Title: "No I Love You's"

Author: Shaitanah

Rating: PG

Timeline: post-canon

Summary: Sasuke knows all kinds of loneliness, but he has never felt as lonely as he does now that the war is over and he has returned home. [Sasuke-centric; implied SasuNaru] Please R&R!

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi. Quotes from various manga chapters.

A/N: This little bugger was supposed to be a very short fluffy ficlet. Alas, my brain was eaten by epic angst and Richard Brautigan, so I bring you this.

NO I LOVE YOU'S

Sasuke stared inside the cup for a long time before bringing it up to his mouth. It was that strange dirty white colour just below the edge, darker than the rest of it, that indicated the cup was used too frequently, yet washed too rarely.

The rim of the cup slid in between Sasuke's lips, and the youth took a gulp. The liquid was hot and sweet; half of it washed down his throat reflexively; the other half, he spat right out on the floor before he knew what he was doing.

"You're cleaning it up," Naruto grumbled.

"There was sugar in it."

Naruto's eyes widened in mock surprise.

"I know!" he said in a theatrical, sing-song voice. "Because, guess what? It was my cup! Yours is over there."

Sasuke glanced at the other cup – a cleaner cup, filled with sugar-free tea. It was white on both sides; Naruto's one – a gaudy, shapeless mug – was white on the inside, but covered in bright orange glazing on the outside. Only a blind man could confuse them – and Sasuke wasn't that blind yet.

Naruto's cup was flashy and stupid, much like Naruto himself. It was screaming at him, daring him to taste that blasted oversweetened tea.

The corner of Naruto's mouth twisted upwards.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he promised. "Don't do anything stupid."

The look Sasuke addressed him was that of mingled condescension and annoyance. 'Stupid' was Naruto's thing, not his.

The door banged shut, and he was left alone in Naruto's small apartment with two cups of quickly cooling tea for a company. The blind was down; he could see the sky through the slit that formed where the blind came off of the wall. It amused him that he hadn't been discovered yet. Ten days before, Naruto had dragged him to the newly rebuilt Konoha and shoved him into this pathetic excuse for a flat and had nearly been holding him prisoner here ever since. Sasuke was too tired to argue with him anyway.

He had expected to be found on the first night. Naruto had left the balcony door open because it was too hot and hadn't even bothered to lower his voice when talking to Sasuke and even using his name once or twice.

"Stop being so edgy," he had said. "They have more important stuff to do than lurking around my place."

And so he had been living with Naruto for ten days. Naruto had never been a good liar, in his opinion. Yet somehow he managed to go out every morning, do his business in the outside world and come home safely, without having told everyone and their mother that Sasuke was back.

While Naruto was away, all Sasuke could do was explore the apartment. It was small and empty, most of Naruto's belongings (not numerous from the start) having perished during Pain's invasion. There was little furniture: a bed, two chairs (one of them serving as a temporary place to pile up Naruto's clean clothes; the other one being a nighttable), and a kitchen table complete with one low stool. The fridge that was hiding in the farthest corner of the kitchen appeared to be very old. At night, when the entire village was quiet, it let out strange, surreal rumbling.

"You'll have to tell them," Sasuke had said to Naruto on the fifth day. "What's the point in keeping me here?"

"I'll tell them when I know they won't lynch you," Naruto had objected.

Sometimes he stayed at home almost all day. He would sneak off early in the morning, do some work-out on the deformed training grounds, and come back to annoy the living hell out of Sasuke. He would chatter non-stop, studiously ignoring Sasuke's sour countenance, ask questions knowing full well he would receive no answer, tell him news from the village, and so on. The conversation was purely one-sided. The only topic Sasuke consented to discuss was that of his future; incidentally it was the only topic Naruto tried to avoid.

Sasuke hated such days with passion. It was bad enough having to live with Naruto, not knowing exactly why he hadn't left yet. If Naruto was out, there would be no one to stop him. Hell, even if Naruto was home, there was no one to stop him! Sasuke contemplated the opportunity of escape many times, yet something always stopped him.

"That's it," he declared at the end of the first week. "I'm turning myself in."

To his surprise, instead of yelling, Naruto jumped him, pinned him against the wall and said, "No," and refused to move until Sasuke promised not to leave the flat.

Come night, he would lie, sleepless, on the tatami that served as his bedding and ruminate about his past. He used to divide it into periods: before the massacre, before Team Seven, before the Sound, before the Akatsuki – but lately the past formed a continuous line. He reflected over all happenings without emotion, as though it had never been his life.

Not his voice…

'Hey, Dad! Me an' Itachi played hide-and-seek today, an' I found him, but he ran away with a clone! That's not fair, right?'

Nor Itachi's voice…

'Some day, when you have the same eyes as me, come before me.'

Nor Kakashi's voice…

'They say an exposed nail should be hammered in.'

Not even Naruto's voice…

'Why didn't you kill me back then!? Is that what you call severing bonds, Sasuke!?'

Nothing seemed real anymore.

He would often remember how it all ended. In blood and fire and blue flashes of Chidori. Too quickly.

He would remember Karin lying on the ground, limp and powerless, her skin lined with bleeding gashes. Her hair was so red, as red as her blood that was drying up in a thin film across her cheeks. He had lowered himself on the ground near her and looked at her, almost through her. She would die.

"Well, fuck…" she had murmured in a raspy, alien voice, not hers. "You go, 'kay? I'm… f-fine."

She would have cried if she had been able to. Suigetsu had leaned closer to Sasuke and whispered two words in his ear, a strange request, coming from someone as him. Sasuke cursed them silently now. So much had gone unsaid, gone without a trace. Why did they have to get him mixed up in their business? But back then, Sasuke did what Suigetsu had asked him to do: leaned into her and kissed her, just a brushing of his lips against hers, but it had made her happy.

She had died.

And now Sasuke was locked up in someone's apartment in a half-destroyed/half-rebuilt village, unable to fall asleep and living out waking dreams.

Naruto.

He gritted his teeth. Naruto's apartment. Naruto's. Naruto's. Naruto's. He thought that if he chanted the name long enough, his breath ragged and short, he could make himself remember how the hell he had ended up here. Make connections. Because reality was slipping away from him. He thought he was going mad.

Naruto's room was… Naruto's. He spent a lot of time just pacing about it when Naruto was out. The chair-turned-nighttable had pictures on it, one of them being that old Team Seven photo. It had been a stupid day. And the picture was idiotic. And the angle it was sitting at looked strange. Sasuke approached the bed and craned out his neck to see it the way Naruto must have seen it. Every time Naruto lay on his left, he would see the young Sasuke's morose face.

Oh.

Stupidstupidstupidbloodystupid…

Contrary to the days that Naruto spent at home, they didn't talk much if he had been out all day. On days like that, he would often come back emaciated and sleep like a log, the pillow at his feet, the blanket on the floor, the green necklace gleaming faintly over his t-shirt. He would drag himself across the floor in the morning, yawning and groaning, and leave his bed unmade. At first Sasuke didn't touch it, not caring for the mess the blockhead made. He would sit on the floor opposite the bed and watch the bedsheets lose their warmth and the dents disappear.

Twelve days after the first night he found himself making Naruto's bed absentmindedly. Smoothing the sheets, placing the pillow on its rightful place, laying the blanket and the cover afresh. Just for the sake of it. Naruto never seemed to pay attention.

More than two weeks after his secret return, he was discovered. Naruto had gone out, but left the door unlocked, most likely by accident. Sasuke heard the intruder before he saw her; she felt him before she saw him. Her hand shot up, ready to strike him down with a fistful of chakra. He was faster. He had her pinned against the wall, hand over her mouth, and looked into her shocked eyes coolly.

"Don't," he said.

Sakura nodded weakly. He let go of her and took a step back. She eyed him in astonishment, pink strands falling over her forehead in disarray.

"Does Naruto–?" she began uncertainly.

"Of course. It was his idea."

She balled her hands into fists and was about to say something when the door suddenly opened again and Naruto came in. She saw him over Sasuke's shoulder, lunged towards him and smacked him forcefully on the crown of his head.

"What the hell were you thinking?" she hissed.

Naruto began mumbling apologies, saying he was just going to tell her, and Sasuke left them to it and retired into the kitchen. He felt nothing, having had Sakura find him. He sat at the table and stared at the dish shelf, with the ugly orange mug standing out like an ugly orange smudge against the rest of the tableware.

He remembered Suigetsu. He remembered him walking away, slightly battered, but alive – alive unlike Karin who was lying in the clotted pool of her blood, her hair so red. Suigetsu was dragging Kisame's sword away. The sword weighed more than the Mist nin could manage, but he was too stubborn to give it up.

"You are a royal pain in the ass," Suigetsu had said. "You are a self-absorbed little bitch with no sense of humour whatsoever, but with a crapload of obsessions. You'd make your way over corpses if need be and you care shit about those around you. I hated every minute of working with you. However… if you never need something, just give me a shout, will you?"

Suigetsu was strange. He was not a friend, yet these words were not common courtesy. If anything, Suigetsu couldn't care less about courtesy. He had meant every word. Should Sasuke ever need a favour, he was free to ask. And he couldn't comprehend why.

The same as he couldn't comprehend why Sakura hadn't reported him to Tsunade. He was a criminal after all; he had killed the Elders. Sakura came as often as she could and brought them home-made food, guessing how sick Sasuke was of cup ramen.

It was three weeks after the final battle when Sasuke was discovered once more. This time it was Kakashi who wandered into the room through the balcony door and stuck his curious nose into the kitchen where Naruto and Sakura were arguing about something.

"Mmm, secrets, eh?" he drawled, referring to Sasuke who was reading in the corner. Uchiha looked up at him, and Kakashi smiled beneath the mask. "Hello, Sasuke."

Naruto squinted up at Sakura. She looked just as disconcerted as he did.

"It wasn't me," she protested.

For some reason, Kakashi not reporting him was less of a surprise. Kakashi had always had his motives for everything. More often than not these motives were obscure and had to do with teamwork and various mush of the sort. Sasuke didn't even want to know what his former sensei was trying to achieve.

Three people knew he was here now, yet it brought no drastic changes into his lifestyle. Kakashi wouldn't come by very often; Sakura took every chance to visit him if she wasn't busy in the hospital; Naruto would still run off early in the morning and come home half-dead late at night. The days when he would try to chatter him to death dwindled.

Sasuke began having strange dreams. The dreams were always perfectly silent, save for a small bell ringing irritably somewhere above him. He walked an empty street, the bell ringing and ringing, and as he moved on through the starless night, houses would rise around him, and he would recognize the Uchiha Compound. People would appear. His parents, faceless shades of his clansmen, Team Seven – to his left. Orochimaru, Madara, Hawk – to his right. He harboured no hate or affection to any of these people. Nothing. At some points in his life they had been important to him.

Someone stood at the end of the road, waiting for him. He woke up before he could see the face.

He woke up alone. Naruto was already gone or hadn't come back at all. Sasuke stirred on the tatami, draught passing over the bare floor. He rubbed his nosebridge wearily; his head was aching dully. He rose and walked to the window, but changed his mind in the last instant. Twenty-six days. He was a prisoner of this place.

Naruto's bed was a mess. Sasuke picked up the blanket and sat on the edge of the bed. A thin strip of sunrise stretched across the sky; he could see it through the ever-present slit between the blind and the wall. He lowered himself into the warm swirl of bedsheets and tucked his legs up. A mixture of scents clung to the bedclothes. Sasuke tried unwittingly to figure out which one of them belonged to Naruto and whether Naruto had his own specific scent at all.

Stupid.

Two days later he found himself standing paralyzed in front of the door that led to freedom. Out there, the sun was shining, birds were singing and the whole bright, crazy world was in motion. Sasuke was disgusted to find a worm of fear eating at his gut. He had grown too accustomed to being locked up. What he was about to do was insane. He planned to go out in the open because for once, he wasn't too embarrassed to admit that he couldn't take it anymore.

He opened the door and stepped outside. Made his way down the stairs, stepped into the light. The light accumulated in his hair and in the dark fabric of his t-shirt and crashed down in liquid gold as he walked.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Tsunade asked in a steely voice as he entered her office.

Sasuke surveyed her coolly. She looked tired, older than he remembered her.

"I've come to surrender," he said. She remained silent, fixing him with a stern gaze. He continued: "I've been here for a month. With–."

"You foolish twit!" Tsunade barked. "Did you really think I was that stupid? Of course I knew you were here all along!"

She seemed very annoyed. Suddenly the reason for it was a mystery to him no more.

"Naruto," he murmured. "You were covering up for him."

"The villagers love Naruto," Tsunade said. "How could they not after what he's done? Yet I don't think they'd be particularly happy to find out he was hiding you for a bloody month." She sighed, undoubtedly imagining a fit the villagers would throw when they processed the truth and a fit Naruto would through when he learnt Sasuke had given them that chance. "Wait here."

She vanished for half an hour. Sasuke waited patiently for her return. Her office was much smaller than the one in the Hokage Tower; this one must have been temporary.

When she came in, a bell chimed somewhere close. Sasuke threw up his head.

"Do you want to stay here, Sasuke?" Tsunade asked sharply.

"I don't plan to leave now, if that's what you want to know."

She seemed dissatisfied by the answer but didn't pursue the matter.

"House arrest," she said, "until I make up my mind what use I should put you to. Go back to Naruto's and stay there."

Sasuke's jaw tensed.

"Put me in prison," he said listlessly.

"Thanks to you and your friends, we have no prison at the moment. And rebuilding it is not our first priority, sorry. Now go before I assigned you an ANBU escort!"

Thirty-three days into his 'imprisonment' Sasuke broke Naruto's orange mug. It slipped treacherously right out of his hands and fell on the floor. Fortunately, it was empty.

Sasuke stared at the shatters of orange ceramics. Shit.

He thought he should repair it. He rummaged through Naruto's belongings in search of glue, but couldn't find it. It occurred to him that being so worked up over a stupid cup was… well, stupid. Having found no glue, he sat down on the stool and stared at the fragments that were still scattered over the floor.

Somebody knocked on the door. Sasuke shook his head, marveling at his own strange behaviour, and proceeded to open it. Behind it, there was Sakura's warm, slightly embarrassed smile. She felt awkward around him, especially alone. He couldn't blame her.

They didn't know what to talk about until she noticed the mess he had made while looking for glue. She asked what it was about, and he told her. She glanced at the orange fragments near the kitchen table and snorted.

"Since it's Naruto we're talking about…" She opened the fridge and groped for a small wrinkled tube. "Here you are!"

"You've changed," Sasuke said.

Sakura laughed. "Why? Because I know that Naruto's enough of a scatterbrain to shove glue into the fridge and forget about it?"

Sasuke shrugged. It was just a fact; he didn't mean anything by it.

The mug looked good as new. He appraised his work and placed it back on the shelf. Naruto came home late as usual and didn't notice anything. For some reason, it felt wrong. "There's something wrong with my cup, what did you do with it?" would feel right. "Oi, bastard! You think such a slipshod work could cover up the fact that you'd broken my cup?" would feel right. Not paying any attention at all didn't.

Sasuke dreamt about the empty street and the bell again. he noticed something that night: two people were missing from the dream, Itachi and Naruto. He wondered why it was so.

"Do you know why I brought you here?" Kakashi asked on the thirty-eighth day.

"Hn," grunted Sasuke.

They stood in the middle of the training ground where Team Seven's 'survival training' had taken place years ago. Technically, he wasn't allowed to leave Naruto's apartment yet, but Kakashi had always had a certain knack for disregarding rules.

Bells jingled. Sasuke's eyes widened slightly, but then he saw two familiar bells in Kakashi's hand. The Copy-nin must have been thoroughly enjoying this.

It didn't take Sasuke long to get the bells. Kakashi seemed pleased. He ruffled Sasuke's hair like he was a little kid and then said:

"You really don't wish to learn to have fun, do you? I made Naruto and Sakura go through this test again a while ago. Ask them how they beat me."

Sasuke was not interested.

"How did you beat Kakashi during the bell test?" he asked Naruto at dinner.

Naruto arched his eyebrows, surprised; swallowed the food he was chewing and said:

"Well… Ero-sennin's new book was out, and Kakashi-sensei was in the middle of reading it. We started telling him how it ends, and he covered his ears and shut his eyes. We won."

He still didn't notice the cup had been broken.

Karin died, Suigetsu left, but Juugo was in Konoha. Sasuke knew it because Juugo had walked to Konoha with him and Naruto after the final battle. "I would rather be close to you," he had said. It always unnerved Sasuke how Juugo could spit something like that out in such casual tones.

Juugo had turned himself in and had been placed under surveillance. "Help me," he had pleaded with Tsunade. She was a notorious medic-nin after all; perhaps she could do as well as Orochimaru had.

Sasuke knew Juugo was in Konoha, but he hadn't seen him for forty-six days.

He would sneak out of his prison cell quite often these days. Kakashi seemed to enjoy those little sparring sessions, and Sasuke certainly didn't mind spending as much time outside Naruto's apartment as possible. He never came across anyone but Kakashi; they could have consciously been avoiding him or just didn't pass by that training ground. He wondered if Tsunade was aware of his escapades.

Forty-six days after his return Sasuke walked in on Naruto taking shower.

"Do you mind?" Naruto grumbled.

Sasuke shrugged, reached for the toothbrush and set to brushing his teeth nonchalantly.

Splashes of water lingered on the floor long after Naruto had left. The bathroom resembled the wet-warm mouth of a carnivorous cave wanting to swallow him. The mirror grew misted over and the warmth clung needily to the damp tile.

Sasuke required a shower after sparring, but he couldn't bring himself to enter that cubicle. His legs carried him towards Sakura's place.

She was surprised, but rather pleased to see him.

"Come in," she said.

"Are you alone?" He noticed that this place was different from where he remembered her living. But it was neat and nice, as expected of her.

"Yes; my very own apartment," Sakura beamed. "Well, my parents actually live down the hall, but…"

"I need to take a shower." Her eyebrows slanted upwards quizzically. "Naruto's… is broken," he elaborated, feeling very idiotic. "Pipes."

Sakura nodded in amusement.

Her shower was girly. He noticed it straight away; smelt it rather than saw it. Naruto's bathroom shelf was empty save for a pair of toothbrushes, a tube of toothpaste and a few small packets of shampoo. Sakura's one was filled with various gels, creams, flower-shaped sponges; there was even a hairdryer in a special holder attached to the wall. Sasuke felt like he was intruding.

A tight jet of water crashed down on him. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to imagine the bathroom in his old house, and realized that he couldn't. Bathrooms at Orochimaru's smelt of medicants; bathrooms at the Akatsuki hideout had no scent at all.

A flask of shower gel was open and emitted a vague soothing perfume of lotus flower and green tea. The water was hot, almost scorching. The plumbing worked fine.

"Thank you," Sasuke said, once out of the bathroom. His wet bangs glistened heavily, plastered to his forehead.

Sakura asked him if he wanted a cup of tea. He thought cups might hold a personal grudge against him and declined politely. There was nothing else they could talk about, so he left.

Naruto was not at home. The shower left Sasuke refreshed, though he still felt pleasantly tired after the sparring session. Naruto's bed enticed him with its stupid yellow blanket. He collapsed into it, feeling like he was lying inside a lemon pie. It was melting around him, the lemon filling dribbling all over him. He felt indeed like drowning.

He pondered the possibility of moving out of Naruto's apartment. The problem was that he had no other place to go to. Kakashi might have let him in, but not once had he brought the prospect of it up in conversation, and Sasuke wouldn't ask him to. Sakura was out of question. He needed his own apartment.

He got it on the fifty-fourth day of his imprisonment. Tsunade told him his service was required and loaded him with silly D-rank missions enough and to spare. Naruto made a strange face upon hearing Sasuke would be getting a flat of his own, and wished him luck.

The first day of his relative freedom came fifty-five days after his return to Konoha. Having completed all the silly D-rank missions, Sasuke roamed the streets he didn't recognize until he came to the hospital. Something prompted him to walk inside and ask about a particular patient. He wasn't even sure he would find him here, but they told him he was down in the new experimental labs and had been docile for many weeks; therefore, Tsunade allowed him to have visitors.

Sasuke came down to the labs and walked past the rows of empty chambers with plexiglass doors. He found Juugo at the end of the hall, talking to a bird. The bird was small and bright blue, and Sasuke thought with slight trepidation that it reminded him of somebody's eyes.

Juugo noticed him, and his lips twitched. He never really smiled, but in his own way, he was happy to see Sasuke now. Happy, Sasuke thought – that was strange. What was there to be happy about? He took a chair and sat in front of the door for half an hour, watching Juugo interact with the bird. Then he left, and Juugo saw him off with a grateful nod. Sasuke told himself he would drop by again.

On the fifth day of freedom Naruto came to visit him. He looked dumb, shifting his feet on the doorstep.

"Nice flat," he said. "Very, er… empty." And he smiled.

In Sasuke's opinion, there was nothing nice about the flat. He said, "Hn," and looked at Naruto, waiting for him to say something.

"Well, if you don't like it here, you can always move back in!" Naruto blurted out. Sasuke's face darkened. He stood there, silent and grim, unable to take his eyes off of Naruto's stupid face. "Yeah… I think I'll just, you know… go."

"Yes," Sasuke said quietly. I feel lonely.

He wanted to add something, maybe even fire off something foolish, and he took a deep breath to do it – but Naruto was already gone. Naruto did everything very quickly.

At night Sasuke couldn't sleep. He held the trophy bells he had taken from Kakashi above his head and watched them gleam faintly in the twilight. He thought about Naruto and wondered whether the blockhead had meant his proposition about moving back in. Like I would even consider it, Sasuke smirked moodily. You stupid bastard, you're in my blood and you don't even know it. He felt useless. He had never been good at talking.

A little over a week after he was officially released, Sasuke stopped counting down the days. He could see no point in it. He was a free man, as free as the Hokage's restrictions allowed. He was once again doing something for the benefit of his native village, making up for all the damage he had caused. The most ironic thing about it was that Tsunade undoubtedly knew he didn't give a damn about the village. It wasn't his home; he just happened to be staying there.

Time went by. He slept better now, without dreams to disturb him, though it still took him a while to fall asleep. Tsunade didn't put him on a team but assigned him an ANBU supervisor. The man was humourless and didn't talk much; Sasuke found it good.

Juugo progressed rapidly. Sasuke suspected that Tsunade liked him; he knew for a fact that she was thinking of letting him out of the labs if only for a few minutes every day.

Sasuke continued training with Kakashi if time let him. Sometimes Sakura would catch him in the hospital, and they would talk a little (or rather, she would talk and he would stand there, statue-like, and listen). Sai decided that he had to make friends with Sasuke since he was part of Team Seven – at least according to the members of Team Seven. Sasuke dismissed his advances, and Sai wasn't much of a pest to pursue the matter.

Others didn't talk to him.

"The door was open," Naruto said one day, poking his head into Sasuke's room. The room was as empty as the day Naruto had first visited him.

Sasuke skewed his eyes upon him. He was lying on the bed, watching a strange yellowish spot that was slowly spreading in the corner. There must have been a leak in the roof.

"Hn," Sasuke uttered.

Naruto dragged himself inside and stood next to the bed.

"You seem distant," he said. "More than usual, I mean."

Look who's talking, Sasuke wanted to think, but his mind took a holiday. He lay quietly, the half-formed thought splashing fluidly in his head. Plop-plop.

"Why did you move out?" Naruto asked suddenly. "Do you really hate me that much?"

Sasuke turned his head to look at him. What the hell was he blabbering about?

Before he knew it, Naruto flung himself on the bed and wrapped his arms around Sasuke. Sasuke stiffened; he didn't like to be touched.

"I just wanted you to be happy," Naruto said constrainedly. "I thought that maybe if it all ended, you'd be happy. Just for a while. But you're not, are you?"

Sasuke sighed. This Naruto, he did know.

"I don't hate you," he said.

Naruto pulled away and looked at the yellow stain on the ceiling. His lips were compressed bitterly. Sasuke rolled to his side, facing him, and suddenly, in spite of him, the corners of his mouth twisted upwards, entirely out of his control. Naruto radiated that strange soothing warmth, lying so simply near him.

"I broke your ugly orange cup," Sasuke said.

After a short pause, Naruto snickered:

"I know."

"You noticed, then?"

Naruto fixed him with a long, indefinite gaze before saying almost inaudibly:

"Everything about you is important to me."

Sasuke thought that perhaps moving back into Naruto's apartment wasn't such a bad idea. The yellow stain on the ceiling was growing by the hour; the roof might actually crack…

February 15–20, 2009