Archive of Our Own

Forget what Father Brennan said

We were not born in sin

Leave a note on your bed

Let your mother know you're safe

Sleep on the Floor - The Lumineers

Here is what June looks like:

The ice cream is melting again.

Naruto watches it drip down his wrist, a slow, white streak racing against another slow, white streak, criss-crossing over his pulse point as if they’re trying to see which one can reach his elbow first. It’s oddly hypnotizing. The afternoon heat is weighing them down, but the sharp pop of Sasuke’s chewing gum snaps him out of it.

He looks at the white smear on his skin. Out of habit, he thinks of licking it off. Wasting ice cream feels like a sin, an unthinkable crime born from leaner years, even if he knows he’d just taste the salt of his own sweat instead of the cheap sweetness of vanilla. He remembers where his hands have been today—gripping bike handlebars, dragging through the dirt by the river. Down his boxers, watching Sasuke. He remembers that he doesn’t even like vanilla all that much. Not enough to warrant that, anyway. But at least he wouldn’t be sticky.

"You’re going to get sticky," Sasuke says from his spot. He has his sunglasses on, and his face is turned towards the clerulean sky, but Naruto knows he's looking at him.

"Already am," he mutters and it's retort.

That's a habit too, snapping at Sasuke. Arguing with Sasuke. Rebutting his beliefs. He doesn't even dsiagree with him right now, but it's habit.

Come to think of it, Sasuke himself was habit.

Sometimes all he can see is Sasuke, and he cannot imagine a day where Sasuke is not occupying the faded orange single-seater couch on his porch. It's the only seating arrangement they have outside, and Sasuke's always been the one to use it. Maybe it’s because Sasuke was the first of his friends to ever come over after school, years ago, when the porch felt bigger and their shorts were shorter. It seemed to fit. 

Naruto had always held Sasuke a little higher than the rest of the world. Maybe it was a pedestal. Or maybe it was just the way people don't let the statues of Gods touch the dusty floor. You keep them elevated. You keep them right where you can look up at them.

He wonders what other things he does purely out of habit as he watches the white drip onto his legs. He can't lick his legs, he frowns. Or maybe he can, he's always been a little more flexible than Sasuke. That's just a fact, one they've tested, one Sasuke refuses to acknowledge even though Naruto has the scar on his knee from the time he proved it. All he'd have to do is lean back against the warm wooden wall, pull his foot closer, closer—

Naruto frowns again at the ice cream that dripped onto his legs. He thinks about how his grandmother used to say you could tell everything about a person by what they did when they spilled something. He thinks Sasuke would blot it. He thinks he himself would just let it dry.

He watches it dry. White against his sun-brown skin.

Sasuke is so particular about the chair. Not like he guards it, not like he says that's my spot, but he's always there first, always already settled when Naruto comes out with whatever they're having that afternoon: ice cream, cold drinks sweating through the glass, or sometimes just nothing, just the group of them together. The chair's cushion is faded in the shape of him now. Orange gone pale where his head leans back. Naruto's mother had bought that chair at a garage sale before she died, and he'd never thought much about it until Sasuke started sitting in it. Now he can't look at it without thinking of Sasuke, which feels like the kind of thing you don't say out loud.

A lot of things, lately, feel like the kind of thing you don't say out loud.

"Would you still be friends with yourselves?" Sakura asks.

Everyone groans, and the sound abruptly yanks him out of the heat and back into the present.

Sakura has been asking odd questions ever since summer break started. They’ve all been somewhat sad questions, or neutral questions without a single happy answer. Naruto knows because he’s tried everything to remain optimistic, twisting his brain into knots just to find a silver lining to hand to her. Sasuke says it’s because she’s disappointed she didn’t land that prestigious summer internship with Dr. Tsunade, but Naruto thinks Sasuke is missing the point. Naruto knows that’s just how girls are. He's always thought girls existed at a slight remove from the world everyone else was in, like they could see something the rest of them couldn't and it made being here less interesting.

Maybe it’s because the world hates them so much. He doesn’t know if he fully gets it, but they hate him too. There aren’t a lot of situations where he finds himself right about something and Sasuke wrong, but this is one of them. Sasuke doesn’t like to admit it, but he finds it hard to understand anyone at all. Naruto, though, Naruto finds it a breeze. He finds himself understanding why his parents are always busy, why they simply aren't there for him. It hurts and bites, but he understands.

"There she goes," Kiba says. Always so quick to be mean, so quick to judge. If it weren't for the guy's optimism, Naruto isn't sure he has a reason to keep Kiba around as a friend. Not that he would ever cut anyone off though, he's never been that privileged. But he thinks he'll be okay if one day, Kiba is not occupying his spot at the corner. 

He'd miss Akamaru though. That part's not complicated at all.

"The Philosophy Cigarette has hit."

"I don't even smoke."

"The Philosophy Ice Cream then."

Sakura throws a napkin at him.

It misses by a mile.

"No, seriously."

She points around the circle.

"Would you?"

A pause.

"Absolutely not," Shikamaru says immediately, and Naruto finds himself smiling at the sleeping boy. Shikamaru is the only one completely stretched out, flat on his back against the cool shadow of the porch, making him the lowest one among them. He looks entirely unbothered by the heavy heat, or the sticky air, or the weight of Sakura’s question. But if there is anyone at all Naruto would miss after Sasuke, it would be him.

Everyone laughs. Even Sakura. Even, barely, Sasuke.

"I'd hate me."

"Why?"

"I'm annoying."

"You're barely present enough to be annoying to us."

Another pause.

"I think I'd be friends with me," Naruto says at last. 

The confidence is surprising.

"Oh?" Ino says.

"Oh?"

Naruto shrugs.

"I think I'd find myself funny."

"You do laugh at your own jokes."

"Because they're funny."

Naruto starts laughing before anyone else does.

Exactly proving the point.

Sasuke thinks he would hate to be friends with someone as depressing as himself. He doesn't voice it out loud though, he's never wished for people to understand him. Although, he knows Naruto does. He tries to understand Naruto too, and finds that it comes easy to him. 

The gum in his mouth has lost all its flavor. It feels very fitting. The afternoon is bleeding away, the day is almost over, and soon he’ll have to go back home.

Maybe not. Maybe he'll stay over at Naruto's again. 

He tries to catch Naruto's eye from across the space but Naruto is trying to lick his legs. Exasperated, he looks away. 

He hates vanilla. He knows Naruto hates it too, but he'll never admit it to anyone. Not even to him. Naruto doesn't like the word hate, doesn't like to hate. That's a principle he holds like a door open in a storm, noble and exhausting and going to cost him something eventually. Sasuke has tried to tell him this, but he's obviously just been stubborn about it. So, Sasuke compensates for the two of them, hating everyone and everything for Naruto. 

It's not a sacrifice he'd ever name as one.

Itachi came home yesterday.

He'd tried to talk to Sasuke, as he always did, and it was a very one-sided conversation, as it always was.

He told Sasuke he wished he were that young again, and that he missed the halcyon days of his childhood. Sasuke had looked at him for a long moment and said nothing. He doesn't know what days Itachi is referring to. He doesn't know what childhood Itachi is looking back on with that particular soft, ruined expression. They grew up in the same house. Sasuke has checked.

He has never been like Itachi, and every time he goes home, something reminds him.

"Would you be friends with yourself?"

Through his Ray Bans he can see Naruto squinting at him. Sasuke gets up. Almost head-butts him in the process, close enough that he can feel the near-miss of it, close enough to touch and he thinks maybe he intended to when he feels dissapointment at Naruto moving away. He does not think of how maybe he just needed the contact. He thinks about it extensively in the process of not thinking about it and groans.

"Probably not," Sasuke says, shifting his weight. "Would you actually like it?"

"Yes, I would," Naruto says instantly, his voice entirely devoid of the hesitation Sasuke carries. "I'd never be alone then."

"You aren't alone now either." Sasuke rolls his eyes, and he knows Naruto can tell he did, even behind the dark lenses. He isn't alone, because Sasuke is here with him is what he's trying to say in those words and he hopes Naruto can hear it. 

"I will be, if you go home," the blonde says and that makes Sasuke smile so wide, he's glad he's not facing the boy. He wonders if Naruto can tell how many of these smiles he's missed. 

He has a feeling about it though.


"Alright," he says. "If you insist."

"Fuck yeah!" The sound of Naruto scrambling upright behind him. "Sleepovers with you are my favourite."

"Do you think," he says carefully, "that you should still be calling it that?"

He can feel Naruto working through it.

". . . Slumber party?"

He walks inside before Naruto can see his face.

Here is what June smells like:

Bug spray and Ino's mom's citronella candle that she gifted Naruto, and the river three blocks east, and cigarettes. Not theirs—a neighbor's, drifting—and then, later, theirs.

Stolen from Kiba, who stole them from his older sister, who probably knew and didn't say anything. Naruto coughs on the first one every time. Every summer, every first cigarette, the same cough. Sasuke doesn't say anything, and he never coughs. He can smell it on his clothes the next morning, and that's part of it too. That's June too.

Sunscreen that didn't get rubbed in all the way. Convenience store slushies going warm in the cup.

"Hey, Sasuke?"

"What."

"Are you going to tell Itachi you're staying?"

As if he ever tells Itachi anything. Naruto knows that, but he still asks. Naruto has always sort of liked Itachi. It was a strange kind of admiration Sasuke never really understood.

"No."

"He'll want to know, y'know."

What is his problem? "I'll tell him tomorrow when I go home."

Naruto shifts, his shoulder rubbing against the wood of the cabinet. "I bought that stupid instant ramen you like. The seafood one. It was on sale," he says, trying to borrow grief from tomorrow at Sasuke going back home.

"I don't like it," Sasuke says automatically. "It's just less salty than the others."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." Naruto tilts his head back, his spiky hair rustling against the cabinet door. "We should go to the river tomorrow. Before the sun gets too high. Kiba said there's a rope swing some younger kids left by the old bridge."

"It's probably rotten."

"So? We'll test it." Naruto looks over at him, his blue eyes catching the pale, dim light from the window. "We'll see who breaks it first."

Sasuke reaches into his pocket and pulls out the crumpled pack of cigarettes. He slides one out, the paper slightly damp from the humidity of his pocket.

"You will," Sasuke says softly. "You're heavier than you look."

"What, no!"

The morning doesn’t look any different from the night before.

Sasuke is asleep beside him.

The phone rings at seven-thirty. It’s an old landline attached to the kitchen wall, its ringer a loud, metallic jar that splits the quiet of the house like a crack in a plate.

Sasuke is no longer asleep, and soon he's not going to be beside him.

Naruto gets up.

"Hello?" "Yes this his son." "Oh." "Oh." "Okay." "Understood." "It's. . . okay?"

"Who was that?" Sasuke is still on the bed.

Naruto just stares at him, holding the phone in his hand. "Um. You want ramen?"

Sasuke is staring at him oddly. 

"Coffee then?"

"Sure."

Naruto cries once, briefly, in the bathroom, with the tap running. He thinks he's being quiet about it. He probably isn't. Sasuke is still at the table when he comes back out, and neither of them mentions it, and that is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for him.

The night doesn't look anything at all like the morning.

"Namikaze Minato got into a crash last night at around midnight. Despite our best efforts, he didn't make it. Uzumaki Karin, your sister, has been contacted as per his request. We are so sorry for your loss."

The words echo in his ears. Maybe he did end up borrowing grief last night; it doesn't hurt as much as it should.

Sasuke knows something is wrong.

Naruto's rushing, his movements frantic and clumsy, trying too hard to look like he's just having a normal Tuesday. He grabs the kettle before it's finished whistling.

"Fuck!" Naruto barks, dropping the kettle with a loud, metallic clang that echoes off the linoleum. He immediately shoves his knuckles into his mouth, his shoulders hunching up to his ears, his body twisting away. "Dammit—fuck," Naruto yells, and Sasuke knows.

Sasuke doesn't say anything.

He gets up, fills a glass with cold water, and sets it on the counter next to Naruto's hand. He doesn't wait to see if he uses it. He goes back to the table and sits down and looks at nothing in particular.

He doesn't ask. He's never been good at asking, and Naruto's never been good at being asked, and they've built something between them in that shared absence. Naruto will say it when he can hold it in his mouth without it breaking. Or he won't. Either way, Sasuke knows he will still be at the table.

Naruto watches Sasuke watch him. He knows Sasuke is waiting, but not really. He'd like him to talk, but not really.

"Ramen?"

"Sure."

Naruto pulls two packs of the cheap seafood ramen from the cupboard. His hands are steady now, though the red burn on his knuckle from yesterday has turned into a dull, angry blister. He doesn't look at it. He tears the plastic wrappers open with his teeth, the crinkle of the cellophane loud in the small kitchen.

"Water's low," Sasuke observes, pointing a chin toward the kettle.

"I'll get it," Naruto mutters. He walks to the sink, turns the tap, and listens to the pipes do that same shuddering groan before the stream hits the metal bottom of the kettle. Dshhhhh.

Sasuke doesn't sit at the table. He stays on his feet, reaching into the silverware drawer to pull out two pairs of mismatched chopsticks. One wooden, one plastic green. He lays them perfectly parallel on the counter.

"You want egg in yours?"

"Obviously."


Right. Obviously. Naruto cracks two eggs on the side of the pot and a shell falls in. He fishes it out with his fingers, and burns himself a little again.

Naruto's shirt is sticking to his back and his feet are bare and the floor tiles are cool and Sasuke is watching, watching, watching.

They eat on the porch, because the kitchen is too hot and the living room has no breeze and the porch has the orange couch and the grey steps and the sky doing its slow gold-to-pink-to-purple thing. Naruto sits on the steps. Sasuke sits on the couch. That's just how it is.

Sasuke scolds him when he licks the bowl, says something about it being unseemly and Naruto throws his chopsticks at him.

He notices, though, that Sasuke hasn't gone home at all.

"We have to pick up my father's ashes."

Sasuke startles.

The cigarette between his fingers twitches, a small flake of gray ash falling onto his denim shorts. He doesn't brush it off.

Naruto isn't looking back at him. He's standing by the sink, his hands submerged in the lukewarm, soapy water, staring down at the dishes. There are only two of them anyway; they've just been rinsing and refilling the same ceramic ramen bowl all day, sharing it back and forth. The coffee cups have already been washed and set on the drying rack, clean and cold.

"I'll drive," Sasuke offers, and Naruto shrugs.

"It's a long way." Naruto passes the bowl under the water. "We'll both drive."

The heat outside is different once they're moving.

The sun is blindingly bright, baking the black vinyl seats until they burn through their clothes.

The highway opens up flat ahead of them, and the wind is loud enough that talking would require effort, so they don't.

Cyndi Lauper comes on, and neither of them touches the dial.

If you're lost you can look,

and you will find me,

time after time.

"Naruto," he says when the track ends. "I am sorry."

They show up all at once. 

They show up armed with beer.

The roar of the old car pulling back into the gravel driveway hasn't even died down before the others are already there, crossing the lawn in the heavy evening heat. They must have heard the news from someone’s parents, or the police scanner, or the gossip that flows through the small town like groundwater.

They don’t ask questions. They pass around warm thirty-packs dragged out of the trunks of their cars, condensation bleeding through the cardboard boxes. Kiba is there, uncharacteristically quiet, without Akamaru this time and Naruto is disappointed. Kiba left his better half back home, and he's disappointed. 

Naruto's better half is in a jar in the trunk of Sasuke's car and he's disappointed.

Shikamaru sits on the porch railing, his eyes dark and heavy.

The others try to talk around it, offering clumsy, teenage condolences, but Naruto just swallows the beer down like it's water from the tap. Like he's trying to drown a ghost that isn't even in the room.

And then, just as suddenly as they arrived, they leave. The beer runs out, the night grows too deep, and the reality of a dead father becomes too heavy for a bunch of eighteen-year-olds to sit with. They slip away into the dark, their headlights cutting through the dust of the driveway.

The house is dead quiet again.

Naruto is a useless, heavy weight against the kitchen counter, his head lolling back. Sasuke doesn't say a word. He just hooks his arms under Naruto's shoulders and drags him to bed.

Once in bed, Naruto twists over onto his stomach, his hands clawing at the sheets, and begins to choke. It’s a horrible, and wet, and a strangled sound. It's very unlike his usual crying, the clean little sobs. But the hurt is unlike the bullies at school or a rejected college letter. 

You only lose your dad once in your life after all. A violent, retching cry that rattles through his whole chest. He kicks his legs out, trying to push himself away from the mattress, away from the room, away from the box that sits in the kitchen now holding white dust and collecting more dust.

"He wasn't even—" Naruto starts. Stops. "He wasn't around anyway. It makes no difference."

"I know," Sasuke says softly into the dark.

"He was never—I mean. I don't even—" Another wave. He lets it go through him. "It makes no difference."

"It makes no difference," Sasuke repeats.

The joint makes its way around.

They're on the porch, all of them, because inside had gotten too warm and outside is only marginally better, but at least outside has the illusion of a breeze, the occasional actual breeze, the sounds of a neighborhood that has mostly gone to sleep.

The moon is high enough now that the porch is painted in sharp, white blocks of light and deep, ink-black shadows.

The orange tip of a cigarette glows bright in the corner, illuminating Kiba's face for a second before fading back into the dark. He exhales, the smoke hanging completely still in the humid air, refusing to drift.

Shikamaru is looking at the tree at the edge of Naruto's yard. He's been looking at it for a while.

"That tree was here before any of us," he says.

"Evergreen," Naruto muses.

"It's not an evergreen." Sasuke is so boring.

"Some of them live for thousands of years," Sakura says. She has her knees pulled up, her chin resting on them, looking out. "Like Pando. That aspen colony in Utah. It's one organism. Forty thousand trees, one root system. They think it's eighty thousand years old."

"Eighty thousand," Kiba repeats, like it's crazy.

It is crazy.

"We can't even imagine it," Sakura says. "We literally do not have the cognitive architecture to feel how long that is."

"I feel like you just say words," Naruto complains.

"You are in college, Naruto."

"Yeah," he scoffs. "Bachelor of science, not cognitive architecture."

Sakura rolls her eyes and looks away.

"I want to be a tree," Naruto says.

"You'd be bad at it," Sasuke says.

"I'd be so good at it. I'd be the most—" He gestures vaguely, expansively, at the tree, at all trees, at the concept. "I'd be so present. Just standing here. Being evergreen."

"It's not an evergreen, Naruto."

"Sasuke." He turns to look at him then, and his eyes catch the dark, finding light from somewhere that shouldn't be enough. "I am an orphan now. Let me have it."

It makes the others uncomfortable when he talks like that.

Naruto likes to, though. To talk like that, not make others uncomfortable... though they far too often go hand in hand.

"I am an orphan too," Sasuke says, rolling his eyes. He has never once been uncomfortable about it. Naruto rather likes that about Sasuke.

Naruto rather likes everything about Sasuke.

"Yeah, but," he pouts. "You have, like, a brother."

"I'd rather I didn't."

Naruto fixes him a look and Sasuke flicks torn grass at him. Sasuke is always so bitter about his brother; Naruto doesn't get it. Yes the guy made life difficult for Sasuke, and yes his childhood would've been better had Itachi been more considerate of his position as an older brother but it's . . . it's not like the guy did it intentionally. 

Naruto had seen Itachi. It felt more like witnessing a man. 

Some people, he realised, really are destined to be something else entirely. 

"You have, like, a sister," Sasuke mimics him.

"Yeah, but she hasn't been home in, like, a year."

"Hey." Kiba squints through the smoke. "How come Shikamaru's not interning?"

"He rejected it," Ino answers.

"WHAT."

Sakura is gasping. Her eyes are open now, wide and green and genuinely scandalized in a way that makes Naruto want to laugh but he doesn't because that will make her mad. He knows, because he knows girls.

He kind of gets her too. Internships are the thing. Everyone's doing internships. Everyone's supposed to be doing internships. That's what college is for. Or something.

"I hate college," he says.

"Wait." Sasuke sits up. "You got offered the internship?"

"Mm. I didn't wanna go"

"You need a job," Sasuke points out.

Sasuke is still upright on the orange couch. Upright and still and impossible to read in the dark. But Naruto can tell even he thinks it was dumb.

For someone so smart, Shikamaru always does things that are dumb.

Shikamaru shrugs again.

"Not now," he says.

"One day," Sasuke says, and there's something in his voice now, something almost careful, "you'll need a job."

"I hate college. I hate the idea of what comes after college. I hate that we're all just—" He pauses. Looks at the cigarette. "Queuing."

"Queuing," Naruto repeats.

"For the next thing. Always the next thing. Internship leads to job leads to career leads to—" He gestures vaguely at the dark. At the future. At everything waiting out there with its hand extended. "I'm tired, and I haven't even started yet."

Sasuke speaks without looking up.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have right now." Shikamaru drops the cigarette, watching the ember die on the porch wood. "I know I'll need a job. I know there's a version of my life where I'm very sensible and strategic about all of this, and I make my father happy, and I'm fine. I know that exists. I just..." He pauses. "Not yet."

"Not yet isn't a plan," Sakura says.

"No," Shikamaru agrees. "It's not."

Whirrrr-clack.

The sharp, mechanical spit of Ino’s Polaroid camera cuts through the heavy humidity of the porch. She grabs the square of plastic as it slides out, waving it back and forth in the hot air like she’s trying to fan herself with it.

She's bossy about it in a way that would be annoying if she weren't so completely right every time — Kiba move left, Sasuke take your sunglasses off, Naruto stop doing that with your face — and the pictures come out alive.

The green of the leaves in the camera doesn't look as good as it does in real life but Naruto will take what he can get. It's perfect against his hair and Sasuk'e light blue shorts. He looks at another picture of him and Sakura with her pink floatie and smiles. They look like a couple in this one. For a second he can imagine a white picket fence future but Sasuke's gum pops and Naruto smiles at him, cheeks and chin dimpling with a grin, dimpling in love. 

"I have cherries!" Sakura yells and Naruto immediately positions himself for another picture. Red always looks so good on him.

He wonders if he’ll ever grow up one day and not feel the desperate, clawing need to document everything.

He looks down at his hands. He’s always been like this, saving things. Keeping ticket stubs, keeping the wrappers of candy they shared by the river, filling drawers with things that should have been thrown away.

Here is what June sounds like:

Wind chimes when Karin comes home. Metronomes.

Her key in the lock, her sandals on the porch. Sprinklers hitting the same arc, the same return. The fountain two streets over that runs all night. Record players through open windows, radios in passing cars, the jukebox at the place on Fifth that Kiba likes. Rain sticks when Ino is bored. The tambourine nobody remembers buying. The xylophone that belongs to a child somewhere on this street, practiced daily, improving slowly, a kind of evidence that time is passing whether or not you're paying attention. Glockenspiels in the distance, or maybe that's just the heat.

"There's no water again," Karin says, turning the tap.

Naruto doesn't look up. "I know."

"Naruto."

"I know, Karin."

"All you have to do is call the guy. Dad had a plan set up with the county line. There's a number on the—"

"I didn't know about the fucking plan."

Karin opens her mouth and then doesn't say anything, because Karin, for all her noise, knows when not to. She leans against the counter instead, arms crossed, and looks at her brother, and the wind chimes move outside in a small, gentle breeze.

Then she sees Sasuke in the doorway.

"Oh—" Her whole face changes, rearranging itself into something brighter. "Sasuke."

"Naruto," he says. "Let's go."

She pouts after him, her mouth twisting into an ugly line as the screen door whines open again. "Hey! Where are you going?"

"Right," Naruto scrambles after him, his sneakers squeaking as he runs out onto the porch, leaving Karin and her questions behind in the dry heat.

Sasuke's convertible is already idling in the gravel, the engine drowns out the cicadas. Naruto leaps over the passenger door without opening it, throwing himself into the hot leather seat just as Sasuke hits the gas.

"Me and my friends
Love the awkward silence. . ."

"WE GET HIGH THEN GO PUT ON SOME MILEAGE, WHAT'S IT EVEN WORTH YEAH, TAKE ME BACK TO COLLEGE!"

Sasuke looks over at the red light and it's a mistake.

A mistake he makes often.

Naruto has his head tilted back against the headrest, his eyes closed, his face turned fully toward the blinding sky. The sun is hitting him directly, turning his spiky hair into a messy, white-blonde halo and catching the gold down on his jawline.

He knows nothing is ever quite perfect. No one is ever quite perfect. For the longest time, he believed his brother was, but then he brought hom Kisame and introduced him as his boyfriend and his parents nearly had a fit.

Suddenly Sasuke was hearing don't follow in his footsteps, from every corner of the neighbourhood. 

He usually ignored them. He’d just walk out of his house, head over to Naruto's, and they’d wrestle in the mud by the river until their shins were black with dirt and their lungs burned. Maybe it would have been something more than wrestling when Naruto's hands lingered on his waist a fraction too long in the tall grass. Maybe it would have been different if it weren't for his brother’s shadow, or the weight of expectations, or the fear of being seen too clearly.

Maybe it would have all been different if it weren't for his brother. 

But at least now he knew the truth: nobody was perfect. Not Itachi, with his revolving door of boyfriends and girlfriends and his faraway high-rise and velvet suits in Tokyo. Not their parents, who couldn't handle one homosexual son, let alone two. Not that they lived long enough to find out about the second. Sasuke hasn't lived long enough to even know if it's true at all. But sometimes the sun hits Naruto and he almost doesn't believe himself.

No one is perfect, no. But when the light shifts at the intersection and he catches those seafoam-blue eyes blinking open, framed by custard-colored hair that’s tinted orange in the amberglow of the fading afternoon, he almost goes against his principle; almost believes in perfection.

"The light's green, you know that?" Naruto mutters, and Sasuke looks away.

He wonders if the feeling will ever go away.

Naruto wonders if he'll ever stop wondering about what Sasuke thinks about. 

The store is far enough that going there is the activity, not just the means to an end and Sasuke is looking at him.

Naruto feels uncomfortable in his own skin and he busies himself leaning out the window.

The road goes on forever, stretching past gas stations with rusted pumps and fields of dry corn that rattle in the hot wind.

They drive until the small town is a faint smear in the rearview mirror, finally pulling into the parking lot of a run down convenience store that will definitely close in the next month.

He grabs bags of sour chips, boxes of cheap chocolate, neon-colored candies, and sodas in glass bottles.

The drink he already has at home because he wanted it now, here, in this specific moment. He puts it all on the counter and feels Sasuke's eyes on the side of his face like a physical thing.

"You don't need all of that," Sasuke says.

"Correct," Naruto says, and pays.

When they get back to the convertible, the plastic bags crinkling loudly between them, Sasuke has a look in his eye.

Naruto wonders.

"You eat like you're trying to die before forty."

He has no idea where that came from. Sasuke is weird.

"Bold claim from a smoker."

"That's different."

"How is it different, Sasuke?"

"It just is." He takes the bag from Naruto's hand, looks at it with genuine disdain, then hands it back. "You never eat anything real. It's always... this. Whatever this is."

It’s a stupid argument. It’s small, petty, and completely uncalled for, and Naruto knows exactly what it is. Sasuke is goading him. 

Naruto rises to the bait. He wants to. He needs the noise just as badly as Sasuke does, so he leans over the console, his eyes flashing.

"Shut up, bastard! It's my money," Naruto fires back. "I'll eat whatever the fuck I want!"

"You drive like a maniac and you eat like a child," Sasuke snaps, reaching over to shove Naruto’s shoulder back into the passenger seat.

"Say that again!"

Naruto lunges.

They don't stay in their seats. Within seconds, they’re scrambling over the low doors, tumbling out onto the hot gravel of the empty parking lot, wrestling against the side of the car. The metal of the door is blazing hot against Naruto’s back as Sasuke pins him there, his forearm pressing hard against Naruto’s chest.

They’re kicking up dust, their sneakers grinding into the dirt, their breathing loud and ragged in the stagnant afternoon air. Naruto grips Sasuke’s wrists, his fingers digging into the cool skin.

Sasuke's eyes are on his lips, and with a thrill Naruto realises he no longer has to wonder.

He knows exactly what Sasuke's thinking.

"Are we really doing this?"

Sasuke yanks him down by the neck and Naruto grunts.

"Ouch — okay. Okay!"

Unbuttoning Naruto's pants should've come with a sense of embarassment. But it feels oddly familiar.

He pauses.

Naruto looks down at him. "What?"

"Nothing." Sasuke looks at his hands. At Naruto. At the quality of this moment, which feels, in a way he has no language for, like a memory. "Have we done this before?"

"We're doing it now."

"I know. I mean—" He stops. Tries again. "Does this feel—"

"Why are you going this far for me? Why...?"

"Familiar," Naruto says quietly.

Not a question.

Sasuke looks at him strangely, and there's stars in his eyes. The whole purple universe.

"Yeah," he says. For a moment there, he thought Naruto was wearing an orange jacket. Just like the color of the single-seater couch out on his porch. Whiskers on cheeks and a delightful grin

"Because... you're my friend."

"Never mind." Sasuke shakes his head. "Fuck me."

For once in his life—and he hopes Mum and Dad are proud—Naruto doesn't need to be told twice.

The paperwork had arrived in a heavy manila envelope while they were out buying junk food.

Minato Namikaze hadn't just left behind a box of ashes and a dry water bill.

He was the head manager of Akatsuki, an indie-pop outfit that had been grinding through low-rent venues for three years. Right before Minato's car went off the road out west, the band's latest single had caught a viral tailwind on the charts. They were suddenly on the verge of real, terrifying fame, and according to the contract, the management company, and the upcoming summer tour now belonged to an eighteen-year-old kid with a coffee burn on his knuckle.

The thing about Akatsuki is that nobody had heard of them when Minato Namikaze signed them.

That was his father's whole thing. Finding the strange ones, the difficult ones, the ones nobody else knew what to do with. Naruto had grown up on the periphery of it, watching his dad come home late, talking about some new act with that light in his eyes that meant he'd found something worth believing in.

He'd never paid much attention. It was his dad's world, not his. Loud and complicated and full of people who needed managing, which was the last thing Naruto had ever wanted to do with his life.

And then his dad died.

And then a lawyer called.

And then another lawyer called.

And then Karin sat him down at the kitchen table with a folder and a look on her face and explained that Minato had built the company in Naruto's name, had always built it in Naruto's name, had apparently spent years arranging for a future where Naruto would step into something instead of nothing.

Which would have been touching, Naruto thought, if the something weren't a six-piece band with a name like a criminal organization and a debut album called Infinite Tsukuyomi, and a tour scheduled to start in three weeks.

"It's stupid," Sasuke says.

The plastic bags of candy are spilled across the table, but neither of them is eating. Naruto is trying to read through a tour itinerary, his thumb tracing the jagged edge of the paper.

"It's not stupid," Naruto mutters, his voice defensive and small. "It's what he did. It's what's left."

"They're going to eat you alive," Sasuke says. "You know that. You're barely nineteen, and you've never managed anything, and they're—"

"I know."

"Then why are you doing it?"

"Sasuke—"

"Why would they even want you?" It's a little mean, but Sasuke doesn't take it back. Sasuke never takes anything back, does he? Much too proud, far too arrogant. "Seriously. Why would a band that's about to blow up want a nineteen-year-old with no experience managing them? They have lawyers. They have the infrastructure your father built. Why do they need you, specifically, standing in a room telling them what to do?"

He's right of course, but Naruto's always been much too proud, far too stupid anyway.

"Maybe they don't have a choice?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "You don't believe that."

"I don't know what you want me to do."

"You don't know anything about tech runs," Sasuke snaps, his dark eyes narrowing. He steps into Naruto’s space, his jaw rigid. "You don't know how to balance a budget, you don't know how to handle press, and you sure as hell don't know how to handle grown men who think they're rock stars. You're doing this because you think it makes him real."

"If you're not gonna help me just go home."

He hadn't meant it.

He watched forlornly as Sasuke briskly grabs his keys and drives home.

It was stupid, and Sasuke was right, and what was Naruto thinking?

They'd been friendly. That was the thing. Warm, even.

Naruto had never seen so many drugs in his life.

Deidara had laughed at everything, and Hidan had clapped him on the shoulder, and someone had put a drink in his hand before he'd fully processed the room, and then later, somehow, there was something else.

"Try it. You're the boss, yeah? Like daddy, like son. You'll enjoy this."

A pill was pressed into his palm and he pulled it away.

"Minato’s golden boy. You think you’re gonna tell us when to get on the bus, kid?"

"I—the schedule says we need to check the monitors," Naruto stammered, his voice sounding incredibly young.

On the table in front of him, a small, bright blue pill rolled across the scarred wood, stopping right against Naruto’s thumb.

A hand clapped down on his shoulder, fingers digging hard into his collarbone, while another hand gripped his jaw, forcing his head back. They were touching his hair, his neck, pulling at his clothes with a casual familiarity.

"You're too tense, un," Deidara laughed, a sharp, unpleasant sound, his breath hot against Naruto's ear. "Your old man knew how to party. You gotta loosen up if you're gonna survive the road with us."

"Let go," Naruto choked out, twisting his torso, but the hands only tightened, a palm pressing heavy and flat against his ribs.

Another slid down the side of his body and unbuckled his belt.

A cold, paralyzing dread slammed into his chest.

In a blind, frantic bid to just make them stop touching him, to buy himself a single second of breathing room, he snatched the pill off the table.

The moment they cheered and the suffocating grip on his shoulders loosened, Naruto ran, his unbuckled belt flapping in the wind.

Behind him, the heavy panic bar rattled again, and the fire exit burst open with a loud, metallic clang that bounced off the brick walls of the narrow alley. Naruto froze, his fingers still wet, his breath hitching in his throat.

They weren't laughing anymore.


Naruto didn't even look back to see who was leading the pack.

He scrambled to his feet, his sneakers slipping on the loose gravel as he shoved his phone deep into his pocket. He began to run again.

He could hear the heavy thud of their boots behind him. They were older, faster, and they knew the layout of this city's blocks.

Naruto rounded a corner, his shoulder clipping a brick wall, his heart hammering so hard it felt like it would crack his ribs. He knew he couldn't outrun them. He was eighteen, exhausted, terrified, and the chemicals were starting to leak into his blood.

He burst out of the alley onto a sun-bleached side street.

Gimme the phone, you little shit! Deidara yelled from fifty feet away.

Then, cutting through the panic and the heat, came a sound Naruto knew better than his own name.

The throaty roar of the all too familar convertible tearing around the far corner, its tires screeching against the hot pavement as it swung wide into the lane.

Sasuke.

The car fish-tailed into the street. Sasuke slammed on the brakes just enough to match Naruto’s frantic pace.

Sasuke’s face was white, his dark eyes wide behind his sunglasses.

"JUMP!" Sasuke roared over the engine.

Naruto jumped. He threw his whole weight over the side of the car, his torso colliding hard with the leather passenger seat, his legs dragging over the door frame as his sneakers kicked at the air.

Before his feet were even inside the cabin, Sasuke slammed his foot down on the gas.

The car leaped forward with a sickening jerk, the engine screaming as the tires bit into the asphalt. Naruto was thrown backward against the seat, his head cracking against the headrest as the wind instantly hit them like a physical blow.


Behind them, the figures of the band shrunk into tiny, furious specks in the rearview mirror, swallowed up by a massive cloud of gray dust and exhaust.

They were speeding, speeding so fast the telephone poles along the industrial road blurred into a solid wooden picket fence. The wind was a deafening roar in their ears, ripping the breath right out of Naruto's mouth as he scrambled to pull his legs inside, before he remembered the pill.

He started choking on sheer terror. He tries to explain it to Sasuke but a look at his face and he doesn't need to.

Sasuke knows.

"Throw it up Naruto."

Naruto tries.

"Get it out," Sasuke ordered again, his voice stripped entirely of its usual cool indifference. He slammed his palm flat against Naruto’s back, a hard thumping that rattled Naruto’s ribs. "Throw it up. Come on, Naruto, do it now."

"I can't—bastard, I'm trying—" Naruto choked, his knees hitting the dirt outside the frame of the car. His head was spinning, the blue pill a heavy, chemical stone sitting at the bottom of his stomach, starting to hum in his veins.

"You can," Sasuke snapped. His face was inches away, pale and furious, his sunglasses discarded on the floorboards. "You have to. Throw it up!"

And then Sasuke's fingers are in his throat and he can barely register the feeling before he heaves.

Sasuke holds the back of his neck with one hand and keeps the other at his back and says nothing, just stays there, just keeps him from pitching forward into the gravel.

It goes on longer than it should.

His eyes burn. His throat burns. The back of his nose burns, and for a moment it's the worst feeling in the world.

Then it's gone.

The hospital is too bright.

Naruto is somewhere behind a curtain with a doctor and a nurse and a drip in his arm, and Sasuke is in the waiting area being told things.

He's been told a lot of things in the last hour.

Karin had arrived first, before the doctors had finished, still in what she'd been wearing at home, which means she'd come as soon as Sasuke had called her.

Itachi had arrived twenty minutes later.

Sasuke hadn't called Itachi.

He still doesn't know who did.

"Forcing emesis with an unknown substance—"

"I know."

"He could have aspirated. He could have gone into—"

"Itachi." Sasuke looks at him. "I know."

The doctor comes out shortly after, and Sasuke can tell from his face that it's good news.

"You got lucky," the doctor says. "Both of you. The timing—" He pauses, recalibrates. "He's going to be fine. Whatever you did, the timing was right. Much longer and we'd be having a different conversation."

Sasuke nods.

"You saved his life," the doctor says simply, and moves on because there are other curtains, other families, other nights.

Itachi looks at him. Sasuke is looking at the floor.

"Sasuke," Itachi says.

"It could have gone the other way," Sasuke says. "I know that. I know I could have—" He stops. "I just needed it to not go the other way. That was all I had."

Itachi doesn't say anything for a moment. Then he puts his hand on the back of Sasuke's neck, brief, the way he used to when they were small, when the world was a different size.

"It didn't," he says.

Karin comes to sit next to him after a while. She doesn't say anything either. Just pulls her sleeves down over her hands the way she does when she's frightened and stares at the curtain and breathes.

The three of them sit in the too-bright light and wait.

Sasuke's hands have stopped shaking.

He doesn't remember when.

"Feeling okay?" 

"I love you Sasuke."

Ppaer cranes that Naruto used to fold and fold from torn notebook pages in class when he stopped paying attention, fill his insides, flitting and fluttering in his stomach. There are a thousand of those winged creatures in his heart too, like birds all landing at the same time. The stagnant waters of his mind are rippling with the stone casually tossed and Sasuke glares at him.

Does he think he'll get off by a measly declaration of love? That he'll make Sasuke's heart skip a beat, and suddenly find himself forgiven? That sugary words and stupid naive smiles would erase the image of Naruto throwing up and crying on the road while Sasuke screamed his name?

"Fuck off."

"No, you came for me," Naruto mumbled, his eyes bright with tears yet unfallen, glimmering like stars. "I would've died—"

"Remember that next time you don't listen to me."

There's the beginning of a sunny golden smile at the corner of those lips and Sasuke feels lighter. He really must be feeling okay then. 

"Did Karin call Itachi?" he asked, turning away and peering through the curtains where the two were talking.

Naruto shrugged. "Dunno, he was there when I woke up." For a moment there, his expression wandered elsewhere, his eyes fixed upon some distant thought, expectant in a peculiar way. Waiting, almost, for Sasuke to say something.

"What?" Sasuke snapped, already bracing himself for some absurd request — ramen, perhaps, or another ridiculous whim.

"I really do love you Sasuke," Naruto began and Sasuke immediately turned away, putting his back towards Naruto halfway out the door now, one foot off the ground.

"No, no don't do that," Naruto begged, and his voice was small and whiny, reaching out and grasping and pulling at his fingers pulling him closer as he buried his face in Sasuke's middle. "I'm sorry, I'll listen to you from now. Don't you think I've suffered enough for it?"

"I never want you to suffer," Sasuke snapped.

Ah.

Naruto looked up, his eyes two crescent moons shining in the bright lights of the hospital, crinkling in the corners.

A low, soft huff of laughter escaped Naruto’s lips and heat bloomed in Sasuke's stomach.

"Aw," Naruto mumbled into the cloth, his breath warm through the fabric. "I knew you were a softie." 

"Happy birthday, little brother."

Sasuke squints at him through the blinding morning glare bouncing off the kitchen tiles.

"Weren't you supposed to be gone by now?"

He had honestly forgotten his birthday was coming up.

Itachi rolls his eyes. "I wanted to wish my little brother. You're only nineteen once."

What a load of bullshit. "I was also eighteen once. Where were you then?"

"Mum and dad had just died, I had to take over the company, I was—"

"I was also seventeen once. Sixteen, fifteen. Hm?"

Where were you, where were you? Where were you when I needed you?

Itachi chooses not to comment on that. He has the grace, at least, to look slightly caught. "I made lemon poppy-seed pancakes. And there's buttered brioche, and I think there's still—"

"I'm going to Naruto's."

"After breakfast, no?"

"No." Sasuke's hand is on the doorknob. "I haven't had breakfast here in, like, years."

Itachi purses his lips, his fingers tightening slightly around the edge of a spatula. "You can take some over for him."

Sasuke shrugs, his shoulder hitting the doorframe. "Naruto will have food."

"No, he won't," Itachi says, his voice dropping into a subdued tone. "He's recovering, so he'll be on liquid diet—"

"He'll have food, Itachi. Goodbye."

He leaves his brother standing alone in the pristine kitchen, holding a plate of lemon poppy-seed pancakes, the exact kind Sasuke used to beg for when they were kids, and buttered brioche that looks perfectly golden. There's more poppy seeds and a glass of almond milk on the counter, too, if Sasuke had to guess. The whole house smells delicious, sweet and heavy and warm.

The sheer sight of Itachi being home, playing house in a kitchen that had been dead for months, turns his stomach into a tight, sour knot.

Naruto has special-edition ramen.

"Happy birthday," Naruto says, pushing a lemon loaf across the table. It's sprinkled with sesame seeds.

It's close enough.

Sasuke is still sitting at the table, his fingers tracing the edge of Naruto’s discarded ramen lid, when the screen door is violently kicked open.

"Happy nineteenth, you brooding prick!" Kiba yells, bursting into the kitchen with a massive, cardboard case of cheap beer balanced on his shoulder like a log. Akamaru trots in right behind him, his paws clicking loudly against the linoleum before he immediately heads for the empty ramen cup.

"Don't let the dog lick the table," Sasuke says automatically, but his voice is entirely swallowed by the sudden influx of noise.

Shikamaru shuffles in next, his eyes half-closed against the glare of the July sun, holding a plastic grocery bag that clinks with the distinct, heavy sound of glass bottles. He drops it onto the counter right next to Naruto’s prescription bottles, not even blinking at them.

"I brought the good stuff," Shikamaru mutters, slumping into the nearest chair with a long, exhausted sigh. "By which I mean it actually has an alcohol percentage higher than dishwater. Don't make me do anything active today, it's too hot for it."

"Sasuke!" Choji’s face appears over Kiba’s shoulder, a massive grin splitting his cheeks. He’s carrying a box from the bakery downtown. The big one, tied with red string and three large bags of prawn cocktail chips. "We got the lemon linzer cookies you like from the corner place. And Kiba tried to wrap his gift but he used electrical tape."

"It holds!" Kiba shouts from the fridge, already shoving bottles around to make room for the beer. "Hey, Naruto! Get your ass out here, your boyfriend is nineteen and he's already acting like an old man!"

Boyfriends, boyfriend, boyfriend.

It's not enough.

Naruto comes stumbling out of the hallway, his shirt on inside out, blinking at the sudden chaos filling his kitchen. The pale, fragile look from the morning disappears instantly, replaced by that loud, clumsy energy that usually fills the room.

"Who's an old man?" Naruto yells, immediately lunging at Kiba to wrestle him away from the refrigerator. "Give me one of those! Sasuke doesn't even drink the cheap ones, more for me!"

"You're not drinking anything yet," Sasuke says, his arm reaching out to catch Naruto by the waistband of his shorts, pulling him back half an inch before he can crash into the blender. "You're still on the antibiotics."

"Aw, come on, Sasuke, it's your birthday!" Kiba groans, throwing a small, heavy package wrapped entirely in black electrical tape onto the table. It lands with a solid thud right next to the lopsided chocolate cake from last night. "Open it. It's a universal socket wrench set. For the car. So you can stop stealing mine."

Sasuke looks at the hideous, tape-monstrosity of a gift, then at Choji, who is already opening the bakery box to reveal six perfect, yellow lemon linzer cookies dusted with powdered sugar.

"Wow Choji," Naruto yells, and my god can he ever talk at a normal volume, "those look delicious. How come you never get them for my birthday?"

"Because I get you a wide selection of flavoured ramen from all over South Asia!"

"Oh yeah. I forgot."

Sasuke doesn't know how Naruto could possibly forget his eighteenth birthday. The 'Creamy Cardamom Coconut flavoured ramen' from some Indonesian village was certainly a memorable bathroom trip for him. Naruto had a smiliar experience, although he claimed to have enjoyed it regardless.

More colourful sweets are pulled out of Choji’s bags, a bright, surreal spread of things he must have driven three towns over to find. They clutter the faded linoleum table until the cheap grease stains are completely covered by pastry boxes.

Elderflower éclairs with pale, lilac-colored icing. Persimmon pastries that look like small, folded orange suns. Mulberry muffins that leave dark, wine-colored smudges on the cardboard. Gooseberry granola in little glass jars.

It looks like a bakery window in Tokyo, entirely too vibrant for a kitchen with a dry faucet and a dead man's ashes in the corner collecting dust. Gossamer catches the afternoon light.

"Don't touch the éclairs yet!" Kiba yells, but his mouth is already half-full of a clementine crêpe, the sweet, sticky orange glaze dripping down his thumb onto the table where he then has to prevent Akamaru from licking it. It always ends with Naruto licking it off anyway. 

Sasuke sometimes dislikes Kiba.

"You're disgusting," Shikamaru groans, though he doesn't hesitate to reach out and pluck a persimmon pastry from the pile, biting into it with a slow, appreciative hum.

Naruto is leaning halfway across the table, his fingers sticky with mulberry juice as he tries to defend the last muffin from Choji's massive hand, his scowl loud and dramatic.

The light is that late-afternoon amber again, the good-for-photography light, according to Naruto, the light that makes everything look the way you'll remember it rather than the way it actually was. Also Naruto's words.

His head is full of Naruto's words.

Ino's flash goes off.

He looks at the photo. He looks at Naruto with his purple-stained mouth. At Shikamaru and his jar. At Choji opening the last box. At Sakura laughing at something with her hand over her mouth. At Kiba on the floor with Akamaru because, at some point, he migrated down there.

He looks at Naruto most of all.

Then himself.

He almost looks happy, like this. Almost believes it too, like this.

Kiba grabs a mulberry muffin, dunks it entirely into a plastic cup of warm seltzer and cheap vodka until the pastry turns into a soggy, greyish-purple sponge, and shoves the whole thing into his mouth.

"Oh my god, you're a feral animal," Ino shrieks, but she’s already pouring chocolate sauce directly onto a clementine crêpe, rolling it up like a burrito, and dipping it into Shikamaru’s beer. "Shika, taste this. It cuts the bitterness."

"I'm not putting that in my body," Shikamaru mutters, though he watches the chocolate cloud dissolve into his amber drink with a lazy sort of fascination. "You guys are going to have ulcers before you're twenty."

"You won't even get to see twenty to chainsmoking cancer-courting clown."

That was Ino. Sasuke always tried to take inspiration from her insults. 

A fungus-faced fraud, a dick-for-brains degenerate. He loved to use them on Naruto.

Sasuke sits in the middle of the noise, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his shoulders pulled back away from the splash zone. He watches a drop of chocolate syrup land on the black electrical tape of his birthday gift.

He thinks they are all absolutely, unequivocally disgusting.

"Here," Naruto’s voice cuts through his silent judgment.

Naruto is still leaning over the console of the table, his custard-colored hair sticky at the tips, holding out a single gooseberry granola jar. He hasn't poured beer into his, and there's no chocolate sauce suffocating the fruit.

It's just a spoon and the tart, green berries.

"I kept the freaks away from this one," Naruto says, his pretty blue eyes bright, a small, knowing smirk playing on his lips as he bumps his shoulder against Sasuke’s arm. "For my birthday boy," he says, scooping a spoonful. 

Sasuke eyes like it's a trick.

"They're all gross," he murmurs, his voice annoyed, but he wraps his mouth around the spoon anyway and watches Naruto stare at him. At his lips around the spoon. 

He tastes the tart, clean fruit, letting the sourness wash away the smell of the warm beer and Naruto is still watching as he swallows. 

Sasuke cocks an eye brow at him. "Stop staring at me."

"Yeah, yeah, happy birthday, bastard," Naruto laughs, leaning his weight fully into Sasuke’s side, completely unbothered by the frost.

Naruto watches the sharp line of Sasuke’s throat move as he swallows the sweet.

The green berries, the long line of his throat, the movement of it. Looks away.


Naruto knows what it's like when Sasuke swallows around him.

He looks away.

They're all gone.

The kitchen is the aftermath of them—empty cups and the last of the gooseberry granola, and Ino's Polaroids lined up on the counter like a contact sheet of the evening, developing in order, chronological evidence that today happened.

That they were all here. That it was good.

The house is quiet. In the way it gets after people leave, fuller than silence, still warm with them.

They’re in bed now, and it’s different.

The sheet between them is thin, tangled around their ankles, the mattress sagging toward the center where their weights meet. The heat of the day is still trapped in the wooden walls of the house, but here, in the dark without Sasuke pressed as close to him as Naruto wishes, he feels cold.

His thumb catches the cool edge of the obsidian pendant.

"Happy birthday," Naruto whispers into the space between them.

The sound is tiny, barely loud enough to clear the window screen.

Sasuke doesn't open his eyes, but his hand moves across the mattress, his fingers locking around Naruto’s wrist, his thumb pressing into the steady, frantic pulse there.

"It's past midnight," Sasuke whispers back, his voice thick with the gravity of the late hour. "It's not about me anymore."

Naruto closes his eyes, his forehead drifting forward until it rests against Sasuke’s shoulder blade. The skin there is warm, smelling faintly of the river and the dry summer grass.

"To me, every day is about you," Naruto says.

        Touch me please.

"Cheesy," Sasuke murmurs against his skin, the movement of his lips vibrating through Naruto’s collarbone.

        I want you to touch me.

"I'm cheesy," Naruto breathes, his fingers tightening in the dark hair at the nape of Sasuke's neck, pulling him closer until there's no air left between them.

        Oh God I need—

"Mm," Sasuke whispers, the breath of it hot against Naruto’s jawline, and then his hands are down Naruto’s pants and back in his mouth. As Naruto sucks on them, he remembers the time Sasuke had made him throw up. 

I never want you to suffer.

It had all been a terrible ordeal, but for a second there, Naruto knew Sasuke loved him back.

The transition is sudden and electric, the cool feeling in his chest vanishing as Sasuke’s palms find the sensitive foreskin.

The heat is immediate, a localized summer spike that burns hotter than the afternoon sun on the car door. Naruto lets out a sharp, hitching gasp, his fingers instantly locking into the fabric of Sasuke’s shirt, his knuckles turning white as he pulls him down closer, desperate for the weight.

Sasuke's hair is sticking up in all directions and there's pre-come all over his face, and Naruto thinks he looks perfect. 


He pushes him down on him again and Sasuke happily obliges, mouth working magic.

Naruto’s hips lift off the mattress automatically, rising to meet the pressure, his head tilting back into the pillow as a low, ragged moan is dragged out of his throat along with Sasuke's name like a holy prayer.

His skin is slick with a sudden, clean sweat, every point of contact feeling magnified. He flips their positions and smiles down at the almost-man under him.

It's time for Sasuke's present.

The Thimbletide festival always transforms the town into something entirely unrecognizable.

Every end-of-July, the narrow streets leading down to the river valley are blocked off by striped canvas booths, strings of paper lanterns that hum in the midday heat, and the overwhelming scent of roasted nuts and fried dough.

Naruto absolutely loves it. He has since they were kids. It’s a day dedicated to the kind of bizarre, traditional small-town nonsense that makes no sense to outsiders.

Frankly, it makes no sense to Sasuke either, but Naruto loves it.

Like the Marzipan March, where people parade down Main Street carrying giant, heavy blocks of almond paste molded into the shapes of local wildlife, or the frantic relay races through the muddy banks of the canal.

Naruto catches a marzipan fish with his teeth. Ino takes a photo. Kiba tries to catch one in his mouth and gets hit in the forehead instead.

The relay races start at two. Three-legged. Egg-and-spoon. Sack races so aggressive that Choji rips his bag in the first ten seconds and just runs the rest of the way with the torn sack flapping behind him like a cape.

The arcade games line the main square and those are Sasuke's favourite. Skeeball. Whac-A-Mole. A racing game with a seat that doesn't work. A claw machine full of rubber thimbles that no one wants.

The winning prizes at every booth are food.

Vouchers for funnel cake. Cotton candy the size of your head. Fried dough dusted in powdered sugar. Corn dogs. Candied apples. Lemon shake-ups so sour they make your eyes water.

Their friends are in it for real.

Choji has been doing calf stretches by the kettle-corn stand since nine in the morning, and Kiba has already been warned twice by the festival committee for trying to let Akamaru run the third leg of the sack race.

"Move," Sasuke mutters, shoving a token into the slotted metal face of an ancient arcade cabinet tucked under the awning of the old bait shop.

The game is some pixelated, eighties shooter with a joystick that sticks to the left, but Sasuke’s face is a mask of absolute, terrifying concentration. His fingers twitch over the plastic buttons with a cold precision. Click-click-click-click.

"Holy shit," Kiba says, leaning over the glass with a half-eaten funnel cake. "He’s about to break the record from 1994!"

The machine lets out a series of tinny, electronic chimes.

The screen flashes HIGH SCORE: UCHIHA.

A heavy, brown paper voucher slides out of the prize slot — a ticket for a full rack of honey-glazed ribs from the fire department's smokehouse.

Naruto's cheer is so loud that Sasuke forgets his fingers are cramping.

They win the races too, thanks to Naruto who is flying tonight, his hair a yellow flag in the wind. Sasuke is entranced.

"Look at that, bastard!" Naruto yells, jogging back toward the booths, his shirt soaked with sweat, his seafoam eyes glittering. "We’re eating like kings tonight!"

But the high from the victory doesn't last long for Sasuke, because the afternoon train just pulled into the junction.

Hinata and Neji are back from their nepo summer internship in Tokyo.

"LOOK WHO'S MADE IT IN TIME FOR THIMBLETIDE!"

"WOO!"

"Naruto!" Hinata breathes, rushing forward. Before Naruto can even drop his crate of berries, she’s there, her hands wrapping around his upper arm, leaning her weight against him with a sudden, heavy familiarity. "We watched the end of the race from the hill. You were amazing. You haven't changed at all."

Kiba nudges Sasuke’s ribs with an elbow. "Uh oh. Look at the city girl making her move."

Sasuke’s mood sours instantly.

The carny hands him another voucher without making eye contact.

But Shikamaru notices.

"Thought you didn't care about that stuff," he says, low enough that only Sasuke can hear.

"Dunno what you're talking about."

"Sure man."

Sasuke throws another ball. 

It hits the target.

Hinata stays close to Naruto for the next hour.

She walks with her arm through his.

They click pictures at the photo-booth. Then they're together at the ring-toss booth. Then they're walking towards him.

"What do you want?" Sasuke asks without looking at him as he sensed the footsteps.

Naruto grins. "Got you something."

He holds up a voucher. 

"I already have vouchers," Sasuke says.

"Not for the fried dough you don't."

"Okay."

Naruto turns his whole body toward him. He takes a few long steps away from the Hyuga cousins, his sneakers dragging through the clover until he’s standing right in Sasuke’s space, his shoulder bumping hard against Sasuke's arm.

"Look," Naruto says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of fresh blackberries from his winning crate, offering them to Sasuke on a stained paper napkin. "Taste these. They're not like the sour ones we had that day by the creek."

Sasuke smiles smugly at Hinata as he eats the berries directly out of Naruto's open palm. 

The air inside the chapel is far too hot.

"Did Itachi have to get married inside an old church?" Kiba complains for the hundredth time and for the hundredth time Sasuke finds himself agreeing.

Everyone is in a suit.

Ino in a deep blue dress that is extremely inappropriate for a wedding.

But Sasuke figured it was okay. It was a gay wedding, what was the matter?

Kiba in something he clearly borrowed. Hinata in lavender, quiet, still not quite looking at Naruto the way she used to.

"I thought he didn't even believe."

"This used be to a church," Sasuke said. "It's just abandoned now."


"Do you think God abandoned his own house?" Naruto asked cheerfully and Sasuke rolled his eyes. A pure non-believer, Naruto liked to tease him.

Up at the altar, Itachi looks sickeningly perfect. His black hair is pulled back into a sleek, low queue, his charcoal-grey three-piece suit without a single wrinkle despite the heat. Next to him, Shisui is grinning, a blood red rose pinned to his lapel, his hand resting steady on Itachi's lower back as the priest drones on about commitment and long roads.

Sasuke sits in the second pew, his jaw clamped shut. He feels like he’s suffocating. The high collar of his dress shirt is sticking to the back of his neck, and a thin sheen of sweat has broken out across his collarbone, dampening the fabric underneath his dark jacket. He’s hot, irritated, and the tie around his throat is choking him.

Naruto is sitting right next to him, and Naruto is just hot.

There's a difference. Sasuke knows there's a difference because he's looking at Naruto instead of watching his brother get married, and he can't seem to stop.

He isn't wearing his usual oversized tees or dirt-streaked shorts. For the first time in his life, Naruto has been poured into a tailored black suit that Shikamaru’s mother had practically forced him into, and the effect is dizzying.

The black fabric cuts a sharp, clean line across his broad shoulders, making his primrose hair look blindingly bright in the stained-glass light.

Sasuke can’t stop looking.

His eyes are glued to the side of Naruto’s profile, tracking the way the heat has flushed Naruto's cheeks a dark, healthy pink, the gorgeous blue eyes fixed on the altar with a rare, quiet respect.

But Sasuke’s gaze drifts downward.

Naruto’s legs are long, his muscular thighs stretching the dark dress pants tight every time he shifts his weight on the wooden bench. The fabric clings to the heavy, athletic curve of his quad, tracing the line down to his polished dress shoes.

And right there, where the trousers bunch against the edge of the pew, the tight tailoring leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.

The satisfying, heavy bulge against the dark fabric is prominent, a stark, distracting frankly unholy shape in the middle of a holy place.

Itachi and Shisui say their vows.

Sasuke doesn't remember a word of them. He'll feel guilty about that later. Right now, all he can feel is the heat and the sweat and the weight of Naruto's gaze every time he dares to look back.

They kiss. Itachi and Shisui. The crowd applauds. Someone throws flower petals. The string quartet plays something triumphant.

There's dancing. There's champagne. There's cake and all of Sasuke's favourite sweets.

Sasuke stands at the edge of the tent, drink in hand, not drinking. He's watching Naruto talk to Hinata near the dessert table. She's smiling at him. He's smiling back. But his hand is in his pocket, and every few seconds, his eyes flick toward Sasuke.

Check. Check. Check.

"That was lovely," Sakura says, her voice softening as she leans against the white wooden railing of the reception pavilion. She’s swirling the ice in her glass, her pink hair catching the late afternoon sun as it dips below the tree line.

The reception tent is half-empty now. The older guests have gone home. The band members have retreated to some VIP area behind a velvet rope that no one is enforcing but no one is challenging.

"It really was," Ino agrees, letting out a long, dramatic sigh that ruffles the lace on her collar. "Ahh, love. Do you think we'll ever have something like that, Sakura?"

"In this world? Not a chance."

"Don't be pessimistic," Choji groans around a mouthful of the catering hall's miniature crab cakes. He’s already working his way through a second plate, his tie completely undone and hanging loose around his neck.

Shikamaru doesn't even look up from where he’s slumped over the linen tablecloth, his chin resting in his palm. "If most people have something like that, it's more likely to end in divorce. Statistically speaking."

"I don't think Itachi and Shisui's will end in divorce," Kiba says. He's on the ground, sitting cross-legged, because someone took his chair and he couldn't be bothered to find another.

"Probably not," Shikamaru agrees, his eyes tracking Itachi across the lawn, who is currently laughing at something Shisui whispered into his neck. "They're too stubborn to admit a mistake anyway."

"I can't see why anyone would leave Itachi," Ino says dreamily, resting her chin on her hands as she watches the newlyweds. "He looks like he belongs on a billboard."

"Or Shisui," Sakura agrees, sipping her orange juice through a paper straw.

A lull settles over the table. 

Sasuke waits for Ino to break it.

Dutifully, she does.

"Who in our friend group do you think will get married first?"

"Probably Naruto," at least two people say at once and Sasuke finds himself wondering.

Naruto, who is sitting at the end of the table, mid-bite of a marzipan flower, freezes.

"Yeah," Kiba says, nodding. "First to get divorced too, probably."

"That's rude," Choji says, frowning. Sasuke's always like Choji. He sets down his fork. "I think Naruto's the most likely among us to find someone."

"Really? Why?"

"Why, because he's already got someone, of course!"

Naruto laughs awkwardly, his eyes meeting Sasuke's.

Sasuke looks away, hoping for something.

Anything.

Coming of age has come and gone.

Sasuke feels a violent restlessness crawling under his skin all evening. He sits in his bedroom, on his bed with the uncomofrtable sheets and closes his eyes. 

He's tried changing his sheets at least three times now. Nothing feels right. He's starting to think Naruto's rarely washed bedsheets have infected him and now his body is literally allergic to clean ones. 

It's stupid but he likes blaming Naruto. It gives him a reason to think about the blonde that's valid enough that he doesn't feel weird about it later. 

He tries rolling around a couple more times before he can't anymore. He gets up and grabs his keys and he's driving.

The road to Naruto’s house is dark, the headlights cutting through the thick summer mist rising off the river.

His gum is new, and the flavour's plentiful right now. It bursts bright and sugary against his tongue. He tracks the miles by the taste of it. The stretch of the is so familiar, he thinks he can drive blindfolded. In the heat, he's tempted to try. He knows Naruto will, if he mentions it.

Maybe he should. Maybe blindfolds could come in other use as well.

The broken fence by the old pear orchard, the rusted tractor near the creek. He calculates the distance by the sweetness in his mouth. It’ll last till he reaches there, and then it’ll be gone. And then he’ll not need the gum anymore anyway, he'll have Naruto.

It's intoxicating; the taste of Naruto. He wonders why. It shouldn't be, with his ramen diet and terrible hygiene. Sasuke is disgusted everytime he thinks about it like this, in his car, in his house, alone. But there's none of this when Naruto's around. When Naruto's around, he's just filled with a primal sort of need.

He pulls into the driveway, the tires crunching loudly over the gravel, killing the headlights.

Sasuke rolls the tasteless piece of gum to the front of his mouth, spits it into a crumpled gas receipt on the passenger seat, and looks up at the porch light buzzing with moths. The artificial sweetness is completely gone. His throat is dry, his heart hammering against his chest in the quiet dark of the valley.

He pushes the car door open, stepping out into the heavy August mist, ready for the real thing.

When he pushes the screen door open next, Naruto is sitting on the kitchen floor, a half-assembled plastic shelving unit spread out around him, his hair spilling around him like sunlight in the night.

"Hey," Naruto says. Surprised. But not unhappy.

Sasuke decides to open with, "I wonder why I even go home."


Naruto chuckles at that.

"Half your stuff is here anyway," he says, his eyes tracking the dark lines of Sasuke’s face, tracing the soft edge of the silver chain still tucked beneath his t-shirt. "Just stay."

Sasuke looks down at his own sneakers, his hands buried deep in his pockets. The restlessness in his blood is still there, but he can feel it fading.

"Yeah," Sasuke murmurs, his throat tight as he thinks of the big, pristine house down the road. "Not like there's anyone waiting."

"When you're not here," Naruto says, his voice dropping to a tone that’s only ever belonged to the dark hours of this house, "I wait."

"Maybe you don't have to," Sasuke whispers.

Naruto’s mouth softens into a small, private smile, his hand finally coming up to rest flat against the side of Sasuke’s neck, his thumb tracing the sharp, familiar line of his pulse.

"Maybe not," Naruto breathes and his lips part with a quiet sound, and his eyes slowly roam down Sasuke's body.

"Do you think you'd like to be a lawyer?" Naruto asks, his voice drifting through the quiet bedroom as he kicks his legs out from under the thin sheet. The August breeze through the window is starting to cool, carrying the scent of damp pine needles and wet earth.

"A lawyer?" Sasuke asks. He hasn't shifted his position, one arm still slung over his eyes to block out the faint glow of the porch light outside.

"Yeah. That's what Itachi is, right?"

"Mm. I guess," Sasuke murmurs, the silver chain around his neck shifting with a tiny metallic click. "Don't really know what he does."

"So would you?"

Sasuke lets out a short, quiet breath through his nose. "I don't know. Probably not. What if I'm defending the killer?"

"I don't know," Naruto says, rolling onto his side so he can look at the sharp outline of Sasuke's profile in the dark. "The killer is probably paying you a ton."

Sasuke hums. "Money is everything . . . "

"But it shouldn't be," Naruto insists, his forehead creasing, his eyes going serious in the shadows.

"Lots of things shouldn't be."

"Like?" Naruto prompts, leaning his chin on his hand.

"Like . . . killing animals?" Where the fuck is this conversation going?

"Lots of problems, huh."

"Lots of wars to fight." Sasuke shifts his arm away from his eyes, turning his head slightly to glance toward the dark kitchen.

"When are the others coming?"

"I don't know," Sasuke muses, his dark eyes cutting back to Naruto. "They talk to you, not me."

"That's your fault, Sasuke," Naruto says immediately, dropping his head back onto the mattress with a soft thud.

"When did I ever think otherwise?"

"I just wish you'd talk to them more." Oh, this is where.

"You got mad when I talked to Karin."

"That's different!" Naruto insists, his voice jumping an octave before he catches himself and drops it back into a fierce whisper. "It was highschool and she was obviously into you."

"And?" Sasuke asks, a tiny, rare trace of amusement catching the corner of his mouth. "Are you saying they aren't?"

Naruto slaps his hand against Sasuke's bare shoulder — a sharp, stinging smack that echoes in the quiet room. "Cocky bastard. They used to."

"Mm." They all know better now, Sasuke wants to say. My eyes are only for you, he wants to say.

"At least Sakura did," Naruto grumbles, looking away toward the ceiling.

Sasuke doesn't know why he decides to say the next words, but it's out. "Ino too." Perhaps its bait.

"Wow," Naruto murmurs, his eyes narrowing into the dark. "I thought you didn't notice things like that."

"I don't," Sasuke whispers back, his fingers twisting into the edge of the sheet. "Kinda hard not to notice when she tells me."

"She told you?"

"Mhm."

"When?" Naruto's voice drops into accusation almost. "You never told me."

"It's because of how you'd react," Sasuke says, his eyes narrowing further as he watches the way Naruto’s shoulders have gone tight.

"Oh." Naruto’s voice small. 

"Yeah," Sasuke says, his tone final, completely unyielding as he looks at the dark window. When Naruto doesn't ask, he says it anyway. "I told her I'm sorry, I'm not interested."

"And? What she say?"

"Said she knew. She just wanted to get it off her chest."

"What if I told you something like that?" Naruto asks, after a while.

"What, someone confessed to you, too?"

Naruto’s eyes are so very blue in the dark.

"That's not what I meant, Sasuke."

The week before college started again, Itachi and Shisui arrived.

They were driving by Sasuke's house blasting Cyndi Lauper on the radio when they spotted a sports car parked in front.

Naruto gaped, his mouth hanging completely open as he squinted.

"Is that—"

"Shisui's car, yes," Sasuke spat, his voice dropping into an icy register. "What the fuck is he doing back here?"

"Hey — hey, Sasuke!" Naruto scrambled after him, his hands reaching out to catch the hem of Sasuke’s shirt as the Uchiha stormed past the screen door.

Sasuke was off.

"Itachi," Sasuke said, as soon as he spotted the newly married couple. He didn't look at the counter, didn't look at the bags packed by the door. "Come. Let's go outside and talk."

"Shisui is family now Sasuke. Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of—"

"Itachi."


"Alright then."

Naruto winced at Sasuke’s tone. Jeez.

He forced a massive, clumsy grin onto his face at their retreating backs and turned toward the stove. "Hey!!"

"Hey, kid," Shisui waved back, completely unbothered by the storm that had just marched through the room. He was leaning against the counter in a soft linen shirt, his dark curls a little messy from the drive, looking exactly like he had at the wedding but far more relaxed, far more sun-tanned, and entirely too comfortable. "Come on, I made a rhubarb rye toast. Still warm."

"Wow!!" Naruto lunged for the plate, his eyes lighting up at the sight of the thick, rustic bread topped with a tart, deep-pink compote. He looked like a boy then, instead of an almost-man. "I missed your cooking!"

"I missed the volume of your voice, wow," Shisui laughed, rubbing the back of his ear but smiling wide. "It’s only gotten louder since last year."

"Sorry," Naruto mumbled around a massive, sticky bite of the toast, the sour-sweet crunch of the rhubarb filling his mouth.

"No worries there, kid," Shisui said, his expression softening, his dark eyes looking away for a moment, then back to Naruto’s flushed, healthy face. "I hope you keep getting louder."

Naruto slowed down his chewing, the bread suddenly heavy in his hand. He looked at Shisui, then out the window where the silhouettes of the two Uchiha brothers were standing by the sports car, their shoulders rigid in the sun.

"It's the first time I've heard that," Naruto grinned.

"I'm sorry about your dad," Shisui says, and he looks like he means it. His dark eyes are steady, completely stripped of that easy, festival-goer charm he usually wears like a shield.

Naruto shifts his weight, his sneakers squeaking slightly against the kitchen linoleum. He looks down at the half-eaten rhubarb toast in his hand, his shoulder dropping into a defensive little slouch. "It is what it is, I guess."

To break the sudden, heavy dip in the room, Shisui reaches into a brown paper grocery bag on the counter and pulls out a small, Mason jar with a hand-written label. He pops the metal lid with a soft, vacuum hiss.

Naruto’s eyes light up instantly, the shadow disappearing from his face. "Pear preserves?!"

"Mhm," Shisui smiles, grabbing a clean spoon from the drying rack and scooping a generous, dripping dollop of the golden, spiced fruit onto Naruto's plate. "So, college next week?"

"Yeah," Naruto groans, his shoulders slumping as he drags his fork through the syrup.

"Don't like your major?" Shisui asks sympathetically, leaning his elbows back against the counter.

"No, I do," Naruto says quickly, his voice rising a fraction as he tries to explain the specific, frustrating knot in his head. "I mean, it's science. It's just . . . I wanted to understand the universe, you know? But we've got to do all this math before that's even possible. It's just lines and lines of numbers before you get to the cool stuff."

"Yeah, kid," Shisui chuckles softly. "The foundational work is always the hard part."

"I just wish I had some path made out for me in life," Naruto mutters, staring at the window screen where the August heat is shimmering off the hood of the sports car outside. "Like it was already written down somewhere, so I didn't have to keep guessing."

Shisui’s expression changes, his head tilting back slightly as he nods. "It can be a blessing and a boon, though. Having a path chosen for you. I heard about Akatsuki — about what your dad got tangled up in before the end. You can see how bad that can get when the path is already set by someone else."

"Yeah," Naruto says quietly, his throat tightening at the mention of the old company name. "But . . . it turned out alright for you."

Shisui goes quiet for a second, his fingers tracing the rim of the pear jar. Naruto knows the story — everyone in the block does, even if they only whisper it over cheap beer at the diner. Shisui had only chosen criminal law to find out the truth behind the suspicious death of his older sister years ago. And against every corporate wall and small-town cover-up, he had. He’d found the files. He’d closed the book.

"I guess," Shisui says, a small, ironic smile touching his lips. "Criminal Law taught me a lot of things."

"Like?" Naruto asks excitedly, leaning his elbows on the lopsided table, his custard-colored hair falling into his eyes.

"I always liked this about you," Shisui says, pulling out a chair and sitting down across from him, his long legs stretching out under the table. "You always want to know things. Always so eager to know more about life."

Naruto smiles, a little sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck. Shisui was always so generous with his compliments.

"There's something really interesting in criminal law," Shisui says, his voice dropping into a storytelling cadence he uses when he's thinking out loud.

"Uh-huh?"

"Murder is considered the worst thing in law," Shisui explains, his fingers tapping a slow rhythm against the wood. "But oftentimes, murder is incredibly difficult to define because human intent is a messy thing to prove in a courtroom. So, what the writers of the law do instead, is they clearly define what murder is not. They outline self-defense, accident, negligence — things of that sort."

"An elimination type of selection," Naruto murmurs, his brow furrowing as his brain automatically connects it to his textbooks.

"Yes, indeed," Shisui smiles, his eyes turning warm. "And it just got me thinking, applying it to life outside the courthouse. It is incredibly difficult to define what love is, Naruto. It’s too big. Everyone’s got a different word for it."

He stops, his gaze drifting over to the kitchen window. Outside, through the dirty glass and the rising summer mist, Itachi is standing by the chrome bumper of the sports car, his arms crossed, his face deadpan while Sasuke gestures sharply with his hands, his dark hair flying as he argues with a fierce, hot-headed intensity.

Shisui watches them for a short while, his mouth curving into something deeply affectionate and settled.

"But what I know is," Shisui smiles, turning his eyes back to Naruto, "what love is not."

He taps the edge of Naruto’s plate with his knuckle. "And it’s easier that way."

Naruto thinks about this for a long time. Sasuke and Itachi come back inside, and the environment is slightly less tense. They seem to have arrived at some sort of middle ground outside the sports car.

"They're here to stay," Sasuke whispers, taking his seat to next to Naruto's at the table. 

"Live here, you mean?" Naruto asks, eyes widening. 

Sasuke nods. "I'm gonna live in the dorms next year."

"Or we could live at my place?"

"And Karin?"

"Will not be here Sasuke. When is she ever?"

"Let's sleep on it."

They always do that. Always say that. Sleeping on their problems like they'll solve them in their dreams. Wake up in the morning and realise they're still under the sheets.

By the time the sun fully dips below the ridge, the heat in the kitchen has mellowed into a soft, blue twilight.

The four of them are crowded around the linoleum table, the remnants of Shisui’s rhubarb toast pushed aside to make room for a massive, chaotic bowl of summer pasta Itachi had thrown together with whatever was in the fridge. A great cook, a great everything.

Itachi is sitting next to Shisui, his charcoal suit jacket draped over the back of the chair, his white sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looks entirely different than he did at the altar in July, looser, his shoulders dropped, the sharp, clinical edge of his city life completely dissolved by the smell of garlic and the familiar creak of the floorboards.

"I miss being eighteen," Itachi says out loud, his voice quiet as he watches Naruto struggle to twirl a massive mountain of noodles onto his fork.

Shisui pauses, his wine glass halfway to his mouth, a slow, wicked grin spreading across his face. He nudges Itachi’s shoulder with his own. "What were we doing when we were eighteen, hm, 'Tachi?"

"Probably having sex," Itachi snorts, taking a calm bite of his dinner.

Naruto’s fork clatters against his plate, his mouth falling open so fast a piece of basil drops right back onto the table. His eyes go wide as saucers, his face instantly turning a violent shade of pink. He feels twelve then.

He looks from Itachi to Shisui, surprised. Marriage seemed to have done a world of good to the silent, brooding man.

The older Uchiha brother, who used to spend entire family dinners staring into his soup like it held the secrets to the universe, was currently leaning back in a mismatched kitchen chair, looking thoroughly amused by the havoc he’d just caused.

"No," Shisui corrects thoughtfully, chewing on a piece of bread, his eyes twinkling in the dim light of the porch bulb. "That was probably like fourteen for us."

Sasuke instantly hacks, a violent, choking cough ripping out of his throat. He slams his glass onto the table, his face flushing dark with a mixture of suffocation and absolute mortification.

Before Sasuke can even recover his breath, Itachi reaches across the small table and thumps his back joyously, taking great delight in his brother's discomfort.

A heavy, booming strike that nearly sends Sasuke's forehead directly into his pasta bowl.

"My little brother is innocent, honey!" Itachi proclaims, his voice carrying a rare, booming lightness that Naruto has literally never heard before. "Look at him. He’s completely scandalized."

"Get off me," Sasuke growls, his voice a raw, watery wheeze as he violently swats Itachi’s heavy hand away from his shoulder. He glares at his brother through the dark fringe of his hair, his eyes flashing. "Shut up. Both of you."

Naruto watches the exchange, his heart doing a strange, fluttering dance against his ribs. He looks at Sasuke’s flushed neck, then down at the table, his fingers tracing the edge of his napkin as a sudden, heavy warmth settles in his stomach.

"Your little brother turned nineteen last week," Shisui says softly.

"These two will forever be eighteen to me," Itachi shoots back. 


He will forever be eighteen too, Naruto thinks, smiling at Itachi. Evergreen.

Here is what eighteen sounds like, in retrospect:

His father's key in the lock, late. The radio in the kitchen, always the kitchen. His own voice saying I'll be back before dark, and the door closing, and before dark meaning whatever it needed to mean that day, meaning nothing, meaning everything—

Here is what eighteen looks like:

The last photograph. The last candle. The way a person looks at you when they're memorizing you, and you don't know that's what they're doing.

Here is what eighteen feels like, now:

Evergreen. Preserved. That year pressed like something between pages—still green, still there, a little flattened by the weight of everything that came after.

Naruto will always be eighteen to his father. His father will always be there to his eighteen.

That's the fact of it. The unbearable, bearable fact of loving someone who stopped at a number—they freeze you there too, keep a version of you in the place where they last looked, and you carry that version forward into every year they don't get to see. Nineteen. Twenty. However far the numbers go.

He is eighteen. He is evergreen.