Returning to Konoha after a seven-year-long mission went exactly the way Sasuke had expected--hardly anything had changed. The same people were running the same shops and restaurants, the chunin at the gates checked his paperwork, and the evening crowd was fairly average for a weekend.
The other ANBU he comes across nod at him, though one falls in step beside him. The Panther ANBU, Neji.
“Hokage-sama wants to see you right away,” he says. “Ino barged in on a meeting to let us know you were back.”
“Hn.” Sasuke was just glad that the girls had stopped fawning over him by the time they were teenagers--he’s a better friend than he is a partner, which is saying something. He’s never been that great of a friend, either. When he was younger, he’d done his best to push people away, thinking everyone was a nuisance, thinking everyone was annoying. As he grew, though, one person in particular hadn’t known how to give up. And if it wasn’t for them, Sasuke probably would have gone off the rails a long time ago.
But losing his mind doesn’t really appeal to him, so he supposes he owes Naruto a lot.
He knows he owes Naruto a lot. Not only did Naruto pull him back from the brink of insanity, he also proved that there were still people worth loving. And fuck did Sasuke fall hard.
Which was part of the reason he’d agreed to go on the infiltration mission that Tsunade handed over to him.
They reach the doors to the Hokage’s office before Sasuke realizes, and Neji huffs a laugh as he pushes it open. “Good luck, Uchiha.”
It is not Tsunade sitting behind the Hokage’s desk pretending to do paperwork. The blond head of hair is a few shades darker--though it is long enough to be tied in a tail a third of the way down his back--and how did he miss Naruto’s appointment ceremony?
“Welcome back, Raven,” the Hokage says without looking up from his desk. “I trust your mission was successful?”
“Yes, Hokage-sama,” Sasuke manages, though his voice quivers. Naruto looks up, then, a smile lighting his face. “Congratulations on your promotion.”
Naruto chuckles. “Tsunade-baa-chan told me about your mission, though she failed to inform me which of our ANBU was on said mission.” He clears his throat. “Sai, will you join Neji outside? Sasuke’s not a danger to me.”
When they’re alone, Naruto steps out from behind his desk and approaches the door, pressing his hand flat against the surface. When he pulls away, there’s a distinct seal there glowing with chakra, like the one his eyes located on the windows when he’d first set foot in the room.
“As much as I love them, they like to eavesdrop on all of my conversations,” Naruto explains. “So, that seal makes it impossible for them to hear what’s going on when I activate it.”
He looks -comfortable is the only word that Sasuke can think of with the right connotation.
“I’m glad you’re home,” Naruto says, sitting on the edge of his desk. Under the white robe draping his shoulders, he wears a simple black pullover and his orange pants, though Sasuke notices his feet are bare. “I wish you hadn’t left without a proper goodbye, but I think I understand.”
The door flies open and a head of long blonde hair weaves between Sasuke’s legs, barreling full force into Naruto’s arms. Behind him, Neji pulls the door closed.
“What have I told you about interrupting when I’m in a meeting, Yuriko?” Naruto lifts the child onto his lap despite his words.
Yuriko laughs, high and clear, her head thrown back. “I’m sorry, papa!”
Sasuke is speechless.
He’d known he was gone for a long time, but Naruto becoming Hokage and a father during those seven years is a lot to take in, and it tears at him. He’d been so sure that his feelings would fade when he set out on his journey; when they hadn’t, he resolved to look Naruto in the eye once he got home and tell him how he felt, even if all it meant was that their friendship, or whatever it was, was slightly different.
But Naruto has a daughter.
“Sasuke-kun, if you want to leave your mission report here and go change, we could meet for dinner.”
The child wiggles in her father’s grip until she can see him clearly, though she won’t be able to recognize his face under his ANBU mask.
“I would like that,” he finally chokes out, though his eyes don’t leave her face.
Those eyes… They’re…
Naruto sets her on the ground and stands. “Yuriko, will you go let Kakashi and Sakura know we won’t be meeting them tonight?”
“Okay, Papa!” she chirps, and then she flits to the window and shoves it open before leaping outside in a burst of white smoke.
//
When Sakura steps out of her apartment for dinner, she’s not entirely surprised to find her little surrogate niece bounding up to her. Ever since Naruto became Hokage, she’s become a rather adept babysitter; she just doesn’t remember Naruto asking her to babysit tonight.
“Sakura-bachan! Papa sent me to tell you we couldn’t meet you and Kakashi-san for dinner tonight.”
“Oh. Did something come up?” She mentally catalogues through the missions she knew ended today, wondering whether any of them needed immediate attention, but when Yuriko beams at her, it’s apparent that Naruto doesn’t have a boatload of paperwork to do.
“There’s an ANBU in Papa’s office and he’s going to dinner with us!”
Sakura smiles, pushing Yuriko’s hair out of her face. “Well, then, you better get going, Yuriko-chan! You don’t want to keep Naruto-sama waiting.”
Naruto rarely misses Team 7 dinners (he calls them family dinners). It nags at Sakura on her way to the restaurant where she meets Kakashi, who smiles at her. “Naruto won’t be here,” he announces.
“Did Yuri-chan come see you, as well?”
“No.” After they order their food, Kakashi hands the menus back to their server and clasps his hands together. “Sasuke’s home.”
//
When he sets foot outside of his home (freshly showered and in civilian clothes), Naruto’s there waiting for him, hands in his pockets. He has, apparently, also changed clothes (black pants and a white shirt under his robe), and his child is seated cheerfully on his shoulders.
“Can I ask you something?”
Sasuke hums. There’s a warmth curling in his stomach he went without for so long that it’s almost unbearably strong. Every time he thinks of something to say, his words get caught in his throat. He doesn’t remember ever being quite so flustered around Naruto.
“How come you didn’t tell me you had to leave the night you told me about the mission?”
So. They’re skipping the small talk, then.
“I… thought the mission would give me time to figure some things out. I didn’t want you to stop me from going.”
“As if I could change your mind.” Before Sasuke can argue, Naruto continues. “And? Did you figure them out?”
“Hn.”
“Papa,” Yuriko chimes after a moment, “is this the--”
“Yes, Yurichan.”
Sasuke spares another look at the child ( she has Naruto’s whisker marks , he realizes), but he keeps thinking about what Naruto said. “If you had asked me not to go, I would have stayed… I couldn’t give you the chance to ask because I thought… Well, I was wrong anyway.”
//
If somebody had walked up to Naruto when he was twelve and told him that he would fall in love with his best friend, he would have laughed and told them he didn’t have one. If somebody had told him that he’d fall in love with Sasuke Uchiha, he would have laughed until tears poured down his cheeks.
He’s not laughing now.
He wasn’t laughing seven years ago when Sasuke spent the night in his bed only to be gone completely by the time Naruto woke up.
He wasn’t laughing when he went to Sakura because he was getting sick every single day, and he wasn’t laughing when Sakura stuttered out that he was pregnant . Him. Naruto. Pregnant.
I blame that part on you, Kurama .
The Kyuubi laughs, as he always does when his powers change something about Naruto without their knowledge.
He doesn’t think that Sasuke realizes, and maybe he’s crazy, but he’s pretty sure Sasuke feels something, too.
“If you had asked me not to go, I would have stayed.” Sasuke must feel something, or he wouldn’t have said that. Right? It isn’t like he was anywhere close to being Hokage when Sasuke went on his infiltration mission. Really, he’s been Hokage for less than half of the time Sasuke’s been gone, so that can’t be it.
It has to be more than that.
“You may be Hokage, but you’re still gonna fry your brains if you think too hard,” Sasuke mutters. It eases something in Naruto, something heavy and knotted and uncomfortably close to fear.
He’s not going to lie, he’s been afraid a fair few times in his life, but mostly either when he’d first become a genin, or directly after he had Yuriko. Lately, his life has been an endless string of fatherhood and paperwork, and not much else.
Throwing his child’s other father in the mix is definitely a welcome change, albeit one he wasn’t quite prepared for.
But hey, he’s nothing if not determined. They have a lot to talk about, but Naruto thinks they’re going to be just fine.
First, they just have to make it through dinner.
//
When another ANBU drops to the ground beside their table at the chosen restaurant, Naruto briefly closes his eyes before standing up. He aims a finger at Yuriko before he says, “You, stay with Sasuke. No funny business, young lady. And finish your food, okay?” He drops a wad of cash on the table and brushes his fingers over Sasuke’s shoulder before he and the ANBU are gone.
Yuriko watches Sasuke with black eyes.
“There’s a group of bad ninja near the western border of Fire Country,” she informs him dutifully. “I guess they attacked again. Papa says not to worry, ‘cause Kakashi-san is one of the ones keeping them in check, and nobody beats Kakashi-san ‘cept for Papa. And when I asked Sakura-bachan about it, she said that they’re just grumpy ‘cause you guys beat their leader before I was born.”
Sasuke’s never really been around children, but he’s pretty sure they don’t talk about war this much, even when it is something wreaking havoc on a village, which it clearly isn’t. “I’m going to take a guess here and say you’re pretty clever, aren’t you?”
She grins just like Naruto. “Thank you!” She returns to her food, but Sasuke’s already eaten his fill; he finds that she’s hard to look away from. She’s animated like Naruto, but there’s a grace to her movements that reminds him of… There’s just no way. Even if… But they’re both… But her eyes .
When they leave the restaurant, Yuriko slips her hand into his. He’s not so much of a jerk that he’d pull away, but he doesn’t even want to--something about her makes him want to take care of her. He doesn’t know if it’s because she’s Naruto’s daughter, or if it’s because she looks at every person she sees as if they’re precious to her (including him!).
“Well, Yuriko-chan, what do you want to do now?”
She hums. “Do you wanna come to our house?”
The two of them find themselves on the sofa while Yuriko regales him with tales of her childhood (his favorite is the one she tells him where Kakashi helps her prank every single teacher at the ninja academy in one day). She talks about her relationship with Naruto, how she gets to go to the hospital with Sakura when Sakura’s watching her and has to work, how Kakashi takes her up to the training grounds to learn some of the basics of being a shinobi.
She’s not quite as animated as Naruto was when they were kids, but she has the same passion in her eyes when she mentions something important to her.
And then she says, “I think Papa really missed you.”
His responding, “I really missed him, too,” escapes before he can wrangle it back, but it’s worth it to see another smile aimed right at him.
“That’s good, because--” she breaks off to yawn, squeezing her eyes shut, “--I don’t want him to stop smiling like he was earlier.”
Oh.
“Hey, Yuriko-chan, we should probably get you ready for bed, huh?” He hadn’t realized it was getting so late. That isn’t so surprising, though. She may be showing it now, but when she was talking about their lives, she hadn’t slowed down or stumbled once.
She kind of reminds him of himself, before he lost everyone, before he lost his beloved brother (distantly, now that Danzo’s betrayal is out in the open and he’s dead, he wonders if he can’t get Itachi to come home). He’d been that tireless, too, then.
“Hn. Sounds good, oto-san,” she mumbles as he stands, pulling her into his hands.
He pauses. “Yuriko?”
It’s not possible, but
But her hair is long and straight. Her eyes are Uchiha dark. She’s perfectly content in his arms and--
Oh.
He’d left Naruto to raise a daughter--their daughter--all alone.
No, not alone. Their friends helped, but Naruto…
He dutifully gets her bathed and dresses her in pajamas, but after, he wraps her in a blanket and settles on the couch instead of taking her to her room, content to let her curl up in his arms and sleep for as long as she’ll allow it. After all, he’s missed seven years of her life. He’s not going to miss anymore. Nothing will stand in the way of his being there for her now--especially not his own emotional constipation.
//
Naruto’s pretty sure he’s not dreaming, but it looks like Sasuke’s asleep on his couch with their daughter in his arms. Yuriko looks perfectly content, cocooned in a blanket, thumb in her mouth, sleeping peacefully on Sasuke’s chest, and Sasuke looks… relaxed, happy even.
So instead of waking them, he makes his way to the shower and gets cleaned up. After he’s slipped into sleep pants, he shuffles back into the living room to find that Sasuke’s watching him with half-lidded eyes. Naruto smiles.
Sasuke shifts, slipping off of the couch with Yuriko in his arms. Naruto assumes he was given the tour, because he goes right to her room and settles her in bed before pulling the door mostly shut. It’s then that he stands in front of Naruto, expression unreadable.
“How?” he asks. How is this possible? How could she be ours?
Naruto hums. “You put your d--”
“Naruto!” A blush rises over his cheekbones, slowly covering his neck, as well. “It shouldn’t be possible, but…!”
It’s all Naruto can do to nod, gesturing toward the kitchen. “I’ll make tea and explain, okay? I promise.”
“We were all baffled,” he begins after Sasuke is seated and he’s turned the electric kettle on. While the water heats, he brings down two mugs and situates the tea bags, pulls out the sugar and milk. “I was feeling sick so I went to Sakura; you should’ve seen the look on her face when she told me I was pregnant. She certainly wasn’t expecting me to say the baby was yours . For a whole month after that, she’d turn bright red whenever she had to look at me.” He chuckles at the thought. “Kakashi was less than surprised, though. Anyway, we think that it has everything to do with Kurama’s powers. The Kyuubi is technically genderless, and I’ve never really cared that much about having a gender, so I guess wherever our powers come from, whoever creates us, Fate or whathaveyou--I guess Yuriko’s a gift from them.” He places a steaming mug in front of Sasuke and wraps his hands around his own to keep them steady, leaning back against the counter with his ankles crossed.
Sasuke takes a sip; Naruto watches his eyes slip shut, watches as he practically purrs. When he opens them, something in his gaze is calmer, settled, understanding.
“The night I left,” he finally says, “I wasn’t really sure what we had. For one thing, I’m a complete dunce when it comes to emotions, and for another, I was a coward. I knew how I felt about you, Naruto, but I was absolutely positive that those feelings would fade.” He studies Naruto’s face like he has been since he set foot in Naruto’s office. “I was absolutely wrong, of course. I… When I realized that they weren’t going to go away, I made a promise that I’d tell you as soon as I got home, but the mission kept getting extended. I couldn’t break off and blow my cover, or we’d have had an all-out war, so--”
“Sasuke, you don’t have to say all of this to me. I understand why you took the mission, and I know you take your job seriously. I was never mad at you.”
“I just wish I had been here.” Sasuke looks down, glaring into his tea like it’s an enemy. He looks so downtrodden that Naruto nearly laughs. Instead, he drinks his tea and thinks.
“You’re here now, though,” he offers after a moment. Sasuke’s head lifts, eyes penetrating. “And you only had to look at her once before deciding she was precious.”
“You’re both precious.” The red rising on his cheeks isn’t enough to stop him, and it makes the warmth in Naruto’s belly rise up like a tidal wave. “I love you, dobe.”
He sets his mug aside and hauls Sasuke to his feet, doesn’t care that his kiss is bruising; Sasuke gives just as much as he takes, it’s exhilarating and overwhelming and so so welcome. One of his hands curls around the back of Naruto’s neck, the other gripping his hip. Naruto’s fingers have threaded themselves in Sasuke’s hair almost of their own accord, but Sasuke doesn’t seem to mind, pressing as close as he can.
He feels like he’s finally found what was missing from his life; it doesn’t really come as a shock to him. Once upon a time, he was ready to fight the whole world to save this man. He just hadn’t fully realized why , back then. He would move mountains, he’d hold up the sky, he’d put his life at Sasuke’s feet if it meant making him happy.
He slows the kiss, eases away until it’s just their foreheads leaning together, attempts to reel his emotions back just a little.
Well, he’s never seen Sasuke smile quite like that.
//
“The door, Naruto. Get the door.”
He heaves himself out of bed, but not before pressing a sloppy kiss to the bare shoulder poking out from beneath the blankets. When he has his pajama pants on the correct way (it really shouldn’t take a grown man two tries), he feels presentable enough to stumble to the front door and pull it open.
Shikamaru and Neji glare at him. “You’re late.”
He groans. “Shika--”
“Look, that’s not the point,” Neji interrupts. “Sakura-chan said she stopped by Sasuke-san’s home this morning and he’s not there. Do you know where he is? Did you send him on another mission?”
He stares dumbly at them until he sees their eyes widen and a gentle hand slips into his own, fingers intertwining. “Hokage-sama’s taking a personal day,” comes Sasuke’s voice at his shoulder. “We’re going to be spending the day with our daughter. Have a nice day, gentlemen. Please tell Sakura-chan not to be concerned.”
Naruto closes the door, turning to the man at his side.
“Problem?” he asks, though Naruto can see the carefully hidden smile underneath the smirk.
“No,” he answers. He squeezes Sasuke’s hand, pulling him back toward the bedroom and the promise of comfort. “Not at all.”