Well hey there! Surprisingly, I did not sit and write this chapter in one go. Took a couple days, this one. Lots of real life stuff happened that drained my motivation and inspiration, so this comes to you a little later than I meant for it to.
But here it is! Have fun with this, all you SasuNaru fans, it's likely the last time Naruto shows up in this fic.
Sasuke woke early the next morning, groggy and still completely exhausted. His head felt full and heavy, and he was in no mood to brave the subway and his teachers' boring lessons. So it was that for the first time in over a year, he trudged into the kitchen, dragged down a prescription bottle dated from sometime a few months after his sixteenth birthday, and took one of the pills inside. He then trudged right back to bed, pulled the covers up over his head and proceeded to let the sleep aid do its job.
He woke again about nine hours later to a muffled, but recognizable voice and a loud knocking, feeling a bit more rested. Hearing the knocking stop, he dragged himself out of bed, still without a shirt from the night before. A glance at the clock on his nightstand had him groaning. He hadn't meant to sleep until four, and despite his lack of appetite, his stomach was still protesting having not eaten since dinner.
As he rounded the corner into the livingoom, he nearly jumped, coming face to face with Naruto (who seemed to have just let himself in upon realizing the door was still unlocked, even though Sasuke hadn't heard him).
"Jesus Christ, idiot, who just lets themselves in like that when nobody answers the door!" he snapped, still somewhat irritable after last night. It was only moderately satisfying that Naruto did actually jump.
"I was worried about you, bastard! What if you were dead or something! You didn't even come to school, and I know you've always got perfect attendance so it had to be something serious! You- is that a hickey?"
Sasuke frowned, unconsciously reaching up to rub the mark as he pushed past Naruto and headed for the kitchen, unashamed otherwise that he was wearing nothing but a pair of dress slacks (that were riding a little bit low on his hips) in front of his best friend who had, just a little less than three days ago, tried to drunkenly molest him at a party.
Undeterred, the blond simply followed him into the kitchen. "Hey, asshole, stop ignoring me, I came all the way out here just to make sure you weren't dead or something and-" Naruto's eyes widened slightly, sentence coming to a screeching halt as Sasuke pushed him back against the fridge, face dangerously close.
"Shut up, moron," he breathed, boxing the blond in with a hand on either side of his head. He heard Naruto's breath catch as he pressed closer, felt the exhale against his lips, and closed the distance between them.
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Itachi stood by the overly large hotel window, dark eyes narrow and more expressive, albeit of frustration, than Kisame had ever seen them. He'd known the younger man for admittedly only two and a half years now, but he'd never, even in the trickiest of situations, seen him this worked up about anything.
Something had happened. Something was happening. It was something big, and he wanted to know what.
"What did that glass ever do to you, kid?" he ventured, plastering a sharp grin on his face as there was a sudden cold snap in those eyes and everything was blocked off again, only to have them shortly directed right at him in a frigid glare. "What? Come on. What's got you so broody? Was it that date you had yesterday? Reservations for two at that snazzy new joint uptown, that's not exactly low profile."
And oh, he must've hit a nerve, because the ice in Itachi's eyes was turning to a black, black fire. Oh, but sometimes, it was fun to play with fire. It wasn't exactly true that if you played with fire you'd get burned, after all, because if you knew exactly what you were doing with it and where your limits were, things usually were just a whole lot of fun.
"It was, wasn't it? It was that Uchiha kid, I bet. He's the only reason I can come up with that you'd even be here. Who is he, anyway? You never go out of your way for anybody if it doesn't benefit you, so this kid must have been close to you or somethin-"
The reaction was sudden, and more passionate than he'd expected. This was the part where he'd get burned; he'd always been good at figuring out and pushing Itachi's limits, but maybe this was just one subject nobody touched, because before he even know what hit him, he was on the floor, wind knocked out of him and no more getting back in. A few seconds later he registered the other man's hand tight around his throat, pushing in all the right places to cut off his oxygen and his ability to make so much as a squeak.
It was Hell and fury he saw in those dark eyes, black tinging the edges of his vision, and he wondered what he must've looked like. Ready to piss himself? Nah. But he'd be lying if he said he wasn't afraid that the grip wouldn't loosen until his lips were blue and cold. As his body reflexively tried to gasp for air, he thought maybe he looked like a fish, and that maybe that Hell was what Itachi's victims always saw before the end, though he had a feeling their view was a little more sinister with a smile than this rage he was seeing now.
But before he could contemplate it further, spots danced in front of his eyes and suddenly a cold wash of air filling his lungs, and he coughed something violent as Itachi stood. The kid was ruthless, but he'd never witnessed it quite this firsthand before. Touchy subject, indeed, he reasoned, and once his vision cleared up again and he stopped feeling lightheaded, he got to his feet, noting the dead silence in the room.
"Speak of him again, or go anywhere near anything about him, and I will finish the job next time, Kisame," came the clipped deadpan from across the room, and he let his eyes again focus on Itachi's back.
Helpfully, he made his coughing way to the mini-bar, pulled some glasses down, and set to serving something hard. "You need a drink, man," he offered, carrying two glasses over to where the younger man again leant his forehead against the window and holding one out.
It was taken wordlessly, stared at calculatingly, and then downed without any preamble, a feat few knew the man capable of. Shrugging it off, however, Kisame handed Itachi the other glass as well, taking the empty one from the outstretched hand in order to get himself something to drink.
Like smoking, drinking heavily was something Itachi rarely partook in, and Kisame himself had heard the man claim it was because getting drunk not only impaired just about every sense useful to anyone (especially the sense of giving a shit, he'd pointed out, which was especially useful for those who gave a shit. Itachi had proceeded to shove him into a pool at that), but it made you stupid. Unfortunately, he mused, listening to the sound of ice crackling and settling in the glass, a drunk Itachi was actually not much different than a sober Itachi.
The only real difference was that a drunk Itachi tended to brood more.
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Naruto's mouth was warm and pliant, but hesitant, a far cry from how Itachi's had been just the night previous. Sasuke tried to shove those thoughts aside, however, and when the blond's head turned away from his, he immediately fell to the slightly tanned neck, feeling a shudder in response.
"Sasuke, what are you-" the question was cut off with a sharp intake of breath as his teeth sunk lightly into the junction of Naruto's neck and shoulder. He didn't want to give the blond time to question it, because he knew that Naruto wanted him, and he had to, had to, at all costs, get the feel of Itachi off.
He worked the buttons on his friend's shirt quickly, with a focused desperation, spreading the material as soon as the last button popped open and splaying his hands against Naruto's chest. His lips rerouted to the blond's in order to cut off another rising protest, and his hands tugged Naruto closer as he pushed forward, grinding their hips and swallowing the sound that bubbled up from the other's throat.
He could tell that the blond was fighting with himself, feeling the hands on his shoulders alternate between pushing and pulling, but he couldn't stop, not now, not when he could feel the heat rolling off of Naruto's body with the roll of his hips and the slide of their tongues. It was only once his hands slid around Naruto's hips, fingertips slipping just beneath the waistband of his pants, that the blond decided on making space between them.
Sasuke had to bite down on a growl, but moreso the wrong name that wanted to slide off of his tongue in protest. As they both caught their breath, he managed a heated glare at the blond who was holding him at arm's length, noting the unguarded emotions flooding blue, blue eyes. He tried to lean back in, to recapture Naruto's lips, but strong arms kept him away.
"What the hell is going on with you, bastard?" Naruto questioned, and Sasuke found he really didn't want to answer it, and he almost growled the blond's name in response.
"You want this, idiot, why are you resisting?" he shot back, leaning forward as much as he could and keeping the palms of his hands pressed flat against the blond's chest. He could feel the rapid heartbeat under his right palm, and he trailed his other hand down, feeling the muscles twitch under his touch.
"You're not thinking straight or something," Naruto pointed out, and he didn't want to hear it. "Sasuke, stop it!"
The blond placed both his hands flat against the Uchiha's chest and shoved, hard enough to send Sasuke almost crashing against the opposite counter. Naruto held his hands up defensively, backing out of the kitchen.
"Think about what you're doing," he prompted, and Sasuke stood there, partially in shock. "If you do, and you decide you really do want this, I'm all for it, but I don't think you really do. I don't know what happened to make you skip school today or anything, but I get the feeling whatever it was is why you're doing this, so just think about it," Naruto rambled, and the next thing Sasuke knew, he was alone in his kitchen, the sound of the front door closing sounding strangely hollow.
Suddenly, he felt sick with himself again, felt his eyes sting and his legs give out. Sinking to the kitchen floor, he dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, clenching his teeth and trying to steady his breathing.
"Why am I such an idiot?" he asked the empty flat, only hearing the tick of the antique clock in the hall in response and feeling more overwhelmed than he had since he got the call from the police that his parents' jet had crashed.
Why did things have to be so complicated? Why did he have to make things so complicated? Why Itachi?
A strangled sound escaped him, and more than ever in his life he felt so, horribly, weak. He already had the feeling that he wasn't going to sleep tonight, and by eleven thirty, he knew he wouldn't sleep until dawn.
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Across town, in that same high-end hotel suite, sitting comfortably in the same chair near the window, Uchiha Itachi, despite having gotten more drunk than he had in quite some time just earlier that day, was sharing his little brother's sleepless night.
He could already feel the hangover coming on, and the caffeine in the painkillers he'd taken to stop it before it started was doing nothing to help his natural insomnia.
Watching as the neon clusters far below blurred in his vision, he settled in for a long, long night.
The good news for you guys? The next chapter is the sex chapter. Look forward to it, and don't forget to review!
Also, I'd like to ask any and all who have read this story this far... Any of you have any clue what's going on with Sasuke? I assure you, everything will be revealed in the last chapter, but I want to see if any of you have caught any of the hints I've dropped.