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Tweak says, "Believe it!"

fallen_tsume (fallen_tsume) wrote in fallen_leaves,
@ 2008-03-02 01:26:00

Entry tags:

raidou, tsume

Different Kind of Dance [closed to Tsume and Raidou] [NC-17]
Set six years previous, a year before the Kyuubi attack. WARNING: very dark material. Discretion advised.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been drinking. Not long enough, that much was sure. She could still stand, for one thing. Still see, for another. In fact, as senses went, she was disturbingly non-impaired.

"Tsume, come home." Yasuo pulled at her sleeve, his slit-pupiled eyes--so prized among the Inuzuka as marking them for purity--creased with worry. "Your mother needs you."

She rounded on him, looking up into his face. "Don't begin with that," she snarled, lips lifting off of her teeth. Her mother needed no one anymore; no one except a dead familiar they couldn't bring back. "My sister's there." In case anything did go wrong. In case her mother spoke one more word, just one.

She wouldn't. But hope was harder to kill than ninja.

"The clan needs you to be clear headed in the morning," Yasuo began, his crimson tattoos bleeding out against his flushed face. His own lip pulled up off his teeth, baring fangs no larger than hers in a mouth that was bigger.

"The clan needs me to bully them into behavior. I can do that hungover or not. Leave me alone."

He reached for her again, anger making his eyes glitter. Tsume recoiled, snarling, taking two steps back and leaping for the table she knew was behind her. She'd been in ANBU for two years, and had only recently quit; a few drinks and a table weren't going to foul her up. She crouched on the tabletop, thought better, hopped off on the other side to put it between them. A bar wasn't the place to start a fight. She might get thrown out.

That had happened enough the last few weeks.

As if waiting for his cue, the bartender called warningly, "Tsume..."

Her snarl changed to a smile, and she waved at him jauntily. "No problem here!"

"You're throwing your life away!" Yasuo growled, hands claws at his sides.

She smiled, knife-edged and full of warning. The clan wanted her to breed. She had good bloodlines, far more feral than most of the other Inuzuka, and they needed the children. This was their top pick; she suspected they hoped Yasuo's tendency for manners would blunt her canine-edge in any offspring, without dulling the clan abilities. "You're just upset," she growled, "because I'm not humping you."

His skin flushed, and she smelled anger and embarrassment over the sharp, sour scent of the beer on the table between them.

"But I have a date tonight," Tsume announced, knowing full well he'd smell the lie.

Yasuo's chin rose. "Who?" he demanded.

She glanced around, then pointed to a man sitting at a booth. "Him." She grinned, wolfish and pleased as bitches in sunshine to make Yasuo that much angrier. Maybe the alcohol was affecting her judgment just a little.

Maybe.

Yasuo turned to look at the man in the booth with both incredulousness--he knew it was a lie--and accusation. "That true?" he barked.

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fallen_raidou
2008-03-02 09:47 am UTC (link)

Raidou had two problems in the world. Big problems. Monumental even. The first involved his wallet and its sadly deflated state. He could probably only afford one more beer. Possibly a shot if he managed to find some real charm somewhere and slapped it on the counter with his remaining change. The second revolved around the fact that his current beer bottle was down to the dregs and ready to join its empty companions lined up next to his elbow.

It was a sad thing to have no more alcohol. Very sad.

He was distantly aware of the snarling fight somewhere behind his back in the same way that he was distantly aware there were seven ninja, three civilians, and one Uchiha in this bar. All armed. Unless one of them actually offered to pay for his next shot, Raidou didn't much care.

And then someone decided to leak enough killing intent in his direction to bleach his hair white.

Raidou studied his bottle for a moment, tilting the slender neck just so between his fingers to make the remaining contents sway. Then he turned around with a fast snap of movement and nailed his accuser squarely in the teeth. Glass shattered.

"Absolutely," said Raidou, without the faintest idea of what he was admitting to. He stood up, swayed one careful step to the left, and signalled at the bartender. "One more? You can put it on his tab."

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fallen_tsume
2008-03-02 09:49 am UTC (link)

Aomaru leaped up, vaulting over a chair and launching himself, talons and teeth first, through the air at the scar-faced ninja as Yasuo spun and clutched at his mouth.

"Kuromaru!" Tsume bellowed, but her familiar had already swept into action, sliding under the tables and snapping at Aomaru's legs, grabbing a hind one and pulling him down just before he reached the man. Two bundles of fur snarled and writhed on the floor, a livid knot of anger matched only by Tsume and Yasuo as she closed on him, ramming her shoulder into his stomach before he could retaliate and smashing him to the ground.

Aomaru yelped twice and lay still at the scar-ninja's feet, his fur speckled with blood as Kuromaru held him down, jaws clamped tight around the smaller wolf's neck.

Yasuo dropped like dead weight when Tsume's fingers dug into his jugular, her snarling-smiling face inches above his.

"Tsume!" the bartender bellowed.

She looked up at him, hair falling raggedly in her face, slit-pupils dilated with fight until they took up almost all of her pale iris. "What? I'm stopping the fight!" Below her, Yasuo choked. She slackened her grip, then finally let him up.

He scooted away across the floor, glaring at her and rubbing his throat.

She crouched, grinning ferally. "You should go. I'm gonna buy my hero over there a drink."

He staggered to his feet, glaring blackly at first her and then the ninja. Then he turned and weaved his way out the door.

"Kuromaru?"

He let go of the other wolf, who slunk out after his familiar with a small whine.

"I'm gonna make this place no-Inuzuka, that happens again," the bartender muttered.

Tsume swaggered to the bar, grinning wildly. "Awww, Osami-san. You don't mean that. Look! Here, I'll pay his tab," she pulled out her wallet and dropped bills on the counter, "and I'd like two more drinks. Wait, make it four. Definitely four." She dropped more bills and smiled up at the beefy man hopefully, stuffing her wallet into her back pocket.

He peered at the bills for a moment, then with a sigh and a grumble swept them up and got four beers, handing them over without popping the tops.

Tsume scooped them up and went around fallen chairs, ignoring the wary and annoyed looks of the other occupants, to the man she'd declared her date. "Here." She shoved two beers at him and grinned. "That was great. Anyone who can bash Yasuo's teeth in..." her grin widened, and she tipped her beer up to clink the bottom to his, then drank.

Except the lid was still on. She frowned at it.

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fallen_raidou
2008-03-02 09:52 am UTC (link)

"Good dog," Raidou said a shade vaguely as wolves tried to kill each other in front of him and the tiny Inuzuka proved the golden rule in a bar fight: always look out for the little one. His muscles, apparently deciding his brain was on vacation, tensed ready to duck, dodge or smash a blow if the need arose.

In the end all he had to do was accept two beers and trade a sharp-edged grin for another.

Well, and laugh a bit when the Inuzuka built like a wire apparently forgot how to drink hers. It felt weird to laugh. "I'm very great," he told her solemnly, when the sound had choked itself out. "One day there will be statues in my honour. Possibly medals." He tucked one beer under his arm, and flicked the tab on the other, lifting it to take a gulp. "Helps if you take the top off."

Damn, that was a big dog.

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fallen_tsume
2008-03-02 09:53 am UTC (link)

Tsume tipped her head back to look up at him--the guy was tall, and she was momentarily jealous--and peered at dilated pupils and a scar-ridden face. He was muscular yet slim, with the growing look men in their teens and twenties had, and the formed look ninja had. The scars across one side of his face, melting over the bridge of his nose, made guessing an age beyond that impossible; he could have been a tall sixteen-year-old or a skinny twenty-nine-year-old. The look in his eyes--an alcohol-fuzzy brown--made him seem older. War did that to people.

She smiled at him. He looked like he didn't smile often enough. He looked a little worn, a little tired. He looked like a mirror, only not at all. "You," Tsume said carefully, "look like you need a beer." She'd bought two. He was drinking one. Excellent. Her job was done.
She stepped carefully over Kuromaru, now lying to one side, and flopped down at the booth the man had so recently vacated. She used the edge of the table to snap the top off the bottle, then tipped half the contents down her gullet.

Hey, she'd been honest when she'd decided he looked like a mirror. She totally needed a beer.

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fallen_raidou
2008-03-02 09:54 am UTC (link)

"I'll agree with that," said Raidou, "mostly on the grounds that it's true." He lifted his own beer in a little salute as he followed her example, swallowing a much bigger gulp. As beers went it wasn't bad. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. And as it was currently his ~~seventh~~ ~~ninth~~ possibly tenth such beverage in a row ~~if you didn't count the shots~~, he wasn't prepared to be picky. Besides, it was free.

He looked at the woman in front of him, eyes flicking over the obvious. She was everything an Inuzuka was supposed to be; wild and grinning and perfectly ready--unless he missed his guess--to snap off someone's head at the neck if they brushed her the wrong way.

He liked that. Made things simple.

It didn't hurt that she was fairly easy on the eyes, either. She was small, but that just meant her teeth lined up with your throat. Her hair was about as jagged as those teeth and just as friendly looking, bristling out above an angular, tan face broken up by red tattoos and ice-blue eyes.

For all that she was tiny, she was a far way from fragile. He liked that, too.

And the dog was definitely huge.

Raidou shifted slightly, angling his left side away a little, and glanced at the door her companion had so recently fled out of. "So what did I do to annoy your buddy? Or was it just my general existence?" Wrong place, wrong time and all.