Attraction: Ch 18: 9/10ths of the Law Is...
Attraction: Chapter 18: 9/10ths of the Law Is
SasuNaru, NaruGaara, slight KakaSasu, yaoi. Naruto embraces his demonic roots, and Sasuke's his 1 enemy and dream. Blood, DARK, angst, lime, non-fluff introspective. And a bag of chips. Push something too hard, and it will break or bite back. The question that plagues all successful megalomaniac comic-book villains: after you’ve destroyed the world (and then some) what do you do next?
Earlier chapters available here and here.
A/N: Chapter dedicated to Kotori for holding on and always giving more of the surprises and shocks that make up life. Much thanks to Felis for being my first beta, strange, and vastly angelically reliable in times of great carnage and school work.
To the Readers who’ve stayed with me this far, I don’t know how you do it, and we’re finally getting plot; yay! Plot again! Yay!
Nine tenths of the law is…
***
Attraction
By gelfling
gelfling8604@yahoo.com
//Thoughts//
::Invading thoughts::
|| Demon Thoughts ||
***
Do you mind that I think I still love you?
--All right, Five for Fighting
Reality is an illusion created by a lack of alcohol.
--NF Simpson.
Love is the answer - but while you're waiting for the answer sex raises some pretty good questions."
--Woody Allen.
***
Kakashi had never been raped before. Still, events had gone, more or less, as he’d expected. He was mildly annoyed and in so much pain he barely felt it--he had put himself safely beyond physical and psychological pain. He would feel the full impact later, when his mind couldn’t contain it anymore.
//If I live that long. Not impossible.//
Prudent even near death, his mind had carefully put away words like ‘file’, ‘screwdriver’, ‘rusty saw’, and ‘bone cutter’ in a locked storeroom, along with others such as ‘violation’, ‘vomit’, and ‘helpless’. Everything he was capable of feeling and thinking was carefully censored before being published for him to think or feel. The issue of his immobility was never even acknowledged--it was no more significant than the tiny skin mites in his eyebrows.
Inside the cool and fragile darkness behind his eyes, his mind observed events--the shuddering on his body was slowing down.
Kakashi waited it out.
Pressure fell on his chest and shoulders--hot air gasped past his ear. Though disinterested, he realized someone was trying to simultaneously cough, choke, and curse.
Back home, in the village, he had had a neighbor who’s stove pinged quite loudly late at night for no real reason, not being exactly disruptive but a little like water torture. It was a constant, arrhythmic sound that got on his nerves. The sounds in his ear were rather like that. Annoying, and telling him that he was alive and it wasn’t over yet.
The temperature dropped in specific areas--the man was getting off him, looking at him. He felt pressure through his headband, over the Leaf insignia. Another cough, wet-sounding and rough.
“Told you.”
As one might observe a large wad of paper clogging up the plumbing to the point where water would soon be exploding everywhere, Kakashi observed his ribcage touching the man’s abdomen as he breathed. Clumsily, wet fingers prodded the pulse on his neck. Kakashi noted his heartbeat was shallower than normal, slower. Of course it had been through a lot, it was only to be expected. He wasn’t worried. If he died, he wouldn’t have much of anything to worry about (the dead never did), and if he didn’t die, he’d be able to do something about it.
He lost consciousness for a while, but suddenly it felt like something warm was being poured down his throat. Something warm and thin, and even on the brink of unconsciousness, he still felt a tendril of dread grip him.
//Ah shit…and here I thought it couldn’t get any worse. Must be getting soft.//
It was days later, before he woke up. There was a woman...pottering about... poking...
Kakashi grabbed her wrist before his eyes even snapped open. She gave a muffled shriek and tried to pull her arm away, and after he got his bearings he let go.
He was in a hospital. She was a nurse. It could have been the dubious hat, the overabundance of white, or the smell that cued him in, but it was mostly the speakers proclaiming: “--to Pediatrics. Doctor Wakana to Pediatrics.”
Before she had a moment to recover herself, he snapped every ounce of former Anbu captain command into his voice.
“What happened to my hair?”
She didn’t even question him. “Nothing sir! Still brown sir!”
He blinked, realizing someone had bandaged his left eye. Brown? Did he have brown? Then he made his body startle and relax, slipping into something less threatening. “I--I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he continued, forcing nearly-real remorse into his voice. “Don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.” For good measure he looked away, adding it on a little thick, “That was inexcusable.”
She seemed to hesitate, then gave him a nervous grin. “It’s--it’s all right sir. The--the drugs take people like that sometimes, sir. But you shouldn’t…um…” she hesitated, looking extremely uncertain and unnerved. He couldn’t look that awful, could he? “I’m--I’m Sayaka Omiro, by the way.”
He smiled weakly in response, trying not to react, not to panic to the fact that his face was unbandaged and open for anyone to see that felt he felt sick. He wanted his mask-it felt wrong without it, he hadn’t felt this naked in public before even when he had been naked in public; even then his face had been covered. “Pleasure to meet you. Hope I haven’t been too much trouble for you all this time.”
“Well…you should still be sleeping--the drugs aren’t supposed to wear off for another two days and your body should still be tired to even be...” She looked uncertain again, perplexed and more than a little worried. Kakashi tensed. “I’m gonna get the--”
He grabbed her sleeve.
“Wait... Please--wait, before you go off and do that could you help me with something?” He would have noticed if the Sharingan eye was missing. It wasn’t. He alive-someone wanted him alive-and for the moment he had some power and mobility. He was alive at the moment, but considering what he remembered happening he might not be alive very much longer.
“I--I’ve got to--listen I don’t know how long I’ve been out but…” he lowered his voice.
She came closer voluntarily. “What?”
He repeated himself.
“Oh sure,” She replied, cheerily. “That’s no problem, if you could just wait while--”
“Now ma’am--I’m sorry but waiting’s out of the question.”
She hesitated again. “But the doctors said you shouldn’t--”
Kakashi wasn’t much good at looking pathetic--useless yes, non-threatening definitely, but not pathetic. He tried. It kind of worked. She looked more suspicious than unnerved now, but at least she went to grab him a wheelchair. He didn’t have to fake the clumsiness, at least, and waited until they were down the hall before asking, “How did the surgery go?”
“Well sir, you were a bit touch and go for a minute, but they managed to heal the whole length without problem. I understand some of it had to be replaced artificially, but I’m afraid I don’t know very much; it’d be better to ask your doctors. You should be walking in no time.”
He didn’t have to fake or mask the relief that came either. He sighed, “That’s good.”
She smiled weakly.
“You really should be still sleeping though…” she trailed off and Kakashi prayed she wouldn’t figure out what he had. There had been the sensation of something being poured down his throat…he’d be angry about it later. Right now, he just wanted to piss and get something cool to drink and find somewhere safe to sleep. Then, when he felt better, he’d get angry and unhappy, but at the moment he felt absolutely fine; even a little relieved. He was, no matter what, still alive.
“And I am sorry about your loss sir, but it can only be expected in your line of work. My son’s got a poster of you in his room--he admires you very much, sir.”
Kakashi didn’t answer-he even stopped counting the amount of times she’d called him ‘sir’, and this didn’t look like a military hospital. He knew enough. Not where he was, but enough. The ‘what’ at least, if not the ‘why’ and ‘how’. He let her wheel him inside the restroom, demanded she wait outside with the door unlocked, relieved himself, flushed, and left the water taps running while he slipped out the window.
His leg did feel…lighter.
Two weeks later, the famous stunt devil Akira Tsuyumaku received a hospital bill for 2, 600, for injuries he didn’t have. He hadn’t panicked until he read the currency wasn’t Yen.
Like a celebrated writer, Kakashi turned up at his own funeral two hours late and uninvited. The girls (and Lee and Iruka) had fussed over him all up the stairs--he caught Hinata studying him with the Byakugan, veins swelling around her eyes. She blushed.
“Alloplastic,” he said simply. “And some allografts on the side. Don’t ask me about it, ask a doctor. Sasuke back?”
Silence.
“Everyone still alive?”
“Yes,” said Iruka.
He opened the door and fell, fully dressed, onto his bed.
He had only planned on being away a day, two days on the outside. Instead it had nearly been four weeks and Neji and Shikamaru were still out looking for him. His outstanding injuries that the hospital hadn’t attended to were healing at a faster rate than normal; it normally took at least six weeks to heal a broken leg, especially to the extent his bones had been shattered. He wondered how the Sharingan worked now.
He did wonder what it meant. He knew how it happened, but he didn’t know why. Demons never gave anything away-there was always a price in there, somewhere, and it was always too much. It was just a question of what.
Sometimes, after showering or just taking a run to test his new leg, he scratched at his neck. He was almost sure he knew what had been poured down his throat, but he couldn’t figure out why. The mystery nagged at him almost as badly as the scar on his neck.
***
Kakashi knew some people had jobs that didn’t risk their lives everyday-jobs where the competition wasn’t so fierce that ‘unemployment’ was synonymous with ‘funeral’. He knew there were some jobs where all you did was write and add up, moving with the world instead of outside of it, on the shadowed periphery.
He had no idea how they could stand it. It sounded so…boring. He couldn’t even imagine it. His sense of misdirection, of always feeling the world spinning out of control under him and falling to pieces had become so everyday he relied on it. It was when things weren’t weird, weren’t fatally dangerous, that he started to feel on edge.
By silent mutinous agreement of his subordinates, he wasn’t allowed more than five yards away from the inn-base without escort. Since other people were running around doing the work for him, he couldn’t complain too much, but he still felt…uneasy. Most of the bone in his leg had been replaced with a lightweight metal, almost all of the lower half. It felt different-lighter and heavier at the same time, and far too fragile, like a strong gust of wind would shatter it like a matchstick house.
Most of it was his imagination, of course. But still…
Admittedly, Kakashi didn’t know much about the demon psyche; the real demons, the monsters of old, not the weak little closet monsters you got today. The real demons, the nine monsters…were rare. Rare, and more a force of nature than an individual creature, and he had no idea how they thought, how they felt; it made them hard to predict, to fight.
He knew about humans though. He knew about kids.
He would come back. It was a tiresome, annoying fact, but it was a fact Kakashi would gamble his whole remaining collection of Come Come Paradise on. He still wasn’t sure why he had been left alive, why he’d been brutalized and not killed, not locked up in some stinking cellar. He had either insulted or intrigued the monster-either way, Gaara would come back. Or something would come back, and it would probably look like Gaara.
A week passed since he returned to the inn-base, walking in on his own funeral uninvited, and nothing happened. Hinata hovered over him like a butterfly, and he found himself hanging around Iruka for the companionable silences, the impersonal friendliness, which meant by default hanging around Lee who reminded him so much of Gai in so many little ways, from the way he frowned to strange straightforward phrases that would’ve sounded insincere coming from anyone else, that it felt like going back in time 20 years. He liked Lee; it was impossible not to.
His visitor came, and he only gave Kakashi a brief, blank glance before trooping up the stairs. Ino frowned at the staircase while Kakashi leaned against the wall, warming his hands with a cup of tea Hinata had drugged to make him sleep more. He didn’t plan on drinking it. Still, he was touched by her concern and silently congratulated the subtlety.
“What’s his problem?” she asked the world in general, sounding a lot sharper and mature than the girl she had been, yo-yoing from diet to diet where the only gain she intended to make was someone else’s approval.
Kakashi shrugged, but held out a hand when she attempted to follow Sasuke up the stairs.
“Let him be,” he said quietly. For although he would normally encourage a little sexual innuendo on Sasuke’s part, a little more social intercourse of any kind, something didn’t smell right. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong-he would’ve felt better if Sasuke had come back wounded, because then he could’ve seen what had gone wrong. Something was wrong-horribly terribly wrong.
“He’s all right,” he lied with a faint smile, “He’s just tired.”
Sasuke stayed in his own room that night, not even coming out for dinner, but he didn’t sleep. Kakashi kept watch, not entirely sure who he was watching for-Naruto, Red, or Sasuke. Someone. One of them.
He almost felt relief when the smell of blood woke him up, deep one night, long before the twitching fingers against his wrist did.
After a while, after many years doing the same job. Murder became mundane-as everyday as lice or garbage, as the bed sheet pressing into his shoulder, the pillow cupping his cheek. It never became less important, never became inconsequential, because if you thought about it that way you went insane, but it did lose its shock-factor, after the first 40 or so.
Kakashi opened his good eye less than a slit, knowing from the weight, sound, and smell that there was a body lying next to him, one that stank of blood and wasn’t dead yet, still moving and twitching. He could hear the breathing-a wet sick sound. It was still alive, but badly hurt.
A trumpet heralded the announcer, the organ began playing the wedding march for the bride’s entrance, and the killer’s equivalent of a greeting card went off next to his face with a wet splattering sound with brittle boned acoustics.
Kakashi blinked, still hearing the sound of a throat been crushed. In his mind, something shifted, and it was as if someone had poured cold liquid over his brain, possibly the same liquid that had gone down his throat, enveloping his thoughts protectively and shutting down his emotions that would be useless at the time. Then he sat up awkwardly with a loud sigh and turned the light on, wiping his face.
“I hope this is important,” he said, half sincerely annoyed and half tired. “You took your time getting back to me.”
Gaara’s body sat neatly in a chair before him, eyes hidden by the sunglasses in dark tatty clothes, frayed red hair brushing his shoulders. It looked weak-too pale and bony. He was losing control, and the demon possessing him was running him ragged. Kakashi found himself reviewing what he knew of exorcism, and at the same time wondering if the kid could even still speak anymore. Possibly not-if the body looked this bad, then the mind inside was probably worse.
“You owe me,” said the thing with Gaara’s mouth. “You hunted me and I let you live. You owe me your life.”
“I have a job for you. I want you to kill not only the human body, but the demon within it.”
“This is the payment for your life. If you fail, I will kill you and I won’t stop with this city. Your subordinates will die.”
“What if I refuse?” Kakashi asked, for the look of things. It might be useless information, but it was always good to grab as much as one could. He wondered who he was talking to.
“You owe me a life-debt. You cannot refuse.”
“How long do I have?” Kakashi asked next, raising one eyebrow slightly.
“Two weeks,” the thing in Gaara’s body said neatly, then stood up and walked over to the open window. Kakashi had locked the blasted thing, and had put enough wards on it to stop a small supernatural army. A superficial part of him was annoyed, a deeper part was worried. An extremely superficial half-baked part was wondering, “That’s it? I’ve been waiting all this time and I don’t even get a good-bye?”
“Can you even be killed?” Kakashi asked before the thing that looked like Gaara left.
The body stopped for a moment. It didn’t answer. And then it left.
“I guess that’s an ‘I don’t know’?” Kakashi asked no one in particular.
***
It started, as things often did, with a bloody row. Not ‘bloody’ in the sense that guts and pieces went flying everywhere and hung nastily on the walls, but ‘bloody’ as in a domestic war you wouldn’t want to know about, not even to listen from the windows and take notes and gossip about it. Some things about people you just didn’t want to know, because then you had to remember they were people just like you, and realize that such terrible things did happen in real life, and not just in bad novellas and nightmares.
The night before, Sasuke hadn’t called. He hadn’t called for Naruto in weeks, had had his own problems that he wanted to solve on his own, and had wanted to know that he was alone in his head without having to concentrate on keeping something else out. Without keeping someone else out, without always having to be mentally on guard. He wanted to be alone.
Naruto had come anyway, well dressed again and looking like a high-school kid in a green jacket and jeans that set off the blue in his eyes, smelling clean and soap-scrubbed.
“I didn’t call for you,” Sasuke protested, bent over maps and financial records spread out on the bed, trying to figure out who was really hiring who and if anyone really knew what the hell was going on. He was kneeling on the floor, both elbows propped against the bed, trying off and on to rub the migraine out of his skull.
“I know,” Naruto ran his hands down Sasuke’s bare arms, grinning warmly and impishly without a hint of teeth. “I just felt like it.”
//I didn’t let you put a collar on so you could just forget about it, ass hole.//
“Don’t. Touch me,” Sasuke had stiffened up. “Stick your damn cock in a meat grinder, if you’re that needy. But don’t touch me.”
For a minute, Naruto came close to fighting back. It was easy to fight with Sasuke-almost reflexive, and it was hard to bite down on that habit. Besides, there was his pride to think about, his dignity; he’d held the man’s life on a fork and Sasuke still had the nerve to talk to him like that.
//You can bite down ‘cause it’s on a fork; remember it’s on a fork and someday it’ll be on the damn knife and you’ll really wish I’d taken a bite back then.//
Naruto had allowed the collar-had allowed it all, decided to go a little kinky and humiliating and instead of softening up a little, instead of relenting just a tiny incy wincy bit because Naruto, as far as he was concerned, had surrendered, Sasuke was still being an asshole! Still fighting him! Fuck!
…There was just no winning with some people, there really wasn’t.
It was hard habit to break, the habit of fighting for yourself, for standing up for yourself. Obedience had never been Naruto’s strong point, he wasn’t even used to being submissive even in sex but for Sasuke he’d…he’d done…shit.
If they got started fighting, they’d never around to having sex, and that’s what he wanted. When he wanted something, he wanted to get it.
“It’s not my cock that wants attention,” Naruto laid his chin over Sasuke’s shoulder, smelling his skin for the first time in what felt like forever, and then smacked the front of his crotch lightly. “I can wait. Take your time.”
Surprisingly, Sasuke didn’t snap something hostile back. In fact, he didn’t even take too much time in making Naruto wait all that long before he got them both naked and roughly horizontal.
Later, Sasuke was too worn and washed through with adrenaline and the comforting, drowsy endorphins, to physically freeze up at the sensation of Naruto kissing his jaw possessively, running his fingers through his hair. Sasuke thought he might’ve heard something like, “belong to me…” but the roaring of blood in his head was too loud and he was too busy regaining control over his heart anyway. The sex had been violent, and his fingernails were bloody with Naruto and Naruto’s teeth were bloody from his shoulder and neck, were he’d sunk his fangs in. Only Naruto’s wounds had healed in a timely manner.
//Do you know what I did today?//
::Does it matter?::
Naruto had given him a half-condescending look, half-smug, before sighing and closing his eyes.
Sasuke was careful to shield his own thoughts next, burying them so far deep under so much rubble he wasn’t even sure he had thought them.
//I’ve been cleaning up after your mess. Your ‘demon empire’. Your blood and bodies that you left strewn around, the families you broke without apparent reason other than whim. I’ve been cleaning that up. Me, not you. Me.//
//You abandoned the village. You abandoned the demons. You abandoned me. And now I think I know why you want me now, why you’ve put up with everything I’ve thrown at you. Why you threw everything else away..//
//You’re not in love with me. You’re afraid of being alone.//
Patience was not Sasuke’s strong point. Forgiveness was something other people gave to people who had hurt them so that they wouldn’t fight anymore; he couldn’t see the point of forgiveness. It wasn’t something he did.
Water was still dripping from his hair when he came out of the shower, looking a bit more distant than usual. The hotel bed was still mussed and damp in places, smelling strongly of sex and sweat and Naruto had managed to pull on a pair of pants, though he hadn’t managed to do much else.
“I want to know about Sakura. I want to know about the demon. About your empire, why you left it. I want to know why you did it-I want to know how it felt to betray your own. I want to know what it feels like to kill your own--I’ve always wanted to know that. If it was like killing yourself. I want to know everything.”
Sasuke deliberately left out asking why Naruto had left the village.
Naruto paused in the effort of tugging his shirt back on, the material rubbing uncomfortably against his skin.
“Ummmm…” he eyed Sasuke through his messed bangs, raising one eyebrow. “Nnnnn-no. No, I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because…that’s really none of your business? And it’s kind of late now? As you’re already fucking me, and so on? And you should’ve asked me earlier, if you really cared? So…no.”
Naruto coughed/laughed under his breath, shaking his head slightly before grinning up at Sasuke through his bangs. He brushed him off gently, since he was in a good mood and Sasuke was being…him again. So adorably self-sacrificing and ineptly noble. It was just cute. “No, I don’t think so.”
“You’re certain?”
Naruto looked at him as if he’d gone insane, and part of Naruto wondered if he had. “Yeee~ah. Yeah, I am.”
Sasuke nodded. “About the fucking. I’m stopping it. I also want you to go. Away. For good, this time.”
“Okay, that’s just being childish,” Naruto spat the word, wringing the kinks out of his wrist. “You’re pissed, sure, but-“
“I was planning to do it anyway. I just wanted to pump what information out of you that I could.” Sasuke looked at the blank, confused look on Naruto’s face, and remembered all the times he’d seen that same expression on Naruto’s face whenever he or Sakura tried to explain the shaper, more academic elements of combat to him. Sasuke sighed.
“I didn’t call for you last night because I wasn’t interested. I’m not anymore-it’s not interesting anymore.”
“You’re saying I’m lousy in bed?” Naruto looked half-amused, half-offended, and overall baffled.
“I’m saying your lousy all around,” Sasuke clarified. “And now I want you gone.”
From there, it had gone critical.
“I have no interest in killing you,” Sasuke explained calmly, as if it were all self-obvious and Naruto was simply too dense to comprehend it. “I don’t care what happens to you either. But you are a distraction I want removed.”
Sasuke stood up and wiped his hands on his pants and began reloading his pockets by the window’s table. Naruto followed at his heels, still shirtless and unbalanced with a growing sense of panic.
“You can’t seriously think…I’d let you do this! This is stupid--I can’t die Sasuke. You’re stuck with me!”
He meant to follow that up with something sharp and witty, like how he planned to be the thorn in his side until Sasuke took his own life, how he’d wrap Sasuke’s brother’s gonads and bloody skull in a fruit basket present, and how he would, invariably, be the best monster a boy ever had. Which Naruto would have said, to be sure, if Sasuke’s hand hadn’t penetrated his stomach, lifted him over one shoulder and flung him out the window without so much as a goodbye.
Naruto hit the opposing building at a near horizontal throw-the full body feeling of acupuncture and cheese grater betrayed how much ferocious energy Sasuke had fueled into the shot. Naruto hit the floor like a cat, wincing and clutching his stomach. He was grinning through. He was a better liar than Sasuke-so much better. He knew when he was lying.
Naruto stood, the feral half-snarl smirk burning steadily and looked up.
The window was empty though, except for the broken glass.
Naruto blinked, then scoffed. If that was the way Sasuke wanted to play it, then fine-they’d play it like that. That was just fine. For now.
***
There were a million things Sasuke could have done, after that. Or, it felt to him like there was a million things he could have done, or should have been doing, but he had no idea what they were. A part of him wanted to sit back and laugh darkly, maniacally, and another part wanted to go after Naruto and cut him into little bits until he couldn’t come back anymore and then burn the bits and then bury them in five different graves, and another, deeper, quieter part of him simply wanted to sit down with his head in his hands and cry.
Which didn’t make sense, because Sasuke didn’t cry anymore. He hadn’t cried in a long time. He didn’t like doing it-not because he was worried that people would think it was weak of him to do, for a boy to cry, but for deeper, more personal reasons than that. He didn’t cry. And he, especially, had no reason to cry now-no reason at all! It was…stupid. It was very, very stupid.
He did, however, attack the sink under the hotel’s bathroom, found some cleaner and multicolored sponges that smelled a bit funny and looked more alive than anything living under a sink for years should be, and ran them both all over the bathroom and shower until he was tired and the place gleamed.
It was a habit-an old habit he had. He wasn’t exactly sure where he learned it, but when he lived in Konohakagure in his small, empty apartment and he was really frustrated and didn’t feel like training (which was strange, rare, but it happened) he went to war against all the germs in his kitchen and bathroom. Shikamaru had only said he would make someone the perfect wife someday. He’d only said it once before he learned not to say it again; it was weeks before the swelling went down over his eye. Sasuke didn’t like being sloppy or living messily, but most of the time he didn’t have much interest in domestic activities either. When the fancy did hit him, like many things did when Sasuke was concerned, it hit hard.
It was nearly half an hour after everything had exploded in his face and the window had broken that he realized Naruto had left his red jacket thrown over the small square table that wobbled. Sasuke stared at it, then reached out slowly, half-expecting it to burn his hand or bite him, and pushed it aside gently.
There was a box underneath it.
Sasuke had gotten used to things not always making immediate sense. The leather jacket did have inside and outside pockets, but only for things the size of a thick wallet. The box sitting on his table like a frog was about the size of a shoebox, made out of a heavy, dark wood.
Sasuke’s first thought was that it was a bomb, intentionally left there to kill him. The second thought was that it had been extremely poorly hidden, so it had probably been an accident. There was a small metal lock in the front-he fooled around with it until it broke, and opened Pandora’s gift.
It only took him a few seconds to reach a conclusion.
“You fucking son a bitch. You goddamned bastard I knew I should’ve…”
Sasuke’s face was dark with all the unspoken thoughts he couldn’t find the words to express, and he considered burning the whole damn thing and fuck the consequences. He had some nerve. He had some nerve carrying this around that hypocritical cowardly little shit…
Inside the box, was the headband Naruto had stolen from Sasuke, carrying the emblem of the Konoha Leafs, of the old burned down village and all of the aspirations and hopes it had embodied. He had thought Naruto had destroyed the thing, or lost it; Kakashi-sensei had given him a new one a while ago, one without scratches or marks on it. He had thought that-he had wanted to think that because it answered everything so neatly, it was the sort of thing the villain, the traitor was supposed to do.
Traitors didn’t deserve mercy. They didn’t deserve anything but a fast painful and all around permanent death. Sasuke had no patience for traitors, for people who didn’t know which side of the fence they were on, people who couldn’t make up their minds. The world didn’t have time for indecision; the time and effort people wasted wondering whom they wanted to be fighting for was time other people who knew spent dying. He didn’t have any patience for people like that at all.
Sasuke would’ve preferred that Naruto had destroyed it, because that was the sort of thing traitors were supposed to do. One could feel good about hating a villain with no second thoughts, no remorse, no matter who’s face he wore.
Underneath Sasuke’s old headband was another one, much older and beat up. He recognized the crosshatched scratches and dents-he’d stared at them for years while they were growing up. It was Naruto’s.
Underneath that were photos. And a piece of old string, a couple of pebbles and a bell.
The box hit the far wall with a clang, its contents spilling out and tumbling across the floor, one hinge shattered.
Sasuke started to storm out, then changed his mind abruptly and did an about-face, snatching up the red jacket and a few other choice items before heading off to the bathroom. A fist pounded against the front door-the hotel manager, wanting to know why his window was shattered and what was being thrown against the walls and when the door slammed open and when he looked through his oval glasses at the one who had opened it, he thought he was looking at a demon. The eyes were red. The eyes were glowing red.
A hand grabbed his face before he could yell or run, and all he saw were those glowing red eyes, swirling around and around like a washing machine, almost hypnotically. Swirling and swirling, dragging him down…
When Sasuke let go, the man stumbled back, blinked awkwardly once or twice, then stepped into the room and looked around quizzically. He didn’t look once at Sasuke-he frowned at the broken window, and to him it seemed that the window wasn’t broken, that it was still whole and that the room was, in fact, empty and completely in order. He continued to glance around, still puzzled, but left locking the door behind him.
Sasuke returned to the bathroom, the tub drenched with gasoline, matches in his left pocket, and lovely bottle of hydrochloric acid sitting on the sink’s counter. He wasn’t sure if fire would hurt the jacket (and its host) or not, but he was pretty certain the acid would have some effect and even if it didn’t he had enough iron to make up for it. He had more than enough, and if it wasn’t enough, he’d get more until it was. He was through playing games-he was through.
He picked up the bottle, and prepared to pour it down. The jacket lay in the tub helplessly. A part of him knew how silly this must’ve looked to an outsider, but at the moment he was too angry to care. All that mattered was that he got his revenge. How he got it, and at what price, were merely frippery.
The minutes ticked by.
Would Naruto scream? Would he be able to feel it, at this distance? Would he die? Would he fall down, frothing at the mouth and skin burning from nothing he could touch and no one else could see? Could he die? Sasuke had the time and means to find out…
He had the means to find out. He had the perfect means to find out.
Sasuke didn’t believe in luck. He didn’t believe in a lot of things: big things like God and Heaven and everyday things like a Model Citizen or a Better Life. He didn’t believe in things like that. He didn’t believe in dreams. He didn’t believe in coincidences, or luck, or good fortune. He just didn’t, and although he’d seen plenty of things he couldn’t explain or didn’t understand, he never saw any reason to believe in anything like that. Cynicism had always been good enough for him. Cynicism always worked.
Cynicism told him that it had been awfully convenient for the jacket to be left behind. Naruto was defenseless without it, pretty much. Naruto was weak and defenseless…and the perfect opportunity to try and kill him and most likely succeed had just been dropped in his lap. Very conveniently. Almost suspiciously conveniently.
Sasuke put the bottle back on the sink, unopened and unpoured. He leaned against the wall, arms over his chest and one foot crossed over the other, and thought.
Then he went back, and picked up the box and its contents.
When he touched them, his chest felt cold-stiff. Dead.
It was hours later before anything made sense to him. He threw up once, in that time. He didn’t eat until late in the afternoon, when he remembered he hadn’t eaten anything that day. He didn’t leave the room. At the end, he’d made his decision.
Naruto came to visit him again, that night. It’d be the last time.
***
Every new beginning comes from another beginning’s end. Many beginnings start with a death. It’s a circle. Life is a very big, wobbly, circle.
Naruto was feeling incredibly wobbly where he was, feeling the world fall in circles and spirals around him, too drunk to stand on his own feet without falling or tipping, too drunk in fact to even dance on tables singing lewd songs about Lira the One-Legged Whore. He was too drunk, in fact, to even throw up, although he thought it might be possible to throw down, if he cared to think about it. He was not, unfortunately, drunk enough to forget.
The bartender had been watching him for some time, from early that evening when Naruto had first come in with the usual after-work crowd and ordered the strongest thing he had in stock, over-paid in obscene amounts, and had steadily drank himself to…well, the bartender had planned to stop him several hours earlier, but something invasively sharp and bloody-red in his mind had pressured him continuing. He was more than a little worried-he didn’t want a death on his hands, not at this point in his life. He had a family to think about, a retirement to look forward to, and a life ahead of him.
Naruto tried not to think about it. He tried not to feel.
If he’d known what would’ve happened, he would’ve let him keep the damn thing. Without question. Let Sasuke be the one to next the move, should’ve waited, should’ve bided his time and reacted to whatever potential mistake Sasuke threw instead of jumping into the fray and into the fire like a damn idiot…
He should’ve done a million things. Naruto took another drink, his throat numb and eyes boiled and aching and demanded the next drink on no uncertain terms.
***
“You enjoy killing.” Sasuke hadn’t been looking at him when he came in, the room dark without lamps or candles, the windows shut. The air smelled stiff, unmoved. He kept his eyes down, non-confrontational.
That should’ve been his first warning-Sasuke looked defeated. Sasuke was always, always more dangerous, more unpredictable, when he felt defeated than any other time. He should’ve known that-he’d seen him broken before, wounded and hurt before, and instead of learning that that was the time when it was good to leave Sasuke alone because he was in a throat-cutting fire-setting mood, Naruto had moved in. He should’ve known. He should’ve known.
“And you don’t?” Naruto sneered. “ I’ve seen your eyes-you’ve got great eyes, Sasuke. They betray you every time.”
Instead, he’d had the goddamn arrogance to think that it’d been him who had broken Sasuke…and he’d honestly, foolishly thought he’d be able to collect him back together and tie a leash around his soul, like he had wanted to for years. To own him. After breaking him. He’d really thought he could…if he just held on a few months longer Sasuke would be his and…
“No, you’re not getting it,” Sasuke seemed more tired than angry. “I kill, but I don’t enjoy it. I don’t hate it. You betrayed us. You left. You’re no longer a threat and I don’t have the patience to deal with you. I want you gone.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Naruto said, leaning his head in his hand casually with a wry smile. “That’s what you said before, and lookie-lookie I’m back again: so what? You’re repeating yourself Sasuke, not good at all for-”
The chair fell over as Sasuke stood, eyes still not on him, but on the floor.
“Fuck Naruto what don’t you get?! I don’t care! You fucked up! You fucked up big and I want you gone!”
Naruto only raised his eyebrows and felt the rest of his face freeze.
He’d seen Sasuke angry before; furious even. Anger didn’t scare him, but it wasn’t anger leaking out of Sasuke’s face. He couldn’t move. He was frozen-it was Sasuke’s voice, and he couldn’t even twitch. He’d been an animal living with humans for years, since he was a young pup who didn’t even know he could be a fox, and there was still something in him that wanted to slow down when a certain, special voice said heel. And Sasuke’s voice had always worked magic, even on Gaara, who ate his own leash and strangled people with it.
Sasuke inhaled deeply, and then looked in straight in the eyes, his shoulders sloped and defeated. He continued softly, breathing awkwardly.
“…I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want to fuck you either, it hurts to have you here. …It hurts. I’m not masochistic and if you’re suicidal then go look for someone else to do it, because I won’t.”
Naruto, in one of the few times in his life, was speechless. Sasuke said nothing, letting the silence hang, staring at him, holding his eyes, and there was nowhere to run and no way to fight. There wasn’t a thing he could do.
//…no. No. This isn’t right, I can’t--//
“I don’t hate you-I’ve tried. I’ve tried, I did, I killed you, and now it’s old. I’m bored.”
//Bored? He’s bored? I’m the one getting beat up and he’s the one who’s bored? Fuck that!//
Naruto snarled inwardly while his face contorted, pissed and jaded and refusing to be rejected that damn easily, and made an invisible grab for Sasuke’s mind, ripping the metaphorical cupboards open and filing cabinets and learning everything Sasuke honestly felt and thought at that moment, because Sasuke wasn’t even trying to stop him. He knew what Naruto was doing--dark eyes winced once at the violence, at the pain that they both knew would last for days before vanishing, then springing back unexpectedly at inconvenient times, but he didn’t fight, didn’t try to stop him.
He didn’t care.
//If you were someone else, I could hate you. We would both be satisfied then.//
//It hurts. You’re hurting me. I respected you.//
//I gave up on you. There’s nothing left to say.//
//You can beat a dead horse but you’ll always be the one losing in the end. No more. No more.//
//I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.//
Again, Naruto felt the world was slipping out from under him. This wasn’t right-this hadn’t been in the cards. Sasuke had found the box. No. The fox skin had given him the box, for him to see. For him to know. His own flesh and blood had given his enemy and sexual prey his Achilles heel, his Pandora’s gift, and he didn’t have a thing to say to him. Not at thing. Not a single…
//I don’t care anymore. Not about the why’s. Not even about the ‘how’s. It doesn’t matter anymore.//
//You did what you did. What’s been done is done. It still doesn’t make sense, any of it, but I can’t hate you anymore. I tried. I really did. I did try, but I can’t keep you anymore. It hurts.//
//I trusted you. I liked you. You died. I killed you.//
//I don’t want to hurt you anymore, and I’m tired of you hurting me. I’ll never be able to bring the old feeling back…back when we were friends and we…//
//…Never. Not even if I wanted to. It’s cut too deep. You hurt me. Nothing will change that.//
//Go away. You don’t belong here. Go away.//
To his humiliation, Naruto found he was on the verge of begging forgiveness, and barely stopped himself from doing it. That wasn’t the way-damn it he still had his pride! That wasn’t the way-Sasuke was just being stupid, emotional. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t talk him out of-nothing he couldn’t fix he was Naruto for fuck’s sake; there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. He thought about grinning, grappled for a way to brush it all off him, leave him free of the responsibility somehow, and couldn’t find a single outlet. He was going insane-it was the only way he could explain his last words, lightly said with just the right touch of demonic pleasure and sadism to really give them that tingle.
“I loved you once.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sasuke stated.
Naruto’s breath caught in his throat, a choking wad of ice. That was supposed to be his trump card-made all the sharper by the fact that it was true and they both knew it was true, and Sasuke didn’t…care. Sasuke didn’t care.
//…That’s not fair. You can’t do that, that’s not fair! You can’t-you’re not supposed to be able to…you can’t do that. That’s not fair.//
Apathy kills.
Well, what could he say to that? What was there to say at all? He couldn’t just leave without a fight-he didn’t have to leave at all, Sasuke couldn’t force him out, he was still stronger than him, but…what was there to say? What was there to do? What was there to fix, or break? He’d started this whole thing with a goal in mind, but if Sasuke wasn’t going to cooperate even the least bit, then things were going to get a lot more complicated very, very quickly. They might even get so complicated they stopped dead completely. Naruto struck out blindly.
“…Didn’t know you could get bored of hating someone. You’ve made an art out of it, Sasuke…”
Sasuke shook his head, “I’m going to kill my brother because that’ll change something.”
“What?”
“I’ll feel better,” Sasuke snapped testily, some life flaring in him at last and Naruto almost sagged with relief. There was a chance; there was still a chance, fighting had always nearly been like sex to them, and if he could get that then he might be still able to make it all work.
“That’ll change. I killed you, and nothing changed. I fucked you, you fucked me, and nothing changed. Nothing got fixed; the land’s still hurt, people are still dead, you can’t replace anything you took--” Sasuke stopped abruptly. He pulled himself back under his shaky control.
“…You left. I don’t know what you want from me. You don’t belong here anymore. And it hurts to look at you…”
It was easy to forget Sasuke was human; he didn’t have too many strange habits or kinks, things that marked him as an individual. He slid easily into the anonymous status of a faceless almost androgynous sex-object or hired-killer; efficient, quiet, and harsh. It was hard to remember he got tired, or could cry.
But he could. He tried not to, but he could, and sometimes he did.
He could feel lonely, and love, and want, and it could make him cry. Not often, but enough to anchor him, to pull him down, enough to remind himself that he was a real person, and that he was alive here and now and one day he would die.
Ages ago, he had fallen in love, and as reserved people often do, he fell hard. He fell hard and he never fell back out of it, never stopped being in love.
He knew it. He knew it had happened, and had known he was unable to change it; it was out of his hands.
It wouldn’t hurt so badly, if he didn’t. It wouldn’t hurt to see, to hear him and touch him, if he didn’t. He still did-still loved the memory inside his head. But this was too much. This was asking far too much of him, and he couldn’t do it anymore and he didn’t want to try either.
//Go away.//
“My skin,” Naruto asked.
Sasuke shook his head, “Stays with me.”
“You could kill me too easily with that thing. It’s too easy for me to die without it.”
“Does that matter to you?” Sasuke hadn’t been sarcastic or joking. He’d meant it.
Naruto hadn’t answered.
“Do you care if you die?”
***
So he found himself in another bar. He was getting sick of bars. Pea soup green nauseas sick of them. Sick of not having a place to go to, of not having…
Sick of stale salted peanuts, and the infant dried mackerel they served along the coast. Sick of the little dried fish that tasted all right after the first five bowls, and then merely sickening after that. Dried fish, dried shrimp…dried ear and fingers in the darker allies, babes cut fresh from the womb, still-born pups boiled in something that smelled like sugar…salted and spiced and served warm in broth…
Hey hey! Your turn to treat me today!
//Oh shut up. I didn’t come this far to…//
//I definitely didn’t come this far to do what I’m doing. Definitely. If I could just remember about what I did come this far to do, I could set up all right. Maybe even get real sleep for once.//
//Fuck it.//
Do you care if you’re alive?
He wanted to live-he did. Dying meant he lost, was defeated; he didn’t want to admit he had lost, he wanted to be alive. He just didn’t care about living anymore. It wasn’t fun. And he’d forgotten the point.
Naruto pulled on his bottom lip thoughtfully while stirring the nuts around with one finger.
“You doing all right there?”
“Hm?” he looked up, momentarily startled.
“Oh,” Naruto said. “Yeah. Hey, can I ask you something? Where’re you going after this?”
The man’s eyebrows raised, but not too high. Guys were always funny this early in the morning and a little worse for drink; it wouldn’t be the first time. Besides, the blonde hadn’t been drinking like there was no tomorrow-he’d been drinking hard enough to attempt it wouldn’t be. It was amazing he was still speaking; there was only a slight slur in his words, the uncontrolled high-note in his voice betraying how young he really was.
“Home, friend. To my wife.”
“Ah,” Naruto nodded agreeably. “You love her?”
“She’s a good woman-three years happily married. The other twenty-seven haven’t been too bad either, mind,” the bar man polished the counter a bit, for the look of things, while pondering how to communicate that he needed his customer to leave so he could close and go home. It wasn’t late at night anymore-it was so late at night it was early in the morning, and he was tired and ready to rest. He respected a man’s wish to get away from the world, but if the blonde hadn’t been able to knock himself asleep or dead by this time he could probably keeping going a while longer…but where was he putting it all?
//Kids these days…crazy.//
“Lady troubles?”
“Mmm. Yeah. You know you think…” Naruto trailed off, his finger still stuck in the bowl of salted nuts, his hand hanging off the edge. “I suppose I was something of a bastard.”
The man nodded. He’d heard that understatement about once a week, usually.
“I just didn’t think it’d be this important. I mean, it’s not like…I guess I never thought I’d care. You know. About what they thought. I knew they’d be angry, but I didn’t think it’d matter. To me. Hey? If you didn’t go home tonight…no, if you died, would you care?”
The bartender stilled. He’d noted the scar running across the blonde’s throat in the first few hours, but by that time it had been a bit too late to tell him to leave; he’d seen deeper scars, but never in so vulnerable a place. His crowd wasn’t all that savory, but it was one thing to chat with thieves about sports and later break up the fights over who had the better team with the old stout friendly stick of wood he kept under the counter, it was another thing entirely to talk to killers about his family.
Naruto flapped his hand unsteadily, weaving gently from side to side.
“Like, I know your wife would care, and any kids-if you have kids,” he added conscientiously. “But you. Would you care? No one wants to die, I mean yeah of course, but would you. Care?”
The man’s lower lip jutted out uncomfortably.
“Well…yes, I would. Of course,” he added philosophically, “everyone dies, but if you happen to be like me it doesn’t end here. Something keeps me going, keeps me moving-I live on.”
“After you die?”
“Yes sir.”
“Why?” Naruto’s face screwed and crumpled painfully, his voice a high-pitched almost hysterical pleading; he sounded like he was about to scream. “…I mean, life’s…I couldn’t stand that. I can’t even keep this life straight, I’d go crazy if I had to do it twice.”
“Well…some people find it comforting. Each to their own, whatever you like best.” The man inhaled deeply, because he would have to bring this up sooner or later and if he didn't bring it up now his legs were going to give way under him and he wouldn’t be able to pick himself up afterwards. “And speaking of owe, I’m going to be closing soon, and you owe me for your drinks.”
Naruto stared glassily at the mole on the man’s right eyebrow.
He stuck out his hand, “Naruto Uzumaki, pleasure to meet you. I. I ruled three countries once.” He shook the man’s hand, and then wiped his palm on his pants. “Not for very long, but I did.”
“So you can pay?”
“Hm? Oh. Oh yeah, I can pay,” he shook his hand dismissively. “That’s not a problem. The problem. The problem is. The problem. The problem is that, um…”
His mind went, blessedly, blank. “I don’t know.”
“Well then sir, I’m going to have to ask you to pay so I can close up. Gotta go home, you know.”
“Mmm…”
“That means you have to leave,” the man hinted again. “It’s over. Time to go now.”
“Mmm… You know? You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I mean, what do I…” Naruto shrugged, closing his eyes and wincing. “I’ll tell you what. How much do I owe you?”
The man told him. Naruto nodded amicably.
“Okay. Good. Now, tell me, is your life worth that?”
Naruto grinned at him surprisingly lucidly, with only his lips and his eyes, not an inch of teeth showing. “How much is your life worth? When is too much…done?”
“Listen,” the bartender started to say, getting angry, “I don’t care what happened with your girls…” his voice died slowly-Naruto was looking at him musingly, light blue eyes fading out in the smoky light swiftly, pixels darkening and pupil slitting. He wasn’t smiling anymore. In fact, he wasn’t even human anymore.
The man took a slow step to his right, careful not to make any sudden movements. Cold, slightly drunk vulpine eyes watched him, completely unafraid or anxious. It wasn’t like being watched by a thug, or a wolf-you could see the hunger in them, the desire. This was like being watched by a cat with too much milk in him, slow, uncaring, and suffering from painful constipation and ready to take it out on anyone.
“A word of advice, friend.”
Crimson black eyes held him in their teeth carefully, not biting down, and the throbbing sharp pain he’d been having in the back of his skull throbbed suddenly clear and incisive. It felt like he was having a heart attack in his head, like he was having a stroke or aneurysm…
Naruto smiled grimly, without humor or mirth or even sadistic arrogant pleasure, and the bartender knew that he was exactly right.
“Never annoy a monster with a personal crisis.”
Naruto closed his hand, dragging his fingers lightly over the counter and leaving grooves in the wood. It was an effortless gesture, a bit meaningless, and thoughtless. The bartender held his breath carefully-his son was a sulking sixteen, and he wanted to live to see him grow out of it. His daughter was only seven. There was a monster brooding at his counter. Time froze gently on his skin, as his senses for several seconds became chiseled and precise, super-aware in fear until he could feel every pang in his spine and all the aches in his legs and hands from old age.
Bartending was not exactly the dangerous job people thought it to be-sure, sometimes there were fights, and sometimes there were weapons, but he’d never had anyone die under his watch though a couple had been sent to the clinic from glass cuts and missing teeth, but he’d never seen his job as really dangerous. He’d come to recognize danger, and learn how to keep it at bay, how to soothe and how to listen.
“What can I get you?”
Naruto gave a cold, hard look. “What do you use,” he stated clearly, the slur temporarily gone from his words as his body metabolized the alcohol at an unholy rate. “For cleaning drains?”
***
Continued Here
SasuNaru, NaruGaara, slight KakaSasu, yaoi. Naruto embraces his demonic roots, and Sasuke's his 1 enemy and dream. Blood, DARK, angst, lime, non-fluff introspective. And a bag of chips. Push something too hard, and it will break or bite back. The question that plagues all successful megalomaniac comic-book villains: after you’ve destroyed the world (and then some) what do you do next?
Earlier chapters available here and here.
A/N: Chapter dedicated to Kotori for holding on and always giving more of the surprises and shocks that make up life. Much thanks to Felis for being my first beta, strange, and vastly angelically reliable in times of great carnage and school work.
To the Readers who’ve stayed with me this far, I don’t know how you do it, and we’re finally getting plot; yay! Plot again! Yay!
Nine tenths of the law is…
***
Attraction
By gelfling
gelfling8604@yahoo.com
//Thoughts//
::Invading thoughts::
|| Demon Thoughts ||
***
Do you mind that I think I still love you?
--All right, Five for Fighting
Reality is an illusion created by a lack of alcohol.
--NF Simpson.
Love is the answer - but while you're waiting for the answer sex raises some pretty good questions."
--Woody Allen.
***
Kakashi had never been raped before. Still, events had gone, more or less, as he’d expected. He was mildly annoyed and in so much pain he barely felt it--he had put himself safely beyond physical and psychological pain. He would feel the full impact later, when his mind couldn’t contain it anymore.
//If I live that long. Not impossible.//
Prudent even near death, his mind had carefully put away words like ‘file’, ‘screwdriver’, ‘rusty saw’, and ‘bone cutter’ in a locked storeroom, along with others such as ‘violation’, ‘vomit’, and ‘helpless’. Everything he was capable of feeling and thinking was carefully censored before being published for him to think or feel. The issue of his immobility was never even acknowledged--it was no more significant than the tiny skin mites in his eyebrows.
Inside the cool and fragile darkness behind his eyes, his mind observed events--the shuddering on his body was slowing down.
Kakashi waited it out.
Pressure fell on his chest and shoulders--hot air gasped past his ear. Though disinterested, he realized someone was trying to simultaneously cough, choke, and curse.
Back home, in the village, he had had a neighbor who’s stove pinged quite loudly late at night for no real reason, not being exactly disruptive but a little like water torture. It was a constant, arrhythmic sound that got on his nerves. The sounds in his ear were rather like that. Annoying, and telling him that he was alive and it wasn’t over yet.
The temperature dropped in specific areas--the man was getting off him, looking at him. He felt pressure through his headband, over the Leaf insignia. Another cough, wet-sounding and rough.
“Told you.”
As one might observe a large wad of paper clogging up the plumbing to the point where water would soon be exploding everywhere, Kakashi observed his ribcage touching the man’s abdomen as he breathed. Clumsily, wet fingers prodded the pulse on his neck. Kakashi noted his heartbeat was shallower than normal, slower. Of course it had been through a lot, it was only to be expected. He wasn’t worried. If he died, he wouldn’t have much of anything to worry about (the dead never did), and if he didn’t die, he’d be able to do something about it.
He lost consciousness for a while, but suddenly it felt like something warm was being poured down his throat. Something warm and thin, and even on the brink of unconsciousness, he still felt a tendril of dread grip him.
//Ah shit…and here I thought it couldn’t get any worse. Must be getting soft.//
It was days later, before he woke up. There was a woman...pottering about... poking...
Kakashi grabbed her wrist before his eyes even snapped open. She gave a muffled shriek and tried to pull her arm away, and after he got his bearings he let go.
He was in a hospital. She was a nurse. It could have been the dubious hat, the overabundance of white, or the smell that cued him in, but it was mostly the speakers proclaiming: “--to Pediatrics. Doctor Wakana to Pediatrics.”
Before she had a moment to recover herself, he snapped every ounce of former Anbu captain command into his voice.
“What happened to my hair?”
She didn’t even question him. “Nothing sir! Still brown sir!”
He blinked, realizing someone had bandaged his left eye. Brown? Did he have brown? Then he made his body startle and relax, slipping into something less threatening. “I--I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he continued, forcing nearly-real remorse into his voice. “Don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry.” For good measure he looked away, adding it on a little thick, “That was inexcusable.”
She seemed to hesitate, then gave him a nervous grin. “It’s--it’s all right sir. The--the drugs take people like that sometimes, sir. But you shouldn’t…um…” she hesitated, looking extremely uncertain and unnerved. He couldn’t look that awful, could he? “I’m--I’m Sayaka Omiro, by the way.”
He smiled weakly in response, trying not to react, not to panic to the fact that his face was unbandaged and open for anyone to see that felt he felt sick. He wanted his mask-it felt wrong without it, he hadn’t felt this naked in public before even when he had been naked in public; even then his face had been covered. “Pleasure to meet you. Hope I haven’t been too much trouble for you all this time.”
“Well…you should still be sleeping--the drugs aren’t supposed to wear off for another two days and your body should still be tired to even be...” She looked uncertain again, perplexed and more than a little worried. Kakashi tensed. “I’m gonna get the--”
He grabbed her sleeve.
“Wait... Please--wait, before you go off and do that could you help me with something?” He would have noticed if the Sharingan eye was missing. It wasn’t. He alive-someone wanted him alive-and for the moment he had some power and mobility. He was alive at the moment, but considering what he remembered happening he might not be alive very much longer.
“I--I’ve got to--listen I don’t know how long I’ve been out but…” he lowered his voice.
She came closer voluntarily. “What?”
He repeated himself.
“Oh sure,” She replied, cheerily. “That’s no problem, if you could just wait while--”
“Now ma’am--I’m sorry but waiting’s out of the question.”
She hesitated again. “But the doctors said you shouldn’t--”
Kakashi wasn’t much good at looking pathetic--useless yes, non-threatening definitely, but not pathetic. He tried. It kind of worked. She looked more suspicious than unnerved now, but at least she went to grab him a wheelchair. He didn’t have to fake the clumsiness, at least, and waited until they were down the hall before asking, “How did the surgery go?”
“Well sir, you were a bit touch and go for a minute, but they managed to heal the whole length without problem. I understand some of it had to be replaced artificially, but I’m afraid I don’t know very much; it’d be better to ask your doctors. You should be walking in no time.”
He didn’t have to fake or mask the relief that came either. He sighed, “That’s good.”
She smiled weakly.
“You really should be still sleeping though…” she trailed off and Kakashi prayed she wouldn’t figure out what he had. There had been the sensation of something being poured down his throat…he’d be angry about it later. Right now, he just wanted to piss and get something cool to drink and find somewhere safe to sleep. Then, when he felt better, he’d get angry and unhappy, but at the moment he felt absolutely fine; even a little relieved. He was, no matter what, still alive.
“And I am sorry about your loss sir, but it can only be expected in your line of work. My son’s got a poster of you in his room--he admires you very much, sir.”
Kakashi didn’t answer-he even stopped counting the amount of times she’d called him ‘sir’, and this didn’t look like a military hospital. He knew enough. Not where he was, but enough. The ‘what’ at least, if not the ‘why’ and ‘how’. He let her wheel him inside the restroom, demanded she wait outside with the door unlocked, relieved himself, flushed, and left the water taps running while he slipped out the window.
His leg did feel…lighter.
Two weeks later, the famous stunt devil Akira Tsuyumaku received a hospital bill for 2, 600, for injuries he didn’t have. He hadn’t panicked until he read the currency wasn’t Yen.
Like a celebrated writer, Kakashi turned up at his own funeral two hours late and uninvited. The girls (and Lee and Iruka) had fussed over him all up the stairs--he caught Hinata studying him with the Byakugan, veins swelling around her eyes. She blushed.
“Alloplastic,” he said simply. “And some allografts on the side. Don’t ask me about it, ask a doctor. Sasuke back?”
Silence.
“Everyone still alive?”
“Yes,” said Iruka.
He opened the door and fell, fully dressed, onto his bed.
He had only planned on being away a day, two days on the outside. Instead it had nearly been four weeks and Neji and Shikamaru were still out looking for him. His outstanding injuries that the hospital hadn’t attended to were healing at a faster rate than normal; it normally took at least six weeks to heal a broken leg, especially to the extent his bones had been shattered. He wondered how the Sharingan worked now.
He did wonder what it meant. He knew how it happened, but he didn’t know why. Demons never gave anything away-there was always a price in there, somewhere, and it was always too much. It was just a question of what.
Sometimes, after showering or just taking a run to test his new leg, he scratched at his neck. He was almost sure he knew what had been poured down his throat, but he couldn’t figure out why. The mystery nagged at him almost as badly as the scar on his neck.
***
Kakashi knew some people had jobs that didn’t risk their lives everyday-jobs where the competition wasn’t so fierce that ‘unemployment’ was synonymous with ‘funeral’. He knew there were some jobs where all you did was write and add up, moving with the world instead of outside of it, on the shadowed periphery.
He had no idea how they could stand it. It sounded so…boring. He couldn’t even imagine it. His sense of misdirection, of always feeling the world spinning out of control under him and falling to pieces had become so everyday he relied on it. It was when things weren’t weird, weren’t fatally dangerous, that he started to feel on edge.
By silent mutinous agreement of his subordinates, he wasn’t allowed more than five yards away from the inn-base without escort. Since other people were running around doing the work for him, he couldn’t complain too much, but he still felt…uneasy. Most of the bone in his leg had been replaced with a lightweight metal, almost all of the lower half. It felt different-lighter and heavier at the same time, and far too fragile, like a strong gust of wind would shatter it like a matchstick house.
Most of it was his imagination, of course. But still…
Admittedly, Kakashi didn’t know much about the demon psyche; the real demons, the monsters of old, not the weak little closet monsters you got today. The real demons, the nine monsters…were rare. Rare, and more a force of nature than an individual creature, and he had no idea how they thought, how they felt; it made them hard to predict, to fight.
He knew about humans though. He knew about kids.
He would come back. It was a tiresome, annoying fact, but it was a fact Kakashi would gamble his whole remaining collection of Come Come Paradise on. He still wasn’t sure why he had been left alive, why he’d been brutalized and not killed, not locked up in some stinking cellar. He had either insulted or intrigued the monster-either way, Gaara would come back. Or something would come back, and it would probably look like Gaara.
A week passed since he returned to the inn-base, walking in on his own funeral uninvited, and nothing happened. Hinata hovered over him like a butterfly, and he found himself hanging around Iruka for the companionable silences, the impersonal friendliness, which meant by default hanging around Lee who reminded him so much of Gai in so many little ways, from the way he frowned to strange straightforward phrases that would’ve sounded insincere coming from anyone else, that it felt like going back in time 20 years. He liked Lee; it was impossible not to.
His visitor came, and he only gave Kakashi a brief, blank glance before trooping up the stairs. Ino frowned at the staircase while Kakashi leaned against the wall, warming his hands with a cup of tea Hinata had drugged to make him sleep more. He didn’t plan on drinking it. Still, he was touched by her concern and silently congratulated the subtlety.
“What’s his problem?” she asked the world in general, sounding a lot sharper and mature than the girl she had been, yo-yoing from diet to diet where the only gain she intended to make was someone else’s approval.
Kakashi shrugged, but held out a hand when she attempted to follow Sasuke up the stairs.
“Let him be,” he said quietly. For although he would normally encourage a little sexual innuendo on Sasuke’s part, a little more social intercourse of any kind, something didn’t smell right. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong-he would’ve felt better if Sasuke had come back wounded, because then he could’ve seen what had gone wrong. Something was wrong-horribly terribly wrong.
“He’s all right,” he lied with a faint smile, “He’s just tired.”
Sasuke stayed in his own room that night, not even coming out for dinner, but he didn’t sleep. Kakashi kept watch, not entirely sure who he was watching for-Naruto, Red, or Sasuke. Someone. One of them.
He almost felt relief when the smell of blood woke him up, deep one night, long before the twitching fingers against his wrist did.
After a while, after many years doing the same job. Murder became mundane-as everyday as lice or garbage, as the bed sheet pressing into his shoulder, the pillow cupping his cheek. It never became less important, never became inconsequential, because if you thought about it that way you went insane, but it did lose its shock-factor, after the first 40 or so.
Kakashi opened his good eye less than a slit, knowing from the weight, sound, and smell that there was a body lying next to him, one that stank of blood and wasn’t dead yet, still moving and twitching. He could hear the breathing-a wet sick sound. It was still alive, but badly hurt.
A trumpet heralded the announcer, the organ began playing the wedding march for the bride’s entrance, and the killer’s equivalent of a greeting card went off next to his face with a wet splattering sound with brittle boned acoustics.
Kakashi blinked, still hearing the sound of a throat been crushed. In his mind, something shifted, and it was as if someone had poured cold liquid over his brain, possibly the same liquid that had gone down his throat, enveloping his thoughts protectively and shutting down his emotions that would be useless at the time. Then he sat up awkwardly with a loud sigh and turned the light on, wiping his face.
“I hope this is important,” he said, half sincerely annoyed and half tired. “You took your time getting back to me.”
Gaara’s body sat neatly in a chair before him, eyes hidden by the sunglasses in dark tatty clothes, frayed red hair brushing his shoulders. It looked weak-too pale and bony. He was losing control, and the demon possessing him was running him ragged. Kakashi found himself reviewing what he knew of exorcism, and at the same time wondering if the kid could even still speak anymore. Possibly not-if the body looked this bad, then the mind inside was probably worse.
“You owe me,” said the thing with Gaara’s mouth. “You hunted me and I let you live. You owe me your life.”
“I have a job for you. I want you to kill not only the human body, but the demon within it.”
“This is the payment for your life. If you fail, I will kill you and I won’t stop with this city. Your subordinates will die.”
“What if I refuse?” Kakashi asked, for the look of things. It might be useless information, but it was always good to grab as much as one could. He wondered who he was talking to.
“You owe me a life-debt. You cannot refuse.”
“How long do I have?” Kakashi asked next, raising one eyebrow slightly.
“Two weeks,” the thing in Gaara’s body said neatly, then stood up and walked over to the open window. Kakashi had locked the blasted thing, and had put enough wards on it to stop a small supernatural army. A superficial part of him was annoyed, a deeper part was worried. An extremely superficial half-baked part was wondering, “That’s it? I’ve been waiting all this time and I don’t even get a good-bye?”
“Can you even be killed?” Kakashi asked before the thing that looked like Gaara left.
The body stopped for a moment. It didn’t answer. And then it left.
“I guess that’s an ‘I don’t know’?” Kakashi asked no one in particular.
***
It started, as things often did, with a bloody row. Not ‘bloody’ in the sense that guts and pieces went flying everywhere and hung nastily on the walls, but ‘bloody’ as in a domestic war you wouldn’t want to know about, not even to listen from the windows and take notes and gossip about it. Some things about people you just didn’t want to know, because then you had to remember they were people just like you, and realize that such terrible things did happen in real life, and not just in bad novellas and nightmares.
The night before, Sasuke hadn’t called. He hadn’t called for Naruto in weeks, had had his own problems that he wanted to solve on his own, and had wanted to know that he was alone in his head without having to concentrate on keeping something else out. Without keeping someone else out, without always having to be mentally on guard. He wanted to be alone.
Naruto had come anyway, well dressed again and looking like a high-school kid in a green jacket and jeans that set off the blue in his eyes, smelling clean and soap-scrubbed.
“I didn’t call for you,” Sasuke protested, bent over maps and financial records spread out on the bed, trying to figure out who was really hiring who and if anyone really knew what the hell was going on. He was kneeling on the floor, both elbows propped against the bed, trying off and on to rub the migraine out of his skull.
“I know,” Naruto ran his hands down Sasuke’s bare arms, grinning warmly and impishly without a hint of teeth. “I just felt like it.”
//I didn’t let you put a collar on so you could just forget about it, ass hole.//
“Don’t. Touch me,” Sasuke had stiffened up. “Stick your damn cock in a meat grinder, if you’re that needy. But don’t touch me.”
For a minute, Naruto came close to fighting back. It was easy to fight with Sasuke-almost reflexive, and it was hard to bite down on that habit. Besides, there was his pride to think about, his dignity; he’d held the man’s life on a fork and Sasuke still had the nerve to talk to him like that.
//You can bite down ‘cause it’s on a fork; remember it’s on a fork and someday it’ll be on the damn knife and you’ll really wish I’d taken a bite back then.//
Naruto had allowed the collar-had allowed it all, decided to go a little kinky and humiliating and instead of softening up a little, instead of relenting just a tiny incy wincy bit because Naruto, as far as he was concerned, had surrendered, Sasuke was still being an asshole! Still fighting him! Fuck!
…There was just no winning with some people, there really wasn’t.
It was hard habit to break, the habit of fighting for yourself, for standing up for yourself. Obedience had never been Naruto’s strong point, he wasn’t even used to being submissive even in sex but for Sasuke he’d…he’d done…shit.
If they got started fighting, they’d never around to having sex, and that’s what he wanted. When he wanted something, he wanted to get it.
“It’s not my cock that wants attention,” Naruto laid his chin over Sasuke’s shoulder, smelling his skin for the first time in what felt like forever, and then smacked the front of his crotch lightly. “I can wait. Take your time.”
Surprisingly, Sasuke didn’t snap something hostile back. In fact, he didn’t even take too much time in making Naruto wait all that long before he got them both naked and roughly horizontal.
Later, Sasuke was too worn and washed through with adrenaline and the comforting, drowsy endorphins, to physically freeze up at the sensation of Naruto kissing his jaw possessively, running his fingers through his hair. Sasuke thought he might’ve heard something like, “belong to me…” but the roaring of blood in his head was too loud and he was too busy regaining control over his heart anyway. The sex had been violent, and his fingernails were bloody with Naruto and Naruto’s teeth were bloody from his shoulder and neck, were he’d sunk his fangs in. Only Naruto’s wounds had healed in a timely manner.
//Do you know what I did today?//
::Does it matter?::
Naruto had given him a half-condescending look, half-smug, before sighing and closing his eyes.
Sasuke was careful to shield his own thoughts next, burying them so far deep under so much rubble he wasn’t even sure he had thought them.
//I’ve been cleaning up after your mess. Your ‘demon empire’. Your blood and bodies that you left strewn around, the families you broke without apparent reason other than whim. I’ve been cleaning that up. Me, not you. Me.//
//You abandoned the village. You abandoned the demons. You abandoned me. And now I think I know why you want me now, why you’ve put up with everything I’ve thrown at you. Why you threw everything else away..//
//You’re not in love with me. You’re afraid of being alone.//
Patience was not Sasuke’s strong point. Forgiveness was something other people gave to people who had hurt them so that they wouldn’t fight anymore; he couldn’t see the point of forgiveness. It wasn’t something he did.
Water was still dripping from his hair when he came out of the shower, looking a bit more distant than usual. The hotel bed was still mussed and damp in places, smelling strongly of sex and sweat and Naruto had managed to pull on a pair of pants, though he hadn’t managed to do much else.
“I want to know about Sakura. I want to know about the demon. About your empire, why you left it. I want to know why you did it-I want to know how it felt to betray your own. I want to know what it feels like to kill your own--I’ve always wanted to know that. If it was like killing yourself. I want to know everything.”
Sasuke deliberately left out asking why Naruto had left the village.
Naruto paused in the effort of tugging his shirt back on, the material rubbing uncomfortably against his skin.
“Ummmm…” he eyed Sasuke through his messed bangs, raising one eyebrow. “Nnnnn-no. No, I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because…that’s really none of your business? And it’s kind of late now? As you’re already fucking me, and so on? And you should’ve asked me earlier, if you really cared? So…no.”
Naruto coughed/laughed under his breath, shaking his head slightly before grinning up at Sasuke through his bangs. He brushed him off gently, since he was in a good mood and Sasuke was being…him again. So adorably self-sacrificing and ineptly noble. It was just cute. “No, I don’t think so.”
“You’re certain?”
Naruto looked at him as if he’d gone insane, and part of Naruto wondered if he had. “Yeee~ah. Yeah, I am.”
Sasuke nodded. “About the fucking. I’m stopping it. I also want you to go. Away. For good, this time.”
“Okay, that’s just being childish,” Naruto spat the word, wringing the kinks out of his wrist. “You’re pissed, sure, but-“
“I was planning to do it anyway. I just wanted to pump what information out of you that I could.” Sasuke looked at the blank, confused look on Naruto’s face, and remembered all the times he’d seen that same expression on Naruto’s face whenever he or Sakura tried to explain the shaper, more academic elements of combat to him. Sasuke sighed.
“I didn’t call for you last night because I wasn’t interested. I’m not anymore-it’s not interesting anymore.”
“You’re saying I’m lousy in bed?” Naruto looked half-amused, half-offended, and overall baffled.
“I’m saying your lousy all around,” Sasuke clarified. “And now I want you gone.”
From there, it had gone critical.
“I have no interest in killing you,” Sasuke explained calmly, as if it were all self-obvious and Naruto was simply too dense to comprehend it. “I don’t care what happens to you either. But you are a distraction I want removed.”
Sasuke stood up and wiped his hands on his pants and began reloading his pockets by the window’s table. Naruto followed at his heels, still shirtless and unbalanced with a growing sense of panic.
“You can’t seriously think…I’d let you do this! This is stupid--I can’t die Sasuke. You’re stuck with me!”
He meant to follow that up with something sharp and witty, like how he planned to be the thorn in his side until Sasuke took his own life, how he’d wrap Sasuke’s brother’s gonads and bloody skull in a fruit basket present, and how he would, invariably, be the best monster a boy ever had. Which Naruto would have said, to be sure, if Sasuke’s hand hadn’t penetrated his stomach, lifted him over one shoulder and flung him out the window without so much as a goodbye.
Naruto hit the opposing building at a near horizontal throw-the full body feeling of acupuncture and cheese grater betrayed how much ferocious energy Sasuke had fueled into the shot. Naruto hit the floor like a cat, wincing and clutching his stomach. He was grinning through. He was a better liar than Sasuke-so much better. He knew when he was lying.
Naruto stood, the feral half-snarl smirk burning steadily and looked up.
The window was empty though, except for the broken glass.
Naruto blinked, then scoffed. If that was the way Sasuke wanted to play it, then fine-they’d play it like that. That was just fine. For now.
***
There were a million things Sasuke could have done, after that. Or, it felt to him like there was a million things he could have done, or should have been doing, but he had no idea what they were. A part of him wanted to sit back and laugh darkly, maniacally, and another part wanted to go after Naruto and cut him into little bits until he couldn’t come back anymore and then burn the bits and then bury them in five different graves, and another, deeper, quieter part of him simply wanted to sit down with his head in his hands and cry.
Which didn’t make sense, because Sasuke didn’t cry anymore. He hadn’t cried in a long time. He didn’t like doing it-not because he was worried that people would think it was weak of him to do, for a boy to cry, but for deeper, more personal reasons than that. He didn’t cry. And he, especially, had no reason to cry now-no reason at all! It was…stupid. It was very, very stupid.
He did, however, attack the sink under the hotel’s bathroom, found some cleaner and multicolored sponges that smelled a bit funny and looked more alive than anything living under a sink for years should be, and ran them both all over the bathroom and shower until he was tired and the place gleamed.
It was a habit-an old habit he had. He wasn’t exactly sure where he learned it, but when he lived in Konohakagure in his small, empty apartment and he was really frustrated and didn’t feel like training (which was strange, rare, but it happened) he went to war against all the germs in his kitchen and bathroom. Shikamaru had only said he would make someone the perfect wife someday. He’d only said it once before he learned not to say it again; it was weeks before the swelling went down over his eye. Sasuke didn’t like being sloppy or living messily, but most of the time he didn’t have much interest in domestic activities either. When the fancy did hit him, like many things did when Sasuke was concerned, it hit hard.
It was nearly half an hour after everything had exploded in his face and the window had broken that he realized Naruto had left his red jacket thrown over the small square table that wobbled. Sasuke stared at it, then reached out slowly, half-expecting it to burn his hand or bite him, and pushed it aside gently.
There was a box underneath it.
Sasuke had gotten used to things not always making immediate sense. The leather jacket did have inside and outside pockets, but only for things the size of a thick wallet. The box sitting on his table like a frog was about the size of a shoebox, made out of a heavy, dark wood.
Sasuke’s first thought was that it was a bomb, intentionally left there to kill him. The second thought was that it had been extremely poorly hidden, so it had probably been an accident. There was a small metal lock in the front-he fooled around with it until it broke, and opened Pandora’s gift.
It only took him a few seconds to reach a conclusion.
“You fucking son a bitch. You goddamned bastard I knew I should’ve…”
Sasuke’s face was dark with all the unspoken thoughts he couldn’t find the words to express, and he considered burning the whole damn thing and fuck the consequences. He had some nerve. He had some nerve carrying this around that hypocritical cowardly little shit…
Inside the box, was the headband Naruto had stolen from Sasuke, carrying the emblem of the Konoha Leafs, of the old burned down village and all of the aspirations and hopes it had embodied. He had thought Naruto had destroyed the thing, or lost it; Kakashi-sensei had given him a new one a while ago, one without scratches or marks on it. He had thought that-he had wanted to think that because it answered everything so neatly, it was the sort of thing the villain, the traitor was supposed to do.
Traitors didn’t deserve mercy. They didn’t deserve anything but a fast painful and all around permanent death. Sasuke had no patience for traitors, for people who didn’t know which side of the fence they were on, people who couldn’t make up their minds. The world didn’t have time for indecision; the time and effort people wasted wondering whom they wanted to be fighting for was time other people who knew spent dying. He didn’t have any patience for people like that at all.
Sasuke would’ve preferred that Naruto had destroyed it, because that was the sort of thing traitors were supposed to do. One could feel good about hating a villain with no second thoughts, no remorse, no matter who’s face he wore.
Underneath Sasuke’s old headband was another one, much older and beat up. He recognized the crosshatched scratches and dents-he’d stared at them for years while they were growing up. It was Naruto’s.
Underneath that were photos. And a piece of old string, a couple of pebbles and a bell.
The box hit the far wall with a clang, its contents spilling out and tumbling across the floor, one hinge shattered.
Sasuke started to storm out, then changed his mind abruptly and did an about-face, snatching up the red jacket and a few other choice items before heading off to the bathroom. A fist pounded against the front door-the hotel manager, wanting to know why his window was shattered and what was being thrown against the walls and when the door slammed open and when he looked through his oval glasses at the one who had opened it, he thought he was looking at a demon. The eyes were red. The eyes were glowing red.
A hand grabbed his face before he could yell or run, and all he saw were those glowing red eyes, swirling around and around like a washing machine, almost hypnotically. Swirling and swirling, dragging him down…
When Sasuke let go, the man stumbled back, blinked awkwardly once or twice, then stepped into the room and looked around quizzically. He didn’t look once at Sasuke-he frowned at the broken window, and to him it seemed that the window wasn’t broken, that it was still whole and that the room was, in fact, empty and completely in order. He continued to glance around, still puzzled, but left locking the door behind him.
Sasuke returned to the bathroom, the tub drenched with gasoline, matches in his left pocket, and lovely bottle of hydrochloric acid sitting on the sink’s counter. He wasn’t sure if fire would hurt the jacket (and its host) or not, but he was pretty certain the acid would have some effect and even if it didn’t he had enough iron to make up for it. He had more than enough, and if it wasn’t enough, he’d get more until it was. He was through playing games-he was through.
He picked up the bottle, and prepared to pour it down. The jacket lay in the tub helplessly. A part of him knew how silly this must’ve looked to an outsider, but at the moment he was too angry to care. All that mattered was that he got his revenge. How he got it, and at what price, were merely frippery.
The minutes ticked by.
Would Naruto scream? Would he be able to feel it, at this distance? Would he die? Would he fall down, frothing at the mouth and skin burning from nothing he could touch and no one else could see? Could he die? Sasuke had the time and means to find out…
He had the means to find out. He had the perfect means to find out.
Sasuke didn’t believe in luck. He didn’t believe in a lot of things: big things like God and Heaven and everyday things like a Model Citizen or a Better Life. He didn’t believe in things like that. He didn’t believe in dreams. He didn’t believe in coincidences, or luck, or good fortune. He just didn’t, and although he’d seen plenty of things he couldn’t explain or didn’t understand, he never saw any reason to believe in anything like that. Cynicism had always been good enough for him. Cynicism always worked.
Cynicism told him that it had been awfully convenient for the jacket to be left behind. Naruto was defenseless without it, pretty much. Naruto was weak and defenseless…and the perfect opportunity to try and kill him and most likely succeed had just been dropped in his lap. Very conveniently. Almost suspiciously conveniently.
Sasuke put the bottle back on the sink, unopened and unpoured. He leaned against the wall, arms over his chest and one foot crossed over the other, and thought.
Then he went back, and picked up the box and its contents.
When he touched them, his chest felt cold-stiff. Dead.
It was hours later before anything made sense to him. He threw up once, in that time. He didn’t eat until late in the afternoon, when he remembered he hadn’t eaten anything that day. He didn’t leave the room. At the end, he’d made his decision.
Naruto came to visit him again, that night. It’d be the last time.
***
Every new beginning comes from another beginning’s end. Many beginnings start with a death. It’s a circle. Life is a very big, wobbly, circle.
Naruto was feeling incredibly wobbly where he was, feeling the world fall in circles and spirals around him, too drunk to stand on his own feet without falling or tipping, too drunk in fact to even dance on tables singing lewd songs about Lira the One-Legged Whore. He was too drunk, in fact, to even throw up, although he thought it might be possible to throw down, if he cared to think about it. He was not, unfortunately, drunk enough to forget.
The bartender had been watching him for some time, from early that evening when Naruto had first come in with the usual after-work crowd and ordered the strongest thing he had in stock, over-paid in obscene amounts, and had steadily drank himself to…well, the bartender had planned to stop him several hours earlier, but something invasively sharp and bloody-red in his mind had pressured him continuing. He was more than a little worried-he didn’t want a death on his hands, not at this point in his life. He had a family to think about, a retirement to look forward to, and a life ahead of him.
Naruto tried not to think about it. He tried not to feel.
If he’d known what would’ve happened, he would’ve let him keep the damn thing. Without question. Let Sasuke be the one to next the move, should’ve waited, should’ve bided his time and reacted to whatever potential mistake Sasuke threw instead of jumping into the fray and into the fire like a damn idiot…
He should’ve done a million things. Naruto took another drink, his throat numb and eyes boiled and aching and demanded the next drink on no uncertain terms.
***
“You enjoy killing.” Sasuke hadn’t been looking at him when he came in, the room dark without lamps or candles, the windows shut. The air smelled stiff, unmoved. He kept his eyes down, non-confrontational.
That should’ve been his first warning-Sasuke looked defeated. Sasuke was always, always more dangerous, more unpredictable, when he felt defeated than any other time. He should’ve known that-he’d seen him broken before, wounded and hurt before, and instead of learning that that was the time when it was good to leave Sasuke alone because he was in a throat-cutting fire-setting mood, Naruto had moved in. He should’ve known. He should’ve known.
“And you don’t?” Naruto sneered. “ I’ve seen your eyes-you’ve got great eyes, Sasuke. They betray you every time.”
Instead, he’d had the goddamn arrogance to think that it’d been him who had broken Sasuke…and he’d honestly, foolishly thought he’d be able to collect him back together and tie a leash around his soul, like he had wanted to for years. To own him. After breaking him. He’d really thought he could…if he just held on a few months longer Sasuke would be his and…
“No, you’re not getting it,” Sasuke seemed more tired than angry. “I kill, but I don’t enjoy it. I don’t hate it. You betrayed us. You left. You’re no longer a threat and I don’t have the patience to deal with you. I want you gone.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Naruto said, leaning his head in his hand casually with a wry smile. “That’s what you said before, and lookie-lookie I’m back again: so what? You’re repeating yourself Sasuke, not good at all for-”
The chair fell over as Sasuke stood, eyes still not on him, but on the floor.
“Fuck Naruto what don’t you get?! I don’t care! You fucked up! You fucked up big and I want you gone!”
Naruto only raised his eyebrows and felt the rest of his face freeze.
He’d seen Sasuke angry before; furious even. Anger didn’t scare him, but it wasn’t anger leaking out of Sasuke’s face. He couldn’t move. He was frozen-it was Sasuke’s voice, and he couldn’t even twitch. He’d been an animal living with humans for years, since he was a young pup who didn’t even know he could be a fox, and there was still something in him that wanted to slow down when a certain, special voice said heel. And Sasuke’s voice had always worked magic, even on Gaara, who ate his own leash and strangled people with it.
Sasuke inhaled deeply, and then looked in straight in the eyes, his shoulders sloped and defeated. He continued softly, breathing awkwardly.
“…I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want to fuck you either, it hurts to have you here. …It hurts. I’m not masochistic and if you’re suicidal then go look for someone else to do it, because I won’t.”
Naruto, in one of the few times in his life, was speechless. Sasuke said nothing, letting the silence hang, staring at him, holding his eyes, and there was nowhere to run and no way to fight. There wasn’t a thing he could do.
//…no. No. This isn’t right, I can’t--//
“I don’t hate you-I’ve tried. I’ve tried, I did, I killed you, and now it’s old. I’m bored.”
//Bored? He’s bored? I’m the one getting beat up and he’s the one who’s bored? Fuck that!//
Naruto snarled inwardly while his face contorted, pissed and jaded and refusing to be rejected that damn easily, and made an invisible grab for Sasuke’s mind, ripping the metaphorical cupboards open and filing cabinets and learning everything Sasuke honestly felt and thought at that moment, because Sasuke wasn’t even trying to stop him. He knew what Naruto was doing--dark eyes winced once at the violence, at the pain that they both knew would last for days before vanishing, then springing back unexpectedly at inconvenient times, but he didn’t fight, didn’t try to stop him.
He didn’t care.
//If you were someone else, I could hate you. We would both be satisfied then.//
//It hurts. You’re hurting me. I respected you.//
//I gave up on you. There’s nothing left to say.//
//You can beat a dead horse but you’ll always be the one losing in the end. No more. No more.//
//I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.//
Again, Naruto felt the world was slipping out from under him. This wasn’t right-this hadn’t been in the cards. Sasuke had found the box. No. The fox skin had given him the box, for him to see. For him to know. His own flesh and blood had given his enemy and sexual prey his Achilles heel, his Pandora’s gift, and he didn’t have a thing to say to him. Not at thing. Not a single…
//I don’t care anymore. Not about the why’s. Not even about the ‘how’s. It doesn’t matter anymore.//
//You did what you did. What’s been done is done. It still doesn’t make sense, any of it, but I can’t hate you anymore. I tried. I really did. I did try, but I can’t keep you anymore. It hurts.//
//I trusted you. I liked you. You died. I killed you.//
//I don’t want to hurt you anymore, and I’m tired of you hurting me. I’ll never be able to bring the old feeling back…back when we were friends and we…//
//…Never. Not even if I wanted to. It’s cut too deep. You hurt me. Nothing will change that.//
//Go away. You don’t belong here. Go away.//
To his humiliation, Naruto found he was on the verge of begging forgiveness, and barely stopped himself from doing it. That wasn’t the way-damn it he still had his pride! That wasn’t the way-Sasuke was just being stupid, emotional. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t talk him out of-nothing he couldn’t fix he was Naruto for fuck’s sake; there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. He thought about grinning, grappled for a way to brush it all off him, leave him free of the responsibility somehow, and couldn’t find a single outlet. He was going insane-it was the only way he could explain his last words, lightly said with just the right touch of demonic pleasure and sadism to really give them that tingle.
“I loved you once.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sasuke stated.
Naruto’s breath caught in his throat, a choking wad of ice. That was supposed to be his trump card-made all the sharper by the fact that it was true and they both knew it was true, and Sasuke didn’t…care. Sasuke didn’t care.
//…That’s not fair. You can’t do that, that’s not fair! You can’t-you’re not supposed to be able to…you can’t do that. That’s not fair.//
Apathy kills.
Well, what could he say to that? What was there to say at all? He couldn’t just leave without a fight-he didn’t have to leave at all, Sasuke couldn’t force him out, he was still stronger than him, but…what was there to say? What was there to do? What was there to fix, or break? He’d started this whole thing with a goal in mind, but if Sasuke wasn’t going to cooperate even the least bit, then things were going to get a lot more complicated very, very quickly. They might even get so complicated they stopped dead completely. Naruto struck out blindly.
“…Didn’t know you could get bored of hating someone. You’ve made an art out of it, Sasuke…”
Sasuke shook his head, “I’m going to kill my brother because that’ll change something.”
“What?”
“I’ll feel better,” Sasuke snapped testily, some life flaring in him at last and Naruto almost sagged with relief. There was a chance; there was still a chance, fighting had always nearly been like sex to them, and if he could get that then he might be still able to make it all work.
“That’ll change. I killed you, and nothing changed. I fucked you, you fucked me, and nothing changed. Nothing got fixed; the land’s still hurt, people are still dead, you can’t replace anything you took--” Sasuke stopped abruptly. He pulled himself back under his shaky control.
“…You left. I don’t know what you want from me. You don’t belong here anymore. And it hurts to look at you…”
It was easy to forget Sasuke was human; he didn’t have too many strange habits or kinks, things that marked him as an individual. He slid easily into the anonymous status of a faceless almost androgynous sex-object or hired-killer; efficient, quiet, and harsh. It was hard to remember he got tired, or could cry.
But he could. He tried not to, but he could, and sometimes he did.
He could feel lonely, and love, and want, and it could make him cry. Not often, but enough to anchor him, to pull him down, enough to remind himself that he was a real person, and that he was alive here and now and one day he would die.
Ages ago, he had fallen in love, and as reserved people often do, he fell hard. He fell hard and he never fell back out of it, never stopped being in love.
He knew it. He knew it had happened, and had known he was unable to change it; it was out of his hands.
It wouldn’t hurt so badly, if he didn’t. It wouldn’t hurt to see, to hear him and touch him, if he didn’t. He still did-still loved the memory inside his head. But this was too much. This was asking far too much of him, and he couldn’t do it anymore and he didn’t want to try either.
//Go away.//
“My skin,” Naruto asked.
Sasuke shook his head, “Stays with me.”
“You could kill me too easily with that thing. It’s too easy for me to die without it.”
“Does that matter to you?” Sasuke hadn’t been sarcastic or joking. He’d meant it.
Naruto hadn’t answered.
“Do you care if you die?”
***
So he found himself in another bar. He was getting sick of bars. Pea soup green nauseas sick of them. Sick of not having a place to go to, of not having…
Sick of stale salted peanuts, and the infant dried mackerel they served along the coast. Sick of the little dried fish that tasted all right after the first five bowls, and then merely sickening after that. Dried fish, dried shrimp…dried ear and fingers in the darker allies, babes cut fresh from the womb, still-born pups boiled in something that smelled like sugar…salted and spiced and served warm in broth…
Hey hey! Your turn to treat me today!
//Oh shut up. I didn’t come this far to…//
//I definitely didn’t come this far to do what I’m doing. Definitely. If I could just remember about what I did come this far to do, I could set up all right. Maybe even get real sleep for once.//
//Fuck it.//
Do you care if you’re alive?
He wanted to live-he did. Dying meant he lost, was defeated; he didn’t want to admit he had lost, he wanted to be alive. He just didn’t care about living anymore. It wasn’t fun. And he’d forgotten the point.
Naruto pulled on his bottom lip thoughtfully while stirring the nuts around with one finger.
“You doing all right there?”
“Hm?” he looked up, momentarily startled.
“Oh,” Naruto said. “Yeah. Hey, can I ask you something? Where’re you going after this?”
The man’s eyebrows raised, but not too high. Guys were always funny this early in the morning and a little worse for drink; it wouldn’t be the first time. Besides, the blonde hadn’t been drinking like there was no tomorrow-he’d been drinking hard enough to attempt it wouldn’t be. It was amazing he was still speaking; there was only a slight slur in his words, the uncontrolled high-note in his voice betraying how young he really was.
“Home, friend. To my wife.”
“Ah,” Naruto nodded agreeably. “You love her?”
“She’s a good woman-three years happily married. The other twenty-seven haven’t been too bad either, mind,” the bar man polished the counter a bit, for the look of things, while pondering how to communicate that he needed his customer to leave so he could close and go home. It wasn’t late at night anymore-it was so late at night it was early in the morning, and he was tired and ready to rest. He respected a man’s wish to get away from the world, but if the blonde hadn’t been able to knock himself asleep or dead by this time he could probably keeping going a while longer…but where was he putting it all?
//Kids these days…crazy.//
“Lady troubles?”
“Mmm. Yeah. You know you think…” Naruto trailed off, his finger still stuck in the bowl of salted nuts, his hand hanging off the edge. “I suppose I was something of a bastard.”
The man nodded. He’d heard that understatement about once a week, usually.
“I just didn’t think it’d be this important. I mean, it’s not like…I guess I never thought I’d care. You know. About what they thought. I knew they’d be angry, but I didn’t think it’d matter. To me. Hey? If you didn’t go home tonight…no, if you died, would you care?”
The bartender stilled. He’d noted the scar running across the blonde’s throat in the first few hours, but by that time it had been a bit too late to tell him to leave; he’d seen deeper scars, but never in so vulnerable a place. His crowd wasn’t all that savory, but it was one thing to chat with thieves about sports and later break up the fights over who had the better team with the old stout friendly stick of wood he kept under the counter, it was another thing entirely to talk to killers about his family.
Naruto flapped his hand unsteadily, weaving gently from side to side.
“Like, I know your wife would care, and any kids-if you have kids,” he added conscientiously. “But you. Would you care? No one wants to die, I mean yeah of course, but would you. Care?”
The man’s lower lip jutted out uncomfortably.
“Well…yes, I would. Of course,” he added philosophically, “everyone dies, but if you happen to be like me it doesn’t end here. Something keeps me going, keeps me moving-I live on.”
“After you die?”
“Yes sir.”
“Why?” Naruto’s face screwed and crumpled painfully, his voice a high-pitched almost hysterical pleading; he sounded like he was about to scream. “…I mean, life’s…I couldn’t stand that. I can’t even keep this life straight, I’d go crazy if I had to do it twice.”
“Well…some people find it comforting. Each to their own, whatever you like best.” The man inhaled deeply, because he would have to bring this up sooner or later and if he didn't bring it up now his legs were going to give way under him and he wouldn’t be able to pick himself up afterwards. “And speaking of owe, I’m going to be closing soon, and you owe me for your drinks.”
Naruto stared glassily at the mole on the man’s right eyebrow.
He stuck out his hand, “Naruto Uzumaki, pleasure to meet you. I. I ruled three countries once.” He shook the man’s hand, and then wiped his palm on his pants. “Not for very long, but I did.”
“So you can pay?”
“Hm? Oh. Oh yeah, I can pay,” he shook his hand dismissively. “That’s not a problem. The problem. The problem is. The problem. The problem is that, um…”
His mind went, blessedly, blank. “I don’t know.”
“Well then sir, I’m going to have to ask you to pay so I can close up. Gotta go home, you know.”
“Mmm…”
“That means you have to leave,” the man hinted again. “It’s over. Time to go now.”
“Mmm… You know? You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I mean, what do I…” Naruto shrugged, closing his eyes and wincing. “I’ll tell you what. How much do I owe you?”
The man told him. Naruto nodded amicably.
“Okay. Good. Now, tell me, is your life worth that?”
Naruto grinned at him surprisingly lucidly, with only his lips and his eyes, not an inch of teeth showing. “How much is your life worth? When is too much…done?”
“Listen,” the bartender started to say, getting angry, “I don’t care what happened with your girls…” his voice died slowly-Naruto was looking at him musingly, light blue eyes fading out in the smoky light swiftly, pixels darkening and pupil slitting. He wasn’t smiling anymore. In fact, he wasn’t even human anymore.
The man took a slow step to his right, careful not to make any sudden movements. Cold, slightly drunk vulpine eyes watched him, completely unafraid or anxious. It wasn’t like being watched by a thug, or a wolf-you could see the hunger in them, the desire. This was like being watched by a cat with too much milk in him, slow, uncaring, and suffering from painful constipation and ready to take it out on anyone.
“A word of advice, friend.”
Crimson black eyes held him in their teeth carefully, not biting down, and the throbbing sharp pain he’d been having in the back of his skull throbbed suddenly clear and incisive. It felt like he was having a heart attack in his head, like he was having a stroke or aneurysm…
Naruto smiled grimly, without humor or mirth or even sadistic arrogant pleasure, and the bartender knew that he was exactly right.
“Never annoy a monster with a personal crisis.”
Naruto closed his hand, dragging his fingers lightly over the counter and leaving grooves in the wood. It was an effortless gesture, a bit meaningless, and thoughtless. The bartender held his breath carefully-his son was a sulking sixteen, and he wanted to live to see him grow out of it. His daughter was only seven. There was a monster brooding at his counter. Time froze gently on his skin, as his senses for several seconds became chiseled and precise, super-aware in fear until he could feel every pang in his spine and all the aches in his legs and hands from old age.
Bartending was not exactly the dangerous job people thought it to be-sure, sometimes there were fights, and sometimes there were weapons, but he’d never had anyone die under his watch though a couple had been sent to the clinic from glass cuts and missing teeth, but he’d never seen his job as really dangerous. He’d come to recognize danger, and learn how to keep it at bay, how to soothe and how to listen.
“What can I get you?”
Naruto gave a cold, hard look. “What do you use,” he stated clearly, the slur temporarily gone from his words as his body metabolized the alcohol at an unholy rate. “For cleaning drains?”
***
Continued Here