a/n:
happy (but sad) two years of this fic—sorry for missing the exact date this year!—and thank you to everyone who has bothered to read, favorite, follow, and especially comment — because, let's be honest, i would've definitely deleted this story if it wasn't for your continued support. so thank you from the bottom of my soul my dudes, i appreciate each and every single one of you.
. . .
...and some things you just can't speak about.
Chapter Summary:
There is physically no room for Sasuke to even be, but he...
...he's staying.
. . .
I tapped on your window on your darkest night
the shape of you
was
jagged and weak,
there was
nowhere
for me to stay but I
stayed
anyway.
Naruto comes to with a rough jerk, eyelids slamming open, the implosion of his heart inside of him, coals on his tongue.
He shoots up from the bed with vertiginous momentum, and for a stilted, disorienting, terrifying heartbeat he's back there again.
The cold pack falling on the middle of his right thigh with an anticlimactic plop tells him otherwise.
Naruto startles back in a stiff, awkward motion, the bouncy impact his palms make against the mattress rebounds across the static fuzz flooding his brain, the hitch of his chest noiseless against his whereabouts swimming into a spindly focus.
Struggling to find his footing, so to speak, he reaches up to touch his forehead. The skin is damp, permeated by that particular feel of cool-hot lukewarmth one feels only after lying for an unspecified amount of time with a cold pack. Speaking of. He's been fading in and out, he can tell, although he's in the dark about the precise stretch—has it been twenty minutes or twenty weeks?
On a physiological level, Naruto feels...fine.
Which—taking everything into account—is absurd.
The murmurs of violence are a brutal reflection, a piercing echo, thrumming, burrowing under his flesh still, just like disease.
His eyes sweep, distraughtly, bloodshot, over the enclosed space, in dire need of a diversion.
The lumps taking up the expanse in his immediate vicinity are his best friends, he gradually realizes. Because of the smashed furniture littering just about everywhere, there is barely enough legroom for them as is.
The thing is...
Sasuke is currently curled against the bed frame. Out like a light, by the looks of it.
From morsels of information Naruto has begrudgingly garnered and refuses to peruse, he's aware that, by night, Sasuke would usually vanish from sight.
So...what is he doing here, at his bedside, occupying an uncluttered patch of floor, elbow tucked beneath his face in lieu of a pillow, sagged against the edge of the mattress in a position that, for his neck especially, looks painfully uncomfortable to withstand for a couple of minutes, nevermind however long it's already been?
And as opposed to Kiba and Sakura, who appear to be catching up on some much needed and restful rest—which would explain why Sakura hasn't immediately sprung awake, given that she is a frighteningly light sleeper—Sasuke looks much, much worse for wear.
If Naruto is being honest with himself, Sasuke appears more unconscious than asleep; but Naruto doesn't have the headroom to be particularly honest with himself at the moment.
The brush of moonbeam mellows him out, painting Sasuke in a thin stroke of vulnerability. Softening his ghastly cheek, the jagged cut of his jaw. Exhaustion frames the shadows underneath his crumpled eyelids, mars him with a ghostly frown, an afflicted haze, almost.
What is Sasuke doing here? At a time like this? During the aftermath of...of one of the most horrific...one of the worst nights of his life?
Why is he here? Why now?
There is physically no room for Sasuke to even be, but he...
...he's staying.
Something akin to guilt tears at his insides for reasons unbeknownst to him.
Naruto, suddenly, mystifyingly, recalls a specific moment in time, many moons ago: the warmth of Sasuke's palm swallowing around his icy wrist, warm enough to melt the harsh conglomerate of winter and tears and fear, gently tugging him to his feet and toward himself, come on, Sasuke had whispered, a soft cloud of breath, the glisten of the first snowfall, I'll walk you home.
Out of their own volition, his trembly fingers inch across the creased sheets to anchor around a limp wrist, in instinctive emulation of the peculiar memory.
Naruto is biting his lip bloody when suddenly also recalling that...he can't.
The cutting reminder tastes vaguely of devastation.
A faint, recurrent tapping pulls at the worn threads of his frazzled focus.
Rain.
Naruto turns, watches from the window left ajar, the world an eclipse of vivid hues and sharp smells against the crisp heat of a summer storm.
Perhaps it's delirium, maybe something else entirely, but Naruto...crumbles.
And finds himself clumsily worming his way beneath the covers, the way he used to do years back to flee the ghosts haunting about his room, until he's reached the center of the mattress, where Sasuke is. He somewhat manages the desperate feat of a fetal position whilst curling around the shape of him. And, as if sensing it in his comatose state, the other boy shifts a shade closer. So close so if Sasuke were corporeal, Naruto would feel the caress of his downy fringe against his dewy skin. Slumber is swift to claim him into a, mercifully, dreamless freefall.
.
.
.
Naruto never registers the gentle outpour of breath as it unprecedently fragments against his cheek, warm, real.
With you I serve
with you I fall down,
watch you breathe in
watch you breathing out...
...and some things you just can't speak about.
Only twenty minutes to sleep
but you dream of some epiphany,
just one single glimpse of relief
to make some sense of what you've seen.
. . .
a/n:
epiphany
this song was meant to draw parallels between the second world war and covid, but now applies to the tragic situation in Ukraine as well.
one of the top comments beneath this video now is:
"Right now sitting in the shelter in Ukraine. Hearing all explosions and sirens, this song totally broke my heart."
writing a story about grief and what it means to lose a life so precious to us, i've felt the burning need to address this tragedy. but i do know that unfortunately nothing i say will magically make this any better. i can't even begin to imagine what it is like to live first-hand through this sickening hell that no one asked for. there is nothing i can do but write, hoping to give you something else to focus on and tell you that i'm here for you and i hear you.
this one time i linked this song in particular because it means so so much to me, and i can only dare to hope that listening to it might give you even a glimpse of comfort, of relief.
