（ he does still, quelling the movement, riding out the haptic clench and release of his body, waiting for the wave to pass. the state of sasuke's cock, and its messy, gleaming smear tells one story, but those words entirely another. in a soft tone — instructive, he murmurs, ）
'Not bad' isn't 'good'.
（ a learned behaviour, clearly. getting sasuke to give an honest answer, an affirmation of any positive experience or feeling, is going to have to be unpacked by degrees. the same way his body is calibrated to tolerate torture more than touch, his mind is similarly primed. is it that not bad diminishes an implicit burden, or expresses a capability to endure? that complaints have long been ignored or overridden by stronger personalities, louder calls to action?
who the fuck has ever listened to this kid? the way he makes himself small, unapproachable, the way he turns his face to guard himself against his own pleasure, as if to risk seeing it means a complete revocation of the strength that's clearly, until this point, kept him alive?
cy leans in and kisses him again, slow and easy. almost chaste, comparatively, the slip of his tongue rather less an intrusion now than the press of a musician's fingers. ）
I don't want to give you 'not bad'. To me, that's pretty well near a 'slow down' — it's going to make me think that something's uncomfortable or pinched or you're putting up with something that could be better for you. You don't have to say it's amazing, and you don't need to feel amazing — it takes some adjusting. But if you want me to trust what you're saying, and act on that, you need to trust me enough to be honest. Sweetheart, I will guard your feelings fiercely — but they need to be communicated.
[At first, the instruction doesn't make sense to him.
It feels like—criticism. Even in the gentle, constructive tone, it feels like a correction to an error he's made, an overwhelming judgment on what he had thought was honest. The wrack of a shiver outside pleasure and somewhere on the plane of just emotional takes hold of him. His hand tightens over Cy's reflexively, for the pressure of it, grasping the physical anchor against an unknown storm that's swept into his mind.
The kiss is gentle, as soothing as the words. Sweetheart comes again, carried on the back of a promise of protection that almost hollows him out completely.
A whisper, then, coming a little thick in his throat.]
（ is the first, immediate response. gently, he eases back. fingers removed, hand wiped on the towel. the lube is set aside, and he lets sasuke's leg down in a controlled, careful descent from where his forearm had it pinned, arm staying hooked at the knee until the angle's more awkward than it is helpful. ）
Mental space or physical space?
（ aka do you need him to shut up and hold you, or do you need him to stop touching you and talk? ）
[His first instinct is to say, I don't know. But he tries doing what Cy has already taught him once before by breathing, even if the count is sloppy, less careful in the swollen state of that sudden and unexpected emotionality.]
Don't leave. [Which maybe isn't even what Cy meant, but—it's what comes out of his mouth when he hears that. "Physical space." As if he'll turn and Cy will be gone from the room in a wispy, malevolent crackle of energy. The hand fastened over those fingers doesn't ease; its grip only seems tighter, desperate.] ... Your voice. I want to hear it.
[It's okay if Cy talks. It might even be better to listen to its drawling cadence as he unravels whatever it is he's just felt, this painful blockage in his chest.]
cw: ... there's a lot here. suicide?? cannibalism?? lmao
（ he adjusts his position just slightly, slinging one clothed leg over sasuke's bare one, letting his right arm rest across his chest. the left stays where it is, tangled in the snare of a lifeline that he recognizes perhaps all too well. he tucks himself in so there's no room between them for so much as a shadow, and then he starts to speak. it's the first thing that comes to mind. sasuke had spoken of a place that was green and growing, and cy had spoken of deserts, but now his mind shifts to water, still and tranquil. ）
When I was new, （ he says, as if that means something. as if it means anything. as if it's at all an explanation of what he was when that old man took him in. perhaps he was new, or at least ravaged by newness, sensation and thought and feelings he couldn't articulate then. he was half feral, fully wild, had lived on unspeakable things down in the catacombs for how long he still can't say. less a person than a thing, cracking open amphorae for wine gone to vinegar and mouldering baskets for bread long ossified by time. he hadn't known then, why he couldn't fucking die. he'd tried every possible way. ） I lived in a little cabin near a lake, with a man named Takëthal. （ his pronunciation is careful, tak-eh-tal. as if this is a precious thing, something that has lived wrapped in silks and nestled away somewhere sacred, to be only sparingly given over to the light of the day, as if it's eroded by presentation alone. he has fought for that name, for the scraps of that person, that past. he has fought so long and so hard and he is tired of that fight, but he hasn't quit yet. ） He was a fisherman. I used to sleep under his porch, no joke. He'd leave food out. Sometimes he'd ask for my help with a haul. I was so fucking angry, then. Violent. I didn't know how to talk, but I could listen. I learned. It took me years to become a person again. I don't know how long I had with him. It's weird to think of him like a dad, I'd already lived over a millennia by then, and he was just — mortal. But it felt that way, like he was the father of who I became. I found peace there. （ almost pensively — ） I remember crying over the fish. I didn't want them to die.
（ it hadn't bothered him until it did. one morning, clear as the knife's edge of daylight, he'd been helping the old man clean his catch, and he'd split open a little trout with a bellyful of eggs and it had broken something in him. he doesn't remember sobbing half so much as being held. ）
He's the one that named me. Cyram means 'summer's dawn'. Doesn't matter which world I go to, what the language is, what the culture is. I've changed my last name a million times. Maybe more than that. But my first name's always been Cyram.
[He closes his eyes to listen, noticing when the rhythm of Cyram's voice alters as he goes into the story of Takëthal—a name spoken so tenderly, so carefully that it rests in the air like an incantation, reaching back for a ghost and pulling it into a slant of light for moments before it is painstakingly returned to the dark. It occurs to him that Cyram's patchwork memory has preserved this fragment of a past exactly because of its significance. So he can fight, too, for what matters to him, enough to dig in the effort of recollection against all the odds of a ruined mind.
Sasuke doesn't know how long he'll be alive. A fraction of the time Cyram has spent in existence, less than the flicker of an eye, less than a blade of grass on a whole planet. Yet he determines, then, to remember Takëthal for as long as he's living. So if one day it should slip from Cyram's grasp, at least Sasuke can give it back to him.]
You changed the language you were speaking in.
[An observation in a voice that emerges quietly between them, low and thoughtful beneath the spell that Cyram has woven over him. The weight of an arm, the hook of a leg. An ease of physicality as he's never shared with anyone, not a parent. Not a teammate. Not even Naruto. Because this is too—gentle, the way Cyram holds him and tells him about the genesis of his name.]
'Cyram'. He chose well. [A mortal father, a fisherman. The image of it is easy, like the cabin and the lake, like the porch. The dying fish.] It's warm. It reminds me of the way it feels when I'm listening to you.
[A shudder, and finally the release, emotion let out like a river in the stream of his breath. His eyes open.]
（ the comment about his language makes him pause. truthfully, language has always come easy to him wherever he goes. most recently in toronto it's been english, french, mandarin — he likes the way urdu sounds on his tongue, the way the syllables fold in easy. but here, with the translations in play, he's stopped thinking about it, trying to hold onto one particular language, and just gone with whatever feels natural in the moment.
it's probably making him lazy.
but chiskikani is, in many ways, his mother tongue. ）
It's called Chiskikani. The language.
（ and he remembers that, too. for what it's worth. ）
You don't have to apologize. Nothing you did was anything that needs to be forgiven. （ he squeezes sasuke's hand, gently. ） You did the right thing asking me to stop. Thank you. （ very deliberately, he leans across him and kisses at his fingers, turning his own hand to present sasuke's on top. ） It's normal to feel overwhelmed, or to have certain actions or words hit harder than you might have thought or even understand. Did I say anything that needs to be addressed?
[Notably, he says this aloud to mimic and test pronunciation, but not Takëthal. That name is reserved for the sanctity of Cyram's memory. It can rest in the dark again now.]
I can't say for certain. I'm not used to... [his fingers twitch under Cy's lips, each press soothing] this communication. What I want, but even more what I feel. Emotions are dangerous for me. I want to tell you the whole story, but not right now. It's long. Complicated. You should still know that they affect me more than a normal individual, and those emotions also influence the power that I possess. It's part of my blood—my clan, the Uchiha. We call it our kekkei genkai. You've seen it in my eyes.
[His head turns, dark hair tickling against Cy's cheek as he shifts to look at him, to be open.]
It was when you said that you would guard my feelings. I responded to that.
（ that hair tickles, and he responds to it by rubbing his cheek against sasuke's shoulder, not willing to mobilize a hand to the task. ）
Ah, （ is the first acknowledging sound. it's pensive, considering. without even being aware of it, his right hand sketches little nonsense symbols against sasuke's side where those ribs are no longer quite so worryingly prominent as they'd been before. sasuke looks at him, unbidden and without direction, clearly trying, and it takes him fully a moment to gather himself after that. because he knows it's an effort. he knows it's excoriation. and still, the kid does it anyway — because cy's demonstrated his preference, and sasuke is doing his best to match it.
it earns him another kiss, pressed against the bridge of his nose. ） I can understand that.
（ empathy swells the way a musical crescendo cuts the air, but he exhales steady. ）
Two things. First — tell me the story when you're ready, when you want to, and not a minute before, okay? Time, place, whether you write it out or say it, whether you can look at me or not, whether you want to be touched or not — hundred percent your choice. You can change your mind later too and never tell me, that's fine — you don't owe me knowledge of you. But if you still want to, later, I'll listen. I already know it's going to be hard to say, and hard to hear.
（ every new nuance of trauma he trips over has driven that horribly home. ）
Second, let's get you cleaned up and put everything away. I can leave if you want space, or I can stay here if you want company. If you want me to stay, I'd love to just sleep with you just like this. （ a little pat against his side, indicating their entwined position. ） You can get dressed （ a little tug against that shirt, so far still rucked up under the kid's armpits. ） or I can get naked, or we can stay like this. Up to you.
[The emotional expense has left him drained, raw, but not in any way that allows regret to lie. It feels clear and washed out, clean. It's how he felt last time too with Cy, a sudden calm clarity beneath all of the difficulty of new experience, of learning behaviors, of confronting his own trained responses. He doesn't know if it will ever be easy, but he doesn't mind that.
It is those kisses that still continue to uproot him, no matter how many times Cy presses them to his skin. Those effortless little expressions of physical affection are so foreign, so unbelievable, a part of him doesn't want to get used to them. To take them for granted.
Sasuke listens, nodding by the end.]
I want to see you naked. [There's interest in the turn of his eyes, curiosity dwelling in a young face.] But I also don't want to give up on this. If I'm going to be here, I need to learn how to do these things. [Brutally pragmatic. He understood the point of Cy gifting him that box, it seems.] Can we try again later?
Of course we can. None of this has to be one and done unless you want it to be. I'm easy.
（ for a moment, the demi-embrace tightens — reassurance melting into absence as he scoots back off the bed and stands up. first, the box of cleaning supplies is retrieved a second time and set within sasuke's easy reach, and then cy strips without ceremony out of his own clothes. it's more mindful of sasuke's space than of his own preferences that the articles are folded neatly and set aside before he clambers back into the narrow bed.
there's a sort of ease to his nudity — neither shy nor showing off, no more self-conscious now than when he was clothed, that carries over into an effortless grace. most notably about him, perhaps, is that his body is entirely unscarred, nothing that would speak to any trauma, nothing that would ever denote pain. an impeccable canvas that conceals an almost monstrous truth.
he wears that lack carelessly, and well. almost too well.
but on his return to the bed, he doesn't quite resume his position — both because of the necessary clean-up that has to occur, and because he's entirely conscious of the fact this is the first time sasuke's probably ever seen another man naked in this particular context. the same bed, on the heels of a sexual act even if left uncompleted. the faint, acrid smell of arousal still in the close, stuffy air of the tiny room like a hazy, erotic overlay. but his earlier interest is clearly subsided, and his cock hangs flaccid against a backdrop of intermittently groomed hair (mostly, when he remembers. or when he cares.) as he lounges on his side, back against the wall, buying precious inches between them. but there's no real sense of shamelessness, nothing suggestive in pose or posture. he's just present.
regardless of what sasuke's doing or has chosen to do on the topic of clean-up, he grabs one of the wet wipes as well and dabs at the boy's stomach to erase the evidence of unfinished orgasm. it's not quite as utilitarian as the last time, getting him tidied before sasuke slipped below the leylines of genuine exhaustion, this contact is less almost medically sterile and more companionable, affection palpable even in the lingering stroke of the wipes. ）
Look, it's normal to have some false starts, too. You don't have to feel bad about that. Trust me when I say I'd rather get halfway there with you a hundred times and have you feel comfortable enough to call it off than fuck you once when you aren't into it. You said you'd look after me too — that's how you do it. So, thank you for that.
（ a bit of a shrug. ）
If it would help you to try anything out on me first, you can. I wanna stress the help part — don't do it because you think you owe me or I need it, that ain't it. I am always down to clown, but my interest begins and ends with my partner's. It's just easier sometimes, and it's an option if you're into it.
[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.]
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no subject
'Not bad' isn't 'good'.
（ a learned behaviour, clearly. getting sasuke to give an honest answer, an affirmation of any positive experience or feeling, is going to have to be unpacked by degrees. the same way his body is calibrated to tolerate torture more than touch, his mind is similarly primed. is it that not bad diminishes an implicit burden, or expresses a capability to endure? that complaints have long been ignored or overridden by stronger personalities, louder calls to action?
who the fuck has ever listened to this kid? the way he makes himself small, unapproachable, the way he turns his face to guard himself against his own pleasure, as if to risk seeing it means a complete revocation of the strength that's clearly, until this point, kept him alive?
cy leans in and kisses him again, slow and easy. almost chaste, comparatively, the slip of his tongue rather less an intrusion now than the press of a musician's fingers. ）
I don't want to give you 'not bad'. To me, that's pretty well near a 'slow down' — it's going to make me think that something's uncomfortable or pinched or you're putting up with something that could be better for you. You don't have to say it's amazing, and you don't need to feel amazing — it takes some adjusting. But if you want me to trust what you're saying, and act on that, you need to trust me enough to be honest. Sweetheart, I will guard your feelings fiercely — but they need to be communicated.
no subject
It feels like—criticism. Even in the gentle, constructive tone, it feels like a correction to an error he's made, an overwhelming judgment on what he had thought was honest. The wrack of a shiver outside pleasure and somewhere on the plane of just emotional takes hold of him. His hand tightens over Cy's reflexively, for the pressure of it, grasping the physical anchor against an unknown storm that's swept into his mind.
The kiss is gentle, as soothing as the words. Sweetheart comes again, carried on the back of a promise of protection that almost hollows him out completely.
A whisper, then, coming a little thick in his throat.]
Pineapple.
no subject
（ is the first, immediate response. gently, he eases back. fingers removed, hand wiped on the towel. the lube is set aside, and he lets sasuke's leg down in a controlled, careful descent from where his forearm had it pinned, arm staying hooked at the knee until the angle's more awkward than it is helpful. ）
Mental space or physical space?
（ aka do you need him to shut up and hold you, or do you need him to stop touching you and talk? ）
no subject
Don't leave. [Which maybe isn't even what Cy meant, but—it's what comes out of his mouth when he hears that. "Physical space." As if he'll turn and Cy will be gone from the room in a wispy, malevolent crackle of energy. The hand fastened over those fingers doesn't ease; its grip only seems tighter, desperate.] ... Your voice. I want to hear it.
[It's okay if Cy talks. It might even be better to listen to its drawling cadence as he unravels whatever it is he's just felt, this painful blockage in his chest.]
cw: ... there's a lot here. suicide?? cannibalism?? lmao
（ he adjusts his position just slightly, slinging one clothed leg over sasuke's bare one, letting his right arm rest across his chest. the left stays where it is, tangled in the snare of a lifeline that he recognizes perhaps all too well. he tucks himself in so there's no room between them for so much as a shadow, and then he starts to speak. it's the first thing that comes to mind. sasuke had spoken of a place that was green and growing, and cy had spoken of deserts, but now his mind shifts to water, still and tranquil. ）
When I was new, （ he says, as if that means something. as if it means anything. as if it's at all an explanation of what he was when that old man took him in. perhaps he was new, or at least ravaged by newness, sensation and thought and feelings he couldn't articulate then. he was half feral, fully wild, had lived on unspeakable things down in the catacombs for how long he still can't say. less a person than a thing, cracking open amphorae for wine gone to vinegar and mouldering baskets for bread long ossified by time. he hadn't known then, why he couldn't fucking die. he'd tried every possible way. ） I lived in a little cabin near a lake, with a man named Takëthal. （ his pronunciation is careful, tak-eh-tal. as if this is a precious thing, something that has lived wrapped in silks and nestled away somewhere sacred, to be only sparingly given over to the light of the day, as if it's eroded by presentation alone. he has fought for that name, for the scraps of that person, that past. he has fought so long and so hard and he is tired of that fight, but he hasn't quit yet. ） He was a fisherman. I used to sleep under his porch, no joke. He'd leave food out. Sometimes he'd ask for my help with a haul. I was so fucking angry, then. Violent. I didn't know how to talk, but I could listen. I learned. It took me years to become a person again. I don't know how long I had with him. It's weird to think of him like a dad, I'd already lived over a millennia by then, and he was just — mortal. But it felt that way, like he was the father of who I became. I found peace there. （ almost pensively — ） I remember crying over the fish. I didn't want them to die.
（ it hadn't bothered him until it did. one morning, clear as the knife's edge of daylight, he'd been helping the old man clean his catch, and he'd split open a little trout with a bellyful of eggs and it had broken something in him. he doesn't remember sobbing half so much as being held. ）
He's the one that named me. Cyram means 'summer's dawn'. Doesn't matter which world I go to, what the language is, what the culture is. I've changed my last name a million times. Maybe more than that. But my first name's always been Cyram.
cw: my feelings getting obliterated
Sasuke doesn't know how long he'll be alive. A fraction of the time Cyram has spent in existence, less than the flicker of an eye, less than a blade of grass on a whole planet. Yet he determines, then, to remember Takëthal for as long as he's living. So if one day it should slip from Cyram's grasp, at least Sasuke can give it back to him.]
You changed the language you were speaking in.
[An observation in a voice that emerges quietly between them, low and thoughtful beneath the spell that Cyram has woven over him. The weight of an arm, the hook of a leg. An ease of physicality as he's never shared with anyone, not a parent. Not a teammate. Not even Naruto. Because this is too—gentle, the way Cyram holds him and tells him about the genesis of his name.]
'Cyram'. He chose well. [A mortal father, a fisherman. The image of it is easy, like the cabin and the lake, like the porch. The dying fish.] It's warm. It reminds me of the way it feels when I'm listening to you.
[A shudder, and finally the release, emotion let out like a river in the stream of his breath. His eyes open.]
Sorry.
con't because you're the wORST
it's probably making him lazy.
but chiskikani is, in many ways, his mother tongue. ）
It's called Chiskikani. The language.
（ and he remembers that, too. for what it's worth. ）
You don't have to apologize. Nothing you did was anything that needs to be forgiven. （ he squeezes sasuke's hand, gently. ） You did the right thing asking me to stop. Thank you. （ very deliberately, he leans across him and kisses at his fingers, turning his own hand to present sasuke's on top. ） It's normal to feel overwhelmed, or to have certain actions or words hit harder than you might have thought or even understand. Did I say anything that needs to be addressed?
🤡
[Notably, he says this aloud to mimic and test pronunciation, but not Takëthal. That name is reserved for the sanctity of Cyram's memory. It can rest in the dark again now.]
I can't say for certain. I'm not used to... [his fingers twitch under Cy's lips, each press soothing] this communication. What I want, but even more what I feel. Emotions are dangerous for me. I want to tell you the whole story, but not right now. It's long. Complicated. You should still know that they affect me more than a normal individual, and those emotions also influence the power that I possess. It's part of my blood—my clan, the Uchiha. We call it our kekkei genkai. You've seen it in my eyes.
[His head turns, dark hair tickling against Cy's cheek as he shifts to look at him, to be open.]
It was when you said that you would guard my feelings. I responded to that.
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Ah, （ is the first acknowledging sound. it's pensive, considering. without even being aware of it, his right hand sketches little nonsense symbols against sasuke's side where those ribs are no longer quite so worryingly prominent as they'd been before. sasuke looks at him, unbidden and without direction, clearly trying, and it takes him fully a moment to gather himself after that. because he knows it's an effort. he knows it's excoriation. and still, the kid does it anyway — because cy's demonstrated his preference, and sasuke is doing his best to match it.
it earns him another kiss, pressed against the bridge of his nose. ） I can understand that.
（ empathy swells the way a musical crescendo cuts the air, but he exhales steady. ）
Two things. First — tell me the story when you're ready, when you want to, and not a minute before, okay? Time, place, whether you write it out or say it, whether you can look at me or not, whether you want to be touched or not — hundred percent your choice. You can change your mind later too and never tell me, that's fine — you don't owe me knowledge of you. But if you still want to, later, I'll listen. I already know it's going to be hard to say, and hard to hear.
（ every new nuance of trauma he trips over has driven that horribly home. ）
Second, let's get you cleaned up and put everything away. I can leave if you want space, or I can stay here if you want company. If you want me to stay, I'd love to just sleep with you just like this. （ a little pat against his side, indicating their entwined position. ） You can get dressed （ a little tug against that shirt, so far still rucked up under the kid's armpits. ） or I can get naked, or we can stay like this. Up to you.
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It is those kisses that still continue to uproot him, no matter how many times Cy presses them to his skin. Those effortless little expressions of physical affection are so foreign, so unbelievable, a part of him doesn't want to get used to them. To take them for granted.
Sasuke listens, nodding by the end.]
I want to see you naked. [There's interest in the turn of his eyes, curiosity dwelling in a young face.] But I also don't want to give up on this. If I'm going to be here, I need to learn how to do these things. [Brutally pragmatic. He understood the point of Cy gifting him that box, it seems.] Can we try again later?
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（ for a moment, the demi-embrace tightens — reassurance melting into absence as he scoots back off the bed and stands up. first, the box of cleaning supplies is retrieved a second time and set within sasuke's easy reach, and then cy strips without ceremony out of his own clothes. it's more mindful of sasuke's space than of his own preferences that the articles are folded neatly and set aside before he clambers back into the narrow bed.
there's a sort of ease to his nudity — neither shy nor showing off, no more self-conscious now than when he was clothed, that carries over into an effortless grace. most notably about him, perhaps, is that his body is entirely unscarred, nothing that would speak to any trauma, nothing that would ever denote pain. an impeccable canvas that conceals an almost monstrous truth.
he wears that lack carelessly, and well. almost too well.
but on his return to the bed, he doesn't quite resume his position — both because of the necessary clean-up that has to occur, and because he's entirely conscious of the fact this is the first time sasuke's probably ever seen another man naked in this particular context. the same bed, on the heels of a sexual act even if left uncompleted. the faint, acrid smell of arousal still in the close, stuffy air of the tiny room like a hazy, erotic overlay. but his earlier interest is clearly subsided, and his cock hangs flaccid against a backdrop of intermittently groomed hair (mostly, when he remembers. or when he cares.) as he lounges on his side, back against the wall, buying precious inches between them. but there's no real sense of shamelessness, nothing suggestive in pose or posture. he's just present.
regardless of what sasuke's doing or has chosen to do on the topic of clean-up, he grabs one of the wet wipes as well and dabs at the boy's stomach to erase the evidence of unfinished orgasm. it's not quite as utilitarian as the last time, getting him tidied before sasuke slipped below the leylines of genuine exhaustion, this contact is less almost medically sterile and more companionable, affection palpable even in the lingering stroke of the wipes. ）
Look, it's normal to have some false starts, too. You don't have to feel bad about that. Trust me when I say I'd rather get halfway there with you a hundred times and have you feel comfortable enough to call it off than fuck you once when you aren't into it. You said you'd look after me too — that's how you do it. So, thank you for that.
（ a bit of a shrug. ）
If it would help you to try anything out on me first, you can. I wanna stress the help part — don't do it because you think you owe me or I need it, that ain't it. I am always down to clown, but my interest begins and ends with my partner's. It's just easier sometimes, and it's an option if you're into it.
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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.
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（ 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. ）
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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.
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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.
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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.]
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（ 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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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（ 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.
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Confusion, more than any other sentiment, clouds his features.]
... You're asking if I want a blanket?
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（ 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.
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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.
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（ rude child. he can barter! or ask! ）
That's an offensive stereotype and I profoundly object to your cruel aspersions on my character, actually.
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freedom again