(no subject)
All that indicates the man's presence is the lengthy shadow of his silhouette streaked across the couch, heels of bare feet propped on the edge of the coffee table, dark hair long across his brow and over the pale shape of his mouth. There's a light on in the kitchen that he's left that way, though the rest of the apartment is steeped in darkness, even the foyer swallowed up by it.
It's long before Eli is due back from work, and the sunlight that comes in through the window has had time to fade into the horizon. He shifts once to lean his elbow against the arm of the couch, creasing the leather upholstery, and then goes still again, eyes closed peacefully.
---
So it's hours later when the door cracks open before he pushes it with his hip, hands full with bags of groceries that he sort of...staggers in with, blinking at the dimness of the apartment.
He'd expected complete darkness or full light, but it doesn't exactly shock him--he wouldn't be surprised if Itachi had moved from one space to another and preferred the slanted line between light and dark, the greyish coloring of everything when it falls under a half-bright setting.
But the fact that Itachi's sitting in the darkness of shadows created by that dimness does startle him a little, and he moves forward to see if the man is asleep sitting up.
He wouldn't put that past him, either.
---
It's immediately evident that there is something off.
Not enough to panic outright, but enough to make a difference. Itachi doesn't open his eyes at the arrival of the boy, though he hears it, shifting slightly on the seat of the couch. His throat works, swallowing air and spit without parting his lips.
He says nothing, though there's evidence he isn't asleep, given how long Eli has known him and how well he's grown used to Itachi's habits and behavior. Sleeping would mean light unconsciousness; he's completely alert, here.
Abruptly and without warning, the man's hand reaches out to grip Eli by the wrist, hard. The circle of his fingers is bruising, but he only applies enough strength to drag Eli onto the couch with him, just from the touch of his hand.
---
Eli arches a brow as soon as he notices that Itachi isn't asleep, turning his head and cocking a strange look down at the man's face.
Something's off, sure. But there are a lot of things off about him, so he doesn't exactly run for the hills.
And by the time it occurs to him that that might've been a really fucking good idea, it's too late. All Eli does in reaction to being pulled down as though he weighs nothing at all and has no control over his joints is hiss a few harsh words in the darkness.
"Jesus /christ/--"
Good thing he locked the door behind him. Yeah.
---
Itachi catches the boy's weight with his own thin frame, solid as if it's been made from steel instead of bone, muscle well-defined under the fabric of his black shirt. His arm at once goes around Eli's waist, trapping him there in close confinement.
It isn't quite...what it should be. The way he handles Eli is rough, like he might handle an object, not sensual, not as though he's aiming to ruffle Eli's nerves a little before drawing him in for a kiss. There's something dark about Itachi's expression, foreign and misplaced.
Ignoring the curse, he swaps their positions in order to straddle the boy's knees, leaning down over him. There's a flash of silver to signal the blade that carries down and plunges deep into the cushion beside Eli's head, narrowly missing the line of his jaw.
---
His body reflexively tenses and attempts to draw away from the sharp angles of Itachi's own as soon as he hits him, and he finds his attempts to pull away about as effective and flexible as flinging himself on a chain tether.
And while he doesn't always expect Itachi to treat him like some sort of delicate feather, he knows that the man doesn't really seem to enjoy being very violent with him. So the boy turns his head away a little from Itachi's own, until he finds himself on his back without so much as a single moment's worth of warning.
It's enough to make him dizzy, and he hears a high pitched tone between his ears, the way he does when he's been to a long, loud show.
But the knife was definitely not expected, and the moment he sees it and realises just how close it had come, alarms scream to life like a fire drill in his psyche. He's trying to squirm away immediately, eyes suddenly large and unblinking as he claws at anything he can reach to get some leverage.
---
When Itachi shifts, it seems for a moment as if something fluid has taken over his body and spread through his joints, dragging the blade from the gutted cushion. Everything about him is jagged and lethal, black eyes invisible in the darkness of the living room.
He looks too far gone to be pulled out of this with words, transforming the situation into another game of cat and mouse. And he's good at games. Eli may not know the taste of that blade except from what they've tried together, with enough blurred lines to smear blood and bring pain, but the monster that's taken over here is not Itachi. Whatever is sitting in his head is piloting every action he makes, and it only has a single motive.
The man kneels back on his knees long enough to let Eli wrench himself from underneath his weight, watching the boy panic with a calm, passive stare. He switches the blade in his grip with one quick flash of movement, swinging his arm left-handed at Eli's retreating figure.
It catches its target, unsurprisingly, and he watches the deep gash open on the boy's forearm with a certain amount of dark pleasure.
---
He doesn't have the breath to scream, mostly lurching away as quickly as he can though the fact that he was able to in the first place sprouts a nasty little seed of worry in the back of his mind.
And Eli also doesn't have time (yet) to feel anything but terror, though bursting into tears right now might be sort of appropriate. The boy only chokes on his own breath as he half collides with the door and watches the knife splinter the wood of the surface in front of him.
For a moment, he can't believe the way his skin is parted, the amount of blood coming from it. But then he flings himself away from the door and bolts for the window and the fire escape, knowing full well he won't make it.
---
He doesn't have the breath to scream, mostly lurching away as quickly as he can though the fact that he was able to in the first place sprouts a nasty little seed of worry in the back of his mind.
And Eli also doesn't have time (yet) to feel anything but terror, though bursting into tears right now might be sort of appropriate. The boy only chokes on his own breath as he half collides with the door and watches the knife splinter the wood of the surface in front of him.
For a moment, he can't believe the way his skin is parted, the amount of blood coming from it. But then he flings himself away from the door and bolts for the window and the fire escape, knowing full well he won't make it.
---
Itachi is there before he can get far, sliding between Eli and the window to make a physical barrier against possible escape. He doesn't have to try, strength from over twenty years of training doing the work for him as he slams Eli into the nearest wall, knocking the boy's skull against the large corner of a picture frame. It's hard enough that he'll see black, but not enough to knock him out cold.
Some of the blood from the wound smears the paint on the wall, bright cherry-red, and Itachi gives the stain a cursory glance before his attention shifts. He lets Eli sink to the carpet unless he can find his footing, then grips the boy by a handful of hair.
Without a word, he drags the sharp, unyielding end of his blade shallowly across Eli's collarbone.
---
Before he can so much as back up, Itachi has thrown him like a boneless body. And he holds a hand to his temple, trying hard not to throw up from the pain that explodes acid into his nerve endings.
Then he barely manages to gasp enough air through his half-parted mouth to give a breathless sort of scream that sounds almost like Itachi's name, lifting another hand to clutch his head as though that will help him to feel like he's not losing his entire mind.
The hold on his hair hurts, even more painful because of the blow to his head. On his knees, he stares upward into the man's face with large, glass-like green eyes, moisture pooling on his lower lashes when the blade cuts him over the clavicle.
---
He drags this moment on for all its worth, lifting the opposite hand to stroke blunt, cruel fingertips through the boy's scalp of his hair, wrecking the carefully-combed fringe. Then he's pulling Eli onto his feet without giving him time to prepare for the movement, quietly whispering the command, "Up." It sounds strange in his normally silken, smoky voice, like something a monster would growl from the back of its throat.
Itachi wipes his fingers over the boy's collar to spread the blood over his fingers, then pushes them against Eli's mouth. It doesn't take much to get past the barrier of teeth; he has a resistence to pain enough to handle if Eli bites down, and works on making the boy swallow instead.
---
He's choking on the taste of copper in his mouth after he stumbles to his feet somehow, more strung along by fear than any other motivation.
The boy makes a low, guttural noise as he attempts to turn his head away instead of biting down on the man's fingers. He's flooded by the most obvious question (why?) but part of him already knows the answer that counts. So he barely resists, the fight already fading--it's faster than he'd normally give up, but he knows exactly what Itachi is capable of and then some: He doesn't stand a chance on his own.
---
Perhaps disappointed by the lack of a fight (though it's hard to tell anything about Itachi's expression, those glittering black eyes staring out from a dark void), he pulls his fingers loose from the boy's mouth and grips him by the chin. Then he steps close, their mouths hovering near, close to a kiss as if it's the most natural thing in the world to do right now.
Instead of leaning in for it, Itachi frees one hand and slides it into the boy's pocket, freeing his cell phone. He spares a cursory glance before tossing it behind them. It isn't like he thinks Eli would try to use it; he could finish and leave before help was anything more than a thought. But, maybe, Itachi likes to know it's just them. No interruptions.
There's a moment of swollen silence, before Itachi steps on the boy's right foot with his bare heel and kicks his knee in with the other foot, esentially cracking the bone of his shin in one swift movement. He wraps a strong arm around Eli's waist to hold him up, their mouths nearly rubbing together with the narrow distance he keeps. Every breath Eli lets go, Itachi swallows it back down.
---
The closer Itachi comes, however, the more Eli struggles to jerk away from him, holding his breath and practically writhing. The hold on his face comes, then, tight enough to bruise his face if he lives long enough for that to happen, and Eli throws his head back, twisting his neck and leaning back a little.
Then the boy watches his phone sail off into the darkness of the corner, and he weakly reaches an arm up as if he hadn't even thought to use it.
Which he hadn't.
And that's how scared he is, gut-wrenchingly, suffocatingly horrified by this and he doesn't think it can get much worse until it does. In the back of his mind, a particularly small, nasty little voice makes it known that this pattern is probably going to be repeating itself over and over again for a while.
Playing with his food, indeed.
Eli's patella cracks into three uneven pieces under his skin, and the shin cleaves neatly under the same surface. It takes a few milliseconds for him to feel it, but he takes in a nauseated breath before he gives winded sort of shriek, attempting to double over and finding himself pressed up against the man's body instead.
So he grips onto him as tightly as he can in some perverse version of intimacy, half sobbing against the man's lips and cursing him viciously under his breath, the pain waking him and making him furious.
---
He easily holds the boy's weight with his arm, eventually lifting Eli's legs up around his waist to carry him, long hair tucked neatly over his shoulder, though several strands catch the wound along Eli's collar and come away soaked with blood.
Itachi's mouth parts, enough to devour those sounds of agony off of the boy's lips. And he really kisses him this time, dragging his tongue across the crease of Eli's mouth, fingertips digging into narrow hips with a certain punctuated cruelty.
The kiss carries with it everything that's ever come into question between them, and he doesn't press forward with the expectation that Eli will return it. He takes, pushes deeper into the boy's mouth to retrieve the lingering vestige of spit-diluated copper.
It's a short distance to Eli's bedroom, where the man practically tosses him down, kneeling calmly at the end. He tilts his head in a faint, vicious smile that reflects in his eyes, their centers almost red with the distant concentration of moonlight from the window.
Then he speaks, in a voice not entirely there. "Why aren't you fighting me?"
---
His body finds this pattern comforting, even if his mind finds it insulting; Eli's good leg hooks around Itachi's waist and holds himself up against his will. Then he's being kissed without warning, and Itachi's guess had been more than right--
The boy is far beyond returning the gesture, and all he can do is try not to scream as Itachi sucks the life out of him. It's like throwing his breath into a black hole.
Being flung onto the bed jars his leg, and Eli barks a short, infuriated sound of pain as he attempts to curl onto his side. But the man won't even let him do that, trapping him with a look, and the boy props himself up on his elbows to stare at him as steadily as he can.
The words come up like vomit, though he's yet to empty the contents of his stomach.
"Because I know it isn't worth trying. Now you're just fucking with me." The last few words are spat out, not quite managing as much contempt as he wants to. It's swallowed up by something else entirely that threatens to rise up and smother anything else going on inside of him.
---
Itachi's eyes remain fixed on the boy, poised on his knees with all the elegance of a dancer, face thin and horribly beautiful in the pale light from the window. It leaves shadows in his face, until Itachi resembles something gaunt and inhuman.
With a quiet click of teeth, the man reaches out, laying a hand over the broken bone and skin of Eli's leg, squeezing. Gently. Enough to feel the rapid, terrified pulse in the palm of his hand.
"If you had called the police the night I refused to leave your store," Itachi's voice melts into one long, smooth tone of darkness, never fluctuating, "I might have stayed out of your life forever."
But that isn't what happened -- the slight arch of a brow clarifies.
"You know why I have to do this."
Itachi leans forward, brandishing the silver blade before plunging it into Eli's thigh, opposite of his wounded leg.
---
The pressure on his leg makes him snarl instead of sobbing the way he secretly wants to, and he stares at Itachi's face, trying to hate it.
...any minute now.
Moments pass, and then too many of them.
Nope. Nothing. Not a single shred of anything but anger--fury, even--betrayal, horror. Then there's that something again, lingering in the background.
"Yes, very fucking stupid of me, please--smugly--rub it in as much as you can, you fucking psycho--" He's biting words out around the pain, gasping for air.
He knows why he has to do this? What the fuck?
"No. I don't." And that's when he smiles, ruefully, eyes brimming over with water.
"It mighta taken me a while, maybe even a few more years, but I coulda given you a fuck of a lot more than one last good time--" As his voice wavers, so does his perfect enunciation, his voice blurring into itself the way it used to before he went to school.
And the new stab wound sends a thick, wet blanket of pain smacking down over his mental processes. Eli claps a hand over his mouth and merely gurgles.
---
His movements are completely mechanical, as if Itachi were in the steady process of taking something apart from the outside, eventually working down into its steel belly to wrap his fingers around hot wires and pull.
It doesn't get that far yet.
Itachi's eyes hood with a flicker of dark lashes, the thinness of his lips pinched into a half-crescent, sharp enough to bleed on alone. His mouth is red from their earlier kiss (if it could be called that), casting the illusion of color in his face -- though in reality the skin is pale as marble.
"Could you?" The words are thick and black, almost spat out of fury. "Do you even know what I need, Eli? You barely know who I am."
He's quiet for a few long minutes, letting Eli steep in the pain that likely flashes through his body. And then Itachi leans closer, a waiting vulture, covering the stab wound with the full spread of his palm. He laughs, but it rattles in his chest like there's nothing in there, just carved hollow space. "It didn't mean anything to me."
---
It almost occurs to him that Itachi looks very cruel in this light, but it's nothing compared to what the man says.
He doesn't understand why Itachi is so angry--shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't he feel more...something? Anything but this pathetic mix of very unpleasant feelings?
And steep he does. His breath comes shallow as he practically rolls around in the hurt the man is causing him, like jabbing at an open wound over and over again.
That last bit makes him tense up, and then he glances at Itachi's face before the brightness of the pain in his eyes immediately sputters and then flickers out. The irises might as well be pieces of seafoam colored tile, the dullness of them rendering them practically opaque in this light.
Wherever he is, it's not here. In fact, the boy tilts his head a little and turns it partially away.
---
He doesn't force Eli to look back, although for a moment it seems like he might. But he knows he won't find anything there.
Itachi expels a long, slow breath, emptying the air from his lungs. He goes through the motions like he's done this a thousand times, and he might as well have, even if his acts of cold murder are very few and far between (and never this elaborate).
This is different; the circumstances require suffering.
A shadow of a smile touches the man's lips, on the edge of agonizing, the black of his eyes exstinguishing the expression from his face until there's nothing left. Itachi moves closer, nudges between the boy's legs, reminiscent of a dozen other instances not quite as brutal as this.
He pauses, only to shift with the faint rustle of clothing and push his long hair back. There's the sound of a sickening crunch before Itachi scatters the broken remnants of his earrings across the sheets, across Eli's skin.
Then he raises his arm, in one clean stroke bringing the long blade down into Eli's chest, over his heart. Unlike Eli's leg, it's a little more difficult, but eventually Itachi works the blade at an angle that it sinks deep into like butter. The blood comes up almost instantly, bright red and hot.
It's long before Eli is due back from work, and the sunlight that comes in through the window has had time to fade into the horizon. He shifts once to lean his elbow against the arm of the couch, creasing the leather upholstery, and then goes still again, eyes closed peacefully.
---
So it's hours later when the door cracks open before he pushes it with his hip, hands full with bags of groceries that he sort of...staggers in with, blinking at the dimness of the apartment.
He'd expected complete darkness or full light, but it doesn't exactly shock him--he wouldn't be surprised if Itachi had moved from one space to another and preferred the slanted line between light and dark, the greyish coloring of everything when it falls under a half-bright setting.
But the fact that Itachi's sitting in the darkness of shadows created by that dimness does startle him a little, and he moves forward to see if the man is asleep sitting up.
He wouldn't put that past him, either.
---
It's immediately evident that there is something off.
Not enough to panic outright, but enough to make a difference. Itachi doesn't open his eyes at the arrival of the boy, though he hears it, shifting slightly on the seat of the couch. His throat works, swallowing air and spit without parting his lips.
He says nothing, though there's evidence he isn't asleep, given how long Eli has known him and how well he's grown used to Itachi's habits and behavior. Sleeping would mean light unconsciousness; he's completely alert, here.
Abruptly and without warning, the man's hand reaches out to grip Eli by the wrist, hard. The circle of his fingers is bruising, but he only applies enough strength to drag Eli onto the couch with him, just from the touch of his hand.
---
Eli arches a brow as soon as he notices that Itachi isn't asleep, turning his head and cocking a strange look down at the man's face.
Something's off, sure. But there are a lot of things off about him, so he doesn't exactly run for the hills.
And by the time it occurs to him that that might've been a really fucking good idea, it's too late. All Eli does in reaction to being pulled down as though he weighs nothing at all and has no control over his joints is hiss a few harsh words in the darkness.
"Jesus /christ/--"
Good thing he locked the door behind him. Yeah.
---
Itachi catches the boy's weight with his own thin frame, solid as if it's been made from steel instead of bone, muscle well-defined under the fabric of his black shirt. His arm at once goes around Eli's waist, trapping him there in close confinement.
It isn't quite...what it should be. The way he handles Eli is rough, like he might handle an object, not sensual, not as though he's aiming to ruffle Eli's nerves a little before drawing him in for a kiss. There's something dark about Itachi's expression, foreign and misplaced.
Ignoring the curse, he swaps their positions in order to straddle the boy's knees, leaning down over him. There's a flash of silver to signal the blade that carries down and plunges deep into the cushion beside Eli's head, narrowly missing the line of his jaw.
---
His body reflexively tenses and attempts to draw away from the sharp angles of Itachi's own as soon as he hits him, and he finds his attempts to pull away about as effective and flexible as flinging himself on a chain tether.
And while he doesn't always expect Itachi to treat him like some sort of delicate feather, he knows that the man doesn't really seem to enjoy being very violent with him. So the boy turns his head away a little from Itachi's own, until he finds himself on his back without so much as a single moment's worth of warning.
It's enough to make him dizzy, and he hears a high pitched tone between his ears, the way he does when he's been to a long, loud show.
But the knife was definitely not expected, and the moment he sees it and realises just how close it had come, alarms scream to life like a fire drill in his psyche. He's trying to squirm away immediately, eyes suddenly large and unblinking as he claws at anything he can reach to get some leverage.
---
When Itachi shifts, it seems for a moment as if something fluid has taken over his body and spread through his joints, dragging the blade from the gutted cushion. Everything about him is jagged and lethal, black eyes invisible in the darkness of the living room.
He looks too far gone to be pulled out of this with words, transforming the situation into another game of cat and mouse. And he's good at games. Eli may not know the taste of that blade except from what they've tried together, with enough blurred lines to smear blood and bring pain, but the monster that's taken over here is not Itachi. Whatever is sitting in his head is piloting every action he makes, and it only has a single motive.
The man kneels back on his knees long enough to let Eli wrench himself from underneath his weight, watching the boy panic with a calm, passive stare. He switches the blade in his grip with one quick flash of movement, swinging his arm left-handed at Eli's retreating figure.
It catches its target, unsurprisingly, and he watches the deep gash open on the boy's forearm with a certain amount of dark pleasure.
---
He doesn't have the breath to scream, mostly lurching away as quickly as he can though the fact that he was able to in the first place sprouts a nasty little seed of worry in the back of his mind.
And Eli also doesn't have time (yet) to feel anything but terror, though bursting into tears right now might be sort of appropriate. The boy only chokes on his own breath as he half collides with the door and watches the knife splinter the wood of the surface in front of him.
For a moment, he can't believe the way his skin is parted, the amount of blood coming from it. But then he flings himself away from the door and bolts for the window and the fire escape, knowing full well he won't make it.
---
He doesn't have the breath to scream, mostly lurching away as quickly as he can though the fact that he was able to in the first place sprouts a nasty little seed of worry in the back of his mind.
And Eli also doesn't have time (yet) to feel anything but terror, though bursting into tears right now might be sort of appropriate. The boy only chokes on his own breath as he half collides with the door and watches the knife splinter the wood of the surface in front of him.
For a moment, he can't believe the way his skin is parted, the amount of blood coming from it. But then he flings himself away from the door and bolts for the window and the fire escape, knowing full well he won't make it.
---
Itachi is there before he can get far, sliding between Eli and the window to make a physical barrier against possible escape. He doesn't have to try, strength from over twenty years of training doing the work for him as he slams Eli into the nearest wall, knocking the boy's skull against the large corner of a picture frame. It's hard enough that he'll see black, but not enough to knock him out cold.
Some of the blood from the wound smears the paint on the wall, bright cherry-red, and Itachi gives the stain a cursory glance before his attention shifts. He lets Eli sink to the carpet unless he can find his footing, then grips the boy by a handful of hair.
Without a word, he drags the sharp, unyielding end of his blade shallowly across Eli's collarbone.
---
Before he can so much as back up, Itachi has thrown him like a boneless body. And he holds a hand to his temple, trying hard not to throw up from the pain that explodes acid into his nerve endings.
Then he barely manages to gasp enough air through his half-parted mouth to give a breathless sort of scream that sounds almost like Itachi's name, lifting another hand to clutch his head as though that will help him to feel like he's not losing his entire mind.
The hold on his hair hurts, even more painful because of the blow to his head. On his knees, he stares upward into the man's face with large, glass-like green eyes, moisture pooling on his lower lashes when the blade cuts him over the clavicle.
---
He drags this moment on for all its worth, lifting the opposite hand to stroke blunt, cruel fingertips through the boy's scalp of his hair, wrecking the carefully-combed fringe. Then he's pulling Eli onto his feet without giving him time to prepare for the movement, quietly whispering the command, "Up." It sounds strange in his normally silken, smoky voice, like something a monster would growl from the back of its throat.
Itachi wipes his fingers over the boy's collar to spread the blood over his fingers, then pushes them against Eli's mouth. It doesn't take much to get past the barrier of teeth; he has a resistence to pain enough to handle if Eli bites down, and works on making the boy swallow instead.
---
He's choking on the taste of copper in his mouth after he stumbles to his feet somehow, more strung along by fear than any other motivation.
The boy makes a low, guttural noise as he attempts to turn his head away instead of biting down on the man's fingers. He's flooded by the most obvious question (why?) but part of him already knows the answer that counts. So he barely resists, the fight already fading--it's faster than he'd normally give up, but he knows exactly what Itachi is capable of and then some: He doesn't stand a chance on his own.
---
Perhaps disappointed by the lack of a fight (though it's hard to tell anything about Itachi's expression, those glittering black eyes staring out from a dark void), he pulls his fingers loose from the boy's mouth and grips him by the chin. Then he steps close, their mouths hovering near, close to a kiss as if it's the most natural thing in the world to do right now.
Instead of leaning in for it, Itachi frees one hand and slides it into the boy's pocket, freeing his cell phone. He spares a cursory glance before tossing it behind them. It isn't like he thinks Eli would try to use it; he could finish and leave before help was anything more than a thought. But, maybe, Itachi likes to know it's just them. No interruptions.
There's a moment of swollen silence, before Itachi steps on the boy's right foot with his bare heel and kicks his knee in with the other foot, esentially cracking the bone of his shin in one swift movement. He wraps a strong arm around Eli's waist to hold him up, their mouths nearly rubbing together with the narrow distance he keeps. Every breath Eli lets go, Itachi swallows it back down.
---
The closer Itachi comes, however, the more Eli struggles to jerk away from him, holding his breath and practically writhing. The hold on his face comes, then, tight enough to bruise his face if he lives long enough for that to happen, and Eli throws his head back, twisting his neck and leaning back a little.
Then the boy watches his phone sail off into the darkness of the corner, and he weakly reaches an arm up as if he hadn't even thought to use it.
Which he hadn't.
And that's how scared he is, gut-wrenchingly, suffocatingly horrified by this and he doesn't think it can get much worse until it does. In the back of his mind, a particularly small, nasty little voice makes it known that this pattern is probably going to be repeating itself over and over again for a while.
Playing with his food, indeed.
Eli's patella cracks into three uneven pieces under his skin, and the shin cleaves neatly under the same surface. It takes a few milliseconds for him to feel it, but he takes in a nauseated breath before he gives winded sort of shriek, attempting to double over and finding himself pressed up against the man's body instead.
So he grips onto him as tightly as he can in some perverse version of intimacy, half sobbing against the man's lips and cursing him viciously under his breath, the pain waking him and making him furious.
---
He easily holds the boy's weight with his arm, eventually lifting Eli's legs up around his waist to carry him, long hair tucked neatly over his shoulder, though several strands catch the wound along Eli's collar and come away soaked with blood.
Itachi's mouth parts, enough to devour those sounds of agony off of the boy's lips. And he really kisses him this time, dragging his tongue across the crease of Eli's mouth, fingertips digging into narrow hips with a certain punctuated cruelty.
The kiss carries with it everything that's ever come into question between them, and he doesn't press forward with the expectation that Eli will return it. He takes, pushes deeper into the boy's mouth to retrieve the lingering vestige of spit-diluated copper.
It's a short distance to Eli's bedroom, where the man practically tosses him down, kneeling calmly at the end. He tilts his head in a faint, vicious smile that reflects in his eyes, their centers almost red with the distant concentration of moonlight from the window.
Then he speaks, in a voice not entirely there. "Why aren't you fighting me?"
---
His body finds this pattern comforting, even if his mind finds it insulting; Eli's good leg hooks around Itachi's waist and holds himself up against his will. Then he's being kissed without warning, and Itachi's guess had been more than right--
The boy is far beyond returning the gesture, and all he can do is try not to scream as Itachi sucks the life out of him. It's like throwing his breath into a black hole.
Being flung onto the bed jars his leg, and Eli barks a short, infuriated sound of pain as he attempts to curl onto his side. But the man won't even let him do that, trapping him with a look, and the boy props himself up on his elbows to stare at him as steadily as he can.
The words come up like vomit, though he's yet to empty the contents of his stomach.
"Because I know it isn't worth trying. Now you're just fucking with me." The last few words are spat out, not quite managing as much contempt as he wants to. It's swallowed up by something else entirely that threatens to rise up and smother anything else going on inside of him.
---
Itachi's eyes remain fixed on the boy, poised on his knees with all the elegance of a dancer, face thin and horribly beautiful in the pale light from the window. It leaves shadows in his face, until Itachi resembles something gaunt and inhuman.
With a quiet click of teeth, the man reaches out, laying a hand over the broken bone and skin of Eli's leg, squeezing. Gently. Enough to feel the rapid, terrified pulse in the palm of his hand.
"If you had called the police the night I refused to leave your store," Itachi's voice melts into one long, smooth tone of darkness, never fluctuating, "I might have stayed out of your life forever."
But that isn't what happened -- the slight arch of a brow clarifies.
"You know why I have to do this."
Itachi leans forward, brandishing the silver blade before plunging it into Eli's thigh, opposite of his wounded leg.
---
The pressure on his leg makes him snarl instead of sobbing the way he secretly wants to, and he stares at Itachi's face, trying to hate it.
...any minute now.
Moments pass, and then too many of them.
Nope. Nothing. Not a single shred of anything but anger--fury, even--betrayal, horror. Then there's that something again, lingering in the background.
"Yes, very fucking stupid of me, please--smugly--rub it in as much as you can, you fucking psycho--" He's biting words out around the pain, gasping for air.
He knows why he has to do this? What the fuck?
"No. I don't." And that's when he smiles, ruefully, eyes brimming over with water.
"It mighta taken me a while, maybe even a few more years, but I coulda given you a fuck of a lot more than one last good time--" As his voice wavers, so does his perfect enunciation, his voice blurring into itself the way it used to before he went to school.
And the new stab wound sends a thick, wet blanket of pain smacking down over his mental processes. Eli claps a hand over his mouth and merely gurgles.
---
His movements are completely mechanical, as if Itachi were in the steady process of taking something apart from the outside, eventually working down into its steel belly to wrap his fingers around hot wires and pull.
It doesn't get that far yet.
Itachi's eyes hood with a flicker of dark lashes, the thinness of his lips pinched into a half-crescent, sharp enough to bleed on alone. His mouth is red from their earlier kiss (if it could be called that), casting the illusion of color in his face -- though in reality the skin is pale as marble.
"Could you?" The words are thick and black, almost spat out of fury. "Do you even know what I need, Eli? You barely know who I am."
He's quiet for a few long minutes, letting Eli steep in the pain that likely flashes through his body. And then Itachi leans closer, a waiting vulture, covering the stab wound with the full spread of his palm. He laughs, but it rattles in his chest like there's nothing in there, just carved hollow space. "It didn't mean anything to me."
---
It almost occurs to him that Itachi looks very cruel in this light, but it's nothing compared to what the man says.
He doesn't understand why Itachi is so angry--shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't he feel more...something? Anything but this pathetic mix of very unpleasant feelings?
And steep he does. His breath comes shallow as he practically rolls around in the hurt the man is causing him, like jabbing at an open wound over and over again.
That last bit makes him tense up, and then he glances at Itachi's face before the brightness of the pain in his eyes immediately sputters and then flickers out. The irises might as well be pieces of seafoam colored tile, the dullness of them rendering them practically opaque in this light.
Wherever he is, it's not here. In fact, the boy tilts his head a little and turns it partially away.
---
He doesn't force Eli to look back, although for a moment it seems like he might. But he knows he won't find anything there.
Itachi expels a long, slow breath, emptying the air from his lungs. He goes through the motions like he's done this a thousand times, and he might as well have, even if his acts of cold murder are very few and far between (and never this elaborate).
This is different; the circumstances require suffering.
A shadow of a smile touches the man's lips, on the edge of agonizing, the black of his eyes exstinguishing the expression from his face until there's nothing left. Itachi moves closer, nudges between the boy's legs, reminiscent of a dozen other instances not quite as brutal as this.
He pauses, only to shift with the faint rustle of clothing and push his long hair back. There's the sound of a sickening crunch before Itachi scatters the broken remnants of his earrings across the sheets, across Eli's skin.
Then he raises his arm, in one clean stroke bringing the long blade down into Eli's chest, over his heart. Unlike Eli's leg, it's a little more difficult, but eventually Itachi works the blade at an angle that it sinks deep into like butter. The blood comes up almost instantly, bright red and hot.