Work Text:
“Are you - knitting?”
“Yes.”
Sasuke is - dumbfounded isn’t the right word. Surprised doesn’t cover it. Neither does disgusted. Offended gets pretty close.
Itachi. His older brother, war criminal slash war hero, last piece of family he has in this goddamn bitch of a world. Is knitting. A pale green scarf. The needles are sunshine yellow and the ball of yarn in his lap bounces as he narrowly catches a dropped stitch, eyes never leaving Sasuke.
“It’s for Sakura,” Itachi says, looking back down at his needles.
Sasuke, who is sweaty and exhausted from strength training with Sakura (the goddamn monster) closes the door of his apartment. And locks it.
What. The fuck.
Every shinobi after the war had been subjected to involuntary therapy. Tsunade was a medic through and through (and a hard ass) and the mental health of her forces was of the upmost importance. Seeing as how the last couple of wars utterly fucked up the collective psyche of the village’s shinobi force, Sasuke was inclined to agree.
When his family had been executed, the Sandaime had tried to talk to him. There was therapy, or something like it for a time. But Sasuke had been young and terrified and unsure. He responded with either silence or violence. Eventually he started answering questions in single syllable answers and he had been discharged from therapy with marks for bad behavior. A rap as bad as his by the time he was twelve should’ve ensured he’d never make genin.
A lot of things were fucked up when the Sandaime was running things.
Which leaves Sasuke with a very poor record with therapy. These are records that the new therapists have. Nobody seems willing to let him get away with the same shit he could when he was twelve, which, fair. But also irritating.
He doesn’t want to be bothered. It’s enough that he’s living in Konoha (wearing fucking chakra inhibitors for two years as punishment for his his “crimes against the state” or whatever) and not actively trying to purge the village of bullshit.
It’s enough that he’s letting Naruto and Sakura go slowly with his revolution, unfurling the fingers of deception and state sanctioned violence against citizens. He shouldn’t have to talk about it twice a week.
Most people didn’t have to go that often but Sasuke is special. He had been special all his fuck damned life and it didn’t seem like it was ending any time soon.
He (begrudgingly) counts himself lucky. His shrink is a civilian woman called Kurosaki Junko. She’s old as all hell, but she’s lived through the last three wars and her eyes are sharp. She reminds Sasuke of his grandmother, Kaede, his mother’s mother.
He thinks maybe if he had gotten Junko the first time around, he might have been a better well adjusted twelve year old assassin.
Most times, they shoot the shit. The only reason Sasuke knows she’s gleaning information, learning his tells, and filing them away is because he’s been trained to know. But Junko (unlike Sakura, Naruto, and Itachi) doesn’t mind that he smokes, and keeps a pack in her office desk. So he lets it slide.
“It’s healthy,” she says, when he tells her about Itachi’s four sets of knitting needles and twelve, goddamn it, twelve balls of yarn, “for shinobi to have habits outside of their work. It’s encouraged. So you’re not just good at killing people, you’re also a good carpenter or a pastry chef.”
“Or a knitter,” Sasuke mutters.
“Or a knitter,” Junko replies, smiling at him like he’s said something funny.
He tucks one of Junko’s cigarettes behind his ear for later and lights up with the lighter on the table between them.
“Do you have any hobbies, Sasuke?”
He shrugs. Junko narrows her black eyes at him. He wonders if somewhere in her blood, she’s got some Uchiha. She’s got a mean fucking face when she wants to have one.
“I like - smoking. Target practice. Meditation. Training.”
“Hobbies,” Junko interjects cleanly, “that are not related to being a shinobi.”
Sasuke is not uncomfortable. He isn’t. He moves his cigarette from the right corner of his mouth to the left. It definitely isn’t a tell.
“Guess not.”
Junko smiles at him like he’s just said something brilliant.
“Your brother is a civilian now, so it’s natural that he has civilian interests.”
Sasuke sucks hard on the cigarette. Feels the smoke burn in his lungs. Thinks of the way his body is the fan and the cig is the fire. Uchihas tend fires. Grow them.
“Maybe,” his therapist says, “it would be a good idea if you and Itachi had a shared interest, outside of shinobi work.”
She taps her fingers on the arm rest of her chair.
“You of course, do need a hobby outside of smoking and practicing skills that will help you kill people,” Junko muses, “but it would be good for your relationship if the two of you could do something for your relationship.”
Sasuke wants to say ‘of course’ through lying teeth, but Junko would see right through him. So he shrugs in a noncommittal way and their session ends after Junko asks several, very uncomfortable questions about his relationships with the women in his life.
“Hobbies?” Naruto asks, furrowing blond brows.
“Yeah.”
Sasuke is sitting on Naruto’s couch. Naruto is drying his hair with a tshirt. It’s a trick he picked up from Ino. Sasuke is fine with a towel, but Naruto is a diva who surrounds himself with divas who think Sasuke is a gremlin for his two in one shampoo-conditioner.
Itachi dries his hair with a t-shirt, too, the traitor. Some of Sasuke’s shirts. Neither of them have much by way of wardrobe. Naruto and Sakura have been helpful with that. Naruto’s shirts are broader at the sleeves and neck, and Sakura had filched things Itachi could fit from Kakashi. Lord only knew how Sakura managed to get into his apartment. The girl had become a terror while he was away.
“Well, yeah,” Naruto says, abruptly stopping Sasuke from watching rivulets of water spill from his hair onto his neck, to his chin, his clavicle. “I do origami.”
Sasuke blinks.
“You do what?”
“Yeah, look.”
Naruto leaves his living room to fetch something from his bedroom. Sasuke does not watch his ass as he goes. He’s a gentlemen. Even if he is a loser who won’t (can’t) make a move, he wasn’t raised in a barn.
Naruto returns with a goddamn zoo of paper animals in his hands. He’s grinning like this is something he should be proud of.
“Konan taught me how.”
“Konan?” Sasuke asks. “Crazy purple haired girl? Rinnengan’s girlfriend?”
Naruto looks at Sasuke like he’s a disappointment.
“His name is Nagato and she’s not his girlfriend. And, I might add, she’s more than her relationship to a guy, Sasuke.”
Sasuke wants to rip his own eardrums out for asking.
“When did she even have time to teach you?” He asks instead.
“There was time,” Naruto says. “You were fighting someone, I think. You weren’t paying attention.”
Sasuke narrows his eyes.
“You learned how to fold paper cranes while I was fighting Obito?”
A sunny look crosses Naruto’s face at the memory.
“Yeah!”
By the grace of god, Sasuke does not eviscerate himself.
He asks around, after that, though there are few people he actually wants to ask.
Shikamaru plays shogi, which is such a shock and surprise. Neji has a small vegetable garden. Ino teaches herself how to cook recipes she never actually eats, then foists the results onto her friends. Choji collects coins.
Tenten volunteers at the Inuzuka Animal Hospital for some reason. Lee teaches civilian kids how to swim. Kiba writes fucking poetry, of all things. Hinata does bonsai because she’s an actual goddamn princess. Shino draws. Sai bakes. Yamato makes clay bowls.
Clearly, Sasuke is the least well adjusted of the Konoha Twelve. It makes him both proud and irritated that there’s a learning curve he isn’t dominating.
It is eleven in the morning on a Saturday. Sasuke had finished his morning run at five, katas and target practice at six, and a taijutsu only spar with Lee at seven. He had gone home, inhaled half of the freezer, and dumped himself in bed despite still being jittery.
He forced himself to take a nap, fingers twitching around kunai that weren’t there. When he wakes up, his mouth is dry so he leaves the quiet privacy of his bedroom to head to the kitchen.
Kakashi, Obito, and Sakura, are all for some ungodly reason in his living room.
Sasuke is only wearing boxers.
“What,” he says, “the fuck.”
Sakura is knitting on his couch. For some reason. Obito is - crocheting? Something? Kakashi has Sakura’s yarn in one hand, Obito’s yarn in his lap, and his porn in his other hand.
Itachi sweeps out of the kitchen with tea like an angel of house and home. He doesn’t even look at Sasuke when he says, “We have company. Put pants on.”
“It’s my goddamn apartment,” Sasuke grouches, heading back into his room anyway.
When he re-emerges, the scene is much as it was before. Something like a lumpy mitten is forming between Obito’s needles, and Sakura is making a throw blanket with a dark green yarn. Itachi is still working on the pale green scarf from yesterday.
“Would you like to join us, Sasuke?” Itachi asks.
For some reason, he doesn’t immediately say no.
“You all knit together?” He asks instead.
Sakura nods.
“It’s called a stitch and bitch,” she says.
Sasuke snorts.
“What’s so funny, brat?” Obito snipes.
“Sasuke,” Sakura says before he can answer, “is your answer going to demean women?”
Sasuke narrows his eyes. “I would never demean women by comparing them to Obito.”
Sakura smiles beautifully at him, and pats the place by her side. Sasuke goes reluctantly, ignoring the pacifying kiss Kakashi puts on his cousin’s mouth around his mask.
“Would you like to learn how?” she asks.
Sasuke grunts, which could mean any number of things. Sakura huffs at him and instead takes her yarn out of Kakashi’s hands and puts it in Sasuke’s.
“Unravel this as I go, then, okay?”
And maybe the clicking of three pairs of needles is soothing against his ears. Maybe the world does go a little hazy between the smell of warm tea, and the soft chatter between his brother and Sakura. Maybe Obito’s cursing when he fucks up a stitch doesn’t sound as grating as it usually does. And maybe Sasuke falls asleep with an unraveled ball of yarn in his hands.
“Are there books on it?” He asks Junko at their next session. “Knitting?”
Junko looks up from where she’s taken a sip of her coffee. There’s a hot mug in front of Sasuke as well. It’s loaded down with cream and sugar. He doesn’t remember telling Junko how he likes his coffee. He is keenly aware that old women know literally everything.
“I’m sure there are,” she says. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like it if your brother taught you?”
Sasuke doesn’t fidget. He’s absolutely still. Which, also, coincidentally, is not one of his tells.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed, Sasuke,” Junko says. “I’m sure Itachi would love teaching you something.”
Sasuke shrugs a shoulder.
“He’s already got this thing going,” he replies. “With him and our cousin and Sakura. A stitch and bitch.”
Junko smiles and crosses her legs at her ankles. This means she thinks Sasuke is close to a break through.
“I’m sure if you asked him privately, he’d teach you. You just have to reach out.”
Sasuke thinks back to eight years old and dogging his big brother’s footsteps. Thinks of begging to be allowed to play. Thinks of running home after school just to see Itachi. Of learning how to throw a sharp shuriken instead of the dull ones they use before they turn six. Of rushing back to the compound so he could show his brother.
How after a little while, the yeses turned into no’s. How eventually, Sasuke had to play by himself.
He thinks of what came after.
He squashes memories of the Massacre with a lifetime of experience. His breath never falters, pupils never dilate, blood pressure never rises. He drinks his coffee, even though it goes down like sludge.
He is fine. Everything is fine. The subject changes because he lapses into silence. Junko asks him about Obito, and what it’s like to have family now. Up until a couple of months ago, Sasuke had only seen a future that ended with following Itachi into death as he had through life.
Restoring the clan had meant less as revenge began to mean more. Now he’s got more Uchiha’s than he knows what to do with. It fills him with hope, and dangerous as it is, he can’t make himself crush it.
When he leaves that day, Junko’s eyes are sad. Sasuke is used to disappointing the people who want best for him. It is a proud, consistent tradition.
Living with someone after spending so much time on his own is difficult for Sasuke. Mostly because he is messy and Itachi is compulsively neat.
Sasuke can’t leave a sock anywhere without hearing about it for the next week. He can’t let a bowl soak in the sink without getting chewed out for not using enough elbow grease.
Every once in a while, he will escape to Naruto’s, if only to bury his face in the blond’s neck and wake up in a room that is a minefield of shoes and dull weapons and take out containers.
“You should just live separately” Sakura says during a spar, having just thrown a punch that could’ve ripped off every layer of Sasuke’s skin.
Kunoichi are vicious, especially when they like you. Sasuke is grateful that Sakura isn’t in love with him anymore. If she was, he might actually die.
“It’s cheaper this way,” he says, blocking her roundhouse by slamming his own into it.
“Cheaper,” she grunts, taking back her leg and changing position, “doesn’t mean healthy for you.”
He catches her knee before it can knock his guts out of his stomach. He squeezes it until he sees her flinch and she launches of her other foot to kick him and make distance.
“What does that even mean?”
Sakura rolls her eyes. Sasuke takes the opportunity to swipe at her head.
“It means,” she says, “you have both the living and communication habits of a toddler.”
His next hit glances off her head as she ducks to avoid it.
“You two have spent more time apart than you have together,” she continues, slamming her head into his chin.
He barely has time to suck his tongue back into his throat before her headbutt makes him bite the thing in two. He takes a step back and brings his two fists over her rising head.
“So there are growing pains.”
She tackles him.
He gut punches her to get her off his stomach.
“Talk to him. I’m sure it’s difficult for him, too.”
She sweeps out her legs until she gets them back under her. Sasuke rears back onto his hands and shoulders then launches himself up.
“Maybe if you did something together, like a hobby or something, you could find some common ground?”
Sasuke groans so loudly he almost misses her uppercut. Almost.
“Shut up,” he grunts, throwing his elbow at her head. “You sound like my goddamn therapist.”
Talking to Itachi about literally anything is just about as difficult as Sasuke expects it to be.
He doesn’t know how to do it. Can’t figure it out. Not when Itachi comes home from picking up groceries. Not when he leaves out birdseed and dry food for the neighborhood strays. Not even when he gets back from Clan Council meetings or breakfast with Anko.
Days go by. Sasuke suffers in silence. Itachi knits.
When he is at home, alone, hands twitching for something to do, he picks up a ball of white and pink yarn. It moves on a gradient in and out of both colors. If someone made a hat out of it, it would look like narutomaki. Sasuke snorts and goes to put the yarn back down. He doesn’t.
It’s soft yarn. Really nice quality. Itachi’s got ANBU back pay for the last almost ten years, not to mention his cut of the Clan trust that Sasuke was too young to squander. His pension is pretty sizable, too, what with the war hero thing going on.
It’s good that he can afford nice yarn. He can do nice things with it, Sasuke reasons. Like make scarves and mittens for people he likes.
It’s still summer, but autumn is coming on fast. No one will need a thick coat for many more months, but a beanie to cover bed head - that seems practical.
Itachi finds him, some time later, covered in tufts of pink yarn, furiously chain smoking.
“Not in the living room, Sasuke,” he says.
There’s a smile in his voice that makes Sasuke’s frayed nerves relax somewhat.
His older brother sits down beside him and begins plucking yarn off of his body.
“Do you know how large his head is?” he asks after a while, peering at the many crochet hooks on the low table.
“No idea,” Sasuke grunts. “He’s got all that - hair.”
Itachi, whose own hair is still short from Sakura’s impromptu haircut during the war, gives him a little smile.
“We can afford to make it a little big.”
He gathers all of the yarn Sasuke has managed to unfurl in their living room, and patiently rolls it back into a loose ball. He picks up a green crochet hook (completely different from the blue one Sasuke had been using) and puts them in Sasuke’s hands.
“Start with a slip knot.”
He starts with the slip knot.
Then the foundation chain, and the slip stitch, and double stitches. It takes the whole day, and it eats into the night. Itachi, the fancy bastard, somehow knits - crochets - whatever, a pink flower onto the edge of Sakura’s finished scarf.
“It’s a cosmos,” Itachi says. “They’re her favorite.”
Sasuke looks down at the ridiculous narutomaki beanie in his hands. Itachi has given him a wry look that Sasuke hadn’t blushed at all at. The boy who it was for was going to love it. Probably.
The poor hat is lumpy and only about half done, but Sasuke hadn’t used his Sharingan to copy the movements Itachi showed him. His hands are a little cramped from the new repetitions but his fingers feel still. He’s calm. Oddly calm.
It’s nice.
“Sakura,” Sasuke says, rolling some yarn around his index finger, “did she teach you how to knit?”
Itachi nods, pushing up his glasses once they’re done sliding down the bridge of his nose.
“She did.”
“How did that come up?”
Itachi hums.
“My hands shook after the war,” he says. “I asked her if she knew any way I could steady them.”
Sasuke doesn’t hold his breath. He’s on the twenty-fourth stitch on his third row.
“Her grandmother began to lose her memories before she died,” his brother continues, “but she never forgot how to knit. It was the only thing they could do together towards the end of her life.”
Sasuke swallows hard. Tries not to think of Kaede-obaa-chan. He can’t remember if she knitted or not. He wishes he could.
“That blanket in your bedroom was the first thing I ever did.”
He looks up at Itachi. He’s got Sakura’s scarf close to his eyes, peering for a dropped stitch or some nonexistent flaw.
“I thought you got that from a flea market,” Sasuke says. His lips are chapped.
The blanket in question is bunched at the foot of Sasuke’s bed, a sea of soft blues and whites. It’s too thick for the summer but too thin for winter, perfect for layering or sleeping under while the fan is on. It’s not Sasuke’s favorite blanket, or at least it wasn’t before. It had gotten the job done. Covered him, that is.
Itachi shakes his head.
“I wanted to give you something.”
Sasuke thinks of his family reduced to three people. He thinks of the birthdays he spent alone. He thinks is of the way he used to isolate himself as punishment. He thinks of how he almost killed his brother. How a miracle stopped him just in time.
Itachi is looking down at the green scarf, fingers never faltering as he weaves a gift Sasuke knows Sakura is going to cherish.
“I took an awful lot from you, otouto, and I thought it was time I gave you something back.”
He thinks of his mother and father. Thinks of cousins. Thinks of the first tomoe on his Sharingan, and tears of blood.
He thinks of the hand made birthday cards he still has hidden in a shoebox in his closet. He thinks of the relics of the happy days of his childhood, held with quivering hands, and never allowed to collect dust. There were good times before the awful ones began. He’s finally starting to believe there will be good ones again.
He’s okay with admitting he cries a little bit. He’s okay with Itachi bumping their shoulders together, he lives through the hug, and the forehead tap that comes after.
They stay up all night knitting.
A couple of days later, a wine red scarf appears on Junko’s desk. Neither of them say anything about it.
She wears it all through winter.