Purple 1/4 (part 1/3)
Title: Purple
Pairing: SasuNaru
Rating: NC17
Chapter Rating:NC17
Warnings: Explicit rape, language
Summary: It's hard learning how to save peoples lives when you're so busy trying to save your own.
Author's Notes Jesus Christ. I started this and wrote ten pages in one sitting. Then I managed five. Then three. Then two, then one, then one again. Soon I was down to writing only paragraphs, sometimes sentances, at a time. I've worked on this for two months. Those who've read Teeth (http://community.livejournal.com/sasuxnaru/2060150.html), I haven't updated because I've been working on this monstrosity. How big is it? I need to put it in three posts. Here is the first part.
Extra warnings: This is not the giggly fangirl rape where Naruto falls to his knees. I've read some supposed 'rape' stories, perhaps for some reference as I've never written anything about it before, and found it disturbing at how lightly people take it. And also, fanfic writers, gay sex is not perfect. Most first times it's a downright disaster. It's messy, awkward, and downright painful.
Ah well. Part 1:
EDIT:Link to the clean version on FanFiction: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4572273/1/Purple
Part 2: http://community.livejournal.com/sasuxnaru/2095052.html?#cutid1
Part 3: http://community.livejournal.com/sasuxnaru/2095125.html
“In my field of paper flowers and candy clouds of lullaby, I lie inside myself for hours, and watch my purple sky fly over me.”
-Imaginary, by Evanescance
Purple, 1 of 4
Out of all the houses he’d been expecting, this was not it. It wasn’t even a house at all; a penthouse suit, situated somewhere between the fourth and sixth stories of an eleven-story building, gleaming and new like a sore thumb in a metropolis of garbage and industrial wreck.
His messenger bag, khaki with frayed edges and broken buckles, was uncomfortable against his side. Sweat made his shirt glue itself to his skin like fly paper. His task set, his map in the form of a torn-out sheet of loose-leaf clenched in a fist with cracked knuckles, Naruto crossed the last street towards the Uchiha’s complex.
“Take this straight to him, Naruto,” his guardian’s words continued to ring. “No side trips. No stops. Straight. To him.”
“I got it, I got it,” his own words echoed back, lacking just as much stability and sounding more like a recorded message on the answering machine. “No side trips.”
There was a mat of gleaming red fur curled by the sewer, Naruto noticed, as he stepped over the chipped curb. Its mangled legs were furled in an almost graceful way, and its stomach was sinking in and starting to turn obsidian with rot. Copper fur was heavy with crisp, dried blood, and its black paws still seemed to claw at the pavement. The creatures eyes were shut, mouth slightly agape, and if it weren’t for decomposition, Naruto would have taken it to be asleep. But its tail’s bush had flattened to a snake-like center, and it had become a beautiful skeleton as opposed to a beautiful creation.
Wondering idly what a fox had been doing so far from its woods in the first place, Naruto waltzed up and through the swinging doors. The metal framework was stainless steel, very modern for a not-so-modern town.
But who would expect anything less of the great protégé Sasuke Uchiha?
The bastard’s homework was settled somewhere in his bag. The fourteen-year-old, after not missing a single minute of class over the entire year, had been absent with no call nor notice for the past three days. Naruto’s impromptu visit was more of a reassurance for the teachers that the star pupil of the class hadn’t thrown himself out the window than to deliver homework the raven could have no doubt completed before the last bell of homeroom rang. Which threw Naruto for a complete loop; the guy couldn’t speak a word of English when he’d first enrolled in Clifford Private School.
He’d been a dark, brooding thing that shone so brightly you couldn’t help but notice him. His tongue was so foreign and something new to hear, like the catchy new song played over and over on the radio until it lost all appeal. At least for Naruto it did. For others, it grew more sickeningly addictive every day, and it was so obvious the youth didn’t want the attention. But since when did things like that make a difference?
Middle school graduation was in three weeks, a small and uneventful ceremony made to please the parents rather than the students. A sense of accomplishment was more of a requirement, it seemed, than the basic four years of math and English. His guardian Iruka would, of course, be there. He was a teacher at the high school and seemed pleased (insultingly pleased) that Naruto had managed to claw his way out with a passing grade. Passing if you squinted.
That being said, while Naruto’s legs skimmed awkwardly along the floor from his position on the bottom rung of the ladder, Sasuke sat so high up he was in danger of his high horse throwing him off.
The guy was Asian, so that could have been key, but did he have to graduate at the top of the class? He didn’t speak a word of English when he’d first come, and honestly, Naruto wasn’t so sure that he knew how to now. The two were in completely opposite classes. Sasuke joined in with the honors and AP classes for calculus and Physics, while Naruto was stuck with career-prep in Algebra 1 and Language and Composition. But even when they strayed paths in public settings, no words were spoken. Or in any sort of setting. The blonde was pretty sure the other had quite a colorful set of insults in his arsenal, though. Too bad they were all in Japanese.
But, hey, who needed words when you had fists?
There were some people Naruto couldn’t help but like. He was attracted to them, and they to he, and through mutual attraction could form some sort of bond, whether fickle or iron-clad. Then there were the people who put a sick feeling in his stomach when he heard their force, made his fists clench whenever their eyes met.
Sasuke was one of the latter.
Naruto’s eyes tightened at the memory of their first head-on collision. It took a week before their heated glares cooled and staled, no longer enough to sedate that unquenchable thirst for contact. For the feel of hard bone against furled knuckles, to feel hot breath as they got into each others face. To have foreign blood splash against their skin and to taste their own in kind. It was a short skirmish, half a minute before hall aids tore them apart, an unrefined quarrel that was more tugging hair and going for weak spots. Their spot was ostantuous and no good. They learned. They learned to dodge like a bullet and strike like a falcon, and learned to make use of quite and desolate spots. The math and science hallway after third period every fourth day of their six-day rotation. The old auditorium that had had a ‘renovation’ sign on it for over a year. The tiny network of alleys stripped the surrounding grounds like a cobweb.
Their fights continued, and the scale of bruises quickly began to tip in Sasuke’s favor. Naruto sometimes avoided the hot spots, if nothing but to calm Iruka’s worried face and his friends’ anxious stares whenever he showed up with a fresh patch of shiny red surrounding his eye or his cheek.
Sasuke knew. He must have. He wore a sneer whenever Naruto took a shortcut, although the blond remained positive that no one followed him. Somehow, he knew. The bastard just knew.
Of course, Sasuke wasn’t the only one Naruto found himself in regular skirmishes with. There were various options to pick from. The football jocks, the black kids with baggy clothes and bad music, the younger, scrawny kids who had more bark than bite but were so quick on their feet that keeping track of them was impossible, and holding onto them even harder. Plenty. Naruto supposed it was just something in his personality. Maybe he was labeled a poser for having a Japanese name with no heritage to back it up. Maybe it was his diminutive height that made him so easy to look down upon.
His sociology teacher had once told his class that for every person that liked you, there were at least two who did not. Naruto had yet to meet what was sure to be a huge flock of admirers, but looked forward to the day that he did.
But so far, he’d been stuck with the not-so-friendly crowd. Sometimes he wondered if even his friends hat strayed over to that side. But until then Naruto grinned and bore the title they’d given him with pride. ‘Monster’. It was fitting, in a way. Monsters were vastly misinterpreted creatures, and always smarter than those who had created them.
The doorman raised an eyebrow at him. Naruto flashed a nonplussed grin and pointedly shifted his shoulder strap so that his pack swung against his hip. “I’m here to give Sasuke Uchiha some homework. He up there?”
The doorman waited a ridiculous amount of time before sniffing in distain and muttering, in an altogether too-prim voice for such a small town, “The young sir lives on the fourth floor. The elevator is down the hallway past the lobby desk.”
Naruto waited, and under the expectant gaze, waited for further direction. Receiving nothing, he just nodded awkwardly and strode past him to the dim hallway by the dim desk.
“…Mr. Uchiha is still attending school?”
Naruto stopped in his tracks and whipped his head around. Uchiha not going to school? Of course. And president Bush had found a cure for breast cancer through personal experience.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t he?”
He was beginning to grow annoyed by being looked at as if he were a tiny fraction of his age. “Ask him yourself.”
“Fine!” Naruto snapped. He whirled around, determined not to stop even if spoken to. He was uninterrupted and made it to the elevator doors winded. And he couldn’t tell why.
The ride upwards was smooth, but Naruto felt as if his stomach had remained rooted to the first floor. When the doors opened all the air had gone from Naruto’s lungs and his chest felt ready to collapse.
And he didn’t know why.
Sasuke lived in apartment 409. The first eight was grouped like small complexes to one side of the vast building, 409 and 410 being the master suites, and the latter under construction. Ten rooms to a floor, all lain out in a similar fashion. All costing more than ten combined years of Iruka’s pay, no doubt. It was sickening, the amount of money people spent on just an apartment.
Vaguely wondering if he would be able to find out what Sasuke’s parents did for a living, he trailed along the short and stubby hallway with only two doors. He knocked on the first one and waited.
And waited.
He waited ten seconds, blinked, furrowed his brows, and knocked again.
Still no answer.
After the fifth set of knocks, by which time it had become more of a hammering, Naruto was considering just leaving the work by the door. The kid could come out and get it himself, couldn’t he? But it was Miss Ghandi who’d given him this assignment. And it was Miss Ghandi who’d always favored slime above him and called his guardian to make sure he completed the task.
It was her ass he had to kiss now. Or so Naruto told himself.
There was also that frighteningly obvious curiosity that was digging its claws deeper and deeper into his skin, sniffing the air before him tentatively.
Before he knew it, the blond was twisting the unlocked doorknob and letting himself into the suite.
There was no evidence to the contrary, but Naruto had a feeling that not a drop of paint had adorned the walls since the Uchiha’s had moved in. They were that same conformist white, a blank slate in which families could paint as they pleased. But these walls were still white. The floor was covered in lack-luster blue carpeting, cheap and also meant to be replaced. There were no photo frames on the walls. No TV in the living room, or what Naruto assumed to be the living room. There was a computer in the corner on a plain oak desk, but it was shut off. A two-seater sofa with an empty coffee table.
And, most importantly, only one pair of shoes by the door.
After sliding his own off and putting them next to the black loafers, Naruto slowly wondered through, looking around himself as he did. There was a short hallway. All three doors were shut. There was another spouting off to the side of the living room, also closed. Another door by the dining room where there sat a polished wooden table with only one chair, and no placemats. A large kitchen with many cabinets Naruto suspected were empty, an industrial-sized fridge, a dishwasher, lower cabinets, a toaster and microwave that looked like they’d come straight from the box mere seconds ago, and a booth with two built-in swivel chairs. One chair empty, the other full of sleeping boy with a collapsed head on the black marble surface.
Sasuke’s face was turned away from him, but from the soft and steady rise and fall of his shoulders, Naruto could tell he was asleep. His normally orderly spikes (Naruto suspected copious amounts of hair gel to be at fault) were jumbled with bedhead. The black wife beater was a stark contrast to the usual immaculate white uniform shirt Naruto had always seen him in. He wore loose-fitting corduroy shorts and his feet were bare, curled where the toes met the floor.
Naruto had never noticed just how thin the guy was until now. They were at the age where they’d either started along with growth spurts or had to wait a year. Sasuke belonged to the former category, Naruto the latter. The raven-haired teenager was a good six inches taller than the blond, a definite advantage when it came to fighting.
But still… Tall or not, no one should be that skinny.
His arms were like wire, taught with thin muscle and not much else. His shirt folded into a concave stomach, and his knees were bony knobs, thin calves stretching too far to meet smallish feet. His skin looked too tight, too thin, to contain what it did. Naruto moved around to bend over the counter and peer at his closed eyelids, under which hung heavy purple pillows. Even his face, under such natural sunlight filtering in through the kitchen window, looked sunken, like a skull.
On vacation to the Bahamas with Iruka two summers ago, Naruto remembered, they’d visited a small tourist trap down a block from their resort. It sold old voodoo dolls, shrunken heads, and various other artifacts manufactured to break soon after purchase. There had been one, a bleached skull with a puff of the softest black hair he’d ever seen. But when he reached out to touch it, Iruka had smacked his hand away, muttered something about counterfeiters, and dragged him from the shop before he‘d gotten the chance to touch.
And now, with no hand to stop him, Naruto’s hand, unbidden, reached out to give it a feather-soft stroke from part to the nape of his neck, and his fingers recoiled as if snapped at by a viper.
It was so damn soft. It felt like the down of a feather. Feather light to the touch, silky and smooth even in its knotted state. Naruto couldn’t resist the temptation to touch it again, this time with a little more pressure. It was like dry water, the strands stroking the rough pads of his fingertips as if they had a mind of their own.
Again and again, from bangs to nape, parting easily and making a fork of hair that smoothed straight down, except for the stubborn tufts that refused to stay down at the back. Mesmerizing. It was mesmerizing. And in the sun, it seemed to have an almost blue hue to it. Hypnotized by the texture and the quite, Naruto allowed his hip to settle against the counter as he continued to pet the boy he’d traded more fists with than words.
It was more curiosity. Like stopping time to inspect the blade that was a mere second from slitting your throat. To study the intricate hilt, to run hands against the cool, silken steel of the blade, to study the symmetry while looking at it point-blank.
But it was something else, too. Something akin to control. Like his soft touches put the roaring beast to this picture of immobility, of fragile marble. That control poured from his fingertips.
And then a cold hand reached out and snatched his wrist, leaving his digits sunken into disheveled hair. Blank black eyes glared up at him for a moment, the smooth obsidian enflamed with a heated, passionate rage usually reserved for their fights.
The grip on his wrist tightened momentarily before lapsing to a gentle hold, allowing the blond to escape with his hand still attached. Sasuke Uchiha regarded him warily before speaking.
Naruto expected shouts, several well-chosen and colorful words, followed by a punch in the face. What rolled from his enemy’s lips, however, was complete and total gibberish. His eyes were calm now, and his lips set into a thin line. Naruto noticed, again, how thin Sasuke’s face was. His and many of his friends still contained a small bit of baby fat left on their cheeks and chin, but Sasuke looked more like a sixteen-year-old than a kid fresh out of puberty.
The blond blinked. “What?” He took the chance to take several casual steps backward, elongating the diminutive space between them. Giving himself space to breathe, but the room seemed to be lacking in oxygen nonetheless.
Sasuke smirked and repeated himself. More slowly. Still gibberish. Belatedly, Naruto realized he was speaking Japanese.
“Do I look Japanese to you, dumb ass?” he snapped, crossing his arms over his chest and hiding the way his hands shook beneath his armpits. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. Maybe he’d forgotten. The first few moments after waking up were always a blur, weren’t they?
The corners of his lips twitched slightly on one side, cocking itself up to one side. “Your name,” he said, voice heavily accented. The ‘your’ slurred to the end, like he had a bad lisp, making it sound more like “you’ll name.” But his tone was a deep baritone, perhaps from sleep. Or maybe he was just mature for his age. Or maybe he lied about his age altogether.
“What about it?” was his anti-climactic response, after several long moments of contemplating the odd accent. His guardian was Japanese, but had no living relatives for Naruto to hear the native tongue of. Iruka, while perfectly fluent in the language, neglected to teach Naruto a word of it.
“It Japanese, dumb fuck.”
Oh. Yeah, it was.
“My guardian named me. So what?”
Sasuke snorted, mumbled something too quietly for Naruto to discern between the two languages, and pushed himself away from the table before standing. Naruto arched his neck slightly to stare and took another awkward step back. Ignoring him, Sasuke went to the fridge and opened it, pondering its contents for a moment before throwing over his shoulder, “Drink, dobe?”
“Huh? Dlin--oh, drink?”
“Isn’t that what I asked?”
Naruto snorted. “Your accent sucks, by the way. Can’t hear a fucking word you’re saying.”
Smirking quietly, Sasuke merely replied, “You get used to it.”
Frowning, Naruto shrugged, not knowing what to make of that. Did he mean anyone could live with it, or was it just Naruto? Then Sasuke tossed him a orange can, and catching it, the blonde noticed it was a Fanta. “You like orange soda?”
Sasuke grunted, and the blond wondered if even understood what he said. He popped the metal tab and took a deep swig, clearing out the bad taste that had caked itself over his tongue. The sweetness was welcomed, but reacted badly to the sourness that came with a dry mouth. Naruto hadn’t noticed when he’d tensed up, but quickly wrote it off as unimportant, taking another swallow. It was cold, and his palms weren’t sweating as much anymore. The distilled air was quiet and fuzzy, full of an energy that Naruto had thus far never encountered in the outside world.
This seemed like a different realm entirely. The way the orange light made the air syrupy and sweet, the emptiness making him feel claustrophobic, the quiet murmur of a foreign voice.
It wasn’t Naruto’s world anymore. It belonged to….
Sasuke fished himself out a bottle of water, and Naruto caught a glimpse of the fridge’s contents before the door could swing shut. There was a half-finished gallon of milk, a thing of eggs, a mesh bag full of tomatoes, and a handful of other things Naruto could have counted on one hand. It was so bare--too bare, from what he’d seen of others fridges.
Squishing down the niggling thought in the back of his head that his refrigerator looked very much the same, Naruto asked the question that was much more prominent in his mind at the moment. Something any sane person would have asked the moment they’d woken up to find a hated-rival hovering over them.
“Aren’t you gonna ask why I’m here?”
“Hn.” Sasuke took his time twisting off the cap of his water bottle, taking a heavy gulp and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before saying, “Homework, right?”
“How’d you know?”
“Iruka-san is very thanking man,” Sasuke said dismissively, but something in his tone twisted the compliment into a way that made it sound like being thoughtful was a bad thing. Which to the raven, Naruto thought, it probably was.
“You don’t want to know how I got in here?”
Sasuke was definitely smirking now. “The door?” he said haughtily.
“Oh yeah!” Naruto sad the can of soda on the counter that he’d wondered over to. “Who the fuck leaves their doors wide open, anyway, huh? You’re passed out on the table. Anyone could come right here and…”
“And what?” Sasuke whispered sardonically. “Pet me to death?”
Naruto’s heart froze in place, and his stomach filled with sand as it dropped to the ground, making his knees stiffen to keep from buckling under his own weight.
Sasuke continued as if he’d said nothing out of the ordinary. “I have nothing here that would be any importance,” he said in his strong accent, half the words flying over Naruto’s head. “There is nothing here that any common thief will want.” He cocked a slick black eyebrow. “Also, my door not ‘wide open.’ It shut. Most will knock.”
“I did knock!” Naruto persisted. “Not my fault you didn’t answer the door.”
Sasuke waved his hand, dismissing the comment casually and settling himself against the refrigerator door.
More to fill in the abrupt silence than anything, Naruto asked, “When will your parents be home?”
“That is none of your business.”
Naruto glared. “It was just a question, bastard. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want---”
“When will yours expect you home?” Sasuke cut him off, setting aside his bottle and looping his thumbs into the pockets of his shorts.
“I don’t have ‘parents’,” Naruto snapped. “I have Iruka. And he expects me home whenever I drop this stuff off.” Struck by the sudden thought, Naruto stooped down to his bag to retrieve the papers, to get this over with and get out. “Hold on, I have it right here.” But when Naruto began to glance up, he saw a pair of feet right by his face. Looking up, Sasuke regarded him with cool obsidian eyes. “Hey, man, ever hear of personal space?”
Not only did Sasuke seem to not be able to grasp the concept, but the next moment, Naruto bag was sailing across the threshold and landing somewhere by the couch, courtesy of Sasuke’s arm.
“Hey!” Naruto was back on his feet in a second, and a moment later had shoved Sasuke back a foot with his forearm, a knee-jerk reaction he’d grown accustomed to over the year. This was it. This was the invitation for a fight he’s been unknowingly waiting for. His fists clenched before he struck one arm, pointing to hid fallen shoulder bag. “Go and get that.”
Sasuke just stared at him, unfazed by the push. “No. I don’t want the papers.”
“I don‘t give a shit about the papers,” Naruto snarled. “Go and get my freakin’ bag.”
“No,” he repeated.
“Maybe you’re hard of hearing, you stuck-up bastard, but I said…”
“I do not care what you said.” A small pause, and Sasuke made an about face. “Why are you still here?”
“I’m still here so that I can give you your stupid make-up work because your lazy ass can’t make its way into school! Just go and get my fucking bag so I can get out of here!” His arm dropped and mimicked the other in forming a threatening fist.
Sasuke snorted. “No. You don’t want me to get that bag.”
“I don’t,” Naruto repeated scathingly, sarcasm like heavy syrup drenching his words. “Then what is it I want, huh?”
Sasuke countered with an unrelated comment. “I’ve been expecting you to come here for while now.” Naruto was too distracted by the fact that Sasuke was now moving towards the thrown bag to notice the oddness of his statement. “But really. I’d have never expected a homework excuse from you of all people…” His next few words were lost in a different language, and Naruto squinted in suspicion as Sasuke flipped open the bag to shuffle lethargically through the disorganized contents. The blond let him find the assignments on his own, remaining rooted to the spot. He felt that to go over would be awkward, that his place, for the moment, was to wait in shadow as Sasuke finally pulled out the leaflet of papers.
“Are these?” Sasuke waved them so they flapped gently from the current of thick air. Naruto nodded, noting in slight surprise he didn’t feel even the smallest urge to correct the horrible English. Naruto’s probably wasn’t all that good anyway, and---
His train of though derailed abruptly as Sasuke tore the packet in two by the metal stable, and then, by papers in sets of twos and threes, ripped them to shreds and allowed them to flutter to the floor and scatter around his feet, under the sofa, through the legs of the chair….
Wide-eyed, Naruto could only watch as Sasuke gently discarded the bag by means of throwing it against the couch, where it gently rebounded from the high back and slumped over the couch cushion like a dead body.
“You appear to have lost the papers, Uzumaki-kun,” Sasuke sneered, once again throwing the odd little phrase at the end of his name, as he did with most. “How thoughtless of you.”
Words were only half-formed on the tip of his tongue, and slipping out of his rough lips too fast for him to piece together into coherent sentences. After garbling out nonsense that was neither English nor Japanese, his cheeks flushed red with rage. Iruka would blame him. The school would blame him. Somehow, the story would end up with him losing the papers down some sewers, or him spending the afternoon down at the arcade instead of making his promised delivery. Somehow, the bastard would make it so. Somehow, he could, and Naruto knew he would.
“You bastard.” Deep breaths and a narrowing of cerulean eyes. “They’re gonna blame me, ya know that? They’re gonna fucking blame me you asshole.” It didn’t matter that insults made no difference. They made him feel better. His nails were painful as they dug rivets into his palms, but he couldn’t cool himself down enough to unclench them.
Sasuke smirked and strode forward, cocking his head to the side like the perfectly pampered little dick he was and Naruto wanted to shoot a hole through that corner of his mouth that seemed to stay permanently suspended over the other corner, seeing that pale face hovering and looming over his. The condescending, smart-ass, mother-fucking ape shit bastard that….
Really had no idea what personal space was. Naruto lurched back as Sasuke weaved through the thick air towards him, leaving him little space and time to formulate a proper punch or kick. As he stumbled backwards, he lost track of distance and found a fist curled in his collar and a counter digging deep into his spine. His back arched unpleasantly, and almost instantly the vague feeling of warmth settled in, followed by pins and needles. More startling than the oncoming pain, however, was the way Sasuke’s right thumb was slowly tracing the collar of his white linen school shirt.
When Naruto looked up from that hand to that pair of eyes, a realization dawned on him.
He wasn’t as stupid as he looked. Playing dumb was always easier than acting smart. He was somewhere in that go-between, and choosing the latter just made his life easier. And it sounded funny to be called a dumb ass, as opposed to insulting when called a smart ass.
It was all in his own series of logics, and right now, his logic pointed to one thing.
Fighting wasn’t enough anymore.
It wasn’t enough?
One could get used to taking the hits, he supposed. You could train the body to remove pain from the conscious. Was this the new plan, then? Discomfort? Or was the raven just too lazy to throw a decent punch his way? Or was the threat of an able hand so close to his neck such a paralyzing threat that Sasuke assumed Naruto would be wary of it?
He wasn’t wary. He wasn’t even nervous. But he was very uncomfortable. But ignorance had to be called bliss for some reason..
“How’d you know I was coming?” was his genius question. It seemed to stump Sasuke for a moment, anyway. The taller boy frowned for a fraction of a moment, debating on whether or not to stay under the false pretense that Naruto was playing dumb or he honestly had shown up as a favor to his teacher. He pressed his fingers against his collarbone with the slightest application of pressure. Naruto didn’t so much as blink. But when he shifted his thumb to rest on the skin of his throat, the blond couldn’t rein in the tiniest flinch of his eyes.
Seemingly satisfied with this, Sasuke replied, “You would have found excuse sooner or later. And this is perfect one.” Silence. “I’m moving,” Sasuke hissed impatiently, seeing no spark of enlightenment cross his features. “I leave at end of the week.”
“Mr Uchiha is still attending school?”
Suddenly, the words had gained a whole new meaning.
School. School. Still attending school.
I’m moving.
Still attending school?
At end of the week.
Of course he was leaving, Naruto thought. It made perfect sense. Sasuke was too special to be at this school. Not special, per say, but different. Too restricted by the language barrier. Too dark, too quiet, too anti-social to even fit in with the misfits. He glared too often and was impassive even more. He showed emotion only when in a brawl, and even then so guarded he looked half-ready to run. He was too mature for his peers, and too mature for the teachers to properly handle. Too cocky, but with such a shadowed and jealous look he shot at other students one would wonder how thick his mask was.
And that one was only Naruto. How sad.
When Sasuke’s forefinger found a gentle path from the hollow of his throat to his Adam’s apple, Naruto shifted back a bit. Perturbed that whole charade had gone a notch above unacceptable, he said the first words that came to mind. “Good riddance.” And watched as the hand slowly slipped down his chest to hang by the owners hip.
Sasuke stared at him with the first dumb expression ever to be witnessed on his noble face. Then it slid to disapproval, with a small trace of disappointment. Then understanding, and finally, the smug look that Naruto knew so well slid right back over his face like the pointer of a compass to North.
Like it belonged there. Another reason he hated the raven. As if he needed another.
And when the bastard started laughing. And when his knuckles started itching, so badly that as he clenched his fists he felt he could only bite at the flesh to tear out the sting or hit something.
He chose the reasonable of the two, and the feeling of hard bone cracking against his hand was a instantaneous satisfaction. Well worth the after-ache, and whatever punishment came his way.
The Uchiha had stumbled back several steps, and Naruto was pleased to see that he’d stop laughing. His head was bent, as he wiped the back of his hand against his lip, and then pulled it away to inspect the smear as if he’d never seen blood before. Blatant shock was mirrored in every one of his actions, and yet when he looked up, his gaze was settled and calm as he said, “You hit me.”
“You deserved it. Don’t laugh at me, retard. People are gonna think you’re a psycho… Your mask’ll slip, Uchiha.”
“Mask,” he echoed blankly. “Do I look like I wear a mask, Uzumaki?”
The automatic ‘yes’ caught in his throat as, upon closer inspection, Naruto noticed something slightly off in Sasuke’s expression. He’d picked up his guardians annoying knack for pestering people to show true colors. That blending in was cowardice, and standing out was a birth-given liberty meant to be executed at every point in a person’s life. That one exception stood in front of him now. A frightening mixture of misunderstanding and superiority twisted his features. His black eyes were slightly wider, and the way they were sat in his sallow face with its white complexion made him look demonically handsome, twisting his already harsh features and making them too perfect, better meant for a hand-drawn creature in a graphic novel or computer-generated villain from a movie.
The look on his face was like a maniac. A quiet maniac gently coaxing his victim backwards until they embedded their own selves on the knife propped up behind him.
Sasuke spit a glob of blood at the ground by Naruto’s feet, and a sickening feeling told the shorter boy that that spot was the least of the blood stains that would ruin the carpet. And he was afraid of who would spill the most.
No. He was just afraid it would be him. Because it undoubtedly would be if he didn’t get out. Now.
“You are safe in here.”
A lie if Naruto had ever heard one. Sasuke stood five feet from him now, and he was slowly closing in with measured steps. Slowly, like a dancer, he treaded across the generic carpet, piercing eyes reminding Naruto that the exit was behind him, and Naruto would have to go through him to get to it.
“Safe from what?” he asked.
Sasuke had the nerve to roll his eyes, shake his head, and call him something undoubtedly insulting in Japanese before demanding, “Stop hiding.”
“I’m not hiding Don’t know what you think I’m even hiding from.”
“And stop lying,” he added. And then, “I know why you are here.”
“Yeah. To give your crazy ass your fucking homework, which you tore up, idiot face, and I am not taking the blame for that.”
“I know you’re not here for the homework. You’ve never done well in school anyway. Why care to deliver homework when you not even complete your own?”
Naruto, who’d inched himself forward a few inches, was no grappling along the counter, sliding sideways and eyeing the wall over Sasuke’s shoulder. The door. He had to get to the order. Any other day he’d love good brawl, but only when there was a back door. Not here, not in his house. His house.
He had to get out.
Sasuke was losing his understanding look and raised a curious eyebrow, frowning slightly now in confusion. He didn’t understand, but to be fair, neither did Naruto.
Clearing his throat, the blond forced out, “I think there’s been a mistake.”
“There has been no mistake,” Sasuke hissed. “I know why y-”
“No, I really think you don’t,” Naruto cut in. “I don’t have a clue what you think I’m doing here, but I’m just here as a favor. Iruka couldn’t find anyone else, so he sent me, all right? You don’t want the papers, I get it, fine. Could’ve just said so. I came, I delivered, I’m leaving.” He took a deliberate step forward, but paused in the action of taking a second.
Anger.
Fuck, he’d never seen anyone look so angry before.
He hissed Japanese through gritted teeth, and it reminded Naruto strongly of a cobra’s hiss he’d heard before while watching Animal Planet. Then the snake had struck the guy who’d been dangling him from his arm with bared fangs. And as entertaining as it was then, that certainly did not apply now. Hs feet spread apart slightly, ready for a fight if need be, Naruto asked, “What did you think I was here for, huh?” He had a hunch, but it was so far out of the realm of sanity he couldn’t dare voice it without either cracking up or getting a wicked punch to the gut.
But that look Sasuke was giving him…
The raven narrowed his eyes to slits of thin obsidian. “Do you think this all funny?” he growled. “You think it joke?” Naruto couldn’t even find his English funny anymore. Now, for the first time in a very long many years, Naruto was starting to feel the slightest bit afraid.
“Well, you’re obviously not laughing,” Naruto breathed. He then attempted a sneer, but it came more of a spastic twitch before his lips fell flat again.
There was a long, quiet silence in which neither of them spoke. Sasuke was breathing slightly heavily as if he’d done a few rounds around the apartment, and Naruto could hardly breath at all. What had Sasuke wanted? What had he expected?
What did he want now?
Naruto didn‘t know what Sasuke said next. It was a lowly-spoken hiss of Japanese, a short sentence the blond didn’t have the time to pick apart, couldn’t guess its contents from his rival’s face, before Sasuke attacked.
When Naruto went into a home other than his own, the first thing that struck him was the smell. It was the smell of that person, only many times more potent, and surrounding him in a thick current. That particular, distinctive scent of all those people combined with all of their possessions, their plants, their animals, the laundry detergent they used, the food they cooked, bundled into one that he’d get used after half an hour. But he couldn’t smell his own home, smell his own scent, or taste his own taste. It was as part of him as his own flesh and bone.
Sasuke had drunk water after being passed out on the counter for who-knew-how long. Was this his real taste? Untainted by foreign substances? Because Naruto would swear on every grave of every person he’d lived long enough to watch die, on every grave he’d ever have to visit, that he would never in his life get used to that taste, that smell of the other‘s boys skin that was abruptly shoved under his nose.
Kissing Sasuke was like swallowing ash.
But it would have been a lie to call it a kiss. It was a pair of cool, chapped lips scraping clumsily along his, sharp canines biting in every now and then. It was a thin, slimy tongue slithering into his mouth and thrusting past his teeth, roaming where it pleased. It was a large hand pinching at the junctures of his jaw with bruising force. It was the blond crying out from the ascending pain of it, and disgust as his mouth was pried and kept open by greedy fingers. It was his fist that had escaped Sasuke’s other hand that beat against the boy’s chest, and when the raven pressed closer, it was Naruto pulling at his hair. It was Sasuke hissing in pain before pulling back, releasing Narutos jaw before capturing the other hand that was still buried in hair the blond had once marveled as so soft. It was large hands snaking around his wrists before the other pinched his jaw and continued his not-a-kiss. It was the raven with an air of trying to do something he’d seen so often, but couldn’t quite pull off, so he tried harder.
The taste was heavy and disturbing. It wasn’t unpleasant, but reminiscent of what Naruto imagined he’d taste if he licked under the grate of his fireplace, or the cinders left from collapsed coals. The pleasant, woodsy smell they gave off. He tasted like that.
Naruto never wanted to see another fire in his life.
The way his head was forced back made it hard to breathe, and his face went lax as his mind swayed to and fro, not processing the present, still stuck in the not-too-distant past when they were glaring, but had a reasonable distance between the two. His mind was stuck at a bump, the present waving itself tantalizingly over his conscious.
Sasuke slipped his tongue back into his own mouth, kissed Naruto’s lower lip, then the top, and drew back. A faint gleam of triumph entered his eyes at the glazed look on the shorter boy’s face.
“I knew it,” he whispered, warm breath laving his captive‘s face. “I knew you felt the same.” He released Naruto’s face, curved his hand below the jaw, cupping it tenderly before leaning forward to plant a chaste kiss on the other’s mouth. When Naruto didn’t respond, Sasuke took it as in incentive to deepen it. Without hesitancy, he plunged inside once more, letting his eyes flutter shut, a deep rumble of approval growing at the back of his throat.
When his wrists were freed, when a hand nestled itself on his hip, Naruto snapped. And bit down, hard, tasting bitter copper ruining the flavor of ash. Like drinking orange juice after just brushing his teeth, it tasted vile and made him flinch, but he held on until Sasuke himself jerked back.
They found themselves in another standoff, now with a mere three feet of distance between their heaving bodies. Both with expressions of pure shock. Of violence, of betrayal.
And that, Naruto thought, crosses the line.
“What,” he whispered slowly, “is wrong with you?” It was a serious question, deserving of a serious answer. He didn’t understand, and half of him didn’t want to. This was insane. Sasuke wasn’t serious. There was something wrong with his head. His brain was fucked up in one or two ways and that was why…
His lips began to tingle and his jaw began to ache as Sasuke slowly spoke. “I thought…”
When he didn’t finish, Naruto finished for him, “Whatever you thought was wrong, okay? I don’t--I mean-- Dude, c’mon, I don’t… swing that way, all right? Don’t know where you got the wrong impression but I’ll set it clear for you, okay? Right now?”
Sasuke didn’t seem to be listening. He was murmuring something under his breath. The blond distinctly heard the words ‘lead me on’ thrown into the mix, and couldn’t help himself from shouting, “Lead you on? What in the flying fuck gave you that idea, dickface? I’ve done nothing to you! Nothing with you, hell, we fight, idiot! We don’t… don’t kiss or shit like that! We don’t fucking flirt, for God’s sake! I’m not gay, all right?”
“This entire year…” His voice was distant, shallow, unbearably heart-breaking. Somehow, in the matter of less than a minute, Naruto Uzumaki had gone from victim to villain. This didn’t set well with him, and sank heavily to the bottom of his gut. “This whole year…”
“What did you think it was?” Naruto asked hoarsely. “Violent foreplay? Gimmie a break! Look, I don’t even like you, so just…”
Like a two-ton hammer, a fist collided with his stomach and he found himself doubled over as pain clutched him in a terrifyingly lethal grasp, breath choked from his lungs one gasp at a time. It was the hardest Sasuke had ever hit him, and Naruto realized with a reluctant realization that the raven had always been holding back on his behalf. Sasuke watched as he hobbled backwards, sifting his weight to rest on the counter as he clutched his aching abdomen. Glassy black eyes met his with an eerie, angry calm, waiting for the blond to catch his breath. When the blond finally did, and straightened his posture, readying his body for another attack, Sasuke took the final step in closing the distance between them, locking their bodies into a tight fit. His arms trapped Naruto’s by his sides and he leaned forward so that the tips of their noses touched. Sasuke’s skin was too warm, the blond noticed, and a pink hue outlined the root of his hair. Maybe the boy was sick. Hopefully, Naruto prayed, he was sick, sick, sick.
“You. Lead. Me. On,” Sasuke stated slowly, annunciating each word with perfect clarity to as Naruto could understand perfectly, although he didn’t understand at all. Not one bit.
“No. I. Didn’t,” he bit out.
“What is it you wanted from me, then?” Sasuke asked. “A friend?” He emphasized the word in disgust, as if the very idea of it repulsed him. “A rival? I can be that, if you like. I always be there to beat you,” he said this so matter-of-factly that it made the nausea in Naruto’s stomach boil unpleasantly. “I always be here.” His warm, cindery breath fanned across Naruto’s mouth, and he had to stop what he knew would come soon. “I be what you want if you be what I want, ne?”
“That’s the problem, bastard,” Naruto retorted. “I don’t want anything from you. Not a single damn thing. Now let me the Hell go.”
Sasuke snorted. “Wrong again, dumbfuck.”
His hand snaked up and snapped a fistful of golden spikes, and Naruto hissed as his head was yanked back. A strong arm instantly circled behind his back, pinioning both arms to the blond’s sides.
His skin erupted into goosebumps as the Uchiha blew a gentle breath across his collarbone. “Wrong, Uzumaki. Everybody wants something.” Naruto felt a warm, slightly damp pair of lips press tightly into his skin.
“Everyone wants something,” he repeated, mostly to himself it sounded. “It’s only fair that one of us gets what we want. And since you apparently want nothing…”
Finally comprehending the whispered words, Naruto snarled, “Wait a minute, you asshole! Don’t you---What the Hell do you think you’re doing!?”
The blonde watched Sasuke’s dark head of hair bob up and down, side-to-side, as harsh lips viciously attacked his neck, along with a pair of sharp incisors and a hot, wet tongue. He started on the right side, licking and biting his way from the lobe down to his collarbone. “Sasuke, stop!” He sucked small bits of skin before clamping down with harsh bites, pushing against the bruised skin with his rough tongue, lapping warm trails over flesh. His body also began to move to a suffocating close proximity. “Knock the fuck off, get the hell off of me!“ He pulled at Naruto’s waist until the boy fumbled, his lower back now balanced as his feet struck out to keep himself from falling. Sasuke’s body pressed him down tightly, legs tucked snugly between the blonds to prevent any kicking. “Let me go!” And pressed against Naruto’s abdomen, hard and almost painful as it pushed against him, pulsing slightly in excitement…
“Bastard,” Naruto hissed. “I don’t want anything, but I definitely do not want this!”
“You shouldn’t have lead me on, then,” Sasuke returned before opening his mouth wider to leave a large bite mark on the column of Naruto’s neck. The blond bit back a startled response, biting his abused lip and try to lean further back. Sasuke’s lips latched onto his neck and followed his body’s movements.
“The kids at school are right,” Sasuke finally declared, face still hidden, but venom lacing his voice. “This your fault, you know. You shouldn’t let it this far. All your fault,” and a short string of Japanese syllables. And then, hissed do low Naruto had to strain his ears to hear it, “You truly are a monster.”
Stunned into silence, Naruto slumped against the edge of the counter. And as Sasuke tilted his head to the right for easier access, Naruto began to wonder at the irony of it. It wasn’t just his heritage and apparent nonchalance to the world around him that made Sasuke different. It was the way he looked at Naruto. That bitter hatred, that arrogance over having beaten him, the pain when the blonde landed a punch, the reluctant approval on the rare occasion Naruto came out on top. It was acceptance, almost. Acknowledgement.
To find someone who acknowledged him outside of family, outside of a person who was forced to sleep under the same roof as he, was something the blond had always wanted. It was in a different form, but always what he wanted.
“Everyone wants something.”
But why realize it now, he wondered. More importantly, was this kind of want that same acknowledgement? Sick, twisted, perverted, but it was a want all the same. Sasuke wanted Naruto.
Naruto wanted something different. This he did not want. And when he felt struggling fingers beginning to pick at the first button of his shirt, he rammed his chin down onto the Uchiha’s head. The motion cause ringlets of pain to spiral through his jaw, but nonetheless got the desired grunt of pain.
“Stop it,” the Uchiha murmured, as if to a five-year-old tugging on his shirt sleeve. But he abandoned Naruto’s neck in favor of giving the shirt more attention, managing to slide the first button through its hole and worked on the second, gaining speed quickly as his hand trailed down. Naruto’s captive hands curled into tight fists, wrenching this way and that, Sasuke’s hand allowing minimal motion. The raven pressed his body closer, hips digging in and erection pressing harshly against Naruto’s stomach. Words choked and died before they could leave Naruto’s mouth. What did he say in such a situation. To stop it, like a little girl. To curse him off, like the small child he felt like. The raven towered over him like an adult, a teacher, who was doing what he thought was right.
Sasuke finished the last button, and wasted no time in bringing both Naruto’s hands behind his back, lacing strong fingers around them before whipping his shirt down and off his shoulders. The blond’s face was pressed against a pale neck, warm and slightly sticky with anticipatory sweat, while the Uchiha worked to bind his wrists with the crisp white cloth. He struggled to open his aching jaw, and when he could, bit harshly. Sasuke hissed, but otherwise didn’t halt in his ministrations. When finished, he yanked his head back, glaring slightly before smirking a triumphant sneer. Cerulean eyes stared back up.
“Do you even know what you’re doing?” Naruto snapped.
“I know what I’m doing to do,” Sasuke sneered in return before looping his index finger through the belt loop of his school trousers and pulling back, slowly and firmly, causing Naruto’s feet to slide across the floor. His socks offered little help as the balls of his feet grappled to find purchase on the carpet.
“You fucker, watch it! I’m fall--”
Crack
Naruto groaned heavily, dots marring his vision, head pounding from where it had cracked against the wooden paneling of the countertop. He slumped against it, neck crooked, arms twisted painfully behind him. His fingers were starting to numb, and he briefly wondered if there’d be welts. He also wondered how the carpet had went from blue to neon purple, and how there were so many lights on the ceiling when the room was so dank with dying light as the afternoon passed them by. He wondered when Iruka would start to become concerned. He wondered if the police would get involved, or already were. He wondered how long he’d been here. An hour, or two, or a week? He wondered when, if, Sasuke would decide to let him go. And he wondered how far Sasuke was going to take this.
Pairing: SasuNaru
Rating: NC17
Chapter Rating:NC17
Warnings: Explicit rape, language
Summary: It's hard learning how to save peoples lives when you're so busy trying to save your own.
Author's Notes Jesus Christ. I started this and wrote ten pages in one sitting. Then I managed five. Then three. Then two, then one, then one again. Soon I was down to writing only paragraphs, sometimes sentances, at a time. I've worked on this for two months. Those who've read Teeth (http://community.livejournal.com/sasuxnaru/2060150.html), I haven't updated because I've been working on this monstrosity. How big is it? I need to put it in three posts. Here is the first part.
Extra warnings: This is not the giggly fangirl rape where Naruto falls to his knees. I've read some supposed 'rape' stories, perhaps for some reference as I've never written anything about it before, and found it disturbing at how lightly people take it. And also, fanfic writers, gay sex is not perfect. Most first times it's a downright disaster. It's messy, awkward, and downright painful.
Ah well. Part 1:
EDIT:Link to the clean version on FanFiction: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4572273/1/Purple
Part 2: http://community.livejournal.com/sasuxnaru/2095052.html?#cutid1
Part 3: http://community.livejournal.com/sasuxnaru/2095125.html
“In my field of paper flowers and candy clouds of lullaby, I lie inside myself for hours, and watch my purple sky fly over me.”
-Imaginary, by Evanescance
Purple, 1 of 4
Out of all the houses he’d been expecting, this was not it. It wasn’t even a house at all; a penthouse suit, situated somewhere between the fourth and sixth stories of an eleven-story building, gleaming and new like a sore thumb in a metropolis of garbage and industrial wreck.
His messenger bag, khaki with frayed edges and broken buckles, was uncomfortable against his side. Sweat made his shirt glue itself to his skin like fly paper. His task set, his map in the form of a torn-out sheet of loose-leaf clenched in a fist with cracked knuckles, Naruto crossed the last street towards the Uchiha’s complex.
“Take this straight to him, Naruto,” his guardian’s words continued to ring. “No side trips. No stops. Straight. To him.”
“I got it, I got it,” his own words echoed back, lacking just as much stability and sounding more like a recorded message on the answering machine. “No side trips.”
There was a mat of gleaming red fur curled by the sewer, Naruto noticed, as he stepped over the chipped curb. Its mangled legs were furled in an almost graceful way, and its stomach was sinking in and starting to turn obsidian with rot. Copper fur was heavy with crisp, dried blood, and its black paws still seemed to claw at the pavement. The creatures eyes were shut, mouth slightly agape, and if it weren’t for decomposition, Naruto would have taken it to be asleep. But its tail’s bush had flattened to a snake-like center, and it had become a beautiful skeleton as opposed to a beautiful creation.
Wondering idly what a fox had been doing so far from its woods in the first place, Naruto waltzed up and through the swinging doors. The metal framework was stainless steel, very modern for a not-so-modern town.
But who would expect anything less of the great protégé Sasuke Uchiha?
The bastard’s homework was settled somewhere in his bag. The fourteen-year-old, after not missing a single minute of class over the entire year, had been absent with no call nor notice for the past three days. Naruto’s impromptu visit was more of a reassurance for the teachers that the star pupil of the class hadn’t thrown himself out the window than to deliver homework the raven could have no doubt completed before the last bell of homeroom rang. Which threw Naruto for a complete loop; the guy couldn’t speak a word of English when he’d first enrolled in Clifford Private School.
He’d been a dark, brooding thing that shone so brightly you couldn’t help but notice him. His tongue was so foreign and something new to hear, like the catchy new song played over and over on the radio until it lost all appeal. At least for Naruto it did. For others, it grew more sickeningly addictive every day, and it was so obvious the youth didn’t want the attention. But since when did things like that make a difference?
Middle school graduation was in three weeks, a small and uneventful ceremony made to please the parents rather than the students. A sense of accomplishment was more of a requirement, it seemed, than the basic four years of math and English. His guardian Iruka would, of course, be there. He was a teacher at the high school and seemed pleased (insultingly pleased) that Naruto had managed to claw his way out with a passing grade. Passing if you squinted.
That being said, while Naruto’s legs skimmed awkwardly along the floor from his position on the bottom rung of the ladder, Sasuke sat so high up he was in danger of his high horse throwing him off.
The guy was Asian, so that could have been key, but did he have to graduate at the top of the class? He didn’t speak a word of English when he’d first come, and honestly, Naruto wasn’t so sure that he knew how to now. The two were in completely opposite classes. Sasuke joined in with the honors and AP classes for calculus and Physics, while Naruto was stuck with career-prep in Algebra 1 and Language and Composition. But even when they strayed paths in public settings, no words were spoken. Or in any sort of setting. The blonde was pretty sure the other had quite a colorful set of insults in his arsenal, though. Too bad they were all in Japanese.
But, hey, who needed words when you had fists?
There were some people Naruto couldn’t help but like. He was attracted to them, and they to he, and through mutual attraction could form some sort of bond, whether fickle or iron-clad. Then there were the people who put a sick feeling in his stomach when he heard their force, made his fists clench whenever their eyes met.
Sasuke was one of the latter.
Naruto’s eyes tightened at the memory of their first head-on collision. It took a week before their heated glares cooled and staled, no longer enough to sedate that unquenchable thirst for contact. For the feel of hard bone against furled knuckles, to feel hot breath as they got into each others face. To have foreign blood splash against their skin and to taste their own in kind. It was a short skirmish, half a minute before hall aids tore them apart, an unrefined quarrel that was more tugging hair and going for weak spots. Their spot was ostantuous and no good. They learned. They learned to dodge like a bullet and strike like a falcon, and learned to make use of quite and desolate spots. The math and science hallway after third period every fourth day of their six-day rotation. The old auditorium that had had a ‘renovation’ sign on it for over a year. The tiny network of alleys stripped the surrounding grounds like a cobweb.
Their fights continued, and the scale of bruises quickly began to tip in Sasuke’s favor. Naruto sometimes avoided the hot spots, if nothing but to calm Iruka’s worried face and his friends’ anxious stares whenever he showed up with a fresh patch of shiny red surrounding his eye or his cheek.
Sasuke knew. He must have. He wore a sneer whenever Naruto took a shortcut, although the blond remained positive that no one followed him. Somehow, he knew. The bastard just knew.
Of course, Sasuke wasn’t the only one Naruto found himself in regular skirmishes with. There were various options to pick from. The football jocks, the black kids with baggy clothes and bad music, the younger, scrawny kids who had more bark than bite but were so quick on their feet that keeping track of them was impossible, and holding onto them even harder. Plenty. Naruto supposed it was just something in his personality. Maybe he was labeled a poser for having a Japanese name with no heritage to back it up. Maybe it was his diminutive height that made him so easy to look down upon.
His sociology teacher had once told his class that for every person that liked you, there were at least two who did not. Naruto had yet to meet what was sure to be a huge flock of admirers, but looked forward to the day that he did.
But so far, he’d been stuck with the not-so-friendly crowd. Sometimes he wondered if even his friends hat strayed over to that side. But until then Naruto grinned and bore the title they’d given him with pride. ‘Monster’. It was fitting, in a way. Monsters were vastly misinterpreted creatures, and always smarter than those who had created them.
The doorman raised an eyebrow at him. Naruto flashed a nonplussed grin and pointedly shifted his shoulder strap so that his pack swung against his hip. “I’m here to give Sasuke Uchiha some homework. He up there?”
The doorman waited a ridiculous amount of time before sniffing in distain and muttering, in an altogether too-prim voice for such a small town, “The young sir lives on the fourth floor. The elevator is down the hallway past the lobby desk.”
Naruto waited, and under the expectant gaze, waited for further direction. Receiving nothing, he just nodded awkwardly and strode past him to the dim hallway by the dim desk.
“…Mr. Uchiha is still attending school?”
Naruto stopped in his tracks and whipped his head around. Uchiha not going to school? Of course. And president Bush had found a cure for breast cancer through personal experience.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t he?”
He was beginning to grow annoyed by being looked at as if he were a tiny fraction of his age. “Ask him yourself.”
“Fine!” Naruto snapped. He whirled around, determined not to stop even if spoken to. He was uninterrupted and made it to the elevator doors winded. And he couldn’t tell why.
The ride upwards was smooth, but Naruto felt as if his stomach had remained rooted to the first floor. When the doors opened all the air had gone from Naruto’s lungs and his chest felt ready to collapse.
And he didn’t know why.
Sasuke lived in apartment 409. The first eight was grouped like small complexes to one side of the vast building, 409 and 410 being the master suites, and the latter under construction. Ten rooms to a floor, all lain out in a similar fashion. All costing more than ten combined years of Iruka’s pay, no doubt. It was sickening, the amount of money people spent on just an apartment.
Vaguely wondering if he would be able to find out what Sasuke’s parents did for a living, he trailed along the short and stubby hallway with only two doors. He knocked on the first one and waited.
And waited.
He waited ten seconds, blinked, furrowed his brows, and knocked again.
Still no answer.
After the fifth set of knocks, by which time it had become more of a hammering, Naruto was considering just leaving the work by the door. The kid could come out and get it himself, couldn’t he? But it was Miss Ghandi who’d given him this assignment. And it was Miss Ghandi who’d always favored slime above him and called his guardian to make sure he completed the task.
It was her ass he had to kiss now. Or so Naruto told himself.
There was also that frighteningly obvious curiosity that was digging its claws deeper and deeper into his skin, sniffing the air before him tentatively.
Before he knew it, the blond was twisting the unlocked doorknob and letting himself into the suite.
There was no evidence to the contrary, but Naruto had a feeling that not a drop of paint had adorned the walls since the Uchiha’s had moved in. They were that same conformist white, a blank slate in which families could paint as they pleased. But these walls were still white. The floor was covered in lack-luster blue carpeting, cheap and also meant to be replaced. There were no photo frames on the walls. No TV in the living room, or what Naruto assumed to be the living room. There was a computer in the corner on a plain oak desk, but it was shut off. A two-seater sofa with an empty coffee table.
And, most importantly, only one pair of shoes by the door.
After sliding his own off and putting them next to the black loafers, Naruto slowly wondered through, looking around himself as he did. There was a short hallway. All three doors were shut. There was another spouting off to the side of the living room, also closed. Another door by the dining room where there sat a polished wooden table with only one chair, and no placemats. A large kitchen with many cabinets Naruto suspected were empty, an industrial-sized fridge, a dishwasher, lower cabinets, a toaster and microwave that looked like they’d come straight from the box mere seconds ago, and a booth with two built-in swivel chairs. One chair empty, the other full of sleeping boy with a collapsed head on the black marble surface.
Sasuke’s face was turned away from him, but from the soft and steady rise and fall of his shoulders, Naruto could tell he was asleep. His normally orderly spikes (Naruto suspected copious amounts of hair gel to be at fault) were jumbled with bedhead. The black wife beater was a stark contrast to the usual immaculate white uniform shirt Naruto had always seen him in. He wore loose-fitting corduroy shorts and his feet were bare, curled where the toes met the floor.
Naruto had never noticed just how thin the guy was until now. They were at the age where they’d either started along with growth spurts or had to wait a year. Sasuke belonged to the former category, Naruto the latter. The raven-haired teenager was a good six inches taller than the blond, a definite advantage when it came to fighting.
But still… Tall or not, no one should be that skinny.
His arms were like wire, taught with thin muscle and not much else. His shirt folded into a concave stomach, and his knees were bony knobs, thin calves stretching too far to meet smallish feet. His skin looked too tight, too thin, to contain what it did. Naruto moved around to bend over the counter and peer at his closed eyelids, under which hung heavy purple pillows. Even his face, under such natural sunlight filtering in through the kitchen window, looked sunken, like a skull.
On vacation to the Bahamas with Iruka two summers ago, Naruto remembered, they’d visited a small tourist trap down a block from their resort. It sold old voodoo dolls, shrunken heads, and various other artifacts manufactured to break soon after purchase. There had been one, a bleached skull with a puff of the softest black hair he’d ever seen. But when he reached out to touch it, Iruka had smacked his hand away, muttered something about counterfeiters, and dragged him from the shop before he‘d gotten the chance to touch.
And now, with no hand to stop him, Naruto’s hand, unbidden, reached out to give it a feather-soft stroke from part to the nape of his neck, and his fingers recoiled as if snapped at by a viper.
It was so damn soft. It felt like the down of a feather. Feather light to the touch, silky and smooth even in its knotted state. Naruto couldn’t resist the temptation to touch it again, this time with a little more pressure. It was like dry water, the strands stroking the rough pads of his fingertips as if they had a mind of their own.
Again and again, from bangs to nape, parting easily and making a fork of hair that smoothed straight down, except for the stubborn tufts that refused to stay down at the back. Mesmerizing. It was mesmerizing. And in the sun, it seemed to have an almost blue hue to it. Hypnotized by the texture and the quite, Naruto allowed his hip to settle against the counter as he continued to pet the boy he’d traded more fists with than words.
It was more curiosity. Like stopping time to inspect the blade that was a mere second from slitting your throat. To study the intricate hilt, to run hands against the cool, silken steel of the blade, to study the symmetry while looking at it point-blank.
But it was something else, too. Something akin to control. Like his soft touches put the roaring beast to this picture of immobility, of fragile marble. That control poured from his fingertips.
And then a cold hand reached out and snatched his wrist, leaving his digits sunken into disheveled hair. Blank black eyes glared up at him for a moment, the smooth obsidian enflamed with a heated, passionate rage usually reserved for their fights.
The grip on his wrist tightened momentarily before lapsing to a gentle hold, allowing the blond to escape with his hand still attached. Sasuke Uchiha regarded him warily before speaking.
Naruto expected shouts, several well-chosen and colorful words, followed by a punch in the face. What rolled from his enemy’s lips, however, was complete and total gibberish. His eyes were calm now, and his lips set into a thin line. Naruto noticed, again, how thin Sasuke’s face was. His and many of his friends still contained a small bit of baby fat left on their cheeks and chin, but Sasuke looked more like a sixteen-year-old than a kid fresh out of puberty.
The blond blinked. “What?” He took the chance to take several casual steps backward, elongating the diminutive space between them. Giving himself space to breathe, but the room seemed to be lacking in oxygen nonetheless.
Sasuke smirked and repeated himself. More slowly. Still gibberish. Belatedly, Naruto realized he was speaking Japanese.
“Do I look Japanese to you, dumb ass?” he snapped, crossing his arms over his chest and hiding the way his hands shook beneath his armpits. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. Maybe he’d forgotten. The first few moments after waking up were always a blur, weren’t they?
The corners of his lips twitched slightly on one side, cocking itself up to one side. “Your name,” he said, voice heavily accented. The ‘your’ slurred to the end, like he had a bad lisp, making it sound more like “you’ll name.” But his tone was a deep baritone, perhaps from sleep. Or maybe he was just mature for his age. Or maybe he lied about his age altogether.
“What about it?” was his anti-climactic response, after several long moments of contemplating the odd accent. His guardian was Japanese, but had no living relatives for Naruto to hear the native tongue of. Iruka, while perfectly fluent in the language, neglected to teach Naruto a word of it.
“It Japanese, dumb fuck.”
Oh. Yeah, it was.
“My guardian named me. So what?”
Sasuke snorted, mumbled something too quietly for Naruto to discern between the two languages, and pushed himself away from the table before standing. Naruto arched his neck slightly to stare and took another awkward step back. Ignoring him, Sasuke went to the fridge and opened it, pondering its contents for a moment before throwing over his shoulder, “Drink, dobe?”
“Huh? Dlin--oh, drink?”
“Isn’t that what I asked?”
Naruto snorted. “Your accent sucks, by the way. Can’t hear a fucking word you’re saying.”
Smirking quietly, Sasuke merely replied, “You get used to it.”
Frowning, Naruto shrugged, not knowing what to make of that. Did he mean anyone could live with it, or was it just Naruto? Then Sasuke tossed him a orange can, and catching it, the blonde noticed it was a Fanta. “You like orange soda?”
Sasuke grunted, and the blond wondered if even understood what he said. He popped the metal tab and took a deep swig, clearing out the bad taste that had caked itself over his tongue. The sweetness was welcomed, but reacted badly to the sourness that came with a dry mouth. Naruto hadn’t noticed when he’d tensed up, but quickly wrote it off as unimportant, taking another swallow. It was cold, and his palms weren’t sweating as much anymore. The distilled air was quiet and fuzzy, full of an energy that Naruto had thus far never encountered in the outside world.
This seemed like a different realm entirely. The way the orange light made the air syrupy and sweet, the emptiness making him feel claustrophobic, the quiet murmur of a foreign voice.
It wasn’t Naruto’s world anymore. It belonged to….
Sasuke fished himself out a bottle of water, and Naruto caught a glimpse of the fridge’s contents before the door could swing shut. There was a half-finished gallon of milk, a thing of eggs, a mesh bag full of tomatoes, and a handful of other things Naruto could have counted on one hand. It was so bare--too bare, from what he’d seen of others fridges.
Squishing down the niggling thought in the back of his head that his refrigerator looked very much the same, Naruto asked the question that was much more prominent in his mind at the moment. Something any sane person would have asked the moment they’d woken up to find a hated-rival hovering over them.
“Aren’t you gonna ask why I’m here?”
“Hn.” Sasuke took his time twisting off the cap of his water bottle, taking a heavy gulp and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before saying, “Homework, right?”
“How’d you know?”
“Iruka-san is very thanking man,” Sasuke said dismissively, but something in his tone twisted the compliment into a way that made it sound like being thoughtful was a bad thing. Which to the raven, Naruto thought, it probably was.
“You don’t want to know how I got in here?”
Sasuke was definitely smirking now. “The door?” he said haughtily.
“Oh yeah!” Naruto sad the can of soda on the counter that he’d wondered over to. “Who the fuck leaves their doors wide open, anyway, huh? You’re passed out on the table. Anyone could come right here and…”
“And what?” Sasuke whispered sardonically. “Pet me to death?”
Naruto’s heart froze in place, and his stomach filled with sand as it dropped to the ground, making his knees stiffen to keep from buckling under his own weight.
Sasuke continued as if he’d said nothing out of the ordinary. “I have nothing here that would be any importance,” he said in his strong accent, half the words flying over Naruto’s head. “There is nothing here that any common thief will want.” He cocked a slick black eyebrow. “Also, my door not ‘wide open.’ It shut. Most will knock.”
“I did knock!” Naruto persisted. “Not my fault you didn’t answer the door.”
Sasuke waved his hand, dismissing the comment casually and settling himself against the refrigerator door.
More to fill in the abrupt silence than anything, Naruto asked, “When will your parents be home?”
“That is none of your business.”
Naruto glared. “It was just a question, bastard. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want---”
“When will yours expect you home?” Sasuke cut him off, setting aside his bottle and looping his thumbs into the pockets of his shorts.
“I don’t have ‘parents’,” Naruto snapped. “I have Iruka. And he expects me home whenever I drop this stuff off.” Struck by the sudden thought, Naruto stooped down to his bag to retrieve the papers, to get this over with and get out. “Hold on, I have it right here.” But when Naruto began to glance up, he saw a pair of feet right by his face. Looking up, Sasuke regarded him with cool obsidian eyes. “Hey, man, ever hear of personal space?”
Not only did Sasuke seem to not be able to grasp the concept, but the next moment, Naruto bag was sailing across the threshold and landing somewhere by the couch, courtesy of Sasuke’s arm.
“Hey!” Naruto was back on his feet in a second, and a moment later had shoved Sasuke back a foot with his forearm, a knee-jerk reaction he’d grown accustomed to over the year. This was it. This was the invitation for a fight he’s been unknowingly waiting for. His fists clenched before he struck one arm, pointing to hid fallen shoulder bag. “Go and get that.”
Sasuke just stared at him, unfazed by the push. “No. I don’t want the papers.”
“I don‘t give a shit about the papers,” Naruto snarled. “Go and get my freakin’ bag.”
“No,” he repeated.
“Maybe you’re hard of hearing, you stuck-up bastard, but I said…”
“I do not care what you said.” A small pause, and Sasuke made an about face. “Why are you still here?”
“I’m still here so that I can give you your stupid make-up work because your lazy ass can’t make its way into school! Just go and get my fucking bag so I can get out of here!” His arm dropped and mimicked the other in forming a threatening fist.
Sasuke snorted. “No. You don’t want me to get that bag.”
“I don’t,” Naruto repeated scathingly, sarcasm like heavy syrup drenching his words. “Then what is it I want, huh?”
Sasuke countered with an unrelated comment. “I’ve been expecting you to come here for while now.” Naruto was too distracted by the fact that Sasuke was now moving towards the thrown bag to notice the oddness of his statement. “But really. I’d have never expected a homework excuse from you of all people…” His next few words were lost in a different language, and Naruto squinted in suspicion as Sasuke flipped open the bag to shuffle lethargically through the disorganized contents. The blond let him find the assignments on his own, remaining rooted to the spot. He felt that to go over would be awkward, that his place, for the moment, was to wait in shadow as Sasuke finally pulled out the leaflet of papers.
“Are these?” Sasuke waved them so they flapped gently from the current of thick air. Naruto nodded, noting in slight surprise he didn’t feel even the smallest urge to correct the horrible English. Naruto’s probably wasn’t all that good anyway, and---
His train of though derailed abruptly as Sasuke tore the packet in two by the metal stable, and then, by papers in sets of twos and threes, ripped them to shreds and allowed them to flutter to the floor and scatter around his feet, under the sofa, through the legs of the chair….
Wide-eyed, Naruto could only watch as Sasuke gently discarded the bag by means of throwing it against the couch, where it gently rebounded from the high back and slumped over the couch cushion like a dead body.
“You appear to have lost the papers, Uzumaki-kun,” Sasuke sneered, once again throwing the odd little phrase at the end of his name, as he did with most. “How thoughtless of you.”
Words were only half-formed on the tip of his tongue, and slipping out of his rough lips too fast for him to piece together into coherent sentences. After garbling out nonsense that was neither English nor Japanese, his cheeks flushed red with rage. Iruka would blame him. The school would blame him. Somehow, the story would end up with him losing the papers down some sewers, or him spending the afternoon down at the arcade instead of making his promised delivery. Somehow, the bastard would make it so. Somehow, he could, and Naruto knew he would.
“You bastard.” Deep breaths and a narrowing of cerulean eyes. “They’re gonna blame me, ya know that? They’re gonna fucking blame me you asshole.” It didn’t matter that insults made no difference. They made him feel better. His nails were painful as they dug rivets into his palms, but he couldn’t cool himself down enough to unclench them.
Sasuke smirked and strode forward, cocking his head to the side like the perfectly pampered little dick he was and Naruto wanted to shoot a hole through that corner of his mouth that seemed to stay permanently suspended over the other corner, seeing that pale face hovering and looming over his. The condescending, smart-ass, mother-fucking ape shit bastard that….
Really had no idea what personal space was. Naruto lurched back as Sasuke weaved through the thick air towards him, leaving him little space and time to formulate a proper punch or kick. As he stumbled backwards, he lost track of distance and found a fist curled in his collar and a counter digging deep into his spine. His back arched unpleasantly, and almost instantly the vague feeling of warmth settled in, followed by pins and needles. More startling than the oncoming pain, however, was the way Sasuke’s right thumb was slowly tracing the collar of his white linen school shirt.
When Naruto looked up from that hand to that pair of eyes, a realization dawned on him.
He wasn’t as stupid as he looked. Playing dumb was always easier than acting smart. He was somewhere in that go-between, and choosing the latter just made his life easier. And it sounded funny to be called a dumb ass, as opposed to insulting when called a smart ass.
It was all in his own series of logics, and right now, his logic pointed to one thing.
Fighting wasn’t enough anymore.
It wasn’t enough?
One could get used to taking the hits, he supposed. You could train the body to remove pain from the conscious. Was this the new plan, then? Discomfort? Or was the raven just too lazy to throw a decent punch his way? Or was the threat of an able hand so close to his neck such a paralyzing threat that Sasuke assumed Naruto would be wary of it?
He wasn’t wary. He wasn’t even nervous. But he was very uncomfortable. But ignorance had to be called bliss for some reason..
“How’d you know I was coming?” was his genius question. It seemed to stump Sasuke for a moment, anyway. The taller boy frowned for a fraction of a moment, debating on whether or not to stay under the false pretense that Naruto was playing dumb or he honestly had shown up as a favor to his teacher. He pressed his fingers against his collarbone with the slightest application of pressure. Naruto didn’t so much as blink. But when he shifted his thumb to rest on the skin of his throat, the blond couldn’t rein in the tiniest flinch of his eyes.
Seemingly satisfied with this, Sasuke replied, “You would have found excuse sooner or later. And this is perfect one.” Silence. “I’m moving,” Sasuke hissed impatiently, seeing no spark of enlightenment cross his features. “I leave at end of the week.”
“Mr Uchiha is still attending school?”
Suddenly, the words had gained a whole new meaning.
School. School. Still attending school.
I’m moving.
Still attending school?
At end of the week.
Of course he was leaving, Naruto thought. It made perfect sense. Sasuke was too special to be at this school. Not special, per say, but different. Too restricted by the language barrier. Too dark, too quiet, too anti-social to even fit in with the misfits. He glared too often and was impassive even more. He showed emotion only when in a brawl, and even then so guarded he looked half-ready to run. He was too mature for his peers, and too mature for the teachers to properly handle. Too cocky, but with such a shadowed and jealous look he shot at other students one would wonder how thick his mask was.
And that one was only Naruto. How sad.
When Sasuke’s forefinger found a gentle path from the hollow of his throat to his Adam’s apple, Naruto shifted back a bit. Perturbed that whole charade had gone a notch above unacceptable, he said the first words that came to mind. “Good riddance.” And watched as the hand slowly slipped down his chest to hang by the owners hip.
Sasuke stared at him with the first dumb expression ever to be witnessed on his noble face. Then it slid to disapproval, with a small trace of disappointment. Then understanding, and finally, the smug look that Naruto knew so well slid right back over his face like the pointer of a compass to North.
Like it belonged there. Another reason he hated the raven. As if he needed another.
And when the bastard started laughing. And when his knuckles started itching, so badly that as he clenched his fists he felt he could only bite at the flesh to tear out the sting or hit something.
He chose the reasonable of the two, and the feeling of hard bone cracking against his hand was a instantaneous satisfaction. Well worth the after-ache, and whatever punishment came his way.
The Uchiha had stumbled back several steps, and Naruto was pleased to see that he’d stop laughing. His head was bent, as he wiped the back of his hand against his lip, and then pulled it away to inspect the smear as if he’d never seen blood before. Blatant shock was mirrored in every one of his actions, and yet when he looked up, his gaze was settled and calm as he said, “You hit me.”
“You deserved it. Don’t laugh at me, retard. People are gonna think you’re a psycho… Your mask’ll slip, Uchiha.”
“Mask,” he echoed blankly. “Do I look like I wear a mask, Uzumaki?”
The automatic ‘yes’ caught in his throat as, upon closer inspection, Naruto noticed something slightly off in Sasuke’s expression. He’d picked up his guardians annoying knack for pestering people to show true colors. That blending in was cowardice, and standing out was a birth-given liberty meant to be executed at every point in a person’s life. That one exception stood in front of him now. A frightening mixture of misunderstanding and superiority twisted his features. His black eyes were slightly wider, and the way they were sat in his sallow face with its white complexion made him look demonically handsome, twisting his already harsh features and making them too perfect, better meant for a hand-drawn creature in a graphic novel or computer-generated villain from a movie.
The look on his face was like a maniac. A quiet maniac gently coaxing his victim backwards until they embedded their own selves on the knife propped up behind him.
Sasuke spit a glob of blood at the ground by Naruto’s feet, and a sickening feeling told the shorter boy that that spot was the least of the blood stains that would ruin the carpet. And he was afraid of who would spill the most.
No. He was just afraid it would be him. Because it undoubtedly would be if he didn’t get out. Now.
“You are safe in here.”
A lie if Naruto had ever heard one. Sasuke stood five feet from him now, and he was slowly closing in with measured steps. Slowly, like a dancer, he treaded across the generic carpet, piercing eyes reminding Naruto that the exit was behind him, and Naruto would have to go through him to get to it.
“Safe from what?” he asked.
Sasuke had the nerve to roll his eyes, shake his head, and call him something undoubtedly insulting in Japanese before demanding, “Stop hiding.”
“I’m not hiding Don’t know what you think I’m even hiding from.”
“And stop lying,” he added. And then, “I know why you are here.”
“Yeah. To give your crazy ass your fucking homework, which you tore up, idiot face, and I am not taking the blame for that.”
“I know you’re not here for the homework. You’ve never done well in school anyway. Why care to deliver homework when you not even complete your own?”
Naruto, who’d inched himself forward a few inches, was no grappling along the counter, sliding sideways and eyeing the wall over Sasuke’s shoulder. The door. He had to get to the order. Any other day he’d love good brawl, but only when there was a back door. Not here, not in his house. His house.
He had to get out.
Sasuke was losing his understanding look and raised a curious eyebrow, frowning slightly now in confusion. He didn’t understand, but to be fair, neither did Naruto.
Clearing his throat, the blond forced out, “I think there’s been a mistake.”
“There has been no mistake,” Sasuke hissed. “I know why y-”
“No, I really think you don’t,” Naruto cut in. “I don’t have a clue what you think I’m doing here, but I’m just here as a favor. Iruka couldn’t find anyone else, so he sent me, all right? You don’t want the papers, I get it, fine. Could’ve just said so. I came, I delivered, I’m leaving.” He took a deliberate step forward, but paused in the action of taking a second.
Anger.
Fuck, he’d never seen anyone look so angry before.
He hissed Japanese through gritted teeth, and it reminded Naruto strongly of a cobra’s hiss he’d heard before while watching Animal Planet. Then the snake had struck the guy who’d been dangling him from his arm with bared fangs. And as entertaining as it was then, that certainly did not apply now. Hs feet spread apart slightly, ready for a fight if need be, Naruto asked, “What did you think I was here for, huh?” He had a hunch, but it was so far out of the realm of sanity he couldn’t dare voice it without either cracking up or getting a wicked punch to the gut.
But that look Sasuke was giving him…
The raven narrowed his eyes to slits of thin obsidian. “Do you think this all funny?” he growled. “You think it joke?” Naruto couldn’t even find his English funny anymore. Now, for the first time in a very long many years, Naruto was starting to feel the slightest bit afraid.
“Well, you’re obviously not laughing,” Naruto breathed. He then attempted a sneer, but it came more of a spastic twitch before his lips fell flat again.
There was a long, quiet silence in which neither of them spoke. Sasuke was breathing slightly heavily as if he’d done a few rounds around the apartment, and Naruto could hardly breath at all. What had Sasuke wanted? What had he expected?
What did he want now?
Naruto didn‘t know what Sasuke said next. It was a lowly-spoken hiss of Japanese, a short sentence the blond didn’t have the time to pick apart, couldn’t guess its contents from his rival’s face, before Sasuke attacked.
When Naruto went into a home other than his own, the first thing that struck him was the smell. It was the smell of that person, only many times more potent, and surrounding him in a thick current. That particular, distinctive scent of all those people combined with all of their possessions, their plants, their animals, the laundry detergent they used, the food they cooked, bundled into one that he’d get used after half an hour. But he couldn’t smell his own home, smell his own scent, or taste his own taste. It was as part of him as his own flesh and bone.
Sasuke had drunk water after being passed out on the counter for who-knew-how long. Was this his real taste? Untainted by foreign substances? Because Naruto would swear on every grave of every person he’d lived long enough to watch die, on every grave he’d ever have to visit, that he would never in his life get used to that taste, that smell of the other‘s boys skin that was abruptly shoved under his nose.
Kissing Sasuke was like swallowing ash.
But it would have been a lie to call it a kiss. It was a pair of cool, chapped lips scraping clumsily along his, sharp canines biting in every now and then. It was a thin, slimy tongue slithering into his mouth and thrusting past his teeth, roaming where it pleased. It was a large hand pinching at the junctures of his jaw with bruising force. It was the blond crying out from the ascending pain of it, and disgust as his mouth was pried and kept open by greedy fingers. It was his fist that had escaped Sasuke’s other hand that beat against the boy’s chest, and when the raven pressed closer, it was Naruto pulling at his hair. It was Sasuke hissing in pain before pulling back, releasing Narutos jaw before capturing the other hand that was still buried in hair the blond had once marveled as so soft. It was large hands snaking around his wrists before the other pinched his jaw and continued his not-a-kiss. It was the raven with an air of trying to do something he’d seen so often, but couldn’t quite pull off, so he tried harder.
The taste was heavy and disturbing. It wasn’t unpleasant, but reminiscent of what Naruto imagined he’d taste if he licked under the grate of his fireplace, or the cinders left from collapsed coals. The pleasant, woodsy smell they gave off. He tasted like that.
Naruto never wanted to see another fire in his life.
The way his head was forced back made it hard to breathe, and his face went lax as his mind swayed to and fro, not processing the present, still stuck in the not-too-distant past when they were glaring, but had a reasonable distance between the two. His mind was stuck at a bump, the present waving itself tantalizingly over his conscious.
Sasuke slipped his tongue back into his own mouth, kissed Naruto’s lower lip, then the top, and drew back. A faint gleam of triumph entered his eyes at the glazed look on the shorter boy’s face.
“I knew it,” he whispered, warm breath laving his captive‘s face. “I knew you felt the same.” He released Naruto’s face, curved his hand below the jaw, cupping it tenderly before leaning forward to plant a chaste kiss on the other’s mouth. When Naruto didn’t respond, Sasuke took it as in incentive to deepen it. Without hesitancy, he plunged inside once more, letting his eyes flutter shut, a deep rumble of approval growing at the back of his throat.
When his wrists were freed, when a hand nestled itself on his hip, Naruto snapped. And bit down, hard, tasting bitter copper ruining the flavor of ash. Like drinking orange juice after just brushing his teeth, it tasted vile and made him flinch, but he held on until Sasuke himself jerked back.
They found themselves in another standoff, now with a mere three feet of distance between their heaving bodies. Both with expressions of pure shock. Of violence, of betrayal.
And that, Naruto thought, crosses the line.
“What,” he whispered slowly, “is wrong with you?” It was a serious question, deserving of a serious answer. He didn’t understand, and half of him didn’t want to. This was insane. Sasuke wasn’t serious. There was something wrong with his head. His brain was fucked up in one or two ways and that was why…
His lips began to tingle and his jaw began to ache as Sasuke slowly spoke. “I thought…”
When he didn’t finish, Naruto finished for him, “Whatever you thought was wrong, okay? I don’t--I mean-- Dude, c’mon, I don’t… swing that way, all right? Don’t know where you got the wrong impression but I’ll set it clear for you, okay? Right now?”
Sasuke didn’t seem to be listening. He was murmuring something under his breath. The blond distinctly heard the words ‘lead me on’ thrown into the mix, and couldn’t help himself from shouting, “Lead you on? What in the flying fuck gave you that idea, dickface? I’ve done nothing to you! Nothing with you, hell, we fight, idiot! We don’t… don’t kiss or shit like that! We don’t fucking flirt, for God’s sake! I’m not gay, all right?”
“This entire year…” His voice was distant, shallow, unbearably heart-breaking. Somehow, in the matter of less than a minute, Naruto Uzumaki had gone from victim to villain. This didn’t set well with him, and sank heavily to the bottom of his gut. “This whole year…”
“What did you think it was?” Naruto asked hoarsely. “Violent foreplay? Gimmie a break! Look, I don’t even like you, so just…”
Like a two-ton hammer, a fist collided with his stomach and he found himself doubled over as pain clutched him in a terrifyingly lethal grasp, breath choked from his lungs one gasp at a time. It was the hardest Sasuke had ever hit him, and Naruto realized with a reluctant realization that the raven had always been holding back on his behalf. Sasuke watched as he hobbled backwards, sifting his weight to rest on the counter as he clutched his aching abdomen. Glassy black eyes met his with an eerie, angry calm, waiting for the blond to catch his breath. When the blond finally did, and straightened his posture, readying his body for another attack, Sasuke took the final step in closing the distance between them, locking their bodies into a tight fit. His arms trapped Naruto’s by his sides and he leaned forward so that the tips of their noses touched. Sasuke’s skin was too warm, the blond noticed, and a pink hue outlined the root of his hair. Maybe the boy was sick. Hopefully, Naruto prayed, he was sick, sick, sick.
“You. Lead. Me. On,” Sasuke stated slowly, annunciating each word with perfect clarity to as Naruto could understand perfectly, although he didn’t understand at all. Not one bit.
“No. I. Didn’t,” he bit out.
“What is it you wanted from me, then?” Sasuke asked. “A friend?” He emphasized the word in disgust, as if the very idea of it repulsed him. “A rival? I can be that, if you like. I always be there to beat you,” he said this so matter-of-factly that it made the nausea in Naruto’s stomach boil unpleasantly. “I always be here.” His warm, cindery breath fanned across Naruto’s mouth, and he had to stop what he knew would come soon. “I be what you want if you be what I want, ne?”
“That’s the problem, bastard,” Naruto retorted. “I don’t want anything from you. Not a single damn thing. Now let me the Hell go.”
Sasuke snorted. “Wrong again, dumbfuck.”
His hand snaked up and snapped a fistful of golden spikes, and Naruto hissed as his head was yanked back. A strong arm instantly circled behind his back, pinioning both arms to the blond’s sides.
His skin erupted into goosebumps as the Uchiha blew a gentle breath across his collarbone. “Wrong, Uzumaki. Everybody wants something.” Naruto felt a warm, slightly damp pair of lips press tightly into his skin.
“Everyone wants something,” he repeated, mostly to himself it sounded. “It’s only fair that one of us gets what we want. And since you apparently want nothing…”
Finally comprehending the whispered words, Naruto snarled, “Wait a minute, you asshole! Don’t you---What the Hell do you think you’re doing!?”
The blonde watched Sasuke’s dark head of hair bob up and down, side-to-side, as harsh lips viciously attacked his neck, along with a pair of sharp incisors and a hot, wet tongue. He started on the right side, licking and biting his way from the lobe down to his collarbone. “Sasuke, stop!” He sucked small bits of skin before clamping down with harsh bites, pushing against the bruised skin with his rough tongue, lapping warm trails over flesh. His body also began to move to a suffocating close proximity. “Knock the fuck off, get the hell off of me!“ He pulled at Naruto’s waist until the boy fumbled, his lower back now balanced as his feet struck out to keep himself from falling. Sasuke’s body pressed him down tightly, legs tucked snugly between the blonds to prevent any kicking. “Let me go!” And pressed against Naruto’s abdomen, hard and almost painful as it pushed against him, pulsing slightly in excitement…
“Bastard,” Naruto hissed. “I don’t want anything, but I definitely do not want this!”
“You shouldn’t have lead me on, then,” Sasuke returned before opening his mouth wider to leave a large bite mark on the column of Naruto’s neck. The blond bit back a startled response, biting his abused lip and try to lean further back. Sasuke’s lips latched onto his neck and followed his body’s movements.
“The kids at school are right,” Sasuke finally declared, face still hidden, but venom lacing his voice. “This your fault, you know. You shouldn’t let it this far. All your fault,” and a short string of Japanese syllables. And then, hissed do low Naruto had to strain his ears to hear it, “You truly are a monster.”
Stunned into silence, Naruto slumped against the edge of the counter. And as Sasuke tilted his head to the right for easier access, Naruto began to wonder at the irony of it. It wasn’t just his heritage and apparent nonchalance to the world around him that made Sasuke different. It was the way he looked at Naruto. That bitter hatred, that arrogance over having beaten him, the pain when the blonde landed a punch, the reluctant approval on the rare occasion Naruto came out on top. It was acceptance, almost. Acknowledgement.
To find someone who acknowledged him outside of family, outside of a person who was forced to sleep under the same roof as he, was something the blond had always wanted. It was in a different form, but always what he wanted.
“Everyone wants something.”
But why realize it now, he wondered. More importantly, was this kind of want that same acknowledgement? Sick, twisted, perverted, but it was a want all the same. Sasuke wanted Naruto.
Naruto wanted something different. This he did not want. And when he felt struggling fingers beginning to pick at the first button of his shirt, he rammed his chin down onto the Uchiha’s head. The motion cause ringlets of pain to spiral through his jaw, but nonetheless got the desired grunt of pain.
“Stop it,” the Uchiha murmured, as if to a five-year-old tugging on his shirt sleeve. But he abandoned Naruto’s neck in favor of giving the shirt more attention, managing to slide the first button through its hole and worked on the second, gaining speed quickly as his hand trailed down. Naruto’s captive hands curled into tight fists, wrenching this way and that, Sasuke’s hand allowing minimal motion. The raven pressed his body closer, hips digging in and erection pressing harshly against Naruto’s stomach. Words choked and died before they could leave Naruto’s mouth. What did he say in such a situation. To stop it, like a little girl. To curse him off, like the small child he felt like. The raven towered over him like an adult, a teacher, who was doing what he thought was right.
Sasuke finished the last button, and wasted no time in bringing both Naruto’s hands behind his back, lacing strong fingers around them before whipping his shirt down and off his shoulders. The blond’s face was pressed against a pale neck, warm and slightly sticky with anticipatory sweat, while the Uchiha worked to bind his wrists with the crisp white cloth. He struggled to open his aching jaw, and when he could, bit harshly. Sasuke hissed, but otherwise didn’t halt in his ministrations. When finished, he yanked his head back, glaring slightly before smirking a triumphant sneer. Cerulean eyes stared back up.
“Do you even know what you’re doing?” Naruto snapped.
“I know what I’m doing to do,” Sasuke sneered in return before looping his index finger through the belt loop of his school trousers and pulling back, slowly and firmly, causing Naruto’s feet to slide across the floor. His socks offered little help as the balls of his feet grappled to find purchase on the carpet.
“You fucker, watch it! I’m fall--”
Crack
Naruto groaned heavily, dots marring his vision, head pounding from where it had cracked against the wooden paneling of the countertop. He slumped against it, neck crooked, arms twisted painfully behind him. His fingers were starting to numb, and he briefly wondered if there’d be welts. He also wondered how the carpet had went from blue to neon purple, and how there were so many lights on the ceiling when the room was so dank with dying light as the afternoon passed them by. He wondered when Iruka would start to become concerned. He wondered if the police would get involved, or already were. He wondered how long he’d been here. An hour, or two, or a week? He wondered when, if, Sasuke would decide to let him go. And he wondered how far Sasuke was going to take this.