"It was for the best," Gaara says.
"It hardly matters," Tsunade says. "It's done, now it's about doing what's best going forward."
Naruto's sitting hunched in on himself, hands pressed together between his knees.
Sasuke stands up abruptly, and Naruto stares up at him with wide hungry eyes.
"Sasuke?" Tsunade says.
Sasuke slants a look at Naruto. "I have no interest in your self-pity."
Naruto catches his hand, holds it for a moment before Sasuke pulls free. Afterwards he can sit up straight.
"Gaara's not wrong, you know," Shikamaru says. "Things have quieted down considerably. The Dona Alliance wants to talk to us now. To you, really."
"Right," Naruto says. "Sure. I'll talk to them."
Tsunade gives him a concerned look. She tried to speak with him before, but he could barely hear her over the ringing in his ears.
One point four million people.
What will Dad say about that, when he finally calls? What would Mum have said?
At least the destruction of Stonehall is something that can be spoken of.
What he did to Sasuke afterwards – he barely even has the words to think it, he couldn't say it out loud.
Also Sasuke would probably rip him a new one if he tried.
He didn't even throw up: Kyuubi was too concerned keeping Sasuke's flesh inside. Naruto reckons the delayed projectile vomiting will start when it's been safely digested.
He's not – how does one think these things, and remain sane?
He ate two of Sasuke's fingers before, he reminds himself. He's been violent with Sasuke before, sexually and otherwise. He just – has to learn to cope with it. Do better. Be better.
"I'll go too," Gaara says rather belligerently. "To Dona."
"Fine," Tsunade says. "Take Shikamaru, too. I'll remain here. Given the demon prognosis, I want to keep Sasuke here as well."
Naruto looks up in protest.
Tsunade pinches her nose. "We've got a lot of our people here, and the anti-demon defences aren't all one could hope for. If God forbid there's actually a devil…"
"You know if it goes wrong, he'll let Kyuubi out again."
"I'd fucking hope so," Gaara snaps.
Tsunade reaches for a bottle and pours herself a generous amount. "There's a certain irony to this, really. He made the trade for the girls in his own name, not in yours. But the destruction of Stonehall – as far as anyone could observe, it was Kyuubi doing that, not Uriel. So I guess that makes him Good Cop, and you're stuck as Bad Cop."
Naruto makes a face. "I don't want to be Bad Cop."
"Yeah, well. We should sort out what we want out of this talk before you go."
But Naruto's distracted, unable to focus.
Eventually Tsunade sends him off to get it out of his system, and he fights his way through a minor army of their guards. He wants Sasuke – when doesn't he? – the guards could never be a challenge like Sasuke, and he wants Sasuke, wants Sasuke so badly, but he can't stomach any more violence between them right now.
xxxxx
It's Sasuke like it's always been Sasuke. The familiarity is almost startling.
Even after all this time, all these betrayals, Kakashi finds he still carries the sensation of Sasuke's skin in his fingertips. The way Sasuke tilts his head, the way he frowns, the sound of his breathing – they have become fundamental and inerasable to Kakashi, like the smell of your first home.
The kid looks better now, whole and healthy. Dressed rather oddly, not in the clothes Sakura came and got from Kakashi – presumably he just pulled on whatever he could find, he's not particular about these things. Orochimaru is, but left to his own devices Sasuke would've probably been content to continue sharing Naruto's wardrobe.
Kakashi's eyes zero in on the seal, which is faded, parts of the outline entirely gone.
Sasuke notices him looking, nods.
"Kyuubi, I presume," Kakashi says, in place of all the words he can't say, the ones that tear his throat, scorch the inside of his mouth. "And I'm assuming you've had Uriel burn away at it from the inside."
Sasuke just lifts an eyebrow. He's never been one to waste words on the obvious.
"You must've acquired some documentation when you took care of Kabuto. Anything you want a second opinion on?"
Sasuke doesn't trust him, but Sasuke's taken insane risks to be rid of the seal before.
Kakashi's fingers prickle around a stillborn twitch, this unfathomable urge to reach out. A feeling he recognises: wanting to reach out and not knowing how, viciously not knowing how. It's followed him most of his life.
"Why are you here?"
Kakashi shrugs, slating a look up at the sky. They're outside, the day chilly but sunny. "I was sent up here. Would've been rather blatant if I failed to stop by and see you." He warms his hands in his pockets. "Well, Sakura suggested it."
"When have you ever listened to Sakura?"
It comes to him like a gutpunch that he had this. This intensity, this fucked up kid with all his issues and all his trust. There's so much of Sasuke, such a large personality that he warps the world around him, draws you into his gravity.
"Now, now, you know I always listen when people tell me what I want to hear."
But there's no room for excuses. He knew that.
"You already discarded me," Sasuke dismisses. "What is it you want?"
"I told you," Kakashi says lightly, leaning back against the wall. Slouching, in the way of tall people speaking to short people. "I owed Minato." He smiles, that empty scarecrow smile. "I did think it would be better for you than Orochimaru."
"Of course it is," Sasuke tells him blankly.
"Ah," Kakashi says. While this is better than Orochimaru, to Sasuke's mind at least, it doesn't change anything between them, because it's the betrayal that's unforgivable. Being threatened, being beaten, being raped – Sasuke can overlook all of that. But Kakashi gave him away. That, he will never get over. "I'm not so sure anymore."
Orochimaru, at least, Sasuke was eventually going to kill. Naruto… Kakashi can imagine Sasuke killing Naruto, but not without going nova afterwards.
"That no longer matters," Sasuke tells him.
"No," Kakashi says. "I suppose it doesn't."
Sasuke stares at him, silent, eyes like black holes.
Kakashi feels like he's falling.
"It's all got rather twisted, hasn't it," he muses. Words that mean nothing, spoken because the silence will rupture him.
Sasuke doesn't relent. "Naruto's very straightforward."
"Ah, yes," Kakashi says, perched on some edge. He's stared too long into the abyss, maybe now he'll fall into it. "Naruto still believes his love is special, that it'll change the world and sa–"
"Save me," Sasuke cuts him off.
"I was going to say, save him. But I suppose to him it amounts to the same thing."
Sasuke steps forward a little, tugging down his neckline: fully revealing the seal, which is even more faded than Kakashi first thought. Kakashi traces it with a mostly clinical fingertip, feeling its searing edges and Uriel's furious light burning against his skin. It doesn't really feel like touching Sasuke.
"I'm amazed it hasn't skewered your brain," he says.
"I'm sturdy."
"I can try pulling some of the spokes out. Would you let me?"
"I'll pull them myself," Sasuke grumbles.
"And how's that worked out for you?"
Sasuke shoots him a dark look. Kakashi lifts an eyebrow.
Sasuke will have figured out the theory of it, he's a bright and tenacious kid, but cages are only meant to be opened from the outside.
When Kakashi reaches out again, it's Gabriel's hand touching the seal.
The twisted, broken spokes are cutting deep into Sasuke's mind. Gabriel pulls at them carefully, carefully, untangling them from Sasuke's thoughts and Sasuke's brain tissue.
Most of them are out when Kakashi lets his hand fall.
"Why'd you stop?" Sasuke demands.
"I'm not a medic."
"I need it off," Sasuke hisses.
Kakashi's sure Sasuke would've grabbed for the seal, torn at it recklessly and brutally, even before he could count on Kyuubi's healing.
Uriel's hands rip at it as though at something physical, Sasuke's skin tearing open as he claws at the writhing lines burnt into him.
Kakashi's never been good at stepping in, but he's tired of disappointing himself. He doesn't have anything more that he can lose.
He catches Sasuke's hand, stills it in his own. Uriel burns and sputters, but Gabriel can take it.
Sasuke stares up at him, eyes blank as those of a corpse. But they wouldn't have stayed that way – if Sasuke had been confident in his ability to remain expressionless, he wouldn't have blinked and opened his eyes red and safely inhuman.
"I don't expect anything from you," Kakashi says. He shakes his head, smiles the smile like a slash across his face. "This…it's a selfish, lonely feeling that I don't know what to do with. But just so you know. I'm in love with you."
He steps forward in a movement completely unlike him, the sort of movement Naruto is wont to, utterly alien to Kakashi. He lifts Sasuke's chin and kisses him hard.
xxxxx
Sasuke stares out the window, in the direction of the capital. It's hundreds of thousands of miles away, but he could get home in a day. He has things to do there.
Naruto's hand closes like a manacle around his wrist. "Hey!"
Sasuke snaps around with some impatience. "What's your problem?"
Naruto's regressed exponentially, right back into the black loathing and hysteria of the first hours after the bond. His chest is moving fast with shallow breaths: Kyuubi's claws are slicing deep into Sasuke's wrist, nestling between the veins. Sasuke hisses at him, the back of his shoulders hitting the wall as Kyuubi pushes close.
"You're thinking about leaving!"
His hand's useless, Kyuubi's claw must be severing the muscles because he can't move it. "That's not...!"
"Don't lie to me," Naruto demands, voice erupting higher and higher, though he must know that Sasuke's not. "You were thinking about it right now!"
"Get a fucking hold of yourself!"
"I can't," Naruto gasps, "I can't, I can't." He slams Sasuke into the wall, presses his face into Sasuke's shoulder. Kyuubi's ears flicker in and out of existence.
Sasuke walls himself off from the panic attack washing through Naruto. After the Stonehall incident, and Kyuubi's violent tendencies – after Kakashi this morning – perhaps it was inevitable.
"God," Naruto groans, his voice breathy, he's not getting enough air. "I want to eat you." And then, in an injured tone when Sasuke stiffens, "I'm not going to!"
"Then you know how I feel about leaving, you idiot."
He gets his hand free at last, forcing healing out of Kyuubi until he can move it again.
The strategic course of action would be to calm Naruto down before he has a complete meltdown... the whole situation pisses Sasuke off, and in any case he's never known how not to escalate things with Naruto.
"What's more important to you?" he hisses. "That I'm happy or that I'm with you?"
"I don't know," Naruto gasps. His face remains pressed to Sasuke's shoulder but tilted up so he can look at Sasuke's face. He still can't breathe, much less let go. On the contrary, he grabs Sasuke's thighs and lifts, stepping forward between them to press Sasuke between the wall and his own body. "I want both. Is that so impossible?"
Sasuke kicks at him out of instinct and principle but ultimately locks his legs around Naruto's hips, his arms around Naruto's shoulders. If he blocks Naruto off properly, Naruto will lose it completely.
"And," Naruto eventually grumbles, "What the fuck were you doing with Kakashi, anyway?"
Sasuke snorts. "Like you'd give a fuck if you weren't freaking out about me leaving."
Naruto growls in protest and presses him harder into the wall, mouth opening around Kyuubi's fangs. His shoulders tremble with his fast, shallow panting.
"I'm right here, idiot," Sasuke says, redistributing his weight to force them away from the wall. "Calm down."
Naruto rocks back on his heels and goes down clumsily, ending up on his arse on the floor with Sasuke in his lap. His legs go up immediately, trapping Sasuke against his chest.
Over Naruto's shoulder, Sasuke spots Kiba and Tsunade and demands, "Leave."
Kiba's staring at them – at Naruto really – in something like shock. Kiba always was an idiot.
"He's fine," Sasuke snaps. "I've got this, leave us alone!"
Naruto's lowered his head and is biting like a puppy at Sasuke's throat and shoulders, needy and anxious, coming out of his skin. Kyuubi's huge hands are locked around Sasuke's hips, forcing him bone-grind tight against Naruto. Sasuke lets him, staring down the intruders until they're gone.
"Don't leave me," Naruto gasps against his ribs. "Don't you fucking ever leave me."
"I'm not going to! For God's sake, enough." He shifts his knees, ignoring Kyuubi's hands sinking into his jeans, curling around his buttocks.
Naruto whines, face buried in Sasuke's chest.
"Naruto, I'm seriously not in the mood."
"I know, I know." But Naruto's still trembling, his face hidden in the folds of Sasuke's jumper. "I just need."
"Get up."
"Not yet." His fingers are kneading, skin-starved, and Kyuubi's ears are still out, tickling Sasuke's jaw and cheeks.
"I said –"
"Don't leave me. You can't leave me. Don't leave."
Naruto might be too lost in his breakdown to notice, but Sasuke certainly hears the approaching footsteps. Fucking Tsunade must have got reinforcements. "I'm getting up now. If you want to stay with me, so will you."
Naruto scrambles to his feet on that implied promise, still entirely in Sasuke's space and with his hands all over him. Sasuke speaks close to his ear, "We're going to go into my room and close the door."
"Okay. Okay."
Naruto moves with him, and seems to calm down when the door locks behind them. "I don't know what happened," he mumbles. "I shouldn't be – this needy. I… Can we just?"
"You can't act like this in public, what's wrong with you?" Sasuke sneers, allowing Naruto to cling to him but not responding.
Naruto glances up from his preoccupation with the seal, which he traces again and again. "But I can in private?"
Sasuke slaps him away.
Naruto bends forward again, pressing his forehead against the base of Sasuke's throat. His knees buckle, depositing him on the floor, dragging his face down Sasuke's body. His arms come up around Sasuke's hips, and they're just Naruto's arms but there's no less possessiveness, no less violent potential, in them than in Kyuubi's. He speaks in the smallest voice Sasuke's ever heard from him, "You're not going to leave. You're not. Are you?"
"No. Hell. Get on the bed. I'm not leaving."
"You're not," Naruto mumbles, letting himself be ushered. "You're not, you're not."
He gets Naruto on his back on the bed, and lies down on top of him. "Go on then," he sighs into Naruto's ear. "Take what you need."
Within seconds he's rolled over onto his back, Naruto all over him, clinging and covering and holding him down. Keeping Sasuke's wrists pinned above his head, mouthing his way down Sasuke's chest and rubbing himself between Sasuke's thighs, Naruto discovers, "You're not into this."
"I told you I wasn't in the mood."
"Usually you'd be – infected by it, by now." He hesitates, not going further but not stopping what he was already doing.
"Anxiety attacks aren't one of my turn-ons." Fury is one thing, even panic is one thing, but this is an existential crisis: Naruto feeling he's losing his grip on who he is. Naruto swallows convulsively, and Sasuke adjusts his legs, bending his knees and crossing his ankles over Naruto's spine. "This always calms you down." When Naruto keeps shaking harder, Sasuke frees a hand and drags it across the whisker scars.
"I want you to like it."
"I'll like it when you're yourself again."
"Yeah?" Naruto mumbles, kissing him.
Sasuke opens his mouth without comment, making himself relax as Naruto grows more intense. He drags his hands through Naruto's hair, across his back, while Naruto's anxiety panting turning subtly but clearly into Naruto's sex panting. Sasuke's vaguely excited: relaxed enough that it doesn't hurt much when Naruto slips inside.
Naruto's calmer after he's come, but of course what he really needed, what he was really after all along, is the closeness afterwards. He remains buried to the hilt, sneaking his arms under Sasuke to embrace him and resting his face on Sasuke's chest, pressing soft kisses between his ribs. "I don't know how to live without you anymore."
"Naruto…" It comes out a sigh, his fingers catching in Naruto's hair. "I was just thinking about how I have things I need to do back home. I wasn't leaving."
"Oh." Naruto makes a sound like a laugh, like a moan, into his skin. "Now I feel stupid."
Sasuke snorts. "How strange and unusual that must be for you."
"Yes, in fact," Naruto insists, barely keeping the laughter out of his voice and angling up to kiss Sasuke's neck. "Unprecedented."
"Mmh." His back arches, letting Naruto stroke up his ribs, suck on his exposed throat.
"Mmh," Naruto echoes, kissing him until Sasuke shifts his hips, welcoming him deeper. Already Naruto's growing hard again, and Sasuke's stretched now and slick from Naruto's climax.
"Roll over," he mumbles, clinging to Naruto's shoulders as the bed dips and shifts until he's on top.
"Bossy," Naruto mumbles, leaning up on his elbows to bite at Sasuke's lower lip. "You're such a control freak."
Sasuke arches a brow. "Remind me of the last time I held you down and ripped off your clothes."
Naruto stiffens, but only momentarily, before electing to reach between Sasuke's legs and stroke. "Far too long ago."
"Clearly," Sasuke breathes, clenching around Naruto. He doesn't usually – he never wants to do this, but he feels like it now, watching Naruto watch him as he lifts himself up and down on Naruto's cock.
Naruto stares at him with that dumb bewitched face he gets, teary-eyed but mumbling in almost his normal voice. His feelings always push at Sasuke through the bond, and usually what he calls love is this wild thing, a savage force of nature. But it's warm now instead of scorching, filled with something like gratitude, like tenderness and amazement –
This isn't – Kakashi lifted his chin and – he leans forward, scratching at the whisker scars and moaning the way that always drives Naruto insane, until the heat burns away any thought.
xxxxx
Naruto's looking for Kakashi. Despite all the murky water under the bridge, they're family, will stay family, and their conversation from yesterday requires closure.
It should be easy to find him – Kyuubi's nose is keenly attuned to the scent of exorcists, and Gabriel smells differently than Uriel.
But finally instead he lets himself find Sasuke, who's sitting cross-legged on the floor, one hand raking through papers in a language Naruto can't read, the other sketching symbols on his seal. He kicked at Naruto until Naruto let him go this morning, wanting to get up at an ungodly hour, but looks up now without rancour. "Kakashi already left."
"Oh."
Sasuke shrugs. "He was just stopping by. He wasn't sent here for us."
"Mmh," Naruto says, kneeling on the floor to get a better look at the papers. The diagrams at least make sense. He glances at Sasuke's seal, confirming: "Something happened with it yesterday." Its circle is broken, the edges twisted and smeared, flowing down into the hollow of Sasuke's clavicle.
Sasuke nods. "Pulled some of it out of my mind."
Naruto blinks. "I didn't think Uriel could reach."
"Gabriel could."
"Ah," Naruto says. Kyuubi couldn't. What he can give Sasuke is the blunt force trauma of the bond: Kyuubi can't grab the seal without having his hands burnt off.
"Bite it again," Sasuke tells him. "I'm going to pull more."
"Shouldn't we align it first? Look, here…" He points at one of the diagrams.
Sasuke shakes his head. "Orochimaru used a modification. Like this…"
"Hmm. But then – here, give me the pen…"
Sasuke nods, leaning forward. "Yes – and then….Like this."
"Yeah, that's good. Could we…"
"How precise can you be when you bite? If we got a fang through here, see…"
Naruto pulls Sasuke's shirt open, dragging his fingers across the sizzling lines of the seal until he finds the place. "That's down here now." On Sasuke's chest, maybe a decimetre above his nipple. "I could still bite but it'd have to be Kyuubi's fox shape to fit his jaws around you. Those fangs are much bigger, we'd hit these parts too." He sketches it out with his fingertip.
Sasuke frowns, messing up the papers looking for something. "I need the older diagrams."
They do eventually arrive at a plan. Naruto's breath catches when he lets Kyuubi out, but he's holding the reins this time. He chose to let Kyuubi out, under his own control, and if worse comes to worst it's he who has the backing of Uriel.
He'd thought – he doesn't know what he'd thought – but Sasuke shows no reluctance as Kyuubi stands over him, closing his enormous jaws around him.
When Kyuubi gets too excited, wanting to bite more freely and savagely, Uriel's angel hands keep him in place. Kyuubi's nose boils and burns where those fingers grip, too large to be Sasuke's and too strong, filled with a light that spears through Kyuubi.
And then – the seal shatters open.
Sasuke pushes Kyuubi off, draws healing to keep his brain intact as he pulls splinters.
When Naruto's forced Kyuubi back into the cage and looks at Sasuke's shoulder, the seal is dead. It's white now instead of black, the white of old scar tissue.
Sasuke can stop pulling spokes, because they fade into nothing. He's unsealed.
Naruto's never seen Sasuke grin so wide, wider than his thin little mouth looks capable of. There's a faint ringing in his ears, angel song not meant for mundane ears, as Sasuke's wings unfold. They're massive, brighter and more unforgiving than ever before. Naruto touches their edge, and feels…something he doesn't have the words to describe, something wholly out of this world.
He smiles back at Sasuke, starstruck and thrilled, until the screaming starts. "Hey! Hey stop! You're burning people!"
Sasuke laughs.
Naruto pushes at him.
"Fine." The wings fade, and Naruto can sit back.
Sasuke didn't exactly mean to immolate anyone. They were just – necessary casualties, collateral damage when his true wings unfolded. He didn't bother shielding them.
Cross-legged on the dirty linoleum floor, he's alight with vicious, triumphant happiness. Ready to erupt with it, in this stunned and almost helpless way: Sasuke's never had to learn what to do with happiness.
Naruto grabs his hand and squeezes, and it's not even a human hand, just vaguely hand-shaped light, but it squeezes back without burning him. Without the interference of the seal, Uriel is more in tune with Sasuke, and doesn't burn Naruto.
Sasuke smiles at him, an almost shy expression.
Naruto hauls him into his arms, and Sasuke hugs him back without hesitation. His whole body trembles with holiness, with the immensity of the power it contains and commands. Even his smell has changed, tickles Naruto's nose like an oncoming sneeze.
"Naruto," Sasuke says. "Naruto." He says it like he needs to say something and it's the only word that will come to him.
"I know."
They're still clinging to each other, Sasuke's fingers possessive in Naruto's jumper, when Tsunade clears her throat. "Should I expect more sudden casualties?"
"Not unless you provoke them," Sasuke smirks.
For the first time in a while, he and Gaara are baring their teeth at each other.
But anything further is interrupted by the tinnitus wail of the alarm. When Naruto chances a quick look out the window, all he sees is black.
Tsunade curses sharply. Shukaku growls.
Sasuke still smiles, standing up. "Easy. I called them."
"What?" Tsunade snaps.
A nightmare mass of demons, who breached their defences very quickly indeed. Because, Naruto understands, Sasuke let them.
Sasuke's savage smirk widens. "Time to stretch my wings."
In the silence after Sasuke's gone outside, Naruto makes a calm-down gesture. "He's fine."
"He stank of holiness," Gaara says.
Naruto wets his lips, throwing the window open to watch. It's blinding, but he sees so much more now. He remembers, incongruously, when the hobbits arrived in Lothlorien and felt they saw new colours, colours that were more and so needed new names, better names, because they couldn't be compared to the colours in the outside world. It's a little like that.
Sasuke's joy and bloodlust sing through him, a hymn he can finally hear.
"He's unsealed," he says.
Tsunade breathes in sharply.
Naruto turns from the window, from the compulsion to throw himself out the window and join the strange heavenly battle. "What? It's a good thing!"
"That's a matter of opinion," Tsunade sighs. Naruto keeps looking at her, and she rubs her face. "He's an unstable murderer. He's also one of the most powerful and dangerous people in the world."
"You've killed thousands of people," Naruto reminds her. "So have I."
"Did you enjoy it?"
"No. Kyuubi did."
"Mmh," Tsunade says, she too staring out the window. "But it's not Uriel getting any kicks out of immolating people."
"He's under control," Naruto tells her. "Now about the Dona Alliance…"
xxxxx
"It'd be better if I came too," Sasuke says.
"Mmh," Naruto agrees. "You think the predictions are wrong? That there won't be a devil coming here?"
Anticipation and magic glitter in Sasuke's eyes.
Naruto leans forward and kisses the tip of his nose. "Exactly."
"If Dona fucks up, we'd both like it better if I had Uriel eradicate them than if I make Kyuubi do it."
"That's not going to happen." Sasuke says nothing, and Naruto grabs his sleeve. "I mean it. Don't do that to me."
"I won't have you killed."
Naruto nods. "I get that. But you have to trust that I know what I'm doing, too."
Sasuke's silent, the silence that means he's thinking.
After a while Naruto tugs at his belt loop. "You talked to Kakashi. Yesterday, and this morning. What'd he say?"
Sasuke's mouth quirks oddly, in this helpless mishmash of expressions. At last he says, "He said he's in love with me."
"Oh." Naruto blinks. "Oh."
Sasuke makes an aborted gesture. "It's not like I believe him."
"Why would he say it, if not…"
"Exactly. He must think he'll gain something from it. I don't – "
Sasuke turns away from him, and Naruto slides his arms around Sasuke's waist, resting his forehead against the small of Sasuke's back. "I think – I think he's just in love with you. It's not strange. You're very lovable."
Sasuke laughs, as if Naruto had said something funny.
When Sasuke turns back around, sits on the bed with him, Naruto turns the tablet back on. "About the Dona negotiations. I was thinking…" And he outlines his main ideas, which he finally persuaded Tsunade to sign off on.
"It depends," Sasuke says. "Are you just trying to stabilise the area or are you looking to annex?"
Naruto nudges Sasuke's shoulder with his own. "Do I look like some evil coloniser to you?"
Well, he did colonise Sasuke's mind.
Sasuke nudges back. "Larger federations are usually more stable than an endless number of squabbling city states."
"I think – I think humans could get around to being under shifter rule. I mean, this whole thing with shifters only being able to hold public office for shifter-designated areas – that's bullshit."
Sasuke rather surprisingly agrees with him immediately.
"Anyway you can't trust the Blakeswood delegates," he says. "They've been in contact with exorcist extremists."
Naruto bites his lip in thought, pondering how to use this. They're still taking about the Dona situation when Sasuke starts yawning. Naruto nudges him towards the pillows, throwing a leg over his.
"If we don't stay together, my nightmares will just wake you up." He says this quickly and without quite looking at Sasuke.
Sasuke lifts an eyebrow but rolls over, laying the way Naruto likes best, with his head tucked under Naruto's chin and his hand fisting the beat of Naruto's heart. "You never said," he mumbles. "How was boarding school?"
Naruto laughs into his hair, unbearably fond, and tells him.
During the night he does wake up, four five six times, lightheaded and darkhearted with the memory of Stonehall and of afterwards, on the floor in his room. He presses his face into Sasuke's chest and reminds himself that if that's what it took to be here with Sasuke, it was worth it, it can't be regretted. Sasuke's fingers card through his hair, and Naruto always meant it when he said there wasn't anything he wouldn't do to have this.