Headcanons for (take your pick - they're odd characters) Zabuza or Kisame with a healer nin being their partner? Sfw or NSFW, or both! THANK YOOOU. 🙌🙌 Bless you and all your blogs! 😂
Ooh, someone has a thing for the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist! Or missing-nin with pointy teeth! Either way, good taste. I got a tiny bit carried away but I hope you guys enjoy them. <3
Characters: Zabuza Momochi, Kisame Hoshigaki
Contents: gn!reader, mentions of blood/suturing etc,
Zabuza took quite a few followers with him when he defected from Kirigakure after the failed coup, so it's possible he took you along with him then, or he picked you up somewhere along the way. Injuries can mean death for a missing-nin, so access to a healer would have been one of Zabuza's top priorities if he wanted to stick around for long enough to make another attempt at taking out the old Mizukage.
This is definitely not going to be a whirlwind romance. Bitter and disillusioned, Zabuza would have seen you as little more than a useful tool in the beginning, referring to you as a "walking, talking First Aid kit" in his particular blunt, sarcastic manner.
He can call you a tool all he wants, but there's an undeniable intimacy to the way your hands hover over his skin, almost close enough to feel the heat radiating from your body, and the way your chakra seeps into his flesh to knit bone, and muscle, and skin.
He'll never admit it out loud, but it feels like your chakra never quite leaves him. Like you're leaving little pieces of yourself inside him, growing under his skin and worming your way into his psyche as you make yourself more and more indispensable.
You never quite know the reasoning behind why he calls you "Little Mushroom".
Months turn into years, and his followers die or trickle away, lured by better money and better weather. Only you, Haku, and the Demon Brothers—Gozu and Meizu—are the constants. The core of his group. Even then, Gozu and Meizu aren't truly in his inner circle. Only you and Haku have that dubious honour.
Despite himself, Zabuza can tell there's a growing...closeness. Yours are the only hands that touch his skin without meaning to cause him harm. Your touch is the only human warmth he gets, and he finds himself craving it. To the point of letting himself take a few extra wounds in order to have your hands linger on his flesh longer that night.
It doesn't escape you. You've followed him for long enough to know how good he is, how fast. He can avoid such simple attacks, but he seems to collect a few more nicks and slashes every time he fights. When confronted, he spits some bullshit about getting old and slow, but you're not fooled for a minute.
In the aftermath of one battle, your cautious, barely-there touch is not enough as it ghosts across his skin. Not anymore. Zabuza's been subsisting on scraps of your touch, on the cool tingle of your healing jutsu, but it's just not enough to satisfy him.
He takes your wrist in a strong, unbreakable grip, and plants your hand against his chest. Palm flat, fingers splayed out. His dark brown eyes bore into yours, as though defying you to question him. When you try to pull your wrist back, he refuses to release it. Cautious, you change tack, and reach for him with your other hand, clasping his bare, muscular shoulder. His fingers loosen around your wrist. You're on the right track.
Tentative, you let yourself trace the silvered scars that criss-cross his flesh. Some so subtle they're only visible when they catch the light, like a kind of iridescence. You know this body of his so well. You've pieced him together so many times.
"Keep going." His voice is low. His gaze is intense.
He allows you to explore him, mapping each and every dip of muscle, every scar—from the raised weals to the flat streaks. He's a testament to how much the human body can endure and still survive.
Finally, your hands find their way to his face, to the edge of the bandages he wears over his mouth and nose. The mask loosens, falls away at your touch, until you're looking at his bare throat, his narrow jaw and the cords in his neck, at the thin, cruel lips that pulls back from his jagged grin.
The kiss takes you by surprise, as does each one after that. The hands that usually wield Kubikiribōchō bearing you down onto the bed, peeling you out of your clothes, seeking out more than just your hands. Something he can get his teeth into.
Literally. Zabuza bites, his teeth leaving imprints in soft flesh. Complaints are met with a scoff.
"You can heal yourself, can't you? Consider it practice."
Healers, med-nin, whatever you want to call them, are not a dime a dozen in the Naruto world. It takes incredible chakra control to wield medical jutsu beyond a basic level. Most shinobi stick to bandages and sutures in the field.
For an organisation like the Akatsuki, however, full of S-ranked missing-nin and with a mission to capture all the Jinchuuriki, it doesn't make sense for them not to have a med-nin of their own.
That's where you come in.
Sure, Kakuzu and Hidan aren't big fans. Kakuzu thinks you're a waste of resources and Hidan thinks it's a fucking joke they need a glorified nurse to patch them up.
"Easy for you two to say," Kisame reminds them. "You're both freaks of nature."
Which is an interesting thing to hear coming from the blue-skinned dude with fins, but the Akatsuki is full of all kinds of...characters. Pein and Konan are rarely seen. Sasori and Deidara are too busy arguing over their artistic ideals. Zetsu's a psycho plant, and Itachi avoids you entirely, despite what you suspect about his declining eyesight. Kisame's the only one who actually talks to you, on the odd occasion he returns to Amegakure.
It's not just you. Kisame's glad to have someone to speak to who will actually respond with more than just fish insults (Hidan, Deidara) or a "hn" (Itachi), if at all (Sasori, Kakuzu, Zetsu). At first you keep it small, discussing any wounds you're fixing up for him. Maybe you point out a couple of scars in his blue-grey skin that haven't healed very well.
"See how the scar puckers? Your sutures were way too tight."
"Yeah, well I was bleeding out at the time. Wasn't none too worried about making it look pretty."
"You did your best. Stitching yourself is hard enough, especially on your ribs like that..."
Being a missing-nin is kind of like being in prison. You don't immediately start yapping about why you left your Hidden Village. Scar talk might lead to talk of old exploits though. What notable shinobi he's fought, his best fights with Samehada. If he can actually breathe underwater.
He starts calling you "Doc", even though you've given him leave to use your name. It feels less like a title, more like a term of endearment.
At one point, you tentatively ask him if he eats fish, and his laugh echoes off the sterile white walls of the infirmary where you spend all day, every day. It's the only opening he needs to invite you to eat with him, to pry you out of your antibacterial little hermit crab shell.
Turns out, he does eat fish. Kind of hard to avoid, in Kirigakure. Better, he's a fairly decent cook, which is more than can be said for most of the Akatsuki, and you're tired of your own cooking, eating the same five meals you know how to make, over and over.
No one objects to you leaving your quarters in the evening. You're not sure if anyone even notices. The others only seem to remember you exist when someone's injured. Or if you tried to leave. You're fairly sure they'd notice then.
Kisame's been hoarding some good sake he's picked up on his travels, waiting for someone to drink it with, since his Akatsuki partner's a teetotaller and he doesn't want to waste it on a whelp like Deidara. Who better to share a few cups with than you, after dinner in his quarters? The atmosphere is relaxed, but there throbs an undercurrent of relief, of craving, for this kind of company that neither of you have quite acknowledged.
The food disappears, the sake flows, and the evening turns warm and slow and golden.
His odd, sharklike appearance doesn't unnerve you anymore. The piercing eyes and the sharp teeth are just him. You've seen him grinning to himself as he sears scallops. And those eyes might not be as unsettling at first glance, but they see you, when everyone else here seems to look straight through you.
It's not Kisame that makes the first move. He's generally the sort to hang back when it comes to things like this, to let people come to him. He knows how he looks, how intimidating he is, and he'll have you eager or he won't have you at all.
Perhaps you ask, tentatively, if you can take a closer look at the gills running underneath his eyes. Professional curiosity you might say, but there's nothing professional at the way you lean close, tracing underneath each one with a fingertip. His cheek bunches as he grins.
"What? Like what you see, doc?"