Found You

A/N:I owe you all an apology. For months, and months, and months, and months, this story has been delayed. That would be because of the fact that my computer, apparently, had... issues. After long suffering, it was put to rest. Say hello to the newly revised CouchPotato everybody! And thank his hard-ass processor for bringing this to you!!


We’ve all been waiting for this. How long have we been waiting? Does anyone even remember when it started? When the numbness filtered in…

Shippuuden: Whirlwind Chronicles
Mangekyou: Kaleidoscope
Akatsuki: Red Dawn
Itachi: weasel. …Yeah. A stinky polecat. You heard me.
Tsukiyomi: Originally a god, but in recent years referred to as a goddesss due to the unspecified gender of the legend. In short, part of the holy trinity of myth (like Orochimaru, Tsunade, and Jiraiya) representing the shedding of all one’s sins to bring forth a new world alongside Amaterasu and Susano-o. Tsukiyomi didn’t put up with shit. Check your local online encyclopedias for more information.


Disclaimer: Celebrating Shippuuden since 2007. Congratulations, Naruto. “It’s a shame, but you really have grown, haven’t you.” –Sakura, 001.
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Chapter Seventeen: Calm Before The…

Blankets rustled. Long before he could hear it, he could smell it. The stealth that trickled in to his sheets had a very distinct aroma.

Floral green.

Silk brushed up to his mask, ebon threads testing the air to make sure he was still asleep.

Sasuke was getting more and more clever in detecting that he was awake. And he still had not cut his hair. It was exhausting Kakashi to not have a quiet night without having to improvise some new way of slipping under the Uchiha’s vigilant spectrum.

Every night it was getting to be like this. After he was finished with his training and target practice, drills with the team and finally making sure each of them got home safely, Sasuke would retreat to the jounin’s apartment and for hours after his late-night showers couldn’t fall to sleep.

At first, the boy would simply give up when Kakashi would grab him down and hold him still against himself. But some nights after that, he would simply stir later and work at doing… things.

Things that Kakashi had a hard time faking sleep through. It had scared him the first time Sasuke had gone to bite on him, at the neck. His tense reaction had given him away and he had ended up being chewed on until his neck was too sore to gurgle proper orders the next day.

Drills had been cancelled. And that night, he didn’t have much to say when it came to the Uchiha chewing him in other places.

Ribs were as far as he got before the jounin had to pull the rope out from under his pillow.

What kind of teacher got himself in to such a position with their student?

Where he couldn’t even detain them properly or enforce the situation like an adult was supposed to with someone half their size and half their age. He was reduced to huddling in less-than-admirable fear and tuning out the provocative noises of groaning rope and grunting youth.

By now, Sasuke had managed to escape just about any knot his teacher put him in, and while the last ones were sapping to where the boy retreat in to simple, restless reverie. He was constantly adapting his approach.

It was almost another shinobi game to them now. Almost.

Shinobi games did not usually end up with having to get the spunk of a genin prodigy all over his hand just to get some peace.

The nights were getting cooler now that the most agonizing part of summer was over and fall was encroaching on the half-decimated village. The window didn’t have to be left open to stave off the exorbitant heat a smaller frame had no trouble projecting. All the better. He didn’t like having to come up with more pathetic excuses than he had to.

It was one thing to lie to his team about why he could never be there on time, and when a third of them made him feel guilty to lie and already knew why he was late. It was another to be creative explaining why there was so much noise emitting from his apartment every night. Saying that his dogs didn’t very much appreciate being washed was beginning to wear thin. As were the squeaky pipes from a running toilet.

They had offered to pay for a groomer, and fix the plumbing themselves at this point.

It seemed Kakashi was not the only one losing sleep over this.

Over the tiny frame that still coiled with the muscle of intense training and nudged in to places that ought not be nudged.

Not that he really minded. Sure, he minded, but not really. He was never without options, and was not afraid to take advantage of his Top Rookie’s inherent naiveté.

Sasuke would never come out and say it, what he wanted, so Kakashi never felt indebted to give it to him. Doing so well in the exams didn’t mean he could go on without manners.

For a while, it was quiet. And they were content to leave it at that. …Kakashi wasn’t entirely content being left to cool down alone as was the norm. But it was that or not get a good night’s sleep when the Uchiha would eventually curl up in to a light nap that lasted until dawn.

That changed. As all things did.

Breath stopped. Chewing hadn’t stirred him, and even when teeth got past his naval, he had still refused to give away that he was awake. For a while, that had worked. The boy would get timid, discouraged by the lack of attention, and would retreat to something more aggressive and blunt. Like pinching, or something antagonizing and just mean that resulted in a fight across the pillows and the jounin eventually kicked out of his own bed.

He refused to yield mattress tonight. Frankly, his back was killing him from sleeping on the boards for the last week. He was paying for it now, muscles all along his stomach growing tense at fingers tugging away his waistband and a long drag of something wet along the groove of his hip.

A smirk against the lowest part of his belly and he almost cursed out loud. There was an unnatural devotion in the curious gesture. Inquisitive, and hesitant. Anticipation crawled up his spine before he could get a proper grip on his nerves. Kakashi glared to the backs of his eyelids, stinking up the inside of his mouth with the slice of teeth on his own tongue; knowing the Uchiha had smaller hands, and feeling that he had smaller hands, were entirely different.

Heart stopped. Such a sinister sound, he almost didn’t hear it. Almost. The flick of one’s tongue to their dry lips, to have it confirmed with the heavy wet of breath falling over his shrouded head. Softened pads stuck to delicate skin, folding it away with a nervousness that was almost electric on his fingertips. He could feel it all the way to the backs of his teeth.

He really wanted to hate himself. It shouldn’t be this easy to play in to the ambitious hands of an ambitious chi--… His being curled and his ears rang, eliciting a sleep-deep sigh in exchange for an overheated regiment of nervous kisses and saturated, fat licks to his stirring flesh.

He was going to owe his self-hatred a great debt, and make it up to the beast later. For now, he strained to listen to the manipulation under his sheets and afforded himself a while of staring at the bulge of sheets just around where his hips ought to have been.

Ah, crap… Brain stopped.

Persistence. It bordered on stubborn, and here it was demonstrated to an agonizing fault. The only one that had anything to lose here… was Kakashi. Just the change of his breath, from a promising metronome of silence to the first jagged end of his exhale, earned him a threatened—caught—freezing crescent of teeth. They both had to pause and collect against the reaction and in that time the man didn’t breathe at all. Lungs were scorching when the Uchiha gathered enough nerve to resume.

This was as far as it had ever gotten. By now, the jounin would forfeit just to put an end to it. The first time he had realized it was another midnight-ninja game, he had gotten the bed to himself. At that time he had stirred; knuckles had twitched and he shuddered with a noise deep in his throat.

As soon as that had happened, the sheets got unbearably cold. Much as he would have wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to finish. Somehow it demeaned the ordeal.

That loan shark of a conscience considered it payment rendered.

The time after that, he had been able to convince the retreating Uchiha to not abandon the bed entirely for just a moment. Long enough to not be in a complete trauma when he did eventually slip downstairs. Kakashi had come down later that morning to be welcomed by a four-course breakfast and an empty apartment.

His students had almost given up showing for their drills, because lately, their instructor would arrive later than usual just to tell them it was cancelled.

Kakashi would never admit how furious he was to meet satisfied coal eyes with his one fatigued blue one out in the open, obliviously beautiful day. When the other two griped and trickled off, when it was just the two of them, that was when the birds got quiet.

That night, he didn’t know where he stood in those eyes, because he didn’t look at them. Not after he had taken the advantage and threaded his fist in inky tendrils before he could get away. Tendons wanted to rip like his willpower probably had, to play in to this horrible game. He emptied in to the pull of tongue and the urgent constriction of heat surrounding him.

Reward was hardly what he would call it. When he felt sticky withdraw rather instead of teeth, though, he didn’t need to be told if it was okay.

He had lost.

That the younger ninja got up and he heard the pipes gossip soon after made no mistake of it.

That they had drills the next day and they had all broken off weary and filthy and that Sasuke had said nothing to it all made no mistake of it.

Through the duration of Team Seven he had always compared Naruto’s outbursts to someone else’s he had known such a long time ago. Never, ever, had he thought he could lose composure in such a similar way and understand on a whole new, personal level how that face could inspire such hysteria.

It had occurred to him, right then. At the meeting place when orange and red had their backs to the scene. In the silent exchange, his livid reaction to it all evaporated. Olive shoulders eased, the tiny shift in his composure resonating in the black eyes that narrowed.

He had almost considered going to the Hokage about this dangerous pace. While it wouldn’t reveal what kind of atrocities he had been committing to obtain his conclusion, it was still something that frightened him to know that if he didn’t indulge the stubborn little bastard, he would seek his satisfactions elsewhere. In dangerous places with dangerous people.

It wasn’t a relationship.

Uchiha Sasuke had hijacked the generosity, and then some, that was bestowed him by Hatake Kakashi.

There were three different conditions to consider. One was that Sasuke had never had a relationship before. That was fine. –Not really fine, but to ease his mind he surrendered and accepted the fact that’s what it was. So long as the boy was still a genin, still just a boy, he could predict the limitations of a boy and whittle some peace of mind that he was a figure said boy was looking up to and seeking help from. It was irresponsible to flash such anger on him, when he reasoned it away like that.

Another was the Avenger. It was troublesome, and in his scenarios always reacted violently to anything he would do, and made him resort to doing nothing at all. But if he did nothing, the monster would surface and scorn him. As much as he would stand by the idea that he didn’t care if he was hated, there was no denying that he experienced a great, hollowing shame whenever he had to reprimand the boy it possessed.

Then, there was the new aspect. One that he had no clue how to deal with, because to even think about it collapsed his other assumptions and filled him with an anger that curbed his appetite and drowned out his ability to reason it away.

The poison of that Curse was reaching deeper in to Sasuke’s being and corrupting both him and the Avenger that he so violently clung to. Lately it had become impossible to meet those dark eyes evenly. It saved them both a lot of trouble.

If he didn’t look at them, he didn’t have to see the shadows that were becoming a thorny maze and suffocating the boy that looked up to him, depended on him just below the surface. If he didn’t look, he didn’t have to hate himself for not being able to do anything to stop it.

He’d like to think he didn’t care if he was hated. …He didn’t like to think he didn’t care if he was thought a coward, either.

Those needs were a dark place that he was quite sure Sasuke himself had a concept of. The Curse Seal was what made him so restless, and in a way, he was… flattered that the boy was resorting to such methods. Using him as some sort of lifeline before the hedges grew shut and scratched him completely open.