Naruto's vision narrowed to a single, strobing corridor: the distance from the sticky floor at his feet to the pair of boots planted at the bar's far end, and the body they belonged to. The crowd pressed close—a mess of Beta regulars, two Alphas deep in a heated darts match, the ambient scent of soju and fried food laced with something sharper and metallic. Somewhere behind him, Kiba was doing his best to shatter the world record for "loudest pool break." At the booth, Hinata and Sakura exchanged nervous glances, both of them pinned to their seats by Neji's razor-drawn presence and Sasuke's death-ray attention.
Naruto gave one last look at his group, then squared his shoulders and headed for the bar.
The walk took three lifetimes. The row of seats was full up to the last, but as Naruto edged closer, one of the barflies slid off his stool and lurched away, muttering a half-formed curse. It left the perfect opening next to Gaara, who sat alone and radiated a force field of pure "fuck off."
Up close, the guy was a study in precision. His hair was the impossible red of an emergency light, but cut with such exactness that each strand seemed to know its place. The black collared shirt he wore looked expensive, freshly pressed despite the bar's humidity. An angry crimson tattoo marked the left side of his forehead—the character for "love" rendered with calligrapher's confidence. Gaara's hands rested on either side of his drink with surgical stillness—something clear and flat in a squat glass, but he never brought it to his lips. He just watched the ice melt, face composed to perfect neutrality, while his eyes tracked every movement in the room with the cold calculation of a predator choosing its moment.
Akane, Kiba's cousin, caught Naruto's approach and grinned with two front teeth missing. "Good luck," He said, nodding at Gaara. Then he set a second glass on the bar, close enough that condensation puddled around Naruto's knuckles. "On the house," He added, then glided away before Naruto could protest.
For a long moment, Gaara didn't move, didn't blink. Naruto wondered if he'd made a mistake, but it was too late to back out now.
He slid onto the stool, gripping his beer bottle tight enough to hide the shake in his fingers. The label came off in damp ribbons as he picked at it, mind racing through conversation starters that all sounded like either conspiracy theories or awkward flirting. When the bar speakers switched to something slow with too much bass, the air between them only grew heavier, like humidity before a storm.
Gaara's gaze finally flickered. He glanced at Naruto, then back to his drink, then at the mirrored wall above the bottles, where he could track Naruto without looking at him directly.
Naruto cleared his throat. "Uh. Gaara, right?"
Gaara didn't respond. The ice in his glass clicked, the only sign he'd heard.
Akane swung by, plunked down a napkin, then disappeared again. Naruto used it to wipe the sweat from his palms, then tried again.
"I'm looking for my brother," he said, and this time his voice cracked, so raw and naked he hated himself for it. "Kurama Namikaze. He disappeared last semester."
Gaara still didn't look up, but his shoulders tensed, the set of his jaw shifting a few millimeters. He reached for his glass and sipped, ice rattling.
"Never heard of him," Gaara said, the words clipped and final.
Naruto pressed on anyway. "I know you don't know me. I just—I need to find him. I heard your family's had—" he stopped, searching for a word that didn't sound like an accusation, "problems too."
At this, Gaara set the glass down with slow, deliberate care. For the first time, he turned fully, and the pale green of his eyes locked onto Naruto with an intensity that made Naruto's heart bang against his ribs.
"You're looking in the wrong place," Gaara said, his voice as flat as the bar top. "Whatever happened to your brother, it's got nothing to do with me."
Naruto flinched. "I just thought—I figured—"
"Stop figuring," Gaara said, not quite a growl but close. "Go back to your friends."
Naruto hesitated just long enough for the first regret to bloom, bitter and sour on his tongue. But then the silence got too tight to breathe. He leaned in, lowering his voice so the words wouldn't echo past the rim of Gaara's glass.
Naruto leaned closer, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "My brother vanished last winter," he said, the words catching slightly in his throat. "And I've heard rumors about Shukaku. That he disappeared too."
The effect was instant—like a switch had been thrown. Gaara's fingers, which had been drumming a lazy tattoo on the Formica, went still. The sharp green eyes lifted, pinning Naruto with a stare that was at once clinical and dangerous. The rest of Gaara's body didn't move, but the violence in the stillness was palpable, like a cat coiled to spring.
"Say that again," Gaara said. His voice didn't rise, but the words landed with a weight that made Naruto's gut clench.
Naruto fumbled, then pushed through. "I said Shukaku. That's… your brother, right?"
Gaara turned fully now, pivoting so his knees were angled to block Naruto from the rest of the bar. The air around him felt charged, as if he was drawing all available oxygen into the space between them.
"You know something about my brother?" Gaara's face was unreadable, but his hands curled into fists, pale and bloodless against the counter.
Naruto shook his head, raising both hands in a quick peace gesture. "No. Not really. Just..." He sighed, took a swig from his glass, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I've been tracking students who vanished from campus records. They all get labeled 'transferred' or 'withdrew,' but it's bullshit. Your brother's name was on that list. Same as Kurama."
Gaara's jaw twitched. One corner of his mouth pulled down in a half-snarl. "Let me guess. The school told you he transferred out? Voluntarily withdrew?" The words landed like stones, each one heavier than the last. "What makes you so certain that's not exactly what happened?"
Naruto's fist clenched against the bar top. Everyone kept feeding him the same line—that his brother was grown, free to vanish without a word to anyone. But they were wrong about Kurama. The brother who'd checked in on Naruto every night, who never missed a single text—that person wouldn't disappear without leaving so much as a forwarding address.
Naruto kept his hands up, palms open. "Listen," he said, his voice catching. "After our parents died, the system split us up. Different homes, different schools." He swallowed hard, Adam's apple bobbing. "But every birthday, every holiday—hell, every bad day—Kurama was there. Phone calls, bus rides across three counties. Once he hitchhiked through a snowstorm just because I sounded off in a text." Naruto's eyes dropped to the bar, where his fingertips pressed white against the wood. "Someone like that doesn't just vanish."
Gaara exhaled, his shoulders dropping a fraction. Naruto glanced up to find the hard edges of his face had softened, like ice beginning to melt. "Your brother," Gaara said, voice low but steady. "That's rough." He paused, fingertip tracing a circle of condensation on the bar. "But Shukaku wasn't taken. He left on his own." The certainty in his tone left no room for debate. "There's nothing I can tell you that would help."
Disappointment settled in Naruto's gut like a stone, but he pushed through it. There had to be something here—some thread to pull. "If Shukaku left on his own," he said, leaning forward until their forearms nearly touched, "do you at least know why?" When Gaara's expression hardened, Naruto's voice dropped to something raw and unguarded. "Please. Even the smallest detail might help me find Kurama."
Gaara's shoulders lifted in a half-hearted shrug. "Found a note on his bed one morning. 'College isn't working out. Don't try to find me.' That was it." When Naruto's lips parted to object, Gaara held up a hand. "Before you start comparing—Shukaku and I aren't like you and your brother. He'd disappear for days sometimes, never tell anyone where he went. This was just the last time."
Naruto's fingers twitched. He glanced down, then drew his phone from his pocket. "One sec," he said, already thumbing through the locked folders. He found the set of grainy photos—the ones Sasuke had taken from the medical ward—and flicked to the manifest labeled "Chimera Protocol—Candidate List." He slid the phone across the bar.
Gaara's eyebrow arched, but his hands remained flat against the bar top, making no move toward the phone. "And what exactly am I supposed to be looking at?" His voice carried the dry edge of someone who'd heard too many desperate stories.
Naruto's throat tightened. He pushed the phone closer, finger tapping the screen. "The names. See? Half of them vanished from campus. Shukaku's right there, third column. My brother's two rows down."
Gaara snatched the phone and hunched over it, eyes moving fast. His face lost what little color it had, lips pressing to a thin, bloodless line as he scrolled.
"What is this?" he whispered.
Naruto watched Gaara's face transform—rage melting into fear, then hardening into something knife-edged and unreadable. "They're medical files," Naruto said, his voice dropping. "Full of notes about experiments. Tests they ran on people. Our brothers."
Gaara tapped the screen with one shaking finger. "These aren't real," he said, but the words sounded more like a question.
Naruto bit his lip, he suddenly felt like the worst person in the world, telling someone their brother might not have actually "Left". "We stole them from the medical building, my partner found these in a hidden compartment in the schools medical building."
Gaara kept reading, tension rippling across his shoulders with each new name. When he hit the line about "Phase 2—collection completed," his hands clenched around the phone, the plastic creaking in his grip.
Naruto eased the phone from Gaara's white-knuckled grip before the plastic could crack. "Look, I get it. Some random guy shows up asking about your brother—I'd be suspicious too." He hesitated, then laid his palm over Gaara's clenched fist, moving with the deliberate slowness you'd use approaching a cornered animal. "Maybe Shukaku really did just take off. But every single name on that list? They're all gone. All labeled as transfers or withdrawals. And your brother's name is right there with my brother's."
Gaara's eyes darted sideways, then back to the bar mirror. A look went over his eyes Naruto couldn't quite read, "If you are right…" Gaara voice dropped.
Naruto turned back to the bar and downed his drink, of all the things he was expecting, to tell someone there brother could be in danger was not one of them.
The two of them sat, frozen, the hum of the bar reduced to white noise.
Finally, Gaara spoke. "Did your brother ever complain about headaches?"
The question made Naruto's skin crawl. "Yeah. How did you—"
Gaara's knuckles whitened around his glass. "The headaches," he said, voice dropping to a whisper. "Shukaku couldn't sleep. Said it felt like someone was drilling into his skull. I told him to take some aspirin and stop being dramatic."
Naruto's mouth went dry. Words failed him as Gaara drained his glass in one swift motion and shot to his feet.
"Give me your phone," Gaara demanded, palm outstretched, voice low and urgent.
Naruto's fingers hesitated over his pocket before he surrendered the device. Gaara's thumbs moved in quick, precise taps across the screen before thrusting it back.
"My number's in there now. I texted myself to get yours." Naruto lurched up from his stool, but Gaara was already backing away. "Don't call me. I'll reach out if I find anything."
Naruto barely made it two steps before a hand locked around his shoulder, sharp and inescapable. He spun, half-expecting a bouncer or, worse, Neji—but it was Sasuke, his face unreadable in the bar's shifting light. Sasuke's grip wasn't violent, but it was absolute. He leaned close, breath tickling the rim of Naruto's ear.
Sasuke's voice cut through the bar noise like a blade. "Let him go," he murmured, barely audible yet impossible to ignore. "You just shattered his world."
Naruto's shoulders slumped as he watched Gaara's retreating back. His chest ached with the weight of recognition—that hollow-eyed look was the same one he'd worn for weeks after Kurama vanished.
"Fine," Naruto said. He forced himself to breathe, tension crawling up the back of his neck like a rash. "But if he ghosts me—"
"He won't," Sasuke interrupted. His hand slid from Naruto's shoulder to the back of his neck, fingers cold and steady. For a moment, they stood like that, anchored together in the storm of the bar. Then Sasuke let go, stepping back into his own airspace. "You did good," he said, soft enough that Naruto almost missed it.
The relief was so dizzying that Naruto had to brace himself on the edge of a barstool.
Naruto swallowed, then risked the question that had been chewing at him. "How long were you standing there?"
Sasuke considered, then shrugged. "Long enough." There was a shadow of a smile, but it never fully formed. "You ready to go home?"
Home. The word settled between them like a promise neither had meant to make. Naruto's pulse quickened as Sasuke's fingers found his, cool and certain against his palm. He should pull away—this wasn't part of their arrangement—but as they stepped into the night, Naruto let their hands remain linked, telling himself it was just the investigation, just the adrenaline, just anything but what it actually felt like.
At the corner, Naruto glanced over his shoulder. The lights inside Shushu-ya glowed softer now, the music reduced to a distant thump. But at the window, a single silhouette remained—Sakura, elbows on the table, chin in her hands, watching them walk away. Her eyes glittered in the glass, an animal patience to her waiting.
Naruto faced forward again, matching Sasuke's pace. The street was empty, the city holding its breath.