Panic wakes him up. The room is strange around him, like the whole world is strange now, Kyuubi's hysteria burning away his oxygen and leaving nothing, nothing.

Sasuke's gone.

Someone's reached inside of Naruto and scooped out the lion's share of him, has gone into his mind and robbed him, cut him apart.

He roars and cries, inside his own head, falling off the bed and running wild.

He's being swallowed by a black hole.

Then he's throwing open Sasuke's door, kicking it in so it breaks off its hinges. He has to find whatever traces are left, has to get him back, and for a moment can't understand what he's seeing.

Sasuke, sitting cross-legged and sleepy on the bed.

Then he's not.

Naruto's kneeling over him again, like last night except all different. Knees planted on either side of Sasuke's hips, one hand locking Sasuke's wrists above his head, the other closed tight around Sasuke's throat.

Sasuke frowns up at him, and Naruto roars. Can't even get a word out, just noise and desperation. Sasuke's right here, right under him, and he's still gone.

"Che. Calm down, idiot!"

He can't possibly calm down. Surges forward, and bites at Sasuke's mark.

Tries to bite at it: Sasuke's hand rips free and blocks him.

So Naruto bites that instead, bites off Sasuke's middle and ring fingers and swallows them down.

It's connection, at last. This is my body, which is broken for you… Sasuke's flesh will become part of Naruto's flesh. Will be made into energy, which will build Naruto's body, and so they will be inseparably one.

Sasuke's wings erupt into the room in a surge of brilliance that blinds Naruto even before Sasuke forces his remaining fingers into Naruto's eyes, twisting vicious and deep.

He clings to Sasuke through the blackout agony and darkness, pressing his forehead to Sasuke's chest, while Kyuubi's tails cling and claw against Sasuke's uncoordinated struggling. But when he can see again, Sasuke's ignoring him: staring at his own regenerating fingers with a sort of dumb, mute scowl. It's the face he wears when looking at incarnations in unknown languages, memorising without yet being able to understand.

That pinched, stupefied face is framed by Naruto's arms, and his arms are – inscriptions written in the white-on-white of angel wings twist under his skin, so full of power a word occasionally breaks through, a sudden hora mortis or mater misericordiae slashing across his wrists.

Sasuke's wings have disappeared now, but they did manifest and Naruto was mostly fine. Because, he thinks, Sasuke has written his ownership into the marrow of Naruto's bones, has marked Naruto as his the same way his angel blades or indeed his wings are his.

He presses his face tighter into Sasuke's skin. "Sasuke, Sasuke."

"It's just a practice block," Sasuke says.

But it's never felt like this before, Naruto hasn't been this completely locked out since those first horrible moments when the bond had just formed and Sasuke first slammed his mind shut against the intrusion. He's shaking badly, rubbing his face mindlessly against Sasuke's shoulder to stop his teeth chattering.

"I can put in a block from your end too, now," Sasuke says.

Of course he can. These holy words written inside Naruto are Sasuke's words, and will cut Naruto off if Sasuke wants them to.

"Let me in, let me in, you have to let me in." It's a mindless litany, Naruto begging and Kyuubi demanding, the words broken in half and almost meaningless.

"Are you desperate, then?" Sasuke asks him, twisting his hip until Naruto goes rolling, ending up on his back with Sasuke over him. "Would you do anything?"

"Yes. Yes!"

He's surged upward, half-sitting, and crushes Sasuke to him strangling-tight.

For some reason he hears his mother's voice, Would you rather I be happy or that I be with you?

Dad had made the correct choice, the justifiable choice. He'd let her go.

Naruto can't make that choice.

You say you just want them to be happy. But what you really mean, Kakashi told him, and he understands it now, better than he ever wanted to, is you want them to be happy with you. I wanted to be happy too. Is that so terrible?

That's when the noise hits.

"Shit," Sasuke says, trying to push him off. "Bomb."

Naruto can hear that perfectly well, and obviously they need to go, but his body has turned traitor. Cut off from Sasuke, he can't function. Can't unlock his hands from where they're fisted around Sasuke's arms, stares at them and curses and tries, but his will changes nothing.

Sasuke sneers at him and Naruto tries and tries, but his hands don't move and he can't make them.

Finally the holy words inside him move again, untwisting and sinking away, and he can feel Sasuke.

There's a second of blind, gasping relief, and then he's off the bed and running, through the corridor and down the stairs, Sasuke beside him. He smells ash on the wind from outside, but no blood.

Dad stops them in the doorway. "Nobody's injured. You're not needed."

Sasuke shrugs. "Okay."

"What?"

Sasuke looks at him as though Naruto's the crazy one. "There's no point."

"What are you even talking about!"

"If there was a demon, you couldn't stop me going. I don't know what you expect me to do about a bomb."

Again there's that unfounded feeling of betrayal. Sasuke's never been anything less than insultingly clear about how little he cares for shifters, and yet it's a sudden backstabbing every time.

"Well, I'm going!" Naruto snaps.

"Whatever."

Sasuke remains behind as Naruto pushes past Dad and jogs outside.

Minato looks after him, feeling sad and stupid for being sad. Of course it's damaged his relationship to Naruto, Naruto's mind being tied to the mind of someone who hates him. He'd just…hoped it'd be less obvious.

Sasuke looks at him blankly, which is really the only way Sasuke ever looks at him. Minato thinks again, is ashamed to think again, that it's no wonder Orochimaru beat him.

It was an unacceptable and more importantly unproductive thought the first time he had it, and it still is now.

Probably he should let Kushina have a crack at the brat.

Sasuke walks away from him without comment, and Minato remains for a long minute in the doorway. Outside Naruto's getting himself caught up on the situation, and spreading cheer among the guards. Since he got back from the north, Minato reflects, he has a new way of speaking to them, a tone of obvious command he would have never previously directed at an adult. Minato doubts he's aware of it, anymore than he's probably aware of his feelings for Minato souring.

Still, they'd follow him now, the shifters. Not because of who he is, which anyway has never been enough in Naruto's case, halfbreed bastard child that he is, but because of what he's done and more importantly what he will do.

But Naruto's still very, very young, and rather lost.

He looks particularly childish when he steps into Minato's office a few hours later. It's not an unwelcome interruption: Minato's had some rather difficult negotiations with the human government on anti-shifter terrorism policies, and Orochimaru's sent another email. Still, it seems they're avoiding outright war, for the present.

Naruto hesitates for a moment in the doorway, trying to rub a patch of mud or ash off his cheek and just smearing it around. "You busy?"

"Come in."

Naruto perches on the edge of a chair. Whatever else Sasuke's messed up, he really has been good for Naruto's energy reserves, because two tails are winding restlessly up the back of the chair and Naruto hardly seems aware of them.

"Why did you," Naruto starts, "stop us?"

"It's better not to let anyone confirm he's here. We need to minimize attacks until we're ready to act."

"We could've spun that. Actually, I mean, it's cheap and all but it'd be the best possible shield. Anyone tried to do anything that puts him at risk like that, Orochimaru would've sent a demon to eat their soul." The words come stingy and bitter, but he doesn't hesitate on the name.

Minato's reminded that Naruto knows Orochimaru now, reminded of how much information is suddenly gathered right at his fingertips.

"He can't send them," he says mildly, steeping his fingers the way he knows Naruto hates. "He might choose not to protect someone, should a demon appear, but that's hardly the same thing."

Naruto frowns at him. "Of course he can."

Minato breathes in. "He can – control them. The demons."

The unspeakable suspicion, and now, here, in Naruto's voice the answer. "Yeah, obviously. Any exorcist could. Well, the strong ones. Someone like, I don't know, Ino could never."

That too is new. Naruto blithely assessing someone, acknowledging an absolute limit to their ability and dismissing them because of it.

Minato wants him to notice what he's doing, but noticing would require taking a step back from Sasuke, and that would limit this sudden flow of information. He says, "Sasuke could."

There are very, very many more humans than there are shifters. And human weapons are used and abused by both sides, so numbers matter and the planet might be devastated if things escalate. To be able to send demons on them – absolute safety, controlling a weapon against which there is no human defence.

"Of course he can." Naruto looks at him then, stops twitching for a second. "He's not going to. It's heresy."

"You know him best," Minato says, as lightly as he can, "but I have to say, he's never struck me as someone who's particularly concerned with rules."

Naruto shrugs, restless again. Three tails now, and he still doesn't seem to truly notice them. "In a pinch, sure. He'd obviously do it to save himself if he needed to. He's not going to do it for us."

"He was certainly willing to exorcise. I'm sure that if –"

"No. This is," and Naruto bites his lip but continues because he's never been one to stop, "this is basically the only thing he won't do because it's wrong. Killing people, torturing them – that's fine, he doesn't even care. But to make a demon devour their soul, that's still wrong to him. I'm not gonna – I'd never try and persuade him to do that. Anyway it's super heresy. It's the kind of shit they're forced to go nova if they do it."

"Ah," Minato says, and then judiciously doesn't say anything else, ushering Naruto out of the room and walking with him because Naruto obviously needs to be moving.

It's not long before Naruto says, "I can do it soon. The exorcism."

Minato slants an expectant look at him, and Naruto lifts his arm. He frowns in concentration, lips drawn back from Kyuubi's canines. Finally something glows under his skin, brighter and brighter until it's readable, eye-searing Latin crawling through Naruto's flesh.

"He's – marked you," Minato says, and feels physically sick. Thinks of Orochimaru taking a branding iron to Sasuke, and this time it's Minato's baby, and he could do nothing to stop it…

Naruto glows up at him. So short still, Yui's shortness. "Yes!"

"You're happy," Minato says, has to say it, to hear it out loud: to hear Naruto not deny it.

"Yeah! And so now it should be fine, really soon. Even if it's not, he can just do the Virgin Mary exorcism, he did before he'd marked me at all and I was totally fine. Mostly totally fine. I was thinking tomorrow. Before there's anymore mess."

"That would be convenient," Minato says, light-voiced, light-headed. Sasuke has written himself into Naruto's flesh, into his DNA. Has scorched his mark into Naruto's soul, and Naruto's happy about it. "On a different subject, Morino contacted me. Unsurprisingly, he wants the girl home."

Naruto looks down. "Yeah."

Minato lets the surprise bleed through his voice. "Is this some if you love someone, let them go?"

"Yeah, that never made sense." Naruto's not looking down anymore. Has that face he gets, uncompromising and unconditional. "If you love someone, you don't let them go, you never let them go."

And here they are, at the root of the rot between them. He did let Yui go, and Naruto has never understood, probably cannot understand.

"Even if they want you to?" He's never spoken so plainly on this before, but Naruto's no longer exactly a child and so Minato might as well stop hoping he'll grow up to empathise. "That's abusive."

Naruto shrugs. It's a jerky, ill-tempered movement that looks more like Sasuke than like Naruto. "If you can stop, if you can control it, then it's not love. People say, like, it's the strongest force in the world, all that stuff – well then, if you wouldn't do anything for it, sacrifice anything, burn the world to have it – then either it's not love or love isn't all that. Which is fine, it doesn't have to be for everyone, but people should make up their damn minds! You can't both say it's unconditional and unstoppable and then except people to stop because certain conditions are met."

There's a certain logic in that, which makes it worse, because harder to dismiss as delusional.

He notices Naruto tensing beside him before he sees Sasuke, standing in the doorway of Naruto's room. "Hey," Naruto breathes. Minato can actually feel him heating up, going a slow hot red as his body temperature spikes, when Sasuke stops towelling his hair and the neckline of his damp tshirt slips down off the mark in what is clearly some kind of offer.

Naruto steps right into Sasuke's space, can do that now because some minute shift of Sasuke's posture has made it their space. Backs Sasuke into the room and kicks the door shut behind them as an afterthought: what matters is Sasuke so close, Sasuke letting Naruto lift him up on the desk. The smell of him is overwhelming, a smell of skin and magic and Naruto's soap.

Sasuke's arms loop around his shoulders, one hand following his spine down below the neckline of his shirt. Sasuke's legs close around his hips, Sasuke's foot flexing against his buttock.

Sasuke's mindscape is a minefield at the best of times, and the cutting, contradictory impulses that have driven him to this point are certainly no exception. His thoughts tumble over each other, faster and faster, and Naruto decides to cut them off. Gathers Sasuke to him with one hand, stroking his leg with the other, up his thigh as far as the loose shorts will let him and then down, curling his fingers under Sasuke's knee the way that drives Naruto insane but just makes Sasuke frown in annoyed confusion.

When Naruto nudges his cheek against Sasuke's chin, Sasuke readily responds, angling his head until his open mouth slides hot against Naruto's.

The whole time, their attention is on the mark: on the knowledge that Naruto's going to bite it. Sasuke's entire body's angled for it, and Naruto's jaws ache and break around the advent of his fangs. "Mmh, Sasuke, why? I thought…"

"I thought you wanted inside me?"

The air disappears, and his mouth's too full of saliva to fit any words. This time when the tails come out and wind themselves around Sasuke's legs and hips, Sasuke just shifts against Naruto, flushed with arousal. He bites at the whisker scars, drags his fingers over Naruto's human ears and then through Kyuubi's. Naruto moans and moans, rubbing his hips between Sasuke's legs and grabbing Sasuke's arse to pull him closer. Realises he's touching skin, that his claws have gone straight through the shorts, and Sasuke's not wearing anything beneath them.

Sasuke angles his head back, shoulder up.

If he changed his mind now, it wouldn't matter. Naruto wouldn't even notice, and couldn't stop if he did.

His lips brush over the mark, a chapped flutter. His tongue, just a quick swipe that nevertheless smears excess saliva all over it, and then finally his aching teeth sinking into Sasuke's body.

Sasuke's flesh again, Sasuke's blood and Sasuke's magic and Sasuke's fucking soul filling his mouth.

And this time Sasuke arches against him, and if there's panic it's drowned out by pleasure erupting like a bomb.

There have been so many false starts, but this time Sasuke won't stop him.

Maybe can't stop him, but Naruto prefers not to think about that. He's so synchronised with Kyuubi, he barely even hears the piercing howling from inside his own head.

His fangs click together inside Sasuke's shoulder, and the seal takes another hit, angel brilliance lighting Sasuke from within, burning under his skin. It tingles against Naruto's tongue, otherworldly but safe now, with Sasuke's ownership written deep into his body.

Sasuke twitches against him, pushing closer and it must hurt, flesh tearing around the bite, but he clearly isn't bothered.

Naruto bites him again and again, drunk on it, bites until it becomes more important to get inside him in other ways. He drags his mouth up Sasuke's neck, sloppy kisses that are mostly licking up the blood from where his fangs drag on skin. Kneads Sasuke's arse, pulling him ever closer. The shorts are completely gone now, and it only takes a rip and a tug to be rid of the shirt too, to have Sasuke naked. He trails a finger down Sasuke's chest, lightly, lightly, and feels Sasuke's heart jump under his touch.

Blood pounds in his ears and between his legs, he finally finds Sasuke's mouth again but can't stay on his feet, sinks to his knees between Sasuke's spread legs.

He's opening his mouth, still aching and overflowing with saliva, when Sasuke's fingers clench in his hair. "Not there. You bite, you die."

"Fine, fine." He tips Sasuke backwards none too gently, and lets his mouth slips further down, past Sasuke's erection and to his entrance. Licks messily and deeply, panting so hard he has trouble sucking. He knows exactly what to do, what Sasuke likes, because Sasuke knows.

And Sasuke, finally, is excited. Naruto groans and licks, pressing his palm to his own erection in stark desperation, and can feel Sasuke feel it: Naruto's unhinged desire, the arousal that threatens to eradicate any possibility of thought, this complete obsession with Sasuke, the need to have him always. Can, more importantly, feel it excite Sasuke, feel that Sasuke's not just echoing Naruto's desire, though probably that helps, but responding to it independently, excited in his own right.

There's a strange lightness in his chest, an impossible wish granted.

"Come here."

Sasuke's voice, and Naruto surges up. Leans over Sasuke, finds his mouth again and again, and he wants inside and Sasuke wants him inside.

It's easier, this time. Only now, as a thick horror gagging him, does he realise how much resistance he powered through last time. The memory should make him pull out, should make him at least want to stop.

Sasuke puts his feet on Naruto's hips, controlling his movements. Naruto's glad of it, glad to be moving the way Sasuke wants, and Sasuke keeps saying his name, Naruto, Naruto, says it like an incantation right into Naruto's ear.

Naruto's put the full strength of his legs into his thrusts, and the desk bangs into the wall a few times before it starts to break. Impatient, he kicks it away, fitting his hands around Sasuke's hips and arse to hold him up against the wall.

This too is something he did that first night. But this time Sasuke doesn't elbow him in the head: this time, Sasuke holds on to him and kisses him back. It dawns on Naruto, a slow merciless dawning that whites out anything but unbelievable desire, that Sasuke's moving with him and is going to orgasm from the feeling of Naruto coming inside him, and that thought sets him off, so abruptly his knees give out.

They end up in a heap on the floor, Sasuke still in his lap with his legs crossed against the small of Naruto's back. The metal one is icy against his sweat-slick skin, strangely still in contrast to the right one, in which Naruto can feel the pulse.

"You fucking dropped me," Sasuke grumbles. "I can't believe you."

"I didn't drop you," Naruto argues, tightening his arms around Sasuke for emphasis. He's skinned his knuckles, going down, and they're still pressed too tight to the wall for Kyuubi to heal them. "Like I'd let you go."

"Hn." But Sasuke's still in his arms, legs locked tight around Naruto's body and Naruto's now-soft dick still as deep inside him as it can go. There's Sasuke's sperm smeared all over his stomach.

"Sasuke," he starts, and then can't say anymore. There's this – this stinging tenderness, his heart encaged in barbed wire that wraps around his ribs and cuts every time his heart expands, not letting him breath because piercing his lungs too.

He remembers Sakura retelling some scene from a show she watched, some character telling their love interest, I can't breathe without you. She talked about it as something romantic.

It's not, Naruto discovers. It's really, really not.

Kyuubi doesn't do well with this kind of feeling. The fangs ache now, foreign and uncomfortable in his mouth, and his tails are starting to twitch with how very not in synch he is with Kyuubi.

"Naruto." Sasuke's hand on his neck, soft but positioned to squeeze.

"Mmh." Naruto tries to kiss him and gets a mouthful of jaw, swept away by this tsunami wave of love, a love to drown the world.

He tussles with Kyuubi inside his own head. Wants to kiss Sasuke again, softly and forever. Kyuubi wants to turn him over and have another go, the harder the better.

"Naruto," Sasuke says again, but this isn't really Naruto anymore. Ignoring Kyuubi leering at him, hardening again inside him, he slips across the bond and into Naruto's mind. It's more chaotic than usual, painted in darker colours, which makes sense when he reaches the cage in the sewers and finds Naruto on the floor next to the bars. He's wrestling with Kyuubi in the mud, both of them miserable and filthy, tearing at each other in a panic.

"What are you doing?" Sasuke demands.

They both freeze, staring over at him. "I thought," Naruto says. "I was losing control, and he was wanting out bad, and I thought – I thought it was better I went in."

"Get up."

"I don't think – "

"No, and that's the problem." The gate opens under Sasuke's hand, swings wide.

Naruto hurries to his feet, alight again on the inside. Sasuke came after him, Sasuke's going to help him fix this, and –

Sasuke grabs him by the back of the neck and hurls him into the cage, locking it behind him.

xxxxx

The betrayed fury has simmered and soured, but when the cage finally opens he wakes up in masturbatory heaven. Comes to his senses in a body moving languidly inside Sasuke's, with Sasuke's hands pressed hard against the back of his hips, urging him closer. Sasuke's eyes open under him, clearly aware of him retaking control.

They're on the bed now, sheets scrunched up under Naruto's knees. Also it's morning, thick sunlight spilling through the window and over his knuckles.

Sasuke speaks over Naruto's incoherent noises, his voice out of breath but ringing with archangel undertones. Brows scrunched up and lips wet, his face is stark with an intensity that has nothing to do with sex. "Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum."

World without end, Naruto thinks, dizzy and shocky. This is an entirely different level of incantation. It rushes through him, wretches him. Bleaches his soul with the terrible light, the light that would burn out any human eye that dared to look.

In the middle of it all he ejaculates, body short-circuiting in any way it can. He collapses over Sasuke, feels his insides collapse, internal freefall into the unforgiving light that will burn away anything that's human, anything that's him.

"Remember you're mine," Sasuke barks.

Naruto presses his closed eyes to the bitten seal, and remembers that they're part of each other. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

Sasuke's hand on his stomach, and it's Sasuke's hand in the same way that Kyuubi's hand is Naruto's, which is to say not really. It's a hand that can reach inside Naruto, straight through his soul, a hand that could palm the galaxy. "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen."

On the far side of the exterminating light, he's aware of Sasuke opening his mouth, rough fingers prying Naruto's jaws apart, stroking his gums until Kyuubi's fangs pop out. Kyuubi twitches awake and wants, but even so Naruto can't move at all. It's Sasuke who has to position him, has to close Naruto's mouth around his shoulder, push at Naruto's jaw until the fangs go in deep.

And Sasuke's clinging to him, legs and arms wound tight around him, face pressed to the side of Naruto's head. He's opened the bond wider than Naruto could have ever dreamt. "Ikiteru," he hisses into Naruto's ear. "Ore no mono da, dakara ikiteru."

Naruto's completely onboard with that, but Naruto's – half eradicated, his soul slipping and fading. He's being exorcised.

The world is distant and over-bright as over-exposed film, just edges of colours left. He blinks in and out, trying to negotiate the light, to power through it or hide from it, but the light of God reaches everywhere and can never be stopped.

He's shrinking, there's so very little left of him, and –

When it stops, he's on his back with Sasuke leaning over him, his body immobile as clay and his head pillowed on Sasuke's thighs. There's so much light, light like after a nuclear bomb, the light of a star going nova and swallowing a galaxy.

Sasuke's wings are fully released, erupting from his back. They're brighter than Naruto's ever seen them: brighter than he would have been able to see, if Sasuke hadn't opened the bond so wide that Naruto can feel the touch of God.

He understands now about Sasuke believing absolutely in God but not bothering at all with the bible, because this isn't a person in any conceivable sense of the word, not like Kyuubi or even Uriel. It's energy and absoluteness, power and light beyond any personality.

It draws him rigid, gasping. Disappearing.

Sasuke's wings – their wings, now, kind of – rise and rise, through the walls and the ceiling, up through the stratosphere.

"Ikiteru, kuso bakemono. Zettai mele da!"

He tries to smile, can't. Tries to live, and can't really do that either.

Kyuubi, useless against this level of angel burn, has left him behind like a dead shell, seeking shelter in Sasuke, curled tight in whatever corner of Sasuke's mind remains unsaturated by Uriel's light. His power is dedicated entirely to healing Sasuke's brain, which tries to bleed where the seal sears into it and Sasuke draws light through it. No more Virgin Mary, no more general incantations to whoever might listen. It's the voice of an archangel who snarls above him, "Kyrie, eleison, Christe, eleison, Kyrie, eleison."

It comes to him that this is Sasuke begging.

Sasuke's not very good at begging, so it comes out a snarling order, his will forced raw and relentless into the void.

And the resonance grows and grows, a hundred thousand unearthly voices echoing the chant. Lord, have mercy. The actual host of actual Heaven, echoing Sasuke's archangel voice and begging for mercy, for Naruto.

It works.

The light softens, merciful and forgiving now of humanity. Of him.

It's still there inside him, absolute eradicating light, but buried under mercy and Sasuke's possession, tuned to Sasuke's will.

It's still a long time before Naruto can blink, before he can move at all, exist again as an independent person and not just as an object Sasuke's claimed.

Before the wings recede, and Sasuke gradually falls silent.

It's only then, with the radiance faded, that people can burst into the room. Naruto still can't move, and Sasuke snarls rejection. There's not much of Sasuke left in this creature, like there's sometimes very little Naruto left in Kyuubi. There's angel light and angel instinct, though Sasuke's at least switched from speaking in High Church. "Kiero."

Alarm spikes in Naruto, because Sasuke means that, means for Dad to disappear.

Sasuke blinks, amending it to, "Run."

He doesn't understand, right now, that Dad doesn't understand Japanese, and wouldn't run even if he'd understood that first threat.

Two of the people behind Dad disappear. Naruto's breathing, never steady, goes desperately shallow.

It's not that they die, or even really that they burn. They're there one moment, gone the next, excised from the fabric of reality: undone, unmade.

"Sasuke," he manages, and breaks through enough for Sasuke to notice him. For Naruto to tug on Kyuubi in desperation, tug him back home. It's a dirty thing to do, but this is his father, he can't let Dad disappear too – he tugs Kyuubi back home, and Sasuke falls on top of him in a spray of blood.

"Fuck. Fuck!" He forces Kyuubi back into Sasuke so fast, it feels like ripping the last torn shreds of his soul loose.

So there they are, in a heap of immobile limbs and blood and fading light. Sasuke gives him a spectacularly ugly scowl, but it's safe now, Dad can come in and not be burned away.

Naruto manages to move a little, too, enough to shift towards Sasuke, who grumbles and glares but stays where he is, pressed skin to skin.

Then it's Dad's hand on his shoulder, Dad calling his name and demanding is he all right, what are you doing, what do you need?

It makes Sasuke sit up and reach for the sheet, bundling himself into it. The room around them, Naruto discovers, has been trashed, presumably by Kyuubi during the night hours Naruto spent locked in his cage.

"Why did you do that?" he demands of Sasuke.

Sasuke's face, still not really human again, doesn't change. "Kyuubi makes more sense than you."

"You can't put me in a fucking cage!"

"I just did." Animation is creeping back into his features, humanity. He wipes at the blood on his face like a kid wiping snot.

And Sasuke's right, of course. He's the one who let Naruto out of the original cage, the one Orochimaru locked him inside and that he rebuilt in his mind, the only cage that can hold Kyuubi – Sasuke let him out and so Sasuke can lock him in. Until Naruto learns to get out on his own, he has no way of stopping him.

"Kyuubi does not make sense," he grumbles. But he understands better now, understands that Sasuke gets off on Naruto wanting him so much, on Naruto needing him, but that the human part of the sentiment behind that need is incomprehensible to Sasuke. Kyuubi's beast desire to own and fuck and dominate, that's what makes sense to him.

"Naruto." Dad's voice, and he turns his head, facing him.

"I'm fine." He manages to push up on his elbows, stealing a bit of Sasuke's sheet to cover his lap. There's a lot of people around now, which isn't a good idea when Sasuke's like this, people Naruto reckons he'd recognise, if he could see properly, if the world wasn't still spinning and strange.

Pulling the sheet over his privates, he discovers a massive mark covering his abdomen, stretching from sternum to pubic bone. "Shit." His own brand of stigmata, deeper than Kyuubi can heal. His skeleton is brittle and hollow as a bird's, filled with holy writ, and he stares at his stomach and can barely recognise it as his own. "Holy shit."

Sasuke puts his hand on top of it, and Naruto's breathing evens out.

"Naruto," Dad says again. "I need to know what you've done to yourself." He glances at Sasuke with a great deal more dislike than he's shown so far.

Sasuke too sounds snottier than usual. "I told you to leave."

"You just killed four of my people."

"You just shot me in the head."

"What the fuck?" Naruto can feel himself wild-eyed and lost. What the fuck, what the hell!

Dad makes a placating gesture, but there's no placating this. Naruto stares, tries to reach for Sasuke, but there's no mark on him. Either Kyuubi healed him or Uriel didn't let him be hit, Sasuke himself doesn't know which.

"I will speak to Naruto," Dad says.

Naruto barely listens, until Sasuke goes snake eyes again. He starts to remove himself from Naruto, and god, no, anything but that. Naruto grabs for him in absolute desperation, cramping alone at sea and he will drown without this, he will, and – Sasuke finally relents. With this absolutely awful smirk, he even leans closer to Naruto, and Naruto hates himself for it but relaxes into him immediately.

With how raw the bond is, how open, Sasuke leaving would mean almost as much pain and anxiety for him as for Naruto. But of course pain and anxiety have been the lion's share of Sasuke's life for the last seven years, and clearly he's more interested in pissing people off, in establishing his ownership over Naruto, than in avoiding them.

"Will you be here?" Naruto asks. Because the light lurks behind his eyelids, he doesn't know how to close his eyes and see darkness.

"Iru yo." It's less shock now and more a private way of speaking, the Japanese, but still. Sasuke's brain is a bloody mess, scrambled and scratched by the bond, by the seal, by the physical bleed. When Dad finally, fucking finally, takes the hint and leaves them alone, Sasuke lays his head down on the brand he's burnt into Naruto's abdomen.