a/n: listen. okay. im saigero trash. i've got like at least ten things written up that im too nervous to share, so im throwing this one out there so that way i can work up my courage to polish up the other ones and post them. this is also the first fe: fates piece i've ever posted! congrats me!
also gentle and loving saizo is my entire aesthetic i love how it's pretty much confirmed that he's so gentle and sweet with his spouse it's so nice.
Blood crusted on her left shoulder, and Saizo grimaced looking at it. It was ugly against the smooth and bright look of her skin, crusty and hard and already flaking. What was worse was the way she was gritting her teeth, the way she was running her nimble fingers over the wound, those soft groans she tried to suppress through her gritted teeth. Sweat formed on her forehead, and it was obvious that though the wound was already closed through the help of an elixir, the medicine was doing little to numb the pain.
"Is it bad?" he asked.
Kagero glanced over at him- there it was, a hint of shame in her eyes, just like usual. "No."
Saizo removed his scarf and lifted an eyebrow at her until she squirmed, looked away, and murmured a weak "hurts" under her breath. A shaky exhale rattled through her body as she fought the pain.
It had just been a training session with Hinata, and all had gone well until she failed to properly block a particularly harsh thrust, and even the practice katana's dull edge had created a sizable gash along the top of her shoulder. The samurai had immediately dropped his blade and apologized profusely, reached to stop her bleeding, but the sight of her blood and tightly-pressed lips had startled Saizo. Perhaps he shouldn't have pushed Hinata quite so roughly, but he had. Hinata had remained undeterred, however, and sheepishly offered up his only elixir to Kagero.
He watched as Kagero pulled her fingers away from her shoulder and stared at them. She brought them together and rubbed back and forth, and fine crimson powder fluttered to the ground. He almost laughed at her distraught expression.
"It's pretty gross," he admitted to her, and she only glared.
"I noticed. I'm filthy. There's no need for you to further point it out."
Saizo brushed a hand along her shoulder gently, picking up both wet and dry blood on the pads of his fingers. She was still sweating, very uncomfortable with her pain, and it was making him nervous as well.
"I'll draw a bath," he told her. "We can get you cleaned up."
"Aren't you busy?" Kagero questioned.
"Not at the moment," he responded. "It won't take long, anyways. Don't move too much; I'm going to go heat the water."
When he came back from filling the tub, he found her finishing untying just one her sandals and struggling to bend over to get it off. Everytime she bent over to pull them off, she would bite her lip and sit back up to touch her shoulder.
He bent down and slid the first sandle off. "Let me."
"You don't have to," she began, but he cut her off, muttering, "I'd rather it not take two hours. The water will get cold."
He proceeded to unlace the other sandal, careful not to jostle her around. The tension in her body, the way she shifted her arms to and fro, told him that she wanted to say something. She was always so plain and open to him, like an open book, and whenever he told her so, she got embarrassed. She always got embarrassed so easily.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled as he took off her final sock. "I'm so pathetic. I can't even take off my shoes."
"Your arm is hurt," he reminded her, "and it's not like it's a problem."
"Thank you," she said softly. "I appreciate it."
Saizo offered her a hand. "Can you walk? Or shall I carry you?"
He was teasing and she knew it. She frowned, yet still took his hand. "I can walk just fine, sir."
"Oh?" He raised an eyebrow. "Any particular reason you're taking my hand, then?"
A blush spread over her face and she turned, trying to hide it from him. "It's because I'd like help standing."
So Saizo pulled her up, putting his other hand on her shoulder to steady her when she wobbled. Her mind was still hazy from the strength of the elixir, that much was certain. Kagero was never so clumsy, not even in the slightest, when everything was fine. She tried to take a step forward and stumbled again, and he put an arm around her waist.
"I think you might seriously need my help," he advised, and though she looked ashamed, she accepted his assistance. After finally getting her to the washroom, he asked, "Do you need me to help you take off your clothes?"
"How forward," she muttered- a thin attempt at a joke. "If you would, I would like your help."
She held out her arm, waiting for him to unclasp the armor, and he undid the ties there, circled around to yank at the threads on her waist band, then finally knelt down to pull off the padding around her thighs. He set them in a pile off the the side, making sure the ties wouldn't tangle, and proceeded to stand again.
When he took her shirt off, slowly pulling it off her arms and over her delicate wound, he counted the scars and scratches. One along her throat where a Nohrian assassin had nearly slit it open. A long gash down her right arm from a close-call with a Faceless. An ugly burn on the nape of her neck from a fire spell. His least favorite, however, was a thin, barely-there scar in the center of her back, where a spy had shoved a spear right through her. That she had survived was a miracle, and one that he wasn't willing to question.
"Are you getting sentimental back there?" Kagero asked.
Saizo jumped and pulled the rest of her shirt off, folding it neatly over his arm and setting it by her pile of armor. "Of course not."
She hummed and pressed her arms at her side as much as she could, standing still while he unclasped her underwear and let it fall over her shoulders. It slid down her arms and she crossed them over her chest quickly. "Don't look," she warned.
Saizo rolled his eye. "How many times have I seen you naked?"
She tried to kick him.
After removing the last piece of her clothing, he helped ease her into the wooden tub. The water was still steaming, and she flinched as he coaxed her in. Her skin promptly flushed, turning pale red, and though she seemed pained for a moment, she quickly turned relaxed and leaned back. The water stopped just above her chest, right below where her wound began, and already some of the blood was drifting away in the bath. Saizo took a step back and began to untie his own armor.
Kagero opened one of her eyes at the sound, regarding him curiously. "You're getting in?"
He scoffed. "You couldn't even take off your own clothes. How do you expect to wash yourself off?"
Her face turned even redder. "I would manage! You don't have to come in."
With a hum, he undid the last piece of his arm guard and threw it over his shoulder, not caring where it landed. "Too late."
"You're being smart," Kagero accused. "Don't tease me."
"You get all red and pouty when I tease you," he replied. "It's kinda cute."
"Don't call me cute."
Saizo leaned in towards her without stopping his work on his other guard. "Adorable."
She also got red and pouty when he called her cute.
She didn't watch as he took off the rest of his clothes, and it amused him- despite all their history, she was still shy and proper. She would even get embarrassed and hide her face if he took his shirt off during training, and the first time he'd realized it, he'd made a point to do it even more. Kagero, when he first met her, had been a cold, stoic, untouchable creature who wouldn't even flinch at his enraged outbursts, and catching her off guard somehow made her soft and warm.
"Scoot," he told her. She sighed and inched forward in the tub, drawing her knees up to her chest while he slid in. The water swelled and tipped over the edge, splashing against the tile. Saizo settled against the back of the tub, wincing a little at the still burning temperature of the bath, and she moved back to lean against him. He spread his knees and pulled her flush against his chest, and she looked over her shoulder to frown at him.
"Are you sure you have time to goof around?" she pressed once more.
"I told you, I'm not busy." He pulled his hands out of the water and ruffled them through his hair until it fell into his face, slightly damp. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you didn't want to bathe with me."
She turned back around, giving him an excellent view of the back of her head (he noticed that her hair was still tied up and began to play with the ends of it), and stayed quiet for a moment. "It's embarrassing that I can't even wash myself."
Saizo reached forward, dipped his hands into the water, and pulled out handfuls of water that he splashed over the top of her head. "It's fine. It's just a little shoulder wound. 's not like it's a big deal."
"It's shameful," she insisted, shuddering under the water.. "We have better things to do."
"I don't think you're going to be working hard for the next couple of days, until that shoulder loosens up," he replied. "Now, be quiet for a few minutes."
She muttered something else under her breath that he ignored. The water swirled around them as he fumbled with the tie in her hair, and when it finally unraveled, her locks spilled out into the tub and stuck to the both of them. He set the ribbon on the edge and took handfuls of water and dumped them over the top of her head, through every part of her hair until it was all wet and tamed. Kagero squirmed slightly and tipped her head back to help him reach her hairline, and she almost looked relaxed.
"I'm going to get the blood off now," he warned her.
Her body tensed against him as he pressed his fingertips to her shoulder blade, where half the blood had become wet again and dripped down her back and into the water. He went slow, rubbing the blood gently until it washed away. The water around them turned pink as the blood drifted in, clouding before dispersing. She hummed, a pleasant little noise, when he ran his hand up her arm to catch stray droplets.
He came to the edge of the wound, still bright red, and warned her once more. She leaned back against him, resting her head against his shoulder, and made another relaxed sound. It was nice, Saizo thought, to see her at ease instead of tense and stressed, and it even relaxed him as well. She jerked considerably when he finally put his hand on the wound, but he pressed his lips against the top her head and she calmed down.
"Does it hurt badly?" he asked. The blood was stiff and unyielding, and he had to scrub harder to get it to budge.
She flinched. "Not badly. It's just not comfortable. I apologize."
"I'm trying to be soft," he assured.
"Just get it over with. I'll be fine."
Her face contorted into pain a few times as he scrubbed the blood out of the slight crevice of the wound, and Saizo apologized every time she gritted her teeth and pressed herself against him. He resorted to grabbing a sponge off the side of the tub and used it to wash away the last spots of red. Kagero moaned and fidgeted.
"Almost done," he muttered, and he pressed his lips to her head once more. "Try to stop moving."
The last bit of gunk yielded to him, and he swept the sopping sponge over the wound twice more to get off the last red drops. Kagero was shaking by the time he was done, and Saizo set the sponge back on the side and folded her into his arms. Her skin was hot, even though the bath had cooled considerably; she had been in more pain than she had wanted to let on. How very like her.
"It's clean," he murmured against her hair. "No more blood."
She sighed and relaxed against him. Her legs stretched out in front of them, and her curled toes peeked out of the water. "Thank you."
They stayed quiet for a while, listening to water drip and drop onto the tile. Lingering steam wafted through the air, making it a little hard to breathe, and Saizo did his best to wave some of it away when Kagero coughed.
"Do you want me to wash your hair?" he asked.
"Not today," she mumbled. She sunk lower into the tub and nuzzled against him. "I washed my hair last night."
She breathed softly and let her eyes flutter shut, and Saizo watched the rise and fall of her chest. He fought away familiar memories of seeing it heave, struggling to take in gasps of air when she was injured or dying, and grit his teeth. He lowered his hands into the tub and dragged his hand over her thighs, tracing small patterns into the skin until she mumbled sleepily.
Her skin was soft, temptingly so. He pulled his hands up her thighs, up her sides, and settled them on her arms. Soft, warm, blemished. He had touched many girls when he was much younger, but none of them compared to the gentle way Kagero felt, the way her flesh gave under his fingers when he held her tight.
Kagero sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder, making small pleased noises while he proceeded to stroke her. They soothed him, comforted. He reached and smoothed a strand of wet hair out of her face and behind her ear, and she angled her face up towards him without opening her eyes.
It was clearly an invitation. Saizo leaned down and pressed his lips against hers. She usually smelled like freshly made paints or fragrant perfumes when he kissed her, but she simply smelled clean this time. Perhaps there was a tinge of iron somewhere from the blood and elixir, but he ignored it. Her lips were soft and wet, malleable against his own, and he sighed into her mouth.
Kagero broke the kiss to sink even lower into the bath. The bath had cooled considerably. Saizo took a lock of her hair and rolled it between his fingers, admiring the smoothness and way it shone in the sunlight coming through the windows. Her heavy breathing suggested that she'd fallen asleep, and a stroke of his fingers over her neck and the lack of response when he said her name confirmed it.
"I'm not a pillow," he muttered. Of course, he received no response. He sighed and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tighter against him, and sank his face into her neck. "Fine, fine, you can sleep."
Maybe he would take a nap, too.