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When Shisui gets like that, he doesn’t say a word. That’s how Itachi knows.
At first, at least.
It’s one gesture from Shisui – that’s all it takes from any master, really – and Itachi knows: A hand to Itachi’s waist, purposeful; a whisper of a sentence in his ear, a beckon; a look—not even—a glance of a darkened gaze that says open—
And Itachi has to part his lips as he takes himself in hand. His neck is arched and bare. He’s already wet, alone in bed, and he sees Shisui’s gesture, always a question.
Itachi has yet to refuse him.
When he had first met Shisui, he had already known Shisui. Everyone, not just the clan but the entire village proper knew his name.
When he had first met Shisui, he had not known Shisui though, not really. Shisui had caught Itachi healing an enemy nin under a broken tree, covered in mud and dripping wet inside a war.
It is useless, the man will die.
Shisui doesn’t kill Itachi (not because he’s the heir, Itachi will find out later).
Shisui should have. Itachi had heard of the loyalty. Instead, Shisui stands close, stands guard.
The man eventually dies. It takes one slow hour. After that, the hours vanish.
Shisui had taken Itachi away, inside a wet cave, and had given him ugly, rolled-up rice balls. The green is not seaweed – Konoha had not been able to afford it in years – it’s green onion.
“I made this myself,” he says. He is quiet but proud, like a child’s first serious project.
The rice balls taste terrible. Shisui’s supposed to be a prodigy. It is all wrong. Itachi can’t feel his arms or his legs. The rice tastes like sweat and ash. Green-onion pungent.
When he can finally feel his arms and legs, Shisui is still beside him, and between the two of them, the rice balls are gone.
Unpredictable.
Was his first word for Shisui. This new birth between them:
When, years later, they had been on a mission, Shisui had led them downhill to corner their targets against the lee of a cliff. In a fray of battle under that edge, Itachi gets a cut on his cheek, and something wet seeping down his side—maybe blood, maybe sweat, maybe water—
And someone grabs his ponytail, just like that. A strong yank to his hair and his neck is bared, arched. A knife to his throat and that pressure—
Gone, as soon as it comes.
A foreign hand, severed now, is one clean stroke at the wrist bone. Blood, and—
—Itachi’s breathing hard as he scratches down his own chest.
—that’s all it takes from a master, really, from Shisui’s tanto
—His heart rate thundering as he bites his lip,
Shisui stabs the severed hand still clenched in Itachi’s hair, pulls it away firmly, not a hair strand pulled out. He throws it far, his eyes a blazing red:
That red is memorized in his own eyes, and he bites his lip harder: blood on his tongue—
It would not be a one-stroke mercy for the perpetrator. Shisui looks at them, calm, and keeps looking until they are silent,
He’s close—
He's banked, after that. That they complete the mission successfully and return home , yet Shisui has still not smiled. He's banked, a storm held back for days. Itachi doesn’t know what’s coming.
He doesn’t know, until Shisui holds him down after a spar and doesn't move. Not until he’s kissing Itachi.
It hadn’t been anger, Itachi knows now, not anger, but thirst.
His hands tangled in Itachi’s hair, a desperate grab.
Itachi doesn’t even flinch when he tastes blood:
His mouth opens wide.
*
When Shisui gets like that, he doesn’t say a word.
His sharingan doesn't go down, cannot. It stays inside the spirals of its mangekyou and Shisui becomes trapped as well.
“No one should see this,” is all he says in a fit of panic, before he holds himself back. Back to a desperate calm. He tells Itachi not to look.
Itachi has already looked, has seen an animal lowered into a well, drowning.
He goes even lower.
His belt is a cloth tie, now tying firm around his eyes, a blind. He kneels. He parts his lips in a wet sound. He waits.
Shisui’s breath shudders, and that’s all Itachi hears before the deafening thudding of his heart.
Shisui feeds him slowly, not a word, just sound—and sweat, and bitter, and tart on Itachi’s tongue. There is blindness at the back of his throat; Itachi tastes nothing but dark: he swallows.
And Shisui had told him not to look, yet soon rips the cloth away himself, grabs a fistful of Itachi’s hair. Fucks him full.
Itachi looks, in tears now, choking up at Shisui’s eyes that are still trapped.
Powerful eyes, people say.
All Itachi can say is Shisui, even when he's full. He knows Shisui, he doesn't know Shisui: he’s in tears of blood as his face is scrunched up in pleasure, holding onto something even as he’s drowning.
Maybe this isn’t right, maybe they aren’t right about anything. But it doesn't feel like anything when it’s too much. They only know to grab onto each other – animals in a well, both trying to drown, gasping in water—a new birth:
Tears flow down Itachi’s cheeks, and it’s not because he’s choked.
Itachi pulls Shisui closer, moans around him. A word:
Mine.
And Shisui cries out when he comes. Itachi swallows till it fills him up, his throat burned by broken shards that stay warm and soft in the depths of his belly.
*
There is a prison out there around them, somewhere invisible in the air even their eyes can’t see. But here, in this room, Shisui uses a knife to tear open Itachi’s clothes sometimes, like they’re beneath him. Like he’s peeling open a ripe fruit to eat. He does so calmly, matter of fact, a glaze in his eyes.
They could be talking about anything: the rains, new curtains, cooking—and suddenly Shisui stops, a rapid petering of words. It’s like a slap, he’d said so once, and Itachi had flinched at that word. That Shisui thinks whatever he feels is a punishment.
He says.
And his eyelashes go half-mast and there is a question there, a tentative gesture of the brush.
Itachi folds. He opens. Allows the slow tearing of his garment, his chest exposed to the air. Shisui bends and takes his nipple under his tongue.
Itachi gasps. He arches and offers more.
Rain beats outside, a rare chorus in winter before the snows. Itachi’s hands are buried in Shisui’s soft curls as Shisui sucks and bites around his nipples as if he’s feeding. Itachi can never quite predict how thirsty Shisui is until Shisui turns ravenous.
Itachi allows him to rip off the rest of his clothes. Then he turns and bends over, waiting.
Shisui uses his mouth, his tongue inside, a wet, patient taste—has Itachi moaning into the sheets, has him canting, writhing in waves.
Itachi can’t close his mouth—his mouth, an open wet cave, dripping.
*
It’s something about their time seeing rotting bodies in a ditch.
—And the starch sweetness of the first dango after months in the rain.
Something about the remnant stench of putrescence and sweat.
—And the clean scent in his damp curls after his bath.
A scent, a shard of memory, a gesture of his hands—and Itachi will seize up over a quiet cup of tea, and Shisui will have to grab him over a slight change in weather.
Something in their Uchiha bloodline, a sickness of emotion, striking without warning.
As they welcome each new year, half in disbelief, the other half in…distrust, their control grows older, more rusted, and it turns into surrender. They no longer call it a sickness.
Shisui still doesn’t say a word, but he presses it hard and needy against Itachi when he’s doing something in their kitchen, a single gesture.
Itachi stops, closes his eyes, and feels Shisui giving him a choice in his slow, torturous grind: a yes or a no.
As if Itachi ever had a choice. As if he will ever refuse.
Shisui takes him on the floor. Raw. Animal. They don’t see the day pass by and leave them behind, the hours vanishing.
So they open their mouths—one dark cave—and invite a storm.