Silk runs through her fingers, so thin the soft light of the lamp by the bed can be seen through it with ease. It slips over her skin as if it's made of liquid. If the shade were any lighter, not the deep Uchiha blue she wears like a second skin, it would be easily seen-through.
Izuna had hoped Tobirama would follow quickly, but his brother keeps him and she grows desperate to hold onto the heat he'd left her with. Looks for anything to keep focused, anchor her mind so it lingers in the promise of pleasure and the phantom feel of his hands on her.
As such, she's tried to turn herself into a show of gratitude, if only because she struggles to express it. Perfumed oils smeared over her wrists, inside her thighs and across her neck, brushed into her loose hair. The thin silk robe she wears is one she'd never intended to be seen in. Commissioned only for the most unbearable summer nights and not worn since she left the privacy of her room in her brother's home.
Some part of her felt silly pulling it on, but when she catches her own reflection in the small, polished mirror she rarely uses, even she must admit, there is an allure to the way it slips over her skin.
Now, though, she can think of little else to do, and with nothing left to occupy her mind while she waits, sorrow creeps in.
Tobirama will make a fine father. No one will harm their children without having gone through him, and Izuna must admit, now, that it's no longer his failings she fears. It's loneliness.
She knows better than most the love her husband is capable of, knows there's more to be felt now she is willing to allow it, but—the love of the Senju is not what she knows. Love amongst the Uchiha is open and freely given, it's what kept she and her brother from turning to ash alongside their brothers through innumerable losses. It's why she's here, it's what they've all fought to protect, what every sacrifice has been in the name of.
If Izuna has the child she carries, they will be loved by their mother and father, by their uncles and aunt, but who, beyond that? She cannot bear the thought of a child who grows up hated by their own clan and now safety alone doesn't feel like enough, nor does even that much feel certain.
In their world, cautions can be taken, but there is no promise of a long life, and if she cannot, at least, offer their child one filled with love, she cannot make her peace with that uncertainty.
Tobirama will be heartbroken, enough so that she considers keeping it from him. Waiting until he is gone on a mission, or she is gone to her brother's, and taking the tea then, but she's been warned against allowing too much time to pass, and she feels, after all he's done, she owes him the truth in this. Anyone else might feel it a consideration to be spared the weight of her decision, but after all they've already gone through, to keep it from him would feel scornful.
Most upsetting is how she already loves the child not yet in being, enough so to know they've come too soon.
Even the thin robe and large room begin to feel stifling and Izuna is taken by the sense that if she does not get fresh air to breathe, she may not breathe at all.
•
When he finally returns to their home, his wife is not there.
It's easy to feel her when he tries, deep into the thick woods behind the house, past the training grounds, by a stream he often swam in as a child. Without thinking closely about it, he takes the thickest of her robes he can find and hopes she won't be upset he's gone through her things.
•
Izuna knows that when she breaks the water's surface her husband will be there, sitting on the bank of grass by the water's edge. She stays under a little longer, allowing the cold weight of the stream rushing over her to clear her mind.
•
The silk that lays across the grass is far too thin to be worn outside of the home, let alone on a night like this—not cold, but far from hot—and he can't think why she'd worn it until he catches the perfume that clings to the fabric and wonders what could've changed so quickly.
Izuna finally surfaces and he averts his eyes as she steps out of the stream and twists the water from her hair. He stands to hold the robe he's brought out by the shoulders so she can slip into it with ease, thanking him quietly as she ties it and surprising him when she ignores the obi he offers and instead steps into his space and winds damp fingers through his hair to kiss him.
It's desperate, but not in the way that promises more. He feels her search for reassurance and offers whatever he can, dropping the fabric he holds to instead pull her tight against him until she draws back to breathe into his neck. He holds her and waits as her fingers knead his nape. Hopes she feels between them the same closeness as he does and that she might take comfort in it.
Izuna cradles his face in her hands and pulls back to look him in the eye. When she speaks, her words alleviate an enormous weight inside of him.
"If I were given a choice today, it would be you."
There is cause for worry in the melancholy of her tone, but she'd not say as much if she did not mean it, and he finds steadiness in the knowledge that nothing she'll say tonight will be insurmountable, now he knows this.
"The same is true for me, though, I suspect you've known that for some time."
"I may have had a feeling." The grin she wears doesn't last. "To bear children by you no longer feels like something I must do, but something I want." Tobirama's chest goes tight, not only with love, but with fear.
"And still you sound upset by it."
"Because I cannot. Not now, not yet."
"You don't feel safe."
"I feel safe with you, Tobirama, but—"
"I understand, Izuna." For perhaps the first time, he thinks he truly might. "I cannot pretend I would feel safe allowing any child of ours outside of sight, after this last week." Tobirama himself has grown up under constant threat, but even still, he's not grown up feeling as though he must watch every step he takes in his own home.
"I expected you'd be angry."
"I am. I've rarely felt anger with myself as I do now. I am the reason their hate runs so deep, I'm the one who's done this to us." Izuna offers no words, only runs a soothing hand over his hair and kisses his neck.
Tobirama cannot recall having ever seen Izuna frightened, even when they first spoke openly of their feelings and she'd named her own fear, she'd not seemed it. Now, though, he hears it in her voice and sees the same behind her eyes.
"I am with child." Her unease is the same as that which swells to fill his lungs and pulls his arms tighter around her. "My first act as a mother cannot be a selfish one." A part of him wants to tell her no. Wants to demand she carry their child to term, beg, if he must, but—he remembers as well as she does the vitriol his men spoke with.
A child between them no longer feels like a show of strength, but one of love, and he has no desire to rush it so much he loses it entirely.
"What can I do?"
"Help me to think of something good."
•
There's comfort to be found in him, now he's proven, in blood and faith, that what's between them is what she needs. Worse than not finding love in her marriage would've been finding it and still feeling deprived, but she's sure of him now. Enough to allow herself want without reservation.
At the first brush of his lips, her heart quickens in her chest and when they push into each other more firmly, Izuna feels she could come apart from the relief of it. Her nerves sing at the taste of him, buzzing heavy and anxious for more behind her lungs.
It's easy, like this, to go dizzy with every breath that passes between their lips, each soft slip of tongue. To let go and focus only on the weight between them, shifting gravity and keeping them close enough there's hardly room left between them to breathe.
He stills her hands when she reaches for the knot of his belt.
"We should return home—"
"No." She swallows, wets her lips as she turns her palms into his, presses a kiss to the hollow of his throat before looking up at him. "I feel better here."
"You'll be cold."
"We'll warm each other."
It's all the reasoning he needs and she can hardly find fault in his weak will, in this, as he allows her to push the shirt from his shoulders and run her hands up chest, taking with them the thin armour he wears until he's made to lift his arms to remove it entirely.
Leaning in to press a kiss to his sternum, she feels his hands settle at her hips and finds a growing weight at the base of her spine spills forward as his fingers toy with the small knot that keeps her covered. Anticipation breaks a shiver across her skin, makes her hair stand on end as she pulls back to watch as he works the knot loose.
The edges of her robe drift apart only enough to bare the narrowest strip of skin. The soft sweep of cool air that teases at her has desire swelling behind her breastbone so sharp she can't help shifting her hips and feeling the way she's gone slick between her thighs with impatient arousal. With it, though, there is none of the shame she normally finds when she digs, only a kind of urgency. She's tired of denying herself.
It feels near-impossible to breathe against the weight between them as he reaches out to run his fingers along the hem of her robe, exposing her further as he does. Her entire body draws inward toward the touch when his fingertips brush the swell of her breast, the dip below her navel.
She runs her own hands over his chest, his stomach, his shoulders in turn, torn between the desire to reach more of him and the want to have his hands on her in full. If he does not touch her soon, she'll be driven out of her mind. She watches his face as he draws his thumb across the line of her curls, nail dragging and leaving unbearable want in its wake.
"Tobirama," she brings her hands up to tug at the hair at the base of his skull, "I ache for you, please—" He leans in and finds his boldness against her lips as he takes her waist, pushing her clothes aside entirely and pulling her in so they might finally feel each other with nothing between them.
Izuna always carries flames beneath her skin, but when he touches her they burn brighter than ever. Every bruise she presses into his back, his chest, his stomach is mirrored in the hands that mark her everywhere they touch. Thighs, waist, breasts, she feels him all over. She digs fingers into his nape until blood wells under her nails. The sound he makes leaves her wet between her legs, heavy weight between her hips pushing her to take one of his hands and guide it there.
He begins to work her, so good at playing her body, now, and as he teases at her swollen nerves she brings a thigh over his hip to find better pressure against the heel of his hand and steal the breath from them both.
Tobirama's mouth leaves hers to bite hard at her neck and a new delight travels down her spine and erupts between her legs. She moves to pull back from his touch, suddenly too much, but he takes hold of her hips with both hands and brings them both to kneel, he on the ground and her in his lap.
He leaves the hand still wet with her pleasure to dig bruises into her waist as the other drags up her ribs to cup her breast, thumb teasing at her where she's gone stiff and spurring a heavy pull in her chest as she sinks her hands into his hair, watching his expression as he explores. She hardly has a moment to spare for the sensation of it before he leans forward to close his mouth over the swell of her chest.
Tobirama moans over her skin, groping and mouthing as though her body holds every desire he's ever known. It's a strange feeling, having him there. Oddly comfortable to have him suck and tease at her chest, arousing without being overwhelming. Intimate enough to scratch an itch she's been unable to reach for ages, and relaxed enough she's content to let him take his time. Search her skin and tickle at her nerves as he toys with her.
He bites, especially sharp, and arousal cuts through the haze she's fallen into, urgent and sharp as he drives the air from her lungs and makes her moan. He groans against her skin at the way she pulls his hair and she can't help dragging her hips over his, leaving a mess across the clothes he still wears.
•
When he pulls back from her chest, he finds her eyes spin red in the night and rather than the way it would have set him on edge some months ago, he feels only affection. Understands enough to know, now, that she wants to remember every moment that passes between them here.
"Come, my love." She tugs at the waist of his bottoms as she speaks. "I miss the feel of you." She will drive him mad, someday. Of that, he has no doubt.
He kisses her, finds it impossible to pull away from her until he's pushed. When he kneels up she lets herself fall back against the grass, legs open around his hips as she leans up enough to slip the robe from her shoulders so she is left entirely bare. Entirely his.
"Tobirama," she's grinning as she says his name, as if she likes the way it feels on her lips, "have you forgotten yourself?"
Of course. She helps him to pull the last of his clothes off and he spares only just enough thought to pull the hem of her robe from under her hips so it might lie beneath them comfortably before he crawls over her to feel himself pulled close in every way she can reach.
Izuna makes a sound when he fills her, one of pleasure, one of love, unguarded and pleased as though she's been waiting for him, missing him as she said, and combined with the feeling of her, finally, skin on skin everywhere they touch, it pulls him apart.
"Izuna," her name scrapes from his chest and leaves him raw. "The feel of you—I cannot stand it." In her body, he finds a home he'd never known to want for.
She laughs, then, and the sound of her delight, so openly pleased as she pushes her hips to meet his, takes him deep inside of herself as she can manage, he cannot imagine a better feeling exists.
"A strange way of saying you love me," she teases, breathless.
Even having hardly moved, only just beginning to find the rhythm of their hips together, a slow-starting grind, he finds himself panting as he pushes up on one elbow and takes her jaw in hand with the other so he might look into her eyes while they move.
"How would you like best to hear it?" She shakes her head, she's smiling.
"Show me, instead. I want to feel what we share."
Close as they are, it's difficult to gather much force behind his thrusts, but he has no want to rush this. His nerves are alight, body achingly tight with ceaseless desire as they move together. The weight of her thrown against him again and again as she takes his own, pulling him down so he no longer leans above her and they are once more pressed together.
Pain mingles with pleasure as her fingers dig themselves into the open wound she's already left over his nape. When he finds her lips, he can't gather the wherewithal to kiss her properly, but he tastes his own blood on them as he licks into her mouth and bites at her jaw, her neck, her clavicle, praying she will leave every mark unhealed so he might look at her and remember how she wants him.
It feels as though they might catch fire where they touch, and as long as this feeling between them stays, making it difficult to discern where the flesh of one begins and the other ends, he could not care less.
Izuna whispers her love into his skin as he loses himself further in the rhythm they've fallen into. The heat of her body is so soft around him he can imagine no touch more consuming.
•
Izuna stares up at the stars but finds she cannot think of anything past the feel of her husband moving with her, inside and against. This close, she feels every shudder through his bones, every muscle that goes tense, every hair that rises. He overwhelms her and given the way he's been so reduced, unable to speak or act beyond his evident desire to give her more, she is not alone.
It's that, truly, the pull between them, the unrelenting current of heat that makes her chest go tight and her hips draw heavy. If she could stay suspended here, on the edge of too much with him, she would be at peace forever.
•
Tobirama pulls back from the edge as many times as he can manage, to the point of aching and beyond, keeping the pace between them slow and deep until he's almost sick with it and she stays with him all the way. Wants, as much as he does, for this moment between them to stretch as far as they can manage.
Eventually, though, it becomes too much and when she peaks against him, the sight and feel of her, body spasming as she digs hands and heels into his flesh and goes so tight as to become truly divine, truly impossible to resist, he is pulled over the edge with her.
Every muscle inside of him seizes abruptly inwards and heat rushes down his spine and forces his hips into a stutter he cannot fight against as he fills her with his release.
Her peak passes and she soothes him through the last of his, panting even as she holds him tight with her thighs, grinding up against him as she runs her hands through his hair and down his back, whispering how good he's made her feel, how she wants him to find every pleasure he seeks in her body.
•
An emptiness she hates follows when he leaves her, but he doesn't allow her long to linger on it. Slipping to her side, he leans over her to watch her face and brings his hand to find the swollen nerves between her legs. The heat that begins to grow anew in her abdomen is almost unbearable but he gives her no space to protest, pushing two fingers inside of her as he works her with his thumb and watches her.
Now he lays against her rather than over her, she feels the chill of the cool night air. Feels every inch of exposure as she lies before him with legs spread and skin bare.
Even as the pleasure becomes too much, too soon, she doesn't resist, instead reaching to grip his shoulders as she lets her head fall back and allows herself to keen into the feeling that curls deliciously, painfully tight inside of her. The cool air against her sweat-slick skin should steady her, but he leans in to kiss her neck and she finds no reprieve from the pleasure that aches in her bones.
"Tobirama—"
"How do you feel?" She hears the hysterical edge to her own laughter, but does not care to hide it.
"Overwhelmed."
"As I want you," he confesses, "as I have been."
He pulls back again to watch her closely and something in her face, the way she moves, must give away how close she is to the edge because just as she's about to tip over it he moves between her legs and mouths at her there as she digs her heels into his back and moans his name.
Tobirama seems particularly enamoured with the way she's swollen from their joining, teasing and sucking at her until she buries her hands in his hair and urges him to more.
Even more overwhelming than the sensation of it, than the way he tongues and teases and sucks, is the edge that her pleasure takes on when he pushes his tongue into her and she thinks of how he must taste himself inside. How he mouths at her as if he's starved for their combined pleasure.
The thought runs through her with strength enough to seize her body and arch her back, fingers digging into his scalp enough she knows well it must hurt as the heat swollen under her skin breaks and washes out through her nerves, leaving her loose and worn.
"You've become an addict," she breathes, heavy. Under any other circumstances, the fondness in her voice would be embarrassing. He kisses his way up her body until he reaches her neck and leans over her once more, self-satisfied as she's ever seen him.
"A predisposition that comes with my name. Though, I prefer you to any other vice I know of." Laughter bubbles from her chest once more and she feels so relaxed she might fall asleep here, like this, as he lies beside her and finally allows himself to catch his breath.
•
Tobirama finds himself grateful for his brother's foresight in having built a private bath into their home so they might have the luxury of cleaning themselves despite the late hour without resorting to the stream that has, no doubt, gone frigid with the night.
He fills the bath easily and when he makes to light the fuel to heat it, Izuna forms seals and puts her hands in the water to push flames through it until it steams. He cannot help his amusement at her impatience as he abandons the wick.
The water burns, just on the edge of too-hot, and he finds it's a sensation he's growing used to, with her. It's entirely too relaxing alongside the heaviness that always lingers after he's finished, especially strong tonight, and the sounds of Izuna next to him. Washing her hair, legs brushing his in the water as she moves. He finds comfort in her own.
He doesn't realize he's begun to fall asleep until she splashes him. The expression she wears is far too pleased for something so petty.
"If you sleep here, I may leave you to freeze in the night."
"You lie."
"I cannot be without you, Izuna. Not with any choice." He tries to swallow his nerves, he has no desire to ruin the feeling between them, but—he knows only enough of her options to fear for her. "How will you buy more time?"
"A tea. It takes most civilian women who use it, but I am strong, and your brother is the best healer the world knows. I'll be alright, Tobirama. I would not leave you so soon after we've found each other."
"You sound sure."
"You do not." She turns to face him, runs her fingers over his shoulder as she sinks lower into the water.
"You won't be the one to live with the loss if it fails." Izuna doesn't speak for a long time, enough so he begins to feel the earliest signs of chill in the water.
"I've never seen you afraid." Her voice is quiet. She sounds as he feels, and it's difficult to know what there is to be said. Water moves around him as she sits up to take his jaw in hand and turn him to face her. "Tobirama, I think this is a poor time to bear a child, but not so poor I'd die to avoid it. I wouldn't be doing this if I felt so at risk. Do you really think I'm so weak?"
"No." It's foolish, he knows. If any woman at all can survive the tea, Izuna, born and bred to be as strong as she is, with the help of his brother, no less, will recover well, but—the fear he feels refuses to be reasoned with.
"I know you are not, but I find little ease in it, even so." There is a lightness to her, then, that he doesn't expect. She runs a hand over his cheek and then takes his chin in hand to shake him.
"I think you're only bothered because you can do nothing to help." Her words rise his hackles enough he knows there's truth in them.
"Am I meant to take pleasure in my uselessness?"
"You cannot always be in control, my love." She leans in to kiss him, intending it to be quick until he follows an impulse and catches her waist in the water, pulling her close and taking comfort in the closeness he's now allowed until the water cools enough to chase them out.
A/N: I usually see people writing the Uchiha as being very literally cold, and that's always been weird to me. Their whole thing is fire, it makes sense they'd run hot, IMO? Anyways, I hope you all enjoy this chapter 💜 I miss being able to lose my mind and post every other day, but sadly, life.
P.S. Thank you guys for the lovely reviews, it's always so fun to know people are enjoying the story! 💜💜💜💜