Disclaimer: if Naruto belonged to me, two thirds of the characters wouldn't exist and the ending would have targeted a different audience.
The wait
Naruto knew marrying Hinata had been a bad idea.
It had first come to him as flickering thought, like a mosquito buzzing around his head while they were dating but (just like a mosquito) he batted it away and forgot about it for a while.
It next visited him in the form of a sensation, that of having the stomach heavy with ice, the day he was going to marry. At the moment he thought it was a case of the jitters.
He allowed the idea room for consideration the first time he and Sasuke fought over the matter, but he tried not to dwell too much on the subject.
Naruto admitted to himself he had not given that particular idea the thought he ought to the day he witnessed Sasuke's and Sakura's wedding, when tears came unbidden to his eyes at the sight of the cold mandatory kiss the couple exchanged. Sakura was so happy. Naruto told himself there was no turning back as he hugged and congratulated her.
By the time he came to terms with his being homosexual, Naruto had already accepted marrying Hinata was one of the biggest mistakes of his life. They never slept together again after that, but Hinata was already pregnant with his daughter.
He was never sorrier than the day he confessed everything to Sasuke, but came home the next day anyway; his heart full of guilt and an excuse ready in his lips. He did not even use it, Hinata did not ask.
Naruto apologized to Sasuke the day Sakura asked to divorce him, because he looked at his children and ate his breakfast and looked at his stranger of a wife― and the words did not come.
Naruto woke up every morning to an empty cold bed and hated himself to the core.
He had thought it could not get worse, until today. He had never felt so awful about his decision of marrying a woman he had never really loved.
The image came back to the front of his mind: vivid and painful in all its colorful, crude glory.
He had been shouting for over ten minutes for Boruto to turn down the volume of the ear-splitting loud music the boy was hearing. The plates in the kitchen made soft twinkling sounds along the vibrations that raked the house. The boy, of course, could not hear. At long last, Naruto had climbed the stairs and opened his son's bedroom door to shout him down into obedience when the sight that greeted him stopped him dead. Sweat-covered bodies broke suddenly apart, haphazardly covering themselves with the blankets. The smell of sex was heavy in the air. Sarada broke into tears.
"Dad!" yelled Boruto, face flushed with anger, shame and arousal. "Get out! What d'you think you're doing barging in my room without knocking, fuck's sake!"
"I just," Naruto had stammered. "The music… I…"
"Fuck off! I hate you! Y'hear? You're the worst fucking excuse for a father in the five fucking ninja nations!"
Naruto still felt like he would sick up.
Was there any way of telling your son he had been bedding the daughter of his father's lover? How long had it been since they had been… well, doing it? Did Sasuke know?
God, he needed some solace.
"Sasuke," Naruto murmured, rubbing his face with both hands. He was sitting atop his own head, in the Valley of the End, where commemorative statues of him and Sasuke had replaced the destroyed versions of Madara and Hashirama. Before him, Sasuke's impassive rock face remained mute and uncaring. "I need you now. Where are you? Why can't you ever stay home?"
But of course he knew the answer to that last question. He would run away, too, if there was not and office and a bunch of people that depended on him. And to think he had even wondered why Sasuke gave up the possibility of being hokage so easily!
"I'm an idiot, I'm such an idiot…" he said, wishing to be brave enough to jump into the waters below and never again come back out for air. Wishing Sasuke was there to punch him and point out how everything was Naruto's own fault and kiss him and fuck him senseless until everything else was no more but the two of them.
-X-
Two months later, Sasuke was back. Naruto was in his office, trying to convince himself he should read the Water Usage Treaty and not do paper planes with it, but the window was open and there was the slightest of breezes and it was just so tempting.
Then he felt Sasuke's chakra.
"Dog, Badger, out," he commanded. The two ANBU obeyed at once. The next moment Sasuke was standing before him, covered in his dusty dark cloak. He reached out with his only remaining arm and closed the door.
"What is it, dobe?"
"Take me somewhere far away."
In Sasuke's eyes, black bled into red and the world spun and faded for a moment to black to be replaced with an infinity of skies and grass and clouds. There was only the two of them and the soft caress of green in the skin as layers of cloth were shed and hands reached out and tongues met hungrily, then lazily. There was hot and there was warmth, and pain, and light, and love.
"I don't ever want to go back," said Naruto sometime later. He had no idea how much time had really elapsed in real life.
"Hn."
"Boruto and Sarada are having sex."
A dark eyebrow raised in feigned interest.
"Do you really not care?"
"I don't much care about anything."
"What about me?"
"Hn."
Naruto sighed.
"Sometimes I wish I was dead, do you know what I mean?"
"…"
"I keep remembering that time, the night we spent together, bleeding out and gazing up at the stars. It sounds ridiculously appealing, now. It would have been nice, if that had been the end. We messed up… I messed up."
"Hn."
"How was your journey?"
Sasuke shrugged. He always did.
Naruto laughed then, humorlessly, raggedly. A laugh weighed down by his frustration.
"Sometimes I wonder if you see someone else― or others, when you travel. You wanted to restore your clan, after all. Right?"
"…"
"Then I remember I have no right to complain."
Sasuke looked at him sideways then. No emotion betrayed his black gaze.
"How big is the world?" asked Naruto after a while.
"Big."
"Infinite?"
"Hn."
Silence stretched for a long and peaceful time, only broken by the soft whisper of their breaths and the distant murmurs of running water.
"Are you looking for something, is that why you keep going away?"
Sasuke thought carefully, then shook his head.
"Then you must be waiting for something to happen."
"…"
"Is there hope, do you think?"
Sasuke breathed deeply and exhaled slowly, as if savoring the moment.
"I don't know," he answered at last.
-X-
The next time Sasuke abandoned Konoha, a shadow appeared before him, stepping resolutely amidst the trees.
"I'm going with you."
It was not Sakura.
"About time, usuratonkachi."