Whatever Gets You Through the Night

Title: Whatever Gets You Through the Night
Author: Sintari
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Author's Note: This piece is part of a fic/art collab. Please do not read this piece without visiting Myrafur's lovely companion art at http://community.livejournal.com/rahly_furverted/8727.html

Sasuke's instinctive reaction when he heard the key in the door was to prepare an attack. He was in a defensive crouch, sharingan whirling, before his brain supplied that anyone invading Naruto's apartment likely wouldn't bother to use a key. Still, he melted into the shadows between the couch and the dusty bookshelf. He hadn't had to turn off the light, he'd already been sitting in the dark. After all, he wasn't exactly supposed to be in Naruto's apartment. Since he recent return to Konoha, they hadn't quite reached that... level of trust yet.

And now - oh god, he couldn't breathe – now, with Naruto missing, it was almost certain that they never would.

A long shadow preceded Hyuga Neji into the room.

“Uchiha.” It wasn't a greeting, just an acknowledgement, said in that aristocratic Hyuga tone, while Neji looked down that perfect aquiline nose at him. Only when he was in the same room with Neji was Sasuke truly aware that he was from the second oldest clan in Konoha.

The best defense, sometimes, is a good offense.

“How did you get a key?” he demanded.

It was a stupid question, of course. Sasuke knew that before he'd finishing asking it.

“I had it from... before.” Neji had the decency to look away as he said that. Sasuke told himself that the pause and the averted eyes were because the Hyuga knew that he had always been just a poor substitute for Sasuke - on Naruto's missions and in Naruto's bed.

Neji remained in the doorway. The fact that he hadn't remembered to shut the door behind him, and that he stared blankly at the closed door to Naruto's bedroom for a long moment, made the hairs on the back of Sasuke's neck stand up. He didn't need to hear the actual words to know what Neji was going to say next.

“There's been further intelligence from Sound.”

And then Sasuke could feel everything. Drops of water in the humid Konoha summer air. A torn cuticle on his fingernail. The way a scar on his abdomen constantly pulled at the skin. His breath leaving his lungs in a rush.

“They say he's dead. Our analysts give the intelligence ninety-four percent credibility. They claim our source in Sound has no reason to lie.”

“Do you believe it?” Sasuke heard himself ask. He asked because talking, asking questions, even of the enemy, was better than processing what he had just heard. Besides, if there was anyone that should believe in Naruto and his ability to be that elusive six percent, it was Hyuga Neji.

Neji took another step into the living room. “I never have a hard time making up my mind. And I had the whole run over here to think about that. But... I still haven't decided what I believe.”

“Why did you come over here?” Sasuke thought to ask.

Neji didn't answer, so Sasuke continued. He couldn't let silence fall. That was important.

Instead he held up the plain black t-shirt in his hand. “Were you going to see if this place still what? Smelled like him? Even though he's been gone for five weeks?” He held the t-shirt up to his nose and inhaled its familiar scent. “Because it does.”

Neji took another, more cautious, step into the room. For what? To make sure he didn't crack up? After all, Sasuke thought, it wasn't so long ago that he had been a dangerous criminal in Konoha’s Bingo Book.

“Don't open any drawers in his dresser,” he told Neji suddenly.

He saw a crease form between Neji's eyebrows.

“I opened one of my mother's dresser drawers once. Years later. I was looking for... I don't know what I was looking for. But it still smelled like her.” He realized he was saying more to Neji now than he had said to anyone except Naruto, even the interrogators, since his return to Konoha. He gestured futilely with the shirt. “Just don't open any drawers.”

Sasuke sat down on the familiar couch, still clutching Naruto's shirt and by the time Neji spoke again, Sasuke had almost forgotten he was there. Maybe he was cracking up.

“We both love him,” the Hyuga said simply. “Loved him.” He turned to go. He seemed to think their business was finished.

Silence was falling. Naruto was...

“Wait.”

Neji waited. He didn't have to. Probably didn't want to. But he did.

“When did it end with you two? Before I came back? Or after?”

Sasuke knew it was not a fair question. But he also knew he would never ask it again, outside this day of death and this room that smelled like Naruto.

Neji seemed to sense that, too.

”Around the same time.”

”When exactly?” Sasuke pressed.

Neji was near the door again. “I don't remember when exactly. Is it important?”

”Yes.”

It was more important than anything and it had taken Sasuke years to realize that.

“You took what should have been mine,” he told Neji. As irrational as that sounded – Sasuke had been the one to leave after all – Neji didn’t argue.

”We have to fix it,” Sasuke grasped for words. “I need to know what you took from me. I deserve to know. So…”

Neji remained silent.

“You pretend to be Naruto, and I'll pretend to be you. And you show me.”

The silence went on for too long. He's dead he's dead he's dead, began to cycle through Sasuke's mind.

But then Neji nodded.

”You do deserve to know.”

They stared at one another.

”He was always touching me,” Neji finally said. He still stood by the door.

Sasuke met his eyes. “Then show me.”

Neji closed the distance between them. He pulled Sasuke to him, gripping his hips. A calloused hand slid under his shirt, massaged the small of his back and Sasuke closed his eyes and imagined the hand was Naruto's.

“He liked to undress me,” Neji whispered. And Sasuke, eyes still closed, bonelessly raised his arms so that Neji could lift his shirt.

“And…” Sasuke thought he heard a catch in Neji's throat, one he would never hear in confident Naruto's voice, “…he always wanted to kiss me. Hard.”

“Stop telling me,” Sasuke's voice was choked too, he realized. “Show me. Be him.” And Neji's mouth was on him, with lips far too soft to be Naruto's perpetually chapped ones so Sasuke bit at them until the kiss was as rough as it was supposed to be.

He opened his eyes – he hadn't meant to – and saw that Neji had acceded to his request. It was Naruto in front of him now, down to messy hair and chapped lips.

Sasuke's chest hurt. If it hadn't been for the fact that he still smelled like Neji - cool and crisp - Sasuke wasn't sure he would have been able to stand it.

But he did stand, knees to the back of the couch, as the kiss deepened and then traveled down his neck. Then he was being pulled down on the couch, and Neji – no, Naruto – was kneeling in front of him. A hot mouth. It had to be Naruto's, Neji's always looked as cold as ice, latched onto this nipple.

But this was not the way it had been. This was not the truth.

“I'm you,” Sasuke breathed. “What would I do?”

“I can't do this with you,” Neji's voice said. “You have to be me.” So, with a one-handed seal, Sasuke changed, felt his legs and torso lengthen, and long hair cascade down his back.

“Now, touch me,” the voice had taken on a husky timbre, like Naruto's did in times of heightened passion. It was an illusion, but it would suffice.

Sasuke reached down and stroked coarse hair, pressed rough jaw bones with his thumbs, ran his fingers down tanned shoulders corded with muscle.

Neji moved down, unzipped Sasuke's pants and exposed his cock with a lack of ceremony. Just as Naruto would have done, Sasuke realized. Naruto was always enthusiastic in everything he did. Was. Sasuke squeezed his eyes shut.

“He was... attentive?” Sasuke found himself asking when the wave of grief subsided.

From his knees on the floor, Neji looked up at him with Naruto's eyes. “Yes. Hasty sometimes, but attentive.” The voice was so wrong. Sasuke resolved not to ask any more questions.

Then he gasped as Neji ran his tongue – Naruto’s tongue – down his chest again, slipping over his nipple, outlining his pectorals, leaving a trail of shiny saliva. Then he moved lower and took into his mouth the cock that had hardened at the prospect of Naruto's touch.

They coupled right there on the couch. Sasuke could imagine Naruto doing it that way, not even bothering to move to the bedroom. With half-lidded eyes, Sasuke watched Naruto move on top of him. So this was what Neji had had that he never would. As the pressure of his orgasm began to build at the base of his spine Sasuke finally came to realize exactly what he had lost that day twelve years ago when he walked out of Konoha's gates. He lay flat on his back, unfamiliar long hair prickly beneath him, and for just a few minutes, with Neji-as-Naruto inside him, Sasuke pretended.


But as their orgasms approached, it was Neji's cry that cut through his grief.

"Sasuke!"

"No," Sasuke gasped, appalled. "Don't say my name. No! You're Naruto. I'm you."

But it was too late. The release of Neji's orgasm has ruined the henge, and then it was white Hyuga eyes that looked beyond him into the darkness of the apartment.


"Like I said before," the stiff, patrician Hyuga tone of voice was back. "You deserve to know."

Sasuke finally allowed the silence to fall completely. Neji only broke it once more before he left Sasuke alone with his grief.

"When I said your name? I was being Naruto."

END