Exodium - Chapter 2 - candlewix (2024)

Chapter Text

Uchiha Sasuke could say, in every sense of the word, that he hated Uzumaki Naruto.

That feeling came quite easily to him, ever since they were kids. He hated the way Naruto was loud and obnoxious, hated the stupid goggles he wore on his head, hated the way he smiled so big even after Sasuke called him an idiot. If he was really nitpicking, he would go on to say that he hated Naruto’s stubborn confidence in whatever he believed was right. He hated the way Naruto laughed like he couldn’t help it, the marks over his cheeks that looked like whiskers, and the way he smelled gross after they spent long afternoons beating each other up on the training ground.

Sasuke especially hated the way Uzumaki Naruto made him feel.

He probably hated it so much because it wasn’t as bad of a feeling as he wanted it to be. Which wasn’t to say that Naruto didn’t irritate him to the point of insanity, because he very indisputably did - but what was quite possibly even worse was that Sasuke found he didn’t mind. He really, really didn’t mind.

Because Uchiha Sasuke could say, in every sense of the word, that he loved Uzumaki Naruto. And he hated that.

It had always been, to him, a whole lot less complicated to hate something more than he loved it. He found that it was even easier to hate something because he cared about it, anyway. For that reason, it was really easy to hate everything about Naruto that got on his nerves - even though it got on his nerves because he liked them.

It was impossibly difficult to explain what about him, exactly, was just so endearing. Naruto’s big and stupid smile made a warmth bloom in his chest and spread like it was going to swallow him whole. His eyes reminded Sasuke of an endlessly blue summer sky - his voice was scratchy when he shouted, his entire face flushed deep red whenever he was embarrassed. He wrinkled his nose and squinted his eyes whenever he was confused. And his palms sweat a lot.

Every single thing that Sasuke hated about him was something that he loved so much it felt like it could kill him.

He liked the scratchiness in the way Naruto said his name, liked the way his face would flush when Sasuke pissed him off on purpose, and didn’t even mind how gross and sweaty he was all the time. Which sucked, in particular. Because Naruto’s grossness and sweatiness became, at a certain point, less of something he didn’t mind and more of something that kept him up at night.

Naruto reminded him of the sun. He’d always been larger-than-life, in that way.

Around the time Sasuke turned thirteen, and the people his age at the Academy started to show a little more interest in the opposite gender, he considered himself above it all. They were merely unnecessary distractions, if anything. Sakura in particular had always been one of the smartest in the class, and incredibly gifted when it came to things like controlling her chakra - which was why Sasuke felt so frustrated when she cared less about her abilities and more about his. She was needlessly burdened with a flimsy crush on him that was impeding her realization that she was a good kunoichi, and impeding her development into an even better one.

And for that reason, at thirteen years old, it really pissed him off.

Things like clumsy romances didn’t interest him in the slightest when there were much more important things to devote his attention to - his weaknesses being taken advantage of had been a lesson learned unkindly. Sasuke found it almost inescapable to reject vulnerability, because in that way, he did not have to cling onto blind hope that it would not hurt him again.

That was all love and friendship was, really. A willingness to become vulnerable; forgetting himself to lay bare in front of another, under the baseless belief that they would not take his exposed weakness and drive a kunai through it.

Sasuke considered himself above it all. His weaknesses remained locked away behind walls that could not be eroded by the number of times Naruto bashed himself against them. Or that was what he told himself, anyway. The walls would crumble into dust, brick by brick, every time he met Naruto’s eyes.

It was almost inescapable to reject vulnerability.

That was the worst part, he was sure, about love and friendship - the fact that they were unavoidable. The fact that no matter how many times Naruto got on his last f*cking nerve, Sasuke did not think twice about putting himself in between him and imminent death. And he could rationalize it in however many ways he could think of: Kakashi’s insistence on camaraderie, a momentary lapse into insanity, a thoughtless mistake. It didn’t really matter, because anything he tried to justify it with felt definitively like a lie. He knew exactly why he saved Naruto’s life, back when they were thirteen and on their first mission outside of the Land of Fire.

It had really just been instinct.

His body moved on its own, struck with a sudden incomprehensible fear that surged through his veins like electricity. It told him that he absolutely would not watch Naruto die, he could not. And he hadn’t even had the satisfaction of regretting it, when Naruto bent over him with an incredulous (if not outright horrified) stare, but unharmed. His voice trembled when he said Sasuke’s name, kind of quiet and scared. Which had made Sasuke realize, a little deliriously, that he had forced Naruto to watch him die instead.

Even then, blacking out from blood loss, he had known it was cruel. Because the fear in Naruto’s eyes had been almost certainly not unlike his own. It occurred to Sasuke that it was entirely possible Naruto might have done the same for him - out of instinct. Driven by a fear that neither of them really understood.

Sasuke had known he was dying, pierced by far too many of Haku’s senbon, and felt relieved. And truthfully, while there were a great deal of things he should have been thinking about on his deathbed, none of them had come to mind.

He had known, of course, that he had every right to be angry. The moment Sasuke came to the understanding that he was dying, he very briefly thought about the people that should have enraged him beyond belief, or the pathetic circ*mstances of his own death - but he didn’t feel angry in the slightest, the moment he met Naruto’s gaze. He just felt quite distinctly relieved that he was alive.

Unavoidable, indeed. He could not rationalize how he felt about Uzumaki Naruto.

He found that he was grateful for Naruto almost taking offense to being saved. He’d been much more prickly towards him after they returned from the mission, as if Sasuke had (nearly) died for him just to show off. Which was annoying at first, but it occurred to him that Naruto believing he just wanted to show off was a stroke of luck. Because if he didn’t, they would both have to face the uncomfortable truth that Sasuke simply made a split-second decision to die, in order to save his life.

For a reason he didn’t want to admit, though it was staring him in the face. How was he supposed to reject vulnerability when he was unconsciously vulnerable? How was he supposed to convince himself that Naruto was not his friend, not his comrade, and not somebody worth dying for?

Sasuke was faced with the unwelcome reminder that he couldn’t, even then. His body betrayed him in ways that felt insulting, like committing himself to hatred and revenge was doomed to fail from the beginning - because weakness was, and had always been, a part of his nature.

He did not know how to feel things apart from letting them consume him. Hatred felt like relief, somehow - though it was not unlike the sensation of drowning. Desperately clawing himself to the surface out of instinct, but terrified of resurfacing for air. Hatred was a perfect stillness, in that way. He could sink to the bottom of it until the darkness swallowed him, and stay there. Suspended in an all-encompassing solitude he would, eventually, convince himself he wanted.

And it felt like relief, because nobody would be able to reach him there - he did not have to be vulnerable, or assign significance to any other feeling that was not rage. Suffocating under the crushing weight of his own anger, but safe from everything else.

Which only worked in theory, evidently.

Sasuke had a begrudging respect for the people that were admittedly stronger than him. He couldn’t really be bothered with girls unless they happened to be better than him at something - and the same went for how he felt about everyone else. During the chūnin exams, Sasuke found himself much more preoccupied with becoming increasingly aware of everything that made him weak.

He hadn’t exactly thought about what it meant to be strong, up until then. It felt like something that existed inherently in people; ones that were blessed with skills they knew how to use to their own advantage. Kakashi had been an obvious example - he became a jōnin at twelve-years-old, after all.

In that way, he’d probably been under some sort of assumption that being strong was through physical ability alone. And he burned with resentment when that appeared not to be the case, even when he was younger. He was weak, forgetting his purpose, and arrogant enough to believe that having exceptional physical ability made up for it.

It was possible that he’d only begun to realize it when he got his ass handed to him just before the first part of the exams. By Lee, out of all people, which had been much too embarrassing to even think about - but it didn’t really matter, because Naruto cheerfully reminded him every time he got the chance.

There had been something Lee said that lingered in the back of his mind for a long time thereafter. He’d challenged Sasuke to a fight to prove it to himself, about how there were two kinds of strength: the kind that a person was born with, and the kind that someone could only achieve through stupid, stubborn effort.

It had been a rude awakening of sorts. One that he was only really capable of learning after getting his (aforementioned) ass handed to him, probably.

Sasuke cared very little about the means in which people became strong, in any case. They either were or weren’t, and he either was or wasn’t stronger than them. And he was quite satisfied with being stronger than his peers, because in the way Lee wanted to prove something to himself, Sasuke needed to prove it to everybody else.

There was always some sort of resentment bubbling beneath the surface, like a cup threatening to overflow. Becoming increasingly aware of everything that made him weak came to a tipping point, once he’d come to the realization that Naruto was one of those reasons. Perhaps it had been a long time coming, and could only be understood in full by remembering they were rivals before they were friends.

It was not quite true to what Lee said; there were not only two kinds of strength. The third, and much more insidious, was a combination of both.

At that point, with the simpleminded arrogance of a thirteen-year-old, he’d thought of Naruto as weak. He was loudly, stubbornly, and compulsively an idiot. He never preoccupied himself with thinking in depth concerning just about anything. For that reason, avoidable limitations came almost naturally to Naruto - and he maintained an unfounded confidence in his own abilities, regardless.

Which Sasuke assumed was delusional, or dumb, or just being unwilling to admit weakness. Something that he failed to consider, however, was that Naruto would always end up picking himself off the ground with that ridiculous grin on his face. Getting up, over and over, like he couldn’t even fathom accepting defeat. Stupid, stubborn effort.

It didn’t matter, he reminded himself. Naruto not knowing how to quit made him an idiot, and having the Nine-Tails sealed inside of him merely made him an idiot with a lot of chakra - and being stronger than him was the only way Sasuke knew how to convince himself that his suffering was all for something. He was not subject to years of being wretchedly lonely for nothing.

But it was meaningless. Because he was reminded every time of his own weakness, whenever he had to watch Naruto pick himself off the ground whenever Sasuke couldn’t.

It enraged him, above all, when it didn’t make him scared.

He’d been hospitalized for long enough after the Tsunade retrieval mission to simmer in his own resentment undisturbed. Sakura would visit him often, sitting by his bedside and furrowing her brow in concentration as she peeled an apple for him - which only made him angrier, for whatever reason. It was, fundamentally, a waste of her time. Sasuke was above it all; above pointless superficial feelings, above his so-called comrades, above everything that made him weak. When Naruto had come to see him for the first time after the mission, with a big dumb grin on his face, Sasuke was so angry he could have killed him.

Which must have shown on his face, because both Naruto and Sakura were momentarily struck dumb - Naruto’s eyes drifted down towards the half-peeled apple on the ground, the one that had fallen from Sakura’s hand when Sasuke slapped it away, and his expression hardened.

Fight me, Sasuke demanded, and the anger that seeped into his voice was venomous. It was the only feeling he was capable of understanding implicitly, after all - because whatever he felt about Naruto was as all-consuming as a raging wildfire. Naruto saving him from Itachi was not a favor being returned, but an insult.

And Naruto’s jaw tightened, his fists clenched, but he did not nearly have the same kind of rage that Sasuke felt. In his eyes there was only satisfied conviction, like fighting him was never about winning. It was, rather, about being seen by him. That was, in a way, one of the worst things about their so-called rivalry. To him, it didn’t come from a place of anger at all.

Love did not make him weak, in the same way it made Sasuke weak.

On the hospital roof, Naruto let out a sharp exhale that sounded like a laugh - which only made Sasuke twitch with renewed hostility, coursing through his veins like liquid fire. It was an insult, all of it: the way Naruto refused to look back at him with the same resentment, the way he grinned like he couldn’t help it, the way he saved him from death not because of uncontrollable instinct but because he wanted to. He made that decision, consciously and sincerely, out of friendship.

“What’s so funny?” Sasuke said through gritted teeth.

“Nothing’s funny,” Naruto replied, still grinning. “I’m just happy, t’ think I can finally beat you.”

It sent another spike of hatred through him like a jolt of lightning. Naruto did not understand why Sasuke wanted to fight him - it was, to him, an acknowledgement. Sasuke wanted nothing more than to crush that acknowledgement into dust. “What?” he snapped, at the stupid smile on his face. “Sounds like something a loser might say.”

“I won’t always be the loser slowing everybody down,” Naruto shot back.

If Naruto wasn’t the loser, what did that make Sasuke?

I have no interest in you, Itachi told him, coldly. Like he had been nothing more than a stranger, not even worth sparing a glance. Hatred that meant nothing to him, if it didn’t result in strength. Get lost.

“You are!” Sasuke snarled, and he could have quite literally thrown himself off the hospital roof with the way that his voice trembled. “Who are you trying to fool?”

He laughed. “You’re talking a lot of trash, huh? It’s not like you.”

What the hell did he mean? Wasn’t he always reminding Naruto that he was weak? Wasn’t he always berating him, contemptuous at his mistakes, being better than him in every single way that mattered?

“Having second thoughts?” Naruto taunted, when he didn’t say anything. “Huh, Sasuke?”

“Shut up!” He shouted, and realized that he’d activated the Sharingan without even being aware of doing so. “Shut up and f*cking bring it, already!”

“Put your headband on first,” Naruto said, jabbing a thumb to his own. “I’ll wait.”

Why was that even important? Why didn’t Naruto look at him with a single shred of resentment, like he refused to return the hatred Sasuke felt for him? They were always fighting, and Naruto was always pissed off at him in one way or another, and yet he did not hate him - as if being rivals did not come from a place of wanting superiority at all. “I don’t need it.”

“Just put it on!” Naruto insisted, annoyed.

“You won’t even be able to put a scratch on my forehead!” Sasuke retorted.

“That’s not why!” he snapped, adjusting his forehead protector. “This is the symbol of two Konoha shinobi fighting as equals!”

That was, in a way, the biggest insult Naruto could have given him. Their rivalry was not about strength, but weakness. The fact that Naruto wanted him to consider them equals was insolent, as if asking him to throw away everything that had ever made him strong on purpose. “I already asked you who the hell you think you’re fooling!” Sasuke screamed. “You think we’re equals?”

“Yeah, I do!” Naruto shouted, just as incensed. “I’ve always been as good as you!”

Always? Always? Was being a person that put himself in between Sasuke and certain death indicative of strength? It was f*cking lunacy - Naruto did not have his inherent abilities, was driven by stupid feelings of superficial love and friendship, and dared to believe that they were equals in any single sense of the word. “You’re pissing me off, Naruto!”

“That’s ‘cause you’re still weak!” he snapped back, and it felt like a real slap to the face that time. More than that, it felt true. The horrifying realization that Itachi had barely cared to spare him a glance, because he was still going through the same motions he’d been at seven years old. Still afflicted by his own instinctive vulnerabilities, still made of glass, susceptible to shattering at the slightest touch. “Isn’t that why, Sasuke?”

Sakura had followed them onto the roof, just in time to witness what would have been the conclusion of their fight - which had really just been Sasuke’s chidori and Naruto’s rasengan, aimed at each other in what would undoubtedly be a decisive outcome. She had thrown herself in between them, uselessly and desperately throwing out her arms as if she’d be able to stop the momentum. And he realized only a long time afterwards that she already knew that she wouldn’t be able to make them stop. Sakura, rather, put herself between them to stop them from killing each other. She would have died, then and there, to save both of their lives.

Perhaps vulnerability was instinctual to everyone except for Naruto. It was something that he would choose to take upon himself, because he likely did not even see it as vulnerability - he had mistaken loving people for strength.

Sasuke would never make that mistake again.

Kakashi had intervened before they could connect, which Sasuke had not known if he was grateful for. Seeing Sakura throw herself between them had made a complicated feeling rise in his throat, one that was more scornful than it was angry.

He was above it all; above the meaningless preconceptions of love and friendship, the foolish attempts of Team Seven to make him stoop to their level. Kakashi had tried to convince them that it was what mattered most of all, but at that moment, being convinced that it mattered almost killed her.

Sickening. He was sickened by the way they wanted him to be so weak.

Kakashi found him a short while afterwards, perched in a tree and chewing on the inside of his cheek until he could taste blood in his mouth. He quite literally ambushed and restrained him, with a thin wire looped around a shuriken that bound Sasuke to the tree trunk at his back.

It was slightly too tight, which he figured was the point. The wire bit into his skin as he struggled pointlessly against it. “What the f*ck is this about?” he demanded, far too pissed off to pretend like he wasn’t. “Let me go!”

“Language,” Kakashi said absently. “If I didn’t do it, you’d run. I gotta admit, you’re not the type to take a lecture willingly.”

Sasuke glared at him with the most menacing hatred he could muster. It probably didn’t end up being as menacing as he intended, because Kakashi wasn’t the outlet he wanted at that moment. He wanted to struggle free, find Naruto, and rip him to f*cking pieces.

Could he? Could he even be able to, considering Naruto’s rasengan had been far more powerful than his chidori? Would Sasuke be able to kill him, when he looked in his big stupid blue eyes and saw none of his own resentment there?

That just enraged him further. The uncertainty of it all. The sting of hatred that was not reciprocated.

The fact that Naruto was stronger than him, and his strength did not come from anger. An idiot that did not know how to quit, an idiot with a lot of chakra, and an idiot that was his friend before he was his rival.

“Sasuke,” Kakashi continued, “forget about getting revenge.”

Kakashi would have to do as an outlet to his anger. He was so pissed off he couldn’t get a word out - because how did he have any idea what it was like? Kakashi was strong, and he might’ve been even stronger if he didn’t care about such sentimental absurdities like friendship. It had been Sasuke’s stupid mistake, for believing him - for throwing himself, just like Sakura, in between Naruto and the senbon that had been about to kill him .

“Although, in my line of work,” he went on, as if oblivious to the way Sasuke was growing increasingly infuriated. “I’ve seen a lot of kids like you. It never ends well, y’know. You’ll only end up suffering more than you are now.”

The reason Sasuke was suffering was not because of revenge. Revenge, rather, was like being injected with kerosene; white-hot fuel that made it feel like waking up in the morning was all for something. Everything he did was to achieve a goal, and without it, he was nothing. An empty shell, as it were.

Sasuke suffered because of all the instinct that told him to let go; that made him forget, momentarily, about the kerosene that filled his veins. All the time he spent with Naruto and Sakura - every stupid joke of Naruto’s and every apple painstakingly peeled by Sakura felt like he was betraying a fundamental fact of his existence.

Because he liked them. Because he did not feel so angry, when he was with them. Because when he woke up in the morning, he looked forward to seeing them - and it was a betrayal towards all the years he spent waking up feeling empty.

“Even if your revenge is a success,” Kakashi said quietly, as if he knew what Sasuke was thinking, “all that’ll come of it is emptiness, Sasuke.”

“What do you know?” Sasuke screamed, pushing against the wire until he could feel it bite through his skin and draw blood. “What the hell do you know about me?!”

It didn’t matter how he felt, once he’d gotten his revenge. It was just fine with him, if he returned to feeling empty - it was familiar, after all. He’d spent so long drained of everything else.

“Calm down,” Kakashi replied gently, loosening his hold on the wire. “You’re hurting yourself.”

“What if I killed the person that mattered the most to you?” he challenged, feeling a sick sort of amusem*nt at the way his composure flickered momentarily. “Then you’ll know just how wrong you are about me!”

And Kakashi did not visibly react, or even sound disconcerted when he spoke. “Well, I s’pose you could, but I don’t really have someone like that anymore.”

Sasuke’s anger faltered, only for a second, but the realization that it had was enough to make it return with a vengeance. Why should he care?

“The people most precious to me have already been killed,” Kakashi said, aloof as ever. “I know the pain of losing somebody more than I’d like to.”

Everything that Sasuke was composed of, more than hatred, felt like immeasurable shame. In that way, hatred was born from it - he’d been too weak to protect his family, too weak to resist those insidious feelings of friendship, too weak to pretend like they didn’t affect him. All of it was shameful, like he was no better than the very people he berated for the very same weaknesses.

Sasuke had considered himself above it all, and for what? To be reminded, time and time again, that he couldn’t help it? Another defeat to add to an already seething pile of losses?

“Neither you nor I can be considered lucky, that’s for sure.” Kakashi, with a flick of his hand, unwound the wire from where it was binding Sasuke to the tree at his back. “But we’re not the most unfortunate, either. You and I have both found precious friends, haven’t we?”

He was right, and that was exactly what Sasuke hated him for. He could only think of Naruto and Sakura, and feel impossibly fragile - made of glass, only moments away from shattering all the time, but throwing himself into danger for their sake anyway. Fragile, because glass could never become steel, no matter how many times he willed it to.

And it really was sickening, but not because they wanted him to be weak. He was sickened by his own love for them, the one that he thought himself above.

It had concluded in a final, unforgivable insult: his body betrayed him in the worst way possible, one afternoon not long afterwards. Kakashi had taken to making them engage in practice fights after Sasuke was discharged from the hospital - as if spending time with Naruto was making him realize anything beyond the fact that Naruto had truly become stronger than him.

Sasuke didn’t know how to begin handling his rage. It had only intensified, ever since Orochimaru branded him with the cursed seal - power surged through his body like it was engraved into the marrow of his bones, even after Kakashi sealed it. And yet, he still could not always win against Naruto at something so simple as a fight; Naruto’s rasengan had surpassed his own chidori, he had more chakra than him - and no matter how many times Sasuke would beat him into the ground, he’d get up with an infuriating grin.

It had been one afternoon in which Naruto won their fight, after Sasuke slipped up and deactivated the Sharingan once he pinned Naruto down. Or what he assumed to be Naruto, which ended up just being a clone - because it disappeared in a puff of smoke beneath him, just as the real Naruto delivered a punch to the back of his head that made his ears ring for quite some time afterwards.

It was disorienting enough that he couldn’t resist when Naruto grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved his face into the ground. He rolled Sasuke over and sat on him with his entire weight, using his forearm to hold him down and laugh triumphantly in his face.

Sasuke couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t say a single thing that would make sense. He was consumed by a rage so powerful he felt as if he were burning alive - every point of contact with Naruto scorched and spread throughout him like fire catching on brittle, dry wood. Naruto’s face was flushed and shiny with sweat, and he smelled exactly like one would expect; which should have grossed him out, but it didn’t. Rather, it just made Sasuke feel even more intolerably hot.

In the same way a high fever made someone delirious, Sasuke wondered briefly if he’d gone insane. He struggled pointlessly underneath Naruto and only felt that wretched heat building inside him, as if everything that had ever pissed him off about Naruto was filling him up all at once.

“Hey,” Naruto said breathlessly, his voice scratchy and hoarse from shouting. “You sick, or something? Ever since the exam-”

Was that it? Had Sasuke finally fallen to a point where Naruto was concerned about him, because he was so weak the other boy thought he might have been sick?

“Shut up,” Sasuke snarled, his hands shaking as he curled them into fists. “Shut up, shut up.”

Naruto furrowed his brow, the satisfaction in his eyes flickering into annoyance. “What’s your problem? There’s something goin’ on with you, isn’t there? That mark on your shoulder-”

“f*ck you, get the hell off me-”

At that point, Naruto had been seemingly allowing him to push back - but he appeared to be emboldened by his own irritation, shoving Sasuke back into the ground with his forearm, as a single drop of sweat fell from his chin and onto Sasuke’s cheek.

“Make me,” he taunted.

His first instinct was to spit in Naruto’s face.

And he was angry, he was so angry at everything about Uzumaki Naruto that had ever pissed him off - but worst of all, he was quite suddenly and viciously aware of the funny jolt in the pit of his stomach at the words, one that did not quite feel like anger. It was, rather, something not unlike live snakes writhing in his guts; glowing with heat and twisting into a tightening knot, as if they were made of molten metal.

It was not something he’d ever been familiar with, like rage. In a way, it was almost nauseating; because it did not feel white-hot with something knowable, understandable. Instead he was wound like a wire twisted impossibly tight - every muscle in his body tensed as if suddenly filled with adrenaline, but unable to move. It didn’t even have anything to do with the immense pressure Naruto was holding him down with, even though Sasuke was keenly aware of it: he could feel every point of contact like it was scorching him through the fabric of his clothes. His knees were pressing into his sides and he was so close, far too close, Sasuke could feel Naruto’s breath hot on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Naruto said, as Sasuke didn’t retort - because he couldn’t have, once his own breathing became strangled in his chest. He needed to get away from him, away from the revolting twisting in his gut that made him wonder briefly if he was gonna be sick. Still, his body betrayed him; because Sasuke was quite capable of throwing Naruto off and pummeling him into the ground, but he did not seem to want to.

“Hey,” Naruto prompted, apparently starting to get concerned. Which only made him even more angry, if anything. “Say something. Your face is freaking me out.”

Sasuke had no idea what his face must have looked like.

What happened afterwards was only recalled indistinctly, as if the memory did not belong to him - or as if he was watching it through a cloudy pane of glass. One of the only things Sasuke remembered in perfect clarity was the sickening fear; threatening to choke him whenever he remembered the other feeling that he could recall in perfect clarity.

Kakashi later explained to him, after he made his escape from the training ground, what it was. And Sasuke might have felt a surge of vehement disgust flood through him at the words, but what was quite possibly even more terrifying was that he knew that Kakashi was right.

Sasuke had been above it all, until he wasn’t. Until he realized that he never had been.

It had always been, to him, a whole lot less complicated to hate something more than he loved it - and even more so to hate something because he loved it. For that reason, in the weeks following the unwelcome realization that he loved a very certain something in particular, it was almost effortless to hate Uzumaki Naruto.

Anger had always been something like hot sand being poured into his lungs. He did not need to breathe in anything that wasn’t an all-consuming hatred; Sasuke would let it fill his chest, seep into his blood, oxygenate his cells. Anger was decisively rewritten into him like a mantra - over the fading brushstrokes of where it had been written the first time.

Though, Sasuke could not convince himself of his own hatred, regardless. It didn’t matter how many times he could dream about throttling Naruto, because he would never kill him, even in his own dreams. His fingers would slacken around Naruto’s throat whenever Sasuke felt his pulse fluttering under his palm - the dream did not give him the courtesy of ending there, either. Naruto grinned up at him and extended his own hand to wrap around Sasuke’s neck, not tightening around his windpipe, but holding him there.

It had been only the first of a number of dreams. All of them began with Sasuke trying to kill him - and all of them ended with Naruto’s rough and calloused hands on his skin, searingly hot to the touch, but never with any of the same hatred that burned Sasuke up inside.

Though, whenever he’d jolt awake in the middle of the night, it was not hatred burning him up inside.

Shame, and the meaninglessness of it. Things that he inescapably wanted, feelings that he had never been able to leave behind entirely. The framed photograph of Team Seven on his desk, left behind instead. It was enough - it had to be enough.

It had only been a few weeks between the unnamed realization and his departure from Konoha with Orochimaru’s Sound Four. Sasuke resolved to leave late into the night, to avoid certain people that might have stopped him - and even certain people that might not have, because he was implicitly aware that leaving Konoha was not merely for revenge. It was, in a way, an exile he took upon himself: one of shame. Meaningless as it were.

Sasuke wasn’t stupid. He knew the shame would follow him wherever he went - and he knew just as well that he wouldn’t be able to outrun whatever feelings he had for his comrades. The most humiliating part of it all was that, as much as he hated him, Sasuke felt suffocated by the immeasurable warmth of being friends with Uzumaki Naruto. More than they were rivals, more than they were anything else.

He did not need any of it. He did not need Kakashi to pat him affectionately on the shoulder, to keep his window open for Sasuke to climb through at night. He did not need Sakura to insist on mending every tear in his clothes, or to ask him to withdraw from the preliminary round of the chūnin exams because she was worried about him. Sasuke did not need Naruto to tell him that they were equals - or pin him down in a fight that only reminded him they weren’t.

Sasuke especially did not need the irrepressible urge to touch him. He would pull away before giving in to the instinctual desire to brush shoulders when they were side by side. He would let go of Naruto’s hand whenever he pulled him up, and resist the impulse to keep holding it.

He was not weak. He would not give into everything that would make him weak, no matter how many times they asked him to.

Sakura had been waiting for him, on the road leading out of the village. She looked small and fragile, hugging her arms as he approached - her cheeks pink from the chill and her chin trembling as if she wanted to cry. She knew he would leave, somehow. Maybe even before he knew it, himself.

“It’s the dead of night,” Sasuke said flatly. “What are you doing out here?”

“I’ve been keeping watch,” Sakura replied quietly.

It was that clumsy devotion she had for him that kept her there, shivering and alone on the street at night. Sasuke had found her crush on him to be something of a needless impediment she refused to get rid of, as if one day he would return her feelings.

Kakashi had confronted him, only a few days prior, about the very same inability he shared with Sakura. It’s not something you can control, though, isn’t it? he reminded Sasuke. Haven’t you tried?

He tried. He desperately, hopelessly, miserably tried.

Sakura couldn’t bring herself to let Sasuke go - however frustrated it made him, that was now something Sasuke could understand.

“Just go to bed,” he muttered, walking past her without sparing her another glance. He was not entirely certain he could continue to meet her gaze.

“Why don’t you ever tell me anything?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Why do you have to - shoulder everything on your own? Can’t you just let me in?”

Sasuke didn’t know why he stopped in his tracks. He didn’t know why his heart still ached at the way she sounded like she was about to cry. “My business is none of yours. Leave me alone.”

She sniffed. “You and me…Naruto and Kakashi-sensei, we’ve been on so many missions, and-”

Why should he care? At the end of the day, none of it mattered - they served no purpose to him but reminders of his own weakness. Hatred, rendered unusable by being around people who loved him.

“And - it was rough, sometimes, but it was still - it was fun. We’re friends, aren’t we? Family.”

Sasuke’s family had been gone ever since he laid eyes upon the slaughtered corpses of his mother and father. His family was irreparably lost in the moment that Itachi looked at him with nothing but a distant coldness, as if he were a stranger.

“Sasuke,” Sakura continued, a little weakly. “I know what happened to your clan, but revenge, it won’t - make you happy. Not you, or…me, either.”

He scoffed.

That was just it - they didn’t care about what it all meant to him. They wanted him to be weak, placated by the immeasurable warmth of their friendship, and let go of the anger that gave him the only purpose he could understand. “I’m not like you,” he said icily. “I’m on a different path than the rest of you. Maybe we were a team, once, but-”

But what? What else was he supposed to feel, after his family had gone? How was Sasuke supposed to live, wandering aimlessly throughout the empty Uchiha manor, walking across the floorboards still stained with the blood of his parents’ lifeless bodies?

He’d never been able to get the stain out. Even throwing a carpet over it felt like an admission of weakness.

“Revenge matters more to me,” Sasuke spit out. “That’s all I’ve lived for.”

“So that’s it?” she cried, stumbling over her words as they came out all at once. “You’re choosing to be alone, instead? I’m - I’m so in love with you, I can’t… stand it, Sasuke - stay with me, and I’ll never let you regret it, we’ll - have fun every day, and you’ll be happy, I just-”

Her voice finally broke, and all he could feel was contempt. “Just please, please don’t go!”

Sasuke had thought himself above it all, until he wasn’t - and maybe strength meant forcing himself to be, because everything that had ever mattered to him paled in comparison to the feeling of choking on his own grief from that insidious vulnerability. He would never again allow himself to get on his hands and knees, endlessly scrubbing a bloodstain out of the floorboards that would never fade. He would never again curl up on his bed and stifle his own sobs, even though there was nobody that would hear them.

Sasuke wasn’t stupid. He knew that his shame would follow him wherever he went - he could only put blind faith in the belief that the weaknesses wouldn’t.

Perhaps that was the pointlessness of trying to outrun them. The stupidest part about faith was that he knew Naruto would follow him, and blindly prayed that he wouldn’t anyway.

The last time he saw Naruto, for what became almost three years, it had been raining.

Sasuke was a stranger, even to himself - or perhaps especially to himself. Introspection, and finding nothing. The inherent absurdity of revenge. The search for a meaning to fulfill him that, upon finding it, would empty him. Itachi’s blood under his fingernails, impossible to wash clean. His parents’ blood forever staining the floorboards, under the carpet he threw over them. The sound of Sakura’s laugh, the feeling of Kakashi’s comforting hand on his shoulder. Naruto’s smile like a thousand, eternally shining suns. An endlessly blue summer sky in his eyes.

The dying warmth of a fire burning until there was nothing but glowing embers. Anger that was like kerosene injected into his veins, love that was like a matchstick struck and forced down his throat.

Sasuke was wronged by his own existence. He was wronged by his own vulnerability, falling to his knees in the Valley of the End. The rain-heavy clouds swallowed the sun as he leaned over Naruto, who lay perfectly still before him.

He could have been asleep. Sasuke stared down at the whiskers on his cheeks, the faint scratches on his forehead protector, the slight furrow in his brow.

“Naruto,” he whispered, and received no response. Sasuke could have ended it, then - and remain unanswered for the rest of his life, to live and die never having to hear Naruto say his name ever again. Sinking into the still waters of hatred in perfect, unbroken silence. Finding comfort in absolute solitude for once, instead of misery.

The rain seeped into his clothes, drenching his skin and weighing him down. His limbs were leaden with exhaustion as he leaned over Naruto, the cold settling in his bones like permafrost.

“Naruto?” Sasuke asked again, feebly.

The emptiness yawned before him like a chasm, an absolute solitude that invited him with open arms. It would have been far too easy to step through and plummet through the darkness, where the sun would never reach him again. Maybe, at the bottom of a bottomless pit, he’d finally be able to find comfort in the loneliness that felt like it could kill him.

The moon did not belong in the endlessly blue summer sky, after all. The moon did not…long for the sun. Night devoured day, time and time again, in that unforgiving cycle of reciprocity - because the sun would rise every morning, and Sasuke could not bring himself to stop it.

Sasuke could not kill him, leaning over Naruto and watching the rain drip from his chin and run down his cheeks. He could feel his breath, see every twitch behind his eyelids.

The moon did not long for the sun, but Sasuke did not know how to live without it. The sun would rise every morning, because saying Naruto’s name and remaining unanswered did not feel like emptiness. It was like a free-fall through the darkness, clawing desperately at the air and feeling it slip through his fingers, screaming for a response that would never come.

It was the last time he saw Naruto, for what became almost three years.

A stranger, to himself. Introspection, and finding nothing. Countless sheets of glass wrapped around his heart, waiting for the moment they would inevitably shatter. Sasuke felt them - or, rather, was reminded of them, like a death sentence embedded into his chest. The fissures would not heal, and glass would never become steel.

Breathe in, and pretend whatever filling his lungs was not regret.

Orochimaru’s seal was like a white-hot iron pressed into his skin. The damp, reptilian smell of his hideouts was sickening, and the air heavy with stagnance. His few belongings would quickly become covered with a thick layer of dust. Buried alive, closing the lid of his own coffin.

Reacquaintance, after many years, with the feeling of being above it all. He was introduced to his replacement in Team Seven - the Konoha headband over his forehead glinted in the suffocating darkness like it was taunting him.

“Naruto’s told me a lot about you,” Sai said. His voice was quiet, almost polite, but the name echoed off the blackened walls of the chamber like the fluttering of a trapped bird that did not belong there. Taunting him.

“He’s been looking for you this whole time, you know. These last three years.”

The light of the sun sought him out, no matter how many shadows he wrapped himself within. In the damp reptilian caves of Orochimaru’s hideouts, Naruto’s name found him.

Breathe out.

“Naruto thinks of you as a brother,” Sai told him, “or so Sakura says.”

Did he? Did Naruto ever think about anything but his own stupid, stubborn confidence in what was right? Would he still believe that they were mirror images, if Sasuke told him that he still dreamed about ripping off his clothes and relieving years of pent-up desire like he was desperate to get rid of it? Would Naruto die believing that they were brothers, no matter how many times Sasuke screamed that they were nothing?

Maybe Naruto thought of him like a brother, but Sasuke did not.

Breathe in. Remind himself that he had not mistaken hate for love, but love for hate.

Naruto hadn’t changed. His voice when he said his name was a memory that had scratched at the back of his skull for years. Sasuke looked down at him, and Naruto tilted his head back to meet his gaze - slightly open-mouthed and dumbstruck like he’d forgotten everything he wanted to say.

What was it all for, if Sasuke wasn’t even capable of feeling nothing when he saw him? Why did he leave Naruto alive, at the Valley of the End, if not to hear him say Sasuke’s name again?

Why did he hesitate? Why did Naruto’s voice ringing in his ears sound desperate? Why did he hesitate?

The moment Sasuke touched him, Naruto stiffened as if he’d been turned to lead. His breath stuttered in his throat, waiting, knowing. Sasuke could have killed him when he leaned over his shoulder, far too close, to remind him that they were not equals. It would have been easy, he reminded himself. There had to be a bottom to the bottomless pit, and Sasuke had been bracing himself for impact ever since he left Konoha.

Kakashi had told him there was nothing but emptiness, at the end of that downward spiral of revenge. He did not appear to understand Sasuke wanted that emptiness more than anything.

Naruto even smelled the same. Sasuke could see sweat trickle down the side of his forehead, feel him shiver under the arm he slung casually over his shoulder. And it would have been easy.

He was motionless like a frightened rabbit, waiting, knowing. Predator and prey, cowering in the shadow of death and waiting for its jaws to close around his neck. Sasuke reached behind him to unsheathe his sword and Naruto exhaled shakily, his breath warm on Sasuke’s cheek.

Didn’t you say your dream was to become Hokage? Sasuke said in his ear, foolishly. Childishly, almost, as if they were kids again - bickering with one another in a way that felt like a memory from lifetimes ago.

If someone can’t even save a friend, then I don’t think they deserve to be Hokage, Naruto replied, quiet. Do you, Sasuke?

Friend, he said. Was it friendship that made Sasuke sweep his sword in one fluid movement around his back, to bring it down in between his shoulders? Was it friendship that made Naruto remain where he was, unmoving, as if he knew Sasuke wouldn’t be able to pierce him with it? Could he feel Sasuke’s hand shaking?

He dreamt about him, that night.

Like an endless Tsukuyomi, he relived the moment in which he’d convinced himself he would kill Naruto - predator and prey, a snake wrapped around its hunt, killing that was in its nature. Not even out of hatred, but instinct. In the dream, Sasuke unsheathed his sword and wondered if snakes ever killed out of fear of their catch. He wondered if its prey could feel it shaking.

The sword clattered out of his hand. Sai hadn’t even needed to intervene, because both him and Naruto knew that he would not die there. In the same way Sasuke had saved his life in the Land of Waves, instinctively, Naruto did not move.

Breathe out.

Killing Orochimaru proved nothing he didn’t already know. His strength felt like it belonged to him, by now. The foul air of the damp, reptilian caves did not taste like revenge, but stasis. Sasuke did not feel like a snake, wrapped in the shadows and unable to breathe from Orochimaru’s vile fingers tightening around his throat. He felt like a rat.

The serpent would not die, even if he cut off the head. It evolved - two more took its place, and the scars remained.

Suigetsu and Karin almost reminded him of everything he wanted to forget, sometimes. Karin would brush her fingers along his arm and croon his name, whenever she found him alone. It made Sasuke want to vomit, for a reason he didn’t really want to think about.

A stranger, to himself. Introspection, and finding nothing. The sun was blinding when he stepped out of the darkness. A paradigm of hatred becoming more and more like a false idol. Bruises turning blue, then black. Hairline fractures in glass. The way Naruto’s voice trembled when he said his name. Dreams of his hand around Sasuke’s neck, holding him there.

Breathe in.

Itachi’s eyesight was cloudy and distant, like he couldn’t even recognize him. A stranger, to the people around him. His Amaterasu filling the sky in plumes of black fire. A pointless existence, without something to burn until there was nothing left. Sasuke’s own pointless existence, without something to hate.

The inherent absurdity of revenge. The flesh of Itachi’s Susano’o melting off its bones, flickering into nothingness as he approached. His fingers, leaving a smear of blood on Sasuke’s forehead that trickled down between his eyebrows.

The glass around his heart, splintering. His brother dead at his feet. The search for a meaning to fulfill him that, upon finding it, would empty him. Sasuke wondered deliriously if he wanted to die, in the wreckage of his fight with Itachi. He did not know what else he was supposed to want.

The splitting pain of the Mangekyō was like the point of a knife, twisting into his eyes. Every face blurring into the next - Naruto, in perfect clarity. The taste of his own blood in his mouth. Mirror images. Trapped birds, dashing themselves dead against the bars of their cage. Permafrost, settling in his bones.

A hopeless conviction that there was a bottom to the bottomless pit.

I’ll bear the burden of your hatred! Naruto shouting at him. And we’ll die together!

Dying with him, and feeling irrepressibly loved. Meeting his gaze, and seeing his reflection in an endlessly blue summer sky.

I’m sorry, Sasuke wanted to say, his heart breaking. Not knowing what else he was supposed to want, except to die next to the only person that had never been able to let him go. Sasuke was a rabid dog that bit the hand that reached for him, and Naruto reached his bleeding hand out anyway. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Why? he asked, instead. At the end of all things, it sounded like an I love you.

‘Cause you’re my friend, Naruto replied, and it sounded like me, too.

Breathe out.

The light of morning that fell upon them that morning did not feel blinding, but forgiving. As if he were loved by the sun itself, stepping out of the darkness and being welcomed back.

He ached all over, his head felt like it was splitting behind his eyes, and every twitch of his muscles sent sharp stabs of pain throughout his body. Sasuke turned his head to look at Naruto, watching the faint rise and fall of his chest as he breathed - and wondered if he would do it all over again, if only to feel the incredible and overwhelming rapture of what it was like to be loved by Uzumaki Naruto. Loved, entirely and unconditionally, by the sun itself.

He looked beaten to sh*t - Sasuke was certain he didn’t look any better. Naruto’s face was swollen and bruised, covered in dried blood and grime from however many times he’d gotten pummelled into the ground. And however many times he’d gotten back up.

Sasuke vaguely thought that he’d never looked so beautiful.

It might’ve just been blood loss making him delirious - Sasuke couldn’t even feel ashamed, staring at him and tracing every line of Naruto’s side profile with his gaze, like trying to commit the moment to memory. To preserve that feeling, the incomparable and inimitable feeling, for as long as he was capable.

Unavoidable. The moon did not belong in the summer sky, the glass was supposed to fracture but never shatter, and yet Sasuke loved him.

He did not know what they were, and quite possibly had never known what they were. A hundred things all at once, and yet none of them simultaneously. They might have been friends, or comrades, or rivals. They were allies and enemies, alike and dissimilar. A perfect, unblinking eclipse.

At the bottom of the bottomless pit, he emerged to see the sun.

In the weeks following his return to Konoha, Sasuke grew uncertain of how to be. The streets were intimately familiar and unknown to him simultaneously - faded memories of hatred etched into stone, buildings and faces he did not recognize, gentle humming of power lines over his head. Stares of curiosity and mistrust trailing after him, wherever he went. The Uchiha compound, perfectly still and silent the way he left it.

Sasuke did not feel angry, looking up at the Uchiha crest embellished on the arch over the gates of the compound. He just felt grief, with no more rage to drown it in.

Perhaps he was not entirely certain of how to be, but moreso how to feel. Years of muffled emotions that became untethered had left him somehow weightless. Being in Konoha was like drifting aimlessly through memories of love and pain, not familiar with how to feel them without hating them.

Kakashi, following his instatement as Hokage, was almost certainly aware of Sasuke’s discomfort - which was why he didn’t try convincing him to stay, when he first found him in the Hokage office to tell him he wanted to leave.

“Really?” Kakashi asked, skeptical. “You know Naruto might actually kill you, this time?”

“I’m not telling him,” Sasuke replied stiffly. There was something incredibly strange about seeing him sit behind the Hokage’s desk, with his feet propped up on what were probably important documents to sign.

“He’ll find out.”

“He’ll understand.”

“No, he won’t. He wants you to be here, Sasuke.” Kakashi looked at him pointedly. He always hated that look, mostly because it was such a bitter reminder that Kakashi was perfectly aware of the implications behind everything he said. He might as well have said isn’t that romantic?

Sasuke swallowed. “I can’t be here. It’s too soon.”

Kakashi appeared to grimace behind his mask. “If that’s what you want, I won’t stop you. Still, you’re not going to find redemption out there.”

Maybe not, but redemption had always felt like an abstract concept. When it wasn’t unwantable, it was unreachable. Like even if he could accept it, forgiveness would burn him. Reject him.

Sasuke intended, in the weeks following the war, to repent in the only way he knew how. It was not as if he hadn’t known how profoundly unwelcome he was in Konoha, and had no desire to spend his time ignoring glares of hostility or suspicion. That was, in a manner of speaking, too forgiving of a redemption. Being allowed to stay in the village felt like a kindness he was not deserving of.

“I can’t pretend like nothing happened,” he muttered.

“Nobody’s pretending like nothing happened.” Kakashi rolled his eyes. “Running away is pretending like nothing happened.”

Perhaps that was it - no matter how many excuses he could make, Sasuke was running away. “I’ve made up my mind.”

“If you say so. Better make it quick, because Naruto won’t give you much of a head start.”

Sasuke could only hopelessly hold onto the conviction that Naruto wouldn’t be able to stop him. He might be able to understand, eventually, that even if redemption was unreachable, punishment was not.

It didn’t matter. Naruto wouldn’t let him go - and being allowed to stay by his side was punishment enough.

The late autumn months gave way, suddenly and without warning, to winter. The sleepless nights grew longer, and faded memories of hatred etched into stone were covered in a blanket of snow. Sasuke felt restless, within the walls of the empty Uchiha compound. He was almost thankful for Kakashi giving him such menial tasks during the mitigation period after the war - catching cats proved to be peacefully mindless (though slightly more difficult than he’d once thought). Sasuke had grown to appreciate what it was like to feel annoyed by something as simple as a cat outwitting him.

It, additionally, helped with avoiding Naruto.

The reality of remaining in Konoha was that, yet again, Sasuke was unfamiliar with how to feel things without hating them. He didn’t know how to talk to Naruto, because there were a hundred things he could have said to him and none of them felt right. Naruto ran into him wrangling a cat and asked him if he wanted help, to which Sasuke was tempted to remind him that only a few months prior he tried to kill him.

Naruto ran into him often, which he started to suspect was intentional. His face would light up like there was nobody else he’d rather have run into, accidentally-on-purpose.

It wracked him with guilt, more than anything. Sasuke avoided him as much as possible, after that. He’d never felt more uncertain of how to be around him. It wasn’t so bad to talk to Kakashi or Sakura, for whatever reason - Sakura seemed to understand he wanted space, and Kakashi wasn’t exactly the kind of person that appeared overjoyed by Sasuke’s company. Their nearly taciturn association was, in a way, more comforting than anything.

Though it was, still, only nearly taciturn. Kakashi, in all his indifference, appeared to find it a lot more effective to punish him in ways other than catching cats. Such as instructing him to spend time with Naruto, under the pretense of a mission.

Of course, clumsy feelings of affection did not feel any less stupid, even after all the time Sasuke spent forcing them down. He hoped he had gotten past the point where a crush was something feasibly repressed - in the sense that he could understand, now, that it would never go away. Sasuke figured at the very least he could pretend it had.

He couldn’t. Being with Naruto felt like he was swallowed by it.

Sasuke knew that he was loved by him, undeserving or not. There was nothing else that would make Naruto sacrifice himself for him, and nothing else that would explain the fact that Naruto would do it all over again if he had to.

How d’you still not understand anything? Naruto snapped at him, annoyed as if the reason why had been irrepressibly obvious. And it was, it always had been, which was something Sasuke had tried denying to himself for years. The walls crumbled, and that irrepressibly obvious truth was laid bare.

If Naruto thought of them as friends, or brothers, or whatever, that was enough. Sasuke did not need anything else - or could not bear to ask for anything else, whichever it was. He would accept it as it was given, and pray that he could feasibly repress the rest; because friends, or brothers, or whatever they were did not love each other the way Sasuke loved him. Not entirely.

Shame. All he was made of was shame, even now.

In an existence that felt incommunicable, Sasuke knew there was a fundamental flaw in the way he loved. It was angry, almost spiteful, and certainly nearly indistinguishable from hatred. He searched for something kinder, or even less resentful, but it never seemed to come. Rage, to him, had been an endlessly expanding void - swallowing everything in its vicinity, with a finality that felt almost like divine wrath.

And perhaps the punishment of being allowed to stay by Naruto’s side was crueler than what it would have been like to die next to him. Having him at arm’s length and not knowing whether or not to push him away or pull him closer.

Sasuke didn’t, or quite possibly couldn’t, blame Naruto for not understanding what they were. There was nothing that could have described it any more comprehensively, except for it being too bad that one of them wasn’t a girl. Maybe it would become any less shameful, and the love felt any more like he deserved it.

The first time Naruto kissed him, when they first graduated from the Academy, he tasted like miso.

It hardly counted as a kiss, anyway, because they really just clumsily banged their teeth together by accident. The third time Naruto kissed him, hilariously enough, was almost exactly the same - though he tasted like almonds, and they clumsily banged their teeth together on purpose.

That was just like him. Everything Naruto said and did was without thinking twice, because of some stupid stubborn confidence in feelings that he couldn’t even really understand. Naruto barrelled headfirst into every momentary whim that struck him, because he was quite happily compliant with his own instincts. He didn’t needlessly concern himself with things like shame, or uncertainty of how to be. Naruto did something if he wanted to.

Wanted to. Wanted to.

The third time Naruto kissed him, Sasuke forgot how to breathe.

In all the hopelessly humiliating dreams he’d ever had, none of them had ever included something so gentle and affectionate as a kiss. Though the way Naruto kissed him was not gentle nor affectionate, but hungry. He didn’t appear to know what he was doing, but Sasuke could hardly tell - he licked into his mouth like he had always wanted to, grabbed him by the front of his yukata as if to hold him there. Kissed him like he was starved for it.

There had never been a dream, Sasuke realized, when he could feel just how much Naruto loved him. He was the spitting image of his own frustration, a hand around his throat that refused to tighten, touches that were forceful but did not bruise. That was probably the only way he could tell that he wasn’t dreaming, at that very moment.

And perhaps it was unnecessarily cruel to ask Naruto why, even then. He already knew, as much as it was impossible to believe. Sasuke could recognize it as if staring into a mirror. The reflection that never looked away, the broken pieces of glass coming together as if they’d never shattered.

C’mon, Naruto mumbled. You know.

Yeah, Sasuke replied, his heart in his throat. An irrevocable truth that he’d never been able to accept. I know.

It was almost inescapable to reject vulnerability, and Sasuke could not - because vulnerability was carved into him, time and time again, by the stupidly big smile and endlessly blue eyes of Uzumaki Naruto. He met his gaze and felt everything that he had ever hated about him be ripped apart and exposed for what it truly was. Had always been.

Kerosene in his veins. Love that he had mistaken for hate.

“Hey,” Naruto whispered, after a while. He pulled away to search Sasuke’s face, like he couldn’t actually believe he was there and not a figment of his imagination. “Is this weird? It’s weird, isn’t it?”

“It’s weird,” Sasuke agreed, not really sure how else to describe it. Naruto was surprisingly right about that.

Naruto looked down at the narrow space between them. They were still sitting on the floor, everything else forgotten in the sudden confrontation, for lack of a better word that wasn’t aggravated assault (which felt like a more apt description than kiss). He never seemed to know what to do with his hands, in moments like those; Naruto started picking at the hem of his yukata again, and Sasuke let him. “You actually bit me, asshole,” he muttered.

“You pushed me down,” Sasuke pointed out.

“I wasn’t…” Naruto flushed. “I mean, that’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it?”

“With girls.”

“With girls,” he echoed.

There was a pause.

“I’m not,” Sasuke reminded him, when he didn’t say anything further. That was the objective reality of it all - neither of them were girls, and they quite literally kissed each other senseless anyway. He was tempted to pinch himself just to be completely certain he wasn’t dreaming.

“I know you’re not. I just-” Naruto chewed on his bottom lip, and Sasuke’s fingers twitched from where they were dug into the tatami mat. “I don’t know. Stop looking at me like that, already.”

Sasuke was, for what felt like the very first time, not even annoyed by the way Naruto hedged around what he wanted to say. He felt stupidly happy, practically reeling from the realization that Naruto kissed him because he wanted to, and Sasuke quite honestly didn’t care if none of it made sense to him. There was an unavoidable and undeniable relief from years of crushing shame that had been lifted all at once.

“We’re okay, right?” Naruto asked tentatively. “You’re not gonna be mad about it? You’re not gonna avoid me, or something?”

“I won’t,” Sasuke said, quite certain he was now smiling. He couldn’t even help it.

He looked up at him again, and his eyes flickered back to Sasuke’s lips almost unconsciously. “I really liked it,” he mumbled, like he was nervous. “I’ve never wanted t’ kiss someone before.”

Sasuke had never dared to admit to himself that he wanted to kiss Naruto. There had always been some plausible deniability, whenever he had dreams of a certain kind. He could pretend that it was a product of being sixteen and not one of being in love with him. “Never?”

“I mean, kinda, but not-“ he turned an even deeper shade of red. “Not like that.”

Not like that, indeed. “Naruto.”

“We’re still friends, aren’t we? Just - other stuff, too. Things don’t have t’ be weird, or different, ‘cause we haven’t changed, so…”

They hadn’t changed. The kiss wasn’t anything either of them didn’t already know, in their own ways. It was, somehow, finally communicating something they didn’t have the words for. Sasuke felt briefly surprised that Naruto was capable of coming to that conclusion on his own. “Yeah.”

“You’re so bad at talking, y’know?” Naruto complained, giving him a shove. “I’m really trying to - jeez, I told you to stop looking at me like that, I keep forgetting what I want t’ say.”

Sasuke laughed. “You’re an idiot.”

He smiled then, stupidly wide - the same incredible, dumb, and radiant smile like it was meant just for Sasuke. Like passing asteroids, being pulled into each other’s orbit eternally. “You’re the idiot,” Naruto said, leaning back in to tap their foreheads together again. It was more forceful this time, like a reprimand. “Always pissing me off. I’m still gonna beat you up for real, one day. Don’t think this changes anything.”

“You can try,” he replied, reaching up to rub his forehead. “You have nothing but rocks in that stupid head of yours. You don’t even need a forehead protector.”

“Yeah, well…” Naruto scrunched up his face, in a way that was so endearing Sasuke almost felt like punching it to make him stop. “You like me anyway, so…so that makes you way stupider.”

“Yeah,” Sasuke agreed, before he could even think about it. “Yeah, I guess it does.”

Naruto might not have been particularly good at understanding things that were left unspoken, but he was certainly right about one thing: they hadn’t changed. They didn’t need to, in the same way nobody needed to point out something obvious.

The way back from Yugakure was oddly reminiscent of the missions they’d been on when they were younger. Sakura liked collecting wildflowers on the way, crouching to pick one whenever it caught her eye - Kakashi raising his voice to give directions over Naruto and Sasuke’s bickering, sounding unenthusiastic about their return to Konoha (or, more accurately, returning to his duties).

It didn’t take very long for them to fall into routine, one that felt much less strained on Sasuke’s part. There was comfortable familiarity in running into Naruto this time around - not even accidentally-on-purpose. They would find each other without even bothering to conceal intentions; because concealing intentions was stupid, when they both knew Naruto did not actually need help with running errands for Iruka. He merely wanted Sasuke to tag along, and asked him to.

When Kakashi wasn’t sending him on time-chewing businesses such as catching cats, Sasuke preoccupied himself with atonement.

It wasn’t nearly the kind of atonement he had in mind, but there was something uniquely painful about it; finding Sakura late into the evening once she’d finished at the hospital, and meekly offering to take her to dinner - to which she’d punch his shoulder and laugh, before telling him that he’d be the one paying.

He truthfully did not know how she had forgiven him, and did not know how else to feel deserving of her forgiveness in the first place.

With everyone else, it was somewhat easier - certain people were delighted to see him when he would visit, and others appeared not to mind, at the very least. He spent an uncomfortably long amount of time with Shikamaru, who seemed to care very little about being delicate with their past differences, so to speak. He’d taken up a lot of the duties Kakashi couldn’t be bothered with; one of which included asking questions about the members of Taka, Orochimaru, and their whereabouts. Additionally, asking Sasuke to recount all of their crimes committed in excruciating detail.

Though pardoned, Sasuke felt slightly nauseated when admitting all of the reprehensible things he had done, as if it had been someone else doing them. The worst part about it was that they felt indisputably right at the time - he’d been prepared to sacrifice Karin to kill Danzō, prepared to kill anyone that got in his way, prepared to kill Naruto.

Shikamaru didn’t appear to notice his discomfort (or care).

It was a few weeks following their return to Konoha when Kakashi proposed a new mission for Sasuke - and Naruto, who had gotten very obviously restless ‘helping out’ at the Academy. It wasn’t anything like the escort to Sunagakure, which had been merely a formality. Kakashi called them into the Hokage office to explain the details about the terrorist organization that Sai and Ino failed to apprehend.

There were far too many terrorist organizations cropping up like mushrooms after rain, once many rogue ninjas had become enamored with Madara’s perfect world. The Ryūha Armament Alliance was merely one of them, and it had been Sasuke’s resolution to handle it by himself. Naruto refused to let him go, of course - and Sasuke had been almost entirely certain he would justify it in ways like insisting Sasuke couldn’t do it on his own, but he hadn’t. Naruto simply yanked him by the collar and bellowed into his face, I want you here!

How was he supposed to argue against that? How was he supposed to deny Naruto anything he wanted anymore, after denying it for so long?

It was somewhat of a relief that Kakashi asked them to take care of it, because atonement was not feeling particularly punishing when it almost exclusively consisted of buying Sakura dinner.

“Just us?” Naruto asked, and the question came out as more of a squeak. He was spectacularly red in the face - which was just like him. Naruto expressed every emotion as clearly in his expressions as he would’ve by saying them out loud quite plainly.

“Scared?” Sasuke suggested.

“Shut it, bastard!” he retorted immediately, as if biting back at Sasuke was a conditioned response. In all honesty, it probably was. “Who’s scared? I - you’re scared! Scared, scaredy-cat!”

“Convincing.”

“You’ll take the mission, then?” Kakashi interrupted tiredly. “I figured I was doing you two a favor, but if you’re going to argue-”

“Favor?” Naruto repeated. “What kind of-?”

“We’ll take it,” Sasuke cut him off.

“I’ve sent Sai and Ino to handle the terrorist attacks in the Land of Waves several months ago, but they haven’t gotten any leads on the Ryūha Armament Alliance’s members or where they might be located.” Kakashi leaned back into his seat. “You can ask them for any more details as soon as they get back. Whatever the case, your goal will be to apprehend the leader of the Alliance however possible.”

“Is that all?” Sasuke asked, skeptical.

“Yeah. Just don’t kill him, if you can manage that.”

His eye twitched. “It’s manageable.”

“I don’t s’pose I have to remind you to stay focused,” Kakashi continued - throwing out the words casually, as if they could be interpreted in a way other than what both he and Sasuke already knew he meant. And, despite himself, Sasuke was struck by a sudden and violent embarrassment that made him want to dig a hole into the ground and bury himself in it.

“What d’you mean?” Naruto complained. “We’re not kids anymore, we won’t screw up a mission.”

Kakashi just coughed. “Yeah, um, it wasn’t the mission I was worried about you screwing-”

“We’re leaving,” Sasuke interrupted through gritted teeth, which was really just offering the Hokage a courtesy. If he went on, and Naruto picked up on what he meant, Sasuke might have actually strangled him to death.

It was not much time afterwards (rather, it was just about right outside the Hokage’s office) when Naruto mentioned that he had a very obvious tell when he was embarrassed. Which was not because Naruto had known what Kakashi was implying - but he had noticed that it mortified Sasuke.

“Your ears are red,” he pointed out keenly, as they were headed down the steps to leave the building. “What’re you shy for?”

Sasuke rolled his eyes. “What kind of nonsense are you on about this time?”

“Your ears get all red when you’re embarrassed. You haven’t noticed?”

His hand flew up to his ear, realizing to his utter dismay, that it did indeed feel really hot. Naruto just laughed, apparently delighted. “Y’know, who would’ve thought Uchiha Sasuke turns into a blushing maiden when he gets shy?”

“Shut up,” Sasuke seethed, giving him a shove that almost made him trip down the steps. “You don’t even know what maiden means.”

“I do so,” he argued, returning the shove. “Um…when a girl is really cute and nice, she’s a maiden.”

“That’s not it, you dimwit-”

It was, quite possibly, somewhat ironic they had that conversation only moments before they ran into an aforementioned blushing maiden outside the Hokage residence. Hinata was apparently waiting for them, digging her heel into the ground and wringing her hands like she was there to deliver distressing news. In any case, Hinata was most certainly waiting for Naruto in particular - something that occurred to Sasuke once she caught sight of them and her face turned spectacularly red.

In truth, he hadn’t given much thought to Hyūga Hinata before. During the chūnin exams, he’d been much more interested in competing with Neji; while she had the Byakugan, she seemed so unwilling to care about the potential that came with it, Sasuke hadn’t bothered to give her any of his attention. He’d been vaguely aware, however, that she was much more interested in Naruto than her own dojutsu, which was irritating beyond belief.

Though he was not quite irritated beyond belief because of her lack of interest in her own power, now. Rather, Sasuke was distinctly annoyed by the way she was gazing at Naruto with that longing doe-eyed stare of hers, like he was some sort of divine savior sent by the heavens.

Even if he might have been. A little.

(Sasuke was briefly struck by the horrifying possibility that he might have looked at Naruto in a similar manner before.)

“Naruto,” she squeaked, “are you busy?”

“Oh, uh…” he scratched his head. “I dunno. Sasuke, what’re you doing?”

“Getting ready for the mission,” Sasuke reminded him, slightly too waspishly than intended. “We’re leaving as soon as Sai and Ino get back.”

“You’re leaving?” Hinata asked, disconcerted. The way she was wringing her hands was starting to get on Sasuke’s nerves. “Can I…um, talk? To you? If that’s okay?”

He wasn’t quite sure how Naruto was capable of noticing something as insignificant as Sasuke being embarrassed, when he was clearly not aware of the reason why Hinata blushed like she had heatstroke whenever she spoke to him. Sasuke resisted the urge to roll his eyes as Naruto scratched his head. “Yeah, that’s okay,” he replied, nonplussed. “What’s up? Is something wrong?”

“I mean-” she glanced at Sasuke, and he felt a twist of sickening dislike in the pit of his stomach. Which just made him feel immediately ashamed. “I - in private?”

Naruto just looked put-out. “All right. I’ll see you later, then, Sasuke?”

It was probably cruel to expect Naruto to remove himself entirely from normalcy. Kakashi had made it abundantly clear that he was to be the Seventh Hokage, and there were certain things that were going to be expected of him in the future. Which wasn’t to say that it was necessary for Naruto to get married, or have children - because neither Tsunade nor Kakashi had. However, they were not affiliated with individuals that were previously terrorists - and by that, he meant that they were not (to his knowledge) romantically involved with them.

The very idea of considering himself romantically involved with Naruto was awkward and foreign. That couldn’t even begin to describe it, after all. Hinata wanted to hold his hand and go on dates with him. Sasuke was oftentimes struck by the desire to rip open Naruto’s chest and climb into his ribcage as if they were a single, inseparable being. To breathe his oxygen, beat his heart, feel every fiber of his flesh and bones as if they were his own.

Romantically involved might have been putting it slightly too lightly.

It was ridiculous and borderline pathological, he figured. But whenever Naruto touched him, or merely looked at him, Sasuke got the irrepressible feeling that he felt the same way. Like he also had that instinctual urge to connect, to communicate entirely through touch and taste and smell and inherent knowledge of the other.

And they weren’t one, they would never be one. That was the limit of physical connections, in the end - their souls could have practically fused together in a bond that could never be explained in words, but their bodies remained frustratingly separate entities. There was no other way to alleviate it, apart from something that Naruto had been able to verbalize quite plainly.

I want to be with you, he’d said. I want you to be with me.

It was possible that his statement, in its simplicity, was the only way any desire to become one could be explained. Sasuke just wanted to be with him, to exist around him, to be swallowed by the everlasting sun and forgiveness that was Uzumaki Naruto.

He was in Naruto’s world, whether he wanted to be or not. Sasuke was blessed to exist, in that way.

Regardless, there was nothing he was entitled to expect from Naruto apart from normalcy. Everything he’d done for Sasuke had gone far beyond normalcy already, and anything between them had to remain confined to that wordless devotion they’d maintained. Because in words, it would be a love that was not comprehensible, was not expected of the Seventh Hokage, and was not normal.

Sasuke knew very well what he was: a terrorist that had been given a pardon for no reason other than admitting defeat. He was a murderer, an intimidatingly powerful ninja, and someone who could destroy all of Konoha if he ever found a reason to and put his mind to it.

He was not, by any means, the kind of person that Naruto was allowed to love.

And perhaps he would be faced with the unwelcome realization that Hyūga Hinata was, and maybe Naruto would have the sense to realize it as well. He could fall in love with the girl that wanted to hold his hand and go on meaningless dates with him. She wouldn’t argue with him, she wouldn’t call him a dumbass when he’d forget their anniversary, and become the meek housewife that was normal enough for the Seventh Hokage.

It was entirely possible that, at some point, Sasuke would be able to accept it. He’d leave Konoha for good, visiting only once in a while to deliver reports on his missions, while Naruto would sit behind his desk and chat with him casually as if they were mere acquaintances.

He would be able to ask Naruto about his family, or apologize for being unable to attend his wedding, and he might be capable of meaning it. Naruto would just laugh uncomfortably and avert his gaze, unable to meet his eyes for the first time since they’d known each other.

Maybe, with time, Sasuke could tolerate the very idea. However, at that moment, he was filled with an uncontrollable hatred for Hinata that only worsened when she shyly took Naruto by the hand and pulled him out of earshot. He might have, additionally, hated Naruto for letting her.

He ran into Sakura on the way to the Uchiha compound - though he was heading there unconsciously, more than anything. Sasuke was lost in thought over whatever bashful confession Hinata could come up with, and even more lost in how Naruto might respond. Wouldn’t he be charmed by it, anyway? He didn’t seem to mind blushing maidens, if anything. In fact, Hinata’s clumsy confession might make him realize that Sasuke would never be one.

Sasuke punched the side of the Hokage residence as soon as he rounded the corner. And stared blankly at his reddened knuckles as they started to bleed.

It was probably the reason Sakura’s cheerfulness quickly faded into concern, when she first spotted him. She was accompanied by Lee, strangely enough - and their conversation halted abruptly, as both of them looked down at his bleeding fist.

“Sasuke?” Sakura said as they approached, looking worried as she took him by the wrist and raised his hand to inspect his knuckles. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“I’m fine,” he replied automatically, glancing at Lee. The chūnin inclined his head respectfully, which he felt slightly weirded out by. “Where are you going?”

“What happened?” she asked, ignoring his question. “This could get infected, y’know? Jeez, I don’t understand how you and Naruto are always getting hurt. You need to take better care of yourselves.”

Sakura was significantly different from the girl he had known when he was thirteen. He had come to understand she was an immensely powerful kunoichi during the war, but Sasuke hadn’t quite realized how strong until the weeks afterwards. She didn’t really blush when she looked at him, anymore - possibly ever since she’d come to see him off when he intended to leave Konoha. He tapped her on the forehead in the same way that Itachi used to do to him, something that had been almost entirely instinctual. Sasuke hadn’t known how else to tell Sakura that he loved her like his brother loved him.

She was always smarter than him, anyway. She knew exactly what he meant, even in his roundabout way of saying it.

“Nothing.” Sasuke gently tugged his wrist away. “I’m going to investigate the Ryūha Armament Alliance with Naruto as soon as Sai and Ino return.”

“Just you two?”

“Yes,” he said, a little tersely (or what might’ve been a little defensively). “Why?”

She smiled, and gave a small affectionate push to his shoulder. “Just curious. No missing limbs this time, okay? I’m not going to come running to save you.”

“Won’t you?” he asked, which only made her giggle.

Sasuke’s heart ached, watching Sakura and Lee’s retreating figures as soon as they parted ways. When she turned her head to talk to him, he could see her cheeks turn pink.

It was what she deserved. She spent far too long chasing someone beneath her.

Naruto had come to the Uchiha compound later that day - slightly too many hours after he’d been pulled away by Hinata. Which only made Sasuke think, irritably, that maybe Naruto had accepted her feelings. Maybe they did all the stupid things she wanted from him; hold hands, go on a date, all of the other typically normal romantic endeavors between a boy and girl. It forced another unpleasant twist in the pit of his stomach.

“Yo,” Naruto said, as soon as Sasuke opened the door for him. He had already known it was Naruto, for whatever odd reason - probably because there were only a handful of people that would willingly visit the Uchiha compound, and Naruto seemed the most likely. “Wanna fight?”

“What?” he asked, annoyed. “Why?”

“Just for fun.” Naruto looked uncharacteristically troubled, fidgeting with the bandages on his previously-missing hand. “C’mon. You scared, or what?”

That was enough to make Sasuke agree to the fight, before he could think about why Naruto even wanted to. He hadn’t been doing much, anyway - preparing for the mission was not very efficient when he was more preoccupied with sitting around and simmering in his own indignation.

Naruto didn’t say much on the way to the Third Training Ground, which was also unlike him. When Sasuke gave him a glance, he had his brow furrowed and was chewing on his bottom lip like he was being faced with a complicated math equation.

Sasuke decided not to say anything, either. Naruto processed complicated feelings with the same difficulty he processed complicated math equations.

Their fight was the first proper one, so to speak, since the Valley of the End. Neither of them had been altogether serious about it, but it wasn’t like Naruto could even fathom taking it easy on him (though he would deny it). There were no weapons involved, no rasengan - at most, he summoned a couple of shadow clones. Apart from that, the fight became almost exclusively physical. It was mid-March, and the late afternoon was cold enough to be decidedly unfit for a fight; but it got almost unbearably hot as they abandoned using ninjutsu and Sasuke deactivated his Sharingan. At that point, every time Naruto’s punch managed to connect, he would be only distantly aware of the pain - but more of the way it would send electrifying heat racing throughout his entire body, that felt like it could stop his heart. As if Naruto had hit him with chidori instead.

Sasuke had come to a decisive victory when he managed to grab Naruto’s arm and twist it behind his back, shoving him into the ground and holding him there as he struggled and complained. “What was that?” he puffed, trying not to sound winded. “You lost to a guy with one arm, dumbass.”

“Did not!” Naruto argued, rather unconvincingly as he spit out a mouthful of dirt. Looking down at him, Sasuke felt affection swell in his chest that was even more threateningly heart-stopping than before. “Was just going easy on - yuck, I swallowed some dirt. Let me up, already!”

Sasuke let him go, collapsing to sit on the ground beside him. Though they hadn’t been fighting seriously, he was still admittedly drained - and didn’t even really feel triumphant about his victory as much as he should have. He just felt warmly, annoyingly fond of the idiot that sat up and spit out more dirt beside him. “Gonna have a rematch,” Naruto muttered, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Gonna show you who’s the real winner, bastard.”

Naruto had always been stronger than him - maybe not a better ninja when they were kids, but stronger in every other sense of the word. He couldn’t find it within himself to be resentful about it, anymore. Naruto was strong because of people like Sasuke; people he loved so much he would subject himself to sharing their suffering, without any hesitation. He wouldn’t even crumble underneath its weight - and even if he did, he would get up every time. That was just the kind of person he was.

Sasuke snickered, despite himself. “Says the guy who just lost.”

Naruto gave him a shove, but a stupid grin spread on his face that did not make it very convincingly annoyed. “Hey, hey, how come y’didn’t ask about Hinata?”

He’d been able to push her out of his mind during the fight, and it was deeply unfortunate that Naruto brought her up on his own - because Sasuke did not want to talk about Hinata, or anything else that reminded him of the world beyond that incomparable moment they were suspended in.

It didn’t matter how much Naruto wanted to be around him, because at the end of the day they would go their separate ways. They would still talk, exchange lighthearted quips, give each other good-natured shoves - as separate beings. Have different lives, different responsibilities, different loves.

Sasuke did not dare ask anything more of him; Naruto would not sacrifice the love of the village he worked so tirelessly to achieve, not for the sake of someone who had rejected his love many times over. Even now, forced to confront his own feelings, Sasuke refused to be selfish enough to ask for anything from Naruto beyond friendship.

And though Naruto had apparently come to the realization that friends did not begin to describe their relationship, it was not allowed to change anything. They had to call each other friends, because anything else would be unacceptable.

“She confessed to you,” he said, and it wasn’t really a question.

“Yeah.” Naruto searched his gaze, curious. “You already knew, didn’t you? She said she liked me ever since we were kids.”

So did I, Sasuke almost replied scathingly, in a bout of momentary pettiness. “What’d you say?”

He looked confused. “What d’you mean?”

“You’ve always been weak to blushing maidens,” Sasuke pointed out; trying to sound indifferent, or at the very least casual. It didn’t entirely come out that way, which was unfortunate enough for him to contemplate getting up and leaving Naruto there mid-conversation. “She’s one of those cute and nice girls, isn’t she?”

Not that he would have known. Sasuke was, for as long as he could remember, utterly impervious to cute and nice girls. He figured there was something objectively attractive about Hinata, merely because it seemed like a lot of people liked her - but Sasuke couldn’t for the life of him understand what was so charming. She was too soft-spoken, too kind, too…perfect. Her hair was never out of place and she never smelled like anything but soft, sweet florals. Even her hands were small and delicate.

Which, in retrospect, might have been appealing to most boys around his age. Sasuke had only been able to find appeal in her opposite.

Everything that Sasuke liked about Naruto felt like a contrast. He was too loud-mouthed, too coarse and insensitive - his hair was wild, he would stink of sweat at times, and his hands were rough and calloused with knobbly joints in his fingers. There was dirt underneath his fingernails more often than not, bitten cuticles, scratchy and scarred palms.

Sasuke should probably not have been so aware of all the ways they were different from Hinata’s. He should not have liked everything about Naruto that made him a boy.

Hinata did not feel right for him. She would not talk back to him, she would tend to his wounds instead of make them, she would lovingly comb through his hair instead of pull it.

Sasuke felt appalled with himself, if not slightly nauseated by his own resentment of a girl that had done nothing to him. What right did he have, to think any of that? How on Earth could he want Naruto to have anything but the gentle tenderness of a love that Hinata could offer him?

His love had always been anything but gentle. Sasuke felt like he incinerated everything he loved into ashes. A pointless existence, without something to burn.

“Well, I s’pose, but…” Naruto scratched his head. “I told her I don’t really like her like that, y’know? I mean, she’s cool and all, but I never really…”

And maybe he should have felt angry, or annoyed by his obtuseness. He should have reminded Naruto that Hinata was possibly not the ideal girl for him, but the ideal wife. The village loved her, they would love their children - and most of all, they would love their perfect image of a normal Hokage.

Sasuke could not do any of that. He could only feel inordinately relieved (and then even more ashamed, naturally).

“You should give her a chance,” he heard himself say.

Naruto just looked at him, bewildered and slightly affronted, as if Sasuke suggested he give Uchiha Madara himself a chance. “What?”

“Hinata.” Sasuke decided not to return Naruto’s gaze, because he was far too feeble when it came to resisting it. He looked up at the sky, instead - it was beginning to darken into a deeper blue as the afternoon slowly gave way to evening. The way his dampened shirt stuck to his back from sweat had started to chill him to the bone. “She likes you, and - you deserve someone like that.”

It did not even have to be Hinata at all, he figured. It had to be anyone that loved Naruto, apart from him. Sasuke did not feel deserving of it, not even when he was thirteen years old.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Naruto said, his voice now irritable. “You’re so confusing, y’know that? Trying t’ be all cool and mysterious, but I can see right through you, stupid.”

Sasuke felt a prick of annoyance, which really didn’t help. “You’re going to be Hokage, Naruto. You can’t assume that position and be obsessed with me all the time. You have an image.”

“Everybody knows I’m gonna be the Hokage already,” Naruto pointed out. “And everybody knows I’m - um…everybody knows I really like you. My image is fine.”

Sasuke’s hand shot up to his ear before he could even think about it, and Naruto snigg*red. “Shut up,” he said sharply. “You have to know that this isn’t normal, don’t you?”

“What’s not normal?” Naruto asked, slightly too innocently to be believably dense.

“You and me,” Sasuke grit out. “We’re not normal. Nobody’s going to think our relationship is normal.”

“Well, I dunno.” He shrugged, kicking at a rock by his foot. “Nobody thinks it’s normal, already. And it kinda isn’t, so…I guess they’re not wrong.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Why d’you care? I’ve been told enough times that I’m not normal.”

The admission sent a distinctive pang of regret through his heart. Naruto had faced nothing but cruelty from the people of Konoha ever since he was young - shuttered in a tiny apartment by himself, an outcast at the Academy, and denied any sort of sympathy or recognition from the people around him. Something that Sasuke had been implicitly aware of, even back then. Naruto’s loneliness felt like his own, after all.

“Anyway,” Naruto said, blithely unaware. “It worked out, didn’t it? I’ve got you back for good now, so what’s the big deal?”

“Dumbass,” Sasuke replied, through the prickling in his throat. “You’ve always wanted everyone to love you. What’re you going to do if they stop?”

Naruto chewed on that for a moment, and Sasuke figured it was for the best. They could let the fog surrounding them disperse - step out of the world they shared in which they were the only ones that knew what they meant to each other. They would remain in that nameless association of theirs, and everyone would be endlessly frustrated with Naruto about being friends with someone like him, but they would tolerate it. He would not force them to swallow the idea of Naruto refusing a wife for the sake of his friend - he would not dare to say aloud that the nameless association was not only friendship, either.

“I dunno,” Naruto said, again. “I don’t think it matters t’ me all that much.”

“What?”

He picked at a loose thread in his sleeve. “I mean, you’re only kinda right. I used to really care about wanting them to like me. Or at least notice me, y’know?”

Naruto appeared to have understood from a very young age that he was irreparably disliked by the villagers. Parents would pull their children away from him like he had some sort of incurable, contagious disease.

It was why he started to care less about being liked, and more about being noticed, at the very least. Which was not to say that causing mischief and getting into trouble wasn’t a fundamental characteristic of his - because it certainly was, even after he realized that it was probably the most efficient way to get people to talk to him. Even if it was through yelling at him.

“I know,” Sasuke mumbled.

“But…” Naruto looked thoughtful (as thoughtful as he could get). “Everyone kept telling me that it was hopeless, and I was being an idiot, ‘cause I kept saying I wanted t’ save you. And I always figured it didn’t really matter, even if they all started to hate me for it.”

“Why?” he asked, before he could stop himself. Of course, he already knew why. Was it ever any other reason?

“‘Cause you’re more important to me than that, bastard.” He scratched his cheek, glancing away sheepishly. “It doesn’t matter if I’m the Hokage and the village loves me, if you’re not…here.”

“Here?”

“Not here. I mean - there.”

“There where?”

“Knock it off,” Naruto complained, giving him another shove. “You always need me to say that stuff, or what? It’s actually kinda embarrassing when you’re not trying to kill me.”

“I could,” Sasuke suggested, and the other boy laughed. It made his heart feel like it was going to implode, for whatever reason. “...Naruto, you shouldn’t have to keep sacrificing yourself for me.”

Naruto abruptly got to his feet and brushed himself off, before extending a hand to help him up. And Sasuke took it instinctively, because he would always take it. He couldn’t help but accept everything Naruto would give him, and he did not know how to return that affection he extended so freely. Sasuke could only feel it like it was choking him, in all its overwhelming entirety. He had no way of knowing how to love Naruto in a way that made sense to everybody else - he couldn’t hold his hand without complaining about his palms being sweaty, and wouldn't let himself be pushed down by Naruto to be kissed by him. Sasuke would rather bite off his own tongue before calling Naruto a term of endearment.

(Though he realized that he might’ve already had one. And Naruto probably knew it, too - because as of late, every time Sasuke called him a loser, he’d just grin like an idiot.)

Sasuke loved him in the only way he knew how. In an endlessly frustrating, teeth-grinding rivalry. In love that felt like hate, sometimes.

“Sacrificing myself?” Naruto said, rolling his eyes as he pulled Sasuke to his feet. “Y’don’t need anyone to sacrifice themselves for you. How lame is that?”

Wasn’t that everything they had been, over the last three years? Wasn’t Sasuke someone who drowned in his own obsession with revenge, and wasn’t Naruto someone who would go after him, even if it meant drowning himself?

Hadn’t Naruto told him that Sasuke could use all his hatred on him, and die together?

“Hypocrite,” Sasuke told him irritably, peeling his shirt from his back from where it stuck to his skin. It was well into the evening, now, and any longer would give them both vicious colds that would probably earn them an even more vicious reprimand from Sakura.

But perhaps Sasuke was the one that was in the wrong. It was entirely possible that Naruto did not see it as self-sacrifice, but selfishness. He couldn’t let Sasuke continue to suffer because the pain felt like his own.

Self-preservation, if anything.

“Hypo…?” Naruto asked, scrunching up his face.

“Forget it.”

Naruto ended up walking him back to the Uchiha compound, which was only something Sasuke realized when they both arrived at the gates and Naruto followed him past them. And he decided not to object, merely because it looked like Naruto hadn’t really thought twice about it.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence on the way back, apart from Naruto rubbing his arms and grumbling about the cold as if he couldn’t believe it was cold in mid-March. The peace was broken when he sneezed and used the back of Sasuke’s shirt to wipe his nose. Image, Sasuke reminded him through gritted teeth for the second time that day, ripping it out of his hands. Naruto just rolled his eyes and asked if Hokages weren’t allowed to blow their noses (missing the point, as per usual).

Allowing Naruto to follow him past the threshold of his childhood home felt vulnerable. It was not even as much of a physical threshold as it was a personal one, in a sense. Sasuke had to yank him back by the collar, as he tried to walk inside without taking his shoes off (and he obliged, though grumbling under his breath all the while). “Y’know,” Naruto said as he tossed his shoes by the door. “I always wondered why they made you live here, even after all the stuff that happened.”

“The Third covered the costs of my living arrangements,” Sasuke replied stiffly, brushing past him. “Just like he did yours.”

“Yeah, but…living all by yourself, and - this place is way too big, anyway. D’you think things might’ve been different, if we got to live together? I mean, I was alone all the time, too.”

Sasuke felt his ears grow hot. “We hated each other back then, idiot.”

Naruto just scratched his chin. “Well, yeah. But we kinda liked each other, too, didn’t we?”

There was really no point in arguing it, though Sasuke was tempted to. Still, he was quite aware that they kinda liked each other much more than they hated each other, back then.

“Whatever,” he said, instead. “Go take a shower, you stink.”

Sasuke left Naruto to figure out where the bathroom was on his own, grabbing a few of his own spare clothes and leaving them outside the door once he could hear running water through it. There was something slightly too domestic about it, he decided, collapsing onto his bed and listening to the echoing metallic thud of Naruto undoubtedly dropping the showerhead. The domesticity was strange because of its unfamiliarity - they had only ever been rivals, tentative friends, or enemies. Whatever the case, they never…had sleepovers, braided each other’s hair, or anything else along those stupid lines.

Sasuke figured he would kick him out of his house as soon as he finished showering - mostly because if Kakashi found out, he’d probably never hear the end of it.

It wasn’t like they were going to fool around on their upcoming mission, anyway; despite Kakashi’s thinly-veiled implication that they would. Sasuke still felt like an awkward thirteen-year-old when it came to that sort of thing. When Naruto kissed him for the first (unofficially third) time, he was quite certain that he’d lost his mind. He’d been unable to do anything but kiss Naruto back like he was deranged.

Sasuke could hardly remember what he’d been thinking, because utter disbelief had short-circuited his brain to a point where he probably wouldn’t have been able to string a sentence together. Until the instinctive wrongness of being pushed down by Naruto snapped Sasuke out of his trance, at least. He’d felt very briefly pissed off, which was enough to bite him.

Sasuke had never given much thought to such things - though he had urges, naturally, at his age. Even so, they just annoyed him more than anything. During his relatively short-lived time with Taka, he’d been uncomfortably aware of Karin’s intentions whenever she draped herself over him every time she got the chance.

Sasuke admittedly considered it, if only for a moment. He’d briefly thought of it as one of those menial necessary tasks; a detached way to serve a purpose, as it were. He was running out of outlets for all of the suffocating emotions that started to become indistinguishable from one another - and if he let Karin have her way, it was entirely possible that disgust would not feel like he was hungry for something else.

When he did not dream of Itachi’s blood on his hands, he dreamed of a certain something else that was almost worse.

Sasuke was sixteen, and it was only natural for him to have urges - but when he would still lurch awake with his heart racing, from dreams of a stupid smile and calloused hands on his skin, they did not feel natural. It was not a menial necessary task, when he grit his teeth and reached involuntarily between his own legs. It was like desperation, ripping apart a dream that scorched and burned with no other way to relieve it.

Sasuke hated himself for it. He hated that it did not feel like a detached way to serve a purpose, and hated that he came far too close to choking out Naruto’s name more than once.

In a way, he felt as if there were certain things about their relationship that were irreparable. Sasuke had shattered it to pieces the moment they were thirteen, and felt a revolting want for the boy that he hated just as much as he loved.

Naruto kissing him was probably the only way he knew how to tell Sasuke that he loved him. He’d never had a girlfriend, after all - his understanding of romance must have been rather oversimplified to him, because that was the only way Naruto was capable of making sense of something. Kissing was what boys and girls did, when they loved each other.

As oversimplified as it could get, there was a boyfriend and a girlfriend. The boy would bring her flowers, tell her she looked pretty, push her down and kiss her - the girl would blush, giggle, let herself be pushed down and kissed by him.

Sasuke bit him instead.

Truthfully, any fooling around would quite possibly result in an argument (verbal or otherwise). Sasuke wasn’t simple enough for Naruto; he could not allow himself to be treated like a blushing and giggling girl. He pushed back - he kissed Naruto like he was starved for it.

Knowing Naruto, he wasn’t the type to take kindly to being pushed down, either.

What kind of relationship, beyond what they already were, have any chance of being normal? Without changing what kind of people they were, fundamentally?

Sasuke didn’t think it mattered, anyway. No matter how much he could try to be just like Hinata; sweet and gentle and loving, someone who would let Naruto push him down and maybe even be okay with it - the fact of his existence was that it was not in his nature. He was not ever going to become Naruto’s timid housewife, even if he wanted to (which he did not. The very idea made his skin crawl).

Despite Naruto being seemingly uncaring about his image, the truth of the matter was that he would eventually need to. The day that rumors started to fly about the Seventh Hokage and his supposed best friend was the day that Sasuke would leave Konoha for good. He might even be able to tell himself that it was for Naruto’s sake, but it would probably be his own. He could not watch Naruto suffer for him any more than he already had.

“Your shower sucks,” Naruto declared as he flung open the half-closed door to Sasuke’s room. “It’s freezing!”

Sasuke turned his head to look at him, exasperated. He was wearing the clothes that he’d left outside the bathroom door, prompting him to yet again feel as if the situation was slightly too domestic. Naruto pulled his towel from where it was draped over his shoulders and tossed it at him for no apparent reason. “You should shower,” he said cheerfully. “You’re gonna catch a cold, and then Sakura’s gonna get mad at me. Or change your shirt, ‘cause I’m pretty sure I got some snot on it.”

“You’re not my wife,” Sasuke replied mildly, picking the cold and damp towel off his chest.

“I’m not trying to be your wife, bastard.” Naruto flopped onto the bed next to him. “Hey, haven’t you ever thought about what I said? About one of us being a girl, I mean.”

Sasuke wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Of course, things would be easier - Naruto had been right about that. Sasuke could revive his clan as he’d intended, after all. However, he hadn’t really given much thought to what it would be like if Naruto was a girl. Everything he liked about him was because it was him, and changing anything about Uzumaki Naruto felt inherently wrong. Sasuke couldn’t envision him any differently because he loved Naruto down to the fiber of his muscles and marrow of his bones.

Sure, it would be easier, but Sasuke could not find it within himself to want Naruto to be anything apart from what he was.

“No,” he said.

“Really? What about the… reviving your clan stuff?”

Sasuke would never tell him the reason, whatever the case. That would be too close to an admission of weakness - which he figured should have been easier to admit by now, but it still stung. “There’s no point in wishing for things that’ll never happen, dumbass.”

“I guess.” Naruto glanced at him. “It could happen, though. Not - me being a girl, but the-“

“I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

Be normal, might have been the first thing that came to mind. Naruto could urge him to get married to a woman and have children all he wanted, for the sake of his clan, but Sasuke knew exactly what it would be like to do such a thing. He would not be able to look his wife in the eyes, live with her, raise their children. He could not do any of that without a guilty conscience, that is - there was no world in which Sasuke wouldn’t feel ashamed knowing that he was irrevocably in love with someone else, like it was stitched into the fabric of his existence.

He wasn’t even entirely sure he could proceed with what was required of him to have children. Sasuke hadn’t given it any thought when he was younger - mostly because sexual intercourse was an extremely abstract concept that seemed to be one of those necessary processes, like brushing teeth. He didn’t think it relied on anything like attraction, largely due to not knowing what attraction was, for the most part. Until Kakashi had very brazenly pointed it out to him, anyway.

“I can’t revive my clan, Naruto,” he said irritably. “I can’t - get married, have kids, with someone that isn’t-”

“Me?”

“Shut up,” Sasuke fumed, sitting up to glare down at him. Naruto just grinned back, as if he wasn’t looking a little flustered, himself. “Arrogant, thickheaded, self-important-“

“Convincing,” he replied, cackling.

It occurred to Sasuke only a few hours afterwards, when it was well into the evening, that he had completely forgotten to kick Naruto out of his house. Even though Naruto was getting on his nerves with the way he was snooping through Sasuke’s room without even trying to hide it, pulling open drawers and shoeboxes out from under his bed. Sasuke didn’t bother telling him to butt out of his personal stuff - he merely watched him for a while, rummaging through junk from three years ago that Sasuke didn’t have the heart to throw away. Most of the stuff in the Uchiha compound remained exactly the way he left it; he returned for the first time to find the framed photograph of Team Seven turned face-down on his desk.

Sasuke had brushed off the dust and set it upright, three years later. The photograph, facing his desk for such a long time, hadn’t been faded or yellowed by the sun. As perfectly clear and vibrant as if taken the day prior.

“Wow,” Naruto said keenly, picking it up. “Didn’t think you still had this.”

“Couldn’t throw it out,” Sasuke muttered. He had wanted to, but the moment he picked it up, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything but turn it face-down. It should have been the first indication that he was incapable of severing bonds, he supposed.

“You’ve got no embarrassing stuff,” Naruto complained, putting it back. “Just sappy things.”

Sasuke wasn’t sure if he agreed. The sappy stuff probably qualified as embarrassing enough - to him, at least. He kept his old forehead protector, the one that he’d left behind in the Valley of the End all those years ago. Naruto had returned it to him, only a few days after they were discharged from the hospital after their last fight.

Sasuke hadn’t known what to feel, when his fingers closed around it. The deep groove in the metal, slashing the symbol of the Leaf in two, felt like the faded scar of a wound that he finally allowed to heal.

He kept the forehead protector in the first drawer of his nightstand. The twinge whenever he saw it was a little too painful to keep in sight all the time.

After a while, Sasuke decided he had enough of watching Naruto pry through his belongings and was much too sore and sticky to delay showering any longer. He pulled his (thankfully snot-free) shirt over his head before rummaging through his own drawers for a clean one, and felt Naruto’s stare burn into his back as he left.

Sasuke…very decisively didn’t think about it.

When he returned, Naruto had apparently found the box of old photographs of the Uchiha family under his bed - he sat cross-legged on the floor and excitedly tore off the lid as if eager to find incriminating evidence (that is, embarrassing stuff). His disappointment upon finding dusty and cracked picture frames didn’t last very long, once he picked up a worn photo of Itachi and Sasuke, when he was barely older than four years old. “Hey, why’re these all under your bed?”

“Take a guess,” Sasuke said dryly, pulling his towel from his shoulders and tossing it at Naruto. He had been unable to bear looking at the photographs when he was younger, like the empty house was filled with ghosts in every room. They weren’t even of the subtle kind - their eyes seemed to follow him almost accusingly, wherever he went.

“Okay, smartass. Why are they still under your bed?” Naruto tugged the towel off his head, before using it to wipe the dust from a wedding photograph of Fugaku and Mikoto. They looked rather stiff and solemn in it. “You look like your mom. This is your mom, isn’t it?”

“What are you looking through my stuff for, anyway?” He replied, ignoring the questions. “You’re not gonna find any p*rn mags, dumbass.”

Naruto looked up at him, bemused. “Not one? I mean, you were never into that kinda stuff…”

“Go home, Naruto.”

“Nah,” he said, as if Sasuke had only offered a suggestion. “D’you just use your imagination, or…?”

Sasuke sincerely would have rather pulled out his own teeth, one by one, than tell Naruto that he used his memory. It had only been a couple of weeks since they returned from Yugakure, so it was quite easy - and very literally every night since he’d been unable to stop himself from doing so.

Needless to say, he flung Naruto out the door not long afterwards (which he apparently did not take kindly to, because he did not go quietly). In any case, Sasuke wasn’t in the mood to have any more of a delicate discussion, for the most part because Naruto didn’t really think it was delicate at all.

It appeared he did not fully understand the extent of their physical association, so to speak. Of course, Naruto was only capable of comprehending a typical romantic relationship when it was in the context of a boy and girl - which was probably why he told Sasuke he wished one of them was one.

Not because he’d like him any more, even. Merely because it would make sense to him, in that way.

Sasuke had given up on trying to force it to make sense, even to himself. It was a love that was like blood in his mouth, ears ringing, a pulse throbbing. It was destructive like a fire that burned flesh to the bone, and healing like one that cauterized an open wound. Sasuke felt like being around the scorching radiance that was Uzumaki Naruto was to be melted by him, exposed until there was nothing left but raw and unmistakable devotion.

He didn’t know how else he was supposed to put it into words. He just loved Naruto with the same certainty that the sun would rise every morning. That feeling, however, did not make sense to someone who always needed everything to be explained quite plainly to him.

While Sasuke could assume with reasonable confidence that Naruto knew, to a point, that their feelings for each other were a little different than typical friendship. However, Naruto appeared to be just as confused by his own urge to kiss him than Sasuke had been. Naruto had probably never considered that he might’ve wanted to, up until then.

They were kids that were forced to grow up far too soon, after all.

Sai and Ino returned to Konoha in the following midday, and a quick conversation with them confirmed that the esteemed Sixth Hokage was not at his office - prompting Sasuke to search for him (and growing more irate the longer he couldn’t find him). It was well into the afternoon when he arrived at the outskirts of Konoha, north of the Forty-Third Training Ground and just outside the chain-link fence surrounding the aptly named Forest of Death.

Kakashi was reading Icha Icha Tactics. Sitting in what was undoubtedly Gai’s wheelchair with the other ninja nowhere in sight, which was only mildly concerning.

“Sai and Ino returned,” Sasuke said as he approached, in lieu of a greeting. He figured it was pointless to berate Kakashi about his responsibilities, which probably included being easily found. It was abundantly clear to just about everybody that Kakashi did not want to be Hokage - he’d accepted the role rather begrudgingly after Tsunade’s retirement, complaining often and loudly that she only retired because she didn’t want to be the one teaching Naruto about diplomacy in the future.

“Yo,” Kakashi replied, not bothering to look up from his book. “You and Naruto are leaving today, then?”

“Yeah.” He hadn’t confirmed with Naruto, but Sasuke couldn’t have been assed to find him beforehand. “Where’s Gai?”

“In the forest.”

“Okay.”

Kakashi peered up at him. There was something decidedly unfamiliar about having both of Kakashi’s eyes on him - he no longer had to keep his forehead protector slung over the Sharingan. Sasuke admittedly preferred it when Kakashi stared at him with one eye; it was somewhat less obvious to tell what he was thinking.

“Looking forward to it?” he asked noncommittally.

Sasuke wished he didn’t know immediately what Kakashi meant. “It’s a mission. There are more important things to care about.”

“S’pose so,” Kakashi agreed, halfhearted as if the mission wasn’t about apprehending terrorists. “You’re about that age, though.”

“This isn’t-“ he ground his teeth together. “We’re not anything like your stupid books.”

“S’pose not,” he said. It occurred to Sasuke (for what was not the first time) that Kakashi had his moments in which he was profoundly irritating. The words that came out of his mouth immediately afterwards were, remarkably, even worse. “Just don’t…ah, how do I say this? Try not to inflict any - bodily harm to each other.”

In complete and utter transparency, inflicting bodily harm on one another was one of the easier ways to understand the other. Sasuke was never any good at feeling things - and oftentimes didn’t understand what he felt, himself.

The moment in which he climbed on top of Naruto during their fight at the Valley of the End, Sasuke had been convinced of his own hatred. He swung back his arm to curl his hand into a fist - Naruto stared up at him with eyes ablaze and his jaw clenched, waiting for it to connect.

Sasuke had vaguely realized, back then, that he’d never be able to convince Naruto of his hatred. If anything, Naruto was convinced of his own stupid, stubborn, lack thereof.

Perhaps it was never love and friendship that were unavoidable; it was always Naruto, who would not let Sasuke avoid it as long as he was able to draw breath. If they ended up killing each other, Naruto would still reach to hold the hand that delivered his death sentence.

And Sasuke would let him, at the end of all things. Unavoidable, indeed.

Sasuke brought his fist down to smash into the side of Naruto’s cheek, feeling the satisfying crack of a split tooth and fresh blood gushing from broken skin under his knuckles. Whose it was, he couldn’t even tell - they were no longer face-to-face, as reflections. Naruto’s breath mingled with his own when Sasuke leaned in, his pulse quickened in tandem, and covered in each other’s blood.

A single, inseparable entity. There was no more chakra in his fingertips - just pure hatred, for the reflection that would never stop looking back at him. Hatred for the realization that neither of them would ever look away.

Naruto spit out a bloodied tooth and turned his head to face him again. For a moment, neither of them spoke; he was heavily bruised, with blood dripping from both nostrils and his lips, but grinning.

There had been an uncontrollable, wordless scream of rage and frustration that was ripped from Sasuke’s chest, that felt like countless sheets of fragile glass shattering at once.

He’d almost been unable to hear it, over the roaring of his own blood in his ears. Sasuke pulled back his fist, suddenly struck by the hysterical urge to laugh before beating him to death. He wanted to kill Naruto just like that, with nothing but his hands - every broken tooth and split lip would remind him that they were not equals, that Naruto’s vulnerability made him weak, and Sasuke was the only one who was able to kill him for it.

And yet Naruto grinned at him.

He coughed and wiped the mixture of blood and saliva from his mouth, holding Sasuke’s gaze and waiting for the second punch that he already knew would not come.

“Why are you smiling?” Sasuke screamed. “Why are you f*cking smiling?”

Naruto hadn’t answered him; most likely because he hadn’t been able to put it into words, either (or that he was much more preoccupied with grabbing Sasuke by the front of his collar, to headbutt him so hard he momentarily blacked out). It was only much later Sasuke could admit to himself that Naruto had been able to understand him, in a way that he himself had been incapable of at the time.

He had been convinced of his own hatred, but Naruto was not. Every time Sasuke’s fist connected with his face, his body betrayed him. Sasuke’s wretched, uncontrollable, unmistakable love for him bled through the cracks like through fractures in glass.

And Naruto grinned like he couldn’t help it, because he knew. He never needed to bear the burden of Sasuke’s hatred in the first place. Sasuke could have spent the rest of his life screaming himself hoarse about how much he hated Uzumaki Naruto - but it wouldn’t matter in the slightest. Every time they touched, Naruto could feel it like a stinging and reprehensible lie.

Sasuke’s body betrayed, as it so often did, that he loved him. A fire that burned flesh to the bone, cauterized an open wound. As if it was etched into his fingerprints, intertwined with his veins, carved into his bones.

Sasuke could hardly blame him for grinning, in retrospect. The punch managed to convey nothing but I love you, I love you, I love you. I wish you were dead. I can’t live without you.

“Please?” Kakashi prompted, after a while of Sasuke saying absolutely nothing.

“Whatever.”

“Teenagers,” he muttered to himself, returning his attention to his book. “I dunno if I can - y’know, cover for you. If there are any injuries.”

“What are you getting at?” Sasuke said irritably. Though Kakashi was the only person who knew of the nature of his relationship with Naruto, he happened to be one of the most exasperating people that could have found out. “It’s fine. We’re fine.”

“Well…” Kakashi looked mildly uncomfortable. “All I meant was you need to…uh, be safe.”

Sasuke briefly felt like throttling him.

“During the mission,” He quickly followed up, at the look on Sasuke’s face. “And…whenever else you might need to exercise caution. I’m sure you can ask Tsunade if she has any - um…tips on being safe.”

“I’m not-” he managed, quite certain that his ears were red (something that he couldn’t help but notice ever since Naruto pointed it out). “I’m not - we’re not - it’s none of your-”

“I already know it’s none of my business,” Kakashi said tiredly, over Sasuke awkwardly fumbling his response. “I just have to remind you. It’s probably a part of my responsibility as your sensei, or something like that…”

Sasuke clenched his hand into a fist, at a loss for words. It was embarrassing, it was f*cking humiliating, every time Kakashi reminded him that there was someone else who knew just how he felt about Naruto. They were not in their own world, and the people around them were capable of noticing how much he loved him. It was in his eyes when Sasuke looked at him, in his touch when he shoved him. In the rare smile that would come unbidden.

How could he even call it invasive? Anyone with eyes could see Sasuke loving him like it was in his nature. Bleeding through the cracks, eternally.

“There’s no need to be safe,” Sasuke grit out, making a conscious effort not to snarl at him. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Why not?” Kakashi looked slightly taken aback. “Isn’t that, uh…something you’re supposed to want?”

“What?”

“I mean, you’re not just going to kiss, right?” He scratched his temple. “Well, I dunno what it’s like between guys, but I figured there has to be something. Do men just grab each other’s-?”

“Shut up, please, just - stop.” Sasuke pinched the bridge of his nose so he wouldn’t snatch Icha Icha Tactics from Kakashi’s hands and beat him over the head with it. Though the temptation was nearly overpowering.

“Ah, sorry. Not my area of expertise.” Ironically, he flipped a page of his p*rnographic novel. “Though it’s not particularly out of the question, Sasuke. You’re teenagers, in love, going on a vacation by yourselves.”

“Vacation?” Sasuke repeated. In love might have been more jarring - though it would be stupid and pointless to argue against, hearing it from Kakashi’s mouth was decidedly weird.

“What’s the problem, then?” Kakashi continued breezily, as if he hadn’t interrupted.

“I’m not a girl,” Sasuke spit out. “And he isn’t, either. He won’t - he can’t understand what I want to - do with him.”

It was humiliating to admit to someone apart from himself - but Kakashi knew far more about him than anyone else, anyway. Sasuke figured it could hardly get any more embarrassing, at that point.

“Oh,” Kakashi said, suddenly proving him irrevocably wrong. “You wanna f*ck him, or what?”

Sakura had once offered him a suggestion in what she called anger management, during one of his visits to the hospital to ask if she’d spoken to Naruto following their escort to Sunagakure. She’d mentioned it more as a joke than anything, but he found that it was actually somewhat helpful when speaking to Kakashi in particular.

Count to ten, Sakura’s voice reminded him. Sasuke got about seven seconds in before he trusted himself to speak.

It was, somehow, worse than what Kakashi guessed - Sasuke did not want to lose to him. It felt like submission, when Naruto tried pushing him down as he kissed him. It was instinctively wrong, because Sasuke couldn’t help but resent being beneath him in every sense of the word. Naruto could only fathom romance in the context of a boy and a girl, and Sasuke could not play a part he could understand.

In whatever clumsy dreams and unbidden fantasies that had been in abundance as of late, Sasuke had never allowed himself to be pushed down. He kissed Naruto with a hunger that was mirrored in kind. He pressed their foreheads together and held his gaze, reached between them to feel the tense muscles of his abdomen - and Naruto wouldn’t look away, because he was never the type to back down from a challenge. His shaky breaths would send shivers up Sasuke’s spine, and Naruto wouldn’t know what to do with his hands until Sasuke pulled his wrists to where he wanted them.

That was how they were supposed to be. Equals, however stupid that sounded. There wasn’t a world in which either of them knew how to be submissive.

He’d always feel ashamed about it, afterwards. It was, in a way, even more shameful than the dreams he had during the period of time spent away from Konoha. There was some plausible deniability back then, after all.

“No,” Sasuke seethed. “Just - forget it, already. I don’t need you to interfere.”

“Sure,” he agreed, picking absently at the armrest of Gai’s wheelchair. “That certainly worked well enough the first time.”

He hadn’t known how to respond, slightly stung by Kakashi’s sarcasm - though Sasuke was aware that rejecting Kakashi’s interference when he was thirteen most definitely did not help him. “I’m leaving.”

“Keep in touch, will you? Iruka starts fretting when he doesn’t hear from his special little boy…”

“Do you?” Sasuke asked, rolling his eyes. “Sounds like an excuse.”

Kakashi flipped another page, his voice deceptively casual as he spoke. “You know I’m always worried about you, Sasuke.”

When he didn’t say anything, Kakashi glanced up at him - as impassive as ever. Sasuke had been quite certain he’d brush it off in the same way he always did; but every once in a while, Kakashi would say something that came a little too close to sounding affectionate. And every once in a while, Sasuke would falter. He’d feel it far too much and all at once, an almost-painful ache in his chest.

Being loved. Unavoidable, indeed.

“Go away, already,” Kakashi said - with that slightly-too-affectionate voice. “I’m tired of looking at you.”

Sasuke obliged, before Kakashi could notice that he’d been shaken. It hardly mattered, anyway. It had been something Kakashi could notice for as long as they’d known each other.

He reconciled with Sai and Ino on the way back. They were accompanied by Shikamaru, who looked thoroughly unhappy to see him approach. Sasuke found that he couldn’t blame Shikamaru for never liking him all that much. He happened to be profoundly unlikeable, even without taking the terrorism into account - and he’d never really cared about whether or not he was likeable, because there were certain people that appeared to like him quite a lot just the way he was. For whatever inane, mystifying reason.

“Sasuke!” Ino said cheerfully, waving him over. “Did you tell Lord Sixth we’re back?”

He never really bothered to call Kakashi by his title apart from when used scathingly (or ever called him sensei, not even when he was younger). It was a little odd to see others address him with such respect, considering Sasuke had once watched him pull down his mask and pick his nose, before proceeding to wipe his prize on Naruto’s shoulder. That was just one of the many things about Kakashi that made Sasuke slightly reluctant to remember that he was actually a very renowned shinobi.

“Yeah,” he said, casting a glance towards Shikamaru as he walked towards them. The other ninja just raised an eyebrow. “Have you seen Naruto? We’re due to leave.”

“Just you and him?” Shikamaru asked.

“So, what?” Sasuke replied tersely. Sakura had asked him the same question - and it was starting to get annoying, as if they were worried he would make (another) attempt on Naruto’s life with nobody to stop him. Sasuke couldn’t see why they were so tense. He couldn’t make another attempt on Naruto’s life even if he wanted to.

“Nothing.” Shikamaru’s eyes drifted away.

“There’s a name,” Sai informed him. “Garyō. We assumed it must be the Armament Alliance’s leader, or something of the kind. It’s best to look out for him, and…bring him in for questioning, if possible.”

Don’t kill him was left unsaid. Sasuke’s eye twitched involuntarily. “Thanks.”

They bid him farewell before he decided he would find Sakura and tell her about their departure. He felt oddly hesitant about stopping by to visit her at the hospital - she always appeared delighted when he did, which made his chest wrench violently with guilt. Sakura, if anyone, should have been thoroughly unhappy to see him.

He went, anyway. For her sake or his own, he couldn’t really tell.

The hospital would bring back far too many unpleasant memories, and it didn’t help that the nurses looked slightly alarmed when they saw him. It smelled sterile, like disinfectant and clean linen; with long, white hallways and blinding fluorescent lights. Sakura seemed to brighten the place spectacularly, like flowers in an otherwise spotlessly white room.

She was always like that.

A nurse pointed him vaguely towards where he might find her, and it turned out to spare him the effort of finding Naruto afterwards - because he was accompanying Sakura, and looked just as surprised to see Sasuke there.

“Sasuke?” Sakura gave him a quick once-over, as if to check for any injuries. She wore a lab coat that fell to her knees, hugging a clipboard to her chest. There had been a lot of Tsunade’s responsibilities that she took upon herself - during one of his visits, Sakura had even informed him of a mental health facility she’d been thinking of proposing to Kakashi in the future. “Is your arm still bothering you?”

“What arm?” Naruto asked slyly, and she pinched his wrist. “Ow.”

“Why’re you here?” Sasuke addressed him, a little suspiciously. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“He’s not.” Sakura rolled her eyes, grabbing both of them by the elbow and pulling them along the hallway. “Come on, now, there’s no use in standing here like idiots…”

She took them to her office (which wasn’t anything impressive, exactly) - with a small desk that was relatively organized, save for a handful of scattered documents and what appeared to be an excessive amount of flowers stuffed in mismatched vases. A woven basket of fruit, beside her framed photograph of Team Seven.

“What’s with the flowers?” Naruto said, as Sasuke looked down at the pens scattered haphazardly across her desk. She appeared to be signing all medical records with glittery pink and purple ink.

“Lee,” she explained, sitting in her chair and waving her hand towards them. “He’s so sweet, isn’t he? I told him I like flowers once, and he brings me one every day. I don’t have the heart to tell him I’m running out of vases, to be honest.”

Naruto leaned over her desk to snatch one of the apples from her fruit basket. “What’s he doing that for?” he asked, nonplussed as he bit a chunk from his prize. “It’s not like you’re a patient.”

She sighed through her nose, turning her attention to Sasuke. “What’s the occasion?”

“Sai and Ino returned,” he said, for the second time that day - before moving to avoid the appleseed Naruto spit in his general vicinity. “Mature, Naruto.”

“You’re cheating,” he complained. “Stupid Rinnegan.”

“Oh, right.” Sakura tapped her pen against her chin. “The Ryūha Armament Alliance, you said? You’ll have to be careful with no medic.”

Sasuke thought, briefly, of Kakashi’s reminder to be safe. He tried not to let it show on his face.

“Naruto’s arm still isn’t entirely healed, either. The prosthetic isn’t magic,” she added, when Naruto’s mouth dropped open to protest. “I’d come with you if I could, but…suppose I’ll have to settle for worrying, again.”

“I’ll keep him out of trouble,” Sasuke offered. Naruto promptly spit another appleseed in his direction.

“Who’s going to keep you out of trouble?” Sakura replied, exasperated but with a small smile. “I guess you’re not really kids anymore. Your hair is getting long, by the way. You look like a recluse.”

He reached up to brush it out of his eyes. Truthfully, it was getting a little annoying - but there was something about being able to hide the Rinnegan behind it that proved useful. People would not stare quite as much, and he could pretend for a moment that he belonged in Konoha like he’d never left.

“Well, looks good, anyway.” Sakura huffed, twisting a strand of her pink hair around her finger thoughtfully. “Guys like you can get away with anything.”

“You should cut it,” Naruto told him absentmindedly, picking bits of apple from his teeth. “I like seeing your eyes.”

There was a pause. Sakura blinked, and Sasuke squeezed his eyes shut like it would distract him from the fact that he could feel his ears turning red. Of course, he’d never been fortunate enough to be granted such small blessings. He was briefly ashamed for all the times he’d gotten annoyed by the way Sakura would blush and giggle around him - Sasuke felt momentarily possessed, his face twitching as he fought against the nearly irrepressible urge to laugh (successfully, thankfully. If Naruto and Sakura saw him visibly pleased he just might have had to kill everyone in the hospital and then himself).

Naruto always said the first stupid thing that came to mind. Sasuke should have known better than to expect him not to.

“What?” Naruto asked, when nobody spoke. He spit a third and final appleseed that Sasuke didn’t move quick enough to dodge. “Haha. Gotcha this time.”

There were certain things that Sasuke could never be, and certain things he was not entitled to expect from Naruto. They had images, whether they liked it or not - roles to fulfill, in a sense. There were moments in which Sasuke was able to forget about all of it. Just for a precious few seconds, he existed in a world that was meant for the two of them; where they didn’t need to speak, or even look at one another. Sasuke could reach out his hand and know that Naruto would extend his in kind. Maybe the only word to describe that knowing was love, or even faith. Sasuke thought of it as instinct.

That was the very thing he’d never been able to get rid of, after all. However close he could come to killing Naruto would be by fighting against every instinct screaming at him to stop - driven only by a hatred screaming at him to keep going. Naruto’s blood on his knuckles felt like his own. The light leaving his eyes would feel like absolution.

And punishment. Something he had known, ever since he was thirteen.

Sasuke could not kill Naruto back then, because saying his name and receiving no response was terrifying. That was an irrevocable truth he’d never quite been able to accept - damnation to something that would not even be emptiness. Sasuke would be damned to a solitude he spent years convincing himself he wanted, though it struck a fear into the very marrow of his bones. Killing Itachi had been revenge for that hellish loneliness, but even revenge wouldn’t ever make it go away.

It wasn’t about dying, or not dying. It wasn’t even about winning or losing, in the end. Sasuke made a last desperate attempt to prove that it was all to serve a purpose, like the death rattle of something that had been decaying for years. Even if he did die right beside Naruto, it would not be because of vulnerability. It would be strength he hadn’t previously been capable of, not for three years.

Sasuke knew he had lost, but not because he was dying. It was because when Naruto turned his head to look at him, he would meet his gaze and know that he was loved. If Naruto reached to hold the hand that delivered his death sentence, Sasuke would take it. In shame, but he would take it nonetheless.

It was only Naruto who was capable of loving him, despite everything.

They set out on their mission later that afternoon. Iruka had come to see them off, and Naruto wrapped him in a big hug that made Sasuke instinctively avert his gaze. He even politely shook Sasuke’s hand and implored them to be careful, as if they were inexperienced genin on an S-rank mission.

It occurred to him, somewhat belatedly, that they hadn’t technically passed the chūnin exam. Both him and Naruto were indeed still genin - though not exactly inexperienced, to say the least. Nobody appeared to have any problems with sending them to take care of this mission in particular, anyway. Naruto was pretty much the savior of the world, defeater of irreparable evils, or something like that. Sasuke was one of the irreparable evils (according to almost everybody except for Naruto).

In any case, they were more than capable to handle an organization as simpleminded as the Ryūha Armament Alliance. They were not anything like Akatsuki, that much was clear.

There was something distantly nostalgic about the journey towards the Land of Waves - albeit much more peaceful than the first time. Sasuke remained vigilant with his Rinnegan, out of the slightest possibility that Kakashi had been inclined to follow them again. He apparently had the sense to refrain, which was a relief, because there were only so many times Sasuke could count to ten.

It wasn’t much different from their escort to Sunagakure. The days were the kind that felt slightly too warm in the sun, and slightly too cold in the shade - nights would leave a thin sheen of frost over the ground that would melt away in the light of morning. The warbling notes of birdsong trailed after them, broken only whenever Naruto would raise his voice to excitedly point out things such as a cloud shaped like a frog. Or something like that.

They arrived at the border of the Land of Fire by nightfall - the now-complete bridge stretched across the strait and disappeared into the mist. Lanterns lighting the way floated like miniature ghosts in the darkness, and the archway over the bridge that became legible as they approached was triumphantly announced by Naruto, as if he didn’t think Sasuke could read.

“The Great Naruto Bridge!” he declared, shaking Sasuke by the shoulder and pointing at it. “Check it out! It’s my bridge!”

“It’s Tazuna’s bridge,” Sasuke replied, unable to stop himself from returning his grin. “Stupid. They named it after a fishcake.”

“They named it after me, bastard, it’s cool and you don’t wanna admit it.”

“Sure, it’s cool,” he said. “The Great Fishcake Bridge.”

“Cut it out, already, you’re just jealous there’s no Great Sasuke Bridge-”

On the way, Naruto suggested they stop to visit Zabuza and Haku’s graves. The sun had disappeared past the trees by the time they trekked up the hill - it was, unsurprisingly, not a very well-worn path. They did, however, run into the other person Naruto suggested they also visit.

Inari, who was just about twelve years old now, somehow carried himself with much more maturity than Naruto had when he was at that age. He might have also carried himself with much more maturity than Naruto at present.

His mouth dropped open when he turned around, looking up at Naruto and then Sasuke like he could hardly recognize them. Sasuke pulled his cloak across his left shoulder, remembering slightly too late that a missing limb might have been alarming to a twelve-year-old.

“No way!” Inari cried, dashing forward and flinging his arms around Naruto before doing the same to Sasuke (which caught him incredibly off-guard). “What’re you guys doing here?”

“We’re on a mission,” Naruto explained, elbowing Sasuke. “Just passing through. Thought we’d pay our respects, or…whatever you do at graves. Stand there and be sad.”

“Can you stay the night?” He asked, tugging on Naruto’s sleeve. “Please? Please?”

“Aww, well, when you put it that way-”

“You can stay in the same room as last time,” Inari said eagerly.

Naruto blinked down at him. “It’s already been…almost four years since then, huh?”

Sasuke remembered it very well. Their first mission felt like lifetimes ago, and everything that happened since then blurred together indistinctly like a lifetime that did not even belong to him. Almost four years apart, they returned as if nothing happened.

“Only four years,” Inari corrected. “The Land of Waves changed a lot, y’know? I mean, everything’s changed a lot - you guys, too. Except Sasuke’s still taller than you.”

Sasuke snickered, and Naruto punched him in the shoulder. “Barely,” he grumbled.

“Why’s your arm like that, anyway?” Inari continued keenly, having apparently taken notice of Naruto’s bandaged right forearm (used to punch Sasuke). “Are you hurt?”

“Oh, yeah.” Naruto looked down at it, before giving Sasuke another friendlier punch for good measure. “Don’t worry. It works fine, see?”

“Quit punching me,” Sasuke said irritably.

“Don’t be a baby.”

“What happened to it?” Inari pestered, pulling at Naruto’s sleeve more incessantly. “Ninja stuff?”

“I mean, kinda.” Naruto scratched his chin, leaning into Sasuke as if he was lost in thought on how to respond. “This guy blew it up.”

Sasuke winced, as Inari’s eyes widened like they were about to pop out of his head. ”Blew it up?”

“It’s okay. I got a new one.” He rolled his shoulder and flexed his fingers absentmindedly. “Sasuke didn’t, though, ‘cause he thinks it makes him look cool or something-”

“What?” Inari whipped his head to face him, flabbergasted. “What happened to your arm?”

“Well, I blew it up,” Naruto replied cheerfully, just as Sasuke opened his mouth to respond.

“What?”

“It’s no big deal.” He grinned, tilting his head to meet Sasuke’s eyes. The affection he could see in Naruto’s gaze was like a punch to the throat, much more painful than being actually punched by him. Sasuke felt winded. “I got something way more important than an arm.”

They stayed by Zabuza and Haku’s graves for a while longer - the grave markers were once-rough slabs of wood that had been weathered by four years of age. Kakashi had once thrust the Executioner’s Blade into the ground beside them, only for it to be carried off by Suigetsu a few years later. The wind picked up as the sky darkened, sending ripples through the grass and making the cosmos flowers shudder.

They paid their respects - or maybe Naruto was just standing there and being sad, Sasuke couldn’t really tell. On the way back down, Inari told them about Tazuna and his new project: the nearly-complete Tobishachimaru, which according to Inari, was the revolutionized Land of Waves’ transport system in the form of a flying ship.

Sasuke couldn’t imagine it from Inari’s description. He didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about it, either, which even Naruto was able to pick up on. There wasn’t anything exciting about innovative technology when it was almost certainly for the sole reason of profit - the Land of Waves’ economy had improved thanks to the Great Naruto Bridge, and they made their living through transport, so Sasuke figured it wasn’t entirely out of the question to optimize transport. However stupid a flying ship sounded.

As promised, Inari showed them to the spare room they occupied back during their first mission. It was a lot smaller than Sasuke remembered, but he hadn’t been in it all that much when he was younger - him and Naruto had stayed up incredibly late into the night, climbing the same stupid trees until they could both reach the top. It happened to be a fond memory, even though Sasuke had been remarkably annoyed by him at the time.

He closed his eyes, lying on his back and listening to Inari pester Naruto with questions - making appreciative ooh s whenever he recounted his many (heavily embellished) fights during the war. When Naruto laughed, the sound filled up the entire room like sunlight pouring through a window.

Something about it felt like home. Sasuke distantly wondered if that was the best way to describe it; being away from Naruto made him homesick.

It was late into the night when Inari left them alone, albeit begrudgingly. He could see the full moon through the window, hanging in the cloudless sky like the all-seeing eye of a god. Naruto padded over to him, crouching down and poking Sasuke in the side of his ribs. “Hey.”

“What?” Sasuke turned his head away from the window to face him.

“Now that he’s gone…” Naruto looked suspiciously mischievous, propping his elbows on his knees and lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Wanna see what I got?”

What he got was revealed (somewhat anticlimactically) when Naruto pulled an entire bottle of sake from his bag and brandished it dramatically in the air like a weapon. Sasuke sat up and gave him an unimpressed look. “Where’d you get that?”

“Nicked it from Tsunade’s office in the hospital. She’s got a lot of them in there, actually…”

“Why’d you bring it?”

Naruto unscrewed the cap, breaking the seal and giving it a whiff. “Well, it’s Sakura’s birthday in a few days, and we won’t be back by then. So I thought we could celebrate.”

Sasuke snorted. “Without her?”

He came back over to sit cross-legged in front of him, so they were face-to-face. “What?” Naruto grinned, tilting the neck of the bottle towards him. “Scared I can drink more than you?”

That was how they ended up passing the bottle between them, late into the night and getting progressively more inebriated the longer it went on. It started to become a competition more than anything - whenever Sasuke was certain he’d had enough, Naruto took another swing and reignited the annoyance at the way he didn’t know when to quit. If he was being honest, Sasuke was just as exceptionally stubborn when it came to Naruto. He would rather drink himself unconscious than admit defeat.

(And he probably understood Naruto well enough to know he would do the same.)

After a while, Naruto pushed himself to his feet to walk (or stumble) over to the window, pulling it up and sticking his head through it. The night breeze that swept through the room felt like it snapped him out of a trance. “D’you wanna go on the roof?”

“Depends,” Sasuke said, tilting his head back to look at him. “I’m not catching you if you fall.”

They climbed through the window and onto the roof on Naruto’s insistence that he wouldn’t fall, sitting side by side and watching the seemingly-endless expanse of water below them crash against the banks of the channel, black in the light of the moon.

If the resounding conclusion of his life amounted to anything, Sasuke could only pray that this was it - being at peace, for the first time in as long as he could remember.

“Hey,” Naruto began, unprompted. “Can you activate your Sharingan?”

“What for?” Sasuke replied, amused.

“I dunno. Show me.”

He obliged, and Naruto peered into his face, before his face split into a dopey grin. “Damn. Makes me kinda pissed off.”

Sasuke rolled his eyes. “Why?”

“S’cool.” Naruto rested his chin on his arm from where it was crossed over his knees. “You’re wayyy too pretty, y’know that? Too damned handsome for your own good, s’what you are…”

“Yeah?” Sasuke prompted, grinning before he could help himself. “What else?”

“Every time I look at you,” he slurred, swaying very slightly in place and clutching the bottle of sake in his lap. “Can feel like - like there’s a balloon, or somethin’, really big in my chest, kinda…”

Sasuke looked over his shoulder at him. Naruto scrunched up his face and wiped his mouth, offering him the bottle of sake. “I’m seriously gonna explode,” he mumbled. “One of these days, I’ll really…s’not ever gonna go away, huh?”

He thought, briefly, of Kakashi. Sasuke took the bottle from Naruto and tilted his head back to take a swing from it, the alcohol burning as it went down. He could feel Naruto’s eyes like they were searing holes into the side of his face. “Probably not,” he replied, setting it down.

“S’okay.” Naruto hiccupped, then laughed. “I’m okay with that. It’s a good balloon, y’know? Like a…really happy feeling, that’s too big to be in my body. Like that. Get it?”

In all of the ways Naruto struggled with saying something, that was the only thing he was able to express in perfect clarity - love. Everything about him was love like it was what he was made of; in anything he said, everything he did.

It was effortless to hate Uzumaki Naruto, but even more effortless to love him. Unavoidable.

“Yeah,” Sasuke said, his throat tightening. He could see the reflection of the full moon across the surface of the water, far below them. It was broken by the wind sending ripples across the strait, shattering the reflection like broken ceramic. “I get it.”

“S’all you ever say,” he grumbled, bumping their shoulders together. “ Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re so…what’s that word? Mon…mono-?”

“Monosyllabic.”

“That’s it. You’re lucky I’m…” Naruto closed his eyes. “Woah. I’m dizzy.”

“Already?” Sasuke grinned, taking another swing from the sake. It seemed to go down easier, after a while. Though it was, admittedly, also making him dizzy. He hadn’t ever seen the appeal in alcohol - but he felt warm, relaxed, and slightly stupid. His thoughts were slow-moving and sticky, which normally would have filled him with alarm, but weren’t unpleasant at all. “Why’d you want to celebrate with alcohol if you can’t even drink?”

“Oh, right, right. This is a celebration!” Naruto leaned over and seized the bottle, before pushing himself to his feet and wobbling precariously on the slightly angled roof. Sasuke watched him, vaguely amused by the possibility of Naruto falling off. He was quite certain it would be the funniest thing that he had ever witnessed.

Naruto raised the bottle of sake and poured some of it over the side of the roof as if at a funeral. “Happy birthday, Sakura…” he began, making a sincere effort not to slur his words. “Um - here’s t’ your health, and…you will be missed, or somethin’ like that…”

“She’s not dead, dumbass,” Sasuke said sleepily. “I…don’t think.”

“S’not her birthday, either,” Naruto replied morosely, sitting back down beside him and knocking their knees together. “Y’know, I think I might’ve just wanted t’ drink with you.”

“Could’ve just said so,” he mumbled, feeling himself lean forward until Naruto steadied him with a hand over his chest. “I would’ve.”

Naruto snickered, and gave him a slight push with his hand still splayed over his chest. Sasuke let him, lying on his back across the shingles of the roof and feeling much stupider than before. “‘Course, you would’ve,” Naruto said, leaning over him and grinning. “You kinda owe me, don’t you?”

“Not-” Sasuke’s mouth went dry. “Not because…I owe you.”

“S’all right, then.” He didn’t seem to want to look away, watching Sasuke for an uncomfortably long while - with that big, dumb, unconscious smile on his face. The breeze gently ruffled his hair like someone was running fingers through it. “‘Cause you don’t…owe me, I mean.”

Didn’t he? It felt like a debt that could never be repaid, not in a thousand lifetimes. Sasuke could have sacrificed everything he had, everything that had ever mattered to him, and still be undeserving of the stupid unconscious smile Naruto had for him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, helplessly. Something about the buzzing of alcohol in his bloodstream and the way Naruto was looking at him made Sasuke feel wretchedly, unavoidably loved. Far too much and all at once. “I don’t know why you keep forgiving me.”

“This again?” Naruto’s eyes became slightly unfocused. “You know why.”

“Fine, then, I don’t get it.”

“Hey, either y’got really good at shadow clones, or I’m seeing two of you…”

“I am good at shadow clones,” Sasuke replied, offended and successfully distracted by the change in subject. He was too dizzy to know what he even wanted to say - his thoughts were bouncing mindlessly around his skull, and Sasuke felt as if he were merely watching them with a detached interest. Meaningless things like the roof is uncomfortable, my eyelids are heavy, Naruto’s hand is still on my chest.

“Not as good as me, though.” Naruto leaned in closer, still grinning. Sasuke couldn’t really tell if it was because he wanted to or because he couldn’t sit up straight. “Hey.”

“What?”

“I’m really…I’m really happy, I think.”

“Don’t…” he briefly thought about it, “explode.”

Naruto reminded him of the sun, larger-than-life, even in the dead of night. He laughed and it felt even more blinding than the light of the full moon. “Hey,” he said, again. “Sasuke?”

“What?” Sasuke replied, again. Wondering if he could live a thousand lifetimes and ever be deserving of the affection in Naruto’s voice when he said his name.

“I kinda want t’ kiss you, dude.”

“You can.”

“Not gonna bite me again, are you?”

“Are you still pissed off about that?” Sasuke rolled his eyes. “I told you, it was because-”

Naruto shut him up, in what was probably the only way he knew how. He pressed their lips together and sighed into his mouth, like releasing a breath he’d been holding for the longest time.

The fourth time Naruto kissed him, he tasted like alcohol - and under the cloudless sky and the full moon, he felt like the sun.