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illneverrecover · 4 years

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Take Me to Church (M) | JJK

➛pairing: Jeon Jungkook x Reader

➛genre: gang!AU, tattooed!Jungkook, smut, fluff.

➛word count: 5,114

➛rating: M

➛warnings: sub/switch Jungkook, power play, praise, body worship, face sitting, oral sex (both giving and receiving), dirty talk, profanity, mentions of weeb JK, unprotected sex, riding, slight cock warming mentions, JK is a soft sweet boy.

➛summary: You can always tell when something is bothering your boyfriend, despite how hard he tries to hide it - and you have creative ways to get him to talk.

➛notes: MY FIRST EVER COMMISSION! As soon as I mentioned opening commissions, my cherub friends jumped at the chance and sent in several requests, @quinnkoo being the first. She asked for sweet soft switchy tattooed Jungkook smut with some power play, and I immediately thought back to the Gang!AU drabble I wrote her last year, and decided to play off of that. It’s not necessary to read that one first, but it’ll give some more back story if you’re curious. Thank you so much, Quinny. I hope you enjoy 🖤

➛song: Church - Fall Out Boy & My Time - BTS

“Ugh! I’m sick of all this rambling. When’s Kakashi going to come back?” you sigh, head plopping onto your boyfriend's shoulder. You waited a few breaths for his teasing reply - he couldn’t help but to drag you after you revealed your favorite character and your totally normal crush on him - but when it didn’t come, your brow furrowed.

He had insisted on the marathon of his favorite anime, eyes lighting with childlike glee as he explained the premise, but he had been noticeably quiet the last few episodes.

Something was up.

A wayward glance at Jungkook told you that your suspicions were right; his wide rich amber eyes were facing the screen, but the light behind them was absent. He was chewing his bottom lip, large front teeth poking out every few seconds, the hand not wrapped around you rubbing at one of the tattoos on his forearm. All the telltale signs that something was Bothering Jeon Jungkook™.

It didn’t take long for you to know what was on his mind. Reading him had been something you excelled at since day one, his body an open book that you have delved so deep inside you knew him better than you knew yourself.

On the outside, Jungkook was the embodiment of the word ‘tough’, which would be fitting of a member of his stature. He was part of the well renowned gang Bangtan, something you had known since the first meeting, and he looked the part - typically dressed in all black, clothes baggy and yet somehow still flattering his lean muscles, ink decorating his arms and neck. A single hoop hung from his nose, messy dark hair hanging low in his eyes - and with one look, it had been over for you.

But that was only one facet to Jungkook.

On the inside, he was marshmallow, soft and gooey and tooth rotting sweet. The type of man who believes in soulmates, who coos at kittens in store windows, who teared up while watching Frozen II (with an adamant cry of, “babe, Olaf is GONE” when you asked if he was alright). He is so thoughtful, always worrying about everyone else - his brothers, his family, you - before himself. A pure heart of gold wrapped in a deliciously decorated package.

Which is why you knew he was still thinking about what happened the day prior.

It had been such a silly thing, something that you had mentioned once but that he couldn’t get out of his mind, and he had wanted to surprise you. He could barely contain his own excitement when he picked you up, admiring your sundress while his legs bounced with untapped energy, insisting you closed your eyes until you had reached your destination.

The Tea Parlor had been perfect, everything you had imagined when you had casually dropped the idea of high tea to your boyfriend. The room was giant and open, windows taking up all of the walls, light spilling in to make the finery of the tea cups and serving trays glisten. You had squealed with excitement, rushing up to the hostess with a spring in your step, Jungkook giggling as he stepped up behind you.

She was friendly at first, polite smiles and kind eyes, until she heard the name the reservation was under. The minute Jungkook’s name spilled from his lips, the hostess went cold, stiff. Her disgust was blatant as she openly glared at him, gaze dragging up and down his form before doing the same to you. Before you could ask what was wrong, she snatched up the menus, giving a curt “Right this way, Mr. Jeon” before turning on her heel, leading you both to the back of the parlor.

A warm palm at the small of your back had you turning to look at Jungkook, seeking comfort in his gaze, but instead he was focused on the woman in front of you, eyes arctic and emotionless. He guided you to follow the hostess weaving between tables, and it was only once you were both seated that she addressed him again, voice pitched low. “You may have other people’s respect around here, but not mine. I know who you are and what you do. You should be ashamed of yourself.” Placing a menu down, she turned to face you, vitriol lacing her voice. “You should be, too. Out with a man like this, flaunting yourselves? It’s offensive.”

You weren’t sure how long you had sat in shocked silence when she made her exit, the menus laying unopened on the table. She had put you in the very back of the room, in a darkened corner, something you would normally disapprove of - but once seeing the look on Jungkook’s face, you were glad not to have an audience.

“What in the fuck was her problem?” you scoff, reaching a hand to lay on top of his own. “Jungkook, don’t listen to that shit. She has no idea what she’s talking about.”

He was still silent, his free arm clenching and unclenching slowly on top of the delicate lace tablecloth. He hadn’t looked up at you since the hostess had left, but you could see the unchecked rage sparking his eyes, the calculated way he was chewing his lip. His mind was racing, and you weren’t sure where it would land - but you wanted him to know you were here.

“We don’t have to stay, babe. We can go somewhere else for high tea,” you murmured, smoothing a thumb over the inked words on his knuckles. “Or, we can go shopping, have our own high tea with unlimited tiny sandwiches and desserts, where no judgmental bitches are allowed.”

He snorted then, the corner of his lip turning. “So what, then you won’t come to your own high tea?”

You had flicked his hand then with a laugh, moving to interlace his fingers with your own, and after a few whispered declarations of love, he had lifted you from your seat, stopping to twirl you once before guiding you to the front of the parlor to exit.

He only turned back once he was sure you were safe outside the door, mumbling a “gimme a minute” before he was darting inside, tall form stalking towards the hostess yet again. You weren’t sure what he had said to the woman, but you could see her face - the fear that pooled in her eyes - and you knew it was enough.

It had been two days since the incident, and Jungkook had been off since. Instead of any usual errands, he had holed you both up in the apartment, nesting and appeasing you with copious cheese snacks and shirtless cuddles on the couch. You had tried to gently ask if he wanted to talk more about it, prompt him in quiet moments and in the protection of your arms, but he always skirted around it, insisting everything was fine, instead pulling you in for a kiss and a reminder that he loves you.

It made your heart ache, to see the man that you love so much, the twin flame to your soul feel like he couldn’t open up, couldn’t untangle the threads in his mind. He was always worrying about you, taking extra precautions in his work and personal life to ensure your safety, and you found yourself wishing desperately that he would let you take care of him for once.

He had never been good at keeping his emotions hidden.

You turn your eyes to the screen once more, catching the end of the episode, the screen cutting to black just as Naruto yells “I’ll never let my comrades die!”, which was a pretty good sign that you had been spacing out in thought for longer than you meant to. As the ending credits played, you nudged Jungkook with your shoulder, turning to face him.

“Babe?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you okay?”

“Well, it’s just - I gave you the perfect opener to roast me about my love for Kakashi and you didn’t take the bait,” swinging your legs into his lap, you move your arms to drape loosely around his neck. “Didn’t even blink. Doesn’t sound like the Jungkook I know.”

He hums then, palming your thigh, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Yeah, I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Why?”

Internally, you sighed. You knew this wasn’t the case, but it also seemed that every attempt to discuss things had been thwarted by the beautiful man one way or another. You needed him to feel ready to open up, to feel vulnerable - and as you stared at the strong, toned arm now touching you, an idea clicked into place.

He grunts an affirmation, turning to face you, inked hands smoothing a path up your legs. There’s a smirk on his face, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You’re right, I was distracted. I was thinking-”

Pressing a finger to his lips, you shush him. “First of all, I’m always right. Haven’t you learned that by now?”

Jutting his chin, he nips at the digit, trapping it between the edges of his teeth. “Sounds fake.”

“Second of all..” you continue, voice husky with a new bead of lust pooling low in your gut. You drag your finger over the plush flesh of his lip before sliding lower, tapping his chin once before you grip his jaw tightly. The responding hiss he gives makes you smirk deviously. “No more thinking. I think it’s time for more distractions.”

Jungkook whines lowly as you move to straddle his lap, your palm still clutching his mouth to pull him closer to you. Your free hand smooths the hair out of his face, nails raking lightly against his scalp.

“Is that okay?” your lips ghost against his own, close enough that he could capture them into a kiss if he wanted, but instead he nods his head, eyes heavy with longing.

Threading your fingers around his midnight locks, you give one sharp tug, exposing his intricately tattooed throat as he keens once more. Releasing his jaw, you drop your head, mouth puckered and planting a kiss on his pulse point. “I wanna hear you say it.”

Jungkook’s chest is heaving, pulse galloping wildly beneath your palm. He hitches a breath, swallowing thickly. “Fuck, baby. Yes, yes that’s okay,” he rasps, words needy and rushed.

Large palms cup your ass, pulling you closer until you are flush against him, and you moan against his neck as he kneads the flesh, his hips raising off the couch. His tongue finds the juncture between your neck and shoulder, and your eyes roll back as he nibbles and licks at the tender skin.

Giving in for a moment, you enjoy the feeling of Jungkook’s mouth on your heated body, the warmth of his lips and tongue igniting a fever in your bones, his hands still pulling at the globes of your ass until you were dragging your core over his clothed cock.

It was a deep growl from his chest that brought you back, lifting your head away from his dangerous mouth. This was supposed to be about him relaxing, but if you continued down this path, you knew you’d be lost under his spell.

With great effort, you step off of his lap, knees wobbly as you untangle yourself from Jungkook’s form, though the sight before you makes you want to collapse. Jungkook looks beyond fucked out, eyes dark and shining with desire, his lips ruddy and shining with overuse. He’s panting, his black t-shirt seemingly straining against heaving muscles, the imprint of his cock evident and thick even through his sweatpants.

God, you wanted to ruin him.

“Lay down for me,” you husk, throat painfully dry. You watch as he does what he’s told, laying until his whole body is now on the couch, his umber gaze never leaving yours.

“Good boy.”

He rolls his eyes then, but his cheeks flush, the praise affecting him despite his embarrassment. “Don’t make fun of me, babe. I’m a very powerful man.”

Chuckling, you move to slide off your sweatpants, stepping out of them and your panties once they hit the floor. A quick flick of your wrist has your top discarded across the room - and leaves you bare before Jungkook.

“I know you are. But I also know you like it when I take care of you, hmm?” you move closer, hovering just by the edge of where he’s laying, planning your next step.

Jungkook can’t take his gaze off of you, doe eyes obsidian and devouring you whole, darting between your face and splendidly naked form. His hand grips his bulge , palming himself as he hisses in response.

Climbing over his lap once more, you pause before settling, instead gripping the edges of his shirt to pull over his head, tossing it errantly. Drinking him in, you trace the lengths of his abdomen, grazing over his nipples before following the inked lines down his arms, hands intertwining. Dropping your hips, you roll them once against his hardened cock, moaning at the friction before you move his arms to rest above his head.

“Leave these here,” you order, but there’s no bite, only softness as you trace back the lines of his palms, the underside of his biceps. He was peering down, wanting to watch your every move, regarding you with admiration as you leaned forward, pressing a wet kiss to his collarbone.

You take your time, dragging your lips back and forth along the planes of his toned chest, nipping and suckling reddened blemishes on his skin, relishing in the sounds he was making for you - just for you. A quick glance told you that he’s behaving, arms still perched above his head and draped onto the side of the couch, though twitching when you would reach a sensitive spot with your mouth. His eyes are closed, bottom lip tucked beneath his teeth, and when you lap at the hollow of his throat, his brow furrows in strain, as if it took every effort to not reach down and pull you closer to him.

Seeing him blissed out beneath you, relinquishing his control despite his body screaming at him not to has heat flooding your veins, your cunt clenching in desire. If there was one thing that turned you on more than Jungkook existing, it was pleasing him until he forgot his own name.

With a groan, you lift your lips to press against his own, gasping when his tongue immediately slides into your mouth, tangling with yours. Jungkook always kisses with such passion, hunger edging in every suckle and nibble of your pout, lips moving in tandem. For a moment, you allow yourself to drown in it, relishing the taste of him, kissing him until you’re forced to pull away for air.

Pressing your forehead to his, you pause, allowing you both time to breathe, your hand rising to cup the silk line of his jaw. His eyes look pained, brows pulled taunt as he looks up at you, and you can feel the sinew muscle beneath your palm twitch.

Nuzzling against his nose once, twice, you press a chaste kiss against his lips once more. “Jungkook,” you breathe, searching his gaze. “It’s okay. I’m with you, I got you,”

He swallows thickly, nodding. “I know, babe, I know you do.” He leans forward, chasing your mouth, tugging your bottom lip lightly between his teeth before dropping. “I just, I hate that she said that to you, that you get treated differently because of me, because of who I am-”

Hushing him with a kiss is much more effective than with your words, and you continue to lick into his mouth until he's groaning beneath you once more, your name a whispered mantra on his lips.

“I don’t care what she thinks, what anyone thinks. I know you, Jungkook, and I love you.”

“I love you too, baby. So much.”

It was only once the yearning and eagerness came back to light his eyes that you continue, sitting up on all fours so you could crawl upwards. Hips dangling precariously above his face, you could see a quirk of his eyebrow before he looked up at you once more, gaze dripping in wonder.

“You gonna sit on my face, hmm? Let me taste you?” he rasps, hands moving from their invisible restraints to slide up the outside of your thighs. You let him explore for a brief moment, savoring the sensation of calluses dragging against your soft skin, before you grab his wrists, pinning them back above him.

“Only if you’re a good boy for me.”

A giggle escapes you at his expression, but before he could protest you lower yourself to his mouth, letting out a sigh when puckered lips immediately latch onto your throbbing clit. He drags his tongue against it before tugging it between plush lips, suckling harshly, your eyes rolling back as you grip the couch to steady yourself.

“Fuck, Jungkook,”

Grinning against your core, he alternates his attack, lapping your wetness, licking the length of your vulva before focusing again at the hardened bud at your apex. Just when your thighs start to tense, your high within reach, he moves back to tonguing your slickened core slowly, moaning as he tastes you like a man starved.

Reaching down, you grab a fistful of his hair, pulling him closer to your aching center, briefly regretting your decision to not let him touch you - but too stubborn to lift the request. “You’re so good, baby.” you mewl, hips rutting against him. “So good to me, I’m so close, please don’t stop.”

Jungkook’s tongue lashes against your cunt with a renewed fervor, your praise spurring him on with the only goal being to satisfy you. As the band in your stomach tightens, your thighs start trembling, making him groan against you before focusing on your clit, the vibrations of his mouth proving to be too much alongside the onslaught of his suckled kisses.

With a cry of his name you tumble over the edge, releasing the pent up orgasm with a flood of liquid arousal, Jungkook lapping up every drop as you give it to him. He’s whispering praise all the while, telling you how good you did for him, how delicious you taste - taking care of you even as he guides you through the crest. Feeling weak as you come down, you shudder a breath, hand reaching to stabilize you on the couch edge long enough to move away from that dangerous mouth of his.

“God, that was so hot, Y/N, you’re so good to me,” his voice is rough, gravelly with misuse. Unable to stop himself, his arms come to cradle your shivering form to his chest, laying you completely on top of him.

You give in, allowing yourself time to catch your breath and regain stability in your wobbling bones. His hand smooths against your hair, cooing softly at you. When you feel firmly returned to earth, Jungkook shifts, moving as if he wanted to pin you beneath him.

“Are you going to be good for me now?” he smirks, eyebrow raised in cocky defiance, the kind only earned from having the skills to back it up.

Returning the smile, you shake your head, pushing his chest back down to the couch. “Absolutely not, who said I was done with you?”

A retort dies on his lips at the sight of you slinking down his legs, hands pulling his sweatpants on your descent, his cock red and dripping in precum as it slaps taunt against his abdomen. Sucking a digit into your mouth, you pull it out with a lewd pop to trace lightly up and down his length, stopping to swirl it around the leaking head.

The thick cords of muscle in his tattooed clad thighs tense at the light touch, and his hips rise to chase the contact. “Baby, you’re going to kill me, please,” he whines, and it’s sweet music to your ears.

“Hmm, want me to touch you? To taste you?” you murmur, dropping your head to kiss lightly up his shaft - just enough pressure to let him know you were there, but not enough for any sort of relief.

“God, I want you so fucking bad,” he mumbles frantically, words tying around his tongue thickened with lust. “Please, baby. I’d do anything. You want me to beg? I’ll get on my knees,”

He cuts off with a moan when you slip the tip into the molten heat of your mouth, worshiping the sensitive flesh with your tongue, sucking gently. He’s bucking now, desperate to feel more, but you pull back enough to not allow his cock to sink further into your mouth, content to lap at the reddened head until he was dripping.

Savoring the hardened lines of his body and the lecherous way he was looking at you for a moment longer, you finally acquiesce, dragging your mouth down his shaft until you could nuzzle the hairs at his pelvis. The growl that rumbled through his chest was your reward, his hands now sliding through your hair to tug at your scalp.

“Fuck, so good,” he babbles, gulping for air. “Feels so good, you’re so good to me.”

Pacing yourself, you glide up and down, tongue swirling around velvet steel as you take him fully, one hand cupping around his base. While his length was impressive, it was the girth that took you time to adjust to, and once you were used to the heaviness on your tongue you increase your speed, taking him as far back into your throat as possible before swallowing around him.

Jungkook cries out, your name tumbling from his lips as his hands tighten in your hair. He thrusts shallowly up into your mouth once, twice, before he hisses, pulling you off of him with a grunt.

“I-I can’t, you can’t keep doing that,” he stutters, licking the salt off his lips. “If you do, I’m going to come.”

Grinning, you slide your fist that had been holding him steady up his shaft, squeezing lightly. “What if that’s what I want? What if I want you to make a mess for me?”

The cock in your hand pulses at your words, and pride swells in your chest, a wicked light brimming in your eyes. “Jungkook?” your free hand moves to cradle the weight of his balls, massaging gently. “Would you let me?”

He whines, head slamming back into the pillows as he gives in to your tease. “Did I mention that you’re going to be the death of me? Because if not, I would like to make sure that statement is on record.”

“Well, that’s not an answer.”

Bucking his hips, his hands slide from your hair to rest on top of your own. “Yes,Y/N. I’d let you do whatever you want to me. I’d let you wreck me thoroughly and I’d thank you for it when it was over,” he pants, before pulling your grip off his throbbing arousal.

Pouting, you watch with narrowed eyes as he sits up, his inked palm coming to caress your cheek. “But right now,” he timbers, voice low, “I want nothing more than to feel you, bury myself inside you. To have your tight pussy squeezing around me as I come. ”

Tracing the lines of your lips, he leans to ghost his mouth against yours, breath intertwining. “Will you let me?” he whispers, imitating your words, nosing down to your pulse point, your throat. A surge of desire had your thighs pressing together, your nipples pebbling as he scorches your neck with the fire of his tongue.

Shoving him down, you straddle him once more, wasting no time to reach behind you to firmly grasp his cock and sheath it into your awaiting heat. You both moan at the plunge, his thickness stretching you deliciously until the pressure ebbed into pleasure.

Once you are fully seated, you lean over him, watching his face intently as you roll your hips gracefully, slowly. Jungkook angles up far enough to pull a nipple into his mouth, encircling it with tongue until you were groaning for him. Inked arms snaked down to grasp at the meat of your ass, dragging you back and forth, your engorged bundle of nerves grinding deliciously against his pelvis. You couldn’t help but to keen loudly, gasps for air becoming more desperate as your unhurried pace tortures you both into delirium.

It’s then he speaks, tone husky as he admires you. “You are so perfect, so beautiful, baby,” he presses swollen lips into your neck, your collarbone, your breast. “Perfect for me.”

His hands slide up to grasp your hips, fingers pressing so deep you were sure they’d leave small bruises in his wake. Moving to plant his feet firmly against the couch, he starts to thrust up into you, his assault relentless as his tight grip pins you in place. Crying out, you throw your head back, eyes closing against the euphoria of him stroking every sensitive spot inside of you on each plunge.

“So good, taking me so good,” he croaks, voice thick with lust. “God, look at you. Falling apart for me.”

You clench then, tightening around his cock and making him choke on a moan. “I can make you fall apart for me t-too,” you breathe, placing your hands on his broad chest to help you meet each snap of his pelvis.

“I know you can, baby. You can make me do anything,” his eyes meet yours then, intense and overflowing with admiration. “I worship you, f-fuck. Love you, I love you so much.”

You try to hold eye contact, but his pace is relentless, his cock filling you to the brim, ravaging you with stamina only he could possess. “I love you too, Jungkook,” moaning, you start to meet each thrust, chasing your high.

He can tell you’re close, tell by the way your eyes are squeezed tight, your cheeks blooming pink, mouth agape in a silent scream. He sits up, settling you onto his lap so he could be face to face with you. “Open your eyes, I want to see you,” he hisses, hands still guiding you to bounce on his length. “I wanna watch you come for me, wanna come with you.”

Prying open your heavy lids, you meet the matchbook fire in his gaze, feeling yourself tighten around him at the carnal lust he assaults you with. You were close, so close, and when he whines out another melody of your name, you feel the thinned band finally snap, throwing you into your second orgasm.

Jungkook fucks you through it, composure lost when you clench around him like a vice, and he reaches his peak as you’re coming down, groaning as he spills himself inside of you. It takes his hips a moment to catch up, stuttering a few final snaps before resting, and then he’s tugging you down to him, pressing your form tightly to his own.

Heavy panting filled the room, and you let the rhythmic beating of his heart bring you back to earth, lull you until your eyes were heavy with fatigue. Jungkook was still inside you, and you could feel him softening though he made no indication of moving. An inked hand rose to sink into your hair, scratching your scalp soothingly.

“You’re the best at distractions,”

“I know.”

Licking his dry lips, he whistles lowly. “Spend the night with me?”

You chuckle, sliding your palm to rest on his chest. “I live here, you dummy.” Humming, you trace the patterns of the designs etched into his skin serenely . “We should still talk about it, though. What’s bothering you.”

He stiffens beneath you, letting loose a shaky breath. Silence envelopes you both, so you continue. “You know I have no regrets about the choices I made, about choosing you. I can protect myself. And I’ll always defend you, Jungkook.”

“I know,” he starts, tone shifting. “I always knew my lifestyle would bring some challenges, and I was ready to face them. But when it affects the people I love - when it affects you - I just,” he pauses, chewing on his lip as he searches for the words. “I just hate it. I know you don’t need me to, but it makes me want to shield you from the world. Lock you away with me, safe from everything. Just the two of us.”

Your heart squeezes tightly at his words, at the sincerity in his voice. You don’t like that he’s worried over you, but you also understand that this is just him, his heart. He will always want to shelter those he loves from pain, and it’s one of the million reasons you trusted him with your life - loved him so deeply.

“We’ve done a pretty good job at that the last few days, I think,” you smirk, resting your chin on his chest to meet his eyes. “We can get through anything as long as we’re together, you know?”

Jungkook grins then, one of his wide ones that crinkles his nose and shows off his teeth, and the rush of love that hits your veins makes you dizzy.

“I know, baby.”

You continue to talk for a few more moments, content to be wrapped up in his embrace, despite the fact that you were both nude and in great need of a shower. When you finally move to stand, stretching your limbs over your head, another thought crosses your mind.

“Wait, I need to know - what did you tell the hostess that day? At the tea parlor?”

Jungkook rises to full height next to you, hair sweaty and flopping into his eyes. He tilts his head, expression sliding into one more serious. “I told her that I was glad she knew who I was, because then she knew what would happen if she ever so much as looked at you the wrong way again…” he trailed off, stepping closer to give you a glimpse of his cold glare, a small taste of the power he possessed.

“And that is I would leave her a terrible review on Yelp. I’m talking abysmal, zero stars, and a detailed essay on just how unprofessional she was. Tell all my friends to do the same. She’d be lucky to have a job by the end of the week when I was through.”

You stare at him wide eyed for a beat before laughter overtakes you, arms rising to slide around his neck, pulling him closer. He was trying - and failing - to keep the serious look on his face, eyes glittered with mischief, chuckles rumbling low in his chest. Pecking the side of his upturned pout, you sigh dreamily.

“My hero.”

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drabblesfromthevoid · 2 years

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kakashi x fma au ideas

looking through my notes and like I had this one idea of yeeting Kakashi into FMA once. Like there were two separate ideas.

So the first idea was that when Ed is in Truth's domain, pleading for Truth to give Al back, Kakashi just...stumbles into the scene. Like idk maybe Kakashi dies during Pein's attack on Konoha. But instead of being with his loved ones, Kakashi wakes up in a place where everything is white and then he just...starts walking.

And he comes across a child and a god, and the child is pleading to an uncaring figure, and he thinks of naruto and sakura and sasuke and himself, and he just...steps in.

And he gives something up. Takes the price instead of Ed and maybe like a life for a life, Kakashi ends up giving up his old life, unable to return, unintentionally, and Al gets his soul in the armor.

And then they're back at the Elric's house and there's a boy in an empty armor and a child bleeding out, and Kakashi looks around, completely confused and concerned and afraid that he's agreed to a deal he hadn't read the fine print of.

And....that's all I have for that one.

Now, the second idea was Kakashi reborn into the Elric family. Maybe as an older brother? Maybe as Ed. Leaning towards older brother to the Elrics, because I can't see Al going ahead with the human transmutation without Ed spurring him on, honestly. And I can't see Kakashi, who's seen the Edo Tensei in motion, who knows that you cannot cheat death, that Kakashi - I can't see him trying to bring someone back to life.

So we have Kakashi and he's been reborn to a loving mother and father, and life is good. He grows and grows and then he gains two younger brothers in his little pack. He digs his hands into alchemy, and Kakashi has always been smart, and alchemy is not quite the same as chakra, but Kakashi performs his first transmutation at an astoundingly young age, and the charge of potential energy in the air draws sparks off his skin like electricity in his veins once upon a time, and Kakashi thinks, 'Oh.'

His father leaves for parts unknown, and Kakashi wants to protest, but there is a look in Hohenheim's eyes that Kakashi recognizes in shinobi, and Kakashi doesn't say anything when the door closes behind their father for the last time.

Ed and Al do not understand why their father is gone, but they have their mother and they have their older brother, and life may not be the best, but they are content.

And then their mother dies.

Kakashi is only a handful of years older than the Elric brothers. Despite his memories of a past life, at the end of the day, he is in the body of a child, and the memory of arriving home to see his mother lying still on the floor sparks nightmares of a child and a stormy night and bloodstains on wooden floors that will not wash away.

His brothers are mourning and confused, and they look to him for support and stability and structure, but Kakashi is drowning. He had once been a child against the universe before - had been a legal adult by the age of five - but there are children leaning on him and trusting in him, and Kakashi has never been the greatest with trust.

But he tries. Of course, he tries. Kakashi has always tried.

He has always failed.

Ed is the one who opens up Hohenheim's books and finds himself on the section about human transmutation. He runs to his brothers with a face full of hope, and Al looks at the pages with curiosity and interest, and Kakashi stares at their bright faces with dread. He lays a hand over Ed's and slowly closes the book and tells him that human transmutation is not and should never be attempted.

But Kakashi also recognizes that stubborn look in his brother's eyes, and deep in his heart, he fails he is not enough.

Al and Ed have always been close, and Kakashi's youngest brother follows Ed around every time. An alchemy master arrives in town, and Ed and Al go to convince her to take them on as apprentices, and Kakashi is right on their heels, because if nothing else, if he's close enough, he might be able to protect them from the trouble they are determined to stumble headfirst in.

At the end of it all, she cautions them against human transmutation, and that spark of stubbornness in Ed's eyes grows.

His brothers become more secretive, and Kakashi feels like he's watching a horror scene taking place in front of him - helpless to do anything but watch.

And then one night, Kakashi wakes up to the sound of screaming.

He rushes down the stairs - slams himself into the door until it breaks off its hinges. And there - there is Edward, missing a leg, screaming and crying, and there is no Alphonse.

And before Ed can finish his array - before he can do anything - Kakashi is there, praying he's not too late - slamming a hand down and meeting face to face with Truth.

"Oh, hello," the god says, "another Elric brother come to make a deal?"

It laughs, the callous sound of an indifferent god.

"Where is my brother," Kakashi demands.

#and that's all I have #drabblesfromthevoid #kakashi x fma #naruto x fma #the crossover that's been in my head for months #no names for either part yet so if anyone wants to suggest anything feel free #naruto #hatake kakashi #fullmetal alchemist #fma #fmab #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #edward elric #what if the elric brothers had a marginally sane older brother (figure)#alphonse elric

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purple-possibilities · 3 years

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Like Father, Like Son

Rating: Teen

Warnings: mentions of death, mentions of prostitution, like slightly dark? Gritty maybe is a better descriptor, Naruto world taken seriously.

Length: 1888 words

Pairing: MinaKushi, Minato’s Canonical Dad x Minato’s Canonical Mom

Genre: romance, drama, slight angst (we know how these two ended up), crack taken seriously

Summary: the story of Minato’s parents, and how that influenced Minato’s decisions, and his courtship of Kushina. Inspired by this post about Minato being extra.

Like many children in ninja villages—and truly, just children in general, since the Warring States Era and the formation of the Ninja Villages—Namikaze Minato is an orphan. His father was a self-taught ninja from a small village on the boarder of Kaze no Kuni, while his mother was a kunoichi from Tsuchi.

Though Minato's parents had died when he was young, he was old enough to remember them. He was old enough to understand why his parents were forced to hide away from their home countries, old enough to know when and why he had to hide and lie.

He was old enough to understand why tousan had to escape in the night while he and kaachan had to flee in the cover of tousan's sacrifice distraction.

He was old enough to understand why he and kaachan had to lie about their ninja training when they immigrated into Konoha with forged papers so realistic that not even Konoha's infamous T&I, or their renowned Yamanaka clan could tell the difference.

He was old enough to understand why kaachan was forced to work in the way she did, why strange people would spend an hour or two, or sometimes even the whole night behind the door to his mother's room, why she made him leave when some specific visitors stopped by, why he eventually came home to find her laying in bed, blooms of red and shocks of shiny white against her cold, still skin.

He was old enough to remember it all—to want to change it all, one day—but his mind would always take him back to one specific memory.

His most precious memory of all.

The love in his parents' eyes.

Minato could recite the story word for word, with how much his kaachan told it—how much more she would cling to the words after tousan was gone.

Kaachan was from Iwagakure, having sworn her life to the Tsuchikage and the Tsuchi no Kuni daimyou as a kunoichi of the Rock. Touchan truly had no allegiance—his skills had come from a talent with chakra and a necessity for self-defense.

So when touchan had seen a group of Suna-nin abducting a woman, he did what any good man would do.

He saved her.

Touchan had followed after the Suna-nin in secret, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Touchan was not sure he could defeat the two Suna-nin on his own, but he knew that with the help of the right environment and a few tricks, he could come out victorious.

With his wind chakra aiding him in both speed and his strikes, touchan caught the first nin completely off guard. As the second nin—the one holding kaachan—noticed his partner listing to the right—before the dead body could hit the ground—touchan had just as swiftly eliminated the other, catching kaachan in his arms.

Unwilling to linger at the scene, touchan carried kaachan away, until it was safe for them to stop. When touchan untied kaachan's binds, she couldn't help herself.

Kaachan pulled touchan into a kiss.

It was in that moment that kaachan fell in love with touchan. Both were alone in this cruel ninja world. The shinobi nations were in the midst of the second Great Ninja War. People were dying left and right, hundreds every day.

Who would miss one kunoichi? Who would recognise one self-taught man from the edges of Kaze no Kuni?

Who would give up on the chance of happiness, love, and family, when the world had taken so much from them?

He remembers asking his parents how they knew they were in love after just one meeting.

His mother always answered, “A selfless act of kindness in a cruel world is a rare thing to be treasured. When you find that, especially when you're alone and hopeless, it's easier to leave behind the entirety of your harsh, unfriendly life for even just a single moment with such a person."

When Minato asked his touchan, his father always answered, "There is not much kindness in this world, not much any single person alone can do to fix that. We work hard, we may try to help others, but that's not going to get any one man very far. Kaachan has a fire in her, a toughness, a resilliance which cannot be crushed. She is fierce in her mind, body, and soul. As a man forced to grow and survive on his own, I know just how valuable, and how rare those traits are. I had desperately craved for companionship, for a family, and your mother has the strength and resilliance to ensure our story will be longer than most."

At the time, Minato didn't truly understand what either of his parents meant. But as an orphan, as a boy all alone, who had witnessed the worst of the world and wanted to make it better, who had his world stripped from him in a place that should have been safe, with the weight of his parents sacrifices on his mind and the desperate urge for a family once more...

Minato fell in love.

All he knew about love was what he'd seen from his parents. With no advice, no one to turn to, Minato did the only thing he could:

He emulated the fond, much told memory of how his parents fell in love with the percotions, strong-willed, resilliant Uzumaki Kushina.

And like a blessing from beyond, like a gift from his absent parents, Uzumaki Kushina—who had only ever glared and grumbled at Minato before then—had fallen in love with him.

It hadn't been hard to use the shadow-clone jutsu and then henge them into Kumo-nin. It wasn't hard to find Kushina all alone, after tricking the ANBU who followed her with a genjutsu laid out by Uchiha Fugaku's sharingan.

It wasn't hard for Minato to gently disable (but not disperse!) his own clones, to catch Kushina in his arms, to take her to "safety" (as if she were in any danger at all).

It wasn't hard to attract her heart and capture it—not with his boyish good looks, his patience, and most damning of all—

Kushina's lonliness and desire for connection.

With her home village destroyed and Mito-sama recently deceased, there wasn't a better time for him to put his ploy in motion. Maybe to a civilian that might seem callous, but to a ninja, that was just smart planning.

What did it matter if he was using her grief and loneliness to his advantage? His company would heal that for her anyways.

(Besides, it was his grief and lonliness which drove him to do it).

Minato would grow up to be a lot of things: a hero and a curse, a soldier and a leader, a husband and—just briefly—a father.

Minato would not go on to share the story of how he got Kushina to love him with his son. Minato would instead go on to emulate his father, sacrificing himself in the hopes of giving his child a shot at a better life.

But that was for later. In this moment, in the shoddy comfort of the bachelor apartment allotted to orphaned ninja-in-training, Minato put the pieces of his plan together.

Minato was old enough to retain memories of his life before Konoha, before his parents were taken from him, but only one memory stood out.

And so he remembered.

And so he took the past and made it his present with dreams of the future on his mind.

Fun Facts!

I imagine Minato's mom to be blonde like he, Naruto, and Deidara are, while his dad has red hair similar to Kushina and Gaara. His mother's hair was smooth and straight while his father's was spikes like Minato and Naruto.

The ninja who killed Minato's father were sent after his mother for desertion. Another Iwa-nin had caught sight of her and reported back to the Tsuchikage. The nin were sent to kill Minato's parents but were instructed to bring Minato back alive in case he was useful. I kind of puts Minato's massacre of those thousand Iwa-nin during the Third War into a new light...

Fugaku only agreed to help Minato because when he initially refused, Minato accused Fugaku of not being able to do it. Fugaku, like a certain other Uchiha we know, was desperate to prove himself. Minato didn't tell Fugaku about his plan, he just dared Fugaku to trick the ANBU.

Minato had to practice with his clones for weeks to be able to fight them without them "popping." He ended up having to use a seal on them to make them more resilliant. It was his first time working with fuinjutsu, and what sparked his love for it. Kushina's interest only heightened his own.

Yes, Minato's dad only went along with kaachan's feelings because he was lonely and she was strong. Relationships have been built on less. He was a very pragmatic man. He did genuinely fall in love with her though.

When Minato and his mom immigrated to Konoha, she had to pretend to be a civilian with no ninja training to avoid suspicion, and be offered asylum as a Hi no Kuni refugee. As a foreigner (even one posing as a Fire Country citizen) and with the growing number of refugees, it was hard for her to find a job, so she became a prostitute. She was killed by a nin who was triggered and experienced a panic attack/flashback. He fled the scene after, and ended up letting himself get killed during his next mission. The case of her murder remains unsolved—not that the police did much investigating. There were more pressing issues to deal with at the time.

The harsh life Minato lived—as a fugitive and then a refugee and orphan—is what led him to want to be Hokage. He wanted to save people from the pain he and his parents suffered.

Kushina's spirit (and declaration to be Hokage) is what attracted Minato to her. His father's words of finding someone strong and stubborn enough to survive in this cruel ninja world is what made him decide she was the one for him.

Kushina is dumb. So dumb. Didn't catch on even once. Fell for the plot hook, line, and sinker. Even when, years later, Minato shared the story of how his parents met with her, Kushina did not piece his plan together.

Due to Minato using "Kumo"-nin to carry out the abduction, he made their already poor reputation in Konoha worse. This was further exasterbated when real Kumo-nin actually tried to kidnap Hinata.

Minato sacrafied himself that night when Kurama was unleashed on the village, because all he could think of in that moment was the way his father sacrificed himself to save Minato and his mom. It clouded his judgement from more logical options, like, I don't know, not casting a suicide jutsu to trap half a tailed beast in his minutes old son and his soon to be dead body.

Kushina was delirious from pain meds, having an tailed beast extracted from her, and her own hotheadedness. It was a bad mix.

In the end, Naruto learnt that rescuing a girl is the way to her heart, following the Namikaze family tradition of courtship.

AN: So, uh... This got darker than I thought. The post that inspired this was so cute too. I wrote this a few weeks ago on a night I was too busy for this bs and yet it would not let me rest until it was released. I wrote this after being challenged prompted by @books-n-guns, as crack is my apparent specialty (we been knew, I know. After the LeeKaguya fic I think I solidified my place in this fandom). I hope you enjoyed it!

#namikaze minato #uzumaki kushina #minakushi #naruto #just a little piece i wrote #sibi writes

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raendown · 3 years

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The first of my follower milestone gift fics! This one is for @rookie-d for the prompt word effete.

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Word count: 2884 Rated: T+ Summary: Getting dragged along to places he didn't want to be wasn't new to Madara, not with a best friend like Hashirama. Meeting someone again that he hadn't seen in years and instantly falling in love? That one was definitely newer.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

Grown, Possibly Matured

“I cannot believe I let you drag me out here.”

Hashirama blinked over at him before smiling widely. What a doofus. Did he ever stop smiling?

“No need to be so grumpy, my friend. It’s a celebration! Enjoy yourself!” His ever-present smile grew impossibly wider as he snatched something off the tray of a passing waiter. “Don’t you want any food? It’s free, I checked.”

“Might as well. If I get nothing else out of this I’ll at least have a full belly without paying for it.”

“That’s the spirit!”

Letting his sigh of disgust blow the hair away from his face, Madara snagged his own passing treat and let his eyes scan the gardens without much interest. It was a nice place. When he’d graduated from college a few years back the ceremony had taken place in the auditorium on campus but Tobirama’s university was one of those fancy big money ones that all the rich families sent their kids to for clout more so than an education. Of course they just happened to have a massive sprawling garden just perfect for outdoor spectacles like this one. He still didn’t understand how a family like the Senju could afford this school. Either Tobirama had the marks to get some very impressive scholarships or every member of their family had agreed to sell at least one of their kidneys to help him pay for it.

“Why am I even here?” Madara shovelled the little morsel in to one side of his mouth and spoke from the other, ignoring a very prim looking woman in pearls giving him a horrified look. “I haven’t seen your brother since, what, high school? Earlier? I could care less about that knobby-kneed little asshole.”

“Tobi hasn’t got knobby knees,” Hashirama protested.

“He did the last time I saw him.”

“Oh. Oh yeah, he did get a little gangly when he finally hit that growth spurt, didn’t he? Ha ha! I remember now! Well he’s grown up a lot since then and I just...I just needed someone here to help me be proud of him!”

Since that was one of the stupidest things he’d ever heard there was no shame in saying so. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. If you want someone to come be proud of him wouldn’t you bring, oh I don’t know, family? You’ve got two other brothers. Or that woman of yours, isn’t she close to him too?”

Hashirama wilted like a flower, as dramatic as he’d been the day they met all the way back in middle school.

“But our whole family is away on vacation because Tobi didn’t even tell any of us when he was graduating! I wanted Mito to come but she couldn’t get out of work on such short notice and he’d never say anything but I just know he’ll love it so much better when he sees there’s people here to celebrate with him!”

“What was he even in school for again? Something yuppie, obviously.”

Because his best friend was an idiot who couldn’t read a tone to save his life, Hashirama practically danced off his own feet with pride as he crowed, “A double major! Oh I could just burst! He completed a double major in political science and international relations!”

Madara stared.

“He went to school...for politics? He’s going in to politics?”

“Yeah!”

“Oh great. Wonderful. He was an annoying kid but that brain of his did have some potential. Now he’s gonna waste it.”

Hashirama stopped bouncing to cock his head, bemused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you know, what good are politicians really? They all talk a big game and they all wear their fancy suits but I’ve never met one who wasn’t entirely full of shit. Every one of them is basically an over-refined waste of space.”

“Didn’t you tell me once that you wanted to grow up and be the mayor?”

Face suddenly much too hot for the cool weather around them, Madara growled and gave his friend a mighty shove. “Keep your mouth shut!”

“So mean!”

Talking about someone he hadn’t seen since they were all still growing in to their own limbs wasn’t exactly Madara’s idea of a good time. Changing the subject to the plans they had made for a beach day that weekend was much more interesting. A little fast talking, a bit of wheedling, and it was possible he might be able to talk Hashirama in to camping out the night without that terrifying fiance of his. Mito was a strong woman, definitely exactly the sort of person someone like Hashirama needed. Madara still didn’t like her. He always got the impression that when she looked at him she wondered what her fiance saw in him and it made his skin itch every time.

It took another half hour but finally the ceremony began and all of the gathered family and friends were invited to find a seat. Though Madara had been calling the area gardens inside his head it was more like an outdoor amphitheater of some kind with ascending rows of benches carved in to the natural rock. It sort of reminded him of something out of ancient Greece, actually, and he hated a little that it impressed him all the more for it.

“Ooh, there they are!” Hashirama grabbed his sleeve in excitement, all but lurching out of the seat he’d only just settled in to point at the thick wave of black robed young adults all marching out of a nearby building. Well, not so much marching. Considering the heavy course loads they had all just finished over half of them looked more like they were shuffling along on the strength of their last cup of coffee. That much Madara could relate to.

“Which one’s your brother?”

“There! There he is! Hi Tobi!”

Either Tobirama didn’t hear the cry from so far away or he was well practiced at ignoring such a fog horn of a voice but none of the faces that turned towards them had any sparks of recognition. From the audience there was mostly fond understanding. Most of the students that looked towards them just looked confused. It was kind of sad but Madara was pretty sure a lot of them had never seen anyone so enthusiastic about supporting their family before. Yuppie types, in his experience, weren’t really great at loving their kids.

He might have based that opinion mostly off his own estranged father. So sue him.

“When they’re all dressed the same how am I supposed to tell them apart? I remember he’s got white hair.” Madara gave the massive group of black robed figures a half-hearted once over. “There’s got to be a dozen people in there with white hair.”

“That’s easy,” Hashirama said. “My Tobi is the best one!”

“Alright, well, that doesn’t really help much but...you tried?”

Despite his friend’s utter lack of ability to describe one simple human face Madara did eventually figure out which one was Tobirama. Not that he had to put much deduction work in; all he needed to do was sit back and wait until eventually the name ‘Senju Tobirama’ was called and one of the white-hair-black-robe-graduation-cap people broke away from the rest to ponce across the stage with more grace than any disney forest animal could ever dream of.

The distance between them was still too large to really make out any fine details but the one thing Madara picked up on had him scowling out of reflex, hunkering down in his seat with arms crossed while Hashirama practically vibrated out of his own skin trying to holler his pride for the world to hear.

He’d gotten taller! That rat bastard of an albino must have had another growth spurt since they last saw each other. What the hell was it about Senju genes? Even from this far away Madara could tell he would barely pass the guy’s chin and there was just something fundamentally unfair about that. He was older! Didn’t he get to be taller than anybody?

Izuna didn’t count. As the youngest brother it was his duty to stay short forever.

Like the disgustingly emotional child he was, it took Hashirama several minutes after his brother had completely vacated the stage for him to finally sit down and heave a deep sigh, followed immediately by several quivering breaths. Madara dug in to one pocket and threw a tissue in his stupid face. He’d learned to carry those around years ago no matter where they were going after one too many of his shirts had been ruined for lack of anything else around to cry on. When it came to Hashirama emotions could attack at any time. And usually for the stupidest reasons.

Waiting out the rest of the ceremony was somehow even more boring now that he wasn’t watching for anyone specific to walk across the stage. It seemed unfair to him that alphabetically ‘Senju’ was so far down the list that there was less than a quarter of the names left to call and somehow it all seemed to last four times as long as the rest of this stupid ceremony had. Finally, however, the entire audience was invited to stand for applause and Madara did so with a groan, shaking out his legs in the hopes that doing so would discretely wake up his ass, gone numb from sitting for too long.

Hashirama turned to him with brilliant eyes the moment the ceremony was announced complete.

“There’s more snacks and drinks in the hall over there,” he said. “I texted Tobi to meet us, come on!”

“I could go for another snack I guess.” Madara let himself be pulled through the crowd, grateful for once that his best friend was such a tree that people just stepped out of his way without question. His interest in heading across to the fancy hall looming over them may have had something to do with more than just filling his belly now but he saw no need to say so out loud.

Once they were inside the sheer number of human beings here for today’s ceremony became much harder to ignore, trapped together between four walls that echoed the roar of a hundred different conversations back and forth until Madara was tempted to clap both hands over his ears. The semi-permanent scowl on his face deepened with every step they took, wading through the tight knit throng until at last Hashirama shot up on to his toes with excitement.

“There! Look! Tobi, over here! Hey Tobi!”

Madara sighed, pulling the ends of his hair away from the grasping fingers of someone’s poorly attended baby, then looked up when a shadow fell over him. Alright. So maybe coming here today had been a good decision. If nothing else it afforded him the chance to see this human adonis up close.

Even with the traditionally ill-fitting graduation robe covering the finer details it was still easy to see that Tobirama had not only grown up, he’d grown up good. The height difference between them was even more than Madara had guessed and the sharp lines of his face had settled in to something like chiseled marble over the years, less the young weasel his classmates used to call him and closer now to what one would expect to find on a magazine cover. He’d even had tattoos done that accentuated his cheeks plus one running down his chin and neck to disappear in line with the buttons of his shirt. To his utter horror, Madara’s first thought was how very much he wanted to trace those lines with his tongue.

“Congratulations!” Hashirama crowed, throwing himself at his brother with wet eyes and a beaming smile. Tobirama, impossibly, withstood the storm of affection without so much as swaying on the spot.

“Thank you Anija,” he rumbled, oblivious to the involuntary whine that slipped out from between Madara’s lips. Thank all the non existent gods for the noise in here covering such an embarrassing sound. It wasn’t fair. He already looked delicious, did he have to sound like a wet dream too?

“You remember my friend Madara, right? Were you surprised? Surprise! We wanted to come celebrate with you!”

One pale brow lifted as Tobirama detangled himself from Hashirama’s embrace with enviable ease. “Hardly a surprise when you called me last night to tell me you were coming, though I appreciate the sentiment. Madara...yes, I remember. Hello Madara.”

“Nng.” Oh very good. Very intelligent. Such a good showing he was making of himself.

“Your presence here is more of a surprise than my brother’s. It’s been quite some time.”

“Guess so,” Madara grumbled.

Tobirama cocked his head to one side. “And what are you doing with yourself these days, Madara?”

He was only being polite, something that age seemed to have added since he definitely wasn’t polite as a little kid, brain too fast for anyone else to keep up with and constantly exasperated that he needed to slow himself down. It was an improvement for sure. One that Madara should have appreciated. It certainly wasn’t his fault that he’d grown up to tick off every box on Madara’s list of things that were physically attractive. Still, the attitude was rising and emotions he’d never liked in himself were prickling and there was no stopping the defensive tone spitting its way out of his mouth.

“Something more useful than where you’re headed, that’s for sure. Politics? Really? I never took you for the lazy sort.” Madara, with what little wisdom he had, very much wanted to hit himself even as the words escaped him. He didn’t blame Tobirama at all for lifting that second too-perfect brow.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Everyone knows that politicians are all talk and no action, too caught up in looking all important and sounding all smart but they’re never really useful. Shame. You always had a good brain, too bad you’re gonna waste it cushioning your ass on the publics’ dollar.”

“The only shame here”-oh but the fire in his voice would have been glorious all on its own even without the deep bass rumble of his voice-“is that you seem to have grown up with your head lodged inside your own asshole. If you think for one second that I intend to rest on my laurels then I invite you go fuck yourself with the sharpest stick you can find. The two of you used to talk big words about changing the word when we were all kids. Tell me, how many internships have you suffered through for the chance to do so? How many scholarships did you study for just to meet the right people and share your proposals with the right ears? Go on, Madara, tell me how many tax breaks you leveraged before you even made it all the way through university?”

Madara swallowed thickly, barely feeling the pressure when Hashirama put a hand on his chest to separate the two of them. It definitely said something about him that he should be so aroused from getting such a thorough dressing down in public but he couldn’t bring himself to worry much about it. Not when he had more important things to concentrate on. Like the fact that he’d just fallen in love in the space of two minutes.

“Sweet mother of fire,” he whispered. “Marry me.”

Both of the Senju brothers looked at him like he’d grown an extra limb. Hashirama coughed nervously, eyes flitting between them like a nervous rabbit.

“Let’s all just calm down now, alright? Today is supposed to be a happy day!”

“Indeed it is. Thank you for coming, Anija. Perhaps you might make this a happier day for me by removing this trash from the premises.” With his final piece spoken Tobiraama lifted his nose in to the air and turned to walk away, striding through the crowd as easily as if the room were empty and exuding all the prim fussiness of someone who had spent a decade in the social minefield of politics already.

Hashirama moaned dramatically and leapt after his sibling. “Wait, Tobi! Maddy didn’t mean it! Come back, we can all be friends!”

Several minutes passed in a haze before Madara even noticed that he was now standing alone in a room crowded with a bunch of uppity strangers, several of them staring at him as though worrying for his mental health. He couldn’t blame them. Not if the expression on his face was half as dazed as he felt. Considering how loud the place was it was somewhat of a miracle that he could still hear Hashirama’s voice booming from somewhere off to the left but he chose not to question his luck, only turned to float off in that direction, hoping Tobirama was still here. Following after them would almost definitely end with more insults being thrown at him.

And like the twisted man he was Madara could freely admit that he was looking forward to it. He’d never met anyone with half as much fire in them as Senju Tobirama. He wondered, dreamily, how long it was going to take him to convince the other man to take his proposal seriously.

#rae writes #madatobi #madara #tobirama #hashirama #modern au #fanfiction

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psalloacappella · 3 years

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reprise

Day 4 Prompt: Teamwork // “I’ll protect you.”

@sasusakublankperiodweek

Ao3 | FFN | ↓

So then, so now. In the simmering tangerine heat, she stands waiting in knee-high boots and the skirt he’s seen her in so often, and he commits her shape to memory through each stage of the return of his sharp sight.

He’s released into a humid dawn with nothing to his name but guilt and the clothes on his back. Things borrowed — the bruises under his eyes, blue.

Emerging from the other side of something indescribable, carrying much more but somehow much less than he arrived with.

Feeling light without the chains of metal and melancholy, the weight of all he’s done. A cyclical cadence of small cold rooms lit by garish bare bulbs and sneers barely concealed by skeptical guards, the entreaties of the interrogation unit, unsure if the gradually softening questions are piteous or a tactic. The same stories to different ears, and the people who adore him creeping at the corners and doors to ensure his treatment is humane.

As the “assigned medic,” as one of the few determined to be able to have even a chance of preventing an escape he has no desire to execute, she’s been his doctor since the first day and his advocate throughout, bringing a semblance of level headedness to the proceedings that Naruto, bless him, isn’t talented in articulating. He’d prefer to raise his voice, brandish fists if he has to, the declaration that he’ll come to blows for his best friend.

They speak around him, Sakura and the last shinobi guard. He lets them.

“He’s been released into my care,” she says stubbornly, folding her arms. Tapping her foot.

The guard has clear reservations, regards her with skepticism.

A fluttering flare of her nostrils, a habit he noticed on day twenty-six; but really, it had only been a forgotten tic of yesteryear, a habit Naruto or even their sensei never failed to induce in her.

“I’m his . . . doctor. I’ll take this from here, thank you.” The acknowledgement is perfunctory, with an edge of dismissal.

She doesn’t unfold her arms or let them fall to her sides until the guard’s long gone, reporting to his next post or perhaps the Hokage’s office, the smoke from his departure whirling and blending with the ripple of a rising summer heat.

Sakura turns, careful to avoid his eyes.

“I suppose that’s that. It’s nice to see you, Sasuke-kun.”

Resists the urge to say he saw her yesterday, and the idiot too, that they’d been around spending far too much time with a criminal, even if newly pardoned. His upcoming stint of house arrest still indicates otherwise.

He knows all the words that would be kind, human, and reasonable to say. Embodying any of those personal qualities would be nice. Instead:

“Why are you here?”

“Actually, I moved around my schedule to make sure I’d be here.”

“I didn’t ask for that.”

“I know.”

She’s not miffed or bothered by him, and that’s what hurts the most. That she expects him to be this: Curt, angry. Broken, fragile. Physically he’s coming together; mentally he’s held up with thin, fraying strings.

She inhales before beginning again, already sounding wary of his potential response.

“For now they’ve assigned you to your previous living space. In the old district.” For all her poise and command when beholding the human body, ever the professional, the fusion of skin and sinew and soul in need of tender loving repair, she’s fiddling with the edge of her skirt and all he wants to do is make her stop.

“I said it wasn’t a good idea,” she adds, intent on staring just past his ear. “No one has been there for years. It’s not your burden.”

“It’s fine.” The strain of unuse, and a little swift. A little mean. Without any further gesture, he turns and heads down the street, the gravitational pull of family ghosts too strong to defy. Then he stops, realizing he’s awkward, unsteady, and forever difficult to read.

Looks at her over his shoulder.

“I’m your escort.” She sounds apologetic, quiet.

He wills her to look him in the eyes, but won’t meet hers. Oh, what does that make him? A coward at best.

He waits until she catches up, their difference in height more than he remembers.

The sensation of her lingering at his shoulder, though, sears through his bones as the catalyst heat of sparks on flint, a familiar biological imprint that feels like coming home.

Three days in a row, she comes to his doorstep.

Three days in a row, she pleads her case.

“Do you think this is good for you? Emotionally, I mean. Sleeping with the ghosts of your past?”

The first attempt to shake her loose goes poorly, and Uchiha Sasuke experiences for the first time and certainly not the last how charmingly infuriating it is to have her stubborn nature focused on him, a spotlight.

Ignoring her questions, unwilling to place a fine point on his obvious dysfunction. “Why are you here, Sakura?”

“What part of ‘released into my care,’ escapes you? You wouldn’t have liked the alternative.”

Each morning visit reveals a wilder man: A little more gaunt, covered in an additional thin layer of dust. She’s terrified the house, this cursed and unforgiving compound moaning his name, will take him back, as moss commandeers the forest floor, as nature reclaims its kin.

“You at least need to eat. Turn on some lights, open windows.”

Sasuke stares at nothing, everything, and in some terrifying moments, only her.

Pressing her knuckles to her lips as she wanders the old rooms, a tomb of memories laden with the skeletons of furniture, saturated with the kinesthesia of many extinguished lives; swiping fingers across surfaces choked with dust; surreptitiously checking that his pillows are comfortable and that curtains get opened and he eats (which, she notes, he isn’t.)

He refuses to engage and watches her silently — simply living, breathing, feels draining — but not once does he order her to go.

She permits his behavior only until Day 4 — so, not very long at all.

Different, with her hair pulled back behind a cloth band of a cheerful color, carrying a box of haphazardly-packed supplies. They stand on the doorstep mirroring one another’s unease, suspended in a place that’s not quite friendship and now, far from war enemies, but a shade of something encompassing nuances beyond.

“If you insist on living among ghosts,” she says, soft but firm, “let’s at least make this all more hospitable.”

Perhaps she notices the way his eyes soften, though he still has trouble facing her head-on. Too bright, earnest, willing to forgive.

I didn't ask you to love me.

Voicing none of this, he instead raises an eyebrow at the box.

“Seems to be more than soap in there.”

A sliver of a moment in which she meets his charcoal eyes — it’s enough to dim the summer sun, melt his bones. Burn down the world.

It cannot be, and here, now, the premonition intuited but not understood in boyhood: Anyone entangled with him will perish.

Together they could catch fire.

Briskly, to distract from her blush, she readjusts the box in her arms.

“There’s food in here, too. And gloves for all four of us, though I’m sure Naruto’ll forgo them.”

“Us?”

“He’s wanted to see you, and we can’t do this on our own.” A pause before she forges ahead, words skipping and speeding up, gathering courage, avoiding his interjections. “I can order them to the yards and common areas, if you’d rather they don’t touch your things. I understand.”

“You don’t need to do any of this,” he says quietly.

The way her eyes sharpen, albeit glimmering with tears, makes Sasuke feel as though he’s losing his control on the little shred of it he might have had.

“We are always a team. And you and I — we can be one too! I know I can’t save you, fix you. But,” she sniffles, voice in vibrato, “we can at least be something.”

He eases the box from her hands, turning his back on her expression of surprise, of wariness. It’s the first time he’s implied she can come in, rather than her opening the door to his makeshift tomb.

Down a hallway, dim and chilled, she follows close behind. The wisps of socks on cold floors, the only sound in silence.

She reaches out.

He tenses, but like so many times under her touch he relents. Lets her fingers weave into the material of his shirt and hold him in place.

If he didn’t feel her, the misty quality of her voice could be calling from another planet.

“I know you believe you deserve this. To be among these ghosts, these dead spirits, as penance. And if that’s what you want, I suppose I can’t stop you. I never could.”

A tether. If she releases him, he has no doubt he’ll absolutely drown.

“But if they come for you, Sasuke-kun, make it hard for you to breathe . . . I’m here, okay?”

He stifles a noise, a growl and a sob and a sigh. Tries to stop her from sinking into him further, becoming sewn to the tapestry of his cursed history. “Sakura—”

But she is his, as she’s always been,

and she is fierce.

(And they end, begin again, forever something old and something new.)

“I’ll protect you.”

#SSBlankPeriod2021 #SSBPDay4 #sasusaku #psalloacappella:SSBP

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wolf08 · 4 years

Text

Igniting the Fuse

A fic for @zutaraweek

Summary: Zuko can’t stand Katara’s obvious contempt towards him. Determined to fix their relationship, he asks Aang and Sokka for help, who, in turn, devise a series of team building exercises with the intention of sparking friendship between the water bender and the banished Prince. They hadn’t anticipated sparking something more. Pre- (and post-) Southern Raiders. Zutara.

Available on A03 and FanFiction.net.

Prompt: Loosely inspired by the prompt “Fuse” (Zutara Week 2020) Genre: Romance/Humour Words: 4293 Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender or any of its characters.

A/N: Hi! Please accept my humble offering to the ATLA fandom for Zutara week. :) I’ve only ever written fics for the Naruto verse, but I just finished ATLA last month and have been fangirling about Zutara and the Gaang dynamics ever since. When I learned that Zutara week was just around the corner, I just knew I had to write something. Enjoy. :)

***

Igniting the Fuse

Now that he was part of the group of vagabond do-gooders (who he used to think were his sworn enemies), Zuko felt a sense of contentment and purpose like he’d never felt before.

It had been an excruciating uphill battle filled with awkward encounters and blows exchanged to finally convince them that he was on their side. But he’d persevered because Zuko just knew he was destined to be here, with them, to support their quest of defeating his father.

Thankfully, in the end, they accepted him.

Well, all except for the water bender, that is.

Katara, the last water bender from the Southern Water Tribe, who had the biggest heart and kindest smile that Zuko had ever seen, utterly despised him.

She made no effort to hide this fact, with how she always sat as far away from him as possible, sneered at his (attempted) jokes, and ignored him point-blank whenever he spoke.

As the Fire Nation’s banished Prince with a prominent scar on his face marking him as such, Zuko wasn’t unfamiliar with this type of treatment. But what made it different with Katara was that (a) she was avoiding him out of pure dislike – not fear (hell, he’d faced her in combat before and knew she could hold her own against him), and (b) it was Katara.

Why did it have to be her who hated him, of all people? She was level-headed, compassionate, and strong, in other words, she was an embodiment of everything that Zuko wished he himself could be.

And, not to mention, she was rather easy on the eyes and nice to be in the presence of (though, of course, Zuko would never dare admit this out loud).

Perhaps the worst part of all of this was that Zuko knew her hatred was justified. After she’d let her guard down in the catacombs of Ba Sing Se by confiding in him and offering to use her few drops of sacred water to heal Zuko’s scar (a gesture that Zuko would never ever forget), Zuko had responded by siding with her enemy and trying to kill her.

So, yeah, Katara had every right not to trust him ever again.

But that didn’t mean Zuko wasn’t going to give it his best shot anyways. After all, he was a changed man now. He was determined to reconcile for his sins. Earning Katara’s trust wasn’t just something he wanted – it was something he needed to fulfill his personal quest for redemption.

Not that Zuko had a clue where to begin.

After numerous fruitless attempts to force an interaction with her around camp like some school boy trying to get a girl’s attention, Zuko realized he needed help fixing his relationship with Katara.

He cast a wistful glance at Katara’s tent before turning towards the sea, where Aang and Sokka were currently fishing.

Zuko sighed and ran a hand through his shaggy, black hair. Despite being a little weird, Aang and Sokka were the most helpful sources of information around, with one of them being Katara’s brother and the other being, well, the Avatar. So he slipped off his shoes, hiked up his pants, and waded out to meet them.

Their fishing tactics were a rather theatrical sight, with Anng literally blowing fish out of the water with some air bending technique and Sokka spearing them as they flung into the air.

Zuko cleared his throat.

Aang, who was wearing nothing but his orange underpants, beamed at the sight of him. “Zuko! Have you come to help us fish?” he asked. “It’s not really my thing, but Sokka needed a hand.”

Zuko shook his head, folded his arms, and proceeded to explain his dilemma. The other boys listened attentively.

“Have you tried being, well, nice to her?” Sokka asked with raised eyebrows. “Katara likes everyone. It shouldn’t be that hard to get on her good side.”

Zuko rolled his eyes. “Of course I’ve tried being nice! But I guess I just suck at it.”

After a moment of deep thought, Aang’s eyes lit up. “I’ve got it!” he said, clapping his hands together. “We’ll do team building exercises to foster trust. When Katara sees that you can trust each other, I’m sure she’ll like you more.”

But Zuko wasn’t entirely convinced. “This isn’t Air Temple preschool, you know,” he grumbled.

“No, no, I think Aang’s onto something here,” Sokka said with a smirk. “No offense dude, but your social skills suck. Structured ice-breakers are exactly what you need.”

“What? My social skills don’t suck!” Zuko shot back, but Sokka just shook his head, still smirking.

Then, in a deep, mocking tone, Sokka said, “Hello! Zuko here. I sent an assassin after you. Can we be friends?”

Aang covered his mouth to stifle a laugh.

Zuko’s eyebrow twitched, his face burning. “Okay, fine. Let’s try your stupid team building then.”

“Great!” said Aang. “Let’s start after lunch. We’ll handle everything Zuko, so don’t you worry about a thing.”

***

In an effort to gain Katara’s support for their day of team building, Aang and Sokka selected an activity that she was sure to enjoy for the first exercise: surfing lessons – an activity that was, quite literally, right in Katara’s element.

It wasn’t a bad idea, Zuko admitted and side-eyeing Katara’s enthusiastic response to Aang’s proposal of the activity. Her blue eyes were brighter than he’d ever seen them.

Shortly after, the four of them, with the additions of Toph and Suki, were gathered around the shore, with the girls in their swimming attire (cropped shirts and shorts for all but Katara, who wore a white skirt overtop) and the boys in their shorts. Then, Sokka explained that there would be no surf boards.

“No surf boards? How’s that supposed to work for surfing?” Toph asked, voicing Zuko’s concerns.

Katara stood, a smile on her face. “I’ll bend the water to make you float – you’ve just got to balance,” she said. Toph raised her eyebrows and crinkled her nose and Zuko made every effort to refrain from making the same face.

The water bender proceeded to demonstrate. With her feet pressed to the rolling waves as if she were on a solid surface, she jumped and glided in a shower of water droplets, her arms outstretched, like she was sliding through snow or sand. In a way, it looked like she was dancing, Zuko observed, and he wondered if he could really do that too, so effortlessly.

The demonstration came to the end and Katara approached the group. “All right – who’s first?” she asked cheerily, while wringing water from her thick, brown hair.

Zuko avoided eye contact.

“I’ll go!” Suki beamed and hopping to her feet.

And said Kyoshi warrior, despite not being a water bender, made it look rather easy too, in Zuko’s opinion, his confidence boosting ever so slightly. Suki jumped and twirled on the water, laughing the entire time, clearly having a blast. Sokka wolf whistled as Suki neared the shore at the end of her turn. She met his eyes and blushed before leaping into his arms with a big smile.

Zuko watched the interaction from the corner of his eye and wondered if he could ever get Katara to feel that comfortable around him.

Yeah right.

Aang went next and he glided over the water with ease (though it was hard to tell if he was truly surfing or floating over the waves with air bending). Even Toph took a short turn, despite her obvious discomfort over being parted with solid ground.

“Zuko’s turn!” Aang exclaimed after everyone had gone, like he was afraid Katara would forget about him.

Zuko caught her gaze and was met with an icy stare. More like she doesn’t want me to have a turn.

He got to his feet and sloshed through the shallow water before turning to the group in anticipation.

With mixed emotions, he noticed that Katara was smiling at him now, her eyes bright once more. What’s with the sudden mood change? he wondered while returning the smile with much hesitation.

Then Katara raised her arms and he was off.

“Whoa!” he gasped, arms outstretched for balance, while the water carried him upwards and backwards, towards the sea. He pivoted and widened his stance for stability, while he adjusted to the strange sensation of a rapidly rolling current against his bare feet, and his total loss of control over where he was going.

Despite this, before long, Zuko began to relax, leaning into the waves’ winding motions, feeling a thrill with each dip and jump, as he climbed higher and higher and farther out to sea.

And then – SPLOOSH!

Like a rug being tugged from beneath his feet, the water supporting Zuko vanished, falling back to the sea – along with said fire bender.

He fell into the water in a rather undignified manner, limbs flailing. When he came up for air, spluttering, to his displeasure, just about everyone was doubled-over laughing.

Zuko gritted his teeth as he swam towards shore, glaring at the mischievous water bender.

“Oops,” she said with a shrug, though she didn’t look the least bit sorry.

Well that was a flop… literally, Zuko thought with a grimace as he trudged along the beach and shook water from his soaked hair.

Aang had the decency to try to look apologetic though tears were streaming down his face.

***

“The next activity better not end like that,” Zuko hissed when the boys regrouped. “How about we try something where she has to trust me this time? Because clearly the other way around doesn’t work.”

“Hm. Maybe you can teach everyone something. What are you good at Zuko?” Sokka asked.

“Fire bending.”

“Well, you can’t exactly teach everyone fire bending.”

“Oh, I know!” Aang piped up. “Zuko isn’t a bad dancer. He nailed the Dancing Dragon formation.”

Zuko dismissed the suggestion immediately. “That wasn’t a dance! And you’re out of your mind if you think I’d ever teach dancing lessons.”

A moment of silence passed while all three boys contemplated their next move.

“It’s probably best if I don’t hire another assassin and like… save her from it. Right?”

“Yes, Zuko. Best we table that idea.”

***

Zuko felt a little more confident about the second activity that Aang and Sokka planned for the group.

“We’re going rock climbing!” Aang exclaimed and gesturing to the ropes and makeshift pulleys he and Sokka had fastened to the cliff side earlier. For the most part, in Zuko’s opinion, this activity far exceeded the last because he and Katara would be on relatively even footing as far as their bending was concerned.

“Everybody partner up!” Sokka instructed. “I call working with Suki!”

“And I call Toph!” Aang shouted, which garnered suspicious looks from both Toph and Katara. “I thought we could work on our teamwork?” he added to the earth bender sheepishly.

Toph smirked. “Whatever you say, Twinkletoes. Gosh, I’m popular, huh?”

Through narrowed eyes, Katara directed her attention to the person she was evidently stuck with.

Zuko tried his hardest to seem friendly, though he was suddenly uncharacteristically nervous. “You can go first, if you want,” he offered.

Katara lifted an eyebrow. After a moment, she said, “All right then,” and turned towards the cliff, her braided hair flipping over her shoulder as she did.

The rock climbing ensued, with Toph practically flying up the wall while she bended parts of the cliff side to jut out like stairs. Momo was doing quite well himself from a little further down, not even holding onto the rope, though Appa dutifully spotted him anyways.

Despite not having any distinct advantages, Suki flourished in this activity too, scaling the wall like a ninja. “Atta girl, Suki!” Sokka cheered on from below. She responded with a glowing smile at her rock climbing partner.

Zuko turned his attention to his own rock climbing partner, who was faring well, though not quite as well as the other climbers. Her movements were a little clumsy and she clung to the rope and handholds like her life depended on it. After all, with each step she climbed, the water bender ventured farther away from the comfort of the sea behind them.

There was no way Zuko would let her fall though, considering the death grip he had on her rope. He needed to prove he was the most trustworthy rock climbing partner she could ever have.

Taking a page out of Sokka’s book, Zuko decided to egg his partner on. “You’re doing great!” he called.

Unfortunately, his comment prompted an icy glare. “Are you mocking me?” Katara snapped, as she freed her blue sleeve from a protruding twig that had snagged it.

“No...,” Zuko snarled through gritted teeth.

This is impossible! I can’t even compliment Katara without her getting mad!

She proceeded to climb in silence without sparing him a glance, and Zuko couldn’t think of what to say, so he just sighed and frowned in her general direction.

How on earth was this activity supposed to bring them closer together now?

She’s probably clinging to the rope for dear life because she doesn’t trust me to stop her from falling, Zuko thought with a scowl.

But then he was struck with a brilliant (and morally questionable) idea.

What if Katara’s rope were severed… for some reason… and Zuko caught her?

Now, Zuko was no expert, but saving someone from falling seemed like the ultimate gesture of trust if you asked him.

Surely Aang and Sokka would disprove if Zuko deliberately severed Katara’s rope, but she was maybe only twenty feet up – so surely, even if she did fall, she’d survive.

Before Zuko had properly thought through his plan, he’d sent a barely discernible fireball – no more than a small collection of sparks – up the cliff side. It went undetected by the others, who were focused on their rock climbing tasks.

With the softest of hisses, the fire made contact with the rope about ten feet above Katara’s head. The rope began to fray immediately but no one seemed to notice. Until –

“Whoa!” Katara exclaimed as the rope started to give. She clawed for the nearest handhold and gripped it firmly while looking around with wide eyes.

Now, Zuko thought, dropping the rope and racing towards the cliff.

By now the others were catching on to Katara’s predicament.

“Oh no, careful Katara!” called Aang.

“Hold on!” cried Suki.

“Just drop!” Zuko shouted from below, his arms outstretched. “Don’t worry – I’ll catch you!”

Katara peered down at him, like she was mentally calculating the risk of doing what he asked. When she met his eye, Zuko felt a swell of anticipation for a reason he couldn’t quite place.

Then, something determined entered Katara’s eyes and she directed her gaze beyond him, towards the sea.

The rope snapped and Katara began to fall.

Zuko braced himself for the impact, his arms at the ready.

I won’t let you down!

And then – WHOOSH!

Zuko faced an impact but it wasn’t the one he was expecting.

An aggressive current of water slammed straight into Zuko’s legs, knocking him off his feet.

“What?” he gasped as he lost his footing, toppled sideways, and fell to his back. Spluttering, he watched in disbelief as Katara bended a neat stream of water through the air, stepped into it, and directed it towards the ground to safety. She landed beside Zuko with a splash – soaking him from head to toe.

Katara straightened up and regained her composure, brushing off the front of her blue dress, as the water drifted back out to sea.

She turned to Zuko like she was just noticing him for the first time. “Oh!” she said while extending her hand. “You okay down there?” she asked, eyebrows raised and the slightest mischievous glint in her eye.

Zuko accepted her offer to help him up, but didn’t have it in him to celebrate the kind gesture – he was far too embarrassed and couldn’t meet her eye.

As soon as he was on his feet, he retreated and stomped away. “I’m fine,” he growled while shaking water out of his hair for the second time that day.

***

“The next team building exercise will be different. We’ll use our words this time,” Aang decided during a brief rendezvous with Sokka and Zuko.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Zuko asked, eyebrow raised.

“You’ll see – I’ve got a plan. Just make sure you’re sitting beside Katara when we gather round the campfire after dinner. Trust me.” He patted Zuko’s shoulder and flashed him what he probably thought was a reassuring smile, but given their track record with team building exercises thus far, Zuko didn’t feel so confident.

“Fine,” he said anyways because he didn’t have anything to lose.

***

True to his word, after the sun had set, bellies were full, and Aang had summoned everyone to the campfire, Zuko claimed the spot beside Katara, even though he had to wrestle Toph in the process of squeezing in between them.

Katara gave Zuko a weird look and motioned to get up.

He grabbed her sleeve. “Wait – stay here,” he said before he could think better of it (and immediately regretting the motion).

She startled and opened her mouth to respond, but thankfully, Aang chose that moment to command everyone’s attention and start the activity. Zuko released a breath.

It turned out the activity was rather simple. Each person was required to share a compliment about the person on their right – and once everyone had a turn, they were to repeat the exercise in the other direction.

Zuko was skeptical about the cheesy activity having any effect on his relationship with Katara but he figured he might as well try.

He frowned and glanced at Katara, who was on his right, noticing the firelight dancing in her blue eyes. He would have to share a compliment with her first.

I’ve got one shot so I need to think of something good, Zuko mused while absently bending the flames from the campfire into little loops.

His first thought was to comment on her water bending, which was quite good as far as he’d seen. But would that just remind her of the times she’d used her water bending against him?

Then what could he say about her to get her to like him?

It was Sokka’s turn to pay a compliment to Suki.

He turned to the brunette Kyoshi warrior with a wide smile and an arched eyebrow, and said, smoothly, “Suki, you are as radiant as the sunset.”

Suki’s face lit up and her lips curved into a shy smile. “Oh, Sokka,” she sighed and shoving his arm lightly, in a friendly, teasing manner.

That’s it! That’s the reaction I want from Katara, Zuko thought, his chest tightening at the very prospect of it, but would complimenting her physical appearance have that effect on her? He wasn’t sure.

By the time Zuko tuned back in to the activity, Aang was telling Toph that she was the most terrifying girl he’d ever met.

Zuko watched the exchange in anticipation for surely the earth bender would take offense to the remark. But instead, she punched Aang’s arm and beamed. “Thanks, Twinkletoes!”

Would Katara want to be called terrifying? Honestly, Zuko thought she was the farthest thing from terrifying (unless she was really angry). No, Azula was terrifying. And Katara was… well, not like Azula.

Toph turned to Zuko next, gazing up at him with a cheeky smile. “Oh, this is easy. Thanks for the entertainment in the water today. I haven’t laughed that hard in weeks!”

Zuko bristled with anger for a moment, but when he realized everyone was chuckling, and he remembered that he would much rather them find him funny than evil, he swallowed his pride and smiled. “You’re welcome,” he mumbled.

“Okay, Zuko’s turn!” Aang prompted, and then, suddenly, everyone was starting at him expectantly.

Zuko swallowed. “Okay,” he said before turning towards Katara, whose arms were folded and was watching him from the corner of her eye.

Here goes, Zuko thought. He said the first thing that popped into his head, inspired by Sokka’s earlier success.

“You’re… as beautiful as the… ocean?”

Now, Zuko wasn’t sure what reaction he was expecting, but, strangely, no one seemed to react at all. In fact, the entire group was eerily silent, their eyes trained on him, including Katara’s.

Suddenly, Zuko felt nervous. I did something wrong, didn’t I?

He turned towards Sokka for support, but only then, to Zuko’s horror, did he notice that Sokka and Suki’s hands were clasped together.

Is Suki his… girlfriend?

That hadn’t occurred to Zuko, honestly. He’d dismissed the idea because surely Suki was too good for the guy.

But maybe he was wrong. Maybe they were so close because they were dating. And maybe, by mimicking Sokka’s behaviour, Zuko had inadvertently suggested that he wanted to date Katara.

He felt his face heat up.

I could use some of Uncle’s calming tea right about now.

Then, Katara was on her feet. She avoided eye-contact when she growled, “Really? Don’t have anything to say about my abilities, do you? I’m just some damsel in distress to you, huh?”

And then she stormed off, effectively ending the team building exercise. Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

I should have just called her terrifying.

He followed her.

***

Katara was perched on a rock near the ledge of the cliff, overlooking the sea and star-sprinkled night sky. She was hugging her knees and her shoulders were slumped.

Zuko approached with caution. “Hi,” he said when he was within earshot.

Katara glanced at him and turned away quickly.

He sighed.

Why do I suck at everything?

“Um, let me try the compliment thing again,” Zuko mumbled, not sure how much Katara was paying attention to him but going for it anyways. “My uncle taught me how to control lightning using the principles of water bending. I never really thought about water bending much, but since then, and since I saw what you can do, now I appreciate it more. It’s a… beautiful ability. And it’s strong. Like you.

“And that’s… what I’m trying to say.”

Katara glanced at him again, and to his relief, there was something kinder in her eyes.

This encouraged him to continue. “And I’m sorry for everything I did before. Please tell me how to make it up to you because I’m trying but I don’t know what I’m doing.”

After a moment, Katara’s lips curled into the smallest of smiles. She turned towards the sea. “You could reconquer Ba Sing Se in the name of the Earth King. Or bring my mother back,” she said sadly with a humourless chuckle, like what she was proposing was ridiculous. She buried her face into her knees.

Later that evening, after a brief consultation with Sokka about the story of his mother’s death, Zuko made plans for what would end up being the most effective team building exercise yet.

***

Many days later, Zuko found himself standing on a dock overlooking the ocean and a sunset painting the sky a glowing medley of pinks and oranges.

He had just returned to camp after a long trek with Katara to track down her mother’s killer, with the intention of executing revenge, but Katara ended up sparing him in the end – while still finding the closure she needed.

Zuko had learned more about Katara’s motivations and abilities on the trip, including her impressive repertoire of water bending feats.

To put it frankly, Zuko had no shortage of compliments to give her if they ever played that campfire circle game again.

And now that he understood Katara better he was filled with hope that maybe, just maybe, she didn’t hate him anymore. Though he wasn’t completely sure.

Katara was sitting at the end of the dock with her toes dipped in the water. Aang was beside her and speaking about the importance of forgiveness.

She got to her feet and faced the two of them. “Thanks Aang, but I didn’t forgive him. I’ll never forgive him.”

And then she turned towards Zuko, a smile blossoming on her face. Zuko’s breath caught in his throat.

“But you,” she said and drawing closer, “I am willing to forgive.”

Before he knew quite what was happening, Katara pulled him into a tight hug. Zuko was startled at first – hardly able to believe what was happening.

I did it! he thought in awe, thinking back to how envious he had been of Suki jumping into Sokka’s arms on the beach.

He smiled in spite of himself and returned the hug with equal enthusiasm, his heart racing.

But then, abruptly, Katara retreated. She stared at Zuko from a short distance away, looking positively radiant in the light of the sunset. A strange expression crossed her features. Embarrassment? Anxiousness? Zuko wasn’t sure. But then –

“I’m not flirting or anything, you know,” she said.

Not… what?

Katara seemed to remember that her hands were still on Zuko’s shoulders and pulled them back quickly. “I forgive you and that’s – that’s it!”

Zuko was still processing her words when she scurried past him, down the dock.

He gaped at her retreating form. “What was that about?” he asked.

Aang, who had been hanging back from the exchange, approached. One of his eyebrows was distinctly twitching. “Well, after the team building exercise around the campfire, everyone thinks that you… well, you know.”

Oh.

Zuko put his head in his hands, face burning. Something told him he was going to need a lot of help, and maybe even a new round of team building exercises, to figure out this new development in his and Katara’s relationship.

#zutara week 2020 #zutara week #zutara #zutara fanfiction #atla fanfic #zuko #atla #wolf08fic #my first atla fic #loved every second writing this

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palbabor-writes · 3 years

Note

Hi, I saw that you accept requests for characters from Naruto. What about the language of love in which they show love you. For Naruto and / or Sasuke ( over 18 years) SFW or NSFW whatever you want.

hello there! eee! my first Naruto ask ٩(｡•́‿•̀｡)۶

i’m really digging all of these love language asks btw!

I always like to split these into the beginning stages of a relationship and move to something you might see as the relationship develops further. It just makes sense to me that people look out for one love language when they’re courting/getting to know you, but when you can peek past their barriers, you’re often shown another, deeper, language that’s more representative of what they need or crave.

For example: someone’s love language might be quality time, but that doesn’t mean they want to spend those precious moments with everyone they run into. no, i think they’d rather save that for the those they love/cherish, above all else.

warnings: none, just gooey ninja boys

Naruto

Alright! Everyone’s favorite hyperactive, knuckle head ninja!

I’d say the love language you see him exhibit to all, be they friend or love interest, is: Words of Affirmation

We’re shown this pretty much from the get-go of the series

He’s been ignored for so long that there’s a deep part of him that is very much into hearing words of praise

Tell him that he’s doing a good job, that you appreciate all of his hard work and dedication, or that move he just made was way impressive

Hearing that will certainly spark something nice and warm within him & I think he’ll do his upmost to give that support back to you

He loves cheering others on & that’s how he shows his care and support

If you give him that affirmation then I think that is the biggest thing that will catch his eye & make not only his heart swell with pride, excitement, and, finally, love

This being said, I do think it’s more of a stepping stone to his actual love language which is: Quality Time

Because Naruto, at his core, is someone who understands what it’s like to be lonely, and has been so for most of his formative years, I think he’ll actively seek out a partner who will ease that lingering ache that’s still within him

Sure, he’s got the support of the village behind him now, but he’ll always, always want to spend time-real, deep, quality time with those that he loves

So, once he’s entered into a relationship with you he’ll make sure that there’s part of his day that’s blocked out, just for you and him

Even if it’s something short!

Like taking you out to lunch, hitting up the training fields for a good natured sparring match, watching movies or playing games at home, or just sitting in the same room while the two of you work on individual tasks, your legs entwined as you sit on the couch or knees knocking while sitting at the ramen bar, Naruto will make sure that you know just how much he loves and needs his time with you

Sasuke

Oh boy, this man. I feel like people have gone from liking, hating him, to loving him now. This man’s growth is wild. ANYWAY

He’s gonna be a hard egg to crack, so good luck!

But if you’re starting somewhere I’d go with: Acts of Service

I say this because the others just feel like they’d be ignored, from the get

However, I do think he’d like to see action, rather than lip service from someone

He likes those who are constantly persevering and being at their best

If you’re useful, on any level to him, I think he might just start to give you a second glance

Now, that doesn’t mean he wants you bowing and scraping - he’s seen plenty of others who do that & I think he’d consider that form of sucking up juvenile at best and distasteful at worst

Acts of Service is more about freeing up time & making the world a little easier for those that you love

So ask him if he wants a sparing partner, pre-file some of his mission paperwork, help him with the little things & be that quiet assist that lets everything gel just right for him

When things get a little more intimate between the two of you I think you’ll see a pretty sudden shift in his behavior

While this might not shine through in public, ever, I think this man would be a touched starved fiend in private

Hence why his real love language is: Touch

Again, don’t expect him to cling, or hold your hand when you’re out and about, but I do think he’ll stick close by - just the nearness of your presence is enough for him

Later, when it’s he two of you, he’ll likely start with little brushes

A touch will pass across the back of your hand, or he’ll smooth some hair from your brow

It won’t come with fanfare, or any real warning

He’ll just start caressing you and pulling you to him, suddenly desperate to feel your skin against his

And once he’s comfortable and safely tucked away, I don’t think he’ll like letting you go

ofc, when you part ways if he touches the tips of his fingers to your forehead then you’re in this for real, for real

notes: so, how did we like this?

i’ve already got another love language examination in the works for the characters for jjk! ugh, i love these sm :3c

#asks #answered asks #pal muses #on naruto #sorry you had see naruto on your dash #but i liked it #naruto uzumaki #uzumaki naruto #sasuke uchiha #uchiha sasuke #love language #headcannon #headcannons #cuties #both of them

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sakura-blossom28 · 4 years

Text

Modern Day Romance

Chapter 1

So I gave up on my other Gaara x Sakura fanfiction lol but it just made me sad to write. So I’m writing this one and hopefully, it’ll be a little bit more upbeat since I myself and doing better. I put a lot of myself into this, but I also want to make the best situations for the characters and hope I’ll be in a good relationship one day too! Just trying to speak into the universe through writing and getting my feelings out there as well cause it has been rough the last few months. Thought I was doing better but life always has other plans!

Obviously, this is a modern au, but no COVID in this world cause I don’t want it! lol please let me know what you think! Also planning on the next chapter to be Gaara’s perspective to change up my writing style!

I do not own Naruto!

...

No. No. Too short. Too far away. Swipe, swipe, swipe.

Sakura laid in her bed looking at the eligible bleachers that were in a 20 mile radius. The internet had turned into her only means of dating in the last few years. Having finished her master’s in nursing while working on top of that with her mentor, she finally was ready for a serious relationship. It was harder than she initially thought.

With the start of summer right around the corner, Sakura was finally ready to get back out there. She got out of a very serious one-sided relationship back in the winter, right as she was finishing school, that left her devastated beyond repair, or so she thought, but she pushed through and devoted herself to finishing with top marks. It took a lot of time to get over her ex, but it was worth it. All those endless nights of crying over her textbooks allowed her to do some real digging and showed her that the person she loved with her whole heart was in fact, not good enough for her.

It was strange getting over someone you thought you loved. For Sakura, it was easy getting over him but the hard part was that she lost her friends in the process. They had chosen him over her, and it was finally obvious. That’s what was killing Sakura at the moment.

Earlier that day was Sakura’s day off in what felt like forever. She was so excited to finally be able to spend time with her friends that she woke up early to be able to make plans with them. Sakura text Hinata and TenTen first because she knew Naruto wouldn’t answer and she never really was that close to Neji. She had a beach day in mind, she was so pale compared to everyone else she saw because she was always at work or in trying to get some studying in.

It didn’t take too long to get an answer from Hinata, but unfortunately, both girls were busy that day and wouldn’t be able to see her. Bummed by the news Sakura crawled back into bed not sure what she would do now. The beach wasn’t worth driving all the way there to pay for just herself. She decided to lay in bed for a little while longer hoping that she could think of something fun to do by herself.

When Sakura awoke she lazily was scrolling through her social media accounts and saw something that made her heart drop into her stomach. There on Hinata’s story was her and everyone else already at the beach. Everyone was smiling and having a good time from what it seemed. Sakura even noticed a new girl with red hair and glasses that she had never seen before. Then next to the girl was him.

Sakura made sure after the breakup that she muted everything on social media to help her heal. She also made a strict rule to never look at any of his profiles because it would just upset her more. Their relationship was over and there was no going back. She was getting better. The sight of his name liking things on Naruto’s page didn’t upset her so much anymore, which was a big sign of progress to Sakura. In all honesty, Sakura felt okay seeing his face and seeing this new girl that he was clearly with. She was more upset with her friends. Sure they had been there for her when they first broke up, but this wasn’t the first time that Sakura knew they were all hanging out and didn’t attempt to invite her.

They chose him. Time to let them go, the voice in her mind said.

This old habit had come back to her within the last year. A sign to Sakura about how unhappy she was with Sasuke because that voice always tried to warn her about the red flags, but Sakura was too stubborn to listen. Now it seemed that voice was the only person she talked to anymore.

Why are they doing this? I thought we all could have gotten along once in a while. Didn’t he say I should still be friends with them?

Clearly, they don’t think the same way. You knew your friendship with them had an expiration date. They’re hurting you. We don’t let people do that anymore remember?

Sakura weeded through a lot of unhappy thoughts to get where she was today. She made a lot of promises to herself to be stronger than she used to be. Somehow she lost a sense of herself along the way and she would never sacrifice that again no matter who it was, friend or partner.

She closed the app and went to text her best friend Ino. They were so close and could tell each other everything, but Ino moved away to the city a few years ago and was living life to the fullest in Sakura’s eyes. She had only met Sasuke once and Sakura didn’t reach out when they broke up anyway. Ino just seemed so busy to Sakura that she didn’t want to bother her. She could really use a friend right now.

It seemed like every person she thought of was in a relationship besides herself. Why was dating so hard for her? Everyone else was clearly doing something she wasn’t. She never even had a relationship that lasted longer than 6 months. She couldn’t even go out and meet someone at a bar because now she had no friends to go out with, not that Hinata and TenTen would have gone with her anyway. All their comforting words came back to her when she first got dumped, was it all a lie?

Sakura was the type of person to say something and mean it. If she said she’d help then she would even if it was months down the line, she would always keep her word. Hinata and TenTen promised they would still be friends and hang out, but that only happened once. A few messages now and again, but Sakura definitely felt a weird shift with Hinata one day. It had been months after the breakup and Sakura was having a bad day and tried to talk to her about it, but at the mention of Sasuke and how upset he used to make Sakura because he ignored her all the time, Hinata clammed up and almost refused to believe Sasuke would have done something like that. From that day on, Sakura never brought him up again.

Jumping out of bed, Sakura was already tired of feeling bad for herself. Anger always helped her move forward. If they couldn’t be fair and hang out with both of them, then fine, she would find new friends! No one was ever going to waste her time again! She got herself ready for a day devoted to things that made her happy.

The men in her area left a lot to be desired. For some reason, the only guys who seemed to like her were incredibly short. Her not being that tall herself it shouldn’t have bugged her, but with past dates with guys that were short always turned out horrible for her, so she stayed clear. Any decent guy that she found always seemed to be just too far away or even out of state which irritated her to no end.

The following weeks were a challenge for Sakura. Matching with a few different guys was exciting, but none seemed too interested in her enough to ask her out and they just ended up ghosting her. Some were a bit more forward in just coming out and saying they were looking for a casual fling. At least these guys had the decency to be outright in what they wanted. Sakura respectfully declined each offer.

Finally, after talking to a nice guy named Zaku, things seemed to be looking up for Sakura. They talked for about two weeks before he finally asked her out. The date was pleasant enough, but Sakura just didn’t feel that spark that she craved. Maybe it’ll get better, she thought, but alas Sakura had no such luck.

A week passed after the date and Zaku made no effort in saying he wanted to see her again. It frustrated Sakura to no end. Here she was giving all the effort once and to have nothing reciprocated. Sure there was no spark, but she thought it was a good change of pace after being totally obsessive over Sasuke. She thought maybe the guy would like her more, but this is exhausting. They ended things amicably, but Sakura felt a bit hurt when he didn’t really give a reaction when she said they should see other people.

Since then no one had really caught her attention. Sure she was matching with guys, but once again they would stop talking to her after a few days. Sakura was about to give up all hope and just accept that love wasn’t meant for her when a guy named Gaara popped up on her scene. Now he typically wasn’t her type, but there was something about him that made her want to look at him more.

He was 5’10”, red hair, and had green eyes that were a very close shade to hers. He seemed to be the polar opposite to her. He mostly wore dark clothing but in a very tasteful way. He definitely had his own style and fashion sense which was really refreshing. Gaara wasn’t smiling in most of his pictures, but the last picture of his profile must have been taken by one of his friends at a party because he was laughing with a guy with big eyebrows who had a funny look on his face. He looked so handsome and attractive to Sakura in that picture that she instantly liked it.

She quickly realized what she had done and checked over her own profile to make sure nothing was too embarrassing on there. She tried to think of some cute answers to put on there and some pictures of her over the years. Nothing was that recent because all the pictures from the last year had been deleted. Looking over the pictures she seemed normal enough, but she was worried that Gaara would think she’s too preppy for him to like her. The only thing that stood out to her was her music taste. She did like a few rock bands, so hopefully that would intrigue him.

Sakura hadn’t felt this much attraction for someone in a long time. She looked over his profile and tried to memorize everything. She didn’t even care if he was out of state. Thankfully he was about a 20 minute drive away from where she lived. The only issue she found with him was that he smoked, but maybe he would be considerate and not smoke around her. One picture was him sitting by a window reading a book as he was surrounded by many potted cacti. Sakura could just picture the rest of the room and imagine the two of them spending time together just relaxing.

Don’t do that to yourself. He didn’t even like you back yet, don’t go imagining things, the voice said.

Sighing, Sakura knew the voice was right. She always got herself into a mess thinking about things before they happened. She knew this bad habit caused a lot of problems for herself when she was in a relationship with someone. She built up this imaginary person in her mind and got upset when they didn’t act that way in real life. On the other hand, it did help her to see that the guys she was dating weren’t a right fit for her because she was imagining the bare minimum of a decent relationship.

She was about to turn off her phone and do something else with her time, but she got a new notification. Gaara has matched with you! See what he said.

With her body moving faster than her mind, she opened the message.

Ch 2

#gaara x sakura #Sakura Haruno #Sabaku No Gaara #modern au #fanfiction #fanfic #naruto #Naruto Uzumaki #Hinata Hyuga #neji hyuga #tenten #Sasuke Uchiha #karin #My writing #gaasaku #dating au #online dating

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mint-yooxgi · 4 years

Text

The Cutest - Jaehyun X Reader

Genre: Fluff, Humour, Slight Crack

Pairing: Jaehyun X Reader

Words: 1,370

Slight Spoiler Alert! - For those who haven’t watch Naruto: Shippuden lol

A/n: On the third day of ficmas, Jackie gave to me~ Just a little idea I had which may or may not be totally self indulgent. Oh well, I hope you like it! As always, feedback is greatly appreciated. Enjoy lovelies~

“Oh my god,” the words escape you in no more than a whisper, an exasperated sigh leaving your lips. You strongly resist the urge to roll your eyes.

Currently, you’re sitting in the living room of your apartment, watching one of your favourite childhood anime. You shake your head in frustration as you hear one of the characters speak.

“Shut up! Just shut up, you angsty teenager,” you practically yell at the screen. “He did this for the sake of the entire village, and because he loves you! Get your head out of your ass and calm down!”

The anime you’re currently screaming at just so happens to be Naruto: Shippuden. You haven’t watched it in a while, but a casual conversation with one of your coworkers about the original series sparked something within you, causing you to rewatch the main episodes leading up to this point right now. The episodes in which the two Uchiha brothers battle it out for the final time.

“I swear, if I could, I’d jump through that screen and kick your stupid ass,” you grumble, taking a sip of water.

“Who’s stupid ass are you kicking?” A separate voice cuts in, managing to pull you out of your own thoughts.

“Sasuke Uchiha,” you reply, eyes barely leaving the screen to flick over to see your boyfriend, Jaehyun, now standing in the corner of the living room closest to the entrance.

He had gotten home only minutes ago to see you sitting on the couch, invested in whatever it is you’re watching. An amused smile tugs at his lips as he moves over to join you on the couch.

“Picking fights with fictional characters now, are we?” He teases, leaning back and relaxing into the couch as he watches you watch the screen.

“Only the angsty, cute, dumbasses,” you reply, not noticing the way Jaehyun’s eyebrow twitches.

“Cute?” He inquires, eyebrow now raised in curiosity.

“Yeah, cute,” you confirm, glancing to him out of the corners of your eyes. “He’s still an asshole though.”

“Geez, (Y/n), if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you have a crush on him,” Jaehyun laughs slightly, but you can tell he doesn’t find this funny at all.

You don’t say anything at first, opting to avoid his gaze as a heat rises to your cheeks, “maybe so.”

“Wait, what?” He huffs, pausing the episode midway through.

“Hey! I was watching that,” you scold, finally turning towards him with a slight frown on your face.

“You can watch it later,” comes his reply.

“Babe,” you whine. “It was just getting to the good part.”

“Too bad,” he says, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he stares you down.

You simply raise an eyebrow at him in response, noticing the way his cheeks puff out slightly as a frown takes over his features.

“Why do you even like him?” He asks.

“Who?” Your brow furrows in confusion. “Sasuke Uchiha?”

“Yeah, if he’s such an ‘angsty asshole,’ why do you even like him in the first place?” Jaehyun quirks a brow at you inquisitively.

Amusement begins shining behind your eyes as you realize what’s going on, a smirk pulling at the corner of your lips, “wait a minute, Jaehyun, are you jealous of a fictional character?”

“Just answer the question,” comes his blunt reply, only causing you to chuckle.

“Well, he wasn’t always this big of an asshole, and considering the amount of trauma he went through as a kid, it can really pull at your heartstrings as a viewer,” you say with a small shrug, going on to add with a slight shrug to your shoulders, “besides, he’s animated really nicely.”

“He’s animated nicely?” His eyebrows raise as his eyes widen, voice filled with disbelief.

“Yeah,” you hum in confirmation. “When I was younger, I never used to like his character. I thought he was too stuck up, cold, and arrogant towards literally everyone else, but I guess that’s just grown on me. I can see the appeal of his character.”

Again, you shrug as if it’s no big deal, taking another sip of your water. You go to continue to episode, until you’re stopped once more by your boyfriend. This time, it’s because you notice him sitting there with a large pout on his face with his arms crossed, leaning deeply into the back of the couch.

Letting out a chuckle, you move over to cup his cheek in your one hand. He looks at you from the corners of his eyes before swiftly grabbing your wrist and pulling you onto his lap so you’re now straddling him. He grips your thighs as he looks up into your eyes.

You can’t help but let out another small laugh as you shake your head in disbelief, bringing your hands up to squish his cheeks affectionately.

“Who would have thought my boyfriend would be so jealous of a fictional character,” you tease, noticing how his pout deepens. “Sasuke Uchiha no less.”

“I’m not jealous,” he says, shaking his head slightly.

“Sure you aren’t, babe,” you grin, shifting slightly to lean down and place a small kiss on his forehead.

“Besides, I have something he can never have,” he goes on to say, causing your eyebrow to quirk in curiosity.

“Oh?” You decide to humour him. ”What’s that?”

“You,” he hums, pulling you down to attach his lips to yours in a brief kiss.

You pull away with a smile, letting your hands fall to rest upon his shoulders.

“That’s right, cause you’re real and he’s not,” you chuckle amusedly. “Besides, you’re the cutest.”

“Hell yeah, I am,” he smirks. “I’m so much better looking than he is, anyways.”

“Whatever you say, babe,” you laugh, patting his shoulder affectionately as you go to move off of his lap. However, Jaehyun has different plans.

“What was that?” He tilts his head slightly, and in the next moment, he has you pinned to the couch.

“I’m just kidding, Jae,” you grin up at him. “You’ll always be my number one.”

“Damn right,” he grins back, leaning in once more to attach his lips to yours.

The kiss is softer than you expect, but appreciated none-the-less. You enjoy the feeling of his lips pressed against your own, the kiss feeling more like a reassurance of your feelings for one another than anything. A fact which you find amusing, considering you wouldn’t trade him for the world, least of all a fictional character.

Pulling away from you once more, he stares into your eyes. You offer him a warm smile, threading your fingers softly through his hair as he returns your smile.

This entire situation is very amusing to you, as you never thought Jaehyun would be one to get jealous over a fictional character. You still can hardly believe it’s happening right now.

“I love you,” his voice pulls you out of your thoughts, him leaning down to gently peck your nose.

“I love you, too,” your smile widens. “Now, will you stop being jealous and let me finish watching this episode?”

“Fine,” he sighs, pushing himself up into a sitting position so he’s no longer hovering overtop of you.

“Thank you,” your voice singsongs, eyes shining with happiness as you move to start up the episode once more.

“I still can’t believe that asshole is your favourite character,” he grumbles, shifting slightly on the couch in order to pull you into his side and wrap his arms around you comfortably.

“I never said he was my favourite character,” you reply. “Hell, he’s not even my favourite Uchiha.”

“Huh?” You can tell your poor boyfriend is confused by your words. The range of emotions he’s gone through in the past ten minutes must be quite something.

“He’s not my favourite character,” you chuckle, “I only said I find him somewhat attractive.”

“What?” You can feel him stiffen slightly against you.

“Yeah, he’s not even the most attractive character in the show,” you confirm.

“Then who is?” He inquires, looking straight ahead at the screen in front of him and avoiding your eyes which are shining in amusement once more.

You simply laugh in response, “wouldn’t you like to know?”

#jaehyun scenarios #nct scenarios #nct 127 scenarios #nct u scenarios #kpop scenario #kpop scenarios #au #kpop au #kpop #kpop fluff #nct fluff #jung jaehyun #nct #nct 127 #nct u #nct scenario #jaehyun scenario

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wlehviosar · 4 years

Text

Her Wish

Konoha graveyard at night is empty. People usually visit before the sunset. Especially in the summer when the ghost story suddenly booming. But it doesn't hinder a kunoichi late-night visit. If ghosts really exist, she can't wait to meet a particular ghost with lavender pale eyes.

"Neji sorry I'm late." Tenten kneels in front of her former teammate. "Can you guess why?"

As if she waited his reply, Tenten pause for a moment while staring at a tomb that craved with his name. "It's Tanabata day. I just finish hanging my wish."

Tenten still remembers her first dearest wish, becomes a fine legendary kunoichi like Tsunade. She was only seven at that time, but the will keep continuing until she gets hit by the harsh reality. It is impossible to become someone like Tsunade if one doesn't have the talent to become one.

She remembers the day she went everywhere trying to do something that Tsunade did. Start from learning medical ninjutsu to visit a gambling site. None of them works. Her last resort is praying, hope that someone or something grants her wish, she wants to be like Tsunade. She wants to have at least one of the legendary sanin famous trait, whatever it is.

When that someone or something finally grants her wish, Tenten regrets her ambiguous prayer. Right now she indeed has a similiarity with her idol, their beloved one died on the battlefield. The worst part, she doesn't even know she loves Neji more than a friend until he has gone. Leaving her without having the chance to confirm her feeling or confess it. And she's willing to do almost everything to make it happen.

"Hey Neji, do you mind if I edo tensei you?" Tenten asked quietly. Edo tensei is her first idea, but she knows Neji would hate her if she killed someone just to bring him back. Not to mention she has to persuade S class criminal, Orochimaru, to do it for her. Or to teach it for her.

"I know, I won't do it." The Konoha graveyard silence once again broke by her voice. "I won't do it but can you visit me once in my dream? I hear you visit Hinata before her wedding day. And you visit Lee too. Why not me?"

Well, maybe his visit related to their marriage. "It impossible for me to get married...At least until I settle everything between us."

She has dates with several men, some from Konoha, some from other villages, her comrades in war. She tried to forget Neji by trying to date others. Who knows her plan backfired. Unconsciously she keeps trying to find Neji in another man. Of course, she always failed miserably and finding herself missing Neji more and more.

Tenten sighs heavily. She misses his cold determined eyes. She misses his fresh wood and mint scent. She misses his unfunny jokes and his irritating nag. She misses their morning practice and sparring even though she lost all the time. She misses having him around. She misses him.

"Even Orihime* get the chance to meet her lover once a year. It's been 5 years but-" Tears and anger obstruct her from finishing her sentence.

Yes, it's been 5 years since the fourth great war end. It's also been 5 years since he left this world. Everyone seems to have no trouble moving on. Neji's cousin, Hinata lived happily with Naruto. Lee started seeing a girl. Ino and sai confirmed dating. Chouji and Shikamaru also getting serious with their fiance from neighboring villages. Only her, Kiba and Shino who doesn't have a fixed partner. Meanwhile, Shino is busy becoming a teacher, Kiba is busy dating many girls. And her? She is busy waiting for the impossible, Neji.

"Stop it. I know what you gonna say." Once again Tenten glaring at his tomb. "You must be itchy to tell me it's not your fault. You didn't ask my heart nor my affection."

Suddenly sounds of fireworks filled the air. The beautiful colorful sparks in the sky reflected in her eyes.

"Neji, can you guess my wish? I give you time until the fireworks show finished."

. . .

"I wish I can meet you. I know my wish is vague and ambiguous like my last wish, but I don't care. Even if it cost my life."

Tenten knows she sounds like a fool. But she is fine being a fool. She just can't help it. If being a fool means she can be with him even for a second, she takes it.

---

Nejiten month 2020 day 10. I know it’s not day 10 anymore but here we go. Hope you enjoy it :)

#nejitenmonth2020 #nejiten #tenten #neji hyūga

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alienbwrites · 3 years

Text

Scintilla (A spark or trace of something)

Capricious (Impulsive; prone to sudden extreme changes in mood)

Once again Hayami was going to be late, she hadn’t meant to be but the lack of sleep these past few days had caught up with her and she missed her alarm. Racing to the academy a quick thought past through that this would be her last time being late. Her pace slowed down a little as a strong feeling of nostalgia hit her. Taking her time she finally reached the window, with a quick knock on the glass, the whole class looked towards her. A small smile on her face Kiba walked over to open the window and help Hayami through. The tired look on Iruka sensei’s face was enough to make the class giggle.

“Again, Furutani” Hayami smiled and placed her hands behind her back.

“I had to for old times sake” with a shake of Iruka’s head Hayami took a seat.

“Goal!” Two shouts came from the door Ino and Sakura made their way into the room and started to fight over who would sit next to Sasuke. Hayami payed them no mind it wasn’t different to any other day, her mind started to drift once again. This time she could she flickers from a raging fire, Hayami drew a quick breath and forced her self back to reality, she turned to Kiba and played with Akamaru.

Hayami had her attention drawn away from the adorable puppy when she saw Naruto crouch in front of Sasuke, with a small roll of her eyes she gave Kiba a nudge as she watched the new found distraction. She could feel the electricity in each of their glares, before the boy sitting at the desk in front of them moved back and nudged Naruto into Sasuke with the boys falling into a kiss. The room became so silent as the tension rose and Hayami was bursting trying not to let out a laugh.

“As of today you have all become full fledge ninjas, however you are all still Genin, from now on you will be in squads of three with one squad being four” the students started to mumble to themselves and each other wondering who would be in their team. Hayami didn’t really have any complaints with who she would be with as long as she could get a long with them. ‘I get along with everyone in class except for maybe Sasuke because he’s on his own all the time and doesn’t really talk, or Naruto just because he is so energetic all the time’ Hayami thought. All of the students were curious as to who would be in the squad of four.

“Now the squad of four is happening because we have one extra person in our class, not to matter though we have evenly distributed everyone. You will carry out missions under the guidance of a Jonin teacher, now ill assign you to your groups” Hayami kept her ear out for her name and watched as people were put together.

“Now for group seven; Hayami Furutani, Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno and Saskue Uchiha” Hayami sighed at the interesting bunch she had been put with. Kiba noticed her dismay and patted her on the back for some comfort.

“Man do I feel bad for you” Hayami looked to Kiba seeing the amused smile on his face.

“Group eight; Hinata Hyuga, Kiba Inuzuka and Shino Aburame”

“Wanna swap teams” Hayami asked him.

“No way” Hayami rested her head on the desk and waited for Iruka to finish dividing the students into their groups. She didn’t have high hopes for her group, Sakura and Hayami didn’t really have a friendship though Hayami didn’t think that the girl would like her because she is obsessed with Sasuke, Sasuke was the last of his clan and kept to himself a lot, maybe Hayami could make some sought of friendship there though it was highly unlikely, and Naruto was a loud mouth. A sigh escaped her mouth. She would have to make this work somehow.

“Iruka Sensei, why does an exceptional student like me have to be grouped up with this guy?” Hayami sighed again her new found hope fastly diminishing,

“Sasuke has the best grades of the class, while you Naruto are at the bottom, this is how it is trying to balance the power of the groups it is also why you are in the group of four” the class started laughing, Hayami started to feel bad for him, no good could come from public humiliation like this. “In the afternoon you will meet with your Jonin teachers, you are all dismissed.”

Walking out of the academy Hayami decided to eat her lunch in her usual spot, in a higam cherry tree, the weeping pink flowers create a nice calming atmosphere which Hayami loved, they reminded her of her home as weeping trees surrounded the area. Hayami had wanted to eat lunch with her new team but they had all ran off before she could suggest it, it didn’t really surprise her she new that Sasuke would be on his own, Sakura would chase after him and Naruto would chase after her. What came as a surprise to Hayami was watching Naruto jump into the window that Sasuke was resting in, the window shut so Hayami could no longer see in, but as expected Sasuke came out victorious. With a huff Hayami packed up her lunch and jumped over to the window, with the intention of freeing Naruto from whatever bind he was in.

“Huh” Sasuke looked towards the intruder, to find Hayami looking at him with such a confused look. He watched as she pointed to him then out the window then back to him. Her eyes went wide with realisation before she bent down to cut the ropes freeing him. “So you aren’t Naruto?” Sasuke looked at the girl with pure offence, huffing a no at her, he noticed that she still had a semi confused look as she was trying to understand the blond boys motivation for tying him up. Hayami knew they hated each other but this was too far. An even deeper confused look came upon her face as Sasuke grabbed her wrist and dragged her out the window behind him, with a short explanation of finding Naruto.

The pair walked together side by side in an awkward silence, Hayami had no idea how to approach the boy in a way that he wouldn’t annoy him. She knew that he liked to be alone but this silence was slowly killing her, she was semi glad when Sakura called out Sasuke’s name

“You’re such a shy bad boy” the awkward tension was thick, “Are you prepared and ready to go” Hayami fell back a few steps and watched a Sasuke ignored the pink haired girl. “Hey Sasuke”

“Where’s Naruto” Hayami speed past the two not wanting to get involved in, whatever this was, it confused her greatly. She came to the realisation that she was going to be in two moods for the rest of her life annoyed and confused.

“Just leave Naruto alone, all he does is pick fights with you, it’s because he wasn’t raised right, you know he doesn’t have parents right” Hayami took a step back next to Sasuke wanting to hear was Sakura was going to say. “He always selfishly does what he wants, my parents would get mad at me if I did anything like he does,” Both Sasuke and Hayami glared at the girl, not that she noticed both other parties getting irritated at her. “No parents to nag you, its just him alone. So his selfishness comes out,” Hayami felt hot, her anger was boiling.

“How dare you!” Hayami stepped forward, both Sasuke and Sakura watching her now, “How dare you say that, when you have no idea what it feels like”

“The loneliness, Its worse then getting yelled at by your parents,” Sasuke added.

“Whats gotten into you two?”

“You are annoying” Sakura looked like she broke, Sasuke started to walk away but stopped as he realised Hayami wasn’t following.

“You need to take a good look at yourself Sakura, see what you have and count yourself lucky. How dare you complain about that sort of thing, at least you get to experience it. I wish everyday that I could be with my family again but I cant because they are gone. Don’t complain about an orphan to two orphans, it makes you pathetic” Hayami tried her hardest to keep her anger at bay but it reached its limit, the loneliness that she had been feeling days prior had mutated into a deep resting anger that had waited to burst. She felt Sasuke grab her wrist and pull her away from the now crying girl. Guilt followed after the anger, as she and Sasuke were walking side by side she got lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t meant to make the girl cry she just lost control of her emotions. At least now the silence between Hayami and Sasuke wasn’t as awkward.

Hayami layed on one of the desks in the class room watching Naruto bounce around the place. Sasuke was set on the desk in front of her and Sakura was leaning against the table to his left. For the eight time Naruto opened the door to the class room and checked to see if out teacher was coming. Hayami had her eyes closed as wathing the brightly dressed boy running around had started to give her a headache,

“Naruto wont you stay still” Sakura nodded along with the suggestion of other girl not that either Hayami or Naruto could see.

“Why is it that only our sensei is late? Everyone else has gone off with their sensei and Iruka Sensei has already left”

“Dont look at me” Hayami moved her arm slightly and opened her eyes has the sound of clattering and watched as Naruto decided to set a ‘trap’ for our sensei.

“What are you doing?” Hayami didn’t think she could handle anymore bickering between the others.

“It will be his fault for being late” ”Man you really are asking for it”

“A Jonin would fall for such a week trap” and now Sasuke has joined in. Hayami took her arm that was sitting over her eyes and placed it laced on her stomache. If her sensei was going to be late, she would take a nap. Or she would have if her team mates weren't so loud. She watched as fingers wrapped around the slightly ajar door, and shock fell onto her face as shot up watching the duster fall onto her supposed sensei’s head. Naruto’s laughter filled the room as did Sakura’s apologies the room fell silent as all for young teens watched their new sensei.

“How can I put this? As for my first impression of you guys? Well I hate you”

Team seven made their way onto the roof and sat in a line waiting instruction.

“Well, first off, why don’t you guys introduce yourself?”

“What should we say?” Hayami picked at her fingernails, she hated introductions, she didn’t like talking about her self, she didn’t like talking in front of other people about herself and she didn’t like talking to strangers about herself.

“Your likes, dislikes, future dreams, hobbies. Things like that?”

“Hey before that why don’t you tell us about yourself?

“Me? Well my name is Kakashi Hatake, I don’t feel like telling you guys about my likes and dislikes, ive never really thought about my future dream, as for my hobbies I have many” Hayami’s eyes sparkled, she didn’t know you could just avoid the quesiton like that, “Next you blondy”

“My name is Naurto Uzumaki, I like instant ramen, but what I like even more is Ichiraku ramen that Iruka sensei buys, what I dislike is the three minutes you have to wait for instant ramen and my hobby is eating and comparing ramen, and my future dream is to surpass the Hokage, and get the entire village to acknowledge me” Well at least Hayami knew what she could get him for his birthday.

“Alright next is pinky”

“Hi, my name is Sakura Haruno, What I mean who I like is…My hobby is…My future dream is” Hayami watched with a mixture of disgust and wonder at the pink haired girl as said girl kept looking at Sasuke for her answers. “And my dislikes Naruto” Hayami’s face fell for the poor boy. Reaching beside her to pat his shoulder.

“Your next brownie”

“uh- Hey, I’m Hayami Furutani, my likes -uh- throwing knives and weeping trees, I dislike the smell of lavender and fire, my hobbies -uh-collecting weapons and my future dream, I guess is just to make my dad proud.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw the concerned glances from Sakura and Sasuke though Sasuke’s only lasted for a second before he went back to his usual aloofness. Though what caught her eye was they knowing look she got from Kakashi Sensei, whether he knew what happened or if he had been through something similar she didn’t know but it gave her a strange comfort.

“And you”

“My name is Sasuke Uchiha, I have no likes in particular but a lot of dislikes, and I don’t have a dream but an ambition, I will restore my clan without fail and to kill a certain man.” Hayami looked to the boy slightly concerned but mostly scared, though the more she thought about it the more she understood. The drive for revenge.

“Good! You all distinctive and interesting” The call of her sensei shook Hayami out of her dark thoughts,

“Tomorrow we have a mission, its a survival exercise,” the excitement from Hayami and her peers dropped, “This is no normal survival exercise,”

“Then what kind of survival exercise is it,” The giggles that came from their sensei creeped Hayami out a lot, concern and worry grew from the pit of her stomach,

“Why are you laughing, what's so funny?”

“Well of the twenty-eight graduates, only three groups will become Genins, the remainders go back to the academy, this ‘exercise’ is actually a test with a 66 percent fail rate or higher” Hayami lost hope.

“Then what was the graduation test for?”

“That was just to test to see who had potential of becoming a Genin, prepare for this bring your ninja tools, we meet at five in the morning,” Hayami was stressed, maybe Kaori was home, he could help her right? Her thoughts were racing, she remembered how proud Kaori was of her. ‘I cant go back now’.

“Oh and its best if you skip breakfast or you will throw up.”

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Part 1

Prev.

Thank you for reading this story your support is greatly appreciated. Feel free to give me any advice or tips x

Sorry also that I don’t update much

feel free to interact with me anytime.

#naruto #naruto fanfiction #naruto imagines #naruto story #x ox #naruto x oc #naruto various #sasuke #Sasuke Uchiha #sasuke x oc #sakura #sakura x oc

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

Text

Fic: Lonely, Dark and Deep - ao3 link - Chapter 8

Fandom: Naruto Pairing: Madara/Tobirama, background others Summary:

Hashirama was always going to have to leave Konoha behind one day, but no one was expecting for it to happen so soon.

Tobirama falls apart without his brother.

Madara, mad and bitter and preparing to leave himself, finds that he’s now without his best friend and responsible for a village he’d just about given up on.

And now it seems like there’s something not quite right with the forest…

———————————————————————————–

"No."

"I'm not sure where you got the impression that you were being given a choice," Touka says dryly. Madara's actually grown moderately fond of her, beserker ‎of a kunoichi that she is, over the last few years, but he's seriously considering whether blowing a fireball at her head would be considered overreacting. Sadly, it probably would. Whether that’s going to stop him is still up in the air. "You were the Nidaime's right hand. You're going on the ballot."

"You can't actually make me be Hokage," Madara says.

"Why not?" Touka asks, merciless as ever. "We made Hashirama do it."

Madara...really doesn't like the sound of that, because if you look at it in a certain light, they did. Not a promising precedent.

"I'm objecting to the fact that there's a ballot at all," he says instead. "We don't even have a body -"

"His students were very clear about the circumstances he was left in - and that was two weeks ago."

"It's Tobirama! If anyone can pull some sort of ridiculous nonsense out of thin air -"

"He had an opportunity to give his life for the village," Touka says, and she doesn't mean to be cruel with it, that's the worst part. He knows that her cousin’s suffering has hurt her as much as it's grown to hurt Madara. "A justified opportunity. You know as well as I do that he would take it."

Madara does. But he's had enough.

Enough of pointless losses, enough of war, shocking as it is to say. ‎They're going to make Kiri pay for this, of course they are, but -

All Madara wants is to get to bury his friend (his almost-something-more) this time.

To mourn properly.

(Not to be the last one of them left standing.)

‎"I'm going to go find his body," he announces.

Touka sighs. "Listen -"

"Put my name on the stupid ballot, I don't care," Madara interrupts. "But I'm going. This isn't like Hashirama, disappearing into nothingness; Tobirama was fighting flesh-and-blood shinobi. Either Kiri left his body behind for sky to bury or they took it back with them. There's even a chance - marginal, I admit, but a chance - that they managed to take him alive. I'm going to make sure that's not what happened."

Touka's frowning, but she seems more inclined to listen.

Good, because Madara's not going to take no for an answer.

"We already have an empty mausoleum for Hashirama," he points out‎. "As you're always observing, twice makes for a tradition. We wouldn't want that."

Touka unwillingly snorts. "Fine," she says. "Go. But mind that you come back. You may be old for a frontliner -"

Madara is not that old!

"- but your name still means something in terms of village defense," she concludes. "Don't let these Kiri bastards write both your names on their wall of trophies or we’ll never hear the end of it."

"I won't," Madara promises.

He leaves the village three hours later, after giving Hikaku - his second, now that Izuna isn't there - notice of his sudden promotion to temporary acting head of the Uchiha clan.

He makes good time. Tobirama's students (they reminded him so much of ducklings, following along behind Tobirama, that he had to remind himself not to call them that to their faces) had given him a pretty good idea of where they'd been when they'd split up, and while Tobirama would have branched off from there, Madara is certain that he can track him.

After all, after all this time spent sparring against Tobirama - and might he say, his respect for Izuna's skills was never higher than when he was fighting the man who was his brother’s opponent - Madara knows what the aftereffects of his jutsus look like better than most.

He forces himself to pace himself on the way, though. As much as he would like this to be a rescue mission, requiring full-bore speed, it's not.

It's just retrieval.

Tobirama’s already gone.

Why is it, he wonders, that every time he starts to admit to himself that he could grow to love someone, they die?

What he has with Tobirama isn’t about the village anymore, not about Hashirama, it's about Tobirama himself - he can admit that, if only to himself, now that Tobirama is gone.

Tobirama is irritating, overly literal and works too much, and Madara had already been missing him like fire even before he’d gotten word that he was gone forever.

But really, Madara’s losses are starting to be too many to count. Izuna, ever a gaping wound, was bad enough, but then he lost Hashirama,‎ too, and now Tobirama as well...is it him? Is he the connecting factor, the bad luck?

Was it Izuna’s ghost come back to snatch away any chance of the new happiness he’d just about nearly convinced himself he could find in the softening of Tobirama’s eyes?

Still, pacing or no pacing, Madara is still who he is. He makes good time and, sure enough, it only takes a day or so to locate what must have been the battle site.

‎The first thing Madara sees is the corpses of Kiri nin piled up and twisted into a defensive wall and he can't help a smile: Tobirama's total disregard for the bodies of the dead never fails to amaze him.

Then he takes a deep breath, fortifying himself, and looks around further.

And that‎ -

That’s when things stop making sense.

He knows these corpses.

Madara never doubted that Tobirama would put up a fight to the end, passively suicidal or not - the man was far too spiteful to do anything less, and really, it's Madara's own fault that he didn't force his clan to make peace earlier because Tobirama and Izuna were two peas in a pod when it came to that. Even less did he doubt that such a fight‎ would have a significant death count, enough to ferry Tobirama to the Pure Lands in style.

But - those were Kinkaku and Ginkaku. Amazingly strong, but ruthless, and cowards to boot: they would have hung back until the very end, letting Tobirama tire ‎himself on their soldiers and moving in to claim the final kill only when his chakra was totally depleted and his body broken.

If they were dead...

Madara casts his eyes across the rest of the battlefield with hope rising like a fire in his belly. These are all of Kiri's strongest, all the ones they devoted to this battle - Kagami had returned with his Mangekyo sparked from Tobirama's loss, and he'd had his Sharingan active the entire battle; he'd given Madara a list of every shinobi on Kiri's side, and this is everyone.

And - and here was what really didn't make sense - their deaths were wrong.

Tobirama had attained mastery over all elements, ridiculous ‎overachiever that he was, but like most shinobi he fell back on his natural affinities when cornered. Water and lightning and sword - those were the signs of Tobirama's fighting, and while there were a good number of those lying around, that wasn't what had killed the majority of the Kiri warriors.

No - what had killed them was wood.

Wood splinters grown through the mouth or the back of the neck to pierce the brain; wooden spears to impale the heart; tree roots wrapped around the throat to strangle...

Madara fought the Mokuton for most of his life. He, more than anyone, knows what a battlefield looks like, after; he knows how to recognize the bodies it leaves behind.

‎But it's impossible.

Hashirama is gone, and for all their mastery or science, neither Tobirama nor Madara has any access to that mysterious Senju bloodline limit.

At least, Madara thought they didn't. Has Tobirama been holding out on him?

Madara licks suddenly dry lips. It suddenly occurs to him that it doesn't matter, not really. What matters is - if Tobirama did figure out a way to use the Mokuton - if every single one of the Kiri shinobi are dead -

Tobirama might be alive.

He could be dead of chakra exhaustion, too, but Tobirama had once explained - on one of those dark nights when everything seemed bleak and they both missed Hashirama like drowning men missed air, when they sat together on the roof and looked down at the village they'd created together and drank Hashirama's favorite sake to pretend that he had only just gone down the hall to get more - that he'd deliberately sealed away an infinitely small portion of his chakra for just such an eventuality.

Tobirama had been the only Senju capable of giving Hashirama a good ‎spar, he’d explained, in the years before Madara was available as anything other than an enemy on the battlefield and he'd been determined to be what his brother needed, even if it meant going far, too far, beyond what he could handle. The seal was designed to activate in the event that all his chakra was gone, sending Tobirama into a deathlike coma meant to conserve his strength until he could awaken once more. He'd understood the risks, of course, but he was a Senju: he had no fear of being buried alive in the welcoming earth, should it come to that.

Tobirama, alive..!

Madara curses himself for not having listened to his instincts and run here as quickly as possible, and immediately starts searching the area.

It occurs to him as he does that the bodies around him are decayed more than they should be - moss and lichen and mushrooms eating up the soft flesh, bones already showing - and he wonders if Tobirama has played some trick with time to accomplish it.

Well, if Tobirama is alive, Madara will just have to ask him about it.

The possibility excites him.

He starts a systematic search of the area, straining his sensor abilities (above-average when compared to anyone but Tobirama) to the limit and covering each twist and turn of land, careful to test each square inch for jutsu designed to hide things or confuse the senses.

Even so, it takes nearly two days of nothing, nothing, and more nothing – no sign of Tobirama, but no sign of a body, either, and that gives him hope – before he finally catches a break.

It’s faint – extremely faint – but Madara’s learned Tobirama’s signature as well as his own through the long nights of working on the Rinnegan together, and it’s unmistakable.

It’s Tobirama.

He’s alive!

Madara whoops, entirely undignified, and dashes off in that direction. It’s not far away, but it’s deep, very deep. Tobirama must have found some cave or cavern to crawl into to recuperate.

It takes some searching to find it – actually, Madara doesn’t find a proper entrance at all and ends up just burrowing into the ground with a doton jutsu – but soon enough he’s in the cavern, which is dark as pitch, and he can hear Tobirama’s voice distantly up ahead of him.

He's there!

He’s alive!

He’s – recounting a story about the village?

“– and then Madara says, ‘You don’t actually think that, do you’,” Tobirama is saying. He sounds…happy? Extremely tired, but oddly happy. Perhaps being so close to death has reminded him of all the reasons he has to be alive. “And then, of course, the Hyuuga leader puffs himself up and says, ‘Are you calling me a liar’ and Madara responds ‘Listen, if what you want is to start measuring dicks I’m willing to pull mine out right now –’”

…why is Tobirama telling that story.

He promised to stop telling people that story.

(Actually, he’d dealt with the situation as sternly as ever and then, the second the still-blustering Hyuuga had left, put his face on the desk and let his shoulders shake with laughter for nearly ten minutes, which had been the one bright spot of a fairly awful day. And then Tobirama couldn’t even look at any Uchiha or Hyuuga for the next week after without smirking. But he had said he would stop telling everyone about it eventually, though he’d refused to indicate when ‘eventually’ would be.)

“– yes, I know, right? Much less shy, especially compared to when he was a child –”

Ugh. Speaking of Senju spreading stories they promised they wouldn’t, has Hashirama told everyone about that particular incident? Madara really hopes not.

Still: embarrassing stories or not, Tobirama’s alive and that means everything.

“Tobirama!” Madara calls out.

Silence. And then – “Madara? Is that you?”

“Yes! Hold up, I’m coming towards you now.”

It’s harder than it looks, given how dark it is in the cave even with the advantage of the Sharingan; Tobirama must be entirely blind. A strange place for a suiton user to hide, deep in the ground, but Madara supposes that growing up in a doton-inclined clan might have that effect.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Tobirama says. His voice is slurring a little from exhaustion – and blood loss, undoubtedly; he can’t be fully healed yet given the amount of blood he left behind on the battlefield. “You’ll be so happy when you find out, just like me…”

Madara has half a second to wonder what Tobirama could have found down in a cave like this that he thinks would make Madara happy - another stone tablet, perhaps?‎ - before he makes his way into the cavern where Tobirama waits.

He sees -

Tobirama.

Alive, wonderful alive and somehow, after all this time and despite all odds, beloved. He's smiling, that crooked little lift of his lips that ‎softens his whole face, and he's - he's -

He's covered in roots.

Twining around his legs, resting on his shoulders, wrapped in a constrictor's embrace around his chest and narrow waist, even woven through his pale hair - everywhere.

And they're not normal roots, either: to his Sharingan, they shine bright in the dark, loaded heavy with chakra of a serene glowing gold that feels bafflingly familiar.

But at the same time, Madara's sure he's never seen anything like it before.

"Madara, I'm so glad you're here," Tobirama says, and he looks pleased, more than Madara has ever seen him, his eyes curved up into crescents with joy even though they are still only half-open, heavy with the call of sleep, and staring in Madara's general direction in a way that suggests Tobirama can't see but is relying on his sensing. Tobirama then reaches up a hand and puts it on the root on his shoulder, a familiar gesture, almost the way he would if it was someone's hand resting there - someone he liked, of course, because the vast majority of people would have their hand cut off for daring to place it there. Madara'd only recently been inducted into the ranks of those who could do it with impunity. "You'd never have believed it otherwise."

"Believed...?"

Tobirama’s lips stretch in a real smile, which for him is the equivalent to beaming. "I found Hashirama!"

Madara stares at his friend and sometimes-lover, wondering if he'd gone mad.

What in the world is he talking about? Is he suggesting that he found his brother's corpse and somehow pulled the Mokuton out of it – fine, that does sound like Tobirama, designing some forbidden jutsu that -

Something moves in the dark.

Madara's attention had been focused on Tobirama, overly focused in his relief, but his Sharingan misses nothing: his head snaps in the direction of the moving roots that someone is sending his way in some sort of large lumbering cluster -

Those...aren't roots.

Or, rather, they are.

But they shouldn’t be.

Gnarled bark and roots twist together to create a terrible mockery of a human body; it's the exact opposite of a wood clone, which accurately formed to resemble a person but living only to the extent of the chakra lent to it - this thing is bursting with life, with that strange gold chakra, and even as Madara watches a thin layer of moss grows over one 'arm' while a scattering of blue flowers appear to curl over the thing's shoulders. Its hands are too large to match the rest of its body, too-long splintering fingers with web-like veins running through every elongated joint; its legs are titanic, sinking deep into the ground like ancient tree trunks.

And its head: lined by a heavy fall of something not quite branches and not quite leaves, thin and willow-like and only vaguely resembling hair, its misshapen face has too much jaw, gaping open in something like a too-wide smile to reveal teeth made of needle-sharp splinters, and the eerie eyes, dark brown with a pupil of gold instead of black, are lined with dark red marks like heavy slashes seeping sap instead of blood.

It's a monster.

"Tobirama -" Madara starts, then stops.

Marks around the eyes.

Dark marks on that ‘face’, streaks of color, and in the center of the thing's forehead are two concentric circles.

No.

The thing before him shifts forward, all of it moving at once and leaning towards him over Tobirama's smiling unseeing unknowing blindness.

"I'm so glad you're here, Madara," the thing says, and the familiar ‎voice it uses is only a little distorted (too many tones all at once, previously absent harmonics, a low rumbling pitch) from the one Madara once loved so dearly. "I missed you!"

And as much as Madara tries to convince himself that the whole horrific mess is just a monster, just a mimicry, just an illusion of the worst sort -

It's still recognizable as his best friend.

#senju hasirama #senju tobirama #Uchiha madara #my fic #lonely dark and deep #madatobi

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rikacain · 4 years

Text

the stronger claim

Warnings for dark themes and noncon/dubcon elements.

Many thanks to drel for holding my hand and doing lit analysis on my words when I sure as hell couldn’t, and to magnus for their suggestions.

when someone put down aphrodisiac jutsu as a prompt, i really wonder if they expected this.

(check ao3 notes for the kinkmeme prompt this is based on.)

summary:

Kidnapping a shinobi is nothing new. It’s what you do to keep them there, that is the question.

read it on: ao3

The kidnapping of a hidden village’s shinobi is not an entirely surprising affair.

Shinobi or not, wars have been fought with prisoners of war as a bargaining chip - it will be fought the same way for many wars more. There are far too many reasons to capture an enemy: for intelligence, or the prevention of it; for a bargaining chip to leverage against your enemies - especially if the target is significant to someone high on the authority chain.

(To act as a suicide bomber upon their return to the village, something whispers. Obito’s eye aches like a bitter reminder.)

Nevertheless, the requisite reaction to such actions in peacetime is to pursue the victim. Losses in personnel are bad for morale, and a healthy discouragement of kidnapping Konoha shinobi, in general, is a good deterrent to future kidnapping attempts (up until it isn’t). And even if retrieval ends unsuccessfully, better for those under the banner to believe that an effort would be made rather than none at all.

Of course, a successful rescue attempt is infinitely preferable - and although Kakashi won't admit it to anyone, this attempt will be personal.

As a shinobi, Umino Iruka is nothing more than a chuunin, a minor gear in the workings of Konoha. As a shinobi of Konoha, he is a teacher in the Academy, a tenant of the Mission Desk, and a regular visitor of the Hokage. Each position affords him information on various affairs, ranging from clan heirs and their abilities to the missions he reviews and accepts.

Coupled with the weekly visits he makes to the Hokage’s office for no discernibly official purposes and the way Naruto proclaims his love for his adoptive father figure without the slightest bit of reservation, Iruka makes quite an attractive target if there aren't other more compelling and valuable targets to infiltrate Konoha for.

But as a person... Iruka is more than all of his worth as a shinobi, more than his sharp words and gentle smiles and unrelenting belief in the Will of Fire; Kakashi can only be pulled into his orbit whenever Iruka passes him by.

But now Iruka’s taken (like Rin before he drove a handful of lightning through her chest) - gone. And Kakashi had always thought that there would be a day he would walk up to the teacher and ask him, maybe, for his time and whatever else Iruka would be willing to give - to let the pieces fall as they may.

It tears more at him than more he ever thinks it would, that there would never be that possibility, soft and warm and entirely his.

It fuels him to run faster, to track harder, to go to where Iruka had been taken to; it leads him to the hidden village of Nagisa, surrounded by white sands and rolling waves. A potentially idyllic vacation spot, only tainted by the actions that they have taken against Konoha.

He directs his team to infiltrate the village, to acquire information on their motives and the whereabouts of their captive. After all their efforts - after the seeping fear of finding Iruka bloody and bruised, broken against a cell wall - he finds himself venturing into a cavern with a foreign seal sketched large and wide onto the pristine sand, the sprawling script of symbols glowing a soft gradient between sea-green and ocean-blue.

He finds Iruka, at the center of it all.

Iruka, bound. Iruka, writhing. Iruka, gasping as a hooded figure bends low over his prone form and seals their mouth over Iruka's own.

Perhaps if Kakashi were more level-minded, he would claim that immediate action was a necessity. That he couldn't wait for a diversion Tenzou was creating on the far side of the village, for a better opportunity. That the seal, an unknown factor, seemed far too dangerous to allow it to come to fruition.

At that very moment, he knows only that Iruka is garbed in a yukata, thin and light and so very easy to remove. Eye-catching, sprawled helpless against the sand.

Whatever is planned next, Kakashi doesn’t want to know. He drops down onto the central array sketched within the seal. The symbols around them flare as his feet touch the ground, washing the cavern in a brilliant white.

The hooded figure jerks their head up, eyes flashing in alarm - but Kakashi only has eyes for Iruka, who arches up in their arms. He doesn't give them a chance to raise their voice; he moves in, the grip on his kunai firm and deadly.

The fight - if it could be called one - doesn't last long.

When the hood is stained red from arterial spray, Kakashi finally lowers his weapon and turns around to check on Iruka. A quip is ready on his tongue, only to dissipate with a sharp breath when he sees Iruka’s reaction - or lack thereof.

It worries Kakashi, how unaware Iruka is despite being shinobi - how utterly vulnerable he currently is. He approaches Iruka’s prone form and crouches over him.

“Iruka-sensei,” he says, urgency rushing his words. "Sensei, we’re here to rescue you.”

It does not bode well that Iruka does not even react. He stares up towards the ceiling, eyes glassy and unseeing. A sheen of sweat glistens upon his skin. The drag of his breaths, slow and audible.

Perhaps a genjutsu. Kakashi attempts to dispel it.

Nothing happens.

“Sensei,” he says again. He ruthlessly quashes down thoughts of too late once again. Tsunade can be the judge of that and no one else. “We have to go."

He reaches out to slide a hand under Iruka’s neck -

Iruka shudders in his arms, pressing into Kakashi. Reflex makes Kakashi tense; experience makes him shift towards a defensive position. He expects Iruka to swing at him, perhaps compelled by this foreign ritual, and half-expects at the end of all this to relearn that heavy numbness within his hand, the cold weight of a precious person dead at his feet.

He does not expect Iruka to moan.

Long and low and guttural; Iruka’s head falls back, eyelids a-fluttering; mouth open, inviting. He shifts, restless, his thighs twitching against each other, unmistakably rubbing against each other. A flush rises high across his face, accentuating that scar that Kakashi has always longed to trail a finger across.

The moan tapers off to something breathy. Needy.

It is a sound Kakashi dared to imagine only in his fantasies, a sound that will feature in many of them to come. His mouth dries, his heart pounds loud in his ears. A blush burns across his face, arousal mixed with mortification - he has never been more thankful for his mask.

It is also a scene he’s familiar with, one that he would not have wished on Iruka.

An aphrodisiac jutsu.

In that haze of arousal, Iruka weakly turns his head to look at Kakashi. In his eyes, there is a faint spark of recognition.

“Kakashi-san,” he rasps.

Kakashi cannot help but track the swipe of Iruka's tongue as it darts out to wet his lips. The muted shine it leaves behind. And - shamefully - all Kakashi can think is: <em>this is what Iruka would sound like in his bed.</em>

There’s a distant sound of an explosion - the distraction he was supposed to wait for, finally come unto existence. It jolts him into action: he hoists Iruka over his head and across his shoulders in one smooth and practiced movement, curling one arm around Iruka's arm and the other around his bare leg but leaving his hands otherwise free to perform a jutsu if need be. Despite the breathiness of the fabric, Iruka is emanating warmth as though he is running a fever - no doubt a symptom of the jutsu placed upon him.

Kakashi resolutely ignores Iruka's trembling, his breathy sighs. He forms a futon to blow away the symbols in the sand.

Whether it would break the jutsu, he doesn't know. Their first priority is to escape.

“Hold on, sensei,” Kakashi swallows, ignoring the curl of desire within his gut. "We're getting out of here."

-----

He meets up with Tenzou and Yugao at the edge of the village, as planned. Their three-man cell takes quick leave of the area, making the run back to Fire's borders - a grueling three days' journey away.

It takes four hours before night falls, and for darkness to set in proper without the silvery light of the moon. The absence of light is a boon more than a bane: it would be difficult for pursuers to come across their camp.

That is, if there were any.

Kakashi had expected hot pursuit of their prisoner, or retaliation for the intrusion. But there has been nothing: no jutsu aimed at them, no shuriken grazing their skin, no kunai planted in their back. They leave Nagisa practically unmolested, with their objective in tow; their objective being draped across Kakashi’s shoulder.

It is discomfiting to refer to Iruka in such an impersonal way. An objective has always been a mark: to steal, to persuade, to assassinate. To use it against Iruka feels incongruous, if not for Kakashi's own affections then to address a comrade.

But the uncomfortable truth is that Kakashi cannot consider Iruka as anything else, not at this very moment.

For Iruka has been restless, the entire time he was on Kakashi's back. The jutsu has not worn off even with the destruction of the array and the distance they gained. There is a damp patch on Kakashi's shirt where Iruka has been gasping helplessly against the fabric. Kakashi's neck is drenched with sweat, from physical exertion and his proximity to Iruka’s body heat.

Most incriminatingly, Iruka's groin is positioned just where Kakashi's tactical vest ends.

It is impossible for Kakashi to maintain an unyielding grip on Iruka; it is equally impossible for Iruka to remain still. It is therefore very natural for friction to occur - for Kakashi to feel the way Iruka's cock fills out against his shoulder as they ran, especially through the thin material of the yukata.

A healthy dose of desperation and his iron discipline stave off Kakashi’s own burgeoning arousal. Or so he hopes.

They stop in a suitable clearing. Tenzou creates a thick copse of trees with its trucks curving to form a hollow dome able to fit four at its base, while Kakashi and Yugao set up the perimeter traps and seals. Such is their routine, established by once a plan and now muscle memory; they reconvene in mere minutes.

"Senpai," Tenzou says. There's an undercurrent of concern in his voice.

The cause is clear: Kakashi has refused to set Iruka down even when they were a safe distance away from the village. Iruka is essentially little more than a deadweight at this very moment.

As if in reaction to Tenzou’s words, Iruka shudders again against his shoulder. Kakashi hastily sets him down, positioning him to face away from the others.

Iruka deserves to have his modesty preserved, as much as Kakashi can provide, even if Iruka's yukata is presently drenched with sweat to the point of translucence. It sticks to him, almost as though it is a second skin. Leaving nothing to the imagination. The way he’ll shiver if Kakashi pushes it off him, shoulder by shoulder...

He tears his gaze away from Iruka and breathes out, harsh. It is only physical relief he can afford.

"An aphrodisiac," he explains briskly, calling upon his lifetime’s worth of discipline, his experience in imparting information concisely. "I found him in a seals array, and tried to dispel the jutsu, erase the seals."

Iruka's heavy breathing in a corner of the dome speaks volumes about the success of either attempt.

Tenzou's eyes flick towards the other man, his face set in neutrality. "What did they do to him?”

"Nothing good if it involves an aphrodisiac," Yugao says darkly.

"We'll get him back to Hokage-sama," he says, decisive. None of them are medics; he can only hope that the aphrodisiac would run its course. Or that they get to Tsunade before the symptoms can worsen. "Tenzou, you're on first. Yugao, third. We leave at dawn."

Tenzou nods, and darts upwards to perch within the trees he built. Yugao settles in a far corner of the dome. He doesn't miss the way she turns her back to him, giving him the privacy he wants to talk to Iruka; gratitude settles firmly in his gut.

He crouches again, this time a distance away. Iruka probably doesn’t want anyone to see him with his inhibitions lowered, Kakashi included.

“Iruka-sensei,” he murmurs. There’s the minutest of shifting - he takes it as acknowledgment. “I’ll get you back to Konoha. To your students - to Naruto. I promise.”

There’s the sound of an exhale, shaky and forced.

“Kakashi-san,” the quiet rasp comes again. Kakashi holds himself still. “I have to go back.”

“We will,” he says hastily. “I promise you, sensei - “

“I have to go back.” Iruka’s breathing shudders again, and Kakashi yearns to reach out, to hold him. To comfort. But physical affection is the last thing Iruka needs right now. “But you can’t let me.”

Something cold drains into Kakashi’s body.

“Sensei,” he says, almost choking on the possibility of his past, repeated. It would be cruel of fate to act so callously. The hoarseness of his voice makes it sound like he’s begging: “Iruka.”

Iruka only repeats, “You can’t."

-----

The wards scream to life as their pursuers finally make their attack.

-----

Something is wrong.

Maybe it’s the way the darkness of the night is supposed to cover their tracks, and the camouflage of Tenzou’s Mokuton-built fortress their presence. Maybe it’s how the pursuers stop far too easily, never giving chase even as they retreat. Maybe it’s how their team is getting run ragged into the dawn of the next morning, as they move camp again and again and again.

Three times. They’ve been attacked three times, within an hour of setting up camp. Had it been once, Kakashi would put it down to unluckiness; twice, coincidence. Three times make a pattern.

Nagisa is tracking them.

Kakashi considers chakra sensors - then discards the theory. All attacks so far have involved different shinobi. Sensory abilities are a highly valued skill; Nagisa would have gone the way of Uzushio if other countries realize the number of chakra-sensitive shinobi they’re putting out.

Perhaps a physical tracker. But none of them has taken anything from the village, and the yukata draped on Iruka (on which Kakashi forced himself to perform the most perfunctory of inspections) is far too thin to hide any tracker sewn into its seams or sleeves. Iruka has been coherent enough to confirm that he had not been fed during his brief captivity.

That leaves only jutsu.

(There remains only one unknown factor in this entire scenario.)

He turns to Iruka - huddled again in a corner of the dome. The aphrodisiac has shown no sign of reducing in intensity throughout the night, raising a whole different set of medical concerns: dehydration and heatstroke, to name a few. More worryingly, Iruka has been incredibly reluctant to press forward, with all attempts at running being best described as faltering. When pressed, he would only shake his head.

(You can’t let me, and Kakashi can’t tell whether he’s remembering Iruka, or remembering Rin. You can’t.)

They had to resort to carrying him but therein arose another problem: Iruka would thrash wildly the very moment Tenzou or Yugao touched him. The only person he would remain still for, would allow to touch him, is Kakashi.

It sets something possessive and dark purring within him, even though he knows that it’s likely due to the jutsu. It also means that Kakashi is the only one who can carry him as they run, limiting his movement and defenses.

Still, the most pressing concern remains Nagisa’s recurring ability to find their camp. And if it’s truly jutsu, then there is one way for Kakashi to confirm: the Sharingan.

He raises his hand to pull off the headband, to direct his gaze towards Iruka… and then hesitates. The Sharingan burns memories into his mind, this he knows. He also knows how utterly mortifying it is to be vulnerable, to curl away from pitying eyes.

If he looks at Iruka, he'll remember him like this, forever. Even though Iruka should be standing with his head held high, his ponytail tied back proper, confident and assured. All the things Kakashi respected him for.

And he will be those things still, Kakashi tells himself, but only if Kakashi can get him back within the safe boundaries of Konoha.

(As though you won't remember him like this when your hand is wrapped around your cock, something small and nasty whispers to him.)

Better traumatized than dead, Kakashi repeats and pulls the headband off.

The strain sets in almost immediately. The sluggish swirl of the tomoes within the eye begins to quicken as it greedily absorbs any and all information it could perceive, the blurry haze of chakra settling into proper place as his vision comes into focus.

Iruka's chakra levels are running low, with the occasion flicker and flare Kakashi expects from a loss in control. What alarms him is a thin cord of chakra running from Iruka's heart, through the gaps of Tenzou's Mokuton dome and out into the distance.

There is little doubt that at the other end is Nagisa.

The cord is cool when Kakashi reaches out to touch it, to run a finger down the line. He flicks at it, noting how the chakra is foreign from Iruka’s fiery own - and the ephemeral flash of inscriptions running across Iruka’s form.

"Senpai," Tenzou says hesitantly.

Ah, right. He must look quite peculiar, touching nothing midair. Actually, now that he notices - the cord seems to go right through Yugao's knee, with her none the wiser.

Curious.

"I think," Kakashi says in lieu of an answer, "we need to ask them some questions."

-----

It takes a counter-ambush to capture a Nagisa-nin. It takes the Sharingan to get her to tell them what Nagisa did to Iruka.

It takes a sick mind to come up with what they did.

The tethering jutsu, Nagisa calls it. A fuuinjutsu, a forbidden technique: the sealing of foreign chakra into another person's body. As long as the source of chakra existed, Nagisa would be able to track Iruka wherever he went.

Placing trackers on prisoners and marks is nothing new, least of all to Kakashi. While physical trackers like the Aburame's insects are far more common, infusing raw chakra into the body is not unheard of. Still, as most jutsu do, such methods have their limitations - in this case, weakening or dissipating entirely after a certain distance is gained.

Nagisa's jutsu entrenches the chakra more firmly, the transfer of chakra augmented by emotional intensity and physical intimacy.

In blunt terms: by sexual intercourse.

(The aphrodisiac jutsu certainly makes that easier, Kakashi notes clinically.)

The tether also acts as a reel, one that constantly compels Iruka to return to the source of the chakra. Even though Kakashi killed the caster, apparently they were but a mere conduit for the source: the sands of the cavern, chakra-infused over the years.

Loyalty to one is a danger to all, the Nagisa-nin murmurs under the swirling Sharingan. Better to bind to a place rather than a person.

There is little need to ask why such a jutsu is so necessary, not when it is clear how small Nagisa is compared to other hidden villages of similar status. The low birth and high mortality rates of shinobi lifestyles are problems Konoha chose to answer through a relatively open (for hidden villages) immigration policy. Nagisa merely circumvented the lengthy background and security checks through the forced conversion of foreign shinobi to bolster its own forces.

After all, why invest in training when you could appropriate a trained shinobi? Why keep your best assets at home performing menial jobs and administrative tasks when you could send them out into the field?

A policy that makes sense on paper. A policy where someone looked at another villages’ shinobi and considered them resources instead of people. The results instead of the means.

(Even so, there’s a twisted part of Kakashi that is relieved - that it is but a tracker instead of a ticking bomb. That when he said ‘back’ he meant to Nagisa, and not to Konoha. That Iruka will not go the same way as Rin.)

Behind him, Tenzou’s chakra sharpens, glass-shard sharp and glinting. Kakashi wagers the idea of loyalty to one's village being ripped away so easily disturbs him. In direct contrast, Yugao’s chakra simmers, roiling bursts contained within a chilly veneer.

He turns back to the captive. “How do we break the jutsu,” he demands. “I interrupted the ritual - it shouldn’t have taken hold.”

A blank gaze. “There were other conduits attending to him,” she finally says, the hungry pull of the Sharingan drawing the information out of her. “A claim has already been made. An interruption is merely another."

Other conduits. How many of them had laid their hands on Iruka before he had gotten there? The very thought turns Kakashi's voice vicious; he snarls, again - “How do we break it?”

“We must let go of him,” comes the placid reply. “Or there must be a stronger claim.”

-----

“Senpai.”

Tenzou finds him outside of the dome. Kakashi is staring out into the distance, for the possibility of more ambushers, more pursuers, more lives to take - something he knows how to do better than solve this problem before them.

“Tenzou.” Kakashi doesn’t turn to look at him. “What are our chances of making it to Fire?”

He doubts they can even make it to Konoha. What an ingenious plan - instead of facing their opponents head-on, Nagisa merely tires them out until they are forced to give up from sheer exhaustion. He’d appreciate it when it isn’t done against him.

To his credit, Tenzou doesn’t soften his words.

“Very low." Kakashi thought so. "Even with chakra pills, we’d be drained of chakra long before we reach the borders. And with that fever Iruka-sensei is running...”

He breathes out as Tenzou trails off, sifting through the various plans he has come up with. A single guard while the others slept would mean they'd have to carry that guard alongside Iruka. A decoy would be useless. And if any of them were caught and brought back to Nagisa…

“I won't abandon him.” The words tear themselves out of Kakashi’s throat, unbidden. Cutting losses, sacrifice - concepts they’re both familiar with. The choice to save three over a compromised one.

But it means letting Iruka go back. Back where they can finish the ritual.

That isn't an option.

Tenzou nods slowly, his faith in Kakashi absolute. “I know."

Kakashi shakes his head sharply. Those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash - but this is more. More than camaraderie, more than loyalty. More than the guilt of allowing someone to be ripped away from their home, never to return, only to be part of a system that will never value their choice.

But to keep Iruka, to return him to Konoha...

It has to be Kakashi. The jutsu would not accept Tenzou, nor Yugao - it recognizes only Kakashi as a competing claim. If they were all to get away from Nagisa alive, then Kakashi would have to -

He’d have to -

“I can’t,” he says, hoarse.

"I know.” The answer jolts him out of the maelstrom of his doubts; he finally turns to look at Tenzou. His friend looks back at him, steady as the trees he built. "But you have to."

Duty calls. Kakashi closes his eyes. Tenzou is right, he has to -

"You have to ask him.” Kakashi’s eyes fly open. They meet Tenzou’s own, dark and piercing. "Ask him, senpai."

To ask Iruka -

"He's out of his mind.” Kakashi's fist clenches, tight, almost as though lightning would build in his hands. As though he could punch his way through the chest of this problem. "He won't know what he's saying."

"Better he decides than you decide for him," Tenzou tells him bluntly.

Kakashi stares at Tenzou, searching his face for another solution, another possibility. As though there'll be another way to bring all of them out unscathed. But Tenzou remains unwavering in his conviction. Firm.

"Go and ask him, senpai," he says again, not unkindly.

Kakashi stands.

------

When he steps back into the dome, he finds only Iruka. Curled small and tucked away into a corner, the previously pristine yukata now creased and sweat-stained. His gaze remains vaguely vacant, staring into the distance, but his eyes flick weakly to Kakashi as he sits down in front of Iruka.

How to even begin this conversation? Iruka-sensei, if you don't want to go back to Nagisa, you'll have to let me fuck you.

Iruka-sensei, I don't want to rape you, but if I don't do it Nagisa probably will. Would you rather be raped by me or them?

Iruka-sensei, I'm sorry.

(There is one more path, one where a kunai is put to Iruka's throat and pushed in deep. The one where Iruka becomes unreachable, untouchable - but remains wholly his own.

Kakashi refuses to even think of suggesting it.)

Kakashi takes a deep breath, to say something - but Iruka's voice is the first to cut through the silence.

"I'm sorry to put you in this position, Kakashi-san," he whispers.

Kakashi should be apologizing, not Iruka. He should have done more reconnaissance before plucking Iruka right out of the ritual. He should have watched and waited - but fear had driven him more than caution had then.

"Maa, sensei." He forces his voice lighter and smiles wanly through his mask. It was comforting then, their easy-going banter - he can't help but wonder if Iruka finds it comforting too. If he still does. "We've all had a tracker planted on us before. Yours is just a bit harder to get rid of."

He thinks he sees Iruka's twitch upwards, just the slightest bit - but that might just be wishful thinking.

"You heard about how to break the jutsu." Iruka dips his head downwards, and Kakashi doesn't know whether it could be called mercy that he doesn't need to say it again. That he doesn’t need to say it aloud.

It doesn't stop his throat from clogging up, to cement what comes next into words. Into reality.

Ask, the echo of Tenzou's voice reminds him.

"Iruka-sensei," he forces out. "I... What do you want?"

Iruka stares at him. Kakashi can see the heated glaze of his eyes, the damp sheen of his skin. What was he thinking, asking - but he can't make this decision for Iruka. Tenzou is right - and even if the choice is not much of a choice at all, Kakashi has to give Iruka anything that he can.

God, he'd give Iruka everything that he can.

"We can break the jutsu now," he continues. "Or - or, we can - " - let you go back to Nagisa, except that choice isn't a choice at all, not one he could let Iruka take any more than he could let Iruka commit suicide.

"We can wait until the borders," he says instead in a moment of great weakness. It comes out like a plea. "We'll just run all the way there. They wouldn't risk invading Fire -"

"The borders," Iruka murmurs. "The borders, they," - he cuts off with a shudder, before forcing out a strained, "three days away."

"We'll make it," Kakashi says, desperation dripping through the cracks in this terrible plan.

Iruka lifts his head. Before he even says a word, Kakashi knows.

"Kakashi-san is a very kind person," Iruka breathes out. "But I... one man isn't worth all this."

You are, Kakashi wants to say - you are, you are worth all the miles I ran after you, worth all the rain drenching my clothes and the sun beating down my back. Worth the burn in my muscles and the strain in my shoulders.

But it’s not about Kakashi, not here, not now.

“I’ll be fine,” Iruka is saying. He’s even smiling - a weak, reassuring smile, as though Kakashi is one of his students needing reassurance for a skinned knee, or from a violent storm. “I can take a few weeks more of captivity. I promise.”

Like how Kakashi promised him a few hours ago. “I promised that you’d return to Konoha, sensei. Would you have me break that promise too?"

“If it means keeping everyone safe,” Iruka answers. “Yes.”

All of them, duty-bound. Martyrs and fools. If this is Iruka’s choice, Kakashi has to respect it - but…

“You know what will happen,” he says. A nod. “You know you might not see Konoha ever again.” If Nagisa decides Iruka is valuable enough, they would increase the security and begin negotiations with Konoha - rescue would be immensely difficult. Yet, still, another nod. “Then why?”

“Like I said,” Iruka says, softly. “I don't want to put you in this position. You shouldn't have to do this."

"I shouldn't have to," Kakashi repeats, uncomprehending.

“I couldn’t…” Another tremor sweeps over Iruka. The sight of Iruka’s throat working around the words, the shift of his Adam’s apple under the skin - it catches Kakashi’s eye and keeps him there. Keeps him wondering how it would taste, if he puts his tongue to it. “I couldn’t be so selfish.”

Selfish, he says. No, Kakashi knows what selfishness is: the urge to tear off the arms off any ninja that would attempt to bind Iruka to their cause. The depths of Kakashi’s want, to be the only person Iruka should ever tether himself to. The hollow grief at the thought of an Iruka-shaped absence in the part of Konoha Kakashi considers his, even though he would be alive in Nagisa.

This is also selfishness: the absolute dread at the idea of Iruka never wanting to see Kakashi again for as long as he is alive.

"It would be selfish of us to leave Naruto worried,” Kakashi says instead. He avoids saying ‘you’, an effort to soften the blow - an effort in vain from the twitch that would have otherwise been a flinch. “Your students. Your colleagues. Friends.”

“They’ll understand.” They won’t. No one possibly could, least of all Kakashi. “They’ll carry on.”

Iruka looks at him - soft and resigned. Final. “You’d look after Naruto for me, won’t you?”

In any other situation, that is a promise he can make easily. In this situation, it is a promise he is not yet willing to give.

“You’d go back to Nagisa just to spare me.” Kakashi says quietly, confirming.

Iruka nods again, exhaustion getting the better of him. "And that's the only reason." Another nod, slow and languid. "I see."

"Thank you," Iruka says. His weak but sincere smile rends Kakashi apart - and the wretched part of it all is the gratitude. That he would be left to the wolves just to spare Kakashi.

And in that very moment, Kakashi knows what he is willing to lose.

"You're wrong about one thing, sensei," he says. There is a flicker of confusion in Iruka's eyes as Kakashi holds them with his own. They widen when he pulls off his headband yet again so that they might better see the strands of chakra tethering Iruka; further still as he pulls down his mask. "I'm not kind at all."

He reaches out to curl a hand around Iruka's nape, pulling him close - close enough for Kakashi to press his lips to Iruka's own.

"I'm very, very selfish," he confesses into the space between their mouths, and begins to stake his claim.

#fic #kakairu #tw: dubcon #kakairu mini bingo 2019

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365daysofsasuhina · 4 years

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[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day Three Hundred Twenty-Four: Loss of Memory ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata, Uzumaki Naruto, Ebisu ] [ SasuHina, blood ] [ Verse: Like Magic ] [ AO3 Link ]

It all began in that bookstore.

Rescuing Naruto from his no-good Summer guardian (which, in all fairness, was mostly Shisui’s hairbrained idea to use his Merlin-forsaken enchanted car) meant that Sasuke and Naruto visited Diagon Alley together with the former’s elder brother Itachi leading them through their school supplies list. They’d met up with their friends - the Hufflepuff Hinata and the Ravenclaw Sakura - on the way, barely able to fit into the bookstore. A so-called famous author, Ebisu, had been there signing copies of his books...and Mikoto had begged Itachi get her a signed copy of one of his tomes.

And it was there they ran into the last people they wanted to see: another Slytherin, Gaara, and his father Rasa. After a rather tense standoff, Rasa calling Hinata a blood traitor as a pureblood mucking about with those ‘lesser’, they’d all failed to notice the book he’d slipped into her cauldron of supplies.

It was that book that would shape the coming year in terrible, terrible ways.

The first attack left the entire school shaken: the caretaker’s cat petrified, and a bloody message written on the wall just beneath her form:

“The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware.”

A Chamber of Secrets…? Not an entirely unfounded idea in their four young minds. After all, Hogwarts was old, and even the headmaster had claimed there were still things undiscovered and unknown about it. But given the impressions from the staff (and some students…), it had seemed such an idea had been heard of before.

Only through their history teacher did they learn of the rumors of the Slytherin founder’s alleged secret chamber: a place housing a terrible monster to cleanse Hogwarts of those Salazar found to be ‘unsuitable’ for learning the arts of magic.

A monster within Hogwarts...and one bent on eliminating those of so-called ‘impure’ blood...a terrifying thought. Especially given that one of their own, Sakura, was Muggleborn. And Naruto himself was a halfblood.

But the strange happenings didn’t stop there.

During a Quidditch match, Naruto found himself being chased by a seemingly-rogue bludger. Only after it broke his arm (and the incompetent Ebisu vanished his bones) did Naruto come to know it was Shukaku - a house elf bent on keeping Naruto from the castle - behind several incidents thus far. He revealed that the Chamber had been opened once before.

...and the attacks continued. The school began a dueling club in hopes of preparing the students for trouble. And it was then during a typical rivalry escalation that Sasuke learned something about himself he’d never known before:

He was a Parselmouth.

Immediately, suspicion began to grow against him. Salazar, after all, had been famed for his ability to speak to serpents. And now Sasuke - part of a pureblood Slytherin-frequenting family - was revealed to have the same ability?

...could he be the heir…? The one attacking the Muggleborns? Maybe his friendship with Sakura was fake...after all, they’d been seen bickering at times.

Desperate to find the real mastermind, the group decides to use a Polyjuice potion to interrogate Gaara, figuring his family’s sketchy history may be a clue. The broken bathroom they used was always occupied by a peculiar girl ghost, who later revealed a key clue: a strange diary someone had left in her haunt.

Sasuke did all he could to uncover its secrets, discovering it belonged to a young man named Madara. He had been present during the last attack, showing his valiant capture of the previous perpetrator: the current groundskeeper.

But that did little to solve their problem. As the headmaster and groundskeeper were removed...one last attack seemed the final straw:

Sakura.

But she provided the clue they needed: in her bookish ways, she’d finally found the answer. The monster was a basilisk: a giant snake, explaining Sasuke’s ability to hear a strange voice all year coming from the walls. They then realize that the student killed when the chamber was last opened was none other than Rin, the lavatory ghost...who tells them all they need to know.

But upon their attempts to rally the last of their group...they find Hinata gone. Taken into the Chamber for her status as blood traitor. Desperate, the boys go to enlist Ebisu’s help.

...only to find him quick busily packing.

“...going somewhere, professor?” Sasuke asks, stepping into the room and drawing the man’s gaze.

Ebisu, as it turns out...is a fraud. But that doesn’t stop Naruto and Sasuke dragging him into the bathroom where Rin waits, Sasuke opening the chamber at last with a command of Parseltongue.

One ride down the pipes later, and the trio find themselves beneath the castle.

“...bloody hell,” Naruto mumbles, pointing. “...is that…?”

“A snake skin,” Sasuke replies. “And a huge one. That’s got to be from the basilisk. Remember...keep your eyes closed if you think it’s near.”

“Oh...well…” With a roll of his eyes, Ebisu simply...collapses.

Both boys give him a glance. “...he’s fainted,” Naruto mutters. “Git.”

Making to poke him with his patched-up wand, the blond gives a holler as the professor snatches it, leaping up and grinning.

“Well now...that’s better. Can’t have you two telling anyone what you know! Now, let’s see...how to spin this little story...ah, yes. We were...too late to save the girl. You both succumbed to shock and madness at the grisly sight. All that remains...is to wipe your memories. Obliviate!”

Before either boy can react, there’s a sparking glow from the split in Naruto’s wand...and then Ebisu crashes against the wall.

And then with a rumble, the chamber begins to crumble…!

“Look out!” Each skittering backwards, the boys duck for cover...and as the rubble comes to a standstill, it’s piled high and wide between them.

“Sasuke!”

“I’m all right! But...I don’t think there’s a way through.”

With a groan, Ebisu then lolls his head up to look at Naruto. “...oh...well hello. Who...who are you? And…” His brow furrows. “...who am I?”

“...I think his spell backfired, he’s lost his memory...but what do we do now?”

Sasuke hesitates. “...stay here, and try to move some of this rock, if you can. I’ll go find Hinata! And...keep an eye on Ebisu. Who knows if he’s faking again, so...be careful.”

“...right. You too.”

“Not sure there’s much point in that now,” Sasuke mutters to himself, continuing down the rocky corridor...only to find another door.

“...all right. Er…” Swallowing, he gives another murmur of Parseltongue, the ornate serpent lock coming undone and revealing a huge chamber. At the rear, a giant stone statue of Salazar, flanked by snakes.

And at the end...a motionless Hinata.

“...no…!” Heart clenching in fear, Sasuke dashes forward and crashes at her side, seeing her skin as pale as death. “Hinata...Hinata!”

“...she won’t wake.”

Gasping, Sasuke looks into the shadows, where a familiar young man walks. “...Madara…? But…? Look, we have to get out of here! There’s a monster!”

“It won’t come until it’s called.”

Sasuke pauses...and then lifts his gaze. In Madara’s hands, forgotten by his own, is his wand. “...give that back.”

“Oh, you won’t be needing it.”

“Didn’t you hear me? There’s a monster! And...we…”

“I can’t let you leave. You see...the weaker this blood traitor gets...the stronger I become. It was she who opened the Chamber of Secrets.”

“No...she couldn’t, she -!”

“She unleashed the basilisk, let it seek out the Mudbloods in the castle...and it was she who wrote the warnings on the walls.”

“But...why?”

“Because I told her to. My instructions were rather...convincing...” A smirk grows across his face. “But not to worry. It was I, not she, who was in control. To finish what Salazar aimed to do.”

“Why would you…?”

“Because I...am the heir of Slytherin. His blood courses through my veins. Veins which, soon now, will be living again. Resurrected from a memory preserved in a diary for fifty years. And very soon now...I will be reborn. And this time...nothing can stop me from purifying the wizarding world. Not even you...your precious headmaster is gone. No one is left to stand against me.”

“You’re wrong...he’s never gone. Not so long as students remain who believe in him…!”

As the pair stare each other down, a trill sounds at the front of the cavern.

“...Fawkes…?”

With a toss, the phoenix drops a worn piece of fabric Sasuke struggles to catch. It’s...the Sorting Hat…?

“...ha...so this is what your loyalty earns you? A songbird, and an old hat. Well...let’s see how it matches up against the power of Salazar Slytherin…!” Eyes wide with malice and grin bearing teeth, Madara turns to the founder’s likeness. A chant of Parseltongue sees the statue’s mouth begin to open.

“Now what will you do…?”

Staggering back, Sasuke watches with wide eyes as a rustling fills the air...and the basilisk emerges with a geyser-like hiss.

“Very soon now, the process will be complete. Hinata Hyūga will die...and I will be born anew. And by then, you’ll be rotting in the basilisk’s belly!”

Barely breathing, Sasuke does all he can do, wandless and alone.

He runs.

.oOo.

(This is a sequel to days 28, 230, 299, and 316!) Well this is...a lot more rushed than I'd like, but it was the first thing that came to mind. And after wasting WAY too much time reading a summary and then checking film pieces to refresh MY memory (ahaha, get it?), I couldn't back out xD I love this crossover, but obviously I need to find more roles, cuz uh...I had to leave quite a few blank, and some of these are a little...hurried, lol BUT! We have a crossover with Chamber of Secrets. And it's valiant Sasuke off to save Hinata! Well...he doesn't look too valiant running away at the end there, but he needs to plan! And not get eaten! Not to worry, I'm sure he'll save her in the end. I know this is an evil cliffie, but...at the same time, we all (or most) know how this goes, right? Forgive me xD Limited time and word count is a killer, lol - maybe I'll do more another time! Buuut anyway, it's...very late, so I better go ^^; Thanks for reading!

#sasuhina #uchiha sasuke #hyūga hinata #uzumaki naruto #ebisu #blood //#like magic [ au ]#365daysofsasuhina

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