The Blessed Realm

Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Two: Just like Icha-Icha

The ballroom couples listened intently, waiting for their number to be announced. There weren't any surprises, neither good nor bad ones: everyone had ended up in the class they had been training for. Some people looked a bit disappointed: they had secretly hoped to be sorted into a higher class, but as they would not have found any understanding from their friends they did not complain.

There was a break now before the contest started with the preliminary rounds. Sasuke and Naruto walked around, looking for some non-dancing friends. Juugo's fostermothers had announced that they would come and watch. The first people they met, however, were some girls from their class who had also promised to come because they were curious what Sasuke and Naruto were doing in their spare time.

“You really look great,” they said. “All you gay people look great. I'd never thought I'd enjoy watching you in such a way.”

“I wish my boy-friend enjoyed dancing too,” the second girl said. “It really looks as if it is a lot of fun.”

“My boy-friend doesn't like dancing either,” the first girl continued. “You don't think we might dance together, even though we are just friends, not a lesbian couple?”



“Quite a few couples are just friends, not lovers,” Sasuke said. “They think their dancing profits from not being in love.”

“I think there's some female couples here who are not lesbians,” Naruto added. “We are a tolerant bunch. We don't mind straight people. So if you join our club people will welcome you.”

The girl looked at her friend, but the friend looked rather reluctant. “I don't know,” she said. “I think I prefer dancing with male partners.”

Sasuke and Naruto went on: These were other people's problems. Finally they found Juugo's fostermothers, or rather, Juugo's fostermothers found them.

“You did well,” they said, embracing the two boys. “So when will we see you again?”

They had brought a programme, and Naruto pointed out to them the time when the C-class would start.

Sakura was with the two women. “You look really good in these clothes,” she said. “But it's still weird to see you dancing, and dancing together. In my mind I still see you as fighters.”

Naruto drew Sasuke closer to himself. She still hasn't accepted that we are lovers, he thought. She still hasn't accepted that Sasuke would never have fallen in love with her. He remembered the time when he would have been content with Sasuke marrying Sakura, and him living with them as their friend, but all in all he preferred the present arrangement. He kissed Sasuke on his cheek.

“Being a good dancer is valued higher here than being a good fighter,” Sasuke said. “You need to change the way you see us in your mind.”

He fell silent, because the division into classes of the Latin couples was announced. They waited for their number and already started to fear that they had been forgotten, but then their number was called among the couples who had made it to the B-class. The two women understood it before Sasuke and Naruto did. They embraced them both.

“Now you've shown that you're great dancers!” they said. “Now you've shown that you really belong to Music Town.”

The boys still had to digest the information.

“The dancing will start soon again,” the women said. It was only the D-class for the straight couples, and neither of them cared much about them, but after this the C-classes of the lesbian and gay couples would start. “So take some time to prepare well and get a calm mind for dancing!”

Sasuke and Naruto returned to their own table, and on their way they were able to discuss the news among themselves.

“Next year we'll make it to the A-class,” Sasuke said.

“Next year we'll be in Konoha,” Naruto replied.

They found the guy from Earth Country and his husband getting more and more excited: they'd start in the C-class, and it was only a short time before their tournament started. They were getting nervous even though they had always stated that they danced only for fun and that participating in the tournament was more important to them than winning it.

“You'll make it,” Naruto said, embracing them both.

Sasuke embraced them too: it was what you did on such an occasion.

“What's that?” he asked, pointing to a piece of gauze that was attached to the local-born man's left middle finger and to his right shoulder.

The man looked at it: “I like it,” he said, answering to Sasuke's unspoken words.

Sasuke shrugged. He had seen a lot of female dancers (mostly from opposite sex couples) wearing such a piece of cloth, and he considered it ridiculous. He knew better than to tell the man, however.

They watched their friends dance and clapped and cheered for them and told them they had done well when it was over. They got immersed in their community, feeling they were one with their friends.

It took a while until it was their turn again. During the B-class ballroom competition, which directly proceeded their own, Sasuke grew nervous again, and he dragged Naruto to the changing-room to renew his make-up. (He also renewed his own make-up, and the gel in his hair, but he spent much more time on Naruto.)

“I want to win this,” he said. “It's going to be more difficult now that we've in the B-class, but it will be more honourable too.”

Naruto embraced him. (He avoided kissing him because he did not want to mess up his make-up.)

“Don't be too ambitious,” he said. “Your dancing gets worse when you are tense from ambition.”

Sasuke nodded because he knew that Naruto was correct, but he also knew that this put him into some kind of paradox: being less ambitious in order to dance better.

Their dance trainer's advice was quite similar: “Just dance and have fun! Don't forget that what you have achieved already is a great success: you have nothing to lose. Don't worry about small mistakes: these won't get you any minus points on the judges' lists. Just be there! Focus on the present: on your dancing, on Naruto, on the audience.”

Sasuke nodded, but Naruto felt that the advice had not been very helpful. He'd have to support Sasuke again, he thought. He laid his hand into the hand Sasuke had offered to him when they climbed the stairs to the stage.

His worries turned out to be unfounded. Sasuke enjoyed walking onto the stage, he enjoyed presenting himself to the audience while the moderator announced their names and where they came from, he enjoyed leaving the stage and waving at the audience. When it was their turn to dance he was still in a special mood, and he returned Naruto's smile when he offered his hands to him so that they might start to dance the rumba.

Sasuke liked the rumba, and even more he liked the samba. This alone would have been reason enough for him to be glad that they started in the B-class, because in the C-class there were only three dances. He liked the samba because it gave them the opportunity to be really close, and because it was more athletic than the rumba and had a more clearly defined rhythm. Naruto loved the jive because it was the dance that appeared like some real sport to him, but with time he had learnt to appreciate the more erotic nature of samba or rumba. He smiled and softened in Sasuke's arms, and Sasuke felt reassured.

“You did well,” their dance trainer told them when their preliminaries had ended. “The first round was for warming up, now you showed them what you're really capable of. We'll see what the judges think of it – but whatever they decide, you can be proud of yourselves. Now focus on the A-class!”

Several couples from their dance club had qualified for the A-class. They had all dressed up, wearing shirts that were open to their navels, and they had used a lot of make-up, and their hair was shining with vaseline. Now they needed the support of their companions, just as they had supported the dancers in the C- and B-class when it had been their turn.

Sasuke took Naruto's hands while they watched. He remembered the tournament he had watched on the day of his arrival in Music Town, and he remembered the fascination he had felt watching the top couples, how they first had given him the idea that love, including physical love, might be something he could enjoy, and respect himself for.

“Dancing ourselves is much better than watching others dance,” he said. He laid his arm around Naruto, and Naruto leant against him. “And making love and being together and sharing everything.”

Naruto also remembered Sasuke's first day in Music Town. He still remembered his anxiousness on that day. He remembered how he had slowly started to trust that Sasuke would stay – and that Sasuke was in love with him and not with anyone else. He had slowly learnt to trust that he was worth being loved, just like as a child he had learnt to trust that he was worth having friends.

“Being together for real is what I've always longed for,” he said. “And now we'll return to Konoha together, and it will be real too.”

“I just regret we cannot stay and learn to dance like the top couples and inspire other people's dreams,” Sasuke replied.

They were watching the Jive now, which was the last dance, and Naruto realized that they still had to learn a lot until they could dance like this.

Thee preliminaries were over, at least for the same sex couples. There were still the A-class and the S-class of the opposite sex couples, but no one was interested in them. They welcomed their own A-class couples back at their table and congratulated them to their performance, and then they discussed the costumes of the couples from other clubs.

When the opposite sex couples had finished their dancing there was a break, and people started to walk around and have drinks and chat with their friends. There was even some music, so that people from the audience also had an opportunity to dance. The competitors did not dance: they were too tense for dancing just for fun.

Sasuke and Naruto met Karin and Kakashi.

“You did great,” Karin said. “It's a pleasure to watch you.”

They looked at Kakashi, waiting for some compliments from his side too, but he only said that he couldn't say anything: “All this is still too new and strange to me.”

“And did you see the A-class and the S-class now too?” Karin continued. “I never thought that ballroom dancing might be that fascinating. I always thought it a bit weird that you had chosen such an old-fashioned dance style like ballroom, but now I see it's really cool.”

“We don't do ballroom,” Sasuke said. “We do Latin.”

“Ballroom is what the guys with the suits and the tailcoats do,” Naruto explained.

“Whatever. And did you see the couple in the lilac shirts, by the way? They were best, weren't they? They'll win for sure. Have you noticed them?”



Sasuke and Naruto had not only noticed them, but they had also discussed them in depth and in length with their friends. “Being gay doesn't mean you have to dress up as parrots,” Sasuke said.

“We saw them, but they're not from our club,” Naruto said. “We'll cheer for our own friends. That's what you do here in Music Town.” He looked at Kakashi. “This is not a weird and strange place,” he said. “People here love and support their friends just as they do in Konoha. Sasuke has written about this. Tomorrow his article will be printed in the newspapers.”

“Really?” Karin asked, smiling seductively.

Sasuke nodded. He felt annoyed.

“Still there's so much that's different about this place,” Kakashi said. “Karin and I watched the parade this morning, and in the afternoon she showed me the town. It's fascinating. I feel reminded of the places Jiraiya describes in Icha-Icha: parties and people who walk around in the town or in the park with their special person, holding hands. There's some differences, however. For example, there's no beach in Music Town.”

“There's a river,” Naruto said. “People go there for barbecue parties, but only in summer. Now it's too cold.”

“I understand. Maybe I will be able to see the place in June, too. Still the town does not feel the same as Icha-Icha. It's similar, but it's not the same.”

“It's not. In Icha-Icha people don't have to work. Here they do.”

“Kakashi may be able to find work here,” Karin said. “He told me that in Konoha he worked as a nurse for your former Hokage, as he was no longer able to work as a ninja. Male nurses are rare here, so he will be appreciated.”

“So you're going to stay?” Naruto asked.

“I'm not certain yet. I fear that I might get into trouble when I return to Konoha. I'm a rogue nin now. Still, helping Sakura to leave the village seemed the most useful thing I might do for Konoha.”

Sasuke and Naruto nodded. Somehow they did not feel like telling him that they had decided to return to Konoha.

“We need to go back to our friends,” Naruto said. “Dancing starts soon again, and our friends need us to cheer for them.”

 

A/N: My beta asked me about the piece of gauze the man is wearing. A lot of female dancers were them, but I have also seen them with male dancers in same-sex dance competitions, and you can see one of them on the Wikipedia-page for ballroom dancing. There you also find a list of dancers at tournaments.

Thanks again for your reviews and your plusses! You can find my answers at http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/14965-blessed-realm/ .It is now possible to access the thread without registration at the forums.