Current mood:	surprised
Current music:	Regina Spektor -- Us
Entry tags:	naruto

[Naruto: gloss]
Title: Gloss
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: R. Very R.
Wordcount: 2844
Notes: So much for my post-Listening Sky hiatus from Naruto, huh. This one wasn't planned: it started to write itself in my head during a dull lecture, growing from the rather cracktastic idea that along with the jutsus, Sasuke might have picked up Orochimaru's habit of doing weird things with his tongue. So it began life as a rather pointless examination of oral fixation, and grew a few deeper ideas as well, even though it's still pretty much all about sex. It's the porniest thing I've ever written and it was a lot of fun, because I've discovered that one can do quite a lot even when one has an irrational entirely valid aesthetic aversion to using genitalic nouns. Due to what I suspect is a combination of overcompensation and self-indulgence, there are too many adjectives in this story, but I like them too much to take them out.

It's set at an indeterminate time in the future; I think they're about seventeen, if that helps.

The title is an incredibly geeky pun that I don't expect anyone to get.



GLOSS

(this is how it works)


It begins with the way Sasuke reaches out and picks up Naruto's hand, with the way his lips are dry and smooth and he never even blinks as he pulls Naruto's fingers into his mouth.

Actually it begins a long time before that, but this is where it begins to make sense. They've already discovered that sex is weird and sticky and refuses to fit into the time that you allocate it; they've gotten it out of the way in ten minutes and had to learn to laugh about it afterwards, and they've shown up to meetings even later than Kakashi, breathless with wet hair and bruises under their clothes. They've discovered that having sex after spending the afternoon fighting in the dust is brutal and exhilerating, but you're going to end up with a lot of that dust in your mouth.

Especially if you're Sasuke.

Sasuke who looks as though nothing could be more normal than the way his tongue slips slowly over and under each of Naruto's fingers in turn, weaving an intangible pattern. Absent. Lingering. Suction and heat and it's just his hand, so it really shouldn't be this electrifying, but violence is building in Naruto's chest and he has to grit his teeth to keep it hidden. Instead he exhales as steadily as he can manage and pitches his voice at mild accusation.

"Oh, great. You've inherited some kind of weird snake tongue thing from Orochimaru, haven't you?"

"Perhaps," Sasuke says, once he's pulled back. "Are you complaining?"

Naruto opens his mouth to reply but Sasuke leans forward again and bites down on the tips of his index and middle fingers, just balancing them between his teeth, his breath hot, and it's too much. He yanks his hand away -- it hurts -- and grabs Sasuke's shoulders and shoves and okay, the wall's further away than he thought, but all it means is that they strumble and lunge and gravity tangles them together into a single urgent mass. Sasuke grunts as his back and elbows strike the wall, but Naruto manages to catch himself; his hands slam against plaster on either side of the Uchiha's shoulders and he leans up with his thigh and in with his mouth and fuck, his fingers are still wet, and Sasuke will probably gain control of this kiss in less than a minute but he's damn well going to hold out as long as he can.

Sasuke murmurs into his mouth, "I'll assume that means no."

~

He's not complaining, and soon enough he's not worrying either: Orochimaru is gone, banished entirely, and this fierce devouring person is just as much Sasuke as the person who still races Naruto up trees and across lakes; it's just a side of him that developed when he was out of sight.

What's also new -- and not entirely pleasant -- is the craving that hits even when Naruto is sitting still and thinking about nothing in particular, the way the space around him can curve and become negative space because Sasuke isn't there to fill it up. It's strange to think that you can sense the absence of someone's body with the same intensity that you can sense them when they're actually there; a greater intensity, even, because it gets worse, this aching awareness building up inside his body until he feels like it's radiating out from his skin.

Standing in Tsunade's office they exchange glances crammed full of meaning and desire and it becomes, without any real discussion, a competition. Who can show the fewest outward signs? Sasuke has an unfair advantage because his outward signs have never been there in the first place, and it goes against Naruto's nature to hide anything this enormous, to wait before seeking gratification. But he waited years to have this, and Sasuke can't win every game they play, so he learns to look away and to laugh with his friends and to keep the cravings simmering just below the surface until they can be acted on.

But every so often he'll break the rules, just to remind Sasuke that he isn't ashamed.

~

There are red sparks dancing on Sasuke's tongue and he laughs and says that it tastes like power. Naruto wonders how many people would be able to do that, to trace with their fingernails and tease with their mouth the symbol of danger lurking within the flesh. The black marks of the seal and the faint tan of Naruto's stomach and the calloused white of Sasuke's fingertips: it shouldn’t work, but it does. Sasuke's fingers are asymmetrical and there are tiny patches of rough scar tissue along their edges.

Sasuke laughs again, silently buzzing against his skin, and moves even lower and breathes short sharp puffs of air and oh fuck and then --

And then he stops.

Naruto's entire vocabulary has been kicked into a thousand scattered pieces and it takes him ten good seconds of shaky breaths and outraged glaring to gather enough of them to babble, "Don't you dare, don't you dare stop being a crazy freak now, not gnnyhaa," and that's it, scattered again, Sasuke's pleased smirk finally ducking out of sight as he lowers his head.

For all his expert violence, Sasuke's greatest weapon is his ability to say nothing and do nothing and -- in some contexts -- move as slowly and as tortuously as he possibly can. Naruto can hear himself making noises which are frankly ridiculous, just little spurting sibilants and bitten-off vowels, but he doesn't care because all he wants is a little more speed and a little more friction and Sasuke knows him outside-in so it must be obvious, come on, come on, the palms of his hands scorching and grinding into the sheets, which are suddenly slippery -- hot -- everything --

The universe shrinks to the fever pitch below his eyelids. The universe is a tight bright thing and the universe is oxygen sucked into his lungs and the limits of the universe are traced out by Sasuke's beautiful satisfied mouth.

~

Of course there are moments of what he calls reasonable insecurity and Sasuke calls stupidity: why is Sasuke so consuming and attentive -- is Naruto just a distraction? Is he trying to forget that Itachi ever existed at all, trying to find complete erasure past the simple fact of his brother's death?

"Don't be an idiot," and Sasuke laughs low and dark in his throat. "It's you."

"What?"

"You." Sasuke doesn't describe things, and neither of them has really ever talked about this beyond logistics, but he sighs and runs a frustrated hand through his hair and gives it a try anyway, which makes something warm and pleased start to pool in Naruto's stomach. "You just -- you keep giving and giving, and you glow, and I feel like unless I keep taking then you're going to spill over onto the rest of the world. And they can't have you," he adds, glaring.

Which is insecurity in and of itself but totally unreasonable as far as Naruto's concerned, because he only glows with want for one person. But it's true that Sasuke is forever pulling him in -- by the wrist, by his clothes, by simply lifting his chin and lowering his eyelids the smallest amount -- as though he has developed this skill in response to Naruto's brightness.

Thinking back further, Sasuke has always been a magnetic presence, a pale vacuum with sullen dark edges, and it's amazing and frightening to think that they've been growing into these patterns of complement and codependence ever since they met.

~

There are things that can be done with wet fingers.

Sex doesn't change them, not really; Naruto is loud and always has been and always will be. Sasuke still treats noises like concessions, which means that even when he's shaking and clenching around Naruto's fingers there's nothing more than the hiss of breath and strange unwilling groans that escape through his teeth. But it's still a competition. So he's silent and urgent right up until Naruto slows down and says, all concern, "Are you -- is this okay?" and then his irritation bursts wide open:

"Fuck, yes, fuck, you moron, come on --" all rapid and rough with the lack of control that he never shows at any other time.

Naruto smiles. And twists.

Sasuke doesn't make another sound, but his face is obscene and writhing and glorious.

~

Things gain new meanings. Sakura leans on the side of a chair and Naruto's mouth goes dry because it's not just a chair any more, it's a place where he sat as his fingernails scored desperate lines across the skin of Sasuke's lower back, under the fabric, closer than close, and Sasuke's grip left bruises on his jaw and they kissed until neither of them could breathe and until the chair almost toppled backwards. (Almost; their reflexes are good.)

And so they stretch the technical definitions of words; they need qualifiers for every description. They're definitely teammates. They're certainly living together. They're sporadically rivals and they're probably friends and they're possibly something else as well but neither of them is at the point where they feel any need to define it.

"Could you do this if you hated me?" Sasuke asks one day, and he sounds odd, mild, curious.

"Sometimes I do hate you," Naruto says automatically, but Sasuke makes an impatient noise and he relents. "I don't know."

He can't extricate the wanting from everything else and it's true, actually: sometimes Sasuke will say something cruel or press down mercilessly on one of Naruto's emotional buttons and he'll hate him and want to shout at him and to kiss the inside of his wrist and to brush a hand over his crotch and memorise the angles that produce the best results. One long stream of want want want and no way to subdivide it or to entertain hypotheticals. And it's always been want, as far as Sasuke is concerned -- over the years Naruto has wanted to be as strong as him, to get his attention, to bring him back, and now he just wants him all the time, wants his dry comments and his close presence and his clever tongue and his rapid graceful hands spinning seals and desire out of the air.

People and books have told him that this stage won’t last, that it's hormones, that it's the first flush of novelty and the shine will wear off the apple eventually. And many other things in the same vein, all delivered with a matter-of-fact tone and eyes averted so that they can pretend not to see that Naruto has three red marks on his neck. The message seems to be that nothing this intense can last forever.

When he mentions this, Sasuke smirks at him with swollen lips and says, "That sounds like a challenge."

If their individual responses to challenges are as impressive as they are, Naruto thinks, a combined effort should be really something.

That it could be boring is unimaginable; that he should tire of playing the game with this particular partner, unthinkable. Though they grow to know each other and to embrace repetition in the name of refinement -- as shinobi must -- it is never quite the same thing twice, and Sasuke has always been the familiar and the Other all wrapped up in one person.

~

Practicing the outwards display of not-wanting pays off, in the end, because -- again, without ever actually discussing it -- they agree that nothing whatsoever will happen between them on missions. Which is not to say that Sasuke doesn't insult him and Naruto doesn't needle glares and smiles out of him with approximately equal frequency. Which is certainly not to say that when Sasuke jerks his head around, his eyes already shifting into the Sharingan, and then taps Naruto's shoulder to signal the enemy's location, Naruto's skin doesn't crawl in shivering appreciation of the contact and the sharp prowling beauty of the Uchiha's movements.

What it means is that the craving is there but they don't let it distract them.

Naruto read his way through a volume of Icha Icha Paradise once and discovered that it is possible to compare someone to -- among other things -- oxygen. At the time he thought this both melodramatic and absurd, but as it turns out, it's absolutely true. Because touching Sasuke after days spent wanting and wanting and wanting and shoving it far down where it won't interfere with the mission…well, it's like breaking surface after a long time spent underwater. The sheer relief of it is frightening, because what if there comes a time when he isn't able to inhale? What if the burning just got worse and worse and never stopped? What if?

"Hey," Sasuke says, somewhere between annoyed and wary, and the backs of his fingers travel across Naruto's cheek, which is screamingly sensitive. Naruto's eyes are hot and dry and beginning to smart. "I'm sleeping with you, not with any damn demon, so get a hold of yourself."

"If you go and die on me," Naruto says, "I'll kill you."

"How fucking romantic," Sasuke says, and rolls his eyes, and then pulls Naruto down and drags his tongue across the sensitive lines on his cheek until the demon is lost inside his cries.

~

It's better than a book could be because there are no expectations of conflict (beyond the usual); there is no narrative to which they must adhere, no sense that certain things must be carried out in certain ways. No script. In real life it is understood that sometimes the wanting is wild and involves their entire bodies, no control or finesse, just carpet burns and awkward movements and the uneven cartography of their mutual need.

And then there are the times where Sasuke seems content to just do things like run the tip of his tongue along the inside curve of Naruto's teeth, which is -- well, technically Naruto supposes it's a kiss, because Sasuke's tongue is in his mouth, right? -- and it's like he needs to know every tiny crevice of Naruto's body, no matter where it is, and it should feel totally disgusting but instead it's warm and intimate. Words are changing their meanings; actions are changing theirs as well. Sasuke pulls back and sucks lightly at the skin below Naruto's ear and all it means is that Naruto wants to bury his nose in the darkness of his hair and inhale.

"You're so weird," Naruto tells him, almost awed.

"Clearly," Sasuke says, "weird is your type."

Naruto isn't even sure if he has a type, but Sasuke must be it, because he's a little too thin and he never looks like he's had enough sleep but Naruto can't stop wanting him, can't suppress the urge to run his fingers over the smudged hollows under his eyes and trace the sharp bones of his hip where the skin feels too delicate to contain them. Perhaps it's that their bodies are everything in their profession; to fight without hesitation you must be able to trust and know your own body, and perhaps familiarising yourself with the body of your teammate in the same way that you do his skills and capabilities is an extension of that. With the constant roaming experiments of his mouth Sasuke seems to be turning it into yet another competition, and Naruto feels like he has to catch up.

So one morning he steps up close behind Sasuke and dips his head to brush his mouth over the place where neck curves down into shoulder, and then his tongue, tasting morning-sun warmth and smooth salt; the very edge of Sasuke's lips tilts upwards in a smile devoid of mockery and Naruto thinks, I will know every inch of you.

~

And maybe it's true: maybe one day the shine will wear off or the glow will dim or the universe will stop rearranging itself in new and wonderful ways. There are emotions beneath the want, strong frightening emotions waiting patiently for the two of them to grow up enough to deal with them, but that's the future.

The present is sitting on their kitchen table with Sasuke standing between his legs, kissing him with the kind of messy, prolonged, leisurely intensity that has Naruto wondering why they're both still fully clothed. The present is the way Sasuke flicks his tongue across the seam of Naruto's lips and moves his hand slowly -- but deftly -- but slowly -- and isn't it just typical that he'd be equally infuriating no matter what body part he's using, equally adept at driving Naruto out of his mind.

"Faster, you bastard."

"No."

"Fuck you," Naruto whispers, as a warm mouth trails downwards from his lips to the hollow of his neck.

"Mm," Sasuke says in a considering tone, "all right," and Naruto bites the inside of his own cheek so hard he tastes blood.


~ fin ~