#godmist

"....Come get your FUCKING sensei."

@godmist / there's a patch of sunlight in my room, on the carpet where i held you for a moment in june

"Which shirt? Which sweatpants?" Gai is smiling through the kiss, teeth knocking into Zabuza's as he surges forward against him, but Zabuza holds him back with a hand on his chest, and shoves him down on the mattress before clambering on him. Gai lands with a playful 'oof'.

"Seriously, where the hell do you keep hiding all my clothes?"

"It's not like you wear them," Gai counters, dragging his nails down Zabuza's midriff, and it's as far as he's going to get in terms of admitting that he is absolutely hoarding them and never intends to return a single piece. What was the Mizukage doing walking around topless all the time, anyway, baring all of that goodness for everyone, for free?

They're all in Konoha, of course -- his clothes. Folded neatly and camouflaged in his own drawer as if they've always belonged there: two of his tank tops, a shirt, the sweatpants, and that sweater he mentioned. They smell like him -- or Gai thinks they do, and looking through his drawer and letting his fingers rifle through Zabuza's clothes makes Gai feel that he isn't so far. Like he'd be in the next room. Like this place was his home, too.

It's not. Not really. Not for now.

Not in the same way he'd given up his whole life for Kiri, not in the same way he'd left Konoha to make right the things he'd wanted to make right for a decade now, not in the same way his heart bled for the village he'd grown up in.

What was it he'd said before he'd left the second time? Borrowing some time from the present, baby, but I'll make it up to you. I promise.

Well, Gai is here now in Kiri with him, and 'home' has morphed again, pieces of it untangling and shifting and resettling in something new and mildly uncomfortable, and all too transient. The relieving pinch of Zabuza's teeth over the skin of his collarbone is counterbalanced by the uncertain way he noses over his scarred veins, and the tender kisses over the circular embossments down his torso.

Home is redefined here with Zabuza, in the way he'd installed ramps into his office, his home -- you'll be staying a while, after all.

'Staying'.

The word hadn't sat quite right with him, but still the smile had grown on his face in excitement, and the thought of settling in Kiri beyond a mere few days had stirred something within him.

Gai is fumbling with Zabuza's pants, and he doesn't know if it's because the nerves on his fingertips are screaming static or because he is trembling from impatience, from weeks of missing the warm press of Zabuza's body to his. Zabuza takes over with a laugh, shucks his pants off and then, then Gai is looping an arm around his neck to draw him down, flush against himself. They're pressed together neck to neck, chest to chest, hip to hip, legs weaved around each other and Gai wants more; he wraps his arm around Zabuza's lower back and tugs, rolling his hips forward as if he could press himself any closer to him.

"I missed you so much," Gai says in a breathless murmur, and the following words spill out of his lips before he can think twice: "Kakashi should be here with us."

But it's true, and Gai tries not to think too hard about the fact that it's probably a little bit of a relief for Gai to be gone a while longer, just so he can get Hokage shit done without having to worry too much about Gai. Zabuza grips Gai's jaw hard, and Gai focuses his gaze on him again. "We'll just have to make it up to him, hm?"

@godmist asked: those eyes of yours ever scare you?

shisui was still a toddler when his mother said to him:

the sharingan is a blessing, a gift from the gods of time.

his mother is dead now. he watched it happen, burned that moment and all of its million permutations into his soul with the mangekyou pinwheeling. shisui will also die, he is dying, soon. he sees it coming through the stillness of clear water. if he could reach out to that reflection, he could grasp his own cold-corpse hand and pull it into being. it would be very easy. their situation is quite dire. no one could blame him.

reach for me now not yet, not yet what is your price?

shisui watches as the thousand-thousand strands of fate spread outward all around them, a heart-blood world of possibilities cast over the world of decision, snapping and reconnecting with every minute shift of being. when he sees a thread that could lead somewhere acceptable, he reaches out — and plucks. from the trees all around them hidden men fall dead, landing with soft fruit sounds.

DRAGON-SIGHT.

in the milk-glass world he sees the actions of another uchiha shisui play out like shadows, and cease to be. it should make him feel something, he thinks.

WITCH EYES.

“no,” he lies to the enemy of his enemy. “do they scare you, momochi-san?”

The golden hour bathed the training fields in a beautiful golden glow, bird song filtered through the air and Sasuke's ragged pants mark the end of another successful day of training. It's been like this ever since the genin summoned the courage to talk to him, having initially avoided him once he came to the village. Fear and anger dissolved into respect and admiration, the cogs of his mind turning as they understood the swordsman's position in life a little better.

Sasuke was not the type to indulge in vulnerability, but perhaps the heaviness of his own heart had not gone unnoticed. Maybe it manifested in the way he was just a little slower than usual, his steps a little too heavy, like the inevitable beat down of their spars were a deserved punishment instead of a fun practice session. Seeing him, he doesn't understand how Zabuza can go on knowing what he knows, suffering the fate he has. What would he have been if his circumstances were different? What would they both be?

"I'll never know who I could have been if they hadn't made me into this."

The Uchiha's eyes snapped up to his bandaged face and for a second, he thought about accusing him of reading minds. Naturally the Uchiha frowns and then frowns some more when the other man yanked his hands from him, turning over his palms to expose the torn calluses from today's training. It's a strange thing that such a violent gesture was answered with a tenderness Sasuke rarely experienced -- a healing balm rubbed over the open sores, hissing a little at the sharp sting.

"You can be whatever you want to be." Sasuke said once he's finished with one of his hands, his words laced with misplaced bitterness, like Zabuza was the mastermind of his own isolation. "You got a second chance, so make the best of it."

He can't help but think there won't be one for him.

@godmist grumbled: handing over his gyoza. "that's what you get for being adventurous. shit food. here, before i change my mind."

shizuma hates smiling.

when he smiles, he loses everything he finds beautiful in himself: the sharp masculine cut of his jaw, the lionine presence, the jagged lines and sharp angles he pulled from the rubble of the weak naive child he once was in order to painstakingly craft the man he is today. he loses the animal. he loses the hoshigaki.

when he smiles, everything softens. his gills flutter shut, revealing the appled cheeks stubbornly clinging to alpine cheekbones. his mouth, wide for ripping and tearing and sundering all that would challenge the sea’s might, smooths into a placid, pathetic lake. long midnight black eyelashes fan against his skin as delicate as a nudibranch; his full lips hide the jagged teeth and cup the sunlight’s glimmer like gloss; the upturn of his button nose resurfaces; he becomes soft. pretty. domestic. docile.

he looks like haku.

he looks like an outsider.

so shizuma doesn’t smile. he smirks, sneers, simpers, lies, lies, lies. but he doesn’t smile. ever.

until zabuza appears at his cell.

shizuma watches his grandfather silently watch him through the bars, noting the way zabuza does not look away from him even when shizuma stares back without blinking. even in his silver years zabuza is a prow unbowed, a stony crag planted in the sea floor unmoved by the tide. tall. proud. strong. vicious. zabuza always was his favorite relative. that used to go both ways, he thinks. judging by the flatness in zabuza’s eyes, shizuma thinks the past tense is appropriate.

“You did this to yourself,” zabuza finally says.

shizuma smiles like the angel he is — gorgeous! patient! compassionate! kind! — then lunges for zabuza’s throat.

steel-trap jaws close around iron centimeters from zabuza’s face hard enough to dent metal. it’s just the slightest bit of wiggle room, but it’s enough for shizuma to shove his arm through and slash at the air in front of zabuza’s face, tearing patches of skin off his forearm in the process. he’s quick, impossibly so, but zabuza has already stepped out of reach.

if he smiles, shizuma will find a way to rip it off his fucking face.

* UNPROMPTED / @GODMIST !

zabuza calls him ‘princess’ (at least sometimes) .        his skin is thicker now (thankfully) ,    a gooey-sticky thing he has wrapped around himself and perhaps it’s just saiken’s chakra stacking up over time     ———     maybe it’s a sort of apathy he had adapted in order to survive .        even as son of the mizukage ,     he’s never possessed anything valuable (material or not) .       the weight around his neck feels restricting (the cold metal of it searing the word ‘commitment’ into his skin) and yet it doesn’t feel wrong .        it’s simply strange      :      but this whole situation is beyond strange ,     a pair of trained killers on the run with two soon-to-be killer children in tow ,     practically playing house (as if they didn’t have to fight for survival every season of every single year) .

he notices the shade of red on his lover’s cheeks (a smile-worthy sight regardless) ,     glistening in the glaring sunlight hitting their forms on the clearing he had been working on .        for lecturing so much about emotions ,     utakata really didn’t have himself nearly as in check as he had thought .          ❛  forgive me for running off earlier .      i …  ❜          even his words do not come to him as easily as they normally did (why now !)      ———      saiken’s laughter is all that ricochets in the hallows of his skull .        but he looks at the precious stone and thinks that zabuza could have certainly been executed if caught stealing it (and yet that only leaves him to swallow harder around the lump in his throat) .         why is this so hard ?

JFJSJFFJ zabuza is wholly uncomfortable