Tobirama has had some time to think, and this idea, slow-built each time he brushes the scar across Izuna's side, each time he's reminded how much more she stands to lose between them, has finally solidified in his mind.
When Izuna has made clear her cycle has settled so they might love freely, he is finally given the chance to see it through.
•
In the evening, they sit across from each other at the table in their room, faces lit by the soft glow of the lantern beside them. Izuna can't help but find the way the light plays across her husband's skin distracting in its appeal.
"I have given thought to what you said."
"What I said?" Things have been peaceful between them, insomuch as they ever could be, with the penchant they share for teasing.
"About how much you are risking. Trusting." He lays between them a length of soft-seeming rope and a sheathed tantō bearing an ornately carved handle. "I have nothing of equal value to put in your hands besides my own life."
Curiosity piqued, Izuna reaches out to unwind the rope, run it through her fingers. It is soft, indeed.
"There are seals painted into this."
"To bind my chakra, when used together with the correct hand seal." Ah. To think of him bound, and at her mercy in full—to think he wants—
"And this?" When Izuna removes the dagger from its sheath, she finds marbled metal and a blade sharp enough she hardly feels when it opens her skin as she runs her thumb along the edge, blood welling in its wake. She licks the blood away and watches Tobirama speak.
"Yours, to do with as you wish. Though, if you are amenable, I would like a wound to match your own."
"Tobirama—" She thinks of the fever the wound brought her, the way the muscle there still aches like an old bruise when it rains. No, she does not wish to put him in harm's way, not truly, though the idea of him bearing forever a mark she's left is appealing. "I will go as deep as I am capable of healing."
"I want more."
"I thought this was about me? I would like my husband to survive the week." Truly, Izuna hopes the word never loses its effect on him. He always becomes heated when she speaks it with love. "Don't worry, I'll care for you enough to stay any infection that might try to take root, no more. You'll have a lovely scar."
She watches the way he moves as he removes shirt, knowing it pleases them both to have her eyes on him. It's no longer a novelty to be open with each other, and she finds it brings more pleasure as it is now, in comfort. When he kneels in front of her, facing away for her to bind his arms, she presses a kiss to the knot of his nape and his head falls forward with a sigh.
The blindfold is an impulse. She takes his sash from the ground and brings it around his eyes. He doesn't startle, but his tone carries a question when he speaks her name, she reminds him to trust her and he does.
When she gets him on his back and tests the efficiency of the blindfold and the bindings, she takes him at his word when he says both are effective. Can feel for herself the way his chakra withdraws further than she's able to feel. Satisfied, she kneels over him and settles into the cradle of his hips, where she'll feel it the moment he grows against her.
Izuna savours the slow release of breath he lets out beneath her, enjoys the way the shadows play across his skin in the dim candlelight and the way she feels him shift under her weight. A thrill runs through her chest when she reaches for the belt of her top, dropping it to the side and sweeping her shirt up over her head to leave her bare from the waist up.
She leans forward and settles against him, chest to chest, skin to skin, hands folded over his shoulder as she rests her chin over them and watches the the feel of her play across his face. His breath goes heavy enough she feels herself lifted as his ribs expand.
"Was the blindfold a cruelty or a mercy? Do you deprive me or save me the temptation of what I cannot have?"
"I'm not sure, does it feel cruel? Or does it feel like a mercy?" She bites at the sharp bone of his collar and whispers into his skin. "Do you not feel tempted?"
"Beyond comprehension."
"A cruelty, then." She can't keep the pleasure from her voice as she sits back up, reluctant to part but eager to continue. He moves to follow and she pushes him back to the ground. "Be patient." The heat of him swelling slow against her when she leans back is anything but.
Izuna picks the blade up from the ground and takes a moment to appreciate the ornate detail of it once more, running her finger along the cut of it, before bringing the edge of it to the hollow of his throat. She hardly has to do more than rest the weight of the steel itself over his skin for blood to pool.
Tobirama's mouth falls open as she drags it down along his skin, stopping at his sternum and tipping forward to lick the blood that gathers there, enjoying the way his muscles jump under her touch as she splays her free hand across his ribs.
"This is not what I imagined." His voice is still far too steady and Izuna finds she is eager to unbalance him, though she appreciates that he doesn't make it too easy.
"No? What did you imagine?" Tobirama swallows hard as she leaves his skin with a kiss, and pulls back, pressing the blade just below the hard swell of his pec, this time. She drags it along his skin as he answers.
"Less touching," he breathes. She traces the wound with her tongue and shifts up to graze her teeth over his nipple on an impulse.
"Is this a complaint?" She bites and he shifts sharply under her, breath leaving him.
"No." He swallows as she repeats the gesture on the other side. "I only wish I could see you." There is a strain to his voice, now, that she enjoys.
When she shifts herself to sit lower on his thighs she drags her body across the swell of him as she goes, amused at the way he shudders into the touch. This time, she cuts across the sharp swell of his hip bone. The skin jumps under her tongue when she follows it.
"Izuna, please."
"Mm, not now, my love." It takes the wind from him as it often does, chest falling heavy under her touch before he, quite abruptly, begins to fight his bindings for the first time since she put them on.
"I want to see you." He demands.
"No." She slips back into his lap and when he strains upward she grounds him with her weight, allowing him to rise with the leverage of her body.
"I wish to see you so I might please you properly," he does his best to persuade her, leaning forward, seeking out her mouth. Close enough to share breath until she tilts her head back at the last moment and allows his lips to find her neck, instead.
"You will please me regardless," she laughs. She has an idea, spurred by the slick slide between her own thighs and the heat in her belly, but she's loath to pull away from the bruises he sucks into her skin with a reverence that almost overwhelms her will. "I have another idea."
"What is it?" He pants hot against her skin as his mouth finds her breast. A moan escapes her throat in tandem with his own. "Whatever you wish, I will do."
"I wish for you to stay as you are," she explains, voice deliberate as he bites down on the stiff peak of her breast and pushes his hips up against hers like he can't stop himself any longer. "Lay back for me."
He listens, reluctance is written clearly into his movements, but he goes. Even warm as it is, the air chills her neck, chest, breasts where his mouth has been, where his blood is smeared across her stomach. She adores the tease of it.
She crawls up until she straddles his mouth and he doesn't have to be asked to seek her out, pressing his lips to her through the thin linen of her pants, too light to be worn in polite company.
When his tongue catches her swollen gathering of nerves, the pressure of it combined with the slightly rough scrape of fabric make her pitch forward and bury her hands in his hair as she knows he loves.
"There," she urges, sure she's pulling at his hair too tight but struggling to contain herself. "Keep going, just there." He hums against her as she grinds down against his face, careful not to smother him now his strength is diminished, but only just.
The feeling is too good and it always amazes her how the pull under her skin so much stronger, deeper than it is when she does this for herself. She comes apart at the thought of how much better it will be when he touches her bare and thanks the stars that he is not the frigid lover she'd have thought him before they married.
When the wave that carries her climax recedes, she allows herself to slip from him and collapse at his side. He immediately turns to nuzzle into her hip, kissing along the cut of it. Izuna feels heavy and sweet with the force of her orgasm, and she allows her legs to fall open for him so he can settle himself between them and press his mouth to her again.
After the second climax he wrings from her with his mouth, she pushes him back and crawls into his lap to grind against him, wet through both of their clothes, mouthing messily at his throat. She holds to her self control enough not to give into his requests to have the bindings removed, to let him see her, kiss her, touch her, but only just.
Instead, she whispers against his skin how much better his touch feels than her own, how she brings herself off imagining him under her, pushing up against her, desperate, just like this, whenever he's away. How he feels better than she imagined and she couldn't live in a world where she was deprived of the pleasure he brings her.
•
The heat between them must overwhelm her as it does him. She pulls away and he mourns her weight until she works to bare him and runs her hands up his thighs. When her mouth finds him, he feels it might not be a dire cost to incur whatever wounds might be needed to escape the bindings that keep him from the sight.
Izuna is near too much to bear when she allows him the pleasure of her mouth. To be treated so softly by her sharp tongue, taken as though she is hungry for his pleasure as much as her own—more so, even—it is near unbearable, and somehow more so when he is deprived of witnessing it himself.
When she crawls back into his lap, all her skin is bare against his own.
"Stay still." He strains against his bindings, trying to distract himself with the way they burn against his skin as she takes him in hand and finds her centre but does not allow him to move as she takes him. "Who knew you could be so obedient?" Her words are half-teased as she rolls her hips against him, hands braced over his chest. "For an Uchiha, no less."
The sound that escapes him is far from dignified.
They've only barely caught their breath when she slips the blindfold from his eyes and cuts his bindings loose. His arms ache with the return of his chakra and the strain of the rope both, but it's impossible to be bothered by the sensation as Izuna works to massage the blood back to them.
Her lips are slick and red with his blood and he desperately wants to taste himself on them. When he can feel his fingers again, he reaches up to cup her face, runs his thumb along her bottom lip and smears the blood across her cheek.
"Once more, Izuna. Something deeper."
Her want matches his, evident in the way she leans forward to sate them both and taste the copper between them. When she pulls back, her eyes are sharp, warm.
"You're unrelenting."
Izuna takes the knife from where it's fallen beside them and shifts closer as he wraps his arms around her waist. She breathes into his skin and draws the knife down, long and deep, along his spine, soothing him through it as she whispers her claim to him. A mark that will last.
Tobirama tilts his head back and breathes through the pain of it. Savours the sharp pull of her possession as she runs her teeth along his throat. Before the pain can fade, he digs his fingers into her hair and urges her to look at him.
"Come closer."
There is little to spare between them, but the space that is there evaporates and when he kisses her, she digs her fingers into the open flesh over his spine. The pain is enormous and he knows his own hands must purple her skin.
•
Izuna doesn't try to heal him, knows he wouldn't let her if she tried, but she insists on applying a salve to prevent any infection from taking root, he won't convince her to neglect his care entirely. When his wounds have been cleaned and bandaged, she sits back on her heels to look at him.
"You look like you've been mauled." She says it with a sly smile as he takes in the bruising, the still-there marks of his teeth along her neck, her collar.
"You're not much better."
There is a question between them, one that has lingered in her mind since he made his request—offer—she's not sure which.
"Do you hope for me to find the same satisfaction in seeing my mark cut into your skin as you do in mine?" His brows draw tight, stern even now.
"I find no satisfaction in it."
"No? What, then?" Tobirama reaches out to draw her near again, she goes easily and allows their legs to overlap as he covers the scar over her ribs with his palm, thumb tracing the raised edge of it.
"Many things." His voice is heavy, but doesn't carry the misery she worried it might. "A mark of my own ignorance. One that shows how you and I have worked to find the love we share." The thought pleases her. Izuna's eyes haven't lingered on her own scar in months, and when they do so now, it's with fresh eyes.
She kisses him slow, running her fingers through his hair. It's strange, may never not be so, to see him in this way, but she would not give it up, offered any choice.
"Who would ever believe me if I told them you were such a romantic?"
"Few enough it's hardly worth sharing, I imagine."
"I would not. I enjoy having you for myself far too much." She kisses him once more and leans back to speak. "What will you see in your own scar, now I've left it?"
"I only wished to bear it, the meaning is yours to decide."
Izuna considers all that's passed between them since they were married. The hurt that still lingers, closer some days than others, and the love that makes it worthwhile.
"And if I choose to keep it secret?" She folds her arms over his shoulders as she speaks, toying with his hair. He seems to enjoy the touch, as he always does.
"I'll assume you enjoyed having me at your mercy, even so, and think of it fondly when we are apart."
Izuna laughs, and Tobirama tips them both to the floor. He is still dizzy enough they do not pursue each other further, but she enjoys the weight of him over her. The softness found between them here tonight.
A/N: As you've all probably noticed, updates have slowed right down with the beginning of finals 😅 HOWEVER, we're at the finish line now, only the epilogue left. It'll be about a week, I'm putting together a nice, polished epub with a bunch of meta for the story for anyone who might enjoy having it, and I want to post it along with the last update 💫
Alright, love you all, enjoy 💜