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“What have you done now?”
Itachi’s look and tone are long-suffering. Shisui hardly thinks that’s fair. Itachi hasn’t been here long enough to be jaded yet, and besides, Shisui’s been behaving.
Well. Kind of.
He looks up at Itachi from the floor of the cell, watches him take his hat off and toss it gracefully onto the desk.
(They fucked over that desk last week. Shisui may or may not have a project going where he’s trying to replace every shitty memory he has of the sheriff’s office with more interesting ones, and he thinks it’s going pretty damn well so far.)
Itachi’s eyes narrow at him, and Shisui realizes he still hasn’t answered the question.
“Haven’t done a thing,” he replies breezily. “Seems to me your lawmen are gettin’, what’s the word. Overzealous. Seeing things where there’s nothing to see.”
“Really.”
Itachi sounds skeptical. Shisui tries to sound like he’s offended.
“Where’s the trust here, Sheriff? Where’s the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ shit they shoved down your throat in law school?”
“Left behind somewhere between here and civilized society,” Itachi says, dry as sand, sitting behind the desk and sifting through papers.
He’s full of shit. Shisui knows that like he knows when it’s going to rain (‘cause that’s a rare enough fucking occurrence out here that you learn to figure out when it’s coming). Itachi likes to pretend he’s just like them now—a hardened paragon of order, coarsened by sandstorms and a total lack of anything comfortable. But it’s all an act, same as it was the day he came waltzing into Shisui’s boomtown and turned everything sideways. He’s still hanging onto that crazy-ass idealism that’s probably gonna get him killed someday.
Wait, scratch that. There’s no ‘probably’ about it; Shisui knows that too. This town doesn’t let people like Itachi grow old—you either adapt, let the wind and the sand wear you down into something tough and hard enough to survive it, or you die where you stand. And Itachi’s too damn stubborn to do the former, so it’ll end up being the latter.
Shisui’s still trying to work out whether he wants to be hanging around when that happens.
“I punched a guy in the face,” he admits, scratching at the iron bars. Itachi pauses in his paperwork.
“You did what?”
“Hit someone. Right in the face.” Seeing the look on Itachi’s face, Shisui rolls his eyes and leans back on his elbows. “Don’t have to look all scandalized, Sheriff. Didn’t hit him that hard. He’ll heal up alright.”
Itachi still looks pained. “Is there even a point to asking whether he provoked you in some way?”
Shisui shrugs. “Didn’t like the way he was looking at me.”
That’s a load of horseshit too, but Itachi hasn’t known him long enough to work that out.
The guy had been drunk, way past where most would’ve had the good sense to just pass the fuck out and put everyone else out of his misery, but not this piece of work. No, he’d started talking shit. Grumbling about the town going to hell (like they’d ever left it, Shisui remembers thinking), grumbling about Fugaku leaving, grumbling about Itachi taking over, and that’s where Shisui’d started paying attention.
He’s not been thinking too hard about what the asshole actually said, only that some of it was hitting too close to home. Shisui’s used to hearing that shit and he knows better than to react to it, knows that only makes people think he’s—well, it’s easy to be all open and easy about it in private, isn’t it?
I like fucking men.
Not in public, though. No fucking way. You’re begging to be strung up by the neck until your legs quit twitching.
And that’s why he’d punched the guy. Because Shisui knows better, but there’s talking shit about someone and then there’s talking shit about someone who’s not there to defend himself. Shisui doesn’t know if the idiot was just blowing off steam or if he’d really thought Itachi might be one of Them—like a fucking disease, Christ almighty—but it hadn’t made a difference then and it doesn’t now.
Itachi’s hold on the reins of this town is only as tight as their respect for him. He’d come with some already built in, courtesy of who his daddy is, and he’s done alright for himself since. Hasn’t pissed off anybody too important.
If rumors like that start spreading, though—forget it. It’s all over. Fucking done. He’ll be run out of town if he’s lucky, strung up for the crows if he’s not, and his last name won’t do him a damn bit of good then.
All Shisui did was nip that potential rumormonger in the bud. Every little bit helps, and all.
Itachi is still looking at him. He’s put the papers back down.
“Why do I get the distinct feeling that you’re full of shit?” he asks.
Shisui almost gapes, stops himself just in time. Sometimes he forgets their new sheriff is a perceptive little shit.
“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies, professor,” he answers slowly. Itachi hmms under his breath and gets up. He crosses the short distance between desk and cell, crouches down and taps thoughtfully on the bars.
“How long did my deputies say you’re meant to stay in here? This time?”
Shisui smirks. This is something he can work with. “Got my three strikes, Sheriff. I’m here overnight.”
“Is that so.”
“Sure is.” He laces his fingers together behind his head, stretches out on the floor. The nice thing about just being chucked into a cell is that they don’t usually bother tying your hands on top of it. “Ain’t your office hours about over, now that I’m thinkin’ about it?”
Itachi’s mouth twitches. “It’s a possibility. I have a massive amount of paperwork to get through.” He raises an eyebrow. “I fear it’s going to be a long night.”
Shisui sits up fast, leans real close to the bars. He’s grinning big enough that he probably looks like that cat in Mr. Carroll’s book.
“I’m counting on it,” he says, and Itachi finally smiles.