Notes: Plotless drabbles, because I forget how much of a slash AND incest fiend I could be.
Warnings: Plotless. Pointless. Overuse of the word 'taste' and characterization taking a downturn at number (one) five.
(itashi, I will stop making eyes at your awesome fandom and start reading it to get this writing thing right)
(itahina, I have not abandoned you. I will… direct my slash writing to HP… after this and when I recover my files, I will write so many oneshots you will be obliged to toss me from your fandom)
(reviewers, I love you, just because I don't respond doesn't mean you're not all-important to me)
TASTE
Seven Smacks. Seven Snapshots of Shisui.
One.
The grass is warm where the lazy afternoon sunshine had bled on them, and Shisui is skipping barefoot over it, sometimes flying, sometimes catching in the cooler earth, on his back a bushel of dried fruits – figs, plums, persimmons – smuggled three days ago from Suna with only minor glitches. Behind him, slow to catch up, his father, sporting some of those glitches, and his mother, carrying a platter of ropy seaweed. Shisui remembers sneaking up on those fronds, clammy hands shaking in anticipation, the sharp taste of the beach bursting in the cavity of his mouth, all breaking waves and sunbaked shores. He'd nearly spat it out when his mother came dancing into the kitchen, before sucking it in fast because he reckons the vicious discipline the Uchiha police force was legendary for was inspired by her, and nearly choking himself to death a decade too early. That night he feeds it to his cousin Itachi, who bites fingers off but dribbles down the slimy thing with significantly more decorum than him, while the latter's parents prepare their affair of a dish – a huge smoked thing that was Fugaku's pride lying amidst glistening vegetables and mouthwatering spices – it's completely awful, of course, but nobody says so.
Two.
Shisui knows the price of war – burned houses and burned lives – at six and brilliant and utterly blind, because few people are adept at catching the concept of the Greater Good. For little boys smarting with loss, GreaterGood ran right through their fingers, sticky like the ooze of broken eggs and broken heads, and in Shisui's mind, there will never be two strangers as worthy of living as the mother who was the world and the father who taught him everything from stunning kunai-throwing accuracy to the just the right way to throttle trees to dust; there is no hero more worthy of recognition than the great-uncle (who gave him yellow fishes in a cup) who defended the border until his chakra ran bone-dry but was passed over in favor of the Yellow Flash who did the same in less than a minute, saving so many faceless; there is no village worth fighting for, no peace worth dying for, there is only Shisui, Itachi and Uchiha and as long as these are still in the habit of drawing breath and existing, the world can waste away.
It does not, not completely, thanks to the many dead (his precious among them, the only ones who actually matter), but the taste of soot was still rancid in his mouth when he watches Itachi fall in love with peace.
Three.
He spends his thirteenth birthday gagging on the taste of canal water, which reeked like many a dead and ugly thing found refuge in it, crawling on his belly following some mocha-colored – though he couldn't see it, given the cesspools they slogged through, turning them into human-shaped balls of slime – ANBU commander, providing back up because the Black Ops ranks were still depleted by a distant war. Behind him, Itachi is a tangle of thin limbs crushed into the diameter of a sewer pipe and, won't Uncle Fugaku be proud of him now? Shisui thinks wryly. His favorite son smothered in shit.
"I can feel you laughing, Shisui," says Itachi, in a voice so soft but so sharply deliberate that he wonders if it is telepathy, something his cousin developed in lieu of normal conversation skills. "You are jeopardizing our position."
Shisui laughs more, because he is a terrible ninja in all the ways that didn't matter, given his selfishness, lack of self-doubt and the reckless abandon that made people think he wanted to be an easy target, and hitherto unknown tendency to cause make people love him too much.
Four.
The taste of speed, of shunshin, is a word called exhilarating.
But, surprisingly, Shunshin no Shisui walks slow, like he's taking the time to feel the beat of the earth in every step, savoring the sensations that crumble away at the speed of light: the shallow joy of helping civilian children put up a swing, living his childhood vicariously through them; the minor impatience of waiting in the street, toeing the cracks time inscribed on the pavement, for Itachi to finish filing his mission reports; the sluggish melancholy of tracing rents in the skin, willing it to heal; the unhurried wonders of everyday living – spars by the pier, home visits, laughter, shades of nature, changing seasons; the dawdling pace of falling in love with his best friend.
He walks slow, languorous, about Itachi's typical pace really, and regains the life he leaves behind in flickers.
Five.
It was long past the point where he had to take on D-class missions to make a living, but things being the way they were – all earnings going to their money-chest deep beneath the shrine, too small the price of lives to fund their war and keep them in luxury at the same time – he takes them anyway – backbreaking work tilling lands, sweeping courtyards, diving for crawfish, babysitting (after Sasuke, he'd never thought he'd coo a baby again, but look at him now) – all on the sly, of course. The fuck, he feels like a genin who went missing every time he takes these kinds of duties, feels like he's cheating sorry civilians of their income, because he just does everything better, feels like he's stooping something low. He knows it's the worst kind of selfishness, petty and childish and borderline treacherous, and it's strangely gratifying.
There's a tang to it, and a shameless sweetness. He really was terrible.
Six.
There is a storm on the border, rolling torrents of rain drench them as they lie, two soulnaked boys along the beach getting drenched, watching for Kirigakure infiltrators, if their government were still absurd enough to keep sending them in, three steps and a cataclysmic divide of principles between them. Shisui's lying face down, tasting the sand, it's cold and bitter and gritty, not really concerned for Konoha as he is for this parasitic rift between them and the expression on Itachi's face he's glued to watching at the corner of his eye. Itachi looks completely dead – a chiaroscuro of ice blue and pale gray – and completely fucked up (not literally, which he'd honestly like to rectify, if only it wouldn't turn them both batshit insane with his unholy state of affairs) and Shisui just loves him more.
"Our ancestors would spin in their graves if they should see how reduced our clan is."
Itachi, who knows better, tells him he disagrees, at least about the ancestors who are, in fact, not even in their graves in the first place.
The darkness of the storm curls around them, promising no stars and no surrender.
Seven.
This is his last dream:
When Itachi is hanging off the edge of a precipice, Shisui wants to save him. He's slow, slow like molasses. He's not strong enough and Itachi's not helping at all.
He screams. "Don't push me away. I'm trying to help you!"
Itachi rips away from him like wet paper and into cold oblivion, a soul-sucking loss that materializes around his neck, dashing him upon the rocks and into the sea.
When he wakes up, he still tastes the salt.
End.