Forgetting is a natural part of the average human life. Sometimes it happens over years, and sometimes after just a few minutes, but in either case, the simple act of forgetting was nothing for one for worry about. But Itachi knew he had a problem in this department. After all, it wasn't normal for someone to forget seventeen years. He knew that it had been seventeen years, because Naruto had once told him that he was eighteen, although Itachi couldn't remember if that had been on his birthday or just in passing conversation. Itachi didn't actually know when his birthday was.
He had learned over time that he had three different categories of memory, and more disturbingly, that the people he lived with were all keenly aware of them. There was one for the basic knowledge that told him how to read letters into words and how to find his way around the village where he lived. Things that he knew, but had no recollection of learning. And if Naruto's nerves were any indication, that knowledge in itself was still to be considered somewhat shaky. For that reason, Itachi sometimes allowed Naruto to follow him when he went to the grocery store, or simply out on walks around the village. Sometimes, he even allowed the pink aired girl that appeared almost daily at their apartment to go out with him too. But most of the time he took pains to sneak out of the house undetected. It was another thing he didn't remember how he knew how to do.
The second kind of memory was more fleeting than the first. He could sometimes be sitting alone in a room, or in a crowd, when an image or a word would come to him. And for a second, when the almost memory was flickering in his mind, Itachi was sure that he knew exactly what it meant. Then, just as he began to follow the train of thought a little farther, the knowledge would vanish and leave him frowning in confusion. A few times he managed to hold onto some remnant of the thought long enough to try voicing it to Naruto or the girl. He was almost certain he had gotten halfway through voicing it on one occasion even, and then had suddenly had to fall silent. In another instance, he had gotten a piece of paper and tried to write down the words that stuck the longest in his mind to remind himself of their meaning later, after the struggle in his mind had calmed, but to no avail.
Kyuubi…Fan…Mission…Kitsune…Kistune…Kis…
And then there was his third type of memory. It usually came from hearing or sometimes seeing something, or even spending too much time trying to force his way around the barrier that came hand in hand with his second kind of memory. His head would begin to pound, as if some invisible force was tightening inside, just behind his eyes. The headache medicines that the pink haired girl brought him did close to nothing to quell the pain in these episodes, and only left him sleepy and frustrated when they subsided. He had long since stopped trying to think about what connections could be surmised from the things that triggered the process, accepting that of the three, this type of memory didn't need him to ponder it at length. If there was a link, the range of stimulus was too wide. A word or a glance, and the pain would flair up again, like a painful barrier on his mind that told him, "You don't want to know."
His blond haired roommate often begged him to stop trying to get into those forbidden parts of his mind, but Itachi couldn't help it. He hated not knowing things.
What made not knowing so especially terrible in his apartment, was the fact that everyone else he came into contact with seemed to know what he couldn't remember. Naruto tried to hide the awareness from him, but Itachi wasn't as simple minded as the blond liked to think. He noticed the odd looks that he received when he went out on his own, and the careful way Naruto and the few people he brought into their home spoke when he was in the room.
And then there was the angry boy.
The angry boy was the person that was most often by Naruto's side. Naruto used to joke about him trying to move in without telling anyone. Itachi honestly hoped not. The boy was taller than Naruto, though Itachi still had to angle his head downward in order to meet his eyes. His hair was dark, and contrasted strikingly with the pale color of his skin. He seemed to be in a remarkably large supply of high collared blue shirts, which Itachi knew had a symbol of some kind on the back. The boy often stood with his back leaning against some convenient surface—the wall, the counter, the window sill—as if he couldn't bear to stand upright on his own. Itachi had wanted to ask if there was something wrong with his legs. But Itachi suspected that the angry boy's habit was really because on one occasion the boy had turned around and given him a perfect view of the before mentioned symbol, and Itachi had nearly swallowed an entire bottle of the pink haired girl's aspirin when he locked himself in the bathroom afterward.
What exactly was on the shirt, Itachi couldn't remember. He'd blocked it out, possibly. When Itachi tried to recall just what had happened after the moment the angry boy's back turned, all that resulted was a warning throb in his temples, and he couldn't be sure whether that was an echo of the headache he'd gotten then, or one caused by trying to remember it.
He supposed that Naruto had talked to the boy—yelled, more likely, because after that incident, the angry boy never exposed his back to Itachi again.
Whether it was also ruled out by the protective blond or not, the angry boy blatantly avoided speaking to Itachi whenever he visited the apartment as well. Itachi knew he watched him intently though, even when being addressed by others, which was on occasion followed by more yelling on Naruto's part. Sometimes with Itachi still in the room with them. Sakura, the cheerful pink haired girl that Itachi couldn't remember meeting, assured him that they had fought from the moment they met, but Itachi couldn't help but listen in when their voices became so loud. It was a small apartment.
"I can't believe you! He's absolutely HELPLESS, and you're still expecting him to go out and—"
"He's a KILLER!"
"Not anymore!"
"He'd stab you in your sleep if he half remembered how!"
Itachi also couldn't help but notice, the angry boy never bothered to wear a different shirt.
~ K ~
On one occasion, the angry boy and Itachi were alone together. Itachi had been leaving the bathroom after taking two aspirin for some reason—sometimes it hurt to think about what sent him to the bathroom medicine cabinet—and the boy had been on his way to use it. When they met each other in the hall, they had to stop when neither bothered to move aside for the other. Itachi and the boy had glared at one another in a mutual refusal to be the first to submit by stepping out of the other's way. Then the boy had started talking. Itachi had to crane his neck down a little in order to hear because the boy's voice was so low.
"…our clan…didn't even think about it…murderer…"
There was a certain tension that seemed to follow the angry boy around. Whenever he walked into a room, the atmosphere changed. Even the chirpy Sakura's voice would dim, and though she and Naruto never said it, Itachi had figured it out. The angry boy hated him. That was why he was angry. The part of his mind that offered knowledge without explanation quickly told him that asking about the boy's hatred was not a good idea. It became obvious that his assumption was correct that day in the hallway, anyway.
The boy's actual words were hard to remember, more for the boy's tendency to mumble rather than Itachi's memory failure. He remembered the raven haired head angled toward the ground, and seeing the boy's fist clench. He listened to the rattled off names, none that struck particular cords in his mind, yet seemed very important to Naruto's reoccurring, angry visitor.
Then he got to the end, the harsh voice cracking with, "And what about Kaa-san? Do you remember what you did to her?"
"No."
The boy's head had snapped up quickly. Itachi had had to step back to avoid it hitting his chin, and then discovered that the effort was pointless. The boy had jumped after him. Itachi stood frozen until the last moment, not quite gaping, but watching. He felt something strange in his chest and stomach. Something similar to a soda can being shaken rapidly by a tightly clenched fist. He didn't realize what the feeling had been until later: fear. And what had caused it hadn't even been the gleaming kunai in the angry boy's hand. In the moment that the boy's head had come up, Itachi had noticed something different about the boy. When he surged forward, Itachi saw it. He knew from how the boy stared at him that his eyes were plain black…yet when he saw the boy in that moment they were red. Bright, blood red.
Itachi had thrown himself to the side and grabbed onto a fistful of coal black hair with one hand, slamming his body forward again to pin the boy's to the wall. The boy let out a low growl, but when he tried to change the angle of his kunai to attack him, Itachi's other hand closed over the crucial wrist and twisted it around so that the weapon's point scraped against the soft skin at the back of the angry boy's own head.
Itachi hadn't even blinked once throughout the process.
When Naruto came into the hallway, probably wondering what was taking so long with his two friends, he had stopped, then screamed. Itachi stared at him for a second in confusion; the unusuality of holding a shinobi in a potentially fatal position hadn't registered yet. And rather than question Itachi's ability, the blond pounced on the raven haired boy, too angry to even take notice, or care, that the roommate he normally strove to shelter was still able to hear him.
"You bastard! You attacked him! After I told you he wasn't going to do anything, you just go and—"
"He's not exactly 'helpless' right now, in case you haven't noticed."
The boy's head lifted away from the wall slightly when he raised his voice, only to press back against it when he discovered the kunai still present behind him,
Naruto glared indignantly, refusing to admit defeat but able to do little better.
Their conversation went on, and to Itachi's distraction, the familiar ache began to swelled up in his head. The raven haired boy had said something. A simple word.
"His own clan!"
"He doesn't remember any of that!"
A pause.
"How do you know?"
Itachi had ended up letting go of the angry boy to go back into the bathroom and take another aspirin. After that, he had gone back to his bedroom, where he laid down until the throbbing subsided, leaving the rest of the conservation unheard. It was pointless anyway, he told himself, thinking of how little these arguments between the angry boy and his roommate managed to stay in his memory.
But as days passed, Itachi began to wonder if the topic of the conversation was something that he really ought to have listened to. Whenever he went out, with or without Naruto or Sakura at his side, villagers turned to look at him. Whether their reactions had become more noticeable, or he himself was simply noticing them more than he had before, he did not know how to judge. And he had heard that word whispered behind him as he stepped out of stores.
"Clan…"
He couldn't remember how long they had been doing that, because, truthfully, he couldn't remember how long he'd been living in that village. There was a calendar in his apartment, but no one ever bothered to mark it. Other than the periodical absents of Naruto and Sakura for missions outside of the village, there was very little to indicate passing time.
During those times when his roommate and their rosy haired friend left, another man came to stay with Itachi in the apartment. At first, Itachi had protested the other man's presence. He wasn't a child, he wasn't helpless. And the man's covered face and cool, level stare made him uncomfortable.
But then one night Itachi had woken up to see the angry boy standing over him. His eyes were red. And Itachi's mind lost control of his body again. His hand twitched, and reached up to grab onto the boy's throat, but the boy moved so that his grip instead fell onto the high rim of the boy's collar. Itachi pulled the angry boy down onto the bed, feeling a different kind of head pain when a fist connected with the side of his skill. The boy kicked and squirmed under him. If he landed another hit on Itachi, it didn't have enough of an affect to be noticed. Once Itachi's hands moved up to the angry boy's throat, he held on like a man dying. His eyes stayed locked with the ones under him. . . flaming, demon red eyes. . . Itachi had a powerful urge to slash the skin around them and bleed the color out. The fact that the boy was a ninja said that if he looked, he was probably going to find a weapon of some sort hidden on his person, but Itachi couldn't convince his hands to loosen their hold on the glaring boy's neck,
When the red eyes began to lose focus, he jerked his head and kneed Itachi in the stomach simultaneously, and for a moment freed his throat. Itachi distantly registered the sound of the other calling out. When the masked man with his wild silver hair came barging into the room in response, he found Itachi and the angry boy in the same position. The boy's hands had dropped to try prying Itachi's unmoving ones away, but they wouldn't budge. The stubborn desire to watch those red eyes roll back in their sockets was too strong.
The masked man walked up to his bed quietly, with a calm that was completely opposite from the anxiety that he had shown when the door first burst open, and without a word, pulled back his hitia-ate and. . .
Itachi blacked out. After Naruto returned, he made sure that Itachi was never left completely alone again. Itachi didn't protest.
~ K ~
At some point, Itachi began having nightmares and the full-time guards began sleeping in his room with him at night. It had started with Naruto being woken by the sound of Itachi crying out in his sleep. All that Itachi actually remembered was waking up trembling with the image of clawed silhouettes with multiple tails and glowing red eyes still in his head. He couldn't remember if he had been given to nightmares as a child, but he was sure that he was too old to be having them now.
The angry boy might have been pleased to hear about them, since Itachi was sure that Naruto must have told the most frequent visitors of their apartment about his nightmares. The smug raven haired monster naturally kept silent, but Itachi was sure that he caught him smirking once when he turned around more abruptly than usual.
At first the night guards began as just Naruto curling up in bed beside Itachi, presumably listening to him mutter about red eyes with spinning black wheelers or cat like slits and floating tails whenever he jolted awake from that dreaded place in his head. Which Itachi was given to understand became often.
Naruto would listen to him quietly, as if he were made of stone. But once when he thought Itachi was asleep, Itachi heard the blond making broken noises that sounded frighteningly similar to laughter. When he opened his eyes just a small sliver, he saw two shining trails gushing down the younger boy's face, tracing along his scars as they reflected the dim light from the open window.
Eventually he came to understand that the contents of his nightmares fell into the second category of memory.
Other than his blond haired roommate, there were few people who actually stayed with Itachi through the night entirely. The masked man would stay with him for long parts of it, siting in a chair and reading a book somehow, despite the darkness. Sakura would also stay occasionally, rolling out a sleeping bag at the foot of his bed like a serving girl from another time. But she could stay for only half the night at most, and then would have to hurry home before her parents noticed the time. The angry boy, naturally, was never left with him. Which was just as well, because Itachi wouldn't have been able to sleep with him there anyway. And there was the shark man.
The first time the shark man had slipped into Itachi's room, the masked man had been staying with him. Itachi had had his eyes closed, trying to fall asleep, when he heard the gentle sound of the door opening and closing. The masked man had gotten up, whispered something to the new arrival with a quiet but nevertheless firm tone, and then performed his disappearing justu, letting out a poof! sound that was almost louder than the door had been.
For some reason, both shinobi had thought Itachi was asleep—"both" because when the shark man went to the chair to sit down, the light flashed across a heavy head protector with a symbol on it, announcing him as a shinobi too.
The shark man had pulled his chair a bit closer to the bed and watched Itachi for a moment that stretched out so lingeringly that Itachi thought his awareness had been detected. But then the shark man had leaned back, settling in for a long night. While he stretched, Itachi noticed that the light shone differently on the man's skin. He'd thought that his eyes had been off at first, but as the dawn came he saw that there really was a difference in its hue. The man's skin was azure blue.
And then his face… For some reason, the man's odd features made Itachi's head throb, only the slightest bit, but enough for him to notice. Why that would happen when the angry boy with his changing eyes had been the only other person to cause a jar in the semi-functional contraption that was his mind, Itachi wasn't sure.
The shark man eventually became the second most frequent visitor to Itachi's room at night, Naruto being the first. On the nights that watchman-ship was traded off between the two, the blond would climb out of bed, head turned pointedly away, and stiffly leave the room in a manner so foreign to his normal attitude that Itachi knew right away that talking about the shark man was a bad idea.
Nor did anyone one else ever mention the strange shinobi during the day either. Even on the first morning after, when Itachi had expected some sort of explanation from his overly protective roommate, if no one else. But no one offered one, and the shark man never stayed long enough for him to see him in full daylight.
But Itachi couldn't complain. He liked having the shark man nearby for some reason. It never crossed his mind to instinctively attack whenever he blinked his eyes open in the night to see the stranger sitting there, as he had when he'd seen the angry boy that one night. His nightmares became less frequent with the shark man looking over his face so carefully every night that it was a wonder he never noticed Itachi looking back.
It was a different kind of security than what he got from Naruto. Naruto would climb into his bed and spoon against his side at night, but the shark man just watched him. Occasionally with a pained expression that made Itachi frown after the man had left.
Then for a long time, the shark man stopped coming. Itachi's subconscious began to wreak havoc again, but this time it was…different. He'd wake up with his body trembling like before, but not in the same way. He'd be tense, as if expecting something to happen, and wanting something very badly, but having no idea what it was. He would have to turn away from Naruto, so that his self-appointed protector wouldn't see how he had worked himself into anticipation while he slept, even if the blond had managed to stay asleep through his moaning
He was thankful that the blond was a deep sleeper.
Particularly the one night that he had woken up in the process or murmuring a name that felt oddly familiar in his mouth.
"Kisame…"
~ K ~
Once, when Itachi had been doing dishes, he discovered something that set an unsettling knot twisting in his stomach. The dishes that he and Naruto owned were solid black in color. When they'd bought them, Naruto had claimed that they would be better than white ones because stains wouldn't show, and Itachi had pointed out that even if the blond did somehow manage to a stain a plate, the plate's gloss would still show it easily. The conversation went on, until Naruto ended it by giving a loud, over exaggerated huff, and Itachi saying that if they were going to argue that much over gloss they might as well buy them before the sales people kicked them out.
As it happened, the same gloss that Itachi had argued over was what brought him to the revelation. He was in the act of drying one of the dark plates off when he looked down and noticed a face staring up at him. A chillingly familiar face. He turned around quickly, only to find that he was alone in the room. No sign of the face's owner anywhere. He turned back, reluctantly, and resumed cleaning the plates, but this time he was more mindful of what he was doing. Soon he saw the stoic face of the angry boy reflected on the glossy surface again. This time he was careful to turn around slowly, casually, just in case, and again found the room to be empty.
When he held the plate up and saw the face a third time Itachi didn't move at all. He just stood still and studied it. Black hair, pale skin. . . even the same nose and chin. But there were things he noticed that separated it from the one that he'd seen hovering above his bed some time ago. Lines jutted away from the elegant nose to underline each coal black eye, and the face was thinner… Raising the plate closer to his ow face, Itachi squinted one eye, and then the other, as a final test to be sure that his suspicion was correct. The face reflection the shiny surface copied him.
He'd never really thought about his reflection before. It had never seemed strange to him until that moment that there were no mirrors in the apartment. No pictures. Itachi's only experiences with reflections was in the windows of shops, glimpses always caught when he was walking from one place to another, not looking closely, fearful of whatever strange thing might cause him to have one of his headaches. . . Even over the sink in his apartment, where a mirror usually would have hung, there was only a painted cabinet. Which had been just fine, because for whatever reasons, Itachi didn't grow facial hair. He had guessed that it was genetics. But as for Naruto. . .
Attention returning to the glossy black surface he held in his hand, Itachi noticed something else that separated the face from the angry boy's: there were scars. Four long, diagonally slanting scars that came out from under the black hair on the right and ended on the left side of the reflection's jaw. They were rust colored, and each imperfect in their lines. Both eyes were caught by at least one slash mark. By blinking one eye, Itachi saw that the dusky colored lines continued even over the lids. It was a wonder that the eyes hadn't been gorged out. He lifted one hand to trace the lines on his own face, seeing a pale hand appear in the reflection, burying itself in the hair and trailing downward, one finger following each mark. But he couldn't feel them. The skin was perfectly smooth and soft under his fingers tips, exactly as it was anywhere else on his face.
Itachi had put the plate away when he heard Naruto coming down the hallway, cautioning himself not look down for his reflection each time he dried another. He never told the blond that he had seen his own reflection. It was the first kind of memory again, that simple awareness that told him that Naruto would not want to hear that he saw himself, and that he knew that, give or take, he looked exactly like the angry boy.
~ K ~
Aside from his discovery, Itachi still remembered the name he'd called out in the after his dream. He had written it down the morning after, in case it disappeared like information was known to do so easily, but found to his relief that he could still recall the name afterward. What he couldn't recall was just about anything else about it. No face, no voice, not even the context of the dream he had been having the night he said it. And he had already spent more than on bottle of aspirin in trying to press his deeper memories.
So he went against his instincts for once, and approached his blond roommate with the simple question, "Who is Kisame?"
Naruto at the time had been in the process of pouring a glass of orange juice from a large plastic jug. When Itachi spoke, he put the jug down hard, sending a short trail of juice droplets onto the counter. The blond seemed to be torn between answering Itachi and cleaning up the mess. He settled for turning around and looking nervously over his shoulder while swiping the counter with his sleeve. "You…You remember Kisame?"
Itachi frowned. He wasn't surprised that Naruto would be worked up over the name, he had no context as why that could have helped him around it. He only had the knowledge that Naruto had gotten furious when the raven haired boy had starting firing names at Itachi that time in the hall.
The raven haired boy was present at that moment, watching them from where he leaned against the wall where the kitchen gave way into the living room. The expression on his face was calm. He came into the kitchen, walking straight over to the blond whose eyes had just reluctantly come to rest on Itachi's face. In one of his more civil acts, the black haired boy quietly asked Itachi to leave the room for a few minutes.
He complied, but stopped when he was inside the hallway, knowing from something he couldn't remember, to press himself flat against the wall and slow down his breathing to make himself harder to detect as he peered back into the kitchen to watch the chunins talk.
The black haired boy said, "You knew he was going to remember sooner or later."
Naruto clutched at his soiled sleeve, not looking directly up again. "I. . .I don't want him to remember anymore."
"You never did," the other boy said with a calm matter-of-factness that was entirely indifferent to what the smaller boy was evidently feeling.
"He's my friend like this!" Naruto snapped. Itachi noted though, he didn't deny what the angry boy had said.
The raven haired boy leaned his back against the counter, close enough to brush Naruto's shoulder. When it became clear that Naruto's attention had turned inward, the angry boy nudged his arm gently and said in the same voice as before, "This isn't how he really is, you know that."
Shakily, the blond nodded. "But if he remembers. . . even if he doesn't go back to the way he was, he'll hate me."
"He wasn't a fan of you before." Still mercilessly indifferent.
Naruto flinched, his fingers tightening on his orange colored sleeve before releasing it. "But he didn't have a reason to before, and after I. . ."
Naruto trailed off and the black hared boy let out a sigh that hinted that it wasn't the first time the two had had this conversation. "Stop blaming yourself. He made you do it."
"It might have been better if I killed him." A pause. "I just. . . don't want it to come back to him, what he was."
Then the angry boy's expression changed. Itachi wondered why. He pushed off from the counter and turned to face Naruto as the blond began to shake, the back of his shirt and whatever symbol it bore facing off toward the far wall. The same sounds that Itachi heard Naruto make when he thought that Itachi was asleep filled the kitchen; the sounds that were so similar to his laughter but represented an entirely different emotion. The raven hired boy looked as if he didn't know what to do. He took Naruto into his arms slowly, awkwardly, his face giving way to one of the few readable expressions Itachi had ever seen on his face: worry.
Naruto resisted the embrace only for a moment before the feeling of another's physical presence won him over and he let his arms circle the angry boy's waist. There was no doubting from the stiffness in the raven-haired boy's movement that he was uncomfortable standing there with another's tears making his shirt damp. An effort was being made though, through an awkwardness that Itachi could feel even at a distance. But as Itachi watched, Naruto's arms lock tightly around the other's person, and he watched, also, as another expression filtered across the angry boy's face. His dark eyes seemed to close on a draining exhale, and all at once his arms tightened around Naruto in turn.
". . .I miss you." Muffled by emotion and the angry boy's shoulder, Itachi could barely hear the words from where he stood.
Itachi strained his ears listening for an answer, but heard nothing he could distinctly understand. But when Naruto calmed back down, both he and Itachi came to the discover that while the black haired boy had been holding him, the latter's nose had found its way into Naruto's hair. And was inhaling the scent, If Itachi guessed correctly. He watched as Naruto drew back, doubtlessly intending to ask what the other was doing, Itachi was sure, but he was cut off by his friend closing the distance between their lips with one downward nod.
. . . And the blond didn't fight the contact. He was motionless for a moment, but he began pressing back against the other boy's mouth with the same vigor as his friend. He even made a low moaning sound after the two of them continued on for a few moments. Or it might have been the other boy that made it. Itachi couldn't tell. Naruto's hands came up to rest on his friend's shoulders, and he used the position to push away from the other's mouth, only to have it slip down to attach his neck.
"Sasuke. . ."
Itachi left the hallway then. To be honest, he couldn't remember why he had stopped to eavesdrop in the first place. The boy's name didn't give him a headache as he would have thought it would though, leading him to the conclusion that rather than blocking the name out, he had likely never been told what it was.
He left the vision of the angry boy kissing his roommate breathless to go write the name down before he could forget it, wondering absently why the before mentioned picture of the two of them didn't seem to surprise him.
~ K ~
After Naruto and Sasuke's kiss, the raven haired boy began spending even more time at the apartment than before. It became almost impossible to find one of them separate from the other, especially since the raven haired boy took to standing close by Naruto's side whenever he could, even when that meant standing on his own feet rather than trusting his weight to the nearest viable object. When they both suddenly disappeared overnight with the excuse of having a "mission" Itachi was highly skeptical, but didn't say anything. There was still that part of him that couldn't shake the feeling that he had seen something like their kiss before.
Besides, after Naruto and Sasuke took to disappearing during the night, Itachi's shark man came back. He still didn't know that Itachi knew he had ever come to his room to begin with, and to the best of Itachi's knowledge, neither did Naruto. And that was just fine, though Itachi would have liked an explanation for the long absence.
His dreams had begun to cause problems for him again. Not the nightmares of red eyed shadows attacking him and speaking in cold, raspy voices. Instead they were more powerful versions of the ones that left his body trembling and craving the touch of someone he couldn't remember save for a faceless name.
Kisame…
He was sure that Naruto still hadn't discovered what the new problem with his sleeping habits was. Too caught up in his own reasons for missed sleep, Itachi inwardly snickered.
One night the shark man looked genuinely pained when Itachi woke up. He was leaning in closer to him than what was normal for anyone save Naruto, one hand raised as if debating whether to shake him awake. Itachi wondered if that meant he'd been having one of his louder dreams. The expression on the shark man's face made him frown, opening his eyes more fully to get a better look. Itachi watched his shark man's face give way to surprise, effectively overcoming the expression that he had wanted to see. He thought he heard the other man hiss something under his breath that sounded close to a curse.
Then, to Itachi's dismay, he began to draw back. Without thinking, his hand sprang off the bed to fist in the shark man's collar, holding him in place. The grip was tighter that he thought he was capable of, another surprise about his abilities that he didn't want to question. But regardless, the shark man was big enough to have broken away. Instead he obeyed Itachi's hand and froze, a blatant look of surprise on his face that made Itachi want inexplicably to smirk.
Itachi's eyes raked over the shark man's face, taking in whatever he had been unable to see before while his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. They came to rest on a pair of equally dark ones, only visible to him because of how they shone in the dim light from his window. His hand let go of the other man's shirt to press itself flat against his chest, sliding up to his neck slowly. The warm roughness of the other man's skin made Itachi's eyes narrow; no one else's skin felt that way. He should have been surprised.
Why wasn't he surprised?
From the moment that Itachi grabbed him, the shark man had gone still, not even pushing Itachi's hand away when it began exploring. . .though also not encouraging it. He was silent too, even when Itachi's fingers found their way up the side of his face to push aside the heavy metal object worn around his head. Itachi didn't like the man in this dummy-like state. He might as well have been caressing a doll.
On its way to the floor, the metal headgear caught the light's reflection and for a moment showed Itachi three clear squiggled lines. The marks were wrong. It was supposed to have a leaf drawn on it. And there was a slash through the middle. He might have tried to remember what it meant, but no sooner had the object fallen than Itachi again found his attention averted.
The shark man's head was suddenly no longer within his reach. Itachi's fingers stayed in the same place, tracing along his body as the man stood. He was dazed when the shark man turned to go. But it wasn't a headache that was keeping his mind from working now. It was something else that made him reach out and grab onto the back of the shark man's cloak with both hands. The man must have been in the process of buttoning it, because he heard a sudden strangled gasp when the shark man was jerked back at the collar. He tugged again, forcing his nighttime protector back to the bed.
The man's head refused to turn. When Itachi's hold loosened, he began walking away again without a word, and in his frustration, the name came out of Itachi's mouth without passing through his mind first. "Kisame!"
The shark froze. Itachi was given the opportunity to get a better hold on him by leaning forward so that his arms passed over the blue man's shoulders, and grabbing the fabric over his chest. Turning him around, the shark man looked at him, expression incredulous for a brief moment before it gave way to something else.
It had been a hot night, and rather than reducing his bedding, Itachi had gone to bed in minimum clothing. And while grabbing after the shark man, he had risen to his knees, forcing the sheets to fall away from his boxer clad body, and leaving it that way for the other man's examination when he was turned around. Itachi felt the shark man's eyes travel over his skin, which he imagined to be nearly glowing in the filtered moonlight when compared to the other man's blue. And for a moment, Itachi experienced a whispered thought that the shark man liked what he saw. But then he tried to step back from him again, and Itachi felt a wave of exasperation, because the habit was frankly starting to get annoying. When he forcefully brought the man back for a third time, he moved his hands up to the cloak's collar and said in the steel edged voice, "Stay."
The shark man looked reluctant. His shoulder shook lightly when Itachi brought him closer, the other man fisting his hands by his sides for reasons that, as his captor, Itachi didn't understand. When Itachi's head turned back to the shark man's face after observing these details, their eyes met and he heard the man's hushed voice clearly for the first time. "I…Itachi?"
"Yes?" Itachi blined at the other man, before he felt hands sliding around his waist. The shark man watch his face as he touched him, looking for all the world as if he expected to be attacked at any moment. The hands weren't demanding, but seemed to be holding him in place. Only tokenly though, as they didn't do anything to hold Itachi back when he brought himself in for more contact with the larger form, until their heads hover inches apart while the rest of them pressed together. He could feel the shark man's breath fanning against his lips, and felt the twinge that came whenever something tried to bring out one of his barred memories. Instead of questioning it though, Itachi pushed himself up higher so that he could put his mouth against the shark man's, feeling the hands on him tighten at the touch.
The man's lips were softer than the rough skin on his throat, making the warmth in them all the more pleasant. Itachi's hands moved upward again, one going to the back of the shark man's neck and the other slipping higher into his hair. Itachi liked touching him like this. A flair of pure contentment light up his senses in a way he hadn't experienced in a long while that may have been month or years, and he had already decided that he shark man wasn't going anywhere. When something notably warmer touched against his lips, Itachi opened to it instinctively. He felt the other man's hands pressing him closer to his body even while his mouth was invaded by the shark man's tongue. A moan came from one of them, but hItachi was no surer of where it came from than he had been when he heard Naruto and Sasuke in the kitchen,
When they were forced to pull back for breath, Itachi was surprised by the coldness of the air on his lips. He let the shark man breathe, then roughly pulled his head forward again, taking the aggressive role and deepening the kiss when the other man hesitated. He didn't know how he knew what he was doing when their tongues met and twisted against each other. The shark man might have wanted to say something, but Itachi didn't care. He could feel his body reacting to their ministrations in the same way it reacted to his dreams. His dreams were hardly remembered though. He didn't remember if they involved this, or if they involved him being pushed onto his back as the shark man did a moment later.
The shark man climbed onto the bed with him, supporting his weight on his hands and knees, and looking down at him when the kiss was broken. Staring at each other made Itachi impatient while he waited for the other man to take control again, it made him tug at the shark man's clothes until his upper body conceded to come down onto his again. The shark man's hands on his body moved as if they knew where they were going, and grinning against his mouth when he heard Itachi moan in response.
Itachi's hands found the belt loops sewn into the shark man's trousers, though the shark man didn't wear one, and pulled downward with the same foreign strength that he'd used earlier. Hips made contact with his, just as painfully excited as his own.
"Kisame…"
The name left his mouth for the second time that night when the shark man gently traced the column of his throat with the razor sharp teeth in his mouth. Itachi felt a twinge in his head.
"You remember Kisame?"
The name came out again, loudly. Itachi had never heard his voice rise to the same volume as it did when he lay there, grinding and sliding against the shark man's body.
The teeth on his neck bit down lightly. Itachi felt a groan start up in his throat and on instinct, he tried to smother it. The shark man's mouth took on a shape that let Itachi know that he was grinning; when the mouth clamped down harder on his neck and began sucking on the wound, Itachi broke. He moaned gain, louder than before. In the sound, he thought he could the name again, stretched out an contorted.
Kisame's smile grew wider, just before they both heard the bedroom door being thrown open. And Naruto's shrill voice reach them as a harsh contrast to what they had been hearing from each other.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!"
Kisame's head turned around first. Itachi spent a moment longer catching his breath before he looked too. Naruto was standing in the center of his room, where he had probably jumped to before noticing that there was no danger. He still had a kunai in his hand, and it was still being held out as if he planned to attack, thought Itachi couldn't think of why he would. Behind the blond, he could see the angry boy leaning against the door frame with his eyes glowing a bloody red in the darkness.
They were the last things Itachi remembered seeing before he was alone again.
He couldn't remember how it happened, that he was left laying in his bed while Naruto and the shark man went into the living room. He could hear their voices sound through the walls. Naruto was using the same voice he did whenever the angry boy went after Itachi.
"We had an agreement!"
"I've KEPT to our agreement, until—"
He heard the conversation in snatches, knowing this was probably the reason he was not invited into the conversation himself.
"—mentally unstable! …That's not okay!"
"He knew me…" Kisame sounded angry. His voice was almost level with the blonde's harsh, booming tone. "…He's stable enough."
"He knows how to say 'Kisame.' Big deal!" Naruto sneered. "…he's been saying it for weeks, doesn't mean he knows who the hell you are."
"Maybe he would remember if you'd let me see him while he's awake!"
"You're just gonna force his old life down his throat!"
"It'd be better than trying to hide it from him!"
Itachi's mind slipped in and out of the conversation. At some point, as he knew it would, his headache came back.
Eventually, the voices became softer, as the effect of their earlier volumes began to take a toll on their throats.
Kisame's brought him back to awareness of the conversation. "—guilty, I can't leave him here."
Naruto's was broken by loud breathing noises that might have been sobs. "Why not? What's wrong with letting him be like this?"
"He's not a child, Naruto. He'd hate how dependent you're making him."
"I'm only trying to protect him," Naruto said quickly. Then after a pause, "The old Itachi's gone…I killed him."
"No, you didn't." Sasuke's voice was sharply level compared to the ones of the other two speakers. "He's still in there. Sooner or later, he's going to come back out of this. He's just having trouble doing it right now."
"Tsunade will have him executed if he comes back." Naruto.
"Then let him remember how to defend himself." Kisame, Annoyed,
There wasn't a response to the last retort. Itachi listened for one, but nothing came, Or perhaps he slipped out again.
He did remember that afterward, he had woken up to see his shark man sitting there in the chair beside his bed, as if nothing had happened. Whether he had been waiting for him to wake up or not, when their eyes met, Kisame grinned.
As he did before, Itachi reached out to grab onto the other man's cloak. This time Kisame didn't resist when he pulled him onto the bed with him.