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Dark eyes raked themselves over the mirror, and it was dark eyes that stared back. With Sasuke’s left eye shut, lashes fanning over his lower eyelid, the purple of the rinnegan was unbeknown to the mirror.
That necklace was sitting loosely at his neck, and sometimes Sasuke would imagine it to be hugging him. Not like when he had his spine against a wall and fingers bruising his throat—no, like when those same fingers were smaller, just as hard but more gentle. When they didn’t have to hide the adoration in their gestures, the pads cupping his nape, pulling him in closer, to the laughter of a younger Sasuke.
That job now fell to Naruto. Naruto’s steady arms would be the ones to embrace him, but years ago, during a time Sasuke’s memory couldn’t travel to, it was his brother.
Naruto sighed against the back of his neck, breath warm over his skin. Sasuke’s lips pulled slightly into a smile. He turned his head a fraction, looking over his shoulder to set his eyes on the blue that defined Naruto’s, though they were closed.
“Did you fall asleep?” he asked. Naruto’s eye muscles twitched, but they didn’t open. The grin slowly spreading over his face was the indication he was awake. Sasuke was faintly surprised—Naruto had a habit of draping himself over Sasuke and then losing consciousness to the world, occasionally and rather remarkably doing so when standing up. Sasuke rolled his eyes when Naruto made no move to answer.
Sasuke would have delivered a small spark of chidori at him had their position not been so comfortable. He found himself leaning into Naruto’s arms, whose reply was a happy noise, and both his eyes slid shut.
Naruto felt so warm, even his prosthetic limb radiating the heat of his body, of the Kyuubi. His waist was encased by the arms wrapped round it, hugging Sasuke in a different way and with different intent than Itachi ever did, but inducing that same feeling in his chest—that feeling of peace, a light, emancipating swell that extended through inside it, the feeling that everything would simply be okay.
Beyond Naruto, Sasuke had felt this way with nobody but his family. When the hands of his mother would tuck him into bed, her beautiful face lit up with so much love. When his fathers rough palm would tenderly card themselves through Sasuke’s hair, a rare, tranquil smile adorning his face. When Itachi’s finger would connect itself with Sasuke’s forehead, when the edo-tensei of his brother had placed a hand behind his head, pulling him in so their foreheads could touch. Soft words which ghosted over Sasuke’s skin: “I will love you always.”
“I love you,” Naruto whispered, lips contacting with the cold skin of his neck, a centimetre under Itachi’s necklace that Uchiha Obito—Tobi—had once scavenged for him when he was 16.
Those words left Naruto’s mouth so often, like they were a ritual, reserved for Sasuke and only Sasuke. They’d enter the air every other conversation, weaving their way into Sasuke’s heart to settle there.
Sasuke, though, said it less so.
Uchiha blood was carried by nobody except Sasuke. The clan which had nothing but love as their power, love driving them, love their source of everything, was lost, and any love that had been carried within had transferred to settle itself inside of Sasuke, as if every child, mother, father, aunt, uncle, grandfather and grandmother that had been Uchiha had gifted their feelings of love to Sasuke. Because Sasuke was the only one who it be gifted to. He was the only one left. He knew that; he’d seen the blood of his relatives be spilt, seen it replayed, stuck inside his own head and unable to just get out.
And Sasuke loved Naruto.
It was different from the love he felt towards Itachi, to his father and mother and every other person he’d lost that night. But it was still so strong, overpowering, heavy and real.
But the words would trip on their way to his mouth, fizzle in his throat. Still, he’d always had the feeling that Naruto could simply get it. Naruto understood him like no other, Naruto loved him like no other.
Sasuke had felt so many types of love. The fierce mix of it and hate made up of lies when it came to Itachi, the pureness of it combined with admiration towards his parents and Shisui, too. And the deepness of what he felt towards Naruto. Something indescribable.
“Sasuke,” Naruto said, and suddenly he was lifting his face from Sasuke’s neck.
“Hm?”
The answering silence curled in the air. Sasuke opened his eyes to meet the dazzling blue in the mirror. Sasuke blinked, noticing the faint nervousness that was beginning to define Naruto’s expression. He tilted his head in a question, and Naruto’s arms unwinded themselves from his waist, swallowing as he took a small step back. Sasuke turned to face him.
“Naruto,” Sasuke said firmly, eyes narrowing just a fraction. “What’s wrong?” Because there was no decipherable reason for Naruto to be looking at him like that.
One of Naruto’s canines was digging into his bottom lip, fingers twitching from where his arms were positioned loosely, but rather meticulously, at his side. “Sasuke, I…” he trailed off, and then allowed his head to shake. “Nevermind. Forget it.”
Sasuke’s eyebrow was travelling up his forehead. As Naruto turned his back to him to leave the room, Sasuke’s hand shot out to grab his arm.
“What were you going to say?”
His voice came out harder than he intended, but the wince Naruto let out was for a reason unrelated, Sasuke could tell. He allowed his hand to fall, the phantom of his left arm he’d lost so long ago still so present.
“I’ve—I’ve just been thinking…” For how long had he been ‘thinking’ to have such blatant nerves written boldly across his face and radiating profusely in his scent?
“We’ve always been alone,” Naruto mumbled, his face turned slightly away from Sasuke, as if he was afraid to meet his eyes. “Both of us. We were both alone for so long… and now we’re not. I know we’re not, but…”
In a manner as soft as Uchiha Sasuke could do, he reached out to touch his palm over Naruto’s cheek, gently cupping the whiskered face so would look at Sasuke. Blue met dark, and the simmering ocean pooled into something Sasuke couldn’t read, yet it was so openly vulnerable.
“But what, Naruto?”
Sasuke barely had time to acknowledge the movement before Naruto’s arms were back round him, his hand pressing into the spikes of his hair. He inhaled deeply, and after a blink Sasuke was bringing his own arm around the other’s shoulders.
“Sasuke,” Naruto repeated quietly, voice a tickle against his ear. “Sasuke… I want a family.”
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
Uchiha Mikoto had been a kunoichi of high status. She shared no direct relation to the clan’s main family, but she was well known within it, and she had the role of being a member of the Fourth Hokage’s genin team.
Sasuke’s mother had been strong, Sasuke knew that, yet he’d never witnessed it. His mother had fallen in love with his father, and they’d had their marriage, and from what Sasuke had been told, the clan had responded with delight. Itachi’s birth had then followed, and from her own choice, she gave up her life as a shinobi to become a mother, instead.
She’d done it so proudly.
And yet Sasuke couldn’t.
Under his own request, he and Naruto were to inform nobody the Last Uchiha was pregnant with the son of the person everybody knew would become the next Hokage.
Beyond a small group.
Due to Naruto’s insistence that they should, Iruka from the academy—who Sasuke could only recall vaguely but he knew to be deeply important in Naruto’s life—was the first they told. Kakashi knew only because they were obligated to tell him with his role as the Hokage, but Sasuke had the impression they’d have told him even if he wasn’t, and Sakura was needed for medical purposes, and Sasuke was anything but comfortable with allowing his doctor to be Senju Tsunade. Again, though, Sasuke was sure she wouldn’t be kept in the dark if otherwise.
On the rare occasions they’d leave the Uchiha district that they lived in (both of them tended to ignore the dry blood scraping the cracks in the floorboards) Sasuke would place a Genjutsu over himself so that the whole ordeal was passed unnoticed by the villagers.
Sasuke almost dreaded the baby’s birth. It felt so horrible to admit, but did he really want a pup, one whose veins would hold the blood of Uchiha, when so much pain fell upon those that did? Sasuke had no wish for another tragedy to strike his dead clan. And yet, years ago, he’d wished to have it restored. So long ago that it was before he’d even presented.
The words of the second Hokage surfaced in Sasuke’s mind. The curse of his family.
What would the villagers even think? Would they despise the baby, as they’d done to Sasuke, merely because of his family? Would resentment spark up on the streets, an Uchiha defiling the future Seventh Hokage and his legacy, as if they had not despised Naruto himself so long ago.
The thoughts ran omnipresent in Sasuke’s mind, pushing rationality away, an old panic rising in his chest that he hadn’t felt since he and Naruto had blown up each other’s arms and Sasuke had allowed him to use that single arm to drag him back to Konoha, the village his brother had sacrificed everything so it could be protected.
Him and Naruto weren’t even married. The child deserved a stable life, stable parents, not an omega mother who had deflected and gone insane, had his arm stained with blood in the pursuit of revenge, an uncle who his own mother had killed, a whole clan that the said uncle had also killed, and a reputation which would render his child maybe hated, saved only by the glow of light that was Naruto, the man who deserved to be a father more than anyone.
Of all people, why did he have to be the one that Naruto fell in love with?
And why did Sasuke have to love him back?
“Stop thinking,” Naruto muttered, his cheek laid over Sasuke’s stomach. It had only been three months, and the bump was noticeable, but small. Nobody but Naruto and (for practical reasons) Sakura were allowed to see it.
Sasuke stayed silent, resting his head against the pillow beneath him. His hair was growing longer, spread and messy in their usual way over the pillow, the length nothing but a vague impression of Itachi’s. Sasuke closed his eyes. He felt pain thinking about it.
Naruto shifted, the sounds loud in the otherwise silent, still compound. Sasuke could feel his presence, felt him moving closer.
Lips brushed his forehead, before they travelled down to his lips, kissing them reverently. Sasuke’s eyes didn’t open; he allowed himself to indulge in the action, to fully feel the way Naruto’s lips slotted over his, the tingling that spiked in his body as a reply.
“Thank you,” Naruto breathed. “Thank you so much for doing this.”
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
Sasuke was unsure of what his expectations for the ordeal exactly were. It would hurt, right? That’s all he really knew. Sakura had an expression of faint amusement when he’d said those exact words to her.
The memory of his bonding with Naruto was his clearest. Sasuke could recall everything about it, could remember the way Naruto’s arms had encased him, the warmth that had defined his insides, the sheer peace that he felt, nothing on his mind, nothing weighing upon him, everything splitting into perfection, a feeling he hadn’t felt since he was seven years old crying as blood rained everywhere. He could remember the way his body had reacted as Naruto’s teeth nipped his scent glands once, the way he’d gasped, sweat building up from the mere anticipation, the way he couldn’t prevent his Sharigan from blazing, and the way Naruto’s blue canvas of the world that were his eyes had stared into him, intense, with intent. How he’d given Sasuke nothing but a smile before he moved in and allowed his mouth to clamp over that part.
Sasuke’s body had felt so euphoric at the moment. There’s been no pain, none physically nor in any way mentally.
It felt as if everything had been building up for this moment. Like Naruto’s mark on his neck was his ascension into heaven.
When Orochimaru had marked him with the cursed mark, teeth sinking mere centimetres away from his scent glands, Sasuke’s body had crumpled. There’s been nothing but agony, and Sasuke thought that it would be the same when it was Naruto’s turn.
Sasuke was wrong.
This, however, Sasuke, evidently, was not wrong about.
Childbirth was fucking painful.
But then Sasuke’s eyes, screwed over and momentarily sightless, caught sight of what was being transferred from Sakura’s hands into Naruto’s. The bundle that was pup. The bundle that was his pup.
Naruto’s bright, beautiful eyes were shining with tears as he turned, his face in an expression of pure happiness, of brightness that was both radiant, tugging Sasuke closer, and also withering, the heat, the light, dangerous to be exposed to for too long. And yet the trepidation shattered in Sasuke’s mind as the bundle was handed over to be held in his weak, trembling lone arm, and Sasuke’s sharingan and rinnegan both tuned themselves to the tiny face that stared with their eyes closed up at him.
Sasuke’s throat broke into a sob.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
“What should we name him?” Naruto asked.
A huff escaped Sasuke’s lips before he could stop it. “You’re only thinking about that now?” Their unnamed, three-week-old son was sat upright in Sasuke's lap with Naruto carefully playing with his hands. His eyes were following his father, a bright, toothless smile bringing light to his face in a way that made Sasuke ache.
The eyes were only now a light shade of grey, though Sakura had said that meant the pigment of the baby’s eyes would fade into black soon, Sasuke’s eyecolour. In fact this baby had so far gotten every one of Sasuke’s features over Naruto’s, which Naruto would bring up with a proud giggle whenever he could.
Naruto’s grin was matching that of his son’s. “Yeah, well, he looks like you, so he should be an Uchiha.”
Sasuke stared at him. Naruto had pride in his expression, like he was thinking of himself as a genius for coming up with… whatever he’d come up with.
“He’s gonna be an Uchiha, like you, Sasuke, because he looks like you. If he looked like me, though, then he’d have been an Uzumaki.”
“What if he had looked like a mix of both of us?”
Naruto raised his hand to finger gun at Sasuke, only for their son to quickly grab at his father’s fingers in an involuntary movement, it seemed from the lack of clarity on his dumb, adorable little face, (Sasuke Uchiha never thought that one day he’d be describing somebody with those words) gripping it tightly in his palm.
Naruto blinked and started laughing. Their son began laughing with him.
“He looks so much like you, Sasuke,” Naruto whispered once their son had fallen asleep, being rocked gently in Sasuke’s lap. He was smiling so much, tenderness, love swallowing his eyes. “The name should correlate to you, don’t you think?” He leaned in a little closer, to avoid having to speak up and risk waking the infant. “Who’s important to you, Sasuke?”
“You,” Sasuke responded without thinking. “Him.” Naruto didn’t comment on the way Sasuke’s voice cracked a little, the way his eyes fogged over slightly as they rested over his son. Sasuke continued. “Sakura, too. Kakashi…”
He trailed off. Naruto’s smile was gentle, and something pulsed within Sasuke, a spark of resentment as well as appeal due to Naruto simply looking at him like that. “That’s just your own son and Team 7.”
“Be lucky it's even that,” Sasuke replied warningly. Even as he said it, the phantom of his left arm made itself present once again, and Sasuke’s gaze was trailing to the bandages and discolouration on Naruto’s right that signalled his replacement.
Sasuke licked his dry lips. “Itachi was important,” he muttered out so quietly.
Naruto’s face shifted once—it wasn’t pity, Naruto had learnt the hard way that Sasuke and pity was a one-sided match of loathing—before he was smiling again.
“Uchiha Ita,” he declared. “That’s our son’s name.”
Sasuke’s gaze snapped to him. Unconsciously, he’d begun rocking the baby just a pace faster. “Why…?”
Naruto placed his hand in the mess of black hair of their son, ruffling it in a manner that suggested he was made to do it. Being a father was something Naruto would be amazing at, Sasuke could tell, and it wasn’t surprising.
“I know it’s not the best kanji,” Naruto admitted. “But it sounds like Itachi’s name, right? Just shortened.” His hands raised immediately at whatever expression had formed itself on Sasuke’s face. “We don’t have to do it,” he assured hurriedly. “Remember, it’s your choice!”
Sasuke looked down at the sleeping face of his baby. “No it’s okay.” His voice came out so much steadier than he’d have thought. He closed his eyes. “Uchiha Ita is a good name.”
Konoha found out about Uchiha Ita only when he was two months old and it was finally being noticed round the village that their saviour of Konoha and his omega mate who was also a traitor and the last member—not anymore—of their collectively least favourite clan eachhadn’t been seen for a while.
Kakashi pushed the idea that they were on a mission together, however due to it being just a fucking lie, he couldn’t make it exactly official. Which was how Shikamaru found himself at their door one day, staring at the kid who was being cradled in Naruto’s arm.
After about two minutes of a blinking silence, Shikamaru’s shock seemed to transfer into a look of exasperation, letting out a withering sigh as he nodded. “I see.” He raised a hand to pat Naruto on the shoulder, less awkward than he’d have feared. “Congratulations. But I’m not keeping your secret.” Naruto shrugged, muttering out a ‘that’s fair’. Shikamaru left after eyeing the baby about 10 times while relaying a conversation with Naruto, and shouting out a slightly sarcastic greeting to Sasuke which was answered with an equal tone of sarcasm.
“Well, Nara's going to tell his mate in Suna,” Sasuke said, taking Ita from Naruto’s hands. “And she’s going to tell the Kazekage. The Kazekage’s going to want to celebrate it, and then.” He gestured vaguely with his hands. “The entirety of Konoha will know.”
Ita nuzzled himself into Sasuke’s chest, which Naruto was gazing mournfully at. “He was doing that to me, ‘ttebayo.” He muttered, crossing his arms. “Baby stealer.”
Sasuke set his only dark eye, the shade shared by Ita, upon the man that was his mate. “What?” He said, deadpan.
Naruto stuck his tongue out. Sasuke found himself having the urge to kiss it, to clamp his mouth over the tongue and, well, there was a baby in the room. Sasuke cast the thought away, and he used Ita’s presence as his excuse, refusing to acknowledge that sudden feeling of discomfort that had risen inside of him, how the thought of doing things to Naruto, allowing Naruto to do things to him, was suddenly, for the first time since he’d realised just how in love he was with his friend, not… appealing.
Naruto was bright, and Sasuke wasn’t. Sasuke was diminishing Naruto’s brightness, his legacy.
He looked at Ita and he saw himself. In the features, in the face, and that was wrong—his genes were wrong.
The villagers appeared to agree with him.
Heads snapped towards them as Uzumaki Naruto, their future Hokage, suddenly appeared in the streets one day, protectively holding a baby with the person everybody knew he’d mated with. Jaws dropped, gasps were ensured, as well as delighted crowding and swarming.
Sasuke saw the way their expressions changed slightly when they saw the crest that was hanging off the baby’s back. The Uchiwa. Konoha’s prophecy child, his future, rooted in a legacy that was a clan they all wanted to forget existed.
Sasuke kept his head down, refusing to meet anybody’s eyes.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
“He looks like you,” Sai stated. The rest of their friends—well, Naruto’s friends—immediately began agreeing.
They were seated in Ichiraku’s ramen, where the owner had teared up and given all of them a free dinner upon seeing the kid. Sasuke was currently doing his best not to grab Ita from where he was placed on Yamanaka Ino’s lap, the other girls all stuffing their faces in his, though Ita appeared to be enjoying the attention.
The kid looked like Sasuke, but he acted like Naruto. Sasuke wondered whether that would change, whether Ita would grow up to be closed off like he did, grow up pushing everyone away as he basked in isolation. Whether anything specific would happen to make him like that, whether one day Ita would come home to find Naruto and himself dead on the floor and blood repainting the floors of the Uchiha compound. Whether it would be Kakashi to have ordered it, even though Sasuke knew deep down that his former sensei would never, and Naruto would probably stop speaking to him if he ever voiced the idea that he would.
“His name is ‘Ita’?” Rock Lee asked, staring at the baby with such adoration you’d think it was his own. “Is that not a strange name for a child?”
“We wanted it to match Sasuke’s brother,” Naruto announced, and Sasuke felt inclined to (at the minimum) hiss at him or (at the maximum) grab his dumb mess of blond hair and use it to bash his head into the ramen bowl.
He felt ashamed the moment the urges fizzled out his body. Naruto was trying to be considerate. Everything about Naruto was defined by consideration; the way he treated Sasuke, the way he was so gentle with him, the way whatever he did was tuned to Sasuke somehow. Naruto was the ideal alpha, and that knowledge made Sasuke feel no jealousy even when he acknowledged the way Hinata Hyuga’s eyes changed slightly, a flush contacting with her skin, whenever they fell upon his mate.
The declaration caused the atmosphere to shift drastically. The truth about the Uchiha massacre had been made public by Kakashi. Itachi was being painted as a hero by Konoha.
But he was thirteen. How could he be a hero when he was given the ultimatum to kill his clan at thirteen?
The silence stretched further until, casually, spoken in a tone that was rather particular, Kiba asked. “You two getting married?” Sasuke’s hands were suddenly tingling with their need to ignite chidori. “Y’know, to finish the deal.”
Ino snorted as she played with Ita’s hair. “Yeah, I should have known that you two would be the first ones to… you know.” She sent a sly smile in their direction that had Sasuke’s hand having to flex harshly to stop chidori from screaming out of it.
“You’re 19,” Sakura said fiercely, crossing her arms. “You shouldn’t have already had a kid.”
“With the way Ino is, it’s going to be you and her next,” Shikamaru drawled.
Sakura’s face of redness clashed rather horrifically with her hair, while Ino’s grin made Ita begin giggling.
The girls collectively cooed.
Hinata was the single one who didn’t.
And yet she looked at Sasuke without any resentment in her pale eyes.The small smile that found itself to him surprisingly got itself returned, and Hinata’s smile turned a little more… happy as she looked away again.
Hinata was an omega, the only other one in this group. And she was also the only other one in the group to be in love with Naruto.
She was good for him. A Hyuga, a princess, belonging to a clan with dojutsu that was as good as the Sharingan and a clan that was more respected and loved the village than that of the sharingan’s clan ever was.
She radiated beauty, and she was powerful, from the small glimpses of her Sasuke had seen in the war. Most importantly, she was devoted to Naruto. It was something everyone could see apart from the alpha himself.
Compared to her, Sasuke was nothing. He was stronger, meaning their kid would theoretically be stronger, but in the end, with Naruto’s dream, that would mean nothing—Sasuke would mean nothing.
Hinata was a good match to Naruto. She would make their children happy, make the villagers happy. In fact, she’d make them celebrate, because the future Hokage was marrying the Hyuga’s prettiest object, and they would create a happy, beautiful family.
Sasuke couldn’t do what Hinata would be able to. Naruto should have loved her, not him. And it wasn’t fair to her that Naruto had decided to swaddle along with someone like him.
Sasuke wasn’t spoken to for the rest of the night, nor did he speak to anybody else.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
Ita reached 6 months old when marriage was brought up again, and this time it was by Naruto.
“Shikamaru and Temari got engaged,” he said to him, before pulling at his bottom lip with his teeth. “Don’t you think that we…” Naruto’s words stopped, his sensors picking up on the troubled spikes catching in Sasuke’s scent. “Sorry,” he amended quickly.
Sasuke’s eyes flickered up to meet his, his rinnegan glowing faintly. “Please don’t,” he whispered out. His voice didn’t sound like Sasuke’s, Naruto realised as his chest panged. “Don’t feel sorry.”
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
Sasuke had always gone through nightmares silently. Ita didn’t wake up, nor did Naruto, even when Sasuke’s sharp gasp echoed across the room as he jerked awake.
He couldn’t exactly remember his dream. He thinks he’d seen blood somewhere in it, and a frightened voice of a child. Whatever it was, it was enough to get him out of the bed and towards the sink where he found himself vomiting in.
Eyebags circled his eyes the next day, though he received no ‘subtle’ shots of concern from Naruto, a positive sign that his alpha hadn’t noticed anything amiss. Sasuke’s scent must be fairly normal, then.
That meant he was overreacting. If his scent was fine, then he was also fine, which was what Orochimaru would say while going about his daily business of pumping drugs into Sasuke’s body.
Ita’s small hand suddenly made contact with Sasuke’s face. Sasuke blinked, fighting his instincts to not violently react and throw his pup into a wall. He gritted his teeth at the surprising effort of it.
He didn’t notice the way Ita’s eyebrows were pulled slightly upwards, lips parting, head in a slight tilt, watching Sasuke with intent.
Ita’s fingers traced underneath his eyes where the darkness Naruto had missed was visible. A low sound escaped from his body, a grumble, something akin to disapproval. Sasuke might have felt amusement had exhaustion not been pulling down his limbs.
He ruffled Ita’s hair without much attention being paid into the movement. His eyes moved away from Ita.
They did that every time he got up in his face and expressed that strange little expression. No, not strange—It wasn’t strange if he’d seen it before.
But Sasuke’s mind groggily shut down before he could focus on anything.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
Blood—yeah he was quite used to that. “Think of something new!” Sasuke told his dream.
He tried to ignore the words that were echoing around his ears. Itachi—Itachi’s tsukuyomi, his parent’s bodies, his parent’s blood splattering across his face, inside his nostrils, his mouth, leaving him to swallow it, choking on it, the smell hot and putrid, tears rolling down his cheek and just making everything worse.
Yes, he knew this script. He knew it too well. He could recite it all. Itachi was going to taunt stuff in his ear before the scene would change so Sasuke was on the streets and he could see nothing but a sword swishing through the air and red. Occasionally, if his dreams were being mean, he’d be crumpled underneath the bodies of every one of his cousins, all younger or the same age as him.
“Foolish little brother”—yes, he fucking knew that, too. Knew it so well. It reverberated in his skull whenever he could, this version of Itachi pairing up with the real one, overlapping inside his mind, screaming inside, tearing his thoughts and leaving him with nothing but both hatred and love so tragic.
He knew it enough to be able to detect the little changes, the way the voice was, this time, just slightly higher. That was weird. And the taunts—they weren’t oozing with cruelty, not exactly. Instead… it sounded like someone was… crying.
Sasuke allowed his ears to tune in a little more, and suddenly he was gagging with screams and screams and screams and screams.
Half were from his slaughtered relatives, and half were from his own mouth.
Above it all, the man he thought was Itachi was speaking to him.
“Foolish mother.”
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
"You and I are flesh and blood.” Itachi had said to him. “I'm always going to be there for you, even if it's only as an obstacle for you to overcome. Even if you do hate me. That's what big brothers are for."
Sasuke rested his forehead against the mirror, a sigh that was between exhaustion and grief leaving his lips. His fingers were itching to press themselves over his forehead’s skin, to poke it and pretend it was his brother doing so instead.
Sasuke decided then and there that he would not have another kid. Ita couldn’t… for him to go through what Sasuke did, or rather, what Itachi did… it couldn’t be allowed. Sasuke couldn’t let it happen.
And yet a part of him ached; his child would never experience the bond that he and Itachi shared—but the other part of him was so glad. Was actively working for it to be like that. His bond with Itachi had broken him. And he didn’t want to see Ita, with a face of gentleness, love, poking his younger sibling in the forehead and then dropping to the floor, blood running down his mouth with his eyes seeing nothing of the world he’d left around him.
Ita was beginning to crawl, to Naruto’s delight. He was doing so earlier than average, Sakura had said, but she’d been pleased and said it was nothing out of the ordinary; Ita was 6 and a half months old.
Naruto would sit at the floor by their son and clap his hands while the baby would awkwardly make his way towards him, shuffling around and falling on his face a couple times. So much joy would grace Naruto’s face, and light would expand around him, brightening up everything, the house that had once been deserted, the motivation inside Ita as he seemed determined to reach his father, the walls that had once been so grey but were now so full of life.
Sasuke wished he himself could brighten up, too. That his heart would stop feeling so heavy, that his eyelids wouldn’t droop down so much.
He lay in bed awake, while Naruto would snore softly behind him. His ears would stay attuned to the sounds of Ita in his crib, his small snores that Naruto would gush about whenever he’d be awake to hear. Ita was not a difficult child, rarely waking up in the night as Sasuke had heard babies tended to do. Sasuke had no reason for the loss of sleep that was being accumulated.
Naruto rolled a lot in his sleep, arms always finding themselves around Sasuke’s waist, always spooning him. Sasuke remembered a time he liked it, when he’d bask in it.
He pressed his face into the pillow, muscles tense with all the contact. Naruto was so warm at his back, but Sasuke felt so cold.
Fuck, what was wrong with him? Naruto was everything—Sasuke shouldn’t be feeling these things.
He wanted to turn around, press his lips against the marks of whiskers over Naruto’s cheeks, but he felt nausea, felt like he’d just end up vomiting on Naruto’s face and ensuring awkwardness for everybody.
He wanted to kiss Naruto, wanted to hug Ita, wanted his affection, his love for his family to be clear, but his body didn’t cooperate, his insides didn’t, his idiot of a self refusing to simply indulge what would otherwise be so easy.
Shikamaru and Temari were married. They didn’t have any pups, but they were more of a family than he and Naruto were, and it was anything but Naruto’s fault.
It was just Sasuke’s. Sasuke’s fault. Naruto had done so much for them to be in this stage, and it was Sasuke who was unravelling it. Ruining their relationship that had established itself so delicately.
The bond mark over his neck pulsed faintly, warm like Naruto.
(“I'm always going to be there for you, even if it's only as an obstacle for you to overcome. Even if you do hate me.)
Both Naruto and Itachi had been there for him, and Sasuke had hated both of them. He’d killed Itachi, and now he was doing this to Naruto.
He wondered whether Ita was simply Itachi in a new body, sent by the Sage of 6 paths to watch him, judge him, making sure he hurt Naruto no more. That he was keeping his part in the curse of hatred’s end.
If so, then he could imagine the disappointment in his son’s dark eyes, could see it so vividly, as it had been shared by Itachi so often—by his father, too, so often.
He turned his head slightly, able to see Ita in his crib despite the darkness due to his rather superior vision. His son looked peaceful, innocent, untouched by the world’s hardships, and he deserved to have it stay that way.
His dream flashed in his mind.
Sasuke found himself trying not to cry.
His own hair had become long, like Itachi’s, spikier than Itachi’s ever could be, a different shade which he’d taken from his mother instead, overall features taken from his mother instead, but Itachi and him had always looked similar, and Naruto had even told him at first glance he’d thought Itachi was him despite the considerable age difference.
Sasuke closed his eyes, though it didn’t change much with the dark, and tried to conjure his brother’s face in his mind.
He saw blood and a smile.
That was accurate.
He saw the black sclera that came with edo-tensei, cracks on his skin. That was also accurate.
He could see those lines that marked everything the other had to go through.
He saw Itachi. He did, but why couldn’t he see a face?
Sasuke’s sharingan whirled itself on. Everything should be stored there—from the blood red moon of Itachi’s tsukuyomi, bodies falling to the floor again and again and again and again. From Itachi brutalising him as Naruto and Jiraiya, one of the Sannin, watched in the hallway, from his and Itachi’s fight, from Itachi falling, lifeless, smile cracking Sasuke into pieces. From Itachi resurrected into edo-tensei with the cracks over himself as he got close to Sasuke in a way he hadn’t done for years.
“I will love you always.”
Wasn’t Sasuke supposed to do the same?
His sharingan revealed everything but a face.
Sasuke, when he was seven with nothing but so much grief, so much hurt, shock and denial and anger and betrayal defining him, eating away at him, gnawing his insides and spitting out what he ended up becoming, had hated his brother. He’d ripped the man out of every photograph and used the kunai Itachi had left him to slice it.
There was no physical copy of Itachi other than a corpse that Tobi, Zetsu or Kabuto had done something to.
It used to be mental. Sasuke never had trouble remembering Itachi’s face then. When it would ripple in his mind and cause Sasuke to see red.
But now it was different.
Suddenly, Sasuke was feeling so sick
He couldn’t remember what his brother looked like.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
Naruto wasn’t home. He wouldn’t be for a few days. He was travelling to the Sand Village to meet the Kazekage there—Gaara, the boy whom Sasuke’s memory could never exactly allow him to forget.
It was quiet without him, Sasuke left with nothing but his thoughts and the babbling of a baby. He… preferred it.
One day, Kakashi found himself lounging in the compound, fondness written over his face as he played with Ita. Sasuke’s chest curled again, the same way it had done when Ino had briefly stolen his baby from him, but it was less intense. Kakashi was a person who was familiar, at least, even with the awkwardness that would sometimes pool between them.
Kakashi’s finger pretended to smear something on Ita’s forehead, who reacted accordingly, hands slapping up and looking around comically. Something… strange pulled inside of Sasuke.
Kakashi chuckled.
“He looks like—”
“Me? I know,” Sasuke cut in. Those words were something that he was beginning to find himself resenting.
“No,” Kakashi stated, gloved thumb pressing gently over Ita’s face, tracing the small creases that Sasuke hadn’t realised were present around his eyes. “I was going to say he looked like Itachi.”
For the first time since Sasuke could properly remember, he openly cracked.
Ita’s small fingers kept catching the necklace at Sasuke’s throat—the necklace that used to hang around Itachi’s throat, one that Sasuke had never really figured out where his brother had got from.
Kakashi’s palm was placed over his back. Sasuke couldn’t understand why he was crying, why suddenly he felt so hurt, why those words had reduced him to tears. The couch was pressed into his face, which he used to hide it from Kakashi, and though his throat kept his sobs silent, the other could see very easily the turmoil crushing Sasuke—the suffering that was so familiar, and yet always so painful.
Ita was squashed a little between the two men, unaware, focused on the toy that was once worn by the uncle he knew nothing about.
Sasuke couldn’t look at Kakashi. Kakashi, whose eyes shared the same deep black as his did, as Itachi’s did. Kakashi, who both Naruto and Sakura saw as something akin to a parent, and yet to Sasuke, was looking at him with that same soft concern that Itachi once shared before he was forced to mask it.
It had once been Itachi’s hand who’d slowly rub circles over Sasuke’s skin as he cried, it had once been Itachi who Sasuke would cling to and then feel embarrassed after.
Once Sasuke’s tears had stopped, he untangled himself from his former sensei—the Hokage—with cheeks that burnt. He rubbed furiously at his blotched face, and, with a blurry vision, Ita’s face swam in front of him, little hands outstretched. He looks like Itachi, Kakashi had said. Itachi, who was dead by his hands. Itachi, who had broken down just like he did over their parents' bodies, and Sasuke had simply never known until it was too late.
“Sasuke,” Kakashi uttered, and Sasuke opted to stare at the fabric of his gloves rather than meet that heavy gaze. Then one of those gloved hands was on top of head, ruffling his hair in a way that caused Sasuke’s breath to catch. “You’ve grown so much. He’d be proud.”
Another tear caught in Sasuke’s lashes before it rolled down his cheek.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
Sasuke couldn’t recall when he’d seen Itachi ever fully unburdened. Kakashi was wrong—Ita didn’t resemble Itachi simply because Sasuke wouldn’t let him do. He couldn’t allow his son to become the same infuriating, self-sacrificing, suicidal man that his brother was.
The lines around Itachi’s eyes had been inherited by their father, but had only become deeper due to everything that was shoved upon his shoulders. The crease around Ita’s eyes proved he’d grow up to have the same lines develop, and Sasuke could predict the sheer pain that would spark inside of him when it did.
He looks like Itachi. Not you. But you look like Itachi, too.
Was that why everyone was under the impression that Ita was a copy of Sasuke? How had Kakashi been the one who noticed otherwise and not Uchiha Itachi’s own brother?
How had Sasuke just allowed himself to forget, to act as if Itachi was nothing.
He thought of all the pictures he’d destroyed and suddenly found himself having the rage-filled desire to hurt himself, to make himself pay for what he’d ripped away from himself.
Sasuke had the rinnegan, a jutsu that allowed him to open portals into different dimensions and exist outside space, and yet he couldn’t time travel? Or rather, he hadn’t figured out how to, yet.
But would he go back in time? He could save Itachi, but would Ita exist? Would he even be with Naruto?
No—no, it was good if he wasn’t with Naruto. Then Naruto could go with HInata or some other girl who he deserved.
It was better that way.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
Sakura and Ino got married at the age of 20 between them. Both Naruto and Sasuke attended their wedding with a 9-month-old Ita.
Kakashi started crying—more than Sakura’s actual father did. Naruto did, too. Shikamaru did a little, though he told everyone otherwise, and Choji was very open about his sobs.
Both Sakura and Ino were alphas, but they were women with knots; a pup would still be very easy to conceiva. Sakura’s dream was to have children, and Sasuke caught the looks of harmless envy she’d send towards him, Naruto and Ita.
He sent the looks back as he watched the two girls take their vows.
Naruto’s glances burnt his skin as the guilt began swallowing him.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
Ita’s first birthday rolled by. His first word was said on it.
His lips were moving in earnest, opening and then closing, the little vibrations in his throat resting there. His eyes were bright, as if what he had to say was something deeply important to him, something that must be heard by the whole word.
“Ma..ma,” was babbled by Ita.
“Sasuke,” Naruto whispered. He swivelled his head round to stare at his mate, grin childish and beautiful, blue eyes shining, “Sasuke! You’re his first word!”
His grin faded once he noticed the reply that had formulated as an expression over Sasuke’s face, or, rather, Sasuke’s face itself.
It felt like a failure on his part, not to have noticed the eyebags that were quite literally defining Sasuke’s eyes, painting his face, thick and dark, the frown that was running deep, set down, and as Naruto suddenly just thought, he realised he couldn’t remember them twitching up recently. And his eyes, Sasuke Uchiha’s pretty, sharp, all-seeing eyes that Naruto was so happy ended up being transferred to their son was glossed over; unfocused, somewhere entirely else.
“Sasuke?” Naruto repeated, and he thought he was quite at liberty to allow panic to slip into his voice. He’d last seen Sasuke like this… when? Before their fight, before the war entirely, when he was standing before the post-killing Danzo, blind Sasuke and making his declaration of friendship to everybody’s contempt.
Was this his fault? Was it his blatant wish to get married? But he’d thought he’d made it apparent that he’d never force Sasuke into it.
But hadn’t he chased Sasuke, as an alpha to an omega, for years, constantly pushing him to come back?
But it was different then—Sasuke needed to have come back. If he hadn’t, the darkness would have destroyed him, and not before he destroyed everything else.
He realised how it must have looked to other people—an alpha who could think of nothing but the omega who’d run away, who spoke about nothing but his own desire to get him back.
“What are we?” Sasuke had asked him. “I’m your friend,” had been Naruto’s reply.
Even thinking about it back then made Naruto want to bang his head against a brick wall. He’d assumed Sasuke was the same, that Sasuke thought of him the same way. Sasuke was never good with words, Naruto knew that, but he could still always feel the love from the other man, the way he was as devoted to Naruto as Naruto was to him.
At least, Naruto had thought he knew that.
How much of it was reality and how much was his own delusion?
Naruto felt sick at himself for thinking it. He remembered standing in the eyes of the villagers, remembered seeing the raw hatred, the anger and the disgust that he could never just understand. It was different now, but as he thought about the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Sasuke didn’t love him, he felt like that boy again, surrounded by nothing but loneliness.
But Naruto knew Sasuke better than anyone. Even before they’d mated, Sasuke had been his other half, the second side of his coin, the other bit of the equation—no, he wasn’t, rather, he was the thing that solved the equation. Sasuke was the moon that Naruto’s son had needed, when he’d been more focused on the Earth that had been Sakura. The sun was supposed to be independent, supposed to not need the moon at all, while the moon could only shine with the sun’s light, and yet, somehow, their relationship had defied the physics that Iruka-sensei had drilled into his head.
And that was just it. Him and Sasuke were different. Sasuke himself was different.
He knew that. He understood that. It was one of the reasons why he and Sasuke just worked—Sasuke understood him, understood his need for touch, need to have Sasuke with him all the time, need for physical touch, and he understood Sasuke’s lack thereof.
They’d established their relationship through this understanding. They’d only bonded because they’d both mutually came to these little conclusions. After everything that happened between them, they still worked, and they had nobody but themselves to thank for it
Naruto knew that he wasn’t just imagining that. It was real—everybody knew that. The Sage of Six Paths himself had known that. Naruto had his own insecurities, the seizings of his heart every time he was looked at a little differently, every time he saw hatred directed in any form at him.
He hated it when Sasuke got angry, and maybe it was slightly unhealthy how he’d do anything to get Sasuke to not just look at him that way—the way he’d done as he stood opposite him in the Valley of the End, they way he’d done as he drove a chidori through Naruto’s chest.
Worse than seeing Sasuke angry was seeing Sasuke sad. And he saw both so many times he felt physically hurt.
“It shouldn’t be like that anymore,” he muttered to himself. Sasuke’s beautiful, dark eyes that looked as if they’d been taken from the night sky and pooled into irises fell upon him. He looked tired, but as radiant as he always did.
“What?”
Naruto shook his head slightly. His gaze travelled to Ita—their son, their son—who was waddling a little, small, tiny hands fisting the furniture in attempts to keep himself steady while his mother and father kept watchful eyes.
That swell in his chest, the way he felt so full—he suddenly understood the parents he’d seen in the village, panicking and weeping for their children. He suddenly understood his father, who’d done everything to protect him even if it meant dying, even if it meant sealing Kurama inside of him. He understood his mother, too, and the way her eyes had clouded over, the way so much happiness had enveloped her form as she was faced by him.
Naruto had a family, and it was changing everything. Life was just better.
So why was it evident that Sasuke felt differently?
“He’s one year old,” Naruto whispered serenely, tentatively moving his hand so it could place itself on the small of Sasuke’s back.
Sasuke reacted, and it was impossible to not notice. Muscles seized and tension was clear through his body. Naruto dropped his hand, and felt sadness when he noticed no relaxation in the other male. Still, he kept talking.
“Remember when I told you I wanted a family? What you did for me, what you did for us, it means so much to me.” He turned round so he could face Sasuke, and he hoped that everything he felt towards the omega was oozing out of him, affecting his chakra, affecting his scent, affecting the room itself. Softness came naturally to him, his voice gentle in a way he hoped wouldn’t be resented. “This was supposed to be for the both of us. A family that we could both have.”
He reached a hand out to connect it with the back of Sasuke’s hair, tender. “But it isn’t like that for you is it?”
Sasuke stayed silent, staring up at him, eyes slightly wide, glowing in the strangest way. Naruto’s other hand—the bandaged one—also came out, and he was cupping the back of Sasuke’s head, leaning forward so his forehead rested itself so lightly against Sasuke’s.
“I’m sorry,” Naruto breathed.
He could see the flicker in Sasuke’s pupils, the sudden emotion that was weeping inside of it. “Why?” Sasuke replied, tilting his head, just a fraction, closer to Naruto’s.
“I’m not blind, Sasuke,” Naruto said with a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “You’re suffering. I can see it.” He closed his eyes. “But I’m sorry I didn’t do so sooner.”
He could feel Sasuke’s lips parting, could feel the vibration in his throat that was maybe a word before it was cut off and his lips closed. Sasuke Uchiha was speechless, and Naruto had rendered him that way so many times, but it still always felt so vindictive. Not this time, though. Not in this context.
“Ita is everything,” Sasuke muttered. “It’s not him. And it’s not you.” His eyes slid shut as well. They had nothing but their ears, listening to Ita’s little noises, his small pads of steps, the way he was succeeding to walk in the smallest of capacities.
“ ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ “ Naruto recited with a grin. “A little cliché, Sasuke.”
The small huff against his lips told Naruto that his mate had laughed. That was good; Sasuke deserved to laugh more than anyone.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Sasuke admitted, his voice quiet, audible to Naruto and Naruto only. “I… I have everything I need, everything I want, and yet…” he broke off. Naruto’s hands slipped down from his hair as he opened his eyes, initiating to hold his face instead, tilting it up at him, while he leaned down himself to press his lips against the other’s.
Sasuke met the kiss with hesitation, and a surge of panic lifted inside Naruto at the thought he was forcing himself upon the omega, but then he sensed the want circulating in the air, Sasuke’s pheromones rather than his own. Ita cooed, as if he could sense it too.
As they pulled apart, a sigh escaped Sasuke’s lips. Naruto saw him rather than felt him fall forward. Naruto caught him easily, due to the fact that they were already rather tangled together. Sasuke breathed heavily against Naruto’s neck, who could feel something wet beginning to accumulate there.
Oh.
Sasuke was crying. More than Ita, Naruto thought, faintly amused. He merely hugged Sasuke tighter, let warmth sweep itself into the air, allowed Sasuke to feel how happy Naruto was to be with him, how much it meant to him.
And, because he was Sasuke, he was able to understand it.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
At 20 years old, Naruto completed everything he had dreamed of doing. At 20 years old, at an age younger than even his father, he became the Seventh Hokage.
Kakashi earned himself the title of the Hokage with the shortest reign ever, which he wore rather proudly.
The first thing Naruto stretched his resources into doing was finding Itachi Uchiha’s body.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
Sasuke sat idly on the floor, the dirt making itself known over his trousers and cloak. Sasuke didn’t really mind, though, as there was someone who was currently residing inside the dirt.
“Nii-san,” Sasuke said to the gravestone. His thumb lifted, the pad stroking the rock gently. “You’re back home.”
Home—but not in the terms of the village. Home, but not because it was Konoha’s soil. Home, because all the other headstones read ‘Uchiha’, too, and right beside Itachi’s were the names, engraved longer ago, ‘Mikoto and Fugaku’.
Sasuke’s name would once grace these grave, as well. Except, when it did, he’d be leaving something behind.
“Nii-san, you’re an uncle,” Sasuke informed the dead Itachi who was sitting, smiling at him, face obscure, but simply enough. The smile that sent peace through his soul, the fingers that would touch or rather cradle his forehead. He didn’t need Itachi’s face to know this was his brother.
“Nii-san, I don’t think I can accurately remember what you look like anymore.”
He allowed his hair to shadow his face as he stared at the ground. Grief swallowed his heart. That, he was sure, would never stop, no matter how much Naruto worked to preserve him as nothing but happiness. And it worked vice versa as well; Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina sent holes into Naruto’s heart everyday, and yet Naruto was always able to patch them up so kindly.
Sasuke wished he still had a picture of Itachi. Wished his sharingan would reveal what he wanted it to reveal, rather than the faces of his relatives as their throats were cut, blood sweetening the world.
He exhaled deeply, suddenly aware of how hard his only hand was gripping the grave. He let it drop, let it hit the dirt.
He raised it up again as he remembered his family. Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, maybe even the other people he’d once attended the academy with during a time that felt so long ago. He remembered Ita, his smiling face, his dark eyes, dark hair, small lines creasing his eyes.
Uchiha Ita’s name would also join the ones here.
Maybe Itachi would finally meet him, up in the clouds or wherever things went after death, if anything at all. Maybe Sasuke would see them side by side for the first time, where he’d have brother’s face to actually compare his son’s to.
Maybe it wouldn’t even be his brother—what if it was his mother, or father who had dominated Ita’s genes? Sasuke could see his mother so clearly whenever he looked in the mirror. He couldn’t forget her face because it was more or less his.
Maybe, one day, he could take Ita here. Let Ita visit his uncle, who might allow his ghost to become corporal and shine his appearance down upon them.
But then, at the age of two, Ita found a photograph.
He waddled his way up to Sasuke and pointed at it. “Whose… this?”
“You from the future,” he lied, hand coming up to ruffle Ita’s hair, the action loving in a way that caused something heavy off his chest. Ita had squealed, tiny body shaking to try and get Sasuke to stop touching him.
Ita didn’t see Sasuke take the photograph and pocket it. Ita would never see Sasuke take out the photograph some times and simply stare at it with his sharingan blazing.
Naruto saw it sometimes, but he’d never comment.
He’d just hug Sasuke’s waist. It was enough, always enough.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
“You’d be mad at me, wouldn’t you?” Sasuke said to a face with sharp angles, handsome though Sasuke had expected it, jawline framed by the long hair, the eyebrows that were just the perfect thickness and length and the dark eyes with lashes defining them, shaped in a way that was slightly curved. He flicked the piece of paper with his index, and the face moved with it, the sound of a smack funny in the quiet room.
Sasuke sighed and cradled the only remaining photo of his brother to his chest, staring at the ceiling. “Liar,” he said. “You’d said you’d love me always. Now you’re guilt-tripping me.”
He rolled over to his side, his own finger coming up to rest itself over his forehead. “Ita deserves to have what we had, doesn’t he?” he murmured. “I just hope he isn’t as much of a shitty brother as you were.”
Itachi didn’t reply. He never did.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Childbirth was so much more painful this time than it was last time.
Sasuke screamed a lot, it was rather embarrassing. And it was Tsunade he had to deal with, as well, as Sakura had gone off with Ino and decided that they’d have a pup of their own at the same damn time as him.
At least the three babies screamed a lot more.
He’d given himself fucking triplets.
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
Ita was three years old now. Itachi had been five when Sasuke popped into existence.
Ita looked so deeply confused it was quite comical.
He and Naruto, thankfully, named the triplets before they’d made it to three weeks; Uchiha Menma, Uzumaki Neoma, and Uzumaki Minato.
Menma and Neoma were identical, black hair the shade of Sasuke’s but that being the only thing they got from Sasuke. Their blue eyes made Sasuke feel so insanely happy, and the whiskers that marked their cheeks made Naruto bark out a proud laugh when he’d first seen them. Their face shape was Naruto’s, or rather, it was Uzumaki Kushina’s. The only reason Menma took the Uchiha name, since based on Naruto’s thesis, it depended on nothing but their appearance, was because Naruto wanted it to be balanced.
Uzumaki Minato didn’t look like Menma or Neoma. Sasuke had been the one to pick out his first name, and Naruto had hugged him so tightly when he did. His hair was blonde, dazzlingly bright like his father’s, with the same whisker marks, but he had the dark eyes that defined the Uchiha. Unlike all their other children, Minato looked like the perfect mix of both of them.
“Thank you,” Naruto said, and he looked exactly as he’d done when Ita had been born. So grateful, so happy, staring at Sasuke as if he was his saviour.
“Don’t be,” Sasuke said, leaning in to peck his lips in a way that started off light and turned a little… less so.
As Naruto’s canines began nipping his neck, favouring where their bonding mark was, Sasuke’s throat finally found itself unplugging.
“I love you,” he breathed.
Naruto’s smile around his skin turned the world so bright. “I love you, too.”
⧭⬲⧭⧭⬲⧭
“Hey, let’s get married.”
“For real?”
“For real, usuratonkachi.”