Okay, first of all: NEW TITLE; NEW COVER ART! TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK!

Second of all: I am so blessed that the amount of people who follow and review this story follow and review this story! I'm also blessed that y'all have been blessed with such patience with me and for that I wanna thank you!

Third of all: You sons of bitches should be gracious that I cranked out this chapter in like, 2 hours tonight, spent like, another 2 hours revising it so that I could reach my standard 4,000 word count quota (which, I'll have y'all know that chapter 2 was only 2,000 some words!) so y'all better be grateful! Especially since I stayed up REAL late typing this up and uploading it onto this site for your viewing pleasure.

Rant over. Enjoy, ladies and gentlemen and anything and everything in between ;)

IF A STUDENT DIES, HOW long would it take for the school to announce it publically? Itachi wondered. It had been three days since Itachi sent Shisui a text asking if he was alright after his drunken partying the night of the homecoming dance. He had yet to receive a response back.

The text was sent at 2:18pm on Sunday his messaging app informed him, so he indeed sent it. What's more, he'd sent it with four bars of signal strength; there was no reason for it not to reach him and the campus wasn't a dead zone for cell phone reception either which meant one of two things: that Shisui's phone had been turned off all weekend or he had already received the message and chose not to reply back to it.

Unless Shisui had dropped his cell somewhere – on the floor, in a punch bowl, in a toilet, or all three – Itachi was willing to bet that it he'd seen the message and simply opted not to reply back to it. But why? If anything, he expected to run into Shisui at the cafeteria for lunch on Monday like he usually did, but saw no signs of the older man. Don't tell me he's still suffering from a hangover. Itachi thought while he waited. Shisui also failed to make an appearance on Tuesday which was unusual given the fact that he and Shisui always ate lunch together on Tuesdays and Thursdays after Shisui's Zombie Lit class ended and before Itachi's Intro to Philosophy class began.

Is it so wrong to worry about someone you care for? Itachi wondered as he patiently waited for Shisui to make an appearance at the cafeteria Wednesday afternoon. He had long finished his sandwich and would've preferred to spend the extra time he had before his next class reviewing his marketing text in the library instead of worrying about his cousin's wellbeing. But here he was, anxiously scanning the flood of students chatting with one another as they carried their lunch trays to a vacant table.

When ten minutes passed with no sign of Shisui's messy head of hair, Itachi pulled his bag onto his shoulder and cleared the small table of trash and any crumbs that may have been left over for his lunch. With only fifteen minutes to spare before his English class, he decided to forfeit going to the library, which was a five minute trek from the cafeteria, and headed straight for his next class instead. Arriving fifteen minutes early to lecture was normal for him.

On his way out of the cafeteria, he spotted a girl walking in his direction and held the door open for her in an act of chivalry. "Thank you!" She smiled brightly.

"You're welcome." Itachi replied back, squinting against the harsh afternoon sunlight. Once the girl was inside, he let the door close behind him and turned to head down the stairs when he collided with another body. "Sorry." He apologized and blinked in confusion.

"It's fine." Shisui muttered and continued to walk past.

"Wait, where are you going?" Itachi asked and followed his cousin inside. "I haven't talked to you since Saturday; did you get my message? How are you feeling?"

"I got your message, and there's a reason I didn't answer." Shisui said from over his shoulder. "You're not my mother, Itachi. I'm not oblicated to tell you where I'm at and what I'm doing at all times because it's none of your God damned business!"

"Come again?" Itachi asked. "Shisui, I don't know if you remember this or not, you're the one who called me completely inebriated at ten o'clock Saturday night! What was I supposed to do?!"

Shisui whirled around to face him. "I'm not some damsel in distress who needs saving, Itachi; I don't need to be locked in a away in a tower where I can do no wrong and wait until my knight in shining armor comes

"I didn't need you to come rescue me from Fu and Torune's party Saturday night, Itachi. I'm not some damsel in distress who can't take care of herself and needs to be locked away in a tower. I'm twenty-one fucking years old! I can take care of myself!" Shisui said through gritted teeth. "I don't need you swooping in to rescue me every time alcohol is involved! I'm not some kind of alcoholic, you know! I wasn't suffering from alcohol poisoning or anything like that if that's what you were thinking!"

With every accusation that left Shisui's mouth, Itachi could feel his own temper boiling, making it harder and harder to bite back the unkind words that threatened to spill out. "You may not have a problem now, but judging by the way you've been drinking, you're not far from it. Watch, you'll be an alcoholic by the time you're twenty-two if you keep this up Shisui."

"Who fucking died and made you the fucking president, Itachi? God! You're only seventeen fucking years old! What do you know about alcohol!? Huh? Nothing! Nada! Zip!"

"I know that alcohol can cause you to make foolish decisions that you'll regret later!" Itachi yelled. "I also know that reckless drinking can quickly escalate into reckless driving and get you or somebody else seriously injured or killed, Shisui!"

"Oh, give me a fucking break, Itachi! Your mother didn't die! She only broke her collar bone for fuck's sake! And that was like, twenty years ago! Let it go already!" Shisui snapped.

That was it. With Shisui's last comment, the floodgates of Itachi's patience opened, releasing what little control he had left over his temper. "And how do you think that happened, Shisui? Do you think that she got so drunk that she drove herself into a tree? No! She didn't! My father was the one who had too much to drink, my mother warned him that it would impair his senses and tried to convince him to let her drive home, even though she was seven months pregnant, but he wouldn't let her and convinced her that he could get them home safely! And what happened? His vision started to blur and he drove them both into a tree!" Itachi yelled, pointing a finger at Shisui. "And yeah, she broke her collar bone, but she also went into labor and gave birth to Sasuke prematurely! How did you think I felt when your mom woke us up in the middle of the night to tell me that my mom was in the hospital because she had been involved in a car accident? How do you think I felt when I saw nurse after nurse rushing in and out of her room and not knowing what was going on because your mom didn't know anything and my father was sitting on a bench sobering up?! How do you think I felt when I was told that my brother was born too early and needed to be kept in an incubator to be monitored for trauma or any birth defects because of the impact?!" Itachi demanded. "And how do you think I'd feel if I'd been told that my cousin, my best friend, and the only person who's been like an older brother to me growing up, died in a car accident due to driving under the influence, Shisui!?" He cried and with shaking hands, pulled his cell phone to check the time. He had two minutes to get to his class. Without bothering to hear Shisui's response, Itachi wordlessly turned on his heel to exit the building.

"Do we really have to study last week's material?" Kisame asked again.

Itachi shot him a glare and proceeded to flip through the thick philosophy text for the chapter covering last week's lecture. He was still smarting from his heated exchange with Shisui in the cafeteria earlier and didn't care to put up with any more crap for the rest of the day.

"And do you actually read that worthless thing?" Kisame asked. "Nobody reads the textbook. I doubt that the professor even reads it!" He laughed.

"We're on page one-hundred and twenty-four." Itachi instructed.

Kisame didn't even move to touch it. "But seriously though. Do we have to study last week's material? It's fresh in my head!"

Itachi sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. "Then tell me what we covered last Tuesday and Thursday." He challenged.

The way Kisame's eyes widened in response to Itachi's serious question. "Last week was so long ago! Do you seriously expect me to remember what we talked about in class?" Itachi didn't flinch. "Come on! Give me a break!"

Itachi redirected his gaze to the page numbers at the bottom of the text. "Turn to page one-hundred and twenty-four so we can cover…"

"It had something to do with war theories or something." Kisame quickly answered. "Right?"

Itachi raised an eyebrow. "Partially."

"Yes!" Kisame silently cheered to himself.

"What about it?" Itachi asked. "And I guarantee you won't get any points for referring to them as 'war theories.'"

Kisame bit the inside of his cheek and looked around the room, as if the millions of books around him would simultaneously lend him their combined wisdom and give him the answer he was looking for. "Give me a hint. How many of them are there?"

"Six."

"Six!?" Kisame cried and slammed his palms on the table, an action which immediately earned him scornful glares from every occupant in the room. "There are six of them?" He whispered.

Itachi nodded.

"I give up." Kisame huffed. "What are they?"

Despite the powerful urge to have Kisame open the book and educate himself, he decided to read them to him. "They, meaning the 'just war theories,' are: just cause, right intention, proper authority and public declaration, last resort, probability of success and proportionality." He read. "Can you remember what any of them are or do we have to go through them one by one?"

Kisame seemed to consider this. "Aren't they self-explanatory?"

"Then explain them." Itachi said and closed his text.

Kisame grimaced and slowly proceeded. "Let's see…"

"Just cause." Itachi offered.

"Just cause means that you can only go to war with someone for the right reasons." Kisame explained.

Itachi nodded. "How is that different from having the right intentions?"

"Is that the second one?" He asked.

Itachi closed his eyes and nodded slowly. "Hm-hm."

"Shit." He swore. "Is this really going to be on the test tomorrow?"

Itachi shrugged. "I can say with utmost certainty that it will be presented in the form of an essay question."

"Shit." He swore again. "But what if it's not?"

"Then you will have been given a reprieve." He answered and thumbed through the text for the page he needed. "Just cause is the most important rule that sets the face for rights to be followed." Itachi read. "A state may launch war only for the right reasons. The right reasons include: self-defen—"

"I think I'll be fine just knowing the names of them, don't you think?" Kisame asked.

Itachi sent him an impatient glare and set down the text. "Tell me something: how are you doing so far in this class?"

Kisame shrugged. "I dunno. The professor hasn't posted any grades yet."

"How do you think you're doing?" Itachi asked, rephrasing the question.

Kisame released a short laugh. "Badly! I'm pretty sure I flunked all of the assignments and quizzes so far! I think the professor has it out for me—"

"Then if I were you, I'd make sure to know all of the just war theories by name, and be able to differentiate them from one another in order to have any hope of getting a good grade on tomorrow's midterm, do you understand?"

Kisame furrowed his eyebrows. "Who pissed in your cereal this morning?"

In a feeble attempt to retain his composure, Itachi took a deep breath and slowly released it. "You're the one who begged me to tutor you, so it's reasonable to say that I expect a certain amount of cooperation on your end, am I right?"

Kisame nodded. "Yeah, I guess so."

"And during the two occasions that I have studied with you, I've worked around your schedule, and adjusted the pace to accommodate your needs when you're the one who asked me to be your tutor. I didn't volunteer for this job and I'm not being paid to sit around and debate what material will appear on tomorrow's test. Now I'm going to give you two choices: we can skip studying altogether and I'll go back to my room and study the just war theories by myself, or you can open your text book to page one-twenty-four. Your choice."

Kisame sighed in resignation. "I left my textbook in my room, can I borrow yours?"

"Thank God that's over." Itachi whispered under his breath once the door to his room was shut behind him. On his left, he noticed that Deidara was lying on his stomach, fast asleep on top of his bed before a large open sketchbook, bereft of any designs.

"Rough day, yeah?" Deidara asked as Itachi walked by, startling him. "You thought I was asleep, didn't you? Sorry. I wasn't."

"Then what were you doing?" Itachi asked, maintaining eye contact while he set his bag at his desk.

Deidara raised his shoulders slightly, blinked and lifted his eyebrows. The laziest shrug Itachi had ever seen in his life. "Not much, yeah."

So far today, Itachi confronted Shisui, which quickly escalated into a screaming match in the middle of the cafeteria, and nearly walked out on Kisame at the library. Dealing with his roommate's problems was the last thing on his list of priorities, but faced with a sight as pitiful as the one before him, Itachi knew that he was going to have to ask "How was your day?"

Turning onto his side, Deidara first shifted his legs so that they hung over the edge of the bed and pulled his body up to a sitting position like the undead rising from their graves. "I talked to Sasori today, yeah." He said.

And so it began. In preparation for what Itachi knew would be a long, drawn out story with meaningless details, he placed his bag on the floor and sat in his desk chair. "How'd that go?" He asked.

"Well," Deidara began, "I didn't want to talk to him after what happened at the homecoming dance, yeah. But after seeing those smoldering eyes and the wicked grin, I couldn't help but wonder if it was all just a really bad dream, yeah."

Smoldering eyes and wicked grin? Itachi almost said something regarding Deidara's word choice but left it alone. As quirky as the artists' words were, he was certain that the big picture would become clearer as the story continued. Or at least, he hoped so.

"It's like, how can somebody like that lead me on like he did, you know, yeah?"

I could list at least ten different indiciations. "I don't know, Deidara."

"He just seemed so real and so perfect, yeah. I thought that he actually liked me. At the very least, I thought he was bi! Not trying to make his girlfriend jealous." He steamed.

"He could very well be bisexual. You don't know that for sure, do you?" Itachi asked.

Deidara fixed him with a hard stare. "I asked if he was actually gay, yeah."

Itachi leaned back in surprise. He didn't expect such a bold move from Deidara. "And what'd he say?"

Deidara bowed his head and kicked his legs back and forth over the edge of his mattress. "He just shook his head and said 'To be honest, I thought you were a girl at first.' Then he said 'by the time I asked you out to homecoming, I realized that you weren't and said 'to hell with it.'"

Itachi shook his head in disgust. From the time Deidara pointed Sasori out at the club fair, he knew that there was something off about him just by observing the way that he dressed. Of course, Itachi wasn't so shallow as to judge a book by its cover so he didn't say anything about it at the time. Perhaps Sasori's personality was softer than his appearances. Maybe he was the real deal. But as time went by and Deidara announced that the upperclassmen had asked him to be his date for the homecoming dance, a red flag signaled in Itachi's head. Up until then, Deidara hadn't mentioned anything regarding a mutual attraction between him and Sasori. While it was obvious that Deidara was attracted to Sasori, it was unclear what Sasori's feelings for Deidara were. Hell, Deidara didn't even know what Sasori's sexual orientation was, and based on Itachi's observations, homosexual men were pretty observant on the topic of sexual orientation. So of course it struck Itachi as odd that Deidara was ignorant to such an important detail about his date, blindly hanging on Sasori's every word as being the truth.

What's more, Sasori's behavior the night of the dance wasn't normal either. In fact, there was no affection in his eyes and seemingly no desire to make physical contact with Deidara as they retreated down the hallway, Sasori checking his phone the whole way instead of wrapping his arm around him or even reaching out to hold his date's hand.

Had Sasori's asked Deidara out to homecoming as a friend, that'd be fine. But in a malicious attempt to make his girlfriend jealous – that was low.

"I'm sorry, Deidara." Itachi finally spoke.

Deidara lifted his head and pulled his hair back over his shoulder. "Thanks, yeah." He smiled. "Hey."

Itachi glanced up to meet Deidara's gaze. "Hm?"

"Did you ever get a hold of Shisui?"

"Yeah. I ran into him at the cafeteria today." Literally ran into him.

"How's he doing?"

"He's mad at me for ruining his fun." Itachi calmly stated.

Deidara cocked his head in confusion. "He's mad at you? For what? Why? He was completely wasted and it wasn't even close to midnight! How could he be mad at you for something like that, yeah?"

Itachi shook his head. "He's upset with me for attempting to convince him that he's not invincible now that he's able to drink and that he, just like every other infallible human being, is prone to make stupid decisions that could yield potentially dangerous consequences down the road." He explained.

Deidara cast his gaze down towards the floor below his bare feet. "I hate to see the day when he figures out you're right, yeah. Is that why you were in a bad mood earlier?"

"Mostly. I'm tutoring one of my classmates in preparation for our midterm tomorrow and he's not putting in the effort needed to pass."

"That sucks." Deidara said.

Itachi shrugged. "Oh well. It's his grade. If he doesn't want to put forth the effort then so be it. It doesn't affect me one way or another."

"Yeah." Deidara agreed and pulled out his phone. "It's six o'clock, yeah. Wanna go grab dinner with me?"

Itachi briefly glanced at his computer before deciding that he could use a break from studying and enjoy a nice, laid back dinner with his roommate. "Sure."

"Great!" Deidara beamed and hopped off his perch on the bed. In a matter of seconds, he was below the mattress frame searching for a pair of shoes to wear out.

Itachi, still dressed from his tutoring session with Kisame, waited by the door with his hand on the handle until Deidara finished forcing his left foot into his black Toms. "Ready?" Itachi asked him.

Deidara nodded excitedly.

"Let's go then." He said and held open the door.

SHOUT-OUTS:

****Hikiri: 1) I think that Itachi has most certainly REACHED his limit in this chapter! lol! (Poor Itachi!) 2) I finally explained the foreshadowing with the tree! hope you enjoyed it! I wasn't planning on it happening in that way - originally, I was going to have Deidara ask him why he's so uptight about drinking but it just sort of came out when Itachi and Shisui were arguing with each other. and 3) Originally, I was going to have Shisui just be all "You didn't really have to come and rescue me, Itachi, you know that right?" Like all, laid back and whatnot, but I ended up going with your suggestion about him not being "appreciative of his cousin" rescuing him. (Thanx!)

****JigokuShoujo'sRevenge: To answer your review to chapter 5 "who goes gay just to mess with someone? Like, how does that?" I finally worked in the "he thought I was a woman" comment and I hope you liked that. (I hope it wasn't forced, it was really hard to naturally include in that conversation)

****Trucky: J'espere que cette faire ton voyage cet martin plus mieux!

****The Secret Sal: I just find it funny that I had to force you to read this thing because you thought it was going to revolve around a pairing you didn't like. It's funny to read through your latest reviews where you say "I like where this story is going and I hope you continue it!" God, I love you!

****And to XxKikipopxX: You are the only person who reviewed the last chapter (before I posted this one) along with the people I mentioned above, and I didn't want you to feel left out so thanks for reviewing recently, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I hope you leave me another kind review! (If you wanna leave a critical one, then you can...it's just...all of your reviews thus far have been so nice!)

Now for my actual author's note: *whew, those shout-outs are hard to type up; y'all need to come up with easier names! Especially you, XxKikipopxX! just kidding, keep it real brothers, keep it real* I am sort of kinda running out of ideas (if you wanna flood me with ideas, feel free to do so) but when I say that I'm running out of ideas, I mean I'm running out of definitive ideas. I have a general idea of what I want to happen for a couple of chapters, but I don't know how this story is going to ultimately turn out. Um...I think I can/will write 2 more chapters that focus on the months of November (mostly summary - fingers crossed because God, I hope not) and then December-January (Winter break! Yay!) And then once the second semester starts, the drama will be heated to boiling *don't quote me on that, things can change!*

Anyways, slowly coming down to the wire here; surprised that I drew up some cover art, planned, wrote AND EVEN revised this thing all in one day, but here it is, for your viewing pleasure. Don't forget to tell me what you think of the cover art/title change and check out my profile page on status updates!

Until next time!

~Sasori33-001

PS - Don't know when I'm gonna update next. Within less than a month, I'm sure.