“Stay with me...”

In all his life, Sasuke had never uttered such a foolish string of words. Without logical reason, they had tumbled out of his mouth. Weak and desperate. So full of need that recalling it now nearly made him vomit.

He had not done this, suffered through all of this, just to want. He had not pursued those memories down this path only to become some shadow of a cause. Slamming his fist into the nearest tree, Sasuke growled ominously to himself.

Fine. If that’s how he wanted it, then so be it. Lips solidified into a grim line, eyes a molten mix of anger, hatred, and frustration as they stared out over the browning landscape. He had been right to leave all those years ago. In the end, none of them got it.

---

"Stay with me...” he whispered, lips brushing lightly against skin, catching a few stray strands of blond hair. Sasuke wasn’t quite sure what he meant by those words. No, he understood what he was asking, just hadn’t thought out the full implication of it. He never really did. Not at least when he knew what he wanted; the route would somehow work itself out. A crossroad would appear here or there, turn left or right, and the decision was made. Or so he figured. It had worked much like that up until this point.

He was patient though. So when Naruto said nothing immediately afterwards, Sasuke merely waited. Naruto always gave him an answer at some point or another. However, he admitted dryly to himself, waiting for this was far more difficult than waiting to catch up to Itachi.

To settle the few nerves that Naruto's silence had managed to jangle, he slipped his hands down over the blond's shoulders. It was there that he had noticed time's effect the most. Having never really spent much time checking his physical self out (though there were countless hours of thought put into the growth of his skills), Sasuke had failed to note the broadening of his own shoulders, the gradual deepening of his chest, all finely muscled. But he had seen it in Naruto, blinking in mild shock at the testament of time displayed by that bare body.

“Stay with you...”. There was a pause. Sasuke brought his hands around Naruto's waist, fingers dancing skillfully over the tanned expanse before them. He tugged the young man backward, smirking at having met no resistance in the act.

“Stay with you...” a lowered whispered this time. The blue of Naruto's eyes was barely visible to him, so focused was his line of vision on Sasuke’s roving fingers.

He didn't like not being able to see his eyes, to see what he was thinking. It was something he had always...liked about him: Naruto was perfectly readable. At least as far as his emotions were concerned. Sasuke shifted himself, sitting up another inch, so that he might lean over and garner a better view. “Ah...that's what I said, dobe...”.

Another splash of silence. Uncertain and not willing to deal with that particular state of mind at the moment, Sasuke pressed his mouth to Naruto's. There was a coolness to the act now, something wholly different from the heat-stained exchanges of the night. He persisted, harder, in an attempt to gain some sort of leverage, and nearly yelped when Naruto bore down on his lower lip with cutting force.

“Stay with you...?” Hesitation echoed hollowly from his voice, an aspect that caused Sasuke to grimace faintly. He hadn't expected the statement to go over smoothly, but this was not what he had hoped for either.

“What do you mean, ‘Stay with me’! Stay with you!” Naruto spit out with embittered anger. “What the hell, Sasuke! Stay with you? Come back to Konoha!”

Puffing a breath of hot air past the blond's ear, Sasuke tightened his grip around the body straddled between his legs. “You know I can't do that.” His fingers slunk ruthlessly between Naruto’s, bearing into his palms with driving need.

There was a short bark of laughter from below him. Hard and disbelieving. Naruto's chest expanded fully with a deep inhale, pushing the young man back against him with surprising force. Sasuke exhaled sharply, then cursed himself on the next drawn breath for his weakness.

“Why?” Bubbling up through his anger, the word issued forth with acute plaintiveness. This time, Sasuke cursed Naruto for his uncontrolled emotions. He hated it. Hated the way that sound stabbed through his dreams, through his life and all the choices he had ever made throughout it. Hated it because it was Naruto, and he was the cause.

“Tch...you want me to go back? Go back to what, Naruto?” And still, he bit back with wrathful ease. Sasuke couldn't help it. Apparently, he couldn't control much of what was coming out of his mouth this day. “So they can lock me up? Shutter me away while you plead my case? I left because I wanted to...”

And even before the sentence had finished flying off of his tongue, Sasuke knew he had stepped too far. Instinctively, he loosened the iron-grasp he had on Naruto's hands and turned his head to the side, though he never removed it from Naruto's view.

There was a moment of silence, not the calm before the storm, but something far more menacing. He could feel Naruto’s muscles tightening, knew that the young man was boring through him with those clear-water eyes.

“Fuck...” Naruto moved his right hand back into Sasuke's. He squeezed gently, eased up, then pressed once more. A hard, desperate attempt to understand.

Sasuke remained unmoved. Almost. Something had stopped up in his throat. Felt like a shuriken trapped just above his collarbone. He was hesitant to swallow, knowing that it was on the verge of tearing something open.

“Can't do it?” Naruto laughed. It wasn't a gleeful chirrup of noise though. His laughter, this time, was a mere cover, that final red-hued wave washing upon the shores of calm before everything was sucked back into the depths. “More like won't do it, you fucking coward.” And came crashing back down to earth as a hundred-foot wall of liquid fury.

With violent force, Naruto pulled himself free of Sasuke's hold. It stung, he noted, when the blond tore his hand from his own. Burned when Naruto's warmth left him alone and naked on the bed. The sheets were now a twisted mess on the floor, trailing lifelessly after the departing figure.

Sasuke watched quietly as the scene unfolded before him. It was real, and yet he felt horribly distant from it all. He imagined that this was how the stars must experience life on Earth. There, but not there. It was a simple matter of viewing without any real concern towards the happenings beneath them. There was no way that this was his life.

Coiled up in his anger, Naruto was unable to properly get his legs through the holes in his boxers. He hopped around from one foot to the other, scowling mercilessly at himself, at the situation. Had the life not just drained from him, Sasuke might have laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing. Instead, he simply tossed his head, finger-length fangs of ebon settling in disarray around his face, and gave a harsh click of his tongue.

The sound, like a stick cracking in a soundless wood, elicited a sharp jerk from the blond. Sasuke focused his gaze on the young man. Coolly drunk in the brief intermission. Momentarily distracted from his own rage, Naruto managed to pull on his boxer shorts, giving a hard tug so the elastic band settled just below his hips. “You're a real bastard, you know that?”

Sasuke gave no response, save perhaps the vague glimmer of a smirk along the edges of his mouth.

“You know something, Sasuke,” Naruto growled out, “Better to be on the run from one village instead of two.” Each word brought the blond closer to the bed, to him. His steps rang with outraged hurt till the sound and feeling were all that Sasuke could acknowledge. “And something tells me Orochimaru” he spit the name out with disgust, “won't be as forgiving.”

Sasuke shuddered involuntarily as he felt Naruto's hands skimming over his torso. He scowled as one jerked his chin up, frustrated that he could now do nothing but stare into those simmering blue eyes, wincing as Naruto's right hand found the various scars scattered across his figure.

That was something he hated too. Naruto knew where each and every white-rimmed, pink-centered flaw was. Sasuke couldn't even tell himself when that had happened. A low hiss slipped past his lips; Naruto smirked with raw satisfaction.

“I still haven't found him.”

“We can do that together. In Konoha.”

Sasuke snarled, yanked his head backward in an attempt to pull himself away from Naruto, away from all of it. Unforgiving, Naruto's fingers burrowed into his jaw and dragged the youngest of the Uchiha clan up to his level with surprising violence. “You can't stay here alone forever, Sasuke!”

“Heh...then stay here with me,” Sasuke retorted bitterly, his hand now slinking up to curl around Naruto's throat. “I have no need for Konoha.”

The pain boiling beneath Naruto's fingers slunk away, the weapon-worn tips just barely brushing against his skin now. Sasuke tentatively moved his jaw, not as a matter of testing for pain but to ensure that no excessive movement caused Naruto to remove himself entirely from his presence. It was confusing to both hate and need the noisy blond. One minute wishing he would just all together disappear from his sight, the next being admonished by his want.

There was another sudden chill as Naruto removed his hand from the last of the scars it had found. Sasuke eyed the appendage warily as it shifted from his body to the open air beside them. “That,” Naruto whispered shakily, “is me.” Staring down the line of sight suggested by the arm, Sasuke caught the glitter of Naruto’s forehead protector, metal and blue cloth tangled up within their clothes.

It was at this moment that he understood. And rather than the flood of rage he had expected, Sasuke felt next to nothing. For a good minute, he simply sat there, blinking emptily at the floor beside the bed. With a heavy breath, Naruto placed his knees on the mattress, nestled his head against Sasuke's neck.

When the blond laced his arms around him, hands gripped tightly onto his shoulders, Sasuke found himself responding immediately. The voice that had always threatened this, had always bombarded these emotions with arrogant spite, was nowhere to be heard. He buried his head against Naruto's chest, fingers hanging onto the edge of his boxers in defeat.

With passive grace, Sasuke pressed his lips against the young man's stomach. “I know that...” he murmured miserably.

He wasn't sure how long they stayed like that. Time had seemed to stop mid-flow, lapping around them with a solemn regret. It would have been appropriate. To have left him like that, on the brink of knowing what could not be stopped. His life seemed to be nothing more than an endless trial of near-death misses. Then time, much like Naruto's anger, came crashing down around him.

Sasuke glanced up, searching desperately despite the lack of lighting for Naruto. He caught a shimmer of movement near the door and shrunk back against the pillows when it was pulled open.

“He took everything from me...” It was the only thing he seemed to be able to offer, his only reason for living, the only justification for his current life. Though the words had come out with a stoic determination, his voice reverberated pathetically within his head.

The figure in the doorway paused, and Sasuke nearly smiled, a small melancholy sort of gesture, as the light caught Naruto's face. His former teammate stood there, gazing silently back at him. The whole scene could have passed for normal. Normal in that they were together. Normal in that he had a home back in Konoha. Normal in that there was no other purpose in his life.

Naruto flashed him a grin. A goofy sort of grin spoiled by the shadow of sorrow.

Sasuke didn't wait for anything else. Instead, he fell backwards, his head burying into the mess of pillows, and closed his eyes. A few moments later, he heard the door clang shut.

“...taken everything...”