Title: The Blazing Hearth. An Idyllic Snapshot of Two People Colliding, Or, What did you give up, Uchiha Itachi?
Rating: hard R / NC-17
Pairing: Itachi/Shisui
Length: 2,268
Summary: The smutty follow-up to The Mechanics of Waking Up. Borders dangerously on PWP. Parts of it are humorous if you squint, and there's a great gatsby reference if you squint even harder. Beware the fluff and sap, you may choke. beaten until it didn’t suck beta’d by
ronsard.
A/N: Aka, I should have posted this ages ago, but got distracted by fandom art projects >_>
Shisui’s grin always seems to freeze time.
Itachi has never been good at this sort of thing, and that fact is making itself known right about now. But he’s also stubborn and idealistic, so now that the heated mix of want swirling in his guts has identified itself, he can’t waste any more time.
That in mind, he immediately begins searching for Shisui, and finds him on the training grounds, doing something that looks like a roundoff, hurling shuriken willy-nilly in all directions.
“Shisui.”
Not a good start. He should really work on that deadpan. Shisui always seems to have an excess of inflections, Itachi wonders if he might be willing to lend him some.
Shisui looks up, and visibly brightens. “Yo,cuz!”
In a flicker of the jutsu he’s known for, Shisui barrels into him, crouching down and slamming his shoulder into Itachi’s stomach so that they both go down in a swirl of dust. Shisui plants his hands on Itachi’s chest, looks down at him with a sharp grin. Itachi is reminded suddenly of all the reasons he often wants to throttle Shisui, one of which is probably his tendency to blabber things like, “A ninja must always be prepared! Who let you into the ANBU anyway, huh? You are totally, completely off-guard with me these days, it’s probably my roguish good looks, who can blame you-”
“Shisui!”
Horrorstruck, Itachi realizes that the noise he’s made is an exasperated plea of some sort, like he’s trying to inject everything he wants to say into the word.
“So,” Shisui says, pinning Itachi to the ground and leering over him, somehow managing to bring gravity back into his words. “What do you want to talk about? Let me tell you, this talk has been a long time coming. You’ve been so weird lately I thought I was going to have to beat it out of you or hold your head under the Nakano.”
For a second, Itachi is frozen. He wonders if Shisui already knows precisely the reason he came here, but he measures the face above him and decides that, wacky prescience aside, Shisui only knows that it’s something serious.
“I-” This is still not going as planned. Shisui’s face is hovering there like some sort of extremely benign but nevertheless alien specter, a creature who probably has good intentions but might do something utterly unanticipated with any revelations you might be foolish enough to plunk into its eager, childlike hands-
More information, he decides, is required. Shisui practically wrote the definition of “wild card.” They probably placed his picture next to the dictionary entry of the phrase.
Itachi settles for shoving hard at Shisui’s shoulders, using the leverage to push himself up. He aims a kick he knows Shisui will dodge- and he does, taking the opportunity to flicker under Itachi’s leg, lift, and flip him over his knee, sending him backwards into the dust again. Shisui settles on top of him, legs on either side of Itachi’s hips, and grabs his wrists, pinning them to his chest.
“Really, are we going to do it this way? Do I have to send you home all beaten up again - and then all your fangirls will cry, Shisui, you’re such a monster, why are you always beating up poor defenseless Itachi- and I’ll never hear the end of it. Also your mother will be mad at me-” here his eyes take on a far-off glaze “-and Sasuke will throw small pebbles at me from alleyways when I’m at the market - so spit it out!”
He punctuates his statement by repeatedly pressing their entangled arms into Itachi’s ribs. The motion sends their hips sliding together, but Shisui is blithely oblivious, intent on ferreting out whatever secret made Itachi begin this terrible, terrible quest. At this point, even he has no idea.
“Beat me up?” Itachi says, in the lightest voice he can manage. “When was the last time you accomplished that? All I recall is me beating up you. ”
It works like a charm, because Shisui makes a squawk of indignation, and shouts, “Listen, Uchiha Itachi-”
Itachi doesn’t let him finish the sentence, but leans forward and presses their lips together briefly. He’s painfully aware of everything around him, of Shisui’s soft lips dropping open in a gasp of surprise - but then the moment is abruptly over, as Shisui throws back his head and starts laughing like a maniac.
“Aahahahahahaha, Itachi, you - you - but you…”
He can’t seem to get any further than that. This is the last straw as far as Itachi’s dignity is concerned. He pushes Shisui away from him, gathers himself up and starts to stalk off, anger and embarrassment churning in his stomach, mixed with bile.
“Hey! Hey now, wait,” Shisui yells. Itachi keeps walking.
“HEY! Wait! ”
Shisui catches his arm very firmly and spins him around. Itachi’s glare could skewer lesser shinobi, but all it manages to do is draw from Shisui a slightly disconcerted grimace. “Hey now,” he says, voice softening. “Sorry, I just…”
He sucks in a breath, says, “I wasn’t expecting that,” and drops his head on Itachi’s shoulder, tucking his face into Itachi’s neck. Itachi’s pulse responds immediately by kicking his heartbeat up a few notches. This is the sort of intimacy Shisui is so good at, creating tenderness out of nothing, and suddenly they have moved into a world where it’s okay - it’s okay. Itachi can do a lot of things, but not this, so he’s glad that Shisui can.
Shisui leans back slowly. He takes Itachi’s hand and tugs him forward, leading him into the grove of trees at the edge of the training grounds.
“Well, that was an eye-opener,” he mutters. “Fuck, Itachi. You are fucking ridiculous. Completely - fucking - ridiculous.”
Itachi opens his mouth to protest, but Shisui lowers his eyes and pins him with a look that makes him feel like his clothes are being burned off. Distantly, he becomes aware of the fact that they’ve somehow ended up on the ground, with Shisui propped over him, face in deep shadow.
“Now I’m not one to rush things, especially since it’s you,” Shisui says, and blushes furiously, but doggedly presses on, “but I feel like this merits some immediate… exploration.”
Itachi’s breath strangles in his throat, and suddenly Shisui’s hands are everywhere, pulling at his clothes, their lips locking as though in spontaneous combat. Shisui is like a current washing over him. He slides his hand down Itachi’s thigh with a determined, sensual pressure, slipping it underneath his leg. Itachi pushes his leg up, and wraps it around Shisui’s lower back. There is a flush of heat between them where their hips are slotted together, riding along Itachi’s nerves, turning his spine to burning liquid.
He bucks against Shisui, who calmly pushes back, increasing the pressure. The rush of blood down below his waist is an onslaught of sensations. Itachi gasps into Shisui’s mouth, and feels Shisui kissing him back languorously, their lips sliding together, connecting and reconnecting, each moment of contact somehow exciting and new. Shisui runs his hands over his ribs, his thighs, pressing tight against Itachi so they are almost like one person, skin sliding against bare skin. Their breath mingles between them in sucking gasps, as though there just -- isn’t - enough -- air.
Shisui braces his elbows above Itachi’s shoulders and sucks on the place where his neck joins his shoulder. Itachi gasps again, acutely aware of the heat between their legs where Shisui’s rolling thrusts have not ceased, but these kisses on his neck are sending more and more waves of pleasure to his groin. Everything seems more real, and for this crystalline moment, all abstraction is banished. The grass is soft against his bare arms and there’s a cool breeze brushing over his skin, all the details of the world in sharp focus, all the sensory input exuberantly on board.
Shisui’s body is hard against his, and they are moving together - he can see his cousin’s face above him, flushed and panting, ragged with this burning arousal. Shisui’s breath catches in his throat in a way that is shockingly beautiful. Itachi decides he likes him this way, but Shisui seems more intent on making Itachi lose the use of functional language, because his touch is burning skin as it goes. The sweat between them sends Shisui’s hand slicking against Itachi’s chin, fingers splayed out, and into his hair, clenching tight. The world shutters, blinking rapidly, and Itachi knows he has to capture this moment before it spirals away, lost in the increasing pace of their thrusting hips. He moves his hands to either side of Shisui’s face and crushes their lips together, hard, willing Shisui to understand through sheer pressure and the ecstatic feeling of their skin touching.
“Heh,” Shisui whispers back, breathless. “Yeah, I know. It’s pretty awesome, cuz.”
The only place he has room to breathe is in Shisui’s mouth, and his cousin’s voice is the only thing he hears. Shisui groans, low and needy against his ear and the sound jolts right between his legs. They are very sweaty, Itachi notes detachedly. Shisui rolls against him again, pressing shoulder to groin, and he can feel his heartbeat echoing riotously throughout his body. The throbbing heat pounding through his blood is almost too much.
Shisui is muttering, “Itachi.. stay with me,” against his collarbone, and so he does, wrapping his arms desperately around Shisui’s shoulders. He breathes against Shisui’s skin, tasting sweat wherever he presses his lips and drags in air. The pleasure accelerates to a white hot singularity, cresting as the shock of release rips through him. A second later, Shisui gasps and shudders above him, and, brat that he is, bites down on the cord of Itachi’s neck as he trembles, squeezing Itachi’s shoulders in his hands hard enough to bruise. Itachi, for his part, tries to reel in his scattered breath. It seems like they are one person instead of two as the aftershocks tingle delightfully across their skin, like the ripples passing over one body of water.
Of course I could live for this. No wonder people do. Shisui - Shisui cannot be described, so this feeling is a small shadow that he can’t contain anymore. He’s struck by the force of the realization that, probably, people fall in love all the time. Probably everyone gets this rush, and everybody thinks theirs is special. But of course, no one else has Shisui, all awkward angles and jaunty smiles. It seems like an irreconcilable fact, that he can be so caught in Shisui’s grin, and all of a sudden, he’s choking on an unbidden rush of terrifyingly maudlin metaphors.
You’re already perfect.
You feel like home.
He can feel his heartbeat slowly return to normal, waiting it out since neither of them seems willing to break the moment. Clarity seeps in slowly, the moments replaying in little flashes, seeming etched into his skin, new patterns woven on top of old ones. Their relationship has changed forever, but Itachi doesn’t feel afraid. The future, green lights and all, is his right now. He feels safer than ever pressed against Shisui, a comfortable weight on top of him. Though- the immediacy of it, the physical reality, he can’t escape. He can feel his neck start to heat up ever so slightly and tries to smother the rising embarrassment. Fortunately, he has Shisui to ruin precious moments for him.
“Well!” Shisui pulls up, resting on his elbows, the sheen of sweat slowly evaporating off his skin; glowing faintly, if Itachi was pressed to characterize the way he looks right now. “Not half bad, am I?” and looks so ridiculously pleased with himself Itachi wants to hide his face and die of embarrassment somewhere else. Except he doesn't want to leave, or be anywhere else. He should have expected this, really. It’s no one’s fault but his own for engaging with a madman like Shisui on an intimate level. Itachi tunes back in to hear “…I am a god among men, clearly you haven't been paying attention when they talk of my studly powers of seduction-”
“Who have you been seducing, then?” Itachi grins up at him, managing to not make it a wobbly, uncertain smile. Shisui smiles with his eyes at half-mast and locked with Itachi's, a look Itachi is sure is reserved only for him, crafted out of their friendship, born somewhere between the breadth of Shisui's shoulders and Itachi's hands steady against his cousin's hipbones. Shisui leans in and breathes against Itachi's lips.
“Nobody,” by which he means nobody as important as you. They press lips lazily, and Itachi wonders if the ease of this act is some kind of sign of bad luck. It can't be this easy, right? It can't be so effortless and perfect, like in all their long trajectory, they were aimed solidly at this point. But the worry passes him by, lost as he turns his face into Shisui’s neck, smiling as his cousin drops his head exhaustedly onto Itachi.
“…we’re gonna stay here, okay? Just for a little while.” Shisui mumbles. Itachi nods against him.
Blue light caresses them as they huddle into each other, skin to skin, arms and legs tangled endlessly. Shisui never shuts up, even in sleep, murmuring whispered nonsense against Itachi’s clavicles, his neck, the palm of his hand. In the chilling night air, their bodies press yet closer together, seeking warmth, cold and warm skin twining in a helpless rush.
The morning will wait.
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...please no one kill me. also i'm aware that the just-kiss-the-other-party trick is a well-used (overused) trope.. but everyone gets to use it once, right?
I even love you guys enough to give you fat, ugly chibis. ♥
This is art accompanying my earlier fic, A Guidebook for the Newly Dead... so this is either the lantern spirit itself, or Shisui-as-a-spirit walking under the water of the Nakano, YOU DECIDE. :3
I have literally given up on giving Itachi any masculine features at all, and just draw him like i draw girls. ._. this is a sad thing.
shisui is... um, seductive.
...Shut up, Sasuke can be Luke a Jedi. He's about to yell at Jabba the Hutt. He's got it all down, right to the angst and emo-powered mind control!