Reunited

[shar1ngan]

Who: Uchiha Sasuke and Uchiha Itachi
When: Immediately after this post
Where: On the beach, where Sasuke's body was burned.
Summary: Sasuke's back! Itachi's going to get him. Tears of joy.
Warnings: Brother issues

Comments

[switch_it_off]

He'd almost forgotten what this place felt like. When he breathed in all he smelled was salt, brine, and old blood. The pull in his chest that fishhooked him back towards the mainland like lateral gravity had taken him several confused minutes to sort, before memory had flooded back. It had happened all at once, sickeningly, clogging up his throat and blurring his vision in the panic of two pasts crashing and merging into one.

Sirens Port, and -- home. How long had he been there? How long had he been here? He remembered dying, he remembered choking and heaving and struggling as the life was strangled out of him, and then darkness. He'd been home, blinking his eyes open to Madara, to hollow inevitability, and there his memories hadn't been twinned. Only here, being back here.

It was disorientating. It made him want to vomit.

Instead, he watched Itachi's approach in silence, his eyes wide and rimmed with damaged red from a battle still fresh in his memory. Again. It was almost as painful as the first time he'd seen this, but this time there were no demands that Itachi prove himself real. He remembered.

[shar1ngan]

Itachi knew immediately when Sasuke turned to watch him that it was his Sasuke, his brother who had killed him and then forgiven him. His feet left the sand before he consciously decided to run, and he darted across the sand to his brother's side, dropping to his knees on the hard, pitted glass that Amaterasu had left.

"Sasuke..." He reached out and took Sasuke's shoulders in his hands, convincing himself that he was real. "You're alive."

[switch_it_off]

Sasuke just stared. If he blinked this illusion would shatter; if he blinked or twitched in any way, he'd distort the genjutsu, or twitch and wake himself and then it would fade through his grasping hands like a fine mist and dissipate away even the memory. If he blinked, Itachi would be gone again and there would only be Madara, hollow and cold behind his mask and his schemes, and it would have to be enough because it was all he had left.

As a kid he'd had a recurring nightmare of falling, tripping over his own feet and toppling off the highest building in the Uchiha compound. He'd always snapped awake in a cold sweat before he hit the ground, but in this dream, in Sirens Port - on this damned island with its power plays and skewed, fucked up politics and confusing holidays he'd never fucking heard of - in this dream, he hadn't woken up until his heart stopped beating. And he hadn't remembered a thing, not until he returned.

"I'm asleep," he whispered vacantly, staring straight ahead. "I'm asleep."

[shar1ngan]

"No, no you're not," Itachi said, worried at Sasuke's strange, disturbingly vacant stare. "Sasuke, you were attacked by SERO and imprisoned again, and they killed you. Do you remember?"

He slipped his arms around his brother, holding him tight as he had done when Sasuke was a child and had nightmares. "But you're back with me, now. It's over."

[switch_it_off]

Sasuke froze rigid under Itachi's touch and twisted a fraction before stilling, his breathing caught in a sharp indrawn rattle. He was unused to being touched like this, and his hands fisted helplessly like he had no idea whatsoever to do with them before slowly inching to return it. Clumsily. With far too much elbow, but the thought was there.

His eyes never shut, even when his vision was overtaken by the black and red of Itachi's sleeve. Sight grounded him, it kept him solid and corporeal and here. "Over," he echoed dully. If Itachi wanted to believe that, he'd let him.

[shar1ngan]

Obviously everything wasn't over, but Itachi was relieved beyond measure that Sasuke was back. He buried his face in the boy's shoulder, drawing a soft breath.

"I was certain you wouldn't return," he whispered. "Or that if you did, you would hate me."

[switch_it_off]

That had Sasuke's arms tightening finally, more of a hard spasm in reaction to his brothers desperation than any proper hug. He wasn't any good at comfort, either giving it or receiving it, no, this was more -- possessive. He gripped Itachi's back and fisted his hands into his cloak, crushing between his shoulder-blades.

"Idiot," he muttered with the first sign of real conscious speech and reaction so far. Whatever haze was gripping his mind, hearing Itachi say stupid desperate things was doing a decent job of clearing it away.

[shar1ngan]

Itachi sniffed irritably at the word. "I'm not Naruto-kun," he reminded his brother, lifting his head. But it was heartening to hear a bit of normalcy returning to Sasuke's voice.

"Come, we should go back to the house. I'm sure the air here isn't doing you any good." Next time he burned a corpse, he'd do it in a more hospitable area. Just in case.

[switch_it_off]

Sasuke's grip tightened in response. Naruto ... a decent reminder of just why Itachi would have bothered worrying over something like that. Naruto had returned without any memory of this place, in a direct opposite of what had happened to Sasuke. He shuddered and closed his eyes, finally, squeezing them against the sudden burn of having held them open too long. It stung like hell.

That was why. No other reason.

"I don't hate you. I didn't forget," he said. Redundant, since Itachi knew it already, but he needed to hear it out loud for his own sake.

[shar1ngan]

Itachi nodded, a hand reaching up to brush lightly through Sasuke's hair. There were so many things he had regretted not saying when Sasuke was dead. He'd brooded over it, obsessed over it even though Shikamaru had tried to keep him sane and distracted.

Now that Sasuke was here, it seemed the words stuck in his throat once more, just as they had before.

"I'm...very pleased," he said awkwardly. "Very pleased that you're here with me, Sasuke. And...I hope you are, too."

[switch_it_off]

"Pleased," Sasuke echoed. His eyes cut away and his grip faded, leaving his arms a limp deadweight where they slid from his brothers shoulders and back down at his sides. He took in several slow breaths to compose himself before he slipped and revealed too much, then lifted his head to squint up at his brothers face.

"Yeah," he sighed. He was 'pleased' too.

[shar1ngan]

Itachi felt cold all of a sudden, the embrace falling away somehow allowing the wind to knife through his clothing even though it was early August.

He knew Sasuke was upset by his lukewarm words, he was upset by them, and even more upset by Sasuke's lackluster response. But it seemed that any words big enough to encompass how he felt were too big to escape his throat.

"I...Sasuke," he murmured helplessly. "I am such a coward. Please forgive me, I don't know how..."

Taking Sasuke's cheeks gently in both hands, he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his lips. His hands and mouth trembled, with the force of it, and he struggled against a voice that screamed inside his mind all the foolishness of what he was doing.

[switch_it_off]

Even when Itachi's face moved closer to his own, Sasuke still didn't expect the sudden warm pressure of lightly chapped lips, firm and trembling, to his own. A forehead, maybe, or a brush of his brothers cheek, a dab of his mouth to his temple or nose. He'd expected one of the countless other gestures over the last eight months that had blurred the line between what was socially acceptable between brothers and what neither of them wanted to admit, or were ready to admit, even to himself.

It froze him in shock and knocked the wind from his lungs in a strangled wheeze. His mouth tried to form sudden questions all vying to be voiced at once until they clogged in the back of his throat and choked him instead. His eyes were burning. His chest hurt.

He couldn't -- what was Itachi doing? What were they both doing? He remembered an older brother that was larger than life, looming over his small eight-year-old self like some unattainable wondrously omnipotent and all-knowing deity. All the time spent apart, and the uneasy truce and awkward attempts at reforming that bond together on the island had perverted and warped those memories into something else, and his hero-worship had funneled into - into this.

Their bond had been so shattered and they'd spent too long apart to act like proper brothers now, but Sasuke hadn't wanted to accept, and still in a way wasn't sure how to accept, that instead. Instead.

When Itachi started moving away, when his brother leaned back, he reached blindly after him and grabbed onto the front of his shirt in order to pull him back. His mouth left Itachi's, breaths staggering fraught and unsteady, and he slid his wet cheek against Itachi's and found the hollow of his neck to hide his face against. And he clung into him for dear life, but he didn't push him away.

[shar1ngan]

Itachi had known it was a risk, a huge one, and there had been a large part of him that expected an explosion from his brother, a push away accompanied by incredulity, even disgust. He himself had spent a long time coming to terms with the fact that when he closed his eyes and pleasured himself, it wasn't any of the faceless lovers he'd had over the years that he pictured. It wasn't some fantasy lover, nor was it Kisame or even Kakashi.

It hadn't always been this way, but his obsession with Sasuke had clouded his brotherly feelings and infected every part of his life long before he had reunited with him on this island. He experienced no self-recrimination about the kiss - except that he expected Sasuke to reject him soundly because of it.

What he hadn't expected was for Sasuke to kiss him back, to press his own lips against Itachi's with the same fervency, and then to cling to him like he was afraid Itachi would leave him.

He didn't expect Sasuke's face to be wet, either.

He wrapped his arms around Sasuke and buried his face in his brother's hair, stroking his back with an awkward soothing motion and at a complete loss. "I...I'm sorry," he said helplessly, not sure what he was apologizing for. "I didn't...didn't mean to upset you."

[switch_it_off]

"Don't," he started in a pained hiss before his voice cracked apart, forcing him silent through a few short jagged gasps to get it back again. "Don't be sorry. Don't say you're sorry," he dug blunt fingernails into Itachi's sleeves, holding onto him that much tighter.

Temari had told him that he'd been dead for two weeks. He missed his own birthday. His eyes squeezed tighter, while he forced his muscles to relax slowly one by one until the high-strung tension started to ease away from him, until he could think again. "You didn't upset me," he whispered near-inaudibly, "You can't do something like this and then take it back. Tell me happy birthday and let's go home."

[shar1ngan]

The silence gave Itachi some time to gather his own wits, too. Slowly his own rather ragged breathing slowed, and the hand rubbing Sasuke's back relaxed, the tremor in his body easing. Sasuke wasn't mad at him. He hadn't finally gotten him back only to lose him once more through his own actions.

"I didn't intend to take it back," he said quietly. "That much is for sure."

He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the pain of realizing that it was on Sasuke's birthday that he'd discovered his brother's fate. "Happy birthday, Sasuke," he murmured obediently. "I have your present at home."