01 - Motion

It's the first thing he sees when he drops from the tree canopy to the training arena below: arms uncoiling, snapping through the still morning air; a dozen kunai finding their mark in a quivering practice dummy; and a grin so bright it hurts his heart to look at splitting a round, scarred face.

02 - Cool

 “But he’s not!” Naruto wailed.

03 - Young

“And fifty years from now, we’re going to be too old to try this,” Naruto insists, “So take off your pants and sit on the goddamn swing!”

04 - Last

 Sometimes, Naruto dreams of war: bodies littering a cold, unforgiving earth, blood so deep he has to wade through it, and Sasuke, Sasuke, cruel, wonderful Sasuke, torn apart by demonic claws.

05 - Wrong

“But you’re wrong!” Naruto screams, voice a furious sob: “All these years, you’ve been so wrong!”

06 - Gentle

Their first time is nothing like what he’d expected - all breathy sighs and trembling touches and thank you being written into the skin of his stomach by quivering, hesitant fingers.

07 - One

“You just wait, teme! That was a fluke; next time I’m kicking your ass!” - and Sasuke, for the first time in what must be forever, throws his head back and laughs.

08 - Thousand

They’ve become the next generation’s Gai-and-Kakashi, but of a thousand battles Naruto’s won five hundred and one, and that’s good enough for him.

09 - King

Sasuke is the last to fall to his knees the day Naruto is made Hokage, but Naruto grins and curses at him anyway - ah, Sasuke thinks later that day with the image of that smile burned across the backs of his eyelids: so this is what it means to love.

10 - Learn

“You never learn, dobe,” Sasuke whispers, and he suppresses a smirk when the brush of breath against lips draws a shudder out of the boy lying beneath him--

11 - Blur

--and then Naruto flips him over - so quickly the edges of his vision bleed together - and leans in: “Neither do you, teme. Neither do you.”

12 - Wait

This is what he sees every Thursday evening, when the sun falls past Hokage Mountain and the streetside lanterns throw Konoha’s denizens into stark relief: Naruto, grinning, bright and cheeky; Hinata, quiet and earnest, smiling wider than he’d have thought possible; a strong, tanned arm holding a slim waist close; it is only coincidence, he tells himself, that every Thursday he carves another indent on his prison wall and thinks soon.

13 - Change

Through the slitted blinds half-covering Naruto’s apartment window, Sasuke sees a fish-net shirt peel slowly from a tanned, muscled body, and oh, it’s all he can do not to palm the erection straining against the front of his pants.

14 - Command

“I’m your Hokage, so you’ve gotta do what I say. And what I say is ‘drop to your knees and suck it.’”

15 - Hold

Sasuke wakes in the dead of night with the memory of blood in his eyes and phantom agony throbbing a shuddering, bird-quick beat in the cage of his chest, and God above, when warm arms wrap around him a split second later and a sleepy, muted voice whispers ‘I’m here, teme, get back to sleep,’ he can’t stop himself from turning around and hugging him back.

16 - Need

“No, I don’t,” Naruto whispers, but he wraps an arm around Sasuke’s shoulders and kisses him anyway.

17 - Vision

It’s worsening by the day, and he thinks he’d rather die than tell Naruto; when the idiot finally finds out, though, all he says is ‘Haha, I’ll beat you all the time now,’ and Sasuke takes this as a clear sign that he’ll just have to work harder to prove him wrong.

18 - Attention

Sasuke sees him hanging off Hokage Mountain sometimes, a can of spray paint in one hand and a rope in the other, and every now and then, in that first heartbeat after the initial, exasperated shock…well, every now and then…just sometimes… he wants to scream a single desperate, frenzied proclamation: “You don’t need theirs, because you’ve always had mine.”

19 - Soul

If Sasuke were the romantic sort, he thinks he could compose ballads to Naruto’s eyes, or his spirit, or the gold of his hair -- but he’s not, so all he says - simply, quietly, voice hard and oddly delicate - is: “Everything.”

20 - Picture

On Naruto’s bedside table lies a photo of Team Seven; it was the first taken after Sasuke’s return, and every time Naruto looks at it he is once more taken aback at how much joy the human face can convey.

21 - Fool

Some days - the bad days, the ones where Naruto wakes up to Sasuke staring out the window or taking a shower alone, the days where the air feels a few degrees cooler, his forehead a few degrees warmer - Naruto will spend hours doing nothing but antagonizing the bastard, desperate for a single ‘dobe,’ an ‘usuratonkachi;’ the world feels safe, so long as Sasuke cares enough to call him names, because if he ever stops caring…

22 - Mad

“Don’t look at me with those eyes,” Naruto whispers, curses, sobs; “Turn them back, Sasuke. I hate that color.”

23 - Child

“Oi, Sasuke-teme, you remember that time last month when you asked me to use Orioke no Jutsu during sex and I was like ‘eww, no, you pervert,’ and you were like ‘it’s that or the Kage Bunshin,’ and I was all, ‘like hell,’ and you were like ‘say goodbye to ramen in bed for the next month,’ and -- shut up, I’m getting there…well, I’m glad you remember because it was your idea and your fault and now I’m pregnant and…yes, teme, I said pregnant, you idiot; we’re gonna have a baby and this was all your fault so you’d better take responsibility, you sleazy little…o-oi! Sasuke! Wake up!”

24 - Now

“Whining about it isn’t going to help you any,” Sasuke sighs as he licks a trail up Naruto’s thigh, carefully ignoring the weeping cockhead the blond has spent the last twenty minutes trying to thrust against his belly.

25 - Shadow

“I thought the reason I used Orioke no Jutsu was so I wouldn’t have to screw a Kage Bunshin!”

26 - Goodbye

Ten years later, and the word still draws Naruto to a shuddering halt every time he hears it.

27 - Hide

“You can’t, dobe,” Sasuke hisses, “Not from me. It’s a simple question, and all it requires is a simple answer. So tell me: yes, or no?”

28 - Fortune

Tsunade wins the lottery one Friday morning, and Naruto spends the next week in full lockdown mode --and then on second thought, he ties Sasuke up in the basement...just in case.

29 - Safe

The first thing Naruto says when he releases his best friend-cum-lover seven days later is: “I did this for your own good, teme, knowing full well you’d cut me off for at least a year when I finally let you go; if that’s not proof I love you, I don’t know what is. Why yes, I would accept ramen as a show of gratitude, thank you for ask…oi! Oi! Ouch, Sasuke, what the hell!?”

30 - Ghost

“He’s dead,” Naruto whispers into Sasuke’s sleep-deafened ears; “Dream well, because he’s dead.”

31 - Book

“I nabbed it from the office,” Naruto shouts happily; “Look, we can create our own arena with this spell!”

32 - Eye

Sasuke realizes for the nth time that he should really learn how to quell his curiosity when he asks “What?“ and Naruto answers, quite conversationally, “It’s just that when you think about it, they’re really sort of freaky.”

33 - Never

Sasuke has only ever promised Naruto one thing: I will not leave again; it makes his heart beat a little quicker to remember the smile that had spread on the fool’s face the moment the last word left his mouth.

34 - Sing

“Dobe. Don’t you ever do that again,” Sasuke snarls, and whacks the blond over the head when the idiot has the audacity to ask ‘aww, why?’

35 - Sudden

“So, I think I love you,” Naruto says offhandedly one day over cereal; Sasuke promptly does all in his power not to die choking on Coco Puffs.

36 - Stop

“No,” Naruto growls at the girl turned woman he will always consider among his closest friends - “Not until he comes to his senses.”

37 - Time

“If you could go back and do it all over again, would you still…you know…would you still?” Naruto asks -- and a split second later he thinks he’d do anything to take the words back if it meant he’d never have to see that look in Sasuke’s eyes again.

38 - Wash

Slowly, Sasuke trails the washcloth between two tanned legs and presses it against the spot where thigh meets groin; Naruto sighs breathily, and Sasuke has to forcibly stop himself from jumping into the tub to join his idiot of a lover.

39 - Torn

“SASUKE YOU BASTARD THAT WAS MY FAVORITE SHIRT.”

40 - History

Every now and then, Naruto wakes up to see Sasuke staring out the window, eyes fixed on some forgotten memory, and it breaks his heart a little more each day to realize that nothing he does will ever be enough to keep Sasuke forever here.

41 - Power

All his life, Sasuke’s been struggling for more of it; now, the knowledge that it is the one thing that will forever keep him from having what he’s never realized he so wanted turns his stomach every time he sees that smile.

42 - Bother

“Would you shut up about your stupid new jutsu!?”

43 - God

“I’m not and I never was, Sasuke,” Naruto whispers, “So just come home with me.”

44 - Wall

“It’s the only place we haven’t had sex at in all of Konoha,” Naruto murmurs breathlessly. "Sasuke, let's go!"

45 - Naked

“Stop laughing at me, teme!” Naruto squawks, shielding himself with fisted hands-- “You’re the one who used up all the hot water!”

46 - Drive

“You,” Sasuke snarls at the happily whooping boy at his side, as Gamabunta makes a beeline for CLIFF OF DEATH NUMBER THREE for the sixth time that evening, “Really, really suck at this.”

47 - Harm

“Why not, dobe?” Sasuke laughs weakly, the sound hacking up blood that splatters all over a twisted, desperate face; “It’s the easiest thing in the world. Just do it.”

48 - Precious

“Because you’re my most precious person, Sasuke,” Naruto sobs, and he rubs a hand against his face to try and stem the flow of blood and tears and snot,  “And if I kill you, I will die.”

49 - Hunger

It’s all he can think about sometimes, when they’re sparring and he’s just executed a truly brilliant maneuver that’s left Naruto both mute and immobile beneath him: neck, mouth, cock - what would they feel under my lips? and it makes the careworn organ in his chest flutter a bit every time he realizes that bending over and reacquainting himself with the sensation is the easiest, most welcome thing in the world

50 - Believe

“Hey, Sasuke,” Naruto whispers, decades later, on the eve of some long-forgotten anniversary; their hands are twined between them: “Let's see how far we've come.” 

“I think he’s doing drugs,” Quistis said.

Zell blinked at her. Then he turned to Zexion. “You. You. Are doing drugs?”

“No,” Zexion mumbled.

“Don’t lie to me, young man!” Quistis snapped.

“I’m not lying,” Zexion hissed. “You just won’t listen!”

“Then what about your grades, Zexion?” his mother retorted. “Your grades are dropping, you’re coming home past curfew, you’ve developed an eye twitch and you’ve lost weight! Tell me what I’m supposed to think if not drugs?”

“Well,” Zell muttered.

“Oh, be quiet,” Quistis barked. “My baby boy is not having a love affair! It’s drugs!”

“I kind of think it’s the love affair,” Zell yawned.

“And I think Seifer’s polluted you!”

“Would ya shut up about Seifer!? You walk in on us once-”

“In your office, Zell. In our workplace-”

“I was giving him a massage.”

“You were devoid of clothes!”

“Well, that’s how massages are typically given, you frigid little-”

“You know, I think I liked it better when you were afraid of me.”

“You would, sado-masochistic-”

“I thought I was frigid!”

“I’m still here,” Zexion muttered. “I thought this intervention was supposed to be about me?”

Two blonde heads whirled at him, and he realized a few moments too late that calling attention to himself was probably not the wisest thing to do.

“We’re just trying to help you, Zexion,” Quistis said, and Zexion was quite alarmed to see tears in her eyes. “I raised you better than this. Did those DARE instructors teach you nothing?”

“There’s nothing wrong with having a girlfriend at this age,” Zell nodded eagerly. “But your grades are more important, and you should listen to your mother. Tell her that you want to focus more on your studies at the moment.”

“For God’s sake, he does not have a girlfriend!”

“Well, if you would stop with your drug phobia for one minute-”

“Forgive me if I’d rather not think about him impregnating a female at the tender age of thirteen-”

Zexion paused a moment to think what a pregnant Demyx would look like. He took one look at his boyfriend’s imaginary bloated belly and decided mpreg was overrated.

“So give him a condom!”

Zexion wondered what would happen if he told his mother that, as neither of them had ever had sex before, there would be no need for condoms. He let a proud smile drift to his face. Hah. He’d be the first person to ever touch that body. The first person to ever discover each of its secrets. The first person to draw eager, willing moans out of that alabaster throat, and-

Uh oh.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and hoped neither mother nor counselor looked down.

“It’s sex!”

“It’s drugs!”

“You’re both wrong,” Zexion muttered.

Quistis and Zell both turned to look at him, and Zexion turned to stare out the window. He shrugged. “I haven’t had sex.” Yet. “And I’d never touch drugs. It’s just…” He sighed.

“Just?” his mother prodded.

Zexion tossed his hair out of his face and cut his eyes to the side. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll raise my grades. And I’ll do my best to come home before curfew. I’ll even stop skipping lunch.”

Zell and Quistis glanced at each other. “You’ve been skipping lunch?”

“I’m not anorexic, either,” Zexion sighed.  “I’ve just…been spending lunch with a friend. We talk. I forget to eat sometimes.”

And that was the magic word.

“Friend?” Quistis whispered.

“Zexion,” Zell murmured, voice hushed and almost reverent. “You’ve made a…a friend?”

“An honest to goodness, real live friend?” Quistis breathed.

Zexion flushed. “Yes,” he muttered. “It’s not something to work yourself into a huff over.”

“I’m extending your curfew two hours!” Quistis cried happily.

Zexion blinked. “Excuse-”

“And Saturdays!” she said. “Saturdays are yours, Zexion.”

Blink. “I-”

“I’ll inform your teachers right away,” Zell said. He grabbed the phone and lifted it to his ear, fingers already scribbling something away on a notepad. “I’ll get you extensions on all of your assignments, you mark my words!”

“You must invite him - is it a him? - over for dinner! Tonight!”

“We’ll get him moved into your classes! Never fear, Zexion, you’ll be lonely no longer!”

And then, together: “What’s his name!?”

Zexion turned to look at both, dumbfounded. And slowly, as if weighing the syllables, he answered. “Demyx Romani.”

Let it be known that the world did not come to an end, explode, or do anything at all untoward at that moment.

But boy, it felt like it.

“Demyx!?” Zell shouted. “You’ve finally made a friend, and it’s Demyx!?”

Something went flying. Zexion quite astutely began plotting escape routes.

“Yes,” he responded. “Is that a problem?”

“A…a problem?!” Quistis gasped. She lifted a hand to her forehead, visibly attempting some semblance of composure. “No,” she half-wheezed. “No problem.” She lurched out of her chair and grabbed her son by the shoulders, where she proceeded to shake the intelligence right out of him.

“You hold onto that boy, Zexion Trepe!” she barked. “He will be the best thing that has ever happened to you. If I ever catch wind of any sort of falling-out, it will be Cartoon Network for a month!”

Zexion blanched. “Not Cartoon Network!”

“And the Disney Channel!” she said, nodding with every amount of the formidable conviction she possessed. “Say goodbye to your TLC and History Channel. Sayonara, Ancient Mysteries! So long, Ordinary People With Extraordinary Powers. Peaceazies, I Can Name More Obscure Sexually Transmitted Diseases Than You Can So There Suckers. All you’ll have for an entire month will be Naruto and High School Musical.” She smiled. “Don’t screw this up, honey. Think of your cranium.”

Zexion glowered. “That was uncalled for.”

“I only act as any mother would,” Quistis said solemnly. She sighed suddenly, and aimed a fond smile at her only child. “You be nice to him. He’s a good boy. I’m happy you chose him as your first friend.”

Zexion blinked. And then he smiled. Not widely, of course. But it was there.

“Yes,” he said softly. “I am, too.”