i want you to want me (i'd love you to love me)

by Aethelar

Summary:

Five times Naruto kissed Sasuke and he left, plus one time Sasuke kissed Naruto and stayed.

One.

Naruto couldn’t tell you when it started. Maybe it was in Wave, when Sasuke threw himself in front of a hail of senbon because he thought Naruto was going to die, or when Naruto threw himself into a Kyuubi-fuelled rage because he thought Sasuke was dead. It probably wasn’t then. If it started in Wave, it would have started in one of the quiet moments when it was dark and the others were asleep, when Naruto was meant to be asleep but he lay awake and stared at the ceiling and thought, He could so easily have been dead.

They were lucky. Haku was kind. When a genin team fought an S-class criminal and his prodigy student, they weren’t expected to come out the other side alive.

And… Naruto’s never had to face that before. He knows death is a thing. He knows you can lose people and never get them back. Obviously he knows; he lost his parents before he even knew he had them, he grew up in a ninja village. But it’s different when it’s someone who’s meant to be alive. It’s different when it’s someone he knows. It’s different when he holds his own hands out in front of himself and doesn’t see a single mark on his skin, but when he looks at Sasuke he sees bandages and the shadow of him lying on the ground and the way he refuses to wince when he walks.

The bandages will go. Sasuke will heal. This time. Naruto’s fear of losing him will not.

Or maybe it started on the disastrous mission to retrieve a golden statue from a band of thieves, where Sakura got taken hostage and Naruto and Sasuke ended up with their hands stuck together by a disgustingly elastic gunk. It took three days for it to dry and slowly crumble away, and while the assorted bathroom breaks and showers were achieved with much defensive posturing and eyes pressed very firmly shut, there were other things that stuck in Naruto’s memory.

Sasuke’s house was meticulously clean. He cooked dinner each night from scratch - not complicated, but still traditional and homemade in a way Naruto had never had. His hair fluffed up when he towelled it dry, and he counted the seconds when he brushed his teeth. He bristled, ears turning an embarrassed red when he needed a second hand to brace the chopping board, and he tugged demandingly and waited for Naruto to work out what he wanted instead of asking for help. When he pulled his shirt off to change into pyjamas he got it stuck on where their wrists joined, and blinked at it in baffled confusion as he tried to work out how to fix it.

When Naruto opened his mouth to suggest something, Sasuke startled as though he’d forgotten he was there, then pulled the shirt back on in a jerky movement and retreated so far under the blanket his arm ended up twisted painfully behind him. He ignored Naruto’s complaints that he’d hurt himself if he slept like that. He also ignored Naruto’s awkward attempts to find a position that wouldn’t actually dislocate his shoulder, but when Naruto wriggled his way out from under the blanket for the fourth time Sasuke elbowed him in the ribs and told him to go the fuck to sleep or he’d be banished to the floor.

“I’m trying,” he complains. “Your bed’s all wrong. It’s squishy. And really hot.”

Sasuke makes an irritated sound and emerges from his cocoon to glare. “It’s a bed, idiot. It’s meant to be squishy. Sleep on top of the quilt. Or pour a glass of water over yourself, I don’t care, just stop moving.”

“Ew, no,” Naruto says, wrinkling his nose. “That’s how monsters get you. Don’t you have a lighter blanket?”

“I get cold. I also set the monsters on fire. Go to sleep.”

That’s not how monsters work, Naruto wants to protest, but Sasuke rolls his eyes before he can and kicks half the blanket down so it only covers Naruto’s feet. “Sleep, damnit,” he says, and uses the hand not currently stuck to Naruto’s to pull the pillow firmly over his head.

In the morning, Naruto wakes up first. It’s quiet. Sasuke is still curled in a tight ball, but he’s facing Naruto this time with his arm pulled in front of him instead of twisted awkwardly behind. The pillow’s dropped down the gap between the mattress and the wall and Sasuke’s head is bent forward to rest against his shoulder, dark hair a tangled mess of sideways fluff, face all but hidden under the quilt. He’s not soft, because Sasuke’s never soft, but. He’s quiet. He’s not the worst person Naruto could have ended up holding hands with for the next three days.

And, maybe it’s then. Not for the way Sasuke tenses suddenly, wary as he comes awake and remembers there’s someone else in the room, not for the way he stubbornly showers with his shirt on because he can’t take it off to change it for a clean one but he refuses to wear it again without washing it, not even for the way he shivers miserably through breakfast while he waits for it to dry but insists flatly that he’s fine whenever Naruto dares to mention it - or, not only for that.

“Just let me help,” Naruto says, grabbing for any of the four things Sasuke’s trying to balance on one hand.

Sasuke scowls and shifts them out of reach. “I didn’t ask you to.”

“You don’t have to. Give. You’ll drop them.” He lunges, and catches him off guard enough to take the chopsticks and one of the cups of tea. He shoots Sasuke a triumphant grin, and Sasuke schools his face back into his usual bitch face and hnns back in dismissal.

He didn’t do it fast enough though. The moment of surprise, of something that almost looked like vulnerability - it stays with Naruto. Later, when their hands are free and he’s turned it over in his mind enough to know that he doesn’t understand it but that it feels like it’s important, he says, “Why don’t you ever ask for help?”

“Because I don’t need it.”

“Everyone needs help though. That’s why we’re in teams.”

Sasuke gives him an annoyed glare, shoulders hunching up towards his ears. “Teams are different. It’s just how we’re taught to fight, there’s no reason we couldn’t work alone if we had to.”

There are a lot of ways Naruto could disagree with that, but what he says is, “Do you want to?”

And here: Sasuke’s muscles tense, and then, carefully, deliberately, relax. His shoulders go down. His glare smooths out into a blank, dismissive lack of interest. He removes every trace of vulnerability from his expression, and says, “Obviously. You take too much effort to clean up after.”

A month ago, Naruto might have believed him. Now, he just leans back on his hands and says, “I don’t want to either. If you won’t tell me when you need help, I’ll just guess. You know that, right? It’d be easier if you asked.”

There’s a pause. Naruto keeps looking ahead, because he knows Sasuke well enough to know that if he watches too closely he’ll make Sasuke try to hide himself away. Eventually, though, Sasuke snorts, and kicks at his ankle in pretend annoyance. “You’re a pain,” he says. “I’m not going to ask.”

It sounds like a question. “I’m really bad at guessing,” Naruto warns, and lets his head flop sideways so Sasuke can see his grin.

“You’re bad at everything,” Sasuke retorts, but the blankness has gone and the smirk tugging at the corner of his lips is - not soft, still, because Sasuke isn’t soft, but. It’s something.

Maybe it started when Naruto was small and loud and obnoxious and people who tried to ignore him only made him shout louder that one day he’d make them see. He barrelled through life like a train without breaks and if there was a track he couldn’t find it but what did it matter because it wasn’t like anyone would care -

“Do you ever shut up,” Sasuke snarled, small and quiet and assholish, and the whole class was vying for his attention but the one who had it was Naruto.

“I’m going to be Hokage!” Naruto had said. “I’m going to be the strongest, and everyone will listen to me, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me, believe it!”

“What kind of Hokage wears orange and can’t throw a shuriken? And even if you are you’ll still be an idiot. I don’t have to listen to you if I don’t want to.”

“You’re listening now, aren’t you?” he’d crowed gleefully, and Sasuke’d clenched his fists and hnned and tried to walk away. He didn’t answer again, but he scowled, and glared, and when he beat Naruto in taijutsu he cocked his head in smug satisfaction at his victory, and Naruto focussed all his efforts to be annoying and attention seeking and too loud to ever ignore on Sasuke because Sasuke couldn’t ignore him -

Later, he’ll claim that it was because they were both lonely. That he saw in Sasuke someone he thought would understand, and that the root of their friendship is that when they were kids they were the same. This is a lie. Naruto didn’t see someone who was lonely, he saw an ass and he called him one. He bothered Sasuke because Sakura-chan only ever spoke to him to tell him to stop, and he built his identity as the rival who hated the class prodigy because enough people paid attention to Sasuke that they couldn’t fail to notice him, even if only to laugh at how badly Sasuke outranked him.

When he asked, “What does Sakura-chan see in you,” he wasn’t being facetious. It was an honest question. The important thing about Sasuke wasn’t the way he looked or how skilled he was, it was the way he looked back and acknowledged that Naruto was a person, an idiot, loud and obnoxious and orange and I don’t have to listen to you if I don’t want to but with every pissed-off glare he did.

He never did that to Sakura. He ignored her. He didn’t ignore Naruto.

And then they got put on a team, and they bit and fought and postured, and when Naruto challenged Sasuke to a race Sasuke cared about winning; they started angry and they started not understanding each other in the slightest beyond being annoying and being annoyed, and somewhere along the road Sasuke threw himself between Naruto and a hail of senbon and Naruto watched until he knew when Sasuke needed help but didn’t know how to say and Sasuke and Naruto fought back to back as well as face to face and -

After the chunin exams, Sasuke is scared. Something’s wrong. He won’t say what, and Naruto can’t guess this one.

“Naruto,” he says, like he’s drunk on it. “I want to fight you too.”

He’s sweaty, bleeding, hair wild and eyes red. The mark on his neck is glowing and black flames are creeping over his skin.

He’s small, shivering, hunched in a hospital gown that’s too thin. He gets cold too easily. He won’t ask for a thicker blanket.

He’s desperate, panicked, shouting Naruto’s name as he hurtles towards his brother like he thinks he won’t survive.

He’s breaking. He’s afraid. He’s angry. He needs help. His hands crackle with lightning he can barely control and he says, “I want to fight you too.”

And Naruto says, “I don’t want to fight you.”

“Why not? Why not? Do you think I’m not good enough? Do you think I’m weak, is that what you think - you’re saying I’m not worth it, you can’t even be bothered -”

Naruto kisses him. It’s sloppy, not because it’s wet but because it barely connects, noses in the way and lips pressed more against Sasuke’s skin than his mouth. Sasuke sucks in a startled breath and the lightning flickers out, but when Naruto leans back in he flinches away.

“What are you doing,” he says, eyes wide and hands raised with his palms out as though ready to push Naruto away if he tries again.

“I don’t know,” Naruto answers honestly. He doesn’t. Not really. He just - “I don’t want to fight you.”

Sasuke got a cold, once. Back at the academy. In winter, when he huddled in his short sleeves and wide collar and tugged the arm warmers down over his hands but refused to wear a jacket for whatever stupid reason that Naruto hadn’t cared about. He got a cold, and he’d worn a face mask and creased his eyes in offended disgust every time he’d had to sneeze, and when the teachers asked if he was sure he didn’t need a break he’d held himself like stone and told them he was fine.

Through taijutsu practice he had been. He’d made every block. He’d hit every target when they moved on to kunai. He’d sat straight in class and paid attention and answered every question perfectly if he was called on to do so, and at the end of lunch break Naruto had slipped out the back window to escape and accidentally seen him leaning against the wall for support and pressing his hands against his head in agony as he struggled to breathe. By the time Naruto was caught and dragged back to the classroom Sasuke was glassy-eyed and tense with pain, fingers gripping too hard to the edge of his desk to keep him from swaying in his seat. His hair stuck to the back of his neck with sweat. When the teacher asked him to demonstrate the correct way to infiltrate an enemy camp, he walked to the front and drew the solution on the black board and didn’t let himself shake, but when he came back to his seat he leaned forward to sit down and almost overbalanced from the strain.

Now, Sasuke stares at him with wide eyes, too pale, stretched thin from lack of sleep and exhausted from the weight of being afraid. (What is he afraid of? He’s not worth killing. His brother doesn’t care. He’s insignificant. It’s the only reason he’s still alive.) Naruto takes a step towards him and says, “Sasuke.” He doesn’t know how to help. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

For a long second, Sasuke is frozen, palms up, hesitant - then he blinks. His eyes flash from black to red. His expression closes off. He flexes his fingers, and the faint sparks of lightning flare up into a tightly compressed ball of anger and pain. “You are,” he spits, in his bare arms and bare feet with no arm warmers and no forehead protector and nowhere to hurt if he patches over the cracks with hate. He gives no warning when he charges. His chidori is aimed at Naruto in the way a forest fire is aimed at the trees it eats. He doesn’t care.

Naruto’s rasengan is an automatic response. He lashes out because he just offered Sasuke something important, even if neither of them realise how much, and Sasuke turned it aside and refused to see. He lashes out because Sasuke isn’t listening, and he thinks he’ll have time later to try again. He lashes out because Sasuke asked him to, and he doesn’t know what else to do.

The reasons don’t matter. Sasuke leaves. From the hospital roof, from the village, from the valley of the end.

At the end of the school day, when Sasuke had his cold, Naruto had hung back because Iruka had promised him ramen if he sat through the rest of the afternoon without trying to run again. He’d sought out Iruka, and he’d found him frowning at Sasuke in worry, writing him a note to take to the medic nins at the hospital and asking if he wanted someone to go with him to get his medicine. At the time, Naruto had been annoyed that Iruka would consider skipping out on ramen in favour of a bastard who didn’t appreciate him, and he’d been relieved when Sasuke had turned him down. He waited up the tree for Sasuke to leave because he didn’t want Iruka to think he’d been snooping, and he’d watched the other boy pause outside the gate and throw the crumpled note in one of the bins before turning and walking home.

The note missed. Sasuke’d made an aborted movement to pick it up and nearly staggered his way to collapsing from the effort of bending down. He’d walked away and left it instead, bracing himself against a weakness he clearly didn’t think he should have, and Naruto had stared after him and thought he was an idiot.

Naruto wakes up on Kakashi’s back, being carried home in the rain, and Sasuke’s gone, and Naruto hides his face against his sensei’s back and bites his tongue to bury the scream and makes wild promises he knows he won’t be able to keep but he’d thought he had more time -

He doesn’t. Sasuke left. He can call himself an idiot all he likes, but it doesn’t change anything.

He’s not dead, he snarls, baring his teeth against the world and holding onto it like a shield. We haven’t lost him. We’ll get him back.

Sasuke doesn’t know how to ask for help. Naruto doesn’t know how to help him. He’s really bad at guessing. Too bad. He’ll try anyway, and there’s nothing Sasuke can do to stop him.

 

Two.

They’re cleaning out an abandoned base. It’s meant to be empty, an old outpost Orochimaru had last used more than a decade ago before he’d set up Sound and the network of hidden facilities that supported it. Their job is to check it for traps, disarm any they find, and reassure the farmers that found it that there’s nothing there that’ll harm their crops or their families.

They. It’s not even they, really; Jiraiya’s wining and dining the village leader, shooing Naruto off with instructions to have fun and send Gamatatsu if he gets into any trouble.

“Orochimaru’s a people person,” he’d said, waving off the concerns Naruto hadn’t yet voiced. “He’d much rather send a lackey than leave a trap. There’s no point in killing an enemy if there’s no one there to see.”

“A people person,” Naruto repeats bitterly to himself, hanging back while he sends another shadow clone to check another deserted corridor. Liking people usually refers to as friends not as fucking specimens to collect. And Jiraiya was wrong; there've been at least three clones dead to traps so far, so clearly Orochimaru isn’t that personally invested in the deaths of his enemies. Dick. The clone reaches the next junction and then dispels, and Naruto pushes off from the wall to move down to catch up to where it’d gone. He creates two more clones, one each for either side of the fork, and pauses to squint at a patch of ceiling that’s discoloured from damp but has been meticulously scrubbed to remove any sign of mould.

“That’s not ten years old,” he mumbles, biting his thumb and already starting the first seal to summon Gamatatsu.

One of his clones dispels. The memory hits Naruto: pale face, red eyes, hand raised and a second shuriken already flying. He abandons the summoning and runs, bolting down the left fork with his heart racing wildly in his chest.

“Sasuke,” he says, feet thundering against the floor as he skids round a corner into an area that’s brightly lit and sterile and very clearly not abandoned, and if he were sensible he’d stop and wait for backup but he keeps running because, because - “Sas- shit!”

His back slams into the wall, Sasuke’s arm pinning tightly across his throat. He’s holding a kunai in a reverse grip that makes it dig painfully into the skin just behind Naruto’s ear and the kick he delivers to Naruto’s ankle to disrupt his stance is hard enough to bruise the bone. That’s fine. It’ll heal. So will Naruto’s fingers, where Sasuke used his free hand to twist Naruto’s painfully up against the wall and tangle wire tightly enough around it to make him bleed. If he struggled, Naruto’s pretty sure he could get out the hold, at least enough to get his hand free for a cross seal and fill the base with clones - but he doesn’t.

“Sasuke,” he says, too delighted to be subtle. “It’s you, it’s actually you, I found you.”

“Do you ever shut up,” Sasuke hisses, digging in deeper with the kunai. He darts a glance behind him, sharingan spinning, and it’s been over two years and Sasuke’s changed - they’ve both changed - but not that much. Naruto can still read him, and he shifts automatically into a defensive mode in response to Sasuke’s agitation.

“Who are we hiding from?” he asks, voice low and hushed. “There was no one on the route I came in through. We can get out that way, Ero-sennin’s not far.”

“Since when do you run away?” Sasuke asks, nose wrinkling in distaste. “Why are you here? How did you even find this place?”

“They were repairing the irrigation channels for the rice fields,” he says, ignoring the first question. He doesn’t run away, that’s stupid. Saving Sasuke isn’t running away. “When they dug through one of the leaks to fix it they found the tunnel system back that way.”

Sasuke blinks, pausing at the unexpected answer. Whether it’s unexpected because it’s honest or because he hadn't expected the base to be found by accident, Naruto doesn’t know. If he stops to let himself think how stupidly lucky he is that he’s found Sasuke like this, when he’s been looking and pestering Jiraiya to look for the past two years - but he’s always been lucky with Sasuke, hasn’t he? Lucky to be put on the same team as him, lucky that Haku was so kind, lucky that Sasuke didn’t kill him when he had the chance.

That one wasn’t luck. He doesn’t know, still, and his memories are too blinded by emotion to tell. He knows what he hopes it was. When he looks at Sasuke now he both does and doesn’t see the same boy, backed in a corner and out of options and biting back out of desperation. He’s tried to understand. So many times; what the hell did Sasuke have to be afraid of? Didn’t he know that Naruto had his back, that Naruto would always have his back - didn’t he know that the reason Naruto needed to be strong was for him?

Didn’t he know that Naruto needed him?

Sasuke’s expression settles into flat determination. “You can’t be here,” he says. “This base is meant to be secret. If they know you’re here -”

“I don’t care,” Naruto interrupts, holding onto the conversation he wants to be happening and stubbornly trying to will away the one that’s happening instead. “Don’t worry about me, we have to get you out. I’ll be fine.”

“I’m not worrying about you,” Sasuke spits, fighting for calm. If this was six months later, if he’d had more chance to prepare himself for seeing Naruto again, if his first reaction hadn’t been to throw a shuriken and think fuck don’t stand there fucking dodge and then catch himself in alarm when he was relieved it was just a clone - but it wasn’t, and he hadn’t had, and it had been. Calm is a tangled mess and he digs the kunai in until blood runs down from behind Naruto’s ear. “You can’t be here. I can’t let the base be discovered. Don’t you get it? You’re not fine, you’re a problem and you need to stop.”

Naruto shoves at him. Knee up, closed fist thumping against his chest to push him back - it’s not coordinated, just angry, but Sasuke’s hardly got proper taijutsu on the mind either and it’s only instinct that lets him move with the blow without losing his grip.

“I’m a problem?” Naruto repeats. “What, because I’m an intruder? I could be anyone, is that what you mean, and you’d just be annoyed at how shit your security is?”

“Keep your voice down -”

“Stick the kunai through my brain and make me, bastard.” He doesn’t know why he says it. It’s a challenge, a stupid challenge, and for all he knows Sasuke will take him up on it. It’s irrational, but he’s never been rational with Sasuke before, and the whiplash of joy at seeing him again after so long followed by the hurt of Sasuke caring more about his sodding base - now is not the time to start being rational.

“And then what,” Sasuke retorts. “Hide the body? They’ll find it. It doesn’t solve anything, they’ll want to know what happened.”

He scoffs. “Some idiot broke in and you killed them. They’ll probably give you a medal.”

“Not when some idiot is my fucking teammate you piece of -”

It’s not a kiss. When Naruto leans forwards it’s too aggressive to be a kiss; he bites for Sasuke’s lips and catches the bottom one, holding it in his teeth when Sasuke tries instinctively to jerk away. Surprise makes Sasuke loosen his grip on both the kunai and the wire that’s still pinning Naruto’s right hand up against the wall, and Naruto takes advantage of it to pull his hands free and lift them up to hold Sasuke’s head in place. The fingers on his right are still bleeding; it leaves a trail over Sasuke’s cheek, a bloody smear of red.

“What are you doing,” Sasuke hisses, stepping back. Naruto follows - the corridor isn’t that wide, there’s only a couple of steps until the other wall. If Sasuke really meant to break free he’d twist to the side, but he doesn’t.

“Is my teammate,” Naruto says. “You said is my teammate.” He’s grinning. He’s angry, too, but it’s the sort of anger now that comes when you’re fucking right and you can taste a vicious hope thick on your tongue because Sasuke had said in the valley of the end that none of it mattered but he lied and Naruto knows it, can see it in the realisation that flashes through Sasuke’s sharingan-eyes.

The blankness that Sasuke tries to pull over himself is laughable in its fakeness. “Old habit,” he lies again. “You’re right, some idiot broke in and I should kill them. I can always burn the remains.”

Should. He should. He makes no move to, and Naruto’s hands are still tangled in his hair. “I’m not going to stop you,” Naruto promises, and this time when he steps forwards he does it slowly enough for Sasuke to back away if he wants to. He doesn’t, just raises his kunai and presses it against Naruto’s chest, but it’s barely enough to feel through the layers of clothes and Naruto doesn’t stop.

He closes his eyes when he kisses him. Sasuke hates being seen when he’s weak, and here, with the faint taste of blood on his lip from where Naruto had bitten him earlier, he’s not weak but - but. There’s something vulnerable in the way he’s hesitating. He doesn’t respond but he doesn’t move away, either, and Naruto keeps the kiss soft. It’s gentle, coaxing, barely more than a press of lips; he tilts his head and butts his nose against Sasuke’s, making a sound of encouragement low in his throat as he dips back to kiss him again. His hands slide down to cup the back of Sasuke’s head, thumb stroking soothing circles against his skin and the base of his palms resting just forward enough on Sasuke’s neck to feel his pulse thundering shakingly beneath them.

There’s a sound, distant enough that Naruto can’t tell what it is, but it jolts Sasuke into pushing him hurriedly away. He opens his eyes with a rush of disappointment, but whatever he was going to say dies in his throat at the way Sasuke stares at him.

“You can’t be here,” Sasuke repeats, shaking the emotions off his face as he glances down the corridor to check it’s clear. “We don’t use the tunnels by the rice fields. Tell the villagers to stay out of them, they'll be fine.”

“Sasuke,” he starts, taking half a step forward, and Sasuke whirls on him.

“Go!” he snarls. Naruto pauses, torn; it goes against everything he cares about to not insist that Sasuke goes with him, but last time he pushed too hard he lost Sasuke for two years and he doesn’t think he can do that again. He bites his lip and shifts his weight back but doesn’t look away, trying to say with his expression what he doesn’t trust himself to say with his words. He doesn’t know if the message gets across. Sasuke stares at him for a long second, red eyes darting over his face as though searching for a lie, then he nods, turns his back, and leaves.

In the quiet after he’s gone, the corridor seems sterile and cold. Dimly, Naruto registers that his other clone dispelled a while back, dying to a tripwire it spotted and pulled out the wall. It doesn’t matter. He’ll think of something to say to keep the villagers out of the tunnels without raising Ero-sennin’s suspicions.

It’s what Sasuke asked him to do, after all. If it helps him, Naruto will do it. It’s as simple as that.

 

Three.

The next time Naruto sees Sasuke he has a new team in tow. Sort of. Sakura is not new, and Sai is not team, but they’re close enough to a new team for it to count.

Sai might be team. It’s complicated. Naruto thought perhaps he was, then he tried to kill Sasuke - unless he’d been trying to bring Sasuke home instead. Sai isn’t Sasuke, Naruto can’t read the things he doesn’t say or spot the difference between an honest calm and a defensive one.

Sasuke is so calm he’s almost dead from it. He stands on the lip of the crater, staring down at them in stone-faced dismissal. He says, “You’re only alive because of a passing whim.”

He says, “I have different bonds.”

He says bonds like it’s a curse that he’s too bored to put any meaning behind.

He says, “How can you be Hokage if you have the time to keep chasing after me?”

He says, “If I kill you now, it’ll be because of another whim.”

He says, ankle deep in the water that pervades the dim prison in Naruto’s mind, “When the fuck will you learn to dodge you idiot,” as though it were Naruto’s fault that Sasuke’s instinctive response to seeing him was to try to stab him with whichever piece of metal was to hand and then electrocute him when that didn’t work.

“You won’t hurt me,” Naruto replies, face breaking into a relieved grin. “I knew you were acting.”

Sasuke turns a sour face on him. “Who said anything about acting? You replaced me. Also, in case you forgot, I hate you.”

“You hate me?” Naruto repeats, unable to keep the teasing lilt out of his voice. “I thought I was a passing whim.” The rest of what Sasuke said filters through, and he wrinkles his nose. “Sai’s not your replacement.”

“He’s pasty and morally ambiguous. I don’t like him.”

Naruto opens his mouth to deny it, then pauses. Does Sasuke think of himself as pasty and morally ambiguous? Because he’s… not. Or, he is, but only in the ways that all ninja are. Morally ambiguous. The fact that his brother is more important than his village is a negative in most people’s books, but Naruto understands what it means to value one person above everyone else.

Perhaps it means he doesn’t have the moral high ground he thinks he does. For Sasuke, he finds he doesn’t mind. Konoha would understand, if they knew Sasuke the way he did.

And Sasuke’s not pasty. That’s ridiculous. He’s pale, but in a way that shows the flush of pink across his cheeks when he’s trained hard, or over his ears when he’s embarrassed. Both Sai and Sasuke are classically handsome, sure, but there’s an emptiness to Sai’s expression that Sasuke’s never achieved. Sai is cold, slowly thawing as he learns to be a person, dangerous in how many masks he wears. Sasuke is hot, fire and anger and fear, emotions writ too large in everything he does to ever really hide behind the blankness he uses when he feels the need to lie. And when he’s quiet, he’s warm. Not soft. Still never soft. But before he left Konoha, before everything went wrong and Sasuke was too scared to lower his defenses, Naruto had been learning to see the person behind the bristling sharp edges, and that person was warm.

… Sasuke is also hot. Naruto’s a teenage boy. He notices these things.

“How are you here?” he blurts to distract himself from that, because there’s a time and place, and the place is probably not meant to be in his mindscape and the time is probably not meant to be in the middle of a battle.

“Did you only just notice,” Kyuubi says from above him, sounding about as unimpressed as a demon made of bubbling chakra could.

Sasuke transfers his glare to him, tilting his head back so he could look down at his nose at Kyuubi despite being only a fraction his height. “I’m Uchiha,” he says, as though that explains everything. His sharingan spins red in emphasis. “Piss off.”

Kyuubi rears back with a snarl. “Those eyes,” he growls, hatred dripping in visible waves. It’s startling, in a way. Naruto’s thought of Sasuke as a lot of things, but strong enough - scary enough - to cow the fox? He forgets, sometimes, that not everyone can see the person behind the lethal exterior. “With eyes like that and worse chakra than mine,” Kyuubi continues, brows lowered and lips pulling back to show his teeth. “You remind me of Uchiha Madara.”

“Who?” Sasuke returns flatly. “Piss off.”

And, with a fading hiss of resentment as the chakra drips away through the floor, Kyuubi does.

Naruto blinks. There is a possibility - a strong possibility - that he should be worried that Sasuke can apparently control his demon like that. On the other hand. On. If there was another hand. That is. Um.

Look, Sasuke’s very hot, ok?

“Orochimaru and Kabuto aren’t far,” Sasuke says, turning back to him as though Kyuubi had never interrupted. “Get your team,” and here he makes a face of disgust; Naruto feels he should defend Sakura at least, but he doesn’t trust his voice to stay steady quite yet, “and get out. I won’t make allowances for you. If you don’t want to die, don’t die.”

He turns to go, and Naruto catches his wrist. “You could come with us,” he says, fast enough to disguise the way his breath hitches.

Sasuke scowls at him, but doesn’t retrieve his hand. “Orochimaru -”

“- Won’t be an issue if we’re fighting together,” Naruto promises. He tugs, gently, insistently, just enough so that Sasuke’s angled towards him. He takes a step closer until they’re standing face to face, and rubs his thumb in tiny circles at the base of Sasuke’s palm.

Sasuke stands impossibly still. His shoulders face Naruto, but his feet are still pointed away. “You’re missing the point,” he says, quietly. Naruto shuffles the last half-step in, resting his other hand on Sasuke’s hip. He pushes, lightly, not enough to force him, but Sasuke still moves with him until they’re fully facing each other.

“What if I’m not?” he insists. He’s watching Sasuke’s expression carefully, cautiously, waiting for any sign that he’s going too fast. Once they leave the safety of his mind, Sasuke’s guard will be up. They’ll fight, and he knows that Sasuke won’t seriously hurt him, but Sasuke knows more than most how much he can heal from.

Sasuke’s gaze shifts down. Just for a second, and he immediately flicks it away and then back up, but there’s the faintest red flush across the tops of his ears and Naruto’s thumb is close enough to his pulse to feel it jump. He feels his own heart pick up in answer and has to stop himself tightening his grip on Sasuke’s hip. He leans in instead, and this time he keeps his eyes open and locked on Sasuke’s, still checking for any sign he should stop.

“What if that’s the point?” he asks again, so quietly he can barely hear himself. His lips brush against Sasuke’s and his mouth is too dry to swallow. “We could be fighting together. We’re good at fighting together.” Sasuke blinks, eyes shuddering closed and then open as though he didn’t mean to. His eyelashes are long enough that Naruto feels them against his cheek. “We’re good together,” he says, and when he kisses Sasuke he hears the catch when Sasuke stops breathing. It makes him reckless, heady with confidence from the way Sasuke isn’t pulling away; he doesn’t bite, but he sucks insistently on his lower lip, drawing it down until Sasuke opens his mouth and then tilting his head sideways so he can push forwards with his tongue and taste -

“I can’t,” Sasuke says, pulling back. Naruto makes a noise of protest and tries to follow, but Sasuke shakes his head and stops him. “I can’t,” he repeats, tugging his hand free of Naruto’s hold and stepping back. “I have to beat my brother. Orochimaru has the strength I need.”

Hope makes disappointment bitter. “You can’t trust him.” He knows as he says it that it doesn’t matter, that Sasuke doesn’t trust anyone, and he knows that Sasuke can hear what he wants to say instead.

Sasuke ignores it. Both what he says and what he doesn’t, but when he walks away his shoulders are tight and his face is carefully shuttered blank. “Don’t die,” he orders, throwing it over his shoulder as though he doesn’t care, and fades out of the mindscape. Naruto gives himself a second to stand there, arms wrapped round himself and all his stupid feelings trapped in his throat and making it hard to breathe, before he too blinks himself awake.

In the real world, they fight. Yamato tries to trap Sasuke in a wood release dome. Sasuke bursts through with another chidori and doesn’t look back. He starts the hand seals for a jutsu he says will kill them all, and he doesn’t look back. Orochimaru arrives and tells him not to waste his chakra, Kabuto tells him to spare Team Seven so they can distract Akatsuki for them, Sasuke scoffs in annoyance at being forced to let them live and retrieves his sword and disappears in flames and doesn’t look back and in the crater Naruto hides and hides and pretends he’s angry frustrated determined that he believes Sasuke would have killed him that he needs to try harder that Sasuke’s lies were truth because if that’s what Sasuke wants them to think then Naruto will make sure the others think it -

Inside, he aches. He thinks he understands, now, why Sasuke doesn’t let people see when he’s vulnerable. It’s a hateful, agonising thing, to hand someone your heart and have them refuse it. He thinks he would have preferred it if Sasuke spat at him, dropped his heart to the floor and crushed it under his heel, at least then he could be justified in the way he wants to scream. If Sasuke fought him, he thinks, then he could fight back. If Sasuke wants him to stand back and just watch while Orochimaru betrays him and he lets it happen -

It hurts. It hurts.

Naruto will do it anyway. If it’s what Sasuke wants. He’ll do it, and he won’t die, and he won’t find Itachi and put his hand through his chest to make him pay for all the ways that Sasuke isn’t ok, and when everything’s over he’ll find Sasuke and drag him home and punch him in the fucking face for asking Naruto to stand back and just watch when he knows it kills him not to be able to help.

“Just wait, Sakura-chan,” he says, crying because he can’t not, even if he won’t let them see the real reason why. “We’ll fix it. He can’t stay gone forever.”

 

Four.

Naruto doesn’t look for Sasuke. If he’s going to wait, then he’s going to wait, but he knows his limits. There’s no point torturing himself with things he can’t have, and he won’t be weak and ask for things he knows will be denied - but it’s easier not to ask when Sasuke’s not there to be asked, so. He doesn’t look for him.

Back in Konoha, he talks about Sasuke before he left. It’s a careful balancing act; he spins the memories to show the best side of Sasuke, but not enough that people dismiss him as lovesick or blind or deluded. He paints a picture of Sasuke as a victim in need of saving without ever revealing how close he’d been to falling apart; he implies that Sasuke’s being manipulated and isn’t to blame for the things he does but he doesn’t let people follow through to the conclusion that Sasuke’s a fool who can’t see what Orochimaru’s doing.

Like he said, a careful balancing act. One day, Sasuke will have killed his brother. Naruto needs him to come home, and so he needs him to have a home to come to. Sasuke will never ask for forgiveness for what he’s done, not from Konoha, so Naruto will set it up so there’s nothing to forgive.

He's not blind. Maybe he’s deluded, probably he’s lovesick, but he isn’t blind. There's a lot to forgive. That’s ok.

But, he doesn’t go looking. The next time he meets Sasuke it’s by accident. They’re in the land of Birds, Naruto’s mission had been to deliver a message but he’d got distracted on the way back freeing a city from a yakuza’s stifling grip, Sasuke’s mission had been - actually, Naruto doesn’t know. They both end up infiltrating the same meeting, and when it goes tits up they both end up fighting their way out. Naruto hears the cry of ninja! and braces himself, because the yakuza themselves aren’t a problem but they’ve got their hands on explosives and use them to deadly effect and they’re in too populated an area to afford a pitched battle but the slums are too crowded to easily draw an enemy out -

When he sees Sasuke, he falters. His first thought is, don’t notice me. Sasuke’s eyes flick to him as though drawn there and he doesn’t pause in the way he cuts through the chaos around him, but he does frown, recognition bleeding to exasperation and he twists aside from an explosion-fuelled blow to throw a shuriken at Naruto’s head and Naruto thinks, I can’t do this.

He flinches, but doesn’t move. The shuriken skims his cheek, a stinging line that carves another whisker mark in amongst his scars, and he hears the thud and gurgle as it lodges in the throat of the woman who’d been reaching round behind him to snap his neck.

It’s enough to shake him to action. The riot that the meeting has turned into has done its job; the yakuza bosses are dead, the people are revolting against what remains of their tyranny, the local daimyo can’t fail to notice what’s been going on. Perhaps Naruto should stay to make sure the aftermath falls the way it ought, but he fights his way to the exit with a single minded determination and doesn’t let himself think of anything else.

Sasuke joins him halfway there. Or maybe Naruto joins him; it’s impossible to say. They fight back to back as though they’d never stopped, taijutsu weaving effortlessly around each other, and for all it’s exhilarating and beautiful and everything it hurts in a way Naruto forces himself numb to avoid.

Itachi’s not dead yet. Even if Itachi was, there’s no guarantee that Sasuke wouldn’t leave again. Back in Konoha, they think he’s lovesick and deluded and maybe he is, but he isn’t blind.

“Idiot,” Sasuke says when they tumble out into the back streets. He slows, but Naruto doesn’t, and they pass through the slums at a steady lope. “Are you ever going to learn to dodge?”

“I don’t need to when you’re around,” Naruto answers honestly. His voice is flat, but he doesn’t care. Nor does he look back; the alleys are seemingly endless, and though it would be easier to scale the walls and escape over the top he’s not really on a sanctioned mission and he’d rather not be seen. He could ask Sasuke if he knows the way out, or he could keep heading what he thinks is vaguely north and hope he recognises something soon.

He chooses the second option. Sasuke follows him, quiet enough that Naruto could easily pretend he wasn’t there except that it feels like every cell in his body is vibrating at the proximity. They make it back to an area he knows and he turns left, down to the end then right and right again and he can see the city wall looming ahead. If he lets himself think, he’ll think he’s making a mistake, if he lets himself feel he’ll feel bitter and betrayed because Sasuke was the one that pushed him away, where the hell does he get off staying close now when Naruto knows it isn’t going to last, he’s trying to do what Sasuke wants but did Sasuke ever think of how fucking much he was asking of Naruto and the least he could do is make it easy -

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Sasuke asks. Naruto stops. He doesn’t slow to a halt, he just - stops. The wall is barely a few metres in front of him, one jump and he’d be over it if he tried, but he doesn’t. He stands at the foot of it and feels brittle from exhaustion.

“What do you want me to say?” It comes out tired. Resigned. It makes Sasuke pause, and there’s a part of Naruto, even now, that wants to turn around and -

And what? There’s no point. Sasuke made his position clear. Naruto’ll only push him away if he doesn’t respect it, and even if it hurts to keep his distance now it’ll hurt worse if he loses the chance for Sasuke to come back when everything’s done.

“You usually ask me to stay,” Sasuke says, cautious and testing. It sounds like a trap, but Naruto nods anyway.

“Ok.” Ok. He turns around. Sasuke is hesitant and wary, frowning slightly in confusion, and his eyes dart over Naruto’s face as he tries to understand. “Come home with me,” Naruto says. “I want -” his voice threatens to crack; through sheer force of will, he doesn’t let it “- you to stay.”

“I can’t,” Sasuke answers. It sounds almost like a question. If there is a trap, Naruto doesn’t see it. He just nods again, and quietly despairs that rejection shouldn’t hurt so much when he already knew it was coming.

“I know,” he says. Blinks, because his eyes are heavy with the potential to cry but he doesn’t want to burden Sasuke with his feelings, and looks back up at the wall with his knees bent to jump.

Sasuke grabs his shoulder. “You know?” he repeats. “That’s it?”

God, please. Naruto wants to go home. He wants to curl up in bed and wait for the world to go away. It doesn’t have to be bed. A tree will do.

“What do you want me to say?” he asks again, like an idiot, like the lovesick moron he is. He isn’t blind. It doesn’t matter. He’ll do what Sasuke wants anyway.

“Nothing,” Sasuke says, and Naruto grits his teeth with a flash of resentment. He already tried that. “How can you expect to be Hokage if you give up all the time?”

The resentment flares, ugly, cracking at the edges because it’s been three years and Naruto’s coming apart from the strain. “What do you fucking want from me,” he snarls, spinning round and taking an aggressive step towards him. Sasuke doesn’t step back and ends up too close, but that’s fine, Naruto squares his shoulders and lifts his chin and bares his teeth to keep his voice from breaking. “Last time you said I spent too much time chasing you, this time I leave you alone and you accuse me of giving up. What am I meant to do? I’m trying, fucking hell I’m trying Sasuke, but I told you I was bad at guessing and I don’t - fuck - I don’t -”

He chokes on the last words, throat closing, eyes stinging, and his chest hurts like his ribs are claws reaching in to crush his lungs. He can’t look at Sasuke, so he drops his head forwards and hates the stupid twisted purple cord of Sasuke’s stupid purple belt and ignores the way Sasuke half lifts his hand as though unsure if he's allowed to touch.

“Why do I have to stay?” he asks.

The ground. Naruto doesn’t even need a tree. He could curl up on the ground if that’s what it took for the world to stop hurting.

“You don’t,” he says. Then, because that’s not what Sasuke’s asking, “I miss you. Every time you go I’m scared I won’t see you again. I’m afraid that something will happen and I won’t be there to help.” It’s horrible. He’s gutting himself, tearing his insides out and offering them with bloody hands. It’s cathartic. He hasn’t told anyone else, not even Sakura, and the weight of keeping it inside has been killing him. He swallows, emotions going down like shards of glass and words coming back up as rusty knives. “I don’t want to lose you,” he says. It’s not strong enough to explain what he means. It’s what he’s got. “I think I’m losing you anyway and I don’t know how to stop.”

Sasuke’s hand has been hovering awkwardly, but now he brings it forwards, hooking the fingers into the folds of Naruto’s jacket. Naruto stares at it blankly.

“I don’t need help,” Sasuke says, and Naruto coughs out a beat of hollow laughter. Sasuke’s fingers tighten and he makes a sound of frustration, pushing doggedly on. “I don’t need help, so you don’t need to worry about not being there,” he explains. “I can’t stay. But. That doesn’t mean I’ll go.”

“That makes no sense.”

Sasuke’s other hand reaches for his chin, tugging insistently until Naruto looks up. It leaves them with their foreheads almost touching, Sasuke’s head tilted forward and Naruto’s tilted back to match, and whatever Sasuke sees in Naruto makes him frown. “You’re not losing me,” he says, not soft because he’s never soft, but quiet, like he’s testing the words out to see how he likes them. He’s quiet and tentative and warm, and with his fingers curled under Naruto’s chin he brings him that last step closer until their foreheads are resting against each other. When he closes his eyes, Naruto feels his eyelashes brush against his cheeks, and when he continues he’s still quiet but now he sounds certain of what he’s saying. “You won’t.”

And - here, Naruto could pull away. It still doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t understand, not completely. If he pulled away, he feels like it would end, like he could leave the pieces of himself littered in the slums under the shadow of some nameless wall in Birds and patch over the cracks with something that didn’t hurt. Sasuke wouldn’t stop him. He’d be fine. Maybe. Or he could stay where he is, balanced on the edge and refusing to fall either way because one side’s full of pain and the other’s full of nothing and he doesn’t know what to do but he’s safe while he doesn’t decide. Or -

“You are such an ass,” he hisses, bringing his hands up to tangle desperately in Sasuke’s hair. “Why the fuck are you so melodramatic all the time, if that’s what you meant why didn’t you fucking say -” The rest of his words are drowned in the way he reaches for Sasuke’s lips, open mouthed, teeth catching, he doesn’t care, and Sasuke huffs in exasperation and moves his grip to Naruto’s hips to pull him closer and he’s kissing back, he’s kissing back the fucking bastard.

“I told you not to die,” Sasuke protests. His hand slips up from Naruto’s hip to his waist, sliding under his shirt and he shivers at the feel of it. He tries to go back in for another kiss but Sasuke’s still talking, so he growls in frustration and aims for his jaw instead, his ear, the long line of his neck with his pulse beating rabbit-fast against it. “I co-overed for you,” Sasuke continues, voice hitching, and doesn’t tilt his head to give Naruto better access because he’s a dick but his thumbs find the hollows under the sensitive skin of Naruto’s stomach and dig in mercilessly and Naruto muffles a swear word against his throat. “I rescued you -”

“I was doing fine,” he says, abandoning Sasuke’s neck in favour of his ear, closing his teeth around the lobe and pulling. It’s red, the ear, like it always is when Sasuke’s embarrassed by the fact that he has emotions, and something about that is satisfying enough for him to reach up and run his tongue over the shell before catching it in another bite.

“Teeth,” Sasuke complains, turning his head to take his ear out of reach. He butts his nose against Naruto’s cheek demandingly until Naruto comes back to his mouth and kisses him again, hungry and desperate and still not sure he believes that he’s allowed to.

He doesn’t know how long it is until they break apart. Long enough that he’s panting, that Sasuke’s hands have moved up under his shirt to rest along his ribs and his own hands have left Sasuke’s hair a tangled mess of fluff. Sasuke’s cheeks are pink and there’s the beginnings of a hickey high on his neck, and his breath puffs in stuttered gasps against Naruto’s kiss-swollen lips.

“You ass,” Naruto repeats, because he can, and nips at the corner of Sasuke’s mouth when he goes to deny it. “Do you even know how much you mean to me? I cried for you, you dick.”

He feels Sasuke tense, and any other time he’d’ve been more careful about what he said, but he’s spent too long tiptoeing around Sasuke’s fear. “A lot,” he says, leaving no room for arguing. “You mean a lot. You’re more important than anything, Sasuke. Don’t do that to me again.”

Sasuke doesn’t untense. He holds himself still, eyes wide, sharingan on as he flicks his gaze from Naruto’s left eye to his right and back again as though he could see an ulterior motive in what Naruto was saying. It could hurt, if Naruto let it, because Sasuke’s the one that’s always tried to lie, but he doesn’t let it. He understands. And, much as he doesn’t want to, he knows when to pull back and not push too fast.

“You’re more important than ramen,” he says, wrinkling his nose in a mock offense that breaks the tension enough to breathe. “I love ramen. Bastard.”

Sasuke takes the out he’s offered. “Idiot,” he says, rolling his eyes as he steps away. His hands are warm against Naruto’s sides as he retrieves them and the urge to grab them and not let go is ridiculously strong, but this is important. Sasuke said he wouldn’t lose him, and he has to trust that.

“I’m meant to be back in Fire by the morning,” he says. “They’re expecting me at the patrol post by dawn.”

Sasuke hesitates. “I was meeting Karin half an hour ago.” He doesn’t sound guilty in the slightest, and something in Naruto eases when he realises that Sasuke blew someone else off just to rescue him. Even if he didn’t need rescuing.

“You’re late,” he teases, deliberately keeping his voice light. “Get out of here, Uchiha. Don’t use me as an excuse for your shoddy time keeping.”

Still, Sasuke hesitates. “I’m not lost,” he says, holding Naruto’s gaze until he’s satisfied Naruto understands.

He does. Now that Sasuke’s said it. That’s all he’s been asking for, since the start; he wants to know what Sasuke needs, and now he does. It makes him smile, soft in the ways Sasuke won’t allow himself to be, and he lifts a hand to rest against his face and run his thumb over Sasuke’s cheek. “See you later,” he promises, and drops it to push at his shoulder. “Go.”

And, with one last look back, sharingan-red to memorise the view, Sasuke goes.

 

Five.

Orochimaru’s death means many things to many people, but what it means to Naruto is that Sasuke has control of his own schedule. It’s not enough for Sasuke to come home - his brother isn’t dead - but Naruto isn’t expecting him to. He isn’t even waiting for it, not now, not as more than a distant someday that will happen in its own time. Without that pressure hanging over him it makes it so much easier, so much better; when he sees Sasuke now it’s with an excited thrill, and when he leaves until next time is bittersweet but far more bearable than I might never see him again.

He can laugh, now, when the rookie nine - eight - share stories of how ridiculous they were when they were younger. He’s still careful with Sasuke’s reputation, cultivating it just enough that he could come home if he wanted to, but he’s more relaxed about it. It helps. People don’t think he’s so lovesick or deluded or blind anymore. Sakura thinks he’s moved on. A lot of people think he’s moved on, and when he lets Hinata down by telling her, as gently as he knows how but also awkwardly because he thought people knew, that he’s waiting for someone else - well, then people are surprised, or indulgent, or roll their eyes and gossip to each other how sad it is that he hasn’t yet realised how things have changed.

“That’s ok,” Hinata says, smiling at him graciously despite his haphazard attempt to refuse her. “I can wait too.”

“There’s nothing to wait for,” he complains to Sakura later, slumped over the latest mission report he’s meant to be writing with her. “I’m not going to wake up one day and decide to stop loving him. I’m not going to wake up one day and decide to stop being gay, what the fuck.”

“I’ll talk to her about the gay,” Sakura offers. “Or you can,” she adds, though she doesn’t even bother to glance at Naruto and see the face he pulls at that. Naruto is an open and emotional guy, ok, but something about Hinata’s quiet acceptance of everything he says really unsettles him. He spends most of the time worrying that he’s deeply offended her and she’s just too polite to say. “But Naruto…” she pauses, and this time she does turn to face him. “None of us are ever going to stop loving him. But you shouldn’t let that stop you loving anyone else.”

He gives her a quizzical side eye. “Yes I should,” he corrects. “Cheating’s bad.”

“It’s not cheating though, is it?” She’s sympathetic, he knows, and if anyone could hope to understand it would be her, except she could never hope to understand. Some of that’s Sasuke’s fault, some of that’s Naruto’s fault, and sometimes Naruto feels guilty that the last member of Team Seven doesn’t know that the first two are - what? Are what? They don’t need a word when it’s just two of them.

“It’s cheating to me,” he says, instead of trying to explain. Then, relenting, “If I fall madly in love with someone else I’ll let you know. Can I borrow a pen? I forgot to bring mine.”

(He didn’t, but it’s a convenient way to change the subject. He’s got a lot better at convenient ways to change the subject recently. That, and leaving potentially important details out of mission reports, but as far as he’s concerned there are some things Konoha doesn’t need to know.)

He tries, where he can, to do the same thing for Sasuke that Sasuke does for him, but team Hebi is difficult to track at the best of times, and Naruto isn’t so free to move as he’d like to be. He manages, once, to come across them with a clone and steal away from his mission long enough to lend a hand, sticking to the shadows under henge because he’s not sure the rest of Sasuke’s team know who he is. Sasuke catches him after barely a minute and shoots him a sour glare, then rolls his eyes and throws a shuriken that Naruto stubbornly (cheerfully) refuses to dodge.

The shuriken turns out to be a small snake in disguise. It tells him please and kindly thank you to piss off, Sasuke can handle this one and he’s trying to be subtle, there’s a place in the next town over that does tempura and Sasuke will meet him there at eight.

“Can he make it seven?” Naruto asks, running through calculations in his head. “I’m meant to be on night watch, if they catch me using clones again I’m dead.”

“Ungrateful brat,” the snake hisses, and bites him on the thumb. “I’m not a messenger, plan your own dates.” It unsummons itself in a huffy cloud of smoke, but when Naruto turns up at the tempura place at two minutes to seven, Sasuke’s leaning against the wall outside waiting for him.

“You let them catch you?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. Naruto mock-glares at him, but it does nothing to hide his grin.

“Lee challenged me to a race. I forgot I was a clone and fell off a cliff.” At Sasuke’s amused look he huffs, and defends, “I was climbing it in a handstand and he made us go up the waterfall. I think he thought I died, he was trying to plant me a thousand rose bushes so I’d never be forgotten when they found him. Stop making fun of me and kiss me, I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“Sixteen days,” Sasuke corrects, but he pushes off from the wall obligingly and gives Naruto a kiss all the same. It’s short, and chaste, because they might not be directly in view of the street but they’re still in public and Sasuke still gets embarrassed more easily than Naruto does.

“Forever,” Naruto insists. “We could skip dinner. I’m not hungry.” His hand finds the hem of Sasuke’s shirt and tugs leadingly. Stolen moments in the middle of missions, hurried kisses in the shadows until one of them has to run - it’s amazing, but it’s also hell, and Naruto lies awake at night sometimes thinking about what he’d do if he had Sasuke and a bed and a few hours without interruptions (a few, fuck, he’d settle for one and he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t need all of that if you pressed him). Sometimes. A lot of times. Most times. Almost all of them. To reiterate: he’s a teenage boy, he does a lot of thinking about what he’d do if he had Sasuke and a bed. Or a wall. Ground, maybe, but he thinks Sasuke would complain.

“I am,” Sasuke says, nudging him towards the restaurant. “We never get to go for dinner.”

Naruto grumbles, but half heartedly. Sasuke’s getting better at asking for things he wants, and it’s a habit that deserves to be encouraged, but still. They never get to go for dinner but they never get to progress further than kissing either, and as wonderful as making out is, there’s a lot more to life than pushing someone’s ridiculously deep neckline back over their shoulders until it traps their arms against their sides and makes them whine in frustration while you trail your tongue down their bare chest, but their hand gets free just before you can do anything more and they fist it in your hair and haul you back up to -

“Look,” he says brightly to distract himself. “They have shrimp. You love shrimp. Let’s get shrimp.”

Frustrations aside, he wants it to last. Maybe even because of the frustrations. As much as he’d love to wake up next to Sasuke and be casual and lazy and sprawl over him in the evening with bowls of ramen perched precariously on the arms of the sofa and the end credits of a cheesy film rolling on the TV, there’s something about the secrecy of what they’re doing, of knowing that this side of Sasuke is his and that of all the people that want his attention, Naruto’s the one that’s got it. Orochimaru dies and Sasuke sets his own schedule and a decent portion of that schedule is dedicated to tailing Naruto’s missions and hiding grumpy snakes in his bedroll and dropping off the roof at the last minute to deflect whatever projectile was apparently aiming for him and complaining that Naruto still hasn’t learnt to dodge -

The point is, he wants it to last. It doesn’t last.

He’s at home. Not even on a mission - he’s in Konoha, in his own apartment, leaning against the kitchen counter in a soft orange hoodie and frog-patterned boxers while he waits the three minutes it takes for the ramen to cook. He hears the window before he sees him, the storm outside briefly getting louder then shutting off again as the window closes behind him, and he looks up with mild curiosity. People don’t usually drop in unannounced, but there’s enough protections on his place that he’s not too worried about it being someone he doesn’t know. Anyone skilled enough to get past the seals if they weren’t keyed in would be skilled enough to not to make a noise, he reasons.

Unless they were trying to catch his attention, and he straightens in surprise and the beginnings of alarm when he sees Sasuke standing in the middle of his living room, water dripping off him from the rain and expression terrifyingly blank.

“Sasuke,” he says instinctively, pushing himself off from the counter and walking towards him. “What are you doing here? How did you - are you hurt? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Sasuke answers, too fast to have thought about the answer. It comes out as flat as his face looks, and the lie must be obvious even to him because he shakes himself and tries again. “I’m not hurt. No one saw me, there’s a hole in the barrier. I just had to evade the patrol.”

“There’s a what,” Naruto asks, pausing in shock. The barrier seal is Konoha’s greatest defence. For it to have a hole - did Sasuke come to warn him about it?

No, from the agitated way he nods then shakes his head again and frowns, as though the barrier were a distraction he doesn’t have time to focus on. “It’s fine, it only works for Uchihas.” He doesn’t say anything else though, so what the barrier’s a distraction from Naruto doesn’t know.

He puts it aside until he either has more clues or Sasuke tells him, and focuses on what he can do. “You’re wet. I have towels, if I get you dry clothes will you wear them?”

Sasuke blinks, then looks down at himself in lieu of answering. He seems surprised. His lip curls in disgust at the way his clothes are sticking to him, and he lifts his feet to frown at his shoes as though confused why he’s wearing them inside. In his chest, Naruto’s heart is racing; this is Sasuke rattled - this is Sasuke beyond rattled, off kilter in a way he hasn’t been since before Orochimaru died, lost and unsure and back to needing something he doesn’t understand how to ask for.

The last time this happened, he crumbled away beneath Naruto’s grip and lashed out as he left, and Naruto didn’t see him for two years. This time, at least, he’s come to Naruto instead of running away, but from the way he hesitates over his shoes and keeps half-leaning back to the window he’s not sure he’s made the right choice.

“I’ll get clothes,” Naruto says, keeping the tension out of his voice. The tighter he holds, the more likely it is to make Sasuke try to escape. He knows this. He has to trust to get any trust in return, even if the act of leaving the room feels like the prelude to everything going wrong. He grabs the first clean towel he can find, throwing it over his shoulder so he can paw through his clothes with both hands for a shirt loose enough that it’ll fit. He ends up with another hoodie instead, an old black one that’s been stretched out of shape until it’s almost too baggy on him to wear, and he adds both it and a pair of pyjama bottoms to his pile as he turns to go.

Sasuke’s at the door to his room, waiting on the threshold as though he’s not sure if he’s allowed in.

“Towel,” Naruto says, holding it out without giving him a chance to refuse. “And clothes. They should fit. And, um, do you want food? I have food. It’s ramen. I have ramen.” He shuts his mouth before he can say anything else, mentally berating himself for the nonsense he can’t seem to stop speaking. I have food - what the hell. Seeing Sasuke in his apartment, in Konoha, has thrown him in a way he isn’t prepared for, and he desperately wants to ask why Sasuke’s here but equally desperately is afraid he doesn’t want to know the answer.

He knows what he hopes it is. Sasuke never said he wouldn’t come back when everything was done. Naruto just thought everything being done would be more of a celebration. Or at the very least a cathartic sort of peace, not this weird feeling of standing on the edge and not knowing which side is the cliff.

“I’m fine,” Sasuke says, taking the towel mechanically. He makes no move to dry his hair, and seems to be looking more round the room than at Naruto. If Naruto had the thoughts spare he’d worry about the fact that he hadn’t made his bed that morning and probably hadn’t hoovered since Sakura made him over a month ago, but there are too many other things to worry about for that. Like the way Sasuke shakes his head and tries to give the towel back. “I’m fine,” he repeats. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”

Naruto doesn’t take it fast enough, and Sasuke drops it, turning to go. “Wait,” Naruto says, catching the hem of his shirt. “Please. Tell me what you need.”

Sasuke stops. He’s turned away, Naruto can’t see his face, and his head is tilted forward so his wet hair hangs limply in front of his eyes. He’s shivering, though whether that’s from the cold or from the emotion he’s not allowing himself to feel, it’s impossible to say. He always got cold easily. His shirt is sleeveless. For some stupid reason, he thought jackets were weaknesses and the only time Naruto had ever seen him wear one was in the the land of literally eternal winter when the snow had been ten feet deep.

“I don’t need anything,” Sasuke says. He doesn’t pull away though, and his lie falls flat.

Naruto takes a step towards him, tugging gently on his shirt to make him turn around. He doesn’t, just tenses further, and Naruto stops. “Please,” he says again. “You’re too important for me to guess wrong. What do you need?”

For a long moment, he thinks Sasuke isn’t going to answer, then with a barely perceptible shudder he lets the tension out of shoulders and just… gives up. It looks like he gives up.

“Make me stay,” he says. He turns around, fingers reaching for Naruto’s hoodie and head dipped down to press their foreheads together. When he butts his nose against Naruto’s it’s frozen cold, and his hair’s dripping rainwater into Naruto’s eyes. “Make me stay,” he repeats, too pleading to be a command, pushing closer insistently until he can catch Naruto’s lips in a kiss. It’s both too hard and too soft, alternating between the two like he can’t decide, and there’s no finesse in the way he crowds Naruto back until he hits the wall.

“Wait,” Naruto says into his mouth, dropping the dry clothes and lifting a hand to push Sasuke’s hair back so he can see. Sasuke whines, bitten-off and low in his throat, and shakes his hand off, tilting his head to a different angle so he can deepen the kiss. His own hands have worked their way under the hoodie to Naruto’s bare stomach, making him suck in a shocked gasp at their icy touch. “Wait,” Naruto says again, pushing back on Sasuke’s shoulders and turning his head aside so he can talk. “Sasuke, wait - fuck.”

“Why,” Sasuke asks around the hickey he’s marking into Naruto’s neck. One hand has rucked the hoodie up to Naruto’s ribs and is splayed possessively over the thump of his heart beat, the other has gone down, curving round Naruto’s hip and dipping two fingers under the waistband of his boxers. In any other circumstance, the fact that both hands have stopped moving and that Sasuke is holding himself painfully still would be torture, but just at the moment the pause is necessary.

“Will it make you stay?” he asks.

“Waiting?”

“This, you ass.”

Sasuke makes a sound of frustration, pressing his cold nose into the junction of Naruto’s neck and shoulder, but he doesn’t resume the hickey. His hands don’t move either, though they’re perhaps a fraction warmer than they were. “Does it matter? You want it. I want it. No one’s waiting for us.”

For a second, Naruto wavers. Old instincts to give Sasuke what he wants combine with the feeling of being pinned against the wall and the hands effortlessly holding him there - but that’s not right. He tried that, giving Sasuke what he wanted (what he said he wanted) and cutting himself to pieces without caring about how it hurt, and it wasn’t right. Tearing yourself apart for someone else doesn’t help them. If he does this, if they do this because it’s a way to get Sasuke to stay - if they do it and Sasuke doesn’t stay -

“It matters,” he says, unable to finish that thought. He doesn’t feel sick, but he feels like he could do if the conversation goes where he doesn’t want it to. “You asked me to give you a reason to stay.”

Sasuke pulls back, scowling. “I told you to make me. It’s not the same.”

“How are you meant to stay if you don’t want to?” He sidesteps out from between Sasuke and the wall, shivering as Sasuke’s hand drags reluctantly down his chest and lets him go. “I can’t force you to.” He bends to pick up the towel, and it’s only when he straightens that he registers Sasuke’s silence. “Sasuke,” he says, blinking, and there it is. There’s the sick feeling, curdling in his stomach. “I’m not going to force you to stay.”

Sasuke’s expression shutters. “My brother’s dead,” he says, blankly, flatly, and Naruto’s been waiting for it for so long because it means Sasuke’s finally free, but he wasn’t expecting to flinch when he hears it. “I killed him. Now I’m here, so. Make me stay.”

Make him stay. Make him - isn’t that what Naruto said he’d do? Drag him home, keep him there if he had to, do whatever it took to get him back? Because Naruto needed Sasuke to stay, didn’t he, and now Sasuke’s asking him to so why -

“Do you want to?” he asks, in a voice that sounds oddly distant to his own ears, though he hopes it sounds normal to Sasuke’s.

Sasuke bares his teeth. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, and that’s an answer, isn’t it. Naruto had always wanted Sasuke to stay. Sasuke had always left. “You want me to stay, so make me and I will, what’s the problem.”

What’s wrong, Naruto had asked, and Sasuke had chosen his brother and said, you are.

The thing about understanding that someone lashed out because they were afraid is it doesn’t change the fact that they hurt you. The thing about realising that someone’s just lost the one person who guided their life for the past three years and who knew how many before that is that it doesn’t make it ok when they try to use you to replace him. The thing about wanting to be able to help is that Naruto can’t do that if he tears himself apart.

“No,” he says. He’s still holding the towel. He holds it out. “Your hair’s wet. You’ll be happier if you dry it.”

Sasuke doesn’t take it. “You don’t want me to stay,” he says, brittle, retreating into anger because it’s easier to handle than fear.

“I do,” Naruto corrects. “I won’t make you. Dry your hair.” He puts it in Sasuke’s hands, physically picking them up and moving them to keep the towel from falling again.

Sasuke grips it automatically, but still doesn’t use it. There’s a glare flickering over his face, like he’s trying to force it but can’t remember how, and it makes him look fragile. Vulnerable. They are the same boys they were when they were twelve and thirteen, but then again, they aren’t. “Why?”

“Because I might lose you,” Naruto answers. It doesn’t hurt the way he expected it to. It’s just. Honest.

“You won’t. I told you you wouldn’t.”

“Yes, but you could leave then. It was your choice. If I make you stay and I fail, then I lose you. If I let you go and you come back, then I don’t.” If he lets him go and he doesn’t come back. If he lets him go and. If it’s a mistake. If he doesn’t come back. If.

What if he lets Sasuke go and Sasuke doesn’t come back.

“Sasuke,” he says, swallowing emotions like shards of glass and bringing up words like rusty knives, he knows this feeling. “What do you want to do?”

Sasuke’s lips twist bitterly. “My brother’s dead,” he says again, and here, this is where honesty hurts. It sounds like it’s ripped out of him, like he’s fighting to hold onto it and he can’t. “I don’t fucking know what I - it wasn’t even him, he didn’t even. He fucking. I hated him and now he’s lied and he - am I meant to thank him, I built everything for him and he lied and I don’t know what I want. I want you. I want -” the words choke off, and he clenches his fist around the towel and uses it to scrub his hair hard enough that it scrapes against his scalp. When he lowers it, Naruto’s there, and Sasuke didn’t ask for a hug but he needs one. He grips too tight and for all his hair is now standing on end it’s still not dry and parts of it drip uncomfortably down the back of Naruto’s neck and he bites his lip and bites off swear words and Naruto stays, arms around him, eyes open and staring at the wall as though that will help, and holds him while he falls apart.

In some ways, it’s been a long time coming. And the thing is. The thing is - but, Naruto’s focusing on Sasuke at the moment.

Eventually, Sasuke retreats. He washes his face and dries his hair again, properly this time, and pulls on Naruto’s baggy black hoodie and the pyjama bottoms that stop an inch above his ankles. When he emerges he follows Naruto into the living room and curls up on the sofa, not saying anything, just watching while Naruto mournfully tips out the cold ramen from earlier and puts two pots of fresh on for their required three minutes to make. Naruto balances ramen and chopsticks and two cups of tea in his hands and frowns Sasuke back to his seat when he makes an aborted motion to try to carry some of them. They eat the ramen in front of a cheesy film, shoulders pressed together, and every time Sasuke looks like he might say something Naruto tilts his head to listen, and every time Sasuke swallows the words instead.

When the film finishes, Sasuke watches the credits to the end, then beyond that, staring at the blank screen on the TV.

“I’m not going to stay,” he finally says. “There were things I didn’t know. There are more things I have to do.”

Naruto nods. They’re leaning against each other, his head on Sasuke’s shoulder, his knees drawn up and half-sprawled over Sasuke’s lap. “Ok,” he says. “Do you want me to come with you?”

Sasuke blinks. “You belong in Konoha.”

“Mm. It’ll still be here.”

There’s a pause. Naruto likes to think that Sasuke’s tempted, at least, by the idea of him tagging along, but what Sasuke says is, “Do you… want to come?”

The question’s unexpected. Sasuke’s never really asked what Naruto wants before. He hums, thinking it through. “I’d like to be with you. But I don’t want to leave Konoha.” It’s not a clear answer, he knows, and Sasuke hesitates instead of replying. Naruto takes pity on him. “I’ll be here when you come back.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

You never knew before, Naruto wants to say. Stolen moments on missions, sneaking out from under both their teams' noses to have tempura and desperate kisses under the trees. The point wasn’t that they knew.

He thinks of Sakura, cautiously urging him to move on. He doesn’t want to move on. Sasuke’s hurting. Sasuke needs him. Sasuke’s grieving for the brother he dedicated his whole life to killing and when he didn’t know what to do he came to Naruto and tried to make him choose for him, and the thing is.

The thing is.

Naruto’s a person too.

He’s not a very good person. Not if he’s thinking of this now, when Sasuke needs him, when Sasuke came to him desperate and Naruto turned it into an argument. Did he? It felt like an argument. It feels like a break up. Maybe he isn’t a good person, but he’s put Sasuke first for so long now, and this time he isn't even sure it's right for either of them. Maybe he’s just a person.

It started when no one saw him and Sasuke asked him if he ever shut up. He’ll say it’s because they were both lonely and because Sasuke understood, but it’s not. It’s because he didn't have anyone else. It started when he thought Sasuke died and he understood that he could lose him, and then he was afraid. It started when he learnt that Sasuke didn’t know how to ask for help but Naruto could help him anyway, and then he broke himself apart trying to guess the best way to do it.

Scattered pieces on the hospital roof. The base under the farmer’s fields that isn’t as abandoned as Naruto’s report made it out to be. A crater, the water sloshing ankle-deep in Naruto’s mind, the slums by the city wall in Birds. And now his living room, with empty ramen pots balanced precariously on the arm of the sofa, and the credits of the cheesy film aren’t rolling on the TV because they already rolled their way to the end and stopped.

This was meant to be a romance. A story of perseverance and love. Hold on tight to your precious people, except the tighter you hold Sasuke the more you make him run away.

Naruto’s a person too.

He leans his head back, flopping it against Sasuke’s shoulder, and if he only gets one chance at sleepy kisses in hoodies and frog-print boxers, he’ll take it. He lifts his chin, barely enough but enough that Sasuke understands, and when Sasuke bends his head down he kisses him. Slow and soft and sweet and it tastes like ramen and goodbye.

“I know,” he says, when they break apart. Sasuke doesn’t know how long he’ll be. When he’s done, there might be more things he has to do. Naruto isn’t going to make him stay.

He piles the blanket on Sasuke’s side of the bed and sleeps with just his feet under it because he doesn’t have a warmer one but Sasuke needs extra because he feels the cold. In the morning, Sasuke’s gone. He took the black hoodie, but not the pyjama bottoms. He never explained what the hole in the barrier seal was that apparently only Uchiha could use. Naruto didn’t ask, and he doesn’t mention it the next time he sees the Hokage.

He’s a person too. If he chooses to leave Sasuke a way back to the village, that’s his own choice, and if he chooses missions that take him as far away from Konoha as he can get, that’s his choice too. If Sasuke wants to join Akatsuki and crash the five Kages meeting to murder Danzo, that’s his.

He thinks he understands, partly, why Sasuke never asked for help. It’s easier to help other people than it is to help yourself. When you help yourself, you have to guess what you need. Naruto’s bad at guessing. He’s bad at a lot of things, but he used to be worse, and he’ll only get better at it if he practices, so.

He does.

 

Plus one.

“So,” Naruto says, kicking his heels against the side of the cliff. “Indra and Ashura, huh?”

“Don’t,” Sasuke warns, but it lacks bite. “I feel like I’m looking through a puddle. The hell do people get off mucking up people’s sharingans without asking.”

“Can you turn it off?”

He considers it, squinting his newly purple eye. “I think I can work it out,” he decides, though he sounds dubious. Naruto nods, and they lapse back into a silence that’s, if not comfortable, then at least calm.

Calm is good. A fucking rabbit goddess. Alien trees. What the hell. Naruto likes calm.

Still, though. “You really think we’re destined to hate each other?” It’s been playing on his mind. Kurama identified Sasuke as Uchiha Madara’s reincarnation ages ago - what, back in that crater when they were still trying to work out if Sasuke wanted Naruto dead or if Naruto was going to beat him unconscious and drag him home? 

“Who cares?” Sasuke asks. “If I want to hate people, I hate people. Past lives can go hang, they’re dead. They don’t get a say.”

“People don’t stop affecting you because they’re dead,” Naruto argues. Sasuke’s whole life has been shaped by the day his brother killed the clan and, later, the day he killed his brother. Naruto’s by the day his parents died. It’s not quite the same as past lives passing on an eternal grudge, granted, but the idea that there’s something outside his control binding him to Sasuke and dictating their relationship… It’s more unsettling than he’d like to admit. “I don’t want to be destined to hate you.”

“You’d be shit at it,” Sasuke points out. “You can’t hate anyone.”

“I tried pretty hard to,” he says. He feels more than sees Sasuke’s eyes flick questioningly to him, and leans back on his hands, head tilted up to the sky as he elaborates. “After you left. In Konoha. When you didn’t come back, and I had to hear about things you did from other people. I thought I made the wrong decision. I thought I should’ve made you stay, and I’d blown my last chance. I wanted to hate someone and you were as good a target as any.”

There’s a pause. Sasuke doesn’t look away, Naruto doesn’t stop seeing shapes in the clouds. That one, he thinks, is a particularly determined turtle trying to climb a tree. A very pretty turtle, with the way it’s just starting to turn gold-red from the evening sun, but not very good at trees.

“You didn’t make the wrong decision,” Sasuke finally says. “I wouldn’t have stayed. I’m sorry.”

“For leaving? That’s ok, I knew you were always going to.”

“No. For… for making you choose.” He turns the words over in his mouth, trying to find the way to say it. “I wanted it to be over. I wanted… I wanted it to stop. I thought if it was your fault, if I could say I would’ve avenged the clan but you weren’t letting me, then maybe it would be ok.”

Naruto doesn’t know what to say to that. He isn’t sure he’s meant to say anything; it’s not exactly a question that’s looking for an answer. He remembers, though, whenever he asked Sasuke to come home. He never said he didn’t want to. He only ever said he couldn’t.

He remembers something else, and it gives him the words he needs. “I forgive you.”

Next to him, Sasuke goes still. “You’re not the Hokage yet,” he says. “That’s not up to you to decide.”

Yet. Sometimes he thinks Sasuke believes more in his dream to be Hokage than he does. And even if he’s not Hokage, Naruto’s been pulling strings for long enough now that he knows he could get Sasuke pardoned if he wanted to. Besides, they just saved the world. From aliens. By being the reincarnations of the sons of the father of ninjutsu.

What the hell.

“I don’t actually care about the missing nin thing,” he says, moving past the clusterfuck his life has become. “I meant us. I spent a lot of time trying to hate you, for all the shit you pulled, but. I forgive you. And I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you needed.”

He feels the tug on his shoulder and considers turning, but with the way Sasuke’s sat it’s an awkward angle to try to look at him. He leans back instead, dropping himself until he’s sprawled on his elbows with his legs out flat in front of him and dangling over the edge of the cliff, and tilts his head until Sasuke comes into view.

He’s frowning. “You did,” he says, then his frown morphs into a scowl at Naruto’s acknowledging but disbelieving hum. “Naruto. Do you have any idea what I’d’ve done without you? I’d’ve gone mad. I’d probably be trying to kill you again, maybe flatten a mountain or two along the way. Or if not that, I’d turn into some aimless wanderer with no purpose and no idea what he was doing, just meandering around the landscape trying to find a reason to exist now that I don’t have to be an avenger any more.”

He wrinkles his nose in distaste at the idea, and Naruto can’t help himself. The concept of Sasuke finally becoming the tragic hero that his fangirls always wanted him to be back at the academy - it’s too much. He barks out a startled laugh, and only laughs harder when Sasuke shoots him an offended glare.

“You’d be restoring your clan,” he manages, trapping his wheezes in his chest just long enough to speak. “Icha Icha Uchiha, read on to find out what fair beauty captures this lonely prince’s heart. Romance! Intrigue! Heartfelt conversations as the sun sets, only to rise again on - ow.”

“Are you ever going to learn to dodge.”

He grins, flopping down to sprawl on his back and nurse his side with exaggerated care. “Don’t need to when you’re around.”

Ah, shame. His tree climbing turtle cloud’s been blown out of shape. It now looks like a blotchy red flower, outlined in gold, which is nice enough but boring. Though, if he imagines it being outlined in black instead of gold, it’d be a passable attempt at Sasuke’s mangekyou.

“Do you want me to be?” Sasuke asks. He says it casually, but there’s a weight to the words that’s impossible to miss. The words, and the way he lies down next to Naruto, propped up on one elbow so he can turn to face him. His expression is… not calm, or not just calm, but not blank either. Not tentative. Not hesitant. Quiet? Warm, maybe? It’s not one Naruto’s seen on him before.

“You know I do,” he says. It used to hurt, to say that, first with a desperate ache then a fear of rejection then a creeping resignation. Now, it’s just a fact, and seeing Sasuke again - being with him again, fighting together, saving the world together, fitting seamlessly back to back not like they used to because they aren’t the same kids but in a way that’s better because they’ve had a chance, now, to learn to be themselves first and the selves they learnt to be fit together like they were always meant to - it’s good. It’s good. Being with Sasuke makes him happy. Of course he wants him around.

He just. Doesn’t need him to be.

It’s freeing, to do things because you want to and not because you’re afraid of what will happen if you don’t.

“I might too,” Sasuke says, and it takes Naruto a second to work out what he’s referring to. When he does though he turns to him, eyes wide. “Might,” Sasuke cautions, but there’s the edge of a smile playing on his lips. “I’ve never stayed before. I don’t know if I’ll like it.”

Naruto swallows, though his mouth feels too dry. Soft. That’s the expression, the one he couldn’t identify earlier. Sasuke looks soft. “Won’t know until you try,” he manages to croak, and he swears he’s just trying to stop his throat caving in on itself when he tilts his chin up, he’s not actually asking for a kiss -

Sasuke leans over and kisses him anyway. It too is soft, gentle and careful in a way Naruto often tried to be with Sasuke but Sasuke had never been able to be with him. Sasuke’s hand comes up to cup his chin and hold him in place and Naruto doesn’t moan, but he does something low and shocked and rumbling out of his chest with a gasp. He’s never been kissed like he’s precious before. When Sasuke pulls back he doesn’t go far, balanced over him on one arm with his hair falling forward around his face and highlighted gold from the setting sun.

“Naruto,” he says. “Will you help me learn to stay?”

“Holy fuck,” Naruto blurts in realisation. “I’m the fair beauty that captured the lonely prince’s heart. Icha Icha Uchiha, but gay.”

“Naruto.”

“Yes, yes I’ll help you, but look it’s even sunse-mmpf. Mm.”

Does it still count as being kissed like you’re precious if you’re laughing into it? If you slide your hands into his hair and can’t stop grinning enough to kiss him properly so he nips at your jawline and drops butterflies on your cheeks instead? If you tangle your legs together and arch up into him, if you say his name and know that it’s not about whether he stays, it’s about whether he wants to, and even if he feels trapped in Konoha and leaves that doesn’t matter because you haven’t lost him, it’s not about leaving it’s about whether he wants to come back -

It feels like it counts. Naruto feels precious. Wanted.

Sasuke stays.