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When Naruto opens his eyes, he’s acutely aware of his age. It’s quite funny to think about it—when he was younger, he always woke up on his birthdays expecting to feel more adult, more grown-up, yet found he never did quite feel like he was ten until he turned eleven. Now the years have gone by, blurring into one another, and Naruto feels every bit as old as he is.
“Sasuke,” he grumbles, looking around the room blearily. The left side of the bed is empty; Naruto can only surmise he’s gotten up earlier than him. In the past, ten, twenty years ago, this would have been cause for concern. Naruto resents the amount of times he’s burst into his friends’ houses, wild-eyed and heaving, only to announce Sasuke is missing, yet again. After the fifth time, Naruto took to telling people who asked him where he was that he’d gone out for milk. They’d look concerned.
“It’s been five months since I’ve seen him.” They’d say.
“I hear milk is hard to come by these days,” Naruto would spit and stomp off into the distance. Three months later, Sasuke would drag his sorry ass back and have the audacity to look sheepish. Naruto would punch him, then kiss him, then tell him to never do that again.
Repeat.
Naruto drags himself out of bed, joints popping, and pushes open the sliding door that hides their cozy bedroom. Sasuke is indeed in his kitchen, struggling to read the newspaper and flip eggs with only one hand. The paper rustles as his hand tremors; he drops the spatula to push his thick-cut glasses higher on his nose.
“Good morning,” says Naruto, walking over to their breakfast table where Sasuke has already laid out a pitcher of juice. “You’re up early.”
“Mm,” says Sasuke. “Thought about leaving you.”
“Sure,” he snorts, pouring himself a glass. “And how far would you get with those eyes?”
Sasuke scowls at him, then sighs and turns back to his eggs. “Life’s not fair,” he laments, accidentally breaking one of the eggs as he flips it badly. “You’ve at least got the Kyuubi to slow your age. What do I have?”
“Glasses.”
“Very funny,” Sasuke drops the eggs onto two plates and serves Naruto the broken one. Coming round to join him, he drops a kiss on his cheek before sitting down and stealing some of Naruto’s juice. “So. You feel sixty yet?”
“Ugh,” Naruto groans, tearing into his eggs in a bid to forget about it. The big six-oh. Jesus Christ. He never thought he’d live to twenty and with each year that passes does not know quite what to make of all the extra time he’s been given. “Don’t remind me.”
“You used to love your birthday. I’d never hear the end of it.”
“I’ve had sixty birthdays now, I’m tired.”
Sasuke hums when he hears this. “Well, if you’re that tired, I could finish what I started and kill you now.”
Naruto chokes on his eggs and gives him a withering glare. “I’m glad you find that a moment to joke about,” he snaps. “The trauma. The PTSD.”
“We’re fucking old now,” Sasuke gives him his version of a cheeky grin, which is basically an imperceptible twitch of his lips. “I think we should be allowed to joke about it. What’s a bit of laughter before inevitable death?”
Yeah, Naruto thinks. They are so old now. Sixty years old isn't too big of a milestone for ordinary citizens, and even for shinobi a good number of them make it past the big sixty. But for the two of them, embroiled in so much fate, wrapped up in so much destiny, making it to sixty somehow feels like a glitch in the system. He's not quite sure how they did it, either. Sasuke's body crumbled first. It wasn't a surprise. Given how much chakra he'd expended over the years and just how furiously he used it, his eyesight spiralled down when they hit forty, and the rest of him has been going ever since.
Naruto's fared a bit better, what with the immense reserves that Kyuubi provides keeping him in a relative state of health, but there's something mental about it. Something about--being older than anyone around him ever was. He's not too sure what to do with his old age.
“You are so bleak,” Naruto sticks his tongue out at him. “You’d think after all these years I’d rub off on you.”
Sasuke pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth, then says, “you have.”
“Huh?”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
For some reason that thought makes Naruto blush—then he thinks about how weird it must be for a sixty year old to be blushing and squashes the sentiment. He’s supposed to be a bitter old man now, a bitter old man who barks at kids to get off his lawn and I’m not the Hokage anymore but I’ll kick your ass type shtick. “I guess you are,” he mumbles, and shoves a huge piece of bread into his mouth.
Sasuke watches him with barely concealed fondness. Then, as though he loves to ruin his day, chimes in with an overly innocent, “don’t forget about the ceremonial dinner later.”
Naruto rolls his eyes so hard they nearly fall out. “Ugh.”
“You’re the one who wanted the village to acknowledge you. This is it acknowledging you.” Sasuke snickers at him, the nerve of that asshole. How’ve they been together for nearly forty years? How’s he put up with this? He searches the vast reaches of his mind but can only conjure up his extraordinary patience as an answer.
“I wanted that fifty years ago,” Naruto sighs and thunks his head down onto the table. “My god. You’d think they’d leave an old man to die instead of parading him around.”
“You’re a war hero.”
“With each day that passes I’m starting to understand Kakashi more and more. Hey—what if I sent Kakashi in my place?”
“What, in his urn?” Sasuke butters his bread and considers this. “Depends. Do you believe in the afterlife?”
Naruto chews his bottom lip. “I mean, what’s he going to do? Kill me?”
Sasuke shrugs.
Naruto sighs, lying his head down on the table. “I just wanted to spend today with you and Sakura.”
A small exhale from Sasuke, then as though taking pity on him—which he should, they’ve been lovers for more than half their lives, after all, where’s the humanity—he gently cards his fingers through Naruto’s greying hair.
“Many people would kill to be where we are, you know,” he murmurs, fingertips dancing on the nape of Naruto’s neck. “You have a home, and somebody who loves you, and most of all you’re a jinchuuriki that’s probably going to die of old age. Tell me the odds.”
“Ah, so you admit you love me?”
Sasuke baps him on the head sharply, then continues gently petting him. The duality of man. “We’re having a moment,” he reprimands. “Stay in it.”
“Yes sir,” Naruto finds his motions are lulling him back to sleep, the cool countertop of their little breakfast bar soothing. “I suppose we should be grateful for what we’ve been given, though it feels like I fought heaven and earth to get it.”
“And aliens,” Sasuke helpfully adds.
“And aliens,” Naruto acquiesces. “From the moon. I think I’ve seen enough.”
“More than enough,” Sasuke agrees, then they look at each other and laugh. Well, Naruto laughs, Sasuke kind of breathes out through his nose and directs his smile to their empty plates. “Come on,” he says, hand stilling in Naruto’s hair. “We’ve got only so many hours before some important dignitary comes to steal you away. Go get ready.”
Naruto grins at him. “Sure,” he says. “And when you need help doing up your buttons, old man—ow!” Sasuke has smacked him on the head with the plates he’s started gathering.
“I do not need help with my buttons.”
“Right.”
(Later, Sasuke needs help with his buttons. Naruto does them up slowly and thinks that maybe being sixty isn’t so bad if he’s sixty with Sasuke. He always thought he’d feel so—lonely, so uncertain, being older than his parents ever were, older than Jiraiya ever was, but now that he’s here it—it’s not as scary as he thought. Sasuke kisses his nose because he can’t see without his glasses and, yeah. There’s a certain sort of peace that comes with being old. He likes it.)