![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
[more drabbles: Avatar & Bones & Naruto]
And here's the rest of them :)
For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
questofdreams -- Zuko/Sokka, swordplay
"Stop it!" Katara snaps, causing Zuko's next insult to freeze into silence and then begin to creep back down his throat. "I don't know if this is just a clash of personalities or some kind of silly competition to see who has the bigger sword" -- behind her, Aang and Toph break into admiring giggles and sadistic snickering respectively -- "but we are a team and we have a serious mission to complete, and the last thing we need is you two ruining everything because you're being boys." She points away from the campsite. "Go on. Sort it out. Come back friends or I'll -- I'll give you cold showers twice a day. Personally," she adds, glowering.
Zuko is about to resurrect and redirect his cutting retort when Sokka grabs his arm. "She means it," he mutters. "Do you really want to wake up sopping wet and freezing? Come on."
"Let go of me," Zuko mutters in return, shaking his hand off, but he follows Sokka until they're in the clearing they were gathering wood in earlier. "Now what? Are we supposed to talk?"
"We could make out," Sokka suggests.
To his own sheer horror, Zuko almost agrees out of curiosity, before he works out that Sokka was joking. This whole traitor-to-his-blood-and-country thing sucks. He misses his uncle. He misses Mai. He wishes Sokka was not so obnoxiously good at things like having a normal family and a sane sister, and talking to girls, and just standing there with his stupid, handsome, unscarred face. Sokka is probably a really good kisser. The bastard.
"Ha ha," he says scathingly, and gives a flick of the wrist that sends a thin flame shooting in the other boy's direction; Sokka flings himself out of the way and ends up sprawled on the ground.
"Hey, uncool." Sokka stands up and gives him a baleful look. There are leaves in his hair. Zuko laughs, and he makes sure that it's not a cruel laugh, but Sokka narrows his eyes and then leaps at him with surprising speed.
Fifteen minutes and one extremely dirty leaf-fight later, Sokka has mud in his hair and a bruise on his chin and doesn't look so damn symmetrical any more.
Zuko smiles and holds out his hand. "Truce?"
Forrawles -- Mai/Zuko, they'll name a city after us
and it's contagious
The fabric is heavy and smooth with precise regions of rough, draconic luxury in a contrasting thread. Zuko rubs it between his fingers and hears the words of the ceremony drumming their way from one side of his head to the other, endless, almost panicked. Incense is leaking through the slit in the curtains in front of him, and the smell mingles with the heat of his outfit and the clamour of hundreds of people all trying at once to make a respectfully small amount of noise. His head aches and with every sandalwood-choked breath his throat seems to close a little further.
"You're freaking out, aren't you. Idiot. I told you not to."
Mai is a vision in deep scarlet and shadowy folds of fabric as one of her hands emerges from the cascade of her sleeve and firmly takes hold of his own. His fingers, he knows, are like the brocade itself: smooth with rough patches. Burns. Callouses. Scars. He no longer finds shame in the markings that set him apart; she has touched every one of them and set him free.
"Breathe," she tells him. "Just say the words, and sit on the seat, and other people will do everything else."
He swallows. "I know. I know. I --"
Her mouth is on his for a brief, hot, wonderful moment, and Zuko forgets to be scared.
"My lord," Mai murmurs into his ear, her dry tone just as grounding as the kiss had been. "Your people await."
Zuko closes his eyes.
The Fire Lord opens them.
Forstars_like_dust -- Booth and Brennan terrorising Sweets but him being smarter than both of them
"So you see," Booth said, warming to his subject, "we've decided that due to the fact that we have proper grown-up jobs, not that you'd know anything about that, heh, we'll still come to your little sessions, but we won't be doing those assignment things in between. Too busy. Sorry."
Dr Lance Sweets tapped one of Brennan's pens against his lips, trying not to laugh; Booth always retreated behind the age difference when he was uncomfortable, and Brennan had that expression that she always got when she was trying to look supportive of someone else's argument, despite the fact that she much preferred to do her own arguing.
"Right," she said finally, abruptly. "Because...well, it's a bit silly, isn't it? Getting homework for our partnership?" A brief, not-quite-casual laugh.
He let the pause go on just long enough that Booth's body language settled into smug satisfaction, and Brennan's face returned to normal. Then he smiled. "It wasn't the negatives, was it? It was the positives that you guys had trouble with."
Brennan was a terrible, terrible liar and even worse at covering surprise. She frowned. "What? No, we -- what?"
"Didn't you hear what we said, Sweets?"
"Oh, very clearly." He leaned forward, still smiling. "Obviously, you had so much trouble with the last assignment I set you that you talked each other into the conviction that the problem was with my 'homework' instead of with you. I'm right, aren't I?"
Booth snorted softly through his nose and looked away; that was answer enough from him. Brennan frowned even more deeply and fixed him with one of her most terrifyingly anthropological looks, the one that still made him want to hide behind something nice and thick, like the DSM-IV. But he knew he was right, and so he looked right back at her.
"Like I said, it wasn't the negatives, was it? I'm sure you two would do just fine at coming up with a list of three faults that the other person has."
"Of course." Brennan pushed back some hair and looked impatient. "He's impulsive, and flippant at inappropriate times, and too stubborn to admit when he's wrong."
"Agent Booth?"
"Pedantic, tactless...stubborn," Booth reeled off, looking snappish. "What?"
"Right. So I am forced to conclude that the enormous problem that led you to develop such an extravagant defence mechanism was that you can't think of a single good thing to say about each other, let alone three good things." He lifted his eyes and waited for Brennan to leap, as she always would in the presence of faulty assumptions. She was tough, but she was easy to lead.
Sure enough -- "No! No, I mean...Booth has a lot of good qualities." She shot a glance at him, and it collided with his glance at her, and Lance bit his tongue against the unprofessional urge to tell them about the people he'd seen and talked to, all the people whose relationships were destructive or dull or just anything less than this raw perfection that Agent Seeley Booth and Dr Temperence Brennan had somehow wrought between them. He wanted to tell them how lucky they were. But that wasn't his job; not yet.
"But?" he prompted.
"But your assignment is stupid. It's unreasonable to expect me to be succinct about -- about such subjective personal opinions. Three words? Three qualities? No. The picture conveyed wouldn't be accurate." She looked relieved, back on familiar ground.
"Agent Booth? Is that how you feel?"
"I -- yeah. Yeah." Booth snuck another look at his partner, a look that was half uncertain, half warm and possessive. "I'm not very good at describing, and Bones is -- well, she's a hell of a lot more than three words."
"Still." He put his hands on the desk and stood up. "I'd like you to try. Not in front of me, that's okay, but with each other. Right now. We'll discuss it next session."
The almost-panic that flew into Brennan's face told him that he was right; that this was what the other half of her defences were directed at.
"Uh," she said.
"Look --" Booth said.
Lance tried not to grin too widely as he left the office.
Forpirateygoodness -- Booth/Brennan, he likes her hands
"I'm just saying that something can't be kind of unique, Booth. It's either the only thing of its type in existence, or it isn't. There isn't exactly a semantic grey area."
"All right, Bones, lesson learned, now can we please move on --"
"Fingerprints, for example, are unique."
She waves her hand in his face and he grabs it with one of his own, moving her plate sideways with the other so that her elbow isn't caught in a smear of ketchup.
"And palms," he says, seizing upon the opportunity to distract her from the argument about words by being deliberately unscientific. "Here, I bet I could read something about your future. This line here means --"
"Don't be ridiculous, Booth."
He likes her hands, the promise of efficiency in them, the elegant angles of the joints and the way she handles human bodies, dead or alive, as though they are miracles. He leans closer and looks at her, mockingly intent. "So you don't believe that personal information can be found in skin."
"Of course not."
"But you believe it can be found in bones."
A pause.
"Yes." She smiles at her own admission, comes close to laughing, and their faces are so near that the abruptness of her humour is almost palpable: like a splash of warm water, or a touch.
They have been like this so many times he's lost count. So many ends to so many days when everyone around them has left for their real lives, their not-work lives, the kind of life that Booth vaguely remembers having before this strange, wonderful, infuriating anthropologist came into the picture.
He thinks, I'm probably supposed to miss that. He probably is not meant to want to see her every day of the year, to hang out with her even when the working day is finished. He probably should not think that it wouldn't be a bad thing to see her even in the slim dark between-hours, and that he'd kind of like to wake up in a place where she is.
Nevertheless, that seems to be how he feels.
"You -- you're unique," he says. "There is nobody else like you, Bones. Nobody anywhere."
So many times they have been like this, just this close; they have smiled and blurred the lines of work and friendship, and one of them has always, always been the first to lean back. Booth watches her lips and thinks about gravity and concrete and other heavy things, concentrates on keeping his feet flat on the floor so that he doesn't do something stupid like run his fingers underneath her necklace, or lift her hand and learn the shape of its joints with his lips and tongue. No; tonight it's her turn to play the responsible adult, her turn to reestablish the distance, because he's not budging.
"True," she says. She doesn't move. She looks at him, her eyes alert and unwavering -- Booth feels like he's being measured.
Her hand slides out of his, very slowly, but she never quite breaks contact, and after a moment she slides her fingers between his until they are tightly laced. Booth looks down to make sure he isn't imagining it, and when he looks up again her smile has an extra layer to it: the familiar precision of her intelligence, the sense that she has flown down a path of reasoning at speeds that most people could barely imagine, and has arrived at a decision.
"What?" he asks, feeling his mouth curve in response. "What?"
"I don't know --" she says, and looks down at their hands, and is quiet.
Booth lifts his other hand, oh-so-careful, like he's showing his empty palms to an armed junkie, and tilts her chin upwards. "-- what that means?" he suggests.
"Yes." Her hand tightens and he can't tell if it's affection or fear. "I'm used to -- this isn't what I -- yes. I don't know how to do this, Booth. I don't know."
Booth ignores the ache of effort that it takes to hold himself in his seat -- gravity, gravity, gravity -- and instead he kisses her index finger, halfway between the knuckles. There's probably a proper technical name for that. She has her language and he has his, and if he's learned anything from working with Temperance Brennan it's the power of a graceful compromise.
"Then we'll start with something you do know," he says, and smooths his thumb across her wrist, and follows the shiver of contact all the way up her arm and the line of her neck to the sudden smile of understanding that diffuses across her face.
"Bones of the wrist," she says, and teaches him.
Formyrafur -- Naruto/Neji
"At least you have a history!" Naruto is yelling. "At least you know who your family is."
This is an old argument. Neji suspects he is simply the easiest person for Naruto to argue with, in the absence of any other likely suspects. The knowledge just makes him angrier.
"You know nothing," he hisses. "You have no idea what I would give to be free of my name's weight."
He waits for the next outburst, but after a moment Naruto lifts his hand and Neji stands very still as the Uzumaki pushes his hitai-ate and his headband upwards as a single block of fabric, laying bare the blue lines on his forehead. Naruto traces them with one finger and Neji thinks, all right then, and puts his own hand square against the curse seal on the other boy's stomach. He can feel body warmth through the shirt and he can feel roiling spitting power underneath that, totally at odds with Naruto's calm eyes.
They stand like that for a while and then Naruto says, his voice layered with laughter, "I suppose we could call this one a draw."
Neither of them are the type to accept compromise. But Neji nods.
Hyuuga Neji can read violence in the line of someone's elbow and envy in the pattern of their lips and breath -- he's good, he's very good, but if the people around him are books then Naruto is written in large, stark characters meant for people with the blindness that Neji's eyes only hint mockingly at, or for children. He is a book well illustrated. Open and guileless in everything he does and every expression that moves fluidly across his features, simple to interpret, effortless to read.
This would be easy, Neji realises. He moves his fingers purposefully against the seal and Naruto looks at him, curious and aware, the heat of his skin and the violence of his chakra creating something in Neji's body that he is far too self-aware not to recognise as desire. This would be easy, and perhaps it would be fun. But easy has never been something that Neji values: there is no strength to be found in taking something that offers no challenge.
But to hold oneself back from taking something so simply offered -- yes, there is strength in that.
Neji pulls his hand away, and smiles, and adds Uzumaki Naruto to the long, long list of things that he wants but he will not let himself have.
Forcrazylittleme -- lessons Tsunade has taught Sakura
define yourself by your own merits
Two of the nurses have started to give Sakura funny looks, but she doesn't say anything: there is seldom any harm in letting a condition escalate if it is still too generic to be identified.
Sure enough, one day they step up to her with a matched set of expressions, one hopeful and one wary, but both with the same decorative edge of schadenfreude.
Keiko says, "Isn't it weird? Don't you sometimes get scared that they probably like each other more than they like you?"
Juria says, "Have you really kissed Uchiha Sasuke? What was it like?"
Sakura looks from one of them to the other and realises that this thing that she has created with the two people she loves most in the world is being seen as simultaneously her fault, and nothing to do with her at all. Fuck that. She is not a catalyst; she is neither a glue nor a soothing balm; she is no complex chemical to be analysed and tested.
"The patient in bed nine," she says, when the pause has become uncomfortable. "I need his temperature monitored carefully and his bandages changed as soon as they even look like they might be loosening."
"Okay, but --"
"Thank you." Sakura turns on her heel.
learn how much of yourself you can safely give
"Hey, Sakura! Bad day?"
She exhales, grateful beyond her own powers of expression for the simple warmth of Naruto's arms around her waist and the way he rests his chin on her head. One of these days he might even stop growing; despite everything the thought almost makes her smile.
"I've had worse," she says, and it's true, but only just.
Naruto hugs her once more and distracts her with cheerful blather about his own day as he makes a pot of tea. But it's Sasuke who watches the way her hands tremble before she steadies them on her cup, and it's Sasuke who says, "Who was it?" with none of his normal dryness of tone.
"Maki," she says, and doesn't say anything else, but that's fine because Naruto knows how to talk the aches out of her heart and Sasuke knows that sometimes silence is all you can give someone's memory when you have already poured yourself into holding back their pain.
know how to do things for yourself
"Here," she murmurs, "just a -- no, not quite --"
Sasuke lifts his head and gives her this totally affronted look and she comes perilously close to laughing, which would ruin everything because even now Sasuke is still learning how to be laughed at.
"Sakura," he growls. "Are you correcting me?"
"Yes," she says, and winds her fingers through his hair and tugs his anger into a deliciously dangerous expression. "But don't worry, Uchiha, I've been told you're a fast learner."
Naruto gives a warm, lazy laugh and presses his fingers against Sasuke's shoulder, then marks the spot with a bite that looks to be bordering on carelessly sharp. His eyes have fallen into a tense, amazed indigo, and Sakura can never decide what it is that she craves the most: the sensations of her own body, or Sasuke's slow progression into someone who can relinquish control, or the way Naruto holds himself apart sometimes -- Naruto, who she once thought incapable of inaction of any kind -- and just watches them.
Now Naruto looks at her and laughs again, his smile tight with fond sarcasm. "Sure, Sakura, give him a fucking challenge."
"That," Sakura says, holding his gaze, tugging harder, "was the general idea."
For
questofdreams -- Zuko/Sokka, swordplay"Stop it!" Katara snaps, causing Zuko's next insult to freeze into silence and then begin to creep back down his throat. "I don't know if this is just a clash of personalities or some kind of silly competition to see who has the bigger sword" -- behind her, Aang and Toph break into admiring giggles and sadistic snickering respectively -- "but we are a team and we have a serious mission to complete, and the last thing we need is you two ruining everything because you're being boys." She points away from the campsite. "Go on. Sort it out. Come back friends or I'll -- I'll give you cold showers twice a day. Personally," she adds, glowering.
Zuko is about to resurrect and redirect his cutting retort when Sokka grabs his arm. "She means it," he mutters. "Do you really want to wake up sopping wet and freezing? Come on."
"Let go of me," Zuko mutters in return, shaking his hand off, but he follows Sokka until they're in the clearing they were gathering wood in earlier. "Now what? Are we supposed to talk?"
"We could make out," Sokka suggests.
To his own sheer horror, Zuko almost agrees out of curiosity, before he works out that Sokka was joking. This whole traitor-to-his-blood-and-country thing sucks. He misses his uncle. He misses Mai. He wishes Sokka was not so obnoxiously good at things like having a normal family and a sane sister, and talking to girls, and just standing there with his stupid, handsome, unscarred face. Sokka is probably a really good kisser. The bastard.
"Ha ha," he says scathingly, and gives a flick of the wrist that sends a thin flame shooting in the other boy's direction; Sokka flings himself out of the way and ends up sprawled on the ground.
"Hey, uncool." Sokka stands up and gives him a baleful look. There are leaves in his hair. Zuko laughs, and he makes sure that it's not a cruel laugh, but Sokka narrows his eyes and then leaps at him with surprising speed.
Fifteen minutes and one extremely dirty leaf-fight later, Sokka has mud in his hair and a bruise on his chin and doesn't look so damn symmetrical any more.
Zuko smiles and holds out his hand. "Truce?"
For
rawles -- Mai/Zuko, they'll name a city after usand it's contagious
The fabric is heavy and smooth with precise regions of rough, draconic luxury in a contrasting thread. Zuko rubs it between his fingers and hears the words of the ceremony drumming their way from one side of his head to the other, endless, almost panicked. Incense is leaking through the slit in the curtains in front of him, and the smell mingles with the heat of his outfit and the clamour of hundreds of people all trying at once to make a respectfully small amount of noise. His head aches and with every sandalwood-choked breath his throat seems to close a little further.
"You're freaking out, aren't you. Idiot. I told you not to."
Mai is a vision in deep scarlet and shadowy folds of fabric as one of her hands emerges from the cascade of her sleeve and firmly takes hold of his own. His fingers, he knows, are like the brocade itself: smooth with rough patches. Burns. Callouses. Scars. He no longer finds shame in the markings that set him apart; she has touched every one of them and set him free.
"Breathe," she tells him. "Just say the words, and sit on the seat, and other people will do everything else."
He swallows. "I know. I know. I --"
Her mouth is on his for a brief, hot, wonderful moment, and Zuko forgets to be scared.
"My lord," Mai murmurs into his ear, her dry tone just as grounding as the kiss had been. "Your people await."
Zuko closes his eyes.
The Fire Lord opens them.
For
stars_like_dust -- Booth and Brennan terrorising Sweets but him being smarter than both of them"So you see," Booth said, warming to his subject, "we've decided that due to the fact that we have proper grown-up jobs, not that you'd know anything about that, heh, we'll still come to your little sessions, but we won't be doing those assignment things in between. Too busy. Sorry."
Dr Lance Sweets tapped one of Brennan's pens against his lips, trying not to laugh; Booth always retreated behind the age difference when he was uncomfortable, and Brennan had that expression that she always got when she was trying to look supportive of someone else's argument, despite the fact that she much preferred to do her own arguing.
"Right," she said finally, abruptly. "Because...well, it's a bit silly, isn't it? Getting homework for our partnership?" A brief, not-quite-casual laugh.
He let the pause go on just long enough that Booth's body language settled into smug satisfaction, and Brennan's face returned to normal. Then he smiled. "It wasn't the negatives, was it? It was the positives that you guys had trouble with."
Brennan was a terrible, terrible liar and even worse at covering surprise. She frowned. "What? No, we -- what?"
"Didn't you hear what we said, Sweets?"
"Oh, very clearly." He leaned forward, still smiling. "Obviously, you had so much trouble with the last assignment I set you that you talked each other into the conviction that the problem was with my 'homework' instead of with you. I'm right, aren't I?"
Booth snorted softly through his nose and looked away; that was answer enough from him. Brennan frowned even more deeply and fixed him with one of her most terrifyingly anthropological looks, the one that still made him want to hide behind something nice and thick, like the DSM-IV. But he knew he was right, and so he looked right back at her.
"Like I said, it wasn't the negatives, was it? I'm sure you two would do just fine at coming up with a list of three faults that the other person has."
"Of course." Brennan pushed back some hair and looked impatient. "He's impulsive, and flippant at inappropriate times, and too stubborn to admit when he's wrong."
"Agent Booth?"
"Pedantic, tactless...stubborn," Booth reeled off, looking snappish. "What?"
"Right. So I am forced to conclude that the enormous problem that led you to develop such an extravagant defence mechanism was that you can't think of a single good thing to say about each other, let alone three good things." He lifted his eyes and waited for Brennan to leap, as she always would in the presence of faulty assumptions. She was tough, but she was easy to lead.
Sure enough -- "No! No, I mean...Booth has a lot of good qualities." She shot a glance at him, and it collided with his glance at her, and Lance bit his tongue against the unprofessional urge to tell them about the people he'd seen and talked to, all the people whose relationships were destructive or dull or just anything less than this raw perfection that Agent Seeley Booth and Dr Temperence Brennan had somehow wrought between them. He wanted to tell them how lucky they were. But that wasn't his job; not yet.
"But?" he prompted.
"But your assignment is stupid. It's unreasonable to expect me to be succinct about -- about such subjective personal opinions. Three words? Three qualities? No. The picture conveyed wouldn't be accurate." She looked relieved, back on familiar ground.
"Agent Booth? Is that how you feel?"
"I -- yeah. Yeah." Booth snuck another look at his partner, a look that was half uncertain, half warm and possessive. "I'm not very good at describing, and Bones is -- well, she's a hell of a lot more than three words."
"Still." He put his hands on the desk and stood up. "I'd like you to try. Not in front of me, that's okay, but with each other. Right now. We'll discuss it next session."
The almost-panic that flew into Brennan's face told him that he was right; that this was what the other half of her defences were directed at.
"Uh," she said.
"Look --" Booth said.
Lance tried not to grin too widely as he left the office.
For
pirateygoodness -- Booth/Brennan, he likes her hands"I'm just saying that something can't be kind of unique, Booth. It's either the only thing of its type in existence, or it isn't. There isn't exactly a semantic grey area."
"All right, Bones, lesson learned, now can we please move on --"
"Fingerprints, for example, are unique."
She waves her hand in his face and he grabs it with one of his own, moving her plate sideways with the other so that her elbow isn't caught in a smear of ketchup.
"And palms," he says, seizing upon the opportunity to distract her from the argument about words by being deliberately unscientific. "Here, I bet I could read something about your future. This line here means --"
"Don't be ridiculous, Booth."
He likes her hands, the promise of efficiency in them, the elegant angles of the joints and the way she handles human bodies, dead or alive, as though they are miracles. He leans closer and looks at her, mockingly intent. "So you don't believe that personal information can be found in skin."
"Of course not."
"But you believe it can be found in bones."
A pause.
"Yes." She smiles at her own admission, comes close to laughing, and their faces are so near that the abruptness of her humour is almost palpable: like a splash of warm water, or a touch.
They have been like this so many times he's lost count. So many ends to so many days when everyone around them has left for their real lives, their not-work lives, the kind of life that Booth vaguely remembers having before this strange, wonderful, infuriating anthropologist came into the picture.
He thinks, I'm probably supposed to miss that. He probably is not meant to want to see her every day of the year, to hang out with her even when the working day is finished. He probably should not think that it wouldn't be a bad thing to see her even in the slim dark between-hours, and that he'd kind of like to wake up in a place where she is.
Nevertheless, that seems to be how he feels.
"You -- you're unique," he says. "There is nobody else like you, Bones. Nobody anywhere."
So many times they have been like this, just this close; they have smiled and blurred the lines of work and friendship, and one of them has always, always been the first to lean back. Booth watches her lips and thinks about gravity and concrete and other heavy things, concentrates on keeping his feet flat on the floor so that he doesn't do something stupid like run his fingers underneath her necklace, or lift her hand and learn the shape of its joints with his lips and tongue. No; tonight it's her turn to play the responsible adult, her turn to reestablish the distance, because he's not budging.
"True," she says. She doesn't move. She looks at him, her eyes alert and unwavering -- Booth feels like he's being measured.
Her hand slides out of his, very slowly, but she never quite breaks contact, and after a moment she slides her fingers between his until they are tightly laced. Booth looks down to make sure he isn't imagining it, and when he looks up again her smile has an extra layer to it: the familiar precision of her intelligence, the sense that she has flown down a path of reasoning at speeds that most people could barely imagine, and has arrived at a decision.
"What?" he asks, feeling his mouth curve in response. "What?"
"I don't know --" she says, and looks down at their hands, and is quiet.
Booth lifts his other hand, oh-so-careful, like he's showing his empty palms to an armed junkie, and tilts her chin upwards. "-- what that means?" he suggests.
"Yes." Her hand tightens and he can't tell if it's affection or fear. "I'm used to -- this isn't what I -- yes. I don't know how to do this, Booth. I don't know."
Booth ignores the ache of effort that it takes to hold himself in his seat -- gravity, gravity, gravity -- and instead he kisses her index finger, halfway between the knuckles. There's probably a proper technical name for that. She has her language and he has his, and if he's learned anything from working with Temperance Brennan it's the power of a graceful compromise.
"Then we'll start with something you do know," he says, and smooths his thumb across her wrist, and follows the shiver of contact all the way up her arm and the line of her neck to the sudden smile of understanding that diffuses across her face.
"Bones of the wrist," she says, and teaches him.
For
myrafur -- Naruto/Neji"At least you have a history!" Naruto is yelling. "At least you know who your family is."
This is an old argument. Neji suspects he is simply the easiest person for Naruto to argue with, in the absence of any other likely suspects. The knowledge just makes him angrier.
"You know nothing," he hisses. "You have no idea what I would give to be free of my name's weight."
He waits for the next outburst, but after a moment Naruto lifts his hand and Neji stands very still as the Uzumaki pushes his hitai-ate and his headband upwards as a single block of fabric, laying bare the blue lines on his forehead. Naruto traces them with one finger and Neji thinks, all right then, and puts his own hand square against the curse seal on the other boy's stomach. He can feel body warmth through the shirt and he can feel roiling spitting power underneath that, totally at odds with Naruto's calm eyes.
They stand like that for a while and then Naruto says, his voice layered with laughter, "I suppose we could call this one a draw."
Neither of them are the type to accept compromise. But Neji nods.
Hyuuga Neji can read violence in the line of someone's elbow and envy in the pattern of their lips and breath -- he's good, he's very good, but if the people around him are books then Naruto is written in large, stark characters meant for people with the blindness that Neji's eyes only hint mockingly at, or for children. He is a book well illustrated. Open and guileless in everything he does and every expression that moves fluidly across his features, simple to interpret, effortless to read.
This would be easy, Neji realises. He moves his fingers purposefully against the seal and Naruto looks at him, curious and aware, the heat of his skin and the violence of his chakra creating something in Neji's body that he is far too self-aware not to recognise as desire. This would be easy, and perhaps it would be fun. But easy has never been something that Neji values: there is no strength to be found in taking something that offers no challenge.
But to hold oneself back from taking something so simply offered -- yes, there is strength in that.
Neji pulls his hand away, and smiles, and adds Uzumaki Naruto to the long, long list of things that he wants but he will not let himself have.
For
crazylittleme -- lessons Tsunade has taught Sakuradefine yourself by your own merits
Two of the nurses have started to give Sakura funny looks, but she doesn't say anything: there is seldom any harm in letting a condition escalate if it is still too generic to be identified.
Sure enough, one day they step up to her with a matched set of expressions, one hopeful and one wary, but both with the same decorative edge of schadenfreude.
Keiko says, "Isn't it weird? Don't you sometimes get scared that they probably like each other more than they like you?"
Juria says, "Have you really kissed Uchiha Sasuke? What was it like?"
Sakura looks from one of them to the other and realises that this thing that she has created with the two people she loves most in the world is being seen as simultaneously her fault, and nothing to do with her at all. Fuck that. She is not a catalyst; she is neither a glue nor a soothing balm; she is no complex chemical to be analysed and tested.
"The patient in bed nine," she says, when the pause has become uncomfortable. "I need his temperature monitored carefully and his bandages changed as soon as they even look like they might be loosening."
"Okay, but --"
"Thank you." Sakura turns on her heel.
learn how much of yourself you can safely give
"Hey, Sakura! Bad day?"
She exhales, grateful beyond her own powers of expression for the simple warmth of Naruto's arms around her waist and the way he rests his chin on her head. One of these days he might even stop growing; despite everything the thought almost makes her smile.
"I've had worse," she says, and it's true, but only just.
Naruto hugs her once more and distracts her with cheerful blather about his own day as he makes a pot of tea. But it's Sasuke who watches the way her hands tremble before she steadies them on her cup, and it's Sasuke who says, "Who was it?" with none of his normal dryness of tone.
"Maki," she says, and doesn't say anything else, but that's fine because Naruto knows how to talk the aches out of her heart and Sasuke knows that sometimes silence is all you can give someone's memory when you have already poured yourself into holding back their pain.
know how to do things for yourself
"Here," she murmurs, "just a -- no, not quite --"
Sasuke lifts his head and gives her this totally affronted look and she comes perilously close to laughing, which would ruin everything because even now Sasuke is still learning how to be laughed at.
"Sakura," he growls. "Are you correcting me?"
"Yes," she says, and winds her fingers through his hair and tugs his anger into a deliciously dangerous expression. "But don't worry, Uchiha, I've been told you're a fast learner."
Naruto gives a warm, lazy laugh and presses his fingers against Sasuke's shoulder, then marks the spot with a bite that looks to be bordering on carelessly sharp. His eyes have fallen into a tense, amazed indigo, and Sakura can never decide what it is that she craves the most: the sensations of her own body, or Sasuke's slow progression into someone who can relinquish control, or the way Naruto holds himself apart sometimes -- Naruto, who she once thought incapable of inaction of any kind -- and just watches them.
Now Naruto looks at her and laughs again, his smile tight with fond sarcasm. "Sure, Sakura, give him a fucking challenge."
"That," Sakura says, holding his gaze, tugging harder, "was the general idea."
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Eeer, anyway ^^;; I adore how they were such BOYS XD and how Katara is, as ever, the peace keeper <333 and Sokka's symmetrical face XDD MMMm thank you! <333
Also, the Sakura one was LOVELY *_* I don't think I've found any other writer whose interpretation/characterization of her I like more than yours <3
no subject
I don't think I'll ever feel as comfortable with any Naruto character's voice as I do with Sakura's. Though I still find Shikamaru very easy and, surprisingly, I am beginning to get a feel for Neji.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject