GaaNaru fic: Theatre
Theatre
NaruGaa
PG-13 for language, violence, yaoi
Summary: Spoilers for post 237 manga chapters. Just exploring the NaruGaa relationship with all the new developments from the manga, had fun making the tension in this one.
Theatre
gelfling
gelfling8604@yahoo.com
You met me at a very strange time in my life.
--Narrator (Edward Norton), Fight Club
***
Naruto comes to Sand and he still doesn’t know what to say. Naruto still doesn’t know what to make of him; Gaara has become leader of his village, while Naruto is still trying to become leader of his. He can’t tell if Naruto’s jealous or not; he seems mostly in shock, as most people were after Gaara pursued the position.
He avoids being alone with Naruto. For a reason he doesn’t understand, Naruto seems to avoid him too. He doesn’t know if he should be relieved or insulted.
It’s three days later, after events have calmed down and the Leafs are preparing to leave for the Chuunin exams, that the knock on his office door one afternoon heralds Naruto inside. He’s alone. So is Gaara. Naruto shuts the door.
For a second, time suspends, caught, snared, and not yet killed nor free.
Naruto laughs, “I’m not interrupting your plans for world domination, am I?” and the tension submerges like a wire in jelly-not broken or brittle, but hidden for the moment.
Gaara doesn’t answer, and Naruto goes closer unperturbed, and Gaara only notes how his shoulders are held a bit stiffer and his footing is a tad too regulated. The acoustics in the spacious oval office are very good.
“Your office is huge,” child-like wonder suffuses Naruto’s voice while Gaara looks for the killer that held his life in his hands and let him go, “You could play ping-pong against the walls all day and no one ever would notice. Do you actually work in here?”
Gaara shrugs, “Sometimes.”
Naruto shoots him a look, the grin sliding around his lips like ice in a frying pan, as if it wasn’t sure it belonged there or not. The difference between a smile and a snarl is very slight. Something in Gaara’s stomach drops and ice flows through his veins, frost forming over his skeleton.
It’s time. He doesn’t know what to do.
You did something to me. My life is in your debt.
Naruto leans against the widow, looking out. “I’d never get any work done in a place like this-look at all the space! It’s so…” he shifts, momentarily uncomfortable, “boring. And huge. And quiet.”
Gaara doesn’t answer.
The silence yawns, blunt blackened teeth gaping, swallowing everything and scraping against the tobacco stained and cavity-rich coarse molars as it slides through the mouth and down the wet throat. The silence is empty. The silence is lost. It’s Gaara’s office, and he’s been waiting a long time.
“Hey…” Naruto breaks the silence, because there is very little Naruto cannot do. “What’s it like though?”
“What?”
“You know,” Naruto shrugs, smiling easier now and leaning so he faces Gaara. “Being in charge and still not being able to goof off for a second without someone screaming at you. They’ve gotta keep dragging the old woman back at home to her desk, except when she isn’t sleeping on it.” Naruto scowls good-naturedly, annoyed by Tsunade’s irresponsibility but the same time affectionate. He glances up at Gaara again; Naruto’s grown, but Gaara’s still taller. “What’s it like being in control?”
His bones freeze over. His heart stops.
Control is always the core. Any thug can have power. Control is the heart.
Naruto’s never been particularly subtle. He has a tendency to rip matters to the core. For a second, Gaara considers violence.
I don’t want to be alone again.
He shrugs and leans his hip against the desk, arms crossed. “It’s not control. Violence doesn’t solve everything. It solves most problems, but not every problem. Power is…the same. Nothing’s really changed.”
“You’re…Kazekage! That’s not the same that’s-in charge now! That’s cool! I mean, that’s…” Naruto’s hands gesture, trying to say what his mouth cannot. “You can goof off all day! No one can tell you what to do! Everyone looks up to you now-that’s cool! That’s perfect!”
Gaara stares a minute too long, hunting his face, before shrugging one shoulder and looking away. “I do what I need to. That’s all.”
“You’re being awfully cool about it,” Naruto looks annoyed. “C’mon, it’s gotta have its perks; you’re the leader now and all. Don’t you like it?”
It seemed like the right thing to do, the thing to fix it all. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. I don’t know what I want to do.
I think I wanted you to come. I don’t know why.
“I…it has its moments.”
Naruto smiles at that, and just as suddenly as the ice froze over, it melts. Naruto has never been sadistic. Naruto has never been cruel. There is a good deal of distance between Naruto and his demon-they’ve made contact before, as Gaara and Shukaku have, so Gaara knows Naruto’s felt some the urges that once ruled his own life. But Naruto fought back. There is very little Naruto cannot do.
“I’d like to fight you again.” The question surprises them both. Gaara never meant to tell him.
Naruto grins wryly, “You kidding? You’d kick my ass out here-I’m not crazy.”
“Neutral ground?”
Naruto blinks. He doesn’t ask stupid questions though. “Sure. Why?”
“To see where we stand now.”
“The best against the best?” Naruto’s arrogance has toned down, but at the moment it darts forward and back, flirting. His eyes narrow, grin sharpens, and Gaara’s heart drops. “Yours against ours? Or you against me?” Naruto’s teeth gleam-it could be professional, or it could be personal.
“Yes. You against me. Just us, no interference.”
“Cool.”
***
He’s disgusted to find that, in many ways, he still hates himself. Hates his body, the way his mind does something without telling him. He’s always been able to rely on his power for safety, for asylum, since before he could walk. He hasn’t always been able to control it, to tell his monster ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, but he’s always known it wouldn’t let him be killed.
“I win.”
Naruto sounds smug.
Fucker.
Gaara doesn’t respond. His eyes are too bright, too sharp, and even though he feels the ground start to give way under his feet he doesn’t look into the crevasse he’s falling into, the dark hunger that pulls him as relentlessly as gravity.
Naruto’s hands are hot, dry, as raw energy spins lethally in the palm of his right hand, keeping Gaara’s right hand twisted behind his back, his breath sweaty and laden with tension wafting through the bracken of his hair. The earth continues to creak and crackle under Gaara’s ribcage, the spider web marks of the crater Naruto punched him into squeaking as Naruto’s weight shifts in the middle of his back. He can feel Naruto’s body heat through his clothes that suddenly seem spider web-thin and lead-thick at the same time. His heart crouches in his throat, tense yet anticipatory, wanting and afraid to be satisfied simultaneously.
A part of him is angry. The rest yearns.
Time stretches, crystallizes, Naruto’s body pressed against his, the snowflake quivering in midair before it begins rolling downhill in a tiny ball that evolves…
Naruto gets up with a deprecating laugh, “You sucked.”
Naruto extends his hand down, to help him to stand. Gaara stares at it, and then stands on his own, without taking it. He isn’t used to anyone getting close enough to touch him, let alone hit him. He didn’t want pity-not from anyone. He didn’t know what to do with it anyway. He doesn’t know what to feel: Offended? Angered? Disappointed? Naruto chatters on.
“You sucked badly--you sucked worse than you fight normally, and we both know I’m not normal. I think I deserved a better fight than that…”
Gaara simply looks at him, his expression unreadable. The slight resentment drains from Naruto’s face, replaced by concern.
“What’s wrong?”
Gaara’s mouth opens entirely of its own volition, but is cut down before it betrays him further. He hadn’t meant to be transparent. He’d simply been impatient. He shrugs a kink out of his shoulders, out of his neck, before turning to leave.
“Gaara.” Naruto’s voice is like lead.
Naruto sometimes worries that he won’t become the Hokage he aspires to be, but his voice can already command the hindbrain of the human cerebral cortex with the perfect complex wavelength, not demanding obedience but taking it instead. It would work disastrously well if Gaara weren’t Gaara, but he pauses out of…not respect. Not respect because he believed Naruto still pities him, but something else.
Gaara inhales, and says, “I keep forgetting you’re human.”
Naruto frowns, “What?”
Gaara shakes his head and continues.
Naruto keeps at him, harassing and cajoling him, until finally getting Gaara to make up a lie about his demon and old memories. What else did they have in common? What else was there to talk about? He hadn’t wanted to talk at all, but what else could they do? Naruto seems to believe him a little.
“I’ve never heard whispers like that,” Naruto frowns. Contact with his demon is scant. “Not while I’m awake. Sometimes I have nightmares, and weird, like, umm…déjà vu? Flashbacks? But they aren’t places I’ve been or things I’ve done but…you know. Memories. It’s weird. I thought it had stopped for you…or something. Or that something had happened…”
Naruto is being intimate, so Gaara answers honestly, “It…comes and goes. Sometimes it stops.”
“At night?” Naruto glances at him curiously, body held casually as he plods along beside Gaara. Gaara nods, wondering if he said too much. “Do you play poker?”
Gaara shoots him an odd look.
Naruto wins the first two games, before Gaara gets the hang of it. He spends the next three nights making Naruto gripe and moan as he wins Naruto’s salaries off him. Naruto isn’t too good at disguising his feelings; when he has a good hand, Gaara knows. After a while, Gaara gets used to the sound of Naruto’s laughter, stops searching for the threat in the twist of his mouth, and even though he never smiles his eyes soften sometimes, when the night is in the creamy-soft late hours he stares at Naruto openly and tells him things he thinks Naruto won’t remember, or at least not properly.
“-irritating. It’ll end eventually. Stop laughing. Naruto. Naruto. …I’m going to throw you out the window.”
Gaara doesn’t exactly glare under the table where Naruto is sobbing and holding his sides, gasping. He’s thrown Naruto out the window and off the roof enough to know that it won’t kill him, no matter what his state, but he can’t understand the joke.
So women wanted to marry him-how was that humorous? They wanted power, he had political and physical power; it was logic. It was petty, greedy, and very human logic. How was that funny? He no longer killed for sport or reflex. He was considered ‘human’ enough now, safe enough to be a target for the fair sex. How was that amusing?
Naruto coughs and hiccups, trying to climb to his knees before dissolving again. Gaara stares, watching in confusion and then aloof appreciation as Naruto’s features smooth out peacefully and his eyes glisten from tears. He stares five inches left of Gaara’s foot.
“I’m sorry that’s, that’s…I’m sure you’ll be very happy and--” Naruto looks at his face, staring for a few seconds before dissolving again. Gaara kicks him, and while the laughter is temporarily muffled Naruto only laughs harder. Gaara doesn’t smile.
“You don’t plan to marry?” he asks after Naruto has crawled back into his chair, exhausted.
“Me? Marry?” Naruto balks at the thought. “No way! I’m way too young and, and…that would be…I don’t know.” His shoulders sink unexpectedly. “I like kids. It’d be nice to have a family but…I dunno, I never thought about it.” He scowls. “Egh, I’ll save it for later. I’ve never really thought about it…”
“I though you and your girl…?” It’s not very subtle, but Naruto isn’t sleeping much lately.
“What, Sakura? Sakura? Are you kidding? Sakura’s my, my,” Naruto’s shoulders roll like marbles in a tin can. “Sakura. That would be…weird.”
Gaara waits for more. Naruto shies away from the subject, going quiet instead before finally leaving to sleep. He isn’t sure if he should be disappointed or not.
It’s three months later when they fight again, and this time neither holds back because they are not fighting to measure each other.
The Kage Bunshin no Jutsu has become Naruto’s choice defense, while the rasengan is his final offense. Hundreds of perfectly identical clones scream and charge, intimidating and confusing, while hiding the true Naruto in the miasma, concealing the only one capable of cracking Gaara’s defense of earth and energy, hiding the single black widow among wolf spiders.
Gaara commands the earth, the earthquakes, canyons, landslides, and gravity has no say when he chooses to float in midair, twisting sinews of sand undulating around him like dragons around a wizard, snapping up hordes of clones in huge bites. Yellow and black dots still swarm over the tendrils, jabbing, buzzing, and biting, sometimes making large dents.
Because Naruto is in a hurry to go after Sasuke and Gaara is not, Naruto is careless and hit many times before he’s finally winded on the ground writhing with Gaara’s power, and even then he refuses to stay down, blood rushing down his face and blue eyes burning purple.
It’s sometimes hard to remember the figure on the silver screen was human, with petty human failings and quibbles.
Gaara never cared for Sasuke, partly because he cared for very little, and partly because Naruto cared very much for Sasuke for reasons he didn’t know. Naruto still cares for Sasuke, perhaps more than he did before the betrayal. Gaara cares for him even less, but tries to stay objective as he physically keeps Naruto from pursuing Sasuke into a suspected trap, forces Naruto to stay alive.
He doesn’t expect Naruto to thank him for it. Naruto doesn’t.
He doesn’t expect Naruto to be angry enough to pierce the sand. Naruto does, and gives him a black eye and bloody nose and they’re both a little surprised how jealously the sand fell on the blonde like a ton of jilted bricks, hitting and hitting hard, pummeling relentlessly. Gaara reigns it in, half-worried about killing Naruto, and finds his clothes, hair, and skin on fire, while sand splinters the air, melting into shards of glass half-way because of the infernal heat and power radiating like a tornado around the blonde.
Gaara has not seen Naruto angry in a long time. He feels relieved.
He’d worried that he was wrong about Naruto, about what he was capable of. He had worried that perhaps Naruto really was as human as he seemed, that perhaps he really was alone.
He feels justified. He feels comforted. Naruto is as monstrous as he is. He’s dragging him down to his level.
Gaara realizes also, that on a cold, primal, animalistic level, Naruto is gorgeous. Captivating. The revelation costs him the skin on the whole of his left arm, leaving it heart-blood red and charred.
Naruto holds back enough for Gaara to win. Naruto is angry, but not stupid. He doesn’t want to fight to the death, because Gaara can. Neither of them can afford to die.
Gaara can barely stand, and staggers in slow jerks and half-falls to where Naruto lays, ribcage heaving under his skin, eyes hidden and sharp incisors stained with blood. Gaara’s chest is criss-crossed with claw-marks, the skin and muscle seared from fire, bruised and bloody, but still upright.
Naruto’s tired. He isn’t beaten. “Bastard.”
“You’re being stupid,” Gaara tells him.
“You don’t understand.”
“What’s there to understand? You’re suicidal and reckless; I’m taking care of what’s mine.”
Naruto doesn’t answer. He pushes himself up, his whole left side near paralyzed; it will be sore and black within a few hours. Blood mattes his hair, dirt entrenched in his skin that heals itself up over wounds without sanitization. Naruto gets no farther than sitting. Gaara can no longer stand, and sinks with as much dignity as possible. He’s tired. He doesn’t know how Naruto can still move, where he finds the strength. Naruto let him win this round. It still hadn’t been a straight fight.
Gaara coughs, “We’re alike.”
“No. We’re not.” Naruto swallows air, even though the steel’s still in his voice.
“I know how you feel. That doesn’t excuse your behavior.”
Naruto doesn’t respond. His fists and mouth tightens, but he tries to calm down before asking, “No. Fuck. You don’t. How could you?”
“I watched my uncle kill himself. He hated me. He would rather die than stand me.”
Naruto continues to hide his eyes, saying nothing. He makes a sound that could’ve been a laugh or a sniff. Gaara watches; all this time, and Naruto still doesn’t take him seriously.
“You can love them. That doesn’t mean they’ll do what you want. You can’t make them love you.”
“You don’t understand.”
Gaara says nothing, but shifts his weight enough to punch Naruto across his face. It’s a hollow echo, flapping up the tunnels of his ulna and radius to his elbow where it dies. It makes him feel a little better; he can’t justify it any other way. Naruto falls curled on his side, and doesn’t get up, wincing, before spitting blood to the side disdainfully. He starts to get up again, before sliding exhausted back down. His breathing is shaky; he isn’t used to taking beatings like this anymore than Gaara is. Gaara, at least, has the sand for meager support. His arms give way gently under his weight; the only thing holding him up is will. Will, and a foolish need to prove himself.
Gaara’s eyes are cold, remote, frozen air on an alien planet, light green and blue and poisonous. He licks the blood idly at his lower lip, coppery and magnetic.
He leans down and whispers in Naruto’s ear, “I win.”
Naruto’s eyes swivel in their sockets to glare at him with a deep scalding ache. His eyes are starting to turn from blood red to violet, the anger seeping from them until they are summer sky blue again. Gold bangs drenched with rust lay across his face, like the high grass concealing the lion. His lips start to spit something tired, “Oh fuck you…” and Gaara leans further, feeling his arms shake.
Naruto tries to jerk back, tries to twist away, but Gaara only pulls back after Naruto bites his tongue, teeth still vampire sharp, and then darts back into the melee to kiss with his own incisors, more used to tearing flesh and blood than Naruto’s. His free hand holds Naruto’s wrist down, recording his pulse like a particularly fastidious bookkeeper. He breathes in the perfume of blood, the stench of burning flesh, and Naruto’s own smell. Contact is stronger this time-longer. Tactile data is burned in white-hot barcodes across his cerebellum, sound magnetically recorded onto laser disks that will be played over and over, later on at will.
Gaara doesn’t plan to spend months in the dark replaying the film until the plastic breaks down, inserting things that didn’t happen drugged on fear and desire, when he can simply make them real and true now. Naruto struggles, clawing and biting, but his nails and teeth are merely human now, and Gaara has waited a long, long time.
Naruto tastes like summer.
Naruto has one hand free, the one he isn’t laying on, one that the fingers flip and twirl on before pressing against Gaara’s chest, the attack Sakura taught him knocking the sand ninja on his back hard with a wet, gasping sound. The sand twitches, then collapses with a dusty ‘whoof’. Naruto sticks his elbows under him, starts to level up, before lying back on the ground, panting. Gaara can’t move.
Ow.
For the first time, Gaara wonders if Naruto doesn’t like blood.
***
Sasuke.
Naruto opens his eyes. He doesn’t recognize the ceiling, the familiar smell-soap, antiseptic, and lemon-tells him he’s in a hospital. He doesn’t want to move, because even without moving everything hurts in very special ways.
Ow.
He got away.
He’s afraid to blink, because it feels like a mountain came down on the left side of his face. Then he remembers one did come down.
I’m going to kill him. That stupid-
Oh god. Oh god. Oh god he, he…me, he…
…O-kay, I’m officially freaked out now. I think. Pretty sure…
…I think he was trying to bite me. Not really trying to…but actually bite me. He’s insane.
Naruto blinks, his mind temporarily blank.
That was weird. In the middle of everything…weird.
Should I panic?
I think I should. I also think I should kick his ass. Sounds like a wonderful idea, after he stuck his butt in it all but…okay.
Why do I hang out with him again?
He hadn’t meant to become his friend. He hadn’t meant to grow close, to look forward to talking or playing cards with him, even when Gaara cheated because Naruto did too, but he had.
They didn’t do a lot together, but it had been easy, comfortable. Natural. Two of a kind fit together, matched, and even though they had never fought side by side he bet that would feel natural too. If it felt natural to fight Gaara, exciting, without actually wanting to hurt him, it should feel natural to fight next to him too. Sure he was spooky and quiet, sometimes a little too secretive, but most of the people Naruto knew were like that. And he could be funny too, in a dead-pan kinda way, and he was always sincere.
Naruto had never thought too deeply about it-he got along with people, but there would always be some that were different, some that were special.
Sasuke had been incredibly special. He still was.
With Sasuke there had been the same kinship, the same epiphany, where they thought alike and felt alike that it seemed only natural-to Naruto, anyway-that they stay together. And maybe they should have.
But some where the rivalry grew stronger, more personal, too personal, until the rivalry wasn’t friendly anymore and it was so personal it was painful, to even think about him, to even be near him.
Naruto didn’t know what they said about Sasuke in Konohakagure because he’d been away too long and tried not to find out, because when they insulted Sasuke they insulted him, and that was too close for comfort.
Sasuke was too close for comfort. Sasuke was so close to his soul that it cut. Gaara had known that. But Gaara shouldn’t have interfered.
Naruto closes his eyes, breathing in antiseptic, and tries not to think.
When the weird gets going, the going gets angry. It was usually a safe bet.
***
His office door slams open, and through the shouting he tells the guards to leave, and locks the door behind them. Gaara doesn’t look up from the casualty report, summarizing it in a crisp, bored tone, “Two of my soldiers died during the conflict between the Sound and Sand, totaling 11 dead because shoddy management.”
“You should’ve let me handle it! I had it until you screwed things up!”
“They are my responsibility as ruler of this land, regardless of what Leaf thinks, including its starting-level ninja.”
“That was low. That was cheap and you know it.” He’s right. He’s pulling rank. He’s right, and Gaara pushes onward.
“It’s my office. It’s my land.”
Steadily, words turn into shouts.
“So what? That doesn’t give you any right to do what you did! None! You can’t just do whatever the hell you feel like and who gives a fuck what other people think!”
“This is not a democracy.”
Naruto doesn’t deflate. But something in him shifts, in his eyes, changes and alters and mutates, hunting now instead of raving. Gaara wonders if this was what he wanted. He wanted to hold his life in his hands, for Naruto to know it, for Naruto to…
For Naruto to accept it. To accept him. Whatever happened from there was inconsequential, as long as Naruto accepted him.
He’s screwed up. He’s screwed up badly.
Naruto’s voice is soft, eyes hard. “I expected more of you.”
Gaara has nothing to say, so he simply sits in the empty theatre behind his eyes, watching Naruto move and speak alone on-stage, completely unaware of his audience’s reactions.
Naruto turns to the door, “Whatever. It’s your land. Do what you want.”
I don’t want…
“Was that all?”
“Did you want more?” Naruto glances coldly at him, mouth healed and face washed. “What else were you expecting?”
One chance is all anyone ever gets. The second you refuse the part, the second you hesitate, the door slams shut and will not open again.
“Nothing. You may leave.”
Naruto doesn’t. He stares back, unafraid, insulted, and unfeeling. He weighs a single soul against a feather on scales made of polished bone and human hair, and Gaara waits. The land knows its master, and for as long as he is in Sand he knows he cannot die.
Blood is not what Naruto likes. But Gaara does. So they were not alike?
The anger Naruto had dissolves-it hadn’t had very much fueling it to start with. His voice is soft, but neither amused or gentle. “What the hell were you getting at? You didn’t have any right to do that. You won but that gave you no right-”
“Why not?”
“Why? Why? What made you think I’d let you get away with it?”
“I have gotten-”
“Like hell you have,” Naruto snarls. “You wish.”
“The opportunity came, I took it, and it’s over.”
“So what? I don’t care what you wanted to do, it was me you were doing it with!”
“Your opinion is your prerogative,” Naruto’s face starts to contort and Gaara adds the truth, “I didn’t want to hurt you-”
He’s cut off. Gaara leans back and lets Naruto rant.
“Really? Really? Why not? You were having such a great time doing it! Why’d you stop? What made you, self-appointed dictator of dirt, stop? Huh? Fear? Nerves? I know it wasn't conscience because you don't think like that..." Naruto's voice drops even as he paces closer. "This is your land. You can do whatever you want. But just because we're in it does not put us under you jurisdiction so what the hell did you think you were doing?"
"I wanted to.” I want you. “To feel you. Calm down--if I was going to hurt you, I would have."
"You can't be serious."
"Why not?"
"...Gaara. We're...we're-”
"Alike. No one else feels what we feel, the way we do--we smell different from humans, and you know it. We're alone, and we're the only ones. I don't expect you to thank me for saving your life or the lives of your crew, but I do expect you to keep your mouth shut."
"...You've changed.” Naruto blinks at him, actually looking hurt, and its enough to make Gaara doubt, but not enough to stop him. “What if I don't?"
"I don't know yet. I won't like it."
“You’re threatening me?” and Naruto doesn’t ask it like a question, but as a hypothetical possibility, as if wondering if the sky is made out of silk. “You get in my way. You stick your hands where you don’t belong and you don’t understand. You nearly tear my face off with your teeth,” Naruto’s knuckles his desk as he leans closer. Gaara’s hand props his head, the other hidden under the desk. “Out in the open where anyone can see it, leaving marks the doctors can see and you’re threatening me?”
Naruto’s eyes rake his face like claws, digging for minerals. His voice is smooth like steel. “Where the hell do you get off threatening me?”
I admired you, and you’re only human.
I want you and you don’t understand.
“You had your chance to kill me,” Gaara reminds him. “There are no second chances-I’m stronger than you are now.”
“You don’t actually think I was fighting you full strength, do you?”
“That’s not the kind of strength I’m talking about.” Naruto doesn’t answer that, doesn’t move back. Gaara doesn’t know what to say, but he says what makes sense to him, “He would have killed you. He doesn’t want your help, he left you-”
Naruto’s right hook catches the sand-shell, but that’s okay because it gives him leverage over the desk and gets his foot in the vicinity of Gaara’s stomach and it’s suddenly clear that Naruto can move a lot faster when his body does the thinking for him. The sand is slow, too slow. It’s used to being commanded now-bit by bit, Gaara took apart its automation, its sentience, until it’s only his tool instead of his guardian. It made him seem a bit more human, in control, in others’ eyes. At the moment, it’s earning him another black eye and gives Naruto the opening he needs, even after the sand tightens in a noose around his neck, because there’s no safe way to force Naruto’s hands away from Gaara’s neck, what with the blade in his hands.
“I think it’d kill us,” Naruto says conversationally. “Something like this? If we’re hit in a vital area without enough energy built up to heal it fast, I think it’d kill us. It should. Otherwise we’re damn hard to kill, and that’d be nice to know too. Shouldn’t move,” he adds casually as if they were talking over coffee, “if I were you.”
“Get off,” and he doesn’t talk too loud, in case he cuts his throat. Gaara has a thing with his own blood. It does something to him, but he isn’t sure if he likes it.
“Nah, this is payback, remember? I win.”
“You don’t have the guts.”
“So maybe I’ll take yours instead, yes?”
Gaara catches his eye, and it’s like falling all over again. He swallows, feeling his skin bump against the metal-cold, hard, and somehow realer than everything else in the room, realer than Naruto’s weight on his chest or the maniac grin or the sudden mad tropical tempest under his skin. The knife is a magnet, an anchor, as often as the storm pulls him further and further out, trying to capsize him.
“Huh,” Naruto scoffs above him, examining his face like an entomologist to the common mosquito, “Never thought I’d see you sweat. Didn’t think you could. Afraid?”
“A little,” he replies, but there’s no fear in his voice, it’s a simple fact.
“Of dying?” Naruto asks with another maniac sneer, which falls when Gaara says, “No.”
Naruto frowns, “Then what?”
He isn’t really angry. He isn’t really serious. What he wants is Sasuke back where he belongs, for life to go the way it’s supposed to, and for things to be normal again. He can accept that things aren’t going to happen like that, but he hates how everyone seems to have given up on his friend. That doesn’t make his allies his enemies, simply because they don’t agree.
And he owed Gaara-he isn’t sure if this revenge is over-the-top revenge or what, but he hadn’t really planned on anything and it feels good enough.
“That you’ll leave.”
The ship finally capsizes, sinks, as the avalanche settles to a stop, globs and clumps of frozen grainy water finally rolling to a stop at the train station. Pure clean silence rings over the snowdrifts, over the frigid destruction and death the snowfall caused.
The knife tip tings against the floor as Naruto’s hand pulls back, sand dribbling down his shirt in lazy spirals to settle on the floor.
Eventually the Leaf envoy leaves Sand, and Gaara spends the following night staring at a glass of what Kankuro drinks after he fails a mission or finds his current fling flinging with some other girl or boy, swearing that he’ll stick to puppets from there on because they have strings you can see, and-in a rare, rare occurrence in the household-everyone agrees with him. It’s far easier to deal with puppets than people, because puppets have strings you can see and touch, and are never unpredictable. Puppets are safe. People are not.
Kankuro never keeps his promise, but the thought retains its appeal.
The smell keeps Gaara from actually swallowing it-his sense of smell is better than his siblings, stronger, and it’s far more pleasant to analyze the smell than to analyze his head. The place is a wreck, inside his head, the screens torn and chairs on fire, and he plans to ignore it as long as he can.
Around 10 (it felt later in the night) Kankuro enters the kitchen, grabs his shot glass with the voluptuous naked breasts on it, and begins swallowing at a steady rate. Gaara watches him, the companionable silence holding until long after Kankuro leaves the table with an unnecessary tap of his fingers, murmuring reassuring nothings about condoms, and stumbles up to his bedroom. Temari makes an effort the following morning by cooking breakfast, and for once it’s nearly edible.
The family has never been close, but they’ve always been there. Sometimes that’s enough.
It’s a month later that Gaara leaves Sand for Leaf, where the Chuunin exams are to be held again. It’s convenient for the other villages; Leaf is the geographical center. When unpacking in the guest quarters the Village council allots him and his staff, he finds a bottle of Kankuro’s drink. Temari gives him his space, but he knows she’s watching closely. What he doesn’t know is who she’s been talking to, and what Sakura tells her about how listless and moody Naruto has been, and how Sakura had to beat and bribe his problems out of him. Temari pretends she knows as little as possible, tries to make events flow as naturally as possible so she can’t be blamed for them later on-no one will thank her for her troubles, but it pisses her off how much a single blonde could affect the family monster. The family pride was at stake.
Gaara keeps to himself until the third phase of the exam-he isn’t needed until then, and has no desire to encounter people. He goes out at night when the village sleeps, but Temari still doesn’t know what he does at night. He comes inside through the window, too deadly to be called graceful but smoothly, like a snake slipping through silk kimonos. He isn’t surprised to find Naruto at the table he’s been taking his meals at, but only because he smelled him before he entered.
Blue eyes take him in, “We never settled the score.”
Gaara stares back at him, cold fog still lingering in his coarse red hair. “You aren’t interested,” Gaara uses the present tense, stating the obvious.
“I am now.”
“Why? Why now?”
Naruto shifts, the chair creaking, “Because I want to. Because it’s been bothering me and because I don’t like abandoning things.” He glances over covertly, before finding his folded fingers immensely fascinating. “I don’t abandon people. Neji yelled at me too,” he adds on. “Typical Hyuuga yelling. It’s almost impossible to get that man to swear. Absolute ass hole sometimes, but won’t swear, won’t shout,” Naruto shrugged. “Go figure.”
Tanned fingers rub over each other as Naruto cleans his nails, the darkness hiding the embarrassed flush on his cheeks.
“I’m not interested in fighting you,” Gaara finally answers.
Naruto nods jerkily, his skull jouncing on his spine erratically with nerves. “Yeah, I figured that. You interested in cards then, or should I just leave?”
Leave. Get out. Don’t come back.
It hurts. You did something to me, inside where I can’t see it.
You own something of mine, you own part of me, and it hurts.
You didn’t let me go to prove something; you let me go because you won’t kill.
You bastard. You coward. I should’ve killed you…
And they call me a monster…
I hate you. I hate you.
“What’s to stop me from killing you?”
“At the moment?” Naruto looks up quizzically, through his bangs. He isn’t wearing his headband, the badge of his village. “Not much. No one knows I’m here. You can raise your power faster than I can, but this is my town, my land-that advantage is mine. But I don’t need to tell you this,” Naruto shrugs again, this time looking as if he really meant it. “You already know your advantages. But so do I.”
“Why are you here?”
“I already told you-”
“Don’t fuck with me. Don’t.”
Naruto’s limbs crouch for a few seconds, before sulking and plopping into the chair with a slight exhalation. He picks at calluses on his thumbs, making a point to not show his eyes. “I told you. It’s been driving me crazy. I wanted to. I-” Naruto stops himself, drops a blanket over his temper to cool it, before continuing, “You aren’t right now anymore than you were before, so that’s still not okay, but I…was a jerk.”
Naruto refuses to look up. Gaara refuses to back down. It hurts to be abandoned, even when it isn’t intentional. It doesn’t have to be intentional to hurt. The standoff continued, tumbleweeds bouncing past.
“You know,” Naruto says softly, so softly isn’t like words at all, but like a sigh in the wind by a ghost repeating his mother’s lullaby. “We could fight like this for a while. We could. I don’t know what the winner would get, though…”
It hurts to be abandoned. But pain doesn’t excuse violence.
“I don’t abandon my friends,” Naruto repeats, almost to himself. “Even when they hate me. I’d like it better if they didn’t but…can’t change people. But I don’t let them go,” Naruto looks up at him once, his eyes naked.
My life is in your debt-you own me.
“Ever. I take care of what’s mine.”
And you knew it.
Gaara knows about violence. He knows about pain. He sits.
Naruto doesn’t grin, but his eyes dart up and down like a rabbit out of its burrow, before lighting a candle with his fingertips and deals out silently, the fragile cards skating quietly across the polished table.
Naruto wins the first round, probably because he cheated, and Gaara has him take off his jacket so his wrists are bare and deals out the cards himself.
“Why him?”
Naruto looks up and down quickly. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t have to. He’s been asked the same question a million times before, often by himself at 3 AM when he can’t sleep.
“He’s my friend. He’s not perfect and right now he’s being…” Naruto falls silent, and then picks up again. “He did betray us. I’m not sure he won’t hurt us, or kill us. But…he’s my friend. Maybe he is a killer now,” Naruto looks up and this time it’s Gaara who looks away, “But he’s still my friend. He’s still him. I take care of my own. You know…you’re my friend too.”
Gaara ignores him, only listening because he needed time to think of what to say.
“You kill what threatens your own. You do anything, and everything, to protect what’s yours. That’s how the leaders are supposed to be. You have what it takes to be Hokage. You don’t need to be it at the moment, but you can be.”
Naruto’s head tilts up before dipping bashfully with a shrug.
“Thanks.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
Gaara wins the second round: all consecutive diamonds. Naruto deals again.
He stares at his hand, not seeing, but instead throwing about old tapes and conversations in his head, searching madly for something real, something he can hold in his hand and show the world and say it, “It happened here. It was real here. He…it was here. It was here, that he shifted and I didn’t see it. This is what I missed. He shifted, because I changed something, and I don’t know where it is or when it happened but I know it did and if I could just find it I could be sure…”
“You said you wanted to do this,” Gaara says softly, lord of his own land and lost tourist in this one. “Why?”
Naruto looks up in surprise, and then ducks his face eyes wide when he registers the question. “Ummm…”
It’s because we’re the only ones, isn’t it? It’s because of what we are…but that’s superficial.
You won’t get this either. You didn’t understand the others. You won’t understand now.
“I…I dunno. I guess. I just. I like talking to you…you don’t tell me to shut up,” Naruto offers a goofy smile weakly. “I just…like you. I wasn’t taking notes why-didn’t know there’d be a quiz later on. You know I failed almost every written test I’ve ever taken? Pretty awful record, but at least I’ve got the worse one there is.”
“That’s good?”
“Well, yeah, there’s no point in being terrible at something unless you’re the worst. Anyway, written tests are for losers.”
“I passed mine,” Gaara says, adding on at Naruto’s sour expression, “Second in my class.”
“Yeah, well you suck. I rest my case. Are we playing cards or what?”
“It’s your turn.” Naruto makes a face before picking two of his cards out on the table and replacing them with two more. He grins, and Gaara knows he’s won. It feels nice-just talking like this, it feels nice. He missed it. He missed it, and he’s going to win.
They compare. Naruto says, “Well, the king’s a good one, but I’ve got one too plus four queens. All you’ve got is four ones.”
He sits back, supremely self-satisfied. “If you want we can settle it in a real fight, this time no holding back at all, and see what happens. If you want. I wasn’t all-out last time, and I’ve gotten better since the last time you saw me. If you want.” Naruto smiles condescendingly, but with enough good humor and affection to water it out and make it endearing. “But I win this one.”
It’s standard boasting. It’s something Naruto should’ve outgrown a long time ago, but what’s more interesting is why he’s doing it. Gaara gives him a dry, slow look, waiting for him to break, and is surprised when he doesn’t. He shrugs once, relenting. He’s never held a grudge before, mostly because he killed on the spot and saw people as things, and not as people. He isn’t sure how to hold a grudge because that takes dedication and passion, though he makes a note to get payback somehow, and Naruto seems sincere.
He shrugs.
Naruto’s grin almost cuts his face, his eyes devious and bright, and asks, “You sure? I’m winning this one.”
Gaara nods, leaning back in his chair, wondering where this is all going.
Naruto grins predatorily, standing up. Something spills over in Gaara’s chest, left boiling and unattended for far too long, causing a fire in the stove that will slowly spread through his body until it hits a gas leak and explodes…
The armrests creak under Naruto’s weight as he leans his hands against them, his breath warm and wet and too close and too far from Gaara’s lips. “You sure?”
Gaara stares, green eyes wide.
Naruto’s pulled the carpet out from under him again, and again he never saw it coming.
He hates being touched. He’s never gotten over that, probably never will. Some call it claustrophobia, being too close to people, either in proximity or knowledge, but he hates being touched. He doesn’t even like to touch people, but it’s something he can manage and do, provided he’s the one controlling it, calling the shots.
He hates being touched, and he doesn’t protest.
Despite everything, something in the back of his throat and stomach find it revolting, and curl up tight with disgust, while the rest of his body goes tense and still, ready to fight back, ready to kill, lash out and attack, and its only the sharp memory of remembering what it was like without Naruto that he stays still.
This wasn’t what he wanted either, and he doesn’t move.
Naruto’s lips are warm, dry, and tightly controlled, so tightly controlled they can both feel the control wearing down and slipping away with the seconds. He kisses awkwardly, softly, too softly because despite his bravado he has no idea what he’s doing. Gaara doesn’t move-he might as well be kissing a dry, dead statue, for the softness and life he finds in his skin.
When he pulls back, he doesn’t meet Gaara’s eyes. He doesn’t say a thing.
Naruto doesn’t like blood, but blood wasn’t always the answer.
***
A/N: I'm debating doing a third installment for this--I kind of want to, and I don't know what it'd be. Ah well...
The first installment is Here. Not a sequel or prequel, but more like a companion.
NaruGaa
PG-13 for language, violence, yaoi
Summary: Spoilers for post 237 manga chapters. Just exploring the NaruGaa relationship with all the new developments from the manga, had fun making the tension in this one.
Theatre
gelfling
gelfling8604@yahoo.com
You met me at a very strange time in my life.
--Narrator (Edward Norton), Fight Club
***
Naruto comes to Sand and he still doesn’t know what to say. Naruto still doesn’t know what to make of him; Gaara has become leader of his village, while Naruto is still trying to become leader of his. He can’t tell if Naruto’s jealous or not; he seems mostly in shock, as most people were after Gaara pursued the position.
He avoids being alone with Naruto. For a reason he doesn’t understand, Naruto seems to avoid him too. He doesn’t know if he should be relieved or insulted.
It’s three days later, after events have calmed down and the Leafs are preparing to leave for the Chuunin exams, that the knock on his office door one afternoon heralds Naruto inside. He’s alone. So is Gaara. Naruto shuts the door.
For a second, time suspends, caught, snared, and not yet killed nor free.
Naruto laughs, “I’m not interrupting your plans for world domination, am I?” and the tension submerges like a wire in jelly-not broken or brittle, but hidden for the moment.
Gaara doesn’t answer, and Naruto goes closer unperturbed, and Gaara only notes how his shoulders are held a bit stiffer and his footing is a tad too regulated. The acoustics in the spacious oval office are very good.
“Your office is huge,” child-like wonder suffuses Naruto’s voice while Gaara looks for the killer that held his life in his hands and let him go, “You could play ping-pong against the walls all day and no one ever would notice. Do you actually work in here?”
Gaara shrugs, “Sometimes.”
Naruto shoots him a look, the grin sliding around his lips like ice in a frying pan, as if it wasn’t sure it belonged there or not. The difference between a smile and a snarl is very slight. Something in Gaara’s stomach drops and ice flows through his veins, frost forming over his skeleton.
It’s time. He doesn’t know what to do.
You did something to me. My life is in your debt.
Naruto leans against the widow, looking out. “I’d never get any work done in a place like this-look at all the space! It’s so…” he shifts, momentarily uncomfortable, “boring. And huge. And quiet.”
Gaara doesn’t answer.
The silence yawns, blunt blackened teeth gaping, swallowing everything and scraping against the tobacco stained and cavity-rich coarse molars as it slides through the mouth and down the wet throat. The silence is empty. The silence is lost. It’s Gaara’s office, and he’s been waiting a long time.
“Hey…” Naruto breaks the silence, because there is very little Naruto cannot do. “What’s it like though?”
“What?”
“You know,” Naruto shrugs, smiling easier now and leaning so he faces Gaara. “Being in charge and still not being able to goof off for a second without someone screaming at you. They’ve gotta keep dragging the old woman back at home to her desk, except when she isn’t sleeping on it.” Naruto scowls good-naturedly, annoyed by Tsunade’s irresponsibility but the same time affectionate. He glances up at Gaara again; Naruto’s grown, but Gaara’s still taller. “What’s it like being in control?”
His bones freeze over. His heart stops.
Control is always the core. Any thug can have power. Control is the heart.
Naruto’s never been particularly subtle. He has a tendency to rip matters to the core. For a second, Gaara considers violence.
I don’t want to be alone again.
He shrugs and leans his hip against the desk, arms crossed. “It’s not control. Violence doesn’t solve everything. It solves most problems, but not every problem. Power is…the same. Nothing’s really changed.”
“You’re…Kazekage! That’s not the same that’s-in charge now! That’s cool! I mean, that’s…” Naruto’s hands gesture, trying to say what his mouth cannot. “You can goof off all day! No one can tell you what to do! Everyone looks up to you now-that’s cool! That’s perfect!”
Gaara stares a minute too long, hunting his face, before shrugging one shoulder and looking away. “I do what I need to. That’s all.”
“You’re being awfully cool about it,” Naruto looks annoyed. “C’mon, it’s gotta have its perks; you’re the leader now and all. Don’t you like it?”
It seemed like the right thing to do, the thing to fix it all. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. I don’t know what I want to do.
I think I wanted you to come. I don’t know why.
“I…it has its moments.”
Naruto smiles at that, and just as suddenly as the ice froze over, it melts. Naruto has never been sadistic. Naruto has never been cruel. There is a good deal of distance between Naruto and his demon-they’ve made contact before, as Gaara and Shukaku have, so Gaara knows Naruto’s felt some the urges that once ruled his own life. But Naruto fought back. There is very little Naruto cannot do.
“I’d like to fight you again.” The question surprises them both. Gaara never meant to tell him.
Naruto grins wryly, “You kidding? You’d kick my ass out here-I’m not crazy.”
“Neutral ground?”
Naruto blinks. He doesn’t ask stupid questions though. “Sure. Why?”
“To see where we stand now.”
“The best against the best?” Naruto’s arrogance has toned down, but at the moment it darts forward and back, flirting. His eyes narrow, grin sharpens, and Gaara’s heart drops. “Yours against ours? Or you against me?” Naruto’s teeth gleam-it could be professional, or it could be personal.
“Yes. You against me. Just us, no interference.”
“Cool.”
***
He’s disgusted to find that, in many ways, he still hates himself. Hates his body, the way his mind does something without telling him. He’s always been able to rely on his power for safety, for asylum, since before he could walk. He hasn’t always been able to control it, to tell his monster ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, but he’s always known it wouldn’t let him be killed.
“I win.”
Naruto sounds smug.
Fucker.
Gaara doesn’t respond. His eyes are too bright, too sharp, and even though he feels the ground start to give way under his feet he doesn’t look into the crevasse he’s falling into, the dark hunger that pulls him as relentlessly as gravity.
Naruto’s hands are hot, dry, as raw energy spins lethally in the palm of his right hand, keeping Gaara’s right hand twisted behind his back, his breath sweaty and laden with tension wafting through the bracken of his hair. The earth continues to creak and crackle under Gaara’s ribcage, the spider web marks of the crater Naruto punched him into squeaking as Naruto’s weight shifts in the middle of his back. He can feel Naruto’s body heat through his clothes that suddenly seem spider web-thin and lead-thick at the same time. His heart crouches in his throat, tense yet anticipatory, wanting and afraid to be satisfied simultaneously.
A part of him is angry. The rest yearns.
Time stretches, crystallizes, Naruto’s body pressed against his, the snowflake quivering in midair before it begins rolling downhill in a tiny ball that evolves…
Naruto gets up with a deprecating laugh, “You sucked.”
Naruto extends his hand down, to help him to stand. Gaara stares at it, and then stands on his own, without taking it. He isn’t used to anyone getting close enough to touch him, let alone hit him. He didn’t want pity-not from anyone. He didn’t know what to do with it anyway. He doesn’t know what to feel: Offended? Angered? Disappointed? Naruto chatters on.
“You sucked badly--you sucked worse than you fight normally, and we both know I’m not normal. I think I deserved a better fight than that…”
Gaara simply looks at him, his expression unreadable. The slight resentment drains from Naruto’s face, replaced by concern.
“What’s wrong?”
Gaara’s mouth opens entirely of its own volition, but is cut down before it betrays him further. He hadn’t meant to be transparent. He’d simply been impatient. He shrugs a kink out of his shoulders, out of his neck, before turning to leave.
“Gaara.” Naruto’s voice is like lead.
Naruto sometimes worries that he won’t become the Hokage he aspires to be, but his voice can already command the hindbrain of the human cerebral cortex with the perfect complex wavelength, not demanding obedience but taking it instead. It would work disastrously well if Gaara weren’t Gaara, but he pauses out of…not respect. Not respect because he believed Naruto still pities him, but something else.
Gaara inhales, and says, “I keep forgetting you’re human.”
Naruto frowns, “What?”
Gaara shakes his head and continues.
Naruto keeps at him, harassing and cajoling him, until finally getting Gaara to make up a lie about his demon and old memories. What else did they have in common? What else was there to talk about? He hadn’t wanted to talk at all, but what else could they do? Naruto seems to believe him a little.
“I’ve never heard whispers like that,” Naruto frowns. Contact with his demon is scant. “Not while I’m awake. Sometimes I have nightmares, and weird, like, umm…déjà vu? Flashbacks? But they aren’t places I’ve been or things I’ve done but…you know. Memories. It’s weird. I thought it had stopped for you…or something. Or that something had happened…”
Naruto is being intimate, so Gaara answers honestly, “It…comes and goes. Sometimes it stops.”
“At night?” Naruto glances at him curiously, body held casually as he plods along beside Gaara. Gaara nods, wondering if he said too much. “Do you play poker?”
Gaara shoots him an odd look.
Naruto wins the first two games, before Gaara gets the hang of it. He spends the next three nights making Naruto gripe and moan as he wins Naruto’s salaries off him. Naruto isn’t too good at disguising his feelings; when he has a good hand, Gaara knows. After a while, Gaara gets used to the sound of Naruto’s laughter, stops searching for the threat in the twist of his mouth, and even though he never smiles his eyes soften sometimes, when the night is in the creamy-soft late hours he stares at Naruto openly and tells him things he thinks Naruto won’t remember, or at least not properly.
“-irritating. It’ll end eventually. Stop laughing. Naruto. Naruto. …I’m going to throw you out the window.”
Gaara doesn’t exactly glare under the table where Naruto is sobbing and holding his sides, gasping. He’s thrown Naruto out the window and off the roof enough to know that it won’t kill him, no matter what his state, but he can’t understand the joke.
So women wanted to marry him-how was that humorous? They wanted power, he had political and physical power; it was logic. It was petty, greedy, and very human logic. How was that funny? He no longer killed for sport or reflex. He was considered ‘human’ enough now, safe enough to be a target for the fair sex. How was that amusing?
Naruto coughs and hiccups, trying to climb to his knees before dissolving again. Gaara stares, watching in confusion and then aloof appreciation as Naruto’s features smooth out peacefully and his eyes glisten from tears. He stares five inches left of Gaara’s foot.
“I’m sorry that’s, that’s…I’m sure you’ll be very happy and--” Naruto looks at his face, staring for a few seconds before dissolving again. Gaara kicks him, and while the laughter is temporarily muffled Naruto only laughs harder. Gaara doesn’t smile.
“You don’t plan to marry?” he asks after Naruto has crawled back into his chair, exhausted.
“Me? Marry?” Naruto balks at the thought. “No way! I’m way too young and, and…that would be…I don’t know.” His shoulders sink unexpectedly. “I like kids. It’d be nice to have a family but…I dunno, I never thought about it.” He scowls. “Egh, I’ll save it for later. I’ve never really thought about it…”
“I though you and your girl…?” It’s not very subtle, but Naruto isn’t sleeping much lately.
“What, Sakura? Sakura? Are you kidding? Sakura’s my, my,” Naruto’s shoulders roll like marbles in a tin can. “Sakura. That would be…weird.”
Gaara waits for more. Naruto shies away from the subject, going quiet instead before finally leaving to sleep. He isn’t sure if he should be disappointed or not.
It’s three months later when they fight again, and this time neither holds back because they are not fighting to measure each other.
The Kage Bunshin no Jutsu has become Naruto’s choice defense, while the rasengan is his final offense. Hundreds of perfectly identical clones scream and charge, intimidating and confusing, while hiding the true Naruto in the miasma, concealing the only one capable of cracking Gaara’s defense of earth and energy, hiding the single black widow among wolf spiders.
Gaara commands the earth, the earthquakes, canyons, landslides, and gravity has no say when he chooses to float in midair, twisting sinews of sand undulating around him like dragons around a wizard, snapping up hordes of clones in huge bites. Yellow and black dots still swarm over the tendrils, jabbing, buzzing, and biting, sometimes making large dents.
Because Naruto is in a hurry to go after Sasuke and Gaara is not, Naruto is careless and hit many times before he’s finally winded on the ground writhing with Gaara’s power, and even then he refuses to stay down, blood rushing down his face and blue eyes burning purple.
It’s sometimes hard to remember the figure on the silver screen was human, with petty human failings and quibbles.
Gaara never cared for Sasuke, partly because he cared for very little, and partly because Naruto cared very much for Sasuke for reasons he didn’t know. Naruto still cares for Sasuke, perhaps more than he did before the betrayal. Gaara cares for him even less, but tries to stay objective as he physically keeps Naruto from pursuing Sasuke into a suspected trap, forces Naruto to stay alive.
He doesn’t expect Naruto to thank him for it. Naruto doesn’t.
He doesn’t expect Naruto to be angry enough to pierce the sand. Naruto does, and gives him a black eye and bloody nose and they’re both a little surprised how jealously the sand fell on the blonde like a ton of jilted bricks, hitting and hitting hard, pummeling relentlessly. Gaara reigns it in, half-worried about killing Naruto, and finds his clothes, hair, and skin on fire, while sand splinters the air, melting into shards of glass half-way because of the infernal heat and power radiating like a tornado around the blonde.
Gaara has not seen Naruto angry in a long time. He feels relieved.
He’d worried that he was wrong about Naruto, about what he was capable of. He had worried that perhaps Naruto really was as human as he seemed, that perhaps he really was alone.
He feels justified. He feels comforted. Naruto is as monstrous as he is. He’s dragging him down to his level.
Gaara realizes also, that on a cold, primal, animalistic level, Naruto is gorgeous. Captivating. The revelation costs him the skin on the whole of his left arm, leaving it heart-blood red and charred.
Naruto holds back enough for Gaara to win. Naruto is angry, but not stupid. He doesn’t want to fight to the death, because Gaara can. Neither of them can afford to die.
Gaara can barely stand, and staggers in slow jerks and half-falls to where Naruto lays, ribcage heaving under his skin, eyes hidden and sharp incisors stained with blood. Gaara’s chest is criss-crossed with claw-marks, the skin and muscle seared from fire, bruised and bloody, but still upright.
Naruto’s tired. He isn’t beaten. “Bastard.”
“You’re being stupid,” Gaara tells him.
“You don’t understand.”
“What’s there to understand? You’re suicidal and reckless; I’m taking care of what’s mine.”
Naruto doesn’t answer. He pushes himself up, his whole left side near paralyzed; it will be sore and black within a few hours. Blood mattes his hair, dirt entrenched in his skin that heals itself up over wounds without sanitization. Naruto gets no farther than sitting. Gaara can no longer stand, and sinks with as much dignity as possible. He’s tired. He doesn’t know how Naruto can still move, where he finds the strength. Naruto let him win this round. It still hadn’t been a straight fight.
Gaara coughs, “We’re alike.”
“No. We’re not.” Naruto swallows air, even though the steel’s still in his voice.
“I know how you feel. That doesn’t excuse your behavior.”
Naruto doesn’t respond. His fists and mouth tightens, but he tries to calm down before asking, “No. Fuck. You don’t. How could you?”
“I watched my uncle kill himself. He hated me. He would rather die than stand me.”
Naruto continues to hide his eyes, saying nothing. He makes a sound that could’ve been a laugh or a sniff. Gaara watches; all this time, and Naruto still doesn’t take him seriously.
“You can love them. That doesn’t mean they’ll do what you want. You can’t make them love you.”
“You don’t understand.”
Gaara says nothing, but shifts his weight enough to punch Naruto across his face. It’s a hollow echo, flapping up the tunnels of his ulna and radius to his elbow where it dies. It makes him feel a little better; he can’t justify it any other way. Naruto falls curled on his side, and doesn’t get up, wincing, before spitting blood to the side disdainfully. He starts to get up again, before sliding exhausted back down. His breathing is shaky; he isn’t used to taking beatings like this anymore than Gaara is. Gaara, at least, has the sand for meager support. His arms give way gently under his weight; the only thing holding him up is will. Will, and a foolish need to prove himself.
Gaara’s eyes are cold, remote, frozen air on an alien planet, light green and blue and poisonous. He licks the blood idly at his lower lip, coppery and magnetic.
He leans down and whispers in Naruto’s ear, “I win.”
Naruto’s eyes swivel in their sockets to glare at him with a deep scalding ache. His eyes are starting to turn from blood red to violet, the anger seeping from them until they are summer sky blue again. Gold bangs drenched with rust lay across his face, like the high grass concealing the lion. His lips start to spit something tired, “Oh fuck you…” and Gaara leans further, feeling his arms shake.
Naruto tries to jerk back, tries to twist away, but Gaara only pulls back after Naruto bites his tongue, teeth still vampire sharp, and then darts back into the melee to kiss with his own incisors, more used to tearing flesh and blood than Naruto’s. His free hand holds Naruto’s wrist down, recording his pulse like a particularly fastidious bookkeeper. He breathes in the perfume of blood, the stench of burning flesh, and Naruto’s own smell. Contact is stronger this time-longer. Tactile data is burned in white-hot barcodes across his cerebellum, sound magnetically recorded onto laser disks that will be played over and over, later on at will.
Gaara doesn’t plan to spend months in the dark replaying the film until the plastic breaks down, inserting things that didn’t happen drugged on fear and desire, when he can simply make them real and true now. Naruto struggles, clawing and biting, but his nails and teeth are merely human now, and Gaara has waited a long, long time.
Naruto tastes like summer.
Naruto has one hand free, the one he isn’t laying on, one that the fingers flip and twirl on before pressing against Gaara’s chest, the attack Sakura taught him knocking the sand ninja on his back hard with a wet, gasping sound. The sand twitches, then collapses with a dusty ‘whoof’. Naruto sticks his elbows under him, starts to level up, before lying back on the ground, panting. Gaara can’t move.
Ow.
For the first time, Gaara wonders if Naruto doesn’t like blood.
***
Sasuke.
Naruto opens his eyes. He doesn’t recognize the ceiling, the familiar smell-soap, antiseptic, and lemon-tells him he’s in a hospital. He doesn’t want to move, because even without moving everything hurts in very special ways.
Ow.
He got away.
He’s afraid to blink, because it feels like a mountain came down on the left side of his face. Then he remembers one did come down.
I’m going to kill him. That stupid-
Oh god. Oh god. Oh god he, he…me, he…
…O-kay, I’m officially freaked out now. I think. Pretty sure…
…I think he was trying to bite me. Not really trying to…but actually bite me. He’s insane.
Naruto blinks, his mind temporarily blank.
That was weird. In the middle of everything…weird.
Should I panic?
I think I should. I also think I should kick his ass. Sounds like a wonderful idea, after he stuck his butt in it all but…okay.
Why do I hang out with him again?
He hadn’t meant to become his friend. He hadn’t meant to grow close, to look forward to talking or playing cards with him, even when Gaara cheated because Naruto did too, but he had.
They didn’t do a lot together, but it had been easy, comfortable. Natural. Two of a kind fit together, matched, and even though they had never fought side by side he bet that would feel natural too. If it felt natural to fight Gaara, exciting, without actually wanting to hurt him, it should feel natural to fight next to him too. Sure he was spooky and quiet, sometimes a little too secretive, but most of the people Naruto knew were like that. And he could be funny too, in a dead-pan kinda way, and he was always sincere.
Naruto had never thought too deeply about it-he got along with people, but there would always be some that were different, some that were special.
Sasuke had been incredibly special. He still was.
With Sasuke there had been the same kinship, the same epiphany, where they thought alike and felt alike that it seemed only natural-to Naruto, anyway-that they stay together. And maybe they should have.
But some where the rivalry grew stronger, more personal, too personal, until the rivalry wasn’t friendly anymore and it was so personal it was painful, to even think about him, to even be near him.
Naruto didn’t know what they said about Sasuke in Konohakagure because he’d been away too long and tried not to find out, because when they insulted Sasuke they insulted him, and that was too close for comfort.
Sasuke was too close for comfort. Sasuke was so close to his soul that it cut. Gaara had known that. But Gaara shouldn’t have interfered.
Naruto closes his eyes, breathing in antiseptic, and tries not to think.
When the weird gets going, the going gets angry. It was usually a safe bet.
***
His office door slams open, and through the shouting he tells the guards to leave, and locks the door behind them. Gaara doesn’t look up from the casualty report, summarizing it in a crisp, bored tone, “Two of my soldiers died during the conflict between the Sound and Sand, totaling 11 dead because shoddy management.”
“You should’ve let me handle it! I had it until you screwed things up!”
“They are my responsibility as ruler of this land, regardless of what Leaf thinks, including its starting-level ninja.”
“That was low. That was cheap and you know it.” He’s right. He’s pulling rank. He’s right, and Gaara pushes onward.
“It’s my office. It’s my land.”
Steadily, words turn into shouts.
“So what? That doesn’t give you any right to do what you did! None! You can’t just do whatever the hell you feel like and who gives a fuck what other people think!”
“This is not a democracy.”
Naruto doesn’t deflate. But something in him shifts, in his eyes, changes and alters and mutates, hunting now instead of raving. Gaara wonders if this was what he wanted. He wanted to hold his life in his hands, for Naruto to know it, for Naruto to…
For Naruto to accept it. To accept him. Whatever happened from there was inconsequential, as long as Naruto accepted him.
He’s screwed up. He’s screwed up badly.
Naruto’s voice is soft, eyes hard. “I expected more of you.”
Gaara has nothing to say, so he simply sits in the empty theatre behind his eyes, watching Naruto move and speak alone on-stage, completely unaware of his audience’s reactions.
Naruto turns to the door, “Whatever. It’s your land. Do what you want.”
I don’t want…
“Was that all?”
“Did you want more?” Naruto glances coldly at him, mouth healed and face washed. “What else were you expecting?”
One chance is all anyone ever gets. The second you refuse the part, the second you hesitate, the door slams shut and will not open again.
“Nothing. You may leave.”
Naruto doesn’t. He stares back, unafraid, insulted, and unfeeling. He weighs a single soul against a feather on scales made of polished bone and human hair, and Gaara waits. The land knows its master, and for as long as he is in Sand he knows he cannot die.
Blood is not what Naruto likes. But Gaara does. So they were not alike?
The anger Naruto had dissolves-it hadn’t had very much fueling it to start with. His voice is soft, but neither amused or gentle. “What the hell were you getting at? You didn’t have any right to do that. You won but that gave you no right-”
“Why not?”
“Why? Why? What made you think I’d let you get away with it?”
“I have gotten-”
“Like hell you have,” Naruto snarls. “You wish.”
“The opportunity came, I took it, and it’s over.”
“So what? I don’t care what you wanted to do, it was me you were doing it with!”
“Your opinion is your prerogative,” Naruto’s face starts to contort and Gaara adds the truth, “I didn’t want to hurt you-”
He’s cut off. Gaara leans back and lets Naruto rant.
“Really? Really? Why not? You were having such a great time doing it! Why’d you stop? What made you, self-appointed dictator of dirt, stop? Huh? Fear? Nerves? I know it wasn't conscience because you don't think like that..." Naruto's voice drops even as he paces closer. "This is your land. You can do whatever you want. But just because we're in it does not put us under you jurisdiction so what the hell did you think you were doing?"
"I wanted to.” I want you. “To feel you. Calm down--if I was going to hurt you, I would have."
"You can't be serious."
"Why not?"
"...Gaara. We're...we're-”
"Alike. No one else feels what we feel, the way we do--we smell different from humans, and you know it. We're alone, and we're the only ones. I don't expect you to thank me for saving your life or the lives of your crew, but I do expect you to keep your mouth shut."
"...You've changed.” Naruto blinks at him, actually looking hurt, and its enough to make Gaara doubt, but not enough to stop him. “What if I don't?"
"I don't know yet. I won't like it."
“You’re threatening me?” and Naruto doesn’t ask it like a question, but as a hypothetical possibility, as if wondering if the sky is made out of silk. “You get in my way. You stick your hands where you don’t belong and you don’t understand. You nearly tear my face off with your teeth,” Naruto’s knuckles his desk as he leans closer. Gaara’s hand props his head, the other hidden under the desk. “Out in the open where anyone can see it, leaving marks the doctors can see and you’re threatening me?”
Naruto’s eyes rake his face like claws, digging for minerals. His voice is smooth like steel. “Where the hell do you get off threatening me?”
I admired you, and you’re only human.
I want you and you don’t understand.
“You had your chance to kill me,” Gaara reminds him. “There are no second chances-I’m stronger than you are now.”
“You don’t actually think I was fighting you full strength, do you?”
“That’s not the kind of strength I’m talking about.” Naruto doesn’t answer that, doesn’t move back. Gaara doesn’t know what to say, but he says what makes sense to him, “He would have killed you. He doesn’t want your help, he left you-”
Naruto’s right hook catches the sand-shell, but that’s okay because it gives him leverage over the desk and gets his foot in the vicinity of Gaara’s stomach and it’s suddenly clear that Naruto can move a lot faster when his body does the thinking for him. The sand is slow, too slow. It’s used to being commanded now-bit by bit, Gaara took apart its automation, its sentience, until it’s only his tool instead of his guardian. It made him seem a bit more human, in control, in others’ eyes. At the moment, it’s earning him another black eye and gives Naruto the opening he needs, even after the sand tightens in a noose around his neck, because there’s no safe way to force Naruto’s hands away from Gaara’s neck, what with the blade in his hands.
“I think it’d kill us,” Naruto says conversationally. “Something like this? If we’re hit in a vital area without enough energy built up to heal it fast, I think it’d kill us. It should. Otherwise we’re damn hard to kill, and that’d be nice to know too. Shouldn’t move,” he adds casually as if they were talking over coffee, “if I were you.”
“Get off,” and he doesn’t talk too loud, in case he cuts his throat. Gaara has a thing with his own blood. It does something to him, but he isn’t sure if he likes it.
“Nah, this is payback, remember? I win.”
“You don’t have the guts.”
“So maybe I’ll take yours instead, yes?”
Gaara catches his eye, and it’s like falling all over again. He swallows, feeling his skin bump against the metal-cold, hard, and somehow realer than everything else in the room, realer than Naruto’s weight on his chest or the maniac grin or the sudden mad tropical tempest under his skin. The knife is a magnet, an anchor, as often as the storm pulls him further and further out, trying to capsize him.
“Huh,” Naruto scoffs above him, examining his face like an entomologist to the common mosquito, “Never thought I’d see you sweat. Didn’t think you could. Afraid?”
“A little,” he replies, but there’s no fear in his voice, it’s a simple fact.
“Of dying?” Naruto asks with another maniac sneer, which falls when Gaara says, “No.”
Naruto frowns, “Then what?”
He isn’t really angry. He isn’t really serious. What he wants is Sasuke back where he belongs, for life to go the way it’s supposed to, and for things to be normal again. He can accept that things aren’t going to happen like that, but he hates how everyone seems to have given up on his friend. That doesn’t make his allies his enemies, simply because they don’t agree.
And he owed Gaara-he isn’t sure if this revenge is over-the-top revenge or what, but he hadn’t really planned on anything and it feels good enough.
“That you’ll leave.”
The ship finally capsizes, sinks, as the avalanche settles to a stop, globs and clumps of frozen grainy water finally rolling to a stop at the train station. Pure clean silence rings over the snowdrifts, over the frigid destruction and death the snowfall caused.
The knife tip tings against the floor as Naruto’s hand pulls back, sand dribbling down his shirt in lazy spirals to settle on the floor.
Eventually the Leaf envoy leaves Sand, and Gaara spends the following night staring at a glass of what Kankuro drinks after he fails a mission or finds his current fling flinging with some other girl or boy, swearing that he’ll stick to puppets from there on because they have strings you can see, and-in a rare, rare occurrence in the household-everyone agrees with him. It’s far easier to deal with puppets than people, because puppets have strings you can see and touch, and are never unpredictable. Puppets are safe. People are not.
Kankuro never keeps his promise, but the thought retains its appeal.
The smell keeps Gaara from actually swallowing it-his sense of smell is better than his siblings, stronger, and it’s far more pleasant to analyze the smell than to analyze his head. The place is a wreck, inside his head, the screens torn and chairs on fire, and he plans to ignore it as long as he can.
Around 10 (it felt later in the night) Kankuro enters the kitchen, grabs his shot glass with the voluptuous naked breasts on it, and begins swallowing at a steady rate. Gaara watches him, the companionable silence holding until long after Kankuro leaves the table with an unnecessary tap of his fingers, murmuring reassuring nothings about condoms, and stumbles up to his bedroom. Temari makes an effort the following morning by cooking breakfast, and for once it’s nearly edible.
The family has never been close, but they’ve always been there. Sometimes that’s enough.
It’s a month later that Gaara leaves Sand for Leaf, where the Chuunin exams are to be held again. It’s convenient for the other villages; Leaf is the geographical center. When unpacking in the guest quarters the Village council allots him and his staff, he finds a bottle of Kankuro’s drink. Temari gives him his space, but he knows she’s watching closely. What he doesn’t know is who she’s been talking to, and what Sakura tells her about how listless and moody Naruto has been, and how Sakura had to beat and bribe his problems out of him. Temari pretends she knows as little as possible, tries to make events flow as naturally as possible so she can’t be blamed for them later on-no one will thank her for her troubles, but it pisses her off how much a single blonde could affect the family monster. The family pride was at stake.
Gaara keeps to himself until the third phase of the exam-he isn’t needed until then, and has no desire to encounter people. He goes out at night when the village sleeps, but Temari still doesn’t know what he does at night. He comes inside through the window, too deadly to be called graceful but smoothly, like a snake slipping through silk kimonos. He isn’t surprised to find Naruto at the table he’s been taking his meals at, but only because he smelled him before he entered.
Blue eyes take him in, “We never settled the score.”
Gaara stares back at him, cold fog still lingering in his coarse red hair. “You aren’t interested,” Gaara uses the present tense, stating the obvious.
“I am now.”
“Why? Why now?”
Naruto shifts, the chair creaking, “Because I want to. Because it’s been bothering me and because I don’t like abandoning things.” He glances over covertly, before finding his folded fingers immensely fascinating. “I don’t abandon people. Neji yelled at me too,” he adds on. “Typical Hyuuga yelling. It’s almost impossible to get that man to swear. Absolute ass hole sometimes, but won’t swear, won’t shout,” Naruto shrugged. “Go figure.”
Tanned fingers rub over each other as Naruto cleans his nails, the darkness hiding the embarrassed flush on his cheeks.
“I’m not interested in fighting you,” Gaara finally answers.
Naruto nods jerkily, his skull jouncing on his spine erratically with nerves. “Yeah, I figured that. You interested in cards then, or should I just leave?”
Leave. Get out. Don’t come back.
It hurts. You did something to me, inside where I can’t see it.
You own something of mine, you own part of me, and it hurts.
You didn’t let me go to prove something; you let me go because you won’t kill.
You bastard. You coward. I should’ve killed you…
And they call me a monster…
I hate you. I hate you.
“What’s to stop me from killing you?”
“At the moment?” Naruto looks up quizzically, through his bangs. He isn’t wearing his headband, the badge of his village. “Not much. No one knows I’m here. You can raise your power faster than I can, but this is my town, my land-that advantage is mine. But I don’t need to tell you this,” Naruto shrugs again, this time looking as if he really meant it. “You already know your advantages. But so do I.”
“Why are you here?”
“I already told you-”
“Don’t fuck with me. Don’t.”
Naruto’s limbs crouch for a few seconds, before sulking and plopping into the chair with a slight exhalation. He picks at calluses on his thumbs, making a point to not show his eyes. “I told you. It’s been driving me crazy. I wanted to. I-” Naruto stops himself, drops a blanket over his temper to cool it, before continuing, “You aren’t right now anymore than you were before, so that’s still not okay, but I…was a jerk.”
Naruto refuses to look up. Gaara refuses to back down. It hurts to be abandoned, even when it isn’t intentional. It doesn’t have to be intentional to hurt. The standoff continued, tumbleweeds bouncing past.
“You know,” Naruto says softly, so softly isn’t like words at all, but like a sigh in the wind by a ghost repeating his mother’s lullaby. “We could fight like this for a while. We could. I don’t know what the winner would get, though…”
It hurts to be abandoned. But pain doesn’t excuse violence.
“I don’t abandon my friends,” Naruto repeats, almost to himself. “Even when they hate me. I’d like it better if they didn’t but…can’t change people. But I don’t let them go,” Naruto looks up at him once, his eyes naked.
My life is in your debt-you own me.
“Ever. I take care of what’s mine.”
And you knew it.
Gaara knows about violence. He knows about pain. He sits.
Naruto doesn’t grin, but his eyes dart up and down like a rabbit out of its burrow, before lighting a candle with his fingertips and deals out silently, the fragile cards skating quietly across the polished table.
Naruto wins the first round, probably because he cheated, and Gaara has him take off his jacket so his wrists are bare and deals out the cards himself.
“Why him?”
Naruto looks up and down quickly. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t have to. He’s been asked the same question a million times before, often by himself at 3 AM when he can’t sleep.
“He’s my friend. He’s not perfect and right now he’s being…” Naruto falls silent, and then picks up again. “He did betray us. I’m not sure he won’t hurt us, or kill us. But…he’s my friend. Maybe he is a killer now,” Naruto looks up and this time it’s Gaara who looks away, “But he’s still my friend. He’s still him. I take care of my own. You know…you’re my friend too.”
Gaara ignores him, only listening because he needed time to think of what to say.
“You kill what threatens your own. You do anything, and everything, to protect what’s yours. That’s how the leaders are supposed to be. You have what it takes to be Hokage. You don’t need to be it at the moment, but you can be.”
Naruto’s head tilts up before dipping bashfully with a shrug.
“Thanks.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
Gaara wins the second round: all consecutive diamonds. Naruto deals again.
He stares at his hand, not seeing, but instead throwing about old tapes and conversations in his head, searching madly for something real, something he can hold in his hand and show the world and say it, “It happened here. It was real here. He…it was here. It was here, that he shifted and I didn’t see it. This is what I missed. He shifted, because I changed something, and I don’t know where it is or when it happened but I know it did and if I could just find it I could be sure…”
“You said you wanted to do this,” Gaara says softly, lord of his own land and lost tourist in this one. “Why?”
Naruto looks up in surprise, and then ducks his face eyes wide when he registers the question. “Ummm…”
It’s because we’re the only ones, isn’t it? It’s because of what we are…but that’s superficial.
You won’t get this either. You didn’t understand the others. You won’t understand now.
“I…I dunno. I guess. I just. I like talking to you…you don’t tell me to shut up,” Naruto offers a goofy smile weakly. “I just…like you. I wasn’t taking notes why-didn’t know there’d be a quiz later on. You know I failed almost every written test I’ve ever taken? Pretty awful record, but at least I’ve got the worse one there is.”
“That’s good?”
“Well, yeah, there’s no point in being terrible at something unless you’re the worst. Anyway, written tests are for losers.”
“I passed mine,” Gaara says, adding on at Naruto’s sour expression, “Second in my class.”
“Yeah, well you suck. I rest my case. Are we playing cards or what?”
“It’s your turn.” Naruto makes a face before picking two of his cards out on the table and replacing them with two more. He grins, and Gaara knows he’s won. It feels nice-just talking like this, it feels nice. He missed it. He missed it, and he’s going to win.
They compare. Naruto says, “Well, the king’s a good one, but I’ve got one too plus four queens. All you’ve got is four ones.”
He sits back, supremely self-satisfied. “If you want we can settle it in a real fight, this time no holding back at all, and see what happens. If you want. I wasn’t all-out last time, and I’ve gotten better since the last time you saw me. If you want.” Naruto smiles condescendingly, but with enough good humor and affection to water it out and make it endearing. “But I win this one.”
It’s standard boasting. It’s something Naruto should’ve outgrown a long time ago, but what’s more interesting is why he’s doing it. Gaara gives him a dry, slow look, waiting for him to break, and is surprised when he doesn’t. He shrugs once, relenting. He’s never held a grudge before, mostly because he killed on the spot and saw people as things, and not as people. He isn’t sure how to hold a grudge because that takes dedication and passion, though he makes a note to get payback somehow, and Naruto seems sincere.
He shrugs.
Naruto’s grin almost cuts his face, his eyes devious and bright, and asks, “You sure? I’m winning this one.”
Gaara nods, leaning back in his chair, wondering where this is all going.
Naruto grins predatorily, standing up. Something spills over in Gaara’s chest, left boiling and unattended for far too long, causing a fire in the stove that will slowly spread through his body until it hits a gas leak and explodes…
The armrests creak under Naruto’s weight as he leans his hands against them, his breath warm and wet and too close and too far from Gaara’s lips. “You sure?”
Gaara stares, green eyes wide.
Naruto’s pulled the carpet out from under him again, and again he never saw it coming.
He hates being touched. He’s never gotten over that, probably never will. Some call it claustrophobia, being too close to people, either in proximity or knowledge, but he hates being touched. He doesn’t even like to touch people, but it’s something he can manage and do, provided he’s the one controlling it, calling the shots.
He hates being touched, and he doesn’t protest.
Despite everything, something in the back of his throat and stomach find it revolting, and curl up tight with disgust, while the rest of his body goes tense and still, ready to fight back, ready to kill, lash out and attack, and its only the sharp memory of remembering what it was like without Naruto that he stays still.
This wasn’t what he wanted either, and he doesn’t move.
Naruto’s lips are warm, dry, and tightly controlled, so tightly controlled they can both feel the control wearing down and slipping away with the seconds. He kisses awkwardly, softly, too softly because despite his bravado he has no idea what he’s doing. Gaara doesn’t move-he might as well be kissing a dry, dead statue, for the softness and life he finds in his skin.
When he pulls back, he doesn’t meet Gaara’s eyes. He doesn’t say a thing.
Naruto doesn’t like blood, but blood wasn’t always the answer.
***
A/N: I'm debating doing a third installment for this--I kind of want to, and I don't know what it'd be. Ah well...
The first installment is Here. Not a sequel or prequel, but more like a companion.