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as beautiful as you are
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"Maybe this is what it's like to be obsessed with someone."
.
He's been in love with her for as long as he can possibly remember, and it's not difficult to see why.
She's absolutely fucking gorgeous. That's the obvious one. Like a painstakingly crafted porcelain doll, all pale skin and pitch-black hair and beautiful dark eyes, pools of ink that express more than words ever could. Slim and sturdy like a willow tree, soft hands and nimble fingers that dry up his throat whenever she touches his arm. She is beautiful, yes. But that's not all, no, not nearly all.
In years not so long past, she was one of the best kunoichi Konoha had to offer—undyingly loyal as well as physically and mentally strong. Somehow no one ever doubted that, if caught, she would never break no matter what they did to her; that kind of statement was not made easily in their world, but something about her made others believe it. That was a moot point anyway, because she would never be caught. She was intelligent on top of everything else, analytic, ever-calculating; if things had ever truly become hopeless, Shisui imagines that she would have taken her own life like the samurai maidens of legend. Dry-swallowed a poison capsule or slit her own throat open with a tanto knife.
She could hold her own against any shinobi in the village, male or female. She aced the Chunin exams at an unheard-of age; it was a record that would not be broken until her firstborn took the same exams years later. She knew hundreds of ways to kill, thanks to the unrelenting training given to aspiring female ninja back then—before it became easy, before any giggling girl more concerned with her hair than with the cold reality of her chosen career could call herself a kunoichi—and she did it without batting an eye, for the sake of her home.
Yet for all that, Shisui marvels, she is not bitter. She is not cold or unfeeling. She smiles, a wholehearted and warm smile that makes his stomach drop straight into his shoes. She speaks cheerfully and asks how his studies are going, how his family is doing, if he'd like her to cut his hair because really, Shisui-kun, it's getting so long…
No one else in this godforsaken family is anything like her. Not her husband, a second cousin she was matched with at eighteen (effectively ending her career); he walks around with frown marks etched permanently around his eyes and mouth and shakes his head at any social conversation.
Not her eldest, a boy almost as beautiful as she is but with none of her warmth or old fire; a quiet and seemingly invincible warrior, a prodigy that Shisui has never once seen smile.
Not her youngest, a little boy who gives smiles away freely but knows nothing of what the world beyond the compound (goddamn prison) and his academy, a boy who scowls at Shisui when the older boy torments him.
Not his own mother, nor his father, nor any of his uncles or aunts or cousins or anyone else he's ever met, for that matter.
She is something utterly unique and precious, and no one else seems to remember that anymore.
He does. He loves her, he wants her, so badly he can almost taste it. But he will never taste it. She is far beyond his reach, forbidden, shackled to a husband she couldn't have possibly loved and children she couldn't have possibly wanted. She is the perfect wife and mother, faithful and endlessly loving, more wonderful than any of them deserve.
And it is precisely because of that faith, that love, that Shisui knows she will never see him as anything more than the distantly related young man who visits and spreads laughter, grins to hide any real emotion, lingers around her elder son with eyes that glimmer.
No matter how much he wants, yearns, she will never belong to him and him alone. He can never touch her beyond the expected hug or chaste kiss on the cheek, never feel those perfect lips under his own, never—
Oh god—
It's going to drive him mad. He knows it. He can only take so many of those incredible smiles before he crumbles and does something unspeakably foolish—something that will feel wonderful in the moment, but that they will both regret when that moment is gone.
He has a notion, however, of something that might help. It will never be as satisfying as the real thing, but Shisui thinks it will at least keep him from ruining both his life and hers.
Her older son is indeed beautiful, and he looks so much like his mother. The same long, silky hair (not quite the same shade, but you can't have everything); the same pale skin; the same dark eyes that anyone would lose themselves in; even her long lashes. He's quiet, that Itachi, but he's human just like all of them and he is young and eager to please.
In the dark, Shisui imagines that he will look like her. Maybe he can pretend.
Maybe the boy won't even notice when Shisui breathes (moans) his mother's name instead of his own.
end