Happy fandom swap, destinylight!
Happy fandom swap, destinylight!
Title: Mute
Author: rainyd
Fandom: Naruto
Summary: "Naruto carries him back home. They barely stir the dust that's all
that remains of Orochimaru's lair. Dust, a fallen pillar, and a few bodies
waiting for the clean up squad."
Pairings: Naruto/Sasuke
Rating: PG
Warnings: Swearing
Mute
When Naruto finds him, ankle-deep in the ruins and shaking with effort, Sasuke can barely stand, let alone walk.
His knuckles are bleeding. Impulsively, Naruto goes to him and rips the hem off his trousers, wrapping the cloth around Sasuke's worn hands. He doesn't flinch away, doesn't even blink; simply stares, an almost pained frown pulling the sides of his face taut. He still doesn't move as Naruto's hand goes around Sasuke's waist, getting a firm grip on it, putting Sasuke's arm around his own shoulders to steady him.
Naruto carries him back home. They barely stir the dust that's all that remains of Orochimaru's lair. Dust, a fallen pillar, and a few bodies waiting for the clean up squad.
* * *
Naruto doesn't stop for breath until the two of them are safe inside his house. His feet touch down lightly on the roof - Sasuke's hanging limply, useless below him - and they slip noiselessly inside the door.
The first thing Naruto does is punch him hard on the side of his face. The sound of bones cracking teeth shatters the dim silence. Sasuke stumbles back, falling, perhaps only out of sheer exhaustion, and spits blood on the wooden floor. Naruto stands over him, trembling and flexing his aching fist. "You fuck," he hisses, his eyes dark. "You fuck." Years of training, a culmination of team effort and absolute focus, all his promises at last fulfilled, and all Naruto can think to do is curse him. He had always been asinine like that.
The expected retort never comes. Naruto waits and wills Sasuke to say something: to apologise, to sneer, to hit him back, anything. But he simply wipes the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, gets slowly to his feet and walks past Naruto, shaking.
Naruto bites his bottom lip until it bleeds, and goes to his bedroom. There is already a futon laid out for Sasuke on the floor. He wonders how brashly judged his confidence was, before he left to get Sasuke. Confident enough that he'd find him in one piece.
They sleep with their backs to one another, and with tense shoulders.
* * *
Sasuke, asleep, looks sort of beautiful in the glass-filtered sunlight that streams in through the half open windows. His hair is splayed out on the pillow like a dead hand - longer now that it ever was, brushing his collarbone - and his fingers are curled like a child's. Naruto doesn't think he's ever seen him look so weak. Even in the days before, Sasuke always seemed tense when he was asleep. Now he looks like he hasn't slept in weeks.
Naruto stands at the end of his bed, frowning, and kicks Sasuke's twisted feet until he wakes up.
They eat breakfast in silence, glowering at each other. Sasuke's stare has lost some of its edge and his eyes look tired; Naruto's makeshift bandage is still loose around his hand. He should change that today, he thinks but doesn't say. He goes to the fridge and drinks the last of the milk from the bottle, his eyes always on Sasuke (though whether it's wariness or over-protection, he doesn't care to know).
"I'm going to tell Hokage-sama soon," Naruto says. "Real soon. You can't just stay here forever."
Sasuke is very still and very silent. He scratches his jaw with his thumb, and doesn't look the least bit regretful. He hasn't even apologised yet. All the things he might've done, orders carried out, people killed - not a word, not even a sign of humility or repentance.
Naruto wants to beat the fucking nonchalance right out of him.
In a flash, he's in front of Sasuke, strangely tall, and grabs him by the collar of his shirt. He's shaking too much to lift Sasuke from his chair, so he leans down close to his face and hisses through clamp-tight teeth: "Aren't you even going to say anything?!"
Sasuke's eyes are terribly white when he's looking up. He pulls Naruto's hands off him by the wrist with graceful, pale fingers. Naruto's palm is dug out deep from the pressure of his fingernails, he was holding so hard; Sasuke made it look like he was plucking a feather from the air.
Naruto doesn't punch him or slap him, which he has an odd inclination to do, but instead takes his shuriken into the garden and thrashes the nearest tree into submission. Sasuke watches him from the decking, light on his feet, arms folded, and says nothing at all.
* * *
"Stay here," Naruto grunts. Sasuke is on the floor, clad in one of Naruto's old t-shirts and his dirt stained shorts, marking out new scrolls. Naruto wonders how much else was destroyed along with Orochimaru's lair; wonders if Sasuke mislaid his voice there. Sasuke doesn't even acknowledge him with a pause. Just to spite him, Naruto locks the front door on his way out, to keep Sasuke inside. It's childish and pointless; they both know if Sasuke wanted to escape he'd have been long gone by now. It isn't like he'd have anywhere to go, anyway.
Naruto ventures out to get supplies. He barely has enough food for one, let alone two. He's been watching Sasuke eat over the past few days, the manifestation of a strange desire to protect him from himself. Naruto had noticed how light he was on the night they came back; has seen the skin stretched taut over his knees and elbows. He's thinner now, much more than before. Gaunt, maybe.
Naruto wonders bitterly what was so compelling about Orochimaru's knowledge that Sasuke forgot to try and keep himself alive.
On the way, he bumps into Sakura. Literally; she meets him at a run, grabbing his arms tightly, with a breathless energy evident in the wind-rushed flight of her hair. It's her smile that pulls him up short - wide and unchecked, like her old smile. The smile she used to look up at Sasuke with. "Naruto! Did you hear?" she says, clasping his hands. Naruto glances down at their intertwined fingers, and hardly feels a thing. Sakura can do this now; it isn't awkward between them any more. Naruto isn't sure whether he's sad about that or not. He frowns all the same. "Sasuke- he's been seen near here! Just a few days ago. Isn't that good news!"
Naruto looks at the floor while he lies. "Oh, I hadn't heard."
Sakura stands on her tiptoes and kisses Naruto's cheek, grinning. He doesn't even blush. "He'll be back soon. I'm sure of it!"
Naruto doesn't watch her walk away, some lightness in her step now, but rubs the back of his neck and scuffs the toe of his sandal in the dirt.
* * *
Naruto hates that they understand each other more than ever now, when he still feels like he doesn't know Sasuke at all. Sasuke reads him like an open diary.
Naruto is sitting in the back yard, picking at the grass with his kunai when Sasuke walks over. He challenges him without words, and with a vague gesture of his head; Naruto knows instinctively what he wants. So they train together in the fading sunlight, venting their ice-brittle tension in a few rounds of vicious sparring. Still, they're both holding back. That makes Naruto sort of angry. Even now, Sasuke's limbs are moving painfully, and whereas once Naruto would've jumped at the chance to show off his new skills, he can't bring himself to now. Whether it's because he's afraid he'd crush Sasuke like some fragile sapling, or that he'd unleash something in Sasuke that he never wants to see again, Naruto doesn't know. He doesn't care to find out.
From the way his loose shirt flaps about as they fight, Naruto can see new scars on Sasuke's skin, new seals like tattoos. He wonders what deep and old evil has been branded onto Sasuke's body. But he doesn't mention it. He doesn't dare.
* * *
Because Naruto is neither entirely selfish nor generally selfless, they take it in turns to have the bed. It's Naruto's night on the futon, which makes him grumpy because the floor is not soft and not warm and not remotely comfortable like his bed. So he stares up at Sasuke's back until it's too dark to make out the shape of it, then turns over and eventually stumbles into fitful sleep.
Naruto wakes up to Sasuke holding him. His head is buried into Naruto's shoulder, and his nails are digging into his back through his pyjamas, which sort of hurts. He's holding on so tightly it's almost as if he's afraid he'll fall and be lost at any moment.
Naruto isn't used to being hugged. He doesn't know what to do with his hands, his body, his voice. Sasuke seems equally unsure, his elbows jutting out at awkward angles and his knees pressing somewhat painfully against Naruto's thighs. Sasuke is breathing by his neck. It tickles. Naruto doesn't dare speak. The tension in the air makes it as brittle as stained glass, and just as fragile, like a word at the wrong pitch could shatter the image into a thousand unreadable shards. Naruto waits, his eyes wide, and concentrates on Sasuke's slight body and slighter warmth.
"...Thank you," Sasuke says, quite quietly.
Naruto's breath catches in his throat. Sasuke's voice is softly hoarse, deeper; a hint of the stranger he's become, but beautifully recognisable.
He can't think of anything to say that won't sound like a judgement. So Naruto puts his palm tentatively on Sasuke's back, between his taut shoulder blades, and just says nothing.
They don't mention it the next morning, when Naruto wakes with Sasuke tangled around him, all lanky limbs he hasn't quite grown into and patches of skin where Naruto's clothes - too big for him - have ridden up. His fingers are pressed against Naruto's back, as though to make sure he hasn't gone anywhere. Instead, Naruto rolls over to face him, meeting his eyes without defiance. After a time, Sasuke starts to talk about Orochimaru, and for once Naruto, somehow wise, simply listens.
Title: Mute
Author: rainyd
Fandom: Naruto
Summary: "Naruto carries him back home. They barely stir the dust that's all
that remains of Orochimaru's lair. Dust, a fallen pillar, and a few bodies
waiting for the clean up squad."
Pairings: Naruto/Sasuke
Rating: PG
Warnings: Swearing
Mute
When Naruto finds him, ankle-deep in the ruins and shaking with effort, Sasuke can barely stand, let alone walk.
His knuckles are bleeding. Impulsively, Naruto goes to him and rips the hem off his trousers, wrapping the cloth around Sasuke's worn hands. He doesn't flinch away, doesn't even blink; simply stares, an almost pained frown pulling the sides of his face taut. He still doesn't move as Naruto's hand goes around Sasuke's waist, getting a firm grip on it, putting Sasuke's arm around his own shoulders to steady him.
Naruto carries him back home. They barely stir the dust that's all that remains of Orochimaru's lair. Dust, a fallen pillar, and a few bodies waiting for the clean up squad.
* * *
Naruto doesn't stop for breath until the two of them are safe inside his house. His feet touch down lightly on the roof - Sasuke's hanging limply, useless below him - and they slip noiselessly inside the door.
The first thing Naruto does is punch him hard on the side of his face. The sound of bones cracking teeth shatters the dim silence. Sasuke stumbles back, falling, perhaps only out of sheer exhaustion, and spits blood on the wooden floor. Naruto stands over him, trembling and flexing his aching fist. "You fuck," he hisses, his eyes dark. "You fuck." Years of training, a culmination of team effort and absolute focus, all his promises at last fulfilled, and all Naruto can think to do is curse him. He had always been asinine like that.
The expected retort never comes. Naruto waits and wills Sasuke to say something: to apologise, to sneer, to hit him back, anything. But he simply wipes the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, gets slowly to his feet and walks past Naruto, shaking.
Naruto bites his bottom lip until it bleeds, and goes to his bedroom. There is already a futon laid out for Sasuke on the floor. He wonders how brashly judged his confidence was, before he left to get Sasuke. Confident enough that he'd find him in one piece.
They sleep with their backs to one another, and with tense shoulders.
* * *
Sasuke, asleep, looks sort of beautiful in the glass-filtered sunlight that streams in through the half open windows. His hair is splayed out on the pillow like a dead hand - longer now that it ever was, brushing his collarbone - and his fingers are curled like a child's. Naruto doesn't think he's ever seen him look so weak. Even in the days before, Sasuke always seemed tense when he was asleep. Now he looks like he hasn't slept in weeks.
Naruto stands at the end of his bed, frowning, and kicks Sasuke's twisted feet until he wakes up.
They eat breakfast in silence, glowering at each other. Sasuke's stare has lost some of its edge and his eyes look tired; Naruto's makeshift bandage is still loose around his hand. He should change that today, he thinks but doesn't say. He goes to the fridge and drinks the last of the milk from the bottle, his eyes always on Sasuke (though whether it's wariness or over-protection, he doesn't care to know).
"I'm going to tell Hokage-sama soon," Naruto says. "Real soon. You can't just stay here forever."
Sasuke is very still and very silent. He scratches his jaw with his thumb, and doesn't look the least bit regretful. He hasn't even apologised yet. All the things he might've done, orders carried out, people killed - not a word, not even a sign of humility or repentance.
Naruto wants to beat the fucking nonchalance right out of him.
In a flash, he's in front of Sasuke, strangely tall, and grabs him by the collar of his shirt. He's shaking too much to lift Sasuke from his chair, so he leans down close to his face and hisses through clamp-tight teeth: "Aren't you even going to say anything?!"
Sasuke's eyes are terribly white when he's looking up. He pulls Naruto's hands off him by the wrist with graceful, pale fingers. Naruto's palm is dug out deep from the pressure of his fingernails, he was holding so hard; Sasuke made it look like he was plucking a feather from the air.
Naruto doesn't punch him or slap him, which he has an odd inclination to do, but instead takes his shuriken into the garden and thrashes the nearest tree into submission. Sasuke watches him from the decking, light on his feet, arms folded, and says nothing at all.
* * *
"Stay here," Naruto grunts. Sasuke is on the floor, clad in one of Naruto's old t-shirts and his dirt stained shorts, marking out new scrolls. Naruto wonders how much else was destroyed along with Orochimaru's lair; wonders if Sasuke mislaid his voice there. Sasuke doesn't even acknowledge him with a pause. Just to spite him, Naruto locks the front door on his way out, to keep Sasuke inside. It's childish and pointless; they both know if Sasuke wanted to escape he'd have been long gone by now. It isn't like he'd have anywhere to go, anyway.
Naruto ventures out to get supplies. He barely has enough food for one, let alone two. He's been watching Sasuke eat over the past few days, the manifestation of a strange desire to protect him from himself. Naruto had noticed how light he was on the night they came back; has seen the skin stretched taut over his knees and elbows. He's thinner now, much more than before. Gaunt, maybe.
Naruto wonders bitterly what was so compelling about Orochimaru's knowledge that Sasuke forgot to try and keep himself alive.
On the way, he bumps into Sakura. Literally; she meets him at a run, grabbing his arms tightly, with a breathless energy evident in the wind-rushed flight of her hair. It's her smile that pulls him up short - wide and unchecked, like her old smile. The smile she used to look up at Sasuke with. "Naruto! Did you hear?" she says, clasping his hands. Naruto glances down at their intertwined fingers, and hardly feels a thing. Sakura can do this now; it isn't awkward between them any more. Naruto isn't sure whether he's sad about that or not. He frowns all the same. "Sasuke- he's been seen near here! Just a few days ago. Isn't that good news!"
Naruto looks at the floor while he lies. "Oh, I hadn't heard."
Sakura stands on her tiptoes and kisses Naruto's cheek, grinning. He doesn't even blush. "He'll be back soon. I'm sure of it!"
Naruto doesn't watch her walk away, some lightness in her step now, but rubs the back of his neck and scuffs the toe of his sandal in the dirt.
* * *
Naruto hates that they understand each other more than ever now, when he still feels like he doesn't know Sasuke at all. Sasuke reads him like an open diary.
Naruto is sitting in the back yard, picking at the grass with his kunai when Sasuke walks over. He challenges him without words, and with a vague gesture of his head; Naruto knows instinctively what he wants. So they train together in the fading sunlight, venting their ice-brittle tension in a few rounds of vicious sparring. Still, they're both holding back. That makes Naruto sort of angry. Even now, Sasuke's limbs are moving painfully, and whereas once Naruto would've jumped at the chance to show off his new skills, he can't bring himself to now. Whether it's because he's afraid he'd crush Sasuke like some fragile sapling, or that he'd unleash something in Sasuke that he never wants to see again, Naruto doesn't know. He doesn't care to find out.
From the way his loose shirt flaps about as they fight, Naruto can see new scars on Sasuke's skin, new seals like tattoos. He wonders what deep and old evil has been branded onto Sasuke's body. But he doesn't mention it. He doesn't dare.
* * *
Because Naruto is neither entirely selfish nor generally selfless, they take it in turns to have the bed. It's Naruto's night on the futon, which makes him grumpy because the floor is not soft and not warm and not remotely comfortable like his bed. So he stares up at Sasuke's back until it's too dark to make out the shape of it, then turns over and eventually stumbles into fitful sleep.
Naruto wakes up to Sasuke holding him. His head is buried into Naruto's shoulder, and his nails are digging into his back through his pyjamas, which sort of hurts. He's holding on so tightly it's almost as if he's afraid he'll fall and be lost at any moment.
Naruto isn't used to being hugged. He doesn't know what to do with his hands, his body, his voice. Sasuke seems equally unsure, his elbows jutting out at awkward angles and his knees pressing somewhat painfully against Naruto's thighs. Sasuke is breathing by his neck. It tickles. Naruto doesn't dare speak. The tension in the air makes it as brittle as stained glass, and just as fragile, like a word at the wrong pitch could shatter the image into a thousand unreadable shards. Naruto waits, his eyes wide, and concentrates on Sasuke's slight body and slighter warmth.
"...Thank you," Sasuke says, quite quietly.
Naruto's breath catches in his throat. Sasuke's voice is softly hoarse, deeper; a hint of the stranger he's become, but beautifully recognisable.
He can't think of anything to say that won't sound like a judgement. So Naruto puts his palm tentatively on Sasuke's back, between his taut shoulder blades, and just says nothing.
They don't mention it the next morning, when Naruto wakes with Sasuke tangled around him, all lanky limbs he hasn't quite grown into and patches of skin where Naruto's clothes - too big for him - have ridden up. His fingers are pressed against Naruto's back, as though to make sure he hasn't gone anywhere. Instead, Naruto rolls over to face him, meeting his eyes without defiance. After a time, Sasuke starts to talk about Orochimaru, and for once Naruto, somehow wise, simply listens.