Chapter Text
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Flame Truths
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And you will meet people
who are safer loved
from a distance
and dangerous to love
up close.
Like the flames
you loved as a child.
Like the fire
that taught you pain.
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“You’re late.”
He’s already facing the door when she enters the room, aware of her presence in that peculiar way they’ve always been aware of each other since perhaps forever, despite both of them having concealed chakras at the moment.
The smile that she gives him is tired; she must have travelled for more than a day to reach him here. Placing her small pack on a table, she starts opening the straps around her neck that secure her travelling cloak, a deliberate slowness to her movements that prickles his nerves.
“There was an emergency at the hospital. Ino – ”
Sasuke makes an impatient sound at the back of his throat. She’s moving too slow.
Crossing the small room in three large steps, he looms over her and swiftly unbuckles her cloak, tugs it off, and drops it uncaringly to one side. Whatever else Sakura is about to say remains inside her mouth because he captures her lips with his own in a bruising, punishing kiss.
She’s flushed pink and panting when he breaks away from her; he’s not faring much better, his heart beating fast like it means to crawl out of his throat and escape into her mouth. She sighs sweetly when he presses his groin into her and rubs against her. But when he bends to kiss her again, she stops him with a gloved hand on his chest.
“Sasuke,” she breathes, and his annoyance must show in his eyes because she amends quickly. “Sasuke-kun, can we wait a little, please?”
“You already made me wait a whole night in this room without you.”
He looks her over once more with a probing gaze. The weariness she shows is superficial, because Sasuke knows that Sakura lives on caffeine and her special, hand-crafted soldier pills, and he also knows that she’s already taken at least three before coming here, in preparation for their tryst. She’ll be out cold in about ten hours or so, crashing down from the aftereffects of her medicated high and the exertion he will put her through, but he’ll be gone by then.
“I thought we could talk a bit before we began.”
Her face has turned a shade darker than the rosy hue of her hair. Even after nearly five years of their arrangement, he’s still able to make her blush like this. The thought might be endearing in different circ*mstances, but it only annoys him, adding fuel to the rage he keeps simmering beneath his skin.
Sasuke walks away from her towards his own travelling pack in one corner of the rented room and picks up his dark cloak. Predictably, Sakura follows him and places her hands on his to stop him, an imploring look in her green eyes that he ignores with practised apathy.
“I’m not here to talk, Sakura. If you can’t give me what I want, then I have no use of you.”
Her eyes widen, her nostrils flare and her lips quiver; a lifetime of knowing each other, and he’s still able to hurt her with the simplest of words. ‘Good’, he thinks, even if he doesn’t feel that way on the inside.
“Don’t leave,” she whispers.
Taking both his hands in her own, she leads him to the middle of the room, to the small bed that’s barely big enough for two people, and makes him sit on the edge. When she moves to stand between his parted thighs, his hands rise and find their place on her hips, like they belong there. She takes a moment to remove her gloves, tossing them carelessly behind her on the floor.
Her fingertips brush the long strands of hair that hide his Rinnegan away from his forehead, her hands cradle his face gently, lovingly, and he should close his eyes because he’s never really deserved her or her love or her devotion.
But Sasuke is nothing if not selfish. Pressing his own fingers deeply into her hip bones, unmindful of the bruises he will inevitably leave on her soft skin, he tugs her forward until she falls into him.
They kiss hungrily, starved for each other in that indescribable, unfathomable, cataclysmic way that keeps them coming back to each other again and again. She’s addicted to him as he’s addicted to her. Like a moth is drawn to an open flame; except Sasuke knows that he’s the moth and Sakura is the burning, all-consuming flame. And if he’s not careful she will devour him whole and leave nothing behind, not even ashes.
With his one hand, he pulls and pushes at her red tunic until it’s open at the front and hangs off her pale, bare shoulders, while his other hand presses into her upper back, keeping her steady in his lap. A harsh tug on her chest bindings, and her breasts are spilling out of their confines straight into his waiting mouth. She moans long and low when he sucks hard on one flushed and lovely peak, drinks from her flesh to sate his thirst and calm her need. But it’s never enough for either of them.
Sasuke would let Sakura consume him, flesh and bones and tainted soul and all; one last, long kiss goodbye, until he’s but an errant thought at the back of her mind. But he’s never been that, not for her. He’s a festering, infected wound, an incurable disease, and he would take her down with him, if he gave them that chance.
It’s for both their sakes, he reminds himself – this distance that he keeps from her.
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Self-preservation. That’s why he always ran away from them – from her.
He was thirteen when he ran away for the first time, chasing after the lure of power and the desire of finally avenging his fallen people. Honour hadn’t meant much to him back then, and his Genin team was just holding him back from achieving his dreams.
He ran away again at seventeen – when he was at the edge of another life-altering event, a mere moment away from exacting his latest plan of vengeance against the only person who could ever stand in his way – because across the expanse of broken earth between them, she had looked at him, while Hagoromo was giving his speech, while Naruto was saying goodbye to his father.
Sakura had looked at him with the smallest of smiles and a sliver of hope shining in her eyes, and Sasuke had seen it then. A glimpse of his future and hers, a vision of their future together. The lives they would live, the child they might have... The misery that awaited them.
And he had been so utterly terrified at that probability that he had barely managed to undo the Infinite Tsukuyomi with Naruto’s help... And then he ran away.
From the battlefield and from Kakashi and Naruto and from her and her small smile and her hopeful eyes. Somehow, he had managed to escape, evaded capture, and remain undetected and undiscovered, despite his famous bloodline and the infamy that surrounded him, and fled far away from the clutches of the Great Ninja Villages.
He travelled to the farthest corners of the continent, right up to the edges of their world, traversing through previously uncharted areas, crossing hostile territories, passing through small indigenous settlements; anyone unfortunate enough to cross paths with him gave him a wide berth because of the dangerous aura he carried with him at all time.
Always moving, never staying in one place for too long – lest he grow complacent and dependent on those around him – his snake and hawk summons his only companions during that time.
And it worked for a long time. Keeping to himself, doing small-scale mercenary work and menial labour, enough for him to get by, never possessing anything more than he needed, never getting attached to anything or anyone or any single place. Attachments were dangerous and only led to downfall and despair, so he kept moving.
Movement kept the visions at bay as well.
Little childish laughter turning to anguished cries, round button-black eyes bleeding red, cowering from him as he drew a sword through them.
Pink hair splayed on green grass beneath him, breathing gasps in his ears, pale skin burning black, engulfed with the flames from hell erupting from his eyes.
Roots and vines surrounding him, trapping him, crushing his bones and draining his essence, dragging him deep underground through soil and dirt until he suffocated and died a pitiful, lonely death.
And if a lonely death was all that awaited him, then Sasuke wanted no part in that. He would die on his own terms, and he wouldn’t leave anyone to grieve behind him. The Uchiha name and bloodline would die with him.
So he kept moving, kept changing places, and it worked. For three years, it worked. The story of the last surviving Uchiha became a legend – a tragic young anti-hero who defected from the greatest shinobi village and became an international criminal bent on a warpath, but later joined the Allied Forces in the Fourth Shinobi World War and helped defeat and seal the Rabbit Goddess and lift the Genjutsu placed over the people of the continent, only to disappear without a trace at the culmination of the final battle.
He forgot all about his wretched past and his precious bonds and his traitorous birth village and his auspicious clan and his ominous visions of the future. He became just ‘Sasuke’. And the world forgot about him.
And it worked, this way of existing.
Until he heard her laughter again.
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She is crushed under his weight, heaving and gasping for purchase, while Sasuke marks and bites and sucks her throat, purple bruises already forming on the translucent skin of her neck and shoulders and around her slender wrists captured tightly in his own hands and held high above her head.
Marks he knows that Sakura will not heal, will wear on her skin like bespoke jewellery for weeks to come until they fade on their own, keepsakes and mementos of her time spent with him.
She murmurs loving words and soothing affections in his ears, twisting her hands in his strong grip because she wants to touch him. He pretends not to hear; she could flip him if she wanted, break his hold on her and take from him what she needed, forcefully if she wanted (and a small, insignificant part of Sasuke knows that he might actually learn to like having her in charge of his pleasure).
But that’s not how Sakura is with him. She lets him take control over her and over their arrangement and their surroundings, bends to him and his demands, and gives and gives. She still loves him with all her heart, even after all these years; her transparent feelings for him are written in bold font in the glass of her eyes and the curve of her pout and the rapid beating of her heart underneath him and the heel of her foot digging into his back.
And it enrages him, knowing that she offers herself to him like this as penance for all the wrongs that have been done to him by the world and by his circ*mstances and by his own hand. ‘It’s not enough,’ he shakes with barely contained fury. ‘It’s never enough.’
He wants so much more from her, with her, with them together for a lifetime, counting stars and watching waves and running through fields breathing snow and drinking sweat and crunching decaying leaves underfoot, until their skin wrinkles and their hair turns silver and his eyes are blind with cataracts and her bones creak when she walks, and they’re buried together side by side in an open field somewhere, surrounded by faces with features a beautiful, perfect mix of his and hers.
But that’s not what’s written for them.
He sinks his canines into her shoulder one more time, then lets go of her wrists to grip her ankles that are crossed around his back. Holding her calves, he pushes her knees up, brings them to her chest bending her legs, and bears down on her with his hands wrapped around her shins until she’s pressed into the mattress on her back and folded in half, her beautiful core splayed open for him, ready and waiting and wanting.
Sasuke feasts on Sakura until her screams turn hoarse, until she’s sobbing, begging him to stop but don’t stop, please don’t stop, keep going. He licks and laps and swallows and tastes her till she’s unmoving and boneless beneath him, and still, he keeps drinking from her, consuming her the way he wants her to consume him, engulf him whole, and keep him safe and snug beneath the bones of her ribs like a secret.
Or a parasite.
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