By The EternityDragon

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto...unfortunately

A/N : This is a type of one shot the two scenes are set in similar circumstances but with years between them...I wanted to write fluff but the muse wouldn't co-operate so it came out as angst. TwT

In the Rain

An act of two parts:

Act One:

There is always a before…..

It started to rain, from clear cold blue skies to a slushing, torrential downpour that sluiced like a waterfall over the grass, turning dust into mud puddles and filling ditches with dirty water.

They were in the middle of an argument when it happened, out on one of the front lawns, the sort that sloped steeply down to the lake, the sort that had long grass but no trees. The only shelter being the tall white pagoda several hundred meters away. It was a lovely place to sit in the summer, with the blooming brilliant violet lavender bushes lining the gravel path, and the delicate trailing dog roses climbing up the fluted columns to the roof.

But in the middle of autumn Sasuke isn't too sure whether he wants to stand under the spiralling roof, especially not with Naruto in this incessant, bickering mood.

But standing here, he's getting soaked through to the skin, his dark hair slipping into his eyes as fat droplets roll down it, soaking into his locks, plastering them to his skull.

It's absolutely no fun whatsoever.

It suddenly seems like a good idea to run, and he does so, turning in the middle of a sentence on his heels. He's feeling unpredictable, sudden, shakeable, light and dizzy all at once as he sprints. Sprints like he's going to fly, down the slope, across the grass, Naruto he thinks can go screw himself, his throat is tired of working and he's sick of those looks. The shielded, probing sort, like he's on the end of an electric pole being jabbed by little snaps of yellow energy.

There is a sudden whoosh, and spiral of air as he slides halfway down the slope, mud splashes across the white of his knees, but he's beyond caring, he's flushed, he's breathing, the adrenaline washes over his senses, he wants to run fast, he wants to run so fast his feet will leave the ground and he'll be running through nothing but thin air.

He thinks maybe he should have heard it before, he's sure Naruto yelled before he pushed him. He thinks, or perhaps considers anyway, it seems the sort of thing Naruto would have done, other wise it would have just been indecent. Naruto never does anything that is indecent.

But perhaps Naruto just likes to play dirty and pretends he doesn't.

Sasuke span, tumbling forwards to his knees, there is a spray as liquid earth falls in a tumultuous shower around his hands, elbows, knees and forearms. He can feel the unpleasant, cold stuff seeping through to his clothes; he's down for less then five seconds before he's up again. Tearing after Naruto, enraged, shouting bloody insults to the wind and the rain. There is blood on his lips from where his teeth have torn through the skin, and his cheeks and ears are numb from the freezing downpour, but he's beyond caring at this point. Rage is pumping through him like a drug; at least he thinks its rage, it leaving him feeling slightly elated, still dizzy, but focused and aware.

Like he can feel the tendrils of water seeping down the nape of his neck, meandering in little curving lines to the base of his shoulders, he can feel an odd electric pulsing in his fingertips. The type that lingers and sizzles, gone in a flash, then back again, harder and faster then ever.

He leaps on Naruto from behind, a type of body tackle and they both go down in the mud, the cold, sticky, clinging substance that coats their legs, arms and faces. Naruto has the muddy imprint of the back of a hand on his jaw, from where Sasuke tried to punch him, whilst Sasuke has streaks of grass and grit mauled across the soft skin under his neck.

They are both panting hard, feet away from the pagoda, it's who gets in first that matters, and it's who gets in first that will have won.

They are both angry beyond speaking, frustrated and unable to communicate in words what they both really feel. Sasuke wishes that the goddamned cat would just spit it out. He thrusts his left knee up and feels it connect hard with Naruto's abdomen. There is a sharp exhale of breath, and a sudden cloud of dirty blonde hair, stained light cappuccino with the rain, as he falls down, doubled over, clutching his stomach.

Sasuke is lying flat on his back, dark hair in his eyes, neither inky grey or smoky black, his eyelashes are clinging together in clumps, and dully through his lips he spits out the wad of congealed blood that has gathered on the tip of his tongue.

His ribs are hurting, and his arms are aching as he jumps to his feet, he steps indifferently over the gasping Naruto, running one hand through his hair pulling out the grass and clods of dirt, the other is by his side.

A good thing too, because it saves his face from being smashed when Naruto grabs him by the ankles and yanks out the ground from underneath him, the earth is soft from the pelting rain but he still inhales soil up his nose. Small stones and dandelions beneath his fingertips that are crushed beneath his chest, Naruto flips him onto his back again. He's so goddamned sick of staring up at the sky, clouded over like it is, streaked with dark greys and the occasional strand of silver, mixing into a turbulent mess which is obscured by the water in his dark eyes.

He wanders vaguely if Naruto is going to hit him again, and finds to his own surprise he doesn't really give a damn if he gets his face smashed in, just as long as Naruto is looking at him. Responding and reacting to him, that's progress isn't it? Something less shallow then petty bickering, something less substantial then hate, it's in between, not quite what he wanted it to be, but he'll take this over what came before.

What bugs him now, is that look on Naruto's face, that sort of curling, half sneer that's unnatural on his mouth. It's not a look he's used to, and one that has progressed there quite recently. As if Naruto has reason not to trust him.

Stupid cat.

Although he thinks sometimes Naruto looks like a fox; it's the sort of half formed expression he makes when he's in the middle of thinking something vague, the line pulled by his generous tasty mouth, lingering over the supple flesh, at it flickers across his eyes and brows.

There's that delirious feeling again, and he wonders why the world stopped making sense a long time ago.

There is just one rule now, just one, the one that seems to matter; Naruto is not going into the pagoda with that look on his face. Not ever, not in a million years. Sasuke just won't let him.

Naruto's eyes narrow a fraction, his skin is muddy and the balls of his hands are pressing painfully hard into Sasuke's shoulders, the pressure is grinding right down to his bones. He seems to be assessing something, Sasuke wishes he knew what, he'd move but the motor functions for his legs seem to have temporarily misplaced themselves. Besides Naruto is slightly broader then he is, although he knows he has longer legs, he knows this from the times they've seen each other in the shower, naked catching glimpses of each other and pretending to look away again.

He'd like to chide Naruto now, make him feel like a fool, rain is dripping from the tips of Naruto's hair and face onto this eyelids and cheeks, long trails of liquid making their languorous wintry way down to his numb mouth, he opens it a fraction and it runs, bitter and chilling against his teeth and tongue.

He's dimly aware of the fact that Naruto is still looking down at him, as if caught by something, his grip as firm, as pressing, as unyielding as ever.

It happens so slowly, he's not even aware it's really happening, but an odd feeling in his abdomen that seems to trail explosions of heat that penetrate right to his toes keep him conscious and painfully awake. The ghost of finger tips, finding his collar bone, pressing the skin there, as if in curiosity, as if in wonder, exploring and hungry.

He doesn't pull away, Naruto's vision has dropped slightly, and he can only see the thick disarming curl of his feathery long lashes, framing his unusually vibrant eyes.

Sasuke is already soaked through to the skin and dripping wet, there is no use in pulling away now, and part of him is not too sure he wants to pull away, part of him is curious to what will happen next. It feels strange, but not unpleasant as the fingers move up, glancing across his neck, rubbing over the grit and dirt there, so it's rough against his numb skin. It's delicious, and he closes his eyes a little at this, Naruto's palms are very warm, feverishly hot, or perhaps it's just him, perhaps he's so cold that Naruto seems so unnaturally tepid. But it's always been like that, Naruto has always been so much more alive then he has.

There is keen expression in Naruto's eyes now, Sasuke can recognise it as he leans down closer, he never thought he'd see it on Naruto. Not that it doesn't fit, because it does, it's making his toes curl and his heart pulse faster and faster, in his wrist and in the base of his neck.

He opens his mouth, rain trickles in, and he licks his lips, pink, glistening and flushed, cold against the heat of his mouth, falling and melting into one. Naruto watches, he shouldn't have watched really because the inevitable happens, the inevitable that starts off a chain of events like clockwork. Like lightening before thunder, sudden, fast and furious.

As Naruto leans down, as the space between them shortens into almost nothing, a hesitant stillness, and then nothing, nothing at all but heat, and that fiery explosion that works itself into places that Sasuke didn't even know existed. Sasuke thinks he could have placed the look in his those deep yellow eyes. That look, before it became possessive, before it turned into a hungry predator claiming what it had had a right to all a long.

That look of innocence.

Of absolute wonder.

Not something he will ever forget easily.

It's sudden. A brief lingering on his lips before darting through his parted mouth, playing, tantalising to his tongue. It makes him shiver, and he is shivering he realises as he presses forwards, hot and thirsty, Naruto angles his head so he can press in further. He's dominating, demanding, playful, wanting and taking exactly what he wants, and Sasuke is pressing against him, not in helplessness but in a greedy thirst of his own, his fingers pressing hard into Naruto's wrist and upper arm, wanting to pull his body down on top of him. Wanting to feel him, all of him against his torso, his hips and his legs, because he's never felt Naruto like that against him, and he's hungry for it.

After a moment they break apart, tongues leaving contact last, and Sasuke finds that he's sticky and hot, and that it's almost pleasant to be lying there in the rain. It smells of clean water, and of earth, the tangy, zesty appeal of grass, and of Naruto. That sort of beeswax smell, spicy, warm and light all at once, it's clinging to his skin, making him ache all over, almost insatiable, penetrating right back into his head, down his senses. Down to the electric sensation sizzling through his fingers, this thing that's making his toes curl and his eyes to remain half closed, lazy, too lazy. He wants to reach up and drag Naruto down again, taste his mouth again, he wants the sensation back, and he wants Naruto back.

He's looking like a fox again, darkly seductive and dangerous.

With Naruto, every emotion is so plain, so obvious, naked and laid bare. You could describe it as clumsy. There are no dizzying circles; it has all of his concentration and thought behind it. It's quite beautifully frank, and Sasuke loves it.

Naruto runs his thumbs over Sasuke's lower lip, dragging it down, it's deliciously warm and rough against the skin there, and he opens his mouth and sucks it, taking in the contrast of the cold nail against the appetizing taste of Naruto's skin.

He tastes, blue, Sasuke thinks, dark indigo mixed with the sea salt that dried in the Mediterranean sun. He sucks him in deeper, supplying pressure with his tongue, so the digit scrapes roughly against the roof of his mouth.

Naruto is smiling at him, from those tempestuous violet blue eyes, like it's that hardest, simplest thing he's ever done, and he thinks maybe something is breaking in his chest because it's becoming hard to think and even harder to breath.

Blonde tresses curl between his outstretched fingers and he drags Naruto down so he doesn't have to think or even feel. Just waiting, waiting for heaven and earth to move beneath him. Because he knows- he implicitly trusts, with every atom of his being, that Naruto…that he and Naruto can do that.

Act Two

From before there must always be an after…

The flash of lightening over head startles them, and the deafening roar of thunder that accompanies it vibrates long and hard in Sasuke's rib cage. They both stop, both look at each other. Naruto moves away, and he's suddenly presented with his back, broad shoulders beneath his shirt clinging to his skin, Sasuke's not quite sure if he misses the pressure on his chest. But he sits up, dimly wondering if there's any part of him that's not dripping wet or dirty.

His limbs are seductively warm and he's aching pleasantly, the type of pain that lingers in the joints, building up until it's released in a sudden blinding urge, hot white and blinding. He grits his teeth and revels in it for a second.

Naruto stands up, his back is still turned, if he's going to walk off Sasuke thinks frowning, his heart is still racing in his chest. He is simply going to have to kill him if that's what it takes to stop this incessant stopping and starting. That's right; he was just simply going to have to kill him, kunai through the chest, maybe making a detour through the abdomen, slicing out the liver and intestines. His mind lingers for a moment on the bloody entrails, he's oddly hungry and undistilled, like nothing and everything is here and gone. After all living and dying are only a state of mind, he knows that now, perhaps he knew it all along.

Time people say, allows wounds to heal over, time sometimes brings forgiveness.

Sasuke had inwardly laughs at all of these; time does nothing but blow dust and grime over a memory, letting it fester and rot in the darkness.

Naruto believes he can save people, Naruto still wants to believe he can save Sasuke.

Sasuke hates denial, and even more he hates blind idiots.

He'll make Naruto see the truth if he has to.

He'd drag Naruto there kicking and screaming if he has to.

Hrrmn, defiantly screaming.

"Is that it?" he asks, he's tilting his head to the side slightly, looking almost amused, almost because the expression of his mouth is tilting exactly the wrong way to be even close to resembling a smile. It's pulled taught, almost a snarl, a frown, a look of disappointment.

Naruto's shoulders are very straight, broad, wide and balanced as he takes deep steadying breaths in, Sasuke want him to look at him, turn around, laugh or something.

"I would have thought you would have gotten better, after all it's been quite a while in between hasn't it?"

Naruto doesn't say anything, but his shoulders shift the way they do when he's feeling defensive about something. Sasuke narrows his eyes, stupid fox, look at me.

"But I suppose if no one else could bear to touch you doing it yourself looses some of its appeal."

Still nothing.

The first flickers of something more substantial then annoyance jab gloatingly at Sasuke's insides and he has to struggle very hard against a temper he has long kept suppressed.

"Not that you where ever very good anyway, you were always something of a go between until something better came along, still I suppose it was quite fun for a while. But I'm sorry to find that you ever took it seriously."

He's still lying on the ground, crushed grass beneath his dark hair, so dark it's almost blue, his eyes reflect silver in the lightening streaks and he hardly hears the thunder for his own erratic beating of his heart.

He sneers, his face contorted with anger- he hates it when Naruto ignores him more then anything else in the world, because it's like there is something crawling underneath his skin that he just cannot touch.

Naruto is obsessed with him so why doesn't he just…

DO SOMETHING

"Because," he continues, and his voice is so full of aggravating words, and his tone so laced with poison that it's making him feel physically sick, "it's hilarious to think that you could have ever imagined that I could ever love such a moronic fool as you, Naruto Uzumaki."

Someone must have started it first because these things don't ever happen by themselves. Perhaps what they both won't acknowledge is that they both moved in at the same time.

The fist is implanted into the ground nanoseconds after his head had just moved, leaving a three inch crater behind it as stone cracks and bleeds fragments of sand that whirl away on the blustering air. He's scrambling to his knees, rolling out of the way as Naruto comes after him again. The air is thick with limbs and blood, his bottom lip is torn and he's bleeding thickly down his neck, crimson carmine pools clotting on his ivory coloured skin.

Naruto is incensed although he doesn't say a word, he grunts through pain as Sasuke bring down two hands into a mind crushing blow on the side of his head, bone could break and splinter into a thousand pieces before he'll say it. Sasuke can tell what he wants to say, all the accusations, all the hurt, all the pain, lying coiled and poisonous on the tip of his tongue.

It makes Sasuke laugh, without amusement, laugh at the pit in his stomach, the thing clawing at his chest, hot, livid but so very much alive.

Greed, lust, glutton and pride, he's a fan of all four and a sinner, once, twice three times over at least.

It might have been Naruto who slipped first, but it could have just as easily been him, as the earth tumbles and slips away, they go rolling in a dizzying spell, it's painful and it's certainly uncomfortable, especially when they hit the ditch.

There are rocks here, poking out jagged and brittle from the dirty water, swirls of blood go trickling down the little river, clods of earth dropping and rolling like flies, and the rain still pours down. They're both numb, so painfully numb it's like the only thing they can feel is each other. There is no happiness, only lust and deep rooted attraction mounted on piles and piles of despair and unhappiness.

"S-Sasuke..." Naruto hisses throatily out between his teeth looking like a fox, hair soiled and bloodied, his body broken and bruised but Sasuke doesn't care, his fingers are trailing around Naruto's neck, and he's wondering what it would be like to strangle him.

Vicious, violent, sicken and awful beyond all reason, but perhaps erotic as well, he doesn't know quite why he's thinking this as he rubs his thumbs over Naruto's Adams apple, watching with a hungry intensity as Naruto licks his lips, not so much out of nervousness, but out of longing, the same craving that's driving him insane. Its type of thirst that no matter how much opens his mouth to take in water his appetite will never quite be quenched.

And it's a cruel possessive smile on his face that crosses his features as he looks down at Naruto, one long fingered hand, elegant and pale in the grey light as it moves across his tanned cheeks, skimming the skin there, dipping little circles about the eyes, the nose and mouth. Pressing against his temple, dancing lazily across Naruto's forehead, but he grows impatient, opening his mouth and letting the rain slide across his lips as his grip suddenly becomes violent, raking into Naruto's dirty blonde hair dragging him upwards, painfully towards him.

Because he can't wait any longer, because he's so sick of waiting, and so sick of Naruto looking at him, with those eyes, the exact shade of his soul, painfully, innocently blue.

You'll just leave me, again.

Please stop.

Somewhere inside of Sasuke, he knows he's breaking Naruto in two; that consciousness is coming into conflict with all the devastation of a tsunami.

There are hands on his shoulders now pulling him closer, and he's leaning in, sucking and pulling with his teeth and tongue. It's warmer here then any other place he's ever been, and he wanders indolently at the hot white explosion in his stomach and lower abdomen. Laughing at the fact that when he pulls his head away Naruto gasps, moans and chases his mouth, brushing feather light kisses across his cheeks and jaw line.

Canines are digging into the base of his neck, and he's shivering from the exquisite pleasure that comes every time Naruto brushes against the place where the shoulders and neck meet. In that place, that painful and sensitive place that's driving him slowly insane.

He's pushing Naruto down, almost subconsciously, his face against his jaw, almost loving, almost gentle.

Almost

There have been few people in his life that he's ever loved, he's not sure if he's ready to admit to himself whether or not Naruto is one of them. He loved Itachi, and the sprawling road that enveloped because of that is what he's knee deep in now, this turgid stinking mess of something he used to call his soul. And he marvels at the fact that Naruto isn't afraid to touch it.

Naruto is afraid he can tell, Naruto is afraid that he's slipping down the sliding slope of sanity. Not because of sex. They've had sex before, Sasuke knows his body so well that he can see it when he closes his eyes, see the knobbly base of Naruto's spine that presses against his skin as he leans forwards from the hips. They know that white hot electric feeling, halfway between pain and pleasure, when you throw your head back grit your teeth grinding against it, nails digging deep pooling blood.

He wonders vaguely through heavy lidded eyes if he should stop this endless toying, just tell him, tell him, he won't come back, that this, this is all that they have left now.

I'll kill you.

Naruto is crying against his shoulder, arms up around his neck, hands pressing the base of his skull, he thinks maybe, the part of him that Naruto is still clinging onto is the only part of him that is still human.

They are both soaked to the skin, and it's slightly ridiculous, more then a little as they both move towards the rocks, and soil beneath them, further then ever from heaven and all the more closer to hell.

Because not every story ends with happiness….