Title: Sleep Habit
Author: Desolate Butterfly
Pairing: Sasuke/Naruto
Genre: Humor/Romance
Rating: PG 13
Summary: Uchiha Sasuke does not cuddle, and those who say otherwise are a bunch of lying liars.

Sleep Habit

Sasuke didn't cuddle. He didn't cuddle or snuggle or any other word ending in "uggle" that you could think of. It was understood that any physical comfort given would come in the form of the one-armed manly hug, or the casual lean against the shoulder. Or comforting jabs to the ribs with an elbow. Sasuke preferred comforting jabs to the ribs. He was best at those.

But cuddling was forbidden in the Uchiha household, even post-orgasm cuddling, because the weight and the stifling heat of another body on top of him made Sasuke feel trapped. And trapped Uchihas bite and stab with kunai hidden behind pillows and such.

No, Sasuke didn't cuddle, which is why his nightly habit of wrapping around Naruto in a tangle of naked limbs could not be called 'cuddling' in any sense of the term. There was no "comfort" involved. Naruto's shoulder blades were pointy and dug into Sasuke's chest sometimes. Blonde spiky hair tickled his nose in an always irritating way. Naruto's feet were always cold, and the rest of him was always unbearably hot, like sleeping next to a furnace. And sweat would form on Sasuke's chest and neck and back, making him wet and slippery and uncomfortable.

This was not cuddling. This was restraint: because Naruto, like any irritating dolt, was a restless sleeper.

If left to his own devices, he would kick, squirm, and change position five million times before settling. And the mattress was very squeaky. Should Sasuke, who was a very light sleeper and woke at every movement Naruto made, have to suffer endless nights of one or two hours of sleep before the moron finally stopped? Of course not.

Finding a solution, however, had been difficult. At first, Sasuke just kicked the idiot out to go sleep on the couch. But he kept sneaking back in and Sasuke found he was getting even less sleep then before, making traps and snares to keep the blond out.

Then Sasuke tried drugging him with sake, which didn't work and made him horny, and a special sleeping pill from Sakura's medicine bag, which worked but made him unable to get horny. The one time Naruto had tried to combine the two methods together--to see if they would counteract each other--ended in a trip to the hospital and a long lecture from Sakura about how stupid both of them were for mixing drugs and alcohol. Sasuke thought this was particularly unfair, because it hadn't been his idea to wash five pills down with a bottle of sake. He'd just watched Naruto do it and silently hoped that it would work.

Tying Naruto up with rope resulted in various odd shaped bruises dotting both their bodies, a broken bed, and the best sex Sasuke ever had until Naruto got his arm free and made it the best sex he'd ever had. The rope was put away for special occasions, like birthdays or when Konoha was having a sale on beds.

So really, restraining Naruto with his own body at night, as uncomfortable as that was, seemed the only solution. With Sasuke's legs entwined with his own, and Sasuke's arms pinning him to the mattress, Naruto didn't move an inch all night, except maybe back a little to press against Sasuke's chest more fully.

Really, it was only a way for Sasuke to get more sleep, and if he breathed in the scent of Naruto's hair it was only because the strands were irritatingly close to his nose. And if Sasuke's arms tightened around him in the night, it was probably because the moron was trying to move. And if Sasuke forgot to shuffle off to his side of the bed as soon as the first watery grey patches of light came shining through the bedroom curtain, signaling the approach of dawn and Sasuke's awaiting ANBU team, it was only because he was not fully awake yet, and not because Naruto's back was so warm and his hips fit perfectly into the cradle of Sasuke's lap.

And it definitely had nothing at all to do with cuddling. So there.

Fin.