#jiraya

⏳ SABAKU NO GAARA — 1.4k words

By the third day, the pain had stopped arriving in waves and had firmly established itself as weather.

Suna knew how to make endurance feel ordinary. The village woke before the heat became punishing, shutters opened and closed according to the sun, water was measured without ceremony, and everyone learned early that discomfort did not excuse the work waiting to be done. You had followed the same logic that morning: washed before dawn, swallowed medicine with the first mouthful of tea, managed three bites of breakfast and dressed while the ache gathered low in your stomach. By then it had already begun to spread, dragging through your hips and lower back until your whole body felt drawn too tightly around the bones.

You had still told yourself it would pass. Every month, your body offered the same warning; every month, you answered with the same lie.

By noon, the lie had brought you to the Kazekage’s private office, where you sat beside his desk with your forehead resting against the cool wood and one arm locked around your middle. The other was twisted behind you, your knuckles digging uselessly into the hard knot above your hip. Gaara had not objected when you came to work beside him, though the documents you had brought remained untouched on the low table. For several minutes, the only sound in the room had been the faint turn of paper and the dry scratch of his pen.

Then the pen stopped.

“The pain has worsened,” he said.

You lifted your head far enough to look at him. The shutters had been angled against the noon glare, leaving the office steeped in muted amber; beyond them, Suna burned white beneath the sun. Gaara sat within that dimness as composed as ever, but his attention had left the reports entirely.

“I admire the delicacy of your accusation.”

“It isn’t an accusation.” His gaze travelled over the arm around your stomach, the stiffness in your shoulders, the untouched cup of water near your hand. “You said the medicine helped.”

“It did. Then my body rejected diplomacy.”

Gaara considered this with the solemn concentration he usually reserved for border disputes. “Then diplomacy has failed.”

Despite yourself, a laugh caught in your throat, thin enough not to pull too sharply at your stomach. “I knew marrying a statesman would be useful one day.”

The sand resting in its gourd stirred before he moved. A narrow current slipped across the floor and gathered beneath your feet, lifting them until the strain eased from your hips. More rose behind you, shaping itself along the curve of your lower back; it began with barely any pressure, then adjusted when your breath faltered, pressing slowly into the worst of the ache until your body loosened reluctantly.

Relief escaped you in a long, unguarded exhale. Gaara’s expression changed, concern settling into purpose now that he had found something he could do. “Better?”

“I resent how much better.”

“You may resent it after the pain subsides.”

The sand continued its careful work, neither soft nor yielding, but exact. It knew where to brace because he had watched you trying not to limp that morning, knew which side hurt most because he had noticed how you lowered yourself into the chair. Once, that same sand had existed only to prevent the world from reaching him. Now it answered the smallest changes in your breathing, shaped by a man who had taught a weapon to become shelter.

Gaara rose and came around the desk. His coat whispered over the stone before he crouched beside you, one hand hovering near your shoulder until you leaned into its warmth. The touch settled fully then, his palm firm through the fabric.

“You should be resting at home.”

“I am resting.”

“You are folded over my desk.”

“It’s an advanced technique.”

“It appears ineffective.”

You opened one eye at him. “Are you criticising my jutsu?”

“Yes.”

His bluntness made you laugh again, and the immediate pull through your abdomen punished you for it. You folded more tightly with a muffled groan and Gaara’s thumb moved to the base of your neck, finding the cramped muscle there with such accuracy that you nearly sank out of the chair.

“There?” he asked.

“Unfortunately.”

His thumb paused. “Why is that unfortunate?”

“Because now you know my shoulders hurt as well, and you’ll insist on doing something kind about it. Then I’ll have no choice but to love you more, which seems excessive after all these years.”

For a moment, he said nothing. Gaara had never met affection with embarrassment so much as astonishment, as though each declaration still reached a part of him that had not learnt to expect good things without hidden conditions. His hand resumed its slow pressure, gentler now.

“I will accept the consequence,” he said.

You let your eyes close. Outside, wind worried a little sand against the shutters; inside, the office held the cool mineral scent of stone, ink and the desert carried in on Gaara’s clothes. The village knew him as its Kazekage, its jinchūriki, the commander who could turn the ground beneath an army into a grave. Few people would have recognised the same precision here, in the sand cupping your aching knees or the steady hand working tension from your shoulder. Gaara’s tenderness had never depended upon softness—it was attention given form.

“You have a council meeting soon,” you murmured when his other hand slid beneath your elbow, already preparing to help you stand. “Before you decide otherwise, no, you cannot cancel it because I have cramps.”

“This quarter’s caravan escort fees have already been approved twice.”

“That’s never prevented the council from discussing it a third time.”

“It will today.”

You raised your head properly. “Gaara.”

“The village will not suffer because its officials are denied one afternoon of repeating themselves.” He said it without irritation, merely as fact, and began gathering the abandoned papers from your lap. “I can carry you back.”

“You can walk me back.”

“You are in pain, beloved.”

“I still have legs.”

“I am aware.”

The knock at the door arrived before you could construct another argument. A shinobi announced that the council had assembled, but Gaara did not look away from you as he answered that the meeting would be rescheduled. There was a startled pause outside, followed by a cautious question about whether everything was all right.

“My spouse is unwell,” Gaara said.

You covered your face with one hand. “By sunset, half the village will think I’m dying.”

“The council knows better than to turn your health into gossip.”

“The council might, but their assistants have mothers.”

This appeared to strike him as a complication worth considering, though not one capable of changing his decision. The sand rose around you before you could brace your feet, supporting your back and thighs while Gaara slipped one arm beneath your knees and the other around your shoulders. He lifted you with the same grave care he brought to wounded children, as if there were no indignity in being unable to carry yourself for an afternoon and no scale by which ordinary pain became too small to deserve an answer.

“You’re taking me to bed in the middle of the working day,” you said, settling despite yourself against the encompassing warmth of his chest.

“With tea, medicine and heat, yes.”

“And food.”

“If you want it.”

“Nothing smug.”

Gaara glanced down at you. “The rice offended you this morning.”

“It knew what it had done,” you muttered.

“Then there will be no rice.”

The private corridor towards the residence was cooler than the office, its stone walls shutting out the worst of the day. His sand followed in a quiet ribbon, carrying the things neither of you had remembered to pick up. You rested your face against his robes and breathed in sun-warmed cloth, ink and dust. The pain remained, a hard red cord drawn through the centre of you, but it no longer filled the whole horizon; Gaara’s arms had given it boundaries, somewhere to end.

“You don’t have to treat this like a diplomatic crisis, you know,” you murmured eventually.

His hold tightened by a fraction. “No,” he said, calm enough that the word did not interrupt his stride. “But I do have to answer it.”

Gaara had spent too much of his own life learning what became of pain when no one answered. He would not leave yours alone merely because it was ordinary.

🐦‍⬛ ITACHI UCHIHA — 1.3k words

Itachi knew before you told him. He usually did.

Pain had taught you to become unobtrusive—you had learnt how to breathe through the first cramp without changing expression, how to keep your steps even when the ache reached into your hips, how to answer ordinary questions while your lower back felt bruised from the inside. None of it came from distrust, you simply disliked the way recurring pain could make a person feel unreasonable, as though suffering on a predictable schedule made it less deserving of interruption.

That morning, you made it through breakfast almost convincingly. You ate enough not to be questioned, returned Itachi’s quiet remarks, and smiled when he slid the better portion of fruit onto your plate without acknowledging that he had done so. The deception held until you began clearing the dishes. Halfway to the basin, pain drew tight through your abdomen and down one thigh with such bright precision that your fingers locked around the bowl. You stopped where you stood, afraid that any movement would make the room tilt.

Water continued running over Itachi’s hands for another second before he turned it off.

To anyone else, he might only have glanced at you, but you knew the small change in his attention, in the way his body became quieter rather than more urgent, as though stillness allowed him to take in more.

“You should sit,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“That is not what I said.”

The correction came without sharpness, leaving you nothing useful to resist. You returned the bowl to the table and lowered yourself into the nearest chair, slowly enough to preserve the last scraps of dignity. Morning light had begun to gather against the paper screens, pale and cool, but the house still held the hush of early hours: damp ceramic, cooling rice, the faint herbal trace of tea. Itachi dried his hands and came to stand beside you.

“You didn’t sleep well.”

“I slept.”

His fingers settled lightly on your shoulder, not pressing until you leaned into the touch. “Those statements are not the same.”

“You become very irritating when you are right.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“By me.”

“Yes.”

The corner of his mouth softened. The expression was brief, but not hidden; this version of Itachi no longer treated every sign of fondness as something that might be used against him. His gaze travelled over you without making you feel examined, pausing at the arm across your stomach and the careful angle of your hips. He had always been able to notice without prying, which often made concealment feel less like privacy and more like wasted effort.

“Where is it worst?”

“Everywhere.”

“Be specific.”

You let your head fall back against the chair. “Lower stomach. Back. Hips. My legs ache, and apparently I have spent half the morning trying to wear my shoulders as earrings.”

Itachi’s thumb moved once across the tense muscle beneath his hand. “The right side is worse.”

You turned your head to look at him. “I was hoping to preserve at least one mystery in our marriage.”

“There are others.”

The answer was so serenely delivered that you could not decide whether it was reassurance or a threat. Before you settled on either, he moved away, taking the kettle from the stove and pouring fresh water over ginger and herbs.

“I’ll draw you a bath,” he said.

“Itachi, you don’t need to reorganise the entire morning because I have cramps.”

“I am not reorganising it.”

“You’re making tea, running a bath and looking at me as though I’ve failed a medical exam.”

“You’re pale, you have eaten very little, and you have been favouring your left leg since you woke.” He placed the cup in front of you, followed by the medicine the village medic had prescribed after your last difficult month. “The morning reorganised itself some time ago.”

“When?”

“When you remained still for twenty-seven seconds while holding the bowl.”

You stared at him over the steam. “You counted?”

“No.”

“That was far too specific to be a guess.”

“I estimated.”

“You’re impossible.”

“So I have been told,” he repeated, and this time the smile reached his eyes.

The tea tasted medicinal, though not cruelly so. While you drank, Itachi warmed a compress and placed it across your lap, testing the heat against his own wrist before allowing it near you. Then, with no announcement that might have given you time to object, he knelt beside the chair and drew one of your feet gently onto his thigh.

“Itachi?”

“Your legs hurt.”

“They always hurt.”

“That doesn’t make the pain irrelevant.”

His hands closed around your calf, warm and careful. “Tell me if the pressure is too much.”

You nodded. The reply lodged somewhere behind your ribs, crowded out by the quiet absurdity of him kneeling on the kitchen floor as though this, too, deserved his full attention. Itachi’s touch was measured rather than tentative as he worked his thumbs through the cramped muscle, pausing when your breath caught and adjusting before you had to ask. There was no embarrassment in him, no suggestion that your body had become unpleasant because it was aching, bleeding or difficult to inhabit. He treated pain as information—something to be noticed, understood and answered where possible.

By the time he moved to your other leg, the tension in your spine had begun to ease. The compress warmed your stomach; steam curled above the tea, blurring the edge of his face when you looked down at him.

“You’re thinking loudly,” he said.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“That rarely stops you.”

“You know, you’re very bold for someone kneeling within kicking distance.”

“You would regret it.”

“Because I love you?”

“Because your hip would cramp.”

A laugh slipped out before you could prevent it. The movement pulled through your abdomen, though less viciously now, and you pressed the compress closer. Itachi’s eyes lifted to yours, quietly amused.

The bath was ready before the tea had cooled. He had warmed the room, folded a towel beside the tub and left water within reach. Lavender softened the steam, though not enough to disguise the sharper scent of the medicinal salts he had added. His talent for practical tenderness could be deeply offensive when you were determined to pretend you required nothing.

“You can stop looking so pleased with yourself,” you told him.

“I’m not pleased.”

“You’ve arranged this entire room with military precision.”

“That is not a source of pleasure.”

“For you, it is.”

He considered denying it, then seemed to decide the evidence was against him. Instead, he helped you to stand, one hand at your waist and the other steady beneath your forearm and when your legs trembled, his grip tightened without drawing attention to it.

At the edge of the bath, you looked at him. “You do know this happens every month.”

“I am aware.”

“You can’t dismantle the day every time.”

“I can change its shape.”

The answer was quiet, offered while he adjusted the towel so it would not slip to the floor. Itachi had spent too much of his life treating his own pain as useful only when hidden, his body as something to exhaust, sacrifice or discard once the work was finished. Perhaps that was why he refused to admire endurance for its own sake in anyone he loved.

He brushed his knuckles over your temple. “Call if you need me.”

“You will be directly outside.”

“Yes.”

“You could stay.”

His hand paused. There was no surprise in his face, only the small solemnity with which he received every request you trusted him enough to make. He sat beside the bath while you undressed, his attention resting on you without scrutiny or embarrassment; your body was not something that became less worthy of tenderness when it was aching, bleeding and difficult to inhabit. When you lowered yourself into the water with a long, relieved breath, he drew closer to the edge of the tub.

Itachi did not ask whether it still hurt; he knew that care was not the same as cure. He only offered his hand, palm open between you, and let you hold on for as long as you needed.

🐸 MASTER JIRAIYA — 1.4k words

Morning found the inn little by little, pale light slipping between the shutters as other people began their day. Crockery clinked together somewhere below, footsteps crossed the passage, and the smell of rice climbed through the old floorboards with enough warmth to make the room feel briefly domestic rather than another rented stop along a shinobi road.

You, on the other hand, woke into a cramp. It caught low in your abdomen before you were properly conscious, tightening until your first breath of the morning stalled behind your teeth. When it eased, it left a familiar ache spreading through your hips and lower back, and something else besides: a cool dampness beneath one thigh that made you lie very still. Then you slipped a hand beneath the blanket, found the sheet, and shut your eyes. Beside you, Jiraiya inhaled deeply through his nose.

“If you’re pretending to be asleep,” you whispered, “keep doing it.”

“I wasn’t,” came the rough, drowsy reply from behind you, “but I admire the strategic thinking.”

You caught the blanket before he could turn and dragged it closer around yourself. The movement pulled sharply through your back, enough to make you pause until the spasm passed. By the time you breathed again, Jiraiya was awake in the way experienced shinobi became awake—all at once beneath whatever laziness remained in his voice.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

There was a brief silence. “You’ve gone pale, you’re guarding that blanket like I’m about to steal your breakfast, and you’ve just lied to one of the greatest intelligence operatives of his generation.” His hand appeared beside your shoulder, palm up rather than reaching for you. “Seems I’m having an excellent morning professionally.”

Your mouth betrayed you with the beginning of a smile. “My period started.”

His eyes moved once towards the bed and back to your face. Nothing recoiled or sharpened with surprise; comprehension simply settled in, followed almost immediately by the particular brightness that meant Jiraiya had located a joke and intended to inflict it upon you.

“Well, that’s a relief.”

You stared at him. “Explain yourself very carefully.”

“This is nowhere near the worst condition I’ve left an inn room in.”

“That’s not remotely comforting.”

“It establishes perspective.”

“It establishes a criminal pattern, you mean.”

“Criminal is a strong word. Several proprietors merely encouraged me to expand my literary travels.”

The laugh escaped before you could decide whether he deserved it. Unfortunately, your body objected to comedy as pain tightened again beneath your stomach, thinning the sound into a breath. Jiraiya’s expression changed without losing all its warmth, though the foolery did not vanish so much as it stepped aside while he sat up and looked at you properly.

“How bad?”

“Manageable.”

“That wasn’t a number.”

You sighed. “Six. Seven, maybe, when it catches.”

“Right.” He reached for your robe from the end of the bed and held it open without attempting to wrest the blanket away. “Put this on.”

There was no fuss in what followed. Once you were covered, Jiraiya stripped the bed with the brisk competence of someone who had spent decades managing injuries, camps, missions and bodily disasters considerably worse than this one. He folded the stained part of the sheet inward before carrying it away, not because the blood offended him, but because he had already understood that being seen was the part bothering you.

“Jiraiya?”

“Private bath, breakfast, medicine, then you’re getting back into bed.”

“We were supposed to leave this morning.”

“Then the road will experience the devastating loss of our company for a few hours.”

“What are you going to tell the proprietor?”

“That we need fresh bedding.”

Heat rose into your face before you could stop it. “She’ll know why.”

His hand settled on the doorframe and when he looked back, there was still humour in his face, but none directed at you. “This is an inn on a shinobi road. She’s probably washed out blood from stab wounds, poison sickness, battlefield dressings and whatever Gai does to a futon after eating curry. Your body hasn’t exactly invented a new form of catastrophe.”

You looked down at the blanket gathered in your lap.

“And if you don’t want to see her, you won’t,” he added. “Fortunately, I possess both money and a heroic absence of shame.”

“You possess money?”

The dignity left his face at once. “Cruel. Completely unnecessary! Stay here.”

He returned with the key to the private bath, clean towels, water, and the expression that told you he expected formal recognition for having negotiated with one sympathetic innkeeper. By then the fresh cramp had begun pulling into your thighs, and he noticed before you made it fully upright. His travelling cloak went around your shoulders; one broad hand remained close to your back as he guided you through the quiet rear passage, never quite touching unless the old stairs made your knees uncertain.

Steam had already softened the bathing room. Jiraiya crouched beside the sunken bath to test the water, added a dipper from the cold bucket, tested it again, then arranged the towels where you could reach them without standing.

“I can manage,” you told him.

“I know.” He straightened. “Do you want me here or outside?”

You considered the depth of the bath, your aching legs and the distance back to your room. “Here. But one joke about research and I drown you.”

His hand went solemnly to his chest. “I would never compromise the dignity of my craft.”

“Jiraiya.”

“Not one.”

He lasted almost three minutes.

By then you were submerged to the shoulders, heat slowly persuading your muscles to release what pain had knotted through them. Jiraiya sat behind you on the tiles with his sleeves pushed back, working soap through your hair. For someone whose public reputation depended heavily on being unbearable around bathing, his hands were unexpectedly careful. His fingertips found the tension at your temples and nape without being asked, and when he rinsed the lather away, one palm shielded your eyes from the water.

“Better?”

“Much.”

“Excellent. Because I’ve just realised this room would be perfect for chapter twelve.”

You opened one eye. “No.”

“You haven’t heard the premise.”

“I know you.”

“Our hero enters a secluded mountain spring, unaware that destiny awaits in the form of a mysterious traveller with exceptional flexibility and unresolved property disputes.”

“Get out.”

“You invited me.”

“Clearly I was impaired.”

“The traveller says something very similar.”

Your laugh sent water lapping against the stone. The answering cramp was smaller this time, but Jiraiya still felt you tense beneath his hand and steadied you until it passed, thumb moving once against your side.

“Sorry,” you said before you thought better of it.

“For what?”

“The sheets? Delaying us? Needing…all this.”

He was quiet long enough that you turned towards him. Jiraiya had a face built for exaggeration, for enormous grins and offended dignity and performances designed to draw every eye in a room. Without any of them, he looked older and far more difficult to evade.

“A dirty sheet is laundry,” he said. “A late departure is a late departure. Neither one becomes a tragedy because you’re embarrassed by it.” His hand remained warm at your side. “And looking after you isn’t time stolen from something more important.”

Your throat tightened. Naturally, he ruined the moment before it could become unbearable.

“Besides, I’ve been campaigning for shared bathing privileges since the Land of Rivers. It would be disgracefully ungrateful to complain now.”

“You’re not in the bath.”

“A bureaucratic technicality.”

By the time you returned upstairs, the bed had been remade and breakfast waited beside it with the medicine you had buried too deeply in your pack. Jiraiya persuaded you through enough rice and fruit to take the tablets, then climbed in behind you without bothering to pretend he intended to do anything productive. One hand settled over your lower stomach, broad enough to hold warmth there while you curled back against him.

Chapter twelve resumed in a low voice and each time he felt the beginning of a smile against his arm, the plot became more ridiculous. The mysterious traveller acquired a jealous magistrate, then a cursed sandal, then an inheritance dispute involving six goats and a bathhouse. Somewhere between the third goat and the arrival of an improbably handsome wandering author, your breathing began to lengthen.

Jiraiya could not reason pain out of your body, and he was too experienced to mistake comfort for cure. What he could do was make room around it in warmth, medicine, changed plans, and a hand that stayed where it helped. He could take the embarrassment you had woken clutching to your chest and keep worrying at it with humour until it became small enough to set down.

When you woke again near noon, his palm was still resting over your stomach and the stained sheets had vanished. Chapter twelve, mercifully, had vanished with them. You decided two out of three problems solved was plenty.

📖 KAKASHI HATAKE — 1.4k words

The mission had been over for six hours, which should have meant the difficult part of the day was behind you. Your body, apparently offended by being excluded, chose the journey home to object.

The first cramp caught you halfway across a narrow branch above the eastern road. Your foot landed cleanly, but the rest of you followed a fraction too late, pain tightening low through your abdomen and drawing one hand towards it before training returned your arm to your side. Nobody called it out. Two shinobi farther ahead were arguing over where to eat once they reached Konoha, while the medic behind you had begun describing a hot bath with the reverence of someone discussing paradise. Kakashi travelled at the front with his hands in his pockets and gave no sign that he had noticed, which, after enough time with him, was almost evidence that he had.

By the time the trees gave way to open road, the ache had spread through your hips and settled heavily into your lower back. Your period was early, not enough to worry you, only enough that everything useful was sitting in a drawer several hours away. You had improvised at the last rest stop and decided there was no reason four capable shinobi needed their return delayed because your body had misplaced the date. Conversation moved around you without requiring much participation; you answered when someone addressed you, saved your breath when they did not, and kept your stride even enough that the effort became its own private task.

Kakashi let this continue for perhaps ten minutes before lifting one hand and bringing the group to a halt. “We’ll use the relay shelter tonight.” One of the others glanced towards the afternoon sun and pointed out that they could reach the village before dark, to which Kakashi agreed pleasantly. “You can.” Then, with the peaceful audacity built only from lying professionally for most of his life, he rested a hand against his right knee and tested his weight upon it. “My old injury disagrees.”

Concern arrived immediately. A slower pace was proposed, followed by a brace, someone taking his pack, and a mild rebuke from the medic for not mentioning the problem earlier. Kakashi accepted all of it with the weary patience of a wounded veteran, his visible eye curving at you over the edge of his mask while you stared back in disbelief. By the time the shelter came into view, a single-room waystation with two sleeping platforms, a water barrel and a hearth stocked with dry wood, the others had become fully invested in an injury you were fairly certain had never existed.

Inside, Kakashi summoned a shadow clone and sent it ahead with them to submit the preliminary report and tell the gate guards their captain would return in the morning. The medic lingered long enough to ask whether his knee would manage the night, and Kakashi assured them that rest should save him from tragic early retirement. Their sympathy followed them back towards the road. Only when the footsteps had faded did you turn on him. “Your knee is fine.”

“Remarkably observant.” He was already crouching by the hearth.

“You made everyone stop because of me.”

“No. I made everyone stop because their captain required it.” Flame caught beneath the kindling, orange light moving over his fingers. “Your name never entered the conversation.”

You folded your arms. “You could have asked.”

“In front of three people?”

The answer removed most of the argument before you could use it. Another cramp took care of the rest, tightening through your middle until you had to brace a hand against the sleeping platform. Kakashi did not rush towards you or turn the moment into an emergency. He waited until you straightened, giving you the dignity of getting through it without an audience, then began unpacking the supply scroll beneath his pack.

“It started early,” you admitted.

“I thought it might have.”

There was no satisfaction in being right. Kakashi noticed almost everything, but the unusual kindness of his attention lay in the fact that he rarely treated observation as permission. He could read an opponent from the angle of a shoulder and dismantle a lie before the speaker finished telling it; with you, he also knew when not to name what he had seen.

The supply scroll released a field blanket, rations, spare clothes, the medical kit and a small cloth pouch. Kakashi passed the pouch across while sorting the rest, and several wrapped menstrual pads appeared when you opened it. Your surprise made him glance up. “Why do you carry these?”

“Because I lead shinobi who menstruate.” He added a clean shirt and loose trousers to your arms as though the answer required no further defence. “A field kit that only prepares for injuries caused by other people would be badly designed.”

Embarrassment found very little to hold on to after that. Kakashi rigged the blanket between two beams to divide the room, filled one basin and left it behind the makeshift screen, then placed another beside the hearth. “Use whichever you want for your clothes. The one behind the blanket means you want me to wash them. The one out here means you don’t.”

“You don’t have to wash them.”

“That would be why there are two basins.”

His attention had already moved to heating water before you stepped behind the blanket, granting you privacy without behaving as though there were anything shameful to conceal. The blood had spread farther than you expected, but alone behind the screen you could deal with it without imagining anyone measuring the length of your silence. Clean fabric against sore skin felt disproportionately merciful after a long mission, even if the shirt hung a little too loosely and smelled faintly of Kakashi’s soap and travel dust.

When you emerged, the shelter had begun to warm. Smoke, damp earth and some anonymous field tea mingled in the air while Kakashi poured hot water into a sealed flask and wrapped it in a towel. He looked at you only long enough to assess your face. “Do you want company, distraction, or quiet?”

“Warmth,” you said, accepting the flask. The question left enough room that honesty did not feel extracted from you, so you added, “and for you to stay.”

“Convenient. I was planning to.”

You lay on your side with the flask tucked against your lower stomach. Kakashi settled on the floor beside the platform rather than crowding onto it, close enough to reach and far enough that the remaining distance belonged to you. You closed it by catching his wrist and guiding his hand towards the ache above your hip. He understood without commentary, waiting until you shifted beneath his palm before applying pressure, then working slow circles through the borrowed shirt while the fire settled into a steady crackle.

The quiet that followed was easy enough to contain ordinary things—water beginning to simmer, wind brushing the roof, Kakashi somehow producing his book without you seeing him reach for it. Eventually you said, “I’m sorry,” and he answered from behind the page, “For what?” When you explained that you had slowed everyone down, he pointed out that everyone else was already on the way home. You amended it to slowing him down.

“I’ve spent years cultivating a reputation for lateness,” he said. “It would be wasteful not to use it.”

Your laugh shifted the flask against your stomach. Kakashi steadied it without looking away from his book, which was irritatingly graceful of him. After a moment you asked whether he had noticed on the branch.

“Mm.”

“But you didn’t say anything.”

The book lowered slightly. “You weren’t hiding from me. You were trying not to discuss something private in front of an audience.”

That was all. No lecture about knowing you too well, no demand that you stop pretending, no gentle accusation disguised as concern. Kakashi had recognised the pain and the boundary beside it and protected both. He returned to his page, his other hand still warm against you, and informed you that the clone would handle the report, nobody expected you tonight, and your remaining options were sleep, complain, or a detailed critique of his imaginary knee injury.

“Can I decide later?”

“That was secretly the fourth option.”

The next cramp still hurt. Kakashi did not try to talk you out of it and there was something restful in being cared for by someone who had no need to make comfort look miraculous. He kept his hand where it helped, adjusted the blanket when your eyes began to close, and let the little shelter become smaller than the road waiting outside.

By the time sleep found you, the basin containing your stained clothes had disappeared from behind the screen and the other remained exactly where he had left it.

🕊️ NEJI HYŪGA — 1.4k words

The water bucket was only half full, but by evening your body had begun to regard it as an unreasonable demand. You set it beside the bath and straightened with care. The movement drew a dull line through your abdomen and into your hips, meeting the ache already lodged across your lower back. None of it was severe enough to frighten you, though that almost made it worse. The pain had spent the day hovering below urgency, too ordinary to justify stopping and too persistent to forget, until sitting hurt, standing hurt differently, and lying down only removed the distractions.

A bath usually helped. The room was already warm from the brazier; steam feathered the edge of the water reservoir and clean clothes waited folded on the stool because you had been optimistic enough to prepare them earlier. All you had to do was finish filling the tub.

Your hand closed around the bucket again. Another hand covered the handle before you could lift it.

“Leave it.”

Neji had returned from training without you hearing him. Evening dust marked one pale sleeve, and his hair was still tied out of the way. His gaze moved once over the bucket, your grip and the careful set of your spine.

“I can lift a bucket.”

“I know.” He took the weight from you with irritating ease. “I can also see that you would rather argue about it than admit lifting it hurts.”

“That isn’t the same thing.”

“No, but it is considerably more tiring.”

There was no point pursuing a disagreement with someone already pouring the water into the bath. Neji returned to the reservoir, added another bucket, then crouched to test the temperature. Too hot earned cold water; too cool earned another dipper from the brazier. By the time he was satisfied, the soap and washcloth had been moved within reach, two towels sat folded beside the tub, and your clothes had migrated close enough to the heat to warm without scorching.

You noticed the covered cup beyond the screen. “Is that tea?”

“It will still be tea when you are finished.”

“You’ve been home for five minutes.”

“And you have been in pain since breakfast.”

The words were so plain that they took the argument out of your mouth. Neji had watched you refuse a second helping that morning because nausea had joined the cramps, seen the way you stood from the table with one hand briefly pressed to your back and apparently kept the information filed away until it became useful.

He reached for the door. “I’ll be outside.”

“No, stay.”

Something in his expression eased, not surprise exactly, more the release of a formality he had been prepared to maintain for your sake. “All right.”

There was no reason for him to turn away while you undressed and he did not invent one. He simply busied himself setting the tea nearer the bath, his attention resting on you with the familiarity of someone who knew your body and did not consider pain, blood or nakedness an event requiring embarrassment. When you lowered yourself into the water, the first wash of heat made your muscles tighten before they began, reluctantly, to give.

For a while neither of you spoke. You folded your arms on the rim and let warmth work at the ache. Neji settled beside the tub with his sleeves pushed above his elbows.

“My back is the worst,” you murmured eventually. “It feels as though everything is pulling on everything else.”

His fingertips rested lightly above your hip, not pressing yet. “Do you want me to use the Byakugan?”

To most people, the Byakugan was distance stripped away, walls made useless, bodies rendered transparent, chakra pathways exposed beneath skin. You had watched Neji find enemies through forests and read attacks before they arrived. He could have looked now and known exactly where tension had settled. He asked anyway.

“Yes.”

Chakra sharpened his gaze; the familiar veins rose at his temples. His attention travelled through water and flesh without becoming invasive, following the braced muscles around your abdomen and the answering strain across your back. After a moment, two fingers touched just above your hip.

“You have been holding yourself rigid here for hours.”

“It hurts when I relax.”

“Because everything around it is compensating.” His hand shifted higher. “Let me try something.”

You nodded, and his thumbs settled on either side of your spine.

The hands of the Gentle Fist had been trained to know precisely how little force a body could survive badly. Neji understood where chakra narrowed and where two fingers placed correctly could do more damage than a fist. In the bath, that same knowledge became almost absurdly careful as he worked through the hardened muscle without touching the tenketsu themselves, increasing pressure only when your body stopped resisting the last amount.

“There?”

“A little more.”

His thumbs pressed deeper.

“Mm, yes,” you breathed. “That.”

“You have said that twice today about things that hurt.”

You lifted your head enough to look at him. “Are you criticising my communication?”

“I am observing a pattern.”

“Dangerous habit.”

“So I’ve been told.”

The answer was dry enough to make you smile. Neji’s mouth softened at one corner before his attention returned to your back and the room settled around the quiet work of his hands. The pain did not disappear, but it loosened its claim in small places, enough for the heat to reach muscles that had spent the day braced against the next cramp. When your breathing changed, his pressure eased before you needed to ask.

“Better?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Then stop trying to help.”

“I’m sitting in a bath.”

“You are still holding your shoulders up.”

You let them drop with a reluctant groan. “I hate how much you can see.”

“I know.”

There was affection buried so neatly inside his answer that calling attention to it would only have ruined it.

When the worst of the tension had eased, Neji released the Byakugan and reached for the soap. “Hair?”

You passed it to him and leant forwards. He loosened the tie at your nape and worked water through your hair, careful not to tug when his fingers met a knot. Steam dampened the strands at his temples until one slipped forwards towards the water. You caught it before it fell in.

“You’re going to end up in here.”

“I am not.”

“That sounds very certain.”

“I have excellent balance.”

“Arrogant.”

“Accurate.”

You were still smiling when another cramp rolled through you. It had lost some of its sharpness, but exhaustion followed behind it, heavy enough that your forehead found your folded arms again.

“I hate this.”

“The cramps?”

“All of it. Planning around what my body will tolerate. Cancelling things. Resting when I don’t want to. It feels as though I’m letting it make decisions for me.”

Neji rinsed the last soap from your hair and gathered it away from your shoulders. He had been born into a family that treated blood as instruction and the body as evidence of where a person belonged. Even after he stopped believing fate was fixed, he had never become careless about the difference between accepting a condition and surrendering to it.

“A limitation is not an order,” he said. “You decide what to do with the information.”

“Rest sounds suspiciously like obeying it.”

“So does taking cover when someone throws a kunai at your head.”

You turned to stare at him and his expression remained composed. “You may ignore useful information if you prefer. I would not recommend building a philosophy around it.”

“That was almost a joke.”

“It was an analogy.”

“A funny analogy.”

“That was incidental.”

This time the laugh came without punishment from your abdomen. Neji wrapped your hair in one of the towels, then held out a hand when you were ready to stand. He did not pull until your grip tightened around his; once you were upright, the second towel was already open around your shoulders and your warmed clothes close at hand.

Later, the tea was still hot enough to steam. You drank it stretched along the bed with your head in Neji’s lap while he combed the damp from your hair, beginning at the ends and working upwards so gently that you nearly fell asleep before he finished. The ache remained, dull and present beneath the warmth, but it had stopped being the only thing your body knew.

When another cramp gathered, you did not brace against it before it arrived. Neji’s hand rested over your hip, steady and unhurried, while you let it pass.

+ bonus: 🔥 MADARA — 1.4k words

The clan meeting had outlived the daylight and, somewhere around the third argument about the eastern storehouses, any reasonable claim to usefulness.

Oil lamps burned along the walls of the Uchiha meeting hall, throwing a tired amber light across timber beams still new enough to smell faintly of resin. Peace had not yet settled into anyone’s bones. Every roof tile, patrol route and sack of winter grain was discussed as though the wrong decision might summon yesterday’s armies back across the river, and tonight three elders had somehow managed to turn the direction of a storehouse door into a matter of clan survival.

At the head of the room, Madara listened with the rigid patience of a man permitting everyone else the privilege of exhausting themselves. You sat beside him and tried not to move.

The cramps had begun before noon, low and familiar enough that you had taken medicine, eaten what you could and assumed the worst of it would pass before the meeting began. Instead, the ache had spread through your hips and settled across your lower back, sharpening whenever you shifted and growing heavier each hour you remained seated. None of it frightened you; pain this ordinary came with no clean excuse to stop.

So you kept your hands folded in your lap and answered when the discussion required you. When it did not, you saved your breath.

Madara noticed when you stopped contributing. His gaze touched you once, brief and exact, before an elder dragged his attention back to timber allocation. You straightened before he could ask. The village was barely old enough to trust its own foundations, and Madara carried half its weight whether anyone around the table admitted it or not. You had no intention of adding yourself to the pile.

By the time he finally dismissed the meeting, relief travelled through the room with almost indecent speed. Papers were gathered, backs straightened, sandals turned towards the door. You waited until the others had begun filing into the corridor before pushing yourself upright.

The hall immediately tilted.

Your hand found the edge of the table before the floor had time to become a genuine problem. You stood there for several deep breaths, letting the cramp burn itself out while conversation continued around you. Fortunately, nobody seemed to notice. Madara had been caught by the captain of the patrol and was speaking to him with a clipped impatience brought on by having already spent too long indoors.

You made it into the corridor, though six steps later, pain folded sharply through your middle and your palm struck the wall. Your knee gave way before you could hide it.

An arm closed around your waist and lifted you clear of the floor. When Madara said your name there was nothing gentle in his voice, which was how you knew you were in trouble.

“I’m fine.”

“Stand, then.”

You tried. Your legs immediately betrayed the argument.

Two elders near the outer doors had slowed to look back. Madara glanced at them once and whatever concern they had developed became private very quickly. Then his attention returned to you. “How long?”

You knew better than to pretend you misunderstood. “Since this morning.”

His face barely changed, and somehow, that felt worse. “You sat through that entire meeting like this.”

“It was important.”

“They spent half an hour arguing over which direction a door should face.”

“The storehouse matters.”

“The grain will remain grain regardless of which way an old man enters the building.”

The cramp eased enough that you could straighten against his hold. “I can walk now.”

Madara bent and lifted you before the sentence had finished. One arm passed beneath your knees, the other braced your back, and the corridor dropped away with your dignity still somewhere on the floor behind you. You caught his shoulder on instinct.

“Put me down.”

“No.”

“Everyone can see.”

“Then perhaps they will remember the cost of wasting my time.”

“They didn’t know.”

“Neither did I.” His jaw tightened. “That concerns me more.”

You stared at him. “I didn’t want to drag you out of the meeting because I had cramps.”

Madara stopped beneath the courtyard gate. Beyond him, the new village glowed warm between houses that had not existed a handful of years ago. “So instead you decided I would prefer to find you collapsing in a corridor.”

“You weren’t supposed to find me collapsing,” you muttered.

“An excellent defence.”

He resumed walking. The Uchiha compound had gone quiet with the evening, though not quiet enough to prevent several people noticing their clan head carrying his partner home. Wisely, nobody commented. A woman sweeping her threshold became fascinated by one stubborn patch of dust and two younger shinobi abruptly discovered something urgent to discuss in the opposite direction.

You hid your face briefly against Madara’s shoulder. “This is humiliating.”

“Good. Perhaps embarrassment will succeed where judgement failed.”

His words remained merciless; his hold did not jar you once.

At home, he lowered you onto the futon and knelt to remove your sandals. When you reached down to help, he pushed your hand away without looking up. The outer layer of your clothing followed, loosened enough to stop pressing against your abdomen, and a cushion appeared beneath your knees before he crossed to the hearth.

Everything he did had the clipped efficiency of anger. Water went into the kettle. The fire answered chakra beneath his hand. A folded cloth was warmed, tested against his wrist and laid over your lower stomach with such care that the contrast nearly made you laugh.

“I’m not delicate.”

Madara gave you a look that could have ended negotiations between nations. “At present, you are bleeding, exhausted and in pain. None of those facts insult you.”

“I could hardly stop a clan meeting because of cramps.”

“I could.”

That did make you laugh, although the movement tugged unpleasantly through your abdomen. Madara looked offended that your body had rewarded the joke with pain, as if this too had become somebody’s personal failure.

He brought you water and remained there until you drank it. Only then did he settle behind you against the wall, draw you back between his legs and replace the compress with his own hand. Chakra warmed slowly through his palm, not enough to sting, just enough to reach deeper than the cloth had managed. The tension across your stomach began to loosen beneath it.

“Are you angry with me?”

“Yes.” The answer vibrated through his chest into your back. 

“For needing help?”

His arm tightened around your waist. “For deciding I would consider your collapse less inconvenient than your honesty.”

You looked down at his hand where it covered most of the ache. “The clan needs you.”

“And therefore I decide where I am needed.” His thumb moved once along your side. “Not you. Not the elders. Me.”

Outside, the settlement carried on around you as doors closed, evening patrols changed, and voices travelled between houses raised where battle lines had once been drawn. For most of your lives, pain had been something worked around because stopping could cost blood, land, siblings, survival. Peace had arrived faster than the habits built to survive without it. Madara knew those habits too well to mistake them for virtue.

“We did not build this village,” he said, quieter now, “so that you could keep treating rest as though an enemy might exploit it.”

You leant farther back against him. “That sounds dangerously reasonable.”

“I am often reasonable.”

“You are…many things.”

His hand pressed a little more firmly over your stomach. “Choose your next words carefully.”

You smiled despite yourself. “Attentive?”

“Better.”

The answer held enough dry satisfaction that another laugh threatened. You spared your abdomen the effort.

For a while neither of you spoke. Madara remained behind you, one arm around your middle and the other hand warming the place that hurt, while the house settled into evening. His anger had not vanished; it had simply mutated into water within reach, blankets drawn over your legs, and a meal deferred until you could stomach it.

Eventually he lowered his mouth to your temple. “Next time, you tell me before your knees do.”

“And if you’re in a meeting?”

“Especially then.”

“You can’t just dismiss the elders every time I have a period.”

His hold tightened just enough to make the answer unnecessary.

You turned your head to look at him. “Madara.”

“Watch me.”

This time you laughed quietly and let your full weight settle against him. Madara remained displeased for the rest of the evening. He also did not let you lift so much as the kettle.

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