Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

Sector Five	By : FlairForTheVeil Category: Naruto AU/AR > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 2291 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto nor its characters. Rightful ownership belongs to Masashi Kishimoto. I make no profit of this fanfiction.

Chapter List
- 8
- 9
- 10
Chapter 8: Hairline Fractures
When they got back down to the food court with Karin finally dressed in a chunky sweater and what looked like two pairs of leggings under her jeans, Sasuke and Naruto were both ushered to the side of the room by Kakashi.
“Now,” he murmured and his gray eye flickered to the laughing group in the center of the cafeteria. “We’re going back to camp to pack up and move along with them to their camp by car. They say they stay there permanently and send out trackers by week to look for those abandoned military checkpoints in hope of finding them.” Kakashi stuffed his gloved hands in his pockets. “But they say they haven’t come that close yet. When we get to camp, Sasuke, I see Suigetsu laid Kusanagi to its rest with you, but take a pumper for yourself as well. We don’t know if they’ll confiscate our weapons and take another hostile turn on us to take Naruto, so when you’re healed you need to teach him how to shoot.”
Sasuke nodded and his eyes skirted to Naruto who looked a bit cross. “I still don’t see why they could have just asked for me back,” he whispered and knotted his arms, “something’s not right about them. Maybe not all of them, but a few of them act weird. Like Neji and Ino.”
Kakashi nodded his agreement and rubbed his chin. “I don’t understand the situation right now, either. The only way to tell if something is or isn’t right about that group is by time. Just act normally and stay close to Juugo. Now, we’re heading back to our camp to meet the group on the main road by car. They drove here also since their camp is about two hundred miles back. Pack your things up tight and keep your eyes open,” the man patted them both heavily on the right shoulders after awkwardly hesitating over Sasuke’s left and ambled back to the group.
Jiraiya’s group wrenched open the emergency exit door to the west of the hospital cafeteria, waving and bidding goodbyes like “later” and “see you lot”. They poured out the door and slammed it to let a gust of howling, freezing wind rush past them.
Sasuke hummed to his side. “Let’s get a head start on them,” he tilted his chin behind him and strolled to the cafeteria doors. Naruto spared Karin yelling at Suigetsu a glance and popped his neck, lining up beside the raven and turning the hallway corner.
Between the time coming down to the food court and leaving it again, Naruto noticed that somehow Sasuke had acquired a pair of thinly-soled combat boots that looked odd with his grey sweatpants and fleece sweater. He racked his mind for even seeing the pair of boots lying around or something, but he could find no recollection of them. Maybe Karin had gotten them?
The blond tilted his head back and raised his eyebrows to stretch his heavy eyelids. They had been in this hospital for well over a day now and Itachi’s moods had helped absolutely none to get some shut eye. He turned to the raven in an attempt to lighten his own mood.
“Hey, Sasuke, when are you gon’ teach me how to shoot?”
The boy turned his body to him and set his lips in a line, raising an eyebrow. Naruto’s eyes focused on the L-shaped lump in his sweater and laughed a bit, scratching the back of his neck.
“Well, why not a handgun?” He suggested, trying to get Sasuke to stop looking at him like he was a dumbass.
“Well,” Sasuke drawled and kicked at a broken light bulb on the ground. “I could teach you how to shoot a handgun, but you need two for a rifle or a shotgun, and we have more of those than handguns. I can use a shotgun with one hand, but if you want to learn properly, I’ll need two.”
“Ah,” Naruto sighed and shuffled his heels when he saw the hospital entrance a corridor in front of them. “I don’t mind learning from you with one. Are you as good with them as you say with your sword?”
The corner of Sasuke’s lips curled up and he practically tilted his nose to the sky. “I’m a very precise shot,” he gloated. “I like shotguns better.”
“Stop being stuck up!” Naruto whined and kicked a clipboard to the side, nearing the front desk of the medical center. “And, aren’t those like, really loud?” he added.
“I’m not being stuck up, I’m being realistic,” the other corner of the raven’s lips quirked up. He shoved the entrance door open with his right arm and kicked it farther open for Naruto to shuffle through. “And yeah, they are. We have suppressors though, but they’re still loud as hell.”
Naruto frowned and nodded, curling in on himself at the weather outside. The sky was a pale gray and he hadn’t seen the sun in a good week or so. “Why do you have so many guns?” he wondered aloud and inched closer to the boy. “You guys are like gun galore.”
Sasuke was silent long enough for the blond to think that he had ignored him. He scuffed his boot at a frozen rat on the ground, scrunching his nose. Silence reigned over the two as they walked down the street and towards the gas station.
“Our father was a police chief,” Sasuke said with a faulty casual air and clenched his fist. “Before we were escorted from One… we had enough time to go to his gun safe and take nearly all of the guns and ammo before the government could get us. We evacuated on our own before they could abduct us. He taught us how to shoot every basic type for the three days he was travelling with us.”
Naruto wiggled his fingers in his pockets and clamped his lips shut as to not ask any inappropriate questions, but they flew out like migrating birds anyway. “Did the Katons get him?”
Sasuke’s eyes flickered and he frowned at him. “No,” he intoned and cast his eyes ahead of himself. “Itachi killed them. They were too old.”
Surprisingly, Naruto flinched and kept quiet for a few moments. Their steps were small and slow and they turned into the chilled woods with shadows of branches creeping around them and stretching out to mar the ground in front of them. Then, when Sasuke’s foot was just about to touch the dead ground, he was pulled to the side and yanked into a warm chest with welcoming, strong arms and a chin atop his head.
“It didn’t have to end that way.”
It took him a few moments to react. It took him a few moments to process Naruto had yanked him into a hug and was talking about his parents. It took him a few moments to realize that the blond still hadn’t let go and he was possibly squeezing him tighter by the second.
Sasuke shifted roughly in his arms and tried to shove the other boy away with his right arm trapped between his chest and himself but Naruto only squeezed his waist tighter. He struggled again, turning different ways and trying to butt Naruto away but made no progress and winced when his injured shoulder shifted uncomfortably. Well, at least the blond was warm. His cheeks were thawing in his warmth and the raven figured that the only way for Naruto to possibly let him loose was to hug the boy back. He swallowed his pride and slowly wrapped his arm around the other’s waist, pressing his forehead against his chest and looking down at their feet which were just inches away from each other. The pain of his parents’ death was still partially fresh, but the tears had died long ago and Sasuke decided to cherish this caring action as Itachi never gave him one.
He gulped and pulled the blond closer, burying his whole face in a sturdy chest. An involuntary blurry image of his mother’s smiling face, which he had inherited, resurrected itself in his mind and he sighed heavily into Naruto’s chest, bunching his shirt in his fist. He remembered being taken care of by her when his father was working long hours, running around the Uchiha compound with too much sugar running through his veins. He remembered her plopping his small body down on the marble kitchen counter to hand him a scarlet pill he was all too familiar with now and a glass of orange juice, patting him on the head and kissing his cheeks. He remembered Itachi walking through the front door and yelling in his high voice that he was home, and toddling towards his big brother with a few toys in his arms to request a few games. Remembered the infant bags under his eyes and his old smile. He remembered his father coming home late at night in his police uniform to tuck him even tighter in bed and whisper about how much bad guys he had beaten up, and at those stories Sasuke would usually get too riled up and have to be shushed back to bed by Mikoto and receive his parents’ kisses on either of his cheeks.
He remembered his tender age of six and a half when they had run away from Oto. His father yelling at him to find Itachi as he shoved gun after gun into a duffel bag, swiping his arm along shelves and dumping small boxes in there as well. He remembered perfectly the three days that Itachi had so selfishly decided to let them live. They had been perfectly fine, with his father protecting them from the “bad guys” with his military weapons and intricate combat. He remembered screaming at the top of his lungs as Itachi grabbed their father in a headlock and scuffled around with the larger man until his face had gone purple and crawling over wet grass to dunk his head in the dirty lake. Itachi had had deep scratch lines on his arms after, bleeding and dripping on Fugaku’s pale hand with blood under its nails.
He remembered his mother returning from the woods with a basket of berries and a saddened, knowing look on her face. She had set down the basket and kissed Sasuke on the forehead then turned to Itachi. “I know,” she had said and tucked a lock of her bangs behind her ear, her eyes glassy and her voice shaking. “Your father taught you well, didn’t-“
She had never even gotten to complete her sentence by the time his big brother had shoved her face into the water and held her until she had stopped struggling and gone cold. He could still remember her muffled screams, her shoulders rolling out of place as she tried to kick her son away to no avail. He remembered wailing and sobbing and beating his brother’s back, tugging his hair and begging him to let her go. He let go a few hours later. Sasuke’s tears hadn’t stopped and he crawled over to touch the rancid palm of his mother’s hand, frozen and too tender to be considered living.
He was jarred from his memories when the blond ran a warm, comforting palm up and down his aching back, soothing it from his transfusion aches and relaxing in his arms.
Ever since that day, his brother’s eyes never held the same volume of care that they used to. Ever since that day, he had built a dominating and superior wall against others, even his own little brother. That event put in his mind that he was the strongest of all, the bravest. To have the raw power to murder his own parents. Death threats could so easily slip out of his fast mouth and lives could be lost at the cause of his bare hands. All the man ever knew how to do anymore was look down to others, touch with the intention of killing, smile with the intention of deceiving, and kill with the intention of hurting. His only loyal childhood friends had been Deidara and Kisame, who proved not to be so loyal by clearing out the iron in the town last week. Even then had Itachi told him that he would let the raven die. Sasuke had subtly shielded himself in the past from his brother’s mean comments and narrow thoughts, blocked out his taunts of his weakness and tried to raise his personality on his own. Even now, every day it wavered with Itachi’s passive aggressive comments and insults. These days, it wasn’t Itachi yelling at him in worry and stress anymore. It was with the malicious intent of lining up his pieces and pawns in the sick game that he had been developing over the years, closing himself off to others in order to focus on just that.
There was even a time where he had been at his lowest mental state and Karin had suddenly come along with her vast knowledge and quick temper, confident demeanor and efficiency. They found her wielding a small knife in an alleyway, and Sasuke remembered the way he had perked up when he saw the girl was about his size too. Juugo had come along with her, also, standing as sturdy as a building in calculating and superior silence. He would hold Itachi’s arms behind his back when the twelve year old would enter a rage against their stupidity and childishness. Then they had found Suigetsu with an inappropriate mindset and sleazy speech, beckoning Sasuke to be just as headstrong to find himself in the matte and shiny guns his brother held more cherishingly than him. He had found himself in watching the lakes by their numerous camps freeze and melt, watching wildlife skitter by and shoot them with an arrow to skin and roast them over a fire. He had found pieces of himself hiking deep into the woods, clambering into trees and watching other groups meander by and ransacking them when their backs were turned or their eyes were closed. He would discover himself in the mirrored metal of guns and knives and even in abandoned public restrooms. He would sneak tattered books off the roads for Karin and he and read about the life that once was, what was popular, what wasn’t.
But lately, a newer entity, a warm and considerate one, a fighting and stubborn one, had jammed its foot through the crack of a closing door in his mind and a new being squeezed and grunted itself through, muttering profanities and offering comfort at the slightest bit of hurt. It was Naruto. Naruto. Who would have and had given him blood when he was in desperate need of it. Who had scrambled to find help for him and who had given him simple advice and comments that both irritated and comforted him. Who would ask him the simplest questions about the life he had forgotten that Sasuke wanted to answer and make innocent small talk. Naruto, who was as confusing as a maze but who was as irritatingly simple as the concept of the sun rising in the morning.
The other boy finally loosened his arms and gently let Sasuke free of embrace, noticing the strong ache in his left shoulder and shifted it with his other hand.
Naruto sputtered a bit. “Oh, geez, I wasn’t thinking… sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Sasuke murmured, feeling softened by the lingering warmth on his body. The raven flinched when he realized that Naruto had been the only person to hug him besides his parents and Karin. He turned and began walking in a different direction from the camp.
Great, now Naruto felt like he fucked something up within the short hug he had given the raven. Yeah, he had hugged him back, but before that, he had struggled to no end. But at least he hugged me back, he comforted himself.
Without thinking, the blond followed the raven into a part of the woods that was hacked down and still had logs randomly spread through its width. He frowned when he didn’t recognize this direction to the camp but kept silent as to not upset Sasuke. Kusanagi swung heavily on the boy’s slender back and shined even from his distance away. Their footsteps sent loud crunches over dead grass and ice and cracked earth, and frankly disturbing the nature around them.
Naruto blanched when he saw a huge black SUV sloppily parked in the center of this mess and gaped even further when Sasuke brushed a panel on the side of it that sent its trunk door rising to the sky. The boy shuffled to the back and set a foot inside it to roughly lug himself into the spacious trunk. After a few moments he could be heard shuffling around and called Naruto.
Sasuke leaped from the trunk with a red gas tank in his hand and a new shotgun swinging with Kusanagi and shoved it at the blond. “Fill it up,” he nodded at the gas latch on the side of the SUV. “It only runs on solar power during the summer.”
Naruto silently took the gas tank and stared at the gas latch that was just a few inches under his face. The damn vehicle was huge and looked like it could shred up a mob and come out without a scratch. He gulped and swung open the latch to reveal a gaping fuel tunnel and shoved the tank’s snout into it, tilting it back and nearly trembling when the SUV gulped it down loudly.
Sasuke shuffled around and brought their satchel of guns to the front of the trunk, grabbing a few heavy wool blankets and throwing them to the middle row of car seats. He left one on the floor there since he knew Suigetsu would want to nap the whole two-hundred mile drive.
Though his voice was muffled, Sasuke heard Naruto call out “Who the fuck drives this?”
Sasuke smirked and pressed the same panel that swiveled the trunk door closed. “Kakashi’s the only one old enough to know how.” He chuckled.
Naruto laughed a bit and shook the last of the fuel into the tank, slamming the latch closed and setting the jug down. He turned to Sasuke and leaned against the SUV, huddling into himself and rubbing his hands together. “How’d you get it?”
Sasuke shrugged and leant in front of him as well. “Took it off the hands of a military official last year.”
“Eh?” Naruto screeched. “W-“
“He didn’t put up a struggle,” Sasuke offered and pursed his lips. “They can’t track us with it anyway. He was also on the run.”
The blond hesitated and gulped. “What now?” He questioned, getting distracted by the puffs of his breath in the air.
“Now,” Sasuke asserted and turned to the woods, “we pack camp.”
Naruto groaned and stomped over dead grass, knocking low-hanging branches out of the way with some of them snapping.
“Stop making so much fucking noise,” Sasuke hissed. “Katons or scouts could be anywhere.”
Naruto blanched and spread his arms. “Then why the hell are we out here without weapons?”
“I have a weapon,” the raven pointed out and shrugged Kusanagi and the gun higher on his shoulder. Naruto pouted and continued to follow the other boy, this time setting his feet down gently and ducking under branches or delicately moving them away.
Sasuke walked deeper into the ashen woods, frozen leaves shattering under his light steps and stiff branches whispering against his arms. He shied away from one when it particularly brushed over his stitches. He could see the slightly worn path to camp from here, their little fire’s embers long spent and various dining utensils spread out. He kicked at the fire’s ashes and spread them out, lugging their sitting logs into the woods to erase their history of camping here. He picked up a few plastic spoons and forks and snapped them in half with one hand, then scuffed a hole in the ground to bury them. He cursed when he accidentally shifted his left shoulder a few times and set to pack up their books.
A few feet away, Naruto was crawling inside tents and grabbing sleeping bags and blankets and folding them up. Figures that bastard would give him the worst job. He finished up with the tent he knew as Kakashi’s and disassembled it according to the instructions on its plastic side, stuffing it back into its surprisingly small storage box and setting his sleeping bag on top of it.
The next tent was known as Itachi’s. The blond hesitated before he opened the flap of the tent, peering in to see an already rolled-up sleeping bag and a knife kit in the center of the tent. He nearly skittered away when he saw that one of them had dried blood on it, but sobered up and folded it back together.
Two tents later and finding a secret stash of really creepy snake skins, he finally cringed and trudged over to the mess that he knew was his and Sasuke’s tent. He knew that Sasuke was a fussier type of guy and folded his sleeping bag and blankets back up every morning, but Naruto was the polar opposite. He inched the tent’s zipper open to Sasuke’s immaculate left side of the tense and the pile of blankets on his side. He groaned and stepped in, kneeling down and beginning to fold what he realized was too much blankets. Once he finished, he took apart the tent and sat on a sleeping bag, burying his face in his hands and rubbing his eyes.
A snort sounded from behind him and Naruto turned to fix his friend with narrowed eyes and pursed lips.
“The next time we pack up like this, you have the damn tents,” Naruto complained and added under his breath, “cripple.”
Sasuke hummed and picked up a few sleeping bags, tucking them under his arm and nodding towards the woods again. “Come on,” he goaded. “The sooner we get all of this done, we can leave as soon as the others get back.”
Naruto cussed under his breath and hugged as many boxes and sleeping bags as he could to himself and stomped behind the crunch of Sasuke’s light steps.
“What the hell took you guys so long?” Naruto whined. He and Sasuke had finished packing up over an hour ago, making small talk here and there and arguing about how long the others were taking.
“My, my,” Kakashi smiled. “We had to look into a few things.”
“You mean Itachi wanted to look into things and he forced us to stay with him?” Karin growled and kicked the SUV’s tire.
“Let’s just go,” Itachi demanded and climbed into the front passenger seat, slamming the door hard enough to make its glass window wobble.
Kakashi snorted and shrugged his body into the driver’s seat, pressing a screen that immediately lit up in green and the engine roared to life, spitting exhaust out its pipes and heating the inside of the vehicle.
The doors of the vehicle opened automatically and Suigetsu hurled himself into the trunk, grabbing the blanket that was there and bundling himself in it. Juugo and Karin humbly got into the back seats and Naruto and Sasuke into the middle seats of the car. They slammed shut and a few strange green symbols ran around on the glass of the windows, the handles lighting up in the same bright green as well as the windshield.
Kakashi skirted out of the cleared space and swerved through the woods, making it to the main road in record time. He recklessly swung onto the road and the tires screeched to a stop when they saw two compact cars and a white SUV that rivalled the size of theirs. The figures standing outside of the leading SUV waved and climbed back into the car, turning back around into the direction of the camp with a funeral line of cars after it.
They had been only driving for five minutes when Kakashi complained about how slow they drove, “Why are they going sixty-five?” he had complained.
“It’s a hell of a lot better than the hundred and thirty you go!” Karin waved her fist from the backseat. Juugo nodded his silent agreement. Itachi set a hand on the back of Kakashi’s headrest and turned in his seat to glare at all of them.
“How long is the drive?” Naruto pondered and kicked the underside of the driver’s seat.
“Well,” Kakashi hissed. “It would take an hour and a half if we were going over a hundred. Now it’s going to take over three damn hours.” Sasuke sighed and plastered his cheek against the window.
It had been a grueling hour and a half filled with turning pages, snores from Suigetsu, and growls from Itachi. Sasuke had fallen asleep with a book on his chest and his legs spread out between himself and Naruto, sharing a green wool blanket. Naruto had his chin resting on his hand, watching frozen forests pass by and the sky darken.
Karin was calmly turning the pages of another medical book and Juugo had somehow managed to start knitting what looked like a cloak. Sasuke muttered something in his sleep and roughly kicked Naruto’s thigh, hogging the blanket. He whined and tried to tug it back, but Sasuke held it in an iron grip.
Suigetsu suddenly woke up mid snore and shot up from his position, yelling to the front of the car. “Oi, I need to take a piss, stop the car!” He hollered and beat his fist on the back seats.
“Pee out the window,” Karin hissed and gave him a disgusted look from over the cover of the book.
“Do you think I should just beep?” Kakashi asked Itachi. Itachi nodded and pressed a button on the dashboard that caused most of the SUV to light up in green again and give a high-toned beep.
Kakashi slammed his fist on the steering wheel continuously and squealed to a stop, keeping it on there for a good few moments. Once all of the cars in front of them had stopped also, he man climbed out of the SUV and signaled a time out.
The doors to the car opened and Sasuke nearly fell out of the SUV when they did, being jerked awake and catching himself on the door hinge with his right hand. He scowled into the evening and shut the door closed, heading around the other side of the vehicle to see Suigetsu run into the woods. The drivers of the car had stepped out and Kakashi was calling something out about a bathroom break. Some members of the group drifted into the same woods Suigetsu had run into, spreading themselves modestly apart. He sighed and asked Karin how much time had passed.
Naruto blinked the sleep out of his eyes and headed into the woods also, deciding to get pissing out of the way. He strolled about twenty feet into the forest so that the trees offered enough privacy. He heard Suigetsu’s sigh some distance away and chuckled to himself, stopping in front of a tree to spread his legs and unzip his pants.
He idly listened to the hiss of his own stream and the alerting volume of Suigetsu’s a few trees behind him, trying to focus on the richer quality of this forest and its green moss. The bark of the trees was dark brown and most of their leaves had already fallen in the autumn, and the earth here was moist. Back at their camp was a harsh dry cold, and this way it was a wet cold. A squirrel jumped around in the trees above him and a few birds cawed in the distance. There were more animals, too. The blond tucked himself back into his boxers and leaned against a tree next to the one he had just peed on, waiting for Suigetsu to finish up and head back to the SUV. He raised his eyebrows when he sounded like he wasn’t even close to done and waited a few more minutes, growing more awkward when he realized the boy had been pissing for around five minutes and stiffly walked back to the road. He greeted a drowsy looking Sasuke as well as a few of the other members of their new group, making small talk and laughing when Akamaru jumped up to set his huge paws on his chest, yipping and licking his face.
He immediately stopped laughing when Akamaru hunkered down to lift his leg, bare his nuts, and piss on his foot. Sasuke started laughing then.
Naruto screamed and shook his boot that was thankfully waterproof of its urine and glared at Kiba. “What the hell is wrong with your dog!”
Kiba finished snickering and clapped his hands together a few times, grinning and baring his sharp canines. “He loves you like the bitches he finds in the wild,” his voice cracked and he started howling in laughter again. Naruto’s ears were bright read and he dried his foot in the grass, scowling at the drooling and panting dog.
“It’s not funny,” he grumbled at Sasuke. The boy only snorted and kicked his other boot, crossing his arms and leaning against the SUV.
A few more minutes passed and Karin’s face turned bright red.
“How is this medically possible! Suigetsu!” She screamed. Kakashi giggled from beside her and flicked through one of his porn books, eyes scrunching in delight. Sasuke looked a bit disturbed and climbed back into the SUV along with Itachi, settling down and waiting for the white-haired boy to return.
“Wow,” Naruto commented and turned in his seat to stare at Suigetsu. “You sure did piss a lot.”
Suigetsu grunted and played with a gooey substance that Naruto didn’t want to know was. Karin grumbled something about medical problems and buried her nose back into her book, cursing under her breath and scowling into its pages.
The blond turned back and stared at Kakashi, then Itachi, and then Sasuke. “I’m bored,” he complained.
“Deal with it,” Sasuke deadpanned and kept his eyes on the scenery passing by. Things around here were definitely greener and richer.
“We’ll be there in about thirty minutes,” Kakashi bartered with one hand on the wheel and the other holding his bright orange book. Naruto didn’t want to start a conversation with Sasuke while Itachi was around to hiss and spit at him. Juugo would look really angry whenever the blond tried to distract him from his knitting and Itachi was a hopeless cause. He fixed his blue eyes out the window and slumped his shoulders.
“Take a nap,” Sasuke suggested and nudged him with his socked toe. His boots were resting side by side on the vehicle’s carpet floor in between them and the raven had been hogging the middle seat for leg space.
“Well, if you’d give me some space, I would!” He growled and narrowed his eyes at the boy.
Sasuke rolled pitch black eyes and placed his feet on the ground, leaning against the car door and shutting his eyes. Naruto laid down and nudged his head into the raven’s thigh. He stretched his legs out as much as he could, which was only a cramped embryo position that made him feel like he was back in the womb.
Sasuke’s eyes flickered to Kakashi and Itachi who seemed to be consumed in their own conversation, and he pursed his lips and patted his lap. Naruto peered up at him from his pillow of his hands, sending him a questioning look. The raven patted his lap again, this time more irritably, before Naruto shuffled his blond head onto his lap and stretched his legs out more comfortably. The boy nuzzled his right thigh and immediately conked out.
Sasuke sighed and rested his head against the cold window once again, finding that it relieved his headache and shut his own eyes, drifting off to slumber as well.
Had he kept his eyes open a second longer, he would have witnessed Itachi slowly turning in his seat and staring at them both from the end of his vision.
They were both started awake when the vehicle jerked to a stop and Kakashi wailed in praise. Itachi all but slammed the door open and storm away into the camp. Sasuke shoved Naruto’s head off his lap and exited as well, yawning into the significantly colder night and wincing.
Slowly but efficiently, they unpacked the trunk and headed into the camp. Kakashi followed the rest of the cars to a clearing where they parked and fueled them up.
Jiraiya approached them and grinned. “We have extra tents if you lot need them, or if you have your own you can set up wherever you’d like. Make yourselves at home, grab something to eat, shit, whatever.”
Juugo humbly thanked the man and took most of their bulk to their camp, a large green-grassed clearing with a bonfire and heavy logs around it. There was a metal rod with what looked like a bird roasting over the fire, crackling and twitching. There were twelve tents already set up, as well as a poorly placed barrel of guns in the center of the circular formation. Bandits could waltz right in and ransack us, Naruto shook his head. Some of those tents were already zipped up and some snores were heard. Sasuke handed him the box of their tent and looked smug at not having to do the work.
“You’re lazy,” Naruto griped and scowled.
“I’m efficient,” Sasuke countered and smirked his part.
“Whatever.”
The raven made a humming noise and observed the camp, large and with its perimeter patrolled by the tall boy Neji and a girl with twin buns on her head, looking tough and alert.
Sasuke’s eyes continued to glide over the camp, paying particular attention to their oddly placed barrel of guns. Usually their group’s guns were stored in Kakashi’s or Itachi’s tent, safe and inconspicuous. But here, they were left in the open. Like they weren’t important enough. To be used nonchalantly by anyone. Like toys. He sneered at the barrel and stared at the girl named Hinata, who was huddled close to the fire. She looked skittish and shy, with her long black hair pleated down her back. Next to her was the Sakura girl who kept glancing at him and skirting her eyes away when he looked back at her. Seated next to Sakura was the boy with a hood over his head and sunglasses, staring numbly into the fire with his knitted fingers hanging between his knees. The boy named Shikamaru had managed to doze off in the space of grass between the log and fire, a hand on his stomach and his eyebrow twitching in his sleep. He could hear the pitch of Karin’s voice in the distance as she screamed profanities at Suigetsu, and the counter of Tsunade who told them both to keep it the fuck down.
Sasuke eyed the roasting bird over the fire, but he wasn’t hungry at all. He was wary in this new environment, a space too vulnerable for Katons and government spies. The atmosphere was too cozy and-
He caught another glimpse of Neji alertly watching the camp’s borders, a bow in his hand and a pack of arrows on his back. He eyed Tenten who had a rifle poised but lowered to the ground, glaring into the dark woods as if daring a Katon to drone into their camp and cock its guns. He glanced at Jiraiya, who seemed to be watching everybody as he poked the coals of the fire.
He realized, just then, that these habits were normal. He realized that Itachi had kept them under straining rule and curfew, high strung and sleepy. These people looked well-rested and well-fed. These people looked ready for battle, but at the same time relaxed and ready for conversation. Was this the environment Naruto had been accustomed to? Raised in, even? At ease and pampered?
Said blond groaned as he finished setting up their tent behind him. Sasuke turned around to watch the boy when he unzipped the tent and lugged both of their sleeping bags and blankets in there, stretching like a cat and wincing when he heard some of his bones pop.
Naruto yawned and glanced at his friend, lazily scratching his arm. His eyes focused on the small group huddled in front of the fire behind Sasuke and back to his pale face. He nodded at them and asked, “Do you want a bite?”
Sasuke shook his head. “I’m going to bed. ‘Night.” He brushed past him and toed off his boots in front of the tent, stepping in and zipping it shut.
“’Night,” Naruto called back and wrapped his arms around himself when a frosty gust of wind hit him. He stamped his feet and headed over to the bonfire, smiling at everyone around it.
“Naruto,” a boy with sunglasses that mirrored the fire nodded his head at him and waited for a response. The blond blanched and wondered for a few moments how he should reply when the boy said it for him.
“Shino.”
Naruto nodded and tried to keep the awkwardness out of his voice. “Shino.”
He greeted Sakura and sat next to the shivering Hinata, watching the boy sleeping on the ground snore and scratch his stomach, rolling closer to the fire and splaying his limbs. His stomach growled loudly and he chuckled nervously when Hinata hid her giggle behind her hand, fixing her pretty opaque eyes on him.
“W-Would you like something to eat?” Her teeth chattered and she held his hand in both of hers, leading him to a large cooler behind a few of the tents. “You always had a big appetite,” she whispered. “But it looks like you’ve lost some weight. You must gain it back to be healthy, ma?”
Naruto felt like a grandson being harassed by his grandmother, telling him that the needed more meat on his bones and to eat their heritage-traditional fatty foods to get it. But he also felt like rubbing his hands together, cackling, and devouring that whole cooler of warm food.
Hinata tugged one of its ends open and produced a plastic container of hearty homemade soup that made his mouth water with just a look. Meat, meat, it had real meat in it! There was real vegetables in it too, organic, brewed thickly in beef juice with chunks of potatoes and thick sweet carrots. Kami-sama! He felt like raising his arms to the air and bowing down to the ground.
She handed him a plastic spoon and set the container in his hands, shyly smiling at him. “It’s g-good to see you again,” she whispered and headed back to the bonfire, huddling with Sakura and smiling at something she said.
Naruto wrenched the container lid open and inhaled the soup. There was no chewing and swallowing the creamy broth in between, it just passed right through his stomach and left him warm and drowsy. He smiled up into the stars at night and thanked Kami for his meal, discreetly bowing when he set the container and spoon on top of the cooler. It felt much better than the stale canned soup that Juugo would grimly brew, or bland frozen vegetables they would struggle to heat up and Karin’s failed attempts at disinfecting two year old chicken breasts. Yes, Sasuke had mentioned that sometimes he and Itachi would hunt but animals around them were scarce and you were most likely to come across a Katon than a mammal.
He bid the huddlers goodnight and floated back to his tent, glowing in health and creeping into the flap after taking off his boots outside. He struggled to beat his pants off his legs and hopped around in his boxers for a bit before he stuffed himself inside the cold material of his sleeping bag. The blond audibly shuddered and he piled three more blankets on top of himself, turning onto his left side and facing Sasuke about a foot and a half away. He made sure that the boy sleeping on his right side, which he was. In the past nights Naruto knew the raven had a habit of sleeping on his left and staying that way. The boy had made himself a warm cocoon with blankets tucked under his chin and a smug look on his features. Naruto scowled until his shivers stopped and warmth seeped into his bones, curling into a ball and studying Sasuke’s face. He still had the same painfully handsome features as when Naruto first saw him, so what was the point of staring?
That was a question that he couldn’t answer.
Pale lips mouthed something in their slumber and the raven turned over to his back, then winced and turned back to his side. The corners of Naruto’s lips barely quirked up when Sasuke repeated the process a few times, his slumbering mind not understanding why it hurt so much to sleep on his back.
Naruto continued watching the long black eyelashes flutter over pale cheekbones until his own eyes shut and sleep engulfed him.
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Sector Five