chiaroscuro

ii. excerpt #1

modern!au, explicit incestuous content, ft. pushy!teen!sasuke and internal moral conflicts. i merged excerpt #1 & #2 together because they're so dreadfully short otherwise.

i hereby disclaim any rights.

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Sasuke pushes him to the wall and Itachi thinks he'd gone to far by trying to tickle his little brother under the armpits. Always been a sensitive spot. His palms are being guided down Sasuke's sides to the handle of his hips and are being kept there, grounded. Furrowing his brows, he wants to say something, an attempt at an apology or maybe an inquiry to figure out what Sasuke's playing at but suddenly his little brother is just so close to his own face it startles him.

For all his wit, Itachi doesn't know how to react when his little brother reduces the distance between their mouths to an exhale.

"I.." Sasuke starts, gazing up at him with half-hooded eyes and Itachi just knows he's standing on his tiptoes to reach. But what is he reaching for? His fingers delve into Sasuke's shirt, as if he wants to excavate through the fabric to reach his brother's skin, his bones.

All sorts of alarm bells go off in his mind. Suddenly the lack of air between them becomes palpable.

"I want this." This is his little brother, pleading, tired of playing games. Sasuke drags the button of his nose along the crease of his left cheek, to the corner of his mouth. "I want you. I've wanted you for so long."

Itachi presses his forehead to the crown of Sasuke's head and murmurs gently, "You're confused, little bro–"

The endearment gets broken up, broken apart by the sudden press of chapped lips to his own. He's stunned and his fingertips print their indent through Sasuke's shirt, into his flesh. It's a chaste, shy kiss. If Itachi hadn't pulled back, he's been certain Sasuke would've tried to push his heart between Itachi's teeth just to see if he'd swallow. Or tear it apart.

"I'm not." Sasuke says as he looks at him defiantly, desperately, short of a brother please. "I'm not, okay. Stop… Stop acting like I don't know what's good for me."

Itachi touches his nose along the slope of Sasuke's, murmurs, "But I'm not." It's a saline kindness, one that sounds like someone's crying.

It doesn't stop Sasuke from kissing him again, from pushing his heart down Itachi's throat.

And wordlessly, the action screams: Accept it, please!

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He is afraid to ask Sasuke what he wants, because the answer would quite possibly be just you this time around and that's a lot more specific than just this. He rolls over onto his stomach and props his arm under his pillow and sighs into the silence of his room. Street light falls in from between the pale blinds and shifts over the paneling of his bedroom floor. It blinks 2:34 in bold red numbers on his alarm clock and he's mulling this entire situation over in his head. It feels too confining, between these four walls, but he couldn't get up and change and take a walk outside at this hour, not without waking somebody up.

So Itachi presses his face into his pillow and sighs again.

The kiss still lingers, ghostlike in its tangibility and romantic in its persistence. As if Sasuke's stubbornness got stuck to his mouth and every time he swipes his tongue over his lips, he can taste it, can taste him. It's not all together unpleasant. This, Itachi muses, must be why it frightens him. His little brother is still so young and it's easy (convenient) for Itachi to chalk everything up to hormones, explain it as a phase, condemn it to the temporal even if the intensity of his brother's feelings… (and what about his own?) no, don't go down that path.

He's overthinking, again. Itachi tries to delve through his pillow to his mattress with his forehead. They are going to have to talk about this. If Sasuke is willing to face him of course. He can imagine his little brother feeling embarrassed and humiliated by his rejection, angered maybe if the heated look was something to go by. Every handful of his self-control not to reach out for him when he left the living room and then some, that's what it took to let Sasuke go brood in solitude.

Guilt is devouring him. His tongue slips out and over his lower lip again. 2:39 on the red dot when he turns his cheek to the pillow and glares weary-eyed at the alarm clock.

Maybe he should just get some fucking sleep.