Just to prove that sometimes I write about characters other than Deidara ...

Kabutofic. Non-narrative, implied OroKabu.

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Kabuto is catlike.

He knows he's catlike. He chose his ANBU disguise for a reason, and smiled to himself behind the feline mask when he wore it. No-one else could see the smile, but no-one else would have understood. Konoha never noticed the feline gleam in his eye past the innocent glint of his glasses, and was the worse for it.

Sasori knew he was a cat, and knew that a wild cat walks by himself and can only be stopped from wandering by a collar and locked doors.

Orochimaru knew better – that he was a kitten, and that a kitten given milk and appreciation grows into a cat that doesn't need a collar to stay put.

A cat doesn't love, and a cat taken in as a cat will only stay by you as long as you're feeding it better than anywhere else would.

(Kabuto thinks Sasuke is a cat, too. Possibly he stopped being a kitten before Kabuto did.)

A cat taken in as a kitten can be tamed, can grow attached, and will come back to the one who tamed it for more than just milk and a scratch behind the ear.

That no cat has a master is a fallacy.

Kabuto is a cat, but he is domesticated; he plays with things he doesn't need to kill and then kills them anyway, and he likes to think he's independent and could walk away any time he liked to if the situation got rough.

Just how independent he is is questionable, but it's easy enough for him to dismiss his willingness to stand by Orochimaru's side through dire straits as a sort of exchange when his master touches him, to think of himself as a cat being petted, indulging in the affection in between catching mice, ready to up and leave as soon as there are no more mice and the stroking stops. An exchange. Convenience.

Kabuto tells himself this and at knows at heart that it's nonsense, that he's a useful pet – a servant and friend, willing but with no choice in the matter – and that though he tells himself he could leave, he knows he won't, and not just because there's no-one else offering a bigger saucer of milk. He knows he never can.

He needs no collar; no mind-controlling jutsu on him, no seal, and the fact that he's sometimes smug at knowing it is proof enough that it's true.