Title: What It Means To Be His Student
Author: kajamiku
Theme:#2 Teacher/Student
Characters: Sasuke, Orochimaru
Rating: PG-13 I guess…
Warning(s): Angst (Sasuke's the king of angst, how could there not be?), sexual references
Disclaimer: "Naruto" belongs to Masashi Kishimoto, not to me
Summary: Written for the Livejournal community; OroSasu.
Sasuke has never had a teacher quite like Orochimaru.
"What It Means To Be His Student":
"Sasuke-kun." Sometimes Orochimaru didn't hiss; his voice became lower in pitch, purring in a way that left goose bumps over Sasuke's skin.
He was very likely the most unconventional teacher he had ever heard of.
It took a long time before he began to realise quite how devious the snake sennin was; how he planned out everything he did, every little gesture and word.
Everything he did was intricately woven into long or short-scale plots of his making, and no matter how much Sasuke tried, he could never work out what the signs were working up to until the result had already been achieved.
He thought Orochimaru planned it like that.
The first scheme he had managed to see was not even related to him. It was the way the sennin controlled his subordinates in general; the 'flunkies', the ones who weren't quite as powerful or important as the ones the pale shinobi kept close to him.
It was in his tone, his eyes; the way those eyes, despite his sincere sounding words, danced almost constantly with amusement. His tone was occasionally graced with a kind of veiled mockery, as if he sometimes couldn't believe how dense his followers were. Sasuke agreed.
Especially in the not-so-rare cases where he was actually sending the obsolete to their deaths.
However, this was not the most significant of the things Sasuke had noticed during his time in the Hidden Sound. After all, who cared what happened to the blind idiots under Orochimaru's command? The ones who would follow any order, despite how suspicious it sounded?
He was not one of them.
Though he had not noticed it right away, Orochimaru had obviously been working towards something ever since the day Sasuke arrived in the Hidden Sound. It had taken time for Sasuke to be able to see the hints of it; to notice the messages hidden in everything the snake sennin did around him.
Then again, how many people would notice something when Orochimaru didn't want them to? It was virtually impossible.
The goal Orochimaru had been working towards was related to the way Sasuke reacted and responded to him.
The snake took every opportunity, not to mention creating his own, to move gradually closer to Sasuke; so that he grew so used to the man's presence, that he didn't flinch when the sennin touched or spoke to him. So that he didn't think it odd that his teacher stood obtrusively close, so their arms brushed, and purposely leant in to speak whatever words he chose into Sasuke's ear.
Sasuke knew the sennin took great pleasure in manipulating and tormenting the people around him; he liked the way Sasuke had initially reacted when the occasional brushes turned into full-blown gropes in unexpected places. The confusion, the inner turmoil and the discomfort these gestures brought out, amused the snake to no end.
Orochimaru seemed to like it even more when Sasuke started to react; at first with resistance and sporadic violence, and then in ways that brought the teen even more confusion, along with newly acquired guilt and shame.
The snake sennin had seemed to enjoy working these things out of him.
"Experience overcomes emotion."
He always had new lessons for Sasuke to learn, and many would very obviously not be any help in the defeat of Itachi.
He often informed Sasuke that he was 'pleased with how open he had become', which the Uchiha took as something lewd when he saw the cunning glitter in Orochimaru's eyes. The sennin was even more perverse than he had originally guessed.
Orochimaru often called Sasuke to his chambers, much to the rather noticeable chagrin of Kabuto. Sometimes he ensnared Sasuke in the library, or on the training grounds. Sometimes as he was leaving or entering a room, or even in Sasuke's own chambers. Basically, whenever the sennin felt like it.
But Orochimaru's devious ways had succeeded well before Sasuke even realised the plans existed; Sasuke did not pull away, he did not resist, and he responded in just the ways the sennin seemed to want him to.
Not by choice, obviously. But the sennin seemed to know the younger Uchiha's mind as well as he himself did, and every word he spoke was dripping with innuendo.
For the snake sennin's manipulation of him, sometimes Sasuke despised him.
In some ways Sasuke hated Orochimaru. He felt as though he had been made a fool of, as if the sennin's 'taming' had been a personal insult. He felt weak because of it.
But in some strange way, Sasuke didn't really mind. It only strengthened his resolve in the knowledge that one day he would be strong enough to teach the sennin something of his own.
End.