Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, or any of its associated characters!

Summary: COMPLETE. He's too bare. Too awake. Too used to the night and too desperate to leave it. Naruto's hand is a lifeline. Sasuke's POV, canonverse, SNS, oneshot, ficlet.

A/N: Okay! So! This is going to be a shorter one, because I spent all my fic-writing time working on something for SNStober next month. So something fun and longer and that I'm really excited about is coming! But for now, this one is a little weird. It's the little dreamy ficlet that predates Rosaceae and Something, and was the inspiration for both of them (I think some of the lines even overlap) - I kept trying to make this fic into its own thing, but it just became two different ones, and now I still have this small little bit that I can't bear to change. I just feel like it stands on its own. So it's short, but I hope you love it anyway. Here you go!

Bare

He's awake tonight.

It's old—this stare at the ceiling...these winds outside. When the rain would taste like salt and the thunder would boom with memories. Sasuke knows what the night looks like, outside in the ice—

But tonight, it's warm.

Tonight, it feels like the winds on a beach. The stars in the sky. Tonight there's salt on his tongue, but it's not from tears—

Naruto lays at his side, bare.

Sasuke feels the sheets underneath him. The cloth on his hips, air on his toes...Naruto's breath on his chest. His weight on his shoulder.

Sasuke wants to taste that salt again.

It feels foreign. It feels fake. Sasuke feels as if his eyes will close and then they will open somewhere else—somewhere cold, somewhere that tastes like ice and ash, like blood and fear. It echoes in Sasuke, even now, but then—

But then.

His hand tightens. Naruto's fingers have fallen into it, like petals from a flower. Sasuke holds them—careful, delicate. As if they might break, rough and calloused and accustomed to a fight as they were. As they had been.

Sasuke doesn't want them to be now. He's too bare. Too awake. Too used to the night and too desperate to leave it. Naruto's hand is a lifeline.

Sasuke wonders if it's ever been anything else.

He breathes out, and Naruto shifts, nuzzling his face to Sasuke's skin as if he is warm, too. As if he's the flower, the sun, the light to follow, the love to hold. Sasuke wants to tell him it's impossible, but Naruto is bare.

Bare, and naked, and with Sasuke's sweat on his tongue, Sasuke's name in his mouth, with hands like fire burning him up and down and up and down and up and—

Down.

…

Sasuke swallows. His heart thrums a desperate, wanting beat. Sasuke breathes out, low and long. And again. Deep, and slow, and please. Please. Naruto is only asleep but Sasuke is bare and wanting and hot and itching, he wants to scratch himself all over, put Naruto's hands on him to calm the skin, push and pull him until he can't think, can't breathe, Sasuke is burning and unsatisfied and Naruto is bare and beside him like a promise, like a whisper, like a breath and a moan and an oh and a yes—

Sasuke is awake.

…

Yes, Sasuke is awake.

He swallows and turns to his half-gone arm. It reminds him of what his haste has done—his sudden turns, his quick exits. There is no race to the end—not for this. Not anymore. Sasuke is bare and when Naruto wakes, tomorrow, he will be too, and that's a question Sasuke doesn't want to think about the answer to—it's so filled with fear, but even louder is hope, so much hope, a desperate hope, and Sasuke—

Sasuke is so, so bare.

He swallows, and the sky looks out into the night.

"Can't sleep?" Naruto whispers, with the voice of a man that hadn't been snoring.

Ah.

"No," he whispers, replying to a face that's far too close. There's barely room to breathe between them, and Sasuke doesn't want to. Sasuke wants to feel a nose bump to his, wants his breath mixed and messy, wants his lips pinned into submission, Sasuke—

"Regret?" Naruto asks, and he is bare.

"No," Sasuke tells him. "Never."

Naruto's face is full of smiles. He breathes out and it's in his cheeks. In his eyes, in his ears, in the bite of his lip and the dart of his tongue and Sasuke can't look at him right now. Not without aching. Not without yearning. He breathes out and it must be too desperate, he knows from the way Naruto's eyes drop down. From the way they stare, and they darken, and please. Please, please, please. He can't say it out loud, he can't breathe it, his voice stays stuck in his heart and Sasuke wants, Sasuke asks, and Naruto doesn't speak but he answers, sitting up and turning with nothing but the moon on his skin, the covers falling from him to leave him—

Bare.

Sasuke's mouth is dry, and Naruto's body is water. Naruto's body is the clearest, cleanest pond. Naruto's body is an invitation and all Sasuke wants to do is accept, over and over and over again—

And he can. He can.

He does.

A/N: Short! I know! But I put a lot of heart into it and my attempts to work it into a bigger fic have so far failed spectacularly, so I just,,,,really wanted a reason to share this bit. And I needed the excuse to keep chipping away at next month's fic, which is one of those ideas that's snowballed and is taking a whole bunch of work to get done, but I'm excited about it, and I hope you are too.

Until then,

- Kinomi