Generally, Asuma wasn't too picky about first kisses. Just so long as they were heated, eagerly received, and led straight to second-third-fourth kisses and the nearest flat surface.

Jerking back to life halfway through and immediately coughing water into his partner's mouth was a new one, though it did involve a flat surface. Asuma arched up as Natsumi yanked away, spitting and shocked, and grabbed the first part of her he could reach while half the damn river retched out of his lungs. Her arm, as it turned out. She shoved him back down before he could double up and accidentally stab something with the sword still shoved through his armour.

It took a couple seconds to find his bearings, and longer than that to realize they were finally on dry land, but when he did--and actually stopped coughing long enough to speak--nothing in the world could have kept him from grinning. His lungs burned like fire.

"Knew you liked me," he rasped in a voice like shattered glass, and hauled himself up. He'd been stabbed, sliced, frozen, drained, drowned, tossed all about the godforsaken landscape, and he was going to have the bruises to prove it, but he really didn't care. Natsumi was right there, glaring above the smile tilting her lips, bedraggled and blue, definitely injured, completely out of breath, and one hundred per cent alive.

Asuma leaned forward, pulled her closer, and stole the coldest, most relieved second kiss he'd ever had.