But tell me now, where was my fault
In loving you with my whole heart~White Blank Page-Mumford and Sons
"You're really going through with it?"
Itachi shrugged, unconcerned. The heavy fall of his hair down his back twitched with the motion, and Shisui watched that instead of Itachi's face. He could fake some things-imagine expressions Itachi would never show to make this all a little better (but only a tiny bit). "It seems too late to protest."
"Itachi," Shisui hissed the word, burning it on his tongue, filling his mouth with something more than a sound. "we're talking about your marriageto Utani. This is important! You're going to be stuck with her for the rest of your life after this."
"Do you think fourteen's too young to be married?" Itachi asked, and the curve of his spine said he was looking back at Shisui. Shisui looked away. Up. To the black sky that held only stars and no answers-but no questions either.
"That's not the point. Are your really going to marry someone you don't love?" Shisui asked the stars. He liked the star's cold silence better than what he knew Itachi's answer would be. The stars austerity allowed him a little dignity.
"There's no reason to assume that we cannot come to a mutual affection in time," Itachi's voice was oddly light, childish and optimistic for once when he should really be using that war time cynicism that had cut Shisui to the bone through-out their lives. "You don't fall in love with someone all at once."
Shisui felt his face burn, his heart plummet. Itachi sounded so wise and practical, but so naive. He had no idea what it was to 'fall in love' or how it happened. Now, more than ever, he was a child parroting back phrases he had heard and decided were reasonable, not the personal sentiment of experience. "We talked about this. You said...you said..."
"That I'd prefer not to get married, but it's politics."
"It's not just politics." Shisui's voice grew harder, defiant, and he looked at Itachi's face. It was a mistake. Those calm grey eyes were weighing him, evaluating his entire being. Shisui could only think of Itachi until he looked the boy in the eyes, and then, he always saw something else. Something more that cut through Shisui's illusions. Shisui flushed harder, and the words stuck in his throat.
"What else is it?" Itachi asked, and he wasn't mocking. Damn him, why couldn't he be flippant about this? Why couldn't he give Shisui that buoyancy to latch onto to keep him from sinking?
"This is your life, Itachi. Your...your happiness. You're just going to give it away."
"I'm not giving happiness away, Shisui. It's just a marriage."
"To someone you don't love—what if you can't love her? What if you fall in love with someone else?"
"I can't see myself doing that, and even if it didhappen-" Itachi's look said that he was saying this just for the sake of argument, and that it would really never happen. If anyone had the willpower not to love, it would be Itachi. "I would not act on it. The circumstances will be such that if I'm going to fall in love with anyone, it will be Utani."
Shisui felt bile rise in his throat. "Stop that. Stop doingthat!"
Itachi blinked, his face opened a little for confusion. "You don't think I can fall in love with Utani?"
"I don't think you can act like it's already done-like you can just give your heart to her because she's there, and you're supposed to. Because you're going to marry her and-"Words failed him and Shisui had to look away from Itachi again, at the river that passed them by slowly.
"Live with her?" Itachi was watching Shisui's face-Shisui could feel it. "Spend my life with her? Sleep with her?" Shisui couldn't stop the flinch in his eyes, and Itachi stopped his guessing game. 'Circumstances will be such'-they learned in the higher levels of training all about sex and the hormone's released, how the body encouraged the mind to bond with a partner. They learned how it could be used against a target, how it was sometimes more effective than torture. You could turn a target against their family if you could make them think that you loved them—as long as you didn't fall for the trap yourself.
"I have heard that it isn't so bad." There was amusement in Itachi's voice. Dry amusement.
"I don't want to talk about it." Shisui grated the words out through painfully clenched teeth.
"You were the one who started berating me on the subject," Itachi pointed out. "Are you reallyembarrassed? You talk about sex all the time with Hige and Koushiro."
"But they're not you," Shisui snapped. His hands gripped his arms.
"You think I'm too young?" Itachi's question was arch. Shisui had never treated him as if he was too young for anything. He never had been. "I'm getting married next month, so I think it behooves me to know more than the basics on the subject. The point is to get an heir." Yes it was, and the proof of the marriage consummation would be a sign for joy. People would be whispering about what they'd heard through walls, marks, bruises, looks, how passionate the two young lovers must be, and so young, so vigorous-Shisui gagged at the images he did not want.
"Will you shut up!" I don't want to think about it, I said," Shisui turned to face Itachi, and his face was still flushed with anger and shame.
"You said you didn't want to talk about it," Itachi combated, and if Shisui's reaction bothered him, he didn't show it at all. Itachi and his rigid control—his power over the base heart, over love, over Shisui, over everything—could burn for all Shisui cared. In fact, he wanted it to burn. He wanted it to shrivel to nothing so he would stop feeling so vulnerable under his cousin's apathetic gaze.
"Well I don't want to think about it either, Itachi, so shut up." Shisui dropped himself onto the ground and scrambled his fingers in the dirt for a stone. He threw it into the river with all the passion he could muster. It vented nothing as it crashed into the water, breaking the reflections and sending up a spray. Ripples cracked across the water. Shisui smelled fish.
"Even if I have questions?" Itachi asked. Why was his voice so level? How?
"Go ask someone else." Shisui ran a hand through his hair.
"Who else would I ask?" And he had a point. Who else could he safely vent his insecurities to? His prowess in love making would probably be as assumed as his prowess in battle, and Itachi had never been comfortable admitting fault to anyone but Shisui.
"Someone else. Itachi, really, I don't want to talk about this."
"This?"
Shisui jerked, because there was no way Itachi had lost the thread of conversation. Itachi was goading him, trying to make Shisui isolate what annoyed him and realize how stupid and childish it was. Shisui already knew what annoyed him. It wasn't stupid. It wasn't childish. "You and Utani having sex! I don't want to talk about, I don't want to think about it, I don't want you to ask me questions about it."
"Like you don't want me to fall in love with her?"
Shisui froze and looked at Itachi, anger arrested for two heart beats. Itachi was staring back, unblinking. Damn him, damn him to hell. Shisui couldn't deny it. Itachi wouldn't believe it anyway. They were terrible liars for each other.
"You don't want me to be happy." There was a mark of confusion in Itachi's voice and on his face. He said it as if it might be a fact, but he didn't know how or why it should be. He was feeling his way in the dark for the stairs that would drop him on his head.
"I..." Shisui pushed his hair back. "Of course I want you to be happy."
"Then why don't you want me to be happy with Utani?"
Shisui looked away. "I wanted you to be happy with me." The words were soft, trembling, lost. They felt naked in the night air, and Shisui wondered if he could have ever said them under the sun, or if they would have wilted on his lips for shame. He was shamed, his neck and cheeks hot with it. His stomach was twisted sick like he'd swallowed poison.
"I am happy with you." Exasperation. Shisui, you're being an idiot. "Do you think I'll stop being happy with you because I'm married to her?"
Shisui shook his head. "You don't get it."
"I don't think you get it. You're as bad as Sasuke, being jealous. It's not like I have a limited amount of happiness or affection, Shisui. Marrying Utani isn't going to change everything." The exasperation was tinged with something familiar. Comfortable. Painful. "You'll always be more important, Shisui."
But in all the wrong ways.
"No. You don't get it Itachi." Shisui felt like he was too far down this road to turn back. And he knew Itachi wouldn't let him until it was too late. Shisui was too mad, anyway-bitter poisoned shameful angry and festered resentment- to walk away again from all of this. He just wanted to slap it all out in the moonlight, to not have his confession belittled and crushed backinto friendship.
"I love you."
The significant words, so laden with meaning in Shisui's mind, so damning, so dangerous, were brushed aside in Itachi's flickering look, his light tone. "I know that." Like it was something obvious, like stars or blue sky or blood from a wound. "I can love more than one person, Shisui. I already do."
It would be a comfort if Itachi weren't speaking of the simple child's love they had shared for ages. It's something good, but lately, more and more, it's just another dose of salt in the wound, to know that even if Itachi spoke of love, it wasn't love like Shisui meant. To know that, the one person Shisui care for above all else, didn't understand what he meant anymore.
"No, no you can't Itachi, don't you see-" You can't love two people the way I want you to love me. It's not allowed.
"I can, Shisui, why are you being like this?" Itachi ran over Shisui's words, angry, peevish and something you'd throw at a child. Like Shisui was just Sasuke throwing a tantrum. Like Itachi understood everything, and Shisui was just irrationally afraid of losing something he had always had. Shisui was afraid of losing something he would never have, and that was the sharp thought that cut him open. He was never going to have Itachi. Never like he wanted, and every time he looked at his cousin, it would hit him like a blow. This isn't for you.
"GODS, Itachi, why do you have to be so stupid about some things! Why do you have to be so dense-and so damned sure you're right even when you have no idea, what's going on!" Shisui threw another rock into the water and his voice rose and fell. He spoke to the reeds on the other side of the river, lips twisting and jumping with his words.
"I love you, okay? I don't want you to love Utani, I want you to love me-"
"I do love you-why're you-"
"Shut up! Just shut up! You don't have any idea what I'm saying-"
"What does anything with Utani have to do with us? Why can't I-"
"You just come in here babbling about everything and falling in love, and having a perfect marriage, and you want to talk to me about all the sex you're going to have with your 'wife'-"
"Why are you upset!" Itachi almost shouted now, cutting through and over Shisui's ranting tirade to the weeds. "Why does that upset you?" Shisui's mind, hot, jumping, quick like his flicker-step jumped and fell over words and thoughts. Didn't really think. Just felt. Instinct. Answer. Why? I'll tell you why!
Listen to me for once!
"I don't want you to have sex with Utani, I want you to have sex with me!"
Silence.
Shisui felt something crumple and die. He couldn't breathe anymore. He'd never meant to say that, and it sounded terrible, bouncing in his ears. He wished he could die. His hands clamped over his mouth, eyes staring, and he wasn't sure Itachi was still breathing. He was afraid to look and see if Itachi was still even there. He half wished he wasn't, but needed him to be.
"I mean...oh gods, ashes and death, Itachi," Shisui's words were strangled and small behind his hands. "Flaming hell, Itachi, I didn't mean..." Oh he had. He had. Every word. "Not..." Now. Not right now, on this river bed, something crass and hurried and stolen in the night. He wanted...a long night. To push his cousin's barriers aside, to sink into him like they belonged together, which they must-but they didn't. Not like this.
"Is that all?"
Shisui couldn't read enough in Itachi's voice, and he didn't dare look at Itachi's face. He pressed his hands over his mouth, feeling foul and dirty, like he'd sullied something pristine.
"That's all? We've known each other for fourteen years, and it all culminates in that? You want to fuck?" The twist Itachi put on the profanity made Shisui flinch. Itachi didn't swear, and now he pulled out on of the worst for Shisui. It made him angry. It made him sick.
"That's not it." Shisui whispered past his hands. He dropped them. "That's not it, Itachi." He felt like his glorious desire had been reduced to a primal act of lust. His careful obsession with Itachi devalued to an infatuation with his baby cousin's flesh.
"You're right. I don't get it." Itachi voice was dead. Cold, Lost. Shisui looked over, and Itachi was staring across the water, face softly lit, the line of his jaw was hard, the light in his eyes muted. His lips were set.
"No, you don't." Shisui agreed. "You really don't. Itachi, I didn't mean it like that. You know I couldn't."
"I thought you said I didn't understand." Itachi's tone was sharp, pointed, but confused beyond the defense, like he didn't know who he was talking to anymore.
Shisui closed his eyed. Breathed. "I love you. I want all of you. I want every single part of your life, and I don't want to share with your 'wife' or anyone else. Sasuke's okay. I'd never ask you to give up Sasuke, but...I canshare you with him. I can't with Utani not the way I want you..."
Shisui was desperate to make Itachi understand-to justify himself and his feelings. He didn't want Itachi to think of him as some creeping shadow pawing him over. He wanted...Shisui wanted to be thought of as loved. Cherished. Special. Maybe if he could make Itachi see what he meant, Itachi could see the way to his own feelings. Please let him have those feelings.
"My life isn't my own, how can I give you all of it?" Itachi finally looked at Shisui. There was something ironic in his lips. Something was dead, though. Something was guarded, and Shisui felt selfish. He felt wrongfor having strayed off the path of platonic love and wallowed off in a different direction, leaving Itachi standing on the shore by himself, watching his friend drift away to be devoured by the lurking lusts and pitfalls.
"Are you happy with me?" Shisui knew Itachi meant now, as things were.
Shisui looked away. He looked back. "No." Less and less with each passing day, because he was so longing for what he didn't have he couldn't enjoy what he did have. He had Itachi, but he didn't. He could touch him, but not enough.
Itachi nodded, but he was looking somewhere else. That was not what he wanted to hear, and Shsiui had his own unasked question answered. Itachi was firmly on the platonic shore. He was happy where he stood, and Shisui knew he couldn't be happy there again, and he didn't even know if he could get back there.
"I don't get it." Itachi's repetition of Shisui's words was childish. Itachi shook his head. "Nii-san..." The childish nickname, and Shisui saw this was something they'd never get by. "I don't."
Shisui kissed Itachi.
Softly, on the cold lips, hand coming up to Itachi's chin to steady him, but not to hold. Never to hold. Shisui could taste something bitter on Itachi's lips-maybe some poison or food. He could feel the soft warmth beneath the night chill, the crack splitting the middle of Itachi's lower lip. He opened his mouth to that, flushing with a hollow triumph and desire and greed that ran through him like blood, so vital, to hot, so intimate.
And Itachi didn't move. Then his fingers brushed Shisui's. His lips pressed against Shisui's, and it was like a dream. It was a realization of something long hoped for-some fantasy that Shisui had long ago given up on that burst into life with golden wings and beat around his chest before soaring into the air.
But as Shisui's tongue brushed Itachi's lips. Itachi pulled back. He turned his head. Shisui sat back, and he watched Itachi's expression, begging with a pounding heart. Please. Please. Please. Need this. Need this like I do.
Need me.
Itachi's expression wasn't changing. He looked lost and confused. He looked like a child, sitting on the river bank, shaking his head as he turned again to look at Shisui. His lips were kiss-bruised red. Erotic. Damaged. Abused.
"I don't get it."
"It's okay."
"No it's not."
"Just leave it, Itachi, please, just..." Leave it alone. The dream has crumpled, falling from the sky to break on the ground.
"You kissed me."
"And you kissed me back."
Itachi, horribly and obviously disturbed, looked off, out, over, above. Somewhere else Shisui didn't want to go. It didn't mean anything, he realized, and loving someone completely, totally, all at once, didn't mean a thing.
Not when they only half loved you back.
"Are you happy?"
Shisui looked at Itachi's face. His lips were pink now. His cheeks were pale. His eyes were wide, dark pits fringed with thick lashes. And Shisui...Shisui just wanted to kiss him again. Repeatedly until Itachi surrendered, until he felt something. Until he was too numb to care what happened to his body anymore and just let go.
Shisui felt sick, like an addict that had gotten his taste of a potent new drug. This wasn't what he had wanted. This wasn't anything like his dream.
"Yeah." Shisui lied, and he hated himself for it. "I'm happy."
And he knew, if he reached out, the boy would let Shisui kiss him again. It wouldn't mean anything, but it would feel like something for a while.
A/N:I get the feeling there was more to this then the muses were telling me. . Written in two hour at school listening to the song on repeat, romance hates me, edited over the weekend. I swear I'm actually working on a multi-chapter fic that makes sense now. :3