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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
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Chapter
Thirty-Eight: Not a monster

It
had been a nice day, all in all, Sasuke thought on his way home with
Naruto. After playing football they had had barbecue and he had got
into a row with Naruto about using his katon though he had promised
not to when he just knew more about keeping a fire alive than Naruto
did. Later in the evening the grown-ups had some wine in the
living-room and listened to Suigetsu's CD, and Karin had told some
amusing stories about her seminar on medical ninjutsu.

He
had also got another present from Juugo, a personal present in
addition to the dress shirt Juugo had bought from the money he had
collected from everyone. In a quiet moment he had made Sasuke follow
him into a far-off corner of the garden where his friends had already
been assembled and had presented him a very small parcel. All the
kids had watched impatiently as Sasuke opened it, hoping he'd like
it, as he thought, and he had hoped that it would not be as useless
as Suigetsu's and Karin's presents. It turned out to be far worse: A
bookmark calender with pictures of naked men. Sasuke stared at it for
some seconds in a mixture of embarrassment, fascination and
annoyance, which all turned into anger when he saw that Juugo
collected some marbles from his friends.

“It
was a bet”, Juugo explained. “First, that I'd dare to buy
it, second that I'd dare to give it to you, third that you'd like it.
You like it, don't you?”

Sasuke
did not know what to say. He was angry but he did not want to rob
Juugo of his triumph, and also, he had looked far too long at the
calendar to pretend that he was not interested or even disgusted.

“I
do”, he had said, and now, walking silently next to Naruto, he
thought the calendar the best of all the presents he had got this
day.

It
had been a nice day, his first birthday not celebrated with his
family but with friends, even though nobody had known how to properly
celebrate a birthday.

Naruto,
who had been walking next to him, lost in his own thoughts, now spoke
up.

“Would
you have liked to be adopted?” he asked.

Sasuke
recalled what the term meant.

“No,
I wouldn't”, he answered. “I would not have wanted to be
anyone else's child. Foster parents might have been okay, if they had
been ready to respect that I was still the heir of the Uchiha clan.”

He
had never considered the possibility of having been taken in by other
people, not even when Juugo's foster mothers had invited Juugo to
live with them. He imagined it now – not yet with a lot of
details, rather thinking of it than imagining it: some nice people as
Juugo's foster mothers who'd have left him alone most of the time but
who'd have called him to have meals with them, seeing that he was
doing well, not just giving money to him that never lasted to the end
of the month.

“I
would have liked to be adopted”, Naruto said. “Someone
who'd say: You are my child now!”

Sasuke
pondered his words. “But what about your real parents?”

“I
might have still searched for them.” Naruto thought about it.
“Maybe my adopted parents would have told me that I had real
parents, too. For a long time I had believed that I did not have any
parents but that I had somehow sprung from the earth, until I
understood that everyone has parents.”

Sasuke
took his hand, just for a second.

“I
wondered if I was some kind of monster even before I knew of the
kyuubi. I thought that maybe my parents had abandoned me because I
was a monster. Everyone shunned me, so I guessed my parents must have
shunned me too.”

(There
had been other times as well when Naruto had rather dreamt that
everything would be fine if his parents just were alive and looked
after him.)

“I'm
sure they haven't”, Sasuke said. “I'm sure you weren't a
monster. I'm sure you were an adorable kid.”

Again
he reached out to Naruto. He felt insecure about it, being well aware
of his desires, and not wanting to scare away Naruto.

Naruto
knew that his father had not abandoned him. He did not want to tell
Sasuke however that his father had turned him into a monster. He
still did not have any idea about his mother.

“It
was the village that ostracized you”, Sasuke said, “making
you think you were a monster, and then confirming it when they told
you about the kyuubi, forgetting that it is only sealed up within
you.”

“Not
everyone”, Naruto contradicted. “Iruka insisted that I
was human. When I heard it I thought he would take me in and become
my father but he didn't.”

“He's
not married”, Sasuke said. “He would not have managed.”

“Sure.
He just invited me to ramen on a regular basis, and not even at his
own home, but only at Ichiraku's.”

For
some seconds they walked in silence.

“But
Juugo was really considered a monster”, Naruto continued. “They
turned him out because of his superpowers.”

Sasuke
did not intend to tell Naruto about Juugo's homicidal impulses. He
still had a bad conscience for not telling Juugo's foster mothers
about them, and still he feared that something might happen to their
kids.

“How
could they! He's such a wonderful child. Just because he's different!
And Haku too was turned out just because he was different with his
kekkei genkai.”

Sasuke
remembered Haku, but he did not remember his story as he had been
unconscious when Haku had told it.

“But
now Juugo's happy”, Sasuke said. “Maybe here Haku would
have found caring foster parents too.”

“Probably.
Here they don't think that a child should live on their own, monster
or not.”

“They
are different here. They don't teach their children to fight, but
they teach them to comfort people even before they can speak.”

Naruto
thought of the kids: He remembered well the smallest one who had been
adopted because his mother was just sixteen.

“That
little guy? What did he do?”

“He
climbed on my lap.”

“What's
great about that? Anyone can do that!”

Sasuke
thought whether he should ask Naruto to do it but thought better of
it.

“You
would not have wanted it from me or Sakura back in Konoha. You always
shut yourself off from us then.”

He
paused and Sasuke thought a second time of asking Naruto to sit on
his lap now.

“It's
not as if people in Konoha don't know how to comfort each other!”
Naruto continued. “Sakura often looked after you when you were
wounded and would embrace you, but you always shoved her back!”

“Sakura!”
Sasuke exclaimed. “She did not want to comfort me! It was
always just a pretext for touching me.”

“Well,
she loves you”, Naruto replied.

“But
I don't love her! Not in that way, anyway.”

Naruto
felt hurt and rejected for Sakura's sake. “You'll change your
mind when you see how she truly cares for you”, he said.

Sasuke
wondered how they had got into a row again. He did not like it. He
considered using the opportunity to tell Naruto that he was gay, but
he did not feel like it. He felt just angry, at himself as well as at
Naruto, and he did not want to end his birthday in this way. He
pointed at a bar at the other end of the street.

“Let's
have a drink over there”, he said. “It's my birthday
after all: I'll invite you.”

Naruto
agreed, thinking of his original plans for Sasuke's birthday,
celebrating just by themselves. Sasuke entered first and then headed
for the sofa in the corner.

“You
may sit on my lap now”, he suggested to Naruto.

Naruto
looked at him confusedly, then he refused. “You don't need to
be comforted, do you?”

Sasuke
shook his head, and Naruto sat down next to him. They were quite
close like this too, and Sasuke enjoyed it, while Naruto, though
normally he also enjoyed being close to Sasuke, still felt irritated
by Sasuke's suggestion that he might sit on his lap.

They
did not talk much, they rather looked around. It was an odd small
bar, narrow but leading a long way into the building, with a winter
garden in the back. It was much cheaper than the restaurant they
worked at, with the furniture all darkened wood and dark red
artificial leather. Theirs was not the only sofa, there were others
occupied with couples deeply absorbed in their kisses. Others couples
were sitting at tables, sometimes carefully touching each others
hands. Sasuke thought they were courting but when he closely listened
to the couple next to him they rather sounded as if they were
breaking up.

There
were also people who were just friends, and Sasuke made a game of
finding out who of those who were not actually kissing were lovers
and who were just friends.

Lover
or friends, he realized, it was an odd mixture of people here:
business people in suits, couples dressed up for a date, some guys in
workers' overalls coming from their late shift, an elderly woman
talking to another woman who might have been her daughter, age-wise,
but obviously was not related to her. There was a whole group of
elderly women, tourists from Earth country as Sasuke discovered after
listening to their conversation for some time, discussing the beauty
and oddness of Music Town. On the other end of the spectrum were the
punks, some in couples, some in groups, and a few artists, showing
their vocation by means of their unconventional clothes.

Their
own presence at the place, strange as it was, only added another
flavour to the mixture, or rather another colour, Sasuke thought
looking at Naruto's orange jacket.

“Everyone
is served here, monster or not”, he said when the waitress
brought the drinks. “Everyone is accepted in this town.”

“You
like it here, don't you”, Naruto said.

“I
do.”

“I
like it too”, Naruto answered. “But it's not the same as
Konoha.”

It
is better, Sasuke thought, but he was wise enough not to speak his
thoughts.

Their
first dance lesson with that same-sex group was approaching. Sasuke
was looking forward to it, obviously, and was all excited about it.
He had bought a new shirt, simple in design but made from shiny black
silk, he purchased a shaving-set and shaved off the scarce black
stubble that grew on his upper lip (Naruto had to admit however that
his saving lotion smelled good), he arranged his hair in the weirdest
manner Naruto had ever seen. He wondered whether Sasuke was aware of
what he was doing.

He
himself was rather worried. These last days he had often thought of
what would happen in this dance class, with all these gay men looking
at Sasuke and planning to have him for themselves. One night he had
even dreamt of it: They had been dancing on some kind of stage,
Sasuke wearing the shirt he had worn at Orochimaru's lair, and a lot
of men had watched them, reaching out to Sasuke, and suddenly Sasuke
had been among them, his shirt off, and the men had been groping his
chest. Naruto was glad that he had woken up before anything worse had
happened: The dream had been disturbing enough as it was, and it was
even more disturbing that he had woken up with an erection. Some cold
water had helped him get rid of the problem: something he would not
do on other days. Normally he would finish what nature had begun,
taking care that Sasuke did not notice. He returned to the room but
not to the bed; he sat in his chair and looked at his friend: Far too
pretty for your own good, he thought, remembering how Orochimaru had
craved Sasuke's body.

The
new dance class was at a different place than the previous one: Not a
place that had been built as a dance school but an old-fashioned
former restaurant with some large rooms in the upper stores that
could be rented for weddings or balls. Now it was a community center
with a library, some rooms for seminars, a hall for lectures, and a
cafeteria on the ground floor. The rooms in the basement could be
rented by musicians who wanted to practise, and some rooms in the
upper stores were still used for dancing.

The
room their own dance class was held in still showed that it used to
be a ballroom for private balls. It was much smaller than the one of
their previous dance class, and chairs were stacked and tables pushed
to the wall. One wall was still covered in mirrors, but there was a
curtain, if people did not want to watch themselves. There were also
much fewer people than in the previous dance class, and to Sasuke's
disappointment almost all of them were women. Fortunately they were
all lesbians and stuck to themselves. Also, while they were waiting
for the dancing to begin, some more male couples arrived.

The
male dance teacher of the other dance class was there too, selling
drinks, and Naruto volunteered to buy Sasuke and himself some coke
respectively coffee. He felt more confident among these homosexuals
if he was busy with something, though actually when he had said:
“Let's go and get some drinks!” he had expected Sasuke to
join, not to say: “Get me some coffee too!” and find
himself a place where he could be seen by everyone. Naruto kept
turning around to him while he was waiting in queue.

When
it was his turn, the dance teacher gave him a particularly warm
welcome.

“Great
to see you here too”, he said. “You have talent, you
know. If you had decided to stay at the other dance class we would
have found you a talented girl, but like this it's easier, and of
course it's nice for Sasuke that we won't have to look for a new
partner for him, which would have been more difficult.”

“Yeah,
I guess so. He's a bit weird and you have to know him well to get
along with him.”

The
dance teacher looked confused.

“I'm
his friend, though, and won't forsake him”, Naruto continued.
“Besides, I have to protect him. I won't let him fall prey to
all these gay men.”

The
dance teacher no longer looked confused but seriously annoyed. Naruto
remembered that the man was gay too and realized that he had made a
mistake.

“I
don't have anything against you, or against gay people in general”,
he said. “I just don't want anyone to lay hands on my friend.”

“You
think people are going to do this?”

“It's
bound to happen. He's pretty, isn't he?”

“He's
certainly a good-looking guy”, the dance teacher said
cautiously, but smiling again, and Naruto was glad of it, as he
wanted to be on good terms with everyone, gay or not.

“I
don't want to keep you from doing your work”, the dance teacher
said, turning to his own work and beginning to wash the used glasses.
“Judging from his behaviour, I am sure he'll fall prey to
someone rather soon. You will be busy.”

Naruto
turned to see what the dance teacher was referring to. Sasuke was
acting weird: Looking around and actually smiling at people, and as
far as Naruto could tell, people smiled back. He was playing with his
hair, rearranging it so that it looked even weirder than before, he
was leaning back, his arms resting on the back of the neighbouring
chairs, showing off his chest, and Naruto was just glad that he had
kept enough sense not to open the buttons of his shirt.

He
saw in shock that one couple was actually changing into shirts that
offered insights to their chests and also their bellies –
bellies without a grain of fat, as Naruto had to admit – but
the other men and all the women wore normal clothes, jeans and
T-shirts mostly, meaning that Sasuke was rather overdressed than
Naruto underdressed. He did not seem to mind, however, he just smiled
at everyone, and then, realizing that Naruto was watching him, he
smiled at him too. Actually he smiled wider at Naruto than at anyone
else, and Naruto could not help but return the smile, even though he
was still annoyed.

Sasuke
got up and joined him. “Shall we dance?” he asked.

“Sure”,
he answered, feeling nervous suddenly. “That's what we came
for, isn't it?”

A/N:

Sneakyfox:
Great! You are not under any obligation to write a review for every
chapter, but I am of course very happy about you staying on board and
commenting regularly! :-)

sukenarufan09:
Ah, well, Naruto. It's his turn now. It says “SasuNaru”
in the tags, you may be confident. The problem is that Naruto has
not read the tags so it will take him a bit longer to realize.

Lady
Gizarme: Well, the date... Ritualized dating is a typically American
phenomenon. Or maybe you can find it in other countries too. In
Germany we don't have it, at least not with rules that are as clear
as those in the U.S. Of course here the prospective lovers have to
meet by themselves as well, but it is far less ritualized. And the
rules among gay people may be different too. One of my weirdest
encounters with gay men was actually when I listened to someone
telling how practical (and cheap) it was to be gay:

“If
you are straight, you have to take her out at least three times to
some expensive restaurant and talk to her for hours, and if you are
unlucky, you still don't get her. If you are gay, you just have a
beer together for half an hour, and each one pays for his...”

With
Sasuke's birthday I tried to write a situation where both sides make
mistakes even though they mean well, and suddenly it is all wrong.
I'm glad it worked!

Sasuke
with a little child... Somehow I have always imagined him to be good
with very little children. And yes, he gets more confident talking
about his feelings in every chapter, just not with Naruto, whom it
would most concern.
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The Blessed Realm