Crave his touch

Guren is back and even if Kabuto feels the corners of his mouth turn downwards in disappointment at the sight, looking at her is still better than looking at Sasuke who is rubbing his arrogance in Kabuto’s face at every opportunity he gets.

The way he finds out about Guren’s return is when she corners him in the small confinements of the supply closet where Kabuto is busy doing inventory while Orochimaru and Sasuke are out training somewhere, his presence not asked for by neither, even if casually offered at breakfast this morning.

The situation with the Uchiha brat has managed to mess with his sanity to such an extent that it is making it difficult to focus on much else than the thought of retaliation, which explains why Guren manages to get so close without him noticing that she could have stuck a kunai in his throat if she had wanted to.

Which, as it turns out, is pretty close to what she actually does, if not downright stabbing the kunai into him, at least pressing the sharp edge of it against his jugular vein, almost breaking skin before his mind catches up with what is being done to him and by who.

“Ah, welcome back,” he says, trying to sound indifferent, as if this is how they always act around each other, one pressing a deadly weapon against the other one’s beating pulse.

He sincerely hopes that she is playing around and won’t actually go through with sticking the edge inside of him, but with Guren it’s always anyone’s guess and it can go either way.

She grabs him by the roots of his hair to yank his head backwards as she leans in closer so her lips traces the shell of his ear, the soft moistness of her breath sending shivers of disgust down his spine.

He hates her after all.

Before Sasuke, she was perhaps his biggest adversary.

Others might have guessed Kimimaro who indeed was truly awful to have around, constantly grating on his nerves simply by existing and being so treasured by their maser, but they both knew that Kabuto never had a chance against him until he turned ill, so there was never any real competition between them.

Kabuto hated and envied him from the shadows while Kimimaro couldn't have cared less.

With Guren, it is a different matter.

She should, in his opinion, be considered small fry but for some reason their master appreciates her talents so she has been given attention far beyond her due.

Kabuto has never like what he can’t understand and this blue-haired bitch with her overblown ego is someone he will never be able to grasp the appeal of, no matter how much he should trust Orochimaru to know not to surround himself with useless henchmen.

On the other hand, his master has proved to have suffered from terrible taste in the past when it comes to underlings and allies, a whole list of bad examples rolling past inside Kabuto's head just thinking about it, and for all her devoted obsession with Orochimaru, Guren is, and always will be, nothing more than an opportunist with too much attitude for her own good.

The fact that she takes every chance available to stick it to Kabuto by violently attacking him, just like she is doing now, is enough to make him wish he had done the same to her the last time they met.

But he didn’t.

Instead he sent her away on some pointless, made-up mission to get her away from Orochimaru and now, here she is again, holding his life in her hands with that kunai instead of the other way around and he can’t understand how his existence turned into such a genuine act of torture of not only dealing with the loathsome Sasuke Uchiha on a daily basis but putting up with a nuisance like Guren as well, when all his focus should be on his master and the forthcoming transformation of vessels.

Why he even puts up with all this crap is solely for Orochimaru’s sake but sometimes the prize for being allowed in his glorious presence seems a little too high to be worth it.

“Are you going to lower your weapon or stick it inside me? Please make your mind up, this is beginning to turn a bit boring by now,” he says and gnashes his teeth when he both hears and feels her piercing laughter directly into his ear.

Her hold around his hair is tightening to so such an extent that his eyes are starting to well up but he will rather die than acknowledge that the pain is harrowing.

She isn’t worth a single twitch on his features as evidence that he is affected by this.

He tells himself to think about Sasuke instead.

He is the real enemy here after all, not her.

“Why did you send me away on that stupid quest?” she suddenly says, her laughter gone now, her fingers yanking at his hair with such force that he fears he will lose entire patches of it unless she weakens her hold soon.

Before he has the change to open his mouth, the edge of the kunai is pressed a little bit deeper into his throat, the metallic scent of blood hitting his nostrils now.

How unfortunate that it’s his own blood and not hers, he muses as he clenches his fist to prevent himself from moving even an inch from his stock-still position.

Her voice keeps licking the inside of his ears as she speaks.

“And if you try to deny it, I will actually stab you, so keep that in mind. Don’t think for a second that I don’t know that it was you who came up with that pointless mission of locating Mizuki. That scheme had your dirty prints all over it.”

“And yet you went,” he says, keeping his voice flat and detached.

He isn’t going to give her so much as an inch of submission despite her bloodthirst and erratic personality.

He will rather be stabbed and bleed out on the floor than give her anything she wants.

“So I did,” she agrees. “And I found him by the way. A complete loon if you ask me, and of no use to someone like Orochimaru-sama. I would even bet that he doesn’t even remember Mizuki at all if asked about it, that’s how insignificant that lowlife actually is. He seems to believe otherwise though but that’s his problem. He’ll die in that cell before someone else will stop by and pay him a visit.”

“I’ll take your word for it, you do after all know all about the consequences of withdrawing into isolation on account of shame.”

For a second he thinks that this is the moment when she will jam that kunai straight into his throat and be done with it, the silence in the confined space so thick that he would be able to taste it if sticking his togue out to do so.

But then, instead of stabbing him, she actually let’s go of his hair and slaps the back of his head in a bantering manner while lowering the kunai as well.

“You poisonous old worm, I sometimes forget just how bitter you really are when I’ve been away from this place for too long. Not that I blame you. Running after a snake with no reward for the effort is bound to make anyone resentful after a few years. And you've been doing that for ages by now.”

He immediately hits back, refusing to allow her words to sink in and affect him where it hurts the most.

“You should know all about that, yourself, Guren. I don’t believe it ever paid out for you regarding that whole vessel thing. You were a third-rate choice at best so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he overlooked you yet again, but still, I assume it must sting to cling onto something so hopelessly for so long.”

Without so much as a second of hesitation, she returns the insult with full force.

“Speaking from experience I hear. Because if there is one person in this place that has played the role of the longsuffering fool for an eternity by now, it is you. He hasn’t even deigned to fuck you yet, and he has fucked more or less everyone else around here, so what does that tell you about your own significance in his eyes, hm?”

His hand shoots out to grab her by the throat but she just laughs and shields herself by creating a crystal barrier around his fist that stops his movement before even gearing up for momentum.

“Come on, Kabuto, we are just playing, aren’t we?” she says with a sneer but it is difficult to tell if she is actually joking or hiding something menacing underneath her carefree words.

He did send her on a made-up mission after something completely useless after all, sabotaging her chances to join Orochimaru in his private chambers.

From her words he can gather that she has been invited to them before though, apparently everyone who works for Orochimaru has enjoyed that privilege by now.

Except him of course.

And Sasuke, probably, even if that is only going to be a question of when before that happens.

Seeing red at the mere idea of such a thing happening, he tries to reach her throat with his other fist while imagining it belonging to a completely different person, someone he has vowed to kill, one way or the other, no matter the consequences.

He just needs to bide his time for a little while longer, that’s all.

When his knuckles connect to the pink crystals Guren has conjured up as her defence against his fist, he feels a soaring pain shoot through his hand, dissipating the mist of hatred that was clouding his head mere seconds ago.

“What has you losing your usually cold and collected temper, Kabuto-kun? Someone steal that stick you always have up your ass?” she mocks, loving the fact that she is older than him and thereby in her right to refer to him in that way.

She reaches for his cheek before he manages to slap her hand away, cupping his face, a look of false concern in her eyes.

“Poor, little Kabuto-kun,” she tuts, shaking her head while he gives her a death glare that accomplishes nothing more than for her to laugh at him in delight. “Has he been neglecting you again? Found a new shiny toy that takes all his time and leaves you all alone and discarded?”

“You’re hardly one to speak. He has deserted you for that very same toy you know,” he hisses viciously.

The desire to make her hurt the same way he is hurting is overwhelming but she beats him to it by shrugging her shoulders and turning her back towards him, as if suddenly bored of the topic.

But when she does eventually speak again, he can tell that she isn’t as unconcerned as she likes to pretend.

“So how is that going by the way? The brat manage to get invited into the bedroom yet?”

Kabuto bristles at her words, remembering the other night and what Sasuke did to Orochimaru’s sleeping body in all its detailed agony.

As the boy isn’t actually here but Guren is, she gets all his pent-up ire directed at her.

“Is every word coming from your cesspit of a mouth always so foul or are you capable of expressing something that isn’t born out of filth from the gutters?” he seethes and only manages to grow even angrier when his words fall flat to the floor without making any kind of impact.

It is the security of having had something he has been denied that fills her with the necessary confidence to remain unaffected, no matter what he throws at her.

She smiles at him with derision but her eyes suddenly narrow, scrutinizing him more closely, the smile eventually withering as her stare grows cold and hard.

“He has, hasn’t he? Been invited?” she finally says, no longer any merriment in her voice as her face turns as hard as her eyes.

Because no matter how casual they act around the subject of constantly vying for Orochimaru’s attention, it is a matter of most importance and cause for much pain when being replaced by someone new.

They have both been there and if not for the fact that they are rivals against each other as well, they could have commiserated over their sorry fates together.

But that will never happen of course.

She hates him almost as much as he hates her and at the first available opportunity, they will try stabbing each other in the back for the chance of being closest to their fickle master.

But in this moment, when it’s just the two of them, alone in a small supply closet among unused syringes, beakers and test tubes, the smell of chemicals and dust in the air and two wounded hearts trying to patch themselves up for the next round of emotional abuse, there can actually be a temporary truce, if just for a fleeting moment, before they go back to being who they truly are and hate each once more.

“Not yet. A least I don’t think so,” he says, his voice hushed, as if worried about being overheard by prying ears. “But something is definitely going on between them and I think that if Orochimaru-sama doesn’t ask Sasuke to come to him first, the brat will make it happen on his own anyway.”

Then he tells her all about the other night, what he had witnessed and the embarrassing aftermath, despite how bad and pitiable it makes himself look.

For someone with his significant amount of arrogance, it is surprisingly cleansing to humiliate himself in front of someone the way he does right now by telling everything that happened.

To her credit Guren doesn’t berate him for his own actions that night, those that lead up to what happened next

It doesn’t mean that she won’t do it at a later date, but right now they are united against a common enemy and when she says that she will handle this before stepping out of the supply closet, he actually believes her.

He doesn’t ask what she will do but is secure in the knowledge that when it happens, he will be made aware of it.

And true to her word, she does what she promised and deals with Sasuke in the cruellest way imaginable.

Apparently it involves telling Orochimaru exactly what the Uchiha brat did to him while he was fast asleep in his bed and when she later recounts the incandescent rage in the Snake Sannin’s golden eyes upon hearing this, Kabuto can actually envision it inside his head, a spark of delight running up his spine at the image and the consequences this will entail.

“And now what?” he asks with bated breath.

“Well, I was given the gift of five extremely savage henchmen, the sole survivors of a recent death match among his prisoners, as well as a vial of some very potent paralytic drug and the keys to Sasuke-kuns room. Considering the fact that three of those henchmen are sexual predators with a penchant for roughness and all of them are killers, the night is looking promising, don’t you think, Kabuto-kun?”

With that she leaves him, a slap to his shoulder before she exits.

The next time they see each other, order will be restored and the wall of hatred between them back in place, but in the early hours of the morning when he is lying in his bed, listening to the bloodcurdling wails coming from Sasuke’s room, he thinks of her with fondness.