snowbirds
domini album
#7 Shisui Uchiha
summary: one room, one bed, one mission partner.
a/n: this fic was impossible to name, and i came so close to just titling it "the one where they share a bed" or "the one in which shisui uchiha almost gets demoted"
word count: 4,457
You’d decided that the Godaime Hokage was testing you.
She was testing you, because otherwise there was no way in hell you would have been assigned to the same mission as Shisui Uchiha three days before the height of the winter storm season in the northern countries, where traveling would be incredibly slowed, indefinitely extending the amount of time you’d have to spend together with him.
A mission a carrier pigeon could have completed in less time it would take for you and the curly haired Uchiha to cross the continent to Kumogakure, no less one of Shisui’s own crows. But here you were, standing in the last room available in a hotel at the edge of Kumo’s border with Shisui standing only a few feet away, his travel pack still slung over his shoulder and snowflakes melting in his hair.
“No,” you said, breaking the tense silence.
Shisui turned, looking back at you. “No?”
“No,” you repeated, shaking your head. “We are not sharing the same bed.” He started to smile, his lips pulling up to one side in a smile you’d realized meant he was going to try his damndest to be a menace, and you cut him off. “I’m going back to the lobby and asking for another bed, so don’t get comfortable.”
He replied, voice lilting, “They already told us this room was all they had.”
You shot him a glare over your shoulder. “I’m not sharing a bed with you.”
You didn’t care for how many years that you’d known him, or how many times you’d saved each other’s asses on missions before, or how you felt about him, this was Shisui Uchiha, and he was your mission partner – that’s it – and you weren’t going to let the line blur, no matter how much he teased and antagonized you.
“Then we can flip a coin to see who’ll sleep on the floor,” he shrugged lightheartedly, setting his pack down. “Or in the shower,” he added, leaning slightly to look into the bathroom through the opened door. He sent you a cheeky wink, “Showering together means we both get hot water.”
You clenched your jaw, willing the heat away from your face. “I’m sure you can heat the water just fine with your katons.”
He just smiled and started opening his pack. “If you want to shower now, I’ll go down to the lobby and get some hot food. I think I saw a kitchen down there.”
You watched as he pulled out a small pouch of coin from his bag before zipping it up again and letting it lean against the wall. He moved around you, minding your space as he went for the door, but he paused before he opened it, one hand on the knob.
“Any food in particular you want me grab?” he asked, head tilting to the side.
You hesitated, gauging his temporary seriousness, then replied, “Bread – if they have any.”
He gave you a nod, and then flashed smile before slipping out the door. It clicked shut behind him, and you felt the flare of his chakra as he covered the door with a protective seal. The moment he was gone, you loosed a breath, and started to take off your boots.
Shisui was so complicated and after over a week of trekking through Hot Water Country and then Frost Country, you were no closer to understanding him than you had been before you were forced into isolation with him. He was a constantly twisting dichotomy of humor and seriousness, a prankster and yet also a jōnin-ranked shinobi with a flee on sight order in all the other Great Nations aside from Fire Country. You’d already experienced a number of times in the last seven days when his personality just flipped, an airy joke made in one breath and his ninjatō buried in the gut of an enemy nin by the next.
If you didn’t already trust him with your life, you’d be worried that he wasn’t entirely mentally competent.
And it wasn’t that you didn’t like him – truthfully, it was more that you didn’t dislike him that was your problem. You’d grown up with Shisui, graduating from the Academy and then through the promotions at nearly the same rate, but while your friends had come in the names of Kurenai, Asuma, Genma, Rin, Obito, Gai, and Kakashi, Shisui gravitated toward his younger cousin, and had melted into the ranks of ANBU with him until a scandal that had ended with the death of Danzō Shimura and the sudden introduction of fifty undocumented Leaf nin into the shinobi system had dragged him back into jōnin mission duties.
Until a year ago, he’d been a distant fantasy, someone you could think about with the freedom of knowing your friends would never be able to guess who it was your thoughts drifted toward through the years. But then Tsunade-sama had started assigning him onto missions with you, or with your friends, and Kakashi had involuntarily begun to run interference whenever Gai started to look too closely at the way you’d react whenever Shisui was mentioned, keeping your secret before you were ready to tell it.
The more time you spent with him or around him, the more often you could feel yourself falling further down a rabbit hole you’d inevitably get stuck in, and now, sharing a room with him? You might as well just look for a shovel to turn the rabbit hole into a grave.
You shivered as you stripped your clothes, pulling three layers off that were all damp and cold from the melted snow. You didn’t bother hanging the clothes, not when you stood naked in the freezing bathroom while steam from the shower promised warmth. As you slipped behind the curtain, you had to suppress a moan when you stepped under the heated water.
You and Shisui had been staying in hotels every night that you’d been on the mission, but all of them had been low-scale so to not draw attention to yourselves and had no running water since the pipes were frozen. You’d both been heating the tubs in the hotel bathrooms with katons, the water provided from one of your suiton jutsus, but nothing compared to running water heated by a furnace rather than an Uchiha who wasn’t sure what the boiling point of water was.
Distantly, you heard the click of the door and recognized Shisui’s chakra signature as you washed the soap from your chest and legs. Knowing that he’d want a hot shower too, you forced yourself to turn the water off and wrapped yourself up in a towel. You made quick work of getting dressed, pulling on a pair of long pants, thick socks, and a thick green sweater you’d stolen from Kurenai before you’d left.
Out in the room, Shisui was standing above the only table in the room holding a cup of something warm between his hands.
“Well, you look comfortable,” he chuckled, but you ignored him, going straight for the food as your stomach growled. “They didn’t have bread, but the chef was nice and gave me larger bowls. I think she thought I was cute.”
You scoffed into your bowl, glad to hide your face with a spoonful of butajiru than acknowledge him flirting with someone.
“She also gave me some hot chocolate,” he added, and you could practically feel his smirk as you kept ignoring him. “She didn’t look as charitable when I asked if I could have another cup for my wife.”
You choked, broth catching in your throat as your head snapped up and you stared wide-eyed at Shisui.
“W-Wife?” you managed to get out, spluttering.
He laughed as he set the mug of hot chocolate down to a second mug you hadn’t noticed before. “My one and only, I told her,” he replied. “The woman who made me chase after her before she finally agreed to marry me.” You could feel your face heating, cheeks practically burning as he continued on. “I might’ve mentioned how you were waiting for me and keeping our bed warm though,” he said, “so the hot chocolate might just be a one-off thing.”
“Shi-” You gaped around his name. “Shisui!” you shouted. “You’re – you’re –”
“Hilarious? Clever? Amazing?”
“Insane!” you shrieked, slapping a hand over your face, if only so you would stop looking at him. Wife – kami, he’d called you his wife.
“Ah, but my insanity got us a warm treat,” he laughed, and then stooped over so that he could pull your hand away from your face. You glared at him with no real heat, really only focused on stopping yourself from rushing outside and sticking your head into a snow drift to stop the blush from making your face actually catch fire. “I’ll go shower now, wife. Make sure you finish your dinner.”
He let go of your wrist, laughing as you gaped at him, only finding your voice after he grabbed his pack and started to close the door to the bathroom.
“He’s insane,” you said to yourself. “He’s actually insane.”
You cut a look toward the twin mugs of hot chocolate and had to bite your lip to keep yourself from involuntarily smiling as you shook your head. “Wife,” you repeated, rolling your eyes. “As if I’d marry him.”
You decided to drown the taste of the lie with the butajiru, and by the time you’d finished the mug of chocolate and climbed into the bed, Shisui was stepping out of the shower, steam billowing from behind him as he rubbed the towel against his hair.
“Flipped the coin and chose the winning side, did we?” he asked, raising an eyebrow as you tried to not look at the muscles of his arm as he finished scrubbing his hair.
You gave him a look, to which he just chuckled at and tossed the towel over the hook on the back of the bathroom door before closing it.
“My wife is so cruel,” Shisui said as he pulled his bed roll from his traveling pack. “She makes me fetch the food and take a shower second, and then forces me to sleep on the floor.”
“Your wife sounds delightful,” you replied dryly, rolling your eyes as you turned over, intent to not let him see your face.
Your heard him hum in response, and listened as he walked around the room, flipping the light off. The room was instantly pitch dark, and it took your eyes a moment to adjust as you listened to Shisui get into his bed roll.
In the bed, you curled your legs up, trying to find the warmth that seemed to have left you the moment the lights went out. Even through your thick socks, you could feel the cold biting at your toes, and your nose felt icy as you pressed it against your inner wrist.
You weren’t sure how long passed before you were biting your lip to keep from shivering, and you were forced to think of Rin’s teasing before you left on your mission.
The closer you get to Kumo, the colder you’ll get, she’d said, and while you hadn’t been warm since hitting the northern border Fire Country shared with Hot Water Country – a region which did not live up to its name in the winter months – the cold had been mostly tolerable. Until today. When you and Shisui had unanimously agreed to find a hotel with running water, even if it potentially drew more unwanted eyes to yourselves.
You swallowed, and then, before you could think better of it, whispered, “Shisui?”
His response came hardly a second later. “Yeah?”
You hesitated, knowing that you could tell him ‘Goodnight’ just as easily as you could pretend you hadn’t said anything at all, but…
But –
“Would you – will you,” you swallowed again, turning onto your back. “You can sleep in the bed.”
There was a moment of silence, and then you heard him shift in his bed roll before he asked, all humor absent from his voice, “Are you sure you’re comfortable with that?”
You nodded before you realized he probably couldn’t see you. “Yeah, I am.”
There was a sound of linen moving as he stood up, and then you felt the bed dip to one side as your heart began to race harder.
“Are you cold?” Shisui asked, his voice much closer now as he lifted the edge of the blanket.
“Y-Yeah,” you answered, stiffening when you felt his foot accidentally brush against your ankle.
There was a light tease in his voice as he said, “And now my wife wants to use me for my body heat?”
You kicked him in the shin before you thought better of it and heard his him chuckle as he settled next to you, his shoulder just brushing against yours.
“That’s going to leave a bruise,” he said, and you froze when you felt his breath coast over the plane of your cheek, which meant he was looking at you.
You didn’t dare turn your head toward his, no matter that you could see the outline of his profile in your periphery. “Good,” you replied.
“I could just go back to the floor,” he drawled, starting to raise the cover.
“No,” you blurted out, grabbing for his arm but your hand awkwardly collided with his hand, your fingers wrapping around his in the attempt to keep him from moving. The bed had already warmed since he’d gotten in only moments ago, and…and it was nice, him being this close, even if it made every part of you hyper focused on him.
Stiffly, you let go of his hand, the pads of your fingers brushing over the back of his knuckles as you pulled your arm back under the covers.
“It’s warmer now,” you said into the silence, glancing toward him.
For a moment, you thought Shisui wouldn’t answer, and then you’d have to force yourself to sleep knowing you’d thoroughly embarrassed yourself, but then he shifted in the bed, adjusting his pillow under his head. He’d turned over, facing you fully. Briefly, you thought you saw a glimmer of his kekkei genkai in the place where you thought his eyes were, but there were only shades of shadows in the room.
“It’d be warmer if you let me hold you,” he finally replied.
You felt the heat of embarrassment light your face up faster than dry grass in a fire, and an alarmed noise escaped you before you could swallow it. Shisui laughed again, but the sound was soft, like he didn’t want to break the conversation off with it.
“It’s just body heat,” he said, sounding like he was smiling again.
You seriously wondered if he really could see your face, because he chuckled and reached out, chucking the underside of your chin with his index finger and making you close your parted lips.
“I’m just kidding,” he said. “You can put your back against mine.”
You swallowed, considering him in the dark. Even though the warmth of him was helping, you really were still cold and didn’t want to spend the whole night shivering – or waking up to a toe that’d fallen off from the chill. And you trusted him. This was Shisui, and if he wasn’t your friend, he was at least an acquaintance, and someone that you’d known for well over a decade at this point.
“Just,” you started, and squeezed the blanket. “You can. But be serious.”
He reached for your hand, his hand sliding down your arm, and you felt his pinky finger lock through yours. Your eyes widened at the gesture, something you’d never seen him do before, but you listened as he told you, “Turn over.”
You felt him move closer, and your breath caught in your throat as you felt him settle his chest against your back, his arms wrapping around you as you kept the blanket pulled over both you. The scent of him was almost overwhelming at first, and as he pulled you into him, setting his right arm just in front of you, you exhaled a long breath, gradually letting yourself sink into him. His legs tangled with yours, one of his thighs slotted between yours, and one of his shins laying over your ankle. Heat practically radiated off of him, and you found yourself pressing closer to him as he brushed his nose against the back of your neck.
“This okay?” you felt him murmur against your skin and couldn’t help the goosebumps that rose across your neck and arms.
“Yeah,” you forced out, shutting your eyes as your heart jack hammered against your chest. You could practically feel his mouth brushing against your neck, and it took every bit of your self-control to not lean farther back to push his lips against your skin.
You counted the seconds as they passed, willing your body to relax and let your breaths match Shisui’s as his chest rose and fell against your back.
Hardly two minutes had passed before he whispered, “Your heart is racing like we’ve never slept like this before, wife.”
“I can’t say we have, husband,” you replied, glad that he couldn’t see you screwing your eyes shut.
He chuckled, his breath stirring some of the sensitive hair at your nape. “I’ll hold you every night, if you want me to, wife,” he said, and you knew he felt you stiffen again.
“You’re insane, Shisui,” you muttered, pushing your face into the cool pillowcase.
He chuckled, and this time his lips did brush against the back of your neck, making your body go rigid as he replied, “Then you can banish me to the floor again, wife.”
You grumbled, “How long are you going to call me that?”
“Call you what?”
You bit your cheek. “Your wife.”
You felt him smile against your skin as he answered, “Maybe ‘til the day I die, but I just might find a way to haunt you so you never stop hearing me say it.”
“But we’re not –” you gaped, starting to turn over, but only managing to twist so far that your face was directly in line with Shisui’s. “We’re not…”
Words left you as you met his eyes, the red glow of his Sharingan eyes casting soft shadows over his face.
Handsome, you thought instantaneously. He was so, so breathtakingly handsome.
His hand was settled over your stomach now from when you’d turned, and you felt his fingers close around the fabric of the sweater as you stared at each other.
You could see his mouth pull into a smile before he said, “We’re not…what?”
You shut your mouth, not realizing you hadn’t done so before, and then replied, “Married. We’re not…married.”
“I told that chef something else,” Shisui said, his eyes flicking over your face.
Quietly, you asked, “What?”
“I told her about how I’ve been in love with my wife since we were kids,” he said softly. “About how I couldn’t tell her for years, because my family was in danger, and I had to help them and how I wasn’t sure I’d survive it, and how when I did live and I started seeing her more often, it made me love her more, now that I was free to tell her.”
You weren’t sure that you were breathing anymore. Your heart felt like it’d stopped beating in your chest, and all you could feel was every point of contact you shared with Shisui.
“I told her about how everyone was figuring it out before my wife was, that I was in love with her, and even our boss kept assigning us on jobs together, trying to get my wife to realize I was chasing after her when she didn’t even realize I was running,” he continued, and his hand left your stomach, reaching toward your face. You felt him brush the side of his finger over your cheek, a gentle smile just barely illuminated by his kekkei genkai. “I told her that when my wife finally figured it out, she didn’t believe me and thought I was joking.”
It was all you could do to stare at Shisui, realizing that he’d read your reaction perfectly.
He shifted, pulling on your hip with his hand as he turned your body over so that you were facing each other. When you were laying face to face, hardly more than a hairsbreadth between your noses, he took one of your hands in his, giving you the opportunity to pull away before he slotted his fingers through yours.
“I’ve been in love with you for years,” he said, squeezing your hand. “I wanted to tell you, but what I had to go through with the clan…with Danzō…” he shook his head, grimacing. “I couldn’t tell you, because if it turned out that you even cared about me at all, I wasn’t sure that I could promise you I would be around at the end of it all.”
“ANBU,” you whispered. “Those years in ANBU…you hardly came around. You didn’t talk to me at all.”
He frowned at the memory. “I didn’t want Danzō to have any advantage over me. If he’d known how I felt about you – that I loved you…” The patterns in Shisui’s Sharingan swirled, and you Sensed his ire roil in his chakra signature, a thin film above a much deeper rage, but then he exhaled, and the anger faded – quelled. “I can’t tell you everything, not right now, but there’s reasons why I didn’t tell you in the past. Sooner.”
“I –” You closed your mouth and then swallowed. “You – I mean, me? You…you love me?”
“Yes you,” he answered, brow furrowing as his hand left yours and brushed over the side of your face, fingers catching in your hair. “Always you. Since before I even realized what I felt for you was love.”
Your throat felt tight as the sight of him became blurry and you bent away slightly. He let you pull away, but he stayed close, his hand returning to the space it’d been with yours as you furtively swiped the sudden tears away from your eyes.
“Shisui,” you said, reaching for his hand and holding it tightly in yours. “You love me?”
The worried lines in his face softened, and he turned his hand in yours, holding it as he brushed a thumb over your knuckles. “I do,” he answered.
“Shisui,” you shook your head, reaching out for his face and cupping his cheek in your palm. His eyes widened at the gesture, but he made no move to escape as your fingers curled in the damp curls at his hairline. You knew from Rin what it meant for an Uchiha to let someone touch their face, where their most precious possession was. “Why did you choose now, while we’re in the middle of nowhere, sharing a bed because it’s freezing cold while we’re on a mission to tell me this?”
His smile pressed against your palm. “We’re on two separate missions,” he replied. When your brow furrowed he explained, “You’re on a B rank mission to deliver a missive to the Raikage. I’m on a S rank mission to be completed upon pain of demotion to genin and unpaid leave for ten years if I don’t stop irritating Tsunade-sama with my ‘longing puppy-dog eyes’ and tell you how I feel.”
The laugh that burst out of you nearly made you knock heads with Shisui as you sat up, holding your stomach as you shook your head.
“You’re kidding me,” you snorted, letting Shisui pull you into his arms as he sat up beside you, the blanket twisting around both of you.
“Absolutely not,” he answered, pressing his face into your neck. “My mission payment is her blessing and paid time off if I can convince you to marry me in a year.”
You tried to stop yourself from laughing, but couldn’t help the smile that pulled at your lips.
“You only told me tonight that you love me – you think we’ll be married in a year?” you replied, tressing your fingers through his hair. “What if we really can’t stand each other?”
Shisui smiled, and you felt your stomach flip as he shifted, pressing you back into the bed as he leaned over you. “Do you love me?” he asked.
You stared up at him and nodded slowly. “I do.”
You watched as he lowered himself, putting his weight on his left elbow as he tugged you toward him so that you were facing each other again, noses just brushing.
“Then you can tell me to sleep on the floor every night, or have me take a shower only after you for the rest of our lives, or make me get all of the food we’ll fill our house with, but I know I’ll always love you,” he said, curling his fingers through your hair. “You’ll never have to doubt me.”
You pressed your hand to his chest and then reached around his neck, running your fingers through his short hair. “You’re awfully confident thinking that I want to marry you.”
Shisui’s smile was something you wished you could remember in perfect clarity for the rest of your life, because something in your heart shifted, and you felt all at once just how much you loved him – had been loving him for years.
“You called me ‘husband’ before, didn’t you?” he replied, and you felt his thumb trace the edge of your lip, delicate as he followed the curve of your mouth even as you smiled.
“And you think I’ll do it again before a year is over?” you asked quietly.
Everything about Shisui was gentle as he moved, just a tilt of his jaw and then his lips replaced his thumb, pressing against yours as he pulled you closer into him. Immediately, you responded, kissing him back as he raised your chin and tucked his hand under your jaw, fingers curling just around the side of your throat as his thumb held your cheek.
Again and again he kissed you, his tongue swiping along the seam of your lips and when your lips were swollen and your breaths came in short pants, he moved again, kissing the side of your face – your cheek, your temple, your jaw – until he was against your ear.
“Marry me whenever you want,” he said, caressing your jaw again, “just as long as you call me your husband again.”
The smile that broke across your face nearly made it impossible for him to kiss you again.
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Time for something else (1/2)
Summary: Life as an ANBU captain has been eating at your very soul. You had been fortunate to have someone with you in what you first considered a privileged duty, but soon learned to be a perilous hell: Kakashi. The man you had looked up to since the beginning - and grew closer to, the more you learned about him. Yet the lurid schemes of a corrupt village elder might break you, as fighting in a system - for a system - that does nothing but throw bricks at you seems to be your undoing.
One final mission. Just one.
Read part 2 here!
Length: 5,700 (part 1)
Warnings! Graphic description of violence, body horror, (psychological) torture), suicidal thoughts/mindset (reader is not in a good place; at least in parts of this fic), very angsty but with a happy ending; pining, I mean it, pining, angst, happy ending. But. It gets dark first
My birthday gift to the bestiest, amazingiest, loveliest @kuramakakashi!! Once more all the best to you bestie, may this year just be great all around 💖💖💖
Read on AO3!
Except below
A tall, very familiar, silver-haired man was waiting next to your door, leaning on the frame with practised ease so many mistook for sheer sleaziness or nonchalance. He rarely was either.
Kakashi was frowning deeply, shades cast over his face from the dim light over your door. "I thought you did not have a mission this night," the question laced into his tune, but the worry was obvious.
You smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry. I went to visit Itachi, it got late."
His dark eye mustered you up and down. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking - nor would you be able to sense it.
Kakashi stepped forward suddenly, his hand on your shoulder. Squeezing, lightly. Gently. "Please get some sleep. You don't look very well."
You chuckled haughtily. "So you keep saying."
His brow furrowed. "Because I mean it, Y/n," the light irritation obvious, now.
You blinked, slowly. "Are you worried about me?"
His frown deepened, the hand on your shoulder gripped tighter. "You ask me that?"
You dared a little smile, even. "You don't have to be, Kakashi. I'll be fine."
His eye widened instantly. His other hand grasped your shoulder now, pulling you closer. An unspoken urgency lingered between the two of you.
For a brief second, you wondered if he could read your mind.
"Y/n," he whispered in the same, shaky tune he had confided so many dirty secrets to you. Vulnerable. "I mean it."
You gazed in his face - what little you saw of it - his eye. The pleading look. Perhaps there was longing in there. And perhaps you felt grief - regret. But - those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash.
"You've been there for me all my life," Kakashi began, but you shook your head.
"Whatever happens next Kakashi - know that I am thankful. Okay? We-" you swallowed drily, your vision grew blurry. "We did everything we could. I couldn't be more thankful to have you here along with me."
"Yn-" He stammered, gaze wide, before you wrapped him into a tight hug.
Your arms closed in around his chest each, and you buried the side of your face into his shoulder protectors. His warm breath fanned the back of your back. He gasped - and your sluggish, damp resolve to hold him faltered a moment right before strong arms encased you in a firm embrace.
You didn't want this moment to end. Another little infinity, spreading between you.
Why couldn't it just be this way?
Warmth lapped at the nothingness inside of you, quelling something - good. Something you had thought dead the moment the Third had forced you back into ANBU.
Kakashi's breath hitched.
"Y/n," he whispered. "Why does this feel like goodbye?"
"I don't know, Kakashi," your frail voice almost broke with the lie you knew he’d detect easily.
He hugged you tighter.
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