Naruto: relative humidity
No, I do not care if this fic rots in hell. I AM FINALLY DONE WITH IT, GODDAMNIT. Except, oh my god, it's really really bad and I regret ever having started it. But it is DONE. And now I officially believe that NaruSasu is completely IMPOSSIBLE and I will never be able to fic it correctly! (erin I am sure you are GLOATING)
There are a lot of reasons Sasuke hasn't run away again yet, and surprisingly, not too many of them have anything to do with Naruto. Predictably, none of them involves Sakura; only one or two involves Kakashi.
Weirdly enough, one of them involves Shikamaru, and just as strange, one of them involves Kabuto.
On the other hand, there is only one reason why Sasuke wants to leave, both the first time and now: There are a lot of things Sasuke could be doing with his life, and wasting away in Konoha is not one he had planned on nor ever plans on doing.
*
Shikamaru said it best when they talked to Sasuke face-to-face the first time after his return. Shikamaru had had on a bandage or two and a wrap around some parts of his body, but he was pretty much intact, unlike Kiba who was pretty beat up, and Temari, who ended up getting quite a bit of damage inflicted on her. Sasuke looked like he was fine except for the gigantic bandage they had on his shoulder where the seal is. Tsunaide had instructed a few of the medics to put some kind of herb and charm mix into the bandage and cover it up in an attempt to further its removal, and Sasuke hadn't said anything at all.
He didn't say anything to Shikamaru, either, when Shikamaru spat disgustedly on the ground and exclaimed, "Look at you. You're not worth Chouji. You're not worth anything." Shikamaru had looked at Naruto then, and Naruto remembered what Shikamaru had said at the very beginning, about Sasuke not being a friend, and Naruto somehow thought back to Shikamaru and Kiba and himself in school, lounging in the back rows and making trouble for Iruka and Sasuke wasn't there at all, hadn't been there to balance leaves on their forehead, hadn't been there to help Naruto pull off pranks, hadn't been there to witness Shikamaru's devious ways of getting around homework and Naruto's even more devious way of copying off of Shikamaru's homework; in that instant there was this odd feeling of regret in Naruto as well.
That was the Konoha Naruto thought of and remembered; it would never occur to him to think that that wasn't the Konoha Sasuke remembered.
"I didn't ask you to save me," Sasuke had replied. "I didn't ask you to do it for me."
Shikamaru hadn't hit Sasuke then, but he looked like he wanted to. They were almost in a ring around Sasuke, like bullies, except that all of them on the outside were so obviously recuperating from the wounds that they couldn't have been bullies at all. Naruto was in the center with Sasuke, eyed Kiba and Shikamaru cautiously. Neji hobbled in closer, bandages apparent under his clothing, asked, "Do you think it was a waste, then?"
Akamaru, bandaged up as well, gave a little whiff like a cough, and then Kiba, sneezing, said, "Forget it."
"I didn't ask you to do it," Sasuke reiterated, talking to the tops of their heads, his eyes focused on some point at the top of a nearby telephone pole and everyone else looking at their shoes or at the shoes of the person next to them, like nobody wanted to see Sasuke at all. Shikamaru was the only one still looking at Sasuke. Naruto was staring at Sasuke's hand at his side, half hidden under his wrist guard. Sasuke was doing something odd where his thumb kept rubbing the side of his index finger over and over again.
Afterwards, Naruto walking with Sasuke home, Sasuke had brought his hand close to his nose, right above his upper lip, and asked, "Why did you rescue me?"
"I don't know," Naruto said, half-disgusted with himself, but even angrier with Sasuke, remembering Shikamaru's expression at the end, all that controlled, languid, furious rage too big for Shikamaru's size and Shikamaru's elongated shadow. "I thought you would come around. I thought it would be what you wanted."
"How could you have known what I want?" Sasuke had answered, voice raised so that it was started to approach hysterical. "Why do you think you understand me at all?"
And Naruto had wanted to yell then, had wanted to scream, 'If I knew you were going to be like this, I wouldn't have!' Had wanted to kick Sasuke, or trip him, or childishly enough pull his hair, or do something, something drastic and solid enough to ease the burning suspicion inside of him that had been growing and gnawing at him since the moment he learned about Sasuke's departure. It was the idea that maybe, in the end, he really didn't understand Sasuke at all, that maybe all his preconceived and innate suppositions were wrong after all.
It was the thought that maybe he and Sasuke weren't at all the same kind of person Naruto thought they both were.
But he didn't do anything at all, said nothing at all then, just grabbed the edge of Sasuke's sleeve and dragged him off to Ichiraku where he ordered a bowl for both of them, not even bothering to ask what kind Sasuke wanted. He ended up eating both bowls because Sasuke in a fit of unrelenting silence couldn't be induced to pick up his chopsticks and eat. The man there didn't charge Naruto, just smiled and waved genially and refused to acknowledge Sasuke's presence, as if Sasuke were some annoying dog or child that happened to accompany Naruto and didn't really count as a customer or a person.
*
Sasuke's retrieval from the bosom of Orochimaru serves to change the Naruto-Sasuke dynamics mainly in two ways:
One: Naruto, traditionally the social outcast of Konoha, was elevated along with the rest of Shikamaru's makeshift team into a sort of honorary child hero. Which is not to say that any of the Konoha parents really forgets that Naruto is still the kyuubi container, but in a dramatic twist of perspective, it's Sasuke who became public enemy number one, as far as parental influences are concerned. It's one thing, they whisper, that Kabuto turned out to be a spy, because he wasn't really a Konoha child after all. But that Sasuke, who had been raised and enveloped with sympathy and kindness since childhood, for him to turn out to be a turncoat, well, that was really unforgivable.
Two: Sasuke, traditionally the one who in most aspects dominated the relationship between him and Naruto, became the one taken under Naruto's proverbial wing. After the Orochimaru crisis, some of the Jounins requested that there be a guardian with Sasuke at all times. Kakashi had been one of the first candidates, but being a Jounin himself who actually had missions, he unfortunately had to decline. The task, then, was passed onto Naruto, for, coincidentally, two reasons:
One: Naruto was at one point Sasuke's friend, teammate, comrade, and peer, and somehow this led to the purported logical-but somewhat faulty-assumption that Naruto would be the one who could make Sasuke feel most comfortable while keeping an eye on him. Kakashi had actually advised the Jounins and Tsunaide that Naruto was probably one of the worst choices, due to the antagonistic nature of Naruto and Sasuke's relationship before the Orochimaru incident, but either that advice was ignored or it was made moot by the second reason:
Naruto was the only one who offered. Everyone else refused.
*
Naruto knows that Sasuke has beautiful feet. They had bathed together once before, and when Sasuke was climbing out of the tub Naruto had seen his feet. They were tinier than Naruto had expected, very white, the kind of white Naruto had always associated with flour or sugar or clean laundry, of which Naruto had very little of most of the time.
Graceful, beautiful feet, like a girl's, like a flower or something, so slow and soft and almost without any lines to them, and the ankle had a soft curve, and oh, just beautiful.
Feet, Naruto rationalizes, that couldn't possibly walk very long on their own, and that's what Naruto tells himself. Can't vocalize it in any other words, just that Sasuke can't possibly leave unless Naruto lets him, and Naruto won't let him.
"Why?" Sasuke had asked him before. "Why did you save me?" And Naruto had said nothing that was true then, nothing that counted anyway, but he knows now that he had thought then that maybe if he could just catch Sasuke, everything else would fall into place like snow, like puzzles, like bones and joints and knuckles.
Now he knows the truth, knows it because it's as if suddenly he can hear all the potential futures they destroy for each other, as if suddenly he regrets everything he's ever done but doesn't have enough regret to cover it.
*
Sasuke hates walking home smelling of Naruto's house. Hates when his head spins because he just can't stop seeing orange, and blond, and blue, and all those different unnatural colors that Naruto is. Hates the fact that he doesn't care about eating ramen anymore, hates that it doesn't matter to him that his sheets are rumpled and that his blanket is never made. Hates that Naruto never cooks, almost never shops, and never seems to do housekeeping at all because Naruto has nothing to keep in his house. Hates that Konoha is full of eyes and mouths and ears, hates that nobody can seem to look straight at him, hates that Naruto's voice is loud.
Hates that Naruto bustles, that Naruto cares and doesn't care, that Naruto is unbearably and casually kind, hates that Naruto never says anything about the rescue, hates and hates and hates until he can't hate anymore, and then there is only one thing left, really: Sasuke hates Konoha because every time he takes a step he thinks about how in the Sound Village he could be doing something, anything, and the only thing he can do in Konoha is nothing.
*
Konoha never snows. When Naruto goes to Mist Country to safely deliver a package there, it's during the time of winter in Mist Country when all that fog freezes up and it snows for days and days on end so that he breathes snow and exhales snow and almost bleeds snow until it finally stops.
When the snow in Mist Country stops, the weather gets colder. Naruto learns this the hard way.
When the snow just begins, Naruto is in Mist Country and seeing snow for the first time, and it's shocking to him because he doesn't think he's ever seen something so white before. It's like the snowflakes are simultaneously returning to the sky and falling on the ground, and he's falling and flying at the same time, and it reminds Naruto of chakra and leaves, of Iruka and Ichiraku Ramen and for some reason, Kakashi. He thinks of mornings. He thinks of summer in Konoha, of Sakura in the most vague terms possible. Even of Gaara's sand, lots of it, all of out it of his gourd in a steady stream threatening to kill. Thinks of needles, sharp things, cold things. And then he thinks of Haku and Zabuza, and then he almost thinks of Sasuke in the same way, as something missing and that he can never get back and would never return, even though Sasuke is right there beside him.
*
Sasuke has never seen snow either, so when he's with Naruto in Mist Country that's the first time he sees snow too. But he doesn't look up when the snow falls. He stares in front of him as if there is something to discern in all that white, something that will tell him what he's doing here, but he comes up blank.
Instead, there in the snow standing next to Naruto, Sasuke thinks about the seal on his neck that itched and never went away, even though Tsunaide had already tried to cover it up. Thinks about his family, and his mother, and his father, and occasionally about Kakashi, but more about Kakashi's eyes, the inches of his face between his forehead protector and his mask. Sasuke thinks about Kabuto, and Itachi, and Akatsuki.
Mostly Sasuke thinks about Orochimaru.
And because they both stay silent under that snowfall, for a while they are two silent figures slowly becoming whiter and whiter, the snow melting into the roots of the hair, almost trickling down their faces as the ice melts but stops cold in its tracks. Eventually Naruto rubs his cheeks with his cold hands and starts walking away, back to the hotel where they are staying, leaving footprints and an empty spot beside Sasuke and cold, lots of it.
Sasuke finds himself forced to follow. Something in that cold and winter doesn't like company, and standing there alone for the few seconds that he does, Sasuke is reminded of the only few other times he had felt truly alone: the first time he cooked a meal for himself and sat down to an empty table, the first time he did his laundry and realized he was washing just his own clothes, the first time he died or almost died in any case, the time he found out Itachi had returned, the time he had said goodbye to Sakura.
The loneliness he felt the time he woke up and found out that he hadn't accomplished anything at all and that he was back in Konoha, and that Itachi was still alive, and that somewhere out there Orochimaru was still pulling strings, lots of strings, and there he was in Konoha, and it was bright outside his window, and he was just lying there mutely, solemnly, stupidly listening to one bird outside sing like it would never stop.
*
They should have thought about the weather before they had gone, but they hadn't; half of their collective intelligence is Naruto after all, and the other half is Sasuke who isn't ever given a chance to care about time. It ends up that Naruto and Sasuke are stuck in Mist Country for a day later than they had planned because of a blizzard. They wake up that day to see everything they had seen yesterday reduced completely and totally into white as if something had tried to blot out everything's existence. Naruto spends a really long time, close to half an hour, just peering outside and not moving from the window because he's still enthralled with the idea of a white like that. "It's whiter than new," he says to Sasuke.
Sasuke, lying on the bed with his hand on his forehead, just shrugs.
Later something goes wrong with the electricity, and Naruto, right in the middle of wolfing down the last of his ramen-the only food they had in the place because Naruto bought ramen every where he went-and using his chopsticks to point at Sasuke, almost spills his noodle bowl when the lights suddenly flicker off. They try to stare at each other in the dark for a minute before Naruto sets down his noodle bowl and says, "I think it's the electricity."
"No, dimwit, it's your brain," Sasuke mutters, reaching in the dark for Naruto's voice and then feeling stupid. Glad that Naruto can't see him, he puts his hand down and just lies back on the bed because there's nothing to do. He listens to the sound of his blood coursing through his veins and of Naruto brushing his teeth using water from a water bottle. Naruto's cursing all the way from the bathroom and back because he's bumping into everything. His mattress makes a sound between whiffling and whistling when Naruto climbs on it, and it sounds like an old man wheezing.
After a while, Naruto clears his throat and says, "Sasuke, the heating stopped. Aren't you just a little cold?"
Sasuke considers, and says in a long-suffering tone, "If you're cold, you're the one who's moving."
Naruto's feet under the covers are cold when he crawls into Sasuke's bed. His hands are even colder when they accidentally brush right against the patch of skin between Sasuke's shirt and Sasuke's pants. Sasuke gives a little shiver, but soon enough Naruto's completely under the covers with him and breathing so that the sheets are sometimes rising even when Sasuke's not inhaling, and it really is warmer with Naruto under there with him. It's warm enough so when a few minutes later, Sasuke assuming Naruto to be asleep from the heart rate and the breathing, Sasuke's back pressed up against Naruto's chest, he doesn't mind that Naruto sneaks an arm around Sasuke's stomach, and both of them are starting to breathe in synchronization, some gigantic four-limbed, half cold and half warm, breathing conglomeration.
*
During the night, Sasuke wakes up suddenly and thinks to himself, one of us here cares more than the other, but he can't figure out whether it's himself, who cares because he wants out, or Naruto, who cares because--
*
The first lesson of life Naruto learns from Sasuke is that nothing ever changes in the mornings, at least not the way you want it to. He's still who he is, and Sasuke is still who he is, even if they're both warmer than what they would have been apart, but that's all there is. That's all they share.
"You woke me up last night. You had a bad dream," Sasuke says like he's commenting on the weather, completely, unnaturally calm, so Naruto wonders. He cracks an eye open to see that he can barely make out some sort of landscape outside their window. He takes this to mean that the blizzard has relatively stopped and that they'll both get frozen feet walking through it, open-toed sandals and all. Naruto wiggles his toes back under the cover; he'd accidentally stuck them out during the night and now they're cold.
"I think it was something about food," Naruto mumbles sleepily, watching his hand twitch awake on the pillow in front of him. The light from the window is white and stark and Naruto doesn't like it much. "You stole a cookie or something from me, and I started to argue with you, telling you to give it back to me, and then you sort of ran off so I was chasing you again, and no matter how fast I went I couldn't catch up to you. Just like that time." He falls silent, then tries to shrug his entire body away from Sasuke's in a fit of embarrassment. "Forget it."
"Sorry," Sasuke breathes into Naruto's hair.
Naruto twists around a little. Sasuke's hand is just barely holding onto Naruto's elbow, and something about it makes Naruto not want to disturb it. "What are you sorry for? It's not like you really left."
A pause. "But if I had?" Sasuke's face is inscrutable in the light reflected from the snow into their window. His skin is pale, Naruto remembers, and his shirt collar is very, very dark, just like his hair, and expressions on his fate are flat like cardboard and just as unbelievable, but Naruto looks anyway.
Naruto tries not to breathe, tries to keep his voice neutral when he asks, "Would you?" It's barely a whisper and if Sasuke squints really hard and moves his head so that his hair is just covering his ears he can pretend he doesn't hear it.
Sasuke's face gives it away, really, even before he says, "Maybe. If you gave me the chance." It's one of the only times Naruto hates being right, and it's long, breathless seconds before he swings his arm around and punches Sasuke right in the cheek, grimacing as much as Sasuke does. Naruto doesn't say anything when he slips on his shoes and storms out of their room, right into the snow. He's forgotten his coat, he realizes moments later, but he's miserable and plunging feet first into the snow, one unsteady footstep after another. It's around an hour before he comes back, so completely sick that he almost falls into Sasuke when Sasuke opens the door.
Sasuke is warm and Naruto is cold and that bit of contact is like electricity, as repulsive and disheartening as that is to Naruto.
They don't say anything to each other the entire day Sasuke spends nursing Naruto back to health, forcing medicine down his throat and warming up his own hands as he touches Naruto's forehead. Naruto's still has a little bit of a fever the next day, but when he wakes up he throws on his coat and marches straight to the door, theatrically unconcerned, and Sasuke follows just like he's developed a habit of doing, just as his whole life has led him towards developing that habit, just as Naruto's face, all silent agony and bitter agitation, commands him to.
*
Naruto tells Tsunaide when he quits that he can't do it anymore because of personal reasons. "How personal?" she asks, touching the edges of her knuckles to her chin lightly, and Naruto grits his teeth, lowers his head, and says, "Personal enough."
She doesn't pursue the topic.
When he steps out Gaara's waiting for him in the street as if he knew Naruto would be here. Gaara looks the same way he always does-pissed off-so Naruto tries to walk right past him except Gaara asks, "Where is he?" and keeps shifting so he's blocking Naruto's path.
"Who's he?" Naruto retorts and commends himself for glaring back when Gaara throws him a look that says 'Idiot' better than words ever could. "I don't know. And frankly I really don't care, so bug off and bother someone else. I'm not his keeper."
Gaara eyes him some more from under dark lines like eclipses, and this time instead of just moving, he grabs onto Naruto's arm to keep him from passing by. Naruto shakes his arm violently, but Gaara doesn't let go, and finally Naruto demands loudly, "What do you want from me?" because Gaara's hand is like a vice and Naruto remembers the way his sand could crush people bodily and leave nothing for the coffin.
"Do you want to know why I saved you?" Gaara asks, his voice low, almost menacing.
"No," Naruto says emphatically, and then stops. "Unless it's the same reason why I saved him, and if that's the case, I'm curious."
"It's not," Gaara says.
"How would you know?" Gaara's grip is loosening and Naruto twists his elbow around to get free. He rubs the place Gaara grabbed him, massages it so it actually hurts more than Gaara's grip did, and does his best to look Gaara in the eye as if they were both feral dogs. "You don't know anything about it or me. Or just-" Naruto looks helplessly at his arm where his fingers are still moving of their own awkward. "Just anything at all."
"You're so-" Gaara scowls and grabs at Naruto's hand this time to keep it from doing any more damage. "Stupid. You're so incredibly-" and when he grabs Naruto's chin roughly and kisses him, Naruto squeezes his eyes shut so tight he's seeing the afterimage of Gaara's face on his eyelids. After a while all those strange, illusory lights dancing in his vision start to look like snow, and then he can't see anything but white, or Gaara's skin, which is white anyway, white like snow and fish and Sasuke.
*
Later Naruto recalls that Gaara has the word love tattooed to his forehead.
And love, he knows, has never been an easy thing for any of them, for Sasuke or Gaara or even himself, because it seems like the easiest thing for any of them to do is to either kill it or let it die. Love has never been a soft, gentle, caressing thing for them, has never been anything but very loud and very painful, and love has never lasted long for any of them either.
Love, for them, has always put up walls instead of taking them down.
But there's nothing they can really do about it. Naruto knows the reason Gaara saved him; it is, after all, the same reason he saved Sasuke, except that Naruto wanted to be saved and Sasuke didn't. It's the same reason why Haku killed himself, the same reason Tsunaide gambles, the same reason Iruka cares. It's the same reason why Gaara pretends not to notice that Naruto leaving even though they both know that Gaara doesn't sleep. It's the same reason why Naruto stands outside Sasuke's apartment that night waiting for the lights to turn off, shivering. It's the same reason why Sasuke sleeps that night with one hand on the shoulder with the seal, his skin itching in his sleep.
It's the same reason why they all care so much.
A/N: The song that is playing right now? Yeah, that is the reason why I wrote this story. That, and the part in the comic where Sakura asks, "Why do boys care so much?" Yes, I know it is horrible and contrite and the entire setup for the story is completely impossible, but I am DONE and nothing could be make me happier. It has been sitting on my harddrive unfinished for at least half a month and I was starting to hate it. *sigh* *figures she really is in writer's block*
Anyway. Mwah. *blows kisses* No rotten tomatoes, please. And if tomorrow this post is gone, realize that I have come to my better senses and completely DELETED this crap.
There are a lot of reasons Sasuke hasn't run away again yet, and surprisingly, not too many of them have anything to do with Naruto. Predictably, none of them involves Sakura; only one or two involves Kakashi.
Weirdly enough, one of them involves Shikamaru, and just as strange, one of them involves Kabuto.
On the other hand, there is only one reason why Sasuke wants to leave, both the first time and now: There are a lot of things Sasuke could be doing with his life, and wasting away in Konoha is not one he had planned on nor ever plans on doing.
*
Shikamaru said it best when they talked to Sasuke face-to-face the first time after his return. Shikamaru had had on a bandage or two and a wrap around some parts of his body, but he was pretty much intact, unlike Kiba who was pretty beat up, and Temari, who ended up getting quite a bit of damage inflicted on her. Sasuke looked like he was fine except for the gigantic bandage they had on his shoulder where the seal is. Tsunaide had instructed a few of the medics to put some kind of herb and charm mix into the bandage and cover it up in an attempt to further its removal, and Sasuke hadn't said anything at all.
He didn't say anything to Shikamaru, either, when Shikamaru spat disgustedly on the ground and exclaimed, "Look at you. You're not worth Chouji. You're not worth anything." Shikamaru had looked at Naruto then, and Naruto remembered what Shikamaru had said at the very beginning, about Sasuke not being a friend, and Naruto somehow thought back to Shikamaru and Kiba and himself in school, lounging in the back rows and making trouble for Iruka and Sasuke wasn't there at all, hadn't been there to balance leaves on their forehead, hadn't been there to help Naruto pull off pranks, hadn't been there to witness Shikamaru's devious ways of getting around homework and Naruto's even more devious way of copying off of Shikamaru's homework; in that instant there was this odd feeling of regret in Naruto as well.
That was the Konoha Naruto thought of and remembered; it would never occur to him to think that that wasn't the Konoha Sasuke remembered.
"I didn't ask you to save me," Sasuke had replied. "I didn't ask you to do it for me."
Shikamaru hadn't hit Sasuke then, but he looked like he wanted to. They were almost in a ring around Sasuke, like bullies, except that all of them on the outside were so obviously recuperating from the wounds that they couldn't have been bullies at all. Naruto was in the center with Sasuke, eyed Kiba and Shikamaru cautiously. Neji hobbled in closer, bandages apparent under his clothing, asked, "Do you think it was a waste, then?"
Akamaru, bandaged up as well, gave a little whiff like a cough, and then Kiba, sneezing, said, "Forget it."
"I didn't ask you to do it," Sasuke reiterated, talking to the tops of their heads, his eyes focused on some point at the top of a nearby telephone pole and everyone else looking at their shoes or at the shoes of the person next to them, like nobody wanted to see Sasuke at all. Shikamaru was the only one still looking at Sasuke. Naruto was staring at Sasuke's hand at his side, half hidden under his wrist guard. Sasuke was doing something odd where his thumb kept rubbing the side of his index finger over and over again.
Afterwards, Naruto walking with Sasuke home, Sasuke had brought his hand close to his nose, right above his upper lip, and asked, "Why did you rescue me?"
"I don't know," Naruto said, half-disgusted with himself, but even angrier with Sasuke, remembering Shikamaru's expression at the end, all that controlled, languid, furious rage too big for Shikamaru's size and Shikamaru's elongated shadow. "I thought you would come around. I thought it would be what you wanted."
"How could you have known what I want?" Sasuke had answered, voice raised so that it was started to approach hysterical. "Why do you think you understand me at all?"
And Naruto had wanted to yell then, had wanted to scream, 'If I knew you were going to be like this, I wouldn't have!' Had wanted to kick Sasuke, or trip him, or childishly enough pull his hair, or do something, something drastic and solid enough to ease the burning suspicion inside of him that had been growing and gnawing at him since the moment he learned about Sasuke's departure. It was the idea that maybe, in the end, he really didn't understand Sasuke at all, that maybe all his preconceived and innate suppositions were wrong after all.
It was the thought that maybe he and Sasuke weren't at all the same kind of person Naruto thought they both were.
But he didn't do anything at all, said nothing at all then, just grabbed the edge of Sasuke's sleeve and dragged him off to Ichiraku where he ordered a bowl for both of them, not even bothering to ask what kind Sasuke wanted. He ended up eating both bowls because Sasuke in a fit of unrelenting silence couldn't be induced to pick up his chopsticks and eat. The man there didn't charge Naruto, just smiled and waved genially and refused to acknowledge Sasuke's presence, as if Sasuke were some annoying dog or child that happened to accompany Naruto and didn't really count as a customer or a person.
*
Sasuke's retrieval from the bosom of Orochimaru serves to change the Naruto-Sasuke dynamics mainly in two ways:
One: Naruto, traditionally the social outcast of Konoha, was elevated along with the rest of Shikamaru's makeshift team into a sort of honorary child hero. Which is not to say that any of the Konoha parents really forgets that Naruto is still the kyuubi container, but in a dramatic twist of perspective, it's Sasuke who became public enemy number one, as far as parental influences are concerned. It's one thing, they whisper, that Kabuto turned out to be a spy, because he wasn't really a Konoha child after all. But that Sasuke, who had been raised and enveloped with sympathy and kindness since childhood, for him to turn out to be a turncoat, well, that was really unforgivable.
Two: Sasuke, traditionally the one who in most aspects dominated the relationship between him and Naruto, became the one taken under Naruto's proverbial wing. After the Orochimaru crisis, some of the Jounins requested that there be a guardian with Sasuke at all times. Kakashi had been one of the first candidates, but being a Jounin himself who actually had missions, he unfortunately had to decline. The task, then, was passed onto Naruto, for, coincidentally, two reasons:
One: Naruto was at one point Sasuke's friend, teammate, comrade, and peer, and somehow this led to the purported logical-but somewhat faulty-assumption that Naruto would be the one who could make Sasuke feel most comfortable while keeping an eye on him. Kakashi had actually advised the Jounins and Tsunaide that Naruto was probably one of the worst choices, due to the antagonistic nature of Naruto and Sasuke's relationship before the Orochimaru incident, but either that advice was ignored or it was made moot by the second reason:
Naruto was the only one who offered. Everyone else refused.
*
Naruto knows that Sasuke has beautiful feet. They had bathed together once before, and when Sasuke was climbing out of the tub Naruto had seen his feet. They were tinier than Naruto had expected, very white, the kind of white Naruto had always associated with flour or sugar or clean laundry, of which Naruto had very little of most of the time.
Graceful, beautiful feet, like a girl's, like a flower or something, so slow and soft and almost without any lines to them, and the ankle had a soft curve, and oh, just beautiful.
Feet, Naruto rationalizes, that couldn't possibly walk very long on their own, and that's what Naruto tells himself. Can't vocalize it in any other words, just that Sasuke can't possibly leave unless Naruto lets him, and Naruto won't let him.
"Why?" Sasuke had asked him before. "Why did you save me?" And Naruto had said nothing that was true then, nothing that counted anyway, but he knows now that he had thought then that maybe if he could just catch Sasuke, everything else would fall into place like snow, like puzzles, like bones and joints and knuckles.
Now he knows the truth, knows it because it's as if suddenly he can hear all the potential futures they destroy for each other, as if suddenly he regrets everything he's ever done but doesn't have enough regret to cover it.
*
Sasuke hates walking home smelling of Naruto's house. Hates when his head spins because he just can't stop seeing orange, and blond, and blue, and all those different unnatural colors that Naruto is. Hates the fact that he doesn't care about eating ramen anymore, hates that it doesn't matter to him that his sheets are rumpled and that his blanket is never made. Hates that Naruto never cooks, almost never shops, and never seems to do housekeeping at all because Naruto has nothing to keep in his house. Hates that Konoha is full of eyes and mouths and ears, hates that nobody can seem to look straight at him, hates that Naruto's voice is loud.
Hates that Naruto bustles, that Naruto cares and doesn't care, that Naruto is unbearably and casually kind, hates that Naruto never says anything about the rescue, hates and hates and hates until he can't hate anymore, and then there is only one thing left, really: Sasuke hates Konoha because every time he takes a step he thinks about how in the Sound Village he could be doing something, anything, and the only thing he can do in Konoha is nothing.
*
Konoha never snows. When Naruto goes to Mist Country to safely deliver a package there, it's during the time of winter in Mist Country when all that fog freezes up and it snows for days and days on end so that he breathes snow and exhales snow and almost bleeds snow until it finally stops.
When the snow in Mist Country stops, the weather gets colder. Naruto learns this the hard way.
When the snow just begins, Naruto is in Mist Country and seeing snow for the first time, and it's shocking to him because he doesn't think he's ever seen something so white before. It's like the snowflakes are simultaneously returning to the sky and falling on the ground, and he's falling and flying at the same time, and it reminds Naruto of chakra and leaves, of Iruka and Ichiraku Ramen and for some reason, Kakashi. He thinks of mornings. He thinks of summer in Konoha, of Sakura in the most vague terms possible. Even of Gaara's sand, lots of it, all of out it of his gourd in a steady stream threatening to kill. Thinks of needles, sharp things, cold things. And then he thinks of Haku and Zabuza, and then he almost thinks of Sasuke in the same way, as something missing and that he can never get back and would never return, even though Sasuke is right there beside him.
*
Sasuke has never seen snow either, so when he's with Naruto in Mist Country that's the first time he sees snow too. But he doesn't look up when the snow falls. He stares in front of him as if there is something to discern in all that white, something that will tell him what he's doing here, but he comes up blank.
Instead, there in the snow standing next to Naruto, Sasuke thinks about the seal on his neck that itched and never went away, even though Tsunaide had already tried to cover it up. Thinks about his family, and his mother, and his father, and occasionally about Kakashi, but more about Kakashi's eyes, the inches of his face between his forehead protector and his mask. Sasuke thinks about Kabuto, and Itachi, and Akatsuki.
Mostly Sasuke thinks about Orochimaru.
And because they both stay silent under that snowfall, for a while they are two silent figures slowly becoming whiter and whiter, the snow melting into the roots of the hair, almost trickling down their faces as the ice melts but stops cold in its tracks. Eventually Naruto rubs his cheeks with his cold hands and starts walking away, back to the hotel where they are staying, leaving footprints and an empty spot beside Sasuke and cold, lots of it.
Sasuke finds himself forced to follow. Something in that cold and winter doesn't like company, and standing there alone for the few seconds that he does, Sasuke is reminded of the only few other times he had felt truly alone: the first time he cooked a meal for himself and sat down to an empty table, the first time he did his laundry and realized he was washing just his own clothes, the first time he died or almost died in any case, the time he found out Itachi had returned, the time he had said goodbye to Sakura.
The loneliness he felt the time he woke up and found out that he hadn't accomplished anything at all and that he was back in Konoha, and that Itachi was still alive, and that somewhere out there Orochimaru was still pulling strings, lots of strings, and there he was in Konoha, and it was bright outside his window, and he was just lying there mutely, solemnly, stupidly listening to one bird outside sing like it would never stop.
*
They should have thought about the weather before they had gone, but they hadn't; half of their collective intelligence is Naruto after all, and the other half is Sasuke who isn't ever given a chance to care about time. It ends up that Naruto and Sasuke are stuck in Mist Country for a day later than they had planned because of a blizzard. They wake up that day to see everything they had seen yesterday reduced completely and totally into white as if something had tried to blot out everything's existence. Naruto spends a really long time, close to half an hour, just peering outside and not moving from the window because he's still enthralled with the idea of a white like that. "It's whiter than new," he says to Sasuke.
Sasuke, lying on the bed with his hand on his forehead, just shrugs.
Later something goes wrong with the electricity, and Naruto, right in the middle of wolfing down the last of his ramen-the only food they had in the place because Naruto bought ramen every where he went-and using his chopsticks to point at Sasuke, almost spills his noodle bowl when the lights suddenly flicker off. They try to stare at each other in the dark for a minute before Naruto sets down his noodle bowl and says, "I think it's the electricity."
"No, dimwit, it's your brain," Sasuke mutters, reaching in the dark for Naruto's voice and then feeling stupid. Glad that Naruto can't see him, he puts his hand down and just lies back on the bed because there's nothing to do. He listens to the sound of his blood coursing through his veins and of Naruto brushing his teeth using water from a water bottle. Naruto's cursing all the way from the bathroom and back because he's bumping into everything. His mattress makes a sound between whiffling and whistling when Naruto climbs on it, and it sounds like an old man wheezing.
After a while, Naruto clears his throat and says, "Sasuke, the heating stopped. Aren't you just a little cold?"
Sasuke considers, and says in a long-suffering tone, "If you're cold, you're the one who's moving."
Naruto's feet under the covers are cold when he crawls into Sasuke's bed. His hands are even colder when they accidentally brush right against the patch of skin between Sasuke's shirt and Sasuke's pants. Sasuke gives a little shiver, but soon enough Naruto's completely under the covers with him and breathing so that the sheets are sometimes rising even when Sasuke's not inhaling, and it really is warmer with Naruto under there with him. It's warm enough so when a few minutes later, Sasuke assuming Naruto to be asleep from the heart rate and the breathing, Sasuke's back pressed up against Naruto's chest, he doesn't mind that Naruto sneaks an arm around Sasuke's stomach, and both of them are starting to breathe in synchronization, some gigantic four-limbed, half cold and half warm, breathing conglomeration.
*
During the night, Sasuke wakes up suddenly and thinks to himself, one of us here cares more than the other, but he can't figure out whether it's himself, who cares because he wants out, or Naruto, who cares because--
*
The first lesson of life Naruto learns from Sasuke is that nothing ever changes in the mornings, at least not the way you want it to. He's still who he is, and Sasuke is still who he is, even if they're both warmer than what they would have been apart, but that's all there is. That's all they share.
"You woke me up last night. You had a bad dream," Sasuke says like he's commenting on the weather, completely, unnaturally calm, so Naruto wonders. He cracks an eye open to see that he can barely make out some sort of landscape outside their window. He takes this to mean that the blizzard has relatively stopped and that they'll both get frozen feet walking through it, open-toed sandals and all. Naruto wiggles his toes back under the cover; he'd accidentally stuck them out during the night and now they're cold.
"I think it was something about food," Naruto mumbles sleepily, watching his hand twitch awake on the pillow in front of him. The light from the window is white and stark and Naruto doesn't like it much. "You stole a cookie or something from me, and I started to argue with you, telling you to give it back to me, and then you sort of ran off so I was chasing you again, and no matter how fast I went I couldn't catch up to you. Just like that time." He falls silent, then tries to shrug his entire body away from Sasuke's in a fit of embarrassment. "Forget it."
"Sorry," Sasuke breathes into Naruto's hair.
Naruto twists around a little. Sasuke's hand is just barely holding onto Naruto's elbow, and something about it makes Naruto not want to disturb it. "What are you sorry for? It's not like you really left."
A pause. "But if I had?" Sasuke's face is inscrutable in the light reflected from the snow into their window. His skin is pale, Naruto remembers, and his shirt collar is very, very dark, just like his hair, and expressions on his fate are flat like cardboard and just as unbelievable, but Naruto looks anyway.
Naruto tries not to breathe, tries to keep his voice neutral when he asks, "Would you?" It's barely a whisper and if Sasuke squints really hard and moves his head so that his hair is just covering his ears he can pretend he doesn't hear it.
Sasuke's face gives it away, really, even before he says, "Maybe. If you gave me the chance." It's one of the only times Naruto hates being right, and it's long, breathless seconds before he swings his arm around and punches Sasuke right in the cheek, grimacing as much as Sasuke does. Naruto doesn't say anything when he slips on his shoes and storms out of their room, right into the snow. He's forgotten his coat, he realizes moments later, but he's miserable and plunging feet first into the snow, one unsteady footstep after another. It's around an hour before he comes back, so completely sick that he almost falls into Sasuke when Sasuke opens the door.
Sasuke is warm and Naruto is cold and that bit of contact is like electricity, as repulsive and disheartening as that is to Naruto.
They don't say anything to each other the entire day Sasuke spends nursing Naruto back to health, forcing medicine down his throat and warming up his own hands as he touches Naruto's forehead. Naruto's still has a little bit of a fever the next day, but when he wakes up he throws on his coat and marches straight to the door, theatrically unconcerned, and Sasuke follows just like he's developed a habit of doing, just as his whole life has led him towards developing that habit, just as Naruto's face, all silent agony and bitter agitation, commands him to.
*
Naruto tells Tsunaide when he quits that he can't do it anymore because of personal reasons. "How personal?" she asks, touching the edges of her knuckles to her chin lightly, and Naruto grits his teeth, lowers his head, and says, "Personal enough."
She doesn't pursue the topic.
When he steps out Gaara's waiting for him in the street as if he knew Naruto would be here. Gaara looks the same way he always does-pissed off-so Naruto tries to walk right past him except Gaara asks, "Where is he?" and keeps shifting so he's blocking Naruto's path.
"Who's he?" Naruto retorts and commends himself for glaring back when Gaara throws him a look that says 'Idiot' better than words ever could. "I don't know. And frankly I really don't care, so bug off and bother someone else. I'm not his keeper."
Gaara eyes him some more from under dark lines like eclipses, and this time instead of just moving, he grabs onto Naruto's arm to keep him from passing by. Naruto shakes his arm violently, but Gaara doesn't let go, and finally Naruto demands loudly, "What do you want from me?" because Gaara's hand is like a vice and Naruto remembers the way his sand could crush people bodily and leave nothing for the coffin.
"Do you want to know why I saved you?" Gaara asks, his voice low, almost menacing.
"No," Naruto says emphatically, and then stops. "Unless it's the same reason why I saved him, and if that's the case, I'm curious."
"It's not," Gaara says.
"How would you know?" Gaara's grip is loosening and Naruto twists his elbow around to get free. He rubs the place Gaara grabbed him, massages it so it actually hurts more than Gaara's grip did, and does his best to look Gaara in the eye as if they were both feral dogs. "You don't know anything about it or me. Or just-" Naruto looks helplessly at his arm where his fingers are still moving of their own awkward. "Just anything at all."
"You're so-" Gaara scowls and grabs at Naruto's hand this time to keep it from doing any more damage. "Stupid. You're so incredibly-" and when he grabs Naruto's chin roughly and kisses him, Naruto squeezes his eyes shut so tight he's seeing the afterimage of Gaara's face on his eyelids. After a while all those strange, illusory lights dancing in his vision start to look like snow, and then he can't see anything but white, or Gaara's skin, which is white anyway, white like snow and fish and Sasuke.
*
Later Naruto recalls that Gaara has the word love tattooed to his forehead.
And love, he knows, has never been an easy thing for any of them, for Sasuke or Gaara or even himself, because it seems like the easiest thing for any of them to do is to either kill it or let it die. Love has never been a soft, gentle, caressing thing for them, has never been anything but very loud and very painful, and love has never lasted long for any of them either.
Love, for them, has always put up walls instead of taking them down.
But there's nothing they can really do about it. Naruto knows the reason Gaara saved him; it is, after all, the same reason he saved Sasuke, except that Naruto wanted to be saved and Sasuke didn't. It's the same reason why Haku killed himself, the same reason Tsunaide gambles, the same reason Iruka cares. It's the same reason why Gaara pretends not to notice that Naruto leaving even though they both know that Gaara doesn't sleep. It's the same reason why Naruto stands outside Sasuke's apartment that night waiting for the lights to turn off, shivering. It's the same reason why Sasuke sleeps that night with one hand on the shoulder with the seal, his skin itching in his sleep.
It's the same reason why they all care so much.
A/N: The song that is playing right now? Yeah, that is the reason why I wrote this story. That, and the part in the comic where Sakura asks, "Why do boys care so much?" Yes, I know it is horrible and contrite and the entire setup for the story is completely impossible, but I am DONE and nothing could be make me happier. It has been sitting on my harddrive unfinished for at least half a month and I was starting to hate it. *sigh* *figures she really is in writer's block*
Anyway. Mwah. *blows kisses* No rotten tomatoes, please. And if tomorrow this post is gone, realize that I have come to my better senses and completely DELETED this crap.