chiaroscuro
fourth drabble: azalea
a bouquet of azalea in a black vase amounts to as much as a death threat.
(first loves, the home brush, softness & fragility, feminity; a seven-piece for itasasu)
I hereby disclaim any rights.
.
i.
When Sasuke first meets Itachi again after several years, he's wearing black.
ii.
The corridor straightens, narrows; everyone else seems to be cast as a background figure, blurred silhouettes with but a few defining features, the color of their hair, the broadness of their shoulders, the outline of a long coat. All of this and more, such as the blankness of the walls, serves to enhance how clearly he sees his older brother. His clearcut cheekbones and his eyes and his forehead looming from above the popped collar of the coat are so defined it's almost like in a photograph, the ones he had to throw away with a sob inside his throat.
And Itachi's profile, he judges as impassive as a statue, regarding him with ennui, disregarding him with a tongue stuck,
to the inside of his cheek.
He knows he shouldn't let his anger get the best of him, but he allows the trespass of his own emotions so easily the sparks of his chidori are almost an afterthought. A hot blue warmth is cocooning the palm of his hand, his wrist, his lower arm. The wall spits up chunks of concrete as the lightning tears through its surface the set line of a mouth.
(the staccato snap of his wrist, stopping him straight in his tracks, renders him deaf to everything but a heartbeat drumming between his two ears.)
I'm not interested in you, right now. – As if Sasuke cares, as if any fiber of his stretched-thin and stretched-open patience cares what Itachi is here for. He's here and that's all that matters. He'd bite his teeth broken on any explanation for the sharp stab of rejection he feels deep down his belly.
He gets kicked into a wall, he's nauseous from the pain.
There's no air left in his lungs when his older brother comes to loom over him, like the silhouette of a tree sheds itself onto the ground. No, instead the breath lingers between the outline of his open mouth as he stares up at his brother's face. He sees the furrows parallel his nose, edging deeper along the gaunt of his cheeks, the dark line set through their village symbol, the slight shadows his side-swept bangs cast along his forehead, his face. Then; the sudden movement, the fist to his gut, the blood spat from his chapped lips, his sense of orientation dizzied, dazed.
and
Sasuke crumbles, a young boy still.
iii.
What do you do when the nightmares are preferable to the dreams you have about the past? When every happy moment you've had with him is something you've come to second-guess now early mornings awake in your apartment. When you think back to your childhood and remember his smiles and his arms around your waist and his fingertips hard-pressed against your forehead. What if all that and more wasn't real, wasn't genuine. What if everything he ever said to you was meaningless or worse, a lie.
What if you don't know what you'd prefer. What then?
He makes breakfast. The tea kettle whistles loudly on the furnace, a shrill sound that chases the silence away, out of the corners. Today he'll be drafted into a team and be assigned to a sensei. He seasons the omelet with pepper and salt. Sunlight falls onto the counter and the pale plate and the ceramic cup too bask in the morning glow. He has been up for three hours already, unable to fall back asleep. His gaze falls on the empty doorway leading to his bedroom. The tea kettle is still whistling and steam spews from its spout and from underneath its metal lid. He pulls the frying pan off the hot plate and puts it on the coaster and grabs the tea kettle and pours the hot water into his cup. It's silent again, aside from the soft shuffle of his footsteps. Last night he dreamt of that time he crept into his brother's bedroom after he got home from a long mission to the Suna desert.
"Can I sleep with you tonight, big brother? It was really boring without you around…"
He tugs onto the string of the teabag until the water turns a dark brown and pulls the teabag back out of the cup and dumps it onto the empty saucer. Wet and soggy, dripping brownish tea water. He scrapes at the omelet with the spatula until the egg gives and flips it onto his plate. There's a glass bottle of ketchup on the counter but he doesn't reach for it yet. His memory of that night is a bit foggy, but he's often wondered why his brother was so out of it. Was he already contemplating the massacre back then?
"I would've rather been bored here, together with you." Itachi murmurs as he accommodates his little brother's body in bed. He's lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. There's little humor in his voice.
Sasuke rolls over onto his side and onto his stomach, so that he's half on top of his big brother, arms crossed on his chest. "But you went out on a mission!" He can't contain his wonder and excitement as if it's bursting apart at the seams of his small body. More quiet: "All the way to Suna."
He squirts ketchup all over his omelet, fully knowing he'll have to throw away more than half of it. The glass bottle makes a low thunk when he puts it back on the counter. It's still empty in the open doorway, still dark in his bedroom –not having bothered with the blinds. He takes a sip of tea, bitter like his father used to drink it. The taste sticks to his palate, refusing to be gulped down with the rest of it.
"I didn't really like the mission." Itachi whispers as he puts his arms around Sasuke's waist in reflex, tries to coax him back beside him. They're embracing now, his little brother safely tucked away at the underside of his chin.
He pouts and mutters, "Is this one of those things I'm too young to understand?" His head falls down on Itachi's pillow; he nestles himself close, closer to his brother.
"No.. Well maybe a bit." His brother murmurs, amused but not entirely. Sasuke figures his older brother must be really tired, but he's surprised when Itachi continues, "I had to do something I didn't want to do."
"Then why didn't they get someone else to do it?"
He cleans up after himself before he leaves for the academy. The plate and the cup and the chopsticks are placed in the sink, soaking in lukewarm water. More than half of the omelet is dumped in the trashcan, the ketchup bottle placed back in the fridge and the salt and pepper shakers are stacked neatly in the cabinet above the furnace with the other spices. He flips off the light switch with wet fingertips and locks the door. The jingling of his keys the only noise in the empty hallway.
"Because I'm the youngest. I was the obvious choice for this mission." Itachi explains kindly, gingerly shifting his arm around his little brother's shoulder.
It was always so much warmer and more comfortable in his big brother's bed. Maybe that's because he doesn't spend nearly enough time to warm up his own, he thinks to himself. He delves the tip of his nose into the hollow of his brother's clavicle. His closed eyes peering from above the sheets.
Sasuke walks to the academy by himself. It's still a bit chilly in the morning and goosebumps form along his bare calves up to the inside of his knees and above. Konoha is noisy and lively and all around, more so than in his sorry excuse of a kitchen, the smell of homemade food lingers.
iv.
Itachi remembers a coarse hand fisting his hair, yanking his head backwards until his neck was painfully curved; the column of his throat exposed to the man's face. His young body exposed to the heat of another, to the dry desert air slipping through the narrow tent flap; his kneecaps pushed into bundled-up silk and below that, the yielding sand.
–don't let him touch you, ibiki mutters in warning when he hands him the sealed scroll, don't ever let those sick fucks touch you.–
He was straddling the man, looking at him with heavy-lidded eyes, spilling the stilted gasps from his lips like a calligraphy brush drops its ink, languidly. Clockspring eyelashes blanketing the sensitive skin of his lower eyelids as he blinks deliberately, seductively. One hand was steady on his lower back, a heavy palm and all its life lines pressing into his naked flesh, and then going lower, to the curve of his ass. Itachi hissing, his mouth threatening the man with an unsure smile, a flash of white teeth bracketed by thin lips. And his own hands, wandering their clammy way upwards.
Their footsteps are muffled, the soles of their sandals barely imprinted in the gravel of the dirt path. Kisame's shadow dwarfs his own, dragging onwards in a sketchy line. He keeps Kisame's profile in his peripheral for a moment before dragging the brim of his straw hat downwards, the white tassels shaking with the movement. Konoha looms in front of them, with its tall buildings shimmering a chalk white in the sunlight.
His thoughts go to his little brother, abandoning the memory of the mission. Desert sand makes way for the solid wooden paneling of his old bedroom floor at the compound, the sound of his door sliding open and soft childlike footsteps teetering the long road from the door to the edge of his futon.
"Can I sleep with you tonight, big brother?"
Besides him, Kisame adjusts the heavy sword on his back, but keeps quiet otherwise. His companion seems to sense that he's not in the mood to talk.
'It was really boring without you around."
The dip of the mattress, the shifting of the sheets, the warm small body next to him, so much more comfortable than the weight of that man, than those huge hands on his hips, than the choked coughs coming from the man's mouth when he pushed down hard on the flat of a throat.
They're almost at the gates, the leaves of the trees are gently rustled by the wind. Itachi remembers he put an arm around his little brother's shoulder then to press him ever close to his chest. His gaze falls on the shadows in front of them.
(Sasuke. – three syllables; casually spoken.
He doesn't look up from his spot, but he can feel how his fingers twitch in response to the name. And something beyond him, inside of him- his soul, his heart perhaps, wants to grab onto a hand that isn't here. And that surely will never be there for him to hold onto, again. )
v.
The kunoichi scrutinizes him and his eleven year-old posture. Her painted-pink furl upwards in a demure, somewhat uneasy smile; as if she still has room for sheathed sentimentality on her body. "You're a pretty boy. They always like that."
He doesn't smile back. The compliment falls flat in the distance between them, in the slatted light of the anbu locker room. She awkwardly scrapes her throat, touches the inside of her elbow in an automatism.
"I see they've informed you about my next mission." Itachi remarks politely, "I would be in your debt if you would give me some advice." He's nonplussed as he says this, he might as well be discussing a different topic entirely.
Itachi watches how the boy glares at him with blackeyed fire, how the boy's chest rises and falls, how the boy's body rattles in rage like an old-fashioned door frame. Pale blue lightning comes to illuminate the gentle slope of his nose, the sharp line of his jaw, the white of his throat peeking above the black collar of his shirt. Gone is the nine year old's baby fat on his cheeks, the grabby hands reaching for big brother big brother, the high pitch of his voice.
Did he really teach this beautiful boy how to sleep at a warzone?
It doesn't take long for him to stop him dead in his tracks, to snatch the wrist proffered to him, vulnerable and exposed. The wall next to them blasts apart onto the street below, leaving in its hollow the cool outside air behind. They stare at each other for a while and to Itachi it feels like he is still the center of Sasuke's universe. And then he snaps the wrist and lets go.
His younger brother is on his knees, crying out in pain. Itachi closing his eyes for less than a second, before he turns his back on him again. Every childhood promise drops down on the street below, drops down the bottom of his stomach. Fizzles, but doesn't dissolve.
"You got to give them the feeling you're not going to feel chased when they chase you." She says as she teaches him the intimacy of a wrist, of a throat in between two rows of metal lockers.
One of them is his. One of them has a picture of his younger brother stuck to the door inside.
Sasuke gets up again, the fight inside of him still not knocked out cold.
vi.
The palm on his throat is oddly soft, even if the grip is steel; easing the air up and out of his windpipe. Sasuke has his eyes shut tight, hyperaware of his back pressing against the wall, of his feet dangling above the floor, of the fingertips holding his head up by the hinge of his jaw.
He wonders if they would leave soft red spots behind, if they would mark him a little bit more in Itachi's name.
You don't have enough hate. He feels Itachi's thumb push into the skin stretched over the bone of his jaw– a mark, and he sinks his teeth down his bottom lip, tries not to focus on the warm gush of breath over his cheek, to focus on the drying blood streaming along his chin. And you never will. He can feel in the press of the palm upon his throat how unbearably close his brother's mouth is to his own.
He can feel in the press of that palm that the score remains
unsettled.
vii.
When Sasuke first meets Itachi again after several years, he's wearing black.