La Belle Dame Sans Merci: 25:
"Thrill Kill"
"Why do you care so much about him anyway?" Sasuke asks irritably when dinner's all but eaten. "From what I've gathered he's done almost nothing for you, and what he did for questionable reasons."
"He's just…" Naruto pauses in minding the bedding arrangements to give the question proper consideration. "I guess you could say Iruka-sensei is to me what Kakashi is to you. He's – not really on your level, but he understands some things, and accepts you, and it doesn't matter that you can count on him to help mostly because it makes him feel better about himself."
He offers a naked, sheepish grin.
"If that makes any sense."
"Alright," Sasuke says with ill grace. "I'll take the first watch."
"'kay," Naruto smiles, and curls up on the leaf-softened ground. Can afford to, since he's won and Sasuke's just agreed to come with him to Iruka-sensei's.
He wakes in the middle of the night from some kind of forest animal biting him, sits up incautiously with a curse. There is too much to say for any of it to be voiced – he gets up, Sasuke lies down. He keeps watch until morning.
They move fast, after that. Naruto gradually discovers what his new disposition will and will not allow – thirty replications a day seems to be his absolute limit, and he can't keep pace with Sasuke. Can't get up if Sasuke gets in a really good hit, either, nor stop him from invariably doing so. Rasengan is a laughably far away impossibility.
He's basically a good, solid Chuunin, and can only console himself he won't have to suffer these indignities (this glaring insecurity) for long.
Still, they leave him horribly on edge, not with fear perhaps but definitely with impotent fury, and that's always the most volatile kind.
"Why did you sleep with Kakashi?" (who has not been kakashi-sensei to naruto since word of that reached him) he asks one afternoon when they've made an early stop because they're getting very close to their target.
"I wanted to be close to him," Sasuke replies steadily after a moment, not looking up from his occupation with catching fish in the river.
"You won't do it again," Naruto tells him flatly, picking himself up from the ground, fiercely tense.
"Don't tempt me to," Sasuke sneers evenly. 'You patronizing bastard' is pretty much implied. Then sharply, acceptance and attack both, "I don't much feel like sleeping with anyone."
"You're scared," Naruto says, wondering if it's a realization or a presumption. Knowing it's a challenge, though that wasn't what he wanted, not at all. Can't take it back though, because you never get anything out of Sasuke that you don't force.
"Shut the fuck up trying to pretend you understand me." Red eyes glance at him momentarily before returning to their prey.
"Sasuke…!"
"Do you really want to have this conversation?"
"I don't think want figures into it." Need does.
Sasuke's smirk is nasty and slips away fast. "Aren't you growing up."
"Yeah," Naruto replies, feels the reality of it. "I think I just might be."
"Fine, then," Sasuke says, and throws a fish at him to put in the waiting bucket. "I don't – much like talking. But alright. It's not about the sex. Everyone goes through that. Name me a real ninja who hasn't gotten fucked, roughly or for a price or because they were captured or whatever. That's – something you learn to handle. Not the problem."
Kakashi. Orochimaru. Some unnamed third. Naruto.
Sex that's domination and humiliation more than anything else. Naruto's familiar enough with that, has sucked and kneaded certain cocks he never wanted to touch. Anti-sex is every unloved kid's inheritance.
More complicated in Sasuke's case, of course, since he actually wanted Kakashi in some ways, and Orochimaru has never struck Naruto as the kind of man who'd stop at screwing merely a body when he could have a mindfuck as well. He guesses it would be more serious to actually have someone inside of you, wonders briefly what it would feel like. Shudders at the idea, when shrouded in these hated faces.
This is presumption and he knows it, but it feels like it might be right and anyway he needs to say it: "So the problem is… what? That you actually want me? That you actually like sleeping with me?"
"Oh no," Sasuke says. "I liked sleeping with Kakashi. I didn't so much like waking up with him."
"I love you," Naruto says, and they both know it's the truth, and that it might not matter very much.
xxxxx
Some few days later they have tracked down their target, and the first henchmen are there.
Sasuke starts forward like a snake, sinuous grace and sickly smirk, and Naruto grabs his wrist.
"This is an A-rank," Sasuke reminds him quite calmly. "I won't help out if you can't pull your own weight, dead-last. I am going to kill them."
"I know," Naruto says. "I wanted to say – I'm with you."
And he is. This is war, and these ninja would not show him or anyone in Leaf compassion, and he's not a child in a fairytale dreamland anymore. People die in reality, and killing is better than dying, I think.
It's easier than it was the first time. He remembers it keenly, the sick lurching feeling and white-vision that came with how his arm stretched through that nameless man's chest (only he wasn't nameless, not to his comrades, his friends, not to the people naruto had taken him away from).
He kills whomever he's able to, now, does it fast. There are very many of them.
Lightheaded and a little sick, he's eventually wrestled down after a chakra-heavy strike cut a little too close to his over-sensitized stomach.
Sasuke gives him a calculating glance but waits until the remaining clones have been rendered mere smoke before he allows himself to be captured as well.
He has a forehead protector on, for the first time in more than three years, and not the scratched one he left behind. Whole and gleaming it shows off the Leaf symbol with glaring clarity.
Rather as expected, they are brought to the leader of the band, this thick-set man they are sent to kill.
He stares at them and does not look particularly evil, after they've been led through some corridors cut out in a mountain. Or, Naruto retracts that, the man does look mean with those unfortunate pig's eyes and the heavy, scowling mouth, but not – not ostensibly so. Looks misunderstood more than anything, and quite a lot like Naruto's old landlord.
Sasuke pauses long enough to identify him, then sends chakra through his captured hands, into the man holding him, who staggers backwards with a muted scream.
So ridiculously stronger than he looks, Sasuke wastes no time ducking forward, kicking a clear space around himself.
The illusion technique that comes next hits Naruto before he has managed to completely squirm free, but he knows it for what it is from the beginning.
It's a good battle, after that – good in the sense that a spectator would regard it, probably. Intense and at least seemingly even, the two of them against perhaps forty men here inside the main cave, more pushing inwards.
The man who does not exactly look an evil overlord throws back his head and laughs.
It's perfect chaos. Genjutsu descend and are repelled, fire and electricity and great bursts of water crash through the air. Snakes explode into the middle of it all.
Naruto holds his own as best as he's able: everyone's going for Sasuke, who is rather obviously the main prize. With the aid of a few replications Naruto manages fairly well, especially after one of his foes pushes him into a corner.
The shock comes afterwards, when Sasuke is standing over the decapitated body of the enemy leader, holding the disgusting head by the hair in a dainty hand, holding it up for all to see.
The minions are dead or fleeing, after that. Most of them get eaten by the snakes.
The summons too have disappeared when Naruto's up and moving, trembling faintly and so overdosed on adrenaline he can barely see straight. Which might be just as well, because the corpses are not pretty.
Sasuke's eyes are still red, thin chest heaving with fast, shallow pants, lips lax in a strangely alight face. Not a hair out of place, but bloodstains on his hands and all the way up his arms.
Naruto recognizes the look from somewhere, gropes through uncooperative memory until the distant, chilling realization strikes him that Sasuke's aroused.
His hand is in Naruto's hair then, warm for once with wildly pounding blood, and his mouth and body pressed up against Naruto's, hard and needy and unforgiving.
"I didn't want it to be like this," Naruto husks, with Sasuke's touch on him and Sasuke's heat under his hands.
"Does want figure into it?" Sasuke breathes back with what would have been scorn, had the voice with which the sentence is spoken been a touch more arch, a smudge less intense.
Need does, naturally (need always seems to, with us).
With the reek of spilt blood in his nose and the deadness inside him and Sasuke's vivid reality in his arms, what else could there be but need?
He's terribly afraid for a moment of what they're getting into, terrified that wrongness will lace everything about them from this moment on, but instead they remedy the horror here. Make it something okay, through its connection to our holding on to each other and to a world gone mad with war.
Sasuke's body is slick with blood under his hands, for they are both smeared with it and so's the floor, so's seemingly the very air, and somehow that doesn't change anything about the carnal glory of legs around his waist, a mouth opening against his, of his terrified self clinging to Sasuke, owning Sasuke, blending with Sasuke.
"Fucking floor," Sasuke grumbles afterwards, still boneless and leaning. Naruto's leaning too, leaning on him, into him.
I, Naruto thinks dizzily. I fucked Sasuke in a cave full of corpses. We killed them and we're still smeared with their blood and now he let me fuck him.
"I did promise," Sasuke says, a thoughtful cast to his face.
His eyes are red again, and his hand's filled with chakra, and on Naruto's stomach.
It detonates through him, a horrifying impure rush of cheated power.
It gives him the strength to roll Sasuke over and kiss him again. Enter him again and fight-fuck him again and come in him again.
Several more times.
The last of which outside, because they finally stumbled out of the stinking pit of debauchery and away from the corpses littering the fresh forest immediately surrounding the cave. He'd never thought Sasuke could touch him so gently, so kindly, as he does then, and that's when Naruto breaks a bit, even though rationally speaking Sasuke's probably just too tired to be violent.
He cries a little, with Sasuke's hands ginger and nice on his neck, Sasuke's voice whispering soft insults in his ear. Because what we've done shouldn't be okay, and yet it is, only not right now.
He knows it will be, though. Knows it'll be another one of those things that really isn't alright but becomes routine, like hitting Sasuke and wanting Kyuubi's chakra.
Right now he feels small and sullied and sundered, and Sasuke's nearness isn't the hurricane force it usually is. Fierce, always that, but as close to kind as Sasuke is capable of, which is more than Naruto has sometimes assumed.
Afterwards, blood and sweat dried and flaking off mostly naked skin, they remain sprawled out in a glade for some time. Sasuke's lying on Naruto's chest, Naruto's hands draped across his back, one palm pressed protectively, provocatively against the edge of his stomach.
"Kakashi's a better man and a worse teacher than I thought if this is the first time you've killed anyone on mission," Sasuke says. Wonderfully tactless, forcing reality back, forcing life back.
"It's not. But that other time was a – mistake."
"You're so pathetically fucking hopeless," Sasuke mutters in what sounds like disgust, but kisses him all the same.
"Just because I didn't pay for private tuition with a perverted serial killer."
"This is getting uncomfortable." Sasuke eases upwards, standing for a moment shady and bloody and bruised in a sunlit forest a late afternoon. Then he flexes his arms with exasperated dismay written all over his features and starts reassembling his clothes.
"You're too damn good for this world," he spits at last. It is not a compliment.
"But I'm not," Naruto says, and the horrible admittance is out and he can't take it back, can't lie, can't denounce the actions that speak so much louder than any words. "I'm just – selfish. Helping so, so maybe I'll be… liked."
Sasuke grabs his hand impatiently, clearly uncomfortable with speech right now, and Naruto's standing upright as well with some pain because the enemies weren't gentle and neither was Sasuke, and though Sasuke's seal is gone the others remain, slowing his healing rate.
Maybe it's okay he never was liked. If he's needed like this.
xxxxx
Tsunade has one word to describe Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto upon their return.
She'd like for it to be victorious, or accomplished, or even sane.
Depressingly, she can't claim to be surprised that it's actually freshly-fucked.
Naruto looks pretty whole, which must mean Uchiha's released the extra seal, but his clothes are another story, and filth clings to him tenaciously. Grass-stains and blood, dust and dirt, and even a touch of something she thinks might be semen.
Uchiha's in much the same state, but what catches your attention is how swollen his mouth is and all the scratches and bite marks and hand-shaped bruises.
She hates to admit it, but if it weren't for the satisfied tilt to his chin he'd look like the victim of a particularly brutal rape.
There's a shocking jaded emptiness to Naruto's face, except – oh gods damn it all – when he sneaks glances at Sasuke (when he looks alive again).
"Mission accomplished, I take it?" she asks tiredly.
"Yeah," Naruto says. "Obviously. There was no reason for you to have ANBU waiting to bring us in at once."
He smells of animal power and defiance: she can very well imagine him being pressed into believing he has to be the grim solider, that he's going to win the war, win against the war, and then everything will be normal and nice again.
She thought the same herself. So, she is fairly certain, did Sasuke, once upon a time.
For his part Naruto smells age on her, and power and bitterness, traces of sake and light sweat now the heat is coming in earnest.
Because in another glade in the deep parts of the forest Sasuke decided that if you're going to do something, you had better do it all the way through, and Naruto decided he agrees that a half-win is hardly better than complete failure, and Sasuke chanted certain words as his hands drew chakra over Naruto's skin, nullifying all the new seals. Breaking a seal is always so much easier than making it.
Kyuubi seems to be in agreement with Naruto for once that it'd be bad if this new state of affairs were broadcast, because it has been unexpectedly simple keeping the demon chakra in check, laced and leashed inside him but ready now to spring forth.
He wonders what Jiraiya would say, now the man's original plan has taken the first few cautious steps towards success after the spectacular initial failure.
"How's your chakra?" Tsunade asks him at last.
He swallows nonchalantly, considers. "It's fine. I'm learning to control what I can get from Kyuubi."
"Good," she says. He can't tell whether she means it. "Don't take any unnecessary risks."
"Is Kakashi on mission?" Sasuke asks suddenly, and Naruto is relived and a little proud his hands are not fisting.
"Yes," Tsunade replies. "Left the day after you did. Don't worry, he'll be back soon."
Sasuke nods fractionally, then has to grab at his ruined shirt to keep it from slipping at the miniscule movement. It was one thing in the forest, but flashing the Hokage is not a pleasant possibility.
Though it might have been a bit funny, from Naruto's perspective.
Naruto, who forces himself not to be upset. Tries to force himself.
Of course Sasuke wants to see for himself that Kakashi is fine, wants to let Kakashi see he is. There is nothing strange about this.
Even though, thinking back, the only reassurance he ever had was the sullen declaration: I don't want to sleep with anyone.
And certainly Sasuke seems willing enough to sleep with him, lately.
Which he isn't about to complain about, but still.
"I doubt we'll face open war for quite some time yet," Tsunade announces solemnly, looking a bit like a primadonna, as she always does when she goes for the dramatic gestures. "Perhaps not for another year or two. Missions will be getting tougher and more frequent, however." She pauses briefly. "How well can you work during the pregnancy?"
"I'd say anything below S-rank is fine this far," Sasuke replies curtly "It might be different further along."
"Excellent." Their chilly smirks mirror each other with frightening precision. "Now, after your latest stint as village savior there has been a dramatic increase in ninja declaring themselves willing to work with you. As for you, though, Naruto, I'm afraid it's quite the opposite."
"That's fine," Naruto says in a brazen voice over the anticipated hollowness gaping inside him. "We work fine with each other."
"I suppose you do, at that," Tsunade says, and doesn't sound happy in the least.
"So," Naruto says. "About the Jounin Exam."
"Ah, yes, about that." She shuffles with something before throwing a small item each at him and Sasuke. "Due to shortage of personal etcetera I've decided to… take some measures regarding that. From this point on, a successfully completed A-rank mission and the agreement of your team mean you've passed. These are your licenses, should you need them." She raises an eyebrow. "Unless, of course, you are inclined to fail each other."
Naruto stares at the little card, at the words he doesn't get even after he's read them five times: Uzumaki Naruto, Registered Jounin of the Hidden Village of Leaf. And the symbols, and ID stuff, and Tsunade's seal.
I'm a Jounin.
It feels like he's cheated. Been cheated.
"Oh," Tsunade looks up from her papers to add. "Iruka says dinner will be served and ready at six o'clock."
"Great," Naruto groans, hungry and tired and beat-up in so many ways, horrified that he'd entirely forgotten about the business with Iruka-sensei.
They take the fast way home, rushing across the roofs. Not only because it's faster and because Naruto would really like to save beating up his assailants as a last resort kind of thing, but also and mostly because it'd be pretty embarrassing for anyone to see them like this.
Shortly they end up in the bath together, and Naruto is… content, as close to happy as he thinks is possible in the circumstances, with the scalding water lapping at his shoulders, watching from under half-closed lids as Sasuke sighs softly and leans his head back, white limbs taking on a relaxed rosy hue from the liquid warmth.
The water has become faintly reddish-brown from blood and grime by the time Sasuke reaches for the soap, the accompanying movement of his leg against Naruto's side rousing the blond from impending slumber.
"Hey," he protests, snagging Sasuke's hand. Its knuckles are blatantly, nastily skinless and his own handprint lies like a handcuff around the wrist. "You okay?"
Sasuke did at least as much damage to him, and the men in the cave got to him worse than to Sasuke, but he doesn't have a scratch, so…
It is an uncomfortable revelation to have to wonder how well he'd be able to deal with slowing, grinding pain, the continuous straining ache of natural healing.
He's not so good yet at reading those golden eyes, can't quite say whether the look they direct at him is insulted or amused.
"It's fine," Sasuke insists. "You can't do anything to me that I don't let you."
Naruto's quiet at that, because he can, they both know he can. Not of the physical variety, of course (of the worse kind).
And probably he could abuse Sasuke, because if Sasuke started hitting him now he wouldn't be able to stop, and Naruto's pretty certain Sasuke's not quite ready to go that far yet.
"I'll heal the worst later, don't worry," Sasuke adds dismissively.
"Why should I worry?" he asks, genuinely puzzled. "You're not seriously hurt."
"I merely assumed you might not want your beloved Iruka-sensei to think you're beating me up for sports. Obviously it was stupid of me to assume you'd mind this great proof of your masculine prowess."
"I am not beating you up for sports!"
"No," Sasuke agrees condescendingly. "You're not beating me up at all."
"Hm. Can I…" He bites his lip, sorting through words that aren't what he wants to say. "Is the baby alright? I mean, after all the… killing and fighting and, um."
"You can't sense for yourself," Sasuke says immediately. "But it's fine."
"Why?" Naruto challenges, though not with much fire. "Jesus, you're so obsessed with your lone hunter routine. Even Hinata let me feel her stomach."
"You're not an Uchiha," Sasuke tells him. "Thus you aren't part of this. It's – private and complicated. I don't want you to have anything to do with it."
"Jeez, alright," he yields, with practiced though ill grace. One argument he can't afford to win. "Anyway, yeah, Hinata's knocked up too. Guess she and Neji are – I mean, they are married, aren't they? Sakura-chan was checking her and – right! Did you, er, know about her and Ino?"
"Did I know what about her and Ino?"
He's never been able to puzzle out post-Orochimaru Sasuke's relationship to Sakura-chan. Distant and protective, possessive and confused and… with that sullen uneasiness and pride over how she doesn't throw herself at his feet anymore. Might be love, he guesses, of a strange sibling-ish kind, maybe (might not be).
"That they're – you know. Kissing, and stuff."
Sasuke's head snaps sharply up. "They are what?" He shakes his head. "No, never mind." Then, sharp and hungry and angry: "I think we have time for a quick one before we need to go."
"Wha? Sasuke, you could barely stand up this morning!"
After some exceptionally, um, passionate sex in a cave. That happened quite a few times. And might have been sort of, you know, on the rougher side.
When Naruto was desperately holding on to anything that could be alive and good, and Sasuke was there.
"I would have walked perfectly well, if it weren't for your incessant nagging about it."
"You grimaced and held on to a tree! You looked like you were going to cry when you took the first step!"
Sasuke gapes for a moment at the indignity, then splashes him.
Which is even more undignified, but never mind that now.
"I did not! Also I healed myself," he protests.
"Why didn't you heal all your wounds?" Naruto asks, honestly curious. "You had the chakra to spare, I know you did."
Sasuke huffs and mutters something that might be, "I don't like doing things I'm no good at."
He's not certain, but then again he is not certain of much of anything in the world save of how Sasuke kisses him. It's the same silly rush it was the first time, tinged with bitterness and unholy lust and not as much sweet carefulness as he once imagined he'd want.
Naruto is quite clear on the fact that, no matter if the appointment's a pseudo-family dinner or anything else important, he'll never be in too great a hurry to have sex with Sasuke.
"Mmh," he mumbles afterwards against Sasuke's jaw, which he is also kissing lazily, possessively. "Shit, we are going to be so late."
"I'm devastated."
"You will be," Naruto assures him. "Iruka-sensei's Guilt-Inducing Stare is practically a jutsu. Bet that's what got him through the Chuunin Exam, he just turned the eyes on the judges."
Sasuke snorts, getting to his feet in the slippery tube filled with now lukewarm water that has splashed horribly all over the bathroom during, ah, previous activities.
Thank god they have replications to use as cleaning slaves.
The rest of the mind-numbingly awkward but kindly trying evening would probably have gone better if Sasuke hadn't been such a jerk.
Naruto is very grateful the Uchiha has decided to be nice and civil around Iruka-sensei, make no mistake about that, but then he realizes the polite greeting and the few almost-normal sentences (several of which prompted by naruto kicking him quite hard below the table) predictably left Sasuke bored and eager for revenge.
He manages not to squeak when Sasuke's hand lands on his closest thigh, just above the knee. It gets progressively harder, in rhythm with his face going redder and his breathing more forced, as those damn fingers sneak higher.
"Naruto?" Iruka-sensei asks in concern as Naruto's fingers whiten around the edge of the table. "Is anything the matter?"
Fuck you, Uchiha Sasuke.
…uh, bad choice of words, there.
"Ehhheheh, not at all! Why would you think that?"
It works out, all the same, if not in the way as he originally wished. Most things seem to, in the end.
xxxxxxxxxx