Follow your destiny
Water your plants
Love your roses.
The rest is the shadow
of other trees.
Fernando Pessoa
It all started with a cactus. One of those small, round, yellow-spiked ones, in a cheap red vase.
In the third period, it was there, just on his desk, just like that.
Naruto had looked around the crowded classroom, but no one was looking in his direction.
Maybe someone had forgotten it there? Placed in the wrong chair?
Before he could ask if someone had seen anything, the teacher had already started the class.
Naruto looked at the cactus, puzzled and confused. Someone must have forgotten it there in the previous period. It wouldn't be the strangest thing anyone had ever forgotten in there.
At the end of the class, he handed over the small plant to the lost and found desk.
.................................................. ......................
The next day, in the third period, the cactus was back on his table.
This time with a small yellow note below the vase.
It had his name on it.
.................................................. ......................
"It's weird, isn't it?"
The only answer he got was a grunt. Nothing much, being Sasuke.
Holding the small vase in his hands, Naruto ignored the other guy's inattention, something he was used to. Sasuke was not the best in terms of conversation, but that's okay. Naruto could speak for both.
"I mean, who would give me a cactus?"
Sasuke was the only person that came to mind, but he doubted the other boy would do that. A lot of the time he wasn't even sure if the two were friends. They went to school together every day and returned together too, but it was more of a convenience. Their mothers were friends, Naruto often spent afternoons there when his father was busy at work. Sasuke just had the misfortune to stay in the role of a babysitter if he suffered from one of his seizures in the middle of the street alone. It would not be the first time.
At school, they didn't sit together, even in the break. Sasuke had his friends and Naruto wasn't exactly popular. Nobody went out of his way to be mean in all those months he had started studying there, but no one had tried to get too close either. Nothing like someone having frequent seizures to scare possible friends.
Naruto didn't care about that. Not really. He still had his friends, they were just on the other side of the country.
It was strange. At his previous school Naruto, even though he wasn't exactly popular, was sociable. He had always been loud and good at drawing attention. He played in the school band, went out on weekends with his friends and was full of energy when he wasn't in the hospital.
Here he was only living one day at a time. The seizures had increased so much in frequency that he always felt tired, and ended up spending more time in the school infirmary than in class a few days.
"Do you have any idea how to care for a cactus, Sasuke?"
" No."
At least he had gotten an answer this time.
His father was waiting for them at the gate, still in the police uniform.
"Delivered."
Naruto felt like a delivery order.
"Thank you, Sasuke!"
Another grunt in response.
"Eloquent, as always, Sasuke!"
Naruto laughed at that, both watching the other boy walk down the street towards his house without even looking back.
His father looked at the small plant and raised an eyebrow, but asked nothing, already putting a hand on his shoulders and guiding him into the house.
Naruto later received a message from Ino Yamanaka explaining how to care for a cactus. Naruto didn't even know that she knew of his existence at school, let alone have his number and do him a favour.
Maybe he and Sasuke were friends after all.
.................................................. ..
A few days later, Naruto had returned from an afternoon in the infirmary after a seizure in the library and there was another cactus on his table. This one had trunks looking like small arms and an even cheesier vase.
Sasuke had been looking almost interested when he appeared at the gate with yet another cactus but said nothing.
During the weeks that followed, whenever he had a bad day at school, he returned to the classroom and found a new cactus on his chair.
.................................................. .......
Naruto was not the only child with separated parents who still loved each other, he was sure. Somehow, people always imagined that divorce was associated with mutual and eternal hatred, but that was not always true.
Just, sometimes love is not enough.
He remembered spending sleepless nights as a child, between hospital visits and vacations with his father, and thinking he was to blame for the separation. It was not easy to care for a child with so many problems, it could exhaust any relationship.
His parents never let him think about it for long. Naruto, despite the bad hand he received in life, still felt lucky to have them. The two were together where it counted.
He also knew that his mother had been sad when he decided to live in the last year of school with his father. It was one of those difficult decisions, but he didn't regret it.
He needed that time with his father, something beyond a few days on vacation. In a few months, depending on what happened, he didn't want to have any regrets.
"Will you need a shelf?"
"Perhaps."
Naruto assessed the seven plants scattered on his table.
His father nodded, leaving the room. He had not yet asked for the reason for the plants, but someone must have told him. Probably Mikoto, because for someone who looked so dignified, deep down Sasuke was very gossipy.
His father returned with wood and tools. Naruto didn't even know how to change a light bulb, so he was content to give orders while his dad worked.
.....................................
"It's a Succulent."
Yamanaka explained, the two of them looking at the small plant on the library table. The girl had become a good informant about plants, her family owning the small flower shop in the small town.
"Would you tell me who-"
She denied it, her expression amused.
"Sorry, Namikaze, but I don't know. Whoever is leaving these plants for you, is buying them in another city."
Who would go to all that trouble to leave him plants? And why?
For some reason, when he that question, the girl looked even more amused, running a hand through his hair as if he were a particularly entertaining puppy.
.................................................. ..............
Naruto felt an attack coming as he washed his hands. The sensation was already familiar: A sensory attack, the sensation of a shock running through his body, bright and colourful spots around him, moving and converging. Naruto could swear he was smelling ozone in the air
In a kind of conformist conscience, he just thought it was a good thing to have already alleviated himself. Years of experience waking up from a seizure with the smell of urine had always alerted him to this. Nothing like pissing himself at school to end his day.
His fingers started to shake and in seconds he was on the floor. Trying not to bite his tongue or hit his head was out of his control and he was sure that, with no one there to help, he would wake up with a guaranteed trip to the hospital that time.
He didn't hear the bathroom door open, nor was he aware of anyone holding him and something protecting his head, but he woke up like that, on his side, in the recovery position.
It was the longest convulsion in a long time. Dizzy, sick and with a metallic taste in his mouth, he could hear someone talking softly near his head. The door opened again. Voices, the sound of footsteps. Naruto felt someone lift him and saw red hair from his peripheral vision, comforting arms around him.
"Shh, don't cry."
Then nothing more.
.................................................. .....
When he woke up Sasuke was in the chair next to him and, to his surprise, Yamanaka was there too. She was curiously looking at a new cactus on his bedside table, but she smiled when she saw him awake.
"That's a Barbary fig. They can grow a lot if you put them in a larger pot. They need space to grow."
Naruto smiled back.
Then he remembered.
"Who brought me here?"
Sasuke exchanged a look with her, in a silent conversation.
First, the woman from the lost and found desk, who had only smiled when he asked who came to get the cactus the first time. Then, the people in his class, who said they had never seen anything when he asked who left a plant on his table. Even Shizune, the school nurse, was just looking at him with an overly amused smile on her face.
Naruto should have been annoyed that they didn't respond, but he was too tired for that.
.................................................. ........
Although they are not officially friends, Sasuke almost always went out of his way when work in group took place. Naruto knew that it was partly because of his sense of responsibility as a monitor, once everyone knew that no one would offer. But also, and that Naruto had been learning that, despite all the cold exterior Sasuke was a good person.
This time Sasuke had no choice. The two art teachers had joined the two classes to organize a single project and, to socialize, had randomly joined students in one room with those in another.
Naruto had looked disappointed at Sasuke from across the room with another boy, and even Ino, who had winked at him, sitting with a pink-haired girl who was also looking curiously at Naruto.
Naruto was startled when someone sat next to him, not having heard his name being called. When he turned around, he looked at the green eyes that looked at him in an intimidating way, beneath red hair. Attractively intimidating.
Naruto had seen him a few times, mostly around Sasuke's table at the break, along with the swim team. One of the school's popular, no doubt.
This sounded like the beginning of a good cliché.
"I'm Gaara."
The guy raised his hand and he accepted it. It was hot and big in his. Naruto felt a slight squeeze and calluses on fingers.
"Naruto. Do you have any idea about what you want to work with?"
Naruto was too busy to notice the eye roll that his teacher, Kankuro, gave them.
.................................................. ...
Naruto had ended the day with a new number saved on his cell phone and a promise to set up a day to meet. On the way back home, through careful questions Naruto had discovered that Sasuke and Gaara were not exactly friends, they just had mutual friends, since they were both part of the swim team, the pride of the whole school. It didn't make sense to Naruto, but okay, social rules at school were never his forte.
That day his father was going to work at night, so they stopped by his house, where Naruto got a backpack to sleep at the Uchiha house. Sasuke looked at the shelves curiously.
"Did you change the pots?"
"Yes, some have grown, I am giving space and time to them. I think one of them if I take good care of it, will soon have a flower."
Sasuke looked at him and Naruto stopped speaking abruptly. He looked thoughtful, but there was also almost a smile there. Which was rare, Sasuke rarely smiled.
"What?"
"Nothing. Hurry up, I don’t have all day, dobe."
Naruto pouted.
"Teme."
.................................................. ............
The weekend found Naruto at his kitchen table, with paint spread over cardboard and newspapers on the floor protecting the floor. They had decided to make a mural as a social project.
Gaara was very quiet. Considering that Naruto lived with Sasuke, that was something. He was also very intense. Naruto constantly found himself intimidated by him, when he looked up after a long monologue and just found him there, silent and staring.
He was the type of guy who, in his old school, would either ignore Naruto, at best or try to put him in a locker. While Sasuke was popular for being the perfect student, with his monitor badge and the best grade in the class, Gaara was popular for being unattainable.
He was the brother of a teacher, captain of the team and firm in the certainty that he would leave school with a scholarship and a guaranteed future. He was handsome, talented and distant. Naruto could understand. He had Neji as a friend in his old city. There was something about cold geniuses, Ino was the only exception he knew.
"Am I talking too much?"
The other just shook his head, green eyes intense in his. There was an ink stain on his cheek and paper in his hair.
Naruto found himself smiling, uncertainly.
When Gaara left, after refusing to wait for dinner, his father was in the living room, watching television. Naruto sat next to him, nestling close. He looked up when he realized his dad was looking at him.
"What?"
His father smiled widely, looking from the door, at Naruto.
"Nothing."
If Naruto hadn't noticed, it wouldn't be Minato who would say it.
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Naruto opened the door and put his head into the room, suspicious.
"Yay! Naruto! You may come in. Class is over."
Bee waved and he entered quickly, passing between the auditorium chairs and going to the piano.
It was his only opportunity to play, on Fridays when he had a free period to wait for Sasuke. When he entered the school there was no more place in the music class, so he had resigned himself to having that time.
He ran his fingers over the keys, familiar. His piano, the one he had in his mother's house, had been sold before he moved, the money going into his savings account for the major surgery later in the year. Given the opportunity to get rid of seizures and play, he didn't have to think twice.
Still, he missed playing. Bee, of course, had accommodated him since catching him playing hidden in the first week of school. Since then, the teacher just sat in the front row, removed his glasses, his milky orbits like Hinata's staring without seeing, and enjoyed the music.
Naruto wasn't even that good at the piano, despite what his mother said. He just liked to play.
He always felt better afterwards. Less alone.
.................................................. ......................
At the third meeting between them, while the two were organizing the post-its on the mural, Gaara took the initiative to speak.
"There is a surgery that can help, right?"
It was so sudden that Naruto paused. It was unusual for someone to come and ask about his epilepsy. It looked like that unspoken code, if you don't comment, no problem exists. It was different from his previous school, where he always had an idiot who thought he could record an attack and put it on the internet.
There was no malice in Gaara, just curiosity. A distant curiosity, like everything he did.
"Yes. I'll do it at the end of the year."
"And will the seizures stop?"
"Perhaps? They'll take a piece of my brain and it should stop, but it can't be sure."
"Are you afraid?"
Gaara had never spoken so much, and Naruto didn't quite know what to think about it. No one had asked that other than his mother. And he had lied to her.
For some reason, he didn't lie to Gaara.
" I'm terrified."
It was his brain. Any problem and goodbye. So, Naruto was scared. It was one of the reasons for coming to live with his father, the fear of dying without knowing him as well as he wanted to. Without giving him the opportunity that the law had given his mother.
"What will you do when you are discharged?"
Naruto looked at the other boy, who was still carefully cutting paper.
When. Not if. Somehow that almost strange, who was becoming something strangely like maybe a friend, was having more faith than Naruto that he would get out of this.
Somehow it made him want to cry.
He swallowed the lump in his throat, the wave of emotion that threatened to explode and smiled, responding softly.
"Take a long dip into the sea. It's never safe to swim because, you know? I always stay in the sand, just looking. So, yeah."
The other nodded, as if it made sense and, with the most serious face Naruto had ever seen on anyone, hammered a post-it to Naruto's forehead.
He was too shocked to be outraged. Like the mature person he was, in response, he retaliated and passed the paintbrush over Gaara's pretty face.
Naruto had a few seconds to think how much of a cliché it was before he got orange paint all over his face.
When Minato got home the two were covered in paint and post-its. The man just took two steps back and returned where he came from.
...............................
Later, while cleaning up, Naruto removed the sticky notes from his forehead and smiled.
It was written: "At the end of the year, we will go to swim."
............................................
On Friday, when he left the music room, Ino was waiting for him.
"Sasuke will be late, I'll take you home. It is close to Sakura's house, it will be my excuse to see her."
" How did you know I was here?"
"Gaara told me."
Naruto was even more intrigued. He didn't know how Gaara could know too when even Sasuke didn't know.
Ino put an arm around his shoulder, the same smile as always. The smile of someone who knew something he didn't.
"So, did any of them flourish already?"
.................................................. .....
Naruto had to admit when the day finally came to present the project he was a little sad. Naruto had gotten used to Gaara and he didn't know how to proceed when the project was over.
Was there a rule? Wouldn't they talk more? Naruto was too afraid to approach him at school. He just kept staring at the other boy when he imagined that no one was looking.
So he had resigned himself.
"You are an idiot, dobe."
He looked at Sasuke indignantly. He did not even know that the other was attentive to what he said, he rarely was. Sasuke was just there, lying on his bed, fiddling with his cell phone while Naruto watered his plants and lamented.
"I know that having a crush in someone that I can't have makes me stupid, you don't have to say it like that."
Sasuke lowered the phone and fixed him with a look that said how stupid he thought it was.
"What?"
"Project together at school, paint fight in the kitchen, the popular and the loser-"
"Hey!"
"You are a fucking clichéd protagonist, dobe. Even being the last to know."
Naruto paused with that, the cursing dying in his mouth.
"Know what?"
Sasuke got back to his phone and didn't answer.
.................................................. ......
The two arrived earlier than usual to set up the mural. The students had been given a free period to organize themselves, which served them well since they would have a lot of work.
Gaara went up the stairs, nailing post-its and ornaments on the top while he did it bellow. The entire left wall was covered, forming with the post-its the question: "What is your dream?"
In the end, the two looked at the work in awe.
Naruto smiled and Gaara smiled back. It was the first time he had seen him smile and felt his stomach churn with butterflies.
Naruto was an idiot.
The red-haired boy handed him a pen, still with the same soft smile on his face: "Do you want to do the honours?"
Naruto accepted. He pulled the lid off with his tooth and approached one of the sticky notes that formed the word, just to hesitate. He knew what he wanted. He wanted the surgery to work, he wanted to be able to have a normal life. Naruto wanted to go to school, play, live alone. Have a future without fear.
Naruto wanted to have space and time. He wanted to see a flower bloom.
Naruto wanted to have that opportunity. He didn't want to atrophy out of fear.
With conviction, he scribbled his dream.
"I want to flourish."
.................................................. ............
The mural was a success.
Later, out of curiosity, Naruto tried to find out what Gaara had written among all the others, but did not find it.
.................................................. ............
At the weekend it would be the swimming championship. Competitors from other schools had come and the winner would go to the state championship. The event was a great opportunity and Naruto was rooting for Sasuke and Gaara.
Beside him, Ino was on the bench holding a sponge finger and shouting the name of one of the contestants, Sakura, who looked between happy and embarrassed with all the attention she was calling. Itachi, Sasuke's brother, was with their cousin, also making a fuss, despite being adults and respectful.
Sasuke's friends didn't seem to be bothered by his presence. One of them even brought him a hot dog and laughed when he saw his sign: "Don't drown Teme!"
Gaara swept his eyes from where he was still in the pool when he won in his category, stopping at Naruto. The two smiled and Naruto felt so happy about that. At that moment he was sure that he had fallen into the greatest of college clichés and had fallen in love. Sasuke was right, he was a big idiot.
Naruto was so happy.
And then he saw the coloured dots converging in his psychedelic aura.
"Naruto !?"
The convulsion was so sudden that there was no time. He felt Ino trying to hold him, more than one person shouting his name, but it was impossible to fight gravity when he collapsed from the stands.
When the crisis passed, he did not have much conscious time. Just like the last time, he saw red hair and felt comforting warmth. There was immense pain somewhere in his body and he could feel that this time he was not so lucky with his bladder.
"Shh. It's gonna be okay. Sasuke? His father?"
'He is coming. It's going to be okay, Naruto. Are you listening to me? It's gonna be okay."
He was happy when he lost conscience.
.................................................. .........
Naruto woke up in the hospital, which was never a good sign. His leg was suspended and in a cast and his parents were sleeping in the armchair, one on top of the other. Despite the situation, he smiled at the scene, noting how much, despite everything, they still always looked for each other for comfort.
Naruto also noticed that there were cards and balloons at its head and a new cactus. This one was bigger than the others.
"Love? Naruto!"
His mother had woken up and in the process of getting up and going to his bed, elbowed his father in the face and woke him up too. Soon the two were on top of him, talking at the same time and kissing his face.
A visit from the doctor later and he discovered that he had spent almost two weeks in the hospital.
"You were catatonic. They said it can happen, with seizures. Your doctor will probably advance the surgery's date."
His expression of fear must have been evident because his parents exchanged a look.
"Everything will be fine, love. Your friends tried to visit you and left these gifts. I am very proud of you, baby." His mother gave him a more predatory smile. "And I see that you inherited your father's problem with redheads."
" K.kushina!"
His father turned as red as his mother's hair and Naruto laughed.
"Problem with redheads? What do you mean?"
His mother looked confused at him. His father sighed.
"He didn't notice, Kushi. He inherited your incapacity to understand these things."
"Minato!"
His father seemed pleased, and then he turned his attention back to his son, taking the pot with the cactus and handing it over.
That's when Naruto saw the note. Post-its, with familiar handwriting. On it was written what he did not find on the mural, Gaara's dream.
"I want a flower to bloom for him."
"Oh."
.................................................. ............................................
When Naruto finally made it home, he put the new cactus on the shelf and compared the two post-its notes with the first one from the first cactus, just to make sure it was the same handwriting.
Sasuke was right, he was a cliché protagonist, the last to know.
He sat on the bed with difficulty, the plaster hindering his movement. When he looked out the window, his heart sped up and a smile spread across his face, a sound of euphoria coming out of his mouth so loudly that his father and mother, who had decreed that she would stay with them for a few days, ran to his room.
"Naruto?"
"Love?"
Naruto didn't know why he was crying, but he couldn't stop. He just pointed to the shelf and mumbled between sobs.
"Look."
The first cactus had flourished.
.................................................. .....
Gaara was waiting for him at the school gate when he returned. Sasuke helped him out of the car, his father placing his chair on the floor. Gaara looked at Sasuke, then at his father, and without further ado took his chair and pushed it across the courtyard.
Naruto felt his face warm, waving when some students passed and asked if he was okay.
"In your first week here, I saw you playing the piano. It was by chance, but I stayed at the door, just listening. I started going there whenever I could, to hear you play."
So this was why he knew where he was on Fridays.
"I couldn't look away after that."
Naruto wanted to say that he answered something equally significant, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was a sound similar to that of a dying whale. How do you answer something like that?
"I wanted you to feel good, Sasuke said you were always sad after the crises."
"So Sasuke knew?"
He looked at Gaara and saw that he was red too, at least that. The two had stopped at his classroom door.
"Everyone knew. I never hid it when I put the vase on your chair."
Naruto hid his face with his hands. It made a lot of sense all of a sudden. He felt Gaaras's hands touching his, freeing his face. Gaara had crouched in front of him, staring at him with the same intensity as always. One big hand-held his, the other touched his cheek gently.
"I had to blackmail my brother to manipulate the pairs and stay with you."
"Eh ?! All that work and-"
Gaara smiled and Naruto almost swallowed his tongue when he touched their foreheads together.
"You are worth it."
Naruto would say something. Something romantic and profound, because Gaara was being romantic and profound. But he heard a whistle and was displeased to open his eyes that he had closed and seen that the corridor was full of students, all looking at them expectantly.
One of the girls appeared to be recording.
Gaara did not lie when he said that everyone knew.
Sasuke rolled his eyes, throwing Naruto's backpack to Gaara:
"Finally, I couldn't take any more of your drama."
"Teme!"
..............................
In Naruto's room, there were lots of cacti and succulents, filling shelves and being showered by the morning sun.
His mother had not yet returned home, Naruto had seen her more than once leaving the middle of the night from the guest room to his father's room. The two always looked suspicious in the morning.
In his room, Sasuke laid on his bed, pretending not to listen while Naruto chattered, watering his plants. Talking about how Ino had taught him the secret, about how plants were like love: they need space, time and care to grow.
Gaara had kissed him at the door, pressed their foreheads together and talked about how all the cacti would bloom for him.
Like a new love, with care, space and time, Naruto would also flourish.
At the end of the year, Gaara took Naruto to swim into the sea.