Never Perfect

Hi guys slogging on through and let me tell you I’m surprising myself, I have a few plans of what to do with them but these characters don’t like me because I’m so cruel to then to the plot sometimes gets hijacked. Review Reponses at the end guys!


Sasuke was tired, they all were, but the Chakra depletion from the use of the Sharingan was getting to him. Finally, it was Naruto who made the decision. Without warning he veered off course wildly and Sasuke had to call Sakura back so they could follow him. When they caught up, he had stopped beside an outcropping of moss covered rock.

There, hidden by the shadows, was a shallow cave. How he had known it was there wasn’t exactly something they could ask, given that he was unlikely to answer. Sasuke and Sakura followed him inside and set their packs down. They both moved to sit, but Naruto slipped back out the opening.

Sakura finally stood after some moments and began clearing debris off the floor. When she was done she pulled out her bedroll. Sasuke followed suit and also pulled out a second for Naruto. Dawn was approaching but this seemed as good as any time and place to stop for rest. Maintaining her silence Sakura, took the two rolls from him and Sasuke nodded his thanks before setting out to set up some perimeter security.

Sasuke assembled some warning bells and traps, praying that Naruto would not set them off when he returned, but they had to surround the entire area. However, he need not have worried for when he returned to their little campsite, Naruto was already there. He was crouched by the entrance and at his feet there was a small pile of dry wood and kindling.

“Naruto, I know you’re trying to help, but we don’t need a fire. It’s not that cold.”

Sakura emerged at the sound of Sasuke’s voice. “He’s back?”

It seemed Naruto had waited for Sasuke to return before revealing his presence. The fox nin made a sound suspiciously like a ‘humph’ before three dead rabbits were carelessly slung at Sasuke’s feet.

“With food and firewood to cook it, it seems.” Sasuke observed with a raised eyebrow. That meant that the other man was thinking. Anticipating needs. Sasuke had thought it had been on rote learning, habit, for which Naruto had collected the wood, but in fact it was so they could cook the rabbits he had hunted down. Three rabbits for three people. Higher learning processes and reasoning capabilities.

“You’re getting better, Naruto?”

Sakura moved towards the crouched blond but Sasuke could see his muscles tense.

“Don’t touch him.”

Sakura turned to frown at Sasuke. “Geez, would you stop it? If he’s getting better it should be safe, shouldn’t it?”

Sasuke made a rude noise. “It’s not your safety I care about. He doesn’t want it.”

Sakura gave Sasuke the stink eye before turning to Naruto. The man had shuffled well out of her reach. Tears burned in those green eyes but Sakura snapped them closed, willing the wetness back while taking a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again they held a determination and Sasuke shrugged and decided to make himself busy cleaning rabbits. He made sure he would look up often, just to see if Naruto was clawing her or not. Wouldn’t want to miss that.

Sakura dropped into a crouch, mirroring the blond man and what she had seen Kakashi do. Slowly she sidled towards him. She kept her eyes low however, and only spared quick upward glances to meet his eye so she could determine if he was still relaxed or backing further away from her approach. But that one eye suddenly seemed so sad, sadder still as it followed her movements through the dirt, like an animal.

She froze halfway when his jaw clenched and he surged to his feet, shoulders thrown back and hands fisted by his sides. She couldn’t help the flinch as he walked to her side, all of that animal lope gone from his steps, they were even and measured. Reaching down, he gently grasped high on her upper arms and pulled her to her feet. Sakura remained still as, with aching slowness, she was pulled in closer until he could lay his unscarred cheek on top of her head.

Sasuke had finished the rabbits, but paused before moving onto the fire, turning his head to warily watch this new interaction. Naruto was all human, all man in the way he was holding the woman, and the raven felt his teeth grinding together.

Finally Naruto took a deep breath before his frame shuddered, and then released her, stepping back quickly. Sakura tried to take his hands, but he held up one in a stopping motion between them, his face turned away. His body language screamed shame and emotional pain.

“Oh god, Naruto. You ARE here. Please, I didn’t mean to upset you. I understand now. I won’t try to force you to react.”

Quickly the blond man turned fully away and circled round to the wood to begin stacking it, ready to light.

“He was trying to comfort ME?” Sakura asked, astounded.

Sasuke nodded, finding his eyes couldn’t leave the silent one of their group as he calmly went about the motions of putting together the fire. “That seems to be the case. He’s just not ready to be here yet. To talk. But you were upset and I don’t think he liked seeing you trying to come to his level.”

Naruto looked up quickly; locking his gaze with Sasuke’s and easily confirming his words as truth. Regardless, it had long term effects on the way Naruto acted. He had forced himself out of the animalistic withdrawal...For now at any rate.

As morning light filtered through the green canopy above them, Naruto sat with them and ate with them. His movements were jerky, but carefully humanistic, as if he was forcing himself. When he was done eating he sat with his head in his hands.
Some time passed, and then slowly, at first, Naruto before a self exploration. This was what Sasuke had dreaded the most. Self awareness and acknowledgement of what had been done to him.

He started with his hands slipping under his shirt and feeling where his ribs poked out of the skin, the loss of weight, condition. Fingers prodded and smoothed to assess the depth of muscle to bone, but that lasted only a minute or two.

His broad hands escaped his shirt before rising up to his neck and his face. Gingerly, the pads of his long fingers explored the length and width of the scar tissue surrounding his left eye. They followed it to the tip, where it cut away half his eyebrow. Then, they came back down to gauge the texture, like he was trying to memorise every little ripple in the stretched skin. Slowly those hands left the scar and began to rise up the sides of his head.

They met skin and hair where his ears used to be, and hesitated before continuing up, up to touch his new ears. His entire body jerked as he encountered them, eyes snapping closed, and he snatched his hands away. They landed on his knees as fists. Sasuke sighed and that impossibly blue eye snapped back open and flew to him.

“Will you tell me about it now, Naruto?”

Naruto surged to his feet and retreated to the cave.

“Guess that’s a no.”

Sakura shook her head. Sasuke’s attitude was so different with Naruto. The enemy they had known was gone, for the blue eyed Nin anyway, but then the boy they had known was also gone.

“I guess he really does understand.” Sakura softly spoke as she watched the retreating back.

This time it was Sasuke who buried his head in his hands, covering his eyes. “I keep expecting to wake up, to have Naruto back in Leaf with you. To have me out in whatever place we’d taken over for the night. Seeing him like this is something from my nightmares.”

Sakura dumped the bones she had been picking at and stomped over, delivering a swift kick to Sasuke’s shin. Hard. The black haired man sucked in his breath and winced, clutching at the abused limb and glaring up at her.

“Sakura what are you….”

The rage all over her face stopped him mid sentence.

“You selfish bastard! What gives you the right to come in here like some toad turned prince to ‘save’ him, just because before that he was tucked away ‘safe’ where you wanted him, and then suddenly he wasn’t.” Her eyes sparked with fury. “What about his nightmares of where you were, huh? What about his happiness? All of a sudden you’re kind and caring instead of shoving Chidori’s in his chest.”

Sasuke winced on the inside but refused to let it show.

“What right do you have to think this is YOUR nightmare? You’re either there or you’re not. You care or you don’t. You don’t get to choose when it’s a good time for you or just when you think you’ve done enough.”

She followed Naruto’s footsteps, leaving Sasuke alone by the dying fire. He hated the things she had said, like she’d been saving them, like she had a right. What did she know? He had put his revenge on hold to stop Madara ripping the Kyubbi out of Naruto and again when he had to play nice for those two damn months just to get into that hateful room. He had left Naruto behind alive, so that he could be safe. He’d left Naruto behind.

Sasuke let go of his aching shin, to bury his face once more into his hands as reality came crashing down on him. Naruto, who hated being left behind, who couldn’t deal with being alone, and who would rather be hated then alone. Ripping his heart out of his chest would have been kinder.
This was the first real time Sakura had chosen to flip her lid at him instead of Naruto, and she had to be right. He couldn’t ‘fix’ Naruto for himself. He had to do it for Naruto. It was past time.

With a deep sigh Sasuke fixed his cold mask into place once more and set about dousing the fire.
Sleep called him. Entering the cave, Sasuke found Sakura on one side while Naruto was on the middle mat, curled into a foetal ball. It hurt the Uchiha deep down to see that position compared to Naruto’s old one: flat on his back with arms splayed wide. He shook it from his head and laid himself down on his side. He arranged himself carefully so he could see Naruto’s face; the marred side was pressed into the mat. His eyes grew blurry, but as he slipped into sleep he took the image of Naruto with him into his dreams.

His lips burned; they felt scorched under the onslaught of kisses. Tongues were wrapped around each other like they were trying to speak into each other’s mouths. Slim hips made themselves at home between his legs, and Sasuke arched up, pushing his own heavy cock to slide against the other. One strong hand supported his head, gripping his hair fiercely, while the other snaked up the side of his shirt, ghosting over ribs. Sasuke’s hands began their own exploration, one reaching around to press into Naruto’s ass, grinding them together with ever increasing pressure, and the other had slid up into blond hair. Yes, it had to be Naruto. He only ever dreamt about Naruto in this way.

Black eyes slowly came open as something twitched beneath the hand tangled in blond locks. His sight was filled with one blue eye and a scar. His gasp of surprise, at finding reality, was swallowed into the mouth on his own. A hard downward thrust made him moan as it all settled in. But too soon, that hot mouth was drawing away: first his lips, and lastly Naruto’s tongue left his. Desperately he clutched tighter and the man above him winced.

Sasuke belatedly realised that what had twitched was, in fact, Naruto’s ear, which was half in his grasp. Naruto’s chin pointedly moved towards the other side of the cave drawing Sasuke’s attention to where Sakura still slept. Judging by the light filtering into the cave it was approaching late morning to midday.

This discretion also made Sasuke aware that Naruto knew what he was doing, and who he was doing it with, and his hard shaft leapt at the thought. Naruto’s too-thin body shuddered above him in reaction. Sasuke gentled his touch and pulled that blond head down into his neck in order to whisper into one pointed ear.

“We’ll just have to be very quiet, then, won’t we?”

He thrust up and could feel Naruto’s jaw tighten in reaction. Not one to lose an opportunity, Sasuke pulled his lips back and their mouths joined once more, bringing back that fiery heat. Almost helplessly they began to thrust against one another. Sasuke took his hand from the tight curves he was clutching to manoeuvre his fingers between their bodies. Naruto grunted in protest, and then stilled when Sakura moved in her sleep – only to settle once more.

Sasuke used the blond’s split attention to move their pants out of the way and free them both. Naruto sucked in a breath, but then slipped the hand from his shirt free and between their bodies. His bigger, broader hand wrapped both of their straining erections together in its warmth. He began a heavy stroking rhythm; lips locked and tongues began dancing in some foreign language around each other. Too soon for the black haired man the heat spiralled low in his belly, but it was one sound that sent him over the edge. A tight whisper. Naruto had stopped kissing him for a moment to scrape his teeth over his neck and then up to the shell of his ear; that was when he heard it.

“Sasuke.”

That was all. His lower back arched and his cock pulsed into Naruto’s palm. Even caught in his own orgasm, he felt Naruto stiffen as he joined him. Somehow, Naruto had caught most of their mess in his hand, even as Sasuke was struggling to right his breath and regain his sight Naruto was pulling away, using a cloth he had gotten from god knows where to clean first his hand, Sasuke, and then himself. He turned away to right his pants and Sasuke reached for his own, doing them up a little shakily.

He was still trying to process the fact that Naruto had just stroked them both to completion after waking him from his dreams of the same man. Naruto had said his name, just before they both came. He knew it was Sasuke. He knew what it was he had been doing. It was just the why that he was keeping to himself. Sasuke felt it was time to push, time to try to get Naruto talking.

“Want to tell me about the eye now?”

“No.”

So maybe talking was a generous term, but two words were what Sasuke would term one conversation. Pillow talk, whatever.

“How about what just happened?”

Sakura chose that moment to blink awake and Sasuke threw a forearm over his eyes and counted slowly to ten. Naruto had slipped out before Sakura had fully sat up.

“Naruto?”

Sasuke forced himself upright as well, all the way to his feet and began rolling up his bedroll. Naruto’s was already done and strapped back onto the pack. He must have been up for a while before deciding that a sleeping Uchiha was an easy target.

“Outside,” Sasuke answered Sakura’s question. He hesitated for a moment before deciding to speak again. “Look, I’m not going to apologise for my life, or for what I’ve done in the past. However, this IS for Naruto now, not me. I understand that.”

She got up off the mat and straightened her clothes before rolling up her own mat. “You mean until you get that list anyway. When he’s ‘all better’. He’s not far off that now.”

Sasuke ‘hn’d’ in response. Just because Naruto had been forced out of the animalistic actions didn’t mean he was getting better. The retreat hadn’t been a symptom, it had been for protection, a way of buffering himself. Just because Naruto chose to speak a few words didn’t mean he was willing to discuss any of it.

They had to face whatever the festering issues were. The list was long. Insanity and withdrawal due to pain and confinement. Deeply seeded betrayal from his friends and village locking him away. Extreme self-effacement for his ‘failure’ to control the tails. Trauma from all of the above. Who could tell but Naruto?

DAMN IT ALL! Sasuke stormed outside the cave, driven by his dark thoughts and uncaring if Sakura thought she had gotten to him. Why couldn’t everything just be perfect? Naruto, free, Sakura, anywhere but here. Those animal instincts would have driven Naruto to have Sasuke pinned under him, screaming his name, as the blond man buried himself deep in the Uchiha. They would pass out in a tangle of limbs and he would awaken the next morning to two bright blue shining eyes, all healed. Naruto would sweep him up and be babbling about how their lovemaking had made everything fall into place and ‘how lets hold hands while we kill some old farts together. Did I mention that because of my sexy-no-jutsu I can bear your Uchiha babies?’

Okay, so maybe the last part was a bit strange, but what about the rest? Why couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t this happen? If anyone deserved perfect, it was the Dobe, and if anyone said different Sasuke would personally sever their heads from their bodies.

Who was Sasuke trying to kid? Certainly not himself. All three of them needed ‘fixing’. Perhaps this was their chance. Coming full circle, in an attempt to seal all the cracks they had made in each other along with the wounds the world had inflicted.

Sasuke lifted his face to the sun, eyes closed, perfectly illuminated in a shaft of sunlight breaking through the dense canopy. Something disturbed the air around him and Sasuke lowered his face and opened his eyes once more. A few paces away stood Naruto, but instead of his proper place in the sun, he lingered back from its rays, back in the shadows. His eye seemed even darker than his surroundings. His face gave away a lot as he gazed at the illuminated Uchiha. Want, fear, and a whole heap of turmoil. His ears were flat to his skull, nearly blending in with his hair. Then, that beloved face hardened. He shifted away from the shaft of sunlight, slipping even further into shadow.

Sasuke had a strange sense of looking into a twisted mirror. Is this what it had been like, what it felt like for Naruto, as he had watched the raven’s decent into darkness? Sasuke’s body lurched forward, and he grasped Naruto in an embrace.

“Don’t, Naruto. Don’t be as foolish as me. I’ll try get us through this.”

Hands gripped his back for mere moments before Naruto shifted restlessly. Sasuke took the hint and let him go. Naruto walked past him, avoiding the beam of light, before disappearing back into the cave. Sakura shrieked a few seconds later and before he was aware his body was moving Sasuke was at the mouth of the cave, but Naruto was already coming back out. He had both Sakura and Sasuke’s packs on his back and one of the side bags.

“Naruto you give me that back right now! I can carry my own bag and you’re still weak, so…”

Naruto had spun back around and lifted one side of his shirt, nearly up to his nipple while his face was turned away, hiding his marred eye. Sasuke had failed to register it in their sexual haze before, but he could see it now. As impossible as it seemed, Naruto was already filling out. Now the Kyubbi chakra wasn’t working overtime just to feed him, just to keep him alive; it was rebuilding his body with the help of sleep and food. Sakura blushed, only to run back in and then out again with the two other side packs. She handed one to Sasuke before one of her hands lit up with green chakra.

“Could I check you, Naruto? Just so I don’t worry.”

Naruto let his shirt fall back into place and stood passively as she passed the hand over his body. It passed from his feet up his legs, past his stomach, over his chest and finally began to rise past his neck towards that scar. Naruto snatched the hand out of the air before it reached. He gave a small shake of his head before letting go and Sakura huffed.

“Fine, fine. Your chakra levels are at pretty much top notch, if not a bit weird, but weird is normal for you anyway.”

Naruto grunted and Sakura laughed. She looked like she wanted to hug him but managed to refrain.

“You’re responding to me. That makes me very happy.”

Naruto pointedly looked in the direction they had been travelling the night before then back to the other two, but Sasuke shook his head. “It’s up to you now, Dobe. I was taking you, us, to sound. You’re able to make that decision yourself now.”

It was a tense moment for the other two as Naruto became thoughtful. For a moment, he looked like he was about to speak, but then he just turned away. He was facing the same direction they had already been following. Sakura shot Sasuke a look that was softer then the night before. Praise. Then, she was gone to take up her point position. Naruto’s chakra surged for a moment and two clones popped into existence.

The curious thing was, that apart from the fact he could manipulate chakra with no hand seals, the clones had no fox ears although they still had only one eye each. They took off to the left and right, as Naruto took his place in the centre of the formation.

Side guards, so they could continue in a spear formation. That was a much stronger formation and would be handy. They had another two days of travel at a medium pace before they reached the border. The Valley of the End. More painful memories. Why couldn’t it be perfect?

A kitsunes light, I felt things would be too ‘easy’ if Sakura wasn’t there or it was just to two of them so…bawhaha I’m evil. Sneakyfox, you made MY day by reviewing, I hope this makes another day good for you. Ivy thank you, I aim for this even if by being different makes a few people not like. I wanted FRESH. Satsuki..you have been emailed to let you know. Blugirllami21 yes it was delicious wasn’t it, my sentence structure sometimes gets messed up because I’m miles ahead (in my head) of what I’m typing and mildly wired wrong so the words I’m meaning to type actually end up as the words ahead that I’m thinking. BETA PLEASE!!! I need one. Ecdragon00 not sure what you meant by the bad side of his boyd but well his eye…MYSTERY!!!!!! Animelover! For you hunny, I made Naruto molest Sasuke before I was ready lol. Shiku….wow thank you thank you. His eye well…I give nothing away. Nanin you are fed. Deathsangel666 I promise no rushing and no easy going for them, I’m a bad bad author very cruel bawhahaha. Purvy Sage Thank you, I’m trying to get a BETA but stick with me okay?