CW: the second part is mainly whump. it has coughing and descriptions of chronic illness (and some chronic pain). 1.8k words - no snz
summary(ish): v/iktor is still experiencing the affects of living with black mold while attempting to settle into his new apartment. he's frustrated with his nextdoor neighbor in 3C (who he eventually learns is j/ayce) for being so loud... but maybe j/ayce isn't actually so terrible
A few weeks have passed since Viktor moved in, and he’s come to learn a few things about his new apartment complex. Firstly, the two elevators that move from the first to sixth floor are obnoxiously small. They barely allow his wheelchair to fit inside with another person, which just gives him more of an incentive to use his crutch (despite his back and legs aching in protest). Secondly, his neighbor seems to come home at odd hours of the night, and it’s always an ungraceful entry into 3C. Of course, Viktor can’t be too frustrated since his sleep schedule is so messed up he’s awake at 2AM most nights anyways, but at least he has the decency to move quietly through the thin-walled apartment.
There have been a few times when Viktor’s been close to marching over to apartment 3C, knocking on the door, and chewing out whoever the fuck is living next to him. Except confronting strangers ranks just below living with black mold on his list of things he’s willing to tolerate, so he settles for silently seething about his neighbor.
Besides, between the remaining unpacked boxes, his overloaded schedule, and the persistent rattling in his lungs, he barely has enough energy to keep himself and his cats fed. Starting a quarrel with his neighbor, though potentially entertaining, isn’t something he has the energy for. To top it all off, he’s still feeling the effects of living with black mold for months. Realistically, he shouldn’t be surprised, especially given the state of his immune system (which is less than ideal), but for some vain reason, he’d been hoping the mold just… wouldn’t affect him. Afterall, he has enough on his plate. Surely the universe could just let one thing slide, right?
Wrong.
The cough is the worst of it: wet, hacking, stubborn. It clings to his ribs and lungs, accompanied with a steady ache and an inability to draw a full breath. Most mornings start with him doubled over the sink, coughing until his vision blurs and his nose begins to run.
His inhaler helps, but it’s not nearly as sufficient as a functioning pair of lungs. Tea helps, if only to soothe his sore throat in the aftermath of these fits. The cats help, though they give him judgemental looks every time he has to catch his breath after crossing the room or lifting a box.
He tells himself it’ll pass soon. He just needs to ride it out. This stubborn denial is as unrealistic as his doctors telling him “you just need a healthy diet and exercise” as if he wasn’t disabled and partially immobilized – hence his refusal to see a doctor now. But he’s been through worse and he’ll surely go through worse in the future, so why bother wasting a few hundred dollars on a 30 minute appointment where he’ll hear the same mantra he does every time.
So he waits it out. Today, that means sipping a new ginger-orange tea he purchased and sitting beside Rio on his couch with a book propped up in his hand. It’s not a bad way to pass the time, and he’s been meaning to read Stanley M. Walas’s “Phase Equilibria in Chemical Engineering” for months.
It had taken him ages to get his hands on a copy. The book is out of print, so it’s incredibly hard to find, and some asshole had the library’s only copy overdue for weeks. But in Viktor’s opinion, it was well worth the wait – really, who wouldn’t enjoy math of applied thermodynamic vapor-liquid equilibria calculations? It’s almost enough to distract him from the crackling in his chest and the slight wheeze when he inhales deeply. Almost.
By the time evening rolls around, Viktor is almost entirely through the book, having scrawled notes and annotations into his journal as he reads. He’s still settled on the couch, though Rio has moved on to bigger and better things (her automatic feeder, which had gone off a few minutes ago and caused her to bolt off of Viktor’s lap). The lamp beside him hums faintly, casting a golden light over the pages of the book. He glances at his watch: 9:15.
He’d usually be up for a few more hours and then some, but tonight his body aches despite his attempt at resting all day. He sets the book down in his lap, stretching out his hand gingerly as he feels a cramp begin to tighten through his wrist and down to the tips of his fingers. The cramping in his hand certainly isn’t a new development. He’s used to any part of his body seizing or spasming or hurting in some sense whenever he stays still for too long… or moves for too long… or stands for too long. Fuck. His fingers had been straining to prop the book open for the past hour or so, but he kept telling himself “just one more page”.
He massages his palm gently as he attempts to bend and extend the sore joints, exhaling through his nose in frustration, which he immediately realizes is a mistake. A sharp tickle flares in his throat and sinuses, blooming into another coughing fit within seconds. The crackle in his chest which he’d been so adamantly ignoring demands his attention, wrenching his posture forward as he hacks up a lung. With his other hand, he grabs the nearest thing he can find – an old, dusty throw pillow that he’s been meaning to wash since moving in – and burying his face in it in an attempt to muffle the sound.
After a few minutes of painful coughing, Viktor manages to catch his breath enough as to where the room isn’t spinning. He tosses the pillow to the side, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and ignoring the buzzing sensation that lingers in the back of his nose.
Mochi pads into the room, drawn by the noise. She makes a quiet, “mrrrp?” as she hops onto the couch beside Viktor, curling onto his lap and resting her head against him with a sleepy blink.
“Sorry Myshka,” Viktor murmurs, though his voice comes out as more of a rasp than anything else, “did I wake you?”
He gently runs a hand over her spine, scratching her favorite spots and earning a quiet, sleepy purr from the black cat. He continues the affectionate petting, taking a moment to appreciate the company of his feline friend.
After a few minutes and a particularly painful swallow, Viktor shifts so he can reach a cold cup of tea sitting on his coffee table. It’s gone bitter after hours of sitting out, but it helps to dissuade the sore throat he’s developing.
The peaceful stillness is only broken as Viktor hears a quiet – but notable – thump right outside his front door. He waits, his ears attuned for any other sounds of company, but no one knocks. All he hears is apartment 3C’s door open and close, and then the silence resumes.
His curiosity gets the best of him, and with an apologetic murmur, Viktor lifts Mochi off his lap. She mews in protest, stretching and moving to sit right beside him – though she gives him a little look of frustration first. He can’t help but grin at her dramatics, giving her head a little scratch before grabbing his crutch and pushing himself upright. A nerve in his hip sparks with pain, forcing him to momentarily pause and wait for it to lessen enough so he can cross the room. Irritating, he thinks.
Maybe the noise was just something in the hall being dropped, or the heavy footed clumsiness of his neighbor returning home, or a figment of Viktor’s imagination. But for some inexplicable reason, Viktor feels as if it’s something else, something worth dragging himself off the couch for. He makes his way over to the front door, opening it hesitantly and nearly tripping over a basket placed right at its threshold.
It’s small, neatly woven, and filled to the brim with a collection of teas of herbal varieties: chamomile, peppermint, hibiscus, and rooibos. As Viktor bends down to inspect the basket, he notices a single note tucked among the boxes of tea.
He glances down the hallway, half expecting someone to come back and take the basket away, having mistakenly left it by his apartment rather than someone else's. But no one comes. The hallway remains silent; all Viktor can hear is the hum of the light and the distant clatter of sewage pipes. He stoops down, grimacing as his back protests, and picks up the basket.
Once he’s seated comfortably on the couch, he unfolds the little note. It’s simple, handwritten, and it reads: “Welcome to the building. Hope you’re settling in alright” – 3C (Jayce)”
Viktor stares at the handwriting for a few minutes, examining the neat, but somewhat rushed lettering on the note. For the past three weeks, he’s been imagining his nextdoor neighbor as some inconsiderate, uncoordinated prude with a deep seeded hatred of anyone who enjoys peace and quiet. Now, however, he considers that his neighbor might just be uncoordinated, but not particularly malicious with his inability to remain quiet.
Damnit. It had been so much easier to be frustrated with his neighbor – Jayce, he now knows – when he could just write him off as an asshole. But now Viktor has to accept that Jayce is a real person. A real person with a name. A real person who happened to be considerate enough to leave a basket of tea outside his doorstep.
And then it dawns on Viktor why he had received an overflowing basket of teas. Jayce had probably heard his coughing for the past few weeks at all hours of the day and night. Shit. Viktor might be just as obnoxious as a neighbor as Jayce is.
Maybe this was a polite way for him to say “hey, kindly shut the fuck up! Your coughing is disgusting, and it’s keeping me up”. In Zaun, someone would have just said that straight to Viktor’s face (in fact, a previous neighbor of his had), but Piltie’s are far too obsessed with etiquette to be forward.
Viktor re-reads the note, and then reads it again before tossing it aside. Whether Jayce is intending to be kind or passive aggressive, he’s not entirely sure. Either way, he’s grateful to have enough tea to last him a while. He gets up, placing the basket on the kitchen counter with the care of someone setting down something delicate.
He does his best to maintain his previous irritation with his neighbor – Jayce, he reminds himself – he can’t ignore the slight feeling of comfort at having received a gift. The teas smell faintly of lemon balm and dried flowers, which contrasts nicely with the stale dust of un-boxed clutter.
He doesn’t write a thank you note or bother knocking on Jayce’s door. Not yet, at least, but he does begin boiling water for a cup of tea.
sorry there's no sneeze in this, but i promise there's more j/ayvik sneeze content coming!! slowly but surely... either way, i wanted to post this to build context for further plots/chapters i have planned :3
as always, thank you to anyone who read it :) any tags and comments are so so appreciated <3
Fandom: Naruto (Anime & Manga)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Idiots in Love, Accidental Marriage, Non-Linear Narrative, Reader-Insert, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending
Summary:
“It’s fine. Really. I’ll just ask Shino to put me up for the night.”
“Kiba, I’m not sending you to Shino’s while I stay at your house!”
“There’s no way I’m sleeping with you like this. Not when you— You didn’t even know—” He ran a hand through his hair, turning quickly toward the door.
How did we get here? Let’s rewind.
An unfamiliar mission results in an unexpected situation for you and Kiba. Thankfully, the two of you figure things out.
A special thanks to WIP Wednesday for pushing me to finish this fic!!
Green eyes leveled at him, glinting like a freshly sharpened and polished blade. Pastel lashes lowered to shade jade eyes, casting a shadow that colored them darker, like rain soaked leaves after a summer storm.
“Brute strength might have made you,” he muttered, taking slow, lazy steps around the circumference of the invisible boundary of Sakura’s turf.
He came to a stop, five paces behind her left shoulder. Her right ankle twitched, the heel shifted back by a tenth of a tenth of an inch.
“If left unrestrained,” he continued, marking the ripple of tension that rolled from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, “I can unmake you with nothing of the sort.”
“Save your riddles, Kakashi-sensei,” she snapped. “You agreed to train me.”
“So I did,” he sighed. Her next breath whooshed out audibly from between her teeth. “What if I told you it was to humor you in your moment of elevated emotion?”
Using the right foot, she pivoted, appearing before him in the blink of an eye, her fist curled tight in the front of his shirt. The flexible fabric popped under the strain of her grip.
“I’d say that you owe me,” she murmured. Despite the cool quality to her tone, her fingers yet trembled, ever-so slightly. “For all the time wasted, and the days you ignored me before. It’s the least you can do.”
“I acknowledge my failures,” he replied. He swallowed thick, eyed the deepening furrow between his former student’s fair brows, the dancing of freckles along the wrinkled bridge of her nose.
“I’ve moved past wanting your acknowledgement.” Sakura released him with a shove that smarted, no doubt leaving a bruise. “I want you to create in me what you made of Naruto and Sasuke.”
He dodged her next blow, his blood pressure spiking in response to the reverberation of her fist smashing into the spot where his face could have been. The world whipped around in a whirlwind of color as she launched herself at him again and again, taking direct blows to her abdomen, her legs and face without as much as a flinch.
With a frustrated growl, Sakura heaved herself up from the ground, swaying into an offensive stance. He stood rooted in the spot he was in before, unruffled and unmarred save for the throbbing bruise at his sternum.
“If you have to break me apart to make me strong,” she panted, sweeping dirt from her cheek with the back of a torn glove. “So be it.”
“That’s not a healthy mentality,” he mumbled, scratching at his chest. He glanced down lazily at his feet, toeing a bit of rock with his sandal. “I suspect this is perhaps a twisted sort of coping mechanism, and I must say I do not recommend it.”
Kakashi attempted to keep his tone light, aiming for brevity and familiarity. Inside him something curled in his gut, sickening him with the image of a pale, youthful face splattered with strangers’ blood and tiny gobbets of flesh.
“You’re the last person to talk to me about coping mechanisms,” Sakura spit, commingled saliva and blood falling, splat, to the side. “You’ve killed or found dead most of your loved ones and spend your free time reading porn or talking to headstones. I couldn’t care less to know what you consider ‘healthy’.”
“Now, that isn’t very nice.” His jaw clenched before he inhaled deeply through his nose, becoming the picture of relaxation once again. “My sweet Sakura-chan would never have talked to sensei like that.”
She scoffed, rushing toward him with yet another full frontal assault. Even as he maintained his composure and twisted away and around her attacks, his muscles strained and heart raced with adrenaline.
Despite the assumed simplicity of her battle style, her technique was near-flawless. Sakura was fast, precise. Lethal. Each movement had a purpose and nothing was wasted from the flexing of her forearms to the touch of her toes to the ground. Kakashi knew that if she were to get her hands on him, he could very well be a dead man.
She fought with a ferocity born of trauma and marrow-deep determination. Her only failure was being fresh, lacking the experience that had festered inside of him for decades; her terrors had accumulated over only a handful of years.
His knowledge of her talent was now supplemented with the new awareness of her capacity for cruelty. It frightened him, even as the part of him buried deep inside who once sought out shinobi for qualities just like that was…intrigued.
Her voice tore from her throat, ripped through his musings and brought him back to the present just in time to duck below a kick that likely would have freed his head from his shoulders:
“You never had any qualms about ruining your students before. Why do I have to be different?”
Because you are different, he thought. He wanted to say, this isn’t you.
Kakashi had to stop completely in his tracks, locking his hands around her wrists in a hold that he knew she could break. He stared down, into her green eyes that were so bright they seemed to glow, at the thick locks of pink brushing past her shoulders.
He had seen that face so many times, watched it age and change slowly through the years. But everything, at this moment, looked so very unfamiliar. As if he hardly knew the girl–no, woman now– at all.
He wondered if he ever knew who Sakura was, if there was a Sakura to know— or if the young woman standing before him was an amalgamation of the people who had been there to form her. The compassion of her mother, wit of her master, quick temper from Naruto, hatred from Sasuke. That just barely cruel edge masked with pretty snark, everything Yamanaka Ino pruned her to be.
Kakashi wondered what, if anything, she might have inherited from him.
“If you want me to treat you like everyone else,” he said, shifting his feet ever-so-slightly, rolling his shoulders back, “so be it, then.”
Her next swipe of a chakra-laden hand cut through a billow of leaves. In the next moment, her legs were kicked out from under her, Kakshi’s knee pressed to her nape, a kunai glinting next to her cheek.
She growled in frustration, the tips of her ears stained red as she bucked and thrashed, dislodging him from his position on her back.
“There is no honor in the field,” he said, watching her face as her eye flitted between his feet and hands. “There are no standards of ethics, no codes of conduct.”
“I have been in the field before,” Sakura hissed, her limbs almost trembling with pent up energy. “I haven’t just been sitting around playing pretty nurse.”
“Assume what you know of shinobi to be a lie,” he continued, marking how she bristled at his lack of response to her quip. “We are not heroes. Not ninja like us. We don’t fight to protect the weak and the poor, nor do we fight enemies because it is the right thing to do.”
“Let Naruto and Sasuke be the heroes,” she spat. Mint-green chakra condensed around her fists, morphing into blade-like protrusions between her knuckles. “I just want to get the job done.”
“If I asked you to assassinate a man who is not even a shinobi,” he asked, lowering his voice so he knew she would have to strain to hear it, “would you do it?”
A beat passed, a minute shift in her features come and gone within the span of a blink.
“Yes.”
“Hesitation,” he sighed. “You don't have the heart for it, Sakura-chan.”
“You don’t know me,” she barked, her hand snatching him by the collar for one brief second before his form slipped away with a poof, leaving a log in its place.
“I do.”
“Everyone thinks they know who I am, what I’m capable of,” Sakura panted, swiping moisture from her brow and whirling to face him with a kunai glinting in her hand. “They make assumptions based on my background, on how I look, on who trained me–”
Their blades clanged, the force reverberating through the bones of his arm.
“–on who didn’t,” she whispered, baring her teeth and narrowing her eyes.
Kakashi allowed a tendril of electricity to zip between his fingers and crackle down the edge of his blade, watched as his former student flinched violently for a fraction of a second before she schooled her expression and steeled her grip.
“I don’t need to assume,” he said cooly, tightening his grip on his blade and his own emotions. He allowed his voice to deepen, his gaze to harden as he stared down into her pale, pinched face. “I know exactly who and what you are.”
“Yeah?” she grunted, bared her teeth. The tendons and his wrists began to ache, muscles bunching with strain as she slowly increased the force of her hand. “What am I, then?”
She had been angry since she arrived on the training grounds. But even as she cursed and spit nastiness at him, he knew that she was still restrained. By respect and her own inherent composure.
He also knew just how to strip that all away.
“Just a civilian girl,” Kakashi whispered, “playing shinobi games.”
When he had pushed Sasuke to his limits, the immediate response was pure, unadulterated rage. Anger that had festered into a pestilence, that carried with it the stench of rotting trees and old blood. He could see in his mind’s eye that way the young boy’s features had twisted like gnarled roots, how his eyes had bled the deepest red.
As always, Sakura was different. In the split second after his words filled the air around them, an agonized expression stole across her face, slackened her jaw and pulled her eyes wide until the green pupils seemed like pinpricks in the whites of them. Her breath stalled in her throat, lips trembling and jaw clenching tight.
Within the blink of his eyes he was slammed backward, pain radiating like a vibration to his spine as a crater formed to his shape around him. He twisted his fingers through hand signs furiously, throwing a barrage at ninjutsu in her direction. It bought him a few seconds, just barely long enough to pull himself to his feet unsteadily, lock his knees as she threw herself at him again in a flurry of feet and fists.
“Tsunade’s tricks, as usual,” he grunted, ducking low to avoid a blow he was sure was intended to actually free his head from his shoulders this time. “I suppose you’re a creature of habit.”
The sound that spilled from Sakura’s mouth could only be described as a garbled roar of fury. She kicked up a chunk of earth and launched it in his direction, following up with a veritable storm of kunai that it took more effort to avoid than he cared to admit.
Kakashi was equal parts proud and terrified at her performance.
“What about you,” Sakura shouted, her voice raw and broken. He fought to hear her still, over his thundering pulse.
“Me?” he questioned mildly. He sent a crackle of lightning toward her that ate away at the waist of her clothes, leaving bubbling, burned skin behind.
It was healed, fresh skin covering the area within moments.
She drew closer than anyone who truly knew him dared, and he managed to snag both of her wrists and lock her against him with a kunai pressed to her sternum.
“Friend-killer Kakashi,” she breathed, her breath hot on his face. Sweat tricked in rivulets from her temples, blood crusted at the corner of her mouth.
Deep inside of him, something ached. But he simply arched his brow, poising himself for the moment Sakura would break his hold, hoping he could avoid losing a limb or more when it happened.
Instead, she only stared. Until both of their breaths began to slow and silence settled like a weight on his back.
“You see her in me, don’t you?” Sakura asked, her voice quiet but piercing in the unnatural quiet around them.
“Are you ready to end our training session already?” he quipped. “I have quite a large pile of paperwork waiting on my desk.”
“The little civilian girl,” she continued, voice taking on that soft, child-like quality it had that blood soaked night that changed their lives. “One you could not save from a shinobi’s fate. I’m sure it keeps you awake at night.”
“Be careful, Sakura-chan,” he replied in a low voice. “Remember that you asked me for help.”
“Of course I did,” she grinned, and it looked sickly, false. There was no light to be found in her wide, wide eyes. “Because how could you deny me? Poor little Sakura-chan. So much like the friend you lost.”
“Training is over,” he stated. He loosened his grip on her wrists and inhaled deeply before stepping back. “Next time we work on your focus and control of your emotions.”
“Was Rin a deadweight, too?” Just as he turned his back and took the first step away, that name slipping past her lips made him falter.
“Sakura,” he whispered. “Enough.”
“I’ve thought about it many times,” she sighed, and he heard the shift of her feet over pebbles and upset soil. “Eventually I came to the conclusion that you neglected my development to somehow make up for the ways you failed to protect your teammate. If I never got into a fight, I couldn’t die in one, ne?”
Kakashi began taking tremulous steps forward, determined to leave the training grounds and this twisted turn of conversation behind. He would deal with his so-obviously cracking former student later. He had his own splintering glass to patch over, for now.
“I’m sure you thought you were protecting me,” Sakura raised her voice, her words falling upon his unwilling ears even as he sauntered away. “But did you ever think that instead of keeping me safe, you could have got me killed?”
Guilt burrowed so deep in his bones he struggled to breathe around it. He closed his eyes, unwilling to look into the memories and truth.
“You almost killed me, Kakashi-sensei,” she cried, something like mirth but far darker clouding her voice.
“I didn’t mean to,” he breathed.
“Kakashi,” a whisper, carried through the wind. His blood froze in his veins. “You killed me.”
Every single one of his muscles locked into place, his heart stalling for a long handful of seconds before resuming at a thunderous, violent pace. His hands shook, knees becoming weak as he toiled to pry his stiffened lips open–
“Kai.”
“You killed me, Kakashi,” the voice whispered again, tremulous. “Why?”
Kakashi’s body jerked, and he clenched his fists, allowing his blunt nails to bite sharply into his palm and uttered the phrase again.
Yet the air did not change, nor his visage of the ruined training ground. His breaths became shallow and a lump lodged in his throat as quiet, tiny footsteps sounded behind him, drawing closer.
“Why did you kill me, Kashi?” she asked. “Aren’t we friends?”
“Stop.”
He flared his chakra, snatched it inward. Fire danced over his knuckles, scalding him and yet–
Wake UP!
“Kashi,” she whispered, voice thick with pain and sadness. “How could you do this?”
As in all of his nightmares, he was helpless and unable to prevent his stiff neck from turning, to avoid the sight of a small girl soaked to the bone in blood, a gaping darkness where her chest should be.
“I’m sorry, Kashi,” Rin whispered. Black marks like diseased veins snaked from the edges of the maw of her wound, up her throat, webbing across her cheeks.
“No,” he rasped.
The scent of blood, pungence of burnt flesh filled his nose and mouth with every gasping breath. He stumbled backwards, clutching at the area above his own wildly beating heart.
The fabric of his shirt stuck to his fingers, and he snatched the hand away, staring blankly at the streaks of red spread thickly from fingertip to forearm, bits of sharded bone and fibrous clumps of flesh clinging to the fine hairs.
He gagged, nearly losing his footing again.
“Why would you do that, Kakashi-sensei?” The sound of Sakura’s voice caused his head to whip upward, but he was once again met with Rin’s small, ruined face.
“Stop this,” he begged.
“Kaka-sensei,” Sakura whispered.
Suddenly it was her, wide green eyes glossed with tears, pink hair stained with blood and small, pale hands prodding tenderly around the bleeding hole in her chest.
“Why, Kakashi?” she sniffled.
“Why?” Rin echoed, her face flickering over Sakura’s. “Why?”
“Why,” they both whispered, such different voices somehow entangling and becoming one, “did you kill me?”
Kakashi crumbled to his knees, clutching at his ears and shaking his head, unable to free himself from the lilting cacophony of the two voices, questioning and taunting him. They refused to be quieted or drowned out, even when he began to scream. It was as if they had multiplied into a chorus, hundreds of his failures joining to ask him why, why, why-
WHY?
WHY?
“Kakashi-sensei.”
He came to awareness with a violent gasp, back arching upward and sending a bruising ache rattling down his spine.
Sakura gazed down at him, the sunlight forming a halo around her head, lightening her pink strands until her hair resembled more a rose-gold. Sharp rock pressed into the backs of his legs and neck, and an incessant pressure against his chest urged him to look downward.
“Get off,” he croaked.
She moved her foot away from his chest without a word, taking a step away from the crater within which his body was stuffed. He pulled himself up to stand on shaking legs and swallowed his panting breaths.
“A new trick,” she eventually murmured, after minutes of standing by as he struggled to grasp reality. “You told me once that I had an affinity for genjutsu. So.”
Kakashi barked a laugh that burned in his throat.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “That you do.”
Finally, he met her eyes. Her expression was blank, her eyes downcast. Not even a tell-tale twitch of her brow or crinkle of her nose cued him into what she could possibly be thinking.
“Well,” he exhaled, straightening and shoving a hand into the pocket of his pants. His fingers stroked against the edge of his kunai. “You’ve proven your point. See you tomorrow, same time. Have a good day, Sakura-chan.”
As he walked away, in the direction of the Hokage tower, he could feel her stare on his back. The feeling persisted for hours after.
Give up the ghosts
Sakura peered down at the sleeping Mitokado Homura, still and silent as the dead. It was easy to do so, considering she felt as if her own heartbeat was but a mere illusion. Her focus remained on the rise and fall of a frail chest, the webs of blue-green veins barely visible under paper-thin skin illuminated by moonlight.
A shinobi who had served under the second Hokage, one who had lived at least three shinobi lifetimes, laid so peacefully— face marred with wrinkles of age rather than the horrors of death and murder and generational strife. Sakura did not think it possible for any shinobi to indulge in such a peaceful slumber.
A pale hand, littered with tiny scars and roughened with callouses reached out, fingers fluttering over the pulse thrumming gently in his neck. To his credit, his cloudy eyes snapped open immediately upon the faint contact, but it was already too late.
Fingers crushed around his windpipe, effectively bludgeoning his vocal chords and choking off the exclamation she knew would fall from his lips.
“Shhh, Mitokado-san,” she whispered, hands glowing faintly as she smoothed over the damage she had done to his trachea and esophagus.
A terrible, wheezing croak slipped from his lips as Sakura moved her hand back, leaving behind a dark, gritty stain.
Then a kunai swung toward her face, but—the poor wretch—it was far too slow. She snapped the wrist holding the blade like a rice cracker and went about hauling the man from his bed and tossing him none-too-gently into the plush armchair at the center of his room.
Planting her hands on thin thighs, she knelt in front of him, fingers dipping deep into the muscles, the tips of them coating with warm, sticky blood.
Homura’s breaths were coming out in frantic pants, his eyes shooting around the room as he squealed and whined helplessly, words shaping intelligibly on his thin, wrinkled lips. For a long moment, Sakura only stared, feeling oddly light and ungrounded as she watched the practically ancient man struggle desperately, numb to the weak blows rained upon her shoulders and head.
“You don’t look like a man who could eliminate an entire community of people,” she whispered eventually. The man froze at the sound of her voice, gaze widening in horror as she withdrew her nails from the flesh of his legs and reached for his face with blood-caked hands.
“I didn’t get a chance to talk to your friend, Utatane-san,” Sakura continued, smearing blood in lazy patterns over his quivering face. “I made it quick, too quick for her. Because I was mad. Shishou would be ashamed that I let my anger control my actions that way.”
“Y-you,” the murderer rasped, voice sounding ripped and warbling. He began choking, unable to say more as red bubbled from his lips.
“I want to talk to you,” Sakura nodded slowly, voice soft. “I want to talk about why you soaked your hands in the blood of innocents, why you ruined Sasuke-kun’s life.”
“Uchiha...not...innocent,” he wheezed and Sakura tilted her head.
“Are you? Innocent?” she inquired. There was no answer as the pressure of her hands increased and with a sickening crack, Mitokado Homura’s jaw crumbled against her palms.
The sound of his attempted cry of pain was barely audible above the roaring in her ears. One hand fell from his face and the familiar glow of her chakra illuminated his slackened, terrified face for a moment before it condensed into a scalpel that she cut into his side.
“I did this before,” she murmured, pushing her hand into the neat incision, reaching between ribs to wrap her fingers gently around the hot, pulsing organ in his chest, “in the war, to save Naruto’s life. I’m sure you hate the fact that I did that. Like how you hate that we brought Sasuke back, that you weren’t able to execute him. Pity.”
Her grip tightened around the frantically thumping heart in her hand; instead of steady compressions to a still, quiet organ, she mapped the arteries and cavities with her fingers and chakra and after a breath sent a thrum into a particular spot. The chunk of flesh in her grip seized, hardening, misshaping itself before twitching erratically. As the organ struggled to find its rhythm, Sakura noted the convulsing of its cage, glancing up to see the way the old man’s eyes rolled white into the back of his head.
She withdrew her chakra for a split second before it flowed out again from her fingertips, gently guiding the flow of blood to the lungs and brain, calming the erratic twitching of the fickle organ once more.
“Sasuke-kun told me he’s haunted by the ghosts,” she informed, watching as tears flowed thick down her enemy’s face, pooling in the divots and valleys of his worn flesh. “Are you? Do they visit you in your dreams, too?”
She disturbed the flow of her chakra again, clutching the malfunctioning organ as Homura once again thrashed, legs kicking uselessly at her belly, spittle foaming white at the corners of his mouth.
“Do you want to see them, Homura?” Sakura pushed her face close to his as she once again stabilized his heart. “Don’t you want to talk to them about your innocence?”
An otherworldly feeling rose up like a wave in her chest as the frantic, glazed eyes above her suddenly sharpened and began darting about the darkened corners of the room. Faces that were mostly unfamiliar to her, but so very recognizable to him bled out from the shadows, drawing closer, closer still.
The furnishings of the lavish room fell away, filled to the brim with pale faces framed with pitch-dark hair, glinting crimson eyes floating toward them.
“P-plea-,” Homura choked, a weak hand rising to clutch at his face, bony finger tips catching in the fragile lids framing his wide eyes. “St-st…”
His gaze grew more horrified by the moment as the room filled with the faces of young men, old women, small children, infants cradled in the arms of black-haired ladies with bleeding irises.
“Look at them,” she breathed, fingers undulating about the slick surface of the heart thundering in her grasp. “Look.”
What would have been a high pitched scream ripped from his throat in the form of a wheezing squeak as the blood-red eyes of his demons fell from their heads, leaving behind gaping darkness in their skulls as they continued to move forward, ever advancing.
“Shh, Homura,” Sakura cooed, reaching up to force his gaze back down to hers. “They can’t hurt you. They’re just ghosts. I am your reckoning.”
Cracked lips gaped in a silent shriek as her once green irises bled red.
“M-m-monster,” he gurgled.
“I know you are,” Sakura replied, sinking back onto the heels of her feet and holding his gaze, “but what am I?”
Then she was ripping her hand from the cavity of his chest, blood, bone shard and viscera splashing hot over her cheeks as cloudy brown eyes widened before the light in them faded and his entire body went slack, sinking lifeless into the back of the armchair.
The taste of iron bit at the tip of her tongue as her lips spread into a crooked smile.
Forgive me not
Sasuke pretended that his gaze was focused on the tepid cup of tea cradled in his palm when the door creaked open and closed. As if moments before he had not been watching, waiting for it to swing open, for the sound of shuffling footsteps and rustling fabric to reach his ears in the ambience of the night-time hours.
“Okaeri,” he greeted quietly, voice raspier still than he would have liked. More internal wounds to heal from, he supposed.
“Tadaima.”
It was more of a sigh than a response. And so he allowed himself to look toward the doorway, to watch as Sakura trudged further into her tiny living room. She flicked on a lamp, casting the space in a weak, yellow glow.
“We don’t all have night vision like a cat, Sasuke-kun,” she muttered. Nearly each word was chased by an exhalation, a release of breath that made him wonder if words weighed like burdens on her tongue, too.
“You look tired,” he stated. His eyes tingled and the room became clearer, if less colorful as he engaged his dojutsu. “Chakra reserves are low.”
“Yeah, well,” she replied stiffly, footsteps pausing for a beat before she shuffled forward slowly. “I have a job. No special house-arrest vacation for me.”
“Hn.”
Sasuke let the snide comment wash over him, inhaling deeply through his nose and out of his mouth. Had Naruto said it, they might have come to blows. But this was Sakura–she had more than earned the right to tug on his nerves now and again.
“There’s dinner in the refrigerator,” he said softly as she finally swept past him, the scent of antiseptic thick, hints of jasmine seeping through.
“I’m not hungry,” she replied without turning.
“You must be.”
Her shoulders lifted in a shrug and she did not respond, swaying her way around various obstacles on the path to her bedroom. A low table, a small stack of heavy tomes. The tall, flowering plant that Sasuke watered and clipped every other day to give himself something to do other than sitting and stewing in his own thoughts. It had a strong fragrance, almost cloying, and it made his nose burn and head ache if he spent too much time in proximity to it. But Sakura would smile a little when the flowers looked vibrant.
When he stepped behind her, she froze, formerly slumped posture overcorrecting as her spine became rigid and her neck stiff.
“I’m not hungry,” she sighed. Sasuke only stared as she rotated slowly, bracing one of her hands on the doorframe leading into her room.
“You’ll sleep better on a full stomach,” he stated.
“I’m too tired to eat,” she countered. Indeed, her lips parted and jaw elongated on a wide yawn.
“It’s not poisoned.”
Sakura rolled her bloodshot eyes, “I know you wouldn’t poison me, Sasuke-kun.”
“I waited to eat with you.”
When her eyes finally met his head on, he knew he had won.
“Come on,” she grumbled.
Her shoulder brushed his chest, just barely, as she stepped around him. Sasuke traced the slope of her shoulders with his gaze, tracking the rhythm of her slow gait as she shuffled to the kitchen.
Sakura wrenched the fridge open and collected the collection of tupperware, scraping their contents into plates and bowls and shoving them into the microwave in silence. Sasuke stood quietly on the other side of the counter and watched.
“Are you,” she bit her lip, sliding his food toward him, “waiting for me to attack you, or something?”
“What?” he blinked, absently reaching for the chopsticks she had slid across the counter as well.
“You’ve been staring at me with the sharingan since I walked in,” she waved one hand in his general direction. Her chin stayed low, eyes fixed on the food in front of her.
“It scares you?” he asked, blinking again and letting his dojutsu disengage. “Sorry.”
“That’s not what I said,” she mumbled around a mouthful of food, chewing somewhat aggressively. “Just…I don’t understand why you’d use it when you’re at– here, with me.”
Sasuke took his own bite, studying her face as he considered.
“Sometimes I want to see more than I can with regular eyes,” he finally said.
“Hm. Okay,” she muttered. She continued to shovel food into her mouth.
“Are you sure it doesn’t scare you?” Sasuke asked, suddenly unable to take another bite. He set his chopsticks down and opted to swirl his spoon around the steaming bowl to his right.
“Should it?” she asked quietly. Her eyes flitted up to his briefly before focusing lower, perhaps on his chin.
“No.”
She stared downward, motionless. His fingers tightened around the spoon.
“Then, no. It doesn’t.”
Sasuke stirred his broth some more. Sakura resumed eating and silence blanketed the kitchen again.
“You don’t look me in the eyes when it’s engaged.”
“That’s shinobi 101,” she said briskly, sipping a spoonful of her own broth. “Never look directly in the eyes of someone who has the sharingan. I would do the same with anyone.”
“I’m the only one left,” he whispered.
She stilled, before lowering her spoon with a quiet clack to the counter. Her mouth opened as if she were going to speak, then closed again.
“You never looked away from it before,” he stated. His fingers tightened around the spoon once more, the metal warming in his grip.
Sakura glanced up to his eyes again, her full lips turning down a fraction. Then she shook her head, and let loose a quiet laugh.
“The last time I looked into your sharingan,” she said, lips twisted in a rueful smile, “you wrapped me up in a pretty nasty genjutsu, Sasuke-kun.”
An ache settled in his chest and shame washed over his head like an angry tide. He dropped the spoon and dropped her gaze.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “I forgave you long ago, Sasuke-kun.”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “But your instinct tells you that I’m a threat. I have made you uncomfortable in your own home.”
“Sasuke-kun. That’s not true.”
“You hardly eat,” he replied, voice low. “I hear you awake in your room at night. You spend more hours at the hospital than you are scheduled for to stay away as long as possible.”
“Sasuke-kun…”
He lifted his head, watched as she flinched at the sight of his red iris. A sick feeling swirled in his gut as he let the crimson bleed away.
“It was better for you when I was tied up and blindfolded in the prison. You probably felt safer.”
“Sasuke-kun, please,” she choked. Her palm smacked into the surface of the counter. “Don’t say things like that. Don’t be cruel.”
“I mean it,” he said quietly. “It makes sense that things would be easier when you actually felt safe with me.”
“I’m going to bed,” she said thickly, whirling away from the counter and taking heavy steps toward the exit of the kitchen.
“You never ran from me before, either,” he murmured. Sakura froze midstep.
“I can’t do this tonight, Sasuke-kun,” she breathed, voice barely audible with how she faced away from him. The desperation rang clear yet.
“I won’t stay here if you’re afraid of me,” Sasuke replied tightly. “I want you to feel safe.”
Sakura remained silent. He stood, the sound of his chair scraping the ground causing her to flinch.
He decided against approaching.
“Sakura,” he whispered.
“I can forgive you for anything, Sasuke-kun,” she said quietly, her voice tremulous and so very tired. “Anything. But I can’t forget so easily. I can’t help that my mind clings to certain images and that my body reacts. Call it fear if you want.”
Her head turned slightly, pink tresses shielding the majority of her face.
“Maybe it scares me to sleep under the same roof as the boy who put his hand through my chest in a dream,” she rasped. “But it scares me more to sleep under this roof alone, without knowing you’re somewhere close by. So let me have my fear–let me have you in the only way I can, until I get over one or the other.”
Shame, his oldest friend, clung heavy on his shoulders. It pressed upon his back and caused an ache in his chest, dragging especially on his left-hand side.
“If there was something I could do to take it back,” he rasped, “I would. Doing that to you is the worst crime I have committed.”
“Maybe not the worst,” she muttered. A heavy sigh brought her shoulders up, then down into a slump. “What’s happened, happened. I forgive you, Sasuke. You have to let it go as much as I do.”
Sasuke took a step forward despite himself, despite the way she stiffened.
“Sakura,” he whispered, drawing closer and daring to touch her arm with the tips of his fingers.
“Sasuke-kun, you can’t take it back,” she whirled and looked at him, chin tilted to stare straight into his eyes. “We both have to live with it. We can't unsee it or undo it; we just have to live with it.”
His lips turned down into a frown, an ache settling between his ribs.
“I’ll stay with Naruto,” he murmured. “I will leave– tonight.”
Yet his feet remained rooted to the spot, his body looming mere inches from hers. Staring, breathing.
“You won’t,” she whispered. “Not unless I tell you to go.”
“Tell me then,” he replied thickly. “Tell me to go.”
“No,” she breathed. She began shaking her head slowly, blinking as if meeting his eyes was the same as staring straight into the midday sun.
“Don’t let me hurt you more than I already have,” he begged. His hand lifted, drew close, cupped her face just as it turned away.
How about “Cruel” featuring BotW Zelink.? You know, a super cheery prompt for the holidays.
Haha!! I like the way you think @bahbahhh :) Angst brain go brrrrr
Cruel | Drabbles Masterlist
Was it cruel of her to smile and laugh, teasing the court poet about his unflappable tie, his crimson gaze, his lexicon, letting her hand wander his arm, as she clinked her wine glass with his, all the while aware of a certain pair of blue eyes that followed her every breath?
Was it cruel, to make him chase after her like a lap dog, giving him sleepiness nights and stress-inducing days over her unannounced, unexpected and numerous escapes?
Was it cruel, to crave a few seconds without his silent gaze, as tortuous as that of Hylia’s, both emotionless stone, both echoing the never-ending malicious laughter of failure?
Yes, yes it was, she realised, as the wind hurled towards along her, the sickle a bare second from her face, and his ragged breaths heaved next to her, that cursed blade clanged against the Yiga’s, that dead blue glare suddenly alive, vicious and angry… all in her name.
there is not much to update considering I STILL WANT MY DAMN PC BACK GODDAMN YOU STUPID BROKEN KEYS. But, maybe i should just keep on making these. So here LEARN ABOUT WIPS WHICH ARE ACTUALLY BEING WORKED ON ACTIVLY
The Santa Issue: Octopath christmas fic. Yes this was inspired by The Santa Clause and I will give no further elaboration on it. (Elaboration which i will give: Primrose accidentally murders Santa and now is Santa. Isnt that fun?)
A Thousand Times More: Chap 4 is in the planning stages and I would be fucking writing on it IF MY PC DID NOT BREAK GODDAMNIT
Smoochfest: law and order: and before anyone questions this name, it was thought of by a friend and I currently have no better name than, so untill I have it yall are stuck with it. Salespitch? “Week before the fall of Hornburg, add a royal birthday, a Cyrus, and a courtcase and watch all of it spiral into a mess”. And my very elaborate exuse to bring up Dutch laws which I find funny. Anyway, I shall begin publishing it when i get ATTM done cus responsible
Soundtrack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V9zxXN1rx0
Dear oh dear,
(Oh, Laurence...)
What was it?
(Master Willem...)
The Hunt?
(Somebody help me...)
The Blood?
(Unshackle me please, anybody...)
Or the horrible dream?
(I´ve had enough of this dream...)
Oh, it doesn´t matter...
(The night blocks all sight...)
It always comes down to the hunters helper to clean up after these sort of messes.
(Oh, somebody, please...)
Tonight Gehrman joins the hunt.
Gehrman: Kneel down, good hunter. I will free you from your course.
Hunter: This I can not do... Gerhman.
Gehrman: So.. it comes to this.. all the blood, everything you saw... such a pity.
A heavy clanking sound tears trough the silent night. The man bearing a scythe.
Hunter: You are just making it harder for both of us. Gehrman... I know.
Gehrman: You know nothing!
The first sound of metal hitting metal tears trough the night.
Hunter: Why must you resist my love. I do it for you.
Gehrman: No one should suffer this horrible dream. Don´t you understand? This dream, this hunt, it never ends. Give it up.
Hunter: No one should bear this dream besides you? Is that it?
Gehrman: Yes! I´ve been doing this for an eternety. This alone is my sin to bear.
In the moonlight the flowers danced to the rythm of wind and dangerous music.
Hunter: You think you know the truth, but there is a way out. I will break this vicious circle.
Gehrman: Don´t ou think I tried already? I tried so many times. It is not possible. Accept your death, be freed from the night.
Scythe held up high, the sound of a swing ended this sad rondo.
The sound of a body hitting the floor was the last note of the song.
Gehrman: The night (Oh, Laurence), and the dream (Master Willem), were long... (somebody help me). I am sorry... Maria... I tried to help him... I-I couldn´t... now you, please... take care of him... beloved Maria...
Is it the ending with you as the new host or is it the secret ending where you break the cicle. It´s up to you to decide that.
Just a small fan Dialogue during the battle with Gehrman. I was bored. I hope you enjoyed.
Lovely Touches Endearing Me to You (3946 words)
Series: Part 2 of The Heat Series
Fandom: Naruto (Anime & Manga)
Relationships: Inuzuka Kiba/Reader
Rating: Explicit
Tags: Fluff and Smut, romantic smut, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, this fic CAN be read as a standalone (in which case it's only werewolf-esque if you squint REALLY hard), Kissing, Neck Kissing, Undressing, Vaginal Fingering, Grinding
You don’t mean to sigh, but it catches Kiba’s attention all the same.
“What’s buggin’ you?”
“Just evaluating my options,” you shrug. “Dunno how much more of this I can take, to be honest.”
He pauses, scrutinizing you carefully for several long moments. “I could… I could help you get off, if you want. Just not fuck you.”
The words strike you like lightning. You’re stunned, but it quickly melts into desire—a wildfire of want burning through your chest. “I—” you shiver. “I want that.”
“You do?” He’s careful, cautious, and so, so lovely.
“Yes.”
The Heat Series has gotten its second installment! (Shoutout to WIP Wednesday for nudging me into finishing it!)
