Fish Bird

魚鳥

Now it was awkward again. Or at least that was how Naruto would have described it, had he possessed the courage to face Sasuke directly. Instead, he avoided him—ignoring him entirely when forced to share a room. A coward's approach, perhaps, but his emotions refused clarity. Part of him wanted to kick down Sasuke's door and beat him senseless until blood and tears brought catharsis. He'd force humility into Sasuke—and himself—until they collapsed into exhausted sleep, swearing and weeping, only to wake as if restored to simpler days: brothers, friends, unchanged.

Had this been all Naruto felt, life might have been straightforward. But another part of him burned fiercer—a visceral urge to storm Sasuke's room, strip him bare, and lose himself in the heat of skin and breath. Was it love or lust? If love, he'd have moved mountains by now. But this was sharper, wilder—a knife's edge between obsession and destruction.

With Sakura, there had been peace. He could close his eyes knowing she'd be there at dawn, whether scolding him for forgotten chores or brushing fingers through his hair with her tender smile. Sasuke? Sasuke was a storm.

For three days, Naruto perfected avoidance. He pretended not to hear Sasuke's demands—like passing the soy sauce—only to "accidentally" knock it toward him. He fled rooms when Sasuke entered, except once when Kiba arrived at dawn, babbling about irreplaceable socks under the couch (and, incidentally, how are you and Sasuke doing?). Naruto froze as Sasuke emerged, blank-faced, from the shadows. The raw ache in his throat from Sasuke's grip still throbbed. When their eyes met—Sasuke's cold, unreadable—Naruto slammed the door hard enough to rattle the walls.

Unsurprisingly, Shikamaru appeared fifteen minutes into Naruto's archive duty, a bag of custard doughnuts in hand. They didn't speak of it—Shikamaru never did unless Kiba prodded him. Instead, he let Naruto slump against his shoulder, silent hiccups shaking his frame, before helping sort dusty scrolls—a punishment Tsunade devised after the takeaway ramen incident.

They hadn't discussed it—Shikamaru never did unless Kiba prodded him with a proverbial stick into emotional conversations, and even then, he complied grudgingly. Shikamaru nudged the last doughnut toward Naruto as the blond slumped against his bony shoulder, stifling hiccups born of exhaustion. Afterwards, Shikamaru abandoned his duties to help sort dusty archive volumes—a punishment Tsunade had devised after the infamous "takeaway ramen" incident (not strictly Naruto's fault, though no one believed him). She'd also rejected his ANBU application outright, dismissing his skills without assessment. "Wrong timing," she'd muttered, though Naruto suspected her irritation stemmed from Sakura's missing team. Every mention of Sakura made Tsunade's eye twitch before she hurled whatever was nearest—much to Shizune's dismay.

Naruto's frustration simmered. Kakashi's mission—a two-week assignment—now stretched into its fourth week. He missed Sakura fiercely. The previous night, he'd fled to her apartment, unable to endure Sasuke's ceaseless pacing. Sitting at her kitchen table, the walls seemed to hiss Liar. Cheat. He'd dug through her plant pots until he found the ring: blood-red in its damp box, a relic he'd buried months ago.

Sasuke. The ring mirrored him—obsessive, dangerous, impossible to relinquish.

Naruto's dreams had betrayed him long before this. Visions of Sasuke—haunting, erotic—clinked through his mind as he twisted the ring around his finger. When did obsession become love? Or was love merely obsession's shadow, a delusion that he could reclaim what he'd lost? Sasuke was an amputated limb, phantom pain throbbing as Naruto limped forward with a splintered stick.

He didn't know what he wanted anymore. To wake beside Sasuke? To heal him? To chain himself to Sasuke's darkness?

Rain lashed Naruto's face as he stumbled home, jacket clinging to his skin. He sneezed, imagining Sasuke reducing the house to rubble—a thought that almost made him laugh. Then he smelled smoke.

Egg fried rice. Sasuke had poured oil into a pan (clueless about gas stoves), igniting a firework-like blaze. Water worsened the flames until they danced near the ceiling. Naruto yelped, crashing into the kitchen, and grabbed the scalding handle. The pan slipped, setting a dishcloth aflame.

"Mother-fucking hermit snake bollocks!"

Sasuke doused him with soapy water. The fire died in a hiss, leaving Naruto sodden and singed.

Sasuke took one look at Naruto's singed eyebrows and smiled—he couldn't help himself. It was too damned ridiculous.

Naruto squelched to the kitchen taps, ducking his head under the cold stream. When he glanced up, Sasuke's smirk lingered. Then, to his astonishment, they both laughed: jagged, disbelieving barks that filled the smoky air.

"You call me an idiot?" Naruto rasped, gripping the counter as water sluiced off him like a drenched hound.

"You nearly torched the village over egg fried rice."

"This," Sasuke arched a brow, that infuriating superiority sharpening his tone, "from the man with half his eyebrows crisped off?"

"They're still there, dickhead!" Naruto scrubbed at his browline, fingertips confirming it.

"Next time, let me cook."

"I was hungry! Why should I wait for your lazy arse?"

(He'd been waiting. All day.)

"Then eat instant ramen, you walking disaster."

"That shite tastes like sawdust!"

"Your Highness will starve, then."

"Cut the crap, Sasuke!" Naruto lurched forward, dripping fury. "You've avoided me all week!"

Sasuke didn't flinch. "Says the man who dodges rooms I enter."

Naruto's voice cracked. "You tried to strangle me!"

The accusation hung, brutal and raw. Sasuke's throat bobbed. Naruto hadn't known when he'd forgiven him—for the choking, the taunts, the hospital vigil—but the forgiveness ached in him, rotten and undeniable.

"I just…" Naruto scrubbed a hand through his hair, laughing bitterly. "I wanted to help. But it's always Itachi, isn't it? Even dead, he's winning." His smile frayed. "Guess I'm the ultimate loser. Your 'Dead Last'."

Sasuke stepped closer. Rain drummed the window as Naruto caught the storm-grey of his eyes—silvered by lamplight, unreadable.

"You'd… rather leave, wouldn't you?"

Sasuke's breath warmed Naruto's scarred cheek. "I have to."

A lie, or the closest either dared. Naruto's pulse roared as Sasuke's tongue grazed his lips, coaxing them open.

"Let me out," Sasuke murmured, catlike, hands slipping under Naruto's soaked jacket.

Naruto snarled, arching into the touch despite himself. Sasuke's palms scorched his stomach, trailing lower—

"Just a moment outside," Sasuke breathed against his ear. "Sun. Wind. Then I'll—"

"You'll leave."

Sasuke stilled. Naruto fisted his hair, forcing their gazes to clash.

"What if I want you to stay?"

Sasuke had closed his eyes, as it was easier this way. He wouldn't have to look upon Naruto's shattered innocence. He could shatter Naruto now, unleash sharp, cruel things onto his psyche that would break him in half. But knowing Naruto, it would probably only give the blond another incentive to chase after him again after he'd put himself back together. Naruto was good at piecing himself back together, and the words were too reminiscent of the Valley of the End anyway to hold any real fortitude. Instead, he'd have to settle for breaking Naruto's heart piece by piece and sewing it back together in a way which didn't include him.

He pressed the right buttons this time. "What about Sakura?"

Naruto's face had gone through a rainbow of emotions at this, from anger to betrayal, to confusion and then to sadness.

"Sakura would...she's...she always..."

But Sasuke could feel Naruto's determination wavering somewhat; the boundary felt it, the thing around the house had wavered and fluctuated for a second. They had felt the chakra of it flickering throughout their bodies and were filled with it for a moment.

"Let me out, Naruto."

It wasn't a demand this time, it wasn't a threat, but spoken as if to a lover, and it had wrenched at Naruto's heart just beneath his ribs, as if he was splitting slowly in two.

Naruto had let him; all the while Sasuke had kissed him, his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his cheeks, his forehead. Lips and teeth had lingered on his skin, as Naruto felt the breath in his throat come short and stick in his chest. He had made a mistake with the hand signs a few times, his fingers trembling with the adrenaline and high sickness running through his system. He remembered shaking his head and gasping as Sasuke had taken his hands in each of his and raised them to his mouth, gently teasing the tips of each fingers with his lips and sliding them slowly across his tongue, all the while looking at Naruto with such dark, deep, bottomless eyes it had seemed impossible to think of anything but Sasuke. It was like being overpowered, filled from the inside out; he didn't understand all the loving motions Sasuke had made as he unbound the Jutsu, like the way Sasuke had rubbed his cheek against the inside of Naruto's wrist after he'd let his hands fall away after the first unbinding was done. Sasuke had said so many little, meaningless wonderful things as he did it, unaware and yet aware at the same time that they were slowly walking away from the kitchen, moving gently into the hallway. Naruto had pressed so close to Sasuke so he could hear Sasuke's heart beat thumping against his ribcage.

The window had been already open, making it easy for Sasuke to slip out of, one long-fingered hand testing and then out, and then the other, before he had swung his whole body across the sill and stood in the rain and the wind and turned his head to the sky and let the water slide and sluice across pale skin and opened his mouth and drank in the raindrops.

Then he had laughed, ashen grey eyes turning to Naruto. It wasn't the sneering, mocking smile that he gave Naruto, but something of freedom and things to come. The truest smile that Sasuke had given Naruto since before the Valley of the End, perhaps, and in that second Naruto had panicked, struck suddenly by loss and abandoning sense as he ran after Sasuke, jumping onto the rooftop with him, sliding across the tiles, forgetting everything about the art of being a ninja. So like and yet at the same time, unlike their childhood, everything so familiar and so distant.

Familiar in the way Sasuke stood, smelt and looked. But the way they had crushed their lips together, Naruto fighting for something, anything, he didn't know. He was afraid, he didn't want to...not able to lose Sasuke, and yet wanting to let him go, like opening the doors of a golden gilded cage and hoping the caught bird would fly back to him of its own free will.

Sasuke was going, he'd let him go, he was going to leave him, again.

Sasuke Uchiha had run his mouth down the length of Naruto's neck, biting the junction where the collarbone met the muscles of the neck; he had tugged Naruto's hands towards him, filled suddenly with childlike excitement.

"Chase me," he had muttered, not needing to give Naruto the incentive more than once - the reflex must have been second nature to him at least by now, if not maybe even his first.

Then he was off, as fast and faster still than Naruto remembered him to be, still a manipulative bastard as always but this time Naruto didn't even question it. He had run after Sasuke, blessed for the dark and gloomy sky and the evening light that cast shadows everywhere and obscured faces.

Everyone would be mad, his life would be topsy-turvy, more so after this, but he cared not at this moment. Sasuke had woven in and out of buildings, taking deserted backstreets and waiting for Naruto down back alleys. Waiting for the blond to run to a place where he'd been previously and then vanished from, and whilst Naruto had stood there dumbly, panting and looking round, licking his lips, Sasuke would pounce. It was like some erotic fantasy where the world was their dream and Naruto would let Sasuke beat him to the ground, where they'd grind against each other, grit against their hands and painfully, almost agonizingly hard. A mouth would descend across him, torturing him with small, brushing kisses, nipping, teasing, trailing, fingers cold and wet raking over hot and searing skin. Fingers pressing into Naruto's mouth as he arched and yelled out, the familiar rocking motion Sasuke would create as he pushed his own hips against Naruto and the blond could do nothing but follow it.

But every time Naruto tried to make Sasuke go lower, Sasuke would pull away, disappearing off for Naruto to chase down again in some other godforsaken dirty corner, at the back of a derelict shop, a broken-down housing estate, and the rickety wooden fence in front of someone's front yard.

Gradually the buildings had broken away to trees and the ground turned to grass, and the wall was jumped, and Naruto realised they were outside of Konoha. Outside it, and he'd let Sasuke out, and it was probably the stupidest thing he'd ever done as he stood in the middle of a clearing of trees after chasing down Sasuke's shadow.

Except there was nothing in the clearing.

Not even Sasuke's shadow.

Naruto didn't even remember yelling, but he had, long and hard, so it had ripped his throat and tore at his voice box, and Sasuke had come down from the line of trees he had been hiding in (he'd always been so awfully good at doing that), sitting on a branch and swinging his legs. His eyes had devoured Naruto from head to toe, savage-looking, like a predator, then Naruto had asked, asked because Sasuke had come when he'd called for him and he'd never done that before.

"Please?"

He was even more surprised when Sasuke had given.

In retrospect, Naruto didn't know if it was just the sex that Sasuke had wanted, part of him argued that Naruto had wanted to know what sex in the rain would have been like. It wasn't sound reasoning, but in nine months' time he'd convince himself that this would be the reason why, and not because he loved Sasuke, and Sasuke hadn't given it to him because he'd loved Naruto too.

Naruto would learn to turn the situation on its head.

They had stripped each other of clothes, and Naruto had felt Sasuke's tongue lick and work at his navel and struggled to keep his legs from buckling beneath him, tilting his head up to the rain and feeling the water slide sensually across his hot lips, drinking it in and gasping as fingers dug into his abs and ass, digging into the taut muscle there. He had sank to his knees then, wanting to find Sasuke's mouth with his own then, groaning and snarling as Sasuke's tongue merely touched his own, the tip playing, dancing, duelling with his own before darting away to slip around the shell of his ear which left both of Sasuke's hands free to pull down his trousers.

"We've waited so fucking long," was Sasuke's dark and husky murmur into Naruto's ear as he had pushed him forcefully down and beneath him. The blond had wriggled and squirmed beneath him, soil getting into his hair and his skin, blinking out the rain and listening to the thunder, why was Sasuke always so fucking gorgeous?

Why must he always be so gorgeous, even when he wanted to pound his face into the ground for being so arrogant, so assuming.

"Why must you always talk?" Naruto had panted out, his voice slightly strangled by the amount of frustration contained within it, lust and desire all culminating at once. His hands had slid down to Sasuke's waistband and slid it down towards his ankles, regarding his erection with his eyes with deliberate slowness, taking in the size, cornflower blue then rising to look at Sasuke's eyes again to find them half-lidded, almost lazy-looking with lust.

Naruto had smiled at him slowly, generous wide mouth, and Sasuke had caught himself thinking of all the wonderful and dirty things he could make Naruto do to him.

He made Naruto kiss him again slowly, pushing his knees between Naruto's spread legs to widen them further. He teased lightly across the places Naruto so clearly wanted touched, watching with fascination as Naruto rolled, arched, and whimpered beneath him. He felt fingernails scrape his back, digging hard, leaving scorching red marks in their wake.

Naruto ground up into Sasuke, who panted, hissed, and bit back, hot tension coiling in his abdomen. He could feel himself pulsing with desperate want, knowing he wouldn't last much longer. Drenched in rainwater and mud, Naruto gazed up at him with hazy eyes, lips swollen from kisses, a red mark blooming on his cheek where Sasuke's teeth had grazed him.

God, Sasuke had wanted this—had wanted him—for so long.

He coated his fingers with saliva while Naruto watched through rain-clumped lashes, then hooked one of Naruto's legs over his shoulder. The intrusion was cold, unfamiliar, a tearing sting that made Naruto stiffen.

Then the fingers withdrew, and—fuck—it hurt. Sasuke sheathed himself fully, thicker and hotter than before. Naruto's eyes flew wide, wondering if he'd ever recover from this, if he could let Sasuke walk away afterwards.

"Once," Sasuke breathed against his mouth, half-mad with need. "Just once."

Naruto echoed the word, voice rasping, unsure whether rain or tears streaked his face.

So much. I wanted this. I needed you.

When Sasuke withdrew almost entirely, Naruto cried out, craving the heat and fullness. He wanted to bite the smirk off Sasuke's face as the Uchiha thrust back in, ruthless. The scream it tore from Naruto's lips nearly undid Sasuke then and there. A minute—maybe two—of relentless rhythm later, Sasuke found that spot that made Naruto writhe and beg. He ruined him for anyone else, biting, marking, claiming, as skin slapped and Naruto chanted his name.

Afterwards, Sasuke collapsed atop him, spent and shaking. "Once," he repeated, though the lie curdled in his chest.

He meant to leave. To never look back.

But the barrier was down. Shadows stirred beyond the trees, drawn to the chakra now unbound.