fic | asleep in the human world
First, some background. A geologic era ago, I wrote a fill for this prompt in the fic meme. The anon and emanga, clearly touched in the head, requested a sequel... If you are not acquainted with the art form known as Korean drama - and by proxy, excessive melodrama and art major biology - abort this mission now.
Title: Asleep in the Human World
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Soap opera. No, like, really.
Summary: Fools in love gently tearing each other limb from limb.
Asleep in the Human World
Fools in love gently tearing each other limb from limb.
In the end, Itachi went to the wedding.
Fourteen separate people greeted him with, “Wow! You’re actually here?” but that likely had more to do with the fact that he hadn’t been seen in public in half a year rather than any potential indiscretion on the groom’s part. The entire proceedings were just as tedious as he had imagined, and if Sasuke went back to the open bar one more time Itachi was going to have to stage an impromptu intervention for his brother which would probably dampen the festive mood somewhat. A dull pain was creeping up between his temples; he yearned for nothing more than to return to bed where the death match with Chapter 17 beckoned in comparative benevolence.
But since he’d allowed himself to be trapped in this situation, Itachi figured he might as well make the most of it. Perhaps he might even make a toast. He had all the embarrassing childhood stories and the humiliating college anecdotes. It would be unkind to deprive the guests of such prime entertainment. Because in all frankness, Itachi was actually quite good at weddings. He had attended them all his life; at this point, it was like riding a bike. Downhill. Without brakes.
As he was weaving his way to the center of the room, he heard a voice say, “Wow. You’re actually here?”
Itachi neither ran away nor reached for the nearest heavy object. He could feel tension crawling up the back of his neck, because he knew that voice and that as a corollary things were about to reach a level of intolerability previously unheard of.
He wheeled around and cracked a wooden smile, which Shisui summarily returned. He was wearing a full-length morning coat, and looked a bit like a mannequin in a bridal boutique’s window, everything down to the vacant, plastic gaze.
“Thanks for the gift,” Shisui said. “Was that a last minute decision too? Well, whatever it is, it must be nice, coming from you.”
Itachi didn’t say, “When you get divorced, I’ll get you something even nicer,” even though he was definitely thinking it. He said, “Don’t think so meanly of me. I picked out your gift weeks ago. I wanted to have it delivered after the wedding and-”
“You could’ve at least fought for me,” Shisui cut in bluntly.
Itachi stared at him. “Do you really want to do this here? Now?”
“Why not?” Shisui countered. “You’d rather do it at the reception dinner in front of the whole family? Because that can be arranged.”
“How much have you had to drink?”
Enough, evidently, for him to forget where he was and make a grab for Itachi’s hand. This was different from last night. Last night, Shisui had come to negotiate; now, he was looking for a fight. One which Itachi wasn’t about to give him. He worked himself free and turned for the exit and the exitheexitexitexitex-
*
The ceiling was pale and dimly lit when he opened his eyes, and when he saw Shisui passed out in an armchair in the corner, Itachi had only just enough presence of mind to quietly reflect that he was so, so busted. His stirring roused Shisui, who straightened up and slowly massaged his eyelids. He was still wearing the tuxedo but the awful morning coat had gone AWOL and his collars were a lost cause. His hair looked like it had recently passed through a wind tunnel.
“Want some water?” Shisui asked quietly.
Itachi shook his head. “I apologize for… the disruption,” he tried weakly.
Shisui’s expression informed him exactly what he thought of this ‘apology’. “Stage III hepatic cancer?” he said. “Somehow, you didn’t think that your family might have wanted to know about something like that?”
“It was a late diagnosis to begin with,” Itachi said. “I thought I would have more time.”
“More time for what? What were you waiting for?” Shisui rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm, and then said, “Look, I get it,” sounding gratingly diplomatic. “I get what you’ve been trying to do. This is why you’ve been holing up in your apartment and trying to make everyone leave you alone, isn’t it? And this is why you broke up with-”
“You don’t get anything.” It was just a tiny bit gratifying to see Shisui flinch. “What are you even doing here, Shisui?” he said, staring at an extraordinarily white patch of wall. “You just got married. Go home to your wife, go on your honeymoon-I don’t want you here.”
“Itachi,” Shisui said, quiet and dismayed.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Itachi said, throat numb and tight. “Now please leave. I’d like to get some rest, if you don’t mind.”
He shut his eyes fiercely and gritted his teeth, and did not look until Shisui’s dejected footsteps had grown silent. It was fine. Everything was under control. This was what he wanted.
When he looked up again, it was to the sight of his brother wandering into the room. He too was still clad in formalwear, but seemed to have “lost” his jacket somewhere.
“Father and Mother are stepping out to grab a bite,” Sasuke said, making himself comfortable in the chair Shisui had vacated. “They said they’ll be back in about an hour.”
“You should have gone with them. Have you had anything to eat?”
“I’m fine right here.” The expression on Sasuke’s face finally settled and decided on a coherent emotion. “Is there anything I can do for you, nii-san?”
His anxious voice cut through right Itachi’s mind, agitating the same resigned ache he’d been accommodating for the last few weeks. He gave his brother a smile that felt ridiculous and feeble even on his own lips. “There is one thing. If you don’t mind, please get the keys from my jacket and go to my apartment. I need you to bring me something.”
*
“It’s after lights out, Uchiha-san!”
The woman who strode into his room looked all of twelve years old, but that didn’t make the hard look on her young, earnest face any less stern. Itachi closed his laptop, blinking at the sudden light streaming in from the doorway. He hadn’t realized how late it was, but then he never did seem to register those quiet hours spent with only the clack-clack-clacking of his keyboard for company, constant as raindrops.
The nurse-her name tag read: SONO KAEDE-made a disapproving noise, concern creasing her brows. “It’s late,” she said, and pulled the computer out of his grasp, setting it on the nightstand. “I’m sure this can wait.” And when Itachi just stared at her, part-fascinated part-stupefied, Kaede grabbed a clipboard from the end of his bed and flipped open his chart. “Do you feel sick? These medications can sometimes cause nausea.”
“Yes, I know,” said Itachi, massaging his throat. “I was in outpatient care before this. I’m used to all the unpleasantness.”
Kaede frowned, going through his chart. “You’re not getting chemo or immunotherapy yet?”
“Not until after surgery, I’m afraid.”
“And that’s coming up,” Kaede said quietly.
“Exactly,” Itachi agreed. “As you can see, I’m on quite the deadline.” He gave her his best gaze of grim, emaciated determination in hopes it might move her to relinquish his laptop, but no-go.
“So what is this project that you’re working on so industriously?” Kaede said, smiling sweetly as she hovered over his bed. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Not at all,” Itachi said. “I’m writing a novel.”
“You’re a writer?” Her eyes flared wide, and snapped back down to his chart. “Oh my God, are you-you wouldn’t happen to be the Uchiha Itachi, would you?”
“Which one is that?”
“I’ve read all of your books! Your writing is just-gosh, I have no words. Most of it goes right over my head of course, but it just gets to me in some way, I don’t even know how. But I had no idea you were, well, that you were so young. I mean, you’d never be able to tell from the writing but you can’t be much older than me.”
Kaede stopped abruptly, possibly realizing this might be kind of a tactless thing to say to a late-stage cancer patient. “My fiancée loves your work as well,” she covered, smiling hesitantly. “It’s sort of funny. We actually talked about one of your books on our first date.”
“You’re getting married?” Itachi asked. He figured he might as well play along, or she might never leave. “Congratulations.”
“Yes.” Kaede beamed. “We met in March, and a month ago, he proposed. Everyone I know thinks we’re rushing into it, but… well, we love each other! That’s enough for us. What’s the point in waiting, you know?” She grinned, bashful. “Now you’re probably thinking I’m simple.”
“Simple is good,” Itachi said. “But very difficult, in my experience.”
“If you keep your expectations low, everything will be simple,” Kaede said sagely. She gave him another shy smile, then turned out the light and left the room.
Alone, Itachi lay back down on his pillow and stared at the dark ceiling. “Is that what I’ve been doing?” he said, smiling to himself. “Have I kept my expectations too high?”
*
Things did not change for the better or worse over the next couple of days. He received remarkably few visitors, for which he was mostly glad. The family appeared to be keeping their distance, all with the exception of Sasuke who was a constant fixture that lurked by the door and took innumerable phone calls in the hallway, speaking in a tense, menacing tone that made Itachi feel a little sorry for whoever was on the other end.
He came back each time with drawn, harrowed shadows in his eyes, and Itachi couldn’t help but think that it wouldn’t do their family any good if every day he eked of his existence was a day siphoned from his brother’s lifespan.
“Is there anything I can do for you, nii-san?” Sasuke asked for the sixth time since lunch-a mere two hours ago.
“Well, I could use another Coke, if you don’t mind,” Itachi said without looking up from the computer. His arms ached all over from all the needle punctures, but he went on typing.
“I thought you didn’t like Coke.”
“I don’t, but since I’m not allowed coffee, I need to get my caffeine wherever I can.”
Sasuke frowned. “So why don’t you just go to sleep?” he asked. “This Diving Bell and the Butterfly crap you’ve got going on, it’s seriously freaking me out.”
Itachi lifted his eyes. “Perhaps you wouldn’t feel this way if you shared my work ethics.”
Sasuke glared at him. “That’s really low.”
“I’m very serious, Sasuke. Aren’t your quarter exams coming up? It would be such a shame if you were to fail out of university because you’ve spent all your time terrorizing the nursing staff.”
“Alright,” Sasuke said crabbily. “I’ll go home and cram all night, okay? Stop making big sad cancer eyes at me already.”
He pulled up a chair and settled down next to the bed, lacing his fingers in front of his mouth, eyes flicking right and left. Itachi recognized this pose even from their childhood; whatever was chewing at Sasuke must be having a hell of a time. His brother was nothing if not subtle like a skull fracture.
“Nii-san.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ve been talking to your doctor. She said that you’re going to need brain surgery.”
“So it seems.”
“I thought ‘hepatic’ means liver cancer. Why do you need brain surgery if you have liver cancer?”
Itachi stared at the screen before him in resigned exhaustion. The blinking cursor had cut off a sentence that ended in ‘lov-’. They had been dancing around an unbearable truth for so long it had gained haunted status. This exorcism was long overdue.
“The cancer is metastatic,” he said, modulating his voice carefully. “It’s already spread to my brain. Without surgery, the mets will kill me before chemotherapy has time to take effect. The doctors are hoping that the medications will shrink the tumors enough for them to operate, but the chances of success are fairly low.”
Sasuke looked back at him, eyes hard and wide and very dark. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m sick, Sasuke,” Itachi said, though it barely came out. “I’ve been sick for awhile now, and it’s quite likely that I’m not going to get better.”
“Why are you saying all this?” Sasuke asked after an aching silence, his voice so raw and pained it must have been scraped out of his throat, his guts. “Why are you telling me all this now?”
“Because I’m running out of time,” Itachi answered. “And because you’re an adult.” He ran these words over in his head, and smiled to himself. “You’re an adult. How did that happen?”
Sasuke’s face had the clear appearance of someone whose mind had just hit emergency brakes, screeching tires, smoking asphalt and all. He sank back down into his chair, boneless and defeated. “Fuck,” he said, slamming his fist into the mattress over and over. “Goddamn it.”
“This is it, Sasuke,” Itachi murmured, stroking his brother’s hair. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Sasuke said, voice blurred and watery, but vehement. “For your terminal illness or for lying about it?”
“I’m not going to be able to be around for you anymore. I wish I could have done a better job, be a better brother, but… well. I’m sorry.”
Sasuke squeezed his hands into the sheets, knuckles taut and bone-stark. “God, you’re stupid,” he gritted out. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
*
After a week during which time the entire nursing staff became ruefully resigned to his unsightly habits and took to sneaking him mildly caffeinated beverages behind the doctors’ backs, Itachi asked Kaede to help him make a call.
Shisui showed up barely fifteen minutes after receiving the message. He looked dreadful, restless and disheveled, bloodshot eyes enormous and taking over his face. Itachi couldn’t help thinking meanly that perhaps domestic bliss wasn’t all it was cracked up to be-but the way Shisui had swept into the room breathlessly and the crazy cocktail of hope and fear on his face made it very difficult for any amount of resentment to really stick.
“I came as quickly as I could,” Shisui said first thing, and Itachi found he couldn’t speak for a moment. This voice had been so dear to him for so long, he would never be used to that wild frantic edge it had acquired, the knowledge that it was he who had put it there. “The woman on the phone wouldn’t answer any of my questions. Is something wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong. I have something to discuss with you. Will you please have a seat?”
Shisui quietly complied but kept his wariness, like he was measuring the situation, gauging for reactions. Neither of them said anything for a moment.
“Here,” Itachi said finally, and handed Shisui a USB drive.
“What’s this?”
“The book I’ve been writing for the last year. I’ve finished it.”
“Oh,” Shisui said, relieved. “That’s… wow, that’s great. So, what’s it about?”
“Us.”
Shisui blinked. “Come again?”
“It’s about us. It’s our story, from beginning to end. I’ve poured everything I have into it, and now I’m giving it to you.”
“Seriously?” Shisui said, and laughed, embarrassed but pleased. “And you said you’d never stoop to navel-gazing.” And while Shisui was still beaming at the small object in his hand like he couldn’t even comprehend its existence, Itachi went on, “I’m not having the surgery.”
Shisui’s shoulders snapped, like he had been tasered. He stared at Itachi, sucker-punched, and this was unbelievably hard but he couldn’t turn back now.
“It’s unwise to gamble with such poor odds,” Itachi explained. “I’m grateful for the time I have had, and the reason I’m telling you this is because I hope we can settle our differences and put everything behind us. For whatever little time I have left, I’d like to have my best friend there.”
He waited for a moment, and when he received no reply, said, “Can you keep an eye on Sasuke for me? He’s smart, but he’s stubborn. He doesn’t know how to take care of himself. I know you two don’t always get along, but-you were good with me. You were a brother to me, and I’d like you to try to be one for mine as well.”
“So that’s it?”
Itachi looked up in surprise, and saw that Shisui’s eyes were dark and hollowed with some nameless, aching depth. “Wow,” he said, soft but caustic. “If I didn’t believe something was wrong with your brain before, I sure as hell do now.”
Without warning, he rose to his feet and threw the USB drive out the open window.
“You-”
“You give me this and ask me to look after your brother, and what-I’m supposed to be happy now?” Shisui said savagely. “That you’ve completed your magnum opus and can now peacefully go into the afterlife without any regrets? Is that what’s going on here?”
“Shisui…”
“Shut up,” Shisui snarled. “Let me tell you exactly what’s going to happen if you don’t have that surgery,” he continued, still in that flat, matter-of-fact tone that seemed to drill a hole into Itachi’s skull. “Let me tell you what your death will do to the people you supposedly love. Your family will be destroyed. Your brother? He’s going to be gutted. He’ll be completely broken and there won’t be a single thing that anyone will be able to do about it. And I’m not going to be able to take care of him because if you die - if you die - I will be just as broken. I’ll be destroyed. I’ll be the one who’ll need to be looked after.”
He knocked the chair out of his way and began to pace up and down the room, frenetic. “You may not realize this, Itachi-oh what am I saying, of course you do.” Shisui put his hand over his mouth, stifling a crazed, corrosive laugh. “I don’t see you anymore.” He stopped pacing and looked up at Itachi, so wrung out and empty it seemed a dried husk had taken his place. “When I look at you, I don’t see my cousin. I don’t see my best friend. I don’t see the brilliant, wonderful, breathtaking person I fell in love with, because all I see now is the cancer.”
Itachi just stared at Shisui impotently, clenching a handful of bed sheet. Shisui looked completely insane, and might at any moment evolve to dangerously insane. He debated running for it, but figured that with the IV stand attached to his body he probably wouldn’t get very far.
“Is that what you’re asking me to be around for? You think you’ll have time but to us, you’ll already be gone. It won’t be you that we’ll be living with-just this fucking disease.”
“Shisui, just stop it - I’m - ”
“You’ve got an inhuman capacity for determination. Once you set your mind to something you stick with it, and I love that about you but it’s not going to fly here. So no, you do not have my support. I’m not going to stick around to hold your hand as you gracefully walk into the light. If you don’t have that surgery, I’m done. I’m not giving you permission to die.”
He stomped forward and dragged Itachi up by the front of his scrubs, almost lifting him from the bed. “You didn’t want to fight for me,” Shisui said. “Fine, I can accept that-but you sure as hell have to fight for this. Fight for yourself, if no one else. Use your fucking determination for that.”
At that moment, the door swung open and Sasuke walked in. He immediately took in the situation, eyes flaring in shock and anger. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sasuke yelled, furious colors rushing into his cheeks.
Shisui let go of Itachi. “I know,” he said roughly, spinning on his heel. “I was just leaving.”
“Wait.”
Everyone turned to look at Itachi, who swallowed and said, “Sasuke, can you give us a moment?”
His brother still looked torn between reading Shisui the riot act or just cutting straight to the fisticuff, but after a moment deflated and made one last noise of rage before stalking out. The thick silence suddenly made the room enormous, unwieldy in size and scope, diluting the oxygen content to the point where it became difficult to breathe.
“Just one thing,” Itachi said. “I did want to fight for you.”
“What?” Shisui said, but Itachi held up his hand to quiet him.
“I did want to fight for you. But I told myself that I couldn’t do that to you.”
As Shisui looked on in confusion, Itachi gestured helplessly at his computer, lying on the bedside table. “This is all I know how to do. You know how it is. I’m not good with people. I lock myself up to write for months at a time. I don’t have any friends, my parents barely speak to me anymore-as far as family goes, you and Sasuke are about it.”
Shisui smoothed his hand over his mouth, muffling what sounded like a choked-off sob.
“Don’t think that I’m taking all the blame for this,” Itachi said sickly. “You made a choice too and that’s on you-but at least you tried. You tried to fight, and I drove you away. I convinced myself that it was your decision so I could let you go and let myself off the hook.”
None of it seemed worth it now, he realized in sickening horror, all those nights wandering around his huge, empty apartment looking for something he never managed to find, going through boxes and boxes of Shisui’s stuff, shoes and books and CDs, the worn-soft soccer jersey from his junior year and ancient issues of Shounen Jump Shisui had adamantly refused to throw out. Missing him so much he couldn’t breathe. All of it parsed now in a bleak miserable blur, dissipated like morning dew.
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he went on, and that was when his voice began to break. “I know I’m no good for you. I want you to leave, I want to be selfless. I want you to be happy. But-” He grappled with himself for a moment, fighting the blockade in his throat, and before he knew it all the words he’d never found the sounds to shape came rushing out in a debilitating flood. “Don’t leave me, Shisui,” he heard himself beg. “I’m sorry I didn’t fight for you. I want you to be happy but I can’t let you go. I-”
“Goddamn it, just shut up already,” Shisui said, grabbing Itachi’s face with both hands, palms pressed tightly to his cheeks. “If you say any more of this stupid crap, I’m going to need surgery to revive all the brain cells you’ve killed.”
He clambered onto the bed, shoes and all, and hauled Itachi into his lap. Shisui kissed his mouth, his neck, his temple-any and every patch of skin he could reach, enforcing silence with his quick, desperate lips. Itachi was fully aware that they were plowing headlong into home-wrecking territory now but he couldn’t help himself, and had no intention to anyway. Instead, he buried his face into the hollow of Shisui’s shoulder and clung to him in a sick mimicry of a drowning victim, digging his fingers into Shisui’s arms like he was his last lifeline. I was here first. I branded him for myself-he’s mine and no one else’s.
“I’ve been thinking,” Itachi muttered, feeling kind of insane, feverish and unhinged. “I can’t really stand the thought of you sleeping with other people. So maybe I shouldn’t die just yet.”
“If you die, I’ll hate you forever,” Shisui said, sounding equally deranged. “I’ll vilify you at family gatherings and spread horrendous lies about you in the tabloids and make all your fangirls cry. So yeah, let’s not have anybody die if we can help it.”
A sniffling sound followed this statement, and just when Itachi thought this whole thing couldn’t get any less dignified, he saw that Shisui’s flushed cheeks were streaked with tears, that his eyes had gone all glassy and he was hiccupping for breaths. His own skin also felt suspiciously wet, so he reached for Shisui’s face and sealed their lips back together, just in case those desperate, needy noises in the back of his throat decided to turn into full-on sobs. So this was how you did it-kiss in words, kiss in apologies, each of them coronated with a glowing imperative, the soothing ambient light of a single-minded purpose-and the way Shisui looked afterward, raw and bruised and burst open, only meant that the healing process started now.
“There’s one more thing,” Itachi said gravely.
Shisui frowned, cautious. “What?”
“If I have surgery, they’re going to shave all my hair off. And with chemotherapy after that, I won’t be getting it back any time soon.”
For a moment, Shisui looked faintly horrorstricken. Then he snorted and said, “Well, we’ll see about getting you a really pretty wig. How do you feel about purple?”
*
“So your surgery is tomorrow?”
Itachi nodded. “The scans from this morning showed that most of the mets have shrunken considerably. The doctors think they can go in and take them out.”
“Are these doctors good?” Shisui asked suspiciously. “I don’t want some hack cutting into my boyfriend’s brain, know what I mean?”
“That would be terrible,” Itachi said dryly. “Then I would be bald and brain-damaged.”
The air between them was saturated with all the things that weren’t being said, such as his 17% survival rate or the fact that he might not wake up after surgery, or just croak on the table altogether. Even if all went well, he still had a long, exhausting fight ahead of him. There was no timeline. Waiting, watching, hoping, that was all that they had to look forward to.
But at least now, they could wait and watch and hope together, and that had to count for something. In all the ways that mattered, it counted a lot.
“Want to hear some juicy gossip?”
“Hmm?”
“Asako is filing for divorce,” Shisui said, sheepish. “I have to say, that’s got to be one of the shortest marriages in the history of this family.”
Itachi didn’t smile. Outwardly. “What happened?”
“Well, I’m never home, for one thing,” Shisui explained. “And the fact that I told her that I’ve been in love with you for ten years might also have had something to do with it.”
Itachi tried to prevent his eyes from rolling into the back of his head, but it was very hard. Suddenly, brain cancer seemed like an infinitely more merciful fate. “So I take it the merger won’t be happening after all,” he said bleakly. “How did that go over with the board?”
“No idea,” Shisui said, brazen. “I gave my two weeks’ notice before I spilled the beans. They can find some other sucker to put out to stud, but I’m done.”
“Our parents…”
Shisui shrugged. “Well, Dad’s not speaking to me, but that’s not actually a new development. Your parents looked slightly catatonic when I broke the news, but I’m sure they’ll get over it in time. The fact that you have cancer will probably help it along.” He pulled a face. “Everyone else seemed sort of unsurprised. It’s so insulting.”
“It’s because we’re so terrible,” Itachi said, almost serene. “Illness and humiliation, that’s how the gods punish awful people.”
“You’re incredibly hilarious,” Shisui muttered. He looked Itachi deep in the eye. “Listen, I’m not going to lie, it’s probably going to be rocky for at least a little while.” There had to be an award for such a colossal understatement. “But I promise you’ll still have your family, when all’s said and done. Sasuke, definitely. He’s vulturing the cafeteria as we speak”
“And you,” Itachi added.
“And me.” Shisui grinned at him. “But let’s face it, I’m a sure thing.”
“If I make it out of this alive, please promise that you’ll never quote that movie at me again.”
“If you make it out of this surgery, you can have whatever you want,” Shisui said. “Seriously, you just have to ask, no need to threaten to skin me with a box-cutter anymore.”
Itachi stared at him pointedly. “You didn’t seem very threatened at the time.”
“No,” Shisui admitted, mouth curving into a smirk. “Actually, it was even kind of hot.”
“Perhaps you’re the one who’s sick.”
In response, Shisui just took his hand and pressed his mouth gracefully to the knuckles. This was the kind of thing that made it so easy to fall in love with him, Itachi reflected. The real trouble was surviving the experience.
“How much time have I got until visiting hours are over?” Shisui asked.
Itachi glanced at the clock. “About an hour or so.”
A sly look flickered across Shisui’s face. He shrugged off his jacket, toed off his shoes and then climbed up on the bed, curling around Itachi like a human cocoon, dragging the blanket over them both. Itachi made some obligatory protesting noises but his head was foggy and Shisui smelled really nice, wind and leather and quality aftershave, so he kind of forgot what he was thinking and decided to just enjoy the probably-transient moment. He had a feeling his life would have been infinitely simpler had he adopted this mode of thought earlier and more frequently.
“Sasuke might come in.”
“Let him,” Shisui said. “I’m looking forward to the mental-scarring.” He laughed softly. “Did I mention he’s changing his major?”
“He’s what?”
“Yeah, to premed. He wants to be an oncologist. Can you imagine that brat in a lab with his punk hair trying to grow cell cultures?”
Itachi sighed. “I’ve ruined my brother’s life.”
“More like redefined it,” Shisui said, still creepily upbeat. “It’s what you do, you redefine people. Just like how you redefined me.”
Itachi grimaced. “My nausea is very bad these days, please don’t add to it.” After a moment, he continued, totally nonchalant, “Did you ever get that tattoo removed?”
In response, Shisui just peeled open his shirt. “Even if I hadn’t said anything, divorce was inevitable,” he said. “It was like I was already married. The whole thing felt like infidelity.”
He tucked his face into the curve of Itachi’s neck and slipped his hand inside his hospital gown, fingers lazily stroking the line of his stomach, the toasty skin. “Sorry about the whole-tossing your manuscript out the window thing. I got caught up in the moment.”
“Don’t trouble yourself over it,” Itachi said lightly. “I already mailed a copy to my agent beforehand. It’s being published whether you like it or not. Now the whole world will learn about our story.”
“I hope it tanks,” Shisui muttered darkly.
“I wouldn’t say that if I were you. We’re about to become impoverished soon. I’m drowning in medical bills, and you’re unemployed.”
“I can use the free time,” Shisui said with worrying alacrity. “And when you’ve recovered, think of all the sex we can have.” He lifted his chin long enough to make that appalling face that meant he was thinking about Itachi naked. “Real sex, not weepy morbid cancer sex.”
Whether Itachi was tired or had simply used up his supply of snarky comebacks in his latest masterpiece he didn’t know, but he let the comment slide. “I take back what I said before,” he said drowsily. “If I die, Shisui, you’re allowed to sleep with other people.”
“Shut up,” Shisui ordered, pressing a kiss to the curve of his shoulder. “It’ll be years before we have to worry about that.”
And then there's also this side story, which is possibly the most self-insert-y piece of fanfiction I've ever written:
The Boy Ain’t Right
Yesterday when Sasuke had woken up, it had been sunny. He remembered being highly irritated with this fact since he had had a wedding to attend and a nice hailstorm might have provided him with a cozy excuse to get out of it. Rolling out of bed, he had reflected upon his hatred of formalwear and public functions, which had devolved into an elaborate tangent about his misfortune of being born into one of possibly five families in all of Japan that still bought into this crap. It had ended with him making a resolution to get himself so fantastically shitfaced at the reception that the doubtlessly horrible memories of this day would have already been wiped from his mind by the following morning.
Today, it was still sunny when he got up, but nothing else was the same. Today, Sasuke didn’t worry about weddings, or formalwear, or soul-crushing familial mores. Today, he would give anything for things to go back to the way they had been yesterday morning.
It was just beginning to get dark when he stepped out of the hospital, the cityscape all noirish and glittering with moving headlights, a nascent dimming. He had skipped three lectures today and was already fifteen minutes late to his group research meeting, which gave him about another fifteen before Sakura began sending concerned text messages and Naruto started calling at mind-bogglingly annoying three and a half minute intervals. He had also promised Itachi to go home and hit the books. Obviously, the thing to do was to go get fantastically shitfaced.
Traffic slowed to nothing around him as he crossed the street. The bar was dark, low-ceilinged and still mostly empty, the usual patrons-hospital staff, presumably-not yet released from the daily, life-saving grind. He was halfway to the bar when someone said, “Little Sasuke.”
Shisui looked incredibly out of place in this shithole of a dive. Only up close and with a sharp eye could you see the wear and tear in his well-suited, clean-shaven disguise, the tousled signs of the bad seed. “You grew up so fast. Come have a drink, ‘s on me.”
“I can pay for my own liquor,” Sasuke said, but took a seat. There was an expensive bottle of scotch on the table, a glass in Shisui’s hand. The one without the wedding ring.
Shisui gazed at him with scrutiny. “You don’t like me very much,” he said flatly. “It’s okay. No need to deny it. Younger siblings always hate the first boyfriend.”
Sasuke raised an eyebrow. “Beg your pardon?”
“Don’t try to fake it.” Shisui waved his hand. “You knew about us. You’re like his other half, even if he hadn’t told you you’d have still figured it out by yourself.” He laid down his glass and lowered his voice into an almost-comedic whisper. “Can I tell you something, Sasuke?”
Sasuke shrugged. “Make it short. I’ve got somewhere to be.”
“I’ll try my best,” Shisui said facetiously. “This was about three months ago. I came home from work, and I’d just. There was this project that I’d been slaving over for almost a year, my golden baby, and it’d just wrapped up that day, and I was-I was happy. I was really - fucking - high, and I had all these crazy shit flying around in my head.”
Sasuke didn’t ask if the nose candy had been substandard that day, but he was thinking it.
“First thing I did walking through the door, I started talking about-fuck, about all these plans. Because I had all these plans for the future, you know? I wanted to come clean to everyone and just be done with all the secrecy and pussying around. What was so wrong about that? Well there he was, sitting at the kitchen counter drinking a creamy black-and-tan, listening to me talk. He just got this look-this weird as hell look on his face, and didn’t say a thing. The next day, I was told that I was moving out. After ten years, he ended it, just like that.”
“You don’t say,” Sasuke muttered, rolling his eyes.
“Ten fucking years.” Shisui stared at the ceiling. “That’s longer than the average marriage. Ten years of skulking around doing things on his terms and trying to hide it from friends and colleagues and the whole goddamn family, and the minute I suggested making a real thing out of it, bam, he spooked.”
Behind the counter, the barman was busying himself setting up shop, assiduously wiping down the scarred wood of the bar top. Some kind of sports program was playing at low volume, the static-filled radio babbling somewhere amongst the rows of glasses.
“The timing couldn’t have been more spectacular,” Shisui was saying, “because not a week later my old man came by with a request-nah, an order for me to go to a marriage meeting. So I said fine, whatever, and I went to the interview. Everything was moving so fast, but I kept telling myself, ‘He’ll come around, he’ll come around,’ and before I knew it I was standing in a reception hall in a morning coat putting a ring on some girl’s finger, and I remembered looking down into the crowd and seeing him standing there-clapping. I wanted to kill him.”
Sasuke had the sudden nebulous thought that he, too, would like to kill a very specific someone. His bloodlust was lost on Shisui, who was still babbling a mile a minute. “The sick thing is it’s only now that I realize-the look from that day? That weird look he got when I told him about all my plans? That wasn’t the look of some commitment-phobe freaking out about intimacy.”
Shisui slammed his glass down on the table with a clunking noise, and looked Sasuke hard in the eyes. “You know what that look was, Sasuke? You know what it means? That was the look of someone who’d just been handed a death sentence. Someone with a living horror smoldering deep inside them, ready to ignite their body from the inside out.”
Some veil of coolness was slipping off. Sasuke tilted his head and said, evenly, “You realize hearing all this isn’t doing anything to lessen my desire to hit you over the head with this bottle, right?” He planted his hand on the table between them, palm up. “Give me your car keys.”
“What?”
“Give me your fucking car keys. I need you around long enough to fix the mess you made, so it’d be very inconvenient if you threw yourself headfirst through the windshield driving home.”
Shisui shrank back a little in his seat, while several people in the bar turned to stare at them. Sasuke’s ears were pounding like a theater drum, but he tried his best to stay calm.
Sasuke didn’t like Shisui. He never had, and he especially despised the way the entire family treated him like the sun shone out of his ass. He already had everyone else eating out of his hand, why the hell did he have to come pawing for Sasuke’s brother, invade the close circuit of Itachi’s guarded love? That this man beside Sasuke, this random insignificant breathing organism could be responsible for such flawless devastation seemed like a cruel hoax. And he also didn’t get how Itachi of all people could have fallen for this smarmy asshole when he could do fifty-one hundred times better. It must have been of those stupid, temporarily insane things, Sasuke had always reasoned to himself, but then ten years had flitted by and suddenly here they were.
So no, he didn’t like Shisui, but he still had to be on his side because Shisui was here and nobody else was. Sasuke had spent more hours than he could count in the past two days alone raging over the fact that everyone else seemed to be taking it so well-that everyone was somehow fine with it. How were they fine with it when it felt like his whole fucking world was crashing down all around him? Shisui was the only other person whose world appeared to be crashing down all around him as well, and that was why Sasuke had no choice but to be on his side.
Presently, Shisui stopped staring at him like a stunned antelope and meekly surrendered his keys. Sasuke pocketed them before waving one of the servers over. “Call us a cab.” His phone was vibrating on the tabletop; he let it go to voicemail. Across the table, Shisui had slumped over in his chair, one hand slung limply over his face. He was possibly crying, but Sasuke didn’t care enough to verify. The half-emptied bottle sat before him, catching a spill of yellow light from the dimmed lamps. Sasuke reached for it, and then forced himself to put it back down. Couldn’t be weak. Couldn’t let the tidal pull of helplessness crush him under now. The fight was long and hard. Itachi was sick, Shisui was a wreck, and there was no one else around.
Sasuke closed his eyes for a moment, letting his mind swim in the murk. The weight of his fatigue felt so insurmountable tonight. Nevertheless, he stared straight ahead at the slim horizon, clutched the wheel in a seaman’s grip. Ready to ferry them from the despairing, drifting sea to solid land. Is this really what you want, niisan?
Well, alright then.
Title: Asleep in the Human World
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Soap opera. No, like, really.
Summary: Fools in love gently tearing each other limb from limb.
Asleep in the Human World
Fools in love gently tearing each other limb from limb.
In the end, Itachi went to the wedding.
Fourteen separate people greeted him with, “Wow! You’re actually here?” but that likely had more to do with the fact that he hadn’t been seen in public in half a year rather than any potential indiscretion on the groom’s part. The entire proceedings were just as tedious as he had imagined, and if Sasuke went back to the open bar one more time Itachi was going to have to stage an impromptu intervention for his brother which would probably dampen the festive mood somewhat. A dull pain was creeping up between his temples; he yearned for nothing more than to return to bed where the death match with Chapter 17 beckoned in comparative benevolence.
But since he’d allowed himself to be trapped in this situation, Itachi figured he might as well make the most of it. Perhaps he might even make a toast. He had all the embarrassing childhood stories and the humiliating college anecdotes. It would be unkind to deprive the guests of such prime entertainment. Because in all frankness, Itachi was actually quite good at weddings. He had attended them all his life; at this point, it was like riding a bike. Downhill. Without brakes.
As he was weaving his way to the center of the room, he heard a voice say, “Wow. You’re actually here?”
Itachi neither ran away nor reached for the nearest heavy object. He could feel tension crawling up the back of his neck, because he knew that voice and that as a corollary things were about to reach a level of intolerability previously unheard of.
He wheeled around and cracked a wooden smile, which Shisui summarily returned. He was wearing a full-length morning coat, and looked a bit like a mannequin in a bridal boutique’s window, everything down to the vacant, plastic gaze.
“Thanks for the gift,” Shisui said. “Was that a last minute decision too? Well, whatever it is, it must be nice, coming from you.”
Itachi didn’t say, “When you get divorced, I’ll get you something even nicer,” even though he was definitely thinking it. He said, “Don’t think so meanly of me. I picked out your gift weeks ago. I wanted to have it delivered after the wedding and-”
“You could’ve at least fought for me,” Shisui cut in bluntly.
Itachi stared at him. “Do you really want to do this here? Now?”
“Why not?” Shisui countered. “You’d rather do it at the reception dinner in front of the whole family? Because that can be arranged.”
“How much have you had to drink?”
Enough, evidently, for him to forget where he was and make a grab for Itachi’s hand. This was different from last night. Last night, Shisui had come to negotiate; now, he was looking for a fight. One which Itachi wasn’t about to give him. He worked himself free and turned for the exit and the exitheexitexitexitex-
*
The ceiling was pale and dimly lit when he opened his eyes, and when he saw Shisui passed out in an armchair in the corner, Itachi had only just enough presence of mind to quietly reflect that he was so, so busted. His stirring roused Shisui, who straightened up and slowly massaged his eyelids. He was still wearing the tuxedo but the awful morning coat had gone AWOL and his collars were a lost cause. His hair looked like it had recently passed through a wind tunnel.
“Want some water?” Shisui asked quietly.
Itachi shook his head. “I apologize for… the disruption,” he tried weakly.
Shisui’s expression informed him exactly what he thought of this ‘apology’. “Stage III hepatic cancer?” he said. “Somehow, you didn’t think that your family might have wanted to know about something like that?”
“It was a late diagnosis to begin with,” Itachi said. “I thought I would have more time.”
“More time for what? What were you waiting for?” Shisui rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm, and then said, “Look, I get it,” sounding gratingly diplomatic. “I get what you’ve been trying to do. This is why you’ve been holing up in your apartment and trying to make everyone leave you alone, isn’t it? And this is why you broke up with-”
“You don’t get anything.” It was just a tiny bit gratifying to see Shisui flinch. “What are you even doing here, Shisui?” he said, staring at an extraordinarily white patch of wall. “You just got married. Go home to your wife, go on your honeymoon-I don’t want you here.”
“Itachi,” Shisui said, quiet and dismayed.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Itachi said, throat numb and tight. “Now please leave. I’d like to get some rest, if you don’t mind.”
He shut his eyes fiercely and gritted his teeth, and did not look until Shisui’s dejected footsteps had grown silent. It was fine. Everything was under control. This was what he wanted.
When he looked up again, it was to the sight of his brother wandering into the room. He too was still clad in formalwear, but seemed to have “lost” his jacket somewhere.
“Father and Mother are stepping out to grab a bite,” Sasuke said, making himself comfortable in the chair Shisui had vacated. “They said they’ll be back in about an hour.”
“You should have gone with them. Have you had anything to eat?”
“I’m fine right here.” The expression on Sasuke’s face finally settled and decided on a coherent emotion. “Is there anything I can do for you, nii-san?”
His anxious voice cut through right Itachi’s mind, agitating the same resigned ache he’d been accommodating for the last few weeks. He gave his brother a smile that felt ridiculous and feeble even on his own lips. “There is one thing. If you don’t mind, please get the keys from my jacket and go to my apartment. I need you to bring me something.”
*
“It’s after lights out, Uchiha-san!”
The woman who strode into his room looked all of twelve years old, but that didn’t make the hard look on her young, earnest face any less stern. Itachi closed his laptop, blinking at the sudden light streaming in from the doorway. He hadn’t realized how late it was, but then he never did seem to register those quiet hours spent with only the clack-clack-clacking of his keyboard for company, constant as raindrops.
The nurse-her name tag read: SONO KAEDE-made a disapproving noise, concern creasing her brows. “It’s late,” she said, and pulled the computer out of his grasp, setting it on the nightstand. “I’m sure this can wait.” And when Itachi just stared at her, part-fascinated part-stupefied, Kaede grabbed a clipboard from the end of his bed and flipped open his chart. “Do you feel sick? These medications can sometimes cause nausea.”
“Yes, I know,” said Itachi, massaging his throat. “I was in outpatient care before this. I’m used to all the unpleasantness.”
Kaede frowned, going through his chart. “You’re not getting chemo or immunotherapy yet?”
“Not until after surgery, I’m afraid.”
“And that’s coming up,” Kaede said quietly.
“Exactly,” Itachi agreed. “As you can see, I’m on quite the deadline.” He gave her his best gaze of grim, emaciated determination in hopes it might move her to relinquish his laptop, but no-go.
“So what is this project that you’re working on so industriously?” Kaede said, smiling sweetly as she hovered over his bed. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Not at all,” Itachi said. “I’m writing a novel.”
“You’re a writer?” Her eyes flared wide, and snapped back down to his chart. “Oh my God, are you-you wouldn’t happen to be the Uchiha Itachi, would you?”
“Which one is that?”
“I’ve read all of your books! Your writing is just-gosh, I have no words. Most of it goes right over my head of course, but it just gets to me in some way, I don’t even know how. But I had no idea you were, well, that you were so young. I mean, you’d never be able to tell from the writing but you can’t be much older than me.”
Kaede stopped abruptly, possibly realizing this might be kind of a tactless thing to say to a late-stage cancer patient. “My fiancée loves your work as well,” she covered, smiling hesitantly. “It’s sort of funny. We actually talked about one of your books on our first date.”
“You’re getting married?” Itachi asked. He figured he might as well play along, or she might never leave. “Congratulations.”
“Yes.” Kaede beamed. “We met in March, and a month ago, he proposed. Everyone I know thinks we’re rushing into it, but… well, we love each other! That’s enough for us. What’s the point in waiting, you know?” She grinned, bashful. “Now you’re probably thinking I’m simple.”
“Simple is good,” Itachi said. “But very difficult, in my experience.”
“If you keep your expectations low, everything will be simple,” Kaede said sagely. She gave him another shy smile, then turned out the light and left the room.
Alone, Itachi lay back down on his pillow and stared at the dark ceiling. “Is that what I’ve been doing?” he said, smiling to himself. “Have I kept my expectations too high?”
*
Things did not change for the better or worse over the next couple of days. He received remarkably few visitors, for which he was mostly glad. The family appeared to be keeping their distance, all with the exception of Sasuke who was a constant fixture that lurked by the door and took innumerable phone calls in the hallway, speaking in a tense, menacing tone that made Itachi feel a little sorry for whoever was on the other end.
He came back each time with drawn, harrowed shadows in his eyes, and Itachi couldn’t help but think that it wouldn’t do their family any good if every day he eked of his existence was a day siphoned from his brother’s lifespan.
“Is there anything I can do for you, nii-san?” Sasuke asked for the sixth time since lunch-a mere two hours ago.
“Well, I could use another Coke, if you don’t mind,” Itachi said without looking up from the computer. His arms ached all over from all the needle punctures, but he went on typing.
“I thought you didn’t like Coke.”
“I don’t, but since I’m not allowed coffee, I need to get my caffeine wherever I can.”
Sasuke frowned. “So why don’t you just go to sleep?” he asked. “This Diving Bell and the Butterfly crap you’ve got going on, it’s seriously freaking me out.”
Itachi lifted his eyes. “Perhaps you wouldn’t feel this way if you shared my work ethics.”
Sasuke glared at him. “That’s really low.”
“I’m very serious, Sasuke. Aren’t your quarter exams coming up? It would be such a shame if you were to fail out of university because you’ve spent all your time terrorizing the nursing staff.”
“Alright,” Sasuke said crabbily. “I’ll go home and cram all night, okay? Stop making big sad cancer eyes at me already.”
He pulled up a chair and settled down next to the bed, lacing his fingers in front of his mouth, eyes flicking right and left. Itachi recognized this pose even from their childhood; whatever was chewing at Sasuke must be having a hell of a time. His brother was nothing if not subtle like a skull fracture.
“Nii-san.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ve been talking to your doctor. She said that you’re going to need brain surgery.”
“So it seems.”
“I thought ‘hepatic’ means liver cancer. Why do you need brain surgery if you have liver cancer?”
Itachi stared at the screen before him in resigned exhaustion. The blinking cursor had cut off a sentence that ended in ‘lov-’. They had been dancing around an unbearable truth for so long it had gained haunted status. This exorcism was long overdue.
“The cancer is metastatic,” he said, modulating his voice carefully. “It’s already spread to my brain. Without surgery, the mets will kill me before chemotherapy has time to take effect. The doctors are hoping that the medications will shrink the tumors enough for them to operate, but the chances of success are fairly low.”
Sasuke looked back at him, eyes hard and wide and very dark. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m sick, Sasuke,” Itachi said, though it barely came out. “I’ve been sick for awhile now, and it’s quite likely that I’m not going to get better.”
“Why are you saying all this?” Sasuke asked after an aching silence, his voice so raw and pained it must have been scraped out of his throat, his guts. “Why are you telling me all this now?”
“Because I’m running out of time,” Itachi answered. “And because you’re an adult.” He ran these words over in his head, and smiled to himself. “You’re an adult. How did that happen?”
Sasuke’s face had the clear appearance of someone whose mind had just hit emergency brakes, screeching tires, smoking asphalt and all. He sank back down into his chair, boneless and defeated. “Fuck,” he said, slamming his fist into the mattress over and over. “Goddamn it.”
“This is it, Sasuke,” Itachi murmured, stroking his brother’s hair. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Sasuke said, voice blurred and watery, but vehement. “For your terminal illness or for lying about it?”
“I’m not going to be able to be around for you anymore. I wish I could have done a better job, be a better brother, but… well. I’m sorry.”
Sasuke squeezed his hands into the sheets, knuckles taut and bone-stark. “God, you’re stupid,” he gritted out. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
*
After a week during which time the entire nursing staff became ruefully resigned to his unsightly habits and took to sneaking him mildly caffeinated beverages behind the doctors’ backs, Itachi asked Kaede to help him make a call.
Shisui showed up barely fifteen minutes after receiving the message. He looked dreadful, restless and disheveled, bloodshot eyes enormous and taking over his face. Itachi couldn’t help thinking meanly that perhaps domestic bliss wasn’t all it was cracked up to be-but the way Shisui had swept into the room breathlessly and the crazy cocktail of hope and fear on his face made it very difficult for any amount of resentment to really stick.
“I came as quickly as I could,” Shisui said first thing, and Itachi found he couldn’t speak for a moment. This voice had been so dear to him for so long, he would never be used to that wild frantic edge it had acquired, the knowledge that it was he who had put it there. “The woman on the phone wouldn’t answer any of my questions. Is something wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong. I have something to discuss with you. Will you please have a seat?”
Shisui quietly complied but kept his wariness, like he was measuring the situation, gauging for reactions. Neither of them said anything for a moment.
“Here,” Itachi said finally, and handed Shisui a USB drive.
“What’s this?”
“The book I’ve been writing for the last year. I’ve finished it.”
“Oh,” Shisui said, relieved. “That’s… wow, that’s great. So, what’s it about?”
“Us.”
Shisui blinked. “Come again?”
“It’s about us. It’s our story, from beginning to end. I’ve poured everything I have into it, and now I’m giving it to you.”
“Seriously?” Shisui said, and laughed, embarrassed but pleased. “And you said you’d never stoop to navel-gazing.” And while Shisui was still beaming at the small object in his hand like he couldn’t even comprehend its existence, Itachi went on, “I’m not having the surgery.”
Shisui’s shoulders snapped, like he had been tasered. He stared at Itachi, sucker-punched, and this was unbelievably hard but he couldn’t turn back now.
“It’s unwise to gamble with such poor odds,” Itachi explained. “I’m grateful for the time I have had, and the reason I’m telling you this is because I hope we can settle our differences and put everything behind us. For whatever little time I have left, I’d like to have my best friend there.”
He waited for a moment, and when he received no reply, said, “Can you keep an eye on Sasuke for me? He’s smart, but he’s stubborn. He doesn’t know how to take care of himself. I know you two don’t always get along, but-you were good with me. You were a brother to me, and I’d like you to try to be one for mine as well.”
“So that’s it?”
Itachi looked up in surprise, and saw that Shisui’s eyes were dark and hollowed with some nameless, aching depth. “Wow,” he said, soft but caustic. “If I didn’t believe something was wrong with your brain before, I sure as hell do now.”
Without warning, he rose to his feet and threw the USB drive out the open window.
“You-”
“You give me this and ask me to look after your brother, and what-I’m supposed to be happy now?” Shisui said savagely. “That you’ve completed your magnum opus and can now peacefully go into the afterlife without any regrets? Is that what’s going on here?”
“Shisui…”
“Shut up,” Shisui snarled. “Let me tell you exactly what’s going to happen if you don’t have that surgery,” he continued, still in that flat, matter-of-fact tone that seemed to drill a hole into Itachi’s skull. “Let me tell you what your death will do to the people you supposedly love. Your family will be destroyed. Your brother? He’s going to be gutted. He’ll be completely broken and there won’t be a single thing that anyone will be able to do about it. And I’m not going to be able to take care of him because if you die - if you die - I will be just as broken. I’ll be destroyed. I’ll be the one who’ll need to be looked after.”
He knocked the chair out of his way and began to pace up and down the room, frenetic. “You may not realize this, Itachi-oh what am I saying, of course you do.” Shisui put his hand over his mouth, stifling a crazed, corrosive laugh. “I don’t see you anymore.” He stopped pacing and looked up at Itachi, so wrung out and empty it seemed a dried husk had taken his place. “When I look at you, I don’t see my cousin. I don’t see my best friend. I don’t see the brilliant, wonderful, breathtaking person I fell in love with, because all I see now is the cancer.”
Itachi just stared at Shisui impotently, clenching a handful of bed sheet. Shisui looked completely insane, and might at any moment evolve to dangerously insane. He debated running for it, but figured that with the IV stand attached to his body he probably wouldn’t get very far.
“Is that what you’re asking me to be around for? You think you’ll have time but to us, you’ll already be gone. It won’t be you that we’ll be living with-just this fucking disease.”
“Shisui, just stop it - I’m - ”
“You’ve got an inhuman capacity for determination. Once you set your mind to something you stick with it, and I love that about you but it’s not going to fly here. So no, you do not have my support. I’m not going to stick around to hold your hand as you gracefully walk into the light. If you don’t have that surgery, I’m done. I’m not giving you permission to die.”
He stomped forward and dragged Itachi up by the front of his scrubs, almost lifting him from the bed. “You didn’t want to fight for me,” Shisui said. “Fine, I can accept that-but you sure as hell have to fight for this. Fight for yourself, if no one else. Use your fucking determination for that.”
At that moment, the door swung open and Sasuke walked in. He immediately took in the situation, eyes flaring in shock and anger. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sasuke yelled, furious colors rushing into his cheeks.
Shisui let go of Itachi. “I know,” he said roughly, spinning on his heel. “I was just leaving.”
“Wait.”
Everyone turned to look at Itachi, who swallowed and said, “Sasuke, can you give us a moment?”
His brother still looked torn between reading Shisui the riot act or just cutting straight to the fisticuff, but after a moment deflated and made one last noise of rage before stalking out. The thick silence suddenly made the room enormous, unwieldy in size and scope, diluting the oxygen content to the point where it became difficult to breathe.
“Just one thing,” Itachi said. “I did want to fight for you.”
“What?” Shisui said, but Itachi held up his hand to quiet him.
“I did want to fight for you. But I told myself that I couldn’t do that to you.”
As Shisui looked on in confusion, Itachi gestured helplessly at his computer, lying on the bedside table. “This is all I know how to do. You know how it is. I’m not good with people. I lock myself up to write for months at a time. I don’t have any friends, my parents barely speak to me anymore-as far as family goes, you and Sasuke are about it.”
Shisui smoothed his hand over his mouth, muffling what sounded like a choked-off sob.
“Don’t think that I’m taking all the blame for this,” Itachi said sickly. “You made a choice too and that’s on you-but at least you tried. You tried to fight, and I drove you away. I convinced myself that it was your decision so I could let you go and let myself off the hook.”
None of it seemed worth it now, he realized in sickening horror, all those nights wandering around his huge, empty apartment looking for something he never managed to find, going through boxes and boxes of Shisui’s stuff, shoes and books and CDs, the worn-soft soccer jersey from his junior year and ancient issues of Shounen Jump Shisui had adamantly refused to throw out. Missing him so much he couldn’t breathe. All of it parsed now in a bleak miserable blur, dissipated like morning dew.
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he went on, and that was when his voice began to break. “I know I’m no good for you. I want you to leave, I want to be selfless. I want you to be happy. But-” He grappled with himself for a moment, fighting the blockade in his throat, and before he knew it all the words he’d never found the sounds to shape came rushing out in a debilitating flood. “Don’t leave me, Shisui,” he heard himself beg. “I’m sorry I didn’t fight for you. I want you to be happy but I can’t let you go. I-”
“Goddamn it, just shut up already,” Shisui said, grabbing Itachi’s face with both hands, palms pressed tightly to his cheeks. “If you say any more of this stupid crap, I’m going to need surgery to revive all the brain cells you’ve killed.”
He clambered onto the bed, shoes and all, and hauled Itachi into his lap. Shisui kissed his mouth, his neck, his temple-any and every patch of skin he could reach, enforcing silence with his quick, desperate lips. Itachi was fully aware that they were plowing headlong into home-wrecking territory now but he couldn’t help himself, and had no intention to anyway. Instead, he buried his face into the hollow of Shisui’s shoulder and clung to him in a sick mimicry of a drowning victim, digging his fingers into Shisui’s arms like he was his last lifeline. I was here first. I branded him for myself-he’s mine and no one else’s.
“I’ve been thinking,” Itachi muttered, feeling kind of insane, feverish and unhinged. “I can’t really stand the thought of you sleeping with other people. So maybe I shouldn’t die just yet.”
“If you die, I’ll hate you forever,” Shisui said, sounding equally deranged. “I’ll vilify you at family gatherings and spread horrendous lies about you in the tabloids and make all your fangirls cry. So yeah, let’s not have anybody die if we can help it.”
A sniffling sound followed this statement, and just when Itachi thought this whole thing couldn’t get any less dignified, he saw that Shisui’s flushed cheeks were streaked with tears, that his eyes had gone all glassy and he was hiccupping for breaths. His own skin also felt suspiciously wet, so he reached for Shisui’s face and sealed their lips back together, just in case those desperate, needy noises in the back of his throat decided to turn into full-on sobs. So this was how you did it-kiss in words, kiss in apologies, each of them coronated with a glowing imperative, the soothing ambient light of a single-minded purpose-and the way Shisui looked afterward, raw and bruised and burst open, only meant that the healing process started now.
“There’s one more thing,” Itachi said gravely.
Shisui frowned, cautious. “What?”
“If I have surgery, they’re going to shave all my hair off. And with chemotherapy after that, I won’t be getting it back any time soon.”
For a moment, Shisui looked faintly horrorstricken. Then he snorted and said, “Well, we’ll see about getting you a really pretty wig. How do you feel about purple?”
*
“So your surgery is tomorrow?”
Itachi nodded. “The scans from this morning showed that most of the mets have shrunken considerably. The doctors think they can go in and take them out.”
“Are these doctors good?” Shisui asked suspiciously. “I don’t want some hack cutting into my boyfriend’s brain, know what I mean?”
“That would be terrible,” Itachi said dryly. “Then I would be bald and brain-damaged.”
The air between them was saturated with all the things that weren’t being said, such as his 17% survival rate or the fact that he might not wake up after surgery, or just croak on the table altogether. Even if all went well, he still had a long, exhausting fight ahead of him. There was no timeline. Waiting, watching, hoping, that was all that they had to look forward to.
But at least now, they could wait and watch and hope together, and that had to count for something. In all the ways that mattered, it counted a lot.
“Want to hear some juicy gossip?”
“Hmm?”
“Asako is filing for divorce,” Shisui said, sheepish. “I have to say, that’s got to be one of the shortest marriages in the history of this family.”
Itachi didn’t smile. Outwardly. “What happened?”
“Well, I’m never home, for one thing,” Shisui explained. “And the fact that I told her that I’ve been in love with you for ten years might also have had something to do with it.”
Itachi tried to prevent his eyes from rolling into the back of his head, but it was very hard. Suddenly, brain cancer seemed like an infinitely more merciful fate. “So I take it the merger won’t be happening after all,” he said bleakly. “How did that go over with the board?”
“No idea,” Shisui said, brazen. “I gave my two weeks’ notice before I spilled the beans. They can find some other sucker to put out to stud, but I’m done.”
“Our parents…”
Shisui shrugged. “Well, Dad’s not speaking to me, but that’s not actually a new development. Your parents looked slightly catatonic when I broke the news, but I’m sure they’ll get over it in time. The fact that you have cancer will probably help it along.” He pulled a face. “Everyone else seemed sort of unsurprised. It’s so insulting.”
“It’s because we’re so terrible,” Itachi said, almost serene. “Illness and humiliation, that’s how the gods punish awful people.”
“You’re incredibly hilarious,” Shisui muttered. He looked Itachi deep in the eye. “Listen, I’m not going to lie, it’s probably going to be rocky for at least a little while.” There had to be an award for such a colossal understatement. “But I promise you’ll still have your family, when all’s said and done. Sasuke, definitely. He’s vulturing the cafeteria as we speak”
“And you,” Itachi added.
“And me.” Shisui grinned at him. “But let’s face it, I’m a sure thing.”
“If I make it out of this alive, please promise that you’ll never quote that movie at me again.”
“If you make it out of this surgery, you can have whatever you want,” Shisui said. “Seriously, you just have to ask, no need to threaten to skin me with a box-cutter anymore.”
Itachi stared at him pointedly. “You didn’t seem very threatened at the time.”
“No,” Shisui admitted, mouth curving into a smirk. “Actually, it was even kind of hot.”
“Perhaps you’re the one who’s sick.”
In response, Shisui just took his hand and pressed his mouth gracefully to the knuckles. This was the kind of thing that made it so easy to fall in love with him, Itachi reflected. The real trouble was surviving the experience.
“How much time have I got until visiting hours are over?” Shisui asked.
Itachi glanced at the clock. “About an hour or so.”
A sly look flickered across Shisui’s face. He shrugged off his jacket, toed off his shoes and then climbed up on the bed, curling around Itachi like a human cocoon, dragging the blanket over them both. Itachi made some obligatory protesting noises but his head was foggy and Shisui smelled really nice, wind and leather and quality aftershave, so he kind of forgot what he was thinking and decided to just enjoy the probably-transient moment. He had a feeling his life would have been infinitely simpler had he adopted this mode of thought earlier and more frequently.
“Sasuke might come in.”
“Let him,” Shisui said. “I’m looking forward to the mental-scarring.” He laughed softly. “Did I mention he’s changing his major?”
“He’s what?”
“Yeah, to premed. He wants to be an oncologist. Can you imagine that brat in a lab with his punk hair trying to grow cell cultures?”
Itachi sighed. “I’ve ruined my brother’s life.”
“More like redefined it,” Shisui said, still creepily upbeat. “It’s what you do, you redefine people. Just like how you redefined me.”
Itachi grimaced. “My nausea is very bad these days, please don’t add to it.” After a moment, he continued, totally nonchalant, “Did you ever get that tattoo removed?”
In response, Shisui just peeled open his shirt. “Even if I hadn’t said anything, divorce was inevitable,” he said. “It was like I was already married. The whole thing felt like infidelity.”
He tucked his face into the curve of Itachi’s neck and slipped his hand inside his hospital gown, fingers lazily stroking the line of his stomach, the toasty skin. “Sorry about the whole-tossing your manuscript out the window thing. I got caught up in the moment.”
“Don’t trouble yourself over it,” Itachi said lightly. “I already mailed a copy to my agent beforehand. It’s being published whether you like it or not. Now the whole world will learn about our story.”
“I hope it tanks,” Shisui muttered darkly.
“I wouldn’t say that if I were you. We’re about to become impoverished soon. I’m drowning in medical bills, and you’re unemployed.”
“I can use the free time,” Shisui said with worrying alacrity. “And when you’ve recovered, think of all the sex we can have.” He lifted his chin long enough to make that appalling face that meant he was thinking about Itachi naked. “Real sex, not weepy morbid cancer sex.”
Whether Itachi was tired or had simply used up his supply of snarky comebacks in his latest masterpiece he didn’t know, but he let the comment slide. “I take back what I said before,” he said drowsily. “If I die, Shisui, you’re allowed to sleep with other people.”
“Shut up,” Shisui ordered, pressing a kiss to the curve of his shoulder. “It’ll be years before we have to worry about that.”
And then there's also this side story, which is possibly the most self-insert-y piece of fanfiction I've ever written:
The Boy Ain’t Right
Yesterday when Sasuke had woken up, it had been sunny. He remembered being highly irritated with this fact since he had had a wedding to attend and a nice hailstorm might have provided him with a cozy excuse to get out of it. Rolling out of bed, he had reflected upon his hatred of formalwear and public functions, which had devolved into an elaborate tangent about his misfortune of being born into one of possibly five families in all of Japan that still bought into this crap. It had ended with him making a resolution to get himself so fantastically shitfaced at the reception that the doubtlessly horrible memories of this day would have already been wiped from his mind by the following morning.
Today, it was still sunny when he got up, but nothing else was the same. Today, Sasuke didn’t worry about weddings, or formalwear, or soul-crushing familial mores. Today, he would give anything for things to go back to the way they had been yesterday morning.
It was just beginning to get dark when he stepped out of the hospital, the cityscape all noirish and glittering with moving headlights, a nascent dimming. He had skipped three lectures today and was already fifteen minutes late to his group research meeting, which gave him about another fifteen before Sakura began sending concerned text messages and Naruto started calling at mind-bogglingly annoying three and a half minute intervals. He had also promised Itachi to go home and hit the books. Obviously, the thing to do was to go get fantastically shitfaced.
Traffic slowed to nothing around him as he crossed the street. The bar was dark, low-ceilinged and still mostly empty, the usual patrons-hospital staff, presumably-not yet released from the daily, life-saving grind. He was halfway to the bar when someone said, “Little Sasuke.”
Shisui looked incredibly out of place in this shithole of a dive. Only up close and with a sharp eye could you see the wear and tear in his well-suited, clean-shaven disguise, the tousled signs of the bad seed. “You grew up so fast. Come have a drink, ‘s on me.”
“I can pay for my own liquor,” Sasuke said, but took a seat. There was an expensive bottle of scotch on the table, a glass in Shisui’s hand. The one without the wedding ring.
Shisui gazed at him with scrutiny. “You don’t like me very much,” he said flatly. “It’s okay. No need to deny it. Younger siblings always hate the first boyfriend.”
Sasuke raised an eyebrow. “Beg your pardon?”
“Don’t try to fake it.” Shisui waved his hand. “You knew about us. You’re like his other half, even if he hadn’t told you you’d have still figured it out by yourself.” He laid down his glass and lowered his voice into an almost-comedic whisper. “Can I tell you something, Sasuke?”
Sasuke shrugged. “Make it short. I’ve got somewhere to be.”
“I’ll try my best,” Shisui said facetiously. “This was about three months ago. I came home from work, and I’d just. There was this project that I’d been slaving over for almost a year, my golden baby, and it’d just wrapped up that day, and I was-I was happy. I was really - fucking - high, and I had all these crazy shit flying around in my head.”
Sasuke didn’t ask if the nose candy had been substandard that day, but he was thinking it.
“First thing I did walking through the door, I started talking about-fuck, about all these plans. Because I had all these plans for the future, you know? I wanted to come clean to everyone and just be done with all the secrecy and pussying around. What was so wrong about that? Well there he was, sitting at the kitchen counter drinking a creamy black-and-tan, listening to me talk. He just got this look-this weird as hell look on his face, and didn’t say a thing. The next day, I was told that I was moving out. After ten years, he ended it, just like that.”
“You don’t say,” Sasuke muttered, rolling his eyes.
“Ten fucking years.” Shisui stared at the ceiling. “That’s longer than the average marriage. Ten years of skulking around doing things on his terms and trying to hide it from friends and colleagues and the whole goddamn family, and the minute I suggested making a real thing out of it, bam, he spooked.”
Behind the counter, the barman was busying himself setting up shop, assiduously wiping down the scarred wood of the bar top. Some kind of sports program was playing at low volume, the static-filled radio babbling somewhere amongst the rows of glasses.
“The timing couldn’t have been more spectacular,” Shisui was saying, “because not a week later my old man came by with a request-nah, an order for me to go to a marriage meeting. So I said fine, whatever, and I went to the interview. Everything was moving so fast, but I kept telling myself, ‘He’ll come around, he’ll come around,’ and before I knew it I was standing in a reception hall in a morning coat putting a ring on some girl’s finger, and I remembered looking down into the crowd and seeing him standing there-clapping. I wanted to kill him.”
Sasuke had the sudden nebulous thought that he, too, would like to kill a very specific someone. His bloodlust was lost on Shisui, who was still babbling a mile a minute. “The sick thing is it’s only now that I realize-the look from that day? That weird look he got when I told him about all my plans? That wasn’t the look of some commitment-phobe freaking out about intimacy.”
Shisui slammed his glass down on the table with a clunking noise, and looked Sasuke hard in the eyes. “You know what that look was, Sasuke? You know what it means? That was the look of someone who’d just been handed a death sentence. Someone with a living horror smoldering deep inside them, ready to ignite their body from the inside out.”
Some veil of coolness was slipping off. Sasuke tilted his head and said, evenly, “You realize hearing all this isn’t doing anything to lessen my desire to hit you over the head with this bottle, right?” He planted his hand on the table between them, palm up. “Give me your car keys.”
“What?”
“Give me your fucking car keys. I need you around long enough to fix the mess you made, so it’d be very inconvenient if you threw yourself headfirst through the windshield driving home.”
Shisui shrank back a little in his seat, while several people in the bar turned to stare at them. Sasuke’s ears were pounding like a theater drum, but he tried his best to stay calm.
Sasuke didn’t like Shisui. He never had, and he especially despised the way the entire family treated him like the sun shone out of his ass. He already had everyone else eating out of his hand, why the hell did he have to come pawing for Sasuke’s brother, invade the close circuit of Itachi’s guarded love? That this man beside Sasuke, this random insignificant breathing organism could be responsible for such flawless devastation seemed like a cruel hoax. And he also didn’t get how Itachi of all people could have fallen for this smarmy asshole when he could do fifty-one hundred times better. It must have been of those stupid, temporarily insane things, Sasuke had always reasoned to himself, but then ten years had flitted by and suddenly here they were.
So no, he didn’t like Shisui, but he still had to be on his side because Shisui was here and nobody else was. Sasuke had spent more hours than he could count in the past two days alone raging over the fact that everyone else seemed to be taking it so well-that everyone was somehow fine with it. How were they fine with it when it felt like his whole fucking world was crashing down all around him? Shisui was the only other person whose world appeared to be crashing down all around him as well, and that was why Sasuke had no choice but to be on his side.
Presently, Shisui stopped staring at him like a stunned antelope and meekly surrendered his keys. Sasuke pocketed them before waving one of the servers over. “Call us a cab.” His phone was vibrating on the tabletop; he let it go to voicemail. Across the table, Shisui had slumped over in his chair, one hand slung limply over his face. He was possibly crying, but Sasuke didn’t care enough to verify. The half-emptied bottle sat before him, catching a spill of yellow light from the dimmed lamps. Sasuke reached for it, and then forced himself to put it back down. Couldn’t be weak. Couldn’t let the tidal pull of helplessness crush him under now. The fight was long and hard. Itachi was sick, Shisui was a wreck, and there was no one else around.
Sasuke closed his eyes for a moment, letting his mind swim in the murk. The weight of his fatigue felt so insurmountable tonight. Nevertheless, he stared straight ahead at the slim horizon, clutched the wheel in a seaman’s grip. Ready to ferry them from the despairing, drifting sea to solid land. Is this really what you want, niisan?
Well, alright then.