Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, or any of its associated characters!
Summary: Sasuke has spent three years trying to figure out how to live on his own. Maybe it's time to try something different. WIP. Future SNS, updates once a month. Canonverse. Rating may change!
A/N: small one again! heart eyes at you all!
Day 11 prompt - I love you in every universe!
sunflowers for the skeptical
Chapter 11: unbuttoned shirts, firelight floor
Sasuke spends the next day naked. Naruto wears an apron, at least. They ruin another batch of ramen before Naruto gives up completely—
Sasuke's more of a hindrance, than a help, but he puts his back into it. And his knees.
…
He hinders Naruto every chance he gets. No different than usual—go figure. Naruto never calmed the storm in his head. The heat in his blood. The closer he got, the worse it became, the more in imprinted into him, branded into him, this was a permanence that was only growing, only deepening, Sasuke felt its hooks claw into him and scratched his own against Naruto's back—
Naruto collapses with a sigh, and then it's a laugh. They're tangled again. Exposed again.
The sunlight streams through the window, and they can't get out of bed.
"M'never gonna get anything done," Naruto mutters, and he's talking to Sasuke's skin. Moving his lips against it. Pressing his nose to it. He sighs and breathes and Sasuke feels the shivers break out over him—
"Not at this rate," Sasuke replies, and it's far more full of breath than he intended. He hopes Naruto doesn't notice.
Naruto's smile stretches, and Sasuke knows he does.
Naruto falls onto his side and props his head up with his arm. Sasuke leaves himself collapsed, sinking deep into the bed. He could happily go back to sleep. He could happily wake to this again.
"Fucking hell," Naruto breathes out, and he's rolling over with a hand on his face. It's the same voice. The same happy disbelief that's coloured the day—painted all over them. Stained them orange and blue.
Naruto sits up, and Sasuke follows him to rise. Follows him to shower. Follows and leads and follows again. The kisses are something close to constant. Sasuke can't bring himself to break for breath. They have so much time to make up for. A lifetime of kisses. A lifetime of touch. Lifetimes, lifetimes, lifetimes.
Naruto laughs again, and they're on the floor, now. By the fire. In the cool air, in the gentle dusk. Sasuke sits across from him, and Naruto's toes press against his.
"Took us long enough, huh?" Naruto says, because the memories have been playing over and over again in his head. They've been playing in Sasuke's, too. It twitches a smile to his lips and he looks away, as if that would let him hide it—
It doesn't, and Naruto laughs again.
"Y'know, Sakura wrote me a letter," Naruto says, and he's wiggling his feet, "they're picking teams again. They're just about to. She's helping with the academy, I don't know if I—"
"You have told me," Sasuke says, every inch of him drenched in fondness.
"Oh," Naruto says, and his smile tilts. "Yeah. Guess I talk a lot."
"You do," Sasuke assures him, and Naruto smacks him in the arm. A trained motion. A familiar motion.
The way it lingers, though…that's far more new.
"They're picking teams," Naruto says again, and he shifts his body to lean against Sasuke's side. Sit on his feet. Press to his legs. "And she's—she's helping, and there's a couple kids they can't decide on, and it's all so—random."
Naruto's hand drops from floating in the air, but Sasuke stares up where it was, as if Naruto had traced his thoughts along the ceiling.
"It would've been so easy," Naruto says, and his voice grows quieter, "for us not to have…"
He lets out a breath. Sasuke's lips twitch.
"Don't try to tell me you were unaware of me," he says, and Naruto huffs out a breath. "You yelled at me every day."
"Yeah, but—!" Naruto sits up straight and spins around. His face is far too close to Sasuke's.
Sasuke lets his knees lower.
No need for a barrier. No need.
"We wouldn't've been able to keep it up," Naruto insists, and Sasuke does what he can not to simply stare at Naruto's lips. "On different teams. I mean, it's not like I—"
"You would have forgotten about me?" Sasuke asks, and Naruto—
"No," he says, shaking his head. "Never."
A pulse of warmth under their fingertips. A pulse of warmth low, in Sasuke's stomach.
"So?" Sasuke asks, with a tilt of his head. "What, then?"
"I wouldn't've gotten to you," Naruto says, and it's a whisper. Sasuke doesn't believe it for a second.
Sasuke sits up, and leans forward. He lowers his voice to a whisper. Lets his breath touch Naruto's lips, like the firelight that flickers against them.
"Let me tell you what would have happened," Sasuke says. "We would have been placed on different teams. I would have worked hard. You would have worked hard. You'd hear something. Anything. Some mission success. Someone complimenting me. You'd lose your mind."
A grin stretches across Naruto's face.
"You'd find me every chance you could," Sasuke says, and it's a challenge. "You'd goad me every time we so much as walked past each other. You'd call for a fight. A spar. Anything."
Naruto bites his lip, and Sasuke's eyes flicker down.
"I'd win every time."
"Oh, come on!" Naruto protests, leaning out and back in. He snatches himself back by a hand to Sasuke's thigh, and Sasuke bites in a breath as it squeezes. A gentle, purposeful squeeze.
"That would only piss you off more."
Naruto ducks his head. His grin rings with a truth. With a happy, laughing agreement.
"We were still in the same village," Sasuke tells him. "Same training grounds. Same places. The missions were something. They would have been different. But we would have been the same."
It would have been difficult. The trust, maybe. The knowledge. But Sasuke had pushed Naruto away as hard as he could. He'd done everything to break that bond. But it had already been formed. And it would have been. It would have been, no matter what their lives would look like.
If they were together, that was irreversible.
"You don't think so?" Sasuke asks, because Naruto is still quiet. Naruto traces his hand down to Sasuke's knee. Lets it come back up again. His gaze is down, like he's watching the motion. Memorizing the motion. Sasuke's heart is in his mouth again.
Naruto looks up with a bite to his lip, and Sasuke wonders how far his cruelty really does go.
"It would've been harder," he says, and he's still stuck on this. "I don't think you would've listened to me as much."
A laugh breaks out of him.
"Oh," Sasuke says, stretching his leg out, "and I've done an excellent job of that already."
Naruto laughs, and pulls Sasuke to him. Sasuke's leg drapes over his knee. Can they get any closer? Sasuke thinks he'll find out…
"What if we weren't ninjas at all?" he asks softly, and Naruto blinks.
"What," he says, his grin widening, "Like what? What would we be?"
"Civilians. No one," Sasuke says, "what would you do if you couldn't fight me?"
"Oh, I still would've fought you," Naruto says, and it makes Sasuke laugh.
"Eager to get your ass kicked, weren't you?" Sasuke asks, and Naruto jolts up his knee to make Sasuke's leg fly up in the air. Sasuke makes sure it lands on his shoulder. Maybe on his face. In fact, he could easily kick Naruto back from here—
"Oi, oi, oi, asshole!" Naruto laughs, and the only way past Sasuke's legs is through. Naruto slips between them, and straddles Sasuke down.
…
Sasuke's smile widens.
"You're a real bastard, you know that?" Naruto asks, and Sasuke does. He actively, purposefully does.
"It's gotten me this far, hasn't it?" he asks, and Naruto's hands slip down Sasuke's chest.
He'd put on a shirt, in the end.
He hadn't buttoned it at all, but he'd put it on.
"Yeah," Naruto says, and his eyes had flickered down to Sasuke's lips, too. Good. Good. "Guess you'd be a bastard in any life."
"Always," Sasuke assures him, and Naruto's smile is brutal. Incessant. It's gold and orange and lopsided, Sasuke is still so pinned to this goddamn ground—
"And I'd be the idiot that falls for it," Naruto says, and he's closer. Closer. Closer—
"Mm," Sasuke hums, "in any life?"
Naruto leans in, and his lips press soft to Sasuke's mouth.
"Any of them."
A/N: thanks friends! bye now!
- Kinomi