Vurt Ninjas 5
I finally figured out a plot for this story, so it's no longer the shameless smushing together of Jeff Noon's universe and Kishimoto's characters. I'm kind of proud of this.
Vurt Ninjas 5, the backstory chapter: or, how Naruto introduced Sasuke and Sakura to each other in the worst way possible.
Fate, karma, luck, or just the fact that Shizune's clinic had been the one closest to Jiraiya's workshop when Naruto slammed open the door to the waiting room and announced that he was fucking dying: Sakura could never figure out which of these it was that wound up introducing her to him. Most days she figured it was karma.
"Sakura? I'll double your pay for tonight if you'll do something discreetly," Shizune said as she opened the door to the second office.
"Sure!" Sakura replied automatically. "What is it?"
"Go treat the guy in the end of the hall. He has a dream snake bite."
Sakura frowned even as she moved to the supply cabinets and began pulling out the snake weed. "What do I need to do that's discreet?"
"Make his lies into something that can actually be put on a report," Shizune said wryly. "He's associated with a good friend of mine, so. . . ."
"On it, ma'am!"
Naruto was feverish by the time Sakura got to the room and began applying the snake weed to the bite on his forearm, but he regained enough sense to start leering at her a few minutes later. Sakura pulled the collar of her shirt up slightly and thought Dogs, before picking up the clipboard Shizune had left behind. "Okay, what happened?"
"A dream snake bit me," he replied cheerfully.
"Thanks," Sakura drawled. "How?"
". . . I tripped over it. And then it bit me."
Sakura set the clipboard on her lap and gave him a look.
"It was in a dark alley," Naruto added.
"Uh-huh," Sakura replied, and reminded herself that she was getting paid double.
Two days later, she came out of the clinic to find Naruto sitting against the wall.
"You have to go into the building before we can help you," she commented as she walked past. He scrabbled onto his feet.
"Nah, I was waiting for you!" he replied with a grin. Sakura gave him a long, sidewise look. He held up his hands non-threateningly. "I'm not a crazy stalker guy, I just figured, I owed you dinner. Or something. For saving my life and stuff."
"It's just my job," she replied, keeping the almost-smile off her face.
He kept grinning despite the barb, which meant he was either ignoring it or it had gone over his head. Sakura couldn't say which for sure. "Well, it's my life. So, can I buy you a burger or dango or something?"
"Your life is worth a burger?"
He held his hands up a little higher, mock-helplessly. "Hey, hey, I'm on limited funds here! Your place charged an arm and a leg for that damn antidote, and my cheapass boss won't cover it, says it's my fault!" He gave her another grin, this one a little plaintive. "If I'd planned it, I would've made sure to set aside enough money to treat you properly. But, since . . . yeah. My life is worth hamburger meat."
Sakura was having a hard time holding back laughter at this point, though she didn't really want to encourage him.
"Just dinner," she said, keeping her tone even.
"Just dinner," he agreed. He smiled so much, she thought.
Naruto was totally not her type. He was obnoxious, loud, coarse, and he was enough of those things that she could tell even when he was struggling to be cool.
He also worked in the Pornovurt industry. Sakura didn't agree to meet him for a second date, but when he was sitting outside the clinic the next day, she let him talk her into dinner again.
Sakura left the clinic a week later. She'd worked out a deal with the place: she didn't steal drugs from there, and Shizune let her come back whenever she'd built up enough savings or wanted to drop out of the trade for a little while. She gave Naruto her phone number with serious regrets, but he didn't call excessively, so she stopped worrying.
She got fired from the newest clinic a month later, at the most inconvenient time--Ino was out of town. And she'd taken Shikamaru with her, so there was no way for Sakura to get into her apartment. (Chouji probably had a spare key, but Sakura didn't get along very well with him, so there wasn't much she could do.)
Really, she wouldn't have called Naruto, but the head doctor had said he was calling the police and she couldn't go back to her apartment until something bigger happened to attract their attention.
"Sure!" was all he'd said, when she finished asking. "I'll pick you up!"
". . . Okay," Sakura had replied, and wondered why he hadn't even asked anything. "Thanks."
He arrived at the bus stop she'd directed him to twenty minutes after hanging up, blaming the traffic. Sakura stared at the motorcycle with a raised eyebrow. "You didn't seem like the kind of guy to drive one of those."
"Oh, this piece of junk belongs to Sasuke. He has to be a badass." Naruto tugged off his helmet and gave it to her. "But we can still fit your stuff on it!"
Sakura was quietly grateful that she had only two suitcases.
The gratefulness only lasted until Naruto pulled up in front of the building that he apparently lived in, and then Sakura went back to wondering what the hell she had gotten herself into, in-between thinking Oh, not another Shadowgirl.
Naruto had slid off the bike and started unstrapping her luggage while Sakura was still staring at the door the Shadowgirl had gone through. And she couldn't go back to her apartment for a while. And Shizune wouldn't let her sleep on her couch or overnight at the clinic, since she didn't want to be implicated in anything Sakura did. And Chouji really probably wouldn't give her a spare key, so. . . .
Ino, get your ass back into town soon or I will kill you. So much, Sakura thought, and then followed Naruto's waving arm into the building.
Four flights of stairs up, and Naruto stopped on the landing where the Smoker was unlocking a door. Sakura was unnerved to see, on closer inspection, that it was a guy--but he wasn't dripping flesh, so it couldn't be a Zombie. At least, she didn't think it could be a Zombie. How would he have gotten into the city in the first place? What the hell is--
"Oi, Sasuke!"
--no way, Sakura thought, and Naruto was already going on.
"This is Sakura!" he said, pointing back at her. "She's going to be living with us now!"
Sakura was a perceptive young woman. She only needed two seconds of seeing the look on Sasuke's face to realize that he wasn't just a roommate.
Sakura and Sasuke's first bonding experience was beating the crap out of Naruto.
After he fell down the stairs as he tried to dodge Sakura throwing her suitcase at his shins while Sasuke aimed a punch at his jaw, she made the other man stop. Sasuke shoved her arm away and kicked the door open, and Sakura went halfway down the stairs and dragged Naruto into the apartment by his jacket collar.
He sat on the table edge as she applied iodine harder than necessary to the bruised cut along his face, and tried to ignore the fact that Sasuke was sitting on the couch across from them and glaring. It was hard, especially since Sakura kept glancing at him from the corner of her eye to make sure he really was a guy, and not about to try and eat her.
"Owwww," Naruto whined as she pressed the lump of cotton against his cut. "Sakura, that hurts!"
"You deserve it!" she snapped. "Hell, if I'd--I can't believe you didn't even say anyth--what are you, part Robo or something? Augh!"
"Eheh," Naruto muttered, looking down at the ground and scratching the back of his head.
Sakura frowned--in her peripheral vision, Sasuke had started. A moment later, he stood up and left the apartment, pulling the door shut behind him.
"Dammit," Naruto snapped, and stood up.
Oops. . . . "He isn't part Robo, right?" Sakura asked.
"No, no . . . here, put your stuff wherever you want, I'll be back soon." Before she could say anything, he had wrenched the door open again and was yelling down the stairs. "Asshole, get back here and listen to--HEY! I said get back here!!"
After the noise of Naruto taking the stairs several at a time lessened, Sakura pushed the door shut and tried Ino's phone again.
Naruto either didn't find Sasuke or wasn't able to force him back until early the next morning. Sakura had already made herself dinner from some of the leftovers in the fridge, had scrubbed down the surprisingly clean bathtub with the chemicals under the sink, and had locked herself in the bathroom with her suitcases, her cell, and a couch cushion and blanket. She woke from a shallow sleep when Naruto and Sasuke continued yelling at each other on their way through the apartment, and then pulled the blanket up over her ears and tried to fall back asleep when one of them slammed a door further down the hall.
It didn't work well, and Sakura had been drifting on the edges of consciousness when someone knocked on the bathroom door hours later.
"Hey, you," Sasuke said tonelessly. "I need in there."
Sakura risked leaving her bags in the bathroom, but took her wallet and her phone with her when she stepped out. She combed her fingers through her hair as she made her way to the kitchen/living room area.
Naruto wasn't in there, and Sakura didn't want to pass the bathroom to check in the bedroom, so instead she called Shizune's clinic and spent several minutes sweet-talking the woman into letting her go back to work in a couple days. Sasuke came into the kitchen while she was talking, and started making eggs.
"You are almost more trouble than you are useful, do you know that, Sakura?" Shizune said crossly.
Sakura had heard it all before, so she rolled her eyes and sounded apologetic. "I know, I know Ms. Shizune. I'm sorry."
The woman sighed. "Come in Friday. No, Thursday--I have too many people scheduled for just me and Migaki."
"Yay! Thank you very much!"
"Don't thank me, I'm giving you all the contagious ones," Shizune replied. "Goodbye."
"Bye, ma'am." Sakura waited until Shizune hung up, and then closed her phone and made herself look over at Sasuke. "Um, hi. . . ."
"Mn," he replied.
Sakura toyed with the phone. "I'm . . . sorry about just appearing here, but I needed somewhere to stay, and--"
"Whatever," Sasuke replied. "You can sleep on the couch."
"Okay." She fidgeted with the phone again. ". . . Where's Naruto?"
"He already went to work," Sasuke replied, and flipped the eggs. "I work nights, so don't make a lot of noise."
"All right," Sakura said, and then hesitated. "I'm sorry about--I didn't kn--"
"I know," Sasuke said flatly, scrambling the eggs with a disturbingly stabbing motion. "He's a dumbass and he's always been a dumbass. Do you want some?"
"--Yeah. I'm going to go buy food for myself later, so. . . ."
Sasuke scraped half the eggs onto a plate next to the stove, then dropped the pan on the unlit burner and turned the stove off.
Sasuke's back had been to her the whole time he was at the stove. Sakura didn't really want to deal with him face-to-face, so she used that moment to escape to the bathroom.
By the time she got out of the shower, the bedroom door was shut and the eggs in the pan were cold. Sasuke had thrown the spatula into the sink, so Sakura washed it off and reused the plate from her dinner last night.
When Naruto came back that evening, bitching about Jiriaya trying to take over the Pornovurt industry by working him to death, he seemed surprised when Sakura said that Sasuke had already left for work.
"Arg," he muttered, slumping in a kitchen chair. "That damn club doesn't even open for another hour. . . ."
Sakura bit her lip, but refrained from making an apologetic comment--it was Naruto's own fault, the two-timer. Quasi-two-timer, whatever, he could have at least warned one of them.
"Well, I'll leave as soon as my friend gets back into town, and I'll be out at work in a couple days, so I can avoid him. Good luck."
"Aw, Sakura, don't be like that," Naruto said, and she gave him a look. "I'm sorry, okay? I didn't think to say anything, I just went to get you."
"Why'd you ask me out in the first place?" she retorted, leaning against a chair. "If you were with him first, that's just . . . being a creep. And you're lucky I'm not a homophobe, or I probably would have run screaming out of here!"
Sakura paused and reflected that it was probably better for her.
Naruto made a couple frustrated hand motions and slumped over the table. "I dunno. You were really cute?"
Sakura stared at him for a few moments, and then pinched the bridge of her nose. Dogs.
And that was how it all started.
Vurt Ninjas 5, the backstory chapter: or, how Naruto introduced Sasuke and Sakura to each other in the worst way possible.
Fate, karma, luck, or just the fact that Shizune's clinic had been the one closest to Jiraiya's workshop when Naruto slammed open the door to the waiting room and announced that he was fucking dying: Sakura could never figure out which of these it was that wound up introducing her to him. Most days she figured it was karma.
"Sakura? I'll double your pay for tonight if you'll do something discreetly," Shizune said as she opened the door to the second office.
"Sure!" Sakura replied automatically. "What is it?"
"Go treat the guy in the end of the hall. He has a dream snake bite."
Sakura frowned even as she moved to the supply cabinets and began pulling out the snake weed. "What do I need to do that's discreet?"
"Make his lies into something that can actually be put on a report," Shizune said wryly. "He's associated with a good friend of mine, so. . . ."
"On it, ma'am!"
Naruto was feverish by the time Sakura got to the room and began applying the snake weed to the bite on his forearm, but he regained enough sense to start leering at her a few minutes later. Sakura pulled the collar of her shirt up slightly and thought Dogs, before picking up the clipboard Shizune had left behind. "Okay, what happened?"
"A dream snake bit me," he replied cheerfully.
"Thanks," Sakura drawled. "How?"
". . . I tripped over it. And then it bit me."
Sakura set the clipboard on her lap and gave him a look.
"It was in a dark alley," Naruto added.
"Uh-huh," Sakura replied, and reminded herself that she was getting paid double.
Two days later, she came out of the clinic to find Naruto sitting against the wall.
"You have to go into the building before we can help you," she commented as she walked past. He scrabbled onto his feet.
"Nah, I was waiting for you!" he replied with a grin. Sakura gave him a long, sidewise look. He held up his hands non-threateningly. "I'm not a crazy stalker guy, I just figured, I owed you dinner. Or something. For saving my life and stuff."
"It's just my job," she replied, keeping the almost-smile off her face.
He kept grinning despite the barb, which meant he was either ignoring it or it had gone over his head. Sakura couldn't say which for sure. "Well, it's my life. So, can I buy you a burger or dango or something?"
"Your life is worth a burger?"
He held his hands up a little higher, mock-helplessly. "Hey, hey, I'm on limited funds here! Your place charged an arm and a leg for that damn antidote, and my cheapass boss won't cover it, says it's my fault!" He gave her another grin, this one a little plaintive. "If I'd planned it, I would've made sure to set aside enough money to treat you properly. But, since . . . yeah. My life is worth hamburger meat."
Sakura was having a hard time holding back laughter at this point, though she didn't really want to encourage him.
"Just dinner," she said, keeping her tone even.
"Just dinner," he agreed. He smiled so much, she thought.
Naruto was totally not her type. He was obnoxious, loud, coarse, and he was enough of those things that she could tell even when he was struggling to be cool.
He also worked in the Pornovurt industry. Sakura didn't agree to meet him for a second date, but when he was sitting outside the clinic the next day, she let him talk her into dinner again.
Sakura left the clinic a week later. She'd worked out a deal with the place: she didn't steal drugs from there, and Shizune let her come back whenever she'd built up enough savings or wanted to drop out of the trade for a little while. She gave Naruto her phone number with serious regrets, but he didn't call excessively, so she stopped worrying.
She got fired from the newest clinic a month later, at the most inconvenient time--Ino was out of town. And she'd taken Shikamaru with her, so there was no way for Sakura to get into her apartment. (Chouji probably had a spare key, but Sakura didn't get along very well with him, so there wasn't much she could do.)
Really, she wouldn't have called Naruto, but the head doctor had said he was calling the police and she couldn't go back to her apartment until something bigger happened to attract their attention.
"Sure!" was all he'd said, when she finished asking. "I'll pick you up!"
". . . Okay," Sakura had replied, and wondered why he hadn't even asked anything. "Thanks."
He arrived at the bus stop she'd directed him to twenty minutes after hanging up, blaming the traffic. Sakura stared at the motorcycle with a raised eyebrow. "You didn't seem like the kind of guy to drive one of those."
"Oh, this piece of junk belongs to Sasuke. He has to be a badass." Naruto tugged off his helmet and gave it to her. "But we can still fit your stuff on it!"
Sakura was quietly grateful that she had only two suitcases.
The gratefulness only lasted until Naruto pulled up in front of the building that he apparently lived in, and then Sakura went back to wondering what the hell she had gotten herself into, in-between thinking Oh, not another Shadowgirl.
Naruto had slid off the bike and started unstrapping her luggage while Sakura was still staring at the door the Shadowgirl had gone through. And she couldn't go back to her apartment for a while. And Shizune wouldn't let her sleep on her couch or overnight at the clinic, since she didn't want to be implicated in anything Sakura did. And Chouji really probably wouldn't give her a spare key, so. . . .
Ino, get your ass back into town soon or I will kill you. So much, Sakura thought, and then followed Naruto's waving arm into the building.
Four flights of stairs up, and Naruto stopped on the landing where the Smoker was unlocking a door. Sakura was unnerved to see, on closer inspection, that it was a guy--but he wasn't dripping flesh, so it couldn't be a Zombie. At least, she didn't think it could be a Zombie. How would he have gotten into the city in the first place? What the hell is--
"Oi, Sasuke!"
--no way, Sakura thought, and Naruto was already going on.
"This is Sakura!" he said, pointing back at her. "She's going to be living with us now!"
Sakura was a perceptive young woman. She only needed two seconds of seeing the look on Sasuke's face to realize that he wasn't just a roommate.
Sakura and Sasuke's first bonding experience was beating the crap out of Naruto.
After he fell down the stairs as he tried to dodge Sakura throwing her suitcase at his shins while Sasuke aimed a punch at his jaw, she made the other man stop. Sasuke shoved her arm away and kicked the door open, and Sakura went halfway down the stairs and dragged Naruto into the apartment by his jacket collar.
He sat on the table edge as she applied iodine harder than necessary to the bruised cut along his face, and tried to ignore the fact that Sasuke was sitting on the couch across from them and glaring. It was hard, especially since Sakura kept glancing at him from the corner of her eye to make sure he really was a guy, and not about to try and eat her.
"Owwww," Naruto whined as she pressed the lump of cotton against his cut. "Sakura, that hurts!"
"You deserve it!" she snapped. "Hell, if I'd--I can't believe you didn't even say anyth--what are you, part Robo or something? Augh!"
"Eheh," Naruto muttered, looking down at the ground and scratching the back of his head.
Sakura frowned--in her peripheral vision, Sasuke had started. A moment later, he stood up and left the apartment, pulling the door shut behind him.
"Dammit," Naruto snapped, and stood up.
Oops. . . . "He isn't part Robo, right?" Sakura asked.
"No, no . . . here, put your stuff wherever you want, I'll be back soon." Before she could say anything, he had wrenched the door open again and was yelling down the stairs. "Asshole, get back here and listen to--HEY! I said get back here!!"
After the noise of Naruto taking the stairs several at a time lessened, Sakura pushed the door shut and tried Ino's phone again.
Naruto either didn't find Sasuke or wasn't able to force him back until early the next morning. Sakura had already made herself dinner from some of the leftovers in the fridge, had scrubbed down the surprisingly clean bathtub with the chemicals under the sink, and had locked herself in the bathroom with her suitcases, her cell, and a couch cushion and blanket. She woke from a shallow sleep when Naruto and Sasuke continued yelling at each other on their way through the apartment, and then pulled the blanket up over her ears and tried to fall back asleep when one of them slammed a door further down the hall.
It didn't work well, and Sakura had been drifting on the edges of consciousness when someone knocked on the bathroom door hours later.
"Hey, you," Sasuke said tonelessly. "I need in there."
Sakura risked leaving her bags in the bathroom, but took her wallet and her phone with her when she stepped out. She combed her fingers through her hair as she made her way to the kitchen/living room area.
Naruto wasn't in there, and Sakura didn't want to pass the bathroom to check in the bedroom, so instead she called Shizune's clinic and spent several minutes sweet-talking the woman into letting her go back to work in a couple days. Sasuke came into the kitchen while she was talking, and started making eggs.
"You are almost more trouble than you are useful, do you know that, Sakura?" Shizune said crossly.
Sakura had heard it all before, so she rolled her eyes and sounded apologetic. "I know, I know Ms. Shizune. I'm sorry."
The woman sighed. "Come in Friday. No, Thursday--I have too many people scheduled for just me and Migaki."
"Yay! Thank you very much!"
"Don't thank me, I'm giving you all the contagious ones," Shizune replied. "Goodbye."
"Bye, ma'am." Sakura waited until Shizune hung up, and then closed her phone and made herself look over at Sasuke. "Um, hi. . . ."
"Mn," he replied.
Sakura toyed with the phone. "I'm . . . sorry about just appearing here, but I needed somewhere to stay, and--"
"Whatever," Sasuke replied. "You can sleep on the couch."
"Okay." She fidgeted with the phone again. ". . . Where's Naruto?"
"He already went to work," Sasuke replied, and flipped the eggs. "I work nights, so don't make a lot of noise."
"All right," Sakura said, and then hesitated. "I'm sorry about--I didn't kn--"
"I know," Sasuke said flatly, scrambling the eggs with a disturbingly stabbing motion. "He's a dumbass and he's always been a dumbass. Do you want some?"
"--Yeah. I'm going to go buy food for myself later, so. . . ."
Sasuke scraped half the eggs onto a plate next to the stove, then dropped the pan on the unlit burner and turned the stove off.
Sasuke's back had been to her the whole time he was at the stove. Sakura didn't really want to deal with him face-to-face, so she used that moment to escape to the bathroom.
By the time she got out of the shower, the bedroom door was shut and the eggs in the pan were cold. Sasuke had thrown the spatula into the sink, so Sakura washed it off and reused the plate from her dinner last night.
When Naruto came back that evening, bitching about Jiriaya trying to take over the Pornovurt industry by working him to death, he seemed surprised when Sakura said that Sasuke had already left for work.
"Arg," he muttered, slumping in a kitchen chair. "That damn club doesn't even open for another hour. . . ."
Sakura bit her lip, but refrained from making an apologetic comment--it was Naruto's own fault, the two-timer. Quasi-two-timer, whatever, he could have at least warned one of them.
"Well, I'll leave as soon as my friend gets back into town, and I'll be out at work in a couple days, so I can avoid him. Good luck."
"Aw, Sakura, don't be like that," Naruto said, and she gave him a look. "I'm sorry, okay? I didn't think to say anything, I just went to get you."
"Why'd you ask me out in the first place?" she retorted, leaning against a chair. "If you were with him first, that's just . . . being a creep. And you're lucky I'm not a homophobe, or I probably would have run screaming out of here!"
Sakura paused and reflected that it was probably better for her.
Naruto made a couple frustrated hand motions and slumped over the table. "I dunno. You were really cute?"
Sakura stared at him for a few moments, and then pinched the bridge of her nose. Dogs.
And that was how it all started.