t know what to say. I just told him he was stupid and didn’t know anything. I really was a horrible person.
There was a particular day when I was meeting with Naruto for the day and I could tell by the look in his eyes that it took a particularly long time to remember just who I was. Sakura had called me two weeks prior to that moment, crying and telling me that Naruto had finally forgotten her. What do you tell someone in a moment like that?
Naruto and I hung out for the day, but I mostly did homework while he walked around the apartment trying to find out just why it seemed so familiar, especially the couch.
“Stop messing around,” I would say every once in a while, and he would flinch and take a seat beside me, before he was soon standing and looking at something else again. That night, as I lay in my bed, and Naruto lay in his just like old times, I stared at the ceiling with my arms crossed loosely over my stomach.
“Naruto?” I said quietly, uncertain if he was still awake or not.
“What?” he replied, and I pictured him lying almost exactly like I was, except with his arms behind his head. When I turned to look at him, he was.
“Don’t forget about me.”
“I won’t,” Naruto yawned out, stretching and shifting onto his side.
“You will.”
He forgot about me the next day. When he woke up, the look in his eyes was more than I could take, so I left the apartment and called Sakura to come and get him. And I never saw him again for quite a while. I talked to a few people as time went by, only to check up on him, but they all said he was doing just fine. He was a fighter, and he fought the condition to the very end when he finally had to be put on a ventilator to help him to breathe. I couldn’t have seen him like that anyway. I would’ve broken down. The last time I spoke to anyone, it was Sakura, and she was telling me that he was expected to make a fast recovery and would be in mental rehabilitation soon. I told her that was great.
By that time, his smile was a distant memory.
//
My footsteps seemed uncertain and slow as they fell quietly across the white linoleum of the hospital. I had been about to head to a seminar when I received a call from Sakura, asking me to come and drop by the hospital to see Naruto. I had nearly dropped the phone, my fingers trembling as I asked her why, but she just said it was a surprise and wouldn’t tell me.
I was about halfway to his room, when I pivoted and detoured into the nearest men’s bathroom. Thankfully, there was no one else in the room, and I braced my hands on the sink, taking a few deep breaths and looking into the mirror. I looked relatively the same; I was still young. It had only been three years, so there was no way Naruto would remember me, but for some reason, I still wanted to make sure I looked all right. Twenty-three saw me with only a few subtle differences; my hair was a little longer, brick-red bangs falling into my eyes; I was a little taller, but just a little-maybe I had grown a fourth of an inch; and my eyes probably held the biggest difference-still blue-green, but with an unalterable sadness lingering in their depths. It was cliché, but true. I had never been able to get rid of it, never even known it was there, until people around me started asking if there had been a death in the family or some other unfortunate event that I couldn’t get off my mind. My brother and sister had been especially concerned, but every time they asked, I told them I was fine. I was still young, or so people told me, working on my Master’s and soon to start my Doctorate, but I felt much older than twenty-three. I couldn’t explain it. I just felt tired all the time, like I had already seen the best years of my life and was simply waiting for death. I know it sounds horrible, but that’s how it was. As soon as I ensured that my sneakers, jeans, and t-shirt would suffice, I took one final breath and stepped back into the hall.
I heard Naruto before I actually saw him. His laugh spilled out into the hallway, nearly making my heart stop. When I got to the door, I could only stand there with a hand on the frame, watching him as he joked and used his natural charm on one of the female nurses in the room. He didn’t look very different. For a moment, it was like nothing had changed.
“Hey!” I was torn from my small moment of awe as Sakura came up from behind me, tapping me on the shoulder and flashing a kind smile. “Long time no see.” I nodded at her, and she looked toward Naruto with a skeptical grin. “Some people never change.”
“Yeah,” was all I could muster.
“He still doesn’t remember me,” she said, voice tinted with a hint of sadness, “or anyone for that matter, but we’re working on it. He might not, but we’re remaining positive. He really is recovering fast.”
“I see.”
“Don’t I know you?”
I broke away from Sakura, snapping my face toward Naruto as if he had highly insulted me. He was looking right at me, tilting his head a little and blinking his blue eyes with the same expression he wore when we first met. I didn’t know what to say. My throat seemed to close, and words wouldn’t come out.
He stood, and the nurses moved away to allow him to walk toward me, looking at him and then each other with a curious confusion. He was still just a little taller than me as he stopped right in front of me. I felt myself wanting to move toward him, so I was sure to brace my hand even tighter on the frame.
“Gaara…right?” he asked, furrowing his brows slightly as I watched him struggle with the right expression.
I’m pretty sure my eyes widened a little, and I looked at Sakura, but she just shrugged, clearly at a loss herself, so all I could do was look back at Naruto. “Right,” I replied, finally bringing myself to speak. “…How did you know?”
He laughed and rubbed my shoulder, looking like he didn’t quite know why he was doing it either, but simply felt like it was the right thing to do. “You must’ve made a good impression.”
I think Sakura was crying, but if she was, she did a good job of hiding it. She motioned to the nurses, who shuffled out of the room, and before Sakura left, she told me she’d give us some time alone. I thanked her, and she was gone, the door closing as I took a step away from it, bringing me closer to Naruto.
When I glanced back at him, he had his hand extended and a sheepish grin on his face. “I know you already know me, but this seems like the right thing to do. So, I’m Naruto. It’s really nice to meet you.”
After looking at it blankly for a moment, I took his hand and shook it. “I’m Gaara.” Loosening my hand, I expected him to let it go, but he held onto it for a few more seconds, and when I looked up at him, he was looking down at me with an unreadable expression, like he was trying to remember something that he probably should’ve known. With a nervous chuckle, he released my hand, and I brought it to rest on my arm as I waited for the memory of his fingertips to fade.
“Sorry about that,” he told me in earnest, motioning toward the two chairs in the room. “Where should we begin?”
When it came down to it, there were two benefits to what happened to Naruto. I was able to face reality and do the things I might never have been able to do under different circumstances. And now, I would be able to start over with him without making any mistakes. It was bittersweet, but it was all we had.
“Let’s start from the beginning.”
I’ll do everything right, this time.
//And:Restart
Stand by (me) - Part III
(...email me for the editted version of Part 3, and I'll send it to you directly. Even on it's own, it's too large to post. Thanks!)