[As Cy stands to undress, he peruses the supplies, quick to begin cleaning the mess of sticky-dried lubricant on his hand and between his legs. Soiled wipes are discarded in the small corner trash can with a practiced toss without looking—his eyes are tilted up through a veil of dark lashes, instead, to watch Cy reveal himself in a display of warm-toned skin.
It isn't surprising to find no scar or mark on that body, given what he knows of Cy's immortality, his ability to heal the most fatal injury before the damage has even took. Sasuke can see the fluidity and grace in him, the evidence of ease in a body he's had for thousands upon thousands of years, that utter lack of self-consciousness bred from a place of extreme familiarity. He sheds clothes as if going back to a natural state. He moves as if knowing every possible movement his body can make. It reminds Sasuke, a little, of a warrior whose armor is their skin—except this possesses more sensuality than cold economy of presence. There's really no word for it that he can find, but it's difficult not to watch, to admire.
Sasuke has already pulled the towel from beneath his body and also tossed it into a laundry hamper (his suite of a closet is truly standing-room-only at this point, except for the bed). His shirt follows. Then Cy is on the mattress with him, a comfortable distance, gently cleaning the residue from a flat abdomen. He rolls onto his side at the initiation of this contact, so that they face each other.]
Then I was lucky, [after a period of thoughtful quiet,] to find you here. I don't know how this would have gone with someone else.
[Badly, is the assumption. If he hadn't completely succumbed to petrification first—he could have truly hurt someone. Or sent himself down a confusing spiral of autonomy, intimacy, and poor emotional reactions.]
Can I touch you? Not with the intent for... anything.
（ he doesn't move from where he is, only drops his hand away from its gentle ministrations against sasuke's abdomen, his body language calm and open. ）
Go nuts. I'll tell you if I need you to stop.
（ truthfully, he doesn't think sasuke could do anything that would actually make him tap out — even pain, if he wanted to go that way, matters so little to him in the grand scheme of things it's barely worth the bother of objection. but it's important to lay down the consent and the promise, to build future patterns of connection and behavioural tolerances. sasuke, he thinks, is already halfway there — but the consistency of demonstration doesn't hurt either. trust goes both ways. ）
[With that permission, Sasuke's right hand extends into the sliver of space still separating them, setting itself to Cy's strong left shoulder. Smooth skin drags underneath the palm of his hand as he maps from that point up to the slope of a throat—where he can feel Cy's pulse drumming steady beneath his fingertips—then down, across the ridge of a collarbone, the hard flat center of the sternum, sideways across the solid swell of a pectoral.
In this exploration, the heel of his palm rubs across one dusky nipple to feel the give of soft nub, to feel it catch against the caress. It isn't to incite anything sexual so much as it is curious, navigating another male body like his own but wholly different, made of hard, lean lines and trim muscle. Completely, flawlessly smooth beneath his wandering hand unlike his own body, which is riddled with scars and mended bone. There's no story on Cy to tell what he's been through. Not even his mind is a reliable archive.
Down across the belly, the sensual jut of an iliac crest, his hand forming itself over Cy's hip in an experimental hold. He ventures lower only as far as he can reach—briefly traveling the outside of Cy's muscular thigh before he comes back up in a long, broad stroke.]
You may be my type too. [Intoned quietly, looking back up at Cy's face. There's the slightest pull of humor in it.] I don't know, since I never thought I had one.
（ breath becomes a hushed huff of laughter, soft and easy beneath the tentative questing of sasuke's hand. ）
Well, you've been through the wringer. （ the touch is returned very carefully, a brush against the outside of sasuke's forearm. tracing a scar. ） That can affect how your body and mind both processes attraction, sexual impulse, romantic inclinations, the whole nine yards. Things like PTSD — you ever heard that term? Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? — can grind your libido down to a fucking glass powder if you aren't careful. Not everyone experiences desire to start with — sexual attraction, orientation and drive are pretty broad spectrums — but psychological safety can be a big part of it too.
（ his thumb tucks around to the inside of sasuke's arm, stroking into the hollow of his elbow. ）
I don't know exactly how long it took me to kinda... 'thaw out', I guess, but it was a long fucking time. Way after I left Chinoon — ah, that world I mentioned. The thought of touching other people, letting them touch me — whew. No fucking thanks, couldn't do it. I really had to work through my shit first. Believe me when I say it's still a work in progress. I have good days and bad days.
（ a pause. then, to clarify — ）
So I guess if you wanted assurance that it gets better, or that shit goes away with time — it doesn't. But it does get easier to manage, and the more you understand about trauma and your own reactions, the easier it is. So that when something sets you off, or wears on you, or hurts... you know why. You can piece it apart, and put yourself back together after.
[The return of touch is soothing as he watches Cy's face while he speaks. Concepts he's never heard of and has no preexisting framework to put them into—it's difficult. But more than that, he wonders at the glimpse of a history described.]
Did you learn all of this alone?
[He has more questions than only this: What did Cy mean, when he was "new"? Why had he been so angry? What exactly went wrong with the Ascension? Yet these are withheld, for now, as Cy is clearly focusing on Sasuke's issues. The rest can wait for another moment.]
If you're still working on it thousands of years later, then I don't seem to have a lot of time. [lmao] Those in my world—shinobi, we're called—don't have long lifespans even by comparison to the average civilian. Perhaps thirty. More powerful individuals might reach forty, or if they're very lucky, fifty and sixty.
[Yet he can count the number of shinobi he's ever known who are that old on one hand.]
Nah, not alone. Alone's always just meant empty to me.
（ at least, not always. ）
A lot of people over a lot of years have put their hands in the dirt and done the work to make me better. I told you — sum of everyone you love, right? I might not remember names or faces, but sometimes I'll say something and it's like hearing an echo. Someone told me that once. Someone cared enough to tell me that once.
（ he remembers a woman with long black hair that smelled like something wild and fey, and how her arms felt around him. he remembers a man with a kindly smile, and how every room he ever stepped into seemed brighter. he's had lovers, husbands, wives, he's raised children and called them his own, he's built friendships that could have burnt the earth to ash, and even if he finds nothing when he reaches for those people, he knows that somehow, some way, they had a hand in who he is. he plays music because of takëthal and the old stringed instrument he kept tucked away under his modest bed. he stargazes because of kaiaxia, and if he closes his eyes he can still see the lift of their arm as they pointed out stars and constellations and gave them names in a language that's a whisper in his mind. he picked up smoking because of james, and holds his cigarettes just the same. he has loved, and loved, and loved again, and he never gets tired of it, and never regrets it. the pain of loss is so small, alongside love. ）
You'll have time. （ it's said with that same soft certainty that he told sasuke, once upon a time, that he wouldn't become like those statues enshrined in horrifying eternity. ） And I'll help, long as I can.
For Sasuke, that has been—his parents. Dead, now, pale ghosts of a life buried and left behind, of a childhood barely lived. His teammates—but even that Sasuke isn't certain. Did he love Kakashi and Sakura? Or Team Taka, Suigetsu and Karin and Jugo? It feels muddied in his mind; reaching for the memory of those people, there's only a strange and muted numbness, extended back into a deep well of regret. He tried to kill Kakashi and Sakura. He tried to kill Karin. Suigetsu and Jugo were only battlefield tools, and he never allowed them close to his body or his mind. And Naruto—yes, he knows it now. That he loved Naruto. But he had tried to kill him too, over and over and over.
Itachi. He loved his brother, but he also hated his brother. And he killed him.
There's a slow closing-off as Sasuke lies there beside the man, the god, who feels almost untouchable in that moment for their differences. An insignificant slip of a life like a ripple in a vast ocean. Knowing how these dimensions work, how long would he even have with Cy? It could be days. Weeks. Months, if there is some fortune. But not years. So how much can Cy really do? And why would Sasuke let him do that? All of that love to give, it would be wasted on someone like him.
Alone. It is empty, but that emptiness is what keeps him safe. From loving people. From hurting people.
Quietly he rolls over to face the other way, the vulnerability of lying there without clothes setting in like he's just noticed it.]
（ it feels like a test — but he doesn't think it's one for him. if he gets up and leaves, does it prove something to the boy for whom tender acts eviscerate? his mind — ancient, eldritch, overclocked, built up and broken down, considers the possibilities that fan out from this moment and beyond. each one a thread that, when pulled, leads to an inevitable end.
he does sit up, one knee propped up, arm draped across it. there's an uneasy ache hooked in behind his ribs, but the yawning grief has nothing to do with his own emotions. he's just — fucking sad, for this kid that's sweet and soft and so badly hurt it bleeds off of him like an arterial severance. ）
I'll go, （ he says finally, and his voice is a thing that is quiet and still as standing water, like a lake with a mirror surface reflecting the dawn. ） but will you answer a question first?
[He doesn't have to. Up to this point in their interactions with each other, Cy has proven that he'll listen to what he asks for, what he wants. So it would be easy to say no and get him to leave—he just has to communicate the words.
But then he'd wonder what Cy is going to ask, and... there's still a part of him, even craving security and familiar loneliness, that doesn't want Cy to go just yet. Maybe he'll always be at war with himself like this.]
（ it's said as he grabs his shirt, getting briefly tangled in it in that universal experience of 'where's the fucking hole for the head actually'. might be a god, still strangely human at the best and worst of times.
it's probably inside out by the time he manages it, tbh. ）
Because this one's a scratchy, asinine piece of shit and I will absolutely get you a better one from one of the other suites.
[He slept outside 90 percent of the time in that last dimension. As if to make a point, he pulls the (extremely shitty, threadbare) blanket up legs and over his lap.]
（ he holds out a hand, inviting a reciprocal touch. but there's no expectation of it, and if sasuke doesn't take his hand he'll let it drop without protest. if sasuke does complete the gesture, however, he'll bend over their hands in a gallant, theatrical bow and kiss the back of his. ）
Let's do dinner. After you've had a chance to really, deeply contemplate the foolishness of kicking somebody that looks this good naked out of your bed.
（ a broad, playful wink. ）
Don't be a stranger, Brightside.
（ and then he's gone, leaving only the impression of that eldritch magic behind. ）
[Now, instead of lying in the dark agonizing over every person he's tried to kill or successfully killed in his life, Sasuke will have to confront a new and troubling problem: Did he just get asked out on a date?
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no subject
It isn't surprising to find no scar or mark on that body, given what he knows of Cy's immortality, his ability to heal the most fatal injury before the damage has even took. Sasuke can see the fluidity and grace in him, the evidence of ease in a body he's had for thousands upon thousands of years, that utter lack of self-consciousness bred from a place of extreme familiarity. He sheds clothes as if going back to a natural state. He moves as if knowing every possible movement his body can make. It reminds Sasuke, a little, of a warrior whose armor is their skin—except this possesses more sensuality than cold economy of presence. There's really no word for it that he can find, but it's difficult not to watch, to admire.
Sasuke has already pulled the towel from beneath his body and also tossed it into a laundry hamper (his suite of a closet is truly standing-room-only at this point, except for the bed). His shirt follows. Then Cy is on the mattress with him, a comfortable distance, gently cleaning the residue from a flat abdomen. He rolls onto his side at the initiation of this contact, so that they face each other.]
Then I was lucky, [after a period of thoughtful quiet,] to find you here. I don't know how this would have gone with someone else.
[Badly, is the assumption. If he hadn't completely succumbed to petrification first—he could have truly hurt someone. Or sent himself down a confusing spiral of autonomy, intimacy, and poor emotional reactions.]
Can I touch you? Not with the intent for... anything.
no subject
（ he doesn't move from where he is, only drops his hand away from its gentle ministrations against sasuke's abdomen, his body language calm and open. ）
Go nuts. I'll tell you if I need you to stop.
（ truthfully, he doesn't think sasuke could do anything that would actually make him tap out — even pain, if he wanted to go that way, matters so little to him in the grand scheme of things it's barely worth the bother of objection. but it's important to lay down the consent and the promise, to build future patterns of connection and behavioural tolerances. sasuke, he thinks, is already halfway there — but the consistency of demonstration doesn't hurt either. trust goes both ways. ）
no subject
In this exploration, the heel of his palm rubs across one dusky nipple to feel the give of soft nub, to feel it catch against the caress. It isn't to incite anything sexual so much as it is curious, navigating another male body like his own but wholly different, made of hard, lean lines and trim muscle. Completely, flawlessly smooth beneath his wandering hand unlike his own body, which is riddled with scars and mended bone. There's no story on Cy to tell what he's been through. Not even his mind is a reliable archive.
Down across the belly, the sensual jut of an iliac crest, his hand forming itself over Cy's hip in an experimental hold. He ventures lower only as far as he can reach—briefly traveling the outside of Cy's muscular thigh before he comes back up in a long, broad stroke.]
You may be my type too. [Intoned quietly, looking back up at Cy's face. There's the slightest pull of humor in it.] I don't know, since I never thought I had one.
no subject
Well, you've been through the wringer. （ the touch is returned very carefully, a brush against the outside of sasuke's forearm. tracing a scar. ） That can affect how your body and mind both processes attraction, sexual impulse, romantic inclinations, the whole nine yards. Things like PTSD — you ever heard that term? Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? — can grind your libido down to a fucking glass powder if you aren't careful. Not everyone experiences desire to start with — sexual attraction, orientation and drive are pretty broad spectrums — but psychological safety can be a big part of it too.
（ his thumb tucks around to the inside of sasuke's arm, stroking into the hollow of his elbow. ）
I don't know exactly how long it took me to kinda... 'thaw out', I guess, but it was a long fucking time. Way after I left Chinoon — ah, that world I mentioned. The thought of touching other people, letting them touch me — whew. No fucking thanks, couldn't do it. I really had to work through my shit first. Believe me when I say it's still a work in progress. I have good days and bad days.
（ a pause. then, to clarify — ）
So I guess if you wanted assurance that it gets better, or that shit goes away with time — it doesn't. But it does get easier to manage, and the more you understand about trauma and your own reactions, the easier it is. So that when something sets you off, or wears on you, or hurts... you know why. You can piece it apart, and put yourself back together after.
no subject
Did you learn all of this alone?
[He has more questions than only this: What did Cy mean, when he was "new"? Why had he been so angry? What exactly went wrong with the Ascension? Yet these are withheld, for now, as Cy is clearly focusing on Sasuke's issues. The rest can wait for another moment.]
If you're still working on it thousands of years later, then I don't seem to have a lot of time. [lmao] Those in my world—shinobi, we're called—don't have long lifespans even by comparison to the average civilian. Perhaps thirty. More powerful individuals might reach forty, or if they're very lucky, fifty and sixty.
[Yet he can count the number of shinobi he's ever known who are that old on one hand.]
no subject
（ at least, not always. ）
A lot of people over a lot of years have put their hands in the dirt and done the work to make me better. I told you — sum of everyone you love, right? I might not remember names or faces, but sometimes I'll say something and it's like hearing an echo. Someone told me that once. Someone cared enough to tell me that once.
（ he remembers a woman with long black hair that smelled like something wild and fey, and how her arms felt around him. he remembers a man with a kindly smile, and how every room he ever stepped into seemed brighter. he's had lovers, husbands, wives, he's raised children and called them his own, he's built friendships that could have burnt the earth to ash, and even if he finds nothing when he reaches for those people, he knows that somehow, some way, they had a hand in who he is. he plays music because of takëthal and the old stringed instrument he kept tucked away under his modest bed. he stargazes because of kaiaxia, and if he closes his eyes he can still see the lift of their arm as they pointed out stars and constellations and gave them names in a language that's a whisper in his mind. he picked up smoking because of james, and holds his cigarettes just the same. he has loved, and loved, and loved again, and he never gets tired of it, and never regrets it. the pain of loss is so small, alongside love. ）
You'll have time. （ it's said with that same soft certainty that he told sasuke, once upon a time, that he wouldn't become like those statues enshrined in horrifying eternity. ） And I'll help, long as I can.
no subject
For Sasuke, that has been—his parents. Dead, now, pale ghosts of a life buried and left behind, of a childhood barely lived. His teammates—but even that Sasuke isn't certain. Did he love Kakashi and Sakura? Or Team Taka, Suigetsu and Karin and Jugo? It feels muddied in his mind; reaching for the memory of those people, there's only a strange and muted numbness, extended back into a deep well of regret. He tried to kill Kakashi and Sakura. He tried to kill Karin. Suigetsu and Jugo were only battlefield tools, and he never allowed them close to his body or his mind. And Naruto—yes, he knows it now. That he loved Naruto. But he had tried to kill him too, over and over and over.
Itachi. He loved his brother, but he also hated his brother. And he killed him.
There's a slow closing-off as Sasuke lies there beside the man, the god, who feels almost untouchable in that moment for their differences. An insignificant slip of a life like a ripple in a vast ocean. Knowing how these dimensions work, how long would he even have with Cy? It could be days. Weeks. Months, if there is some fortune. But not years. So how much can Cy really do? And why would Sasuke let him do that? All of that love to give, it would be wasted on someone like him.
Alone. It is empty, but that emptiness is what keeps him safe. From loving people. From hurting people.
Quietly he rolls over to face the other way, the vulnerability of lying there without clothes setting in like he's just noticed it.]
I want to be alone.
no subject
he does sit up, one knee propped up, arm draped across it. there's an uneasy ache hooked in behind his ribs, but the yawning grief has nothing to do with his own emotions. he's just — fucking sad, for this kid that's sweet and soft and so badly hurt it bleeds off of him like an arterial severance. ）
I'll go, （ he says finally, and his voice is a thing that is quiet and still as standing water, like a lake with a mirror surface reflecting the dawn. ） but will you answer a question first?
no subject
But then he'd wonder what Cy is going to ask, and... there's still a part of him, even craving security and familiar loneliness, that doesn't want Cy to go just yet. Maybe he'll always be at war with himself like this.]
I will.
no subject
（ it's said as he grabs his shirt, getting briefly tangled in it in that universal experience of 'where's the fucking hole for the head actually'. might be a god, still strangely human at the best and worst of times.
it's probably inside out by the time he manages it, tbh. ）
Because this one's a scratchy, asinine piece of shit and I will absolutely get you a better one from one of the other suites.
no subject
Confusion, more than any other sentiment, clouds his features.]
... You're asking if I want a blanket?
no subject
（ he shimmies into his sweatpants, which require markedly less fussing than the shirt. ）
I'm not entirely unconvinced this one's not shaved off a fuckin' werewolf.
no subject
It's fine. It doesn't bother me.
[He slept outside 90 percent of the time in that last dimension. As if to make a point, he pulls the (extremely shitty, threadbare) blanket up legs and over his lap.]
Don't steal from someone else because of me.
no subject
（ rude child. he can barter! or ask! ）
That's an offensive stereotype and I profoundly object to your cruel aspersions on my character, actually.
no subject
[Don't be charming, he's trying to kick you out so he can angst in private.]
If you find one that doesn't belong to anyone, then fine. But I don't need it.
no subject
（ the most haphazard shrug in all of fucking creation, here. ）
What were we even talking about?
no subject
Nothing. You were leaving.
[... unfortunately, his ability to be cold/rude to Cy is decreasing dramatically by the hour of every day.]
I'll see you later.
no subject
（ he holds out a hand, inviting a reciprocal touch. but there's no expectation of it, and if sasuke doesn't take his hand he'll let it drop without protest. if sasuke does complete the gesture, however, he'll bend over their hands in a gallant, theatrical bow and kiss the back of his. ）
Let's do dinner. After you've had a chance to really, deeply contemplate the foolishness of kicking somebody that looks this good naked out of your bed.
（ a broad, playful wink. ）
Don't be a stranger, Brightside.
（ and then he's gone, leaving only the impression of that eldritch magic behind. ）
freedom again
(And, yes, he took the hand.)]