Requested ficlet: Midnight on the Firing Line (Naruto; for rosalui )
Remember this post?
Title: “Midnight on the Firing Line”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: G
Timeline: post-canon, about a year after Sasuke’s supposed return to Konoha
Summary: Apparently Naruto’s idea of friendship is making his friend’s life harder.
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi. Lyrics from Lighthouse.mp3 by Spleen (translated by me*).
A/N: A piece of utterly pointless, idiotic, humourous wtf. Don’t ask. Sorry that I’m so late with it. >_< It was supposed to have a picture with it and I was waiting for it, but my artistic friend is busy and I decided not to bug her with it.
Prompt: letters from rosalui
MIDNIGHT ON THE FIRING LINE
Won’t jump into the flight of stairs,
Won’t drink poison,
And won’t be able to pull the trigger over my temple.
No knife blade
Except your look
Has power over me.
The first thing Sasuke saw upon waking up was a white board with a message written on it in black highlighter.
HI! WHAT’S UP?
Sasuke blinked. The board was so close that its whiteness hurt his eyes, and the black characters seemed to be floating in the thin air. So it would seem, but for the wisp of yellow hair sticking up behind the board.
Sasuke grasped the board and lowered it forcibly, revealing Naruto’s face, the expression on it being that of-. Forget it. Sasuke couldn’t be bothered to play another one of Naruto’s idiotic games.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a tone of complete disinterest.
Naruto turned the board around and wrote his reply:
LET’S TALK!
“I’ve told you a thousand times: I don’t want to talk.”
Sasuke disentangled himself out of the blanket and made for the kitchen. It was bad enough to be living in Naruto’s apartment without Naruto constantly pestering him with friendly conversations.
The board, having changed its message again, was hovering by the fridge, looking like it had grown a pair of orange legs of its own.
I KNOW!!! U JUST WATCH!
Sasuke poured himself a glass of tomato juice and considered telling the bothersome orange abomination that his eyesight had deteriorated again and he was unadvised by medics to “watch” anything. The few slices of ham they had in the fridge had gone bad. No breakfast then; Sasuke sure as hell was not eating Naruto’s cup ramen.
Meanwhile, Naruto was vigorously sketching something out on the board. He looked so focused and determined that for a moment Sasuke felt vague curiosity stirring up inside him.
A few minutes later Naruto turned the board around again, looking victorious. Sasuke frowned. The board looked like a kaleidoscope of multi-coloured blotches interconnected with small arrows.
“…What?”
Naruto arched his eyebrows and craned out his neck to take a peek at his artwork. Then he gave himself a slap on the forehead, grabbed the highlighter and added an equals sign in the bottom right corner along with the word,
FRIENDS.
“Okay,” Sasuke said warily. “And what does that prove?” Except that you possess an arsenal of multi-coloured highlighters that should be confiscated from you as soon as possible.
Naruto growled, his exasperation building, and added a few more captions which finally had the abstract horror painting start making a tiny bit of sense.
There was an orange blotch and a blue blotch and a blotchy plus between them and a huge equals sign and lots of smaller splotches around them, bearing the names of various Konoha nins and even Sasuke’s former teammates from Hawk. You told a five-year-old to depict world’s peace and that was something he would likely come up with. A big happy rainbow.
Despite himself, Sasuke felt a tiny smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Once again, what does it prove?”
Naruto erased half of the picture with his sleeve briskly and flashed Sasuke a smug grin upon writing:
WHATEVER! MADE U SMILE THO!
Sasuke suppressed the urge to roll his eyes and limited his display of irritation to one half-hearted clip on the back of Naruto’s head. He downed the rest of his juice and headed out. A new bright and early morning meant another round of pointless menial work that the Hokage had devised to keep the notorious Konoha criminal busy.
Ever since Sasuke’s semi-voluntary return to the village Naruto was trying to come up with numerous idiotic ways to prove him that life wasn’t that much hell after all. The latest one had exceeded Sasuke’s expectations: it proved with enviable ease that Naruto’s philosophical, mathematical and drawing skills left much to be desired. And yet, as hard as Sasuke tried, he couldn’t get the colourful daub out of his mind. That stupid idea must have wormed its way into Naruto’s head after Sasuke had described his voice as “nerve-grating”.
Yet it was something Naruto deserved a lot of credit for. He kept finding new creative ways to employ his never-give-up philosophy when battling Sasuke’s reluctance to work himself back into community, and little by little the sheer absurdity of those began to make Sasuke wonder if he was actually missing out on something.
* * *
A week later Sasuke decided that he missed the sound of that nerve-grating voice. There was a lot of writing going on these days: Naruto even managed to dig up some fridge magnets shaped as letters and would often leave stupid messages like “FUD GONE, SRY!” on the fridge door. It brought back some childhood memories which Sasuke had certainly never shared with anyone, and he often found himself rearranging the little plastic letters absent-mindedly, thinking back to the small household-related notes that Mother left for Itachi whenever she had to go out for the better part of a day.
“You know,” he told Naruto after nine days of silence, “I don’t think you’d be so hung up on me if I hadn’t told you back then that I wanted to fight you.”
I THINK YOU’RE A MORRON,
Naruto wrote.
Sasuke snickered. “You misspelled ‘moron’, moron.” He sighed wearily. “You don’t have to try so hard. I told you: I’m not leaving. You can get on with your life. Go be a Hokage or whatever.”
For a moment Naruto looked like he was going to hit him.
“You really don’t get it, do you!?” he spat finally. “It’s not about keeping you as a prisoner! I just fucking care about you, that’s all!”
I know you do, Sasuke thought, resigned. I just suck at admitting it.
He mused about Naruto’s ‘picture’ again. There may have been more sense in it than he’d originally thought. That big colourful maze, all those people, those threads of fate, all that blinding chaos - and yet, in the end, it was still them, Naruto and him, together. No matter how many summands you added, it always equaled two.
After a moment of hesitation, he pulled the board closer and wrote:
SO… WANNA COME PICK UP GARBAGE WITH ME?
Naruto let out a bewildered laugh. “What?”
“Nothing spells care like helping a friend do boring, humiliating community service for the benefit of the village said friend still harbours no warm feelings for.”
“Fine by me,” said Naruto a little doubtfully and then added with a sly wink: “So we are friends!”
Sasuke thought about it. Perhaps, really thought about it for the first time since forever - and decided that if he had lived with Naruto for so long and had managed not to kill either the moron, or himself, then yes, they were friends. It wasn’t such a scary thought, after all.
He turned to the fridge and pushed all the magnets down, leaving only two to spell out,
…HN.
* Original song lyrics excerpt:
И в пролет не брошусь,
и не выпью яда,
и курок не смогу над виском нажать.
Надо мною,
кроме твоего взгляда,
не властно лезвие ни одного ножа.
Title: “Midnight on the Firing Line”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: G
Timeline: post-canon, about a year after Sasuke’s supposed return to Konoha
Summary: Apparently Naruto’s idea of friendship is making his friend’s life harder.
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi. Lyrics from Lighthouse.mp3 by Spleen (translated by me*).
A/N: A piece of utterly pointless, idiotic, humourous wtf. Don’t ask. Sorry that I’m so late with it. >_< It was supposed to have a picture with it and I was waiting for it, but my artistic friend is busy and I decided not to bug her with it.
Prompt: letters from rosalui
MIDNIGHT ON THE FIRING LINE
Won’t jump into the flight of stairs,
Won’t drink poison,
And won’t be able to pull the trigger over my temple.
No knife blade
Except your look
Has power over me.
The first thing Sasuke saw upon waking up was a white board with a message written on it in black highlighter.
HI! WHAT’S UP?
Sasuke blinked. The board was so close that its whiteness hurt his eyes, and the black characters seemed to be floating in the thin air. So it would seem, but for the wisp of yellow hair sticking up behind the board.
Sasuke grasped the board and lowered it forcibly, revealing Naruto’s face, the expression on it being that of-. Forget it. Sasuke couldn’t be bothered to play another one of Naruto’s idiotic games.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a tone of complete disinterest.
Naruto turned the board around and wrote his reply:
LET’S TALK!
“I’ve told you a thousand times: I don’t want to talk.”
Sasuke disentangled himself out of the blanket and made for the kitchen. It was bad enough to be living in Naruto’s apartment without Naruto constantly pestering him with friendly conversations.
The board, having changed its message again, was hovering by the fridge, looking like it had grown a pair of orange legs of its own.
I KNOW!!! U JUST WATCH!
Sasuke poured himself a glass of tomato juice and considered telling the bothersome orange abomination that his eyesight had deteriorated again and he was unadvised by medics to “watch” anything. The few slices of ham they had in the fridge had gone bad. No breakfast then; Sasuke sure as hell was not eating Naruto’s cup ramen.
Meanwhile, Naruto was vigorously sketching something out on the board. He looked so focused and determined that for a moment Sasuke felt vague curiosity stirring up inside him.
A few minutes later Naruto turned the board around again, looking victorious. Sasuke frowned. The board looked like a kaleidoscope of multi-coloured blotches interconnected with small arrows.
“…What?”
Naruto arched his eyebrows and craned out his neck to take a peek at his artwork. Then he gave himself a slap on the forehead, grabbed the highlighter and added an equals sign in the bottom right corner along with the word,
FRIENDS.
“Okay,” Sasuke said warily. “And what does that prove?” Except that you possess an arsenal of multi-coloured highlighters that should be confiscated from you as soon as possible.
Naruto growled, his exasperation building, and added a few more captions which finally had the abstract horror painting start making a tiny bit of sense.
There was an orange blotch and a blue blotch and a blotchy plus between them and a huge equals sign and lots of smaller splotches around them, bearing the names of various Konoha nins and even Sasuke’s former teammates from Hawk. You told a five-year-old to depict world’s peace and that was something he would likely come up with. A big happy rainbow.
Despite himself, Sasuke felt a tiny smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“Once again, what does it prove?”
Naruto erased half of the picture with his sleeve briskly and flashed Sasuke a smug grin upon writing:
WHATEVER! MADE U SMILE THO!
Sasuke suppressed the urge to roll his eyes and limited his display of irritation to one half-hearted clip on the back of Naruto’s head. He downed the rest of his juice and headed out. A new bright and early morning meant another round of pointless menial work that the Hokage had devised to keep the notorious Konoha criminal busy.
Ever since Sasuke’s semi-voluntary return to the village Naruto was trying to come up with numerous idiotic ways to prove him that life wasn’t that much hell after all. The latest one had exceeded Sasuke’s expectations: it proved with enviable ease that Naruto’s philosophical, mathematical and drawing skills left much to be desired. And yet, as hard as Sasuke tried, he couldn’t get the colourful daub out of his mind. That stupid idea must have wormed its way into Naruto’s head after Sasuke had described his voice as “nerve-grating”.
Yet it was something Naruto deserved a lot of credit for. He kept finding new creative ways to employ his never-give-up philosophy when battling Sasuke’s reluctance to work himself back into community, and little by little the sheer absurdity of those began to make Sasuke wonder if he was actually missing out on something.
* * *
A week later Sasuke decided that he missed the sound of that nerve-grating voice. There was a lot of writing going on these days: Naruto even managed to dig up some fridge magnets shaped as letters and would often leave stupid messages like “FUD GONE, SRY!” on the fridge door. It brought back some childhood memories which Sasuke had certainly never shared with anyone, and he often found himself rearranging the little plastic letters absent-mindedly, thinking back to the small household-related notes that Mother left for Itachi whenever she had to go out for the better part of a day.
“You know,” he told Naruto after nine days of silence, “I don’t think you’d be so hung up on me if I hadn’t told you back then that I wanted to fight you.”
I THINK YOU’RE A MORRON,
Naruto wrote.
Sasuke snickered. “You misspelled ‘moron’, moron.” He sighed wearily. “You don’t have to try so hard. I told you: I’m not leaving. You can get on with your life. Go be a Hokage or whatever.”
For a moment Naruto looked like he was going to hit him.
“You really don’t get it, do you!?” he spat finally. “It’s not about keeping you as a prisoner! I just fucking care about you, that’s all!”
I know you do, Sasuke thought, resigned. I just suck at admitting it.
He mused about Naruto’s ‘picture’ again. There may have been more sense in it than he’d originally thought. That big colourful maze, all those people, those threads of fate, all that blinding chaos - and yet, in the end, it was still them, Naruto and him, together. No matter how many summands you added, it always equaled two.
After a moment of hesitation, he pulled the board closer and wrote:
SO… WANNA COME PICK UP GARBAGE WITH ME?
Naruto let out a bewildered laugh. “What?”
“Nothing spells care like helping a friend do boring, humiliating community service for the benefit of the village said friend still harbours no warm feelings for.”
“Fine by me,” said Naruto a little doubtfully and then added with a sly wink: “So we are friends!”
Sasuke thought about it. Perhaps, really thought about it for the first time since forever - and decided that if he had lived with Naruto for so long and had managed not to kill either the moron, or himself, then yes, they were friends. It wasn’t such a scary thought, after all.
He turned to the fridge and pushed all the magnets down, leaving only two to spell out,
…HN.
* Original song lyrics excerpt:
И в пролет не брошусь,
и не выпью яда,
и курок не смогу над виском нажать.
Надо мною,
кроме твоего взгляда,
не властно лезвие ни одного ножа.