SN

The boys (read: Gaara and Sasuke) spend the afternoon and a good chunk of the evening looking through oral poetry examples they pull from Gaara’s extensive notes (Sasuke is pretty sure his first diagnosis of Gaara as an obsessive studier was correct). Naruto spends his time poking through the books on Gaara’s shelf, and then, when he is disappointed by the lack of “substantial reading material” (meaning comic books), he goes to forage for snacks downstairs.        

As the door clicks shut behind him, Gaara glances up. “Okay, Sasuke, I think this is good for now. The actual poem isn’t due for two weeks.”

“Right.” Sasuke sighs and sets down the stack of papers he is sorting through. “Are we going to have to… perform this?”

Gaara exhales in a shaky laugh. “Probably. Shizune-sensei loves that kind of stuff.”

“Oh.” Sasuke is quiet for a moment. When the silence stretches out longer than he expects, he glances over and finds Gaara watching him with a small, secretive smile.

Sasuke feels self-conscious all of a sudden. “What?”

Gaara looks away, and begins shuffling papers back into his binder. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

Sasuke frowns, because that smile was most certainly not nothing, but before he can press the issue, the door flies open and Naruto all but tumbles in and slams the door behind him so hard, Sasuke can feel the bed frame vibrate. “Ah,” he gasps, “I’m alive.”

Gaara rolls his eyes. “What did they do to you?”

Naruto flops onto the bed, clutching a pack of cookies to his chest. “Unspeakable things,” he groans. “Things with lipstick.” He rubs at a fuschia mark on his cheek. “But here --” he chucks the cookies towards Sasuke, who barely manages to catch it before it smacks him in the forehead “-- the fruits of my labor.”

Gaara is putting his books away, sliding his binders into his backpack. “Don’t eat those. It’s six-thirty. We’re going to have dinner.” He glances up at the two boys. “You’re welcome to stay.”

Sasuke is about to refuse, but then he remembers what’s waiting for him back at home. A cold, dark apartment. Some sort of microwaveable meal. Another sleepless night -- and then he remembers. Neji. Neji will be waiting for him, somewhere not far from here, and that very thought is enough to give Sasuke goosebumps.

And so that’s how Sasuke finds himself eating dinner with Naruto, Gaara and his two extremely flirtatious siblings.

“Soooo...” Temari flicks Sasuke’s ear, grinning at the way he flinches and leans further forward over his dinner plate. “How did you three meet?” She glances up and Sasuke catches the slow smile she shares with Kankuro across the table.

Naruto is cramming mashed potatoes into his mouth, the vegetables on his plate still noticeably untouched. “I’ wa’ fo’ a pro’et,” he answers, and Sasuke looks away in disgust at the half-chewed mouthful he displays to the table.

Gaara is glaring at his siblings in a way that makes Sasuke think he has not quite forgiven them for earlier. “We were doing homework,” he hisses, stabbing the green beans on his plate for emphasis.

Temari and Kankuro exchange looks once again. “Is that so.” Kankuro skewers a piece of pot roast without meeting his brother’s stink-eye. “Then why was someone shouting ‘orgasm’ at the top of their lungs?”

Temari and Naruto simultaneously choke on their dinner. “It was a poem!” Gaara shouts as Temari tries to drink from her water glass in the midst of hysterics and Naruto attempts to sputter out a response around the lump of meat caught in his throat.

Sasuke tries to exhale and hold his breath to keep from laughing, but one look at Naruto’s bright red face and the way Temari’s shoulders hitch with every silent guffaw, and he begins to giggle.

Every pair of eyes turns towards him. Kankuro’s mouth hangs open in disbelief. “Is the silent one… laughing?”

Sasuke wishes he could stop, but the image of Gaara’s outrage while being tickled bubbles up in his brain, and then he is wheezing, doubled over, almost sliding beneath the table, and he can hear everyone else cracking up around him, and that only makes him laugh harder because this is so weird, them all sitting around the dining room table in a house he’s never been in before, surrounded by the first friends -- yes, friends -- he’s had since elementary school, and it’s as though the food fight during lunch unlocked some secret fountain of hilarity that has been welling up in him all these long months, or maybe he’s tired, or maybe he’s giddy with his own laughter and happiness, just the possibility that he can be happy in this way after everything that’s happened, and it’s been a long, long time since he’s really and truly allowed himself to just beright here, be who he is in the moment and nothing more.

. . .

After dinner is over, after everyone has recovered, after Temari and Kankuro produce a giant tub of ice cream from the freezer for dessert (“Cherry-flavored,” Kankuro says with a wink, “like Gaara,”) Sasuke and Naruto leave Gaara standing in his brightly-lit doorway, waving farewell, and head off into the night.

“Whew!” Naruto scratches the back of his neck, elbows in the air as he grins up into the dark. “What a day.”

Sasuke rolls his eyes, but can’t keep a smile off his face. “That was certainly interesting,” he admits.

Naruto smirks. “Hey, Sasuke, if you had to choose between Kankuro and Temari, which would it be?”

Sasuke is grateful for the darkness hiding his expression. “What.”

Naruto shrugs. “You know.”

“No,” says Sasuke, who has the terrible feeling that he does know what the blond boy is talking about. “I have no clue.”

Naruto shoves his shoulder. “You know. Who would you…” he waggles his eyebrows.

Sasuke huffs and buries his face in his collar. “I’m not going to talk to you if you don’t make any sense.” He picks up his pace, leaving Naruto scrambling after him.

“Fine,” he pants, “I’ve got a better question for you.” He pauses for dramatic effect, and Sasuke turns to look at him. “What’s your best memory?”

The question is so unexpected, it catches Sasuke off guard. “Huh?”

Naruto crosses his arms. “Well?”

Sasuke is at a loss for words. Both the question and the suddenness of it surprise him. “What’s your best memory?” he finally says -- a weak response, but Naruto answers without hesitating.

“When I was little, every time I did well on a test or tried especially hard in class, Iruka-sensei -- he used to teach elementary school, before he became the history teacher at the high school -- he would take me out to get ramen, at like, a real restaurant. And I would tell him about my week, and he would tell me funny stories, and the guys at the restaurant knew me and everything, and I just felt like…” he exhales, not looking at Sasuke. “... I had a place where I was just right. Where I belonged.”

A long silence follows. Sasuke realizes dimly that they’ve both stopped walking. What is his best memory? All he can think of is Itachi, his father yelling and throwing a flowerpot, Itachi, his mother crying and cleaning up the shards, Itachi, Sasuke’s fingers -- there is blood on them -- Itachi bandaging his hand, Itachi whispering poetry to him as he falls asleep, Itachi waving to Sasuke from the driveway as he leaves with those friends of his, Itachi’s eyes, Sasuke’s eyes, everything blending, and then he is speaking.

“When I was nine,” he says slowly, “my brother took me walking in the woods.” As he speaks, he can see it, as vividly as if he were there -- the crackly autumn smell in the air, the colorful leaves crunching beneath the rubber boots Itachi had insisted he wear. “It was beautiful. The trees -- they arched up above, and I could see snatches of the sky in between the branches. Clouds would pass overhead, and the woods would be dark with shadow one moment, and glowing with light the next.” The words are falling out of Sasuke in a rush now, like the dam inside of him that broke during dinner is suddenly churning out all of these hidden words and details of his memories. “And he was walking next to me -- walking and every now and then writing something down in this little notebook he carried with him. I never found out what happened to that notebook. He was writing things down, and every now and then he would call me over and point something out -- ‘Look, Sasuke, there’s a blue jay’ -- ‘look, that’s a ginkgo, you can tell because of the leaves’ -- ‘look, this kind of mushroom glows in the dark’ -- and I was kicking my boots through the leaves. And then I ducked around a tree while he was writing something down, and then I was standing in front of a river. I remember -- the river --” his voice is cracking, his throat closing up, but Sasuke has to finish this story, has to tell Naruto what happened next “ -- and it was clear and blue, in the way water is in photos but never in real life, and then Itachi came around behind me and his eyes are sparkling and he says, ‘Sasuke, let’s swim,’ with just this recklessness. Like nothing in that moment mattered besides the river, and me. And us. And --” Sasuke’s chest is heaving, but he is not going to cry, the way he did in front of Neji. Neji. His head shoots up. “Where are we?”

“Huh?” Naruto blinks rapidly, as though he’s coming out of a trance, and Sasuke realizes he’s been staring at him. “Uh, I’m not… did you?”

“Did I what?” Sasuke is scanning the rooftops, because this street looks familiar, and if he’s right --

“Swim.” Naruto steps a little closer. “Did you? Just jump in?”

It takes Sasuke a moment to realize what he’s talking about. “Oh. I don’t remember.”

“Oh.” Naruto looks so sad, for a moment, that Sasuke almost regrets lying to him.

“Look,” he says hurriedly, because he suddenly doesn’t want to stand here and watch the sorrow in Naruto’s eyes, “I have to go -- my house is near here.” That’s twice he lied.

Naruto glances up at him. “I can walk you to your --”

“No.” Sasuke cuts him off. “It’s fine. I’m okay to go on my own.” He brushes past Naruto, trying to ignore the hurt look on the boy’s face. “See you tomorrow.”

Naruto says something in response, but Sasuke rounds the corner before he hears what it is, and exhales. A small twinge of guilt twangs in his stomach, but he quickly pushes it down. Neji, he remind himself, and he can feel his heart speed up a little. Which is stupid, but Sasuke can’t seem to make it slow down.