He leaves Naruto arguing with Tsunade and her lackey – he doesn't know why they bother, Naruto's obviously going to win.

"Sasuke."

"What?"

Kiba visibly tries to keep his face neutral. "They're really waking up Gaara?"

"He's no good to anyone like this."

"Well, yeah. Just – he was pretty crazy. Really crazy. So I didn't think you'd…"

Sasuke shrugs. "Naruto can handle him."

"Yeah," Kiba says slowly, grinning at him as though they're suddenly friends. "Yeah, he can. Anyway, I was looking for you because – someone's here to see you." He leans out of the room, waving to someone. "He's in here, guys."

Sasuke finds himself ambushed by Sakura and her useless father. It's inexplicable that Ibiki Morino should have sired this bumbling, naïve man – presumably it was a unanimous decision that Iruka stick with his mother's maiden name. But Mama Umino's long gone by now, and Iruka must be a few years older than Anko, though he seems much younger.

It's him speaking now, apparently realising that neither Sasuke nor Sakura is going to. "Hello, Sasuke. It's good to see you again. We, well. We brought you some things."

"Yes," Sakura pipes up, her voice relentlessly bright. "I, um. I figured you hadn't had much time, and I – I'm always more comfortable when I've got my own things. So I thought."

Sasuke looks for the words and eventually finds them. "That's kind."

Her smile becomes a little more genuine. "Yeah? I'm glad. Maybe we could bring them to your room? You can have a look, if you want, see if there's anything else you need."

"Sure."

Iruka hands Sasuke the suitcase he's been carrying and makes his excuses. Sasuke, who hasn't bothered checking rooming arrangements, leads Sakura to the guest room Naruto thinks of as his.

The bed's a single, but that's fine – Naruto can sleep on the floor.

Sakura puts her bags – his bags, he supposes – down and stands uncertainly, pulling nervously at her own fingertips. Naruto used to tease her about that.

"I'm sorry," she says abruptly. "I was – I was being self-centred. I was applying my standards to your life, and – and I think they're good standards, but your life is very different. So that wasn't fair."

"Okay." He puts his hands in his pockets and then, annoyed with himself, takes them out. "I was nasty to you. You don't deserve that."

"Okay," she says, much more softly than he managed. Walks close by him to perch on the bed. "Is, um. Is Naruto here too? I think I owe him an apology as well. We didn't really say goodbye."

"He's walking up Gaara."

"Oh. Um, is that… I just mean…"

"Naruto can take him." He shrugs. "Or I can, obviously. I meant, he's been obsessed with Naruto since we were kids."

"You always believed in him."

"Hmm?"

She smiles, fastening her hair behind her ear. "Naruto. You always – obviously now he's powerful and everyone counts on him, but even back when he was this little runt. You know, when everyone discarded him because of his mum, and he maybe had a lot of energy but he couldn't control it so they thought he was useless – you believed in him. How did you always know?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." He feels himself frowning, shrugs it off. "He's Naruto."

Her smiles grows, teasing but brilliant. "Of course he is."

He shakes his head. "You're such a little bitch."

"Shut up!" She punches his arm but then pulls at it until he sits down beside her. "You're the only one who talks to me like that, you know."

"Tch. You like it."

"Yeah, I guess I kind of do." She jostles against him, close and familiar. "Now be a good boy and open your presents."

"Bossy," Sasuke fake complains. "Fine."

It becomes very quickly very clear that Sakura hasn't chosen these things for him. The clothes are all his size and his preferred colours and cuts. Sakura could possibly have got that right, could have conceivably managed his toiletries and electronics. Unlikely, but not impossible. But the weapons – his favourite guns, his favourite knives – and the exorcist paraphernalia, there's no way Sakura could've picked out these things.

Sasuke puts the earphones away and closes the suitcase. "You talked to Kakashi."

"Yes. I'd hoped I could just speak to Neji, but he – doesn't know you. He was just – that is, did you really, like, have a fling with him?"

"Sure. I'm the – what is it they always say about Ino? The village bicycle. Everyone's taken a ride."

"That's a disgusting thing to say about someone! Also everyone has not taken a – a ride. I for one haven't. Oh, for God's sake, don't look so horrified, it's not like I want to. I suppose if anything, Naruto would be more my type."

Sasuke's eyebrow shoots up. "That's not what you said when he was pursuing you."

"Hmm. He was so, you remember, he was so upset about the divorce, so obsessed with reuniting the family. And then his mother had just died. His mother, I might add, who was a mousy human girl. With green eyes."

"Well, you can't have him."

"I know. He's always been yours."

"Everyone says that these days."

"Mmh. Really, what would you have done, if he'd been bonded to someone else?"

He lifts an eyebrow, which never really has any effect on Sakura. "Naruto's convinced I would've killed them."

"You're not? Oh, don't – obviously I don't think you would've. But you're usually all about killing people."

"If he needed a medically advised sidepiece, as long as they knew their place…"

Sakura's mouth quirks. "Wouldn't you have been the sidepiece?"

"No."

"Well, no, I suppose you wouldn't."

"Whatever." He falls back on the bed, pulling her along. "So did you finish that Murakami or what?"

xxxxx

Sakura's long gone by the time Naruto wakes him up by opening the door. Sasuke remains sleepy and curled up beneath the covers until the bed dips under Naruto's weight and Naruto starts pulling some of the duvet towards himself.

"No," Sasuke mumbles, much more awake and pushing at Naruto. "Sleep on the floor."

"This again?" Naruto grumbles. "All right, I'll – no, wait, actually, not all right."

Sasuke kicks at his hip.

Naruto grumbles some more and grabs his ankle. "This has been a shitty day and I'm tired and I'm not going to sleep on the bloody floor. I've been in the bed with you a dozen times already and you're hardly traumatised. Scoot over."

"No. You'll just touch me and we'll get stuck in the fucking dreams again."

"Then we'll make sure to wake up from them together." Naruto pulls the duvet over his legs, his head hitting the pillow.

Sasuke sits up, pulls on a discarded fleece jacket, and moves for the door.

"What're you doing?"

"You sleep in the bed. I'll find another one."

"There's people everywhere. Don't be absurd. Just come back to bed."

"Do you actually think there's anyone here I couldn't kick out of their room?"

"Fine. Jesus. All right. I'll sleep on the floor. Just stay."

"Fine."

Naruto rolls off the bed none too gracefully, sprawling across the carpet. "Toss me a pillow at least."

"Hn." Sasuke kicks the extra blanket off the bed too, and Naruto builds himself a cocoon.

"Gaara wasn't really there yet," Naruto says, a low voice in the dark. "I sat with him, but it was mostly just Kyuubi and Shukaku screaming at each other. Gaara wasn't awake yet."

"Tch. Maybe that's for the best."

"No it's not. But I'm going back tomorrow and we'll get it sorted out." He inches closer, dragging against the carpet, closer but not too close. "Sakura was here."

"Yeah. She says hi."

Softer now, which isn't a natural tone for Naruto and so comes out rather rough, "Sasuke… You didn't betray her."

"Don't condescend to me. Of course I betrayed her. I just couldn't – go back anymore."

"I know."

"And I'd do it again. So don't tell me it's not a betrayal because it fucking is."

He lied to her for years and then he stopped lying, and he's not sure which is the worst betrayal.

"I mean," Naruto says. "It's not the same with everyone. You're different with different people, like – I'm saying this wrong, but. If I acted with you like I do with Kiba, that'd be a betrayal of you. But it's not a betrayal to be that way with Kiba."

He's so earnest, such a shock to listen to sometimes. Sakura said, He's always belonged to you. Sakura knows nothing, and even she knows that.

It's always been Naruto's mantra: people need people, people belong to people.

"She's been my friend for a long time," Sasuke says carefully. But it's a relative friendship: they've betrayed each other now like he always knew they would. Sakura can only be his friend if he lies to her.

There's no going back from that, and going forward afterwards you do it as different people.

Like there's no going back from how there was Naruto, his whole life was saturated with Naruto, and then suddenly from one day to the next Naruto was gone, and there were months and then years of Naruto being gone.

Now here he is again, and everything is different. Like how he had a foot, all his life he had a foot, and then suddenly it was gone, and when the prosthesis was attached he could walk again but it wasn't the same.

"We tried to take care of her," Naruto says. "After I was gone, you still tried to take care of her."

Sasuke shrugs.

"I thought," Naruto says. "It's stupid. I just thought, you never tried to take care of…"

Sasuke smiles thinly. "Kakashi could take care of himself."

"Yeah," Naruto agrees. "That's what he does best." He falls back, pillowing his head on his arm. "You must've had other people. You know, when I wasn't – around."

Sasuke shrugs. "I got along with Kimimarou."

"You were friends with Kimimarou?" Naruto splutters, edging up onto the bed after all but keeping his distance.

"Not really." He sits up, resting his chin on the tops of his knees. "Like I said, Orochimaru took him in, Kimimarou loved him. He never had anyone else."

Naruto's toes sneak forward and lock around the hem of Sasuke's pyjama trousers. "This got depressing fast."

"You asked."

"You don't have to take everything as a criticism, you know."

Sasuke hmms, unconvinced and prickly but not strictly uncomfortable.

"Shit," Naruto mumbles. "I'm such a spoilt brat complaining about my parents, huh."

"At least your mother isn't absent because she wants to be," Sasuke says, rather acidly

That cuts, he would've seen that on Naruto's face even if he hadn't been able to feel it, though that wasn't necessarily how he'd meant it.

Naruto moves up on his knees, moves closer. "Mmh. And I guess both our parents are disappointed in us." He leans forward, they're close now. Sasuke's heart stutters, a wrenching in his chest, and the bond's as closed as it can be while still allowing Naruto to function, so it's not just bleedover. "Mum always thought I was so reckless, so careless with people, and Dad thinks I'm soft. God knows what's wrong with your parents."

"Yeah." It's more breath than word. He reaches out to touch Naruto's hair.

Naruto arches into his hand for a long time before smiling, "I guess we're the runts of our litters, huh."

"Hn."

Naruto laughs, low and deep, and leans in to nudge his face against Sasuke's. Sasuke's fingers catch in his hair, locked tight in it. The kiss is deep, the good kind, it feels like Naruto's slipping under his skin.

Sasuke needs to leave.

"Don't freak out," Naruto mumbles, catching his mouth again and again, until Sasuke grabs his face and keeps him in place, close as they can get. "I never want to be away from you. I always want more of you, I – it's like I said, I wake up thinking about you and I go to sleep thinking about you and all the time in between I never stop, I couldn't stop…"

"Naruto," and he meant it matter of fact but it comes out breathless. "I'll kill you if you stop." Naruto looks at him like he's a miracle, and fuck, Sasuke's not going anywhere. Naruto's mouth comes back to his, Naruto climbs into his lap to get closer. Sasuke's whole body is buzzing, hot and tingling from the inside out.

"I belong to you," Naruto gasps, and Sasuke's kissing him and kissing him, lost in it, feels his hair sticking to his skin with sweat and only wants more. He's lost track of how to control his face: eyes shut, lips open, and all of him feels open, overwhelmed by this sudden emotional excitement.

Naruto does belong to him, he's Naruto's whole world and necessary to every beat of Naruto's heart. Naruto…loves him. It's fucked up and tainted and messy, but it's real. It's who Naruto is.

"God," Naruto mumbles in between kisses, "I need you so much. You can't ever leave, I can't let you ever be away from me."

"Good," Sasuke breathes. And what the hell is he saying, but it prompts a sound from Naruto, a sound of unbelievable relief and joy, and any further words Sasuke might have spoken are stuffed back down his throat by Naruto's tongue.

There's a hard knock, and next moment light spills through the doorway, illuminating Tsunade's raised eyebrows. "Naruto. Gaara's asking for you."

It's much like being dosed with ice water, left raw. Sasuke hasn't been this naked with anyone – emotions acted out and visible – since… since before he had Naruto sent away. But this is not a good time to think about the past.

"Granny," Naruto groans, still straddling Sasuke's hips and looking awkwardly over his own shoulder, "could you have worse timing?"

"Could have come ten minutes later," Tsunade snorts.

"Just go. I'll be up."

Tsunade laughs, but she obeys.

Sasuke pushes Naruto off him. He's fully dressed and people have watched him getting fucked more than once, it's senseless to feel so exposed.

Naruto hovers. "What? You don't – you never cared before? About people seeing."

"Just go."

Naruto stands up obediently, but lingers. "But really… Oh. This wasn't – this was different. You were excited because –" Because it was me, because you love the way I love you. Because Naruto's love is enormous and endless, a love to shatter the sky.

"If you ever want me to be excited again, you will shut up."

"Okay. What? You being excited again is very important to me!" He steps closer, fingers curling warm and proprietary around Sasuke's jaw. "Don't tell me you wanted me to insist."

Sasuke swallows confused challenges and feels like he's swallowing retches.

"Why are you," Naruto hesitates. "Why are you thinking about Kakashi? And – Itachi?"

"Get out of my head."

"You can't just –"

"Seriously get out."

Naruto apparently doesn't take him seriously, which hurts no one so much as Naruto himself, who takes a quick step back, an incredibly disturbed look on his face.

It breaches the surface, Sasuke's last memory of emotional nakedness. It's a memory of being little, of before Orochimaru: of not understanding that taking off your armour means the hits will kill you. Kakashi's arm around his waist and Itachi's fingers spilling down his face, tickling his eyebrow. Kakashi mumbling in his ear. Sasuke laughing, breathless like he's been tickled – a laugh that doesn't sound like his own, a soft stupid sound – slipping free of Kakashi's arm and edging forward into Itachi's lap. What matters is the way his fingers curve greedily, reverently around Itachi's heartbeat, the weight of Kakashi's cheek resting against the top of his head.

It has much less impact than he would've thought, has lost much of its resonance. It leaves a gritty feeling.

"I get it!" Naruto snaps, cutting the memory off. "Okay, I get it! That's what you wanted, I'm not. Okay!"

"But I don't."

Naruto freezes.

"I don't want that. Them."

Naruto's face is so still, in contrast to how his chest heaves. "But you did – and now…I know you didn't choose me."

"I could've let you die," he snaps, hears the words brittle and resentful. Minato would've killed him then, or given him back to Orochimaru, but Sasuke wouldn't necessarily have minded dying. He made a choice. Naruto keeps staring and he can't stand it. "I told you. It could've never been anyone else."

"Sometimes I feel sick at how much I need you," Naruto says, swallows. "I'm so relived now. But it's so unfair, I need you too much. You have so much power over me." Sasuke snorts, reminded of Itachi and Kakashi and Orochimaru, one long row of betrayal and violence and violation. "The power to be unhappy with me, to take yourself away from me. To just not want me. I love you and I want this but – I belong to you. I don't – it's not right toneed someone this much and sometimes I really, really hate it."

"I know."

Naruto smiles crookedly, his eyes suspiciously wet. "I know you know. You always know."

"Tsunade's going to come back any time."

"Bitch," Naruto grumbles. "Okay, I'm going."

He doesn't look at Sasuke as he takes Sasuke's hand in his, and because of that Sasuke lets him hold on for a few seconds. Naruto's is a good hand, with large knuckles and sensitive fingers, the life line like a scar across the palm. It's the kind of hand you could hold on to hanging over the abyss and feel safe with.

He can't have these thoughts. These feelings.

"Out."

Naruto's eyes widen, clearly hearing the resonance. The resonance that comes of Sasuke drawing on Uriel, cauterising what feels like an open wound of the soul with the brilliant radiance of an inhuman Heaven. Naruto backs out of the room so quickly he stumbles through the doorway, his skin already blistering.

Sasuke pulls more light through the seal, scourging himself clean of any emotion.

xxxxx

Gaara's eyes are open now, and are finally Gaara's eyes again.

But Naruto's barely inside the infirmary before Gaara grabs something off a tray and throws it in Shizune's face.

The smell of acid and corroding flesh is immediately overwhelming.

"Gaara what the hell!"

They're both kneeling on the floor then, where Shizune's fallen. Her beast is weak, so weak the healing isn't even visible yet. Her face flakes and erupts, flesh melting off it.

Gaara leans forward and licks it up.

Shizune screams.

Naruto punches Gaara off her, curses and struggles to keep Gaara restrained as he moves towards the alarm button on the wall. Shizune needs him to keep Gaara away from her, but she also needs him to call for Tsunade.

He sits on Gaara's chest, pinning his arms and snarling down at Shukaku, until finally Tsunade comes.

"Right," she says. "Let's get him on the bed. We need to restrain him."

Between them they break his bones and force him down, lock hundreds of kilos worth of reinforced metal over him.

"What the hell?" Naruto demands again when Tsunade's taken Shizune away, pacing beside Gaara's bed.

Gaara's rather blank, annoyed expression doesn't change. "I was angry. She'd kept me captive. I retaliated." He turns his head a little, the only part of his body he can move. "She's weak."

"She'll heal," Naruto says. "She was trying to do what's best for you."

"You disagreed with her."

"Yeah," Naruto says, stopping now. Staring Gaara down. "I said you were better than that."

"Hypocrisy is beneath you," Gaara says flatly. "You've got Uchiha's smell all over you. He would've done exactly the same thing."

"You wanna talk about hypocrisy?" Naruto bends over him, so close Shukakau's teeth snap shut just short of his face. "I don't expect shifter loyalty from Sasuke. He's never held forth on the importance of pack."

"A functional pack is about having a few alphas and a lot of followers. People need to know their place."

"What for? Will that make them happy?"

"It's not about happiness."

"Then what's the point? If I force you to bare your stomach, what will that get us?"

"You can try."

Kyuubi grins at him, wider than a human mouth should be able to and feral. "Come back when you've been bonded, and we'll see if you stand a chance."

For the first time, Gaara looks away.

Naruto sinks down on his bedside, the little bit of it not covered by restraints. "You'll be fine."

"I'm always fine."

"Two out of three of your litter already bonded human. What're the odds, right? You'll be fine."

"I'd kill them," Gaara says. He's not looking away anymore. "If I ended up with a human, I'd kill them."

"That'd be a waste."

"Yes," Gaara agrees without hesitation.

Naruto leans over him. "Don't you want to live?"

"I do. But not under any circumstances."

"That's a coward's way out."

"Not any life is liveable."

"Then you change it! You make it better."

"Have you found a way to undo a bond, then?"

"No, but – "

"A life chained to something I can't abide – I won't have it."

Naruto rotates on the bed, until he can put his legs across Gaara. "You're such a fanatic."

"Humanity should be exterminated."

Naruto snorts. "Isn't that such a waste? Then who's gonna be our slaves?"

Gaara stares, then snorts, the looks – oddly betrayed. "Did Uchiha say that?"

"You can hardly have thought I came up with it."

"Maybe I hoped."

"Look. Shifters are objectively biologically superior to humans. Sure, that's obvious. But that can't be all that matters. In that case exorcists are way superior to shifters and humans both."

"That's bullshit. A single bullet, they're gone. They're nothing."

"If shifters were exterminated, nothing would happen. The world would go on. But if there were no exorcists? The entire fucking world would be gone within a month."

"We'll exterminate humanity, not the exorcists. We'll keep them as our weapons."

"Mmh. And so are we gonna discuss the likelihood of subduing the host of Heaven, or are we ready to talk about the fact that I killed your brother?"

"You did what you thought was best."

"Yeah."

"You didn't mean for him to die."

"No."

"You chose that girl over him."

"No. I didn't – I never thought she'd kill herself just like that. I wouldn't have let her do it if I could've stopped her."

"Why?"

"Because she died and Kankurou died! They could've both lived!"

"She didn't want to."

"Yeah, well, suicide is not okay. Other people need you."

"Is that why you forced yourself on Uchiha?"

"I didn't!"

"He let you?"

Naruto shrugs, uncomfortable "Well, yeah."

"Oh. But you wouldn't have killed yourself for him, then? If he didn't want you. You'd have forced him."

"Of course not! Dying for someone else and dying just because you're too weak to stand your own life, that's different."

"You wouldn't have been dying for him," Gaara snaps. "He can obviously live with being someone's fucktoy. If you killed yourself over that, you'd be doing it because you were too weak to handle what you'd done."

"You know," Naruto says, his face hurting around a wobbly smile, "you sound just like him."

Gaara looks like he'd shrug, only the restraints don't allow it. "I've never liked him, but he's not an idiot."

"You'd have liked him fine if he wasn't an exorcist."

"Maybe."

"Anyway it would've been his decision. If I killed myself or not. It was his decision."

"You let him decide? Naruto!"

Smiling really hurts now, it cuts through his face. But if he stops he'll cry. "Not every life is liveable. If he wants me to die, I can't live. It's weak. It's a betrayal of everyone else. But it's how it is."

"I don't understand how he doesn't want you dead."

Naruto laughs. It's a ragged sounds that feels like it scrapes his throat raw, gritty and coppery in his mouth. "Neither does he."