"And:Reboot" - Part II

Classes progressed strangely and far too fast. Whereas I usually found myself practically hanging onto every word of my professors—interesting or not—today I found that I could not stay focused for more than a few seconds. I kept thinking about that moment, kept hearing my name on his lips, kept feeling his lips on me, and if that wasn't frustrating, then I didn't know what was. And if that wasn't enough, everyone kept asking me if I was okay. Apparently my cheeks were particularly flushed. I could only glare and tell them that I was fine. Leave me alone was, as usual, implied.

The one Friday I thought classes would never end, they seemed to end too fast, and soon I was walking to the coffee shop, which I refused to accept was a way of avoiding Naruto. I don't know why, but I didn't want to face him. I wouldn't really know what to say. It wasn't like this hadn't happened before; it had—many times—it was just that he had never said my name before, so I was at a bit of a loss as to what the proper reaction should have been. Was there even a proper reaction in such occasions?

It was close to eight when Naruto called me. I could tell he was a little worried by the sound of his voice, so I was sure to casually mention that I was fine. He laughed and said he knew I was avoiding him. I glared and said he didn't know me very well. It was a childish thing to say, but I said it nonetheless. It was also a complete lie, because he always had a niche for guessing exactly what I was doing. While I told myself this bugged me, I knew deep down that it was pretty cool, if not impressive.

"When you're done avoiding me," he said sarcastically, so that I could almost picture his face as he was saying it, "can you meet me at the apartment?"

"I have things to do…" I lied, looking out the window at the sliver of sun just barely visible in the far-off distance. I was on my fourth cup of coffee.

"It's—" I heard him sigh, then waited as a few seconds of silence passed between us. "It's important, Gaara," Naruto continued. I couldn't quite pick up what I was hearing in his voice. Frustration? Anger? Sadness? "You know we have to talk. Please…just meet with me, okay? Please?"

Naruto was the only person I knew who I would ever drop everything for just to do something he asked of me. He didn't know this, and he probably never would. I'd certainly never tell him. "Fine," I said tiredly, sighing as well. "I'll be over as soon as I can."

"Thanks," Naruto replied, so that I could hear the appreciation and small smile in his voice. He was also the only person I had ever been able to vividly picture no matter where I was. "I'll see you soon."

I could only answer a brief "Yeah" before closing my phone and finally heading home. He was sitting in the front room when I came in, and he must have been so engrossed in his thoughts that he didn't even hear me enter at first, turning only when I flipped on the light. He had been sitting in the dark, which could have been an unusual occurrence if I was not so used to it already. Sometimes, he just sat in the dark, in silence. I decided somewhere in our relationship that I wasn't going to ask him about it. If he wanted to sit in the dark, that was his own business. It had nothing to do with me.

"You're here," he said dazedly, blinking as his eyes adjusted. He stood and stretched, toned body straining slightly against the tight fabric of his shirt, and I coughed and looked away. Sometimes I thought he wore tight shirts just to aggravate me. Because it did aggravate me. Later on, I found out that he liked to run in his spare time, and the tight, black, long-sleeved shirts were just part of the routine. Knowing this didn't make me feel any less aggravated whenever he walked around with one on, however. Thankfully he grabbed an oversized t-shirt and threw it on, exercising his odd ability to make anything look good. I was not thankful for that.

"You asked me to come over," I grumbled, sounding angrier than I meant to, sounding, also, like I didn't even live with him. "Of course I'm here."

"Of course, of course," Naruto said merrily, shaking his head at me in the usual way, like I was a child prone to childish antics. I hated his headshakes. As if he knew this, he did them often. "You sound mad," he added with an elevated brow.

"I'm not," I all but snapped out, immediately feeling stupid. I wasn't looking at him, but I heard Naruto start laughing and glared. I was in love with his laugh, though. His real laugh. If it was possible to love such a thing, then I knew that I loved his laughter. Naruto was one of those people that laughed with their very soul, revealing everything and nothing in the sound. It was one of those rare things in life that I found beautiful. He'd never know this, either.

"What did you want to talk about?" I finally asked, dropping my bookbag on a couch and bringing myself to face him. He might never have kissed my neck, the way we were able to face each other so blithely. Still, when he paused and faced me with an unreadable expression, I knew we were going to have The Talk. We could skirt around the topic all we wanted, but we always had to face the truth eventually. So Naruto had given me a hickey. So what? While it was a little embarrassing, just getting it out into the open would be enough to let me move on as usual.

"Right," he said slowly, motioning behind him to the couch he had previously occupied. "It's probably best if we sit down."

I stared at him in silence for a few moments, nearly asking if someone had died, but then knowing I would feel like an ass were that actually the case. Giving him one more skeptical glance, I walked over and took a seat right as he sat down in the space beside me. He didn't say anything for a while. We didn't say anything. I was waiting for him to speak, and he was waiting for whatever it was that was weighing on his mind. This wasn't like him, I thought, as I watched him struggle with whatever he was going to say. He was usually so keen on jumping right in—it was always Naruto who brought it up so easily and me who sat in silence.

An image of the Naruto's bicycle flashed in my mind. I don't know why, but all I could think of was the stupid, yellow contraption and how well it matched his hair.

"Gaara," he said slowly, looking like he might put his hand on my leg before deciding against it. "What I'm about to tell you is…not easy. But…I think you should know—no, I know you should. I want you to know." Naruto didn't smile, and he didn't laugh, and suddenly I knew that this wasn't The Talk, but I found myself fervently wishing, for the first time, that it was.

"What are you talking about?" I managed to say, irritation outweighing my confusion.

Naruto only looked at me in silence for another moment. Then, very slowly, he said, "I have a condition. I'm going to forget everything. I'm going to forget you. And there's nothing you can do about it."

Then, prevailing silence.

I could only stare at him. I stared at him for a long time, face blank as my thoughts seemed to cease formation. I couldn't even move. I think I was waiting for him to jump up and start cracking up, saying something to the effect of "You should've seen your face," or "I totally got you this time," but he never said anything. He just stared right back at me, face calm as he waited patiently for my reply. All I could focus on was his breathing.

"That's cruel," I said eventually, probably five minutes after he had spoken. My voice was level, but it broke halfway through the sentence, ending in more of a whisper. "That's not funny, Naruto." Standing and collecting myself, it took more energy than I could remember to shake my head. "It's a shitty thing to do."

I left. I don't know how I reasoned that that was an acceptable response to the situation, but that's what I did. I just left. I walked all the way to the other edge of campus, spotted a bench sheltered mostly by trees, and sat down in it. I must've walked for twenty minutes, but all time seemed to stop as I sat there, contemplating his words. He was such an asshole. He played pranks like these on people all the time, and while I gained slight amusement from it, I never thought he would have the gall to pull it on me.

I was so angry. It was only when roughly three quarters of an hour had gone by that I realized how cold it was. It wasn't so much that it was cold, but there was a steady breeze that picked up so often, and it was just strong enough that, combined with nightfall, I was almost freezing. But I didn't care. I just ignored it. I could've gone into the nearby Law building, but another part of my mind seemed to say screw it all. Just screw it all. But most of all, screw Naruto for his stupid lies and stupid self and stupid, stupid, just, stupid…

"Don't I know you?"

I was suddenly thinking about how we first met. I had gotten to the room first and was pulling things out of boxes when someone stepped into the room. I stopped and turned, and there was Naruto, beaming from ear to ear like I was the love of his life just come back from a war. I wanted to hate him, but that stupid smile was almost infectious. Then he laughed, saying he was kidding and just wanted to start our friendship off in a familiar way, and I was just staring at him wondering why I had such horrible luck with these things. He was always a prankster, always playing jokes, always just being stupid.

"Naruto, where's you car?"

"Oh…I crashed it."

And suddenly I was thinking about that stupid bicycle again, and Naruto's look of regret when he told me he had crashed his car.

"I was driving, and, all of a sudden…I forgot how to."

"You're such a liar."

"Seriously. Here's the damage report."

He had smiled when he handed it to me, like it was some sort of game. He always thought everything was a game. It was no wonder I didn't believe him. But still, memories of the past few days were suddenly flashing in my mind, and I couldn't seem to stop them. I remembered Naruto asking for his car keys, and looking at me like I was lying when I told him his car was totaled. I saw him at the library, coming in late, saying he had forgotten. I saw his pensive blue eyes looking at nothing, staring into the darkness, turning toward me. I saw his smile, heard him laugh, felt him.

"You seem to be forgetting quite a bit lately."

"Have I?"

Again, had he been waiting for me to ask him what was wrong?

"I have a condition. I'm going to forget everything. I'm going to forget you. And there's nothing you can do about it."

Beside me, the leaves of a tree rustled, and Naruto emerged into the darkness beside me. He was also the only person who could find me no matter where I was. He was breathing hard, so I could tell he had probably been searching for a while, but he didn't say anything. I didn't look at him, didn't even turn toward him as he shook his head and sat beside me. I wanted him to get mad and say he had been looking for me everywhere, but he only put his arm around my shoulders.

"Jesus, Gaara," he said, rubbing his hand on my arm and sitting closer to me. "You're freezing." It was only when I felt his warmth that I realized I was shivering, and slowly, the feeling crept back into my limbs and I felt the far-off strain of sitting in one place for too long. Opening my mouth, I was ready to ready to get mad at him and tell him how much of an ass he was, but I ended up crying instead. The tears came before I could stop them, before I even knew they were rolling down my cheeks, and I clutched at my hair and bent over, shaking from both the cold and trembling sobs that threatened to wrack my body. Naruto only pulled me closer, wrapping his hands around me and laying his head on me and holding me through it all.

I didn't even cry when my father killed himself and I happened to be the one who found him. I was sad, torn apart inside, but I couldn't cry. The feelings just stopped. It was like there were too many, all threatening to come out at once, and so they all conglomerated into a clog, making it so that none could be released. Yet, I cried over Naruto. I actually cried over the stupid blond who I didn't even like in the first place, who pushed his way into my life with his stupid smile and stupid life, and thought it was all right to miss class on a whim, and ate breakfast for dinner, and occasionally tried to kiss me, and somehow managed to fill a space in my life that no one else could and likewise never would again.

Funny how that happens.

/

Naruto slept with me that night. Not in the sexual way, but in the way that allowed him to hold me in his arms and tell jokes for roughly an hour while my inexplicable sorrow gradually morphed into all-out annoyance.

I told him to shut up and sleep in his own bed at least five times, but I knew he wouldn't budge. He had slept in bed with me one other time when a guy I had really liked had capriciously dumped me, and I had told him then that I was fine then, but he just laughed and slipped into bed with me, holding me so I couldn't push him out. It was the second time in two days that we had slept together, but at least this time he wasn't inebriated. I finally ignored him, but not long after I stopped talking to him completely, I heard his breathing deepen and even out, and I didn't have to look to know that he was asleep. But I looked at him anyway.

I supposed he was handsome; I had never really looked at him like that. He had always just been Naruto, that boy who was my friend even if he was always getting on my nerves. But that was just it. I think I always thought Naruto would be there; I had never considered the fact that things could change. Maybe I took him for granted. Maybe I was just being stupid.

Turning away from him, I closed my eyes and pretended he wasn't there. The steady heat of his body told me otherwise.

I don't know when I fell asleep, but I woke up freezing, irritated that it probably had to do with the fact that Naruto was no longer beside me. I felt exhausted, but at the same time, I felt…better. It was weird, but I definitely felt just a little bit better. It was close to 10:30 when I finally rolled out of bed and put on acceptable Saturday morning clothes. Naruto was in the kitchen making Saturday breakfast as usual—he said that it made him feel like a productive member of our two-some. I didn't want to argue, and I was usually too tired by Saturday morning to care. His cooking was horrible, though. Well, not horrible, but I'd certainly had better. As long as it was edible, I didn't care, and I didn't say anything to him about it—not because I didn't want to hurt his feelings, but because I'm sure he already knew. We always ate breakfast together on Saturdays, and oftentimes he would take a bite of food, looking in surprise from his plate to my face, all the while smiling like some incognizant fool. Like I said, he's stupid, but that didn't stop me from stopping in the hall and just watching him in silence as he toiled blissfully over the stove…Just watching him.

Stupidity must be infectious.

Clearing my throat to alert him of my presence, I walked into the kitchen and plopped down in a chair.

"Almost ready," he called over his shoulder, dancing around in his white t-shirt and boxers. He was always shameless about such matters, running around with no shirt, no pants, and sometimes no underwear. Once it had been somewhat funny when Naruto had performed a little dance in just his boxers to try and cheer me up, and something accidentally poked through. He was morbidly embarrassed, and it did greatly improve my mood, but I never told him. I think I provided the usual insult as he mumbled on in the corner about how it was the end of the world.

I felt myself falling back into melancholy, and so I got up and went to the bathroom to wash my face. Pulling down the collar of my shirt, I looked again at the bruise on my collarbone before readjusting my top and turning off the light. Naruto was setting out the plates when I came back, and he knew me well enough to know how many spoonfuls of sugar my cups of coffee took, and that I took no cream. I sipped at it as he filled our plates with something that probably should have been French toast.

"Here ya go," he said cheerfully, as he placed one final dollop on my plate. I eyed it suspiciously before waiting for him to sit down and take a bite. It tasted as disturbing as it looked, but my face didn't reveal anything as we proceeded to eat in the normal silence.

"So," I said when I had basically finished, pushing my plate forward and resting my hands in my lap. Naruto pushed his plate forward as well, as if he had to do the same thing, and I was sure he probably thought it was some form of respect, but I really couldn't have cared less. "You're just…going to forget everything." My questions were usually posed as statements, because I didn't like asking questions. I simply hoped answers were provided to whatever I happened to comment upon. Naruto was able to catch onto this rather quickly in our relationship, probably surprising us both.

"Exactly." Naruto looked a little gloomy having the subject brought up again, but he also looked like he knew it was something that was eventually going to have to be discussed.

I just stared at him, finding it hard to do much else. "And this is just some kind of condition you have."

"Exactly," Naruto said again. "It's called Latent Oscillatory Alzheimer's—L.O.A. for short. Oh," he added as an afterthought, "and it's an 'early onset' in my case, according to the doctors, that is."

"Latent Oscillatory Alzheimer's," I repeated, looking at my hands in my lap and then back to his face. "I thought only old people were diagnosed with Alzheimer's."

Naruto elevated a brow, raising a finger in the air as if to point to the ceiling. "That's what I thought, but if you break it apart, it explains it all. This is still all according to the doctors, but it's obviously a memory disease—that's the Alzheimer's part. It's 'latent' because it rests in the body's system, undetectable until it decides to activate, and this can be at any time, but it's usually when one is much older. The 'oscillatory' part simply means that I'm going to forget everything, and then sort of remember it all again." I thought he was finished, until he smiled and added, "Oh, and the 'early onset' means it's happening to me now, rather than when I'm an old man." He was smiling like he had just decoded some complex problem.

I'm sure I looked as if I was viewing Niagara Falls for the twentieth time and either didn't know what to think or was clearly not impressed. "You're going to forget everything…and then remember it all…" I felt my hands drawing into tight fists, which I was thankful he couldn't see. "Everything?"

Naruto looked at me, shaking his head in agreement. "Yeah, pretty much. They say it's like unlearning everything you've learned, and then having to relearn it. The worst part is that I won't remember my old memories." He turned away from me, seemingly staring into space, but I knew he was thinking about what it would be like to lose everything he had gained up until that point. I couldn't even imagine what it would be like. "Anyway," he faced me with a grin, "it'll be like growing up again, so it won't be so bad. You just have to look at it from the bright side."

I couldn't see how there was a bright side to any of this. Naruto was going to forget everything—he was going to forget me, and he wouldn't even be able to remember me. It hardly seemed fair. "Latent Oscillatory Alzheimer's," I said again, not really knowing why, and not really able to control it either. My voice didn't seem like my own—hollow and empty, and I felt like I was in a world where horrible things happened to good people. I was in that world.

But Naruto's laughter broke me out of my daze as he grabbed both our plates and cups and turned to the sink to watch them. "Yep. Apparently it's one of those one-in-a-million type things." Grabbing both our coffee cups, he seemed to avoid my eyes.

"Why aren't you taking this seriously?" I asked, feeling a bit of anger rising up within me.

"How should I take it?" Naruto asked me at the sink, dipping a sponge into a cup. "There's nothing I can do about it."

"Be mad. Be upset. Show some emotion other than this futile resignation." The anger was subsiding now, leaving a strange form of apathy in its wake.

"You can be mad and upset for me, okay?" Naruto turned toward me, drying his hands on a towel before setting it aside. "Me? I just want to be me for as long as I can."

I watched him leaning against the counter, until my eyes wandered back to my hands. "That's okay for you. You're going to forget. You don't have to remember."

"You can remember for me," Naruto said, voice warm so I could see his kind smile in my mind.

"Don't make me do this."

"I believe in you."

"Don't believe in me."

Naruto crossed the small distance between us, pulling my face against his stomach. I was glad I didn't have to face him in that moment, because I'm not sure what I would've done. His pulsating warmth spread into me again, and I took in a deep breath, inhaling Naruto's natural scent. Of course, he smelled good. When I realized how close my face was to his crotch, however, I pushed him away, saying something to the effect that I didn't need to be babied. Naruto only laughed.

/

Naruto asked me to spend the day with him. For some reason, I said yes.

We had never spent the entire day together; usually, we hung out for an afternoon, spent a few hours at the library, or relaxed a little at a weekend party, but we never spent a whole day with one another. Maybe that's why I was nervous. I mean, sure, I'd known him for over two years, but still…I'd never seen him for more than a limited time-period. It was strange.

It also felt suspiciously like a date. Naruto opened doors for me, pulled out chairs, refused to let me pay for anything, and finally, when we had stopped at a little café and he told me to put away my wallet yet again, I felt the need to say something.

"You don't have to do this." That wasn't really what I had meant to say, but I suppose it worked.

Naruto's smile spread across his face as if on cue. "You're right," he agreed with a nod, "but I want to. We don't spend too much time together like this, and we should."

I don't know why I said it, but I found my lips moving and the words coming out, saying, "You mean, before you forget everything?"

Naruto paused, face falling and making me feel like a complete ass. In record time, however, he had restored his spirits and was smiling again. "Regardless of my condition, we should spend more time together. Don't you think?"

I stared down at my espresso. At least it's swirling-brown depths didn't confuse my thoughts like the blue of Naruto's eyes. "I guess."

We were quiet for a few more minutes, before Naruto's laugh broke the silence. I looked up at him with a skeptical glance.

"Did I really give you that hickey?" he asked, still laughing a little as he said it.

I felt myself redden. "Of course you did," I said a little angrily. "I certainly wouldn't make such foolishness up."

"Of course, of course." Naruto was still releasing little chuckles. "That must've been quite an experience."

I was glad he was taking delight in the situation. And that was sarcasm, by the way. "It's not funny," I stated flatly, face still a little warm. I watched as he tried his best to stop smiling, placing his hands around his mouth and squeezing his lips into a frown.

"You're right. This is serious business."

Sometimes I thought that he really did think everything was a game, finding humor where there really was nothing to laugh at. Then again, some might see that as a rare gift.

"You're so weird," was all I could say.

"It's too bad I can't remember…" His voice held that sad note in it again, causing me to unwittingly look at him. I wondered how fast he would lose everything. I wondered how long it would take. I wondered why I was depressing myself with such thoughts.

Naruto took a few more sips of his iced coffee, before placing his empty cup down and facing me again. "The way I see it, there are two benefits to my circumstances: You can do anything you might regret and I'll forget about it, or, you can do everything you regret not doing the next time around." And he was smiling again. How on earth could he bring himself to think of benefits to his circumstances?

"You're really going to have to learn everything again?" I asked, sure my face's calm appearance was melting to reveal a more sober expression. "You won't get your old memories back?"

Naruto's smile faded a little, too. "There's no guarantee I won't remember everything." He patted me on the shoulder and his touch seemed to linger. "You just have to make a good enough impression."

I was just glad to have his hand leave my arm. "What would I even want to do that I would regret?" I asked, dubious glance back again.

"Only you could know that," answered Naruto, looking at me like I was stupid and making me feel insulted. "Oh," he suddenly looked excited, "We should make a list of things to do before I lose my memories! That'd be cool."

The look on my face must've been the typical "are you crazy" look, because Naruto was about to laugh again. "Like what?" I questioned, disbelief heavily tinting my words. "Climb a mountain?"

"Nothing like that," Naruto said with the usual headshake. "I mean, things we should together. Weird and daring things."

"Weird and daring," I repeated, slowly, fearing where the conversation had potential to go.

"Yeah," Naruto said casually. "For example, you're gay. Let's have a one-night stand. I've always wanted to know what it's like to sleep with a guy."

I don't know that my mouth has ever literally dropped in response to a comment, but I know when Naruto said that, it was only a few seconds later that I realized my mouth was open. I wanted to say something, anything, tell him he was an idiot, something, but no words would form. For some reason, I could also feel myself getting angry. Maybe it had something to do with the way he had implied that it would be weird and daring to sleep with me.

"Seriously," Naruto added after a while. "We should do it. We're close enough that it shouldn't be very weird between us, and I might forget about it the next day. Either way, I'd like to give it a try."

It was me that almost laughed, this time.

The rest of the day, we just walked in silence, taking in the natural beauty of the campus together. We walked closer together than I had ever remembered walking, so that our hands brushed together and our shoulders occasionally bumped, but Naruto didn't seem to notice. He just walked along, taking everything in, watching it all intently as if he was trying to brand the memory into eternity. I suppressed the urge to take ahold of his hand.

/

It only took a week or so to realize that Naruto had been serious about sleeping with me.

He brought it up as casual dinner conversation. He brought it up in the morning. He brought it up when I exited the shower only in a towel. He brought it up before bed. At first, I had thought he was joking, but as the questions increased, I realized that there was a good chance that he would've had sex with me had I actually said yes. This made me uncomfortable, to say the least.

We were friends. Friends did not sleep with one another—not like that, anyway. Sure, there were the occasional friends-with-benefits, but that was between people of the same sexuality. I was homosexual. Naruto was heterosexual. I liked boys. Naruto liked girls…at least, the last time I checked he did. He had admitted that he had had one gay experience as a child in which he had practiced French kissing with a friend, but that had been it. Besides, I was convinced that all people had at least one gay experience in their lives, and it was perfectly normal. Childhood is blissfully ignorant that way.

But we were not children. We were nearly adults—considered to have a good judgment of right and wrong. It wasn't that sleeping with Naruto seemed to wrong to me; I just couldn't seem to bring myself to reason it out as right. And I'd had casual sex before; that wasn't the problem. I just…I don't know. It just seemed awkward to have sex with Naruto. Sex was already an awkward situation. Sex with Naruto…It just seemed weird.

And the more he asked me, the angrier I became about it all. It was like he was treating it as another game. I don't know why, but I couldn't see it as easily as he was seeing it. For him, it might just be sexual intercourse with one other person that he would forget, but for me…I would remember that I had slept with Naruto for the rest of my life. Could I really handle such knowledge? Sex without feelings. I used to think that there was nothing wrong with it, but with Naruto…I don't know. I just didn't know.

We were driving back from a recognition dinner when he brought it up again. Feeling a bit tired, I had practically forced Naruto to drive, promising to keep an eye on him, and, to my surprise, he actually agreed. I saw the hesitance in his eyes, though. I wouldn't have been able to fall asleep even if I had wanted to.

I liked to watch him drive, though; it made me feel at peace, the way he braced his hands loosely on the wheel, and how he was able to take turns one-handedly and with a quaint grace. Every couple of miles, he would turn and smile at me. What the hell was wrong with us?

"Wanna do it tonight?" he asked nonchalantly, turning toward me again for a brief moment, before turning his eyes back toward the road.

I don't know why, but something seemed to snap inside of me then. Why was he so bent on asking me all the time? Why did he want to sleep with me so badly? I felt like a plaything that Naruto thought he could use and discard arbitrarily, and while I knew this couldn't have been farther from the truth, I felt my anger flare up anyway. I had been slumped against the door, but I suddenly reached over and unzipped his fly, like I had been reaching for the salt or something else inconsequential. If Naruto was going to treat this in such a laissez-faire way, then so was I. I was tired of troubling myself over it anyway. I probably would have slipped my hand into his pants, too, if he hadn't flipped out on me and veered off the road. And he did veer off the road—completely—tires flying over the asphalt grooves and emitting a horrendous sound as my car swerved head-first into a small bank, coming to an abrupt stop.

I don't know how the airbags didn't deploy, because we had hit the ditch pretty hard, and there was no way my car was coming away from this incident undamaged. No one came over the bank to see if we were all right, and I would've thought this was a little weird had I not considered that it was nearing dark and the route we had taken was a less-travelled back-road of a more rural area. We were both breathing really hard. Thankfully, our safety belts had activated, and so we hung rather forward rather awkwardly, eyes boring into the dash.

I heard Naruto start laughing. "Oh my god," he said a little hysterically. "Oh my god." When his laughter had settled, he pulled himself back in his chair and slowly turned to look at me. He looked concerned and a little scared. "Are you okay?"

"…Yeah."

With a tired sigh, Naruto put the car into reverse, somehow managing to back it up and onto the side of the road. It was nearly dark now, the reds, oranges, and purples of dusk blending wonderfully in the dimming sky. I could already see that a headlight was busted, but I didn't care. I was just glad we were alive.

My silence must've worried Naruto, because he put his hand on my leg and asked me again if I was sure I was okay. I looked at his hand, felt the warmth that seemed to cascade around it, and suddenly I was remembering his lips again. I imagined them in place of his hand, with no material to separate the two, and then I looked at Naruto. He wasn't looking at me.

"It must've been scary," I said quietly. "To forget how to drive."

Naruto swallowed hard, not bothering to attempt a smile. "It was."

We sat in silence for a few minutes more before he seemed to notice that his pants were still unzipped, and then he noticed me, my eyes on him, his hand on me—but he didn't remove it. He kept it there, deep blue never once leaving the blue-green of my eyes. And then he moved his hand, just a fraction, up my leg. I don't know if he meant to or not, but my breath hitched anyway. And then his hand moved again, and I knew it was on purpose this time, because his fingers traced my own zipper before he unfastened his seatbelt and leaned towards me.

I wanted to fight him. I really wanted to fight him. But I didn't. I couldn't. I wanted him to touch me.

He leaned over me, face disappearing somewhere towards the side of my own face, and I felt his fingers fumbling with my pants. He didn't kiss me, and probably the weirdest thing about our encounter that night was that he didn't kiss me. I just felt his hands as they finally undid the front of my jeans, and my own hands as they reached up and tangled into his shirt, pulling him even closer to me. For some reason, but I needed him close. My breath came in short, trembling gasps, and I could feel his hand shaking as it slowly slid into my pants. I don't know why, but I almost felt like I was going to cry again, and I felt a soft whisper against my ear, saying something again and again before I realized it was Naruto, saying "It's okay; it's okay; it's okay…"again and again, but it wasn't okay. It just didn't seem like anything was okay anymore.

I think a part of me was relieved when I saw the flashing lights pull up. Naruto must've seen the police cruiser before it turned on its lights, because he sighed and returned to his seat, leaving me to wonder what in the world was going on. The officer, an older man in his thirties, came up to the window by the time Naruto had already prepared his flawless grin.

"Good afternoon, officer," he said cheerfully, seeming more suspicious than guiltless.

The policeman had his flashlight out, pointing it at both of our faces. He wasted no time in getting to the chase. "I received a call about a car of this description driving into a ditch." He glanced toward the broken headlight. "Was that you two boys?"

"Yeah," Naruto scratched the back of his head. "There was a deer in the road, so we swerved to miss it. You know how it is."

The officer walked around to the front of the car, pointing his flashlight all over it before coming back to Naruto's passenger window. "Well, you've got a broken headlight, so I'll give you a warning. You're lucky you two boys are all right."

"We are," answered Naruto truthfully, so I could tell that he really meant it. I just sat silently in my chair, hoping to disappear from the earth, wishing fervently that such a thing were possible. The policeman flashed his lights on both our faces again, before the light landed on Naruto's unzipped fly, and then naturally seemed to gravitate to my unbuttoned pants. I didn't care anymore, eyes staring forward at the small slice of daylight left in the horizon, and I don't know if the officer saw something in my face that seemed to suggest that there was no way what he was no doubt considering could have happened, but either way, he patted the top of the car and told us to have a good night. A few seconds later, the flashing lights died down, and I watched the twin red of his taillights disappear into the distance.

Naruto didn't say anything after that. Perhaps he thought I was asleep, what with the way my head was leaning against the passenger window. It was dark out, too, and a heavy silence, the kind that deafens, seemed to pervade the small car as Naruto started it up and we were on our way again. I wanted him to say something. But, at the same time, I'm glad he didn't say anything. I wondered if I would ever learn to make up my mind.

I also wondered what in the hell had just happened.

/

A/N: Gah, the angst...Also, be aware that the final part of this story is both explicit and around 13000 words, so plan accordingly. An editted version is finally available (link in next chapter). Thanks for reading :D