Mar 17
*
seen from United States
seen from Romania
seen from Italy
seen from Denmark
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Bulgaria
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Poland
seen from Australia
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from Indonesia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Yemen
seen from China
seen from United States
*
itakabu but female!
I am once again pitching peak to chat
☝️READ 👉 Mending Fences by @zubious Completed 32k itakabu fluff...domestic... with a side of sasuke!! Because theres also a spicy sequel in process !!!
i love kabuita
u got this on the 10k commission‼️
Control Study (Itachi x Kabuto)
Patreon
Ko-Fi
AO3
Kabuto thought he was the one watching. Measuring. In control. But the subject does not obey the script. What begins as an experiment spirals into something raw, violent, and unrecognizable. A quiet descent into hunger, into instinct, into ruin. And when the body breaks, what remains is not data. It is devotion. And the echo of footsteps walking away. (Itachi x AFAB! Kabuto)
Mini-fic made with lots of love, care, and research for @ga--to
Feel free to reach out to me here on Tumblr, Ko-Fi, Patreon, email or even Discord, if you want to ask about this kind of personalized writing!
1.
He’d thought of this for too long.
The first time was in passing: barely a flash, a contour of memory lodged somewhere behind mission reports and surgical data, behind half-burned ANBU profiles and rumors passed between corpses.
Itachi Uchiha.
The ghost that kept killing.
The boy who left a clan in ribbons, walked into Akatsuki like it was his second skin, and never once looked back.
Kabuto remembered him from the ROOT archives.
The cleanest file with the most blood attached to it. Genjutsu prodigy. Tactical elite. Noted for silence, obedience, and the kind of intellect that didn’t require praise, only precision.
He remembered reading the profile and thinking, briefly, clinically, that it was almost beautiful. A life made entirely of subtraction. Every impulse, every excess, carved away until only the weapon remained.
He’d been thinking about him ever since.
Not consciously. Not at first.
But something stayed.
The name. The concept. The absence.
You didn’t forget someone like that, not if you were wired the way Kabuto was. You filed it under interesting and came back when the time was right.
Now it was.
He stood over the desk, maps splayed like entrails beneath his fingers, scattered notes, behavioral models, chakra decay readings, Akatsuki movement logs, intercepted communications. Every page a piece of the construct. Every margin packed with scrawled speculation.
None of it guesswork.
Kabuto didn’t guess.
He modeled.
He calculated.
He pried out data with steady hands and cold light.
And this… this wasn’t a kidnapping. It was a controlled test environment. A closed loop.
Subject Uchiha, Itachi.
Parameters defined.
Risk margins logged.
Everything locked.
His fingers tapped once against the edge of the blueprint, a compound design etched in black ink and obsessive detail. Non-linear escape routes, rotating chakra barrier frequencies, a chakra-suppressing field embedded in the floor. No restraints. Nothing primitive. Nothing crude.
Control wasn’t about chains. It was about conditions.
Itachi wouldn’t need to be restrained if the math was sound.
And the math was sound.
It always was.
He’d studied the Akatsuki’s patterns for months.
Watched Itachi move like a shadow stitched into Nagato’s broader design. He wasn’t the unpredictable one; his partner was.
Kisame. Loud. Brash. Easy to work around.
When they split, they always did so for exactly forty-three minutes on average, and Itachi’s path could be predicted by his primary mission priority: avoid unnecessary contact. Evade confrontation. Minimize presence.
Every ghost moved in a pattern if you knew where to look.
Kabuto had reconstructed seventeen of them.
And now he had the window.
He adjusted his glasses, eyes flicking to the third scroll on the wall, a chakra sensor grid coded to Itachi’s last known frequency.
Dull. Muted. Tired.
The Uchiha wasn’t sick yet, at least, not terminal, but Kabuto had seen the irregularities stacking. Minor blood changes. Fatigue shifts. Chakra thinning at the edges. Whatever illness Itachi carried, it was progressing. Not fast enough to remove him from play, but enough to slow his guard. Enough to pull the weight from his steps when no one was looking.
Kabuto had watched the way he coughed once after a high-velocity engagement. Had isolated the sound from a surveillance scroll and played it back for hours.
Not because of the breath.
But because of what came after.
Nothing.
No pause. No visible consequence.
Just a man re-sealing his cloak and walking into mist.
That’s when Kabuto knew.
The only way to reach someone like that, someone already half-dead, was to interrupt.
Not kill. Not attack. Interrupt.
There would be no violence. No spectacle. That wasn’t the point.
He would wait until Itachi was alone, thirty minutes into a split mission, in transit, shielded by forest or mist, and strike with something clean.
A precision mixture. Toxin-laced chakra. Enough to stun the nervous system and mimic a simple lapse in circulation.
Just long enough to move him. Not enough to damage.
Because Kabuto wasn’t here to harm.
He was here to witness.
To observe.
To finally touch what he’d been circling for years in maps and printouts and secondhand data.
And yes, study.
Measure the body up close. Catalog chakra fluctuations at rest. Understand how someone that fractured moved without breaking.
That’s what he told himself.
The rest… the way his hand trembled once when finishing the fourth dosage; the way he redrafted the architecture of the compound to include a temperature-stabilized chamber for prolonged exposure; the way he replayed a single still-frame of Itachi looking over his shoulder on a blood-slicked battlefield… wasn’t relevant.
It wasn’t desire.
That would imply weakness.
And this wasn’t weakness.
It was pursuit. Scientific interest. An itch of unsolved genius.
Kabuto exhaled slowly, setting the final formula down beside the surgical kit. Aphrodisiac blend, customized. Non-invasive. No loss of motor function, no psychological compromise.
Not a tool for dominance.
That would’ve been easy.
He’d used that approach a dozen times, in different labs, different targets. This wasn’t the same.
This wasn’t about breaking Itachi.
This was about being allowed to see what no one else had.
To kneel under him.
To be taken.
His cock stirred at the thought, low in his gut, the heat of it buried under layers of denial and sterile protocol.
But he didn’t touch it. Didn’t indulge it.
Not yet.
There would be time later.
Time when Itachi was there, quiet and real in the room Kabuto built for him. When the drug took effect and the Uchiha’s eyes sharpened just slightly from their usual apathy, when he reached—
Kabuto bit the inside of his cheek.
No. Focus.
He reran the checklist.
Chakra dampeners: active.
Compound: ready.
Containment: cooled and pressure-sealed.
Emergency measures: non-lethal, auto-triggered.
Escape contingencies: irrelevant. He wasn’t going to fail.
Not with this.
He’d rehearsed it a hundred times.
Not because he was afraid.
Because he was precise.
Because Itachi was not a man you stole by force. He was a man you invited, slowly, carefully, with the illusion of control.
And Kabuto was very good at illusions.
The last thought came unbidden, sharp and unwelcome:
Why do you need him to want it?
Kabuto’s jaw tightened. He closed the scroll, locked it, stored the compound, and adjusted his coat with clinical efficiency.
There was no need for that question. It had no logical bearing. The objective was set. The conditions were clean.
The subject would be secured within the hour.
And whatever came after, data, reaction, release, would be catalogued accordingly.
He was ready.
He’d been ready for years.
2.
It began at 02:43 local time.
Western range, mid-altitude, low civilian density.
Kabuto knew the topography by heart: he’d spent twelve hours reconstructing it from ANBU-era mission reports, factoring in the last five Akatsuki sightings, and tracking chakra fluctuations through a field of white-noise interference designed to scramble normal sensors.
He wasn't using normal sensors.
The hairline fracture in the terrain beneath his sandals matched the elevation data to the meter.
Just beyond the ridge: target presence, confirmed. Solo.
Kisame was gone, split off four minutes ago, chakra signature veering east. A calculated divergence. Routine. Kabuto had predicted it to within an acceptable five-minute window.
Itachi’s path remained linear. Quiet. Predictable.
But not careless.
Never careless.
That’s what made the nerves worse.
He’d masked his chakra completely. Dropped to negative pulse rhythm, slowed breath rate, matched the thrum of tree-bound insects. Any skilled shinobi would’ve had trouble clocking him now.
But Itachi Uchiha was not just skilled.
He was what came after.
Kabuto moved under the tree line, not running. Not rushing. Just... gliding between covers, each step measured. Each shadow was scanned. His hands stayed loose at his sides, coat weighted to dampen motion, glasses catching no reflection.
He followed the subject for eighteen minutes.
Watched the turn of his head, the steady pace, the absence of variation.
No wasted motion. No glances back. No flickers of suspicion.
It was perfect.
Too perfect.
His stomach twisted once, tight, shallow, but he pressed it down.
Physical response. Nothing more.
Anticipation, not fear.
Excitement misrouted.
He adjusted his posture.
Watched Itachi pause at the river’s edge.
Twenty meters ahead.
The clearing opened wide, a gap in the trees and a break in the sound, like the forest itself held its breath for him. Kabuto’s own didn’t catch, but something in him tightened.
Some useless, ancient muscle deep beneath thought.
He lowered himself to a crouch, one knee in damp earth. The sedative compound sat in his pocket, untriggered. The mechanism was pressure-based. One squeeze, one twitch of chakra, and it would deploy in less than a blink: airborne, targeted, fast.
He didn’t move.
Didn’t strike.
Just watched.
Itachi tilted his face slightly toward the water. Not far. Barely anything. As if listening to something low beneath the surface.
And for one moment, one second of clarity in the chemical fog of focus, Kabuto wondered what it would feel like to be seen.
Not as a threat.
Not as a spy.
Not as a tool.
But as himself. Just... himself.
His heart skipped. Then stuttered. Then recalibrated.
Useless.
He dug his nails into the meat of his palm and refocused.
Observation: Itachi's stance still relaxed. No defensive posture. No tension in the spine. No activation of the Sharingan.
Possibility one: Kabuto’s stealth was flawless.
Possibility two: Itachi was allowing it.
Kabuto exhaled.
No.
That was ego talking. Paranoia disguised as narcissism. He was a former ROOT operative with a near-perfect infiltration record, chosen by the strongest Sannin for his abilities and intellect, decisive strength, potential.
This wasn’t a mission.
It was secured success.
He reached slowly into his coat. One hand touched the injector.
He imagined the touch of Itachi’s fingers instead.
Heat surged low in his gut, quick, cruel, and unwelcome. He shoved it aside. Not now. He couldn’t afford to be compromised.
This was about completion.
The plan.
The system.
He’d trained for this. Built it. Refined it.
But his mouth had gone dry. His thoughts scattered.
He blinked hard.
One squeeze and it would begin.
One press and Itachi would drop to his knees, not in pain, not in agony, just… still.
Fogged. Fogged enough to move.
To touch.
To speak.
Kabuto gripped the mechanism tighter, knuckles white through glove-leather.
Why are you shaking?
He didn’t know.
He hated that he didn’t know.
ROOT taught him that emotion was chemical static. It meant nothing unless it compromised efficiency. He’d measured his own cortisol levels. Monitored pulse. Regulated serotonin. None of this should’ve touched him.
And yet…
He imagined Itachi looking at him, not with contempt, not even with interest, just… with attention.
Direct. Calm.
Still.
His cock stirred again, almost imperceptibly, but he noticed. Every micro-change catalogued. Every failure of his body's neutrality written into the margins of his mind like shame.
He should've triggered it then.
But he hesitated.
For one more second, he let himself watch.
The fall of Itachi’s hair. The faint curve of his spine. The total, effortless calm.
You think you're in control of this, he told himself. You think the scalpel makes you the surgeon. But you're the one shaking, and he hasn't even moved.
His jaw clenched.
Then, finally, he stood.
Silent.
One step forward.
Another.
He raised his hand.
The injector clicked in his palm.
Itachi turned.
Just slightly.
Not alarmed.
Not surprised.
Not even interested.
Just a single look over the shoulder. Flat. Blank. As if watching the weather.
Kabuto's throat locked. He moved the final step forward and triggered the release.
Itachi blinked.
No resistance.
No violence.
No attempt to dodge.
And Kabuto knew, right then, as the world softened around the edges and the Uchiha lowered to one knee… this wasn’t control.
It was permission.
But he took it anyway.
3.
He laid the body down with surgical care.
It wasn't reverence.
Kabuto didn't believe in reverence. Reverence was the illusion of weakness dressed up in ritual. No, this was procedure. This was preparation.
Subject placement had to be exact. Shoulder alignment against the surface, head at the correct angle, wrists positioned with the bind points accessible but not overly taut.
Room temperature: regulated.
Surface pressure: optimal for circulation.
Chakra field dampeners: synchronized to the subject’s resting frequency.
Everything clean. Sterile. Controlled.
Itachi didn’t stir.
Not once.
Kabuto's hands moved automatically, the way they always did.
He’d done this thousands of times before, securing a body, threading binding seals with medical precision. There was a rhythm to it. The right chakra pulse at the right pressure point.
He felt for resistance, and there was none. No twitch, no breath hitch, no instinctive recoil.
Just stillness.
Kabuto paused.
Let his gaze trace the curve of Itachi’s collarbone, pale against the metal surface. His chest barely moved with breath, so slow, so faint, he had to look twice to confirm it was there at all. He catalogued vitals. Heat signature. Chakra circulation. Everything aligned. Everything silent.
Itachi Uchiha, bound to his table.
Kabuto’s table.
He swallowed.
A flicker of static moved through him, like feedback in a system too fine-tuned. His fingers trembled when they shouldn’t have. There was no cause. No chemical imbalance. No failure in the seal array.
And yet his pulse spiked, irrational and loud in his ears.
The final chakra binding clicked into place over the sternum.
He stared at it for too long.
He should’ve moved on, begun the analysis, collected samples, run the standard chakra disruption sequence.
That was the plan.
But he couldn’t stop looking.
The way the body lay, so still. So offered. Like it was waiting.
Not limp. Not dead.
Available.
His breath hitched, sharp and useless.
He stood too fast, the scrape of his chair loud against the floor.
No. No, this was wrong.
Not the procedure.
Him.
His hands were shaking.
He stared at them like they were foreign.
He couldn’t be shaking.
Not now.
Not after months of construction. After all the simulation, the trial scenarios, the protocols. This moment was his. Everything was in place. The room, the bindings, the atmospheric control.
Everything.
But Itachi was right there.
And he looked…
His.
Kabuto turned on his heel and left the room.
The door sealed behind him with a hiss.
//
The corridor was dim and narrow, designed that way on purpose. No windows. No stimuli. Just stone and silence and the echo of breath. He leaned against the wall, pressing his hands flat to the surface like he needed something real to remind him of gravity.
He hadn’t expected this.
He hadn’t expected to feel…
Lust?
No, not lust. That was too base, too readable.
He could’ve handled that.
This was hunger. This was an ache.
Something molecular.
Not in his dick, not even in his chest, but deeper: cellular.
Like every version of himself that had ever existed had wanted this moment, and none of them had known how to hold it.
He pressed the heel of his palm to his temple.
Get it together.
He was a shinobi. A medic. A spy. He’d cut his own empathy out years ago with chakra scalpel and silence.
He didn’t feel.
He studied.
He dissected.
He understood.
But his stomach was churning, the wrong kind of heat building low in his abdomen, and when he closed his eyes all he could see was that pale body on the table, mouth slightly parted from sedation, long lashes over still eyes, chest barely moving under the seal… too fucking beautiful for any of this to make sense.
Kabuto bit down hard on the inside of his cheek.
Iron. Blood. Something solid.
It didn’t help.
He could still feel.
His cock was half-hard already and he hated it.
Hated the way his body betrayed him, the way arousal curled through him like it had agency of its own. He hadn’t planned to react.
This was supposed to be clinical. Detached.
The aphrodisiac wasn’t for him.
It was for the subject.
His hands curled into fists.
He stood like that for twenty-seven seconds. Breathing. Regulating. Fighting his own system like it was an enemy.
Then, slowly, precisely, he turned.
Stepped back into the lab.
//
The room hadn’t changed.
Still sterile. Still sealed.
Still his.
Only one thing had moved.
Itachi.
His head was turned.
Eyes open.
Looking at him.
Kabuto stopped moving.
His heart stopped with him.
The Uchiha didn’t speak. Didn’t twitch. Just stared, blank and detached, like he’d been awake the entire time and simply hadn’t bothered to announce it. His expression didn’t shift; not amusement, not curiosity, not even disdain.
Just that bottomless, unbearable stillness.
Like Kabuto wasn’t even interesting enough to react to.
And the bindings?
Still in place.
He could’ve broken them. Kabuto knew he could’ve. The seal grid wasn’t foolproof, not against the Mangekyō. Not against someone willing.
But they held.
Not because they were strong.
Because Itachi allowed it.
Kabuto’s breath caught, raw in his throat.
The silence stretched. A canyon between them.
And in that silence, Kabuto realized something worse than fear.
This had never been his game.
4.
He walked ahead of Kisame, not because he wanted to, but because it was easier that way.
The mist was shallow in this part of the forest, clinging low to the ground, weaving between ankle-height underbrush and dead limbs. A passable cover. Their mission parameters didn’t require secrecy, only completion.
Another extraction.
Another man who wouldn’t talk.
Another witness to erase from the map.
Itachi didn’t care about the details.
The mission was what it always was: a step. Then another. One foot in front of the other. A body obeying motion. A mind partitioned into essential functions.
His thoughts were quiet.
Not gone, never gone, but stored elsewhere. Contained. Labeled.
He’d learned how to compartmentalize long before Akatsuki, before ANBU, before breath had ever been a luxury. Everything not necessary to the objective lived in the cold part of his mind.
The part untouched by heat or feeling.
He could think about the target’s location, the terrain spread, the most efficient pressure points to apply once they reached the safehouse.
He could also think about Sasuke, wonder, even.
About how much chakra he himself had left.
About the shape of Kisame’s footsteps behind him, heavier today, dragging slightly, like the swordsman was injured and hadn’t said anything.
He thought about all of it.
He felt none of it.
//
Kisame spoke. Itachi let him.
He didn’t register most of it. Something about bloodlines. About Jinchūriki and their "inevitable waste of potential," which Itachi had heard at least four variations of over the last month alone.
His partner cycled obsessions like the rest of them changed weapons. Today it was hosts. Last week it had been how chakra systems evolved under duress.
It didn’t matter. It never did.
Itachi’s eyes stayed forward, steps even, the terrain folding away beneath his sandals like it had been expecting him. His body moved with a precision that wasn’t effort, just programming. The kind that made rest obsolete and sleep more of a phantom limb than a need. He hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. He wouldn’t sleep for twenty more. His body could go longer.
Kisame’s voice filled the space between trees like vapor, too casual for the kind of violence they left in their wake. He liked to talk. It filled the air. Covered the absence.
Sometimes Itachi thought he did it for himself, a form of tethering, keeping his mind from sinking too deep. Other times, it felt performative, like the other was reminding Itachi he was still human, just in case he forgot.
As if anything about this life could be light.
Itachi made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat, acknowledgment without agreement, and kept walking.
He didn’t dislike his partner. That would’ve taken energy. The man had been useful. Reliable. Efficient, in his own way. Loud, yes, but not careless. Brutal, but not sloppy.
More importantly, he never asked questions.
Not about the eyes.
Not about the missions.
Not about the way Itachi sometimes didn’t speak for days unless forced.
That alone earned him something resembling trust.
They were twelve minutes from the fork. That’s where they’d split. Divide and conquer.
Two targets. Two ghosts.
They’d done this enough to make it routine. Their paths were different, but their arrival times synced to the second. Always were.
Kisame was already winding down his monologue, sensing the upcoming break.
-I don’t even think these fuckers believe we exist… But that’s fine. Makes it easier to disappear them when the time comes.
Itachi glanced once, sideways.
Kisame grinned, breaking off at the split, a nod and a lazy wave, muttering insults about paperwork to himself.
The Uchiha kept walking. Slower now.
Alone.
The silence was welcome.
The forest took over, sharp with the sound of insects, the damp click of branches moving in patterns.
He liked quiet.
But he liked clarity more.
And the mission was clear. The route was set. He let the rhythm of his steps dictate the rest.
Left foot. Right foot. Breathe. Listen. Watch.
He kept his hands loose at his sides.
Felt the shift in the air four steps later.
Small.
Barely noticeable.
But there.
The presence registered like a faint breath against the skin, not noise, not chakra.
Just intent. Moving parallel. Shadowing.
Not a threat.
Not yet.
Itachi didn’t change pace. He let his breath pass steadily, even. Watched the movement in his periphery. Too far back to be seen. Close enough to matter.
He considered it. Let the data filter through without emotion.
Could be a hunter-nin. Could be a trap from the target ahead. Could be—
No.
The rhythm was wrong. Too careful.
The distance not meant to close in but to observe.
Curious.
He let it continue.
Listened to it.
It thought itself quiet. Masked. Invisible.
It wasn't.
Not to him.
There were a hundred ways to conceal a body. A thousand ways to regulate breath.
But intent—that was harder to hide.
And this one had it.
Deliberate. Focused.
Not hateful.
Not frantic.
Just... hungry.
It made him pause.
Not in fear. Not even caution. Just consideration.
What did it want?
A fight? Information? Was it revenge? Surveillance? A contract he hadn’t been warned about?
He could’ve turned.
Could’ve launched some genjutsu through the trees and dropped the figure like a pin in a dish.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he adjusted the tilt of his head. Let the angle of his shoulder fall back a degree. Gave them the space to act.
If you're going to do something, he thought, do it.
Not because he wanted to be attacked. But because he was curious.
About them.
Whoever was out there… they were good. Not great. Not good enough to fool him. But almost.
He could respect almost.
More than that: he could use it.
It had been a long time since someone tried to reach him directly. Most didn’t get that close. Most didn’t want to. They avoided him like plague, like death. Or worshipped him from a distance like a god no one dared touch.
But this one...
This one wanted something.
And Itachi, for all his detachment, liked puzzles. Even small ones. Especially ones that moved like this.
He kept walking.
Kept his posture neutral.
Didn’t activate the Sharingan.
Didn’t stop them.
Let them follow.
If they thought they were clever, good.
Let them play.
He’d see how far they’d go.
And if they reached for more than they could hold, he’d take it back.
//
The river wasn’t important.
Not tactically. Not logistically.
Just a natural shape in the landscape, a curve of water tracing rock and sediment, bleeding sound into the otherwise flat quiet.
Itachi stepped toward the edge and let his eyes settle on the current.
Not watching. Not thinking. Just cataloguing movement.
In his periphery, the presence held.
Still following.
Still thinking itself unseen.
Amateurish, but not incompetent.
Not reckless.
There was intention to the distance. The kind of spacing taught in hunter programs.
He could feel the shape of it now, the chakra signature just low enough to avoid triggering alerts, just quiet enough to mimic ambient noise.
A good mimicry. Almost seamless.
If Itachi had been tired, if he’d been truly distracted, it might’ve passed undetected.
But he was neither.
Not tired.
Not unaware.
Only... observant.
There was a difference.
He let his posture soften. Let the shape of his breathing change, deepening, slowing. The way a body moved when it forgot to be alert. He didn’t turn around, no tension visible.
Just let stillness drape over him like water.
He felt the wind shift behind him.
A pulse of chakra.
Small. Precise.
Then, dispersion.
An airborne compound.
He could smell it before it hit him. Bitter, sharp at the edge, something synthetic and vaguely floral, meant to blend with natural terrain.
Fast-acting, high-absorption. Inhalation-based.
Sedative class.
No paralysis.
Too delicate for that.
He let it pass through him. Let his lungs fill with it.
Felt it thread through his bloodstream like fog.
So this is what you came for.
Not to kill.
To take.
He considered it.
Not for long.
He’d been trained for this. This exact kind of infiltration.
Not against aphrodisiacs specifically, but against coercion.
Against toxins meant to seduce, to loosen the grip on intention. ANBU didn’t call them aphrodisiacs. They called them leverage compounds. Agents that rewrote the body’s priorities: need over discipline.
Want over mission.
Itachi had read the profiles. Had dissected the training procedures. But he hadn’t needed the intel to know how to counter it.
His body obeyed a different kind of programming.
The moment the compound entered his bloodstream, he pulled his chakra inward. Not a suppression, not an expulsion: a partition.
He isolated his circulatory system into closed loops, severing the flow to the cerebral nodes that governed arousal and reflexive response. Heartbeat lowered.
Skin conductivity altered.
Oxygen output restricted to brain, lungs, liver, every secondary zone flooded instead with dormant chakra fields designed to intercept signal interference.
He did it all in three breaths.
His body remained warm.
His skin remained flushed.
But the response, the heat, the ache, the collapse into sensation, that wouldn’t happen.
To the outside eye, it would look like the aphrodisiac had worked: a softening of the muscles, a gentle dilate of the eyes, the long, still breath of surrender. A pliable body, suspended in a state of dormancy that would soon dissolve, giving way to an insatiable need, illogical, animalistic.
But inside, he was untouched.
Feel nothing, he thought. Let them think they’ve won.
He wasn’t trained to play dead.
That kind of deception belonged to the weak, to the desperate.
He was trained to become unreadable.
To vanish in plain sight.
It started with breath. Shallow. Even. Measured in patterns a medic couldn’t trace. Then the temperature, slightly dropped. Nervous system lulled to dormancy. Every twitch, every reflex sealed down.
He could slow his heart rate to near-stillness.
The effect was exact.
To any eye but his own, he would appear sedated.
Unconscious.
Powerless.
Perfect.
//
He didn’t move when the footsteps approached.
Didn’t move when gloved hands touched his wrist.
Didn’t move when the fingers checked his pulse, found what they were looking for, and paused.
Just briefly, long enough to process the thrill of perceived victory.
Itachi felt it.
Not the touch.
The tremor in the hands.
The sudden tension in the breath behind him.
Like the figure couldn’t believe it had worked.
Like they’d caught something too rare, too impossible.
You think this is yours now. You’re wrong.
But he didn’t stop them.
//
He let his body go slack.
Let his limbs move like dead weight, perfectly balanced between lifeless and responsive.
He counted the lift: six seconds to shift the shoulders, another four to lower the spine, then the legs. Whoever it was, they were efficient.
Strong.
Someone who’d learned how to take without asking.
He catalogued the chakra once again, still dampened, still masked, but not invisible.
Sharp. Clean. Intricate.
Too meticulous to be unpracticed.
The scent clung to the gloves, disinfectant, steel, something medicinal under the skin.
He memorized that too.
//
They moved quickly.
Not panicked. Not rushed.
Just... eager.
Itachi let his eyes stay closed. Let the motion carry him. Stone beneath him. Air. Then containment: chakra suppressors embedded in the floor, he could feel them even through sleep-mimicry.
Technology not standard. Self-made.
Wherever they were going, it was custom.
Personal.
He wondered why.
What this stranger thought they were doing.
Capturing?
Studying?
Using?
He felt none of it as a threat. None of it was fear.
Just... data.
Another field to map. Another variable.
He catalogued the hands again. The breath. The shake in the fingers that returned after each confident movement.
You’re nervous, he thought. Why?
He was already planning to find out.
5.
They laid him down with care.
Too much of it.
It wasn’t reverent, but it was close, something bordering on caution masquerading as control. The kind of care that revealed more than it concealed. He felt the touch along his spine, the minute adjustments at his wrists, the precision in chakra seal placement.
Not rough. Not careless.
Just... practiced.
He tracked it all through closed eyes.
The figure, male, most likely, chakra tight and dense in the chest, hands deft but shaking, breathed too loud. Shallow exhales. Controlled, but faltering at the edges.
Overthinking each movement.
Itachi filed it away.
Breath count, scent, tremor. Trace chemical: dried blood, sterilizer, something faintly floral clinging under his nails.
Medical.
Not someone he recognized.
But familiar in blueprint.
He let the restraints seal around his body without resistance.
If he wanted to, he could’ve broken free in a breath. A flicker of his Mangekyō. A displacement seal. Even just the flex of enough raw chakra would’ve shattered the grid.
But that wasn’t the point.
Not yet.
//
The room was quiet once the figure left.
Airlock seal. Chakra latch. Door secured.
Itachi waited.
Five seconds.
Ten.
Then opened his eyes.
The ceiling was plain steel. Unmarked. But reinforced.
He could feel the chakra signature humming low through the structure; a feedback loop, self-correcting, built for long-term dampening.
Efficient. Not standard.
He moved his head slightly, only enough to scan the space.
Twelve feet across. Ventilation node overhead. Pressure sink at the far end. Medical-grade. Clean. Not sanitized like a hospital, but like something personal. Maintained obsessively. Every angle purposeful.
There were no cameras.
No mirrors.
But he was being watched.
That much was certain.
//
He tested the binds at his wrists.
Not for escape. Just to learn the signature.
Custom sealwork. Layered. Precise.
Someone spent a long time building this. For me.
The absurdity of it touched something close to irritation.
Not fear.
Not even caution.
Just quiet, biting contempt.
As if someone had studied his blueprint and come to the conclusion that this, some diluted root-derivative sedative and a few chakra locks, was enough.
That he could be taken like this.
Tied down like this.
Owned like this.
He heard the door cycle.
Didn’t bother turning his head.
Just kept his eyes forward.
Waiting.
//
The man stepped inside with the hesitant precision of someone who wasn’t sure what state his subject would be in. Measured steps. Palms still gloved. Shoulders drawn too high.
He stopped two paces in.
Itachi turned his head.
Met his eyes.
Watched the moment hit, the one where certainty gave out. No tremble. No flinch. Just a pause. A stillness. Like a machine skipping a beat.
Itachi held his gaze. Flat. Neutral.
Then, calm as breath, -Your sedative didn’t work.- Silence. The man said nothing. -It entered my bloodstream. I allowed that. Rerouted chakra flow before full absorption. Restricted autonomic response. Deliberate control. You failed to account for that.-
He looked at the ceiling again, as if the confrontation wasn’t worth eye contact.
-You also made a mistake with the compound. Too volatile. You prioritized delivery speed over accuracy. I could smell the destabilizers before it even hit.
His voice remained soft. Even.
-I don’t respond to chemicals. If you thought I would, you didn’t do enough research. Or misunderstood who I am.
Not anger. Not insult.
Just fact.
He turned his head slightly again. Looked at him this time. Not with contempt, but with a kind of impersonal stillness.
Like watching something being measured and found insufficient.
-Why are we here? Why am I here? Speak plainly.
The silence lingered. It didn’t stretch so much as freeze, stagnant in the space between them, dense with something unspoken. Not tension. Not threat. Just recognition.
Itachi had seen this before.
The moment where someone realized they’d made the wrong calculation, and had no protocol for correction. Where the mind searched for script and found only static.
The man didn’t speak.
Didn’t move.
Didn’t even breathe too loudly.
And didn’t meet his eyes.
That, at least, was intelligent.
A baseline precaution, likely drilled into him.
You don’t lock gazes with a Sharingan holder unless you’re suicidal.
Itachi gave him credit for that. But only that.
He shifted. No resistance. The chakra bindings fell apart beneath his fingers with the same weight as brittle paper. Sealwork was good. Clean, even. But not built for someone who knew how to fold chakra beneath the skin, how to unhook each node of a restraint without igniting an alarm.
The man still said nothing.
Itachi sat up.
Swung his legs over the side of the table and let his feet touch the floor.
Still no movement from the other side of the room.
The man stood like someone trying to recall whether or not they’d locked the front door, and now couldn’t move to check it. Rooted. Not with confidence. But with the tension of someone one breath from retreat.
Itachi stood.
The other still didn’t move.
He crossed the room slowly, deliberately. Not rushed. Not threatening. A presence that absorbed space as it moved through it. The way water filled a closed vessel. Silent. Inevitable.
The workbench was covered in notes.
Scrolls, samples, compound vials. Heat-sealed syringes. A breakdown of his own chakra signature, transcribed by hand. Several drafts. A failed sedation sequence. What looked like a hormone reactivity index.
Sloppy.
He picked up the nearest scroll.
Unrolled it.
Lines of kanji, clinical breakdowns, diagrams of circulatory pathways, neurological inhibitors.
He stared at it for a beat.
-You were planning to record my physiological response to the drug?- The man said nothing. -There are more efficient ways to acquire this data. You should know that.-
He moved to the next scroll. A failed mapping of his ocular patterns. The symmetry was incorrect. The assumption about his chakra output under duress was laughable.
He moved on.
Another scroll, this one with projected behavioral models.
Itachi paused.
Read them.
Three of the nine scenarios involved him submitting under stress.
Two involved physical deterioration.
One predicted sexual compliance.
He exhaled, long, controlled.
-This is what you thought would happen.
Not a question.
A statement.
He placed the scroll back on the table.
-You spent time assembling a space like this. Studying files. Building sedatives. Constructing restraints. And at no point did it occur to you that the outcome might be different.
He looked up then. Not at the man’s face, just past him.
His voice didn’t rise. But there was a cold shift in it, something like the temperature dropping.
-What exactly did you plan to do when I woke up?
Nothing.
Still.
Itachi let the silence answer, moved to the next vial. Turned it between his fingers. The fluid inside sloshed gently: violet, thick, artificially sweet. Catalogued it instantly. High concentration. Accelerated libido trigger. Precursor class compound. Highly unstable.
He placed it down without expression.
-This was never going to work.
Then stepped back from the table and crossed the room again, slow, paced. Breathing even.
But the irritation had rooted now.
Not at the man himself.
At the interruption.
He was supposed to be thirty miles east by now. Supposed to be knee-deep in another mission. Another kill. Another objective stripped of meaning. His days followed ritual, assignments, elimination, movement, silence.
He liked it that way.
This wasn’t planned.
This wasn’t welcome.
This was noise.
Unnecessary.
Disrespectful, in its own way.
Not because he felt entitled to peace.
Because he had built peace despite being what he was. And this stranger had walked into it with compounds and shackles and the arrogance of someone who believed desire was leverage.
6. -Measuring arousal. Testing submission. Simulating control. Was that the intent? Or was that a cover for something else?- Itachi's eyes narrowed faintly.
Kabuto didn’t understand what he was watching.
The Uchiha moved through his space, his lab, his design, his domain of control, like he had all the time in the world. He walked to the bench, quiet, precise, and picked up the vial like it was nothing. Like it was one of a thousand things he could do.
Turned the glass toward the light, studied it, confirmed the content.
Then, without looking at him:
-This is the one you built for me.
Not a question.
Kabuto couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move.
Every command he'd ever programmed into his own nervous system, the fail-safes, the contingency scripts, the precision handling of fear-responses, collapsed beneath him like wet ash.
His body felt foreign.
His mouth didn’t work.
And Itachi didn’t wait for confirmation.
The Uchiha selected an injector, clean, unused. Slide the vial in. Primed it. Then he rolled up the sleeve of his cloak, and pressed the needle to his arm.
Kabuto’s legs nearly gave out. He registered the need to breathe, the pressure of air in his lungs, but it no longer translated into motion. His stomach twisted in on itself, like something too tightly wound had just snapped under pressure. Blood rushed in his ears. His throat dried out.
All he could do was stand there, watching the man he thought he’d captured move freely through the space he’d built like a shrine, methodical, unbothered, as he injected himself the very drug Kabuto had designed to control him.
This wasn’t surrender.
It wasn’t even out of interest.
It was something else entirely: choice.
Unapologetic, sovereign, terrifying choice.
And Kabuto, the one who thought he’d set the experiment, realized he was the variable. The subject. The unstable one. And with every second that passed, with every breath Itachi took, his grip on the room slipped further, until it wasn’t slipping anymore.
It was gone.
He couldn’t speak because there was nothing left to say that wouldn’t unravel him.
He couldn’t move because movement would be a kind of confession.
So he stood there, inside the echo chamber of his own mind, watching the reality he’d wanted most become real, not for him, but in spite of him, and there was no calculation in the world that could carry him out of it.
He’d imagined administering the aphrodisiac himself, watching Itachi’s control unspool, his silence breaking open in heat and tension.
But this… this was nothing like that.
This was worse.
Because Itachi was choosing it.
Because the syringe wasn’t in Kabuto’s hand.
Because this wasn’t his.
It was given.
And that broke something in him he didn’t know was still intact.
Itachi dropped the empty injector onto the table. It clattered once, loud in the silence. Then he turned back toward him. His expression hadn’t changed.
No lust. No flush. Not yet.
Just calm.
Deliberate.
Measured.
But Kabuto knew the timeline. Knew the absorption rate. Knew the dosage. It was high. Designed to override resistance. To drown inhibition.
If Itachi let it in, it would work.
And it was working.
It was fucking working.
He could see the pulse at the Uchiha’s neck accelerate. The way the chest rose just a little faster. The eyes, still black, not red, began to narrow, not from pain.
From sensation.
Kabuto felt his own knees weaken, but forced himself to stay upright.
He wanted to run.
He wanted to fall to his knees.
He wanted to tell Itachi to stop.
He wanted to tell him not to.
He wanted to be touched.
He wanted to be torn apart.
-----------------
Read the rest of this story, free and as a gift, on AO3, or join my Patreon to access any future story like this one.
From now on, full pieces will only be published there!
AO3 FULL STORY
PATREON FOR FUTURE FULL POSTS
its.........it’s them bois........
new fav thing: kabuto being held over his s/o's shoulder like a sack of potatoes
