They've driven for maybe fifteen kilometres when Sasuke says, with no more than his usual annoyance, "I might be on the verge of a stroke."
"What?!"
"I was airwalking almost the entire time. The seal cuts deeper when I use magic." He shrugs, shoulder spiking up like a shark fin. "It should be fine as long as Kyuubi's healing isn't cut off."
Naruto presses his face into Sasuke's arm on irrepressible instinct, and gets himself elbowed in the nose. "We should check it out. Like, we could go inside your mind and have a look? With a bondbridge, you know, Temari was talking about it, like how you do sometimes with humans mates. We, um. We visualise the bond as a bridge between our minds. And us on it, and…"
"I know," Sasuke interrupts. "Haku and Zabuza supposedly did something similar."
"Yeah?"
"It should work. I'll get a better look at Kyuubi, too."
Naruto's face hurts from repressed expression. Again Sasuke's turning the bond from something that's happened to him into something for him to use: again Naruto can believe that Sasuke doesn't have to hate everything about this.
"How do you know?" he asks to distract himself. "About Haku and Zabuza, I mean. Wasn't that like two hundred years ago?" He smirks. "Were you preparing all this time to be with me?"
Sasuke ignores the last part. "There're a few books about them."
"Really? Huh. No, wait, I think I saw that. At Kakashi's? Why would he have those, though? I thought they were really frowned upon. Like, worse than the porn." Haku and Zabuza were and to a large extent still are persona non grata with both exorcists and shifters, though nowadays certain human circles idolise them. The lines were more sharply drawn back then, in an era when it was inconceivable for exorcists and shifters to attend the same school, or indeed walk on the same street. Haku, and by extension Zabuza, died because the other exorcists wouldn't step in until the demons had already killed him. Even now, it remains a sore point.
"Guess he thought it was romantic."
"Cause they were like super outcasts? And the whole tragic death thing…on account of, you know, the Crusader Council spitting on anyone getting involved with a shifter."
Sasuke snorts, an impossibly sharp sound. "Well, he did have a huge crush on your father, so he –"
"What?!"
Sasuke shrugs, an even jerkier movement than usual. "Who knows. It was Itachi said it, it's not like he gets emotions."
"But – but what the fuck – on Dad?"
"If you care so much, ask him."
"But – but – eww. I figured if anything he'd be into Itachi. At least that makes sense!"
Sasuke looks sick, looks shattered. "Maybe he is."
"Why are you… I mean, I get that Itachi's a piece of shit, but…"
"Shut up," Sasuke snarls. "Just – shut the fuck up about Kakashi."
"I – okay. Okay." He knows how to press Sasuke's buttons, and this is the self-destruct one. "Okay. Now stop the car and let's get ourselves a bondbridge."
xxxxx
When he visualises it, it arcs against his closed eyelids.
And there, on the bondbridge at the very edge of Sasuke's consciousness, is Naruto. Grinning, overbright, waving; then scowling, paler, as he takes in the mindscape behind Sasuke.
Turning around, Sasuke stares dispassionately out across the abstract city of his mind: dirty buildings in darkness, the seal a black storm cloud obscuring the scourging light of Heaven above it. The bond has hit it like a bomb. The landscape is fractured, and the seal intermittently admits light that burns parts of it to ash.
He doesn't need Naruto's borrowed perception to know that he looks like a vagrant inside his on head.
When he blinks, the city's gone and the seal is no longer a storm cloud but a metal construction, its twisted spokes buried bleeding in the tissue of his brain. Touching it makes hostile light scald him, an echo of how Naruto felt when Sasuke started exorcising and then stopped, because if he'd kept going Naruto couldn't have survived.
Kyuubi's power is the only thing keeping his brain from exploding into a mess of burnt blood at the provocation.
"Come here!" Naruto calls.
"Hn." He walks across the bondbridge into Naruto's mind, which is damaged by proxy but only by proxy, and oddly seems to consist mostly of sewers. Looking down at the water that flows through them, he sees vertiginous seascapes, endless atlantises glimmering under the surface.
In the centre there's Kyuubi, who looks almost exactly as Sasuke's imagined him, as Naruto's always described him: this huge creature, wild even in captivity, a monster of magic and want. Sasuke in an exhausted show of defiance sits down with his back resting against the bars of Kyuubi's cage, and Kyuubi's breath ruffles his hair, its dampness like a lick up the back of his neck.
If the humans ever really understood that this is what lives behind Naruto's silly smiling face, the bombs would fall and the world would burn.
Of course, if the humans had ever grasped what lives behind Sasuke's eyes, they'd have drowned him like witch, like a kitten. Put him in a sack and put the sack in the river, trying to extinguish an unforgiving light fit to immolate them. With the seal in place, their iconoclastic rage might have exterminated him.
Kyuubi pushes against the bars, equal parts magic and flesh but unable to escape the cage that is clearly a larger version of the one Orochimaru locked Naruto in, the night Naruto got his scars.
Sasuke, unlike Kyuubi and quite possibly even Naruto, could open and close it as he likes: within the confines of Naruto's skull, Sasuke is a force of incomparable power.
Out of the corner of Naruto's physical eye, he can see his own material body, limp in the car seat. Deep in its trance, it looks like comatose people on television look.
After a while Naruto comes and sits beside him, in the sewer outside the cage. He's been snooping around on the bondbridge, but he understands that he's not allowed in Sasuke's head and has respected that.
Kyuubi's less friendly with him, huffing and puffing until Naruto chases him away.
He returns soon enough, lying down on the far side of Sasuke and nudging his back through the bars.
"You get it, right?" Naruto says, his voice echoed and amplified by the strange architecture of his mind. "How you feel about the bond – that it's all contradictory. It's not real so you dismiss it. But at the same time it's the only sort of connection that's real enough for you to trust. You get that that's all messed up, right?" He makes a frustrated sound, angling sideways towards Sasuke, his eyes so big now. "That you mattered to me before the bond, that you matter to me aside from the bond – is that something you can believe?"
Sasuke swallows, stiffly. "Sometimes."
"Oh. Okay. Okay."
Silence again, just Kyuubi's heavy breathing and the dripping sewer water, until Sasuke says, "I meant what I said before. I don't – want you to be dead."
Naruto looks like he's going to bawl, but in the end swallows and then smiles.
xxxxx
They drive for hours, taking turns sleeping, until they're back at the estate. Leaving the Luthors and the weapons to Unit 1, Sasuke lets Naruto lead the way inside the main building.
Green walls, he notices in the entrance hall. He notices it distinctly enough, apparently, that Naruto thinks he's said something aloud.
"Hmm? What?"
"Green walls," he repeats. "Like in a mental hospital."
Naruto makes a face like sticking his tongue out. "Clearly they knew you were coming."
Sasuke's distracted from replying by the sound of his own name. It's spoken in a familiar voice, accompanied by familiar footsteps, and so he allows the speaker to throw her arms around his neck.
"Sakura!" Naruto exclaims, Kyuubi's vermilion surprise creeping back under his skin. It's for the best that Sakura has her face pressed into Sasuke's shoulder, so she doesn't see. More importantly, it's for the best that Naruto's no longer capable of lying to him: the surprise is genuine, Naruto really didn't know she was here, didn't try to spring this on him.
It's astonishing like walking again after the prosthesis was first attached, to have someone now that might be counted on. Nobody can be trusted, but he doesn't necessarily have to take Naruto on trust: Naruto can be known and so potentially could be relied on the same way as Sasuke's hands, Sasuke's memories, Sasuke's decisions.
Sakura finally steps back, smiling shakily at Naruto over her shoulder but keeping her hands closed tight in Sasuke's shirt, knuckles against his heart. He allows the touched passively. It's the path of least resistance, and his resistance would break their relationship.
Her touch doesn't signify.
"Sakura," he says at last, and she won't notice this but he can see Naruto hearing the surprise between every clipped syllable in her name.
"I was hoping," she starts. "I mean. I wanted to see you." She breathes in, collecting herself and releasing him with a rather embarrassed smile. "I heard about – the bond. Ino said. So I went to try and see you, and Tsunade made arrangements, and – well. Here I am."
"That's so like her," Naruto grumbles under his breath, even as he steps forward for his own hug.
That too is insignificant. There's a bland, distracted kind of pleasure from Naruto, which is nothing unexpected. He reacted much the same even back when he claimed to be in love with her, an idea Sasuke wasn't alone in dismissing as bizarre.
Faced with Kyuubi's raging desire, Sakura would try to run, and would be devoured.
"My room," Sasuke says.
Naruto looks up from Sakura's dye-damaged hair. "Hmm?"
"My room. Where is it?"
"Uh, I guess you can just pick whichever you like?"
Sasuke nods, turning to the staircase. Sakura catches up with him in the upstairs corridor, where about a third of the bedrooms seem unoccupied. He decides on a corner room fairly close to Naruto's, closing the door behind them.
It looks like a low-class hotel room, an empty cheap space. Sasuke has nothing to put in it.
Sakura says his name again, sitting down on the unmade bed. "Are you all right?"
"I'll live." He'll stop by Naruto's room later, pick up some clothes, some toiletries. A phone charger, Naruto's always losing them so he must have spares.
"I thought…" She hesitates, wets her lips. He has the impression that she does these things – licking her lips, looking down, stumbling over her words – to signal safety, signal that she's unthreatening. What remains unclear is whether it's subconscious, which would mean she's afraid of him, or deliberate, which would mean she condescends to him. "I thought you'd be happier, with Naruto."
"He's a monster."
Sakura smiles, heartened by his distracted tone. "What is it they say? When is a monster not a monster?/Oh, when you love it."
Sasuke thinks about a later line in that poem. When is a monster not a monster?/Oh, when you are the reason it has become so mangled.
Kyuubi's hunger is eating through him, leaving his insides hollow and brittle with this horrible need, an emptiness eroding and expanding like a black hole in the core of his body. The hunger pain feels like a corrosive burn scorching through his skin, scalding the air in his lungs.
His blood boils with the memory of Naruto's fangs eating through the seal, Naruto husking out his name and pressing inside his body. It was a feeling like going over an edge, familiar from his kamikaze attempts to trigger the self defence release, which Naruto keeps calling suicide attempts.
It doesn't matter to this need that Naruto was supposed to be better than this, was supposed to be above base instinct. That Naruto always insisted he would choose him, and that it would mean something.
Sometimes when Sasuke was small and on the very edge of sleep, Orochimaru talked about love as a horror story. Pretty love, love that isn't supposed to be about using someone, never lasts. And I doubt you'd know how to live in a world that didn't constantly fail, rock bottom after rock bottom breaking open under your feet. Shinigami-chan…
The sensible approach would be to take charge of the situation and get it over with, and not being practical about it implies the sort of sentimentality that kills you.
"It was kind of them," Sakura says. "Tsunade and Minato. To arrange for me to come here." She says their names easily and almost fondly, as though they were still simply Naruto's caretakers, as if they could be Sasuke's family too now: as if they could ever be anything but subhuman filth, another set of thoughtless would-be jailors. "Anyway. Should we go down?"
"Hn."
Downstairs Naruto and the rest have gathered around a television set, playing some video game.
"Come on, then," Naruto says, looking up before he could possibly have heard them approach and throwing a controller at Sasuke.
Sasuke's fingers close around it automatically, as though they're back in the days when this was normal. He smirks at Naruto, climbing over the back of the couch to sit beside him. Their arms touch, and Sasuke has never felt desire like this, pure as hatred, as heavenly fire. Every time he breathes his shoulder nudges Naruto's, and every time it does the craving stabs through him, his guts clenching painfully around this longing like around a death wound.
Naruto stares at him for a long tense moment, then takes the opportunity to kill Sasuke's character.
"Fucker."
Naruto sticks his tongue out, doing an utterly ridiculous victory dance. "Headshot! Godlike!"
xxxxx
"If you two arseholes could stop TKing for a moment, we might actually survive this!" Kiba's exasperated tones.
Sasuke leans forward, sneaking up behind Naruto and gutting him with a power drill. "Never said I was a team player."
"Fucker," Kiba grumbles. "We're gonna lose again."
"Can't help it if I'm the only challenging competition," Naruto gloats. "That said – ouch! Bastard!"
"You're giving me a headache," Shikamaru grumbles. "Couldn't you trash talk in your indoor voices?"
"If you hadn't fallen asleep in the middle of the first match, you could've…"
"Yeah, yeah."
There's a knock on the doorframe behind them, and Sasuke turns around. "Sakura." She left not long after they went downstairs, for an extended bathroom break that he expects turned into calling Ino.
Naruto twists around too, somehow managing to take out most of the enemy squad while waving awkwardly at Sakura. "Hi."
"Hi. I hope I'm not interrupting."
"Of course not," Sasuke says, turning his back on the others, shutting them out, so she'll come in properly. He hadn't meant to sound gruff.
"Good." She smiles rather shyly, approaching the couch. "Um. I don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to come right out and say it. Have you been – giving me space, lately?"
"…yeah." That and there was Kakashi, who seemed at the time a more realistic proposition.
She nods. She's standing quite close, this girl he's known for almost as long as he can remember. Who's seen him cry and laugh, and still remains. "I thought about what you said. About us looking at things very differently. I – Sasuke, don't be like this, okay, please."
He lets her take his hand. "All right."
"All right." Her smile is more determined now. She alights on the arm of the couch. "So, um. Did you… finish the reading assignment? Because that ending was so frustrating! It would have needed so much more development, and his relationship to Sonja was still completely twisted. She seems almost afraid of him, you know?"
Sasuke's missed a lot of school this semester, even for a non-human. At this rate he won't graduate, but school was only ever relevant as a passage rite to university libraries, and so ceased to matter the moment Kyuubi bit through the seal. Still, he did finish the book. "She's a murder groupie. I'd think that's part of the appeal for her."
Naruto's head appears over Sasuke's shoulder. Heat radiates from his body, so tangible that Sasuke thinks for a long moment that Kyuubi's energy has started leaking. "What're you taking about? Not Crime and Punishment? Shit, that ending was so dumb! So he realised it's not a great idea to go around murdering people – fine. But that's got nothing to do with randomly finding religion."
"His problem wasn't killing people," Sasuke points out. "His problem was he wasn't any good at it."
He'd expected Naruto to protest, maybe, but he snorts back, almost a chuckle. "Heh, yeah. This whole ubermensch thing, if you're gonna put it up against God and have it lose, you have to actually have an ubermensch. Not just someone who thinks he's an ubermensch."
Sasuke shifts, forcing Naruto's face away with his shoulder. "The whole point is there's no such thing." A stupid point, made by a misguided author who'd never met a proper exorcist.
Naruto makes an impatient sound, face scrunched up in thought. "People aren't that weak. They just – need to have their basic needs met. Then they can get up on their two feet. If he did, Raskolnikov wouldn't have killed that lady, and we would've been spared reading about his bullshit finding God in work camp."
Sasuke snorts. "Isn't that where you think God belongs?" This wasn't always the case, but Naruto took against God when he realised God lends his light and his power to the likes to Orochimaru, and doesn't care how it's used, doesn't bother saving those Orochimaru turns it on.
God helps he who helps himself, Sasuke's told him more than once, but that's never made Naruto more sympathetic to the idea.
Sakura cuts in, redirecting the conversation, "I might have settled for being spared reading about Marmeladov."
"Ugh, yes! If anyone should've been axed…" Naruto keeps moving around as he talks, never having been able to keep still, and keeps brushing against Sasuke. "Sure, poor guy needed help and all, but he was responsible for other people! At least they didn't just sit around crying about how hard their lives were when, hello Marmeladov that's actually your fault and maybe you should step the fuck up and fix it instead of just using everyone else."
"They shouldn't have let themselves be used. It's not like he forced them."
Again Sakura cuts in, diffusing, "I take it you don't consider alcoholism an illness?"
Naruto belatedly looks away from Sasuke. "You can stop drinking," he says, sounding sad but also sure. "It's hard, but. People can stop."
Sasuke lifts an eyebrow but doesn't speak. He's come to understand that Tsunade drinks more than is good for her, and everyone knows Jiraiya's been a drunkard ever since Sasuke crippled him, but that's not Sakura's business.
"Sometimes," Naruto says, softly, with that sick intensity of his, "sometimes people are trapped. Then you have to change things for them, if they can't on their own. So they can get back on their feet. Or even just show them a way to change things themselves."
But there's no changing things for people who are really trapped, who have lost too many things that can never be got back or replaced.
"How noblesse oblige," Sasuke drawls. Drawling is a way to obscure his accent slipping through, forbidden by his mother but encouraged by Orochimaru, and automatic now.
"It's not like that."
"You think someone's your equal after you have to save them from themselves, and they follow you out of gratitude?"
"I… No, but it doesn't have to be that black and white."
"Look who's talking."
"There can be – mutual saving," Naruto insists. He's so close that Sasuke can feel his every exhalation against his own cheek.
He tilts his face. "If you keep this up, I'm going to stuff that saviour complex up your arse."
That's a peace offering if Naruto's ever heard one. He chooses to laugh, opening his knees a little. "You better prep me good if it's as big as you say."
"Be glad it's not your ego, or you'd never sit again."
"Guys," Kiba interrupts. "You gonna play or what?"
"Um. Sure," Sakura says, with the smile of someone making an effort. "I'm afraid you'll have to rescue me, though."
Naruto grins. "I give great rescuing hero."
Sakura laughs, and it's not very long before the two of them abandon the game, slipping into conversation. It'll have been a long time for them too, since they spoke regularly. Sasuke decides to keep pummelling opponents, especially Kiba, until eventually Sakura leaves.
"Fucker," Kiba grumbles, not without admiration. "Are you anywhere near this good in reality?"
"Depends," Sasuke says, taking the opportunity to stuff a hand grenade down Kiba's character's jacket.
"Yeah? How about a match, then?"
Naruto abruptly switches focus from attempting to insert a cheese doodle into Shikamaru's ear.
"I'm no good at play fighting," Sasuke says.
"Who said anything about playing?" This is a clear reminder that Kiba is the kind of stupid that means he beat Sasuke up, once or twice, in the childhood days of a new seal. Naruto had trashed him for it: Sasuke's only real option, at the time, had been to burn Kiba out of existence with heavenly light once a demon appeared.
"Eh," Naruto cuts in. "If you don't use magic, you might lose – don't give me that look, Kiba's bigger and better trained for this. And then you'll be pissed and there will be magic, and I don't actually want you to kill him."
"You must have rules."
"Totally do," Kiba agrees. "Look, how about I go downstairs and fix up some mats and stuff, and you can come down when Naruto's done worrying? Come on, Shikamaru!"
In their absence Naruto rubs at the back of his head. "I really will be very sad if you murder him."
Sasuke kicks at his knee. Because it's Sasuke, it hurts like a bitch. "What makes you think I would?"
Naruto shrugs. "I'm pretty sure he doesn't understand what he's up against. Even before we were bonded, he couldn't take me, and now – I don't think he gets that you can use it all. I mean. Kyuubi and your magic."
"I wasn't actually planning to exorcise him."
"I didn't think you were. Just, you get mad sometimes, and you're used to my levels of healing. Kiba can't take that much damage."
"I get mad at you."
Naruto surprises him with a quick kiss. It's just a butterfly brush against the side of his jaw, a world away from Kyuubi's feral, unhinged touches. It's something Naruto might have done, if – if things had been different, if there had been no bond.
That's a pointless thought.
It's fleeting, because the kiss leaves Sasuke feral and unhinged. He's frozen with it, stock-still, shock-still, his skin burning with animal desire and with – yes – his ownership of Naruto.
"Sasuke…"
Sasuke moves like he always moves, with barely restrained violence, in the economic stabs of a natural born killer. He straddles Naruto's legs even as he locks his hands around Naruto's face, angling it for a deep, harsh kiss that steals Naruto's breath away in every frightening, literal meaning of the words.
And Naruto just loses it, in this new and terrifying way. He understands that this is wrong and twisted, a bad and selfish thing to do, and it makes no difference. That understanding has no power over him, can't affect how he pushes greedy hands under Sasuke's shirt, closes clawed fingers around the nape of Sasuke's neck.
He's there now, in the place where will doesn't matter, where bond craving is breathing and Naruto's drowning.
He gags on Sasuke's tongue and just swallows, moans for more and bites in blind desperation, catching Sasuke's skin, Sasuke's taste like something tangible in his mouth. He can't see, can't think: there's no room for that, and no need for it, with Sasuke nudging his knees apart and slipping down between them. Naruto groans in protest, Sasuke's shirt rips and then his skin a little as Naruto tries to keep him, oh god please, this one thing – until Sasuke unzips his jeans. There's barely a moment's shock before Sasuke's mouth is on him, remorseless and heavenly, and Naruto's hips buck up hard. Sasuke grunts and gags, reaching up to lock Naruto's thighs to the coach, but he doesn't stop sucking. It doesn't have much effect, holding down Naruto's legs, because Naruto grabs his head, tugging him closer, always closer.
"Sasuke, Sasuke!" He gulps it like a litany, like Sasuke small and ravaged and locking himself into his rosary prayerslike into a safety belt.
When he comes it feels like a bomb going off inside him.
He opens his eyes to Sasuke sitting back on his heels with his face flushed, lips open and swollen and wet. Some of his hair remains stuck between Naruto's clutching fingers.
"Sasuke," he says again, more tentative now but deliberate too. Trying to negotiate a path through an unfamiliar forest, trying not to stumble into any sudden abysses.
Sasuke wipes his mouth and starts to stand up, away from him, and fuck it, he can climb back out of any potential abyss: snags Sasuke's wrist, pulls Sasuke down on top of him. Sasuke catches himself on the back of the couch, making a face that forces Naruto to release him. "Don't touch me."
"But we just – you just." He doesn't need to gesture at it, really: at his own spent, still-naked dick, at his sperm sticking to the corner of Sasuke's mouth. At the wet spot on Sasuke's trousers, from when he came too.
For a protracted moment Sasuke's face remains oddly blank. Then he leers. "Haven't you heard? I do this shit for a living. I don't have to like it."
Naruto sits forward, elbows on his knees. Tucks himself back in, because he can't stand to see it anymore. "I can't be some disgusting chore to you."
And Sasuke certainly wasn't disgusted when he did it. Sasuke was desperate for it, on fire with Naruto's desire, which will become overwhelming the minute Sasuke's balancing revulsion slackens.
Sasuke looks away. "I can think now."
Naruto can too, head cleared by intense orgasm. "This can't happen again. You're all –" He makes a gesture, for this thing that he knows but doesn't know the words for.
Sasuke's voice is quiet. "Like I said. You were supposed to be better than this." He smirk-sneers, a rather subdued expression. "I suppose it's to my advantage that you're not."
"You couldn't stand me if I were! …could you?"
"I don't know," Sasuke tells him, scraped raw and naked, down to the bare chafing bones of truth. "What does it matter now?"
"All the time that I was away, I wanted back with you. I – everything that happened, when I thought about something funny or I was upset or – or anything. I wanted to experience it with you. You're who I wanted to tell it to. How could you – how the fuck could you do that to me. Throw me away like that!"
"Then maybe you shouldn't have let me," Sasuke sneers. "If you hadn't been so weak!"
"I tried!" Naruto screams at him.
"And what the fuck good is that?"
"At least I did something, I fucking tried, I…! You just cut me off! Why didn't you – that was fucking weak, that – you let me down."
"That was the one good thing I ever did!" Sasuke hisses back. And they're on their feet now, close enough that Kyuubi's lashing tails sparkle through Sasuke, who pays this no mind. Just breathes in, a deep shuddering breath. "You couldn't help me, Naruto. You couldn't even help yourself."
"If you think you helped me by turning me away like some worthless child, then –"
"I helped myself," Sasuke cuts him off. "You were a liability."
"I'm not a liability now," Naruto finally manages to say. "We're a team now."
Sasuke might not have answered even if Kiba hadn't reappeared in the doorway. "You guys coming or what?"
"No," Naruto tells him. He cuts off Kiba's protests, "Now isn't a good time."
Kiba takes a step back, but persists, "No such thing as a bad time for kicking exorcist arse."
Sasuke's never had much patience for verbal warnings. Light sizzles across his fingers, his eyes spinning red and deranged.
Naruto didn't need this reminder that killing has always come naturally to Sasuke, that he's no stranger to cruelty.
Kiba starts to burn.
"Fuck's sake!" He pushes at Sasuke, which makes Sasuke stumble backwards but has no effect on the magic. So there's nothing to it, because Kiba's screaming now, and Sasuke's clearly prepared to burn him as some kind of fucked up punishment for Naruto: nothing to it, so Naruto lashes out at him through the bond, darkness and claws and foxfire through Sasuke's mind.
And this was never about Kiba, so it's a given that when Sasuke retaliates, it's Naruto being hit by that searing angel light. He stumbles to his knees, the outline of his own body hazy with imminent exorcism. But Kiba, panting on the floor there in the doorway and bleeding a little from his ears, is fine.
And Naruto too is fine, because the light goes out. Sasuke kicks him in the head, and Naruto falls over, but not before grabbing Sasuke's leg, forcing Sasuke down with him.
"Fuck you all," Sasuke hisses. He's up before Naruto, still healing massive internal damage, can stop him. Steps on Kiba as if Kiba's simply part of the floor, storming off God knows where.
"Your boyfriend's a bitch," Kiba gasps.
"Yeah well," Naruto says. "What else is new."
