The house has been razed and rebuilt twice since Sasuke played here with Naruto as a child, but it's the same general design. Also, Naruto thinks with a thrill twisting his insides like an upset stomach, Sasuke will know the way because Naruto knows the way.

"What?" Sasuke snaps, and Naruto realises he's grinning.

He makes a gesture that gets lost in the air, and has never wanted to lie to Sasuke. "The bond. You're using it."

Sasuke doesn't actually bristle, and doesn't deny.

Sasuke's life has not lent itself to the kind of pride that turns away from power on principle.

After they'd taken his foot, he'd had to crawl for a few days. Within the first hour of the metal foot being welded to the stump, he'd kicked someone in the face who'd taken the opportunity, during those crawling days, to mock him.

The new foot, stronger than the old, had gone straight through the man's cranium. Sasuke had passed out from the pain, it was weeks before he could walk on the prosthesis without fainting from the bone-pain where it clung like a parasite to his stump, but had woken up pleased to see the brain-blood on his toes.

All these years later, Naruto's room is still identifiably Naruto's room. On the wall, in red sharpie and only slightly more evolved penmanship than Naruto had been able to manage when he first wrote it at age six, Sasuke recognises the legend that has led Naruto into his fictional world of politics: of idealism, of not realpolitik. Society is the work of man. If something is wrong, we can change it.

It's a smaller and dirtier room than Sasuke's. The bed in particular, unsurprisingly, is much, much smaller than any Orochimaru would deign to sleep in, and consequently much smaller than any Sasuke's had to make do with since childhood ended, on the October afternoon when he was transferred from Itachi's arms to Orochimaru's.

Sasuke looks at the red words without really seeing them, looks at them until Naruto looks at him looking at them, and he has to say, "Why, were Ghandi and Martin Luther King already taken, so you had to settle for Palme?"

"Actually," Naruto says slowly, and god, they've never really talked about this before. "I was never really into Gandhi after that stuff with the little girls." He rubs at the back of his head, where his hair's already a mess. "Eh, and Sakura kept saying it was cultural appropriation for me to quote Luther King, or whatever."

"That's stupid," Sasuke says, distracted. Stepping deeper into the room, which in a way means stepping deeper into the past.

"Well, yeah, I think so," Naruto says behind him. "But since I'm, you know, really white, well…"

Sasuke ignores him, walking past the desk piled high with Naruto's accumulated rubbish, and drops a potted plant on the floor to give himself room to perch on the windowsill.

Naruto's eyes are greedy on his long neck emerging like a stalk from the oversize neckline, stretched to let Sasuke lean the back of his head against the wall. On Sasuke's thin chapped fingers curled on his knees and glowing faintly with magic, turning his skin into a lamp shade.

He wets his lips. Lips that were on that long neck, stretched open across it… "You killed my plant. Fuck you."

"I didn't use to be a slab of meat to you."

Naruto stops like a watch. Hadn't been moving, but seems like he had because this sudden stillness is brutal. It's thirteen seconds, half the time of their fuck, before he gasps out, "You're not!"

"Oh please," Sasuke spits, with a gesture like he'd claw out Naruto's eyes if they'd been closer. "I've been looked at like that all my life. Just never by you."

"I'm not – that's not -!" And he's red-faced and ready to cry.

"No? Come here."

Naruto's stumbling forward before the first syllable is out, that's how Sasuke says it. And then Sasuke's hand on his face, in a pointed grip around his chin. This is the only meaningful part of Naruto's reality, and then entirely irrelevant: Sasuke's mouth on his, hot parted lips and the wet swipe of tongue like a stabbing.

And Naruto would do anything, make any sacrifice –

Grabbing for Sasuke, moaning loud so his ears ring with it, almost humping the wall under the ledge Sasuke's sitting on.

Crashing into the desk, which breaks under the impact, when Sasuke pushes him away.

"I don't want you." His mouth is still open, in the kind of panting that is the twin of hyperventilation. "I never – I don't want you to want me."

"I don't fucking want to, either!" Naruto yells, sitting in the heap of broken desk.

"Don't lie to me!" And Sasuke's screaming now, really screaming, his deep gruff voice gone impossibly high and thin.

"It's nothing to do with what I want! I need you."

"Yes," Sasuke says, and his voice is Orochimaru's again, rusty and silken. He's showing Naruto what Orochimaru calls his snake eyes, the eyes of a natural born killer. "Too bad about that. So sorry I'm not good enough for you to want."

"That isn't!"

"No, it's not, is it," Sasuke bites out. "You're a liar and a coward, and don't you fucking pretend it could have ever been anyone else!"

"No," Naruto agrees. "It couldn't." It comes to him then with surprising certainty, "You would have killed them, if it was."

Sasuke blinks. "I distinctly remember you being belligerently certain, every time I threatened to kill you, that I wouldn't."

Naruto shrugs, lightly so the situation won't come crashing back down on them. "This is different. You've always – like, no offence but you've always been the sort of person who'd destroy something before you let anyone take it from you."

Sasuke blinks again. "Why would that offend me?"

Naruto laughs. It's the kind of laughter that hurts, that cuts its way from his stomach and up through his throat trailing blood. "Forgot you're proud to be a bastard."

"Have you ever considered how it's funny you should use that particular insult?"

"No," Naruto says, and then quickly, before Sasuke can call him a liar again, "It's not all that funny."

"No," Sasuke says, in a tired voice that sounds old, older than it's possible to imagine a teenager ever being. Exorcists, Naruto remembers with an uncomfortable twinge, average a lifespan of about thirty.

"Don't be like that," Sasuke says, tired and insulted and Naruto's breath catches and he very, very carefully doesn't point out that Sasuke's reading him through the bond. "I'm not some loser. I took out a devil."

"Yeah," Naruto says. "On your own. So you're suicidal. So you don't be like that."

"It was just a single devil."

"It was a noble of hell," Naruto says, and for some reason he's smiling but his voice is so tight it could strangle someone. "It's against every fucking exorcist guideline ever written to go up against one of those solo."

"Itachi does it all the time."

"Itachi," Naruto starts, and then can't stop, "is an evil fucking freak, and if he died, it wouldn't be such a loss."

Sasuke blinks, twice, trice. It's a long time before he says, "I notice you don't talk about him being suicidal. Should I be insulted?"

"It's more if you sell your kid brother to a monster, killing yourself is about the best thing you can do."

Sasuke's eyes are open now and hard. "Should Kakashi die too, then? He sold me to your father."

"What?" Naruto says stupidly, a coward's way of postponing the stinging realisation.

"He's who brought me here for you," Sasuke says. He leans further back against the wall, so his gaze slips away from Naruto's. "I tried to jump out of the car. He said he owed Minato too much to let me."

"You'd rather jump out of the car than come see me? What did you think was going to happen!"

"Exactly what did happen!"

Fighting with Sasuke, even when they were little, and they've fought again and again and again over the years, has always meant going one on one with death.

"Is this so bad?" Naruto has to ask, hoping against hope, risking everything.

Sasuke throws it at him, burning the last bridge.

Naruto is spread out on his back, twisted bedclothes against his naked skin, legs spread so wide his hips ache. All he can see is the ceiling, which is maybe a mercy though it's one he doesn't want. Over him a weight of heat and violence, magic and flesh locking him into place and then – it hurts more than he'd thought it would. He's thought of rape as some sort of unimaginable violation of the self, disregarding any bodily discomfort. That's what Sasuke gives him though, because whatever Sasuke's feeling is locked tightly away: physical pain that tears and burns into him. Teeth in his neck, hands locked around his wrists, a cock showed up inside him where it's not wanted, where there doesn't seem to be room for it.

And the bond. Naruto knows it happens now, alongside the borrowed sensation of someone – of someone – he knows that's not what it is, but he thinks of it as the sensation of someone pissing inside him – but he can't experience that from Sasuke's point of view, not in any meaningful way. A shifter mind is made to accommodate the bond, and can't sustain the memory of its inception from a mind that isn't.

"I'm sorry," he says, miserably truthful, ill with the truth of it. "What would you have done!"

"I'm not an animal."

"Oh, shut the fuck up. If you – with the bond craving, and if they didn't want you, then – then…"

"You know what I would have done," Sasuke tells him.

"Tell me anyway. Tell me, Sasuke."

Sasuke speaks carelessly, as though it doesn't matter. "I would have taken what I needed. They could like it or not."

"But then you would have…"

"If I thought that was actually a fate worse than death, I wouldn't be here."

Naruto swallows. "You've never done that to anyone."

"No. But I've done a lot worse."

"I don't – there's no way to rank that shit."

"Bullshit," Sasuke says flatly. "I've done a lot of things to people that I'd much rather be raped than have done to me." After a moment he adds, "Also you didn't rape me. Just so we're clear on that."

"I," Naruto chokes out. Crawls forward, a step or two, before he makes it up on his feet, stumbling towards Sasuke.

"That does not mean you can touch me."

"Okay," Naruto says. "Okay. I'm gonna…" He loses track of the sentence, like he's losing track of everything else, which is becoming just background, just scenery. There's Sasuke, how could anything else matter or even register? His pupils are wide with Sasuke, painfully attuned to every potential movement.

He breaks away from that, struggles the few steps to the bed and throws himself down on it, holding on to its edge. Looks up at the wall, If something is wrong we can change it.

"And it's not that I had to settle for Palme. It's a great slogan!"

Sasuke's not even looking at him.

"What would you prefer, then?" Naruto challenges, thoughtless, burning with – with too many things he can't think about. "She walks in beauty, like the night?"

It's a snide thing to say. "No," Sasuke says, and for a moment Naruto huddles in on himself, defensive. More than snide, it's an unworthy thing to say, because that's the line Kakashi used to tease him with.

"No," Naruto says, more softly. "I guess it'd be more, let us go then, you and I."

Though the stanzas that had drawn Sasuke to Eliot were grimmer, grimier. What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish? Son of Man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead trees give no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water. The devotion of that, of knowing someone else's poem by heart like a prayer…

Sasuke's voice, incisive in the darkness. "Why are you using this against me?"

"I'm not!"

Sasuke speaks over him. "The bond's – it's shit but there's nothing to be done, it's a shit world. But this is – you're taking things you know because we were – because we knew each other, because I didn't know to keep them from you, I thought we were…"

"I thought we were a team," Naruto says, and his jaws are locked so hard the words barely make it out between his teeth. "Then you had me sent away!" And that's a roar, a battlefield roar like he's given himself over to Kyuubi, only the acrid betrayal powering it is human.

"A team?" Sasuke repeats. "When I was locked in Orochimaru's bedroom while you went home to Mummy and Daddy?"

"To Mummy? Mummy was murdered! You were part of murdering her!"

He's standing up know, face red and pulsating, hands fisted.

"I was," says Sasuke. "Does that make this easier for you?"

"No!" It's an inerasable connection, though, to have something unforgivable between yourself and another person. "No," he says again, not sure if it's true but needing it to be. "Look, will you just… Come to bed?"

"I will not and you must be joking."

"I don't – would you prefer a guest room?"

"No."

Naruto nods, picking up one of the pillows. There should be an extra blanket somewhere, in the wardrobe possibly. "I'll sleep on the floor."

"I'm fine where I am."

"Mmh, yeah, that looks real comfortable."

"You can't think I'll actually sleep with you in the room."

"Whatever. You know where the bed is if you change your mind." He throws the pillow on the floor, kicks at it until it's on the carpet. Fuck the extra blanket, it's only September.

Sasuke doesn't reply.

It comes to Naruto, as he squirms on the under-vacuumed carpet, that he should have maybe changed his clothes. Showered, possibly, brushed his teeth.

No way he's getting up now of course, not when he's thrown down the gauntlet like this. Not when Sasuke could leave while he was in the bathroom.

Not when he wants the tang of Sasuke's blood stuck between his teeth, couldn't stand to wash it away.

And he dozes, can do that, can lie half-asleep through the night, because every time he wakes in a panic of arousal and abandonment issues, there's Sasuke's profile drawn sharply against the window.

xxxxx

"Narutoooooooo!"

It's Konohamaru yelling, Konohamaru throwing open Naruto's door and Konohamaru's bright red crocs trampling Naruto's knees.

Naruto catches the squirming body, stands up so he can keep his grip without Konohamaru's legs dragging on the floor. Touches his head, half swat and half caress.

Konohamaru clings to him, looking shyly at Sasuke over Naruto's shoulder and pretending he's not. "You're fine! They said – well, they didn't say, but – but you're fine."

"I'm fine," Naruto agrees, swinging him a little. "Like I could afford to lie around being sick with you running amok, you little wildling."

"Good morning," Dad says, standing framed in the doorway with Kushina by his side like some family painting, and Naruto puts Konohamaru down. For once, the brat is silent.

"Naruto," Kushina says. "Sasuke."

"Kushina," Sasuke replies rather curtly. For someone who was raised by such ostentatiously polite people, Mikoto and Orochimaru and all their careful politicking, he's always been astonishingly rude.

Naruto's burningly aware of him sliding down off the window ledge, of him pulling on Kyuubi to ease the sleep-ache in his shoulder. The vermilion energy simmers visibly under Sasuke's skin, glowing through the shirt.

It's at once painful and exhilarating, to realise he's been away from Sasuke so long, he can't be sure whether it's a statement to Dad and Kushina, or a complete dismissal of them.

"We thought you might like to join us for breakfast," says Dad, which is a surprisingly terrible suggestion given how Sasuke's generalised hatred of humanity tends to peak in the morning.

"Konohamaru," Kushina says. "Time to go."

When the door has closed behind them, Sasuke snorts. Standing against the intrusion, he's standing startlingly close to Naruto. "She must hate this so much."

"Heh, yeah. Shit, you know things are looking bad when she's the one worrying about diplomacy." Dad likes to point out how that's something they have in common, Kushina and Naruto, as though being criticised in front of each other would somehow make them like each other more.

Sasuke wanders away from him, circling the broken desk. "I meant because as of thirteen hours ago, you're the one shifter who could conceivably wield an angel blade. Yet another thing you have over the little tyke."

"He's not a – I could? I could. God, I totally have to."

To not be so completely dependent on the exorcists, to be able to protect their own people from demons…

Sasuke lifts an eyebrow. "If you encounter a demon without me, I'll let you try."

Naruto barely listens, because obviously Sasuke realises, "But this is huge, this is everything, it…"

"You're unclean," Sasuke cuts him off, and his voice is dirty and merciless. "I'd have to filter it, shield you from just – you can't use much or you'll burn faster than you can heal."

"I'm not unclean! You can't think that."

Sasuke sniffs impatiently. "It's not a moral judgement. Jesus, Orochimaru channels Samael, he's hardly an example of personal purity."

And Sasuke's used to exorcists, to living with exorcists and talking to exorcists, and casually says Jesus as he would to another exorcist, in a language meant for such words. Not as an incantation, Naruto can still hear the word, understand it as a word, but not in strictly human language. It sizzles through his ear, so pure it burns his skin open and raw, trickles blood down his cheek.

The way Sasuke doesn't take this opportunity to gloat over his proven impurity is almost an apology. He goes to Naruto's wardrobe and takes some clothes.

"Don't lock the door," Naruto says, asks, pleads as Sasuke continues to the bathroom. "I won't go inside. Just don't lock it."

"Fuck you," says Sasuke, and turns the lock.

Well, Naruto always knew he was an arsehole. Keeps his hand on the handle, Kyuubi's red clawed hand, and doesn't doesn't doesn't break it open.

xxxxx

He can hear Sasuke's footsteps outside the door. Naruto would have left it open, but Sasuke gave him a look of judgement and disgust and closed it in his face.

The silver lining to this is that Naruto isn't at his most alluring when lunging for the toilet on the realisation that he hasn't actually relived himself since yesterday afternoon, and it might be just as well that Sasuke doesn't see.

He hasn't showered either, not since before they returned from the battle front. Days and days of sweat and dust cover his skin, under the most recent stains, from yesterday evening with Sasuke. He blinks, turning the shower on. Tries, right now, not to think about yesterday evening, both because it makes him want to die and because it makes him want back inside Sasuke so bad he can't stand it. He feels leaden inside, like his stomach's filled with sharp gravel and every time he moves around it rattles and cuts and weighs him down.

He distracts himself with the ridiculous, delirious discovery that Sasuke has used his toothbrush, in addition to his soap and his clothes. Far more meaningful, since that was the only toothbrush available, is the fact that he can still hear Sasuke's footsteps, a grumbling echo that never quite stops.

Sasuke hasn't walked away. Left on his own, he hasn't tried the door.

And he could have stepped quietly, Kyuubi's hearing is superhuman and acutely attuned to Sasuke but there's no way for even Kyuubi to hear if Sasuke walks on air. Jesus walking, Naruto called it when he first saw it, which was when Kakashi taught Sasuke to walk on water. It was months until he understood that it didn't have to be water, thin air is fine.

But when Naruto steps out of the bathroom, Sasuke's feet are firmly on the ground. He's also positively drowning in a huge jumper, which can't be a good sign and has to be a deliberate choice because they're roughly the same size, only Sasuke looks delicate while Naruto looks like a misshapen puppy, hands and feet too large for the rest of him. If it continues like this, Konohamaru will one day be taller than Naruto, which is unacceptable on many levels and also doesn't make sense, because Dad's tall, and – well, he supposes Mum wasn't.

Sasuke grumbles something about how the walk of shame has never before been a walk to breakfast with the in-laws.

"But it's not," Naruto says, and at Sasuke's blank and annoyed stare elaborates, "You haven't done anything to be ashamed of."

Sasuke is quiet for what seems a long time, clearly entertaining a number of possible replies. In the end he says, fairly lightly, "Leviticus 18:22, 20:13 say different." He snorts. "Or perhaps that should be 18:23, 20:15."

"Eh," says Naruto. "18:22 is the antigay one, right? You never – that never bothered you."

Sasuke gives him what seems to be intended as a darkly amused look, but which comes out mainly tired and rather bitter. "Believing in God as an energy source doesn't mean believing in the bible."

"We don't have to go," Naruto says. "We can just stay here. Or go somewhere else. Anywhere you want." Which is hypocritical, because where Sasuke probably wants to go is away from Naruto, and Naruto wouldn't know how to let him even if it were possible: even if Naruto hadn't clawed his way into Sasuke's soul and intertwined with it.

"No," Sasuke says. "Better get this cleared up."

"Okay."

"Okay. So let's go."

"Yeah. Yeah, I just…"

"Naruto." And Sasuke's voice has gone testy again. "Let's go hear what your father wants me to do."

From the first moment – for years, Naruto understands now – Kyuubi has been singing of Sasuke, a low incessant hum like the beating of his own heart.

And he needs, he needs so badly for this to be in any way mutual. It could, it wouldn't have to be so very different, if Sasuke just felt it too, even if it wasn't in a shifter way: Sasuke loves ferociously and possessively, loves with protectiveness but also resentment, with very little tenderness about it. Loves like Kyuubi, really.

Only Naruto knows this because Sasuke once loved Itachi, loved his mother, maybe his father, and then his parents told Itachi to give him to Orochimaru, and Itachi did, and so Sasuke maybe isn't really capable of love anymore.

Naruto breathes out heavily, and out of the corner of his eye sees Sasuke minutely relax, and resent himself for it, and bristles.

"I don't want to tell you what to do." It's true, or true enough to be considered truth.

Years ago, Sasuke said, I don't belong to you.

Naruto said, The hell you don't!

Sasuke surprisingly hadn't hit him.

In the present Sasuke gives him a blank yet insulting look. "Good."

"Sasuke," and he has to halt them, fingers skimming over Sasuke's arms, catching in the sleeves to stop them from grabbing too much, too hard. "I'm not going to let him hurt you."

"Don't lie to me," Sasuke says, and manages to sound calm up until the last syllable. "Get your hands off me!"

Naruto will, as soon as every instinct he has stops screaming to hold tighter, he will, only – this is no excuse. He drops his hands. "I'm not fucking lying! You know I'm not!" He's never wanted to lie to Sasuke, and as of yesterday evening he's no longer capable of it.

Sasuke's lips are tightly compressed around the words, which are nevertheless a sort of concession. The kind of concession Sasuke does best, the kind that stabs you, sharp ice between your vertebrae. "I believe you'd try."

The rest is unspoken, but plain to be read in Sasuke's face, and Naruto supposes in his own too. If Naruto could have stopped people hurting Sasuke, he would have. If Naruto could have stopped Dad buying Sasuke like a commodity, instead of rescuing him like a person – well, a lot of things would be different.

Again he feels himself sprayed across the corridor, nothing left but messy uncontainable splatter, and then grows very swiftly very old and very cold, shouldering the knowledge that Dad is the kind of man who'd do this kind of things to strangers – to someone Naruto cares for – to Naruto himself. It's not news that people joke about Dad being some sort of Godfather character, not news that people fear him, and the knowledge crystallizes now that the jokes too are just a kind of fear.

Naruto's failure is enormous and familiar: he tried to get Sasuke out and instead he got himself caught, so that Sasuke had to negotiate him out of a cage. Dad's failure, which is a failure of will rather than a failure of ability, has loomed in the background but is dawning now merciless and blinding.

Dad's very different from this perspective, and yet at the same time there's nothing really new to discover. Sasuke doesn't see the laugh lines or the hands that carried Naruto through his childhood; and shifter tyrant Minato wasn't somebody Naruto ever wanted to see, but he understands now that maybe he needed to.

Dad, what have you done?

To me, he doesn't add, even though if Dad thinks about this as being done to someone it will be to Naruto, he won't have been thinking of Sasuke as a real person. You can't think of someone as a real person and then act like they aren't, nobody could. Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani…

"Let's go then," Sasuke says, and Naruto's too busy keeping himself from grabbing to do anything but follow. Sasuke stops in the doorway, looks at him in that way he has, like Naruto's the only thing he can see. Naruto's caught by the messy fall of his fringe and by the sharpshooter suddenness of the question, "Are you on my side?"

"Yes," he says, helplessly and instinctively yes, but of course that doesn't matter. Sasuke's not asking for the answering words but for the answering reaction: using the bond, not for closeness but for information. Already it presents itself to him as an option, and clearly not one he's particularly reluctant to use.

He says, "Right", and steps out into the corridor with the stride of someone who knows exactly where to go. Two metres into the corridor he has to stop, because of course he has no idea where to find Dad and the others. Naruto waits for a breathless moment to see if he's going to use the bond, but Sasuke just looks at him, that look like an impatient demand.

And so they walk together through the familiar corridors, past people who exchange nods with Naruto but ignore Sasuke, because it can be so dangerous to offer the wrong reaction when someone's standing is uncertain.

Naruto would have liked to think better of them.

Genma does nod at Sasuke, but perhaps it would have been better if he hadn't. Sasuke gives no outward reaction but on the inside he boils over, a little bit: like someone reminded of a gnat and now wanting to squash it. Another reminder that to Sasuke these people aren't friends or protectors, but rather kidnappers, subhuman monsters.

When they were little and Sakura was afraid of monsters under the bed, Naruto ducked down to talk to them and Sasuke plunged a knife through the mattress in a better safe than sorry sort of manoeuvre.

"It's been remodelled a bit," Naruto says. "Reinforced, and stuff. There've been a few attacks."

Sasuke doesn't say anything aloud but Naruto can feel him considering, and considers himself. Would the anti-shifters, BEAST and their ilk, deem Sasuke a victim to be rescued or a race traitor to be purged?

He hasn't reached a conclusion when they arrive in the smaller dining room, where Dad and Kushina and Konohamaru are sitting at the table. Naruto slows down, but Sasuke has pulled himself together with perfectly ruthless efficiency, nothing broken or directionless left after last night's wildness and panic.

He slips onto one of the chairs and reaches for the milk, quietly and without any fuss.

It's abruptly impossible to imagine the kitchen without Sasuke in it, to envision a morning without Sasuke there.

Naruto knows then that he could do something terrible to keep him, if he had to.

Not Dad's kind of terrible, but his very own kind. Sasuke reaching for a banana, peeling it and cutting it into slices that splash into his cereal, Naruto wouldn't really hesitate to kill for that.

He has to stop, before he horrifies himself so much he horrifies Sasuke too. Sits down too, and stares at the table because he can't look anywhere else without exploding.

Konohamaru's babbling away, voice going higher and higher with tension, until Kushina tells him in no uncertain terms to shut up. For the first time, looking at them as though from the outside, it comes to him that it's always Kushina doing that. What sort of relationship does Konohamaru have with Dad?

Dad who's looking tired over his coffee cup, but also rather pleased. With sudden bitterness Naruto thinks how that will have more to do with Sasuke's magic, which glows golden and alive under both their skins, than with Sasuke's sustained sanity.

And Dad will know the guilty pleasure thrill Naruto gets from having Sasuke still all over him, from seeing Sasuke in his clothes and his smells. Probably figures it might unbalance Sasuke, too, not being able to wear his own chosen armour.

He's so clearly underestimating Sasuke, Naruto could almost laugh.

There's a knock on the doorframe. Shikamaru, and Temari, and Hayate.

"Please," Minato says, gesturing for them to enter. Kushina looks at him, long and steady, and doesn't speak.

He could break him, Minato.

She isn't usually wrong, and she wasn't then.

Of course I want Naruto to live. She was removing her earrings, long chandelier earrings, one of the few pieces of jewellery he's given her that she genuinely loves. I care for Naruto – oh, don't you dare. No, I'm not thrilled that he's your child with the woman you really wanted to marry, but that's beside the point. Those are my issues, they're not Naruto's fault. She'd turned from the vanity, paced the room, before finally sitting down on the edge of the bed. That child has been part of my family since we were bonded, of course I care for him. Of course I want him to live. If nothing else then because I don't want to experience your grief when he is lost. But Uchiha… this is a big risk, Minato, an enormous gamble with all of us, and for what? Uchiha hates shifters.

He could be – broken in. If need be.

Minato… If anything could break Naruto, a bond with Uchiha is it.

He'd made a weak gesture, like the sign of the cross performed by someone who no longer believes in its power.

It's different, Kushina said, relentless and beloved. If you – if you'd been able to bond with Yui, she could have broken you. Don't – I felt your feelings, when she'd died. If she rejected you…

I have to do this.

And she'd smiled, after all. I know. Don't do it blindly.

He muffles a sigh against the edge of his coffee cup. He didn't do it blindly, nor with any delusional expectations of gratitude from Sasuke.

He did it because everything was very stark and very simple, the way things are when there is something you have to do.

He looks at his sons, Konohamaru with his toothy grin temporarily dampened into a sulk, the grin of a child who's never really lost anything; Naruto, with his shoulders hunched up around his ears and shaking faintly. Naruto who is so much Yui's son, with Minato's colouring certainly but that's the slant of her jaw, the shape of her eyebrows, her way of angling his head – so much Yui's, except that Naruto has never once before seemed breakable.

He does now, oh he does now, because of course there's no way to handle this. The table breaks under his hand, which is suddenly Kyuubi's hand, twice the size and all claw. And then.

Sasuke's fingers closing around his wrist, cold and surprisingly human. Naruto can feel every bone in his hand, the flesh a too-thin glove around them. "Enough," Sasuke says, wincing from Naruto's turmoil, from the black loathing that must be coating the bond. "Get over it." And Naruto's looking up, stunned and dumb, at the impossible face of forgiveness, only Sasuke doesn't believe in forgiveness. "It's not the worst thing that's happened to me." It's not a lie, and not entirely bitter.

And Naruto could say, it's not like you have to hate it. He could say, you could like me. He could say, believe me, trust me, forgive me. He could say so many things.

He could say, how dare you care more about anyone else hurting you than me hurting you!

"Well," Kushina says at length. "Not that this awkward silence isn't enjoyable, but perhaps we should get to the point."

Shaky laughter, until finally Minato pulls himself together. "We were thinking of sending you up north."

Naruto pales. Sasuke says, "I'm not much good against humans."

There's another kind of silence then.

"You'd be willing to do that?" Kushina says. "Go against the humans?"

Sasuke frowns. "Why wouldn't I?"

Yes, Minato reminds himself. This is what Sasuke is: someone who doesn't need a reason to kill, but rather a reason not to.

Humans, some of the more benevolent exorcists say, are the children of God and the treasure that exorcists protect.

Humans, less benevolent exorcists say, what have they ever done for me?

"It's not an uncontroversial request," Kushina says mildly. "Asking someone to kill people."

Sasuke looks nonplussed, speaks not a challenge but simple truth, like it's obvious, like he can't imagine it not being obvious to everyone. "People die all the time. I don't care about strangers." He shrugs. "But like I said, I'm not much good against humans in combat situations."

Indeed, Minato thinks. Sasuke has the power to burn them, to wipe them from the fabric of the world, but Sasuke's vulnerable. A shifter can be shot, mutilated, exploded: a shifter will heal. But Sasuke – a single bullet, to the head, to the chest, and there would be no saving grace. Not, at least, before the bond, before Kyuubi.

"That's not," Minato cuts in. "We are certainly not suggesting anything of the kind." He straightens in his seat, slipping from family father into patriarch. "Naruto, you know we've been negotiating with a number of parties up north – I suspect so do you, Sasuke. Why don't you expand on that, Hayate?"

Hayate coughs. "Well, we've reached a bit of an agreement with the Rock faction. They want help with their demon problem in exchange for being assimilated. We're not calling it that, of course, but it's what it amounts to."

Kushina stirs an ungodly amount of sugar into her tea. "What kind of time frame are we looking at?"

Hayate makes a gesture like he'd shrug, in less august company. "It's a question of how well and how quickly we can deal with the demons. Depending on how much manpower we can devote to the issue, we're looking at one to ten years. Of course, that was before." A short, careful silence. "With an exorcist involved, it could be a matter of hours."

Minato doesn't allow himself a relived sigh when it's Naruto who asks, "Would you do that?"

"You want me up north exorcising demons for you?"

"Would you?" Naruto repeats, tenser.

"The question is," Sasuke says, "can you shield that well?"

"I am shielding."

Sasuke makes an oh please face. "You're keeping yourself from exploding all over the bond, but you're completely open to anything from my end."

"Well, yeah, but…"

"You're lower than a human," Sasuke snaps, "you're filth. If I channel Uriel and you can't shield yourself, he'll go Hiroshima on your mind."

It comes to him that to Sasuke, it's nothing personal.

Mist Town was nothing personal: humans are worthless, and shifters are dirt. His skull echoes with the girl's shrill voice screaming you're an animal you're an animal during the last days of Kankurou's life.

His hands still feel raw with ice and blood from a thousand miles away, fisted here around this kitchen table, where Sasuke looks at his little brother and thinks, animal. Where Sasuke said, or perhaps that should be 18:23, and here looking at Konohamaru it comes to Naruto that Leviticus 18:23 prohibits man from defiling himself by having intercourse with an animal.

When did you stop projectile vomiting? Sasuke asked.

I didn't, Naruto thinks now. I'm going to do it right now, oh god.

Because he did, too. He forced himself on Sasuke like an animal.

His mouth is hot, bloody around Kyuubi's emerging fangs, his throat burning with retches.

Sasuke's hand closes around his wrist again, cuffing him to sanity, to a kind of control. "You're not an animal," he says, impatient and beloved. "You're my – you're a person."

Naruto can't speak yet. He'd puke if he opened his mouth, or possibly cry. Maybe just upend the table and break the world, break everything so they could build on a cleaner slate.

Sasuke continues, voice going strained and thin. "I have a lot of issues with – this. But that's not one of them."

No, Kyuubi was never really the problem, for Sasuke. Naruto's not sure that makes it any better.

But he can breathe again, eventually, and straighten up. When he does, he discovers that Dad's sent Konohamaru away, along with Shikamaru and Temari.

Dad and Kushina and Hayate appear to be talking about Rock, and the general chaos of the northern war. "I have no objection," Sasuke cuts in, the spoon forgotten in his hand and abruptly incongruous, ludicrous. Things are snapping into new places inside his head, Naruto can feel it, like the pushback of a fired gun. "There is however the issue of the shielding, and the exorcists would be displeased. They enjoy their monopoly."

"I will speak to Rock," Hayate says, clearly feeling himself dismissed by some minute shift of Dad's posture.

"I'm pleased to hear that," Dad says mildly, to Sasuke. "Bad start notwithstanding, it's my hope that we can – function together."

"It's not difficult to understand that someone wants to live," Sasuke says, not really speaking to Dad at all. "Like it shouldn't be difficult to understand that someone would resent being – involved – in this manner."

"Be that as it may," Dad says, "can I trust that you will not attempt to leave? May I have your word?"

"My word's not worth anything to you."

"Dad," Naruto says, eyes closed against the blistering whiteout of an imminent panic attack, "just go. Leave us alone."