For: bellicosus
Author: fireun
For: bellicosus
Title: Depth Perception
Rating: PG13
Summary: Like a fine wine, the flavor of a relationship shifts subtly over time.
Warnings: A little bit of a sexual situation here and there, but nothing explicit
A/N: It was a pleasure to write! I hope you enjoy.
Mod note: Reminder for the author/artist of this submission, please do not reply to comments signed in, if you want to reply anon commenting is enabled.
Depth Perception
It made sense that Naruto would keep a scrapbook. Once you thought about that clutching edge of his personality, that need to hang on to everything and everyone...
That clutching bit was oddly endearing, in the same way a new puppy trying to climb your leg to get its tongue on your face was endearing in ways science had yet to explain.
There were the expected things, group photos full of lazy smiles and black eyes, and a section marked in Naruto's scrawling handwriting as 'blackmail'. One lingered over the blackmail pictures in the same way some people stared at unfolding disasters- in shock, with a sense of awe, and completely helpless to move. Some were pictures of Sakura and Ino that would get a man killed if he was foolish enough to speak of them, but the scandalous images were enough to keep a man tongue-tied as they were forever imprinted among his most indecent fantasies .
Sasuke flipped another page with absent grace, trying to ignore the twitch in his eye and the shift in his knees...
It was a picture of him, from years ago, hair being pushed every which way by the wind, a habitual scowl twisting his features into something vaguely threatening. He wasn't looking at the camera, probably never knew it had been taken. Naruto had scribbled something hardly legible on the thick paper, the only words that stood out were friend, and rival, in the same sentence. Only Naruto, with his skewed sense of social interaction, would have found those two concepts compatible. Still found those two concepts compatible.
Sasuke snorted, a sound caught halfway between disdain and affection, and turned the page. His vision blurred a bit, and Sasuke blinked with a grimace. It was a distraction and a reminder he didn't want. Blinking and straining, Sasuke was able to get the page in front of him to regain his definition.
A piece of cloth was glued there, Naruto having notated it as a fistful removed from Sasuke's shirt, most likely during one brawl or another. There had been a successful, at least partially successful, grab on Naruto's part that had left him burning with pride, and most likely pacing his bedroom with his chest puffed out like a rooster on the strut. It was an image Sasuke could not rid himself of as he flipped through a fascinating progression of battle trophies and candid shots, soaking in every bit of posturing, committing every expression to memory.
“Well damn. You actually look happy.”
looked up, refusing to give into the the need to posture, to make his subordinate sitting on the floor position seem more advantageous than Naruto's casual standing lounge in the doorway. Naruto's unfurled a lazy grin twisting lines of exhaustion into amusement. It was infectious, as it always was. As Naruto always was.
“I didn't expect you back yet.”
Naruto gave up the added support of the door frame and entered the bedroom, squatting down at Sasuke's side with an audible creak of abused muscle and joint and quiet grunt. “I didn't expect you to to be on the floor with an old keepsake. Feeling sentimental?”
“Feeling old?” It was a lazy rejoinder, but it earned Sasuke a light cuff and the pleasure of watching Naruto decide whether or not to give in and sit, therefore ceding the point to Sasuke, or to continue kneeling on principle.
“You spend a week skulking about in damp, cold weather and see what your knees feel like.” Naruto settled on the edge of the bed. “Why are you on the floor anyway? Too good to use a chair like the rest of us?”
Sasuke exaggerated a sneer while leaning his head against one of Naruto's much-bemoaned knees. It was a bit bonier than he remembered, his cheek against a knobby bit of bone that was the result of an old break. He listened as Naruto detailed his exploits of the past week. It was just one of those things, Naruto's endless chatter, Sasuke's constant cataloging of every nuance of each exchange, and it felt as comfortable and natural as Naruto's knobby bone in the hollow of Sasuke's cheek.
That is, until Sasuke grew bored, his disbelief and patience with Naruto's inevitable hyperbole wavering. He stopped Naruto in mid sentence with a simple rub of his cheek against Naruto's knee and brushing a kiss in passing. . It never grew old, that warm feeling he got from watching Naruto go still as a startled deer, eyes wide, nostrils flaring just so, afraid to move lest the moment of intimacy be scared away.
It warmed something in the pit of Sasuke's stomach, wriggled around the back of his head like a pile of kittens- soft and insistent and clamoring for his attention. It was an emotion he never wanted to get used to, to get comfortable with. He wanted that edge to hang on every instant such as this, not just for the flush of dominance being responsible for it created, but for that blurry edge between dominance and affection, that blurry edge on which Naruto existed. Where he knows, feels, he is wanted. Where the look in Naruto's eyes that says he is needed.
It brought a little light into the darkness, a glimmer of bright hope into the worst of his bad days.
Naruto reached and tentatively laid a hand on Sasuke's shoulder, and Sasuke exhaled, allowing the tension of a week without Naruto's presence to slip away.
“So. What prompted you to start such an incriminating collection?” Sasuke tapped a rather heavily annotated page of pictures.
“Can't you let a day go by without trying to make me all red in the face?”
“It's called blushing.”
“That sounds really girly.”
“Deal with it.”
Naruto had to admit he looked forward to coming home from missions for more than just home cooked meals and clean hot water. He liked that mix of old exhaustion and renewed relief and that all but overwhelmed him every time he passes through the apartment door. It's that feel of comfort, and the clutter that's just as cozy and familiar.
The couch was always appealing, the living room being so close to the door, but Naruto did his best not to give into temptation before a shower. Naruto pried muddy shoes off his feet, dropped his mask on the table, and followed his nose to Sasuke, whose own nose crinkled up in fastidious disdain while dark eyes tracked their disapproving way down a torn and dirty uniform.
“Is that blood yours?”
“Nope.”
“Then please shower before the whole building knows you are home by smell alone.”
“It's good to see you too.” Naruto cracked his best toothy, cocky smile, and waited for Sasuke's mask to dissolve. The best part about coming him? The way he could watch tension melt out of every one of Sasuke's muscles, watch Sasuke shift from Uchiha to human.
“There is fresh milk in the fridge and instant ramen in the cupboard.” It wasn't quite the declaration of affection that most would be waiting for, but from Sasuke it was as close to an announcement of his loving intent as Naruto was ever going to get.
Naruto flipped a lazy salute and sauntered to the shower.
The best part about coming home? Hot water, and the feel of a second skin emerging from underneath various types of filth sloughing off in the shower. Naruto killed a bar of soap scrubbing most of a marsh off of him, wincing every now and then as he brushed skin tender from bruises and abrasions that ranged widely from superficial to probably needing medical attention.
It was only as steam clouded the room and Naruto had settled into the stand-still-and-bask phase of the shower that he heard the bathroom door click open. The curtain shifted and Sasuke slipped in. Showers were not a comfortable place for two people. There was always water dripping into eyes and splashing into ears, but Naruto sighed in approval as Sasuke's arms wrapped around him, as a kiss was brushed across the particularly nasty bruise on the back of his left shoulder. These were the good moments. Skin to skin, silent, nothing getting in the way- the outside world or their own ingrained personas.
The water started to run cold, and Naruto gave in with a grumble, unwilling to move, but unable to condone being drenched in cold water. Exiting the shower he snagged two towels, handing one to Sasuke, pretending not to notice when Sasuke missed the offered towel on the first grab. It was an easy mistake, misjudging a grab like that, a little thing.
The little things piled up. There were the little stumbles, fumbles that could have been chalked off as fatigue, had Sasuke been doing anything strenuous. Had he been doing anything at all but wait for Naruto to come back from mission after mission, waiting around for that spark that shifted life back into sense and focus. He wasn't clumsy, never had been. There had to be another explanation.
Sasuke glared balefully at the coffee pooling on the floor, the mug laying on its side on the floor, not sitting on the table where he had meant to, tried to, set it.
“Hey, I'll grab some paper towels.” Naruto went to the kitchen, trying to pretend he wasn't fleeing, wasn't trying to avoid the look on Sasuke's face.
Sasuke carefully placed the mug on the table, moving slowly, feeling the edge of the table before releasing his grip. Calm, so very calm, up until the moment he knocked the table over with a low growl.
There was another explanation, but it was one they had been so careful to ignore for quite some time.
Naruto flipped through the scrapbook, indulging in a little bit of reminiscing in one of those rare times Sasuke was out of the house.
There was a picture of Sasuke sprawled inelegantly across the bed, legs tangled in blankets that had been kicked away at some point in the night, a displaced pillow cradled in one arm. That had been the first night, the one where Sasuke had finally given up and given in, his scowl deeper than usual as he followed Naruto home. Between shared beers and boasts something had built, had crawled out of hiding and sparked in both of their expressions.
Sasuke had been as fierce a kisser as he had been a fighter, taking every inch he could, determined to keep the upper hand. His tongue had scoured every inch of Naruto's mouth, teeth grating aggressively against teeth as they scrabbled for position, lips getting caught in the fray. Naruto smiled, remembering the fat lip he had displayed for the better part of three days.
Kissing had released some of the tension that kept a pole up Sasuke's ass. Naruto had managed to curl next to him on the bed without being savaged, listening to him breathe until it was obvious Sasuke had fallen asleep. It had been warm, had been so damn comfortable...
Naruto had almost regretted slipping out to take that photo in the morning. The flash, the sound of the camera, had woken Sasuke, and he had woken meaner than ever.
But he had still accepted breakfast with only a mild snarl, and had stayed until almost lunch.
Naruto sighed and stretched, his back not at all pleased with the position he had been sitting in. A handful of things had led to another few and soon enough Sasuke had showed up at Naruto's door with a bag over one shoulder and a look in his eyes that dared Naruto to say anything. To his credit, Naruto had managed, that once, to keep his mouth shut and merely move aside so Sasuke could enter.
And more things accumulated, leading to Naruto discreetly asking to be taken off the ANBU rotation for a little while, until he got things sorted out with Sasuke. The Hokage had eyed him thoughtfully for a few minutes, long enough that Naruto opened his mouth to explain further, but had been silenced when she raised a hand, interrupting.
“Take care of it.”
Take care of him.
It wasn't supposed to get so bad so fast. Sasuke's world was a blur of shadows slipping by, indistinct and irritating. Walking down the street was more of a chore than he could ever, would ever, admit. Sasuke blinked, trying to get a better sense of where he was and who was around him. Almost home, he was almost home. His arm started to reach out, to feel along the side of the building next to him before his pride sent it back to hang useless at his side. Uchiha Sasuke would not be seen feeling his way along the walls like some blind beggar.
It was bad enough he spent the better part of his life wondering if this was going to be the mission Naruto didn't make it back from. It was bad enough he didnt dare attempt field work himself, lest he prove a liability to the mission.
A liability.
Sasuke felt his eyes twisting, his sharingan trying to shift and see where his normal sight was failing him. It was disorienting enough that he paused, swallowed pride and power, and reached a hand out to the wall.
What use was there for a blind ninja?
Sasuke ran his hand along a bit of cloth trying to work out words made doubly difficult between Naruto's singular penmanship and Sasuke's own failing visual acuity. He knew what the page, said, had opened to this page many times, had curled his face into a quiet, private smile and felt his world settle back into something tolerable.
'I won.'
Naruto might have, Sasuke couldn't remember the exact occasion this scrap of cloth symbolized, but he could feel Naruto's excitement, trace along letters pressed into paper with a firm, enthusiastic hand. Sasuke traced along those letters, reading through his fingers, and hating himself for the necessity.
Did Naruto still feel he had won, now that he had the dubious pleasure of being the caretaker of the invalid Uchiha?
Sasuke wanted to be the one out there in the field, mask containing his face and emotion, kunai warm in his hands. He was the one with something to prove, something to maintain. Naruto had already won, already had everything he had ever wanted. Sasuke bit his lip until he tasted blood, waiting for the waves of antagonistic fury settle back into the vague hint of bile in the back of his throat, waiting for jealousy and hatred to shift back to where it belonged.
He almost had it under control when Naruto slipped in, settled down, and curled strong arms around Sasuke's shaking form, risking the reflexive lashing out that was Sasuke's last line of defense before sinking down and allowing himself to mourn.
“Hey, what have I told you about moping around?”
Naruto's bright voice, the cliché sun peeking out from around the clouds, tricked a snort of derision out of Sasuke, who then tried not to sniffle as a traitorous nose attempted to get clogged and uncomfortable.
“You're always on the floor. I swear, you do this on purpose to make me creak my way down to your level.”
It was so hard to stay angry and unhappy in the presence of such honest good humor and affection. It was so hard to slip back into the mask that had served him so well for so long.
And that was the point, really.
Sasuke's lips parted in a smile that showed a bit too much tooth, but was far from the sneer habit would have him display. “I like making you come to me.”
“You always did.”
History hung, shimmering in the dust motes Naruto's settling onto the floor kicked into the air, and both were distracted, thoughts wandering and wavering along with the specks drifting through their vision. Naruto sighed, a crooked sort of smile on his face. Sasuke leaned over, resting his head against Naruto's shoulder.
Sasuke closed his eyes, breathing in the musky smell of Naruto, a mix of sweat and shampoo and a tang of mildew from clothes dried too slowly indoors, a hint of salty soup and a beguiling scent that was Naruto himself. It carried years of close quarters and close contact, sneers and scowls, insults and injury. Recently warmed with the feel of arms around him in the night, coaxing him out of moods and nightmares, patient where patience was never returned.
Somewhere long the way Naruto had grown up, but had never grown out of his affection and attraction to his rival and lover, had never grown out of that hitch of insecurity that got tangled into the end of each sentence, hung off the edge of each joke.
There were uses for a blind ninja, and they all involved returning embraces and remembering to smile. It wasn't what he had set out to do, and his pride squirmed at the thought of being reduced to a baby blanket, but Sasuke had grown beyond, if not out of, his pride.
Naruto's jaw was temptingly close to his face, a half-days worth of stubble visible as Sasuke leaned close and dragged a kiss along that jaw, that something in his stomach wriggling to life as he thought of that jaw clenched in determination, gone slack with surprise and intense arousal. That warm feeling filled in the blanks where his eyes failed him. Sasuke remembered the look that had spread across Naruto's face that first time, as he kissed his way down Naruto's firm stomach, tasting and testing, remembered how muscles had twitched and flexed involuntarily. It had been about domination then, bending the willing under his will, but it was about something different now, something that let Naruto close and didn't flinch away.
Sasuke bit at Naruto's neck and encouraged him to get rid of his shirt, slipping out of his own. Skin on skin, Sasuke let his mouth, his fingers do the seeing.
He would never be rid of the dark moods, the bitter fury, but he could drown himself in the fullness of being that was Naruto. It was an overly poetic emotion and inclination, with a very primal expression. Sasuke reveled in the taste of Naruto, the way Naruto's hips flexed involuntarily as he licked and sucked, there was something soothing in the hitch and gasp to Naruto's breathing, the way he would laugh raggedly at each intense sensation.
It was the laughter, that different breed of laughter that was targeted at no one, nothing less than life itself, that was the salve that soothed over all the worst parts of every situation. There was a humor to life, and Naruto knew its secret.
And when the nights got bad, and Naruto was the one laying awake and hurting, it was Sasuke that sensed the shift in Naruto's mood, caught the change in his breathing, and would lift his head from the pillow and explain the things Naruto needed to hear.
“I am not going anywhere, idiot, so calm down and go back to sleep.”
For: bellicosus
Title: Depth Perception
Rating: PG13
Summary: Like a fine wine, the flavor of a relationship shifts subtly over time.
Warnings: A little bit of a sexual situation here and there, but nothing explicit
A/N: It was a pleasure to write! I hope you enjoy.
Mod note: Reminder for the author/artist of this submission, please do not reply to comments signed in, if you want to reply anon commenting is enabled.
Depth Perception
It made sense that Naruto would keep a scrapbook. Once you thought about that clutching edge of his personality, that need to hang on to everything and everyone...
That clutching bit was oddly endearing, in the same way a new puppy trying to climb your leg to get its tongue on your face was endearing in ways science had yet to explain.
There were the expected things, group photos full of lazy smiles and black eyes, and a section marked in Naruto's scrawling handwriting as 'blackmail'. One lingered over the blackmail pictures in the same way some people stared at unfolding disasters- in shock, with a sense of awe, and completely helpless to move. Some were pictures of Sakura and Ino that would get a man killed if he was foolish enough to speak of them, but the scandalous images were enough to keep a man tongue-tied as they were forever imprinted among his most indecent fantasies .
Sasuke flipped another page with absent grace, trying to ignore the twitch in his eye and the shift in his knees...
It was a picture of him, from years ago, hair being pushed every which way by the wind, a habitual scowl twisting his features into something vaguely threatening. He wasn't looking at the camera, probably never knew it had been taken. Naruto had scribbled something hardly legible on the thick paper, the only words that stood out were friend, and rival, in the same sentence. Only Naruto, with his skewed sense of social interaction, would have found those two concepts compatible. Still found those two concepts compatible.
Sasuke snorted, a sound caught halfway between disdain and affection, and turned the page. His vision blurred a bit, and Sasuke blinked with a grimace. It was a distraction and a reminder he didn't want. Blinking and straining, Sasuke was able to get the page in front of him to regain his definition.
A piece of cloth was glued there, Naruto having notated it as a fistful removed from Sasuke's shirt, most likely during one brawl or another. There had been a successful, at least partially successful, grab on Naruto's part that had left him burning with pride, and most likely pacing his bedroom with his chest puffed out like a rooster on the strut. It was an image Sasuke could not rid himself of as he flipped through a fascinating progression of battle trophies and candid shots, soaking in every bit of posturing, committing every expression to memory.
“Well damn. You actually look happy.”
looked up, refusing to give into the the need to posture, to make his subordinate sitting on the floor position seem more advantageous than Naruto's casual standing lounge in the doorway. Naruto's unfurled a lazy grin twisting lines of exhaustion into amusement. It was infectious, as it always was. As Naruto always was.
“I didn't expect you back yet.”
Naruto gave up the added support of the door frame and entered the bedroom, squatting down at Sasuke's side with an audible creak of abused muscle and joint and quiet grunt. “I didn't expect you to to be on the floor with an old keepsake. Feeling sentimental?”
“Feeling old?” It was a lazy rejoinder, but it earned Sasuke a light cuff and the pleasure of watching Naruto decide whether or not to give in and sit, therefore ceding the point to Sasuke, or to continue kneeling on principle.
“You spend a week skulking about in damp, cold weather and see what your knees feel like.” Naruto settled on the edge of the bed. “Why are you on the floor anyway? Too good to use a chair like the rest of us?”
Sasuke exaggerated a sneer while leaning his head against one of Naruto's much-bemoaned knees. It was a bit bonier than he remembered, his cheek against a knobby bit of bone that was the result of an old break. He listened as Naruto detailed his exploits of the past week. It was just one of those things, Naruto's endless chatter, Sasuke's constant cataloging of every nuance of each exchange, and it felt as comfortable and natural as Naruto's knobby bone in the hollow of Sasuke's cheek.
That is, until Sasuke grew bored, his disbelief and patience with Naruto's inevitable hyperbole wavering. He stopped Naruto in mid sentence with a simple rub of his cheek against Naruto's knee and brushing a kiss in passing. . It never grew old, that warm feeling he got from watching Naruto go still as a startled deer, eyes wide, nostrils flaring just so, afraid to move lest the moment of intimacy be scared away.
It warmed something in the pit of Sasuke's stomach, wriggled around the back of his head like a pile of kittens- soft and insistent and clamoring for his attention. It was an emotion he never wanted to get used to, to get comfortable with. He wanted that edge to hang on every instant such as this, not just for the flush of dominance being responsible for it created, but for that blurry edge between dominance and affection, that blurry edge on which Naruto existed. Where he knows, feels, he is wanted. Where the look in Naruto's eyes that says he is needed.
It brought a little light into the darkness, a glimmer of bright hope into the worst of his bad days.
Naruto reached and tentatively laid a hand on Sasuke's shoulder, and Sasuke exhaled, allowing the tension of a week without Naruto's presence to slip away.
“So. What prompted you to start such an incriminating collection?” Sasuke tapped a rather heavily annotated page of pictures.
“Can't you let a day go by without trying to make me all red in the face?”
“It's called blushing.”
“That sounds really girly.”
“Deal with it.”
Naruto had to admit he looked forward to coming home from missions for more than just home cooked meals and clean hot water. He liked that mix of old exhaustion and renewed relief and that all but overwhelmed him every time he passes through the apartment door. It's that feel of comfort, and the clutter that's just as cozy and familiar.
The couch was always appealing, the living room being so close to the door, but Naruto did his best not to give into temptation before a shower. Naruto pried muddy shoes off his feet, dropped his mask on the table, and followed his nose to Sasuke, whose own nose crinkled up in fastidious disdain while dark eyes tracked their disapproving way down a torn and dirty uniform.
“Is that blood yours?”
“Nope.”
“Then please shower before the whole building knows you are home by smell alone.”
“It's good to see you too.” Naruto cracked his best toothy, cocky smile, and waited for Sasuke's mask to dissolve. The best part about coming him? The way he could watch tension melt out of every one of Sasuke's muscles, watch Sasuke shift from Uchiha to human.
“There is fresh milk in the fridge and instant ramen in the cupboard.” It wasn't quite the declaration of affection that most would be waiting for, but from Sasuke it was as close to an announcement of his loving intent as Naruto was ever going to get.
Naruto flipped a lazy salute and sauntered to the shower.
The best part about coming home? Hot water, and the feel of a second skin emerging from underneath various types of filth sloughing off in the shower. Naruto killed a bar of soap scrubbing most of a marsh off of him, wincing every now and then as he brushed skin tender from bruises and abrasions that ranged widely from superficial to probably needing medical attention.
It was only as steam clouded the room and Naruto had settled into the stand-still-and-bask phase of the shower that he heard the bathroom door click open. The curtain shifted and Sasuke slipped in. Showers were not a comfortable place for two people. There was always water dripping into eyes and splashing into ears, but Naruto sighed in approval as Sasuke's arms wrapped around him, as a kiss was brushed across the particularly nasty bruise on the back of his left shoulder. These were the good moments. Skin to skin, silent, nothing getting in the way- the outside world or their own ingrained personas.
The water started to run cold, and Naruto gave in with a grumble, unwilling to move, but unable to condone being drenched in cold water. Exiting the shower he snagged two towels, handing one to Sasuke, pretending not to notice when Sasuke missed the offered towel on the first grab. It was an easy mistake, misjudging a grab like that, a little thing.
The little things piled up. There were the little stumbles, fumbles that could have been chalked off as fatigue, had Sasuke been doing anything strenuous. Had he been doing anything at all but wait for Naruto to come back from mission after mission, waiting around for that spark that shifted life back into sense and focus. He wasn't clumsy, never had been. There had to be another explanation.
Sasuke glared balefully at the coffee pooling on the floor, the mug laying on its side on the floor, not sitting on the table where he had meant to, tried to, set it.
“Hey, I'll grab some paper towels.” Naruto went to the kitchen, trying to pretend he wasn't fleeing, wasn't trying to avoid the look on Sasuke's face.
Sasuke carefully placed the mug on the table, moving slowly, feeling the edge of the table before releasing his grip. Calm, so very calm, up until the moment he knocked the table over with a low growl.
There was another explanation, but it was one they had been so careful to ignore for quite some time.
Naruto flipped through the scrapbook, indulging in a little bit of reminiscing in one of those rare times Sasuke was out of the house.
There was a picture of Sasuke sprawled inelegantly across the bed, legs tangled in blankets that had been kicked away at some point in the night, a displaced pillow cradled in one arm. That had been the first night, the one where Sasuke had finally given up and given in, his scowl deeper than usual as he followed Naruto home. Between shared beers and boasts something had built, had crawled out of hiding and sparked in both of their expressions.
Sasuke had been as fierce a kisser as he had been a fighter, taking every inch he could, determined to keep the upper hand. His tongue had scoured every inch of Naruto's mouth, teeth grating aggressively against teeth as they scrabbled for position, lips getting caught in the fray. Naruto smiled, remembering the fat lip he had displayed for the better part of three days.
Kissing had released some of the tension that kept a pole up Sasuke's ass. Naruto had managed to curl next to him on the bed without being savaged, listening to him breathe until it was obvious Sasuke had fallen asleep. It had been warm, had been so damn comfortable...
Naruto had almost regretted slipping out to take that photo in the morning. The flash, the sound of the camera, had woken Sasuke, and he had woken meaner than ever.
But he had still accepted breakfast with only a mild snarl, and had stayed until almost lunch.
Naruto sighed and stretched, his back not at all pleased with the position he had been sitting in. A handful of things had led to another few and soon enough Sasuke had showed up at Naruto's door with a bag over one shoulder and a look in his eyes that dared Naruto to say anything. To his credit, Naruto had managed, that once, to keep his mouth shut and merely move aside so Sasuke could enter.
And more things accumulated, leading to Naruto discreetly asking to be taken off the ANBU rotation for a little while, until he got things sorted out with Sasuke. The Hokage had eyed him thoughtfully for a few minutes, long enough that Naruto opened his mouth to explain further, but had been silenced when she raised a hand, interrupting.
“Take care of it.”
Take care of him.
It wasn't supposed to get so bad so fast. Sasuke's world was a blur of shadows slipping by, indistinct and irritating. Walking down the street was more of a chore than he could ever, would ever, admit. Sasuke blinked, trying to get a better sense of where he was and who was around him. Almost home, he was almost home. His arm started to reach out, to feel along the side of the building next to him before his pride sent it back to hang useless at his side. Uchiha Sasuke would not be seen feeling his way along the walls like some blind beggar.
It was bad enough he spent the better part of his life wondering if this was going to be the mission Naruto didn't make it back from. It was bad enough he didnt dare attempt field work himself, lest he prove a liability to the mission.
A liability.
Sasuke felt his eyes twisting, his sharingan trying to shift and see where his normal sight was failing him. It was disorienting enough that he paused, swallowed pride and power, and reached a hand out to the wall.
What use was there for a blind ninja?
Sasuke ran his hand along a bit of cloth trying to work out words made doubly difficult between Naruto's singular penmanship and Sasuke's own failing visual acuity. He knew what the page, said, had opened to this page many times, had curled his face into a quiet, private smile and felt his world settle back into something tolerable.
'I won.'
Naruto might have, Sasuke couldn't remember the exact occasion this scrap of cloth symbolized, but he could feel Naruto's excitement, trace along letters pressed into paper with a firm, enthusiastic hand. Sasuke traced along those letters, reading through his fingers, and hating himself for the necessity.
Did Naruto still feel he had won, now that he had the dubious pleasure of being the caretaker of the invalid Uchiha?
Sasuke wanted to be the one out there in the field, mask containing his face and emotion, kunai warm in his hands. He was the one with something to prove, something to maintain. Naruto had already won, already had everything he had ever wanted. Sasuke bit his lip until he tasted blood, waiting for the waves of antagonistic fury settle back into the vague hint of bile in the back of his throat, waiting for jealousy and hatred to shift back to where it belonged.
He almost had it under control when Naruto slipped in, settled down, and curled strong arms around Sasuke's shaking form, risking the reflexive lashing out that was Sasuke's last line of defense before sinking down and allowing himself to mourn.
“Hey, what have I told you about moping around?”
Naruto's bright voice, the cliché sun peeking out from around the clouds, tricked a snort of derision out of Sasuke, who then tried not to sniffle as a traitorous nose attempted to get clogged and uncomfortable.
“You're always on the floor. I swear, you do this on purpose to make me creak my way down to your level.”
It was so hard to stay angry and unhappy in the presence of such honest good humor and affection. It was so hard to slip back into the mask that had served him so well for so long.
And that was the point, really.
Sasuke's lips parted in a smile that showed a bit too much tooth, but was far from the sneer habit would have him display. “I like making you come to me.”
“You always did.”
History hung, shimmering in the dust motes Naruto's settling onto the floor kicked into the air, and both were distracted, thoughts wandering and wavering along with the specks drifting through their vision. Naruto sighed, a crooked sort of smile on his face. Sasuke leaned over, resting his head against Naruto's shoulder.
Sasuke closed his eyes, breathing in the musky smell of Naruto, a mix of sweat and shampoo and a tang of mildew from clothes dried too slowly indoors, a hint of salty soup and a beguiling scent that was Naruto himself. It carried years of close quarters and close contact, sneers and scowls, insults and injury. Recently warmed with the feel of arms around him in the night, coaxing him out of moods and nightmares, patient where patience was never returned.
Somewhere long the way Naruto had grown up, but had never grown out of his affection and attraction to his rival and lover, had never grown out of that hitch of insecurity that got tangled into the end of each sentence, hung off the edge of each joke.
There were uses for a blind ninja, and they all involved returning embraces and remembering to smile. It wasn't what he had set out to do, and his pride squirmed at the thought of being reduced to a baby blanket, but Sasuke had grown beyond, if not out of, his pride.
Naruto's jaw was temptingly close to his face, a half-days worth of stubble visible as Sasuke leaned close and dragged a kiss along that jaw, that something in his stomach wriggling to life as he thought of that jaw clenched in determination, gone slack with surprise and intense arousal. That warm feeling filled in the blanks where his eyes failed him. Sasuke remembered the look that had spread across Naruto's face that first time, as he kissed his way down Naruto's firm stomach, tasting and testing, remembered how muscles had twitched and flexed involuntarily. It had been about domination then, bending the willing under his will, but it was about something different now, something that let Naruto close and didn't flinch away.
Sasuke bit at Naruto's neck and encouraged him to get rid of his shirt, slipping out of his own. Skin on skin, Sasuke let his mouth, his fingers do the seeing.
He would never be rid of the dark moods, the bitter fury, but he could drown himself in the fullness of being that was Naruto. It was an overly poetic emotion and inclination, with a very primal expression. Sasuke reveled in the taste of Naruto, the way Naruto's hips flexed involuntarily as he licked and sucked, there was something soothing in the hitch and gasp to Naruto's breathing, the way he would laugh raggedly at each intense sensation.
It was the laughter, that different breed of laughter that was targeted at no one, nothing less than life itself, that was the salve that soothed over all the worst parts of every situation. There was a humor to life, and Naruto knew its secret.
And when the nights got bad, and Naruto was the one laying awake and hurting, it was Sasuke that sensed the shift in Naruto's mood, caught the change in his breathing, and would lift his head from the pillow and explain the things Naruto needed to hear.
“I am not going anywhere, idiot, so calm down and go back to sleep.”