[Fanfiction] December Chapter Eight I

December- It's sad quiet in our apartment because Itachi doesn't talk much. He laughs even less. I don't laugh much either, because there's nothing to laugh about anymore. Especially in December.

Category: Chapter fic, AU
Status: Work in Progress
Rating: R
Pairings: KisaIta, KakaIru, a bit of GenRai

Notes: Well, here it is. For once, I really was speedy about something I promised I'd be speedy about. This chapter takes the record for length at thirty-three pages long, so park yourselves somewhere good and comfortable.

Chapter One-August I & II
Chapter Two-August III & IV
Chapter Three-September I & II
Chapter Four-September III & September IV
Chapter Five-October I & October II
Chapter Six-October III & November I
Chapter Seven-November II



***
Come on, we all know I'm not Kishimoto, don't we?



December I
I. Just around the corner, there’s a man who knows your name



Time doesn’t make sense, if you really stop to think about it.

At eleven fifty-nine, it’s November – the month of fallen leaves, creaking floorboards, Kakashi’s philosophy book, paper turkeys, packages in the mail. With rain not cold enough to be snow. The month Itachi promised to play a game and Kakashi gave me a marble for safe-keeping, while we wait for him.

November is the month Iruka left.

There were boxes on the porch that Sunday morning. Three of them, stacked like a tower by the front door, leaning slightly to the side. Kakashi didn’t write his name on them, but I knew they belonged to Iruka. No one puts their own things out on the porch unless they’re leaving, and I smelled coffee before I even made it up the steps. Before I even saw the boxes.

He’d been brewing it all night. Pot after pot and cup after cup of coffee from midnight to 8 a.m. It smelled like he’d painted the walls with it.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to smell coffee and not think of him. My brother smells like coffee too, but not all the time the way he used to. On Thursdays and only Thursdays, he smells slightly different. The coffee is still there, but it’s buried under other smells, ones I can’t always identify; sharp, spicy scents that sting my nose and make my eyes water and thick, sweet aromas that vaguely remind me of peanuts. The smells come from plain white bags with plain white boxes he says are for me. He doesn’t tell me what the food is until after I take a bite, which isn’t fair, because I don’t like onions and the chicken he gave me definitely had onions in it. I wouldn’t have eaten it if he’s told me first.

I pushed it away after that, washing the onion down with Kakashi’s coffee. Coffee tastes better than onion, and smells better than the sharp, spicy aroma he brings back with him.

Coffee smells like the way things are supposed to be.

Iruka didn’t smell like coffee. Even after being around for two months, he smelled more like the candles mom would light around Christmas and the red berries on wreaths. I don’t know how he managed to escape it between Kakashi, Itachi and me. I suppose it’s because he left as often as he stayed. To be with his other boyfriend.

In that way, not much has changed. We still play chess during dinner, the house still creaks when the wind blows through the open door, and Saturday is still a day for graveyards. The sugar bowl is in its place on the counter, the mint blanket on the arm of the couch. None of Kakashi’s books have moved, none of the furniture has shifted, none of the knick-knacks on the shelves have disappeared. Nothing in the house, it seems, belonged to Iruka. Three boxes full of clothes and nothing else. Where did Iruka keep all of the things in his life that came before Kakashi’s house? The books, the photos, the music he’d hum under his breath?

Kakashi thinks they’re with his other boyfriend. The one who called Iruka babe and asked me my name, ready to forget it afterward.

Mizuki, who smelled like cigarette smoke that made me want to cough.

As horrible as it sounds, I don’t think I’ll miss Iruka. For as long as he stayed, I never really got to know him. He was never with us. He’d eat at the counter while Kakashi and I played round after round of chess, grade homework in the living room with the radio turned on low as he hummed. Come in late, just as Itachi and I were leaving.

There without being there.

It’s what I once imagined meeting a ghost would be like, before I actually met one. Because ghosts, Kakashi’s proven to me, are very, very there. You feel them, whether you want to or not.

I wonder if Iruka ever felt them. I don’t see how he couldn’t have. Not a minute goes by in Kakashi’s house when I don’t feel them. Finding them there is unnerving, but you don’t feel so strange around them after a while. They’re comforting, in a way, simply because I can always count on them to be there. I don’t know if they have names, or if we’re supposed to know them, but I give them my own names, and they don’t object. I call the sunflower clock in the hall Maria, ask her what time it is before I look for myself.

Sometimes, I wish I could have taken Iruka by the hand, led him to Maria and introduced them myself. Maybe that way he would have seen. Maybe that way, he would have been there.

Maybe that way, we would miss him.

But the way things are, November is fading into December and leaving him behind. Second by second. On clocks like Maria, you can see time in detail; watch the ticks of the second hand as it passes over all the numbers. On clocks like ours, you can’t see the seconds going by. You can count them in your head, if you want, but in the end you can only trust that the green numbers glowing across the room will change all on their own accord, without you.

Thirty-three, thirty-two, thirty-one, thirty seconds until November is gone, and it doesn’t make sense that I could miss it with a blink. That it’s happening already.

Between the green glow of the alarm clock and the streetlamp light peeking in through the crack in the curtains, I can see mostly everything in the room. The closet by the foot of Itachi’s bed has a broken door handle on the right side that gleams slightly. I can’t tell if it’s from the crack in the curtain or the glow of the clock, but it flickers when I lower my eyes, like a candle. The big fan we keep in the corner for summer nights is off, replaced by the hum of the finicky radiator in the living room. The dresser with the big mirror on top hulks against the wall by the door, the bottom drawer left open from my impatience to get my bare feet off of the cold floor and into my bed.

If I sit up, I can probably see parts of myself in the mirror. I’ve done it in the daylight, when I can see my whole reflection instead of only the parts that catch the light. But since it’s too cold to do that, I content myself with making out bits and pieces of Itachi. His hand, curled across his belly; his shoulder, peeking out from the two dollar shirt we found at the thrift store; his nose, half hidden in shadow. He has dad’s nose. That’s what mom used to say.

Seeing his arms and shoulder exposed to the cold sends a shiver down my spine. I don’t know how he does it. The room is almost as cold as it is outside. I’m a little cold under the blankets.

Then again, once December is here, he’ll take to the fire escape without any blankets. Without a coat or shoes.

I’d like to just crawl into bed with him. Brave the chill of the floor and huddle up at the other end of his bed, buried under the blankets. I used to do it all the time when I was younger –when I couldn’t sleep, or when I had a bad dream. He’d stir out of sleep as soon as I climbed up, blink blearily at me, and murmur something before he slipped back into dreamland. He didn’t mind, back then.

My guess is that he’d probably mind now. Not because he likes me any less or doesn’t care about the bad dreams I have, but because he doesn’t like being touched. The first year was the worst. If I so much as brushed his hand when reaching for the cereal he’d go stiff as a board. Hugging him, if I’d ever wanted to while I was mad at him, wasn’t a good idea. It still isn’t, as far as I can tell, and even though I’ve thought about it and he’s getting better bit by bit, I’m scared to see what will happen. If he’ll get that blank look on his face, go stiff, and pull away.

That’s why I only touch him if I have to rescue him from the cold of the fire escape: He forgets himself out there.

Outside the wind whistles as it blows through the gap in the window – a tiny gap that we’ve tried to fix, but it won’t budge. The air lifts the curtains up and out, looking like my old version of ghosts, shimmery and lightweight. If it blows highs enough, you see glimpses of the tiled roofs across the street, the wires of telephone poles. Moonlight, lamplight, rain…

Snow.

I blink, sitting up, making sure it’s not just the dust that collects and swirls under the lamp. A few seconds pass and I’m sure it’s snow, because it’s everywhere out there, from what I see before the curtain flutters back against the window pane, sucked tight when the wind tries to pull it through the gap.

Snow at midnight. Itachi isn’t stirring.

Snow is falling, the clock says twelve o’clock and November is over, gone for another year, all before I have anything to say about it. I feel like I’m the only one awake to see this, even though I know I’m not, and it strikes me that this is the way I want it to stay. Itachi doesn’t have to know what happened here tonight. He doesn’t have to know that it’s December. We could just stay here, in the dark, where things are finally getting good again.

He said goodnight to me. Goodnight and sleep tight, the same way Mom used to. He didn’t kiss me on the forehead, or even come to the room with me, but he said goodnight from the couch, tucked into the corner with the book he’s been working through all week. He has a stack of them on the end table. They’re the only books I’ve seen him with in a month.

It can’t be all that unpleasant, living in the past. Kakashi lives there all the time. He never stops. I don’t usually envy him. He seems lonely sometimes, even when I’m around, but if he can keep Iruka away, I should be able to keep December away.

I don’t want Itachi to start forgetting himself. Not now, not when he’s just starting to remember.

That Itachi scares me.

Mom told me once that wishing on the stars would make my dreams come true. All you had to do was pick a star. She said it didn’t matter which star, because every star is a wishing star if you desperately, desperately want something. Because wishing stars don’t work for things like days off from school or toys, or the everlasting bowls of ice cream. Wishing stars only work for your heart.

I was so entranced by the rise and fall of her voice that I nearly forgot to make a wish. But when I remembered, snapping out of the thrill of an explanation that felt more like a story, I wished for snow. And that night, it did.

So I went on believing in wishing stars. For years, I believed that if everything else failed, I’d have the stars to fall back on. I wished for the pain in Itachi’s back to go away, for dad to come home early, at least once. I wished for rain in the middle of July.

I wished for my parents to come back.

I haven’t wished on a star since one let me down. Moms are story-tellers. The stories are good and sound so perfect, but in the end, they are what they are. Stories. And even the desperate ones can’t do the impossible. Desperation didn’t bring mom and dad back, and it has yet to bring Kakashi’s friend back either. Sometimes, desperation can’t even do things that are possible. I figured that out watching Iruka, slowly forgetting how to fight for the things he wanted.

Iruka liked to play pretend instead. And I think that’s what you have to do – live in the past or play pretend. Pretend, for tonight, that the clock didn’t change to midnight. Pretend that Itachi doesn’t notice his bed dipping down as I climb onto it wrapped in my blankets, my knees knocking into his feet. Pretend that he doesn’t ask me what I’m doing over here and just lay my head against the wall, listening to the wind and the snow and December, settling down to ruin us. I pretend that, in the few seconds where Itachi watches me and waits for an explanation that I won’t be able to give, that he understands how badly I want all of us to be happy, away from the fire escape.

I pretend that, maybe, the star that let me down was just the wrong star. Maybe there are other stars up there, right now, that can give me what I want. One of them can stop time. Another can stop the snow.

Itachi sighs, mumbles something I don’t hear as more than syllables and lies back down, edging his feet away from me. Maybe he’s pretending I’m not here. Maybe he’s pretending it’s alright. I don’t really know. All I know is that it gives me a few seconds to take a breath. A long, deep one that I pretend is sleepy and contented when it’s really relieved, and just the tiniest bit hopeful.

A few seconds can change a lot. If Iruka had played pretend for a little while longer, just pretended that things would work out later on down the line, would he still be here now? Would he have made it to December? I’m not sure anyone really likes playing pretend, but sometimes, you need to feel better. To keep going until something can change.

I feel bad for him. Those boxes will smell like coffee for weeks.

***

According to the radio, the snow came just past midnight. The window frosted crystalline, the crack in the window let in the cold, and the temperamental radiator let it stay. By the time morning rolled around, Sasuke and I could see our breath in the air.

Sasuke spent the whole day with Kakashi and me at The Den, surprisingly unexcited by the unanticipated day off from school that the weather had given him. At his age, I remember living for even the chance that school would have mercy and give us a day to horse around in the snow. Sasuke merely graced the radio announcement was a tacit acknowledgement, before he reassumed his position as window sentinel, surveying the scene beyond with obvious discontent.

I didn’t know if I should ask him why he looked so distraught. I’m not his confidant. I settled for letting him be, hoping that he’d snap out of his mood in his own good time. Knowing Sasuke, he will. He’s resilient.

Knowing me, I wouldn’t be able to help him anyway. I keep secrets. I don’t ask and I don’t tell.

It’s not that he doesn’t deserve to know what happened. Of all people, he’s the one that should know what kind of family he really had. But I can’t talk about it with a trained psychologist. There’s no way I can talk about it with Sasuke. There’s so much I’d have to explain. Why Mom dreaded the nights Dad didn’t come home right after work. Why our own grandparents don’t come to visit anymore. What rape means.

Of all the things, that’s the one I dread the most. How can I possibly explain something like that, something that still sends tendrils of hot helplessness shooting up my spine to someone who doesn’t even understand what sex is? And if he could understand all of the ways it damaged me, would he turn on his memory, too? Would he still see our mom as a saint and our dad as a patron, loving us from a distance? Would I still be the bad guy?

The truth is that I’d rather he sees me as the bad guy. One of us should be able to have some good memories. One of us should be able to lay flowers over their grave, if only because Mom is buried with him.

There were a few times when I wanted to. Mom was a saint, as much as she knew how to be. She didn’t deserve the bottle of gin I broke over her grave any more than Sasuke deserved to see me do it. She didn’t deserve to be buried with him.

I pause for a moment. I can feel the flush of heat threatening at the base of my neck, wanting to take over. Not a panic attack yet, since my breathing hasn’t changed, but a significant, burning reminder of why I keep my silence. His hand would rest there, light as a feather and always hot for some reason. Possibly the alcohol, heating his blood. Possibly my imagination, and my fear of the closed space into which it drew us.

I crouch down near a fence, reaching for a handful of snow and consciously not thinking of anything but the snow. The cold crunches under my palm. I push down, burrowing until my wrist is gone and the chill creeps up to my elbow. To anyone passing by, I look like I dropped something. Something rather important, because I’m willing to stay there for almost a minute, fingers wriggling in the bank.

As to what I’m looking for, their guess is as good as mine.

When I have just enough feeling in my hand for the sake of flexibility, I withdraw and rise from my crouch. My hand seeks out the hot spot on the back of my neck and settles there until it leaves.

Heat is how I remember my father. Cold is how I chase him away.

As I wait for the tingling feeling to subside, I focus on other things. I study the street sign, crooked white letters announcing that I’m on Burberry Street, less than one block from my destination. Something hit the pole at some point because it leans at a frighteningly precarious angle that rivals Italy’s famous tower. A car. A kid on a bike. I look down at the sidewalk, following the path my feet took to get here. I have small feet, I realize, as I spy another pair of footprints walking in the same direction before they cross the street just up ahead of me. Somewhat elfin feet.

I roll my eyes wryly, knowing good and well that a thought like that had to have come from Kisame. I would never call my own feet elfin. After the vastly entertaining dinner, during which he likened Sasuke and I to elves, I’d expect nothing less from him. Despite my best efforts not to be too accommodating, part of him has taken up residence. Unfortunately, it’s the part of him that delights in torturing me. Incessantly.

Amazingly, Kisame transformed. Once he realized that I wasn’t kidding about turning over a new leaf, he became almost an entirely different person than the one I knew behind the desk. One I almost don’t recognize.

He looks the same. He continues to dress almost exclusively in blue and, I suspect, not really brush his hair in the morning. But his eyes are different now. They’re still as blue and vibrant as before, but they don’t hold as many concerns as they did before. I didn’t know they held that many until they disappeared.

Apparently, I was on his mind far more than I imagined.

I flex my hand on my neck, digging my fingers into my skin. If I were to pull away, there would be white imprints left on my skin that would fade away in ten seconds of so. Only imprints. That should be the last of the memory.

I count to five, just to make sure I’m not jumping the gun, concentrating on the snow. White, like the imprint of my fingers. Smooth, cold, and light. Sasuke used to call them ground clouds, toss up handfuls of powder into the air where they’d glitter if they caught the right light. He’d spin around in circles until he was dizzy and fall to the ground. Once there, he’d spread his arms and legs and flap, making the sloppiest snow angels I’d ever seen.

Sasuke probably doesn’t remember that. He was barely three at the time and said ground with a “w” instead of an “r.” I find myself wishing that he does, because this is one memory that isn’t dredging up other things along with it. Far from it. I realize with an odd, overwhelming kind of clarity, that this is a good memory. Among all of the bad ones I continuously push down, I’ve practically forgotten that good ones still exist. Perhaps even deeper down than the bad ones, if one surfaced so unexpectedly that it rivaled epiphany.

The heat on my neck is gone entirely.

The snow must be doing this to me. I’ve always been aware that the cold has a calming sort of effect on me, but this is different. This isn’t numbing. This is feeling, remembering and somehow not regretting the slip.

This is what some people call okay.

It’s a nice feeling. Airy, vague, and insubstantial, but nice all the same. Though I have to wonder, thinking of the hand I plunged into the snow and the welcoming embrace of freezing midnights, how long “okay” will last before it turns into something devastating. Truly good evades me yet, and I still don’t know if I can handle that kind of remembrance any more than I can handle the truly bad. Things can start out good and end up bad without much effort. I understand that perfectly. Memories are no different.

Moving forward is a necessity now. I took a few steps backwards to make amends with Kisame, but now I have to go forward again. Taking him with me and somehow not letting him get too close. We’re working on something that could be friendship, in time, and keeping him at a distance, even if it’s only a small distance, will help keep things in perspective for me. I’m not asking, nor do I want, for him to heal my wounds. But if something beneficial should happen as we figure out the parameters of our relationship, then I’ll only be convinced that I made the right move in resisting at first. I can’t talk in a chair. I might be able to talk if I’m not afraid of having my innermost thoughts pried away from me.

The chances of talking with him like that, candid and unafraid, aren’t likely. I don’t expect it, and if he has any sense, he doesn’t ether. Still, we stand a better chance this way. Close, but not intimate. And not strangers. Strangers look at you funny when they see you standing in the middle of the sidewalk with your hand pressed to the back of your neck. They stare and point and whisper and want to know what the hell is going on.

Friends don’t do that.

Of course, time also flies when you’re having fun. Clichés don’t comfort me. Time flies whenever it wants. Like when something dreadful is around the corner.

Time used to fly whenever I had an appointment with Kisame. The last hour of my Thursday shift would pass by before I knew what was happening. One minute it was five thirty and the next it was six twenty-six and time for me to clock out and begin that all too short, despicable walk to the psychiatrist’s office.

A walk that is familiar to me now.

I don’t know when it became familiar, exactly. Not familiar the way the walk from the café to Kakashi’s house has become, but familiar in the way that a half-finished book feels. You don’t know which villain will turn out to have a heart or which hero will have the Achilles heal, but you have ideas. Opinions are still forming from the way one man disappeared when he was needed most, the way one woman said the right thing at the right time. That one look he gave her. You could end up being completely wrong, and you may even expect it, but you’re so engrossed in fleshing these people out to the fullest that you don’t care.

A good book does that to you.

It’s unnerving, this familiarity, the way I know things about him now, when a couple of weeks ago his personal life was alien to me in all respects. I can rattle off about a dozen facts right off the bat, stupid little tidbits that don’t mean anything, but at the same time mean everything. He’s a Scorpio who identifies better with the Libra. Spicy foods are his favorite. He loves grape flavoring but not actual grapes. His favorite color is actually green, but he thinks he looks better in blue. He knows all of the lyrics to Don’t Stop Believing by Journey. He learned to read music at the age of four. His hometown is Boston. He was suspended three times in high school for disturbing the peace, although he didn’t specify exactly what that meant. Fireworks make him jumpy. He doesn’t care for dogs and loves cats. He can’t bluff, even for poker. He’s allergic to ragweed. He sleeps best to the sound of silence.

Knowing the last one, for some reason, bothers me the most. The revelation came out in conversation last week, the same week I found out he was born in Boston. He was telling me about his childhood home and his neighborhood, the three blocks that were his adolescent stomping grounds. The corner store that sold gum and pop. The cassette player attached to his hip as he roamed around with his friends, teasing girls. The front stoop they sprawled out on in the early evening. The quiet nights that followed the loud days.

As he spoke, I imagined him lying on his back in bed, head turned towards the screened window. The dead heat of summer was upon him. Sheets thrown off. He was my age, I think, in my reverie, but only because that’s familiar to me, like heat of July. He lay in bed, halfway to sleep before that one minute where the crickets ceased chattering and dogs stopped barking and the traffic hit a lull, and he drifted away.

He’d stopped talking by the time I finished thinking, waiting for me to maybe, possibly, share something in return. But I had nothing for him. I was too caught-up being guilty with intimacy to find a watered-down yet sincere version of the truth to give back. These conversations are an exchange where he receives a penny for every nickel he gives me, but he tolerated it in good humor. He didn’t press.

I took a sip of my water, giving him a watered-down but sincere upturn of my lips and not telling him that I fall asleep the most easily to the sound of rain.

I’m unfair to him. I know I am. He answers all of my questions while I answer just under half of his, and some of those answers are only partial truths. I told him that I haven’t had a best friend since the fourth grade, but I didn’t tell him that it’s because I couldn’t think of any other excuses to explain the bruises on my forearms. That I chose to close myself off from the other kids so that I could keep and eye on my brother, always afraid that something would happen if I wasn’t next to him when dad came home. That my young life revolved around the fear of people finding out what was going on.

Fear. Always fear. Even now, I fear giving too much away. I look at the fragmented bits of his life, little pieces of nothing that say everything about him. His life is somewhere in all of the pieces. In grape flavored popsicles and sticky, purple lips. In the principal’s office, waiting for a verdict. In the walkman attached to his hip. In singing Journey when no one was listening. In the records on his office walls.

More than ever, I want to know if he was a musician. And more than ever, the answer terrifies me. If I can already connect the dots with so little in his life, what dots has he connected in mine? After all, he knows what my father did to me. He knows that the abuse and the rape are the driving forces behind everything I do and don’t say. I’ve proved that to him several times over – by my campaign to keep him out and even by the arrangement we have now – that even in death, my father has a hold on me.

Only the little things are left now. The little things that trigger the one big thing.

I don’t want to break yet. I don’t think anybody really wants to break, but some people have more of a reason to fear it. And aside from telling him truths that leave mostly everything to the imagination, I’m running out of ideas that will stave off the inevitable. I’m going to have another episode in front of him. I just know it, the way a farmer knows when the sky is going to open up and feed the earth. The way children know there’re monsters lurking in the closet.

And nobody wants to face the monsters.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep up this tenuous balance, this talking but not talking, so that he’s close but not too close. Not wanting to bear my soul, but knowing that he’s going to see part of it when I break. And knowing it’s coming, thinking about it just up ahead, will probably only make it happen sooner.

That, really, is my only other defense for now – not thinking about what’s coming, the same way I deal with what has been. The old standby.

Not thinking about, as I walk, how I know I’m almost there; not by the street sign that marks Randall Avenue, but by the blue Dodge pickup on the corner that always seems to be there.

I’m almost two minutes late at this point. Chances are very, very high, however, that he’s still not outside to meet me. Apparently, we’re close enough these days that he doesn’t have to worry about punctuality. I thoroughly disagree, but I’m not going to begrudge him a few minutes, especially since I’m late too this time around.

Five minutes is about my limit.

Luckily, he doesn’t keep me waiting more than another minute. Right after I make myself comfortable sitting on the brick wall surrounding his apartment complex, the double door on the right opens. Kisame, dressed in his usual blue, strolls out leisurely. He’s never in a hurry, from what I can tell. He’s just not the kind of guy who is hassled by time.

We’re polar opposites on that front. I’m not a fast walker, but that’s because I constantly allow myself the correct amount of time so that I don’t have to rush. Kisame seems to walk at whatever pace suits him, even if he was supposed to be there ten minutes ago. He doesn’t plot his day around the clock.

I envy him for that.

“Hey, you,” he greets as he comes closer to the wall. “Beat me again I see.”

Our heights even out a bit when I’m sitting on the wall, putting my gaze level with his collarbone. He’s not wearing a button down shirt tonight. From what I can see underneath the coat, it appears to be a grey sweater.

I shrug. Forty-five seconds. I could tell him, but I won’t. “An amazing feat, I know. You live so far away.”

“Your subtle sense of humor never ceases to amuse.” He closes the gap between us until there’s only about a foot of space left. I don’t mind, not the way I used to. He’s not a threat anymore, as long as he keeps his hands to himself. And I don’t see him doing that. The only times he’s ever touched me were when it was necessary, and I can’t blame him for either of those. He did what he thought he had to do.

I don’t know if he still refrains because of that time I jerked away from him in the café, or simply because he has good senses. Either way, needless. I deliberately swing my foot, just to prove to myself that I’m not in a dangerous situation. It very nearly comes in contact with Kisame’s kneecap.

Kisame sighs, shaking his head at one of us. “I’m going to be the first one here one of these days. Really. I am. And you’re going to be so surprised that your mouth is actually going to drop.”

Forty-five seconds. I laugh softly, but not for the reason he probably thinks. “No, you won’t.”

He opens his mouth as if he’s going to protest, but instead all he does is laugh back. “Yeah, you’re right. I won’t.” He shoves his hands in his coat pocket. Blue and grey tweed. That surprised me. For some reason, I expected leather. “I don’t need you expecting things of me.”

I could have said any number of things after that. That I will never expect things from him. That I don’t want to expect things from him. That I already expect things from him. But even if I’d wanted to say any of those things, I’m distracted by the fact that he’s now conducting a thorough search of his person. Jean pockets, front and back. The inside slit of the jacket. Back to the coat pockets.

“Damn,” he says without meaning it, patting his pockets one more time. Just to make sure. “Yeah, this is why it’s not good to expect things of me.”

“Better you realized it here than in the restaurant,” I remind him practically. “I don’t think they let you work off your dinner this day and age.”

He’s still patting his pockets absently, convincing himself that no, his wallet is really not there. “No, I don’t suppose they do.” He stops patting himself, which is a shame because I was just catching onto the rhythm he’d picked up. “Okay. I’m going to run upstairs really quick and grab my wallet. Then we can go.”

I nod my consent, pulling my legs into a cross-legged position that hurts my ankles but instantly warms my legs. “I’ll be here.”

“Of course you will.” He tosses me one of his charming smiles that might be an apology for the delay and turns around and takes a step. But only a step. He half turns around, haltingly, and when he speaks his voice matches. I don’t think he’s sure he should say what he wants to say, and when I hear what it is, I’m not so sure either. “You can… I mean, you could, if you want. Come upstairs, I mean.” He shakes his head, rearranging his jumble of words into better coherency. “You can come upstairs if you want.” He motions jerkily with his shoulder, asking me to take in the surrounding scenery. “It’s cold out here, you know.”

I know. I know because there’s still a lingering chill on my neck where I pressed snow against it. And he knows that I have a high tolerance for cold, so his excuse is about as thin as the ice on the sidewalk.

My body reacts quickly, the way it used to when my dad told Sasuke to go to bed. Sweaty palms, quickened breathing, a thick sense of foreboding in the back of my throat. A burst of fear that nearly sends me shaking.

The creeping heat.

But then I look at him. I look at the discomfort in his posture that says he’s regretting he ever let the words out of his mouth. The hands shoved in the pockets to disguise twitching fingers and the hunch in his shoulders. I look at the conflict in his blue eyes, the overwhelming need to take it back and the irrational hope that I’ll be okay with the invitation. That what he’s done is alright. I look at the way he’s waiting for me to make the next move, the lip he’s biting so fiercely it might start bleeding. And I look at all the things he’s not: Proud. Cocky. Selfish, arrogant, and unfeeling. Entitled.

He’s not my father, assuming he can have whatever he wants from me.

Maybe I should listen to the fast rise and fall of my breathing. Maybe I should get down from the wall and walk away. Forget we ever tried this. But I don’t. Instead I concentrate on right here and right now, and on all the things Kisame isn’t. All the reasons I don’t have to fear. As I think of all those things, my breathing slows back down. My heart stops beating so hard. My throat clears so that I don’t feel like I’m choking.

He crossed a line. We both know that. But he’s not like that. He’s not my father, and even if this is more intimacy than I’m comfortable with this soon, it’s going to be okay.

I have to make this okay.

I take a long, drawn out breath to rid myself of any shakiness that might still be vibrating in my muscles, and say a silent thank you that they didn’t lock in fear. Kisame stops breathing. I hear the hitch and say a silent thank you that he’s still waiting on me. Waiting for me.

“Alright,” I say so softly that I almost don’t hear myself. He does though, because his shoulders jerk up in surprise, and the look on his face is incredulous. Incredulous and, above all, relieved.

“Alright?” he repeats on an exhale, questioning that I really said what he thinks I said. Giving me another chance to back out, if I want to.

“Alright,” I say again, my voice loud enough for both of us to hear clearly. To convince him that I mean what I’m saying, I unfold myself from my sitting position and hop down from the wall, putting us back at our usual height difference.

He doesn’t smile at me. Not exactly, but the tension leaves his shoulders, and the conflict lifts from his eyes. All that’s left is that irrational hope now, and in the strange, unconventional relationship that we’ve cultivated, I figure that it’s pretty damn close to the perfect reaction. “Alright.”

His apartment, like mine, is on the third floor. We take the stairs up, his longer legs carrying him up considerably more quickly. I follow at my own pace, full of a mixture of bewildered anticipation and trepidation Secretly, guiltily, I’ve wondered what his apartment looks like. If it’s anything like his office, with records on the wall and autographed album covers on the shelves. That’s where the anticipation comes from. The trepidation is realizing that I’m going to see for myself and not knowing if I’m ready, from not being sure if coming up here is the biggest mistake I could make and I that I should have said no and walked away.

I know I’m pushing my luck. Our luck. But this is something that has to happen. Needs to happen.

I conveniently forget the fact that seeing even more of his personal life is exactly what I don’t want to happen. There’s something else at stake here, though, something that seems, somehow, more important.

Kisame needs to be the person I think he is. I don’t want this to be just another bad memory.

I pray, as we reach the top of the stairs, to a god I don’t have much faith in anymore, that this won’t be just another bad memory. I pray, as the door swings open with the keys dangling from the lock, that I won’t regret doing this.

He goes right in. I hover in the doorway a moment, a little afraid to step over the threshold. I take in my surroundings instead, distracting myself from my nerves. Like Kakashi, he has hardwood floors. A darker, cherry-toned wood. The walls aren’t blue, but a rich cream color. I didn’t expect that. The ceiling, however, is a shade of blue that thoroughly distracts me from everything else. It’s like the sky is in the room with us, the sky that falls before the sunsets. Light and dark at the same time.

I wonder if he painted the ceiling himself, or if the ceiling sold him the apartment. It would for me.

“Bear with me, okay?” he says from in the kitchen. I see the edge of it from where I stand, the island that separates the kitchen from the living room. “I’m not entirely sure where my wallet is, which is probably why I ran out without it.”

I make a noise of assent, daring myself to take another step. I’m so, so close and yet I can’t bring myself to take that last step. I hate myself a little for being such a coward, especially now that I’m in the doorway.

One step.

“I thought I saw it on the coffee table earlier, but it’s not there so…” I hear the sound of a drawer rolling open, then closing a second later. “You don’t happen to see it lying around, do you?”

I can’t see much of anything from my vantage point, so I don’t feel entirely unjustified when I answer no after a few beats. I don’t see his wallet. I see brown leather couches, creamy walls, and airy windows that look out over a snow covered yard. I see a pair of his shoes by the door, and a coffee mug he left on the coffee table. I see another one of his jackets on the piano tucked away in the corner.

A piano. I imagined this, him having a piano. I don’t even know how the idea ever got stuck in my head, but one day I pictured him behind a piano, and I haven’t been able to banish the notion ever since. It makes so little sense, really, that I would assume such a thing. Almost as little sense as it makes that there’s actually one here.

He never mentioned a piano.

Unconsciously, I take a step forward. I don’t know what I want to do, exactly. Nothing that makes sense. But I have the urge to run my hands over the lid, convince myself that it’s really here. That I put the pieces together so perfectly.

That there’s something he hasn’t told me.

I’m only a foot or so inside the door when Kisame crosses the room, heading right for the piano. “I think I just had an epiphany,” he informs me, unfazed that I’m fully through the door now; I honestly don’t think he realizes that I haven’t been in the actual room all along. “I didn’t wear this jacket to work, where I had my wallet last.” He picks up the jacket on top of the piano. “I was wearing this one. So it should be…” he pauses as he plunges his hand straight into one of the pockets, smiling as he strikes gold. “Right here.”

“Great,” I murmur quickly. “Can we go now?”

The smile drops instantly from his face. Damn him for recognizing more than just impatience. I think he’s starting to know me too well. “Everything okay?” he asks quietly. Concerned, always concerned for me. Always cautious with me.

Fuck, just once, I’d like to be okay.

I take a deep breath, not caring if he notices my struggle or not. What do I have to hide anyway? He already knows my deep, dark secret. He already knows what I’m afraid of giving away.

I need this to be okay.

“Do you play?” I ask out of the blue. I don’t think I’ve ever asked him a question about himself that he hasn’t asked me first, and the action is so foreign that I feel clumsy. “The piano?”

Kisame’s eyes widen, and I think all of the blue in the ceiling-sky enters them at once. He looks away from me, at the piano. Sadly, bitterly, at the piano. “I used to,” he says softly. He looks back at me, all of the blue back in the ceiling. And I miss it. Guiltily, secretly, irrationally. “I used to play.”

There’s something so sad, so poignant in his voice that I stop dead in my tracks. I was so close to finally asking all of the questions that I’ve been wanting to know for so long. Is he a musician? Was he ever in a band? But looking at him now, standing in front of the piano that I imagined all on my own and seeing him thrown so far off-kilter that I’m reeling, I don’t have the heart. Because I know what it’s like to stand in front of someone and feel so exposed that you want to crawl under your own skin. Because I know he’ll never be anything but patient with me.

Because we all have secrets. Even Kisame Hoshigaki.

“I bet you were wonderful,” I say sincerely. Slowly, deliberately, I take a half-step backwards. Leading him, letting him follow. Another half-step, and I’m almost back through the door. “I am dying of starvation.”

I can’t describe the sigh that escapes his lips. Relief that I didn’t pursue further. Disappointment that I didn’t. A mixture of both. I can’t tell. But he does follow me. He doesn’t say anything, but he follows me. Down the stairs, through the lobby, and out the double doors. Past the wall that protects the property. It’s a strange game of follow the leader, one way too old, the other way too jaded.

But still.

“Where do you want to go?” Kisame asks finally, signing the unspoken agreement. We won’t talk about what happened upstairs. Not right now. Perhaps one day we will, when we’re both ready for it. Perhaps one day I’ll talk about my dad. But not now. Now, we’re going to put this aside for another day.

We’re going to move on. This will not be a bad memory.

There are so many things I could tell him, like I’m in the mood for pasta or, for god’s sake, nothing spicy, but it’s not about the food. Things that are needy. Whiny. Sentimental. Things he doesn’t know I can be yet. “Doesn’t matter,” I decide on after a while, emphasizing it with a shrug. And truly, with this vague, airy, insubstantial feeling that has settled over me, it doesn’t.

I can only hope that, one day, he understands that.


Go to Chapter Eight-December II
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