Substantiation

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
A/N: This is the sequel to the Naruto/Neji fic, Lines, written when I was still a young fanficcing lass. While I’m at it, Sarolynne wrote a prequel to Lines called Step Too Far. Essentially, this takes place in the universe that won’t die!

Lines - http://sintari.livejournal.com/39834.html
Step Too Far - http://sarolynne.livejournal.com/74372.html

Substantiation

So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.
- T.S. Eliot

Sasuke knew when Naruto entered their small house, even without the burst of street noise or the tell-tale slam of the door. He could smell him. Even over the malt scent of the rapidly warming beer he held to his lips, he could smell him.

Naruto had dragged the smell of someone else’s sweat, someone else’s musk, someone else’s come into their house again.

“Been training with Hinata?” he offered.

He heard the refrigerator door slam, footsteps, and then Naruto was leaning in the doorway, grasping the overhead doorframe with one hand. He held a sweating bottle of water in the other and he rubbed it along his face, highlighting his unshaven whiskers with water droplets.

“Didn’t know you were back,” he said, a bit breathless. His eyes darted unconsciously to the door. Sasuke merely watched as he uncapped the water and took a long pull.

Sasuke had been reading on the couch, more to pass the time, really, than for any actual need to study up on the social history of the Wave Country. He started to stand but Naruto put a hand out.

“Stay there, I’m nasty. It’s this fucking heat wave. Let me get a shower then we’ll go grab a bite or something. Okay?”

Sasuke nodded.

“Glad you’re home early,” he heard Naruto’s voice from the hall.

Naruto emerged a few minutes later, tousled hair already drying and a t-shirt sticking to his still-damp skin in places. Even knowing what he knew, Sasuke still wanted to slip his hands under that shirt and trace the outline of Naruto’s pecs with his fingertips. Since he had begun taking those extra ANBU missions, Naruto’s body had grown thick with ropy muscle.

The last time they had been together, two weeks before, Naruto had tensed and gasped as Sasuke tongued an outline of his abdominals. Even that sliver of a memory made Sasuke’s toes curl against the threadbare carpet. He shifted on the couch as Naruto loped into the room, full of energy.

“Ah, that’s better,” Naruto grinned. “So, where you want to go?” He punctuated the question with a rolling stretch of his arms. Sasuke winced at the cracking in his shoulders. Despite the oppressive heat, Naruto approached him, teasingly bumping the inside of Sasuke’s knee with his own. “Or we could stay in and give you a proper welcome home.”

Sasuke covered his wince with a shrug. “Let’s stay in.”

Out, they would risk bumping into people they knew. People who might know. People who might have witnessed another such display like the one Sasuke had seen at the practice field that afternoon.

He couldn’t risk the slightest chance of seeing anyone who might know what a fool he had been. How Naruto had made him a fool.

Sasuke still sat on the couch and Naruto sidled up between his legs.

“Did you have something in mind?” He gyrated his hips teasingly. “Hungry, maybe?”

Sasuke exhaled slowly.

“Where do you get your energy, Naruto?” Maybe it was the flat tone of his voice, or how he didn’t automatically respond to the overtures, but Naruto finally began to catch on to his mood. Naruto had once remarked offhandedly to Sakura that there really wasn’t much difference between “Angry Sasuke” and “Sasuke on a Good Day.”

“Sasuke? What the hell do you mean?” The smile was fading into a scowl.

Sasuke took his time standing, and Naruto didn’t retreat. By the time Sasuke was on his feet, they were standing chest to chest. So, Naruto was planning to fight him. That was rich.

“What I mean is, you fuck Hyuga Neji all morning and now you’re ready to go again. Where…” he reached out and palmed Naruto’s half-stiff cock, “…do you get your energy?”

Naruto’s mouth hung open. Sasuke waited for him to deny it, just so he could turn around and prove it. But Naruto took a step back. “It’s not…”

Sasuke advanced on him.

“…What I think?” He could see that the hard tone of his voice shocked Naruto. He had shocked himself.

“I didn’t mean… Sasuke, you have to…”

They had crossed the room now, Sasuke advancing and Naruto retreating, Sasuke’s hand still pressed menacingly against Naruto’s softening cock. He didn’t know what he meant by that, but he liked it – Naruto wilting in his hand.

Sasuke crowded Naruto, got up right in his betraying face.

“I don’t have to do anything. You, on the other hand…”

The expression on Naruto’s face was pained, his eyes shiny with something that might have been tears, but Sasuke couldn’t stand to look. How dare he ask for sympathy.

He was hard, Sasuke realized then. With Naruto hunched miserably in front of him, his cock was straining against his zipper, as hard as it had ever been.

That was the truth of it. No matter what Naruto did, Sasuke would want him. It’s hereditary, came the sudden, incongruous thought.

“How long?” he ground out.

Usually robust enough to command strict obedience from the most elite ANBU squad, Naruto’s voice went meek. “A few months.”

Sasuke was unable to stop himself. He gave Naruto’s shoulder a shove with the heel of his palm and he crashed into the wall opposite the couch. But Naruto was tough. It wasn’t physical hurt that clouded his blue eyes.

“How many months?”

“Eight,” Naruto confessed after a moment’s thought.

Eight months. Two hundred and forty days. Oh god.

Sasuke felt his eyes melting into the Sharingan. For an instant he considered it. You will relive this moment for the next eight months..

Naruto took advantage of the pause.

“I’m sorry, Sasuke. I’m sorry. I know it was wrong. I won’t ask…”

Sasuke bore down on him again.

“No. You won’t ask. You won’t say a fucking word unless I tell you to.” With the curse, Sasuke’s barely contained fury finally boiled over. Naruto’s hands instinctively came up to protect his chest with a basic block, but Sasuke didn’t attack.

Naruto’s eyes, daring to look into his, had gone glassy, his lips had begun to tremble, and the expression on his face had frozen a shade away from utterly devastated.

“Now tell me how it started.”

So Naruto told him. Sasuke listened, through every sordid detail. The perfect mission, the adrenaline, the rushed hand job in the alley. Sasuke listened until he had the “how” of it firmly memorized. And he watched. He watched Naruto’s chapped lips, the ones that had latched onto Hyuga Neji’s pale neck. He watched Naruto’s big, calloused hands flex just as they’d flexed in Hyuga Neji’s long hair. He watched Naruto’s blue eyes, the ones that had darkened with lust for someone else.

Someone who was not Uchiha Sasuke.

Sasuke realized then that everybody he’d ever loved had betrayed him.

“Did you let him fuck you?” The words were out of Sasuke’s mouth before he could weigh them. They were jealous and petty. But right now, he was jealous and petty, goddammit.

“It wasn’t like…” Sasuke narrowed his eyes and Naruto seemed to realize again that explanations were the last thing on Sasuke’s mind. “No.”

“So you never let him fuck what’s mine?”

Sasuke was painfully hard inside his pants now. What’s mine. He didn’t want to know if it was the hurt, or worse, the fear on Naruto’s face that did it. There were a lot of things he didn’t want to know just now.

Naruto shook his head emphatically.

“Did you suck him off?”

Naruto’s eyes flickered left before he answered. He’d been contemplating lying, Sasuke knew.

“Yes,” he said, more softly than before. Naruto was deflating right before his eyes. Right there trapped between Sasuke and the wall in their living room he was becoming smaller, less vibrant. Sasuke grasped Naruto’s broad shoulders in both hands and pushed down, hard. Naruto winced as he dropped to his knees. He hadn’t had to allow that. He was atoning.

“Are you sorry?”

Naruto nodded.

“Good. Then you’re going to put your lying mouth on my cock and apologize.”

It was a semblance of the old, unbowed Naruto that protested. “Sasuke, this is not…”

“Apologize.”

Sasuke’s voice had become a hiss. Naruto looked up at him with wilted blue eyes. Then he fumbled Sasuke’s zipper down.

“I’m sorry,” Naruto said in a choked voice. Sasuke stared hard at the wall. He felt Naruto’s hands freeing his erection, but he didn’t wonder what Naruto thought of that – how hard he was – even here and now. Naruto lied. What he thought didn’t matter.

Naruto took him in his mouth. Sasuke inhaled, and have fisted Naruto’s hair in his hands but stopped himself. A cheater didn’t deserve his touch.

Naruto worked spiritedly for a few long minutes. Because that’s what it was – work. Earning forgiveness should never be easy. They’d taught Sasuke that lesson after he returned to Konoha. And sometimes forgiveness could never be earned. He’d taught Itachi that lesson himself.

Sasuke suddenly thrust his cock deep down Naruto’s throat. He hoped it choked him.

“Keep going,” he said when tears appeared on Naruto’s eyelashes. That loud mouth felt as good as it always did, but Sasuke was still just as hard as before. At this rate, he could make Naruto suck him all night. He’d put that famous stamina to the test.

He looked down and found Naruto staring up at him, pleading in his eyes. Sasuke could barely stand to look at him.

“Take off your shirt,” he said next. Naruto removed his mouth from Sasuke’s cock with care, but Sasuke saw him lick his lips and flex his jaw after the forced blowjob was over. Naruto shimmied out of the shirt next, all his movements etched with misery.

Sasuke looked at him. Just looked at him. He took in Naruto’s thick arms, his broad chest, his taut stomach, and the trail of wiry hair leading down past his navel.

He regarded the body Naruto was so willing to give away and bile bubbled at the back of his throat.

“Have there been others aside from Hyuga Neji?”

Naruto shook his head, looking at the floor, still on his knees.

“So you’re a faithful whore. That’s it?”

Naruto was daring to look at him again. He was shaking his head slowly, his shaggy hair falling into his eyes. “It wasn’t love. I only love you, Sasuke.”

“Is that how you show me you love me?” He was yelling. It was said that Uchiha Sasuke never yelled but there he was. He did fist his hands in Naruto’s hair then, pulled that golden head back until Naruto’s neck muscles drew taut and his chin tilted skyward.

Sasuke knelt in front of him, pressed his lips close to Naruto’s ear.

“I can’t fuck you until you love only me. But I can fuck you just the same.” The scene he’d witnessed between Naruto and Neji was still raw in his mind. “And maybe I’ll make you scream my name this time.”

With that, he thrust Naruto forward. Naruto still refused to fight, even when Sasuke yanked the black pants down over his hips without bothering with the button. Even when he ripped the boxers so that disparate pieces of cloth hung from the elastic waist band.

Naruto was still silently apologizing when Sasuke shoved his cock inside.

One deep thrust for making him look foolish. Another for lying. Another for fighting him when he left to avenge his clan. For that stupid look on his face. For making him so hard even now. For submitting.

Sasuke couldn’t recall when fucking became hitting, but he was pummeling Naruto’s back suddenly, leaving red welts that would darken to bruises if the Kyuubi didn’t heal them first. That just infuriated him more. Sasuke’s nails were short and stubby, but they managed to gouge long gashes down Naruto’s smooth back just the same.

“Does it hurt?” he screamed, but he choked halfway, the question transforming into sobs he didn’t know how to suppress.

Naruto hadn’t cried until he did, then the body in front of him was shaking. Tears and snot mingling on the floor. Naruto is breaking, he realizes.

But I’m doing this for love, Sasuke thinks. When Itachi did it, he did it for power.

“I just loved you so much,” escapes his mouth unbidden, coming out garbled. He punctuates the words with a thrust. It’s the first time he’s ever said that word to Naruto, and he isn’t even sure it’s Naruto he’s talking to.

“I love you, too. I never meant it. I love you,” Naruto’s voice is miserable. “Please, Sasuke… Please.”

The begging does something to him. Dries his tears, steels his spine. He thinks he might be as close as he’s ever been to his brother when he spills onto Naruto’s back. He watches with satisfaction as his come highlights the bruises and seeps into the gouges. Naruto’s back is a mess. He’s been punished now. But it isn’t enough. It will never be enough.

I should kill him for this, a small, dead voice in the back of his mind says matter-of-factly. It’s a voice that’s more familiar than his own, and when he shoves Naruto aside and stumbles into the bathroom, the face he sees in the mirror is the same. With his thumbs, he attempts futilely to smooth the dark lines under his eyes. But he doesn’t try very hard. Truthfully, Sasuke has grown accustomed to them. But he did this for love.

He sees Naruto, a dark shape lying on the living room floor, before he closes the bathroom door.

In the shower, he discovers the blood on his cock. He looks down at it, horrified, until it’s all washed away, along with the blood on his hands. Naruto shouldn’t have betrayed him. He’d done it for love.

Maybe Itachi had done it for love, too.

Naruto is gone when he gets out of the shower and Sasuke is relieved. He doubts he’ll ever be able to look Naruto in the face again, but realizes immediately that that isn’t true. If he’s able to look in the mirror, he’ll be able to look at Naruto. He’s surprised this hasn’t happened sooner, actually. Blood will tell.

Sasuke’s anger has run its course, washed away along with the blood down the drain. If Naruto is smart, he won’t come back. But then, Naruto has never been smart.

Hyuga Neji is probably good for Naruto, he rationalizes. He probably thinks only of Naruto when they’re together. Its Naruto’s strong body, his grinning face, and the way that he can make the most mundane things sound dirty when he’s horny that Hyuga Neji likely wants. He doesn’t get hard at the memory of a smile of blood on his brother’s throat, or red eyes finally dimming to black. He doesn’t insist they always fuck facing away from one another. He doesn’t balk at the word love.

Hyuga Neji is still alive.

Sasuke sees the note on the kitchen table, written on the back of a receipt for twenty-nine cases of ramen. He tells himself it’s the childish scrawl that makes his vision go blurry for a second.

“I have two missions,” Naruto has written. “I’ll come home after. I’m sorry.”

Sasuke takes the note when he leaves.

End