Naruto/Sasuke Fic: Lead Me There
An old NaruSasu I thought I'd share:)
Title: Lead Me There
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto
Summary:
A/N: Alright! It's a Naru/Sasu! Just for the record guys, I'm not a fan of this pairing being all about mushy-ness and glowy-ness and naru-chan crying from love. I like them being guys, with a shit-ton of problems and issues, who watch out for each other even as they go for each others throats. And if they are both super hot while doing that, well that's just an added bonus right? XD
And yes, before you read this and think "Huh?" Sauske is blind in this one. Temporarily! I swear! Save me from the fan girls with pitchforks. And yes he has just killed his brother, and yes both of them are about…hmm…19 in this fic.
Enjoy!
Warnings: Rated M for sexual situations, violence, and language.
Pairing: Naruto/Sauske
XX
Lead me There
Cut apart my dreams
Carry away my demons
Take me to that place only you know
Sasuke came up to the conscious world slowly, rising through waves of deep blackness in levels. When the world became a place that had a definite, painful ground attached to it he decided to acknowledge that perhaps he wasn't really dead.
He hurt too much to be dead.
Hi s eyes were crusted in red liquid that dried down his cheeks in bloody tracks, his bare chest riddled with wounds, with gashes that trickled and oozed and wept fluid. He flexed broken fingers and felt the edging razor pain that came from unconnected bones shifting with a grating hiss and then a sigh.
Ten minutes later, he came upon another realization; the air was hot. Far to hot to be that same chilly night it had been when he'd entered the warehouse that was now lying in rubble and broken bits of concrete around him. Not the night where he'd faced down a second set of red glowing eyes, not the night where he'd burned his candles until there was nothing but wicks left. It must be day, around noon if his judge of the heat of the sun that beat down on his dirty, sliced shoulders was any indication.
He couldn't see anything. His vision was a painfully swelling mass in his head, black shot through with red streaks, milky white-gray around the edges. His breath rasps.
What the hell…? His mind trembled over the thought. What the fucking hell had he done? With considerable effort and a strained grunt, Sasuke moves to bring his fingers halfway up to his eyes, intending to touch the swollen, blood-crying lids, before he lowers it again. He doesn't really want to touch them. It probably wouldn't help anything anyway.
A ragged groan breaks like crusted sandpaper from his throat as he uses some tiny miracle of drained chakra still whisping through his coils to haul himself into a sitting position, wincing as muscles that spark in white hot flashes and the dust that crumbles off of his stiff frame. There was so much dirt on him he could've been in a grave. He felt like he had been.
Right now, he wasn't sure if he didn't want to be.
He coughs a dry hacking rattle to force air into his lungs, before suddenly stilling, spine tensing despite exhaustion and broken hand reaching for weapons that were missing, chakra that had long since burned past usefulness. Someone was there.
Or he assumed so. He is not thinking about his eyes right now.
A voice laughs, deep and masculine and so achingly familiar the last Uchiha stiffens and his breath stutters in his chest.
"Yo! You finally woke up Sasuke-bastard! I've been waiting for fucking ever! "
He knew that voice. Knew that light-bright chakra signature brushing on him that he hadn't felt since…
"I was starting to get worried. Was gonna just start haulin' your ass to the nearest village if you didn't wake up in an hour. Do you know how boring it's been just sitting here? There are only so many times a guy can sharpen his kunai and count clouds y'know… Y'sneaky bastard."
Yes. He knew that voice. Sauske choked and tried to force his eyes open to confirm this new and entirely shattering reality of a voice that was drilling itself into his skull, wrenching with sudden gut-stabbing shock into that place in his chest which used to hold something, a long time ago. His hands fly up, unhesitating this time. But before his fingers could press into tender sockets the voice starts up again, a hint of warning in its tones.
"Oi! I wouldn't do that."
His hand paused, not out of any real acquiesce, but out of grim suspicion and another burst of fluttering shock at the voice speaking. He was beginning to hope he'd imagined it. Blind lunatic rambling. Shinobi had episodes of insanity after near-death experiences sometimes right?
"Sakura-chan told me that if a Uchiha's eyes get overly irritated, or like yours, which fall under heading of shot to hell with way too much use you idiot, and the vessels pop, like yours did I might add, then you gotta be super careful with'em or they'll go permanently blind. Which means touchin' ain't a good idea you idiot. Aren't you supposed to be the smart one?"
Another sun-struck laugh jolts Sauske to a paint-peeling bridge from a thousand and one years ago. His fingers twitch, but stay still. He still doesn't quite believe it. When he gropes through hazy shock to find his vocal cords his voice is weak and sounds like rusted nails.
"N-Nar-"
His voice breaks.
He's annoyed at this. He should be fine, should be better than fine. He should be ecstatic in the wake of the life-changing battle he'd been longing for since he was eight, which he had won. Should be pleased. Should be something other than coming apart at the seams over the stupid voice of his stupid ex-teammate anyway.
His fingers move toward his face again. But somehow in the space of time before his knuckles could even brush at the dirt caked on his lashes he started, chakra running up from places he didn't have any to spare and stinging when a warm and hard body braced suddenly against his back. It kept him firmly in the upright sitting position as a hand pressed his fingers down and then tied a length of clean bandage against his eyes, around his head.
The voice was back. "C'mon Sasuke-bastard, I said It wasn't gonna help. Maybe you should just believe me for once huh?"
It had to be Naruto. No one else was that stupid.
Sauske grit his teeth as hands secured the bandage knot on the back of his head. Somewhere between the surprise of having him right there and solid, and having a fucking bandage put around his eyes, which no one were allowed to touch thank you, he had found his voice quite suddenly.
"What the fuck Naruto!?"
The blonde, it must be, had to be the blonde behind him laughed again. He was still braced close against Sauske's back, and Sauske could feel Nauto's heart beating steady and strong, feel the warmth radiating through his body in lit chakra, feel the shudder of laughter that shook shoulders broader than the last time they'd met, under distinctly different circumstances.
For one thing, they'd been fighting to the death the last time he'd seen Naruto.
And Sauske hadn't been blind.
This was ridiculous. The loser's voice and undeniable self was the fucking last thing in the world that he'd expected. He managed to grate out a growl and jerked, twisting out of the warm grasp, unsettled by the support, by everything.
Sauske shoved himself away, scrambling on his ass backwards to a foot away from where he knew Naruto probably crouched, most likely confident and blonde and gleaming like a sun. Sauske's panting, injuries burning into him and blurring into each other. The bandage on his eyes has a thread of Naruto's chakra in it, set to heal, and for a minute all he can do is sit there as he felt the tiny amount of bright energy wind through his sockets, soothing them somewhat. The feeling was wrong and alien, unknown and forgotten, and yet…he sat there and panted and it felt almost familiar.
Sasuke stiffens again at this revelation. This was clearly the far side of fucked and twisted. It was Fate wasn't it? Fucking goddamn Fates little slap in the face, or punch to the guts if you wanted to think about it that way, throwing the orange bastard at him from left field now. Now, when he was covered in dirt and shit and blood, when he had just felt his purposes for the rest of his life crack in to a million useless pieces, when he had no goal, no hope, no nothing. Of course Fate would shove Naruto in his face and make him all warm and sun-smelling and solidly real. He should've fucking expected the irony this time.
Sasuke would've glared if his eyes held the capacity.
He opens his mouth again angrily, suddenly aware that the Kyuubi vessel was whistling idly like he hadn't a care in the world. Fucking loser.
"What the hell loser? What are you even doing here?"
Sasuke wished he could keep his cool and his confidence, keep his demeanor of a high pedestal wrapped in red and black darkness and swirling tomoes, but the dirt that clots his voice every third word makes it hard. Or perhaps he is just too tired, too broken, and too dead to care.
When Naruto speaks again Sasuke can hear the smirk on his face and the stupid idiot has moved again dammit, without Sauske sensing, and he is suddenly only inches anyway, crouched in front of the Uchiha with one hand gripping the gritty bruised skin of Sauske's shoulder. The blind shinobi sits rigid as a board, unnerved at the contact of Naruto's long fingers grasping so firmly, so easily.
"Sauske-bastard, c'mon. I told you I'd bring you back, wouldn't stop searching. You think I would pass this opportunity up?"
Naruto's mouth is suddenly very close to Sasuke's ear and filled with intensity, an edge of danger that shudders in Sasuke's bones, in someplace dark and deep and almost sweet inside him, that brought adrenaline endorphins flaring and synapses snapping. He remembers the monster beneath Naruto's skin, remembers the red-hot chakra that pulses like a shining column of something to terrible to name, and remembers a painted seal glowing against tight curved stomach muscles. Naruto's voice is dangerous.
Sasuke almost scoffs at the idiocy of that thought, but the fact is right there in front of him, caressing the shell of Sasuke's ear with sharp breath and hungry words and red scraping on the edge of chakra that suddenly presses in. Sasuke can feel the hairs on the back of his neck raising and his skin starting to goose bump. He twists his mouth downward, wishing he could glare the jackass in front of him into another shithole, preferably far away from this one.
But when the Kyuubi-vessel speaks again, Sasuke can hear the grin and can't help but picture it, white and glinting and sunlit.
"Judging by the state of you Sasuke-bastard, you're gonna be blind for awhile, definitely until we get to a skilled ninja medic. That's plenty of time for me."
Sasuke growls again, angry suddenly at the laugh in Naruto's voice, angry again now at the fucker for even daring to appear at all, even as a potential hallucination and disembodied voice, irrated instead of chilled from the raw power that twisted beneath the surface of a blue-eyed man.
Damn the whole world already. This was not what he had intended to happen. What he had intended he had no idea; it was gone along with his sight. He heaved his aching body up and forced it to move, forced it to gather strung-out muscles and dislocated joints and gaping skin and move quick as the snake that he was, because he was a damn good shinobi whether he was blind or not, whether he was real or not. He knew that much.
Sasuke twisted and flipped their positions, snatching a discarded kunai that Naruto might have been playing with as his fingers brushed the ground and found metal and then pushed himself over Naruto, legs tangled, broken hand digging into shoulder bone and sharply glinting Kunai at the Jinchuriki's throat. His muscles screamed in protest and his hands felt slippery with blood, but suddenly their faces are an inch apart, and Sauske can smell the other teen's salty scent and feel Naruto's breath puffing against his own mouth.
He stills in shock for a second, because it's so close and Naruto's breath feels warm on his lips, like something ethereal, earlier than Sasuke's time. Sasuke snaps at himself for noticing and presses the edge of the kunai down a little, bringing the faintest line of blood that beads the blade and runs down it like a jewel, coats his fingers in sticky-slick. He forces his mouth open and grates words against his parched throat, raspy and bloodstained.
"I don't need to be able to see to kill you Naruto."
His voice holds snake venom.
For a second he thinks the body underneath him, the Jinchuriki, the ex-teammate-best friend-best enemy-best something will struggle like he always did before. But the Uchiha is wrong. Instead the crazy idiot starts to laugh, a rough braying laugh that grates at Sauskes ears and pulls at that gut-wrenched area in his chest. He almost has to stop himself from leaning in to hear it more.
Why was he laughing?
Did he think Sasuke was bluffing? He wasn't. He could kill Naruto. Perhaps Naruto had the upper hand right now, because Sauske was fucking blind, but it wasn't really about ability. The only reasons he would fail would be because of the stupid familiar little niggling feeling in his chest, the way Naruto's breath was still puffing little wisps of warmth over the gap from hi lips to the Uchiha's, the dark danger edge in Naruto's voice, and now because of something in his fucking laughter.
It was there, tempting and wry and with a rippling hint of anger beneath the humor in the mirth that Naruto trembled with under his weight. It was stupid. It was unimportant.
He felt a strange urge taste the air in front of Naruto's face, just to see if the blonde's warm breath would taste different than regular oxygen.
Sasuke only had time to shake himself, give one pointed sniff and mutter "What the hell is so amusing loser?" Before Naruto was up again, rolling them over despite the Sasukes struggle until once again Sasuke was beneath the unyieldingly hard body of the Kyuubi-vessel and his head was hitting the ground with enough force to cause his eyes to jar and jerk with white-hot pain behind the bandage.
Sasuke choked a little, hands scrabbling as Naruto shifted comfortably on him, curling fingers along the bloody kunai in Sasuke's broken grasp as he flashed it up desperately and tossing it away, the last breaths of a chuckle escaping fro his lips. Sasuke twists underneath him, angry at the nerve of the him, at the whole fucking universe for being this shitty and longing to smash the blondes head into the ground beside his own, to smash everything he could reach.
The wounds on his back that are pressed into the dust-laden, blood-spattered ground tear and flame along the edges as he stifles a groan, and Naruto remains a firm weight on his stomach, anchoring as if to the world.
Sasuke feels the heavy weight of the other man and wonders if that man is all that is holding him to the dirt. Wonders if Naruto wasn't there, would he be floating off into the clouds now? All of his threads frayed so thin that they don't hold, and rising to drift off, drift up, into deep dark blackness and swallowed up by nothing? He thinks he would.
But Naruto is here. Here with all of his overwhelming, all-encompassing, won't-take-no-for-an-answer weight seated firmly on Sauskes stomach, and his hands are holding Sauskes shoulders so hard they are bruising more and his dislocated, fucked up body is protesting, bones grinding. Naruto's breath is so close, so deliciously close and warm-wet and feathering at Sasuke's dry thristy lips. Naruto shifts and Sasuke can feel him leaning down, breathing so close with his voice gritty and sardonically, sarcastically humorous in a way Sasuke didn't think he could be. But there he was, dry and growling through his teeth.
"I bet you can Sasuke-bastard. I bet you can try anyway. Only not yet. You're coming back with me. Then you can fuck things up all your bat-shit insane brain wants to."
Sasuke pictures Narutos face, the blue-blue-blue and the smiling mouth, battle vicious and child-sweet, always treading ever closer to something that is too much, too big for Sasuke. He pictures the glint of a boiling sun on teeth, and the way they are probably bared in a grin-growl that is bitingly alive. Sasuke wishes he could see it for real. He hopes it is real. If he could see Naruto's smile right now it would probably make him feel less dead, less broken.
Less slipping away and drifting off.
He tries to sneer. "I am not going back to Konoha you fucking Dead Last. Ever."
He couldn't.
He tries to put the venom in again, to slip it into a ruby wine and make it turn Naruto all shivery and broken like it had a thousand others, make it dig in and claw until nothing is left. He sneers.
But Naruto, damn him, still solid and heavy and smelling like a tingling combination of salt and sweat and sunbeams, only paused for a second and then his breath blows warm on Sasuke's cheek in a small sigh.
Sasuke wants to lick the warmth from his lips where Naruto had sighed and hold it on his tongue.
"You always looked like an idiot when you sneered Sasuke-bastard."
A chuckle pulls from the Jinchurikis throat and Sasuke is blindsided by the comment, the laugh, suddenly remembering sun splashed leaves and a dirty, grassy training field that is full with flashes of pink hair and grey eyes, a scuff of limbs and grins as a scrawny Naruto jumps him, and juvenile crowing hitting the air when Sasuke grumbles and sneers in response. He shakes his head to clear the images away, wincing as his eyes sting. He wished he didn't have memories. Wished that he didn't know his past. He has no past.
But oh, why does he feel like his dead self is dying again when Naruto laughs, why does he feel like his bloody eyes need to cry, why is everything so rapidly spinning out of his control, and why does Naruto's breath feel so damn good on his face?
He snarls, stops wishing for no past, and instead wishes he could see the blonde shinobi, wishes there was something real about this that he could grab in his broken bloody fingers. His neck thrashes. He can't feel Narutos beautiful breath anymore without needing to breathe it into himself and he is going to rise up like evaporating water, because this couldn't be real. Naruto couldn't be here and holding him and sounding so wrong and breathing so warm. It goes against all reality, a flitting illusion he is only holding in his fingers for a brief instant.
Any second now he will snap from his brothers genjutsu, or wake up alone and dead, any moment now the salty-clean-sharp scent of this boy on top of him will vanish like smoke over water, weight dissapate and become nothing but a phantom ghost.
He jerks and twists, shuddering, about to lash out with no chakra and no strength, just to prove he can.
But suddenly Naruto is holding his head still, his long fingers scraping in the mucky hair of Sasukes scalp and his broad shoulders and elbows stabbing Sasuke's collarbone and his torso suffocating the Uchiha into the ground. His breath is so close and hot and good that Sasukes mouth snaps at it involuntarily, searching. His icily analytical self feels like he's scrambling off a cliff just under his back and he's flying off into an orange glaring sun and he's stabbing knives into a wound that was already bleeding, bleeding out until the last trickle falls.
Naruto's nails scrap and his breath sighs and then he's whispering something in Sasuke's ear, not dangerous, not sarcastic, not jubilant, but just Naruto, pure and simple and as uncomplicated as Naruto always was, and always would be.
"You always were a stupid fucker Sasuke. Maybe I'm not getting you back for fucking Konoha. Maybe I'm getting you back for me."
Then, before Sasuke could respond, could comprehend, could think at all really, Naruto slammed lips and mouth and breath down onto his own.
The Uchiha arches his back and flails with surprise, only he isn't really surprised, because hadn't he longed for this, unacknowledged and dormant and craving somewhere in his skull? The warmth that he'd wanted to taste was passed into Sasuke's mouth, suddenly burning hot and bright and as flaming as the beams of heat that beat down on them from the sky. Naruto's dry, chapped lips shoved themselves onto the Uchihas dry, crusted lips, and there is no room to be wondering if it's real or not, or why it's happening.
Naruto kisses fiercely, with a wave of consuming greed crashing out and meeting with Sasukes crests of ruthless want. Sasuke had always shoved the waters away and waded through, because Naruto's need was something he couldn't wrap his hand around and choke, something he couldn't map with all-seeing eyes, something he'd long since known was to perfect for his poisoned, clutching mind to comprehend.
But now in the sun and dirt, with the bits of his revenge lying somewhere in the ruins of an old warehouse scattered around them in so many pieces he doesn't want to pick them up, Sasuke lets Naruto's need buoy him up, drag him under, and wash him away.
Narutos tongue snakes around and shoves halfway down his throat. Sasuke arches up and his hands fist in Naruto's hair, even if all the bones scream at the movement. Naruto's teeth snag on his lips and his tongue twists in Naruto's mouth and only when Naruto breaks away for air, gasping and finally shaking a little does Sasuke realize they've changed position. They're sitting up, Naruto half holding him upright and still straddling his hips, with hands clutched around shoulders and sweaty foreheads touching. The Kyuubi-vessel's breath still tingles at his lips and the teenager sighs a little.
Salt and sweat and sunbeams. He rubs his forehead a little against Narutos, butting enough to sting, and wishes he could see what Narutos lips look like kissed.
They wait for a few seconds, letting themselves teeter on the edge of something bigger than Sasuke can fathom, something he needs Naruto to show him. He can feel the other shinobi buzzing under his hands, feel the blondes fingers tightening on his shoulder and in his gritty and bloody hair, as though worried Sasuke would pull away.
He probably should pull away, Sasuke reflects. But he hurts so much, so much more than before, and he is going to die until he was dead and gone again so why should he stop now? Naruto wouldn't care anyway. Naruto was used to people hurting and dying and then living again. He draws in a shaky breath, cursing himself at the trembling, and then lets the curse slide away unsaid.
He was blind. Shaking probably wasn't a big deal.
Naruto was shaking too,after all.
He draws breath again. He knows Naruto is waiting, as patient as a he can. "So…Are you real then?"
The murmur barely breaks his lips, but of course Naruto hears. He is quiet for a long moment. Longer than Sauske ever believed Naruto could be quiet really, and Sasuke is just about to conclude he wasn't real and it was all a fucking ruse and he was crazier than he knew when Naruto tilts his chin and his lips and breath brush fire over Sauskes ear, then bite at his jaw, and finally kiss his lips. He feels tendril of fire spiraling into his gut and groans a little against Narutos mouth.
Because maybe he didn't need to know yet, and maybe he can hold on to this for a little longer.
The ground is dusty and bloody under them and Sasukes brokenbody screams as they bend around each other, and he was blind for fucks sake, but the sun was beating down so hot and the Kyuubi-vessels breath was so good, his tongue so smooth and his hands so strong as they started to move over skin.
Naruto growls and kisses with a sun on his tongue; Sasuke bites back. His clothes are coming off, but he decides he couldn't really care less, because there wasn't a lot of clothing left to get ripped away anyway, and Narutos are coming off too, and suddenly he can touch the tightly curved stomach muscles silky and slick under his hands and feel the beat of a heart pumping blood fast under a chest.
He lets himself fall over the edge of the cliff, because he has no where else to go, and if Naruto isn't real than at least he won't have anything to regret.
They're violent and fast, with tongues and bodies that need now and rough hands tearing at already torn skin with eagerness. Sasuke doesn't know if he's sinking his teeth into Naruto's left or right shoulder, or where the hell Naruto's tongue is, even if it did feel like it was carving a new name for nirvana on his skin. He was blind and scared and if Naruto pulled away then how was Sauske going to find him?
But he clings hard anyway, with teeth and nails, and tethers the blonde to him. Naruto didn't seem like he wanted to go anyway, pressing his skin onto Sasuke's at any point he could reach and murmuring broken things that had no meaning except for everything in Sasuke's ear.
The breath felt so good and the friction felt so sweet and so what did it matter if it was rough or he was trembling or if Narutos teeth bit down on something that made ecstasy burn through his whole body?
Violence was all either of them had ever known in the first place after all, and if felt too perfect and wrong and glorious to ever, ever stop.
When absolute white blends over the black-red of his vision, Sasuke gasps hoarsly against the glowing heat of Naruto's skin, everything unstiching, unraveling into the taste of Naruto is his mouth, dirty and insatiable, the sound of Naruto's haggard breaths as he moves still, a rocking beat that seems dimmed compared to the cacophony of the air he pushed from his mouth into the air, a harsh, desperate, pleading explusion of carbon dioixe hammering lound and angry and sublime on Sasuke's ear. It is all he can hear in that instant; the irratic push pull of Naruto's lungs, the rythmic rocks of sharp hips on skin, and Sasuke wonders for that snatched moment if could listen to it forever.
And later, after what felt like eternity but really wasn't all that long, he lay melded to Naruto's side while slightly cooler air blew through the crater to signal that dusk had come, and if he had any proper sense of time in this new and always-dark world, the stars were probably starting to show their stupid faces just a little under the cover of a sun falling.
Sasuke lies there quietly, smelling the air of dust and blood and sex instead of dust and blood and anger, feeling Naruto's hard angles and lines and geometric planes pressed on his in a way that was hardly comfortable, but that he didn't think he had the energy to shift away from. Besides, the pressure on his ribs meant that Naruto was still there, and that was something.
His body hurt in a million places, old and new, and he had to have broken at least three more fragile bones in the last hour or so. His breath rattles as he stares unseeing at the sky and tries to catch hold of his thoughts that are darting around in his head in circles, wild and bouncing and nervous despite his exhaustion. Naruto hasn't disapeared yet, and Sasuke feels like he is taunted, trussed up to be poked at, played with. He is crusted with grime and blood and sex-sweat and probably smelled worse than the air around them, but when he turned his head sideways with a little grunt of effort and pressed his nose on the flushed skin of Naruto's neck, the Kyuubi-vessel still only smelled like salt and sweat and sunbeams.
Sasuke feels himself curl into the scent, his thoughts and needs and questions that still course through his mind shoving themselves down for a few seconds. He presses his nose into Naruto's needle-sharp collarbones and tries, desperately, to not think about revenge and brothers and blood trickling from pupils, and needing, and longing for this to be real, to have boundaries instead of this fucking darkness, clustering in and trapping and dragging warmth away, and oh gods, oh fucking gods-
Naruto's hand comes up and lies over his eyes, light pressure, and he abruptly goes still, unaware that he'd started to shake violently. When Naruto finally speaks, lazily indolent and abrasively confident as always, his voice is soft and beautiful to Sasuke's ears, like water in a dessert, a moon sky in a red ground, and he can feel calluses in the fingertips over his lids, the same calluses that had been on him, pressing along spine and digging into hips and curling.
"I'm real you fag. And so are you."
Snip-snip-snap and release, and it could be a trick but he doesn't want it to be, ohgodpleaseplease...
So he has to sigh to hide the weightlessness that flies over his body and sinks gentleness into his mind. If Naruto said it, than it must be true.
Naruto doesn't know how to lie, especially not to Sasuke. The Jinchuriki's hands come up again, his weight shifts, and his fingers roam over the planes of Sauskes shoulders, trace a slowly building tingle pattern from the bridge of Sauskes nose to the bottom edges of his scratched ribcage. Sasuke focuses on breathing, letting oxygen replace a lump of dead matter in his throat. If Naruto said he was real, than he had to breathe didn't he?
His broken fingers wrap around Naruto's scarred wrist and grip strong. He pulls the other shinobi down to meet lips with lips and mix breath with breath, lets himself get dragged under, and maybe this time he doesn't worry quite so much about Naruto leaving, because they were real, and a real Naruto would never let him get away.
nevernevernever
When he's lying still again, body reaching new levels of exhaustion and ache but still glowing around the edges, he feels numb and his mouth feels dirty with dirt and cum and kisses, and Naruto smells like sweat and salt and star beams. The Jinchuriki speaks again, casual and unassuming, but with a question underlying his tone that wonders, quests, waits.
"I'm heading back towards Konoha tomorrow."
Naruto's hands are lacing soothing chakra through Sasuke's chest as he perches on the Uchihas groin with hard, unyielding weight. Sauske jerks a little at the words, spinning away towards fleeing and red and black and hurt and rebellion, but then remembers tongues and teeth on bloody skin, rough calloused caresses, remembers salt and sweat and sunbeams and the pull and tug of skin over bones, remembers the sound of Naruto's breath in his ear, remembers being real.
He sighs a long breath that blows through his lungs like slippery soap and stringent acid, cleaning and burning and new. His still broken, still aching fingers come up, lace through Narutos on his chest, and catch hold, unrelenting because he was nothing if not thurough. Then he lets his body melt into the dirt; loose relaxation, defeat, and perhaps a little acceptance.
He doesn't need to say a word of course, because Naruto understood. He always did.
Sasuke is blind and injured and probably half-dead and Naruto is all he has, so of course he will go with the Kyuubi-vessel. But truthfully, Sasuke is going because he is too tired to resist the stormy force of gravitaional magnets anymore, tired of not having Naruto, tired of being a figment waif and a blur of movement, a trick of the light.
Naruto made him real. And since Naruto was Konoha, Konoha made him real too. He would go.
Blind, trapped in darkness ad deadness and unseeing through fried pupils and burst blood vessels and it was terrifying as fucking shit. But after he melted down and gave his silent acquiesce, Narutos fingers tightened and his chakra in the other teens skin glowed extra hot for a moment. And really the thing was-- the thing was that Sauske didn't need to see the knife-edge, blindingly hot and heady and fierce as a supernova smile on Narutos face, glowing through darkness and cutting dreams into sharp pieces of cloth fluttering to the ground;
He can feel it.
XX
Fin
XX
Any feedback is much appreciated
Thanks for Reading!
Title: Lead Me There
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto
Summary:
A/N: Alright! It's a Naru/Sasu! Just for the record guys, I'm not a fan of this pairing being all about mushy-ness and glowy-ness and naru-chan crying from love. I like them being guys, with a shit-ton of problems and issues, who watch out for each other even as they go for each others throats. And if they are both super hot while doing that, well that's just an added bonus right? XD
And yes, before you read this and think "Huh?" Sauske is blind in this one. Temporarily! I swear! Save me from the fan girls with pitchforks. And yes he has just killed his brother, and yes both of them are about…hmm…19 in this fic.
Enjoy!
Warnings: Rated M for sexual situations, violence, and language.
Pairing: Naruto/Sauske
XX
Lead me There
Cut apart my dreams
Carry away my demons
Take me to that place only you know
Sasuke came up to the conscious world slowly, rising through waves of deep blackness in levels. When the world became a place that had a definite, painful ground attached to it he decided to acknowledge that perhaps he wasn't really dead.
He hurt too much to be dead.
Hi s eyes were crusted in red liquid that dried down his cheeks in bloody tracks, his bare chest riddled with wounds, with gashes that trickled and oozed and wept fluid. He flexed broken fingers and felt the edging razor pain that came from unconnected bones shifting with a grating hiss and then a sigh.
Ten minutes later, he came upon another realization; the air was hot. Far to hot to be that same chilly night it had been when he'd entered the warehouse that was now lying in rubble and broken bits of concrete around him. Not the night where he'd faced down a second set of red glowing eyes, not the night where he'd burned his candles until there was nothing but wicks left. It must be day, around noon if his judge of the heat of the sun that beat down on his dirty, sliced shoulders was any indication.
He couldn't see anything. His vision was a painfully swelling mass in his head, black shot through with red streaks, milky white-gray around the edges. His breath rasps.
What the hell…? His mind trembled over the thought. What the fucking hell had he done? With considerable effort and a strained grunt, Sasuke moves to bring his fingers halfway up to his eyes, intending to touch the swollen, blood-crying lids, before he lowers it again. He doesn't really want to touch them. It probably wouldn't help anything anyway.
A ragged groan breaks like crusted sandpaper from his throat as he uses some tiny miracle of drained chakra still whisping through his coils to haul himself into a sitting position, wincing as muscles that spark in white hot flashes and the dust that crumbles off of his stiff frame. There was so much dirt on him he could've been in a grave. He felt like he had been.
Right now, he wasn't sure if he didn't want to be.
He coughs a dry hacking rattle to force air into his lungs, before suddenly stilling, spine tensing despite exhaustion and broken hand reaching for weapons that were missing, chakra that had long since burned past usefulness. Someone was there.
Or he assumed so. He is not thinking about his eyes right now.
A voice laughs, deep and masculine and so achingly familiar the last Uchiha stiffens and his breath stutters in his chest.
"Yo! You finally woke up Sasuke-bastard! I've been waiting for fucking ever! "
He knew that voice. Knew that light-bright chakra signature brushing on him that he hadn't felt since…
"I was starting to get worried. Was gonna just start haulin' your ass to the nearest village if you didn't wake up in an hour. Do you know how boring it's been just sitting here? There are only so many times a guy can sharpen his kunai and count clouds y'know… Y'sneaky bastard."
Yes. He knew that voice. Sauske choked and tried to force his eyes open to confirm this new and entirely shattering reality of a voice that was drilling itself into his skull, wrenching with sudden gut-stabbing shock into that place in his chest which used to hold something, a long time ago. His hands fly up, unhesitating this time. But before his fingers could press into tender sockets the voice starts up again, a hint of warning in its tones.
"Oi! I wouldn't do that."
His hand paused, not out of any real acquiesce, but out of grim suspicion and another burst of fluttering shock at the voice speaking. He was beginning to hope he'd imagined it. Blind lunatic rambling. Shinobi had episodes of insanity after near-death experiences sometimes right?
"Sakura-chan told me that if a Uchiha's eyes get overly irritated, or like yours, which fall under heading of shot to hell with way too much use you idiot, and the vessels pop, like yours did I might add, then you gotta be super careful with'em or they'll go permanently blind. Which means touchin' ain't a good idea you idiot. Aren't you supposed to be the smart one?"
Another sun-struck laugh jolts Sauske to a paint-peeling bridge from a thousand and one years ago. His fingers twitch, but stay still. He still doesn't quite believe it. When he gropes through hazy shock to find his vocal cords his voice is weak and sounds like rusted nails.
"N-Nar-"
His voice breaks.
He's annoyed at this. He should be fine, should be better than fine. He should be ecstatic in the wake of the life-changing battle he'd been longing for since he was eight, which he had won. Should be pleased. Should be something other than coming apart at the seams over the stupid voice of his stupid ex-teammate anyway.
His fingers move toward his face again. But somehow in the space of time before his knuckles could even brush at the dirt caked on his lashes he started, chakra running up from places he didn't have any to spare and stinging when a warm and hard body braced suddenly against his back. It kept him firmly in the upright sitting position as a hand pressed his fingers down and then tied a length of clean bandage against his eyes, around his head.
The voice was back. "C'mon Sasuke-bastard, I said It wasn't gonna help. Maybe you should just believe me for once huh?"
It had to be Naruto. No one else was that stupid.
Sauske grit his teeth as hands secured the bandage knot on the back of his head. Somewhere between the surprise of having him right there and solid, and having a fucking bandage put around his eyes, which no one were allowed to touch thank you, he had found his voice quite suddenly.
"What the fuck Naruto!?"
The blonde, it must be, had to be the blonde behind him laughed again. He was still braced close against Sauske's back, and Sauske could feel Nauto's heart beating steady and strong, feel the warmth radiating through his body in lit chakra, feel the shudder of laughter that shook shoulders broader than the last time they'd met, under distinctly different circumstances.
For one thing, they'd been fighting to the death the last time he'd seen Naruto.
And Sauske hadn't been blind.
This was ridiculous. The loser's voice and undeniable self was the fucking last thing in the world that he'd expected. He managed to grate out a growl and jerked, twisting out of the warm grasp, unsettled by the support, by everything.
Sauske shoved himself away, scrambling on his ass backwards to a foot away from where he knew Naruto probably crouched, most likely confident and blonde and gleaming like a sun. Sauske's panting, injuries burning into him and blurring into each other. The bandage on his eyes has a thread of Naruto's chakra in it, set to heal, and for a minute all he can do is sit there as he felt the tiny amount of bright energy wind through his sockets, soothing them somewhat. The feeling was wrong and alien, unknown and forgotten, and yet…he sat there and panted and it felt almost familiar.
Sasuke stiffens again at this revelation. This was clearly the far side of fucked and twisted. It was Fate wasn't it? Fucking goddamn Fates little slap in the face, or punch to the guts if you wanted to think about it that way, throwing the orange bastard at him from left field now. Now, when he was covered in dirt and shit and blood, when he had just felt his purposes for the rest of his life crack in to a million useless pieces, when he had no goal, no hope, no nothing. Of course Fate would shove Naruto in his face and make him all warm and sun-smelling and solidly real. He should've fucking expected the irony this time.
Sasuke would've glared if his eyes held the capacity.
He opens his mouth again angrily, suddenly aware that the Kyuubi vessel was whistling idly like he hadn't a care in the world. Fucking loser.
"What the hell loser? What are you even doing here?"
Sasuke wished he could keep his cool and his confidence, keep his demeanor of a high pedestal wrapped in red and black darkness and swirling tomoes, but the dirt that clots his voice every third word makes it hard. Or perhaps he is just too tired, too broken, and too dead to care.
When Naruto speaks again Sasuke can hear the smirk on his face and the stupid idiot has moved again dammit, without Sauske sensing, and he is suddenly only inches anyway, crouched in front of the Uchiha with one hand gripping the gritty bruised skin of Sauske's shoulder. The blind shinobi sits rigid as a board, unnerved at the contact of Naruto's long fingers grasping so firmly, so easily.
"Sauske-bastard, c'mon. I told you I'd bring you back, wouldn't stop searching. You think I would pass this opportunity up?"
Naruto's mouth is suddenly very close to Sasuke's ear and filled with intensity, an edge of danger that shudders in Sasuke's bones, in someplace dark and deep and almost sweet inside him, that brought adrenaline endorphins flaring and synapses snapping. He remembers the monster beneath Naruto's skin, remembers the red-hot chakra that pulses like a shining column of something to terrible to name, and remembers a painted seal glowing against tight curved stomach muscles. Naruto's voice is dangerous.
Sasuke almost scoffs at the idiocy of that thought, but the fact is right there in front of him, caressing the shell of Sasuke's ear with sharp breath and hungry words and red scraping on the edge of chakra that suddenly presses in. Sasuke can feel the hairs on the back of his neck raising and his skin starting to goose bump. He twists his mouth downward, wishing he could glare the jackass in front of him into another shithole, preferably far away from this one.
But when the Kyuubi-vessel speaks again, Sasuke can hear the grin and can't help but picture it, white and glinting and sunlit.
"Judging by the state of you Sasuke-bastard, you're gonna be blind for awhile, definitely until we get to a skilled ninja medic. That's plenty of time for me."
Sasuke growls again, angry suddenly at the laugh in Naruto's voice, angry again now at the fucker for even daring to appear at all, even as a potential hallucination and disembodied voice, irrated instead of chilled from the raw power that twisted beneath the surface of a blue-eyed man.
Damn the whole world already. This was not what he had intended to happen. What he had intended he had no idea; it was gone along with his sight. He heaved his aching body up and forced it to move, forced it to gather strung-out muscles and dislocated joints and gaping skin and move quick as the snake that he was, because he was a damn good shinobi whether he was blind or not, whether he was real or not. He knew that much.
Sasuke twisted and flipped their positions, snatching a discarded kunai that Naruto might have been playing with as his fingers brushed the ground and found metal and then pushed himself over Naruto, legs tangled, broken hand digging into shoulder bone and sharply glinting Kunai at the Jinchuriki's throat. His muscles screamed in protest and his hands felt slippery with blood, but suddenly their faces are an inch apart, and Sauske can smell the other teen's salty scent and feel Naruto's breath puffing against his own mouth.
He stills in shock for a second, because it's so close and Naruto's breath feels warm on his lips, like something ethereal, earlier than Sasuke's time. Sasuke snaps at himself for noticing and presses the edge of the kunai down a little, bringing the faintest line of blood that beads the blade and runs down it like a jewel, coats his fingers in sticky-slick. He forces his mouth open and grates words against his parched throat, raspy and bloodstained.
"I don't need to be able to see to kill you Naruto."
His voice holds snake venom.
For a second he thinks the body underneath him, the Jinchuriki, the ex-teammate-best friend-best enemy-best something will struggle like he always did before. But the Uchiha is wrong. Instead the crazy idiot starts to laugh, a rough braying laugh that grates at Sauskes ears and pulls at that gut-wrenched area in his chest. He almost has to stop himself from leaning in to hear it more.
Why was he laughing?
Did he think Sasuke was bluffing? He wasn't. He could kill Naruto. Perhaps Naruto had the upper hand right now, because Sauske was fucking blind, but it wasn't really about ability. The only reasons he would fail would be because of the stupid familiar little niggling feeling in his chest, the way Naruto's breath was still puffing little wisps of warmth over the gap from hi lips to the Uchiha's, the dark danger edge in Naruto's voice, and now because of something in his fucking laughter.
It was there, tempting and wry and with a rippling hint of anger beneath the humor in the mirth that Naruto trembled with under his weight. It was stupid. It was unimportant.
He felt a strange urge taste the air in front of Naruto's face, just to see if the blonde's warm breath would taste different than regular oxygen.
Sasuke only had time to shake himself, give one pointed sniff and mutter "What the hell is so amusing loser?" Before Naruto was up again, rolling them over despite the Sasukes struggle until once again Sasuke was beneath the unyieldingly hard body of the Kyuubi-vessel and his head was hitting the ground with enough force to cause his eyes to jar and jerk with white-hot pain behind the bandage.
Sasuke choked a little, hands scrabbling as Naruto shifted comfortably on him, curling fingers along the bloody kunai in Sasuke's broken grasp as he flashed it up desperately and tossing it away, the last breaths of a chuckle escaping fro his lips. Sasuke twists underneath him, angry at the nerve of the him, at the whole fucking universe for being this shitty and longing to smash the blondes head into the ground beside his own, to smash everything he could reach.
The wounds on his back that are pressed into the dust-laden, blood-spattered ground tear and flame along the edges as he stifles a groan, and Naruto remains a firm weight on his stomach, anchoring as if to the world.
Sasuke feels the heavy weight of the other man and wonders if that man is all that is holding him to the dirt. Wonders if Naruto wasn't there, would he be floating off into the clouds now? All of his threads frayed so thin that they don't hold, and rising to drift off, drift up, into deep dark blackness and swallowed up by nothing? He thinks he would.
But Naruto is here. Here with all of his overwhelming, all-encompassing, won't-take-no-for-an-answer weight seated firmly on Sauskes stomach, and his hands are holding Sauskes shoulders so hard they are bruising more and his dislocated, fucked up body is protesting, bones grinding. Naruto's breath is so close, so deliciously close and warm-wet and feathering at Sasuke's dry thristy lips. Naruto shifts and Sasuke can feel him leaning down, breathing so close with his voice gritty and sardonically, sarcastically humorous in a way Sasuke didn't think he could be. But there he was, dry and growling through his teeth.
"I bet you can Sasuke-bastard. I bet you can try anyway. Only not yet. You're coming back with me. Then you can fuck things up all your bat-shit insane brain wants to."
Sasuke pictures Narutos face, the blue-blue-blue and the smiling mouth, battle vicious and child-sweet, always treading ever closer to something that is too much, too big for Sasuke. He pictures the glint of a boiling sun on teeth, and the way they are probably bared in a grin-growl that is bitingly alive. Sasuke wishes he could see it for real. He hopes it is real. If he could see Naruto's smile right now it would probably make him feel less dead, less broken.
Less slipping away and drifting off.
He tries to sneer. "I am not going back to Konoha you fucking Dead Last. Ever."
He couldn't.
He tries to put the venom in again, to slip it into a ruby wine and make it turn Naruto all shivery and broken like it had a thousand others, make it dig in and claw until nothing is left. He sneers.
But Naruto, damn him, still solid and heavy and smelling like a tingling combination of salt and sweat and sunbeams, only paused for a second and then his breath blows warm on Sasuke's cheek in a small sigh.
Sasuke wants to lick the warmth from his lips where Naruto had sighed and hold it on his tongue.
"You always looked like an idiot when you sneered Sasuke-bastard."
A chuckle pulls from the Jinchurikis throat and Sasuke is blindsided by the comment, the laugh, suddenly remembering sun splashed leaves and a dirty, grassy training field that is full with flashes of pink hair and grey eyes, a scuff of limbs and grins as a scrawny Naruto jumps him, and juvenile crowing hitting the air when Sasuke grumbles and sneers in response. He shakes his head to clear the images away, wincing as his eyes sting. He wished he didn't have memories. Wished that he didn't know his past. He has no past.
But oh, why does he feel like his dead self is dying again when Naruto laughs, why does he feel like his bloody eyes need to cry, why is everything so rapidly spinning out of his control, and why does Naruto's breath feel so damn good on his face?
He snarls, stops wishing for no past, and instead wishes he could see the blonde shinobi, wishes there was something real about this that he could grab in his broken bloody fingers. His neck thrashes. He can't feel Narutos beautiful breath anymore without needing to breathe it into himself and he is going to rise up like evaporating water, because this couldn't be real. Naruto couldn't be here and holding him and sounding so wrong and breathing so warm. It goes against all reality, a flitting illusion he is only holding in his fingers for a brief instant.
Any second now he will snap from his brothers genjutsu, or wake up alone and dead, any moment now the salty-clean-sharp scent of this boy on top of him will vanish like smoke over water, weight dissapate and become nothing but a phantom ghost.
He jerks and twists, shuddering, about to lash out with no chakra and no strength, just to prove he can.
But suddenly Naruto is holding his head still, his long fingers scraping in the mucky hair of Sasukes scalp and his broad shoulders and elbows stabbing Sasuke's collarbone and his torso suffocating the Uchiha into the ground. His breath is so close and hot and good that Sasukes mouth snaps at it involuntarily, searching. His icily analytical self feels like he's scrambling off a cliff just under his back and he's flying off into an orange glaring sun and he's stabbing knives into a wound that was already bleeding, bleeding out until the last trickle falls.
Naruto's nails scrap and his breath sighs and then he's whispering something in Sasuke's ear, not dangerous, not sarcastic, not jubilant, but just Naruto, pure and simple and as uncomplicated as Naruto always was, and always would be.
"You always were a stupid fucker Sasuke. Maybe I'm not getting you back for fucking Konoha. Maybe I'm getting you back for me."
Then, before Sasuke could respond, could comprehend, could think at all really, Naruto slammed lips and mouth and breath down onto his own.
The Uchiha arches his back and flails with surprise, only he isn't really surprised, because hadn't he longed for this, unacknowledged and dormant and craving somewhere in his skull? The warmth that he'd wanted to taste was passed into Sasuke's mouth, suddenly burning hot and bright and as flaming as the beams of heat that beat down on them from the sky. Naruto's dry, chapped lips shoved themselves onto the Uchihas dry, crusted lips, and there is no room to be wondering if it's real or not, or why it's happening.
Naruto kisses fiercely, with a wave of consuming greed crashing out and meeting with Sasukes crests of ruthless want. Sasuke had always shoved the waters away and waded through, because Naruto's need was something he couldn't wrap his hand around and choke, something he couldn't map with all-seeing eyes, something he'd long since known was to perfect for his poisoned, clutching mind to comprehend.
But now in the sun and dirt, with the bits of his revenge lying somewhere in the ruins of an old warehouse scattered around them in so many pieces he doesn't want to pick them up, Sasuke lets Naruto's need buoy him up, drag him under, and wash him away.
Narutos tongue snakes around and shoves halfway down his throat. Sasuke arches up and his hands fist in Naruto's hair, even if all the bones scream at the movement. Naruto's teeth snag on his lips and his tongue twists in Naruto's mouth and only when Naruto breaks away for air, gasping and finally shaking a little does Sasuke realize they've changed position. They're sitting up, Naruto half holding him upright and still straddling his hips, with hands clutched around shoulders and sweaty foreheads touching. The Kyuubi-vessel's breath still tingles at his lips and the teenager sighs a little.
Salt and sweat and sunbeams. He rubs his forehead a little against Narutos, butting enough to sting, and wishes he could see what Narutos lips look like kissed.
They wait for a few seconds, letting themselves teeter on the edge of something bigger than Sasuke can fathom, something he needs Naruto to show him. He can feel the other shinobi buzzing under his hands, feel the blondes fingers tightening on his shoulder and in his gritty and bloody hair, as though worried Sasuke would pull away.
He probably should pull away, Sasuke reflects. But he hurts so much, so much more than before, and he is going to die until he was dead and gone again so why should he stop now? Naruto wouldn't care anyway. Naruto was used to people hurting and dying and then living again. He draws in a shaky breath, cursing himself at the trembling, and then lets the curse slide away unsaid.
He was blind. Shaking probably wasn't a big deal.
Naruto was shaking too,after all.
He draws breath again. He knows Naruto is waiting, as patient as a he can. "So…Are you real then?"
The murmur barely breaks his lips, but of course Naruto hears. He is quiet for a long moment. Longer than Sauske ever believed Naruto could be quiet really, and Sasuke is just about to conclude he wasn't real and it was all a fucking ruse and he was crazier than he knew when Naruto tilts his chin and his lips and breath brush fire over Sauskes ear, then bite at his jaw, and finally kiss his lips. He feels tendril of fire spiraling into his gut and groans a little against Narutos mouth.
Because maybe he didn't need to know yet, and maybe he can hold on to this for a little longer.
The ground is dusty and bloody under them and Sasukes brokenbody screams as they bend around each other, and he was blind for fucks sake, but the sun was beating down so hot and the Kyuubi-vessels breath was so good, his tongue so smooth and his hands so strong as they started to move over skin.
Naruto growls and kisses with a sun on his tongue; Sasuke bites back. His clothes are coming off, but he decides he couldn't really care less, because there wasn't a lot of clothing left to get ripped away anyway, and Narutos are coming off too, and suddenly he can touch the tightly curved stomach muscles silky and slick under his hands and feel the beat of a heart pumping blood fast under a chest.
He lets himself fall over the edge of the cliff, because he has no where else to go, and if Naruto isn't real than at least he won't have anything to regret.
They're violent and fast, with tongues and bodies that need now and rough hands tearing at already torn skin with eagerness. Sasuke doesn't know if he's sinking his teeth into Naruto's left or right shoulder, or where the hell Naruto's tongue is, even if it did feel like it was carving a new name for nirvana on his skin. He was blind and scared and if Naruto pulled away then how was Sauske going to find him?
But he clings hard anyway, with teeth and nails, and tethers the blonde to him. Naruto didn't seem like he wanted to go anyway, pressing his skin onto Sasuke's at any point he could reach and murmuring broken things that had no meaning except for everything in Sasuke's ear.
The breath felt so good and the friction felt so sweet and so what did it matter if it was rough or he was trembling or if Narutos teeth bit down on something that made ecstasy burn through his whole body?
Violence was all either of them had ever known in the first place after all, and if felt too perfect and wrong and glorious to ever, ever stop.
When absolute white blends over the black-red of his vision, Sasuke gasps hoarsly against the glowing heat of Naruto's skin, everything unstiching, unraveling into the taste of Naruto is his mouth, dirty and insatiable, the sound of Naruto's haggard breaths as he moves still, a rocking beat that seems dimmed compared to the cacophony of the air he pushed from his mouth into the air, a harsh, desperate, pleading explusion of carbon dioixe hammering lound and angry and sublime on Sasuke's ear. It is all he can hear in that instant; the irratic push pull of Naruto's lungs, the rythmic rocks of sharp hips on skin, and Sasuke wonders for that snatched moment if could listen to it forever.
And later, after what felt like eternity but really wasn't all that long, he lay melded to Naruto's side while slightly cooler air blew through the crater to signal that dusk had come, and if he had any proper sense of time in this new and always-dark world, the stars were probably starting to show their stupid faces just a little under the cover of a sun falling.
Sasuke lies there quietly, smelling the air of dust and blood and sex instead of dust and blood and anger, feeling Naruto's hard angles and lines and geometric planes pressed on his in a way that was hardly comfortable, but that he didn't think he had the energy to shift away from. Besides, the pressure on his ribs meant that Naruto was still there, and that was something.
His body hurt in a million places, old and new, and he had to have broken at least three more fragile bones in the last hour or so. His breath rattles as he stares unseeing at the sky and tries to catch hold of his thoughts that are darting around in his head in circles, wild and bouncing and nervous despite his exhaustion. Naruto hasn't disapeared yet, and Sasuke feels like he is taunted, trussed up to be poked at, played with. He is crusted with grime and blood and sex-sweat and probably smelled worse than the air around them, but when he turned his head sideways with a little grunt of effort and pressed his nose on the flushed skin of Naruto's neck, the Kyuubi-vessel still only smelled like salt and sweat and sunbeams.
Sasuke feels himself curl into the scent, his thoughts and needs and questions that still course through his mind shoving themselves down for a few seconds. He presses his nose into Naruto's needle-sharp collarbones and tries, desperately, to not think about revenge and brothers and blood trickling from pupils, and needing, and longing for this to be real, to have boundaries instead of this fucking darkness, clustering in and trapping and dragging warmth away, and oh gods, oh fucking gods-
Naruto's hand comes up and lies over his eyes, light pressure, and he abruptly goes still, unaware that he'd started to shake violently. When Naruto finally speaks, lazily indolent and abrasively confident as always, his voice is soft and beautiful to Sasuke's ears, like water in a dessert, a moon sky in a red ground, and he can feel calluses in the fingertips over his lids, the same calluses that had been on him, pressing along spine and digging into hips and curling.
"I'm real you fag. And so are you."
Snip-snip-snap and release, and it could be a trick but he doesn't want it to be, ohgodpleaseplease...
So he has to sigh to hide the weightlessness that flies over his body and sinks gentleness into his mind. If Naruto said it, than it must be true.
Naruto doesn't know how to lie, especially not to Sasuke. The Jinchuriki's hands come up again, his weight shifts, and his fingers roam over the planes of Sauskes shoulders, trace a slowly building tingle pattern from the bridge of Sauskes nose to the bottom edges of his scratched ribcage. Sasuke focuses on breathing, letting oxygen replace a lump of dead matter in his throat. If Naruto said he was real, than he had to breathe didn't he?
His broken fingers wrap around Naruto's scarred wrist and grip strong. He pulls the other shinobi down to meet lips with lips and mix breath with breath, lets himself get dragged under, and maybe this time he doesn't worry quite so much about Naruto leaving, because they were real, and a real Naruto would never let him get away.
nevernevernever
When he's lying still again, body reaching new levels of exhaustion and ache but still glowing around the edges, he feels numb and his mouth feels dirty with dirt and cum and kisses, and Naruto smells like sweat and salt and star beams. The Jinchuriki speaks again, casual and unassuming, but with a question underlying his tone that wonders, quests, waits.
"I'm heading back towards Konoha tomorrow."
Naruto's hands are lacing soothing chakra through Sasuke's chest as he perches on the Uchihas groin with hard, unyielding weight. Sauske jerks a little at the words, spinning away towards fleeing and red and black and hurt and rebellion, but then remembers tongues and teeth on bloody skin, rough calloused caresses, remembers salt and sweat and sunbeams and the pull and tug of skin over bones, remembers the sound of Naruto's breath in his ear, remembers being real.
He sighs a long breath that blows through his lungs like slippery soap and stringent acid, cleaning and burning and new. His still broken, still aching fingers come up, lace through Narutos on his chest, and catch hold, unrelenting because he was nothing if not thurough. Then he lets his body melt into the dirt; loose relaxation, defeat, and perhaps a little acceptance.
He doesn't need to say a word of course, because Naruto understood. He always did.
Sasuke is blind and injured and probably half-dead and Naruto is all he has, so of course he will go with the Kyuubi-vessel. But truthfully, Sasuke is going because he is too tired to resist the stormy force of gravitaional magnets anymore, tired of not having Naruto, tired of being a figment waif and a blur of movement, a trick of the light.
Naruto made him real. And since Naruto was Konoha, Konoha made him real too. He would go.
Blind, trapped in darkness ad deadness and unseeing through fried pupils and burst blood vessels and it was terrifying as fucking shit. But after he melted down and gave his silent acquiesce, Narutos fingers tightened and his chakra in the other teens skin glowed extra hot for a moment. And really the thing was-- the thing was that Sauske didn't need to see the knife-edge, blindingly hot and heady and fierce as a supernova smile on Narutos face, glowing through darkness and cutting dreams into sharp pieces of cloth fluttering to the ground;
He can feel it.
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Fin
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