#halfhyuuga

Yugao presses her nose to Nana's half-exposed collarbone, her arms encircling her waist loosely. She hums, a quiet laugh bubbling out of her as Nana teases her about the weather.

She likes trying to get her out of the compound when she can, but it's not like she can take her back to her apartment if they want a little alone time. So if it's a little alone time @halfhyuuga wants, she's hardly going to complain about staying in.

Nana's hand snaking between them draws her attention, which remains rapt as her belt flutters to the ground and her robe finally falls open the rest of the way, exposing the pale curve of her chest, the tender skin of her belly, and Yugao bites her lip as she tries very, very hard not to drop to her knees immediately.

"Oh, hm..." She pretends to think, tucking a cool, callused hand against the bare skin of her waist, sliding it up slowly over her floating ribs, until her thumb rests just beneath the underside of her breast. "Now that you mention it, I can't think of a single place I'd rather be, another person to see, or a thing to do."

Her other hand settles butterfly-light on Nana's jaw, and she leans down to press a kiss to her lips that starts out chaste, and twists swiftly into something more than a little hungry. The hand at her jaw slips into her silky, dark hair, and she pulls away just enough to mutter: "You know you drive me crazy, right? You didn't even offer me a drink."

❝ you have a good heart—despite the tales. ❞ / Nana 💜

His hands freeze as he's sorting through the photos. She's no shinobi, so he as no idea if she's fast enough to notice or if she's so absorbed in the picture she's smiling softly at that it didn't register. Kakashi carefully hands the next one to her, surprised to see that his fingers have a perfect predator's stillness, that they don't shake at the reminder that he's--

Friend-killer Kakashi, right? In no way is he surprised she's heard the little epithet, he's quite certain that his reputation far outstrips her own both in infamy and reach. He wonders if she was titillated more by the whispers of him stealing a doujutsu, something the Hyuuga clan head at the time had clamored to have him executed for just for precedent, or if she was more excited by the rumors around Rin's death-- he knows there's a particularly vicious one about him having impregnated her and gone ballistic. Perhaps she'd even liked the tales about his gallant, tender-hearted father, so different from Kakashi himself by all accounts. Gentle, until he wasn't. Fair, until he wasn't. Well liked, until he wasn't. Perhaps she'd found fascination with the tales of the Hatake, the Otherness, the old rumors of cannibalism. It could be that she'd heard of any number of assassinations he'd conducted, hungry and blood soaked at fourteen or tired and dripping rivers of the stuff just last month. It could be any number of things, really, because people stopped whispering about Kakashi where he could hear them when he came halfway out of the shadows a few years ago, but he knows that doesn't mean they've stopped whispering altogether.

She knows the tales. Some of them, at the very least.

Something in his mouth feels like a hot coal. He isn't sure why the idea of it is making him freeze like a genin, because everyone talks about him, and he's sure she's heard all kinds of things, both absurd and true, from her clan once the rumors of them seeing each other had really started to circulate. She knows how the rumor mill gets, but... The blood on his hands feels very, very literal, even when it isn't. He picks up the next photo, his movement precise, and he looks blankly at Nana's face, smiling so hard with her slim arm looped through his that her pale eyes are only crescents in the soft planes of her face. Kakashi himself is smiling too, visible in the curve of his eye.

He remembers the woman that had asked if they'd wanted their picture taken-- she had dark hair, big brown eyes, and her hands had been very careful when he'd given her his camera, like it was something important. A civilian tourist, and her eyes had passed over Kakashi like he was just another man, and over Nana like she was just another woman, and she'd snapped a photo of them standing in front of one of the fountains in the park in the northwest quadrant of the village. Nana had pinched him on the back so hard in an effort to get him to stand up straight that he'd bruised like a peach.

Kakashi took all these photos so she could put them in a little scrapbook and look at them when she's too on-house-arrest to see the sky and he's too out-of-the-village-again to break her out so they can both just live a little. Does that mean he has a good heart? He hardly thinks he has one at all, let alone a good one. He thinks a man with a good heart would look nothing like him, hungry and mean like a beaten dog. He thinks a man with a good heart would not leave behind a trail of corpses the way a spring storm might.

Maybe she doesn't know, if she thinks that. His shoulders relax. Maybe she's heard, but she doesn't believe them. Maybe he'll never disappoint her opinion of him, or maybe he'll die first and he'll never have to worry about it at all.

"Mm," he hums contemplatively. Kakashi thumbs over the photo, their faces pressed cheek to cheek, and knows he's only imagining the smear of blood that he's left behind. "Don't tell anybody, you know I have a reputation to uphold."

❝ DID YOU SEE THAT?! ❞ his movements were a little clumsy, but the effort bled through every movement of the kata; and he finishes with a well placed konoha senpuu. it's different from the basic taijutsu taught at the academy, it's the movements of a master. . . performed by a small child. every time nana came over to watch lee while gai was on duty, the maito had something different to show her. he's getting stronger. FAST. ❝ i'm a maito, AND MAITOS ARE SUPER STRONG. ❞

and he gives nana an, uncharacteristic, mellow smile as she sat across from him. here they could talk in peace, away from the hyuga clan's prying eyes. ( hiashi hyuga especially irked him )

❝ i'm glad for these conversation, i take them as AN AUSPICIOUS SIGN. ❞ gai took a swing from his tea, a soft sigh leaves strong chest. ❝ he's strong, he's earned himself the title prodigy. but - ❞

he saw it in these pale eyes whenever he gave lee and tenten affection, he saw it whenever he reached out to neji. the disdain, but also a hint, something the youth probably believed well hidden, of yearning and fear. ❝ his team work is abysmal, and he seems to have no idea what to do with himself if offered kindness. ❞

It is what some may consider 'date night'.

@halfhyuuga is technically supposed to be in seclusion, as her husband demands when he's out of the house for more than a few days at the beginning of each month. Kakashi wishes he didn't know why they still bother doing that, since he's already proven more than capable of secreting her away from the compound, but he does: he doesn't always have time to come, can't get her our every week, let alone every day, and they hope one day to break her spirit.

He really, really tries not to dwell on it. Tells himself he's working on it, even as the thought of following through makes him sick with anxiety. It's date night, he tells himself. Nana looks like she just rolled out of bed, and Kakashi is fresh out of the hospital, still has his heavily bandaged right hand in a splint. Nana hangs off his blind side, insisting she's shoving people out of his way before they can jostle him.

It's a pretty good bit, he concedes. Especially since people give him a wide berth already.

She has flounced off to peer at some tea merchant's wares off to the side of the street. He's considering following her, the stall actually smells like some quality stuff, Gai and Zabuza might get a kick out of it but-- he pauses. In the busy street, he picks up a familiar scent of grapes, crushed and overripe magnolia, linen. His head jerks up, and he locks eyes with Hyuuga Hibiki.

Kakashi smiles at him, just the curve of his eye, and desperately tries to sign with his left hand against his side to Nana that she needs to stay over there, half-hidden in the shade of the stall. Of course, there's no reason for her to know shinobi sign, let alone the bastardized Ro-han code he'd slipped into in his brief moment of panic. She's walking back over to him, and Kakashi watches the exact moment that she registers on Hibiki's radar-- the grim slant to his mouth shifting into a scowl, the tension in his shoulders growing.

"I hired a tutor fer ya, Dawn."

Outside, the early morning sun stretched long across the ranch yard outside the farm house, morning dew glistening on the grass like golden dust. A cow mooed, a duck quacked, and little Hidan groaned.

"Ma, I don't need no tutor," He whined, looking up from his bowl of grits and sausage, squeezing his spoon.

His mother stood at the stove, her back to him, pouring herself a second cup of black coffee. "Yeah, ya do." Hikari countered. "Mr. Ben says yer fallin' behind the other kids at the Sunday school with yer readin' n' writin'."

"I can read! I can write!"

"Not well, Dawn," Hikari sighed, grabbing one of the wooden chairs at the table and sitting down. "Listen. I understand a preacher ain't a teacher, n' that's why I wanna git ya a lil' more help. I don't want ya endin' ya like me n' bein' stuck on this here ranch fer the rest of yer life."

Hidan frowned. "But, I like the ranch! You like the ranch, too! N' you said I could go to Academy to become a shinobi. Like Pa!"

Hikari flinched a little at the mention of her deceased husband. She didn't want to discourage her son from becoming a shinobi, the very thing that killed her dearly beloved. "I understand. But the Academy teaches ya 'bout jutsu n' fightin'. Not life skills. Readin' is important! I couldn't 'til I was a biggin'! How ya s'posed to learn all them fancy-dancy jutsu if ya can't even read 'em?"

Hidan pouted into his bowl. "I don't wanna."

His mother grinned, displaying her missing front tooth. "Well, that's too bad, Dawn. I already hired her n' she'll be here soon. Her name is Nana. Sweet lil' thing. I reckon you'll like her."

"B-B-But I was gonna ride Marshmallow to take the cows out to the pasture!" That was his favourite thing to do!

"I'll take 'em out. N' Mashmallow, too," That female Appaloosa got so temperamental if she was cooped up for too long. "Now finish yer breakfast. Nana should be here soon. N' it'll only be a few hours."

Chains rang along on the ground when Madara sat back, crossing his arms, nodding in acknowledgement of her statement. There was nothing to gain from lying to a dead man, and she did not seem vengeful either. Rather, she was curious. That all made him thoughtful.

Madara should not say ridiculous things, otherwise the world would have zero persons who looked at him so neutrally. In turn, he was curious as well, as to why a Hyuuga woman would stay in Suna for a prolonged period of time. His distant cousins were always snobs, and disdained the outliers.