"Thank you for joining us for dinner, sweetheart." His mother cooed.
Sasuke just nodded to her, shoving a healthy serving of linguine twirled on his fork straight into his mouth.
His mother had made chicken marsala and grilled asparagus. A typical meal in his household. Even though neither of his parents had been born in Italy, and neither had either set of his grandparents, his "Italian" family had some sort of dinner like this every night of his life.
"I know, I feel like I've barely got to see you since you've been here." Itachi smiled at him.
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "I've been catching up with friends."
"Yes, how is Naruto?" Itachi asked. Not because he thought that's who Sasuke had been spending his time with. He asked like he knew that Sasuke had only seen his best friend once, and had in fact, been spending all of his free time with Naruto's very recently made ex-girlfriend.
Sasuke leveled his brother with a cool stare. "Fine."
"That's good to hear." His mother beamed. "I hope to see you more over the rest of the summer. Maybe we should re-enact Uchiha weekly game night."
Sasuke grabbed his wine glass to his balk.
"Wouldn't that be great, honey?" His mother turned towards his father at the head of the table.
Mr. Uchiha had also grabbed his money glass to save himself a reaction, mirroring his youngest son at the opposite end of the long African Blackwood table.
Itachi beamed across his mother. "I think that's a wonderful idea."
"When will Izumi be here?"
His mother latched onto a new topic and thankfully Sasuke was saved for the rest of his dinner. That was until his brother created another opportunity to corner him.
"We'll do the clean up, mom." Itachi grabbed her plate from her when she stood to clear off the table.
"Oh, sweethearts." She swooned. "You don't need to-"
"You already did so much." Itachi wouldn't hear the end of it. "Plus now you have time to finalize with dad when we're going to take the boat out."
His father, who had already started his silent retreat from the dining room, shot his oldest son a withering glare.
"Oh, that's right!" She finally relinquished her death grip on her dinner plate to Itachi and quickly scurried off, her high heels clacking. "Fugaku, dear!"
Just because his mother was usually the clean freak of the house, he wasn't unaware of how to clean a kitchen. He did live by himself for most of the year now. Their kitchen was large and updated, and there really wasn't a reason for Itachi to be elbow to elbow next to him, and yet that was exactly where his brother was. Sasuke watched the plates while Itachi was drying them by hand.
"If you have something to say, just say it." Sasuke finally snapped.
Itachi looked over at him. "It sounds like you have something you want to say."
"I'm not playing mind games with you."
It fell back into silence for a while as they finished up. When they finished, Itachi grabbed his brother a beer from the fridge. He knew it was a little dog treat, to get him to sit and stay, but he took it anyway.
"Do you remember in middle school when you came to me and asked what you should do if you liked someone that didn't like you?" He asked.
Sasuke didn't nod his head yes or no.
"Is this in any way similar to that?"
"It's not similar." Sasuke promised.
He didn't waver or change his answer even through the eyebrow raise of his older brother. Because it was true. It was not similar.
It was exactly the same situation.