The door creaks open just past midnight.

You’re already awake — you always are when he’s gone longer than promised. You don’t move. You just wait. There’s no greeting. Just the faint thud of boots dropped near the door, the slow sound of cloth rustling as he shrugs out of his cloak. Then silence.

You hold your breath.

And then you feel him. Sasuke doesn’t walk, not when he’s tired, not when he’s been to the edge of some nameless border and back. He glides, soundless as shadow, until the edge of your futon dips with his weight and his remaining hand brushes your shoulder.

“Hey,” you whisper.

You barely get it out before he folds down next to you. Sasuke’s body is cold — chilled from night air and riverside travel, from god-knows-what terrain he crossed to get back to you. But his grip is hot. Desperate. His arm snakes around your waist, pulling you flush against his chest, and he tucks his face into the crook of your neck like he’s chasing warmth he forgot existed.

You feel the tremble in his fingers before he stills them.

“…You’re back,” you murmur.

Sasuke doesn’t answer. His breath shudders out against your skin, exhale sharp and tight like something inside him cracked the moment you said it. His arm curls tighter around you — just one, strong and possessive. His stump rests awkwardly between you for a moment before he shifts it behind you, pulling you closer still.

You reach back, running your fingers through his hair, soft and tangled, longer than last month, and he exhales again, slower this time. Calmer.

“Didn’t want to wake you,” Sasuke mutters against your neck.

You almost laugh. “Like I sleep when you’re gone?”

There’s a beat of quiet. Then, softly: “I hate leaving you.”

The words are fragile — more than confession, less than apology. They break something in you every time he says them like that: like he doesn’t think he deserves to be missed, but still aches when he is. You twist in his hold, enough to face him, and his arm moves instantly to support you, hand sliding to your lower back. His Rinnegan eye glows faintly in the dark, tracking every inch of your face like he’s afraid it’ll vanish.

He looks young like this. Barely nineteen. Not a war criminal. Not the last Uchiha. Just a boy who’s lost too much and doesn’t want to lose you, too.

He presses his forehead to yours.

“I hate it,” Sasuke breathes, “I hate leaving you.” His voice cracks on it — and that’s when you know. The mission was worse than usual. More blood. More guilt. More reasons he’ll carry to punish himself tomorrow.

But not tonight.

Tonight, he pulls you closer still, burying himself in the scent of you, the feel of you, the weight of your steady, living warmth. You feel the heat of his breath against your lips and the slight tremble in his shoulders as he holds you like the world only makes sense when you’re pressed this close.