Places, a naruto fanfic

Disclaimer: Don't own, won't profit.

Author's note: A belated, birthday half-gift for Kaikouken. She's some species of awesome!

Related: Nothing & Nowhere by Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton.

fish for ashes presents

PLACES

I still don't know if you're permanent.

theft

A hot afternoon and a vacant apartment is what he comes home to.

The room next to Naruto's is empty, all white walls and bare floorboards. There's not much in the room besides heavy sweet air and late light filtering through the window. The furniture is gone; the dark mahogany structures (there only yesterday, looking much too somber and out of place with the rest of his small flat) have been spirited away. The room looks like it did the day he moved in – empty and small. Warm, but in a lifeless way. Lonely, even.

The rest of his apartment looks the same as it did when he left this morning. Maybe a little neater, though.

He looks at the empty room, with rising uneasiness that might be tinged with a biteless kind of anger.

It feels a little like (or a lot like) being robbed, but the thief and the theft are one and the same.

a breeze

The bastard left the window open, and Naruto wonders what that was supposed to mean.

tundra

Maybe eight months ago, it was December. Bitterly cold, but nothing like Naruto's internal tundra, sprouting and expanding its desolate plains within him as he watched the television one night. His half-done instant ramen, waiting on the counter for him, was forgotten (when he returned later, he found it stone cold, but by then, he hadn't much of an appetite, anyway) as soon as the black box began spewing the terrifying live broadcast (it was then that his tundra began growing, from a single concentrated drop of icy feeling in his chest).

He didn't grab his jacket (it never crossed his mind; as it was, he barely remembered to shove his socked feet into his sneakers) as he sprinted out the door and sprinted four blocks uptown.

So it was that a Naruto who was cold inside and out when he stood in front of a lofty building with a liberal amount of windows – luxury apartments that put his to shame, like princes to a pauper and he really didn't like the aptness of that analogy – that usually gleamed by day (because of all that glass, of course). Gleamed.

But tonight, it burned.

It burned in that inferno kind of way; spiraling heat, smoke, ashes up into the December sky. And bathed in the red and yellow lights of the enormous fire engines beside him, Naruto counted up the burning building with desperate eyes. Six, seven, eight. On fire. He could see those floors smoldering.

Sasuke lived on the seventh floor.

Ohgodohgod

There was an incredible pressure building up within him; his head hurt so bad at the thought that – that his best friend in the whole goddamned world was burning to death (or maybe Sasuke was already dead) up there, seven stories too far from Naruto.

Sasuke.

And losing him – it felt something like an invisible hand was viciously hollowing the visceral contents between his ribcage (out, they pulled out the heart, out, they pulled out the lungs). And his new tundra was growing and growing and damn but Naruto had never known such coldness in his life.

day

He's left with sort of a buzzing in his head, a motley mess of how could he's inevitably popping up between thought threads about laundry and grocery shopping and those mundane things. (They used to do them together. As roommates, best friends.) Even at work, as he stocks the warehouse shelf with flat-packed furniture, he's struck with pangs of anger, knocking around inside his skull. Usually, by the time his shift is over, though, it just turns into a little sadness at the prospect of going back to an empty home.

clever trick

(Night air and a familiar voice)

"Done breaking your heart over me, usuratonkachi?"

Naruto did the first thing his heart told him to do – "oh fuck no, you asshole" (angrily) – and turned around to swing his right fist at his unburning, undying, uncharred best friend… who caught the hand, pale fingers tight around Naruto's knuckles. And so Naruto did the next thing his heart told him to do – and so Naruto promptly rammed his left fist instead into the unburning, undying, uncharred best friend.

Sasuke stumbled back, back hitting the side of the fire engine behind him with a soft flesh-to-metal thud – and then lifted his chin to just stare at Naruto with unrelenting (fathomless) dark eyes.

"God, Sasuke." Naruto groaned. "Why the hell didn't you call me?" (Who else would you call, anyway?) He let the question hang for a while, but Sasuke was making no reply. He demanded again, "Why didn't you call me." – but more softly.

Honestly, it was unlikely that Sasuke would ever answer. And he didn't. Sasuke just looked and those inscrutable dark eyes were making Naruto feel transparent.

Didn't you know how fucking worried I was?

(Sasuke probably did.)

And yet –

Naruto studied his silent friend in the partial illumination – from the harsh streetlamp glow, the red-yellow lights, the flickering of the burning building behind them. Sasuke wasn't wearing a jacket either, and there was a black smudge across one cheek. Naruto hesitantly reached out and rubbed a thumb across the smudge (and sort of smeared it further, made it worse, but Sasuke couldn't tell). Sasuke's face was warm (from the fire?) under Naruto's fingertips.

"Goddamn you." Naruto grumbled finally, coming over to the side of the fire engine as well and slumping down to the concrete at Sasuke's feet. "How long were you watching while I was here, thinking that you were burning to death, anyway?"

"A while." And Sasuke slid down as well, warm (from the fire?) against Naruto's side.

"You're a heartless bastard."

"I'm a heartless bastard," Sasuke agreed.

cradle

"He's gone?"

"Not like that." Naruto grips the phone and wonders if it he had made a mistake after all, telling her. The sharp inhalation lacerates the faithful heart, and so does the soft, nuanced gone … and the unspoken (again).

collision theory the first

Sasuke leaned and pulled a few objects out – out of nowhere, it seemed – and dropped them onto the concrete sidewalk in front of them.

His practical black leather wallet made little sound as it hit ground, but fell open to reveal two photographs hastily tucked into the pockets. One was of an unsmiling family – but there was perhaps a secret tenderness within the still image (to be found after hours of gazing with the least bitter heart one could manage).

The other object clinked onto the sidewalk; it was a key.

And the other photo, Naruto tried not to stare at it. It wasn't as if he himself didn't have a copy of it.

And what could you say?

"I'm so freaking cold," Naruto said, finally.

"No one asked to run out here without a coat, idiot."

Naruto grumbled at the idiot. "Well, I'm sorry if I was a little concerned seeing your apartment building burning down on the ten o'clock news. And aren't you cold, too?"

No reply.

"You must be, but you're a freaking frigid bastard anyway. Anyway," Naruto continued as he pulled himself up, "what I meant was, it's freaking cold, I'm going to head home."

Sasuke looked away to the concrete.

"And you're a fucking idiot if you think I'm going to leave you on the sidewalk here, with your swanky apartment burnt to bits an' all. C'mon, Sasuke."

Naruto patiently held his hand out.

Sasuke looked up.

central

He's still thinking about Sasuke-the-bastard.

Right now, he's very sweaty and he's sticking to the varnish on the wooden floor, as he lies down in the middle (flat on his back, blue eyes on the white ceiling) of the empty, empty room.

Naruto's supposed to be at work, but he'll just show up for a later shift, maybe. It just seems inane to be meandering around grinning at customers and rearranging the sofa displays when the stupid bastard is missing. The disappearance is affecting him more than it should. Sasuke is totally messing with my mind, Naruto decides right there on the floor.

It's been four days since Sasuke left; four days of this suddenly empty room and the unreturned phone calls and the most tangible frustration Naruto's ever felt (well, except for that one time). Four days and Naruto can hardly sort out – anything, really. Mumbo-jumbo and inane nonsense, and desperate, desperate thoughts – that's all that seems to be in his head nowadays. That, and the anger. And under that, the ache.

Maybe because?

No.

(Then, why?)

it dawns

The first couple days with Sasuke staying with him were pretty bizarre, in a domestic kind of way.

It was weird to find someone using your bathroom or sitting on your worn, garage-sale couch or standing at the window in your kitchen. It was also kind of inevitable that Naruto would be perplexed at tripping over objects that weren't his, and that Sasuke would be awkward and stubbornly silent in the mornings. And it was so, so strange to think that every night, there was someone in the next room over was breathing, sleeping, and dreaming; it was odd that your best friend was just a thin plasterboard wall away.

It was pretty weird, at least in the beginning.

On the fourth night, Naruto woke up in the middle of the night (still dry-eyed, but just barely) with a headache and left his room for a glass of water, to help him gulp down lingering irrational fears and clear his vaguely panicked, muddled mind.

The kitchen was already occupied, though. The lights were on, and Sasuke was sitting at the table. Sasuke looked up when Naruto walked in, and Naruto stared. It might have been one of the loneliest images that Naruto had ever come across – Sasuke Uchiha sitting alone in a foreign kitchen at three thirty in the morning.

Naruto didn't ask why, even if dark eyes were almost defiant and challenging him to say something. Naruto didn't remark on Sasuke running the light in the middle of the night and how Naruto would be paying for it when the electricity bill came and really bastard, I'm not as stinking rich as some people are. Nor did Naruto try to say how forlorn Sasuke looked.

Naruto just found a clean-enough glass, got his water, and left his best friend in the kitchen.

But in his room, Naruto couldn't sleep. He lay awake, listening to the silence, until he saw the kitchen light go out and heard Sasuke walk past. And at daybreak, he couldn't stop himself from hovering at the doorway of Sasuke's room, just for a second, before he decided to go and make some breakfast for two.

across the sea and land

Naruto doesn't really know where to start.

Hell, maybe Sasuke didn't leave, maybe he was kidnapped or something. (Totally methodically and with all his stuff. And it's not like Sasuke's already done this.) But Naruto can't really convince himself to that idea, no matter how much he wishes he didn't have to blame Sasuke for this – but who else could he blame? And after a while, Naruto starts feeling cold again and starts wondering: What am I blaming him for?

It's not like Sasuke said he was going to stay with Naruto forever, in that dinky little apartment. And then Naruto wonders how could he have expected that Sasuke would want to stay with him in a miserable little flat. And maybe it is a little miraculous that Sasuke stayed so long, anyway.

But still.

The bastard should have said something before thoroughly disappearing into thin air.

And in the end, Naruto is a little deflated, a little angry again. What the hell to do, and what fucking kind of best friend was his best friend anyway.

He leaves a lot of messages on the bastard's cell phone, because Sasuke never picks up. Naruto doesn't really remember a lot of what he says to the answering machines, but he keeps on doing it. It's probably mostly the same – god damn it talk to me bastard! There's probably a dozen messages in Sasuke's voicemail like that, by now, and Naruto wonders if the bastard even listens to them.

sides

Sakura is waiting for him, by his car in the employees' lot.

This means –

"I've talked to him," Sakura says and she sounds funny. "He's fine but… Oh, I'm really sorry,Naruto. You're going to have to… forgive me."

She says it hesitantly, and she really does look sorry. Green eyes are trying to probe his brain, it seems. But Naruto feels such a strange mix of emotions, anyway, spiraling around in his insides, that he doesn't know what Sakura could conclude. Actually, it almost feels like he's going to explode. He's pretty surprised he didn't explode at the I've talked to him.

"But… he told me not to tell you anything."

As that slowly registers, Naruto's pretty surprised that he didn't explode at that, either.

eventual

But he grew to like it. Really, really like it.

They both did.

The things salvaged from Sasuke's fire-ruined apartment began arriving in boxes that sat in Naruto's hallway. In time, though, the boxes were gone and the hallway more navigable, as objects were taken out of the cardboard and used once more. Naruto grumbled loudly about having to move his stuff around so that there was space for his unexpected roommates' furniture and things (but in the end even Naruto had to admit to himself that Sasuke's stuff looked better. Because there was no denying that it was more expensive and dignified-looking, kind of.) And Sasuke seemed to know that Naruto wasn't making any real complaint.

And it was nice, to come home after work and there's someone to say, hey, I'm back. And if there was a sort of grunt that bordered on friendly (or even just kind of on the border of friendly), or even a acknowledging nod – that was nice, too. And the occasional argument over kitchen mishaps or the remote control, or if they were occasionally throwing punches (honestly, sometimes they acted like they were still in high school) because the nature of their relationship involved butting heads over the most trivial things… that was okay, too.

(It was nice to know some things don't change even when they mashed their lives even closer together.)

It was still weird to stumble on someone awake in the kitchen at ungodly hours of the night.

But sometimes they sat with each other, because they knew each other better than anyone else in the world and so understood the old hurts best.

collision theory the second

Nothing lasts forever – "ain't that the truth" – but that means the bad stuff doesn't last forever either, and the Mysterious Disappearance of Sasuke Uchiha is abruptly brought to an end within the next fortnight.

"Basta – Sasuke."

A half-word and a name, but so much is stuffed into those few syllables. Most of it is anger, but it isn't too hard to find a little tiny cautious bit of quavering hope, too.

How Sasuke came to be in the lamps and lighting section of his workplace, Naruto doesn't know. But among the pretty paper lampshades and incandescent bulbs stands Sasuke Uchiha, with that expression on his face that Naruto often cursed because it was so, so stupid. Usually because when his best friend looked like that, there was some crisis and trauma and tremendous pressure, even if it was only in Naruto himself. It's a sure sign that a meltdown, breakdown, everythingdown is impending.

Naruto drops the cardboard-packed something in his hands that he was just about to shelve and strides angrily across the room. It's Naruto striding across and bridging the distance because silent Sasuke isn't moving and doing a goddamned fine impression of those statues you find in the middle of town squares. Unnatural, really.

(Naruto hopes and hopes that this isn't a hallucination.)

Author's note: Sometimes, I'm really proud of this. Sometimes, I know it's super insufferable and boring. I'll try to redeem myself in the second half, loves. And of course, I'll really appreciate it if you drop a line.