[naruto] Just a wind away from happy (repost)
Title: Just a wind away from happy
Pairing: SasuNaru.
Rating: PG-15.
Summary: Because love transcends time, and the wind carries it all.
Warnings: Saptastic ending, crazy love relationships and a whole lotta dirty talk. From a 69-year-old. AU LIKE THERE HAS BEEN NO PRECEDENT FOR SASUNARU AU.
Notes: This was originally posted on sanityinasylum a year ago for peridottears ' birthday, but I went back and realized that, a) it sucked balls and b) there were too many inconsistencies coming from a chick who'd only gotten as far as the 70th anime episode. And since I'm on the 498th manga chapter now, shit yes, that's gonna make a difference. Here are my edits. I'm not reposting on any comms, because that's just spam, but I -will- revise my fic-list.
--
Just a wind away from happy
by ezylrybbit
edited 22.5.2010
A man by the name of Tanaka, the owner of a successful coffee shop in Aoyama, stops by his own place once in a month and orders a small drink to taste. He takes a newspaper off the shelf to read, seats himself at the nearest table next to a complete stranger, and then strikes up a conversation, inquiring as to how well they think the business is doing. This is the deciding factor for the deployment of many of the café's staff. Tanaka-san poses nothing but the simplest questions-ranging from how the French roast tastes today to whether or not the supervisor behind the counter resembles a large gorilla. In this way, he can gather and negate any harm that will make his coffee shop any less successful.
The strategy works surprisingly well. The customers are friendly, show an intelligent point of view, and never stick gum under the chairs. Tanaka-san is pleasantly treated, contrary to the general belief of how regular coffeeholics should behave. And their advice is more or less well thought-out. It was thanks to a certain Inohara-san that he learned how polka-dotted wallpaper was a decoration far more suitable for a children's playroom, and through another Sanada-san that he understood that the proper use for an umbrella stand with no functioning legs is as a coffee-bean grinder.
Tanaka thought of himself as a very forgiving, open-minded person. Although this may seem a little too prideful coming from a man who counts the change from the cashier's drawer by himself, if you were to look at the bigger picture it wasn't impossible to think it untrue. Tanaka was skilled in making people feel uncomfortable and inadequate around him (it was common business courtesy to appear unimpressed-it lowered prices considerably), but at the same time he also believed in the ideal of there being nice people in the world. He was compassionate, and this was what made him different from the asocial records shop owner next door and the suspicious bartender who single-handedly manned the club down the street with a shotgun. He had his philosophies, of course. People who dress a certain way will behave a certain way. Never trust a guy who orders more than three drinks in one go. Policemen work for no one but themselves. Tanaka was a practical man. He judged books by their covers. And he was arbitrary, to the point where people would call him the Victorian King behind his back-he was only 69 this year, for god's sake. It didn't ever stop him from letting a couple of the homeless wanderers in for a few soft chocolate-chip cookies, a latte, and maybe a bed in one of the booths, if they promised to shower with Lemon Zest beforehand.
It was the way he ran things. Street bums are journeyers, he thinks, just hopeless romantics searching for hopeless solutions in the hopelessly dirty terrains of a city street. They will continue to be street bums until the day they figure out that they've finished their journey. He wants to believe that he'll be able to fix at least a few of them along the way.
+
In August, he sits down next to a young, dark-haired boy.
"He's been here for a whole week," he hears a furtive whisper from one of the counter girls, "You'd think he'd have brought in a girl by now. So damn fine…" The busboy she's talking to giggles in response.
Girls will be girls, Tanaka finds the corners of his mouth turn up, somewhat excited himself despite his practical personality. Young people rarely come into his old-style coffee shop. The wallpaper is a bit of a quixotic maroon color, the stripes of the walls fading against it. He has Picasso and mixed-media photographs hanging behind the counter; a combination that was supposed to create an effect of pleasing everyone but over the years had turned into more of a haphazard jungle of aesthetically-fake. The beanbag chairs needed a washing, the bamboo tables a little creakier than he had last seen them, and the wooden armchairs seemingly bent out of shape. Time to have a sit-down with the café-manager.
Out of the corner of his eye, Tanaka watches as the boy orders a dark coffee. He is mildly surprised when he witnesses the kid down half the cup in one large gulp, sans cream and sugar.
Yosh, he thinks. I've found my advisor.
When Tanaka casually maneuvers himself down beside the boy, he is careful to examine this customer. Closer-up, this kid seems far too mature in composure in contrast to his appearance. At the same time, there's an air of childishness in the way his fingers curl around the coffee cup. When the boy releases his mug after a second sip, he is looking at his own hands as if they were some newly-discovered artifact dug-up from under volcano ashes, flexing long fingers back and forth and carefully tracing each fingernail, dark eyes following the path of his fingers slowly, methodically, in circles and lines. His hair was styled in one of those pop idol haircuts, the kind that looked messy but was not actually messy at all and arranged to look like that. Except this boy looked like he had started the trend.
Tanaka makes a decision to interrupt the flow of the mood (as if hadn't already, by placing his plaid-overall-clad-self next to someone dressed like a pop culture icon, the old man noted to himself with a little smirk). It's a move that he will certainly regret in the months to come.
"So, my friend, how do you find your coffee today? Too sour? Too sweet? Or god forbid, too painful to swallow?"
"It's wonderful," the customer replies in a somewhat apathetic manner, and then goes back to staring at his fingers, waiting for the man talking to him to leave.
Adolescents are such difficult specimen to deal with, ne, Tanaka-san thinks to himself, "Feeling alright?"
"All right."
He didn't look all right, the old man thought with a snort. All pale and angsty-eyed. The absolute picture of all right, he certainly was. "Really?" He prompts instead, "Are you sure? Shouldn't be drinking to much coffee at such a young age, ne. I have some oolong tea in the back shelves if you'd like. Imported from Thailand. Great mind-straighter-outer. It's on the house."
This time -and Tanaka applauds his own conversational skills- he's rewarded with a lengthier response. "Well," the boy hesitates, flexes his fingers again, "I feel…like I don't understand myself anymore. Like…I don't belong in this world."
Suicidal. Another one of those. Tanaka breathes a sigh of relief. At least it hadn't been something completely out of this world. But then again, suicidal…
"I don't want to pry," he chose these next words carefully, "but are you really okay?"
"Perfectly fine."
And that's the last he hears from this boy as his customer gets up and leaves by the front door. The bell tinkles after him in a manner more fit for a funeral home than a café.
Tanaka debates on whether or not he should inform the police or check the black coffee grinder for traces of drugs.
+
Uchiha Sasuke is sitting on a log when he realizes that this is going to last for a really long time. It's not going to go away, it's not going to lose speed, nor will it grow and gather and explode. It'll just be another thing he'll wake up to, fall asleep with, plant doubts and hopes and fears in. He'll die with this, or kill himself while he's still struggling in it.
He peers down (disdainfully? uncomfortably?) at the problem next to him. Naruto is snoring, sprawled across the grass in a shape similar to a cat flung across an oven rack, his back to Sasuke and a wide grin plastered over his face. His old teammate is sleeping in a happiness that shouldn't be there, a complete disregard for the fact that they are in enemy territory, could be killed or captured at any time.
You idiot, he wants to say.
Then his face starts to soften, and with startled emotion Sasuke remembers that this is where is gets bad.
This is where it gets bad, when he traces a finger over Naruto's face, sketching a line over Naruto's cheek, this is where it gets bad, when the line stretches down the bridge of Naruto's nose, past his mouth and his chin, all the way to the bottom of his neck. This is where it gets bad, when Sasuke wonders, tries to remember the exact moment he had figured it all out.
Unsurprisingly, he doesn't remember. It's been such a long time.
And since that day, he'd been like a house caught in a flood, caved-in and hollowed-out and unoccupied, as wrong and as disturbing as it sounds.
Naruto snorts, rolls over.
You stupid, stupid…
Naruto chooses this moment to open his eyes and start laughing. Sniggering. Giggling.
"What's so funny?" His eyes narrow in a typical-Sasuke response.
"You're sitting on bird shit." Naruto points out, yawning. "Don't tell me you don't think that that's at least a little ironic."
He doesn't want to smile, but does anyway and then hates himself for it.
How did it go again?
I fell for you like an idiot. Like a child. Like a fucking rock dropping into a bottomless pit, a well eight-hundred-million feet deep. Without a sound, without a warning. Sinking, lightless, weightless under the water.
And the scariest thing is that I want to be there.
God, why did it have to sound like a scene out of some crappy-Naruto stretches again, and the hem of his shirt rides a little up his abdomen to reveal tanned skin and toned muscle. And in that moment he felt such a powerful, blinding wave of whatever-it-was-called coming to the surface, bubbling up and he wanted to do something about it, but he couldn't. Sasuke sucks in his breath.
(Stupid bird shit.)
+
A few days later, Tanaka finds the boy back in his coffee shop, sitting at a corner table and gulping down black coffee. This had been an unplanned visit from Owner-san, and most of the employees behind the counter were wearing strained expressions. No one fully understands why the coffee shop owner is back, not even the old man himself.
"I shouldn't have interfered with his life," the boy starts off, once Tanaka is seated.
"What's your name, boy?"
"Uchiha."
"Uchiha?" Tanaka-san says, bemused, "you mean like the Uchiha in that old anime? I used to love the show when I was a little kid, ne. Watching Naruto with Jiraiya-sensei. Uchiha Sasuke was always my least favorite though. Such a moody kid, if there ever was one. Sorry for interrupting your story, how did you interfere with who's life?"
"I don't remember exactly," the boy named Uchiha scratches his pop-culture-icon head. "My memories are all different from how I used to remember them. Mixed up. I feel kinda like I've just climbed up out of a steep well."
"You mean, your memories are all intact, but they're water-logged."
"That's right."
Sasuke wiped the blood from his mouth. "Naruto. Go, now."
"Are you insane? I'm going to leave you!"
He smiled grimly to himself. If you wanted irony…"I can take them. Leave before I hurt you."
"But…your wound…"
He laughed. The sound is hollow. "Uchiha Sasuke can handle a small scratch. They still need a hokage. They don't need me."
"I need you."
He jumped, startled and certain that his ears had heard something false. "What?"
"I need you, Sasuke." Naruto said, and he heard the uncharacteristic emotion in those words, "I still need you. You're an amazing fighter, the best tactician. I'm not going to abandon you."
"You're an idiot, you know."
"You and Sakura-chan have taken turns telling me that for the greater part of my life. I know. I'm an idiot."
"And I'd be one too if I don't make you escape. Just go. I can handle it."
I fell for you like an idiot.
"I can't." Naruto panics, then.
And he realizes that it's impossible to push this any further. They're already stuck in the enemy's base; decampment would be beyond dangerous and probably futile with two people-unless there was an opportunity to simulate or create a diversion. Simple reasoning came out with the best solutions; it was what made him the smart one.
But they had nothing between the two of them. Since running away from capture, the two of them were left with the clothes on their backs and two daggers Sasuke had kept hidden in their hitai-ate.
He makes the last decision, then.
"I love you." He whispers, pressing his mouth against Naruto's lips and untying off the band around his forehead, shoving it into his old teammate's hands along with both daggers. And this is enough to freeze Naruto in his tracks, to make him openly astonished and still as a furniture fixture. It's enough to gain that extra time to jump out from behind their hiding position and divert the attackers.
"W-Wait…! Sasuke-" Naruto's frantic whisper came behind him, but he was a minute too late. Uchiha Sasuke is gone.
(It's so unreal, all of it. Him confessing, the incredulous response. They should star in a gay soap opera. Even Sakura goes for that sort of thing.)
A week later, when Sasuke is still within captivity, the captain of the guard laughingly tosses him something that the emissary had delivered. The war was over, and they are to release him within in a week. He is free to go wherever he wants to go.
Barely concealing the excitement of being let free (despite the heavy wounds he had suffered in the torture chamber), Sasuke leans down and retrieves the object that had been thrown into his cell. His fingers shake as he unties the package, but the bubble of joy in his gut promptly disappears when he unravels its contents.
It's his hitai-ate. The same one he had pressed into Naruto's hands at that moment when he had decided.
Across the symbol of the Konoha leaf, there is a deep, deep scratch.
You are no longer welcome, it says, a million words unsaid and more dead that alive.
(And so he wants to laugh. And cry. Better at the same time.)
+
Uchiha accepts the oolong tea offer the third time Tanaka comes to visit him. But as the old man watches the boy take tentative licks of the strong tea, he realizes that Uchiha is just showing a reluctant sign of courtesy and so he snatches the cup out of the teenager's hand with an unsatisfied smile, "If you're not going to enjoy high-class tea, just tell me." And then he proceeds to drink the rest of it by himself, going behind the counter to make a regular black coffee for the boy.
"It's only polite to tell me your name after I've told you mine," Uchiha replies, grumpy but happily settling down with his coffee.
"I don't know your full name," Tanaka says defensively, "Unless if you're actually called 'Sasuke'. That'd be a laugh."
"Then laugh." Sasuke frowns, annoyed.
"I would never."
+
He doesn't want to go home. Hell, he doesn't even have a home.
In reality, he doesn't know what to do with his life anymore. He is always driven by something. He would have a goal, one impossible goal that he would convince himself that he could achieve. He was like the vicious cycle of the generations of people who dream of tunneling through a mountain of gold with bare hands, or sucking the ocean dry with a plastic pail. It could never happen, but he would dream.
He used to be so strong. He could do anything; take over the world, sleep with a million girls, kill everyone on the planet. He's unable to do anything, now. It's all gone. That willpower, the drive, the heart.
+
In late August, the coffee shop suffers a little economically. Fewer and fewer customers come in during the day, and, much to his own dismay, Tanaka is forced to lay-off one of the cheerful counter girls and his faithful manager (who had even changed the bamboo tables to glass-tops at Owner-san's first request).
Instead, the coffee shop owner takes their places, taking orders and rubbing old coffee mugs with clean rags until they squeak when they're touched. Everyone must make sacrifices in hard times. His shop was no exception.
It continues in this way until the young boy who had shown up on the first week of August is the only regular customer to the shop, quietly sipping his black coffee in his now-established back table, an elbow lined up with the window ledge next to him and a distant gaze directed towards the foot traffic outside. Uchiha-kun eyes each member of the sidewalk carefully. The salarymen with their black buckled-briefcases and building key-cards, the young ladies clutching big designer bags and cute cell phones.
He's much more accustomed to his fingers, now, and also accustomed to Tanaka-san taking a break in shifts to sit down with him. He drank from his coffee cup as he listened to the old man tell a story. As for Tanaka-he busied himself with trying not to go beyond the regular assumption that Sasuke was an interesting companion. But it was difficult. Sasuke had interesting looks, interesting demeanor. His youth gave the coffee shop owner an old memory, one that he hadn't had in a long time.
"I want to hear a murder story. You mentioned it once to me in the passing."
"The story about the murderer with a long string of records in raping women?" He asks with a laugh.
"Yes."
Tanaka launches into the story without another word.
Kuroda was a genius murderer. He would attack, but only to victims who would trust him and him alone. He gained this trust meticulously, painstakingly. He would pull his victims in, one by one, with sweet smiles and carefully-laid gifts. Caring, tender kisses. The whole works. He had a naturally handsome face, too, and you know everyone falls for those. It was only when the murderer tried to rape his victim, did they uncover his true nature, but then it would be too late, because the murderer, like a modern Jack the Ripper, would already have all of his tools of the trade laid out under the bed. Belts, whips, chains. Kuroda was a sadist, scary by anyone's standards.
The special reports and the police files uncovered it all. The murderer had grown up in an abusive home. Single parent. Mother had died a long time ago in childbirth, father with too much of an interest in drinking and gambling. His dad blamed his little sister for the death of their mom. And at home, his drunken father controlled every inch of his body, doing whatever he wanted to do to the teenager and his younger sister. Regular pity-story, you know? It was a trust issue. Children can only be hurt so many times. After a while the boy began to get panic attacks; couldn't trust anyone anymore. His father was the best actor in front of the police, all smiles and shit-ironically, that's probably how his son learned to reel victims in. And one day he broke off from the whole problem, stole his dad's handgun and murdered his father, then murdered his own sister in her sleep, anguished that she might find out what he had done to their lives. The detectives on that case had written it off as a suicide crime, and the older boy's identity was lost. He ran away, got a job as a clothing store, made himself a little rich, and began his operation. He would take his revenge on anyone and everyone.
"What a freak." Uchiha said.
"You really think?"
"I can't see why anyone would ever do that."
Tanaka took another gulp of tea. "And you know who he ended up falling in love with?"
"Who?"
His prison guard. A man who had been new on duty the day he'd been hauled in. A pretty good-looking guy, by anyone's standards. And a few nights later, the murderer had decided to break out, and while the unsuspecting prison guard leaned into the handcuff him, the murderer stole his keys and his gun. The guard panicked, couldn't let go of the prisoner. He begged the murderer to stay, begged in the name of society and for himself.
And Kuroda stayed.
"What a stupid murderer."
"He had his reasons." Tanaka took another sip of his drink, continued on.
They lived like that for a few more years. The guard under constant threat because he had no idea why the fully-capable-of-escaping-prisoner had stayed. He tried to find out more about it from Kuroda in the following days they spent together, and the murderer would tell him everything, from the descriptions of his pretty victims to his distaste for prison food, everything but his own history. The other prisoners knew of him; Kuroda was quite famous, but the guard, under Kuroda's express wishes, was to never find out. And five years later he tried to escape again. Once a swindler, always a swindler. Kuroda had stolen the keys again, cocked the gun, locked his guard in the cell. But you know what made him stay? When that guard, under the pressure of the gun and the keys and being locked in, when he reached in and grabbed his dick.
"What?"
Tanaka grinned. "It was an accident, of course. But it was quite the accident. Things were never quite the same afterwards."
"I can imagine."
"The murderer lost his control. He fell in love. Absolute love. All because he had needed to get laid."
"Amazing."
"Really."
"And the moral of that story is that there is no love without sex."
The boy frowned at this. "That's not true."
"No?" Tanaka seemed surprised.
"That murderer received a life-sentence, didn't he?"
"Yes, he did. But later on when the jury arbitrarily changed their minds and gave him a death sentence, his prison-guard-lover made him escape and took the damage instead by dressing in the murderer's prison clothes. And on the day they gave him the chair, the murderer went and turned himself in. Life wasn't worth living without him…"
Uchiha had a very bitter thought at this moment. He stifled it with another sip of coffee, and kept his cool. "Overreaction?"
"I guess," Tanaka leaned back in his chair, "but tragic, ne. Almost just like Romeo and Juliet."
"You can love someone without ever touching them," the boy said quietly, "All those years they looked at each other through the bullet-proof mirror and those finger holes through the plexiglass in jail. The years they had those conversations, when they talked about each other, related to each other as normal people…when they shared with each other their hearts. You can fall in love that way too, right?"
"But it was just another way that the murderer gained the guard's trust. By coaxing him to talk, he was able to slip out one day." Tanaka countered.
"But without the foreplay, his dick would've meant nothing." Uchiha said flatly, "Even if his dick was the deciding factor."
"So it all comes down to the dick, doesn't it?"
(No it doesn't. It never will and it never did but it's not like Naruto said anything about it, so why should he give a damn?)
+
He meets Naruto one last time after he is released. He's running through the forest, having wanted to enter the village, but then realizing at the last moment that he had been banished. He was so stupid. He should not have been seen here. But Naruto had spotted him anyway, had caught onto his trail and tailed him all the way back to where he had set up camp in the middle of an abandoned plantation.
They are standing in the center of the farmer's field until he gives up running, and Naruto gives up chasing.
"Sasuke…"
He wants to ignore the voice. He wants to convince himself that it was all a dream of seeing him again. Around them, the overgrown grass on the field billows in the wind, scattering aside the items of his hastily-set-up traveling pack. The dirt brushes past his feet, floats into the air.
"I was scared."
"Scared?" He raised an eyebrow. "Coming from you? Try another one."
"I was scared to see you again." Naruto stepped forward. "But I couldn't. Not if I wanted to keep you safe. It was a trap. They would have thought you were a valuable hostage if I hadn't…hadn't-"
"If you hadn't taken away my village from me, yes," he says flatly, "I understand, Naruto. Don't explain it to me any more."
The blond boy licked his lips. "No. You don't understand. I would rather you live t-than to never see you again. Especially after you said those things-"
"No, definitely not."
"I didn't know what to say. And I can't see you again. I'm sorry."
Oh. Oh.
He fought the hard lump rising in his throat, tried at a pasty smile but it was clearly useless so he just reverted to a neutral expression. "Don't be sorry. I didn't expect it from you."
"It…it wouldn't have worked out right. You and I both know that. It isn't supposed to be that way. I'm getting married to Sakura in a week."
Breathe, he told himself. "Of course not. After all, it was just…just a desperate measure in desperate times, right? I had to keep you away from danger, so I did." He managed a weak grin. "Don't worry about it."
Even if I did love you, it wouldn't have made a difference.
Naruto wanted to say more, but he had turned away. "W-Wait! We can still be friends, can't we? In memory?"
"Friends in memory?" He grunted. "Whatever the hell gave you that idea?"
And he felt the wind brush away more of the field, felt the power of a single brush in the air whip past his face, his hair, lead tears into his eyes, whistling in his ears like a kettle on a hundred-degree stove. It would be carrying people and houses and animals away if it rose a little more, keep them up in the air for years and years if it never stopped. And indeed, a wind like this seemed ceaseless, relentless, a wind that could feel anger, feel sorrow. It was a powerful wind, this one; it could take everything away and leave nothing behind.
It could take him away.
He wondered if it could.
Sasuke disappears the next day.
+
"Watch carefully, Uchiha-kun," Tanaka smiles lightly. He takes a napkin out of the metal holder on the table, a pen out of his pocket, and scribbles out the kanji of his name.
田中. Ta-naka.
"The middle of a field." He said, feeling the understanding dawn in Uchiha's eyes. "I never forgot it, ne."
"You mean…that field?" He felt the younger boy whisper.
The coffee shop owner leaned back in his chair. "A long time ago, Sasuke-kun, when my name wasn't Tanaka, I had lost my only shot at happiness. Someone I had known all my life, later realized that I had loved all of my life. He was really cool, and I was a happy idiot. But when he told me that he loved me…I didn't know what to do. I could only stand behind the shadow of the hideout and watch him leave. Afterwards, I wanted to find him again, before it was too late. But circumstances at the time didn't allow it. I had a future to consider, a community to attend to. I had a fiancée whom I had been courting for about twenty years before she even agreed to let me stand next to her in the laundry line. But I had that teenage dream, you know? The kind you get when you fall in love. I wanted to grow old with him, take in his sorrows as my own. I wanted to tell him, one last time before he left, that he meant a lot more to me than I'd let on. And it was funny, because he was usually the one who kept his feelings locked away from the rest of us. I could not -still cannot- understand how difficult his position must've really been.
"But before I could say another word, it was too late and he was gone."
"You mean…you're…"
"I never saw him again."
He could almost physically hear the boy take another breath before he could respond, quietly, "I'm here now. I'm here."
The wind forgets to blow. And suddenly, it's almost as if they were back in the middle of the field, feeling the swirling currents of wind billowing around their jackets.
Naruto smiled, "Thanks for showing up, Sasuke. You're forty years late, but I'm glad you were able to make our date."
~the end.
♣ My fic index may be found here.
I should be getting on my exchange fic. And the bigbangs. What am I doing to my life.