9 to 5 Grind
The madness continues.
"But you guys are really branching out now," Naruto replied. "Especially her. Do you not think it would work?"
Neji, sitting at the desk in Naruto's room, obviously chose his answer carefully. "I don't think we should be making expenditures yet that won't have definite ends."
Naruto made a face at him. In the bathroom to the left, the shower cut off.
"Even if Hinata-san is getting extra work, the fact doesn't change that she's a prostitute and not a geisha," Neji replied after another pause. "The men hiring her know that."
"Yeah, but," Naruto replied, waving his hand with a rapid gesture, "she only sleeps with one or two, and now that she's getting party calls, this is a chance to show off to the rest of the guests."
"Those people will know she's a prostitute, too," Neji pointed out. "Even with her manners and attitude, she doesn't have any of the training."
"We're not gonna get the top clients," Naruto half-agreed, half-explained, "but we could get some of the lesser people."
"You mean," Sakura called from the bathroom, "since we're still a second-class house, by having someone better than the other ones, we'll attract more second-class customers?"
"Yeah!"
Sakura came out of the bathroom, still toweling her hair dry. She was wearing the pair of clean panties that she'd pragmatically brought with her. "There might be something to getting her a new kimono, then, to meet people that haven't hired her yet," she agreed cautiously. "But I don't think you should buy it. Have you talked to Jiraiya, asked him if there's anyone we could rent one from instead?"
"Not yet, no," he admitted.
Sakura glanced over her shoulder at him as she pulled her jeans off the folding chair by the bed and tugged them on. "That's probably the best idea, then. At least for the next few months," she added, buttoning them up.
Naruto made a low, mrring noise, but with both Sakura and Neji advising him against an action, he'd listen. "All right."
Sakura looked for her shirt, saw that it was half-buried under the blankets that Naruto was sitting on, and gave up. She went over to the computer instead; Neji pushed the chair to the side so that she had room to stand.
"What about the couch?" he asked, as she pulled up the spreadsheet. "Shouldn't we wait on that as well?"
"We can pull it off," she replied, pulling the scroll bar over enough to show the latest week's worth of earnings. "If you really want to," she finished, looking to Naruto again. "Toss me my shirt and bra."
Naruto glanced behind him, and pulled the shirt up a moment later. He was still hunting for the bra when Neji asked, "What's the numbers in green?"
Sakura turned enough to see that he was eying the spreadsheet, and then turned completely in order to be able to point at the screen. "Projected earnings," she replied, "based on what everyone's been bringing in for the last month. See, if things stay the same we should probably be able to pay for the couch, get Hinata the kimono, and start setting aside to pay Jiraiya whatever hike the old bastard's gonna demand, before January."
"Hm," Neji said.
"You missed your calling," he added dryly, but still low enough that Naruto missed it.
Sakura gave him a sidelong look.
"Never mind," she said to Naruto a moment later. "Just throw them in your laundry when you find them, okay?"
"All right," he replied, tossing the shirt at the basket.
"If you go through Jiraiya, he can probably find someone who'll give you a discount for renting the kimono," she added, leaning forward slightly and frowning at the numbers. ". . . Damn, it's times like this I wish Sasuke was still working."
"Son of a police chief," Neji reminded her.
"Mm," Sakura replied, "but we could use someone picking up the clients you can't get to. I mean, you can teach someone to react perfectly in bed, but someone who struggles naturally is so much more attractive. It was great income while we got it."
"Sakura," Naruto said, watching her.
"My apologies," she said coolly. Neji didn't deign to reply.
Sakura turned and tossed the towel at the laundry basket as well. "That's all," she said, moving towards the door. "I'm going to bed."
Naruto started to reply, but she shut the door behind too fast.
He eyed Neji, but the other man was busy closing out of the spreadsheet and shutting down the computer, and either didn't notice or didn't acknowledge it.
Ino flopped over enough to face the door when she heard Sakura come in.
"Sheeze," she commented, when she'd blinked enough to actually see. "You'll get a cold. And you're gonna get the pillow wet."
"Yeah, yeah," Sakura replied, shucking out of her jeans and leaving them on the floor. When Ino started scooting back, out of the middle of the bed, she shook her head. "No, you sleep away from the wall. You'll be up before me--I've done all my work for the tomorrow, so I'm not getting up until we leave."
"'Kay," Ino yawned, and scooted in the opposite direction, hugging the covers the whole time. She grumbled about the 'arctic wasteland air' when Sakura pulled them enough to shimmy in; Sakura told her to not be a wimp.
Naruto caught her before she went out the door the next evening and asked if she still wanted to go couch shopping with him the next day, openly giving her the option to skip out, so Sakura said she'd go.
"Not that one," Sakura rejected. "It'll clash with the carpet."
Naruto wandered off to the next setup. "What about this one?"
Sakura sighed under her breath. "That's leather, Naruto."
"So?" he asked, tilting his head at her.
"Leather sticks," she pointed out.
"We've already got the rule about no sex on the couch."
Sakura just looked at him.
". . . What?" Naruto finally replied, trying to give her an innocent look.
"Cloth," Sakura said emphatically.
"Aw . . ." he muttered, but wandered away from the sofa. "All right, what color should it be?"
"Mm," Sakura replied, eying the furniture store's layout. "Maybe. . . ."
She wished vaguely that someone else had been up when she and Naruto left--neither of them were really awake enough, even though Naruto had bought her two cans of coffee after they'd reached the mall.
Hinata had been supposed to come, but she'd been up later than usual last night after a long day, so Naruto had said to let her sleep. Sakura personally thought that Hinata was only going to feel worse about being left out than woken up, but really, if Naruto couldn't remember that, she shouldn't have to walk him through everything.
"Maybe brown," she said, settling on the first color of sofa she saw. "Until you let Sai paint on the walls, there's nothing to really clash with but the carpet."
"Well then, what was wrong with the other couch? It was cloth!"
"It was the ugliest shade of orange ever invented," she retorted.
Naruto muttered something indistinct about a lack of taste, and Sakura stuck her tongue out at him.
"We could just put this off a little longer," she added a moment later. "We've already got the chairs, and since the old one's been gone, the place has made a pretty good training room."
"But everyone's getting sick of sitting on the carpet, right?" he replied, looking over from an overstuffed tan couch. "And Neji was saying something about Hinata getting rug burns."
Well maybe if he didn't suck at teaching her, she could learn on mats, Sakura was tempted to reply, but she wasn't so tired that she couldn't tell when something would be a bad idea. "If anyone ever bothered to vacuum or steam it, it wouldn't be that bad."
"Yeah, but that'll never happen," Naruto replied with cheerful fatalism. "So it's, like, more sanitary to get a couch again."
"Uh-huh," she replied dryly, folding her arms.
"You're my accountant," Naruto acknowledged, turning to face her completely this time. "If things changed, we can skip it."
Sakura sighed faintly, and then eyed the store again.
"Not really, no," she replied. "Even if you do find someone to rent Hinata a kimono, we've got enough saved that we can afford it and still have a little leeway. And it will be nice to see a couch in there again. It still feels like we just moved in without one."
He nodded. "That's what I was thinking. And I think it's getting to Gaara--he goes around the upstairs to get to the front room from the kitchen now."
"Okay," Sakura said, letting her arms drop. "Then we might as well. Just, try to keep it under 200,000 yen."
"Will do," Naruto replied with a grin.
They were halfway through the store when Naruto grabbed Sakura's arm suddenly, startling her.
"Sakura! That one! We've gotta get that couch!"
Sakura looked along his line of vision, and found that he was pointing at a large, L-shaped that couch that looked like it had been shipped to the store directly from a pornography studio yard sale.
"Oh my god no," was her succinct reply.
"It's perfect!" he retorted. "It's even cloth!"
"It's a porn shoot reject."
"But it'll go with the carpet or whatever, right?"
"No."
"Sakuraaaaaa." Naruto pouted at her. "That's, like, the best couch ever. That is the perfect couch for us. We can fit everyone on it! At once! It'll be great!"
"It's a porn couch!" she retorted, trying to restrain her 'why aren't you getting it?!' gestures.
"That just . . . adds to its beauty," Naruto replied, eying the couch appreciatively.
Sakura stared at him for a moment, and then pressed a hand over her eyes.
"I knew something bad was going to come from you having to visit Jiraiya so much lately," she said in a mock whisper. "I just didn't realize it would be that you'd start thinking like him."
"Oi," Naruto retorted. Sakura made another expressive gesture towards the couch in reply, which he ignored in flavor of flagging down a salesman.
Sakura refused to have anything to do with the acquisition of the couch, so she sashayed off and then slumped into an armchair to wait for the headache from too much coffee and too little food to wear off.
When Naruto and the salesman moved to the counter to arrange the papers, though, she took a picture of the sofa with her phone and emailed it to Ino.
Ino had shown the picture off to everyone by the time they got back; the commentary started as soon as Naruto stepped into the house.
He gave Sakura a look once he figured out what had happened. She returned it with a bright grin.
"Now we're even," she added, pulling out the cell and hooking the cord of it over one of her fingers so that she could splay them out around it briefly, before tucking it back into her purse.
"I didn't distribute that picture of you and Hinata, you know."
"Sure," Sakura replied, heading the stairs and glancing at him over her shoulder, "because we were both still wearing our shirts."
". . . Mean."
It was when Sakura and Neji left for judo separately that Naruto called Kiba.
It was in the early afternoon of the next day, a little before one, so he knew nobody, with the possible exception of Sasuke--the kid had even more erratic sleeping hours than Naruto, and at least he had an excuse--would be awake.
That included Kiba, but after a few half-groggy curses he woke up enough to ask if he was supposed to come in early.
"No, it's not that," Naruto replied, leaning back in the chair and stretching. He had to smother a yawn before saying, "It's about Neji."
Kiba was silent.
Naruto blinked, and then frowned. "Kiba?"
"Yeah, I heard." The other man yawned as well, and Naruto heard bedsprings creak faintly. "What about him?"
"How are he and Sakura acting around each other?"
Kiba was silent again, which meant he was picking his words, which meant some really bad shit was going down because Naruto had known Kiba since high school and he could count on one hand all the times the other man had done that. Naruto began to suspect that he had missed a lot more than whatever Neji had said to send Sakura off like this.
"They don't talk, mostly," Kiba replied. "He's the same as he is with everyone else, but she stays in the opposite sides of the rooms when they're in the same one. Rrg," he added, and there was a brief noise as Kiba shifted the phone.
"Yeah," Naruto agreed, leaning back even further until the top of the chair was digging uncomfortably into his spine. "Anything else?"
When Kiba paused again, Naruto closed his eyes and made himself grin. "Dude, you have a hangover or something? This is the first time since you've been working with me that you've been thinking so much."
"Oi," Kiba snapped, and then paused one last time.
A moment later he heard the springs creak again, and Kiba pushed open a door while saying, "Sakura's losing it."
Naruto exhaled quietly. "Yeah, I know."
"Why don't you just marry her?" Kiba asked. "Then she could go to college. If you got some kind of contract that she'd continue doing the accounts for you and would return after she graduated, you could probably talk Jiraiya-san into funding part of it."
"Ino," Naruto replied succinctly.
Kiba snorted in a 'that's all?' way. "Let her keep Ino."
"Of course I would," he replied, annoyed. "But that's the problem, Ino would think she was being kept then. And she'd leave because of it. I'm not doing that to Sakura." He tapped his fingers awkwardly against the side of the chair, started to say "I'm . . . already thinking about ask-- . . ." but then stopped himself.
Kiba started to huff to show that that was all he could be expected to come up with this early, but it turned into a yawn.
After a couple more seconds, he spoke again; and his tone had changed. Naruto sat up.
"You need to do something about Neji, too. Put him in anger management classes or something." There was the noise of a cabinet opening. "Now that Hinata's doing better than him and away from him more, I think he's starting to take it out on the others."
Naruto leaned his elbows on the kitchen table, wishing he had something to fidget with. "What's Hinata got to do with this?"
There was nothing but the various noises of Kiba getting breakfast for a few seconds; but when he was still in the middle of opening the cereal, he exhaled sharply.
"Look," Kiba said, "he does take care of her. He doesn't let her skip meals, he's at least trying to teach her self-defense, and I don't think he's stopping the johns that attack her fast enough but he's never let any of them rape her. But he hates her, Naruto." Kiba shifted the phone again. "Maybe you know why, but you gotta make him deal with it, whatever it is. If he and Sakura start fighting things'll get ugly fast."
Naruto was silent for a few seconds, and then dragged his free hand through his hair.
"Okay," he said, exhaling deeply. "All right. I thought he was better now, but . . . you think it started when she began getting classier jobs?"
"Him going after the others did."
Naruto paused, and then frowned again. "The others? Has he been pulling shit on you?"
"I can take care of myself," Kiba replied, opening his fridge.
Naruto exhaled through his teeth, but let it drop at the tone in the other man's voice. "Fine. Okay. Sorry about getting you up this early."
"While you're feeling so magnanimous," Kiba drawled, "you think you can give me Tuesday off? I need to move."
"Yeah, sure," Naruto replied. "You need help?"
"Nah, I got a couple people to give me a hand already."
"Okay." He pushed away from the table. "See ya."
"Yeah," Kiba replied.
Naruto hung up, and then stared at the phone for a few minutes, before finally flipping it closed and standing up.
The couch had been set to be delivered late Thursday afternoon, before any customers would be coming by but when Sasuke would be awake and coherent enough to deal with it. After clearing it with Naruto, Kiba brought Akamaru with him when he came in Wednesday.
Sasuke just kind of stared as the entire house tried to simultaneously play with the puppy and eat breakfast. Even Gaara had come down when he learned what the noise was about.
He'd gone back up and gotten one of his small whips to use as a toy for Akamaru to chase, which had caused Kiba to make and then attempt to hide several interesting expressions, until Hinata noticed and got a ribbon from a customer's gift to replace it. Gaara and Sai were currently competing to see if he would chase the ribbon or an empty water bottle more.
"He's gonna think he died and went to dog heaven," Kiba remarked, leaning against the wall beside where Sasuke was doing the same against the door frame. Neji was scratching the dog underneath one ear while Hinata petted it; Ino and Sakura were trying to lure it away with bits of toast. "I'm never gonna hear the end of it, taking him back home."
"You'd think none of them had seen a dog before," Sasuke replied, eyebrow still raised in badly disguised confusion.
"Ah, most prostitutes are really fond of domesticated animals," Kiba replied, looking over at him. "Naruto gave this report once, about how like seventy percent of prostitutes in the past era had pets."
Sasuke raised the other eyebrow as well. "Report?"
"Back in high school."
At Sasuke's expression, Kiba snickered. "Yeah. I used to think it was funny when he always said that his career goal was to run a whorehouse, but now. . . ." He waved a hand at the room. "I just wonder how Jiraiya-san handled the phone calls from the teachers."
Sasuke had that suspicious look again, the one that really set Kiba's instincts off. He wished he'd thought to mention that to Naruto, as well. "He knew Jiraiya before he was legal?"
"I guess so."
"How?"
Kiba shrugged. "We were in the same elementary," he explained. "Not the same junior high, but by high school, he'd changed a lot--he was this damn irritating kid in elementary, the kind you never want to talk to, you know?"
Sasuke didn't reply, so he went on. "He told me then that he was going to be set up with work once he was legal and had contacts, and asked if I wanted to work for him then. So I said sure. And here we are."
Sasuke was still frowning, eyes narrowed. "Jiraiya shouldn't have had a kid working in a brothel underage."
"There's no law against a woman keeping her kid with her in company housing," Kiba replied. "Brothels with live-ins fall under that category."
That made some of the suspicion disappear. "His mother works for Jiraiya?"
"Dunno," Kiba replied, settling a little more against the wall, "but I'll bet you 2000 yen that's what the paperwork will say."
He glanced over at Sasuke. "You're not a cop, right? Just chill."
Sasuke made a quiet, irritated noise, and looked back to where Ino had secured the puppy. Sakura was scratching it under the chin.
Sasuke let the movers in through the front door, since it was easier to carry large objects into the common room from there than it was to try and haul them through the back hallway and kitchen. The noise had drawn down first Sakura and Ino, and then Neji; Hinata had gone down the back stairs and started making coffee.
One of the movers looked uncomfortable at being inside the building. The other two had been making hushed comments about the women--even though they were dressed in as respectable pajamas as Sasuke had ever seen them in, shirts and loose flannel pants--up until Neji had walked straight between the two of them on his way into the room. Now they were just hanging back near the doorway, by the first mover.
Sasuke had noted that all three of them--four if he counted Hinata, because she was doing the same thing in a different way--were actively not acknowledging the movers' existence. He knew that in Sakura and Hinata's case, at the least, it wasn't normal behavior, so the only thing he could guess was that this was how they always treated people lower on the chain than them. The movers hadn't entered the building as customers, and therefore were trash.
"If we put it there, it's going to block the straight line to the kitchen," Sakura objected, gesturing at the doorway that the coffee scent was wafting from.
"Yes, because it's so hard to walk around," Ino drawled. "Thank you! My god, think of what kind of horrors we might have faced if we'd gone with my idea."
Sakura stuck her tongue out at her. "Fine," she retorted, "if you put it there, we'll have to move the armchairs further back. It'll look cluttered."
"Put the couch perpendicular to the doorway," Neji replied, gesturing with a palm to show where exactly he meant, "with the angle on that side, and move the chairs over here. They'll both still nominally see the TV, and there will be enough room behind the couch for everyone to walk."
Sakura, who'd already turned her back on him earlier, didn't reply. Ino eyed the room for a few more seconds, and then looked over to the movers and snapped her fingers. "Get to it, boys."
Sasuke had been standing against the railing of the front stairs, but when the movers went to pick up the first section of the couch, he slipped through the doorway and headed for the kitchen.
The couch really was horrifically porntastic, but it was hard to combat Naruto's enthusiasm. He'd even called Kiba after it was set up and told him to come in as early as he could on such short notice. And to bring a camera.
Having known Naruto for quite a while now, Kiba was relieved when he found out that the other man just wanted to take a picture of everyone on the couch at once.
"Gawd," Sakura stated, eying the way Naruto had sprawled out in the corner angle of the couch, arms thrown over the back on both sides. "All you need's a hat."
He grinned at her, widely.
Sakura rolled her eyes and then flopped down on the shorter side, next to him. Ino pushed one of her legs over the edge and sat down between them, draping herself over Sakura's breasts and stomach and hooking a knee underneath the leg that Sakura still had on the couch.
"C'mon, Gaara," Naruto urged. "You can stand behind it if you want, just don't glare too much?"
"Are you gonna use this for business purposes?" Kiba called from the front room, where he was replacing the battery in the camera, when Neji pushed aside the curtain for him and Hinata to enter. Sai was still coming down the stairs.
"Nah," Naruto called back, "that'd have to be more stylized. This one I'm just sticking in my room."
"You should frame it," he faintly heard Ino reply, because she was drowned out by Sai grabbing Sasuke's elbow when he reached the bottom step. He began to drag the teenager into the room, with: "So, no harm in a former worker joining, right?"
"What the hell," was Sasuke's reply, as the curtain fell behind them.
Kiba raised an eyebrow as high as it would go, but continued with the battery.
He turned the camera on once he was finished and took a couple test shots of the front room to make sure it worked, before deleting them and standing up. He was two steps from the doorway when Sasuke flung the curtain to the side and stormed out.
"Where you going?" Kiba asked with a frown, as Sasuke began taking the steps two at a time.
"To wash in acid," was the reply.
Kiba continued to eye the stairs Sasuke had disappeared up, until he caught the swaying curtain and pushed it aside enough to step inside.
"Or alternatively, he could be the virgin twin and I could be the naughty one," Sai continued.
He was sitting on the end of the long section of the couch, one leg propped up on the cushions and the other splayed out on the ground. Neji was next to him, face unreadable; Hinata, pressed between Neji and Naruto, was staring at the ground. Gaara looked as uninterested as Neji, Naruto had a hand covering his face, Ino was biting her lip to hold in laughter and Sakura looked ready to maim.
"Never mind," Kiba commented dryly, and lifted the camera.
"But you guys are really branching out now," Naruto replied. "Especially her. Do you not think it would work?"
Neji, sitting at the desk in Naruto's room, obviously chose his answer carefully. "I don't think we should be making expenditures yet that won't have definite ends."
Naruto made a face at him. In the bathroom to the left, the shower cut off.
"Even if Hinata-san is getting extra work, the fact doesn't change that she's a prostitute and not a geisha," Neji replied after another pause. "The men hiring her know that."
"Yeah, but," Naruto replied, waving his hand with a rapid gesture, "she only sleeps with one or two, and now that she's getting party calls, this is a chance to show off to the rest of the guests."
"Those people will know she's a prostitute, too," Neji pointed out. "Even with her manners and attitude, she doesn't have any of the training."
"We're not gonna get the top clients," Naruto half-agreed, half-explained, "but we could get some of the lesser people."
"You mean," Sakura called from the bathroom, "since we're still a second-class house, by having someone better than the other ones, we'll attract more second-class customers?"
"Yeah!"
Sakura came out of the bathroom, still toweling her hair dry. She was wearing the pair of clean panties that she'd pragmatically brought with her. "There might be something to getting her a new kimono, then, to meet people that haven't hired her yet," she agreed cautiously. "But I don't think you should buy it. Have you talked to Jiraiya, asked him if there's anyone we could rent one from instead?"
"Not yet, no," he admitted.
Sakura glanced over her shoulder at him as she pulled her jeans off the folding chair by the bed and tugged them on. "That's probably the best idea, then. At least for the next few months," she added, buttoning them up.
Naruto made a low, mrring noise, but with both Sakura and Neji advising him against an action, he'd listen. "All right."
Sakura looked for her shirt, saw that it was half-buried under the blankets that Naruto was sitting on, and gave up. She went over to the computer instead; Neji pushed the chair to the side so that she had room to stand.
"What about the couch?" he asked, as she pulled up the spreadsheet. "Shouldn't we wait on that as well?"
"We can pull it off," she replied, pulling the scroll bar over enough to show the latest week's worth of earnings. "If you really want to," she finished, looking to Naruto again. "Toss me my shirt and bra."
Naruto glanced behind him, and pulled the shirt up a moment later. He was still hunting for the bra when Neji asked, "What's the numbers in green?"
Sakura turned enough to see that he was eying the spreadsheet, and then turned completely in order to be able to point at the screen. "Projected earnings," she replied, "based on what everyone's been bringing in for the last month. See, if things stay the same we should probably be able to pay for the couch, get Hinata the kimono, and start setting aside to pay Jiraiya whatever hike the old bastard's gonna demand, before January."
"Hm," Neji said.
"You missed your calling," he added dryly, but still low enough that Naruto missed it.
Sakura gave him a sidelong look.
"Never mind," she said to Naruto a moment later. "Just throw them in your laundry when you find them, okay?"
"All right," he replied, tossing the shirt at the basket.
"If you go through Jiraiya, he can probably find someone who'll give you a discount for renting the kimono," she added, leaning forward slightly and frowning at the numbers. ". . . Damn, it's times like this I wish Sasuke was still working."
"Son of a police chief," Neji reminded her.
"Mm," Sakura replied, "but we could use someone picking up the clients you can't get to. I mean, you can teach someone to react perfectly in bed, but someone who struggles naturally is so much more attractive. It was great income while we got it."
"Sakura," Naruto said, watching her.
"My apologies," she said coolly. Neji didn't deign to reply.
Sakura turned and tossed the towel at the laundry basket as well. "That's all," she said, moving towards the door. "I'm going to bed."
Naruto started to reply, but she shut the door behind too fast.
He eyed Neji, but the other man was busy closing out of the spreadsheet and shutting down the computer, and either didn't notice or didn't acknowledge it.
Ino flopped over enough to face the door when she heard Sakura come in.
"Sheeze," she commented, when she'd blinked enough to actually see. "You'll get a cold. And you're gonna get the pillow wet."
"Yeah, yeah," Sakura replied, shucking out of her jeans and leaving them on the floor. When Ino started scooting back, out of the middle of the bed, she shook her head. "No, you sleep away from the wall. You'll be up before me--I've done all my work for the tomorrow, so I'm not getting up until we leave."
"'Kay," Ino yawned, and scooted in the opposite direction, hugging the covers the whole time. She grumbled about the 'arctic wasteland air' when Sakura pulled them enough to shimmy in; Sakura told her to not be a wimp.
Naruto caught her before she went out the door the next evening and asked if she still wanted to go couch shopping with him the next day, openly giving her the option to skip out, so Sakura said she'd go.
"Not that one," Sakura rejected. "It'll clash with the carpet."
Naruto wandered off to the next setup. "What about this one?"
Sakura sighed under her breath. "That's leather, Naruto."
"So?" he asked, tilting his head at her.
"Leather sticks," she pointed out.
"We've already got the rule about no sex on the couch."
Sakura just looked at him.
". . . What?" Naruto finally replied, trying to give her an innocent look.
"Cloth," Sakura said emphatically.
"Aw . . ." he muttered, but wandered away from the sofa. "All right, what color should it be?"
"Mm," Sakura replied, eying the furniture store's layout. "Maybe. . . ."
She wished vaguely that someone else had been up when she and Naruto left--neither of them were really awake enough, even though Naruto had bought her two cans of coffee after they'd reached the mall.
Hinata had been supposed to come, but she'd been up later than usual last night after a long day, so Naruto had said to let her sleep. Sakura personally thought that Hinata was only going to feel worse about being left out than woken up, but really, if Naruto couldn't remember that, she shouldn't have to walk him through everything.
"Maybe brown," she said, settling on the first color of sofa she saw. "Until you let Sai paint on the walls, there's nothing to really clash with but the carpet."
"Well then, what was wrong with the other couch? It was cloth!"
"It was the ugliest shade of orange ever invented," she retorted.
Naruto muttered something indistinct about a lack of taste, and Sakura stuck her tongue out at him.
"We could just put this off a little longer," she added a moment later. "We've already got the chairs, and since the old one's been gone, the place has made a pretty good training room."
"But everyone's getting sick of sitting on the carpet, right?" he replied, looking over from an overstuffed tan couch. "And Neji was saying something about Hinata getting rug burns."
Well maybe if he didn't suck at teaching her, she could learn on mats, Sakura was tempted to reply, but she wasn't so tired that she couldn't tell when something would be a bad idea. "If anyone ever bothered to vacuum or steam it, it wouldn't be that bad."
"Yeah, but that'll never happen," Naruto replied with cheerful fatalism. "So it's, like, more sanitary to get a couch again."
"Uh-huh," she replied dryly, folding her arms.
"You're my accountant," Naruto acknowledged, turning to face her completely this time. "If things changed, we can skip it."
Sakura sighed faintly, and then eyed the store again.
"Not really, no," she replied. "Even if you do find someone to rent Hinata a kimono, we've got enough saved that we can afford it and still have a little leeway. And it will be nice to see a couch in there again. It still feels like we just moved in without one."
He nodded. "That's what I was thinking. And I think it's getting to Gaara--he goes around the upstairs to get to the front room from the kitchen now."
"Okay," Sakura said, letting her arms drop. "Then we might as well. Just, try to keep it under 200,000 yen."
"Will do," Naruto replied with a grin.
They were halfway through the store when Naruto grabbed Sakura's arm suddenly, startling her.
"Sakura! That one! We've gotta get that couch!"
Sakura looked along his line of vision, and found that he was pointing at a large, L-shaped that couch that looked like it had been shipped to the store directly from a pornography studio yard sale.
"Oh my god no," was her succinct reply.
"It's perfect!" he retorted. "It's even cloth!"
"It's a porn shoot reject."
"But it'll go with the carpet or whatever, right?"
"No."
"Sakuraaaaaa." Naruto pouted at her. "That's, like, the best couch ever. That is the perfect couch for us. We can fit everyone on it! At once! It'll be great!"
"It's a porn couch!" she retorted, trying to restrain her 'why aren't you getting it?!' gestures.
"That just . . . adds to its beauty," Naruto replied, eying the couch appreciatively.
Sakura stared at him for a moment, and then pressed a hand over her eyes.
"I knew something bad was going to come from you having to visit Jiraiya so much lately," she said in a mock whisper. "I just didn't realize it would be that you'd start thinking like him."
"Oi," Naruto retorted. Sakura made another expressive gesture towards the couch in reply, which he ignored in flavor of flagging down a salesman.
Sakura refused to have anything to do with the acquisition of the couch, so she sashayed off and then slumped into an armchair to wait for the headache from too much coffee and too little food to wear off.
When Naruto and the salesman moved to the counter to arrange the papers, though, she took a picture of the sofa with her phone and emailed it to Ino.
Ino had shown the picture off to everyone by the time they got back; the commentary started as soon as Naruto stepped into the house.
He gave Sakura a look once he figured out what had happened. She returned it with a bright grin.
"Now we're even," she added, pulling out the cell and hooking the cord of it over one of her fingers so that she could splay them out around it briefly, before tucking it back into her purse.
"I didn't distribute that picture of you and Hinata, you know."
"Sure," Sakura replied, heading the stairs and glancing at him over her shoulder, "because we were both still wearing our shirts."
". . . Mean."
It was when Sakura and Neji left for judo separately that Naruto called Kiba.
It was in the early afternoon of the next day, a little before one, so he knew nobody, with the possible exception of Sasuke--the kid had even more erratic sleeping hours than Naruto, and at least he had an excuse--would be awake.
That included Kiba, but after a few half-groggy curses he woke up enough to ask if he was supposed to come in early.
"No, it's not that," Naruto replied, leaning back in the chair and stretching. He had to smother a yawn before saying, "It's about Neji."
Kiba was silent.
Naruto blinked, and then frowned. "Kiba?"
"Yeah, I heard." The other man yawned as well, and Naruto heard bedsprings creak faintly. "What about him?"
"How are he and Sakura acting around each other?"
Kiba was silent again, which meant he was picking his words, which meant some really bad shit was going down because Naruto had known Kiba since high school and he could count on one hand all the times the other man had done that. Naruto began to suspect that he had missed a lot more than whatever Neji had said to send Sakura off like this.
"They don't talk, mostly," Kiba replied. "He's the same as he is with everyone else, but she stays in the opposite sides of the rooms when they're in the same one. Rrg," he added, and there was a brief noise as Kiba shifted the phone.
"Yeah," Naruto agreed, leaning back even further until the top of the chair was digging uncomfortably into his spine. "Anything else?"
When Kiba paused again, Naruto closed his eyes and made himself grin. "Dude, you have a hangover or something? This is the first time since you've been working with me that you've been thinking so much."
"Oi," Kiba snapped, and then paused one last time.
A moment later he heard the springs creak again, and Kiba pushed open a door while saying, "Sakura's losing it."
Naruto exhaled quietly. "Yeah, I know."
"Why don't you just marry her?" Kiba asked. "Then she could go to college. If you got some kind of contract that she'd continue doing the accounts for you and would return after she graduated, you could probably talk Jiraiya-san into funding part of it."
"Ino," Naruto replied succinctly.
Kiba snorted in a 'that's all?' way. "Let her keep Ino."
"Of course I would," he replied, annoyed. "But that's the problem, Ino would think she was being kept then. And she'd leave because of it. I'm not doing that to Sakura." He tapped his fingers awkwardly against the side of the chair, started to say "I'm . . . already thinking about ask-- . . ." but then stopped himself.
Kiba started to huff to show that that was all he could be expected to come up with this early, but it turned into a yawn.
After a couple more seconds, he spoke again; and his tone had changed. Naruto sat up.
"You need to do something about Neji, too. Put him in anger management classes or something." There was the noise of a cabinet opening. "Now that Hinata's doing better than him and away from him more, I think he's starting to take it out on the others."
Naruto leaned his elbows on the kitchen table, wishing he had something to fidget with. "What's Hinata got to do with this?"
There was nothing but the various noises of Kiba getting breakfast for a few seconds; but when he was still in the middle of opening the cereal, he exhaled sharply.
"Look," Kiba said, "he does take care of her. He doesn't let her skip meals, he's at least trying to teach her self-defense, and I don't think he's stopping the johns that attack her fast enough but he's never let any of them rape her. But he hates her, Naruto." Kiba shifted the phone again. "Maybe you know why, but you gotta make him deal with it, whatever it is. If he and Sakura start fighting things'll get ugly fast."
Naruto was silent for a few seconds, and then dragged his free hand through his hair.
"Okay," he said, exhaling deeply. "All right. I thought he was better now, but . . . you think it started when she began getting classier jobs?"
"Him going after the others did."
Naruto paused, and then frowned again. "The others? Has he been pulling shit on you?"
"I can take care of myself," Kiba replied, opening his fridge.
Naruto exhaled through his teeth, but let it drop at the tone in the other man's voice. "Fine. Okay. Sorry about getting you up this early."
"While you're feeling so magnanimous," Kiba drawled, "you think you can give me Tuesday off? I need to move."
"Yeah, sure," Naruto replied. "You need help?"
"Nah, I got a couple people to give me a hand already."
"Okay." He pushed away from the table. "See ya."
"Yeah," Kiba replied.
Naruto hung up, and then stared at the phone for a few minutes, before finally flipping it closed and standing up.
The couch had been set to be delivered late Thursday afternoon, before any customers would be coming by but when Sasuke would be awake and coherent enough to deal with it. After clearing it with Naruto, Kiba brought Akamaru with him when he came in Wednesday.
Sasuke just kind of stared as the entire house tried to simultaneously play with the puppy and eat breakfast. Even Gaara had come down when he learned what the noise was about.
He'd gone back up and gotten one of his small whips to use as a toy for Akamaru to chase, which had caused Kiba to make and then attempt to hide several interesting expressions, until Hinata noticed and got a ribbon from a customer's gift to replace it. Gaara and Sai were currently competing to see if he would chase the ribbon or an empty water bottle more.
"He's gonna think he died and went to dog heaven," Kiba remarked, leaning against the wall beside where Sasuke was doing the same against the door frame. Neji was scratching the dog underneath one ear while Hinata petted it; Ino and Sakura were trying to lure it away with bits of toast. "I'm never gonna hear the end of it, taking him back home."
"You'd think none of them had seen a dog before," Sasuke replied, eyebrow still raised in badly disguised confusion.
"Ah, most prostitutes are really fond of domesticated animals," Kiba replied, looking over at him. "Naruto gave this report once, about how like seventy percent of prostitutes in the past era had pets."
Sasuke raised the other eyebrow as well. "Report?"
"Back in high school."
At Sasuke's expression, Kiba snickered. "Yeah. I used to think it was funny when he always said that his career goal was to run a whorehouse, but now. . . ." He waved a hand at the room. "I just wonder how Jiraiya-san handled the phone calls from the teachers."
Sasuke had that suspicious look again, the one that really set Kiba's instincts off. He wished he'd thought to mention that to Naruto, as well. "He knew Jiraiya before he was legal?"
"I guess so."
"How?"
Kiba shrugged. "We were in the same elementary," he explained. "Not the same junior high, but by high school, he'd changed a lot--he was this damn irritating kid in elementary, the kind you never want to talk to, you know?"
Sasuke didn't reply, so he went on. "He told me then that he was going to be set up with work once he was legal and had contacts, and asked if I wanted to work for him then. So I said sure. And here we are."
Sasuke was still frowning, eyes narrowed. "Jiraiya shouldn't have had a kid working in a brothel underage."
"There's no law against a woman keeping her kid with her in company housing," Kiba replied. "Brothels with live-ins fall under that category."
That made some of the suspicion disappear. "His mother works for Jiraiya?"
"Dunno," Kiba replied, settling a little more against the wall, "but I'll bet you 2000 yen that's what the paperwork will say."
He glanced over at Sasuke. "You're not a cop, right? Just chill."
Sasuke made a quiet, irritated noise, and looked back to where Ino had secured the puppy. Sakura was scratching it under the chin.
Sasuke let the movers in through the front door, since it was easier to carry large objects into the common room from there than it was to try and haul them through the back hallway and kitchen. The noise had drawn down first Sakura and Ino, and then Neji; Hinata had gone down the back stairs and started making coffee.
One of the movers looked uncomfortable at being inside the building. The other two had been making hushed comments about the women--even though they were dressed in as respectable pajamas as Sasuke had ever seen them in, shirts and loose flannel pants--up until Neji had walked straight between the two of them on his way into the room. Now they were just hanging back near the doorway, by the first mover.
Sasuke had noted that all three of them--four if he counted Hinata, because she was doing the same thing in a different way--were actively not acknowledging the movers' existence. He knew that in Sakura and Hinata's case, at the least, it wasn't normal behavior, so the only thing he could guess was that this was how they always treated people lower on the chain than them. The movers hadn't entered the building as customers, and therefore were trash.
"If we put it there, it's going to block the straight line to the kitchen," Sakura objected, gesturing at the doorway that the coffee scent was wafting from.
"Yes, because it's so hard to walk around," Ino drawled. "Thank you! My god, think of what kind of horrors we might have faced if we'd gone with my idea."
Sakura stuck her tongue out at her. "Fine," she retorted, "if you put it there, we'll have to move the armchairs further back. It'll look cluttered."
"Put the couch perpendicular to the doorway," Neji replied, gesturing with a palm to show where exactly he meant, "with the angle on that side, and move the chairs over here. They'll both still nominally see the TV, and there will be enough room behind the couch for everyone to walk."
Sakura, who'd already turned her back on him earlier, didn't reply. Ino eyed the room for a few more seconds, and then looked over to the movers and snapped her fingers. "Get to it, boys."
Sasuke had been standing against the railing of the front stairs, but when the movers went to pick up the first section of the couch, he slipped through the doorway and headed for the kitchen.
The couch really was horrifically porntastic, but it was hard to combat Naruto's enthusiasm. He'd even called Kiba after it was set up and told him to come in as early as he could on such short notice. And to bring a camera.
Having known Naruto for quite a while now, Kiba was relieved when he found out that the other man just wanted to take a picture of everyone on the couch at once.
"Gawd," Sakura stated, eying the way Naruto had sprawled out in the corner angle of the couch, arms thrown over the back on both sides. "All you need's a hat."
He grinned at her, widely.
Sakura rolled her eyes and then flopped down on the shorter side, next to him. Ino pushed one of her legs over the edge and sat down between them, draping herself over Sakura's breasts and stomach and hooking a knee underneath the leg that Sakura still had on the couch.
"C'mon, Gaara," Naruto urged. "You can stand behind it if you want, just don't glare too much?"
"Are you gonna use this for business purposes?" Kiba called from the front room, where he was replacing the battery in the camera, when Neji pushed aside the curtain for him and Hinata to enter. Sai was still coming down the stairs.
"Nah," Naruto called back, "that'd have to be more stylized. This one I'm just sticking in my room."
"You should frame it," he faintly heard Ino reply, because she was drowned out by Sai grabbing Sasuke's elbow when he reached the bottom step. He began to drag the teenager into the room, with: "So, no harm in a former worker joining, right?"
"What the hell," was Sasuke's reply, as the curtain fell behind them.
Kiba raised an eyebrow as high as it would go, but continued with the battery.
He turned the camera on once he was finished and took a couple test shots of the front room to make sure it worked, before deleting them and standing up. He was two steps from the doorway when Sasuke flung the curtain to the side and stormed out.
"Where you going?" Kiba asked with a frown, as Sasuke began taking the steps two at a time.
"To wash in acid," was the reply.
Kiba continued to eye the stairs Sasuke had disappeared up, until he caught the swaying curtain and pushed it aside enough to step inside.
"Or alternatively, he could be the virgin twin and I could be the naughty one," Sai continued.
He was sitting on the end of the long section of the couch, one leg propped up on the cushions and the other splayed out on the ground. Neji was next to him, face unreadable; Hinata, pressed between Neji and Naruto, was staring at the ground. Gaara looked as uninterested as Neji, Naruto had a hand covering his face, Ino was biting her lip to hold in laughter and Sakura looked ready to maim.
"Never mind," Kiba commented dryly, and lifted the camera.