（ his tone is soft, appreciative and warm even as he pushes back against sasuke's forward thrusts, steadying and regulating the rhythm with easy, practiced guidance. his other arm is halfly trapped beneath him, but not so much that he can't squirm about until he can hook his other hand against sasuke's elbow, thusly holding onto him by two points of contact as if he were something by which cy could anchor himself to the present. ）
Go ahead and bite me. It's okay if it's hard — healing, remember?
（ he peels sasuke's hand away from his chest, guides it upwards and kisses his hand along the path of calloused fingers to their tips. his grasp slips down to sasuke's wrist, and in a mirror of what he's done now with sasuke several times, he takes two of the boy's fingers into his mouth, a scrape of teeth against the rough knuckles, and hollows out his cheeks with a slow, sensual suck. ）
[The encouragement is a potent salve, steeping in his system as he's held onto, as focus slips into those blurry corners where pleasure takes over and he becomes almost mindless in his drive toward release, fucking Cy's thighs with that climbing need. My good boy — Sasuke feels like he becomes a little desperate hearing that, the ownership impressed upon that phrase soon writing itself under his skin until he's hot everywhere, aching, close to the edge.
New and sudden sensation of his fingers in Cy's mouth only uproots him further. It mimics how it feels to have Cy's lips around his cock, sucking at him skillfully; hips stutter in their rhythm, wound up in that dual wetness between Cy's legs and on his tongue.]
Cy... [ragged, obedient to the urge, wanting to mark Cy as much as he's been marked in turn — teeth dig down on flesh at the tender nape of a neck. A fierce pinch, messy and almost feral in his desire. He tastes the brief flavor of metal and salt before it's gone in the laving of a tongue, flesh healed in an instant. His breath pants humidly over the flawless spot. Frustration makes him bite again, though not so hard this time as to draw blood, voice bent out of his throat in a hoarse murmur.] Cy. I want you.
[Maybe he says it in French. Maybe it's translated. He can't tell, too bleary in those moments before orgasm, latched on desperately to Cy's body — and then coming, soaking Cy's thighs as that pace falters, slows, every muscle shivering.]
（ pain holds nothing for him — it's not a turn-on, it's not something that well and truly drives him. it doesn't put him in the moment or anchor him to his body. but — the difference here is the love. it's not a panacea, exactly. it doesn't act as a fulcrum upon which pain and pleasure balance. but it transmutes the meaning for him — a step back from pain viewed from the lens of a body that is built to take abuse, and into the realm of one for whom acts of service reign paramount. enduring it, ultimately, costs him nothing. but the twitching interest of his cock, half-stirred to arousal, is in spite of the ache and not because of it.
the bite heals, is soothed, is repeated without the same force, and cy closes his teeth against sasuke's fingers just a little. not a warning — just the physical act of acknowledgement, and when sasuke repeats the words in a dizzying jumble of language, intermarried utterance that starts french and ends japanese he makes a soft sound, a moan around the boy's fingers that feels like it was unmoored from behind his navel.
sasuke spills his release in a wet splatter between his thighs, and even here he's driven to overstimulate him, a firmer flex of his thighs as he shifts his hips obscenely, making sure that sasuke's softening cock is deliberately cradled by the mess.
he pulls sasuke's fingers from his mouth, kisses his knuckles, his palm, the pulse-point at his wrist. ）
Fuck me, you're so fucking hot. How'd that feel for you?
（ not just physically — but emotionally, psychologically. ）
[He resurfaces slowly from that haze past pleasure, rubbing his face against the warm skin at the back of Cy's neck — shuddering hard through the too-sensitive drag of wet friction across his cock as it softens in the shelter of thighs, a weak noise of unmeant protest. Cy's praise rolls over him, meted out with that physical affection across his knuckles, palm, wrist, each spot tingling where those kisses land.
Another aftershock jolts him, and he tries to pry himself from between Cy's legs before he's tormented further.]
I feel good. [And how far they've come, for him to state this so plainly. He feels connected, close to Cy, demonstrated in the nuzzling as his hand tries to slip lower down Cy's body, palm flat at the sternum and lower on the man's abdomen, fingers searching for his cock. It's a curious touch — but a desiring one, too, because he wants to make Cy feel as good as he does.] It's not fair, though. That I can't leave any marks on you the way you can with me.
[A petulant huff matches a tone implying no seriousness, because it's not Cy's fault.]
（ he lets sasuke withdraw with a soft laugh, and then just slings his arm backwards over the boy, the touch bracing more than restrictive. ）
I know, I know. Trust me, my kingdom for a hickey.
（ it's been all he's ever known for so long, he isn't sure if he ever grieved the lack of it or if the pervasive sadness of that lack of intimate connection is just something he carries on its own merits. he's considered on more than one occasion if his own love for leaving marks is due to the fact they can't be left on him in turn.
but that level of deep contemplation has meant that he's come up with a few ideas over the years.
sasuke gropes downward for his cock, which frees up his hand — it's an easy thing, then, to lift his arm up and bite the edge of his thumb bloody. from there, his left forearm is raised and with an effortless flourish he paints the character that sasuke so often uses to represent himself with on the network: 火 against the smooth skin of its inside.
the wound, of course, heals only moments after serving as an impromptu source of ink — but the blood lingers in a ruddy smear, and he holds his arm aloft, halfly over his shoulder to offer sasuke an order: ）
[Mismatched eyes snap to the bloody etching of a symbol almost as soon as Cy has begun to write it out, attention narrowed, watching. The effect it has on him is profound enough to make him utterly still, at once softened and inflamed by the gesture Cy demonstrates. There's little delay in his obedience; lips form a tight circle, blowing a thin stream of air over the blood to help it cool and stain in the drying.
Something settles in him, seeing the mark. He knows it will come off in their next shower. But it is more permanent than anything else he can leave on the man, and the fact that Cy has done it so readily for him engraves a deeper satisfaction. A more vibrant need temporarily met.
Mind decided, he sits upright and smoothly rearranges himself, nudging Cy onto a flat back and straddling the man's waist in a familiar perch. He is deliberate in sitting not across Cy's thighs, but higher, weight on Cy's hips — because he wants to feel Cy's cock tucked under the seat of his ass, even if it isn't fully hard. The intimacy and the suggestion are enough.
Then he lifts his right hand, teeth biting his own thumb with a quick and practiced gesture — the skin of that place has been bitten enough times to show scarring from it, but not too severely for how shallow a wound it is. Scrawled in a delicate smear, this time in the slope where Cy's ribs come together: うちは.]
（ he feels more than sees it, the narrowing of that focus like the apex of light in a pinhole camara that inverts the visible world. that inversion is still present in him when sasuke slings a leg over him and settles across his hips, a deliberate shift that slots his dick against the cleft of his ass. there's a heightening of interest that fills out his cock, and he drops a palm down against sasuke's thigh, pushing him in a soft, slow grind that's almost more casually than wilfully intimate.
his eyes, however, are on sasuke's, the contact broken only when the boy looks down and writes a series of characters in hiragana. the sentiment of it does not surprise him. it couldn't, after everything, but his breath does hitch faintly when he realizes what's written. there's something achingly soft in his expression, as if he were a man standing in a childhood home for the last time, knowing that when he steps across the threshold he will never return to all that was loved and lost within those walls.
but still, despite the gesture he still tuts faintly and reaches for sasuke's hand, laving the negligible hurt with his tongue. once he's satisfied, he doesn't quite let him escape — just slips his hand to the boy's wrist, encircling it with his own hand. his index finger and thumb overlap broadly, and even though sasuke is neither small nor delicate — dizzyingly — he seems so in the moment. then the moment is gone, and cy nuzzles in against his palm. ）
[He's caught in that look, bending beneath it like a reed in water to blow air across blood-marked skin without losing Cy's eyes. It should terrify him, that meaning — but he is too certain to feel anything but rightness, and the terror comes from recognition more than mere existence. As if to speak it will dash it away. Writing in this temporary way, perhaps, is safer, because they'll lose the evidence. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't once there: a private confession of sentiment he dares not say aloud.
Cy's tongue is wet over the miniscule wound, and then as the grip changes he cups a warm cheek and considers how to respond. What he's told Cy already has not carried much detail; he could say plenty about Konoha, its people, the Hokage. He could tell Cy what his world was like before his clan was wiped from the face of history in one broad stroke. Yet none of these feel true enough — the word home comes with an opaque sense of loss, and only now is he realizing why.]
It was lonely. [This is the truth.] After my clan was gone, the village officials left the compound — where we were living separated from the rest of the citizenry — intact. It was... a ghost town, or a graveyard, without any people. They cleared the bodies quickly but there were still signs of what happened everywhere. I visited often, but I didn't live there. I had a small apartment on my own. I went to school and I came back. Most days, I spoke to no one.
[His head droops forward, fringe of dark hair falling into his eyes as his gaze slips down Cy's body. He stares at those red characters, his own family name staring back.]
Eventually I left the village. And then there was a battle, and the compound was destroyed. When I saw it again, everything was buried in rubble, and I knew it wasn't going to be rebuilt. To me, it was... almost a kind of permanency, that those ruined structures wiped away the last evidence my clan was ever there at all.
I was in prison for a year after I returned. Once I was finally released, I couldn't stay. [His voice — falters at these words, some piece of vulnerability broken off as shoulders lose their shape and round slightly forward, unconsciously closer.] I no longer belonged. Everything was gone. I'm not certain that I had felt it was my home since I was eight years old. It was — Naruto. He was the only reason.
[It has weighed on him, this sense of responsibility. He's only alive because of Naruto. To protect that future Naruto had promised.]
... I don't know that I would go back now. [And this, his voice lowers to admit, tangled in shame.] I want to know that he's alive, and safe. But it isn't my home anymore.
（ he's weathered more heartbreak than this. but of those things he has the benefit of distance and time, and hearing this is raw in its newness to him and nearness to sasuke both. the words spill out of sasuke the way blood fountains from an arterial rupture, and he's a decade too late to have staunched it. now, he can only do little things: he pulls sasuke in against him until he's bent at the hips and flush against his chest with the name of a clan that's almost extinct cooling in the blood of its final scion between them.
it was lonely, he says. cy so very rarely reaches for anger, but it splinters at the shards of his awareness there. there were so many points of failure in his life, so many people who should have known better, so many hands that impressed only cruelty upon him. it's the first he's heard of jailed for a year, and the fucking marvel of sasuke being in any way sane, capable of expressing tenderness and care even sheltered in the space between them is — it's remarkable, but it's awful that it's remarkable because someone, at some point, should have fucking cared.
his arms lift, and close around sasuke's shoulders like the promise of a lock built to safeguard some precious wonder, and he just. holds him for a time, without trying to speak. existence is a strange spark of a thing when it is sheltered only between bodies, in breath and in blood. ）
[He folds himself in against Cy with no effort, starved for the security those arms provide in a way that is difficult to fully acknowledge. Easier to tuck his head in against Cy's shoulder, to smell the familiar scent of his skin and hair — and, slowly, to let go of the memories that have resurfaced with this retelling.
There's only one way to answer what Cy asks him then.]
I don't know. [As close as he is, he seems to try to be closer, pressing in tighter, those bloody characters sealed between them.] I thought I did. I would wander the world for some time and come to terms with myself, with being alive — I would atone, protect what Naruto had created after the war, and then I'd return. I'd find a woman. We would have children.
[Faltering, a stumble in the way his breath hitches.]
I don't believe that I want that anymore. But I don't know.
[The only thing he wants is here against him, and Sasuke's heart trips faster at the thought, too fearful. It's too heavy, means too much.]
[He understands the reference, but... he's afraid to agree to it. And it's so much easier to follow that fear than it is to seek calm beneath the kiss Cy presses to his neck.]
[His right hand slips up almost against his will, sliding into Cy's hair to cradle the man's head in at his shoulder, hiding the vulnerable expression that breaks across his own face.]
You don't know how long that will be. [Worse —] What if we don't have a choice? Either one of us could vanish tomorrow.
We wouldn't know how long it would be elsewhere, either.
（ one arm stays anchored, but his right hand lifts to cradle the back of sasuke's head very gently, curling into hair like an inkblot bled onto the night sky. ）
The only thing we're ever promised is an end. But for now we have each other. Right now means more than all the tomorrows left until the universe goes dark and cold and airless. And if one of us vanishes — I'm not saying it wouldn't hurt. It'd gut me to lose you. But I'm still better for having met you at all than I would have been alone.
Traitorously, the words come into his mind — and once they're affixed, he finds himself spiraling. He tells himself to do as Cy asked, to handle the knife, but the blade becomes loose and slippery in his fingers, and his grip fails, and it slices all the way down. Dark, viscous terror spills out from the wound. You don't understand, because he can't think of the moment, he can't think of today without tomorrow, and it won't only gut him to lose Cy. He doesn't know how it happened, how this man became so important to him or how he allowed it to slip beneath every barrier he's raised between himself and the world — but to be confronted with the idea of losing Cy hurts more than he expects. The sudden force of that emotion takes him by surprise, like a swift blow to the center of his chest.
How can Cy simply accept the future ending? No, of course he can, because he's had to. There's no choice for a person that has lived tens of thousands of years. The way it is is the way it is. Time will happen to him, eventually, and Sasuke will be gone from his memory. Cy has known this since the beginning. Sasuke thought he also knew this. Isn't it why he chose to ask for Cy's help? Yet in light of what they've discussed — home, and loneliness, and wanting — he is reminded that he has lost everything and everyone and he doesn't know that he can do it again. He doesn't know that it is possible without succumbing to the trench of his own self, a madness of despair built into every cell and fiber of his being. Wouldn't it be better to die than to have to live, again, alone?
It drowns him. His breaths come shorter, a panicked rhythm, and he struggles to escape Cy's arms in search of air, fumbling backward until he's managed to trip himself over the side of the bed and onto the floor where he curls up.]
this is so tame for an uchiha freakout he hasn't tried to sew bits of cy to his tiddy yet
（ the first moment of panic, he lets him go. he knew what he was asking, and what he'd offered, and what it would mean, and it costs him nothing to let his arms drop away. and when sasuke trips and drops to the floor and doesn't fucking move, cy just. lets his breath out in a soft gust, gathers up the blanket that has spent all this time rucked up along the edge of the bed.
he slips to the floor rather more gracefully to sit cross legged — his thighs still tacky with dried come that flakes away as he moves — and he throws the blanket over sasuke's shoulders and the tight curled ball of his body that has to be a holdover from childhood, an attempt at self-soothing that never quite brought comfort, and then just lets his hand rest over the blanket, against his shoulder. warmth and weight. ）
[The world careens out of his awareness to the bright, tinny noise in his ears, fear slurring senses and making everything feel unreal. His heart pounds dully, his hands sweat, his chest is tight. He knows all of these symptoms because he has felt them before — frequently in childhood and later only when he knew he was alone, when no one was watching.
Cy's voice comes through to him, and for a moment he doesn't know what the words mean. Then it centers; the practice, like coming down from a great height, begins to slow his pulse. Square breathing. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. He is aware of the blanket around his shoulders, and he reaches up to grasp it, pulling it like a shield, fumbling until he discovers where Cy has placed his hand and then trying to hold onto him through the fabric.
It takes time, but eventually — the panic recedes. But the emotion is still there, waiting for him, lurking like some monster under the floor. His voice drags out of his throat, threadbare.]
（ once the touch is accepted, cy takes it a step further — he just scoops sasuke directly into his lap, blanket and all. whether this is awkward or not, or an odd array of limbs or not seems to be well beyond his concern. ）
You won't, as long as it's in my power.
（ one hand slips below the blanket and catches at sasuke's hand at that desperate grasping fro him. just holding him. ）
You just experienced something called a panic attack. You're going to feel cold and thirsty just now, and a full body ache. Let's start with putting the focus on letting go of the tension in your body. Start with your hand in mind. Think about how warm my hand is, how good that feels, the individual places where your fingers are clenched on me. Relax them one at a time.
（ slowly, gently, he walks him through it. that slow uncurling. and when he's done, cy fetches a water and a couple of ibuprofen from the nightstand, offered out. ）
We're going to talk about this again later, okay? But for now just be present with me.
[He listens, docile in the hold as he's gathered up into Cy's lap — and to his own humiliation, he finds himself sheltering closer like a child in search of comfort. Panic attack, Cy tells him. A foreign phrase for a common enough phenomenon in his life.
Yet he tries, as always, to follow Cy's instruction. It's easy because Cy's hand is very warm; he can feel how their fingers thread together in a touch rapidly becoming a steady fixture of his life. He consciously attempts to loosen the clench of knuckles, until only the pressure of Cy's grip keeps their hands together. Then he considers how warm the rest of Cy is through the blanket, and how much he's come to enjoy pressing himself up against that center of heat, leanly carved muscle and smooth skin and the barest scrape of stubbling hair. For intimacy not only sexual, not only what this place demands of them — but for the mere security of a physical presence at his side.
When he's done, he thirsts and aches but he is not cold. Cy makes certain of that. The water is sipped, the pills taken.]
I want to stay with you tonight.
[It's a quiet voice, tone asking, but still a great leap from the last time they had discussed sharing space.]
Sweetheart, I was already planning on you staying.
（ sasuke curls closer, and cy makes room for him. his body language is easy, open, inviting, and anywhere sasuke presses in he carves out space. he puts his arms around him, and just leans against him, leaning slightly like a sheltering tree. ）
I want you here. I want you with me. And it doesn't bother me when you experience these feelings, okay? I get them too. That's just a knife I've had practice with.
[Finally the tension drains out of him like a sieve, and he's left more relaxed in Cy's arms — exhausted, a wound bled out to the cusp of what his body can contain. He cranes up to kiss Cy's jaw because he doesn't know how else to put into words what that reassurance means.]
Thank you. [...] I'd like to clean you up. I should have taken care of you, after what we did last.
[He wants to be better, for Cy. And perhaps there is a selfish element too, an act of service that will communicate what he feels naturally.]
You still can. There isn't some magical aftercare timer in the sky that starts counting down the second you jizz on somebody.
（ he shifts his grip on sasuke and stands with him, lifting him up with no sign of strain so he can return them to the bed. he puts sasuke closer to the wall, and just curls around him in a protective parenthesis, tucked into his negative spaces as he drags the soft lilac blanket over them both as if it could blot out the broader world. ）
But it's okay if you want to just stay like this for a while, too. You had a busy day. I came all over you, spanked you, we got kinda into rape play, we had a nice chat about breeding kink, and then I made you do all this emotional labour thinking about grief and loss and panic. That's some exhausting shit, and even if it hasn't hit you just yet, all of those things take a toll on you. No wonder you're worn thin emotionally. It's okay to rest. You feel safe like this?
[The ridiculous words, at first, coax a dry snort of laughter — one small sign he's returning to normal. Carried to the bed, he doesn't hesitate to entangle their legs once Cy has cocooned them into the plush fabric of the blanket. He can feel where blood and spend and lubricant has dried on Cy's body, but instead of discomfort it only heightens how close he feels to the man, as if establishing some tangible evidence of their connection no matter how temporary.]
Yes. I've said it before, but — I feel safer here with you than I have since I was a child. [In that tired state, he tries to be clear about his feelings, even if it rips him down to the wick of vulnerability in the process. With Cy, he knows at least the sentiment will be protected.] Yet it's strange. I know that I've always been capable of feeling deeply, but it's almost... more intense now. I don't know if it's because I've stopped fighting against it, as if by trying to relax I've lost some control over those emotions. I don't usually have such strong reactions. Not in front of other people.
[Speaking of what he feels seems to give it power; he shivers, hiking a leg up over both of Cy's in their embrace.]
Perhaps it's also because I'm used to communicating through battle alone.
Sex and sparring have a lot in common. They're both dialects of the same language.
（ he laces their hands, and lifts both up demonstrably. then he disentangles them and makes a fist to bump gently against sasuke's knuckles. ）
In sparring, you can express anger, loss, confidence, warmth, playfulness, solemnity, exhaustion, affection. Same thing in sex. As for the feelings... ah. Knives, but I've got you. Mind your breathing.
（ he captures sasuke's hand anew, and then brings it close so he can bite thoughtfully at one of his knuckles like a dog worrying at a toy. ）
If you look at the bond between two people as... give and take, ebb and flow... then emotions are something you pour into other people. It can be used to nourish them. It can be used to deepen a bond. It can be used to excise something from yourself. But what's important is the balance. I told you that sex isn't transactional because it isn't. Emotional resonance isn't transactional either — people need different things from others, and give different things from themselves. But if you can't stand somewhere close to equal with what's given, what's taken, it causes problems down the line. You give me a piece of cake and I give you a bag of chips — they're different things, but they are meeting a need we both have in giving and accepting and eating, you know? And they both express that we've been present, that we've paid attention, been mindful of each other. You took the bacon off that sandwich. I remembered you liked tomatoes.
（ a lot of people understand what dominance and submission are. they think that it creates an innate power imbalance that is held to viciously, ruthlessly. that one person is subjugated, and one the subjugator.
but the truth is, at its core, about exchange. about equality. and more than anything else, it's about trust. ）
You're not accustomed to connection. So your ability to regulate what you pour into others is lower than it would be with someone who's had more practice. But... if you want to talk in terms of metaphors, when you're with me, the vessel you're filling has higher capacity than most people. So you feel comfortable because I can take more, and I feel good because that expression of trust and intimacy, that demonstration of the ways you feel safe and how that safety expresses itself means a lot to me. It's normal to tip over into extreme emotion when you find someone that can take all of you unflinching. Especially since so much of your life has been lived lonely. But I told you I'd protect what you give me, and I meant it. The more you feel safe, the more the walls come down, and you've got a lot pent up. Here — （ his free hand squirms free from wherever it was pinned in the tangle of their bodies, and he taps against sasuke's chest, over the heart. ） and here. （ similarly, there's a soft little bonk against his forehead. ） So sometimes it's a flood. And that's okay. Notice how every time you feel these emotions, or you have these reactions, it gets easier? Less intense to stand? And how you're able to regulate a little more efficiently each time, right? That's because you're doing the work. It's not me, sweetheart. It's you, learning and growing and changing, developing ways to accept and understand and move forward from yourself.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
（ his tone is soft, appreciative and warm even as he pushes back against sasuke's forward thrusts, steadying and regulating the rhythm with easy, practiced guidance. his other arm is halfly trapped beneath him, but not so much that he can't squirm about until he can hook his other hand against sasuke's elbow, thusly holding onto him by two points of contact as if he were something by which cy could anchor himself to the present. ）
Go ahead and bite me. It's okay if it's hard — healing, remember?
（ he peels sasuke's hand away from his chest, guides it upwards and kisses his hand along the path of calloused fingers to their tips. his grasp slips down to sasuke's wrist, and in a mirror of what he's done now with sasuke several times, he takes two of the boy's fingers into his mouth, a scrape of teeth against the rough knuckles, and hollows out his cheeks with a slow, sensual suck. ）
no subject
New and sudden sensation of his fingers in Cy's mouth only uproots him further. It mimics how it feels to have Cy's lips around his cock, sucking at him skillfully; hips stutter in their rhythm, wound up in that dual wetness between Cy's legs and on his tongue.]
Cy... [ragged, obedient to the urge, wanting to mark Cy as much as he's been marked in turn — teeth dig down on flesh at the tender nape of a neck. A fierce pinch, messy and almost feral in his desire. He tastes the brief flavor of metal and salt before it's gone in the laving of a tongue, flesh healed in an instant. His breath pants humidly over the flawless spot. Frustration makes him bite again, though not so hard this time as to draw blood, voice bent out of his throat in a hoarse murmur.] Cy. I want you.
[Maybe he says it in French. Maybe it's translated. He can't tell, too bleary in those moments before orgasm, latched on desperately to Cy's body — and then coming, soaking Cy's thighs as that pace falters, slows, every muscle shivering.]
no subject
the bite heals, is soothed, is repeated without the same force, and cy closes his teeth against sasuke's fingers just a little. not a warning — just the physical act of acknowledgement, and when sasuke repeats the words in a dizzying jumble of language, intermarried utterance that starts french and ends japanese he makes a soft sound, a moan around the boy's fingers that feels like it was unmoored from behind his navel.
sasuke spills his release in a wet splatter between his thighs, and even here he's driven to overstimulate him, a firmer flex of his thighs as he shifts his hips obscenely, making sure that sasuke's softening cock is deliberately cradled by the mess.
he pulls sasuke's fingers from his mouth, kisses his knuckles, his palm, the pulse-point at his wrist. ）
Fuck me, you're so fucking hot. How'd that feel for you?
（ not just physically — but emotionally, psychologically. ）
no subject
Another aftershock jolts him, and he tries to pry himself from between Cy's legs before he's tormented further.]
I feel good. [And how far they've come, for him to state this so plainly. He feels connected, close to Cy, demonstrated in the nuzzling as his hand tries to slip lower down Cy's body, palm flat at the sternum and lower on the man's abdomen, fingers searching for his cock. It's a curious touch — but a desiring one, too, because he wants to make Cy feel as good as he does.] It's not fair, though. That I can't leave any marks on you the way you can with me.
[A petulant huff matches a tone implying no seriousness, because it's not Cy's fault.]
I want everyone to know you're mine.
no subject
I know, I know. Trust me, my kingdom for a hickey.
（ it's been all he's ever known for so long, he isn't sure if he ever grieved the lack of it or if the pervasive sadness of that lack of intimate connection is just something he carries on its own merits. he's considered on more than one occasion if his own love for leaving marks is due to the fact they can't be left on him in turn.
but that level of deep contemplation has meant that he's come up with a few ideas over the years.
sasuke gropes downward for his cock, which frees up his hand — it's an easy thing, then, to lift his arm up and bite the edge of his thumb bloody. from there, his left forearm is raised and with an effortless flourish he paints the character that sasuke so often uses to represent himself with on the network: 火 against the smooth skin of its inside.
the wound, of course, heals only moments after serving as an impromptu source of ink — but the blood lingers in a ruddy smear, and he holds his arm aloft, halfly over his shoulder to offer sasuke an order: ）
Blow.
no subject
Something settles in him, seeing the mark. He knows it will come off in their next shower. But it is more permanent than anything else he can leave on the man, and the fact that Cy has done it so readily for him engraves a deeper satisfaction. A more vibrant need temporarily met.
Mind decided, he sits upright and smoothly rearranges himself, nudging Cy onto a flat back and straddling the man's waist in a familiar perch. He is deliberate in sitting not across Cy's thighs, but higher, weight on Cy's hips — because he wants to feel Cy's cock tucked under the seat of his ass, even if it isn't fully hard. The intimacy and the suggestion are enough.
Then he lifts his right hand, teeth biting his own thumb with a quick and practiced gesture — the skin of that place has been bitten enough times to show scarring from it, but not too severely for how shallow a wound it is. Scrawled in a delicate smear, this time in the slope where Cy's ribs come together: うちは.]
no subject
his eyes, however, are on sasuke's, the contact broken only when the boy looks down and writes a series of characters in hiragana. the sentiment of it does not surprise him. it couldn't, after everything, but his breath does hitch faintly when he realizes what's written. there's something achingly soft in his expression, as if he were a man standing in a childhood home for the last time, knowing that when he steps across the threshold he will never return to all that was loved and lost within those walls.
but still, despite the gesture he still tuts faintly and reaches for sasuke's hand, laving the negligible hurt with his tongue. once he's satisfied, he doesn't quite let him escape — just slips his hand to the boy's wrist, encircling it with his own hand. his index finger and thumb overlap broadly, and even though sasuke is neither small nor delicate — dizzyingly — he seems so in the moment. then the moment is gone, and cy nuzzles in against his palm. ）
Tell me about your home.
no subject
Cy's tongue is wet over the miniscule wound, and then as the grip changes he cups a warm cheek and considers how to respond. What he's told Cy already has not carried much detail; he could say plenty about Konoha, its people, the Hokage. He could tell Cy what his world was like before his clan was wiped from the face of history in one broad stroke. Yet none of these feel true enough — the word home comes with an opaque sense of loss, and only now is he realizing why.]
It was lonely. [This is the truth.] After my clan was gone, the village officials left the compound — where we were living separated from the rest of the citizenry — intact. It was... a ghost town, or a graveyard, without any people. They cleared the bodies quickly but there were still signs of what happened everywhere. I visited often, but I didn't live there. I had a small apartment on my own. I went to school and I came back. Most days, I spoke to no one.
[His head droops forward, fringe of dark hair falling into his eyes as his gaze slips down Cy's body. He stares at those red characters, his own family name staring back.]
Eventually I left the village. And then there was a battle, and the compound was destroyed. When I saw it again, everything was buried in rubble, and I knew it wasn't going to be rebuilt. To me, it was... almost a kind of permanency, that those ruined structures wiped away the last evidence my clan was ever there at all.
I was in prison for a year after I returned. Once I was finally released, I couldn't stay. [His voice — falters at these words, some piece of vulnerability broken off as shoulders lose their shape and round slightly forward, unconsciously closer.] I no longer belonged. Everything was gone. I'm not certain that I had felt it was my home since I was eight years old. It was — Naruto. He was the only reason.
[It has weighed on him, this sense of responsibility. He's only alive because of Naruto. To protect that future Naruto had promised.]
... I don't know that I would go back now. [And this, his voice lowers to admit, tangled in shame.] I want to know that he's alive, and safe. But it isn't my home anymore.
no subject
it was lonely, he says. cy so very rarely reaches for anger, but it splinters at the shards of his awareness there. there were so many points of failure in his life, so many people who should have known better, so many hands that impressed only cruelty upon him. it's the first he's heard of jailed for a year, and the fucking marvel of sasuke being in any way sane, capable of expressing tenderness and care even sheltered in the space between them is — it's remarkable, but it's awful that it's remarkable because someone, at some point, should have fucking cared.
his arms lift, and close around sasuke's shoulders like the promise of a lock built to safeguard some precious wonder, and he just. holds him for a time, without trying to speak. existence is a strange spark of a thing when it is sheltered only between bodies, in breath and in blood. ）
So, tell me about the one you'd like to build.
（ not what was. what is, what could be. ）
no subject
There's only one way to answer what Cy asks him then.]
I don't know. [As close as he is, he seems to try to be closer, pressing in tighter, those bloody characters sealed between them.] I thought I did. I would wander the world for some time and come to terms with myself, with being alive — I would atone, protect what Naruto had created after the war, and then I'd return. I'd find a woman. We would have children.
[Faltering, a stumble in the way his breath hitches.]
I don't believe that I want that anymore. But I don't know.
[The only thing he wants is here against him, and Sasuke's heart trips faster at the thought, too fearful. It's too heavy, means too much.]
no subject
he turns just enough to kiss the side of sasuke's neck, over the shivering sluice of blood there, steady as a drumline. ）
Hey, you wanna handle a knife for me?
（ yes this is clearly code. ）
no subject
I'll — try. How?
no subject
（ it's an entreaty. soft as the slip of dawn across the mountains, where the mist is so dense it casts shadows. ）
What you want, I mean.
no subject
You don't know how long that will be. [Worse —] What if we don't have a choice? Either one of us could vanish tomorrow.
[A thought enough to torment him frequently.]
no subject
（ one arm stays anchored, but his right hand lifts to cradle the back of sasuke's head very gently, curling into hair like an inkblot bled onto the night sky. ）
The only thing we're ever promised is an end. But for now we have each other. Right now means more than all the tomorrows left until the universe goes dark and cold and airless. And if one of us vanishes — I'm not saying it wouldn't hurt. It'd gut me to lose you. But I'm still better for having met you at all than I would have been alone.
we were overdue a freakout i guess
Traitorously, the words come into his mind — and once they're affixed, he finds himself spiraling. He tells himself to do as Cy asked, to handle the knife, but the blade becomes loose and slippery in his fingers, and his grip fails, and it slices all the way down. Dark, viscous terror spills out from the wound. You don't understand, because he can't think of the moment, he can't think of today without tomorrow, and it won't only gut him to lose Cy. He doesn't know how it happened, how this man became so important to him or how he allowed it to slip beneath every barrier he's raised between himself and the world — but to be confronted with the idea of losing Cy hurts more than he expects. The sudden force of that emotion takes him by surprise, like a swift blow to the center of his chest.
How can Cy simply accept the future ending? No, of course he can, because he's had to. There's no choice for a person that has lived tens of thousands of years. The way it is is the way it is. Time will happen to him, eventually, and Sasuke will be gone from his memory. Cy has known this since the beginning. Sasuke thought he also knew this. Isn't it why he chose to ask for Cy's help? Yet in light of what they've discussed — home, and loneliness, and wanting — he is reminded that he has lost everything and everyone and he doesn't know that he can do it again. He doesn't know that it is possible without succumbing to the trench of his own self, a madness of despair built into every cell and fiber of his being. Wouldn't it be better to die than to have to live, again, alone?
It drowns him. His breaths come shorter, a panicked rhythm, and he struggles to escape Cy's arms in search of air, fumbling backward until he's managed to trip himself over the side of the bed and onto the floor where he curls up.]
this is so tame for an uchiha freakout he hasn't tried to sew bits of cy to his tiddy yet
he slips to the floor rather more gracefully to sit cross legged — his thighs still tacky with dried come that flakes away as he moves — and he throws the blanket over sasuke's shoulders and the tight curled ball of his body that has to be a holdover from childhood, an attempt at self-soothing that never quite brought comfort, and then just lets his hand rest over the blanket, against his shoulder. warmth and weight. ）
Breathe the way I taught you.
i mean. i guess i can put that on the list.
Cy's voice comes through to him, and for a moment he doesn't know what the words mean. Then it centers; the practice, like coming down from a great height, begins to slow his pulse. Square breathing. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. He is aware of the blanket around his shoulders, and he reaches up to grasp it, pulling it like a shield, fumbling until he discovers where Cy has placed his hand and then trying to hold onto him through the fabric.
It takes time, but eventually — the panic recedes. But the emotion is still there, waiting for him, lurking like some monster under the floor. His voice drags out of his throat, threadbare.]
I can't lose you too.
no subject
You won't, as long as it's in my power.
（ one hand slips below the blanket and catches at sasuke's hand at that desperate grasping fro him. just holding him. ）
You just experienced something called a panic attack. You're going to feel cold and thirsty just now, and a full body ache. Let's start with putting the focus on letting go of the tension in your body. Start with your hand in mind. Think about how warm my hand is, how good that feels, the individual places where your fingers are clenched on me. Relax them one at a time.
（ slowly, gently, he walks him through it. that slow uncurling. and when he's done, cy fetches a water and a couple of ibuprofen from the nightstand, offered out. ）
We're going to talk about this again later, okay? But for now just be present with me.
no subject
Yet he tries, as always, to follow Cy's instruction. It's easy because Cy's hand is very warm; he can feel how their fingers thread together in a touch rapidly becoming a steady fixture of his life. He consciously attempts to loosen the clench of knuckles, until only the pressure of Cy's grip keeps their hands together. Then he considers how warm the rest of Cy is through the blanket, and how much he's come to enjoy pressing himself up against that center of heat, leanly carved muscle and smooth skin and the barest scrape of stubbling hair. For intimacy not only sexual, not only what this place demands of them — but for the mere security of a physical presence at his side.
When he's done, he thirsts and aches but he is not cold. Cy makes certain of that. The water is sipped, the pills taken.]
I want to stay with you tonight.
[It's a quiet voice, tone asking, but still a great leap from the last time they had discussed sharing space.]
no subject
（ sasuke curls closer, and cy makes room for him. his body language is easy, open, inviting, and anywhere sasuke presses in he carves out space. he puts his arms around him, and just leans against him, leaning slightly like a sheltering tree. ）
I want you here. I want you with me. And it doesn't bother me when you experience these feelings, okay? I get them too. That's just a knife I've had practice with.
no subject
Thank you. [...] I'd like to clean you up. I should have taken care of you, after what we did last.
[He wants to be better, for Cy. And perhaps there is a selfish element too, an act of service that will communicate what he feels naturally.]
cw: rape-play mention
（ he shifts his grip on sasuke and stands with him, lifting him up with no sign of strain so he can return them to the bed. he puts sasuke closer to the wall, and just curls around him in a protective parenthesis, tucked into his negative spaces as he drags the soft lilac blanket over them both as if it could blot out the broader world. ）
But it's okay if you want to just stay like this for a while, too. You had a busy day. I came all over you, spanked you, we got kinda into rape play, we had a nice chat about breeding kink, and then I made you do all this emotional labour thinking about grief and loss and panic. That's some exhausting shit, and even if it hasn't hit you just yet, all of those things take a toll on you. No wonder you're worn thin emotionally. It's okay to rest. You feel safe like this?
no subject
Yes. I've said it before, but — I feel safer here with you than I have since I was a child. [In that tired state, he tries to be clear about his feelings, even if it rips him down to the wick of vulnerability in the process. With Cy, he knows at least the sentiment will be protected.] Yet it's strange. I know that I've always been capable of feeling deeply, but it's almost... more intense now. I don't know if it's because I've stopped fighting against it, as if by trying to relax I've lost some control over those emotions. I don't usually have such strong reactions. Not in front of other people.
[Speaking of what he feels seems to give it power; he shivers, hiking a leg up over both of Cy's in their embrace.]
Perhaps it's also because I'm used to communicating through battle alone.
no subject
（ he laces their hands, and lifts both up demonstrably. then he disentangles them and makes a fist to bump gently against sasuke's knuckles. ）
In sparring, you can express anger, loss, confidence, warmth, playfulness, solemnity, exhaustion, affection. Same thing in sex. As for the feelings... ah. Knives, but I've got you. Mind your breathing.
（ he captures sasuke's hand anew, and then brings it close so he can bite thoughtfully at one of his knuckles like a dog worrying at a toy. ）
If you look at the bond between two people as... give and take, ebb and flow... then emotions are something you pour into other people. It can be used to nourish them. It can be used to deepen a bond. It can be used to excise something from yourself. But what's important is the balance. I told you that sex isn't transactional because it isn't. Emotional resonance isn't transactional either — people need different things from others, and give different things from themselves. But if you can't stand somewhere close to equal with what's given, what's taken, it causes problems down the line. You give me a piece of cake and I give you a bag of chips — they're different things, but they are meeting a need we both have in giving and accepting and eating, you know? And they both express that we've been present, that we've paid attention, been mindful of each other. You took the bacon off that sandwich. I remembered you liked tomatoes.
（ a lot of people understand what dominance and submission are. they think that it creates an innate power imbalance that is held to viciously, ruthlessly. that one person is subjugated, and one the subjugator.
but the truth is, at its core, about exchange. about equality. and more than anything else, it's about trust. ）
You're not accustomed to connection. So your ability to regulate what you pour into others is lower than it would be with someone who's had more practice. But... if you want to talk in terms of metaphors, when you're with me, the vessel you're filling has higher capacity than most people. So you feel comfortable because I can take more, and I feel good because that expression of trust and intimacy, that demonstration of the ways you feel safe and how that safety expresses itself means a lot to me. It's normal to tip over into extreme emotion when you find someone that can take all of you unflinching. Especially since so much of your life has been lived lonely. But I told you I'd protect what you give me, and I meant it. The more you feel safe, the more the walls come down, and you've got a lot pent up. Here — （ his free hand squirms free from wherever it was pinned in the tangle of their bodies, and he taps against sasuke's chest, over the heart. ） and here. （ similarly, there's a soft little bonk against his forehead. ） So sometimes it's a flood. And that's okay. Notice how every time you feel these emotions, or you have these reactions, it gets easier? Less intense to stand? And how you're able to regulate a little more efficiently each time, right? That's because you're doing the work. It's not me, sweetheart. It's you, learning and growing and changing, developing ways to accept and understand and move forward from yourself.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)