Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Summary: Stoic by day and irreparably drunk by night, Itachi finds solace in the arms of the love of his life and the person connected to his deepest fears.

BINGE

By: HJ

"Okay, that's enough, big boy."

Shisui's large hands clamped over his biceps and pulled him backward and away from the small figure he was mauling against the grimy bathroom wall. Itachi stumbled, trying to elbow the man whose palms were too heated to touch his skin. "The fuck. Can't you s-see I'm fucking busy?"

He refused to believe he was slurring. Surely, he didn't have that much to drink tonight. "Let go! Your hands are too fucking hot."

"Shut it, you manwhore," Shisui hissed, bringing Itachi in front of him and shoving him outside the bathroom. He ignored the whines of protest coming from the androgynous figure left behind as they stepped into the blaring music, and Itachi was coerced outside into the cold night air. "Are you stupid? You were about to stick your dick into a living, walking disease."

Itachi shot his cousin a look that mustered a life's worth of frustration and annoyance. "I had a condom, you know," he flippantly stated.

"Don't be a dumbass," said Shisui gruffly, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I'm tired of watching you ruin your life like this. Night after night, when are you going to stop and realize how selfish your actions are?"

"Stop being a prissy bitch, Shisui," Itachi said, ignoring the incredulous look he received when he ungracefully sprawled onto the ground by the curb and curled up on his side, pressing his heated cheek against the cool pavement . "I can take care of myself," he mumbled into the elbow cradled under his head.

"I already called Sasuke," the man replied. "He should be here any minute now."

"Shit!" A blur breezed through his vision, and Shisui realized that the man had sat up abruptly. "Why the fuck did you do that?" Itachi hissed.

With arms crossed, Shisui raised a brow. "Isn't that what you wanted, Itachi?"

The anger in Itachi's glare waivered and he ended up with his head dug into in his shaking hands. A moment of silence passed save for the cars that blared passed the open street before Itachi turned hysterical.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck." Itachi shot up to his feet and began stumbling the opposite way, shoving past Shisui as he headed toward the alley.

"Don't bother. He's already here."

True to Shisui's words, the soft purring of a car pulling up behind him made Itachi freeze. The sound of Sasuke's signature combat boots hit the pavement seconds later and the unmistakable thumps of the younger making his way toward Itachi was deafening.

"Itachi."

The sultry voice sent chills down his spine, and when he swiveled to face Sasuke, he could not help but stare at the 18-year-old.

"Come here."

Automatically obliging, he took a wavering step forward. And another. And another and nearly tripped on a rather deep crevice in the ground, but he had surprisingly caught himself halfway and ensured himself he would not make himself more of a fool than he already had in front of the college student.

When he finally rooted himself in front of his beautiful brother, minutes must have passed. He was sure of it, but those careful minutes he spent closing in the meters of space between them allowed him to keep what was left of his pride and dignity.

He felt a gentle hand wrap around his right wrist and fought to keep his eyes open. "Otouto," he greeted, a smile threatening to usurp the solemn expression on his face had it not been for the situation.

"You don't have a right to call me that right now." The coldness in Sasuke's voice easily reached glacial proportions and sliced through stone, and Shisui nearly took a step back at the underlying ferocity in those words.

Sasuke tugged him forward and began walking toward his car at a set pace, ignoring the stumbling man behind him. Reaching the curb, he swung open his black beamer's passenger door and stepped aside. He released Itachi's wrist and used his other hand to give his older brother a small push forward.

And despite his monotonic words and the nonchalance clearly written across his face, Shisui saw something gentle about the way Sasuke placed his hand on Itachi's lower back as he guided him into the seat and secured the seat belt over his torso. He sighed loudly, watching idly as the scene played out.

At the sound of the car door closing, Shisui turned his gaze onto Sasuke whose hand stayed rooted on the handle.

"Maybe you should visit home more often, Sasuke," Shisui said. The night air carried his soft voice all the way to those automatically tense shoulders. "You know he only does this to get your attention. Even if he doesn't know it."

"He shouldn't blame his drinking habits on anyone but himself."

"Look, I don't know what happened between the two of you, but Itachi's miserable. At least go easy on him. These months haven't exactly been peaches and cream for him."

"Because sleeping with sluts and getting shitfaced are so damn hard," Sasuke mocked in monotone as he headed to the driver's side.

Shisui sighed. "Just make sure he stays hydrated."

With the slightest inclination of his head, he turned the ignition on and stepped on the gas pedal. As he came to a red light, he ignored the heavy breathing next to him and the hand that reached over to caress his face surprisingly gently in his drunken state. "I'm sorry," he heard his brother whisper. "I didn't mean to get trashed like this. I-I just needed to forget. I really just needed to forget."

He swat the man's hand away from his face and ignored him, keeping his eyes trained forward. His brother's hand shrunk back and dropped back to his own side, and droopy eyes settled in his lap in shame.

"I love you, Otouto. I'm sorry."

Sasuke chose to ignore that as well. He turned right at the end of the street and pulled up in front of his apartment. He threw off his seatbelt and was ready to do the same for Itachi's, but quiet sniffling caught his attention. That pitiful noise made Sasuke look at Itachi's face for the first time in the last half hour, and he bit onto his lower lip when he witnessed a single, silent tear roll down his face.

God, why did his brother in tears always get to him?

He blew out a breath of frustration he was holding and stepped out the car. He took a deep breath, made his way to Itachi's side and hoisted the man up from his seat. "Let's get you inside. Neji's asleep so you need to be quiet."

"Who's Neji?" Itachi slurred before forgetting the question altogether when he rested his head between the juncture of Sasuke's neck and shoulder. He sighed loudly and mumbled something incoherent.

With no pretense to answer his brother's question, Sasuke locked his car and strategically maneuvered the two of them inside by gripping onto the man's right hip from behind and keeping the arm slung across his shoulders in place. He reached into his pocket when they stopped in front of his apartment, a one-story, two-bedroom flat, and easily extracted it and opened the door as if he had done so a dozen times, which, to be fair, he had.

After they were both safely inside, Sasuke kicked the door shut and lightly shoved Itachi onto the sofa. Itachi fell onto his ass as ungracefully as Sasuke expected, bangs hovering over his glossy eyes.

"You are going to sleep off your drunken haze on this couch," the 20-year-old commanded, and when he didn't get an answer, he trudged off to the kitchen. He merely had the intention to retrieve a bottle of water from the fridge so he dismissed the need to flick on the lights, but he wished he had when he turned around, bottle in hand and the bright fridge light disappearing behind him, and was startled by the large silhouette behind him.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed, more so because he had been taken by surprise than placing blame on the man for being there. He hadn't even heard Itachi creep up behind him, which was strange because his brother was physically bigger than Sasuke and the floorboards would have creaked under his weight.

"What are you doing, Itachi?" he asked, an edge to his voice. Despite the darkness, he could feel those midnight eyes trained on his face. It was an intense gaze. Focused. Was the man even drunk?

Within a blink of an eye, Sasuke had his arms full of his older brother. Itachi had one arm around his neck and the other around his waist, pulling Sasuke's entire body flat against his. The immediate stench of hard liquor hit his nose followed by the warmth of his body. "I'm hurting, Otouto," Itachi whispered, agony dripping from his voice. "My heart hurts so much, Sasuke. I can't take it. I can't function properly."

It was the same confession he had heard repeatedly in the last two months, ever since Sasuke had stormed out of their house with the intention of never returning.

"You need sleep, Itachi," Sasuke said, arms limp next to him.

Itachi squeezed him tighter against his chest. "I need you, Otouto. I only need you."

"I thought we talked about this." Sasuke almost had an urge to curl up into himself.

"No," the elder Uchiha growled as he tightened his grip, "you talked and then you were dead set on leaving!"

"Oh, so it's my fault then?" Sasuke replied coldly. "What did you expect me to do, huh, Aniki? Did you want me to spread my legs willingly like your whores and beg to be fucked because you thought it was appropriate to kiss me?"

Itachi buried his face in Sasuke's neck in denial, and when the boy was met with complete silence, he blew out another breath of annoyance. "You need to stop doing this. I'm not always going to be here for you, Itachi."

"I'm sorry," the man mumbled, nuzzling Sasuke's neck. "I'm sorry."

"You're exhausting the meaning of 'I'm sorry' when you keep saying it. You think that, if you apologize, everything will go back to normal; but one day, you're apology isn't going to mean shit. I wonder what you'll do then," Sasuke said. He pried his brother's arms off his body and dragged the stumbling form back to the living room where he angled the man down onto his side. "Sleep there. I'm going to shower, and then I'll bring you a blanket."

The ravenette didn't wait for a response before he walked away. He placed the bottle of water on the coffee table and made his way to the large bathroom at the end of the dark hallway. He closed the door, turned on the lights and hot water and stripped in under a minute. He stared at himself in the full length mirror that hung behind the door and grimaced at what he saw.

Thin, red blemishes, about an inch in length and half in width, littered messily across his taut belly. They were nearly five days old and had someone other than Neji accidentally cast a glance at his naked torso then, Sasuke would have been too tripped up to respond. Normally, bite marks like that would have faded in a few days, but they had been imprinted into his skin with desperate determination that Sasuke had to scrub and ice it to aid the healing process.

It wasn't on him, this careless mistake. Well, not really. He hadn't counted on falling asleep that one night nearly a week ago when he brought Itachi back to the house they used to share. He had forced Itachi to change out of his clothing in the restroom and had been waiting on the couch when he fell asleep. And it was quite the deep sleep because that week was marked with three midterms and two papers, and adding his obnoxiously inebriated big brother to the picture at two in the morning didn't make matters any better. So imagine his surprise when he was sucked back into reality- quite literally, by his hunk of a brother pinning his lower body down with his hands as he ate at his bare chest and abdomen like a rabid animal devouring a piece of steak.

The man had littered his body with so many marks, but the most frustrating part of it was the fact that Itachi didn't seem to remember it the next day. And as petty as Sasuke was and despite looking out for himself, he couldn't stay mad at someone, especially if that someone was his brother, who was too drunk off his ass to remember his actions.

Sasuke had shoved him off with newfound energy as a pained sound resonated deep from his vocals and had bolted for the door, ignoring Itachi's hysterical screams for him to come back and stay. But that was out of the equation because staying had an ethical repercussion that Sasuke didn't even want to begin to fathom.

Sasuke sighed as a heavy fog began to settle around him, finally looking away from his haggard appearance in the mirror. He stepped in and did a quick job at washing his body and refused to think more of anything Itachi-related. When he was finished, he tugged on a pair of briefs and a navy blue T-shirt and draped that blanket he promised over his brother's snoring form. He proceeded upstairs and collapsed face first into his mattress, and the night was gone.

He was radiating warmth upon waking the next morning. It was Friday, the first free day of the week, and Sasuke had woken up a little past eight. For a moment, he panicked as he felt warm kisses trail down the back of his neck, and it was evident because the hand strewn across his waist slid under his shirt and began stroking his belly.

"Relax. It's just me," cooed a low voice, and Sasuke caught himself mid exhale and huffed. Otherwise, he hadn't bothered to shove his housemate aside and even tilted his neck to give the male easier access. He could feel the curve of the man's lips against his neck, and he knew Neji had been smirking.

"What are you doing here?" Sasuke asked minutes later, interrupting the soft sound of smooches being expertly placed along his collarbone. "I thought you had a Poli Sci at eight."

"Emailed my Professor. I told her I was out sick."

Sasuke snorted. "Lie," he called. "Your immune system is a beast."

"You know me so well" were the words next to his ear, seductive and alluring. "Besides, it's not everyday I wake up with a gorgeous man in my bed."

Eyes arched in surprise, Sasuke noted that, true enough, he had accidentally climbed into Neji's bed instead of his own last night. The silk white sheets were evidence enough as they easily slipped down his hips as he shifted. "Sorry, man," he grumbled, reaching down to pull his sheets over his shoulders, but gave no indication of moving anytime soon.

The man's chest rumbled against his back as he chuckled, and Sasuke felt the man give him a playful nip on his shoulder. "You're welcome anytime, babe," he said, quite seriously, and the ravenette didn't know how he felt about that. "By the way, the person who crashed here yesterday left earlier this morning. Something I should be worried about?"

Sasuke chose to ignore the insinuation behind the playful, carefully disguised question and gave the man a one-shoulder shrug. "Nothing worth mentioning," he grumbled into the pillow. He felt the brunette trace a finger gently down the crevice of his back that nestled his spine, but was otherwise lulled to sleep by the warmth radiating around him.