Chapter Text
It starts like all homicidal love stories do; with a dead body found in Konoha. Shisui hears it over the police radio and is instantly excited. This is the most interesting thing to happen in Konoha since Mrs Yamanaka shot her husband in his sleep three years ago.
He thinks about getting Itachi involved, and then decides against it. He’s more fascinated by the prospect of finding a dead body than he thinks is appropriate and he doesn’t need Itachi side eyeing him the entire time.
It’s in the woods he meets Obito. And it’s in woods he discovers something new about himself. Obito is fascinating and endlessly interesting, Shisui is curious and endlessly bored, a match made in – well not heaven, somewhere probably hotter - and Shisui quickly finds himself torn between fear, respect and a mouth-watering desire that smashes into him for the first time next to the dead body of a woman - which is new – and it’s so sudden he loses his breath for a moment.
It scares him at first, those secret nights with Obito always feel like a dream - ethereal and untouchable, a world of their own, until the morning comes, and he sees the photographic evidence of what’s been done spread across the kitchen table. He sees photos of police tape and evidence tags and blood spatter analysis and it becomes real with a jarring head rush.
It escalates quickly. Obito is charming, Shisui is charmed, and the whole thing brings out all the shameful dark feelings he’s done his best to ignore all his life. He thinks his dad might see it in him or suspects something not quite right.
Shisui still remembers the look on his dad’s face when at twelve he’d been caught looking through the police photos left on the dining room table - a triple homicide – he’d been enthralled. Any evidence files had stayed in the Konoha Military Police Force’s department for a long time after that.
Obito recognises it and is very encouraging.
A month in and Shisui and Obito had sex in a cold, hardpacked forest floor. He’s soaked, half from the still rain wet earth and half from the cooling blood of Obito’s latest kill pooling underneath him. Obito is above him, eyes impossibly bright and spattered in blood like a gruesome watercolour. It’s the hottest thing he’s ever seen.
Obito kisses him, consuming him with his mouth and Shisui barely registers the taste of blood. When Shisui comes, emptying himself onto the ground, Obito growls and bites down so hard on his neck Shisui seriously considers needing a tetanus shot a week later when the bloody bite turns a sickly yellow.
The bodies keep piling up, becoming more and more gruesome as Obito really finds his way, Shisui can’t understand that kind of hatred, he doesn’t share Obito’s obsession with taking people apart, doesn’t quite understand what the older man gets out of it. Obito had tried once to get him into it, had brought him out to the woods before the deed had been done.
He’d wanted Shisui to help, wanted him to get involved, had pressed a serrated hunting knife into his hand and told him where to cut. With Obito pressed up against him, Shisui had felt the other man’s erection pressing into his back, hot breath panting into his neck as a strong, large hand guided his shaking one.
He’d tried. He really had. He knew how much this meant to Obito, sharing this was as close to a love declaration as the man could come. He’d made the first cut, the man – prey – had screamed.
Blood.
For the first time since his encounter with Obito, Shisui felt pure revulsion, stomach rolling and the chicken pesto he’d had for dinner decided to come back up. He’d barely managed to pull away from Obito in time to aim his vomit away from the sight in front of him. He may have fainted, he doesn’t remember. He does remember Obito stroking his hair as his body shook until there was nothing but bile left in his stomach.
Now they’re six months in, the bodies are piling up nearly weekly by this point, with Obito getting more and more brutal with every kill and it’s getting harder for Shisui to dig for information without his dad getting suspicious.
He knows they can’t maintain this forever. The bodies are hitting mid double digits, the ANBU had been bought in after the ninth murder.
Shisui can feel the net closing in.
Whispers begin, of an accomplice and then of a leak in the Konoha Police’s department. His dad is sure it’s not one of his colleagues, he’d trained with most of them, they would never. But ANBU interrogator Ibiki Morino is less sure, and it burns Shisui up that he can’t shove it in Ibiki’s face that his dad is right, the Uchiha police is loyal.
Shisui not so much, but he figures a win on a technicality is still a win.
Now, not to toot his own horn, but Shisui is good at reading people. He’s good at connecting dots and putting together the pieces of a puzzle. He’s very good at it. It’s a pity his extracurriculars lately have put him on the wrong side of the thin blue line because he thinks he would have been an excellent detective one day.
Which is why, when he comes home on a Tuesday night, closer to midnight then not – to what should be an empty house - hip checking the front door open as he juggles his keys, backpack, and a mango tango slushie - only to find his dad sat at the kitchen table, he freezes for half a second before catching himself and continuing forward.
Secrets are also something he’s good at, surprising to most people considering how much he runs his mouth. But he’s always liked knowledge, he likes knowing things other people don’t and secrets have a special kind of power to them.
He’s been getting a lot of practice keeping secrets lately.
Those secrets sit heavy in his gut as he makes his way into the kitchen. He puts on his best straight face, relaxed and calm despite the nerves punching through his chest. He’s made an error somewhere, miscalculated something important and he wracks his mind for any idea of where he’s tripped up.
His dad is sat facing the front door – waiting – with a glass of scotch and a half empty bottle that Shisui is sure had been full a day ago.
“Dad. Didn’t your shift start like four hours ago?”
His dad doesn’t answer, just slips further down the chair and takes a long slow mouthful of scotch. His dads gaze weighs heavy on him, searching and judging – more a cop than father. He drops his bag to the kitchen floor up against the wall. It’s a delicate balance, don’t make too much eye contact, and don’t make too little eye contact, the sure-fire signs of a liar.
“Where have you been? It’s nearly midnight on a school night.”
“Sorry dad, got held up at Itachi’s.”
He knows he’s made a mistake half a second after the words leave his mouth. He would have stayed at Itachi’s if he’d been there so late.
Shisui is suddenly very aware of the mango tango slushie currently melting in his hand and making his fingers go numb, it’s a limited release, only available at the one gas station next to Obito’s apartment. There’s no way for his dad to know that, but it still feels dangerously close to being caught red handed.
Staying so late at Obito’s on a school night had been a mistake. He’d just been having such a nice time. The first night in weeks they hadn’t spent in the woods. He’d done his homework sprawled out on the man’s obscenely large couch while Obito cooked dinner.
After dinner they’d curled up on the couch, Obito spread out, legs outstretched with a glass of red wine while Shisui tucked himself under Obito’s arm. It had been warm and comfortable, Obito alternating between kissing and nuzzling at Shisui’s neck.
Shisui sips at his slushie and ignores the phantom memory of hot hands on his body, branding him. As his dad nods like Shisui has confirmed something for him, every nerve in his body is on edge, the hair on the back of his neck standing up as he comes to the slow understanding that there is too much tension in this room for it to be about missing curfew.
He watches as his dad’s eyes flicker to his backpack, a look in his eyes that Shisui recognises as fear. Their eyes meet again, and Shisui knows. It hits him like a punch to the diaphragm. His dad knows.
Head spinning as his lungs freeze, white nose in his ears.
He knows.
It’s an odd feeling, knowing you’ve been caught. Fear so gut wrenching it makes him want to vomit. His hands are shaking and blood rushes through his ears with deafening white noise. Shisui thinks he may have forgotten how to breathe.
But also, relief. It’s out, it’s like only realising you’ve been drowning when you reach the surface and take in that first giant gulp of air.
He decides to sit before his legs give out. Pulling out the chair opposite from his dad and throwing himself into it, he places the slushie on the table and watches the water droplets travel down the cup and pool on the wood.
Should have used a coaster,
His hands are shaking, and he hides it by holding them in his lap. It’s only now he notices his dad’s phone sat out on the kitchen table. It’s facing down like his dad doesn’t want any notifications popping up where he can see them.
Shit.
“I’m guessing Ibiki and the whole ANBU squad are already on their way?”
“I called when I heard your car pull into the driveway.”
Is it possible to feel both hot and cold at the same time? He’s hot, body temp skyrocketing while fighting the urge to shiver. Funny thing, fear; he didn’t know it could make your head feel like it was being squeezed and your eyes to feel tight.
His tongue feels too thick for his mouth, but Shisui still manages to choke out; “How did you figure it out?”
“We found some DNA at one of the scenes a couple of months back, the Wickem murder. Fluids. The results came back yesterday.”
Air escapes his lungs in a rush, eyes closing as his shoulders slump. Wickem. He doesn’t have to ask what kind of fluids had been found. That was the night that he and Obito had sex.
Had that been in the reports? Had he missed it?
“Obito Uchiha. His DNA ended up in the system after a breaking and entering charge in his twenties. The second sample came back with nothing. But imagine my surprise when you were seen coming out of his apartment an hour ago?”
Shisui isn’t sure what to do with his dad’s toneless, empty voice. He wishes he’d scream, yell, call him names and tell him what a disgrace he is. Anything but this eerie hollowness.
Light shines through the living room window, headlights as a car pulls into the driveway.
“That will be my ride.” He mutters. His fingers itch to take out his phone, to warn Obito and give him a head start but he knows it doesn’t work like that, they wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t already been there.
His dad watches him, he’s starting to cry now, and Shisui thinks he may be crying too, there’s definitely something wet on his cheek.
The front door is kicked in, yells of ‘hitting the ground and hands on his head’ filling the room. Very dramatic, Shisui thinks. A little over the top for a seventeen-year-old sat quietly at his dining room table. But then the ANBU has always been a bunch of assholes. Someone scruffs him, throws him bodily onto the floor with a force that makes his ribcage hurt.
Distantly he hears his dad finally move, finally emoting something other than apathy as he demands they stop hurting his son.
Maybe he’ll regret this later, once the shock wears off and reality kicks in. Maybe he’ll wish he never went looking for that body that night. But right now, while he can still taste Obito in his mouth and feel the heat of his hands on his body, he can’t say he regrets it.