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Waking or Sleeping Lykomancer Instinctively, the white-haired boy recoiled in shock from the green eyes so close to him, his face flushing under the pattern of bruises and scrapes marking it. So close…too close… The strange, mesmerizing, beautiful eyes; fine sheaves of long loose hair framing a too-pretty face, drawing his gaze down to soft, pale lips marked with smears of blood… “Wh-What do you think you’re doing!?” Orochimaru’s hand slammed down over his mouth hard enough to knock him flat back on the ground, black static stars dancing across his vision as the blow threatened to relieve him again of his newly-acquired consciousness, and he pressed his weight down against his teammate as though trying to bottle Jiraiya’s noisiness at the source. He glanced around the darkened forest, focusing all of his senses on whether they’d been detected, while the boy under him panted through wide-flared nostrils for breath. After a long moment, some of the tension dropped out of Orochimaru’s shoulders and he pivoted on his heels, shooting Jiraiya a disdainful look. “Shut up, you idiot!” he hissed, leaning down into his face, silk streamers of hair slipping down to tickle his cheeks. “You want to bring more enemies down on us? We’re both lucky to be alive as it is.” His knee rested on his teammate’s chest, and Jiraiya could feel the butterfly-fine tremble of the muscles in his leg; he’d missed some of the action after he’d blacked-out, it seemed. There’d been fighting, hard fighting obviously if even Orochimaru was starting to push his limits, and somehow, they’d gotten separated from Tsunade and Sarutobi-sensei; he could only hope that his other teammate and teacher were also safe and relatively unwounded. They were; they had to be. Jiraiya refused to even entertain the idea that anything bad could happen to either of them—Tsunade was too bad-tempered and his sensei too skilled… They’d be alright. But that meant that… He jerked away from the palm still resting on his mouth, the fingers curled around his aching jaw, trying to hide a wince as his body reminded him of the beating he’d taken at the hands of those bastardly Mist nin with a wicked little cocky grin. He could taste the sweat-salt from the other shinobi’s hand and it burned on his cut and swollen lips. “Well. What do you know… You do have enough of a human heart to care a little about your teammates’ welfare.” He clamped down on a momentary wash of jealousy and resentment; no, what mattered more than his damned ego was the fact that finally, finally, Orochimaru’s cover was slipping to show more and more of the human—the boy, really—underneath, his cool arrogant façade frayed to the point that he hadn’t even rubbed his perceived superiority over his teammate in with either word or gesture. No, he was acting almost like… Orochimaru wrinkled his nose in a sneer and rolled his eyes, a soft, sharply cutting plosive exhale his eloquent comment on the stupidity of that particular remark, and Jiraiya wanted to laugh— shakily, probably while coughing as his strained lungs protested— laugh and laugh; things would be alright. Things would be more than alright—the pair of them were together; they had each other and despite their stupid rivalry, despite their stupid arguments, despite everything, they were still teammates; they’d guard each other’s backs and fight on through anything. They’d survive; they’d find the rest of their team… As long as they were together, there was hope. It was so hard to remember that sometimes, when they weren’t in such crucial situations, but all that didn’t matter—the petty irritations, the cold snubbing, the taunts and teasing—in a moment like this… In a moment like this, Jiraiya wouldn’t say anything about the rust-colored smudges painting Orochimaru’s lips, the remaining dabs of the blood that he’d licked off the other boy’s face as he’d cleaned his wounds with his tongue while he’d been out, an intimacy both erotic and terrible taken without permission. “You’re so stupid.” Jiraiya closed his eyes, his smile fading as he wiggled his head in a small nod. “Yeah… Tell me about it. Anyone who gives a good goddamn about you probably is.” He swallowed hard, taking a deep breath. “But you’re not much brighter, are you…since you’re still here with me.” There was an irritated, exasperated sigh, and he felt Orochimaru shift his weight back away from him, and he could picture it perfectly in his mind—the annoyed set of his fine features as he glanced from the corner of his eyes at his battered teammate; the fall of his long dark hair; the curve of his back down to the compressed-sprint tautness of his legs, toes digging into the ground and heels up under his buttocks, one knee sloped down to triangulate his weight; a kunai gripped in one hand, his finger dipped through the hole in the pommel. “Maybe I should leave you then.” “You won’t.” Jiraiya wanted to trust his teammate, his comrade who’d fought to save him when he could no longer defend himself… He wanted to trust him and he would, and he wasn’t going to play this game; if Orochimaru was going to go, he would have left already. “You won’t.” There was no answer but the wind in the trees, and, satisfied at that, Jiraiya slid back into healing sleep, content with Orochimaru’s company and confident that he was safe here and now, well-protected by his teammate. There was no trace of blood marking his skin when he awoke. |