Hello readers ! This fic was my way of reconciling myself with the fact that one day Sasuke and Naruto would, inevitably, grow old. It's a little bitter sweet but more light-hearted then sad. The parts in the italics are flashbacks! I wasn't sure how clear that was so I thought that I would put it up here just in case. Also, I have aimed to have this story as grammatically correct as I can but I don't have a proof reader so please let me know if you find a mistake.

Warnings: boyXboy (SasuNaruSasu) if u don't like don't read (it's really not that complicated), minor course language, and brief mentions of character death prior to the story line and some mentions of pairings other than SasukeXNaruto

I don't own the characters, just the idea for the story (Which I hope people like)

p.s. I need reviews like voldemort needs a nose job ;)

And So the Years Drag On

Wrinkled hands and sunken faces regarded the chess board with strategic curiosity. Two old men; one with a short shock of pure white hair and a faded honey completion, the other with a cap of grey wisps and skin that was almost translucent. They had aged well. They were spotted wrinkled and shades of what they once were but they still had their dignity, wits and teeth.

The white haired man moved his bishop to take his rivals rook. Sasuke looked at him with bored amusement. "You're starting to get the hang of this." He said.

Naruto raised his head and grinned. His eyes were still bright blue and they gleamed out of the folds of his face with the excitement of a 16 year old girl on her first date. His smile tightened the skin around his cheeks where six faded scar rested, three lying on each cheek like whiskers on a fox.

"Only took 61 years of playing every day. Or is it 63?"

There was a moment of silence as he valiantly tried to recall how many candles were on his last cake. His whole body froze as he squinted out the corner of his eye. He stayed like that for a second before he realised that neither he, nor his once dark haired companion cared. He swivelled his face forward once more and gave a gummy grin. "Anyway, the point is your fuc"

Sasuke cut him off smoothly by moving his queen, taking the bishop and placing Naruto in a checkmate. He smirked. "If it's been 63 years, then I guess this makes it 22994 to 1"

Naruto pouted. "Stupid geniuses."

"A. that's a contradictory statement and B. The plural of genius is genii."

Blue eyes narrowed in annoyance as Naruto pointed his emaciated finger offensively close to Sasuke's face.

"A. You're an ass and B. I'm sure it's only 61 years."

Sasuke knocked the finger away with a flick of his wrist. A surprisingly graceful movement for anyone let alone a man his age.

"hn, If its 61 years then its 22264 to 1, not that much of a difference really dobe."

Naruto smiled and his face clouded over as he lost himself in another time.

"But I did beat you that once."

Sasuke chuckled reluctantly.

Sasuke sat frozen before the chess board, his dark eyes wide with disbelief as his boyfriend danced around the kitchen like he'd won the lottery. Tan hands flew behind blond hair as he squashed his eyes shut, bent his knees outwards and stated to swing his hips in large, stupid circles.

"Oh yeah~ I won~ Oh yeah~ I won~"

He straightened up and started making wave motions towards Sasuke with his arms.

"Oh yeah~ you lost~ Oh yeah~ you lost~"

Sasuke sighed and ran a hand through his hair, grimacing as he felt where it was starting to thin out around his temple.

"Naruto, how old are you"

Naruto eyes lit up like blue lanterns, the sapphire flames dancing with playful mirth.

"I'm $39.95, plus postage and handling." He grinned.

Sasuke felt his breath catch and his heart stutter. Even after all these years Naruto could whip out a smile and he would be back to step 1 of "Breathing for bastards"

Step 1; breathe in.

Sasuke shook his head as Naruto went back to his idiotic antics

"hn, Dobe."

Naruto stopped "you're a bastard"

"So I've been told"

Naruto took a mature stance on the argument and stuck his tongue out, "You love me. Just admit it."

"I love you"

Naruto's smile returned so quickly that it was rather alarming. Sasuke smirked

"But you're still an idiot"

"Bastard!"

Many of the other residents wondered why they played the game so diligently when the outcome was so predetermined. To them it was pointless. To Naruto and Sasuke it was anything but. To them it was a tribute, an unspoken monument to Shikamaru, Temari and a baby who died too soon to be named. It was the shadow of painful memories and a family that never came to be

Shikamaru had been given a choice; his wife or his unborn daughter.

He choose.

Neither Naruto nor Sasuke knew who; neither wanted to know. It didn't matter in the end.

They had watched, as a man's last traces of innocence were striped from him. It took a few words from a man in a white coat before he crumpled inwards. He lasted just long enough to bury his wife and daughter.

The police said he jumped.

They said that he had leapt from the tree and thrown himself into the noose.

Police knew nothing.

Shikamaru would never jump, leap or throw himself. Not even at the end.

He was far too lazy.

He had seemed ok, or, at least as ok a man who has lost everything can be. It was as if he had woken up one morning with a rope in one hand and a realisation in the other. I can't do this.

There had been no witnesses but Naruto and Sasuke could see it so clearly in their minds. As the relentless years wore on, it became harder to tell the difference between memory and imagining.

A man is perched on the top rung of a ladder as a few lazy clouds roam across the sky, almost invisible next to the troublesome stars that were sewn onto the night. His long dark hair hangs like brown curtains around an empty stage and a few days' worth of stubble shadows his chin. The tan knots of rope hang around his neck with grin certainty as he stares into the oblivious night. The stars were like a chain of memories, hanging across the sky with vindictive love while the moon smiled down at him, as innocently as an unborn babe. Her toothless grin lit him in a silvery wash as untroubled as an infant's skin. He looked at the scene laid out above him as a cool breeze of acceptance blew into the deepest fractures of his soul. He closed his eyes and smiled lazily as a single tear paved a wet path down his cheek. "Troublesome women" he mumbled.

And then he took a step.

They were only 30 when it happened; practically children. Sasuke had walked out of the apartment he shared with Naruto the moment the man at the door had stopped speaking. Naruto spent the day on the couch, his head resting softly on his knees as his helpless hands dug into his legs and left bloody furrows. The rain danced on the window panes but the thunder and lightning were roaring through his mind. When Sasuke finally returned he was soaked through to his soul, his black hair hung in wet sheets as he dripped mud and water over his previously pristine floors. A well- used chest set was clutched in his long fingers hands. He sat down in front of the coffee table and began to set up the game as Naruto crawled off the couch and sat opposite him. They said nothing; they just played in a comfortable silent mourning as they let their hearts grieve.

Naruto lost spectacularly.

Age is a curious thing. Memories pool under the skin and drag folds inwards. It bubbles furiously with regret as the weight of past sin stutters and slows the body. Old tragedies smoulder vividly while monotonous everyday happiness blurs together indistinguishably.

Sasuke's long furrowed fingers shook slightly as he packed the chess pieces away. Naruto frowned as he asked the rhetorical question.

"The arthritis is getting worse isn't it?"

Sasuke sighed.

"I'm just having a bad day with it"

"Right, like yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that and the day before.."

"I'm not the idiot who fell down the stairs and got us landed in this place."

Naruto paused mid-way through his rant, his mouth hanging open like a Venus flytrap before he offered a sheepish grin.

"I needed the chair after that and you were too old to push me around anymore, besides the arthritis kicked your legs out a few days later."

"It was a few months later"

Naruto shrugged dramatically before giving Sasuke a sly look, the same one he'd had when he planned pranks as a child

"A few days, a few months, we're 91 or 93 what's the difference?"

"hn"

They both looked across the courtyard as a pearl of young laughter rung brilliantly through the air. A gaggle of old men were clustered around a beautiful young woman. She had soft pink hair, pale green eyes, a short contagious laugh and an even shorter temper. She wasn't like the other nurses; they treated you like an exhibit in a museum but she treated you like a person.

Sasuke turned back to see that Naruto was resting his chin on his hand and smirking.

"What do you think?" He asked "Recon she's your type?" Sasuke smirked back

"Defiantly not, I prefer blonds. Besides, I'm gay."

"Really" Naruto raised his eyebrows in mock amazement. "I had no idea"

Sasuke made a sweeping gesture with his arm that encompassed the whole scene.

"What about you? You were never picky about a little thing like gender."

"Well she is beautiful." He said, acting like he was considering it. "but I think I'm a bit old."

Sasuke scoffed and pointed at the woman and her admirers. "tell that to them"

The men in the home stared lecherously at any young woman who was misfortunate enough to cross their paths; it was as if they sought to convince themselves that they were still men. They were like castrated bulls, clinging to the shreds of long lost masculinity as they waited impatiently for death. Everyone was waiting for death in these places. The residents were waiting for their chance to stand beside him while the workers waited to see who he would take.

Youth are trapped within themselves, yearning to find their place in the world, dreaming that they are important.

Age desperately wishes to forget that its existence, while pleasantly painful, was pointless. They wish to be ignorantly innocent once more, with all the beauty and horror that innocence is entitled to.

Some become tragically silent as their memories leave them and they lose who they have become. Some feel the need to share the stories of their youth with each passing generation in a futile attempt to relive old glory.

Unfortunately this person was Lee. This meant long speeches about youth, the power of youth, the passions of youth and a rather embarrassing story about the time he walked in on Sasuke and Naruto ummmm…..playing chess…. on the couch….with no clothes on. Sasuke had just made a…. strong tactical move when Lee burst through the door.

Why is it that the mind can recall horrifically embarrassing experiences but not to who and how many times they talk about them? Because life and death are ironic like that;

Ino had spent years telling Choji that if he didn't lose weight he'd die. She had a heart attack at 40 and dropped dead into her cereal bowl. Choji died of old age. Kiba had spent his youth protecting fragile Hinata but when Kiba lost his marbles she spent the last few years of their lives protecting him. Temari, the very picture of fertility with her wide hips and long gold hair, had died in child birth, and her untroubled by everything husband took his own life. And Sasuke and Naruto, the ones who had suffered through the persecution and religiously induced ignorance, outlasted them all. They were the ones left behind. The ones left waiting for death to finally take them somewhere better.

Or maybe somewhere worse.

Or maybe nowhere at all.

After 91 or 93 years on this moron riddled planet anywhere would do.

But they were still waiting.

Life can be a bitch like that.

Naruto stood nervously before the door, his blond hair fell into his eyes and his hands felt too big for his body. He raised his hand as if to knock but left it suspended in the air as he weighed the value of lowering it onto the wood. He knew what he wanted, they'd been going out for a few months now but Sasuke had made sure he didn't try to rush Naruto into anything that he didn't want to do.

But he wanted this…right?

Naruto stood in the cool, late autumn chill that shivered through the night as he debated his options. He could turn around and walk away; Sasuke would never know he was there. He could walk away from the apartment, go back to his university lodgings and come back on a different day when he felt more secure. Sasuke would wait, they'd been best friends before boyfriends and they couldn't stand to be apart too long, even if they had spent all of middle school, a good part of high school and every alternate Thursday in an all-out brawl. Their constant quarrelling had become as natural and necessary as lies to a politician.

On the other hand he could knock. He could go in to Sasuke's apartment and let him lead him in a dance as old as evolution.

One was safe, easy, predictable and familiar. The other was unknown, nerve racking and it would change something between them; for better or worse he could not know. Did he leave and take what he already had, or did he risk it for the chance of something that was so much more?

His hand was still hovering in mid-air when his brain finally got through to him. He was being stupid, he couldn't risk his most precious relationship, they was only in his first year of college and he couldn't stand to lose the bastard and then have to look at him every day as he slugged through the last 3 years of his course.

Just as he was about to lower his hand and leave the door swung inwards to revel the subject of his internal debate. The moonlight was playing on his skin and bleaching it of what little colour it had while his black bangs framed the sides of his face. Sasuke's eyes were so dark they seemed to meld with the iris and at the moment they were widened with surprise as they beheld his suddenly frozen boyfriend.

"Dobe, what are you doing here? I was just going out to get milk and…" Sasuke surveyed his still motionless friend, his thin eyebrows drawing together with concern. He placed a firm hand on his shoulder and shook him lightly.

"Hey! Naruto!"

Naruto's whole body he jerked as he snapped back into reality, the concerned touch causing something in his heart to click into place. He looked up at Sasuke, but still appeared vacant. Sasuke began to rake his eyes over the parking lot bellow them as he searched for Naruto's completely pathetic excuse for a car.

"Did you walk here?" he demanded. "God, you really are stupid, you're not even wearing a jacket, its cold out here."

"Shut up bastard"

Sasuke looked back at him, his mouth half open to retort before something tied up what he was about to say and threw it out the window. His eyes, oh God his eyes. They were even brighter than usual, boiling with determination, lust and something unnameable that was as dangerous as it was beautiful. It took Sasuke just a second longer to realise why Naruto was standing in the cold outside his apartment. He took a tan wrist and gently dragged him inside before kissing him lightly.

"Are you sure?" his voice sounded huge in the heavy silence that surrounded them. Naruto instinctively knew that Sasuke was asking about more than just this single night. There was a petrified longing that sizzled violently in the air around him and he appeared to be shivering with nervous energy even though the hands on his wrist and face were soft and steady. Sasuke's eyes seemed to glow in the unnatural light and in them were all the emotions that were currently eating away at Naruto's mind. Naruto snarled before he crashed their lips together, his desperation made the act almost violent. Sasuke responded enthusiastically as their tongues twisted together so tightly it was as if they were trying to mould into one. They drew back for air and Sasuke smirked.

"hn, I'll take that as a yes."

He leaned over and closed the door, shutting out the night as he folded into the heat that radiated off Naruto's skin.

"Hey! Fag's!"

"Mr Welch, please!"

Sasuke and Naruto turned their heads towards the commotion. A shrivelled excuse for a man had a thin hand cupped around his age thinned lips and was croaking at them like a bullfrog. The skin on his face was crinkled up in dissent like a ball of paper as the pink hair nurse reprimanded his crude language.

"You can't just use insults like that" she scowled, "it offends people, and it is ill-becoming."

The old man waved her off and then stuck his rude finger up at the men who, up until a few moments ago, had been minding their own business.

"I hope you burn in hell" he croaked as he swung his finger around and death glared them.

Sasuke, being far more experienced in the art of "killing with a look", simply sent his own 91 or 93 years of Uchiha death glare experience back at the man. Poor old coot, he didn't know what hit him. One second the grey and extremely old bastard had simply look haughty and bored, the next minute he was frying people alive with his eyes. The subject of his glare felt his balls shrivel up and retreat deep in to his body and his hand shook slightly as fear racked up through his spine.

Sasuke held the man's gaze for just a second, before he let out a contemptuous "hn" and turned back to his lifelong companion.

Naruto was still staring at the man across the courtyard, his head tilted to the side and an eyebrow raised in a kind of curious incredibility, as if he were simply astounded by the amount of ignorance the man was excreting. A quick glance at the nurse told him that her clenched fists and furious aura probably meant that she was trying not to hit the fool before her. He straightened his head as a menacing grin stretched across his face like a fatal wound spreading blood over white linin.

"Sakura wasn't it?" He asked the young nurse. She looked up.

"ahhh...yes…" Sasuke couldn't blame her for her hesitancy when Naruto had that look on his face. He looked quite demented.

"Would you mind wheeling me over to Mr Welch?"

Sakura drew back suspiciously, as if trying to assert Naruto's reason's for getting close to a man who had just insulted him.

"why?" She asked.

"Because he's going to put that finger down" he said as the intensity of his grin grew to alarming proportions. "and if he doesn't I'm going to shove it so far up his ass, he'll cough up shit for the remainder of his ignorant life."

Mr Welch's eyes widened in terror before his hand shot down at a speed that he should not have been capable of.

Naruto let a more genuine smile grace his features before he turned back to Sasuke at the sound of his soft chuckling. When their eyes met the corners of Sasuke's mouth turned up to reveal a smile that Naruto had only seen sparingly throughout his life. Even after all these years, the beauty of the emotion behind it made his bones shiver in resonance.

Sasuke shook his head, expressing his exasperation and amusement with gesture alone. Deep feeling pooled behind black eyes as old, thin lips parted to whisper, more fervently than a prayer;

"I love you"

They were lying on the bed; one of Sasuke's hands was gently running through the soft blonde hairs on his head, which rested, incidentally, on Sasuke's chest. They rested peacefully as they lounged in each other's presence, dressed only in their skin, but the moment the words left Sasuke's lips Naruto's body seemed to seize up in shock. The hand in Naruto's hair froze as its owner felt a cool drop of water drop onto his chest. He looked down, shocked.

"Naruto!"

Naruto quickly buried his face further in to Sasuke's chest, hiding his eyes as if he had just showed a fatal weakness. He cleared the tears before he dared to meet Sasuke's gaze.

"Nothing, its nothing, I'm just being stupid, It's just…" He looked off to the side and began to chew on his bottom lip.

There was a pause, a hand full of seconds where Sasuke was sure that Naruto wasn't going to finish and he could feel something akin to terror creeping its way into his thoughts.

The panic welled up within him. It's just what? He didn't want this? He only wanted to be friends? Oh God, what if he didn't feel the same?

"I feel the same" He looked up at Sasuke and laughed softly and the vibrations echoed through Sasuke's chest as his heart memorised the sound.

"No-one's ever said that to me before, at least no-one outside of my immediate family. Besides, you don't talk much and you only say exactly what you mean. To hear you say that you love me it…...it means a lot, it means everything."

Sasuke sat contemplating for a moment, his hand still tangled in hair that gleamed like brass in the strips moonlight that slipped in through the blinds.

He looked down into Naruto's eye's and could see the truth of his words laying in deep blue pools.

"then" Sasuke began, untangling his hand and reaching down to lay it gently on a lightly scared cheek, he felt his heart swell with love as it threatened to bust apart at the seams.

"I'll have to tell you every day"

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