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Look, moving into Sasuke’s apartment wasn’t really a bad thing. It was practical. It was logical. It was, one could argue, even the right thing to do.
To the surprise of exactly no one (not even Sakura had held out any hope on that front), the moment he and Naruto were deemed fit enough (once it was confirmed that no, really, neither of them were going to grow an arm back), Sasuke took off into the world on a secret mission, and there wasn’t enough bribery money in the world to get Kakashi to tell anyone where. At least, nothing was more persuasive than Tsunade’s uncontrollable fury, especially now that she was so buried in post-war medical work she’d broken her own record for days sober.
The recovery period after the final fight between Sasuke and Naruto hadn’t lasted long. In fact, it had been pretty damn short, if anyone had cared to ask Naruto. But nobody did, of course, because he had plenty to do on other fronts. Konoha was under pressure not only from its own residents but from the outside – the feudal lords, especially those from the Land of Storms, weren’t exactly thrilled about the wreckage left behind after a fight with an ancient beast and a bunch of aliens. Naruto’s chakra, he learned, wasn’t just useful in combat (or for sexy no jutsu, let’s be honest): the Kyuubi’s bottomless reserves were more than welcome in the rebuilding of villages, cities, even countries.
Naruto’s hunch was that Sasuke had been saddled with rebuilding the Valley of the End. It would fit Konoha’s sadistic streak perfectly. Self-flagellation dressed up as a mission.
“Have you seen him around?” Naruto asked one day, directing the question at the friendliest member of the group in Gai’s absence: Rock Lee, obviously.
“Sasuke?” Lee’s eyebrows formed a configuration rarely seen, even during the war: confusion. “Was I supposed to?”
“In the Land of Fire? I’d hope so,” Naruto shot back, laughing. “I don’t know if they’ve had time to pull him out of the Bingo Book in the other countries yet.”
Lee shrugged, his usual good humor returning. “Ah, my friend, rest easy. I’m absolutely certain there’s no one on this planet capable of capturing him,” and, glancing at Naruto sideways, he elbowed him and added, “not even you could do it! Have faith. Have confidence!”
“Wow,” Naruto pronounced the word with no emotion whatsoever. “You’re a great friend. Real encouraging of you. I’m even starting to miss Gai. But have faith,” and he elbowed Lee back, “one day you’ll come close to him!”
Lee’s laugh was louder this time. The people around them, thankfully, were already used to the decibel levels the two of them could reach and didn’t bother looking over. Or so Naruto thought, anyway.
𖦹
Sage mode had countless advantages, from the most obvious to the most personal (it was a way of easing the ache of missing Jiraiya, for example). One of the abilities Naruto had drawn on at least up until that night, by far, was sensory perception, since he’d never exactly been known for being – or needing to be – subtle. Even outside of sage mode, he felt his surroundings more sharply, including things that weren’t exactly tactile: sound, smell, the way a movement distorts the air.
He already had the kunai in his left hand and Kurama’s chakra burning through his veins before whoever it was came anywhere near the bedroom. Ever since he’d moved into Sasuke’s apartment, Naruto hadn’t bothered setting up any kind of protection, which, in hindsight, was monumentally stupid. Nothing. Not a single seal, which embarrassed him even more – he’d wanted to properly learn that body of knowledge, which he also thought of as something inherited from his mother, and, for reasons only grief knows, he kept putting it off.
Then again, what kind of lunatic would break into Sasuke Uchiha’s apartment? An apartment that, as the whole village knew, currently housed the fucking savior of the world? The Child of Prophecy? The son of the Fourth Hokage, the pupil of a great sannin, the student of the Sixth Hok-
When he saw it, he caught on quickly. It wasn’t “who” but what. A swarm of bees rushed toward Naruto’s face, and he, in shock, did little more than choke back a scream and spring to his feet, leaping as fast as he could toward the en-suite bathroom (of course he slept in Sasuke’s bed. Where else? The couch? Spare me).
A metallic voice filled the air before the water started running, but it was already too late; there was no avoiding the cold shower now. It bellowed: HOLD ON.
Dazed, Naruto turned off the shower and stared at the swarm. It was hard not to stare, honestly. It was a pretty hypnotic thing.
I CAN’T TELL YOU WHERE HE IS RIGHT NOW, the bees echoed in perfect unison. Naruto didn’t need to ask who “he” was; he knew. He would always know. BUT I HAVE A MESSAGE FROM HIM FOR YOU.
“Yes?” Naruto stammered. He could be loud and obnoxious, but never rude.
IT’S A SHOPPING LIST. HE’D LIKE THESE ITEMS, FRESH, IN THIS APARTMENT BY NEXT WEDNESDAY. THINK YOU CAN HANDLE THAT?
Was he imagining things, or were the bees being a little ironic?
“Sure,” he answered, mildly offended.
GRAB A PEN AND PAPER, KID. WE DON’T HAVE ALL NIGHT.
I’ve seen aliens, Naruto thought as he walked naked through the apartment looking for something to write with. One of the small luxuries he allowed himself when he wasn’t on missions was sleeping naked. That was exactly how the bees had found him, the poor things. I’ve fought aliens and won, he reminded himself. A swarm of bees is nothing.
The way the bees dictated the shopping list and ingredients to him, Naruto thought, had an almost maternal, scolding quality. Tomorrow I’m starting on seal studies.
𖦹
After the Valley of the End, the moment he was released from the hospital, Sasuke headed to what would be his last stop before leaving Konoha again. Even uninvited, Naruto came along. Sasuke didn’t object to the company either; if anything, he was asking Naruto questions the whole way. Where had that one shop ended up? Did Sakura’s parents still live on that street? Was the Yamanaka flower shop still running? What else had been lost in Pain’s attack, besides the Uchiha compound? A lot, Naruto explained. Almost everything, to be honest.
Sasuke had been talking more since the Valley, but all that extra talk seemed to be directed only at Naruto – which flattered him deeply. When they got to the apartment, Sasuke politely murmured “make yourself at home,” which (maybe) Naruto took more literally than intended.
On his way out, Sasuke explained that he had a mission “more personal than professional.” Naruto was left haunted, trying to work out whether that was some kind of joke on Sasuke’s part. He’d assumed Sasuke would come back before leaving for good; all he had on him was an enormous cloak, more like a poncho. Naruto had only ever seen that kind of garment farther north, in the Otaru Mountains. He should have suspected that was the goodbye, because before heading to the door, Sasuke stepped close to him and touched the arm that had been shattered in the final fight – a soft touch with the tips of his fingers, almost ghostly. Naruto felt the whole arm tingle, whether or not it had been amputated. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Sasuke’s. He wondered if the rinnegan let Sasuke see his body the way it used to be. Does the sharingan remember every scar it made, every one Kurama healed? He wanted to ask, but Sasuke spoke first.
“Don’t forget to take care of this,” he said, and he touched (caressed?) the stump of the lost arm. It was confusing: the tone was a reprimand, but the touch betrayed concern. Still, Naruto preferred it that way: Sasuke, talking.
𖦹
When Sasuke walked back through the apartment door that Wednesday, a week before the bees came in, Naruto chose to hurl a question at him like a shuriken instead of greeting him politely.
“So you’re ANBU now?”
“Hello to you too,” Sasuke murmured as he calmly pried off his shoes, using his heels instead of his hands – his hand.
The bees, Naruto realized hours later, had obviously been a courtesy from Shino. Why the hell would Shino be running errands for Sasuke? Why the hell Shino, and not him? It only took one trip to Ichiraku with Kiba to find out. Shino had been promoted within ANBU; one of his new duties was handling communications in the safest, most efficient way possible. Naruto came to understand that he was an exception when it came to subtlety. A swarm of bees wasn’t exactly discreet. Efficient? Absolutely. It had taken him three hours to get back to sleep. He’d have remembered the list without writing it down.
Even more shocking was finding out that Sasuke answered to Shino. Or relied on him. Naruto could think of few things less in keeping with Sasuke’s style than serving an institution so thoroughly subordinate to Konoha.
And, again, Shino? With all due respect. Shino?
“So?” Naruto asked. Suddenly, he realized he sounded like an old woman welcoming her husband home after decades of marriage. Barefoot in the kitchen, chopping vegetables, a dish towel thrown over his shoulder.
Sasuke turned to face him and seemed to be thinking the same thing. At least, that was how Naruto read the smirk spreading across his face. It was incredulous.
“So?”
“Shino owed me a favor,” Sasuke explained, now taking off the poncho carefully. Meticulously. Very slowly, even by Sasuke Uchiha’s standards. “He still does, actually.”
Seething, Naruto grumbled, “Let me see your face.”
Sasuke stopped mid-motion, frozen for a long moment. Naruto grew even more livid, this time for another reason: Sasuke obeyed. Instead of taking off the poncho, he put it back where it had been. His hair really was long, Naruto noticed. He took his hand off the knife and made a quick gesture near his own face, motioning for Sasuke to push the bangs out of his eye. That was when Sasuke noticed Naruto’s new arm. His expression twisted, more curiosity than revulsion.
“You first,” Sasuke said, his voice cutting through the small apartment. That tone, Naruto thought, I haven’t heard since the war.
𖦹
The truth is that, ever since the Valley of the End, Naruto had been incomplete.
Not in a dramatic or metaphorical way. It was sort of obvious: he’d lost his arm. In the first hours after regaining consciousness post-fight, he chalked the feeling of emptiness up to that. Kurama had been thorough this time, more tender than Naruto had ever felt from her: she’d done everything as carefully and quickly as possible, genuinely sorry she couldn’t 3grow him a new arm. Naruto, of course, was moved. The sensation really was strange.
Within a few hours, he could already walk around the hospital. First observation: no one has the nerve, or even the inclination, to stop the guy who saved the world. Second: no one has much desire to take care of the guy who tried to kill the guy who saved the world. Naruto was met with no resistance whatsoever making his way to the room where Sasuke was.
For days, Sasuke slept. It was hard to reconcile the figure so powerful a few days earlier, full of strength and feeling, with the slack, frighteningly still figure on the bed. They – he, really; Naruto wasn’t supposed to be there, but, oddly, no one seemed surprised to find him there too – received visitors over the course of almost a week. Naruto didn’t remember how much time passed. He still doesn’t.
What he does know is that it was on the second night in that room that he realized the physical emptiness left by his arm was impossible to reach. Even Kurama was silent. Anger at the Uchiha, maybe, but Naruto didn’t feel any spark of resentment coming from her.
He slept well for the first time in years.
The next day, sore from the position he’d spent the night in, he went looking for a more comfortable chair. Once again, being a hero helped: it was easy to get used to being treated well. Being treated like a person. All the gurneys and beds were occupied, they apologized profusely, they were still dealing with the aftermath of the war. But for him, they brought in the armchair from the hospital director’s office. Tsunade herself carried it into the room.
He dragged the armchair close to the bed, promptly sat down in it, and propped his feet on the sheets. There, he started talking to Sasuke. Maybe that was why his talkativeness came later. Or maybe not – Naruto had always talked to Sasuke, at Sasuke, about Sasuke. When Sasuke woke up, Naruto was talking. The transition was so natural, comatose to awake, that it felt like he was watching him wake up like any other day, except it was the middle of the night and Naruto was whispering instead of saying good morning. He was telling Sasuke about when he’d met his mother. I even remember her smell, Naruto was saying as Sasuke opened his eyes, perhaps remembering his own mother too.
The pain of the emptiness, the pain of absence, only came back to haunt him after Sasuke left in the poncho and didn’t return. He waited in the apartment. After that, he didn’t want to leave anymore. It was more practical, more central in Konoha, closer to everything, even Ichiraku. Sasuke wouldn’t mind. Hell, if he’d seen the state of the apartment Naruto had grown up in, he might have offered sooner.
He’d thought that, in the apartment, the pain would fade again. It didn’t. It wasn’t really pain, to be honest. It was an empty echo, a vacuum too intense and too uncomfortable to ignore, throbbing like a second heart. He hadn’t had time to ask whether Sasuke felt the same. He wanted to do it in person, to touch his arm the same way Sasuke had touched his.
As Sasuke’s mission dragged on, the stream of solutions proposed by Tsunade and the medical team only grew. Naruto didn’t have the strength to turn down the Hashirama cells option; he saw in Tsunade a longing he felt too, except his was for someone still alive. Maybe that would be the answer: it would fill the emptiness, make something grow inside him. It didn’t work, but that part he never told anyone. The physical side of it went very well. In the eyes of the doctors and nurses, the project was a success. In Sasuke’s eyes now, in the middle of the kitchen in his apartment, Naruto looked more broken than before.
𖦹
Naruto told the whole story, and so did Sasuke. They started talking in the kitchen, then with the poncho finally off, then in the living room, then in the bedroom, and now wrapping up in the bathroom, with Naruto trying to talk while brushing his teeth. Sasuke wiped a bit of toothpaste off his chin while Naruto tried to explain the logistics of the cell transplant for the fifth time.
“I don’t know if I want to understand this,” Sasuke said, his eyes tired but alive.
Naruto spat into the sink. “Me neither, now that I think about it.”
Without missing a beat, Sasuke cut in: “Shall we go to sleep?”
“Sure,” Naruto agreed mechanically. “You must be tired. I’ll grab my pillow.”
“Why?”
Naruto stared at him, half a laugh, half incredulity. “Are you really this much of an asshole? Making me sleep without a pillow on that abnormally hard couch of yours? How do you even stand it, by the way? Only you would have a couch that hard. Only you, with your perfect little posture,” Naruto punctuated the accusation by jabbing Sasuke right in the middle of the chest with the handle of the toothbrush, “could sit on that piece of crap without getting back pain. It’s garbage. I regret to inform you.”
“No, you don’t regret informing me at all,” Sasuke replied, his tone flat. “If you could, you’d stab me with that toothbrush right now.”
“I should,” Naruto admitted, with some amusement.
“Spare me, please, oh savior-hero,” Sasuke went on in the same bored tone. “I shall sacrifice myself, in the name of the people of all nations, and sleep on the hard couch.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Since when do you say absolutely?”
“The apartment is yours.”
“You’re living here.”
Silence. Naruto wanted to laugh, but something in Sasuke’s face had a certain seriousness to it. He faltered. Automatically, he brushed a strand of hair off Sasuke’s forehead, frustrated that he couldn’t read him better.
“What do you want me to do? Move out?”
Sasuke only looked more exasperated.
“What do you want from me?” Naruto asked again, in a very low uncharacteristic tone.
“You did the shopping,” Sasuke argued weakly, but still with authority in his voice.
“You ordered me to.”
“I asked.”
“You sent a swarm of bees to order me around.”
“I didn’t know it was going to be a swar- are you afraid of Shino’s insects?”
“For your information, sharingan, plenty of people in the war were afraid of Shi-”
“You were afraid of Shino’s insects inside your own house, perfectly safe, with no war in sight, knowing full well who Shi-”
Naruto smiled. Sasuke was a little taken aback by how feline that smile made him look. He was even more taken aback by how beautiful he found all of it.
“Where was I?”
“In your house,” Sasuke confirmed. He wasn’t falling for any tricks. He meant every word coming out of his mouth.
“And the couch?”
“Unfit for human use, as you’ve just informed me.”
“Would you say the couch is mine too?”
Sasuke huffed and made to leave the bathroom. “For the love of-”
He stopped, not because Naruto grabbed him, but because Naruto was very gentle about it. “If the house is mine…”
“I’m already heading to the fucking couch,” Sasuke shot back. How had Naruto gone even more feline? Was it the Kyuubi taking shape? Not even then did the sharingan spring to life. I’m safe here, Sasuke knew. This is home.
“If the couch is mine, I forbid you from sleeping on it,” Naruto said.
Sasuke couldn’t take it. He laughed. A short, quick laugh that stripped all the feline right out of Naruto.
𖦹
Neither of them shut up to go to sleep. Naruto talked, Sasuke talked even more. The most impressive thing, however, was that when they finally did sleep, Naruto woke up at one point, sweating bullets. Very unlike him; his body ran hotter than normal to begin with, and he’d always preferred the heat. He understood when he went to move and felt the weight of Sasuke’s leg tangled with his. He didn’t move. He fell back asleep soon after, the sun already stroking the curtain.
He woke to the tips of Sasuke’s fingers tracing his new arm.
“Can you feel this?” Sasuke asked as soon as Naruto looked at him, a slow, unhurried look, still drunk with sleep. Half in that world, half in another. “When someone touches that arm?”
He nodded. Sasuke was watching him, his face soft, his eyes anxious. It was so unlike him. Instead of alarming Naruto, though, it only filled him with tenderness.
“I can still feel mine sometimes,” Sasuke went on, fingers still running along his arm, eyes still on his face. As far as Naruto could tell, he was staring at his cheeks.
“Does it hurt?” Naruto asked.
It was Sasuke’s turn to nod, his eyes still tracking the same spot. Naruto swallowed hard, suddenly anxious, a knot of energy rising in his throat. He felt his lips tingle. Now Sasuke was looking at them.
“It hurts a lot,” Sasuke continued. “I’m used to it.”
“Mine too,” Naruto hurried to agree, anxious to push past the nervousness that felt so unfounded. He felt the moment drifting delicately between them and, dazed, he feared that the smallest things, even his own voice, could shatter it if he wasn’t careful enough. He pictured the throbbing energy of a rasengan, powerful and so fluid. He had wielded that energy so many times. But this isn’t war, this isn’t a fight, Naruto thought. This is home, he realized. A foreign concept. The nervousness, explained. “It’s like a vacuum,” he had less luck with the words he spoke than with the ones he thought. Everything was prettier in his head. Bigger, brighter. “It hurts all the time.”
Silence, but an electric one. Naruto remembered that this, too, was Sasuke’s nature – powerful and, rather than fluid, considered uncontrolled by many. Sasuke moved first with his eyes; he pulled them away from Naruto’s face and lowered them to his new arm, gleaming, hollow. Naruto watched, without understanding what he was seeing. He felt before he understood the press of Sasuke’s mouth against the inside of his wrist, where he could still feel the ghost of those fingers from minutes before. He realized the vacuum no longer hurt.
“Do you still feel it?” Sasuke asked, mouth still against Naruto’s skin. “The pain?” he added a moment later, probably because of the stunned silence that followed the question. He seemed apprehensive about looking at Naruto again, preferring to keep his eyes down.
Naruto shook his head. He realized Sasuke couldn’t see him, but Sasuke must have felt the movement, because a second later he finally glanced up at him again.
“You don’t feel anything?” Sasuke asked.
“Try again,” Naruto answered quickly. His voice sounded like an echo of the boy he’d been back at the academy, watching Sasuke from a distance, feeling he was being watched back. He thought Sasuke would purse his lips, curse him, even laugh. But Sasuke turned his face back to the arm, now kissing the delicate skin at the crease, where the old arm ended and the new one began. This was a completely new animal; Naruto wouldn’t have expected it in a million years. As he marveled, he realized he had wanted it for a long time too. Wanting – want, hit him head-on. It blew the vacuum apart, filled his body, seemed to stretch all the way to his soul. He went dizzy, but not so dizzy that he couldn’t feel Sasuke’s mouth touch his new skin one, two, three more times.
“I wish I could kiss yours,” Naruto seemed to blurt the words out. The moment they were out, he felt a thousand times lighter. The moment Sasuke turned to look at him, the relief turned into electricity.
“But you can,” he replied.
Naruto huffed, part impatient, part in awe.
“You can kiss me wherever you want,” Sasuke went on, as casually as if he were saying the grass was green.
Exactly two weeks later, on Sasuke’s birthday, Naruto would say that same sentence back to him, in that same bed, only without the sun bathing the curtains. By then, he would already have figured out how in love he was with the weight, the sound, the texture, and the taste of Sasuke’s mouth. With all of him. In that moment, however, in order to understand, he needed to give in to the want. All the aching throb he had once felt in the vacuum now pulsed warm, melting on the tip of his own tongue.
Sasuke moved in slowly, as though about to attack, except that Naruto knew each of his attacks well and could tell that this one was unprecedented. The most lethal of them all.
“May I?” Sasuke asked right in front of his face, eye to eye, the red of the sharingan beginning to bleed into the pupil.
“Make yourself at home,” Naruto whispered, feeling the longing slip from his tongue to his lips. It felt like he was going to faint.
“I am,” Sasuke whispered back before closing the void between them.