Learning the Ropes

AN/Warning: Lemon, Non-con, anal,torture, blah, blah, blah.

Disclaimer: The whole Naruto universe, emo-tastic, genius-nin included, is the property of Kishimoto-san.




Hyuuga Hiashi watched the fight from the staircase leading down from the porch that bordered the mansion courtyard. His oldest son, the best of them, retreated beneath the onslaught of Neji’s divine-strike technique.

Hiashi could tell Neji was not coming against his cousin at full strength. The lord was familiar enough with Neji’s skill, he could tell when the boy was lagging. He doubted there was anything like pity in Neji’s restraint. He was probably tormenting his cousin on purpose, pushing him until the other pulled new strength from the bottom of his nature.

Hiashi had seen him do it before. Bitterness had bred in Neji a sadistic streak. He enjoyed depriving his high born cousins of the sense of supremacy they had by virtue of their birth. They wore it like armor against his talent, and he shredded it to nothing every time they faced him in practice. Neji would let him the other boy think he had a chance, if he only gave a little more, then, when he’d mined the last of his energy, Neji would lay him flat just to show him how far he had to go.

Hiashi had watched Neji closely for years, idly curious to see where he hit a wall. His children waited eagerly as well. They knew from experience that there was a point at which all branch family members simply stopped progressing. But Neji had continued to improve in advance of his cousins, denying them the chance to pay him back for so many humiliating defeats.

Only Hinata ever came close to matching Neji’s genius and that was partly because Neji had drilled her himself.

Hiashi found it strange. He had no idea what had passed between those two since their battle in the Chuunin exams, but time had thawed Neji. His hatred for Hinata had been altogether replaced by something warmer. It had alarmed Hiashi at first, but he’d overheard enough bitter words from the boy’s forgotten lovers to know where Neji’s preferences lay. Neji was certainly no threat to the purity of his daughter, and since their feelings had improved Hinata so much, he saw no reason to stomp them out.

Likewise, he saw no reason to prevent his son’s defeat. It was good for him, was good for all Hiashi’s children, knowing Neji could best them even handicapped as he was by the curse seal that dammed his potential. It infuriated them, made them work harder.

Hiashi watched as Neji forced his oldest son back across the courtyard an inch at a time. It was such a beautiful, frightening thing to watch. Violence was the only thing Neji did with any measure of delicacy. For all his interpersonal brutality, for all his hardness and merciless insight, he was an incredibly graceful fighter.

Hiashi shook his head, stopped them only when the victory was plainly Neji’s.

“That’s enough.”

The Hyuuga lord crossed from the steps of the Hyuuga house to the center of the courtyard. The boy flat on his back in the grass raised himself up on his elbows, panting, frowning at his father. Hiashi did not even glance his way, but gazed intently at Neji. Offended, jealous, the boy slammed his fists against the earth, rose, and stalked away.

Neji deliberately ignored them both, fussing with the strips of cloth that braced his bones against the blows he dealt his opponents.

When his son had disappeared and they were alone in the yard, Hiashi reached up and combed the tie out of Neji’s long hair with his fingers.

Neji still did not look up, but he clenched his teeth, swiped at his lord with force enough to sting when the offending hand lingered too long at his hip.

Hiashi was too surprised by Neji’s reaction to bother at first with reprimands. Necessities of training aside, Neji never struck at his betters. He rarely registered feelings at all. When he was frightened or hurt or angry, he just seethed in silence, damned all his passions up behind a wall of ice. And here, mysteriously, that wall had cracked.

“Rough night?” Hiashi said sourly, noting for the first time the new bandaging looped around the boy’s left shoulder, nearly hidden by the collar of his shirt. “Who was it this time?”

Neji ignored Hiashi’s invitation to dialogue on his private life, ignored the tone in which he said it. He’d been called a whore and nastier things than that more times than he could count. His uncle’s indirection didn’t even break the skin.

Turning his back, he strode across the green toward his rooms without another word. It was late afternoon already and they had been at practice all morning. He wanted to wash. Neji flung open his bedroom door, shedding his shirt as he headed for the shower.

“Neji!”

Even though Neji had been expecting the reprise and even though the old man’s voice was not loud, it stopped Neji in his tracks like a rope pulled tight around his ankle.

Hiashi shut the door hard behind him.

Neji could feel his uncle’s anger in the flaring of his energy, always so tightly controlled. One did not strike at the lord and one did not simply turn one’s back on Hyuuga Hiashi-sama. Not in his home. One was dismissed. Then, one bowed and exited bowing.

“This disrespect. Perhaps you have forgotten,” Hiashi said darkly, “that I have cared for you since you were small. That I have trained you alongside my own children although you are not mine. That I have seen to your education and your comfort and in return I have endured the indignity that your disobedience and your lack of discretion has brought on my house.”

Neji cringed inwardly at the way the words seemed to sour in Hiashi’s mouth. He had rarely ever heard his lord so angry. The temptation to give in and seek accord and forgiveness was overwhelming, but he wanted Hiashi to stop using him and peace, he knew, would not serve him in this.

Neji didn’t turn to face the man, still gathering his resolve. For a moment they stood there quietly and the Hyuuga lord misinterpreted his nephew’s silence as surrender. Although the old man’s footsteps made no sound, although Neji didn’t turn, he felt his lord come near.

“Have I not been good to you?” Hiashi asked him softly.

Neji was more than aware that that he had been. He knew now his father had more or less chosen his fate, had sacrificed himself willingly. After that, for years, Hiashi had provided in his stead.

A hand settled lightly on Neji’s naked arm, a soft touch with a brutal message: you owe me this much. Neji said nothing as Hiashi combed his hair over one shoulder, as long fingers ghosted over his neck. The hand on Neji’s arm slid lower to his hip and he shivered. He knew very well Hiashi’s willingness to forgive him extended only as far as he got what he wanted.

“Just...not today,” Neji whispered. “I’m tired and I hurt.”

“I will be gentle,” Hiashi insisted, the hard edge back in his voice at the hint of defiance. He drew Neji back against him, insistent.

Neji pulled away, rounded on Hiashi, shaking his head. “Not today.”

Hiashi blanched, furious. He reached again for Neji and the boy dropped back into a high crouch – his defensive stance.

Hiashi took one look at him, covered instinctively before he stood up straight again. He squared his shoulders, righted his garments. His voice was thick with scorn. “Don’t be foolish.”

Neji didn’t blink. He didn’t lower his guard. The muscle in Hiashi’s jaw twitched as his nephew cast Byakugan.

“I’m not going to fight you,” the older man hissed, dwelling on the phrase to make the threat painfully clear, “because I don’t have to.”

It was then Neji knew he had lost. Hiashi was a proud man. When Neji had imagined this moment, he had hoped desperately it would be pride, more than that mad possessive instinct, that moved Hiashi. For pride, he might have fought. If he refused to fight, their confrontation was over.

Neji’s sigh was soft, but Hiashi noticed. He had taught Neji by example after all to read feelings in the finest gestures, and how to turn those feelings back on people, how to use words as weapons.

“All this petty rebellion,” the Hyuuga lord said blandly, “this is for him isn’t it? This one you won’t name, he means something to you? And now you’re trapped. You know you cannot win, but now that you’ve forced this confrontation you’re too proud not to see it through. Well, come then. Let’s see how much suffering this one is worth. Let see if your hands are faster than mine, Child.”

He laced his fingers together before him. Not Byakugan. This was a seal Neji knew instantly thought he’d seen it only twice before in his life. Neji moved to strike the same instant Hiashi moved to put distance between them and before he could get close enough again to land a hit, Hiashi had cast his damning juin jutsu.

An instant later, Neji dropped to his knees, face in his hands. Hiashi watched as he clutched at fistfuls of hair, whimpering now as he fought the pain, agony in excess of any he’d ever experienced in battle, lancing through his body from a locus just behind his eyes.

Hiashi crossed to the boy doubled up on the floor. He spoke to him in strident, contemptuous tones, but the words drowned in the flood of misery before Neji could process them. Light was painful. Hiashi’s every step sounded in his ears like thunder. His touch, as he lifted Neji and half-dragged him across the floor, burned like a brand against his skin.

Neji struggled against his lord as Hiashi shoved him down in bed and stripped away his clothing, but it was a mad, unconscious struggle, a reflexive desperate attempt to evade the hands that spread cruel fire everywhere they touched.

When Hiashi tired of Neji’s fighting, he yanked him up onto his knees, caught both his wrists behind him, took them in one hand and shoved them up between his shoulder blades as he bent him over. The motion wrenched Neji’s wounded shoulder and he screamed into the pillow.

Hiashi ignored him. “I would have been kind,” he fumed, pinning Neji with his other hand as he struggled to free himself of his own cumbersome clothing. “I have always been kind. My generosity has made you disobedient.”

Hiashi didn’t waste time preparing Neji. He wouldn’t feel much next to the pain of the juin anyway. Pressing the tip of his erection against Neji’s entrance, he forced himself inside. The pressure made him grunt in pain. He had forgotten. Neji would fuck anything on two legs, and if he was feeling generous, he’d hit his knees, but he didn’t give himself this way to anyone else. He was insanely tight. And dry.

But Hiashi liked a little pain and the heat roiling way low down in his stomach prevented him from pausing long to adjust. Clamping his free hand around Neji’s shoulder, he pulled the boy back into him, bruising that tight second ring of muscles inside him. A little deeper. There.

Neji’s whole body spasmed uncontrollably around Hiashi’s organ. The boy was twitching,cold, fighting in vain to edge away as his lord’s heavy arm kept him pinned to the mattress.

Inspired by unrelenting anguish, Neji had been a steady stream of incoherencies since Hiashi had taken his mind from him. He was silent now, for an long time, as his breath caught in his throat.

Hiashi looked down at his nephew through hooded lids as began to move inside him. Neji’s energy, blue-white to Hiashi’s sharp eyes, rolled off his body in waves, wild and uncontrolled in his state of half-madness.

He thrust slowly, loving the way all the boy’s muscles stood out against his pale skin, the way frigid little Neji panted and wept. He hadn’t cried since he was small; he had never been so responsive. Hiashi could run his hand along Neji’s side, across his back, could overstimulate his burning, tortured nerves just to feel the body beneath him tighten around his shaft. It felt lovelier still because it was Neji – such a driven, prideful, powerful creature.

Hiashi leaned down, swept Neji’s hair aside. “You’re mine.” He bit a trail of welts down the boy’s neck, along his shoulder, so that when the pain receded, the marks would remind him to whom he belonged.

Neji whimpered, because he had no strength to fight. His throat was far too raw to scream, his mind too wracked with anguish to even comprehend the wetness oozing from both ears, red-black on white sheets. As Hiashi drew closer to losing himself, driving Neji harder up the bed, the words that his uncle breathed in his ear, ragged and barely coherent, battered his brain like a grinding stone. Selfish. Ungrateful. Disgusting. Mine. Mine. Mine. The refrain had no meaning anymore for Neji.

When at last, Hiashi added his seed to the wet mess between his legs, he was slipping in and out of consciousness.

Then it was over.

Hiashi pulled out of him and rose. He did not cancel juin. The power of a curse-seal technique could drive a man to insanity, given the time, but he’d never seen anyone break in a day and Neji was stronger than most.

Wiping himself clean of blood and filth with Neji’s discarded shirt, Hiashi dressed and left.