DID SOMEONE SAY 80S ROMCOM? (2/4)
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And the thing about Shisui, see, is that he’s a hopeless romantic. Like, you know how many times he went to see The Princess Bride when it was in theaters? Four. Four times, and he teared up every single time. It’s that bad. John Hughes holds the current title of Shisui’s Personal God, although he also worships occasionally at the altar of Cameron Crowe. He grew up on cheap-seat views of even cheaper fantasy movies and Legend was a personal revelation (that Cruise kid is going places, he doesn’t care what anyone says).
The upshot of all this is that a mere five days after asking Itachi out, Shisui is basically planning their wedding.
(Not in any kind of detail, obviously; trends change and Shisui doesn’t want to end up on the wrong side of history like his grandma and her eight-foot-long veil that made her look like she was being eaten by a sea monster made of lace, okay?)
He’ll probably be naming their kids in a week.
Objectively speaking, Shisui’s pretty sure he should be concerned about this. This can’t be normal. He already thought about Itachi an unnatural amount before they’d ever spoken; now it’s just getting absurd. His sister is giving him weird looks when she thinks he can’t see and Anko keeps giving him “seduction” tips without bothering to be subtle.
She’s also called dibs on being his best woman. Obviously.
Shisui’s startled out of his contemplation (whether his best woman would think wearing a tux was feminist or just reductive masculinity or whatever it was) by the sound of the phone ringing.
Natsuko yells at him from her bedroom. “Shisui, I swear to god-”
“I’m getting it! I’m going!”
He picks up on the third ring. “Yallo?”
“Shisui?”
The dopey smile is spreading across his face before Shisui can stop it. He only hopes it doesn’t come across in his voice. “Hey, Itachi, what’s up?”
“Were you still in bed?”
“’Course not. It’s noon, I’ve got…stuff. Stuff that needs doing.”
“Of course,” Itachi says dryly. He clears his throat. “I wondered if you were busy tonight.”
Like Shisui wouldn’t reschedule a meeting with the President if it meant getting an hour or two with Itachi. “Nah, I’m not doing anything. Why?”
“My father…” Itachi clears his throat again. Shisui wonders if there’s something stuck in it. “He has expressed an interest in meeting you. Over dinner.”
“Oh.” It takes a second for the full impact of the words to hit. “Wait, your dad wants to meet me?”
“If you’re available.”
Shisui suddenly wants very much not to be available, perpetually unavailable in fact, but he wouldn’t put it past Fugaku to have him assassinated for lying.
The course of True Love never does run smooth, he reminds himself, and sometimes the valiant hero is required to slay a dragon. In this case, a grumpy dragon with millions of dollars and probably a private army at his disposal.
So Shisui swallows hard and definitely does not whimper, “What time are we talking here?”
.
Fugaku, The Terrifying, is not much of a conversationalist.
Shisui doesn’t know why he’s surprised.
“Nice, um.” He coughs and resists the urge to tug at his collar. “Nice house.”
Fugaku’s expression doesn’t change.
They’ve been doing this for ten minutes and Shisui is ready to throw himself off the nearest convenient bridge. Fugaku’s across-the-table glare could peel paint, never mind what it could do to enemy combatants. Forget private army; the military should be all over this shit.
Itachi’s return from the kitchen is accompanied by a spontaneous rendition of the Hallelujah chorus, although it’s possible that part is just Shisui’s fevered imagination.
“Here,” he says, setting a plate down in front of Shisui and then his father before sitting at his own place. Dinner is steak, potatoes and green beans. Very All-American. Very manly.
Shisui begins to sweat. Fugaku is still staring at him. He can’t eat like this-he’s liable to choke to death on the first bite. And this damn collar is really not helping; why had he let Natsu talk him into wearing one of their dad’s old button-downs again?
“Shisui, was it?”
Shisui almost jumps. It’s the first Fugaku has spoken. “Yes, sir.”
Fugaku nods. “And you graduated the same time as my son?”
“Yes, sir. I was at the graduation ceremony, sir.” I almost ran into you, he doesn’t say, because his apparent habit of literally running into members of the Uchiha family isn’t something that’ll help his case here.
“Hm.” The sinking feeling in Shisui’s gut is accompanied by the realization that yes, Fugaku is indeed drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. Like a fucking Bond villain. All he needs is a fluffy cat. “And do you-”
“Father,” Itachi interrupts. His tone is polite, flawlessly enough that Shisui wonders if he’s hallucinating the steel underneath it. “Perhaps we could save the interrogation for after we’ve eaten.”
Fugaku says “Nonsense” at the same time Shisui says “It’s okay”. Even though it kind of isn't.
“As I was saying,” the Uchiha patriarch continues. “Do you have any idea what you’re going to do now that high school has ended?”
Which is the point at which Shisui knows for sure that he’s fucked.
Because the other thing about Shisui is that he’s got no idea what he wants to do with his life. He’s never even held down a job. And it’s not like he’s afraid of work or whatever, he’s fine with it, but he wants to do something he’s passionate about. Something that matters.
The obvious thing would be to follow in both his parents’ footsteps and join the military, but as good as he thinks he’d look in uniform, the one thing Shisui hates is having to take orders. He’s shit at it; ask any of his teachers. The other ‘role model’ option would be Natsu and her teaching career, which she seems to like okay, but it barely pays enough to keep them both afloat and Shisui is a crappy disciplinarian anyway.
So basically, he has no direction and no prospects. Fugaku has probably eviscerated people for less.
Shisui’s floundering in the face of fear, he knows he is, just like he knows Fugaku’s opinion of him is dropping precipitously with every second he doesn’t answer. His tongue feels like lead in his mouth.
Then something brushes his leg under the table. It’s only through sheer force of will that Shisui doesn’t flinch.
Itachi’s put his hand on his knee, out of sight of his father, and is calmly sipping his water like nothing odd is going on.
Shisui’s pretty sure his ears are going bright red, a friggin’ siren screaming out how confusing this whole situation is, but Itachi’s hand is warm and something about it lightens Shisui’s tongue.
“I’m not sure yet, sir,” he says honestly. “Haven’t figured it out. But I think I’m okay not knowing, for now.”
Fugaku blinks.
“Hm,” is all he says.
But he starts eating after that, which should make Shisui feel like he can breathe again, except for Itachi’s hand and how it doesn’t move for the rest of the dinner.
.
Itachi walks him out to his car, like they’re in a Jane Austen novel or something. Shisui has to wipe his sweaty palms off on his pants twice.
They stop by the car door and Shisui hovers, awkward.
“So-”
“My father is most likely watching us from the living room window,” Itachi informs him.
Shisui stops. Takes a second to process that. “Um. Okay, that is…seriously creepy, no offense, but what’s it got to do with anything?”
Itachi seems to sway right into his space, but Shisui tells himself it’s probably his imagination going haywire. Making the streetlights catch in Itachi’s dark eyes.
“Because,” Itachi murmurs, “if my father weren’t watching, I would be saying goodbye to you properly.”
Shisui’s legs abruptly turn into jelly.
“Oh,” he manages.
He sees a flicker of doubt in Itachi’s eyes at the lackluster response. It makes Shisui wonder how much of this whole super-confident thing is a front, has always been a front.
But now’s not exactly the time for Deep Thoughts, so Shisui pulls himself together.
“You know, it’s pretty rude not to say goodbye to a guest,” he points out. “Properly, I mean. Not very Oxford of you.”
Itachi lifts an eyebrow. “And what would you suggest?”
Shisui would suggest a lot of things, but one step at a time. Passing out from lack of blood flow to the brain would be a really embarrassing way to end the night.
“Want me to do some reconnaissance?” he offers. Itachi shrugs and doesn’t completely manage to hide the smile playing around his mouth.
Shisui really, really wants to kiss it.
He makes a show of leaning sideways, stretching his neck out to try and catch a glimpse of Fugaku’s stony visage through the windows.
“Don’t see any suspicious curtain movement,” he reports, turning back to Itachi. “I think we’re-”
Itachi cuts him off with a kiss, again, which Shisui has decided is the only acceptable reason for one person to interrupt another. Like, ever. It’s awkward for a second, neither of them having figured out exactly what the hell they’re doing, but then Shisui tilts his head and Itachi opens his mouth and something clicks.
When they break apart, Shisui’s heartbeat is pounding so loud in his ears he can’t think.
“Well,” Itachi says after a second. “Good night, Shisui.”
“Right. Yeah.” Shisui can hear how embarrassingly high-pitched his voice has gone. He coughs. “I’m-um. I’ll call you?”
Itachi nods, that stupid little not-smile making another guest appearance, and Shisui can’t stop himself leaning in for another kiss, quick and chaste, because apparently he can do that now.
He makes sure Itachi gets back into the house alright, because he’s a gentleman like that, before starting the car.
And sitting there for a good five minutes with the headlights off until there’s a decent chance he’ll be able to drive home without crashing.
.
Things stumble along from there. Shisui guesses they’re dating, although nobody’s broken out the B word yet (that’s Boyfriend for the more filthy-minded, thank you very little). They kind of go on dates-Shisui keeps up the driving lessons, Itachi all but straps him to a chair and helps him fill out college applications they both know he won’t submit; all very romantic shit, Shisui is sure.
But occasionally they get creative. Hence the time Shisui finds out about a Back to the Future marathon at the drive-in and basically begs Itachi to go with him.
“This opportunity may never come again, Itachi.”
“Somehow I think I will survive.”
“How about the opportunity to practice your driving?” Shisui tries, desperate. “That’s productive enough for you, right?”
Itachi hesitates just a second, and Shisui smells blood in the water.
“It’s like, thirty minutes away. Just think how much Practical Experience you’d be getting.”
Something in Itachi’s Oxford-bound brain must be hardwired to accept anything that sounds like it’s being said in Highly Significant Capital Letters, so he capitulates with a graceless “Fine” and Shisui tries not to punch the air too obviously.
The first movie is great, the whole parking lot laughing at Marty’s antics and Doc Brown’s hair even if Shisui can feel Itachi shooting him perplexed looks, like he really is surrounded by lower life forms and no longer has any idea how to communicate with them. Must be that alien thing again, Shisui figures sympathetically, and takes to exaggeratedly explaining the jokes under his breath until Itachi elbows him hard enough to leave bruises.
They make it about halfway through the second movie before Itachi apparently runs out of patience. (Which is bullshit, by the way, because Shisui has seen him pore over math textbooks like they’re the latest issue of Mad fucking Magazine; it’s like Itachi doesn’t actually have a sense of when things go from ‘endearingly clueless’ to ‘your nerdiness is starting to physically pain me’. Which is, Shisui is finding, just as endearing. Dammit.)
It starts with long fingers brushing a stray curl out of Shisui’s face, causing him to look sideways in confusion. “What’s up?”
“You had hair in your face,” Itachi replies, like that’s anything close to an explanation.
But Shisui’s long since decided he’s just gonna have to take Itachi’s weird-ass idiosyncrasies in stride if this thing’s going to go anywhere, so he shrugs it off.
Until about ten minutes later when, upon Marty discovering his mother’s married to Biff (which in Shisui’s humble opinion is a massively uncomfortable time for any type of touching to be going on), Itachi puts a careful hand on the back of Shisui’s neck.
Shisui’s skin evidently missed the memo about this scene, because it unhelpfully breaks out into gooseflesh under Itachi’s touch.
He still doesn’t say anything, though, because somehow he gets the feeling if he asks what Itachi is doing then Itachi will actually tell him, and that will probably ruin whatever mood is being set here.
Itachi doesn’t move again for a while, just leaves his hand there, for all intents and purposes doing nothing but sitting there. Occasionally his fingers curl into the hair at the nape of Shisui’s neck-an absentminded little gesture, a tic, another one of Itachi’s seemingly endless list of oddities, or so Shisui would think if he couldn’t see the tiny smirk pulling at Itachi’s mouth. The fucker is doing this on purpose.
Not that he’s looking at Itachi’s mouth or anything. ‘Course not. He’s a gentleman, after all.
But there’s gentlemen and then there’s monks, and guess which one Shisui is fucking not. Gentlemen are still men, it’s right there in the damn name, and there’s only so much any man can take, okay? Itachi’s nails bite ever so slightly into his skin and Shisui’s iron self-control crumbles.
“Hey, Itachi.”
“Yes?”
He sounds innocent, like he totally hasn’t been fucking with Shisui for the past half an hour. Shisui takes a deep breath and tries to ignore the way his heart’s going a mile a minute.
“You wanna get out of here?”
It’s harder than he thought it would be to turn and meet Itachi’s eyes.
But there’s nothing cautious there, just a tiny smile. Shisui’s gonna be generous and not label it ‘smug’.
Itachi nods.
Shisui swallows. His throat is dry all of a sudden, so it makes a weird unsexy clicking noise. Sigh.
“Cool.”
(Cool? Fuck, someone disconnect his tongue, please. He’s a menace to himself.)
Itachi turns the car on and peacefully ignores the irritated yells from other moviegoers at the interruption. Shisui’s so jittery he doesn’t notice how smoothly Itachi’s driving until they’re already out on the road.
He squints, suddenly suspicious. “Uh, Itachi?”
“What is it?”
“How long’ve you had this driving thing down?”
Itachi looks decidedly shifty, and it surprises a laugh out of him.
“Oh my god, you little shit! You’ve been pretending to suck for weeks!”
“To be fair,” Itachi says, “I did suck for a good amount of that time. Several days, at the very least.”
“I hate you so much,” Shisui tells him happily.
They drive in comfortable silence for a bit, until Shisui gets bored and turns the radio on. Van Halen comes on, Why Can’t This Be Love blasting through the speakers as Shisui cranks the volume, singing along even though he knows he’s obnoxiously off-key while
Itachi grins and shakes his head and doesn’t comment.
He pulls over in the parking lot of a mini-mart type place that’s been closed down for hours, not another car in sight. The Mustang is nestled away in a corner mostly taken over by trees and hidden from view even if there was someone around to be looking, which makes Shisui suspicious all over again-it’s a little too convenient, if you ask him; he wouldn’t put it past Itachi to do actual research on this shit.
He’s turning to start up that very line of inquiry, so his mouth is already half open when Itachi leans over and kisses the words right out of his mouth.
It’s long and lush and slow, and Shisui’s brain melts out his ears the second Itachi starts using tongue, so he’s not really sure how long the kissing goes on. Feels like forever and not nearly long enough, but he doesn’t have the breath to complain.
He fumbles with his seatbelt and manages to get it off, which leaves his hands free to cradle Itachi’s face, tip his head back and deepen the kiss. Itachi shudders. Shisui’s about to ask if he should back off when Itachi’s hands go to his hair and use it to yank him forward, which, okay, he’s guessing that means everyone is a-okay with this situation here.
By the time they break apart for air they’re both flushed and breathing heavy. The windows are starting to fog up, Shisui notices even through his lust-filled haze, which feels like a personal accomplishment. Or it will at some future point when he’s not hard enough that it’s starting to ache.
“Um.” He sounds like he’s swallowed a whole sheet of sandpaper. “You want…?”
Itachi’s pupils are blown wide. The sight knocks the words right off Shisui’s tongue.
Fortunately, one of them is a genius who’s good at multitasking. “Backseat,” Itachi says. “Now.”
“Right,” Shisui croaks. “After you.”
Itachi somehow twists himself around the armrest and into the backseat with an almost feline grace, instead of just getting out of the damn car and then back in like a normal person, so of course Shisui has to try and do the same thing, only he’s pretty sure he ends up looking like a fumbling giant crashing around and terrifying all the townspeople. He almost slips and snaps his neck too, which would be The Actual Worst.
“Fuck,” he swears, stumbling into a sitting position on the backseat, “there has got to be a better-”
But of course, because it’s Itachi and he’s starting to make a habit out of this (which Shisui will complain about later, he totally will), he practically lunges at Shisui and recaptures his mouth, tipping them both backward and nearly cracking Shisui’s skull against the window in the process.
“Ow,” Shisui mumbles halfheartedly against his mouth, and Itachi immediately draws back.
“Are you alright? Should we-”
A rush of fondness threatens to drown him in it. “You’re fine, genius, just let me-here.” He maneuvers them both into a more horizontal position so nobody’s in any more danger of getting their heads broken. Itachi is looking down at him with that crease still between his eyebrows, and it’s adorable as shit, so Shisui cups his face and pulls him down and kisses him as gently as he knows how.
It doesn’t stay gentle too long though, Itachi bending down and licking into his mouth like he’s been wandering the desert and Shisui is a conveniently placed oasis.
On second thought, no, that imagery sucks, but it doesn’t matter because Shisui is getting lost in it. His eyes are closed but he can’t remember closing them, and somehow his fingers have gotten tangled in Itachi’s long hair. They brush by accident over the smooth skin behind Itachi’s ear and he gasps a little into Shisui’s mouth.
He pulls back a bit, just enough for Shisui to see the surprised roundness of his eyes. Shisui almost asks again if they’re good, if everything’s above board, but Itachi gets this glimmer in his eye like he did the first time he drove around the neighborhood without hitting anything.
And then slowly, experimentally almost, he rolls his hips.
Shisui’s pretty sure his eyes roll back in his head.
“Oh fuck, Itachi-”
“Do you want me to stop?” Itachi asks, even as he does it again, wresting a strangled whimper from Shisui’s throat.
“N-no-Jesus fuck, please keep doing that-”
Itachi’s smirk is insufferably self-satisfied when he kisses him again. Shisui doesn’t even have the wherewithal left to give him shit for it, he just kisses back with an unbecoming amount of desperation because he is suddenly embarrassingly close to coming in his pants.
But then whatever scraps of brain cells he’s got left, whatever Itachi hasn’t already obliterated with the steady movement of his hips, band together and remind him that a) he’s older than Itachi, which b) means this is probably illegal and, more pertinently, c) also means that he should be the one blowing Itachi’s mind right now. As a matter of pride.
So Itachi thinks he can just melt Shisui’s higher functions down and then take advantage of him, huh? Well, two can play that game. It takes a little effort, but Shisui manages to rock his hips up against Itachi’s while Itachi is grinding down, and he doesn’t think he’s bragging when he says holy fuck.
Itachi’s mouth goes slack, drops open just a little, and it’s possibly the hottest fucking thing Shisui has ever seen.
Everything gets kinda fuzzy after that. They find a rhythm that’s abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous, hips and mouths sliding together like they fit right into all of each other’s empty spaces, or so Shisui’s hopelessly romantic mind likes to think. Before he knows it his toes are curling and Itachi’s breaths are coming hot and fast and for fuck’s sake, they’ve still got all of their clothes on.
Shisui doesn’t think there’s time enough to fix that properly, not this time anyway, but he scrapes together the last of his courage and lets his hand rest on Itachi’s inner thigh, watches his eyes darken to a shade he’s never seen before.
“Can I?”
Itachi nods once, twice, dips his head and kisses him hard enough to split his lip open as Shisui fumbles blindly with his zipper. Damn fucking jeans, Shisui hates fucking jeans, he’s never gonna wear another pair of fucking jeans as long as he lives. The delay evidently reminds Itachi of his pathological need to be better than everyone at everything, because his fingers are expertly undoing Shisui’s fly before he realizes what the fuck is happening.
‘Do you practice this shit?’ is running through his head, right up until those long fingers brush against his cock and all coherent thought comes to a screeching halt.
“Fuck,” he says with feeling, and finally, finally manages to get his hand down the front of Itachi’s pants. He hears a sharp hiss of breath from the boy on top of him.
There’s no space for awkwardness or hesitation; they’re both way too far gone for it. Shisui moves first, stroking a little rougher than he means to, but Itachi’s eyelids actually flutter so he figures he’s doing something right. And then he pretty much stops figuring anything at all, Itachi’s fingers going to work around his cock, his wrist twisting in a way that makes Shisui want to make really embarrassing noises.
“Sh-Shisui-”
It’s a warning, Shisui knows it, knows they’re both so close, and on a sudden flash of inspiration he leans up-ignores the strain on the muscles in his neck-puts his mouth up close behind Itachi’s ear and licks.
Itachi makes a broken, startled little noise and comes, hot against Shisui’s hand. Shisui follows about three seconds later, groaning around a full-body shudder.
Itachi lets out a sigh and lies more or less on top of him, heedless of the gross they’re both covered in. Like he’s entitled to use Shisui however he damn well likes now that he’s put out. Whatever. Shisui submits himself to the role of human pillow without protest. His clean hand even comes up of its own accord to stroke through Itachi’s hair.
The radio is still on, he realizes after a minute-it’s playing freaking Peter Gabriel of all things, In Your Eyes passionately blaring from Itachi’s speakers. Shisui hates this song, hates it with a fury bordering on lust; he hates the overdramatic lyrics, he hates Gabriel’s voice, he hates that he can’t turn the fucking radio on without his ears being assaulted by it.
Right now, though…look, maybe Shisui’s just high off post-orgasm endorphins or some shit like that, but when Gabriel sings about wanting to touch that light, about reaching out from the inside, Shisui feels Itachi’s heartbeat against his own chest and he thinks he maybe kinda gets it.
He’d be willing to do weirder things for Itachi than make a truce with Peter Gabriel.
“Shisui?”
He jumps. He hadn’t realized Itachi was still awake, much less capable of interrupting his unforgivably sappy inner monologue.
“Yeah?”
“Are you all right?”
Shisui lets out a very unattractive snort of disbelief. “Pretty sure I’m fucking awesome right now. Why?”
Itachi props himself up to look Shisui in the eye. His hair has come completely out of its usual ponytail and is now hanging down on both sides of his face, which only serves to make him look even more unfairly gorgeous than usual.
“You are shaking,” he points out.
Huh, maybe Shisui is. He hadn’t really noticed.
“Are you coming down with something?” Itachi continues, a crease appearing between his eyebrows again.
Shisui almost laughs. “Um, no. I think I’m just…happy.”
Ooh, shit, that was gross as hell. Shisui would smack himself upside the head if his arms weren’t currently pinned down by the weight of Itachi’s body.
But the thing is, Itachi doesn’t seem bothered by Shisui exuding enough sap that he might be mistaken for a tree. In fact, he smiles like Shisui’s said something romantic instead of dorky as hell.
“Good,” he says.
.
And the thing about Shisui, see, is that he’s a hopeless romantic. Like, you know how many times he went to see The Princess Bride when it was in theaters? Four. Four times, and he teared up every single time. It’s that bad. John Hughes holds the current title of Shisui’s Personal God, although he also worships occasionally at the altar of Cameron Crowe. He grew up on cheap-seat views of even cheaper fantasy movies and Legend was a personal revelation (that Cruise kid is going places, he doesn’t care what anyone says).
The upshot of all this is that a mere five days after asking Itachi out, Shisui is basically planning their wedding.
(Not in any kind of detail, obviously; trends change and Shisui doesn’t want to end up on the wrong side of history like his grandma and her eight-foot-long veil that made her look like she was being eaten by a sea monster made of lace, okay?)
He’ll probably be naming their kids in a week.
Objectively speaking, Shisui’s pretty sure he should be concerned about this. This can’t be normal. He already thought about Itachi an unnatural amount before they’d ever spoken; now it’s just getting absurd. His sister is giving him weird looks when she thinks he can’t see and Anko keeps giving him “seduction” tips without bothering to be subtle.
She’s also called dibs on being his best woman. Obviously.
Shisui’s startled out of his contemplation (whether his best woman would think wearing a tux was feminist or just reductive masculinity or whatever it was) by the sound of the phone ringing.
Natsuko yells at him from her bedroom. “Shisui, I swear to god-”
“I’m getting it! I’m going!”
He picks up on the third ring. “Yallo?”
“Shisui?”
The dopey smile is spreading across his face before Shisui can stop it. He only hopes it doesn’t come across in his voice. “Hey, Itachi, what’s up?”
“Were you still in bed?”
“’Course not. It’s noon, I’ve got…stuff. Stuff that needs doing.”
“Of course,” Itachi says dryly. He clears his throat. “I wondered if you were busy tonight.”
Like Shisui wouldn’t reschedule a meeting with the President if it meant getting an hour or two with Itachi. “Nah, I’m not doing anything. Why?”
“My father…” Itachi clears his throat again. Shisui wonders if there’s something stuck in it. “He has expressed an interest in meeting you. Over dinner.”
“Oh.” It takes a second for the full impact of the words to hit. “Wait, your dad wants to meet me?”
“If you’re available.”
Shisui suddenly wants very much not to be available, perpetually unavailable in fact, but he wouldn’t put it past Fugaku to have him assassinated for lying.
The course of True Love never does run smooth, he reminds himself, and sometimes the valiant hero is required to slay a dragon. In this case, a grumpy dragon with millions of dollars and probably a private army at his disposal.
So Shisui swallows hard and definitely does not whimper, “What time are we talking here?”
.
Fugaku, The Terrifying, is not much of a conversationalist.
Shisui doesn’t know why he’s surprised.
“Nice, um.” He coughs and resists the urge to tug at his collar. “Nice house.”
Fugaku’s expression doesn’t change.
They’ve been doing this for ten minutes and Shisui is ready to throw himself off the nearest convenient bridge. Fugaku’s across-the-table glare could peel paint, never mind what it could do to enemy combatants. Forget private army; the military should be all over this shit.
Itachi’s return from the kitchen is accompanied by a spontaneous rendition of the Hallelujah chorus, although it’s possible that part is just Shisui’s fevered imagination.
“Here,” he says, setting a plate down in front of Shisui and then his father before sitting at his own place. Dinner is steak, potatoes and green beans. Very All-American. Very manly.
Shisui begins to sweat. Fugaku is still staring at him. He can’t eat like this-he’s liable to choke to death on the first bite. And this damn collar is really not helping; why had he let Natsu talk him into wearing one of their dad’s old button-downs again?
“Shisui, was it?”
Shisui almost jumps. It’s the first Fugaku has spoken. “Yes, sir.”
Fugaku nods. “And you graduated the same time as my son?”
“Yes, sir. I was at the graduation ceremony, sir.” I almost ran into you, he doesn’t say, because his apparent habit of literally running into members of the Uchiha family isn’t something that’ll help his case here.
“Hm.” The sinking feeling in Shisui’s gut is accompanied by the realization that yes, Fugaku is indeed drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. Like a fucking Bond villain. All he needs is a fluffy cat. “And do you-”
“Father,” Itachi interrupts. His tone is polite, flawlessly enough that Shisui wonders if he’s hallucinating the steel underneath it. “Perhaps we could save the interrogation for after we’ve eaten.”
Fugaku says “Nonsense” at the same time Shisui says “It’s okay”. Even though it kind of isn't.
“As I was saying,” the Uchiha patriarch continues. “Do you have any idea what you’re going to do now that high school has ended?”
Which is the point at which Shisui knows for sure that he’s fucked.
Because the other thing about Shisui is that he’s got no idea what he wants to do with his life. He’s never even held down a job. And it’s not like he’s afraid of work or whatever, he’s fine with it, but he wants to do something he’s passionate about. Something that matters.
The obvious thing would be to follow in both his parents’ footsteps and join the military, but as good as he thinks he’d look in uniform, the one thing Shisui hates is having to take orders. He’s shit at it; ask any of his teachers. The other ‘role model’ option would be Natsu and her teaching career, which she seems to like okay, but it barely pays enough to keep them both afloat and Shisui is a crappy disciplinarian anyway.
So basically, he has no direction and no prospects. Fugaku has probably eviscerated people for less.
Shisui’s floundering in the face of fear, he knows he is, just like he knows Fugaku’s opinion of him is dropping precipitously with every second he doesn’t answer. His tongue feels like lead in his mouth.
Then something brushes his leg under the table. It’s only through sheer force of will that Shisui doesn’t flinch.
Itachi’s put his hand on his knee, out of sight of his father, and is calmly sipping his water like nothing odd is going on.
Shisui’s pretty sure his ears are going bright red, a friggin’ siren screaming out how confusing this whole situation is, but Itachi’s hand is warm and something about it lightens Shisui’s tongue.
“I’m not sure yet, sir,” he says honestly. “Haven’t figured it out. But I think I’m okay not knowing, for now.”
Fugaku blinks.
“Hm,” is all he says.
But he starts eating after that, which should make Shisui feel like he can breathe again, except for Itachi’s hand and how it doesn’t move for the rest of the dinner.
.
Itachi walks him out to his car, like they’re in a Jane Austen novel or something. Shisui has to wipe his sweaty palms off on his pants twice.
They stop by the car door and Shisui hovers, awkward.
“So-”
“My father is most likely watching us from the living room window,” Itachi informs him.
Shisui stops. Takes a second to process that. “Um. Okay, that is…seriously creepy, no offense, but what’s it got to do with anything?”
Itachi seems to sway right into his space, but Shisui tells himself it’s probably his imagination going haywire. Making the streetlights catch in Itachi’s dark eyes.
“Because,” Itachi murmurs, “if my father weren’t watching, I would be saying goodbye to you properly.”
Shisui’s legs abruptly turn into jelly.
“Oh,” he manages.
He sees a flicker of doubt in Itachi’s eyes at the lackluster response. It makes Shisui wonder how much of this whole super-confident thing is a front, has always been a front.
But now’s not exactly the time for Deep Thoughts, so Shisui pulls himself together.
“You know, it’s pretty rude not to say goodbye to a guest,” he points out. “Properly, I mean. Not very Oxford of you.”
Itachi lifts an eyebrow. “And what would you suggest?”
Shisui would suggest a lot of things, but one step at a time. Passing out from lack of blood flow to the brain would be a really embarrassing way to end the night.
“Want me to do some reconnaissance?” he offers. Itachi shrugs and doesn’t completely manage to hide the smile playing around his mouth.
Shisui really, really wants to kiss it.
He makes a show of leaning sideways, stretching his neck out to try and catch a glimpse of Fugaku’s stony visage through the windows.
“Don’t see any suspicious curtain movement,” he reports, turning back to Itachi. “I think we’re-”
Itachi cuts him off with a kiss, again, which Shisui has decided is the only acceptable reason for one person to interrupt another. Like, ever. It’s awkward for a second, neither of them having figured out exactly what the hell they’re doing, but then Shisui tilts his head and Itachi opens his mouth and something clicks.
When they break apart, Shisui’s heartbeat is pounding so loud in his ears he can’t think.
“Well,” Itachi says after a second. “Good night, Shisui.”
“Right. Yeah.” Shisui can hear how embarrassingly high-pitched his voice has gone. He coughs. “I’m-um. I’ll call you?”
Itachi nods, that stupid little not-smile making another guest appearance, and Shisui can’t stop himself leaning in for another kiss, quick and chaste, because apparently he can do that now.
He makes sure Itachi gets back into the house alright, because he’s a gentleman like that, before starting the car.
And sitting there for a good five minutes with the headlights off until there’s a decent chance he’ll be able to drive home without crashing.
.
Things stumble along from there. Shisui guesses they’re dating, although nobody’s broken out the B word yet (that’s Boyfriend for the more filthy-minded, thank you very little). They kind of go on dates-Shisui keeps up the driving lessons, Itachi all but straps him to a chair and helps him fill out college applications they both know he won’t submit; all very romantic shit, Shisui is sure.
But occasionally they get creative. Hence the time Shisui finds out about a Back to the Future marathon at the drive-in and basically begs Itachi to go with him.
“This opportunity may never come again, Itachi.”
“Somehow I think I will survive.”
“How about the opportunity to practice your driving?” Shisui tries, desperate. “That’s productive enough for you, right?”
Itachi hesitates just a second, and Shisui smells blood in the water.
“It’s like, thirty minutes away. Just think how much Practical Experience you’d be getting.”
Something in Itachi’s Oxford-bound brain must be hardwired to accept anything that sounds like it’s being said in Highly Significant Capital Letters, so he capitulates with a graceless “Fine” and Shisui tries not to punch the air too obviously.
The first movie is great, the whole parking lot laughing at Marty’s antics and Doc Brown’s hair even if Shisui can feel Itachi shooting him perplexed looks, like he really is surrounded by lower life forms and no longer has any idea how to communicate with them. Must be that alien thing again, Shisui figures sympathetically, and takes to exaggeratedly explaining the jokes under his breath until Itachi elbows him hard enough to leave bruises.
They make it about halfway through the second movie before Itachi apparently runs out of patience. (Which is bullshit, by the way, because Shisui has seen him pore over math textbooks like they’re the latest issue of Mad fucking Magazine; it’s like Itachi doesn’t actually have a sense of when things go from ‘endearingly clueless’ to ‘your nerdiness is starting to physically pain me’. Which is, Shisui is finding, just as endearing. Dammit.)
It starts with long fingers brushing a stray curl out of Shisui’s face, causing him to look sideways in confusion. “What’s up?”
“You had hair in your face,” Itachi replies, like that’s anything close to an explanation.
But Shisui’s long since decided he’s just gonna have to take Itachi’s weird-ass idiosyncrasies in stride if this thing’s going to go anywhere, so he shrugs it off.
Until about ten minutes later when, upon Marty discovering his mother’s married to Biff (which in Shisui’s humble opinion is a massively uncomfortable time for any type of touching to be going on), Itachi puts a careful hand on the back of Shisui’s neck.
Shisui’s skin evidently missed the memo about this scene, because it unhelpfully breaks out into gooseflesh under Itachi’s touch.
He still doesn’t say anything, though, because somehow he gets the feeling if he asks what Itachi is doing then Itachi will actually tell him, and that will probably ruin whatever mood is being set here.
Itachi doesn’t move again for a while, just leaves his hand there, for all intents and purposes doing nothing but sitting there. Occasionally his fingers curl into the hair at the nape of Shisui’s neck-an absentminded little gesture, a tic, another one of Itachi’s seemingly endless list of oddities, or so Shisui would think if he couldn’t see the tiny smirk pulling at Itachi’s mouth. The fucker is doing this on purpose.
Not that he’s looking at Itachi’s mouth or anything. ‘Course not. He’s a gentleman, after all.
But there’s gentlemen and then there’s monks, and guess which one Shisui is fucking not. Gentlemen are still men, it’s right there in the damn name, and there’s only so much any man can take, okay? Itachi’s nails bite ever so slightly into his skin and Shisui’s iron self-control crumbles.
“Hey, Itachi.”
“Yes?”
He sounds innocent, like he totally hasn’t been fucking with Shisui for the past half an hour. Shisui takes a deep breath and tries to ignore the way his heart’s going a mile a minute.
“You wanna get out of here?”
It’s harder than he thought it would be to turn and meet Itachi’s eyes.
But there’s nothing cautious there, just a tiny smile. Shisui’s gonna be generous and not label it ‘smug’.
Itachi nods.
Shisui swallows. His throat is dry all of a sudden, so it makes a weird unsexy clicking noise. Sigh.
“Cool.”
(Cool? Fuck, someone disconnect his tongue, please. He’s a menace to himself.)
Itachi turns the car on and peacefully ignores the irritated yells from other moviegoers at the interruption. Shisui’s so jittery he doesn’t notice how smoothly Itachi’s driving until they’re already out on the road.
He squints, suddenly suspicious. “Uh, Itachi?”
“What is it?”
“How long’ve you had this driving thing down?”
Itachi looks decidedly shifty, and it surprises a laugh out of him.
“Oh my god, you little shit! You’ve been pretending to suck for weeks!”
“To be fair,” Itachi says, “I did suck for a good amount of that time. Several days, at the very least.”
“I hate you so much,” Shisui tells him happily.
They drive in comfortable silence for a bit, until Shisui gets bored and turns the radio on. Van Halen comes on, Why Can’t This Be Love blasting through the speakers as Shisui cranks the volume, singing along even though he knows he’s obnoxiously off-key while
Itachi grins and shakes his head and doesn’t comment.
He pulls over in the parking lot of a mini-mart type place that’s been closed down for hours, not another car in sight. The Mustang is nestled away in a corner mostly taken over by trees and hidden from view even if there was someone around to be looking, which makes Shisui suspicious all over again-it’s a little too convenient, if you ask him; he wouldn’t put it past Itachi to do actual research on this shit.
He’s turning to start up that very line of inquiry, so his mouth is already half open when Itachi leans over and kisses the words right out of his mouth.
It’s long and lush and slow, and Shisui’s brain melts out his ears the second Itachi starts using tongue, so he’s not really sure how long the kissing goes on. Feels like forever and not nearly long enough, but he doesn’t have the breath to complain.
He fumbles with his seatbelt and manages to get it off, which leaves his hands free to cradle Itachi’s face, tip his head back and deepen the kiss. Itachi shudders. Shisui’s about to ask if he should back off when Itachi’s hands go to his hair and use it to yank him forward, which, okay, he’s guessing that means everyone is a-okay with this situation here.
By the time they break apart for air they’re both flushed and breathing heavy. The windows are starting to fog up, Shisui notices even through his lust-filled haze, which feels like a personal accomplishment. Or it will at some future point when he’s not hard enough that it’s starting to ache.
“Um.” He sounds like he’s swallowed a whole sheet of sandpaper. “You want…?”
Itachi’s pupils are blown wide. The sight knocks the words right off Shisui’s tongue.
Fortunately, one of them is a genius who’s good at multitasking. “Backseat,” Itachi says. “Now.”
“Right,” Shisui croaks. “After you.”
Itachi somehow twists himself around the armrest and into the backseat with an almost feline grace, instead of just getting out of the damn car and then back in like a normal person, so of course Shisui has to try and do the same thing, only he’s pretty sure he ends up looking like a fumbling giant crashing around and terrifying all the townspeople. He almost slips and snaps his neck too, which would be The Actual Worst.
“Fuck,” he swears, stumbling into a sitting position on the backseat, “there has got to be a better-”
But of course, because it’s Itachi and he’s starting to make a habit out of this (which Shisui will complain about later, he totally will), he practically lunges at Shisui and recaptures his mouth, tipping them both backward and nearly cracking Shisui’s skull against the window in the process.
“Ow,” Shisui mumbles halfheartedly against his mouth, and Itachi immediately draws back.
“Are you alright? Should we-”
A rush of fondness threatens to drown him in it. “You’re fine, genius, just let me-here.” He maneuvers them both into a more horizontal position so nobody’s in any more danger of getting their heads broken. Itachi is looking down at him with that crease still between his eyebrows, and it’s adorable as shit, so Shisui cups his face and pulls him down and kisses him as gently as he knows how.
It doesn’t stay gentle too long though, Itachi bending down and licking into his mouth like he’s been wandering the desert and Shisui is a conveniently placed oasis.
On second thought, no, that imagery sucks, but it doesn’t matter because Shisui is getting lost in it. His eyes are closed but he can’t remember closing them, and somehow his fingers have gotten tangled in Itachi’s long hair. They brush by accident over the smooth skin behind Itachi’s ear and he gasps a little into Shisui’s mouth.
He pulls back a bit, just enough for Shisui to see the surprised roundness of his eyes. Shisui almost asks again if they’re good, if everything’s above board, but Itachi gets this glimmer in his eye like he did the first time he drove around the neighborhood without hitting anything.
And then slowly, experimentally almost, he rolls his hips.
Shisui’s pretty sure his eyes roll back in his head.
“Oh fuck, Itachi-”
“Do you want me to stop?” Itachi asks, even as he does it again, wresting a strangled whimper from Shisui’s throat.
“N-no-Jesus fuck, please keep doing that-”
Itachi’s smirk is insufferably self-satisfied when he kisses him again. Shisui doesn’t even have the wherewithal left to give him shit for it, he just kisses back with an unbecoming amount of desperation because he is suddenly embarrassingly close to coming in his pants.
But then whatever scraps of brain cells he’s got left, whatever Itachi hasn’t already obliterated with the steady movement of his hips, band together and remind him that a) he’s older than Itachi, which b) means this is probably illegal and, more pertinently, c) also means that he should be the one blowing Itachi’s mind right now. As a matter of pride.
So Itachi thinks he can just melt Shisui’s higher functions down and then take advantage of him, huh? Well, two can play that game. It takes a little effort, but Shisui manages to rock his hips up against Itachi’s while Itachi is grinding down, and he doesn’t think he’s bragging when he says holy fuck.
Itachi’s mouth goes slack, drops open just a little, and it’s possibly the hottest fucking thing Shisui has ever seen.
Everything gets kinda fuzzy after that. They find a rhythm that’s abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous, hips and mouths sliding together like they fit right into all of each other’s empty spaces, or so Shisui’s hopelessly romantic mind likes to think. Before he knows it his toes are curling and Itachi’s breaths are coming hot and fast and for fuck’s sake, they’ve still got all of their clothes on.
Shisui doesn’t think there’s time enough to fix that properly, not this time anyway, but he scrapes together the last of his courage and lets his hand rest on Itachi’s inner thigh, watches his eyes darken to a shade he’s never seen before.
“Can I?”
Itachi nods once, twice, dips his head and kisses him hard enough to split his lip open as Shisui fumbles blindly with his zipper. Damn fucking jeans, Shisui hates fucking jeans, he’s never gonna wear another pair of fucking jeans as long as he lives. The delay evidently reminds Itachi of his pathological need to be better than everyone at everything, because his fingers are expertly undoing Shisui’s fly before he realizes what the fuck is happening.
‘Do you practice this shit?’ is running through his head, right up until those long fingers brush against his cock and all coherent thought comes to a screeching halt.
“Fuck,” he says with feeling, and finally, finally manages to get his hand down the front of Itachi’s pants. He hears a sharp hiss of breath from the boy on top of him.
There’s no space for awkwardness or hesitation; they’re both way too far gone for it. Shisui moves first, stroking a little rougher than he means to, but Itachi’s eyelids actually flutter so he figures he’s doing something right. And then he pretty much stops figuring anything at all, Itachi’s fingers going to work around his cock, his wrist twisting in a way that makes Shisui want to make really embarrassing noises.
“Sh-Shisui-”
It’s a warning, Shisui knows it, knows they’re both so close, and on a sudden flash of inspiration he leans up-ignores the strain on the muscles in his neck-puts his mouth up close behind Itachi’s ear and licks.
Itachi makes a broken, startled little noise and comes, hot against Shisui’s hand. Shisui follows about three seconds later, groaning around a full-body shudder.
Itachi lets out a sigh and lies more or less on top of him, heedless of the gross they’re both covered in. Like he’s entitled to use Shisui however he damn well likes now that he’s put out. Whatever. Shisui submits himself to the role of human pillow without protest. His clean hand even comes up of its own accord to stroke through Itachi’s hair.
The radio is still on, he realizes after a minute-it’s playing freaking Peter Gabriel of all things, In Your Eyes passionately blaring from Itachi’s speakers. Shisui hates this song, hates it with a fury bordering on lust; he hates the overdramatic lyrics, he hates Gabriel’s voice, he hates that he can’t turn the fucking radio on without his ears being assaulted by it.
Right now, though…look, maybe Shisui’s just high off post-orgasm endorphins or some shit like that, but when Gabriel sings about wanting to touch that light, about reaching out from the inside, Shisui feels Itachi’s heartbeat against his own chest and he thinks he maybe kinda gets it.
He’d be willing to do weirder things for Itachi than make a truce with Peter Gabriel.
“Shisui?”
He jumps. He hadn’t realized Itachi was still awake, much less capable of interrupting his unforgivably sappy inner monologue.
“Yeah?”
“Are you all right?”
Shisui lets out a very unattractive snort of disbelief. “Pretty sure I’m fucking awesome right now. Why?”
Itachi props himself up to look Shisui in the eye. His hair has come completely out of its usual ponytail and is now hanging down on both sides of his face, which only serves to make him look even more unfairly gorgeous than usual.
“You are shaking,” he points out.
Huh, maybe Shisui is. He hadn’t really noticed.
“Are you coming down with something?” Itachi continues, a crease appearing between his eyebrows again.
Shisui almost laughs. “Um, no. I think I’m just…happy.”
Ooh, shit, that was gross as hell. Shisui would smack himself upside the head if his arms weren’t currently pinned down by the weight of Itachi’s body.
But the thing is, Itachi doesn’t seem bothered by Shisui exuding enough sap that he might be mistaken for a tree. In fact, he smiles like Shisui’s said something romantic instead of dorky as hell.
“Good,” he says.
.