It was obvious in the first ten minutes: with two people in it, Naruto's bachelor pad had gone from 'cozy' to 'too damn small', and when their third joined them (if he ever did, the asshole) it would turn into 'can of sardines'. Apart from the bathroom and toilet there were only the kitchen-living-room where the dining table took up all the place, and his bedroom.
And of course, they were off the duty roster, and old hag Tsunade didn't want them to walk around the village today (not that the redhead cared, the second she dismissed them he'd slipped out of the Tower and disappeared god knew where.) That meant Naruto and his ... tenant... gender-flipped clone... almost-identical twin... pretty much had nothing to do but sit there and stare at each other.
That or go through the fridge.
It was emptying at an alarming rate.
"Do you have a black hole for a stomach or what?!"
Naruto planted his hands on the kitchen table and glowered at her. The girl glared back at him and defiantly bit off half of the chunk of bread she was holding.
"Mmh... It's almost like we haven't eaten since yesterday," said a low, rough voice from the window.
"Exactly!" Naruto exclaimed, turning to point at the redhead clone, who crouched on the windowsill, watching them. (And why did he have to crouch like that? Tsunade's half unbuttoned lab coat was the only thing protecting Naruto's eyes from the horrific sight of his dangling man parts.)
Wait. They didn't exist yesterday.
"... Oh. Very funny." He frowned, suspicious. "Where'd you get that ham from?"
The redhead shrugged, gnawed off the last of the meat, and threw the thick, heavy bone over his shoulder. Naruto was suddenly really glad there was nothing but a narrow, rarely used back alley on that side of the building.
"Did you steal it?"
He didn't even get another shrug. The redhead slipped off the windowsill, landing on the linoleum in complete silence, and went straight to the fridge, no doubt to polish off what the girl had left. Man, but calling him Kyuubi wasn't going to be difficult at all, he moved so creepy-predatory -- ate like it, too. Naruto flopped in his chair, dropped his head into his hand and groaned. He made enough per mission to support himself and put a little money aside, but his savings were going to melt really fast.
"I hope we don't need to call Sakura-chan," the girl admitted. When he looked up she looked faintly worried, making him blink. "Because my stomach is full and I'm still kinda hungry." She glared at him. "I swear, if you managed to make us with a hole in our stomachs, I'll kick your ass."
Naruto groaned again and slumped back down. "Wouldn't the old hag have noticed something if you were put together wrong?" he protested. "You're just greedy."
"You're just selfish."
It didn't look like she meant it, it was just a comeback, but Naruto winced anyway.
Earlier, after Tsunade let them go, Sakura had asked him quietly why he hadn't asked Tsunade to find them somewhere else to live. He could tell her honestly that the thought hadn't even crossed his mind. Go live elsewhere? He was responsible for the two of them even being out here, alive. If he hadn't been stupid, he'd still be alone and they'd be -- not really dead, but ... Unborn.
He couldn't just give them the boot! For one thing it would be monstrously unfair. For another...
He couldn't. The redhead pissed him off more by wandering away on his own than by being creepy and an ass right there with them; and the girl freaked him out a bit, being all Naruto-with-boobs, but if she'd tried to leave too -- no.
It just seemed... He didn't know, normal, that they would be there.
Normal apparently meant eating him out of house and home, without even a 'please' or a 'I know you were keeping that for a special treat to yourself but look at that, I'm yourself too! So, er, yeah.' Even then he tried to imagine telling them to move out, and couldn't.
He couldn't figure it out. They were in fact strangers, they were intruding, crowding him -- it was weird. It was going to change everything.
It wasn't about not wanting them to leave. Them leaving wasn't even a question.
He didn't have the first idea how to explain it to Sakura. She might treat it like genjutsu and try to find a way to free his brain from their evil and sneaky influence...
... Anyway, money.
"I really hope you guys start taking missions very soon," he grumbled under his breath, watching the girl make herself a cup of instant ramen with a little jealous, sulky pout.
Though that implied letting them go their own way, or only taking missions that required beefed-up teams. Make team Kakashi a permanent double arrangement.
"What was that?" asked the girl, lips pursed as she blew steam away from delicious pork-flavored noodles. Naruto groaned and waved off the smell before he was too tempted to steal it back. He could share his ramen, really he could.
"Missions. When?"
"I dunno, soon as Kakashi-sensei finds something." A pause. "Oh. We're a bit big for a normal team, huh." She counted quickly on her fingers. "Me, Sakura-chan, Sai, the both of you, Kakashi-sensei and Yamato-taichou..."
Naruto huffed, looked away. It was strange when the girl said stuff like she was him.
It must really suck, he thought, to feel like you were the real one when you knew it wasn't true. Made him all awkward and ... well, kind of sad. Guilty.
She ruffled her hair with a nervous grin, then blinked as she tangled her fingers in a ponytail. She'd likely been expecting short spikes. "... Anyway." An embarrassed cough as she freed herself. "When we get Sasuke back, we'll be double-team-sized!"
Kyuubi paused in his fridge-pillaging and sneaked her a narrow-eyed look. "Who says I'll team up with anyone?"
The girl rolled her eyes. "You know you're gonna stalk us anyway, you might as well get paid for it."
Silence, and then a soft, dangerous, "Stalk you?"
Naruto winced a little. Touchy. "Come on," he replied, "like you're gonna let us go kick ass out there without you." It was a no-brainer.
... He didn't think he could explain that one to Sakura-chan either.
The way the other guy slowly unfolded from his crouch and turned to face the table had Naruto's figurative hackles all up.
"No, you're right. I'm not going to let you. Because unless I tell you otherwise you two are staying in the village, and if we go anywhere it'll be you following me."
"What?!" they both said together. The girl followed it with a "Like hell!" while Naruto was still looking for some nice-sounding curses.
Kyuubi's lip curled up. Naruto hadn't really noticed before, but of course there were fangs in there, big thick predator fangs visibly made to tear into meat. "You can go wherever you want to..."
He took a step around the table, looming over the girl, who was up on her feet by now and had that mulish look on her face that said he'd have to break the ground under her to make her take a step back.
"When you can beat me in a fight. Want to try your luck now -- three-tails?"
Naruto was feeling kind of ignored. It was really strange. Made his own indignation cool off a bit, to be replaced with a feeling of surrealism, puzzlement, and --
The girl grabbed the redhead's collar. He grabbed her wrist right back. Naruto lunged over the table, hands spread to keep them apart. "Not in the house! The --"
Oh.
"--The deposit," he finished, eyes just a little wide.
They'd both come to a stop, though he was sure he was off-balance enough from leaning over the width of the table that they would have had no trouble sidestepping out of his reach. They were both looking down at his hands on their skin.
His right hand had somehow found the gap in Kyuubi's half-buttoned up lab coat and slipped entirely under the cloth. He was warmer than Naruto had expected. His left hand only touched skin toward the girl's collarbone with his ring and little finger, and then again, only the tips; her t-shirt was a thin, mostly inefficient barrier between his palm and her cleavage, his thumb pressing the cotton between her breasts.
It tingled.
"... Huh," the girl said, and uncurled her fingers from the lab coat to touch the back of her knuckles to Kyuubi's collarbone. A shiver went up Naruto's spine.
"Okay, what the hell is that?" he asked, a little alarmed. He remembered the tingle from when Kyuubi had stabbed himself to prove he wasn't a kage bunshin and they'd grabbed onto him, but at the time they'd be kind of distracted.
Also he was pretty sure it hadn't been even half that strong.
-- He still had his hands on boobage. He'd forgotten. Yelping, he yanked his hand away. "Sorry!"
The girl gave a cry of protest at the loss of contact, and then said "Oh right," and started blushing. Naruto was already pretty red-faced by then.
"Hrrrrn."
Suddenly Naruto's other hand was cold and tingle-free as well, and the girl's wrist was dropped without ceremony. They watched Kyuubi turn away and stalk his way out of the living room, growling to himself.
"...What just happened?"
"Man, why are you asking me?" She shook her fingers out, as if Kyuubi had given her static. "I have no clue."
Naruto gave her a suspicious look and then sighed heavily and slumped in the closest chair. It was a little weird to see the girl mirror him, maybe a half-second behind, too close to have meant to.
"This is all so strange," she said first, so he snapped his mouth shut before he could echo her.
He scratched his jaw, looked away. The girl sat slumped in her chair with her elbows on the table, pouting a little bit. On him it looked childish; on her it looked -- well, still childish, but in a kinda girly way. Kinda... hey, my mouth's here, look.
She didn't move all arched-back and swinging-hips and prissy like he did when he was in disguise. She moved pretty much like him. Except, yeah, not the same body shape, so, not the same effect, but... still familiar.
Still family.
"What's so funny?" she asked, looking up from the hand she was still opening and closing and watching quizzically.
"--Aheh." He stopped rubbing his fingers together under the table and ruffled his hair, laughing nervously. "I was thinking. It's stupid."
She kicked him under the table. "Just tell me already!"
"Ow!" Naruto glared at her as he rubbed the bruised area. "I take it back. You're not like family at all!"
There was a snort, almost a bark of mocking laughter from the corridor. Naruto threw a grimace that way, but their third didn't emerge to see it.
"What?"
"Shows you've never had any."
Naruto pushed away from the kitchen table and stomped his way to the bedroom -- took him, oh, six long steps, maybe. "Oh, and you have?"
"Foxes are born in litters, idiot."
The girl huffed from right behind Naruto, "Well nice to hear at least it's familiar to one of us."
She bumped him aside -- another shock of muted tingles -- and walked into the bedroom. Naruto stayed in the doorway, staring.
It was surreal, seeing them here. The redhead lounging on his bed, legs stretched out, leaning back against the wall negligently -- Naruto never held himself like that, and it was weird because they were the same size and weight but somehow he seemed bigger. The girl... going through his drawers...
"Hey," he spluttered. She had her hands in his underwear!
"Hm?"
She pulled out his lucky boxers with a little 'aha!' of triumph. Naruto choked. "W-w-what are you doing?!"
"What do you usually do with underwear?" she asked, staring at him with a little frown of confusion, head tilted. "I'm gonna put 'em on, of course!"
"You can't do that! It's my --" but okay she was him and he'd said he would share his things, but... "--It's boy underwear! You're gonna stretch them all out of shape!"
She waved his boxers angrily. "Well I don't want to wait until I find girl underwear! Those stupid shorts are all up in my crack and it's really distracting, okay?"
Naruto didn't need to touch his cheeks to feel how warm they had gotten. He tore his eyes away guiltily; not that he'd seen anything with his t-shirt hanging down to the top of her thighs, but still.
"Huh. So they are," said Kyuubi, holding the back of her t-shirt lifted up past her waist.
Naruto made a little strangled noise and dashed forward to tear the shirt from his hands and yank it back down. "You can't do that either!"
"You just try and stop me!" she yelled back, slapping Kyuubi's hand off without a thought, and then, before he could tell her he hadn't been talking to her, promptly yanked down her shorts.
They were stubbornly clingy; that was all that saved Naruto's virgin eyes from seeing something he'd... Perfected in the mirror over a week or two of research and then paraded in front of the whole village without a second thought. Um.
"Like you've never seen it," she said with a snort.
"It's different!" he protested, his back now stiffly turned to the whole scene, though from the corner of his eye he still saw the redhead lounging, watching with narrowed eyes as if he hadn't decided yet whether to take offense.
It was different. When it was him, making up the first version of the jutsu, he'd been twelve ; interested in the bodies he'd looked at for research, yes, but just as much from burgeoning sexual interest as from 'really, seriously, girls are like that?' and vaguely mocking curiosity of the 'adults sure are weird to get so distracted by that, huh' variety. Now it wasn't him in that body and, and -- well.
Just because he knew what a generic one looked like didn't mean he wouldn't get -- well, not flustered but -- if he saw, he didn't know, Ino's or Tenten's or someone's.
(Not to mention Sakura-chan's, but he was trying not to think about that.)
She peered at him around his shoulder and he sneaked a peek despite himself, blushing, but the shirt was once again blocking the view, so that he couldn't tell if she'd gotten out of Sakura's shorts and whether she was wearing anything under there. She snorted and threatened him with her leg, wriggling her toes. It was a very long leg, and the higher that knee lifted and got the shirt to slide back and the longer it looked.
It was like a really bad crash, where everything went super slow but you couldn't move to change a thing or even tear your eyes away.
"Naruto," the redhead growled behind them, interrupting her cruel, evil game.
They both turned around and said "Yeah?"
Naruto didn't have any time to feel weird about that, because then Kyuubi yanked the both of them down.
The mattress was really narrow.
Kyuubi was really warm.
Naruto had the horrible feeling that Kyuubi had somehow managed to pop open all his buttons, because he was positive the only clothes between the two of them were the ones he, Naruto, happened to be wearing -- that was, his jacket and his pants. The jacket was thick, and zipped up all the way to his throat, but he still felt like that was too little. Too intimate.
The tingle was a buzz now, something that built up under his skin wherever they touched. He shuddered, tried to lift himself off, but Kyuubi's hand snaked around his waist and jerked him back down, right on top of him.
"Hey, listen there --"
"Quiet," Kyuubi said. It wasn't the order that silenced him, so much as the strangely thoughtful look in his heavy-lidded eyes, blood red shadowed by thick dark lashes. For a second Naruto stupidly wondered if his own eyelashes were anything like that, because, huh.
When a rough hand slipped up the back of his jacket, he squeaked like a little girl. He'd sacrificed his t-shirt for the girl; he had nothing on underneath, it was skin to skin immediately. He gave a full-body shiver, made a little strangled noise as the hand traveled higher up his spine. It felt -- he couldn't describe it, could only find ridiculously understated approximations.
Strange. Warm. Intimate.
Good.
"Oh," the girl said quietly, and tentatively relaxed until her head rested on Kyuubi's shoulder. Naruto looked her way, and couldn't breathe.
He couldn't see where Kyuubi was touching her. What he could see was the way her hips twitched, rolled back.
"What are you doing," he whispered. He was trembling. He couldn't stop.
For a second he had the weird thought that Kyuubi was going to kiss him. Which would be really weird because they were kind of twins, and because he hadn't kissed anyone since Sasuke (and that had been weird too because he was a boy and Naruto didn't kiss boys), and.
Kyuubi's cheek brushed against his, and then he felt a breath against his neck -- and then teeth, worrying at his earlobe.
He almost laughed in relief. Not making out, just weird fox things, weird clone things. Not making out.
It felt so good.
The girl's bare leg cautiously draped over the back of his thighs. "Guys," she said, voice shaking a bit. "Guys, I'm really hungry."
"Huh?" Naruto said, and then blinked because apparently at some point after Kyuubi started chewing on his throat Naruto had rested his jaw on his shoulder and hadn't noticed.
He could feel Kyuubi's chest twitching under his own as he laughed.
"So that's where it went."
"I don't understand jack shit," Naruto complained, wriggling a little when Kyuubi's fingers kneaded the muscles in his back.
"Yin and yang," he said, which was really not helpful at all, especially because it was really hard to think of what it could mean with him breathing in Naruto's neck.
The girl made a little frustrated noise and squirmed closer, pressing herself against their sides. She touched Naruto's lower back, where Kyuubi had uncovered, and it was another shower of sparks going up his spine.
"This is really weird," Naruto said through clenched teeth. "Should -- should ask Tsunade or Sakura-chan after all."
The girl gave a little meep, muffled against Kyuubi's shoulder. When she looked up her eyes were bright and her face even more flushed.
"We'll add them in later," Kyuubi said, voice lazy and unconcerned.
Naruto tore out of his hold so he could push himself up on his hands, and gaped -- glared! -- down at him. "Pervert!"
"Says the guy humping my thigh."
Naruto's mouth hung open for five whole seconds before he found his voice again. "Straddling! I'm straddling your thigh!"
... He really was, actually.
"In a non-sexual way! And it's because of how you pulled me down, and I'm just gonna..."
He committed the mistake of looking down. The lab coat was open, framing a flat stomach and reddish curls and (his eyes skidded to the side in self-defense) a bare thigh bracketed by his own black-clad legs.
His eyes skidded back, morbidly curious.
Kyuubi was hard, but so was he.
"Get rid of that," Kyuubi growled, and hooked his claws on Naruto's collar. "That's what you're gonna do."
"Don't tear it, don't tear it!" the girl said, grabbing his hand. "We only have one of those! Just..." She sneaked a glance at Naruto and blushed, unable to meet his eyes. "Just take it off, okay," she mumbled. "You know he's gonna shred it off you otherwise."
Naruto did an impromptu impression of a carp. "What the hell?! Traitor!"
He tried to get up, but now Kyuubi had him by the belt loops, and they were solidly made, ninja issue he could use to rappel down a cliff if necessary; he'd leave his pants behind long before they tore free, and as for making Kyuubi let go, well, good luck. He tried it anyway, but ended up doing nothing but wriggle and accidentally rub their inner thighs together, which prompted a whimper and a return to frustrated, confused, grumpy stillness.
"What do you want me topless for?!"
"It's better skin to skin," Kyuubi replied, voice so low it was almost a whisper. "That feeling." One of his hands slipped under Naruto's jacket and curled around his hip. Goosebumps everywhere, instantly.
Red eyes, staring straight into his own. He couldn't look away.
"I want to know how much better it can get." A smirk. "You do too."
Naruto couldn't find the words to contradict him.
"We don't even know what it is," said the girl, her hand gingerly coming to rest on Kyuubi's chest. Naruto watched her fingers rub careful little circles. "Maybe when it hits critical mass we're going to melt back together or something creepy like that."
Kyuubi snorted in disdain, and kissed her. Something coiled tight and uncomfortably warm in Naruto's belly. He'd seen people kissing in the streets -- quick pecks, mostly, but you didn't stare at people brazen enough to do that sort of thing in public. He'd never been so close.
Lips pressed together, parting, the tip of a pink tongue trailing along the edge before their mouths mashed together again and that tongue disappeared, plunged in...
His girl twin's eyes were half-open, but hazy, pupils blown wide. Naruto knew she wasn't seeing him, perhaps wasn't even seeing Kyuubi's face, so close to her own.
Okay. So. This was totally making out. He laughed a little, still perched on Kyuubi's thigh, tried to get rid of all that nervous energy running through him, making everything confusing and scarily attractive.
"Hey, aren't you a fox? How the heck do you know how to kiss?"
Their mouths parted with a wet noise; Kyuubi turned a red gaze on him. Naruto swallowed. He could feel the buzz under his skin -- secondhand pleasure, heady.
Kyuubi reached up, grabbed the back of Naruto's neck, and pulled him down.
"No no no I don't kiss boys Sasuke was an exception--"
Lips. Damp from a previous kiss. Parting under his own, and it was so strange how immediately, how easily his own mouth opened to them. There seemed to be very little conscious decision involved.
Kyuubi's hand curved against the back of his head, fingers slipping through his hair, tightened in a light tug. Naruto realized he had his hands on Kyuubi's shoulders, squeezing. He pushed himself up, breaking the kiss; he couldn't pull away more than a few inches. He glared down, cheeks flushed, mouth tingling both from the weird energy and from sheer body memory.
"I think you meant 'an accident'," the girl said, pink-cheeked and snickering.
"Whuh?"
"Sasuke. Kissing him. An accident."
Kyuubi gave a slow, mocking smile. "No, I think 'an exception' is exactly what he meant."
Suddenly freed, Naruto sat up; he would have flailed and raged in denial, but Kyuubi had only let him go so he could flip them over and suddenly he was flat on his back, his legs from mid-thigh down dangling from the edge of the mattress, and Kyuubi looming over him.
"What are you doing, you're a guy, we're both guys, I don't do that stuff with guys--"
"You don't do it with anyone. Virgin."
"--And also we're clones! Isn't that like incest or something--"
oh. Oh. Hard yank, cloth running over his face and then he was topless. Body covering his own, fever-warm, solid muscle pinning him down and pressing -- rocking, slow and intent. Skin. He couldn't think, it buzzed all over from guts to fingertips to his cock, so hard it ached -- so hard, so --
He cried out, his face pressed into Kyuubi's shoulder, voice muffled but not enough to really pretend he hadn't. He beat his fists against Kyuubi's shoulders, his back, asshole, how dare he do that to him, make him feel so weirdgood. Hands caught his -- too small, but the same burst of pleasure and rightness. Fingers interlaced with his, holding on tight as he --
As he --
White starbursts behind his eyelids, white rush blanking his mind, pouring, running through his body from head to curling toes. For a second it was like an afterimage, phantom limb, two ghost bodies felt in lightning flashes, and then slowly the sensation faded.
Dazed, he blinked his eyes open. The room looked weird, colors slightly off, as if he'd spent some time in the dark. The buzz had gone back down, just a pleased little shiver in the background. He felt...
Good. Tired, not planning to move, but at the same time... huh.
It reminded him, vaguely, of the time after Orochimaru had sealed him in the Forest of Death, when Jiraiya had freed him. Like his chakra was balanced again, free to flow properly. He could have gone tree-running right now without any problem.
It just felt too nice to bother moving yet.
Kyuubi and the other Naruto were still sprawled on top of him. He could feel their hearts beating through their skin, slightly out of synch with each other. Kyuubi's was slower.
He blushed a little when Kyuubi shifted, stretched his back and then his legs, rubbing them with Naruto's through his pants, but Kyuubi didn't pay him attention. He threw a sidelong glance at the girl, a lazy, satisfied bastard smirk on his face. Naruto would have wanted to hit him for that expression if he wasn't still kind of afterglowing.
"Still hungry?"
The girl blinked in surprise. "Oh. ...No."
Kyuubi chuckled quietly, visibly unsurprised -- how the hell had he known? -- and flopped back down on Naruto, an arm thrown across the girl's waist. He yawned, eyes closing. The girl pouted and poked him in the side.
"Hey, don't say stuff like that and then not explain."
Kyuubi growled under his breath, half-heartedly. Naruto supposed even he was susceptible to afterglows.
"Kitsune have the ability to steal life force through sex. I just never bothered. Faster to just eat them the meat-in-jaws way." As Naruto cringed in disgust, Kyuubi gave a thoughtful frown. "I don't think I can do it anymore, anyway. Huh."
The girl pushed herself up on an elbow. "Wait -- wait. Steal life force through -- you've got to be kidding me! I'm a sex vampire?!"
"Gah!" Naruto protested, worming a hand free from Kyuubi's weight and the other from her tight grasp so he could block his ears. "It wasn't sex! It was ... cuddling! With chakra fields mixing and. And stuff!"
The girl blinked, stared at him for a second as if she had no idea what he was freaking out about, and what was wrong with her that she didn't ?!
"... Stuff. Right. Yes. Not sex." Ah, and there was the freak-out face. Oh thank god, he wasn't alone in sowrong-land. "So not sex. Weird, uh, side effect thing. Yeah. We'll have to ask Sakura-chan, I'm sure it's got a perfectly normal explanation --"
"Sure," Kyuubi drawled, laughing at her with his eyes, "If you want to explain to her how you found out."
The girl went a little pale. "... On second thought it's really nothing to worry about."
Kyuubi rolled his eyes and pulled her back down against his side, smothering Naruto that little bit more. "Shut up and sleep or I'm groping you."
There was really only one response to that. "Yessir," Naruto muttered, resentful and embarrassed, kind of pouting and all sorts of squashed.
There was no way he was asking Kyuubi to move so he could get out of the pants he had just come in, no matter how damp and sticky it was or how much it would suck once that mess dried. Because, not sex. Totally not sex.
He was gonna have to deal with being slept on.
It was kind of strange, kind of nice, not to sleep alone. He closed his eyes and counted breaths. He could feel the two of them, alive against his skin.