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
- 38
- 39
- 40
Chapter
Thirty-Six: Birthday Party

Naruto
had spent quite some time making plans for Sasuke's birthday. He had
organized a day off for both of them, he had considered going out
with his friend on his special day, have picnic in Heroes' Park for
example, then watch a football match or a movie, then invite him to a
really expensive restaurant and in the evening visit one of the local
music clubs. He had not yet decided which one as he had no idea of
Sasuke's taste for music, nor did he have any particular taste for
music himself. For a moment he had thought of taking Sasuke to a
place where you did not just listen but also had the opportunity to
dance, having a vague idea that Sasuke might prefer this, but he was
still shy about dancing with Sasuke in public. They were not good
enough for this anyway, he thought.

Juugo
relieved him from having to decide whether they should dance or just
listen: He was planning a real party at his new family's place.
Suigetsu and Karin had promised to be there too, and he had also
collected money to buy a birthday present, not telling anyone what it
was. Naruto had contributed, but he had also bought a smaller present
of his own, to show Sasuke that his affection went beyond just
donating some money so that Juugo could buy a present.

Sasuke
had not given much thought to his birthday. He'd never celebrated his
birthdays since the murder of his family, but had just seen them as
markers in the endless stretch of time lying before him until he
would kill Itachi, markers that told him how he got older and
stronger, approaching the day when he would be considered a grown-up
man, old enough to challenge his brother. Later they only marked how
much time he had wasted staying in Konoha instead of avenging his
family, and then, when he had been with Orochimaru, his birthdays
reminded him that he had limited time to get strong enough to defeat
Orochimaru before he would attempt to take over his body.

His
sixteenth birthday had been a short time before he fought Itachi and
he had celebrated it all by himself, withdrawing from his team who
had been with him already at that time, meditating in front of the
picture of his family: Now he was grown up, now he had gathered the
strength to defeat Itachi, even without the Mangekyou Sharingan.

He
felt rather weird about his seventeenth birthday. A year ago he would
not have thought that he would be alive to celebrate it. He'd die
after killing Itachi, he had been sure, though he had also had some
vague plans of killing Madara too.

Now
that he was alive on his seventeenth birthday he did not know how he
felt about it. It certainly meant that he was again wasting his time
instead of forging plans for his revenge. It had been a mistake to
tell Naruto – now it was impossible to leave Music Town without
Naruto's consent, which he would not get without a plan that would
leave him and Naruto alive. One the other hand he was not in a hurry
– he might enjoy life in Music Town for a while.

For
a short moment he forgot about his revenge and his birthday seemed to
mark the beginning of an unknown future, a future that held a lot of
possibilities, a lot of unknown risks – everything but the
familiar path of training, fighting, gaining revenge and dying, the
path he had always seen whenever he had thought of his future after
his family's death. He had never imagined what it might be like to be
a grown-up man in his twenties or thirties or forties, now he could
see a future that stretched into old age. When he thought of this
future, his seventeenth birthday was only a minor landmark: the last
before his eighteenth birthday, when he would be considered a
grown-up man according to the laws of Music Town.

He
had actually not given much thought to his birthday. Maybe if Juugo's
foster mothers had not asked for his age he would not have thought of
it at all, and neither Juugo nor Naruto would have made any plans to
celebrate it. Maybe then he would not have been surprised by Naruto
waking him up in the early morning, taking his shoulders and drawing
him into an embrace before he was fully awake.

“Happy
Birthday”, Naruto said. “But I'm sure it will be a happy
day: Juugo has organized a surprise party for you.”

“Has
he?”

“Sure
he has. I also have a present for you.”

He
got up and produced a parcel from the wardrobe where he had kept it
hidden for some time. It was wrapped in brightly coloured paper and
rather huge. He took it to Sasuke, who was still in bed.

Sasuke
saw Naruto's eyes, saw his eagerness for him to unwrap the parcel,
his anxiousness whether he, Sasuke, would approve or disapprove of
it, and suddenly it felt all wrong. It should not be like this: You
should not get your presents while you were still in bed, you should
have to get up silently when everyone else was still fast asleep and
find them on the living-room table. The giver should not be sitting
next to you when you discovered and unwrapped them, waiting for your
judgement. He should be standing, or not be present at all, knowing
you'd like his presents because you were supposed to like them. They
were what those who loved you gave to you, they were what they wanted
you to grow up into. He would look at his presents, unwrap those that
were wrapped and feel all the love they represented, and then see the
same love in his family's faces who by now had joined him to
congratulate him.

He
unwrapped Naruto's present: An espresso machine.

“You
like that stuff, don't you?” Naruto said. “I thought
you'd enjoy being able to make it yourself.”

He
had long thought what he wanted to give to Sasuke. He had spent quite
some time in a drugstore, smelling various brands of hair gel but
then deciding that it was probably better to let Sasuke choose by
himself and rather get him some coffee machine. He had listened for
more than an hour to a shop assistant explaining to him the
advantages and disadvantages of the available models, having
difficulties to understand them as he, Naruto, did not like coffee at
all.

Sasuke
did not know what to say. It was certainly a well-meant present,
indicating that Naruto had observed him well and really intended to
give him something he would enjoy, but – it was all practical.
Birthday presents weren't supposed to be practical. They were
supposed to be equipment he needed to grow up as a ninja: His first
wrist protector, his first kunai (still blunt), his first shirt with
the Uchiha crest on its back, or they were real toys to play with.
But definitely no household machines.

“Thanks
a lot”, he said when he realized that Naruto was still waiting,
but his heart was not in it.

Naruto
insisted that they tried the machine for breakfast, and it produced
good coffee as it turned out. (Naruto had chosen well when he had
bought coffee.) Naruto insisted also that Sasuke did not help while
he prepared breakfast, and this felt right to Sasuke: Having the
birthday breakfast table laid for you. Only when he sat down with
Naruto he felt sad: It should not be espresso, no matter how good it
was, but cocoa. When he saw that Naruto was looking worried a got a
grip on himself and smiled again.

“We
should have celebrated our birthdays when we were still Team Seven”,
Naruto said. “Why didn't we do it? We should have invited each
other and celebrated as anyone else.”

“Sakura
celebrated hers with her family and invited the girls of our academy
class”, Sasuke answered. Naruto was silent: They could not have
celebrated without a family.

Silently
they ate, and Sasuke got aware that he was actually glad that Naruto
and Juugo had remembered his birthday and he felt moved that Juugo's
new family had agreed to give a party in his honour, even though he
felt sad that it was not his own family. He was looking forward to
the party, and at the same time he felt anxious about it.

When
they arrived the two mothers had already put up tables and benches in
their garden, and this time they had not invited a bunch of their
lesbian friends: It was Sasuke's party, not theirs. Suigetsu and
Karin however had found time to come.

“Seventeen,
eh”, Suigetsu said. “Quite grown up, I think. You're
taller than me now, though only in height.”

“I
have always been taller than you”, Sasuke replied. “And
not only in height.”

Inwardly
he smiled, and then he was sad again: Itachi had always remarked on
Sasuke's growth on his birthdays, and Sasuke had always answered that
one day he would be taller than Itachi. He had not, in the end, and
he did not know whether he was still growing. It did not matter
anyway, as he would never again be able to compare to Itachi and see
who was taller.

“I
have something for you”, Suigetsu continued and handed a CD to
Sasuke. “It's not wrapped because I did not have time, and
anyway, it's a waste of paper.”

“It's
a waste of paper if you don't know how to wrap a parcel and get it
all crumpled”, Karin said.

Sasuke
looked at the CD: Neither he nor Naruto owned a CD player. At least
the cover was pretty.

“It's
a copy of the demo tape we did with our band to apply for concerts”,
Suigetsu explained.

Karin
had a present too. It was well wrapped: Sasuke had to work his way
through several layers of paper and bubble wrap until he found the
present itself, a ring of wood, some fifteen centimetres in diameter,
supporting a net of threads decorated with wooden pearls, feathers
and some tiny bells. Karin was leaning against him while he unwrapped
it and he had to suppress a urge to shove her away as he did not want
to appear rude.

“It's
supposed to catch nightmares and protect you against them”, she
explained.

“I
don't need it!” Sasuke said automatically, feeling caught as he
had actually suffered a lot from nightmares for a long time. Right
after the massacre he had night after night relived the moment when
he had returned home and found Itachi standing next to the bodies of
his dead parents. Later he had learnt to wake up at will and to raise
barriers against the pain, mostly by dreaming of his revenge. The
nightmares had returned after he had heard that his clan had been
murdered on orders of the Leaf, and they had actually got worse after
his arrival in Music Town when telling Naruto about his parents,
building his shrine and being confronted with Juugo's new family had
brought the memories back to him. It was in some way worse than
before as dreaming of his revenge did no longer work to get him out
of the pain he felt when he remembered the day of the massacre.
Seeing Naruto sleeping next to him sometimes gave him comfort, and
sometimes it did not.

Anyway,
he had no intention of telling Karin about his nightmares, and he did
not want any item she had created to keep them away from him. They
were his dreams after all. He activated his Sharingan to check the
thing.

“It
does not contain any jutsus”, he said.

“Oh
no, it's just feathers and threads. The women in my seminar class
asked me about these things, so I pretended that I knew everything
and then went to the library and found a book that explained about
them. It took me some practise, but now I am able to teach how to
make them. They are quite pretty, I think.”

“Yes,
certainly”, Sasuke answered. He had not made up his mind about
this thing. If anything, he thought it plain weird. “I'll have
to ask Naruto before I put it up”, he said. “It's his
place after all.”

They
joined Naruto who was chatting with Juugo's foster-mothers. He liked
the dreamcatcher, and the two women were full of admiration.

“You
still know how to make them! We used to know similar techniques, ways
to communicate with the spirits of nature, but we have lost all our
traditions and now we have to re-import them from other countries.”

Karin
promised to make them some dreamcatchers for their kids.

Juugo
had been inside the house all the time, wrapping the present for
Sasuke. Now he joined the rest of the guests in the garden, handing
the present to Sasuke.

“It's
from all of us”, he said. “Your old friends and your new
friends.”

It
was soft and big and wrapped in plain paper.

“Be
careful or it will get crumpled”, Juugo said.

Sasuke
removed the paper, rather anxious than in joyous anticipation. He
unfolded what was beneath the wrapping paper, held it up and looked
at it. It could have been worse, he thought when he saw it: Juugo
could have gone for some fancy underwear.

“It's
beautiful”, Karin said. “You've chosen well, Juugo.”

“I'd
never wear anything like this”, Suigetsu said. “In my
branch of music you don't even have to dress up for concerts, except
that you may get a new leather belt or wristbands. It will always be
my muscles that help me seduce a girl, not some fancy clothes. But
you'll look great in it, I'm sure.”

“I've
always liked those traditional shirts”, one of the lesbian
mothers said. “I have always liked how in former times men were
not afraid of wearing bright clours, or having frills and embroidery
on their garments. Now even in the ninja countries all they think of
is whether their clothes are practical.”

Sasuke
was glad that the shirt was white, or rather ivory.

The
other woman carefully touched the fabric. “It's pure silk”,
she said. “It feels quite special, smooth and rich.”

“It
looks great”, Naruto said. “Like something you might wear
on your wedding when we're back in Konoha.”

The
little girls had assembled too, touching the material and admiring
the embroidery as their mothers had (there weren't any frills). Now
they urged Sasuke to put on the shirt. He would have preferred not
to, not with Karin around, but there was no rational way to refuse,
or to insist that he wanted to change inside the house. He felt
uncomfortable in it: It was traditional, without buttons or a zipper,
intended to be kept in place by a belt, which he did not have at the
moment. He straightened and tried to look cool and unmoveable as he
had at Orochimaru's place but it did not work with a bunch of little
girls tugging at his sleeves and touching the front of his shirt. He
could not well chidorize them as he would have done with Orochimaru.
He was glad when one of the mothers told them to leave him alone.

“Why
is he getting all these presents?” an even smaller girl asked.

“It's
his birthday”, her mother answered. “He's seventeen
now.”

The
child registered the information and it was almost possible to watch
her process it.

“Then
why aren't there any candles? Why is there no birthday cake?”

Finally
someone remembers what is needed on a birthday, Sasuke thought.

“He's
a big boy, almost grown up”, her mother said. “He does
not need that any more.”

Sasuke
did not react. The other mother saw that he was unhappy and gave the
girls some money so that they might buy candles and a cake while the
rest of the guests sat down to have some tea or coffee. (The children
got apple juice and water. They did not sit down for long anyway but
soon went to play.)

It
was all wrong, Sasuke thought again. The presents were wrong, the
food was wrong, the whole way of celebrating his birthday was wrong.
He listened to Naruto, who had been asked whether they already missed
Juugo and who was explaining how he had come to like him in the
course of the few weeks he had been living at his place. Sasuke felt
left out.

The
girls returned with a cake in a box. They disappeared into the
kitchen without letting anyone, least of all Sasuke, see the cake,
claiming that they had to add some final touch, or rather decoration
to it. Sasuke was content. The cake was supposed to be a surprise. He
was just worried that it were some little girls who were preparing
that surprise.

It
took them rather long, so long that one of the mothers went after
them to see what had happened. Ten minutes later they returned with
the cake: It was white and pink, it was eight centimetres in height,
and on top the girls had tried to write “happy birthday,
Sasuke” with chocolate, ruining the top layer of cream. The
cake's edges had also been ruined by the girls' attempts to evenly
distribute seventeen candles on a circle.

It
was all wrong, Sasuke thought again. They meant well but they just
did not get it right. The cake was too artificial, the writing
contained a spelling mistake, the candles were still assembled on one
side of the cake, with a few lonely ones on the other side, giving
the impression that the other candles were trying to avoid them, and
Sasuke suddenly felt sad for the lonely candles.

“My
mother used to make the cake herself”, he said. He could not
talk more becuase otherwise he would have cried openly. Even as it
was he could not prevent a tear running down his cheek. The children
stared at him in shock.

“Why
is he crying?” one of them asked.

“His
parents are dead”, he mother answered. “He's sad that
they can't be with him.”

The
girl nodded in understanding. The smallest child, a boy who could not
even talk, went over to Sasuke and embraced his knees and hips as
well as he could. Sasuke picked him up and placed him on his lap.

He
had to get a grip on himself, he realized. He could not disturb these
kids by crying when he was supposed to be happy.

“I
am sorry”, he said. “I have to thank you for allowing me
to celebrate my birthday at your place. You're very generous.”

A/N:

ladygizarme:
Thanks again for your compliments! I am glad that you like how the
boys' bringing up clashes with the way people in Music Town think
about children. Getting this well is one of my main ambitions with
this story. I am glad also that you like the dancing chapters. I used
to dance myself, and I fear that this will make the dance chapters
overlong and too detailed, but at the moment I am quite confident
that „writing about what I know“ rather helps them to get
better.

Naruto
finding out that Sasuke's gay – I think that at this point of
the story he's actively avoiding the most natural conclusion.

Naruto
won't let down Hinata the way Sasuke let down Sakura: Naruto is nice
and amiable person.

I
have some plans for Sakura in my story. (I have given up hope for
Canon-Sakura by now, mostly because she's conventional. I would have
liked her to go and save Sasuke, with or without Naruto, not
kill him. But maybe Kakashi is mistaken.) I hope you will like what I
am going to do with Sakura.

Rahvin
68: I am glad that you are enjoying my story. I'm sorry that this
birthday chapter, written on request of some of my readers, means
again a standstill – but the next chapter will again move the
plot.

DeMock_LeFay:
Thanks for commenting again. I could understand everything, at least
I think so. I have plans both for Sakura's answer and for the new
dance class...
- 38
- 39
- 40
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