( cy laughs in turn, and then lets his leg slip from sasuke's shoulder, reaching to haul the boy up on top of him as he flops back on the bed. somehow, somehow, this is elegantly done.
sasuke is wrapped up into his arms and he bites at the side of his neck playfully. )
You little shit. You're telling me the first time I get you to laugh and it's not because I'm charmingly hilarious? I just had to get you to suck my dick?
[There's a quiet oof as he's manhandled down on top of Cy, wrapped in arms that he wouldn't escape even if they weren't keeping him held fast, steady in a warm embrace. But—he has to play the part, doesn't he? So a right hand slithers up, pushing Cy's face back by the cheek when he's bitten.]
Maybe you're not as funny as you think you are. [HUFFS] You're the one calling yourself 'charmingly hilarious'.
[The disdain is totally ruined by the smirk that keeps trying to tug its way onto his mouth.]
（ them's tusslin' now. which is — challenging on the narrow bed, but not impossible. he shifts, one arm cradling sasuke against him precisely until he can get him on his back, and then... well.
playful nude wrestling ensues. the greeks would've been proud.
but all good things have to come to an end eventually, and when the moment has passed, cy is laughing again. pressing messy kisses against sasuke's swollen, reddened mouth, tasting himself with the intrusive lick of his tongue. ）
[He won't get tired of this—the playful physicality of wrestling, the easy contact of their bodies, Cy's face smiling out at him like that. The laughter, the kisses. In a reversal of usual positions, Sasuke ends up on top by the end this time, straddling strong hips as they taste each other in that lick of a tongue.]
I had a good teacher.
[The word he uses is sensei in a voice that drawls, tone lowered, looking at Cy through the cast of dark lashes. He's still aroused—an effect not diminished since sucking Cy's cock had first coaxed him hard again, but also further enticed by all of the grappling on the bed.]
（ he has his hands on sasuke's thighs, fingers kneading just a little at the strong cords of muscle there. he's found attraction in sasuke's body since they first met — every scar a love letter to something he's given up on ever burying. but he likes, too, how fit he is, and that it comes from living, surviving. ）
Hm?
（ he settles back on the bed, easy. that's the tone sasuke uses when he's about to say something just a little this side of serious, so he'll wait for it to come. ）
[He has to sort his thoughts in order to say what he wants to say, made even more challenging by the vulnerable content of what he's feeling as he looks down at Cy, as he enjoys the sensual rub of hands on naked thighs. He steadies himself with his right hand against Cy's shoulder, then bends in closer—seeking both the affection of a head laid down against the man's chest while also taking the opportunity to hide his face.
Just this time, at least, if Cy allows it.]
You've said a lot for me already. [Gingerly, he eases his weight more fully flush against Cy, less for the sexual aspect now than simple intimacy of touch. A fumbling communication of sentiment.] I want you to know that I heard it. And I won't forget it. [Ever.] And that it also isn't only your responsibility, because I want to... do the same for you. I want you to feel safe. I want you to believe that I can protect you, too.
[His words aren't so effortless, clearly struggling to be expressed.]
I'm less afraid of you hurting me than I am of hurting you. I know that you'll laugh, because wounds don't matter—not with your ability—but I don't want to do that. I never want to cause you pain, even by accident. You could tell, but I've done it before. I've tried to kill people who were important to me, because I was lost, and confused, and it seemed easier to... sever those connections than it did to live with them.
cw: (cy grab bag - war horrors/assault/trauma/suicide)
（ sasuke curls in against him, and cy adjusts automatically to accommodate him, however he wants to be, or lay. arms slip around him in an easy embrace as natural as dawn, and he laces his fingers together just beneath the boy's shoulders. he draws one knee up, foot braced against the bed, half to bracket him.
and then the words come, each one felt in an exhalation of breath against his chest, and some part of his mind goes eerily still, eerily blank. his body is a graveyard of many things — lost worlds beneath his skin, the whisper of sweet nothings of lovers, the sobbing terror of victims as they begged or pleaded or wept beneath him. he has not always known how to be kind, it was something he had to learn. re-learn, maybe, because the boy he used to be must have been so once. kulo vayn would not have delighted in turning his hand to cruelty if its seeds had already been planted in him. he would not have taken his chin in the prison of his mind and told him not to look away.
will he remember this moment, he wonders? in a thousand years, in ten? maybe it will live alongside takëthal cutting him down from a tree with the burn of rope around his throat and death seeming like it was only ever another gasping breath away.
fear has been part of him far longer than he's carried his name. it is a muted presence now, but never gone. yet for all his confidence and surety and grace, he is always, always afraid. of what he might become. what he might do. what he could lose. what horrors he has yet undiscovered he could inflict. he doubts he mastered every way of taking a person apart in a thousand years, that there must still be something left in him to learn. he fears the unknown span of time stretched out ahead of him, because one day he will wake up and the foundational tenets of what he holds dear and who he wants to be will be eroded out of his mind the way wind tears down mountains, and what follows that will burn worlds to ash and cinder.
he does not breathe as sasuke speaks. he feels the edge of pain when his lungs start to protest, and repair, and protest, and repair.
i'm less afraid of you hurting me than i am of hurting you. that's when he breathes in, a ragged inhalation that smells like the mild shampoo sasuke uses on his hair. ）
Okay.
（ he should say something back, he knows. something meaningful, that meets that kindness halfway instead of dragging it into himself the way one might seize a person by the hair and let their heels cut furrows in the dirt. ）
[It isn't the response he is anticipating—and it shocks him, cold as icewater running through grooves carved out of warmth and desire and affection not long ago. Ares. When he'd asked, he hadn't thought he would hear it, and so soon. The emotional wound is a splash across his face: torn open like a hole, then swiftly collapsed into defensive, self-protective barriers of distance. Patterns of coping.
Unlike Cy, playing off how that reaction makes him feel is almost impossible. He is still new to safewords, so to him this signals only one thing. In trying to express the depth of what he is feeling he has managed to hurt Cy exactly as he didn't want to. He can't tell which of the words did it, but—that doesn't really matter.
At least he knows, having seen it demonstrated, what to do. Physically extracting himself from their embrace, Sasuke slides to the edge of the bed and faces away, seeking folded clothes to begin putting them back on in sharp, efficient movements. His voice is a murmur.]
（ he reaches for him, and catches him by the arm. hauls him back to the bed, back into the embrace. only this time, cy's pulled him onto his lap and has pressed his face into the hollow between sasuke's neck and shoulder. even wrung out, even ruined, he can manage this. his grasp is tight with a sort of desperation that's only seen in people clutching a lifeline. ）
I don't want you to leave. I just need a minute. Let me breathe. I'll explain.
[He's managed only to pull on the navy sweater before he's quickly bundled back into Cy's arms, and—like that, the little knot of anxiety that had begun to grow in his chest is stymied. A breath gusts out of him; an arm wiggles itself to return the embrace as much as he can from this position.]
（ he breathes. it's clear by the cadence that the form of it he'd taught to sasuke wasn't just something he'd pulled out of a textbook once — it's a real practice that he sinks into. he's old hat at pulling himself back from the edge of panic. doesn't mean it's not hard, but it's — simpler, maybe, for someone who's done it a thousand times. bit by bit he walks the tension back, though his grip on sasuke does not slacken even as the bound, rucked up awfulness of his shoulders does.
one final exhalation, and then: ）
You didn't do anything wrong here. And you didn't hurt me. You just caught me off guard in a way that doesn't play nice with something I haven't told you about yet, and that's not your fault. I need you to say those words, please. That it wasn't your fault.
（ his voice is a bruise. ）
Edited (will i ever catch when i use the same word twice in a row, remains to be seen) 2024-01-22 19:45 (UTC)
[It's difficult to hear Cy sound like this. A far and removed step away from the formidable presentation of someone so controlled, put-together, so learned on the pain of life and living with no other option—but he also understands the effort it seems to have taken Cy to get to that point, based on all he's heard. That he uses the same breathing method he taught Sasuke, that his voice is wounded despite its care.
The aching in his chest feels sore. He doesn't begrudge whatever secrets Cy is still keeping, when he has so many of his own yet unspoken.]
It wasn't my fault. [Surrendered with no effort, his hand roots around, seeking one of Cy's.] I know.
（ sasuke takes his hand, but cy is the one to wind their fingers together like a twist of old ivy. his fingers flex there. ）
What you said was one of the sweetest, kindest things anyone's ever told me. And I'd remember that. I will remember it, I'll hold onto that as long as I can. （ he can't make that same promise of forever, but it's what he has. ） And I appreciate the trust and the effort it took you to say it, and how contrary it runs to so many of the things you've learned in your life. I'm sorry it was met with a hurtful reaction, and I hope that won't stop you from speaking like that in the future.
（ he peels himself away from sasuke now, but it's only to press a kiss to his forehead. ）
Are you okay if I don't tell you right now? If you need to hear the full story I will, and it won't be a hardship. But if you're fine waiting, I think I just want to take a few days to think about it first. （ then, to further clarify: ） I'm not afraid of your reaction, or worried how you'll take what I have to say. It's — the messy part I mentioned earlier. That's what I know, I'm certain I've never told anyone before. I'm not really sure how.
[This he says with certainty. If it is so significant as to cause such a reaction in Cy, who has been nothing but steady and indomitable, he doesn't want to force it for his own sake.]
Later, we'll discuss it.
[There's no real hurry, in light of everything else. Even if there is that seed of fear in Sasuke—growing, steadily, alongside the tenuous feelings for this man—that he will wake up and Cy will be gone from his life.]
You deserve my patience. [After his own episodes of emotion, after the false starts, and still with his history bound up in a reluctant mind. In levity—] ... That toy, though. I'm not sure we'll ever use it at this point.
[Another chuff of that almost-laughter, very gently, tucks itself in against Cy's shoulder.]
Only if you want to. [The hand on his midriff, like all of the man's touches, is as soothing as balm—a cat coaxed back to relaxation after all the tension of the previous moment.] As long as you stay here with me tonight.
[This is stated firmly, mind made up. He wants what he refused last time.]
I'm feeling fine.
Edited (i forgot to answer the question :')) 2024-01-22 20:38 (UTC)
[Good call since we're over a hundred comments into this thread.]
Yes.
[He thinks so—though there is a prickling sensitivity of emotion still in him, like fine static, he imagines it will always be here. And right now, he'd rather stay together than go separate ways.]
... I wasn't serious about the blanket. You didn't need to.
Nah, I know. I wanted to. You deserve nice things, and I'm in a position to make that happen. You'd do the same for me — you cleaned my damn room, remember?
（ but he calls the bag up from beneath the bed, and gently extricates himself from sasuke so he can gesture him to open it.
actually. you know what? given the context they've gotten into over the last few hours, he shakes his head briefly to forestall him opening it just yet. ）
Though for the sake of little kittens, if orange is some kinda trigger for you tell me now so I can just swap that bad boy out. I will go blue.
[Echoed dumbly as Sasuke sits up on the bed, sweater pooling in his lap, eyes a little rounded. His expression... softens by degrees, grateful at least that Cy has warned him.]
It's not, but... [With a sigh, his hand slowly peels the bag open to extract the fluffy blanket, pulling it into his lap in a spill of plush fabric. His face changes—a tilt into melancholy.] It makes me think of him. Naruto.
It's a stupid color for a shinobi. Stealth was impossible, but he didn't care about that. He liked that it was bright. That he stood out.
[Shifting, Sasuke peels the sweater off of himself one-handed, draping it at the end of the bed. Then, naked once more, he wraps the blanket around his shoulders like a heavy cloak.]
I don't have much left of him, except for memories. [The hollow ache in wondering what happened to Naruto after the Netherworld continues to nag him—but that powerlessness can't be solved simply by wishing it away. He has to believe Naruto is all right.] Thank you.
Tell me about him one day, okay? I want to know everything about you, too.
（ the blanket is big — far bigger than the small bed, and there's plenty of room for two. sasuke strips naked again, and cy reaches for another corner of the blanket to drag around himself and sasuke closer at a consequence.
sleep may not come quick or easy, but when it does — he'll have slung an easy arm around the boy, keeping him tugged in against his chest. ）
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
sasuke is wrapped up into his arms and he bites at the side of his neck playfully. )
You little shit. You're telling me the first time I get you to laugh and it's not because I'm charmingly hilarious? I just had to get you to suck my dick?
no subject
Maybe you're not as funny as you think you are. [HUFFS] You're the one calling yourself 'charmingly hilarious'.
[The disdain is totally ruined by the smirk that keeps trying to tug its way onto his mouth.]
no subject
（ them's tusslin' now. which is — challenging on the narrow bed, but not impossible. he shifts, one arm cradling sasuke against him precisely until he can get him on his back, and then... well.
playful nude wrestling ensues. the greeks would've been proud.
but all good things have to come to an end eventually, and when the moment has passed, cy is laughing again. pressing messy kisses against sasuke's swollen, reddened mouth, tasting himself with the intrusive lick of his tongue. ）
Wow, hey, so you're pretty amazing at that.
no subject
I had a good teacher.
[The word he uses is sensei in a voice that drawls, tone lowered, looking at Cy through the cast of dark lashes. He's still aroused—an effect not diminished since sucking Cy's cock had first coaxed him hard again, but also further enticed by all of the grappling on the bed.]
Cyram.
no subject
Hm?
（ he settles back on the bed, easy. that's the tone sasuke uses when he's about to say something just a little this side of serious, so he'll wait for it to come. ）
no subject
Just this time, at least, if Cy allows it.]
You've said a lot for me already. [Gingerly, he eases his weight more fully flush against Cy, less for the sexual aspect now than simple intimacy of touch. A fumbling communication of sentiment.] I want you to know that I heard it. And I won't forget it. [Ever.] And that it also isn't only your responsibility, because I want to... do the same for you. I want you to feel safe. I want you to believe that I can protect you, too.
[His words aren't so effortless, clearly struggling to be expressed.]
I'm less afraid of you hurting me than I am of hurting you. I know that you'll laugh, because wounds don't matter—not with your ability—but I don't want to do that. I never want to cause you pain, even by accident. You could tell, but I've done it before. I've tried to kill people who were important to me, because I was lost, and confused, and it seemed easier to... sever those connections than it did to live with them.
cw: (cy grab bag - war horrors/assault/trauma/suicide)
and then the words come, each one felt in an exhalation of breath against his chest, and some part of his mind goes eerily still, eerily blank. his body is a graveyard of many things — lost worlds beneath his skin, the whisper of sweet nothings of lovers, the sobbing terror of victims as they begged or pleaded or wept beneath him. he has not always known how to be kind, it was something he had to learn. re-learn, maybe, because the boy he used to be must have been so once. kulo vayn would not have delighted in turning his hand to cruelty if its seeds had already been planted in him. he would not have taken his chin in the prison of his mind and told him not to look away.
will he remember this moment, he wonders? in a thousand years, in ten? maybe it will live alongside takëthal cutting him down from a tree with the burn of rope around his throat and death seeming like it was only ever another gasping breath away.
fear has been part of him far longer than he's carried his name. it is a muted presence now, but never gone. yet for all his confidence and surety and grace, he is always, always afraid. of what he might become. what he might do. what he could lose. what horrors he has yet undiscovered he could inflict. he doubts he mastered every way of taking a person apart in a thousand years, that there must still be something left in him to learn. he fears the unknown span of time stretched out ahead of him, because one day he will wake up and the foundational tenets of what he holds dear and who he wants to be will be eroded out of his mind the way wind tears down mountains, and what follows that will burn worlds to ash and cinder.
he does not breathe as sasuke speaks. he feels the edge of pain when his lungs start to protest, and repair, and protest, and repair.
i'm less afraid of you hurting me than i am of hurting you. that's when he breathes in, a ragged inhalation that smells like the mild shampoo sasuke uses on his hair. ）
Okay.
（ he should say something back, he knows. something meaningful, that meets that kindness halfway instead of dragging it into himself the way one might seize a person by the hair and let their heels cut furrows in the dirt. ）
Ares.
the walking content warning that is cy
Unlike Cy, playing off how that reaction makes him feel is almost impossible. He is still new to safewords, so to him this signals only one thing. In trying to express the depth of what he is feeling he has managed to hurt Cy exactly as he didn't want to. He can't tell which of the words did it, but—that doesn't really matter.
At least he knows, having seen it demonstrated, what to do. Physically extracting himself from their embrace, Sasuke slides to the edge of the bed and faces away, seeking folded clothes to begin putting them back on in sharp, efficient movements. His voice is a murmur.]
Sorry.
🥲🥲🥲
（ he reaches for him, and catches him by the arm. hauls him back to the bed, back into the embrace. only this time, cy's pulled him onto his lap and has pressed his face into the hollow between sasuke's neck and shoulder. even wrung out, even ruined, he can manage this. his grasp is tight with a sort of desperation that's only seen in people clutching a lifeline. ）
I don't want you to leave. I just need a minute. Let me breathe. I'll explain.
no subject
I can wait. I'm here.
no subject
one final exhalation, and then: ）
You didn't do anything wrong here. And you didn't hurt me. You just caught me off guard in a way that doesn't play nice with something I haven't told you about yet, and that's not your fault. I need you to say those words, please. That it wasn't your fault.
（ his voice is a bruise. ）
no subject
The aching in his chest feels sore. He doesn't begrudge whatever secrets Cy is still keeping, when he has so many of his own yet unspoken.]
It wasn't my fault. [Surrendered with no effort, his hand roots around, seeking one of Cy's.] I know.
no subject
（ sasuke takes his hand, but cy is the one to wind their fingers together like a twist of old ivy. his fingers flex there. ）
What you said was one of the sweetest, kindest things anyone's ever told me. And I'd remember that. I will remember it, I'll hold onto that as long as I can. （ he can't make that same promise of forever, but it's what he has. ） And I appreciate the trust and the effort it took you to say it, and how contrary it runs to so many of the things you've learned in your life. I'm sorry it was met with a hurtful reaction, and I hope that won't stop you from speaking like that in the future.
（ he peels himself away from sasuke now, but it's only to press a kiss to his forehead. ）
Are you okay if I don't tell you right now? If you need to hear the full story I will, and it won't be a hardship. But if you're fine waiting, I think I just want to take a few days to think about it first. （ then, to further clarify: ） I'm not afraid of your reaction, or worried how you'll take what I have to say. It's — the messy part I mentioned earlier. That's what I know, I'm certain I've never told anyone before. I'm not really sure how.
no subject
[This he says with certainty. If it is so significant as to cause such a reaction in Cy, who has been nothing but steady and indomitable, he doesn't want to force it for his own sake.]
Later, we'll discuss it.
[There's no real hurry, in light of everything else. Even if there is that seed of fear in Sasuke—growing, steadily, alongside the tenuous feelings for this man—that he will wake up and Cy will be gone from his life.]
You deserve my patience. [After his own episodes of emotion, after the false starts, and still with his history bound up in a reluctant mind. In levity—] ... That toy, though. I'm not sure we'll ever use it at this point.
[Hah.]
no subject
（ he doesn't quite sound like his usual irreverent self, but at least his tone mostly matches sasuke's. ）
The Dildo Of Emotional Turmoil, whenever we're due to bust it out it just his us with psychic damage that makes us suffer.
（ he exhales, then, and skirts a hand along sasuke's midriff beneath that blue sweater. ）
I'm still up for it, though. Little detour into Traumatown never stopped me before. How're you feeling?
no subject
Only if you want to. [The hand on his midriff, like all of the man's touches, is as soothing as balm—a cat coaxed back to relaxation after all the tension of the previous moment.] As long as you stay here with me tonight.
[This is stated firmly, mind made up. He wants what he refused last time.]
I'm feeling fine.
no subject
Honestly, then, let's call it here. Sleeping on it would probably do me some good anyway. Plus, that means I get to wrap you up in that new blanket.
（ a thoughtful pause. then: ）
You cool with cuddling?
no subject
Yes.
[He thinks so—though there is a prickling sensitivity of emotion still in him, like fine static, he imagines it will always be here. And right now, he'd rather stay together than go separate ways.]
... I wasn't serious about the blanket. You didn't need to.
no subject
（ but he calls the bag up from beneath the bed, and gently extricates himself from sasuke so he can gesture him to open it.
actually. you know what? given the context they've gotten into over the last few hours, he shakes his head briefly to forestall him opening it just yet. ）
Though for the sake of little kittens, if orange is some kinda trigger for you tell me now so I can just swap that bad boy out. I will go blue.
no subject
[Echoed dumbly as Sasuke sits up on the bed, sweater pooling in his lap, eyes a little rounded. His expression... softens by degrees, grateful at least that Cy has warned him.]
It's not, but... [With a sigh, his hand slowly peels the bag open to extract the fluffy blanket, pulling it into his lap in a spill of plush fabric. His face changes—a tilt into melancholy.] It makes me think of him. Naruto.
It's a stupid color for a shinobi. Stealth was impossible, but he didn't care about that. He liked that it was bright. That he stood out.
no subject
（ he'd wanted to stay away from red and black for obvious reasons. maybe he should have gone with pink. (laughs in ooc.) ）
If you don't want the reminder around I can return it, it's okay.
no subject
[Shifting, Sasuke peels the sweater off of himself one-handed, draping it at the end of the bed. Then, naked once more, he wraps the blanket around his shoulders like a heavy cloak.]
I don't have much left of him, except for memories. [The hollow ache in wondering what happened to Naruto after the Netherworld continues to nag him—but that powerlessness can't be solved simply by wishing it away. He has to believe Naruto is all right.] Thank you.
no subject
（ the blanket is big — far bigger than the small bed, and there's plenty of room for two. sasuke strips naked again, and cy reaches for another corner of the blanket to drag around himself and sasuke closer at a consequence.
sleep may not come quick or easy, but when it does — he'll have slung an easy arm around the boy, keeping him tugged in against his chest. ）