Purple 5/5 (Part 1/5)
Title: Purple
Pairing: SasuNaru
Rating: NC17
Chapter Rating: NC17
Warnings: Sexual themes, language
Summary: It's hard learning how to save peoples lives when you're so busy trying to save your own.
“I reached the wrong end by the wrong means.”
-Wrong, by Depeche Mode
--
In a subtle way, like a person doesn‘t realize they‘d been dozing off before their head hits a desk, Naruto noted that he didn’t remember it like a constant, flowing jet of memories. It didn’t start at the beginning, not at the middle, nor the end. It was like he wasn’t remembering it at all, only knowing it, acknowledging it like he would the nose set plainly on his face. Like the nightmares had been someone else’s, not his. Not like there had ever been a gap in his memory, but that it had never been there, the truth always sitting right in the center of his heart, of his brain. That’s he’d never forgotten. That he’d never misunderstood.
--
Out of all the houses he’d been expecting, this was not it. It wasn’t even a house at all; a penthouse suite, situated somewhere between the fourth and sixth stories of an eleven-story building, gleaming and new like a sore thumb in a metropolis of garbage and industrial wreck.
His messenger bag, khaki with frayed edges and broken buckles, was uncomfortable against his side. Sweat made his shirt glue itself to his skin like fly paper. His task set, his map in the form of a torn-out sheet of loose-leaf clenched in a fist with cracked knuckles, Naruto crossed the last street towards Sasuke’s complex.
“Take this straight to him, Naruto,” his guardian’s words continued to ring. “No side trips. No stops. Straight. To him.”
“I got it, I got it,” his own words echoed back, lacking just as much stability and sounding more like a recorded message on the answering machine. “No side trips.”
The street was deserted save for a large cat, slinking in-between the garbage cans. As Naruto grew closer, the creature darted out, into the light, and flew across the street from where Naruto had come from. The fluffed tail, tipped white, and black padded feet told Naruto that he’d been mistaken regarding the creature’s species. Wondering idly what a fox had been doing so far from its woods in the first place, Naruto waltzed up and through the swinging doors. The metal framework was stainless steel, very modern for a not-so-modern town.
But who would expect anything less of the great protégé Sasuke Uchiha?
The bastard’s homework was settled somewhere in his bag. The sixteen-year-old, after not missing a single minute of class over the entire year while Naruto himself missed a grand total of thirteen days, had been absent with no call nor notice for the past three days. He’d shown no signs of impending illness the last time Naruto had seen him, other than being quieter than usual. This threw Naruto for a complete loop; the guy couldn’t speak a word of English when he’d first enrolled in Clifford Private School, but once he‘d gotten the swing of it, he‘d headed straight to the section of the English language comprised of every insult known to the country‘s language. He could call Naruto more names than Naruto, who‘d spoken English since he was two, had ever heard of.
Sasuke had been a dark, brooding thing that shone so brightly you couldn’t help but notice him. His tongue was foreign and something new to hear, like the catchy new song played over and over on the radio until it lost all appeal. At least for Naruto it did. Then he‘d began to taunt the foreign tongue (he noticed a significant improvement after this). For others, it grew more sickeningly addictive every day, and it was so obvious the youth didn’t want the attention. But since when did things like that make a difference?
Middle school graduation was in two weeks, a small and uneventful ceremony made to please the parents rather than the students. A sense of accomplishment was more of a requirement, it seemed, than the basic four years of math and English. His guardian Iruka would, of course, be there. He was a teacher at the high school and seemed pleased (insultingly pleased) that Naruto had managed to claw his way out with a passing grade. Passing if you squinted.
That being said, while Naruto’s legs skimmed awkwardly along the floor from his position on the bottom rung of the ladder, Sasuke sat so high up he was in danger of his high horse throwing him off.
The guy was Asian, so that could have been key, but did he have to graduate at the top of the class? He didn’t speak a word of English when he’d first come, and honestly, Naruto wasn’t so sure that he knew how to now. The two were in completely opposite classes. Sasuke joined in with the honors and AP classes for calculus and Physics, while Naruto was stuck with career-prep in Algebra 1 and Language and Composition. But even when they strayed paths in public settings, the meetings were never all that pleasant. Sometimes Naruto felt that Sasuke waited until he was at the pinnacle of his emo-boy bad mood before hunting the blond down, just to make the encounters as explosive and violent as possible. Naruto couldn’t bring to memory one decent, calm conversation they’d shared in the presence of other students.
But, hey, who needed words for a reputation when you had fists?
There were some people Naruto couldn’t help but like. He was attracted to them, and they to he, and through mutual attraction could form some sort of bond, whether fickle or iron-clad. Then there were the people who put a sick feeling in his stomach when he heard their voice, made his fists clench whenever their eyes met.
Sasuke was both.
Naruto’s eyes tightened at the memory of their first head-on collision. It took a week before their heated glares cooled and staled, no longer enough to sedate that unquenchable thirst for contact. For the feel of hard bone against furled knuckles, to feel hot breath as they got into each others face. To have foreign blood splash against their skin and to taste their own in kind. It was a short skirmish, half a minute before hall aids tore them apart, an unrefined quarrel that was more tugging hair and going for weak spots. Their spot was obvious and no good. They learned. They learned to dodge like a bullet and strike like a falcon, and learned to make use of quite and desolate spots. The math and science hallway after third period every fourth day of their six-day rotation. The old auditorium that had had a ‘renovation’ sign on it for over a year. The tiny network of alleys that stripped the surrounding grounds like a cobweb.
Their fights continued, and the scale of bruises quickly began to tip in Sasuke’s favor, once the initial shyness of real damage dissolved. Naruto sometimes avoided the hot spots, if nothing but to calm Iruka’s worried face and his friends’ anxious stares whenever he showed up with a fresh patch of shiny red surrounding his eye or his cheek.
Sasuke knew. He must have. He wore a sneer whenever Naruto took a shortcut, although the blond remained positive that no one followed him. Sasuke never brought it up in words, but the condescending look in his eyes whenever he caught Naruto in the act spoke volumes. Somehow, he knew. The bastard just knew. This deadly game of cat and mouse lasted well into Winter.
Of course, Sasuke wasn’t the only one Naruto found himself in regular skirmishes with. The football jocks, the black kids with baggy clothes and bad music, the younger, scrawny kids who had more bark than bite but were so quick on their feet that keeping track of them was impossible, and holding onto them even harder. Plenty. Naruto supposed it was just something in his personality. Maybe he was labeled a poser for having a Japanese name with no heritage to back it up. Maybe it was his diminutive height that made him so easy to look down upon.
His sociology teacher had once told his class that for every person that liked you, there were at least two who did not. Naruto had yet to meet what was sure to be a huge flock of admirers, but looked forward to the day that he did.
But so far, he’d been stuck with the not-so-friendly crowd. Sometimes he wondered if even his ‘friends’ had strayed over to that side. But until then Naruto grinned and bore the title they’d given him with pride. ‘Monster’. It was fitting, in a way. Monsters were vastly misinterpreted creatures, and always smarter than those who had created them.
The doorman raised an eyebrow at him. Naruto flashed a nonplussed grin and pointedly shifted his shoulder strap so that his pack swung against his hip. “I’m here to give Sasuke Uchiha some homework. He up there?”
The doorman waited a ridiculous amount of time before sniffing in distain and muttering, in an altogether too-prim voice for such a small town, “The young sir lives on the fourth floor. The elevator is down the hallway past the lobby desk.”
Naruto waited, and under the expectant gaze, waited for further direction. Receiving nothing, he just nodded awkwardly and strode past him to the dim hallway by the dim desk.
“…Mr. Uchiha is still attending school?”
Naruto stopped in his tracks and whipped his head around. Sasuke not going to school? Of course. And president Bush had found a cure for breast cancer through personal experience.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t he?”
He was beginning to grow annoyed by being looked at as if he were a tiny fraction of his age. “Ask him yourself.”
“Fine!” Naruto snapped. He whirled around, determined not to stop even if spoken to. He was uninterrupted and made it to the elevator doors winded. And he couldn’t tell why.
The ride upwards was smooth, and Naruto leaned his head back against the wood paneling of the elevator wall, thinking the doorman’s words over. Sasuke had never mentioned any future extended absences from school, not had he shown any symptoms of a cold. Up until the last day Sasuke had been seen at school, a Friday, the foreign student had been colder than usual, slipping back into his native tongue, taking longer to realize that until Naruto had to hit him over the head and order him to speak in words that he could understand. But Sasuke was like that, Naruto knew. Like a teenage girl, Sasuke fell into week-long spells of bitchiness and sullenness. Naruto didn’t mind. It was just another reason to use fists instead of words to knock him out of it. That Friday, however, was different. On that day, Naruto had avoided him like he would the black plague.
Ding
Naruto shook his head, his thoughts flying to the back of his head, and he stepped out of the elevator. Sasuke lived in apartment 409. The first eight were grouped like small complexes to one side of the vast building, 409 and 410 being the master suites, and the latter under construction. Ten rooms to a floor, all lain out in a similar fashion. All costing more than ten combined years of Iruka’s pay, no doubt. It was sickening, the amount of money people spent on just an apartment. He knocked on the first one and waited.
And waited.
He waited ten seconds, blinked, furrowed his brows, and knocked again.
Still no answer.
After the fifth set of knocks, by which time it had become more of a hammering, Naruto was considering just leaving the work by the door. The courage he’d tried to talk himself into this morning was waning fast in face of the door to Sasuke’s apartment. Naruto didn’t know to deal with it without ignoring it, and this was a far cry from the word ‘ignore’. ‘Confrontation’ seemed better suited.
There’s nothing to be afraid of, Naruto told himself. It’s fine. He’s fine. You’re fine. He probably had a fever then, he was delirious. Forget about it. He probably has.
Naruto sighed, weighing his misery as only a fourteen-year-old could, licking his dry lips. For a moment, he could taste the smoke again. And before he knew it, the blond was twisting the unlocked doorknob and letting himself into the suite.
--
Naruto hadn’t caused much of a disturbance besides that first tumultuous day when he and Sasuke made enough of a ruckus to alert the residents on every floor of their dorm building. On that day, the rooms had been full of people who had their eyes and ears doing a constant three-sixty, taking in everything, every odd detail, every bit of sordid gossip, everything and anything that would make this foreign place a home. But after several months, people stopped caring as much. Young adults played their music loudly and no one minded much. Students thundered down the halls and they stopped getting shouted at. Instead of every noise sticking to their minds like flypaper, it went in one ear and out the other.
Naruto was fortunate in this way. It felt good to scream, to let the pain roaring in his throat combat the life-shattering guilt budding up and boiling over, threatening to kill his insides. The guilt that made him question everything he knew, everything he thought he knew, everything he’d built himself up to be, everything he wanted to be. Everything, gone, and he felt completely justified at screaming as if he were falling off the face of the Earth. Because, in a way, that’s exactly what he was doing. Falling without ever having the chance to climb back up again.
The door slammed open.
Of course, there was an exception to every rule. The one person who wouldn’t just ignore something. And he stood in the threshold, stepping in and panting, letting the door fall shut behind him.
Sasuke.
Oh God.
What have I done?
“What’s wrong?” Now that he saw that Naruto was in my physical harm, Sasuke seemed reluctant to enter any farther into the room. “I heard screaming.”
Actually, you heard part of me shrivel up and die. Actually, you heard the biggest invitation for an “I told you so” in the world. “S-sorry,” was all Naruto could utter. “It’s nothing.”
Sasuke’s right eyebrow cocked itself higher than the other. “You were screaming over nothing?”
“Erm…” It wasn’t quite the articulate response he’d been hoping for, but Naruto couldn’t think of nothing in the English language that would sit this particular conversation. He wished he didn’t need words. That Sasuke could reach in through his head and grab the answer, all so Naruto wouldn’t have to sat it aloud.
Sasuke stood there, waiting. When Naruto failed to supply him with an answer, he sighed. “Whatever,” Sasuke muttered, turning around and reaching for the door. “I’ll let you get back to your fit, then. Try not to disturb our neighbors.”
“Where did you go that night?”
Sasuke blinked, confused. “Excuse me?” He had one hand on the door knob now, and it was lingering, as if half-tempted to yank the door open and dart away right this instant.
Naruto bit his lip. He couldn’t tell which emotion was going to win the war that was currently splitting his head in two; pride or guilt. Pride would make him keep up the façade of the victim trapped in his rapist’s room. Guilt made him want to confess everything, to apologize over and over until his voice cracked and his mouth ran dry. He was treading slowly, unsure of how either he or Sasuke would react.
“The last night we saw each other,” Naruto mumbled in a rush under hiss breath.
Sasuke’s eyebrows furrowed and he frowned. “I can’t hear a word that you’re saying.”
As tempting as it was to just say “Never mind” and live life like this conversation had never happened, Naruto knew himself well enough to know he’d never be able to sleep at night knowing he’d given up. Guilt would drive him to misery faster than Sasuke would walk out that door.
So he repeated himself, slowly, clearly. “Where did you go the last night we saw each other?” he asked. “Back in middle school. I--” He was biting the bullet, he knew. This was dangerous, After this, he’d never be able to return to the safe cloud of ignorance he’d been floating on for so many years. Sasuke wouldn’t ever let it go, and to be fair, Naruto couldn’t blame him. “I woke up and you weren’t there…”
Sasuke’s hand slid from the door, and he didn’t hesitate to abandon his station by the threshold to cross the room. He ended at the foot of Naruto’s bed, eyeing him incredulously, almost angrily. “Why would you believe anything I say?”
I’m sorry.
Naruto shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “It’s just a question, bastard,” he said, displeased to note how his voice quaked. Surely, Sasuke would notice. Surely, he wouldn’t make Naruto say it. He’d know and let it go. He wouldn’t tear Naruto apart any worse than the blond was already doing to himself. “You don’t have to answer.”
Again, Sasuke didn’t hesitate. As soon as the last word had left Naruto’s mouth, Sasuke had put a knee on the bed and hoisted himself up. On his knees he shuffled closer, looming a foot over Naruto’s hunched figure. They were inches from touching. Naruto eyed him warily, frightened of what he’d say, frightened of what he’d do, and most of all, scared witless of how he himself would react.
“Are you scared of me?” Sasuke asked. The way his eyes were alight with energy, with shock, with confusion, completely bellied the calmness in his voice. It seemed that Sasuke was a good actor.
“Would you believe me if I said ‘no’?” Naruto countered with a question of his own. He studied Sasuke’s face carefully, looking for hints as to the true dominant emotion running through the older man at the moment.
Sasuke seemed to consider it for a moment before saying, “Yes, I would believe you.” Naruto was surprised at the answer, and even more surprised when Sasuke leaned forward on his hands, crawling across Naruto’s legs to reach the other side of him, There, he sat cross-legged against the wall, mimicking Naruto’s position. “I’ll answer your question,” Sasuke said once he settled, “If you answer one of mine.”
Naruto debated it with himself for a moment. Sasuke looked ready to simply shrug it off if Naruto said ‘no’. The blond was seriously beginning to doubt that Sasuke’s calm face was really a mask. “All right,” he sighed, dreading the question.
Sasuke nodded once, lightly, as if he’d made a deal he’d correctly predicted the outcome of. “That night, after you fell asleep,” Sasuke said, “I went out to the drug store.” Naruto blinked, surprised at such a simple answer. He was expecting something far more complicated. But Sasuke went on, “It was late at night, and there weren’t any convenience stores open 24/7 in my neighborhood. I took the subway up to near our school to the CVS. You were sleeping so deeply when I left, I figured you’d still be asleep by the time I got back. But when I returned…”
Sasuke trailed off, and Naruto asked, “What did you need at the drug store?”
At that, Sasuke turned away. Is he embarrassed? “I didn’t have any Tylenol or Advil in the house,” Sasuke explained in a low voice. “I thought you might want some asprin for… the pain.” Sasuke shrugged.
Naruto now wished that he hadn’t asked. He hadn’t been aware of it, but he’d been holding onto one last grudge to keep himself from feeling completely at fault. Sasuke had left him without a word, without a note, without a word of good-bye. Now even that was gone. He went out in the dead of night to buy me some pain medications. Fuck.
“When I saw that you had gone without so much as a note, I figured you were angry with me, and didn’t want to see me.” Even Sasuke couldn’t hide the pain in his voice. “And I was right.”
Naruto didn’t know what to say, again. Lost in sorting his thoughts, he’d completely forgotten his promise to answer one of Sasuke’s questions.
Until he asked, “How is it that you got those scars?”
--
There was no evidence to the contrary, but Naruto had a feeling that not a drop of paint had adorned the walls since Sasuke had moved in. They were that same conformist white, a blank slate in which families could paint as they pleased. But these walls were still white. The floor was covered in lack-luster blue carpeting, cheap and also meant to be replaced. There were no photo frames on the walls. No TV in the living room, or what Naruto assumed to be the living room. There was a computer in the corner on a plain oak desk, but it was shut off. A two-seater sofa with an empty coffee table.
And, most importantly, only one pair of shoes by the door.
After sliding his own off and putting them next to the black loafers, Naruto slowly wondered through, looking around himself as he did. There was a short hallway. All three doors were shut. There was another spouting off to the side of the living room, also closed. Another door by the dining room where there sat a polished wooden table with only one chair, and no placemats. A large kitchen with many cabinets Naruto suspected were empty, an industrial-sized fridge, a dishwasher, lower cabinets, a toaster and microwave that looked like they’d come straight from the box mere seconds ago, and a booth with two built-in swivel chairs. One chair empty, the other full of sleeping boy with a collapsed head on the black marble surface.
Sasuke’s face was turned away from him, but from the soft and steady rise and fall of his shoulders, Naruto could tell he was asleep. His normally orderly spikes (Naruto suspected copious amounts of hair gel to be at fault) were jumbled with bedhead. The black wife beater was a stark contrast to the usual immaculate white uniform shirt Naruto had always seen him in. He wore loose-fitting corduroy shorts and his feet were bare, curled where the toes met the floor.
Naruto had never noticed just how thin the guy was until now. They were at the age where they’d either started along with growth spurts or had to wait a year. Sasuke belonged to the former category, Naruto the latter. The raven-haired teenager was a good six inches taller than the blond, a definite advantage when it came to fighting. Naruto had never seen Sasuke eat anything from the school’s cafeteria. Instead, he brought a black box with him that held sections of foreign-looking food, most of it containing dull-looking white rice. Naruto was shocked that someone who downed so many carbs on a daily basis could stay as thin as a rail.
Sasuke’s arms were like wire, taught with thin muscle and not much else. His shirt folded into a concave stomach, and his knees were bony knobs, thin calves stretching too far to meet smallish feet. His skin looked too tight, too thin, to contain what it did. Naruto moved around to bend over the counter and peer at his closed eyelids, under which hung heavy purple pillows. Even his face, under such natural sunlight filtering in through the kitchen window, looked sunken, like a skull.
Whilst on the roof they frequented during lunch breaks, they’d sat with their still-growing legs dangling over the edge, chugging cans of soda, kicking shins, making a few near-death pushes that involved one shifting too close to the seeming limitless amount of empty space beneath their feet. They did all this underneath the heavy light filtering through the atmosphere, the sun’s fingertips stroking through their hair and pressing gently on their clothes. In such brightness, Sasuke’s hair had always seemed a deep, dark blue as opposed to the black Naruto knew it was. Every now and then, a pale hand would flick up to brush through his bangs, stroking it back against his scalp, creating a wave of texture like an ocean wave. Every time Sasuke had done that, Naruto’s fingers twitched at his side, and he had to clench them into tight fists to limit the movement.
And now, with no reason to stop him, Naruto’s hand, unbidden, reached out to give it a feather-soft stroke from part to the nape of his neck, and his fingers recoiled as if snapped at by a viper.
It was so damn soft. It felt like the down of a feather. Feather light to the touch, silky and smooth even in its knotted state. Naruto couldn’t resist the temptation to touch it again, this time with a little more pressure. It was like dry water, the strands stroking the rough pads of his fingertips as if they had a mind of their own.
Again and again, from bangs to nape, parting easily and making a fork of hair that smoothed straight down, except for the stubborn tufts that refused to stay down at the back. Mesmerizing. It was mesmerizing. And in the sun, it seemed to have an almost blue hue to it. Hypnotized by the texture and the quiet, Naruto allowed his hip to settle against the counter as he continued to pet the boy he’d traded more fists and half-translated conversations with than any orderly human contact.
It was mere curiosity. Making those waves in his hair of his own accord. To control the way the colors shifted, from black to a dark, bluish hue, so deep and so different it was almost purple.
But it was something else, too. Something more than control. Like his soft touches connected them in a way that lunch breaks on a school roof could not. If Sasuke did it, and Naruto could do it, it was a deeper connection, he rationalized. Naruto continued to stroke back his hair, feeling like he was in a different person’s skin. Sasuke’s skin. The fear of touch he’d been harboring since the Friday before was drifting back to the unreachable recesses of his mind, where they wouldn’t ruin this movement. Where it wouldn’t ruin them.
And then a cold hand reached out and snatched his wrist, leaving his digits sunken into disheveled hair. Blank black eyes glared up at him for a moment, the smooth obsidian bright with the unbridled curiosity Naruto should have known would be there.
The grip on his wrist tightened momentarily before lapsing to a gentle hold, allowing the blond to escape with his hand still attached. Sasuke Uchiha regarded him warily before speaking.
“What are you here?”
A perfectly acceptable question, Naruto thought. One deserving of an equally sensible answer. But Naruto was afraid that Sasuke wasn’t just requiring about his sudden presence in the room.
He felt suddenly claustrophobic. The rhythmic motions of his hand stroking Sasuke’s hair had diminished his equal fear, but now it was coming back full-force, this time paired with an extreme sense of awkwardness.
“Naruto?”
Naruto always found it odd how Sasuke pronounced his name. He figured it was a Japanese thing, to have difficulties pronouncing the ‘r’ sound. It made his lips twitch slightly at the sound. He’d spent many a afternoon trying to coach the transfer student proper speech, as well as teaching him a few choice words.
“Naruto,” growled a husky voice, darker than what he was used to, and the guttural tone of it sent shivers racing up his spine, alarm bills shrieking in his ears. Naruto shook his head, blinked, and saw the Sasuke of the present staring curiously at him.
I’m imagining (remember) things. Get a grip, idiot.
“Naruto.”
Naruto belatedly shrugged, and slid his bag from his shoulder to lay it on the counter. “I brought you your homework,” he said, sliding the flap of his bag off to shuffle through the bags contents.
“You didn’t knock.”
“I did. You were too passed out to notice.”
Naruto’s gaze darted up and met Sasuke’s dark one. His narrow eyes had thinned even further, and he was opening his mouth, probably to inquire about Naruto’s temporary lapse of sanity, but the blond beat him to the punch.
“What’s with the absences, anyway?” he asked, yanking his eyes away from Sasuke’s to return his attention to finding the homework and, therefore, to getting the Hell out of here. He could deal with this later. In a school setting, preferably, with more eyes and more ears to keep a dangerous conversation in check.
“Been busy,” Sasuke replied. “Drink?”
“Huh? Dlin--oh, drink?”
“Isn’t that what I asked?”
Naruto snorted and, not for the first time, said “Your accent sucks.”
Smirking quietly, Sasuke merely replied, “So you say. You get used to it.”
Frowning, Naruto shrugged, not knowing what to make of that. Did he mean anyone could live with it, or was it just Naruto? Then Sasuke tossed him a orange can, and catching it, the blonde noticed it was a Fanta. “You like orange soda?”
Sasuke grunted, and the blond wondered if even understood what he said. Unless the Japanese teen was paying a decent amount of attention, he had difficulty deciphering what it was that Naruto was saying. At the moment, he still looked half-asleep. Naruto popped the metal tab and took a deep swig, clearing out the fuzziness in his head a little. He hadn’t felt it when he came in, but now that Sasuke was awake and moving, making scuffing sounds as his feet slid over the floor, his breath soft-sounding, Naruto not only felt like a trespasser in the home, but in his own skin as well.
Sasuke fished himself out a bottle of water, and Naruto caught a glimpse of the fridge’s contents before the door could swing shut. There was a half-finished gallon of milk, a carton of eggs, a mesh bag full of tomatoes, and a handful of other things Naruto could have counted on one hand. It was so bare--too bare, from what he’d seen of other’s fridges.
Squishing down the niggling thought in the back of his head that his refrigerator looked very much the same, Naruto refocused on his bag. He set the can of soda on the counter, and located a slightly bent manila envelope. He pulled it out slowly, and then tossed it on the counter.
“There,” Naruto said. “Your homework.”
“Hn.” Sasuke took his time twisting off the cap of his water bottle, taking a heavy gulp and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before saying, “Homework, eh?”
“Yeah. There it is.” Naruto picked up his abandoned can and tilted it back, gulping it as fast as he could, feigning extreme thirst. In reality, his stomach was twisting itself in knots, and the icy beverage was making it ache even worse. But he had to get out of here. He’d thank Sasuke for the soda, and leave the imminent fight for later, for when he could better handle it.
Sasuke frowned and made no move to pick the folder up. “Why?”
Naruto finished his drink and swallowed painfully. “That’s what they do here in America,” he replied, already closing his bag. “Miss a few days and you’re hunted down like a dog.” He lifted the shoulder strap, and let his hand hover awkwardly for a moment. “Thanks for th--” But he stopped talking when Sasuke scowled, dark and angry eyes boring holes into Naruto’s shoes. He was muttering something in Japanese, and despite hearing the gibberish nearly every day for the better part of the school year, Naruto still couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“What?” the blond asked, brows furrowing.
Sasuke’s eyes snapped up, like he’d completely forgotten he was there. “I speak,” Sasuke muttered, “my guardian hasn’t called school yet.”
Naruto’s curiosity got the better of him. Instead of saying a dismissive “Oh, right” like he should have, he asked, “What, can he get you out of your homework?”
Sasuke shook his head, sighing, but not letting their eyes to break contact again. He seemed to mull over his words for a long while before saying, “I am not return to school.”
“What? Christ, how sick are y--”
“Not sick,” Sasuke said quickly. ”I… moving.”
“Moving,” Naruto repeated, tasting the word on his tongue and quickly deciding it didn’t really fit. “What do you mean by ‘moving’?”
Sasuke scowled, like he was scolding Naruto for his incompetence. His eyes, however, remained guarded. “My guardian received new job. We move closer to it.”
“Move… where? Up state?”
“California.”
Naruto didn’t bother to repeat that word. He knew exactly how wrong it would be without allowing it to taint his mouse. His articulate response was, “And what the fuck is in--there?”
“His job,” Sasuke repeated, giving Naruto a look that clearly displayed his lack of respect for Naruto’s intellect.
“And what is his ‘job’?” For reasons he couldn’t understand, Naruto was beginning to panic. When Sasuke said ‘moving’, he hadn’t felt much of anything, although that might have been a symptom of the shock that would soon make his throat feel like a steel-boned fist had it clutched tight. ‘California’ made his stomach fall right to the floor of the alien apartment.
“I don’t know,” Sasuke said dismissively, waving his hand. “He do something.”
It felt too cliché, too girly, to ask “When were you planning on telling me?” but Naruto desperately wanted to know. This didn’t seem like a plan someone thought up overnight. His guardian couldn’t be that spontaneous.
Even though Naruto didn’t say it, Sasuke seemed to feel the need to supply Naruto with an answer.
“It was not much planned,” Sasuke said. Naruto couldn’t tell if it was just him, but his accent seemed thicker in his haste to get the right words out. “My guardian very like that. All the time. He didn’t--didn’t--” His eyes narrowed like they always did when he failed to come up with an appropriate word. “Opinion me,” was what he came up with, and although the words made no logical sense, Naruto understood. “He decide.”
When were you going to tell me?
Were you ever going to bother?
Dear LJ Friend's Page: I'm really sorry for killing your Friend's page.
Pairing: SasuNaru
Rating: NC17
Chapter Rating: NC17
Warnings: Sexual themes, language
Summary: It's hard learning how to save peoples lives when you're so busy trying to save your own.
“I reached the wrong end by the wrong means.”
-Wrong, by Depeche Mode
--
In a subtle way, like a person doesn‘t realize they‘d been dozing off before their head hits a desk, Naruto noted that he didn’t remember it like a constant, flowing jet of memories. It didn’t start at the beginning, not at the middle, nor the end. It was like he wasn’t remembering it at all, only knowing it, acknowledging it like he would the nose set plainly on his face. Like the nightmares had been someone else’s, not his. Not like there had ever been a gap in his memory, but that it had never been there, the truth always sitting right in the center of his heart, of his brain. That’s he’d never forgotten. That he’d never misunderstood.
--
Out of all the houses he’d been expecting, this was not it. It wasn’t even a house at all; a penthouse suite, situated somewhere between the fourth and sixth stories of an eleven-story building, gleaming and new like a sore thumb in a metropolis of garbage and industrial wreck.
His messenger bag, khaki with frayed edges and broken buckles, was uncomfortable against his side. Sweat made his shirt glue itself to his skin like fly paper. His task set, his map in the form of a torn-out sheet of loose-leaf clenched in a fist with cracked knuckles, Naruto crossed the last street towards Sasuke’s complex.
“Take this straight to him, Naruto,” his guardian’s words continued to ring. “No side trips. No stops. Straight. To him.”
“I got it, I got it,” his own words echoed back, lacking just as much stability and sounding more like a recorded message on the answering machine. “No side trips.”
The street was deserted save for a large cat, slinking in-between the garbage cans. As Naruto grew closer, the creature darted out, into the light, and flew across the street from where Naruto had come from. The fluffed tail, tipped white, and black padded feet told Naruto that he’d been mistaken regarding the creature’s species. Wondering idly what a fox had been doing so far from its woods in the first place, Naruto waltzed up and through the swinging doors. The metal framework was stainless steel, very modern for a not-so-modern town.
But who would expect anything less of the great protégé Sasuke Uchiha?
The bastard’s homework was settled somewhere in his bag. The sixteen-year-old, after not missing a single minute of class over the entire year while Naruto himself missed a grand total of thirteen days, had been absent with no call nor notice for the past three days. He’d shown no signs of impending illness the last time Naruto had seen him, other than being quieter than usual. This threw Naruto for a complete loop; the guy couldn’t speak a word of English when he’d first enrolled in Clifford Private School, but once he‘d gotten the swing of it, he‘d headed straight to the section of the English language comprised of every insult known to the country‘s language. He could call Naruto more names than Naruto, who‘d spoken English since he was two, had ever heard of.
Sasuke had been a dark, brooding thing that shone so brightly you couldn’t help but notice him. His tongue was foreign and something new to hear, like the catchy new song played over and over on the radio until it lost all appeal. At least for Naruto it did. Then he‘d began to taunt the foreign tongue (he noticed a significant improvement after this). For others, it grew more sickeningly addictive every day, and it was so obvious the youth didn’t want the attention. But since when did things like that make a difference?
Middle school graduation was in two weeks, a small and uneventful ceremony made to please the parents rather than the students. A sense of accomplishment was more of a requirement, it seemed, than the basic four years of math and English. His guardian Iruka would, of course, be there. He was a teacher at the high school and seemed pleased (insultingly pleased) that Naruto had managed to claw his way out with a passing grade. Passing if you squinted.
That being said, while Naruto’s legs skimmed awkwardly along the floor from his position on the bottom rung of the ladder, Sasuke sat so high up he was in danger of his high horse throwing him off.
The guy was Asian, so that could have been key, but did he have to graduate at the top of the class? He didn’t speak a word of English when he’d first come, and honestly, Naruto wasn’t so sure that he knew how to now. The two were in completely opposite classes. Sasuke joined in with the honors and AP classes for calculus and Physics, while Naruto was stuck with career-prep in Algebra 1 and Language and Composition. But even when they strayed paths in public settings, the meetings were never all that pleasant. Sometimes Naruto felt that Sasuke waited until he was at the pinnacle of his emo-boy bad mood before hunting the blond down, just to make the encounters as explosive and violent as possible. Naruto couldn’t bring to memory one decent, calm conversation they’d shared in the presence of other students.
But, hey, who needed words for a reputation when you had fists?
There were some people Naruto couldn’t help but like. He was attracted to them, and they to he, and through mutual attraction could form some sort of bond, whether fickle or iron-clad. Then there were the people who put a sick feeling in his stomach when he heard their voice, made his fists clench whenever their eyes met.
Sasuke was both.
Naruto’s eyes tightened at the memory of their first head-on collision. It took a week before their heated glares cooled and staled, no longer enough to sedate that unquenchable thirst for contact. For the feel of hard bone against furled knuckles, to feel hot breath as they got into each others face. To have foreign blood splash against their skin and to taste their own in kind. It was a short skirmish, half a minute before hall aids tore them apart, an unrefined quarrel that was more tugging hair and going for weak spots. Their spot was obvious and no good. They learned. They learned to dodge like a bullet and strike like a falcon, and learned to make use of quite and desolate spots. The math and science hallway after third period every fourth day of their six-day rotation. The old auditorium that had had a ‘renovation’ sign on it for over a year. The tiny network of alleys that stripped the surrounding grounds like a cobweb.
Their fights continued, and the scale of bruises quickly began to tip in Sasuke’s favor, once the initial shyness of real damage dissolved. Naruto sometimes avoided the hot spots, if nothing but to calm Iruka’s worried face and his friends’ anxious stares whenever he showed up with a fresh patch of shiny red surrounding his eye or his cheek.
Sasuke knew. He must have. He wore a sneer whenever Naruto took a shortcut, although the blond remained positive that no one followed him. Sasuke never brought it up in words, but the condescending look in his eyes whenever he caught Naruto in the act spoke volumes. Somehow, he knew. The bastard just knew. This deadly game of cat and mouse lasted well into Winter.
Of course, Sasuke wasn’t the only one Naruto found himself in regular skirmishes with. The football jocks, the black kids with baggy clothes and bad music, the younger, scrawny kids who had more bark than bite but were so quick on their feet that keeping track of them was impossible, and holding onto them even harder. Plenty. Naruto supposed it was just something in his personality. Maybe he was labeled a poser for having a Japanese name with no heritage to back it up. Maybe it was his diminutive height that made him so easy to look down upon.
His sociology teacher had once told his class that for every person that liked you, there were at least two who did not. Naruto had yet to meet what was sure to be a huge flock of admirers, but looked forward to the day that he did.
But so far, he’d been stuck with the not-so-friendly crowd. Sometimes he wondered if even his ‘friends’ had strayed over to that side. But until then Naruto grinned and bore the title they’d given him with pride. ‘Monster’. It was fitting, in a way. Monsters were vastly misinterpreted creatures, and always smarter than those who had created them.
The doorman raised an eyebrow at him. Naruto flashed a nonplussed grin and pointedly shifted his shoulder strap so that his pack swung against his hip. “I’m here to give Sasuke Uchiha some homework. He up there?”
The doorman waited a ridiculous amount of time before sniffing in distain and muttering, in an altogether too-prim voice for such a small town, “The young sir lives on the fourth floor. The elevator is down the hallway past the lobby desk.”
Naruto waited, and under the expectant gaze, waited for further direction. Receiving nothing, he just nodded awkwardly and strode past him to the dim hallway by the dim desk.
“…Mr. Uchiha is still attending school?”
Naruto stopped in his tracks and whipped his head around. Sasuke not going to school? Of course. And president Bush had found a cure for breast cancer through personal experience.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t he?”
He was beginning to grow annoyed by being looked at as if he were a tiny fraction of his age. “Ask him yourself.”
“Fine!” Naruto snapped. He whirled around, determined not to stop even if spoken to. He was uninterrupted and made it to the elevator doors winded. And he couldn’t tell why.
The ride upwards was smooth, and Naruto leaned his head back against the wood paneling of the elevator wall, thinking the doorman’s words over. Sasuke had never mentioned any future extended absences from school, not had he shown any symptoms of a cold. Up until the last day Sasuke had been seen at school, a Friday, the foreign student had been colder than usual, slipping back into his native tongue, taking longer to realize that until Naruto had to hit him over the head and order him to speak in words that he could understand. But Sasuke was like that, Naruto knew. Like a teenage girl, Sasuke fell into week-long spells of bitchiness and sullenness. Naruto didn’t mind. It was just another reason to use fists instead of words to knock him out of it. That Friday, however, was different. On that day, Naruto had avoided him like he would the black plague.
Ding
Naruto shook his head, his thoughts flying to the back of his head, and he stepped out of the elevator. Sasuke lived in apartment 409. The first eight were grouped like small complexes to one side of the vast building, 409 and 410 being the master suites, and the latter under construction. Ten rooms to a floor, all lain out in a similar fashion. All costing more than ten combined years of Iruka’s pay, no doubt. It was sickening, the amount of money people spent on just an apartment. He knocked on the first one and waited.
And waited.
He waited ten seconds, blinked, furrowed his brows, and knocked again.
Still no answer.
After the fifth set of knocks, by which time it had become more of a hammering, Naruto was considering just leaving the work by the door. The courage he’d tried to talk himself into this morning was waning fast in face of the door to Sasuke’s apartment. Naruto didn’t know to deal with it without ignoring it, and this was a far cry from the word ‘ignore’. ‘Confrontation’ seemed better suited.
There’s nothing to be afraid of, Naruto told himself. It’s fine. He’s fine. You’re fine. He probably had a fever then, he was delirious. Forget about it. He probably has.
Naruto sighed, weighing his misery as only a fourteen-year-old could, licking his dry lips. For a moment, he could taste the smoke again. And before he knew it, the blond was twisting the unlocked doorknob and letting himself into the suite.
--
Naruto hadn’t caused much of a disturbance besides that first tumultuous day when he and Sasuke made enough of a ruckus to alert the residents on every floor of their dorm building. On that day, the rooms had been full of people who had their eyes and ears doing a constant three-sixty, taking in everything, every odd detail, every bit of sordid gossip, everything and anything that would make this foreign place a home. But after several months, people stopped caring as much. Young adults played their music loudly and no one minded much. Students thundered down the halls and they stopped getting shouted at. Instead of every noise sticking to their minds like flypaper, it went in one ear and out the other.
Naruto was fortunate in this way. It felt good to scream, to let the pain roaring in his throat combat the life-shattering guilt budding up and boiling over, threatening to kill his insides. The guilt that made him question everything he knew, everything he thought he knew, everything he’d built himself up to be, everything he wanted to be. Everything, gone, and he felt completely justified at screaming as if he were falling off the face of the Earth. Because, in a way, that’s exactly what he was doing. Falling without ever having the chance to climb back up again.
The door slammed open.
Of course, there was an exception to every rule. The one person who wouldn’t just ignore something. And he stood in the threshold, stepping in and panting, letting the door fall shut behind him.
Sasuke.
Oh God.
What have I done?
“What’s wrong?” Now that he saw that Naruto was in my physical harm, Sasuke seemed reluctant to enter any farther into the room. “I heard screaming.”
Actually, you heard part of me shrivel up and die. Actually, you heard the biggest invitation for an “I told you so” in the world. “S-sorry,” was all Naruto could utter. “It’s nothing.”
Sasuke’s right eyebrow cocked itself higher than the other. “You were screaming over nothing?”
“Erm…” It wasn’t quite the articulate response he’d been hoping for, but Naruto couldn’t think of nothing in the English language that would sit this particular conversation. He wished he didn’t need words. That Sasuke could reach in through his head and grab the answer, all so Naruto wouldn’t have to sat it aloud.
Sasuke stood there, waiting. When Naruto failed to supply him with an answer, he sighed. “Whatever,” Sasuke muttered, turning around and reaching for the door. “I’ll let you get back to your fit, then. Try not to disturb our neighbors.”
“Where did you go that night?”
Sasuke blinked, confused. “Excuse me?” He had one hand on the door knob now, and it was lingering, as if half-tempted to yank the door open and dart away right this instant.
Naruto bit his lip. He couldn’t tell which emotion was going to win the war that was currently splitting his head in two; pride or guilt. Pride would make him keep up the façade of the victim trapped in his rapist’s room. Guilt made him want to confess everything, to apologize over and over until his voice cracked and his mouth ran dry. He was treading slowly, unsure of how either he or Sasuke would react.
“The last night we saw each other,” Naruto mumbled in a rush under hiss breath.
Sasuke’s eyebrows furrowed and he frowned. “I can’t hear a word that you’re saying.”
As tempting as it was to just say “Never mind” and live life like this conversation had never happened, Naruto knew himself well enough to know he’d never be able to sleep at night knowing he’d given up. Guilt would drive him to misery faster than Sasuke would walk out that door.
So he repeated himself, slowly, clearly. “Where did you go the last night we saw each other?” he asked. “Back in middle school. I--” He was biting the bullet, he knew. This was dangerous, After this, he’d never be able to return to the safe cloud of ignorance he’d been floating on for so many years. Sasuke wouldn’t ever let it go, and to be fair, Naruto couldn’t blame him. “I woke up and you weren’t there…”
Sasuke’s hand slid from the door, and he didn’t hesitate to abandon his station by the threshold to cross the room. He ended at the foot of Naruto’s bed, eyeing him incredulously, almost angrily. “Why would you believe anything I say?”
I’m sorry.
Naruto shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “It’s just a question, bastard,” he said, displeased to note how his voice quaked. Surely, Sasuke would notice. Surely, he wouldn’t make Naruto say it. He’d know and let it go. He wouldn’t tear Naruto apart any worse than the blond was already doing to himself. “You don’t have to answer.”
Again, Sasuke didn’t hesitate. As soon as the last word had left Naruto’s mouth, Sasuke had put a knee on the bed and hoisted himself up. On his knees he shuffled closer, looming a foot over Naruto’s hunched figure. They were inches from touching. Naruto eyed him warily, frightened of what he’d say, frightened of what he’d do, and most of all, scared witless of how he himself would react.
“Are you scared of me?” Sasuke asked. The way his eyes were alight with energy, with shock, with confusion, completely bellied the calmness in his voice. It seemed that Sasuke was a good actor.
“Would you believe me if I said ‘no’?” Naruto countered with a question of his own. He studied Sasuke’s face carefully, looking for hints as to the true dominant emotion running through the older man at the moment.
Sasuke seemed to consider it for a moment before saying, “Yes, I would believe you.” Naruto was surprised at the answer, and even more surprised when Sasuke leaned forward on his hands, crawling across Naruto’s legs to reach the other side of him, There, he sat cross-legged against the wall, mimicking Naruto’s position. “I’ll answer your question,” Sasuke said once he settled, “If you answer one of mine.”
Naruto debated it with himself for a moment. Sasuke looked ready to simply shrug it off if Naruto said ‘no’. The blond was seriously beginning to doubt that Sasuke’s calm face was really a mask. “All right,” he sighed, dreading the question.
Sasuke nodded once, lightly, as if he’d made a deal he’d correctly predicted the outcome of. “That night, after you fell asleep,” Sasuke said, “I went out to the drug store.” Naruto blinked, surprised at such a simple answer. He was expecting something far more complicated. But Sasuke went on, “It was late at night, and there weren’t any convenience stores open 24/7 in my neighborhood. I took the subway up to near our school to the CVS. You were sleeping so deeply when I left, I figured you’d still be asleep by the time I got back. But when I returned…”
Sasuke trailed off, and Naruto asked, “What did you need at the drug store?”
At that, Sasuke turned away. Is he embarrassed? “I didn’t have any Tylenol or Advil in the house,” Sasuke explained in a low voice. “I thought you might want some asprin for… the pain.” Sasuke shrugged.
Naruto now wished that he hadn’t asked. He hadn’t been aware of it, but he’d been holding onto one last grudge to keep himself from feeling completely at fault. Sasuke had left him without a word, without a note, without a word of good-bye. Now even that was gone. He went out in the dead of night to buy me some pain medications. Fuck.
“When I saw that you had gone without so much as a note, I figured you were angry with me, and didn’t want to see me.” Even Sasuke couldn’t hide the pain in his voice. “And I was right.”
Naruto didn’t know what to say, again. Lost in sorting his thoughts, he’d completely forgotten his promise to answer one of Sasuke’s questions.
Until he asked, “How is it that you got those scars?”
--
There was no evidence to the contrary, but Naruto had a feeling that not a drop of paint had adorned the walls since Sasuke had moved in. They were that same conformist white, a blank slate in which families could paint as they pleased. But these walls were still white. The floor was covered in lack-luster blue carpeting, cheap and also meant to be replaced. There were no photo frames on the walls. No TV in the living room, or what Naruto assumed to be the living room. There was a computer in the corner on a plain oak desk, but it was shut off. A two-seater sofa with an empty coffee table.
And, most importantly, only one pair of shoes by the door.
After sliding his own off and putting them next to the black loafers, Naruto slowly wondered through, looking around himself as he did. There was a short hallway. All three doors were shut. There was another spouting off to the side of the living room, also closed. Another door by the dining room where there sat a polished wooden table with only one chair, and no placemats. A large kitchen with many cabinets Naruto suspected were empty, an industrial-sized fridge, a dishwasher, lower cabinets, a toaster and microwave that looked like they’d come straight from the box mere seconds ago, and a booth with two built-in swivel chairs. One chair empty, the other full of sleeping boy with a collapsed head on the black marble surface.
Sasuke’s face was turned away from him, but from the soft and steady rise and fall of his shoulders, Naruto could tell he was asleep. His normally orderly spikes (Naruto suspected copious amounts of hair gel to be at fault) were jumbled with bedhead. The black wife beater was a stark contrast to the usual immaculate white uniform shirt Naruto had always seen him in. He wore loose-fitting corduroy shorts and his feet were bare, curled where the toes met the floor.
Naruto had never noticed just how thin the guy was until now. They were at the age where they’d either started along with growth spurts or had to wait a year. Sasuke belonged to the former category, Naruto the latter. The raven-haired teenager was a good six inches taller than the blond, a definite advantage when it came to fighting. Naruto had never seen Sasuke eat anything from the school’s cafeteria. Instead, he brought a black box with him that held sections of foreign-looking food, most of it containing dull-looking white rice. Naruto was shocked that someone who downed so many carbs on a daily basis could stay as thin as a rail.
Sasuke’s arms were like wire, taught with thin muscle and not much else. His shirt folded into a concave stomach, and his knees were bony knobs, thin calves stretching too far to meet smallish feet. His skin looked too tight, too thin, to contain what it did. Naruto moved around to bend over the counter and peer at his closed eyelids, under which hung heavy purple pillows. Even his face, under such natural sunlight filtering in through the kitchen window, looked sunken, like a skull.
Whilst on the roof they frequented during lunch breaks, they’d sat with their still-growing legs dangling over the edge, chugging cans of soda, kicking shins, making a few near-death pushes that involved one shifting too close to the seeming limitless amount of empty space beneath their feet. They did all this underneath the heavy light filtering through the atmosphere, the sun’s fingertips stroking through their hair and pressing gently on their clothes. In such brightness, Sasuke’s hair had always seemed a deep, dark blue as opposed to the black Naruto knew it was. Every now and then, a pale hand would flick up to brush through his bangs, stroking it back against his scalp, creating a wave of texture like an ocean wave. Every time Sasuke had done that, Naruto’s fingers twitched at his side, and he had to clench them into tight fists to limit the movement.
And now, with no reason to stop him, Naruto’s hand, unbidden, reached out to give it a feather-soft stroke from part to the nape of his neck, and his fingers recoiled as if snapped at by a viper.
It was so damn soft. It felt like the down of a feather. Feather light to the touch, silky and smooth even in its knotted state. Naruto couldn’t resist the temptation to touch it again, this time with a little more pressure. It was like dry water, the strands stroking the rough pads of his fingertips as if they had a mind of their own.
Again and again, from bangs to nape, parting easily and making a fork of hair that smoothed straight down, except for the stubborn tufts that refused to stay down at the back. Mesmerizing. It was mesmerizing. And in the sun, it seemed to have an almost blue hue to it. Hypnotized by the texture and the quiet, Naruto allowed his hip to settle against the counter as he continued to pet the boy he’d traded more fists and half-translated conversations with than any orderly human contact.
It was mere curiosity. Making those waves in his hair of his own accord. To control the way the colors shifted, from black to a dark, bluish hue, so deep and so different it was almost purple.
But it was something else, too. Something more than control. Like his soft touches connected them in a way that lunch breaks on a school roof could not. If Sasuke did it, and Naruto could do it, it was a deeper connection, he rationalized. Naruto continued to stroke back his hair, feeling like he was in a different person’s skin. Sasuke’s skin. The fear of touch he’d been harboring since the Friday before was drifting back to the unreachable recesses of his mind, where they wouldn’t ruin this movement. Where it wouldn’t ruin them.
And then a cold hand reached out and snatched his wrist, leaving his digits sunken into disheveled hair. Blank black eyes glared up at him for a moment, the smooth obsidian bright with the unbridled curiosity Naruto should have known would be there.
The grip on his wrist tightened momentarily before lapsing to a gentle hold, allowing the blond to escape with his hand still attached. Sasuke Uchiha regarded him warily before speaking.
“What are you here?”
A perfectly acceptable question, Naruto thought. One deserving of an equally sensible answer. But Naruto was afraid that Sasuke wasn’t just requiring about his sudden presence in the room.
He felt suddenly claustrophobic. The rhythmic motions of his hand stroking Sasuke’s hair had diminished his equal fear, but now it was coming back full-force, this time paired with an extreme sense of awkwardness.
“Naruto?”
Naruto always found it odd how Sasuke pronounced his name. He figured it was a Japanese thing, to have difficulties pronouncing the ‘r’ sound. It made his lips twitch slightly at the sound. He’d spent many a afternoon trying to coach the transfer student proper speech, as well as teaching him a few choice words.
“Naruto,” growled a husky voice, darker than what he was used to, and the guttural tone of it sent shivers racing up his spine, alarm bills shrieking in his ears. Naruto shook his head, blinked, and saw the Sasuke of the present staring curiously at him.
I’m imagining (remember) things. Get a grip, idiot.
“Naruto.”
Naruto belatedly shrugged, and slid his bag from his shoulder to lay it on the counter. “I brought you your homework,” he said, sliding the flap of his bag off to shuffle through the bags contents.
“You didn’t knock.”
“I did. You were too passed out to notice.”
Naruto’s gaze darted up and met Sasuke’s dark one. His narrow eyes had thinned even further, and he was opening his mouth, probably to inquire about Naruto’s temporary lapse of sanity, but the blond beat him to the punch.
“What’s with the absences, anyway?” he asked, yanking his eyes away from Sasuke’s to return his attention to finding the homework and, therefore, to getting the Hell out of here. He could deal with this later. In a school setting, preferably, with more eyes and more ears to keep a dangerous conversation in check.
“Been busy,” Sasuke replied. “Drink?”
“Huh? Dlin--oh, drink?”
“Isn’t that what I asked?”
Naruto snorted and, not for the first time, said “Your accent sucks.”
Smirking quietly, Sasuke merely replied, “So you say. You get used to it.”
Frowning, Naruto shrugged, not knowing what to make of that. Did he mean anyone could live with it, or was it just Naruto? Then Sasuke tossed him a orange can, and catching it, the blonde noticed it was a Fanta. “You like orange soda?”
Sasuke grunted, and the blond wondered if even understood what he said. Unless the Japanese teen was paying a decent amount of attention, he had difficulty deciphering what it was that Naruto was saying. At the moment, he still looked half-asleep. Naruto popped the metal tab and took a deep swig, clearing out the fuzziness in his head a little. He hadn’t felt it when he came in, but now that Sasuke was awake and moving, making scuffing sounds as his feet slid over the floor, his breath soft-sounding, Naruto not only felt like a trespasser in the home, but in his own skin as well.
Sasuke fished himself out a bottle of water, and Naruto caught a glimpse of the fridge’s contents before the door could swing shut. There was a half-finished gallon of milk, a carton of eggs, a mesh bag full of tomatoes, and a handful of other things Naruto could have counted on one hand. It was so bare--too bare, from what he’d seen of other’s fridges.
Squishing down the niggling thought in the back of his head that his refrigerator looked very much the same, Naruto refocused on his bag. He set the can of soda on the counter, and located a slightly bent manila envelope. He pulled it out slowly, and then tossed it on the counter.
“There,” Naruto said. “Your homework.”
“Hn.” Sasuke took his time twisting off the cap of his water bottle, taking a heavy gulp and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before saying, “Homework, eh?”
“Yeah. There it is.” Naruto picked up his abandoned can and tilted it back, gulping it as fast as he could, feigning extreme thirst. In reality, his stomach was twisting itself in knots, and the icy beverage was making it ache even worse. But he had to get out of here. He’d thank Sasuke for the soda, and leave the imminent fight for later, for when he could better handle it.
Sasuke frowned and made no move to pick the folder up. “Why?”
Naruto finished his drink and swallowed painfully. “That’s what they do here in America,” he replied, already closing his bag. “Miss a few days and you’re hunted down like a dog.” He lifted the shoulder strap, and let his hand hover awkwardly for a moment. “Thanks for th--” But he stopped talking when Sasuke scowled, dark and angry eyes boring holes into Naruto’s shoes. He was muttering something in Japanese, and despite hearing the gibberish nearly every day for the better part of the school year, Naruto still couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“What?” the blond asked, brows furrowing.
Sasuke’s eyes snapped up, like he’d completely forgotten he was there. “I speak,” Sasuke muttered, “my guardian hasn’t called school yet.”
Naruto’s curiosity got the better of him. Instead of saying a dismissive “Oh, right” like he should have, he asked, “What, can he get you out of your homework?”
Sasuke shook his head, sighing, but not letting their eyes to break contact again. He seemed to mull over his words for a long while before saying, “I am not return to school.”
“What? Christ, how sick are y--”
“Not sick,” Sasuke said quickly. ”I… moving.”
“Moving,” Naruto repeated, tasting the word on his tongue and quickly deciding it didn’t really fit. “What do you mean by ‘moving’?”
Sasuke scowled, like he was scolding Naruto for his incompetence. His eyes, however, remained guarded. “My guardian received new job. We move closer to it.”
“Move… where? Up state?”
“California.”
Naruto didn’t bother to repeat that word. He knew exactly how wrong it would be without allowing it to taint his mouse. His articulate response was, “And what the fuck is in--there?”
“His job,” Sasuke repeated, giving Naruto a look that clearly displayed his lack of respect for Naruto’s intellect.
“And what is his ‘job’?” For reasons he couldn’t understand, Naruto was beginning to panic. When Sasuke said ‘moving’, he hadn’t felt much of anything, although that might have been a symptom of the shock that would soon make his throat feel like a steel-boned fist had it clutched tight. ‘California’ made his stomach fall right to the floor of the alien apartment.
“I don’t know,” Sasuke said dismissively, waving his hand. “He do something.”
It felt too cliché, too girly, to ask “When were you planning on telling me?” but Naruto desperately wanted to know. This didn’t seem like a plan someone thought up overnight. His guardian couldn’t be that spontaneous.
Even though Naruto didn’t say it, Sasuke seemed to feel the need to supply Naruto with an answer.
“It was not much planned,” Sasuke said. Naruto couldn’t tell if it was just him, but his accent seemed thicker in his haste to get the right words out. “My guardian very like that. All the time. He didn’t--didn’t--” His eyes narrowed like they always did when he failed to come up with an appropriate word. “Opinion me,” was what he came up with, and although the words made no logical sense, Naruto understood. “He decide.”
When were you going to tell me?
Were you ever going to bother?
Dear LJ Friend's Page: I'm really sorry for killing your Friend's page.