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There were hands gripping tightly in his hair. The pads of Shino’s fingers were rough and calloused. Kiba could feel the texture of them brush against his scalp from how hard the other shinobi was clutching at his hair. Hot, tired breath shuddered across his face, the fabric of Shino’s long jacket rubbing coarsely over the exposed skin of Kiba’s chest from where he had stripped down to his mesh shirt.
‘Not good enough,’ Shino said. He pushed Kiba’s head away and the suddenness of the motion made his neck click. ‘Try again.’
‘Damn it, Shino, I already told you there’s no point to this.’ Kiba barked. He swiped at the side of his face where Shino’s breath had tickled along his skin and made his way so they stood opposite each other.
‘Of course there’s a point. You’re strong but your hand-to-hand combat is lacking. I’m a long range fighter but I still beat you when we spar. So try and land a hit on me again. Taijutsu only.’
Shino stood opposite him, hands in his pockets, posture lax and comfortable, one foot tapping idle rhythms on the dirt floor, and it sent a wave of irritation coursing through Kiba. It rose, thick and hot like lava in his chest until he burst into a loud growl and leaped forwards. His fist curled and he swung it straight for Shino’s cheek.
‘Not… Good enough.’ Shino stopped him without moving anything but one arm, his hand clasped around Kiba’s fist, knuckles white from the force of his grip.
‘Damn it!’ Kiba ripped his hand out of Shino’s and wiped that hot touch off his skin onto the fabric of his trousers.
‘You’re not thinking before you attack.’
‘How am I supposed to think when you’re constantly talking?’ he snapped back at Shino. One of the Aburame’s bugs landed on the angry line of Kiba’s furrowed forehead and he felt it gently sucking away some of the chakra boiling in the air around him.
‘I’m only trying to help you.’
‘I know,’ he said, voice guttural and angry. He paused to take a ragged breath, forcing himself to calm down before he spoke again. ‘Man I know, okay?’
‘Okay.’ Was all Shino replied. He shucked his hand from his pocket to summon the beetle on Kiba’s face back to him and the vibration of its wings tickled.
He looked intimidating like this, Kiba thought. They had been training for so long that the sun had started to set, and the orange light of early evening cast flattering shadows over his face. It highlighted the strong line of his jaw and nose contrasted against his soft, fleshy cheeks. Shino had always had a statuesqueness about him. He was calm and cool, quiet and still. In the beginning Kiba had found that quiet invasive, the constant looming silence that surrounded Shino was so heavy that it almost had a physical weight to it, but overtime Kiba had started to find comfort in it. Even if he was an annoying bastard.
‘Come here,’ Shino said and the words pitched a flurry of inexplicable warmth in Kiba’s stomach.
‘Why?’ he asked, voice reluctant even as he obeyed the order.
Shino didn’t reply directly. He took his hand out of his front pocket to reach into his back one and when it re-emerged he was holding a small, dark food pill. ‘You’re tired,’ he said.
‘I’ll be fine.’ Kiba scratched his head.
‘Just take the pill. If you want to carry on practicing you may as well do it in your best state,’ Shino said, but rather than hand the pill over to Kiba he raised it directly to the Inuzuka’s lips, held between two slim fingers.
Kiba flushed, brilliant blinding heat radiating from behind the markings on his cheeks. He didn’t bother trying to deny the inevitability of Shino placing the pill in his mouth. He parted his lips and Shino’s fingers slipped to press the pill onto the flat of his tongue. Those calloused fingertips tasted like mud and grass and they caught slightly on his bottom lip when they retreated, punctuating his exit from Kiba’s mouth with the soft pop of that cushion of flesh smacking back into place. He crunched the pill and the taste of earth was gone, replaced with the sour, medicinal taste that accompanied most food pills.
‘Try and hit me again,’ Shino said. Kiba didn’t miss the way he wiped his fingers down his jacket to get rid of the moisture of his mouth before returning his hands to his pockets.
Kiba swung, his tight fist aimed for Shino’s gut. Chakra leaked out from the gaps between his knuckles as his fist careened for Shino’s covered stomach.
‘You’re still not thinking,’ Shino said. He stepped to the side and Kiba fell to his knees from the lack of impact, his punch leaving a large dent in the ground that rippled the birds from the trees around them.
Kiba let a frustrated grunt rip from his mouth and slammed his fist back into the rupture of land he’d created.
‘Damn it!’ he said again.
‘You’re too hot-headed,’ Shino said, but his tone wasn’t accusatory. He bent down next to the Inuzuka and rested a hand on the slope of his shoulder blade jutting from his back. ‘Use your tactical skills. If I know where you’re going to aim before you land the hit then I know where to move to dodge it.’ His fingers squeezed against the sweat-damp mesh beneath his hand.
‘I don’t have any problems with this usually,’ Kiba replied, frustrated at the shake in his voice when he spoke. A drop of sweat trailed from his forehead and down the slope of his nose before falling from the tip to darken the dry dirt beneath him with a spot of moisture.
‘I know your techniques well. It’s an advantage you won’t often find when facing an enemy on the battlefield.’
Kiba leaned back on his heels and Shino’s hand fell from his shoulder. When he looked at the Aburame there was a slight upward curve to the slant of his mouth, too small to be considered a smile but comforting nonetheless.
‘I just feel like I’m always trying to catch up to you.’ Kiba sighed and dropped his eyes to the ground between the two of them, his brows still pinched into a frustrated frown.
‘You’re a good shinobi, Kiba,’ Shino replied, and when he shifted forward to be closer, Kiba saw the plateau of his pale chest down the exposed opening of his shirt. Shino put his hand back in contact with Kiba, this time resting on his knee. The spot of contact was a hot epic-centre on his body. He put a hand over the Aburame’s on his knee and squeezed.
‘Thanks, man.’
Shino grunted a non-comittal sound in response.
They remained in that silence for a while, Shino allowing Kiba the time to calm his temper and Kiba attempting to steady his thundering chest from the swell of feelings echoing around his body from that hand on his knee, those fingers locked between his own. It felt like static raising the hair on his arms and legs and chest.
‘Kiba,’ Shino started to say but trailed off before he finished. He shifted forward again, a little closer, the tips of their knees moved to lock together. His hand underneath Kiba’s was rubbing arhythmic beats into his knee.
‘What?’ Kiba replied, he raised his eyes to look at Shino. The face before him was impassive as ever but he could feel the sharpness of his gaze, despite not being able to see it, like a needle dragging along the curves of his face.
‘Nothing.’
‘Man, you always do that. You know, this whole mysterious schtick that you’ve got going on isn’t as cool as you think it is.’ There was no bite to Kiba’s words. He lifted his hand from Shino’s on his knee and raised it so he was fingering the corner of Shino’s opaque goggles, teetering on the edge of them in obvious question. ‘Can I take them off?’
Shino let out a small cough, more a nervous tic than anything else, and nodded his head. When Kiba dragged the goggles off the other’s face the skin under his fingers was flushed warm.
‘Much better,’ he said. His hand lingered in the hair under Shino’s hood. The goggles fell to the ground unnoticed. The hair caught between his digits was soft and short, it tickled in the crevices of his finger joints.
Shino’s breath was a little shaky but his gaze was sure and locked directly on Kiba’s.
‘If you’ve calmed down then we should continue training,’ the Aburame said, but made no effort to move.
‘It won’t work,’ Kiba replied, scooted forward a little closer, pushed his hand a little deeper into that hood of hair.
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t think I want to land a hit on you.’
‘Going easy on a friend isn’t a kindness,’ Shino said, his hand on Kiba’s knee brushed slightly higher so it was spread along the meaty part of his thigh.
‘Screw you, I know that.’
‘I never said you didn’t.’
It was a warm, still day, but in the rapidly cooling sunset the small space the two of them occupied felt like a radial hotspot. A swell of heat frothing at the point that their knees interlocked. Kiba tugged lightly on the hair in his hand and rather than resist, Shino submitted forwards, lifting himself up on his knees so he hung close over Kiba, the fan of his breath humid and medicinal like his food pills. Kiba shuddered, pulled him a little closer until their breath melded into one indistinct mass of warm air between them.
‘Kiba,’ Shino said again.
‘What?’ Kiba grunted.
Shino kissed him. Not a surge of pent up sexual tension but a slow, open-mouthed kiss that caught Kiba’s plump bottom lip between his slender ones. When he pulled away their mouths separated with a tacky sound.
‘Screw you.’ Kiba laughed, his words high pitched and lilting with regressed excitement. ‘Do it properly.’
He pulled Shino towards him again with the hand in his hair. Their lips met and Shino grunted quietly at the contact, he rested a steadying hand on Kiba’s shoulder and it joined his other in tapping nonsensical rhythms into his skin. The Aburame’s kisses were soft and small. He pressed slow kisses one after another onto Kiba’s mouth and each one ended with the sticky clack of their lips separating.
Kiba’s hand in Shino’s hair thumbed through the strands and it added another rhythm to the cacophony of beats they were creating. He brought his free hand to rest low on Shino’s hip so his long fingers could skirt on the edge of inappropriate, just barely grazing against what could be argued as the edge of his pretty, round ass.
Shino’s lips were a little dry, slightly chapped at the apexed centre of his lower one and the tingle of that dry dragging against Kiba’s smooth thrummed giddy jolts down his neck. He craned to try and deepen the kiss but every time he did Shino just pulled back a little.
‘This doesn’t seem like the best idea,’ Shino said quietly against Kiba’s skin between kisses. His sentence was punctuated with a particularly long one that left the man beneath him dizzy on want.
‘Stop thinking so much, Shino,’ Kiba grunted back in reply.
‘We’re in the middle of the training field.’ A long kiss, a flick of tongue against the acute corner of Kiba’s mouth. The Inuzuka wrapped his arm more definitely around Shino’s lower back, dragged him down so he could feel the weight of him sitting on his lap.
‘You wanna stop?’ Kiba asked into the dip between Shino’s mouth and chin.
‘You need to train.’
‘That’s not an answer to the question.’
‘No. I don’t want to stop.’ Shino moved to drape his arms around Kiba’s skinny neck, one hand tickling the fine hair at the nape of his neck, the other teasing along the ridges of his spine. It made him shudder, gooseflesh rising under the hard skin of Shino’s fingers.
Their mouths slotted together again and this time when Kiba traced the seam of his lips with his tongue Shino accepted the intrusion. Soft brushed against soft and Shino groaned receptively at the feeling, pushing his body forward so the two of them were pressed chest to chest and Kiba fell heavy onto his back from the suddenness of it.
‘This really isn’t a good idea,’ Shino muttered as he straddled himself over Kiba’s thighs and leaned down to pressed his lips into the juncture where the Inuzuka’s neck met his shoulders, licking into the hollow cup of his collarbone on the way. Kiba whined slightly and dug his nails into Shino’s waist.
‘If it’s not a good idea then get off me,’ Kiba said and Shino smelled like tree bark and herbs, his skin tasted like earth, their bodies pressed tightly together and Kiba just couldn’t get enough of the way his senses were overwhelmed with him, every minuscule pock of his taste sending hot flares down his body.
Shino ignored the taunt to suck a spot at the centre of Kiba’s neck. A large, obnoxious mark too high up to hide under the collar of a top or jacket. Kiba’s neck flexed taut and strained in pleasure. He choked on a groan.
‘I will,’ Shino murmured, his breath billowing over the wet of his saliva on Kiba’s neck so the man beneath him felt more than heard him speak.
‘Do it then.’ To further make his point, Kiba dropped his hands from Shino’s waist to lie useless in the dirt on either side of him. ‘I won’t stop you.’
Shino hummed and pressed the noise into Kiba’s quivering Adam’s apple. He raised himself and pressed his lips slowly against Kiba’s, licked into his mouth just to catch the Inuzuka’s tongue and suck it. Kiba’s groan was loud and his hands clenched violently into the dirt, Shino felt his thighs tense and untense beneath him.
Shino sat up.
The Inuzuka beneath him let out a confused whine at the loss of contact. He was dazed and muddled, there was dusty mud in his hair and worked into the lines of his palms and his eyes were half-lidded. He tilted his head up to give a quizzical look at the man straddling him.
‘Hey,’ he croaked. ‘What gives?’
‘I’m getting off you.’ Shino slid himself off one side of Kiba’s lap and stood upright, wiping his knees of dirt and picking up his goggles as he raised himself.
‘I didn’t mean it.’ Kiba’s voice was high-pitched with outrage and he dropped his head back to thunk heavily against the ground again. ‘You ever heard of calling someone’s bluff?’
Shino knocked his hood down to fit his glasses back over his head and the side of his hair that Kiba had been gripping was tangled with thick knots. ‘If that’s the case then it seems you placed a losing bet.’ He offered his hand down to the other ninja and he reluctantly took it. He pulled Kiba to his feet.
When Kiba was upright he wrapped his arm back around Shino’s small waist, tugged until their chests were pressed together again, he teased a lone finger up the fabric of Shino’s shirt to rub against the bare skin of his lower back.
‘This isn’t over,’ he said, and despite the dominant nature of his actions, there was an unsure look in his expression. He rested his face close to Shino’s but didn’t cross the final line to press their lips back together.
‘It’s not,’ Shino agreed. He closed the gap and their lips melded naturally together again before he broke away, far too soon for Kiba’s liking if his frustrated whine was anything to go by. ‘But you still haven’t landed a hit on me.’
‘Are you kidding?’ Kiba’s forehead slumped against Shino’s.
‘We haven’t finished training. Unless you’re okay with always losing to me in hand to hand combat?’
Kiba groaned and let go of the Aburame’s waist. ‘Fine,’ he said with a heavy roll of his eyes. ‘But only so you’ll stop thinking you’re better than me when I know for a fact you’re not.’
Shino only nodded in response and took a step back. The sun had almost completely set by now and that vivid blue of early nighttime shifted their surroundings moody and distracting. There was a surprising lack of awkwardness between them. Kiba smiled to himself at the way Shino slid back to his natural posture, hands in pockets, weight baring slightly to one side, face passive and unreadable.
‘You ready?’ Kiba asked.
‘Think before you attack,’ Shino replied.
Kiba nodded, took a moment to consider, and swung forwards.