1Everything But Love - 462

He admired the way his fingers stood out against such bronze skin. The tips, always cold, always perfectly immaculate, traced a shadow across an unfamiliar seal, which was so because he'd never really had the chance to study it this way before. It held a darker shade of the boy's skin, curling around like a paper cut out and warmer than the rest of his body. Naruto was always very hot blooded, he mused, so it didn't make much of a difference anyway. Perhaps, if he rested his hand there long enough, it would begin to burn at the living energy that fluttered and danced beneath his skin, bone and blood.

Sasuke remembered how he had his fist through that thriving body once, and as the thought brought him a whisper of pain, so it brought a sick flare of pleasure. He was the only one who could say, no matter what women came before or after, that he had his hand wrapped around this boy's heart. If he concentrated hard enough he could still feel the thrum and shiver of it, feel the splash of blood and intimacy such as he'd never known. No mother, or father, or, dare he say it, brother could ever be that close. The thought ripped a deep chuckle from him, even as he pressed the heel of his hand harder against warm flesh.

Sasuke watched the muscle shudder beneath his fingertips in breath and awareness. He traced a straight line from his navel down to the drawstring of his hospital pants, and wondered if Naruto would ever let him know his body, as he'd once known his heart.

Beating with it's pulse in his hand.

Sasuke let his blood red eyes trail up to the puckered and angry tissue that peaked out from under heavy bandages, and couldn't help the psychotic grin that stretched his face. They were fixing him, he thought, letting his nails scrape slowly along that lone jagged scar. The machines beeped in time with his heart, and Sasuke knew without knowing he could count those pings even if he was no longer awake to hear them. He would feel them like a Chidori in his hand, and he worried if obsession was becoming his bag instead of vengeance.

Yes, he would kill Itachi, but in the darkness and in between time he would pleasure himself with thoughts of Naruto's heartbeat and how in a single moment, it had depended only on him.

The beeps quickened, a sharp intake of breath from a respirator and Sasuke was gone.

"Sasuke." Naruto muffled into the face mask, indigo eyes half open, staring sightlessly at nothing.

It was want. It was need. It was lust. It was everything except love.

A/N - forgive me for these exceptionally short pieces. I've really gotta dream up a good story, but I'm having so much trouble with that. I start some, and they never turn out how I want, they just sort of end up...boring. Bleh, I hate boring. I need to take apart an interesting theme, or idea. You know, I started a stalker! Naruto piece, but I just couldn't think of where to go with it. o.0 I'm a sucky author. N e way plz review.