Title: They Kiss Instead
Author: Timothy Wren
Fandom: Naruto
Relationship: Uzumaki Naruto/Uchiha Sasuke
Genre: Anime, Romance, Canon Divergence
Word Count: 2,064
Warnings: Canonical concepts of suicide/murder-suicide. Nobody dies in this, but Naruto does think about letting Sasuke take him out, in line with the canonical scene; canonical violence.
Summary: When he realizes they’re hurtling toward a mutual end, Naruto refuses to let Sasuke die.
There’s a moment when, beyond exhausted, Sasuke lets lightning wreath his hand and knifes it at Naruto’s face. The entire fight is charged and impossible, a culmination of emotion and both their journeys; it’s hard to breathe or even think around it.
Naruto plans to uppercut him in the chin to drive off the blow; they’re in sync, in a mirrored sort of harmony, so much so that they’ve made hand signs together for half the fight on perfect accident.
The fight has almost ended so many times but they’re both so stubborn and reacting to each other, neither willing to back down. It’s like a dance and they can’t stop, won’t ever stop, like nothing in the world matters as much as this ‘finally’.
For a moment, Naruto can’t see it ending, and part of him is– if not happy, then at least content, to die like this. To continue the fighting-dancing-living with Sasuke until they both succumb to blood loss and die together, because they won’t stop until they have to, until they literally can’t move.
It won’t end unless they stop it and the thought is so viscerally painful he can’t even consider it. He needs this. It’s what they’ve been working towards. The idea of stopping the song they’re building between them would be like turning his back on everything.
But Naruto’s heart beats wildly in his ears, lightning screams next to his cheek, and as his fist crosses the threshold of Sasuke’s chest he feels Sasuke’s heart beating too, human-alive-warmth, and a clear thought rings out amidst the fever pitch they’ve been building, discordant.
Thump-thump.
The shriek of Chidori.
Thump-thump.
If they carry on this battle to the bitter end, then…
Thump-thump.
If he doesn’t knock the jutsu off course, he’ll die. They’re not holding back. One wrong move is death. They’re so evenly matched it’s like a dance.
Thump-thump.
If they keep going, they’ll die together. And that means…
At the very last second, eyes blinded by light, Naruto yanks his fist back down. His knuckles skim Sasuke’s jaw and his fingers yank on the collar of his shirt, pulling him close.
The scream-crackle chirp of the Chidori dies, more out of surprise than anything, and Naruto kisses Sasuke on purpose for the very first time.
His eyes are shut tight, heart thundering in his chest, his throat, and his ears.
Sasuke is still, slack with shock, and the sudden cessation of their battle working to a frantic crescendo is a glaring silence ringing across the barren landscape.
Naruto’s fingers are trembling in Sasuke’s shirt, a fistful of fabric. His lips are soft and parted. Sasuke’s hand falls numbly to Naruto’s shoulder, fingertips ghosting across his face on the way down.
If we keep going, Sasuke will die.
I will, too, but… The thought of Sasuke dying next to him is so fucking painful he can’t breathe around it. It feels like kneeling in the snow after begging for his– Sasuke’s– life, like the world is closing in around him, and this time he quietly says ‘no.’
He closes his eyes because if they’re going to die, anyway, it might as well be like this.
He kisses Sasuke because he doesn’t want to kill him, not even if they’ll die together, more of exhaustion than anything else.
It does feel like turning his back on everything– on them, on their bond, on the final climactic fight, but.
Naruto’s golden lashes brush his own cheeks as he fights the urge to open his eyes and pulls away from Sasuke’s mouth instead, still breathing each other’s air. He rests their foreheads together and doesn’t open his eyes.
He can’t change Sasuke’s mind– his heart– but he can say ‘no.’
I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to let you die.
The lack of sound is so loud around them, but it doesn’t drown out the sound of their hearts– both audible to each other, this close– or the sound of their labored breathing.
Naruto’s fingers unclench, a little, starting to let go of the shirt they’re so frantically clutching. Sasuke’s hand snaps out, latching onto his wrist, and he freezes. He doesn’t move.
Sasuke’s breathing picks up, becoming a rasp.
Naruto has never wanted to see someone so badly in his life.
He has never wanted to see Sasuke so badly in his life, and he’s spent the better part of four years wanting to see him so desperately it was like being punched in the face or stabbed in the heart.
Naruto doesn’t usually consider himself a coward, but here at the end of it all– at the end of everything– he finds he isn’t willing to open his eyes. He doesn’t want to watch Sasuke kill him.
He’ll open them at the very end, he decides. At the very last second– so Sasuke’s face can be the last thing he sees before he dies.
“Idiot.” Sasuke says, more choked air than sound, and Naruto realizes his own body is shaking. Fingers clench tighter around his wrist. The hand on his shoulder squeezes, just a little.
Naruto swallows hard. Well, he’s already decided, right? So there’s nothing to be afraid of, now. No reason to hold back. He can’t ruin anything now, or say the wrong thing, because– he’s finally given up.
The knowledge burns down his throat, fire in his mouth– his lips still tingle– but he opens it anyway and says:
“H-hey, come on. Say the other one.” He’d worry about being misunderstood, but– they were reading each other’s minds a moment ago. Reading each other’s bodies.
Sasuke pulls away just enough that there’s air between them, just long enough for Naruto to tense all over, and then deliberately touches his forehead to Naruto’s once more, some tension leaving him.
“Usuratonkachi.” His breath fans out over Naruto’s lips, and it’s warm.
“It’s my birthday.” Naruto murmurs, taking courage from these last moments– so much nicer than he imagined even a few seconds ago. “I just.”
His throat closes on him.
I won’t kill you on my birthday. I won’t kill you at all.
That’s stupid, though.
Stupider still, the thought that spills like acid: I don’t want to die on my birthday.
But they’ve been fighting– against Kaguya and Obito and Madara, if not each other– for long enough that it’s probably not, anymore, and it’s nonsense, anyway. He doesn’t want to die at all.
Better you than me, he thinks, half-desperately. Some strange part of him wants to laugh. The happy part, probably. The part that’s still giddy that Sasuke is here, in touching range.
Acknowledging him. Equal to him. His mirror.
You take it, he thinks, drawing his free hand up to linger against Sasuke’s cheek, not-quite daring to touch.
It’s either they fight til both their deaths, bleeding out on the cold ground, or…
Or Naruto gives it up.
He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Sasuke’s hand moves from his shoulder to his face. Usually he’s a loud cryer– loud, rasping sobs.
They’re kneeling in the dirt, hands at each other’s faces; Naruto still hanging onto Sasuke’s bunched collar– pulling him in– and Sasuke’s fingers still a cuff around his wrist, keeping him there.
“Usuratonkachi.” Sasuke says again, more breath than sound, and this time it sounds– funky. Desperate. Almost sad.
What wishful thinking, to think Sasuke is sad to win this fight– to kill him after all. This is why he didn’t open his eyes to ruin the illusion.
Memory stirs in him, something about the positioning– Sasuke, slightly leaning over him, a chidori aborted mere hairs’ breadths away from his face.
He remembers the feeling of Sasuke breathing against his face, as out-of-place as it feels, and it doesn’t click why until he feels cold drops of water hit his nose.
The valley of the end. Of course.
He’d been mostly unconscious, mostly dead from that same jutsu, and Kurama’s healing hadn’t kicked in yet. He’d thought he imagined it, or maybe dreamed it.
He’d laid awake at night and wondered why Sasuke left him alive– or if it was an accident, though of course it couldn’t be. If Sasuke had wanted him dead, he could have made sure of it; finished Naruto off while he was at the Shinigami’s door, and helpless.
He hadn’t.
Back then, he hadn’t wanted Naruto dead.
Sasuke touched the tear tracks on Naruto’s face and the thoughts– disarming and painful– were enough to start the familiar, wretched sounds in his chest to accompany the tears.
It was different now.
He hadn’t killed Naruto back then, when he had the chance, but–
Things were different now.
His breath hitched and he barely noticed the thumb sliding over his cheek bone, the fingers curling around his jaw until Sasuke jerked forward and–
Pressure against his lips, soft and seeking–
Desperate, trembling.
Naruto’s eyes flew open in perfect shock.
Sasuke, holding on to him.
Sasuke, pulling him closer, grip just shy of painful.
Sasuke, kissing him.
He couldn’t wrap his head around it properly, the verb slipping through his mind. He had the absurd thought that he was misunderstanding somehow, that he must be.
Naruto’s eyes slid shut, his free hand slid softly along Sasuke’s skin in a mirrored hold, and he kissed him back.
Soft, desperate, shaking.
He was so, so tired.
Their foreheads touched again, leaving the barest millimeter between their mouths. Neither went far.
“I won’t– I can’t go back.” Sasuke murmured in the quietest voice, raspy and half-failing. If Naruto were an inch further away he wouldn’t be able to hear it. “There’s no place for me. I don’t have a future. Everything’s done and this– this was the last.”
The end of his story. The only way forward.
Naruto made a hurt sound, ripped from his throat. He squeezed his eyes closed against the thought.
“I’ll go with you.” He promised, somehow finding the strength to speak. “Anywhere. Somewhere new.”
“There’s nowhere left.” Sasuke insisted, voice still weak but– tired. Like he’s already given up. Like he’s already thought about this.
Naruto shakes him by the grip on his shirt.
“We can go anywhere.” He says instead, and unspoken between them are the other things– Konoha, Naruto’s dreams, the childhood desires washed away by war–
He maneuvers slightly, the effort taking energy he doesn’t have left– his chakra is bare dregs in his channels– and presses trembling lips over Sasuke’s new eye.
“We can go anywhere.” Naruto repeats. Everything else feels far away– unreal in the face of this. It’s like he and Sasuke tumbled off the pages of history, on a different existence than anyone else. Like they all pale in comparison to this, as they had when Naruto and Sasuke were fighting to the bitter end, distant concerns at best.
Hope sparks in him, a blue light in the dark, tremulous and small.
He holds it between them and believes, deep to the heart of them, that this isn’t the end. That it might, maybe, be a new beginning.
That their story can start here.
Sasuke squeezes his eyes shut. Naruto can feel the tension in his forehead, the pressure, the movement of his lashes. Then, the impossible, barely felt in the air between them:
Sasuke smiles, the motion enough to brush their lips together faintly. It feels like Naruto’s heart squeezes tight, refusing to beat– and then trips into a sprint, that same hope flaring painfully bright.
“Okay.” Sasuke says, impossibly quiet between them. It feels like surrender, like Naruto had felt when he realized he could change you and me to you or me, to always, always you.
“Okay.” Sasuke repeats, impossibly soft, and the breath between them tastes like victory.
Like, somehow, they’d both won.
Or, even more impossibly:
Like nobody had to lose.
Naruto sucks in air, a harsh gasp, and finds himself laughing on the exhale. It’s contagious, giddy, high with disbelief. Sasuke picks it up too, something too impossible to be real, for all that it’s barely chuckling under his breath, and Naruto feels so happy he might die, after all.
Sasuke smiles again, in answer to Naruto’s own blinding grin, and moves their foreheads together, noses brushing, neither of them wearing any kind of headband.
It feels safe. It feels like home, like naked relief, the start of something impossibly new.
It’s everything.