Vernajast's Notes - Warnings: None. There were no rules this time. I was just bored and Moiyahatake wasn't home, so I threw a few paragraphs at her in a chat window and just sort of glared at them until she got home and responded. Heh. We didn't know where this was going. It was completely random, but we fell in love with it. :D We hope you enjoy it, too.

Coming Home

naruto x sasuke

roleplayed by vernajast and moiyahatake

He is bored, tired, but can't relax at home. No amount of training or meditation seems to assuage his growing uneasiness as the long night creeps forward. He decides to try and sleep—not that he's been able to for a while now—but he doesn't go to his bedroom upstairs and crawl into his own bed.

No, he travels across the village to Naruto's empty apartment, breaks in, and flops down onto the dobe's rumpled sheets. Tentative fingers slip along the fabric of the scratchy top blanket before he grips it greedily and hugs it tight to his chest.

The idiot's been missing for three weeks, without word or sign or rumor. Sasuke isn't allowed to leave the village, and though he knows Naruto would come to search for him in his place, it was Naruto himself who worked so hard for Sasuke to even be allowed back into the village to begin with and he will NOT fuck that up now. The blanket soaks up a few stray tears, nothing that counts as crying, not really. Uchiha Sasuke doesn't cry, after all, like he doesn't worry, care, or love. "Come home, dobe."

A few hours later, Naruto limps up the stairs—one, two, three, too many, five...—his mind wandering. Wishing he lived in a house or an apartment on the ground floor. Wishing Sasuke had been home so he didn't have to drag his ass halfway across the village. Wishing the damn fox would hurry up and heal his damn leg before Baa-chan or Sakura-chan realizes he (snuck out) left the hospital. He avoided them all simply because he needs to go home. Ten, eleven, twelve, too many. Naruto stopped. Blue eyes travel up the remaining steps, a quick calculation—ten steps too many. He uses a burst of chakra to appear just inside the door and leans back, head thudding against the wood. "I'm home."

He would slide down and sit (sleep) where he lands, but a familiar scent keeps his eyes open. "Sasuke."

Sasuke stirs a little on the bed, but doesn't wake. Mutters something about 'home' and grips the blanket tighter. He's dreaming. His body twitches lightly and he mutters again, this time the word 'dobe' is clear and colored with more affection than annoyance.

Naruto smiles at the word and quickly removes his sandals, leaving them in a pile by the door. He limps his way around a few obstacles, not sure he can make it over them without falling on his face. In fact, he's pretty sure that's exactly what would happen. It's the sight of his friend curled around his blanket and not his injured leg that stops him in the doorway. It is a rare sight to see the arrogant Uchiha so vulnerable.

"I'm home." I found you. He attempts to move silently over to the bed and lowers himself to the floor, fingers hesitantly brushing the tips of dark spikes and even that takes too much effort.

A pale hand jumps up to wrap tightly around Naruto's wrist. Sharingan eyes rise and fade in an instant of recognition and then go wide in disbelief. He's sure he's still dreaming, imagining Naruto home again because the truth is far too unbearable. But Naruto's skin is warm in his hand so he doesn't fight it, the dream, just tugs lightly, scooting over to make room for the blond in the bed. He nuzzles his face into the blanket and smiles in his half-sleep.

Rolling his eyes and sighing, Naruto carefully maneuvers his leg and half-crawls, half-drags himself up into the bed. But it feels nice once he's there, and he can't help groaning, all his muscles instantly relaxing into the mattress and it's soooo good to be home he thinks maybe he'll cry. There were too many moments when he wasn't sure he'd make it back. Moments when he'd wondered what Sasuke would do if he didn't. It's a nice feeling that runs through him seeing his friend, feeling his warmth, in his bed. "I'm home." He repeats the words and throws his free arm over his eyes because he can't believe he really is lying in his own bed, but Sasuke's hand on his wrist is so warm and soft and real.

Sasuke's eyes flutter again, open this time, and his head falls to the side. Naruto's arm is snagged by his own free hand, and they slide together effortlessly, fit together as they always have. He can't tell if this is real or not. He wants it too much for it to be real.

"Clingy, teme," Naruto mumbles because he's already half asleep, too warm, too tired, too happy to care that he hurts.

"Dobe..." Sasuke's smiling crookedly again and his fluttering eyes stay open this time, blond hair assaulting his vision, but a welcome sight nonetheless. He licks his lips, trying to make sense of it, but failing to break away from sleep—the first real sleep he's had since the decision was made to call off the searches. "You're home..."

"Mmmmhome." Grunts and moves and curls into the warmth, wrapping himself around Sasuke, trying to use him as his pillow.

Sasuke's smile softens until it fades completely and he sits up abruptly in bed. "You're home!" His eyes slide over Naruto's body, looking for injuries. Something's not right, and the damned idiot came home and went to sleep instead of going to the hospital. Except the wound he finds on the dobe's leg is expertly bandaged, so it's obvious he has been there. He just escaped at some point. Of course.

The bandages are stained with blood. "Idiot, wake up!"

The blond boy whimpers at the loss of heat. "S'eep" My pillow's too noisy. And a tiny voice is screaming for him to wake up, to not fall asleep again because he should be running home. Home to Konoha. Home to Sasuke. WAKE UP! "S'suke."

"Naruto, WAKE UP!" Sasuke's hands run over the bandages and come away bloody, the sheets are starting to soak with it. He knows for certain if Sakura had been on duty this wouldn't have happened, but he knows just as certainly that she had the night off. He punches the blond in the shoulder, in the chest. "Wake up, asshole! I won't let you!"

The pain that spreads through his chest is too familiar and he moves on instinct alone, eyes frantically searching the dark, swinging and kicking and trying to back away from his attacker, cursing the pain and his stupidity. "Fucking get away from me!"

"Naruto! Wake the fuck up!" Sasuke spreads himself on top of his best friend, trying to keep him from hurting himself further. He suspects there's something lodged in the wound, and if Naruto continues thrashing around he'll only make it worse. Make it impossible to fix. And Sasuke has to fix this. "Naruto, dobe, please..."

Shaking, hands tangled in hair and clothes, the words—that voice—filter through the pounding in his ears. "S-sasuke..." There's so much relief he thinks he'll drown in it and die happy. "T-take me home."

"You are home. But you need to wake up or you're going to fucking die and I'm not losing you again!" Sasuke is already rolling off the bed, though, wrapping Naruto in the blanket he'd been snuggling before, and he's trying so hard to scoop the dead weight the blond is becoming up into his arms. The jump to the hospital is too far for him to make from Naruto's apartment. "Hold onto me. C'mon!"

"Mmmmhome." The memories those words conjure are vague and he's almost positive he's dreaming again. Dreaming about home and Sasuke. Sasuke. Dreaming about a long walk to an empty house and stairs. Too many stairs. "Hurts." The pain is the only thing keeping him from losing himself completely, blue eyes working to focus on the blurry lines of Sasuke's face. It has to be Sasuke's. Even if he has to pretend. "F-found you, S'suke."

"You found me." Sasuke nods, and then he's running, running so goddamned hard, toward the center of town, the hospital. He needs to get within line of sight to make the jump, and he needs to be there now. Chakra floods his muscles, making him strong enough, fast enough. "You better wake the fuck up, dobe, or...or I'll have to k-kick your ass!" He's starting to sound like Naruto himself, but he's getting desperate, can feel the weight in his arms increasing as Naruto starts to lose consciousness.

Naruto tries to smile, but it takes too much effort and the words "as if you could" sound so wrong to his own ears he can't be sure he's saying them out loud. So tired. He lets his eyes close because he doesn't need to see to know what Sasuke looks like; he has everything about the Uchiha committed to memory for long missions and lonely nights.

Curling his arms protectively tighter around Naruto, Sasuke finally sees the front doors of the hospital and manages a final surge of chakra that sends him hurdling through space and time to land, stumbling, on the hospital lawn. "Someone, please!" He hurls himself through the doors and into the busy waiting room, a trail of Naruto's blood dripping onto the white tiles. "Someone help him, now!"

He refuses to hand Naruto over to the nurse who comes rushing over to take him, demanding to be shown where to put him. She leads him down a cold gray corridor at a jog, and he keeps whispering down to the boy in his arms, "It's going to be all right. You're not going to die. I won't let you. I won't fucking let you leave me, too."

In the dark, Naruto thinks he can hear voices, muffled by the surrounding water. Sasuke. I'm home. It's all very confusing. The bits and pieces. Seeing enemy faces that blur and bleed and become Sasuke. Become Kyuubi. Become Sasuke. Feeling exhaustion, hunger, real fear. Fear that he may never see Konoha again. Never see Sasuke. Sasuke. But there had been comfort and warmth and he'd been so sure he'd found him. Found home. Remembers...I'm home. But all he can see now is the endless black water. All he can feel is cold. Am I dead?

Sasuke is finally forced to hand his best friend over to the medical ninja who come into the room thirty seconds behind him. Though they try to make him leave, Tsunade takes one look at his face and tells him to lean against the wall and keep his mouth shut. He complies willingly.

When Sakura arrives to help Tsunade, called in on her night off because everyone knows better than to leave her out of this, she stops by Sasuke to offer a smile, even if he can see right through it. Then, Tsunade's yelling for her to get her ass over there, and they're lifting Naruto and turning him on his side so Tsunade can extract the barb lodged in his leg, the one the first nurses missed and the idiot hadn't thought to look for.

Because he had to come home.

That word, home, it repeats in his mind until it's lost all meaning, a useless syllable, nothing. And then the healing begins and he's ushered out of the room. They look like they expect a fight, and the orderlies are surprised when Sasuke nods and walks outside to wait. He stands there with his back against the wall, head against the stone, hands slick with Naruto's blood. With his eyes closed, he tries to recapture the feel of Naruto's arms around him and uses the memory to block out the scent of the hospital and death.

"Wake up," Sasuke whispers, again. He's nearly hoarse from repeating the words over and over, but no one tries to stop him. They come and go with trays of food Tsunade's ordered for him, and though he never eats, they don't say anything about that, either—not to his face—nor do they try to send him home to his empty house.

Uchiha Sasuke is to remain by Uzumaki Naruto's side. Those were Tsunade's words, and the Hokage's word is law.

"Wake up, dobe." Pale fingers encase tan ones in a steel grip, binding Naruto to him. "Wake up. I won't let you leave me like everyone else." The quiet words slip over Naruto's cheek where Sasuke's leaned closer, and dark eyes watch Naruto's pulse fluttering in his neck. Naruto's forehead is wet, and Sasuke doesn't process the fact he might be crying. It doesn't matter.

"Wake up," and he remembers everything he wishes he had said to Itachi before his brother collapsed, to his parents before they died.

"Wake up," and he knows regret is the hardest emotion to live with because he does it every day.

"Wake the fuck up, Naruto, goddammit, so I can kick your fucking ass!" and his anger is as useless as ever.

"Wake up?" and Sasuke's lips brush Naruto's scarred cheek. He knows what he'll regret if Naruto di—Don't even think it.

Silently, he releases Naruto's hand and walks over to the door. The lock clicks into place and Sasuke returns to the bedside. He knows what he needs to do, and he needs to do it now, before Naruto becomes just another regret.

"Please, Naruto...just...fuck, just open your eyes." No one is there to witness his moment of weakness. "I-I'm sorry. I suck at apologies, but I am. There is a lot to say...about things...but, none of that really matters..." He presses a soft kiss to the back of Naruto's hand, his wrist, his cheek. Sasuke's lips graze Naruto's and another tear escapes to get lost in blond hair. "This is what matters. Us. W-whatever this is."

He stops to take a trembling breath, his dignity refusing to let him go on sounding like the tearful child he is. Gentle fingers unused to comforting brush golden hair away from eyes he simply wants to see open.

"I...was jealous. You were becoming stronger and I wasn't." There. "Now wake up." The boy in the bed doesn't move, and Sasuke bites his lip, glancing at the door. It's still locked.

He presses his cool forehead against Naruto's warmer one and closes his eyes, wrapping his free arm around Naruto's waist and holding him in silence for as long as he can bear it. A sigh escapes his lips, heavy with exhaustion of heart and body. When he finally speaks, his deep voice slides and whispers into the small space between them. "You're not easy to love, dobe."

"...not easy...t'find, t-teme." It's the best he can do when he's still fighting against the heaviness trying to pull him back down, but how can he not say something when his best friend is suddenly pouring his heart out and crying on his face and admitting that he loves him. It's the 'love' that forces his eyes to open, searching for the face he's been dreaming about. "S'suke."

"Y-you..." The older boy pulls back, involuntary and automatic, a reflex ingrained by a father who despised weakness, pressed into the fabric of his soul by a mother who knew how to make her sons strong. His pale, trembling hand doesn't let go of Naruto's and he stares at their joined fingers, alien appendages no longer his own. Entwined bronze and alabaster. Beautiful.

The Uchiha are bones and ash, bloodstains in abandoned houses, and fading memories overshadowed by death. This boy lying too still in a stark white hospital bed...this is Sasuke's strength. His heart. "Took you long enough...dobe..."

"Teme." Naruto licks dry cracked lips and slowly takes in his surroundings. Dark. Cold. Stiff. Itchy. Sterile. Konoha hospital. Light. Warm. Soft. Clingy. Smoke. Sasuke. "How long?"

"Three days." Facts are something safe that Sasuke can flee to now that the pain in his chest is reaching a fever pitch. Distraction and misdirection have always been his natural armor. "No one bothered to tell me you had returned. And when I finally...found...you, you were nearly unconscious." But every armor has chinks, weak spots. And just as he is Sasuke's strength, Naruto is also his only weakness.

The Uchiha reaches out despite his own internal protests, his body moving on its own, and his fingertips barely graze over Naruto's scarred cheek. "Why couldn't you just stay in the hospital? You almost...died..."

Naruto squeezes Sasuke's hand and tries to shake his head. There are so many things to say. "Had to...find you." Things he'd realized when he was runninghidingfighting and trying to find his way home. "You're home…"

He tries to shake his blond head again. "…not stronger…"

He tries that much harder to keep his eyes open because this is too important. "…you're...not easy...t'love either, teme."

Sasuke's dark eyes blink rapidly and his hand grips Naruto's even tighter. It isn't easy to catch him off guard, but Naruto has been doing it for years, so it's no wonder he manages to knock Sasuke's world askew with a few half-conscious ramblings.

Sasuke reacts the only way he knows how: "You were AWAKE! Why didn't you tell me? I was...I begged..." Pin pricks behind his eyes warn him that he's had too little sleep to be dealing with this and he leans back in the chair so that their faces aren't so close. He isn't sure when he leaned forward to begin with.

Panic grips Naruto's heart and he tugs on Sasuke's hand, trying to pull him back, to move closer, leveraging himself up on his elbow because he hasn't told him what he's figured out, what he needs Sasuke to know. "You're home, Sasuke."

"Yeah, because you dragged my ass back here." Sasuke stubbornly refuses to be moved. He hates the way he equates giving in with giving up, and he hates it more that he's losing that warm one-sided affection he's harbored since the night he frantically carried Naruto into the emergency room. "I'm 'home.' Are you delirious, dobe?"

He realizes Sasuke doesn't understand—"Te-me."—and ignores the way the room wants to tip the wrong way. He manages to get his leg free of the sheets, chest and eyes burning with the need to say this one thing before it kills him. Or he kills Sasuke for being so stubborn and thick headed. "Have to...tell you..."

"Hey, lie down!" Sasuke grabs at his friend and pushes him back onto the bed, muttering about 'idiots' and 'injuries' and 'fucking demons that don't do their fucking jobs.' He smooths the blankets around Naruto's legs and leans over him, brushing hair back from his forehead. It feels natural to take care of the person he loves, and that thought sends a little tremor through his hand that he firmly ignores. "Whatever you have to say can't be worth falling out of bed."

"You're worth it." For a moment he gives in to the touch, to the overwhelming need to close his eyes and sleep, trusting Sasuke will find a way to bring him back again. But this is his chance, finally, after too many days he's lost count, struggling to get home, and he quickly forces his eyes open, mumbling, "You're my home."

"Oh." And suddenly everything—everything—makes sense. A slow smile, a rare genuine curve of his lips, and Sasuke asks so quietly, he's afraid Naruto doesn't hear him at first: "You found me. You said you were looking for me and you found me, but do you...Naruto, do you r-remember where I was?" The tremor has returned to his voice and Naruto's cheek is wet again, and maybe it's the dobe's tears this time. He really, truly hopes so.

Naruto has to search the broken bits of his memories, but it's there and he does remember. Remembers the long climb to his apartment. Remembers hearing Sasuke's voice. Remembers the pain. But most of all, he remembers how warm and soft and content he'd been before things became too fuzzy, too blurred at the edges. "M-my bed."

"Th-that's right," Sasuke stutters and he can't deny the tears that start falling in streams now. The pain in his chest makes it hard to breathe again, and the only relief is gained by leaning closer and pulling Naruto up into an awkward hug. Awkward because no one has hugged Sasuke since his brother all those years ago, and he's afraid he has forgotten how.

The closer he gets to Naruto, the less he hurts, and he's tempted to climb up into bed with the blond if it means an end to the pain. Only his pride keeps him hunched and kneeling over the bed, trembling, shedding tears into Naruto's hair and shoulder, three weeks worth of worry compressed into a sudden outpouring.

Naruto wraps both arms around him as tightly as he can manage, clinging to Sasuke the way he clings to the one thought that's given him the strength to fight his way back to him. Because this is where he needs to be, with Sasuke. His friend. His rival. His strength. His life. His home. And he wants to be those things for his friend. He wants to give him back everything he's lost. "S'ok, Sasuke. I'll be your home, too."

"You are." Sasuke says it without the expected hesitation, and the hovering Uchiha's cheek presses against Naruto's, lips beside his ear. "You always were."

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