It's been several hours when the attendant lets Minato know that Naruto, and Naruto alone, is awake. Minato puts away his laptop and finds Naruto still naked but at least wrapped in the duvet. Blue eyes blinking open, face scrunched mischievously against the pillow, he looks a child again.

The instinct to get on the bed with him, take him in his arm as if he were really five again, is a physical force. But Naruto's arm is looped loosely around Sasuke's back, Sasuke's head tucked under his chin, face hidden in Naruto's shoulder. It's a position that makes him look unendurably young: Minato understands as obvious, and hopes that so does Naruto, that this is how Orochimaru has conditioned Sasuke to sleep, how Orochimaru gets off on seeing him.

Minato leans over carefully, brushing Naruto's fringe aside and kissing his forehead. Naruto's eyes blink open wider. "Dad."

"How are you feeling?"

"Strange," Naruto says, face scrunching up even more and his fingers tightening against Sasuke's spine. "Light, sort of."

"I want you to explain to me what he was doing."

"Well." Naruto bites at his lips, moving his free hand to his stomach. The duvet slips, and there's the mark. It's more discreet now, the white of old scar tissue, but it's still a seal covering Naruto's entire abdomen. "He was, I guess, he finished marking me."

"I wish you'd consulted with me before you agreed to this."

Naruto snorts. "Like he asked."

"Are you telling me that he did this against your will?"

Minato doesn't like hypocrisy, particularly in himself: it's a question, not an accusation. Once you've bought an abused child for sexual purposes and had him marked forever, it's difficult to summon up the moral indignation to condemn this sort of behaviour. And yet, Naruto is his baby.

"Nah," Naruto says, slanting a look brimming over with tenderness and need and resentment at Sasuke. "It's not like I would've said no."

"Hmm."

"It's," Naruto starts, making a frustrated gesture. "Of course I'd agree. I want – I want him to have magic, and I want to be able to handle the exorcism stuff, and I wanted him to mark me, I just. It wouldn't have mattered what I wanted, you know?"

Minato waits, always the best tactic with Naruto. In this too he's so much like Kushina, so little like Yui.

"He'd – he has to have the magic. He's not in this unconditionally. He'd sacrifice his other leg for me – he says he wouldn't but he would – but the magic, that's not negotiable." He shrugs, making Sasuke cling to him tighter. "Either we find a way he can use it like this or – or I have to go, cause he's gonna use it."

Minato takes that in, directing a speculative look at Sasuke. Most of his face is hidden away, and he's curled like a toddler against Naruto's side, metal ankle hooked over Naruto's thigh.

"He doesn't want me to die," Naruto says, rather softly. "But it's not his absolute priority."

Minato draws in a deep breath, and stays pragmatic. "How much influence do you have over what he says? Because I'm arranging funerals for the people he killed, and we need to spin this."

"Don't know, really. He'll be nasty if he's pissed off. But he doesn't care about it, he's not gonna say anything if it's not brought up."

Minato considers whether to point this out, but he has no doubt that Sasuke will realise it and little doubt that Sasuke will break the news to Naruto in as stressful a way as possible: "Those wings will have been visible for miles. It'll be a fairly clear indication that something's going on with the seal." Naruto keeps looking at him, watchful, waiting, so he has to continue, "I suspect that will mean Orochimaru involving himself much more actively. He's been quite laid-back so far, but with the seal in jeopardy I'd be shocked if he didn't make a move."

That snaps Naruto into focus like the dead guards failed to, killer eyes and all. "Orochimaru needs to die."

"Everyone dies, sooner or later. For now he's alive, and we need to deal with him alive." He chooses not to point out that Naruto knows, that Naruto must know, that while Sasuke obviously hates Orochimaru, he obviously would never forgive anyone else for killing him. "What happened to the room?"

Naruto shrinks in on himself, uncomfortable and resentful. "He let out Kyuubi."

"Did he indeed."

"Mmh." Naruto twists around a bit, sitting up straighter and then cursing under his breath as this makes Sasuke's head slide from his shoulder to low on his chest. Sasuke grumbles in his sleep but doesn't wake, and stays obediently close, curled foetal under Naruto's arm.

Minato already knew that Orochimaru likes very young boys, enjoys manipulating as well as molesting them. It's still disturbing to see this carefully performed vulnerability, the obviously learnt instincts to make oneself smaller, to cling tenaciously but submissively.

Kyuubi will love it.

Naruto smoothes a hand through Sasuke's unruly hair, looking mostly conflicted. "Why did he say you shot him?"

"Don't wake him up now, but I did."

Naruto's stare is a black demand, but he's actually waiting for Minato to speak. And so Minato tries to explain in acceptable language that he faced quite possibly the most terrifying sight of his life. Angel light burning through the walls of the building, radiating from Sasuke so strongly it physically prevented him from entering the room. Burnt out his eyes again and again, but in between he could see Naruto, what seemed nothing so much as Naruto's corpse.

Naruto's biting his lip again, but only for a moment. His voice comes slightly hoarse. "Will you – hand me some clothes?"

Giving up on the torn fabric on the floor, Minato reaches into the wardrobe and offers him a shirt and a pair of sweat pants. He turns away as Naruto starts struggling into them, but still, "He's not waking up?"

"Ah, no, I'm kind of totally leeching off him right now. He's sleeping for both of us." He shrugs rather defensively, visible out of the corner of Minato's eye. "I've got stuff I need to do and he doesn't much care about anything here anyway."

Dressed, he sneaks out of the bed and then suddenly Minato has an armful of spiky, clinging child pressed to his chest. Minato hugs him back, resting his face against the crown of Naruto's head, until Naruto starts to step away.

"You're steadier now," Minato observes.

Naruto rubs at the back of his head. "Eh, well, yeah. Kyuubi must've spent like ten hours fucking him, so."

"You don't remember."

"No. Just these sort of blurry impressions."

They both look, quietly, at the trashed room. Broken furniture, even the floor has cracked in places. Sasuke will heal now, of course, will heal from almost anything, but it's clear that Kyuubi will not have been gentle.

Then again, presumably Sasuke could have stopped him, if he'd wanted to. God knows Naruto almost died this morning, and that was without Sasuke intending to hurt him.

Minato thinks again about Orochimaru, about how Sasuke, whatever his natural inclination, will have been trained to respond to sexual violence with submissive pleasure.

"Well." Naruto breathes in and out, deeply, and squares his shoulders.

Minato feels his eyebrows go up. "You're leaving?"

"Mmh." Naruto's grin is crooked and struggling. "I need to get some shit together. Take responsibility. Anyway then maybe he'll learn to admit if he wants me to stay. Just don't, you know. Don't let anyone else come in. That wouldn't, that wouldn't be okay."

xxxxx

"Yeah," Naruto says quietly into the phone. "Yeah, me too. Bye."

It's always a surreal, choked feeling, talking to the walking dead. You can live for about a day, after your mate has died. If you can call it living.

Sasuke wiped two people out of existence, which means two other people dying now. Sometimes mate bonds suck.

"How are they?" Temari asks.

"Dead."

There's a certain tightness to Kiba's and Genma's faces, not grief so much as resentment. Naruto's going to have to do something about that, but Temari beats him to it, "If Gaara tells you not to come in, and you do anyway, then what happens?"

A long, surly silence before her hard gaze breaks it.

"You die," Genma says. He's still in bed, hasn't been able to leave it since Sasuke burnt him, and he's down an arm and two legs, but at least he's talking.

"Exactly. Why you'd expect any different from an unstable, anti-shifter exorcist who was brought here against his will, I couldn't even begin to guess."

"He's not that anti-shifter," Kiba says unexpectedly. "I mean." He nods towards Naruto. "He's with you and all. He hung out with us and everything."

Temari arches and eyebrow, but it's Genma who says, "Didn't Naruto have to stop him burning you?"

"Eh, yeah. But, well, I mean. I used to beat up on him, when he had no way to defend himself. Fair's fair."

Naruto rubs at his shower-wet hair, tilting his head a bit. "Why doesn't he like you? Not you, Kiba, we all know that."

Genma looks away. "I was one of the guards escorting him to the room, the night you returned. I was careless in how I spoke to him."

"Really," Naruto says, rubbing at his forehead. The guards aren't usually formal with him, or avoidant. Whatever Genma said to Sasuke, he doesn't feel safe repeating it to Naruto. "Well, it's good you told me. I'll handle it."

Kiba's reasonably safe, because he's tagged in Sasuke's mind as Naruto's friend. Genma should maybe be transferred.

He stretches a bit, feeling the seal on his stomach itch with the movement. It feels ready to burst through his skin. "I should go say goodbye to Sakura before she leaves."

But he's barely made it off the chair before the world freezes. "Fuck fuck shit no fuck."

Sasuke's woken up. There's a cold feeling, and then no feeling at all.

The holy writing inside Naruto moves so quickly it must be visible on his face, given the way he's being stared at, chains of prayers rolling just under his skin. Naruto claws and pulls at them, but the movement remains implacable, unstoppable. Sasuke shuts him out.

And so Naruto's locked out, stuck with the memory of Sasuke waking up absolutely convinced he's waking up in Orochimaru's bedroom. Alone in a cold bed in a room like a crime scene, blood all over him and his thighs and arse sticky and itching with dry sperm, a burnt hollow feeling inside him. Something Sasuke's woken up to on hundreds of mornings, something that's normal in Orochimaru's house. The gradual understanding, as he sits up, that he's not in Orochimaru's building, that Naruto's the one who left him like this… and then the cold, arctic ice freezing away any further reaction.

"No no no."

Sasuke's shut him out so hard, for a moment Naruto's not even sure where he is.

He runs amok through the building, until finally he finds him. Perfectly composed, Sasuke's standing on the edge of the roof like fucking spider man, always drawn to the high places of the world.

"Sasuke."

Sasuke turns his head towards him, face expressionless as bloody Itachi's, a face not made for human expression. "What do you want?"

Naruto had expected anger, but Sasuke's voice too is blank. It's a neutral question, not even rude. He takes a careful step closer to Sasuke. "Why are you up here?"

Sasuke's disinterested eyes sweep over him and dismiss him. "I've always liked heights. You know that."

"Yeah. But." He reaches out, to pull Sasuke away from the edge.

Sasuke steps nimbly away from him. Still his voice comes absolutely neutral. "Was there somewhere else you wanted me to be?"

"I'm sorry," Naruto explodes miserably. "I thought, but – I was wrong. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left."

Sasuke blinks. "You got what you needed. Why would you stay?"

Naruto understands then that Orochimaru doesn't really matter. It's easy to focus on him, the abuse is so explicit, but the fundamental fissures in Sasuke have very little to do with him.

It was Itachi who got what he needed and left, who gave Sasuke away as if he'd never mattered at all.

The sheer fucking depth of Sasuke's abandonment issues shouldn't be a surprise, but it hits him now like one after all. He'd figured that part was fine, Sasuke's fucking felt Naruto's hopeless love, experienced the unconditional need from inside Naruto's own head.

But Sasuke experienced Itachi loving him, once upon a time, and look how that turned out.

It dawns on him, a bleak winter dawn: Sasuke doesn't trust him, because Sasuke isn't capable of trusting him.

Rage and nausea twists through his chest, and this fucking desolation. Sasuke's not fast enough to avoid him this time, and Naruto fists his hands in the front of Sasuke's jumper.

Twenty hours ago, Sasuke opened his arm to Naruto.

Seven hours ago, he made the fucking angel population of fucking Heaven entreat the Lord God for Naruto's life.

If Naruto had stayed, then maybe… If, if, if.

"It's not that I," he starts. "I had stuff I had to do."

"I assumed as much."

Naruto thinks how the last person Sasuke trusted enough to voluntarily fall asleep with sold him like cattle. "Sasuke, don't fucking be like this. Don't shut me out." He starts out rough and ends up weak, a howling wind thinning into a creaking whine.

Sasuke brushes him off, a burning inhuman strength in his hands. The seal clearly is more open, though it's still savaging his mind. "Like I said, you got what you needed. Don't touch me again."

"You wanted space," Naruto snaps.

"Yes."

"You were fucking drowning in all this, you've been wanting to shut it down from the start!"

"Yes," Sasuke says again, utterly unruffled.

"Then what the fuck!"

Sasuke's eyes are so level, so shut down. "Everything's much clearer now. I see what this is."

"I love you."

He's never actually said that to Sasuke before. Hasn't needed to, it's been too obvious for saying. Only now obviously it's not.

Sasuke smirks at him. He doesn't have to say: that's what they all say.

Naruto reaches for him again, has to have him back. The block shifts, a glimpsed opening, and Naruto's hit with memory, so immersed in it he can't even see the roof anymore. Orochimaru's voice tells him he loves him, again and again. And Orochimaru's…doing things to him. Torture porn, they call it, and it is, it is. Naruto's been hurt, hurt bad, but never in a body that couldn't numb and heal, and never with the knowledge that he belonged to this person, that this was his life. This time too Sasuke's emotions have been edited out, but the sensations come through loud and clear.

"Back off," Sasuke tells him, still so bloody collected.

"No."

"Ah," Sasuke says, and looks over Naruto's shoulder. At where, Naruto discovers in too-slow horror movie slow-mo, someone has stepped out onto the roof, presumably to check on them. Sasuke doesn't even speak. The man just disappears. Vacuumed from the universe, eradicated.

Naruto's only done that a few times, wiped someone out on a molecular level. Human weapons are more energy-efficient, and under exorcist creed eradicating humans is heresy: and while shifters aren't technically bound by that, it tends to increase tensions a whole hell of a lot when they don't abide.

"What the hell!"

"Do you still love me, then?"

"Yes!" Naruto roars, boiling over. "But what the hell, you can't do that! What the fuck, arsehole!"

Behind him there's the sound of the door opening again, and Sasuke lifts an eyebrow.

Naruto pushes him as hard as he can. Sasuke topples off the roof.

It never occurs to Naruto that Sasuke won't air walk, until he doesn't.

Naruto yells in terror as Sasuke falls and falls. Kyuubi's hearing doesn't let him miss the sound of impact when Sasuke hits the ground.

He's not drawing on Kyuubi either, and Naruto realises too late that he's not going to, that it's Naruto who has to force healing energy into Sasuke before his neck snaps completely. By the time he does, most of Sasuke's bones are already broken.

Naruto jumps after him, barely feeling the impact snap his legs before Kyuubi's healed them. Sasuke sits up slowly, his face smeared with mud and blood and still absolutely expressionless.

Naruto jumps him and slugs him. Sasuke ends up on his back in the mud and rotting leaves, staring up at Naruto with blank eyes. Naruto belts him another one.

And another, and another, waiting for Sasuke to hit back.

Kyuubi keeps healing him just enough that he doesn't die, and Naruto knows Sasuke could throw him off any time, turn this into something mutual.

Sasuke remains lax, face swelling and breaking under Naruto's punches but unmoved by expression. Eventually, tears start leaking. Strictly pain tears, the sort that form as a biological reaction after a certain pain threshold is exceeded. Sasuke gives no indication of noticing them.

It sets Naruto off too, until they're a heap of beaten, crying, and in Naruto's case howling bodies on the ground. Mud has started to leak through his clothes when Sasuke finally pushes him off.

Naruto rolls back on top of him immediately, grabbing the sides of his face. "I love you. You know that, you can feel it."

"For now."

"You know shifter bonds are forever."

Sasuke looks away. Naruto sighs, pressing their foreheads together, tearing at the block until a little bit of it can bleed through, a surge of love that makes Sasuke stiffen.

Intellectually of course Sasuke knows perfectly well that shifter bonds can never be broken. Actually believing it in any meaningful way, that's another matter.

His voice is still mainly expressionless, though hoarser now. "You're furious with me."

Naruto tries a grin, mostly fails. "For now."

Sasuke makes a non-committal noise, staring past Naruto's shoulder, up into the cloudy sky.

"I love you," Naruto insists again. "I love you so much. I'd never –"

"Beat the shit out of me?"

"Um."

Orochimaru will have never beaten Sasuke this badly, because without Kyuubi's interference Sasuke would have long since died.

"Fuck me bloody?"

"I – that's different! Anyway I'd never – " And he searches – shouldn't have to search at all but searches now for something Orochimaru's done to Sasuke that Naruto can say with confidence that he would never. "I'd never piss in your face."

Sasuke's quiet for a long time before he says, "Get off me, Naruto."

Naruto rolls off, stays lying next to him. Follows every breath in and out of Sasuke's chest, transfixed. Finally forces himself into action, up on his feet. Reaches a hand down to Sasuke, "Let's go find some demons."

Sasuke gets to his feet under his own steam, walking with Naruto towards the entrance. They'll need a vehicle, at the very least. Naruto stops just inside the doorway. "Stay here. Don't kill anyone, okay? Promise? I'll go find some car keys."

Sasuke makes no such promise, but there's no one else here, so it's probably as safe as it's going to get.

The good thing about Sasuke shutting down the bond is it means he can't piggyback Naruto's shifter hearing. Which lets Naruto fumble for his phone the second he's out of sight, sagging against the wall when Dad finally picks up. "We have to go. Now. Demons."

"What's going on now?"

"We have to go now. He's gonna kill something, it's either demons or us. He just wiped Takeshi."

"I'll be right there."

"Maybe we should go alone."

"Out of the question. You can wait five minutes. I'll get the men and equipment."

"Dad, he's fucking suicidal. He could go nova right here. That'd wipe us all out."

"It'd still wipe us all even if you left on your own. I'll be right there."

"Fuck," Naruto whispers. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

Sasuke was not borderline suicidal when he fell asleep this morning, after saving Naruto. If only Naruto had stayed with him, if only Naruto hadn't been one more person getting what they needed and leaving… Only of course it's not that simple.

It's becoming real now, that he's away from Orochimaru. The seal's being forced open. And Sasuke still feels like shit, still hates the world and everyone in it and himself.

Naruto has never hated Itachi more.

He's never hated himself more, either.

He hurries back to the entrance hall, where, horror of horrors, Sakura has appeared. Where Sasuke is systematically awful to her until she runs away crying.

"Arse," Naruto mutters, jostling his shoulder against Sasuke's.

Sasuke shrugs, their shoulders jostling further.

Naruto remains close, their clothes touching. "Should I go after her?"

Sasuke makes the most human face he has since yesterday. "She wasn't…"

"Yeah, I know." He leans a little closer still, letting their shoulders lean on each other. "I am though. Ride or die."

xxxxx

Sasuke's better in the car. Stilly twitchy, moving in rather birdlike, fundamentally inhuman starts and stops, still ready to come out of his skin at the slightest provocation, but better. More grounded, more talkable.

Naruto picks away at the double blocks, pushing love into Sasuke. He's not trying to censor it anymore, just gives it everything he's got: this is the insane love, the insatiable love. The kind of love that Sasuke can get a grip on, the love that pushed him off a roof and beat him into the ground, the love that ate his fingers and wants to lick his heart, fuck his soul bloody.

Sasuke's staring blankly out the window, but when Naruto reaches out – just going to nudge him, touch his knee – a wall cuts him off. Literally. Searing light, flashing in and out of existence, and the better part of his little finger falls on the car seat between them.

Dad looks over rather sharply. "Are you all right for this exorcism, Naruto?"

"Fine," Naruto says, "He meant for that." Dad doesn't seem to understand that that's a good thing, that the danger was always the unintentional damage. Naruto tips his head back, inspecting the stump. He reckons he'll have to cut this one too, to let it grow back. "If you wanted a geisha finger, you could've just asked."

Sasuke picks up the severed finger, idly playing with it. "Shisui always did talk a lot of shit."

It was Shisui who explained about Japanese courtesans of old cutting off their fingers to give away as love tokens. Something irretrievable and irreplaceable, something that could not be bought.

The holy writ changes shape inside Naruto, twisting through his intestines. His pinkie re-grows at the same time Kyuubi washes away the last bruising from Sasuke. Sasuke's not looking at him as he says, "What's a foot worth, then?"

"Nothing," Naruto says, the word steady even as his insides flutter. "You take it by force, it's not worth anything."

Sasuke raises an eyebrow at the amputated pinkie. "Guess this is worthless, then."

Naruto shrugs. "You could've had it if you really wanted, but yeah." Sasuke makes to flick it out the window, and Naruto hears it spill out, a thoughtless question half hope and half absurd insult, "Not gonna eat it?"

Sasuke gives him an especially weird look, still completely ignoring anyone else. Not even actively ignoring, really: they're just scenery to him. "I'm not a cannibal."

Heat flashes through Naruto's gums. He remembers the taste of Sasuke's blood, of Sasuke's flesh being swallowed down and merging with his own.

Still he has to grin at Sasuke, who frowns in what is clearly confusion but just looks like a demand.

Naruto makes an incoherent gesture, glowing at him. "Cannibalism is eating your own kind."

xxxxx

When they finally step out of the car, there's a shitload of people waiting. Dad's been on the phone almost non-stop, and Naruto spots a lot of news crews, aside from the locals and the human military.

Some kids throw stones at them as they get out of the cars, and Naruto quickly steps in front of Sasuke. It won't matter anymore if he's hit, but the memory of that abandoned village, when a simple ricochet brought him down, lurks just under the surface.

"You're not welcome here!"

It's not the military yelling, not yet, but it's a matter of time. Naruto knows from experience that their gun safeties aren't on.

An answering wall of equally armed shifters is being built around Dad, and by extension Naruto and Sasuke.

"We don't want another motherfucking shifter here!"

Shikamaru usually calls these encounters that-escalated-quicklys.

It stops abruptly and absolutely when Sasuke realises they're lumping him in with the rest, seeing just another dirty monster. Which makes sense, to Naruto if not to Sasuke: Sasuke's standing beside Naruto, inside the ring of shifters, and he looks no different from the rest of them.

Naruto has to snort at the incredulous, insulted face he makes.

Someone throws another stone.

Dad's starts to speak, but his voice dies out in the sudden silence.

Sasuke's wings are out.

All of Sasuke glows, heavenly light clearly visible just beneath his skin.

Most of the locals fall on their knees.

Some of them, it comes to Naruto, are kneeling with their hands pressed to their faces, smelling of blood and ash. Look directly upon a god you've insulted, and you're liable to get your sight burnt out.

All the same, they're not screaming now. Their noise, when it comes, is a noise of prayer, hundreds of people chanting in chorus. "Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principo…" It's a very different resonance from the angelic choir that usually echoes Sasuke's chanting.

"I don't go back on my word," Dad says. "I promised you I would help with the demon infestation. This is a problem for all of us, a common enemy. So we agreed we'd tackle it together. And here we are. With a crusader."

The silver lining to the locals completely slavering over undeserving arsehole exorcists who've let them languish as demon food for months, is how they don't see the look Sasuke directs at Dad.

"Hey," Naruto says, aiming to distract, but it's not necessary: there's no distracting Sasuke from what he came here to do. He steps into the air.

They've assembled on the furthest outskirts of one of the central human settlements. The sky is darkening towards dusk.

Naruto quickly ends up on his arse on the ground, the seal on his stomach burning. This is the big magic, and he understands and feels cold around the understanding that Sasuke's not going to stop, whether Naruto's seal holds or not.

Someone reaches for him: Naruto waves them off. His attention is on Sasuke, some kind of human torch in the sky.

They were impressed with Ino, he remembers, in that village. Ino dancing through the air, exorcising four demons like it was nothing.

The entire sky around Sasuke is pitch dark now.

There are seven main human settlements in the area, each hassled by demons. All of those demons are here now, whether sensing Sasuke and hurrying to defile him or called by Sasuke. There must be dozens of them.

Naruto knows that's not going to matter. This is what Sasuke lives for and was made for, the actual reason he exists in the world.

He frowns around that thought, which isn't really his own – Sasuke exists to be with Naruto, Sasuke exists because he's Sasuke and necessary, because there couldn't be a world without him in it – and then can't think anymore. The seal burns so bad it shines, blinding, through two layers of clothing, and his skin is starting to rupture around it like stitches under pressure.

"Fuck," he whispers, pressing a hand to his stomach. It comes away bloody and with a faint reflection of the seal design burnt into it.

He's gritting his teeth, hiding his stomach behind his legs, by the time Sasuke finishes up. It can't have been twenty minutes but it's like a paradigm shift when Sasuke sets foot on the ground again, like there should be an earthquake shattering under his step.

People part for him like the Red Sea for Moses, until he's in front of Naruto, and Naruto can breathe out the last of the tension, wipe his hands on his trousers. The seal burnt and bled, but ultimately it held.

Dad's already turning with alacrity towards approaching cameras and humans leaders, but slants a quick glance Naruto's way. "You're hurt. Go home. You both should."

Obviously Dad won't want Sasuke here to fuck up the good impression. There's no doubt Sasuke realises this, but then Sasuke has no actual desire to be here, so it doesn't matter.

Raidou helps Naruto to his feet, and they walk with Sasuke towards the closest car.

The reporters are far more interested in Sasuke than in Dad, but Sasuke ignores them completely. He's good at it too, seeming genuinely unaware of them the same way people are genuinely unaware of ants on the ground where they step. He climbs into the van without a word, and Naruto hurries after him. Finds Sasuke curled comfortably next to the tinted window, and whatever his other reservations, Sasuke's consistently been very tactile when Naruto's been hurt, so Naruto sits down next to him, so close their arms touch, and – Sasuke's glare freezes him in place, until Sasuke hand pushes him away. "I said you got what you needed. Don't touch me."

"What the fuck? I'm…"

"You'll heal. I'm going to sleep. If you touch me I'm burning your dick off."