Chapter Text
Truth be told, there were a lot of facets of living life as a rockstar that Itachi found himself wholly unprepared for. When he was younger, he thought he’d be smart enough to avoid most of the cliches, that he’d watched enough Behind the Musics in Shisui’s basement and studied enough Rolling Stone profiles to know what not to do. It was always the same sad story, like something out of a Greek tragedy: gifted musicians who let their talent become their gateway into hell. Back then he’d thought he could neatly step over the potholes known as sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, that he’d be able to make it to the finish line without plummeting to his demise.
Back then, Itachi had been a little bit of an idiot.
These days, with as much time and space as he’s accumulated between the person he is now and the disaster he once was, Itachi can regard his time as one of the twin leads of a groundbreaking band with the fondness a person has for their wayward cousin, equal parts affectionate and disapproving. There’s a wall he’s created to protect himself from the worst of the fallout, a comfort he’s spent years building with his own two hands, and the majority of his late twenties and early thirties has involved him clinging to that comfort with trembling fingers. Whispers of a reunion fifteen years after his pet project’s breakout album threaten to tear it from him. But in the end it’s Itachi himself who makes the final decision to take a hammer to his shelter and smash it to pieces by making the most absurd choice of all: asking Shisui to meet him in the middle of downtown L.A. at a trendy new juice bar to discuss whether or not they’re ready to make each other miserable all over again.
Nobody prepares you for what it’s like to wait for your ex-lover to stroll back into your life and shit on it. There’s no guidebook on how to ask yourself if the decision to peel off the bandage covering the worst pain you’ve ever experienced and dig your hands around in the bloody raw wound is cathartic or just plain stupid. Itachi knows what everyone else thinks about it; about four days ago he’d been foolish enough to tell Sasuke about this development and had received no less than thirty texts, eight calls, five Instagram DMs, and one subtweet about it. This morning he’d woken up to a single message from his little brother: good luck today. i think.
By the time Shisui finally makes an appearance, Itachi has been waiting so long the sight of him is almost anticlimactic. One moment he’s alone and the next Shisui appears beside him, blocking out the California sun in a manner that feels far more foreboding than it actually is. For a brief second the person Itachi used to know, used to love, is standing in front of him, all ripped jeans and sharp, troublesome smiles. But then Itachi blinks and the image fades into nothing more than a vaguely familiar stranger.
It was too much to hope that Shisui would age terribly. There are faint lines around his dark eyes and a few wisps of gray threading through his curly hair. (It was also apparently too much to hope that by the age of thirty-six Shisui would somehow discover how to use a brush.) If Itachi looks carefully enough, he can just make out the tan line of where Shisui’s wedding ring once sat, which is probably a great sign that he should stop looking so carefully.
“Hey,” Shisui eventually says, easy as breathing, and not for the first time Itachi curses him for always being so damn good in these situations. When they were still playing together it made sense for Shisui to take the lead and use his irrepressible charisma to dominate interviews and award shows alike. It only stopped making sense when Itachi realized he’d let Shisui take so much there was nothing of himself left standing. “Long time no see.”
A thousand different retorts, all of them equal parts cruel and kind, bubble to the surface, and Itachi swallows every one like a bitter pill. Whatever he came here to do, he’s sure that fighting is not on his agenda. So, instead he inhales, then exhales. Controls himself the way his yoga instructor always harps on him about, and says, “Have a seat.”
*
“We’re going to be famous.” At this point, Shisui is seventeen years old and absolutely in love with music. Also at this point, Itachi is sixteen years old and absolutely in love with him.
They’re sitting on the hood of Shisui’s decrepit Toyota, its chipped blue paint shining almost black in the moonlight, as they pass a joint back and forth and try not to freeze to death in the late January evening.
Itachi shakes his head as he pulls Shisui’s leather jacket around his slender frame and tells him, “You’re delusional.”
“No way,” Shisui argues, overconfident as always. There’s always been a part of Itachi that wants to hate Shisui’s smugness, the brash way he enters every situation in life with the force of a car crash. In hindsight, Itachi will look at Shisui and find him beautiful the same way a forest fire is: lovely to behold, yet dare to get close enough to it and you’ll find yourself annihilated.
But as a teenager with a harsh father and an aloof mother, the warning signs don’t click with Itachi yet. These days, he looks at Shisui and all he sees are stars.
“We’re gonna be big,” Shisui continues, waving his arms theatrically as he grows dangerously close to falling off the car. An amused Itachi contemplates pushing him, just for a second, before deciding to leave him be. “Bigger than big.”
“Bigger than Van Halen?”
“Yup.”
“Bigger than Led Zeppelin?
“Totally.”
“Bigger than the Beatles?”
“Ugh, fuck the Beatles,” Shisui groans, and Itachi laughs loud enough to cut the night in half, his breath ghost-like in the darkness. “Don’t talk to me about the Beatles ever again.”
“Whatever.” Smirking, Itachi plucks the joint from Shisui’s fingers and takes a drag, his eyes catching on the way Shisui winces when he rolls his left shoulder. Two days ago he’d watched Shisui produce what was perhaps the world’s worst fake ID and walk away with perhaps the world’s ugliest tattoo because of it. A small black bird now lives on Shisui’s upper arm, the color blotchy and the lines blown out, and the entire time he’d been under the needle Itachi alternated between thinking the gesture was incredibly sweet and worrying he was witnessing a staph infection being born. It’s hideous, and it never stops being hideous. Even after Shisui spends more than a decade collecting new pieces of ink, it will remain Shisui’s favorite tattoo, all because of something as useless as sentimental value.
“Mark my words,” Shisui starts, eyes blazing, and Itachi can’t bring himself to laugh at the single-minded determination radiating off his friend in waves. “Years from now we’re going to be rich as shit and our music will be amazing and you’re going to look back at this moment and laugh at yourself. Because we’re going to have a mansion in Hollywood and a vacation home in Venice--”
“Ideally before it sinks,” Itachi cuts in dryly.
“--and we’re never going to come back to this crusty little town again,” Shisui finishes, and Itachi’s humor dims. Two weeks after this conversation Shisui will find out that despite his laziness he’s managed to get into Harvard, Yale, and Standard. Two weeks and a day after this conversation, Shisui will drop out of high school, pack all his things up in the aforementioned decrepit Toyota and roll up to Itachi’s single story house in the suburbs to beg Itachi to run away with him. And Itachi, without a second thought of doing otherwise, will say yes.
Before all that though, he merely says, “We should get a parrot, too.”
Shisui beams in response. “Now we’re talking.”
*
Their first album isn’t important enough to be a flop. It’s more like a blip, just a shred of nothingness bouncing along the horizon before disappearing into the atmosphere entirely.
In a heartbeat all of their savings, which had been poured into instruments and studio time and recording gear, are gone. Immediately, Itachi is nervous. Predictably, Shisui is not.
“It’s always like this at the start,” he reassures Itachi from his place at their wobbly kitchen table. It was one of the first things they brought into their tiny Brooklyn apartment, picked clean off the street along with almost the rest of their furniture. (“Almost” being the operative word; Itachi had heard enough horror stories about sidewalk mattresses that he was willing to cough up enough cash to avoid the nightmare of a bedbug infestation.) They don’t have a lot, but what they do have is the result of them fighting tooth and fucking nail for it, and for each other.
Still dubious, Itachi crosses his arms against his chest, and stares at Shisui. The cockiness slides off his friend’s face, softens into a sweetness he’s only ever let Itachi bear witness to. In the blink of an eye he’s crossing their kitchen--an action that takes about two seconds given the size of the room--and is peeling Itachi’s protective covering away, forcing Itachi’s arms to wind around his torso. “It’s just going to take time,” he murmurs against the shell of Itachi’s ear, and somehow even after knowing Shisui since they were in kindergarten he still finds himself shivering. “We’ll make it work. We always do.”
Itachi glances over Shisui’s shoulder at the pile of bills on their counter, thinks of their empty fridge and the black mold spreading through their bathroom that’s probably about to kill them. But then Shisui reaches up and touches his face, cradles his cheek in a fashion that forces Itachi to see nothing but his earnest expression. “Trust me,” he says, and Itachi does. For a very long time, he did.
*
When success finds them, it honestly feels like a fluke.
By this point a buzz has started to build around them in the local scene, created almost entirely by Shisui’s aggressive, almost unyielding speed on the guitar and Itachi’s singing, which alternates between a crooning misery and a near screeching anger. Either way, it’s a far cry from the choir practice his parents used to force him into. But it's their onstage chemistry, mentioned by every music industry insider they manage to drag to their shows kicking and screaming, that's the biggest weapon in their arsenal. The seemless way they play off one another, the rhythm of their minds meeting and souls clicking that's existed since before Itachi even knew what love was, is the center of their band, their connection solid and unshakable.
Along the way they pick up two newbies: Yugao, a former art student who’s an absolute force of nature on the bass, and Genma, an even-keeled slacker with an unimaginable talent on the drums. The four of them end up meshing well considering that for much of their lives Itachi and Shisui have existed in their own sphere and have rejected the appearance of any outsiders. Somehow it ends up being easy for Itachi to design album covers with Yugao on he and Shisui’s living room floor while Shisui and Yugao argue for the hundredth time who is really the best guitar player of all time.
“It’s gotta be Hendrix,” Shisui argues, with one arm draped over Itachi’s shoulder and his other hand holding his fourth beer of the evening, which causes Genma to groan and the cycle to begin again.
They never tell their bandmates what they are to one another. If either Genma or Yugao has any thoughts on the single mattress that lives on their bedroom floor, they wisely keep them to themselves. Back when they were kids they’d made a pact never to explain themselves, to hold hands in private and love each other completely and never say a fucking word to anyone about it. Such privacy seemed even more vital as they dangled on the precipice of a breakthrough; music was a tolerant place, right up until it wasn’t, and so far they’ve managed to artfully dodge the question of their relationship through enough zines and underground newspapers to last a lifetime.
At the tailend of their fourth year in New York, their third album is nearly finished when Itachi decides to slamdunk the entire project in the trash. He’s sitting at their new kitchen table--this one fresh from the thrift store down the street the local influences are threatening to ruin--and watching as Shisui bumbles his way through Christmas dinner. It’s a spectacle that repeats itself each year, because for some reason Shisui never learns his lesson and always attempts some grand-scale dish that quite literally goes down in flames. Because of this Itachi has learned the best thing for him to do is sit on the sidelines with his thumb on his phone, ready to dial the number to their favorite Indian place when Shisui eventually throws in the towel and admits defeat.
Most years the sight of Shisui carelessly dumping seasonings and dirtying every pan in their possession makes Itachi indescribably irritated. This year, however, he thinks the holiday season has well and truly rotted his brain, because as he looks at Shisui now all he feels is warm. All he can think about is how much he loves this man, and how much he will always love him.
Itachi sets down his phone, letting it clatter against the tabletop. And then he picks up his pen and his book of lyrics and begins to write.
After that, Itachi becomes a man possessed. He barely sleeps and only eats when Shisui plies him with deli bagels and bodega sandwiches, his gaze equal parts wary and curious when Itachi inevitably shoes him away. In the span of a week, with absolutely no rational explanation, he manages to produce an entire album’s worth of content. It’s perfect and like nothing they’ve ever done before, because it is clearly, unmistakably about them.
In the time they’ve known each other, Itachi has only seen Shisui genuinely afraid twice. The first was when he totaled his first car, a sleek sedan he named Bertha for unfathomable reasons, and dragged himself home, all the while knowing his father’s left hook was waiting for him. The second time was when they were freshman, and Itachi’s appendix decided to rupture, causing him to miss a week of school and scare Shisui down to his bones. And now there’s a third time to add to the list: the time Itachi shoved a book of love songs in Shisui’s face and asked him to take a flying leap out of the closet.
“Are you sure about this?” Shisui asks slowly, and Itachi tries his best to smother how much the rejection stings. He knows they’re not A Gay Band, nor have they ever been trying to be one, and is just as aware that if they make this album that’s exactly what they risk becoming. They’re not indie darlings who can wax poetic about doves and sunsets and hearts beating as one; they’re in a rock band, for fuck’s sake. With that in mind, Itachi’s pretty much just handed Shisui one big kiss of death.
Clearly Itachi’s doing a way worse job of hiding his hurt than he expects, because in seconds Shisui rests a hand on his thigh, and says, “It’s not like that. Itachi, this stuff is fucking amazing. It’s just that… If we do this, there’s no coming back from it. The cat can’t go back in the bag.”
“I know that,” Itachi counters, lifting his chin like he’s preparing for war, and Shisui keeps staring at him. It’s like the secrets of the universe are hidden on Itachi’s face, pressed between his lips and stashed between his lashes, and if Shisui looks hard enough he’ll have life all figured out.
After a beat, a small curl of a smile grows on Shisui’s face and the surprise blooming in Itachi’s chest wars with his affection. “Okay,” Shisui replies. “I’ll call the guys.”
*
Shisui’s right: there is no coming back from it. They record the album and after that the world explodes around them.
It feels like entering a boxing ring, full of adrenaline and thirsty for victory, and getting punched for six straight rounds. As soon as the album drops, each moment of peace in their life suddenly vanishes.
Word of mouth quickly morphs into the public screaming at the top of its proverbial lungs.
Bars are throwing wads of cash at them, desperate to get them on the stage.
Producers lurk at each of their sets, legit titans of the industry, and start shoving contracts in their faces.
Pitchfork gives them an 8.5.
Thinkpieces spread across the Internet like a disease, discussing the “groundbreaking impact of their relationship.” Judas Priest broke barriers, some over-caffeinated intern at Buzzfeed writes in an article Itachi deeply wishes he’d never opened, but the members of Judas Priest were never declaring their love for all the world to see.
Coming out doesn’t kill them the way Itachi and Shisui both suspect it will. Somehow, despite all the odds, it makes them gods.
*
It’s what happens next that Itachi always has the hardest time remembering, partially because all of his best memories are painted in faded color and worn around the edges, and partially because he straight-up doesn’t want to. At this stage of his life, Itachi can remember the pain they inflicted on one another and picture the sheer collateral damage that their careers became in the wake of their unbridled aggression towards one another without wincing.
It’s the happiness they once shared, that fleeting, ephemeral joy, which proves to be the real bitch.
*
Even if he’s not so clear on the details, Itachi is certain of one thing: after that album Shisui’s teenage prophecy comes true and they become insanely, unbelievably famous.
The timeline of their new found glory, summarized as neatly as possible, goes like this:
Year one, the whirlwind year: they ditch their small-time label to roll with the big boys, and The Album gets a deluxe re-release with three songs originally left on the cutting room floor. The Album, Take Two goes multi-platinum in weeks, and suddenly he and Shisui’s dinky, roach-infested one bedroom is exchanged for a remodeled Mediterranean in the Hills. As two people who grew up as what could very charitably be considered middle-class, they stare at their new dwellings with wide-eyed wonder before diving in with the glee of two kids in a candy store. Of course, said glee morphs into something far less innocent when their exploration devolves into them christening every shiny surface by having sex on it. Life is undeniably good.
Year two: despite Itachi’s expectations, none of the mania dies down. They’re still getting booked for late night talkshows, planted on couches where Shisui is funny and charming and just the right amount of confrontational when a remark about their rising career gets a little bit more snide than he’d like. At one point their faces end up plastered across Entertainment Weekly, and when Shisui won't stop teasing Itachi for his overly serious expression on the cover Itachi has to kiss him senseless to shut him up. On the ride to the Grammy’s Shisui goes down on him in the limo and the photos taken of them on the red carpet are incredibly telling. Three hours later they win Album of the Year, and at the after party Itachi watches Shisui snort a line of coke and pretends it doesn’t make his stomach bottom out. Life is still very good.
Year three: after what feels like endless speculation, they finally go on tour. It’s a far cry from the dive bars they used to play before they could even drink, all huge, sold-out stadiums and shrieking fans. Even with their reputation, they’re still drowning in a sea of groupies, a fact that benefits Genma more than anyone, and at this point in their career Itachi and Shisui are still able to laugh the hysteria around them off. Right now it feels more like an absurd joke and less like a noose around their relationship’s throat, threatening to choke its life off at the root. Life is bewildering and exhausting and at times very frustrating, but still able to be classified as good most days.
Year four: coincidentally, their fourth album drops, and it does well enough. It’s not a firestarter the way the previous one was, but it’s satisfactory to the masses. Think Bad after Thriller. Itachi should be happy at their continued success, but for some reason he just… isn’t. Recently it’s begun to feel like said success isn’t actually his, because the press has started skewing more towards Shisui and his cult of personality. The narrative around them stops being about them, and more about Shisui’s good looks and his talent and the tension building amongst the four of them tastes like bile rising up from Itachi’s gut. Shisui still tries to laugh off the hysteria, only this time no one, not even Itachi, is laughing with him. Life is… complicated.
Year five: Shisui turns to him and asks, aren’t you worried that one day we’re going to get sick of each other?, and Itachi tries to ignore how terrified the question makes him feel. He also tries not to think about life as a concept.
Year six: rumors start spreading that Shisui cheated on him, and Itachi doesn’t know what’s worse: the fact that he’s certain Shisui didn’t do it or the fact that he’s just as sure Shisui wants to. Their second tour ends abruptly when Itachi injures his back and spends the next few months in a haze of painkillers and bitterness. Shisui remains at his side, faithful as ever, but Itachi’s not so drugged up that he misses the skittish cast of his gaze. Itachi can’t even bring himself to pick up a pen, can’t do much else besides stare out the window of their latest home, so perfect on the surface, and wonder when life got so damn ugly. Yugao wants to walk, Genma dodges rehab, and all the while Shisui struggles to keep all of them together because somehow this band has crumbled into sand, slipping through his fingers. Life is utterly miserable.
Year six, continued: in the span of three months, he and Shisui have had at least twenty-five arguments. Some are big, some are small, but most are incredibly stupid. They’re meaningless moments in time, all a complete waste of their energy, and yet each one pushes the knife in them just a little bit deeper. They fight about Itachi’s tone and Shisui’s expressions, who gets the first song-writing credit and who forgot to tip the housekeeper. Shisui starts sleeping in the guest room and sometimes Itachi will wake in the middle of the night and pad down the hall, peeking his head inside to make sure the man hasn’t given up and run off for good. He loses track of how many hours he spends in that doorway, staring at Shisui and trying to find the person he once loved. He lost track of a lot of things that year.
Year six, day two hundred and sixty-six: everything finally comes to a head, and to this day Itachi remembers every moment of that last fight with picture-perfect, agonizing clarity:
*
What do you want from me?
‘What do I want from you?’ How can you even ask me that?
Because I don’t know! Itachi, you don’t talk to me anymore.
Maybe that’s because I still haven’t come up with a nice way to ask you if you still love me.
Of course I love you! I just…
What? You just what, Shisui?
I’m just worried that we’re… stuck with each other.
How romantic.
I don’t mean it like that. You know I don’t.
These days I don’t feel like I know anything about you.
Nice, Itachi. That’s real nice. You say shit like that, and yet somehow I always end up the bad guy.
Oh, please. Save the ‘poor me’ act for one of your groupies.
Would you stop fucking saying that? I didn’t do anything.
Yet. You didn’t do anything yet.
Silence. Incriminating as the grave itself.
Do you even want to be with me anymore?
Itachi…
Yes or no, Shisui?
… I don’t know.
More silence. Then, the worst truth of all:
Neither do I.
*
In the wake of their break-up, there’s an insane amount of speculation on who dumped whom. As he sits in a condo in Manhattan and licks his wounds, a part of Itachi--the part of Itachi that can actually function around the mind-numbing emotional pain burning in his chest--wishes there was some grand, sweeping melodrama he could feed to the hungry public. He wonders if it would make him feel better if the cause of their dissolution was something as gripping as infidelity or theft or a drug overdose. But it isn’t any of those things. Instead, it’s just a tale as old as time: two people who used to need each other like air suddenly rolling over and realizing they don’t know themselves when they’re apart, and being scared shitless by the knowledge that they want to find out.
Itachi didn’t leave Shisui, and Shisui never kicked him out. Years and years in the future Itachi will still ask himself which one of them walked away first. But while their separation is still new, still raw to the touch, he doesn’t focus on the big questions as much as he does putting one foot in front of the other and simply making it through the day.
The first sign of trouble is the fact that Itachi doesn't cry. He doesn’t scream at the heavens or break things or go buy some crystals and eye of newt from the weird new age store down the block to curse Shisui’s dick off. Truthfully, he doesn’t do much of anything besides order takeout and watch true crime documentaries on Netflix until his brain stops working. Not long after he settles into his new apartment, Sasuke takes a week off school and arrives at Itachi’s doorstep to stitch his brother back together.
Sasuke’s appearance is exactly the blessing Itachi thought it would be. It forces him to brush his teeth and comb out his hair and leave the house for the first time since he moved into his temporary refuge. Of course, Itachi quickly scurries back into said house when a flurry of cameras and iPhones end up in his face, and Sasuke grabs his wrist hard enough to break it as they make a run for it down a filthy alleyway.
When the pictures end up splashed all over the rags, Sasuke makes him promise not to look at them. Itachi gives his word, fingers crossed behind his back, and pulls up each and every image on his computer the second Sasuke disappears to look for vegan froyo to cheer Itachi up.
They’re just as terrible as he’s expecting, his face a mess of dark circles and chapped lips, and it occurs to Itachi how frail he looks. Across the country Shisui’s probably looking at these same pictures, and Itachi has no clue how it’s probably making him feel. Maybe Shisui’s playing the part of the vengeful ex, relieved and satisfied to see Itachi so unhappy. Maybe Shisui pities him and holds the Victoria Secret supermodel that occupies Itachi’s former place in their bed that much closer for warmth. Maybe Shisui just misses him.
Itachi slams his laptop closed, choking on an unnameable emotion.
That night Sasuke sits on his three thousand dollar sofa and asks, critically, “You’re sure you’re going to be okay?”
Itachi smiles, hoping the expression comes off as hopeful rather than deeply unsettling. “Someday,” he says, and the strange thing is he actually believes it. Perhaps Itachi’s greatest gift is his unfailing realism, the way his feet always stay firmly glued to the Earth while his former companion would float off into the clouds getting lost in his dreams. It was one of the reasons they had complimented each other so well, back before life as they knew it fell apart: Itachi kept Shisui grounded when necessary, and in turn Shisui was able to lend him his wings and let him fly. Just because Itachi is now flying solo doesn’t mean this ability has suddenly fled him; in fact, he clings to his pragmatism even tighter to cope with his impossible loss.
Deep down, he believes that somehow all of this ugliness will work itself out. The distance has made his heart kinder, his grievances softer, and without the weight of his worse feelings for Shisui hanging from his neck it’s easier to remember that he loved him. Still loves him, even. While he can’t profess to see the future, the knowledge that someday he and Shisui will find a way to repair things lives in his body, moves through his blood and burrows into his bones.
It’s a nice sentiment. Itachi actually manages to hold onto it up until, two months later, a paparazzo snaps a picture of Shisui fleeing a nightclub in Vegas with a C-list actress’ hand entwined with his own. After that, all of Itachi’s nice feelings skip off on vacation and don’t come back for a long, long time.
*
to be continued.