The Beach
Chapter Two: Battening Down the Hatches
by eggadshorace
» Fandom: Naruto
» Rating: T
» On Going(WIP)/One-off/Series: WIP
» Classification(s): Romance/Mystery/Supernatural
» Warnings: Language, Sexual Situations
» Pairing(s): Sasuke/Naruto

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Chapter Two: Battening Down the Hatches

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Water.

The first thing he heard was the low rush and beat of the sea on the rocks. It wound through his dreams like threads of a mother's lullaby and followed him into consciousness, almost subliminal under the cry of the seabirds and the muted noise of the wind.

Ruining the soothing effect somewhat was his own surprised, agonized moan as his body registered the abuse of the day before. His left side was on fire, every separate cut and scrape burning as his clothing, stiff with salt, rubbed against them through the bandages.

He gritted his teeth and tried to sit up, but only managed to roll on his right side as his muscles rebelled and knotted themselves into painful cramps. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he hissed at the floor. His voice was hoarse and guttural, like he'd swallowed glass. He road out several minutes of full-body agony, coughing weakly with his cheek pressed to the cool wood floor. This close, he could smell beeswax.

Water.

Around him, the tiny house creaked in the soft breeze. The sun was still low but bright and hot, slitting in and around the door he hadn't been able to open the night before. Sasuke, eyes crusty and barely slitted, could see his pack lying a few feet away, every inch caked with salt and mud and lit up like a torch in the beams. As his breathing evened, he ran his tongue over his cracked lips, which bleed and stung, and winced as his mouth filled with the coppery-iron taste of blood.

"Water," he whispered croakily. He couldn't remember ever being this thirsty in his life. Then, "Shit." She said he'd have to turn on the water, that there was a pipe somewhere. His memories of the night before were cloudy and indistinct, swimming through his mind's eye like fish through murky water.

Water…

He'd had odd dreams. Odd for him, anyway; odd, because he more routinely dreamed of fire, smoke and blood-smeared darkness. He supposed more people would find that odd, rather than dreaming of starfish on cobblestones, of the dimness beneath the waves. There'd been submerged streets lined with lamps that still glowed, and temple grounds where only kelp and coral grew. There had been fish, yes, of every kind and color and description. They had danced in the eerie diluted moonlight that marbled the sea floor.

He began focusing on stretching out his body, easing his arms into a stretch and rotating them as the tendons protested fiercely against the movement, and as he did something fell out of his palm.

He stared at it as it rocked lazily a feet inches away, then slowly reached to pick it up, holding it up to the hard morning sun flooding in the doorway. Heavier, but big as a marble, lumpy and misshapen, with a deep, lustrous iridescence.

A pearl.

And with that thought, unbidden, came a sudden memory of bright cerulean eyes.

Sasuke's eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. Well, that was one explanation. One strange, very doubtful explanation. Had he really…? All of yesterday swam before his mind's eye through the kaleidoscope eye of pain and exhaustion, panic and numbness by turns, and a kiss that warmed like a shot of whiskey. The boy felt like a dream. Even their first—and he was sure only—actual meeting, Sasuke on the hill and the boy sharply silhouetted against the sunset, seemed surreal and improbable in the light of day. The kiss had never happened—he could remember so little of it now that it must have been a dream. All of this could have been a dream.

Except that he hurt, everywhere, and was dying of thirst while the speckled sunlight baked his already tender skin. The pearl sat in his palm, glistening with an almost oily sheen.

Water.

He set the pearl aside. He had other things to worry about now.

Propping himself into a sitting position was exhausting, and crawling to his knees proved almost too much, but in ten minutes he was rummaging through the pack and twisting off the top of one of his bottles of water and in his enthusiasm getting more of it on his face than in his mouth, but he just didn't care. It felt so damn good, wetting his eyes and soaking into his collar while he drank in huge gulps. Nausea threatened again, but he gritted his teeth and drank and drank until the bottle was empty.

The water gave him the strength to rise unsteadily to his feet, and made the background gurgle of his empty stomach erupt into pain that made him groan out loud. Another rummage through the pack turned up nothing but empty wrappers, and he sighed. "First, pipes," he said out loud, words like gravel in his ruined throat. "Then, food." And then a wash, he thought with some distaste as his clothes moved on him with all the flexibility of cardboard.

First, to find pipes. There were the two interior doors he'd yet to open. The first revealed a short hallway, and off of that a small, dark kitchen. The smell was mustier here, and the air on his skin felt clammy.

His hand automatically went to the switch on the wall and he looked up in surprise when the light hummed, then blinked on. Three of the four bulbs had burnt out, but the remaining shed enough light to see a fairly modern-looking range and refrigerator, and an ancient set of cabinets and counters. A quick investigation confirmed that those cabinets were completely empty, as was the fridge.

There was a tiny window over the sink, and though the wood had swelled in the frame until it was watertight Sasuke managed to ram it open. Across the room, sunlight streamed through a shouji screen; shoving it back revealed boxes and furniture stacked in the narrow space between the screen and the wall, and another small window with a view of the dense vegetation of the shore. He opened this one, too, and a crossbreeze began to stir the dead air of the room.

Under the sink, the pipes stubbornly refused to sprout an "On-Off" valve. The same with the pipes in the water closet, just down the hallway.

The second door off the main room opened into a sunken bathroom. He tripped down the short step and nearly fell into the tiled tub, only half-covered by an old-fashioned wooden lid. No valves there, either, although a rather beautiful and complex funnel web had been spun across the washbasin and into the drain. Sasuke stepped back up into the main room, wincing as his stiff jeans rubbed on the unbandaged scrapes on his leg, and then crossed the room to the broken door that faced the sea.

The world outside gleamed in jewel colors, sapphire and emerald and topaz. The sun was behind him and cast the house's shadow into the clear blue water that lapped at the shore of the small island, ten feet from where he stood. Across the shallow cove something glittered in the sunlight, in and amongst the trees on the mainland. Windowglass. He stared at it, but couldn't distinguish the outline of a building. The forest was too thick.

The scenery was half-wild now, but the island and shoreline looked as though they had once been landscaped, and lavishly; there were the fences that had once framed flowerbeds, and stone paths that wound gracefully under the tall grass. Everything that might once have been tended had since been allowed to run rampant, and the result was a snarled jungle of vines and overgrown topiaries. The little white-belled flowers he'd seen on the road had colonized the gravelly earth around him, and where the trees hadn't shaded them out they grew in an uninterrupted carpet to the sand of the water's edge.

Some horticulturalist had sculpted clouds out of the evergreens that grew around the house, decades ago. Now the bushes had grown and spread in a thick verdant screen, wisteria and jasmine tangled in the branches, and it was all he could do to pry them apart to search the sides of the house. Sasuke startled a bird (although not nearly as much as it startled him), and just beyond its perch saw pipes exit the house and disappear into the ground.

No valves in sight.

A few more minutes of exploration proved that these were indeed the only pipes on the house, and that white-belled flowers made treacherous footing. With a few more bruises and bloody scratches, Sasuke pried himself free from the undergrowth and stood staring in incomprehension at the brightly-colored package sitting on the stairs into the main room.

Instant ramen.

He whipped around, but the only thing that caught his eye was the wink and glitter of windows across the cove.

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He walked, quickly, across the now dry stone-in-sand path that led to the little gate which had no fence. The footing on the path beyond was uneven and dangerous, more vertical than flat; it was a miracle he hadn't killed himself, running down it in the dark. It was a miracle that he'd stayed on it at all, as overgrown and narrow as it was.

Breathing harshly, he eventually came to the split where one path led up a set of stairs, too steep to see over. He was surprised to see, in the light of day, that the road in continued past both paths. He stared down it for a moment.

Then he continued up the stairs.

They opened onto another path made of what had probably once been pure shell gravel. It was mostly dirt now. It ran straight down the middle of a long allée of trees, ending in a door.

It was a strange optical illusion, and for a moment his eyes told him that the trunks were walls and the canopy a ceiling. The wind chose that moment to shift the trees into rustling conversation, and Sasuke saw that the door was merely another gate, tall and somehow ominous.

By the time he had reached the gate, he could see the corner of another building, immense, all but swallowed up by summer growth. It was made of dark gray stone, with tall black-lined windows peering out from underneath the foliage.

This, then, would be Sannin's 'spooky mansion'. One of the keys she'd given him fit the gate, which eased open with a long, drawn-out shriek of rusted metal.

It was Western in style, he saw as he came up the gravel path and around the corner, with a wide veranda and cracked columns in the speckled sunlight. The house—manor—sprawled across a clearing that was rapidly giving way to the forest. The only part of it still in direct sun was the roof, black slate with moss growing in its nooks and crannies. The dusty white gravel formed an oxbox curve up to the house, then away into the trees.

The front door was an ornate slab of solid cherrywood, weathered and pitted from the elements. The second key slid haltingly into the lock and turned in jerks, before the door gave way and Sasuke edged into the dim, quiet stillness of the house.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected. A huge fan mosaic? Fireplaces adorned with the family crest? He wandered from the huge, empty foyer through room upon room of sheet-draped furniture and shuttered windows, and there was no indication an Uchiha had ever set foot in this place—apart from him, as his fingers left trails in the dust that had gathered and his shoes scuffed the carpets. He scared the hell out of himself, coming around a corner and suddenly face-to-face with a floor-length mirror. With his livid bruises and bandages, he looked like a refugee from a war documentary.

Walking through a long corridor open to the elements, he looked out on ocean and realized that on this side of the house, the ground dropped away into oblivion less than a meter from the foundation. He shuddered from a moment of vertigo, and moved on.

A window had been broken in the massive kitchen, and dead leaves were scattered across the floors and marble countertops. The dry crunch they made under his feet was a welcome interruption of the oppressive silence.

The kitchen had a narrow set of stairs ascending into the gloom of the second floor. He took them, and as he reached the top step a voice echoed up from somewhere in the house. He froze with his foot on the top tread, and considered following the immediate urge to hide.

"Hello?"

Preferably under a bed.

"Sasuke-kun?"

A little disgusted with himself, he eased up the last step and crept down the upstairs hallway, until he came to an open portion that held another staircase, spiraling fluidly down into the two-story foyer. Standing there was a nervous-looking Bubblegum, her virulently pink hair and wide green eyes looking just as much like plastic Easter-grass as they had the night before.

"Hello! Sasuke-kun?"

Hiding from this would be silly, and pointless.

"Yes?" he asked, and had the pleasure of seeing her jump.

"Oh! Sasuke..kun, ah, hi. Tsunade sent me with some things. Your bike. A futon and stuff… you know?" She looked down, then up and rocked back a little on her heals—and any threat Sasuke might have seen in her was banished. He was well accustomed to the effect he had on the female of the species.

"I'm sorry she made you do that," he said sympathetically, straightening away from the wall and moving to the top of the staircase.

"No, really, it was no trouble," she said, and colored. Sasuke could have laughed. "There's quite a lot of, er, stuff. It's outside in the truck."

"I'll help you unload," he said, almost amicably as he began moving down the stairs. "But I warn you, I haven't been able to turn on the water yet."

"Oh, no!" She smiled a little, and edged playfully away from him as he reached the first floor. "You mean you haven't had a bath in a whole day?"

More like three, he thought, but kept a bland and apologetic look on his face. That damn fake smile was trying to creep up on him again. "Unfortunately." She giggled, and held her nose as he walked towards her.

Unexpectedly, as he came closer her hand dropped and her eyebrows knit in genuine concern. "You're bruised black and blue, Sasuke-kun. I'm really, really sorry for what Neji did, honestly. He's such an idiot."

"Like I told him, it wasn't all his fault. I was stopped in the middle of the road at the top of a hill. He couldn't have seen me in time." He pushed open the door, and she followed him out. Her car was a true POS, rusted through in so many places as to resemble a vehicle-shaped doily. She wrenched open a backseat door and started pulling things out.

"He thinks you're holding a grudge," she told him as she handed over a fruits basket. "You disappeared last night, and they couldn't figure why." She gave him a sidelong look from under her lashes.

Sasuke shrugged, the picture of unconcerned ambivalence. "It was nothing personal, and you can tell him so. I had the bike in the first place because I wanted to find a place to stay before the sun set."

"And by the time I finished patching you up, it was getting dark, right?"

"Yes. And thank you for that," he added, as she seemed to expect it.

"Oh, you're more than welcome." She actually simpered, a little.

There was the fruit and futon, and a few other mystery bags, but also an electric kettle and a surprisingly well-repaired bike, prompting Bubblegum—no, no, it was Sakuya or something, right?—to ask, "Did you ride here? It's an awfully long way from, well, pretty much anywhere."

"I got a ride," he said, evasively. "I was lent the bike. I'm glad Tsunade was able to straighten it out; it looked terrible."

"She had help," Sakuya said, and giggled again. "She has an admirer who's always trying to do 'manly' things for her."

"Oh?" he said politely, as she shut the door and they gathered things to carry in.

She glanced over at him, her head tipped coquettishly. "You know, the usual. 'I, a man of great honor and decency, will take care of you, a single woman of a certain age. Don't you worry your pretty little head.'" Her snort was just this side of indelicate. "Being 'of a certain age' hasn't stopped her from knocking Jiraya unconscious, and good for her."

Eyebrows raised, Sasuke watched as she hefted the bags, the basket, the blankets, and the appliances, leaving him to wheel the bike slowly after her. He kept his comment to a noncommittal "Mmhm."

He couldn't remember where the kitchen was exactly, so when asked told her to leave everything in the foyer. She was staring around again, taking in the vast emptiness of the place. "Are you really going to stay here, all by yourself? Tsunade calls it the spooky mansion for a reason, you know; a lot of people say it's haunted."

"I haven't seen anything frightening," he said, mentally adding Except my own reflection. She shrugged.

"It's probably because it's old, and abandoned for the most part. The last time anyone lived here full time was more than fifteen years ago, I think. Oh!" she exclaimed, suddenly enough to make him jerk. "Two things, before I head back to the clinic.

"I turned your water on, on my way in; the service pipe and the house's local pipes intersect at the road. Two, Tsunade says to consider yourself paid through the summer, with utilities. If she hadn't been, ah, incapacitated, she never would have let you pay full price for this place."

"That's good of you, and her," said Sasuke, who had been wondering in the back of his mind if he'd really had the 10,000 yen a month to maintain the fiction he was living in the huge manse. Still, now there should be running water on the little island.

As if she'd read his mind, she continued, "There are a couple different little teahouses and things on the property which all have their own pipelines, so it can be confusing to direct the water to the right place. Um?" Sasuke had, with subtle body language, been herding her toward the door, and she seemed somewhat surprised to find herself outside again.

"Good to know," he said. A teahouse? "Thank you again—but don't let me keep you. I'm sure you're needed at the clinic."

Sakuya looked disappointed, but rallied herself enough to smile and purr flirtatiously, "Come by whenever, and I'll rewrap your ribs. No appointment needed for Dr. Haruno Sakura."

She climbed in the car, and it started with a choked roar and a cloud of bluish smoke. She waved, he waved, and she rattled off down the oxbox and back into the trees. He waited until the noises of the ailing engine died away completely before he turned back to the house.

The appliances, excepting the electric kettle, he set aside as unneeded, and besides that impossible to maneuver down that ridiculously rough path back to the island. The fruit he took, and the first bite of apple might have been ambrosia of the gods.

It reminded him of the ramen he'd left on the step, and the reason he'd come to the house in the first place. But he was certain that the only footprints in the dust were his. He knew he hadn't explored the whole of the house by any means, but he was satisfied with his conclusions. There was no one here.

Someone was watching him, and that worried him. He picked up the futon and bags, and maneuvered them out the heavy front door. Someone was watching, but to act as scared as he had last night was completely counterproductive. Hopefully Sakuya—Sakura would do something to smooth over his questionable actions with Neji and that group; he wanted them to forget they'd ever seen him, not go around wondering what the hell was wrong with him.

A package of 15¥ ramen was by no means a hostile overture, he reasoned as he kicked open the screeching gate. He'd said he was hungry, hadn't he? It was, if anything, neighborly… and somewhat childish. There was nothing menacing about that.

But…

But.

He slipped through the allée and down the stairs as quietly and quickly as he could, heart fluttering at every rustle and scrape in the underbrush, every insect buzz that came too close. After hesitating a full minute, he left his burdens at the split and stole back up to the road. The sudden sunlight almost blinded him, and the sudden heat made him aware of how thirsty he'd become again and how gritty and uncomfortable his clothes were, but there at the corner was the switching station, and here was a valve clearly marked, "Island", along with three others.

The sunlight made him feel vulnerable, and he was glad to return to the cool shade of the trees. The path to the teahouse was even more treacherous on the way down than it had been on the way up, descent complicated by his full hands and bulky burden. He made it to the small gate, still open from his earlier passage, completely out of breath, battered and desperate for water and a bath. Counter to those plans, his legs made the decision to sit without him and the resulting sting sung up his spine and had him gritting out a curse.

He could admit that it was a nice view. There on the threshold between earth and water, sun and shadow, the island stood in all its green and rocky splendor. The sun was directly overhead now, and glinted off the waves with an eye-searing sparkle. It looked postcard-perfect.

He looked down for a rock smooth enough to skip, but his eye was caught by something strangely-shaped and half-buried in the sand.

He reached for it and worked it loose, and found himself holding a small stone statue. It was an animal, but age had rendered it otherwise unidentifiable. He looked around, curious, but only after he had levered himself back on his feet and stumbled a ways down the shoreline did he find the toppled shrine, and righted it. He found no other stone kami, and the dedication stone held no names, only a jagged spiral, but still he set the statue back on the altar and, after a pause, took out a persimmon and set it next to the solemn figure. He folded his hands, and said a short prayer of thanks.

You never knew. Maybe it was a miracle he'd made it down alive.

The water, when he first turned on the faucet, coughed and sputtered and ran an evil rusty red. When it finally ran clear, Sasuke climbed into the tub and let the cool stream flow over his face, soaking through his hair and then his shirt and pants. Running water was a miracle in its own right.

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He ate the ramen, still damp from the bath and arguing with himself over every mouthful. He fixed the door, but left it open, and opened its stubborn opposite. He pulled a table and pads out of storage and them up in the main room. He put the fruit in the fridge. He unpacked the dishes, all of them, and folded the futon into the closet where they'd been.

After nearly an hour letting the sun bake his already tender skin, restlessness drove him from the island, along the shoreline. He'd soon lost sight of the island, but found an orphaned cement sidewalk a foot below the surface of the water; shoes in one hand, he followed where it wandered.

At one point it approached the shore and rose out of the water. He walked into a deserted collection of gutted, roofless buildings with saplings growing through them. Things had been half-buried in the earth that seemed to have flowed up like quicksand around the structures, and the water lapped hungrily at it all; there was old, rotted timber, plastic deck chairs, toys, a post office box. A stop sign glittered out in deeper water. In one sheltered corner Sasuke found the remains of an upright piano, half its keys missing and the body and strings splintered under the weight of an interior fallen wall. Still, his fingers picked out the entrance suite to Swan Lake, the soft notes swelling only in the imagination.

He walked on, leaving the concrete for the shoreline again, but even here there were signs of a drowned city. Marooned signposts, a bare three inches of fire hydrant poking out of the sand. It all had such an… apocalyptic feel to it.

The sun blazed across the sky, and under it Sasuke wandered, purposeless but striding with a determined air through the tumbled rocks and ruins. He still followed the shoreline, but he'd ascended to the loamy bluff that overlooked the sand dunes. The trees were thicker and older here, and amongst them Sasuke found another weather-beaten shrine. The small animal's pointed muzzle looked more lupine here. Sasuke gave it a brief nod before continuing on.

Through the dense foliage he saw a cracked and flaking stucco wall, and when the thin path he followed turned toward it he followed. Expecting another ruin, he was almost on top of the small building before he realized that it was whole and roofed, and that the strong smell of coffee and fried food hung in the air around it. A dingy, discolored sign read only, 'CAFÉ', and the place had an air of general disrepair, but the glass of the windows was spotless. A door led out onto a small wooden landing, and there a bored-looking girl was leaning against the railing. A hand with a cigarette between two fingers was paused on the way to her mouth, her eyebrows raised as she stared at him.

After a moment of surprised silence on both their parts, Sasuke remembered himself. "Ah, hi."

"Hey." With that, the cigarette continued slowly up to her lips, and she took a long, slow drag as her eyes scanned him coolly. "You must be a new renter," she decided, every word wreathed in smoke. Obviously, she didn't like new renters. She was blond, hair tied in messy knots on her head. She was wearing a worn white apron with the same inane 'CAFÉ' blazoned across it, a bikini made entirely of thin orange string, and very brief cut-offs.

Another drag. "Really new. Welcome to Chiyo's."

"Chiyo's… café?" he guessed.

Her eyes narrowed in a way that said, dumbass, but all she said out loud was, "That's us." She flicked the cigarette to the floor and ground out the coal under a pristine white flip-flop. "May til August. Nine to nine. You coming in, or not?" Dumbass.

Sasuke gritted his teeth, and smiled. "Sure thing." Bitch.

Her eyebrow jerked up again as if she'd heard the subtitle, but she returned his bared-teeth smile with one of her own. She jerked open the door and motioned him inside. "Well, then climb on up and we'll get you seated!" Asswipe.

In between the bathroom and kitchen doors, he had no doubt.

He'd reached the top of the stairs before he heard a surprised yell and the rattle of cutlery hitting the floor. The girl was still holding the door open but now stared inside with some confusion, allowing Sasuke to crane his neck around the frame in time to see another door opposite them swing gently shut.

The café was occupied by two other people, and both of them had turned towards the other door with similarly surprised expressions. One was standing, dressed in the same apron as the girl, and had two empty glasses in his hands. He turned to look at the second, who was sitting at a table with his apron crumpled in his lap, and shrugged. "Maybe he had an appointment?"

But the seated boy turned to look at Sasuke and the girl, and it was very clear from the homicidal gleam in his ice-blue eye that he was sure the blame lay elsewhere.

The girl threw up her hands. "Hey, Gaara, he's your friend. Unless he suddenly developed a phobia of boobs, or—" dumbasses— "summer renters, I've got nothing."

The full force of Gaara's glare shifted onto her, and Sasuke surprised himself by breathing a sigh of relief. The girl rolled her eyes and crossed the threshold, letting the door go so that Sasuke caught it an inch from his ear. He followed her negligent wave to a table, took the laminated menu she gave him and scanned it while an itch built between his shoulder blades from the force of Gaara's stare.

The café was surprisingly nice inside, huge bay windows with padded seats and painted plank walls in seafoam, tan and white. There were a few kitschy pieces of driftwood and sailcloth, but for the most part it seemed… friendly…

Well, no. Not when he was fairly certain that the strange boy behind him was testing the spontaneous combustion point of cotton t-shirts from heated glares. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gaara had moved behind the counter and was methodically washing a plate in a manner that suggested he was trying to strangle it.

"Don't worry," said the girl blithely. "He almost never actually kills anyone. Ready to order?"

He'd taken his first sip of the best lemonade he'd ever tasted when the older boy, sitting slumped in a windowseat over a newspaper, said "Oi, imoto. Boyfriend's here."

Sasuke looked up at her scoff and creak of the opening door, and Shikamaru slouched into the café with his usual bored expression.

Despite her derisive sound, the girl leaned back on a table in a position designed to impress, or at least distract, and purred, "Hi, Shika-kun."

He nodded to her, but to her visible annoyance almost immediately turned his attention to Sasuke.

"Hey," he greeted him. "I see you found Chiyo's. They have good food, but it's mostly Suna-style."

"'But'?" Temari objected with a pout. It was an odd look on her.

"But," he repeated. "I don't like that much spice on anything, let alone my ice cream. This is Sabaku Temari-san and Sabaku Kankuro-san. They work in the café for a friend of the family." No introduction of Gaara, Sasuke noticed, and then realized that the boy was no longer in the room.

Much to his dismay, Shikamaru pulled out the chair next to him and sat down. Even more dismaying, Temari followed suit. Kankuro stood up and stretched, and ambled over to the counter to pour drinks while Temari immediately set to monopolizing the conversation. By the time her brother set a soda in front of her and joined them at the table, she was deep into a story about spiking dango with Tabasco and stolen cigarettes. "—and you should have seen his face! Kurenai-nee-sani couldn't stop laughing."

After a few minutes of silent suffering, Sasuke decided that it wasn't worth finishing the lemonade if he'd have to listen to this. He straightened away from the table, and Temari looked up in surprise—which quickly morphed into a sort of spiteful glee. "Oh, you're leaving, Sasuke-kun?"

"Yes. Have a nice chat," he told them, only mildly sarcastic. "How much do I owe for the drink?"

"On the house," said Temari, who seemed much happier to see him go than come. "Welcome to Konoha, Sasuke-kun."

Shikamaru just watched him.

Sasuke went out the front door and had stepped down from the short landing when the crunch of gravel warned him, and he was able to turn and get an arm between them before Gaara had grabbed him, fingers digging painfully hard into his skin. "What did you do to him?"

"I have no idea was you're talked about," he said, trying to jerk his arm away.

"He ran like he'd seen a ghost," Gaara gritted out, other hand balled into a fist. "What did you do?"

"Sasuke-kun," said Shikamaru, on the landing behind them. "Why don't I walk you home?"

"…sure," Sasuke said, and shook off Gaara's loosened grip. He backed away from the angry boy as the other's attention turned to Shikamaru; he looked as though he might challenge him, eyes hot and jaw tight. Shikamaru met that stare, then deliberately turned his eyes to the road that wound away from the café, strolling down the stairs and past him. Sasuke allowed himself to drawn along in his wake.

He could still feel those eyes on them after the café had passed out of view and they were in the trees again, picking their way down the rutted road.

"You seem to be doing better."

"Hn." Sasuke was still a bit bemused by events, and not altogether thrilled by the company.

"Your color's good. Those dark circles are gone."

"I slept."

"You're not smiling any more. I think that's a good sign, with you."

The lazy intensity with which Shikamaru watched him drew his attention away from his own thoughts, and he belatedly attempted to deflect the other's interest. "Nara-kun… what happened here?

Shikamaru's eyes flicked away from him, to the horizon. "What makes you think something happened?"

Sasuke shrugged. "Things. The empty hotel. The powerlines under the water. All the deserted buildings."

Shikamaru mirrored his shrug. "It's not much of a mystery. A hurricane came through a while back."

They'd walked a few seconds in silence before Sasuke prodded him with, "That's all?"

A sardonic smile hovered at the corners of the other boy's mouth. "It was enough."

They'd taken the first right turn before Sasuke realized Shikamaru was leading him right to the manor, and he swallowed against the brief flicker of alarm in his stomach. "You don't have to walk me home," he said, a little too forcefully.

Shikamaru responded with a mild stare. "Just being neighborly. Neighbor."

That brought to mind the instant ramen, and Sasuke badly wanted to ask if he'd left it. But that would reveal too much, to this boy who already saw much more than Sasuke wanted him to. "… tell me more about Konoha," he blurted out.

"You've already seen most of it. It used to be a fairly large resort town, fifteen or sixteen years ago. The hurricane wiped out more than half of it."

Shikamaru slowed to a stop, and Sasuke realized they had reached the two stone pillars that marked the entrance to the manor's drive. The boy seemed to be looking for something up the road, and as he craned his neck Sasuke edged as casually as he could manage to stand directly between the pillars. Shikamaru was not going any farther than this.

"There," the other boy said abruptly, and pointed. "See that?"

There, squatting next to the pavement and almost lost in the seagrass, sat another shrine. Even from this distance Sasuke could see the familiar animal kami and serrated spiral.

"There's a local god whose symbol is the uzumaki, for the hurricane. Although this part of the country gets hit every summer, for decades Konoha managed to escape serious damage from tropical storms. You'll find pieces of those shrines everywhere, most of them from before the Showa period."

"Interesting," he mumbled to himself.

"I always thought so," Shikamaru agreed. "Hey, Sasuke-kun?"

"Mm?"

"You found the Uchiha house with no problems, right?"

Sasuke jerked his eyes back from the shrine and was caught in that deceptively lazy gaze.

"It can be a little tricky, since these old estates usually have a couple of cottages and things on the ground. But you've found the mansion, right?"

Sasuke was suddenly very aware of the pipes protruding from the ground next to him, the valve marked "Island" firmly on. "Yes," he forced out. How much does he know, or guess?

Shikamaru's small smile as he turned to go was his only answer.

-----------------------o-----------------------

The sun was dying away into the sea again, and Sasuke blinked languidly against the afterimages as he held the pearl up to the bloody light.

He lay flat on his back amongst the white flowers on the western shore of the teahouse island, turning the gem in his fingers and watching the gleam. The water rose past his heels, buried in the sand, and teased his bare calves before receding, only to wash back up with the next wave. The tide was rising again.

The ramen was childish. A pearl, especially a natural pearl of this size, was not childish. Or… maybe it was. Picked up on a beach somewhere? Possibly. Did pearls just wash up like beachglass or seashells?

Somehow, he doubted this one had. It must have been decades in the making, to be so large, and despite its lumpen surface it was polished to a mirror shine. Did that happen naturally?

A small noise from the direction of the teahouse intruded on his thoughts, and he tilted his head back to see the literal boy of his dreams freeze in the middle of climbing around the corner of the teahouse.

A moment of deer-in-the-headlights shock became a deeply guilty expression, and the boy looked down, then up, then down again before venturing, "Er, hi…"

Sasuke stared.

The boy straightened from the corner, and gave a nervous laugh. "Ah, ha ha. I'm… I mean, I was… just walking through, and I thought I'd, er, stop by. Again."

At Sasuke's continued silence, he continued somewhat desperately, "I'm Naruto, by the way. Uzumaki Naruto."

Sasuke was speechless another long moment, and the boy's blush became distinctly visible. What finally came out was a disbelieving, "… your name is 'spiral'?"

"Yes?"

Well, it either is or it isn't, idiot. Sasuke kept the thought to himself, and instead pulled himself upright and turned to face… Naruto. He held the pearl up. "Did you give this to me?"

He hadn't thought it possible, but the boy looked even more awkward at this.

"Yes, then. Why?"

Naruto's face was redder than the carmine sunset, but he managed, "I just… did, okay?"

"Well, take it back."

"…no."

"I can't keep it. It must be worth a fortune."

Naruto's expression was becoming more mulish than embarrassed. "It's yours, alright?"

"Let me see if I have this right," Sasuke said slowly, twisting to face him more directly and folding his legs under him. "You follow me into my house, molest me—"

"Hey! Who grabbed who, bastard?"

"Who kissed who, idiot?" Sasuke countered silkily.

Naruto folded his arms. "I only kissed you because you grabbed me!"

"I only grabbed you because—because…" And here Sasuke was at a loss. He couldn't think of a single sane impulse that might have provoked the action.

Naruto saw himself as vindicated. "Hah! And it sucked!"

Sasuke took a moment to make sure he had properly understood this, then replied, "I beg your pardon?" His tone could have flash-frozen lakes.

Naruto leaned forward and carefully enunciated, "The kiss sucked. I've had wetter pecks from women in babushkas, and you fell asleep two seconds into it."

The flat-out attack on his male pride swept all thoughts of the utter strangeness of the situation from his mind, and Sasuke sputtered, "I—I was exhausted! I hadn't slept in days!"

"Or you just suck." Naruto was grinning a little now, and Sasuke found it absolutely intolerable.

"Forget it! Get off my island." He turned to glare out at the sunset.

There was a snort. "Your island? You've been here, what, a day? Twenty-four hours?"

"I'm paying for it, so it's mine. Leave."

There was a short, scandalized pause, and then from somewhere behind him came a sigh and the soft sound of sand under Naruto's sandals. Instead of disappearing to wherever dreams came from, the boy sat down next to Sasuke and propped his forearms on his knees. For a moment, the gulls made the only conversation in the evening air.

"This isn't how it's supposed to go," the boy finally muttered to himself. "See, I introduce myself—the awesome Uzumaki Naruto—and then you say your name."

He looked pointedly at Sasuke, who was still making a great effort to deny his existence. "Hey. Hello? Oh, that's really mature."

"Like calling yourself 'the awesome Uzumaki Naruto' is any more mature," Sasuke retorted, still not looking at him.

"But I am awesome," Naruto explained, with such sincerity that it won a reluctant snort from Sasuke. "Now, your name."

"Uchiha Sasuke," he said, and almost clapped his hand to his mouth in horror.

"Hey, at least be honest," said Naruto, sounding injured.

"I'm sorry?"

"Fake names are pretty obvious if you call yourself after the house you're staying in."

"… right."

"So?"

"What?"

Naruto gave him an exaggeratedly patient look. "Your name, please."

Sasuke's lips crooked before he could stop them. "Sorry, you'll have to be satisfied with Uchiha Sasuke."

The boy actually pouted, and made Sasuke stifle a chuckle.

"For now, I'll let it go. The next part is more important."

"Is it?"

"Of course! You thank me for my wonderful gift."

A flinty glint in Naruto's eye prevented Sasuke from once again offering to give the gem back. "Thank you," he said, reluctantly.

Naruto nodded. "You're welcome. Then you thank me for the tasty ramen."

"Er, thanks," Sasuke replied, with a mordant edge. Yes, Naruto definitely fit the definition of 'childish'.

"And then, because there's no way anyone could really be that bad of a kisser, I lean in like this," and he demonstrated, bringing his face within centimeters of the surprised Sasuke's. "And I kiss you again."

He really did have the most startlingly beautiful eyes, blue shot through with lapis and indigo. "You kiss me?" Sasuke murmured perplexedly.

"Yep."

"…alright then," he breathed, eyes already slipping closed in anticipation.

"See? It's better my way," Naruto whispered, and kissed him.

The first few seconds were sweet and rather innocent, their closed lips rubbing softly against each other. Sasuke let the edge of his teeth graze Naruto's bottom lip, and Naruto's tongue flicked out to wet his, and Sasuke took the opportunity to suck the appendage into his mouth—there the kiss heated. Naruto gave a soft groan and pressed closer, gripping Sasuke's jaw to find a better angle as his suddenly adventurous tongue stroked playfully along the roof of Sasuke's mouth, and Sasuke felt a shudder work its way through his body. Naruto grew bold, tongue pressing deep to tangle with Sasuke's and kissing him literally breathless. He broke the contact enough to gasp out, "Na—" but the rest of the word was smothered as Naruto kissed him like he would swallow him whole.

A hand on his chest, and Sasuke allowed himself to be pushed down onto the sandy shore. Naruto was silhouetted against the sunset, leaning over him so that his face looked outlined in fire. Just before their lips touched again, Sasuke murmured, "Why are you doing this?"

It seemed to give Naruto pause, the first thing that had. He started to say something, stopped. His perpetual grin slowly faded as he stared down at Sasuke.

"Because you made an offering and said a prayer," he said finally, tilting his head so that the sun spilled into Sasuke's eyes and blinded him for a moment. "You're the first that has, in a long, long time."

Unable to open his eyes against the light, Sasuke only felt him draw away. Then there was only a sudden distinct lack of presence. He rolled to the side and looked blearily around the island. But for him, it was deserted.

But for where Sasuke had walked barefoot and lay, there were no prints in the sand.

-----------------------o-----------------------

A/N: During the (long, long) reviewing process, I was looking back over this and realized that I write like a point-and-click. It's not a particularly disturbing revelation, since I like point-and-clicks, but I can see how it might be excruciating to someone who doesn't. That's all!

i Sometimes, a nee-san is just a friendly older girl.