Chapter Nine--Complete!

Here it is! I am reasonably satisfied with it, so I'm posting it now, before I go to bed. If I waited until tomorrow, I might get too distracted and forget to post.

I did indeed end up splitting the original chapter nine into chapter nine and chapter ten. I'm really glad I did, too, because it grew by almost a page again by the time I finished.

Enjoy!


Chapter 9
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It was the first week of November, and the house was finished. Kakashi stood in the middle of the first floor, surveying the empty space critically. The weak afternoon sunlight made the room glow. Kakashi watched a particle of dust drift into a groove in the floor. He sighed, looking at the stack of shoji that had yet to be erected. At least the upstairs was done and their bedrooms were, blissfully, walled off. They could argue about the division of the main floor later, once they had actually moved. It was a little hard to imagine where all their possessions would go. The room looked so big like this, the floorboards running off into infinity, the walls blank canvases. Kakashi looked up. Even the ceiling was impersonal. The smell of new wood permeated the air. He found it hard to breathe, suddenly, and so he went outside.

Three feet from the door, Kakashi nearly ran into Sasuke. Sasuke was just standing there, a hand shading his eyes from the sun as he stared up at the house. His chest barely moved with each breath, but Kakashi could see the pulse pounding at his throat, saw the flickering of red in his eyes. He looked stunned. Kakashi felt much the same, though probably for different reasons. Even if Sasuke did explain himself, Kakashi wasn’t sure he’d understand.

He felt a sudden pity for Sasuke. Sasuke didn’t make changes easily, and now, suddenly being done with the house…well, it brought that hazy, far-off idea of someday, maybe living there crashing down into the present. Kakashi stood beside him for a few minutes, watching the sun grow weaker behind the house. Hesitant, he reached out a hand, made to touch Sasuke’s shoulder and wavered. He felt the warmth of Sasuke’s body an inch from his fingers. Kakashi stretched himself out, instead, and hoped Sasuke hadn‘t caught his abortive gesture. Sasuke didn’t want his pity or his reassurance.

“Let’s go back to the apartment,” said Kakashi. “we’ll start packing in the morning.”

A chill breeze picked up. He thought he saw Sasuke shiver. Sasuke’s hand dropped to his side.

“In the morning,” Sasuke said.

His eyes narrowed as he looked at the house one more time. He turned his back on the building.

“In the morning,” Sasuke said.

It sounded like a death sentence, coming from him. Kakashi wanted to tell him to grow up, but it was at least nine years too late. Kakashi turned his back to Sasuke and tried not to feel it was an act of rejection. He couldn’t convince himself. Sasuke was suspiciously quiet. His eyes drilled into Kakashi the whole way back to town. Kakashi felt no relief that night as he left Sasuke in the living room and closed his bedroom door.


The next day, he started packing, beginning in his bedroom. All his uniforms filled one box. His civilian clothes filled less than half of another and, for a moment, Kakashi pondered trying to cram the clothes all into one box. His photographs and books and the contents of his desk went into a third box. He took down the art on the walls. He rolled them up and stuck them in with his civilian clothes. Kakashi tossed in his alarm clock and, as an afterthought, carefully placed his potted plant in the box as well.

The room was bare, save for the still-made bed. He glared at the shuriken-print blanket. He’d have to get another box. It was an unprecedented event. When Kakashi had moved into this apartment, in anticipation of Sasuke’s release from prison, he’d only needed two boxes for everything. He had twice as much stuff now in the bedroom alone. He felt smothered. Kakashi was sure it was somehow Sasuke’s fault. Kakashi slid to the floor and examined the dust bunnies under his bed.

Sasuke had had three boxes’ worth of stuff already when he’d come under his supervision, and Kakashi was sure he had only added to it over time. He didn’t know all of what Sasuke owned, of course, but he could truthfully say that most things in the apartment were not his. Sasuke owned some books, lot of pots and pans for cooking--and really, what was wrong with having just one pot?--and a veritable mountain of bedding. Kakashi didn’t remember Sasuke carrying an especially large bedroll on missions, but then, that was on missions. Carrying more than was strictly necessary was exhausting.

He slid under the bed with a rag, intent on eradicating the dust. Kakashi didn’t usually pay attention to the furniture…not that he had much. There was the eating table and its two mismatched chairs. He had his desk and bed and the desk chair and a stray ottoman. More recently, he’d acquired a futon and a pair of end tables to make it look less insignificant while it floated in the middle of the living room’s space.

Now that Kakashi thought about it, the futon was Sasuke’s too. Kakashi may have paid for it, but it was Sasuke’s bed more than it was a place for company to come and sit. During the day, Sasuke kept his bedding stored in a cupboard. Every night he straightened the frame and made his bed, and every morning he folded it all up again. When Sasuke wasn’t under covers, they sat two feet high on the surface of the cushion. It was amazing how they never dragged on the floor.

Kakashi didn’t know how Sasuke could sleep like that. He himself had had the same, solitary blanket for years and years, long enough for him to have forgotten when he first slept under it. It was a long time. He’d had it all through his last apartment…but before then? It was so hard to remember. Kakashi hadn’t had it while he had lived under his father’s roof. By the time he moved into his first apartment, he’d been busily working his way up to jounin status and that was all that stood out from those dark times. Kakashi wriggled out from underneath the bed and tried to ignore the way his dust cloth was trembling and shaking dust all over him.

Kakashi tossed the rag and stretched. He tipped the alarm clock face-up in the box. He’d wasted half the morning on unpleasant memories, which was exactly half a morning more than he‘d intended to waste. Time to see how Sasuke was doing.

When Kakashi entered the living room, he was, well, shocked. The empty boxes were still stacked neatly by the entrance. Everything looked exactly the same as it had the night before. Sasuke was, technically speaking, still in bed. He was stretched out, fully dressed, over the couch. His blankets were nowhere in sight; Kakashi presumed they were in their cupboard. Sasuke cracked an eye open and fixed it on Kakashi.

Kakashi felt challenged by the look in that eye. It said “You can’t make me pack.” Kakashi itched to do it, to somehow force Sasuke to fill boxes. It was irrational and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. There were jutsu designed to puppeteer, to manipulate, to convince and coerce. He could, in theory, invade Sasuke’s mind and make him think packing was his idea all along. Or he could leave Sasuke’s awareness intact and just pilot his body. That, though, would be crossing all kinds of boundaries, all of them bad.

Many of these jutsu assumed that the recipient was some sort of unaware moron. Sasuke’s mind was strong despite its damaged state. During his debriefing, his interrogation at the hands of the T&I squad, they had used many mental jutsu to pick apart his answers to the questioning, but it was nigh on useless. In the same way that a once-broken bone is strongest at the break site, so too was Sasuke’s mind…and parts of it had broken many, many times. The damage was unfixable at this late point. But if Sasuke could find a way to change, little by little, he might carve out a new direction that went around those damaged parts. It would be painful. Could Sasuke take it?

As much as Kakashi wanted, he couldn’t force Sasuke to pack. So he settled for the next best thing: Kakashi started to do it for him. But, as soon as he had put a single book into the first box, Sasuke was behind him, holding a kunai to his throat. Kakashi let out a breath. The edge scraped the fabric of his mask. Anger and murderous intent radiated out from behind him. He idly wondered whether it was a good thing or a bad thing the kunai wasn’t as sharp as it might have been.

“Put it down,” said Sasuke.

He paused. Kakashi felt the blade at his neck shiver. He heard Sasuke’s knuckles creak. His grip on the haft firmed.

“Please,” Sasuke said. “Put it down.”

His breath washed unevenly over the nape of Kakashi’s neck. Kakashi dropped the box to the floor and, moving slowly, nudged it away with his foot. He was clear of it.

“I‘m assuming this is what you wanted,” said Kakashi. “If you wouldn‘t mind…”

Sasuke removed the kunai. The point caught on a fold of fabric and made a little slice. It was intentional and Kakashi resented it.

He made a strategic retreat to his room. He could feel Sasuke still boiling in the living room, which was not especially out of the ordinary. The incident struck him as being off, though. Kakashi sat down on his bed to think. He fingered the tiny hole in his mask and frowned. That Sasuke didn’t want to pack was obvious. Yet he seemed perfectly fine with the concept of living in the new house, and living in the new house required packing and moving. Sasuke wasn’t an idiot. He had to have realized moving meant packing.

The conclusion Kakashi suddenly came to was so obvious that he was amazed he hadn’t seen it earlier, kunai to the throat aside. Sasuke didn’t want him looking at his belongings. This begged a new question: why? It wasn’t like he didn’t know almost everything there was to know about Sasuke’s stuff. He knew what Sasuke had brought with him in those three boxes. He also knew what Sasuke had bought in the intervening months and there was nothing unusual there.

Kakashi got off the bed and sat at the desk, resting his feet on a box. He knew that Sasuke kept kunai tucked into his pillowcase at night and that a garroting wire kept the edge of Sasuke’s collar stiff. He knew that Sasuke collected and burned the detritus from his personal grooming, which was inexplicably intimate and weird to think about, but Kakashi knew it anyway. He knew the altered shape of Sasuke’s curse seal, despite its being disguised with both genjutsu and physical means. What could Sasuke be blocking him from seeing? If he had hidden anything from Kakashi, anything at all, it had to be bad.

Kakashi couldn’t let Sasuke’s reluctance stall them for long. They had to be out of this apartment in five days. He needed to encourage him to pack. He decided to keep his eye peeled and see if he could figure out what it was, exactly, that Sasuke was hiding. Kakashi poked his finger through the hole in the mask and sighed. He dug through his uniforms, found another mask. Maybe Sasuke would slip up and give some hint or clue. Kakashi peeled off the old mask and put on the new. Until then, he was prepared to wait. They weren’t going anywhere until he found out exactly what was going on.

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How was it? If it is riddled with errors, I apologize. I'm going to look it over after I have some sleep.

If you notice a couple small discrepancies between this chapter and the rest (namely, regarding Sasuke's curse seal and his sleeping arrangement,) I promise to explain the former right now. Sasuke's seal is something I've tweaked from the canon, mostly because what happens with it in the somewhat-recent canon is not in keeping with what I have planned for this story. I know I'm being vague. I'm trying to avoid spoilers. ^_^ (It probably would also be less confusing if I had put up the prologue already, but I haven't.)

As to the whole couch/bed/futon thing, I've probably used these terms all interchangeably and indiscriminately for what Sasuke sleeps on. What I've been trying to convey all along is that Sasuke doesn't have a legitimate bed. He's been stuck with a make-do, temporary set-up for nearly a year.

A total digression: would you be interested in seeing my major events timeline? Not my horifically messy sharpie version, but one that is all nice and neat. It's the sort of thing I like to know about a story, but you readers may not necessarily want the same sort of insider knowledge. Also, at some point, I will be thinking about publishing a playlist/quasi-soundtrack for this fic. I have a working playlist that I listen to while I work on this story, but that's not necessarily the same as the music that really captures the moods of this writing. Any takers? (I know, it's kind of pathetic that I end up with theme songs and stuff for the stuff I write.)

Later!

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