Chapter Text
The dream first occurred three days after the end of the civil war, and it plagued him for almost two years straight, beginning with the same view of a rough, russet-colored planet, and ending with an aurora that bathed the baked planet in shimmering pinks and purples. Naturally, he thought he was losing his mind. Between grappling with his own guilt and shame, navigating the intricacies of grief, and finding his place in the world, he couldn’t handle the added weight of something more. He told himself he would find some hidden meaning in the dream that greeted him night after night, but no part of the scenery was familiar to him. It wasn’t until he saw the red, dying sun that he realized his dream wasn’t something conjured by his damaged psyche. On the night of his seventeenth birthday, the red sun glowed brighter, like a last burst of life, a surge that he felt in his whole body, and the rinne sharingan took up the entire night sky. The light revealed a russet planet covered in God Trees, all of them in full bloom, an orchard for the only inhabitant of the planet.
Otsutsuki.
He woke up with a scream lodged in his throat, unable to see anything around him through the blood that clouded his eyes and coated his cheeks. Fear was familiar, something he could work through, so he leaned to his right and felt for the switch on the bedside lamp. The light did nothing to help him when everything was distorted by the blood in his eyes, so he had to feel his way along the wall, taking careful steps that still left him feeling like a stumbling wreck. The bathroom door was open, welcoming him into the start of his morning routine, even though it was three in the morning and he felt like death. His right hand slapped the wall beside the door and he wrinkled his nose when his wet palm slid across the slate tile before connecting with the light switch. Blood. Of course there was blood on his hand. The ethereal quality of the dream had vanished the moment he saw the rinne sharingan that dragged him right back to the civil war and reintroduced all of the darkness he’d worked so hard to keep from flooding back into his life.
The moment he fully entered the bathroom, he turned to go to the sink and ran into the partially open bathroom door. Without thinking, he reached out with his hand and left a swipe of a handprint on the lattice-work and fine paper. When he stumbled forward, he bumped into the bathroom vanity, where he left more blood behind in the form of his fingerprints on the granite sink. Then he felt a presence in the doorway, a few feet from himself, when he was sure he’d been alone the entire time. The moment he felt a hand on his right elbow, he whipped his head in that direction, as if he could see the person. He tried to activate his sharingan and his rinnegan, but the stabbing pain he felt had him doubling over, almost vomiting. He felt as if his skull had been cracked, as if the bone had splintered and each little piece had been driven right into his brain. He couldn’t hear over the loud ringing in his ears, even when he tried to focus, because he couldn’t move beyond the pain that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He still struggled when he felt someone try to steady him.
“Hey. It’s me. Calm down. It’s me.”
Fifteen minutes later, he was seated on the bathroom floor, cool slate beneath his bare legs, his back flush against the wall. His eyes were closed, his head tipped back, to allow the warm washcloth to carefully swipe across his bloodstained skin. He should have woken up alone, but he’d failed at so many things in life that he found himself asking what was one more. Sleeping around wasn’t his style, even though he could brush it off as experimentation, just a boy growing into manhood. His father would have beaten him with a switch for such behavior, even if he was seventeen. He was old enough to know better. But it wasn’t quite sleeping around. But it wasn’t quite experimentation. He could have tolerated promiscuity, except it wasn’t solely for the sake of sex, nothing to do with instant gratification. He was sleeping with his deceased brother’s mate, something too complicated to break down, something not exactly forbidden but certainly frowned upon. It was Shisui who had held him as he’d mourned for his brother, for his parents, for his clan. It was Shisui who cupped his chin just so and made smooth, careful swipes of that warm washcloth across his face.
He opened his eyes, one blood red and one vivid violet, mismatched since the conclusion of the civil war, and Shisui offered him a partial smile, where they both knew he needed something more to draw him out of the nightmare. It was the prophecy told to him by the blind woman in the northern mountains of fire, where aging itako told tales of the world before and the world after, mediums for kami his clan still worshipped. She’d spoken many things during the lunar eclipse, when he’d seen her for a blessing before he claimed the role of clan head, but the name Otsutsuki was spoken with an indescribable combination of fear and rage. And then the fourth war had begun, continuing the cycle of war and peace that had stretched across the years, continuing where the third war had left off, where sides drawn in history were drawn again. And he hated it, but he was helpless to do much else than fight. Just like the people before him. Just like the people after him. That was how the world worked.
“It was worse tonight. Maybe staying at my place would have been better,” Shisui shared, hesitant to touch on the fact that his birthday and holidays were hardest. Two years of mourning wasn’t enough for him, and it wasn’t enough for Shisui. He knew that the moment their eyes met. They’d complicated what was already complicated. “Hey.” Shisui drew his attention away from the sharingan staring back at him, at the eyes that slowly shifted back to black. The man’s voice was softer, smile fuller. “Happy Birthday, Sasuke.”
That was why he loved Shisui.
“Hn,” he managed, distracted by the fact that Shisui was straddling his legs. And again, it wasn’t about the sex, though it would have been so much easier if it were. Proximity alone left him feeling as if he were basking in warm sunlight, a perfect combination of Shisui’s scent and personality and body language, something no one else could ever replicate. “Thanks.”
That was why he loved Shisui.
Leaning his head back against the wall, he closed his eyes once more, the blood fully gone from his vision and his skin tingling from the heat slowly leaving him. The warmth of the washcloth was replaced by the warmth of Shisui’s palms against his cheeks. He hummed as Shisui brushed both thumbs over his cheeks, then down to his jaw. It was the light touch of heat against the column of his throat. It was the light touch of those perfect lips against his left scent gland. He wrapped his arms around Shisui and focused on the steady, soothing sound emanating from the man, a soft rumble, a purr that sometimes left him feeling almost boneless. Shisui knew how to coax him back to sleep, to fight and win the battle against insomnia that had caught and held him since the civil war. It was happiness, something he thought he’d lost when he’d lost everything else, when he’d discovered his parents’ gruesome double suicide, when his brother had succumbed to a childhood illness at the height of the war. And it was another warm breath against his neck. And it was another kiss pressed against his scent gland.
Shisui collected him from the floor and carried him back into his bedroom, the bedroom that had secretly become theirs. He didn’t complain about the princess carry or the soft nuzzle against his jaw or the arms that quickly found him underneath the covers. He could be prickly. He could be impossible. Shisui endured the worst of him, promising that it was worth it, even when he felt that it wasn’t. He fell asleep to the murmured “happy birthday” against the nape of his neck, repeated between featherlight kisses, and woke up alone, the necessary price of sneaking around, of pretending they were nothing more than friends, nothing more than a clan head and his loyal guard. Waking up alone wasn’t always easy to bear, not when he recalled a childhood spent crawling into bed with his older brother, sure that there were monsters in his closet, sure that there was a ghost who lived in the corner of his room. They had been inseparable, at least until his brother had presented during the boy’s first meeting with Shisui. It was love at first sight, such a rarity in a world wrapped around arranged marriages and forced bonds.
He lay on his back, twisted up in sheets the color of cream that smelled of honey, vanilla, and cedar, a combination of scents that didn’t belong to him, a problem to remedy when he was fully awake, when he wasn’t so reluctant to move. He breathed in Shisui’s scent like a starving man, taking it into himself and holding it in his lungs until he felt a pleasant burn. Outside, the sun had risen, matching the time displayed on his digital clock. Shisui had let him sleep in, something of a tradition when it came to his birthday. Itachi had always been the one to wake him. His mother had always been the one to present him with breakfast. His father had always placed a cup of fresh coffee alongside his plate, black, plain, perfect. But he spent that morning squinting at the sunlight from a parted shoji door he was sure that he’d closed. He couldn’t refrain from rolling his eyes, because it was a sign that Shisui was on guard duty, a sign that he had to drag himself out of bed and step onto the engawa to greet the man.
Sighing, he carefully untangled the sheets from around his legs and threw back the thick comforter the color of golden sand. He sat on the edge of his bed, one hand raised to rub his eyes, another idly scratching his bare stomach. He ignored the bird call that was too convincing, knowing it was a ridiculous signal. Shisui was impatient, which meant the man had likely bought him a birthday gift, something he hated, something he secretly loved. Forgoing his robe, he stood and padded over to the parted shoji door, which he pushed open further to reveal his slice of paradise, a private side yard that had always been his, becoming more and more to him as the years had passed. He crossed his arms over his chest, nose wrinkled at the heat that air conditioning had fought and won in his bedroom. Shisui peered down at him from the rooftop, offering him a cheeky grin and a bag holding what looked like takeout containers, where the bag bulged in an unnatural shape.
“You could have stayed. My advisors won’t be here until noon. I told them that I wanted the morning for myself.”
“You neglected to mention that. Mind if I join you then? I brought more than enough.”
“If it’s something sweet just to piss me off—”
“Nah. Chuka ryori. I made a tomato egg stir fry and threw it over some rice. I also have your favorite supermarket coffee, the disgusting suntory brand. Wait. What else could be in this bag?”
He snorted and shook his head at the man’s antics, then he pointed at the ground, a silent command that Shisui join him on the engawa. His low table was small enough to make the meal more intimate, so he moved his small pile of books and the candle that was too strong when lit but perfect when unlit. As he sat on one side of the table, Shisui carefully unpacked the plastic bag, revealing nice bento, not cheap takeout containers. Shisui made a show of laying out the food, and he chuckled, amazed that so much had fit into the bag without it bursting at the seams. At the end, Shisui had a slightly crushed piece of what looked like loaf type cake, blueberry and lemon with a graham cracker crumb topping and no icing. Clever. Thoughtful. Naturally, he ate the dessert first, devouring it while listening to Shisui sing him “happy birthday” offkey. Shisui could cook well, and the man loved showing off. Shisui had been the one to teach Itachi to cook. He’d never forgotten the utter chaos in their kitchen.
While Shisui was slowly stirring the tomato and egg mixture with the rice, focused on the bento they would share, he looked at the scar on the man’s right scent gland, the scar that would have lined up with his brother’s teeth, the scar that had bonded them. He did his best to avoid being caught, to avoid admitting that the mark reminded him that he’d lost his brother, that he’d never had Shisui, that he’d never really have Shisui. Mixed emotions clouded the air, contrasting with the bright summer sun shining down on his cared-for yard. Without his scent blockers, he was an open book, not because he meant to share such feelings but because he’d grown accustomed to being himself, at least with Shisui. He was a rich combination of pomegranate, plum, and amber, and Shisui immediately looked up when he noticed his scent in the morning air. There was a moment where their eyes met, and he made a point of looking down at the mixture of eggs, tomatoes, and rice, avoiding the man’s gaze.
“It looks disgusting.”
“You look disgusting.”
“You can be so childish.”
“Hm. I don’t think I’m having childish thoughts right now though.”
“You smooth fucker.”
He laughed and reached across the table to snatch the chopsticks from Shisui’s hand. There was a brief war between them, but Shisui slapped the chopsticks down on the table and stood, quick to pull him to his feet and drag him back into his bedroom. His legs hit the end of his bed and he fell back onto the mattress in a mixture of a gasp and a laugh. Shisui grasped the end of his own shirt and tugged it up, revealing more of the man’s toned stomach, revealing more of the man’s toned chest. And then the shirt was gone. And then his hands were at the waist of Shisui’s pants. His sharingan and rinnegan took in every moment, as if he could replay the moment over and over again for the rest of his life.
That was why he loved Shisui.