Notes: I will throw a proposal and a love confession in the same story together! I had that brilliant idea while I was driving with my friends and listening to hard j-rock. Haha, I'm so strange. But I'm still so glad you like these drabbles! You all give me such nice comments! You're such a nice bunch of readers! More requests just for you! Yay!

He looked down at the golden band lying cold against his palm. Droplets of rain had splashed across its shiny surface and clung to it like off-shaped diamonds that glittered whenever the lightning forked out from the clouds overhead. He curled his fingers around his father's heirloom and waited.

"You wanted to talk to me?" the familiar voice came from somewhere to his left and he felt himself smile instantly. He turned his head, the water that had collected on his face streaming down to patter on his green vest's shoulder pad.

"Yeah, I did."

The black-haired shinobi wrinkled his nose, eyes slit slightly against the falling rain. "Couldn't we have done this somewhere drier?"

"You don't like the rain?" he blinked. "I always thought it was very…cleansing."

Lightning streaked overhead, quickly followed by the thunder's loud boom. The other man waited for the echo of it to fade from the sky before speaking: "What did you want to talk about?"

The blond turned to face his friend fully, shoving the hand with the ring into his pocket. "You're leaving tomorrow morning, right?"

"Mm-hmm."

"…I heard you'd be gone for a while."

"Are you the one who gave Kiba that black eye?"

"Don't change the subject!"

"I don't believe I am," the taller man gave a slight grin.

"How long do you think it'll take? The mission, I mean," he averted his eyes from the other man's slightly pale lips. He had been following the beads of water that had slipped from his damp hair down the curve of his face and along the tilt of his grin, and could do little to suppress the urge to lick the water away.

"Shikamaru estimates about half a year," he shrugged.

"That's…a long time."

Uchiha Sasuke looked at his teammate closely, trying to decipher the emotions flickering in his deep blue eyes. The rain had already soaked him down to the bone; his usually-spiky blond hair was plastered to his head and face. He looked…fragile.

"…why did you want to know?" he cleared his throat, resisting the urge to lift a hand and push the wet bangs away from the other man's eyes.

"I just…" Uzumaki Naruto lowered his eyes to the muddy ground, and scuffed one foot in front of him. "This is the longest you'll be gone from Konoha since…" He unconsciously stiffened and the blond noticed; he flinched. Sasuke wasn't quite sure how to react to this. The subject of his betrayal to Konoha had been a touchy one, and after the day of his return, it had never been mentioned between them. Naruto had welcomed him home with no questions or judgment, and now…

"What does it matter?" he turned his back to his friend, wanting to let him know not to go any further down the track that this conversation was going. "I'm going to come back." He glanced back at the blond, giving a humorless grin: "Or do you think it's just an excuse to run away again?"

"That's not what I meant!" Naruto cried, jumping forward and gripping his cold wrist, holding him back. The ring that had been clenched in his fingers dropped to the dark path with a plop and he momentarily debated bending down and recovering it, but within such a tense moment, he resisted. "I trust you, you know that! That's not why I said that! I was just…just…comparing," he finished lamely. His hand slipped from the other's wrist and he stepped away, keeping his eyes to the floor now. The gold ring stared back up at him, blurring slightly as his vision was obscured by a sudden rush of hot tears. Now he's going to call me an idiot and walk away, and I won't be able to…won't be able to…

Sasuke paused, then turned back around. Naruto's shoulders were slumped and his eyes were clenched tightly shut, his bottom lip pulled in as he bit on it fiercely. His eyes dropped to the ground as well, and he blinked when he saw the gold band half-stuck in the mud in between them. He knelt and removed it, rubbing the cold earth from it. Then he nudged Naruto's shoulder and held out the ring as the blond looked up with tear-filled eyes. He winced: Dammit, I did it again…

Naruto looked at the ring in Sasuke's hand, gulped down the knot in his throat, and pushed the hand back toward the other man.

"It's…it's for you," he sniffled weakly, trying to sound like he hadn't been crying. "That's why I called you out here, where we could be alone and I could…" His voice hitched and he inhaled deeply, willing himself to calm down. "I wanted to give it to you, before you left."

Sasuke blinked slowly, absorbing what his friend had just insinuated. "…why?" he finally asked.

Naruto sighed: "Because I want you to have it, dumbass."

"But it's…" the raven-haired Anbu tried to make sense of it. Half of his brain was screaming out in surprise and the other half in happiness, but, it was too dangerous to hope. He had to know: "Naruto, where did this ring come from? And why are you giving it to me?"

The blond nodded as if he had been expecting these questions and knew how to answer them. "The ring belonged to my father," he said and Sasuke's head snapped up attentively. "Jiraiya gave it to me. He said my father wanted me to have it when I was old enough." He shrugged offhandedly and rubbed the back of his neck nervously, keeping his face turned away. "I'm giving it to you because I want to."

"Naruto, I can't take this," Sasuke shoved the ring abruptly at him. "It was your father's--"

"You have to take it," he shoved it right back. "My father wanted me to give that to the person I--" Naruto suddenly turned a fierce shade of red and dropped his hands, which had been clasped over his companion's.

"Finish." If possible, he slumped lower. "Naruto, please, finish it."

He murmured something. Sasuke tried to tell him he couldn't hear it, but his throat had constricted and all that came out was a dry squeak. Somehow, in the darkness and the rain, as lighting continued to flicker and thunder kept roaring overhead, blue eyes met black ones.

"He wanted me to give it to the person that I love." His hands groped silently, pleadingly for the others. "The one who's most important to me. The one I want to be with forever." Cold fingers found one another and intertwined. "I want to be with you, Sasuke. I want…I want you to stay by my side forever. I don't want you to go away anymore, I don't want to be left alone again, I never, ever want you to leave me. Can't you understand?" Their foreheads had somehow come together, they were leaning into each other, Naruto's voice slowly getting lower and lower, until it was nothing more than a shaky whisper. "Don't you see? I've always… Ever since we were younger, I've always looked up to you, aspired to be you, to be better than you, and then, finally…" the last part was almost lost in a rumble of thunder, "I fell in love with you."

He was expecting a cold silence, to be shoved away and left behind to stand alone in the rain and feel ashamed. What he wasn't expecting was what Sasuke did: he threw his arms around Naruto's shoulders and yanked him even closer, gripping their bodies together until the warmth from their centers gathered between them and spread throughout both of their bodies, pushing away the cold of the rain and wind. Naruto tried to say something but didn't know what could possibly fit in this situation.

"Why didn't you say anything before?" Sasuke whispered harshly into Naruto's neck, and the blond was suddenly light-headed as those same pale lips brushed tenderly against the angle of his jaw. "Why did you keep it to yourself for so long? If I had known that you…" If possible, Sasuke squeezed him tighter. "You idiot, I love you too."

"Wha…?" Naruto didn't think he was one for imagining things like this, but maybe he'd been out in the rain for just a little too long and now he had a cold and it was causing him crazy hallucinations. Sasuke, admitting he loved someone, much less Naruto? Yeah, right.

"I…" Sasuke's hands slipped up to clasp either side of Naruto's face and he moved his lips upward, dropping soft, fluttering kisses all over the features of his scarred face. "I love you too."

"Sa-Sasuke, you…?" he couldn't make a coherent sentence; he was incredibly dizzy all of a sudden.

"Yes," the other man whispered back, pressing their foreheads together, a shaky smile curving his mouth slightly. "Since before I left the village--even while I was away, I couldn't stop thinking about you. I came back for you, Naruto. No one else, no other reason." His voice was likewise dropping in tone until the rain itself almost drowned out his words. "I couldn't stay away; my heart wouldn't let me stay away anymore. I loved you too much." He corrected himself. "I love you too much."

And for absolutely no reason at all, Naruto began to laugh. It began as a chuckle, and then escalated to the point of nearly shrieking; he threw his head back and laughed up at the dark sky, his hands gripping his friend's vest convulsively. Helaughed until fresh tears sprang into the corners of his eyes and he couldn't breathe properly, and all the while, Sasuke was giving him a puzzled look.

"What's so funny?" he finally asked as Naruto's laughter calmed down.

"I was…so worried," the blond gasped between small fits of giggles. "I mean…I never thought that you…of all people…"

"Believe it," the black-haired ninja said and pressed his lips firmly to Naruto's. That effectively stopped the laughter, but it also brought back the blush he had worked so hard to suppress. When they pulled apart from their wet, awkward kiss, Sasuke himself began to chuckle.

"Now what's so funny?" the blond asked dizzily--he was still recovering from the surprise Sasuke had just given him.

"You," he answered simply, and laughed a bit more when Naruto tried to pout at him through his haze. He held up the ring, which had wound up clenched in one of his hands, and held it up for the blond to see. Naruto blinked and watched in numb disbelief as Sasuke kissed the golden band and then slipped it onto the ring finger of his left hand. Then, he looked up into his eyes and smiled. "I'll come home as fast as I can. But only if you're here to welcome me home again."

Speechless for a moment or so, the best answer Naruto had was to take Sasuke's left hand in both of his, smooth the raindrops from the ring that fit his now-lover perfectly, and kiss it gently. And he was not surprised to feel that the ring was no longer ice cold. He smiled back at Sasuke.

"I will be, I promise."

"Even after this mission? Forever?" Sasuke lifted an eyebrow and the blond could only blink, startled again. "That's what you said, isn't it?"

Naruto opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, and chuckled lightly. He took the hand he was holding in both of his and pressed it firmly against his heart, nodding slowly.

"Forever," he agreed. "As long as you want me to be beside you."

"I can live with forever," the black-haired man wrapped his other arm around his companion's waist and drew him close again.

"Good," the blond closed his eyes and let the tears come one more time. This time, he wasn't ashamed.