Chapter Five

I'm really glad I waited until today to post this! I was so tired by the time I finished editing last night...if I'd posted then, this chapter would still have a lot of errors and rough spots. (Plus, it would have been really short and it would have had a nonsensical segue into chapter six.)

Happy reading!

Chapter 5

----

Both men looked horrible when they sat for breakfast. Sasuke stared into his cup of tea and refused to acknowledge Kakashi. Kakashi watched his rice go cold. He stole glances at Sasuke and wondered how to bring up the subject of housing. He stretched in his chair, settling into a purposely casual pose.

“Yesterday didn’t go so well,“ Kakashi said. “Those apartments were awful.”

He paused. He hoped Sasuke appreciated his forced nonchalance. He poked at his breakfast with one chopstick. Grains of rice clung to it, and he tried not to think about maggots invading his bowl.

“I thought today we’d--”

“I’m not looking at more apartments. It’s pointless.”

Sasuke still wasn’t looking at Kakashi, but at least he was talking. He turned his teacup around and around on the table. Kakashi stifled a sudden impulse to make Sasuke stop before he spilled his tea. He knew that wouldn't happen. Sasuke was too good a ninja to have teacup accidents like that.

“Did I say anything about apartments?” Kakashi said. “I want to talk about what we‘ll do today, not what hasn't been working for us all along.”

Kakashi slouched into a different position as he watched Sasuke think. Sasuke was starting to get a wrinkle in the middle of his forehead, and it deepened whenever he was thinking, or if he was frowning. Sasuke didn’t smile much these days. He had always thought too much.

“Or condos,” Sasuke said.

Now, Sasuke raised his head. His eyes flickered from black to red and back again.

“And don’t even think about asking to live in my parents’ house,” he said.

Sasuke crossed his arms over his chest and frowned. He pushed back from the table. His tea sloshed over the rim of the cup. Kakashi eyed the puddle, daring it to spread. It lengthened, reached the edge of the table, and started dripping onto the floor. Kakashi sighed.

He might have been intimidated if it wasn’t all so silly and childish. Who would honestly expect Kakashi to live in that mausoleum, let alone Sasuke? Sasuke’s rights to the Uchiha property remained, but that didn't mean he had to live there. Kakashi wondered if he had always planned on returning there, living out whatever life he might have had.

The tea filled a small line of grout in the tiling. To his one eye, the spill started to look red. A metallic taste flooded Kakashi's mouth. He swallowed and cleared his throat.

“As I was saying, I had an idea. A stroke of brilliance, even,” Kakashi said.

Sasuke seemed unimpressed. Kakashi gave up trying to make it sound interesting.

“I thought we could build our own house. No landlords, no rent, no nosy neighbors, no shared bathrooms…”

He put on his best bored expression and waited for Sasuke to say--or do--something.

“Even the do---even a complete idiot wouldn’t come up with that plan!”

Kakashi could see Sasuke was confused. The pre-wrinkle was back again, digging into the smooth skin between Sasuke’s eyebrows. Kakashi let him mull it over some more. He was sure this plan would appeal to Sasuke. He’d just have to work him around...and figure out the details.

Kakashi gave up on the pretense of breakfast. He got up from the table and took his uneaten rice with him. He wrapped the leftovers and put them in the fridge. Maybe he’d feel like eating it later, when his head was firmly in the present. He got a rag and started mopping up the spilled tea while Sasuke’s eyes drilled into his back. It wasn’t very comfortable. It felt like Sasuke was trying to peel back his skin to see what made him tick. Kakashi ignored it as best as he could.

“Aside from everything else, we haven’t got anywhere to put a house,” said Sasuke.

Sasuke got up and took his teacup with him to the sink. Kakashi wiped the table down. He wrung the rag out and hung it to dry.

“The Forest of Death is a nice quiet neighborhood,” Kakashi said. He slid past Sasuke on his way out of the kitchen.

He couldn’t resist ruffling Sasuke’s feathers, even if that meant Sasuke got angry. Especially if he got angry, because that proved parts of Sasuke were still there, despite everything. This suggestion wasn’t entirely a joke, though. There was a lot of unused land near the forest. There were training grounds all around. It was private. It was set apart from just about everything that might set Sasuke off. (Except, of course, the spot where Sasuke had received his curse seal. Kakashi still wasn’t sure what Sasuke thought about that.)

“It would be like survival training, really,” Kakashi said. “Working hard, camping in the woods for a while, in easy reach of giant centipedes and tigers, sharpening our carpentry skills…”

For a moment Kakashi felt nostalgic, but he shook it off. No use trying to pretend the situation was any different that what it was. Sasuke wasn’t a little genin anymore, and he wasn’t an instructor or team leader or whatever he could call his former job. He was Sasuke’s shadow and constant companion. What that made Sasuke, he didn’t know.

Trying to read Sasuke’s face was both very difficult and very easy. Sasuke’s emotions were written across it, but Kakashi was never fully sure why Sasuke felt as he did. For the moment, Kakashi felt safe enough to get on with the day. Sasuke washed up the few breakfast dishes by himself, and he seemed intent on eradicating all germs and food specks from the kitchen. Sasuke hadn’t given him an answer about the house, but at least he hadn’t said no outright.

Kakashi weighed the benefits of a nap with the benefits of being awake this morning. He decided he needed the sleep. He hoped that, when Sasuke finally made up his mind, he would wait until Kakashi was awake to tell him. If there was one thing Kakashi had learned over the past weeks, it was that Sasuke had gotten much more dangerous. Kakashi was a light sleeper, but it wouldn’t give him much of an edge if Sasuke went irretrievably insane. All pretenses aside, knowing why Sasuke thought and felt the way he did made it easier for Kakashi to steer away from incipient arguments and attacks on his person.

Kakashi lay down on his bed. He closed his eyes and tried to quiet his mind. The very real possibility of his death at Sasuke's hands was never far away. Still, he was always prepared to defend himself. He just didn’t know if he could stop Sasuke without killing him. Not a very comforting thought. Kakashi pulled up a blanket and rolled onto his side. He waited for sleep to come.

----

As always, let me know what you think.
Later!

P.S. Anyone know how to make a dash on here? Sticking two hyphens together (--) just isn't cutting it for me, visually speaking. The program I use to write in doesn't do dashes either, but I was hoping there was some way to do it here, in the post.

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. All rights remain with its original creator, Masashi Kishimoto. I make no profit from writing these stories.