As soon as the door's hinge creaks open, Sasuke moves deeper into the corner of his cell. The prickling sensation against his eyes tells him that the door has let light flood in, the cheap fluorescent type that all prisons seem to have. Two low voices exchange words, and unwillingly he recognises a familiar scent—a whiff of soap, steel and some kind of curry. The door clangs shut again, and footsteps sound on the cement floor, approaching him.
"Nice digs," Naruto says. Sasuke snorts back at him, content to stay in his stifling space, where the shadows envelope him like comforting secrets.
Naruto fumbles in the dark, after a few moments his hands click against something. Abruptly, his cell is illuminated with white light. It stabs his eyelids, fissures of lightning stealing into the corners of his eyes.
"Turn out the light," he says, voice viscous from disuse.
"Sorry," Naruto says, sounding sheepish. He dims them until he can barely make out the bony curves of Sasuke's kneecaps folded against his hollow chest. Sasuke's arms hang about him limply, as though he has forgotten to use them. There is silence for a few moments when Naruto just looks at the other boy. He sees the little changes that adulthood has brought on Sasuke's body, and like little confidences meant for him alone, he will preserve them in his mind: the carved-out quality of his face, the hollow, shadowed spaces underneath his eyes, the fiercely sharp collarbones, below his pulse.
Naruto can almost feel it from here, the steady
DUB
dub
that keeps them under the same sky.
"How long did you say it would take you?"
"You know me, I'm called the three-minute wonder."
"So what, this is a booty call?"
Snort.
"That you should be so lucky. And, never say 'booty call' ever again. It might induce spontaneous barfing in me."
"Charming, as usual."
Even in the dark, Naruto can see Sasuke's smile. It is a shy half-crescent of tender strangeness and fades quickly, not even leaving a hint of a shadow that some expression left its mark on his face.
"Sakura's getting married next month," he continues, feeling triumphant when Sasuke makes a faint sound of interest.
"That guy with the creepy facial hair?"
"Eerily accurate as that description was, people have names. Use them."
Pause.
"Want me to tell her something?"
He says it with a hopeful undertone, and there is an expectant tilt to his chin. Sasuke hates these moments, when he feels like he cannot do the right thing, when it stops being about just him and Naruto. With Naruto, he knows how to be, how far he can go, how the other boy will react. Including other people in their world just makes things messy and hopelessly confusing.
"Ask her how far along she is."
"Haha. She'll be really amused."
The slight tautness in Naruto's shoulders eases, but there is a new unhappy shadow creeping along the length of his mouth. Naruto assesses Sasuke carefully. He always does this, presses forward, smudging lines, breaking things.
"If I helped you get out of here," Naruto says, carefully noting the sudden harsh line of Sasuke's shoulders, the hunger in his stance, "Would you try to kill them?"
Sasuke looks resigned now. Naruto always tests him, prying for weakness, like a child digging its fist into a festering wound. Sasuke is all for letting the maggots feast, leaving well alone.
"Yes," he answers tonelessly. For a while there is just the sound of his own breathing—Naruto is holding his in.
"And me?"
"What about you?"
"Would you kill me too?"
"I would…try to," Sasuke answers. That is all he has left now, his capacity to be truthful. And that is all he can offer Naruto and anybody else.
He has tried explaining to Naruto before, that there is nothing left of the old Sasuke…the Sasuke that Naruto wants.
"You see what you want to see, or you make things into what you want. The truth is never important for you," he had told Naruto once. His eyes had been soft and blue and incredibly sad. Sasuke had felt an answering ache inside himself—or a frustration. He never knows anymore, what he feels. These emotions are all just shadows of what other people must feel—like paper with words faded and blurred by time, hardly recognizable. But once, Naruto would have argued, they must have made sense—to somebody.
A sharp, business-like rap on the door announces that Naruto's time is up. For a second or two, they stare at eachother wordlessly.
The light casts shadows in strange places. The hollows under Sasuke's eyes, the curve of his mouth, the line of his jaw…they all look strangely vulnerable now. He looks…young, just young.
"You need to get a haircut," Naruto says in his warm, impossibly soft voice, arm reaching for Sasuke. Sasuke flinches away, but not before Naruto can brush his hair out of his face. Sasuke feels the pulse—almost breathes it, senses it-at Naruto's wrist as it is inches away from his face, jumping wildly, as his own must be.
"Yeah," Sasuke retorts, snappishly, "Get me a salon appointment, will you?"
Naruto laughs as he exhales—it is an oddly breathless sound, then backs away. Suddenly, that smell of fruit and steel and curry is gone. The door creaks open and then shut. Naruto never says goodbye before he leaves. He just does, without warning. Abruptly, it is just Sasuke in his cell again, with his fear and his memories and his eyes…
Naruto…I'd try not to.