A/N: FFnet continues to make posting as arduous as possible (current iteration: turning all of my fics into code when I try to upload...) but I will slowly continue crossposting nonetheless! Please enjoy this latest sequel to "Sometimes You Only Get One Chance" - and thanks lots to notmolly for your lovely PM, which reminded me I hadn't posted this one here yet. 3
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Midwest Shooting Stars
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Shisui wakes up before his alarm, which is strange.
The cause is even stranger: bright, cheerful sunlight, pouring in through the window and stabbing him repeatedly in the eyeballs.
Or at least that's what it feels like. Shisui's pretty sure living in England is turning him into an actual cave dweller. He's going to start talking in Gollum-speak soon; he has an image of himself curling protectively around his toaster and hissing "My precious" at anyone who comes close.
He turns his face away from the unforgiving gaze of the sun to find that Itachi's still fast asleep. This is delightful, seeing as Itachi is usually awake at disgusting hours of the morning for the sake of things like "essays" and "required readings" and "I did technically come here for school, Shisui". Whatever. It means Shisui doesn't get to see his sleeping face very often, which is criminal because Itachi's sleeping face is adorable. It's one of the only times that all traces of stress or anxiety seem to leave him.
Shisui stretches happily under the blankets. The air feels crisp and cool, a breeze coming in through the window they've got cracked, but it's warm in their bed. He's got nothing pressing on his schedule. The day can wait.
It's been a year and change since they settled in Oxford (which, as Shisui learned embarrassingly late, was not London—who knew? Obviously not Shisui, because nobody tells him these things) and things are finally starting to feel…well, not homey exactly, but definitely not as alien as they had when they'd first stepped off the plane. They have a better apartment now, for one; this one doesn't feel like it's in constant danger of collapsing in on itself, and also has more than two pieces of furniture. Truly a sign that Shisui's Made It in life.
More importantly, it's theirs. His and Itachi's. Both their names are on the rent agreement, both their mugs are in the cupboards (Itachi's tea addiction continues despite Shisui's best efforts), and Shisui's eyeliner shares sink space with Itachi's spare contact lenses. It was a little more than they could've swung on their own at the time, but some of Fugaku's assets had finally been unfrozen over the summer and the next thing Itachi knew, he had access to a small account that had been set up in his name. As fatherly gestures went, it hadn't been the worst one in the world.
(There'd been an argument first, naturally; Shisui's discovered it's almost impossible not to argue when bank statements are involved. They'd gone round and round for twenty minutes before Itachi finally got to the root of the issue.
"I won't take his money," he'd said, heated. "If he thinks he can buy his way back into my trust—"
"Babe." Shisui put his hands on Itachi's shoulders. "I get it. I'm all for principles and, like, taking the high ground and shit. If you really wanna throw your dad's cash back in his face I'll back you up."
He'd taken a breath and tried not to look too much like a Dickensian waif. "But also, we ate half our meals out of cans last week. I'm just saying! It'd be nice to not eat out of cans."
The resulting score had been Shisui's Stomach: 1; Itachi's Principles: 0.)
It's kind of a moot point now that Shisui has an actual job, thank God and all the saints England long ago kicked out (hey, he does listen when Itachi talks). He's working in a bread shop of all places. Kind of a weird gig, but the owners took a liking to him and apparently his accent and general American-ness make him "intriguing to the locals"—take that, literally every other employer in the U.K.!
So all things considered, he thinks they're doing pretty well. Itachi passed his first semester exams with flying colors, they're doing okay money-wise (it helps that Itachi's picked up a part-time job at the campus bookstore, just to really drive home that Hot Nerd brand), and some days it doesn't even rain.
They've even taken the train down to Real London once or twice. Shisui's kind of obsessed with the Tower and all its castle-y-ness.
A slight movement makes Shisui glance over again. He finds Itachi newly awake and watching him.
(A weaker man might find being stared at unnerving; creepy, even. Shisui considers it one of Itachi's many charms.)
"Morning, nerd," he says cheerfully. "Looks like I'm up first for once. You're slipping."
Itachi tries to hide his smile. It doesn't work very well. "I was not aware it was a competition. If so, I believe I have enough of a lead not to worry."
"Details, details." Shisui leans over and kisses him on the nose, because he can. And then it occurs to him why Itachi slept in. "Wait, do we actually both have the day off?"
"Of course."
Shisui blinks. "Of course?"
Itachi raises an eyebrow. He's been awake all of five seconds and already the unimpressed look, that's gotta be a personal record.
"You cannot possibly have forgotten what today is," he says.
"Today's, uh…" Shisui racks his brain. He swears he's better at keeping track of time than this—he does have a job—but the shop's been a little crazy lately and Itachi's been more buried in coursework than usual and dates have been slipping his mind. He only noticed it was October when the leaves started changing color. "Refresh my memory."
Itachi buries his face halfway in the pillow. His eyes are laughing. "I should have known. It was like this last year as well."
"Last—" Oh. Shisui grins. "Wait, I know this one—"
"Happy Birthday, Shisui," Itachi says dryly.
Shisui raises his hands. "I definitely would have remembered before the day was over this time. Probably."
Itachi sighs. "Surprising you with birthday gifts is difficult when you seem to constantly forget that the day exists."
"Aw, you got me something?" A prickle of heat dances down his spine at the memory of last year's "gift". He may not technically be Itachi's trophy husband (yet), but Shisui will never object to that kind of present.
"Something material," Itachi says, pointed, like he knows exactly what Shisui's thinking. (He probably does. Shisui's never in his life been accused of being subtle.) "I purchased it with some of what I've made at the bookstore."
He looks ridiculously pleased with himself. Shisui knows it means something to him to have his own money, to earn it instead of being dependent on Fugaku. It makes him really proud of his dork sometimes.
"As long as you don't go wild with your newfound wealth," he says. "I'm definitely not cut out to be the responsible one in this relationship."
"It didn't cost much," Itachi replies. "Besides, you could say it's an…academically sanctioned expense. There is plenty of historical significance in Paris."
Shisui blinks. He just vacated his teenage years, there's no way he's going deaf already. Or maybe he's listened to too much Boston on full blast.
"Okay, bear with me for a sec," he says. "I could've sworn you just said Paris."
Instead of answering, Itachi produces two tickets out of nowhere.
"Channel tickets are very reasonably priced," he says. Shisui squints and sees 'Round Trip – London and Paris' printed on one of the tickets, and his brain breaks.
He's a just-barely-not-poor kid from the U.S. It's bizarre enough that he's ended up living in England when his big sister's never so much as crossed the state line back home. Going to France is so beyond the limits of his imagination that he's never even thought about it.
Itachi blinks at his apparent lack of response but soldiers on. "The tickets are for tomorrow. It is a shorter trip than I had assumed, so I thought we could spend a day there. We will have to be economical, of course, but I did the math and we should have enough left over from rent this month—"
"Forget math," Shisui interrupts, and his awe must bleed through somewhere because Itachi begins to smile. "I know you have a whole itinerary planned out already, so let's hear it."
Itachi relaxes and starts talking animatedly about architecture and history and bakeries and the river Seine, all this stuff that seems so far removed from Shisui that it might as well be Middle Earth. He's explaining something about a bridge called the Pont des Arts when Shisui has to cut him off before his head actually explodes. That would be a definite loss of Romance Points for both of them.
"How long have you been planning this?" he asks. Itachi gets a shifty look on his face and Shisui groans. "You've been doubling up on coursework so you'd have two days off, haven't you?"
Before he can start in on a Take Care Of Yourself, Idiot lecture that would make his mother proud, Itachi jumps in.
"It was within what I could handle," he says. "I have not been overdoing it. I have even been sleeping at normal hours; you can attest to that."
"Well, yeah, but I don't think it counts if I have to blow you to get you to come to bed—"
"The point stands," Itachi interrupts, slightly pink. "I…I wanted to do this for you. I thought it would be an adventure, of sorts."
And Shisui lets himself think about it, really think about it: he and Itachi in Paris. Like something out of a Cameron Crowe movie for real—American Idiots In Love Take France. And then he realizes something.
"Shit!" he blurts. Itachi blinks.
"What?"
"You—" He holds Itachi's face and tries not to laugh. "You just totally out-romanced me, that's all. Like, as far as romantic gestures go, it doesn't get any bigger than Paris. I think you just wrecked my entire sense of self."
Itachi smiles and laces his fingers with Shisui's.
"Once again," he says, "I was not aware that it was a competition. But if it is—"
"Shut up," Shisui tells him happily, and kisses him on the mouth.
Tomorrow, they'll have Paris. Today they have a warm bed and gorgeous weather, and Shisui has Itachi.
He really couldn't ask for anything more.