Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

The Blessed Realm	By : susanna Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1746 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the world he lives in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I write this story only for my pleasure and I don't make any money with it.

Chapter List
- 27
- 28
- 29
Chapter
Twenty-Five: The Rich Jerks from Center Uptown

Objectively,
Naruto's place was still crowded, even though Juugo had gone to bed
before Sasuke and Naruto had returned from work, and got up and left
before they had woken up. Objectively, Naruto's place was crowded
even if it was inhabited by only two people, and yet, compared to
last week when Sasuke's whole team had been sleeping on the floor it
was empty. Naruto felt it when he looked around: Suigetsu's
sleeping-bag was no longer lying on the floor (he had always failed
to store it away), Karin's various creams were no longer
overpopulating the board above the sink, only Juugo's blankets lay
neatly folded in a corner.

Sasuke
was still asleep, curled up on his bed. Naruto had learnt to keep his
arms close to his body, now that Sasuke slept next to him, but Sasuke
did not seem to have realized that curled up he took up more than
half of the available space. Holding fast to his blanket he looked
like a small child in his sleep. The vulnerable, horrified child who
had just witnessed the murder of his entire family, Naruto thought:
When Sasuke slept, he turned back into him. Naruto felt the desire to
protect him – why had he allowed his jealousy to blind him and
prevent him from seeing Sasuke's vulnerability?

Sasuke
woke up when the sunlight touched his face.

“You
are awake?” he wondered, as on most days he had been the first
to wake up.

“I
had to, or I would have fallen out of the bed”, Naruto answered
good-humouredly.

Sasuke
saw now too that he had lain right in the middle of the bed, and that
Naruto had had to find some free space around him. He blushed and
withdrew to his half.

“I'm
sorry – I don't want to take up your space. I can find a place
for Juugo and myself, now that I earn my own money.”

For
a moment, panic flickered up in Naruto's face. “You are welcome
to stay as my guest as long as you want”, he said.

“Then
let me pay my share of the rent at least”, Sasuke insisted.

“You
don't have to. I am a rich heir now, too. The Icha-Icha-series is a
great success throughout the ninja world, so that I only work in
order not to get bored.”

Sasuke
was confused: What did Naruto mean when he said that he was a rich
heir now, too? It took him some seconds to work it out.

“I
have never been a rich heir”, he said. “After the
massacre, the clan's fortune was put under the surveillance of some
trustee of the village, who saw that every week I got a small amount
of money to pay for my food and other stuff I needed. At the
beginning the money hardly lasted to the end of the week; later I
learnt to live more economically.

Naruto
listened – it sounded familiar to him. He dimly remembered that
there had been a time when someone had bought food for him, but
during all his academy years he had had to do it himself. “I
never managed”, he said. “I always tried, making rules on
how much money I was allowed to spend per day, but it never worked.”

“It
was just too little”, Sasuke remarked.

Both
were silent for a few seconds.

“It
got better when I was a ninja”, Naruto continued in order to
shake off the memories of loneliness he had fallen into. “It
came as a revelation to me how life felt if you no longer had to
consider every little coin you were spending.”

“For
me, they stopped the payments from my family's account when I earned
some money of my own, so my situation did not much approve. After my
desertion the clan's fortune was confiscated as a whole, with the
exception of some rather small amount deposited in banks outside of
Fire Country where they don't care that I'm a missing nin. Yet it's
not much anyway – we've never been that wealthy from the
beginning as we were in charge of the military police of Konoha and
not eligible to any lucrative missions, or a job in ANBU. After the
kyuubi's attack on Konoha when the clan had been ghettoized, we were
even poorer. Now, with all the expenses for medical treatment for
myself and Suigetsu I will soon have exhausted my reserves.”

“Don't
worry about Suigetsu”, Naruto said. “He'll be rich and
famous soon, and then he will pay for himself.”

He
considered Sasuke's story, which had come as a surprise to him. He
had always taken it for granted that the Uchiha were not only one of
the strongest and most famous clans, but also one of the wealthiest.
He had always imagined that Sasuke had inherited their fortune and
was free to spend it as he wished. He felt a bit ashamed now: With
all his jealousy of Sasuke he had never spent much thought on how he
was actually living.

“Take
your time to decide whether you want to pay your share of the rent”;
he said. “You are always welcome as my guest.”

He
was not sure whether he wanted Sasuke to pay his share. It would mean
that he was no longer the host who generously offered his place to
Sasuke and his team but that they'd share everything for real, and on
equal terms. He'd let him into his flat not as a guest, but as an
inhabitant, with little space remaining for himself. The idea scared
him, and yet, when he looked at Sasuke, more beautiful than ever as
his features were no longer hardened by his desire for revenge, but
soft from mourning for his family, Naruto felt strangely touched and
ready to push all fear away in order to be close to him.

The
moment passed without a decision from Sasuke's side. (Actually he had
already made up his mind that he would pay for his share and Juugo's,
but he intended to wait for some more days before he informed Naruto
on his decision, pretending that he was taking his time.) They
returned to more mundane activities, reading or browsing the magazine
with events in town, and in the afternoon Naruto decided to introduce
Sasuke to the town's most popular pastime, which was not music.
Music, in Music Town, was not a pastime, but serious business, work,
art and a huge industry. If people wanted to relax they opted for
silence.

Naruto
did not tell Sasuke where they were going. From the bed, where he was
reading the Gutsy Ninja, Sasuke watched him putting on a red
T-Shirt with some white text on it which was in Sasuke's opinion even
uglier than the orange jacket he normally wore. Then, to Sasuke's
horror, Naruto tossed a T-Shirt of the same kind to him, urging him
to put it on.

“You
have to wear it”, he said. “You have to show which side
you're on.” It's like that crest of your clan you always wear
on your back.”

Longingly
Sasuke looked at his own shirt with the Uchiha symbol on it. He felt
weirdly naked without it – no longer sure who he was. The other
issue was that never before he had worn red and did not recognize
himself in the mirror with such a brilliant colour.

“It
suits you”, Naruto said. “White's just too boring –
red makes you look sexy.” (Why did he have a talent to confuse
and irritate him with his compliments? Sasuke thought. Weren't
compliments meant to please the person they were given to?) “Next
week you can applicate your clan's crest on it.”

He
insisted that they left early in order to get some good places, but
also to have time to buy themselves some takeaway food for lunch and,
most importantly, to enjoy the atmosphere in town as they leisurely
made their way to the area where the event was going to take place.
They met other groups of people wearing the same red shirt, and
greeted them no matter whether they were complete strangers or people
they knew as colleagues or regulars from the restaurant. Sometimes
they stopped to chat, or rather to give Naruto the opportunity to
chat. Sasuke was not able to contribute anything to the conversation
as it was all about the upcoming event.

They
also met people clad in green, and with them, there was no friendly
chatting, just an exchange of provocations.

“Sing
while you can!” Naruto would tell a group who were standing
around some food booth, drinking beer and singing loudly and out of
tune. “When the match is over, you'll be silent.”

“Sure,
because it was us who won the last three times”, they gave
back.

“They're
the enemy”, Naruto told Sasuke when they had passed the group,
making him wonder how Naruto, who had always done his best to make
friends, had managed to gain himself any enemies when he had had
lived in this place for only a few weeks. “They are Center
Uptown, we are Inner Center. Center Uptown begins at the town hall
and runs all along the left side of Heroes' Park. I hate them –
they're all rich jerks.- Ey, you jerks! Don't behave as if you own
the place! We'll show you who is the true champion of this town!”

Sasuke
wondered if he should look for an apartment in Center Uptown. He'd
still be able to visit Naruto every day, and green did not look as
stupid as red. Maybe he should ask Naruto for a quarter of town where
people wore black and white.

The
event itself took place on a green field in the outskirts of the
town, surrounded by benches that allowed for several thousand
spectators. To Sasuke it seemed quite impressive, but Naruto told him
that it was still rather small. “Now it's only the quarters of
town playing against each other. But in a few years when it will be
popular throughout the ninja world there'll be whole towns or even
countries competing against each other, and tens of thousands of
people will be watching.”

He
had to stop explaining as the match was about to start. Tense and
upright he sat on his place, concentrating on what was happening on
the lawn, with little attention to spare for Sasuke.

“Look
out for the guy with the number ten”, he told him. “That's
our hero. That's why he's wearing the number ten.”

“The
one with the ball?” Sasuke asked.

“No,
that's Center Uptown's hero.” Naruto was a bit annoyed: Was
this not obvious, as the man was all in green? He turned away from
Sasuke and focussed on the match: Having not much talent for music
Naruto had soon turned to music town's second most important
activity: its ethics of pushing oneself to one's limits for the
benefit of one's team, its rivalries and its heroes, its simple rules
about winning or losing, and the ambition to come out top against
all adverse circumstances were something he could relate to, and
watching the players he sometimes even forgot that he was far from
home and that there was no prospect for a quick return. (Though being
with Sasuke and helping him find his way around town had a similar
effect.) Fusing with the people of his quarter of town, becoming one
with them in their singing, in their joy when their team scored, or
their despair when they were losing temporarily made him feel as if
he was one of them and not a stranger without any friends in this
place. (Even though in Sasuke's eyes he had adapted quite well and
better than he, Sasuke, ever would.)

To
Sasuke, the whole game simply did not make any sense. A bunch of
grown-up men passing a ball among each other as they had done in
Konoha when they had been kids. (Not him, however, he had had to
train.) He activated his Sharingan, but while it told him how they
moved to control the ball it did not help him understand the game in
itself. He listened to the conversations of people around him about
this or that team winning or losing, but their words did not make any
sense to him either: All the men were still on their feet and
running, even though sometimes one or the other was on the ground,
struck down by one of the other players, or faking to be struck down,
and always they were looked after by the medical staff immediately,
who came rushing onto the ground, not waiting until one of the
players was so seriously wounded that he was no longer able to fight
because he was in need of some intense medical care.

He,
Sasuke, would not have gone down for minor wounds as these, or
shouted out in pain and cried for help. He would just have gone on.
And as it seemed, the players themselves did not take their wounds
too seriously either but were back on their feet after a few minutes
of treatment. Maybe they had to behave like this, Sasuke mused, for
the lack of serious attacks, so that they complained loudly whenever
they were touched by another player in a way that could be hardly
called a strike. Normally they were lucky and the other player was
told off, and two of them, one of each side, even had to quit the
game.

How
were you supposed to win if you were not allowed to fight? Sasuke
wondered. And how were you supposed to fight if whenever you touched
your opponent the man in black would tell you off?

The
man in black was the other source of wonder to Sasuke. People
listened to him when he told them off. They accepted punishments.
They talked to him, trying to make him change his mind, but in the
end they accepted his decisions, if only grudgingly. (The spectators
did not. They kept calling him a blind idiot who did not know the
rules. Not knowing the rules himself Sasuke could not judge whether
they were correct.)

And
all this happened without him using any force, which would have been
useless anyway, as he was older and weaker than most of the players.
It was a strange world, and Sasuke was fascinated by it.

Everyone
rose from their seats suddenly, including Sasuke, who understood that
this was what you were supposed to do. Naruto cheered at the top of
his voice, he embraced Sasuke and kissed him on his cheeks (without
meaning anything as Sasuke realized to his disappointment.)

“I
told you!” he shouted. “I told you! We are going to win!
It's only five minutes left, and they can't make up for this! Not
when they're still in shock.”

Sasuke
had no idea what had happened, and he could not ask Naruto, who was
now completely absorbed by the match, torn between hope and fear for
his team. The woman on his other side however felt pity for him when
she saw that he was rather confused and irritated instead of enjoying
the match.

“You
are not from here, are you? Hasn't your friends explained you
anything?”

“Nothing
at all”, Sasuke answered. “Why are we winning?”

“We
just scored a goal”, she answered, and then his confused looks
told her that he was in need of even more explanations. Yet thanks to
her he was able to follow the rest of the match with some more
understanding, and felt glad with the people around him when Inner
Center left the place as victors.

He'd
definitely have to find out more about this strange activity, he
decided.

A/N:
The story will get a bit more serious soon again.

Sneakyfox:
Thanks for your review! Things just developped in a direction Sasuke
never foresaw, and now he wants to show Naruto that he is not
inferior to him.

msuzumaki:
Thanks! It's good to see you again! That they are in a strange place
with strange rules and standards does not mean that they are no
longer jealous of each other...

Nami:
Thanks for your compliments! I try to give Sasuke some psychological
depth and plausibility (which, alas, he hasn't in canon at the
moment, where he is just insane.) I tried to make his dreams of
revenge understandable, and I also tried to find a believable way out
of this state for him, so your lines made me hoped that I achieved at
least partly what I was aiming for.
- 27
- 28
- 29
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Blessed Realm