#godmist

@godmist

He startles when the velvet voice unfurls behind him. He swivels around on his bar stool to find himself face-to-face with the man himself, Zabuza Momochi -- Demon of the Hidden Mist is quite the right name for him, Gai thinks, considering how he's slunk up to Gai without him quite noticing. Of course if asked, he would claim he'd just happened to have his guard down on a recovery day, that Tanaki's Udon was the safest place a shinobi could find themselves, and that he had been deeply immersed in the warming aroma of the nourishing broth.

Beady eyes stare back at him, waiting for a response.

"Momochi-san," Gai opens, polite and loud in the way only Gai could be. "I need clarifications. Are you simply paying me just to challenge Kakashi -- not to win the challenge nor to make sure that he truly sleeps?"

Because this is very, very easy, and it is either an oddly creative strategy to coerce Gai into a dubious plot that he knows very little about, or Zabuza really, really cares for Kakashi. And if he's been reading things right, there is a narrative Gai has more or less pieced together, thanks to the astute "observational skills" he's applied to his rival.

Kakashi had started stealthily taking weekend trips right after his mission to Kiri. Two, two and a half days max that he'd slip away, and Gai knew from his own experience that jonin-sensei hardly ever took their own missions, especially not when the genin team was still so fresh. Then he'd found Zabuza Momochi one day, brought him to Konoha, and the trips stopped.

And here the legendary swordsman is, living in Konoha, looking for Maito Gai, asking him to get Kakashi to sleep. Gai's been trying to do the same thing for years! Though, as far as he knows, an hour is a little bit of a low bar to set, even for Kakashi.

A ruse, or a pivotal moment of shared concern, albeit expressed in a rather odd way?

@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

✦   うちは   /     ❛      AH                   ❜             he   stares ,   blankly ,   at   the   pen   now   rolling   across   the   ground .   his   knuckles   smart   just   a   bit        (        nothing   substantial   at   all   really ,   he’s   mostly   startled        ) ,        &   he   turns   to   look   at   the   offender   with   a   confused   expression   on   marred   features .             ❛      oh ,      ❜             a   slow   smile   emerges ,   cheeky   glint   in   dark   eyes .             ❛      you   want   my   attention ,   huh ?   how   cute !      ❜