Author's Note: More crack. Birthday crack, at that. Go me! Anyway, still crack, still pointless, still just writing it for the fun. Hopefully everyone is enjoying.

Warnings: See previous chapters. Also, some (more) Sasuke weirdness.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Vice

Chapter Six

"What the hell was that about?" Naruto snapped as they walked back to Sasuke's home. He had to hurry to keep up with the Uchiha's longer stride, and Sasuke wasn't in the mood to slow down so the idiot could look more dignified. Fuck him. It was his fault for not being taller.

He could still taste Neji's chakra, cool and bitter, but smooth. Shame burned in his stomach. He hadn't been able to control himself.

Neji's words hurt more than his punch had. Sasuke had a high tolerance for pain; less so for humiliation.

Naruto grabbed his arm, his chakra scorching. The exact opposite of Neji's. "Sasuke!"

"What?" Sasuke hissed back, shaking his arm free.

"What the fuck just got into you?" the other demanded, gesturing widely. His eyes pinned Sasuke's. This time Sasuke didn't care to flinch away. Naruto's power buzzed around him, agitated and potent, and Sasuke wanted it so bad he ached.

And Neji had seen that, the prick.

"Well?" Naruto pressed.

Sasuke tensed. He was not--was not--telling Naruto what had happened. Not now. Not when the shame was still fresh. Probably not later either, when it wouldn't matter anymore. So finally, he hedged, "I'm hungry."

Naruto blinked, surprised, and lost his edge. "We just ate... oh."

"Oh," Sasuke repeated humorlessly.

They walked the rest of the way to Sasuke's apartment at a more sedate pace. Naruto didn't say anything else. It was still early, still bright and warm, the sun almost a physical weight across Sasuke's back. People were out, shopping and visiting and working, just walking. Sasuke grit his teeth and ignored them. If it weren't for the sparks they put off, he might have felt alone on the street.

Sasuke expected Naruto to leave once they got back, but he didn't. He invited himself in and sat down on Sasuke's couch. His expression was thoughtful.

Sasuke shrugged and locked the door behind them. He sat away from Naruto. It was already becoming habit to keep himself at a distance. The thought left him a little sick, but the temptation was too strong not to acknowledge.

Sighing, he wondered why exactly the world seemed to hate him.

It was a long time before Naruto broke the silence that grew between them, saying, "You eat chakra, right? More or less."

"That's part of it, yeah," Sasuke agreed. He was tired. Very, very tired. Last night's dream flitted near by, not something heard or seen or felt, but a little off all three.

"So..." Naruto said, fidgeting absently. "I could feed you, couldn't I? I mean, hell, I have enough chakra for both of us, right?"

"Naruto," Sasuke began, and was surprised himself with how much it sounded like a protest. Hadn't he thought the same thing? Hadn't he tried when he first found Naruto after waking up?

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," he said awkwardly. "You're chakra is what did this in the first place. Adding more might not be a smart." Fuck, but he wanted more.

Naruto explained quickly, "Yeah, I thought of that. But if it's like a withdrawal or something, maybe more would make it less like getting off all the sudden, right? Either way, it's better if you aren't trying to eat people."

Sasuke couldn't argue with that. He didn't want to argue with that, either. He wanted to crawl over to Naruto and do whatever it was he did. He wanted to take everything he could hold. Something inside him shivered and turned. He wanted.

"Are you sure about this?" Sasuke asked and, more than anything, he wanted Naruto to say no. He wanted Naruto to stop this now, to think better of it.

Idly, he wondered what Naruto's blood would taste like; thick as it was with the Kyuubi.

Laughing dryly, Naruto said, "Not really. But do you have a better idea? Better me than someone else. Why are you being a girl about this?"

"I'm not being a girl," Sasuke shot back, but without much heat. "I'm trying to be reasonable."

"So am I," Naruto assured. "And I'm glad you didn't just leap at the chance, really I am, but I think that it's worth a shot, isn't it?"

Sasuke didn't argue. He bit his lip, and didn't stand. He didn't cross the space between them. He didn't trust himself, and he hated it. He hated thinking that he might wrap around Naruto and just take and take until he couldn't take anymore. Until, impossibly, he took too much.

But Naruto was right. Naruto had more than enough. Naruto had enough chakra to burn him up. In a weird, irrelevant way, it made Sasuke want to gloat because he could still beat his friend in a fight as often as he lost, even with that handicap. Naruto had enough reserves to destroy his own body, though, and his body was used to handling ridiculous amounts of power. Sasuke would flash out like a fly in a bug zapper if he took too much.

Sasuke swallowed hard.

"Well," Naruto said when Sasuke stalled. "How do we start?"

Sasuke took a deep breath and stood up slowly, holding his back straight. He approached Naruto cautiously. His mouth was suddenly dry, and that thing inside him was squirming, but he would do this like a man. He would not whimper or sidle up to Naruto diffidently like that part wanted. That part of him wasn't him.

"I think..." He stopped in front of Naruto, voice carefully neutral. "I think that I have to touch you."

"You think?"

"I know that works." An irritable growl tried to climb out of his throat. He held it back.

"Okay, then," the blond said, meeting Sasuke's eyes. Did they still look black now, or were they fox eyes? "Then touch me."

Sasuke's hands didn't shake. He didn't know how he managed that. It felt like they should have been. He was steady as he put his hands on Naruto's shoulders. He could feel the heat of Naruto's body through his tee shirt. He was always warm, like he was running a mild temperature. He was warm on Sasuke's other senses, too. Naruto filled that sense. That thing that was more like touch than anything else, but sometimes seemed like smell and sometimes like taste, and occasionally like sight. That sense told him that Naruto was blazing. He could feel the fire smoldering up his arms, like a fuse turning to ash.

Naruto's jaw flexed, and Sasuke wondered if he felt it also. Was he even aware of this side of himself? Or was he really totally oblivious to his own presence?

Until two days ago, Sasuke had been. On one level, he couldn't blame Naruto for not knowing. On another, he didn't know how anyone could be so blind, deaf and numb.

"I'm ready when you are," Naruto encouraged. The words fell a little flat.

Sasuke nodded, and took.

And suddenly all the control he thought he had vanished, incinerated in the heat that poured out of the other man and into him. He couldn't stand up straight anymore--he couldn't even stand. He crouched before his friend, back and knees folding; his hands slid from Naruto's shoulders to his chest. His finger curled against hard muscle.

Sasuke felt a pressure in his mouth, and knew the fangs were back. He knew his eyes were orange now, if they hadn't been before. He could see his fingernails as they hardened and grew to points.

Naruto watched him with a look of... surprise, maybe? Not horrified surprise, but detached curiosity sort of surprise. Like someone catching a plot twist in a movie they were only vaguely interested in. His eyes, though, weren't detached. They were very, very immediate. For all that they were still blue, still human in appearance, the look in them was not. The eyes, at odds with the face, were the eyes of a predator in its own territory. They weren't threatening, not to him, but not afraid either.

It was a look Sasuke had seen a few other times, something alien behind Naruto's eyes.

Except now, it wasn't.

Sasuke wanted to touch the other man's skin. He wanted to feel the life in Naruto, wanted it without any barrier.

He climbed onto the couch, straddling Naruto's lap and reaching up to cup his face.

Naruto hissed at the contact, his lips pulling into a small sneer. It wasn't the bad kind of sneer. Sasuke hadn't even known there wasn't a bad kind. Fire and life and chakra moved into Sasuke's body, tingled through him, warmed and fed and filled him. This close, he couldn't sense the end of it. It seemed as limitless as the ocean or the sky.

He almost laughed. Instead he leaned closer and breathed in the smell, the life, that pulsed in the air around him.

Naruto felt like someone had punched him in the head. In a good way, though. It was the same feeling of impact, not really pain, just being hit by something. Hard.

His skin felt strange where Sasuke touched him, half-numb and heavy, stinging slightly with chakra. It didn't hurt. Far from it. But it seemed, in a way, like it did. Like his brain couldn't think of a better way to interpret the sensation.

That shock was nothing compared to the change in Sasuke. One moment he had been standing hesitantly in front of Naruto, the next he was wiggling into his lap in a manner that was nearly childish. The way his fingers moved over his jaw, feeling out the shape and texture, wasn't the touch of an adult. It was more like a kid who'd just discovered something soft, something interesting.

The closeness wasn't childish, though. Not really. The way Sasuke went to lengths to keep his head lower than Naruto's, even though he was taller and sitting higher up, wasn't childish. It wasn't normal.

His mouth was near Naruto's ear, moving silently.

His hands were pleading.

Something warm curled through Naruto's stomach, something that might have been disgust but wasn't, as it clicked.

Submissive.

The word submissive in conjunction with Sasuke's name was beyond ludicrous. There was nothing submissive about Sasuke. Ever.

Until now, with his hands encouraging and his soundless mouthing evolving into whimpers, and a drain that was starting to make itself felt. It wasn't really like having used his chakra, or like when he'd given his chakra to Sasuke. That was there, a little, but it was different. It was a rush--adrenaline and endorphins, and sexual enough that he ought to be uncomfortable with the fact that it was coming from his best friend.

Sasuke wasn't really like the Sasuke who was his best friend, though. Not when he was acting like this. This, this was the thing in Sasuke coming out. A thing Naruto had put there, somehow.

He thought about putting his arm around Sasuke's waist to settle him, but he didn't. Naruto's hands stayed at his sides, even as his breathing sped to a pant to match Sasuke's. The eyes that peeked out from behind Sasuke's bangs from time to time were orange. Bright, true orange.

Then Sasuke-who-wasn't-Sasuke nuzzled him. His nose and his lips brushed against the side of Naruto's neck, and Naruto nearly thought he could feel Sasuke nibbling at his chakra.

Naruto had jutsu that took more chakra than this.

Those hands still pleaded, running down to brace on Naruto's arms, that mouth whispered into his skin. Sasuke nuzzled, he shifted closer. His body was warmer now. More than just warmer, it was hot. Under other circumstances, Naruto would have worried. People shouldn't be that hot.

Sasuke's body hummed above him, a gentle, satisfied vibration. The drain slowed, then stopped. It took Naruto a moment to figure out it was because the other was full. Sasuke couldn't take any more.

He kept nuzzling though, kept close. His body language didn't change, needy and inhuman. His mouth moved, not a kiss, but something. Something that came again. And again.

A taste.

"Sasuke..." Naruto said, surprised to hear his voice sound hoarse to his own ears.

"Hm?" Sasuke murmured, and he laughed.

In Naruto's experience, Sasuke only had two laughs. The first was a nearly noiseless chuckle--half the time he hid it in snorts. If something really struck him as funny, his chest would shake and you could hear his breathing catch. The other was not so pleasant. Like the smug, bastard offspring of a snicker and a giggle. Naruto had heard it before, and now it raised his hackles.

"Sasuke," he said, more urgently. "Are you okay?"

"Hm." The sound was... well fed. "Fine." Sasuke wriggled closer as he spoke, so their hips and bellies touched. He kept his head low, and the position nearly wrapped him around Naruto. His breath ghosted over the side of Naruto's neck and face, strangely sweet.

"Sasuke?"

Sasuke hushed him, breath shooshing against skin. Then he hunched, nuzzling. As though he were apologizing for the familiarity. It was wrong. It wasn't Sasuke. Sasuke would have just told him to shut up.

Naruto's seal prickled his stomach, and he felt an emotion that wasn't his leaking from behind the Nine-Tail's gate: humor. The thing was fucking amused. Naruto couldn't even begin to guess if it was amused by Sasuke's behavior, or because it thought this was a joke, or just because Naruto was half hard for all he wished he wasn't.

"Shh," Sasuke shushed again, and giggled. A giddy, intoxicated, utterly wrong little giggle. His tongue flicked Naruto's throat, and he whined, still begging.

Naruto wasn't sure if he wanted to be sick, or to roll Sasuke under him.

No, that was a lie. But he wished he wanted to be sick. He wished that his body didn't hum with a strange satisfaction, and that he didn't want to respond to the way Sasuke touched him, to what Sasuke obviously wanted from him.

A long, moist lick sent a shiver down Naruto's spine. It made his teeth itch, and his hands itch to touch back.

"Sasuke, I don't," he tried, and stopped. He couldn't find the words that came after that.

"So don't," Sasuke whispered, then pressed close and buried his face in Naruto's shoulder. Taste.

Naruto reached up, his hands going to Sasuke's waist, his fingers creeping under the hem of the other man's shirt and touching his sides, his back. Skin was hot, damp with sweat, sticky under his finger tips.

He groaned as Sasuke kissed his neck, feeling teeth behind the other's lips. Sasuke's hands were insistent. They groped at his arms and shoulders. Nails like claws pricked him.

Then Sasuke bit him. Pain and shock cleared Naruto's head in a rush. He stood, pushing Sasuke off him and onto the floor. His hand went to the side of his neck. The wound was already sizzling closed, though his finger tips still came away bloody.

There was blood on Sasuke's lips. His posture was submissive again, still, whatever, but the effect was spoiled by the blood and by the sniggering, snickering, giggling laughter that Sasuke couldn't seem to contain.

Naruto didn't bother saying goodbye before he ran out the door. He just hoped Sasuke stayed put until someone else showed up to watch him.

To be continued.