DID SOMEONE SAY 80S ROMCOM? (3/4)
Anko doesn’t do phone calls. She’s got exactly two modes: normal, in which case any relevant news can be passed along whenever she happens to see you next, and really fucking urgent, in which case she shows up at your house at eight in the morning and busts down your fucking door.
(For the record, this is why Shisui had a spare key made for her two years ago. Natsu would actually kill him if one of his friends woke her up like that again, and Anko would almost definitely be helping her hide the body.)
Shisui wakes up to her clunking around his room with a pitiful groan, which garners him exactly zero sympathy, in case anyone was wondering.
“Morning, stud,” Anko says brightly, which is horrifying.
Even more horrifying is the white sheet cake she’s holding, words spelled out in expertly wielded red icing. Anko works at the Dairy Queen and sometimes uses her powers for evil instead of good, so Shisui’s not nearly as surprised as he should be when the words compute as:
Congratulations On The Sex!!
Yes, with two (2) exclamation points.
“I hate you so much,” Shisui moans, burying his face in his pillow. Anko responds by mercilessly throwing the blackout curtains open and ignoring his little shriek. Why are all the women in his life terrible people?
“Too bad,” she says. “You deserve to be punished for not calling me the second you popped your cherry, Shi. And I mean the second. The jizz should not’ve even dried on your shorts before you fucking called me.”
“Jesus, you’re disgusting. Please have some shame, I’m begging you, it’s so fucking early.”
Anko keeps talking like he didn’t say anything. “I’m kinda pissed about it, but I’m gonna be nice and forgive you on the condition you tell me every repulsive detail about your big night. So.” Even without looking he knows she’s got her shark smile on-the kind that usually comes right before significant others turn into big, capital X’s. “How was he?”
Something occurs to him. Shisui drags his head back up.
“How do you even know we had sex?”
“Please, Shi, give me some credit. You reek of finally-sated teenage male desperation.” She plays with her lip ring and considers. “Oh, yeah, and your sister called me last night freaking out, said you were late getting home and asked if I knew where you were.”
Ah, shit. They’d fallen asleep, and by the time Itachi dropped him off it’d been way past the time he’d told Natsu to expect him. She must’ve gone to bed at some point, though, as evidenced by the fact that Shisui’s balls haven’t yet been ripped off.
“What’d you tell her?” he asks, apprehensive.
The shark grin is back on full display. “Told her you were spending the night with your new friend. She’ll probably want to talk to you about that, just FYI.”
Shisui sighs. “You’re a horrible friend, and also thanks for nothing.”
“Anytime. Now spill.”
“About…?”
Anko waves the arm not holding the Cake of Shisui’s Humiliation impatiently. “Was our little genius any good in the sack? Or-” She leers. “In the backseat, I’m guessing?”
Shisui can feel his face heating up-he’s pretty sure he’s never going to be able to sit in that car again without getting hard, which is going to make any future driving plans tricky.
But he’s grinning again like a total lunatic, he can tell, his stupid face hurts with it and he’s never gonna be able to keep this a secret from his sister.
“It was fucking amazing,” he admits. “Shit, Anko, I think I’m in love.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, nerd.”
Shisui flops down on his back and stares dreamily up at the ceiling. Anko parks herself on the foot of his bed and shoots a contemplative look at the cake in her hands, before swiping her finger right through the frosting and sucking on it.
“Should I tell him?” Shisui asks.
“Tell him what?” Anko mumbles around a mouthful of icing.
“That I’m in love with him and I want to, like, have his biologically-improbable babies?”
“Out of wedlock? Nice.”
“No, you heathen, I’ve already planned the wedding.”
She hums thoughtfully. “Color scheme?”
“I’m thinking blue. Lots of blue.”
“Just blue? No accent colors or shit?”
Shisui squints at her. “Exactly how gay do you think I am?”
Anko rolls her eyes. “Can we go back to the part about biologically-improbable babies?”
“Hey, I listen to your sexploits all the time,” he protests. ”You can listen to my lovelorn ramblings!”
“I’d much rather be listening to your sexploits.”
He mimes pulling a zipper across his mouth. “Sorry Anko, but I’m a gentleman now. My lips are sealed.”
She smirks. “I hope not.”
Okay, he walked right into that one.
“So, like…” He flails a little. “Should I say something to him or what?”
Anko looks at him in that way she has, the way that makes him feel like he’s naked-not in a sexual way, more like she’s assessing every inch of him and figuring out where a pin would hurt the most. Or a kitchen knife.
“You know how many times I’ve dropped the L word on one of my exes?” she says at last.
Shisui has a bad feeling about this. “Not a clue. How many?”
She holds up a single ringed finger.
Shisui gapes. “No fucking way. You’ve dated half the school!”
“Yeah, but I said the big three exactly once.” She smiles that sharklike smile but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Also happened to be to the only person who’s ever dumped me and not the other way around.”
He sits up. “Shit, Anko, I’m sorry.”
She waves him off. “I’m over it. But it fucked me up good, Shi. And you’re a dipshit, okay, but you’re my dipshit and I don’t wanna see you going through that.”
Shisui’s not really sure what to say to that. He doesn’t know who Anko’s talking about, and he doesn’t think she’s going to tell him, but it can’t’ve been the same thing that he has with Itachi. It’s impossible. Shisui’s already pinched himself raw over this thing they have-he jokes about it because that’s the only way to distract himself from how fucking huge it feels. Like they could have one of those cheeseball happy endings Shisui always secretly cheered for in the movies. Like they could actually go the distance if they tried.
But saying any of that would be in pretty shitty taste when his best friend has just pulled the sleeve back on one of her scars, so Shisui changes the subject.
“Wanna watch a grade-B slasher movie?”
Anko eyes him like she knows exactly what he just didn’t say, but then she grins and it’s a real grin this time. Nothing bloodthirsty about it.
“You know me so well,” she purrs, and that’s that.
.
The thing about Anko, see, is that she’s a very dramatic person. It’s just in her nature. Shisui envies her flair, her aesthetic if you will-her perpetually smudged eyeliner, her many many piercings, her rings, the way she runs her tongue over her teeth like she’s thinking about skinning and eating you and somehow managing to make it sexy. So in a way it doesn’t shock him at all that she’s got a long-lost love buried deep in her past. It totally makes sense.
But the two of them are completely different people, Shisui tells himself. And it’s just as well; if he were any more like Anko than their shared sense of (inappropriate) humor and (biting) sarcasm already dictates, they probably would’ve killed each other a long time ago. Just because she’s got a skeleton in the closet with its heart ripped out doesn’t mean Shisui’s going to end up with one that matches.
It’d be tacky, for one.
The other thing about Anko, though-and Shisui ignores this in favor of blissful ignorance, which in his opinion is an infinitely preferable state-is that she’s almost always right.
.
He doesn’t bother calling ahead this time, but he does make sure Fugaku’s car isn’t in the driveway before running up to the door and knocking.
The door opens. Itachi’s eyes widen when he sees him.
Shisui grins, waves a little bit because he’s an idiot. “Hey.”
“Shisui.” Itachi visibly tries to snap out of whatever daze he’s in, but it clings, making him slower to react than he normally is. Shisui squints at him.
“You okay? You seem kinda pale.”
Mutely, Itachi shakes his head. Forget pale; he kinda looks like he’s going to puke.
“What did you want?” he asks, and it’s stiff. Formal. He still hasn’t moved from the doorway.
Shisui’s rattled, okay, but he rallies, because True Love can withstand a little post-sex awkwardness. Itachi probably got an earful from his dad about being out late, too, which Shisui would not wish on anyone.
“I wanted to tell you something,” he says. “I think it’s kinda important.”
Itachi gives him a long look. Shisui can’t read it, which is weird. Maybe they’re both just tired.
Finally Itachi nods. “Could we go…somewhere? Somewhere else?”
Shisui doesn’t really get it, but, “Yeah, no problem. I drove here so I can-”
“No,” Itachi cuts in. “I can drive.”
He swears there’s more tension in it than a basic offer requires, but Itachi’s face is perfectly impassive. Tired, then. Definitely.
“Sure,” he says.
They get into the Mustang, which unhelpfully reminds Shisui what happened the last time they were alone in this car. Sternly, he tells his dick that now is not the time. He’s got important shit to say, dammit.
Itachi’s still acting weird, though. He keeps his eyes fixed straight ahead, even on neighborhood roads he’s got to know by heart at this point. Shisui’s attempts at witty conversation are met with monosyllabic answers; he gets desperate after three straight minutes of silence and makes a purposely stupid comment just to goad Itachi into one of his smartass responses and-nothing.
He notices that Itachi’s knuckles are white around the wheel, he’s gripping it so tightly, and that’s when Shisui really starts to think something’s wrong. Itachi hasn’t been this tense behind the wheel since the first time Shisui showed him how to drive.
And the thing about Itachi, see, is that he doesn’t go backwards. Not ever, not that Shisui’s seen. He’s always stubbornly pushing forward.
Shisui wonders out of nowhere if that means he never looks back.
To his surprise, Itachi takes them all the way to the drive-in. These places never look right in the light of day, Shisui thinks; what’d been a vibrant scene the other night, filled with sounds and smells and life, is now a desolate and abandoned wasteland.
A weird feeling curdles in the pit of his stomach.
Itachi pulls in next to a silent speaker and turns off the car. He still doesn’t look at Shisui. His white fingers still don’t leave the wheel.
“Hey,” Shisui says carefully. He wants to reach out but he’s suddenly not sure whether Itachi would let him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
There’s a click in Itachi’s throat as he swallows. He clears his throat-once, twice.
“I have something to say to you, as well.”
“Oh.” Oh. Maybe-Shisui’s heart feels like it’s growing three sizes at the thought-maybe they’re on the same page? They have been so far, right? What if Itachi’s not sick or pissed at him-what if he’s just nervous?
Shisui’s palms are sweating, which is gross. He wipes them off on his jeans and sucks in a deep breath.
“Okay. I’m gonna go first, and then you can go, okay?” He’s gotta spit this out or he might chicken out.
Itachi’s head comes up sharply. He twists around in his seat to face Shisui. “No, I think-”
“It’s just-”
“Shisui, please-”
“I love you.”
“I think we should stop seeing each other.”
Itachi goes completely rigid, his mouth tight. He looks like someone’s just hit him.
Shisui has absolutely no idea what his face looks like.
Silence swallows the space inside the car. It feels like all the air went out along with the sound.
“What?” Shisui manages after a few seconds. The word comes out sounding like the noise someone makes when they’ve been punched in the stomach.
“I think we should stop seeing each other,” Itachi repeats, mechanical in his precision, and Shisui’s pretty sure the sound’s come back tenfold. There’s no other reason why he should be able to hear his heart ripping in half.
“Why?”
Itachi isn’t looking at him. “My father,” he says flatly, “is under investigation. He’s been accused of embezzling money from his investors.”
Shisui closes his eyes briefly. “Shit, Itachi.”
He doesn’t ask if Fugaku’s guilty, and Itachi doesn’t offer.
“There is-there is a lot to think about right now,” Itachi continues in that same unnervingly even tone. “It’s not just my father. It’s Oxford, it’s moving out, and-” He shakes his head. “This was never going to last, Shisui. I am going overseas. There was always an expiration date on…”
He gestures helplessly between them, lost for words for once in his life, trying to encompass the last few weeks with a futile flapping of his gorgeous hands.
A trickle of hot anger melts some of the ice freezing Shisui tongue, and he manages an entire sentence this time. “Is that why you’re breaking up with me, or is that why your dad wants you to break up with me?”
Itachi’s eyes flash, but Shisui’s done sitting pretty and listening while his life gets ripped apart in a goddamn Mustang of all places.
“Be honest with me, okay? It’s not just that you’re going overseas. It’s that you’re going to Oxford. Fucking Oxford. I said it before, right? You’re probably gonna own half the world before you’re twenty and then what? Pretty English wife, two-point-five kids, picket fence and all that bullshit? Guess an almost-dropout with no job and no clue what he’s doing with his life doesn’t factor in, huh?”
Itachi actually flinches. “Shisui-”
“No, you know what, I need to finish this.” He blinks hard against the burning in his eyes. “Because you’re right, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but I know what I fucking want, and it’s you.”
For one second, one heart-stopping second, Itachi looks him in the eye and Shisui would swear on his parents’ graves that he’s not the only one on the verge of tears.
But the image is gone in a blink, leaving Itachi a perfect alien specimen once more.
“I can’t, Shisui.”
It sounds so fucking final. Like a judge handing down a sentence.
Shisui stares numbly at him, but Itachi’s eyes have flickered away again, back to staring at something that’s so much more fucking fascinating than Shisui’s face.
This is bullshit, his mind screams, but Shisui doesn’t the energy to say it out loud.
“Okay,” he says instead, and his voice sounds rusty. “Okay, um. I’m gonna just-”
“I can drive you,” Itachi begins, but Shisui shakes his head hard to rattle his brain. He’s already reaching for the door handle. It’s harder than it should be because his hands are shaking.
“I’ll walk,” he says, and climbs out of the car.
He starts blindly towards the road opposite of where they came from. Itachi doesn’t try to stop him.
.
“Natsu?”
“Shisui? Where the hell have you been?”
“Hey, I, um-I misplaced the car, can you come get me?”
“How do you misplace-you know what, I don’t even care. Let’s get back to where the hell have you been?”
“Itachi…”
“Itachi what? Wait, doesn’t he have a car? Or did his get misplaced too?”
“He dumped me, Natsu.”
“…What?”
“Um, yeah. Tossed out like yesterday’s trash, so…”
“Fuck. Where are you?”
“Just look for the sad sack next to the payphone by Route 47, that’s me.”
“Okay. I’ll go ask Yoshino if I can borrow her car. Don’t you dare move, little brother.”
“Not like I’ve got somewhere to be,” Shisui mumbles, but Natsu’s already hung up.
She shows up twenty minutes later and finds him soaking wet, probably looking like some dashingly sad band member out of a music video, and the AC in their neighbor’s car is cranked all the way up which means Shisui’s probably gonna end up with pneumonia on top of every other shitty thing that’s happened to him today.
Whatever. He’s still sorta grateful for the downpour, clichéd as it is, because it keeps his sister from noticing that he’s been crying.
.
What it comes down to, he tells himself once he’s cried through two pillows and is staring morosely at the ceiling at two in the morning, is the simple question of whether you believe in love. That’s all there is to it.
And Shisui does. And that’s either his greatest flaw or his saving grace, depending on who you talk to, but it doesn’t matter either way because it’s a fundamental part of his personality at this point. A solid rock in his foundation-yank that away and he’ll crumble like a vampire left out in the sun.
So Shisui wipes off his face and he doesn’t give up.
.
He calls Itachi three times the next day. Or four. Five, maybe. Something like that.
Fine, six. Look, he’s not proud of himself, okay?
Not that it matters. Shisui gets nothing for his efforts except a painful familiarity with the Uchiha household’s dial tone. He supposes he should be grateful that Fugaku never picked up.
The messages he leaves are all along the same lines (read: mildly pathetic) (okay, maybe a little more than ‘mildly’) of how he thinks this whole breakup thing is a mistake, and he’d really like to meet up so he can explain his Very Logical reasons why, and also he’d really like Itachi to pick up at some point so Shisui can stop feeling like he’s shouting into the void.
Void. Ha. Wretched abyss, more like.
Day one is a failure. Shisui is undeterred and renews his campaign the next day. Their phone bills are likely going through the roof and his sister is going to skin him alive, but at least he’ll be able to meet his gruesome end knowing he died in pursuit of True Love.
And okay, real talk: Shisui’s not actually allergic to introspection. He’s aware that he’s starting to border uncomfortably on stalker territory-like, close enough that he can wave merrily to its residents and not even have to squint that hard. It’s two-thirds of the reason why he hasn’t just gone up to Itachi’s place and rung the doorbell.
(The other being, of course, the fear that Itachi’s father will answer and blow his head off with a rifle before he even opens his mouth.)
But Shisui also knows he’s not a total creepy asshole, thanks. He wouldn’t be doing this if Itachi’d said straight up that he wasn’t interested, or even that he wasn’t ready. Shisui’s been there. He respects that.
Getting dumped because Itachi got spooked by having feelings? Kinda harder for him to respect.
And if Itachi does get fed up and picks up the phone and tells Shisui he doesn’t want a relationship right now or ever, well, Shisui’s just gonna have to deal. Pick the shattered remains of his heart up off the floor and hope he figures out a way to put them back together.
But Itachi’d said ‘I can’t’ in the car. Not won’t, not don’t want to, just can’t.
Shisui can work with ‘can’t’.
The kicker comes after a week of this particular brand of masochism. Shisui hasn’t slept properly since the breakup and he’s pretty sure he hasn’t been eating much either, if the worried looks Natsu keeps shooting him are any indication; Anko flat-out asked yesterday if he’d gotten hooked on drugs or something (which, no, he’s not a fucking idiot thanks very much).
It’s probably the sleep deprivation that does it, though. That and Peter Fucking Gabriel on the radio in his sister’s room.
Something inside him snaps, causing Shisui to temporarily lose his mind.
Three minutes of driving (ten miles over the speed limit, but who’s counting) and one stolen boom box later (he’s pretty sure the last of Natsu’s sympathy has just worn out), and Shisui’s standing outside Itachi’s house, holding the radio up over his head like a fucking moron.
Gabriel’s braying about the light, the heat, and Shisui’s arms are starting to shake from the weight of the boom box and of too many memories for his exhausted brain to handle, but he stands there until the song ends and then he waits.
He waits until his fingertips go numb from the cold. He thinks he sees a flicker of movement at one of the upstairs windows, but nothing else happens. Eventually he’s forced to give in and go home.
.
Another week. Shisui stops calling.