Three weeks. That was how long Itachi waited to hear from Kisame, hoping that his best friend would man up and come to him so they could have a nice sit-down chat like mature adults, and talk out what the kiss on Kisame's birthday had meant. Really, that didn't seem like much to ask for; especially since the ball seemed to be in Kisame's court, seeing as it was the shark who decided to kiss and run, and Kisame was the one who was usually the most forward and willing to approach Itachi about any problem or scheme that came to him.

Unfortunately Itachi had either overestimated the maturity level of a 14-year-old hormonal teenager, or grossly underestimated how embarrassed the kiss had left Kisame. The shark managed to successfully dodge Itachi outside of class, avoid eye contact when they had to be in the same room for more than two minutes, and refused to return any of Itachi's calls or texts.

It hurt, to say the least. Maybe Kisame had clubs to throw himself into or other friends to hang out with, but Itachi didn't have those options. Sasori and Deidara were nice, but they were no replacement for his best friend of eight years. Having Kisame ignoring him like this, particularly when it was the shark who'd made things awkward between the two of them, was so painful it physically made his chest ache.

Itachi kept giving the shark more and more chances day after day, but after a certain point he was forced to admit that Kisame simply wasn't going to approach him to talk this out; at least, not in the foreseeable future. Very well then. If the shark wouldn't come to him willingly, Itachi would just have to "persuade" him to come over, in the Uchiha sense of the word. And so after three weeks of somewhat impatient waiting, on the first of April, Itachi decided to take matters into his own hands and force Kisame to talk to him.

He waited until school was out one afternoon and headed straight over to the Hoshigaki household. Kisame wouldn't be home for a few hours yet, so there was no danger of the shark ruining the plan mid-execution. But there was a car in the driveway when he arrived, and that meant Hana Hoshigaki was home, probably hard at work on her family's dinner. Not ideal, but certainly not a deal breaker for Itachi. Although he had a key to the house (and had had it for years at this point), manners dictated that Itachi still had to knock on the front door and wait patiently for Hana to answer.

The woman who'd become a second mother to him answered the door a moment later, covered in flour and smelling strongly of fresh bread. She must have been baking when Itachi arrived. "Itachi? Oh honey, it feels like it's been ages since I've seen you!"

The weasel was quickly swept up into a hug, which fortunately hid the frown on his face against the soft shoulder of Mrs. Hoshigaki. He hadn't been over once during the time he and Kisame were not speaking, and although three weeks might not seem too long to the average person, Hana was used to seeing her son with Itachi nearly every day. Itachi quickly pushed aside those negative thoughts; if he was able to pull this off, he'd soon be coming over to the Hoshigaki household with regular frequency once more. His attention was distracted from these dark musings as Hana pulled away and finally showed her surrogate son inside. "I'm sorry, Kisame's out right now with some of his friends; swim team meeting or something, I think. He should be back by dinner though, if you want to stay."

Itachi knew that Kisame was indeed at a swim team meeting, and that he always managed to duck out of them right before dinner; that was precisely why he chose to come over at this time. No need to let Hana know that, though; best play the part of an innocent and unaware best friend. Nodding as if to agree with her suggestion, he quietly made his way up to Kisame's room and shut the door behind him. That wasn't something he would normally do, since Hana had a habit of bringing up cookies or muffins whenever he was in Kisame's room, but he couldn't risk Kisame's parents walking in on him right now. Quickly Itachi looked around the room until he located Kisame's gym bag, crumpled up by the foot of his bed. The weasel dug through its contents until he came across his targets: Kisame's lucky sweats and swimsuit, reserved specifically for important meets. In a flash Itachi had stuffed these into his backpack and replaced them with a note, telling Kisame to come over to his place if the shark ever wanted to see his swim gear again. Perhaps a bit drastic, but Itachi had already exhausted all his reasonable options as well as his patience. Short of kidnapping, there were simply no options left to the Uchiha. Kisame had brought this on himself.

Mission complete, Itachi exited the room and walked down the stairs as quietly as he could. In the blink of an eye he was out the front door and dashing across the street, hoping to get out of visual range before Hana could stick her head outside the kitchen and realize he'd disappeared without so much as a hug goodbye.

-m-

Hours passed as Itachi sat in his room, trying to find something to occupy his mind until Kisame showed up (if Kisame decided to show at all). He'd given up on trying to do any homework; not only was he unable concentrate on the work, but he also didn't want to give Kisame a bad impression when the shark came over, as if suggesting that stealing the prized possessions of his best friend was minor enough not to interrupt Itachi's algebra. A book was out of the question for the same reason, and he'd already checked his email and texts a dozen times already. Finally he'd settled on trying to rearrange the clothing folded up inside his dresser drawers. At least it would keep his hands busy, if not his mind. And so it came to pass that Itachi was elbows deep in his socks when a very irate Kisame rapped on his window at 11 o'clock at night. To his credit, Itachi only jumped a little bit and sent barely half a dozen pairs of socks flying in shock.

He opened the window and quickly dashed over to the other side of the room, locking his bedroom door before Kisame had even climbed over the windowsill. As Itachi suspected, Kisame did not look very happy to see him and all but slammed the window shut behind him. "Seriously Itachi?! You broke into my room and stole my…my…oh shit."

Itachi tried to look as defiant as possible, which was rather difficult considering that his cheeks were doing a bang-up impression of ripe tomatoes and Kisame was, frankly, gaping at him in utter shock. He'd figured that Kisame would try to barge in, yell for a bit, and then steal his clothing back before bolting without even a single word about their little kissing issue. In order to avoid this, Itachi had made it impossible for Kisame to reclaim his stolen belongings by putting on the pilfered garments himself. If Kisame wanted to take them back, he'd either have to hear Itachi out or strip his best friend.

"Why are you wearing my clothes?!"

"Hn."

"That's not a good answer!"

"Shh!" Itachi hissed, motioning to the door. The last thing they needed right now was for his parents to come upstairs to see what was causing a commotion in his room.

Frowning, Kisame nevertheless reduced his yells to angry whispers. "Why are you wearing my sweats?! They're way too big for you!"

Itachi set his mouth in a grim line, marched forward to stand directly in front of his friend, and shoved him towards the beanbag chair at the foot of his bed with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. "Talk."

Kisame stumbled backwards and flopped down on the chair with a soft "Oomph!", clearly surprised by Itachi's sudden display of strength. He looked up at his friend and opened his mouth as if to argue, but no words came out when he saw the look Itachi was giving him. Finally he sighed and bowed his head forward, motioning for Itachi to sit in front of him on a small cushion that had slid off the foot of the bed. "Fine. I knew this was coming eventually; might as well get it over with now."

Itachi sat in front of him, kneeling quietly as he waited for Kisame to speak. The shark took a minute to gather his thoughts, running his fingers through his hair as his eyes darted around the bedroom to look at anything but Itachi. Finally when he could delay no longer, Kisame began addressing his friend. "I'm sorry I sprang that kiss on you, Itachi. I should've asked or something before I did that."

"Hn."

Kisame sighed, bowing his head even lower than before. "I've had this major crush on you for I don't even know how long. I've known I'm gay for a while, but you're the first actual real person I've had a thing for."

Itachi nodded, hoping that he was coming across as understanding and not upset. This was clearly hard for Kisame, and regardless of how difficult the shark had been for the past few weeks, they were still best friends.

"At first I tried to tell myself that it was just because you were the one guy I was always around," Kisame went on, "So I tried to spend more time at swim practice, away from you, to see if that changed anything. But it didn't; I just started feeling bad every time I saw how sad I made you when I had to shoot you down for extra practices."

Itachi winced; he'd been hoping that his loneliness had been better concealed than that. To be fair, a normal person probably wouldn't have noticed anything, but Kisame had spent nearly a decade learning to read the weasel's most minute expressions. "Sorry Kisame."

Kisame shook his head. "Don't be. Anyway, about my birthday…I made a big mistake. We were alone together, and I'd been thinking about you all day, so I decided to make a move. But I chickened out at the last minute and tricked you into closing your eyes so I could kiss you. And then when you froze up, I panicked and ran."

"Hn," Itachi sternly remarked. At least Kisame could admit that it was a poor move on his part to just run off like that.

"And then I avoided you for a couple weeks, which I know was a shitty thing to do. I just…I didn't want you to be angry with me. You've always been my best friend, and…I dunno, I feel like I wrecked that."

Without a hint of hesitation, Itachi snatched a pillow from his bed and smacked Kisame's head with it.

"OW! Damnit-" The rest of Kisame's lament was cut off by Itachi lunging forward and wrapping his arms around Kisame's neck, embracing the shark in a tight hug. "Itachi?"

"Idiot," Itachi whispered, squeezing his best friend tightly. "Idiot."

"Er, not to prove your point, but are you calling me an idiot for kissing you, or for avoiding you afterwards? Because I really hope it's the second one." Itachi's response was a chuckle and another hug, this one more gentle. "Ok, I'm gonna go with the second one." Slowly, clearly still scared that he was going to mess up, Kisame hugged Itachi back.

A moment later Itachi sat back and glanced up at Kisame, who was finally looking him in the eye for the first time in over a fortnight. There was a smile on his face, and his overall body language spoke of extreme relief. "Thank god. I was seriously worried that this was going to be it for us."

Itachi picked up his pillow and smacked the shark again.

"OW! Ok, I get it, I'll never make that kind of assumption again. Just like I'll never spring a surprise kiss on you again-"

"Hn."

Kisame blinked. "What?"

Itachi rolled his eyes, hoping that Kisame would be able to piece this one together without his help.

"You can't…you don't want that again, do you? There's no way you do! You freaked out!"

"Hn!"

"Well why else would you freeze up?!"

"Because it felt nice," Itachi stated as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Kisame blinked several times. His mouth opened, closed, opened again, and only let out a confused sound. He looked around the room, as if searching for the words desperately needed at this point, but nothing was forthcoming. Finally, he leaned forward in his seat, put both hands on Itachi's shoulders, and plainly asked, "Itachi, you do know that you're supposed to kiss back if you like it, right?"

The Uchiha cocked his head to the side, giving Kisame a confused look that had probably only been donned by him half a dozen times over the course of his life.

"Seriously, how could you not know that?! It's in TV shows, movies, books-"

"Fiction," Itachi summarized.

"But fiction more often than not has some grounding in reality," Kisame retorted, exasperated. "And kissing back is one of those things that actually happens in the real world, Itachi."

"…Hn."

At that noise, Kisame completely and totally lost it. He fell over to the side, laughing harder than he had in a good long while, and had to quickly grab a pillow to muffle the sounds before Itachi's parents came in to investigate. It was several long moments before he was able to quiet down enough to safely pull it away, and tears were streaked down his face by then. "I can't believe it…I've been panicking this whole time, thinking I'd lost my best friend over my stupid crush on him, and the truth is the all-knowing Itachi Uchiha didn't realize you're supposed to kiss back. If there's a god up there, that bastard has a twisted sense of humor."

Itachi frowned, not used to being the butt of jokes about someone's intelligence. As payback, Itachi deliberately climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over his head, still dressed in Kisame's lucky swim gear.

"Aww, c'mon Itachi! I've got a big meet this weekend and I need those," Kisame begged, tugging at the covers.

Smirking internally, Itachi allowed the covers to be pulled back and stretched his arms above his head, carefully angling his body in what he hoped would come off as a provocative pose. "Then take them."

To Kisame's credit, the shark had the decency to turn away once his cheeks flushed as red as Itachi's had been moments before, rather than continuing to stare at the Uchiha like his brain had just short-circuited. Itachi himself was blushing a bit, but hopefully Kisame wouldn't notice that due to his own embarrassment.

Carefully averting his eyes from Itachi, Kisame made his way over to the dresser and began rummaging around its drawers. "Did you reorganize this…? Never mind." Shutting the drawers, Kisame turned around to look at Itachi. "Here. Trade you these pajamas for my stuff."

Itachi rolled his eyes and carefully peeled off the clothes, making sure to stay under his blanket the whole time. Gradually pieces of the outfit were flung out to Kisame, who quickly exchanged them for pjs. Soon enough, Kisame had his lucky sweats and swimsuit back, and Itachi was dressed in a pair of pajamas that were slightly too warm for April.

"Thanks, Itachi." Kisame said with a smile. "I, um, guess I should go…"

"Hn," Itachi agreed, somewhat reluctantly.

Kisame moved towards the window but stopped before he actually got there. There was a pause, and then the shark spun around, took two quick steps to the bed, and bent down to give Itachi a kiss. This time the Uchiha responded, and even if it wasn't as graceful or well-executed as he might have liked, at least it was a proper kiss back with his arms around Kisame's shoulders.

Kisame stood up and smiled again, this time with a much goofier look on his face. He mumbled something about needing to go, wandered towards the window and walked smack into the wall a foot to the left of his target. Itachi winced and bit back a chuckle; laughter was probably not a good response right now.

Kisame swore, opened the window, turned back around one more time to tell Itachi goodnight, and then disappeared from sight. Itachi gave him a few minutes to wander off before he got up and closed the window properly. Grinning his own dopey smile, the Uchiha burrowed into his bed and shut his eyes contently. That wasn't so hard. Maybe he should resort to thievery more often when he wanted something from Kisame.