“Goddamn, Haku, what took you so long?” Zabuza grouses, scrubbing at his hair with something one could generously call a towel as he steps out of the bathroom. He should’ve been back even before he’d stepped into the shower, what with the grocer’s next door to their rundown motel—
But the person sitting on the couch isn’t small, slender Haku with a too-large bag of groceries.
“You still keep that bloodline waif with you?” the intruder asks genially, and Zabuza can’t help the way his hands twitch for Kubikiribōchō in the face of Kisame’s pointy smile.
He’s not exactly threatening, hunched as he is with Samehada wrapped and as quiet as it’ll ever get—but Zabuza remembers going head-to-head with Kisame, back in the day. Remembers trying to wield his tetchy sword and feeling the difference between its awareness and Kubikiribōchō’s, and…
“Thought you went rogue ages ago, Kisame,” Zabuza says to him, consciously relaxing every muscle in his body even as he strides towards his bed—and where Kubikiribōchō’s stashed away in its own wrappings. “Didn’t you join some sort of mercenary group?”
“I could say the same for you,” Kisame replies mildly. “Though, with that ice kid you’re carting around, I suppose it’s hard to find a group that’ll take in a mother hen like you.”
“Watch it,” Zabuza snarls at him, because they’re not the Seven Swordsman of the Hidden Mist any longer.
Not since Kisame slaughtered his division and disappeared into the night not long afterwards, not since Zabuza tried to beat some sense in Yagura and fucking failed—he had never been fully accepted, not when he was only another low-caste dog, but it had still been his village. He still finds himself dreaming about those days on particularly dark nights, laughing at Mangetsu’s little brat of a brother as he’d tottered after all of them and declared his intention of taking their swords for himself, and…
With the reminder of what once was, without the reason he’d defected from the village he’d never betray in the room with him, it’s all too easy to grip the hilt of Kubikiribōchō and growl, “Get out of here if you know what’s good for you, shark face.”
There’s a moment when Kisame stares at him, cold calculation in his ice-blue pupils—but then the door unlocks with a noisy click and, when Haku steps into the room, there’s no sign of Kisame in the room.
“Zabuza-san?” Haku asks immediately, but Zabuza only shakes his head before uncurling his hand from his sword and tossing his towel onto the bed.
“The hell took you so long?” he asks Haku then—but he doesn’t bring up anything about the past few minutes and Haku, like the obedient tool he is, doesn’t either.
But it’s not the last he sees of Kisame and, as he drags Haku along and lives from job to job, Zabuza finds himself looking into still waters more and more often. It’s not anything obvious—whispers of the Tailless Tailed Beast here, corpses bearing the distinct hollowed-scarred look of Samehada’s victims—but he starts spending a little more time on seals whenever he and Haku turn in for the night.
It’s only a temporary measure at best, nothing a few well-chosen strikes of Samehada wouldn’t be able to break, but it’s still not enough warning when Zabuza turns to wake Haku and there’s fingers brushing against his. Instinct causes him to whip around, hands flickering into the beginning of his Hiding in Mist technique—but then there’s a solid weight pressed against him and arms pinning his own against their chests.
“Do you want the bounty hunters outside to raise the alarm?” is hissed into Zabuza’s ear, and…
Now that he’s not trying to murder Kisame to death—because it is Kisame awkwardly hugging him for whatever godforsaken reason—Zabuza can sense the faint flickers of chakra from outside. He’s set up enough barriers and seals that he, Haku and now Kisame will be more or less concealed from the average sensor… but if the hunters happen to stumble onto their location?
“Fucking let go of me,” Zabuza hisses right back, but Kisame doesn’t respond.
Hell, he doesn’t so much as budge, even when Zabuza flexes his arms and viciously steps onto his insole, and when he settles down enough to scowl and keep Haku from waking to whatever chaos this is—
Kisame is warm, far warmer than Zabuza would’ve expected of him. He’s solid in a way that Zabuza’s almost forgotten about too, preoccupied as he is with training Haku up and taking just enough jobs to survive and fund the resistance effort back home. He’s never really cared for romance in any way, has had maybe a handful of one-night stands with whoever caught his interest since he became aware of hormones, but… this is different, somehow.
You’re just pent up, Zabuza tries to tell himself, you’re both just tools with different purposes.
But even when all presence of the bounty hunters fade, Kisame doesn’t step back—and neither, to his surprise, does Zabuza himself. He tries to brush it off, tries to force out a brusque, “Go back to your mercenary group and their world of truth—”
Except there’s lips brushing against his and cool-warm breath puffing out, “I heard about what you were doing—and I thought, well, why not see where your truth leads our village first?”
Our village, Kisame had said, in the same way Zabuza always thought about Kiri—but then lips seal over his and all Zabuza can do is grunt and kiss him back.
(even when Haku wakes, stills at the sight of Kisame and raises a cool brow in Zabuza’s direction—he only smirks weakly back and elbows Kisame’s side)
(it’s probably more dangerous than ever with Kisame around… but when they break up camp, Kisame smiles toothily at him, and Zabuza could almost believe again)