Just something that came into my head as I reread some of my favorite SasuNaru doujinshi. I hope you like it and all of my weird musings.

COMING BACK HOME

You can’t think about why you have to kill someone.

In the world of the shinobi, in this world of kill or be killed, fleeing to fight another day, battling others and trying your hardest just to get a scroll or some sort of object… turning in mission reports as fast as you can, just to run down streets, jump over roofs, dash up and down levels upon levels of stairs just to open one door…

You can’t think about why you love someone either.

“I’m home,” Sasuke said. Bags were under his eyes, he was out of breath, and no one could say that he didn’t look like he would pass out any moment.

“Welcome back!” Naruto said happily, coming over to him so he wouldn’t collapse. He himself had just gotten out of the shower about ten minutes ago, and his ANBU uniform was still in the bathtub, soaking in the cold water from his shower, his hair still wet.

“You just got back yourself, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Long mission?”

“Yeah.”

It’s inevitable that you’ll die someday—we just die sooner.

In this world, where we kill for a living, where we have to fight for ourselves and sometimes others, for a living, for a meal or to pay rent or for whatever we use money for to keep us going through our lives because nothing these days comes for free, where we might be alive one moment and then dead the next or something close enough that it feels like we are dead or should be dead, we have to take what we can get.

Because when you are death, you have to hold onto what everyone else calls “humanity”.

Sasuke had finally dried off out of the shower, but he didn’t want to bother with drying his hair and messing with it. It would go into what Naruto called the “chicken butt style” on its own sooner or later. Naruto smiled at him from the couch and patted the seat next to him. Sasuke shook his head but took the invitation anyways.

“You’re quiet tonight,” the blond said, cuddling up to him. “Something wrong?”

“No,” Sasuke replied. “Just… glad to be home.”

Little things. Little things like the sun shining after a storm, flowers blooming, seeing some innocent kids play in the street, hearing someone laugh, a cheerful tune, a warm hug in the middle of the night, someone holding your hand… someone waking you up in the middle of a nightmare, holding you tightly, reassuring you that it wasn’t real.

In this world, you just gotta take whatever love and humanity you can get and keep.

Naruto smiled, and squirmed closer to his best friend, rival, lover, everything else, wrapping his arms around the other’s waist, resting his head on his shoulder. Sasuke wrapped his arms around Naruto, tucking his head under his chin. They had gone through a lot since they first met when they were twelve. Hard to believe that they were only nineteen years old… You’d think they’d be insane by now.

But they weren’t. They weren’t even going to go back to where that was a possibility.

“Love you,” Naruto whispered, his eyes closed.

“Love you,” Sasuke said back, letting his own eyes close and his body relax. He might be a killer, he might be feared, he might have been something evil, might still be evil or capable of that evilness, but he was still human. And sitting on this old couch of theirs, falling asleep in Naruto’s arms and Naruto in his, was why he kept fighting.

Because in this world, in the world he was in, if he didn’t have something, someone to come back to… what was the point of coming back at all?