Sasuke's spent hours going over the room, but it's proven predictably useless. There's no way to get out without magic, and he's not getting any magic, not when this prison is, pathetically, the safest place he's been for years.
So he's sitting on the bed, and as a rule he doesn't allow himself to touch the seal but he's clawing at it now as though human fingers could tear it off.
That's when the door opens.
That's when Naruto opens the door.
And there, the sudden eye of the storm: Sasuke cross-legged on the bed, within reaching distance and still looking unreachable.
Naruto has to steady himself, try to breathe, because his hands are fisting around the need to take and hold, like they're Kyuubi's hands even though no claws have come out.
Sasuke is Naruto's and necessary the same way as Naruto's spine or Naruto's lungs.
Except Sasuke won't see it that way, won't need Naruto.
Sasuke looks up then, straight into his eyes. Smiles a shark smile: half-smirk, half-sneer, wholly Sasuke. "Hey." His fingers are little needles, drawing blood at his own shoulder.
"Hi." He's staring back helplessly, has never felt so powerless. Wants to just look at him, forever, drink him with his eyes. Wants to rip Sasuke's chest open, and stroke softly over his heart. Nuzzle it as it pulses, right there in the cradle of Sasuke's broken ribs.
Kyuubi's salivating at the idea of burying his fangs in Sasuke's flesh, eating him up until they're inseparably one, and Naruto's throat clogs with retches but his dick throbs.
He realises his hands are shaking only when they steady around the door handle, something to hold on to, anything. "You're here."
Sasuke shrugs. It's a harsh, one-shouldered movement, typical of Sasuke, who only looks graceful when he's still, always moving in sharp, economical stabs. "Your father was quite insistent."
"He can be – sort of pushy," Naruto agrees. Sasuke's eyes stay cold and flat, but he won't speak. His mouth is small, his closed lips straight and severe and rather thin, not made for smiling. "Okay, yeah, he means well but he can be sort of Hitler." Sasuke snorts, and Naruto's smiling at him, hopelessly obsessed. "I guess fathers are like that."
Naruto remembers saying, years and years ago, I think parents are mostly good. So you have someone from the start to love you.
That was before he'd seen parents fail, far beyond the fixable. Before he'd heard Sasuke let slip a reference to Orochimaru as otousama, and think explaining it away as Orochimaru's incest kink was the lesser evil.
It's inconceivable now, that minutes ago life was over.
"I tried to come back for you," Naruto says abruptly.
And it's stupid but Sasuke believes him. It's a sort of last gift, that belief, a sweetsour thing that will make Naruto's inevitable betrayal hurt, salt the wound. But Sasuke's used to pain; used, even, to the sort of pain that changes who you are.
He's showered, exchanged Kakashi's old jumper for a spare shirt from the wardrobe, which is far too large on him. Borrowed clothes tend to be: he only notices now because the neckline exposes his collar bones and Naruto's looking. The nausea is a tangible weight in Sasuke's throat.
He didn't change because he's trying to hide anything about Kakashi – it's largely meaningless to try to hide things from Naruto – but he can't think about it yet, isn't ready to fight about it.
"What?" he snaps.
Naruto's eyes snap back up to his, and they're not blue anymore. His voice stays light, the lightness that comes of being very, very careful not to let it get heavy. "If it came down to it, could you stop me?"
"How could I possibly?" Sasuke's still snapping, with that cold defensive fury that's carried him through so much of his life, so much that would otherwise have been unbearable.
Naruto swallows. He's so hard it hurts, so over-aroused there's hardly any pleasure left in it, just pain, just raw need scraping under his skin. Eventually, you will breathe. "I thought – self-defence. That maybe."
"You don't want to kill me," Sasuke says. "You just want to fuck me. I'd think you'd realise that it would be a little contra productive, from Orochimaru's perspective, if that was grounds for self-defence." He started out calmly enough, subdued even, but gets gradually louder, ending spitting furious.
Indeed Naruto can see quite plainly the brand on Sasuke's shoulder, framed by the low neckline. Literally a brand: Sasuke does not advertise this fact, but it was made with an actual branding iron. He can also see Sasuke's throat and collar bones, and that someone's been biting at them.
"Those are not defensive wounds."
Sasuke looks his version of stricken, which is to say rabid. The threat of violence between them is so overt it's almost already violence.
"I couldn't fight him every time!" The volume is all wrong for a scream, but there's no other word to call it. "Fighting him at full power – that means he has to hurt me a lot, to get what he wants, and how can I ever get strong enough to stop him by lying around in a hospital bed!"
Sasuke can fight all he likes, Sasuke can lie there and close his eyes and think of England, Sasuke can enjoy himself: it makes very little difference to Orochimaru's pleasure.
He's done all of it, by now. Seduction is a skill like any other, and that's an excuse but it's also the truth. It can be useful, can be a way of getting people where you need them. Not one he'd anticipated having to lower himself to – an exorcist warrior prince, a child of heaven – but this is what his life is, and he's hated it and hated it, and survived in an unsightly way.
"Yeah," Naruto says, the bleakest word Sasuke's ever heard from him. He finally leaves the doorway, stumbles forward until he sinks to the floor right beside the bed. Sasuke's foot dangles close to his shoulder, and Naruto's desire to touch it is so obvious, so intense, he might as well be touching it already.
Pulling back to look Sasuke in the face, find his eyes, Naruto catches sight of his own reflection. For a very long moment, as he struggles with himself, his fingers are claws and his teeth are fangs, his eyes tint red and the whisker scars are too large for his face. He hardly looks human at all.
He can't help leaning closer.
Once, shortly after they'd first spoken, when Naruto was still trying to understand why it was unacceptable to tease about Sasuke's accent even though it was fine to tease about everyone else's dialects, he'd leaned very close. You have weird eyes. They're large, a little slanted, so dark it's hard to tell where iris becomes pupil. Um, is that racist too?
You're weird, Sasuke huffed, as was his highhanded way. Baka gaijin…
It goes without saying that Naruto quickly became fluently rude in Japanese.
Anyway you'll have more experience of racism than I do. Sasuke had seemed… maybe curious, maybe something Naruto could pretend was affectionate. He had also seemed rather to be offering his condolences for Naruto's utterly unspeakable condition, which he'd apparently decided wasn't something Naruto could be blamed for but which was disgusting all the same.
Today, years later and after Sasuke's prioritised Naruto's safety over that of humans, his eyes remain far colder and more distant. Naruto can still see his own face reflected in the window behind the bed, see how stricken he looks. Though he can't bear to move away from Sasuke, it feels like he's rearing back, shocked and oddly betrayed, as if Sasuke had really promised him anything.
As if Sasuke's ever pretended to stop considering shifters subhuman filth.
"Am I your token shifter friend?"
That startles a snort out of Sasuke, the snort that's generally the closest he gets to a laugh. "Why would I want a token shifter friend?"
"I would make sense!" Naruto insists. "I'm the token shifter, and Sakura's the token human. It's a diabolical masterplan!"
"Idiot," Sasuke mutters. He kicks lightly at Naruto's shoulder, and it takes everything Naruto has not to moan at the contact. Grab for more. "What am I, then? Your two for one, token Asian, token gay friend? How convenient."
Naruto makes a bewildered face at him. "Why would I need a token gay friend? I'm – you know. Literally dying from how much I want you." It's in bad taste and his voice comes shaky, but if Sasuke can make rape jokes then surely Naruto can make light of his own imminent death.
It's fitting, maybe, that his death wears Sasuke's face.
Sasuke's voice is crisp again. "Orientation is irrelevant in the face of bond compulsion."
"Well, yeah, but… none of that matters anymore? There's just you."
Sasuke's face is bleak and unhappy, and the only face Naruto wants to see. His voice comes dry and bitter, but not without warmth, which Naruto licks up like a pathetic dog, a stray puppy leaping at any sign of kindness. "Didn't we once run away because of how much you don't believe in mate bonds?"
It was after Naruto's parents had split up, and Mum had moved to a different part of town. Minato, she's your family. You literally cannot live without her, and I – I'm not going to compete with that.
It's not a competition.
No, it's not.
Naruto had determined to bring them back together, reunite the family as practice fore reuniting the country and the warring races – Kushina could stay too, if she really wanted to. After all, Granny Tsunade and Grandpa Jiraiya stayed with them all the time, and all the guards and servants and associates.
This mission had turned out to be rather difficult to accomplish, as he now lived with Mum in a new part of town, and she didn't pick up the phone when Dad called. Rather, she always picked up when it was about Naruto, if Dad wanted to talk to or about Naruto, but then when he started talking to her she'd hang up.
It had overall not been a great time.
Naruto, I still love you, I always will love you, and so does your mother–
I know! It's you she's–
We still love each other, too, Naruto. But sometimes adults need space from each other.
No they don't. Families should be together.
I'm afraid the world isn't structured around the notion of 'should', Cubbie.
So Dad wouldn't listen to him. Though Dad probably still loved him, in so far as he'd loved him when they'd lived together. Which had barely been enough even then, without the distance.
It had so clearly been pretence, when he said it didn't matter how people talked about halfbreeds or bastards, though Naruto hadn't, at the time, understood what exactly he was pretending.
Fourteen months later, Mum had been kidnapped and then killed.
Naruto of course needed to save her, and Sasuke of course needed to be anywhere but at Orochimaru's, but Dad wouldn't take them, and none of the employees. A taxi ride would likely end with the police bringing them home, which would have been all right for Naruto but disaster for Sasuke.
So they hitchhiked.
Little Naruto stands before him in memory, in all his chubby, absurd glory, with his bright orange sneakers and the frog plushie Kakashi once gave him, on a birthday before the beginning of memory. Little Sasuke, who was even tinier then, drowning in a random jacket they'd snatched from the hallway.
He'd had to smuggle out, hide among a truckload of corpses being taken from Orochimaru's residence. The most disturbing part was how little it had evidently disturbed him, how well he'd fitted among the silent, hollow bodies until he could move again.
The smell lingered on him for days afterwards, made Kyuubi's maws itchy even though Sasuke, with his human nose, didn't notice it anymore.
A lot of people picked then up, when Naruto stuck his baby thumb up.
At the time it felt great, felt like success, but in retrospect it makes him go cold. It's terrible, of course Naruto would stop for them, would throw himself out of his car to save the little boy with the big grin and the big scars, standing in the rain with his thumb up, orange shoes so soaked with mud they looked like old leather. And Sasuke – big-eyed and beaten up, too proud to stick up his thumb.
Many were concerned. Kind women who made sure they didn't have to steal lunches, family men they had to jump out of the car to avoid being taken to the authorities by. Maybe people wouldn't have let them in their cars if they'd known they weren't human – nobody seemed prepared that they could throw themselves out the door when they were driving, that they could run from them on whole healthy legs after they had. It hurt but it was worth it, it was necessary, they were getting there.
Some were kind in the dirty way, the dangerous way.
The first time Kyuubi hurt someone was when a lorry driver had picked them up, and then made them get out of the car on a deserted stretch of road.
Naruto had done what, if Sasuke had done it, would have been leading the man on. Smiling a lot, not shying away too much from his hands. Letting him think Naruto knew what he wanted, that he'd get it.
Sasuke had kicked at him and looked away.
And Naruto wasn't Sasuke, and had never had to be helpless in quite that way. Had never had to learn to understand what handsy strangers might want with him.
The man reached for him with tenderness that was worse than violence, and turned to violence when Naruto objected.
Then there was Kyuubi.
Little Naruto's hands were inefficient, wobbly little things. Kyuubi's fingers were red claws, and cut through the man's body so easily, it felt like no more resistance than the air.
And Naruto stood there dumb with shock, his mouth full of blood that tasted like dirty things, stomach things, and one of his hands huge and red, with energy, with someone's life.
Someone's death.
He was on his knees then, retching a little, sideway so as not to hit the man or the big hole in him, the hole Naruto tried to cover, only his human hand was too little and Kyuubi's hand just savaged him more, cut through his ribs too.
"Get up," Sasuke told him. Got the matches from inside the lorry, and burned the man's face off, his fingertips. "Let's break his teeth, too. Then we're going to burn the car."
And Sasuke was steady, so steady that Naruto's legs steadied too, and he could get up.
"We have to – tell someone." Do the right thing, or as close to it as was possible: explain that he'd killed someone, he hadn't meant to but when he tried to help it just got worse, and so a man is dead now.
"Do you want to get to your mum or not?" Sasuke spoke with his back turned, setting fire to the lorry. "Anyway people like that don't stop."
"They need stopping, that doesn't mean–"
"If you hadn't." Sasuke straightened, flames licking at the car. "If you hadn't been here. I don't have any magic now."
Naruto figured they should put the corpse back in the car, so it might look more like a traffic accident.
They walked a few miles before they tried for another lift.
It was after they had been discovered, in the darkness in the back of a police car bringing them home, that Sasuke said, "You do know it was someone on your side, right?"
Naruto's guts clenched, like Kyuubi had got loose and started biting at them. "Dad would have found out."
"I think he couldn't bear to. It would have to be – someone he trusted. Someone he still needs."
Naruto had understood, mainly from Kushina, that Mum had been taken to make Dad do things. That it had worked. If you're susceptible to this sort of extortion, then for god's sake bring her here, arrange to have her looked after so she can't be used against us!
I'm not going to keep a woman I love locked up against her will! She left me, she–
Keep her or let her go, but do one or the other and do it right. If you can't…Minato, this can't happen again.
"Yeah," Naruto breathes, in the present. "Yeah, we did."
He's dazed, his blood singing, screaming, and – yes, beginning to boil. It bubbles and burns under his skin, a faint blood mist seeping through his pores.
Against this desperation he catches Sasuke's idly kicking foot after all. Curls his fingers around Sasuke's ankle, drags his thumb under the sole.
Sasuke's barefoot, and the touch makes Naruto want to beg. Want to growl, and drag Sasuke down on the floor with him.
He swallows, trying to make himself let go as Sasuke stiffens and then kicks harder. Like this, with the seal closed tight, Naruto's so enormously stronger, so enormously faster, there's no way on this earth that Sasuke can get free if Naruto doesn't choose to release him.
This is the old horror story of having a human mate, the stinging helplessness of someone who'll never have the means to assert themselves.
On the other hand, someone who will live regardless of Naruto, while Naruto–
"I'm sorry," he says miserably, pressing his forehead to Sasuke's leg, hardly able to hear his own words over Kyuubi's howls. "It's so bloody obvious now it was bullshit, how he kept saying he couldn't get you out. Easy enough when it was for – for me."
And Naruto must be really dying, visibly dying, because Sasuke's foot stills in his grasp. "Naruto, I couldn't even get my own father to help me. Anyway getting me out was never the problem. It's keeping me away."
Naruto looks up then, his eyes smarting and hot as though with imminent tears, but they're red now, they're Kyuubi's eyes, and Kyuubi isn't capable of crying. He thinks outside of himself, outside of himself and Sasuke, for really the first time. "This'll be… this'll be war."
And he poses a question with his eyes, one he can't speak: because Sasuke's been tortured for almost a decade, to ensure this peace, and now it's shattering, and–
"Peace hasn't been great for me," Sasuke says. "Maybe war'll be better."
And this – war – Naruto was finally tired of trying and trying to move on, of pretending it could ever be anyone but Sasuke, he was so tired and it hurt so much, he didn't want to pretend anymore, but this is something he should have considered too.
The world is breaking apart, like Naruto's body is breaking apart.
"He's been – he's been all anxious and over-protective, lately," Naruto mumbles. He has to have something, some connection, and words are the least intrusive one. So they spill out, though he's not sure if he's defending or condemning Dad. "He – Kankurou died, you know."
Sasuke hums in agreement, toes twitching a bit but his foot otherwise still in Naruto's hand. It's too tense even to shake. Naruto can feel the pulse inside it, and his own fucked-over heart calms momentarily, echoing it. "I heard he got a BEASTer for a mate."
"Nothing that organised," Naruto mumbles into his skin. "She just thought shifters are monsters." A small girl, brown braid, whom Naruto had barely noticed but who made Kankurou stare and not be able to stop staring.
"Was she wrong?" But Sasuke's voice is soft, the way it gets sometimes at night. "I heard Kankurou killed himself by accident, fucking her to death."
"No! No, of course he didn't, god. Shit, no, and also how the hell did you even hear about this?"
Sasuke shrugs. "Orochimaru finds mate bonds hilarious."
Naruto breathes. Sasuke's trouser leg has been pushed up a little, by Naruto's hand, so Sasuke's skin is right there. The smell of him, and Naruto wants to taste so bad he can't stand it, his mouth is watering to the point it's a question of time before drool starts leaking, his jaws aching around Kyuubi's fangs. His open lips brush, just lightly, against the side of Sasuke's ankle.
Sasuke kicks him viciously in the mouth and tears his foot away while Naruto's spitting teeth.
Kyuubi's regrown them before the taste of blood has even thinned in his mouth. At that point Sasuke's heel is still bleeding, and Sasuke has fallen back on the bed. Lies on his back, and Naruto surges up next to him, can't stop himself, sits on the foot end of the bed, curved forward over Sasuke's legs.
Sasuke's gaze slips from the ceiling, straight into Naruto's eyes in that remorseless head-on collision way of his. Eyes you can fall so far into, it becomes indistinguishable from flying.
"Right! Right, let's get out of here."
He's up on his feet then, because if he doesn't move away, he'll – move closer. Much, much closer.
The door is locked.
Of course the door is locked, because they're in a fucking prison cell.
"Let us out. Let us the hell out!" It's an animal roar dwindling into a wounded animal's whine. There's barely enough time to kick at the door before his heart seizes, bringing him brutally to his knees. His blood boils again. There are cracks in his lips now, where the skin is thin.
"I'd say the fatherly devotion on display here is touching," Sasuke drawls, and it's all wrong, Sasuke doesn't drawl, drawling's what Orochimaru does, "except he just shipped you off to a war."
That's gut-punch true. He owes Sasuke truth, and more than that, wants him to have it. To take all of his truth, all of him, and hand it over, close Sasuke's fingers around it. "I had to go," he says. "Nobody forced me. I just – my people are being killed and I could never just stand by, and – it was horrible but not going would have been horrible too, would have been – impossible." He swallows, burns his tongue on his own blood. "I did what I had to do."
"I understand," Sasuke says. He sounds like he does, like it's clear and obvious. It's a long time, a minute probably, before he says, "Che. Can you stand?"
Naruto doesn't have time to find out before Sasuke moves. He's off the bed and coming towards Naruto, and Naruto's body goes on lock-down. Because…because he's still so tired and stunned by how much the world can hurt him, and he knows what would make him feel better.
Sasuke beside him on the floor, so close, so good. Naruto locks his hands around his own knees, cuts through them with Kyuubi's claws and still can't let go, because if he did – if he did he couldn't stop himself. Just moans, weakly, in unbelievable relief at Sasuke's shoulder jostling against his. It burns, but a good kind of burn…
"Phoenix burn? You're making less sense than usual," Sasuke grumbles. "And don't you hate killing people."
"I do," Naruto says, letting his face fall forward, into the curve of Sasuke's neck becoming Sasuke's shoulder. It's been an enormously long day, which began half a continent away in a room full of other people's blood. "I used to hesitate." His eyelashes flutter against Sasuke's skin. "I hesitated, because I do hate when people die. But when I hesitated people died too, only they were my people." He swallows and swallows, the scent of Sasuke so thick it becomes a taste. "I don't hesitate anymore."
"Ii yo," mumbles Sasuke, who only slips between languages when extremely comfortable or extremely upset.
"I didn't want to be this selfish," Naruto chokes out, around the desperation spilling through him like internal bleeding. "But I'm so glad you're here."
"Of course I'm here, you unbelievable idiot." He makes an impatient sound, a sound that would be a sigh only there's too much edge to it, right by Naruto's ear. "The only surprising part is he didn't – tie me up or blackmail me or something."
"I guess he thought – you saved my life once."
"Hn," says Sasuke, closing his fingers around Naruto's wrist, neatly and with no fuss. It's how he's always held on to people, in this clinical over-careful way, the way of a child who's been taught he can be made to let go at any moment. "I think he's rather misunderstood that."
This is a much kinder thing to say than: I guess he thought – you wouldn't need him to force me, you've got Kyuubi for that.
"Yeah," Naruto groans. "I could have totally handled that demon."
"Like Shiva handled Kali, possibly. But that wasn't – I was just doing my duty." And of course he's holding on to that, the only thing left to hold on to: that no matter what's been done to him, what he's been made to do, Sasuke has a destiny, has been chosen by the Lord God for the highest calling.
It's a good memory, all the same, the memory Dad thinks of as the time Sasuke saved Naruto's life.
This was in the days when Naruto knew full well Sasuke wasn't human, but hadn't understood in any meaningful sense what being an exorcist meant. They were in the school gym, the three of them: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura. Naruto had dragged Sasuke along to show off what he fondly imagined to be an epic new combat move, and Sakura had taken a quick look at the gathering rain clouds and decided to accompany them rather than to walk home. It was easy enough to sneak into the building, and Naruto was dragging at mat from storage when the air abruptly grew dusky. Under the fluorescent lights, they were standing in a sudden sunset.
"Sasuke, what – what's happening?"
Sakura's voice behind him, and Sasuke behind him too, which was good. Because the demon was coming now, materialising out of the shadows at the far end of the hall.
Kyuubi's hackles rose, and red energy spilled over his hands where they fisted in front of him.
Sasuke was smart: he'd make sure they ran, called for help. He'd have to, because Naruto couldn't look away from the demon.
He'd never seen one before, and couldn't get a hold of how it really looked now. It was darkness, and it was evil, and monstrously huge, but he couldn't… he blinked, kept blinking, but it was true what he'd been told, mortal eyes can't see a demon's true shape.
"Come on, then, you bastard! Eyes over here!"
Because he'd need to hold it back, need to keep it at any cost from Sakura and Sasuke.
Only then Sasuke was walking past him, and it could be like this: everyday and ordinary. Safe.
Naruto was directing a cocksure grin at the hulking beast, and brandishing his fists, a human shield; Naruto's shirt was wet with sweat under his arms, and his hands ached from being clenched so tightly.
For the first time in months and months, there was no trace of fear in Sasuke. Even the grinding misery had lifted.
"Sasuke, you bastard, what are you doing? This is my kill!" It had to be, because of the seal, the reason for all that misery: because the power spreading from the demon like rings on water around a thrown stone was like a blast, like something that could bring people to their knees, and Sasuke hadn't even had the magic to stop a random lorry driver molesting them…
And it should have been ridiculous when Sasuke started singing, in his too-deep tone-deaf voice, but after the first syllable there was a resonance that, it gradually and mercilessly dawned on Naruto, was the actual host of actual Heaven echoing his words.
Confiteor Deo omnipotenti and light spread around Sasuke, his very own rings on the water, light like altar candles, like the star over Bethlehem. And Naruto was always the child who reached insolently and irresistibly for the altar candle, slack-jawed with wonder: who wanted to touch more than he wanted it to last.
Beate Marie semper virgini and Sasuke too good for the ground, standing on air in that circle of Heaven made manifest. Swords materialising, blades of light in his hands. So much strangeness, and holiness, that the lightsaber jokes would come to Naruto only afterwards.
Beato Michaeli archangelo and there were wings now, angel wings flickering in and out of existence every time Naruto blinked: wings like the demon, wings that mortal eyes couldn't see properly, that it later emerged Sakura hadn't noticed at all.
Sanctis apostidos omnibus sanctis and the light, which was the light of divine grace, flowed through Sasuke, unsealed and unstoppable.
The demon never stood a chance.
On the bus home, Naruto had swallowed and said, "Right, so you can still…"
"Exorcising demons is why I exist in this world," Sasuke said, with the flat inflection that let on he was quoting an axiom he'd been made to learn along with his prayers. "Sealing that off would be heresy. Besides, Orochimaru wouldn't want a horde of demons running around either."
"That weird lullaby," Naruto said, and Sasuke went icy and huffy with humiliated fury. Naruto understood that it was a child's way of accessing the power, power that Sasuke could summon perfectly well by will alone before he could ride a bike, but necessary under the terms of the seal.
It had given Naruto chills entirely unlike those provoked by the demon. "But you were – yeah. You know. It was – I guess I get it more now, thinking shifters are dirt, if we're descended from that. I mean they're wrong, obviously, I'm nothing like – but yeah."
"People are wrong all the time," Sasuke said. "People are shit."
"You're shit!"
Naruto kicked at him, and ended up banging his knee and also his forehead into the seat in front when the bus stopped for a red light.
Sasuke snorted. "Sic transit gloria mundi."
"That's right, bastard! I am glorious indeed!" And Naruto stuck his tongue out, and almost bit it off when the bus started again.
That'll be what Dad thinks of, thinking of Sasuke saving Naruto's life.
The time Sasuke actually saved Naruto's life occurred much later, after Naruto had finally had enough and went for Orochimaru for real. It wasn't the first time he'd wanted to, or even the first time he tried, but it was, for a very long time, the last.
He'd been little and impatient and incompetent, and had failed miserably, to the surprise of no one but himself. He'd spent the night in a cage into which he couldn't quite fit, beaten almost to death.
And then in the morning, stumbling down the stone steps of Orochimaru's building in sunshine running like egg yolk over the world. Sasuke's face, icy and acid, eyes impossibly darker against the sudden arsenic pallor of his skin. "What I had to do, to make him not kill you."
Things, very clearly, that Sasuke cannot be made to do again. Things done right at breaking point.
That too was years ago now. People keep telling Naruto this, as if it means he should have got over it.
"You were a very cool child crusader," he mumbles in the present. Sasuke's pulse, hidden behind the thinnest layer of skin, beats against his face, and the urge to bite stabs through him. Kyuubi throws himself against the bars of his cage in wild abandon: escape or die. He could live, Naruto could live, they could feel better than they ever have… His panting rattles his chest against Sasuke's, his tendons standing out like ropes stretched to breaking point under his skin. The disgusting smell, marring Sasuke's scent, is the smell of Naruto sweating blood.
Sasuke snorts. "Even when I went on strike?"
"Heh, yeah. Always."
The strike, as it were, took place on a rainy Wednesday, a few days after it had become known that Sasuke was involved in Mist Town Massacre. Naruto couldn't deny it, and more troublingly couldn't deny that Sasuke had no doubt enjoyed what he'd done.
"You could have fucking evacuated!"
It was Kiba barking at him, Kiba pushing at his shoulders.
"Yes," Sasuke said tonelessly. "That's right."
"So why the fuck didn't you! There were thousands of shifters died there! You knew there were! You fucking well took the time to evacuate the humans!"
Not all of them, Sasuke didn't bother saying. Sasuke would have walked away, except he didn't expect Kiba would let him. And he'd never liked Kiba, even aside from Kiba being subhuman, but perhaps he owed him this. Naruto at least would think so. "They should have informed us about the infestation much sooner. If they hadn't tried to deal with it on their own, it need never have escalated this far."
"They didn't call you in because they knew you'd fuck them over, you don't care about shifter lives!"
Sasuke shrugged. "Those were the orders."
Kiba had never liked him either, and at this point didn't even like Naruto. He'd been ambitious once, in his own small way, had aimed for a spot as one of Konohamaru's future guards. A group leader, maybe, and this was in the days when Kushina had made it clear that being Konohamaru's precluded being in any way Naruto's.
"Oh, you're gonna hide behind that? You cowardly little shit!"
"No," Sasuke told him, bland the way you're bland when speaking obvious truths of little importance. "I agreed with them."
Then he was being thrown up against the wall, and things went pained and distant for a little while. They still were when Gaara spoke up, from where he was sitting like a murderous Buddha under a tree, "You know, if you go much further I'd imagine self-defence will kick in."
Kiba's hands, fisted in Sasuke's shirt, were shaking. Of course they were, Kiba's an indecisive and shaking sort of person.
Then there was Naruto, who's neither and never has been, and Kiba was thrown off of Sasuke. In a different life, the life that was lost to him, it would have been humiliating.
"What the hell, you arsehole!" Naruto yelling and fist-shaking, in that way of his, standing over Kiba, who pushed himself up off the ground and yelled back, spluttering.
Finally Kiba was backing down, inevitable as the tiresome yelling. "Hiding behind orders, behind other people – fucking weakling!"
"Were you not just crying about how I didn't need orders to put down your entire halfbreed litter?"
Then he was pushed up against the wall again, only this time it was Naruto doing the pushing, so this time it mattered.
"What is wrong with you?" Naruto demanded.
"What isn't?" A long look, the only meaningful challenge left, which built and built like he still had magic after all.
That was when dusk came.
"You'll want to let me go now."
And Naruto did let go, though he plainly didn't want to. By the time he turned around, Kiba and his ilk were wary, crouching away from the descending darkness. Gaara was standing up, walking towards it.
Sasuke leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Well then, angel son, isn't this your chance to prove your superiority?"
It was a genuine question when Sasuke asked, "Why should I?"
Naruto directed an incredibly weird face at him, cheeks scrunched up so the whisker scars looked like trenches. "Eh, because it is your beloved sacred destiny?"
"My duty is to repel demons. Saving half-demon bastards is not."
Naruto's face changed, but not in anger. To be fair, Sasuke hadn't been referring to him. "They're not on your level. They never will be. You can't expect them to." Naruto's always clung to his ridiculous ideas of equal worth, but he's never been blind enough to claim equal capacity.
"It's a weak demon. More of a challenge if I let it eat them first."
Their new stare, different in quality but no less intense than the previous one, was broken by Neji. "Sasuke! There are more of them over in the human residential quarters. More powerful, too. That's priority."
"Okay," Naruto said. "Go. I'll take care of it."
Naruto would try. Maybe he'd even succeed. Gaara was there, and would help him, even if Kiba and the rest were useless.
"Trust me," Naruto said, over his shoulder, when Sasuke still stood there. "What, you don't believe I can sort out a little bitch demon on my own?"
"Of course I believe," Sasuke snapped, because it really was a little bitch demon and Naruto would be useless if he couldn't deal with it, and Sasuke had no time for useless people. But believing, as he'd had to tell Naruto more than once, isn't knowing. It's not good enough.
The grace of God burned past the seal, and the demon was gone before it had even fully materialised.
"Naruto. Naruto! Keep yourself the fuck together." Naruto's mouth is open now, open against Sasuke's neck, and Sasuke kicks at him. With his left foot, the one that's made of metal.
Naruto winces, and sort of rolls his head, it's still lying on Sasuke's shoulder but at the edge of it now, so he can tilt his face back and catch Sasuke's eyes. His breath catches, locked rasping and shaky in his throat, as Sasuke's fingers press flat against his cheek, dragging heavy across the whisker scars. Sasuke's other hand closes around his knee, hot and steady. "Bite me now."
Naruto's heart stops again, and this time his lungs stop too. "You don't want this."
"I don't want you to die," Sasuke says, and in volume it's a whisper but really it's a scream. His voice grows viciously, violently controlled, "I sometimes want to kill you but I don't want you to be dead." The minutes and then the hours and the years afterwards of Naruto being dead…
"I don't want to die, either," Naruto says, and feels his eyes burn again. "I want to live, god I want to live. And I don't think I should have to die to avoid making someone slightly uncomfortable or something, but you hate this, and it's – it's not right to live at the expense of someone else. I could never ask–"
"I know that! Dakara…!" He breathes in harshly, until his voice comes sharp and supercilious. "It's not like I came here a blushing virgin."
"I know that!" Naruto protests. "If you had, then I could have asked." At Sasuke's incredulous stare – and he tries to reach up, to catch the expression in his hand, but his arm won't move – he laughs a little, only it comes out mostly blood, blood that burns his mouth. "You wouldn't have known if you liked it, maybe you would, so it would have been all right to ask."
"If you don't bite you'll die," Sasuke says briskly, ignoring Naruto's input. "The rest – how much do you actually need? Can I just handjob you?" And it's so agonizingly obvious that Sasuke lacks any real conception of how tenuous Naruto's control is right now.
"I'm not – I can't stop. If I start, I –" The words taste sour in his mouth, taste like death.
"Right," Sasuke says, in that controlled cutting voice Naruto hates, the one he uses about Orochimaru. Then Naruto has an armful of his heart's desire, and his heart is rushing, running for its life. Sasuke straddles his thighs, leaning close so his hair is in Naruto's face.
"Sasuke," he says, and his own voice sounds bewildered and strange, sounds like Kyuubi's learnt to talk, "you have to move." Because Naruto's arms are coming up, animated by sheer survival where Naruto's will couldn't move them, and Sasuke's skin is soft and sweet, the shirt rips, it's just luck Sasuke's skin doesn't rip too. Sasuke must be able to feel his erection, feel it acutely.
If Sasuke did try to move, he'd – he'd have to force his way free, now, because Naruto can no more let go of him than he can stop his heart beating.
Sasuke pulls at the neckline of his shirt, revealing the seal fully. "Bite here."
The seal spills from Sasuke's neck and onto his shoulder, looks to Naruto's fevered eyes to be moving, writhing and alive just under Sasuke's skin. "That'll fuck with it so badly."
"That's the point."
Sasuke's never been one to play it safe. Sasuke's jumped off more buildings, walked out in front of more cars than Naruto can count, to get at the magic.
"I can't," he says, and it comes out a growl. "I'll lose you."
"You'll lose me if you don't. Because you'll die."
He forces his head up, away from that expanse of skin, and Sasuke's right there, right where he belongs and where he's never getting away from again, and his lips open for Naruto, let Naruto lick into his mouth. Kyuubi's canines are out, there's no stopping them, and he bites at Sasuke's lip, mostly by mistake. Sasuke's mouth stays open for him though, Sasuke bites right back despite the fangs and the scabs from the bloodburn, which has stopped now, Sasuke's stopped it, Naruto still feels like he's burning but it's stopped, the breaking apart of his body – Sasuke bites right back and licks at a fang.
He kisses Sasuke as hard as he can, so hard it feels like Sasuke's teeth are cutting into the bone of his jaw. Sasuke's shirt is gone, he dimly realises. He's torn it off.
And Sasuke is suddenly so naked, and Naruto's so hungry for skin, he's hollow with it, cramping with it. He drags his knuckles up Sasuke's side, over his ribs, fits his fingers in the furrows between them.
"Enough," Sasuke orders. "Just bite."
"If there was no bond," Naruto says, desperate. It takes everything he has, not to roll them over, have Sasuke spread out under him on the floor. "If it was just that I love you…"
"Then I wouldn't have trusted it," Sasuke snaps. "Now fucking bite me."
He has a rough hand clenched in Naruto's hair, forces Naruto's head down, towards the seal. After a second, not even a second, it doesn't take any forcing.
He bites across the seal, fangs meeting in Sasuke's body.