-Itachi-

"You've seriously got some nerve coming here, Sai." Itachi said in a bitter tone, glaring up at the boy in front of him who was, as usual, dressed head to toe in female attire.

The prison cell seemed to be even more excruciatingly cold today, and Itachi was huddled up in a corner, with the one blanket that he was allotted pulled tightly against him. His pride made him want to brave the cold so that he didn't look so pitiful – but he was too sensible for that, and he figured that Sai was colder than him anyway, by the looks of that skirt.

He hoped the bastard froze his balls off.

"Come on now, Itachi. I'm here to help you; and not for my own sake – as you well know."

Itachi glared cruelly at the younger man. "If it was for your own sake, maybe I'd let you. But you're right, it's not for yourself that you're trying to free me, and that just makes me want to strangle you to death right now even more."

Sai shrugged, and plopped down on the floor – immediately regretting it as he remembered the basic rule of nature that heat rises and cold air falls. The stone of the prison floor felt like ice and he shuddered, eying Itachi's blanket with open envy.

"I'm trying to be a good friend, Itachi. I-"

"You're sleeping with my fucking mother!" Itachi shouted furiously, hearing the jingling of keys as the guards hovered around the cell in response to his outburst. Itachi forced his voice down to a calm whisper and glared hatefully at Sai. "I've been in here for three years and you're still sleeping with my mother. Moved yourself into the complex, even. What's it like, Sai? Or should I say Ami – walking around like the lying little shit you are, having to wear a woman's mask because you can't even man up to your own sins."

Itachi could hear Sai grinding his teeth in apparent annoyance, but the shorter-haired man did manage to also calm down some and when he spoke it was with an annoyingly kind tone of voice.

"I love her, Itachi. I'm in love with her, and I've been in love with her for so long that I don't even know how to love anyone else anymore. I've never done anything to get between her and your father, it's not my fault if she doesn't love him anymore. Perhaps you're forgetting that she is the one who came on to me when I was just a helpless little kid."

Itachi looked pointedly at the wall, dreading the facts that were, of course, true. Fugaku had never sexually satisfied his wife. It was a fact that Sasuke and Itachi had always been disturbingly aware of, but no one spoke of it. Perhaps they were in love once, yes, but as far as things went in the bedroom – Mikoto was a spitfire and Fugaku was a cardboard box.

When Sasuke had turned sixteen, and held a massive birthday party at the complex ballroom – Sai had gotten lost. Itachi had no desire to know the details, but from what he understood, Mikoto had managed to seduce the teen, and had done so many times afterwords.

Of course, Sai hadn't come out about all of this to anyone but Sakura, who had of course told Sasuke, who had met Sai in room two-thirty-four, and the rest was history.

"I know my mother isn't the most moral of people either, but that doesn't mean you had a right to-"

"You think a sixteen year old boy has it in his mind to resist the temptation of a beautiful older woman? I don't remember you and Sasuke being around to see any of that, though. Hmmm... Sasuke's sixteenth birthday. I wonder where he was. Seems odd that he'd invite the whole village to a party, doesn't it? Almost as if he wanted to make sure he wouldn't be missed at his own event."

Itachi felt his jaw clench and he glanced worriedly at the door, hoping that the guards were hard of hearing. They were speaking very quietly, but he was still paranoid. As much as he hated him, it truly would be bad for the case if it came out that the charming young Ami was actually one of the lead suspects in disguise.

"If you want to know where Sasuke was, you'd be better off asking him yourself."

Sai snorted and rolled his eyes. "Right, right – except that you were missing in action as well, weren't you?"

Itachi was seriously getting sick of having Sai here. "Why did you come anyway, Sai? What do you want?"

Sai smiled. "Simple. I want your word that if I find you a way out of here, you won't try to kill me again, or blow my cover to make me stop sleeping with your Mom."

"Well, that's not something you can have. You might as well leave now. If I get out of here – and I will get out of here, then exposing you to the police is going to be the very first thing on my to-do list."

Itachi very much did not like the frown that Sai was giving him.

"Such a shame. I was hoping we wouldn't end up having to sue each other, Itachi... I've been staying at your house for quite some time. In your room, even. Of course, I did have to change your sheets before using your bed. They were quite filthy, and I must confess that I still haven't had them washed. I'm sure the court would be anxious to know how it is that DNA with such a close match ended up on the same linens..."

Oh lovely. Sai had a set of sheets with Itachi and Sasuke's cum all over it. Well, wasn't that just the lovely ending to an already wonderful day?

"It's highly possible that my brother could have been pleasuring himself on my bed, Sai. Don't jump to the wrong conclusions so easily."

Sai raised a mocking eyebrow. "Honestly, Itachi – is that what the jury is going to say when we all know that you and Sasuke have a secret that you tried to kill someone over? I think not."

And even as nonchalantly as the blackmail was referenced, Itachi got the point loud and clear: He and Sasuke's future was being handed to Sai on a plate.

-Shisui-

He had always imagined Gaara's arrival to be different, somehow. Shisui half frowned as he approached the bedroom he shared with his lover, able to hear the light gasp of pain – and then a low deeply pleasured purr. He knew exactly what Gaara was up to in there, and he was trying to decide whether or not to burst in.

Scathingly angry at the redhead, though unwilling to admit that to himself, Shisui stepped boldly into the room, and in one long stride, he was in front of Gaara and violently smacking the small razor out of pale steady hands.

Sea-foam eyes looked teasingly up at him, and a smirk spread across plump freshly-bitten lips. Shisui pointedly ignored the sexual gaze, and glowered down at the younger man.

"You've been out for over a month, now."

Gaara nodded, guardedly, and reached his abused arm slowly to his face, lapping at the blood as it spilled freely. It was a habit he'd picked up at the asylum – literally licking his own wounds. It was the only way to make sure the blood didn't stain the whiteness of it all, so it had been born out of necessity. However, Gaara had found in those three years that he quite enjoyed the taste of his own blood. They'd laughed about it once, and Shisui had called him his little vampire.

From the look on the Uchiha's face – there was no humor left to be had on the subject.

"I would have thought that this cutting business would have stopped by now." Shisui spat out bitterly, glaring down at his lover's arm, and scowling at the new scars there. They contradicted the old ones greatly – most of which had been either very depressing or very sexual or very frustrating.

Gaara's new scars were all happy words: Sunlight, Colour, Music, Love, Family, and today's new addition – Laughter.

There was about one for every week, and the lining of the words had gotten smaller. Shisui had wondered before how it was that Gaara found the space to have been carving himself open every week, but upon the Subaku's arrival to his home, and their first round of desperate love making, Shisui had made the unfortunate discovery that Gaara had clearly made good use of his legs as well as his arms. This had somehow been a bit of a wake-up call for the raven-haired man, and he had been completely against Gaara's self-mutilation from that point forward.

"Things like this don't just … stop." Gaara said quietly, looking at the man he loved with a mask of cool uncaring even though he was panicking on the inside. "They're not as deep … I'm doing the best that I can." He whispered the last part very quietly, almost just breathing it out, and Shisui couldn't help but look at him and see a pitiful child.

It was an odd sensation, that. He'd never really seen Gaara as a child before, even when Gaara was a child. He always had something so entirely adult about him that youth and innocence seemed foreign. Shisui was probably the only person who realized that Gaara really was an emotional wreck – even at the best of times, clearly.

So instead of pressing the issue, he smiled softly, and placed a gentle kiss on the red and torn flesh of Gaara's forearm, noting that the cuts were, in fact, significantly more shallow. "I love you," Shisui said quietly, placing another kiss on Gaara's lips, almost smirking at the desperate way the younger male's tongue insisted on battling with his, and refusing to cringe at the taste of Gaara's blood on his tongue. When their brief moment of passion ended, Shisui smiled, and looked down at the arm again.

"So, what made you laugh?" He asked, adoring the amusement in Gaara's raised eyebrow, and knowing that he'd impressed his young lover by pointedly ignoring the context in which he'd been made aware of Gaara's apparent laughter.

Gaara grinned and leaned playfully into Shisui's shoulder. "Well, Hinata Hyuuga told me the most amusing little thing today..."

A/N: Hello! Sorry I've disappeared! Hope you enjoyed the update, and it's enough to keep you reading. Don't worry, everything actually DOES start to unravel itself rather soon, and the dominoes will start to fall rather quickly once the first one's tipped. We're actually coming to the last few chapters of this fanfic, believe it or not. It'll be fifteen chaps long, so five more to go. Don't worry, there will be yaoi xD

PLEASE leave me a review! I so covet them!

All my love and thanks for reading,

-Beloved