Archive of Our Own

The sun flickers through the water, painterly strokes of light twirling about each other like dancers. 

Now, the story will end a bit better, I hope.

The caustics dance in slow-motion. He watches them until they’ve faded. 

      The final chapter. 

Down, further. The light is nearly gone—deep water, perhaps, or simply lost blood.

          A story of a frog in a well, eh? Knows nothing of the ocean.

Jiraiya smiles. Just barely glorious, but glorious, indeed…

The water no longer stings in his wounds. Instead, a soothing balm—enveloping like a mothers’s embrace. 

     Strong. Gentle. 

He doesn’t feel cold anymore. The water has warmed around him, balancing their temperatures. Jiraiya can no longer tell where he ends and it begins. 

He sinks deeper. 

Everything is dark, now. Jiraiya opens his eyes to check. Or does he close them?

Deeper, still.

Jiraiya feels the last stutter of his heart with solemn clarity. A tearing, burning sensation, as water is involuntarily sucked into his chest.

Then—

        Calm. 

Then—

Jiraiya wakes to the same sensation, harsh pain in his lungs. A gasping, gripping burn as the water is forced back from him.

He chokes on it, feels the twist in his stomach as he doubles over and vomits. He opens his stinging eyes—tries to—closing them quickly, again, when the piercing blur of light and color stabs clear out the back of his skull. The smattering of sounds quickly fade in around him, as if cotton had been pulled from his ears. 

“Jiraiya-boy,” a gruff voice says, resolving itself from the crowd, “hang on.”

Jiraiya sees the ground rise to meet him, and everything goes black. 

Tsunade tosses the empty clay bottle out of the window with a flick of the wrist. Hears it crash on the broken pile of others below. She brings her sleeve to her mouth to wipe at the remaining liquor dripping from her chin. 

Perhaps she’ll go home, for a bit, after lunch. A change of clothes would be good. She hasn’t left the hospital in a while.

The office door crashes open behind her. A loud, hurried voice. “Lady Tsunade, you need to come with me!”

Shizune stands panting in the doorway. “Quickly,” she says. Her eyes are wide and shaking. “He’s waking up.”

Wake—! Your sleep is over. Your story is not quite done yet. The rasp of prophecy in his head. Don’t you feel it?

Jiraiya’s temples throb as the shaky twin images of Tsunade’s face snap themselves into one. She leans in closer to him. “Jiraiya?” she says, “Can you hear me?”

Her cheeks are flushed. Jiraiya isn't sure if he's imagining the moisture in her eyes.

He groans. “T-Tsu—” a cough sputters, harsh, from his lips. It hurts to speak, but it's remarkable he can do so at all, so he tries. “Tsunade,” he manages, finally. Her eyebrows raise, stitch together in the middle. Her upper lip quivers, and the shine in her eyes bubbles up and over.

“Don’t tell me you're crying for me,” he rasps.

She looks as though she's about to speak, but a sob bursts from her throat instead, and she falls onto him in a desperate embrace. Jiraiya manages to lift a hand to her back, attempts a soothing motion as she clutches at him, shaking through silent cries that wrack her entire body. 

“You were dead,” she whispers, into the coarse gray hair that falls over his shoulders, “I told you to send for help if you were in trouble. I thought— Jiraiya, I had lost you."

“Did you bet on me?” Jiraiya says, over her shoulder. He rubs shaky circles into the tense muscles of her back. 

Tsunade pulls back, tear-streaked and horrified. “I couldn’t," she admits.

Jiraiya coughs out a weak chuckle. "You should have," he says, "you always lose your bets."

She sniffles. “I tried, believe me, I did. I even told Shizune—" she laughs, and it sounds hollow. "But seeing you leave… Jiraiya, I couldn't do anything but hope, and it was my luck that got you killed." The tears start up again, and she tucks her face into his shoulder. 

He lets her cry, hand kneading slow circles into her skin as he comes to. Her weight on top of him feels crushing—painful, with his wounds, but sharply pleasant in his ability to feel anything at all. His own emotions feel like mottled scar tissue in his chest, and he envies her ability to cry so easily. Even as the room resolves itself around him, as the pain and shock fade into a steady thrum, there’s a lump in his throat he can’t be rid of. 

"I'm sorry," she says, mumbled against the skin of his neck, "I couldn’t wish it. I couldn’t. How could I gamble everything on you dying? Orochimaru is gone, and you're all I have left."

Jiraiya stiffens. Could that be it? He feels sharply aware of the absence of their friend, for perhaps the first real time since his death. The weight of his passing twists deeper into Jiraiya's gut like a knife, sobering him up from the haze of his own near-death. For all his cruelty, Orochimaru had been a good friend to them, once. To Tsunade, especially. Had always known how to love her in a way she accepted—a way she had wanted. Something Jiraiya had no choice but to admire, for he himself could never manage to do such a thing. Once again, he finds himself one-upped by his teammate.

Orochimaru. Jiraiya selfishly longs for the time when it had been just the three of them, together against the world, and Orochimaru had loved them both: Tsunade, as his dearest friend, and Jiraiya, an aching, confounding yearning. It was just one more way he surpassed Jiraiya, in the end. They had both loved Tsunade since childhood—in their own ways—but Jiraiya had never once seemed to be able to reciprocate the burning, obsessive frenzy that Orochimaru carried for him all his life. 

He wonders why he feels it now, a hot stone of longing in his gut, only after Orochimaru’s death.

Tsunade wipes at her eyes, “Your contract,” she says, “Fukasaku reverse-summoned you back to Mount Myōboku. Then brought you here.” She pulls back from him and frowns. “In your state, the transportation jutsu made things worse. But because he got you out of the water, I was able to get to you. I wouldn’t have had a shot otherwise.” 

Jiraiya had thought that might be the case, though he hadn’t ever discussed such a plan with the toads. He had meant it, when he entered the Rain to die. Had made peace with his decision. 

That wasn’t to say he died without regrets. He had many; among them, Tsunade and Orochimaru both. 

"We couldn't save your arm," Tsunade says, slipping easily into her solemn bedside manner, "and it'll be a long time before you can use ninjutsu again."

But it doesn't matter, because you're here. 

Jiraiya had come home to her, alive. Just like she had asked him to. What's more, his mission had been successful. Pain's identity—

She stares at him with a queer look on her face. He can tell she knows his mind is wandering elsewhere, and he can tell how little she cares for it, right now. How unbecoming of a Kage, to worry more about her friend than of national safety matters. Her thoughtful carelessness lights a small spark of warmth in his chest, melting away the bad feelings.

It's small moments like these—when he can willfully misinterpret her attention, her affection, when he can pretend that things are different between them—these are the moments that have kept him going all these years. 

He closes his eyes and leans back into the pillows with a small smile. Fine, then: they could talk later. He would rest a moment longer—he had died, after all.

Jiraiya can feel his body grow heavy with the need to return to sleep, but Tsunade doesn't allow it. 

"Jiraiya," she says, soft voice dragging him from the edge of unconsciousness, "Jiraiya. What was it you were going to say to me? That night?"

Jiraiya cracks open an eye and looks at her, really looks, and catches the signs of nervousness in her avoidant gaze. In the way she picks at the hem of her robe. Her professional persona is gone; there is a childishness to her tone and her behaviors that feels out of place on a woman her age. 

"And… and Shima," Tsunade continues, "she said that before she left, you tried to—" she trails off. Jiraiya knows. He had wanted the old toad to carry a final message of love back to Tsunade. It had felt like such a gallant idea, at the time.

Shima—crotchety old thing, but kinder than she lets on—had stopped him from embarrassing himself one last time before death. 

Tsunade's eyes meet his, and she looks sad.

If he made it back alive— he had said to her, as she cried for him, that evening on the bench. What had he meant to say, after that?

He had been so close to losing his cool, then—the closest he had come in years to vomiting up the depth of his feelings. But what good would it have done? To selfishly unburden the truth onto Tsunade only to leave her for good?

No—at long last, Jiraiya had finally learned when to shut his mouth. It had only taken him his whole life to do so. 

"Jiraiya," Tsuande begs, "you can tell me now. Ask of me, anything—I'll give it." 

Jiraiya quirks one corner of his mouth up into a half-smile. "Don't say stuff like that, princess. You'll give a guy ideas." 

Tsunade's mouth twitches. She leans closer, hands coming up to cup his jaw. They are nose-to-nose. “Jiraiya, you fool," she whispers.

A soft pair of lips press to his own, and Jiraiya feels his heart stop for a third time. 

"Sleep," Tsunade whispers, laying down alongside him and throwing an arm across his waist. Her head rests on his chest, tucked under his chin. "I'll be here when you wake," she says. "You can tell me, then."

As promised, Tsunade is there when Jiraiya wakes—still tucked into his side, her arm a warm, heavy weight on his chest. She is there when he insists on writing a complete version of his dying message, and she is there when he falls asleep again less than a minute after putting down his pen. 

She is there to help pour the first sip of water down his newly-reconstructed throat, and is there to hold his hand when he coughs it back up again. She is there when he takes his first, hobbling steps from his bed to the bathroom, and she is there to catch him when he inevitably falls. 

For the next several days, she hardly leaves his bedside, insisting that his medical care in its entirety be left to her. Jiraiya doesn’t know who’s acting as Hokage in her absence—some combination of shadow clones, Shizune, and Shikaku's son, if he had to guess. They certainly have their work cut out for them, if the hushed gossip of the hospital staff is any indicator. 

Tsunade doesn't tell him anything that's going on outside of the four walls of his room, and he doesn't press. He had hurt her feelings, he realizes, telling her that her place was in the Hokage office, and not fighting at his side. And now, she seems determined to prove him wrong—never leaving his hospital room and going out of her way to avoid administrative tasks. 

In more or less words, she reminds him daily that the only job she cares about is healing him, and that his only responsibility is allowing her—he has done more than his share in the fight against the Akatsuki, she insists, and he needs now only to focus on recovering from his injuries.

Jiraiya finds, perhaps surprisingly, that he has very little problem with this—though, he supposes, once one has accepted their own death, there is a certain carelessness to what remains of life beyond that. The world would have kept on turning without him, so he selfishly lets it spin on its own for a little while longer. 

And if Tsunade insists that it doesn't need her, either—that she is just fine where she is, thank you—who is he to disagree? 

So she remains. And he lets her. Lets her feed him, lets her administer his pain medication, lets her work daily on healing the severed nerves in what’s left of his arm. He lets her wash the parts of his body that he can no longer reach, and lets her help him to the bathroom, again and again, though he insists every time that he won't fall. 

They don't kiss again, and they don’t ever talk about that night. She knows, surely; she always has. Still, Jiraiya feels as though something ought to be said—perhaps it is the romance writer in him, longing for that shining moment of confession, that hard-earned bit of catharsis. 

It unnerved Jiraiya at first, the imagined tension, that searing absence of resolution—but as time passes, and the weight of Tsunade’s arm on his waist every night starts to feel like something he ought to get used to, what he thought was mutual avoidance starts to look a lot more like taking their time. 

Time passes, and Tsunade’s sturdy presence at his side starts to feel like something he’s never lived without. Jiraiya skips right over hoping—she falls asleep first, one night, and as he watches her sleepily rub her face into his chest, feels her tighten her strong arm around his waist—he realizes all at once he’ll never have to live without it again. 

When he is discharged from the hospital, she is there too, tucked under his shoulder, helping him stay upright as he waves goodbye to Sakura.

"Well," he says, after a long while, turning to his companion after her apprentice leaves with a cheerful wave of her own. "Time to go home, then?” He gives Tsunade a wink. “Didn’t really think I’d be back. Good thing I didn't have any plants to keep alive."

She lets him guffaw at his own humor for a moment, a small, quiet look on her face. "Actually," she says, looking to the ground, "I… had your things moved to my place." 

“Eh?” Jiraiya stops mid-laugh. Stares at her, mouth open. 

She looks up at him through her lashes, uncharacteristically shy. “I hope that’s okay,” she says, “I thought… well, I have a lot of extra space, and I thought you might—I thought we might—”

“Yes,” Jiraiya says immediately, taking her hand. “You, ah—you thought right.” He feels the nervous urge to bring a hand to rub the back of his neck—but with only one to spare, he decides holding hers is more important. 

Tsunade’s nerves visibly unwind. “I thought so,” she says, smug as ever.

“Lead the way, then,” Jiraiya mumbles, pulling her in for a hug so she can’t see any more of the blush that has risen to his cheeks. 

Tsunade’s apartment is more than big enough for the two of them. Big enough for a family, Jiraiya thinks, if things had been different. He can picture it—Minato and Kushina coming ‘round for dinner, little Naruto running about. There would even have been room at their table for Kakashi, if he had wanted it. 

“They gave me a pretty nice place when I came back to take the hat,” Tsunade says, kicking off her shoes, “maybe you should have taken the offer instead.”

Jiraiya laughs. “Nice try, princess, but I tracked you down for a reason.” He takes off his shoes, too, setting them neatly down next to where Tsunade’s have been strewn about. He smiles at the little microcosm of domesticity. “And it seems like I’m doing pretty well for myself, anyway. I’m here now, aren’t I?”

Tsunade wraps her arms around his waist and tugs him into a perfect hug. “You are,” she says, face pressed against his chest, “you’re here now.”

Tsunade shows Jiraiya around the major features of the apartment: the kitchen, the bathroom, her home office—now his home office, overwhelmed by the bookmaking tools and writing supplies she had moved over from his little studio on the outskirts of Konoha. She insists she wasn’t using the space, anyway.

“Shikamaru prefers I get my work done in the administrative building,” she says, trailing her hand along the edge of the desk, “he’s too lazy to come by here.” She plays with a bit of gold foil—an experiment Jiraiya had been working with for his deluxe editions. “I don’t know if you even want to write, anymore,” she admits, “but I thought it might be nice for you to have a more permanent space, if you ever feel inclined again.”

Truthfully, Jiraiya isn’t sure either. But the gesture goes straight to his heart nonetheless. “It’s nice,” he says—a paltry fraction of how much he’s feeling. “All of it, Tsunade. It’s wonderful.” He looks around the desk, admiring the way she's carefully arranged his array of pens, his stacks of single-page notes. So different from the haphazard mess she leaves of her own work. He’s not type-A either, but her effort for him makes him smile. 

He patters around the room for a moment, cataloguing, appreciating. Thumbing through piles of drafts to bide him time to slow the wild beating of his heart. She watches him all the while, back to the edge of the desk. He can feel the weight of her gaze. 

"I read some of them," she says, eventually, regarding him with that same patient stare. 

Jiraiya carefully lays the stack of paper he had been perusing back down on the desk at her side. "And?" he says, meeting her eyes, "What did you think?"

"You're not a bad writer," she admits, "I didn't realize. I thought it was all going to be pornography."

"Ah," Jiraiya laughs, "only mostly."

Tsunade shakes her head, "Even so—I didn't realize you were such a romantic." 

Jiraiya doesn't know what to say to that. 

"I thought—" Tsunade starts, "I don't know, I kind of thought they'd all be about me. It sounds so foolish, but I remember you spying on me in the bathhouse when we were young, and I just…" 

Jiraiya gives her a strained smile. "I'm not that bad."

"No," she says, "I didn't mean it like that. I just thought—well, perhaps I'd read them and get to know you better. How you felt." She looks at the floor. "If there were things you didn’t feel like you could say any other way." 

Fumbling as he is, even Jiraiya knew that it would have been unfair to Tsunade to take the coward's way out and pen her love letters under the guise of character exposition. He’d considered it, more than once, while drunk and hurting and working out his heartbreak on paper—but it never seemed the right thing to do. A small mercy, in his long history of poor judgement. 

"I wouldn't have done that," Jiraiya says. "I would've just told you."

She stares blankly at him, disappointment written clearly on her delicate features. "But you didn't," she says, plainly, "you planned to die without saying anything."

"I didn't think it needed saying," Jiraiya says, and it's the truth. "You knew how I felt, so there wasn't anything more to be said." 

"What if I had more to say?" Tsunade's voice is quiet and fierce.

"You didn't say anything either!" Jiraiya answers. "You just sat there and let me make a complete fool of myself—"

"Would you even have let me?!" Tsunade interrupts. "All you could do was ramble on about how rejection has made your writing stronger," she shouts at him. "Had you not already made up your mind about how your story would end? What would you have done if I confessed to feeling the same? Would you have stayed? Let me help?" 

Jiraiya is struck silent. "No." he admits, after a moment. "I don't know." He rubs a hand down his face roughly. "I probably wouldn't have believed you. Would've thought you were just trying to save my life."

She nods, wiping the angry tears from her eyes, and stares at the floor without a word.

"Tsunade," Jiraiya begs, unable to bear the weight of her silence, "I'm sorry, alright? For all of it." He's unable to keep the emotion from his voice. "I’m a fool, I always have been. Just—let me try again.”

She looks up at him. The tears are still there, but her cheeks are flushed with life. “We’re both suckers,” she says. But it sounds like moving on—like new, hopeful beginnings. 

“I’m not used to winning, either,” he says with a grin. 

"Come on, fool," she says, tugging him by his hand towards the door, "I still have to show you the bedroom."

Inside, Tsunade gently pushes Jiraiya towards the bed, nudging him until he sits down on the edge of it. She slots herself between his knees, rests her hands on his chest.

“Last time we kissed, we were the same height,” she says. “Do you remember?”

“How could I forget?”

Her hands slide up his shoulders to play with the collar of his robe behind his neck. “I thought you were pretty cute,” she says, “not as cute as Orochimaru, though.”

Jiraiya huffs out a laugh.

“It’s been a while,” Tsunade says.

“Forty-four years,” Jiraiya agrees. 

“We’ve grown so old,” Tsunade mumbles.

Jiraiya laughs, deep and genuine. “I have, maybe. You look as young as the day you shattered my ribcage.”

Tsunade blushes. “You look a lot better than you did back then,” she says. 

“You think so?” Jiraiya blurts out, instantly realizing how childish he sounds.

Tsunade’s brows rise with her smile. She looks Jiraiya up and down. “So eager for praise. Didn’t I just call you cute?”

“Come on, princess,” Jiraiya says, softly, voice full of fond exasperation, “Are you going to show me the bedroom or not?” His hand goes to her hip, slowly rocks her forward until they’re pressed nearly chest-to-chest. She slides her hands beneath the collar of his robe. 

Their lips meet—and while it’s not their first kiss, it may as well be, for all that Jiraiya feels deeply, profoundly young again. They both kiss like they’re shy—closed-mouthed, pressing together hesitantly like a pair of schoolchildren. Tsunade’s mouth is soft and inviting, and when Jiraiya tries to deepen the kiss, she teasingly licks at his lips with a sweet, girlish giggle. 

Jiraiya cracks a smile, at that—and soon, the both of them are laughing, clinging to each other as they share a moment more exhilarating than any sex Jiraiya’s ever had. 

“Oh fuck,” Tsunade breathes, wiping tears from her eyes. “I can’t remember the last time I smiled that hard.”

“Tsunade,” Jiraiya sighs. 

She grins at him. Her hands slide to his neck, gently press on the sides of his throat. She pulls him back in for another kiss, firm and confident, and throws her knee over his hip, straddling his thigh. She squeezes his neck, his shoulders, his remaining bicep. Jiraiya groans as she sits her full weight on him and kisses him slowly, deeply. Every inch of her taking charge.

Jiraiya feels his face flush, feels hot below the collar. Then Tsunade makes a small noise into his mouth and he feels his entire self erupt in flames. He tugs her closer by the arm slung around her waist, grips and kneads at her ass while she tilts his chin up to deepen their kiss. Everything becomes frantic, then—both of them tearing at each other with hands and mouths, dragging each other impossibly closer, hardly stopping to breathe. 

She breaks the kiss to gasp, a sweet, airy thing—and his mouth instantly finds her chin, her jaw, then her neck, and down to her collarbone. She tangles a possessive hand in his hair, the other looped around his neck, and rocks her hips into his stomach again and again as he presses warm, wet kisses across her skin. 

“Fuck,” she says again. “Fuck.” Her hands come to his shoulders, push gently as she tries to raise herself off his lap. 

His hand grips the plushness of her waist, keeping her in place while he sucks a bruise into the junction of her neck and shoulder. 

“Let me up,” she says, slapping lightly at his arm, “so I can take my clothes off.”

He pulls her in for another kiss instead, and she indulges him. His fingers press circles into the fleshy part of her hip as he encourages her to start up a slow grind against his leg. Soon, they're both whimpering. He can feel the searing heat of her, between her thighs, even through the material of his pants. “Sages, Tsunade,” Jiraiya groans against her mouth. His voice, raspy and thick in his throat, surprises even himself. 

“Jiraiya,” she whispers, still trembling from their kiss. 

They’re both shaking—Jiraiya feels the twitch of his hand when he pulls it from her waist. “Let me help,” he asks, bringing it to the knotted sash of her robe. 

They undo the ties together, and he helps her tug her robe back off her shoulders. 

“Forgive me,” he says, bringing his lips to the top of her breasts. 

She tosses her head back and moans as he sucks kisses into the skin of her chest, across her collarbones, and up to her shoulders. She yanks wildly at his hair, and Jiraiya returns to her chest, taking one of her breasts in his hand and bringing it to his mouth. Her hands scrabble at his shoulders, clawing at his skin, as he takes her nipple between his lips, lapping and sucking at it until she cries out from oversensitivity.

Tsunade takes his hand in both of hers, pressing their lips back together as she guides his hand towards the apex of her thighs. 

Jiraiya wedges his hand between her and his leg, his palm a generous offering for her to grind down on. And she does so—rubbing herself into the meat of his palm, groaning into his mouth as his fingers trace the wet spot that’s soaked through her pants. 

He lets her grind on him until she’s pressing their cheeks together, panting in his ear. Her wet, shuddering breaths warm his shoulder, and he can feel the poke of her swollen clit through the fabric of her pants. He slides his hand out from between her thighs—back up to tug at the top of them. “Take these off,” he murmurs. 

"You're not calling the shots here," she breathes, as she climbs off the bed and clambers for the button of her pants. "Don't get any ideas."

He only gets a glimpse of her full body before she climbs back on top of him. 

"You're gorgeous," he says, bringing his hand back between her legs to slide through her soaked folds. 

"Hm? I feel a little underdressed." She squirms on his fingers with a gasp. 

"I only have one arm," Jiraiya laughs, "I'm going to need a bit of help."

Tsunade reaches down and gropes over the front of his pants. “In a minute,” she says breathlessly, still rocking her hips into his hand. She rubs at his cock haphazardly through the fabric, but it’s clear her attention is divided. “In a min—ah!”   Her hips stutter, and she clings to Jiraiya’s shoulders as she crumples forward with a cry.  

Jiraiya, who hadn’t really been doing much of anything aside from holding his hand in place, presses diligent kisses to her cheek, her jaw, her neck while she comes down from her high. 

Eventually, she stops shaking—unwinds her arms from Jiraiya’s shoulders and peels herself off of him. Jiraiya chuckles at the exhausted sigh that leaves her mouth, still not quite believing it.

“Shut up,” she breathes, not meeting his eye. 

Jiraiya laughs. “That was pretty fast.”

“I’ve been pent up,” she says, “this was a long time coming.”

“A long time—what?”

“Enough,” she says, pressing a finger to his lips and stifling a giggle of her own. “Behave. Or you won’t get yours.”

Jiraiya smiles underneath her fingertip. “I’ve already gotten plenty.”

“Oh? So you won’t mind if we skip this?” Tsunade leans back and presses her palm to the erection straining through his pants. Jiraiya’s breath hitches. She curls her fingers into the waistband, tugs it down enough to pull his heavy cock out. She wraps her hand around it—or as much as she can—with a gratified noise. She strokes down and back up, playing with his foreskin, rubbing along his piercings. More exploratory than anything. Her finger dips into the divot at the tip and comes away wet. 

Jiraiya falls forward, forehead against her chest. His heart is racing. “Hey,” he sighs, “Tsunade—I’m not going to last long.” Arousal courses through his veins, but so does exhaustion. He still isn't fully recovered from his injuries. 

“So we should get to it then?” He can hear the smile in her voice. She tilts his head up to look at her. “I’ll do all the work,” she promises. 

“Mmm,” Jiraiya hums, closing his eyes, “that’s more than fine.” 

She pushes the robe off of his shoulders, and lightly shoves at him. "Lay down," she says.

He does, admiring her as she wiggles his pants down to his thighs. "You're so gorgeous," he whispers, words spilling from him unbidden.

"So I've heard," she laughs, as she hovers over him, one hand lining his cock up. 

"Bears—ah—repeating." His breath hitches when she pulls off his head, pressing the thick shaft of him against her clit and grinding herself against him. Three, four times—rubbing herself up and down his cock until it's slick and messy, then pressing the tip back to her entrance. 

"You look good, too," she says, sinking down an inch onto the flared head. He hears her breath catch. "Handsome, for a warty old toad." 

Jiraiya huffs out a laugh. She presses herself further onto his cock—he can feel her opening up around him, trembling through the strain. His hand flies to her hip to hold her back, pull her down further—he isn't sure. 

"Jiraiya," she says, softly. She clenches down on him, and he groans. 

She braces a hand on his chest and starts rocking her hips, seating herself deeper on his cock with every motion. Her clit scrapes against his pubes, poking out from her own thatch of wiry hair. Jiraiya slides his hand forward so he can push his thumb against it.

“Easy,” she gasps, slapping his hand away. “You’re big. And I just came.”

Jiraiya opens his mouth to say something, but decides against it, grinning at her instead. 

She laughs, grinning at him in return. “What?” she says between giggles, “What were you going to say?”

“Only that you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to hear that.”

“Oh?” she says, leaning back. She raises her hips up and down, starting a steady pace. “I've no doubt you’ve gotten good reviews before.”

“Sure,” Jiraiya says with a cocky smile, “but not from you.”

“Ah," she says, tossing her head back, "I see." She picks up the pace, strong thighs flexing as she picks herself up and seats herself back down on his cock. She said she'd do all the work—and she does—but Jiraiya finds himself thrusting up into her wet heat without meaning to. She's soaked; her slick coats his cock, her thighs, his lower abdomen, eases the tight stretch into something delicious and gratifying. With every shove of his hips up into her, there's more, and an almost pornographic sound that goes straight to Jiraiya's stomach. He closes his eyes, listens to the sounds of them coming together, the gentle slap of skin, the heady patchwork of their breaths. He thinks could get off on the sounds of their lovemaking alone, if he tried. 

Tsunade groans, leaning forward so she's no longer supporting her weight in her legs and breaking his trance. Her breasts squish pleasantly against his chest. "Gods," she breathes, "I'm close again,” she laughs. 

"So?" 

"So, I told myself I wasn't going to let you keep your cool."

Jiraiya laughs, nudging her with his nose, turning her face for a kiss. "Trust me," he says, "I'm about to lose it."

She hums with satisfaction. "What do you need?" she asks.

"Just—this," Jiraiya says, winding his arm around her waist and holding her close as he thrusts into her again. He relishes in the warm plushness of her body against his, the way her ample chest is within mouth’s reach. She cries out into his shoulder as he pounds back into her with a firm, steady rhythm. 

It takes maybe a minute for the tension to stack back up in his gut. “Tsunade—fuck, I’m—” he groans, “Where—?”

“Inside,” she bleats, tearing at his hair, “inside.”

He comes with a low moan. She presses their lips together, stealing his sounds and his breath while he shakes through the most intense orgasm he’s had in a long while. His hips stutter and eventually come to a stop, cock still buried in the soft, wet heat of her. He can feel his legs continue to twitch even long after. 

They lie there for several moments, pressed stomach-to-stomach, wet with sweat and kisses.

“Hey,” Jiraiya says, breaking the silence. “Sit on my face.”

“What? You’re exhausted.” Tsunade leans forward, Jiraiya’s half-soft cock falling out of her and onto his thigh with a wet plap. She rolls down to lay alongside him, tucks herself under his arm.

“Tsunade—”

She pulls him in by his neck and kisses him, deep and lazy. Jiraiya pulls away, lips tingling. “Don’t you want to finish?”

“Yeah,” she says, “but you’re just out of the hospital, I don’t want to go breaking your neck so soon. Aren’t you tired?”

Jiraiya’s laugh fills the room. “Seriously, princess. I’ll be fine. You’ll do all the work, anyway.” 

She rolls her eyes. 

“Come on,” Jiraiya says, “I nearly died. You gotta give me whatever I want.”

She sits up, swinging a leg over him so she straddles his chest. The heady smell of her arousal hits Jiraiya’s nose. “Come up here,” he says, mouth watering. He feels loose and relaxed after coming, and combined with the physical toll of recovering from his injuries—he can already feel his body settling hedonistically into the mattress underneath him.

Tsunade climbs up Jiraiya’s chest until she’s hovering above his head, knees and muscular calves on either side of his face. Jiraiya is exhausted, yes, but this—this is easy. He could do this for hours, even depleted of chakra. He reaches for her thigh and pulls her down so she rests lightly on top of his open mouth.

"Oh," she says, "oh." Her swollen clit knocks against his upper lip, and Jiraiya grins.  

Jiraiya pulls her down so she's seated on his tongue, then licks at her hole. Her pussy is soft and blood-hot, and the bitter taste of his own cum leaking out of her makes him shudder. He laps at her until he can't taste it anymore, only the mild, natural sour of her, then pushes his tongue inside. Her thighs flex around his face, and he hears a muffled moan.

He shoves his tongue inside again, licking and sucking at her more urgently until he hears her start to curse. Her hands fist in his hair, almost painfully—definitely painfully—and she rocks her hips persistently against his face. She’s so, so wet—spit and slick pool in Jiraiya’s mouth and drip down his chin. He releases his grip on her thigh and opens his mouth wider to let her frot messily against his tongue, his lips. Her breath comes out in short, whiny pants.

Jiraiya takes a breath when he can, but otherwise is content to let himself be used. Her clit fills his mouth perfectly, he haphazardly tunnels his tongue to suck at her, and is rewarded with sharp pleasure shooting down his spine when she tugs at his hair and fucks his mouth harder. She’s close, he can tell by the trembling in her legs, so he doesn’t try to do anything novel, just lets her ride it out in the way she likes—

“Fuck, Jiraiya, I’m—ah!” Her thighs clamp around his head, shaking violently with the strength of her orgasm. Jiraiya is thoroughly smothered, but, he thinks, if he ends up losing consciousness, it wouldn’t be a bad way to go. He’s already on his way out, anyway—bone-deep satisfaction spreading through his limbs and dragging him into sleep.

Tsunade finally releases her grip on his hair, and flops down on the bed next to him. She lets out a comedic groan. 

“If you want anything more, princess, you gotta tell me now, or else I’m going to fall asleep.”

“Later,” she says, “I’m good for now.” She grabs a blanket off the end of the bed, and tosses it over them both, snuggling up against Jiraiya’s chest like a cat. She reaches up and wipes some of the mess from Jiraiya’s face, wiping her hand against the bedsheets with a grin. “You just sucked my brains out,” she laughs.

Jiraiya’s cock is half-hard against his leg, but he ignores it. For once, he finally feels as though there’s no need to rush. He holds Tsunade close, stroking through her silky hair, thumbing over the soft shell of her ear. Gratitude floods his body with warmth.

“Jiraiya? Are you going to sleep now?”

“Hm? Was planning on it.” Jiraiya closes his eyes, blanketed by Tsunade’s warm weight half on top of him. He doesn’t think he’s ever been more comfortable in his life.

“We’ll talk in the morning,” she mumbles against his chest hair. She stretches out her arm and wraps it around his waist, letting out a satisfied sigh.

Jiraiya pushes back the cover of drowsiness. “Was there something you wanted to talk about?” 

“No,” she says, “I’m just happy you’re here.”

Something tender unfurls in Jiraiya’s chest. Hope—excitement—for the future. He feels tears prick at the corners of his eyes. “Me too,” he says. “Me too.”

The Tale of Jiraiya the Gallant—not quite as finished as he had thought. There’s still some story left to tell. Something with a touch of romance.

That was always his strong suit, anyway. 

Perhaps an epilogue is in order.