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They meet where they always do, a couple miles out from the base of the mountain, far enough into the woods to be swallowed by the trees. They call it a safehouse, simply because there’s no better name for it. It’s certainly not a house and it’s barely a cabin. It’s recklessly built but surprisingly sturdy, designed for efficacy and efficiency but still comfortable and calm. They’ve never made any effort to make it warm, Sasuke figures the atmosphere is more an accidental byproduct of the time they’ve spent there together.
Because it is warmth that blooms in his chest in these moments. The sun cracking the edges of the horizon, painting pinks and purples with streaks of orange across the sky. It filters down through the canopy’s leaves and the cracks in the window and paints Naruto’s face gold. He makes a pretty stupid picture, asleep next to Sasuke. Drooling all over the pillow, a dopey smile on his face, blonde hair somehow messy despite being closely cropped to his head. It’s paradoxical, this man’s existence. It once made Sasuke blind with fury. Now it aches, like a bruise painting the back of his ribcage.
They always say they have to leave before sunrise. It’s a promise whispered into each other’s mouths in the dead of night as they tumble across the threshold, holding each other tight enough to bruise. Sometimes Sasuke digs his nails in hard enough to bleed, only because he knows it makes Naruto’s knuckles go white around his skin. He wants Naruto’s fingerprints branded across his throat, wants Naruto’s nails to scrape along his vertebrae, wants Naruto to dig his teeth into the meat of Sasuke’s heart and pull.
But Naruto is Naruto, and he does everything but. Sasuke can tell him a million times that he likes the marks left behind, that it doesn’t hurt much at all, that he likes this kind of hurt yes Naruto, it is a sex thing, please let’s drop this conversation. But all Naruto does is huff out this exasperated laugh that’s achingly fond, ghosting his lips along slowly purpling skin, and Sasuke has to close his eyes and pretend not to feel his lips taking the shape of apologies, countless and kind.
They’re not for him, not for his ears to hear. They are addressed to a loving wife who is left sleeping in a bed built for two, who swallows the rotting lies she is spoon fed without question, who trusts in her husband wholeheartedly and does not see his smile crack under the weight of his guilt. It is a guilt that Sasuke only feels the echo of. He is lucky to have a wife who doesn't love him, who picks the blonde hair off of his clothes with a knowing smile, laughing when he returns the favour. Sasuke is in a marriage of companionship and understanding, of safety and secrecy. Naruto isn’t.
Naruto’s heart, strangled and stepped on from childhood, is still too big for him to bear alone. He had confessed through tears that he has a title and a wife and children, that he has a life that he has always dreamed of and that he never once thought he’d deserve but he still wants. It is a dirty, disgraceful want, that poisons his mind and haunts his dreams and he can’t live under its weight and it was then that Sasuke had taken his face with a shaking hand and kissed him, gentle and slow and selfish.
Naruto’s eyes open with a flutter, long blonde eyelashes breaking way for eyes that are cornflower blue and as clear as the summer sky. He blinks once, twice, and then smiles. It’s soft with the remnants of sleep and sex and sweetness. It crinkles the corners of his eyes and colours the tips of his ears and makes his nose scrunch up the slightest bit, like it has to move to accommodate the sheer breadth of his smile. It’s like watching a flower unfurl from bud into bloom. Sasuke has it memorized, the pattern and pacing and pull and all, but he documents it with care. Tucks this memory into the corners of his mind, pockets of joy that he keeps folded away. He wants to die with something beautiful behind his eyes. It’s a childish notion.
“G’morning.” Naruto whispers, his breath ghosting along the inside of Sasuke’s wrist. Lightning sparks at the base of his spine.
Sasuke swallows, lest his heart tumble out from between his lips. “Good morning.” He croaks back, pulling the man he loves in for a kiss, letting himself pretend, at least for a moment, that the life he leads is just a bit warmer, just a little bit kinder.