Disclaimer: Naruto and everything associated don't belong to me, neither do the lyrics. I'm not claiming ownership of anyone's ideas. I'm just borrowing.
Basics: PG13/T, General/Drama/Romance/Angst, AU, (?) chapters
Warnings: Boy x boy love, boy x girl love, profanity, mild mature themes
Summary: Sasuke always did mean to leave Konoha, and that intention breaks Naruto's heart. But fate pulls a 180, and instead it is Naruto that leaves, and Sasuke is the heartbroken one.
Author's note 1: Hi everyone. It's super great that you even clicked your way in here. Onwards!
X;
Counting the ways
to where you are.
X;
Naruto had been faintly blushing at the small kiss Sai had given him when a voice forced him to look over his shoulder. The light brushing of uncomfortable pink over his scarred cheeks rapidly vanished into a color far paler. What- or who- Naruto saw resulted in the draining away of all of the hues in his tan face.
Sasuke.
A tremendous swelling of emotion hit Naruto with all the force of a punch to the gut- something Naruto thought he'd probably be getting from Sasuke anyway- and Naruto swore his heart, clichéd as it sounded, was going to burst or stop when he realized his best friend had decided to be the bastard he was and abruptly show up like that. And for a moment, his entire world was suspended as Naruto looked at the achingly familiar slender boy with blue-black hair, the intense dark eyes, and the pale complexion.
What did bother Naruto, though, was the fact that he couldn't read at all the odd expression that his impassive best friend wore. Sasuke was always somewhat indecipherable, but Naruto had never seen that look on his face before.
They stood there, Sasuke and Naruto, face to face as the crowd of people moved around them, murmured around them, ignored them. A clock somewhere above them muttered off the seconds, but neither heard.
Why can't I breathe whenever I think about you?
Their last encounter was all too distinct in their minds, all too vivid on how intent they were on hurting each other. 'Or how intent I was trying to hurt him, at any rate,' Sasuke admitted silently, looking at Naruto, wondering if the other could somehow read his apologetic thoughts. When Naruto looked at him like that, with those so bright, so deep eyes, Sasuke thought that maybe Naruto did know exactly what he was thinking.
Naruto was wondering where the fuck all the oxygen went. Why couldn't he breathe, damnit?
A small polite noise startled them both out of that strange trance- real world rushing back and bleeding into reality- and two sets of eyes darted immediately to Sai, who smiled placidly. Sasuke immediately felt a more-than-vague annoyance at the third boy, and Sai pointedly ignored the kind of look that Sasuke was directing at him.
"Naruto, do you know him?" Sai inquired pleasantly.
Naruto blinked roughly. "Y-yeah." Managing to get his suddenly dry throat unstuck, Naruto finally found his voice, and his affirmation came out in a rougher tone than he had meant to use.
Naruto missed the quicksilver pained look that skated across Sasuke's expression.
"Uh. Sai, this is Sasuke. Bastard, this is Sai." Naruto continued carelessly, sneaking looks at the Uchiha as he made the necessary introductions. Goddamnit, his heart was beating fast- too fast.
"Hello." Sai said, still in that almost mockingly friendly voice. Naruto wondered if Sai was intentionally trying to piss off Sasuke, and then dismissed the thought, for what reason could Sai have for that? But, whatever Sai was trying to pull, it was working. Naruto observed the slight stiffening of his best friend.
"Hello." Sasuke replied coldly, aloof. Sasuke… that arrogant jackass. Naruto shot him an accusing look. That immediately sparked a little flame of anger within the Uchiha.'Why, Naruto? Why are you fucking protecting him?' Have you replaced me…? Sasuke's back straightened even more, and he swore that the temperature had dropped a couple degrees. Replacement! That thought hurt, too.
There was an awkward, heavy silence.
Sasuke watched with narrowed eyes as Sai gave Naruto an expectant look, and Naruto, upon receiving it, seemed to remember something. With a small smile and a general gesture, Sai started walking ahead with his luggage and Naruto turned to Sasuke.
"Oi! Bastard, could you just wait- wait for me, okay?" Naruto asked, pointing to a wooden bench against one of the train station's walls. "I'll be right back." Then Sasuke watched the blond teenager bound off to rejoin Sai's side. Sasuke was still watching as the two disappeared out the main entrance and into the streets, watched the retreating backs until he could not see them anymore. 'I'm-not-jealous-shit-no-I'm-NOT'
Sasuke mused on whether or not he should be really be letting the moron walk out like that. Will you leave me again? Sasuke wondered if he'd be left waiting, if this was just Naruto vanishing off.
How much would that hurt? A lot.
Naruto said he'd be right back.
And Naruto never lied- never ever lied. But do you even know him, anymore? Who is he when he's the boy who ran away? Who is he when he's so familiar with people you don't know? A nasty little voice whispered into his ear. Sasuke wanted to snarl and snap at someone, something, but he merely tightened the grip on his luggage handle.
Sasuke didn't sit down on the bench that Naruto had indicated. Instead, he stood standing, waiting as seconds melted into the fast production of the past. Would he still be standing here an hour later? Two hours later? Three?
His heart clenched. Naruto. And he knew he'd be waiting there all evening if it came to that.
It didn't come to that.
Sasuke's eyes caught the movement of a bright blond head, weaving through the crowd in a not-so-graceful manner. … He had never known such relief as the warmth-and-chill that swept through him now.
Now what?
Naruto felt distinctly awkward as he made his way through the crowd, with Sasuke's emotionless gaze riveted on him. He pushed past nameless people as inside he quivered like a string pulled taut. When at last he stood in front of his best friend, Naruto looked at him dead in the eye, and said only, "Well… I'm back."
When Sasuke didn't say anything, Naruto's internals only tightened further, knotting and twisting. He closed his eyes, feeling condemned forever to this cold silence in the midst of the train station's bustle. Naruto had known Sasuke would be pissed, angry, mad at him. Sasuke would call him a hypocrite, relentlessly, and this time Naruto would know he was right. Sasuke would never again even think of listening to him. Sasuke would- Sasuke- would-
Even as he felt like he was suffocating, drowning in the negativity and the never-agains, Naruto managed to pull back the joy he first felt when he turned around and saw Sasuke. And then he threw all thought out the window as he defiantly pushed against the wave of chilliness he felt that his friend was piling upon him.
Naruto threw all thought out the window, and instead, threw his arms around his friend, the boy he loved, lunging forward in an embrace.
"I missed you, bastard."
Sasuke stood stock still for a second. Naruto looped his arms around the Uchiha's shoulders, Naruto's face against Sasuke's neck. Please don't hate me, Sasuke. Naruto was about to start backing away when he felt Sasuke's arms encircle his waist, returning the hug. Sasuke could feel a small smile against his neck. 'Was… was Sakura right? Naruto, do you love me as I love you?' Sasuke wondered, tightening his hold. 'We can deal with the problems later…'
Nothing ever felt more right to Naruto than being held by Sasuke Uchiha.
But peeking over the brunet's shoulder, he wondered at why Sasuke was carrying an overnight bag. He wondered why Sasuke was even at the train station anyway. Had Sasuke been running off as well? Running off to his psycho-murderer brother…? But then… why would Sasuke make an effort to stop Naruto and talk to him and… wouldn't Sasuke have wanted to sneak off? Wouldn't Sasuke have known that in meeting up with Naruto, Naruto would try to stop him?
Naruto was confused. He let go of Sasuke, and felt the arms around his waist immediately loosen to let him go. 'Is… is Sasuke blushing?' Naruto wondered, looking at the other boy's face.
"Sasuke? Why do you have a bag with you?" Naruto couldn't help but be blunt, and just a little accusatory. But to his amazement, it seemed that Sasuke only reddened a bit more.
And then the pieces started assembling themselves in Naruto's mind. "You're not going after Itachi…" the blond stated slowly, rather than questioned. Looking at Sasuke's face, Naruto knew he was on the right track. Then something caught his eye. Naruto plucked a ticket sticking out of the breast pocket of Sasuke's black button-up shirt. "Hara?" Naruto read it off wonderingly. "You weren't going after Itachi… you were going after… me."
Naruto began laughing weakly at the realization. "Holy shit."
"Stop laughing, dumb ass." Sasuke muttered, vaguely irritated, but more embarrassed.
"Holy shit." Naruto said again, disregarding the Uchiha's order to stop laughing. He was emitting the breathy sort of disbelieving chuckle, reading the ticket over and over again. He wondered how Sasuke had figured out where he went. But he knew Sasuke was a smart bastard, so what amazed him more was that… "Fuck. Wow. You do care."
Sasuke narrowed his dark eyes at that. "Idiot. Is that so hard to believe?" Sasuke asked lowly, directing his glance away from his best friend.
"Well…" Naruto scratched the back of his head, somewhat sheepishly with a silly little smile on his face. "You did say…"
Sasuke flinched at the reminder of the cruel words he had inflicted upon Naruto, how those words had haunted him for the whole week thereafter. "… Naruto… I'm sorry."
"Damn. This day keeps getting weirder huh? Did Sasuke Uchiha just apologize to me? Using my name?" Naruto joked, still laughing that funny little laugh, and this pissed Sasuke off.
"Goddamnit Naruto. I'm serious. Why do you have to make a joke of everything?" Sasuke shot at him, looking up furiously. Naruto shut up immediately. Sasuke tried once more. "I didn't mean what I said."
"… Thanks." Naruto replied quietly. Naruto wanted to apologize too, but the way Sasuke looked at him, Naruto thought Sasuke already knew. There's time to verbalize it later, Naruto decided. He could find the words to not royally screw it up… later. He would. He would let Sasuke know that things would be all right between them.
Naruto glanced up at the clock mounted on the train station wall. "Hey, Sasuke-bastard. It's Saturday, right?" At Sasuke's nod, a sly grin stretched across the blond's face. "Lee and Sakura are probably on a date right now, right?" Naruto cackled. "Let's go crash."
Walking out together, Naruto kept sneaking looks at his companion. 'Sasuke, you don't know how much it means to me… that you were willing to go after me.'
If I could fall into the sky
Do you think time would pass me by?
You know I'd walk a thousand miles
If I could just… see… you
If I could just… hold… you
Tonight.
Sasuke would not admit that his heart pounded and hammered with elation that Naruto was back, but it did.
X;
Sakura and Lee were walking with hands loosely intertwined out of Konoha's movie theater. Lee was animatedly discussing the movie they'd seen, but Sakura's heart wasn't in it. She kept thinking about Sasuke, Sasuke on the train alone, Naruto, Naruto, god-knows-where her favorite blondie was. What if Naruto lay dead somewhere, mauled and beaten by gangsters? Or what if Sasuke's train crashed? What if…?
Sakura was a worrier by nature.
Sakura's hand felt Lee's tighten over hers. "Uh, Sakura-chan? Do you feel like… we're being followed…?" Lee was about to turn around and scan the vicinity when someone grabbed him. Sakura screamed when her boyfriend slipped out of her view, screaming louder when someone grabbed her own waist, muffled only when the one behind her put a hand over her mouth.
She stilled when Rock Lee came in sight again, accompanied by a smirking Sasuke. Lee looked slightly peeved at having been manhandled by the Uchiha, but Lee was also smiling a wide grin at her and behind her. 'If that's Sasuke over there…' The hand over her mouth lifted, and she felt herself being gently released and the terrible roaring in her ears caused by fear was replaced by the sound of familiar, mischievous laughter.
Sakura slowly turned around and shrieked with – joy. "Naruto!" She launched herself at her previously missing blond friend and he opened his arms out as she promptly and thoroughly glomped the teenager. "Oh my god, Naruto, you're alive, and you're not lying dead in some city and you're here, my god you're here… and here Sasuke was going to go after you and everything and he missed you, did you know that, you idiot, he missed you, and I missed you…" Sakura mumbled on and on into Naruto's loose white t-shirt.
"Eh heh heh." Naruto grinned down at Sakura. "Sorry for worrying you, Red."
"Worrying me? Damn straight you worried me. And now the first thing you do is terrify me, jerk!" Sakura pushed herself off of Naruto and bapped him on the head. "I can't believe you scared me like that!" She scolded, yet she was beaming at him.
"Did you go home to Iruka yet?"
""Ah… no." A slightly apprehensive shadow passed over Naruto's face, and Sakura guessed something of why Naruto had come to see her first.
"He's worried sick about you, too." Sakura said, more gently. "He's not going to disown you. Come on, let's all bring you home."
Sakura stepped over Lee and took his hand. "Glad you're back, Naruto!" Lee said cheerfully to the younger boy. Sakura tugged Lee toward Iruka's apartment. "Come on guys, let's go."
"Thanks, bushy-brows." Naruto said honestly. "Coming, Red." He said to the pink-haired girl as the couple started to walk ahead. "I'll be right there."
Sasuke came up beside him, looking at him quizzically. Naruto told him, "You're coming too, emo-boy."
Sasuke rolled his eyes at the term 'emo-boy' but nodded affirmatively. "Of course I am, dobe."
"And Sasuke?"
"Hn?"
"Thanks… I mean, it means a lot that, that you were going to…"
Sasuke offered him a rare smile. "I know, dobe."
X;
"Iruka, you have visitors." Kakashi stepped aside to show Lee, Sakura, and Sasuke. Iruka stared at them. What were they doing here, randomly on a Saturday night? Iruka was sitting at the kitchen table, and he smiled warmly, if curiously. They were all wearing varied expressions with identical glee. Kakashi, Lee, Sakura, even Sasuke. What was going on?
All of them stepped aside.
Iruka immediately stood up, knocking the old wooden fold-up chair to the floor where it hit with a dull thud ignored by the chair's previous inhabitant. "Naruto, "Iruka murmured, and the gathered group could see that his kind dark eyes were glimmering. The addressed boy smiled a somewhat timid smile at his former teacher and his adoptive father. "Iruka-sensei." He said carefully, moving toward the person who had fished him out of a terrible life, the person he called father in his heart.
The older man drew him in a tight embrace. "Iruka… aren't you mad at me?" Naruto mumbled into the man's shirt. "I'm furious, Naruto, but we'll deal with that later." His adoptive father replied. Then, "I'm glad you're home." Iruka released Naruto and smiled brightly at the group of guests he had, from his boyfriend to his ex-students/Naruto's friends.
"Let's go out to eat, ne?"
The group cheered, especially the younger ones, and Naruto cheered loudest of all.
"Then you get to tell us all a story, right Naruto?" Kakashi asked, the one eye that wasn't hidden by his silver hair curved in a happy arc.
"Mmm. Only if it's ramen! You don't know how much I missed that stuff. Man. I don't know how the hell I survived a week without it!" Naruto said, nodding seriously.
"Dobe." Sasuke muttered.
"Hey, I heard that Sasuke-teme!"
X;
The clatter and bustle of Ichiraku's Ramen Shop was always something Naruto loved, and the boy was practically glowing under the combined ambience of the bright lights and the soft brightness of red paper lanterns that hung from the ceiling. Hell, Naruto glowed with more radiance than either medium of light. 'He really is happy to be home,' Sasuke mused.
Sasuke wondered if he was being delusional- hopeful? - or was it that Naruto was really constantly touching him? Not that he minded, no, not at all. But with Sakura giving him conspiratorial winks across the table and Lee nodding pseudo-sagely, with Iruka looking at him over his bowl of Ichiraku's ramen and with Kakashi making thinly-veiled innuendoes all throughout dinner- and Naruto not noticing any of it- Sasuke had almost had enough.
He decided instead to focus on the story that Naruto was telling.
"Well, see, I took the bus out to Sakei- that's where I emailed you, Sakura!- and from Sakei I kinda hitchhiked with old man Tazuna and his little grandson brat Inari. Then I got to Hara, town of my birth, and all this shit started happening. I met this girl Ami, who knew the guy I was looking for, Iwasaki- he made this, see-" Naruto put down his chopsticks and pulled the necklace from his white tee and showed them.
"And he was a real bastard." There was a brief injection of venom in the boy's voice, but Naruto was incapable of holding such malice, and it faded away to a light note of bitterness. Sasuke- having been called bastard by Naruto for the greater deal of the years he had known him- knew that this form of bastard was one he never wanted to be called by.
"Anyway, he told me to go see Jiraiya- who's a bit of a pervert but a good guy- and so Ami goes back to… work… and I go to see Jiraiya, and it turns out that holy shit, I have a godfather. Yeah so Jiraiya's my godfather. But he also tells me… that I had famous parents in Hara, and that they died a long time ago, and I was supposed to be dead, too, and somehow ended up in the orphanage here. With Sasuke-bastard."
Naruto grinned at Sasuke, but Sasuke couldn't muster a return smile. Sasuke decided that he would have to ask the dobe to give him the unedited version of the story later. Sasuke snuck a peek at Iruka over his bowl of noodles and could read that Iruka was thinking the very same thing.
Sakura seemed to be suspicious, but not overly so, and the fact that the story was clearly censored seemed to be completely over Lee's head. And Kakashi… Kakashi was still smiling that funny little smile.
I was supposed to be dead, too. Under the table, Sasuke let his hand briefly rest on Naruto's knee as an attempt to… Sasuke didn't know, comfort maybe. Support. Damn. Uchihas didn't do these kinds of things. Maybe it was an I'm there and I love you, even if the latter half of that silent sentiment was a debatable matter.
Whatever Sasuke was trying to get across, Naruto received something positive, and the bright smile sent Sasuke's way made Sasuke thought maybe he got it right.
X;
The Uchiha apartment was a dark realm lit only by the bright images of the muted television. Taniguchi, inebriated guardian of Sasuke Uchiha, lay bonelessly on the couch, murmuring listlessly to himself about his own despair. Occasionally, his eyes would flick to the television, and he'd see something on the news that made him rant furiously to no one for a few enraged minutes.
He didn't know where the fuck his little shit of a charge was, and he didn't fucking care. But then Taniguchi thought he saw the stupid boy on TV. He looked closer, straining his fuzzy-with-alcohol eyes. Oh. It was the other one. Taniguchi fumbled around for the remote to switch off the mute on the TV and raised the volume instead.
"… a young man claiming to be Itachi Uchiha, the notorious murderer who slaughtered almost all of his immediate and extended family eight years ago, has been arrested in a police raid of a drug warehouse in downtown Konoh-"
Taniguchi started laughing in a sickly way. He took another swig from the bottle nestled in his lap, and spat it out when rising rage choked him. He hurled the bottle away, listening for the satisfying smash of glass and splash of liquor. Then he leaned over the side of the couch and puked.
X;
Author's note 2: Ah. Just when everything was sort of going right. Naruto's back! In both Shippuden and this story. Yay! And thank you guys so much for all the birthday greetings. And for the lovely reviews. You guys totally made my day(s).
This chapter roughly marks the halfway for this story. Thanks for sticking with it (and me) so far. The happy/sad ending question has yet to be decided, so you can still sway me. But thank you everyone in general and happy lunar new year.
Please join/subscribe to my C2 for complete and well-written SasuNaru/NaruSasu. Links and details in my profile.
Sorry for the long author's note! Unedited chap, but tell me how I'm doing.
Lyrics are from Five for Fighting's 100 years, Vanessa Carlton's The Wreckage, Vanessa Carlton's Afterglow, (my) I miss you, Blink182's What's my age again?, Anna Nalick's Citadel, Liz Phair's Why Can't I, Vanessa Carlton's A Thousand Miles. Comments would be very much appreciated.