Title: An Apparition's Affection

Author: Birddi

Beta Reader: Tammy – My muse and goddess, my adoring support.

Disclaimer: I don't own either Itachi or Sasuke, or anything Naruto related. Kinda obvious but for those who want to know, I don't own them - sorry.

I hear they are cheap on ebay though…Just kidding.

Read on my little ones,

Cheers!

Perhaps it was better to remain broken, Sasuke thought, placing down his tea as a bitter smile started to pull his lips upward. It was so easy sometimes to let depression and anger go now that Itachi was gone, leaving something hollow behind; so very easy when times were quiet.

Sitting in the back booth of a rather homey café, Sasuke sat in silence, the waitress having left him alone long ago. It was somewhere in the North, he knew that, but the name eluded him. It wasn't truly vital, it was remote and nobody paid him much mind. It was a good thing; he wanted to be left alone.

Now, he rested, sprawled across one of the benches, having the freedom and ease to allow his mind to wander, cup of tea in hand. There was a person he had met once, a long time ago during his travels with Team Seven, who told him everything in life could be cured with a warm cup of tea. He had forgotten the name and face, it being years ago that it had happened, but he remembered the sage advice. He had scoffed at the notion then, insulting the person as he left, but dropping his gaze back to the cup in his hand, he couldn't help but hope it to be true. Tracing the patterns in the brown tea leaves at the bottom of his cup with his gaze, he frowned. It looked like nothing.

Shouldn't his destiny lie somewhere at the bottom of the cup?

The world remained blurry and detached to him, so much like the remaining tea. But it seemed everything did nowadays and he didn't pay it particular attention now, as there wasn't any need to anymore. He cupped the still warm cup in his hands, his mind unusually calm.

The only thing he kept his concentration on, now that he could afford to, was the warmth in his hands and the nonsensical patterns in the bottom of his cup. Nonsensical. He easily pulled the word out of the random nexus that his thoughts had become to ask a person who wasn't there, Nonsensical, just like us. Right, Aniki?

He would never escape his thoughts of Itachi, he knew this. He had long ago accepted it as a fact of life; it just was.

It just never seemed to be as predominant as it was now. Itachi, his beautifully damned brother had been the only thing on his mind as of late. The only thing: morning, noon, and night, thoughts of Itachi followed him, haunted him. It was so different now, though. Before, he had been ignorant into the depth his brother could play with his mind. Even dead, the man wouldn't leave him alone.

He would never know the man now; that thought had hurt when he'd first had it. It hurt even worse now. He had come to that realization a few nights ago, that he would never know his brother. He would not know Itachi. He would know of him, but he wouldn't know his brother's habits any better than a stranger. He wouldn't know the ridiculous things that make a person. Never know what toothpaste Itachi used or why he preferred one sweet over another. He would never know the man he was in love with.

Frankly, he hadn't truly cared before all this, before Itachi's death he just did not care – he had been too young to.

He had always loved him, though.

He had placed his brother on a pedestal in his youth, and had later dubbed it as hero-worship. That or a misplaced love a younger sibling holds for the older one. Now though, he could come to grips with it. Why he had felt the world turn and shatter, and he knew to the depths of his being how irony bites hard.

Hero-worship, by god, what had he been thinking? If only that could have been it - heroes come and go after all, this Sasuke was aware of. You can, after all, learn to hate the person you thought once to be a hero, a friend. He had seen it happen before, had been witnessed to betrayal and, in a way, done so himself. It was easy to walk way.

If only everything was that easy, he remembered thinking.

Itachi had just told him he wasn't strong enough, he didn't have enough hate yet. Beaten and bloody, he remembered that the one thought that echoed in his mind was: if it was only that easy.

If only training could be easier, if only getting stronger could be easier, if only hating could be easier.

It was true though, even after that hellish day he couldn't bring himself to hate his brother. How can you hate the person you… it didn't matter, but how can you hate the person who makes your world? Orochimaru, the bastard, had tried to instill such a lesson into him once, that it was possible to hate them. He had failed it splendidly.

It had, unsurprisingly, taken him a long time before he understood what it meant to love someone. Sakura and Naruto had both loved him to varying degrees and while he hadn't then been able to understand or return it then, he now did. He knew he loved his brother, had always loved his brother. It was just with the massacre, it was harder to understand and accept. He hadn't realized the magnitude of his feelings nor their depth. His love wasn't orthodox as it was outside the normal boundaries of kin, and as taboo as it was - it didn't lie in the fantasy realm of happily-ever-after either.

Nope, his love, while most certainly not brotherly, didn't involve holding hands and exchanging flowers. It wasn't the chaste kisses and words of sweet nothings that Sakura had wanted from him in their childhood. He didn't see the point in those lies. Well, perhaps 'lies' wasn't the word for it, for there were people who honestly believed in the notion of a hero, a damsel, and a world where everything would be right after a kiss. He just wasn't one of them. He couldn't be if he loved Itachi. He didn't believe that after you found your soul mate, you made love with them and then life became so blissfully perfect.

It wasn't real.

Love wasn't perfect. Even long ago he had understood that you didn't have to be perfect to love and be loved. He wasn't perfect, even if those idiot girls thought otherwise, but he had had those who cared for him. He himself loved Itachi, a man who once was perfect - the same man that he still loved even after the fall from grace that had landed his brother with the need to kill. It's rather comical to know that despite being used and abused as fiercely as Itachi had, he still loved him. He had heard of the term masochist before, but never did he think the term was so aptly used.

Whether he loved his brother or not, he was dead now. At least he was dead in the physical sense, the clan having been avenged - Itachi having been avenged. Yet, his brother seemed to still be quiet alive within his own mind. The dreams though, the dreams were the worst. He never thought that finally killing the man would tie their bond even tighter.

Fuck, he also never thought that they'd become this sexual either. Setting his cup down, he winced, cringing against the onslaught of more recent images. His hands going to his hair in a gesture learned long ago.

Yes, he remembered waking up some nights after a particularly arousing dream, and it was true he did not think much of it. It was normal after all for males his age to experience such. It was, however, not normal to be fantasizing about one's brother as one jerked off. He however had come to terms with it; at least he thought he had. Every night now, laying either on the ground in the woods or a bed in a western styled hotel, Itachi would come for him. Last night was no exception.

With the lights off, Sasuke believed it was easier to sleep. To relax at least, letting stimuli after stimuli slowly ease beyond his grasp for a short period of time. Deep calm came to him, surrounded in the dark. With the calm came the fingertips, slowly. Barely whispers of touches, felt even threw the thickest of fabrics, touching him so gently. Raising both the baby soft hair on his body and his awareness as the touches came across one arm and down the next, swirling around a knee without rhyme or reason.

It was maddening; as with every press of the unseen fingertips, ever so gentle came they, leaving with them a burning of sensation. They ran chaotically until they came to his neck, and always at his neck did they pause. Soft stain skin, the type that his brother was barer of even after his training, stroked from the base of his neck to his ear, following and ever so carefully pressing into his jugular.

"Sasuke,"his brother's voice would whisper to him, taunting as ever.

Like a ritual his ear was always then taken between a spectral pair of lips that felt more real than any in this life. Warm and wet with a mouth full of sharp teeth, he would then take the shell into his ear, running a too warm, too wet tongue around the base of it, nibbling on the particular spot that made Sasuke gasp and whiter along the bed. It was only after he would make a verbal sound, a name, a moan, or a plead, it didn't really matter, for as soon as his pleasure was verbalized, did the touching pause.

Itachi's voice came through the darkness, filled with a sadist's mirth. "Little brother is so excited for his aniki's touch."

And it was then that the pain would start. A sharp bite of nails somewhere would signal a new type of game to be played; usually it was on the nipple. The left usually seemed most favorable, grasping the briefest of skin between two sharp nails and pinching. So sharp and acute, that it left him breathless.

Other times it would come on the backs of knees, the bottoms of the feet, or the skin around his pelvis but always a quick nip of skin, leaving an ever sharp trail of pain in its wake. It was this pain that all future activates were to be based around, and when the pain dulled from that particular spot where the first bite of nails were, the night's activates came to a rather abrupt end. At least most nights, others it ended just after the ears with a pleased hum from his brother, others it never seemed to end.

It was no question that his brother was haunting him, but that mattered very little at night when his brother's hand slid up his thigh, massaging muscles. Ever so careful to be caring, gentle and without withdrawing, a powerful sing came to him. It never mattered that he tried to move, Itachi had a grip on his wrists and body, leaving him immobile.

Cool air was felt before the feeling of a wooden flogger or a hot hand was laid to his skin without notice. Over and over on one spot; last night had been his thigh, burning into him with its intensity, and worse yet, the consistency, always the same spot between knee and hip. It had quickly become unbearable as the sensation of Itachi's mouth around his neck came.

Itachi suckled the spot behind his ear, as the pain on his thigh became hotter. Itachi had placed a butterfly kiss on his neck, so careful before his brother had, with all the strength the other was capable of, bit his neck. He blacked out then briefly, having screamed for something, and not knowing what. Everything had stopped for a moment.

It started again, a jolt of sensations and emotions so deep he couldn't place them, as inhumanly strong hands touched the most inner of his thighs sliding down the smooth inner workings of his thighs before abruptly pulling them apart, leaving him bare and vulnerable.

Sasuke had tensed, unsure. Just like he had every other time, it was still so new to him being flayed out in front oh his brother like that, so vulnerable and small. A breath of hot air went across his genitals, calming and equally disconcerting. Another puff of air followed by another, as the feeling he was being judged bore into him, stripping layer upon mental layer of confidence and security.

It, like everything else, was done without notice, and soon the head of his penis was engulfed in his brother's mouth. The head of rolled around in a playful manner, teeth scraping delicately along the tip, before all of him was encompassed between hot wet flesh. Pulling at him, stroking him, milking him until he was so close to coming that he had reached the edge of orgasm and was so close to tipping over. So close, yet so far from oblivion. It was then that Itachi would stop.

Some nights his brother would leave then.

Other nights Itachi's voice came to his ears, chuckling in that not quiet right way of his.

"Did Sasuke like that?"

"Such a naughty boy you are, liking your brother's lips around your cock."

"Tell your aniki what you want."

Itachi could go on and on, even with Sasuke's begging for more, screaming his need for release. Forever taunting him with words, cruel, kind, and questioning. Only after Sasuke was in tears or in such unadultered rage, would Itachi move. Sliding a finger into the most private part of him, slowly and undulating. Back and forth, teasing and purposely missing the spot that would bring Sasuke pleasure. It could go on for hours, one finger sliding in and out, pulling the skin on its retreat and with a determined goal of conquering on its entrance.

Light touches would dance across his overly sensitive thighs, the caress flaring the ache and burning the earlier abuse left to new life.

A second would be added, and then a third, always missing that spot, but widening him to an almost ridiculous degree. In and out, and without breaking the pace, they would be replaced by something larger. Dry and ruthless, Itachi never paused.

Itachi would move within him, always missing that spot, no matter how Sasuke moved. Instead, all his actions seemed to only amuse the elder brother.

"What do you want, Sasuke?"

There was only one answer that would give him the long sought after relief, and Sasuke knew it well. His brother could be merciless, and would leave without delay if he didn't give the answer; Itachi had done so time and time again.

"You. I want you, aniki."

Then, did Itachi shift and Sasuke felt himself filled. The spot within him brushed, kissed, and pounded into as Itachi went in deeper, faster. Sasuke was brought to the edge of orgasm and thrown over as his brother ground into him.

When it was over, Itachi was gone and Sasuke opened his eyes to face a new day. Every night was he at the mercy of his brother and his whims. Every night he was subjected to pain and pleasure.

It was unhealthy, he knew, and taking the cup of tea back into his grasp, Sasuke smiled bitterly. Truly, killing him had only immortalized him. Irony was such a bitch.