Belief

Summary: Love will always have two faces. NaruSasu. ItaSasu. One-shot.

Disclaimer: As usual, Naruto is not mine.

A/N: It's been awhile since I've written some ItaSasu fic so here it is.

Belief,

Makes things real

Makes this feel

Feel alright

Belief,

Makes things true

Things like you

You and I

-Belief, Gavin DeGraw

---

"It's getting cold out here already. Are you trying to kill yourself faster?"

"Shut up, I'm enjoying the scenery here."

Naruto snorted and walked up to his lover sitting comfortably pallid on the bench atop the Konoha hospital. The sun was slowly setting towards the horizon earning a healthy orange glow painting the village's sky. Sasuke welcomed him with a soft smile from his dry lips; lips he'd never get tired of kissing, caressing, taking….

"You know you shouldn't be loitering outside your room." Naruto sat himself beside Sasuke releasing a soft sigh of contentment. Feeling his lover's warmth emanating from the small bench brought a wider smile to his lips.

"Being a Hokage's lover has its perks, you know." Sasuke smiled and raised a brow as if expecting another rant from the Naruto "And please, that Hokage outfit of yours makes me want to puke."

Naruto sniffed haughtily. "I'll have you know that this is the latest fashion for top ninjas here in Konoha." Sasuke only rolled his eyes at the statement. It's been four, no five and half years since… since everything happened. Everything that changed his life.

The dark history surrounding Konoha will never fade, Tsunade once claimed. Naruto never believed such but now, as he stood by the Leaf Village as their Hokage, well perceptions change as time goes by.

Sasuke. He almost lost his mind upon seeing his former teammate turned traitor turned lover (finally) sprawled on the bloody ground outside Konoha's walls barely breathing with Orochimaru's mark eating his body alive. Sasuke. The Uchiha heir who returned to his home's solace with a damaged soul and an unfulfilled vendetta.

Sakura wept against his arms for four days nonstop while Tsunade and all the best medics in the village tried to revive Sasuke from the verge of a brutal death. Five years in passing and all those bitter memories buried with all the dead, the victims and fighters. All of them six feet under, but never forgotten.

"I'm trying to talk into your iota of a brain and yet my attempt will forever be futile, isn't it?"

"What?"

"The sun's beautiful." Naruto scowled at the sudden change of topic, missing Sasuke's main talk. He felt him shudder and suddenly realized the sun has passed below the horizon, blue-black color grazing the sky with studded stars. It was indeed getting cold out here. Naruto shrugged off his top coat and placed it around Sasuke's frail shoulders, shoulders that once were brimming with quick reflexes and igniting chakra now all thin and skinny.

What he wouldn't give to bring back Sasuke's health, a mantra he's been bearing upon knowing Sasuke's fateful condition. A body slowly degenerating. Much power to be handled by a twenty years old body. Please help him. Please. Please. Please.

He didn't even know when their platonic relationship bridged towards an intimate one. He resigned himself to think that he's been harboring such feelings for the Uchiha since time immemorial. All those bickering and tiffs considered as another form of expressing his inner emotions. Afraid to express the real thing out loud. Fear of rejection. Pain. Struggle. Happiness. Is it achieved now?

Sometimes when he makes love to his dark-haired lover, he would occasionally catch him drifting off somewhere he couldn't reach. He couldn't breach because he's not the right person to enter it. Painful. Stabbing. Sasuke would turn his head aside, towards the window as if expecting. Hoping. Anticipating. Yearning for his return. His return. But will he?

Sakura would sometimes give him this… this pitiful look he would never consciously admit to catching. Shikamaru or even Konohamaru could sense it, too. His friends would smile and greet him—for he is the Hokage. Deference is a must before the informalities. But against his back, there lies that sympathy. Empathy. Understanding. He's willing to wait and wait and wait.

"Do you want me to get you coffee?" Naruto forced himself to veer from those thoughts. Sasuke knows him better than anyone. Knows him better than he knows himself. He will feel the flood of emotions before h could even stop it. It makes him smile a little. Just a little.

"Hmm, get it fast will you?" Sasuke drawled (how he loved that tone) as he stole him a look. A look that will never put past complete love. It's just… admiration. Friendship. Tenderness. Adoration. It hurt like hell.

Naruto mock saluted him before pulling his lover against himself, burying his face against that scented dark hair he came to love for half a decade. "I love you," he muttered fiercely against it muffling the words but the perspicuousness was indubitably met.

A warm yet pale hand gave his thigh a knowing squeeze which sent tingles down his spine. Love. Still hoping. "I know."

-----

Two hot cups in both hands warming his palms to a brink of scalding but he never mind. He will never mind slight pain when he survived a war of arrows, spells, curses and exhaustion. This was nothing.

Naruto stopped short from the back of the rooftop. Finally. And it hurt. Kills him. Drowns him. A small frown marred his tan skin as one, no, two pairs of dark haired men stood in front of each other. The smaller one cupping the taller man's face, his ashen appearance bursting with a certain kind of desperation. Relief. Warmth. Love. Something he's been expecting to pass by his lover's face as he sees him. Him. Uzumaki Naruto. Hokage. Friend. Confidante. Lover.

Nii-san. He could almost read his lover's lips saying those. Why come now? After all these years…. Turn back. Turn back as he would've preferred he could not. He'd rather face the bane of his covert suffering from afar and see his lover—the only person he's loved more than his life—come to an end. And the scalding heat turned ice cold.

Hands grazed his lover's waist with comfortable grip, a grip only he should have the right to do. No need for words, Naruto could feel it. Feel the passion suppressed for more than a decade between two Uchihas. And somehow, in one way or another he could not put the blame of a one-sided five year affair to Sasuke. To his Sasuke that gave in to his want, need because he was begging for it. Just for a part of that to be his. And Sasuke relented to that, because that's the only way he could repay all those love/help/love/love/love to him. Selfish as it may seem, he would never regretted it.

Sasuke now has his face buried on his shoulder. Once. Only this once will they see each other again. Him and Sasuke. Naruto and Sasuke. Will he take Sasuke away from him? Will this all be a waking dream he would have to disregard? Power was his. A snap of his fingers will let this dream move on, continue but will he ever be happy about it? Can he still stand that same distant look Sasuke has every time he worshiped his beautiful, perfect body?

He placed the cups on the ground, its usual warmth now ebbing after twenty minutes of staring. The darkness should've covered them. Children of the night. Lovers of despair. It's something that needs to be accepted. That some things will never come his way. Never. Being a leader gave him that astuteness. That sometimes gaining is equaled with losing. And love will always accompany suffering. To the person left behind.

END

A/N: My plot turned out as garbage. Argh!Review? Thanks and have a nice day. It's our summer vacation already! Wo-hoo!