Once the mess was cleaned, and all the tiny cuts on the back of his neck healed as if they were never there, he sat down on his bed, his feet dangling off the tall surface. The room was darker without the light, but the window let in just light enough to see clearly. An ice cold hand grabbed his ankle again and he yelped and pulled his legs onto the bed with him, studying where nothing was there. He could have sworn he felt something grab him, and he panicked at the thought that some stranger was in his house under his bed.
His eyes darted around his room before he remembered the school-issued training kunai he still had packed in his pocket. He pulled one of the knives out and carefully went to peek under the bed. He instantly froze when his blue eyes met a pair of red ones that shone in the dim lights like a cat's. Neither set of eyes moved, frozen in time for what seemed like forever until light from the window glinted off Naruto's dull excuse of a weapon. The light reflected under the bed and right between the red eyes, showing only the wall as the creature hissed and disappeared.
Now seemed to be the most appropriate time to use one of the words Kiba taught him. "What the fuck." He stated, going back to sitting upright. "Is there a raccoon in my house?" He rationalized, before hopping to his door so his feet wouldn't be in reach of whatever cold-handed giant raccoon that was under his bed. He went to his tiny kitchen and tried to figure out what in his scarce refrigerator he would be willing to sacrifice as raccoon bait. He hated it but dried instant ramen was what he had the most of, so he grabbed a brick of uncooked ramen(he preferred the cups anyway) and an old blanket.
He decided that the best course of action, seeing as the raccoon didn't like light apparently, was to make a little blanket tent attached to his bed with crushed ramen bits in the middle and then when the raccoon crawled out to get the bits he'd scoop it up in the blanket and see where to go from there. A fairly decent plan seeing as he was still in a daze hoping the raccoon just had wide-set eyes and wasn't as big as him.
He wasn't a very good fighter, but he had good base strength so he could probably hold a wild raccoon the size of him long enough to find something to do with it, he hoped. Now wasn't the time for thinking. He made sure to stay far enough away from his bed as he fastened the blanket loosely to the edge of the bed and over the floor with enough space that the raccoon would have to be full out from under the bed to get Naruto's precious bait. Then he walked on the spot, exaggerating his steps to make the creature think he'd left, and he waited.
He didn't have to wait long, it seemed the thing was more curious than anything, and soon a small moving lump in the top of the blanket told him his plan was working. Once he saw the entire lump of raccoon, he quickly grabbed both ends of the blanket and scooped the thing up before it could comprehend what was happening. Naruto was surprised that this plan had worked at all, but he was confused at the frantic noises the lump was making. It wasn't hissing and chirping like a raccoon, it wasn't barking or yowling, and it was definitely a bit bigger than him.
The noises it made were echoed, like words shouted from across a cave so distorted and warped that he couldn't understand them. He didn't know how the creature could sound so loud and quiet and far away even though it was being held in front of him like a caught fish, writhing. "I'll let you out if you calm down!" He yelled, his young voice squeaking a little. It seemed whatever it was, it could understand him, because it paused right there.
Naruto slowly lowered the blanket lump, until the thing was back on the floor. Keeping the opening an arms length away, he slowly opened the makeshift trap, and the thing stayed still.
He opened it more until a bit of the sun's light poked into the bag and a pale white hand pulled the blanket back up, making something that would have sounded like a yelp if it weren't so distorted and echoed. Naruto remembered that the thing seemingly hated light, and so closed the bag back up and let it go entirely. "Wait a second, I've got an idea." The thing shuffled around but didn't move, possibly out of lack of options to do so.
Naruto closed his blinds, before eyeing the small holes in them that the string was fed through. He grabbed the blanket off his bed and stood on his bedside table to reach up and tuck the blanket over the top of the window, blocking out almost all of the light in the room. He closed his door and went to crouch in front of the blanket lump of not-raccoon.
"It should be safe now, I made it super dark in here." Naruto never really had a problem with seeing in the dark, Jiji always said people with blue eyes had better night vision because they didn't have melon-something, but he had better night-vision than Ino, even though her eyes are paler. He guessed he was just awesome.
The blanket slowly shuffled and a pale white hand was the first thing he saw come out of the blanket. The hand was followed by an equally pale little boy, his black hair was matted and a stark contrast to his white skin. Red eyes peeked out behind unkempt bangs, and Naruto froze.
"You teme, you had everyone thinking you were dead." His voice cracked, his fists clenched, and he tried hard not to cry in front of his rival. "What do you have to say for yourself? Huh? You made Sakura-chan cry for hours, you know." His voice was gravely and cracked, and the other boy seemed to shrink in on himself. That wasn't the apathetic asshole Naruto knew, and he scowled deeply with glassy eyes. He punched him.
Tried to, at least. His tiny fist sailed right through the jerk's arm, as if it were never there. His eyes widened as the projection didn't even flinch at his punch, ruling out clones. Sasuke moved, and Naruto began to take in his appearance. He was white as a sheet, his eyes were red with spinning flecks of black, he was quiet in a way he never was. Sure, he'd never been talkative or anything, but this Sasuke had no presence, as if he wasn't even there. A slender hand pointed at the side of his neck, and Naruto felt sick looking at the stab wound that clearly caused his death.
"So you are dead." He said, his hands unclenching and his shoulders sagging as he wracked his brain with why the ghost of his dead classmate was here in his house making him sacrifice his ramen. "Why are you here?" He asked, no heat in his tone, and Sasuke's red eyes glared at him silently. He shrugged, and Naruto furrowed his brows.
"Can you talk?" The Uchiha rolled his eyes and pointed to his neck before making another of the echoey distorted noises that Naruto couldn't understand. "Well, even if you can talk I can't understand you." He crossed his arms, thinking. Sasuke rolled his eyes and went to get one of Naruto's old school journals and a pencil.
He wrote a message and then hit Naruto on the head with the book, as if trying to point out how obvious writing instead of speaking was. Naruto made a disgruntled noise similar to a duck before squinting down at the page. "I can't read when it's this dark." The blond fibbed, because he'd never reveal that he couldn't read much to his rival.
Sasuke crossed his arms in annoyance, but then Naruto came up with an idea. He pointed to his mouth, and spoke. "Just talk while facing me, I'll lip read." And Sasuke tried it.
"I don't know why I'm here, usuratonkachi--" The ghost huffed, but that was all Naruto could get before the echoey piercing wavy noises started to make his head hurt.
Naruto blinked away the black spots trying to take over his vision, ruling out lip reading as the space behind his eyes pounded. "Okay, nope." He put a hand in front of the now silent ghost. "Don't think my brain likes it very much to talk to dead people." He muttered.
When his head stopped pounding he looked back up to see the ghost looking like he'd seen a ghost. "What?"
The ghost pointed to his classmate and then his eye, but the blonde continued to look confused. Sasuke huffed silently before pulling over the notebook and drawing what looked like a cat eye on the page. He pointed to the picture then to Naruto, and Naruto continued to be confused. "Why would I have cat eyes? If I had magic eyes like you and Hinata I wouldn't be living in a shithole like this now would I?" Sasuke seemed aghast at the use of slurs.
Sasuke mouthed 'well I have magic eyes, but I'm not exactly living, am I, dobe?' Without noise. Naruto nodded sagely. "Fair point."
"So why were you under my bed, you perv?" Sasuke glared at Naruto, crossing his arms. 'Light hurts, idiot.' He mouthed, as if you ran into ghosts every other day. "Yeah, I got that, but shouldn't you be haunting your house or something? Wait, is it because you can't go in your living room anymore?" Sasuke cuffed Naruto on the head. He seemed to be able to touch things just fine as long as those things didn't hurt him, which was annoying because Naruto couldn't hit him back.
'Why would I live in an abandoned house, there's no one there anymore.' Sasuke mouthed silently, and Naruto didn't really have anything to question that logic. 'Tried others, they couldn't see me.' And that had Naruto confused.
"Who did you try?" The undead heir mouthed a short list. 'Hokage, kids, and random civilians. It was hard because I had to try when it was dark.' The blond nodded.
"Whelp, guess if I'm the only one that can see you, then you're stuck with me, teme." Red eyes shot him a glare. "Do you eat?" Those same eyes rolled as the ghost shook his head. "Well then, go back under the bed." Sasuke crossed his arms, offended that the dead-last would dare try to tell him what to do.
After a childish attempt at a one-way dick measuring contest, Naruto just shrugged. "Fine, have it your way." And he opened the door, letting light from the large windows of the main room spill into his dark bedroom and Sasuke made an echoey hiss that Naruto snickered at to hide how much the voice affected him. He closed the door and then shoved his palms into his eyes in a feudal attempt to make the sudden pounding and throbbing stop.
He took a minute, then went to go make himself lunch once the pounding pittered down to a low throb. He needed to get earplugs or something. He poured the boiling water from the kettle into the styrofoam cup and then rested chopsticks on the paper lid to keep the steam in. He squinted at the large window that took up the majority of his one wall and then at the plants that covered the windowsill.
"If I get some thick curtains, I could probably portion off a part of this room to the plants and then the rest of the house can be dark for Sasuke." He muttered to himself, trying to figure out how to maneuver himself around his new roommate. "Front door might be a problem, so I should portion off the shoe hallway with thick curtains too." He played with his hands, trying to figure out ways to make his apartment darker. "Should take out the light bulbs too, wouldn't want Jiji visiting and accidentally hurting him." His ramen finished cooking and he carefully squeezed through his bedroom door, closing it behind him.
"I'll go shopping later for curtains, can you float?" Sasuke had yet to get out from under his bed. "Would sure make both our lives a hell of a lot easier if you could float up and take out all the lightbulbs." Still no response, but ramen made Naruto more lax so he didn't push, only sat on the floor in the dark eating ramen and calculating how to get decent curtains with his budget and status. He'd deal with that later, he guessed.