Naruto One-Shot (Yaoi)

Sand & Glass

By: Ninjacat.

Perhaps this time, Naruto had been away much longer than he'd thought.

The village had, upon each of his many departures and returns, always remained essentially the same. The changes, he had always noticed, happened deep within the village, and no matter how significant the change was, it was never obvious at first. Perhaps the greatest changes were always the subtle ones.

Naruto returned one day to the Hidden Leaf, dusty and weary with blood still drying on his vest, having only been gone for a year and a half, give or take a few months.

He may as well have been gone a lifetime.

- - -

"I'm sorry about your apartment, Naruto," Tsunade said, her smile flickering and sad. Her cheeks were flushed and she was well on her way to being very drunk. Naruto didn't mind, he was too tired to care about anything really. His head was buried in his arms, and he only sighed dejectedly in reply.

Bad news had that effect on him.

"It happened not too long ago; a raid from some Mist missing-nin. They managed to set a good part of the city on fire before we neutralized them." She paused, leaning forward onto the table. She ruffled his hair gently and coerced him to look up and meet her eyes. She offered him another quiet smile, but then pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Did you have anything really important there?"

Naruto was quiet for a long time. He caught her eyes, warm and kind as she watched him, and thought distantly of how much he had missed her. He wanted the day to be over, he wanted to go home and sleep---and he couldn't. He missed his bed and he missed Sakura and Sasuke and he had missed the Godaime and he wanted to be able to express it.

He didn't want to be tired, frustrated and homeless and stare at this woman as if she meant nothing to him when he hadn't seen her in a year.

Naruto was positive that if he could just go home and sleep, if the day would just end, tomorrow everything would be better. He could come back and call her an old bag and annoy her all through her hangover and then maybe tell her he was glad to see her again. It'd been too long.

"Not really," he answered, his voice muffled by the crook of his elbow. He wasn't sure, at any rate. Sakura had his plants, didn't she?

Tsunade sighed in relief, ruffling his hair once more before sitting back. She crossed her arms over her chest and gave him an appraising look.

"That's good," she said. "Tomorrow morning, I'll find you a new apartment. Or a house, if you'd like."

Naruto just wanted his bed. That was all. He didn't care where it was. "Sounds good," he muttered, shutting his eyes. "I want a nice one. Lots of space and big windows---you're paying for it."

She laughed, loudly, and he looked up at her briefly to grin. She smacked his head when he did so, which only made him laugh in reply. A shrill, almost giddy laughter that made him almost sick to his stomach. He needed to sleep.

He wanted to go home. He still hadn't fully grasped that he couldn't.

If Naruto walked to the street where his apartment building had stood for more years than he had been alive, it would not be there. A bookstore, or something like that, now stood in its place. Tsunade had told him so, at any rate. He hadn't seen it yet.

He didn't particularly care to, either.

"Do you have someone to stay with?"

Naruto blinked up at her with a start, his thoughts crumpling like paper and discarded just as easily. He smiled a little uncertainly, thinking briefly of Sakura. Also, briefly, of Sasuke but he knew from previous experience they didn't share quarters well for too long.