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: thanks for bearing with me while this chapter took an extra month, friends. I needed it, though - I think the chapter did, too.
Two is a Crowd
Chapter 18: if not somewhere to try again
They followed the night to its death. Trapped together in small conversation, little secrets between the silence. Naruto's voice was quiet and half-asleep—his eyes sticking closed each time they blinked. By the time they stayed stuck, he'd fallen to Sasuke's shoulder. Sasuke didn't know if he'd meant to.
He stayed with the thought. It held him there, in the night. It held him even as it fell away. The morning light came slow and steadily, revealing the wood and the dust and the air between them. The air that wasn't. There was something about the day that tasted different. Something colder. Something clearer. Sasuke liked the fog and the dark and the way things seemed unseen. Unspoken. Unheard. There was protection in that secrecy. Some sort of defense that was…missing from him, now. Missing from them.
It didn't matter that Naruto was asleep when the skin he breathed against was bare. In the morning light, Sasuke was exposed.
But mercy came suddenly and stupidly, in the form of Naruto falling off Sasuke's shoulder and waking himself up. He made a noise and rubbed his face and his first instinct, as his eyes fully opened, was to turn.
He looked at Sasuke, and the sleep cleared from his eyes.
"You didn't sleep," he said, and he was sitting up. His brow was furrowed, and he was scanning Sasuke's face for the worry, but Sasuke didn't give it to him. He could offer a wane smile, and little else.
"Not particularly, no," he said, and his back ached in reply. He hadn't moved from this position in many hours. Not a new stiffness—he'd had to do that plenty of times before, but it was rare that he…chose to.
…
These thoughts were like needles in his head. Every time he thought he'd found them all, another started to sting.
"Damn," Naruto muttered, and it made Sasuke look back. Naruto's eyes flickered to him, but didn't stick. "Just—I should've stayed up."
Sasuke's eyebrows raised.
"Did you have the option?" he asked, and it made Naruto laugh. That was an addicting feeling, too—
"I could've stayed up," Naruto told him, and he was lying. He was lying straight through his teeth.
Sasuke gave him his politest nod.
…
Naruto punched him in the arm.
"Okay, okay," he said, heaving out a breath. "I'm gonna bring you breakfast. Stay there and—think about whatever."
Naruto hopped to his feet and disappeared through the door. Sasuke watched after him, bemused. Naruto got an idea in his head about how to help and that was it. There was nothing to be done after that. Naruto would always see it through.
Sasuke leaned back down, and used Naruto's futon as a pillow. It was still warm. Something about it smelled…familiar.
The difficult thing was trying to do this all at once, Sasuke supposed. Konoha and Naruto and Itachi and his family and his past and his actions and all of it, all of it, all of it—he barely had time to consider a thought before another returned, with all the righteous fury of being ignored. Like dams bursting free, one after the other—Sasuke was only one person. He couldn't stem the flow of them all.
And with the water building as Sasuke scrambled, the way Naruto looked at him became a constant soak on his skin, but that was it. There was no way to deal with it. No way to consider it. He was too overwhelmed. It should have been so easy, but the fear was cold and it froze Sasuke's feet to the ground—
Naruto barged back into the room.
"That was fast," Sasuke told the ceiling, unmoving. He'd been tracking Naruto's movements since the moment he'd left.
"They already had stuff made!" Naruto announced, and then it was all thrown onto Sasuke's lap. "Eat something. We missed dinner."
"Did we?" Sasuke asked, vaguely sitting up. Naruto's mouth was already stuffed.
They were freshly baked buns—still warm from the oven. Naruto's was sticky and sweet, but Sasuke's weren't—although, from the looks of things, Naruto simply asked for one of everything.
Such a mundane, kind gesture. Sasuke felt his impulses grow insane—some sort of affectionate gratitude. Some sort of way to show it. A kiss on the cheek flittered through Sasuke's mind and it was enough to make him go blank. Stare at the wall. Admit that the sleep deprivation was—an issue.
"I think I'll stay in today," Sasuke said, and Naruto laughed a little.
"We got nowhere to go," he pointed out, and he kicked Sasuke in the back as he sat down. It was an uneven, clumsy process—made worse by the futon. Naruto bumped into Sasuke some several thousand times, and he didn't even have the grace to apologize about it.
…
It was on the tip of his tongue, though.
Sasuke saw it. Naruto stared at the floor and bit his lip, and when he caught Sasuke's gaze, the smile was laughing and sheepish. It even had a sound to it. So close to a word. So close to a sorry.
Look at him.
He was trying.
Sasuke straightened his back and made no move to give Naruto space. It was a signal and a siren, blaring into both of their ears, but Naruto was trying. Sasuke could try, too, no matter the way his instincts begged, begged, begged him not to.
Their bodies stayed stiff, but they stayed touching. It was something. It could have been everything.
For the rest of the day, they tried.
For all Naruto talked, he didn't talk about this. It was a small blessing. A kindness. Sasuke thought his fear would inflate and burst him from the inside out if Naruto tried to start talking to him about it all. It wasn't as if he avoided the topic—Naruto was obvious in every part of his body, most of all his eyes—but he tried through half-finished sentences and asking Sasuke to read the rest. Understand the rest. It was spoken, but not aloud. There was some level of shelter there, too—just like the dark.
They spent the day in the room dancing around each other. Sasuke tried, Naruto relented. Naruto tried, Sasuke relented. Their attempts were feeble and pathetic and completely, utterly terrifying. Sasuke became restless in the night, and so they switched—they left the inn into cooler, darker air. Naruto walked slow. Sasuke walked slower.
They weren't alone, but the air was…quiet. Calm. Something in the way they went so—unnoticed.
"Coming around on this place, huh?" Naruto asked, and he was grinning. Sasuke had stalled in his steps again, and it was giving him away.
"Wait until tourist season," Sasuke deadpanned, and Naruto's smile only widened. He fell back to Sasuke's side, and there was a gap between them again. It was smaller than before. Barely perceptible, but Sasuke knew.
"We're tourists," Naruto pointed out, and it was true. It was true, but it was ridiculous. Sasuke wanted to laugh. What were they, on vacation? Something so innocent? Mundane?
Tourists. Them.
"Okay, travellers, then," Naruto offered, reading Sasuke's silence. It was a more comfortable description. Sasuke would give him that.
"We're both," Sasuke sighed, and Naruto grinned wider, as if he'd just gotten Sasuke to admit something. Sasuke pretended he didn't notice. They passed by the food stalls—some still open, to Sasuke's surprise. They'd come down a street with lights over their heads, criss-crossed strings with yellow light.
"What?" Naruto said, doubling back as Sasuke stalled. "You want some—what is that? Plum wine? Or sake—I think that's—is it—?"
Naruto stopped talking to Sasuke completely. He hadn't even wanted any, he'd just been distracted by the lights, but Naruto saw something to be done and it didn't matter if anyone had wanted it so. Sasuke felt a smile on his lips, and Naruto handed him a warm drink.
"It's still kinda cold here," Naruto said, "right?"
"Not to me," Sasuke offered, but it wasn't a rejection. More of an acknowledgement. Naruto huffed as if it was an insult—bristling at any reminder that they might be skilled at different things. Adapted to different things. Sasuke found his amusement once again.
"Whatever," Naruto muttered, and Sasuke smiled into his drink. This paper cup was thin. The heat was already in his hand before it hit his throat, but he felt it—a foolish way to dull his senses. Hamper his reactions.
But they were trying.
This was part of that.
Naruto spared him a curious glance, and the lights reflected in his eyes. Sasuke busied himself with the drink again. It was too convenient of an excuse.
"You don't gotta drink it if you don't like it," Naruto pointed out, but Sasuke didn't mind this sweetness. He didn't know what it was.
Something about the night. Something about the lights in Naruto's eyes.
"Are you displeased?" Sasuke countered, nodding towards Naruto's drink. They shifted past a couple, and then another three—perhaps the crowds were beginning to gather. It meant the recognition would follow—if the season was growing warmer, and this festival wouldn't be the last. Sasuke supposed it might have been the first of many to come. The first of many for people like them.
"No, I—it's great. Kinda sweet for you, though." He rocked towards him, like he was one step away from a nudge. A month ago, it would have been. Now?
…
Sasuke closed the space.
"Oi!" Naruto laughed, surprised and trying to catch the liquid before it spilled from his cup. Sasuke stared straight ahead and at the lights and at the sky and the booths and the trees—
Naruto's eyes stayed on him. He could feel them. By the time he gave in, they'd turned away.
"Y'know," Naruto said, and he'd slowed again. He was looking down at his feet, as if searching for somewhere to place them, "I didn't get a chance to—I dunno. I'm thinking about the letters again."
He looked up, and Sasuke's lips twitched. He did appreciate the explanation.
"Um," Naruto said, and the sight of Sasuke was somehow enough to make him smile, too. It was a rare sight to see Naruto trying to fight it. "You know the one—I think I fell asleep right after we read that one—you know?"
Sasuke took a sip of his drink.
"I do."
There had been a…contrast between the letters. Two in a row, completely clashing in tone. Naruto had fallen asleep somewhere in the second, after muttering his vague, sleep-laden noises of discontent at the first—upset at his past self's frustration. His justified anger. Not that Naruto was ever properly hostile to him, even on paper. He was far too hard on himself to ever properly shift the blame where it ought to be.
The second letter, on the other hand, had seemed perfectly content.
"I feel like I was the meanest to you in that one," Naruto said, and Sasuke eyed him.
"I hope you don't intend to turn this into an apology," he warned, and the smile flashed back onto Naruto's face. Lopsided, and stretching to his right.
"No, I—just—y'know how they were weird? Like—together? I just—looking back on it, I think I just needed to yell about stuff for a bit. And then when it was out, I was just kind of—better." He shrugged and ran his bandaged hand through his hair. "That's why they were so—like that. The letters. I dunno, I just—reading them back, I felt like it didn't really make any…sense or anything. Right?"
Naruto bit his lip and Sasuke greeted his gaze with a consistent, reminding knowledge. Naruto thought Sasuke didn't understand him. Was he a fool?
Yes.
Yes, he was.
"Don't look at me like that," Naruto grumbled, and it made Sasuke hide his smile in his drink. "I—feel like I gotta explain this stuff. You already know. Whatever. I guess you already knew."
Sasuke snorted into his drink, but stayed a few steps back with the thought.
"Perhaps you ought to yell again," he offered, and Naruto blinked at him. Sasuke shrugged. "If it makes you feel so much better."
Naruto laughed.
"I guess you are right here," he said, "if I wanna yell about something to you. Um."
He kicked at the dirt. The pressure was already getting to him. Sasuke took a moment to consider the things Naruto would need to…speak about. The ways Sasuke could prompt him. Get him angry. Get him speaking. Frustrate him until he snapped his honesty back.
…
The night was quiet and calm. Sasuke didn't want to ruin it yet.
What a strange, strange feeling.
"This is hard," Naruto said, and he was staring at his feet again. "I—I don't really—"
He ran a hand through his hair, and the words stopped coming to him. If it was that easy, Sasuke supposed, it would have happened already.
"It was easier to write," Naruto told him, and his laugh was sheepish. It was an excuse he didn't think was good enough, and it was written all over his face.
"Nothing's stopping you now," Sasuke pointed out, and Naruto blinked at him.
"From—what? Writing a letter?" Naruto asked, and Sasuke turned to his drink. He could see Naruto's smile growing again, from the corner of his eye. They were going to have to turn around soon…
"I mean…" Naruto said, and he turned his smile to the sky. "Would you write back?"
Sasuke breathed in.
He supposed he should've expected that.
"Yes," he said, and the night was warm. "Yes, I would."
It was peace and quiet until the next morning. Naruto was full of secret smiles that have Sasuke stomach turning over its nerves—there was solace, he supposed, in knowing Naruto would give him something to work with, something to reply to, but then—
He had never had to reply with Naruto…here. Before. It should have been a good thing—and it was—but Sasuke was trapped in his head again, listening to the part of himself that still wanted to punish. Sasuke's replies would never be good enough. Never make up for lost time. There was a voice in Sasuke's head that told him he wasn't enough and it used to be the one he knew spoke the truth. And now, knowing that it didn't—that was new. That was difficult to remind himself of. The voice was loud and booming, and Sasuke's first instinct was still always to listen. But he was learning to do differently, now.
He was trying, anyway.
And while Naruto wrote his pages and pages, Sasuke practiced a reply in his head and couldn't even get past the first line. The introduction. The address. The stilted dear, the too simple Naruto, resorting to insults wasn't enough and anything else was far too much—
Sasuke hadn't even begun writing yet, and he was failing. He wanted to swear. He wanted to heave out a breath.
Naruto turned his page over. He'll be writing on the back. Of that one. Too. What was this, six? Seven? It wasn't even the afternoon yet.
Naruto let out a laugh, and it broke Sasuke free of his head.
"Man," he breathed out, "can you get rusty at writing letters? I'm so bad at this now."
Sasuke blinked at him.
"Are you?" he asked, and Naruto threw the crinkled paper at the ceiling.
"Yup," he said, falling backwards. The paper ball landed, helpfully, on Naruto's face. "Ow, fuck."
Sasuke coughed to hide his laugh, and Naruto glared at him. It was just enough to distract as he snatched the ball.
"Hey!" Naruto exclaimed. "That's not done!"
Hm.
'Hey, Asshole.'
"Endearing," Sasuke told him, and Naruto attempted to grab the page out of his hands.
'This is me yelling. I'm supposed to be yelling about stuff.'
Sasuke snorted, and Naruto finally succeeded.
"I don't know what to write!" he insisted, scrunching the page up again. "Give me a—I don't know. I keep getting stuck."
He paused, and the ball of paper was in his hand. He didn't let it go, but he didn't open it, either.
"I'll figure something out, though," he insisted, looking up. "Lemmie—give me another couple of days. I think."
He gave Sasuke a sheepish grin—one that was meant to reassure. Sasuke felt a sigh in himself, instead.
Something was bubbling up in him again.
"It's easier to reply to a letter."
It broke free, and Naruto's eyes stuck to him again. It was an offer. He supposed it was an offer. A stupid one, but Naruto's smile was growing, and he was bright and happy and fine. Fine, fine, fine, Sasuke would—Sasuke could do this.
"Yeah?" Naruto asked, and Sasuke…shrugged. As if it was nothing. It wasn't, and one look at Naruto's face would tell him so, but Sasuke's heart was plastered all over this room, and it was between them, and it was hard enough to keep any of it contained anymore. It was red and it was obvious and Naruto could hold it in his hands if he really wanted to—
"Fine," Sasuke said, and he was leaning against the wall. Casual. Nothing. As if he wasn't flooded in—this. This trust. This gentle, hopeful happiness.
It could be deserved, Sasuke told himself. If it was earned. If he earned it…
"Okay," Naruto said, and he was nodding. "Okay, um—I—"
Sasuke stole his paper. Stole his pen. Stole his blankets. Stole his—
"Oi!"
"Get out of here," Sasuke told him. "I'm writing."
"I—"
"You'll get the letter later. Bring back food."
He kicked Naruto out and settled in his bed. Well—across both of theirs, anyway. Sasuke was laying to the side the same way Naruto had been. It was the only way he could access the paper, strewn all across the floor.
Sasuke started the letter with a word. Not a name. Just an opening.
'Listen.'
A letter that would frustrate Naruto into replying without even a thought.
Sasuke knew exactly what to write.
For the first time since he'd come to terms with it, Sasuke let his guilt run free. He let it lead the pen. Lead the words. Of course Naruto couldn't write a letter—what words did he have left? What questions had he not asked? Sasuke had stolen Naruto's chance at a reply and still didn't give it to him. Quiet words between letters weren't enough. This time wasn't enough. Look at all that they had lost. There was no getting that back, was there?
There was no getting back what Sasuke had destroyed.
There was an element of kindness, Sasuke's guilt wrote, that was missing from him. The most basic of thoughts. Of willingness. Of effort. A reply. Naruto would have been happy with a word. Naruto would have been thrilled with an acknowledgment, a receipt of acceptance, without even a reply—and if Sasuke had only told him the words were too much, too hard, if they could have spoken face to face—
The regret spilled out with the ink. He smudged it with his hand. Wrote blotchy and quick. It was a letter littered with imperfections—but then, Naruto's had been, too. Naruto had written quick, written impulsively, let his thoughts pour all over the page and not bothered to second guess them. Sasuke wasn't exactly verbose, but he could explain himself. He could write, given a good enough subject—something that came to him easily.
And he was well-versed in guilt. Practiced in it, even. His level of expertise perhaps surpassed all else he'd trained in.
Besides, the letter had a purpose, beyond its length. This letter was a trick. It was honest and it was true—it was a raw and painful part of him, and not one Naruto was unaware of—
But it was the easiest reply Sasuke could hand to him. Something to catch his instincts. Something to anger him just enough. Naruto's words would want to snap back so immediately that it would be a miracle if the pen even hit the page. Sasuke could even hear them. Sasuke even knew what they might be.
And yet…
…
Sasuke folded the letter once and then again, and pretended he did not feel the change in his heartbeat. The way his hand wanted to shake. At the end of a furious rush was the quiet nothing, and Sasuke had been left in that waiting before—it never eased the nerves. But he knew Naruto's reply—that should have calmed him. He didn't know why his body thought otherwise. Naruto returned to the door with a smile and a tease and a head poking through—
"Am I allowed back in yet?" he asked, and Sasuke flicked the letter in the air. Naruto dropped all of the food to catch it. He spun around and laughed and Sasuke darted to the door before the things started to spill—Naruto was immediately distracted. He stole the place where Sasuke was sitting.
…
Sasuke's heart was hammering.
It didn't take long for Naruto's smile to falter.
The first word came quick. The first reaction. The small scoff, the stand, the reel back and the "okay—"
Naruto pulled the letter down and met his eye. The reply was right there, on his tongue.
…
He snatched a new page instead.
And it was Sasuke's turn to smile, as he began to write. Naruto's writing was furious. It was so angry Sasuke could hear it. It might have been carving through the paper into the floor. Sasuke couldn't stop watching him.
"And that—"
Naruto snapped and flipped the page over. Sasuke's eyebrows raised, and Naruto hunched over the paper. He ground his teeth harder every time he referred back to Sasuke's letter. He was ripping it apart piece by piece.
"The—okay, I can't—this is bullshit," Naruto said, and he'd dropped the pen. He was holding Sasuke's letter up, showing it to him, as if it wasn't his own words— "You know this is bullshit. Don't you? Sasuke—"
"Not in every part of me," Sasuke told him, and Naruto—Naruto—
"What part is this, then?!" Naruto asked, and it was panicked. Sasuke's letter was in the air, and Naruto was waving it—
"A part the waterfall argued against," Sasuke gave him, and it was enough to calm him. Enough to pause him, at least. Enough to let Naruto breathe.
"And—did you listen?" Naruto asked, and Sasuke was—was quiet.
"Because this is bullshit, Sasuke," Naruto said, and he was coming closer. "This is—I could've come to you, too! I could've come looking—like you ignoring me would've stopped me? Like it did before? You had to heal and I knew that, Sasuke, come on—"
"I hardly succeeded in that," Sasuke pointed out, and Naruto let out a frustrated breath—
"Yeah, but you were trying! How the hell were you supposed to know what to do? I didn't know what to do! Blaming yourself and asking everybody else to blame you too isn't gonna fix anything, and it's never gonna work anyway because I'm never gonna blame you and you can just—"
Naruto cut himself off in a pause. In a stare into space. He spun back in the next moment, back to the letter, back to his reply, glaring and writing and using the wall to hold his paper and pen—
Sasuke came to stand beside him, and Naruto finished three more sentences before he looked up.
"I don't care," Naruto told him, and Sasuke wondered which piece of Sasuke's expression he was replying to. "I know you did this on purpose. I don't care. I'm gonna kick your ass about it anyway."
Sasuke let his head lean against the wall.
"I knew you would," he offered quietly, and Naruto's fist hit his shoulder.
Gently. Lingering. There was a pen still in that hand.
Sasuke wondered what it would have done if it had been free.
Sasuke enjoyed Naruto's reply far more than he should have. Far more than Naruto wanted him to. He spent the whole letter smiling, no matter Naruto's insistence that this was serious, Sasuke was being reprimanded, stop laughing about it, asshole, stop laughing—
There was a happiness in his chest that Sasuke couldn't seem to control. A relief and a catharsis, but an exhilaration, too. He was even forgetting to feel the nerves. Naruto tried to punch him and Sasuke snatched him closer by the wrist, and he forgot. They returned to him later, but in that moment—
They came close.
Sasuke let go and Naruto stepped back, but his eyes were deep and blue and Sasuke wasn't trying to avoid their gaze anymore. Naruto's tongue was between his lips and the laugh was nervous. Breathless. Smiling, though. It was a roll of his eyes and kick of his feet against the floor and they hadn't left this room for three days. Naruto's food had been plenty to sustain them. The voices outside were louder than they had been—the weather was warmer, and the crowds would be thicker.
There was no desire in Sasuke to leave.
And so, he wrote back. Naruto hovered over his shoulder and pretended he wasn't reading. Sasuke pushed him away often enough that he was still forced to fill in the blanks, but the letter became some jumbled mess between the reply to the one before, and the reply to Naruto's voice in his ear. 'You're incessant,' he wrote, and Naruto laughed. Sasuke felt his breath on the side of his face. 'But only when it comes to everyone other than yourself.' Sasuke leaned back and looked up and Naruto huffed and walked away. Sasuke stared after him, and Naruto pretended he hadn't just admitted the same in the line before—these raw parts of themselves that they teased around. Laughed around. Naruto was smiling, even now.
"Why would I defend myself when I've got you right there?" he asked, and Sasuke lifted up a leg to glare at him better.
Naruto met him with a grin.
"I should not be a motivating factor," Sasuke told him, and Naruto shrugged and grinned wider. Sasuke's glare narrowed, but he took a moment to think—
And put his reply on the paper, instead.
'It's easier to hear from someone else. You don't deserve to defend yourself. You haven't earned the right.'
Naruto hopped back over to him. His knees bumped against Sasuke's back.
'It's why you jump so quickly to the defense of everyone else—you want someone to do that for you, too.'
"You're taking my light," he told Naruto's shadow, and Naruto ignored him.
"Don't care," he said, reaching for the letter. "I dunno if that's—maybe. But that's not why you do it, though."
"No," Sasuke replied, not letting go of it. "No, it isn't."
'Try defending yourself.' Sasuke wrote. 'Try it now.'
"You're trying to turn this on me," Naruto said, and maybe Sasuke was. Maybe he was. But he looked up at Naruto, and he had issued a challenge.
That was all it took.
"Fine," Naruto huffed out, and he stole the pen out of Sasuke's hand.
'I wasn't treated good as a kid.'
"Happy?" he asked, and Sasuke took the pen back.
"More of a satisfaction than a happiness," Sasuke corrected, writing just under Naruto's scribbling.
'Too easy.'
"Easy?!" Naruto yelled, as if he didn't know the offense was exactly what Sasuke was going for. "You—"
'You weren't treated well as an adult, either.'
Naruto paused just before he snatched the pen back. His fingers were still on the top. It made the ink trail, but Sasuke still kept his grip loose enough to allow it to be stolen. Naruto didn't take it back, though.
"By Konoha," he clarified, but Naruto had already known.
"Yeah, but I—that's not really true," Naruto said. "They were pretty nice to me."
"In their demanding of you?" Sasuke deadpanned. "They asked quite kindly, did they?"
"Th—okay, that—"
"Tell me this," Sasuke interrupted. 'Were they full of apologies? Did they acknowledge their mistakes?"
Naruto let out a humourless snort.
"Not really realistic to ask everybody to do something like that, though," he muttered, and Sasuke leaned back. His head pressed to Naruto's body, and he used it to look up.
"And if you been the one to treat a child that way?" he asked, and it was quiet. "What would you have done?"
Naruto let out a groan and pretended to collapse. Sasuke caught his weight, and let it slide off of him.
"What am I, back in the waterfall again?" Naruto asked, a melted puddle on the floor. Sasuke tilted his body to face him. He had to cross a leg through Naruto's—twist it just over one, under the other.
He did. It made Naruto's eyes open.
"They had no right to ask you to be Hokage," Sasuke said, and he knew Naruto's protest before he even opened his mouth, "even if you wanted to be."
"They weren't gonna tell me I couldn't be," Naruto said, "not after all that."
"No," Sasuke agreed, "but did they ask you if it was what you wanted? Any of them?"
Naruto's lips thinned.
"Or did they just expect it of you?"
"I was pretty loud about it, though. Before. And it's not like it's—it's not easy to talk like that, c'mon," Naruto said quietly, waving at the both of them. Waving between them, as if they were the example. As opposed to the opposite.
"If I could make an effort, they could," Sasuke pointed out, pulling back. Turning back to the letter. He suddenly had much more to say—
Naruto laughed.
"Come on," he said again, and he was smiling. His head was tilting with the weight of his affection. "They don't know me like you do."
…
The thought came with a lump in Sasuke's throat. He swallowed them both, and found his nerves again. Naruto flexed his toes, and they played with the fabric of Sasuke's shirt.
He was realizing his power, here. Sasuke saw it in the way he sat up. The way the sunlight sparkled in his eyes.
"What about you?" he asked, and Sasuke's nerves were furious at being ignored for so long—
"How come I have to acknowledge the bad stuff people did, but you don't?"
"Are you under the impression that I am unaware of the injustices against me?" Sasuke deadpanned, and Naruto rolled his eyes.
"Not like that, asshole," he said, leaning forward. "I mean like using that when you think about yourself. When you talk to yourself, whatever. You're way meaner to yourself than you'd be to me. 'Cause you still think you deserve it."
"I find it difficult to believe," Sasuke told him, and it was even quieter, now, "that we deserve the same things."
"We do," Naruto replied. "And it's either good or it's bad. You pick."
…
"Blackmail," Sasuke said, and Naruto's grin was blinding. "Unbelievable."
Naruto hopped to his feet and let out an innocent whistle. Sasuke wanted to tackle him to the ground. Sasuke wanted to wipe that smile off his face. Sasuke wanted to grab him by the collar, press him up against the wall, tell him everything he was and how it was so much more than Sasuke would ever be—
But they were equal. Weren't they? Was that not what made them what they were? Sasuke looked at Naruto and saw someone like him. Naruto looked at him and saw the same. Something in them was carved the same shape. Chipped and scratched, broken in different ways, and Naruto's shined brighter than Sasuke's—
But they were the same. Connected in the ways they'd lived their lives. Connected in the way they bound themselves to each other. Connected in what they deserved?
It seemed impossible.
Sasuke couldn't even believe he was considering it.
"You have a way," Naruto read, and he was back over Sasuke's shoulder again, "of making insane statements sound true. Do—nothing I say is insane!"
Sasuke laughed. He couldn't help it.
"I'll bear the burden of your hatred and die with you," Sasuke repeated back to him, because those words had been burned in him. Either the reason for his sleeplessness or the words that drenched his dreams—for a time, they'd been inescapable.
They still were.
"That's—okay, you can't just pull it out of—that made sense to you and that's all that mattered," Naruto pointed out, and Sasuke let his amusement shake his head. Strange to be able to laugh about it, now. Strange that that was all he wanted to do.
"You started the dying for me stuff anyway," Naruto grumbled, and it blinked Sasuke back to him.
"With Haku," Naruto says. "Y'know, the Waves mission. All that."
He waved a hand around them vaguely, and Sasuke inhaled a deep, suffering breath. Yes. Yes, well.
Naruto had him there.
…
"Did—" Naruto started, and his hand was in his hair. He was nervous again. "You said that your body—y'know, moved on its own or whatever."
Naruto looked at him as if it was a question. Sasuke supposed it was.
"It did," Sasuke told him, "in a way."
Naruto's hand stayed stuck.
"In the moment I knew what I was doing," Sasuke told him, looking away. "Maybe not entirely why."
There was a pause. The birdsong filtered in through the walls with the sunlight—above the soft murmur of voices outside. And Sasuke…
It hadn't been easy. Not the aftermath. In the moment, it had been an instinct. A split-second decision—immediate. Simple. The path was clear and Sasuke hadn't needed to deal with the reasons why, or the emotions underneath them. Trying to justify it to himself, afterwards, with Naruto's blue eyes staring a hole through the back of his head—
That had been a nightmare.
"It's a lot to process for a thirteen year old," he offered, and Naruto huffed out a breath.
"Yeah," he said, kicking his bare feet against the floor. "You're telling me."
Sasuke hid his smile in the letter.
'How undeserved did that feel?' he asked the page, and the scratch of the pen called Naruto back to hover over him. 'Do you still think it unjustified?'
"Well, yeah," Naruto said, and Sasuke snorted. "'Course I do."
"So why are you able to die?" he asked, looking up. "But I am not?"
"I mean," Naruto pointed out, "it wasn't just gonna be me. We were gonna die together and—stuff."
"Stuff," Sasuke repeated, and he wanted to laugh. It was insane. The whole thing was insane. His head had been steeped so deeply in anguish that it took something of that level to break through, he supposed. But the worst part was knowing Naruto had meant every word.
Knowing him, he still meant it now.
"You're the strangest person to walk the earth," he told him, and Naruto tried his best to look offended.
"Wow," he said, "I mean—okay, sure, yeah, whatever, but that's gonna change as soon as you stand up."
The grin returned to his face.
Sasuke narrowed his eyes.
Naruto flicked his cheek and ran away.
…
He wasn't fucking fast enough.
A/N: lots to work through this chapter. but we're getting there :)
More soon,
- Kinomi