[Log] None so quiet as he who cannot speak [Naruto, Sasuke]

[orange_epiphone]

Who: Naruto and Sasuke
What: Have a moment after Obito's funeral
When: August last year. HAHA YES I KNOW WE FAIL STFU OKAY.
Where: Kakashi's house in California
Notes: They're understandably emo, but kind of sweet. But...yeah, slightly soul-crushing.


It had not been Sasuke's first funeral. It was not significantly different that the others, he'd decided. The same dark suits and really meaningless words and lots of people he didn't know murmuring platitudes at him. Funerals always made him feel tired. The ceremony didn't seem to make any difference. The coffin they put in the ground didn't seem connected to the person he'd known. The ashes they scattered earlier that day meant even less, it was even harder to imagine they'd once been a person at all. He might as well have held a handful of dust. Wasn't it all the same in the end, just bits of carbon now? And he hadn't knownObito Uchiha. He'd seen to that.

All in all, it was like Naruto was suffering for both of them. No one walked in California, so they drove back and forth from the cemetery, from thegravesite to the funeral home. It was all meaningless. He'd hoped that Naruto could go without crying- openly. Naruto's red-smeared eyes over breakfast made it clear that he was not okay. But in public, at Sasuke's side, if Naruto were to cry then... well, Sasuke wasn't sure what he'd do then. There didn't seem to be anything he could do.

And Kakashi was as distant as ever. His house was silent and seemed empty, other than the dead person behind one of the doors. Sasuke was used to his own ghosts but not those belonging to other people. He was finding this all too strange, a new state full of bizarrely inappropriate sunlight, miniature palm trees in Kakashi's garden, a ghost that walked through walls when Sasuke fell asleep- when he finally did.

But at least the funeral was over. He got out of his suit and folded it. He'd iron it again when he was back home in New York. He hung up his tie and pressed shirt, shelved his polished shoes in the empty pocket of the guest room's closet. The sundawdled through the window, bright and crisp with a happy Californian summer. It might have been the middle of July. As before, it was obvious to him, the world didn't change or stop. The sun was still bright and warm and most people had no idea that another person was dead. They didn't care, either. There wasn't a lot left of the Uchiha family now, but anyway... Sasuke thought he should stop that immediately. No more repackaging the death of a person he didn't know well as tacked-on addition to a personal tragedy. The dead Uchiha were his, they were no longer alive to argue that they had meaning beyond a reason for one survivor to ruin the rest of his life on purpose. ButObito Uchiha had been something else. To many other people.

Other people like Naruto. Sasuke sighed, and didn't have to look over his shoulder to see the mess Naruto had left on his side of the room. Naruto's messes were like electrical fields, the white noise static of a synthesizer line. You didn't have to see it. Sasuke could feel it, feel Naruto's presence. Naruto wasn't even in the room.

Though he would be. Very soon. Dinner had been hours ago, and Sasuke hadn't been hungry. He'd only eaten to make Obito's mother happy. He felt sick now. He'd done all the boring everyday things to stuff up his empty time and keep from thinking too hard. There was really nothing to do but go to bed, turn off the lights. And hope that Naruto didn't make too much of a commotion when he came up to go to bed himself.

This had been Naruto's first formal funeral. The ones he'd been to for his parents had just had small clusters of their remaining family, drinking and eating and mourning in their own ways. He'd personally spent the week he'd been in ElPaso for Carrie Mama's drunk, mostly in the desert, sobbing and wailing and eviscerating himself until he got most of the hurt out and could start to put himself back together again. And it was hard, because he'd found that he hadn't really wanted to. Despite everything, she had been the person who loved him most in the world, and she had left him.

Perhaps the only thing that stopped him following was the vague, sodden idea that if she'd wanted him to she would have taken him with her. And then, once he'd crawled back out of his friendly, sympathetic bottle, Naruto had put some perspective on things and come back into himself. But it was still a battle.

Once again he'd been unable to dam the constant drain of tears that wove over his cheeks, silent and statuesque in the intensity of his grief but still literally leaking it like a punctured water balloon. WhenKakashi had given the eulogy he'd had to stifle sobs into his fist as 'Tiny Dancer' sounded out eerily over the congregation. The worst part was the looks on MrsUchiha's face, the look on Rin's face, the almost complete lack of expression on Kakashi (yet it somehow managed to pour through in every gesture and word and downward glance). It compounded his own hurt, multiplied it exponentially because he cared about these people and they were hurting and he couldn't make it better.

Sasuke was as stoic as always. That worried him - in some ways it hurt even more than the tears - but that was just Sasuke for you. Naruto couldn't find the energy left to try and do anything about it right then.

He'd eaten everything they'd put on his plate, knowing that if he didn't he'd likely pass out and he had no wishes to make himself sick before departing on thisroadtrip . They'd be skipping the first week or so of school, but Naruto couldn't care less. He wasn't ready to deal with that yet, or face a class with PopsObito absent. Getting fucked up and rocked out on a roadtrip to the Delta sounded far more appealing. He stared blankly at the bathroom wall as he showered, not noticing how long he'd been in there until the water started going cold; with a ragged sigh he dragged himself out and toweled himself off. Everything about him felt heavy, like he was wading through that stuff Tania put in some of her baking - treacle? Something like that - and just couldn't get himself out. He knew he out to try and shake this mood off himself, but couldn't bring himself to do so.

Naruto brushed his teeth automatically and staggered into some underwear and his pyjama pants - Sasuke'd pitch a fit if he came in in anything less, even this was a stretch - and headed back to the room they were sharing. Kakashi's house was huge, full of dusty old rooms and mysteriously locked doors. Normally Naruto would be afire with dangerouscuriosity. Right now he couldn't care less what secrets Kakashi was hiding.

He shuffled quietly into the room and hung his damp towel off the handle, climbing into bed with as little noise as possible. He could hear Sasuke's regular breathing on the opposite side of the room. It was strange, to be back in a single bed and alone. Naruto didn't like it. He was too used to having somebody nearby, the comfort of another warm body and the knowledge that there was affection only a snuggle away. On theroadtrip he wouldn't have to worry about it - no doubt they'd all pile in together, except maybe Zaku - and he and the girls had already decided that their room was basically an excuse for acuddlefest , so their beds would immediately be pushed together for maximum awesome. But right now? He was alone, alone and bereft and the pillow just wasn't cutting it as asnugglebuddy.

...but Sasuke sounded like he was asleep. And he slept pretty deeply.

Naruto peered across the gloom cautiously. While it was true that he needed some physical contact to keep him anchored, it was also true that Sasuke could kick like a mule and had a pretty good right hook when he was pissed. He also didn't seem to take well to casualspoonage - jabbered on about it being gay or something, as if Naruto was trying to lure him into bed and molest him - which could be trouble if he awoke. He pondered this all fuzzily for a while before carefully slipping out from his sheets and padding across the wooden floor. Sasuke slept surprisingly messily, limbs sprawled slightly, flat on his back and out cold. Naruto pursed his lips - it would have been easier if he was on his side, but whatever - before easing under his blankets, sneaking in between his body and arm, head curling onto Sasuke's pale shoulder. There wasn't much space on this edge of the bed, but that was okay. All he needed was this. His anchor. He drew a shuddering breath and let himself float back into unfinished misery. He trusted Sasuke to pull him back in if he got too far away.

Sasuke had maintained some illusion of being all right. And maybe he was, he didn't feel much of anything and now his own insides were pretty much empty. Numbed, really. He might well have been drugged up into oblivion for all he could feel or think. He just marched through the tasks set before him. He got on a plane. He put on a suit. He got in a car. He scattered ashes. He complied stiffly as Obito's mother hugged him. Something inside him crumpled, whined like strained, buckling metal, but nothing came out of him. He was completely unable to cry. It didn't even seem to be an option for him. It was something for other people to do. He stared impassively, watching the ashes torn apart on the wind.

Kakashi's house was bigger than it looked from outside, and it looked substantial. It was an old restored house, built in some other era, all varnished wood and high bay windows. Naruto managed to make himself disappear within it. Usually Sasuke could track Naruto by the trail of mess and distant racket. But Naruto was making himself very scarce. Sasuke thought maybe that he should wait up, but as the numbers on Kakashi's clock radio blinked upwards, the logic of this became more tangled, and Sasuke couldn't think of what he'd say, or what even he could do. Death had always been a profound sense of helplessness to him. He couldn't make the dead come back to life. And because of this, there was nothing he could do, he couldn't help Naruto at all.

As eleven rolled around, he sat up in bed and tried to read a newspaper, get some sense of the world around him and so many other people with far worse problems than he had. But these damn west coast newspapers were all full of that same airy, sunny California-ness. Sasuke didn't think he'd be really suited to all this sun-kissed orangey, granola-y, oceanfront warmth and decadence. Even if it were just an impersonal stop on a roadtrip, a place to drink a few beers- never mind, he hated beer- to sit on the beach and watch the waves. No real pressing problem or reason for him to be there. But for a funeral, for the shadow of death, it was not right- at all. He folded the newspaper back up with terse disgust. He put it down beside the bed. He considered reading one of his technical synth manuals, but the numbers and frequencies and hardware would just swim around in his head now, he felt fuzzed out. He felt disconnected from the sense of the person he was, too much was changing too quickly. Or else all the dry electrical circuits and the technical terms would rattle inside his empty thoughts, turn dry and featureless, make him wonder why he felt so much darkness and energy and mystery in this music, this strange instrument, even in the piano hammers and coiled strings in the baby grand downstairs. Right now he couldn't feel any interest or pull towards it at all. He'd been here with it for two days now and he hadn't even lifted it's keyboard lid. He was depressed, he supposed... He should go to bed. He should try to sleep. He thought he could write a letter to Hinata, mail it tomorrow. Let her know that he was thinking about her. But the words would come out like dry chips of bone. Like incinerated bits of flesh and muscle. Like ashes.

Bed was a good idea, his thoughts were draining down into places he didn't want to be.

So he turned out the light and, thankfully, dropped soundlessly into a deep sleep.

Deeper than usual, and he was not always so lucky to fall asleep with such ease. But maybe he was exhausted under the numbness and didn't know it. The numbness could be like his suit, pressed and expensive and immaculate, concealing the ugly splinters of his heart under the starched linen and wool. So he'd look fine, he'd look perfect. Maybe it was the shiny surface, the empty words, the benediction from the priest and the flowers, the useless artifice of the ceremony that put him off.

Deep sleep like this had the power to strip reality from him entirely. It was always a relief, to be dreaming of something else, to feel no burden of the person he was and his personal history. He'd awaken and be completely unaware of what day it was, what time, where he was... and if not who he was, which place and time, which screaming ghost, which bad memory. The uncertainty was a few seconds of freedom.

So when he woke with the soft blare of red digits floating in the darkness in front of him, he thought of his own clock radio. He felt arms around him, was pleased that Hinata was with him, that everything was okay, that she'd returned to him, that...

....

....reality descended and with it, the words-California, after the funeral, Naruto-

-and it was Naruto, he realized. The hands were bigger and much rougher than Hinata's hands would be. The body pressed to him gave out much more heat, Hinata was soft and small and she didn't blast body heat this way, she didn't have shortspikey hair, she didn't smell like aftershave and sweat and alcohol and despair.

The digits swam in blackness. 12:50. The center dots blinked blinked blinked. The darkness slowly materialized the angle of the window, the bedside table, the curve of a lampshade.

Sasuke held very still. He would have shoved Naruto away, maybe, in his daylight waking life. Maybe... even recently he would have done this, he had such a chain of debt to Naruto, like adaisychain of Naruto's stupid ballpoint ink hearts, the times when Naruto had stood up for him, listened to him complain furiously, tried to help him. The time when he'd had a complete panic attack in front of Naruto and Naruto had just held him and then-

-yes, then even replaced the teacup Sasuke had shattered. Even though Sasuke had thrown it himself.

You couldn't spit in the face of someone like that and not feel like a fucking asshole. And when all that stood between him and accepting all this affection was his need to prove that everyone despised him and a few lazy gay slurs by dead-eyed bigots on the streets...

...he couldn't see why he should shove Naruto away. He couldn't see a single justification for it. Cuddling didn't make you gay, after all. All these other damn libertines seemed to cuddle all the time! Hell, from the way Naruto and Anko went on about it, their rooms were a 24 hr co-edcuddlefest . And anyway, Sasuke was pretty damn sure he liked girls just fine and also that he didn't want to let some asshole on the street pausing between calling him a chink and ajap for the novelty of calling him a faggot be the one who made this decision for him.

So he just closed his eyes.

"...what it is, Naruto?" he said, finally. The darkness seemed to hush and absorb his voice.

Naruto froze instantly, automatically waiting for the scathing tone and/or a thump aimed at his head before slowly relaxing back into his slump when none was forthcoming. Taking Sasuke's lack of vociferous aggression as a tacit invitation he buried his face into the younger man's shoulder a bit further, feeling the hot seep of tears absorbing into Sasuke's pyjamas. His head spun every time he tried to sort it out into coherence, a miasma of words he'd never said, words he should have said, messages left on a dead man'sanswer machine less than a year past, the sad strum of his guitar married with Mike's equally regretful voice and--

--he'd tried to escape it all day but Carrie Mama had a knack of haunting him and he was too worn out to push her away. Her birthday, Obito's funeral...the only day worse than this was his own birthday. Papa's birthday. Mama'sdeathday . The Texan shivered slightly despite the California heat and attempted to speak. The words sounded messy and fractured when he managed to get them out, rolled onto Sasuke's chest with the rest of his weight.

For today, he was too tired to hold himself up any longer.

"I got her song stuck in m'head," he whispered, tilting his head up to look at Sasuke, though all he really got was an eyeful of chin, and even that was dubious in this light. "Sing mesomethin' t'get it out?"

Of course, Sasuke didn't sing, but Naruto didn't take this to assume that he couldn't. His prickly hermano seemed to think that to sing was to mean you wanted centre stage and the spotlight and the attention that when with it. Obviously Sasuke had never heard his mother quietly singing along to the radio as she did the housework or made dinner - then again, Sasuke's mother had been on Broadway, hadn't she? Maybe that had something to do with it. But to Naruto, singing was just an extension of playing, of the music that he heard continuously thrumming through the world until he had to get it out somehow. It was just another instrument, another way for him to release everything.

But Sasuke thought of instruments as tools. Naruto knew it was the other way around.

He closed his eyes, trying to stop crying for Sasuke's sake - tears and emotion made him uncomfortable, ripped the balance out from under his feet - but it wasn't working. He needed to get this out, this last little bit of mind-crushing grief for two people he loved. His handfisted slightly in Sasuke's pyjama shirt as he held on for dear sanity. "Please..." It was unfair of him to be asking Sasuke to look after him right now, Naruto knew that, but he was so broken apart at the seams that he needed his help. He couldn't do it on his own this time.

Naruto was crying, there was no escaping the fact now. The tears were seeping through Sasuke's t-shirt, wetting the locks of hair that sat against his neck. Naruto's hands were trembling as much as they clenched. It was a full-on situation. The clock radio blinked on, indifferent. Silence moved through the house,Kakashi was out of reach, and the fact that Sasuke had no bloody idea how to help anyone with any emotional issue was completely beside the point. Naruto was here and this was happening.

He exhaled tiredly. His chest deflated. He understood grief, it was seared into him now. He could spot it instantly, see it carved into people from across a crowded funeral, see its invisible bruises in even Kakashi's impassive face, his few words. Naruto was so virulent with it that Sasuke could barely fucking look at him. It was like asking to break down himself. And he couldn't do that. He wasn't even sure who he'd be crying for. Not forObito Uchiha, whose name was formal and distant like a stranger in his memory. No- it would be for himself, because he'd fucked up his last chance to have a family- a real one, connected in blood- and now it was too late. He'd be feeling sorry for himself.

And Naruto's request was not on, he could sing.. sort of.. he could sing a phrase like any music student was taught to, he could judge pitch and reproduce it. But he wasn't a singer, the most he did was hum under his breath. He knew instinctively that he'd look like fucking moron if he tried to pull off the entire act of singing, the showmanship and the theatre, the spotlight- so he didn't fucking bother. And anyway, he wasn't generally able to do it period at the small hours of the morning, having just been awoken by someone who'd crawled into his bed and was now crying on his shoulder.

He sighed. It wasn't exasperated, he didn't blame Naruto for feeling this way. Frankly, anyone who acted out of grief or did somethinghyperbolically stupid in the process got a free pass from Sasuke. He knew what it felt like. So he shrugged with the shoulder that Naruto wasn't crying on and said, his voice stiff with sleepiness. "...I'm not a singer. But mywalkman is on the bedside table." He'd attempted to listen to some music while trying to keep himself busy, found that he couldn't concentrate or manage to feel excited and engaged with it. "It's full of loud music." ...to say the least. It was all experimental industrial and techno from Detroit. Where they thought sledgehammers on steel car frames made great percussion instruments. "...that will get anything out of your head." There weren't even choruses or chords or lyrics. Just pure, organized, mathematical, rhythmic, melodic noise and melody and notes created by synthesizers to sound like the vibration of columns of crystal.

"Listen to that," he concluded. And stifled a yawn into his hand.

That wasn't what Naruto had meant - he hadn't wanted noise, he'd wanted the comfort of a familiar voice soothing him in a familiar manner, but that wasn't Sasuke's style. He'd known that when he'd asked, but his eternal wellspring of hope had denied censorship and spouted it out anyway. He didn't say anything, just shook his head vaguely in denial and wriggled in closer, while paradoxically trying not to invade Sasuke's space any more than he absolutely had to. One foot was curled up behind him, hanging out the side of the bed and trying to drag the rest of him with it, but he was resisting its subversive efforts admirably.

He shivered again - shuddered, really, unable to control the spasm as it flowed and twisted down his spine - feeling the old mattress beneath them quiver in sympathetic momentum. It was like he couldn't get warm, like there was a glacier moving through his veins andcalfing icebergs into the pools of his nerve endings before he could rekindle his usual spark and flame of life. Without that, what was the point? Naruto clenched his jaw, willing the bad thoughts to go away, wanting to be himself again.

But that was awful hard to want when who you were seemed, increasingly, to be a constantly-kicked-to-the-ground loser.

Why did this keep happening?!? He'd just pick himself up from the ground when the effort earned him another boot in the ribs. It made him angry, which was not an emotion Naruto liked to let fester within himself. Annoyance, irritation, peevishness...they weremanageable . But anger turned too swiftly to blind rage, and that was hard to rein in once he let it get away from him. With a choked-off groan of utterly crushing despair, Naruto squeezed his eyes shut on another flood of tears, leaving them to burn futilely against his eyelids instead. No. He had to pull himself together. There was no use in wasting all this perfectly good time feeling sorry for himself and angry at the world for taking away something else he loved.

It just hurt so damn much, that was all...

Naruto didn't seem to want to do that. Listen to anything. Sasuke was not awake, not really, he was sort of fuzzy-headed and confused as to why Naruto didn't want to listen to music, that's what Sasuke did to turn his brain off when it insisted on spitting up horrible nightmare images and fractured panic-laced ideas at him. And usually it did the trick. But Naruto didn't reach for thewalkman . His hands fumbled in the covers and he moved around a bit, Sasuke was too tired to really follow what he was doing. The idea that Sasuke could just roll over and hug Naruto like a normal person, yes, occurred to him. But then again, did guys do that? Hug? Sasuke wasn't sure. That might be gay. And he wasn't gay! Though maybe comforting Naruto was something that was more important than avoiding doing something gay... and, of course it was. Grief was horrible. There was no other word for it. But Sasuke also didn't really feel like moving, he had to work himself up to moving, and hugging and all of that. And as well- there would be no one around to witness him doing something gay, so it didn't really matter.

"....then do you want to talk?" Sasuke managed, since Naruto didn't want music and he clearly wanted something.. and the idea of talking made sense in Sasuke's sleepy brain anyway.

...Naruto had shivered. He'd just felt it. Naruto was clinging to him, after all. It was like...

...right, Sasuke remembered. It was like the day he'd had a panic attack in front of Naruto, hurling his teacup at the wall, lost it completely. Naruto had, very calmly in fact, just hugged Sasuke and held him like that until he calmed down.

And it hadn't been gay at all.

So hugging was okay. Sasuke got Naruto's arm from under him, rolled over, and matter-of-factly put his arms around Naruto. There- done.

Though Naruto was not okay, Sasuke could feel it in the jumpy tension of his body. Naruto wasn't okay at all.

Sasuke had to say something.

What?

He had plenty of experience with grief. He could speak at some length on the subject, though mostly he found it exhausting and futile to talk about it at all. Comforting people... was so impossible, when he really thought about it. Had anything comforted him, seemed to mean anything at all? The most honest thing he could say was probably that it hurt like hell, and then later on it stopped hurting- as much. And that was pretty much how it was. And you didn't die of it, though it really felt like you would. And... all of this was something people had said to him. And he'd despised these people for those empty fucking useless words.

"....what's the problem?" he yawned. No, that sounded too brusque. He frowned, his eyes bleary and closed. "...look, you're not all right... can tell.. what's wrong?" That was as much gentleness as he could manage. Maybe if he got up and woke up completely he'd do better. And if Naruto was really messed up seriously then maybe, Sasuke thought, they should get up, get dressed, find some all-night diner and have a cup of coffee and bad food and talk. Or not talk, but get out of this dark room, its memories, its associations. This whole mindset. It was too close to the funeral home and the ash scattering ceremony. This whole house was like that. Sepulchral. Like a monument to the dead. No wonder Naruto was losing it.

The world rocked, flipping his stomach over and catching his throat before it suddenly halted and left him feeling slightly dizzy. There was all this pressure, like thatfeeling you got in the middle of the thunderstorm or something, and it was weighing down his head. Naruto couldn't work out what to do to get it to release - he never could. Usually when it settled on him he just drank until he could ignore it, and kept himself drunk until he judged it to have blown over. Maybe in that time he flew to pieces; he didn't know. If he did, there was always somebody around who cared enough to pick up the puzzle and shove it back together again.

Maybe the was the boil-lancer in itself.

He felt a near-overwhelming urge, a flat-out need, to crush himself into Sasuke's unusually-pliable form and somehow melt into him until nothing of himself remained. It was an unusually morbid thought for the normally ridiculously cheerful Texan, but his tired and overwhelmed psyche reasoned that if he wasn't him this wouldn't hurt. It wouldn't make him feel so sick every time he thought about it - Pops is gone, Pops is dead, Pops is GONE - and maybe, by the time he melted through Sasuke and became himself again, maybe it would all be over. He could leave it behind. He could drain it from his soured blood, like a sieve or a filter or whatever.

For the brief moment this fuzzy chain of thought slogged through his head, Naruto didn't breathe, didn't move as it held him down. Sasuke's arms around him felt warm - surprisingly so, despite the fact that Naruto was actually physically warmer. It was so nice to be held. It was always a sure-fire way to soothe his nerves, to pull him back from the brink, to give him some sanity. He was tactile person by nature, and he had this tendency to transmute feelings, memories and thoughts into actions that floated on colour and sound. Hugs to Naruto meant more than just affection and good times; they were warm scones straight from the oven, they were listening to Patti Page records in the sun, they were the smell of lavender and rose drifting on a dusty Texan summer breeze. They were everybody he loved and everything he loved, a constant reaffirmation of all that was good and right in the world. It was awfully hard to feel so terribly down with that trying to boost him back up again.

Naruto sighed deeply, tucking his head firmly into Sasuke's chest. Did he realise how much this meant? No, probably not. Few people did. But at least it was easier to speak now that nearly twenty-one years of love was resounding back through him, triggered by such a simple action. "...I hate losing people," he whispered finally, fingers splaying over Sasuke's back absently beforereclenching in his shirt. There was still that awful, echoing hollowness in his chest where Obito should have been, and Naruto knew that no amount of hugs and love and all that good stuff could ever completely fill it, oh no. It just wrapped it over and quietly shut the door until the next hurricane blew through and ripped his guards down.

But that storm warning wasn't sounding yet.

That seemed a bit better, Sasuke thought. Naruto's sigh was edged with relief under its ground glass sting of...

Well, that ache of loneliness and grief that Sasuke knew like an old wound. Or an old enemy. But Naruto seemed to be calming down a bit. Sasuke didn't consider himself to be good at this. Good at affection. Afraid to open himself up to it, really, that was what the shrink said and she wasn't wrong. But Naruto could hide his face in Sasuke's shirt and clench at the fabric and it was... actually, it wasn't bad like Sasuke had thought. He was awake now. The house was silence and darkness around him, but it was normal and still and, yes, it was safe. Kakashi was incomprehensible, but he was not threatening. His house was full of stillness like it was caught in time, yes, unresolved issues. But also nothing changing in a hurry. Nothing to stop him from catching his breath.

And being there for Naruto, since he'd wanted to do this, he realized. He'd just been afraid to even try. If he couldn't be normal, he'd be ruined and bitter and furious. He'd have nothing in his heart to rage against the unfairness of the loss.

Losing people, that was a good way to put it. Straight to the point. Naruto had a rough, pure way with the truth. With all of the truth and he didn't hide from it or push it away or throw it away with great force like Sasuke did.

Did he?

"I know how that feels." Sasuke muttered heavily.

Was there anything else he could say?

"I don't know how to make it better," he admitted.

Because maybe that was what would matter, just talking to Naruto. Being there for him. Naruto couldn't stop a panic attack, he couldn't put the bullets back in the service revolver or take it out ofItachi's hand or push back the hands of the clock or somehow do anything to change things that Sasuke himself couldn't do. And Sasuke had figured that made anything else completely pointless. The teacup was shattered and the panic attack was triggered and nothing could stop it.

Nothing could change it.

"It helped a bit." he said, continuing. "When you..." Call it what it is, he thought. "...hugged me. That time when I broke the teacup. That's all I can do right now."

But maybe it would mean something. And maybe it wasn't all pointless.

"You were right when you said all those things about my life not being over." he added. In a rush, like he was embarrassed. And he was, he hated being wrong. "I shouldn't have argued with you." And the fact was, Naruto probably knew his own life wasn't over either. Both of his parents gone now, and his mother having taken her own life, which was something so raw and painful that Sasuke shied from it. It was too much to even consider, look at, think about. It was pain he didn't have room for, even reflected or shared or...

"You can get into bed all the way." he sighed. And moved over so Naruto would have room. "I won't kick you out." The darkness covered the awkwardness of his half-smile. "I know it's not gay. I just didn't know..."

Well...

"I didn't know how to be around people. I still don't. But you can get into bed anyway." He moved over so Naruto could have the pillows he'd been lying against. There were others, this was a double bed. It could handle two people. And maybe Sasuke could himself. Once again.

"Thanks," Naruto said simply. And maybe Sasuke wasn't the type to really read all the emotion that could be invested into one simple word, but on the other hand Naruto had heard him play: he knew for certain that there in fact was a heart beneath that solid iron facade. Hell, witness the moment right now, with Sass actually inviting him into bed for some totally platonic man-snugglings. It probably would have seemed like a small thing for many people, but to Naruto it was another match lighting him up, keeping him warm, keeping his flame burning.

He scooched across, again closing the distance between them. If he'd ever thought about it, Naruto might have praised his extreme good fortune for somehow having the exact right person to hold him together when he needed them most. If he'd possessed anything remotely like objectivity he might have passed it off as Karma paying its dues to him when it took away what he loved most. But Naruto did neither of these things. He just burrowed his messy head of blonde hair into Sasuke's increasingly-damp shirt, holding close to reassure himself that they were alive and breathing. His habit of living in the moment probably served him best now, because it didn't leave room for looking back, nor room for looking into a future coping with his loss. Naruto concentrated on the steady rhythm of Sasuke's chest as it rose and fell with his breathing, on the slowing drip of tears off his own cheek, of the warmth that radiated from the place where he imagined Sasuke ended and he began - or maybe it was the other way around, Naruto didn't know and didn't mind either way.

His voice was still raw and hoarse when he cleared it past the lump in his throat. "An' I know why you argued. 'S'in your nature to argue everythin'. S'just the way you are." He sighed, though it wasn't anything more than a simple exhalation of excess breath from his crowded lungs. There was no particular emotion attached to the action. One hand released Sasuke's poor abused shirt to rub at his eyes. "Ijus'...I never meant t'try an' force y'to be somethin' you're not, Sass. But I don't like seein' you so unhappy, y'know? So I figured that maybe tryin' my way might help things. Jus' a little bit. Even if it really ain't the right way f'you. I never meant to try an' make you into...another me. 'S'at make sense?" He could hear his voice slurring and yawning with sleepiness, his drawl sprawling over the syllables in exhaustion. Naruto supposed he should probably sleep, but he wasn't quite ready for that yet. He had a bit more rebuilding to do first.

"'S'long as y'here, 's'all right with me. 'S'the important thing. Yeah?"

And it was a question he wanted answered, even if he hadn't really phrased it that way. He had to know that what he did for Sasuke meant something. Naruto had to know - always had to know - that he meant something.

Because if he didn't, then what the fuck was the point?

Sasuke wasn't sure if Naruto was still crying. Naruto's face was buried in the covers and the wild tangle of his blond hair and Sasuke's bunched, damp shirt. But maybe it didn't matter. Things seemed to be almost.. sort of... yes, all right. Kind of all right. And no one could see him smiling and he didn't have to account for that smile, or worry that people would notice it and make a big deal of it. So he felt safe smiling. Just a bit.

"You weren't trying to make me into someone else." he replied, gruffly. Awkwardly. "I knew you weren't." He was just arguing out of his... need to protect himself and hammerspikey armoured plates of resistance and stoicism around his heart and pretend it was cold and hard and unreachable. And that he felt nothing, though mostly he was just being a shit anyway. And he was sorry, but he felt too embarrassed to apologize.

In so many words, anyway.

"It was good advice. My father says that if it works, that's all that matters." And his father had felt that way. That made it something Sasuke could believe in too. "Yeah," he replied, quietly. And it had worked. Naruto had been right. He wet his lips nervously, and was glad for the darkness and the silence and the... lack of chances to embarrass himself more, this situation was just right. It was okay. "I needed the shrink first." he sighed. Admitted. Well, it's no secret. "But you were still..." he harrumphed slightly. "...right. Naruto." You were right, Naruto. Why was that so hard to say?

Just his pride, the usual reason. The impossibility of it.

"You knew you were anyway." Sasuke muttered, his words muffled against the press of covers and Naruto's hair and their tangled arms. "But fine. I admit it." Because it's true, he thought. "It is true." Gruffness was the only way to get this out, to be straight and truthful about it. "But you knew that. Anyway."

'Says', Naruto thought to himself, not 'said'. He didn't point the slip out, but it was another affirmation of Sasuke's complete inability to let go, to know that the past was the past and that nothing anybody did could bring it back. On the one hand it hurt Naruto's heart. On the other...well, he knew he was just as guilty. Concentrating on his now didn't mean he didn't think about then. It was too important, too central. Naruto carried his past around with him so seamlessly that people mostly didn't even notice, but every now and again something would dust the top off it and reveal it for what it was: a gaping wound, a heart that was more hole than whole and patched up with whatever and whoever he could find to fit.

Luckily, Naruto was rather gifted at making himself fit around all the other assorted pieces. "I dunno. 'S'not often I'm right. But sometimes...you gotta look at stuff from someone else's point'a view, yeah? 'S'like perspective, or somethin'. But 's'hard t'do. 'S'always harder ta be someone else instead'a yaself. Bein' yaself...you don't gotta think 'bout it. Bein' someone else means y'gotta pretend. I don't like t'see people pretendin' that way. I never met anybody that doin' it made them happy." He yawned ferociously, relinquishing one handhold on Sasuke to rub at his eyes in an oddly childlike gesture, face screwing up with the effort of thinking and being awake all at the same time. "I think...if you're morey'self, then it don't hurt as much, 'cause to be y'self you gotta accept y'self - all of y'self - and by the time ya know who ya really are, you're prob'ly ready for anythin'."

The hand found a new mission in patting Sass' head gently, like he was Emilë on a bad day. "Knowin' yaself's always the hardest part, I guess."

Sasuke listened to Naruto and kept his eye on the heaviness in Naruto's voice like the level of mercury, going high up and now, thankfully, coming down. He listened to the words too, the sound of Naruto talking them both out of a real breakdown. He decided that he agreed with most of it. It was not his father's philosophy, but it seemed reasonable.

Still. "I don't think you can ever be ready for anything." he said. And having picked that nit, another thread unraveled and he thought that he did know himself, and that had never helped him.

And none of that that line of thinking would help. So he let Naruto... do whatever he was doing. He opened his eyes. Was Naruto petting him? Snotty retorts sprung immediately to mind. I'm not a cat, Naruto. And Naruto's flippant reply, which Sasuke could instantly imagine. Yeah but your hair looks like one,haha ! Or something like that, Sasuke could never seem to capture the spark of Naruto's words, his memory was like a snapshot. Perfectly rendered in cold detail, but flat. Naruto had something that he couldn't even imagine.

"Let go for a second." he said. He could see they were going to spend the night this way, and Naruto would probably doze off soon enough. Sasuke figured they might as well get comfortable.

"Here." he yawned, rescuing Naruto's pillows from his bed. "There's room for both of us." He kicked the covers back into place. "Don't steal them." he warned sleepily. Then he lay back down. On his side, facing Naruto in the darkness and the steady blip of the clock radio over Naruto's shoulder.

"Mmm. Thanks, Sass." Naruto curled in, so incredibly tired. His eyes were stuck full of grit and sand that squeaked over his eyeballs every time he tried to open them, so he just quit trying. He didn't need them open right now anyway. His fingersretangled themselves in Sasuke's shirt, head burrowing into the same space, but gently. He just needed a little bit of steadying now, not someone to remind him who and where he was. He was...better, for now. And in a few days he'd be better again. And in a few weeks, he'd be able to pretend to pretend that it'd never happened, that Pops wasn't really dead - just not here right now.

And then he'd be back to normal.

He sighed, the last vestige of his consciousness drifting away into the room's silence. "Mmm. G'night. See y'in th'mornin'." Sleep. He could do it now. He owed Sasuke big time for this, but that was fine. Life was all about that, anyway.

Sasuke lay there, Naruto curled up against him. Not stiff. Not exactly comfortable yet. He stared out at darkness.

He put his arm around Naruto. Now, while Naruto was not yet asleep and wouldn't be disturbed. It felt like detaching it.

Being close to people. Like pulling himself apart. Scary. New, but good. He blinked and thought about it. He decided he was too tired to think.

Too many questions. He was not gay. He assembled a perfect argument for a case where he'd defend his heterosexuality. He went to sleep that way, considering his opening statement. Naruto curled up warm and alive against him.