In which Sasuke catches up in some things, and doesn't quite catch some others
Title: These People I Can’t Stand
Rating: T
Warnings: (oblivious) Sasuke, (GaaNaru) fluff, a bit of language
Setting: AU, present day Japan
Chapter One, Chapter Two
Chapter Three, Chapter Four
Chapter Five: Homecoming
Rehabilitation was another timeskip, but one Sasuke remembered more about.
During it, he learned to tolerate the concerned and still slightly guilty looks of his uncle, and to let himself feel just a tiny bit of guilt, too, for being the cause of them. He watched Itachi struggle with starting over and learning to do things one sense short, having gone almost completely blind as a side-effect of whatever he had been on.
Sasuke wasn't sure if he should consider himself having finally bested his brother, as it didn't feel like a victory. Perhaps a truce wouldn't be too much of a yielding considering the circumstances, though.
He even got a visit from Kakashi, whom somebody had obviously told too much: the third question his former teacher asked him was what kind of eagle or hawk he had thought of being. Sasuke got rid of the topic by saying that actually, he had been a duck instead, and just agreeing to the first species of ducks Kakashi mentioned.
He was also told how his friends had found him.
Three of those allies he had made had ratted him out -with his best interests in mind, he was assured; he had seemed in pretty bad shape the last time they had worked together. Sasuke insisted he had not been homeless and broke and could have perfectly well afforded a belt, the rope had just felt like a convenient thing to have around and what better place to store it than wrapping it around your waist. And the bandages around his wrists had totally not been what they looked like. He would never even think of killing himself, drunk, high or sober. Probably.
Either way, Naruto and Sakura had gotten a deal of being kept informed whenever the trio bumped into him again. They had always gotten there too late to even catch a glimpse of him, though.
Meanwhile, a branch of Itachi’s gang had made the mistake of stepping on the toes of one now-very-intact Sabaku clan. Gaara said they had ‘given him information’.
Naruto said Gaara and his brother and cousin had caught a bunch of guys robbing their grandmother’s place and beaten them up pretty thoroughly, and that Gaara’s cousin, as an ex-member, had recognized the burglars and given the little terror a free hand in fishing out anything they knew about where Itachi hung out. One of the locations was two streets away from where their joyous reunion had taken place.
And Sakura said Gaara’s brother had had to use all his diplomatic skills to convince him that he should get his own injuries treated and leave the rest of the interrogations to the cops. When Gaara had finally agreed to go to the hospital, Naruto had practically teleported there the second he had received the call, her trying to keep up. From her description of that joyous reunion, Sasuke could easily picture Naruto setting a camp at Gaara's bedside like the redhead had died and come back to life instead of suffering a broken wrist and a concussion ('Colles fracture' and 'MTBI', she had insisted). Always the overreactor.
He was not informed of whether Gaara had needed hand-holding as well, but finding out Naruto had at least had to feed him a couple of times was consolation enough.
He eventually caught up in his studies and started high school with Naruto and Sakura -and Gaara, who by then had moved back to Konoha with his new family and then some in tow.
Aware of his misadventure, some girls now left Sasuke alone because he was ‘dangerous’, which was a relief. Also aware of his misadventure, some girls now swarmed him with tenfold enthusiasm because he was ‘dangerous’, which he decided was much more annoying than Naruto, Sakura and Gaara could ever manage to be, so he kept them around as a human shield of sorts. If he was with them, he would at least get left alone by others.
The only flaw in that plan was that apparently you couldn't leave your loser friends unattended without having them make more loser friends, who were now by association Sasuke's friends, too.
Naruto the stupid little outcast blended seamlessly into any clique, had a girl following of his own no matter how oblivious he was to it, and didn’t need to copy anyone’s homework and steal test sheets from the teachers’ office to get by in class anymore. Complex-ridden crybaby Sakura held her head high and her ground in an argument, even if it wasn’t with Naruto. She hadn’t asked Sasuke once if he thought she was beautiful, as if she didn’t need his assurance anymore.
And Gaara? The antisocial freak who followed them around because nobody else dared to talk to him was the goddamn picture of a gentleman, trusted and respected by students and teachers alike. And he smiled. Without looking like he was going to pick up an axe and hack you to pieces with that grin on.
It seemed Sasuke wasn’t the only one who still found him creepy at times, though.
One day some random guy had just happened to bump into them and drop his stuff, and Gaara had had to go and work his ‘I’m nice and polite now’ campaign and help him pick it up. Both him and the random guy had looked at each other eyes wide as saucers (well, the random guy’s eyes had already looked a bit like saucers anyway) and stuttered a ‘YOU!’ in utter horror.
Then Gaara had -without a warning, because there was a gap in his social skills where it would have been said you had to ask a person first to do something that looks like an attack- yanked the guy’s sleeve up and carefully turned his forearm around to inspect it from every angle. Then he had looked at his corresponding leg with much interest, before finally gasping a sincerely relieved, amazed ‘You’re okay!’
The guy had, with quickly dispersing nervousness, explained something about how yeah, he had recovered completely and was even the captain of some sports team now, and something about how injuries heal quickly when you’re in the Springtime of Youth and whatnot.
Gaara had flashed his Smile and told him he was glad things had turned out that way, and then the guy had looked like he had seen a ghost.
“An old friend of yours?” Sakura had asked when the guy had left in a hurry after some undeniably courageous introductions.
“I went to school with him before I moved to Konoha for the first time,” Gaara had explained, and then taken a pause to see if he needed to elaborate.
“I broke his arm and leg because he sat next to me.”
And despite of this, Naruto still dared to sit next to him in the class they had been on their way to.
But Naruto and Gaara were inseparable anyway. Sasuke had heard on at least one occasion Sakura and her friend (who probably wasn’t called Pig, but he couldn’t remember her real name, and Sakura called her that all the time) plotting to come up with a portmanteau name to refer to both of them simultaneously, because you pretty much couldn’t get one without the other.
And if Gaara could read his mind every once in a while, Sasuke was positive that sometimes Gaara and Naruto simply shared a consciousness. They could have a conversation through looks and smiles and only a few random words or inside jokes spoken aloud. Maybe they were the last two of a telepathic alien race. After all, Naruto kept calling Sasuke a bastard, but it wasn’t like the pedigreed Uchiha heir was the one here who didn’t even know who his birth parents were.
Sasuke watched Naruto scribble the finishing touches to his art project, which was due in fifteen minutes.
The blond had erased and redrawn the fox’s tail so many times it looked like it had nine instead of one, and the ears still looked like those of a rabbit’s. Sasuke knew the subject of the picture was what had been Naruto’s imaginary friend as a child when he hadn’t had any real ones (friends, not foxes), because -surprise surprise, Gaara had had one, too (a fat, drunken tanuki, of course, not a fox or anything normal like that).
Was there anything at all that Naruto had and Gaara didn’t?
“Ooh, now I see what you have been trying to tell me! Thank you so much, Gaara-sensei!”
Slightly frowning at the honorific, Gaara helped Matsuri gather her books and wished her good luck on her test, when a big guy, who looked like he had fallen asleep in class and had someone with drawing skills equal to Naruto’s doodle on his face, walked up to them.
“Pretty little thing, that girlfriend of yours,” he told Gaara with a wink.
“Thank you, so is your boyfriend,” his brother replied, with a smirk. There was no need to correct things in front of Gaara’s friends anymore -if they didn’t know by now that pursuing close proximity with the opposite sex was somewhere in the top three on Kankuro’s list of interests and just about the second to last thing on Gaara’s, they hadn’t been paying attention.
(Sasuke was very aware of the latter, since it was about as high up on his own. There were so many better ways to spend your time efficiently than worrying about your own or your peers' pathetic juvenile attempts at courtship, and he was -secretly, of course- happy that someone saw him eye to eye on this.)
“Alas, it seems Sasori and I have broken up," Kankuro sighed. "Ever since we moved here he’s been spending all his time with those artist pricks.”
“Sai is not a prick,” Naruto said absent-mindedly, and erased one more foxtail.
“Most of the time,” added Sakura.
“You have my approval of applying the description to Deidara, though,” Gaara assured with a shrug, and Sasuke silently agreed. Throwing fire crackers at random passerbys tended to get you on people’s bad sides. The guy was probably only calling his antics 'art' because it made it easier for him to get away with them.
“At least my brother still loves me,” Kankuro said in an annoyingly theatrical voice, and slung his bag off his back, rummaging something from it. “Anyway, I just came to tell Naruto I have something of his. I guess you forgot this when you last stayed over?”
Naruto stared at the strange hat that… stared back. It had eyes and big buck teeth. A typical, stupid thing Naruto would own.
“…No, I’ve got mine at home. At least I wore it last night, and I haven’t stayed overnight at your place in weeks.”
A typical, stupid thing Naruto would admit to owning.
“You sure? Then whose-“
Gaara was looking rather uncomfortable. Sakura, Sasuke could tell, was struggling not to snicker or coo at how cute it was or something.
“You got one, too! That’s awesome, now we match!” Naruto, of course, made no such effort. "Wasn't I right? It does help you sleep."
The contrast in volume between the question and the answer was so huge Sasuke wasn’t sure if anyone besides Naruto and him had heard it (or if anyone at all had been intended to hear it), but Gaara’s lips had moved when he nodded, so he must have said it.
“Because it reminds me of you.”
And then in the next blink of an eye the redhead, slightly red from other parts of his head than just hair, turned to Kankuro and calmly told him he would appreciate it if he didn’t bring any more of his laundry to the school. Sasuke mentally crossed off ‘stupid sleeping cap’ from his list of things Naruto had but Gaara didn’t.
The list grew even shorter in the next few weeks, and then one day the readings on the Garuto Weirdness Meter just went throught the roof.
(Yes, Sakura and Pig’s creative efforts had finally paid off and they had a collective title. Naruto liked it, even, because besides Gaara + Naruto, it also sounded like GAR + Naruto. He joked about how they should take up superhero-ing, because together they would be too badass for the villains of the world to handle.)
Neither of them were anywhere to be found during the lunch break, but it wasn’t like Sasuke even looked for them. He could use a bit of time alone, without trying to figure out their disturbing half-lidded staring contests as a distraction, and Sakura was eating with Pi- okay, Yamanaka, anyway, or more like trying to convince Yamanaka to eat.
His relaxation was short-lived, however, because when the two boys turned up for the rest of the day, it seemed they had forgotten what else to do.
Gaara didn’t pay attention in class and got his first angry ‘ahem’ from a teacher. Naruto didn’t bother to have a stealthy eraser-bit war with Inuzuka or to interrupt the teacher with stupid comments, and got left alone simply because he wasn’t causing any problems. During the breaks they didn’t chat with other students, rush to finish any last-minute schoolwork, or try to mess with Sasuke’s head by having one of their half-telepathic conversations.
No, all they did was stared at each other and smiled.
When school was over and they each headed for their homes, Naruto suddenly got all fidgety and stuttered ‘see you tomorrow’ or something equally self-evident.
Gaara stood there looking like he knew he should do something but had no idea what. That was nothing new.
Naruto was blushing. That was definitely new.
Then Gaara smiled yet again and extended his hand, which Naruto took a couple of seconds of hesitation to grab and approximately five minutes to let go of. What the hell?
If Gaara was ever informal and laid-back with anyone, that someone would be Naruto, who in turn wouldn’t know formal behavior if it bit him in the ass. They had known each other for years and been instantly on first-name terms. And suddenly -a handshake? That strange caricature of a prim gesture had looked more like an emergency measure to avoid doing something completely reckless.
Little did Sasuke know (though he should have), that wasn’t even off the scale yet.
-----------
GAR = A term for male anime characters who are so overwhelmingly badass it’s okay to fangirl them even if you are a guy yourself. And this is the point where you lulz: originated from someone describing their feelings for such a character and misspelling the critical part of the sentence “I’m gay for…”
I had to include that because some people do refer to Sage!Naruto as 'GARuto'.
Edit: Yes, I keep changing the title of the chapter. I think this one'll stick.
Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight
Rating: T
Warnings: (oblivious) Sasuke, (GaaNaru) fluff, a bit of language
Setting: AU, present day Japan
Chapter One, Chapter Two
Chapter Three, Chapter Four
Chapter Five: Homecoming
Rehabilitation was another timeskip, but one Sasuke remembered more about.
During it, he learned to tolerate the concerned and still slightly guilty looks of his uncle, and to let himself feel just a tiny bit of guilt, too, for being the cause of them. He watched Itachi struggle with starting over and learning to do things one sense short, having gone almost completely blind as a side-effect of whatever he had been on.
Sasuke wasn't sure if he should consider himself having finally bested his brother, as it didn't feel like a victory. Perhaps a truce wouldn't be too much of a yielding considering the circumstances, though.
He even got a visit from Kakashi, whom somebody had obviously told too much: the third question his former teacher asked him was what kind of eagle or hawk he had thought of being. Sasuke got rid of the topic by saying that actually, he had been a duck instead, and just agreeing to the first species of ducks Kakashi mentioned.
He was also told how his friends had found him.
Three of those allies he had made had ratted him out -with his best interests in mind, he was assured; he had seemed in pretty bad shape the last time they had worked together. Sasuke insisted he had not been homeless and broke and could have perfectly well afforded a belt, the rope had just felt like a convenient thing to have around and what better place to store it than wrapping it around your waist. And the bandages around his wrists had totally not been what they looked like. He would never even think of killing himself, drunk, high or sober. Probably.
Either way, Naruto and Sakura had gotten a deal of being kept informed whenever the trio bumped into him again. They had always gotten there too late to even catch a glimpse of him, though.
Meanwhile, a branch of Itachi’s gang had made the mistake of stepping on the toes of one now-very-intact Sabaku clan. Gaara said they had ‘given him information’.
Naruto said Gaara and his brother and cousin had caught a bunch of guys robbing their grandmother’s place and beaten them up pretty thoroughly, and that Gaara’s cousin, as an ex-member, had recognized the burglars and given the little terror a free hand in fishing out anything they knew about where Itachi hung out. One of the locations was two streets away from where their joyous reunion had taken place.
And Sakura said Gaara’s brother had had to use all his diplomatic skills to convince him that he should get his own injuries treated and leave the rest of the interrogations to the cops. When Gaara had finally agreed to go to the hospital, Naruto had practically teleported there the second he had received the call, her trying to keep up. From her description of that joyous reunion, Sasuke could easily picture Naruto setting a camp at Gaara's bedside like the redhead had died and come back to life instead of suffering a broken wrist and a concussion ('Colles fracture' and 'MTBI', she had insisted). Always the overreactor.
He was not informed of whether Gaara had needed hand-holding as well, but finding out Naruto had at least had to feed him a couple of times was consolation enough.
He eventually caught up in his studies and started high school with Naruto and Sakura -and Gaara, who by then had moved back to Konoha with his new family and then some in tow.
Aware of his misadventure, some girls now left Sasuke alone because he was ‘dangerous’, which was a relief. Also aware of his misadventure, some girls now swarmed him with tenfold enthusiasm because he was ‘dangerous’, which he decided was much more annoying than Naruto, Sakura and Gaara could ever manage to be, so he kept them around as a human shield of sorts. If he was with them, he would at least get left alone by others.
The only flaw in that plan was that apparently you couldn't leave your loser friends unattended without having them make more loser friends, who were now by association Sasuke's friends, too.
Naruto the stupid little outcast blended seamlessly into any clique, had a girl following of his own no matter how oblivious he was to it, and didn’t need to copy anyone’s homework and steal test sheets from the teachers’ office to get by in class anymore. Complex-ridden crybaby Sakura held her head high and her ground in an argument, even if it wasn’t with Naruto. She hadn’t asked Sasuke once if he thought she was beautiful, as if she didn’t need his assurance anymore.
And Gaara? The antisocial freak who followed them around because nobody else dared to talk to him was the goddamn picture of a gentleman, trusted and respected by students and teachers alike. And he smiled. Without looking like he was going to pick up an axe and hack you to pieces with that grin on.
It seemed Sasuke wasn’t the only one who still found him creepy at times, though.
One day some random guy had just happened to bump into them and drop his stuff, and Gaara had had to go and work his ‘I’m nice and polite now’ campaign and help him pick it up. Both him and the random guy had looked at each other eyes wide as saucers (well, the random guy’s eyes had already looked a bit like saucers anyway) and stuttered a ‘YOU!’ in utter horror.
Then Gaara had -without a warning, because there was a gap in his social skills where it would have been said you had to ask a person first to do something that looks like an attack- yanked the guy’s sleeve up and carefully turned his forearm around to inspect it from every angle. Then he had looked at his corresponding leg with much interest, before finally gasping a sincerely relieved, amazed ‘You’re okay!’
The guy had, with quickly dispersing nervousness, explained something about how yeah, he had recovered completely and was even the captain of some sports team now, and something about how injuries heal quickly when you’re in the Springtime of Youth and whatnot.
Gaara had flashed his Smile and told him he was glad things had turned out that way, and then the guy had looked like he had seen a ghost.
“An old friend of yours?” Sakura had asked when the guy had left in a hurry after some undeniably courageous introductions.
“I went to school with him before I moved to Konoha for the first time,” Gaara had explained, and then taken a pause to see if he needed to elaborate.
“I broke his arm and leg because he sat next to me.”
And despite of this, Naruto still dared to sit next to him in the class they had been on their way to.
But Naruto and Gaara were inseparable anyway. Sasuke had heard on at least one occasion Sakura and her friend (who probably wasn’t called Pig, but he couldn’t remember her real name, and Sakura called her that all the time) plotting to come up with a portmanteau name to refer to both of them simultaneously, because you pretty much couldn’t get one without the other.
And if Gaara could read his mind every once in a while, Sasuke was positive that sometimes Gaara and Naruto simply shared a consciousness. They could have a conversation through looks and smiles and only a few random words or inside jokes spoken aloud. Maybe they were the last two of a telepathic alien race. After all, Naruto kept calling Sasuke a bastard, but it wasn’t like the pedigreed Uchiha heir was the one here who didn’t even know who his birth parents were.
Sasuke watched Naruto scribble the finishing touches to his art project, which was due in fifteen minutes.
The blond had erased and redrawn the fox’s tail so many times it looked like it had nine instead of one, and the ears still looked like those of a rabbit’s. Sasuke knew the subject of the picture was what had been Naruto’s imaginary friend as a child when he hadn’t had any real ones (friends, not foxes), because -surprise surprise, Gaara had had one, too (a fat, drunken tanuki, of course, not a fox or anything normal like that).
Was there anything at all that Naruto had and Gaara didn’t?
“Ooh, now I see what you have been trying to tell me! Thank you so much, Gaara-sensei!”
Slightly frowning at the honorific, Gaara helped Matsuri gather her books and wished her good luck on her test, when a big guy, who looked like he had fallen asleep in class and had someone with drawing skills equal to Naruto’s doodle on his face, walked up to them.
“Pretty little thing, that girlfriend of yours,” he told Gaara with a wink.
“Thank you, so is your boyfriend,” his brother replied, with a smirk. There was no need to correct things in front of Gaara’s friends anymore -if they didn’t know by now that pursuing close proximity with the opposite sex was somewhere in the top three on Kankuro’s list of interests and just about the second to last thing on Gaara’s, they hadn’t been paying attention.
(Sasuke was very aware of the latter, since it was about as high up on his own. There were so many better ways to spend your time efficiently than worrying about your own or your peers' pathetic juvenile attempts at courtship, and he was -secretly, of course- happy that someone saw him eye to eye on this.)
“Alas, it seems Sasori and I have broken up," Kankuro sighed. "Ever since we moved here he’s been spending all his time with those artist pricks.”
“Sai is not a prick,” Naruto said absent-mindedly, and erased one more foxtail.
“Most of the time,” added Sakura.
“You have my approval of applying the description to Deidara, though,” Gaara assured with a shrug, and Sasuke silently agreed. Throwing fire crackers at random passerbys tended to get you on people’s bad sides. The guy was probably only calling his antics 'art' because it made it easier for him to get away with them.
“At least my brother still loves me,” Kankuro said in an annoyingly theatrical voice, and slung his bag off his back, rummaging something from it. “Anyway, I just came to tell Naruto I have something of his. I guess you forgot this when you last stayed over?”
Naruto stared at the strange hat that… stared back. It had eyes and big buck teeth. A typical, stupid thing Naruto would own.
“…No, I’ve got mine at home. At least I wore it last night, and I haven’t stayed overnight at your place in weeks.”
A typical, stupid thing Naruto would admit to owning.
“You sure? Then whose-“
Gaara was looking rather uncomfortable. Sakura, Sasuke could tell, was struggling not to snicker or coo at how cute it was or something.
“You got one, too! That’s awesome, now we match!” Naruto, of course, made no such effort. "Wasn't I right? It does help you sleep."
The contrast in volume between the question and the answer was so huge Sasuke wasn’t sure if anyone besides Naruto and him had heard it (or if anyone at all had been intended to hear it), but Gaara’s lips had moved when he nodded, so he must have said it.
“Because it reminds me of you.”
And then in the next blink of an eye the redhead, slightly red from other parts of his head than just hair, turned to Kankuro and calmly told him he would appreciate it if he didn’t bring any more of his laundry to the school. Sasuke mentally crossed off ‘stupid sleeping cap’ from his list of things Naruto had but Gaara didn’t.
The list grew even shorter in the next few weeks, and then one day the readings on the Garuto Weirdness Meter just went throught the roof.
(Yes, Sakura and Pig’s creative efforts had finally paid off and they had a collective title. Naruto liked it, even, because besides Gaara + Naruto, it also sounded like GAR + Naruto. He joked about how they should take up superhero-ing, because together they would be too badass for the villains of the world to handle.)
Neither of them were anywhere to be found during the lunch break, but it wasn’t like Sasuke even looked for them. He could use a bit of time alone, without trying to figure out their disturbing half-lidded staring contests as a distraction, and Sakura was eating with Pi- okay, Yamanaka, anyway, or more like trying to convince Yamanaka to eat.
His relaxation was short-lived, however, because when the two boys turned up for the rest of the day, it seemed they had forgotten what else to do.
Gaara didn’t pay attention in class and got his first angry ‘ahem’ from a teacher. Naruto didn’t bother to have a stealthy eraser-bit war with Inuzuka or to interrupt the teacher with stupid comments, and got left alone simply because he wasn’t causing any problems. During the breaks they didn’t chat with other students, rush to finish any last-minute schoolwork, or try to mess with Sasuke’s head by having one of their half-telepathic conversations.
No, all they did was stared at each other and smiled.
When school was over and they each headed for their homes, Naruto suddenly got all fidgety and stuttered ‘see you tomorrow’ or something equally self-evident.
Gaara stood there looking like he knew he should do something but had no idea what. That was nothing new.
Naruto was blushing. That was definitely new.
Then Gaara smiled yet again and extended his hand, which Naruto took a couple of seconds of hesitation to grab and approximately five minutes to let go of. What the hell?
If Gaara was ever informal and laid-back with anyone, that someone would be Naruto, who in turn wouldn’t know formal behavior if it bit him in the ass. They had known each other for years and been instantly on first-name terms. And suddenly -a handshake? That strange caricature of a prim gesture had looked more like an emergency measure to avoid doing something completely reckless.
Little did Sasuke know (though he should have), that wasn’t even off the scale yet.
-----------
GAR = A term for male anime characters who are so overwhelmingly badass it’s okay to fangirl them even if you are a guy yourself. And this is the point where you lulz: originated from someone describing their feelings for such a character and misspelling the critical part of the sentence “I’m gay for…”
I had to include that because some people do refer to Sage!Naruto as 'GARuto'.
Edit: Yes, I keep changing the title of the chapter. I think this one'll stick.
Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight