The waves lapped gently at the shore. Taking a walk had been the perfect suggestion; Sasuke usually only ate to the point of satiety, but he'd certainly overindulged. Movement cleared his mind and made the heaviness in his body less draining.

Naruto had taken off his shoes and rolled up his pants legs, and was jogging contentedly in the waves. Sasuke didn't want his feet wet; furthermore, a little distance allowed him to observe Naruto easily. He walked where the sand had barely been dampened, keeping up with Naruto but maintaining a leisurely pace. Naruto was made for the beach, Sasuke decided, a definite child of the sun. His hair shined in the sun, and he grinned as the surf churned around his ankles. When he turned to face Sasuke, droplets of water were scattered over his face and body, and Sasuke realized that the ocean couldn't compete with Naruto's eyes for color.

"I love the beach. Don't you?" Naruto said breezily.

"I do. But I prefer it at night."

"It's gorgeous at night, too," Naruto agreed. "But there's something so wonderful about a sunny day at the beach. It's like… being a little kid again, but better, because you don't have to go home until you're ready."

Sasuke smiled as Naruto looked towards the water. The silence that expanded between them was warm and comforting, and Sasuke welcomed it. He thought of Juugo, and the times that they had sat easily and amicably. Walking with Naruto on a beach was similar, but different. Something beyond mere acceptance, something magnetic, circulated between Sasuke and Naruto.

He didn't mind when Naruto changed paths to walk alongside him. He listened to the waves hitting the shore, to the distant sound of children frolicking on the more sheltered beach ahead of them, to the calls of querulous seabirds diving for shells at low tide. It all felt perfect, elemental, rhythmic.

He became aware of Naruto looking at him, searching his face for answers.

"Sasuke." Naruto said his name as if it were a complete sentence, noun, predicate, modifiers all in one.

"Yes, Naruto."

"Tell me about your marriage."

Sasuke couldn't pretend that Naruto was an innocent, overgrown child. He was a man with a complicated history and life, much like Sasuke. He had a purity, though, that Sasuke envied, and while he didn't mind the honest question, didn't even mind surrendering the information he usually kept so close to his chest, it occurred to him that he didn't want to taint Naruto with his history.

"We've talked about it before," he said distantly.

"Yeah, you told me that your situation is the same as mine," Naruto acknowledged. "But how did it happen? How did you figure it out?"

"That I was gay, or that my marriage was over?"

"I dunno. Either. Both," Naruto said with a dry little laugh.

Sasuke sighed and suppressed a groan. "I never considered myself gay," he answered. He stopped walking and looked out over the water, where the sun was announcing that it was getting ready to set.

"I never considered myself much of anything. Sakura had been infatuated with me since middle school, she was there. We got drunk together one night. The next morning, we were married, and unbeknownst to me, she was pregnant."

Naruto listened attentively as he continued. "I wasn't in love with Sakura, but I liked her enough, and trusted her enough to be a good mother. I wasn't wrong."

He looked down at the sand and scowled. "I knew she wanted more from me, because I gave her so little. I gave her my respect, but she wanted my love. And I was in love with someone else. I couldn't be with the person I loved, but I couldn't give that love for them to someone else, either. She ultimately figured it out. She realized that neither she, nor any other woman, any other person, was going to ever going to have the part of me that she wanted. She called an end to it. In between getting married and figuring that out, I didn't make it easy for her or for our daughter. I was gone, working on things that I really couldn't talk to Sakura about, for most of the time."

Sasuke took a small breath before he continued. "I wasn't just working overtime or coming home late. I seldom came home at all. I didn't feel I had a choice; the work I was doing was a priority, and it had ramifications for my daughter and for my wife. I didn't think my daughter really needed all that much from me. I wasn't sure how to be a father, not a good one, in any event, so I assumed she would be just fine with someone strong like Sakura to raise her without interference aside from financial support. I was… wrong. When she ran away to find me late last year, I realized how important it was to her to know me."

Naruto listened quietly. Sasuke squinted at the sun in his eyes. He had never discussed his marriage with anyone other than Kurenai, but he felt in some way that he owed Naruto the truth, so he kept going. "I had run away from Konoha as a teenager, and I never wanted to see it again, much less live within its limits. I came back to get to know my daughter. My wife, though, had had enough of a sham marriage, enough of trying to force our interactions when I was home, and we had a long talk. She pretty much had laid the foundations for our divorce in her mind already, so it was easy to agree to. I had no right to fight her about it."

"So," Naruto said quietly, "This person you loved. Was a man?"

"Yes," Sasuke answered.

"But you didn't know you were gay?" Naruto didn't sound shocked, or appalled, just curious, as if he were trying to see how it might make his own situation more understandable.

"I thought I was only ever capable of loving that one person," Sasuke answered. "If that person had been a woman, I would have still loved them, and I never would have considered anyone else."

"But… you don't like women."

"No," Sasuke agreed. "Not in the way that a woman wants to be liked by her husband."

Naruto laughed easily at this, and Sasuke did, too. "Yeah, my wife would agree with you, there," he said lightly.

Sasuke didn't know how to communicate his feelings about his orientation. Prior to meeting Naruto, he'd only ever been oriented towards one man, and he had felt that this was just a pronouncement of fate. He could see, now, that he certainly looked at men differently from the way he looked at women, even if it was to compare them to the incomparable.

Naruto bit his lip and scuffed his bare feet in the sand.

"Sasuke?" he queried softly. "Who were you in love with?"

Sasuke hadn't been counting on this question. He smiled, but not lightly, not easily—not happily. He was still who he was, and who he was had a somewhat infernal drive to see how Naruto would react.

He looked Naruto in the eyes.

"My brother."

Naruto's eyes went round. "Oh," he said.

"Shocked?" Sasuke prodded, somewhat bitterly.

"I dunno, maybe a little. But, not really," Naruto said after a pause. "I mean, I don't have brothers or sisters, and I never knew my family. I kinda think that you don't get to choose who you love."

"Hn." Sasuke thought this over.

Naruto continued talking. "I mean, you wouldn't be the first to feel an attraction for your sibling. It seems it's kind of a common thing. There was a book… by that one guy who wrote the "Garp" novel… about a brother who was in love with his sister."

Sasuke elbowed Naruto gently. "The Hotel New Hampshire, yes, by John Irving. But there was a lot more to that novel than that."

Naruto shoved him back. "Asshole," he said, grinning. "I didn't like Irving's books much, even though my godfather thought he was god's gift to contemporary literature. I don't remember much about The Hotel New Hampshire except for the dude wanting to bang his sister."

"Heh." Sasuke laughed involuntarily. It sounded harsh, like a bark.

"What is your brother like?" Naruto asked. Sasuke took in his open face, his wide eyes and gentle smile. He didn't seem to have any motive other than curiosity.

"He's dead, for one thing." Sasuke regretted the bitterness and sadness in his voice. He looked away from Naruto, but felt is hand come to rest on his shoulder.

"I'm really sorry," he heard Naruto whisper earnestly. When he raised his head to look at Naruto again, he saw nothing other than sympathy.

The wind pushed errant bangs into Sasuke's eyes. He swiped at them and breathed in. "Itachi was… singular. Gifted. A polymath and an autodidact. He was a highly regarded martial artist, but he was also a prodigy violinist and a very accomplished pianist."

"A genius," Naruto summed up.

"Yes. A genius. He was also very complicated, and very lonely." Sasuke looked down the beach where a small child toddled after his older siblings, who were engrossed in their own pursuits. He felt a pressure behind his eyes, a familiar pressure, and the old heaviness over his heart.

"He was the first thing I ever knew about love. My very first memories were of Itachi—he was only four or five when I was born, but he carried me with him everywhere until he was sent to school. I used to play with his hair. I am sure I pulled it, but he never complained." Sasuke smiled as he recalled twining the dark strands around his fingers and watching the sun burnish the streaks of mahogany in them.

"He sounds amazing and special," Naruto said.

"Yes, he was both of those things."

Naruto moved his hand and lowered it over Sasuke's. "I wish you'd had more time with him," he murmured quietly.

"Yeah, so do I," Sasuke said with a heave. "But… he died when he was 21. I had just turned 16. And there was a lot I never got to know about him. I was obsessed with him for most of my life. Especially after he died."

"Are you still?"

Sasuke turned his hand over, allowing his palm to touch Naruto's and permitting Naruto to twine their fingers together. He considered the question.

"Hn." He looked away again, as far out to sea as he could. "I still think about him a lot. But not like I once did. Not with the same intensity."

He looked back at Naruto to gauge his reaction, but Naruto was now looking away, his features impassive. They sat this way for several seconds, each man lost in his own thoughts. Sasuke had never shared his feelings for Itachi with anyone other than Kurenai, not because he feared their judgment, but because pronouncing his love vocally made it sound unseemly and tawdry, and Sasuke didn't feel that his adoration for his brother was worthy of such small and inadequate descriptions.

"Naruto," he said, suddenly needing to clarify, "Itachi was my ideal. In some ways, the image I had of him wasn't even real. But he was the nearest thing to perfection in my life."

Naruto met his eyes and smiled. "You don't have to explain or defend, Sasuke," he responded. "That's normal. Everyone has an ideal. That's why people talk about girls marrying someone like their fathers or boys marrying a girl like the one who married dear old dad. It's natural. And it's beautiful. I've never felt that way about anyone. I kinda wish I had."

His words shocked Sasuke, hitting him straight in his core. He just sat and stared at Naruto as his mind grappled with a response he hadn't expected. While he was still mentally adjusting to Naruto's words, Naruto stood, tugging Sasuke up with him.

"C'mon. I ate way too much. I need to work some of it off."

Naruto didn't release Sasuke's hand immediately. Sasuke didn't entirely mind.

"Your turn," Sasuke said after they had walked a few feet. "Tell me your story."

Naruto smiled and looked at him. "Where do you want me to start?" he asked.

"Wherever you want."

Naruto inhaled and whistled the breath out through his lips. "Well. I was kind of the last kid standing growing up," he said. "I never really fit in. I made sure that everyone paid for it, too. I was constantly in trouble. Until I was about 12, and suddenly, one teacher took an interest in me. Then, my godfather showed up, from out of the blue, so I didn't have to live in foster care anymore. They made sure I trained in martial arts, and I found out I was good at it. Like, really, really good at it."

Sasuke watched as Naruto smiled at the memories.

"Things got better when one of my teachers realized that I was not going to learn the way that our school was insisting on teaching me."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Let me guess. Ultra-traditional, styled after a romanticized version of Japanese schools, super strict, with no tolerance for individualism?"

"Heh. Something like that," Naruto affirmed. "Kakashi realized that I was way too hyper and way too movement-oriented to learn that way. He insisted on getting some psychometric testing done, and by the end of the day, I realized I wasn't stupid. I just had ADHD. He worked with me one-on-one, and so did another teacher, Yamato. My grades immediately went up."

Naruto kicked at the sand with his right foot. "This whole time, Hinata was just this timid little girl in my grade. I'd actually got my ass whipped for her a few times when we were little, because she was just such an easy target." Naruto frowned and looked at Sasuke. "You know that thing in our culture? Maybe it's widespread in immigrant communities, I don't know. But people are so focused on fitting in and proving their worth that they have really strict standards for their kids."

Sasuke nodded. Yes, he certainly knew something about this.

"Hinata couldn't fit in. She wasn't a troublemaker like me, and she didn't have a bad family history like I did. Her family descended from feudal lords and legendary samurai. But she was timid, and she stuttered. She couldn't perform at the other school in Konoha. You know the one? It's Japanese-only instruction and most of the kids there can get a diploma in either Japan or the US."

"Yes. I'm familiar with that school. I went to that one," Sasuke answered.

"Her sister and her cousins all went to that school. But Hinata couldn't perform, so she came to our school, instead. But she struggled there, too, and the teachers didn't really mind her being bullied, because they felt that it would be good for our "character development." Naruto scoffed and kicked the sand more forcefully.

"I always took up for Hinata. I didn't realize that she looked up to me as much as she did. When I started with martial arts, she came to every tournament. She even trained harder, she told me later, because she said watching me struggle and achieve my victories meant she could keep trying, too.

When we were 18, she told me she loved me. She knew I wanted to become a teacher, and later an administrator, so I could change our school and make it where kids like us weren't tormented just for being different. She encouraged me. A long time before my teachers saw my potential, or before my godfather took me under his wing, she had believed in me and cheered me on. When she said all of that, I felt like I just wanted to protect her and be good for her forever. So I asked her to marry me. I had no idea what romantic love was."

Naruto made a face. "My godfather wrote romance novels." He laughed a little at this admission. "I always found them disgusting. I didn't want a love like that, and I'd never looked at women with any interest. I found some of my male friends fascinating, so maybe even I had crushes, but I never associated it with attraction. I just appreciated their skills and personalities. When I felt like I wanted to protect Hinata and provide for her, I thought that was what romantic love must be about."

"I'm sure she had different ideas," Sasuke said with a smirk.

Naruto laughed. "She sure did. But she didn't tell me that. She just kept accepting me and supporting me and defending me to her parents and friends. We had kids right away. I worked and went to school, and we were both busy with the kids when I wasn't in class or on the job, so it was easy to write off the lack of romance, then. Plus, she'd become a mother, and therefore more valuable in her family's eyes, so the affirmation she got from them made my absence easier to overlook." He kicked the sand again and scowled.

"It wasn't until after I got my Ph.D. and was hired on as principal that things started to unwind. I had made my goal. She'd been counting on us having more time together and resting a little from the years of constant study and work. But I just put everything I had into the job. I didn't want to go home and see her disappointed when I couldn't look at her the way she wanted me to."

Sasuke stared off ahead as he listened. Naruto's story hadn't been so dissimilar to his.

"She thought I was having an affair. I was so shocked. I'd never looked at anyone else. Hinata didn't know that, though. All she knew was that I didn't look at her the way she looked at me. She was the one who ended up suggesting that I was probably just not attracted to women at all. I realized when she said it that I wasn't. Not even a little."

He looked at Sasuke, and the sadness in his heart touched something long forgotten in Sasuke.

"I neglected my kids pretty badly," Naruto said. "My son is so pissed off at me that he painted "asshole" over my portrait at the school." Naruto's laughter invited Sasuke to join in. Naruto was naturally confident, Sasuke could tell, but he also had a self-deprecating facet to his personality that made his confidence not only bearable, but likable.

The two of them continued to walk down the strand as the sun began to sink into the water. Talking to Naruto had been freeing, as had listening to him. There was so much Sasuke wanted to know about the blond-haired man who walked beside him. He wondered if there might be some way to inveigle more walks along the beach, more conversations. He supposed he could ask, but that would make it so easy for Naruto to deny him…

He shook off his discomfort. He'd only feared rejection from his father and from Itachi. He didn't want to give that kind of power to another person. He withdrew his phone from his pocket to look at the time; it was time to end this afternoon of reverie, anyway.

"I have to pick up my daughter," he said. It came out far more harshly than he'd intended.

"Ok," Naruto said agreeably. They walked back towards the restaurant and Sasuke's car. Both men were careful to dust the sand from their feet and and their pants before getting in.

"I suppose I need to take you back to your place," Sasuke said, "since you didn't drive to the shop today."

"You can drop me anywhere," Naruto said quietly. "I don't mind walking."

Sasuke pursed his lips. He didn't know why Naruto's offer bothered him, but like the ease with which he'd insulted himself on the first night they met, it infuriated him.

"I'm driving you back to your apartment," Sasuke said with finality.

Naruto looked over at him, trying to suss out the change in mood, but Sasuke wouldn't answer for it. Except for Naruto giving him directions to his apartment, they rode in silence for the rest of the way.

He noted that Naruto lived in one of the new, gated apartment complexes, the ones that were meant to entice families and downsizing empty-nesters. He wondered if Naruto had chosen the gated complex, or if his ex-wife had; had they thought it might be safer for their kids? Sasuke found the idea laughable.

"The code is 5157," Naruto told him at the gate. Sasuke punched in the numbers and drove through when the gate slid aside. "I'm in Building 4."

Soon enough, Building 4 loomed in front of them, and Sasuke found himself panicking. Once again, Naruto was going to get out of his car, and he would not see him until life brought them together again however it chose to. It hurt in a way that puzzled and angered him, most of all because he had no idea how to stop it from happening.

When they'd stopped, Naruto looked at him with his easy, magnetic smile and his bright eyes again. He linked the first two fingers of his left hand with the first two of Sasuke's right and smiled even brighter. "I had a wonderful day today. Thanks so much. I know my son is going to love the books, too."

"Don't mention it," Sasuke said heavily.

"I want to take you out, Sasuke," he said, simple and direct. Sasuke swallowed.

"I close Tomoe tomorrow at 5 pm," he said hoarsely. Naruto's grin made him look sly and fox-like.

"I'll be there." He leaned over the console and pressed his lips briefly to Sasuke's forehead before getting out of the car. Sasuke didn't move, he just watched as Naruto bounded up the stairs of Building 4. He brought his hand, shaky and sweating, to his forehead, where the dampness from Naruto's kiss still lingered.

His stomach felt as if it were doing somersaults, and his brain was filled with anticipation. Life hadn't given him another opportunity to see Naruto, Naruto had given him one. And, he had kissed him.

Sasuke smiled broadly. His cheeks hurt, but he still smiled, all the way from Naruto's apartment to his daughter's judo lesson. He turned his stereo on, flipping through a very brief playlist before finding the song he wanted. He'd meant to mention it to Naruto before they had bickered and he had forgotten it.

"And if a double-decker bus

crashes into us,

to die by your side

is such a heavenly way to die..."

He had meant to tease Naruto about the senselessness and immaturity of such a sentiment, but instead, he found that it succinctly summed up how he felt in Naruto's presence. He listened to it five times on the way home, his mind completely occupied by Naruto.