He’s so anxious it makes him feel sick. He had to take up extra shifts today at the gym to make up for the week he was away competing, and now he’s been stuck in class after class for hours, anxious to check his phone, anxious to get to Anko. Gai hopes none of the clients have caught his restless finger tapping or his restrained sighs.
He sends texts in between classes, but they all go unread.
[text:] Hope you’re on your way safely.
[text:] Don’t drive if you’re angry. I’ll pay for the taxi
[text:] Home yet?
By the time he’s wrapped up his last class, Gai has no idea where she is and what he can do. He goes home, puts one of his frozen meals in the microwave, and sits. Sits with the uncertainty gnawing up his belly. Sits and stares at the single ticks, swiping to social media to refresh mindlessly before swiping back to the single ticks again.
[text:] I’m home now. Classes went well! Are you ok?
When his screen lights up with her name, Gai snatches his phone up, a tentative relief washing over him. But before he gets the chance to say anything, she’s hung up on him.
Well. It’s good that she got home safely.
But the tone of her voice hasn’t done anything to quash his worry; if anything, it’s grown. He … wants to be there with her — he won’t be able to sleep if he knows he doesn’t do something.
Gai drives to her place, rings the bell, and raps on the door with his knuckles. “Anko!”
It'd be sexy if her foot wasn't so cold. Or if feet weren't feet and thus not really sexy. His leg is warm so she's sneaking her foot up aaannddd --- right there. Cool foot (feet, soon) all snug on his thigh. Warm her up, please. Thanks.
@mita-rashi
He’s more than half asleep when she lets herself in, sprawled against the arm of his couch with a forgotten book curled in his lap and his feet up on the low coffee table. Yamato doesn’t even greet her, just cracks open his eyes and watches her putter about, taking off her shoes and her jacket and some of her weapons. He knows that if he lifts his head from the back of his couch that his neck will hurt, and the move might spur her into mouthing off at him, so he just stays perfectly still.
The air outside is brisk in a way only fall evenings can be, but his apartment is warm. Enough so that he’s just in his boxers, which means when she makes herself comfortable and tucks her little ice cube feet under his thigh, she is touching bare skin. It pushes a long sigh out of him, but he doesn’t flinch away. It’s just cold, and he’s very comfortable.
But. Her feet are cold. He imagines that’s not very nice for her. There’s a blanket thrown over the back of the couch, so he pulls that down over her legs haphazardly and lets it lay with a couple of absent pats to her shin, before his hand slides instead to rest against the top of her left foot. His hand is just as warm as his thigh, and he rubs his thumb around her ankle bone a few times before digging it into the arch of her foot almost absentmindedly. Yamato’s other hand pulls the book from his lap-- he frowns when he discovers he’d lost his place, but sets it to the side with silent resolve that he’ll find it again if he feels like it. “Anko,” he starts hoarsely, and considers curling on his side so that he’s just laying on top of her legs. “I am going to get you the most ridiculous fuzzy socks in the world.”
"Why do you look like that?" She doesn't like it. Genma, respect yourself.
He feels kind of like a half-drowned rat.
It’s not a feeling he would normally enjoy on the best of days, but considering the fact that the fall-breeze is cold and promising a frost during the coming night, being drenched from head to toe is even less pleasant than normal. Genma gives her a sardonic look and opens his mouth to respond, but instead of words what ends up coming out of his mouth is a long series of wet coughs. At least he covers his mouth with his elbow--
The cloak over his shoulders is starting to soak through, and he spits mucus and water onto the ground between them with a sniff. “Hatake tried to drown me when we were sparring--” came pretty close to succeeding, too. Little bastard. “He’s getting me some dry clothes or... something.”
Genma hadn’t really heard what he muttered before darting off like his tail was on fire.
He pulls the cloak tighter around his shoulders and sighs heavily. “Will you walk back to the village with me? It’s freezing out here and I’m bored of waiting.”
@mita-rashi /// Stick your tongue out Catch the pieces as they drift down the air I am too slow to catch them all Not too far gone to care
It takes him five months to get to and back from the far end of the Land of Islands on his mission as a guard for a small caravan of goods and their merchants. The journey would usually take him about four, but he’s waylaid in the Land of Water of all places, just after he crossed over the last ocean straight between the two countries.
He meets this monk, you see.
Sai happens upon the old man on accident, which is how the vast majority of his socializing seems to start-- the Land of Islands is a series of, get this, Islands, just a little too large to be considered an archipelago but still a series of many dots of land separated by slips of ocean and connected by long stretches of bridges. It’s very flat, very quaint, and very fucking boring. He thinks maybe it’s been days since he’s seen a tree, and he finds he actually misses those more than he misses the company of man, because trees make travel faster, easier, and more subtle, and for now he’s just kind of stuck trotting along alone on the caked-brown dirt of the roads and over their deep strips of ocean via their ugly, rickety bridges.
It’s over one of those ugly, rickety bridges that he hears The Commotion. There’s no cursing, just thrashing in the water below-- and when he peers over the edge of the bridge, he spots a man waist-deep in the shallows, shirtless, hopelessly tangled in some kind of net and thrashing with his head stuck under water. So of course, Sai does whatever any self-respecting samaritan would do, and he considers continuing on his way. But no, the man looks pretty stuck, and he definitely hasn’t taken a breath in the ten seconds he’s been watching, so he hops down there and stands on the surface of the water, reaches down with a kunai and cuts the net and then hauls the man out of the water by his bicep and kind of just holds him in midair, his toes just barely hanging in the water.
It’s shockingly easy. The skinny, shirtless little man weighs almost nothing. Sai’s pretty sure if he tossed him he would easily make it the hundred yards to shore. The man coughs and splutters and hacks out water for a moment, thrashing in Sai’s grip before he realizes he is no longer drowning but he is certainly still trapped, and he gives Sai and his crop top and his tanto and his hitai-ate a suspicious look for a moment, still breathing raggedly.
“Hello,” Sai says pleasantly.
“You cut the net,” says the funny old man, his voice nasally and a little shrill.
“Would you rather I let you drown?” The question is butter-mild, and he carefully holds the old man aloft by his arm and carries him to the bank of the creek, before depositing him on solid ground. The old man falls on his ass, and struggles out of the remains of the net wrapped around his shoulders and his neck. It is only now that Sai realizes he isn’t just shirtless, he’s quite naked. He watches him struggle with the rope for a few moments more, limbs flopping quite pathetically, before leaning down and stilling him with a touch and cutting the rest of the net from him. He stares down at the man, and the man looks up at him curiously.
“Thank you, shinobi-san,” he seems almost reluctant to say it.
Sai gives him the same plastic smile he reserves for all social situations where he really doesn’t know what to do, and he replies, “you’re welcome, naked stranger,” and does not give the man is name.
He does, however, give the man his traveling cloak and walk beside him on the shoreline where the man had just nearly drowned. The man offers no name of his own and no explanation for his little escapade in the water, and Sai doesn’t ask, because he hardly thinks it’s his business what a man gets up to in his free time. Instead the man asks him about any news he’s heard from the world at large, and Sai replies as best he can, having been on the road a while. The old man leads him all the way to a squat house hidden deep in a little inlet, takes him inside, and makes him a cup of dandelion root and kelp tea. He gets dressed as their drinks steep, muttering to himself the whole while.
He sits across from Sai at the tiny wooden table and up at him, seeming troubled. “You’re a strange one,” is all he can seem to come up with when he finally comments.
“Am I?” Sai responds absently, lifting the tea to his face and sniffing it, then taking a careful sip. It’s hot and more than a little bitter, but it was made for him and so he will drink it. “I cannot call you naked-stranger any longer, can I?”
The man shakes his head with a weary sigh and mutters something else under his breath, and then replies, “You may call me monk, if I must call you shinobi. It can be our little charade.”
Sai smiles beatifically at Monk and says only: “Okay.”
Somehow the monk gets him to agree to accompanying him to a temple in the low and ragged cliffs in the north of the Land of Water-- technically still on the way back home, but not exactly the swiftest path. He doesn’t think it takes a lot of convincing on the monk’s end. Sai is bored as hell, and at least the old man provides a little life to the dull days of travel.
The man jabs him in the side once with his fingers, not hard enough to hurt but Sai still flinches from it anyway, and the monk laughs at him when he sees Sai had instinctively pulled a kunai out from the sudden movement, but he doesn’t comment on it. The ink that’s sunken into his skin shifts restlessly, peeking out of the collar of his shirt and that passes without comment as well.
The Land of Islands turns into a series of larger chunks of stone and sand settled into the sea, higher crests, with stubborn plant life in the salty, hot breeze and some jagged columns of rock. The temple that the monk leads him to is-- well, he thinks it might qualify as a shrine, if they were in Konoha. It’s quite small, with low doorways and made completely of stone. Also, covered in cobwebs. It looks like no one has been here for years.
“Monk-san,” he begins evenly. “Is this your temple?”
The old man grunts, wrestling the doors at the other end of the little temple open to let in a cross-breeze. “As much as anything can be mine,” he responds, and at Sai’s questioning look he elaborates, “I don’t own anything, shinobi-san. Do you?”
There’s a long pause, because Sai is not sure how to answer that question. Does he? He owns his clothing and his weapons, he supposes. His books. Though technically everything he owns is dedicated to serving the village, so perhaps he owns nothing at all? Watching the monk watch him offers him no answers on this front. Is it better to own things or to not own them? Perhaps he is simply a thing to be owned? Is that right? He can’t remember, his head hurts, so he cocks his head to the side and asks, “was the home you took the clothes from not yours?”
The man simply says, “not really,” and Sai thinks: well, fair enough.
So he takes his sandals off and ducks inside, touching his fingers to the smooth stone walls and the writing inscribed in them, fascinated by the vague artwork of some forgotten man, carved into the temple and faded from age. He thinks it’s a story of some sort. When he looks back to the monk, the monk is watching him, brows furrowed.
“Do you know where you come from, shinobi-san?”
Sai tilts his head, considers, and he says, “Not really.” He was shaped in and he serves Konoha, but beyond that he hasn’t a clue-- this has never bothered him before and it doesn’t start now, he simply watches the old man back, blankly.
A grunt, and then, “Well alright then. Would you like to hear a story?”
Contemplating this question with as much gravity as the last one, Sai finally decides: sure, why not? He sits when the old man gestures for him to do so, and listens as a tale is told. For a monk, he is a very entertaining storyteller, if not one that makes a lot of sense-- it begins with a spirit, wise but not too wise, kind but not too kind, building a shelter from the storm. No, he thinks he has it confused, maybe. Perhaps it was the storm that came first, an angry god striking out, plucking souls from the ground and the sea with the help of his pack of hunting hounds. And then the not-too-wise and not-too-kind spirit comes in, because he doesn’t want any more souls to be stolen, and he builds the people a shelter. Just the one? Sai had asked, and the monk had shushed him. He wishes he could have understood the tale better, because it seems like one Kakashi may have liked. You know, because of the dogs.
The monk pauses, and Sai asks him, “is that it?”
An exasperated look. “This is the shelter, this temple.”
“Oh,” he says. And then: “Well, it’s nice of you to look after it, monk-san. Do you need any help cleaning it up? It seems like it’s just been sheltering spiders for a while.”
The monk gives him a strange look but acquiesces, getting to his feet and groaning as his bones creak. Sai hauls water from the sea and scrubs the dirt out of the corners with the strange little monk, until the musty smell is replaced with salt and the cool breeze. He stays the night in the shelter and listens to the thunder of a sea-storm rumble in the distance, and the roar of waves crashing against the shore somewhere below, and he thinks he understands, a little, where the myth came from.
The monk is not in the temple when he wakes in the morning, and Sai spends a few minutes sitting and peering at the carved, ancient art on the walls, before reaching into his pouch and pulling out a couple of rounded pieces of sea glass, a feather from a gull, and a couple of crushed prunus flowers and leaving them in a neat pile in the center of the floor.
Send me ‘Redacted:‘ with Trivia or Headcanon and get secret info about my muse!
Ryozen is all drama when it comes to what he’s wearing. Mayumi is a tad more practical in that the drama generally has a goal in mind--- but still high drama. Gets it from her older brother. Down the practicality spectrum is no-frills-Rasa.
Reizei is still in the realm of dressing up in some high fashion (whatever high fashion is in Sunagakure. Maybe it’s checking out colors that would look well even against the blood stains that will eventually be sprayed on it. Who knows). He does wear a distinctive sort of cologne.
It’s soft for the desert. White tea. A few citrus notes. Unexpected from a man of the Kazekage line. But to those who know him, getting a whiff of that means you’re entirely too close to one of Suna’s genjutsu masters.
The eyes--- people always tend to protect that. Catch them in one and at some point they’ll realize it; they’ll mount their already practiced defences. People tend to forget they have other senses a genjutsu master can use.
Careful who you step close to. You might find yourself feeling like you’re drowning in the middle of the desert.
It's been 84 years and I still love all your shit so stop trash talking your writing in the tags or I'm gonna book an international flight just to whoop your ass in the sky.
ding dong how’s my portrayal?accepting / @mita-rashi
SHUT UP i love u sam. i miss writing with uuuuuuu ( and who i was, someone who didn’t write kakashi clowning all the damn time lmao ). when u send me our old shit im just, like. ;;;;;;; it blows my mind
“If you say so,” Tenno hummed, folding his hands behind his back.
Personally, he thought that Sasori’s height (or lack thereof), was precisely what made him fun. But those thoughts were better left for the bedroom, and not for public conversation.
“The average height of a modern adult male is 171cm - about five feet, six inches exactly. Sasori is, generously, five feet, 152cm, five four in heels. True, he has a presence - an aura, if you will - that makes him larger than life -” Tenno was referring to his controlling personality and flair for the dramatic.
“-but that does not negate facts. Sasori is indeed ‘short’.”
💓 k this is the last meme i send in for awhile b/c i am pretty sure at this point the level of attention we have given hidan borders on harassment.
Send “💓” to listen to my muse’s heartbeat!
Her shitty K-pop hair flutters on his bare chest, as dark as the night sky above. She has a head filled with stars and theories that he’d never get, like,
The absence of light is in itself evidence of a black hole, which will typically present itself with a contradictory ring of light around it, which comes from matter heating up as gravity pulls it to its doom; and,
if you fall into the visual horizon of a black hole you’re fucked before you know it, ‘cause invisibility is proof of its existence, something that we can’t run and hide from; and,
if you’re being pulled into a black hole your body will elongate like spaghetti, organs stretching into cells disintegrating into molecules and atoms, then energy; but,
All Hidan really gets is,
that these things have halos, that not even light can escape the fury of God; and,
that angels are horrific things, the sight of which causes death; and,
that we are all made of the stardust, and to stardust we will return.
Anko laughs when Hidan says that. He shoves her, and she shoves him back, slapping a hand over his mouth.
“Shut your trap,” Anko says, simply. Not because he’s stupid, but because she’s tired of his rambling, cracking a yawn before laying back down on his chest.
He shifts, skin sweaty and slick against the hood of his car. With a shrug, Hidan goes back to star gazing, neck prickling with static.
