Author's note: I'm not sure if Kimimaro's markings are tattoos or what, but since this is AU I'm gonna say they're makeup. Dun dun dun.
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It is the weirdest fucking thing, Anko decides, watching Kimimaro put on his makeup.
Well. It's not exactly makeup per se, they're ceremonial markings of his clan - but it's still fucking odd. Anko watches, perched at the side of the bed, as Kimimaro sits in front of the mirror. Dutifully he mixes a sort of charcoal paste and lines the rims of his eyes; then she watches as he takes a second mixture, this time a sort of red clay that he's diluted with water, and carefully swipes his lower lids with his fingers. He dips the pads of his index finger into the red and presses two perfect circles on his forehead, the maro-mayu of his clan.
The hair is next. Anko watches as Kimimaro carefully parts his hair to the side, plaiting them as carefully as a twelve year-old girl. He fastens the red clips at the end, and Anko decides watching him is boring as hell.
"Why do you have to do that?" Anko says. "You're going to bed. It's not as if you're going to repeat the process tomorrow morning."
"I must always bear the markings of my people, even if it is just for the night," Kimimaro says. Anko snorts.
"You look like a woman," Anko says. "Besides, this shit's gonna get all over the bed, can't you just wash your face like a normal person?" (Anko's routine, after all, consists of splashing cold water in her face and tying her hair up without brushing it. Bedtime is even worse.)
"You've never had a problem with it before," Kimimaro says.
"Yeah, but I just realized I don't know what the hell you look like without it," Anko says.
"This is a problem?" Kimimaro says.
"Yeah, because we're supposed to be fucking intimate, and you already walk around half-naked all the goddamn time, what's left for me to see?"
Kimimaro watches her for a long moment. Then he slowly begins to unfasten the plaits in his hair.
Anko gawks. Slowly, Kimimaro takes a wet cloth and wipes his face; she watches his hands as he wrings the cloth out over the basin, the colors bleeding into the water.
"There," Kimimaro says. "Are you satisfied?"
Anko's eyes widen. Kimimaro's hair falls in stringy clumps by his neck; his face is washed out, and his eyes are sunken hollows in his sockets. Anko stands behind him and presses her chest against his back, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and dropping a kiss against his freshly scrubbed cheek.
"You look like shit," Anko says, sweetly. In the mirror, Kimimaro rolls his eyes.
A/N: So, it's my personal head canon that Kimimaro would even go to bed in those markings and with his hair plaited - in the anime he's even got them when he's bed-bound hooked up to a monitor - so yeah. Plus it's all sorts of hilarious to me thinking of Kimimaro putting on makeup twice a day and Anko giving him shit about it. lol :)