Authoress: I LOVE YOU GUYS! I seriously just want to thank all of my reviewers and readers. I'm amazed at how many hits this little fic is getting. And I really appreciate all of the reviews. Thank you so much!
This particular idea has been swimming around in my head for months. Well, not so much the idea of the plot, as the idea of Orochimaru's mouth.
To fully understand this, you have to know a bit about the mouth of a venomous snake. Think of a snake fang, long, narrow and curved. This fang, in a viper, will fold up and rest on the roof of the mouth. Just keep that in your head while you read this. Or you can search on the Internet to get a better idea.
I do not own Naruto or any of the characters in this fic.
Orochimaru had been very sick for quite a while now. It had started out with him complaining of excruciating headaches. The headaches had gotten more frequent, and then they never went away. He had been bedridden for over two weeks now.
And he was getting worse.
Now he had a fever, and his temperature was rising by the hour. Kabuto couldn't figure out what could be wrong with him. He'd run every test he knew and all had come back negative. Orochimaru was perfectly healthy.
Except for the fact that he obviously wasn't.
Kabuto entered his master's dark room with some water. He approached the bed silently, fearing (and half expecting) that Orochimaru had died.
He certainly looked dead at this point. He lay on top of the blankets, breathing shallowly. During the course of the past month he had lost almost twenty pounds. Orochimaru had been a very slim 126 when he was healthy, and Kabuto knew he couldn't afford to lose much more weight. Though that was almost the least of his problems. His normally pale face was flushed with fever. As Kabuto knelt by his bed, Orochimaru opened his eyes slowly. They were dull and bloodshot.
"Orochimaru-sama, I have some water for you," he whispered, sitting down on the bed. His master turned his head away weakly.
"Sir, you have to drink." Kabuto slid his hand gently under Orochimaru's neck, so he wouldn't choke on the water. The man resisted feebly, swatting at his servant's hand.
"Not…not thirsty," he hissed quietly. But Kabuto barely heard him.
Instead, the medic nin was trying to determine what the two golf ball-sized lumps at the base of Orochimaru's skull were. They felt almost like grapes; firm, but liquid-filled.
Against his better judgment, Kabuto pressed on one of them lightly.
He was rewarded with an ear-shattering scream of agony. Touching that swelling had been a bad mistake. Orochimaru continued to howl, as he clawed at the back of his head. Expectedly, Kabuto was taken by surprise. He dropped the bottle of water and, for the first time in his life, abandoned his master.
-----
Kabuto sat on the couch, deep in thought. Whatever those lumps were, he was pretty sure that they were causing Orochimaru's headaches, at the very least. It was possible that they were the cause of his entire sickness.
But what were they?
A nameless cobra slithered past his feet. It was one of the few venomous species that his master kept. Almost as if to scold Kabuto for leaving Orochimaru, the cobra hissed at him. When he ignored it, the snake merely yawned.
And Kabuto noticed the two bumps on the back of the snake's head.
-----
He was back in Orochimaru's room only ten minutes after leaving. It appeared that the man had drifted into a light, fitful sleep.
"Orochimaru-sama, wake up," he said quietly, setting his tools down on the nightstand. Orochimaru's eyes opened sluggishly at first, but flew open when he saw his servant. He pulled his body to the other side of the bed, face contorted with anger. But, as Kabuto continued to observe him, he saw an alien emotion that tried to disguise itself as anger.
Terror.
"It's alright, sir. I'm not going to hurt you again. In fact, I think I can help you to feel a lot better." Orochimaru lifted an eyebrow. The gesture was so utterly…Orochimaru-like that Kabuto had to laugh.
"Don't worry, sir. You'll feel much better when I'm done." Kabuto then picked up one of the items he had set on the table. It looked like a goblet, but with some sort of cover stretched over the top (1).
"Sir, I'm going to need you to bite down on this, OK?" He held it close to his master's mouth. Orochimaru stared at it tentatively. Kabuto gave him a pleading look. When the older man opened his mouth to bite, his servant nearly dropped the goblet.
Kabuto had seen the fangs of a venomous snake before, but this took him by surprise. Orochimaru had not one, but five sets of viper-like fangs. Each tooth of the first pair was nearly three inches long, and was located just behind Orochimaru's human teeth. The second set was closer together, and the fangs were slightly shorter. This continued all the way back to the last set, where each tooth was a little under an inch long. Kabuto guessed that the odd spacing of the teeth was so that when the folded, the shorter fangs rested neatly within the longer ones.
Orochimaru grinned weakly at Kabuto's reaction, then sank his teeth into the filmy covering of the container. Immediately, a viscous light yellow fluid literally poured from his fangs (all ten of them) into the glass goblet. Both parties looked a bit surprised, and Orochimaru started to squirm nervously.
"It's OK, sir, relax. It's OK," Kabuto reassured, smiling gently at his master.
The cup filled up within minutes, and Kabuto pulled it away from Orochimaru. He carefully removed the covering, and emptied the liquid into the large glass beaker he had brought. He replaced the cover, and gave it back to Orochimaru.
This process was repeated four more times, and afterwards, Orochimaru was looking significantly healthier. Kabuto emptied the goblet for the last time, and screwed the top onto the beaker.
"Do you feel any better, Orochimaru-sama?" The snake man nodded and grinned weakly.
"You haven't fought lately, and so you haven't gotten to use your venom. But your body kept making it. The lumps I touched were your venom glands, and they were causing your headaches because of how swollen they were. And then you just got worse and worse because of the venom being absorbed into your bloodstream, since your glands couldn't hold any more. Essentially, you were poisoning yourself," Kabuto sighed, adjusting his glasses, "but you should be fine now."
He turned around to leave the room and let his master rest.
"Kabuto?"
The younger man looked at Orochimaru.
"Thank you."
"Of course, sir."
Authoress: Whew. Sorry this one took so long, it was Easter so I was a bit busy. I like how this one turned out. But I was listening to happy sweet Naruto music, so that might have influenced this a bit.
(1) I'm not making this up. That is basically what is actually used to milk venomous snakes to make antivenom. Although, it's been a while since I've seen one.
