a/n:
fun fact!
i've wasted MONTHS of my life writing out 13 DIFFERENT versions about the different directions i wanted this chapter to go.
and then i end up using the only version that hit me just a couple days ago…so. haha. that was fun.
. . .
secondhand thread in a secondhand bed with a second man's head {all of this is temporary all of this is temporary all of this is—}
Chapter Summary:
He's been due for a couple rude awakenings now.
. . .
He is entranced.
Crackling lightning and bursts of thunder, merciless rains, this heady downpour threatens to guzzle down this whole damn village.
At the first sign of stirring, he has to physically tear himself away from the lovely sight, only to be greeted by a lovelier one.
Sasuke comes around with a rough start to a rougher reality, palms unconsciously flying to press against the worst of his pains, failed attempts to alleviate even some of the agony.
He's been due for a couple rude awakenings now.
Still, it's much, much sooner than he had foreseen, just short of miraculous really. But that is a given, present circumstances considering.
Although a halved plethora of the wounds Sasuke sustained would be enough to kill a lesser man.
He doesn't want to give in and admit to being pleasantly impressed.
"Aren't you in excruciating amounts of pain?" He is unable to pose the rhetorical question without stinging needles of glee piercing through it. "You shouldn't even be conscious right now."
As a matter of fact, Sasuke should, actually, be spectacularly dead right now.
But that's a technicality he knows the interested party to be uninterested in addressing.
It takes a smattering of muffled minutes for the battered silhouette to gather himself enough, to form coherent thoughts and shape intelligible sentences; not necessarily in that order.
"Funny." Sasuke heaves with strain that isn't entirely human and not wholly cognizant, words lubricated with phlegm, wet with blood. "I c-could say the same to–"
And that's when Sasuke cuts himself off, snapping back like an elastic pulled too taut, breaking into the moment as he steals the very first unfocused glance at him.
He revels in the weight of his disbelief, greedily drinking in the flickers of unguarded horror that, unfortunately, harden much too quickly into a benumbed, grounding realization.
"...you." Sasuke hisses without air.
He turns to fully face him.
With a poisonous smirk that stands starkly out of place but right at home as it slants its way through Naruto's face, with hooded eyes, milky scleras murked by inky abysses, sky blue irises polluted by scarlet blood pools.
With features bleeding an uncharacteristically cruel haze.
"Me."
. . .
a/n:
if you're interested, you can find a direct continuation of this chapter on Archive Of Our Own!
