Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, or any of its associated characters!
Summary: COMPLETE. In which Naruto brings Sasuke back. Sasuke's POV, canonverse, SNS, oneshot.
A/N: Well. It's been all of November, hasn't it? I don't know how I managed to make it here, but here I am. I normally explore Sasuke's POV a significant time after VOTE2, after he's had some time to heal, but I've been building up to a fic like this - it's right after. Sasuke's still a bit lost. I hope you like it!
Lost
Sasuke wakes up in white. In searing, electric white—he wants to shut his eyes to stop the burning, but all that does is snap his focus to a—
Pain.
Pain in his arm, fear in his heart. Sasuke's awoken in Konoha. The venom in his throat opens and swells, thrashing like an ocean's storm until Sasuke rolls, ready to heave himself away from this place—
Naruto opens his eyes, and Sasuke's world settles.
He grows quiet, after that. Quiet and passive, lost in the place he's in. Moving between places. Naruto drags him from the first three, lashing with a quiet fury that Sasuke almost finds...satisfying. Pleasing. Like he's seeing Naruto truly understand—
Sasuke remembers the rest of his life, and the pleasure fades.
He lets people speak for him. Naruto does, most of all. Sasuke watches people argue for and against him, and only speaks when spoken to. Automatic, lifeless responses. He feels distant from his body, like he's watching his life from...somewhere else.
Not here.
Sasuke doesn't want to be here.
But here he is, and it's the relief on Naruto's face that cues Sasuke to realize he should be feeling something, too. He doesn't, and he's pulled to somewhere else again. Somewhere soft and comfortable and beige. Neutral. Unoffensive.
Sasuke finds offense in it anyway.
He's no stranger to pain but he's a stranger to comfort, and this was never supposed to be a comfort to him anymore. He feels a betrayal and a bitterness and a traitor to himself, and it's all he's managed to feel, so far.
He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be here.
But what does it matter? Days pass, Sasuke watches as it doesn't. Konoha is bustling, and Itachi is still dead. A child is laughing behind his wall, and the bodies of Sasuke's family still litter the ground. He stares at the wall, and paints it bloody with memories.
Naruto visits him. Talks to him. Pokes at him. Sasuke gives him half-responses and vague smiles. He feels a different ache when Naruto is around. A different sort of pain—acute and burning and yellow, like he's been set alight. Naruto hurts to look at. Hurts to breathe in.
Sasuke does it anyway.
He loves the taste of flame.
He forgets to eat, and remembers the taste of ramen. Warm food had been a luxury Sasuke couldn't afford. Warm clothes. Warm beds. Everything is soft here, and it makes him uncomfortable. Even Naruto—especially naruto. He's lived with a punch to the gut and now he's to take fingers traced along his arm? A bandage wrapped and replaced, calmly, quietly—no yelling, no pain, no fear—
Just Naruto.
Just this room, and Naruto.
Naruto stands up. He's finished. He's turning to leave, and Sasuke is breathing in—
He has no words.
Naruto stops anyway.
"Um," he is saying, as if he isn't sure if there's any point to it, "I've got a mission tomorrow, so I'm—Sakura's going to come around. If that's okay."
Sasuke nods, and Naruto has to leave.
The walls are red again.
He wakes to hissed voices through a door. Naruto has been here and back again, telling stories of his time away. They're loud and exaggerated, and his attempts to bring a laugh to Sasuke's chest are becoming more desperate. They both know it.
But Sasuke just...can't.
He's getting worse instead of better, and the voices on the other side are saying the same.
"Worse," says his favourite one, and Sasuke presses himself to the wall. "I don't know what to—"
"He's the same, if anything, Naruto. It's going to take ti—"
"He's not the same! You didn't see him when we—this isn't working. This isn't working, Sakura."
Sasuke pulls away, and goes back to bed.
Naruto has his things packed before he wakes.
"I found a place," he says, and Sasuke doesn't care enough to argue. He's finding it hard to find it in himself anymore. What good has he done in the past, anyway? His desires, his goals, his place in the world—
He's like a grain of sand that thought it could fight the ocean.
And so he lets himself be taken, this time. By a warmer part of the water than the rest had always been, but just as powerful all the time. Sasuke's been helpless to Naruto before, and would be again. Again. Again.
He doesn't see the trees he passes. He picks up on the path vaguely, foggily, automatically—a movement out of Konoha, a few days travel...a few more, and they'd be in Wave Country. Sasuke stares out at the ocean and waits to be told to take another step.
"Um," Naruto says instead. "We're here."
Sasuke sleeps. He sleeps, he dreams, he sleeps again. Naruto reminds him to eat, and so he does, if only to get that look off of his stupid face. He leaves and comes back and leaves and comes back, and it wakes Sasuke up over and over again. That and the ocean—the water, the sand, and Naruto.
It's bright. Yellow, yellow, yellow. Sasuke wakes to the light streaming through the window and breathes in the blue, turns to his side to see the man who'd meant to leave the night before.
Sasuke wants to ask him to stay.
For the first time, Sasuke leaves the house on his own.
It's only a moment before footsteps are behind him. Naruto's, of course—frantic, panicked, something close to stumbling. He's barely awake, but Sasuke isn't hard to find.
He's standing on the beach, feeling the wind.
"I thought—" Naruto is saying, out of breath from something that had winded him many times before. "I didn't know you were—um."
"You thought I might leave," Sasuke says, and his voice is nothing compared to the waves. "Where would I go?"
"...Anywhere," Naruto says, and the word rings through Sasuke's head.
It's a strange thought. A strange freedom. Sasuke turns it over in his head as he turns over in his sleep, and doesn't understand the feeling it gives him. He's lost, isn't he? He has nowhere to go. No goal to follow. Nothing to drive him forwards, and so…
He can go anywhere.
"What would you do if I left?" he asks, one day, as Naruto stands beside him.
Naruto breathes in, once—twice—Sasuke turns to him just as he turns away.
"Um," he says, and it sounds thick. Something awakens in Sasuke—something clicks back into a place it had once fit into. He feels the sand under his feet, and wonders why he hadn't known they were bare.
"I don't know," Naruto says, and the ocean almost drowns it out, too—
"I don't know."
Naruto stays, that night. Sasuke's lost count of how many nights he's stayed. He's almost grown accustomed to a weight at his side, and the numbness gives in to a vivid, red fear. Panic. Warning. Sasuke was to have nothing. He had nothing. And when he had nothing, he couldn't lose anymore. That's how it had worked, that's how Sasuke's world had—
He meets his fear in the middle of his head, and reminds himself Naruto has never obeyed his rules.
Still, it wakes him when the weight leaves the bed. The ocean is here but the light isn't, and Sasuke wonders how many times Naruto has awoken to pace around with bags under his eyes. A shake to his fingers. He's filling up a glass, and his tremble makes it look like the sea.
Sasuke purposefully steps onto the floorboard that creaks.
"O-oh—hey!" Naruto says, spinning around like a statue. A grin carved into his face like marble, like stone on the side of a mountain. Sasuke wonders if it has been, yet.
He never looked up, when he was there.
"I was just thirsty. Was I too loud?" Naruto asks, and Sasuke stares at his face. A plastered, fake smile. Sasuke knows it well. Sasuke knows it so well, it's vivid, in his head, and yet—
There's only the two of them here.
Another part of Sasuke wakes.
"Why are you trying to lie to me?" he asks, and it's quiet, but he's angry. He's furious, he wants to lash out and so he steps forward—forward and forward and forward until the smile slides off Naruto's face—
Naruto deflates, but he's never afraid.
"Relax," he says, pushing Sasuke's shoulder. "It's just a nightmare. No reason to dwell on it or whatever."
The last part is a mumble, and Sasuke feels the lie there, too. No, of course Naruto isn't dwelling. He's simply awake by choice. Out of bed, in the cold, hiding his hand somewhere Sasuke won't be able to pick out the shake—
"Sleepwalking, then," Sasuke replies, and his eyes roll on their own, "are you?"
The world pauses—
And then Naruto laughs. His eyes are clear and blue and awake, like they're just seeing Sasuke for the first time. The smile is slow and surprised and Sasuke wonders what it is about what he's done that deserves—
"Hi," Naruto says, and it sounds like a breath. "Did you wake up on your own?"
Naruto scans him and pauses his smile in place, waiting. Sasuke feels the weight of his answer.
"No."
And look at that. There's the sun.
Naruto stops leaving, after that. It takes Sasuke a few days to clue in, and by then, it's too late to ask. He thinks, anyway. But something in him must have gave it away, because Naruto speaks up on his own, one day, as Sasuke is staring again—
"I've...negotiated some stuff," he says, rearranging the shells Sasuke's absentmindedly started to pick up. "I'm here for a while. Um."
He looks up. Sasuke meets his eye and wonders if Naruto knows what it's like to look at someone and see the stars.
"It's not really a vacation," he says. "I'll have to go back for a—about a week every month. That—that's not for a bit, though."
The reassurance settles something in him—the tension that had been coiling in Sasuke's stomach. He feels the relief with some resignation, knowing there's little he can do to fight the feeling. This feeling. He…
"Why do you stay?" he finds himself asking. He doesn't look at Naruto—too afraid he'll read the real question in his eyes, but then— "There. Why do you stay?"
Sasuke doesn't need to look to feel Naruto's smile falter.
"You know," he says, "I'm still working that out myself."
"It's the people," Naruto says, a few days later, as Sasuke stands at the window. Naruto and his clones stay on the outside, several steps below him, and they all look up at Sasuke as they passes him bags of things they've brought from the nearby village.
"I have a...duty to them. To Konoha. You know?"
Sasuke does. The knowledge disgusts him.
"And what of their duty to you?" he asks, placing the bag onto the bed. For now.
"What duty?"
"As a person in Konoha," Sasuke says, looking down at him. "How have they treated you?"
Naruto laughs. Sasuke does not.
"Okay, okay. Bastard. Take this to the fridge, would you?"
Sasuke doesn't let his gaze waver, but he does take the bag.
"It's not like I don't know," Naruto says, a few days later. "I'm not stupid."
Sasuke turns around. Naruto huffs out a laugh.
"Fuck you," he says, and Sasuke turns back again. He's cooking, today. The first time in...he doesn't know.
He doesn't know.
"Konoha isn't...wasn't good. To either of us."
Sasuke breathes out. The steam parts for him, but only for a moment.
"But now it's—" Naruto runs a hand through his hair. "Now it's—what now? You know? So—great, I move on, and you move on, and we live our lives and what? There's gonna be more powerful kids in the world. Kids people wanna take advantage of."
"And it's your duty to save everyone, is it?"
There's a pause.
Sasuke continues to stir.
"...If I can," Naruto replies, and Sasuke smiles.
He doesn't know what he expected.
"You leave soon," Sasuke says, starting the conversation up again. It's grown quiet, nothing more than the crackling fire in front of them. Sasuke finds comfort in something so...familiar. He wonders if that's why Naruto suggested it.
"Yeah," Naruto says, soft and solemn. His cheek is on his fist, and the flames flicker their reflection in his eyes. "I wonder how much I've missed."
Missed.
What a strange way to think about the world. There's a foreign wistfulness in him at the thought, as if some part of him wants to know about all he's shut himself from. Maybe it does. Sasuke is finding new parts of himself every day.
It's been easy to lose them, after so long being blank.
"I'll be back soon though," Naruto says, and Sasuke flickers back into the room with the fire. "A week'll pass fast. Don't worry."
Sasuke raises an eyebrow, and Naruto breathes in, as if caught in a thought he hadn't meant to say. Sasuke wonders if Naruto expects him to argue with the thought.
"Don't do anything stupid," he says instead, and Naruto smiles.
It's painful to watch someone walk away.
Sasuke supposes it is, on some level, deserved. Naruto would violently argue with the thought, but Sasuke knows it to be true. A week is a small sacrifice for this confusing, singular comfort Naruto has struggled to create for him.
It's strange, though—how easily a peaceful silence can transform into a stifling one. Sasuke had thought himself quite happily away from the noise of the world, but now—now—
He makes himself busy. He cleans. He cooks. He walks along the beach and visits the village Naruto had told him so much about, only to find out Naruto had been blabbering about him just as much.
He hears his name in stranger's voices. With recognition, and excitement—a 'Sasuke, yes, we've heard so much about you. Come in. We trust you. We've never met, and we trust you.'
Of all the things to finally make Sasuke cry.
There's stars in his eyes when Naruto returns. A galaxy painted in blue, an excitement Sasuke wants to grab and bottle and drink and drown into. His heart hammers with nerves he doesn't understand, and Naruto tackles him with a force that makes them both stumble, stumble—
Fall.
And Naruto is laughing. On top of him, and laughing—Sasuke falls back and feels the smile on his own face, too—foreign and new, like he isn't sure how it fits his face anymore. Naruto babbles his apologies and Sasuke stays in the sand, looking up at the sky.
The sky looks back.
"Sorry," Naruto laughs again, reaching down. Sasuke clasps his hand in Naruto's, but doesn't let himself be pulled.
He pulls instead.
"Whoa—ah!"
Naruto hits the sand with an oomph, and Sasuke turns away to hold the laugh in his chest. It bubbles out of him anyway, like the spray at the end of a wave that the ocean couldn't quite catch—
"You asshole," Naruto laughs, spitting the sand out in front of him. It's pasted to his face and falling out of his hair, and Sasuke makes absolutely no move to help him. "I'm here five seconds, and you—how've you been? You look good."
Sasuke startles at the words.
"Do I?"
He doesn't think he's ever described himself that way. Not for a long time. Not for…
"Yeah. Yeah, you do."
Naruto holds his breath for three more hours before Sasuke takes pity on him. And the floodgates open, of course, as soon as Sasuke tells him it's fine. Go on. Just tell him what he's done and where he's been. And so Naruto tells him and tells him and tells him and tells him and—
Sasuke feels the smile on his face, and hears it all.
It's easier at a distance, he thinks. It's not surprising, but Sasuke feels the surprise nonetheless. He expects to be bursting. He expects it in his throat—fire in his fingertips, twisting in his stomach, throbbing in his head—
But Naruto runs a hand through his hair and puffs out a breath and Sasuke's pain...simmers. Letters, Naruto says. He's been trying to send them, trying to give feedback and trying to keep the village on the right track—trying, trying, trying. Naruto speaks with a sigh, and says they listen to him, now. He's not the best person for the job, but they listen to him, and so he has it.
He supposes that answers Sasuke's question.
"Shouldn't the Hokage be in the village?" Sasuke hears himself ask, and Naruto stops.
"I mean—yeah, but I'm not—Kakashi's still the Hokage. I just—"
"Make all of the decisions?"
Naruto's hand gets stuck in his hair.
"Well, I…"
He breathes out, but doesn't meet Sasuke's eye.
"Yeah. I guess I'm kind of neglecting my...duty."
Sasuke wants to slap him over the head.
...So he does.
"Ow! Hey—!"
"You're an idiot," Sasuke tells him.
He leaves it at that.
...Not for long. He can't quite manage it. Naruto is back to being quiet and Sasuke is frustrated at how little it takes for him to get used to that voice again. The sun has set, and the house is dark again.
Sasuke misses when it was yellow.
"If you were to leave," he asks, facing the window still open to the ocean, "this place. Live in Konoha. What would you do?"
He hears Naruto breathe in.
"I...I mean. Be Hokage, I guess," he says, and there's an uncertainty that threads through the words. "No, I mean—I would be. And I'd get into—all of it. Get all the—the history out there. I mean, we are, but there's so much to—there's the council, and we haven't even looked at the Hyuuga clan, and—"
He hisses out a breath, and it makes Sasuke turn.
Naruto shakes his head.
"Everything," he says, staring somewhere far away from where they are. "I want to change everything."
Sasuke remembers a time when he wanted the same. When he thought he'd known how. He'd sucked in all of his pain like a hurricane—building and building and building until he'd been ready to tear the world around him apart for all they'd done to him—
Sasuke breathes in, and it tastes like salt. Tastes like the ocean spray, like the warmth at his side. He doesn't have answers, yet. He doesn't have a goal. He doesn't have very much.
But sometimes this...just feels like enough.
Sasuke stays awake that night. Not on purpose, but he does. He's sure Naruto doesn't mean to, either, but the chorus of snoring has yet to start at his side. Still, he's kept the window open, and something about the night is making the ceiling look like stars.
Sasuke finds himself wanting to study it.
And so he is still awake, here, with this weight at his side. Naruto has hopes and dreams and his fingertips on all of them. One tug and they'd snap to him, all at once. Sasuke wants to tell him not to go, wants to tell him Konoha is worthless and traitorous and deserves nothing from any of them—
But who else could do it?
Who else could change things? Sasuke wouldn't trust a soul. Not one, except…
"Sorry," Naruto says, snapping his cold, clammy foot back to himself. It's sought Sasuke's leg out again. "I don't mean to—"
"Yes, you do."
Naruto lets out a sleepy laugh, muffled by the old, dusty pillows that they hadn't bothered to replace. Sasuke had found a comfort in how weathered they were. Torn, frayed, matted...replaceable.
They felt like him.
"You'd make a good leader," Sasuke hears himself say. "You should do it."
Naruto rolls right over. Sasuke gives him nothing.
"What?"
Sasuke stares at the ceiling. He gives him nothing.
"Live your dream. What are you doing here?"
He hears the breath in Naruto's throat.
"Living my dream."
Sasuke's head snaps to the side. Naruto's eyes echo the crash of the waves—
The tide falls, and Naruto rolls away.
"If you want me to go, you'd have to come with me."
Sasuke scoffs at the thought.
"And what good would I do you?" he asked, the bitterness back in his mouth again. "You can change things. I can't. I never have."
Naruto doesn't turn around.
"That's not true," he says, and it rings through the room.
"You changed me."
The next day is different. Feels different. They awaken with the sun high in the sky, legs tangled together in a strange...something. Sasuke lays and stares at the ceiling in daylight, this time, until Naruto's snoring starts to stutter.
He takes that as a cue.
He feels like using the window as a door, and so he does—dropping down with a stiffness he's grown used to. He's rusty—a tool left unused for too long.
For the first time in his life, he doesn't mind the feeling.
He walks along the beach and thinks about turning around, making breakfast for them both, like they're a couple in a home. A ridiculous thought, but it's in his head—settled and set, like a glue left to harden.
He sighs, as if it will leave with his breath.
A strange night. A strange morning. There are thoughts in his head Sasuke had been sure would never come to him. The most foreign of those, of course, being returning to Konoha—if only because Naruto would be there…
…
…?
The ocean gives him no answer. He searches it anyway.
Itachi had had a loyalty to the place. He'd had a great many things Sasuke didn't understand. And while Sasuke knew, knew, in his heart of heart's, he had no place there...as long as Naruto was there, he did. There was a place at Naruto's side. He'd seen it himself.
He breathes out, again.
But it's a betrayal. In his chest, it's still a betrayal. The pang of hurt has dulled, but it's there—a scar with its roots twisted deep and thick through Sasuke's soul. Betraying Naruto, betraying Itachi, betraying his clan—
All of his choices brand him a traitor.
Maybe that's what he's meant to be.
"Ever heard of sleeping in, asshole?" comes a shout, and Sasuke wants to shake his head at Naruto's timing. Always at his worst, weakest moments.
Always when Sasuke couldn't wish to see him more.
"You've grown soft in your old age," he greets him, and Naruto punches him in the arm.
"I could take you in my sleep," he says, pushing himself so close that his nose could bump against Sasuke's—
"Yes," Sasuke deadpans, breathless, "the prerequisite does seem to be in your dreams."
Naruto tackles him to the ground.
Sasuke tires quickly, and Naruto laughs too easily. It's him that convinces them both that food is their next, most vital priority—and him that settles into a seat, waiting for Sasuke to do the honours.
He does, of course. He gives in to those eyes a thousand times a day.
He eats less, and Naruto eats more. His appetite is better, of course. He has one. But Naruto's has always been unrivalled, and Sasuke finds something so stupidly funny in the way some things haven't changed.
"What?" Naruto asks, ever the clueless one.
"You're a moron," Sasuke tells him, and Naruto is right back to trying to fight him again.
The day swells up and slows back down. After an...active morning, Naruto's grown quiet again. Thoughtful—staring into something invisible with a furrowed brow, and Sasuke's taken his chance to study the fact that everything Naruto has ever done booms in Sasuke's ears.
Especially the silence.
"Are you going to share your thoughts?" he asks, restless. Patience has never been a strength of his. He's been careful until he hasn't, and his impulsive shortcuts have never led him anywhere...good.
Still, Naruto looks up.
"Huh?"
Sasuke crosses his arm over his knees, and continues to wait.
"Oh," Naruto says. Finally. "I guess I'm—sorry. I'm kind of thinking."
"Yes," Sasuke says, studying the grains of sand stuck between the floorboards, "you can see why that might make me uneasy."
Naruto laughs. It's small and simple and Sasuke immediately forgets about the chill in the room. He dodges the bit of paper Naruto crumples in his direction—part of a letter he'd written and scrapped and written again.
"Asshole," he says, and Sasuke watches him. "Fine, yeah, I was—I wanted to say—"
He breathes out. Sasuke sits up straighter.
"Yesterday," he says. "Last night, um—I don't think I—explained myself very good. Um. I don't—I don't—you don't need to come back to Konoha."
Sasuke blinks.
"I feel like I made it sound like I was—was pushing for that. But I—"
"What?" he says, and Naruto jerks in place. "I thought that's what you—"
"Wanted, yeah, I know, and it was, but—"
Naruto cuts himself off in a breath.
The breeze rustles the room around them.
"But then I did it," he finishes simply.
Sasuke finds a bitterness on his tongue.
"Am I not all you thought I would be?"
"No, you dumbass," Naruto says, and it's a sigh. It's tired and firm and as piercing as the blue in Naruto's eyes— "Konoha isn't."
The wind settles.
Sasuke doesn't find his voice.
"And I'm working on that," Naruto says, filling the silence, as if the words hadn't crashed right into Sasuke with the wind— "and until that's all done and fixed there's no point in throwing you back into bullshit."
Sasuke looks down. There's a fire in his veins, again, but it's warm. It's warm, it doesn't burn, Sasuke stares at the floor and knows it must be yellow—
Naruto sighs, and rubs his hand over his mouth.
"No point if you're not happy."
Naruto's words play over in Sasuke's head for three days. Not that he's a stranger to obsessive thoughts, but this one brings a small...relief. Hope? Sasuke doesn't know.
He holds it to himself, though. Like a hand cupping the open flame of a candle so it won't go out—Sasuke holds the words to him and lets them tumble in his head. Naruto spends less time writing and more time looking over at him, and Sasuke finds himself doing the same. Finds himself laying closer to Naruto, at night. Finds himself sleeping longer, waking less.
They go to the village together, this time, when they're out of food. Sasuke feels the need to trail a few steps behind, and Naruto feels the need to wait for him.
It makes for a slow day.
A good one, though. They stop at the gardens—everyone's grown too much for themselves, and are happy to give their produce away. They don't want to take money, but Naruto insists.
He's better at it than Sasuke was.
"Ah! Sasuke—just the man I wanted to see!"
Naruto beams at him. The older lady hobbles away, and Sasuke finds himself wanting to raise his hand behind her, if only to hold her steady. She's a talker, and Sasuke is quiet—he supposes that's what might have endeared him to her.
She returns with a small crate of tomatoes, and Sasuke's throat is thick.
"Thank you," he says quietly. She smiles happily, and Naruto jumps into action. It's a hard sell in this town—to get someone to accept payment for their hard work. It escalates quickly and fiercely, and Sasuke finds the smile on his face as the two stubbornly face off—
"Bah!" she says, waving a hand in the air. "Look at me! I'm old! I've had enough money! You are young and happy and in love, you have a lifetime to use it—go on. No, no, I won't take it. No—"
It takes Naruto about three more seconds for his brain to catch up.
"Wait," he says, pausing in place. "What did you—did you say—"
"Sorry, could you take this for a moment?" Sasuke asks, flipping a paper bag over just so—
"Of course," she says, and the money unfolds in her hand.
"Thank you," Sasuke says, and then he's gone. Heaving the idiot with him, who's still frozen solid, and spinning around to wave at the lady who yells back—
"Again! Devil child—come back next week!"
Sasuke lets go of Naruto to wave behind him, fighting the smile on his face. Naruto is awestruck.
"What just happened?"
Sasuke laughs.
"We won."
Naruto is still stiff, after that. Laughing, but stiff, and Sasuke thinks he can bring it up if he likes. Sasuke has no need to revisit it.
The village had got the idea from Naruto first, after all.
Sasuke has his own concerns, though. He's seeing the things Naruto buys—seeing the money Naruto uses, and thinking that…
Sasuke should have run out of money by now. He didn't have very much on him. Barely any. He didn't know if there had been anything in his name left in Konoha, but once he had become a missing-nin, it would have surely been taken by the village.
And yet, Sasuke's cabinet never seems to run low.
Naruto laughs, and uses another one-handed seal to get a few more clones. They've amassed a collection, and it's cost more money than Sasuke had surely had.
Sasuke's lips twitch.
Naruto had been the one to unpack everything. It didn't take a genius to connect the dots. It wasn't like Naruto to do things quietly, but it was like him to be stupidly, stupidly selfless, and Sasuke finds lagging behind as the many Narutos are distracted by something else delicious.
How bizarre.
He's forgotten what it's like to rely on someone like this...so wholly and consistently that you forget you've done it altogether. Sasuke wonders what Naruto would do if Sasuke simply forgot again. Never bring it up again?
He shakes his head, and turns on his heel.
Of course the idiot would.
Sasuke's not quite as good at negotiating as he wants to be. His newly assigned boss insists on payment, plus a tip of the rest of the tomatoes until the season ends. She doesn't enjoy them anyway, absolutely hates bending down to pick them—she's too stiff in her old age, and Sasuke is young and fit and she'll enjoy all of his spoils anyway, and—
Fine, fine, fine.
Sasuke huffs and agrees, and meets Naruto back where they'd been. Naruto is surprised, and stays that way for the next few days—as Sasuke spends his mornings harvesting, planting, fertilizing...cleaning, repairing. The ocean has done damage to this old house, and although Sasuke's never stayed in one place long enough to learn what to do with it all...she knows enough for the both of them.
And these are one set of orders Sasuke...doesn't really mind obeying.
He gets bitten by bugs and works through the rain. He gets dirtier than he had already been and feels somehow cleaner at the end of it all. She asks him about his husband, and Sasuke answers with no correction. He finds he doesn't mind the word. Doesn't mind the thought.
Naruto might, of course. He's been looking at Sasuke more, recently.
Sasuke wonders if this is what it's like to be so bright all the time.
"Doesn't it bug you?" Naruto asks, midway through drafting another one of his letters. He's been working at it for an hour now, and Sasuke's been waiting for whatever has been bothering him to surface, flipping through the pages of a book he'd insistently been told to borrow.
"What?" he asks.
"That—um." Naruto breathes in and looks down. Sasuke looks over at him. "Doesn't—doesn't the whole village think we're—think we're married or something?"
Sasuke flips a page over his finger and raises an eyebrow.
"Naruto," Sasuke says, scanning the page, "do I really seem the type of person to concern myself with other peoples' thoughts?"
That breaks a laugh out of Naruto—surprised, and quickly fading. Sasuke looks over and lets the silence fill the room again. Near silence, anyway. It's a colder night, and Naruto hadn't needed to ask Sasuke for the flame to be lit.
He'd seen the shiver, after all.
"Okay, okay, sure…" Naruto huffs out another breath. "But it—shouldn't we correct them? Uh—"
"Would you like to?" Sasuke asks, unfazed. The book falls open again—an easy excuse to avert his gaze...
"I—well—I—" Naruto's voice strains and cracks. Sasuke continues to breathe. "...Shouldn't we?"
Sasuke looks up, but doesn't reply. Naruto's eyes are a storm, and Sasuke has little to lose anymore. He doesn't want to consider what he might gain, but he has little to lose.
And there's no point in lying to Naruto, anyway.
"You've seen my heart," Sasuke says, raising the book over his face. "You can look again, if you'd like."
Naruto doesn't reply.
He has to leave tomorrow, and Sasuke wakes, in the morning—
Wondering if he's ruined something.
He's alone for the next day. The ocean's whipped up into something angry, and the sky is dark and grey as Sasuke returns home from his morning.
He's left the window open, and the room is a mess.
Fitting.
He sighs and moves to it. Stares into the wind, feels it as it tries to tear into him. He doesn't want to close it yet.
The room would be too dark.
There's something about the ocean. Something about the sand, something about the salt in the air. Something about it when it's blue, when it's yellow. Even the nights are yellow when Naruto is around.
But it isn't today. It won't be tomorrow. Sasuke has had months pass like seconds and days pass like years, and he thinks this one will be the latter.
Something rumbles in the distance, and Sasuke seals the windows shut.
He feels vulnerable today.
The walls feel frail, the lights feel dim. He's uncertain again. Uncertain of being in this place—as if there's something else, somewhere, he should be doing instead. He's never lived such a stagnant life.
He'd felt so sure of it a day ago.
He breathes out, and the rain starts to fall. Heavy and fast—it's a jarring, harsh sort of rain. He's been in that rain before. Been in the eye of the storm, been the lightning as it strikes. He'd thought it a good way to get clean, at the time. Or clean the world around him...
The storm rumbles around him, and Sasuke shakes his head.
No sense in this. No sense in any of this. Naruto had yet to abandon him, even if everyone else in Sasuke's life seemed to. Either he learned it now or he learned it later, and even then, all it was was something Naruto already knew. Somewhere, in that head of his.
If only he'd had a brain in there, too.
Sasuke smiles at his own joke and turns away from the door. He was in another period of...stasis. Waiting for something—waiting for Naruto. And until then, there wasn't anything to be done. Sasuke's heart was in his hands.
…
...Again.
Maybe it lived there, now.
Sasuke closes the fridge he's only just opened, and looks around the kitchen. There's books to read, dinner to cook, plenty to clean in that storm of a room...none of it will address the restlessness in him, and so he doesn't want to do any of it.
He breathes out.
Another week of this.
Another week only to likely have Naruto come back and pretend nothing had ever happened at all. He was good at that, wasn't he? Ignoring emotion...especially his own. And if Sasuke let himself think about it, on some level, there was a...certainty. A hope. A distant thought that everything he'd seen in Naruto's heart—surely, that—surely, there was no other way to describe it. Right? It had to be—
God.
He can't even think the word.
Sasuke closes his eyes, and something crashes.
He snaps a knife to his hand and drops to the—
Oh.
He huffs out a laugh and slides the knife back in its block.
"Moron," he greets, as Naruto shoves the door closed with his sopping wet back. "Did the storm manage to outrun you?"
Naruto wipes his hair back, and laughs.
He sounds breathless.
"No," he says, "no. I…"
He laughs again, and Sasuke is closer. Closer without a thought, moving without a word. Naruto catches his eye and bites his lip, dripping all over the floor.
"I just—" he says, ducking down and then back again—
"I didn't say bye."
Sasuke blinks. Naruto shuffles again, wet and dripping and wiping at his face as if it's full of tears. He's smiling, though, and Sasuke's heart aches with the familiar sight—
"So, um," he says, and it's nearly a whisper, "bye. I'll see you soon."
He looks up, and Sasuke stares back. There's something else in those eyes—another sentence Naruto has yet to say. Sasuke stares into them and Naruto stares back, firm, unwavering, almost asking—
Sasuke's sharingan flickers to life, and Naruto nods.
They can't put it into words. They've never been able to. But Sasuke opens his eyes and lets Naruto wash over him. Dive into him. His world is yellow and blue and Sasuke wants to live in this, these echos of emotion bursting around him like fireworks—the fear, the desperation, the drive, the care, the—
Love.
"Do you feel it?" Naruto asks, and Sasuke's breath trembles.
"Yes," he whispers, and he's back in the real world again. Naruto is nervous and smiling and still dripping wet, and Sasuke hadn't realized how close they've gotten. He can feel Naruto's breath. See it as he swallows. Naruto's searching him for something and Sasuke wonders what, because all he's ever had is his, now.
"I just—um," Naruto says, his eyes darting in between Sasuke's, "I didn't want to go without making sure you...knew. So—"
He breathes in and turns, as if so filled with nervous energy that it's forcing him away—
Sasuke catches him by the arm and wrenches him back.
The kiss is quick. Chaste and quick and awkward and Sasuke stumbles right back after he does it, like he's ready for Naruto to tear away from it all.
He doesn't.
He just laughs. Laughs and smiles and stumbles in place like it's weakened something in him. His eyes are wide and disbelieving and brilliant, and Sasuke wonders if this is where the blue in the sky had gone—
"Go on, then," Sasuke mutters, his heart beating its own storm in his chest. "I'll...see you."
Naruto laughs and nods, squeezing the hand Sasuke didn't realize was still locked with his before letting go.
"Yeah, um," he says, slipping through the door. "I'll—I'll be back soon."
Sasuke breathes out, and follows him outside, leaning against the doorway.
The rain has stopped. The ocean is calm. The air feels clear and crisp, and Sasuke breathes it in as Naruto spins around to give him a wave.
The sun peeks through the clouds, and Sasuke feels the smile on his face.
He doesn't know where to go—
But it feels like he's found his way.
A/N: And there it is! What did you think? It felt a bit different to write this. A bit more uncertain. I hope you liked it nonetheless, and I hope you're all doing well!
Until next time,
- Kinomi
P.s. I can't include links here, but if you go to .co , you can find all my social media and other writing. I hope that bit works, haha!