Uchiha Sasuke crawled into his bed and turned out the light, determined not to repeat the history of only a day before, and keep a certain blond idiot out of his dreams.
A pale chest gently rose its blankets upward and down, as dark eyes under equally pale lids fluttered, attempting to find sweet, restful slumber. All seemed calm and quiet until the pale chest suddenly heaved a sigh, and those equally pale lids snapped open to reveal their flashing dark eyes. Sasuke angrily shoved the top half of his bedding away and swung his feet over the side so he could stalk his way to the window overlooking Gaara's village. It was no use. The raven would never have a good night's sleep as long as Naruto was only a few doors down and so irreversibly angry with him. He knew he hadn't always been nice, or even civil, with the blond most of the time, but he'd never seen the other look so pissed off, so uncharacteristic, so defeated. Sasuke also knew that most of the village still held a grudge against the fact that Naruto carried the fox demon Kyuubi within the depths of his heart and mind- and he'd never made the weight any easier to bear. But the Uchiha had always known, at first reluctantly, that Naruto was his favorite person to deal with and to be around. They'd always balanced one another in their rivalry, in their friendship, and in what the former avenger had hoped would someday be more.
The teenaged raven wasn't completely sure when or how his feelings toward the blond idiot had blossomed into fantasizing about the two in rather obscene and intimate positions. All he was sure of was that he needed to find a way to make that baka understand the reason he left Konoha after being such an ass to him. Why he couldn't handle the progressions Naruto made after Sasuke had received Orochimaru's mark. Why he trained under the purple pervert, who possessed far too many pictures of that other male sanin, and then eventually left. Why he couldn't kill Naruto at the Valley of the End. Sure, he wanted to rid the world and his mind of his brother Itachi, but it went far deeper than that, unfortunately.
Somehow, somewhere on the twisted path of the avenger's life, he'd fallen for the idiot who'd stolen his first kiss.
Sasuke had tried to squash the feelings at first by ignoring the yellow nuisance, then by being snarky and rude. But Naruto had still managed to weasel his way into Sasuke's thoughts, actions, belief system, and heart. He'd nearly chosen Naruto over his broken heart and pride for his fallen clan- until Orochimaru had come along. Years after he had left however, he returned to Konoha, and though he still held a grudge against his older brother, he'd hoped his life would go back to "normal" again.
But nothing could ever be normal anymore. Not after he and the rest of their god-forsaken village had finally broken Naruto emotionally. Not after the blond fled to the demon wings of a redhead who could understand his feelings of solitude better than Sasuke ever would. Not after the blond refused to talk to, or even look at the raven properly since his arrival in Sunagakure. Not after the very person he'd loathed the most in the world had been the reason for his survival in the desert. Not after that same person then revealed to him that his hatred had been in vain because it had been to Konoha elders, not Itachi, truly responsible for the horror Sasuke had experienced that night eight years ago.
Itachi.
Sasuke couldn't help the fluttering of anxiety in his abdomen thinking aout his older brother, about the man with nearly constant scowling red eyes. He didn't always hold expressions like that, though. The elder Uchiha with the long, silky black hair used to send the younger the most charming smiles in those faraway days in which they were closer. Sasuke used to look up to his brother with the greatest adoration and respect until his aniki had shown him what his was truly capable of. Sasuke, if he was going to believe everything he had once been told was true had really been false, still had to proceed with caution- he couldn't reconcile the two images of a smiling, loving aniki, and a sneering, mocking murderer. If Sasuke was truly honest with himself, which he knew he wasn't, he'd see that it was the close bonds, the genuinely loving smiles that had made him feel the most betrayed. Had made his gentle and naïve heart into the calloused stone it was today- not the murder of his entire clan, but the fact that Itachi had ridiculed him and told him he wasn't good enough to kill.
He still had a lot to think about; perhaps it wasn't the situation or the choice that was more complex than it used to seem. Perhaps it was simply Itachi himself that had more layers that originally met the eye. An unexpected knock at the door sent the youngest surviving Uchiha reeling from his ponderings, and his gaze to the door. What could anyone possibly want at this late, or likely very early, hour? Didn't they know he could have been sleeping? He opened the door to reveal who he believed was the most cold-blooded, dangerous, hated, and difficult ninja figure out Sasuke had ever known.
"Hello, Itachi."
Had anyone sleepless been gazing down from their windows at around three-thirty that morning, they'd have struggled to breathe through the thick tension emanating from two dark-and-pale both radiating and shadowed from the moonlight. And had they caught eyes with them, they might have been bitterly amused to think that still more demons had entered Suna.
The two brothers who contrasted the monochrome color surrounding them as they walked the streets, did so in an uneasy and awkward silence before Sasuke decided to break their unspoken rule. "Why would you wait all of these years to finally tell me what you say is the truth? Why would you go through steps to leave and tell me to hate you, if you were only going to fuck that all up later?" He asked heatedly, blushing slightly at the look his brother gave him for his vulgarity.
"As I said earlier: at the time, I thought it would be the best thing for you. You'd be more focused in your training, safe in the village, and wouldn't have been torn away from your home." The other said simply.
"How could you possibly have thought that?" Sasuke snapped. In the back of his mind, he entertained the notion that he might have been too loud responding, but "at the time" he couldn't bring himself to care enough to stop. "How could you think that growing up without a family to love that I'd still have a home? How could you expect me to focus on training when, in the beginning, I couldn't even see past my anger and tears? How could you think I'd be safe in a village that wanted our family destroyed and I had no way to protect myself? How could you think I could survive surrounded by peers who couldn't possibly understand how I was feeling? How could you?" He finished sobbing, brokenly whispering under his breath, "how could you…?"
Though it went against everything the brothers had taught themselves for the past several years, Itachi did the only thing he felt he could do as a brother: he embraced his crying otouto. Sasuke clung desperately to Itachi, burying his face in his brother's soft clothing and not caring if they were making a scene or potentially causing inappropriate rumors. He didn't even care if that blue bastard found out and pestered him about it until the day Sushi-Platter learned to fly.
When Itachi offered to take him back to the guests' quarters and spend the night with him so that he wouldn't be alone, Sasuke found he couldn't refuse even though he knew it to be against his better judgment. Itachi had to pick Sasuke up during the trek back when the younger's legs finally gave out from physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. The smaller of the two let himself be lulled to sleep by the rhythm of his brother's steady heart, away from everything but the two of them together.
