[closed; back-dated to December 2]

[not_thedragon]

Who: Uchiha Sasuke & Uchiha Shisui
When: December 2, evening
Where: Shisui's sweet bachelor pad
Notes: Sasuke would provide a better assessment of Ami's work if there had been any.

Sasuke had avoided the meeting as long as he could, but there was no way out of it now. If he didn't meet with Shisui about his genin's performance, it would be another half a month or more before he'd even be in the village long enough to put together a report.

The good thing was that he'd been able to fill out the basic assessment shortly before he'd left for his mission with Adela; it had been an incredibly short write-up. The problem was the shortness. If anything had actually happened during the mission with Ami, he'd have a better perspective on her work.

Not that Sasuke was wishing for more things to happen on missions, since anything that did happen seemed invariably to involve humiliation and discomfort. The only small victory was managing to return home with an uninjured teammate this time, though apparently the trade-off meant that his left leg was still tightly bandaged, complete with entirely unnecessary splint. Trying to remove it this morning had resulted in a few extremely painful head thwaps from Tsukiko at the hospital, which meant that Sasuke's gait was still uneven as he approached Shisui's apartment.

He paused just to glare at his leg for it, then produced the scroll with Ami's assessment before knocking, just in case he might be able to get away with handing it over and going home. It was not at the top of Sasuke's list to reveal the still-fading bruise around his eye socket to yet another Uchiha; it had been bad enough sneaking around the compound at night.

Perhaps it would have been better to just heal it, but -- he cut off the thought, focusing instead on waiting for his cousin to answer the door.

Comments

[shunshinoshishi]

It wasn't necessarily an odd hour to be calling, but Shisui rarely slept at a decent time. Except for when people called on him unexpectedly. They always ruined a much-needed nap. Even if it was way too early in the evening to be calling it a night.

A little disoriented and a tad grumpy, Shisui forced himself off the couch to answer the door.

He was groggy, but alert enough to immediately notice the bad leg. The bruise, however, held his gaze for the longest time. "Sasuke?" The door is held open, and Shisui pushes himself off the frame to make way for his cousin. "Come on in."

A glance at the scroll. "Everything alright?"

[not_thedragon]

Sasuke had, by and large, only visited Shisui's apartment in company with Itachi, and even on those rare occasions he'd formed the impression that his cousin's schedule left something to be desired from a medical perspective. He'd halfway expected this to be Shisui's 'awake and chipper' time, but evidently he'd aimed wrong.

Still, even visibly rumpled from sleep, Shisui was Uchiha enough to stare at the bruising around Sasuke's eye before letting him in.

"Fine," Sasuke said, the response automatic by now and unavoidably stiff. He'd been asked far too many times with far too many expressions of thinly-veiled disappointment (some pathetic son of a clan head he'd been, needing to have his eyes rescued by someone he outranked) to manage any kind of natural response, which as far as Sasuke could tell, generally served to fuel the general consensus that the clan backup plan for Itachi left something to be desired.

But he wasn't here to wallow in self-pity, he reminded himself with no small amount of disgust. Lifting the scroll to hand over, he explained: "I have my assessment of your student. We had that mission last month."

[shunshinoshishi]

It really was a shame; Itachi even had the keys to Shisui's apartment to come and go whenever he pleased. And Shisui rarely slept. He'd go for days without sleep if he had too much going on in his head, even when not on any mission. He's... used to it.

The door is shut behind Sasuke, and Shisui pads over to the kitchen table to drag out a chair to go with the single armchair in the vicinity. "Alright." He gestures towards the armchair. Take a seat. "Tea or juice?"

Yes, yes, he knows you're here on business but. Formalities first. Can't have his little cousin come over and not offer him anything to drink.

Plus, he did notice the monotonous response to whether he was doing alright. Eventually, Shisui will poke around for details on that.

[not_thedragon]

Ah, Shisui actually wanted to talk about it. Sasuke sat with some resignation before straightening again in indignation, because -- "Tea, cousin, I'm not six years old anymore."

Not that he didn't occasionally get caught drinking straight from the juice carton at home, but that was for the purposes of nutrition (and being, unavoidably, a teenager). Even if Mikoto delivered punishing thwaps to the head with every ounce of painful precision that her jounin status indicated, that didn't mean Sasuke couldn't at least appear like something other than a child outside of the house.

[shunshinoshishi]

Wow. Way to take it as a personal insult, Sasuke. Yeesh. "Well, I would have offered beer if I had some. Tea it is, then. You're missing out on this great new passion fruit drink I got, though. I'll be having some of that." Pause. "And I'm twenty eight."

Shisui wasn't offering Sasuke any milk because that was exactly what he did with his milk cartons...

"So go on about Ami. I heard the mission went well?"

He'll just be over here, fixing your tea.

[not_thedragon]

It was, Sasuke decided after a moment of reflection, probably for the best that Shisui remained in the dark about any recent beer-related adventures (or misadventures) Sasuke might have had. Not that beer was generally his drink of choice, which in retrospect maybe should have made him question Tsunade's preferred meeting venues a bit more, but still ...

He was in enough disgrace with relatives at the moment as it was.

"It's too sweet anyway," he mumbled, belatedly realizing how childish the demand itself had been. There was something about Shisui's presence that -- but he was here to talk about genin.

"It went well," he confirmed, and after a pause added: "Too well. It was bizarre. Ami performed her duty, but ... it was mostly standing rearguard or taking her watch shift without complaining."

[shunshinoshishi]

Shisui will find out. Eventually. He always did. Whether or not he would use that information to give Sasuke some grief over it, however, was something he was going to have to decide when he found out. Shisui mostly kept that sort of information to himself until the opportune moment. Usually, those moments were I-wish-the-ground-would-swallow-me-up-now moments...

Here's hoping those misadventures weren't too bad.

"Aaaah, yes. I'm so used to having your brother around, we've got an entire cabinet full of sweets." He's pouring himself a drink. "You should stop by more often." And setting the carton back in the fridge. "Your brother and I talk about the old days sometimes. Y'know, when it used to be the three of us." There's no denying he's missed Sasuke. It just... seemed as though they had grown apart over the years. Sure, he looked out for him from afar, but it was never the same anymore.

Sometimes he wanted to ask him where he'd gone wrong.

But, back to business. "Well, that's a good thing, I suppose?" But one glance at Sasuke told him that it wasn't. Not exactly.

"So it wasn't a mission that tested her skills."

[not_thedragon]

Sasuke's shoulders tensed momentarily at the easy mention of Itachi's constant presence -- they had nothing close to an entire cabinet full of sweets at home, though that was mostly the result of Mikoto's being in charge of the grocery shopping. In all fairness, if she'd left the job to Itachi and Sasuke, the fridge would probably have been a disaster zone within a month.

Not that that meant Itachi needed to leave his stash at someone else's -- but Sasuke forced himself to relax. He hadn't exactly been tracking Itachi down of late either, for reasons he didn't relish visiting himself.

"I doubt you want the third wheel baby cousin hanging around when you've finally got your own place," he said dismissively instead, feeling an inordinate amount of pride about keeping his voice light. "Or that Itachi wants home chasing him down when he's not trying to be there.

"Anyway -- no," he shook his head, returning to the professional topic at hand. "It wouldn't have tested the skills of a second-year Academy student. The most action we saw was when we accidentally busted something shady for the client by walking into a room while armed."

And for that they now had one lifetime onsen membership each, which was still something Sasuke wasn't quite sure he'd wrapped his head around yet.

[shunshinoshishi]

Itachi didn't leave his stash at Shisuis; Shisui stocked up for both of them. Mostly because he knew Itachi wouldn't bother eating otherwise, especially when he crept into Shisui's place when no one was around to escape staying at home.

"Hm. Who really was the third wheel, Sasuke. You or me?" That's just him saying that Sasuke wasn't the third wheel ever, and that Itachi never considered him t be one at all. Just that Itachi and Shisui were more closer in mental age at the time. "And I'd trust you'd respect his wishes to stay away from home when he needed the rest and not call him home at a time like that."

But ah. Back to 'the topic'. Shisui dropped a tea bag into Sasuke's cup before pouring hot water into it.

"Okay. So... You're telling me this because?"

[not_thedragon]

Sasuke just barely refrained from snorting out loud at the question, mostly because it was abundantly obvious to him exactly whom the third wheel had been. Shisui and Itachi had probably been remarkably tolerant for much-older relatives with an insistently tag-along child, but Sasuke was old enough now to have a sense for when his company wasn't preferred, or so he liked to assume.

In any case -- that was hardly the topic he'd wanted to discuss. If Itachi continued to show evidence of ignoring his medication, though ...

For now, Sasuke blinked at the hot water in his cup before blinking up at Shisui again, frowning slightly.

"She's your student," he said, blank. "I was told that it was my job as the ranking team member to provide an assessment to her jounin teacher."