(that's not the heimlich) → NARUGAA, P1 『LOG』

[undid]

Who: Uzumaki Naruto (undid) and Sabaku Gaara (harajuku_kage)
What: Naruto is not doing that great, and the gaping hole in his chest has both nothing and everything to do with it. He calls a "shower conference" with his fellow oyabun to try and sort things out, gang-wise, and ends up stuck trying to sort things out head-wise, with a redhead stuck in the shower with him trying to sort things out body-wise. Wisdom isn't common these days, apparently.
Where: The Naruto apartment. Of love. ♥ -SHOT-
When: Severely backdated. Two weeks after Sasuke's defection from the Konohagumi.
Warnings: Naruto, which means cussing, sexual references, and lots of fucking emotion. Oh, and have I mentioned just how much this muse loves cuddling? Because he really likes cuddling. Oh, and hey, have some nightmares.

Naruto has been having very bad dreams, recently, wherein he is lying on his bed or his couch (or wherever he happens to be sleeping at the time) and being strangled by great tangled knots and hordes of snakes. They're strange dreams, because in all his life, the only snakes Naruto has ever come in contact with have been behind glass at a zoo he went to once on the first day on the run from his foster family, and twice while playing hookie from a middle school he never finished. (Never went to highschool. Diplomas don't do anything for yakuza, not realistically speaking. And maybe that's why Neji is such a mystery to him. "College...? Wait, why?") But he has always hated snakes. Always. (Went into the place labeled Reptile Room and then ran straight out, and then had to force himself back in and walk all the way through it, getting more and more irrationally angry with every step he took because they were all looking at him, and he forced himself to look back because Uzumaki Naruto is not a quitter, never backs down, keeps his promises to himself and the people he loves and even to people he hates. Even in a world he hates. Loves. The same thing? Doesn't Uchiha Sasuke prove that they must be?) And so, in the dream (but it must be a nightmare, looking at it logically) when they are all over his body, twining around his naked limbs and his throat, constricting his chest and writhing inside his mouth, he twists and fight so hard against their cold skin, against the cold grace of their movements that he starts to feel violently sick. He breaks out in a freezing chill sweat, and he's been thrashing so hard that he wakes up shaking, usually with a muscle or two pulled.

(He can usually get them better within a few hours, but its painful, and that a dream could shake him so badly is embarrassing. And he still refuses to call it a nightmare because the word nightmare makes it feel out of his control and that makes him feel weak.

And godfuckingdammit, Uzumaki Naruto is not weak.)

-when Gaara gets there Naruto is in the shower with the water turned on as hot as it will go and his skin the red of weeping eyes. The bathroom door is closed and the curtain too, but the front door to his apartment is wide open in an invitation to only one person (and Naruto knows the Sabaku will shut it behind himself out of courtesy).

It disconcerts Gaara to see Naruto throwing caution to the wind at times like this. He's the junior division leader of a prominent Yakuza group in the capital of Japan, and should take more measures to ensure his own safety than the average Tokyo citizen. To leave his door wide open is downright foolish, and so very Naruto that it would make Gaara smile faintly if he weren't so busy being concerned for his friend's well-being.

He enters the apartment, closes the door behind him.

Locks it.

As he takes off his coat and throws it onto a table by the door, Gaara can hear the shower going (could here it, too, when Naruto first called him; it's in all honesty where Gaara would expect him to be). His makes his way to the bathroom, pausing outside the closed door. Naruto, he knows, is volatile right now, and he can't just walk in on him showering - that would be rude and disrespectful. He wouldn't even be thinking about going in in the first place, if Naruto hadn't sounded so - not needy, but in need - on the phone. At the very least, he's going to knock and give his friend all the warning he can before entering.

"Naruto?" he asks, rapping loudly on the wood. "It's me. Can I come in?"

(And even in his distress is Naruto-)

"If you dare, baby~"

(His voice is almost as gaudy as he is, if a little less.) He twists a smile onto his face and dives back into the heat of the spray, hair crushing automatically to his scalp before springing back up as the strands find their way through the water. Most times he would sing in the shower, but Naruto likes talking more than he likes singing (although he does like singing, it's true; music is his real Achilles' Heel, although not really, he just jokes that way- "If I had a rock ballad for every time I've shot someone, I'd be Queen, dattebayo~♥") and Gaara is here so he knows that (obviously) he will be the one that will do most of the talking, which is one of the reasons why he likes Gaara, which is one of the reasons why he surrounds himself with naturally stoic, quiet people.

It's not the only reason.

But it's one of the big ones.

(Naruto is a believer in balance, for certain.)

Gaara sighs and opens the door - he supposes it's good that Naruto is still able to joke around as he is, but there's a time and a place and this is neither. The curtain on the shower is closed, and Gaara breathes out a sigh of relief. He knows that it's important that Naruto talk to him, and that since Naruto isn't coming out of the shower to do so, then he has to be in the bathroom, too, but he wants to give his friend as much privacy as possible. Somehow, even with the door wide open and waiting for him, even with Naruto teasing him, he still feels as though he is intruding.

The door shuts softly behind him with a slight push. The running water covers the sound. He leans against the wall next to the shower, hair falling slightly into his tilted face and covering the tattoo above his brow. He wants to sit, because he feels like this may take a while, but his training has taught him never to leave himself in such a vulnerable position when there is no one else around to guard. Naruto may not care, but Gaara values the lives of both himself and his friend, and isn't going to do anything even slightly reckless when it's just the two of them (both of whom are big whigs in huge gumi with members of at least one other group after them. Damn the Akatsuki to hell-).

"Are you alright?" he questions, hearing the tremble in the smile of Naruto's voice. "What's wrong?"

Naruto hums pleasantly between gaps in the heat, water coursing down his face and into his eyes but not bothering him in the slightest. He wonders if the amount of steam in the room is making it hard for Gaara to breathe, but knows that if it were Gaara would say so. The Sunagumi leader has his pride, it's true, but he isn't half as prideful as a few people Naruto could name (a few people Naruto worked pretty closely with) and certainly not the extent where he wouldn't tell Naruto if something where that drastically wrong. It isn't like he's aiming to suffocate either of them. If that were his goal, he would've said so. Naruto's lungs are big, handsome things though, not unlike the organ of his heart, which is good, because the hotter the shower the more steam in the air and the more steam in the air the less oxygen. Strangely, Naruto likes showers quite a bit because its where he gets some of his best thinking done (not that he likes for people to know that. It's really just asking to have some punkass bitch tamper with his hot water heater again, which would be bad, since the first time it happened Naruto went on a rampage and ended up nearly killing three people. He likes his godfucking showers, dammit).

"Nothing that you don't know about," he says lightly, talking to be heard over the small thunder of water on flesh and porcelain tile. "Why?" (Even though he knows why Gaara's asking. Knows why everyone's been asking. The evidence is bandaged up in gauze, still, because it just isn't healing as fast as he wants it to, and the doctors don't understand why. "It doesn't make sense," chewing on the end of her pen with a troubled look. "Your lung tissue healed within hours, but the stitches in your chest...they aren't holding together. Even by normal human standards," as he does not apply to normal human standards? But the speed at which is lung tissue healed was incredible. No one in the medical field had seen anything like it before, and now the doctors have been trying to get permission to do a study on him, "this should be healing up a lot faster. It's been almost two weeks and the healing process...the flesh hasn't even started to regenerate yet.")

But Naruto does not think anything about the hole in his chest is anything really concerning.

(Its the repercussions, both of it being there and of who put it there, that are really cause for thought.)

"Do I sound sick or something?"

But that would be absurd.

Because Naruto has never been sick. (Not once.)

Gaara sucks in a quick breath, the combined result of the increased steam and the tone of his friend's voice. "No," he replies after a moment, "You don't," even though Gaara thinks that a little bit, he does. Not sick physically (though not well, either; there is a gaping hole in Naruto's chest that blows that theory out the window), but mentally. Gaara thinks that if Naruto's gunshot wound to his physical still hasn't begun to scar over, then the ones inflicted upon his spiritual one must still be bleeding openly.

(There is no way to gauze up emotions, nor is there any ointment that can soothe the burn of betrayal.)

"But if you're fine, then what do you want to talk about?" Gaara can understand the fragile state that Naruto's in right now, but he's too tired to play these games. The Uchiha's desertion didn't affect just Konohagumi; Suna's been up in arms about it as well. His nightmares are as strong as ever, as well, so it doesn't look like his insomnia will be leaving him alone any time soon.

(For Naruto, nightmares are new and frightening; for Gaara, they've been a life-long plague, one he's never gotten used to.)

"What do you want to discuss with me?"

What do you want from me?

And Naruto knows that Gaara says something and means something deeper, something that strikes a deeper chord than words can. He's not delicate, but he tends to word things well and at the same time mean something more substantial with what he doesn't say. (The perfect citizen of Japan. How precious.) But Naruto isn't jealous of Gaara. Isn't mad at Gaara. Can't possibly dislike him the way he is. (Has no reason to be. Gaara has never done anything that Naruto could possibly hate him for. Impossible, the very notion of it.) They've been friends for a long time, after all, for more reason than one, and one of Naruto's greatest talents is his ability to make friends quickly and easily, regardless of who they are or how much they think they really like him. Making friends is easy for Naruto if he actually puts himself out there and is social, which he wasn't in his youth. (His blond hair and blue eyes and righteous fury with everything made him that way.)

Making friends is not easy for Gaara, and they both know it.

(But it's okay, because Gaara is a good friend, and Naruto is empathetic in his way.)

And they understand one another.

(Because they are the same.)

Naruto reaches up and pushes through the tresses of his hair (its getting long again. He cuts it every two weeks, all the way to his temples sometimes, but its always down to his chin by Day 10,) with his fingers, feeling his nails against his scalp and sighing softly to himself. He scratches, rubs them deep and then lets go and feels the water burn newly against the raw skin, christening it with liquid heat to rival the midday sun.

"I just thought that I would call you in to brainstorm something that I was thinking the other day."

(-does not add "when I was hyped up on Vicodin" to the end of that sentence, because he doesn't need the pain pills, not really, and he was only on one them because the doctor had handed it to him and asked him to take it in the office so that she could know he was taking them and he had, because he knew that - in some manner of speaking - she felt bad for him, and she was really just trying to make him feel bad for himself so that she wouldn't have to anymore. If he was on pain medication to kill a horse she could rest easy knowing that atleast he wasn't aware of his own pain. And Naruto doesn't like being under the thumb of other people's pity. Honestly, he loathes it, which is one of the things making right now so hard, and in his way he wishes-

He wishes-)

Stop it.

(-more people would act like Sasuke and not pity him because he's a big boy now and he can take care of himself.

Even a shot in the chest isn't as bad as it is with people staring at it and then him.

He can't stand it.

He can't stand it.

It makes him want to vomit.)

"I was thinking," I was really thinking because I couldn't sleep, I can't sleep nowadays and it makes me laugh because I know everything I ever told you about insomnia, tried to do to help you sleep, ha, I know, I know now, I know it wasn't worth shit, and I guess I'm sorry, but more I'm just so tired, how do you live like this? It's irritating. All I want to do is sleep but instead I'm up thinking about how my best friend shot me and about how everyone won't stop talking to me about it. Not that I'm not flattered, I mean, I am, sure, it's nice to know you guys care, but I would much rather actually do something about it, because, y'know? Nothing's getting any better with you all just staring at it. Nothing's getting any better. So I was just-, "that I'd move Sakura up the ranks and make her my Second Hand just to," take Sasuke's place, because she'll probably be a better best friend than he was anyway, if we're being really honest, and I think it'll really, "even things out. I mean, I'd check with her first, but Sakura's dependable, right? I think she'd be good for me. I could, like, permanently get rid of my brain and just rely on her instead."

-of a pit viper.

Naruto makes friends easily.

But Sasuke.

Sasuke was different.

Sasuke-

(-has already been forgiven and Naruto just wants him back, just wants to know why the fuck-)

He's still in shock, it seems.

(Because the same people who pity him now were the same people surrounding him in that room and he had just stared at a Sasuke who wasn't even there anymore, just stared blankly. No anger. No tragedy. Just a stark, blank surprise. Like he could not even comprehend why Sasuke had done it or how. As if he could not even really comprehend what was happening now. As if the words "...did you just shoot me...?" were resting on his tongue, waiting to be said, and instead he managed:

"................my chest hurts.")

Gaara says nothing for a long moment; Naruto's voice sounds raw (like waking up in the dead of night screaming for days on end - he knows what it feels like, he's been there, too) and it's clear that he's purposely changing the subject. Gaara will let him for now, but it's not like he's just going to forget all the bad stuff going on in his friend's life just because Naruto wants him (everyone) to.

You can't run away from your life, Naruto. It will follow you.

(Everywhere.)

"I think it would be a good a idea," Gaara eventually replies. He's met Sakura a few times, more than most of the other people in Konohagumi, and likes her a fair bit. She's a bit plain, but smart, and reliable, not to mention strong and a damn good medic. Gaara doesn't have concerns about her hurting Naruto like he did with the Uchiha-

(there is a reason Gaara is naturally untrusting, and he hates it when he's proven right)

-nor does he worry that she doesn't care about the groups and the other people she's loyal to. Sakura is dependable. "She'd make a good right hand man." Except she's not a man, she's a woman, and that will make the whole thing so much harder. Gaara trusts that Naruto will somehow miraculously find a way (he always does), but it's just one more thing he'll have to be concerned with now.

But to be honest, Sakura isn't what Gaara is interested in. There are more pressing matters at hand. "Is there anything else you want to talk about?" he asks, placing one hand lightly on the shower curtain. He hate this - this, getting closer- and Naruto knows he does, too. He has issues putting himself out in the open with other people, but Naruto isn't going to say anything of importance unless Gaara takes the initiative here, so he has to force himself to take the next step.

I'm here for you.

"You know you can tell me about anything," Gaara offers hesitantly. This is so far out of his comfort range, it's ridiculous. "I'm not going to think you're weak. You're not weak."

(He is weak, Gaara is weak. Gaara is the one who's had nightmares all his life.

Love is the spirit of devoting yourself to someone important and close to you... you are important and close to me, Gaara-sama.

I was ordered to kill you.

Your existence was deemed a danger to the group.

DeepwithinmyheartIhatedyou.)

Gaara is the one still afraid of monsters under his bed.

(But more than that, he's afraid he is the monster.)

He shakes his head.

Tell me about your nightmares, Naruto.

Say to me the words-

"Maa, I'm not sleeping all that well lately 'ttebayo. So I'm not entirely sure on that whole 'weak' thing. Physically I'm not exactly on the very top of my game. And, you know, mentally, being up to speed isn't even a vague concern of mine, honestly. Although, being as divinely awesome as I am? It helps."

But Naruto, when plagued with his own emotions, is not incredibly forthcoming with them. He takes a great amount of pride in being able to understand people without ever knowing them very well - or rather, being able to know and get out of even the most tight-lipped of his comrades their feelings on something, on a given situation. For a big talker, Naruto is also a pretty good listener, in the sense that he knows when to get people to talk. He knows how, even if they are not talkative people. Somehow, Naruto could probably convince plants to tell him their feelings like he is both a physician and a miracle maker (the latter he is, most times, the former he is definitely not. Naruto isn't certified worth shit and he honestly doesn't understand people who are. The doctor at the hospital. The teachers at his middle school. His case worker in social services. He didn't understand any of them and their unnecessary credentials, and he never tried to. But Naruto gets people. He really does. And he knows how powerful a thing it is to know a person's heart on any given matter, and so he instinctually fights against giving anyone that sort of power over him). Even with friends, friends as good as Gaara, it is very difficult for Naruto to talk about his feelings as if he really thinks he needs to. As if he really wants anyone to know about them. People knowing that he has them in this business is bad enough.

Being a sensitive yakuza gets you killed, and Naruto knows that.

(It's an unspoken law that the less emotion you show here, the better off you are.)

His voice changes a little. (Deepens with sincerity.)

"Thanks though."

A small silence.

"I don't know. I'm just trying to...figure things out. Or, you know, sleep. Whichever comes first." At the moment he actually has no idea which one will and it irks him. Being tricked into a state somewhere unhappy between life and death by his best friend is bad enough, but for his own body and subconscious to be in on it too seems almost too unfair for him to stand. Naruto's world does not really have any roots in logical justice, but it definitely has roots buried deep in "fairness". Life isn't fair for anyone, but yakuza are in denial about that much, at least, and it is one of the things the blond likes best about them. Somebody kills one of yours, you kill one of theirs. Somebody takes from you, you take from them. Somebody sells to you, you sell to them. Somebody rapes your woman, you rape theirs. Somebody gets you in deep shit, you get them in shit that's deeper.

Somebody shoots you in the chest, you-

("That's different." "How is it-" "It's just different okay?")

"Why?" He peers out of the shower curtain, head hanging disembodied about five feet off the floor. "Have I been hurting you too?" And he smiles and it looks honest, but nothing about Naruto is really, really honest, if you look him up and down. (He's too happy to not love his job, no matter what he says, and he's a liar if there ever was one. A good one. But a liar nonetheless.) Even if he does care about Gaara's answer, it doesn't change the fact that-

"Have you-" Gaara cuts off, suddenly and irrationally angry. "Have you been hurting me? Naruto, maybe you don't get it, but you've been fucking hurting everyone. We're concerned about you, damnit. We reach out to you, and you-" He takes a deep breath and tries to control his anger, but once he gets like this, it's hard for him to go back. "You just push us away."

His head thuds against the wall, hard. He hasn't been sleeping, and the steam is beginning to make him dizzy. "You don't want our pity? Fine." He stares coolly at Naruto's floating head from the corner of his eyes. "Then don't give us a reason to give it." He moves toward the shower, and suddenly his face is mere inches from Naruto's. He doesn't know why this isn't making him uncomfortable; usually, having so little personal space makes him feel incredibly awkward. Gaara chalks it up to his concern for Naruto overriding his usually more prominent self-preservation instincts.

He glares down the bridge of his nose and up Naruto's. "Don't block us out."

He stands there for a moment, breathing in steam and Naruto's exhaled breath (they're that close). He won't back down, not this time. But Naruto's still stronger than him, and he looks away first. Eyes cast to the side, he murmurs, "Your breath stinks, by the way," feeling lame and unsuccessful.

(His friend needs him; just this one time, couldn't he have done something right?)

And Naruto's laughter is an explosion from his mouth, somewhat like a cough in how suddenly it jumps from his throat, startling and enthused. It's honest for a change (what else is new?) and he doesn't even have to change the subject like they both already knew he would, because Gaara's already done it for him, and he laughs like he's giddy, laughs a little like yelling, loud and abrupt and full, and then dives back behind the curtain again like he's playing coy, which he isn't, because in the long run, Naruto isn't very coy. He's a good actor, of course, which helps. He's been acting his whole life, putting on little stage productions for himself and everyone around him just to see if they have the same sense of humor he does.

"Hand me my toothpaste then."

(But he's not laughing at Gaara, and they both know it.

He's laughing because he's laughing.

That is the only reason Naruto ever laughs.

And he's Naruto, so he laughs a lot.

He's laughing even when he's not laughing, and that's the handle of the door Gaara's trying to come through, and if the redhead doesn't know it, that isn't really Naruto's fault. The blond isn't subtle, not by a long shot, but he's secretive and a fantastic liar unless you happen to know him well at all, in which case it's like building sand castles knowing full well that the ocean is right there watching you and is going to knock it down as soon as you put up the outer wall, because castles with walls feel like they make a mockery of everything around them. Sandcastles are just asking to be pushed down, be it by large crested waves, by fury, by arrogance, or just by the careless feet of a boy with a pail and a shovel. Sandcastles and Naruto's lies both.

Fragility's not really his thing, though.)

Gaara scowls, though inwardly he's really kind of happy, because Naruto really isn't laughing at him, and even if he were, at least he's being honest. Gaara is used to being awkward, but Naruto wears the color uncomfortable poorly, so Gaara is willing to be embarrassed enough for the both of them, if only it means Naruto will start acting like himself again (no, scratch that; he wants Naruto to stop acting and just be himself at this point).

Gaara looks behind him and reaches for the sink.

Grabs the toothpaste on top.

He wonders vaguely what Naruto is doing with a toothbrush in his shower.

At least, he hopes Naruto has a toothbrush in there if he's planning to brush his teeth.

(Gaara tries not to think about what else toothpaste could be used for. It doesn't seem all that versatile, but Naruto is nothing if not creative.)

Hands it to Naruto through the shower curtain. "Here."

Naruto takes it by the end, as if he's being careful not to get Gaara wet, which he sort of is and sort of isn't. It's sort of second nature to him to try and respect the niceness of clothing or do his best to completely desecrate it, because a person can't possibly both. Sometimes Naruto is respectful to people just because of how nicely they're dressed. Sometimes they overstate a person's formal royalty and then they just make him promise himself that he'll crush their face into the dirt sometimes, not because he especially dislikes them but because he dislikes their pompousness. Usually that is the beginning of a spiral that leads to increasing dislike, but just as easily (with Naruto) it can lead to a demanding affection, a sort of admiration for their arrogance.

(Ah, the Hyuuga family. Such charming people.)

He unscrews the cap dutifully, talking the whole time. "So you think moving Sakura up will work?" He's very nonchalant about the whole thing, not coldly so, but just offhandedly. Like he's not incredibly concerned with what the answer will be, because he already knows his plan of action and he has it solidified in his mind, what he will do, but its obvious that he wouldn't ask unless he cared a little. He squeezes out enough onto his orange toothbrush (his favorite color, everybody knows it) and forces it into the midst of his molars, scrubbing away rhythmically and still talking around the shape of it. "She's pretty upset too, you know. Between you, her, baa-baa, and jii-jii, I don't think I'm ever going to hear the end of it. Seriously, you'd think I shot myself." (It's a little difficult to understand him, but the words come out clear enough, and he just keeps right on as if they have no real weight at all, like a Titan running around with a sack of boulders over his shoulder.) Mint flares up his nose and he resists laughing again because that will make it worse, scrubbing throughly in circles all around the inside of his mouth, all of his teeth and around the back of his tongue.

His spits, aiming for the drain, rinses out his mouth with scalding hot water that tastes electric to him, puts the brush and the tube of paste back up on his shower shelf, judges the distance purposely and then rears his head out from the curtain again, millimeters from the pale skin of Gaara's face. He exhales purposely before grinning wide.

"Better?"

He doesn't wait for an answer.

(He's just changed his mind.)

"Hold your breath."

-the only warning Gaara gets before Naruto drags him in by the starched collar of his shirt.

Gaara sputters as scalding water cascades onto him, drenching him and his clothing. His skin colors red immediately, the pallor of it very easily affected by strong and sudden heat. "Naruto!" he growls, the threatening effect somewhat lost by his hair sticking wetly to his face and the fringes of his shirt clinging to his arms. He feels embarrassingly naked, dressed in a white shirt as he is (he thanks his lucky stars that he at least chose to wear black pants and remembered to take off his leather boots at the door), even though Naruto is really the one that is-

Oh.

Gaara doesn't know why he suddenly feels so reticent - it's not as though he's never seen another man's body before. Gaara, as much as he may not have wanted to, did participate in gym class in school (which he attended until he was sixteen), and thus therefore had to change in the public locker rooms there. Still, not once did he feel as self-effacing as he does now (and really, isn't Naruto the one who should be feeling that way? He's the one that Gaara into this position in the first place).

The redhead keeps his eyes firmly above Naruto's neck level, resisting the natural urge to allow them to drift downwards (in the end Gaara is only human, and all humans are sexual beings). He crosses his arms over his waist as both a menacing a protective gesture. "What do you think you're doing?"

It's almost offensive that Naruto's whole countenance should still be laughing.

(But he is. His grin is ridiculously wide and his arms are draped around Gaara's shoulders and he is laughing.)

"What does it look like I'm doing, Dearheart?"

The only clothing Naruto is wearing is gauze which is wrapped tightly around the expanse of his chest and across his left shoulder, and it is soaked and heavy, and so are they. But Naruto is not wearing anything else which is the difference between looking wet and resembling a drowned rat, the difference between being himself and being his friend whose clothing and hair are plastered to the body beneath them obscenely and it makes him laugh because Gaara looks so cute and awkward with his cheeks flaring from the heat and from his nude company. (Naruto's never really been ashamed of his body. Even nowadays, he's usually perfectly comfortable with whatever state people find him in, however much clothing he has on at the time. He loves the way people react to him shirtless, for instance. Well, atleast he's used to. He thinks that, if anything, the repercussions of this could have something to do with interfering with his sense of modesty, because he hates the way people look at it Every time somebody stares at the place of the wound he wants to hit them if just to make them look at his face for once, and at the same time he won't because he doesn't want to see that look anymore. He doesn't want to see that pained gaze of, "you poor, naive, gullible little child you. You really believed that-" "Shut the fuck up!") But at the same time, Naruto knows he can't change his ways because if he does, he'll feel like a coward, and Uzumaki Naruto is not a coward. He supposes he'll just have to get more interesting to distract people from it. That or make a law about not talking about it. That seems the coward's way out too, of course, but he supposes that if worse came to worse he would take what he could get.

He grins brightly.

"See how much easier it is to talk when you're in here instead of out there? I don't have to talk as loud anymore. And you don't have to make faces at a curtain."

He pinches Gaara's cheek swiftly.

"Come'ere, I'll wash your hair. ♥"

"I-" Gaara begins, swatting at the hand on his face. "I-" I, what? This isn't exactly a position Gaara has dealt with before. "I fail to see your point," he finishes dully, managing to collect himself to some extent. "Even if it is easier to hear you when you're all of two centimeters away from me, doesn't mean you should pull me into a shower when you're indecent

(and yet so not indecent at all)

and I'm fully clothed." He simmers silently, knowing that wasn't what Naruto wanted to hear and that the blond won't deign him with a response until he tells him just that.

He takes a strand of his red hair between his fingers at looks at it sidelong. "What's wrong with my hair?" he mumbles to himself, giving the strand a once-over. It looks fine, healthier than hair on most males, really. He washes it every night, and conditions it every other. It doesn't really look like it needs another cleaning. But Gaara sighs, accepting that the ways of Naruto are strange ones indeed, and that if this will make his friend happy, he supposes he can indulge him. "Fine," Gaara finally concedes. "You can wash my hair. Just let me take off my shirt." It's already soaked, Gaara doesn't need it to get all full of shampoo, too.

He stretches his arms down and catches the bottom of his shirt with his fingertips, before reaching his arms back up, taking the shirt with them. He throws it outside the shower and into the room, where it lands with a wet smack. He pauses and looks down critically at his torso. He's ghastly pale and too thin, side effects of his insomnia and isolationism. He doesn't have the muscles that Naruto has, but he doesn't have to struggle at all to see the top half of the hourglass tattoo marking him as Sunagumi jutting out on his right hip.

He looks back up at Naruto. "Alright, I'm ready now."

Laughing.

Laughing.

(Laughing.)

"You think so~?"

And Naruto says it so perversely that it should be a crime, but of course it's not, and neither is dragging your friend into the shower with you, and neither is wrapping your hands around his waist just for grins, which Naruto proceeds to do in the coming seconds. (You don't have to be in love to be physically affectionate, and Naruto is very touchy-feely regardless. He has kissed virtually all the members of his gang atleast once, is renowned and well known to hang all over his close friends. It's not because he's loose, and it isn't because he's a sex fiend. It's because, when you're particularly close to a person, close enough, you can hear their heartbeat, and Naruto is the head of new generation of heartstoppers, and so he finds it so comforting, the very sound. There is, of course, that obvious problem of his blatant disregard for propriety, modesty, and personal space, too. He doesn't understand why you wouldn't want to be that close to a person. It doesn't make any sense to him.)

He nuzzles Gaara's temple adoringly, smile painted on his face as he grabs the shampoo.

"Mm. You're warm 'ttebayo."

Gaara freezes the moment Naruto's hands wrap around him, head swimming. He'stouchinghimhe'stouchinghimohdeargodwhatishedoing? Gaara is now officially way out of him comfort zone and hanging out somewhere near mortified. His hands clench and unclench with the natural urge to grab Naruto by the wrists, remove him from his body, and fling him into the wall as is Gaara's training to do. But he forces himself to relax.

A moment later he's quelled his fighting instinct, but he still can't help but frown. Despite having calmed himself down mentally, his body doesn't seem to want to listen as his heartbeat continues to accelerate at an impressive rate. Gaara's body is refusing to obey its conditioning, and he does that last thing he's expect himself to do in such a situation.

He smiles.

"I'm... glad," he says softly, leaning his head toward Naruto's. He's not very at ease right now, but if Naruto is happy, then that at least means he's doing his job.

There's just an edginess to him that he can't help.

(In his instincts-)

Can't help it.

Naruto - the one who is always laughing, always laughing, and once there was a woman who crooned down at him through hot tears and tried to smile (and called him a sunflower, and he just cried, cried and screamed. And after child services came and she was gone - long, long gone, out a three story window, but there was no body below, so had she really jumped...? - he stopped crying, and then he was just laughing. He hasn't been able to stop since then. He really honestly can't. It's like a fit, but in moderation, somehow. New foster family. Laughter. New city. Laughter. New school. Laughter. New classmates. Laughter. New bruises, new scars, new terrors, new nightmares, new dreams, new memories, new dissapointment after new dissapointment. Laughter and laughter and laughter, every kind, be it bitter or sad or nostalgic or angry or happy or sympathetic or anything, Naruto will laugh. Forever, Naruto is laughing.

Shot in the chest.
Fucking laughing.) - groans as if he's pained, but its exasperation, really. "Jeez, Gaara, kill me with fuckin' cute why don't you." He squeezes the shampoo (citrus) into his hand and rubs the two of them together expertly before diving his hands into the red hair before him. He's never had any desire to be a hairdresser, but he's always liked playing pretend (because Naruto is a fantastic actor, he loves to act and is always there to do it) and massages his fingers into Gaara's scalp.

"Do you think he hates me, really?"

Gaara takes a moment to respond, because his brain isn't really working at its full capacity. He ignored the comment about being cute, because the only response he could think of wasn't one he thinks would be very useful given the current situation.

(It'll take a lot more than cute to kill you if a bullet shot at point blank range didn't.)

Gaara bites his tongue. He's gotten good at saying nothing, even when the demons are screaming inside his head.

(But more than that, he's afraid he is the demon.)

And for a moment, Gaara tries to just lose himself in the water, in the steam, in Naruto washing his hair. He readily admits it feels nice to himself, but then, Gaara has always been blunt about his feelings. He sees the world as black and white; for him, there are very few shades of gray. Because he is so unused to physical contact, Naruto's touches are far more electrifying than they should be.

And for a moment, Gaara tries to just lose himself.

(The truth is he's already lost.)

The tricky thing about Naruto is that he asks difficult questions; he makes Gaara find himself again. As a oyabun, Gaara can understand the effect Uchiha's defection has had on all the groups. Because he sees the world in black and white, he already has his answer in his mind. But his answer may not be the one Naruto needs to hear. "...Do you want my honest opinion?"

Laughing like a spiral.

(A spiral tattoo around his navel. It looks like lines, but it's really writing, an intricate calligraphy, and getting it took hours of itching, bleeding pain but Naruto sat through it all, because "The Grateful Foxes" was his favorite fairy tale as a child and it was what he wanted to be inked in him forever. One of the social workers had told it to him to try and get him to sit still on a bus one day, and he had sat, legs swinging, and listened.

The tale went that a businessman, while strolling the countryside with his friend, spotted a group of boys stealing a fox cub from its parents and saved it from certain death at their hands. A few years later, his dearest son, his pride and joy, his sun and moon, had contracted a terrible illness, the only cure for which was a fresh fox's liver. Since the businessman and woman were kind people, they could not stand the thought of killing an innocent beast, even to save their own son.

And then, in the middle of the night, a man came from a neighbor, bearing what the sought and saying, "Here, here! From my Lord!" The couple accepted graciously, sure that it had come to their kind neighbor circumstantially, and the boy began to recover. But, when the businessman tried to go about thanking the man, he refused saying, "No, no, there was no fox hunt and so it was not me. It could not have been."

Fretful, the businessman began making his way home in the dark, and spotted the messenger who had brought him the fox's liver. He ran to him, demanding an explanation, and before his eyes the messenger and his wife transformed into the very fox's whose cub he had saved so many years before. They had heard of his plight and, with the memory of how he had saved their son, how he had enabled them so many memories of him, the mother fox had killed him in his sleep, and the father had taken his liver, so that another son might be saved.

And the businessman, besought by a sadness deeper than any human being had felt at that time, went home and told the story to his wife, who had just dreamt of it, and they two sat side by side and cried until the light of morning, bereaving the life of a being they had never really known.

Naruto had been riveted.)

He loves that the suds bloom white and foam against his fingers, that the red begins to lose out to the white sheer that begins to falls between the strands in messy wet detail. Gaara's hair could be clothing in the way that his body could be a runway, and Naruto wants to see his emerald eyes as the jewelry adorning the necks of his model fingers, like champagne glasses. He isn't sure why. But that's what he wants. He purrs and leans into the warmth and the feeling, rotating his thumbs soothingly.

"Of course I want your honest opinion."

He's not supposed to be getting these bandages wet.

But he doesn't really care.

"If I didn't, I would've asked you to lie. I mean, I already know what I think," although he doesn't, really. Naruto has no idea what to think anymore. He has no idea. (One minute it's the regular "I'm not going to let you just walk all over me, Uchiha!" and the next moment his friend is standing over him and he's bleeding out on the floor, shivering and stunned silent. And the only thing he could stare at were Sasuke's eyes, and they had held not one ounce-) But does not regretting signify hatred? He doesn't know. He doesn't know and he wants to hear what Gaara thinks, because he values Gaara's opinion.

"I'm curious."

Gaara closes his eyes, wincing slightly against the suds beginning to fall into them. He raises a hand to wipe away the excess soap, but keeps them firmly shut as extra precaution. The black rings above and below his eyes come together to form two dark smudges on the pallor of his face, making his eyes look like empty sockets.

"I don't think he hates you," he replies truthfully. He pauses, blind to world, but with all his other sense heightened, hearing his own breathing, smelling the citrus of the shampoo, feeling Naruto's hands on his head and tasting the tension in the air. Everything is so clear to him now that he can't see. "I think you're not worth enough in his eyes to hate. It's like asking what his feelings for a fly are. That's what you were to him, I think - a noisy little pest constantly buzzing in his ear. I think he tried to swat you."

(Blunt, always so blunt. Everything is black and white.)

"But Naruto," he continues, not knowing whether it's the shampoo or his words that's making his tongue taste like acid, "I also think he's a moron." Gaara quiets himself once more, reflecting. He fought the Uchiha, once, before the Suna and Konoha were allies, and it was one of the hardest fights he's ever been in. He would've beaten the boy back then, if Naruto hadn't come to his aid. And, Gaara remembers, he never quite had an ass-kicking like the one Naruto gave him that time. He swore then that he would change, that he would find away to improve himself so he could beat this blond little upstart who had so royally handed his ass to him.

Funny how things work out.

But Gaara remembers that one fight, and how Sasuke had Naruto with him all along, and he wonders how things possibly turned out like this, how that boy could've possibly given up all that he had when Gaara would've died to be in his place - to have people who loved him surrounding him everywhere, to be so full promise, to be respected, not just feared.

Gaara doesn't see how the Uchiha's decision is anything but stupid.

And thus he thinks he is a moron.

Gaara blindly gropes behind him, twisting his body so that he is fully facing Naruto. Against the water and the soap, he opens his eyes and stares into Naruto's own. They make him think of never-ending oceans and stained glass windows in a church.

"You're the strongest person I know, Naruto."

(And in a world so black and white, Gaara has no reason to lie.)

Naruto blinks.

"Well, thanks."

It's strange, because the blond really doesn't know what his friend's talking about. Strength is something he formulates plans on - emotional, psychological, physical strength, his strength (has known since he was very, very young that he has to be strong because there is no one else in the world that is going to be strong for him; he has been lucky enough to find a group of friends who are dear to him, who are strong too and can protect themselves. But strength nowadays, for Naruto, is a given. Is negligible. When a person is exceptionally strong or exceptionally weak, then it is strength you talk about. But Naruto, for all his ego, for all his words and his laughs and his smarts and his promises that he always, always keeps, Naruto knows that, as far as strength goes-) He's flattered in his way, honestly. That Gaara thinks he's strong (the strongest person he knows, even) is big, because Gaara does not say things that he doesn't mean. He really doesn't. Not even when he should.

But Naruto knows that as far as strength go, even if he is the strongest person Gaara knows, he is not

strong

enough.

Because if he were, Sasuke would still be here. If he were, he would've been able to keep Sasuke from leaving.

And he couldn't.

"I guess I should be glad you don't think he hates me. I don't know for certain of course, maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, but I think it would be worse if he hated me. I can't fix hate. Especially if I don't know what I did." He pushes soap suds out of the path of Gaara's eyes, directed then down the sides of his face. "Ignorance I can probably fix though, assuming that's what it is. I don't know. You're probably right. You're usually right about things like this. I don't know."

He tilts his head.

"I just don't know how to go about getting him back, exactly. That's all."

Gaara stares at him. Unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

"Get him back?" He forgets to wipe the next wave of lather away from his eyes and the chemical mixture burns his retinas, but he doesn't even feel the sting through the onion layers of his emotion.

First layer's disbelief, second layer's confusion.

"What do you mean, 'get him back?'"

Next layer is outrage.

"You want to know how to get him back? You don't, Naruto," Gaara seethes, because his friend is a simpleton and gets nothing and is living in his happy little rainbow world when the real, stormy gray one is threatening to chew him up and spit him out with every step he takes. "He's not coming back!"

And the last layer is always fear.

"And you," the redhead jabbers, loose (blunt as club but sharp as a knife - Gaara's mouth is made for wounding) tongue stumbling over its own words. "You almost didn't come back either! You're standing here, bleeding out from a wound that came closer to killing you than anything else in all your existence, and all you can think about is how to retrieve the traitor who personally delivered it to you without an ounce of regret on his face!"

(The thing about onions is that the more layers you peel away, the more it makes you want to cry.)

Gaara holds his breath and tells himself it's the soap that's making his eyes water.

After all, Gaara's is not a breathing, living green. It is not a green that exists thanks to water. The green of Gaara's eyes is not the green of a desert oasis, but the green of a jewel, the gleam of emerald through years and years worth of sand. His green is cold, would be empty if not for the way he (his soul? Can Naruto really question if Gaara has a soul anymore? But there is still that lingering fear. That lingering-) sits inside of it, the only presence for hours, for miles.

(Gaara's self is itself an oasis, but not the watery kind. The mirage that stays just out of reach to most people. That is what Gaara's self really is.)

It is Naruto's kind of person who can reach out to it with both hands, grasp it between their fingers.

Twist it in their hands.

("This is love, I'll show you. This is protection. This is want. This is need. This. Is codependence. This. Is Friendship. And this-")

Only Naruto's kind of person.

(But what sort of person-)

He's blinking.

Just standing there and blinking.

He cannot understand, and in not understanding he knows that he's looking stunned, which he is, and confused, which he is, but he knows that most of all it makes him (feel) look stupid to not understand what the fuck Gaara's talking about. The words are fine - he isn't unintelligent insomuch as he is baffled - it's the meaning that completely misses him. He cannot understand at all.

Not go after Sasuke?

What?

That's absurd.

(Common sense.)

What?

And Gaara is so upset about it-

What?

"Gaara," and Naruto says it slowly, as if he cannot understand why he is having to say it at all. "Of course I'm going after him. You don't just- I'm not just letting him get away with up and leaving! He made a commitment, he sticks with it! And I mean over my dead body or otherwise, Gaara, I'm fine! I didn't die and- God, what are you even talking about? Of course I'm going to get him back."

And he just blinks at him before moving to wipe at his friend's eyes automatically.

(So upset-)

"I'm not gonna get shot and just give up."

Gaara reels back from the hand reaching out to him, head hitting with a thunk against the shower wall as he tries to escape in quarters far too confined for that kind of action. "Don't touch me," he hisses, narrowing his eyes. "Don't you dare touch me when you're uttering such nonsense." He presses himself into the solid surface behind him. "All you're doing is lying to yourself."

He stops his mouth before he says something he regrets. Avoiding Naruto's gaze, he raises one hand and examines it critically. It's small and thin for a boy his age, but it has killed many. Gaara can count the number of people he considers precious to him on this one, murderous hand. One finger for every person he holds dear.

(There is a yakuza tradition called yubitsume, in which a kobun will cut off his finger and offer it to his oyabun as an apology for a mistake he made. Starting from the pinky, each additional mistake calls for the progression of the removal of another digit. Gaara knows he has made many mistakes in his lifetime, and he wonders, just a little bit, if Fate isn't just a giant yakuza boss demanding payment for his hasty actions.)

He feels as though he's spent his life learning about the world only to realize he knows absolutely nothing.

(He thinks of being six years old and standing over the corpse of his uncle; and even though all his fingers are still there, he still feels like his pinky has been torn off his hand.)

The point of yubitsume is that with enough fingers gone, a person cannot effectively hold a sword and thus becomes defenseless. A person without a pinky can still wield such a weapon, albeit with pain and much difficulty, but any less than that and the task becomes near impossible.

One more finger gone, and Gaara won't be able to hold a sword.

(One more precious person gone, and Gaara will be weak.)

"There are different ways to give up," he scolds. "You tell me how running in to face an enemy you aren't strong enough to beat will help anyone. You tell me how you dying helps this situation at all." He shakes his head, flinging shampoo everywhere, before grabbing the shower curtain. "You tell me that, and then you talk to me." With a haphazard tug, Gaara yanks the curtain open. "And for the record, you're not fine. You're critically injured."

Enough is enough - Gaara's done what he was called here to do. There's no reason in his mind to remain.

And so why Naruto's hand is around his forearm is a mystery.

(Now to get those troublesome fingers off.)

PART II.