this blog is dedicated mostly to 'x reader' content, character studies disguised as self-indulgence, emotional intimacy, complicated people, and the strange little rituals that make someone feel loved. among other things. i tend to jump around fandoms a lot but certain characters will always have a chokehold on me
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fluff
angst
domestic softness
mutual pining
emotionally repressed characters having a terrible time
hurt/comfort
occasional suggestive content
unhealthy amounts of projection
characters experiencing the horror of being known, loved, perceived
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fandoms: naruto, jujutsu kaisen, one piece, attack on titan, hellsing, death note, dc comics, frankenstein, devil may cry, bleach, whatever else i decide to write
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summary: amegakure does not grow flowers easily, so konan makes her own. in a field of paper blossoms and summer rain, grief becomes confession, and two women choose tenderness in a world that taught them both to survive without it
word count: 3,707
content: konan x fem!reader, emotional hurt/comfort, grief, softness after war, sapphic tenderness, making out in the rain, paper flower imagery, angel imagery, post-pain arc or canon-divergent (up to you how you read it)
a/n: me seeing how little konan fic there is: fine. i'll do it myself.
happy pride!
Rain in Amegakure was not simple weather; it was inheritance.
It came down in silver ropes and cold veils, gathering along rooftops, spilling from gutters, threading the village in sound until every street seemed to breathe beneath it. People elsewhere ran from storms. In Amegakure, they lived inside them. They learnt to speak over the rain, sleep through it, fight through it, kiss beneath it, bury their dead while it softened the soil and washed blood from their hands.
You had thought, once, that nothing delicate could survive here. Then you found Konan’s flowers.
They filled the abandoned training field beyond the eastern towers where old drainage channels had split the concrete and rust had gnawed through the broken fencing. Thousands of them, perhaps more, rose from the cracked earth in pale clusters: white, blue, violet, grey, some touched by faint threads of ink. Paper lilies, paper irises, paper blossoms all folded into shapes you didn’t know how to name.
They trembled under the force of the rain, but they did not wilt.
Konan stood at the centre of the field.
Her cloak hung, dark and heavy, around her. Rain slid down the high collar, caught in the soft blue of her hair, gathered at her lashes. She had no umbrella (of course she had no umbrella). Konan stood in storms as though they were courtrooms and she was waiting to deliver a sentence.
You stepped carefully through the flowers, afraid to crush them, though they parted before you as though sensing where you were going to step before even you knew.
“You followed me,” Konan stated without turning.
“You left the village alone.”
“I often do.”
“That doesn’t make it safe.”
Konan turned her head slightly to look at you over her shoulder. Her eyes were calm, unreadable as ever, gold-brown beneath grey skies.
“You came to protect me?” There was no mockery in her voice when she asked.
You looked out across the field, at the impossible garden where nothing living had any business taking root. Rain ran cold down the back of your neck.
“I came because I was worried.”
There were few things more foolish than following another woman into a storm because your heart had started making decisions before your senses could object. Konan was silent for long enough that the rain nearly filled the space where her answer should have been.
Finally, she said, “You worry too easily.”
“No,” you replied wryly, arms folding lightly over your chest. “I think I worry exactly the right amount for someone surrounded by people who think endurance is a personality.”
A flicker of something crossed her face, amusement almost, something adjacent to it, something too small to name without frightening it away. It was gone just as quickly.
“You should go back,” she murmured, “before the lower paths flood.”
“You made a field,” you observed instead.
Konan’s gaze returned to the flowers. “I did.”
“In Amegakure.”
“Yes.”
“Konan.”
This time, when she looked at you, the solemnity in her face seemed much older than even the village around you.
“I know where I made it.”
You took a step closer to her and the flowers shifted again, opening a narrow path between you and her. They brushed at your ankles, damp and cool, not fragile so much as obedient to a delicacy that was stronger than it looked. You crouched and touched one with your fingertips.
The paper was wet beneath your skin but it held its shape stubbornly, chakra thrumming faintly through the fibres. It was not soft in the way a real petal would have been. It was precise, folded with care, creased into beauty by loving, patient hands.
“Do they have names?” you asked.
Konan’s answer came after a pause. “Some.”
The rain beat gently against your shoulders. You swallowed before asking, “Are they for people?”
“...some.”
Such a careful word hiding a locked door with light beneath it.
You stood and looked across the field with new understanding. Not a garden, then. Not only a garden, you corrected.
A cemetery. A memory. A prayer. A rebellion against mud and concrete and endless rain.
You thought of the children in the lower districts who still pointed at Konan when she passed by. God’s Angel, they whispered, with awe in their voices, as if she had not once been a hungry child beneath the same sky. As if she had not bled, loved, lost, and remained. As if a title could hold together what grief kept trying to tear apart.
“You made them for the dead,” you concluded softly.
“No.” Her expression did not change. “For the remembered.”
The correction was quiet but firm. You bowed your head slightly to her, accepting it.
The remembered.
The rain came harder. The field answered with movement, petals lifting and settling in slow ripples, a pale sea quivering around you both. In the distance, thunder rolled between the towers. You reached for another flower, then stopped.
“May I?”
Konan watched you, then tipped her head forward a little. “Yes.”
You plucked one carefully from the ground. It came away whole, stem and bloom made from a single intricate sheet. You turned it between your fingers, searching for where the folds began.
“This is beautiful.”
“It is paper.”
“It’s still beautiful.”
“It cannot grow.”
“Neither can anything here, apparently.” You looked at her then, expression gentle. “But people keep trying.”
Something sharpened in her eyes—pain, perhaps, before it folded itself away.
“Trying…is not always enough,” Konan breathed.
“No,” you conceded, “but it still matters.”
Konan looked away first. That, more than anything, felt like confession.
You knew better than to reach for her too quickly. Konan was not a woman to be startled into tenderness. Everything in her had been trained toward purpose, restraint, survival. She could stand before armies without flinching, but kindness sometimes made her seem almost wary, as if it were a weapon she had not yet identified. So you stood with her in the rain and let silence do what speech could not.
After a while, you asked, “Is there one for you?”
The entire field seemed to still. Konan’s face remained composed, but the flowers nearest her feet curled inward; a small betrayal, a paper flinch.
“No.”
The answer came too quickly. You looked at the flower in your hand, then at the thousands around you.
“You made all of these for other people…”
“Yes.”
“And none for yourself?”
“I am not dead.”
You smiled. “You don’t need to be dead to be remembered.”
Konan’s mouth tightened; a small movement, almost nothing. From anyone else, it might have passed unnoticed. From her, it was the sound of solid stone cracking.
“You speak as if the world is kind enough to keep what it loves,” she snapped.
“No,” you replied calmly. “I speak as if I’m tired of watching you give every part of yourself to the dead and call it duty.”
Her gaze snapped back to you. The rain hit harder and, for a moment, you thought you had gone too far. Konan’s stillness deepened, solemn and cold, the air around her threaded with the faint rustle of paper waking under her skin. Not anger exactly, but warning. The angel gathering her wings.
Then she dropped her gaze down and sighed.
“You think I don’t know that?”
The words were delicate enough to be nearly lost beneath the storm.
Your heart ached for her.
“I think you know it better than anyone.”
Konan’s lashes lowered; water slid from them like tears she had refused to make herself.
“I have buried children,” she admitted carefully, as though uncovering a festering wound to open air. “Friends, enemies, dreams. Versions of this village that only existed because we were young enough to believe hunger could become peace if we named it correctly.” Her voice did not break which only made the confession hurt more. “Yahiko wanted flowers here once. Real ones.”
You did not move, barely even dared to breathe too loudly.
“He said a village that knew only rain should have something to do with it besides survive.” Her eyes drifted across the field, remembering, lost in a memory that you could not see. “Nagato told him the soil was too poor. Yahiko said we would fix it.”
The flowers stirred again, lifting in a delicate wave.
“He would have,” you offered.
“Yes.” Her voice thinned. “He would have tried.”
You closed your fingers gently around the paper stem in your hand.
The old field stretched around you, full of blossoms that would never rot, never grow, never scatter seed, never become anything other than what Konan had made them. Beautiful, static, and safe from decay because they had been denied life from the moment of creation. You understood suddenly why the sight had made your chest ache.
“You wanted to know what it would look like,” you observed.
Konan turned toward you then. “What?”
“A field of flowers. Here.” You watched the flowers around you fluttering lightly where the rain hit them. “You wanted to know what it would look like if he had been right.”
The silence that followed was almost tender, and when Konan spoke, her voice had lost its edge.
“Yes.”
There was no grandeur in it. No godhood. No angelic distance. Only a woman in the rain admitting to a grief so old it had learned to stand upright all on its own.
You peered down at the flower in your hand.
“You know,” you began, “I don’t know how to make these properly.”
Konan blinked once at the unexpected turn. “No.”
You huffed softly. “Thank you.”
“It would be dishonest to say otherwise.”
“There is that famous Amegakure comfort.”
“You did not ask for comfort.”
“No, but I am very bravely leaving the door open for it.”
You nearly caught it again, that small, almost-smile, faint enough to feel stolen.
You slipped a folded sheet from your pocket. Mission report paper, already damp at the edges, ink blurred from the rain. You had meant to deliver it before following her, although now it seemed destined for something far less official. Though, perhaps, greater.
Konan watched mildly as you tried to fold it.
It went…badly.
Paper, it turned out, did not become a flower simply because you cared about the result. It bent incorrectly. Slipped in your hands. Softened under the rain. Your fingers fumbled with creases Konan could have made in her sleep. The first attempt collapsed into something more like a wounded moth.
“You are making a mess,” she observed, and the amusement was there now, real in her voice.
“Yes, I had noticed.”
“That fold should be reversed.”
“The fold is doing its best.”
“It is not.”
You glanced up at her. “Are you criticising my flower before it’s even had a chance to disappoint us both?”
Konan assessed the misshapen paper in your hands. Then, with impossible tenderness, she reached forward. Her fingers brushed yours and though the contact was brief, warmth moved through you in spite of the cold rain.
“Here,” she said, quiet amusement warming the word.
She guided the paper between your hands, not taking over, only correcting. Her fingers were cool and steady, chakra precise beneath her skin. You followed her movements as well as you could. Fold. Turn. Press. Release. The paper resisted, then yielded. It did not become one of her perfect blossoms. It became something crooked, damp, and uneven, but…alive-looking, somehow, in its failure.
You held it out to her and Konan stared at it.
“What is this?”
“A flower,” you stated flatly.
“It is not a very good one.”
“No,” you agreed, laughing lightly, “but it’s yours.”
The rain seemed to pause inside your chest.
Konan did not take the paper bloom from you. Her face changed so slightly that no one who feared her would have seen it. You did—you saw the tiny fracture in her composure, the wounded confusion of someone being handed something she had not earned through sacrifice, duty, blood, or grief. Something made for her simply because she was there.
“You shouldn’t,” she whispered.
“Of course I should.”
Her eyes lifted to yours. “You don’t understand what you are offering.”
“I think I do.”
“No.” Her voice sharpened, but trembled beneath it. “You see a field and think it beautiful. You see paper and think it delicate. You see grief and think it can be answered with tenderness.”
“I don’t think that.”
“You do.”
“I think grief stays,” you asserted, stepping closer. “I think it changes the shape of everything. I think sometimes love isn’t able to heal the wound. Sometimes it just sits beside it so no one has to bleed alone.”
Konan went very still. The paper flowers rose around her ankles and you held the crooked blossom between you. An offering.
“I’m not asking you to stop mourning,” you murmured. “I’m only asking you to let someone remember you while you are still here.”
For one long moment, she stared at you as if you had struck her, then she took the flower, carefully and with both hands, as if it might break.
The sight of it almost undid you: Konan, God’s Angel, holding a ruined little paper thing in the rain like it was sacred.
“You are a reckless woman,” she said.
Your mouth curved, helplessly fond. “You say ‘reckless’ like it isn’t one of my better qualities.”
“You speak too much.”
“Only when I’m nervous.”
“You follow people into storms.”
“Only women I’m foolish enough to want.”
The corner of Konan’s mouth softened, and something in the storm-torn field shifted toward warmth. Then she gingerly tucked the flower into the fastening of her cloak, close to her heart.
You sucked in a sharp breath.
Konan saw it, naturally. She noticed everything, no matter how hard you tried to hide from her. Your surprise, your hope, the way your hands had curled at your sides to keep from reaching for her, she saw it all.
Her gaze fell to your mouth.
“Konan?” you whispered.
She stepped closer, only inches left between you.
The paper flowers climbed around you both in slow spirals, pale petals rising from the ground, hovering at your knees, your waist, your shoulders. They made a trembling wall around the two of you, not hiding you from the rain, but sheltering the moment from the rest of the world.
Her fingers touched your jaw, cold from the storm, careful even now, asking without words.
With a small, contented sound, you leaned into her hand.
Something in her expression gave way entirely, and Konan kissed you.
She came to you with the last of her restraint still held between her teeth, her mouth meeting yours in a kiss so careful it ached. Rain cooled her lips before you could learn their warmth. Her fingers remained at your jaw, light enough that you could have stepped back, firm enough that you knew she wanted you not to.
For one aching, suspended moment, she only held you there.
Her mouth moved once against yours, slow and deliberate, as if she were learning the shape of wanting from the inside. Rain tread lines down your skin, cold on your lips, sweetened by the soft, startled breath she failed to hide when your hand found her waist. Beneath the soaked fabric of her cloak, she was still. Too still. A woman made of discipline standing at the edge of something she could not command into silence.
When you kissed her back, Konan’s composure did not shatter. It unfolded, petal by careful petal.
Her hand slid from your jaw to the nape of your neck, fingers threading into your rain-wet hair with a fragility that trembled at the edges. The flowers around you stirred. Pale petals moving in spirals around you both in slow, shivering layers, turning the storm into a secret chamber of paper and water and breath.
Her mouth softened beneath yours, then deepened. The kiss grew less careful with every passing second, less like permission and more like confession. She tasted of rain, of cold air, of the quiet hunger she had kept folded inside herself for far too long. When you pressed closer, she answered with the smallest tilt of her head, letting you in piece by piece, giving nothing thoughtlessly and somehow making it feel like everything.
You clutched at the front of her cloak, and Konan made a sound against your mouth. It was barely there, so quiet it would have been lost had there been any distance left between you. A broken breath, a low, helpless thing caught between surprise and surrender. Too fragile for the angel of Amegakure, too human for anyone but the woman standing beneath your hands.
You chased it before she could bury it.
Your mouth moved over hers again, slower now, coaxing rather than taking. The corner of her lips, the rain-cool line of her cheek, the delicate tension in her jaw where she was still trying, impossibly, to hold herself together. When your lips brushed there, her fingers tightened at the back of your neck.
Behind her, wings began to form, only halfway. Vast and spectral almost, rising from her shoulders in a sudden rush of paper, trembling as though the storm had found a second sky to tear open. Then they loosened, breaking apart into a whirl of white petals when your mouth touched the place just below her ear and her breath caught again, sharper this time.
The flowers burst upward around you.
They spun through the rain in bright, frantic spirals, paper blossoms flickering against the iron-dark sky. Some clung to your sleeves, some brushed your face, some dissolved into sheets and folded themselves again before they struck the ground. Konan’s chakra moved through all of it, restless and luminous, betraying what her voice would never have allowed.
Then her hand came beneath your chin and she drew you firmly back to her mouth. There was hunger in her now, no longer hidden so neatly beneath control. Even here, even with rain running down her throat and your hands tangled in her cloak, Konan kissed with intention. She kissed as if tenderness were a language she had almost forgotten, and each press of her mouth was a word remembered by touch rather than thought.
Slow, then deeper.
Gentle, then aching.
Her thumb traced your cheek, following the rainwater there as if it were something sacred. You felt the slight tremor in her hand before she stilled it, felt the warmth of her mouth return beneath the cold, felt the careful, overwhelming pressure of her body leaning into yours, just enough to confess that she wanted to be held and not enough to ask for it aloud.
So you held her.
The field fell away, the village with its towers and gods and old griefs blurred into rain. There was only Konan’s mouth opening under yours, her hand at your neck, fingers tangled in your hair, the paper flowers twirling around you in soft, storm-bright circles. Only the hush of two women standing in a place built for mourning and choosing, impossibly, to want.
When you sighed her name, her whole body seemed to hear it, as neither title nor prayer, but as something cherished.
Konan kissed you once more, slower than before, and this time the hunger softened into something almost too heavy to hold. Her lips lingered, her forehead touched yours for half a breath, the hand at your neck loosened, but did not leave.
When you finally parted, neither of you moved far. Your forehead rested against hers.
For a moment, neither of you seemed willing to disturb the narrow warmth between your mouths. Her fingers remained tangled in your wet hair, not holding you in place, not letting you go. Rain slipped between you both, threading down her lashes, falling from her face to yours until you could not tell which cold drops belonged to the sky and which had gathered from her skin.
The crooked flower was still tucked against her heart.
“I…do not know how to do this gently,” Konan whispered hesitantly.
You breathed a laugh, soft and unsteady. “You’re doing fine.”
Her eyes searched yours with quiet severity, as if she could not allow even tenderness to pass unexamined.
“I am serious.”
“I know.”
“I have lost too much to pretend love is harmless.”
“Then don’t pretend.”
The flowers around you began to lower, one by one, settling back into the rain-dark field with a soft whisper of paper against paper. Konan’s thumb brushed your cheek once, following the path of rainwater there. A small touch, almost nothing. It burnt through you anyway.
“You may regret saying that,” she warned.
“Maybe.” You let your hand rest over hers. “But not today.”
For a while, she only looked at you, eyes gentler than you had ever seen them. Then, with the faintest hesitation, she took your hand.
The rain softened but it did not stop. Amegakure’s rain never stopped for anyone, not even its angel. It eased, instead, into something gentler, misting over the field until every paper blossom shone silver at the edges, each fold brightened by the storm that should have ruined it.
“Real flowers do not last here,” Konan said.
You looked across the trembling field, then back to the misshapen bloom held safely against her chest, lifting a hand from where you clutched at her cloak to trace a finger across the wilted edge of a petal.
“Then we’ll make them again.”
Her gaze returned to yours.
“You say that as if it is simple.”
“No,” you disagreed, “I say it because it matters.”
Her fingers tightened around yours. This time, the smile blossomed. Small. Brief. Hers.
The kind of smile that would not survive being named too loudly, so you did not name it. You only stood with her in the rain, two women soaked to the skin beneath a hostile sky, wanting without apology, while the field of paper flowers trembled around you, delicate and stubborn beneath the storm.
Alive because she made it, remembered because she could not bear not to, and, for the first time, perhaps, not only for the dead.
When a sudden trigger pulls Kakashi back into the past, you remind him that he doesn't have to fight his battles alone anymore.
Proofread: Yep! | Word Count: 1.2k | Warnings: Hurt/comfort, g!n reader, PTSD/panic attack, Kakashi x reader, caretaking, established relationship, heavy angst, domestic setting, emotional vulnerability. Readers are free to scroll past if heavy emotional themes, trauma recovery, or this specific character interpretation do not align with their comfort levels.
a/n: My first 2026 post, and I'm more than happy to debut my (not-so) new obsession: Kakashi. I saw this quote on Pinterest, and I knew I had to write using it as my base!
Also, I'm trying a new type of writing style, idk if it's maybe because I'm reading a different book series rn, but every time I read something different, I feel like I want to adapt my writing style to reflect it (?) Anyway, enjoy it! Dividers by @cafekitsune <3
The knock at your front door was urgent today, entirely lacking the polite, familiar sound Kakashi usually made when entering the house you both called yours. You turned around, a smile already forming, opening your mouth to happily chant a welcome home greeting. However, as soon as the door swung open, the hallway light spilled over two figures.
Guy stood there, completely stripped of his usual booming presence. His face was drawn tight with grim understanding, and his large hand was wrapped firmly around Kakashi’s bicep, keeping him upright.
"I apologize for the intrusion," Guy said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. "We were training near the training grounds. A stray lightning jutsu hit a cluster of pines. The crack of the timber, the smell of the ozone...I fear it took him back somewhere I cannot really follow."
You shifted your attention to Kakashi. You tried asking in a soft, careful tone what had happened, but he did not answer. He did not even blink. His visible eye was completely blown out, the pupil swallowed by black, his gaze locked on something entirely unseen. Kakashi was seeing through things rather than staring at something.
His chest hitched in violent, shallow intervals, fighting for air that he seemingly could not process. His fingers were curled into rigid claws at his sides, his knuckles bone-white. He was trapped in a timeline that did not exist anymore, a place where you knew that, just like Guy, you could not reach him.
You nodded to Guy in silent gratitude. The taller man carefully transferred Kakashi’s weight to you. As soon as the door clicked shut, the gravity of his state became terrifyingly clear. He was a statue of pure panic. He did not take a single step on his own. You had to wrap your arm around his waist, anchoring your hand firmly against his ribs, physically steering his rigid body down the hallway and into the bathroom.
You guided him to sit on the closed toilet lid. He sat completely stiff, staring blankly at the grout between the floor tiles.
You turned to the bathtub and twisted the metal taps to their maximum limit. Water crashed heavily against the porcelain. Thick steam began to coat the mirror in a layer of fog, making the air in the small room dense. It smelled strongly of clean soap and the damp cotton of freshly washed towels.
You knelt in front of him and put your hands on his knees caressing him a bit. Anything to help him understand that he was being taken care of. "I am going to take this off now," you told him quietly.
He offered no resistance, nor did he assist. You had to pry the heavy green tactical vest from his shoulders, your fingers working the cold metal buckles. You pulled the dark fabric of his uniform over his head. His arms remained limp, offering dead weight as you undressed him down to his bare skin. You carefully removed his metal headband, but you left his mask untouched. You knew that whatever silent war was raging inside his mind, that mask would provide an essential layer of safety for him.
The tub was full enough, so you made your way back to the taps and twisted them shut. You dipped your hand into the water. The temperature felt perfect, hot enough to embrace Kakashi’s body and, hopefully, bring him back to the comfort of today, to the present you had both built on a foundation of love and understanding.
You guided him over the edge of the tub. He sank into the water, his knees pulling up defensively toward his chest. Sitting in front of you was no longer the legendary Copy Ninja. It was simply the figure of a child who had lost everything and still blamed himself for it.
You did not stay on the bathmat. You stepped directly into the water with him, your everyday clothes soaking through instantly. The heavy, wet fabric clung to your skin, providing an anchoring weight. You slid in right behind him, occupying the little space left in the tub, wrapping your arms securely around his chest and pulling his bare back flush against your soaking shirt. He was much taller than you, leaving you barely able to rest your chin against his shoulder, but you made sure to pull him close enough so he could feel the steady warmth of your breath on his skin.
It was difficult. Usually, Kakashi was the one who protected you, the one who took physical care of you. Not that you demanded much, but he took immense pride in it. Now, with the roles entirely reversed, you had to concentrate fiercely to avoid panicking yourself. Seeing the person you loved most trapped in a state you could not easily reach made your own chest tight with anxiety, but you forced yourself to suppress it.
You started regulating your own breathing, hoping he would feel the rhythm and use it to tether himself back to reality.
"Collapse into me," you murmured, pressing your forehead into the damp skin of his upper back. "I promise you will never have to fall again."
You closed your eyes. You focused entirely on the rise and fall of your own ribcage against his spine. You inhaled deeply, held the air in your lungs, and forced it out in a slow exhale. You repeated the cycle, waiting for his erratic, panicked breathing to catch the rhythm of yours. Not a single word being spoken. Thankfully, your relationship with Kakashi never needed too many words. You were comfortable in your own silence together. You could understand each other with a simple look. Words or not, your dynamic worked better than you could’ve ever imagined.
Slowly, Kakashi surrendered his body weight, releasing almost all of it against you. He slumped backward, the back of his head resting heavily near your collarbone.
Your hands moved up to his wet hair. You dug your fingertips into his scalp, massaging the base of his skull with slow, heavy pressure. You dragged your hands through the silver strands, tracing the tension held tight in his neck, smoothing the skin over and over again in a mindless, repetitive loop. At this point, you were entirely lost in the trance of the moment. Nothing else mattered if Kakashi was not okay. Nothing would ever matter if Kakashi were not there.
The minutes bled into an hour. The water began to lose its heat, but your body remained anchored to his. Your hands ached from how tightly they held him. Your eyes felt heavy, but your breathing remained a steady metronome in the silence.
Slowly, the rigid terror holding his muscles hostage began to fracture. The violent tension melted into a long, exhausted shudder. The fight left his body all at once, and he buried his face deeper into the crook of your neck. His breathing finally leveled out, matching yours perfectly in the quiet, fog-filled room. His subtle movements made you aware that he was finally coming back to himself, but you still refused to let go until you were absolutely certain he was well enough to stand.
You were perfectly willing to let your own bones ache, so long as it meant holding his together. He swallowed hard, his throat clicking in the heavy silence. When he finally spoke, his voice was cracked, hollow, and reduced to a bare whisper.
"Thank you for loving me when I still taste of heartache and war."
just wanted to say thank you so much to everyone for following 🖤
there are quite a few new faces here, which is both lovely and mildly terrifying 😭, so welcome to my little corner of fictional emotional damage, gothic yearning, and characters who desperately need therapy but will be receiving kisses instead because i am not a licenced professional :)
as a thank you, i thought i'd share a little sneak peek of some of what i’m working on right now!
gaara x reader: this one was me frantically scribbling down an idea this morning after a dream where i was just cuddling with gaara out in the desert and woke up like WRITE THAT DOWN WRITE THAT DOWN
alucard x reader: i actually have way more in the works for him because comfort character (insane, i know dw) but they're mostly in the planning stages rn except this one that has a first draft already hehe
konan x reader: i listened to 'imaginary - evanescence' for the first time in probably years and immediately knew i had to write some sapphic bs for konan. "in my field of paper flowers"?? that imagery is AMAZING for her. also kind of just an excuse for me to write two women making out in the rain 😭
shinobi gothic: pretty sure i have these line ups finalised now after messing around with them this afternoon!! so here's what's coming up in the next few weeks!!
thank you everyone again for being here, reading my work, leaving comments, reblogging, screaming in the tags, or just quietly lurking like a beloved little cryptid
i'm just getting back into posting fanfic after a few years of absence from fandom, so it genuinely means the world to me that so many people are already enjoying my stories and i'm excited to keep sharing my insane brainworms with you all 🖤🖤
Hi I was wondering if you also do other Naruto characters too, if you do can you please make a Neji x reader one shot where they're in a secret relationship reader and Neji are obviously from different clans and they're in an arranged marriage proposal with others and they don't know who they're suitors are
I miss Neji sm 😭
love the lee x reader fic btw 💕
━ caged bird, sacrificial lamb | neji hyuga
pairing: neji hyuga x fem!reader
⋆ . ࿔ ˚ when the pressure to fulfil your born purpose grows stronger, you're torn between two realms: an honest existence, where you choose love. and a respectable existence, where you choose duty.
wc: 6k words
content: one-shot, loosely canon-compliant, neji lives, angst, mentions of family conflict, mentions of arranged marriage, secret relationship, forbidden love, only one bed trope, descriptions of kissing, tongue-kissing, oral (f. receiving), p in v, loss of virginity, unprotected sex, sex outside (but not public), crying during sex, creampie, crying after sex
konohagakure, despite being the largest of all the hidden villages, was small enough for the sound of your family name to send ripples cascading down the spines of every shinobi who resided here.
the clearing collateral damage of the warring states period, and the creation of the hidden leaf was a beacon of promise that guided your ancestors to ingrain themselves within the fabric of its history. your forefathers, once vehement warriors, abandoned their violence once and for all to exchange it for status.
blades raised with the intention to kill became firm handshakes that birthed clan alliances.
the spilling of blood became the pouring of luxurious wines.
and cumbersome, blood-stained armour became bespoke clothing, woven with fine silks and embroidered with the most intricate of patterns.
your parents, the leader and matriarch of the (l/n) clan, could easily pass as architects. they mapped out your existence, and constructed it carefully to ensure you would align with the reputation that preceded you.
your efficacy in combat. your savoir faire. the cadence of your voice: you were built to be the picture of civility, befitting of the eventual heir to a strong legacy. you recognised your privilege, and you were grateful for the luxury of being brought up this way. however, your feelings of resentment were greater than any feelings of gratitude you could garner.
you hated that your upbringing was never truly for your own good, but rather, for the good of whoever's hands you were going to get tossed into. your family cared more about preserving the clan image than you, and you hated it.
you hated that you felt like a mere mass of consciousness, sealed inside of a doll to be played with by others. you were trapped in your own body, and you were forced to watch as your own blood negotiated with your suitor's family.
during visits, your suitor would look at you with soft eyes. they would have the nerve to smile at you. their kindness felt like salt being rubbed into an open wound. anyone would've liked them, but you simply didn't—you couldn't. further insult gets added to your injury when you hear everyone in the room talk about you as if you were breathing currency; like a prized possession.
you were a sacrificial lamb being offered to somebody you did not know, nor care about. it fanned the flames of hatred that burned in your heart to the point of rebellion.
it's a rebellion that's futile, but you indulge in the freedom it gives you regardless. you're willing to pay in punishment, because it's probably the last time you will be able to rebel. you don't care for a moment if it's all illusory and fleeting. the sun will set, and you will sneak out to see neji in the isolated forest you've been meeting up at for the past few years, like you always have.
it began when the two of you were paired together by lady tsunade—assigned to a long-term mission outside the village on the basis that you were both high-performing students with similar backgrounds. your clan were famed for their taijutsu, and so was his. you'd score near-perfectly in exams, and so would he. you accelerated up the ranks quicker than your genin peers, and you were spending less time with your three-man squad. just like you, neji was prodigious.
there was an air of gravitas surrounding your clan that neji acknowledged, because it reminded him of his own. so when you walked into the hokage’s office with blunt-cut short hair, he frowned. what others saw as a superficial aesthetic change, neji recognised as a reminder of shame and disgrace; a punitive style. he had seen the same thing happen to hinata in childhood, when it was decided that she was much too timid, and much too weak to be the heiress to the hyuga clan’s head branch. he wonders what shame hangs over your head. he wonders if you too, have been forsaken by fate.
he wants to make things easy for you.
he knows you're more than capable as a fighter, but he still feels compelled to look out for you more than you need him to.
he carries you on his back when you complain blankly about a minor ache in your legs. he dresses your wounds, even though you could've done it yourself. he never moves when you rest your head against his shoulder.
why?
because it feels good to serve on his own terms, and not because of fate.
a month and a few days have passed. nightfall has arrived, accompanied by floating lanterns in the sky, and fireflies lighting up the path you're both on. once again, you find yourself being carried on neji’s back, with your arms draped loosely over his shoulders, and with eyes shut against him.
“neji?” you call out softly.
“yes, y/n?” his voice is equally soft.
“thank you.”
neji pauses briefly. “your gratitude is unnecessary, y/n. there’s no need to thank me.” he says, flatly.
his tone makes you roll your eyes.
“and don't roll your eyes at me,” neji continues his admonishment. “i have a feeling you did that.”
“why shouldn't i?”
“because you know very well that it’s rude to.”
“i’m aware, genius,” you tease, caustically. “i meant to ask why i shouldn't thank you, not why i shouldn't roll my eyes at you, neji.”
“because, y/n,” he bites back. “it’s standard for shinobi to protect their teammates. i should be doing this for you regardless.”
“sure, but my legs aren't even hurting right now. i could walk on my own.”
“so then, would you prefer to walk, y/n?”
in that moment, you realise that it's not about whether or not you want to walk. it’s about whether or not you want to let go of neji, and you don't want to. so you wrap your arms around his neck with more intention, resting your cheek against his head. his hair feels soft against your face.
“i don't want to walk…”
a rapid exhale escapes neji's nostrils. the ghost of a smile forms on his face, away from your vision.
“fine. you don't have to walk, then.”
eventually, neji’s footsteps stop when you both reach the inn you’ve been staying at since the mission’s start. the doors open to reveal the innkeeper’s seat, which is now vacant. you're glad she isn’t here right now, because if she were, she wouldn't shut up about how close you two were. neji loosens the grip on your thighs, a cue for you to dismount from his back, and walk back gingerly to your shared bedroom.
the bedroom is dark, with the only sources of light being the moon and lanterns outside working in tandem. you’re sat on the edge of the bed, putting your hair in a silk bonnet. at last, you can finally slip out of your heavier shinobi wear, and into your night clothes. it’s a silken dress that flares gently at your bust and stops just below your knees. your clan insignia is a delicate pattern, faintly printed across the dress.
at times, neji would steal glances at the dress against your skin, and memorise the detailing woven into the fabric before falling asleep on the floor. you didn't like the fact that he chose to sleep there, and you had protested against it on the first night. neji, however, insisted that you have the singular bed all to yourself. his obstinacy was stronger than your objections, so you just let it go, and routine was set, never to be spoken of again.
routine was deviated from on this night, though.
you felt the mattress dip from behind you, paired with the shifting sounds of the bed creaking. it isn't long before you can feel the warmth of neji’s body radiating onto your back. it coaxes you to turn around, and settle on your other side. now, you're face-to-face with him. in a rare moment where his headband is removed, you can see the seal emblazoned on his forehead. he's zoned out with half-lidded, milky eyes that don't budge from your face.
exhaustion from the events of the day. sounds of fireworks outside. the wind against the windows. it all leaves you both in a trance-like state, where you find that neither of you care about the fact that you're staring at each other.
“neji?” silence is finally broken.
he says nothing, but the light in his eyes return when you speak.
“why are you so…” you pause, looking for the most appropriate word to define neji's behaviour. “nice to me?”
“what are you talking about?”
“well,” you half-whisper. “i mean, when we share food, you always give me the bigger portion, as if you're not hungry. you always want to patch me up, even if it's a tiny scratch that’ll just heal anyway…”
his eyes dart quickly before meeting yours again.
“...even today, you carried me. i know it's okay to hold me.. but you keep doing it. do you think i’m weak or something? tell me.”
he scoffs. “no. lady tsunade chose you to accompany me for a reason, y/n. that alone is proof of your strength. you’re one of our brightest kunoichi. use your head.”
“okay, okay,” you sigh. “so if you think i’m not weak, why do you do all of that?”
“because i think you’re strong." neji pauses to reconsider his words. “because i think there's something you're trying to be strong about, rather.”
you remain silent.
“do you remember when you were called to lady tsunade’s office before this mission? you had longer hair before that.”
your heart pounds against your ribs. “yeah. i did…”
“you didn't look so good.”
you kick his leg.
“i wasn't calling you ugly, calm down,” neji brushes your leg away. “i mean you had a miserable look on your face. i didn't want to be presumptuous, and i didn't want to overstep by asking you, but clearly, something happened…”
he already has an outline of what it could be: a clan-related problem. he just wants you to confirm it.
“you wanna know?”
“yes, but only if you’re willing to tell me.”
you take a deep breath. your throat feels tight, but your words rise to the surface regardless.
“you're the first person i’m saying this to, okay?”
neji nods slowly, with eyes staring intently into yours.
“i’ve been betrothed to somebody.” your voice trembles. “i’ve met them, and while they do seem lovely, it’s not something i want at all. i don’t want to be something to just… give away.”
the corners of neji’s mouth grow slightly downturned at your revelation.
“and it just hit me—is this what i was raised for? to be some bride that just happens to fight? there's no way that's gonna be my life. so, i told my parents that i didn't want to follow through with the marriage, and they told me i had no place to,” you clear your throat. “and that if i am to be a good wife, i should first learn to not object, and instead, accept fate. to hell with that,” a scoff leaves your mouth. “i know better than to bite the hand that feeds me, but i was so hurt. i couldn't contain my anger. you know how that feels, right?”
neji nods his head slowly. memories of his fight against hinata during the chunin exams return to him in fragments. each one feels like a blister reopening.
“i do.” his voice is quiet.
“i tried to land a hit on my father,” you continue. “he caught my fist, of course. and after that, he cut my hair in front of my entire clan. i guess it was to shame me, and it worked. he did humiliate me.” for a moment, its like you're reliving that situation. your words revitalise the past, and once again, it taunts you in the present.
neji’s suspicions were confirmed. you too, were foresaken by fate.
no, you didn't have a seal that would be released at death, but still, you were imprisoned by your circumstances, just like him. neji himself knew that eventually, he’d have to preserve the legacy of the hyuga’s branch family, and birth another caged child. he wouldn't know who his suitor would be yet, but the fact remained that it was inevitable and sure to happen, as fate is.
“that wasn't easy to talk about, was it?” his voice is more subdued in approach.
you’re trying to keep yourself together, but the memories from that day flood your mind. the pain of it makes you sit up from your reclined position, with tears flowing down your face.
a weak “sorry” is all you can muster, but you should know by now that neji doesn't care for apology. just as you're about to wipe your tears, neji also sits up to cup your face in his palms. his thumbs brush away your tears as they fall. he doesn't attempt to speed up your weeping with verbal consolation. you have all night to cry, just as he has all night to dry your eyes.
“it's justified. you shouldn't be sorry.”
neji wanted to remain reticent about his life. this was only a mission, and you were only his teammate—no more, no less. but he couldn't remain silent. he saw so much of himself in you. you shouldered a heavy burden against fate and shared it with him, so he decided to lay out his burden in front of you.
“i’ve also been placed in a situation i wish i could escape.”
your tears cease to fall, and his hands detach from your face. it’s your turn to touch his face this time. your fingers delicately trace the seal on his forehead.
“this is a part of it, isn't it?” you ask softly.
“it is.”
“you spoke about it at the chunin exams. i remember.”
he nods. “i wish i could be free, but i know i won’t be. it won't be long before i continue this cycle. like you, i’ll be trapped in marriage, adding onto this cycle…” his tone is laced with bitterness.
your heart aches.
“but,” his tone returns to neutrality. “i think working with you is the freest i’ve ever felt. it could sound selfish, but the reason i do all this for you is because i want to. i somewhat lied to you when i said that it’s because i should be doing it.”
you tilt your head slightly, surprised at his transparency. neji, ever the professional, was finally talking about himself for once.
“the main branch don't thank us for our forced servitude as branch members. but you always thank me for making my own choices. i tell you it doesn't matter, but it does.”
your fingers move from the seal on his forehead. they run through the strands of hair that frame his face.
“you’ve made things bearable. and i see the things you're going through. i think part of me wanted to make it bearable for you too… you don't have to be strong all the time.”
you don't know if this interaction would've still happened if you both weren't tired out of your minds. you're probably never gonna get this level of vulnerability with neji ever again, so you force yourself to stay up. to keep looking into his eyes.
“you don't have to be strong all the time.” his voice echoes in your head.
you've never felt so seen before. you lay back down on your side, with your head against the pillow. he mirrors your position, facing you. some of his hair falls over his shoulder, and you brush it away.
“neither do you,” you whisper. your eyelids feel heavy. “again… thank you.”
“it’s fine, y/n. get some sleep.” neji’s eyes are already shut. you both fall asleep right after that.
years have passed.
war is over.
and neji’s heart continues to blossom after that mission, albeit in quiet ways that go unnoticed by others. in a crowd full of people, his longing eyes will devote themselves to his memory by stealing glances at you from across the room.
he’s a ghost whose hands caress the skin of your thighs under the table when you sit together. he is the perfect stranger in public who leaves messages that are indecipherable to everyone except you.
with bound wings, neji felt as though he could soar in your presence. he found himself believing in the doctrine of fate devoutly: that life is fixed, and the future is set in stone. but he could have never predicted how strongly he’d feel for you. with a distinguished family of his own and expectations that weighed on him, he found solace in you. your life was a mirror of his own. he know your heart as if it were his.
and you both know you're being reckless. you know it's impossible to stop your soon-approaching marriages, and you know that neji will disappear into the arms of another hyuga, instead of retreating into yours.
but still, you never fail to meet him at night in that same spot in the forest, laid down on a blanket of grass away from the watchful gaze of your clans. the trees here were the keepers of your most precious memories and secrets. they shield you as moonlight peeks through its thick branches.
"i missed you, y/n,” neji whispers against your neck. "it’s ridiculous..."
he pulls you onto his lap and inhales your aroma before pressing light kisses along your neck, as if you're made of fine china—like you'll shatter into pieces if he isn't careful. neji loved to embrace you particularly for this reason. your body was a space where he could forget his strength. he could get lost in you, imagining a life where he'd never have to fight again and instead, devote every ounce of his tenderness to you.
your breathy exhales fade into the wind for every kiss he plants. "i know," your faint voice lingers in his ears. "i missed you too, neji..."
so much pain is trapped in so few words. in the past, the ache of separation was tolerable, because you knew that you’d find relief in seeing each other here again. but this time, you're not so certain.
"they came to my house today, you know." you confide, cupping his cheek.
neji raises a brow in interest, his pearl-like eyes scanning yours. the despondency in your eyes is enough evidence for him to piece together what you're talking about.
you didn't want to desecrate this sacred space with talk of the outside world, but you couldn't allow neji to remain ignorant.
he takes a pause that feels like forever. "what happened? what did they say?"
your hand slips off of neji's cheek, and it remains clenched at your side. "my family paid the dowry." you hated having to verbalise that. it felt like you were really speaking it into existence.
"i see." he pauses. "so your fate has been decided."
"neji..." your voice falters.
"there's nothing we can do." a slightly mournful edge slips in between his words.
"we knew that this would happen, though.” your tone lowers. “your clan would never accept me, even though we've built such a legacy for ourselves. i'm no match for a hyuga."
neji takes the clenched fist from your side, and plants a soft kiss on the back of it.
“in spite of that, you're a match for me.” the look in his eyes breaks your heart. “we can’t do anything about the future, y/n. let's do something about the present. while we still have each other.”
you're both like magnets, unable to resist the pull of your faces as they draw closer, and eventually, connect lip-to-lip. in the past, the kisses tasted sweeter. they were a teasing defiance in response to your future. you’d hold back smiles and laughs, thinking you were both above it all. it was thrilling, to put on a show in front of everyone, only to drop the act, and kiss and kiss until your lips grew pleasantly sore in private.
but now, as his tongue wraps around yours, you can only taste a fervency that’s driven by fear. a taste you recognise all too well, because it lives in you too. he's scared that he’ll lose you to the future. he’s scared that this is really going to be the last time.
he knows it will be.
his mouth is still on yours when he leans forwards with a hand on your chest, gently pushing you onto the soft grass. he looms over you, with both forearms planted on either side of your head. when your eyes open, neji is the only thing you can see. it’s unfair how gorgeous he looks, with his hair spilling forwards, and a soft blush adorning his skin. he’s an empty promise, staring right at you.
“will you think of me?” he begins, kissing down your neck. his lips find your collarbones, and stop above the beating of your heart. “when you're at your wedding ceremony?”
“neji…” your hand strokes over the top of his head. “you know i will.”
he wastes little time in unbuttoning your shirt, allowing the breeze to blow against your exposed flesh. he pauses for a moment, admiring the way your skin glows underneath moonlight. he discards the shirt to one side, and promptly resumes his kisses in between your breasts, focusing on your sternum while his large hands massage your supple breasts.
you unclasp your bra to reveal the extent of your hardening nipples to neji, who's already sucking them, and rolling circles with his tongue around the circumference of them. neji is full of you: the sound your soft gasps in his ears. you, in his mouth. you, in the palms of his hands as they roam up and down your torso.
it was always you. it’s just a shame that it can't be.
open-mouthed kisses travel down your belly, before they turn into light pecks at the waistband of your skirt. you can't help the way your core pulses when neji looks up at you through his eyebrows, almost like a puppy, you think.
“would you like me to, y/n?”
you don't need him to complete the sentence in its entirety. you already know what he's looking for.
“yes, please, neji. i want you.” you plead softly. “please...”
without further delay, neji reaches for the hem of your skirt, easing it down your legs. he swallows at the sight of you, clad in just your panties. he can feel himself growing harder than he already was.
when you lift your hips, neji wraps his fingers around your panties and drags them down with your assistance. a string of your essence connects your pussy to the fabric of the underwear, making his face grow warm. he feels the same way too, with the pulse of his cock growing faster under his garments.
he returns to the space in between your legs, experimenting with a ghost-like kiss to your swollen clit.
“here?” he breathes.
you nod, “perfect.”
the kiss earns a gasp from you, but neji has decided that a mere gasp is not enough.
you feel a wet warmth that wraps around the expanse of your clit, taking you in and out with a gentle suction that comes and goes like the ebb and flow of waves on a shore. it’s a sensation that you could never replicate by yourself. your own fingers pale in comparison to neji’s own hunger, as his lips slurp away at your pussy, as if it were a ripe fruit that oozed the sweetest of nectars. he had to have every last drop of you. he had to memorise the way you tasted. he felt as though nothing in this world could take him away from in-between your legs. this would be his first, and his last time consuming you. this meal would have to sustain him for the rest of his life.
it's impossible to articulate how good he's making you feel. he’s easily reduced you to a litany of breathless moans, and desirous requests for more, more, and more. your fingers are embedded within the thick, dark locks of his hair, impossibly tugging him towards a distance that's already been sealed. your toes are curled, and your hips are raised, grinding and crashing against his tongue as it swirls around your clit.
the signs of your impending orgasm begin making themselves evident to neji. that sweet pussy of yours begins to weep more of its juices onto neji’s tongue. he can feel the pulse of it, throbbing intensely against the tip of his tongue in perfect synchrony with your legs buckling in place, and your hips jerking upwards into his mouth. a final whine escapes your lips, and the grip on his hair feels as though you want to dig into his skull.
paradise ends when neji separates his mouth from your core, but it resumes when his eyes meet your own from between your legs, half-lidded and dazed in a haze of pleasure. the gratification he receives from it is bittersweet. neji can live the rest of his life knowing he drove you to such ecstasy, but at the price of never being able to do it again.
“neji,” your voice is like music to his ears. “i need you tonight.”
neji crawls forwards until his head hovers over yours, returning to the same position you were both in earlier where he was above you, with his forearms framing your face. with a singular hand, his knuckles gently traces the contour of your cheek.
“i’m already here, y/n…”
“you are. but i need to have you closer to me...”
you never once sever eye contact with him as your palm cups the erection poking against the fabric of his pants. his breath caves in when you feel over his solid length. he can feel himself crumbling in your hands.
it's uncharacteristic of neji to push past his imposed limitations. you were both intentional in your mutual choice to never search beyond one another's clothes—to respect one another's honour, for the first time was a bridge to be crossed with your spouses. but this situation was dire. things were moving quickly in your arrangement; neji felt it, and you felt it doubly. it’s the perfect justification to claim you before anyone else can.
“how much closer?” his breath is warm against your lips.
“inside of me, neji,” both of your lips are barely touching. “i have to feel you.”
your hands move from his bulge, to the waistband of his pants, where your fingers promptly hook themselves around the material and tug downwards. neji lends a spare hand to help you, simultaneously grabbing the waistband of his boxers and freeing his dick with a swift pull. his length stands on end, tip flushed and glossy with pre-cum as it pulses above your pubic mound.
neji swallows. “we can’t go back after this, y/n.”
“there’s nowhere else i’d want to go.” your hands wrap around the nape of his neck. “it’ll always be you, neji.”
his forehead connects to yours before he speaks again. “and it will always be you.” he grabs his shaft and rubs his dick between the lips of your pussy, catching your dripping slick and coating his length in it. you can’t help but whimper at the friction against your clit.
“are you ready, y/n?” neji whispers in your ear.
you nod wordlessly, parting your legs wider in preparation.
“if you could use your words, y/n,” he positions his tip at your entrance, teasing it ever so slightly. “i would appreciate that.”
“yes,” you oblige. “i’m ready for this, neji.”
“i’m pleased, y/n,” he presses a gentle kiss against your temple. “stop me at any point.”
inch by inch, the length of his dick gradually begins to occupy the space in your eager, willing pussy. the foreign sensation of your walls stretching makes you suck in air through your teeth. the pressure is yet to feel pleasurable, and your eyes brim slightly with tears. without thinking, your fingers start to dig into the flesh of neji’s nape.
“y/n.” neji calls. “you’re doing well,” he whispers in between gentle shushes. “so well, y/n. just keep looking at me, alright?”
you hold his warm gaze while he continues to sink into you, slowly and with care. he kisses at your swollen lips, feather-light, for every ingressive hiss you make, almost as if he were absorbing your pain and sealing it inside of him. it’s unbelievable how big he feels inside of you, despite the fact that he isn’t completely in. before long, you feel him skin-to-skin, completely bottomed out in your pussy. he moans softly at the feeling. every vein and ridge of his cock is completely sheathed in your inviting warmth, leaving no part of you empty. neji remains still for a moment, just long enough for you to acclimatise to the feeling of him inside you. the tears that were once threatening to spill from your eyes appear to have rescinded, and your grip on neji has become something of a more languorous hold.
“there.” neji purrs in your ear. “i told you you were doing well.” you hum in response, running your hands through his hair. “do you want me to move now?”
“yes, neji,” you breathe hungrily against his lips. “please, do something. anything.”
and he would do anything for you. if he can’t free you from the throes of a future without him, then he’ll at least do you the pleasure leaving the memory of him seared in your mind as he makes you come undone.
neji barely pulls out before pushing inside of you again, testing the ways in which your body relinquishes itself to him. you can feel the resistance of your pussy cease as it stretches and molds to the shape of his dick. for every little thrust he takes in and out of you, he trains your muscles to recognise the sensation of pleasure.
“you… you feel,” neji breathes in between thrusts, “so good. i can’t compare it to anything.” you notice how he blinks slower, as if he’s trying to capture your face in his memory for longer. you mirror his actions, and stare into his being with half-lidded eyes.
your breath mingles with his in the air. “tell me,” your foreheads touch, “tell me how it feels, neji.”
neji pulls out further now, setting up a more leisurely rhythm as he pushes into your pussy with more courage—more vigour. “you feel so warm,” he slams himself down against you. “like you’re sucking me in,” and again. “i can’t believe i’m inside of you.” and again. he steals a kiss from your tender lips with a voracious abandon that makes you moan in his mouth. to him, your tongue tastes so sweet with desire, and yet, so bitter with anticipated grief that has yet to actualise.
when the kiss ends, your lips remain agape, allowing a chain of soft moans to slide into neji’s ears. the tip of his dick finds that distinct, spongy spot in your pussy with a precision that makes pleasure accumulate in your lower belly. it makes you arch your back against him, and writhe beneath his body. neji absolutely relishes in the awareness that it is his actions, and his actions alone, that makes you react in such a way.
“n-neji,” you pant, “oh, fuck-” you pull him closer to your body, leaving your breasts flush against his chest. “you’re making me feel so good,” you start to hook your legs around his waist. “so, so good… i-”
“speak to me, y/n.” he softly pleaded.
“i wish it were you,” you rasp. “every single day, i wish it were you.” neji is practically pounding into you now, filling the air with sounds of skin slapping, and obscene wetness. “neji,” your eyes begin to bubble with tears. “i love you,” you whisper. “i love you so much that it hurts.”
“y/n,” he whispers back against your lips. “i’m sorry,” he never takes his yearning eyes off of yours when his thumb finds your protruding clit, rubbing firm circles around it. “i wish i had all the answers to heal your heart,” he thrusts harder. deeper. “i wish things weren’t the way they were,” his breathing grows more ragged, “i never wanted to let go of you. you are so special.”
you moan at the additional stimulation. “oh, i love you,” you both kiss each other light-headed, with teeth clicking and lips crashing carelessly. “i love you, i love you, i love you.” it’s a mantra from the depths of your heart. you could find love in the future, but it would never ever be as immersive, and as true as this.
“i know,” he exhales gently, dragging out the syllables. “i love you too.”
neji begins to lose the rhythm he established and maintained. he can feel his inevitable release approaching, and he chases it with just a few more thrusts. you aren’t that far behind either, with the feeling of sweet static deep in your womb getting more and more difficult to hold in with each slam of his hips.
“y/n,” neji hisses. “i’m close…”
“oh,” you gasp, “me too. fuck, fuck, fuck.” you wrap your legs even tighter around his waist, keeping him locked in place. “please don’t go anywhere…” tears spill from your eyes.
“i won’t.”
with a final groan, neji has buried himself to the hilt of your drooling pussy. your body becomes rigid, and every muscle in your body draws taut as your hole clenches around his throbbing dick.
you’ve soaked his cock with sweet, sticky essence that leaves a ring of cream around the base of his length. at the same time, long ropes of hot cum begin to flood your womb, spewing out with each final twitch of his cock. he continues to move slowly in your heat, until your sore pussy drains him to completion.
neji, still buried inside you, wipes the tears from your eyes. neither of you speak. you simply savour the silence, and allow yourselves to come back to reality after spending what feels like an eternity in sheer bliss. the night air feels like cooling liniment over the blazing heat of your sweat-glazed skin. it feels almost surreal.
both of you stay holding onto each other, as though releasing one another would make dawn arrive faster. moonlight catches onto the dark strands of neji’s hair.
“do you remember the first time we came here?” you gently break the silence.
“i do,” he whispers. “you tripped over a tree root.”
your eyes widen. “i did not.”
neji reaches for a kunai in the holster he haphazardly shoved away after he stripped for you. he throws it at one of the thick roots with such accuracy, that you know can’t be made up. “it was that one over there.”
“fine,” you roll your eyes. “i guess it was.”
neji rapidly exhales, smiling with the utmost softness.
“will you think about me?” you tried to stop the question, but it snuck past you anyway. neji didn’t seem to mind the abruptness of it, though. “i will,” he answers. “whenever i come here… all the time, to be truthful.”
he takes a brief moment to look around the clearing. “the trees. their leaves, their roots,” he looks to the sky, “the moon.” his gaze then returns to you. “you’ve made it considerably impossible not to think of you.”
“but won’t it hurt? thinking of me, when your mind is supposed to be with your betrothed?” the question, as heavy as it is, manages to float in the air for a while.
he finally speaks. “it will hurt. but, i can’t complain. i made my choice the day i let myself love you.”
you both come together, lips meeting for a final kiss. “i wish i could stay.” you whisper against his lips.
neji shuts his eyes against you, and allows a stray tear to fall down his face.
“so do i.”
a/n: i've had this draft since April omg get it away from me bro.....!:!.?: also, thank you for this request nonnie. my first time doing a bit of angst, and my first time writing for Neji! i hope this is how you envisioned it 🪷🪷🪷
tl: @sakunai @t1track (idk if any of you guys are into neji but if you are, lmk!
alrightyyy babe can you give me some teen Obito headcanons for the scenarios I had described to ya T_T 💗
༄ Tags: teen Obito, fluff, friends to lovers
༄ Requested scenario: How Obito will react if you confess to him first?
Obito was a lovely child ever since he was young. At least in your eyes. His fiery determination blended seamlessly with his kind-hearted nature and those soft, brown eyes. It was truly admirable.
And you made sure to voice every thought on your mind.
“Good job, Obito! You almost crushed him!”
Obito blinked, thoroughly defeated by his opponent, his glare directed at Kakashi evaporating as he looked up at you, a wide smile spreading across his face.
You offered him your hand, and he took it, before you placed a hand on his back, guiding him toward a bench—not before sticking your tongue out at Kakashi, who merely raised an eyebrow in response.
So Obito tried, every single time, to make you proud of him, inadvertently helping himself become a better version of who he was.
And of course, surprising you whenever he got the opportunity.
Meaning, every attempt your Obito made to capture your attention came in the form of the sweetest gestures a little boy could possibly offer his crush. Carrying your schoolbag after class. Picking the prettiest flower along the road, only to present it to you with flushed cheeks. Holding your hand whenever you lost your way. Arguing with anyone who got too close to you because their intentions didn't seem particularly friendly for Obito’s taste.
And you were no different. Always complimenting him. Always seeking out his presence. Always hugging him excitedly whenever you hadn't seen him for a few days.
And so it continued throughout the years until he grew older, mature enough to gather the courage to ask you to be his lover. Not that it hadn't been obvious before. Everyone knew that, ever since childhood, the two of you had been bound together by a red string of fate.
“Obito, when we grow older, promise you'll still be here? And that we'll always stay together?”
He felt his eyes sting at the time, only nodding frantically as he took your hands in his, his heart fluttering wildly within his chest.
“Yes! Yes, yes. Always!”
—
In the present, Obito was pacing near the front gate of the school, waiting for you to arrive. You knew something was wrong from the moment you saw him, familiar as you were with every expression that could grace that handsome face.
“[Name]!”
“Yes?”
He jogged forward until he stood directly in front of you. He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, his gaze drifting elsewhere.
“Obito, what's wrong?”
He whispered so quietly that you barely caught it.
“I wanted to talk about something...”
“What?”
“I wanted to talk about something!”
Both of your eyes widened at how serious he sounded, and Obito released a breath of relief when you laughed. He missed it every time you didn't laugh or smile, though he liked to believe he was capable of keeping you happy whenever you were with him.
“Yeah? You can tell me anything, Obito.”
He gulped, his throat already dry from nervousness.
“I wanted... I wanted to ask you something.”
You could see the tremor running through his body, his hands twitching at his sides. Your smile widened, your heart pounding against your ribs. You knew. You had waited for this for so long.
“Please, tell me. I want to hear it, Obito.”
“Y-Yes?” You nodded, and he glanced at you shyly. “I suppose I'm not exactly the most inscrutable guy, and you probably already know what this is about... but I wanted to tell you directly because you deserve that.” He exhaled deeply, closing his eyes for a brief moment before opening them again.
He was struggling too hard, so you didn’t have much choice than to be the one taking the lead.
“I like you, Obito.”
Obito blinked a few times. His ears were ringing, and his body only had grown noticeably warmer. Your smile faded slightly as a tear rolled gently down his cheek before you panicked. He wiped away a tear with his elbow, trying to hide it from you.
‘No, no! Obito.” You cupped his face in your hands, making him look at you until he had no choice but to continue.
“I love you, [Name]. And... I want to show you just how much I've always wanted you in my life... only if you want that too.”
The silence between you was agonizing for Obito—until it wasn't. He was terrified, terrified that he had gotten everything wrong, until suddenly you threw yourself into his arms, and he embraced you instantly, your hands settling on his shoulders.
“It sure took you long enough!”
His lips parted in surprise as he gazed into your lovely eyes, then down at your soft lips.
“I love you too, Obito. But I'm sure you already knew that.”
He nodded. He did. Still, Obito had been utterly scared of your answer. But now, as you looked at him as though you truly meant every word, and as your eyes lingered on his lips as well, it became unmistakably clear. The two of you belonged together.
Obito cupped your cheek, leaning in slowly until his lips met yours in a gentle, innocent kiss. Only then did his heart thunder within his chest for reasons that had nothing to do with anxiety, but everything to do with happiness.
⤷ Kakashi and Gaara showing that their perfect shinobi indoctrination shatters the second your life is on the line, and refusing to let your survivor's guilt push them away. | Kakashi x reader | Gaara x reader | As mentioned in this poll
Proofread: I started raw-dogging it at some point, sorry for any redundancy! Wc: Kakashi 4.8k | Gaara 5.1k | Warnings: gn!reader, heavy angst, hurt/comfort, descriptions of severe injuries (back/spine, thigh/shoulder/face), panic attacks, survivor's guilt, Kazekage!Gaara weeping in your lap, Hokage!Kakashi removing his shirt for emotional grounding, mild profanity. Everyone is a mess. Readers are free to scroll past if these specific character interpretations or themes do not align with their comfort levels. | Tag list: @ichxraaa, @itachispetrock - Tag list is open for all AUs, lmk which fandom/character you'd like to be tagged in <3
Nyx says: First of all, thanks wordhippo for always being there for me! Told Berry I was posting this if Brazil won their 1st game today, they technically did (t'was a draw 🥲). At least the Knicks compensated for this. ;) But here it is! Strained my wrist too, so yeah that was fun :) First time writing for Gaara, feedback about it is welcomed 🤍 Enjoy! Please see the end for important notes! Next time we see each other will be for the 200 special <33333 P.S: I'm enjoying making these new covers and my own dividers SO MUCH!
"I will be home for dinner tonight. I promise you."
His voice echoed in your head over the steaming pot of miso you had just prepared. Gaara had kissed the crown of your head this morning, his hands lingering on your waist like he physically couldn't stand the thought of walking out the door. He meant it.
He always meant it.
But the clock on the wall ticked past ten. Then eleven.
The food went cold again.
It was a hushed tragedy played out on ceramic plates; it had become a habit by now. You could count on your fingers how many times a month Gaara made it home for dinner. But you always waited, and you always would.
For the life you had carved out together, the affection you had cultivated in the spaces between his duties.
You knew the weight of the Kazekage hat. Years had passed since he first took it, trading his youth for a village's fragile hope. Gaara had become a hardened leader now, carrying the exigency of Sunagakure on his shoulders. But that same demand pulled him away from your table every single night.
And you understood that.
You always did.
But understanding didn't fill the empty chair across the table.
Some days, the house felt too silent, too big, too much yours only. You missed the days when both of your laughter would fill the room, or just your comfortable silence stretching while each of you was focused on your own hobbies or activities.
"Fine, I guess I'll have to take matters into my own hands," you muttered to the empty kitchen, grabbing a wooden bento box from the top cabinet. If he wouldn't come to the dinner, the dinner would come to him.
You packed the rice, arranging the ingredients precisely, using shredded crab stick to mimic his messy red hair and sharp cuts of nori for his eyeliner. You finished it with a tiny slice of red umeboshi resting on the rice face forehead, forming his kanji.
You let out a small giggle imagining Gaara's face when he'd open the bento box and see his face, or at least a “failed” attempt to make his face, in the food. Your heart beat a bit faster when his face crossed your mind. There was nothing in this world that you loved and treasured more than Gaara, more than your relationship.
You wrapped the box in a thick blue cloth, a stubborn smile tugging at your lips as you made your way out of the house with nothing but hopes of finally having a moment with him. He was going to scold you for walking alone so late, his lips pressing into a thin line before he inevitably pulled you into his lap and buried his face in your neck, his hands making their way around your body to hold you tight the way he always did. The reassurance he needed to feel, to know that you were still there with him.
His and his only.
The village was a maze of expansion with new buildings and new infrastructures coming alive. Gaara was doing his best in his leadership position, ensuring the Sand Village would stand out, remain well-developed, and that he completely fulfilled his duty towards his people.
Deep aqueduct trenches cut through the market district. The wind howled through the alleyways, kicking up a blinding veil of grit. You pulled your scarf over your nose, hugging the bento tight to your chest.
Just two more blocks and I get to see him.
You were so intensely focused on the image of him finally taking a break, finally looking up from those endless scrolls, that your foot stepped into nothingness.
The ground was simply gone.
Gravity took you violently, snatching you out of the air.
A jagged rod of rusted iron protruded from a broken concrete slab below. It caught the meat of your shoulder blade. Metal bit brutally into your flesh, carving a deep, diagonal wound down the length of your spine, severing muscle before your weight pulled you off the hook. You slammed into the packed earth of the trench floor; you had no time to scream, no time to cry for help.
The bento box splintered. The carefully crafted face scattered into the dirt, food spilled everywhere.
“Ga-Gaara,” was the only sound that left your throat before the darkness surrounded your eyes.
Your body turned to lead, flesh and pain being dragged into the depths of a soundless abyss. Air abandoned your lungs upon impact, and every desperate attempt to inhale brought only the metallic taste of blood and the suffocating dust of the trench. Above you, the sky of Sunagakure was a narrow, indifferent slit, framed by the same jagged edges of shattered concrete that had just taken you down.
The wind howled again high above, but down here, at the bottom where your body remained, silence was the only thing heard.
Your consciousness wavered. The pain in your shoulder and spine was a constant throb that numbed your extremities. You tried to move your fingers, wanting desperately to reach the grains of rice scattered in the mud—that little bento face you had made with such care to make him smile—but your arms would not obey, they went numb the moment you took the fall.
Shadows began to close in at the edges of your vision, a velvet shade of black promising relief. In the final second before total oblivion, the image of Gaara in the office light flashed through your mind once again. You wanted to tell him how sorry you were for not making it, that the dinner had gone cold, and it wasn’t his fault, it never was. That you loved him enough to walk across the entire desert just to see him for a minute.
Then, the white noise consumed everything.
Consciousness returned in uneven fragments. Searing lights piercing your exhausted eyelids.
"Losing too much blood! Page the head medic NOW!" The stinging was burning into your arms, into your back. The smell of copper flooding your senses. A cacophony of panicked voices bled into white noise, pulling you back under the gloom.
Miles away but not so far from the accident area, the Kazekage’s brush paused over a trade agreement when his fingers twitched slightly.
A pressure clamped down on Gaara’s chest, an overwhelming feeling he couldn't explain, consuming him in that moment. The air in the office grew stale, and his heart stuttered against his ribs, a cold knot of nausea twisting in his stomach. He had survived far worse, but this feeling was foreign, like an innate alarm ringing in his blood.
He looked at the clock.
11:42 PM.
You should have had dinner by now and be in bed. And maybe, just maybe, this was why Gaara was experiencing this gut-wrenching dread. Because he couldn't keep his promise to you once again, he failed you in a way that was hurting him, and probably even you, though you'd never admit it.
Yes, this was probably why he wasn't feeling good now.
But despite that, in the corner of the room, his gourd shuddered. The sand spilled over the rim, hissing as it hit the floorboards. It was agitated.
Wild.
Too much.
Too aware.
He stood up, unable to control his shaky hands, pacing to the window. He stared out over the village, his hands clasped tightly behind his back, his left eye twitching a little. The dread sat dense in his throat.
Twenty agonizing minutes bled by before his office's walnut doors swung open. No knocks, no announcements, no nothing, just Kankuro and two jonin trailing behind him, all three breathless.
Kankuro stood in the doorway, his face drained of color. And for a moment, just a faint moment, Gaara knew deep down he was about to lose his ground regardless of what his older brother would say.
"Gaara…" was the only echo he heard as Kankuro opened his mouth. Why was his brother muttering the words hospital, accident, and your name together?
The hospital smelled of a blend of antiseptic, bleach, and rubbing alcohol. A sterile aroma that now conveyed immediate unease to him.
Gaara didn't remember when he stopped listening to Kankuro's words. He didn't remember what happened after he pushed past his elder brother and the two guards, the less than fifteen-minute walk to the hospital feeling like forever. His intercostal muscles burned as they expanded his ribcage, his diaphragm fatigued to supply the oxygen he'd lost from how fast he ran.
Each and every second without seeing you was torture; he needed to know if you were okay, he needed to know if you would come back, if you would live. If he would see your face when he returned home, because he would come back to you. He promised he would.
Please, whatever higher forces there are, let them come back to me, too!
Gaara wouldn't let his mind use your name and death in the same sentence. Ever!
No!
His own death? That never frightened him. But yours?
His deepest, greatest fear.
The only thing he remembered was the blinding fluorescent lights and the impenetrable wall of Temari’s arms pressing flat against his chest. The sudden bump made him come back to reality and realize he was this close to barging into the intensive care room you were in.
"Stop," she ordered, her voice firm as she used her body weight to shove him back from the doors. "Gaara, you have to let them work!"
"Move." He said in a voice that sounded too low, almost too dangerous to himself even. His fists clenched.
"I won't," she snapped back, she was aware that both she and Kankuro needed to stand their ground in this moment. "The medics are stabilizing the injuries! If you go in there with your chakra spiraling like this, you will make it worse. Sit down! Please…" Her last word came out like a plea, because she knew that even if she wanted to, she couldn't fully stop Gaara.
The unspoken feelings lingering in the air, the tension that built up so fast, was enough to make him take a step back and allow the medical staff to perform their job.
Gaara didn't sit.
How could he?
How could he allow himself to attempt to calm down when he didn't know whatever condition you were in that damn room right then?
He paced. He paced so much that his siblings thought he would open a hole in the floor with his feet.
He paced the corridor for what felt like a lifetime. Back and forth in an oppressive loop. His jaw muscles tensed so hard his teeth and head ached. The agonizing beep of the heart monitor bled through the thin walls, the sound a mocking metronome measuring the exact cost of his absence, the cost of how much your life was worth in that moment.
Gaara's mind never stopped. He was vibrating with the need for a target, for an explanation, for whatever it was. He was fully preparing to hear a name, any name —a rogue ninja, a displeased villager, an assassin—so he could unleash his desert of wrath upon them.
He had stopped being so aggressive long ago, but he would never falter to protect what was precious to him, what he treasured the most.
If blood needs to be spilled, let it be mine. Always mine! Not theirs.
Finally, footsteps echoed down the hall. Two chunin approached, bowing their heads a bit before handing a scroll to Kankuro. Gaara stopped pacing and the sand at his feet stilled completely. He turned his gaze to his elder brother, bracing himself for whatever would be inside that scroll.
Kankuro read the report, his shoulders dropping with a certain ease. Half glad, half still hurt for his brother. "It wasn't an attack, Gaara. It was the Sector 4 construction site."
Gaara raised his head properly and took the scroll with practically trembling hands. Practically. He wouldn't dare lose any more composure now, not in front of his subordinates. Kazekage Gaara needed to be in that hospital the moment your accident cause was revealed, and so he assumed his posture as a leader.
He looked behind him, staring at the door. No signs of anyone coming out of it, no other sounds other than the heart monitor that still beeped, making sure to let him know that you were still there, still fighting, still alive.
But for how long? Were you stabilized? Were they doing everything they could to ensure you'd be fine?
Temari stepped forward, placing a comforting hand on her brother's tense shoulder. "Go," she said as caring as she could. "Go see it. If anything changes here, you will be the first to know."
He looked at his sister, hesitated for a bit, but then took a deep breath and nodded. Gaara vanished in a swirl of sand.
When Kankuro arrived at the site moments later with others, Gaara was standing perfectly still at the bottom of the ditch. The wind whipped his crimson coat around his ankles while he stared at the dried blood staining the rusted rebar.
Your blood!
Gaara was so unnervingly still that in the space of a breath, a cold spike of fear hit Kankuro's chest. He worried that the broken boy from their childhood might snap back to the surface.
But there was no bloodlust in Gaara’s eyes.
Only an ocean of grief.
He knelt in the dirt, reaching out with trembling fingers, brushing the splintered wood of the crushed bento box. He stared at the ruined food, the single red slice of umeboshi sinking into the mud.
His posture remained firm, a flawlessly sculpted monument of the Kazekage, but his physical tells betrayed the violent storm, the rage, the guilt beneath his skin. His jaw muscles tensed visibly for the hundredth time. His fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned stark white against the morning light that started to make its way to Sunagakure.
They were coming to me.
At the sight of where you were suffering just a few hours ago, something fundamental died inside of Gaara. Something he swore he would protect, but couldn't. How bad had he truly failed you this time?
You survived.
For whatever purpose you had left on this Earth, you survived.
The medics stitched the torn muscle.
At least 68 stitches on the upper back alone is what they said when the doctors came out of the room.
But the worst part of the damage was the violent, the harsh, the brutal scar carving down your back. The sign of a night full of hopes and dreams, turned into a nightmare. That wasn't you anymore; you did not recognize yourself in that skin.
You drifted in and out of consciousness for days. When you finally woke up properly, the buzz of the hospital room greeted you. Your back felt like it was on fire, held together by tight threads. Even the slightest movement hurt.
Through the haze of painkillers, muffled voices drifted from the cracked door.
"The aftercare will be demanding, Lord Kazekage," the head medic warned. "The muscle tissue was severely compromised. Constant assistance with dressing the wound, bathing, and for mobility will be required for the foreseeable future."
"I understand," Gaara replied with his familiar calm tone. "I will personally handle the aftercare."
I will personally handle the aftercare.
A knot of terror formed in your stomach, eclipsing the physical pain. You squeezed your eyes shut, tears burning your lashes. A silent scream trapped in your throat as anger filled your body.
What had you done?
Gaara was already drowning under the demands of his entire village, working himself to the bone, missing dinners, special dates, and sleeping in his office.
And now, because you were careless, because you were so reckless for just wanting to just see him for a minute, you had doubled his workload. You were no longer a supportive partner but a casualty.
A burden.
And you hated yourself for it, resentful of the skin you were now forced to inhabit for as long as you lived.
He would never get to rest now.
The discharge papers were soon signed. Gaara stood in the hospital corridor, bowing his head respectfully to the lead medic. His voice was full of gratitude for them saving your life, but his gaze never left your wheelchair. You sat there, sealed off in your own mind, numb to the world around you. You couldn't even bring yourself to look him in the eye.
The journey back to your shared house was painfully slow and quiet. You kept your eyes locked on your lap, barely meeting his gaze even once, ignoring the silent pleas hidden in his posture. Gaara knew better than to push someone out of their shells. He knew you'd need time, and he was willing to wait.
When you finally got home, the house was a tomb. The walls, once vibrating with the warmth of his new life, felt hollow.
The first few nights in your shared bed were a specific kind of hell. You lay rigid on the very edge of the mattress, too afraid to even fall asleep.
Awake.
Aware.
Scarred.
If you turned your back, the sheets might slip. If the sheets slipped, he would see the ruin of your skin.
The scar felt like a violent brand, broadcasting your vulnerability to the man who was supposed to be your sanctuary. And the kind of shame you were feeling burned hotter than the healing tissue.
By the fourth day, you could not bear the proximity anymore. You gathered your pillows and moved to the spare bedroom.
Gaara didn't argue. He stood in the hallway, watching you close the door, nodding in a feigned understanding. But beneath his ribs, a helpless grief tore him apart. He couldn't fathom a world where you didn't want to be next to him.
This withdrawn ghost was not who you were, and the realization settled deep into his bones.
He had truly failed you, hadn't he?
You spent your days hiding in the shadows of that spare room, feeling like a ghost haunting your own life. You only left the room to eat, but you didn't make it to every meal.
The only time you'd let someone see the damaged raw you was when Temari or another medical ninja would stop by to help you clean the wound. It was not about feeling ugly. It was the sensation of being trapped in someone else's skin.
The body you owned did not feel like yours anymore. It was a disgraceful landscape of pulling scars and pain. How could Gaara look at you with the same eyes? He probably wouldn't be ready to live with this new, damaged, wrecked you.
Gaara didn't know how to fix this. He was a skilled shinobi, the village's Kage, but fundamentally clumsy with emotional nuance. He was never trained for this type of damage. To see you in pain.
He tried silent support. He moved his endless stacks of paperwork from his office to the dining table at home, refusing to leave you alone. He left glasses of fresh water on your nightstand while you pretended to sleep. He knew you were far from being asleep by the way your chest heaved, the way the tears kept falling even when your face was turned to the opposite side.
He sat in the armchair across the room, watching the rise and fall of your chest, letting the heavy quietude speak for his devotion.
But the silence only fed your anxiety.
Weeks bled into each other. The tension stretched like a rubber band ready to snap. You kept distancing yourself, and it was killing him inside. He was lost, desperate for any signs that you would forgive him for not being there that night, or the countless times you needed his presence by your side, and he never came.
Until that night, when Gaara finally gathered the courage to enter the spare bedroom to lie down next to you. The mattress dipped under his weight, and you immediately shifted to the very edge, putting miles of cold sheets between you.
The rejection hung in the air.
Thick.
Loud.
Suffocating.
Gaara shifted closer, bridging the gap until the warmth of his chest, the warmth you craved every night, the one that made your heart flutter every time, radiated against your back. He didn't touch the scar; he wouldn't dare. He simply rested his hand flat against the mattress beside you, trying to show he had no intention of leaving you to yourself.
You flinched, quickly sitting up and pulling your knees to your chest.
"Stop!" you whispered, the word sharp and brittle in the dark, tears forming already in your eyes.
"But I—," the strain in his voice was obvious.
"You don't have to do this," you snapped. The emotional whiplash finally broke the dam. You glared at him, your chest heaving, tears blurring your vision. "You don't have to sleep in here. You don't have to stare at me like I'm a casualty you need to manage. Just go back to the office, Gaara. You don't have to pretend you want to be here right now. I-I don't want… I don't need you seeing this."
The air in the room dropped ten degrees. He froze.
"Pretend?" his voice dropped into a quiet register. "I'm not— How could I? I love you so much!” He sat up next to you. Not smooth, not suave. But eager to ask, plead, beg if necessary, for you to let him in again.
He spent most of his life believing he was unlovable, and watching you push him away was tearing him apart from the inside out. You didn't deserve to feel this way, especially concerning him.
"I don't know how to be in this body anymore," you cried, the truth finally spilling over. "It feels wrong. I feel wrong. Look at m— Actually, I'd rather you didn't, Gaara! It’s ruined!"
Gaara stared at you, his chest rising and falling erratically with anxiety. He reached out, his fingers hovering inches from your tear-stained cheek, as if asking permission to touch you for the first time in weeks, before finally making contact. His thumb brushed away a tear, his touch light as a feather.
Silence took over the room again. Your muffled cry, Gaara's breathing, everything combining into that moment where you were crumbling apart in front of him.
"I know what it means to feel like your skin is a prison," he murmured, breaking the tense silence. "Do you…Do you know the violence it took for me to become this gentle?" he asked with a pain in his voice you hadn't heard in years. It wasn't a guilt trip. It was a quiet hope that you might understand he knew at least a fragment of the pain you were enduring.
Your breath caught under his touch.
He was talking about the blood on his hands. The monster that used to live under his skin. The years he spent feeling like a hostage in his own volatile body.
"I know the exact weight of feeling ruined. But you are not."
You squeezed your eyes shut, a sob catching in your throat. He was clumsy with his words, but the desperation in his voice kept you in the moment.
He shifted his weight, moving closer until his forehead gently rested against your uninjured shoulder. You flinched again, but didn't move away from his touch. Gaara only let out a trembling breath, his sand-roughened hand sliding from your cheek to cup the back of your neck, being careful not to touch your stitches and make you uncomfortable.
He was mapping the safe path of unbroken skin, keeping you in the present, in that room, in that vulnerable moment with him.
The respect, the care in his touch, was devastating.
It showed the desperate grip of a man holding onto his heart, proving that he was not afraid of the ruin, the damage, the pain, the darkness.
His thumb stroked a slow circle against your nape. "When they told me," he began, his voice in the stifling room. "When Kankuro burst through my office doors, my lungs stopped working, and my heart ached so much. I do not even remember the run there. I only remember the panic tearing through my chest."
He swallowed hard, the movement pressing against your collarbone. "When I stood in that corridor, fighting against Temari's hold just to get to those operating doors... listening to the monitor keeping your heart beating...not knowing if you…" His words suddenly trailed off.
Gaara pulled back just a fraction of an inch to look at you, his free hand lifting to hastily wipe a stray tear from his own cheek before it could fall. "If you would come back alive. And then I felt the sand turn to glass in my veins. I felt so many dark emotions I hadn't felt in years. I spent what felt like an eternity pacing that floor, waiting for a name so I could bury whoever did this to you under the desert."
His breath hitched, the ghost of that memory haunting his eyes. "But… But there was no enemy. When the messenger finally arrived and said it was the construction site, I vanished. I went straight to the bottom of that ditch. I needed— I needed to see it, to see where your body was lying down before someone found you…."
Gaara closed his eyes, his free hand finding yours resting on your lap. "Kankuro found me there moments later, but by then, I had already seen it. I saw the splintered wood.” A choked gasp escaped his throat. The stiff posture of the Kazekage, gone. He dropped forward, burying his face into the fabric of your pants as your legs stretched out flat beneath him. Broken sobs tore through his chest, vibrating against your thighs. “The food sinking in the mud," he wept into your lap. "And I realized the only person to blame, the one I was truly after, was myself."
"Gaara, no—" you tried to interrupt, but his grip found your fingers, tightening around them, silently pleading with you to let him finish.
"You fell in the dark because I chose my desk over our home," he whispered from the sheets, the self-loathing bleeding into every syllable. "I-I left you waiting. You can harbor resentment. You can hate me for the rest of our days, and I will sit in the other room and accept it."
He pulled back, his weight shifting on the mattress. You watched in stunned silence as Gaara folded his legs beneath him and lowered his upper body. He pressed his forehead to the blankets right beside your hip, taking a formal bow. “Forgive me, my love. Please forgive me for not being present when you were in pain, alone in that dark trench.”
He slowly raised his head, rising just enough to press his forehead against your shoulder. A shuddering breath escaped his lungs. It was Gaara's utter physical manifestation of guilt and devotion combined into one. The kind born from a man starving for a touch he believed he no longer deserved, practically begging you to let him stay within your orbit.
"But I need you to understand that I am extremely grateful you are still breathing," he confessed, his thumb finding and tracing the pulse point on your wrist like it was his only lifeline. "That you are alive, and here. Right here."
He finally pushed himself up from the mattress, shifting his legs to sit up fully. He moved close, sitting back on the bed so he could pull you gently toward him. He rested his forehead against yours, his breath uneven as it ghosted across your lips.
"I needed you to know that, even if it is the last thing you want to hear from my mouth. I need you to know how much I love you. Every single part of you." He took a ragged breath, tears still falling from his pale teal eyes. "I've lost so many people," he went on, softer now, more devastated. "But losing you would be different. You wouldn't be someone who left. You'd be the part of me that went with you. You'd be the light that never came back."
Gaara didn't know how to fix the physical pain, but he knew he could not survive the emotional distance. "So please, please don't make me brave enough to survive you," he begged quietly, his bare vulnerability tearing down every wall you tried to build in the past weeks. "I don't want to be strong if it means being without you."
The last of your defenses exploded like fragile glass. You let out a broken sob, your hands flying up to grip the fabric of his crimson cloak. You buried your face into his chest, uncaring about the tears soaking his clothes, the sting in your healing muscles, or the pain deep in your soul. He immediately caught your weight, his arms wrapping around your frame carefully to avoid hurting you, a protective warmth that you had starved yourself of for weeks.
"Gaara…I could never hate you," you cried against his collar, your voice muffled by his embrace. "I don't blame you, Gaara. I never blamed you. I was just so scared you would look at me and see a burden. A ruined thing. You already have your duties as the Kazekage. I couldn't bring myself to bother you with how careless I was."
"Never a burden, please don't ever say that again, my love," he whispered fiercely as if you had just insulted him by thinking so low of yourself, pressing his lips to your wet cheeks as another tear fell from your eyes. His hand rubbed soothing circles into your waist. "Never ruined. Never a bother. Mine," he pressed another kiss, now close to your mouth. “Mine to protect, mine to hold, mine to take care of. I promise… I really do.” Another kiss, now directly onto your lips. How much he missed those sweet lips of yours, your soothing touch, your presence around him. The silence was no longer a void, but a vessel. Gaara's presence flooded the space where the fear had been.
Healing would be a nonlinear road, but within the safety of his embrace, the room no longer felt like a grave, losing its hollow, tomb-like chill completely. Your scars, once jagged reminders of the trench, now rendered soft and insignificant against Gaara's embrace.
As he held you, you realized that the only way to truly believe a vow is to watch a man stop running and finally stand his ground, choosing to stay. Gaara was no longer dealing in the currency of future promises.
He was refusing to abandon the present.
Kakashi
The recently discovered Otsutsuki shrine near the gorge was a collapsing graveyard of ancient secrets. The dense air surrounding it carried the scent of damp earth and rotting stone. As you brushed the dust from the central altar, your fingers traced the faint ciphers carved into the pedestal.
You were the brightest mind in the Intelligence Division, and one of the only agents in the Leaf who could translate this forgotten dialect before the cavern completely caved in.
Your mission was simple: come in, decipher, take what needs to be taken, and get out before it's too late. You could do it like you had done so many times in the past, for years and years in the department.
Kakashi hated the idea. He already had a highly capable Jonin squad ready to dispatch, terrified of sending you anywhere near a crumbling hazard. Kakashi had hesitated, looking at Shikamaru for an excuse to keep you grounded, to refrain from letting you leave the village for this mission. But his advisor only sighed, stating that logic dictated your presence was the most efficient choice.
Nevertheless, Kakashi knew that he couldn't let his private affairs meddle with his role as Hokage.
That was the only reason he had stamped the mission approval. You could still picture the rigid set of his jaw this morning, his dark eyes clouded with reluctance as Shikamaru asked him to sign the parchment once and for all.
Before you left, he pulled you close and gave you that look you knew well, a silent plea to be careful out there without him.
He knew that you would.
You were always careful, maybe even too excessively in certain situations.
Kakashi just had to make sure; he needed to tell you that, regardless of how many times he had already in the past.
But now, it was too late.
A violent tremor suddenly shook the cavern walls, the structural integrity of the ruin finally failing. The central limestone load-bearing pillars snapped under the shifting tectonic pressure, causing the cavern's keystone to fracture and trigger a cascading collapse of the upper terrace.
"Fall back now!" you shouted to your Jonin escort team, scrambling away from the altar.
But the warning came too late. The stone beneath your boots gave way faster than your feet could move.
Gravity snatched you into the pitch-black chasm below, plummeting you through the dark as the air abandoned your lungs. A jagged pillar of shattered masonry caught your fall, its sharp edge carving a deep laceration straight up your inner thigh. You groaned, tumbling off the pillar and slamming heavily onto the lower terrace.
A nonstop shower of sharp shrapnel rained from the ceiling, with slabs of debris slashing across your temple, tearing through your eyebrow, and biting fully into the center of your cheek.
But the most devastating blow came a second later when a massive chunk of the ruin's ceiling caved in, crashing directly into your shoulder blade and pinning your broken body against the cold rubble.
So this is how it ends…
The brute force of the impact felt as if your entire body was being crushed through a rusted grinder. The metallic taste of blood flooding your mouth, you coughed, almost choking on the liquid. You tried to push the stone off your shoulder, but your arms were completely unresponsive, just like most parts of your body. The hot sensation of your own blood pooling beneath your thigh and soaking your cheek was the only thing left to feel.
Kakashi is going to be so disappointed, was the last coherent thought that drifted through your fading mind. Shadows began to swallow your vision while the dust filled your throat.
In the final second before total oblivion pulled you under, the dense debris shifted. A silhouette materialized in the gloom, and the striking, ethereal glow of a purple Rinnegan pierced through the dusk.
Sasuke.
The moment your brain registered his presence, it forcefully severed your consciousness. A rather necessary mercy. Your mind plunged into a protective void, completely sparing you from the torture, the painful sensation of the extraction. You wouldn't remember the agonizing feeling of being pulled from the crushing rubble, or the grueling, miles-long journey as he carried your broken body across the gorge.
My squad. Where is my... squad?
The entire race back to the Hidden Leaf was swallowed by the dark.
Sasuke entered the trauma ward with an urgency that immediately shook the sterile calm of the hospital. He laid your half-scarred, half-unconscious form carefully onto the nearest gurney as the medics swarmed in.
He looked at the nurse, his tone clipped. "Make sure Sakura sees to these injuries immediately. The debris cut deep. Hurry!"
He didn't wait for her nod; he turned around and left the hospital. As soon as he stepped outside, an ANBU shinobi appeared in front of him, explaining that he was alerted by the gates’ guards of what had happened a few moments ago.
"Take this to the Hokage," Sasuke asked handing his latest report to the ANBU. "I am heading back to the gorge with a Jonin squad to check on the scene. Make sure Kakashi is aware of this incident as soon as possible."
A few blocks away, the Hokage's office was stacked with piles and piles of endless paperwork. Kakashi was exhausted, running on nothing but tea and duty. He'd kill for your miso soup right now. Actually, he'd do anything to go back home and stay under the sheets with you, napping for a whole day.
The thought brought him back to the moment, as he had been on edge all day, his mind continuously drifting back to the argument you both had that morning. He was feeling as if he had let you go on a suicide mission, though he knew how capable you were and how this new finding would help the Leaf.
Maybe he was worrying too much; there was no need for that.
The same ANBU that had just spoken to Sasuke materialized in the center of the office, dropping to one knee. He held out the smudged scroll Sasuke had given him a few seconds ago. Shikamaru stepped forward, taking the item and placing it directly onto the Hokage's desk.
"Lord Sixth," the operative began. "Sasuke Uchiha just delivered your Intelligence agent to the trauma ward. He returned to the incident area with another squad to further investigate and retrieve the rest of the team."
Kakashi was still in the middle of signing a document when his pen paused over the parchment, a drop of ink pooling into the paper.
He heard the words, but his exhausted brain processed them at a sickeningly slow pace.
Your Intelligence agent.
Incident.
Trauma ward.
He blinked once. Twice.
His dark eyes lifted to look at the ANBU kneeling in front of him.
"The Intelligence agent?" Kakashi asked, his voice sounding distant, as if the words were having trouble finding their way through the fog of his shock.
He turned his head slowly, locking eyes with his advisor. "Wait. Who? Did you just mention an incident?"
Shikamaru stiffened, his entire posture snapping to attention as the reality took hold. He knew Kakashi was trying to process the words in the calmest way known to a man.
"Damn it," Shikamaru cursed under his breath, the color draining from his face.
The oxygen was instantly sucked out of the room while a deafening ring took over Kakashi's ears. His tongue tasted blood — blood that wasn't even there. The wraith pain of his own old scars flared to life beneath his Hokage robes. It felt as if his chest was tearing open all over again.
He was paralyzed by the terror of his own curse. The curse that violently struck down the only people he ever allowed himself to love. It was his fault, once again. Entirely his fault.
He had authorized the mission.
He had signed the paper.
He had sent you right into the jaws of death.
"Lord Sixth!" Shikamaru barked, slamming a hand flat on the mahogany desk to break the trance. "You need to go to the hospital. Right now."
Kakashi dropped the pen, violently pushing his wooden chair against the floorboards, bolting through the doors of his office as if the village was going to war.
But the only war he had to endure now was the hell in his mind. The panic at the thought of losing you.
Kakashi took the tower stairs three at a time, bursting through the main doors and hitting the bustling streets below. He didn't break his stride; there was no time for it. He tore through the center of Konoha, his standard calm facade shattering into a hundred ragged pieces with every distressed step.
Villagers and market stalls blurred into meaningless streaks of color. The wind whipped against his face, carrying the stench of fresh copper—a sensory hallucination born purely from his spiraling trauma, stinging in his throat.
His lungs burned, scraping against his ribs as he forced his body to move faster than his chakra reserves comfortably allowed. Please. The silent plea cycled through his mind like a broken mantra, bouncing against the walls of his skull. Take my life. Take my eyes. Take whatever is left of my miserable soul. Don't die on me, please don't even dare to.
He had spent a lifetime burying the people he loved. He knew the exact weight of shoveling dirt over a casket.
He had authorized this mission. Damn it, he had authorized it!
He had handed you the executioner's blade and told you to walk into the dark.
His hands were itchy, and he felt the need to wash them as if your blood had stained them. But if he scrubbed them now, would it mean your life was being washed away?
Do not die on me, please!
The sliding doors of the Konoha trauma ward didn't open fast enough. Kakashi forced his broad shoulders through the narrowing gap, his boots squeaking harshly against the polished linoleum.
The scent of bleach, rubbing alcohol, and raw iron hit him like a punch straight to his face.
"Kakashi-sensei!" A pair of green-glowing hands pressed firmly against his chest before he could breach the curtain of bay 2. He came in so fast that she could barely stop her chakra from flowing from her hands before preventing him from taking one more step, before she could even process the appropriate title to call him.
Sakura.
Her medical apron was speckled with drying crimson. The metallic tang in the air wasn't a hallucination anymore; it belonged to you.
Blood.
Your blood.
"Sakura, I need to come in," Kakashi rasped. His voice didn't boom or echo; it carried a tone that sounded dangerous to himself, to his sanity, to what he would do if the word combination of death + your name came out of anyone's mouth.
Kakashi knew he was asking too much. But he would use his Hokage title, his privilege, to barge and break through any barrier that was between you and him. After all, you were out on a mission, official Leaf business, so he was going to check on you regardless.
"I need you to prepare yourself before you look," she warned, her grip on his flak jacket tightening. Her emerald eyes were clinical, but the way she bit her lower lip and held the action for two seconds too long betrayed her own stress. Kakashi would never be ready for whatever was behind those curtains. "Sasuke got them here just in time. We stabilized the hemorrhaging. The femoral artery was narrowly missed, but the structural damage is severe. Really severe…"
Kakashi didn't say anything; he couldn't. He couldn't even understand how this whole situation ended up happening. Or actually, he could.
Because he was the one who did this to you. He signed you up for this madness.
He looked behind Sakura, reached up, his fingers firmly prying his former student's hands away from his chest, and pushed past the curtain.
The floor completely dropped out from beneath his feet this time.
You lay unconscious on the hospital mattress, your skin leached of all color under the harsh fluorescent lights. The medical team had already cut away the ruined fabric of your uniform, exposing the brutal geography of your injuries.
That wasn't you. No.
It couldn't be you.
The body lying in that hospital bed was devoid of its usual smile, utterly stripped of its sunshine. It was far too still to be yours—the person, his person, who teased Kakashi, the one who lived to be playful, loving, and always loyal to him.
But look at what the loyalty to his duties did to you.
Kakashi’s breath hitched, dying in the back of his throat.
His eyes immediately caught the wound carved up your inner thigh. The jagged stone had severed the muscle fascia entirely, leaving a gaping laceration. A maze of countless black sutures and Sakura's residual medical chakra held the separated tissue together.
His gaze dragged upward, taking in the massive, violently colored hematoma swelling across your left shoulder blade. The skin there was an angry, mottled purple where the collapsing ceiling had crushed the scapula, splintering the bone beneath the flesh.
But it was your face that made his knees lock.
A harsh avulsion sliced diagonally across your temple. The gash tore straight through the arch of your eyebrow, biting so deeply into the center of your cheek that a secondary medic on the scene was actively using a micro-scalpel to repair the damaged nerve endings.
You looked like a porcelain doll dropped from a great height, stitched back together with fraying thread. As if your pieces needed to be glued together with so much care, or you'd be gone forever.
Kakashi couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe. Hell, he couldn't breathe at all.
The monitors beeped in a synthetic rhythm, confirming that your heart was still pumping blood through your veins, but the sound offered zero comfort. He stepped forward, his legs moving like lead weights, until his thighs hit the metal rail of the bed.
He didn't reach for your hand. He didn't dare touch the unbroken patches of your skin. He felt too filthy, too tainted by his own terrible decisions to lay his hands on the ruin he had caused. Because he was so sure that he was the one who caused your fall, your wounds.
He just stood there, his dark eyes wide and fixed on the steady rise and fall of your chest, letting this fresh acidic reality burn a hole straight through his ribs up to his heart.
The scent of the trauma ward clung to your skin long after Sakura finally signed your discharge papers five days later, and Kakashi picked you up from the hospital, as if you were a kid waiting for your parent to come get you after school. Not that he really left your side while you were recovering, though he sometimes would leave for a few minutes to sign a paper or two, or do something as fast as he could at his office. He was there, and for some reason, he seemed impatient, as if he needed your eyes to lock onto his to make sure you could see him.
Fully.
By your side.
Always there.
Kakashi didn’t ask if you could walk, nor did he offer his shoulder for support. Therefore, the same second the medical staff left the room after checking on you one last time, he stepped up to the edge of the mattress and slid one secure arm beneath your knees, the other wrapping carefully around your uninjured back.
He lifted you with that same fluid ease you were used to, but that now felt wrong. He angled your body precisely to ensure zero pressure was applied to the thick lattice of sutures holding your thigh together, the ones that would make you immobile for a few days, as Sakura had mentioned, or the shattered bone resting beneath your shoulder blade.
You didn't protest. You had no strength to. Your mind was in chaos, sustaining scars worse than the ones outside. The structural failure of your own body was the new humiliating reality you were forced to swallow.
The humid air of Konoha at night hit your face as he carried you out of the hospital and into the quiet streets. The village was asleep, oblivious to the stretching silence between the two of you, as if it was creating this huge space between you and him.
Kakashi hadn't spoken more than a handful of clinical sentences since you woke up. His jaw was locked tight beneath his mask, his dark eyes fixed straight ahead. You pressed your uninjured cheek against the flak jacket covering his chest, feeling the palpitating thrum of his heartbeat.
Every beat felt like a damning reprimand.
He was right. The thought cycled through your exhausted brain, a venomous loop you couldn't shut off, not since you took the fall, not since you had woken up in that bright hospital room.
He was absolutely right to try to keep you grounded. Kakashi was the Hokage after all; he knew better than you did, and you chose to almost sulk like a stupid kid over his first refusal to let you go.
You were supposed to be an asset. You had practically begged Shikamaru to push the mission through because you knew what those Otsutsuki ciphers meant for the Leaf. They were the key to securing the perimeter, the leverage the village needed to maintain the peace every shinobi had bled to secure.
Most importantly, they were supposed to lighten the stifling crown sitting on Kakashi’s head. You had marched into that gorge because you wanted to give the Hokage a break. You wanted to hand the man you loved a victory so he could finally rest for a few moments, at least.
Instead, you had handed him a nightmare.
You had become just another casualty he had to worry about. Another liability, draining the village's medical resources, at least that's what your anxious mind thought. You had looked at the man who had spent his entire life burying the people he loved, and you had selfishly forced him to say yes to a mission that nearly added your name to the Memorial Stone.
How could you dare to almost put him through another situation like this?
You closed your eyes, squeezing them tight as a pathetic tear slipped into the dark fabric of his vest. You completely misread the rigid tension in his shoulders. You thought it was the cold weight of Kakashi's disappointment. You didn't realize it was the paralyzing terror of a man terrified he was going to drop you, lose you.
Kakashi climbed the stairs to your shared apartment as carefully and slowly as he could. He put you down for just a second to grab the keys and unlock the door, scooping you again as he unlatched it. The click of the lock tumbling open was the loudest sound in the world.
He stepped inside, the familiar fragrance of Yuzu, your favorite, it helps with the stress, you said in passing one day, and his favorite sencha tea offering no comfort to the guilt sitting on your chest.
He bypassed the living room, carrying you straight down the hall and setting you down on the edge of the plush mattress in the bedroom with gentleness.
"We're home now, you can rest properly. I'll get your medications," Kakashi murmured, his voice carrying a rough gravel that barely broke the silence. He didn't look at your face, just turned toward the hallway and into the kitchen.
You sat alone on the edge of the bed, the air of your home biting against your bare legs, while the hospital grime clung to your skin, making you feel overwhelmed. You needed to wash it off, needed to scrub the catastrophe out of your pores. Gathering every ounce of stubborn willpower you possessed, you forced yourself to stand.
Your good leg took the brunt of your weight as you dragged yourself toward the bathroom, your fingers gripping the doorframe to keep the room from spinning as you crossed the threshold. That thigh scar hurting like a hundred kunai were being used to stab you right there and then.
You reached back blindly, pushing the wooden door shut behind you until it clicked into the frame. You took this opportunity to take the black robe behind the door and put it on as you shed your hospital gown since your clothes had all been destroyed in the fall and in the trauma ward.
You gripped the edges of the porcelain sink, forcing your head up to look into the vanity mirror.
But it wasn't just your face staring back.
The full-length mirror mounted on the back of the closed door caught your reflection, bouncing it directly back into the glass in front of you. It created this infinite hallway of your own doomed body.
You were trapped in a loop, forced to see every terrible, every cracked angle.
The angry, raised pink tissue mapping the brutal area of your trauma. The massive, twisted scar knotting your shoulder blade, reflected back at you in so many details. The uneven trench climbing your inner thigh was even worse than you wanted to believe it was.
Your hands trembled under the weight of that inescapable reflection. You reached blindly for a glass bottle of medicinal wash sitting on the edge of the sink, desperate to just start scrubbing.
But your fingers were completely senseless. The glass slipped from your grip, creating a deafening shatter that echoed against the ceramic tiles.
In the kitchen, the sudden sound of something breaking froze Kakashi down to his bones.
A shinobi must prioritize the mission above all else.
That was the foundational doctrine pounded into his skull since he was a child. The perfect shinobi did not hesitate, did not crumble, and certainly did not let personal attachments compromise their judgment. For decades, Kakashi Hatake was the pinnacle of that cold, calculated ideal. He had operated as the perfect weapon for the Leaf, or so he thought.
Yet, ever since he pulled back that hospital curtain, his immaculate indoctrination had ruptured.
He couldn't reconcile the Hokage—the man who cold-bloodedly authorized operations, sometimes lethal ones—with the man standing at the kitchen sink, stuck under the weight of his own penitence. Every time he looked at you, his tactical mindset short-circuited. He no longer viewed you as another capable Konoha agent; he only saw the damage he had caused. The perfect shinobi was dead, now a man terrified of his own ideals.
The sound of shattering glass was immediately followed by your breathless thud against the bathroom floorboards. Kakashi didn't hesitate. His reflexes hijacked his nervous system, and in a fraction of a second, he dropped your meds and the glass of water on the counter, bolted down the hallway, and shoved the bathroom door open, his heart slamming violently against his ribs.
You were collapsed on the cold ceramic tiles with the heavy jar splintered into a hundred jagged pieces around your knees. The thick cotton robe had slipped down your arms, leaving you completely exposed to the harsh overhead lighting and the unforgiving reflection of the full-length mirror.
You were staring at the inflamed tissue of your trauma, hyperventilating, your chest crammed as a full-blown panic attack took your figure. Your chin was tucked into your chest as if trying to shrink away from your own reflection.
The bathroom atmosphere soured with a grief he couldn't deflect.
Kakashi dropped to his knees, pushing away the glass shards so they wouldn't dig through his uniform pants or hurt you even more. He pulled your shaking frame directly into his chest, wrapping his arms around you. Desperate. Scared. Terrified.
"I failed," you choked out, your voice laced with venomous shame, anger at yourself. "I failed so bad, Kakashi. Look at the mess I made in a simple task!"
"Don't say this," his voice cracked.
"But it's true!" you sobbed, pushing frantically against his chest. The tension in the room became unbearable as you desperately tried to hide the scars you were convinced made you unlovable. "I failed the mission! I failed your trust! I’m a disappointment!"
Your breathing turned ragged, panic swallowing any signs of your logic. "I feel disgusted at my own sight, Kakashi. These parts of me are doomed. What if it makes me incapable of ever being good enough for my job? Or even worse, for your job, I should be helping you, and—" He didn't let you finish.
His hands moved in a rush to grip your jaw, holding your tear-slicked face firmly. His eyes locked onto your agitated ones, refusing to let you look away. "Breathe," his thumbs brushed away your tears. "We’re not against each other."
The leadership in his voice, devoid of pride, forced the air back into your lungs.
Healing something inside of you.
“Show me the parts you want to throw away," he continued, refusing to give your intrusive thoughts a single second to recover, to consume you again. "I want them. All of them. The parts you are now convinced I won’t want. I will kiss every single scar on your body and your soul. The ones that hurt, that burn like hellfire. Because I know they do, I know baby, I know." He pressed his forehead against yours, closing and pressing his eyes hard.
He barely took a breath before continuing. "I will remind you every day that this,” he gestured between both of you, “this love won’t hurt, never will.”
His honesty paralyzed you.
Kakashi released your jaw, distancing his face from yours, and reached for the hem of his black undershirt. With one swift motion, he pulled the fabric over his head and tossed it aside, leaving his torso bare in the clean bathroom light.
"You think you are the only one carrying mission scars?"
He reached out, his fingers gently taking your trembling hand. He pressed your palm flat against the center of his abdomen. The skin there wasn't smooth, but marred by a thick ridge of pale tissue—the remnant of a rogue shinobi's sword that had nearly cleaved him in half during his ANBU days.
You knew every scarred part of his skin, of course you did. You loved it, you loved all of him so much.
He slowly dragged your hand upward, pressing your fingertips over his collarbone to trace a violent, starburst burn decorating his left shoulder.
"Every single one of these marks is a failure," Kakashi murmured, his chest rising and falling against your hand. "A mistake. A moment where I was not fast enough, or strong enough. But also a mark, a reminder that I tried, that I did not yield, I did not falter, just like you didn't."
Finally, he guided your hand up to his face, pressing your palm against his cheek. He allowed your thumb to trace the vertical groove splitting through his left eye. The biggest substantial proof of his deepest regret.
“So tell me," Kakashi breathed, leaning into your touch. His eyes held your gaze, burning into your skin with a vicious vulnerability. "Did any of my thorns ever stop you from loving me? Did you ever look at my scars and see disappointment?"
A fresh tear slipped down your cheek, the panicked shivering in your chest finally beginning to slow. You shook your head, your fingers curling gently against his scarred cheek.
How could you not love him?
"Never," you whispered, your voice still wrecked but honest.
Kakashi let out a shaky exhale, resting his forehead against yours for the second time.
"Then don't insult me by thinking I would ever look at yours any differently. I am not going anywhere. You are exactly where you belong, where you need to be."
You let out another sob, both your hands finding their way to his shoulders. "I'm sorry," you whined. "I'm so sorry I made you worry. I'm sorry I put you through this for being reckless."
Kakashi's pulled you flush against his bare chest at once, removing any space left between your bodies, burying his face in your hair. "Don't apologize. Please, don't apologize. It's my fault. I signed the order. I sent you there."
"No," you insisted, shaking your head against his collarbone. "I begged you to. I wanted to help you. I would never blame you for this, Kakashi."
"So how could I ever blame you for surviving?" his arms tightened around you like a vice. "It's not your fault. It's no one's fault."
He held you on the bathroom floor until the shaking in your limbs finally melted away into exhaustion. When your tears finally stopped, Kakashi shifted his weight. He carefully scooped you back into his arms, always mindful of your injuries and the dangerous debris surrounding you both.
He carried you out of the bathroom and back into the soft haven of your bedroom, laying you gently onto the sheets. He didn't go back for the water or the meds. He just climbed into the bed beside you, pulling you against his chest, determined to spend the rest of the night by your side, holding you for as long as you needed, because you did the same for him when he still tasted of heartache and war.
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summary: five gothic romance vignettes for the men the uchiha clan could not bury properly
word count: 3887
content: gn!reader, multi-character x reader, gothic romance, dark romance elements, horror imagery, canon-typical violence, cliffhanger endings, individual content tags are attached to each mini-story
ITACHI UCHIHA — the doomed saint
content: injury and blood, wound care, death imagery, self-sacrifice, canon-typical itachi angst
You found him where the road ended and the cedar trees began.
It was always a place of endings. A shrine too small to appear on maps, a bell with a cracked mouth, stone foxes furred in moss and old rain. Travellers left paper prayers there when they feared they would not return home, and shinobi avoided it because shinobi hated admitting they believed in anything that could not kill.
Itachi sat beneath the eaves with blood darkening his sleeve as crows gathered in the branches above him.
He looked less like a missing-nin than a beautiful mistake grief had made and failed to correct. His cloak was torn at the shoulder, hair clinging damply to his cheek, and one hand rested against his ribs, too still to be casual, too careful to be painless, and when he looked up at you his eyes were dark.
No Sharingan.
Worse.
Human.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he stated.
“You always say that.”
“And you never listen.”
The bell’s rope swayed though there was no wind.
You crossed the shrine’s courtyard and knelt before him. He watched you with that terrible gentleness, the kind that made every practical motion feel ceremonial, every kindness feel like an offering laid before a god who had long since refused worship.
You pulled bandages from your pack.
Itachi’s fingers closed around your wrist before you could touch the wound.
“Don’t.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Yes.”
“Then let me help you.”
His hand remained around your wrist, loose enough that it couldn’t hurt, tight enough that it couldn’t be ignored.
Above you, the crows shifted together, a single dark thought passing through the trees.
“It will make no difference,” he responded.
You hated him for how calmly he could say things that broke something inside you.
“Then let it make no difference after I’ve done it.”
For a moment, Itachi only looked at you. Then, his fingers released.
You worked in silence, cutting away ruined fabric, cleaning blood from skin gone too pale beneath the lantern light. The wound was deeper than it looked. Older bruises shadowed the side of his abdomen below it, yellowed at the edges, violet near the bone. His breathing did not change when the antiseptic touched his flesh, but his gaze drifted up towards the treeline, towards distances you could not follow.
Inside the shrine, incense began to burn. You had not lit it.
The scent curled through the damp air, bitter and sweet.
“I brought food,” you offered, because talking about rice balls was easier than saying you were afraid that one day he wouldn’t be sitting beneath the eaves when you arrived.
Itachi’s mouth softened. “You shouldn’t.”
“You’ve mentioned.”
“You should forget this road.”
“I have a good memory.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
When you tied the bandage tighter than necessary, his eyes returned to you.
You saw it in his face then, that slight fracture in his composure, so delicate anyone else would miss it. You, however, had learnt the language of Itachi’s almosts. His almost smiling, almost reaching, almost staying.
A crow dropped from the cedar branches and landed beside his knee. In its beak was a strip of red thread. Itachi took it before you could ask.
“What is that?”
“A warning.”
“From whom?”
He looked down at the thread in his palm and when he spoke, it was soft, thoughtful. “Someone who still believes warnings can change fate.”
The shrine bell rang once. Far away, another bell answered. Then another. The sound moved across the forest like grief being passed from hand to hand.
Itachi closed his eyes. You felt the air change. He had made a decision.
“No,” you said.
His lashes lifted. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to.”
For the first time, something like pain crossed his face openly. It was gone almost before it arrived, swallowed by discipline, by purpose, by whatever cruel altar he had made of himself years ago.
“You’ve mistaken me for someone who can be saved,” he said.
“I have mistaken nothing.”
His hand rose to your face, and stopped before touching you. That restraint hurt more than contact would have.
“Do not love me,” Itachi said quietly. “I am already leaving.”
The words entered you cleanly, without mercy, and struck your heart.
You caught his hand before he could lower it and pressed his cold fingers against your cheek. For one breath, he let you.
The crows exploded from the trees.
The lanterns inside the shrine went out one by one.
When the darkness reached the doorway, Itachi turned his head towards the forest road.
Someone was walking towards you through the rain, wearing his face.
MADARA UCHIHA — the warlord
content: supernatural horror, curses, blood imagery, shrine/ritual imagery, power imbalance, fate/possession themes, implied forced betrothal
The shrine had been dead for a hundred years, though the villagers still left offerings at its steps.
They did not pray there, not properly. No one rang the bell, no one clapped their hands beneath the rotting beam or bowed long enough for any god to mistake them for faithful. They came at dusk with rice wine, salt, wilted camellias, and scraps of paper inked with names they would not dare speak aloud. Then they fled before moonrise, moving quickly through the trees as if the forest might remember their faces if they lingered too long.
You were sent because you did not believe in curses.
That was what you told yourself as you climbed the cracked stone path with your lantern held close to your cloak, damp from the mountain mist. The trees grew too thick here. Roots strangled the old steps and branches interlaced overhead until the sky narrowed to a torn, black cloth with moonlight caught in its ragged seams. Somewhere beyond the shrine grounds, a murder of crows called once and then even they fell silent.
Inside, dust settled over every inch like funeral ash. The offering table had split down the middle, one half sagging beneath a scatter of old salt and brittle flower stems. Paper talismans peeled from the walls in curled tongues, their ink faded to brown veins. A statue stood at the far end of the hall, too damaged to identify, its face eroded smooth by time.
At its feet sat a bowl of water, untouched by dust and still enough that the moon reflected through a roof that no longer existed.
You stepped closer.
The water turned red.
The lantern guttered in your hand.
“Late,” a voice said.
You turned too quickly and nearly dropped the light.
A man stood beneath the broken torii gate where no man had stood a breath before wearing armour dark as old blood. His hair fell wildly around a face cut from arrogance, violence, and fatigue. His eyes were not merely red, they were ancient wounds opened anew.
You knew him before your mind ever permitted the knowledge.
Every child knew Madara Uchiha by silhouette alone. The warlord, the ghost of battlefields, the name buried beneath treaties because peace could not survive speaking it too often.
“You’re... dead,” you whispered.
Madara looked almost amused. “As are many things worshipped by cowards.”
The mist crawled around his feet. Behind him, the trees bowed beneath a wind you could not feel. The shrine changed with his presence, becoming taller, darker, more recalled than ruined, as though waking from a long slumber. The beams groaned overhead, the walls remembered their lacquer, the air filled with incense though none had been lit.
You reached for the kunai at your hip.
His gaze followed the movement with imperial disinterest.
“If I wanted you dead, little descendant of trembling men, you would not have had time to fear me.”
“I’m not afraid.”
At that, he smiled.
It was not kind. It was worse. It was pleased.
“You lie badly.”
He came forward, each step unhurried, and the shrine accepted him. That was the only word for it. The floor did not creak under his weight; the shadows arranged themselves behind his shoulders; moonlight caught on his armour and came away sharpened.
You held your ground because pride was the last poor weapon left to you.
Madara stopped close enough that you could see the fine cracks in one plate of his armour, the old faded scar at the corner of his mouth, and the strange weariness buried beneath his terrible composure.
“Why am I here?” you asked, though your voice came out weaker than intended.
His eyes lowered to your face. “Because history has a longer memory than the living.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the only answer you are prepared to understand.”
You should have stepped away, you knew that. Every instinct in your body understood that this man was not safe. Especially not in the ways a shinobi measured danger. He was not a blade at your throat—he was the mountain deciding whether gravity still pleased him.
His hand rose, slowly. He touched two fingers beneath your chin, so lightly it was almost reverent. The shock of it passed through you with humiliating force.
Madara’s expression shifted. Something in him had faltered, brief as lightning behind cloud.
“You were promised to me by history itself,” he rumbled, voice low and quiet in his chest.
You sucked in a sharp breath. “No one promised me to anyone.”
His thumb brushed the corner of your mouth. Barely there, barely a touch at all.
The shrine’s bell rang, once, deep underground, and Madara’s gaze moved past you towards the statue at the end of the hall.
Its faceless head had turned.
Your lantern’s flame sputtered and died.
In the sudden darkness, Madara’s hand closed around yours. Not gently, but not cruelly. He took your hand as though the world had opened beneath you both and he had decided you would not fall alone.
“Then tell history no,” he remarked.
The floor beneath the shrine split open under your feet.
You knew because you had walked this road every morning for three months, past the broken bridge, past the persimmon tree split by lightning, past the field where nothing grew though summer had come early. There had been no house, no gate squeaking on its hinges, no warm square of light behind paper windows.
Now it stood at the end of the road as though it had been waiting for you all your life.
It was a small house, perfectly ordinary at first glance. Dark roof, wooden steps, wind chimes singing softly under the eaves. Morning glories climbed a fence you did not remember planting.
Your name was carved into the gate.
You should have run. Instead, you opened it.
Inside, it smelled of rice, rain, and something almost painfully familiar. The entryway held your sandals, though you had never removed them there. A cup sat on the table, filled with the tea you preferred. In the corner, a half-mended tear in your old cloak had been stitched with clumsy, careful thread.
The room knew you, that was the first horror.
The second was that you wanted to sit down.
“You came home early.”
The voice came from behind you.
You turned, and Obito Uchiha stood in the doorway with flour on his sleeve and one visible eye curved in a smile.
This was not the masked man from rumours, nor the war criminal whispered about in briefings. This was not the thing that had crawled out of history carrying too many dead with him. This Obito looked younger around the mouth. Tired, yes, and scarred, and wrong in ways your instincts recognised before your heart did, but he smiled at you as if nothing terrible had ever happened.
As if nothing terrible ever needed to happen again.
“Where am I?” you asked.
“You’re home,” he stated simply, his smile thinning at the edges.
“This— isn’t my home.”
“It could be.”
The wind chimes sang.
You took one step back. The floorboards did not creak, nothing in the room moved unless he allowed it to. Obito watched you with aching patience.
“I made it from memory,” he said. “The parts you liked. That kitchen from the place you stayed in the Land of Waves. The window from that inn near the border. The garden from the village you said smelled best after rain.”
Your breath caught painfully in your throat. “I…I never told you that.”
“No,” he murmured softly, “you didn’t.”
Outside, the sky remained a perfect, tender blue. Too blue.
You went to the window and looked out. The road was gone. The field was gone. Beyond the fence, there was only garden after garden, all blooming impossibly. No insects. No rot. No distant smoke from war camps. No sound except the bell-bright chatter of water over stones.
A world without injury. A world without interruption. A cage made of flowers.
Obito came to stand behind you, not touching, but close enough that his warmth reached your back.
“You were tired,” he explained. “Every time I saw you, you were tired. Fighting, losing people. Pretending it didn’t matter because everyone else was doing the same.”
You stared out at the garden until the colours blurred.
“So you built a prison?”
“I built a place where nothing can take you from me.”
“You don’t have me.”
The silence that followed was the first imperfect thing in the house. Then Obito chuckled once, very gently. It was not amusement; it was damage learning how to breathe.
“No,” he conceded. “Not yet.”
You turned on him then and his expression had changed. The sweetness was still there, but behind it, something vast and starving looked as though it was trying to crawl through the seams. One eye red, one eye lost forever to shadows and old bargains.
“I made a kinder world,” he sighed. “Why are you afraid of it?”
“Because you’re the one who made it!”
He reacted to that as though you had struck him. You saw the movement, saw the boy beneath the monster flinch.
For one dangerous second, the house trembled.
The cup shattered on the table. The garden outside flickered, black earth bleeding through beneath the flowers. The far wall opened onto a battlefield slick with rain and blood, and for a moment, you heard screaming.
Then Obito closed his eye and the house became whole again.
“I can make you happy here,” he said.
“No.”
His gaze lifted.
In the hallway behind him, a door appeared where there had not been one before. Your bedroom door from childhood.
Obito looked at it, then back at you.
“That room was the hardest,” he said. “I had to guess what you dreamt about.”
As the words left his lips, the door handle began to turn.
SASUKE UCHIHA — the last heir
content: supernatural horror, haunted house, massacre and death references, ominous presence, claustrophobic atmosphere
The Uchiha compound did not rot.
That was the worst part.
Rot would have been merciful. Rot would have softened the beams, swallowed the blood, turned grief into earth and fungus and something honest. Instead, the compound endured. Roof tiles remained aligned, doors slid open on well-oiled tracks, the pond still reflected the moon. Even the wind moved through the streets as if afraid to disturb what had happened there.
The dead had kept house.
You arrived at dusk with a key from the Hokage and a task no one else wanted. Inventory, preservation, and removal of unstable materials. Careful bureaucratic phrases for walking through a massacre with a clipboard.
Sasuke was already there. He stood in the central street beneath the black skeleton of an old lantern post, his cloak lifting in the evening wind. He did not turn when you approached.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“I was assigned.”
“So was he.”
You did not need to ask who. The compound listened for your answer.
That was how it felt from the moment you crossed the gate. Every wall seemed alert, every window dark but aware. The place had the awful intimacy of a room where an argument had just stopped.
“I can leave,” you said.
Sasuke’s shoulders moved almost imperceptibly. “No.”
It was not welcome. It was not a refusal. It was simply the only permission he knew how to give.
You worked through the first house in silence. Records, weapons, ceremonial clothing, framed photographs turned face-down in drawers. In one room, a child’s wooden shuriken lay beneath a low table.
Sasuke saw it before you did. His hand twitched, then went still.
You looked away.
Outside, crows gathered along the roofline and by midnight, you had reached the main house.
The air changed at the threshold. Sasuke stopped moving.
You felt it before you understood. Heat without fire, pressure without movement, the sensation of standing before something that knew your name and disliked the sound of your breathing.
“This house remembers everything I tried to forget,” Sasuke breathed. His voice was flat. His hand was shaking, but only slightly, only because the house saw him too.
You stepped inside first.
The entryway smelled of dust, cedar, and old smoke. A pair of sandals sat neatly by the wall, too small for him now. A crack ran through the mirror above the washing basin, splitting your reflection from throat to brow.
Sasuke entered behind you, and every lamp in the house went out.
Instinctively, you reached for a weapon. His hand caught yours in the dark.
“Don’t.”
The word was close to your ear, closer than he had been a second ago.
For a moment, the only living thing in that house was the warmth of his palm against your knuckles.
Then something moved upstairs. Not a footstep.
A drag.
Sasuke released you and his sword whispered free of its sheath. You could see nothing but the faint outline of him, black on black, breath held so tightly it seemed the air itself might bruise.
“What was that?” you asked.
“Just the house settling.”
You raised an eyebrow at him in the dark. “You don’t believe that.”
Sasuke hesitated. “No. I don’t.”
A door slid open above you. Then another. Then another.
The sound moved down the hall in sequence, slow and deliberate, as if someone were passing through rooms and leaving them open. As it went, the dragging continued.
Sasuke started towards the stairs, but you caught his sleeve before he could begin his ascent. He looked down at your hand. In any other place, he might have pulled away. Here, he let the contact remain.
“Don’t go alone,” you pleaded.
His mouth tightened, flattening into a line. “I’m always alone here.”
“No,” you said, shaking your head. “Not tonight.”
The words altered something.
You felt it and so did he.
The house…exhaled.
A lamp at the end of the corridor flared to life, blue-white and sickly. Its glow revealed a wall you were certain had not been there before. Fresh wood, no dust and a paper charm nailed to the centre with a rusted kunai.
On it, written in a hand identical to Sasuke’s, was your name.
Sasuke stared.
“That wasn’t here before,” you whispered.
His sharingan opened in the dark and from behind the new wall, something knocked three times.
You met Shisui Uchiha three days after his funeral.
The village had buried an empty story and called it closure. There had been no body for most to mourn, only rumours folded into official silence, only ANBU shadows lingering too long near the Naka River, only Itachi standing beside the water with his face blank enough to frighten you.
Three days later, Shisui was sitting on the riverbank with his sandals off and his trousers rolled up to the knee.
“Don’t scream,” he said cheerfully.
So you screamed. Naturally.
Shisui winced. “That’s fair.”
You should have run for the nearest patrol, you should have thrown a kunai, you should have done any of the things shinobi were trained to do when the dead appeared at dusk, smiling as if lateness were their only crime. Instead, you stood ankle-deep in river mud and stared at him.
He looked alive.
Not ghostly, not pale, not transparent beneath the dying light. Alive. Warm colour in his face, dark hair slipping loose around his forehead, that familiar, beautiful quicksilver smile softening when he saw your shock giving way to something more dangerous.
Hope.
“No,” you breathed.
Shisui’s smile faded then. “I know.”
“You’re— you’re dead.”
“I know.”
“Stop agreeing with me,” you huffed.
That almost brought the smile back. You hated how badly you wanted it.
The river moved quietly between you, evening insects humming in the reeds. Across the water, the trees leaned close, keeping counsel. Shisui looked down at his bare feet, toes just touching the current.
“I didn’t mean for you to see me.”
“Then why are you here?”
His eyes lifted to yours. The question morphed into something else in your mouth.
Why are you here?
Why are you alive?
Why did you leave?
Why does the world look less unbearable now that you’re sitting in it again?
Shisui heard all of them, he always had. That was one of his cruellest talents, understanding the things you had not yet forgiven yourself for feeling.
“I missed you,” he stated. Simple. Unadorned. Like it was obvious.
A blade between the ribs would have been kinder.
You laughed once, because anything else would have sounded too close to weeping.
“That’s not fair.”
“No.”
“You don’t get to haunt me and say things like that.”
His gaze dropped to the water again. “I’m not trying to haunt you.”
“Then what are you trying to do?”
The river darkened as the sun sank behind the trees.
For the first time, Shisui looked afraid.
Not of you, not even of death. He was afraid to speak the answer to that question aloud.
“I don’t know.”
You came back the next evening. And the next. And again after that.
Each time, he was there at the edge of the Naka River, alive in every way that mattered until dawn came too close. He told you things in fragments, but never enough, never the part that explained the impossible. He laughed when you were angry, went quiet when you were kind. Once, when you slipped on the wet bank, he caught you by the waist and his hands were warm through your clothes.
Too warm for a ghost. Too dear for a lie.
On the seventh night, you touched his face.
Shisui went still as stone.
His skin was damp from the river mist. His eyes searched yours with a grief so carefully hidden it could only belong to someone who had been beloved and doomed at once.
“You feel real,” you whispered.
“I am real.”
“Then why do I wake up every morning with river water on my hands?”
His expression broke open. Only for a moment, only enough to show you the terror beneath the charm, but it was enough.
“Do you?” he asked.
Your blood seemed to freeze in your veins. The reeds stopped moving and far across the river, a crow called from the dark.
You stepped back from him.
Shisui stood quickly, reaching for you.
“No— Wait!”
“What did you do?”
Shisui held his hands up as though in surrender. “Nothing you didn’t ask me to.”
“I never asked you for this.”
His sharingan bloomed red in the dusk, not as a threat but as a plea.
“You did,” he whispered desperately. “You just don’t remember.”
Behind him, the Naka River began to flow backwards.
a/n: as you can see, i got possessed by gothic literature and decided to make a series of naturo characters as gothic horror/romance tropes since the naruto cast is basically emotional asbestos wrapped in pretty trauma
i'll be making a tag list for this series, please let me know in the comments if you would like to be on it 🖤
told myself i wasn't going to write this weekend but apparently i can't help myself. anyway, i'm cooking something that i've had drafts of for a while now and it's finally coming to life👀
✭ brushing your thumb over their knuckles while you're both not saying a word, just existing quietly in the same space like it's the most sacred thing.
✭ them absentmindedly playing with the hem of your sleeve because they want to touch you but aren’t ready to say it yet.
✭ “can i kiss you?” whispered like they’re afraid the moment might shatter if they speak too loud.
✭ their voice cracking just a little when they say your name for the first time in a long time.
✭ them resting their forehead against yours and just… staying there. No words. No movement. Just breath. Just nearness.
✭ sharing headphones and they keep looking at you during the best part of the song. you don’t even know what the song means to them but suddenly it means everything to you.
✭ "stay the night?" said so soft it might’ve been a wish.
✭ dragging their fingers gently down your back like they’re trying to memorize the map of your spine.
✭ tracing your features with their fingertip like you're a sculpture in a museum and they were not supposed to touch you, but god, they can’t help it.
✭ “don’t leave yet.” not because you’re going somewhere. but because being with you is the safest they’ve felt all day.
✭ their voice in the dark. low. quiet. like the night is just for you two.
✭ "this reminded me of you" and it’s just a stupid rock or a weird leaf but you hold onto it like it's a diamond because it's you to them.
✭ laying in bed, face smushed into the pillow, sleep-drunk and murmuring, “you make me feel like i’m home.”
✭ them looking at you like you're not just a person, but their favorite story. one they’ve been rereading since forever and still keep finding new parts to fall in love with.
