Strangers like You and Me
starter for @rainokami
There were many things different now that peace had finally returned to the village. It started with large, noticeable things like the rebuilding efforts and people recognising him on the streets, but these things weren’t what had Naruto stop and think. He noticed them, surely, but they weren’t what went through his head when he went to bed at night or during those half-light, half-dark hours early in the morning.
For him, strangely enough, it was the little things, the ones that had nothing to do with the grander scope and the ones that definitely bothered only him and perhaps a very small circle of friends. Actually, a really small circle. It wasn’t even a circle, more like a triangle. If not just a simple line between two people. His missing arm was the first and foremost of these things that differed, vastly. It wasn’t even the pain so much as it was the lack of utility with just one hand. Even making cup ramen was a hassle, he now had to do all the single steps one after the other. It wasn’t just tedious, it also led to him spilling the spices more than once now that he ripped the package open with his teeth, impatient. It had taken him all of the past month to figure out how to produce shadow clones without the full seal and while that kept memories from crawling up his neck with icy hands that didn’t fit into the summer sun shining on the village, it felt like too slow a progress.
But that wasn’t all. The arm wasn’t just a missing arm. Its absence stood for something that didn’t quite go into Naruto’s head in its entirety, like something he could just feel, but not grasp, rationally. It was a definitely sign for something having changed, something that nobody understood.
Well, nobody, except one.
Sometimes, when sleep eluded him for too long, Naruto had closed his eyes and thought of Sasuke. How he too was alone, somewhere across the village. Did he just sleep or did he have trouble as well? Did his arm sometimes itch, even though it wasn’t there anymore, like Naruto’s?
Their arms, or rather, their not-arms were what had had him walk up to Sasuke, four days after they’d left hospital, to ask him to move in with him.
Across the small couch in his apartment stood the outcome of this question, a tiny box with Sasuke’s most important belongings. Sasuke hadn’t even protested in the slightest, hadn’t even commented on Naruto’s joking suggestion that together they’d have two hands again. He’d just asked when, and Naruto had found it strange that it was a surprise to him and yet wasn’t at the same time that he’d just said today.
Someone knocked at the door and Naruto shot up from where he’d been sitting and eyeing the box like it was a living creature.
He made it over to the door, thoughts in a flurry that had him both excited and nervous, and stretched out an arm that wasn’t there anymore. It took him a moment to understand that the stump surely couldn’t open a door very well, so he applied his other hand to turn the key and swing it open at last.
“Hey.”
