but you know with one step forward darling, we've taken two steps back (I)


Summary of the chapter:

"It's not like I've never seen you without clothes before."

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Naruto doesn't sleep that night either, but he dips in and out of consciousness.

When the world starts clearing around the edges he becomes conscious enough to grasp the sight above him, through a husky screen of smoky gray the hue of dawn rolls in.

He blinks a few times, blearily, as if simply waking up from a dream. The bad taste of iron is all over the place, even so his mouth still is dry, like he's kept his jaw locked for days on end, and when he swallows on reflex he takes notice of his parched throat. The tip of his tongue automatically draws to the roof of his mouth, the row of his teeth, and finds another tooth is already growing back in the missing gap.

After a moment more of resting, he then attempts to sit up.

And immediately falls back down, groaning at the sudden pull he seems to feel from every inch of his body. He might have torn something. Gingerly touching his stomach, he quietly hisses through gritted teeth at the light pressure from his palm—yes, something is definitely torn. Well, he is certainly feeling the after-effects of his impulsive brawl, if his sore muscles are anything to go by.

His second attempt is far more successful, and, finally, he's sitting up, though with a considerable amount of effort. He touches his face next, patches of his skin are tender to the touch, no doubt from the bruising still going on. The first thing to do is drag himself back to his apartment, he can probably walk by now, and if the visible bruises haven't faded in a few hours he'll have to come up with a plausible excuse for Sakura (Sai wouldn't really care).

He rakes a hand through his hair and doesn't fight a yawn, even if his jaw prickles with sore sparks.

"I need a shower." Naruto says his first complete and coherent thought out loud to no one in particular.

Except, someone in particular does hear him.

Sasuke, who is standing but a few feet away and leaning for support on a nearby wall, as if patiently waiting for Naruto to regain full sense of himself, stares at him like he has just grown a second head on top of his existing one, raising a bemused brow at him.

"You're being...surprisingly casual about the situation?"

Naruto meets his eyes through his lashes and...shrugs. And his nose crinkles a bit at the stiffness in his shoulders.

Sasuke uncrosses his arms and doesn't break the stare. "Seriously? No, wait–seriously?" He blinks in rapid succession down at him, befuddled. "Okay, am I the only one who's bothered by how casually you're approaching this? Really? Is this the new teenage way of dealing with stuff and no one bothered to let me know?"

Naruto only hears half of what he says, barely paying attention to his own thoughts. "Shh..." He tries to say 'shut up', but it doesn't really work in his favor. "...Don't be so loud, I've got a headache."

"...With what happened last night you've got a 'headache?'" Sasuke sounds incredulous. "Try a concussion. Or two. Or five. How many concussions can one person have at the same time anyway, 'cause I think that's what your case is right now."

Sasuke seems to be in a pretty chatty mood today, but Naruto is in much the opposite. And he really needs a shower, dried blood doesn't exactly smell great.

A second too late, as if in afterthought, Naruto realizes it might give him away. Sasuke might figure out this is not exactly uncharted territory for him. But again, Sasuke was witness to the unfolding of last night and at this point Naruto doesn't even find the energy in himself to care, seeing as the adrenaline that had taken his body hostage a few hours ago is now leaving waves of drowsiness in its wake and he seriously needs to be up and on his way.

"...Naruto?"

Out of everything he could have been expecting at the moment, however, at the bottom of his list was the sound of a worried, familiar voice greeting him.

Naruto looks up and to the side, and blinks with a start. "...Ino?"

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Ino manages to take him to a small pension not too far off from their meeting point and on the way there tells him about how she occasionally helps the owners there because they're family friends, insisting on having a look at his wounds despite Naruto reassuring there is no need to. But, well, her persistence has always been a match to Sakura's own and the two of them belong in the circle of girls Naruto never wants to anger, unashamed to admit he is easily scared of them when they get mad.

They talk for a while, but she doesn't exactly ask what happened, or push on the subject, to Naruto's mild surprise.

"You ended up in the wrong place at the right time, I assume." She simply offers, instead.

"Yeah, something like that." He offers back.

He sits slouched a bit forward with his legs loosely crossed on the tatami mat, while Ino is sitting on her folded legs with her back almost ramrod straight as the lukewarm, viridescent glow of her chakra glazes over the now exposed skin of his torso.

Naruto doesn't pay attention, not exactly keen on seeing the proof of yesterday's sideshow scattered over his body, but he preoccupies himself with paying attention to her and his surroundings in general, so as not to let the nerves get the best of him.

Ino is fairly good at keeping up a poker face when she needs to, but he can clearly see her face is currently creased in uneasiness, although it's nowhere near bad as he might have imagined, thus, he concludes, the worst of his injuries healed well enough throughout the darkest hours.

"Does it hurt?" She only asks once throughout the process.

"No." He replies instantly.

(Of course this is not what's hurting.)

"...Thanks." He adds in a mumble, almost guiltily so, feeling that he owes her an apology somehow for involving her in this set of circumstances, even if she is the one who volunteered to check up on him in the first place.

"No problem." She says, meeting his eyes with a small smile for a second as if in reassurance.

Naruto wants to smile back, but he is too spent to fake one at the moment.

It doesn't take long at all, even if the minutes seem to drag on like hours, but regardless of the silence being short-lived, it feels like it has him caged in and his senses are screaming at him to flee. Naruto has always been comfortable around her, but the already present tension is growing thicker and he knows Ino is trying to hold herself back from asking, though he doesn't know what about. He's far better at reading Sakura and Kiba, and occasionally Sai, than he is at understanding anyone else.

Her hand drops back on her lap and her head tilts a tad downward, Ino's concern is once again perceivable.

After taking a bit of time to debate with herself, she regards him with distressed care. "What's going on with you, Naruto?"

Naruto's muscles lock up on a cut off inhale, taken aback by the straightforward question. It takes him a few seconds to force his body into relaxation and his next exhale to come out fairly quiet, not wanting to give his shock away. He lets his hair fall in his eyes, hiding his expression as he utters a barely audible reply.

"...Nothing."

Ino's resulting sigh suggests his minimal attempt at damage control isn't very successful, not that he had expectations about it. But he really doesn't want to do this right now. He's not up for it.

"Sakura and Sai are worried about you, you know?" She begins, the soft words aren't a way to guilt trip him, but rather meant as comfort. "Even Kakashi-sensei and Tsunade-sama and–really, we all are."

"I know." In spite of her efforts, self-reproach still tightens around him in a knot. "But there's no need to. I'm fine."

From the way her shoulders sag and her gaze drops, she doesn't believe him.

"Naruto, I..." Ino fidgets with her fingers. An apprehensive aura surrounds her, and when she raises her head again there is a dreadful kind of empathy written all over her face. "I understand what you are–"

"Ino."

Naruto's voice raises abruptly, verging on a scream in the quietness between the four walls, startling the both of them.

She cuts herself off immediately and the room plummets in ringing silence.

Naruto turns his head to the side, chest constricting and nails unconsciously digging in the worn tatami as alarm spikes throughout his whole body, and he swears he experiences a head rush so strong he might faint on the spot.

He has to fight to keep his breathing under control, but is in the end is able to catch himself. Fortunately for him the sense of fright goes swiftly diminishing, as if it was never there in the first place.

He meets her eyes again with a gentler but flimsy expression, lips pressed narrowly in what is supposed to be a smile, that in truth is more of a fragile frown, and he shakes his head, as if begging her not to press any further.

Ino backs off with a remorseful nod.

"You'll be fine." She utters in a second moment, while Naruto puts back the shirt and hoodie too, most definitely referring to his physical state rather than...well, everything else.

With a final nod Naruto stands back up and silently walks to the threshold, stopped by her next words.

"Just..." Ino's voice dwindles to a whisper, though her expression is hopeful. "Please take care of yourself, okay?"

Naruto turns to face her, answering in a hush. "...okay."

He smiles at her, worn out, and Ino smiles back just as tiredly.


Sasuke had mostly kept to himself throughout the exchange, to the point Naruto had almost forgotten about his presence and missed the way Sasuke had also shown surprise at Ino's direct question, watching on curiously.

On the way back, they walk once again past the hard concrete Naruto spent the night upon, and Sasuke is the one who is asking this time, nodding towards the ground, smattered still in dried blood.

"Care to explain what this was all about?"

Naruto bites down on a frustrated sigh. He's beyond fatigued and it's sort of unbelievable to think the day has yet to start.

"No."

He tries to ignore the way Sasuke focuses back on him, apparently engrossed in Naruto's reckless judge calls.

"You really–"

"I said no." He stresses.

"Let's just–"

"Not happening."

Unfortunately for him, this is territory Naruto won't allow trespassing in, he is not about to give up statements on his life choices and neither does he plan to have any conversation about them. And certainly not with him.

"But–"

"Stop."

"I want to–"

"Shut up."

Sasuke's exasperation is a step away from turning into full-fledged annoyance. "Can I please get a word in–"

"No. You can't." Naruto finally stops and faces him, his own annoyance building over the earlier queasiness. "And while you're at it, could you stop talking to me." He requests, but it's not a request at all and he only wants a bit of quiet before he has to put a facade on, is this really too much to ask? This moment sort of feels like a deja-vu.

"Oh, I wasn't aware this was one of those 'don't talk to me until I've had my morning coffee' type of situations?" Sasuke bites back, but his words are more contemptuous than mocking.

"No. It's more of a 'don't talk to me at all' type of situation." Naruto mutters out, gritting teeth behind thin pressed lips as he resumes his trek back, avoiding the most obvious routes where he can be seen. "...Today's just not a good day."

"Yeah, no shit. You think I had a sudden moment of blindness and actually missed the way you got your brain slammed around?" Sasuke retorts, sarcastic but more subdued now as he avoids his eyes.

What's his problem? Naruto is the one here with too much on his plate already and Sasuke has nothing to do with this. Sasuke has no place being here. And he most definitely has no place barging in Naruto's life now and acting like he knows what's going on when he himself is grasping at straws and climbing up walls of mirrors and smoke as he tries to figure it out.

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Making it back without any mishaps along the way, Naruto is quick to discard the hoodie first, mindlessly thinking if he should just wash it off or if throwing it away is an altogether better option. When he nears his bathroom door however, and he has the hem of his shirt in his hold, he stops in his tracks.

"Uh, what are you doing?"

Sasuke has a look around, as if he might be talking to someone else, and blinks once in confusion. "Nothing?"

"Stay there." Naruto orders like he would do with a dog, and in another moment he is probably going to think back to this and maybe laugh about it.

"And I should do that because...?"

...Is this guy for real?

"Because I have to shower." He answers, obviously.

Sasuke's amused, mischievous little smile is back and Naruto's inexplicable need to punch it out of his face grows exponentially when he opens his mouth next.

"Why? It's not like I've never seen you without clothes before."

The blankness in Naruto's mind is quick to be replaced by a few lively images prior four years and a gust of warmth blares from the base of his neck to the tip of his ears.

"We were twelve!" He exclaims in sixteen percent horror and eighty-four percent embarrassment. "I–I didn't even know you were there! I just wanted to swim!"

The curve of Sasuke's mouth widens. "No need to get so defensive about it."

"Sasuke!" He shouts, because he doesn't know what else to say.

"Okay, okay, I'm just messing around." Sasuke amends, not sounding apologetic in the least. "Though you flashed Sakura too, I remember her blushing for three days straight after that. She couldn't even look you in the eyes for a couple of weeks." He keeps going, not even having the decency to keep his diverted little laugh to himself.

Naruto drags a hand to his face, covering it in shame. But really, it's not his fault if they had been stuck in a mission and conveniently stumbled upon a pond on the way to the village. The sun had been scorching that day and he had wanted nothing more to submerge himself in cold, cold water, so he snuck away and did just that, running in head first. How was he to know his two teammates had apparently shared the same idea and were standing only a few feet away!

Relenting a bit, after what seemed like a proper amount of time had passed, he peeks from his hand.

Half of Sasuke's silhouette is exposed to the weak sunlight trickling in, the other half that's enclosed in shadows Naruto is watching from the gaps in between his fingers.

"...You're the worst." His tone lowers to a murmur, but the words ricochet in the open, stifling space between them as he wonders if he has ever meant this sentence in a more mortified, in a more innocent way than he does now.

"Tell me something I don't know." Sasuke's voice is almost a whisper, and he is watching him right back.

Something burns and expands in his chest at the sight, tugging at him enough for Naruto to give in to the temptation to ask. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Sasuke's smirk softens at the edges, along with his features and his voice. "Because I like this quieter side of you."

Naruto's eyes widen and his lips part as if to let air out, though it feels his lungs have stopped cooperating.

As if caught off guard by his own words, a hand raises to the back of his neck in a seemingly self-conscious gesture and he fixes his gaze elsewhere. "Not that I don't like your loud self from years ago, it's just..." He lifts his shoulders, then lifts his gaze back to him. "You've been quieter around me these days."

Naruto's fingers twitch at the unexpected response and the breath that pushes out of him is a little shaky. He slowly takes his hand away to better see the boy in front of him.

But the apparently flawless moment gets broken when he narrows his eyes in flat suspicion. "You're still messing with me."

Sasuke's brows furrow and he makes a confused noise in the back of his throat. "Not everything I say is a way to mess with you." His words are said slightly higher toward the end, as if in question.

"Could have fooled me."

Sasuke sighs and rolls his eyes to the ceiling, muttering to himself. "Aaand we're back to your defensive default setting."

"I'm not being defensive." Naruto protests defensively.

At Sasuke's pointed stare, not to mention his point being proven, he refrains from adding anything further, considering this a lost battle, and proceeds to shuffle his way into the bathroom, shutting the door a little too loudly behind him.

Naruto leans against it and frowns behind the closed door, the coldness of his face swapped away by a blaring warmth setting in. With the back of his hand he hastily rubs at one cheek, as if to get rid of the feeling.

Shaking his head, he wonders for maybe the umpteenth time what is wrong with him. Maybe it's just the weather getting to his head or something.

It's a few steps in, when vertigo sweeps him out of his feet and has him grabbing the edge of his bathtub in time to avoid an ugly concussion—if he doesn't have one already, that is—but time slows down and he keeps falling, and the floor caves in from under him and, suddenly, flashes of scenes already lived blaze behind his closed lids in indiscernible cuts.

Vicious trembling flares up his limbs and paralyzes him against the cold tiles, his forehead presses on the uncomfortable fiberglass and a dizzying wave of nausea has his stomach constricting so tightly he can't even gasp out a breath. Terror streams inside his veins and, terrified, he eyes the stretch of his quivering forearm, and digs his nails down into his skin, it feels paper-thin.

He loses balance, a thud echoes, and the back of his head and shoulders are pressing against the tiles next. He doesn't breathe. He doesn't move for a few, interminable seconds.

From ruby indentations, droplets break out and he starts breathing again, slumping forward, reminding himself that this is physical pain and there is nothing more to it. Pain only runs skin deep, he reassures himself. Until the horror wanes.

Exhaustion has him keep his eyes closed tight and fingers wrapped around the slight wetness of his arm, the cold sweat beading at his hairline has a race of goosebumps shuddering down his skin.

Although, when he manages to blink his eyes open again, he is definitely not anticipating to find Sasuke crouched a few steps away, peering down at him.

Huh, he must seriously be exhausted since the sudden proximity has him utterly unfazed, he isn't even flinching at their faces being a few inches apart.

Rather, the world is tilted and hazy, and Naruto has never been happier to see him.

"...Hi." He is the one to greet him with an unstrained smile this time.

Sasuke's responding smile is cautious, but honest. "Hey yourself."

The floor unravels in wool threads beneath him and the sky splits wide and open above him and his brain is so so fuzzy and all he can see is Sasuke and never before has he been more okay with such a notion.

"Are you o–"

"You're so cool." Naruto blurts out, interrupting him. "...And you look cool too." Raising one incredibly heavy hand, he vaguely gestures at his head. "I like the new hair...it suits you. Really suits you. Reeeally."

"Thanks? And I like this new style you've got going on for yourself." Sasuke returns the compliment, pointing to his forehead.

"That..." Naruto frowns a bit, hand falling down and making a far away sound. "I...sorta don't wear it anymore. S'been a while."

"Yeah, I had noticed the distinct lack of forehead protector." The heaviness behind his eyes brightens a little at the crinkling corners. "I never liked it anyway."

Naruto laughs with a little effort and a lot of fun. "You...always found excuses to avoid it."

"Busted." Sasuke grins. "I just never found the use for it." And his grin turns feeble. "...I'm guessing your reason runs a little deeper than mine."

Naruto's head drops a bit and his eyes glaze over. And although he doesn't give an answer to that, he gives one all the same.

"I was waiting...you know?" Somehow it feels like his tongue is stuck in place, just like him, but he can't stop the truth from spewing out of his mouth. "When he...Konoha..." His chest hurts again, but he doesn't think it's a tangible sensation this time around. "...wanted you to be there..."

The tilt of the other boy's grin falls completely, giving way to a resigned frown. "I wish I was there with you, wish I could have helped."

"Where..." Naruto swallows past the lump in his throat to no avail. "...were you?"

"I got..." Sasuke hesitates, unable to hold the intent look. "...caught up in some trouble."

Naruto tries to raise himself a little, but it's useless since it feels his body is made out of foam. "...Trouble? Are you...are you okay?"

A soft smile meets his now unsettled frown. "I'm the one supposed to be asking that right now, not the other way around."

"...I'm fine."

Sasuke's expression falls completely. "No, you're not."

Naruto slumps back with a little huff of agreement. "...No. I'm not."

"...How long can you even go on like this?"

"I..." Now he's the one who can't look in his eyes, the truth behind the words too threatening. "...don't know what else to do."

"But you did it, you made it."

Naruto doesn't add anything, but his silence is telling. And Sasuke ends up falling silent too in understanding.

Naruto expects him to deny his unspoken claim, expects to hear him say something reassuring, but he does neither. What Sasuke does say, however, is...

"...You must have been so scared."

Sasuke's voice carries over his ears in a whisper and the far away whiteness of the sky wavers in front of him—then Naruto notices his eyes are filling with tears.

"I..." His vocal cords aren't working, but he tries, he tries so hard to let the words out. "...so scared." He gasps out. "...I was so scared." With dry lips and the quaver of a fading smile he plucks words out from the deepest, darkest recess of himself. "I...needed you there. No one...no one else could...make it better...the hospital...waiting outside that door...so cold...wanted to see you..." Shivers crawl up his spine and his voice cracks, unaware that a tear, the first tear since Sasuke showed up, the first in a long, long time spills down his skin.

Sasuke draws closer, putting a hand right beside him, but halting. "Naruto I'm..." He wears a contrived expression, as if fighting with himself, his hands clenching and jaw locking in place. He lets himself fall forward, until his forehead drops right next to his head on the cool porcelain. "...you shouldn't have gone through that hell, you never should have."

Naruto blinks, dizzy, slowly turning toward him. "...I...I could say the same about everything that happened to you." He thinks, for a moment, for a single moment in what feels like years, he thinks about Sasuke. He thinks about what Sasuke has lost. Something shatters in a million little fragments, he's powerless to tell if it's outside or inside of him. "...wish I could have helped with that." And he means it with every piece of his fractured soul, but he doesn't know how much more of it he has left.

Sasuke remains unmoving for a few seconds more.

Naruto watches him breathe in, watches him breathe out. At the moment he can't tell which one of them is in more pain.

"But you've helped more than you can even think." Sasuke finally looks back at him, smiling.

Naruto wants to say it's not true, that he could—should—have tried so much harder, but Sasuke feels so close like this and his head feels so foggy and even through this kind of hurt he feels so peaceful, because Sasuke is here, with him, and he doesn't want this to stop and—

"–I missed you."

And just like that he is giving out the words he had wanted to speak a year ago, when he saw him again, the words he had wanted to tell him three years ago, the day he left, these cursed words that became a weakness he tried to bury inside, these hopeful words that he came to forget he was even hiding inside himself.

Sasuke's slow smile lights his whole face with aching relief. "...You're saying that like you don't know I've missed you to death for three damn years."

And Naruto's smile stretches so wide he thinks it might just break his face off and somehow he is perfectly fine with that.

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