La Belle Dame Sans Merci: 36:
"Proving Points"
They end up in the bedroom, Sasuke propping another flask into Itachi's mouth to keep him occupied – since the diaper was clean, he must reasonably have started complaining because he was hungry.
Despite everything, the scene still throws Naruto. A smallish bedroom, light through the window, generous amounts of it, illuminating Sasuke cross-legged on the bed, looking young again and beautiful, feeding a child held competently against his body.
"So," Sasuke says after some time, not looking at him. "How was the mission?"
"Tough," Naruto says. "Lots of running after terrified people with no idea where they where going, who turned vicious when they were cornered. Temari got hurt, Ibiki and I are fine. ANBU's dead."
He pauses, staring out the window, considering things he's done and hasn't.
"Now," he starts, a little uncertain, about a great deal of things, "are you – I mean, you said before you'd take care of Sound. What exactly did you mean?"
"Depends," Sasuke says evenly, his shrug a light, joyous movement. "It'd be smartest to subdue them and bring them back as minions, but I'm not sure Tsunade will approve, or think it worth the cost."
"What cost?"
"Depends, too. Dead people, obviously. Mainly Sound, to prove the necessary points. If we do bring them here there'll obviously be trouble, deaths on both sides, first arguments and then the punishments. But they're good at killing, and that's what's needed in war."
"That's not enough," Naruto protests. "Killing is how you start a war, it's not how you stop it."
"It's hard for your enemy to fight back if he's dead," Sasuke argues. "On the other hand Sound won't be all we have, so it's a pointless discussion."
"Maybe," Naruto concedes, with a sigh. Goes to sit on the bed as well, letting his body fall back against the pillows, lies with his eyes half closed, studying Sasuke.
Sasuke who looks back every now and then, discreetly, and eventually puts an apparently sleeping Itachi away in the pseudo-cradle. Comes back, after that, and closer than he was before, leaning over Naruto so black hair brushes his face. His hand is on Naruto's arm, just below the elbow.
"I want to fight you," Sasuke says. Breathes, really.
Naruto sits back up, his expression a challenge. In Kakashi's room with Itachi sleeping there is little they can do, however. Settle for arm wrestling, face to face on the bed, elbows on knees, hands clasped and straining.
"No chakra," Sasuke stipulates, eager words, bright eyes.
It is a very even thing, wonderfully.
Naruto wins, but only because Sasuke's concentration snaps elsewhere when there's a sound from Itachi's direction.
It turns out to be nothing, a bird crying outside, and Sasuke's still on the bed when he realizes this, doesn't leave it. Actually, with the way he twisted around and how Naruto held his arm, it's the easiest thing in the world to tug him back, collapse him over Naruto.
Sasuke, who's still bright, with those impossibly missed eyes, who's never in his life backed down when it comes to Naruto.
Who is staring challenge right back at Naruto, and can suddenly seem playful even though actually he isn't, he never is, about this or anything but particularly this, and Naruto moves his hands a little, reaffirming the solider ribs, the spine that never broke, the stronger jaw.
Sasuke moves under his touch, tugging at him, pushing, pulling, and who did they think they were kidding, with the games?
Mouth to mouth, and Sasuke kisses the exact same way he usually does, teeth and tongue. His mouth is very much the same – small, pallid, but proportion-wise larger in a male face. Other things are different.
How Sasuke's torso is flat and hard against his, how he's heavier, larger, though both of these last are marginal changes. Marginal things matter, any ninja knows.
These aren't bad. His hand slips down Sasuke's side, over the thicker chest, the less pronounced waist, along the curve of a hip that hasn't changed much. Which was part of the problem, really, regarding the birth.
When his hand ghosts across the stomach Sasuke doesn't protest. Raises an eyebrow, slips a hand down the collar of Naruto's shirt, bends to kiss him anew, hard.
He's surprised and he isn't.
The abdomen is inverted again, an almost flat wall of thin muscle. Sasuke won't have to worry about protecting it carefully anymore.
Naruto pauses, in all the strangeness, hands on Sasuke's skin, reminds himself the blackish eyes are a lie.
Thinks about a certain memory, Neji wearing Sasuke's face, pressing him into a wall. He's raw and tender and hell turned-on, then and now, lost in a crazy world of regrets and the failures that prompted them.
Sasuke lost interest in sex entirely in the beginning of the fifth month of the pregnancy, sighed and snapped at Naruto to fuck off by himself more often than not. Wasn't impossible to persuade, but Naruto doesn't feel so good about that (sasuke looking grumpily the other way, cursing under his breath or obviously counting seconds, face carefully, agonizingly blank, preventing naruto from stopping – had to get a reaction first, and he didn't, and grew rougher, turned away in disgust when it was over but couldn't keep away, and sasuke never said a thing; or, he said many things, but none that mattered).
Sasuke is hardly passive-aggressive now, though. Clings to him, through the strangeness, mouth opening and closing around a soft hiss.
This is shocking innocent, the tentative stage they never tried – went from comradely fighting to sloppy sex in days (in years). Never this clothes-on fumbling, the shy comfort of a body pressing partially into another, his fingertips finding and cradling Sasuke's neck.
They are interrupted by a hard knock; Sasuke slips free, straightens his shirt and is off the bed in a single fast movement. Naruto hasn't seen it in months, that lighting-sharp control and merciless grace. He's missed it, only partially consoled by the heavier grace of pregnant-woman-Sasuke, reckons Sasuke must have been going mad for it.
Rather more slowly, he follows the Uchiha towards the door, is still approaching when Sasuke opens it and his spine tenses. The trio that has come knocking is the outside of improbable.
"Sasuke," Sakura breathes, in the kind of voice that should shake the earth. "Sasuke-kun!"
She's a stupid girl, not innocent, not particularly competent. Too loud, too quiet. A forgettable presence; he doesn't owe her anything.
He also – cares for her. There is a bond there, and he's… alright with that, now he actually knows her.
She isn't – there are many things she is not, but that is less important than the fact she's a person he loves, in the bleak stunted painful way he has.
He isn't Sasuke-kun, but that's okay. For both of them. She throws her arms around his neck, and Sasuke-kun would have let her, gruffly, if he didn't manage to step away in time to avoid the contact. He wouldn't have held her back.
Changed in a fundamental way, he is aware, after Orochimaru, that touching is something one person does to another.
Absolutely fed up with being a victim, with letting things happen to him because fighting back will just make it worse, he holds her back. Her body pressed up against his, the vice-like grip around his neck that he doesn't want to break; the experience feels peculiar, estranged, but not bad per see. Uncomfortable, perhaps, but not desperately so. Her back under his hands, slender and solid, is a better sensation than he would have believed, and this is how it could've been, one of their many might-have-beens.
In a dream where reality doesn't open up where it's been torn, where red shadows don't reach for me through the gaps.
She cries into his shoulder, despite and because of the realization that though the color is right, the gaze in those eyes isn't.
Sasuke-kun, I didn't even dare miss you, and that might've been for the best; Sasuke-kun isn't coming back.
There's just Sasuke now. Maybe that's for the best as well. She loves him, after all, and you don't exchange your precious people, not for anything.
Used to being pushed away, she leaves her arms around his neck for as long as she can, hardly able to process that he hasn't shrugged away, hasn't even let go of her. There is a grip around her hips. Uchiha Sasuke's grip. Their broken darling's grip, and it isn't going to break.
Naruto stares at them with a watery smile below aching eyes, forcibly reminded of the first time Iruka-sensei slung an arm across his shoulders.
"Sasuke," Kakashi says eventually, a measured voice, a smudge surprised and something deeper.
Sensing something Naruto doesn't catch, Sakura-chan extracts herself from a passive, dismissive Sasuke, inches behind him until she's standing beside Naruto, a hand warm on his ribs. He chances a look at her in startled gratitude, slings an arm around her.
"Kakashi," Sasuke replies, in that tone that isn't his but with the voice that is. Scratchy, deep, makes you shiver, deep inside.
There is something so incredibly private, exclusive. Their looks at each other, the minimal tilt to Sasuke's mouth, Kakashi's hand on his shoulder.
With non-surprising but seldom-used courtesy Tsunade stays quiet until the moment has passed, until everyone is looking at her, expectant.
"I am here to confirm certain things," she says. "About Sound, and about Itachi."
"I see," Sasuke says, and moves, until they are all in the kitchen, cramped now, waiting for him. When he returns from the bedroom Itachi is held possessively, Sasuke hovering over the child with protective paranoia. Shit, Naruto is reminded. Holy shit, Sasuke has a child.
"He's fine," Sasuke says crisply.
"What experience do you base that judgment on?"
Rather to her surprise, Tsunade finds it is much easier to interact with Uchiha now, to deal with what he has become. It might be the eyes, or the surety of the dwarfish figure – a ninja, a boy, and dark-eyed. Things she can handle, all of them. He does not evoke pity, nor memories.
What she couldn't deal with properly, what ate at her, what called to her own lost ghosts, were the golden eyes, which are no more.
She had not thought she could grieve for that, but it appears some bonds go deeper than death.
Sasuke stares at her mutinously, with nothing to say.
"Shall I take a look?" Sakura asks. "Would that be satisfactory, for both of you?"
"Alright," Sasuke agrees. The silence before he spoke was so short, hardly long enough for doubt. But Orochimaru was always quick, and it does not do to forget that appearances mean little, in this world (tsunade knows that better than anyone).
"Yes," the Hokage agrees. "Do so."
So she takes Itachi from Sasuke, the quiet bundle resting easily against her chest, except she doesn't know how to do this, really, and she'd feel so much better if the kid would just have some kind of reaction. She brushes chakra over it, light, light fingers on soft skin, and the red eyes widen, fix on her, and this is creepier than it should be but she can't stop, won't stop, and amazingly there doesn't seem to be anything amiss.
"Healthy, I think," she says, subdued in uncertainty, trying to like the child (failing).
Even Itachi, Sasuke's brother Itachi who slaughtered the Uchiha Clan to see if he could, even he had normal eyes, once upon a time.
Sasuke accepts his son back, looks down at him with a befuddled and passionately soft expression Sakura ached to evoke from him, years ago. Still does, though not for the exact same reasons.
Love's love, and it doesn't leave you, change though it may.
"Sound, then," Tsunade says. "We've established the whereabouts of the two major gatherings of Orochimaru's former minions. Everything is set to go."
Sasuke looks up from Itachi, nods, businesslike, an improbable sight: killer extraordinaire, cuddling his baby. "Excellent." He offers the child a finger to play with. "This body hasn't fully adjusted to the chakra-increase it received due to the merging, but training it up to full potential should be fast work." Translation: I need a strong team, just in case. "Someone has to mind Itachi."
"We're already short on medics," Tsunade says, with a brief glance towards Sakura.
"I'm not…" Naruto pauses, hands moving restlessly at his sides. He offers a rueful, sheepish smile. "I'm not so good with babies, I don't think."
"I'll take him, then," Kakashi offers. "I don't mind."
"Alright," Sasuke says, with a slow look at him and a hint of what should have been a smile.
"Good," says Tsunade. "I'm sending Shikamaru and Neji with the two of you."
"If you must," Sasuke replies. Could've been much worse. "For clarification, then: I intend to re-establish myself as leader of the former Hidden Village of Sound, then bring them back to set up a base near Leaf Village, whose allies they are to understand themselves to be in the ongoing conflict."
"Acceptable," Tsunade says. She does not look happy. She looks powerful and burdened, a Hokage. Do what you have to do.
"Excellent," Sasuke says again, sounding like he means: barely adequate. "Did you set a time for departure?"
"Shikamaru has leave until tomorrow."
"Tomorrow, then," Sasuke affirms.
Tsunade nods, looks at him for a moment longer, this boy who is not, when all is said and done, a person she loved once (but not really, as i have told myself so many times).
She went here today to see him, see what she could glean and learn and leave behind, in a milieu that was not stylized, formalized as the Hokage office. Is still uncertain whether it was a good idea.
"I – made some promises," Sakura says. "Have to leave. But Sasuke, I'm so glad."
"Promises," he repeats, and whatever you want to call the expression on his face, it isn't a smile. "Yamanaka Ino?"
Her expression is worried, mildly annoyed. She steps away from Naruto, facing down Sasuke. "Is that any of your business?"
"Yes," he says. "Yes it is."
She offers a rueful twist of her lips. "Try," she asks. "For me?"
"I do," Sasuke replies, obviously not comfortable with the admittance. The rest is implied, sinks in after a moment's silence: I am trying, for you, I haven't killed her.
"It's… not the same," she says, and touches his face. He lets her get away with it the way a wary, half-tamed animal would. "You're both so important to me, in so different ways, but I can say truthfully that I lo–"
"Don't!" Sasuke sneers viciously.
Watching them, not allowing herself to see a roughish white head and a sleek black one, Tsunade translates his expression as best she knows how, aware it might not be very accurate.
Don't say you love her, for if you do I shall despair, and my despair is not a pretty thing.
Don't say you love me, because then I will break and I will hate you – don't say you love me, because I love you too, and it'll break the both of us, I'll break the both of us.
Stupid silly kid, but at least he's trying. Hasn't hurt Ino, wants Sakura safe and reasonably happy. Better than Orochimaru, she supposes.
"Right," Sakura says. "I'll see you later, then." Marches off.
Tsunade does not respect others' privacy, but she does respect her own; follows her student out.
"Damn it," Sasuke says tightly, practically hurls Itachi at Kakashi – hands fisted and white at his sides.
"Honestly," Kakashi says with snide softness. Sadness underneath, always that, but not much of it. He knows what he's doing, always knows, and it could drive you mad if you let it. "Are you in a position to be so jealous?"
Sasuke nobly refrains from giving him a filthy look.
Kakashi shakes his head, assumes the tone of a teacher: the mock disgust, so familiar it is almost comforting. Still a mask?
"Go train, both of you. Fight it out. Learn to handle the chakra properly again. I'll take care of Itachi. Mind the collateral damage."
"Right," Naruto says, touches Sasuke's elbow.
"Are you really?" he asks, later, far from the village, beyond the normal training grounds where the forest still stands, untouched by the recent assault. "I mean, you could've had her if you wanted, before."
"I've lost enough people," Sasuke mutters murderously, low enough Naruto would not have heard him before Jiraiya started breaking the seal on Kyuubi.
The fight is bitterly brilliant.
They explode towards each other, again and again, and someone has to win but no one can lose, and this won't ever end, least not well.
And then it does.
The first time Naruto has sex with boy-version Sasuke is nothing like he imagined it would be. He's thought – or, he hasn't thought about it (which in retrospect is kind of stupid) but the never-vocalized idea he's had is centered on violence, something fierce and abrupt and ardent, a fight taking a wrong turn. A back pressed into a rough surface, hard enough it has to be painful and neither of them could care less, holding up and holding fast, clinging blessedly strangling-tight, mouths wetly open, smeared with blood, sliding hotly against each other.
Something like that, like what certain memories and certain dreams and certain nightmares are made of. He grows hard, thinking about it, and disgusted. Feels unclean and aroused and animal and just – desperate, for too many reasons.
He also half expects a fist in his face, the one Sasuke didn't give him even though Naruto suspects he should have, over the last months.
Reality isn't anything like that. It's quiet, not the sort of silence that heralds or follows a major event but the kind of stillness that signifies a peak in and of itself.
"I fucking love you!" Naruto has screamed across all the ruined moments between them. "I hate you because I love you so goddamn much, you fucking asshole!"
Frustration and blood-loss have loosened his tongue: he is on his back, feeling demon power force his cells into hyper-activity, to replace the lost fluid.
He feels the wounds close up, seamless and searing, tells himself he's not scared because of the sudden confession. So maybe he didn't mean to say it, now or ever again. He never meant to kill more people than he's counted, either, or watch helplessly as others die, as his loved ones hurt.
Never meant to rely on the Kyuubi, or fightfuck Sasuke. Never actually planned on loving the bastard either, actually, though that last he doesn't mind so much.
A ninja has to get used to life taking unexpected turns – usually for the worse.
So he insists to himself they don't frighten him, the truth-words issued recently from chapped lips; unfortunately he has never been all that good at lying to himself.
"Dead-last," Sasuke husks, and the words sound like they're a strange taste in his mouth, alien between his tongue and palate. Naruto could laugh, almost, at that. He could almost laugh because hell if he's going to cry.
The ground bloody shakes, or if it's just Naruto trembling atop it, when Sasuke sinks to his knees beside him. It's probably just Naruto, realistically speaking – Sasuke's worn and willowy, not the kind of weight that makes the earth roll beneath it.
Regardless of what the ground does, Naruto shakes for him. He's up on his elbows, up on instinct. There are things worth fighting for. There are things worth losing for.
His hands close ache-hard around Sasuke's neck, holding him down over him. They're not any good at this, neither of them is – being close is dangerous, especially in the stillness with no distractions from the necessity. When you need someone so much you can't live without them, every moment carries an almost inhuman (breaking) weight.
The forest is a catastrophe around them, ashes and broken landscape. Naruto won't consider it symbolic.
It's so strange and disconcerting and wonderful, now and during the fight; the new-old proportions of Sasuke's body, the hard strength and frail-softer skin.
They're not the best they could have been.
Your level best can go a long way sometimes, though. Far enough?
"Hey," Naruto mumbles, voice shaking, fingers trembling, kisses Sasuke. Ironically, it's actually a mistake – he expected Sasuke to either slip free and sit back or force Naruto back down when he inched upwards, but had to move to avoid getting his spine crushed (to get closer, his sweaty face pressed to sasuke's).
Nevertheless, hold still, Sasuke did not move. Naruto's never exactly had a perfect understanding of him, and it usually frustrates him, but he thinks, dimly with Sasuke's lips on his, that maybe he can live with it this once.
Sasuke is beautiful lying in the dirt, and what's even more beautiful, and curious, and shit alarming too, come to think of it, but Naruto isn't thinking now, because moreover it's so goddamn inconceivably beautiful that Sasuke lets him.
Naruto has always figured Sasuke for the kind of guy who wouldn't appreciate being rolled around and pushed down and molested by his multitasking rival/best friend; experience has taught him in no uncertain terms that Sasuke is not generally the sort of guy who doesn't let his dislike of things shine through.
It's also let him know Sasuke does sometimes enjoy a bit of rough and tumble, and that he may occasionally (okay, pretty often) let you sleep with him even though he doesn't much want you to.
But right now Sasuke is not only not slugging Naruto senseless or sneering at him to take his perversions elsewhere; isn't glaring death or darkness or dishonor. He is on his back on ground as broken as is he with his shirt pooling around his armpits and Naruto leaning over him, and going by the hooded eyes and wet, parted lips he likes it.
His tongue is lost and found in Sasuke's mouth, his left hand in Sasuke's hair, its sibling stroking down his chest; Uchiha Sasuke is in his arms, panting like a fish on dry land, fingers wreaking havoc with Naruto's clothing, and fuck, am I crying?
Does he care?
No, didn't think so.
His hand travels further downward, past the hip, lingering for a moment at the fastening of Sasuke's pants before slipping cautiously underneath the material.
Sasuke gives him a sound, a breathy reluctant one, and a very long, very level gaze. What are you going to do, Uzumaki? Can you take it?
Naruto…takes the plunge.
This is beyond weird, and somehow his fingers are still expecting a female sex, but they aren't – aren't unwilling to discover new opportunities.
He looks down at Sasuke, still feeling unsteady, wobbly fox grin, and imagines the implicit question is clear: how do we do this?
In response to which Sasuke rubs impatiently against him, thighs parting to wrap around Naruto's hips. Not for the first time by far, but they've never previously had so much power behind them.
(they open like butterfly wings, like the gates of heaven, like a billion beautiful ethereal things that naruto is not actually the kind of man to readily think of, though sometimes he thinks he would've liked to be. at least aspiring towards the good and pure has to be worth something, right, even if you can't get there in actual reality?)
Like the legs of the one person Naruto loves without a single reservation and so much it scares him sick and without being able to hold back at all. They really are too bony, they really are pressing to hard around his waist, chafing against his hips, they really are absolutely perfect.
He stares down again into Sasuke's face and it could have been perfect, it should have been perfect, but he's meeting a mismatched gaze, Sharingan red and Sasuke dark, and the world is spinning.
He moves with it, on his back now, Sasuke straddling him, still mostly clothed and increasingly desperate.
Thinks he could cry again, afterwards, which is good in a way because while it furrows Sasuke's brow and makes him mutter about clumsy idiots, it proves he's still – he's not a horrible person, not completely someone he doesn't want to be.
"Idiot," Sasuke groans, easing his rather painful grip around Naruto's shoulder.
And Naruto finds, with an amount of cheeky, cheery non-caring that is spectacular even for him, that he really doesn't give a damn. Not about anything but this, not right now.
Sits back up at length, watching the proud, easy movement as Sasuke stands – not a claustrophobic prisoner inside his body anymore. The gesture when he brushes hair out of his face is achingly familiar, and clearly Sasuke shares this thought, and is growing tired of it, since he slips a left-over kunai from its sling around his thigh and cuts a generous portion off, leaving him with uneven bangs a good inch shorter.
"Heh," Naruto mutters, trying to angle his pants so the sodden spot at the front won't be quite so visible or annoying. "I could've done that better for you."
"I'm sure you enjoy telling yourself so," Sasuke replies. Unfairly, his pants are an inconspicuous black.
"Yup," Naruto says, firing off the brightest grin he can manage. "Some of us like telling it like it is."
Sasuke snorts at him, looking the other way.
A moment later he looks back though, and there's that peculiar hybrid between a grin and a smirk on his face.
"Say that with a blade in hand," he calls, bright as a summer morning, flickering between the remaining trees.
"Don't need a blade to take you!" Naruto calls back.
Sasuke is fast as hell, smooth and unpredictable; Naruto is shortly very grateful for his self-healing ability. After all, a main point of the fight is chakra training.
Fire and electricity have always been Sasuke's favorites, vicious and flashy they decimate the woodland and Naruto.
Shadow clones and taijutsu and Rasengan retaliate, only to discover that Sasuke has indeed acquired a rather extensive knowledge of new jutsu.
It's as close to perfect as you get in this world; giving your all, your absolute all, with the most desperately precious person.
Day is losing to dusk when they return to the village, shabby and sniping at each other. Inspecting his companion, Naruto is briefly glad they don't actually do their own laundry (what's the point of cloning techniques if you don't use them?).
"What?"
"Nothing," Naruto mumbles around a grin, arranging their arms around each other (oh god, like in country of the wave, like all those trainings and mission before the bad things happened), warm support.
Sasuke frees himself when they reach Kakashi's building, where the stairs are narrow, but given that he's already allowed it most of the way Naruto doesn't mind so much.
Inside Itachi starts whining the second Sasuke steps into the kitchen, where, until this unfortunate moment, the baby was dozing, leaving Kakashi to skim porn and cook dinner.
It does strike Naruto that there is probably something wrong with considering the scene homely, but never mind.
"Feeling better?" Kakashi asks over the edge of his book.
Ignoring the rhetorical question Sasuke steps past him and lifts the child, who calms with peculiar immediacy. Sasuke's expression is grave and uncomfortable as he adjusts his grip, dedicating a brief study to the baby, but Naruto could not have avoided noticing how fast he moved, the single-minded haste towards the child.
"Evening," he mutters to Kakashi, dusting off his jacket before stepping into the apartment proper.
"Shikamaru stopped by," Kakashi mentions with a demented smirk Naruto recognizes; one that makes him fear for his life. "We decided you should start off from the main gate three hours past dawn tomorrow."
"Man," Naruto sighs, dejected. "Cut me some slack here." It's decidedly doubtful whether it's worth running around to Neji and Shikamaru to argue about changing the time, though.
"I, on the other hand," Kakashi adds evilly, "was planning to take advantage of my baby-sitter duty and sleep out. Will Itachi be spending the night here?"
"No," Sasuke says. "I'm not – comfortable with that."
"No offense," Kakashi says, "but I haven't gotten much rest lately. I don't care if you stay over, but I'm taking the bed and I'd prefer not to be woken up in the morning."
"I'll go home," Naruto offers. The kitchen chairs do not look inviting, nor, really, is Kakashi's presence.
Sasuke stays pallid and silent, but there is something like surprise tinting his expression.
"Ah," Kakashi says. "Are you and Itachi staying, then?"
"I suppose we are."
"See you tomorrow," Naruto mumbles, stepping up and apparently startling Sasuke into allowing him to kiss his cheek. He does it playfully, gives it a nip. "Bye, Itachi, Kakashi."
The kid does not look at him, but swats at his hand when he lets it slip close enough to imitate touching.
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