Chapter Text
Winter gives way to spring with trepidation. The change of seasons hesitates, lingering in some fragile halfway point between the two for weeks as if sharing a breath. Flower buds prise themselves open during the early mornings only to be bruised by the chill in the air. Trees are cotton soft with new growth but still are rattled bare by bitter winds. The last few frosts have yet to give over entirely to the sun where it yawns warmly on the horizon, rising earlier and earlier as the days drift by.
And Itachi has been living with Kisame for five months.
Mornings, now, are a different sort to when Itachi lived on his own. When he still lived in his generational family home. In what is now their apartment, the lease renewed last month, and his name signed right alongside Kisame’s on the contract, he has free reign over every room. He can stumble barefoot through their living space, trailing one hand over the walls to guide himself, and open every window and blind whenever he likes. Sit on the floor in his sleepwear, various texts in Braille fanned out around him, for as long as he needs to make sense of whatever subject he is fixating on and not be told sharply to move to a table. Rummage through the fridge to snack on the dango Kisame bought home for him the night before for breakfast, sharing it contritely with the other man as he teases him for having such a sweet tooth.
It’s a quiet, individual sort of freedom. One he hadn’t realised he was lacking when he lived with his parents, and had been lost to the weary isolation collecting like dust in every corner of his life when he lived alone.
But here, in what is now his home, it’s draped over every day like sunlight.
He takes his time getting out of bed. Lingers beneath the covers, stealing into Kisame’s space, his bony knees tucked up against Kisame’s strong thighs, his ankles wedged between the firm lines of Kisame’s shins and the mattress. He soaks up the warmth the other man radiates like a furnace until he eases out from Itachi’s embrace, threading his calloused fingers through the tangles in Itachi’s hair as he murmurs in a voice rough with sleep, “sorry, love. Shower’s callin’.”
Dressing comfortably in loose cotton pants and a thick sweater he thinks was actually once Shisui’s, Itachi turns the heating right up and pads into the kitchen. The cold wood floor nips at his bare feet, but with the full intention to curl back up atop of their bed with a book and hot cup of tea, he doesn’t bother searching for his slippers. The kettle goes on and he starts to prepare them both a cup, spooning fresh tea leaves into two infusers and dropping one into each of their mugs.
Kisame follows at an even more sedate pace, carrying a damp heat on his skin and an aura of steam with him from the bathroom. Joining Itachi in the kitchen, he hovers behind him, his strong arms slung loosely around his middle, cracking his jaw as he yawns into Itachi’s hair. Once the kettle is hot enough, whistling in reedy bursts, he pours the water into their cups before Itachi reaches for it himself and turns the handle of Itachi’s mug directly into his eager hands.
“Thank you,” he hums, leaning back into Kisame’s embrace. Lifting his cup to his lips, he closes his eyes against the rising threads of steam, welcoming the enticing warmth of it dancing over his eyelids. If every morning of the rest of his life is like this, he can’t see himself being anything other than deeply content.
Rubbing his palms fondly over Itachi’s forearms, Kisame presses a lingering kiss to his crown. “You’re welcome, sweetheart.”
They settle back in the bedroom, sitting atop of the covers, their pillows propped up against the headboard so that they can lean back somewhat more comfortably. Kisame passes him a bowl of toasted melon seeds, a makeshift breakfast to tide them over until either of them can be bothered cooking, before audibly setting his mug of tea down on top of his bedside table.
“C’mere, darlin’.”
It’s all the warning he has before Kisame hauls him close, gracelessly gathering his weary limbs up and depositing them across his lap. He grunts when Itachi’s elbow swings wide in surprise and nails him in the gut, but waves off his apology without a second thought. By some miracle, his tea doesn't spill at all. Once settled, he sips at it, closing his eyes on the pale dark of their room, and allows his weight to sink back into Kisame’s hold once more.
Warm and weary and wanted, he listens idly to the sounds of Kisame working through his business’ recent financial records. Going over the transactions from this month and scrutinising the ever-shifting tides of the stock market for smart investment opportunities. Business has been steady so early in the new year. Kisame has been away for long hours at a time, returning home after midnight, tired and grumbling, often collapsing into bed still half-dressed. He shushes Itachi gently when he wakes, blinking blearing-eyed and searching for him in the dark with a reaching hand, and scooches close, curling around him beneath the covers and burying his nose into his hair.
He’s grateful they get today to be still. That he can take the time to drift in and out of sleep with his head against Kisame’s shoulder, dozing lightly to the sound of him muttering figures under his breath. Running the numbers through his head and scratching notes and totals into his little moleskine notebook.
He takes notes himself, too. Internally marking points of consideration and how Kisame processes the information he’s working with. It’s been an unexpected challenge, learning all of the ins and outs of Kisame’s business. For all the years and higher education he wasted preparing to take over the Uchiha family law firm, very little of it has proven relevant in assisting Kisame in managing his arms dealing operation. It’s on a completely different scale, with more money coming in and going out than he’s ever had to worry about before. More wages to be paid. Exports, foreign trade and routes of transportation to consider.
And the many revolving methods in place to handle clientele.
Potential buyers with money but poor manners and even more terrible character go under strict observation before any sort of deal is even remotely considered. Those currently in possession of Kisame’s trust, but whom his stance on is liable to change, are treated with the same caution as distant family members who have shown up to a holiday gathering for the first time. The regular clientele who have come to know Kisame personally as well as professionally over the years make an avid effort to remain in his good graces, keeping his name out of the media and off the streets, particularly when they’re involved in some personal dispute operating entirely outside of the law. In return, Kisame not only keeps them on his radar, but also often attends organised meetings with them, leaving their apartment some nights dressed in fine suits cut strikingly to his shape and an open invitation for Itachi to attend as his plus one.
There are so many abstract details to his line of work. Rules that can be bent in some situations, but never broken, the trick to it learning just when and where to bend them. Laws that can be carefully sidestepped on occasion, and the art of buying silence by putting money in the right pockets, at the right time and in the right places.
If his father were to learn even half of what he knows now about the internal affairs of numerous criminal organisations—not only Kisame’s either—and knew that he was keeping the information to himself, he is certain he would be banned from returning home all over again. But there’s a reason he was in line to succeed his father in just a few short years. Besides the fact that even Kisame is not as familiar with the law as he is, no one can find loopholes or manipulate the terms and conditions in a contract quite like he can. Nor absorb new information as quickly and as thoroughly.
Even so, Kisame doesn’t expect his help. He doesn’t pressure him into being a part of the empire he has created. He could spend the rest of their lives, dragging his heels, still trying to find his footing after having the rug pulled so suddenly out from under his feet, and Kisame would be content to share this with him. Quiet mornings like these where Itachi remains close by, immersed in all the little mundane details that have come with relearning how to live his life without his sight. A blip of warmth and civility daring to brave his raging high seas and settle within reach. Someone to come home to, day in and day out.
After sitting for an hour or so, a dull ache has spread throughout his tailbone where it supports his weight. He adjusts how he’s sitting in an idle attempt to relive it, when suddenly, Kisame groans. He abandons his paperwork in favour of pressing his forehead against Itachi’s temple, and draws in a long, shaky breath. His next exhale shudders through him as it’s released, disturbing the wispy strands of Itachi’s hair where they’ve come loose from his hair tie. Gingerly, he shifts Itachi off of his lap, but not before Itachi feels exactly what the problem is.
“Oh.”
Oh.
He straightens instinctively, tucking his legs underneath him. Senseless panic settles sour in his mouth, as thick as white mould over his tongue, and nausea creeps up, hot and volatile, from his stomach to the back of his throat. Logically, he knows Kisame means nothing by it. He knows that it’s unintentional, and that there’s nothing he can do to prevent it from happening occasionally. Kisame is not like him. Of course, he can’t help his body’s reaction to how he feels. He knows this. But knowing is not enough to ease his building panic.
Or his guilt.
“Fuck, sorry, sweetheart,” Kisame swears, his warmth retreating from Itachi’s side as he gets to his feet. He sounds pained, his frustration at himself evident. His own guilt too. He makes no attempt to touch Itachi as he usually does when moving away from him for any length of time. It should be a comfort, for the moment, but Itachi only feels helpless as he listens to him back away from the bed. “Bodily response, is all. Give me ten minutes.”
Distantly, he hears the bathroom door close behind him and the shower start up once again in the next room, but not the door to their bedroom. Kisame has left him with an out. A clear path to the front door of their apartment if he wants to flee for a moment. In his chest, his heart kicks out at his ribs like a startled colt, and in his alarm, he pats frantically at the wrinkled bed covers in search of his phone. He could call Shisui. Ask him to please come and collect him, then maybe spend the night on his sofa or curled up at his side in his cousin’s bed the way they used to when they were kids and Itachi was forever crumbling before the knowledge that the world was so huge and so often wretched. His brain always felt too big for him then. He knew far too many things he wasn’t ready to know so young. Somedays, it still feels that way.
He doesn’t call. Doesn’t even unlock his phone. He sits instead, clutching it between his hands, paralysed by the thought that if he leaves now, he might lose all of this.
So he waits.
When Kisame returns, carrying with him the clean scent of sandalwood and steam-slick skin, he hasn’t moved an inch.
He approaches slowly, his footsteps cautious in a way that sets Itachi’s teeth on edge. The edge of the bed furthest from him dips, sinking with the other man’s weight, but still, Kisame makes no move to touch him.
“I’m sorry, darlin’,” he murmurs, deeply remorseful and so terribly ashamed, Itachi wants to tear into himself for ever making him feel such a way.
He shakes his head. It’s not often now that he desperately wishes he was still in possession of his sight. There are some things, of course, he doesn’t think he’ll ever not miss seeing, and others he regrets not appreciating the sight of when he still could do so. But he’s always been a realist, and it’s useless to hope when it isn’t about to change anything. As Dr. Konan keeps reminding him, glaucoma is a life-long condition, and unless the technology to perform full eye transplants is invented successfully within the near future, he’s likely to remain blind for the rest of his life. However, it’s in situations like this when he wants to see most. When he can only read the room so much without being able to analyse every line and swift change of expression that passes over Kisame’s face.
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” he urges quietly, twisting the fraying hems of his sleeves between his anxious fingertips. The slightly uneven, filed points of his nails dig crescent moons into the soft skin of his palms. “It’s not your fault. Kisame, I’m sorry I can’t–”
“No.” Kisame cuts him off determinedly. Suddenly, the mattress sinks much closer to him, enough to unbalance him from his nervous perch, and Kisame is there, in his space again as if it’s right where he belongs, tentatively grasping his hands between his own much larger ones. The calloused pads of his thumbs graze over the tender skin on the inside of Itachi’s wrists, taking a moment to sweep lovingly over where his pulse thrums beneath.
“No,” he repeats—insists. “Don’t you dare be sayin’ sorry for being yourself, ‘Tachi. This here is enough for me. As you said, it’s everything, and I don’t want you ever thinkin’ that it ain’t.”
Itachi doesn’t say anything in response, too busy turning Kisame’s words over in his head. How like him to remember just what Itachi had asked of him all those months back.
“Are you–?” When he does speak again, he hesitates, trailing off. He can’t bring himself to ask, although his eyes betray him, helplessly flickering downwards despite not being able to see anything at all.
Kisame huffs an unsteady laugh through his nose. “All taken care of.”
Itachi can’t help it. He wrinkles his nose, pushing gently at Kisame’s clavicle in jest. Kisame just laughs harder, his cautious amusement burgeoning into deep, helpless chuckles that start to ease the tightness in Itachi’s chest, clearing the sour awkwardness from the room.
“Too much?”
“No, not really. I–” Itachi shrugs, his tongue still lead in his mouth. He’s never really talked about this with anyone before. Not in detail, and certainly not without being possessed by the crippling fear that it would somehow reach his father. It’s one thing to have a college senior sneer and call him a prude. It’s another thing entirely to consider how his father might have reacted, his face a strange combination of stony and concerned as he instructs him without a doubt that he can be fixed. Cured. Sucking in a determined breath, he crosses his legs out in front of him.
Across from him, the mattress dips again as Kisame does the same thing.
“It’s not the subject of sex that bothers me, so much as the act—the thought of being involved. I mean, I don’t really think about it at all unless someone else brings it up.”
“Or somethin’ like this happens?”
“Mhm.” He tilts his head slightly, not quite committing to a nod of agreement. “Not that it happened often before you. I tended to avoid letting other people get close enough to find out. An absence of sexual attraction isn’t exactly something everyone wants to know you experience when they’ve been trying to get you alone for that exact reason. I understand that for most people, it’s a crucial part of a relationship, but I just—It’s not necessary for me. I don’t feel any need for it. I don’t want it.”
“It’s not necessary for me either. I think sex can be fun and all, but there are other things more important to me. This for one.” One of Kisame’s hands furls more tightly around his own, lifting it between them as his thumb caresses the inside of his palm. “I would do anythin’ to keep this—keep you, ‘Tachi, for as long as you want to be here. Anythin’ at all.”
“And if we never—If I don’t want it ever?”
“Then I guess I’ll be takin’ care of myself for a long time. It ain’t a problem, sweetheart. You told me your boundaries before, and I respect ‘em. Just–” He pauses, floundering. Itachi may not be able to see him wince, but he can certainly hear it. Feel the way he starts to draw back for a moment only to sigh in frustration and muscle his way through what it is he has to say. “This was bound to happen at some point. I mean, you’re gorgeous, darlin’, and I can’t help the way I react sometimes when you’re right here, trustin’ me, lovin’ me, and sharing this space with me. But it doesn’t mean I’m expectin’ anything from you in that regard. I just—I can’t stop feelin’ how I do any more than you can.”
“I know. I would never expect that of you.” How could he when he himself has laid conditions firmly into the grounds of their relationship? When he has already told Kisame not to hold on to the futile hope that he might wake up one day and suddenly want Kisame in all the ways Kisame wants him. Tentatively, he squeezes Kisame’s hand in reassurance. “You just caught me off guard.”
“I could say the same. I can’t say I was any more prepared for that than you,” Kisame snorts, but squeezes his hand right back. “Are we alright, sweetheart?”
Itachi nods and offers him a small smile. “We’re alright.”