A/N: Hi. It's been a long time. I'm mostly active on AO3, but will upload a few stories here as I go. This is a quick one I've written recently. Given the current circumstances, I hope you are all safe and healthy, and that this story might make your days just a little bit better(:

Enjoy, and thank you for reading.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. My only form of payment for writing these stories are reviews and comments (and sometimes, new friends!).

This story is NaruSasu (a little SasuNaru, to an extent). Some mild rutting. Canon-divergent (mostly canon). This is how I wished things ended.

The boy arrives in a surge of red—literally—trailing buckets of the sopping paint and slapping it over the stone faces of Hokage. Men run after him, their voices carried away in the wind and the clouds. They are colorless in the boy's golden wake, like ants scrambling after the shadows of a butterfly. Sasuke's father folds his arms over his chest, his face tilted up, the corners of his mouth dripping to his chin.

Between the red paint and the orange pants and the golden hair, the boy is lively as tongues of fire. Sasuke watches him throw his face to the sky, paint streaked across his cheeks, mouth open in a smile where the teeth don't meet, shoulders shaking. He wonders what it is like to laugh that beautifully.

The boy announces his name to the class as if it is his only possession in the world and he wouldn't mind giving it away. He jabs his thumb against his chest and juts his chin out. There is a smudge of dirt across his neck. Crusted paint in his fingernails.

"My name is Uzumaki Naruto and I'm going to become Hokage!"

(Dattebayo!)

The class yawns and shuffles, but Sasuke is enthralled. He watches the way Naruto puffs out his chest. Not arrogant, no. Confident. And sad.

Naruto looks at Sasuke, and Sasuke looks at him.

The day after Sasuke loses almost everything, he is thrown into a tunnel of spinning whispers and pointing fingers. His head still throbs and his vision still swims with the drying blood of his mother and father. Only Naruto looks straight at him. Sasuke knows his own eyes are swollen and his face is blotchy, but he cannot look away. Naruto's eyes are blue and blue and blue.

But they are also clearer than anything Sasuke has ever seen.

(I see you.)

Naruto has eyelashes.

He is squatting on Sasuke's desk, and he has eyelashes.

Sasuke knows, of course, that everyone has eyelashes. He just never thought about Naruto and eyelashes, together. They are golden as his hair, the shape of the sun peeking through slits in his curtains.

And suddenly Naruto is kissing him, if he can even call it that. Sloppy and heavy and he doesn't even close his eyes and Sasuke only knows this because he doesn't either. There is a giant smacking sound when he pulls away and suddenly everyone is screaming and Naruto is screaming and a girl with pink hair is hitting him over the head and Sasuke realizes that Naruto tastes like miso.

Naruto is terrible at almost everything. He fails assignment upon assignment. His shadow clone is as useful as half a shoe. He interrupts lessons with new jokes and stories about his walks to school. Iruka-sensei pinches the bridge of his nose and Sasuke can see the skin above his eye twitch.

And later, after they have graduated from the Academy, Kakashi-sensei catches his forehead in his palm and Sasuke can hear him pray beneath the dark blue of his mask. He had never known Kakashi-sensei to be religious.

But Naruto is also good at many things. The class laughs and snickers, but Naruto only tries again. He looks at Sasuke and huffs and tries again and again and again.

Naruto has chosen him, Sasuke thinks. He goes out of his way to challenge him and point his finger in his face and it takes all of Sasuke's willpower not to go cross-eyed trying to look at it. Then Sasuke will say something just to spite him, because he likes the way Naruto feels his feelings. He feels them fully and completely, without hesitation. His anger is like his laughter, loud and full of color. Only his sadness is a void. Sasuke would rather him painted purple with anger or red with happiness than nothing in sadness.

So Sasuke likes to call him an idiot, even if he knows that Naruto is anything but.

Before the sun sets one day, Naruto lets Sasuke run his finger over his cheek. Sasuke has always wondered what the scars on his face feel like. If they are raised. Or indented. If they ever hurt or itched. Naruto shakes his head.

They don't feel like anything.

('Tebayo!)

Sasuke likes the way the scars bend when Naruto laughs. They lift with his cheeks like little winking grins.

Sasuke has never been one for ramen, but he likes the way Naruto hums when he slurps the long noodles into his mouth, so he goes. Naruto's blue eyes are curved into two waning crescent moons.

He eats slower than Naruto does. His father had hated splattering. His mother had said that each bite was meant to be savored. But Naruto swallows his entire bowl in two minutes. It is not unlike watching a thunderstorm.

On the days that the frog wallet is underfed, Naruto will look from his empty bowl to Sasuke's and tuck his bottom lip between his teeth. There is always soup on his forehead, maybe a slice of green onion on his cheek. Sakura grimaces.

Naruto could ask the world of him, and he would probably give it. This is only a half-eaten bowl of ramen. Sasuke pushes his bowl to him.

Sasuke had barely taken four bites, but the way Naruto smiles at him makes him feel full.

Naruto is as all-encompassing as the sky on a mid-summer day, and it frightens Sasuke. He has vowed himself to cold vengeance, but when he is with Naruto, he is only warm. He begins to get used to the warmth. It's okay to feel warm, those blue eyes say.

(It's not.)

When he leaves Konoha, he does so when the sky is still grey because he knows Naruto is asleep. He knows that if he looked into those blue eyes again, he would never leave and his brother would never die and then—what would be the point of living? Did Itachi not spare him only to give his foolish little brother a purpose?

Sasuke has always been good at lying, but never with Naruto. Naruto, with his eyes that are clearclearclear. They see straight through him.

"I never cared for you," Sasuke tells him. He has to yell it over the roar of the waterfall and he wonders if it would hurt less if he whispered it instead. "You are nothing to me."

Naruto shakes his head and says something that Sasuke does not catch. It is odd not to hear him—Naruto has always been too loud. When they fight, Naruto cries, his anger and sadness a flurry of reds and blacks and blues. It rains.

Sasuke can hear his heart beat in his ears, thick and pulsing. He wonders if Naruto can hear it too.

Naruto quiets and his feelings are leeched of color. Sasuke leaves him on the ground. The rain drips from his temple to his chin and it is cold.

The faces of his classmates have begun to blur. Was Shikamaru the one with the eyebrows or was it Ree? Is his name even Ree? Who was the girl with the mind jutsu? It doesn't matter. But whenever he closes his eyes, he still sees Naruto and the shape of his smile.

Naruto, in sharp lines and full saturation. It is blinding.

He dreams in color. So much so that he has trained himself to wake whenever it happens. When he opens his eyes, there is only black. This is why Sasuke prefers the caves. He tells Orochimaru that he will only train when the sky is grey or when it is night.

The cold seeps into him and fills his bones and Sasuke tells himself that this is right.

It must be right.

(Isn't it?)

The first time he dreams in only grey, a boy with white skin and black hair wakes him. He is a stranger with a question about bonds and Naruto's name on his tongue. There is a feeling spinning in Sasuke's gut that he cannot explain. It is white-hot.

Rock breaks easily in his wake. Shatters under his chakra, brittle as glass. The white-hot feeling dissolves and prickles underneath his skin. The sun is high in the sky and he has to squint when he looks down and—

"Sasuke."

(At last.)

Naruto does not smile, does not laugh or yell or scream. He only looks at him. Sasuke brings himself close and Naruto still smells the same. Miso and sweat and warmth. It hits him with the force of thunder. He grips Naruto's shoulder to keep from falling.

He has always liked the way Naruto feels his feelings, but now Naruto stands before him and there is no color.

It is only when he is leaving, when he catches a glimpse of Naruto crumbling to the ground, mouth open in a sob, that he realizes.

(I have broken you.)

He has imagined this moment more times than he has taken breath. He has imagined feeling triumph surging through him, imagined feeling light, imagined feeling finallyfinallyfinally.

(Mother, Father, it is done. I've done it.)

Itachi is dead before him, but he feels nothing. Like he could die, too, and it would be okay. Perhaps in death, he would feel something.

He looks up at the sky and it is grey.

(I've done it, but why do I only feel empty?)

There is nothing.

It envelops him and he turns and thrashes and there is only nothing.

He feels as though he is falling.

Downdowndown. Suspended in air and yet, it hurts.

He holds his breath.

(It hurts so much.)

He exhales.

People make mistakes, Sasuke knows. They act to the best of their judgement because they want to be good.

That's where the problem lies.

People want to be good, but they don't know what it means.

That's where Danzo fucked up. And the Konoha Council. And Sandaime.

They all believed that the actions and plots of a few Uchiha defined all Uchiha. That wiping out the entirety of the Uchiha clan would be for the good of people. Sasuke wonders how they gave the order. Was it simply, 'kill them all'? Or was it, 'kill the men, the women, the children, the newborns'?

When Danzo dies, Sasuke does not feel nothing. There is triumph, a feeling of lightness, a feeling of finallyfinallyfinally. It is almost as he had imagined it would be. It hits him the way mornings pull him from his slumber.

He is losing his sight, and he doesn't care.

This will be better than the nothingness.

"I promise," Naruto tells him. His voice is soft. "I will shoulder your hatred and die with you."

Sasuke's vision has gone, but he can still see Naruto in front of him.

"You can't become Hokage if you die," Sasuke says, but he knows that Naruto knows.

Naruto smiles and suddenly there is a world of color. It blinds him even though he is already blind. Sasuke shuts his eyes and holds his face in his hands, but the color does not go away. It scares him because it is both everything he has always wanted and everything he knows he cannot have.

(You have no idea how long I have ached for your colors.)

"Come back, Sasuke," Naruto says. "Come home to me."

Sasuke says nothing. Naruto is close. He takes his hands in his and pulls them from his face.

"Just a little longer," Sasuke says. "I just need a little longer."

"Okay," Naruto says.

His wrists are still in Naruto's hands and they are warm.

The search for goodness is too long, its path too narrow and winding. No wonder people get lost.

The path of vengeance is straight and clear. Black and white. It is easy. Sasuke wants to step to it, but he cannot stop looking at the colors of the other path.

(I must.)

He needs to scrape away the colors.

But Naruto, like the paint he had once used on the stone faces of Hokage, is hard to wash away. He clings and yells and grabs. He buries himself underneath Sasuke's nails and in the shells of his ears and on the backs of his eyelids. Every sound he hears is Naruto and every color he sees is Naruto. Every time Sasuke hits him or cuts him—

(I hurt.)

"I promised you," Naruto says. "I would go with you."

"I will do it alone."

"You don't have to."

Blood is seeping into his eyes and his mouth and he raises his fist to land another hit. Naruto's cheek is soft under his knuckles, his stomach hard against his knee. Naruto doubles over.

(Naruto, I'm sorry.)

"I won't let you do it alone," Naruto grunts. He swipes at his mouth and swings another punch to Sasuke's shoulder. "I am your only one. I am your one and only. If I die… Sasuke."

Sasuke stumbles.

"Why do you keep doing this?" he cries. All semblance of control—wiped. He is screaming, his throat pulled raw. "Why can't you just—stop?"

He leaps onto Naruto, sits across his stomach and throws fist after fist into his face.

"Why—can't—you—leave me—alone?"

(I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.)

"Because—" Naruto coughs a mouthful of blood, grasps his collar and pulls him close.

(I'm tired, Naruto.)

Sasuke struggles to hit him again, but he's lost his balance and Naruto is sitting up and he's got his golden head buried in his neck and his arms wrapped around his shoulders and it takes Sasuke two breaths to realize Naruto isn't fighting him.

"Because I love you."

The punch that Sasuke aims at Naruto's ribcage loses its momentum. His body feels limp as dying leaves. He closes his eyes and wills the wind to take him away.

"I love you, Sasuke," Naruto says again.

Sasuke feels something press against his forehead, and he opens his eyes into blue. He had always likened Naruto's eyes to the sky, but this close—this close—the sky is nothing like them.

"I know."

He has known—part of him has always known—since Naruto's chakra cloaked him in the battlefield. Naruto, with his feelings of wildfire, full and blazing. Utterly bright bright bright. It is very much like him to announce it in full volume to every shinobi in range.

There is pressure in his chest, squeezing him from all sides and pushing up his throat

(I am no longer cold)

and he bites his lip to keep from spilling.

"Hey, hey," Naruto says, and Sasuke realizes he is shaking in Naruto's arms and his eyes are burning but his Sharingan has already faded.

Naruto runs his thumb along his cheek and it comes away wet.

"You must be tired, Sasuke," Naruto says, and there's that little smile of his again. "Let's go home, ne?"

"Hn" is the only sound Sasuke can make without breaking into pieces, but Naruto accepts it.

Sasuke wraps his arms around him, as tight as they will go, as if holding onto Naruto is the only thing keeping him there. He is warm.

He kisses Naruto—a real kiss—for the first time underneath the rustling leaves of trees in summer. They are in some land far away from Konoha and Naruto's skin is slick with sweat and Sasuke likes how the cropped hairs at the base of Naruto's neck feel against his fingers.

For all his loud declarations and boisterous laughter, Naruto is shy. Sasuke will push himself into his space and watch the blush spill over the markings of his cheeks and listen to his words stumble. He does this often when he is fresh from a dip in the river, his shirt still hanging on low branches in the sun, his pants loose around his hips, his feet bare.

Naruto falls out of whatever story he had been telling this time around, his arms frozen mid-gesture. He looks at Sasuke with a new kind of concentration and Sasuke knows it is taking all of his effort to keep his eyes on his face.

"You were saying?" Sasuke cannot keep the smile from his face and Naruto has to clear his throat.

"Uh—ha—Sasuke—can you please, um—"

And Sasuke leans forward and kisses him. Soft. Just enough so he can feel the way Naruto's lips give way underneath his own. He closes his eyes this time.

Naruto's face is all shades of red when Sasuke pulls away, his brows pulled up into his golden mess of hair, his lips shining with Sasuke's saliva. His eyes are half-lidded, bluer than open skies and still lakes. Sasuke is dizzy with joy, and if this feeling is a color, it would be every shade.

He laughs, the tip of his nose catching on Naruto's. "Usuratonka—"

Naruto grabs his face in his hands and pushes their lips together, all shyness gone.

"Finally," Naruto says into his open mouth, and Sasuke presses himself closer because kissing Naruto is not unlike drinking sweet honey wine.

The first time they fuck—or make love, as Naruto likes to say—they are entangled in the sheets of Naruto's bed. Summer is waning, but Konoha is humid as ever and Sasuke's hair is sticking to his cheeks and Naruto's eyes are chaotically blue underneath his new Hokage hat. It sits tilted on his head, shifting with his movements, and Sasuke reaches up and throws it into the wall and the air fills with their laughter. The mattress is too old and too thin and every time Naruto pushes down, Sasuke feels as though he is being pressed into the deepest ends of the earth.

"Relax," Naruto whispers. "I have you."

"I'm trying," Sasuke says, but he cannot just relax because the bed is too small for the two of them and they'd spent the first half of their rut trying to keep the dumb hat on Naruto's head. Naruto is shaking above him and burning inside him and his brows are all twisted and his eyes, his eyes— "Anyone ever tell you how beautiful you are?"

Naruto buries his face into Sasuke's neck and drops a kiss to his collarbone and Sasuke can feel the shape of his smile against his skin. "I love you. I love you."

"I love you, too."

Sasuke runs his hands over the lines of his back and Naruto kisses him and pushes into him over and over again until his back bows and his mouth traces the sounds of Naruto's name. Naruto's breath is broken against his skin, black hair spilling over his fingers like melting midnight skies.

"I love you so much, Sasuke," Naruto says. His chin is tilted to his chest and he is looking at him through his golden lashes. "More than everything."

Naruto presses kisses over Sasuke's eyes and Sasuke feels warm and whole.

The skin of Naruto's chest is sticky and hot against his back, but Sasuke does not move. He digs his head into his side of the pillow that they're sharing and stares at the white cloak that lays on the ground like a winter pond. He's been in this room more times than he can count and somehow he has never known he would end up here again, like this. Naruto is mumbling about something and Sasuke turns into him, his eyes briefly catching on that stupid ramen poster on the wall. Crinkled at the edges, sun-bleached.

"Are you taking that, too?" he asks.

Naruto has to turn to follow his gaze. Sasuke runs his fingers over the line of his neck and watches him shiver. "Yeah."

"It's ugly."

"Wha—hey!" He tries to look offended, but he is laughing. It is night, and yet his smile is brighter than the sun. "I'm taking that, and I'm putting it right in our new room, right over our new bed."

"Leave it in the office."

Naruto pouts. "But I'm the Hokage."

"Usuratonkachi."

Naruto's laugh is soft as he settles back into his half of the pillow. The moon spills through the window and washes his skin in silver. He is all kinds of breathtaking.

"I'm going to fix it," Naruto says. "I promise."

Naruto is looking at him in that way again, and Sasuke knows he isn't talking about crumpled ramen posters.

"You don't need to make me any promises," he says.

"I'm going to re-write the system," Naruto says. "And you're going to help me."

Sasuke finds Naruto's hand somewhere in the sheets and grips it, tight.

(My one and only.)

They are standing over the heads of Hokage and the sun has just begun to wake and Naruto is slapping a paintbrush over stone. His lips are curled up in the way they always are when he is breaking rules. Sasuke can feel sweat running down the center of his back. He turns and tries to find the street he had been on with his father the first time he saw Naruto—was it that one, or the other?—but it's impossible because the village had been remapped after Nagato. He wonders if Naruto had seen him—a little black dot far away, glued to that explosion of color.

"You good, teme?"

Naruto is looking at him. Sasuke snaps his gaze back and smiles, dipping his hand in the bucket of bright yellow. Naruto squawks and flees.

His white Hokage cloak billows out behind him, magnificent as clouds. Sasuke pursues him. In his stomach, there is that feeling again, blooming in him—the feeling that is every color. He leaps and his arms come around Naruto's neck and they are tumbling over stone and Sasuke knows he will have bruises tomorrow.

All the bruises in the world wouldn't matter, not in this instant, because Naruto is snorting with giggles and Sasuke is laughing as he takes Naruto's face in his paint-colored hands. Naruto's eyes are blue and his cheeks are painted with every color they bought at the store and Sasuke does not think he has ever seen anything quite so beautiful.

A/N: Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, I'd really appreciate it if you could leave a review. They really make my day!