Disclaimer: The original manga, Naruto, is the work of Kishimoto Masashi. Characters and settings have been adapted without authorization or approval, and I am making no profit from their use.
"Out of Hand"
There was nothing safe about it. Not the matburn on his knees, not the scratches on both their backs, and not the curious sensitivity that lingered and hurt. Definitely not Naruto's scent, sinking into his pores while Sasuke clung to his friend as he would to a secret.
Why was it ending like this? With a gasp and a shudder erasing the world for an instant, with his hand stroking a sweaty thigh as he pulled out. This was the cliff he'd kept trying to edge away from since falling in with his teammates. This was what it looked like from the bottom gazing up. He hadn't even noticed when Naruto had shoved him over his limits and they'd both started falling toward catastrophe. How was he supposed to clean up this mess now?
I should have run. After they found me, as soon as I kissed him... as soon as they tried to follow.
He'd have been waiting in Sound another day, or starting this road on his own - not wasting time, getting into a sticky mess with a moron he'd be better off leaving behind. They'd both be better off. He needed the strength of distance to ignore how he'd wanted this. It was hell on earth, but he'd wanted this so much - this whole week, complete with Naruto being an idiot and Sakura being a know-it-all.
Why the hell didn't Naruto understand that he couldn't go home? That the memories hurt? That they hurt more than ever in the rush and ebb of their bodies' unsubtle language.
"You bastard."
Naruto grinned and buried his forehead against Sasuke's shoulder, as if that had been an endearment. His old teammate had an uncanny way of hearing what you meant, not what you said - and at the most inconvenient times. Right now, the grip of Sasuke's hands left white lines and red afterimages all over his friend's skin, and he stole slow, silent kisses on Naruto's exposed neck without asking his better judgement's leave. Why hold back now? He'd never say, 'I won't let you go,' but Naruto acted like he could hear it anyway.
He was fucked. Admitting that and screwing Naruto into the floor might have been the best thing he'd done all week. At least his headache was gone.
"Hey, Sasuke." Naruto butted Sasuke's ear with his forehead and rolled flat on his back. "Remember how you said if two first-rate ninja throw just one punch, they can see what's truly in each others' hearts?"
He scowled at the question and at the rush of air on his damp chest.
Of course he remembered. The Valley of the End. How Naruto could think about that and smile, he was sure he'd never know. But he rolled on top of Naruto rather than ask, and rested his arms on the floor by his friend's head. He was warm with Naruto's legs curled around his, which was better than a sweaty chill. "Why bring that up now?"
"I dunno."
Wanting Naruto was like a broken bone he knew would hurt to set properly, but if he didn't fix it he'd never walk the same again. Not that it mattered; if he'd known how to stop, he'd have done it years ago. And at the same time, Konoha was a choice he couldn't make. They wanted him to take back his life, but only if he turned his back on Itachi's death - when he had to have vengeance. Not one of them seemed to see that when a wound healed badly like the festering remnants of the Uchiha had done, you needed a clean break to set things right.
Instead of seeing that, Naruto was kissing him again. Undemanding kisses drove him to push back, fully aware that each touch reminded him of what he was losing. Every inch of his skin and bone knew he couldn't have this, but he couldn't contradict the visceral knowledge that he did. Right now. Whatever the hell it was, the bond between him and Naruto...
He'd break it if he could, but at least for today he couldn't.
"I guess I figured out what you were trying to say back there," Naruto went on when kisses had faded to a touch, forehead to cheek. "About how I shouldn't be with you if you can't come home. And I was wondering if you knew that I'm here because you'll come back someday no matter how much sex we don't have." For a split second, the serious Naruto his goofball rival had turned into was resting like a smoking ember in his arms. Then his bright smile came back with a chuckle and set all of Sasuke's world back in order. "But... I still vote for 'do', y'know."
"I don't have to read your mind for that, moron. You've been telling me all week." He'd never heard when it was that Naruto had stopped wanting Sakura, but he'd probably have to ask Kakashi-sensei if he wanted to know. The moron himself hadn't understood the question. "Besides, since when are you a first-rate ninja?" Sasuke pushed up off the floor, bearing with the cold, and walked over to the bathroom. "You can't make up for quality with quantity. I'm taking a shower." He was more glad than ever that some inns put private showers with the larger suites. At present, he didn't relish the thought of being seen.
"I'm coming, too!" Naruto yelled out, bounding after him. Figured. Sasuke didn't object, already missing his touch across the distance of half a room despite himself.
He had to close his eyes for a second and pause to steady himself at the doorframe, waiting for their bodies to collide. They'd touched so many times over the years, left so many memories in his skin; they shot like lightning now under Naruto's hands, but his mind felt like it was slowly returning from somewhere far away. Like he was looking at a beautiful picture of someone else's life.
Then the moments with Orochimaru welled up out of nowhere and made him sick inside. It was a sudden relief that he'd never let Snake-breath have his way. Naruto's touch made his skin hum from a finger's breadth away. Their awkward struggle on the floor had spun into a fragment of memory, like the first time he'd thrown a kunai or blown a fireball over the lake behind his home. If he'd been with Orochimaru, it couldn't have felt like that. His skin would have wanted to crawl right off his bones, and that'd be the memory he was stuck with forever.
As if he'd let Orochimaru anywhere near Naruto, even as a memory.
The sleeping snake thrummed in his consciousness, somewhere far away. He wouldn't- Sasuke couldn't let him-
Hadn't everything just now been him, been Sasuke? His own ridiculous desires, his own actions. No part of that thing should have touched Naruto...
Right?
"Oi, Sasuke. Are you going, or do I have to show you how to use the shower like I had to show you how to-"
His spine snapped straight and he whipped around, questions forgotten. "Shut the fuck up! I would have figured it out!" How was he supposed to have known blowjobs weren't as intuitive as he'd thought? And why the hell had that moron's teacher had him editing erotica during training? Didn't he know that Naruto couldn't be trusted to spell anything more complicated than 'ramen with extra porkchops'? Sasuke stalked into the bathroom, ignoring the mirror showing him how red his face had turned.
I can't believe I want that numbskull. Maybe he could rule out Orochimaru ever trying to break out and 'play'. He had the most ridiculously abominable taste in men in history - he'd never have to share.
Except with Sakura, and that was different. She was like their sister.
Sasuke's mind went numb while he turned on the shower spray and felt the cold water growing warm on his skin, waiting until it was scalding before he turned down the heat.
Like family.
Naruto had tried to tell him once, that was what their bond had meant to him, and he'd said it couldn't be. After all, someone who had never had a family couldn't understand what that meant. His own heart shouldn't have felt the same.
He didn't want a new family. He wanted his mother back, and his father, and the brother he'd loved. If that wasn't possible, he wanted to kill the man who'd taken all of it away from him. Itachi... The name, the face, a thousand memories echoed in his skull, trying to break his mind open, and fighting for space with an image of a stupid blond wearing an idiotic, mile-wide grin...
"Hey, don't hog all the water!"
"Would you shut up for two seconds?" The cacophony inside his head was bad enough. The comparatively peaceful storm of screwing Naruto had blown the noise temporarily away, but all of it was coming back to life now. "I wasn't kidding when I said this was over! You, me, not happening! So get this through your steel-plated, three-inch-thick skull: I am not coming home. Stop asking."
Trying to think felt like a full-body bruise the morning after a rough mission, and pushing Naruto further away was ripping him open in a way he'd tried to forget three years ago. But the tremors of fire in his friends blue eyes had never changed. "Stop asking me to stop asking, if being a stubborn jackass is so dumb. I never asked you what I could do in the first place!"
"Fuck this," Sasuke muttered, and he paced back toward the door. Taking a length of rope from his room, he wound it around Naruto's chest and arms while his former teammate was still blinking in confusion. If there was one thing he knew about Naruto, it was that he rarely knew you were going to attack unless you were already fighting or you warned him. The fact that he won so many fights was a sad statement on the entire ninja world.
"Hey, what's the big idea? Sa-"
Before Naruto's mouth could close, he stuffed it full with a washcloth, then threw the end of the rope over the shower head to hoist the blond in the air. Once the loose end was tied to the water knob, he was free to soap up and rinse off in the privacy of his own thoughts.
Although he didn't much want to be alone with those either.
"Hahhge! Hnn nga hgg-! Hngai ee, uu ah-hag!"
"You're a ninja. Untie yourself." For all of the short while it took him to get clean, Sasuke avoided looking his former teammate, current distraction, and temporary lover in the eye. Instead, he focused on a spot of grout on the wall and thought about as little of anything as he could. He had to get his head back on straight, as soon as possible.
He had to get every hint of Konoha - and every hint of Naruto - out of his life.
His problem kept jumping up and down like a fish on a line in the corner of his eye, attention directed at getting himself free now that he'd figured out that shouting muffled obscenities wasn't getting him anywhere. "Eh-hay khahi hahegnay heha-eo!"
"Shut off the water when you're done, moron." As if he was ever going to let Naruto beat him. He had a destiny to meet, and he was never going to be able to handle it if he couldn't hold his own against one singularly stubborn blond, no matter how hot he'd grown up to be.
Grabbing a towel from the pile, Sasuke walked off to the sounds of an indistinct scream and metal tensing under its bobbing load, and he slammed the door behind him. It was an easy thing, clearing his mind. He'd been doing it for as long as he could remember. He just had to focus everything on what was right in front of him, and remember why he was doing this.
Towel. Dry skin, dry hair. Find pants. Kill Itachi. Everything else was a distraction.
As he pulled his pants onto one leg at a time, he caught a glimpse of the mirror, reflecting back the overturned table and the scattered scrolls that'd been victim to his...
His what?
Breach of self-control? Fit of insanity?
No sense mincing words in his own head. The whole room was a disaster because he'd fucked Naruto.
He'd...
His eyes closed all on their own, blocking out the images of furniture littered around him, but the memories were all inside his head. He'd never forget how good the taste of his sweat had been, how warm the touch of his skin-
Naruto had somehow managed to smell like a ramen shop, even though they'd been way back out of nowhere for so long. It was too real to have imagined, not like dreams that woke him up with messy sheets in a dark, lonely room underground. Dreams vanished too fast into the shadows and out of mind, and it had been easy to shut them away. But not the touch of Naruto's skin, the breath on his ear, the way they dove into each other without holding back - the sensations that echoed in his nerves, ghosts of feelings that he didn't know how to fucking turn off. Naruto hadn't been faking a second of that. He'd never really believed Naruto was capable of lying well enough to pull off this past week, but telling himself that it had been an act to get him home was easier than believing.
He'd given up being happy too long ago for that chance to exist. Happy was for people who hadn't lived his nightmares. Happy was for the innocent and the ignorant, not for him. That dream was bullshit. Naruto wasn't the only thing he couldn't forget. He'd have to wipe out the image of his parents, dead on the ground, and he couldn't. Even if he could, he wouldn't.
But-
He couldn't even claim that he'd lost himself in the heat of an unfortunate moment, then come to his senses when he cooled his head. He'd found himself there - the self he'd left behind. The self he thought he'd burned away.
Warm drops fell on his hand, and his senses reawakened, letting a bit of reality in. His hands were aching, tense... gripped in his towel hard enough to hurt, and shaking. And the drops kept falling, far too warm to be confused with the occasional drip from shower-damp hair.
They couldn't be tears. He wasn't crying - his body was still. There was no sobbing, nothing to break the oppressive quiet of the room except the sound of his breath. How could they be tears? Then he heard his breath more clearly, harsher and faster than he'd realized, burning his lungs... He felt dizzy...
He was hyperventilating?
Sasuke tightened his gut and forced himself to exhale slowly, to a count of five, and breathe in just as slow, over and over. Raising his hands to his eyes, he felt the running streams that wouldn't stop no matter how calm he tried to make himself. He had to lock down his whole body before he lost it. No more tears. The damp towel cooled his face. His slowed breaths bounced against the cloth and pushed back towards him. If he'd broken away from Naruto and Sakura once, he could do it again.
But right now, he had to get out of this fucking room.
Without taking another look at the floor, he stalked toward the sliding door and threw it open with a smack against the frame. He would have liked to have thrown it hard enough to rip the wall in half, but unlike certain people, he had self-control. From now on, he'd find a way to exercise it.
"Long time, no see, Crabcake. Was it good for you, too?"
Before he had consciously recognized the voice's owner, Sasuke found himself quickstepping down the hallway with a fist ready to land on the bastard's jaw. It took another second to realize that the reason he'd stopped mid-blow was Sakura, who'd body-blocked him about a foot shy of impact.
"Excuse me?" he growled. Good thing Sakura was holding him back, too. That slit-eyed, pale-faced bastard long since had it coming. He knew that face.
"Sasuke-kun, please trust me. Killing him won't help anything."
"If he just said what I think he said-"
A hollow smile showed up on the freak's face. "Well, we could all hear that Naruto was enjoying himself-"
"You know, every time I see you, I want to bash your skull in."
"I get that a lot," he answered, never dropping that grin.
"Just... stop, Sai," Sakura interrupted. "Quit while you're ahead."
'Sai'. That was right. He'd been an insufferable annoyance when Orochimaru had first introduced him, too - said he'd worked for someone named Danzou, and had been selling out Konoha. Where the fuck had he come from, anyway? He'd have remembered if there'd been an asshole like that in the Academy. Then the bastard'd said he was there to kill him, but instead decided to sell out Danzou...
... for his new teammates. And the 'bonds' he was so interested in seeing at work.
Sai. The new third man in the three-man cell. And who could say when he'd sell out Team Kakashi? Of course, he'd been assigned to the traitor's position. Let him. They'd find someone else - again.
That bastard wasn't worth his time, anyway. "I suppose it's appropriate that the Hokage sent my replacement to remind you that you've all got somewhere to be," he told Sakura when he calmed down enough to lower his fist.
"Sasuke-kun..." At least Sakura didn't try to claim he was wrong, not that she'd be able to. The black-haired bastard was standing right there, fetching them for Konoha.
He faced her down with deliberate silence while she tried to think of something to say. He'd meant to remind Sakura of everything she already knew - how screwed up this little party was, and how nonexistent the chances were that he'd ever have a place back in Konoha - and when he saw her wince, he knew he'd done it. Why Karin looked troubled was more confusing, but there she was, crossing her arms and biting her lip. Suigetsu was the only one in the room doing anything predictable. He'd poked his head out of his door to look at the commotion and was examining the newcomer with very appropriate suspicion.
Just remembering that his replacement existed made it easier to tell all his old friends to fuck off. They could say what they wanted about how they'd been like a family, how much they cared, how they'd go to any length to bring him 'home'. It was all a pretty lie. His position had been filled.
"He's got the interpersonal skills of rotten mayonnaise, hasn't he?" The jackass met Sasuke's glare without flinching, even though Sasuke could feel his fist clenching involuntarily and his lip curling up from his teeth in a snarl. Most people found that sufficiently frightening. "You know, I can recommend several books-"
Sakura smacked him across the head with her bag. "Did none of those books teach you how to read the atmosphere?"
"I thought it was obvious that I wouldn't 'replace' him even if you'd let me." The stranger turned a perfectly serious stare at him - no crazy, fake smiles this time - and this time, Sasuke was the one who felt like wincing. "They won't, by the way. But if you can't see that, explaining won't help."
He kept his eyes locked on the bastard and tried to puzzle him out. It was darkly fascinating, staring down someone he couldn't see as anything but a traitorous, unsavory, and slippery piece of shit - wondering how to get him away from people he had a vague desire to know were safe somewhere, not sure if he even had the right to care - and knowing that the other man thought exactly the same of him. Sai wouldn't be wrong to think it, either. Not objectively. That didn't mean the fucker had any right to talk to him.
Then their moment of mutual contempt shattered to pieces, thanks to the cutting whine of metal twisting and pulling, followed by an even louder clatter on ceramic tile. Sasuke turned around just in time to hear a torrent of water smash against the hallway's bathroom door and see the small but violent flood dashing out from underneath.
"It's all good! I'll fix it!" Naruto yelled. Apparently, he'd been able to remove the gag after he'd broken the shower head to get out of his bindings.
"Three years, and you didn't learn how to untie a damn rope?"
"The rope was wet, you asshole! What did you expect?"
"Maybe for you to not suck for once!"
Once the percussive strikes of water on the door died and the flooding slowed to a trickle, the quiet sounds of stifled laughter appeared.
Karin and Sakura. Giggling. Together.
Something was wrong here.
"Ah, Sasuke..." Karin managed, swallowing her laughter for the moment. "Is there something you need to tell us?"
"What? That I tied Naruto to the shower head? Any idiot could..." He trailed off as the girls shot each other big, eyebrow-arching looks over knowing smiles that he wished he couldn't decipher. "Not like that! What the hell's gotten into you two?"
"What's gotten into them?" Suigetsu asked, the only one not laughing out of the whole room. "You're the one who tied your gay boyfriend to a running bathroom fixture that didn't have the tensile strength to hold him there."
Sakura bopped Sasuke on the forehead, still cracking up. "Idiot! What were you thinking?"
"Or was he even thinking at all?" Karin answered before he could get a word in, then the two of them started laughing even harder, collapsing on each other's shoulders. Karin was even helping Sakura shrug her knapsack back on after it had come off in the giggle fit. He'd spent most of his life watching girls fight over him, and he'd learned to tell the difference between hostility and camaraderie, as indistinct as kunoichi sometimes made them.
He didn't like it. That was scary as hell.
"That's enough," Sasuke muttered, then whipped back towards the bathroom and yelled, "Don't bother fixing anything, Naruto! Just get your pants on and go!" Naruto probably couldn't even do it right anyway. He'd fix the wall himself.
"Okay, okay!" A few doorslams later, his old teammate ran out of the bedroom, zipping his pants while he ducked into the meeting room across the hall. His footsteps splashed on the soaked floor, and Sasuke shut down the echoes in his head showing him their fight three years ago. A vision of a younger Naruto fighting him on a waterfall - of a shirt ripped to shreds by a chidori and screams echoing on the rocks - only haunted Sasuke for a moment. Naruto was his regular, fully-dressed, idiotic self again when he came out.
Dropping that damned forehead protector back into his pouch.
Somehow, in the sounds of fading laughter, nothing felt as serious as it should have been. Everyone who was heading back to Konoha without him gathered up their packs, but it didn't feel like goodbye would have to. No sickening twinge in his gut when he saw Naruto keeping that thing, nor the pained shivers in his skin reminding him how hard their bond would be for him to break. Even though it was right in front of him, everything felt like a faint, unreal world playing on a screen. His feet wouldn't move. He couldn't summon his voice.
Naruto ran around the suite to pick things up and called out to the others. Punched his third teammate lightly in the stomach for speaking out of turn. Next to the rush of his own blood in his ears, sound faded from the scene in front of Sasuke's eyes.
The first thing he felt was Naruto's lips, kissing him goodbye, then the grip of Naruto's hands on his towel. He didn't try to stop himself from wrapping his arms around Naruto's waist and taking every second he could from that kiss. If this really was the last time, the way he had every intention of it being, then that moment was all his.
"Love you," Naruto whispered next to his ear, probably not quiet enough to escape the ears of everyone else in the room but Sasuke was willing to pretend they couldn't hear it. His friend's arm and hand slipped through his fingers while Naruto ran for the door and this two waiting teammates, yelling, "See you later!"
"... Yeah."
For that second, right up until the door closed behind them, he didn't have the voice to argue. Then he saw Karin and Suigetsu, watching him with matching evil grins.
"What?" He fixed them each with a death glare in turn, which still wasn't cowing people like it should have done. "If anybody's got a problem, take it up with him. This isn't my fault."
~/~
It was the breath on his face that woke Hidan up. He'd gotten used to the weight, but the huff-huff-wheeze that came quick and ticklish from a tiny little pink nose was always too much. The press of fur and a pudgy belly was annoying enough once he'd woken, though. The little fucker was using his ear as a bed, and the only thing he could hear through the warm, flopsy weight on his skull was the manic rhythm of the bunny's heart.
Fucking bunnies.
If it weren't for the fact that the little buggers weren't even real, he'd fucking kill them all.
As it was, he'd learned it was better to ignore them. Nothing was more frustrating than pinning one of those damned beasts down and getting set to put it out of his misery, then watching it miraculously wriggle out of his grip and get away free. Nothing could hold them. They were always just beyond his reach, except when they were sleeping on his fucking head.
And, unless he missed his guess, that was another one taking a stroll up the side of his chest. Battle-hardened muscles of steel all over his body, and he still felt punched in the gut every time one of the critters bounced on him. It was one hell of a way to wake up. Or live.
Haunted by god-damned illusory bunnies.
No way did anyone writing his gospel for the memory of Zashin ever get wind of this. They'd be dead before their pen hit the paper, and he'd make sure their afterlife didn't put them somewhere that they could talk to the god direct. History was never going to learn that the fucking Uchiha was torturing him slowly into insanity with hordes of bunnies.
Hidan had never had much to think about the guy before, but now he knew one thing for sure: Uchiha Itachi was an asshole. The fucking patron saint of assholes. How the hell had he found out that bunnies were his-
Well, 'mortal enemy' was a little dramatic. But Hidan didn't like them. He'd never liked them - now less than ever. Anyone who ever tried to tell him again that bunnies would grow on him if he just gave them a chance was going to suffer horribly before they died. No warnings, and no second chances. Maybe they should see how they liked it, being surrounded day and night. He couldn't even escape them in his dreams, because Itachi was that much of an asshole.
He sat up, and the bunnies on his head and chest hopped a few feet away. The one sitting by his feet, staring at him endlessly with those freaky red eyes set in fur whiter than hot ash, didn't move a muscle. Another one hopped over from where Kakuzu was checking his scrolls as soon as he stirred and nudged his arm with its twitchy little nose. None behind him. With a heavy sigh, Hidan looked up at the ceiling. Sure enough, there was one defying gravity, hopping between stalactites without a care in the world.
"There are five of them today. These fuckers are breeding or something."
"I told you, apologize to Uchiha. Everything you've tried to do has made it worse."
"And why the fuck should I apologize? Huh? I only said what everyone was thinking."
"We kept our mouths shut because we all remember what happened to Sasori, and that was an accident."
Like anyone could forget the two days the puppet master had spent wandering in a fog, pulling on strings that didn't exist and not saying a word to anybody until he'd uttered the last words he'd ever said to Itachi: 'I think we understand each other,' he'd said. 'Make it stop.' His wooden face had never changed, but his voice had sure sounded like he'd been through thirteen kinds of perdition. If Sasori'd gotten any more pen pal letters from Orochimaru after that, he sure as hell had never read them out loud.
Members of Akatsuki who'd just kill you if you pissed them off were leagues better than the ones who thought they were above that - and who had a sense of humor. Hidan didn't begrudge Kisame his partner one bit.
"No one's opinion was asked on the subject of what Uchiha Sasuke ever let into his pants," Kakuzu sighed, "and it's not worth it to cross Itachi. Just say you're sorry. It doesn't matter if you're not."
Not likely. A stupid illusion couldn't beat him for eternity. That was the gift of Jashin, and Jashin certainly wouldn't be understanding of him kowtowing to some upstart Konoha bitch just to get rid of a few phantom bunnies. Even if they were freaky as hell.
"Apologizing and lying are both against my religion," Hidan answered while he pulled on his cloak. "That red-eyed rat bastard had better not hold his breath waiting."
Kakuzu straightened his hat with a sigh. "You could try telling him that, I suppose, if upsetting him is a matter of principle. Maybe he'll get mad enough to try to kill you. I'm sure that will help."
"Just shut your trap! It's my problem, I'll handle it my way. If that fucker thinks I'm going to apologize for sayin' things like they are, then I'll apologize to him in hell!"
He could hear Kakuzu rolling his eyes from the way he groaned, even though his partner in crime was walking out of the cave. "It's not the truth of it that matters. Imagine how you'd feel if someone called your little sister a whore to your face, Hidan."
"My little sister worked in a damned whorehouse!"
The old ninja squinted backwards, with an expression Hidan knew well enough. Kakuzu was deciding whether he had the time to spare trying to kill him permanently. He must have decided they were in a hurry, since he turned back to the path a moment later. "It's an honest profession," he answered. "And if you're going to handle your little rabbit problem, handle it. One more complaint, and next time I sew your head back on, I'll sew your mouth shut, too."
"I'll handle your mom," Hidan muttered. Then, as he took a step towards the exit, he felt something warm and fluffy settle on his foot. The bunny looked up at him with eyes like spots of blood in the snow and weighed down on his toes like a lop-eared piled of bricks. His step went sprawling, and he barely found purchase before he fell. To make everything worse, all four hoppers on the ground gathered up in front of him to stare. And stare, and stare some more.
Itachi would be getting his punk ass killed as soon as Hidan could be sure that killing him would end this fucking genjutsu. Just his luck, the Uchiha would probably be one of those whose spells got stronger when he died. He definitely had the annoying, grudge-holding personality for it.
Hidan righted himself and took another step toward the cave entrance, where his partner was waiting with a none too patient scowl for the way he was 'handling the situation'. Maybe Kakuzu'd have more sympathy if he had to live with this shit, too, but any thoughts he might have had on how to share his misery with his teammate vanished when the rabbit on the ceiling dropped down to his shoulder and started breathing in his ear.
"Fucking hell! Would you cut that out? It tickles!" he yelled, and shrugged off the bunny, who hopped from his shoulder to join the others at his feet. "I swear, that bitch Itachi is going to get a cut for every time you fuckers hop, and he'll say he's sorry to me once for every whisker on your goddamn twitchy noses! Just you wait!"
Kakuzu sighed with that killing look still in his eyes as he waited by the road. "Get a move on, would you? We've got a cat to catch."
Steeling himself to step on a bit of the floor that wasn't covered in hopping fluff, all Hidan could think was that the fucking Two-Tails was lucky she wasn't a fucking bunny.