Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, or any of its associated characters!
Summary: Sasuke has spent three years trying to figure out how to live on his own. Maybe it's time to try something different. WIP. Future SNS, updates once a month. Canonverse. Rating may change!
A/N: Hooooo boy, friends! It's a shorter one for this fic in particular, but this past month has been a personal best in terms of writing for me. I haven't been able to give this fic the love it deserves in a little bit, and I am so ready to get back in. I'm happy with how this chapter went, though - I hope you like it too!
Two is a Crowd
Chapter 4: if not somewhere to sleep
They left, and Sasuke…recalibrated. Found his feet, somewhere in the dirt and leaves and cloudless sky. He was used to the woods. Used to the way the breeze lifted everything up, used to the way the night settled it back down. And there was little familiar that Sasuke found comforting, but this—this was…better. The open. No walls. No silence. There was a low hum that kept Sasuke's head occupied. Distracted in its own way, the way Sasuke felt he needed to be—Sasuke's head was a pendulum. It was the ocean and it was the waves—always in flux, always in motion. Never still. Never settled.
Sasuke needed to move quicker. Needed a world that was louder. Needed—
"What's with you and getting up at night," Naruto grumbled, and his hand was slapping at the flap of the tent. Sasuke hadn't gone far. Sasuke was just outside. Naruto didn't need to come closer. There had only been fabric between them—
Naruto huffed and sat beside him. Something in Sasuke's eyes…strained.
"I don't sleep well," Sasuke replied, and he didn't need to elaborate. It was the nights. It was the quiet, calm, contained nights. It was the travelling alone and it was the voices in his head—it was the same thing he'd been determined to figure out, and failed. Failed, failed, failed, failed again.
Tonight, it was Itachi. And his parents. Konoha. The village. His childhood home. Maybe his only home. He saw the same flower that used to be in their garden today. Sasuke had picked it once. He didn't remember why. It stayed in a little glass jar on their open windowsill. Sasuke sat at the table and studied. His feet stayed too high to touch where his parents body would soon lay. He still could see their eyes. He could always see their—
He swallowed and looked away. Tried to bring himself back, tried to stare at the blades of grass and count them, think of nothing else but the cold night air, one, two, five there, another four—
"Here," Naruto said, and Sasuke hadn't even noticed he'd left. "At least bring a blanket or something."
He tossed his travelling cloak over the both of them. It didn't cover them both. It doesn't even come close. But Sasuke found the chill in the night somehow renewed, and the cloak was a strange, contained relief—
"Thanks," he replied, and it was quiet. It was absent. It echoed with the same hollow voice Sasuke heard somewhere within it. Just…
"It's so bright right now," came Naruto's voice, and it was gold. "It's not morning yet, is it?"
Sasuke raised his head.
"No," he said, as if he hadn't had to check himself. "No, it isn't."
"…The birds are singing, though."
Sasuke vacantly looked to the side. So they were. Their soft songs filtered into his consciousness with the wind, the soft rustle of the leaves…
"I don't think they exclusively sing in the daytime," Sasuke said, and Naruto shifted.
"Don't they?" Naruto muttered, "I guess I don't know."
Sasuke looked back at him. Naruto's laugh was short and sheepish and…pouting.
"Shut up," Naruto told him, and Sasuke's lips twitched. "When was I supposed to learn about birds? Come on."
Sasuke looked away, but the amusement lingered. He caught the edge of the blanket before Naruto managed to pull it from the both of them. Not the blanket—the cloak. Naruto's travelling cloak. Sasuke…
"Sorry," Naruto said, shrugging it back to him.
"You should be," he muttered, and Naruto laughed again.
He didn't apologize again, though. The cloak pulled from Sasuke's foot—never meant to cover the both of them, but Sasuke welcomed the cold air as it came, this time. It woke up a mind that was starting to…
Go.
Naruto's warmth did something to him, and Sasuke didn't want to think about what it was.
Naruto heaved out a yawn. He rolled back with the motion, like the force of it was the same as the fatigue—
"Go back to the tent," Sasuke told him. "What are you doing out here?"
Naruto laughed at him. It was a small, snorted laugh, but it called Sasuke an idiot, and Naruto's eyes did the same. He looked up, and the blue of them caught Sasuke by the throat.
"Go fuck yourself," Naruto told him, and it was tired. Sasuke's seen a Naruto this tired. He's seen him more, he's seen him shaking with exhaustion, trembling on the feet that were desperate to give out, desperate to keep going—
But the determination in those eyes—it was the same. It looked exactly the same.
Sasuke tore himself away.
"You're an idiot," he said, and it was a whisper. It was the motion of his foot crossing underneath the cloak—it was his unconscious pull towards the warmth, towards the touch. Sasuke tried to catch himself. Sasuke tried to catch himself a hundred times a day. He didn't know what made him so—
Naruto bounced back, and he was trying to wake himself up. Their shoulders were close enough to touch, but they don't. They don't.
Sasuke kept himself very still.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Naruto said, stretching his arms up, as if merely the act of being awake was enough to get his body to beg for motion. "Tell me something new once in a while, huh?"
Sasuke's lips twitched, but the smile didn't come. Something in his face felt too…heavy.
"What's the point of a vacation," Sasuke asked, and something about the words felt familiar, "if you get no rest?"
Naruto scoffed out a laugh.
"I'm getting more rest than I did in Konoha," he said, kicking himself back. "This is nothing."
Naruto leaned back onto his hands, and Sasuke looked back at him.
"What?" Naruto asked. "I wasn't. I didn't have time. And even when I did, I…there was so much more I could be doing. Y'know."
Naruto shrugged and looked down at his feet.
"I got pretty used to not getting sleep."
Sasuke scanned the side of his incandescent face. No one else would have had a chance of being seen in this black a night, but Naruto glowed with a life Sasuke had never understood. Even with his downturned eyes. Even with the memory of his worry written in the wrinkles forming across his face, even with his unsmiling mouth—
Naruto looked up, and Sasuke was in motion again.
He spit his breath into the night and felt his heart pretend he was in battle. Naruto's eyes were the kunai it was trying to dodge, he was sure.
"Don't flatter yourself, asshole," Naruto was telling him. He's reading something in the strain of Sasuke's back. "It didn't all start with you."
Sasuke looked back, over his shoulder. Naruto's smile dared him to talk back.
"I used to train all night as a kid, too," Naruto said. "You didn't change anything."
Oh.
Oh.
The lie grabbed Sasuke by the teeth, and he bit down on it like it was a hook. It might as well have pieced his cheek from the way he was being reeled in. Naruto wanted him to snap back, Naruto wanted him to jump to life and react, Sasuke knew exactly what he was doing and it was working—
"Konoha's always driven you to desperation," he lashed back, "haven't they?"
His words were a whip, but Sasuke was still stuck in the storm in his head. The thunder cracked too loud for him to break. It hit Naruto just as hard, though.
"Okay, asshole," he said, and he was smiling. "That's what we're doing tonight?"
"If you're going to be saying stupid things," Sasuke told him. Naruto reached over to fix where the cloak had fallen.
"If I keep going," he said, and his hand never once pressed to Sasuke's skin, "you gonna tell me why you can't sleep?"
Sasuke didn't answer. Naruto pulled his bandaged arm away, and it was only the tilt of Sasuke's head that followed it—
"S'it my fault?" came Naruto's voice, and Sasuke's head snapped back—
Naruto's lopsided grin widened.
"Fuck you," Sasuke told him, and Naruto laughed.
"Don't make it so easy," he said. "Your stupid ankle's uncovered again, come on. Look—"
He leaned over, pulling at Sasuke's side as if it didn't leave him bare, too. As if he didn't know there wasn't enough space for the two of them.
"…It's not your fault," Sasuke muttered. Naruto had put the thought in his head, now. He just needed to say it out loud.
"I don't know," Naruto said, leaning back to rest on his arms again. "I did bring you there."
"Where?" Sasuke asked.
"The village," Naruto answered, and he was looking up at the sky. "The one we went to."
He spoke to the stars, and Sasuke was an afterthought. Sasuke was avoided. Sasuke sat up, and still Naruto didn't look—
"And what was the alternative?" Sasuke asked, because Naruto was an idiot. "Did you think I could avoid my reflection forever? Avoid every reminder of every disaster? A flower was enough to set me off today."
Naruto's head snapped down.
Ah.
Fuck.
"A flower," Naruto said, and it was quiet. It was prompting. It was the silent hand of a starving child, snatching food from the top of the table—
"That's enough," Sasuke told him, and Naruto accepted it with a soft smile. An innocent smile. Sasuke didn't believe him for a second.
"Okay," he said, as if he'd never been known to push and push and push until Sasuke broke. "I'll take it."
Sasuke glared at him.
Naruto smiled right back.
"Don't push it," Sasuke muttered, and it sounded more pathetic than the intended threat. More tired. More…resigned.
Naruto fixed the cloak on Sasuke's ankle again.
"Konoha didn't ask that much of me," he said, pulling back to himself. "I put those pressures on myself, y'know. I'm the one who made the promises."
"You're right," Sasuke said, and it's withering. "Tell me more about yourself."
Naruto looked over at him. Sasuke stared back.
…
He broke first, though. Naruto didn't deserve his vitriol. Sasuke opened his mouth to apologize—
Naruto laughed.
"You get so pissy when you think I'm wrong about myself," he said, as if it was hilarious. "Fucking hell."
He flopped back onto his back and kicked the cloak to the side. Sasuke had well more than him now. It barely covered Naruto's hip, and his shirt had pulled up to expose his skin to the air, but Naruto never complained anymore—
Sasuke was the one to fix it, this time.
"Tell me this, though," Naruto said, and he was looking up at the sky again. "Don't you think I broke them?"
Sasuke stared at him. Naruto didn't look back.
"I was meant to be there for life."
…
…
The night was getting to him, too.
"You're being an idiot," Sasuke told him. "No."
Naruto's eyes flickered to him.
"No?" he asked, and they were back on the sky.
"No."
Naruto smiled in response. Loose and uneven—humour, not happiness.
"I'm not talking about the ones I made with you, asshole," Naruto pointed out. "The other ones."
Sasuke breathed out a thousand breaths.
"Tell me again how the village hasn't warped your sense of responsibility," he told Naruto's cloak. It was thick against his fingers, the perfect thing to grip without making it tear—
Naruto let out a humourless laugh.
"Maybe," he said, and it was something. It was something, at least. "Maybe."
The night sunk back into them. It was loud, though. It was loud to Sasuke—filled with Naruto's sighs and shifting and guilty eyes staring up into the air. Sasuke wanted to grab and shake him. Wanted to throw Konoha to the ground and demand retribution. Wanted an apology, but even that would never be enough—
Hah.
How familiar.
"I do miss my plants, though," Naruto said, and it was following a thought he hadn't said out loud. "That's something. I had to ask Iruka to take care of them."
…
Something in Sasuke shook free.
"In your apartment?" he asked, and it was light. It didn't mean anything at all. It was just a question, it didn't have something coiling in his stomach or twisting in his chest—
"Yep," Naruto said. "Same one. Why?"
Sasuke took a calculated risk and didn't look back. He didn't want to know what Naruto would read in his eyes. He likely read it in his shoulders, anyway, but—
"Figured the Hokage could afford more lavish living," he replied, and it was a diversion. What from, Sasuke didn't know, Sasuke didn't want to pick apart what it was about Naruto keeping a home to return to that made Sasuke want to stretch and stand and pace and move—
Naruto laughed.
"My money went to the village," Naruto said, and Sasuke didn't know what he'd expected. "The people. You know how much shit we had to rebuild after the war?"
…
He did, actually.
"You mentioned it," Sasuke said, "in your letters."
"Did I?" Naruto asked. "Been so long, I can't remember."
Well. Sasuke didn't reply to that. He looked down at his hand, though. At his feet. At the ankle Naruto's cloak no longer covered again.
Naruto sat up.
Sasuke wondered if it was only to fix it.
"You done them yet?" he asked, pulling his hand back to himself.
No.
"None of your business."
Naruto laughed and looked over at him, but Sasuke gave him nothing. Each letter was—was a world. Was something new. Was something devastating. Was something Sasuke sat and read and stared into space with for at least two hours. If Naruto had awoken an hour earlier tonight, he would have caught him.
Sasuke didn't know.
Not opening them was still a mistake. He truly thought that, now. But on the other hand…
He didn't know what he would have done. Ran to Konoha. Demanded Naruto leave. Whipped himself up into a fury Naruto didn't answer to, and what then? If Naruto hadn't listened. If Naruto wouldn't listen—and he wouldn't have, not before he was done, not before he was exhausted, Naruto was at his frailest edge now and even then Sasuke couldn't get him to understand Konoha was the one chipping it out from under him.
He pressed his lips together.
Sasuke was in too deep. He hated Konoha too much. Still. Even now. Even with Naruto at their head. Even with all the changes they'd made. It was impossible to speak without fury and so it was impossible to convince Naruto the fury wasn't what wrote his words before he spoke them—
"We could get moving, if you want."
Sasuke turned to look at him. Naruto shrugged.
"What?" he asked. "There's nothing stopping us from moving around at night and sleeping during the day. Wanna go?"
Sasuke's body had been still for too long.
Naruto's smile widened.
"Come on," he said, and he was already standing. "Let's go."
A/N: If I haven't had the chance to thank you for the love, thank you so, so much. It's been a crazy busy month for me, and for a little while, it was looking dodgy as to if I would be able to even get this out. But! I really wanted to make it, and I hope it was worth the wait! Something about this story is really working well for me. I hope I can fit all the bits and pieces I want to into place.
All my love to you, friends. Thank you for going on this WIP journey with me! It's the first time in a long, long time that I'm trying this again for fanfiction. But I feel much better about it all this time around. Hope you feel the same!
Until next time,
- Kinomi