Cake, or Death?

Written for Reyn's Naruto Competition, the Eddie Izzard Tribute theme!

I hope it goes without saying that I DO NOT own Naruto or Sasuke (dear god, imagine owning Sasuke...blimey...) but I also want to point out that all the best lines in this fic belong to Eddie Izzard. I got them from his Dress to Kill, Glorious and Definite Article DVDs et al and he holds the copyright.

Buy the DVDs! The man is a genius!

This fic is rated Mature for the swearing and the religious theme.

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The church looked as if Bridget Jones had exploded in it. A sneeze tsunami-inducing number of pink flowers graced every pew and rose petals were scattered down the aisle. Women trilled and snivelled in all directions, often accompanied by terrified looking boyfriends, waiting no doubt for the Inevitable Question of Death, ‘Will you two be next?’ The bridesmaids milling around wore puce tulle puffed out so that they resembled rancid dandelion clocks. Sasuke sighed. He hoped that Sakura was grateful.

He wouldn’t have endured such hell for anyone else.

Well...maybe one someone else, once. Not any more though...obviously.

Sasuke glanced around surreptitiously. Naruto always stood out in orange. He would clash horribly with all the pink. So why couldn’t Sasuke see him? There was Lee, the groom, lurking nervously at the alter, still unable to believe his luck. There was Ino in the third row wearing an ugly hat and a face like thunder’s inbred cousin. Sasuke smirked. He knew for a fact that Sakura had only invited Ino in order to triumph over her. Lee might not be a catch in physical terms, looking rather like a squeezed frog, but he was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Ino cared about things like that.

As the flurry of activity at the back of the church suggested vomitous public displays of affection were about to take place, Sasuke became almost bewildered. Where was Naruto? He would never miss his best friends’ wedding. For a moment Sasuke basked in the happy thought that Naruto had been too afraid to be in the same room as his ex but then the vicar appeared from the vestry.

Sasuke’s jaw fell into a heap of rose petals by his feet and stayed there for the next hour.

When they had been together Naruto had certainly been very religious. He had once screamed at Sasuke, during an especially vicious row, that God’s love was the only one that he was sure about. He had used to talk about how the church needed more openly gay vicars.

But Sasuke had never though that he would actually do it and be walking up to the pulpit now in his white vestments emblazoned with an orange sun.

‘Someone shoot me,’ Sasuke thought, pale with shock and impending apoplexy, ‘Please.’

Naruto treated the congregation to his best smile. The Smile. It was one of the first things that Sasuke had ever noticed about him. It’s power was awesome. The assembled mass sighed in quiet rapture.

Sasuke nearly bit his tongue off.

“My sermon today is from a magazine I found.” Naruto began, eyes bright with subversion, skin glowing. If he had possessed a tail it would have been bushy.

It appeared that getting dumped by Sasuke had done wonders for Naruto’s health.

Sasuke tried to concentrate on the rest of the sermon. Naruto was about to make a fool of himself and Sasuke wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“Eye shadow colours this season are in the frosted pink area with lipstick to match.” Naruto blasted the congregation with another smile and they considered applying sun cream before it was too late. “And this reminds me of Our Lord because when he rode into Jerusalem on that donkey he must have got...tarted up a bit.”

Some of the more traditional worshippers present gasped in shock. Sakura stood at the front grinning. Lee appeared to hear nothing, gazing only at his bride, with adoration in every line of his skinny body.

“Sakura is a big fan of eye shadow and lipstick and especially of pink.” Naruto continued, “And people, so prone to judging, sometimes take that to mean that she is girly or frivolous. In truth Sakura is as tough as old boots, morally speaking, and, by God, is she persistent! Lots of people told her that she and Lee weren’t compatible. She ignored them. Lots of people told her not to get married by the most controversial vicar in London. She not only ignored them but designed the campest wedding possible, just to wind them up.”

Ahhhh, Sasuke looked about at the pink, the netting, the big petticoats, the...pink.

It was on purpose.

“And she truly loves Lee, not in a giggly, needy, ‘I need a man, any man, to complete me,’ sort of way but in a deep, real, realistic, warts and all, sort of way. Real love that survives in the face of real life. Come what may; even be it male pattern baldness or a visit from the Inland Revenue, she will love him. And anyone can see how he loves her, somehow simultaneously seeing both the angel he believes her to be and the real woman as well. He will love her when she is ninety and she will look exactly the same to him. God designed these two to be together, no matter how difficult it might be (I believe that Lee had to ask twenty seven times before Sakura agreed to go out with him), no matter how odd or seemingly contradictory. Some people,” Naruto’s dangerous eyes rested on Sasuke’s face for a moment, “are just meant to be together. God knows what he is doing.”

Sasuke felt a blush start on his neck and battled to calm down before it reached his face. The Look had been brief but Sasuke had got the message.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, despite three long years apart, Naruto hadn’t given up. Sasuke should have known. ‘Giving up’, just wasn’t in the man’s nature.

The rest of the service passed in a blur. There was a lot of standing up and sitting down. There was Sakura’s dazzling smile and the tears in Lee’s round eyes and the way that Naruto joined their hands, his tanned fingers closing gently over them. Sasuke had to swallow hard. Then came the blessings which, if Sasuke had imagined such a thing, he would have found laughable, but somehow the prayers rang out, drenched in faith and lit by Naruto’s endless optimism and something about it made all the hairs stand up on the back of Sasuke’s neck.

The final hymn was sung and it was over and Sasuke was almost kicking people aside in an attempt to get out of the pew, the church and possible the country, as quickly as possible. There was practically smoke rising from the soles of his shoes. But, just as the door became visible through a sea of hats and suits, a firm hand came down on his arm.

He turned and looked straight into the frighteningly happy and determined eyes of Sakura. Behind her Lee was being hugged to within an inch of his life by her mother.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Sakura hissed cheerfully, an evil glint in her perfectly made up eyes. She looked like an avenging angel in white and pink. “You’re going to talk to Naruto. He has a little room in the vestry where you can both sit while I sign the register and then we’ll all go to the reception together. You and Naruto WILL be civilised. You can drink some tea. Eat some cake. Be nice to each other.”

“Why would I,”

“I mean it Sasuke. Between the two of you you’ve put us all through hell for three years. Trying to be friends with both of you hasn’t been easy, splitting special events so that you don’t have to meet, listening to Naruto cry on the phone at one a.m. Watching you bury yourself in work and die a little more every day. We have had enough. Now you will go and have tea and cake with the vicar or you die!”

“But,”

“Tea and cake or death. Tea and cake or death!” Sakura chanted, “What’s it to be?”

“Fine! What ever you say!” Sasuke growled, aware that a bride pretty much rules the world on her wedding day and also aware that twenty minutes awkward, stilted conversation with Naruto couldn’t be worse than the six months of torture that Sakura was likely to inflict if he refused. Plus he was losing feeling in his arm.

“Well, go on!” she demanded, stamping one pink bridal shoe, “Go on, before I halve your options!”

“Alright, alright!” Sasuke snapped.

Sakura smiled beatifically and turned back to her admiring throng. Lee immediately clamped himself to her side like a limpet.

Sasuke slunk his way to the vestry door, grumbling under his breath. Sakura was always threatening him. She had been the sadist who bullied Sasuke into going out with Naruto in the first place. Now that it had all gone wrong she seemed to blame herself for it. Well...partly herself. But mostly Sasuke.

He didn’t really see how it had been his fault. It was Naruto. Naruto had just been so unreasonable, so demanding, always wanting Sasuke’s time, attention, love, hands, mouth...

Sasuke hesitated, coughed a little and then carried on. He pushed open the old, heavy door and briefly wondered how many priests’ boyfriends had walked through it over the years. Probably more than history suspected.

Naruto had just pulled his vestments off over his head and underneath he was wearing jeans and an orange T Shirt. Nothing really changed.

“I see that Sakura didn’t have to kill you,” Naruto observed turning to a small table and pouring out some tea from a pot so old that it probably came with the building in the year 1000. Sasuke accepted his drink with a barely suppressed shudder. He didn’t like antiques. They were unhygienic.

The two men sat down on the only chairs and there was a long painful silence. Sasuke looked at the cake. It was probably ginger but he couldn’t blame Naruto for wanting to torture him. Even the Uchiha was prepared to admit that he could have handled things better when he ended it. He could have been more tactful, less sudden. He could have explained more and perhaps stuck around longer to see that Naruto was OK. But he had actually done it fast and brutal, as though amputating a limb, and then he had run before he could see the blood.

“Cake?” Naruto asked, smirking slightly.

“I believe it’s compulsory,” Sasuke snapped. Naruto cut him a big slice and Sasuke sighed as he chewed. Yes, ginger.

Naruto leaned back in his chair and absentmindedly rubbed the back of his neck, “Judging from your hilarious expression when I walked into the room earlier I am assuming that you had no idea about my new career?” he remarked, gesturing vaguely round the church walls with their weight of accumulated religion. “I’m surprised no one told you.”

‘They didn’t tell me because I ordered them never to mention you,’ Sasuke thought. His stomach was churning. Maybe it was the horrible cake.

“So, you’ve really found God,” he sneered. The weakness of the faithful always riled him. He relied only upon himself and didn’t see why everyone else couldn’t too.

“Yes,” Naruto replied, in angry sarcasm, “He was down the back of the sofa.”

“Do you take confession?” Sasuke mocked, struggling to see Naruto as a great moral authority because of the number of times he had...they had...The blush threatened again and Sasuke tried to steer his thoughts firmly away from several feverishly erotic memories.

“That’s Catholics, you stupid bastard!” Naruto grinned, “But it’s true, people do tend to tell vicars things that they don’t tell anyone else.”

“If I were you I would get bored,” Sasuke said, “It must be the same things over and over again. ‘I slept with my best friend’s wife,’ ‘I coveted my neighbours MP3 player.’ I would start requesting more original sins if I were you.”

“What?” Naruto wrinkled his nose, “like, ‘I poked a badger with a spoon?’”

“Yes, or ‘I’m an executive transvestite.’”

“Being a transvestite isn’t a sin.”

“Some of your colleagues in the church might disagree with you there. In fact they might disagree with you on a lot of things. Your sexuality, for example.”

Naruto shrugged, “Someone has to be the trail blazer. I sort of see myself as a suffragette...with a penis.”

“Any death threats?” Sasuke enquired.

“No. You?” Naruto grinned.

“No more than usual.” Sasuke found himself smiling at Naruto and had to stop, quickly. He had forgotten how easy it was to talk to him. Disturbingly easy.

“Remind me why we split up?” Naruto asked, abruptly.

Sasuke went cold. He had never been able to properly explain his reasons to anyone although they had made sense to him at the time. At the time there had been a horrible inevitability about it.

“We aren’t suited.” He stated, flatly, sipping his tea. For fuck’s sake, how long did it take to sign a register?

“The sex was great, we were suited there!” Naruto objected.

“I didn’t mean the sex,” Sasuke snarled, aware that they were on dodgy ground now.

“I can make you laugh,” Naruto pointed out. “No one else on earth had ever managed that and no one ever will.”

It was true. When Sasuke walked away from Naruto he hadn’t just left love and sex behind but a lot of other things too. He became aware of his blood pressure rising.

“I couldn’t be what you demanded.” Sasuke said emphatically, hoping intensely that this would be the end of the conversation.

“What did I demand?” Naruto insisted, unable to just let it go.

“Everything!” Sasuke blurted, “You wanted everything. Every minute of my day, all my attention, all the parts of me that don’t exist. You wanted me to be someone else.”

Naruto stared at him for a moment and then calmly said, “Bollocks.”

“What?”

“You’re talking out of your perfectly formed arse. I knew exactly what I was getting into by falling for you. I knew that you were a moody, workaholic, borderline closeted, atheist, with a fuse shorter than a defective toaster. I didn’t care. I only wanted you to be with me. To care about me.”

Sasuke breathed in sharply. He was starting to wish that he had chosen, ‘or death.’

“Well, maybe that was the bit that I couldn’t do,” he mumbled, feeling deflated.

“Bollocks.” Naruto repeated.

“Stop saying that!”

“You chose not to care about me. You wouldn’t allow yourself.”

“It’s been three years. What does it even matter any more?” Sasuke could hear the pleading in his own voice and cringed.

“It matters because we’re meant to be together.”

“Did God tell you that?” Sasuke felt a tide of contempt and fear wash over him.

“No,” Naruto told him, confidently, “You did.”

“Me? Do you even know who I am anymore?”

“Do you know who I am?”

“This isn’t a game of Who the Fuck Am I! Christ, Naruto, this was exactly the reason I ended it. You credit me with feelings that I don’t have! I never said that you and I were meant to be together. I never even really thought about it. I didn’t have a chance to! You just exploded into my life, made everything chaos and then hung on grimly for five years.”

“You did tell me!” Naruto exclaimed, infuriatingly, “Every time you came home and every time you kissed me and that time you introduced me to your boss as ‘my boyfriend’.”

Sasuke tried to roll his eyes but his heart was going too fast. Naruto was so near him in the cramped old room and he looked so bright and warm against the worn stone and Victorian panelling. So perfect.

Sasuke had found many, many things to criticise about Naruto over the years but his looks had never been one of them. The slightest brush of the man’s hand had always made the rest of the world dimmer. Being so near him brought back memories of the last time they had seen each other. Sasuke’s cold, desperate conviction that he was doing the right thing. Naruto’s confusion. The way the blond had reached out to take Sasuke’s arm and say, ‘Please, don’t do this. You don’t really want to.’

“Can you honestly say that you’ve been happy since we split?” Naruto was saying, when Sasuke emerged from the excruciating flash back. “Even by your standards?”

“I’ve thrown myself into my work.” Sasuke informed him, sternly, but with a shake in his voice that he couldn’t eradicate. “You always got in the way of work.”

“Whenever I could,” Naruto grinned. He sobered then and looked at Sasuke intently, “Is work enough?”

‘No!’ Sasuke wanted to shout, ‘But I understand work, I can control work. Work doesn’t frighten me the way you do.’

Naruto seemed to take his silence as a answer. He stood up purposefully. “Sakura and Lee will be on their way to the reception now. We should be going too. Come back in a week and we’ll figure out where we go from here.”

“But there is nowhere to go!” Sasuke almost yelled, “And since when were you so sure that I’m not over you? For all you know I got over you in a matter of days.”

“Ha!” Naruto retorted enigmatically.



At the reception Sasuke got spectacularly drunk as quickly as he could. It was a craven attempt to prevent any more deep conversation with Naruto. ‘He can’t hassle me if I’m too unconscious to talk to,’ Sasuke thought blearily on his seventh vodka. The last thing he remembered was the DJ playing Agadoo at which point the Uchiha sank into appalled oblivion. He was later told that he had been found at two in the morning under a table in a pool of sick. Naruto had apparently cleaned him up and put him to bed in the hotel. He had sat beside it all night, according to Sakura, “to make sure you didn’t swallow your tongue or something.”

She made a point of ringing Sasuke from Barbados to tell him about it.

After the two days that it took to get over the hangover Sasuke proceeded to spend the next five in a state of permanent fury, at Sakura, at himself and, especially, at Naruto. His secretary locked herself in the toilets on the third day and refused to come out. Sasuke’s boss took to avoiding his employee’s office. The photocopier tried to hide behind the shredder. And it was no better at home. A luckless telesales operative rang Sasuke on Wednesday evening to try and sell him time share. She was promptly blasted into a parallel universe.

No one could get to him the way Naruto got to him.

Then, on Friday night, Sasuke turned on the TV and saw the local news (always worth it for the poor journalism and reporters who announced terrible accidents with big, stupid rictus grins on their faces. Sasuke felt even more superior that usual when he watched local news). This time however a woman in too much makeup was standing outside Naruto’s church. Sasuke felt instantly sick.

“Controversial local reverend Naruto Uzumaki says that he is sticking it out despite the discovery of homophobic graffiti on the doors of this eleventh century church and the arrival of the third death threat in six months.”

And there he was. Naruto.

Looking tired.

“I hear that several parents have withdrawn their children from your after school community group,” The reporter said, thrusting her microphone aggressively into Naruto’s face.

Sasuke’s fists clenched.

“Is that because the parents are concerned about your...lifestyle choice?” she demanded.

Sasuke hissed like an enraged snake in a bag.

“I doubt that,” Naruto smiled thinly, “More likely they don’t want their children near someone who has received death threats. I completely understand that.”

“What proportion of local Christian opinion do you believe to be represented by these latest attacks?”

“I’m sure that it’s just one, sad individual.” Naruto told her, “And might I object to your use of the phrase ‘lifestyle choice’? It’s just all about love, really. You love who you love, there’s no real choice about it. And I was always told that God is pro-love. I certainly don’t think that he is pro-death threat.”

“Well, that’s all we’ve got time for but with your talent for courting controversy I am sure that we will be speaking to you again soon.”

As the bitch handed back to the studio Sasuke had to resist an urge to kick in the TV in a futile attempt to get at her. He was panting with rage. Death threats. Someone was trying to hurt Naruto. And that slut on the news made it sound as though he was ‘asking for it.’

It took Sasuke an hour to get across town to Naruto’s church and he stormed up the gravel path expecting to see the news team (and thereby rip them limb from limb) until he realised that the local news was repeated four times a day. The interview had probably ended hours before. The grisly death of journalists would have to wait.

The church’s main doors were locked and newly gleaming with fresh paint but it took only five minutes of furious searching to find the side door and Sasuke burst into the nave.

Where he found Naruto rehearsing some kind of spiritual drama skit with a gaggle of teenagers. One of them had a sheet over his head and was running around crying, “Woo! Holy Ghost! Holy Ghost! Woo!”

Naruto’s voice drifted across the pews, “Holy Ghost, this is not an episode of Scooby Doo.”

The boy pulled his sheet off and went, grumbling, back to the gaggle.

Sasuke walked up to Naruto and, anger draining, put a calm arm around him.

All would be well. No one was going to get away with threatening his man. Ever.

Naruto glanced at Sasuke and smiled, “You took your time.”