Exodium

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/56471818.

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: M/M
Fandom: Naruto (Anime & Manga)
Relationship: Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Characters: Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, Hatake Kakashi, Nara
Shikamaru, Sarutobi Asuma, Hyuuga Hinata
Additional Tags: Dai-nana-han | Team 7 Dynamics (Naruto), Character Study, Alternate
Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, Idiots in Love,
unconventional love languages, Aggressive Use of Passive Voice,
aggressive use of italics, Feelings Realization, Attempt at Humor, First
Kiss, Kinda, POV Uzumaki Naruto, POV Uchiha Sasuke, POV Haruno
Sakura, POV Hatake Kakashi
Language: English
Series: Part 4 of The Symposium
Stats: Published: 2024-06-07 Updated: 2024-07-07 Words: 43,373 Chapters:
2/4
 Exodium
by candlewix

Summary

Naruto and Sasuke were not, and had never been, conventional in the ways they expressed
love and received it. They were, after all, intimately familiar with the unconventional ways
they cared about one another - through antagonism, competitiveness, and an enduring
devotion from intrinsic knowledge of the other.
An interpretation of Team Seven's perspectives of Naruto and Sasuke's clumsy developing
not-quite relationship, and what it means to have a love language entirely unique to them.
 Aristophanes
Chapter Notes

It's me again...almost entirely because I don't know how to leave well enough alone.
This continuation of The Symposium is dedicated entirely to everyone who has
expressed interest in hearing the story from different perspectives :D I'm deeply grateful
to the love and support I've received from you all! I've heard that part of being a good
writer is knowing when to quit, but another part of being a good writer has to be writing
because you genuinely love your story and want to see it continue (even just for
yourself). This functions as a character study of Team Seven, in a lot of ways.
Additionally, it is an interpretation of Naruto and Sasuke's relationship that I rarely see
in other fanfics. I hope I can create a narrative that shows just how many unique forms
love can manifest itself (if that makes sense).
Again, my sincerest thanks to everybody who leaves kudos and/or comments, as well as
anyone who just dedicates their time to read my writing. Obligatory apologies for any
OOC/mischaracterizations and plot/worldbuilding errors in general...at the end of the
day I am faced with the realization that I'm writing fanfiction and not editing canon, to
my regret.
Sorry for yapping, and my humble request that people keep an open mind to what I
think is an unconventional romance (but one that is somewhat believably canon, imo)
:'D happy reading!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Naruto knew that he wasn’t very smart.

He hadn’t exactly come to that realization by himself, mostly because a lot of the people in
his life would often tell him that he was just about as bright as a bag of rocks. They wouldn’t
even always put it in that way, so Naruto would only realize quite some time afterwards that,
whenever Sakura told him it was an astonishing miracle that he’d saved the world, it wasn’t
actually a compliment. Which he could kinda agree with, anyway. He was still a little
impressed with himself that he'd been able to.

At the very least, Sasuke was not the kind of person that cared about being considerate in the
things he said - even though he wasn’t any good at being upfront about a lot of things, the
moments in which he would call Naruto a dumbass were pretty straightforward. Despite
being incredibly antagonizing (most of the time).

Kakashi-sensei didn’t really call him stupid. Though it occurred to Naruto that (yet again
quite some time afterwards), when he would look at him in exasperation, he was most
definitely thinking it.
So Naruto knew that he wasn’t very smart, when it came to a lot of things. He was never
much interested in being smart, anyway, because being dumb happened to work out for him
for the most part. He understood, of course, that spending three years trying to save someone
that did not want to be saved was a stupid thing to do. It was only because Naruto was quite
stupid that he did it anyway - since he couldn’t really care about whether or not the things he
did were logically good ideas. He only cared if they felt like the right things to do.

Spending three years trying to save someone that did not want to be saved had always felt
indisputably right. Naruto had not once doubted that.

For that reason, he didn’t really mind if he was a little stupid (or maybe even a lot stupid) -
and he didn’t mind whenever people told him so. Except for when Sasuke told him so,
obviously, because Sasuke never seemed to get that there were times in which he was way
stupider.

But in general, he was quite okay with being dumb and doing dumb things. And Naruto
wasn’t entirely sure how he knew what the right things were - they just felt that way.
Consequently, a lot of his life was spent entirely doing whatever he felt that way about.

It was possible that Naruto was really only good at knowing instinctively whether or not
something was right or wrong. Which had not failed him thus far.

The problem, however, was that he did not possess the capacity of foresight. In the sense that
he was not capable of knowing how he felt about something until it was quite figuratively
hitting him in the face. Which was to say, Uzumaki Naruto did not know what he felt about
Uchiha Sasuke - not even when he was literally hitting Naruto in the face.

He had, of course, been under the impression that he actually knew very well what it was that
he felt about Sasuke. Spending three years trying to save him felt right, because Sasuke was
and had always been his best friend. So, naturally, he did not give it any thought beyond that.

The fact that a lot of people treated it like some sort of ineluctable mystery had always been,
for the most part, kinda bewildering. Naruto couldn’t understand what there was to not
understand - because it made perfect sense already, didn’t it? Everything he had ever done for
Sasuke, because it felt right, was entirely due to them being pretty damn good friends.

Which was precisely why the way Sasuke found it so complicated really pissed him off.
Naruto couldn’t, for the life of him, see what there wasn’t to get.

At the Valley of the End, Naruto knew (in the same way that he was capable of knowing,
instinctively) that he was prepared to die with Sasuke. The life that stretched ahead of him
had always seemed to flicker out into nothingness when Naruto tried to imagine it without
him. And there was almost certainly a relatively good life awaiting him if he left the Valley of
the End as the sole victor of their final conflict. But Naruto was distinctly aware that he did
not want it all that much (or at all), just because he couldn’t really imagine it without his best
friend. He was not blessed with foresight, after all.

A lot of people had asked Naruto why he remained so certain that they were still friends,
particularly after Sasuke had decisively tried to kill him the first time in the Valley of the
End. Naruto hadn’t really known how to explain, exactly - even though it was quite obvious
to him. It was because Sasuke hadn’t killed him, despite the fact that Naruto had very
indisputably lost.

So, why was Naruto still so certain that they were friends? Why did he still believe,
wholeheartedly, that Sasuke cared about him - despite rejecting their bond many times over?

He could confidently say that he didn’t really know how he knew.

It was in the same way he couldn’t tell why something was inherently right or not - it either
was or wasn’t. For that reason, Naruto had a certain blind faith in the love he held for his
friend. Faith that had felt that much less blind, when Sasuke left him alive all those years ago.

He could not, for the life of him, see what there wasn’t to get. Naruto would save him time
and time again because they were friends, and they were friends because…because. Why did
it matter?

Kakashi first brought it up a short while after he returned to Konoha from his training with
Jiraiya. And Naruto hadn’t really been able to put it into words, just because he hadn’t ever
needed to. Kakashi asked him why he was friends with Sasuke, and Naruto did not know how
he could even begin to answer.

How was he supposed to put it into words, anyway? Sasuke felt like a piece of himself. A
constant…mirror image, one that would make a single unnameable emotion swell in his chest
whenever he would meet his eyes. And that was the only emotion that felt right, when it
came to him. Naruto wasn’t capable of feeling anything else about Sasuke.

And if Sasuke kept refusing to meet his eyes, whatever. Naruto would wait until he did.

There were only bits and pieces from the enormity that was the unnameable emotion Naruto
could make sense of. The inexplicable feeling felt like it was written upon hundreds of pieces
of paper, ripped up and scattered in front of a fan. Almost impossible to interpret individually,
but with the tentative awareness that they would be able to explain it in full if he could only
catch them all.

One of the fragments he’d been able to understand had been almost remarkably simple: in the
sense that whenever he saw Sasuke in pain, it would feel quite tangibly like a stab to the
chest. A horribly physical sensation, as if the pain had been his own.

And he told Kakashi so - which just made his teacher glance over to him, something in the
expression of his single visible eye betraying what looked like regret. A regret that Naruto
hadn’t been able to understand.

Is that all? he asked.

Well, it probably wasn’t. It was just a fragment of that indescribable reason why he was
friends with Sasuke - but Naruto didn’t see why it mattered. Because did there really need to
be anything else, anyway?
Nobody was asking Sakura why she still cared about Sasuke; since, apparently, it made
complete sense only if she had a crush on him. Which only made Naruto feel weirdly
irritable, because he very clearly didn’t need something like a crush to want to save Sasuke.

Though Sakura’s crush hadn’t made a lot of sense to him in the first place. Primarily because
Sasuke was a bastard most of the time, when he wasn’t acting cool and mysterious. The cool
and mysterious stuff was vastly eclipsed by the total bastard stuff, and it was sincerely
infuriating that Sakura did not realize she deserved way better than some guy that wasn’t
even all that cool and mysterious in the first place (though he regrettably had his moments).

Naruto was first made aware of the annoying double standard when he intruded upon a game
of shōgi between Shikamaru and Asuma. It had been when Kakashi had offered his assistance
in developing the rasenshuriken, and they’d determined Naruto’s chakra nature with a slip of
paper. Which had felt a little underwhelming - but according to Kakashi, was the most
efficient way of finding out. He’d given an example by lifting up his own paper between two
fingers, and Naruto watched as it crumpled as if he’d crushed it in his fist instead.

Underwhelmingly, Naruto’s paper had split in two perfect halves down the middle when he
imbued it with chakra.

“Wind,” Kakashi reminded him, after a brief moment in which they both looked down at the
now two pieces of paper.

“Wind,” he repeated, not really sure what else he was supposed to say. It wasn’t super cool to
split a piece of paper in half.

Kakashi just sighed. “It’s a chakra nature that’s unrivaled in battle power,” he explained,
taking the halves from him. “It’s able to cut, tear, sever…anything and everything in its
path.”

That was much less complicated to understand, and suddenly splitting the paper in half felt
way cooler. “Yeah!” Naruto said cheerfully, punching the air to reiterate. “I knew I would
have the best one!”

Kakashi rolled his eyes - or maybe he just looked at the sky, because Naruto could really only
see one of his eyes. Naruto looked up at the sky, too, just to check if there’d been anything he
was looking at (he didn’t see anything). “Hold your horses, Naruto. We’ve only just figured it
out.”

He then assigned Naruto to the task of splitting a single leaf in half with his chakra alone -
with the help of as many shadow clones as he could possibly summon. That was to say, each
clone would have to split a single leaf in half with its chakra alone. Because Kakashi was a
draconian tyrant when he wanted to be.

“That’s easy,” Naruto complained, before he’d been made aware of just how difficult the task
was going to be. “How many clones?”

“Well…” Kakashi looked down at him, a little contemplative. “At one leaf per clone, how
about…”
He pointed at the tree just behind him, towering over their heads with its full and resplendent
summer foliage. “This many?”

The progress between his clones varied substantially - some of them were not able to create
more than a tiny tear in their leaf, and others had almost torn theirs in half entirely.
Something that Naruto felt unreasonably jealous about.

Still, it was a very long and boring process that felt not much different from wiping all the
chalkboards at the Academy as punishment when he’d been younger. He didn’t think Kakashi
intended on punishing him, of course - but sometimes when Naruto would let out a cry of
frustration, his teacher would make a sound that sounded suspiciously like a snicker.

After a while, he asked Kakashi if there’d been anyone else in Konoha with a wind chakra
nature - for the most part because he started to get really annoyed with how much time
splitting a single leaf in half was taking.

“You wanna ask them for tips, or what?” Kakashi replied, paging through Icha Icha
Paradise.

“Can I?”

“If you want to.” He glanced at Naruto over the cover of his stupid book. “There’s someone
in particular. He’s probably playing shōgi just about now…”

So that was the reason he’d come to interrupt Asuma’s game of shōgi with Shikamaru. They
had been sitting outside on the veranda of the Nara residence, with the gameboard between
them and the older jōnin letting a cigarette burn to the filter between his lips.

“Yo, Asuma-sensei!” Naruto shouted, jogging over to them. They simultaneously looked up
from the game, and exchanged an equally puzzled glance.

“Naruto?” Shikamaru said, raising an eyebrow as he approached. “In a hurry, or what?”

“What’s up?” Asuma asked as well, flicking his cigarette into the ashtray beside him and
looking slightly relieved that the game had been interrupted.

“Actually-” he bent over, puffing a little bit from what had been a very long dash from the
training ground to the Nara residence. “I wanted to ask you something.”

Asuma had been more than willing to help - mostly because he made Naruto promise that he
would cover the bill the next time his team went for yakiniku, and when Naruto begrudgingly
agreed, a heavy weight appeared to have been lifted from his shoulders (which was probably
not a good sign). He only remembered much later that Chōji was a part of Asuma's team.

Regardless, Naruto couldn’t help but feel a renewed excitement when Asuma imbued his
chakra blades with enough power to effortlessly pass through the thick trunk of a tree - and
decisively lodge itself in the boulder behind it, creating deep fissures in the stone that
reminded Naruto of hairline fractures in glass.
“Man,” Shikamaru complained, as they walked over to inspect the wreckage and collect
Asuma’s chakra blades. He gave the boulder a kick and it immediately crumbled into pieces
from where the blade pierced it. “My mom is gonna be so mad.”

“Damn,” Asuma realized, scratching his head sheepishly. “I didn’t even think of that. Can
you tell her to…send me the bill?”

“For a rock?”

“That’s so awesome!” Naruto said, touching the jagged open wound in the tree trunk where
the blade had passed through it. “Thanks, Asuma-sensei!”

“You’re doing chakra nature drills, or what?” Shikamaru asked, as they walked back to the
veranda. “You gotta be really sharp for those, y’know?”

“You could use some practice,” Asuma reproached him, tucking his blades back into his
pocket. “Don’t be so high-and-mighty.”

“I’d practice if it wasn’t such a fucking pain,” he muttered, settling back down on his side of
the board.

“...You don’t use that word in front of your mom, do you?”

“I’m sharp,” Naruto argued, once Shikamaru’s words were processed (belatedly). Both of the
jōnin just gave him a look - Asuma kind of amused, and Shikamaru exasperated. “What
makes you think I’m not?”

“I can think of one thing in particular,” Shikamaru replied pointedly, prompting Asuma to
clear his throat very loudly and obviously.

“What’s that?” Naruto said crossly.

“How about you get back to training, Naruto?” Asuma interrupted kindly, shooting
Shikamaru a warning glance as his student opened his mouth. “I’m sure you have a lot of
practice to-”

“Uh, Sasuke.” Shikamaru cut him off, apparently uninterested in humoring Asuma’s attempt
at avoiding the subject. “Duh.”

Naruto may not have been very perceptive about a lot of things, but he had noticed how many
people did not want to talk about Sasuke. In front of him, especially, skirting around
mentioning Sasuke’s name like saying it would cause them to spontaneously combust.
Shikamaru wasn’t one of those people, probably because he couldn’t really care less. At any
rate, what Naruto couldn’t understand was why he was now being accused of being stupid
about Sasuke. Wasn’t everybody, a little?

“What’s he gotta do with it?” Naruto asked, nonplussed.

He looked very slightly taken aback - and what was probably even weirder was that Asuma
also did. “I mean,” Shikamaru said, after a moment. “You’re a bit of a dumbass about him,
Naruto.”

“No, I’m not,” he insisted. “Sakura wants to bring him back, too. D’you think that means
she’s a dumbass?”

“Kinda. Not as much as you, though,” Shikamaru said, and Asuma slapped him over the
head. “Ouch. Is that necessary?”

“Don’t talk about girls like that,” his teacher reminded him.

Naruto huffed. It was admittedly frustrating that Sakura had that crush on Sasuke,
considering she deserved way better than him - but it wasn’t like he could find fault in the
way she wanted him to come back. Naruto wanted him to come back, after all. “What d’you
mean, not as much as-?”

“‘Cause she likes him,” Shikamaru told him irritably, rubbing the back of his head. “She can’t
help it.”

He couldn’t help it, either - which neither Shikamaru nor Asuma seemed to understand. How
come it was so hard for other people to accept that he cared, just as much as she did? More
than she did? It wasn't like wanting to save a friend was something restricted to people who
had secret feelings for him. “Why does that make her less of a dumbass?”

“Women are like that,” he said wisely, and Asuma slapped him over the head again. “Cut it
out, Asuma, it’s true. He’s a fucking handsome guy, girls like him.”

As much as Naruto hated to admit it, Shikamaru was (unfortunately) right about that. Sasuke
had been popular at the Academy for the sole reason of being a really fucking handsome guy,
even when he was twelve. “Yeah, so what?”

Naruto wasn’t really sure why they were both looking at him even more strangely the more
he went on.

“Well,” Shikamaru replied, after a long pause. Asuma had put another cigarette between his
lips, but apparently forgot to light it. “Sakura wants to save him so bad ‘cause she has a crush
on him, which makes sense, but what about you?”

He really was always repeating himself. Seriously, what the hell wasn’t there to understand?
“He’s my friend,” Naruto said, annoyed. “Duh.”

That had been pretty much the end of it. There had been an even longer pause, until Asuma
cleared his throat again and told Naruto he was welcome to drop by if he had any more
questions (as long as he was willing to pay for yakiniku).

As he turned to leave, he vaguely heard Asuma address his student exasperatedly. “What’s
the matter with you, Nara?”

“Nothing,” Shikamaru said in response. “Realized something, that’s all.”

Naruto had always somehow felt like he and Sasuke knew something that everybody else
didn’t - as if the reason they were friends was a secret they shared, one that didn’t ever need
to be put into words. There were certain people, however, that made him feel as if the secret
was one that everybody but him knew about. Kakashi-sensei, for one, would often look at
him like he was waiting for Naruto to come to that conclusion on his own - and there was
always something a little sad in his expression, when it wasn’t a little…something else
(Naruto could only describe it as impatient).

One of those instances had occurred not long after his conversation with Shikamaru and
Asuma - it had been once he’d resumed his training with Kakashi, and the relationships
between chakra natures was explained to him (in an unnecessarily confusing manner).

“Fire burns even stronger when there’s wind, right?” Kakashi said, at the bottom of the crater
Naruto blasted into the training ground. Which hadn’t been his intention, exactly, but the
elemental chakra he’d imbued the rasengan with had been almost alarmingly powerful. Like
an atomic bomb, at the eye of the vortex in the palm of his hand.

Naruto didn’t know what he was getting at. He contemplated telling him that candles were
prone to getting extinguished by gentle breezes.

“I mean,” Kakashi continued, as Naruto thought about it. “Your wind element jutsu would
lose to Sasuke’s fire element jutsu. Get it?”

“What?” Naruto cried. He supposed it made sense, because Sasuke’s katon was not really
comparable to a candle. Still, distressing. “Come on!”

“It’s true that wind is inferior to fire,” Kakashi said patiently, having apparently taken
sympathy. “But it’s superior against lightning. Your new jutsu will be stronger than Sasuke’s
chidori.”

He was quiet for some time, as that unnamable emotion expanded in his chest like a balloon.
It made it hard to respond, when all he was aware of were the fragments of that inexplicable
it, scattering like pieces of paper in front of a fan. Naruto felt like he was hopelessly trying to
catch just one of them that made sense.

His wind nature was stronger than Sasuke’s lightning nature, which Kakashi was trying to
console him with - but Naruto wasn’t really upset about the fact that his wind would lose to
Sasuke’s fire. He was, rather, taken aback that Kakashi saw it that way.

Because he’d said that fire burned stronger when there was wind - and he couldn’t help but
feel, as the inexplicable it expanded in his chest, kind of pleased. Wasn’t that just…how they
were supposed to be?

“I’m compatible with Sasuke,” he mumbled.

“Well, yeah,” Kakashi replied, eyeing him like he was confused. “Only wind is superior to
lightning.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” Did nobody get it? “I mean - only wind can make fire stronger,
right?”

Naruto didn’t want his chakra nature to be more powerful than Sasuke’s, if Sasuke didn’t
rival him in kind. What would be the point? It was no longer about being better than him, and
it hadn't been for quite some time. Naruto had almost always been aware that he wanted to be
acknowledged by Sasuke as an equal.

The pieces of paper scattered in front of the fan - and he couldn’t catch a single one of them
that could explain it in full. Kakashi said nothing, and Naruto looked up at him; weirdly
embarrassed by the tense silence. “Right?” he repeated.

And his teacher only looked at him with that slightly sad expression, like he was privy to a
secret that Naruto was not capable of understanding. “Right,” he agreed quietly.

At the end of the day, did it really matter? How come anyone cared why they were friends,
anyway? They just were, and Naruto was quite satisfied with that - if only everyone would
stop looking at him as if they knew something he didn’t. Saving someone that did not want to
be saved felt like the right thing to do, because that person was Uchiha Sasuke. And if that
made him a little stupid, whatever. Big deal!

The first and last time they fought in the Valley of the End had been three years apart.

Naruto knew, of course, they had changed quite a bit - their first battle had been almost
child’s play in comparison. They were not fundamentally different people, though, from who
they were back then. Even at thirteen-years-old, Naruto maintained some kind of
incomprehensible devotion to him that he could not describe through anything apart from
being friends. And even three years later, he found that he still did not know how else to
explain it.

Naruto knew he had reached his limit as soon as he woke up before Sasuke did. Every atom
of his body screamed at him in protest when he tried to move - and once his muscles failed
him, Naruto could only turn his head to look at the boy beside him.

He hurt. Naruto hurt so fucking bad it was indescribable; his face felt bruised and swollen,
with cracked and bloody lips from the amount of times Sasuke’s fist connected with his face.
The rest of his body ached intolerably - but worst of all was that he was cold. The pain from
his missing arm felt almost numb, somehow, but he could feel the blood draining out of him
every time he tried to move it. With every betraying beat of his heart, he felt himself dying.

And still. Naruto looked at Sasuke and felt the muscles of his face ache, because he couldn’t
stop smiling like an idiot. If Naruto died from blood loss right beside him, it would be with a
stupid delirious grin on his face.

It took some time for Sasuke to wake up, afterwards. Naruto had turned to look back at the
sky - the clouds having parted around the full moon of the infinite Tsukuyomi. Which was
still eerily beautiful, somehow. He hadn't really been thinking of anything in particular; just
suspended in that moment, almost entirely at peace.
“Ouch,” Sasuke muttered, so quiet it was almost inaudible. It brought a grin back to Naruto’s
face, anyway.

“Finally,” he said. His voice was hoarse from all of the shouting. “You take forever to wake
up, jeez.”

Sasuke tilted his head to glance at him, and twitched involuntarily when his eyes flickered
down to Naruto’s arm. Or where it used to be, he supposed.

“If either of us moves too much, we’ll die,” Naruto said. Which he was quite certain he was
supposed to feel very distressed about, but he wasn’t. He was so exhausted he could barely
move his lips to speak, and in so much pain he would probably die from it before he even
bled out - and yet. Naruto could not find it within himself to be distressed.

They were quiet for a moment.

“Why’d you go that far?” Sasuke asked. There was no more inexhaustible anger in his voice.
He merely sounded tired, or almost defeated, but no longer capable of feeling resentful about
it. “Why do all that just to get in my way?”

Stupid, Naruto thought briefly. Stupid stupid stupid.

“I wanted to sever all ties,” he said, raggedly. “And everyone’s tried to cut their ties to me,
too, at some point.”

If he had any more energy, he’d get up and give Sasuke one last punch to the face. Just for the
sake of it, really - it wasn't like there would be any weight behind it. A reprimanding slap on
the wrist, as it were.

“Except for you,” Sasuke continued. His gaze bored into Naruto, somewhat accusingly. Kind
of in the way Kakashi would look at him, like he was waiting for an answer to something
endlessly unanswerable. “You’ve never tried to cut me off, no matter what.”

Of course, he wouldn’t. The pieces of paper scattered in front of the fan - and Naruto did not
know what any of them meant entirely, except for a single one.

“Why do you keep involving yourself with me?” Sasuke asked, the slightest bit of anger
reentering the words. He wasn’t even really pissed off , something Naruto was well aware of;
just confused. That was exactly what irked him, though - he couldn’t, for the life of him, see
what there wasn’t to get.

“You know already,” he replied. It was kinda funny, that Sasuke would always be the one
calling him an idiot. Naruto turned to face him and almost felt like laughing. “Now that your
body can’t move, your mouth is sure moving a lot.”

“Just answer me!”

“‘Cause you’re my friend,” he could only respond. The pieces of paper scattered, and the
only one he could understand in full told him just that.
Sasuke stared at him. One of his eyes had swollen shut - which was kinda funnier, because
apparently without the Rinnegan he couldn’t see something that was written quite plainly in
front of his face. “You’ve said that before,” he said, eventually. “But what exactly…does that
mean to you?”

Fuck, could everyone stop asking him that!? He didn’t have a clue. How was he supposed to
know?

“Honestly,” Naruto muttered, glancing back up at the moon. The unblinking eye of a perfect,
infinite dream - where he wouldn’t be in quite so much pain, and everything wasn’t quite so
complicated. He could only vaguely realize that (in a way that felt very distant, but still in
perfect clarity) he would rather be nowhere else in the world at that very moment. “I don’t
really get it, either. It’s just that whenever I see you trying t’ shoulder everything on your
own, and get all messed up…it kinda…”

Felt like a horribly physical pain, worse than what it was like to bleed to death at the bottom
of the Valley of the End. “Hurts.”

Sasuke’s lips parted slightly, but he did not say anything - just looked at Naruto like
something was crumbling inside of him. The wall he had painstakingly built around himself
over the years, disintegrating into dust at his feet. He felt a funny jolt inside his chest - an
ache that was not painful, exactly. It was, rather, one of relief; like snapping a dislocated limb
back into place. Because Sasuke had never been gone. He was just, for the longest time, not
where he was supposed to be.

Naruto had repeated himself over and over again - and Sasuke heard him, for the very first
time.

“Right now, though, I’m in a ton of pain everywhere.” He grinned, and the pain in his face
reminded him that he should not be doing that. “Ow.”

Sasuke fell silent.

They remained there, drifting in and out of consciousness until the moon had fallen, and the
light of a new morning nearly blinded him when he woke up again. The sky was boundlessly
blue above their heads, almost perfectly clear, like the still and undisturbed surface of a lake.
It looked suspiciously unreal. “Where are we?” Naruto mumbled, squinting. “This isn’t
heaven, is it?”

“We slept all night,” Sasuke said - and there was something in his voice that sounded like
amusement. “We’ve failed to die, again.”

Naruto tried to sit up, and his muscles failed him once more as he only succeeded in
twitching his arms (one-and-a-half of his arms, anyway). “I still can’t move,” he complained.
“I was hoping t’ clobber you and make you really open your eyes, bastard.”

It really was a shame that he couldn’t, because all of the times he’d clobbered Sasuke up until
then had been to save him - and he deserved just once more, to reproach him.
Sasuke laughed. And all of the scathing words on the tip of Naruto’s tongue, prepared to
return whatever insult Sasuke bit back with, were completely forgotten.

The infinite Tsukuyomi was probably the most perfect, infinite dream - one in which he
wasn’t in quite so much pain, and he could never lose the people that he loved. Naruto
figured it must have been one in which he’d probably become Hokage, his parents would be
alive, and he’d throw sticks for Kakashi’s ninken or go out to lunch with Sakura all the time.
He could have everything he ever wanted, even the things that he wanted just a little - Iruka
would treat him to ramen whenever he asked, Shikamaru would do all the boring paperwork
for him, and Sasuke -

Naruto couldn’t imagine a single dream about Sasuke that would be better than that very
moment. He was yet again struck by the realization that he would have rather been nowhere
else.

He could only wonder if, perhaps, the infinite Tsukuyomi had indeed been a complete
success. Whatever he could think of that might’ve been his perfect dream was not nearly
comparable to watching Sasuke laugh, really laugh, for the first time in years.

“What’s-” Naruto asked, almost at a complete loss for words. “What’s so funny?”

“We’ve beaten each other unconscious,” he said, a smile playing on his face as he looked
back at Naruto. “And you still want to fight?”

“Of course!” he snapped, annoyed by the implication that Sasuke didn’t think he could.
Though he was probably right, ‘cause Naruto was so bone-tired and aching all over he
couldn’t lift a finger. “No matter how many times it takes, I-”

“I admit it,” Sasuke interrupted, his expression melting into something wordlessly vulnerable.
“I’ve…lost.”

“Dumbass!” Naruto retorted. “This fight wasn’t about winning or losing! I’ve just made you
snap out of it, stupid! The real match I want comes after that!”

He just watched him, with a small smile that felt like reverence. Sasuke admitted that he had
lost, and yet was looking at Naruto like he was the only thing worth losing to.

The pieces of paper scattered in front of the fan - and Naruto was momentarily struck dumb,
watching them gently flutter to the ground around him without remembering why he wanted
to catch them in the first place.

“Naruto…” he said, and Naruto twitched at his name like he’d been zapped with electricity.
He hadn’t realized he was staring at Sasuke like he had forgotten about everything else. “If I
die here, the cycle of destiny the Sage of Six Paths mentioned will probably end, as well.”

Die there? Die there, now that he’d finally been saved? Naruto’s fingers twitched as he
thought about forcibly willing himself upright to actually punch Sasuke in the face. Which
probably would have caused both of them to well and truly bleed to death, but he didn’t
really care all that much. He would’ve died saying something like, way to go, idiot!
“You can undo the infinite Tsukuyomi after I’m dead,” Sasuke continued, “by transplanting
my left eye to Kakashi…or someone else.”

Stupid, he thought, seething. Stupid stupid stupid.

“I will…” Sasuke stared up at the sky, “put an end to myself.”

“Don’t you dare!” Naruto snarled, his anger renewing just enough energy to yell at him. “You
dying isn’t gonna settle things! If you’d go that far, then just - live and help me instead! I
want all shinobi to cooperate with each other, and - including you!”

“Just because you want that doesn’t mean others will agree to it,” Sasuke told him, a little
stiffly. In that same matter-of-fact tone he would use when he thought Naruto was being
dumb on purpose.

“Yeesh!" Naruto grumbled. "Fine, go ahead. Keep sulking and whining. I’ll just beat you
up!”

“There’s no guarantee I won’t oppose you again,” he reminded him - the words kind of
empty, like Sasuke was desperately holding onto an anger that he knew he no longer had. All
of it had been drained out of him already.

“Then I’ll stop you again!” Naruto replied irritably. “Actually, I know you’re not gonna do
that kind of thing anymore, anyway!”

Sasuke’s eyes were a deep black, his pupils practically melting into the irises until they
looked like pools of ink. Even in the blinding light of the early morning, the single eye that
was fixed upon Naruto was so black he couldn’t make out any other color.

But he could see himself, reflected in it.

“How can you say that?” Sasuke asked, and there it was again: the unnameable emotion that
everyone kept asking him to name. “How can you be so sure?”

“Don’t make me keep repeating myself! How d’you still not understand anything?” Naruto
would have rolled his eyes if it didn’t make his head hurt so bad. What made Sasuke care
about why they were friends, after all? They just were, because it was something that never
needed to be put into words. So he didn’t care if that made him stupid - because Naruto
would become the biggest idiot on Earth a thousand times over, if it meant saving him.
Sinking to the bottom of the ocean of hatred that Sasuke drowned himself in, just to pull him
to the surface. “Now that I think about it, you were always pretty stupid, too!”

Sasuke was quiet for such a long time that Naruto glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.
The other boy had turned his head away only slightly, so Naruto couldn’t make out the
expression on his face.

There was a single tear that had trailed over his cheek, disappearing just past the corner of his
jaw.

“Shut up…” he said, his voice breaking, “you dumbass.”

Naruto didn't know what to say. There hadn't been the words.

Sakura had found them shortly thereafter, leaving Kakashi's side and dashing towards them in
a way that was distinctively driven by panic. She stumbled over the rubble until she reached
them, her face screwed up in the hardened expression she'd make when she was trying not to
cry. At that point, Naruto's thoughts were altogether incoherent from blood loss - but it
occurred to him, somewhat detachedly, that she would almost always cry for everyone's pain
but her own.

Her hands were shaking when she held them over Naruto and Sasuke’s arms (or where they
used to be) to stop the bleeding. She started to cry, despite herself, when Sasuke whispered a
broken apology. An apology for her pain, one that nobody had ever bothered to give her.

Sakura kept sniffling and wiping her eyes until long after they’d been able to get to their feet
and perform the hand-seal to undo the infinite Tsukuyomi.

Sasuke’s hand around his own felt (which he knew in the same way that he was capable of
knowing, instinctively) right. Naruto knew that he was allowed to let go, once the genjutsu
fell, but when he turned to look at Sasuke it occurred to him that he didn’t really want to.

Naruto didn’t know what made him lean forward and tap his forehead against Sasuke's own.
But he didn’t pull away - so they stayed there, just like that.

There were a lot of things that Shikamaru was right about. He was way smarter than Naruto
was, annoyingly enough; and even though he tried to deny it, he was forced to admit that
Sasuke really did make him stupid. Naruto stared into his eyes and realized that he would do
it all over again, as many times as it took, to meet Sasuke's gaze and see himself in it. His
own reflection, instead of a bottomless pit of hatred that swallowed everything else.

And it made him stupid, because merely looking at him would fill Naruto with that
impossibly big feeling - and there was nobody quite like Sasuke that made him so
argumentative, so pissed off, and so stupid. Though Naruto could rattle off a laundry list of
everything it was about Sasuke that would get on his nerves, truthfully, he could not manage
to get even a single word out about what it was that he liked about him.

Which he couldn’t really understand, either. Because there was a lot, but everything he
thought of to say seemed to fall exceptionally short.

Kakashi was appointed as the Sixth Hokage of Konohagakure following the war. His
instatement had been, for whatever reason, incredibly hilarious to Naruto. It might’ve been
because Kakashi looked like he would have rather swallowed a kunai before accepting the
Hokage cowl - his face mostly hidden behind his mask but in what was still unmistakably a
grimace. After the ceremony Naruto found him just to tell him not to worry, because he'd be
relieved of his duties soon enough. To which Kakashi patted his head affectionately and told
him quite gravely to hurry the fuck up.

Naruto had boasted about it to just about anybody that would listen, anyway. He felt nearly as
proud as if he’d worn the Hokage hat himself - which Kakashi often called the dunce cap.
Whatever that meant.
In any case, the Hokage office proved to be a much more agreeable place to hang out, once
Tsunade wasn’t the one sitting behind the desk and berating him (he took Kakashi's
beratements much less seriously). Naruto liked to invite himself every afternoon to talk
Kakashi’s ear off about nothing in particular. Part of the reason being avoiding Iruka and
Ebisu-sensei, who would make Naruto do odd jobs around the Academy such as cleaning
chalkboards and adamantly refuse to let him teach a class. Which he begged them for many
times over.

Another part of the reason, however, was that Kakashi genuinely seemed to enjoy his
company - because he would practically throw down the pen he was using to sign paperwork
whenever Naruto stopped by (which might’ve just been because he didn’t want to do
paperwork, but whatever).

Though there had been something particularly unusual about Kakashi for quite some time (or
maybe since Naruto first met him), he seemed to get significantly weirder once the war was
over. Which had first become apparent one of the days Naruto had overstayed his welcome at
the Hokage office.

“Can I ask you a question?” Kakashi had begun, suspiciously casual - cutting Naruto off from
the long-winded story he was on about (that he’d truthfully forgotten why he started talking
about in the first place).

It wasn’t like him to be quite so polite about asking a question, and Naruto couldn’t help but
feel a little taken aback. Kakashi was typically very straightforward about anything he
bothered bringing up, even if he was a little too straightforward about them. Naruto was
never really interested in conversations when people would dart furtively around the point,
because they'd usually be filled with overly complicated phrases that didn't actually mean
what they were supposed to. Hinata, for example, had once waited until he was dismissed for
the day at the Academy - just to ask him if he'd like to take a walk with her. And Naruto had
quite honestly replied that he kinda didn't feel like it, because he had been admittedly much
more preoccupied with how hungry he was.

He relayed the conversation, in passing, to Sakura. She had gaped at him in utter disbelief
and told him that Hinata was asking him on a date.

Naruto didn't really know what to make of that. If anything, he felt a little irritable - because
why didn't she just say so?

For that reason, he liked being around people that spoke their mind. Sasuke and Sakura, of
course, wouldn't hesitate to call him a dumbass if he was truthfully being one. Kakashi had
been like that, as well, which was why Naruto felt so bewildered that his sensei was now
awkwardly fidgeting with a subject in a way that reminded him of Hinata. “Oookay…”

“Do you…” he began, considering Naruto as if he was unsure of how to proceed. “Like
Sasuke?”

Naruto decided there was indeed something very wrong with Kakashi - and Shikamaru, while
he was pointing fingers. It was as if everyone had started asking him the same pointless
question, over and over. Wasn’t it extremely obvious that he liked Sasuke? Additionally,
wasn’t that enough of a reason to want to save him? “Well, duh. He’s my best friend.”

“I mean-” he looked exasperated, as if Naruto was the one failing to grasp a very simple
concept. “A different kind of like, Naruto.”

“…Yeah?” Naruto said, now utterly confused. “We’ve kinda been through a lot, y’know? It’s
not the normal kind of like.”

Sure, while he liked Sakura and all the other friends he made at the Academy, he had plenty
of words to describe that kind of like. It was most certainly because he did not have the
normal kind of like for Sasuke that made it so hard to explain. He was getting pretty fed up
about the fact that he really couldn’t explain it, and moreso the fact that so many people kept
asking him to.

Kakashi just gave him a defeated look for such a long time Naruto wondered if he’d gone
senile (his hair had looked suspiciously gray for a while). “You feeling okay, Kakashi-
sensei?” he asked, leaning in to inspect the visible parts of his face. “I can ask Sakura to stop
by.”

“No. I’m fine.” Kakashi just heaved a sigh and leaned back into his chair. “Go away. You’re
giving me a headache.”

Weirdo, Naruto decided, as he left. He was gonna ask Sakura to take a look at him, anyway.

He was unreasonably excited about accompanying Sasuke on his escort to Sunagakure. He

figured it must have been because he was looking forward to seeing Gaara, who had been
freakishly overworked by doing damage control after the war. It did, of course, fall under the
umbrella of responsibilities that came with being Kazekage. Kakashi-sensei, on the other
hand, did not seem half as busy - ‘cause Naruto had watched him make quite a lot of paper
planes with the documents that he looked like he was supposed to be signing.

Regardless, while Naruto was pretty sure he would have liked to see Gaara - the mission was
just as good of an opportunity to hang out with Sasuke, who seemed to be almost as busy as
the Kazekage. Not even for important things, exactly, since whenever Naruto would see him
around he’d be wrangling a hissing cat as best as he could with one arm.

Naruto had asked him one time if he wanted help, to which Sasuke responded (somewhat
irritably, as the cat swiped at his face) that he was quite capable of catching cats on his own.

Dumbass, Naruto thought sullenly, watching the cat wiggle out of his arm and tear towards
the alleyway opposite them at breakneck speed. Sasuke just grumbled under his breath and
headed after it, giving Naruto a passing glance like he wanted to say something else. He
didn’t, of course.

It wasn’t like Naruto was gonna tell him that he just wanted to hang out with him, anyway.
That would be far too embarrassing.
And it might've been a little bit because he felt uneasy, with every passing hour without
spotting him around the village. It was even worse at night, when he'd lie awake in bed and
feel possessed by the insane urge to go to the Uchiha compound and check if Sasuke was still
there.

For that reason, Kakashi asking him if he wanted to go with Sasuke on his escort was kinda
lucky - because he spared Naruto from finding other pretenses. Sasuke appeared to be
especially sullen before they left, as Kakashi came to the village gates to see them off. Which
Naruto didn’t really think too much about, ‘cause it wasn’t particularly unusual for Sasuke to
be more or less sullen.

He lightened up shortly after they left (or rather, immediately after they left). Naruto was
struck with the irrepressible desire to talk to him about absolutely everything he could think
of, all at once - which ended up making him switch between subjects so erratically the
Sunagakure envoy got a far-off look in her eyes, like she was no longer fully present.

Sasuke looked like he was listening, anyway. He didn’t talk a lot, and kept his gaze fixed on
anything but Naruto most of the time - as if on alert for any rogue ninjas and suchlike that
might have been following them. But Naruto knew he wasn’t, because he’d nearly tripped
over the tree root that jutted through the dirt path like he hadn’t even noticed it. He was, in
fact, giving Naruto his utmost attention. In every way except for looking at him.

Although, every once in a while Sasuke would give him a brief glance when Naruto paused
for breath. And it was only for a moment, but it looked really -

He couldn’t quite figure it out.

Naruto realized, after some time, that he’d nearly forgotten the envoy was there. She kept
completely silent, but would shoot him occasional strange looks. She would, additionally,
give the back of Sasuke’s head an almost bewildered stare when he wasn’t paying attention.

Naruto was becoming increasingly aware that there was indeed a secret that everybody in the
world knew, except for him. Even the envoy was looking back-and-forth between them,
entirely confused and maybe a little annoyed (which might’ve just been because Naruto
wouldn’t stop talking).

Other than that, Naruto felt ridiculously content with having a long walk and going on about
whatever he could think of - and it wasn’t like he thought Sasuke had any interest in just how
many burn marks he had on his hands from making cup ramen. Naruto just really wanted to
show him, for some reason.

It had been a pleasantly warm morning, and the sun made its long and arduous ascent into the
sky about two hours in their escort. The thick foliage of the trees dappled sunlight over the
ground, like tiny pinholes scattered mindlessly over the beaten dirt path. Sasuke wore his
black cloak, even though he must have been swelteringly hot underneath it.

Naruto hadn’t entirely understood why he refused the prosthetic arm Tsunade made for him -
but he figured that it must’ve felt wrong to accept, like living without it was part of his
atonement. He was an unbelievably powerful ninja regardless, so Naruto didn't really think of
it as an impediment, anyway. He hardly felt like Sasuke still needed to atone for anything,
though. He'd been atoning ever since he left the village, when he was thirteen.

Sasuke was mind-numbingly stubborn about the weirdest things.

He took great care to avoid making his missing arm obvious in front of other people,
however, and the cloak did not come off despite the way he had gotten much sweatier than
Naruto by the time the sun reached its peak. Wearing black suited him, anyway - his hair was
so dark it had an almost blue sheen, like raven feathers. His eyes (well, eye, now) that never
had even a hint of brown, or any other color. They were in stark contrast with just how pale
he was, like brushstrokes of ink on ivory.

The tips of his ears were red, it vaguely occurred to Naruto. He seemed to get sunburned
there a lot.

Sasuke caught him staring. “What?”

“Aren’t you hot?” he asked absently, just because it was the first thing that came to mind.

“I’m fine,” he replied, giving Naruto an appraising glance. “Aren’t you? Your face is red.”

Naruto raised his hand to his cheek, bemused. It did feel really hot. And the Sunagakure
envoy just stared at him in disbelief like he’d sprouted a second head.

They proceeded similarly until they reached the borders of the Land of Rivers, settling on the
banks of a stream as soon as it began to get dark. Sasuke wordlessly set up a tent for the
envoy, as Naruto busied himself with picking up a few sticks for a campfire. They got a fire
going as soon as the sun set over the trees, and the buzzing of cicadas gradually gave way to
the gentle stitching of crickets.

He couldn’t help but feel strangely giddy, watching Sasuke lean over closer to the fire. He
could see it reflected in his eyes, flickering within the irises like the tiny flame of a candle in
the dark. Even the Rinnegan was eerily beautiful, when it wasn’t looking at him with killing
intent.

Maybe it was still kinda beautiful even when it was. He figured that might’ve just been
‘cause Sasuke was one of those unfairly good-looking guys - because he hadn’t ever thought
that the Rinnegan was beautiful at all (it had honestly creeped him out a little), until it struck
him at that very moment.

It made Naruto privately grumble to himself, for what felt like the thousandth time, about
Sasuke’s annoyingly otherworldly beauty. He even made something as freaky as the
Rinnegan look unreasonably not freaky at all, just because the rest of him was so…unfairly
good-looking. Even Shikamaru couldn’t blame Sakura for having a crush on him, just
because it appeared as if everyone could agree unanimously that Sasuke was a pretty
handsome fucking guy.

“You can go to sleep,” Sasuke said eventually, and Naruto snapped out of the trance he hadn’t
even noticed he was under. “I’ll take first watch.”
“Nah, I’m not tired.” How was he supposed to go to sleep? Naruto was filled with a sort of
frenetic energy that just seemed to get even more unbearable when he looked up at him.
Sleeping seemed like a waste of time he could have been spending just talking to him, feeling
practically skittish with that impossibly big balloon of unnameable emotion swelling in his
chest like it was about to burst. He hadn’t realized he was grinning until Sasuke raised an
eyebrow.

“What are you grinning about?” he asked, a little miffed as if there was a joke he wasn’t in
on. “You look like an idiot.”

“I dunno,” Naruto confessed, because he quite sincerely didn’t. “I’m happy.”

That was just it - Naruto knew that he wasn’t very smart, but he was really good at feeling
things. He may not have known what they all meant, but the way he loved things was
immeasurable. Like every atom of his body was possessed by a single, incredible emotion. It
was always about love, really. He loved so many things and so many people, all in different
ways, but with an inexhaustible affection that felt as natural as breathing.

And he was struck absolutely dumb by the way he felt about Uchiha Sasuke, even though he
had no idea what it meant apart from the fact that he loved him. In a way that calling him his
best friend never seemed to describe it in full, but what other words were there? Sasuke was
here, sitting in front of him, and he was quite literally overwhelmed with how happy he was
about it. That was just about everything he knew.

Sasuke lowered his eyes to the fire, and Naruto had a suspicion that he was actually
embarrassed - not that he would be able to tell, from his face. He maintained an annoying
impassiveness as he spoke. “Me, too.”

He was quiet, but the words were so sincere that Naruto couldn’t help but grin impossibly
wider. The balloon inside his chest felt like it really might explode. “I missed you, y’know.”

“I know,” Sasuke replied.

Naruto suddenly felt a jolt of embarrassment once he realized just how sappy he’d sounded.
It was one thing to shout sentimental things when they were fighting, and entirely another
when they were chatting amicably. “Everyone else did, too," he added. "Sakura and Kakashi-
sensei - I mean, he was really good at hiding it, but you could tell…”

Kakashi was not, by any means, the kind of person who would cry. Naruto had really only
seen him cry once, following Pain’s assault on Konoha and Nagato’s death after performing
the Gedō Rinne Tensei. Naruto had been half-conscious and nearly dead on his feet when
Kakashi found him - and he made a choked noise that sounded like a sob, holding Naruto in a
nearly bone-breaking grip like he was afraid to let him go.

He wasn’t super good at expressing his feelings, except during life-and-death situations such
as those. There had been a moment, however, not long before the war when Naruto spotted
him outside of the Uchiha compound.
And he wasn’t really doing anything - merely leaning against a tree and staring up at it in
silence.

Even if Kakashi was decidedly weird and did weird things, Naruto could understand well
enough why he was there. So as much as Kakashi pretended he didn’t care, Naruto was
cheerfully certain that he indeed cared quite a lot. Ever since Sasuke left Konoha, Kakashi
was unmistakably crushed in a way that he adamantly refused to let on.

“Sakura still really likes you,” he continued, a little mindlessly. It was just like Shikamaru
said; she couldn’t help it. And it might’ve been partly because Sasuke was so (infuriatingly,
unfairly) good-looking. But in the way anything Naruto could say to describe him fell
exceptionally short, good-looking did not come close. In the warm light of the fire, he looked
unmeasurably beautiful. Which was, Naruto decided, not something he was supposed to
describe a guy with - but he really couldn't think of anything else.

How could anybody blame Sakura for having a crush on him, anyway? “She never stopped,”
Naruto said, unsticking his throat.

Sasuke’s jaw tightened. “Yeah.”

He felt a little lightheaded. The sticky humidity of the night air, the fire that warmed his face,
the way that feeling felt so big in his chest - they all were making it exceptionally hard to
think.

Wouldn’t he and Sakura make a good couple? They were, after all, two of his favorite people
in the world. He figured it would only make sense that they’d be his favorite couple in the
world, too. It'd been a long time since Naruto gave up on romancing her, anyway. Even
though he was not particularly gifted in knowing how to quit, he was quite aware that she
only had eyes for Sasuke. And since Sasuke finally pulled his head out of his ass, he might
start having eyes for her, too.

Then what?

Then they'd be like a normal couple, probably. They'd go on dates, hold hands, write love
poetry to one another. Or something.

And Sakura liked him a lot, so they’d probably get married - have kids, even. Naruto would
visit them at their house, and their children would be excited to see him, and…he’d sit down
for dinner, watching Sasuke smile adoringly at his wife, feeling -

Weird. It was weird.

Because Naruto couldn’t help but get the sense that it was wrong, somehow. Which he knew
in the same way he was capable of knowing, instinctively.

He was not blessed with foresight, anyway. Perhaps he could not imagine Sasuke being in
love with Sakura just as much as she was in love with him, because…it was just really hard
to imagine. Sasuke writing love poetry was so hilariously unlike him that Naruto was pretty
sure he would rather die than do so.
But what did he know? Maybe it was just weird because it was Sasuke and Sakura -
imagining his best friends married and inseparably in love was a little more off-putting
because he knew them so well. Naruto really couldn’t picture Sasuke smiling adoringly at
Sakura (or any other girl, for that matter).

Well, what if he did? It would make her really happy, for one. And maybe Naruto would be
really happy for them, too, once that persistent feeling of something being wrong went away.

“Since you’re staying…” he began slyly, leaning towards Sasuke. “Have you ever thought
about…y’know?”

Sasuke had picked up his own stick earlier to poke at the embers of the fire - and with a loud
snap, shoved it a little too forcefully into the ashes. He pulled his stick out of the fire and
stared at the charred end, still glowing with heat. “I can’t,” he replied.

Naruto felt like rolling his eyes. He really didn’t know how lucky he had it - a girl like
Sakura was head over heels for him, would do just about anything for him, and he looked
like he couldn’t care less. Naruto might have strangled him for it a few years ago (though
he’d been tempted to strangle him for many other reasons a few years ago). “Why not?” he
asked. “You don’t think she’s cute?”

There was likely not a single person in Konoha that didn’t think Sakura was cute. She was
pretty in a delicate way, like a porcelain doll. He didn’t think there were any porcelain dolls
capable of shattering every bone in someone's body with a single punch, though. That was
just another part of her charm.

“I-“ Sasuke hesitated. “She’s…like a sister to me.”

“Jeez,” Naruto muttered, leaning back and picking a piece of dried bark from his stick. He
supposed trying to imagine Sasuke and Sakura happily married felt wrong because Sasuke
was stubbornly weird about it - refusing to return her feelings for some undeniably dumb
reason. It occurred to him that there might have been another girl that Sasuke had feelings
for, which felt inexplicably wronger. “I don’t get you. What about…Ino?”

“Uh…” Sasuke fixed his gaze on the stick in his hand, his grip tightening around it as if it
were a kunai. “I don’t think so.”

Being handsome was wasted on guys like Sasuke (and Sai, while he was thinking about it).

What was the matter with him? He could probably have any single girl he wanted, and
Sasuke had to have known that already. He’d never seemed much interested in girls, ever
since they’d been kids - which Naruto could sort of get (he had more important things on his
mind), but things were different, now. He could have a life that was more or less normal; and
maybe it wouldn’t be with Sakura, but he could…get married, have kids, revive his clan. And
smile adoringly at a nameless, faceless wife.

Naruto chewed on the inside of his cheek as he watched him over the fire.
But that wasn’t right, wasn’t it? Sasuke wouldn’t fall in love with just…someone. Because
while Sakura really did love him, and all of the other girls at the Academy would have
become his girlfriend in a heartbeat if he’d only just ask, there wasn’t anybody that knew
him.

Knew him like Naruto did, anyway.

“It’s kinda too bad one of us isn’t a girl, huh?” he said, without thinking.

The stick that Sasuke was holding snapped a second time as he crushed it in his fist, his
impassiveness momentarily slipping as he looked up at Naruto - with an expression that was
unmistakably alarmed. And Naruto realized far too late that he said something very
spectacularly, obscenely stupid.

“What-” Sasuke’s voice was unnerved. “What do you mean?”

Naruto laughed nervously - he might’ve been able to defend himself if he didn’t feel so
tongue-tied at the look on Sasuke’s face. He didn’t even appear to be angry, which was
somehow worse than the way he looked like all the blood had drained from his face. “I mean
- um, well-”

What did he mean? Wouldn’t it be a lot more convenient, if Sasuke was a girl? ‘Cause then,
Naruto would -

What?

Well, he was the only person that knew Sasuke implicitly, wasn’t he? It was so weird to
imagine him in love with a girl because…because there wasn’t any girl that would come
close to knowing him like that. And that bond they shared, the one that could never be
explained in full - it was much more profound than anyone else could ever…wasn’t it?

Wouldn’t the ineluctable mystery of Naruto and Sasuke’s relationship make perfect sense to
everybody else, if one of them had been a -?

Fuck, what?

“It would be a lot…easier,” he stumbled over the words coming out of his mouth before he
could stop them. “If you were-”

The brittle sound of a tree branch snapping did not come from Sasuke’s stick (for what would
be the third time). Kakashi-sensei’s shadow clone had fallen out of a tree, only a few feet
away from where they were sitting.

Which might have been a stroke of luck, once he thought about it. For the first time since the
Valley of the End, Sasuke kinda looked like he wanted to kill him again.

The rest of the way to the Land of Wind had been, to say the least, really fucking awkward.

Naruto may have been a little bit of an idiot, but he was quite capable of noticing the way
Sasuke had been freaked out. And he could understand that, just because it had been a
supremely stupid thing to say - but Naruto would have much preferred it if Sasuke took a
swing at him, over the weird and tense silence that descended upon them until they reached
Sunagakure.

The envoy seemed to have noticed, as well - probably because it would have been impossible
not to. She didn’t say much (or really anything at all), but she would give Naruto inquiring
glances whenever he’d try to talk to Sasuke and get stiff one-word responses.

Which started to piss him off, after a while. Okay, it was a weird thing for him to have
brought up - but was it even all that wrong? Sasuke was his best friend; and he was really
annoyingly stubborn about the way he showed his affections, but it was one of the things
Naruto really liked about him, ironically. It made his affections feel uniquely important,
especially when they were reserved for Naruto - each small smile and repressed snicker at
something Naruto said were private reminders that (as much as he pretended not to) Sasuke
liked him quite a lot, as well.

And with that frustratingly otherworldly beauty of his, Naruto couldn’t help but feel like he’d
be a fucking knockout if he was a girl, too.

So once he really thought about it, he didn’t think it was nearly as strange as Sasuke was
making it out to be. ‘Cause calling them friends hardly seemed to cut it, even now - their
relationship was much more impossibly immense than that. The Sage of Six Paths had told
him that they were reincarnations of some eternal bond between Ashura and Indra, which
hadn’t even felt right, either. Naruto didn’t save him because of some stupid, predetermined
cycle of love and hatred. Their bond was entirely their own.

And, well, if either of them had been a girl…Naruto was pretty damn sure it would be a lot
easier to explain. Right?

Gaara appeared to brighten up considerably when he first saw Naruto - and was maybe a little
less enthusiastic when Sasuke followed him into the office. Still, he was good at being civil
about it. He politely thanked them for escorting the envoy, who drifted past Naruto to whisper
conspiratorially in the Kazekage’s ear. Which he felt unreasonably nervous about, like she’d
been giving Gaara their performance review.

She then gave them a bow that seemed a little too rigid to be entirely thankful, before making
her exit.

“Are you guys okay?” Gaara said, just before they bid their goodbyes (Kakashi had reminded
them not to linger). “You two are acting weird.”

Fine was their simultaneous response - and Naruto didn’t turn to look, but Sasuke sounded
like he said it through gritted teeth. The annoying bastard.

In the following weeks, he acted frustratingly elusive whenever Naruto would look for him.
Which Sasuke just chalked up to being busy, but it hardly looked like he was doing anything
actually important most of the time. Kakashi would assign him to certain C and B-rank
missions that were hardly befitting a ninja of Sasuke’s caliber. Which Naruto started to
suspect was on purpose, because Kakashi was incredibly petty sometimes.
Anyway, he started to give up after a while of trying to talk to Sasuke and being very
obviously avoided. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t complain to Sakura about it, however.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, bent over the sink of the women’s washroom in the
hospital. He was lingering just outside the door, holding it open with his foot. Sakura was
also, apparently, trying to avoid him - though for an entirely different reason. Specifically, not
being in the mood to listen to him complain. Naruto was a lot more willing to be persistent in
her case, regardless. “You’re fighting with Sasuke? Again?”

“We’re not fighting,” he sulked. “He’s just not talking to me.”

Sakura shook water from her hands, giving him an exasperated look. “Why not?”

“I dunno. I thought you might know.”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“I dunno,” Naruto said, again. “Hasn’t he talked to you?”

She sighed, brushing past him and beginning a brisk pace down the hallway. Naruto followed
her, keeping close to her shoulder despite her clear attempt to leave him behind. “Yeah,”
Sakura told him, once she must’ve realized that he wasn’t going to give up. “And he asked if
you said anything.”

“He did?”

“Good grief,” she muttered. “Can’t you two just talk to each other? I’m busy, you know.
Tsunade-sama has me on clinic duty.”

“He really asked about me?” Naruto pressed. “What’d he say?”

“That you can’t take a hint.”

“Really?”

“No,” Sakura said, giggling a little. "I'll see you later. Just talk to him, okay? You two always
work things out, in the end."

He decided not to point out that it took just about three years to work things out the first time.
And that they both almost died working it out. "Should I beat him up again?"

"Only if he deserves it," she replied wryly, before disappearing past the doors of the inpatient
ward. Leaving him wondering if being avoided was enough to warrant getting physical with
Sasuke.

Naruto was pretty self-aware when it came to certain things about himself - he was impatient,
for one. He didn’t have any interest in the subtleties of fighting with Sasuke unless it was
with their fists. Arguments which they’d always be able to settle like that in the first place,
anyway. Which was why he was utterly taken aback that Sasuke didn’t just punch him in the
face and be done with it.
And he had been quite certain that they weren’t fighting until his conversation with Sakura,
which only made him even more annoyed. It was such a dumb thing to be fighting about.

Kakashi hadn’t been much help, either, but he rarely was. The only times Kakashi appeared
to be interested in being helpful were when some sort of compensation was provided, and
Naruto didn’t really know what to offer him except for a bag of konpeitō. Which didn’t end
up working all that much, because Kakashi was never really helpful when it came to
discussing personal matters anyway.

It was during one evening they found themselves on the top of the Hokage monument,
throwing pieces of konpeitō imbued with chakra at increasingly ridiculous targets. Naruto
complained about the situation at hand - and Kakashi merely looked at him and asked, well,
did you mean it?

Wasn’t it bewilderingly obvious that he meant it? It was almost unmistakable that everything
Naruto did to save his best friend would be to save the person he was in love with, if that
person had been a girl. If Sakura had been in his position, it would be the kind of love story
that was passed down for generations.

But why did it even matter? The even more unmistakable fact was that he wasn’t.

Sasuke had the quiet, deeper voice of a man - the rough and calloused hands of a man. He
smelled like ozone and campfire smoke when he used his ninjutsu, or sweat and heat
whenever they'd fight. And every time he would give Naruto a shove or cuss him out, it
would piss him off way more than when Sakura would. He was (barely) taller than Naruto,
(slightly) faster, and very distinctively a guy.

He didn’t have that same porcelain doll beauty like Sakura did, in any case. She was
pleasantly warm, like a spring morning - even her soap made her smell like vanilla and cherry
blossoms. Sakura was soft and pink-cheeked and delicately pretty, which was one of the
reasons Naruto had liked her so much. She was…very distinctively a girl.

Sasuke was blisteringly hot like a scorching summer afternoon. Which was a little strange,
because he had the kind of carved from polished marble beauty that a lot of people might
have thought made him cold and unapproachable. Naruto couldn’t really say that he agreed -
because Sasuke was like wildfire, if anything. Everything about him burned.

It didn’t matter if Sasuke was a girl or not - because Naruto couldn’t even really imagine him
as one, anyway. And even if he could, that would just be weirder. Wouldn’t it?

Not long afterwards, Kakashi cheerfully proposed a trip for Team Seven to the Land of
Steam’s Yugakure, with suspicious benevolence that was very unusual for him. He even
assured them that he would be paying for it, which normally Naruto would have been
enthusiastic about taking advantage of - but he was truthfully not looking forward to being
evaded by Sasuke the entire time.

In fact, Sakura’s impression that they were fighting had made him feel a lot more awkward
about it. He was used to being blatantly ignored by Sasuke, obviously - but not, for any
reason, cautiously avoided.
Because, well, if Sasuke was pissed at him, he’d just throw a punch. The fact that there were
no punches being thrown made the silence between them tense like it was charged with
electricity. And it was like that the entire way to Yugakure, Kakashi occasionally throwing
glances over his shoulder and looking quite indifferent to the prickly atmosphere. Sakura
probably noticed their sullen silence, as well - but appeared to care extremely little about it.
Rather, she seemed very pleased to have a long and uninterrupted chat with Kakashi, while
Naruto was preoccupied peeking intermittently at Sasuke and wondering what the hell he was
supposed to say to him.

Kakashi booked them a single room, for some inane reason. The onsen hadn’t even been
busy, so it wasn’t like there weren’t spare rooms - but Kakashi wasn’t the type to be all that
generous in the first place, anyway.

And he shared plenty of rooms with Sasuke before, when they were kids. Sasuke at thirteen-
years-old was (arguably) not as outright uncomfortable around him, though - when they got
changed to shower before getting in the hot springs, Sasuke turned away like he was afraid
Naruto was gonna perv on him.

Which pissed him off most of all, grinding his teeth together as he glared into the back of
Sasuke’s head. Wasn’t he continuously aware that they were both guys, which was something
that had not left Naruto’s mind ever since he brought the stupid thing up in the first place?

It was just as awkward in the hot spring than it was on the way there - if not worse. Kakashi
kept a towel over his face, and Naruto didn’t know why he bothered. It was hard enough to
breathe as it were. Sasuke was on the opposite side of the onsen, and Naruto was decidedly
not looking at him. His hair was damp and sticking to his forehead from the steam, and he
was submerged up to his shoulders in the water - every visible inch of his skin flushed from
the humid heat. And he was also decidedly not looking at Naruto.

“You kids are going to give me gray hairs,” Kakashi remarked.

“Your hair is white,” Naruto pointed out.

“It’s-“ Kakashi just pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “It’s an
expression, Naruto.”

It was not fifteen minutes since they got into the onsen until Kakashi excused himself with a
half-assed lie. Naruto figured he wasn’t really in the mood to break the solidifying tension
between them, which he could understand (he also wasn’t really in the mood). It was
especially not helping that, whenever his eyes flickered over to Sasuke, he would forget
literally everything he wanted to say.

So for about ten minutes after Kakashi left, Naruto averted his gaze and tried desperately to
think of something that wasn’t just angrily confronting him.

Which never ended up working, anyway - because he’d steel himself to apologize, and make
brief eye contact with Sasuke, and be momentarily struck speechless with embarrassment.
That was probably the worst part about him being so (infuriatingly, unfairly) good-looking,
because it was really fucking distracting. Naruto would stare at the drops of water that
streamed from his hair and down his neck, and realize he couldn’t even blame Sakura for
being so impulsively head-over-heels for him - because while Sasuke was a total bastard a lot
of the time (such as that very moment), he was the most undeniably striking total bastard
he’d ever had the misfortune of being friends with.

Naruto watched the drops of water trail down his neck and pool in the junction of where his
collarbone met his shoulder. And was rendered completely incoherent.

“Hey,” he managed to say. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“For what?” Sasuke replied flatly. The apple in his throat bobbed as he spoke.

“You know.” Naruto felt lightheaded again. There were far too many things that were making
it impossible to think - like the heavy steam curling off the surface of the water and the way
Naruto felt hot, way too hot. “For that stuff I said.”

Sasuke just sighed, and his heart jumped. “I’m not mad, Naruto.”

He was clearly mad - Sasuke was avoiding his gaze like making eye-contact was gonna put
him under a genjutsu. If anything, Naruto should have been the one avoiding his gaze.
Though it was becoming increasingly difficult to look away from him. “Yeah, you are,” he
argued. “You’ve been avoiding me. I’m sorry, all right?”

“It’s fine,” he muttered, looking down at the water (Naruto looked down there, too, but didn’t
see anything). “Just - drop it.”

Fuck, why was he so pissed off? Why wouldn’t he look at him? Why was it so impossible for
Naruto to explain?

“I meant-” he began, which had been his first mistake. He couldn’t even figure out exactly
what he meant, and…and was it really such a weird thing to say, when he would definitely be
- wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he be in love with Sasuke, if he was a girl? Wouldn’t that just make
perfect fucking sense?

“Well, it’s just ‘cause - you know, we’re really good friends, and…”

Sasuke was finally looking at him, now. Except he was looking at him like he wanted to kill
him (which wasn’t particularly unusual).

“And…” Naruto continued feebly, “I like you a lot, so if - if you were a girl-”

“Naruto,” Sasuke interrupted, and his voice was as cold and sharp as ice. He snapped his
mouth shut, realizing slightly too late that he irredeemably fucked up yet again. “Enough.
Shut up.”

Naruto felt like submerging his head under the water and not coming up for air until Sasuke
left or he drowned.

Okay, yeah, he wasn’t very smart. That was hardly his fault. Naruto was only ever good at
feeling things, because he felt them with every single particle of his body. He knew how he
felt a warm and protective affection for Sakura, an annoying respect for Kakashi (and an even
more annoying admiration for him). He could not, however, put a name to how he felt about
Uchiha Sasuke.

And it was entirely true that Sasuke pissed him off like crazy. It was, additionally, true that
Naruto craved his attention ever since they’d been thirteen. Conclusively (and in a way that
explained absolutely nothing), Sasuke made that impossibly big balloon of emotion inside his
chest feel like it was only moments away from exploding all the time.

Which didn’t make any sense to Naruto. It wasn’t some secret between him and Sasuke that
only they knew about - it wasn’t even a secret that everybody but him knew about. It was the
ineluctable mystery of Naruto and Sasuke that an explanation like being friends wasn’t
cutting. Because nobody really understood it, and Naruto was beginning to realize he didn’t
understand it himself.

Then what, he thought a little desperately, was it? They were not just rivals, nor were they
just friends. Naruto never wanted to take the place of Sasuke’s brother, nor did it feel right.
They were not merely reincarnations of a preexisting bond.

The pieces of paper scattered in front of the fan.

Sasuke had gotten out of the onsen before he did, and Naruto wasn’t really enthusiastic about
seeing him in their shared room, so he found himself in front of Kakashi’s door instead. Just
because he wouldn’t turn him away (probably). Though he ended up looking a lot like he
wanted to.

“How did you mess up again, Naruto?” Kakashi asked tiredly.

“Sasuke again, duh,” he complained, shovelling salted edamame into his mouth. “Why
doesn’t he get it? I’m trying to tell him that I don’t like him-” that wasn’t right. “I mean - I
like him, but not in a girl way. He’s pissing me off. I get all tongue-tied and forget what I
wanna say when I’m lookin’ at him.”

Kakashi just rolled his eyes.

“Good-looking guys are the worst,” Naruto muttered, “‘cause you get all stupid when you try
to talk to them-”

“Pardon?”

He was starting to look at Naruto weird. Which he was getting really sick of, to say the least.
Everyone kept giving him those strange looks - Shikamaru and Asuma, Kakashi, the
Sunagakure envoy. Even Sasuke. They were all getting on his last fucking nerve. “You
know,” he said, irritable. “When you’re lookin’ at Sasuke and start acting stupid.”

Kakashi stared at him for a moment, unreadable. “I don’t…start acting stupid when I look at
him, Naruto.”
“No, everybody does,” Naruto reminded him. It was just like his harem jutsu he’d developed
to mess around with Iruka and Ebisu-sensei (usually to get out of cleaning chalkboards) -
because pretty girls worked on almost everybody, and…pretty guys worked on almost
everybody, too. “That’s why I developed that sexy reverse harem jutsu, remember it? The one
I used on Kaguya?”

Kakashi truthfully looked like he had been trying to forget it. “...Naruto,” he said timidly,
“remind me, why did you develop a sexy reverse harem jutsu?”

The idea had first come to him not very long after Konohamaru had shown him just how
much better he’d gotten at his shadow clone techniques. And it was decidedly really fucking
weird, to see Sai and Sasuke butt-naked and wrapped in a passionate embrace - but it
occurred to Naruto that it seriously was a distraction unlike any other. Sakura had turned
beet-red and lapsed into nervous giggles through her fingers, and Naruto -

He tried it out himself, in his room that night. And dismissed the clones almost immediately
after they appeared, because one of them looked a little too familiar.

“Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about Konohamaru’s boy-on-boy jutsu, y’know? And then I
got to thinking-”

“What?”

“I said, I got to thinking that it might be useful f-”

“No, I meant…” Kakashi’s head fell into his hands, and Naruto started to feel a little
concerned for him. “You couldn’t stop thinking about what?”

Naruto pulled the bowl of almond tofu closer to him, not really sure what Kakashi was
getting at. It seemed wildly off-topic, anyway. “Uh, Konohamaru’s jutsu?” he replied
pointedly. Surely Kakashi wasn’t actually going senile (he'd been wondering that more often
lately). “Don’t you remember?”

“What-” Kakashi glanced up at him, like he was torn between exasperation and disbelief.
“Why couldn’t you stop thinking about it…?”

Naruto didn’t know why he did a lot of things. He didn’t know why he kept practicing the
reverse harem jutsu, always late at night and always in the privacy of his room. He decided it
wasn’t that weird, because it was a really good distraction he might’ve been able to use in
combat - and that was exactly what he’d remind himself, over and over, every time he locked
eyes with one of his too-familiar clones. He didn’t know why he’d get a funny jolt in his
stomach. Or why he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“I dunno,” Naruto said, with his mouth full. “I mean, it really does work as a distraction,
doesn’t it? So I thought-”

“It doesn’t,” Kakashi cut him off, bewilderment creeping into his voice. “Naruto, it doesn’t
work as a distraction unless you think it's sexy.”
That couldn’t be right - everyone got distracted by lookers. Kaguya herself, a limitlessly
powerful deity, got distracted by lookers. And nobody needed to think they were sexy for
them to be successful distractions, anyway. Naruto didn’t, after all.

He just laughed, briefly wondering if Kakashi was messing with him on purpose. “What
d’you mean? It’s a reverse harem, y’know, with dudes?”

Kakashi breathed in deeply. “Naruto, I need you to listen to me very carefully.”

“Sure,” Naruto replied, not really interested. Kakashi seemed to be taking it much more
seriously than necessary, if he wasn't just messing with him. More importantly, he was still
hungry. “Can you ask them to bring some meat? Hey, actually, d’you think they have any
ramen?”

His teacher briefly closed his eyes. “Not everybody…starts acting stupid when they look at
Sasuke.”

But they kinda did, didn’t they?

Everybody at the Academy had been practically in love with him when they were younger -
and still were, from the way stares would trail after him whenever they’d be out in public.
Which might’ve been partly because Sasuke had been a terrorist only a few months prior,
but…it also had to be because he was a fucking knockout, wasn’t he? Naruto caught himself
staring at him multiple times just as obviously, because - because he had that effect on people.
It was hardly his fault.

“Uh, yeah, they do,” he said, now properly annoyed by Kakashi’s obtuseness. “He’s a
handsome guy, isn’t he? Well, not as good-looking as me, obv-”

Kakashi cleared his throat. “No, uh…you see, people usually don’t have those kinds of
thoughts about their friends.”

“Yeah, they do,” Naruto repeated. “Sakura does.”

There was a pause, and Kakashi sighed. “Sakura has a crush on him, Naruto.”

Well, yeah. But -

But what?

He realized just exactly what Kakashi was implying, looking up at him over the table. He was
watching Naruto with that slightly-sad, slightly-impatient expression - like he was waiting for
Naruto to come to that mystifying conclusion on his own. The secret that everyone else but
him knew about, without exception.

Naruto’s mouth dropped open.

“I don’t have a crush on him, though,” he heard himself say. “He’s - he’s a guy. I’m a guy.”
Wasn’t that just - wasn’t that just the problem? Wasn’t it kinda too bad that they were both
guys, because if they weren’t, everything would be easier?

Wouldn’t - wouldn’t he be the one getting married to Sasuke if one of them had been a girl,
and maybe they would even have kids, and…Sakura would visit them for dinner, and…
Sasuke would be the one smiling adoringly at him. Because they would be in love ever since
they were thirteen years old, if only -

“Well, ahem, when a man and-” Kakashi looked pained. “Um, another man love each other
very much…”

What?

“Quit staring at me like that,” he said, as Naruto gaped at him. “You look like an idiot.”

It wasn’t like that. The ineluctable mystery between them wasn’t…that, and they weren’t -
they weren’t just friends, or rivals, or reincarnations of a preexisting bond. And they most
definitely weren’t in love, because -

Because what?

“Are you-” Naruto began, suddenly finding it very difficult to speak. “Are you messing with
me? This isn’t - I don’t think it’s funny. I don’t like guys.”

“Forget him being a guy,” Kakashi said, quite visibly frustrated. “Haven’t you ever thought
about kissing him, or something? Um…again? Don’t you think that you might want to?”

And his first instinct was to believe that Kakashi-sensei had seriously gone insane.

He could have laughed and asked him what the hell he was talking about, that it was creepy
and downright weird - neither of them were like that, because Naruto obviously liked girls,
and even though Sasuke didn’t have feelings for Sakura, he was clearly -

Wasn’t he?

Neither of them were like that, because he and Sasuke were best friends, and they were best
friends because…

Because what?

Has he ever thought about kissing Uchiha Sasuke? Has he ever wanted to?

Has he ever practiced the reverse harem jutsu, just because one of his clones ended up
invariably looking like him? Has he ever gotten that funny jolt in the pit of his stomach, the
one that freaked him out enough to dismiss the clone as soon as they locked eyes?

Has he ever wished that Sasuke was a girl, so it would be easier to explain that impossibly
big balloon of emotion in his chest?

Naruto said nothing. Kakashi, to his credit, didn’t either.

He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that he’d gotten up and left, because the moment he
slid open the door to his room, he realized that he’d been practically in a trance. Sasuke
merely glanced up at him, sitting by the tea table and picking at the bowl of white rice in
front of him. He was wearing a yukata, his hair still wet and dripping water down his neck to
pool in the dip of his collarbones.

“What?” he asked, as Naruto stared at him.

“Your ears are sunburned a lot,” Naruto said stupidly.

Sasuke looked, predictably, annoyed. He raised his hand to his reddened ears, as if to feel for
a sunburn. “What the hell are you talking about?”

What the hell was he talking about?

Naruto walked over to him to hover beside the tea table, and Sasuke stiffened before shifting
over to make room for him. Or what appeared to be making room for him. Naruto really just
felt like he didn’t want to touch him, even by accident.

“What?” he repeated irritably, as Naruto didn’t say anything. “If this is about avoiding you, I
told you to forget it.”

He just kneeled in front of him, and Sasuke’s face tightened in that way he was so familiar
with. Like he was putting up walls just to lock any feelings away behind them - pale and
nearly emotionless except for the furrow in his brow, because he was always like that.
Only…

Only his ears were red. Almost all the time, when they were together.

“Hey,” Naruto said weakly. “Um…”

Sasuke stared at him - water trailing down his face and dripping steadily from his chin,
leaving damp spots on the front of his yukata. The Rinnegan bored into him like it was trying
to pick him apart and read his thoughts, as if they were etched on the inside of his skull. In
the single, endlessly black eye of his, where the pupil and iris melted together in a pool of
ink, Naruto could see himself.

“I really-” he whispered, “I really wish you were a girl.”

And Kakashi hadn’t been quite right - because Naruto did not ever think about kissing
Sasuke, except for at that very moment. At that very moment, when he realized that he really,
really wanted to. So much it was fucking terrifying.

“Stop,” Sasuke snarled, his eyes flashing with renewed anger. He reached out to shove
Naruto away from him - and he could’ve sent Naruto flying through the paper screen doors of
their room if he wanted to, but the shove barely pushed him backwards. “Fuck, stop staying
that!”

The pieces of paper scattered in front of the fan, and Naruto reached out in kind to grab him
by the front of his yukata - Sasuke’s breath caught in his throat before he wrapped his hand
around Naruto’s wrist, with that bone-breaking strength that felt like they were fighting
again. The same rough and calloused hand that connected with his teeth more times than he
could count - and the same hand that helped him up after they fought in the Valley of the End,
and the same hand that wrapped around Naruto’s when they performed the hand-seal to undo
the infinite Tsukuyomi.

The impossibly big balloon of unnameable emotion inside his chest burst; the air stilled, and
the pieces of paper settled. Naruto knew (in the same way he was capable of knowing,
instinctively) that he was in love with Uchiha Sasuke. And it was even more fucking
terrifying.

“Naruto,” Sasuke said, and it sounded like a warning.

He’d never been any good at listening to warnings, anyway. Or running away from the things
that scared him, for that matter.

Naruto yanked him forward to crash their mouths together, in what was less of a kiss and
more like a sudden and desperate hunger to touch him in the only way he could think of.
Sasuke’s lips parted in surprise, and Naruto licked inside his mouth to swallow whatever
curse he was undoubtedly about to spit at him.

Right. It was right. Everything in his body told Naruto that kissing him was the rightest thing
in the world.

Sasuke’s hand tightened painfully around his wrist - not pushing him away and not pulling
him closer, but holding him there.

His eyes were blown wide, in utter disbelief as Naruto instinctively leaned in and deepened
the kiss - because he couldn’t pull away, despite every fleeting semblance of logic telling him
he should. He fisted his hand in the front of Sasuke’s yukata and let his other hand snake over
his shoulder to grab him by the hair, because it felt right, and he made a noise in Naruto’s
mouth that sent a shudder surging through him like electricity. All he could think about, with
a sort of rapid-fire incoherence, was along the lines of it’s Sasuke, I’m kissing Sasuke, his
tongue feels so hot, my wrist really fucking hurts, I’m kissing Sasuke and it feels good, it feels
good, it feels -

The way Sasuke kissed him back felt like his own desperation. Mirror images, after all.

Naruto curled his fingers in his hair and tilted his head to the side, pulling apart only slightly
to slot their mouths together a second time. Sasuke’s fingernails dug into the delicate skin of
his wrist, hard enough to break skin - and it hurt, it hurt really fucking bad, but he was much
more distracted with probing at Sasuke’s teeth with his tongue and tasting him with an
equally fervent desire that had always been there. Sasuke panted into his mouth and Naruto
felt lightheaded, because his breath was so hot and his hand was too fucking tight around his
wrist and because everything about Uchiha Sasuke burned.

And he felt himself go weak in the knees as their noses brushed and Sasuke stared at him,
maintaining eye contact in the same way he held his wrist in place. Naruto had no urge to
close his eyes - he needed to look back at him, into that eerily beautiful Rinnegan and feel
irrepressible shivers shoot up his spine because it was him. And he could have pretended it
was anybody else if only he closed his eyes, but that felt like the very last thing he wanted to
do.

If Sasuke wrenched away and asked him what his name was, Naruto might not have known
how to respond.

He was only ever good at feeling things, after all. Naruto didn’t know what any of it meant, at
that very moment - all he knew was that he was kissing Uchiha Sasuke and it felt like the best
fucking thing in the world.

Naruto hadn’t realized he pushed him onto his back until Sasuke bit him - and he tore himself
away to stare down at him, who met his gaze with the most wordless disbelief that Naruto
had ever seen on his face. His yukata had fallen off his shoulder from the way Naruto yanked
it.

“You taste like almonds,” Sasuke said. His voice was hoarse.

“I had almond tofu,” Naruto replied, the words coming out equally rough.

They stayed there just like that, both breathing heavily and Naruto only vaguely aware of the
bite on his bottom lip throbbing. He was holding himself up with one hand, and he realized
(belatedly) that he was still holding onto the front of Sasuke’s yukata so tightly the fabric had
creased in his fist.

Naruto let go. And Sasuke let go of his wrist.

He was still wide-eyed and had gone completely stiff - his ears now spectacularly red,
because it wasn’t really a sunburn at all. It never had been, not even…three years ago, around
the time Naruto first noticed it. “Get,” he managed, “off me.”

Naruto had quite literally caged him between his knees. “Sorry.”

They pulled apart, and he felt the irreparable sense of loss that had come with letting go of
the hand-seal in the Valley of the End. Sasuke’s lips were still slightly parted, and he felt the
impossibly powerful desire to lean in and kiss him again.

His breathing was uneven as he searched Naruto’s gaze, and he got the distinct impression
Sasuke was trying to pick him apart and read him again. That was just annoying. Why
weren’t they kissing again, anyway? That seemed way more efficient than staring at each
other.

“Why’d you do that?” Sasuke said softly.

“You did it too,” he accused, mindlessly picking at the hem of Sasuke’s yukata. It was
making his face feel hot, every time it inched over his thigh. “I mean - you did it back.”

Sasuke snatched it out of his hands. “Naruto.”

“What?” Naruto said distractedly, leaning back to sit on his heels. “I - I wanted to.”
His fingers dug into the tatami mat, but otherwise perfectly unmoving like a snake poised to
strike. Which probably shouldn’t have sent another funny jolt through Naruto’s stomach.

“You wanted to,” he repeated.

“Yeah,” Naruto replied. All he could really hear was his own unsteady breathing and the
ringing in his ears. Why was Sasuke looking at him like that, anyway? Wasn’t it - wasn’t it
obvious what he wanted? Naruto was undoubtedly looking right back at him like he wanted
to eat him. He could feel his own hunger like it was tangible.

Sasuke drew in a long and shaky breath. “Don’t - don’t fuck around with me.”

“I’m not,” he said weakly. He definitely wished he was fucking around - because it was
finally settling in, now, like a hot wire winding itself tighter and tighter in his gut. He could
still taste him on his tongue. “I’m not.”

And everyone kept asking him the same stupid question; why. What was it about Uchiha
Sasuke, and what was it about Naruto that made him quite so devoted to saving him.

“Why?” Sasuke asked. Utterly still, eyes wide and almost certainly dangerous, like if Naruto
said the wrong thing he would activate Amaterasu. Which would probably suck, and
definitely shouldn’t have sent another irrepressible shiver up his spine.

“You already know why,” Naruto muttered.

It didn’t need to be put into words. That was not how they communicated with each other. He
lifted his gaze to meet Sasuke’s and hold it - long enough for Sasuke’s fingers to twitch and
dig his fingernails deeper into the tatami mat.

Kakashi had asked him, a long time ago, why he was friends with Sasuke. And he hadn’t
even really thought about it, not really, up until then. He’d just said the first thing that came
to mind - which had been right all along.

‘Cause I know him, it occurred to Naruto, vaguely. And he knows me.

“Tell me,” he said.

“C’mon.” Naruto was most definitely completely red in the face by now. “Gonna make me
say it?”

“Yeah,” Sasuke bit back. “Say it.”

Fuck off, he could’ve replied irritably. Sasuke knew exactly what it was, ever since Naruto
smashed their faces together and kissed them both senseless. That was almost always how
they communicated, after all. They knew each other implicitly through touch - whether it was
a punch to the face or desperately forcing his tongue into his mouth, Naruto understood him
like they were a single, inseparable entity. Every time Sasuke touched him, it felt like an I
love you. Even (or perhaps especially) when he was trying to kill him.
 Naruto looked at him and he stared back - and everything he could have said to describe how
he felt for Uchiha Sasuke fell exceptionally short, because there weren’t any words for it.

“I-” his mouth was dry. “You know. Fuck, I - I like you, you’re my best friend, I need you, I-”

He knew.

“I care about you, I - think about you. I want to - to be with you.”

He knew, because their feelings were interchangeable. Sasuke knew him like he knew
himself.

“I want you to be with me,” Naruto said, his heart in his throat. And it was painful, because
he couldn’t quite say it in its entirety. Sasuke had asked him, many times before, about why.
Why he devoted himself, without hesitation, to save someone that did not want to be saved.

Well, it was actually pretty simple, wasn’t it?

Sasuke said nothing.

“C’mon,” Naruto mumbled, again. “You know.”

There was a pause, and he leaned in. Naruto just watched him as he tapped his forehead to his
own - meeting his gaze and holding it. And they stayed there, just like that.

“Yeah,” Sasuke replied quietly, his breath ghosting over Naruto’s face. “I know.”

Chapter End Notes

In retrospect, I might have ripped into Naruto a whole lot this chapter. Which is not to
say he isn't my most beloved little guy in the whole world, because he most certainly is.
I think that being faithful to whatever someone believes is the right thing to do is much
more important than being "smart" about it. Though it can cause some problems, as I
hope I've developed accurately through his perspective, lol. Additionally, this part is
slightly repetitive of Si Vis Amari Ama, which I hope doesn't feel too redundant.
For anybody curious, this chapter is titled Aristophanes after a speaker in Plato's
Symposium. He was a comic playwright and considered the "Father of Comedy," and
his play Lysistrata is definitely worth checking out :D
I've chosen him to represent this chapter based on his speech about the origin of love.
He states that people were originally a single being (two individuals physically
interconnected with one another), and Zeus had crippled them by cutting them in half.
Ever since then, people have searched for the other half of themselves in a way to
reconnect with the "wholeness" they once had. A very primordial and instinctual love, in
that sense.
Ironically, Aristophanes' turn to give his speech had been impeded by a bout of hiccups
that prevented him from speaking and getting his point across. I feel like this suited
Naruto for (what I hope are) obvious reasons. He's never very good at expressing things
in their entirety.
I've struggled with this chapter in a lot of ways, but I hope it's not too disappointing!
Specifically, I hope that it isn't glaringly obvious that I have absolutely no idea how to
write physical intimacy (whoops). Please forgive me, because I have not had the fortune
of knowing what it's like to want to kiss someone. I gave it my best shot regardless.
Thank you for reading if you've made it this far!
 Alcibiades
Chapter Notes

Hi and my sincerest apologies for the wait! :'D I did not intend for this chapter to be as
long as it turned out, and it didn't help that I kept cringing at my own writing, lmao. This
is a product of the most effort I've ever put into characterizing someone, and it ended up
being needlessly poetic at times...I am my own editor, and admittedly a little blind to my
overuse of italics and repetition. This part is kind of messy in terms of storytelling.
This part somewhat aligns itself with Kakashi Hiden, many thanks to @juca for the
suggestion! Obligatory forewarning about canon inaccuracies, OOC, and failed attempts
at humor. Additionally, slight CW for underage drinking and suggestive/sexual thoughts
you might expect from teenagers. There isn't anything explicit, just typical teenage
horniness and very thinly veiled implications, lol. Thank you to anyone who has shown
their appreciation and expressed interest in seeing the story continue :) happy reading!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

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 fucking 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 circumstances 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fuck 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 fucking 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 amusement 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-”

“Fuck 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 shit - 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 sniggered.
“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 porn 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 fucking 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 fucking
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 pornographic 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 fuck 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.

Chapter End Notes

I'm truthfully not entirely certain about how successfully I was able to interpret Sasuke
in this part. It's hard to remember that I'm writing about literal sixteen-year-olds that
have the traumas of war veterans. I'm sorry that it turned out so damnably long, and
concerned myself with being introspective instead of the actual plot :'D I much prefer
writing about thoughts and dialogues than action. I recommend reading Kakashi Hiden
if you're interested about the Armament Alliance mission (though it's about Naruto and
Sai). As an aside, the line about Sasuke being in Naruto's world and thus blessed to exist
is taken almost word-for-word from Sasuke Hiden.
This chapter is titled after Alcibiades, who expressed a very deep and unrivalled love for
Socrates in Plato's Symposium. One of his statements about Socrates, in particular, goes
as such:
"But once I caught him when he was open like Silenus' statues, and I had a glimpse of
the figures he keeps hidden within: they were so godlike-so bright and beautiful, so
utterly amazing-that I no longer had a choice. I just had to do whatever he told me
(216e-217a)."
I'm prone to rambling (if I haven't done so already), so I'll leave it at that. Thank you so
much for reading! :D
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