A/N: I've been paying thought service to the idea of adding more description to this story. I know it needs some. But I haven't seriously tried to add more in, especially not since I've been writing these chapters last minute for a while. I hope this chapter takes a step toward remedying that, and that I can continue to describe things more in the future.
Yurg.
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Kisame
Light glittered on the surface of the lake. The water lay smooth, flat, reflecting the sky and the trees like a giant mirror. A little bit of air whispered through the trees sometimes, blurring the reflections. Even then, the lake could have been photographed and put on a postcard.
Kisame stopped several feet from its edge, and asked Samehada to do the same. Slowly, carefully, he scanned the lake from side to side, below to above. It looked ready for a postcard. The trees around it looked healthy and undisturbed. But it seemed as if, if he looked just right, Kisame could see traces of water in the surrounding dirt. He knew there couldn't be any after so many hours had passed, but he felt that they were there anyway.
Samehada made eager sounds, nudging his whole body out toward the lake. Swimming! Yes! Kisame shook his head no. "I'd rather test it first," he told the shark. "Who knows what's going on with this thing." He walked up to the edge, stopped, and listened to his body. He detected nothing, so he leaned down and placed a hand in the water. He expected to feel something painful. Subconsciously, his idea of possession had become tied to the ideas of anger, of rage, of great pain and lashing out and despair. That was what motivated the ghosts in movies who possessed people, after all.
Kisame was shocked to find that the water was not like that. It was just the opposite. As he placed his hand in the water, he immediately felt good. The water seemed unusually clean, crisp, cool: the sort of water fantasy characters are shown bathing in. Kisame trembled under the force of a deep yearning. He wanted to dive into the water. He wanted to let it take his troubles away.
He snatched his hand back, but the beauty and the yearning remained. He shook his head. No! What the fuck? I will not dive into a lake because of some mysterious force I don't understand! I will not do anything that stupid.
Samehada whined eagerly. Kisame realized that his heartbeat had not risen an inch. For once, he was not being seized by unexplainable paranoia. Only the logical part of his mind was arguing against going swimming in this lake. Wasn't this a state of trust he wanted to have more often? I came here to swim. Samehada would be so unhappy if I turned back now. It felt good. What am I standing here for? I came here to try to feel good, and now I'm getting spooked because I'm getting results too fast?
He turned and walked away from the lake shore, pulling his hoodie over his head as he did so. "The water's fine." Before he even finished the sentence, he heard a tremendous splash from Samehada diving in. A few seconds later, as Kisame was taking off his undershirt, Samehada came back up to the surface to warble in a low, drawn-out way. Kisame remembered the feeling of contentment and cleanliness, and shivered. He knew exactly why Samehada sounded like that.
But there was something else, too. Kisame found himself breathing hard as he raced to take off his outer pants. His heartbeat galloped along, and he felt wild inside, on the edge of frenzy. Frenzy. That's the name for how sharks act sometimes. Do I feel like this because this is the first time I've approached my shark half? Because deep down, in my tough skin and these gills on my face and my weird eyes, my instincts want me to be swimming?
Well, tough luck if so. Kisame refused to abandon his original plan. He was going to go about this in a proper, scientific way. He couldn't simply go by feelings and instinct as Samehada could; he needed a way to think about this and explain it later. So instead of rushing to the lake immediately after folding his clothes and placing them under a tree for safekeeping, Kisame sat on top of them under that same tree instead. He needed to establish a baseline.
He took a deep breath and pressed the start button on his phone's timer, then closed his eyes. As he held his breath, he begged his heartbeat to settle down. If he was this much more active outside of the water than inside, he wouldn't be able to tell whether his gills really worked. Any difference in breath-holding ability might just be due to being calmer.
He held his breath for as long as he could stand to, so that he deflated like an old balloon after letting it go. He swallowed deep breaths of precious oxygen as he picked up his phone and stopped the timer. He had lasted most of a minute. He did nothing that required careful breath control, nor did he usually hold his breath for any reason, so he figured that was pretty good.
Kisame took his phone around to the north end of the lake, near the mouth of the river. There was a rise there instead of a gentle slope down to the lake's waters. He laid his phone down in a safe place, pressed the start button, and immediately took a running leap into the lake. He took a deep breath as he fell.
The pleasant shock of the water almost made him let it out, but he held onto his breath. Kisame shivered with the desire to move, but he made himself sink to the bottom instead. His cheek and shoulder muscles tensed, flaring his gills. Once he reached the bottom, Kisame found a good position to push off from in a hurry, and waited. It felt like he spent longer down there than he had on land. Once Kisame came up, crawled onto the surface of the water, and hurried to stop the timer, he found he was right. Almost two minutes had passed. That couldn't be coincidence.
He had a third scientific investigation planned. He was going to love this one. Kisame grinned as he started the timer again. He turned and took off in the same running leap as before. This time, he attempted a proper dive, and as soon as his arms broke through the water he tried to make them move, only to realize they were already moving. He couldn't stop himself from swimming, and he didn't want to. The way the water moved around him made him feel like a starving man with a morsel of food. Yes, his instincts had been crying out for this all along.
He almost stopped to just stare at the way the light shone through the water, but he made himself keep going. For the purposes of this investigation, he couldn't stop swimming. If his gills really worked, he should be able to hold his breath for longer if he kept moving, even though he would be spending oxygen faster. Kisame didn't bother to dream of being able to breathe underwater. His gills were too small for that. But if they worked, it should take him longer to run out of air.
Samehada swam by, flicking a bit of water with his tail as he passed. Kisame swam after him, following Same's course in the water. Samehada dove down, where the water got darker, but Kisame could see fairly well. The entire bottom of the lake appeared to be silt. He did not see any rocks anywhere, at least not in the circuit he made with Samehada before coming up for air. Said circuit was not methodical because Same was not; they kept pausing to wave bursts of water at each other. Kisame was one hundred percent convinced his gills worked by the time he came up for air. He was not surprised to see over five minutes recorded by the timer on his phone.
Samehada came out of the water with him this time. The shark nuzzled his legs in a burst of affection that transcended anything warbling could convey. Kisame reached down and picked up his favorite shark for a hug, surprising them both. It was a good kind of surprise. Kisame was also pleasantly surprised when he spontaneously started wondering about his own skin after feeling Samehada's scales. Maybe thinking of myself as a shark will be easy!
He put Samehada down to rub his own arms. His skin was about as rough as it usually was. Dammit! I need to feel other people's skin. I have no idea what normal human skin feels like. Kisame was pretty sure his skin was tougher than normal humans'. He could stand Samehada chewing on his arm, and many other things that would scratch any other person. My skin is definitely tougher than your average human. It might be a little rougher than the typical human, too, but not as rough as shark skin - even I can feel those little toothlike scales they have. Why are Samehada's scales not just giant teeth? Will the doctor give me an answer when I ask him? Not noticing anything unusual about Samehada seems to be part of the blinders every NPC has, so probably not. Or maybe he would, but he'll treat whatever answer he gives as something completely straightforward. It'll be entertaining either way.
As soon as he thought that, Kisame remembered something he had not remembered for a long time. It felt like a lifetime ago that he had come back to the abandoned hotel, heard a conversation, and arrived just in time to witness Kakuzu acting and sounding excited. That wasn't a usual state for either of them to be in, and he had forgotten about that moment just after it happened. But now, Kisame remembered it, and he thought he understood. This was more than a little exciting.
Samehada nudged his legs, purring and flapping his fins. Kisame looked down. "Yeah, I know. You can go back right now - I just need a sec to put this back with my clothes." He took his phone back to the tree the rest of his possessions were folded under, then returned to the water.
Once underwater, he turned over so that he faced up towards the light, and he watched the way it rippled through the water. It was beautiful.
Hidan
Hidan flicked his ears a couple times, feeling the stretch of those minor muscles. He kneaded his cloak with his fingers and flicked his imaginary but real-feeling tail. He purred. Finally, he yawned and opened his eyes.
The sunroom was now sunny. None of it reached the chair he slept on, which was in a corner, but Hidan was not troubled by that. The sight of unbroken sunlight on unbroken carpet was actually far better. The sight of it made him purr. He watched little specks of dust dance in the golden air for a while.
Then he shifted his head, and noticed what wasn't there. Hm? Where'd the paper go? He sighed. Despite its crinkliness, it really had been comfortable. Come to think of it, how did it go? Had it fallen as he moved his head in his sleep? Hidan pushed himself forward and looked over the side of the chair. There was no paper on the floor, nor anywhere around him on the chair. That meant someone had to have carried it away. But who? It seemed like everyone had split up to do their own stuff after the card game.
Did I carry it away?
Hidan stared at the sunny carpet as he pondered this question. He knew all too well that he had the ability to do things like that without remembering. How much should he worry about the possibility that he had?
Hidan decided that he could do absolutely nothing about what his other self did with papers, and therefore shouldn't worry about it at all. He got up from the chair and lay on the sunny carpet, instead. Rolling back and forth on it, making the soaked-up warmth touch every part of his bare back, was heavenly. Why worry when he could be doing this?
Hidan paused in his rolling. Listened. Heard nothing. Paid close attention to his feelings and sensations, and detected no shifts. Locked the door anyway. Then, as he relaxed back into the carpet, he turned female. He was a big believer in the value of touch across all areas of skin, not just the socially approved ones. Speaking of which, I really gotta get in touch with Sunshine about those makeup sessions he said he'd help me with. In the meantime, Hidan giggled with delight as he rolled across the carpet on his belly and lay there. Hey, they prop my head up just the right amount!
Sometime later, he got up from the carpet. It had been a truly luxurious rolling and lying and scratching and watching-dust-motes session. If he was a king, he would commission rooms of the finest bare wood, in the most carefully chosen patches of forest, to be built just like this. Or maybe he wouldn't; part of the fun had been finding this room and claiming it. Hidan rubbed his chin. That was the problem with fantasies; he could never think of something he would change. Everything was already perfect, so every fantasy fell flat because they didn't have any purpose.
He posed that as a question to the group chat: Hey, guys. Quick question: How do I fantasize when everything's already perfect?
He got no reply from Nagato or Yahiko, which he found odd. Were they okay? No reply from Kisame. No reply from Deidara or Itachi. The first person he got a reply from was Kakuzu. Kakuzu said: Don't.
Hidan typed out a reply: Yeah, yeah, go fuck yourself too. Before he could send it, Sasori replied: Fantasize about the future. How will perfect things change and maintain their perfection? It was a very good and useful reply, so Hidan added re: Kakuzu to the start of his message before sending.
Seconds later, Kakuzu replied with: I take it this means you're awake now.
Yeah. Hidan inserted a grumpy emoji. Those papers under my head were really nice to sleep on. I want them back!
Papers? Yahiko asked. So he was on the chat! If he was there, why had he not responded? Hidan decided to go check up on his optimistic friend as soon as he was done conversing.
Where are they? Kakuzu asked.
How the fuck should I know? They're gone somewhere.
Several seconds passed. Then, Hidan received two messages simultaneously. One was from Kakuzu: Seriously? Hidan just knew that the appropriate tone of voice to read that in was a quiet exasperated one. The other message was more interesting. It was from Nagato: The last time you delivered papers somewhere while you were sleepwalking, you left them in Konan's room. Check there.
"What the shit?" Hidan asked aloud. He typed out his next message at a furious pace. Wtf? I've had papers under my head before? Similar messages came from Yahiko and Sasori, although Yahiko's was more confused and Sasori's was more polite.
Hidan chewed on his typing hand while he waited for a reply. It seemed like forever before Kakuzu responded: That's how Konan got the instructions to install the symbol.
Hidan's mouth dropped open. He made no response in the chat, even as others responded. Hidan sat down and carefully put his phone to the side, out of sight, so he would not be distracted. He needed to concentrate. What was this mystery feeling?
He had made no response because he couldn't think of any appropriate words or emojis. His response was silence. The closest word he could use to describe how he felt was unsettled, but even that implied a level of activity he didn't feel. It was like Hidan's mind had turned off upon reading those words. He could imagine a mind worker of some kind reading the message, saying to themselves, "No, I don't think we'll be dealing with that today," and flipping a switch. Mental images like this were the only things passing through his head. Verbal thought and speech were silenced.
What was this? Without thinking, Hidan knew he currently lacked the ability to think, so he tried to pay attention as closely as he could in order to remember and think about it later. His heartbeat was normal. His spine felt a little chilled. His mouth was still hanging open, and he was breathing slowly through it. He sat on the edge of the chair leaning forward, staring at the carpet with unmoving eyes. Although his eyes were not moving, his attention was, so Hidan could almost imagine that his eyes were moving as he paid attention to different parts of his visual field. All this, he dutifully tried to remember.
The first thought that returned to him was a decision. I am not going to deal with that. He picked up his phone and said so in chat without reading any messages. Then Hidan shook his head to himself, and massaged his forehead. Why won't I deal with that? Feeling of discomfort: no. Pain: no. Scattering thoughts: no. Memory problems: no. Is there anything else that feels like this? He thought about things he did not do. Going down to the basement feels just like this! I don't even have to think about that shit! I just know for sure that I'm not going to do that. Konan said way back that a drawing of the symbol hurt me and made me lose my memory. But the thing in the basement isn't a drawing; it's real, and there, and has weird effects that other people can feel. Maybe something about the realness of it makes it different. It's like, beyond pain or some shit. If it hurt, I would at least be interacting with it a little. But this is no interaction, nothing, nada. Can't deal with it even enough for that. Can't deal with talking about it even enough for that.
Hidan finally looked at the messages that had piled up since Kakuzu's answer. Still, only Yahiko and Sasori were responding, with Nagato, Kakuzu and Konan fielding questions. Hidan knew it was a good idea to take no-phone days, but on this particular day? The other half of the group was missing out! Hidan read the answers to see what he had missed. Apparently Konan had installed the symbol according to instructions on sheets of paper that she got from sticking the blank papers under Hidan's head. Hidan noticed with some puzzlement how easy it was to not think about that. He felt no distress. It was as if there was a void inside, a true void, different from the mere holding place that all the things he didn't remember went to. Unlike those things, which he was able to be influenced by (so clearly they still existed), the thoughts and questions he knew other people would be having never arose in the first place. They genuinely did not exist. Hidan wondered if he should be very, very scared of that.
He looked at Nagato's answers next. The redhead said he had woken up early, seemingly on the day that Konan had received those instructions, and briefly spotted a dark shape in the hallway outside Konan's room. Every fear a child has of things that creep through the dark arose in him. Despite that, he followed a trail of fleeting glimpses and barely-heard noises to the lobby, then back to Hidan's room, where he had found Hidan sleepwalking just like he had sleepwalked on the night Nagato and Yahiko went to visit the vampires. Nagato's last message was: It was creepy. I don't want to talk about it. Please don't bug me.
And Konan, sending messages from Kakuzu's phone, confirmed that she had placed papers under Hidan's head and made the symbol according to the instructions that appeared there. That is all I will say on the matter in this public place, she wrote. He does not need to be burdened with questions.
Agreement, Hidan typed. I have the same mind-feeling as if I was asked to go down into the basement. Nope. As simple as that. Nope. I don't even feel anything or have any other thoughts. I just won't be thinking about this shit.
Are you okay? Yahiko asked.
Are you? Hidan replied. Without expecting Yahiko to answer in a public chat, he put his phone down and put on his cloak. It was time to go visit his favorite ray of sunshine.
.
It was very difficult to locate Yahiko. Hidan crossed the entire base and paused to concentrate on expanding his range, but he did not pick up anything that changed how he felt. Yahiko must have been outside the base entirely. He checked the chat in case Yahiko had replied. He had: Um...yeah. I'm sitting on a rock watching butterflies. It's nice.
Hidan happened to know a rock that fit that description. He made his way through the forest in the direction of his former nesting site, taking a detour across a hill about two-thirds of the way there. Beyond the hill, he found the rock where he had planned things once, on a day where he had stayed away from the base in order to protect his own sanity. Hidan checked his arm; the writing was gone by now. He struggled to remember if his attempt to ground himself before reentering Konan's influence had worked. It was hard to remember that general area of time.
Or any other area of time, for that matter. The feelings Hidan was picking up were doing something to his memory. The past seemed unsteady, unstable, unreliable. It felt horrible. Yahiko sat on the rock staring in the general direction of some butterflies in a patch of light, but Hidan knew he wasn't really watching them like he had claimed.
Yahiko moved aside, making space for Hidan to sit on the rock beside him. Hidan did so. He wondered what to do first. Said wondering was not successful, so Hidan gave up on thinking and trusted to his instincts. He took Yahiko's hand, and winced at the burst of pain and confusion he received from it. The confusion clouded his mind, nearly stopping him from speech, but Hidan pushed his way through that. "What happened?" he asked.
Yahiko clenched his hand so tightly Hidan could feel bones grind together. Small beams of sunlight made their way through the trees and lit up his hair. Despite that, he was no ray of sunshine right now. "I have to go," he whimpered. Tears spilled from his eyes. "I can't stay with Nagato anymore. I have to go and be by myself and find out who I am. It's scary."
Hidan squeezed his hand back. Is this what leaving home felt like? "Yeah. It is." He sniffed. "But you got this, Sunshine."
"Do I?" Yahiko asked.
"Yeah," Hidan answered. "Because we've got you."
Yahiko turned to face him, eyes shining and wet. "You do?"
Hidan sensed a terrible wanting, a longing so strong he might be blown to pieces by it. He wanted to be blown to pieces. It would feel good. "Yes."
Yahiko's face twisted, and he lunged forward for a hug. Hidan hugged him back. The wanting lessened, but only for a moment. Hidan felt it as it retreated without fully going away, and then came back. Yahiko shivered. "I don't want to…"
What the fuck is going on here? Hidan felt the pain of deprivation, but also the wanting, side by side. "I know," he whispered. "But there's something that you do want."
Yahiko released them from the hug and wiped his face on his sleeve. He did that for longer than he needed to. His face was still hidden when he whispered, "I know."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Hidan asked.
Yahiko continued to hide his face. "I feel like such a bad friend."
Hidan chuckled. "Don't tell me what I should think of you," he ordered gently. "I want to make up my mind myself. Tell me." He felt the impact his first sentence had on Yahiko. It was like the ringing of a bell, and he was the bell. Hidan took a moment to celebrate the minor achievements of life. Yes! I said the right thing! Then he went back to waiting.
Yahiko lowered his sleeve. "Okay. I - if you want to." He took a shaky breath. "I've been thinking about my family recently."
"Is that the thing you want to do?" Hidan guessed. "Think about them? Talk about them?"
Yahiko nodded. "Nagato and I don't do that though. We don't talk about our lives before we met. I thought we didn't need to, that it doesn't matter now that we have each other. But…"
"It fucking does," Hidan whispered. "I don't even have memories of my family, and that part of my life still manages to matter. It's not possible for it not to."
Yahiko looked at him more closely. "You think about this stuff too?"
Hidan nodded. "What about them do you want to think about?"
Yahiko looked down. "Well… When we were talking about Jiraiya, I almost - I almost said something about my dad."
"Makes perfect sense," Hidan replied.
Yahiko's lips twitched. "Yeah, maybe it did. But I've been thinking of him other times too, when I wasn't doing anything related to parents. And my sister; I miss my sister. I've been missing her more lately, and I don't know why."
Hidan grinned. "Big sister or little sister?"
"Big sister." Yahiko's eyebrows twitched. "Maybe that has something to do with Konan? She doesn't act like I remember my sister acting. My sister didn't look after me like that. We...stopped being so close…" He began to sob again.
Fuck. These are old tears, not new ones. Why do I keep finding shit like this? If Hidan had the chance to go really deep with someone, more often than not he found old feelings, ones which should have happened a long time ago but for some reason had not. He couldn't help but wonder if he was unusual for expressing most of what he felt as it came. Am I really different from other people? Hidan wondered that as he held Yahiko's cheek softly in one hand, rubbing away his tears with one thumb.
Yahiko stopped sobbing and took a big, shaky breath. "Can - can I…"
"Fuck yes." Hidan pulled him closer. "Any fucking time you want."
They had to get off the rock and sit on the ground next to it. There, Hidan sat with his back flat against the rock and his lap open in front of him, and Yahiko leaned in from the side awkwardly. Hidan managed to wrap his arms around him anyway, holding Yahiko's head more or less against his chest. Yahiko sighed. "What am I, a kid?" he whispered.
"That's not bad," Hidan reassured him. "Everyone likes being held sometimes. Give in. Let it happen."
Yahiko did not give in, not completely. There was some internal drawing back, a retreat, as if giving in to comfort was frightening or bad. It reminded Hidan of how Kisame had reacted to the question of whether or not he would consider being with a female shark. Hidan thought about how this blockage could be related to the rest of the conversation, and made many, many hypotheses. He voiced none of them. Holding and nuzzling a warm, friendly person was much better than thinking. He smells nice, too. How does Moonlight handle being around this?
Speaking of Moonlight… "Hey Sunshine?"
"Yeah?"
"We talked about hanging out together and helping me decorate myself a few days ago. You remember that?"
Yahiko relaxed. "Yeah?"
"Wanna get started on that?" Hidan already knew what the answer was.
Yahiko giggled nervously. "If you want to."
"Fuck yes!" Hidan patted him on the shoulder twice. "Want to stay here, or wanna get started?"
"You sound really eager, so…" Yahiko got to his feet. He smiled shyly and smoothed his hair into order as Hidan got to his. Hidan suppressed a low growl. How the fuck does Moonlight deal with this?
But there was more important business to get to. "Fuck yes I am." Hidan took Yahiko by one elbow and began to lead him back home.
.
A/N: The 'at' symbol is apprently forbidden here. Darn.
*sigh* Why does it have to be so annoyingly hard to be held as a grown person? If I could have any jutsu from the Narutoverse, I would have have the Shadow Clone Jutsu (for hugging myself, or playing with myself, or ordering myself around), and I would have the transformation Jutsu so that I could turn into a cat. I would love to be a cat. Being small and able to curl up around sources of warmth and be petted... That's the best! Being nuzzled and held and stuff would be great, except that I'm physically too big to do so comfortably. Agh! Poor Yahiko! And I don't have any place like the sunroom where I could get the sun to wrap around me. *sigh*
I really liked Kisame's scene this chapter. It felt good to write it. Yays.
I am now obligated to begin next chapter with Yahiko and Hidan hanging out and doing this thing, even though I know literally zero about makeup. That's going to be difficult. But it's going to be fun!
And yes, I have known that sharks don't have "scales" like other fish do for the entire time I have been writing this story. I learned that when I was like 7 and reading about prehistoric sharks. I've just been referring to them as scales anyway because the shark appearing most often in this story is Samehada, who has very strange scales. They are kind of spiky, but not very teethlike. So weird! Sharks are fascinating. My favorite was Cladoselache, because its name was fun to pronounce (I have no idea how it is supposed to be pronounced so I pronounce it clad-oh-SELL-ah-key). I now want to watch videos about prehistoric animals.
A good week to all, and to all a fun day!