Archive of Our Own ^beta

Mikoto trained him in a way Fugaku never could. She taught him how to make his callused hands seem soft. She taught him how to lie beside another person and how to feel comfortable in his own skin.

She taught him how to kiss.

There are ways to please an Uchiha, and Mikoto is well-versed in them, but it seems impossible to please her own son. From the moment of his birth, Itachi is cold, self-reliant, distant. As a baby, he rarely cries; he sleeps through the night from early infancy, and sometimes she wakes to check on him and finds him awake as well, his wide dark eyes staring contemplatively back at her.

As a toddler, Itachi does not throw tantrums. He obeys her rules quietly, without question; he cares for his elders without being told, he never asks for food from her, or comfort, or warmth. When he cannot solve a problem by himself, he endures it.

What has she done to deserve a son like this? He’s barely a son at all — she’s given birth to a fully-formed adult, a creature who seems hardly human in his efficiency and quiet wisdom. He was born thin — not premature, but thinner than the other baby boys his age — and as he grew, he never put on baby fat.

The other mothers parade their healthy, chubby children around, and Mikoto eyes her own strange child from the periphery of her vision, noticing how long and thin his fingers are, how vividly his ribs show through his skin. He has an innate sense of how much food to eat to sustain himself, and he never eats any more than that.

Toys do not interest him. He plays with them dutifully, affecting an unconvincing expression of concentration as he arranges his toys (all of them gifts, none of them requested) in silence. He doesn’t speak out loud while he plays, and sometimes Mikoto catches him sneaking her glances, gauging whether enough time has passed for him to abandon the pretense of play. When she peeks into his bedroom, he’s always training, studying, even meditating. His simple, inexpensive toys are put away, out of sight.

He focuses on the subject at hand with an intensity Mikoto has never observed in a child before, not even in Fugaku when the two of them were young. It seems she can barely teach him anything — he doesn’t need to be told to practice his taijutsu, or to go outside on a sunny day, or to moderate himself or behave. These things he knows innately.

So what use is she, as a mother? Is she only there to make his bed when he makes it perfectly himself? To cook his food when he prefers to cook his own? To kneel before him when he’s on his way to school, to pretend to straighten his already-straight clothes, to futilely comb his already-perfect hair?

She can’t take another year of Itachi staring at her with those knowing eyes, silently enduring every single one of Mikoto’s pointless ministrations. He lets her pretend, lets her fuss over him and fool herself that he’s an ordinary child, that she’s an ordinary parent.

But what use is she?

What use is she?

He can bathe himself. Mikoto knows this, but still each night she leads him to the bath and stands there silently, arms crossed and gaze far away, as Itachi takes off his clothes. He never protests her presence; he has no sense of embarrassment around her, no concept of privacy for himself.

Itachi does not splash. He has no bath toys. He allows Mikoto to wet a rag beneath the faucet and trail it over his skin, sitting still with his arms around his knees and his eyes fixed on the water. He doesn’t flinch or twitch when she scrubs him, even when she puts more force behind it than she knows is necessary. The rag is coarse, harsh against his skin, but even as his skin turns red and raw, she keeps pressing down against him, and he keeps enduring it.

She draws blood. He bites his lip. He says nothing.

When Mikoto realizes what she’s done, she pulls away, resting the sodden rag on a shelf built into the shower wall. Then she thinks better of it, dunking it in Itachi’s bathwater. They both watch tendrils of blood coming off the rag like smoke. She feels cold — numb. Not ashamed, exactly.

Not anything at all, exactly.

Itachi doesn’t cry when he’s in pain. He sprains his ankle while training alone in the woods and walks himself back home, his face placid and serene. He glances up at Mikoto as he comes inside, sliding the door shut behind him and sitting in the corner, so graceful she doesn’t realize he’s injured.

When he tells her what happened, his voice is flat, unbothered. Mikoto turns to look at him, eyeing his ankle — swollen, a little red — and then his impassive face.

Somehow, she feels uncertain. Like she’s never dealt with a sprained ankle before.

“What do you want me to do?” she asks her son, a boy who’s only just started school, who ought to be sniffling and wiping back tears and begging her to fix it. He stares back at her calmly.

“Nothing,” he says. “I just thought you’d like to know.”

A beat passes. She stares at him, thinking over his words. She supposes most mothers would want to know when their children are hurt. In the end, all she can think of to say is,

“Thank you. For letting me know.”

He nods. Another beat passes. Mikoto bites her lip.

“Would you…” she starts, then hesitates again. “Would you like me to bring you some ice?”

“I can get it,” Itachi says. His voice holds no trace of martyrdom or self-pity. He uses the wall to ease himself back onto his feet.

“You ought to rest it,” Mikoto says, but she makes no move to stop him. He walks past her slowly, moving into the kitchen, where she can hear him filling a bowl with ice and cold water. Mikoto stands in the den, staring at the empty spot by the wall where Itachi was sitting a moment before. Her arms are crossed protectively over her stomach; one hand covers her mouth.

It isn’t her responsibility, she supposes. He’s perfectly capable of handling it on his own.

There’s little she can teach him about shuriken that he hasn’t already figured out for himself. It was her specialty, when she was active duty — one thing Fugaku could never surpass her in. But Itachi, it seems, already has.

This is what parents are supposed to desire, she knows — for their children to do better, to be better than them. To achieve more, and at a younger age — to be stronger, smarter, and more kind. And Itachi has done all of that.

A mother’s dream.

Still, when Mikoto looks at Itachi, she finds it difficult to summon up the feelings of a mother. Protectiveness and pride — these things don’t apply to Itachi. He is a being completely separate from her in spirit; not her son in any way that matters.

She watches him as he grows — as he interacts first with his cousins, then with Sasuke, then with his classmates at the Academy. He grows far too soon; in a way, he’s never been truly young. But as the years pass, Mikoto can only definitively name one flaw in her son.

Itachi is distant — he is cold without meaning to be. He gives affection to everyone, even to Sasuke, as though he’s holding something back. He’s gentler than other boys, but it seems robotic, almost like an act. Like a statue pretending to be human.

This, at least, is something Mikoto can teach him.

How to be convincing.

“Itachi.”

She comes into his room when Fugaku is at the police station, when Sasuke is down for his afternoon nap. Itachi pauses in the middle of strapping on his sandals and looks up at her, and the expression in his eyes is clear:

What are you doing here? You never come in here.

Mikoto takes a seat beside him on the tatami mats. She puts her hand on his bare knee and he stares at her, eyes dark, unreadable.

“You love Sasuke, don’t you?” Mikoto asks. This, she knows for sure. This much has been clear ever since Sasuke was born.

“Yes,” Itachi says. His voice is low; perhaps out of some unacknowledged desire for secrecy, but most likely, Mikoto suspects, because Sasuke is sleeping and Itachi doesn’t wish to wake him.

“You want to be a good big brother, don’t you?” Mikoto asks. As the words come out of her mouth, she knows they’re too condescending, too patronizing, for Itachi. But he takes no offense; he never does.

He merely nods. Mikoto removes her hand from his knee, letting it rest momentarily in her lap.

“I can teach you,” she says. She is not looking at her son. “I can teach you to kiss him. Like you mean it.”

Itachi twitches — a barely perceptible flinch. He’s not looking at her, either; his face is shielded by his hair.

“I can teach you to make him feel good,” Mikoto says. “For when he’s older. If you want.”

Itachi says nothing. She can hear him concentrating, thinking the offer through. Mikoto has trained since the age of five as a kunoichi, but pleasing the Uchiha -- that’s something she’s been trained in since birth. It’s as natural to her as breathing.

She puts her hand on Itachi’s knee again. She slides it up to his thigh.

“Let me teach you,” she says.

Itachi is, of course, a natural. Mikoto trails her fingers over his bare chest and he learns, immediately, that nipples are sensitive, that such sensitivity can be utilized like a weapon, and soon he is grasping at Mikoto’s breasts, his fingers gentle, his lips soft.

He learns how tantalizing it can be just to watch someone disrobe — and to sit still as they strip his clothes away, too, removing each article one by one, allowing the cloth to drag sensuously over his skin. He learns to put his tongue between his mother’s legs and not to squinch his eyes shut at the peculiar taste; he learns to lap it up as though he loves it.

He learns to act the same when her mouth is on him. Mikoto teaches him how to moan like he means it, how to gasp just so, with his chest heaving and flushed.

“Even if you can’t come, you can fake it,” she tells him. “Even boys can fake it. Especially at your age.”

Itachi nods. He understands exactly what she means; he’s a quick learner, and he suspects that even if Mikoto’s mouth doesn’t please him, it’s supposed to. The unpleasant friction, the way his nerve endings stand on end like they’re on fire — it doesn’t appeal to Itachi. It brings him no pleasure, just stress.

But Mikoto isn’t teaching him how to enjoy sex. She’s teaching him how to please.

And Itachi listens, of course. He arches his back and gasps the way she showed him. They work on timing, on positions — her mouth on his cock, his mouth on her cunt — on the power of a tongue, of lips, of teeth. Itachi is no stranger to bruises, both giving and receiving them, but there’s something different about the mark he leaves on his mother’s collarbone, something new and exciting and possessive.

He can’t wait to see that mark on Sasuke’s skin.

She cleans him up afterward, and he allows her to. She drags the rough washcloth over his skin, wipes away an afternoon’s worth of sweat, of cum, of tears neither one of them acknowledged. Later, as she’s drying him off, she looks at his cock, hanging limp and raw between his legs.

“Show me how you kiss, Itachi,” she says. He leans forward obediently, and his lips are soft and warm and gentle against hers. When his tongue swipes over his lips, she lets him in, and he explores her mouth at a languid pace. Before he pulls away, he presses his tongue to the roof of her mouth, a move that surprises Mikoto, that almost makes her moan.

And then they are staring at each other again, Itachi’s face pale and unbothered and expressionless once more.

“Very good, Itachi,” Mikoto says.

If nothing else, she’s taught him how to kiss.