Title: Seeing Red

Type: Oneshot

Warnings: Explicit violence

Pairings: Obito Uchiha x Kakashi Hatake

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Seeing Red

"Cut me open and I still bleed red

Do your best to get inside my head

´Cause I'm gonna make you remember my name

And I'll be the last one you'll ever betray

Just wait

You'll be seeing red"

-Beth Crowley – 'Red'

Red slips out from the thin, delicate cut. It's the first for today, and the rest of his skin is still smooth and milk-coloured.

It's high time to taint it crimson again.

(Put away the knife. Undo his bounds.)

Obito knows he really should use a more ragged weapon, but he sort of fancies the clean, sharp blades. They're such a joy to work with. They make much nicer lines in the skin. No ninja can honestly say he enjoys using a dull knife. The sharp ones don't hurt as much, though. That's their only flaw.

But at this point, knowing what's slowly coming, approaching, is almost equally bad to as if it were actually happening.

It's dawn.

It's only morning.

The knowledge that this is just the beginning is tearing him apart.

Obito can see it.

He finds himself distracted by the pained grimace that twists Kakashi' face, fear that flashes through his eyes, fear that stays there, fear that burns into his.

(Don't hurt him.)

Obito's eyes flicks between the bleeding cut and Kakashi's silently pleading face. It's hard to choose what to focus his attention on when both are so mesmerizing.

His finger follows the red line, pushes the wound apart, helps the blood run easier. Kakashi's jaw clenches as skin tears and again, Obito's eyes are pulled towards his face.

(Stop it.)

Kakashi's lips are parted in panting, his eyes – rather, his remaining one, that is – is wide, stares into nothingness. There's a panicked look on his face.

Obito never really needed to use a gag. Kakashi is stubbornly quiet if he is physically able to remain so. The sounds of pain, when he finally makes them – gasps, moans, and screams – are welcome.

He enjoys them.

(They hurt me.)

Only when it gets more intense does he use it, mostly to take away yet another freedom from Kakashi. Perhaps the last freedom he has at this point.

His hand runs down Kakashi's chest, for once not harming, but just marveling at how smooth, lean, and warm it is. He touches pale, even skin; hard, tense muscles underneath, rippling beneath his fingertips.

The traces of yesterday and the day before that; they're all gone. With the exception of the new cut, he looks unharmed, like nothing ever happened. Like fire hadn't melted skin. Like bones hadn't been shattered. Like his stomach hadn't been cut up, like his intestines hadn't been a hairbreadth away from welling out from his abdomen.

It looks like nothing even had happened to him.

Karin's healing abilities truly is remarkable.

When Obito thinks back to what he had made Kakashi go through, bound to by this table, it's hard to believe this is the first time he uses just an old-fashioned, traditional knife on him. Perhaps because plain cutting isn't that painful, if compared to other torturing methods, but still…

...it is easily the most satisfying.

(I want to protect my comrades.)

His blood is beautiful, and Obito rather prefers when his body keep its shape. Limbs bent in wrong directions and joints twisted into unnatural positions just doesn't appeal much to him, even if he had liked the horror playing on his features. The smell of clean, pure blood is much more pleasant than burned, charred flesh.

Besides…

Obito chuckles darkly, and sweat runs down Kakashi's flexing muscles, mixing with the blood from the one, single cut he has made across his stomach.

Kakashi is scared. He tries to mask it – it astonishes Obito how he still has the energy to try to mask it – but he is terrified. Obito knows that the sound of his footsteps coming down the hall had his heart racing. When he opened the door, his breath hitched. And now… just standing next to him, Kakashi is trembling, quivering.

(He is a great jonin.)

Right now, just being in his presence – waiting – seems to inflict more stress than anything else. Kakashi knows he can't escape. Knows that something is coming. To let Kakashi's mind run away with its own conclusions, come up with new ideas of what Obito might do to him next…

...it's tormenting him something immense.

Especially now that Obito has already shown he can be quite imaginative himself, that he shows no pity, doesn't hold back. Show that he finds pleasure in doing this to him.

(It makes me sick.)

Obito's index finger runs down from his collarbones to his underwear.

"Kakashi," he says, watching the reaction it has on him.

His heart rate accelerates; his breathing comes out in shallow, erratic puffs.

This is so… entertaining.

(I don't want him to suffer.)

He lets his knife make a new line, blood slipping out. The scent of it fills Obito's lungs as he breathes in. The crimson liquid runs down the side of his stomach, makes thin rivulets, drips down into little scarlet pools.

Kakashi shudders.

Obito's eyes are locked on the blood as it gushes out from his wound. The flowing crimson intrigues, the dark liquid in motion almost seems hypnotizing.

This…it truly is….

Addicting.

He pulls the flat side of the knife along his arm, over his shoulder, to his neck. Sees Kakashi shiver from the cool surface of it – or maybe it's not because of the cold at all. He lets the blade rest against his neck. Turns the knife; lets it nip under his jaw. He pulls it through skin, makes a shallow gash.

He inhales the coppery-smell. It's still fresh in the air, not enough to be overwhelming yet. He puts the knife away for the time being, leans closer to the blood running down his neck. He is so close he can smell musky sweat, traces of soap. His breath hits skin and he feels Kakashi tense under him, the arm, the shoulder he's leaning over twitch.

Obito's tongue catch the red drops before they have time to run down and waste on the table, slowly licks up the trail leading to the source of its flow. He tastes iron, a tint of salt. He laps up blood – slowly, deliberately – and he can taste the sweet, sweet suffering.

(It breaks my heart.)

Kakashi is panting. Obito can feel his hot pulse under his tongue – irregular, accelerating. His spine arch, what little his restrictions allow him to. Grey hair is stuck to wet, feverish skin. Obito smirks against his neck, fingers caressing his naked face like a lover, and Kakashi let out a strangled whimper.

Kakashi has, for the longest time, been trying to change him, convert him, resonate with him, but time has broken him out of that habit. Sometimes, though, he almost misses the begging tone of his words, the clinging hope as it slowly dies away. The promises to do anything if Obito would only be willing to come back with him, give Konoha – give this cursed world – a second chance.

As if he ever would consider that.

(I want to become the Hokage.)

Kakashi doesn't talk anymore. His stubborn will is still lingering, though. It has refused to leave him for the longest time.

Any normal person's mentality would have broken long ago.

Obito starts playing with his knife again. Draws new, red lines. He creates a work of art in 3D – scarlet against a flesh-coloured background. He makes them idly, with no particular goal in mind.

Until an idea strikes him. He likes it immediately.

The razor-sharp knife moves.

Kakashi's body is bleeding.

He begins to crave in the first letter of his name in Kakashi's stomach, carefully peeling layers of skin until he reach muscle as he writes an 'O'. He works slowly. He has some free time over today, and he'd be damned if this ends too quickly.

The low moan from Kakashi's throat is like a soft piano-note to his ear.

He wants to hear more, make music.

The next letter is a 'B'.

He might not acknowledge himself as Obito Uchiha anymore, but Kakashi does, and as long as it gets to him, that is all that matters. As he starts on the third letter, Kakashi's eyebrows furrows in understanding, and, as expected, pain. Not just the physical pain that has his teeth tight clenched to not make a sound, but emotional pain, pain that cuts deeper than any injuries to skin, muscle or bone could reach.

Pain that touch his heart, pain that might never heal.

Obito is the fondest of that sort of pain, especially on Kakashi. It fits him beautifully.

Kakashi can't have much energy left, but a silent, quiet tear slips from his one eye, runs down the side of his face.

(DON'T HURT HIM!)

Something clenches in his chest, and in his frustration, his knife digs deeper, tears through a blood artery. Blood spurts out like steaming water thrown up from a hot underwater spring; red seems to splatter everywhere, and the warm drops hit his face, clothes. If fills the air thick with its unmistakable smell. Obito curse at his ruined handiwork, quickly sealing the blood-flow away. He is far from an expert, but he knows some basic medical jutsu, and he can't have Kakashi passing out from blood loss – not again. Obito has already learned that lesson the hard way, and he wasn't making the same mistake twice.

(You made him cry. Kakashi never cries.)

He wasn't going to let Kakashi take the easy way out.

Kakashi winces as the last letter is craved into his chest, meets Obito's eyes with difficulty.

He looks hurt – terribly hurt – but surprisingly, not accusatory.

Kakashi never looks accusatory.

(Let him go. He wants to go home.)

It benefits him. But it is slightly annoying.

Obito uses his blade again, admires the colour red, takes pleasure in Kakashi's agonized expressions.

Every time flesh yields to metal, something cut deep inside of him. Every pained, unmasked expression he sees reaches into his soul, makes something within curl up in pain.

(I took a boulder for him. Why are you doing this?)

Obito bits his teeth together, ignores what's desperately clawing to get out. He focuses on the beauty of Kakashi's suffering;

the despair left unspoken,

the heavy, intoxicating smell,

the varying shades of crimson,

the hoarse, choked groans,

the exquisite, conveying features.

(I can't breathe.)

A small boy inside him is begging him to stop.

Obito chokes him.

A/N. My first attempt at psychological horror, because I'm twisted like that. Thank you for reading and please review! Your support means a lot!