Repression Chapter 2-A Domestic Matter

Morning came swiftly, the staccato beeping of his alarm pulling Kabuto from a black sleep. A loose hand slipped out from under the sheets, depressing the button that would silence the noise. His eyes slid open rather easily, having always found himself a fast riser. The world tried to come into focus, but he found that no matter how much he blinked, the room was still blurred, seemingly full of sleep still. It was only after he sat up that he realized his glasses were still on his face, and had pressed against his face during the night, leaving oil smudges from his cheeks and lids on the clear glass.

He removed them, wiping them on his shirt until they no longer bore the streaks of oil that would distort whenever he happened to look at a light. If there was one thing that got on his nerves, it was smudged glasses...but thinking on it, there was much more that annoyed him, trivial things that itched and nicked at him. If his hair was down, that would irritate him; if his shoes were tied with one much tighter than the other, that would bother him. There were a million little things that he had to have just so or they would grate on his nerves. Such was the sacrifice of a precise, detail oriented life.

Setting his glasses aside for the time being, he removed his shirt, placing it with the rest of his clothes from the night before and moving to his closet. He kept his hand on the bed to know where it was in relation to the closet. In the dark of early morning and with his glasses off, he was effectively blind, only being able to identify the most broad spectrum of shapes, just able to make out the brown border of his closet door. Feeling out the knob, he pulled open the door, grabbing another outfit, the whole ensemble hanging off of one clothes hanger and ready for the day. He closed the closet and dressed himself, taking care to fit everything smoothly over his body, no twists in the legs of his pants or uncomfortable bunches under his arms.

Once satisfied with that, he sat on his bedside, taking the hairbrush from its place on the desk and running it through the bristly silver mane he sported. Gripping the hair past his neck behind him with one hand, he took a band from his wrist and tied it back in a tight, frayed ponytail. His bangs, not long enough to be pulled back with the rest of his hair, fell to either side of his face, hanging lower than normal without the added lift from his forehead protector. With his hair out of the way, he took his glasses once more, sliding them on and reveling for a moment in the sharpness of sight he instantly attained from gazing through the two panes of glass.

He gathered the empty hanger and his clothes from the night before in his arms before slipping out of his room, quietly locking it behind him as he made his way down the desolate hallway. Kabuto's morning began far earlier than the rest of Sound Village. He was the oil between the cogs that let the machine run smoothly, and it ran it's smoothest when his actions didn't interrupt the flow of the rest of the village. He made a fast stop by the laundry room that resided at the end of the main residential hall, dropping off his clothing and the hanger.

His top priority for the morning wasn't anything involving his particular expertise, well not in a way that most would think. He wasn't heading into the medical ward to check on any patients or to the labs to look at any specimens. The first task of his mornings wasn't anything medical, it was something that could only be described as domestic. The first task on his agenda was to get breakfast prepared for the Otokage himself, calling upon his acute knowledge of Orochimaru's habits and preferences. In a way, he was still the only one with the skills to do the task set before him to the highest degree, still requiring particular knowledge only he had.

Orochimaru was a touchy specimen at best, unpredictable and moody to the untrained eye, but Kabuto's expert observational skills coupled with the years of experience he obtained from working at his side had allowed Kabuto to pick out his habits and to make note of any triggers that might send him spiraling towards a bad mood. Once Orochimaru decided he would be in a bad mood, almost nothing could coax him from becoming broody and spiteful. An angry Otokage was bad for the village. When in a bad mood, Orochimaru would shut himself away in his room or the more private quarters of his lab to study in solitude, ignoring any responsibilities towards the village he might have to confront and leaving them for Kabuto to manage until his mood improved or otherwise taking the cruelest route in dealing with any situations that needed his attention.

Kabuto had noted in his quest to preserve the pleasant mood of his boss that he always seemed to wake in a perfectly pleasant mood. Orochimaru was, by definition and as unlikely as it might seem, a morning person. He rose each day with a smile on his face, his sleepy eyes carrying a positive outlook on the day. The trouble wasn't in putting him in a good mood; he was quite capable of doing that himself. The hardest part was getting him through the morning without that mood being shattered. In the early hours of the day, it didn't take much for that to happen. If there was a single hitch in his morning routine, that would be the end of it. However, if the good mood was preserved, only a significant amount of bad news or failure could hamper Orochimaru's pleasantness for the day.

Thus was the reason why Kabuto had taken over the breakfast routine. Orochimaru, while normally a graceful being who carried himself like a swan over water, was a terrible klutz first thing in the morning. He seemed to always manage to drop or spill or otherwise ruin something when trying to prepare his own breakfast, resulting in the aforementioned bad mood that Kabuto worked so hard to avoid having to deal with. Now, Kabuto would rise before the Otokage and prepare a meal for him, having it ready and still hot by the time he entered to enjoy it.

This morning was no different, and he went through the routine of cooking just as he did every morning. He prepared a pot of coffee, pouring a cup for Orochimaru and preparing it to his tastes: sweet with just a bit of cream but not enough to overpower the natural flavor of the beans. Bacon was fried, being it's turn in rotation as opposed to sausage, and the eggs were poached. He was always very cautious when dealing with the eggs, knowing that they were the centerpiece of Orochimaru's meal, his favorite no matter how they were styled. If the eggs were wrong, and that man knew his eggs, it could sour his mood. He finished the plate off with lightly buttered toast.

The timing worked so that by the time Orochimaru strode into the dining room, his food was already waiting at his seat, fresh from the stove and still at perfect eating temperature. Kabuto was cleaning up from preparing the food, but soon joined him. He had made himself a plate of the same foods, though his portion was notably smaller, never having much of an appetite for breakfast, preferring a larger lunch or dinner.

Orochimaru was still in the clothes he had gone to bed in, the dark kimono top with snake patterns on the sleeves and matching pants. His hair was still unbrushed and in a tangled mess behind him. It pained Kabuto to see his hair this way, knowing that when he went to brush it he would tear at the knots that formed, splitting the ends and fraying them out more rather than taking his time enough to ensure the health of each shaft was seen to. If only he would let him brush it for him. Kabuto knew he could take better care of him if only he was allowed, knowing that he would have to use the brush carefully to avoid tugging at his tender scalp, working each lock until it was sleek and smooth and caught the light when it swayed.

"Good morning, Kabuto-san." he noted politely, more so acknowledging his presence than actually wishing him well, though there was a note of something genuine, maybe making an observation about the pleasantries of the morning. His thin lips were drawn into a smile, eyes relaxed and downcast, focusing on the steam rising from his coffee cup.

"Good morning, Orochimaru-sama. I hope that everything is to your liking, though if your expression is any hint, I shouldn't think there's much to worry about." Though not always perfect in his execution, Kabuto held a confidence that he did his job well more often than not.

"Of course. You've spoiled me all these years with your cooking. I'd imagine that by now, you're as good with a spatula as with a scalpel."

A soft smile, a barely heard chuckle was his only answer. He enjoyed the banter that they shared, the small, soft jokes made at each other. They would go unnoticed and under appreciated by most, but Kabuto was always on the look out. They were both subtle creatures in the art of conversation, often times their tone taking more meaning that the words that they shared.

Kabuto picked at his plate, taking a bite only every so often and not having any real intention of eating the whole thing. His eyes, hidden by the distorting reflection of his glasses, were trained on Orochimaru. He loved watching him eat. Eating was full of small, specific motions and nuances in the body. Each slight change in the contraction or relaxation of muscle tissue left a ripple of sorts over his ivory skin, either diminishing or enhancing the shadows cast against it.

He began his observations by watching his hands. They were so well shaped, not really consumed by knuckles, but still defined at each joint by the folding of skin, creating dark grey ridges where one bone stopped and another began. The tendons that stretched from fingertip to wrist and further stood out stalk straight on the backs of his hands, casting neat lines of shadows that were only interrupted by the light blue of veins standing out against his flesh. His blood vessels were expanded, working to cool him off and making them stand out against his skin. He took note of the tension in his wrist when he raised the fork to his mouth, making his styloid process more pronounced, a small shadow being cast between it and the tendon running to his thumb.

When the food made it to his mouth, he watched the tension and relaxation of his masseter as it worked to chew whatever bit of food that had made it into the mouth, noting also the more apparent movements of the orbicularis oris, the muscles that moved the lips which never seemed to be still on that man, never totally relaxed, but always finding a new, subtle expression to hold. Whenever he swallowed, he watched paristalsis take over, moving the food into the stomach, creating a temporary lump, a roll against the smooth flesh of his neck, making his laryngeal prominence stand out more so than normal for a moment, casting a heavier shadow.

It was this time of observation that relaxed Kabuto in the morning. He could lose himself in the shifting shadows of his subject, of a man that was all lights and shadows. There was silence as Orochimaru, only half-unaware of the prying eyes on him, thought through his own agenda for the day. Kabuto let himself drift into his obsession, his apathetic stare revealing nothing of the gears that were turning under the surface. His gaze gave off no ripples to hint at the dangerous tempest festering below.