 sex, he was fanatical in his training.
She went to watch, once. Didn't tell him, but he knew when she arrived.
She understood why her mission was important. She tried to picture him having a psychotic break and failed, and she'd been there five months ago when Sugiyama Aina'd woken from her coma and failed to notice she was home in Mist for a full hour.
Mia been there to see the underweight from starvation, weakened woman gut two nurses and damn near take out a whole hospital wing. It'd taken three Anbu and ten jounin to finally sedate her, hold her down.
Trying to picture Kisame in that scene thought. That was like trying to picture a viper in place of a worm. If he truly snapped, went past feeling pain, farther than the normal training's tolerance to hurt and damage...
"How do you have time for me, and training?" she asked just to interrupt her own train of thought after he was done and sitting on the branch next to her.
He shrugged his shoulders. Looked away from her. That meant it was just another one of his freaky little... things. Like his constant teeth shedding. "I don't sleep very much."
She'd known that. He got up in the night, some nights, to eat, and it'd just wake her and he'd be back for an hour, before dawn. She'd hoped he was cheating on her.
He wasn't. He just. Got up and trained, or read on the roof so the light wouldn't bother her.
At least his learning curve was mind-melting steep in anything he set his mind to. She didn't know if the other six had given him some advice or if he'd read a book, but if she didn't think about who was doing those things to her she could black out from the intensity.

It always faded to a blue out.
They didn't move in together.
That at least was... Something. He liked things... Messy wasn't the right word but for a shinobi he seemed to accumulate things. She teased him about it once, on a day when she was feeling blade proof and up beat, sitting on his bed painting her toenails and listening to the radio. He had copper tubing wrapped around it, going out the window, and on clear nights could pick up a grass weather station.
"If this place ever catches on fire you'll be scorched trying to save it all."
"You'd never soak your precious books."
He nodded in agreement, watched her.
"You keep staring I'll assume you want your nails done too," she said, lips quirking.
She thought he was joking, so she said yes. Then after, she thought maybe he was doing it as a joke.
Then after he bought this own jar.
His learning curve was steep here as well. He could even do white tips, small designs.
It was oddly endearing.
She developed a sense of when he was looking at her. An oily feel on her skin no matter what she wore.
She felt it once while sparring with a former team mate. Almost took a hit to the face for her carelessness except the ankle that was connected to the foot that had been aimed at her nose was suddenly gripped in that too big hand.
"Don't let me distract you, Mia," he said with a grin, then looked at her sparring partner. Reached out and shifted her knee down, a little. "And your form needs tightening."
The girl nodded dumbly. Blushed.
Mia stared at the blush. Well, noted it, and mentally stared at the image in her own head. The idea that...
She reported it, and the rest of that day was spent swimming in foolish hope.


Mia swallowed and told herself it was just bad luck.
Her collection of pills grew. Red pills for scent. Little ones to halt pregnancy. Pain pills for sparring (and she did still spar, threw herself into it, sometimes with him, usually with other chunnin who'd hit her hard enough to bruise) and now little blue ones to put her to sleep at night. Because the blushing girl had a round face and her name had been Kikimo, and Mia wished she didn't know that.
She had, a few video's of her own. Slightly questionable ones. She kept them to the side, behind her ever sprawling collection of black rectangles.
When he found them, it was one thing. It was, slightly awkward but somewhat funny.
When she caught him watching them, later that night after he'd thought she'd gone to sleep.....
It was a blinding ray of hope.
Please be queer, she mentally begged him. Please.
And she'd played the concerned girlfriend role, confronted him on the spot, and... He'd turned deep purple and admitted to being curious, but he loved female bits, really, or at least he loved hers, loved HER..
She told him she loved him too, the lie as trained and automatic as her smile.
That she didn't mind, he could have her tapes. Admitted a half-fake voyeuristic fantasy about watching him with another man. Half fake because while she'd ADORE him with another man, she didn't really want to be there.
She didn't like the way her superiors looked at each other. She liked the mission scroll she got a month later even less.
She was sparring harder now. Somewhere between needed to burn energy she never spent on missions, and wanting to hit something.
The secret was to bruise, but not to bleed.
He could smell the blood. He never said so, directly, but when cramps had her grouchy he knew. When she'd been cut in a spar, he knew. He treated her as if she was slightly more fragile.
It was something that should have felt... Good. Right? Every girls dream, to be treated like a princess. She acted like it was good, that he was sensitive to her like that.
But it made her feel naked.
He'd been gone for two weeks. She knew where he was.
He was on a mission with Junpei.
Junpei, who should have been on the sticky red pills a month now. His with the blue stripes, extra testosterone or something.
She barely went on missions, anymore. Not ones that took her out of the village. She did a lot of paperwork, helped at the academy.
Her superiors discussed levering her into a teaching position, or something in T&I (T&T, more like it. Bastards.) giving her a reason to always be in the village.
Lately though, that was alright. She hated everything.
She read a few books about more flexible relationships. There weren't many books, but there was more than one team in Mist that took the phrase 'teammates' rather seriously.
They didn't always last very long.
But not because of internal strife.
And her superiors agreed. If something happened to her, then if Kisame had another...
It'd both deepen his loyalty and protect his sanity.
It felt wrong, but she hoped Kisame wouldn't be open to the idea. She remembered that blushing girl who'd vanished, even without dreaming, and didn't want that to be her.
She might be a whore in this mission but she was alive. There was no guarantee that'd stay the same if the mission ended because someone else could do it better.
The trickiest part of the sex was not touching the gills, the fin, and ignoring the teeth.
But if you could manage all that...
"You're amazing, you know," he told her. "You're always, serene."
He nodded. "Yeah. You're always. You're calm and warm. Like a cup of tea."
Flat eyes. She was starting to think he might actually be blind except she knew he wasn't.
Afterwards, she couldn't remember if he'd suggested it, or she had, or maybe she'd gotten him to think he'd suggested it. She'd gotten good at that. Wasn't too hard. He was young, after all. And in love. And male.
But what was two became three.
Junpei was under orders, of course. On red pills with a blue stripe because she'd been right, his didn't have extra estrogen in them, meeting with her when Kisame was away to discuss how the mission was going. He had olive green eyes and olive gold skin. Dyed black and red into his hair. She thought he might have been a blond under it.
She hadn't known him before. Didn't know if his clothes were new like hers had been.
At least he was probably as gay as he seemed.
The pity was that, she didn't see any less of Kisame.
His damn sleep patterns meant that neither she nor Junpei were neglected. Not that they could break up with him without approval.
She imagined going to them, saying, no, she couldn't do this, but she always thought of that stupid girl whose blush she'd reported, and the way that girl was gone.
But a lot of shinobi... Their reasons to fight...
The person you fought to honor didn't have to be alive.
Junpei nodded in agreement and pointed out, if nothing else, Kisame wasn't much of a sadist.
Mai'd laughed until she'd been weeping in agreement.
Kisame was going to be gone for a while.