Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

Constellations (complete)	By : momhuey8 Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Naruto/Sasuke Views: 1362 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 28
- 29
- 30
Neji stood stiff by the bed in the tower sleeping quarters waiting for Naruto to finish his conference with the Hunters in the corner of the room.
He was having a hard time finding the box in his mind. If the Hunters had to take Naruto’s head; if he had to let the Hunters take Naruto’s head…
His breath stuttered briefly as doubts hammered at him. His biggest doubt was about shouldering this risk alone. They’d told Sasuke nothing, given him no opportunity to help.
But Naruto had pleaded to leave Sasuke out of this. Let him get some rest he’d begged, and then he’d work to bring their home back to some semblance of normal.
Neji didn’t know how Sasuke would have responded to this, but if he had to go home today and tell his family that Naruto… The blood left his head again and he struggled to bring up the white noise that kept him sane. Now was the time for focus, for a cool head.
Clinging to the empirical, to reason, he breathed and thought. The way he figured it, there were two options for helping Naruto; brute force or finesse. He didn’t have the chakra to just sit on the seal and muscle through the pull on the demon. But he did have the ability to see the escape route and block it. In theory.
“Ready?” Naruto smiled at him and laced their fingers in a reassuring squeeze.
“Naruto, I…” Neji started.
“It’ll be fine, okay?” Naruto grinned. “We won’t need them. They just don’t have anything better to do.”
Neji closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose. His job was to help hold Naruto up, not pull him down. He nodded.
Naruto pulled his clothes off and crawled onto the bed. Neji crawled up beside him and activated his byakugan.
Damn. He was going to have to simultaneously block every chakra path that even passed near the seal.
“Whaddya think?” Naruto finally asked.
Neji nodded after a moment. “I can do this.” He just didn’t know for how long.
Naruto’s smile widened. “You’re awesome. Just let me know when you’re ready.”
Neji quickly created a web inside Naruto that he could control from a single point. His heart hammering, he nodded and his gaze shot to the group in the corner. He could almost feel their mounting anticipation from here.
“Okay, I’m going to let you have it all.” Naruto closed his eyes and Neji felt the pressure against his barricades build. After several seconds of building force, his breath caught and he felt a moment of panic.
“I can’t do this,” flashed through his mind. “No! I can,” he said to himself forcefully and gathered his focus.
The force built and built and…then leveled off. Neji looked at Naruto. “Do I have it all now?”
If Neji ever doubted it before, the look on Naruto’s face told him everything. It may not have been true in the beginning, but it was now. Naruto loved him.
“You do,” Naruto whispered.
And he would not let Naruto down.
“Are you okay?” Naruto asked.
“Yes. Now sleep.”
Naruto looked at him another moment, adoration clear on his face, then closed his eyes. He was asleep in seconds.
Damn! Damn! Damn!
It had only been four hours and Neji couldn’t hold the demon any longer. Even the Hunters in the room could sense the struggle, the fluctuations, and were aligning their grips on their swords.
Naruto probably hadn’t even reached the Delta stage. He’d still be exhausted after this.
Maybe he could hold out just another…
Heat gathered in and around his eyes, in the palms of his hands.
“Naruto.” Naruto’s breathing changed, but he didn’t wake up. “Naruto! Wake up!”
Naruto’s eyes flew open and he blinked several times.
“Huh? What?” He looked around the room and Neji watched comprehension dawn.
“I can’t hold…” Neji closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Naruto sat up and scrubbed his face briskly.
“No, it’s okay. I’m awake. I’ve got it.” He looked at Neji and smiled through a yawn. “I’m awake now.”
Naruto still looked exhausted, dark circles stood out against a washed out pallor.
“We need more help,” Neji said.
Naruto stopped in the middle of pulling on pants.
“All Hyuuga’s have the ability. Also anyone with sage level chakra.”
Naruto frowned, but Neji continued.
“I know you hate asking for help, so you don’t have to. I will.”
Neji could almost hear the unspoken question in Naruto’s head. “Sasuke?”
“Our agreement…” Naruto started. “We protect Sasuke.”
Neji rubbed his face in uncharacteristic agitation.
“He’s not protected now.” Neji thought about all the times he’d spied Sasuke standing unseeing, his fists clenched, his face contorted, of all the times a noise would bring him to the bedroom to find Sasuke thrashing, crying, in his sleep.
“Just…” Naruto’s face was pleading. “Let’s try this first and then I’ll fix things with him at home.”
Neji didn’t answer right away.
“Please.” Naruto came to stand in front of Neji.
Neji sighed. This was irrational. All of it.
Sasuke was being irrational, doing the exact opposite of what he should be doing, shutting everyone out, blinding himself to the world around him, hiding instead of helping. But Neji understood him and what he was doing was really no different than what he and Naruto were doing.
All three of them had a portion of themselves that acknowledged this threat. The differences were in how they internalized and externalized the resulting emotions.
Sasuke couldn’t face life without Naruto, but he’d painted himself into a corner by building a family. He was out of control, which was the most dangerous thing for an Uchiha. Put a daunting task before Sasuke and he could accomplish more than most. Put the truly impossible before him and he became an asshole.
Put a threat to his family before him and tell him there was no way to fix it… He became nuts.
Neji imagined Sasuke joining the efforts at the tower and facing one failure, one disappointment, one nail in Naruto’s coffin, after another. He could envision what Naruto had feared all those years ago; the erosion of Sasuke’s sanity.
Naruto looked reality in the face most unflinchingly. He’d come to terms with it many years ago. But he refused to inflict it on anyone. He had a sense that people fell into two categories, those who didn’t care about Naruto’s problems and those who did. He didn’t see a point in bothering those who didn’t care. Those who did care were such a dear and precious commodity, such a rare and wonderful thing to Naruto, that he would open a vein, would expel his last breath to keep the sun shining on those precious few. So he smiled and kept his burdens to himself.
If Naruto’s loved ones wanted to help support him, they first had to look for the problem and then force their support on him.
Neji realized that, in truth, he was no different. He saw the threat, but it was askance, in the barest periphery of his cogency. He kept his eyes and mind focused firmly forward. He kept his focus linear, on his children and their needs; on next steps and activities. Spine stiff, head forward, his days were one foot in front of the other.
There was a small container in his mind, way in the back, that was black and ugly and hammering for attention. It was full of panic and squirming sickness and jagged fear and clawing screams. But he kept the lid firmly in place, leaving the clean white stillness in the forefront of his mind. Naruto and Sasuke and their children needed that from him and that’s what he would do.
Yes, the truth, the fear, lived in all three of them. Neji let the fear be displaced with clean white stillness that served his family best. Naruto let love fill him and cover his fear like a warm soft blanket. Sasuke let anger grow and build until fear was crushed under the weight of a consuming rage.
Was it fair of him to take Sasuke’s coping mechanism away from him? Or indeed Naruto’s?
He sighed. “Okay, Naruto. For now.”
Naruto laughed at the stunned expressions on the faces of their two oldest boys. Naruto’s and Sasuke’s sons had this uncanny rivalry that erupted into contention eight or nine hundred times a day.
The two had been waging an increasingly escalated assault as they fought with their elbows to determine exactly where the boundary was on the table between one dinner plate and the other.
Seconds before the battle had escalated into an all out war, the boys found themselves dangling upside down over their upturned chairs.
“You two can fight all you want for position of top dog in this house,” Naruto started conversationally, “but I gotta tell you, it’s a pointless battle.
“Because, in this house…” The air shackled around their ankles vibrated, jerking the boys to attention. “I’m the top dog.” He shook them again. “Got it?”
The other children cheered and Naruto cast a glance at Sasuke. The bastard had been silent and stiff through dinner, but his lip was twitching and his amusement had reached his eyes.
Neither boy answered, too busy casting disgruntled looks at each other around the blood rushing to their heads.
“You think you’re ready to take me now?” Naruto raised a brow. He moved the baby in his arms to his shoulder and started to burp him.
Sasuke’s boy immediately shook his head, his hair hanging in shaggy black spikes. Naruto’s son studied him with pursed lips for several seconds. Out of the corner of his eye, Naruto caught Sasuke’s jaw working to hold in his mirth.
“I’d advise you to think hard on this, son,” Sasuke said to the dangling blond. “Because you’d also have to whip Neji,” he leaned on his hand and raised a brow at his adopted son, “and me.”
“Or,” Neji added, “You two could try to remember you are brothers and not enemies.”
Both boys frowned, muttering unintelligible epithets at each other.
After dinner, Neji cast several worried glances at Naruto. That chakra display had been as much for Sasuke’s benefit as the boys and Neji, as exhausted as he knew Naruto to be, had been surprised he could even pull it off.
It had worked though. By the end of dinner, Sasuke had appeared more relaxed than Neji had seen him in weeks. Deciding to let Naruto continue to work his magic, he’d told Naruto and Sasuke to leave the clean up to him and go get the kids’ baths. They’d agreed and the happy sounds floating to him from around his home eased his soul.
It had done Naruto such good to see Sasuke smile tonight at dinner. He felt like he’d finally exhaled after weeks of holding his breath. He hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed this bit of normalcy, or how much the children had needed it as well. While it was nothing particularly overt, as they navigated the nighttime rituals he’d missed these last weeks he sensed an especial neediness in their babies. They clung longer and more tightly and were reluctant to let the day end, begging longer and more strenuously for playtime and stories.
He came to understand how observant children were. The underlying theme of all their bedtime petitions revolved around keeping Naruto and Sasuke together in the same room, near each other. The twins had produced a strangling tangle of limbs, wrapping their arms around each other and around both Naruto’s and Sasuke’s necks. Then they’d created an impromptu little game that involved goodnight kisses and only let the game go when Naruto and Sasuke had kissed each other.
The continuation of this return to normalcy, which he felt resided entirely on his shoulders, was paramount to Naruto. This problem with the demon, his problem, was what had brought this family down, and they all seemed to be looking to him to set the tone, to set everything right.
Some time later, Sasuke and Naruto closed the last bedroom door and sighed wearily. But Naruto didn’t want to allow time for Sasuke to stop and think. So he moved into Sasuke’s space and pressed him into the hallway wall.
“Tired?” Naruto asked in a warm puff of breath against Sasuke’s neck.
Sasuke only paused a moment before gripping Naruto’s hips and sighing, “No. You?”
“Mm,” Naruto was saved from elaborating by Neji who appeared at their sides and guided them down the hall to their own room.
Sasuke groaned as Naruto moved inside him and Neji held him in his hot mouth.
As always, it was so good, but…there was something wrong. He couldn’t quite…place…it… Then he knew.
“Get off me. Both of you get the fuck off me.” He swung off the bed and began pacing and pulling his hair.
“Is this what you came back here for?” He yelled at Naruto. “First you don’t give anything and then you give too much.” Spit flew from his mouth as he raged, “And that turns out to be fucking nothing too, doesn’t it?”
Naruto sat on the edge of the bed, his head hanging. Neji sat at his side, his arm around his slumped shoulders.
“Is this what we’ve come to? Pity fucks for Sasuke? For gods’ sakes, Naruto. A fake erection?” He barked an ugly laugh. “Only you, Mr. Chakra King of the Universe, could whip up a fake erection. What? I don’t do it for you anymore?
“And you!” He pointed at Neji. “You knew it. I know you did.” Neji just looked at him as Naruto’s shoulder’s shook and sniffling breaths came from the bowed, blond head.
“I’m sorry. It’s not you. Please believe that.”
“This has been ridiculous. First we can’t find hide nor hair of you, then you come back for this?”
“Sasuke, I’m trying. There are just some things I don’t know how to do.” Naruto muttered. “I don’t know how to get ready to die. I don’t know…”
Sasuke spun, gripping his hair and screamed. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! I hate when you talk this shit! You don’t plan to die, you just fucking do it!”
Naruto nodded and Neji gasped as he saw where this was going.
“Would that fix this? To get rid of the planning and the waiting?”
“Give the man a big fucking cigar. Maybe he’s not as stupid as he looks!”
“Sasuke, please don’t say things that you haven’t thought through,” Neji said.
“Shut up, you traitor.”
Naruto stood and pulled on pants.
“Where the hell are you going? I’m not through with you yet. Not till you stop this shit.”
“I’ve stopped.” Naruto walked out of the room.
Neji just looked at Sasuke.
“What?” Sasuke snapped.
“I have to leave,” Neji whispered.
Sasuke faced him fully, his whole body rigid.
“I’ll…I’ll,” Neji rubbed his palms on his legs, more agitated than Sasuke had ever seen him. “I’ll be here when the kids are here and awake.” He turned and grabbed his bag from the corner. “And…and I’ll keep an eye on him.” He unhooked his weapons pouch from the back of the door. “I’ll…uhm…be at the quarters in the Hokage Tower.” He looked at Sasuke. “I’ll watch him from there.”
Sasuke’s heart was racing and he felt the pressure of pounding blood in his head.
“Neji…”
“I’ve done what I promised myself and both of you I would never do. I’ve let you put me between you.” He came and grasped Sasuke’s hands, his anguish clear on his face.
“I’m sorry, Sasuke. I let you do it because I thought it would help both of you.” Neji’s voice broke. “But, there’s no help, is there? It’s all just…”
“Neji, you haven’t…”
“I’m a window between you two now. He looks through me to you, wishing what I give him came from you. You…your side is a two way glass. You’d see him if you got close enough to look. But you stand far enough back that all you see is yourself.”
He pulled away. “I promise I’ll watch him.” He stuffed a few more things in his pack. “I have to go now. He’s getting so close to making a rash decision.”
“What?!”
“He sees what this is doing to you. And he feels you turning further and further away. And he’s so tired.”
“Why is he tired?” Sasuke was getting frantic and latching on to anything to keep Neji talking…and from leaving.
“Do you hear yourself? Tonight happened because he is completely exhausted.” Neji shook his head and backed away. “And you don’t know why.”
“Neji, wait!” Sasuke was terrified. Not so much by Neji leaving but by the idea of being left alone with Naruto and this leviathan of terror that came with him.
“I have to go now. I’ve waited too long already.” He turned and left the room on a run.
Naruto leaning against a Knotwood tree not far from the house.
Naruto took one look at Neji with his bag over his shoulder and heaved a sob.
“Please don’t leave!” Naruto dropped to his knees and threw his arms around Neji’s waist.
“Naruto…” Neji started, threading his fingers through the blond hair.
“Please. The kids. Sasuke. I…I…” he started to tell Neji that he needed him, but then thought that his burden might be why Neji was leaving. “I’ll stand more on my own two feet.” He rushed on, “I’ll ask the toads to help me sleep.”
Neji pulled Naruto up into his arms. “No, Naruto. Stop. That’s not what this is about.”
“Tell me what to do to fix this. To make you stay.”
“It’s not you.” Neither had heard Sasuke walk up. “It’s me.”
He walked up to the two holding each other. Though it seemed to pain him, he reached out and stiffly wrapped his arms around both of them.
“If I promise to…” he swallowed audibly and closed his eyes, “…try, will you stay?”
“I just want to help both of you. Honestly, I don’t know if it is my presence or my absence that will do the most good. Or frankly, if there is any help for any of it.”
Both Naruto and Sasuke said in unison, “Stay.”
“I need you,” Naruto said.
“We both do. Now more than ever.” Sasuke pulled them closer. “I know we’re asking a lot, but please help us.”
Neji sighed and allowed Sasuke to lead them all into the house.
- 28
- 29
- 30
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Constellations (complete)