Strike Me Down, a naruto fanfic

A/N: I'm so sorry for this fic y'all - it's probably one of the most messed up things i've ever written. Ever.

This was ground out in like one week as a way to get over writer's block with "Brightness Pouring Itself Out of You", which should now have a chapter going up at the end of the month! Victory! In my defense, I've been getting very into KakaNaru lately, which just screams dysfunctionality, so of course this had to be a bit twisted. Also posted on Ao3, under same name.

LOTS of warnings for self-harm, suicide, dub-con, blood-kink, bondage, and D/S vibes. (Oh god did i just write blood-kink?)

*Please disregard any canon-compliance, because I give do not care one bit for the real Naruto storyline. Here there be monsters.*

Strike Me Down

Make it Hurt, I"ll eat the dirt.

Naruto always knew he was different from the other children in Konoha.

Not for any of the reasons you'd think, either. It wasn't the fact that all the other kids but him seemed to have doting mummies and daddies ready to scoop them up the very second the doors of the lower academy opened every day. It also wasn't the fact they many of them quite clearly told him he was unquestionably different; an outsider, a undoubted loser, usually to his face.

Naruto always had a tendency for heedless overconfidence that lent great obliviousness toward the more cruel overtures of his classmates.

No, what made Naruto strange, made him notice just how much was peculiar about himself, was realized one summer day when his class was starting to learn how to use throwing knives.

In the practice yard, an eight-year-old girl's scream split the air - high and squealing - as a bad toss with a kunai ripped her palm open like a plastic bag, a fountain of red erupting.

A medic was called for the girl, who held up surprisingly well under the pain, her eyes welling with tears but mouth pressed into a thin line. The other kids gathered around to the sides of the lot to whisper excitedly with one another about how epically cool the whole incident was.

"That's going to leave a biiiig scar, huh?" said one, with admiration in her tone.

"Yeah! That takes balls!"

"...what's a scar?" Naruto asked.

Looks of derision were passed down the line to him. "A scar, you dummy. You know, like what sticks around after you get hurt real bad."

One boy wipes his nose with an air of importance. "My uncle is a war hero. He says scars are badges of honor."

Naruto gingerly fingers the faint lines fanning his cheeks, skeptical. "Like these?"

More mutters of contempt from his classmates, and sniggering. "No, you idiot. Those are clan tattoos -a scar is something that happens to the skin when you're hurt and then leaves behind a memory when it heals."

The boy with the runny nose proudly displays where he scarred his knee playing in the river when he was six, and Naruto has to admit that the toughened skin there, threaded with white, did not remotely resemble what Iruka-Sensei had once vaguely referred to as his 'whiskers.'

"Naruto-kun doesn't have a family," someone piped up from the back, a bit obnoxiously. "Those can't be clan tattoos."

There is some rather judgemental discussion amongst the children about what the lines on Naruto's face could possibly be;

"Maybe he was just born weird like that?"

"My mom says it's a mark from the spirits to show he's unlucky."

Naruto flushes, ducks his head.

"Well, they definitely aren't scars," said the snotty boy decisively, which closed the matter.

All the other kids seem to have scars already, and be quite familiar with them. Naruto can tell, and this is what finally sets him apart. His classmates all have thin, visible marks, varying in size, from activities ranging from tripping over rocks in the road to getting a bit adventurous playing make-believe with their grandfather's ceremonial swords. A couple have banged up thumbs or fingers - results of experimenting with chakra spells early. There's an impressively burned forearm, an old lingering dog-bite.

Naruto takes off all his clothes that night and stands in front of his small mirror inspecting himself thoroughly, from all angles. With a slow, sinking feeling of certainty, he realizes he doesn't have a single one, not even the smallest nick.

He is completely unblemished.

It's the Kyuubi of course, Naruto finds out later. The ever-swelling well of chakra trapped in his core heals him faster than any magic Sakura can conjure, more efficiently than the best medical gadgets money can buy, and cleaner than the softest roll of bandage.

Openly bleeding wounds neatly fold themselves over into velvety new skin, gashes from trip wires are wiped away like sweat, everything from the smallest kunai prick to a katana blade through the stomach, just gone, gone, gone.

It's not like he can't be knocked over, but it takes a damn lot to put him out, as he finds out through the years, and he doesn't stay down for very long.

Most people seem to marvel at it, his limitless reserves of chakra energy, his quick turnaround time from hospital bed to training field. But Naruto, skin raw, fresh and tingling, knows better.

"Ninja are their scars," says Kakashi-sensei on the third day of their training, his voice level and unmuffled by the strip of cloth on his face.

Of course, this is before his teammates notice that Naruto never keeps a mark on him longer than a week. But the damage is done.

"Ninja live and die by their scars; by what they've endured, what they've been able to overcome, and what they remember," says Kakashi-sensei.

If ninja are their scars, Naruto is no ninja. He isn't really much of anything

Naruto puts off this inevitability for as long as possible, grandstanding his prowess and his courage to everyone who will listen. Eventually it all starts to sound hollow, even to himself.

Instead of getting weaker as he gets older, Kyuubi only licks of fire that would gradually fade cuts, scrapes and abrasions in the academy, often over a few weeks at a time, steadily burn higher within him. One morning in training he forgets to dodge and Sasuke side-swipes him with a shuriken - slitting a long, jagged line up his forearm, not exactly shallow either. When Naruto showers in the lockers only an hour later, he watches in trepidation as the skin knits itself together seamlessly before his eyes.

Naruto likes to slice himself up every so often, just to test things out. Just to see if maybe he can stupefy the spirit in his flesh, and maybe even keep a memory for himself, a semblance of control, a pass at ownership.

He stabs himself with senbon in the tender meat between his thumb and palm, nicks himself repeatedly on the backs of his knuckles as he sharpens shuriken, draws agonizingly slow grazes across his arm for everytime his video-game character dies as he whiles away the hours in his shabby apartment on days off.

If the cuts get deeper as time goes on, if Naruto stops doing it to test the fox and more so because it feels good to have a moment when he can see skin peel away from his knife, puckering pink and shivering; altering that endless, flawless golden-brown surface into something new and different, well, what did it matter?

When Sasuke catches him digging a blade into the heel of his foot absentmindedly one day after training, he knocks the kunai from Naruto's hands.

"Why are you even bothering to try, loser?" Sasuke is sneering.

"Piss off, yeah? Before I make you." Naruto snaps aggressively, but he's suddenly too embarrassed to take the Uchiha on in a brawl, no matter how much the snobby git deserves to get punched in the throat right about now.

Sasuke can tell, and scoffs scornfully, surveying Naruto's mangled foot with open revulsion.

"Do you want something to last?"

He leans over to grip Naruto's chin with cold fingers, his eyes like twin dark pits - untouchable.

The kiss comes unexpectedly, ever so soft, and when Naruto jolts and bites him, half in shock, Sasuke pulls away with a lingering smirk on his mouth.

He runs his tongue over his reddened lips, and Naruto suddenly feels hot, eagerness thrumming rash and gritty up his veins.

"Let's see you find another way."

It shouldn't have worked at all, but surprisingly, it almost does. For a short period of Naruto's brightly comet-burning life, he remembers being cool and shaded; bedsheets over his head, another boy's pale skin pushing against his own, a mellow comfort in his bones.

Sasuke has scars Naruto marvels at for hours, dragging his tongue up the battered knobs of Sasuke's spine or running his hands over his finely threaded ribs until Sasuke eventually grows peeved and pushes him off the mattress.

For a while, the imprint of Sasuke's lips and teeth and tongue seem to shimmer on Naruto, so even when a hickey fades within minutes of him leaving Sasuke's bed, he can still feel the impression singing on his skin like a beacon. He revels in the memory, the way it stays with him.

Sasuke is a haughty and cold lover, because of course the bastard was made to be an over-dramatic twat, it runs in the family. He always has to have the upper hand about everything, from claiming kisses to blanket-hogging. Even so, he likes to blow Naruto, that perfect mouth dripping pearly strings and his eyes hyper-focused as Naruto whispers Sasuke's name - a constant, fervent murmur under his breath.

Sasuke keeps himself distant, but Naruto likes to be persistent, likes to try his luck even when it only ends up pushing Sasuke away, toward long hours of stony silence and violent trainings with Kakashi-sensei always lasting far into the night.

Still, for few short months Naruto doesn't seem to need anything but Sasuke's lips on his own, mockingly tender as they could occasionally be, and when anyone would bother to ask, it's not a lie to say it's the happiest he's ever been, ever could be, ever would be.

But then Sasuke leaves the village, and takes all that gorgeous scarred skin with him.

Naruto can't pretend he isn't gutted, wrecked more than anyone really had a right to be - Sasuke was always very clear about his intentions, but Naruto latches onto things when they work for him without considering the consequences, never looks before the leap.

To that end, he really hasn't had a lot of things work for him.

Naruto picked up his knives again, and hasn't put them down since. His fingertips are always stained red now, but he doesn't really notice.

When people find out he can't scar, sometimes the reaction is awe.

Sakura puts her hand on his stomach one evening as they rest by the fire of their campsite on a recon mission, long after Sasuke's been gone on his merry way. His shirt is off, sticky from the day's slog, but Sakura's eyes are not on his cut-glass abdominals, but on the peachy fuzz of skin on his chest.

Her green-grass eyes are alight with intelligence and a precise, almost scientific desire.

"Incredible," she breathes. "Naruto, last week you were dying."

Naruto grunts. Last week a mouthy missing-nin had speared him right below the heart, and through the blood coming up his throat Naruto had laughed, because he knew that kind of blow would be an absolute mess for Kyuubi to sort out.

He was right, in that he felt the flames burning chaotically in his core for forty excruciating hours straight in the hospital as the fox worked overtime, sweat soaking the sheets and body convulsing spastically, eyes shuttering wildly under his lids. The medics scurrying like mice around him watched with half-distrustful, half-evaluating looks.

When he woke up, the bloody mess of his rib-cage was a shining expanse of newly cartographed skin.

It made Naruto want to scream.

Now, Sakura runs an appraising hand over Naruto's chest, and notes delightedly that it seems like every single one of his chakra points is miraculously still connected.

"Hey, wanna jack me off while you're at it, Sakura-chan?" His tone is sweet and light, but he catches her hand in his own and moves it to his crotch forcefully, fingers twitching.

Sakura yelps shrilly, jerks away. "What the hell, Naruto?!"

"Next time you wanna start feeling me up, how 'bout ya start there?" He can feel the rest of the team looking at him in surprise, From Shikamaru's slow chuckle to Kiba's muttered snarl, but doesn't care.

Sakura gives him the finger and moves away, a blush building furiously up her cheeks.

Naruto ignores it. He's gotten better at dismissing the pleas of medics to examine him, to stick him like a pincushion full of needles and tubes, to experiment with the capabilities of his fucked-up body. He'd always had a soft spot for Sakura, but the fact of it was at the end of the day her intellect would far outpace the muddy emotional swamp that was his connection to Team Seven. She was too good for that.

When Sakura lets herself into his tent late that night, her eyes glowing and her tone silky and seductive, he lets her give him a hand-job and then take a vial of his blood, as she suggests, for science. After all, it's not like she'll be able to get much out of it.

They never can.

After that Naruto joins ANBU, if only to get away from the team, get away from it all for a little longer. The council has plenty of misgivings about letting him take the mask, but in the end they reflect that it's probably the best way to put his skills to use now. The village doesn't need a hero, but it has plenty of uses for a killer.

On his fourth solo ANBU mission, Naruto assassinates a foreign dignitary - a spray of blood staining his hair - and he feels a sudden savage glee from it, the demon in his belly licking its lips in anticipation. On the way home, he stabs himself in the hamstring and writes it off in his report as an incremental injury from the target.

On his twentieth ANBU mission, Naruto incinerates a civilian village that had offended the Fire Daimyo somehow, and wonders if this is really all that being a ninja was anyway, just a sort of systematic bloodshed. The glory of his genin days seems far, far away.

Afterward, even though his ANBU tattoo has to be reapplied by Konoha's resident bureaucratic brander every month because even ink is scared to linger for too long on his skin, Naruto takes a kunai to his arm and slashes it right out, washing the final flakes away in a swirl of red down the drain.

It's healed over the next morning of course, but the act still brings him a sick kind of pleasure.

Naruto claims not to be bothered about the whole Akatsuki deal, but can't stop himself from trying to chisel those telltale jinchuuriki whiskers off his face once or twice, because sometimes being a coward is a bit easier, really.

Naruto burns to a fever pitch when Pein attacks the village, and nearly hacks his own intestines out when the battle is over and there is only dust rising from the ground.

Naruto hears that Sasuke is dead, killed with his brother in some twisted murder-suicide pact that makes Naruto want to gag it's just so damn typical of him, and he slits his wrists.

Kakashi finds him.

"Get the fuck up," the copy-nin tells Naruto gruffly, who is naked in the bath, coated in a sheen of blood and rather close to fainting.

"Ninja-ah-die by their sc-scars, ya know?" Naruto drawls, long and slurred by pain.

Kakashi raises an eyebrow, hikes both arms under Naruto's armpits and hauls him up. Naruto tries not to look too hard at his hands, which are flopping uselessly, like a doll's.

"Do you really want scars, Naruto?"

Naruto stays silent. He's mutinous, and Kakashi knows it. It's laughable to think that Sasuke had been his problem-child, when this monster steadily grew into its own on his team. He can almost smell the musky tails of fox-fire twisting under Naruto's skin.

Hatake Kakashi misses Sasuke almost more than Naruto does, because that dark-eyed boy had been been the one final chance for him to get it right, to set up some plans and promises that actually went through, to pay off some old, old debts.

But it's too late for all of them now.

Later, Kakashi finishes bandaging Naruto's wrists as he sits, still naked, at the kitchen table.

Without missing a beat, Kakashi takes a roll of bandage and loops Naruto's hands together, tying them neatly behind his back before Naruto even notices, still somewhat dazed as Kyuubi grinds to push blood correctly through his hands, prickling like tiny, vicious daggers in his fingers.

When Naruto finally does notice, he snags a sideways grin a Kakashi. "Going to have your wicked way with me, Sensei?"

Kakashi sighs. "More to keep you from having your way with yourself, I'd think."

Naruto laughs and it's quick and high-pitched, too dangerous to be completely sane. "Fat chance Kakashi...I'll just find another way."

Kakashi hums absentmindedly, and ties Naruto's ankles to the legs of the chair too. His thighs spread open aggressively, and it's not hard to admit that Naruto is attractive like this; bound, red-streaked and golden in the setting sun blazing through the window over the kitchen sink. He's faintly other-worldly, and it suits him.

Maybe it suits him too well.

Neither of them have failed to notice Naruto appears to be more than a little turned-on.

"You seem to enjoy hurting yourself a bit too much." Kakashi's voice is slow, and his grey eye is speculative as he looks Naruto up and down, lingering too long.

"Fuck off," says Naruto, but his mouth stays open, hungry.

"Do you want someone to hurt you?" Kakashi's tone is too predatory to be mistaken, and Naruto nearly chokes on the sudden flare of heat that billows up his belly.

Kakashi steps back a pace, posture lazily slumped but unmistakably powerful, a lithe body built for speed and control. A senbon is somehow in his hand now, and he spins it nonchalantly along the back of his half-gloved fingers. The gleaming point catches the evening light, mouth-wateringly sharp.

"Would that make it all feel better, Naruto?" Kakashi is mocking him, but the shame curling in his gut only makes Naruto hotter. "Make everything a little bit more manageable?"

Naruto grits his teeth, cheeks darkening. Under that veneer of confidence, under those declarations of heroism when the team still together - when Sasuke was alive, dammit - his humiliation coils tight. Naruto has been living as an imposter his whole life, really. Sometimes it's easier to play a part.

He makes himself stand up a little straighter despite the bindings, and lifts his chin aggressively.

"You wanna hurt me?"

"Perhaps." Kakashi is still cool and calm, senbon spinning, as off-hand and casual as if they are discussing the weather, and it's driving Naruto crazy.

"So what does it matter if I cut myself up a bit or if you do, huh?

Kakashi's lips seem to smile under his mask, and Naruto feels unexpectedly very vulnerable, supremely aware of the binds on his wrists, aware of his cock proudly bobbing in from of him, aware of how Kakashi was always whispered in some ANBU circles to maybe be a bit unhinged, a bit messed up, when all the cards are on the table.

"Oh it matters, Naruto."

Suddenly a gloved hand is on his cock, rough and glorious, and in a flash the senbon has punctured his chest, in that little divot of his collarbone where sweat pools bitter and salty. Naruto's breath hitches rapidly in shock and the needle draws a bead of blood down his clavicle.

Kakashi's admittedly talented hand works Naruto's dick, hard enough make him to shudder and bow from the chair, make that tricky senbon edge deeper, stinging. Kyuubi stirs and turns within him, a great sleepy beast, and Naruto struggles against rolling waves of pleasure mounting frighteningly fast.

Kakashi keeps up a steady rhythm and Naruto wants to ask him what the hell he's doing, but can't quite bite out the words. Kakashi's one grey eye is fixed on Naruto, stuttering toward completion. His gaze is cold and intense, almost assessing.

When the wound stops bleeding, Kakashi swiftly stabs another senbon into Naruto's collarbone without so much as a pause, easy and smooth as you please. It's practically in his throat, and Naruto gasps, coughs blood, arousal searing down his veins

A chilly stream of fear seeps down the back of Naruto's neck too, his hands clammy and his body gearing up for a fight - as if that's even possible now - but it's the good kind of fear, that makes everything seem brighter, more palpable, more brilliant. He spits insults to all of Kakashi's ancestry and genealogy in turn, jerking and scrambling for leverage in the chair, but when Kakashi holds up another needle as if considering, Naruto's eyes follow it, greedy.

He comes, shattered, white splashes spurting onto his trembling stomach. His heaving chest is bloody, senbon shivering; silvery flags on a battlefield.

Kakashi's masked mouth is by his ear, hot and damp.

"When I hurt you, you deserve it."

It takes Naruto two days to heal from Kakashi's onslaught, longer than it's taken senbon wounds to fade in years. He relishes it. It isn't long before he's gussying himself up and going out to find Kakashi after any particularly bad mission, after any mission that goes too well, eventually after no mission at all.

Kakashi is easy to find too, and it never seems to take much to convince him to lay into Naruto good, give him exactly what he wants and then some.

Kakashi strings Naruto's hands over his head to the convenient exercise bar Kakashi keeps over the door of his bedroom, his fingers deft and slippery in Naruto's ass. When he wraps Naruto's legs around his waist and buries his cock to the hilt in one urgent thrust that has Naruto's eyes watering in pain, he also sinks a shuriken between the arched flare of Naruto's shoulder blades and lets it sit there just for good measure, nice and deep.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck-!"

Spasming, Naruto can barely pant the words, but Kakashi brings a hand to his neck and grips tight - cutting him off. It's maybe a bit vindictive, all things considered, but it feels so good Naruto could die. He loves it, the way Kakashi hurts him so easily; it's no more difficult or complicated than snuffing out a rogue-nin or dispatching an enemy's summons. Naruto hangs there on Kakashi's dick and begs.

Naruto finds out that Kakashi likes to tie him up, and decides he likes it too. He finds out Kakashi likes to make him bleed, and he likes that even more. It makes sense, when he thinks about it, that Kakashi is really only a hair's-breadth away from being totally criminally insane, but he decides he's okay with that.

He likes to bleed anyway, he notices. He likes to be pinned to the bed and stuck like suckling pig. Under Kakashi's rough hands and cool blades, Naruto is made solid and real - a mess of blood and tears and come, no more a half-spirit demon-child than any other average shinobi, no more than Kakashi himself.

It doesn't occur to Naruto that Kakashi might be edging ever closer to becoming a monster as well, because Naruto hasn't really ever been the most observant person, but maybe that's all for the best.

He wonders why it took him so long to notice that Kakashi was like this, but it's an understanding they both share deep-seated in their core that with the death of Sasuke, that prodigy child Kakashi pinned all his hopes on, all the pieces on the boards had shifted.

It's not super great to be someone's sloppy seconds, but he supposes it's better than nothing.

Kakashi also sometimes comes to him, which makes Naruto shiver with pleasure, the feeling of being suddenly slammed over a desk or up against a door, a kunai pressed sweetly to his throat like a kiss and a warm hand pushing down his pants.

Kakashi makes Naruto suck his cock, hogtied and balanced carefully on his knees, his neck taut with effort and his dick wet and straining.

"There we go, that's it," says Kakashi, and his tone could be almost called soothing if it wasn't for the unforgiving grip of those long fingers in Naruto's hair, if it weren't for the dagger he runs along the side of Naruto's jaw with his other hand like a paintbrush, delicate and razor-sharp.

"Suck me like you need it," Kakashi half-groans, breathing quick and shallow.

Naruto does need it.

Kakashi pins Naruto to the wall with a kunai pierced clean through each bicep, like an errant moth to a corkboard, hikes Naruto's ankles over his shoulders and fingers him firm and slick until he comes all over Kakashi's worn-leather gloves. It's a good thing Kyuubi can handle nerve damage, because Naruto can barely move his arms for a week after.

Kakashi doesn't like him to cut himself, Naruto realizes, and whenever he finds out Naruto's gotten a little handsy is quick to give him a ugly battering and disappear for a few days, apparently out of disgust, which Naruto considers extremely petty. The longest they went without fucking was a month, after Kakashi caught Naruto carefully working the point of his favorite kitchen knife into his lean-muscled upper thigh with single-minded determination.

He'd wrapped his fingers around Naruto's wrist before the boy even knew he was there, and aggressively shoved the blade in deep, far deeper than Naruto had been idly planning to cut. It just missed bursting Naruto's femoral artery, which would have been a right bitch, but it's still damn near mutilation, and the sound Naruto makes has Kakashi hard faster than he could have thought possible, thick and throbbing.

"Don't you do that again now," Kakashi murmurs softly to Naruto as he drags his head back mercilessly, making Naruto arch, his mouth twisting in pain and all that blood spilling down.

Even through the mask, Kakashi's lips are still hot on Naruto's neck, and when he bites him, those sharp teeth still bruise. "Don't you ever fucking do that again."

Kakashi bends him over the table, makes Naruto hold himself up on his ruined leg and spread himself open while Kakashi fucks him, and the rust-red tang rising in the air makes them both half-mad, makes it better, so much better.

Naruto's leg is numb with pain, his ass stretched tight and taut because when Kakashi's riled up he usually doesn't bother with much prep beyond the good ole' spit and lather, and breath sears like fire through his lungs; every whimpering gasp is new limit reached.

This was all about testing those limits anyway way, Naruto knows. How far could he go, how much could they push?

At this point, he's not even afraid to find out.

Eventually, Tsunade calls Naruto into her office and says boring, basic things like "against protocol," and "mandatory therapy" and "a requirement for healthy separation from superior officers." Naruto - or maybe Kyuubi, he really can't tell anymore - imagines suddenly flinging a shuriken between her eyes, her skull cracking clean in two halves and her body crumbling to the floor in a heap.

The image is so satisfying it scares him.

Kakashi is good at pulling strings though. He's seen his way through three Hokages and knows everyone's quirks. When he wants a toy, he gets one. This is why on his next mission under the mask Naruto finds himself still running alongside Kakashi, flicking scarlet droplets from his fingers into a chilly winter night.

It also might have had something to do with the faintly ominous glow that hangs around Naruto like a cloud occasionally now when he's worked up, how the scent of blood and animals lives on his skin, the way his eyes sometimes flicker to a melting-pot gold when someone is caught staring at him for too long. It's a shame the only person the Godaime Hokage trusts to keep the demon in Konoha's midst in check is the person who also wants to fuck it, but Tsunade really has never had the best luck.

In their crappy motel room after a particularly brutal mission, Kakashi flays Naruto's back to ribbons with serrated wire, and it hurts so much he cries.

Kakashi fucks him into the sheets, each thrust heavy and wicked, but just at the last second he stalls, half inside Naruto's ass and completely motionless. Naruto, all but just about to fucking come and sobbing, wrenches against the lashes holding his hands tightly to the headboard.

"Fuck, f-fuck, no!" His voice breaks on the words. "Ka-kashi, please, please."

Kakashi looks at him, and that mask is never off but Naruto's gotten better at guessing the expressions beneath it. If he could use enough brain-power right now to hazard an estimate, he'd say angry.

Kakashi is rather too good at that cold-blooded, long-lasting anger. But then, Sasuke had been good at it too.

"Tell me what you did, Naruto."

Naruto tries to catch his breath. "Sh-shit- Wha?" He thrusts back against Kakashi's cock. "I didn't do nothin', Oh god."

Kakashi abruptly tightens the wires criss-crossing Naruto's flesh with an irritated flick of his wrist and Naruto actually yells as the lacerations on his back stretch further, his cock surging and leaking pre-cum from the swollen tip, every inch of his body screaming.

"Tell me," Kakashi says quietly, ruthless.

Naruto arches his back hard, wires creaking, and it's a pity he doesn't know how good he looks right now, helpless and bloody and still so damn energetic. He forces his eyes open, good and mad.

"How do you know I've done jack-shit?!"

"Hmm."

That has been the wrong thing to say.

Kakashi slips from Naruto entirely, and leaves him bound on the bed, going to the kitchenette for a slug of cheap whiskey.

He sips it with his back to Naruto, all long, smooth planes of muscle, glistening with sweat. Kakashi has beautifully visible scars on the his back, some heavy and long, others thin ropes around his hip-bones, a few even on the curve of his ass. Naruto drinks him in, and jealousy rises, a tidal wave, up his chest.

He struggles, curses streaming from his mouth.

Kakashi turns around, mask just a silky whisper of cloth barely hanging on the edge of his nose, and runs his hand up his cock with a long, considering pull. Naruto's mouth waters.

"Fine! Goddammit Kakashi." He can't be made to wait anymore. "So maybe I sliced my hand a lil' bit the other day, what's it to you?

He'd had a particularly bad day and started painstakingly pushing his fingernails up with a needle-sharp senbon is what he'd done, but how could Kakashi even tell? Naruto's fingertips now are as pink and healthy as a newborn babe's.

He supposes he'll never know.

Kakashi keeps stroking himself, wordlessly.

"Loo-Look, I'm sorry okay?" Naruto attempts remorse, a sob cracking his voice. "Please c'mere. I wanna come so fucking bad."

Kakashi always liked it when he begged. He had a feeling it's because Sasuke never did, but supposes that's a secret that's not about to come out now.

"Well if you're hurting yourself again, you don't really need me." Kakashi has never pushed him this far. Usually when he finds out Naruto's been cutting, his punishment is a pitiless screw and abandonment for a few days.

It's a shame Naruto loves a good dressing-down. Apparently, his sensei has suddenly found a better way to make him pay for his sins.

"No!" Naruto feels himself going white with fury, the wire screeching over his back as he pants. Blood seeps from the gashes onto the already stained sheets, it's smell hot and coppery in his nose, blinding.

Because those sins do need some kind of retribution don't they? Those missions he ran, those teammates he failed, that world he was supposed to be a hero for, all of it all wanted answers, wanted penance eventually.

He's just been running from it.

"I-I...I need it, need you." The words choke themselves from his lips.

Kakashi isn't even jerking himself off now, just standing there bold as brass, all scars and muscle and memory that lives like a cloak on his skin, looking too steadily at Naruto twisting on the bed, fine-toothed metal digging deeper and deeper with every pull, and Naruto is aching, aching so much. His vision blurs red.

"No, not me."

Naruto thinks afterward that maybe he should have known this was coming; too much of a good thing -even his own twisted version of one- can never end well.

Kyuubi is just too close to the surface now, too good at getting out. Maybe Naruto had honed the fox to a fine point with all those years of bleeding, brought him up to the thinnest layer on the seal too many times. It doesn't matter.

The point of it all is that Naruto leveled the entire motel and surrounding forest, and Kakashi lost three fingers and a heavy bit of his face.

Naruto wakes up and fresh snow is melting in the debris surrounding them. His hands are shackled to the makeshift cot the rescue corp laid him on. Kakashi, a few feet away and definitely worse for wear, turns his head slightly to look over.

Half his face is a gory mess, scraps of fabric just barely clinging to the exposed muscle of his cheek - a tattered flag. Naruto isn't sure he even still has the Sharingan, and a dull dread sinks into his stomach. A medic with hands glowing over Kakashi's forehead sees that Naruto is awake and calls for backup, voice shaky with underlying fear. Clearly doped-up on drugs already, Kakashi manages a grim chuckle.

"...Ninja live by their scars."

Naruto closes his eyes.

He doesn't have a single scorch mark on him of course, all those unyielding blades Kakashi wrapped him in like a blanket smoothed away.

He's a new god, born perfect and shivering into the powdered snow. A god with no followers.

He's too dangerous to keep on missions now of course, after a break like that. Not quite sure what to do with their resident freakshow, Konoha's council decrees that he stay under house-arrest, at least until they decide he's better off as Akatsuki bait. He doesn't mind too much - he spends the hours playing bad video games and eating too much ramen; it's a half-life for a half-man, but maybe it fits him.

Kakashi comes to visit occasionally, but not as often as he could. Losing most of your face has to be a bit of a relationship deal-breaker, after all. They make bitter black coffee, and don't talk very much.

"Sasuke was the only one who ever let me have his scars, you know." Naruto says once. After being under cooped up for three months he's paler now, but Kakashi probably likes him like that.

He's still ethereal, a kind of unsubstantial being tenuously gripping reality. Those heavy black whisker-lines stand out starkly on his cheeks, eyes large and glinting. His gaze is mostly gold, nowadays.

Kakashi sighs and gestures leisurely to his face, still tender. Even the mask can't hide as much as it used to. "We all have scars to give, as it seems."

"Fuck off," but Naruto's mouth is still hungry.

Is Kakashi's debt paid, now that the Sharingan barely functioned, blown to near blindness with fox-fire and misplaced outrage? He can't be sure.

Just in case, he still fucks Naruto every so often. They both love it a little too much to stop, after all. Naruto moans as Kakashi drives him into the wall, knocking over empty coffee cups in haste, a kunai dug insistently into his throat. The blood runs in steady crimson rivulets onto the floor, drip, drip, drip.

Kakashi likes to just about kill him every time now, and slowly, but Naruto can't really blame him.

When he leaves, Naruto absentmindedly wipes his chin clean with a cloth, and picks up his knives.

End

A/N: ...Wow. I'm sorry. I don't even know what to say for myself. i guess i hope you enjoyed it.3

The summary and title are taken from the song "Promiseland" by MIKA, who i love and who has inspired me to write many a fic.

All feedback, thoughts, musings, and noises are much appreciated!

-Lute.