Not again.

The sentiment is the only coherence Sasuke's mind is capable of just then as he rouses suddenly and uncomfortably from his sleep. His heart races, lungs heaving and legs shaking, and he's agonizingly conscious of the unpleasant dampness across his legs and belly. The last of the haze fades with his sleep, annoyance and disgust rapidly replacing it.

Somehow, the cold darkness of his room seems even more so in his discomfort.

Fuck.

He shoves his thin blanket aside and bolts from the hard cot, stripping off his clothing with economic efficiency. He ignores his body's instinctive shiver of protest as he stalks across his cavernous quarters.

The grotto where he sleeps is dimly lit with torches, but he doesn't really need their glow to light his way. His eyes are better than any lamp, and though the rock of the riverbed is slippery beneath his bare feet, his footing is certain.

Like most of Orochimaru's hide-outs, the cavern complex is located underground in one of the numerous damp and twisted tunnels. Sasuke normally feels a distant sort of annoyance with life underground—it feels too much like hiding to him, which is a coward's way—but this bolthole is to his liking. It's constructed around an underground river, one of whose tributaries flows through Sasuke's own lodgings. That means instead of the communal facilities in the centre of the complex, he can bathe or wash his clothing in privacy.

Right now, he does just that, scrubbing doggedly at the loose black trousers he sleeps in. He beats them against a rock outcropping, intending to eradicate every trace of stain there. It's not blood, though he's had to clean that out of his clothes often since arriving to train with the legendary Sannin; Orochimaru does not pull punches just because of Sasuke's age.

In some ways, it's so much worse than blood.

Despite the cold, Sasuke's cheeks burn.

When he first started having mornings like this, waking surrounded by damp bedsheets, his immediate reaction was panic and shame. Bedwetting is the action of a child and—barring the horrible months directly after his clan's murder, when memories of Itachi's genjutsu often loosened his bladder at night—Sasuke hasn't wet the bed since he was three.

Unsurprisingly, realising the actual reason for the soggy sheets in the morning did not make him feel better or less ashamed.

A shinobi's education is beyond comprehensive for matters of biology and physiology, and that doesn't even account for everything Sasuke has learned since Orochimaru started teaching him. He had classes in biology at the Academy, of course, and memorized that information with ease.

The connection between physical body and chakra is more than a mental one, often manifesting physically. There's also the necessity of knowing the exact placement of internal organs, or the junctures where joints are particularly weak, or the exact breaking point of certain bones. Shinobi are often assigned assassinations, after all.

Even before he lost his family, and along with them anyone with whom he might connect personally over these types of problems, he was passive in his knowledge of the human body. It was just another tool to mould in his ever-present quest for revenge.

He spent almost ten years of his life forcing his body to bend to his will and obey him in everything.

To discover that this was something he had no control over was…frustrating, to say the least.

And it didn't stop him from trying to control it.

Once the confusion and shame wore away, replaced with angry resolve, Sasuke dealt with the matter as well as he could. He woke up earlier than before, pacing back and forth until his traitorous flesh returned once more to his control. He wore looser clothing to disguise his lower body during the day and became an expert at making comments that distracted others from noticing his physical discomfort. Or worse, when he had to readjust his shorts.

He soon learned fretting did nothing; if anything, it made his problem last longer. There wasn't anything more to do than sit uncomfortably and grit his teeth, because any wrong movement sent tingling jabs of sensation shooting up through his body.

There was one morning that he took care of the issue himself, impatient to make it go away faster. The task itself wasn't unpleasant, and for a brief moment he actually experienced fully body relief as the coiling tension within him let go.

But almost immediately, he experienced a sense of shame and rebuke well up within him.

How could he dare to give in to his unruly hormones and treacherous body? How could he dare feel anything good, or let his mind focus for an instant on something other than his lofty goals for revenge?

His inner recriminations were enough to erase whatever pleasure came from the act, and eradicate any future temptations for self-gratification.

These days, Sasuke sleeps on his side, training himself to keep blankets or clothing from twisting across his body. When he wakes, he tries to move carefully, not wanting any part of his body to react to stimulus. On particularly difficult mornings he recites whatever technical treatises Orochimaru or Kabuto give him to read, anything pedantic enough to keep is mind busy while his body returns to its normal state.

But every now and again—more often than he would like—there a mornings like this one, where he wakes to the evidence of his body's rebellion.

Despite the fact that he has an excellent memory, and the Sharingan preserves images so well, Sasuke never remembers the dreams. Probably it's because they're the product of an overactive brain, and not something his eyes have copied.

(He thinks that's probably for the best.)

The icy burn of the water temperature is almost painful now, to the point that he would almost—almost—rather wait out his discomfort on his bed. But that has its own complications.

Cohabitating with someone like Kabuto has been an experience.

The medic is always taking skin or hair samples from other subordinates, those who have volunteered or been co-opted into Orochimaru's experiments. The whole practice unnerved Sasuke when he first realised what Kabuto was doing. That was about the time he started being very careful about leaving any trace of himself within reach of the medic. Before leaving his quarters, he would study his room with the Sharingan for minute traces of anything that might be used for…untoward activities.

Perhaps not wanting to alienate an already distrustful child, Orochimaru decided that Sasuke's physical health would be monitored personally by him.

By them, Sasuke corrects with a small frown, stumbling over the best way to describe his teacher. The confines of grammar are somehow insufficient to deal with a being like Orochimaru.

Sasuke hasn't had to worry about needles or invasive tests or anything beyond what he would undergo in the care of a regular physician. The only difference is he undergoes monthly physicals instead of biannual ones, as a means of keeping track of his progress, as well as a regimented diet to optimize his energy output. There's not as much fruit and vegetables to it as Sasuke would like (it's mostly bioengineered soldier pills), but it does the job.

It strikes him as odd, and perhaps a little ironic, that he feels less threatened by the Snake Sannin than their subordinate. But then, Orochimaru has always been up front about their intentions and the way they intend to achieve those.

Kabuto speaks out of two sides of his mouth.

It's clear that he is used to finding peoples weaknesses and exploiting them without mercy. It's a tactic Orochimaru uses, too, but somehow different. The Snake Sannin always has some larger goal in mind and doesn't mock or taunt beyond the exact increment needed to achieve a desired result.

Sasuke was surprised in his first months training with Orochimaru to discover that they were not an entirely the malicious entity he had expected. In fact, he's come to realise that Orochimaru is just very, very amoral. They're a scientist first and foremost, and it's the pursuit of results in their studies which have made them ruthless.

Kabuto does not seem to have any other goal but to manipulate those around him.

It's easier to trust a scientist than a spy, I guess, Sasuke decides, wringing out the sodden material in his hands. Goosebumps spread across his bare skin, up the flesh of his calves and back, eradicating whatever lingering warmth might remain from the nocturnal…incident.

Sasuke hates his human body for it inborn weaknesses.

Worse than the embarrassment are the erections themselves, because those aren't limited to his sleeping hours.

It happened to him during training a few weeks ago, and luckily he was sparring with Orochimaru at the time, instead of Kabuto.

"This is a normal biological function," the Snake Sannin dismissed when Sasuke's flustered anger led him to make several obvious mistakes. "Simple evidence that you're a healthy adolescent male. Undisciplined, perhaps, but healthy. There's no reason such a thing should distract you."

Sasuke snarled at that, not wanting to acknowledge the subject.

"The human body is but an earthly vessel for the spirit—a temporary transport. You know this," Orochimaru continued, gesturing to their own host body. They had long since shed the outward appearance of their last host. "Your mind can control that when you're awake, but when you sleep, you relinquish some of that control."

"Then how do I stop?" Sasuke demanded at last, albeit through clenched teeth.

"Practice, of course. What do you think I've been trying to teach you? It's not just training your body to become strong, but your mind must be strong as well."

Or else it won't survive the Fushi Tensei, the snake Sannin didn't say, though Sasuke was just as aware of his teacher's end goal as always.

"I can't focus on training either when I'm dealing with this," he complained. As if to add insult to injury, his voice cracked, making his words end on a high, questioning note rather than a low growl of menace.

For a wonder, Orochimaru hadn't mocked him, though they looked amused.

"If you are so impatient to control your baser human urges, there are other options," they suggested. "A simple operation, and that bothersome testosterone will never trouble you again."

"No."

Sasuke surprised himself with the speed with which he refused that offer. And though Orochimaru chuckled at it, they didn't pursue it.

Sasuke frowns in the darkness, going over the incident again.

Oh, he doesn't believe that he'll ever have children. Given the fact he's dedicated himself to annihilating the last of his family, he doesn't believe he deserves to build another.

But agreeing to a sterilization procedure might suggest he believes Orochimaru to be some kind of threat that might use Sasuke as the progenitor of countless, mindless Sharingan-wielding bodies. It would seem like a coward's safeguard, a confirmation that he worries Orochimaru will defeat him at that arbitrary future date.

And Sasuke is too stubborn to give the old snake the satisfaction of that.

Against his will, his thought stray to Sakura and Naruto and Kakashi. He tries not to dwell on the idea that losing himself to Orochimaru has anything to do with them. It's a challenge, but one that gets easier each time.

He no longer thinks of his home or the people in it with a gnawing feeling of regret. Sometimes he can even manage distant detachment, when he's exhausted himself of chakra and his body no longer moves at his command.

That surprised him most when he first arrived here: the homesickness.

It wasn't that his resolve wasn't strong; he'd almost killed his best friend in his determination to prove that. But severing bonds, it turned out, wasn't like the cut of a sharp sword. Much as he tried—and he should have known this from the years spent grieving and hating Itachi—his emotions persisted in longing for impossible things.

It honestly felt more like the fruitless hacking of a blunt axe than anything else.

He knows Naruto is no longer in Konoha—Kabuto reported that a few months after Sasuke defected. He suspects his former teammate has gone off with that white-haired degenerate who taught him the Rasengan. And Sakura might have remained behind in the village, but she's training as a medic, according to Kabuto reports.

Having seen what Orochimaru's underling is capable of, Sasuke understands just how dangerous an opponent this will make Sakura, should they ever encounter each other. The way Orochimaru speaks of the Fifth Hokage is never in the same dismissive vein as their feelings on Jiraiya. There's a grudging respect there that Sasuke has only ever detected when the Sannin speaks of the Third Hokage or Hanzō of the Salamander. Sasuke imagines the only times the Snake Sannin has ever come truly close to death has been during encounters with one of those three.

He's even more curious about whether Orochimaru would change the outcomes if they had the chance. Orochimaru enjoys learning from mistakes almost as much as succeeding.

His clothing now clean and his raging blood once more under control, Sasuke climbs out of the water and pads toward his bed. Beside it is the only furniture in the room, a low table, where his garments and belt are folded.

Taking up the clothes to dress in, he lays out the wet trousers flat so that they can dry better. Though they are now clean, he still scowls down at the wet fabric.

It could be worse, he thinks grimly, as he shakes out his white shitagi. I could still be in Konoha right now and going through this nonsense.

第七班

I hope I voiced Sasuke okay in this. I figure up until a certain point in his life he probably viewed sex as an obstacle, so I tried to evoke that here.

And yes, Orochimaru is gender-neutral. I don't care what anyone says. Also, based on how he answered Mitsuki's questions, I figure he would be pretty chill about puberty stuff. Like, of all the adults except for Tsunade, he'd probably be the least embarrassed. I'm always reading these fics where Orochimaru is after Sasuke in a sex way, and (except for that one fic where it was only just alluded to), I just don't see it. I'm pretty sure he's ace or some permutation thereof and getting involved in anything sexual just takes time away from becoming immortal or whatever.

I hope you enjoyed the story! Comments and constructive criticism are much appreciated, and very motivating—and if you enjoy my writing, want updates or just to chat, I'm on Tumblr and Twitter (KuriQuinn).

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