Kakashi kept talking in his amused yet wholey psycotic way, the tones going up and down and all around as Naruto sat on his couch and thought of what had just happened. His body ached. The entire thing. It felt like someone had torn him apart from the inside out, and yet it felt right. His once teacher began rambling about some moral code that he'd thought he'd instilled in his students but Naruto was too spaced out to notice. As far as he was concerned this wasn't about them.
It wasn't meant to happen this way. Sakura and Naruto had just so recently got together and he'd even slipped the ring on her finger just a few months ago. They had both been so ecstatic, he had hoped that for both of them their love would be enough to conquoer what still managed to haunt them. But even the engagement party and wedding plans didn't stop the constant talks of their lost partner, even while they were in bed together at night. There had been more than one occasion where his wife-to-be would even mumble Sasuke's name as she cried silently into the pillow. Those things didn't bother him, he understood her pain, but his lover's voice cooing in his ear at night and asking him if he thought that Sasuke was out there right now, thinking of them... He hated conversations like that. So many years had gone now with Sasuke in the wind and never heard of. He had never given up hope that his rival and friend was still out there fighting the unseen battle, he knew it all too well that they sat in peace while Sasuke was on the run, in pain and scared.
He supposed that's how this all happened.
He'd come to Kakashi's house not to get away from Sakura, but to try to understand better Sasuke's pain. He wasn't sure how they'd wound up having sex, except that he'd started it. He remembered asking his old captain if he knew anything about the pain that Sasuke had felt, why it was he was so hell bent on never coming home. And he remembered the flat deadpan voice of their teacher begin a story to him about how Sasuke's life had gone. Thinking back that must have been what had happened. All he wanted to do his entire life was to just hold Sasuke, to look into his red sharingan eyes and to take away all that pain. To let him have control of his life. He glanced up through glossy eyes at Kakashi who was still ranting about something or another and cocked his head to the side. Somewhere in the mix of words he'd heard Sakura's name. The only other person on the planet that he cared to protect, he wondered why he couldn't have them both.
Shaking his head, defeated, he rested his face and buried it deep into his arms, slumped over on Kakashi's uncomfortable couch. He couldn't hear or understand his teacher anymore, but like a zombie, he pulled himself upright once the ANBU touched his shoulder. He grabbed the rest of his things, thanking Kakashi for the understanding he'd brought to him, and a swift, curt apology about anything else that might have happened, He'd go home to Sakura, where he belonged; kiss her soft lips and tell her just what a wonderful wife and mother to his children that she was going to make, then make love with the woman he cared most for in the world.
And then tomorrow... he'd come back to Kakashi and ask him for the next chapter in Sasuke's life.
