"What the fuck, ya know!" Naruto scrambles upright as Sasuke's hand falls away, "Is that— no. You— what the fuck?"
"Eloquent, dobe," Sasuke replies distantly, eyes still glued to the bright red brand of Naruto's soulmark— emblazoned tauntingly across the border of his waist.
"Shut the fuck up," Naruto hisses, snatching up Sasuke's wrist to plaster his hand against the mark once again, "This can't— this can't be real. It doesn't make sense!"
Sasuke leaves his hand where Naruto puts it, still too stunned for anything resembling bodily autonomy at the moment.
"It's probably—" he wets his lips, finally tearing his gaze away to look at Naruto's face— only the idiot isn't looking at him, his wide eyed attention focused solely on his mark under Sasuke's hand, "It's probably a coincidence."
"A coincidence?" Naruto scoffs, fingers tightening over Sasuke's wrist dangerously, "Are you serious right now?"
"You got your mark when you were seventeen," Sasuke reminds him, "You've grown— skin's dimensions changes over time."
"Technically, I was sixteen and that's not how it works," Naruto glares at him, though he doesn't let Sasuke's hand move even an inch, "Temari and Shika's marks still fit their hands perfectly and they got them when they were twelve, y'know."
"That..." Sasuke frowns, "That doesn't make an ounce of anatomical sense."
"Because having our skin change color for some random person the universe decided makes us happy really screams scientifically sound, doesn't it," Naruto snorts, "What does happiness even mean to the universe anyway? It's like— subjective or whatever."
"You— you're changing the subject," Sasuke snaps.
"Am I though?" Naruto's eye narrow, "I feel like I'm going crazy. Like all the rules they told us were nothing but— but— bullshit to make us feel better about things we just can't explain."
"Or," Sasuke says, "The rules could just be rules and this is a coincidence."
"Do you really think that though?"
"It's better than—" Sasuke's mouth clicks shut, before he can voice such damning words.
Because assuming this was a coincidence— just some giant cosmic joke that happened to be at their expense— would be better. Better than getting his hopes up. Better than trying to assign some grand meaning to all the pain and confusion and bitterness they'd waded through, over the years—
Because if it were true... if somehow they had been a match all this time...
It was too much— too heartbreaking to think about. All the time they'd lost because Sasuke had been so determined to be miserable at both of their expense...
Naruto, as always, understands him without words though.
"It's not though—" Naruto answers Sasuke's unspoken thoughts, "It wouldn't be better. It wouldn't be worse— it wouldn't be anything. Nothing would be different at all, really. It would just be... to know, y'know?"
Right, Sasuke thinks— inhaling deep, shoving down the spike of nervousness he hadn't even recognized for what it was. Right— logically, why would this change anything? Whether it was a merely a coincidence or a horrible, profound misunderstanding on fate's behalf— why would it really matter? When they had already collectively decided that fate could go fuck itself.
"I doesn't change anything," Sasuke confirms, with a slow nod.
"Right," Naruto agrees easily, and then broad palms are cupping Sasuke's jaw.
YOU ARE READING
Occam's Razor
FanfictionPalm marks were the most common- everyone knew that. And almost always the result of carelessly accidental contact. It was the entire reason clans like the Uchiha had developed their first meeting rituals the way they had- to provide definitive, imm...
