Perchance to dream
Rating: PG-13 to be safe (not that this will save my eternal soul…)
Summary: Sasuke doesn't dream of tomorrow and certainly doesn't dream of might-have-beens. Kakashi doesn't do comfort. Set during the genin years (gen, but can be taken as pre-KakaSasu)
Warning: beware overuse of ellipses (take that Ms.Radelat!), ambiguous interaction and sleepy!Sasuke
Disclaimer: Kishimoto owns the guys and possibly my debit card. Damn Kishimoto…and damn Shakespeare and the Big Bad Wolf too while I'm at it.
"Sleep, Sasuke."
He curled up tighter at the husky murmur, rubbing a damp cheek against the cloth of his sleeve in lieu of a comforter or pillow. His fingers tightened over his nape as he resolutely ignored the other's fingers hovering, strangely uncertain, over his exposed cheek, before gliding lightly over a stray strand.
He shivered. It tickled.
"Cold?"
He shook his head, burrowing into the crook of his arm. The other was warm, close, and the tent insulated against the elements. He breathed shallowly trying to see through cloth the shadow of without. The hand eventually came to rest on his forehead and he stilled the impulse to jerk away, away…
"Dreams will pass with time."
Hollow assurance to ensure enduring faith and a fool's dream for the future. His eyelids drooped, lashes heavy with the memory of trailing rain and tomorrows, endless empty promises of yesteryears gone by and the rush of hope in the shy smile of a child before the wolf came and blew the house down…
"Liar." A whispered prayer from the godless to ward against familiar lies from behind yet another façade of kindness. The mask more acceptable, more visible, yet more than the material and thus all the more deceptive, layers upon layers of it like illusion like -
Kakashi hummed, the sound vibrating softly in the chest behind him, the steady-eccentric beat of another's breath, another's heart, closer than anyone he had let get in years. Deceitfully there, coaxing him in...
He stifled a yawn with his free hand, slender fingers cool now, across heated skin, searching…hesitant betwixt holding on and letting go…
Unconsciously the hand found the other's, suffused with calloused heat, sliding and twinning like tangible shadow around the wispy cloth of his own.
"I have no dreams." He echoed another's sigh. Tired, he closed his eyes, submitting to the melancholy desire to lean back into the false embrace. Capture a half-imagined kiss to his crown. Impressions of rustling leaves in the wind across his skin, encompassing him, bidding him home…
Kakashi wrapped protectively around his ward, the whorls of his thumb sheathed within the sleeper's hold as if to secure his words 'til waking; waiting, with an unvoiced wish of his own, for daylight to dispel wistful dreaming.
Fin