Desert Places
Rated; R
Summary; The desert waits. And it is far too patient.

Standard Disclaimer; I don't own Naruto; if I did, I wouldn't be writing fanfiction.

Author's Note; This was for a friend's birthday, which was awhile ago, I admit. I can't help it when the muse hits ; Anyway, again with the poetry–I totally blame the poetry class I took this quarter (but not the professor at all, as he was rather lame) for all this.

Excerpt below is from "Desert Places," one of my favorite Frost poems.

—
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

—

The desert sleeps.

When Sasuke pushes Neji over a table, or into the bed, or against the bathroom tile where there is no water, the desert dreams. It dreams of too-hot muscles that are too-well oiled, skin slick with sweat, sliding bodies. It dreams of tongues of heat and desire that twist their way through flesh and bone alike, that transcribe lust into something more permanent (like whispers instead of shouts, moans and breaths and stricken I love yous) that flex and purr against throats and navels and thighs. It wakes up only when Sasuke is so deep inside that he can feel Neji living all around him. It is only when Sasuke breathes that anything in that empty place is truly alive.

Sasuke hates the desert the most.

He likes only the way it makes Neji walk barefoot and half-naked with only a pair of shorts, and sometimes, nothing. How it sweeps Neji's hair into a high ponytail and off his shoulders to reveal the pale skin, skin that Sasuke will mark over and over just to show how much Neji is his. Neji never marks, and Sasuke never asks, just sucks twice as hard and twice as long to make up for all that Neji insists on lacking. He is confident that the longer the desert night, the more he can taste of Neji, and the more the desert can awaken.

They have been in the desert for months. Sleeping during the day, missions at night. Suna is understaffed and the desert is wide and deep, long stretches of territory with hidden dangers like vipers ready to strike at a land encapsulated by sand. Sasuke and Neji return at dawn with grains in their boots, hair, ears. They stomp out the desert and slip into the dreams that this world provides fully and eagerly.

But when they aren't working, when the sun has baked the sands and the white moon has cooled them, they bask in that ethereal glow and sit and listen to each other breathe.

There's something about the way Neji looks in white that makes Sasuke cold, like secrets no one ever tells that become lost forever. It's moments like these that Sasuke wants the most to throw the Hyuuga against the porch and fuck the secrets right out of him. He knows that Neji and he are only half-alive, and that destiny has drawn them from a similar outline, made perfect from the same material. Two parts of the same whole.

But Neji is reading again–poetry. His hair is down and his legs are bathed in moonlight, loose cotton robe shifting in a variable breeze. He's as far away as a thousand ships at sea, farther away than Sasuke's Sharingan eyes can see ( and he wonders sometimes, just how far can the Byakugan see? Can it see shore?). Too far away to catch in a net of any devising, but Sasuke is content to watch. He has learned some form of patience, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Sasuke doesn't like to admit to himself that sometimes, he's afraid of chasing Neji away.

In the winter, when it's cold and empty, they'll return to Konoha where this all began. Neji will come back, and the voices that are living will make him live again, and Sasuke won't have to slam into him so hard to make the ghosts trickle out of his eyes and mouth and throat. Things will surface there, in the place that they belong and they'll both return to the young men they had been crafted to be. For now they'll bask in each other's presence and try to live enough to convince each other that something's still moving inside.

Sometimes Sasuke wonders if he has too many ghosts of his own to banish Neji's. Don't they both awake at night from the dreams that rip whispers painfully from their chests, that pull and grab and smother? Sometimes they seem so similar that Sasuke wonders if they have the same dreams. But when Neji whispers Chichiue in the night, it always clashes with Sasuke's Nii-san, and he knows they don't.

Neji turns a page and Sasuke listens for the telltale sign of the Hyuuga's disinterest. He wants to push Neji into wood now because it's been days since he's seen any life in those eyes as pale as the moon, but Neji might be too far away, and Sasuke's eyes are just as blood-soaked as ever.

The Hyuuga puts the book down softly, still open and stands to walk to the railing, an angel in waiting with too much damage to ever see heaven again. Sasuke merely glances at the page Neji had left–a Frost poem that they both know too well–but Sasuke is too impatient to think about stars and snow and the desert places that so well describe the boy that he's suddenly touching. And Neji's skin is cool as Sasuke removes the cotton that covers it, exposing the paleness to shadow and lines of light.

"It's much too quiet here to live without thinking," Neji's voice is merely a whisper,

"Too silent to communicate without speaking?" Sasuke makes up for what Neji's missing, and when the Hyuuga turns there is the self-sufficient smirk that Sasuke hates painted there. It reminds him a little too much of himself, and that brokenness tells him that this is all too real.

"We don't speak when there is no one to listen..." the icy angel insists,

"No use in listening when there is no one speaking." Sasuke's fingers are already gliding over Neji's shoulders, pushing a curtain of dark hair back to reveal fading bruises that he himself has created. The Uchiha smirks against Neji's skin, and he feels it tighten with Neji's smirk in response. They don't need to talk to hear to understand. When he's touching Neji, that's all it takes to make the communication whole.

They move for awhile, sighing against each other. Neji's kisses are cold, but not frigid. Sasuke always knows how to warm him, but he's distant. When Sasuke's tongue is dipping into Neji's clavicle, the Hyuuga is looking over his shoulder.

"I want to fly toward the sun."

Sasuke pauses and lifts his head, eyes taking a path over Neji's face that his hands soon follow. "It'll kill you." His response is merely the muscles of the throat moving.

"Something already is."

Sasuke wonders if he's too selfish to let Neji go, and if it really is true that if something belongs to you, it will return.

He realizes that he doesn't have a choice.

The desert is too large.

---

Ende.