Work Text:
Itachi woke up in the dark to the sound of water running.
He got out of bed quietly. This apartment was small and the walls were thin so sound traveled easily, which made it ideal for monitoring his brother’s condition, noticing anything out of the ordinary. This, a tap running continuously in the early hours of the morning, meant without a doubt that something was wrong.
He made sure his footsteps were audible as he exited his bedroom, so that Sasuke would hear him coming. The problem became apparent as soon as he slid open the door.
Sasuke lingered in the hall outside the bathroom door in a way that suggested he wasn’t entirely there— doing nothing but standing, absently listening to the running faucet. The bathroom light was on, just a dull amber glow. Other than that, the apartment was blanketed by night.
“Sasuke,” Itachi said, in the soft and gentle tone he only ever used with his brother. Sasuke didn’t respond— made no indication that he’d even heard Itachi at all.
Itachi knew better than to touch him in this state. So, instead, he went into the bathroom to shut off the tap. It was as he thought— just running, nothing under it, producing a continuous hiss. The handle squeaked when he turned it and the water stopped.
Sasuke was leaning fully against the doorframe when Itachi turned back. He waited until Sasuke looked at him. In the dull light he could see his eyes were red-rimmed, dark crescents underneath them. He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks, and truthfully, it was possible he hadn’t.
Only once they’d shared a look of acknowledgement did Itachi touch him. And then it was only a pressureless hand on his shoulder, gently steering him back from the bathroom door, towards the kitchen at the other end of the hall. Itachi shut the light off as he went, sealing the apartment back into a cool darkness.
Sunrise couldn’t be too far off. The kitchen window was tinted blue, and the moon provided enough light to see decently in the dark. Once they reached the couch in the kitchen and Sasuke had sat down, Itachi knelt in front of him and took one of his hands. “What were you doing, Sasuke?”
Sasuke stared down at their clasped hands, hardly blinking. “I was—” He broke off, voice brittle and barely above a whisper. He searched for words a few moments longer before he continued. “I need to get over it.”
Itachi worked his thumb up to the tender inside of Sasuke’s wrist, pressing lightly into his pulse point. It was erratic, a helpless flutter beneath his skin. “You need to rest.”
Sasuke’s hypervigilance wasn’t new, but it had worsened intensely from recent events. This new behavior of standing outside the bathroom, listening to the water running was a prime indicator of that, and it was worrying.
Sasuke still hadn’t told him everything. Itachi didn’t think he ever would. It wasn’t hard to infer what he’d been tortured with, though, considering that upon his retrieval, he had to be held down to be bathed. It was necessary with the state they’d found him in— covered in dirt and filth and dried blood— but he’d had a terrible adverse reaction to it and his screams of protest were burned into Itachi’s memory.
Itachi decided he would have to run him a warm bath at some point when he wasn’t around to hear it, then give him time to sit and soak. It might help ease his fear of water, as well as those visible knots of tension in his body.
They were in no rush. An hour or so till daylight and nothing after that. Itachi put on a kettle for tea, black and fennel spice, even though it wasn’t the most calming, it was the only kind Sasuke liked.
While it heated, he retrieved fresh gauze and tape from the emergency medical pack under the counter. He then returned to Sasuke and knelt beside him once more with the materials. “Let me see your stitches?”
It was less of a request and more of an invitation. After a few moments of considerate silence, Sasuke lifted his nightshirt halfway so Itachi could see the patch of cloth taped down over his ribcage.
There were two of these, one on either side of Sasuke’s body, each covering three long, sealed gashes. Painful, nondeadly areas for slow bleeding and drawn-out torment.
Itachi was the farthest thing from squeamish, but seeing this evidence of injury on his little brother still hollowed out a pit of sickness in his stomach, even days after the fact. It was as though he could feel every ounce of Sasuke’s pain himself, like the wounds were his own. And underneath that, there was an intense protective rage that called for the violent deaths of those who had inflicted this pain on him— who’d dared to lay hands on his baby brother like this, not just once but over and over and over again. He pushed aside that anger, though, to focus on what Sasuke needed right now.
He peeled down the patch with careful hands, exposing the lines in Sasuke’s flesh, which were parallel like a macabre set of gills. The stitches were thick-bound and the skin around them was raw and red, irritated and even torn in some places, though thankfully none of the threads had ripped. Still, it was evident that Sasuke had put stress on them. He must have been thrashing in his sleep.
Itachi folded a patch of fresh gauze and began to gingerly press it to the cuts, mopping up the thin blood and fluid that had seeped through during the night. Sasuke’s posture stiffened and he sucked in a sharp breath. Itachi gently shushed him, monitoring the pained wince on his face.
As he finished tending to the first set of cuts, the kettle began to build up a whistle, and Itachi went to remove it from heat before it could get too loud. He poured tea for them both and inconspicuously slipped an ice cube into Sasuke’s, just to make sure it would cool down enough not to burn him.
He gave Sasuke his tea first, then set about cleaning and re-bandaging the stitches on his other side. At this angle, he could see a shadow of the dark bruises on Sasuke’s stomach and chest, a further reminder of the extent of the abuse he'd suffered that Itachi didn’t know about. From the look of them, he could guess he’d been kicked, but— if Sasuke didn’t want to tell him, he had no right to be speculating about it, so he forced himself to stop.
Soon, he noticed that Sasuke’s eyes had unfocused again— he turned absent and glazed, lost somewhere in his memories. “You’re here,” Itachi reminded him softly, pausing his work on the stitches to give Sasuke his full attention. “You’re safe.” Sasuke said nothing, but he took a shaky breath and exhaled, as though trying to convince himself.
Once he had finished taping down the fresh gauze, Itachi sat on the couch beside him and they drank their tea in silence.
Itachi let his gaze wander back to the window, not wanting Sasuke to feel smothered by attention, and simply gave him space to speak if he felt like it. As he waited, he noted the growing warmth in the dark blue sky, indicating that the sun was hibernating just below the horizon.
It was difficult to focus on much else besides his worry for Sasuke, but he did the best he could. That was interrupted, though, when Sasuke’s head dropped to his shoulder.
After a moment’s realization, a mournful ache swelled in Itachi’s heart and turned to draw Sasuke fully into his arms. He squeezed him, not tight enough to risk causing him pain, but enough to feel his heartbeat. Sasuke moved his head so that the cold shell of his ear pressed against Itachi’s throat, cheek resting on the bit of exposed skin just above his collarbone. Itachi breathed into his hair, rubbed his back, and held him close until Sasuke’s heart rate began to slow.
Itachi loosened his grip then, giving Sasuke the room to pull free if he wanted to. He didn’t, though— his eyelashes prickled into the side of Itachi’s neck when he nuzzled closer, eyes still firmly closed. The thump of his heart resonated somewhere in the space between them. Itachi ran a hand through his hair a few times, gently scratching into his scalp, and simply let Sasuke breathe.
Eventually, Sasuke exhaled heavily against him, pulled away and straightened up. Itachi rubbed a few more long, gentle strokes up and down his back as he scrubbed at his eyes— and then, to Itachi’s amusement and relief, stifled a yawn. It was an indicator that, at least for now, Sasuke had become comfortable enough to sink into his own exhaustion.
“Do you want to go back to bed?” Itachi asked, and Sasuke nodded.
Itachi accompanied him back to his bedroom and sat beside him as he lay down, slow and tentative to avoid straining his injuries, like how a cat might settle down for sleep. Once he was comfortable, Itachi draped the blankets over him so he wouldn’t have to reach for them.
Then he sat back and listened to Sasuke’s breaths. Making sure they stayed slow and even, that they didn’t hitch, and that they eventually softened out into a subtle whistle when he fell asleep.
Itachi watched the sun rise through a sliver of window between the curtains and kept quiet vigil at his brother’s bedside. Sasuke slept soundly.