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Konoha was half of what it had been when Naruto was a child. He had gone on a walk one of the first mornings after the war was over, and half of the places he looked for were just gone. There were heaps of dirt where familiarity used to be. He had charged head first into a war he was far too young for, and had forgotten how much was still left to rebuild after Pein.
He wanted to charge head first into fixing all of this, too. Tsunade was already training him to take her job within the next two years or so, while Sakura was on his ass constantly about ‘taking a break’. She told him he needed to stop and breathe. He had responded, ‘I’ve been suffocating for years, Sakura. This is the first breath I’ve taken since we were kids’.
She knew what he meant. She could see how he was different now. He had worked towards one goal since they were 14. He had reached it, surpassed it even, when everyone else had given up. Sasuke was home, and now Naruto could breathe.
This evening, Sakura had dragged him bodily away from the construction of a new hospital. She'd walked him to Ichiraku’s, bought him dinner, and pointed him towards the apartment Tsunade had prepared for him after the war. She was right. Naruto was exhausted.
But Sakura had bought him far too much food (he was sure she had done that on purpose), and there was only one place where he would be able to relax. Well, not a place. A person.
Naruto hadn’t seen Sasuke all day, but he could feel him. They had already tested the distance that it took for them to lose the feeling of each other’s chakra. That distance was far larger than what any part of Konoha could do.
He could feel the hum of chakra that practically radiated off of Sasuke. It had quickly become apparent that no one else could. Tsunade thought it probably had something to do with the symbols that had been etched into their palms. The power the Sage had given to them to defeat Kaguya. Those symbols were gone now. Blown away along with every duty and responsibility each had to the destiny that had controlled them for so long. Naruto and Sasuke were free.
But the chakra, the awareness of each other. That had stayed. Sometimes it ran through him as powerfully as the chidori had. It only stilled when he and Sasuke were touching, somehow. Like an electrical current that needed to close.
Sasuke didn’t seem to mind. Naruto certainly didn’t. He felt better when he was touching Sasuke anyway. Sasuke was back. Sasuke was home, seemingly to stay; with Naruto. But how long would that last? He had already told Sasuke that he wouldn’t chase him anymore. He had set out to bring Sasuke back safely to the village, and he had done that. He still had his promise to Itachi to honor, but as long as Naruto knew that Sasuke was safe, healthy, happy; he wouldn’t dream of making him stay in Konoha if it wasn’t what Sasuke wanted.
~
It was already far past sunset, but Naruto knew he’d find Sasuke somewhere out. He does, eventually, follow the low thrum of chakra to the top of the Hokage summit. Sasuke was sitting on a large boulder, looking out over the village. He had his chin in the palm of one hand, his other sleeve hanging loose from his shoulder.
Sasuke let’s Naruto come and sit next to him without a word. This has been their routine for weeks now. They don’t need words. They know when the other is nearby.
They sat in silence for a while, before Naruto took his ramen out and began sipping it. Wordlessly, still, he held the bowl out to Sasuke. He glanced at Naruto quickly before taking his chopsticks and his--
“Hey!” Naruto laughed as Sasuke took the boiled egg before he could stop him.
Sasuke tried to stifle a smile, failing miserably as he handed the chopsticks back. He crossed his legs so one rested over Naruto’s thigh, and looked back out over the village.
“Teme,” Naruto mumbled, taking a bite of his ramen before any more of his favorite ingredients could be stolen.
“You offered.” Sasuke, the bastard, was smirking.
Naruto just hummed, sipping more of the broth. It wasn’t a particularly cold season, but there was still a biting breeze coming up the mountain. It didn’t seem to bother Sasuke, but he must have noticed Naruto’s shiver, because he held his right hand out in front and between them. Naruto met him with his left, and Sasuke used it to make hand signs. He turned his hand at the last minute, starting a flame but catching it in his palm and holding it there. Naruto’s eyes widened in the glow.
“How are you doing that?” He asked, leaning closer and setting his dinner aside.
“I’ve been working on it,” Sasuke said, letting the flames dance through his fingers, “it’s the same concept as chidori. I’m just holding fire instead of lightning.”
Naruto held his hands out and felt heat. “It’s not burning you?”
Sasuke shook his head lightly. “Not unless I want it to.”
“Well, don’t.” Naruto looked at him worriedly.
Naruto had looked at him that way a lot recently, he was awful at hiding it. Sasuke had found that it didn’t bother him. Not even a little bit. Naruto was too deep under his skin for anything he did to not feel right.
Sasuke felt scraped raw. Everything that had happened over the last year had ripped him apart. He had returned to Konoha, it’s golden haired, blue-eyed hero had turned all his attention towards making him whole again. He didn’t deserve it. He had said as much once, and had been answered with a punch from Sakura, but it was the look in Naruto’s eyes that had rooted him to the spot.
He was home, wherever home was.
He looked over at Naruto, who had gone back to sipping broth, not holding the boiled egg theft against him.
Maybe he did know where home was.
“It’s beautiful.” Naruto was looking out over the village now. “In its own way.”
Sasuke nodded. “In its own way.”
“The dock is gone.”
Sasuke looked over to see Naruto watching him. “That’s probably for the best.”
“Sakura is working on plans for the new hospital. She’s asked me over and over for my input on what we ought to do for an orphanage in the village. You know she wants your input too.”
Sasuke nodded. “Where would you have wanted to live? When we were children?”
Naruto took a deep breath, then pointed to an empty space near the corner of the current village.
“I lived there.” Sasuke looked. “It’s all dirt now, of course.”
Sasuke wordlessly pointed further out on the opposite end. Naruto followed the direction out to the empty corner. The edge of the village, near the river, where Tobirama had moved the Uchiha clan when he was hokage.
“I’m so sorry,” Naruto whispered.
Sasuke took the opportunity to smack the side of the bandaged arm between them.
“Ow!”
“That didn’t hurt and you know it, usuratonkachi.” There was no bite to Sasuke’s words. “Don’t apologize. Nothing that happened to us as children was our fault.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes after that. Naruto nodded, before flinging Sasuke’s empty sleeve up to hit his cheek. He received nothing but a smile for his trouble.
“Do you think it would have been different?” Naruto asked.
“Would what have?”
“Us. Would we have been friends? Before all of this,” Naruto waved weakly out at the village below them. What was left of it. He meant before all of it. He meant before more than just Pein. Sasuke understood.
Sasuke thought back to all the times they had fought. And then before that. Before they met at school. He could see a little blonde boy running from some ninja who worked for the third, but looking down to where he had seen him just gave him another empty space. Another memory blown away.
“Itachi told me once that I used to cry all the time, as a baby. He remembered being one of the only people that could make me stop crying. One of the only ones.”
Naruto didn’t say anything, so he continued.
“My mother was carrying me once, and I was crying, and another mother in the village stopped to talk to her. She was going to have her baby soon too. Itachi said when I saw her I stopped crying, reached out and held onto her hand and wouldn’t let go.”
Naruto laughed quietly. “Does Itachi know who it was?”
Sasuke looked at him, shifted to sit closer, so their sides were pressed against each other, and nodded. “He didn’t know her name, but he remembered who her husband was. He remembered that she had beautiful red hair, and that he always thought that’s why I like tomatoes so much.”
Naruto had gone very still next to him. “Who was her husband?”
Sasuke sat up, tall enough to where he could see the top of the closest hokage carving on the mountain. “I believe we are currently sitting above him.”
Naruto let out a breath, almost a laugh, mostly not. He was looking at his hands, picking at the bandaged one with the one that was still whole. Sasuke extinguished the flames in his hand, and reached over to still Naruto’s fingers before he ruined the jutsu that held the bandages.
“Naruto,” he started, ducking his head slowly to see Naruto’s face, “I think we would have been very good friends, and much sooner, if everything that happened had happened differently.”
The light coming from the village below them was enough for him to see Naruto’s face. He had teared up a bit, but he wasn’t crying. He was probably too tired to cry. Sasuke wished there was a way to give him the energy, he could probably use it. Instead he just leaned over to bump their foreheads together. Naruto pressed into the warmth and they stayed there for a moment.
Neither of them wore their headbands anymore. Sasuke had his secured to his belt, scratch and all. Naruto had kept it for him all these years. He was never letting it out of his sight again.
Naruto had taken to tying his around his neck, when he wore it at all. He wasn’t now, so Sasuke moved his hand from Naruto’s up to his neck to hold him close for a moment longer.
This was new too. This closeness. It was nice. To be allowed a space so near to Naruto. To fit into that space so perfectly.
“I think we would have been friends too.” Naruto whispered. “I’m happy we are now.”
“Me too, usuratonkachi.” Sasuke whispered, and Naruto smiled at the nickname. Sasuke had suspected that would make him smile. He was grateful he was right.
Making Naruto smile was new too. Sasuke didn’t think he’d ever see another smile on Naruto’s face that he put there. But he had, and the first time he did it had torn through him in a way only Sakura had seen. She had given him a knowing smile, had squeezed his hand lightly, had told him that half of Naruto’s smiles were about him whether he had done something for it or not. ‘You two have always been inevitable’, she had whispered to him, before being thoroughly distracted by a flash of ash blonde hair and light blue eyes and purple. Sasuke had made a mental note to ask her about that later. He had forgotten it two seconds later when his own blonde haired distraction had joined them.
Sasuke was shaken out of his thoughts as Naruto pushed harder on his forehead before leaning back again. Sasuke’s hand was pulled back just enough for his fingertips to graze his throat, before he let his hand fall slowly.
“Do you think anything else would have been different?” Naruto was holding himself still again, looking out over the village, or at anything other than Sasuke.
“Hey,” Sasuke said quietly.
After a moment, Naruto looked at him. They were already so close, Naruto was pressed up against him, and Sasuke wished he had two hands for this. He took Naruto’s jaw again, waiting for the blonde to pull away. When he didn’t, he leaned closer and pressed a slow, solid kiss to Naruto’s mouth. After a moment, he pulled back, and Naruto let out a shaky breath before opening his eyes.
Sasuke realized sometime in the last ten seconds that he had activated his sharingan. He was happy he did, he never wanted to forget the way Naruto was looking at him.
“That would have been different.”
Naruto’s face fell slightly, though he tried to hide it. “How would that have been different?”
Sasuke watched his thumb trace Naruto’s lip for a moment before looking back up at him. “Because, I probably would have done it sooner.”
There’s that smile. Sasuke never wanted to see anything but that smile.
Naruto used both hands to pull Sasuke back to him, into another kiss. Longer than the one before. Open mouthed, between smiles and laughter and teeth. Sasuke chuckled when Naruto kissed the corner of his mouth, gasped a bit when he moved down his jaw.
Naruto pulled back after a moment when he felt Sasuke shiver, and held his hand out waiting. Sasuke used his hand for the second time that night to make a small flame. It illuminated the space between them, not that there was much space between them.
“I used to wish on stars that you would come back wanting to kiss me.”
Sasuke’s mouth quirked up at that. “Naruto, we were fourteen. I left wanting to kiss you. Why do you think I thought I had to kill you, you were so goddamn distracting. All I ever thought about.”
Naruto’s eyebrows were raised when he looked back at him. He bit his lip for a second before saying, “I hated you.”
That made Sasuke laugh. Really laugh. It had been a long time since he had laughed the way he had around Naruto these past few months. “Clearly,” he said, earning a nudge from Naruto that was less of a nudge and more just leaning into him and staying there.
“Itachi asked me once why I was so obsessed with you,” Naruto said. Sasuke could hear the smile in his voice. “I think it was mostly for my benefit though, the entire time he was just looking at me like he knew something I didn’t know.”
“I’m sure Itachi knew a lot of things you didn’t know.”
“Teme!” Naruto turned to Sasuke, but fell silent when he saw him looking back over the village again.
Naruto had grown accustomed to Sasuke’s silences. He was grateful he was allowed to stay during them. Sasuke was comfortable just being with him. And Naruto was grateful he was able to be there to pull him back when Sasuke began thinking a little too much. This time, Naruto reached up to brush Sasuke’s hair away from his face. It had grown long enough to cover the rinnegan in his left eye, and Sasuke had worn it that way ever since.
Sasuke pulled away at first, but slowly let Naruto push his hair back. “It suits you.”
Sasuke shook his head. “It’s not mine. Neither of them are.”
“Well, no,” Naruto agreed, but he kept his hand there, running his thumb over Sasuke’s cheek, beneath the eye that swirled purple and black, “they weren’t, but they are now.”
Naruto brought his other hand up to hold Sasuke’s face so he couldn’t pull away. Not that Sasuke was trying to pull away. He wasn’t.
“Sasuke, they’re just you. I don’t look into your eyes and see anyone except you.”
Sasuke blinked a few times, letting Naruto’s words sink in, before leaning forwards to kiss him again. When he spoke again he stayed close enough to still feel Naruto’s lips on his. Letting their noses bump together.
“Naruto,” Sasuke breathed, “do you remember when I left, when you tried to get me to stay, when we fought?”
He could feel Naruto’s breath on his lips. He was looking at Sasuke’s mouth while he spoke. Naruto nodded gently, pressing another kiss to Sasuke’s lips before letting him continue.
“You asked me if I had to kill you, to kill you calmly. Do you think,” Sasuke paused, searching for the words. Words just weren’t enough. But he could try anyway. “I’m back now. I’m home, with you. Could I… could I love you calmly... instead?”
Naruto stayed where he was, just holding him there, for long enough that Sasuke was nervous he had said something wrong.
“Naruto, I’m sor- mph ”
He was cut off by Naruto’s mouth on his. Not that he minded. If Naruto wanted to interrupt every thought Sasuke had for the rest of his life, this was all he would have to do.
Naruto had pushed forward to kiss him, and they both lost their balance, rolling off the boulder they were sitting on. He turned them so that he cushioned Sasuke’s fall. They landed face to face, Sasuke’s one arm propping himself up on Naruto’s chest.
“Is that a yes?” He asked breathlessly.
“Yes, teme. Yes.” Naruto laughed, pushing them up so Sasuke was in his lap, one knee on either side of him. Sasuke just smiled, winding an arm behind Naruto’s neck to rest on his shoulders, pulling him in again.
Naruto’s hands found Sasuke’s hips and held him there. He wasn’t scared Sasuke was going to pull away, or leave, but he was allowed to touch and he loved it. He was allowed to hold Sasuke and kiss him and love him the way he had always wanted to.
To love him.
He loved Sasuke. He always had. Had he ever told him? He tried, then, in between breaths and Sasuke’s mouth on his. The words were in his brain when Sasuke smiled against him, then no words were in his brain when his bottom lip was between Sasuke’s teeth. Then they were back again.
“I lo- mph ”, more laughing, “Sasuke, I-”, more kissing, “Teme!”
“What!” Sasuke laughed back, still not pulling further than a few inches away from Naruto’s face.
“I love you!” Naruto hadn’t meant to say it that loud, but he had said it.
Sasuke’s face softened into an easy smile, and he felt Naruto’s hands wind around the small of his back and hold him closer.
“I know, usuratonkachi,” Sasuke said, gently sliding his fingers into Naruto’s hair and pulling their foreheads together, “I love you, too.”