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He didn't notice it was gone until Team 7 had gotten back from a mission and he had suggested going to Ichiraku's for ramen. Once his comrades agreed, Naruto ran back home to grab his frog pouch. He even remembered exactly where he had left it this time. Except, when he tried to look for it, it wasn't there anymore. The spot on his nightstand where his pouch was supposed to be was empty - it almost mocked him and his usually faulty memory.
"Wha- it has to be here!" He mumbles to himself before diving into the other shelves.
Under his bed, on the kitchen counter, the corners of the house, on top of the fridge - he looked everywhere. There was no sign of it.
"Naruto!" Sakura screamed outside. "Come on, we've been waiting for half an hour!"
"Sakura-chaaan-" He cries from the balcony, staring down at her and the rest of his team with watery eyes. "I can't find my money."
"What?! Mah, honestly, Naruto, how could you be so unorganized?!"
"I'm sorry~"
His friend sighs, dropping the hands she had put on her hips. "Forget it, we can go tomorrow, right, Sasuke-kun?"
"If the idiot can find his money, sure." The boy shrugs and starts to walk away.
"Jerk!" Naruto puts his tongue out.
"Well," Kakashi shrugs, "see you guys tomorrow. Make sure to rest up, we have an early day ahead."
"Right, Kakashi-sensei, because you surely will be there when you're supposed to be."
He begins to walk away as well, Sakura at his side, and Naruto watches as the sound of their conversation grows quieter and quieter until he can't hear them anymore. He pouts, drops his head on the handrail and lets his arms dangle from his body.
His stomach growls and he would kill for Ichiraku's ramen.
Meanwhile, Sasuke Uchiha arrives at his empty home and as soon as he steps in his room, he notices something out of place. Since when did he own a pudgy dark green frog pouch? He didn't and he knew exactly who it belonged to. Now, how had it gotten there? It was probably just that idiot playing a prank again. A… weird, does-more-harm-to-him-than-anyone-else prank.
Whatever, he can give it back to him the next morning.
Sasuke lets his body fall on his bed and closes his eyes. His eyebrows furrow and twitch while his lips curl when he thinks of the noise the idiot will be yapping in his ear first thing at six in the morning, complaining about not knowing where his damn thing is. It would be worth the trouble now if he could avoid that pain from later.
In a matter of minutes, he stood at Naruto's balcony. The idiot's snores come through the wooden door loud and clear, he's sleeping at noon. Of course he would.
The Uchiha sighs in annoyance, leaving the pouch on the railing before knocking on the door. And he takes off before Naruto gets the chance to open it.
It's much later in the month when he notices something in his house that doesn't belong to him. Because, why would he have a picture of Uchiha clan members? And more specifically, of Sasuke's family.
The next day, when they met again, Naruto didn't have his pouch again. It had been lost for weeks now. He never even knew it had been out on the balcony that first day he noticed it missing. When he had gone to that area again, his pouch was long gone.
He took Sasuke's picture to hand it to his teammate face to face.
The Uchiha boy eyed him with a mix of emotions in his eyes. Naruto could only focus on the anger as the kid snatched the photo from his hands and shoved it in his pocket. Neither said a word.
They went on another mission and in coming back home, Sasuke found the pouch on his bed again while Naruto would see the picture on his nightstand once again. And no matter how many times they tried to switch, the objects would always go back.
This lasted for a month, with the frog pouch and the family picture. Because it kept happening with other objects they owned for a lot longer.
~~~
It had been a few months since Sasuke left the village. Some couple of months and Naruto hated it.
He hated how he felt that absence in its entirety, how just the knowledge that he was gone was enough to set him off the edge and just how empty Team 7 and Konoha itself felt without him.
It was enough to make him lie awake at night for a while.
On one of those nights, he remembers the switch. He remembered that with the start of a new month arriving, so should something of Sasuke's. And so he searches his entire apartment, with only moonlight to help him, desperate to find what doesn't belong to him.
Hours upon hours pass and there is nothing. Naruto spends a sleepless night trying to find a whatever it was that never got there in the first place. And he thought it kind of made sense. Because when Sasuke left, he didn't take much, at least according to Sakura.
When the sun rose up and he realized he was late to meet with Jiraiya, the Uzumaki boy bolted, parkouing his way to their meetup spot.
"Well, there he is." The older man greeted him. "Did Kakashi's bad habits get to you already?"
"Mah, I'm not that late!" Naruto complains with a pout before smiling and putting on a I'm-ready-to-take-on-the-world facade. "What do you have for me today, old pervy sage?!"
"Where's your kunai?"
"Huh?!"
Jiraiya glances down. "You have two, don't you? And you keep them in that pouch on your right leg. So why is there only one there?"
"GAH!" Naruto jumps back when he notices. "I thought it was there! Damn, lemme run back home real quick!"
His teacher lets him. The young child turns his room upside down and never finds the second kunai. Did it… Sasuke had it. And he would have it for the entire month.
"Hmm…" A voice came from behind him.
Naruto jolts in surprise when he sees Jiraiya in his balcony, squatting on the railing.
"You asked me what I have for you today." The old man grins. "I have a story."
"A story!? Don't fool around me with me, old pervy sage! I need to get stronger to bring Sasuke back!!"
"Hai, hai, but see…" Jiraiya steps down, eying his student with intense sincerity. "This is of extreme importance."
Naruto huffs, crossing his arms over his chest as he falls and sits on the floor. "Well then, what's that story?!"
"It's about bonds." The man begins. "What do you know about soulmates?"
"Eh?" Naruto scratches the top of his head. "Soulmates? It's… hm…" He holds his grin, thinking. "That gibberish of two people making up two parts of a whole, right? Like romantic stuff."
"It doesn't necessarily need to be romantic. It just means a bond so strong, those two people understand and love each other more than they do others. So you see… we live in a world where we can know for sure who is our soulmate."
"HUH? HOW??"
"Your objects get switched with theirs." Jiraiya explains. "Every month. And they usually hold great importance to the owner."
The child hears this and has trouble processing the new information. Because if he does, he will understand that his soulmate left Konoha, that he had fought with him nearly to death, and that he was the person who Naruto thought he hated for years but had turned out to be his best friend. And oh what a blow to his heart that would be.
"So for today," His teacher continued, "I will let you mull over that. And our training can continue tomorrow."
"WAIT, NO-" Naruto grabbed his robe before the man could flee. "Why did you tell me this?!"
Jiraiya hums in response. "Good question… I wonder… Well! I hear someone calling me, until then, Naruto!"
The man slips from the child's grasp with ease. Naruto screams, calling him back but he's gone. And the new knowledge he had started to sink in, as his eyes widened with realization.
The jerk was his soulmate. His best friend. Someone he loved and understood more than anyone else.
He drops to the ground, knees colliding with the hard wooden floor.
And there are no objects from Sasuke with him for months on end. For approximately two years.
Somewhere far from the outskirts of Konoha, Sasuke Uchiha sees the symbol of ninjas, something he had long begun to despise, a kunai that belongs in a set. And he knows where its twin is and who it is with.
He wants to throw it as far as he can, and he does. But he knows when the morning comes, it'll be in his pocket again.
~~~
He's sixteen and it's been two years. He has no idea where Sasuke is, how he is and what he's been doing. He realizes no amount of personal objects he gets every month will give him enough understanding of what was going on in the Uchiha's head and he wondered if the boy himself really knew.
In the meantime time, team 7 grew. Yamato and Sai can't fill the hole left by Sasuke. And it's unfair to expect them to so Naruto doesn't. But when they are travelling outside of Konoha, seeing other villagers, meeting new shinobi and tracking down the fallen ninja, his absence, ever present, is crushing.
And by now, all of them know the deal. Something of his goes missing when something of Sasuke's arrives. Yet, it seems that at least Kakashi is the only one who knows what that means, for now. Not because the young teenager had told him, mind you, but because his teenager was a snoopy sneaky little bastard who seemed to know bits and pieces about everything.
So when Sakura finds a sword in their lodging for that night, she recognizes it immediately. It's the one they see their friend with after actually finding him for the first time in two years.
"It's Sasuke-kun…" She whispers when the only one who can hear her is Naruto. "What did he get of yours this time?"
"I don't know." He admits. "It might be something that was back in Konoha and not with me."
And he's not wrong. What the Uchiha holds in his hands is his old headband, with the Konoha symbol crossed. What he looks down upon is what should've been the symbol of the end of his bond with Naruto. Yet their belongings keep switching and the memory of the twelve year old kid who grew up to try and catch him for four more is ingrained in his mind. Because of this, he will never be truly alone or powerful enough until Naruto Uzumaki is dead.
~~~
It's their last battle. Both have grown, both have trained, both have become stronger… and both finally come to an understanding.
When Naruto tells Sasuke he feels his pain, it's the truest sentence he's ever spoken into existence. From when he saw how alone the child was after the massacre of the Uchiha clan, from when the teenager finally managed to kill his brother, to now, when the same teenager screamed, begged, Naruto to let himself be killed.
For that month, Naruto was gifted one of Sasuke's old arm warmers, albeit a destroyed one. He has it in his pocket during the entire fight. And Sasuke… his friend digs into his own clothing with his still existing arm and pulls out a chain, Naruto's necklace.
"I keep trying to throw these away." He confesses. "I would have tossed them to the side of the world if I could. But they keep coming back. They are insufferable pests, like you."
Naruto laughs and coughs due to the pain it brings. "You're as stubborn as ever."
"And you're as stupid as ever."
"But I'm your friend."
Sasuke turns his face away. "Shut it, stupid."
The trace of a tear marks his face and Naruto smiles at the sky. Part of it is sad, his friend spent years dealing with such pain and trauma alone, and part of it is… not happy, per se, but content, that he won't have to anymore.
~~~
When Sasuke decides to leave the village, Naruto gives him a parting gift. It was originally his to begin with, anyhow.
"You kept it for four years." Sasuke holds his old headband in a tight grip as he speaks.
"Because I knew you'd come back."
And he knows he will again.
"I'll keep it until we can properly solve things between us." The Uchiha responds, but the one he says this to has nothing left to solve with him.
He still knows better than to say that the work's already done.
"You better."
Sasuke snickers. "Will you be Hokage by the next time we see each other?" Then he asks, teasing yet hopeful.
Naruto grins. "You'll just have to find out, won'tcha?"
Sasuke rolls his eyes. "I'll see you around, stupid."
"Until then, jerk."
Once Naruto gets back home, he knows this time the absence of his soulmate and best friend is both temporary and for healing. He imagined staying in Konoha for Sasuke, after everything he's been through, could end up being more harmful than anything else.
And this time he's okay, because he knows Sasuke has Naruto's picture of Team 7 from when they were kids to keep him company for at least a month while he himself has a dark black cape to give him a specific kind of warmth he only ever got from the Uchiha survivor.
~~~
It is years by the time they see each other again.
And he has not, in fact, become Hokage, taking a job as a Jounin instead. He likes where he is, going on missions and working up to becoming a sensei for a team of twelve year old brats. His goal to be acknowledged came to life after the Shinobi War was over and done with, and if he were to be true with himself, becoming the Hokage had never been about the job itself now, had it?
So at the start of the new month, Naruto is able to instantly notice what goes missing and what comes to replace it. His old jacket from his childhood days is no longer in sight and in its place he sees an old shirt of Sasuke's with the Uchiha crest at the back. It's both expected and a wonder that he still holds on to his clan's name and its symbols.
Naruto doesn't expect to sense his chakra as early as he does - which is to say the moment Sasuke steps inside the outskirts of Konoha. The Uzumaki man runs to the gate, willing to wait however long until his friend gets to the village. And it takes him very little, which makes Naruto think he ran - or jumped between the trees.
And this is when he sees it for the first time he can even remember, a breathless Sasuke who needs time to catch up.
"Sasuke," Naruto goes to him, grabbing his arm and putting it around his neck, "you didn't need to get here so fast."
"Yes, yes, I, I did." The man breathes in with each word. "Can we go somewhere private?"
"Ahrm... sure. Is my house okay?"
He nods and lets himself be taken away. Naruto gently lets him sit on his bed, stepping back and noticing how different he looks. His jaw is more squared, his dark hair now covers one of his eyes, and his face seems wider. He is just as handsome as he was when he left.
"Naruto." He calls. "Do you know about soulmates?"
"HA?!" The blonde blinks several times before nervously laughing. "Eh, yeah, I've been told a story or two."
"And it has to do with switching objects, doesn't it?" Sasuke chuckles with some slight bitterness to it. "So, how long have you known?"
"Ah, I'm surprised that you know, jerk!" Naruto sighs, smiling back. "It's been a few years."
"How long?"
"What's with the interrogation?! Did Sakura ask you to investigate me now?"
"Why would this have anything to do with Hogake bussiness, stupid?"
So there it was. The falling into old patterns like rain inevitably falls after the appearance of darker clouds.
"How long, Naruto?"
He grunts. "Since we were around twelve."
"AND YOU NEVER TOLD ME, STUPID?!"
"Hey jerk, you were kinda too far away and then you left the village again, when was I supposed to tell you again?!"
"Oh, I don't know, during the Shinobi War, or when we fought for the last time, or when you saw me off!"
"Yeah, like those were good times to say, Hey, Sasuke, GUESS WHAT! We're soulmates, so what do you think, huh?!"
"It would be better than finding out through whispers outside of Konoha! You could've told me in any of the letters you wrote me, stupid!"
"I didn't think that was a thing to tell you on paper!" Naruto defended. "I would have told you now if you hadn't brought it up first…"
"Naruto, it's been years!" Sasuke yells, standing up. "Years, do you understand that?"
"Yes, but listen!-"
An arm squeezes him before he can finish. Sasuke has a firm grip on Naruto's left shoulder, trying to bring their body closer as if even their skin was something that could get in the way.
When he speaks again, his voice is quieter, almost a whisper, and it quivers with emotion. "I wouldn't have been gone so long if I knew."
The Uzumaki gulps upon hearing the words and attempts to keep tears at bay. "Don't say that. You needed time."
"Might've not needed this much."
He lets out a laugh, hugging Sasuke back. "Well, glad to know you're not out to kill me again."
"Oh no, I am."
"Sasuke!!"
"You're such a loser, you know that?" The other says. "So stupid, so stubborn. You never think of yourself first, do you?"
"I- what?"
"Be a bit more selfish." He continues. "That's all."
"I wasn't-"
"Yes, you were." He buries his face in Naruto's neck. "I don't think I'll be away from the village as long now."
Naruto takes a second to register the sentence. "You won't?!"
"There are more reasons for me to stay."
The blonde pulls back, keeping his friend at arms length. "You can't say that!"
"Why not?"
"Because this, it's not your home anymore, is it? You can go anywhere! You don't have to be in pain anymore, you c- you can-"
"It wasn't." Sasuke corrects him. "I feel like it can be again. And I haven't been in pain that way in a while, Naruto." His dark eyes meet sky blue. "I've been just fine."
"You…" Naruto's jaw clenches and he bites his lower lip, the grip on Sasuke's shoulders becoming just a tad bit stronger. "You really are okay with staying?"
"Yes. Aside from the fact my soulmate is here, Team 7 is also the closest thing I had to a family, you know."
This makes a smile grow on both of their faces. The blonde man chuckles. "Sakura will be happy to hear that. You think you might wanna head to her office?"
Sasuke scrunches up his nose in quick movement before replying. "Maybe later. We have lost time to catch up on."