Just a drabble.

~*~

When he was all alone again in the stark, quietness of his mind he realized that however much he’d loved Sasuke had obviously not been enough. As he traced over black and blue marks of affection with glittering pools of azure he wondered when he had decided that standing idle while the object of his affection marked him up and down was the right thing to do. Really he wanted to shrug it off and tuck it safely away in the closet of his mind for things best reserved for nightmares.

Because even his nightmares had never made his heart hurt so much.

It had come as a startling realization to him that love wasn’t supposed to hurt. He hadn’t known love of any kind until a soft-hearted academy teacher read the sadness in his eyes and matched it with his own. Naruto had found different kinds of love more suddenly than he was really prepared for after being denied it for so long. The love of a father in Iruka, the love of a sister in Tsunade, the love of an uncle in Jiraiya…

…the love he’d always dreamed of in Sasuke.

Truthfully, it was jarring when Neji had traipsed into his messy room in his rundown apartment one morning before the world had even awoken and quietly slipped under the covers next to him, wrapping long muscled arms around his waist and tugging him towards the warmth of his body. The situation wasn’t disturbing for the action but more so because it taunted him with just a peek of what Sasuke – as the one he loved – should have given him.

Sasuke never held him like that. The avenger never held him just-shy-of-crushingly-tight simply because he liked feeling the blonde in his arms. As he lay there wrapped up in an unfamiliar – but not wholly unpleasant – embrace, warmth and sincerity seeped into his worn soul and withered heart and he wondered if that was what it would have felt like with his lover if the raven had let the ice around his heart melt.

Where the Uchiha’s touches were rushed and raw and oftentimes painful the Hyuuga’s were warm and tender and almost ghostlike. And as the blonde succumbed to the gentle sifting of long fingers through his hair and low murmurs from a soft voice whispering in his ears he knew he had been broken and lied to.

When in the presence of the one he had loved for so long, he still felt unworthy and chained. Naruto remember always thinking when he was younger that he would feel free and saved when loved. Instead he felt bound and trussed and helpless.

So for the first time he greeted the fading colors on his skin with a true smile because he knew that once they were gone, they would never be back.

And it was on that chilly autumn morning when he found his savior in an unfamiliar – but not wholly unpleasant – embrace.

~*~