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Sasuke doesn't tend to sleep well.
Naruto doesn't really either. He's bad at falling asleep. Tends to just wander around the house until he gets tired enough—Sasuke just wakes up in the middle of the night. Sometimes, Naruto does too, and finds him sitting on their engawa, halfway through the door. All painted in pinks and oranges and Naruto's favourite colours. All tired and warm and waiting for him. Sasuke's back's against one side, his feet are against the other. Naruto picks a side to sit on.
It's outside, today. Sasuke doesn't look up as he comes, but his arm does reach for him. Naruto takes it, and the sun is just about coming up. The sky is full of clouds, all full and curved and catching on to each other. Catching on to the light. Naruto had always been one to stare up at the stars.
In his older age, that seemed to be…changing.
"You're up early," Sasuke greets him, and he's tired. He'll fall asleep soon. He always settles after Naruto comes out to find him. Naruto's bugged him about it a million times—wake me up when you go. Come back to get me. Just stay in bed, if I can help you go back to sleep—
But Sasuke needs to move for a bit. Random, slow pacing that helps him think—helps him get here. Naruto thinks he can understand that.
"You haven't even slept, have you?" Naruto asks, and Sasuke does look at him, that time. Dark eyes. Wane smile. The bitterness is fading with age. The sharp edges in his soft eyes. Naruto doesn't know what it is about it that makes him crawl forward, but he does. He kisses Sasuke, soft and slow. It'd been a night like this when he'd kissed Sasuke for the first—well, second—time. A morning like this.
Something about the way Sasuke had looked at him. Something about the way he had reached. Sasuke had lifted a hand, and Naruto's whole body had followed.
"I sleep better in the day," Sasuke says, and Naruto understands that, too. There's only so much you can do after training half your life to travel at night, and hide in the day. And Sasuke's had it way worse than Naruto. Naruto would take weeks to flip back after a long mission. Sasuke never even had that luxury.
"I'll make you tea," Naruto offers, and Sasuke's playing with his fingertips. Flipping over his hand.
"You hate tea," he says, and he kisses the flat of Naruto's palm.
"Not if there's sugar in it," Naruto says, nudging forwards. Naruto's hand slips from Sasuke's grip, but only to catch his body. "And cream."
"Put it in the freezer and call it ice cream," Sasuke deadpans, with his arm running soft along Naruto's side. "There's no point in the tea at all."
Naruto snorts out a laugh.
"Maybe I will," Naruto threatens. "Maybe I'll just have ice cream for breakfast."
Sasuke rolls them over and pins Naruto to his back.
"No, you will not," he says, low and tender. He kisses the nape of Naruto's neck. The part where his shirt sits on his shoulder—the part that it misses on his collarbone. He's moving down, and it makes the heat in Naruto's stomach pool low.
"That's a different kind of breakfast than I was thinking," Naruto teases, and Sasuke snorts. He's ridden Naruto's shirt up. He's kissing along the bottom of his stomach. Naruto sighs, and falls back and succumbs to the feeling—if only for a bit. Until Sasuke gets bored.
Sasuke rests his chin along Naruto's hips, and looks up at him. He's smiling, now. Something about it makes Naruto smile, too.
"Can I help you?" he asks, and Sasuke flicks his waistband against him and stands. The morning cold hits him in a graceless, merciless way, and Naruto nearly yelps. He stands, instead, stumbling after his heat source.
"You're a jerk," Naruto says, forcing him into the hug. Sasuke's gone to make his own tea, and Naruto's just clinging to his waist, now. But he's nice and warm again.
"I am," Sasuke agrees. "It's one of my defining traits. Are you going to let me turn around?"
"No," Naruto says, but he does. He pulls back and sits on the counter, and Sasuke opens a drawer to grab their tea. He'd filled the whole thing with it. It was Naruto's favourite drawer.
He really didn't like tea.
Sasuke flicks Naruto on his way by, and Naruto kicks at him and complains and jumps down to bother him. Sasuke laughs and stays stubborn and doesn't turn around until Naruto's kissed his whole neck, and even then, it's just to shut Naruto up. It's always just to shut Naruto up. Naruto knows every excuse Sasuke has. He knows how badly he needs to cling to them.
(Sasuke's smiling, when he goes in for the kiss, but Naruto keeps that to himself.)
The light shines orange and hazy through the window, and Naruto is tired, and Sasuke is tired, too. It's a normal kind of morning for them. Like waking up, after a battle—it's a residue on them. The feeling hasn't really relented. The fatigue. The relief. It just feels like they've finally done it. They've finally finished. They're aching all over, they can barely move with the bruises, but it's okay.
They can rest.
It took them a while to find somewhere to stay, but this has been Sasuke's favourite so far—a little house, on a hill, by the ocean. They're just above it. They have to walk down the hill—which is really more of a cliff—to get to it, but hell, something has to get Naruto to practice his chakra control. He's quick to lose the stuff he doesn't use.
Sasuke isn't, though. One of the perks of the sharingan. Naruto doesn't think he'd trade for it—but then, sometimes, Sasuke looks over at him, and the window his behind him, and the sun is coming up, and Sasuke is smiling, and Sasuke is bathed in pink and orange, with the clouds spreading out like they're wings behind him, and Naruto just—
He just wishes he could keep that picture forever.
He breaks it, instead, impatient as he is. He kisses Sasuke and goes to find some food. Some breakfast to make, or something. Naruto likes a good breakfast, but Sasuke barely tends to eat. He likes little salads—healthy stuff, with nuts and things, and so that's what Naruto makes him. If he's been up all night, he'll sleep half the day. Whatever food Naruto can get into him is good.
"Vegetables," Sasuke sighs. "What a sight."
He's feeling better. Naruto doesn't know how nobody else had figured it out. The more of a dickhead Sasuke tended to be, the better mood he was obviously in.
Naruto brandishes his knife as if it's a threat, and Sasuke flicks the tip of the handle as if it isn't. Naruto stabs it into the cutting board and spins around, and Sasuke pins him with his body. His chest. His hips.
He's pretty…physical this morning.
Naruto tilts his head as if he's a challenge that will not yield. Sasuke smiles like he's accepted it.
"Come with me to the beach," Sasuke demands, and Naruto plays with the idea of saying no. Just to see what Sasuke would do. Just to see how he would choose to convince him.
"For breakfast?" Naruto asks. "You gonna fall asleep down there?"
"I could," Sasuke threatens, and Naruto's smile widens.
"Fine," Naruto says. "Fine. Let me…finish this up."
Sasuke slips back enough to let him turn, but bothers him the whole time.
It's not a real beach. It's filled with jagged rocks and there's no real way to get there without scaling their cliff—but there is one little sandy part up in a crevice, where the water can't really reach. That's where they tend to go.
The water's loud, but nothing else ever is.
"I forget too much of my dreams," Sasuke tells him, and the sun is almost completely up, now. It's found them, too. The cliffs and the clouds aren't going to do them any good at this angle. "I can't seem to hold on to them. No matter how I…try."
"You're spoiled by your good memory," Naruto tells him. "The rest of us get that feeling all the time."
"Well," Sasuke deadpans, "if they have your level of processing, I suppose they would."
Naruto kicks Sasuke's foot off of its ledge. Sasuke accepts the blow with a smile. It's more like a touch. It's more like a tease. Sasuke goads for attention, and Naruto loves to give it to him.
"You ass," Naruto tells him. "I make you food and come to find you and that's the thanks I get? What are you dreaming about anyway?"
"Thank you," Sasuke says, and the soft kiss is enough to melt even the fakest offense off of Naruto's face. "None of your business."
Naruto's interest is immediately sparked.
"None of your business," Sasuke insists, and Naruto nods quickly. Smiles to himself. Keeps his mouth shut. Hands Sasuke his stupid little salad.
Sasuke glares at him, but Naruto says nothing, and so he can't complain.
"You're incessant," Sasuke grumbles, and Naruto wiggles a little closer to his side. "It was just—about our lives together. So far. The good and the bad."
Oh. Sasuke looks out at the sky, but Naruto just stays watching him. There's a sort of—wistfulness there, he supposes. Fatigue and weight and that sort of residual sadness he always seemed to have, but something…warmer, too.
Naruto tucks his ankle under Sasuke's.
"You're stuck on the bad, aren't you?" he teases, and Sasuke's lips twitch.
"Well," he says. "Not so much, anymore."
Naruto feels a little bloom of victory in his chest. He shuffles a little closer to Sasuke.
"That's enough out of you," Sasuke tells him, as if Naruto had said anything at all. Naruto guesses his grin is probably saying too much.
"You wanna talk about any of it?" he asks, and Sasuke…considers it. His immediate reaction is still to say no, even now. Naruto knows that.
But he doesn't.
He lets himself think.
"Maybe," he settles on. "Maybe. In a while."
Naruto can live with that. Sasuke isn't always someone to open up, especially without anyone else forcing him to. Naruto usually has to bash himself against Sasuke's stubborn arguments fifty times before he finally breaks through. Sasuke is getting better with all that, but still.
This feels good.
Sasuke eyes him, as if knowing what Naruto's thinking, but says nothing. He's done his tea, now. He always leaves the last little bit, even before it gets cold. Naruto doesn't know why he does it, or even if he notices.
Maybe it's something about not wanting it to be over. Maybe it's something about wanting something warm to come back to.
He glances over at Sasuke again, but Sasuke isn't asleep, yet. He's usually passed out by now. Something about the morning air—all salty and water-logged—is making it hard to feel sleepy.
He's comfortable, but he's not tired at all. Sasuke slips his shirt off, and makes it even harder.
"I'm going to go for a swim," he tells him, as if Naruto wouldn't have gladly accepted Sasuke's sudden desire to strip with no explanation at all. He leans to the side, and watches Sasuke go with a sigh.
They spend most days like this. It's a weird, boring sort of life. If you'd tried to tell Naruto as a kid what he'd be up to, now, he would've…
Well, no. He would've made a big huff about how lazy and old he must've gotten. And then he'd have crumbled, the first moment he was alone. Naruto couldn't imagine he would've slept, as a kid, if he'd been able to daydream about the love he'd grow up to have.
…
Naruto takes a sip of Sasuke's tea. It's bitter and vague and still warm. He's coming around on the taste. He's never going to tell Sasuke that, but—
There's a memory there, now. An association. It's this. It's little mornings, like these.
Sasuke springs up and wipes his hair back. He tends to just float, sometimes, letting the waves carry him wherever they wanted to. Naruto decides his chakra control needs a little more practice, and he steps out, on top of the water. Sasuke rights himself, and looks up.
Naruto crouches down with a grin.
"Bold move," Sasuke greets him, and Naruto knows it is. He knows that. He just likes to bug Sasuke too much.
"Yup," Naruto says, and Sasuke pulls himself out of the water. Sits on it, with his legs still floating within.
He's bragging about his chakra control. The dickhead. Naruto—Naruto can do that too.
(His butt gets wet. Sasuke smiles about it, but says nothing.)
"Does it bother you?" Sasuke asks, and Naruto looks at him. "That we don't tend to…speak about these things."
"You're gonna have to be more specific," Naruto tells him. "I never shut the hell up."
Sasuke snorts out a laugh, and Naruto finds his leg, under the water. It's always cold in the mornings. Sasuke never seems to mind it as much as he does.
"Feelings," Sasuke says. "Positive emotion. We don't tend to…"
He trails off, and Naruto looks at him.
"Well," he admits, "I guess I did just kind of kiss you, huh? No talking."
He shrugs, considering the thought. It's not really fair to ask him tough questions when he has to focus this hard on other stuff. Naruto has so much chakra to wrangle into doing what he wants, it's like trying to command a swarm of bees.
"I don't think I mind," he says. "But I don't think I'd mind if we…did. Um. Why d'you ask?"
Sasuke gives him a glance. Dark eyes, wet hair, drops of water on the tips of his face. The sun over his head. Naruto slips a little further into the ocean.
"The dream," he explains simply.
"Oh," Naruto says. "Did we—talk?"
Sasuke nods.
"You did," he says, and Naruto…oh.
He laughs a little.
"Okay," he says, pulling his legs out of the water. "Okay. Uh-huh. Did I do the whole confession thing?"
He crosses his legs. He's totally soaked and completely off balance, but Sasuke's face is visibly getting redder.
"Really!" Naruto says. "Huh. I didn't think you'd be into that."
"That's enough."
"Aw, but I'm supposed to be talking," Naruto complains, and Sasuke shoves him into the water. Naruto lets his control break with a terrible splash—a shock of cold, soaking right into his body—but it's worth it. He grabs Sasuke's foot, too, and pulls him underneath.
Sasuke lets them both sink.
He's not great at opening his eyes underwater. Not yet. Sasuke's face is all blurry and bubbly—yellow and blue, down here, as the waves rock them closer and closer and closer to shore. Sasuke swims towards him and Naruto pulls him in for a kiss anyway—messy, and half-missed, before they both swim up to the surface.
Naruto's laughing as soon as he hits the air.
"You're an idiot," Sasuke greets him, and Naruto grabs him by the waist.
"An idiot who tells you things you wanna hear, apparently," Naruto says, and Sasuke is immediately wriggling free of his grip. Naruto swims after him. Nothing that leaves Sasuke that flustered is going unbothered.
"But if the dream was about us and our lives and I just did a whole big speech about it or something," Naruto asks, as Sasuke heaves himself back up to the rocks, "what's the thing you think you're not remembering?"
Sasuke presses his lips together.
"From today?" he asks, squeezing the water from his body. "My reply."
Naruto blinks.
"I don't need a reply," he points out, but Sasuke's brow furrows.
"You will."
"I won't, though," Naruto insists. "I already know. I know you."
Sasuke still looks unsatisfied. Naruto doesn't really understand. But Sasuke returns to his salad and Naruto stays in the water—regretting, a little, jumping in without bothering to take any clothes off. There was nothing dry for him up there. The sun wasn't even properly hot yet.
He folds his arms over the rocks, and looks up at Sasuke. Sasuke presses his bare foot to Naruto's face and pretends to kick it aside.
"You would want a reply," he tells him, and Naruto grins up at him.
"Yeah," he says, "but I wouldn't need one."
Sasuke looks like he's pouting. Naruto loves it.
"I don't need this either," he says, and he's barely even eating the salad. He's just poking at it. Like he needs a distraction from the nothing else that's here. It's still so hard for him. Sasuke can talk up and down about how selfish he is and how he only really cares about himself and his goals and whatever, but trying to get him to do something nice for himself is like pulling teeth. He can barely even stomach honey in tea. It's too sweet. It's too good.
"Mmhmm," Naruto hums, and he's already made up his mind. He's already daydreaming. He's already resting his head on his elbows, looking up at Sasuke's face, thinking about what he might say. It's not like they're new thoughts. Naruto thinks them all the time.
Sasuke looks terrified.
"Don't—" he starts, "don't just do this because I—don't do it. It's nothing, Naruto."
"Okay," Naruto says simply, but Sasuke doesn't trust that at all. And he shouldn't.
"I mean it," Sasuke says, and Naruto lifts himself out of the water. Crawls up on Sasuke's feet.
"Hi," he says. "Have you met me? Do I listen to you?"
Sasuke's lips thin. Naruto sits, and waits to be shoved back into the water.
"I kinda spend all day with you and thinking about you," he continues. Sasuke visibly panics. "This isn't the confession. Relax. But don't you think I've already confessed to you, like. A million times a day?"
He looks like he's holding his breath. Naruto touches his fingers with his own, just to try to warm them up a little. Thaw them a little. Sasuke's so frozen.
"Don't you think you've already replied?" Naruto asks, and it's quiet. The waves crash against them. Naruto feels the spray on his back. The salt, sticking to his skin. The sun's starting to warm, at least, but the chills still break out.
"If you want a big speech about our whole lives together and how I don't think my life could ever be mine without you, I can give that to you," Naruto says. "But I think you know that already. So I think I should just tell you I love you."
Sasuke doesn't move.
"I think I should just tell you I love you," Naruto says, "a hundred times a day."
He sees Sasuke swallow. Naruto doesn't even think he's blinked. He would've said it sooner, if he'd known it was something Sasuke had wanted to hear, but it was just like—talking about the sunrise. Yeah, the sun was up that day. No shit. Was it worth appreciating and watching and being happy about? 'Course. Was it worth announcing to the world? No. There wasn't any point.
Unless, Naruto supposes, you wanted to talk about how particularly good it felt that morning.
"Naruto—"
Naruto leans in to kiss him. He knocks Sasuke's tea, but Sasuke catches it—he's well-practiced in making up for Naruto's mistakes. Well-practiced in knowing when he'd make them. Their bodies are wet and warm and sure, it's mostly Naruto stealing Sasuke's body heat for himself, but Sasuke welcomes it like he would a blanket. Like he would the sun. Sasuke lays back and Naruto kisses him until they're both out of breath. Sasuke barely even lets him go.
Even as he pulls back, Sasuke stays laying, staring at the sky.
Naruto puts a gentle hand on his arm. Just around his bicep, where he can see the chills start to rise.
"I think," he says quietly, "I should go back to bed, now."
Naruto laughs a little and agrees. He's happy to get out of these wet clothes anyway. Happy to get warm and dry and less salty in their cozy little house. Sasuke stays staring at him, even though Naruto can never really catch him at it, and forgets to put his clothes back on.
Naruto doesn't mind. Naruto can forget, too.
He takes extra blankets to the bed. He always likes to have them. Sasuke likes it, too, so he can be left with something when Naruto kicks them all off in their sleep. They don't bother to close the blinds, although they had got some, way back when they'd moved in—
But there's something about sleeping in sunlight. It's different. It's warmer. It's like it's a choice. It's an easier choice for Naruto, sure, but he likes to think Sasuke might get there. One day, when he's sleeping better at night, and he takes a nap during the day. Just because he can.
It seems weirdly in reach today. The dreams that kept Sasuke awake had never been this…happy, before. Sasuke's still flushed about it all when Naruto joins him, but Naruto can't help the smile. He really can't.
"You're laughing at me," Sasuke mutters, and Naruto shakes his head.
"I'm not! I'm not," he insists. "I'm just happy, Sasuke. Come on. Aren't you?"
Sasuke presses his lips together. He looks like he wants to close his eyes. He looks like he needs another distraction. Naruto smiles and nuzzles himself into the bed. Their sheets feel so soft in these mornings. Naruto thinks he might be converting, too.
"I am," comes Sasuke's voice, and Naruto blinks. Sasuke swallows, and his eyes…shine, brighter than normal. Naruto pulls him in and traces his fingers along Sasuke's back—a smooth, rhythmic motion. It steadies Sasuke's breath. It lets him feel his heart. It's a reminder of where they are. Alive. Well. Warm.
"I am," Sasuke says again, and it's a sigh against his neck. "I love you too."
Naruto blinks.
"What?"
Sasuke doesn't move. Sasuke doesn't answer. But he does smile.