A/N: So I figure if the Christmas fic thing doesn't work out, the least I can do is get you guys some end-of-the-world fic!
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Just the End of the World
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The intruder walks in on December 20th. At 11:49 PM, to be exact.
Itachi has spent the day thus far the way he has every other day this week—classes in the morning, followed by a shift at the library, and then wrapping Christmas presents in the evening. (He's sort of abnormally proud of his wrapping skills—Sasuke always complains that Itachi is the reason he simply puts all of his gifts in bags rather than draw inevitable comparisons. Itachi smiles serenely at him during these rants and pretends not to know what his brother is talking about, but to be honest, he's perfectly aware than he could put a professional mall wrapper to shame. And fine, maybe he's a little smug about it.)
A few of his classmates and coworkers made comments over the course of the day, of course. The End of the World (ominous capital letters and all) has been a subject of much conversation and intrigue since 2012 began, and now that the date is so close at hand people are really beginning to get excited.
Itachi, personally, prides himself on the job he's done in managing to avoid all the madness. He hasn't stocked up on canned goods or toilet paper, or done anything reckless like quit his job or go skydiving. For god's sake, he hasn't even tried to get drunk. He has a seven AM class tomorrow, thank you very much, and he'd rather not drag his hungover corpse out of bed for it after the world doesn't end.
Because it isn't going to. Itachi is a reasonable person, he likes to think—at least reasonable enough to know that even if it does, if this prediction out of so many turns out to be correct, there is absolutely nothing he can do about it. Therefore, there is no point worrying.
Content in his cocoon of logic, Itachi is settling into his favorite chair and opening a book. He plans to ring in the not-apocalypse with some Asimov.
True to form, as soon as he settles on this plan the door opens.
He really needs to learn to stop making plans.
Itachi looks up. There are only two people in the world who have a spare key to his apartment, and as Sasuke is off on a skiing trip with his classmates, that leaves only—
"Shisui?" he ventures.
Sure enough, a curly-haired head pops into view from the doorway.
"Hey, 'tachi," Shisui greets him cheerfully, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. "You busy?"
"If I were, would it stop you?" Itachi asks dryly.
"Wouldn't even slow me down," Shisui replies without hesitation, hanging up his coat and collapsing on Itachi's couch. "So, will you be the one giving Aunt Uruchi food poisoning, or will I?"
"Shisui," Itachi says patiently, "you could always just not go to her Christmas party. I don't see why you're trying to get the whole thing called off."
"Because she's a maniac!" Shisui groans. "She's been hounding me about clearing my schedule for weeks, and over the past few years I think I've used up my supply of believable excuses."
"You call 'my German shepherd got his tail shut in the car door and needs to be taken to the vet immediately' a believable excuse?"
"Hey, I was proud of coming up with that one on short notice! It could happen!"
"Shisui, you are allergic to dogs."
"…Yeah, well, she still bought it," Shisui says breezily. "Anyway, speaking of allergies, I'm pretty sure shrimp will be the weapon of choice, considering what it does to her-"
"Please stop telling me about your nefarious plans in advance," Itachi sighs, slipping a bookmark between the pages of Foundation's Edge. "As much as I appreciate foreknowledge of how much fallout I will need to dance around, I think I would like to claim plausible deniability in this case."
"Suit yourself," Shisui shrugs. "We can just skip to the reason I came here, then."
There's something in his tone that worries Itachi greatly, and the feeling only intensifies when Shisui produces a bottle of unidentifiable alcohol from the ether. He hadn't thought his friend believed in all the 12/21/12 hype, and he shudders to think what Shisui might want to do if he thinks it's his last chance.
"Shisui, I do not intend to get drunk on our supposed 'last night on earth'," he warns. "Or anything else…unadvisable."
Shisui waves him off. "No, see, the drink's not just for shits and giggles. If what I'm about to say goes nightmarishly wrong, this-" he shakes the bottle, swashing around the clear liquid inside "-is solely for the purpose of forgetting I ever opened my mouth. On the other hand, if what I'm about to say doesn't prompt you to stab me in the face with a fork, then it can be used for celebration purposes. So it's a win-win, I figure."
Itachi raises an eyebrow.
During the course of their long friendship, Shisui has said many things that have, as he so eloquently put it, made Itachi want to stab him in the face with a fork. Or at least smack him upside the head with perhaps slightly more force than strictly necessary. The list of offenses is extensive and varied, ranging from particularly filthy innuendos (that is, before Itachi got used to them/sort of started not minding them as much, which he will admit the same day he sprouts wings and learns to fly) to "hypothetical" schemes that would very likely end in arrest warrants or grievous bodily harm (especially when they—and by extension the unfortunate consequences—stopped being hypothetical).
Yet by some miraculous and prolonged feat of self-restraint, Itachi has thus far managed not to kill Shisui with whatever blunt instrument might be in the room.
If Shisui thinks that whatever he's about to suggest can top everything else he's dragged Itachi into over the years, Itachi rather fears for them both.
"Go on then," he prompts, bracing himself.
Shisui clears his throat.
"Itachi," he begins, hesitating to run his fingers back through his hair like he always does when he's nervous. Then something fierce lights up his eyes and Shisui straightens, barreling right through the rest of it.
"If the world doesn't end tomorrow, do you want to go out with me?"
Itachi blinks. Several times. Rapidly.
Shisui waits patiently, having long since recognized the blinking that signals Itachi's brain buffering.
There is not a chance, Itachi decides, he heard that correctly.
"Come again?" he says at length, convinced he's finally lost his mind and become one of those mad geniuses who think cutting off their ears and sending them to their girlfriends is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. That Itachi is neither an artist nor straight is, he feels, beside the point at the moment.
Shisui, meanwhile, has taken on the air of a man who knows he's headed for the gallows and is determined to give any witnesses nightmares before his time is up. (Or something. Itachi's metaphors have a tendency to become more morbid and nonsensical the more confused he is.)
"Assuming the apocalypse doesn't happen in-" Shisui checks the clock on the wall "-three minutes and cook us in our seats, do you want to go out? And no I don't mean 'go out' like, to the grocery store or any other romcom-y, misunderstanding definition of the phrase, but like going to dinner or the movies or something and you letting me kiss you and eventually do things that will make your dad want to castrate me. That going out."
Shisui is blushing right up to the tips of his ears, but he looks as resolute as Itachi's ever seen him.
As for his part, there are a lot of things Itachi could say about now. Things like "we're cousins, sort of" or "the possible end of the world doesn't seem like a healthy basis for the start of a relationship". That kind of thing.
But the clock on the wall now reads two minutes to midnight, and if a solar flare does pop up and cook them in their seats, Itachi would rather not become a charred corpse with the knowledge that he left Shisui hanging.
Besides, he was sort of planning on asking Shisui out anyway. Tomorrow. When the world didn't end, because if it had he would have been extremely pissed.
In any case, Shisui has beaten him to it, but Itachi smiles and nods anyway.
He figures he'll have plenty of other opportunities to be the proactive one.
Shisui's face splits with a huge grin. "Awesome. That's-"
Abruptly he glances sideways at the clock, and Itachi follows his gaze.
It's officially midnight on the day after their last day on earth.
"Guess that answers that, then," Shisui says with a shrug, almost sounding disappointed.
"So it would seem," Itachi replies nonchalantly, and wastes no time in crossing the room to pull Shisui up for a kiss.
The world may not have ended at midnight, but there are still twenty-four hours left in the 21st and Itachi has always been pragmatic about these things.
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The End
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A/N: And just in case the world DOES end tomorrow, can I just say how awesome all of you people are and how much I love you all to bits?