Sasuke wakes up panting. He has been dreaming. Of Itachi. Again.
They are itches, these dreams. They wake Sasuke up half-rested and panting. He never remembers them. Whenever he tries to, because he knows these dreams are one dream, he remembers only the feeling of a hand on his back, harsh and insistent. If hands, too, can be inhabited by abstract nouns.
And Itachi. He remembers Itachi. Not what he looks like in the dream, nothing he says or does. Just the sense of pricking like an itch on the underside of his cranium. He knows these dreams are about Itachi.
The next question, then, is why is it that Sasuke wakes up panting, in a cold-sweat. And hard. Really, really hard. Having just dreamt about Itachi. Because he knows that hand on his back is Itachi's hand. Harsh and insistent. What is it insisting he wonders.
Dream Itachi is reaching for him, his fingers an infection reaching for Sasuke. Sasuke feels them, cold, on his back. Have they been fighting? Where is his shirt? Itachi's hands are cold like Sasuke always imagines they are.
The first time it happens Sasuke is eleven and the books he reads on it call it normal. Eleven year old boys are supposed to wake up with wet sheets having just dreamt of their brothers. Traitor brothers that whisper to him like a siren. He doesn't remember the dream, he only remembers Itachi's cold fingers on his back and an itch on the underside of his cranium.
Dream Sasuke feels clammy, feverish. Why is Itachi's hand so cold? And where are his clothes? Sasuke wonders if the slices of shuriken have stripped him completely. Where are his clothes?
The second time it happens, Sasuke is twelve and at the academy and Sakura, annoying pest of a person like a fly on shit sometimes, pushes Naruto on to him and they kiss. And Sasuke feels… something. That night he wakes up exhausted, like he has been at the training grounds all day thinking about Itachi. Sasuke's body aches the dull ache of worked muscle. He has ripped through his bedsheets into his mattress; Sasuke wakes up and has to carefully remove his fingers from the bloodied mess of bedspring and down.
Something. Dream Sasuke feels… something. Coiling at the base of his spine, harsh and insistent, this something. Like the cool press of Itachi's hand on his back. Is he kneeling? Why is he kneeling? Where is Itachi's hand coming from? Has he lost? Again.
The third time it happens they have just fought the Demon of the Mist and the strange boy whose infection enters the body slowly like temperature dropping, whose jutsu crystallises in the body like stalactites. Something about raw power effortlessly wielded by a boy who dresses like a girl, has long hair like a girl, delicate pretty features like a girl. Like Sasuke imagines Itachi has. Something, about how the boy wears power like the folds of a kimono and the obi around it, pushes Sasuke into Naruto and they kiss.
Sasuke is exhausted, having run up and down trees all day with the idiot like a race caller next to him. Naruto and him stand on the topmost trees in the clearing and look down. Naruto's tree is exactly ten centimetres taller than Sasuke's. Something, about the adrenaline of accomplishment and the black hair of the boy with a voice like crystalising icicles – the quietest tinkle, something pushes Sasuke and he kisses Naruto. And he feels… something. So he calls Naruto a loser and walks away.
Later, when they stand on the bridge and Haku's mask cracks and Sasuke sees his delicate pretty features like a girl, like Itachi, he feels something.
That night, Sasuke eats like a king and cleans crusts of blood from under his fingernails with a kunai. He wakes up that night knowing what he has dreamt. Sasuke has dreamt of Haku naked inside the pink Kimono Naruto has told him about. Sasuke has dreamt of Haku's body and has woken up hard. Really, really hard. He touches himself for the first time. The delicate pretty features of Haku's face, so much like he remembers Itachi's face, keep coming back to him. And Haku's body and how it moved cloaked in the dangerous black of Kirigakure's ANBU. He thinks of stalactites falling around him and power, real power, and how it looks when worn like women clothes. He sees Haku a geisha in another time, folding the sleeves of her kimono just so, exposing the inside of her wrist, the delicate skin there. Pouring her tea scalding hot. Like Sasuke's body heating up now, scalding hot, something. Something insistent.
Sasuke feels he is being pulled by both his arms and both his legs and the centre of his belly and his neck lolling like it wants to break. He remembers Haku at the end: fierce and kimono half shredded, blood on his chest and on his hands, his hair Uchiha black against an Armageddon of mist. Sasuke thinks of Itachi and feels like he's dying. Itachi's Sharingan has infested its way into Sasuke's body and is burning him from the inside out. Sasuke jerks his head violently to the side, and muffles his sobs and screams and choking, suffocates himself on the feather down of the pillow, and suffers the whiplash.
Itachi's hand is cold. But Sasuke is hot now, really hot. This is familiar, he knows, he just can't place it. Sasuke feels trapped by Itachi's hand, held down where he is with a confidence like rope-burn on wrists. Why can't he move? Why is he so hot? Where is Itachi? Is Itachi's Sharingan burning him from the inside out?
And then Itachi had come back. For that fucking idiot of a loud-mouth. And Sasuke saw with the bloodred confidence of his Sharingan, so livid he was. That night they'd all returned to Konoha – and who knew there was another Naruto in a fifty-something year old body with the mind of a pervert. Sasuke had charged at Naruto with Chidori and this was not a training drill; Naruto had charged at Sasuke with Rasengan and that, too, was not a training drill. For the first time, Sasuke had looked into Naruto's eyes and seen… something. His blood had run hot and cold with the adrenaline in the no man's land between warriors destined to split each other's chakra.
That night, like another night, Sasuke had gone to Naruto. Not pushed by Sakura or success. Sasuke had opened Naruto's hospital room and made a decision.
He was going to the place where Orochimaru was.
Naruto had looked haggard, worn-out like he hadn't slept since he blasted a hole through the hospital's water tank. Its radius had been thirty centimetres bigger than the similar hole Sasuke had blasted through his own tank. Naruto had said,
"Don't walk away again."
Sasuke had touched Naruto's body for the first time. Naruto's body had been scarred and bony in parts like thirteen year old boys'. Naruto had kissed him that night like Sasuke's Sharingan had planted tendrils of infection inside of Naruto, and he had looked like he was burning. Hot and scalding. Sasuke likes Naruto's body, it is the body of a boy who does not have delicate features and could never have been a geisha. When Sasuke touches Naruto's penis, looks at it next to his own in his hand, he feels very far away. He feels like he has tripped backwards into his dreamself and he is being pulled in all the directions of his separate limbs. It is strange to Sasuke, Naruto doesn't have Sharingan. And yet, Sasuke is burning from the inside out and he knows he is going to die again very soon.
"Sas-ke."
Naruto is looking at Sasuke in awe and Sasuke hears his name slit and slip and spill out of Naruto's mouth like blood from the slices of shuriken. Naruto chokes out Sasuke's name brokenly, like Sasuke has at times himself strangled screams of Itachi's name now stuck in his throat.
Sasuke is hot and cold and clammy. Itachi's hand is cool like glasses of water for thirst on hot days after watching Itachi practice shuriken jutsu for hours. That hand is coaxing something out of him. This fever. Stuck in the tight coil of… want? Sasuke is burning on the inside. It is hot and he thinks he might be dying. Why is it hot? Has Itachi killed him? Where is Itachi?
When Sasuke wakes up from dreams that itch like words on the tips of tongues, or thoughts, he goes to someone. He fucks them and walks out. It has been many people, or very few. The number doesn't itch at him like the important things do, so he doesn't care to remember.
Lately, though, he has found himself, again and again, pushed to Juugo. Who is nothing if not the antithesis of his dreams' whispers. Infecting Juugo with his Sharingan is hard. Killing Juugo with heat is hard. Juugo sometimes looks at Sasuke like there is something he knows which he, Sasuke, does not know. He forgets sometimes that Juugo is older than Itachi. Sasuke has to really focus to make Juugo hot. It is only when he is searching Juugo for open wounds he can leak his Sharingan into that he does not think about Itachi. Juugo, for the most part, stretches out like a Cheshire Cat and grins down at Sasuke like he knows something and Sasuke doesn't. Juugo stays hard for hours sometimes. Sasuke uses his hands, his tongue, his cock and Juugo moans, like a fucking slut sometimes, but doesn't come. Not ever. Afterwards, sometimes, Sasuke has to go for a walk and use his katana like he is Itachi practicing shuriken justu.
Yes, Sasuke thinks to himself after, I am good at this.
And then he will go back to Juugo and begin again. Juugo will watch him from a distance and his grin will spread slowly like a cat with his cream. Sasuke did always have a soft spot for the family ninja cats.
"'Tach-I," Sasuke hears himself say. Why is he saying his brother's name like that, like how Naruto said his name once? But he is saying it, over and over again. Sasuke can hardly stand to listen to it. It makes him feel the slow rise of fever like temperature. And, actually, where is Itachi? If he, Sasuke, is face down on his knees, where is Itachi? And why is his cheek being scratched lightly by the nib of down feathers. And why is he naked, on his knees, face on a pillow, and Itachi's hand behind him. Where the fuck is Itachi?
The first time Sasuke had seen Naruto in two years he had felt… something. Slow itch. Like something he should be remembering, but doesn't. Itch. Or like a thought he knows will come back to him anyway. Itch.
Naruto's hair is blonde. So blonde after two years of Orochimaru and Kabuto.
"With chakra more ominous than my own, you're the spitting image of Madara Uchiha."
And of course the demon fox in Naruto would be this idiotic bright orange colour. And of course Naruto would look at him like that, like he did when Sasuke walked into his hospital room so many years ago.
"Just don't walk away again."
And of course Sasuke thinks for a moment of fucking him in the genjutsu of the prisons in Naruto's own head. And, though he doesn't, he knows Naruto would have let him.
The second time Sasuke had almost seen Naruto he had smelt him on Itachi in a way that felt… familiar. Like licking the coat of dried come on Juugo's stomach when Sasuke resolves to try again, to make Juugo come.
"What can you see with that Sharingan of yours?"
"Fu-uck. 'Tachi, fuck." And Itachi shows Sasuke exactly what he has been dreaming about. Itachi stands in front of Sasuke in the dream-reality of genjutsu. And infects. Itachi's Sharingan burns hot inside him and sees… everything.
Oh. Fuck. Of course he's been having wet dreams about getting fucked by Itachi. Except when he has wet dreams about fucking Haku. And Itachi sees… everything. And drags it from the incomprehensible tangle of Sasuke's thoughts and words and insides.
Oh. Fuck. And there is Sasuke on his knees on a bed with his face on a pillow and Itachi's hand on his back. Cold. And there is Itachi attached by the inside of his wrist to that cold hand on the small of his back. And Itachi is fucking him. Like, tortuously slowly. And there is Sasuke again, moaning like a slut.
Sasuke feels his pride shudder and surge when he remembers he hasn't, not once, heard himself beg. He would not forgive himself that.
"I'm flattered you fantasise about us having slow sex on a bed, though I doubt that's how it will happen."
Sasuke knows he will have to approach this with the focus of fucking Juugo and the resolve of fighting Naruto. Sasuke knows he will have to approach this with the delicacy of dreaming about Haku.
Sasuke is panting, dreaming about Itachi. They are itches, these dreams. He remembers only the feeling of a cold hand on his back, harsh and insistent. If hands, too, can be inhabited by abstract nouns and Itachi.