The table was already set and prepared when Suigetsu dragged Haku into the room. Kisame sat, sprawled, really, at the left side, and the tanned man sat in the shadows at at the edge opposite the door he had just been kidnapped through.
"Damn, Suigetsu," Kisame rumbled. "what did you do to him?"
"Hey, he looked like this when I found him! I didn't do nothing!"
"Didn't do anything." Haku corrected, jabbing Suigetsu in the ribs.
Suigetsu twitched and shuffled Haku off his shoulder and onto the floor. Haku landed shakily and brushed invisible specks of dust off of his trousers.
"I'm sure he didn't look this bad when I checked on him earlier."
"Yeah, well, he was covered in a layer of crap earlier, so."
Suigetsu sat down at the side of the table opposite Kisame. So, that left Haku facing Zabuza.
He sat down, folding his legs underneath himself, with his back straight as a branch. A very straight branch, like one from one of those huge pines from Fire. For a second, he wondered how the Kitsune and his handler were doing, but then he noticed the food.
The table was full of the most exquisite and mouth watering food Haku had ever seen. A steaming pot of sukiyaki sat on the center of the low table, surrounded by an artful spread of thinly sliced fish. Plates of sushi and tempura were scattered along the table. It was the most food Haku had ever seen in his entire life, barring royal feasts, but those didn't count because he wasn't allowed to attend them anyways.
"Where did you get all of this?" Haku muttered. He was fairly certain that his stomach was trying to commit mutiny and take over so that it could get at the food.
"Made it." Kisame grabbed a dish of rice and began leveling it onto his plate. Suigetsu followed suit and Zabuza... well, Haku couldn't really see him, but he guessed the man was eating.
"You made all this?" Haku was decently impressed. When he was put on kitchen duty, it basically meant he couldn't sleep for the next forty-eight hours.
"Yeah, it ain't hard, you just-"
A loud gurgle interrupted him.
/Really, stomach?/ Haku blushed a little.
"Goddamn kid, just eat if you're that hungry. I didn't poison anything."
Haku nervously took a bowl of rice and sectioned a small portion onto his plate. As a servant, eating with everyone else was so rude he could barely imagine it. If Lady Terumi were here, she would have pummeled him for doing something so presumptuous as to eat at the same time as his hosts, even if they were as unorthodox as they were.
"So," Haku started, trying to relieve some of the heavy tension in the air. "what's being here like? Is it... normal, I mean." He amended after Zabuza's glare cut through the shadows.
Well," Suigetsu said around the dango. "I'm pretty sure Kisame's dating the halibut that lives in the rock formation two doors down."
Kisame scowled.
"At least I'm not pining after some dominatrix that beats me everytime I see her."
Haku wasn't sure exactly how Suigetsu's face managed to contort like that, but he was impressed at the intensity of the expression nonetheless.
"Fuck you." He muttered and casually flipped Kisame off.
"Sorry, but I'm not into bondage."
While Suigetsu was exploding into rage, Kisame turned to Haku.
"So, kid, got anyone waiting for you back in Mist?" He waggled his eyebrows in a way that was clearly meant to convey some degree of raunchiness, but with his face and those teeth, it made him look more like a shark that had found a helpless bleeding diver swimming around without a boat in sight. Haku nearly told him so.
"Er, no." Haku didn't form relationships as a rule, given that he spent most of his time making sure the Mizukage wasn't eating rotten food or slitting his wrists in some mid-life crisis relapse to his teenaged years. He didn't really see the attraction of relationships or sex in general, and didn't particularly understand the fascination people had with it. He chalked it up to one of those things that people had when they were introduced to society as children and actually had parents for the bulk of their formative years, instead of being sequestered away from other humans and having been orphaned at a tragically young age through horrific circumstances.
"Oh, I guess you've got that thing for Yagura anyways."
Haku glared at Kisame.
"I am not attracted to the Mizukage."
Suigetsu nudged Kisame with his elbow.
"That makes two of them." He leered.
There was a threatening growl from Zabuza's end of the table.
"Zabuza won't admit that he has a raging mancrush on Yagura." Suigetsu confided to Haku.
"Naw," Kisame waved a hand at them. "he's in hate."
"Hate?" Haku asked, trying to feign interest and not run out of the room going 'la, la, la, I can't hear you' with his hands clasped over his ears. Hearing about the Mizukage's love life, or hate life, as it was, was something he never wanted to do.
"It's a bit like love, except they actively try kill each other, instead of only occasionally." Kisame reached for another piece of tempura.
The table was mostly silent, with only the clinking of silverware and chewing, or in everyone but Haku's case, loudly ripping food apart with their sharp death teeth.
"Fuck it, Zabuza. Eat something. Yagura ain't gonna die just 'cause you're glaring his slave to death." Kisame threw a piece of tempura into the shadows.
A knife flew back. Kisame neatly dodged it, shrugged and went back to eating.
"Servant."
Haku suddenly found himself the point of several stares.
"I'm the Mizukage's servant," He shifted. "not his slave."
"There's a difference?" Kisame asked.
"Well, I'm sure that you all seem to think that the Mizukage spends his days devouring souls and gargling the blood of innocents, but he isn't evil. Besides, they abolished slavery in Mist when they made murder illegal." Haku said resolutely.
"Please," Zabuza growled, leaning forwards into the light. "Yagura is as much of a killer as any of us are."
He... wasn't hideous, now that Haku could see him and his vision wasn't obscured by an overlarge hood, although he didn't have eyebrows, so that was a little weird. His skin, at second glance, wasn't tanned, just dusky. He had a strong jaw, and sharp cheek bones that led up into his hairline. His short, dark hair was jagged and messy. His whole being, really, was jagged. There were no soft lines or slopes anywhere.
"He saves people. He has mercy." Haku's voice was quiet.
"Feh," Zabuza sneered. "all Yagura can do is try to keep from kicking peasants in the streets."
"He saved me." His voice had gone ice cold.
"And how many more has he killed?"
"No more than you."
The tension in the air could have been cut and served as part of dinner and probably been entirely filling. Kisame was ignoring them, looking like this happened every night and he was well versed in pretending nothing was happening and going on with eating. Suigetsu, on the other hand, looked like he was a second or two from cracking a bad joke in an attempt to keep everyone from killing sack other.
"I was under orders."
"Oh," Haku put a hand to his chest, looking for all the world like an offended duchess. "I recall those being orders to stop."
Zabuza slammed his hands onto the table. The silverware rattled and Suigetsu jumped.
"What do you know about it?!" He growled.
"I know you killed innocents." Haku knew this was a bad idea. He knew he was being stupid and trying to goad a homicidal killer who had attempted murder on him. But the Mizukage was the only thing he trusted to not sick dogs on him, amongst other things. Digging into stories he had only heard from travelers with Kitsune was probably a bad idea, but then Haku was the person who attempted to fight a known killer on his own turf with a weapon he couldn't use.
He didn't actually see Zabuza move, but suddenly the swordsman was there, his hand clinching around Haku's throat.
"Don't talk to me about innocents, you little shit. If you knew anything, you'd shut your damn mouth." He gave Haku's throat a warning squeeze.
Haku flailed his legs, trying to kick Zabuza away. He ran his fingernails down Zabuza's arms, scoring angry red lines in the scarred skin.
"Hey," Kisame's rumble filled the air, and one huge grey hand descended onto Zabuza's shoulder. "drop him, Zabuza."
"Why should I?" Zabuza gave a squeeze and a shake.
Haku made an undignified squawking noise. Really, couldn't the two deadly killers have a domestic when his life wasn't hanging from an over muscled arm?
"You'll ruin the curse if you do."
"And why shouldn't I ruin it? Give me a reason not to kill this brat."
"Zabuza, you can't!" Said a voice that sounded vaguely like Suigetsu's. "We'll all be stuck here forever!"
Fuck this noise, Haku thought, and kicked Zabuza in the stomach.
It wasn't a hard kick by far, but it was enough.
To his credit and Haku's misfortune, Zabuza barely grunted. But, he loosened his grip just enough that Haku was dropped to the floor, slumping in a heap and gasping for breath.
Zabuza scowled and kicked him in the ribs, then stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Haku's vision briefly lit up in white hot pain and he whimpered, curling around his middle.
Suigetsu dropped beside him and gently shook his shoulder.
"Hey, you gonna be okay?" He asked, his face open with concern.
I just got kicked in the ribs after suffering a major concussion and various other serious injuries. Give me a minute. Was what Haku wanted to say, but he only managed a brief moan.
"If it makes you feel better, he didn't treat any of the other drownees any nicer. Although I don't think he tried to kill any of the others as actively as he does you."
"Yay me." Haku coughed-whispered.
"Um, I guess you should just go back to your room when you can." The floorboards creaked in a manner that indicated Suigetsu was shifting his weight from one leg to the other. "Kisame and I've gotta go make sure Zabuza doesn't do anything stupid."
The tow sets of footsteps pounded away, and Haku heard the creak of unoiled door hinges.
It was hard. Breathing, that is.
Haku slowly forced oxygen past his bruised airway. His throat was unsettlingly puffy. A few more huffs and he sat up slowly, trying not to aggravate any injuries.
It was pretty clear that Zabuza was projecting his hate for the Mizukage on Haku, he knew that. Now he just needed to figure out how to survive a homicidal killer, keep a curse in place and keep the Mizukage from harm.
Right, little by little it was then.