Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ None the Wiser ❯ Nettles and Notebooks ( Chapter 2 )

Title: None the Wiser

Author: The Uke Reformation

Genre: Naruto

Subgenre: Romance/Drama

Summary: There are some things not meant to be said. There are some pasts that you cannot escape. Some people that will always hunt you down. And every once in a while, there are special students that reward you for all your teaching... SasuNaru, yaoi

Rated: R for harsh language, as well as sexual and mature content.

Author's Note: Around this time, school started up for me again, making chapters come more slowly. Desperate for ideas, rushed for time, and not yet well enough into the story to get the true plot line rolling, I think it turned out quite well, all things considered. Inform me if you think otherwise.

Note: Get your yaoi groove on, baby.

Disclaimer: Copyright The Uke Reformation, 2005. All rights reserved.

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None the Wiser

by The Uke Reformation

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Chapter 2

" Nettles, notebooks,

and worse things. “

Naruto smiled down at his shopping cart, which was half filled with a gigantic stack of orange spiral notebooks. The store was barren, his footsteps and the creaking of the shopping cart's wheels echoing of the grungy tile. The fluorescent lights made it shine like water, which was deceiving if you had ever had the misfortune to have to sweep it up after hours.

While he was in the correct section, Naruto scooped the latest edition of the Guinness Book of World Records into his cart out of the clearance bin. It was rather thick this year. His smile widened and he wheeled out of the aisle, headed for the cashier.

Anko didn't even give his load a second glance. Somehow, she had been able to maintain her job behind the register of Murphy's School Supplies for a good three years now. And it really only took one of Naruto's notebook binges to get you used to them for life. She snapped her gum and punched in the amount.

“Are you sure you got all the orange ones?” she said, taking the amount he offered her from his frog-shaped wallet with a sarcastic look.

“Sure am, Beano.” Naruto grinned back at her and she scowled at the nickname. The receipt printed out from the machine with a buzzing whirr, and both salesperson and customer jumped as a large clatter followed by a resounding crash at one of the farthest aisles. From the ensuing yells from Iruka, Kakashi had just toppled Gai by way of shopping cart. Naruto stifled his laughter, able to picture the P.E. teacher's impassiveness in perfect clarity.

Anko gave him a severe look. “Tell your friends to settle down, will you? It took me all day to stack those highlighters properly.”

-----

 

Boxes and boxes and boxes. Naruto dragged the first one in, using his back to push the door to his room open. He had taken the liberty of turning all of the lights on in the halls. The dark made him unbearably nervous, even in his own school.

He held the door open as Iruka, Gai and Kakashi came in with the other boxes, the dolphin nodding to him a smile of thanks. He smiled back, unfazed by the ungodly hour of evening it was. He was more awake than ever as he shut the door behind them, slightly spooked by the shadows and bad memories but not thinking much of it with his promised company. He was up on the counter in an instant, leaving dusty footprints in his wake. He took the first giant of cardboard and shoved it up on the cabinets with difficulty.

They continued to cart boxes upon boxes in as the night wore on. Naruto's arms ached but he neither tired nor relented in his stacking. His biceps could handle the strain and he knew it. They continued on stacking until what seemed like very late and then he was off the counter, locking up his room and helping them cart their barrels of materials off to wherever they needed it. Overall, it seemed like a relatively quick process, although the clock face stated otherwise.

It was nearing one in the morning when he received the knowing tap on the head from Kakashi.

“You need to go home, dunce.”

Naruto stuck his tongue out, but it was in a good natured sort of way. He smiled back at the boxes on the cupboards in his now deserted room, the warm, cozy feeling he always got unfurling in him. He hugged Iruka farewell, promised to take his medication twice, and bid the rest of them goodnight, following Kakashi out and down the few blocks to his house.

He smiled back at the scarecrow in a sassy sort of way.

“Okay. I'm home now.”

“Taking the hint,” Kakashi said, nodding and waving his hand loosely. “Sleep, and then wake up again.”

“Can do.” Naruto grinned in the dark. It was an old saying of Kakashi's, and hearing it pleased him.

And as soon as the words were exchanged, the scarecrow had vanished as he always did, leaving Naruto to scald on the landing of his apartment building, looking out into night for a long, long while. Finally, he reached into his pocket, took out the silver key and turned it in the lock, going up the three flights of stairs to his apartment.

The door was old, worn and made of oak. There was nothing adorning it, as would have been expected from a man of Naruto's vibrancy. He shrugged off the bereft feeling he got looking it over and went in, taking his shoes off and wading through the carpet.

All the lights were on as they always were. He walked to the bathroom and took a white bottle from the medicine cabinet behind his mirror, shaking a few tablets into his hand and swallowing them with a sip of water, tipping his throat back. He drank the rest of the water, taking a wash clothe and wetting it before rubbing at his cheeks to take off the foundation.

Three scar-like tattoos stared back into his hollow blue eyes, reflected in the mirror. He watched himself for what seemed like a very, very long time before putting the bottle back in the cabinet and walking out of the bathroom. He turned on none of his lights as he walked to the bedroom, taking off his shirt and hanging it neatly in his closet, and collapsing on his bed. He pulled the covers up around himself, the light on his ceiling watching him wordlessly from above.

He let his eyelids slip closed, and his sleep was dreamless.

-----

 

Naruto had had the sense to wear tennis shoes the second day, a trick he had forgotten over summer break. He was just as late as he had been the day before however because of whom he nearly ran down half way through the second hall.

“Whoa!”

He spiraled over an outstretched leg, landing on his shoulder and rolling into a crouch, swearing. He spun around to scowl up at the owner of the offending limb, who seemed entirely disaffected by the exchange.

“You're gunna make the fire alarms go off, Shika-chan,” Naruto said, gesturing to the smoke billowing between Nara Shikamaru's pursed lips from where the science teacher was leaning near his door. A few belated arrivals hurried in, looking slightly queasy at the smell.

Shikamaru took another puff at the cigarettes end. “Whatever,” he said, not sparing Naruto a look.

The blonde's scowl deepened at the edges and he rested his right cheek on his fist. “Is that even legal?”

Shikamaru shrugged, replacing the cigarette in his mouth and blowing again. “You never seem to trouble yourself over the legality of your own actions.”

Naruto watched him for a second, and flinched as the bell rang. “…You gunna apologize for almost killing me?”

Shikamaru shrugged again. “I didn't almost kill you. You should have been looking where you were going.”

Naruto stared up at him for a second more before standing, taking the cigarette package from Shikamaru's left pocket, plucking the cigarette from the man's lips and smashing it against the opposite wall in one flowing movement and smirking in his face. “Kay. Have a good morning then.” And he was gone, zooming down the hall.

Shikamaru's eyes followed him, and the man twitched. “How troublesome…”

-----

 

Run run run run. Skid. Throw open the door. Get in, get in. Stop. Pant pant pant. Look up and—

“YOU'RE LATE!”

Wham!

Ow. Okay. That hurt.

Naruto groaned and rolled over, looking green in the face and clutching his stomach as the famed and abhorred beets rolled off in another direction. “Oh my God Sakura, what did you do this summer…?”

“P.E. CAMP WITH KAKASHI! NOT THE POINT!”

Naruto groaned again clutching his abdomen. “Tell me you went out for the softball team like he asked you to.”

He saw her eyebrow raise ever so slightly. “…Why?”

“Because it'd be a crime if you didn't, with an arm like that.”

She snarled menacingly. “I'm not sure how to take that.”

“As a compliment.” He shoved her a meek smile, still holding his stomach.

“Right.”

“I'm serious!”

“Sure you are.”

“I am!” He coughed out a chuckle with difficulty.

“Uh-huh.” She gave him a chastising glare that was so similar to Iruka's it almost made Naruto shiver.

“Okay, okay, I'm sorry. You see, I would have been here on time, but there was this ugly cat that got in my way and—“

“LIAR!”

Ah, what a way to start a school day. Naruto shrugged and Sakura helped him up, laughing when he told her off for being so late to her own class and hurrying out.

The blonde sighed and looked around the room.

“Yeah, good morning to you guys too.”

No body moved, nor made a sound. Naruto had to resist the urge to twitch with difficulty.

“Do you guys ever breathe?”

That earned him a laugh from Haku. He smiled, the sound reminding him of rain falling, echoing prettily in a way that was madly contagious. There we go. That was better.

“C'mon guys! I'm not that frightening! Inhale! Exhale! It's just school, chill out!”

He heard a few students take his advice and laugh. “Honestly. You guys are so uptight! Jeez! Talk a little! It's depressingly silent in here.”

He heard Haku laugh again, and more than one person join him.

“Better. Much better.” He clapped his hands together. “Alright! So how are you all doing this morning?” He looked around. “C'mon, I want to know. Good? Bad? Mental?” He put the last part on as an afterthought. Might as well keep them laughing and loose, at any rate.

“Never been better, Sensei,” Akamaru laughed from the first row.

“Then I'll be the first to say you're mental,” Kiba crowed from behind her.

The class laughed as Akamaru scowled back up at her brother. Again, Naruto noticed Neji's small cousin in the back row and his smile broadened.

“Alright, alright. On that note - “ he clapped his hands together as he was apt to do “ - I've got a present for all of you.”

His student blinked, laughter dying down into a more comfortable, questioning silence.

“No, honestly,” he said, still grinning as he went to the cupboards, putting his hand down and leaning against the black counter top that ran beneath them. “Went out and got `em last night, just for you guys.” He looked around the room. “I need help getting `em down though. We got anybody strong who's willing to lift down a huge box from offa here?”

A few hands went up, and once again he was struck by the boy in back that look like a snake with alabaster skin. He called on him automatically, the name cueing on his tongue before it hit his brain.

“Uchiha Sasuke.”

He nodded to the boy who readily came forward and lifted himself up onto the counter with a lithe, acrobatic sort of grace. Naruto watched him in the same sort of entrancement he had undergone the day previous, almost enthralled by the way the boy's black eyes shone with depth and yet revealed nothing. He could the muscles in his arms curl and bunch elegantly as he lifted the huge box from it's place on the shelf and set it down with a dull thud on the countertop, hopping off of it and walking back to his seat as if he had just swatted a fly, not one hair out of place. It was the thud that awakened Naruto (as well as most of the rest of his class) and he nodded to Sasuke's retreating back.

“Hai. Thankyou.” He took the box in his hands and lifted it off of the counter, walking it over to set it on the front table at the left of the room, nearest the cabinets, peeling the cover open and lifting out the first of the fifty bright orange spiral bound notebooks up so that all could see.

The students gaped. He swore by all that was holy he heard Uchiha Sasuke mutter something about an assault on his eyes and grinned.

“Alright. This is what I went to the trouble to get you. It's orange. It's relatively big. It's got your name on the cover. Do not be a moron and lose it, because if you do, you are going to be one very miserable little creature. Do I make myself clear?” He looked around the classroom, putting his hands on his hips, and saw many students nod, looking fearful. His grin widened. “Excellent. Come up and get yours, then.”

They approached him as if entering a torture chamber in single file.

Chouji, the kid in back he had begun to tell off constantly for his terrible eating habits, lifted his warily by the front cover, eyeing it like one eyes a particularly unpleasant piece of roadkill. “Is there a reason they had to be orange?” he said, almost disgustedly.

“Yeah,” Naruto said putting his hand on his hips. “I don' like pink if we aren't on the topic of Sakura's hair.” Chouji exchanged him a venomous look and he ignored it, correcting his stature and looking around his sea of students. “Any other stupid questions?”

“I've been told, sensei,” came an emotionless voice with a chilling edge from behind him, “that there is no such thing as a stupid question.”

Naruto's blue eyes met Uchiha's dark ebony ones and they stared into one another for a moment.

“Well obviously, Uchiha Sasuke-kun,” Naruto said, smirking, “whoever told you that was dead wrong. Because that was a stupid question.”

Chouji grumbled something and stalked off. Uchiha's eyes lingered on him for a short while, endlessly cold, before he slipped back into the crowd of soft chit chat and was back in his seat with the notebook labeled his before Naruto had proper time to calculate his being gone.

Chairs scraped again as everyone clattered back into them, blinking back at him with a bewildered sort of air, notebooks in hand. He smiled at the familiar tangerine glow of the covers. Oh, he loved notebook day. Loved it. If there was anything that made him feel better during the school year (other than his students, of course) he did not know its name nor what form it took.

“Anou…sensei.” Haku spoke clearly but softly, raising his hand to indicated that he wished speaking rights in his place at the back of the class.

“Yeah?” Naruto looked up at the boy out of his reverie.

Haku seemed unfazed by his teacher's now-uniform lack of etiquette. “Sensei, I'm afraid I don't understand. What is it we need notebooks for in history class?”

“Writing assignments, of course.”

He heard, as assuredly he had heard it on the first day, a class-wide groan.

“Oh, c'mon you guys!” he said, looking around distastefully. “It's school, what're you expecting?”

More groans.

He sighed. “Look, I know you guys are missing summer vacation. Trust me I do. But you guys are back in school once again, and high school no less. C'mon. Relax. I'm not going to load you up with homework, I promise.”

“You swear?” Akamaru said shrilly, piping up from her seat in the first row.

Naruto sighed again, his smile reappearing ever so faintly on his lips. “I swear I will not load you up with homework. Trust me. Grading is the only thing I don't completely adore about my job. You will not get a lot of worksheets in this class. You will not get a lot of homework. You will not be having very many tests. And you know why? Cuz I don' wanna grade `em. And that is the only thing that will matter in this class…whether or not I wanna do it. So trust me, if you make me want to do something, it'll happen, and vice versa.”

“So can we talk you out of these notebooks?” Kiba said, almost whining.

“No.” Naruto said it immediately without a shadow of a doubt as soon as the question was asked.

“Sensei,” Haku said from the back, raising his hand again.

“Speak.”

“What kind of writing assignments?”

“Not essays if that's what you're thinking.”

“What kind though?” Akamaru spoke out of turn now, advocating for Haku's request.

“Whatever I tell you to write.” He smirked down at her and she stuck her tongue out at him.

“For instance?”

Naruto and the Uchiha stared at one another for a good long time. Both sets of eyes were narrow with a slightly violent and conflicting sheen. Blue versus black. The timeless divergence. The electricity shot between them and vibrated against the air in a way that near everyone could recognize.

“For instance, Uchiha-san,” Naruto ground out finally, “the writing assignment I'm about to give you.”

Another class-wide groan. Naruto and Sasuke finally broke their staring contest as Naruto looked around the rest of the room.

“Right. I'm going to give you the rest of the time in class to do this. I want three paragraphs - that's right, gimme three good solid paragraphs - on what you think history is and why, written on the first page of your notebooks. If you don't finish it it's homework.”

Today was official Groan Day, Naruto decided with a chuckle. But, oh well. That's what they got for assuming his class would be easy.

-----

 

The teacher's lounge in the center hall was one of the places Naruto felt safest. For him, safety was the essence of all ability to be happy, and that's simply the way it was. And of course, safety was being in a place with many of his Precious People so that lurking, unwelcome Ghosts did not come wandering into his brain. He didn't like Ghosts.

The bell rang and the clamors disappeared as the last students exited the halls to head for the cafeteria for lunch. Naruto's shoes squeaked against the tile as he walked the length to the door, opening it with a smile, his feet meeting carpet at long last.

Kakashi was already there, his mask tilted downwards ever so slightly so that he could sip at his china mug of black coffee. He looked comfortable. Iruka was nearby flicking through a newspaper and muttering something about scantily clothed women in advertisements and blushing faintly. Both looked up when he entered the room and he waved to them with a grin.

“Yo.” Kakashi nodded over at him.

“Naruto!” Iruka smiled up at his cheerily.

Naruto laughed and thudded down on the couch beside him. “You seem to like me so much at lunch, Iruka-sensei, and yet everyday I'm met with a beet can to the gut with your name written all over it. Do you, like, just get kicks out of buying me ramen, or what?”

Iruka gave him a chastising look. “You shouldn't be late if you don't want to get `beeten' so often Naruto!”

Said blonde laughed, looking casual. “Sure, sure. Whatever you say Iruka.”

The dolphin cast him a maternal glare which made him laugh more.

There was a click and the door opened slightly. Naruto stopped laughing to look over. It was Lee, who was looking slightly green, with bags under his eyes as he wheezed slightly. Looking as though he had run the whole way there.

“Oi, Lee, you okay? You aren't lookin' too good.” Naruto watched the boy sway, as if his eyes were going in and out of focus as they landed on him.

“Aa, Naruto-sensei. Is Gai-sensei here?”

Naruto shook his head. “Have you checked his room?”

Lee nodded but smiled tiredly. “No worries. I'll check around the rest of the campus. Thankyou anyway, Naruto-sensei!”

And then the door clicked behind him and he was gone.

Naruto looked back to Kakashi. “You had him last period. What's up with him. Is he sick?”

Kakashi shrugged, looking slightly pensive. “Must be. But he wasn't looking too badly when he ran five laps instead of one.”

Naruto shook his head, slightly worried. “Hope he's okay…”

Kakashi shrugged again and sipped his coffee.

Iruka sighed. “Naruto, let's go get your ramen.”

Naruto cheered, mind leaving the subject of Lee in an instant.

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End Chapter 02

Haha. Naruto called Shikamaru an ugly cat. -snorts-

--Lady Lamb