Chapter Text
In the beginning, there was only fear. It was so simple, then.
Of course, he had other emotions — thinking about his family or what he'd seen plunged Sasuke into an anguish so deep and cold he felt he'd drown in it. But if he thought about Itachi, the only thing he felt was fear. Sheer terror at the transformation he'd witnessed in his once-beloved brother, turning him into something that Sasuke didn't recognize. Something that haunted his dreams and woke him up screaming.
The first feeling that crept back into the void Itachi had left in his life and settled down next to the fear was anger. Senseless violence will often inspire that feeling in any person, especially adults, so everyone that witnessed it in Sasuke — spilling out of him every time he spoke of Itachi, and what he planned to do to him — understood, even if they were disturbed at seeing so much of it in someone so very young.
He didn't know when the other feelings first started or where they came from. All he knew was that they made him hate himself almost as much as he hated Itachi.
He remembered being around ten. Lying in his bed, unable to sleep — but that was nothing new. Thinking about finding Itachi, knocking him out, binding him up, killing him slowly — nothing new, either. His heart beating hard, his body growing warm, he kicked off the sheets, and was confronted with the uncomfortable knowledge that he was hard in his sleep shorts. That was new. He tried to ignore it, and failed. He tried calling himself disgusting and shaming it into going away, but that only made him harder, and he could only fall asleep that night by slipping a hand under his waistband and spilling into his shorts as he cried into his pillow.
As brilliant as Sasuke was, he couldn't possibly understand it. And he didn't try to, either — he tried to pretend whatever this feeling was did not exist. The thought of anyone finding out made his fingers twitch as he fought off the urge to run and grab his father's sword and regain his honor in the only way possible. How else could he redeem himself now, if not by death? Of all the things Itachi had done to him, this was the thing Sasuke hated him for the most. Turning him twisted, making hate and lust entwine themselves so closely together that he couldn't feel one without the other.
The onset of puberty was a particularly hellish time for Sasuke. As his classmates started whispering about crushes and getting flustered around their opposite-sex peers, Sasuke withdrew even further into himself and nurtured with a grim self-loathing his fantasies about Itachi. Somehow worse than his initial arousal at the thought of killing his brother, he found himself dwelling on the thought of them touching — him sinking down into Itachi's lap, their arms brushing together as they walked, warm breath and whispered words against his ear. Memories that he hadn't let himself recall in what felt like half a century, because they cracked his heart open with grief at the thought that he would never again share such things with his brother, or probably anyone. The tenderness was worse than the violence. The fact that they existed so stubbornly close beside each other was the worst part of all. Sasuke hated Itachi so much it took his breath away, but he loved him even more. He came more times than he could count to the thought of kissing his brother, or being tortured by him, or slitting his throat, or being held down and fucked.
It was starting to make him feel legitimately psychotic.
He found the word for it one day in a book — masochism. Itachi had turned him into a masochist. It was clear he had some sadistic tendencies too, but they weren't what had him in a choke-hold. So much time spent dwelling on his pain and anger and self-hatred, and reinforcing their power over him with desperate and miserable orgasms, had inextricably tied his sexual appetites to his own suffering. He knew this did not bode well for him. It was one thing when it was confined to the inside of his skull, and only spilled out on those cursed nights alone under his sheets. It was when it started to show up in broad daylight, with other people around — and touching him — that he began to grow alarmed.
The first inkling of it arose during one of his many fights with Naruto. In this particular one, they'd decided ninjutsu wasn't allowed, so they were using only taijutsu. They ended up in a stalemate, grappling with each other, breathing hard and muscles straining — and when Naruto got the upper hand with a punch to the face and they broke apart, Sasuke got up and abruptly left the training ground for fear the other boy would see what it had done to him.
The next instance, significantly worse in every way, occurred during their ill-fated bell test. When Sasuke's frustration got the better of him and he charged their would-be jounin teacher, Kakashi turned aside his attack and countered it with zero effort, leaving him pinned to the ground where he actually sat on Sasuke as he continued lecturing the team. And Sasuke squirmed under his weight, powerless to move and utterly humiliated, as his face reddened and heat slunk into his belly, leaving him hard as a rock. He didn't like to think about that — about what he wanted Kakashi to do to him in that moment, about how disgusted the jounin would've been with him if he could read his thoughts.
The more time passed, the harder it grew to ignore the feeling that his secret would soon be out, and something terrible would happen to him because of it.
He hated being right.