There was something in his eyes that night. A something that made his lungs go flat and unheaving, because of something in his eyes that he adored, and the fact that he came running when he got home, as if time hadn't been good to him, and that everything else but time just had been a cruel joke.

And that's why he loved him. Because there had never been anything else to do, because of his hands that could reach out and touch the stars, his hands that sometimes seemed far away and yet never left him peace. And because of his lips, and because of the way he sat down on the kitchen chair, bending a knee, angling his shoulder, and how an intake of air followed on every surprising news, and how he scratched his forehead when he was beat, how he peered at him from the other side of the sofa when he wanted to stretch out but didn't dare say anything because he didn't want to disturb him.

It was in how he always tied his right sandal first and how he refused to do the dishes when he'd done the cooking. Sometimes it was in the beckoning lines of his profile that discarded the light around it, as if the light could go and die somewhere else and Kakashi couldn't understand why people went to the beach, sunbathing, when there was a sun right here, smelling of future meals and arguments and precarious laughs that made his sides hurt.

His love was like getting grains of sand in his eyes, and the more he thought of it the more it hurt.

His love was like a sinking boat, and the more water he tried to shuffle out, with a bucket at a time, the more there was, engulfing his feet like there was no tomorrow and maybe there wasn't, not when his lungs burned for air.

Naruto groaned, rolled around in the bed, had an obscene affair with their soft white cotton covers, "What time is it?"

"Eight, I think."

The head with all the blond hair thumped down on the pillow. "I'm late. But the bed's so comfortable..." he said, and stretched out just to show how comfortable it was, and his muscles played under his skin, singing lewd songs of the pleasures and discomforts that had shaped them.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked, and there was nothing in his head that could answer his question, no words for the unphantomable jagged edges that was in between what he felt and what he said.

"Because I love you," he said simply, because it was that simple, because when he looked at him, all he felt was love. He'd felt irritation, frustration, indignation, jelaousy, but not in this moment, not in this moment when Naruto was leaving, going through the door, heading out to buy groceries, all he felt was love, and a bit of hunger, and a bit of sadness because he wasn't finished with his breakfast but he didn't want to throw it out, because that would make him even more sad, but he still wanted to go with him.

And then Naruto walked up to him, and he froze because maybe he'd poured just one bucket too much into the ocean, maybe the ocean wasn't the ocean anymore, and Naruto leaned in, kissed his forehead, "I love you too," and then stole his piece of toast, going back to the world outside, waved as he opened the door and slipped out into the sunshine that could never, ever rival his warmth.