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Teamwork, chapter 6, tidbit n°1548720 or something.
He closed his hand on a thick metal bar, and opened his eyes to a wooden ceiling, where the wobbly stick figure grinned at him from under a mess of glowing barrier sigils. His ears were whistling, and the acrid scent of singed hair tickled his nose.
He could hear them breathe -- fast, but not in the peculiar, high-pitched way that betrayed a painful wound. So he breathed with them, and tried to make the world stop spinning.
"... Everyone's alive?" Sakura eventually inquired from where she lay sprawled on the floor.
Sasuke grunted. Naruto carefully pulled his claws out of the gouges in the wooden planks, and added his own "Yeah."
He managed to lift his head off the floor. The glow of the barriers was dimming slowly, letting him see charred lines and loops on the walls. Panels had splintered. Three of the four high-placed, narrow windows were broken. Sasuke's ink bowl had rolled away from him to crash in the wall; there were broken shards of pottery behind him and, red-black splashes all over the floor just outside the main array -- they'd been lucky none had splashed the patterns.
Sasuke was pale. Already, he was trying to scowl, but it only made his shaken look worse for who knew how to look.
"What the hell was that?" he demanded as he climbed unsteadily on his feet.
Sakura gave an exhausted laugh, flat on her back, and spread her arms as if to stop the floor from swaying. "Don't know. Hurts. We did it!"
"We almost didn't!" Sasuke retorted as he made his way to her. "And not even for one of the weak points we were ready for... Fuck. Where do you hurt?" He fell to one knee at her side, one of his hands by her head, tapped her cheek to get her to open her eyes.
She laughed, again, and brought back one of her arms to hold his hand against her face. "Sasuke, calm down. I'm alright. It's over."
He gritted his teeth. "You said it hurt."
"It aches. Kind of burns. It's marvelous."
"It's what?"
"It's not a bad pain! It's like -- when you've been running for hours, and -- you know, you hit your stride, and then your legs feel like they might fall off, but you know you could run for days and never have to stop. It's like that."
She was grinning, Naruto could hear it. He couldn't see anything but Sasuke's sudden stillness.
"What's up, guys?" Naruto asked cautiously, and wondered if perhaps he should move.
"Hmm?"
Sakura didn't sound concerned. Sasuke spared him a quick, sideway glance, and then reversed his hold, catching Sakura's wrist and lifting it over her head.
She had claws.
She had claws, and neither she nor Naruto really seemed to be able to do much more than dumbly stare at her hand. He wondered if, like him, she had trouble seeing the problem.
"... Oh."
"'Oh'? That's all you have to say?" Sasuke shook his head. "Something's wrong with you."
"No, there isn't," she replied sulkily.
/No, there isn't,/ some part of Naruto chorused.
"Yes, there is. You have claws. You should be--"
"I should be freaking out?" Now she sounded irritated. "It's just temporary chakra-induced euphoria and some keratin growth. My hair is probably a little longer and more bristly as well. It's nothing, I'll trim my nails and it will be gone." She sat up, sighed, gave Sasuke a softer look. "I know I'm not much as far as medic-nins go, but I would have to be really sucky to miss such a gross imbalance. It feels weird, but it's not hurting me."
"Unless it's making you euphoric to make you miss the smaller details, like the fact that it's changing you."
"It can't. Do. That," she growled. Naruto twitched his nose, and interrupted her before she could add something else.
"Ehh. Sakura-chan, just let him check the seal. If it's done properly it shouldn't allow Kyuubi to change you for good, right?"
Sasuke glared at him, then at her, then back at him, with a touch of desperation. "She's growling!"
Naruto rolled to his side slowly. The room briefly tried waltzing around him, and then settled down; but everything stayed too bright and detailed. "Yeah, well. The old man told us there would be bleedover."
Sakura made a face. "That's not a word."
Naruto sat up, leaning heavily on his hand. "You understood it, right? That makes it a word. Stop whining and let Sasuke check you out." He grinned suddenly and waggled his eyebrows. "I know he's had long enough to do it with his eyes, but it's the kind of thing you see better with a... hands-on approach."
Sakura snorted and giggled, and let herself fall back on the floor, arms curved elegantly over her head. Her back arched up from the floor, offering her flat stomach. The seal covering it was no longer ink. Part of her now. Naruto liked the effect.
Sasuke stared at her for a few seconds, and then shook his head and concentrated chakra into his fingers, brushing them along the dark loops and swirls that sprawled on her skin. He started with the point closer to her solar plexus, made his way down every single arch and coil. Black hair framing high cheekbones, black, slanted eyes serious -- worried. Naruto liked that, too. Both the face and the feelings trying to hide behind.
When Sasuke's fingers reached the point just above Sakura's pubis, she sighed. Naruto smirked a bit, and smirked more when Sasuke paused for a second before forcing himself to continue his check-up.
"So?" Naruto asked, when he managed to tear his eyes away from Sasuke's strong, callused hand on Sakura's belly.
Sasuke gave him a forbidding scowl, as if he could guess what Naruto was thinking -- he probably could, Naruto acknowledged, and tried not to laugh -- and lifted his hand away from Sakura's skin. Sakura sighed again, this time disappointedly.
"Lean back. Let me see yours."
Naruto forgot his question as Sasuke crawled over Sakura's legs and crouched, a foot on each side of his knee. The blond leaned back on his hands, digging his claws in the wood when Sasuke's chakra brushed his skin. His own seal was still black as ink, refusing to fade, but he wasn't going to worry about that yet.
"...The link between you two seems to be dormant. As it should be. And the filters and stopgaps are in place..." Sasuke shook his head, raked a hand through his hair, visibly frustrated. "It still shouldn't have done that," he added, nodding toward the damaged walls and broken windows. "How the hell did he slip through? I thought he couldn't leave you!"
... Oh. Naruto blinked, tore his attention away from Sasuke's legs on both sides of his, his warmth so close, and the delicious thoughts of pulling Sasuke closer and making him ride his thigh -- tore his attention away again. "He didn't," Naruto replied, when Sasuke rolled back onto the balls of his feet to move away. "I went with him."
Even as languid and relaxed as she was, Sakura's eyes still snapped up to his face in a second. Sasuke's narrowed, threatening, and Naruto wanted to frown back at them for being so serious for a moment, until he remembered what that meant.
"... I really did. I went with him." Naruto covered his eyes with his hand and laughed humorlessly. "So stupid. God."
"... So you let him trick you into invading Sakura?"
Sasuke's voice was dangerously soft. Naruto twitched. "I know, okay! I was expecting him to lie to me. And he didn't, he never lied for one second."
Sakura sat up and tilted her head. "So he... asked to see what his kit-incubator could take before bursting into flames, and you thought it sounded nice?"
"No! Goddammit, no." Naruto looked away, disgruntled. Guilt soured pretty girls in bras like nothing else. "He wasn't trying to hurt you, I'd never have let him if he'd even thought about hurting you."
"Hah! If that's his caresses, I don't want to see what his punches are like!"
Naruto wilted. "... You were just in his way."
"So he was trying to get to the child," Sasuke whispered, vindicated.
"He didn't wanna hurt the baby." They were doubting his judgment, Naruto could tell. He bristled. "He wanted to do anything but hurt the baby."
"Because possessing it wouldn't hurt it, maybe?" Sasuke snapped back.
"He didn't wanna possess it! He wanted to make it stronger. So it would survive," Naruto added, and looked away, a hand pressed flat on his stomach. "He really wants the baby to survive."
"... Very badly?" Sasuke asked quietly, thoughtful and displeased.
"You have no idea how badly."
"Badly enough to change Sakura to make sure of that?"
Sakura's claws raked the floor as she gave Sasuke a harried glare. Her hair really was more bristly; it hung slightly past her shoulders, perhaps a little farther than it had yesterday, but the ends looked more like she was attempting a slightly more gravity-prone version of Sasuke's duckbutt than like her usual smooth locks. "I told you I'm fine!"
"Eh, as long as Sakura-chan feeds the baby enough chakra, he doesn't care what she looks like. Human, not human, whatever. She could even be a cat or a horse -- hell, she could be an octopus, he doesn't give a shit. As long as the kid is kitsune."
He paused, gave his teammates a somber look.
"And... 's what he was trying to do. Make sure the baby would be one hundred percent kitsune."
There was a muscle twitching in Sasuke's jaw. "And you let him."
"It's not like I knew he would do that! He was just -- he was worried, okay? Like 'it's going to be weak and sickly' and 'what if it dies' and that's already stuff I was worrying about, alright? So he didn't -- I didn't... think. We just wanted to make sure the kit would be alright." Naruto grimaced. "Just not the same way."
Sakura moved a little closer on hands and knees. "And so you decided to flood me with chakra and try to take over together. What happened exactly? One second I was trying to dam a river and the next I was trying to swim in an ocean."
Naruto blinked at her. Didn't she remember -- the green corridor, and her own featureless inner room, and the two Sakuras? "But you were there," he protested.
"That doesn't mean I had much time to really map out your progress in my coils when I was getting hammered with wave after wave of demonic chakra," she replied tartly.
"... Chakra?"
She tilted her head, and Sasuke frowned and placed his palm on Naruto's forehead, fingers in his hair, angling Naruto's face to stare into his eyes. "What's wrong with you, dead-last? Dizzy?"
... She didn't remember the fight in the soul-room? Kyuubi with Naruto's face? The second, see-through Sakura? That was... huh. He opened his mouth to explain, and then closed it again. He didn't want to sound crazy. "Nah, sorry, I was distracted. But hey, he didn't succeed, right? Blocked him before he reached his goal. So everything's alright."
Sasuke didn't seem convinced. Sakura either. Now he had to distract them, before they started questioning him. But then Sasuke was still kneeling over his thigh, a hand in Naruto's hair, and Sakura sitting with her legs folded together at her side and shirtless and still absently raking her claws on the floor, so it probably wouldn't be too difficult.
... And then Sasuke sighed, hand falling, and his shoulders slumped a little. "Fine, whatever." He shifted his weight back and to the side, as if wanting to sit on the floor, but it was either between Naruto's knees or against Sakura's side, and, apparently, he needed to think on it a bit.
Naruto was about to make the choice for him; but then he noticed that Sasuke's hand, the one half-hidden behind his leg, wasn't really all that steady. "Hey... You alright?"
Sasuke frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"Dunno, you look... not fine."
"You're wrong," he snapped, and looked away when Sakura peered at him.
Yeah, right. He was still kind of pale, Naruto wasn't sure how he'd missed it. "No, don't think so."
Sasuke growled and rolled his eyes. "Who do you think was holding the wards while you were playing chakra flash-flood?" He still wouldn't look at Sakura, and only gave Naruto a quick glare before glancing away again. "...I'm a little tired, that's all."
-- which meant it wasn't just simple exhaustion, or else he wouldn't have admitted even that much. But if he was admitting it, it meant he was using it as misdirection for something more. Damn it. Naruto scowled, opened his mouth to prod him again.
Sakura moved fluidly up on her knees, and leaned against Sasuke's back. She rested a hand on his opposite shoulder; the other crept around his chest. "I'm sorry we worried you," she whispered against his shoulder, and then she hugged him and he pretty much stopped breathing.
Naruto watched. The curve of Sakura's hip and her chest against Sasuke's shoulder, and her claws brushing against his collarbone. And Sasuke's clenched fists, tendons rolling under his skin, and his neck, and his eyes, unfocused and -- vulnerable. Almost.
"... I wasn't worried," Sasuke muttered under his breath halfheartedly, and then he closed his eyes, and Naruto knew that it had been much worse than simple worry.
He reached out to stabilized Sasuke's crouch, a hand on his chest -- blue cloth, cool skin underneath. Sasuke opened his eyes to look at him, and Naruto slipped a hand around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss.
"Hey, asshole."
Sasuke glared at him, but it didn't have any fire in it. "What, dead-last?"
We're fine, Naruto wanted to say. Perhaps even an apology for scaring him, but then he'd kill them both just so he could pretend it had never happened. So in the end the blond just grinned. "It's not that late, is it? The seal didn't take that long. Not even -- what, eleven? Eleven thirty?"
"I think so..." Sakura gave him a curious look from over Sasuke's shoulder. Naruto beamed.
"Good! Then it means we've got the rest of the night to celebrate."
And before either of them could tell him no, he closed his fingers on Sasuke's t-shirt and pulled, bringing them both down on top of him.
+
And that's all she wrote today. *ded* Six pages, not too bad. *^___^*
*gets killed for stopping there* .____. oops?
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