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Itachi isn’t stupid. He knows that Sasuke and Shisui are fucking. They’re not as discreet as they think they are, disappearing for stretches of time and turning up an hour later with shifty, furtive expressions, rumpled and swollen-mouthed with a certain loose languor in their limbs. There are love bites hastily hidden, and for another thing, they’re loud.
Even when they try to hide it, the walls of their homes are thin. Itachi knows the sound of his brother’s voice. He knows the sound of Shisui’s almost as well, and it’s been a long time since he hasn’t known the sound of those two voices twined together in pleasure, the sound of low, hushed pleading and high, sharp moans.
Itachi is happy that they’re happy, if that’s what this is. They bicker bitterly, sniping at one another with a ferocity that Itachi assumed was reserved for other people and their siblings or for sworn mortal enemies. But they also find each other’s eyes across crowded rooms, during meetings in the Uchiha family temple. Shisui will raise his eyebrows, and Sasuke will make a face. Sasuke’s rolled eyes will be met with a bright, crooked grin.
Itachi tells himself that he doesn’t feel the low pinch of jealousy at two of his most precious people finding comfort and joy within each other. It is very nearly true for stretches of time.
It’s harder on the nights when he can’t sleep, when the sound of low moans filter into his room, the slap of skin on skin. At times like these, he can’t help but picture them lying together—how beautiful they must look, all that black hair against pale skin. He wonders if it’s wrong to think such things. War is wrong. Fighting is wrong unless it serves to end fighting. Idly passing the time between dusk and dawn wondering what Sasuke’s arm looks like draped across Shisui’s back—it hardly seems to tally in comparison.
They get abusive sometimes, hurled invectives and bitter insults, the sound of strikes ringing against skin, but Itachi has been a member of ANBU since he was eleven. He knows all the ways shinobi slake their lust and shore themselves up against the darkness. His family members aren’t the first to find health and help in sharper pleasures, and they certainly won’t be the last. They are both the most precious things he owns, and he trusts them to each other. Still, it’s hard.
There are desires he won’t admit to, not even to himself, not even in the dark.
Itachi doesn’t allow himself to touch himself during these moments of weakness. He lies on his back with his hands balled into fists and pressed against his sides, breathing in the intoxicating scent of jasmine outside and willing sleep to come to him in his stillness.
He imagines they’ll invite him to join them some quiet, blue night in the early hush, that there will be a hand extended to him, too.
Of course, it’s just an imagining. A tender, fragile dream.