A/N: Happy Birthday, Itachi! This is set in the same 'verse as "Sometimes You Only Get One Chance" and "Burnt Toast In The Real World", but it stands alone. Enjoy!

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You're Really Growing On Me

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Anko picks up on the third ring. "'Sup?"

And, see, Shisui isn't really sure how to start this conversation. He goes with a seemingly safe, "Hey!"

His best friend is not impressed. Actually, he's pretty sure he can see her unimpressed face even over thousands of miles and, like, an ocean.

"What's the damage?"

"There's no damage," Shisui replies, trying to sound as offended as possible. "Excuse me for wanting to know how my best friend is doing without me there to stop her from burning buildings down."

"That was one time, Shi. You gotta let it go." Anko yawns. Shisui looks at the decrepit clock on the wall and cringes—he's been on the other side of the pond for a while now, but it's still hard to remember that 'afternoon' here means 'Satan's asscrack of dawn' over there. This is probably why he almost failed algebra twice.

"So I say again: What's the damage?" she demands.

A healthy sense of self-preservation (that is definitely not paranoia, thank you very little) has Shisui looking over his shoulder before he elaborates. Itachi's supposed to be in a lecture for another hour, but they've been living out of each other's pockets for just long enough that Shisui knows his boyfriend can move like a freaking stealth cat when he wants to.

"It's, uh—" Shisui coughs. Maybe if he just eases into the problem then this conversation will be marginally less mortifying. "It's Itachi."

Anko snorts. "And by Itachi you mean your sex life?"

Shisui's jaw drops through the fucking floor.

"How are you psychic? How the shit are you always psychic when it involves me getting humiliated?"

Anko is cackling because she's evil and also she hates him. "Fuck, Shi, has the honeymoon gone south already?"

"No!" Wow, okay, that came out at a way higher pitch than Shisui wanted it to. He dials it back. "No." Then, "I mean—I don't think so."

She sobers up. "You guys having issues?"

Shisui scratches the back of his neck. "No? It's just—like, Itachi's really busy, I get that, but now that finals are coming up he's kind of losing his shit and it's kind of starting to freak me out."

"Hmm." A smack and a pop, almost like she's—

"Anko, are you seriously chewing gum while I'm trying to talk to you about my problems?"

"I'm your BFF, Shi, not your marriage counselor. I'm not getting paid for this shit." Another pop. "Okay, so spill. How long's it been? And I mean exactly."

Shisui closes his eyes and categorically hates every single life decision that led to this conversation happening. "Two weeks."

"And?"

"…and six hours."

She whistles. "Ouch."

"It's not that bad," Shisui insists. Then, in a small little voice he's painfully aware is pathetic, "Is it?"

"Relax, two weeks isn't enough to sink your ship if you've already gone through the emotional wringer like you two have," Anko says dismissively, which means Shisui has about two point five seconds of relief before she adds, "But there's gonna be some holes in the boat if you don't get your ass in gear."

"How?" Shisui groans. "If he's not on campus he's burying himself in books. And I'm not being metaphorical, Anko, I almost couldn't find him last night inside the book igloo. It's batshit. He's not sleeping, he's not eating right and oh my god, I'm turning into my sister. It's finally happening. I'm gonna have to commit ritual suicide now."

He can picture Anko's shrug, unfazed by Shisui's self-image crumbling around his ears. "You just gotta offer him something more appealing than an A."

"Have you met Itachi?"

And there's the smirk, right on cue. Shisui can picture that through the phone with no problems—it's all in the voice.

"Valedictorian or not, a dude's a dude. Sounds like you've been making the mistake of giving him too much space."

"He needs space to study," Shisui mumbles, aware that he sounds totally whipped and—actually yeah, that pretty much sums it up. He's totally whipped.

"No," Anko corrects him, "what he needs is to have his brains fucked out before they leak out his ears. You're too easy on him. This is for his own good, Shi."

Shisui opens his mouth, fails at locating any words whatsoever, and closes his mouth again.

It's surprisingly hard to argue when she puts it like that.

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He spends pretty much all of the next day psyching himself up, which, yeah, makes Shisui feel like the nerdiest nerd ever to nerd, because it's not like they haven't had sex before. Two weeks and [Redacted] hours isn't enough to kill Shisui's mojo, no sir.

But sex is usually something that happens in the spur of the moment. There's not a whole lot of thinking involved, unless it's to creatively avoid making enough noise to get them kicked out of their apartment (Shisui refuses to call it a 'flat'; call it his one small rebellion against the U.K. and its total lack of seasons).

Shisui doesn't normally have to prepare himself to be Assertive in order to drag Itachi out of an academic hell of his own making. But desperate times, yadda yadda; Shisui knows he's gonna have to be smooth as butter to get any kind of distraction past the productivity-induced shield walls Itachi's got up.

So obviously, by the time Itachi gets home that night, Shisui's managed to psyche himself out instead. He's clearly not made for this assertive stuff. Confrontation is the tool of Satan himself, hence the reason Shisui put up with Mrs. Henderson calling him "Shishi" for the entirety of his elementary school career.

But when the door opens, somehow all of that flies right out their badly patched-up window.

Itachi doesn't look like shit. That would be too kind, and Shisui is saying this as the designated Love of Itachi's Life. He looks like shit that somebody threw in the microwave and promptly forgot about. He looks like someone a zombie would ignore completely, assuming Itachi to be one of their shambling masses.

"Hello, Shisui," Itachi croaks. His words sound slurred, and his entire body appears to be sagging. There are circles under his eyes dark enough that Shisui vividly remembers Natsu's first (disastrous) experimentation with eye shadow. Is this what higher education does to people? Shisui is suddenly very, very glad he's abstained.

"You okay, 'tachi?" he asks, careful, because Itachi can get prickly about people implying he's not capable of doing literally everything by himself with no negative consequences whatsoever.

But Itachi apparently lacks the energy even for that. He nods slowly, like a drunk, and heaves his book bag onto the floor. It lands with a sound that makes Shisui think of boulders falling from great heights.

"I am going to make some tea," Itachi says; he's bypassed the slurring now in favor of over-articulating his words, like talking coherently is an effort. "And then I am going to study. You don't need to wait up."

If he's going to implement Anko's oh-so-brilliant 'fuck the stress out of him' strategy, Shisui thinks, now would be the time. Before Itachi can crawl back into his hole of books and papers like a really attractive mole. Shisui likes Lord of the Rings as much as the next geek, but he did not sign on to date Gollum or any other cave dweller for that matter.

He stands up and walks over to where Itachi is inspecting the cupboard for a clean mug (his optimism is so sweet sometimes, it really is).

"Itachi," he says.

Itachi doesn't turn around. "Nn?"

Shisui puts a hand on his shoulder and gently turns him around. The other hand goes to Itachi's temple, carefully brushing a stray hair out of his eyes. Shisui tries to remember the last time Itachi literally let his hair down and fails.

Itachi leans into the touch. His eyelids are at half-mast, but not like he's turned on. More like he's about to pass out in their kitchen. Shisui makes an executive decision.

"You're not studying tonight," he says firmly.

"I'm not?" He thinks Itachi is going for withering sarcasm, but as he's swaying slightly on his feet it's kind of like watching a wet kitten try to roar. Doesn't really work unless the goal is to make Shisui want to make 'aww' noises.

"You're not," Shisui confirms. "You're gonna go get in the shower while I make some of that nasty tea you've started drinking like a traitor, and then you're gonna come back out here so we can chill and watch shitty TV. And then you're going to sleep because I'm ninety percent sure you haven't done that in, like, a month."

"I am fine," Itachi insists, but it comes out so bleary it's almost pitiful. Shisui turns him again and starts nudging him toward the bathroom, and that's more a sign of Itachi's exhaustion than anything else, his total willingness to be led.

"Sure you are, genius. Try not to conk out and drown in the shower. That'd be, like, super undignified."

Itachi grumbles something unintelligible, but he doesn't put up any more of a fight, so Shisui counts it as a (surprisingly bloodless) win. After a minute he hears the shower running, nods to himself, and gets to work on the tea.

When Itachi eventually emerges, wearing the drawstring sweatpants and T-shirt he calls pajamas and with his hair loose and damp over his shoulders, Shisui doesn't give him any time to find his second wind. He half-drags him to the couch (which is again way easier than it should be), presses the tea into Itachi's hands (Shisui even cleaned the mug, you're welcome), and turns on the TV before Itachi can formulate a protest to any of it.

"Wonder if we can get MTV from here?" Shisui muses, flipping through the tiny selection of channels. "I mean, how else are we gonna know what religious group Madonna's pissing off this week?"

Itachi doesn't respond, but he does let himself tip sideways so that his head's resting on Shisui's shoulder, which is kind of unprecedented and kind of really nice.

"I skipped taking a shower today," he blurts, because nerves still don't agree with him. "So, y'know, you could steal all the hot water. It's not good to be that tense all the time. Um."

He can feel the curl of Itachi's smile against his neck.

"Thank you," Itachi says.

Shisui coughs. "What, for ignoring personal hygiene? I mean, you're the only one who has to deal with my grossness, so…"

Itachi doesn't say anything else. His fingers wind their way into Shisui's, though, and Shisui thinks he understands that pretty well.

After a few minutes, when Itachi's breathing evens out and Shisui's confident he's not about to wriggle away and study at the first opportunity, Shisui turns off the TV. He knows he should probably get them both to bed, because sleeping on couches is bad for your neck and your back and your everything else, apparently, but their apartment is nice and dark and the couch isn't that lumpy, when he thinks about it.

Shisui closes his eyes, rests his head gently on Itachi's and settles in.

He is awesome at being assertive. Take that, Anko.