burning bridges (3/3)
domini album
burning bridges album
#7 Shisui Uchiha
summary: shisui is your best friend, and for your best friend, there's little you won't do, even when helping him means accepting the heart aches he gives you - until you reach your breaking point.
word count: 2,896
part two
The noise that left you was somewhere between a shriek and a whimper as you whirled back around, covering your eyes with your hands as you shouted at the door, “IZUMI, I SWEAR TO THE GODS!”
Shisui started, “(Y/N) –!”
“Don’t talk to me!” you snapped at him, making the mistake of looking back at him and then immediately feeling your face begin to burn when you realized again that he was naked except for the towel.
“(Y/N), just –”
“Izumi!” you shouted, banging your hand on the door. “Izumi! Open the door!”
Something like hysteria was climbing up the back of your throat as you kept banging on the door, desperate to either break it yourself or convince Izumi to just come back. She really had sealed you in here with Shisui; your chakra ricocheted uselessly off of the fūinjutsu wards, not able to find any crack in Izumi’s mastery sealsmanship.
“(Y/N)!”
Shisui’s voice rose over your own, and you were only aware that it had because he’d come closer when he grabbed your wrist and tried twisting you around, which only succeeded in making you shriek again at the thought of him being naked this close to you.
Your hip hit the edge of the counter as you tore your arm out of his grip, but you tripped before you could find your balance again. You braced yourself, fully prepared to take the bite of the tile, but Shisui grabbed you again, yanking you upright, and into him, your free hand locking around his bicep and his other hand gripping at the fabric of your shirt at your waist.
You were panting, winded from screaming and then from falling, but Shisui was a steady force holding you up, partially bent over and flush against you, and so close that the smell of his sandalwood shampoo was nearly overwhelming.
His fingers flexed at your waist.
You swallowed once and then opened your mouth. Shut it. Swallowed again.
“Shisui,” you spoke quietly, refusing to look away from his eyes as he stared down at you, even while your heart pounded in your chest so hard that you were surprised it hadn’t broken through your sternum.
His voice was low, almost as quiet as yours as he answered, “Yes?”
The burning in your face was nearly as hot as Uchiha fire as you forced yourself to ask with a straining voice, “Did you drop your towel?”
Shisui’s face and chest were already pink and splotchy from the heat of the shower, but when his eyes dropped from your face to the floor, his cheeks took on a color as dark as his kekkei genkai.
“I – uh.” Shisui glanced back at you, and you painstakingly kept your eyes on his face as he stood upright, gently letting go of you before taking a step back. “Don’t uh – don’t look.”
You screwed your eyes shut, heartbeat thundering in your ears as you jerked your chin toward the ceiling, wholly averting your gaze. You could hear him shuffling around, and a softly muttered, “Fuck,” before there was a noise of shifting fabric like he was getting dressed.
“I’m – uh,” he gave a short, forced laugh, “decent now. I guess.”
Cautiously, you opened your eyes, letting yourself look back at him.
He’d put on his pants – the same ones you’d been stepping on – but he’d forgone much else, leaving the rest of his uniform on the floor as he scrubbed the towel quickly through his hair.
You’d seen him shirtless plenty of times before, between training together and the odd mission where he was injured and needed immediate medical treatment, but it was different right now, and you felt your face heat again as you looked away, pointedly staring at the sink basin instead.
Gods – this was humiliating.
You hated that you still found him attractive – knee-buckling attractive – especially right now, with his damp, curly hair hanging over his forehead as he awkwardly set the towel on the counter, and the blush still visible on his face as he turned back at you, shifting slightly on his feet.
“Going by the yelling, I’m guessing that you’re not here willingly,” Shisui weakly joked, giving you a strained sort of smile.
You swallowed, and bit the edge of your tongue before you replied, “No.”
During your attempt to get away from him, you’d inadvertently put him between yourself and the door, and now the shower stood at your back, the tile slightly wet beneath your socks. Shisui would never harm you, not in the physical sense at least, but there was something too broad in his presence – too encompassing, and you were more aware of the four walls around you as you gauged the man in front of you warily.
Shisui ran a hand through his hair, and you tried to not follow the motion, tensing when he looked back at you and sighed. “(Y/N), I think we need to talk about –”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” you interrupted quickly, almost taking a step back, but thinking better of it before you ended up on your ass in the shower tub.
He rebuffed, “Then just listen to me inste–”
“No,” you snapped back, trying to shore up some kind of authority, despite being trapped in his bathroom, in hisapartment, with him knowing full and well that you were in love with him. You were at the disadvantage here, Izumi had as much assured that the moment she’d spirited you away here.
“(Y/N) –”
“I don’t want to talk to you Shisui!” you cut him off, shaking your head. “I already told you I’m sick of handling shit for you with those women that you sleep with and I don’t want to hear what –”
Shisui’s patience never ran out. He was a calm man, a level-headed shinobi and pacificist by nature, but damn if you didn’t see the leash that he kept on his patience slip as he snapped, “I haven’t slept with anyone!”
You blinked.
He blinked back, like he hadn’t expected that confession to come out of his mouth.
He cleared his throat and shifted on his feet again. “I haven’t slept with anyone, (Y/N). They’re just…dates.”
For nearly two years, Shisui had been seeing women, and for nearly three years, you’d been in love with him. You could vividly remember the first time he went on one of his dates, that one with a small, timid civilian girl who worked in the Hokage Tower, filing paperwork until she completed her internship, because it’d felt like someone had gut punched you, and then broken every bone in your chest as you watched him throw his arm around the girl’s shoulders and kiss her cheek before leaving you, Izumi, and Itachi behind.
You hadn’t breathed a word about your feelings for Shisui since, not even while your best friends prodded at you in their own ways to get you to open your mouth.
Wish you looked at me like that, Genma Shiranui had once joked, after you’d caught sight of Shisui waiting near the gates for you after a month long ANBU mission.
Remember to blink, Anko had once teased, leering at you over the table in a jōnin bar when Shisui passed by.
Always, always, always, your eyes had been on Shisui, and everyone else had noticed and known where your heart was, even when didn’t know it himself. And whether he’d slept with all the women he’d gone on dates with or not, he’d let everyone think he did, earning you sympathetic glances from your friends and comrades when he’d talk about so-and-so.
“I don’t care,” you answered as you somehow found words.
You and Shisui stared at each other, unmoving, for seconds that you lost count of before he spoke again.
“I didn’t know that you –”
You stiffened and looked away, and he cut himself off this time, taking a short half-step toward you. It made you glance back at him, and he scrubbed his hand through his hair again.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me, (Y/N)?” he asked, shaking his head. “I thought –” He stopped again, jaw pressing against his cheek. “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me.”
You exhaled a long breath, and then another, staring intently at the empty towel rod on the wall before you finally looked back at Shisui.
“Why would I have told you when you seemed happy enough with your dating?” you replied, meeting his honey-brown eyes unflinchingly, even as your heart hammered in your chest. You ran a hand through your own hair and puffed out a short, jaded laugh. “You don’t feel the same way, Shisui – you never did, and it wouldn’t have changed anything anyway. You knowing – all it did was bring us here.” You threw your arms up, gesturing to the bathroom, the entrapment seals, the conversation – all of it, with flippant hands.
Shisui was staring at you with an unnerving intensity, and he straightened, letting his hands fall to his sides as he did. “So you kept it a secret that you’ve been in love with me this entire time?”
You wanted to cringe, hearing the truth coming from his mouth with such detachment making something within you wither. But you felt the tension drain from your shoulders as the heat of your anger abated. “Yes, Shisui, I did.”
He took a step closer to you, and you let him, until he was standing directly in front of you, close enough that you could feel the warmth still clinging to his body from the shower in the air around you.
“You want to know something I find funny?” he asked quietly, and you sighed, looking away from him. The memory of the look on his face when you’d confessed to him yesterday surfaced in your mind, but you couldn’t bring yourself to even try to brace for what he could say. What was another cut on top of the already hemorrhaging wound of heartbreak?
“What, Shisui?” you answered weakly.
“With these eyes, I can see anything,” Shisui replied, and you felt the shift in his chakra signature as he activated his Sharingan, “details that anyone else would miss, minute traces of chakra, the smallest changes in someone’s expression…” You stiffened when you felt his hand on the side of your face, tilting your gaze back toward his eyes. “And I didn’t see you right in front of me, loving me back.”
You have no idea what the expression you made was, but you suddenly felt a little bloodless as Shisui’s mouth pulled into a slight, rueful smile and his thumb swiped along your cheek.
“Ba –” You swallowed the word and shook your head even with Shisui’s hand on your face. You could feel your throat tightening, but you forced out, “What?”
Shisui kept smiling that same smile, and when his thumb brushed your face again, you realized he was wiping away tears that you hadn’t realized you’d begun to cry. But it wasn’t from relief or happiness – you stepped out of his grip, knocking away his hand as the anger returned anew, burning in your chest.
“Don’t fucking play games with me, Shisui!” you snapped at him, furiously wiping your own tears. “If you – if you –” You choked around the words without meaning to but glared at him when he attempted to come closer again. “You’re lying.”
His expression hardened. “I’ve never lied to you.”
“Don’t do that!” you shouted. “Don’t say that because you might not have lied to me before but you’re lying now and you –”
Shisui suddenly lunged forward with a speed that only the fastest man in Konoha could have and grabbed the sides of your face with both hands, unrelenting even as you struggled against him, fingernails digging into the flesh of his wrists.
“I love you, (Y/N)!” he shouted over you. “I’ve loved you almost since the day I met you, when you knocked Itachi flat on his ass as a genin but you never – you hadn’t ever let on that you,” he swallowed, “that you loved me,” he spoke, words coming quieter. “I knew I was your best friend, but I didn’t know you loved me.”
Your breath left you so quickly that you felt your ribs press against your lungs, and you stopped fighting, and just stared at Shisui’s eyes as he shook his head.
“I thought you didn’t love me, and I thought you didn’t care that I went on dates,” he said. “At first, it was just to see if you’d react – if you’d say something, but…you never did,” he breathed, “and then it just became filling a hole. Because I wanted you,” he continued, both of his thumbs brushing your cheeks. “I wanted you so fucking badly, but I didn’t think you’d see me as anything more than your friend.”
You swallowed thickly, still holding onto his wrists and unable to let go.
“I thought you didn’t care,” you admitted softly. “I thought you only saw me as your friend, and when you’d use me to get rid of your dates, I thought it was because you thought I wouldn’t care that someone else wanted you.”
Shisui hesitated. “At first, I did it to see if you’d react, or say something that seemed like I had a chance, but when it seemed like I didn’t…” He shook his head. “I was a fool, and I’m sorry, (Y/N).”
The lines of Shisui’s face were becoming blurred the longer that you stared at him, the tears in your eyes falling even while you tried to stop them.
“Shisui,” you said quietly. “I knocked Itachi on his ass over seven years ago.”
“I know.” He nodded, sweeping his thumbs across your face again and smiling. “I know.”
He pulled you into his chest as you swallowed a sob, borne from something between grief over the lost time and the realization that this man in front of you – this man that you’d spent three years loving – had really loved you for even longer.
You’d already thrown your arms around his neck, letting him pull you flush against him in a hug as he buried his face against your throat, when you suddenly remembered that he was only half-dressed.
“Shisui,” you squeaked, feeling your face begin to heat again. “You’re not wearing a shirt.”
He chuckled against your throat before he raised his head, his nose just millimeters from yours as he rested his hand against the side of your face again. “You’ve just seen me naked, and you’re worried about my shirt?”
You knew he could feel the heat in your face as you said, “Shisui –”
“Are you guys still alive in there or do Itachi and I need to cover up a murder?” Izumi called through the door, instantaneously making the words die in your throat.
You and Shisui shared a look, one of his eyebrows rising.
At your brief pause, Izumi called again, “(Y/N)? You didn’t kill Shisui right? Shisui are you alive?”
Shisui snorted, and answered, “Alive and kicking.”
“Did you guys finally confess your undying love for each other, or should I lock you in a smaller room?” Izumi crooned, and you rolled your eyes even while you smiled, though Shisui laughed.
“You could lock us in my bedroom next!” he answered.
“Shisui!” you yelped, smacking his chest, but he only laughed harder.
“Oh, thank the gods!” Izumi laughed and you heard her shout into the apartment. “Itachi! They finally got their shit together!”
You didn’t hear what Itachi said back, but both he and Izumi were forgotten about as Shisui chuckled and looked back at you, his nose just brushing against yours.
“I think this is the part where we kiss,” he teased lowly.
You felt yourself smile unbiddenly and watched as his eyes drifted from yours to your mouth.
“Is it?” you asked, words hardly taking form on your lips, his own less than a hairsbreadth from yours.
He hummed, and you let your eyes fall shut as he kissed you, his hand cradling your face as he held you close to him, your own hand tangling in the still-damp hair at the base of his neck. He tasted of mint and vanilla, and as his tongue swiped along your bottom lip, you realized you were glad for everything that had brought you here, to him, in this moment.
You started smiling, and he pulled back, smiling too as it became impossible to keep kissing.
“Tell me you love me,” he said, voice just louder than a whisper.
“I love you,” you told him, moving your hand to the side of his face, and feeling the warmth of his cheek against your palm as he tilted his face into your touch.
“I love you,” he answered, turning his head and kissing the inside of your wrist. His brow furrowed though, just slightly, and he asked before you could prompt him, “Why didn’t you ever tell me, even before I started going on the dates?”
You hesitated and then said, “I thought telling you would ruin our friendship.”
Shisui’s expression softened, and he leaned toward you, chuckling as he pressed a kiss to your forehead. “Yeah, we really burned that bridge, now didn’t we?”
You laughed, and then he was kissing you again.
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