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Kakuzu was not prone to introspection. Not out of thoughtlessness, like his idiot partner -- it was just that after living such a long life, he’d stopped bothering to second-guess himself. Questioning the true motivation of one’s actions, let alone one’s feelings, was for those who lacked confidence in themselves. So Kakuzu generally did as he pleased without worrying about why.
Eventually, though, he was bound to reach a point where he had to wonder what the everloving fuck he thought he was doing.
It was when he was digging up Hidan’s remains, though. He didn’t have time for doubts. So Kakuzu emptied his mind and kept digging, eyes straining in the dark for a splash of red or white amidst the dark soil. He’d been expecting pieces, and that was what he found. A bit of skull, pale filthy hair still attached; broken shards of bone and meat; part of a spine, part of a heart. They hadn’t decayed like a corpse left in the ground for weeks should have. If he could survive this, Hidan’s immortality really was impressive, Kakuzu thought as he put every piece he could find into a sack.
He was just turning to leave when a gleam of something metal at the bottom of the pit caught his eye. He pushed the soil aside with a foot. It was twisted and burned almost beyond recognition, but it looked like it might once have been a circle with a triangle inside it.
Kakuzu picked it up and tucked it in his pocket before he left.
Kakuzu had hideouts all over. Of course he did. He predated the Akatsuki and everyone in it by decades -- he had needed somewhere to stash his things and hunker down. He hadn’t informed the organization about them, though, because it wasn’t any of their damn business.
The one he took his sack of Hidan parts to was one of the oldest, near the village of his birth. Despite being underground it was fairly large and comfortable -- Kakuzu had lived here for months at a time over the past decades, and stored most of his books here as well. It was the most suitable. He had absolutely no idea how long it would take for Hidan to put himself back together -- they might be here for a while.
Assuming Hidan put himself back together at all.
He didn’t appear to be fully dead -- the pieces Kakuzu had gathered were faintly warm, now that they were out of the cold earth -- but he was definitely close, and Kakuzu didn’t have the best idea of how Hidan’s whole thing worked. Hidan had never given him a proper explanation, out of what seemed to be a mix of caginess and not really understanding it himself. If he died because Kakuzu didn’t know how to fix him, well, it was his own damn fault.
He washed the pieces off and tossed them into a metal bucket, then sat down and stared at them. They looked like scraps from a butcher’s shop. They did not look like a person, let alone Hidan.
What the fuck was he doing.
Somehow, Kakuzu had managed to get away from those Leaf shinobi, but instead of cutting and running -- which he was fully aware would have been the sensible thing to do -- he hung around, waiting for his chance to retrieve and hopefully resuscitate his stupid partner who he hated.
He did not like Hidan. Hidan pissed him the hell off. Kakuzu threatened to kill him on a daily basis. And yet he’d risked his own life on the chance of saving him. For some reason. He hadn’t thought about it, any more than he’d thought about it the first time they fucked, or when Hidan whined about the cold and Kakuzu told him to shut up and pulled him into his arms, or when he read aloud and Hidan had that look in his eyes. He did as he pleased and didn’t question why.
Until now.
Hidan had said something about starvation, Kakuzu remembered, turning his focus back to the matter at hand. How to get nutrients into a pile of parts.
The answer, once it came to him, was incredibly obvious.
Kakuzu went to the nearest peasant town and ate enough for three people, meat and vegetables, good nutritious food. Then he returned to the hideout and slashed his forearm open over the bucket, letting his fresh hot blood pour down and soak in until he began to feel lightheaded.
Seriously, Kakuzu thought as he stitched his arm back up, what the fuck am I doing.
It seemed like Hidan was going to take a long time to heal. That said, it also seemed like Hidan was going to heal, which hadn’t been a given. Kakuzu went about his life -- finding strong shinobi to replace the hearts he’d lost, keeping tabs on current events, which seemed to be getting more and more outlandish by the day, stopping by his other hideouts for money or other useful things. And every day he poured fresh blood over Hidan -- other people’s when he could get his hands on it, his own when he couldn’t -- and every day his pieces looked a bit fresher, until they started to stitch themselves together and grow back what was missing. It was an incredibly bizarre and grotesque thing to witness. Not that Kakuzu had much room to talk.
Why, he kept wondering. Why had he done this, why did he keep doing this, why hadn’t he just left the illiterate murder-crazed idiot in the ground to rot. Why did he want him back.
Eventually, reluctantly, Kakuzu was forced to conclude that he liked having Hidan around. For some reason.
Hidan was annoying. He never shut up -- whether it was whining about every little thing or just making random observations, he seemed physically incapable of keeping his mouth shut for more than thirty seconds at a stretch. His so-called religion was absolute nonsense. He had no class, manners, or common sense. And Kakuzu… God, even thinking it was humiliating. Kakuzu missed him.
Was it possible to hate someone in a way that was enjoyable? The way he loved tearing into Hidan, whether it was with words or fists or his cock, knowing Hidan could take it, wanted it, loved it even more than Kakuzu did, knowing he could vent his anger without restraint because Hidan was unbreakable… That made sense to him. Of course he missed that.
There was still everything else, though.
Kakuzu had had lovers in the past, even people he called his partners in more than crime and would have said he was in love with. They died. Of course. Some in battle, some killed by his hand during an unusually heated argument, some simply of old age. That was what it meant to be immortal -- watching everyone around you die, while you don’t. Kakuzu had been upset about it for a while, when he was in his fifties and sixties. He got over it. He had other things to care about than people.
Hidan, though, would never die.
His body repaired itself; he didn’t age. Barring another very well thought out attack, he would live forever. The rest of eternity with one person, and it’s him.
Kakuzu was infuriated that he didn’t mind.
It took weeks for Hidan’s pieces to even begin to look like a person. The skeleton grew first, joining the disparate parts together; then organs, tendons, muscle. He never moved. It was impossible to tell whether or not he was conscious -- he didn’t respond to anything Kakuzu did.
It was about when Hidan regained a pulse that Kakuzu began reading aloud.
He had a lot of time to kill and a lot of books he hadn’t revisited in ages -- it was as good a pastime as any. He would sit in a chair next to the bathtub he’d moved Hidan into and read. The Tale of Genji, first, then The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, working his way slowly through the foreign words. Hidan had skin again now, and Kakuzu had moved him from the bathtub to the bed, but he still didn’t respond.
Maybe he was brain-dead, and this whole time he’d been growing a living corpse.
He was looking through his collection for something new to read when a small volume caught his eye. Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book. It was the oldest known copy, if not the original, which was why he’d gone to the trouble to acquire it -- it certainly wasn’t for the contents. He’d skimmed it and found it to be meaningless drivel, a journal interspersed with nonsense lists. Things That Make the Heart Beat Faster; Things That Are Distant Though Near; Pleasing Things; Annoying Things. Even the author herself declared it to be a trivial work. So if ever there was a book Hidan would enjoy, it would have to be this one.
Kakuzu took it back to the chair next to the futon and read, trying very hard not to think about what he was reading. Both because it all felt rather pointless, and because… Well. It was the diary of a court lady. Of course it would be preoccupied with romance to an embarrassing degree. It was just irritating, especially when he could look up from the pages to see the face of the man he’d spent the last months tending to.
Before he realized it he was already at the end -- at least it had the decency to be short. Kakuzu closed it and stood, moving to go put it back on the shelf.
“...Kaku…”
He turned, eyes wide, to see Hidan looking back at him. Things that make the heart beat faster. “How long have you been conscious?”
“...a bit.” Hidan’s voice was rough and choked, but when the corner of his mouth pulled up in a weak smile, he almost looked like his old self. “...wanted to...listen.”
“You’re an idiot,” Kakuzu said, like his heart wasn’t pounding out of his chest, like he didn’t want to… He didn’t even know what. “Can you move?”
Hidan shifted under the blanket, managing to sit himself up a little before collapsing again, wincing. “Owww…”
“...I’ll take that as a no,” Kakuzu sighed, sitting down cross-legged next to him. Hidan was alive. Hidan was alive. It was all he could think.
“...how...long…?” Hidan said, voice already sounding a little less ragged.
“You were in the ground for almost a month,” Kakuzu said, “and it’s been a month and a half since I dug you up.”
“...huh.” He closed his eyes for a long moment before opening them again. “Gimme...a week.”
A week for his newborn, atrophied body to strengthen itself -- that sounded about right. “We’re clearing out as soon as you can walk,” Kakuzu said. “The Akatsuki’s as good as gone, and they’re talking about a fourth Great Ninja War. No point in sticking around.”
Hidan looked up at him, the gears in his head slowly and visibly turning. “...m’cold.”
Kakuzu sighed heavily, shrugged off his clothes, and climbed under the blanket, pulling Hidan’s body close to his.
“...it’s cold,” Hidan said quietly. “Dying. Cold and scary.”
“Shut up,” Kakuzu said. “You’re immortal, remember?”
HIdan laughed weakly, pressing closer to Kakuzu.
They didn’t talk about it. Hidan recuperated quickly now that he was conscious -- able to sit up and talk more or less normally by the next morning, able to stand by the end of the day. He drank soup and kept it down. Kakuzu told him about what had happened with Pain, to the best of his knowledge, about war on the horizon, and Hidan listened, and neither of them said what they were both thinking.
Kakuzu wasn’t about to bring it up. He hated talking about feelings and if Hidan was willing to just accept this without questioning it like he’d accepted so much else, Kakuzu would be perfectly happy.
It was the second night since Hidan regained consciousness. They were in bed together. “You came back for me,” he said.
So, no such luck.
“And after all that talk about wanting me dead...” Hidan continued when Kakuzu didn’t reply. “I knew you liked me.”
“Shut up or I’ll put you back in the ground.”
“You won’t,” Hidan said, voice infuriatingly amused. “You just spent the last however long waiting to dig me up and nursing me back to health, you’re not about to waste all that time.”
Hidan really knew him too well.
“Are we… What are we?” Hidan asked. His expression was invisible in the pitch black, but somehow Kakuzu knew he had that same look in his eyes as when he listened to him read.
“We’re teammates.”
“The Akatsuki’s gone, you said it yourself.” Silence. Kakuzu could hear Hidan’s breath, soft in the darkness. “Are we, like...in love?”
Damn it all, I should’ve left him there.
“Don’t give me the whole tsundere schtick,” Hidan said as Kakuzu tensed against him, “there’s no other excuse at all for why you would’ve done all this shit, not even a bullshit ‘oh I was just reading aloud to myself while you happened to be in the room’ kind of excuse.”
Kakuzu took his best guess at where Hidan’s face was and swung.
“Fucking hell, I’m still recovering here!” Hidan said, scrambling back away from him. “Shit, I’m bleeding. You busted my nose and now I’m getting blood on your futon, Kakuzu, I hope you’re happy.”
“Shut up,” Kakuzu said. “This isn’t a conversation I’m interested in having.”
“Yeah, I fucking got that! Are you seriously so up your own ass that you can’t even--” He was cut off as Kakuzu lunged, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him into the floor.
“We’re not having this conversation.”
“I literally cannot believe you,” Hidan said, trying to pull his hand off, kicking at him. Kakuzu had always been able to overpower Hidan in terms of pure strength -- he didn’t stand a chance now, with his muscles only half grown back. “Do you think you’ll die or something if you admit you like me? You basically told me we’re running off together, you dumb fuck!”
Kakuzu...kind of did do that, didn’t he. “You don’t have the right to call anyone dumb.”
“Well you’re sure as shit not acting smart!” Hidan said.
“Shut up.”
“Make me!”
Kakuzu had time to react, if he was being honest. He didn’t have to let Hidan’s fingers knot weakly in his hair and pull him down into a kiss.
He did anyways.
Hidan’s mouth tasted like blood and he kissed like he was drowning, hard and desperate, clinging to Kakuzu like he was the only thing between him and oblivion, and Kakuzu kissed him back. Like he’d been wanting this ever since Hidan opened his eyes; like he’d been wanting this forever. Whatever got him to shut up.
They made love like they hated each other, or maybe they hatefucked like they were in love, all bruised hips and breathless sighs and clawed backs and kisses, but the way they folded their bodies in together when they were done could really only be described as tender. “Fuck, I missed that,” Hidan mumbled into Kakuzu’s chest. “I think you set my recovery back a few days, but holy hell was it worth it.”
Kakuzu said nothing, running his fingers absently through Hidan’s hair.
“You don’t wanna talk about it, fine,” Hidan said, shrugging against him. “Stubborn bastard.”
“...I don’t see why you need everything spelled out to you,” Kakuzu said. It was the closest he was willing to get to an admission, and from the way Hidan shifted in his arms, it was clear he realized.
“Yeah, you’ve got a point,” Hidan said. Kakuzu could hear the smile on his face. “It’d just be kinda weird to hear you say it anyways.”
“Yes,” Kakuzu said. “It would.” And the subject was dropped.
A week later, when they were packing to leave the hideout for parts unknown, Kakuzu found the twisted piece of metal in the pocket of his cloak. “Here,” he said, handing it to Hidan. “It was with your remains.”
“The fuck is…” Hidan said, trailing off as he realized, then smirking up at Kakuzu. “Y’know, even if you don’t say it, it’s pretty obvious.”
“Shut up,” he said, but he let Hidan pull him down to kiss him through his mask.
Kakuzu had been overthinking things again, he thought as he hoisted his pack onto his shoulders and climbed out into the sunlight, Hidan following close behind him. He did what he wanted without worrying about why, and what he wanted was to be with Hidan, and that was fine.