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
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Chapter
Forty-One: True Mothers, and a Sport for True Men

Life
got busy suddenly with dance lessons more than once a week and an
evening for free training in the bargain. Naruto had to negotiate
with the patron's daughter to get them more evenings off and some
shifts in the afternoon to make up for it. The worst was that on
Saturdays they had to work from early morning (eleven a.m. to be
exact) until the restaurant closed. Naruto would not admit that these
days wore him out, and in consequence Sasuke would not either. They
would however own up to regretting that it was no longer possible to
watch football matches on Saturday afternoons.

Playing
football themselves was much more fun than watching anyway, as they
discovered when they met with that group of young gay men on Sunday
morning. They were warmly welcomed by the whole group when their
acquaintances from the dance class introduced them as newcomers who
had just eloped from Konoha.

“Konoha,
eh” one of the men asked. “Are you ninja?”

“Sure
we are”, Naruto answered.

“Do
you know how to play football then?”

“Sure
we do”, Naruto said.

They
were put into one team first but soon the rest of their side
complained that they were rather playing against each other than with
each other and demanded that they be split up. The effect was that
they spent the rest of the time guarding each other, with the result
that the other players did not pass them the ball. They had fun all
the same, even Sasuke, who had not been that enthusiastic about
playing football in the beginning. He got infected by Naruto's
ambition to keep him away from the ball and tried to do the same to
him.

Only
when the match was over their teams explained to them that they had
to try to escape their opponent when their own team was in possession
of the ball.

“Not
me”, Naruto replied. “I don't run away from anyone.”

They
tried a different approach. “You try to achieve a goal, and
that goal is to score, not to beat your opponent. You avoid your
opponent who tries to prevent you from achieving your goal, you don't
seek him out.”

“That
may be true for you”, Naruto said. “But I don't need to
be careful. I'm not afraid of anyone.”

“Is
this how you work as a ninja?”

“Sure!”

Naruto
smiled and the men he had talked to gave up as they had run out of
arguments. He was enjoying himself immensely even though people were
making fun of him, and he liked the gay men he had played football
with. They were pretty laid-back, more humourous than the dancers
(though there was some overlap between both groups), they were
younger in average, and though he and Sasuke were still the youngest
of the group they did not stand out as much as they had among the
dancers.

They
also seemed manlier to him, and he learnt that they too thought of
themselves as manlier than the dancers when he told them that he had
play invited to play football at their dance class.

“You
don't have to do girlish stuff like dancing just because you're gay”,
they said. “You can still play football just as any other man.”

Naruto
considered asking Sasuke to abandon dancing and switch to football
instead but then he remembered that Sasuke really loved dancing and
that he would probably continue it with a new partner – a man,
Naruto realized - if he, Naruto, quit.

It
was not that unmanly, Naruto decided, at least not for him, as he was
still leading in all dances except Quickstep. Also, he actually liked
dancing, and he also liked that they got a lot of compliments at
their dance class while the football players had mostly made fun of
him. He enjoyed it too that with dancing he got to know a lot of
people, not only the regulars at the restaurant, to whom he was
obliged to be friendly all the time, while with the gay dancers and
also the footballers he was more ready to speak his mind.

(Sasuke
just wished that he might be more careful when it came to expressing
his prejudices against gay people.)

He
got along with people all the same, and also, he slowly lost his
paranoia: There was no danger of Sasuke being seduced by anyone in
the near future. He was still doing his best to smile at people and
invite them to their table but when it came to actually talking to
them Naruto was still much better than him. (Sasuke might be pretty,
he thought, even breathtakingly beautiful in some moments when he was
happy and smiling, but this was not all that mattered.)

Sasuke
in his turn was rather annoyed by Naruto's behaviour. He wondered why
Naruto considered it appropriate to do considerably more than fifty
percent of the talking when he was engaged in a conversation, and he
felt particularly annoyed that Naruto effectively excluded him from
the conversation by answering every question that was directed at the
two of them before Sasuke even had opened his mouth.

Nonetheless
he had managed to make friends with the guy he had talked to on the
first evening, also with his partner, the guy from Earth Country.
They had told him that they were actually married, which was possible
here. (Juugo's fostermothers however were not. They considered
marriage a patriarchal institution they did not want to have a share
in.)

Naruto
remained suspicious of the men even though Sasuke had told him that
they were married and even though he understood that they were not
looking for an extramarital affair. He just could not stop the images
of one or the other or even both of them molesting Sasuke that turned
up in mind in the evenings: They'd take off his shirt and sometimes
also his pants, and then they'd touch him: his arms, his face, his
chest, his belly, and if Naruto could not stop these images before
Sasuke was completely naked they'd also touch his thighs and his
backside. Naruto forced himself to cut off the pictures when the men
touched Sasuke's genitals and he never imagined anal sex. Even
thinking of it in abstract made him shrink back, and he felt an urge
to protect his friend and sometimes laid his hand on his shoulder,
but only when Sasuke was fast asleep and the shoulder was covered by
a blanket. It was all rather disturbing and he took care not to let
Sasuke notice anything.

The
weirdest moments were those when he actually talked to the couple,
which happened often, not only because Sasuke was friends with them
but also because they were aiming for the beginners' class as well so
that it seemed natural to ask them for information and advice. Naruto
had a bad conscience because of these mental images as the men were
obviously friendly and caring and did not make any open attempts to
seduce Sasuke: They just meant well. Only the images of them
molesting Sasuke kept turning up in his mind when they talked.

Sasuke
himself seemed completely oblivious of any danger of being seduced.

They
practised dancing as often as they could but they skipped the Dance
Tea because they had been invited to lunch by Juugo's fostermothers
on Sunday. It had happened like this: One afternoon Juugo's new
little sisters, the girls who had ruined Sasuke's birthday cake in
their attempt of decorating it, turned up in the restaurant and
invited Sasuke to live with them. Apparently the fact that his whole
family was dead had continued to bother them, and this was the
solution they had come up with. Sasuke had thanked them and declined
to Naruto's relief, telling them that he wanted to live with his
friend who'd be lonely without him.

The
girls had looked at Naruto, who had felt very embarrassed (and also
annoyed at Sasuke) as he did not like to be pitied, least of all by a
bunch of little girls, and asked him whether this was true. He had
been honest however and told them that it was: Living in Music Town
had become unimaginable without Sasuke. The girls had nodded at him
in understanding.

The
next day they had turned up with their mothers, who as it turned out
had not had any idea of their daughters' invitation to Sasuke. They
changed it into an invitation to lunch and tea and made sure that
Naruto knew that he was invited too. Naruto felt weird, as if he was
invited only for the sake of pity, but when Sasuke accepted the
invitation in the name of both of them he could not decline. At least
it meant that they did not have to cook on Sundays.

He
was not sure what to make of these women. It was not so much that
they were lesbians, though the lack of a grown-up man in the family
still irritated him. (They thanked him however for standing in as a
male role model and playing football with their sons, something they
were not good at. They also asked him to make sure to include the
girls into the game as they resented the idea that football should be
an exclusively male sport.)

What
irritated him about them was the way they cared about everything and
everyone, whether they needed it or not. They even urged some food on
them when they left, and a collection of fancy tea cups they did not
need any more.

“In
case you have guests”, they said.

Naruto
did not know how to answer but luckily Sasuke managed to politely
turn down the offer of food and accept the cups.

“As
if we could not buy our own food”, Naruto said when they were
safely on their way home. “And choose our own cups.”

“You
don't understand”, Sasuke replied. “They are mothers and
act like true mothers, even towards us.”

(Actually
it had been his grandmother who had forced stuff on his mother that
they did not need.)

“You
can't know that of course”, he continued.

Naruto
felt hurt, all the more as he felt that Sasuke had hurt him on
purpose. He tried to shake off Sasuke's hand on his shoulder, but
Sasuke held him fast and Naruto would have had to break away by
force which he did not want.

“Don't
run away. You will have to learn to accept a true mother's love.”

Naruto
was silent and remained so, and when they had arrived at his place he
busied himself with tidying up his table while Sasuke went down to
fetch the weekend's newspapers from the restaurant.

One
of the first things Naruto found while going through the stacks of
paper on his table was the bookmark calendar Juugo had given Sasuke
for a birthday present. It was quite on top actually, only covered by
a teacup. Naruto stared at it in shock, flipped through it, looked at
the pictures. They were not that bad actually – all in black
and white, the men quite good-looking, photographed in an aesthetic
way, not obscene at all, and only two of the pictures showed the
men's genitals. Still they were disturbing in the way they presented
themselves to the viewer.

When
Sasuke returned with the newspapers Naruto confronted him.

“What's
this?” he asked.

“A
bookmark calendar”, Sasuke replied.

“I
figured out so much by myself. How did it get here? Did one of your
admirers give it to you to turn you gay?”

For
a moment Sasuke looked hurt, than he switched to the cold and
arrogant expression that had been typical for him as a child.

“Juugo
gave it to me as a birthday present. I don't know if he counts as an
admirer.”

“So
why are you keeping it?”

“It's
a present. You don't get rid of a present, do you? Besides the
pictures are beautiful.”

He
smiled again, and then joined Naruto who was leaning against the
table. Their shoulders almost touched. He took the calendar out of
Naruto's hands and went through the pages.

“Now
which one's the most handsome in your opinion?” he asked.

Naruto
had already chosen: The guy on the page for February, who looked at
bit like Sasuke, but nothing in the world would make him admit it.

“None.
I don't care.”

Sasuke's
physical proximity suddenly confused him as it had never before. He
left the table and put on his sandals.

“Juugo
will have to answer for it”, he said.

Sasuke
watched him leave. He'll return! he told himself. It's his place
after all. Still he was nervous and felt quite relieved when Naruto
was back just in time for their shift.

“Juugo's
still alive, I hope”, he said.

“I
don't kill children”, Naruto answered.

A/N:

Sneakyfox:
Thanks a lot for your compliments! Naruto is learning to „protect
Sasuke“ in this new environment...

Ladygizarme:
Thanks for your comment on the conversation between Sasuke and the
stranger. And their status will become an issue but in a different
way.
- 43
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The Blessed Realm