Vurt Ninjas 7
Vurt Ninjas 7: No one is safe from the Vurt. Resistance is futile.
Sakura was the most clear-sighted of the three of them. By the time Sasuke nearly killed a man outside their front door, she'd begun to realize that something was going wrong.
Sakura had found another job at a different clinic, but with no letter of reference and no place to return to, she was only working part-time and wasn't interested in trying to steal with such a limited access to the medicines. She hadn't been out selling for nearly three weeks; finally, one of the junkies found where she was living and went to see whether she'd died or moved or been arrested in order to spread it to the others. Sasuke had answered the door.
Naruto made Sakura stay in the kitchen, where the wall hid her from the door and the sight of the junkie (his name was Ogano; Sakura had recognized his voice, and she'd always kept a small enough client base to be able to remember names). He sat on the table and glared at the doorway, while Sasuke flatly and repeatedly told Ogano to go away.
After the fifth time that he had demanded to know something about Sakura, Sasuke hadn't replied. Sakura watched Naruto's face for some clue to the silence.
Naruto frowned and started to speak a second before Ogano began screaming.
Naruto dived off the table, and he and Sakura ran for the door. Naruto reached the outside first, which was extremely fortunate for Ogano, because by that point Sasuke had already flipped him over the railing.
Naruto barely managed to grab Ogano's leg before he wound up falling four stories to the linoleum floor of the apartment entryway. He dragged the teenager back up as Sakura shoved Sasuke in the chest and asked what the fuck did he think he was doing?! He stared at her silently.
"Fuck!" Naruto snarled, after Ogano had collapsed on the landing, cursing and panting. "Fuck, Sasuke, you would have killed him! Just shut the motherfucking door!"
"I don't like him," Sasuke replied. "He has the same red hair."
It took them a moment to understand.
When they did, Sakura pulled back. Naruto looked down at the landing, and then at Ogano.
After several long seconds of silence, punctuated only by the junkie's continued muttered cursing and the overly-curious convenience store cashier who lived in one of the second floor apartments looking out her door, Naruto reached down and grabbed a fistful of Ogano's shirt. He yanked the teenager up before slamming him against the railing.
"Fuck off," Naruto told him. "If you talk to anyone about this, I'll hunt you down and break your teeth into the curb, understand?"
Sakura wrenched his hand loose and gave him a glare before looking Ogano in the eye. "I'm not selling anything at the moment," she said soothingly. "I don't have any access. I'll be back in the business in another month--I'll give you half off what you first buy then, okay? But you should really leave now."
Ogano fled without saying anything. When Sakura looked over her shoulder, she saw that Naruto was baring his teeth at him. She whacked him on the arm, and then hesitated and didn't look at Sasuke.
The three of them stood on the landing, until Naruto turned his glare on the cashier and scared her back into her apartment. Sasuke, who'd been watching Ogano run down the stairs and out the door, glanced at the slammed door before snorting and beginning to walk back into the apartment. Naruto stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
When Sasuke turned to glare at him, Naruto punched him in the face, hard. Sasuke had to brace a hand against the wall to keep from crashing into it.
"That wasn't Gaara," Naruto said lowly, before Sasuke could retaliate. "Keep them separate. It's just the Vurt in your blood. You have to keep them separate."
Sasuke spit the blood from his cut lip on the floor and hissed, "I fucking know that!"
"They don't even look the same," Sakura added.
"I know!" Sasuke snapped. "He should have gone away!"
"We can't kill people!" Naruto snapped back, shoving Sasuke at the door before grabbing Sakura's wrist and pulling her behind him. "We're not t--not in that world!"
Sasuke gave him a long look. He jerked away when Naruto started to shove him again, and stormed into the apartment.
"Does . . . does the bite really make it bleed over that much?" Sakura asked, later. Her voice was quiet, even though it was just her and Naruto in the apartment. Sasuke had left for work early to avoid eating dinner with them.
Naruto shut the cabinets and handed her the bowls; Sakura began spooning the noodles and chicken into them. "Yeah," he answered, "at first. He'll get over it soon. I mean, he should. It only took me about a week."
Sakura bit her lip, and spooned the noodles into the second bowl slower so that she could have something to concentrate on. "But you're . . . did you act this bad?"
Naruto sat down heavily in one of the chairs. "It's not that--"
"You saw the look he gave you, Naruto," Sakura interrupted. "It's the same one from. . . ."
Naruto stabbed one of his noodles with a chopstick. "Okay, he's a little worse. But he's always been a violent bastard."
"He almost ki--"
"I know, Sakura." Naruto hesitated, and finally shrugged. "I dunno, maybe the Vurt's just reacting weirder with him. But it'll wear off pretty soon, I promise."
"How much?" Sakura asked, and when Naruto looked up at her she sat down. "It never goes all away, right?"
Naruto slowly chewed two more bites before answering her. Sakura didn't pick up her chopsticks.
"It's not that bad," he finally said, looking down at the bowl. "I almost call you 'Sakura-chan' once in a while, but that's all. It'll be okay."
Sakura looked down at her bowl, and then broke her chopsticks apart quietly.
Her normal reaction in these situations was to call Ino--after a few suggestions that Sakura dump the both of them and start dating less violent, less gay men, the shadowgirl usually had good advice--but Sakura found dialing Ino's number distasteful these days.
~
As much as Naruto wanted to believe that things were going to be okay, he was neither blind nor stupid. He could chalk some of the growing side effects of the game up to his and Sasuke's bites, but it was becoming obvious that it was getting to Sakura, too.
Sasuke and Sakura got along well enough--better than he deserved, he knew, though Naruto would never admit that to either of them--but at some point after the section with Gaara ended and storyline with Naruto's character got tangled up with the character almost exactly like Jiraiya (when he'd first appeared Naruto had immediately crashed into a haunting, and finally jerked out. Sakura had laughed so hard when he told them about the similarities--barring the frogs--that Naruto would've worried that she was going to strain something if he hadn't been so annoyed), their relationship had nosedived. It was mostly Sakura's fault; Sasuke was usually less of an asshole to her than Naruto, but recently even the meaningless comments he made were enough to send her tearing into him. She'd actually begun sleeping on the couch two nights ago, and wouldn't come back to bed even after Naruto spent three hours trying to sweet-talk her.
Naruto and Sasuke had always fought, and the farther along they got in the game the fights were starting to get a little more violent, the punches a little less pulled, even though neither of them mentioned it; but it had always been fists and feet with them. Sakura used words and silence, and it made Naruto restless. Bruises went away, but the curve of Sakura's back as she slept facing the couch lingered.
However, Naruto had confusedly blamed it on PMS (and had been starting to think, with no little panic, that he should ask Jiraiya if bitchiness was a typical symptom of pregnancy--he'd assumed that that condom had been torn because it'd snagged on the trashcan, but oh shit what if it had been--), until everything became painfully clear one afternoon.
He had no idea what the fight started over; when he'd come back from work, it had degenerated into a yelling match. Or, Sakura had been yelling, and Sasuke was standing with his arms crossed and sneering in that way that just egged her on more. Naruto had sighed under his breath, thrown his coat on the rack, and then shouted "Shut the fuck UP!"
That immediately turned Sakura on him, of course, but that was fine--Naruto was capable of apologizing. He waved his arms, trying to cut her off before she could get started.
"Sorry, Sakura, sorry, but damn, what is it now?"
"She's being an idiot again," Sasuke replied.
"Go to hell, you sorry son of a bitch," Sakura snarled.
"Whooooa, okay," Naruto said, stepping between them. "Sasuke, don't be an ass."
"I'm not--"
"You're always being an ass," Naruto told him, not completely without innuendo, because it was better to get Sasuke pissed at him than at her, too--Sasuke had never laid a hand on her yet, but he had no problems hitting girls, and Naruto was slightly afraid of what he would have to do if that ever happened. "Sakura, what is it? This is, like, the eighth fight this week!"
"Why shouldn't I get pissed at him!?" she bit off angrily. "It's not like I love him!"
Naruto stared at her.
Sakura went still a moment later, and bit her lip. She pulled back when Naruto made a move to free it before she drew blood.
Behind them, Sasuke was quiet. After a pause, he let his arms drop slightly.
"I know that," he replied carefully. "You don't have to prove it."
"God!" Sakura screamed, body curving and tensing with the sound, and then she turned and ran to the bedroom. The sound of the door slamming almost covered the click of the lock.
Naruto turned to stare at Sasuke, but the other man looked unsettled as well.
Sakura didn't come out of the room until after Sasuke loudly announced he was leaving for work. Naruto had thought about sliding a sandwich under the door, because she had to be hungry, but then he decided that if she had to come out to eat, he could finally talk to her.
Naruto's skin prickled when, after she walked out of the hall, he saw the duffel bag in her hand.
Sakura took a wide loop through the living room towards the door, avoiding the table. "I'm going to be at Ino's," she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and speeding up slightly when Naruto stood. "You've got my cell number, so--"
Naruto caught her before she could reach the door handle, wrapped his arms around her elbows and waist and pulled her back.
Sakura lashed out with her feet, kicking him in the shin. "Let me go!" she shouted, in a voice suddenly much shriller than before.
Jiraiya hadn't needed the sexual harassment cases he generally inspired to bleed over into his work, so one of the first things he'd beaten into Naruto was that when one of the actresses, or any woman at all, spoke in that tone of voice, he was to back six feet away and protect his eyes and the family jewels. Naruto dragged Sakura another step back from the door, and then sank into a sitting position on the carpet, pulling her with him.
Sakura was shaking, nails digging into his wrists and smelling sourly of fear, and Naruto swore at himself for not noticing things earlier.
"Don't leave," he said quietly, pressing his forehead against her shoulder. "Don't leave like this. Please, Sakura."
Sakura stopped digging her nails into his skin a few moments later, and let her arms drop to her lap. The shaking took longer to subside; it wasn't until Naruto shifted his grip so that her arms were free that she almost relaxed.
"I'm going to Ino's," Sakura repeated, swallowing. "Let go, Naruto. I've already called her."
He tightened his arms instinctively, and then forced himself to loosen them when she tensed again. "Don't leave."
"I'll come back," she replied quietly. "I mean, if I go away for a couple days, this will all seem stupid and I can calm down. Please let me go."
The fear was still there, even if she wasn't shaking; Naruto could almost taste it along the back of his throat and wanted to spit. He let his arms drop to the sides.
Sakura stood up, moved out of arm's reach, and then smoothed down her skirt. She crouched when she picked up the dropped bag, rather than bending, and her goodbye was directed more to the door than him.
Naruto was lying on the carpet, in the same general area, and staring up at the ceiling when Sasuke returned early in the morning.
"She'll come back," Sasuke said, after Naruto told him what had happened.
"She was probably lying to get me to let go," Naruto replied hoarsely. "You didn't smell it."
"She has to come back," Sasuke said, pushing himself up off the floor where he had been sitting next to Naruto. "She couldn't have packed all her stuff in one duffel. We can talk to her when she returns."
Sakura had her own key and knew their schedules, but Sasuke left that part out, so Naruto didn't bother to bring it up either. Sasuke made dinner for himself, showered, and finally toed Naruto in the side and told him to go to bed.
Sakura did come back, two days later, looking just as tired and escorted by Ino.
Ino entered the apartment like some kind of smoky explosion, demanding Naruto hold the door open for them and take Sakura's bag for her and where was that son of a bitch Sasuke and God, these carpets, Sakura, don't you ever make them vacuum? What was that stai--ew.
Naruto well remembered what had happened the first and last time Sasuke and Ino met, and tried to keep her from heading toward the bedroom; but she barged right past him. Naruto was left to stand awkwardly in the living room with Sakura, who wouldn't quite look at him, and try to think of what to say.
After Ino had banged on the bedroom door for twenty seconds, Sasuke opened it and glared at her. Naruto and Sakura edged closer.
Ino folded her arms over her chest. "You. Apologize to Sakura."
Sakura stepped into the short hallway, holding up a hand. "Look, Ino, you're really not help--"
"Sakura," Sasuke interrupted, rejecting Ino's existence and turning to face her. "I'm sorry for not doing the dishes."
The room was quiet, until Naruto looked at Sakura, and then Sasuke, and disbelievingly mouthed Dishes?
". . . ." Sakura bit her lip, and then attempted a half-smile. ". . . It was actually about making lunch."
"I'm sorry for not making lunch," Sasuke replied. "Now shut up and let me sleep."
He shoved the door shut without waiting for a reply. Ino gave it a raised eyebrow, but Sakura caught her elbow and dragged her out of the hall before Sasuke's spate of civility ended.
"Making lunch?" Naruto asked, staring.
"I know, I know . . ." Sakura murmured. "It was just . . . a bad. . . . I'm sorry, Naruto. I should have handled that better. I didn't mean to hurt you."
"You're not at--" Ino started to say, before Sakura shoved her slightly with the hand still on her arm.
". . . It's okay," Naruto told her quietly. "I. . . ." He hesitated at mentioning Konoha in an outsider's presence, and soon changed it to: "Sasuke probably didn't help anything."
Sakura nodded faintly, absently. Ino looked at her, and then back over their shoulders to the bedroom.
"You shouldn't let him off so easy," she said decisively. "I am not believing that this was just over whose turn it was to make dinner."
"It's okay, Ino," Sakura said, dropping her hand and looking at her. "Really. He apologized. And he didn't even say anything about you being here."
Ino still looked skeptical. "I told you, it's a sign of a potential abuser to try and cut off contact with friends."
Naruto snorted in surprise. Sakura pressed a thumb to the bridge of her nose.
"He's not an abuser, Ino," she replied in a tone that said they'd gone over this already, more than once. "I don't have to worry. We just live in the apartment, I told you."
"He threw a chair at my head, Sakura," Ino replied in the same tone.
"You did try to head trip him without warning," Sakura retorted.
"He's weird!" she answered defensively.
None of them had expected Sasuke to react as badly to Ino as he had. Sakura had occasionally wondered if things would have gone better if she'd warned him the friend she was bringing over was a shadowgirl, so he could have left early, or if Ino at least hadn't immediately tried to read his mind to figure him out. Naruto had managed to deflect the majority of the chair so Ino only got a bruise on her forearm, and she and Sakura had then fled the apartment with him yelling at Sasuke and Sasuke yelling right back.
Naruto had called her a few hours later, after Sasuke had left for work and Ino had finally tired herself out from cursing him and every possible family member he had ever or would ever have, and told her that Sasuke really hated shadowgirls and wouldn't tell him why. He promised to make Sasuke sleep on the couch until he made it up to her.
Sakura had started speaking to Sasuke again after nine days, when she'd grew tired of Naruto babbling about anything and everything to fill the silence when all three of them were there. But she always went out to meet Ino or to the other woman's apartment since then.
"That still--" Sakura shook her head. "Look, don't make me have to defend him, okay? Just drop it." When Ino starred to reply, Sakura glared at her. "I'm not stupid."
"I can fucking hear you," Sasuke yelled through the bedroom door.
Ino gave Sakura a significant look. She sighed.
"Shut up!" Naruto yelled back, and then scratched the back of his head. "Hey, I . . . have you eaten breakfast yet?"
"Not much," Sakura replied. "Let's go out to eat. Then Sasuke can sleep." She hooked an arm through Ino's and began pulling the other woman toward the door.
Ino was still arguing with her when Naruto went into the bedroom to get his wallet. Sasuke had curled away from the door with the covers pulled over his head.
Naruto shoved the wallet in his front jeans pocket, watching the lump of blankets. "Sasuke. . . ."
"I am not talking anymore until that shadowbitch is gone," he snarled.
"No, not--. . . thanks," Naruto told him.
Sasuke didn't reply for a moment, and then grunted and yanked the blanket further over his head.
Naruto twisted the bedroom doorknob so that it would shut quietly, locked the outside door, and then jogged down the stairs until he caught up to Sakura and Ino.
~
Sasuke had been leaving for work more and more often recently--Naruto didn't learn how early until one day Sakura commented that he hadn't been home when she got back from work for the past two days. Sasuke wouldn't say anything about it, not even when Naruto pushed to the point that he knew exactly how annoying he was being, which was weird enough to tell him it had to be some really bad shit. And coming at a time when Naruto still wanted to kick the emptied duffel bag half-buried in a corner of the closet, he wasn't willing to let it go.
But Sasuke wouldn't talk about work; and after Naruto convinced Sakura to ask questions as well, he stopped talking at all. Naruto finally quit asking and instead started following him around whenever he was in the apartment, imitating the silence. It was really hard, not speaking--he had no idea how Sasuke or Sakura pulled it off--but he managed.
He assumed that it had finally worked when Sasuke showed him the package.
Sasuke let the door swing shut behind him when he came back from the club, just loud enough that it woke up Naruto. Sakura slept through it, but she stirred awake when Naruto jostled the mattress as he slid off the bed.
"You guys . . ." she whined, and pulled the covers back up around her. Naruto patted her hip through the blanket, and chuckled when she drowsily swatted at it from underneath.
Sasuke was sitting at the table, staring at a packet. When Naruto sat down across from him, he flicked it over the table absently, as if he hadn't been so focused on it that he'd started when Naruto opened the bedroom door.
"Do you know what those are?" he asked as he stood up and tugged off the loose sweater he'd been wearing.
Naruto opened the package, and whistled lowly when he saw two yellow feathers. He looked over at Sasuke, who'd dropped the sweater over the back of his chair and now was rummaging through the refrigerator. "Where the hell'd you get these? You didn't kill anyone, right?"
"No," Sasuke replied with annoyance. "Somebody left them at the club."
"Somebody left--" Naruto replied disbelievingly. "These are yellows! Pure yellows!" He fished the feathers out of the packet. "Betcha we could pay the next couple months' rent and groceries if we sold them."
Sasuke dumped the ingredients for a sandwich on the counter and pushed the fridge door closed with his foot. "What are they?"
"Yellows," Naruto replied. When Sasuke gave him a 'no shit' look, he shrugged. "I don't deal with these things, okay? I can't tell them apart from sight."
He twisted his hand, turning the feathers. ". . . Maybe Jiraiya would--nah, he'd harass the hell out of me. Maybe Kabuto. . . ."
Sasuke shrugged, busy with the sandwich, and Naruto realized that he hadn't looked at him yet.
"So how'd you really get them?" he asked.
"I told you, someone left them on the limbic splitter," Sasuke said.
"Uh-huh, right," Naruto replied, picking up the packet to push the feathers back in, "and I'm the--hey, it's got writing on it."
"I know," Sasuke replied oddly.
". . . 'This is one way out of your skin, but I don't recommend it,'" Naruto read, and then gave the package a look. "Is that supposed to be a clue or something?"
"Maybe," Sasuke answered, and Naruto hooked the flap closed before setting the packet down.
"What the fuck is up with you?" he asked seriously. "If you stole them, we need to go back and . . . deal with the guy. You know Sakura's been freaked about police since that junkie bastard found us."
"I didn't steal them, damn it!" Sasuke snapped. His hands were curled around the edge of the counter. "Someone left them for me!"
Naruto blinked. "What?"
Sasuke didn't reply.
Naruto sat forward on the chair. "What do you mean someone left them for you? These are the--the fucking gold of the Vurt!" He started to scowl. "Are you starting to work for some other dealer? I don't trust any of those--"
"No!" Sasuke half-shouted, still glaring down at the counter. "It's not--I don't know who left them there, I just assumed they're for me. No one else would have been working in the booth at the time."
Naruto stared at the tense lines of Sasuke's back under the thin t-shirt he was wearing, and then sat back in his chair.
"Why are you lying to me?" he asked quietly.
The muscles in Sasuke's arms flexed sharply, and his hands clenched around the counter before he shoved away. He stormed into the bathroom without speaking, and locked the door before Naruto could reach it.
The noise had woken Sakura up completely--she was halfway out of the bed when Naruto came back in and shoved the package onto the dresser, underneath his wallet and watch.
"You should give up," she said, dropping back onto the mattress. "If he doesn't want to talk, he's not going to."
"Yeah, I guess," Naruto mumbled as he crawled back next to her.
Sakura frowned, and then propped herself up on an elbow. "What happened?"
". . . Nothing," he said. "I'm just getting tired of all this stuff recently."
Sakura started to say something, and then closed her lips again. Instead, she leaned back onto the mattress, before curling up closer to Naruto until she could tuck her head under his chin. She slipped her arm beneath his a moment later, and began to scratch the back of his neck gently.
Sakura had fallen asleep again by the time Sasuke got out of the shower and came into the bedroom to pull on a clean pair of boxers. Naruto reached back and flipped down the covers on his side without saying anything.
For several seconds, he thought that Sasuke was going to ignore him and go sleep on the couch. But then there was the familiar dip and shift of the mattress, and Naruto felt his chest untighten slightly. Sakura mumbled and rolled over; Naruto lifted his arm to give her the room and draped it back over her waist when she'd settled. He checked that she really was asleep before saying quietly, "I can take those with me and show them to Kabuto the next time he comes around. That guy's another feather maker."
"Sell them to him," Sasuke replied, the echo of his voice telling Naruto that he was sleeping facing away. "I don't care. Get them out of here."
"Okay," he replied, and let it stay there.
He would regret dropping the subject later, but at that moment the bed had felt weighted down the way it was supposed to, and Sakura was warm against him and he could hear how Sasuke's shallow breaths soon deepened into unfeigned sleep, and Naruto figured he could wait a little for the real answers.
"These are knowledge feathers, with knowledge's consequence. Blue for pleasure, pink for porn, black for violence, and yellow . . . yellow for death. It's all very logical.
"If you know what you're seeking, kittling."
Sakura was the most clear-sighted of the three of them. By the time Sasuke nearly killed a man outside their front door, she'd begun to realize that something was going wrong.
Sakura had found another job at a different clinic, but with no letter of reference and no place to return to, she was only working part-time and wasn't interested in trying to steal with such a limited access to the medicines. She hadn't been out selling for nearly three weeks; finally, one of the junkies found where she was living and went to see whether she'd died or moved or been arrested in order to spread it to the others. Sasuke had answered the door.
Naruto made Sakura stay in the kitchen, where the wall hid her from the door and the sight of the junkie (his name was Ogano; Sakura had recognized his voice, and she'd always kept a small enough client base to be able to remember names). He sat on the table and glared at the doorway, while Sasuke flatly and repeatedly told Ogano to go away.
After the fifth time that he had demanded to know something about Sakura, Sasuke hadn't replied. Sakura watched Naruto's face for some clue to the silence.
Naruto frowned and started to speak a second before Ogano began screaming.
Naruto dived off the table, and he and Sakura ran for the door. Naruto reached the outside first, which was extremely fortunate for Ogano, because by that point Sasuke had already flipped him over the railing.
Naruto barely managed to grab Ogano's leg before he wound up falling four stories to the linoleum floor of the apartment entryway. He dragged the teenager back up as Sakura shoved Sasuke in the chest and asked what the fuck did he think he was doing?! He stared at her silently.
"Fuck!" Naruto snarled, after Ogano had collapsed on the landing, cursing and panting. "Fuck, Sasuke, you would have killed him! Just shut the motherfucking door!"
"I don't like him," Sasuke replied. "He has the same red hair."
It took them a moment to understand.
When they did, Sakura pulled back. Naruto looked down at the landing, and then at Ogano.
After several long seconds of silence, punctuated only by the junkie's continued muttered cursing and the overly-curious convenience store cashier who lived in one of the second floor apartments looking out her door, Naruto reached down and grabbed a fistful of Ogano's shirt. He yanked the teenager up before slamming him against the railing.
"Fuck off," Naruto told him. "If you talk to anyone about this, I'll hunt you down and break your teeth into the curb, understand?"
Sakura wrenched his hand loose and gave him a glare before looking Ogano in the eye. "I'm not selling anything at the moment," she said soothingly. "I don't have any access. I'll be back in the business in another month--I'll give you half off what you first buy then, okay? But you should really leave now."
Ogano fled without saying anything. When Sakura looked over her shoulder, she saw that Naruto was baring his teeth at him. She whacked him on the arm, and then hesitated and didn't look at Sasuke.
The three of them stood on the landing, until Naruto turned his glare on the cashier and scared her back into her apartment. Sasuke, who'd been watching Ogano run down the stairs and out the door, glanced at the slammed door before snorting and beginning to walk back into the apartment. Naruto stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
When Sasuke turned to glare at him, Naruto punched him in the face, hard. Sasuke had to brace a hand against the wall to keep from crashing into it.
"That wasn't Gaara," Naruto said lowly, before Sasuke could retaliate. "Keep them separate. It's just the Vurt in your blood. You have to keep them separate."
Sasuke spit the blood from his cut lip on the floor and hissed, "I fucking know that!"
"They don't even look the same," Sakura added.
"I know!" Sasuke snapped. "He should have gone away!"
"We can't kill people!" Naruto snapped back, shoving Sasuke at the door before grabbing Sakura's wrist and pulling her behind him. "We're not t--not in that world!"
Sasuke gave him a long look. He jerked away when Naruto started to shove him again, and stormed into the apartment.
"Does . . . does the bite really make it bleed over that much?" Sakura asked, later. Her voice was quiet, even though it was just her and Naruto in the apartment. Sasuke had left for work early to avoid eating dinner with them.
Naruto shut the cabinets and handed her the bowls; Sakura began spooning the noodles and chicken into them. "Yeah," he answered, "at first. He'll get over it soon. I mean, he should. It only took me about a week."
Sakura bit her lip, and spooned the noodles into the second bowl slower so that she could have something to concentrate on. "But you're . . . did you act this bad?"
Naruto sat down heavily in one of the chairs. "It's not that--"
"You saw the look he gave you, Naruto," Sakura interrupted. "It's the same one from. . . ."
Naruto stabbed one of his noodles with a chopstick. "Okay, he's a little worse. But he's always been a violent bastard."
"He almost ki--"
"I know, Sakura." Naruto hesitated, and finally shrugged. "I dunno, maybe the Vurt's just reacting weirder with him. But it'll wear off pretty soon, I promise."
"How much?" Sakura asked, and when Naruto looked up at her she sat down. "It never goes all away, right?"
Naruto slowly chewed two more bites before answering her. Sakura didn't pick up her chopsticks.
"It's not that bad," he finally said, looking down at the bowl. "I almost call you 'Sakura-chan' once in a while, but that's all. It'll be okay."
Sakura looked down at her bowl, and then broke her chopsticks apart quietly.
Her normal reaction in these situations was to call Ino--after a few suggestions that Sakura dump the both of them and start dating less violent, less gay men, the shadowgirl usually had good advice--but Sakura found dialing Ino's number distasteful these days.
~
As much as Naruto wanted to believe that things were going to be okay, he was neither blind nor stupid. He could chalk some of the growing side effects of the game up to his and Sasuke's bites, but it was becoming obvious that it was getting to Sakura, too.
Sasuke and Sakura got along well enough--better than he deserved, he knew, though Naruto would never admit that to either of them--but at some point after the section with Gaara ended and storyline with Naruto's character got tangled up with the character almost exactly like Jiraiya (when he'd first appeared Naruto had immediately crashed into a haunting, and finally jerked out. Sakura had laughed so hard when he told them about the similarities--barring the frogs--that Naruto would've worried that she was going to strain something if he hadn't been so annoyed), their relationship had nosedived. It was mostly Sakura's fault; Sasuke was usually less of an asshole to her than Naruto, but recently even the meaningless comments he made were enough to send her tearing into him. She'd actually begun sleeping on the couch two nights ago, and wouldn't come back to bed even after Naruto spent three hours trying to sweet-talk her.
Naruto and Sasuke had always fought, and the farther along they got in the game the fights were starting to get a little more violent, the punches a little less pulled, even though neither of them mentioned it; but it had always been fists and feet with them. Sakura used words and silence, and it made Naruto restless. Bruises went away, but the curve of Sakura's back as she slept facing the couch lingered.
However, Naruto had confusedly blamed it on PMS (and had been starting to think, with no little panic, that he should ask Jiraiya if bitchiness was a typical symptom of pregnancy--he'd assumed that that condom had been torn because it'd snagged on the trashcan, but oh shit what if it had been--), until everything became painfully clear one afternoon.
He had no idea what the fight started over; when he'd come back from work, it had degenerated into a yelling match. Or, Sakura had been yelling, and Sasuke was standing with his arms crossed and sneering in that way that just egged her on more. Naruto had sighed under his breath, thrown his coat on the rack, and then shouted "Shut the fuck UP!"
That immediately turned Sakura on him, of course, but that was fine--Naruto was capable of apologizing. He waved his arms, trying to cut her off before she could get started.
"Sorry, Sakura, sorry, but damn, what is it now?"
"She's being an idiot again," Sasuke replied.
"Go to hell, you sorry son of a bitch," Sakura snarled.
"Whooooa, okay," Naruto said, stepping between them. "Sasuke, don't be an ass."
"I'm not--"
"You're always being an ass," Naruto told him, not completely without innuendo, because it was better to get Sasuke pissed at him than at her, too--Sasuke had never laid a hand on her yet, but he had no problems hitting girls, and Naruto was slightly afraid of what he would have to do if that ever happened. "Sakura, what is it? This is, like, the eighth fight this week!"
"Why shouldn't I get pissed at him!?" she bit off angrily. "It's not like I love him!"
Naruto stared at her.
Sakura went still a moment later, and bit her lip. She pulled back when Naruto made a move to free it before she drew blood.
Behind them, Sasuke was quiet. After a pause, he let his arms drop slightly.
"I know that," he replied carefully. "You don't have to prove it."
"God!" Sakura screamed, body curving and tensing with the sound, and then she turned and ran to the bedroom. The sound of the door slamming almost covered the click of the lock.
Naruto turned to stare at Sasuke, but the other man looked unsettled as well.
Sakura didn't come out of the room until after Sasuke loudly announced he was leaving for work. Naruto had thought about sliding a sandwich under the door, because she had to be hungry, but then he decided that if she had to come out to eat, he could finally talk to her.
Naruto's skin prickled when, after she walked out of the hall, he saw the duffel bag in her hand.
Sakura took a wide loop through the living room towards the door, avoiding the table. "I'm going to be at Ino's," she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and speeding up slightly when Naruto stood. "You've got my cell number, so--"
Naruto caught her before she could reach the door handle, wrapped his arms around her elbows and waist and pulled her back.
Sakura lashed out with her feet, kicking him in the shin. "Let me go!" she shouted, in a voice suddenly much shriller than before.
Jiraiya hadn't needed the sexual harassment cases he generally inspired to bleed over into his work, so one of the first things he'd beaten into Naruto was that when one of the actresses, or any woman at all, spoke in that tone of voice, he was to back six feet away and protect his eyes and the family jewels. Naruto dragged Sakura another step back from the door, and then sank into a sitting position on the carpet, pulling her with him.
Sakura was shaking, nails digging into his wrists and smelling sourly of fear, and Naruto swore at himself for not noticing things earlier.
"Don't leave," he said quietly, pressing his forehead against her shoulder. "Don't leave like this. Please, Sakura."
Sakura stopped digging her nails into his skin a few moments later, and let her arms drop to her lap. The shaking took longer to subside; it wasn't until Naruto shifted his grip so that her arms were free that she almost relaxed.
"I'm going to Ino's," Sakura repeated, swallowing. "Let go, Naruto. I've already called her."
He tightened his arms instinctively, and then forced himself to loosen them when she tensed again. "Don't leave."
"I'll come back," she replied quietly. "I mean, if I go away for a couple days, this will all seem stupid and I can calm down. Please let me go."
The fear was still there, even if she wasn't shaking; Naruto could almost taste it along the back of his throat and wanted to spit. He let his arms drop to the sides.
Sakura stood up, moved out of arm's reach, and then smoothed down her skirt. She crouched when she picked up the dropped bag, rather than bending, and her goodbye was directed more to the door than him.
Naruto was lying on the carpet, in the same general area, and staring up at the ceiling when Sasuke returned early in the morning.
"She'll come back," Sasuke said, after Naruto told him what had happened.
"She was probably lying to get me to let go," Naruto replied hoarsely. "You didn't smell it."
"She has to come back," Sasuke said, pushing himself up off the floor where he had been sitting next to Naruto. "She couldn't have packed all her stuff in one duffel. We can talk to her when she returns."
Sakura had her own key and knew their schedules, but Sasuke left that part out, so Naruto didn't bother to bring it up either. Sasuke made dinner for himself, showered, and finally toed Naruto in the side and told him to go to bed.
Sakura did come back, two days later, looking just as tired and escorted by Ino.
Ino entered the apartment like some kind of smoky explosion, demanding Naruto hold the door open for them and take Sakura's bag for her and where was that son of a bitch Sasuke and God, these carpets, Sakura, don't you ever make them vacuum? What was that stai--ew.
Naruto well remembered what had happened the first and last time Sasuke and Ino met, and tried to keep her from heading toward the bedroom; but she barged right past him. Naruto was left to stand awkwardly in the living room with Sakura, who wouldn't quite look at him, and try to think of what to say.
After Ino had banged on the bedroom door for twenty seconds, Sasuke opened it and glared at her. Naruto and Sakura edged closer.
Ino folded her arms over her chest. "You. Apologize to Sakura."
Sakura stepped into the short hallway, holding up a hand. "Look, Ino, you're really not help--"
"Sakura," Sasuke interrupted, rejecting Ino's existence and turning to face her. "I'm sorry for not doing the dishes."
The room was quiet, until Naruto looked at Sakura, and then Sasuke, and disbelievingly mouthed Dishes?
". . . ." Sakura bit her lip, and then attempted a half-smile. ". . . It was actually about making lunch."
"I'm sorry for not making lunch," Sasuke replied. "Now shut up and let me sleep."
He shoved the door shut without waiting for a reply. Ino gave it a raised eyebrow, but Sakura caught her elbow and dragged her out of the hall before Sasuke's spate of civility ended.
"Making lunch?" Naruto asked, staring.
"I know, I know . . ." Sakura murmured. "It was just . . . a bad. . . . I'm sorry, Naruto. I should have handled that better. I didn't mean to hurt you."
"You're not at--" Ino started to say, before Sakura shoved her slightly with the hand still on her arm.
". . . It's okay," Naruto told her quietly. "I. . . ." He hesitated at mentioning Konoha in an outsider's presence, and soon changed it to: "Sasuke probably didn't help anything."
Sakura nodded faintly, absently. Ino looked at her, and then back over their shoulders to the bedroom.
"You shouldn't let him off so easy," she said decisively. "I am not believing that this was just over whose turn it was to make dinner."
"It's okay, Ino," Sakura said, dropping her hand and looking at her. "Really. He apologized. And he didn't even say anything about you being here."
Ino still looked skeptical. "I told you, it's a sign of a potential abuser to try and cut off contact with friends."
Naruto snorted in surprise. Sakura pressed a thumb to the bridge of her nose.
"He's not an abuser, Ino," she replied in a tone that said they'd gone over this already, more than once. "I don't have to worry. We just live in the apartment, I told you."
"He threw a chair at my head, Sakura," Ino replied in the same tone.
"You did try to head trip him without warning," Sakura retorted.
"He's weird!" she answered defensively.
None of them had expected Sasuke to react as badly to Ino as he had. Sakura had occasionally wondered if things would have gone better if she'd warned him the friend she was bringing over was a shadowgirl, so he could have left early, or if Ino at least hadn't immediately tried to read his mind to figure him out. Naruto had managed to deflect the majority of the chair so Ino only got a bruise on her forearm, and she and Sakura had then fled the apartment with him yelling at Sasuke and Sasuke yelling right back.
Naruto had called her a few hours later, after Sasuke had left for work and Ino had finally tired herself out from cursing him and every possible family member he had ever or would ever have, and told her that Sasuke really hated shadowgirls and wouldn't tell him why. He promised to make Sasuke sleep on the couch until he made it up to her.
Sakura had started speaking to Sasuke again after nine days, when she'd grew tired of Naruto babbling about anything and everything to fill the silence when all three of them were there. But she always went out to meet Ino or to the other woman's apartment since then.
"That still--" Sakura shook her head. "Look, don't make me have to defend him, okay? Just drop it." When Ino starred to reply, Sakura glared at her. "I'm not stupid."
"I can fucking hear you," Sasuke yelled through the bedroom door.
Ino gave Sakura a significant look. She sighed.
"Shut up!" Naruto yelled back, and then scratched the back of his head. "Hey, I . . . have you eaten breakfast yet?"
"Not much," Sakura replied. "Let's go out to eat. Then Sasuke can sleep." She hooked an arm through Ino's and began pulling the other woman toward the door.
Ino was still arguing with her when Naruto went into the bedroom to get his wallet. Sasuke had curled away from the door with the covers pulled over his head.
Naruto shoved the wallet in his front jeans pocket, watching the lump of blankets. "Sasuke. . . ."
"I am not talking anymore until that shadowbitch is gone," he snarled.
"No, not--. . . thanks," Naruto told him.
Sasuke didn't reply for a moment, and then grunted and yanked the blanket further over his head.
Naruto twisted the bedroom doorknob so that it would shut quietly, locked the outside door, and then jogged down the stairs until he caught up to Sakura and Ino.
~
Sasuke had been leaving for work more and more often recently--Naruto didn't learn how early until one day Sakura commented that he hadn't been home when she got back from work for the past two days. Sasuke wouldn't say anything about it, not even when Naruto pushed to the point that he knew exactly how annoying he was being, which was weird enough to tell him it had to be some really bad shit. And coming at a time when Naruto still wanted to kick the emptied duffel bag half-buried in a corner of the closet, he wasn't willing to let it go.
But Sasuke wouldn't talk about work; and after Naruto convinced Sakura to ask questions as well, he stopped talking at all. Naruto finally quit asking and instead started following him around whenever he was in the apartment, imitating the silence. It was really hard, not speaking--he had no idea how Sasuke or Sakura pulled it off--but he managed.
He assumed that it had finally worked when Sasuke showed him the package.
Sasuke let the door swing shut behind him when he came back from the club, just loud enough that it woke up Naruto. Sakura slept through it, but she stirred awake when Naruto jostled the mattress as he slid off the bed.
"You guys . . ." she whined, and pulled the covers back up around her. Naruto patted her hip through the blanket, and chuckled when she drowsily swatted at it from underneath.
Sasuke was sitting at the table, staring at a packet. When Naruto sat down across from him, he flicked it over the table absently, as if he hadn't been so focused on it that he'd started when Naruto opened the bedroom door.
"Do you know what those are?" he asked as he stood up and tugged off the loose sweater he'd been wearing.
Naruto opened the package, and whistled lowly when he saw two yellow feathers. He looked over at Sasuke, who'd dropped the sweater over the back of his chair and now was rummaging through the refrigerator. "Where the hell'd you get these? You didn't kill anyone, right?"
"No," Sasuke replied with annoyance. "Somebody left them at the club."
"Somebody left--" Naruto replied disbelievingly. "These are yellows! Pure yellows!" He fished the feathers out of the packet. "Betcha we could pay the next couple months' rent and groceries if we sold them."
Sasuke dumped the ingredients for a sandwich on the counter and pushed the fridge door closed with his foot. "What are they?"
"Yellows," Naruto replied. When Sasuke gave him a 'no shit' look, he shrugged. "I don't deal with these things, okay? I can't tell them apart from sight."
He twisted his hand, turning the feathers. ". . . Maybe Jiraiya would--nah, he'd harass the hell out of me. Maybe Kabuto. . . ."
Sasuke shrugged, busy with the sandwich, and Naruto realized that he hadn't looked at him yet.
"So how'd you really get them?" he asked.
"I told you, someone left them on the limbic splitter," Sasuke said.
"Uh-huh, right," Naruto replied, picking up the packet to push the feathers back in, "and I'm the--hey, it's got writing on it."
"I know," Sasuke replied oddly.
". . . 'This is one way out of your skin, but I don't recommend it,'" Naruto read, and then gave the package a look. "Is that supposed to be a clue or something?"
"Maybe," Sasuke answered, and Naruto hooked the flap closed before setting the packet down.
"What the fuck is up with you?" he asked seriously. "If you stole them, we need to go back and . . . deal with the guy. You know Sakura's been freaked about police since that junkie bastard found us."
"I didn't steal them, damn it!" Sasuke snapped. His hands were curled around the edge of the counter. "Someone left them for me!"
Naruto blinked. "What?"
Sasuke didn't reply.
Naruto sat forward on the chair. "What do you mean someone left them for you? These are the--the fucking gold of the Vurt!" He started to scowl. "Are you starting to work for some other dealer? I don't trust any of those--"
"No!" Sasuke half-shouted, still glaring down at the counter. "It's not--I don't know who left them there, I just assumed they're for me. No one else would have been working in the booth at the time."
Naruto stared at the tense lines of Sasuke's back under the thin t-shirt he was wearing, and then sat back in his chair.
"Why are you lying to me?" he asked quietly.
The muscles in Sasuke's arms flexed sharply, and his hands clenched around the counter before he shoved away. He stormed into the bathroom without speaking, and locked the door before Naruto could reach it.
The noise had woken Sakura up completely--she was halfway out of the bed when Naruto came back in and shoved the package onto the dresser, underneath his wallet and watch.
"You should give up," she said, dropping back onto the mattress. "If he doesn't want to talk, he's not going to."
"Yeah, I guess," Naruto mumbled as he crawled back next to her.
Sakura frowned, and then propped herself up on an elbow. "What happened?"
". . . Nothing," he said. "I'm just getting tired of all this stuff recently."
Sakura started to say something, and then closed her lips again. Instead, she leaned back onto the mattress, before curling up closer to Naruto until she could tuck her head under his chin. She slipped her arm beneath his a moment later, and began to scratch the back of his neck gently.
Sakura had fallen asleep again by the time Sasuke got out of the shower and came into the bedroom to pull on a clean pair of boxers. Naruto reached back and flipped down the covers on his side without saying anything.
For several seconds, he thought that Sasuke was going to ignore him and go sleep on the couch. But then there was the familiar dip and shift of the mattress, and Naruto felt his chest untighten slightly. Sakura mumbled and rolled over; Naruto lifted his arm to give her the room and draped it back over her waist when she'd settled. He checked that she really was asleep before saying quietly, "I can take those with me and show them to Kabuto the next time he comes around. That guy's another feather maker."
"Sell them to him," Sasuke replied, the echo of his voice telling Naruto that he was sleeping facing away. "I don't care. Get them out of here."
"Okay," he replied, and let it stay there.
He would regret dropping the subject later, but at that moment the bed had felt weighted down the way it was supposed to, and Sakura was warm against him and he could hear how Sasuke's shallow breaths soon deepened into unfeigned sleep, and Naruto figured he could wait a little for the real answers.
"These are knowledge feathers, with knowledge's consequence. Blue for pleasure, pink for porn, black for violence, and yellow . . . yellow for death. It's all very logical.
"If you know what you're seeking, kittling."