We Three

EPILOGUE

Singularity.

This is not an epilogue.

This is not a conclusion.

…

There's a certain look on Naruto's face- after they've made love or when he wakes up in the paleness of their mostly closed blinds and takes his first reluctant glimpse of the day. It's a look Sasuke has spent dissecting, picking at until the papery creases in the blonde's brow unfold clean and smooth again, and they can finally kiss good morning. He has begun to understand the expression as a suspended disbelief.

Naruto has not yet come to to terms with their queen-sized bed, their shared bathroom. He has not accepted that there is only one closet so badly organized, they cannot tell which side belongs to the other. When they are lying front to front, no flowers or sheets or cum between them, and he whispers his name with an unspoken question at the end of every last syllable,Sasuke. It's more prayer than statement; more plead than fact.

Most days, Naruto does not know reality from dream because he spent so long dressing up to a nightmare.

Sasuke hopes that never changes.

He hopes that the startled jump of Naruto's shoulders whenever Sasuke randomly holds his hand- as if he's forgotten that they can in the first place- never fades.

The poor blonde doesn't realize he's so easy to read, so easy to love. Naruto agonizes that he can't get over the constant longing, the ingrained ache at the sight of Sasuke, that he can't move beyond the point of wishingand into a realm where they fight for elbow room over the sink, where Sasuke lounges in their media room in nothing but his skin on laundry day. Domestic bliss, down to its most disgustingly romantic and married-couple baseboards- shadowed by Naruto's bad habits and ticks.

I have everything I never thought I'd get. And I still can't be happy.

It's so clear.

Sasuke doesn't get bothered by this.

He's so used to seeing his lover stressing over something that more often than not turns out to be something so simple and trivial, and he's so used to soothing Naruto of these little anxieties, but the breathless, awe-struck, and completely incredulous whisper in his lips as they graze over Sasuke's knuckles is an insecurity he'll never cure Naruto of.

Impossible, he hears Naruto repeat to himself before they drift off, and he can't help but agree.

Impossible- to fathom the obsessive way Sasuke files the quirks and flaws in the way Naruto's body rolls with his, like being stuck shifting between gears, the cogs not quite meshing but almost. Impossible to explain the one-way blindness to the worship in his posture at Naruto's feet.

He wants to tell Naruto that it's okay he hasn't fully accepted their relationship- that it doesn't mean they made a mistake in abandoning their separate lives to forge a singularity, a resonance that seems to tangle out of synch.

They are on the precipice of something- grand. The cliff of I love you's before a crashing sea that will rip the words apart and evolve them into something resilient.

Sasuke wants to reassure him that the terrible foreboding, the knots in their shoulder blades and knees are simply the beginnings of an undertow.

-END-