I don't own Naruto.
Warnings: Domestic violence, Stockholm syndrome, depression, PTSD, heavy angst.
It's staggering: the art of keeping my hands still when there's a fire inside of me. I can't pretend that everything is all right, no matter how many times he tries to create the illusion of happiness. He told me he loved me, but I never told him I had a monster beneath my skin.
We've grown up with uneven edges, hate and love fading into a realm of emotions. It could never be easy, because that's not the way things were meant to be between us. I've tried to tell him that; that he has to leave or everything will fall apart.
I'm a time bomb. I've always known, that one day I'd have to destroy everything around me. I'd have to claw him down not to scream at the walls. My brother would be proud of me.
It was winter the first time I hit him. He was unhappy. The way he moved told me everything he couldn't say, I was avoiding him, because how could I be close to something so easy to break, when my hands itched to destroy. In the winter he confronted me. I worked too much, I didn't spend enough time with him. He was lonely.
We were out in the snow, I had tried to escape but of course he always had to follow.
"Teme, wait! I'm sorry!" He yelled from behind me, trying to catch up.
He grabbed my arm and I couldn't help myself. It was like someone else took charge of my body. I turned around, snow swirled around us but I found the blue of his eyes. I smashed my fist right into his face and everything felt so much better for a second, like it was all I needed.
He staggered back, brought his hands up to his face. Blood seeped out beneath his fingers and then he just stared at me. He was bleeding and we both knew that this was nothing like the fights we used to have as kids.
He was quiet for so long that I almost forgot about the world. Snow fell down in his hair, melted and mingled with blood.
"What the hell was that for?" I remember him asking. His voice was weak, like cracked glass.
He looked so hurt. I still have it etched to my mind. It was like he had never been more humiliated, more let down or betrayed in his entire life.
He was like a fallen angel. White, blonde, cyan and stark crimson. He wasn't even wearing a jacket. He wasn't even wearing shoes.
I looked at his face again and I realized that he was bleeding. Leaking crimson from the inside out and he was shaking with the cold.
He had run after me, barefoot on snow and icy pavement. Because he no longer got any attention from me. Because I'd rather sleep in the sofa then next to him. Because he was lonely and forgotten. I had hit him.
I shivered. The chill reached into me. I walked past him, just like I used to. Snow dampened my footsteps, he didn't have to hear the sound of me walking away.
He didn't meet my eyes throughout the entire day. I would catch him glance at me, but when I turned to him he'd rather look out the window.
Later that night when we were in bed together, he kept watching me from the other side of the bed. The skin around one of his eyes was bruised purple and black. I didn't like to look at it.
I couldn't sleep, and in the middle of the night he made his way over to my side. Carefully, as if trying not to wake me up (the monster will kill you). He brushed his fingers along my arm. I opened my eyes and he watched me with something intense in his winter irises. They were so bright next to the bruised skin. He opened up, crashed into my arms. I heard a gasp, maybe of relief, before he whispered into the darkness.
"I forgive you."
I couldn't stop. I began to associate the calmness and apathy with breaking his skin. It happened every once in a while. When I had gotten trapped inside the walls I built around me. I had to beat my way out, I had to beat the walls down but instead I kept beating Naruto.
I asked him to leave. I told him I wouldn't care if he did.
But Naruto never leaves, never gives up. He doesn't complain. I see lightning in his eyes sometimes, and I know that he's boiling inside.
He knows I'm broken, he knows that I'm a mess - that nothing will ever change. But he's not rational you see. It doesn't matter what he knows, because he will always do what his heart tells him to.
So after I hit him, he'll grab my hand and hold it tight. He'll sit there beside me, fingers shaking and eyes hurt until I kiss it away.
I'll kiss him and then I'll tell him I'm sorry, because I always get the feeling that I just beat the warmth out of the warmest thing I have.
"I love you." He'll say, and then he'll look at me with eyes so full of emotion I forget how to breathe, so bright with hope.
But I never say anything back. I'm always lost for words near him and I'm not sure what I want to say. It's like I've hit him again. He looks away, betrayed as he lets go of my hand.
It makes me feel angry and cold. And then later, when we lie on each side of the bed I like to reach out for him.
I'll run my fingers down his stomach until I reach the hem of his boxers. He'll look at me then, and he'll either close his eyes or give me the weakest of smiles.
I don't want him to smile at me, he doesn't have to. I know it hurts to smile because it splits his lip open again and it splits my heart in two to see the blood seep down his chin.
Everything aches when I reach down further, he closes his eyes and he whimpers. It sounds just like when he's about to cry but I can't stop.
He shuffles closer to me because he's not afraid of me in the slightest. He'll take anything I give him, good or bad.
And I'll try to make him feel good, I like to hear him moan as much as I love to feel him tremble.
He'll arch off the bed, arch closer to me until I can feel his warmth seep in through my skin and travel with the blood in me.
Straight into my heart, like small fireworks and sparkles. I love to see him tear up, he always do right before he comes.
Small tears leak from his eyes and he gasps, everything feels good with the ache and I'll try to make it feel good for him, I try to make it hurt. And then he's done.
"Can I ... touch you too?" He asks afterwards.
I shake my head. He watches me for a while until I retract my hand and he moves away. But then he turns back.
"Please?"
I shake my head again, more firmly this time.
"Do you want to ... you know ... on your own? And I can just be near you? Or do you want me to-"
"I just want you to go!"
He flinches. I keep my gaze at the wall but I can still see him, I can still see the hurt.
"But I ... I don't understand. You used to like me."
I don't say anything, and he turns his back at me eventually. I feel cold. I wish he wouldn't do that. I wish he would face me, I wish he would hit me.
But then I hear his voice, and his eyes breaks the darkness, looks at me again.
"Do you know what Sasuke? This is not fair at all. It's not my fault! I can't help that I bruise when you...when you..." He tries, voice shaking and he looks upset now. Frustration is written all over his face.
"What?"
"I ..." He squeezes his eyes shut. "I know that I look ugly like this." Every word for him seems like running a marathon, leaving him breathless and weak.
"What are you talking about?"
"You don't ... have to look at me, If you think I'm ugly or gross. If it makes you feel bad or something. I just want to touch you because I know you like it when I do! You always told me that I was great at it but now it's like you're not even attracted to me. So maybe if you ... just close your eyes. If you pretend I look like before ... maybe that-"
"You're beautiful, Naruto." I interrupt, because every word is gunshot to my heart. And what breaks me the most is the way those small words I just uttered seem to make him so incredibly happy. Like it's something he's been starved of.
He goes from looking utterly devastated to suddenly trying not to smile too widely. He looks so preciously hopeful, too. But I don't want him to be, because nothing has changed.
His lip splits again but he doesn't even flinch. As his eyes begins to shine, the bruises seems to fade.
"Oh ..." He manages. "So do you want me to ... you know." He gestures his head at my groin and grins the way he used to. He's smirking like he always did before and it tugs at me more then anything has for a long time.
"Okay." I say eventually, because I really want him to, even though I shouldn't. He grins even wider, and immediately moves to pull down my boxers.
He goes down on me, he uses his lips and tongue just like he used to and he looks up at me from time to time, as if checking to make sure that it feels good. He swallows everything when I come.
He wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand and chuckles, lust evident to his eyes and all I want is to kiss him and hold him and tell him how much he means to me.
But I can't. Because that would make it even harder to see him hurt, to see him bleed and cower.
"You uh... still love me, right?" He asks then. I frown. There is so much hope and anticipation in his voice that I don't know what to do.
His eyes flicker at my face and then down at the bed, then as he glances at me again, uncertainty creeps into his features.
I look away and he seems to get the point eventually. He becomes smaller, somehow. Then he disappears from my vision and when I look for him, he's lying down with his back against me.
I can't sleep, I see his blue eyes in my nightmares and they haunt me until I wake up. Sadness looks so wrong on his face, wrong in his body. But it looks good too, he always looks so good.
He was supposed to live in sunshine, because it brings out the best in him.
But I keep him in the middle of a storm. My darkness rains down on him and he's melting away, rushing down in the drain, just like the blood rushes down his face.
I just want him to go somewhere else. Because the things I care about always ends up broken. And I care about him more than anything.
He'll die with me. I know that. He'll fade out just like I did and eventually there'll be nothing left of the brightness in him.
He doesn't know what is best for him. But I know; he'll never see the bad in me, even if it's right there, right in front of him.
The more I want him to stay, the more I have to push him away.
In the morning, I see him yawn and then he smiles my way. The sun breaks through the curtains and his face is the most beautiful thing I know, so I feel the need to break it, to kill his smile and kill his insides so I can save him.
I don't smile back, and then he knows. He remembers.
Something drops away from his eyes. Blue turns gray, bland, and sad. The sun disappears behind the clouds.
But then today, something seems different. There's a flicker, and then he tries to smile again. He looks so young, almost shy.
"Can I hold you?"
And everything is breaking in me. Because even now, he's still opening up. He's opening up for me so I can crush that small hope to pieces, because that's what I have to do.
I shake my head, "leave me alone."
Cloudy skies glaze over before he turns, the hurt in his eyes hiding in shadows. He's crying and it tears me in two, because I want to save him but I also want to run away.
So that's what I do. I dress and walk out calmly, but then I run and run until I pick up the sounds of him following. I turn around, and he stands there brokenly, tears in his eyes, waiting for me to kiss him.
I always do. And then I give him the smallest of smiles. He smiles back at me, takes my hand. We walk back home together. We breathe in the cold morning air. The flaring sun flashes in Naruto's eyes. Forever alive, always hopeful.