Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/3810715. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: F/M Fandom: Naruto Relationship: Mitarashi_Anko/Orochimaru Character: Mitarashi_Anko, Orochimaru_(Naruto) Additional Tags: Menstrual_Sex, Sex_with_Sentient_Animals, Genderqueer_Character Stats: Published: 2015-04-24 Words: 3806 ****** Complicated Separations ****** by aquila_black Summary Anko sleeps naked with her snakes sometimes. That's one of the habits she acquired after forsaking the village of Hidden Sound. On the whole, it's a cold comfort; a way of bonding with her summons, who expect humans to be at least a little bit scared of them. But it's a lot more sensible than ever taking up with one particular snake sannin again. "I'm bleeding," Anko said, bluntly. "Are you. Let me see." The shine on Orochimaru's hair shifted as he turned to look at her. "... from between my." She made a small gesture at the place where her legs met her body. "Ah. Come with me," he said, extending a hand to hold hers. She went where he led her. Away from the places other people frequented in the Hidden Sound, through the deeper halls of Orochimaru's personal quarters. People found their way, here, by invitation or not at all. "Are you in pain?" He asked. "No," Anko said, frowning. "But I am -" what was the right word for this feeling of internal constriction and full body unease? "- uncomfortable," she finally said. I'm feeling vulnerable and fragile would have been equally true, but Anko wasn't girly enough to admit to that, even to herself. Much less to someone like Orochimaru, who also worshiped at the altar of strength. He said nothing for a moment. And then he asked, "did they teach you to be ashamed of it?" "They tried. But it's my body," Anko countered. "Anyone who has a problem with it can damn well bleed from other places. And be embarrassed they lost to an unfeminine missing nin." Orochimaru smiled broadly at her but did not comment. "It's just the - other implications I don't like." She said softly. "The pointlessness of my body automatically readying itself for a child from now on, just because it's becoming an adult's body. I resent not being able to control that." They stepped through the threshold to one of his chambers, snakes moving out of their way as they went, coiling sinuously towards the room's shadows as Orochimaru lit the underground torches with a breath and a fire sign. "We think similarly," Orochimaru said, "and greater compliment than that, I could not pay you," he added. "Besides, the fact that something is for one purpose never kept me from re-purposing it. And there's no reason why it should limit you." Anko felt goosebumps raise on her arms as Orochimaru laid her out, face-up, on his bed. Legs spread. But she trusted him at fourteen. She trusted him implicitly, so she didn't start struggling or demand what are you going to do? as he undressed her. Anko had already started favoring military coats and sensible shoes, a protective layer that hid her growing curves and contradicted people's expectations, respectively. But she let them form a pile on the ground now, along with her pants, top, and underwear. The latter peeled off reluctantly, shiny and slick with new blood. They smeared her inner thigh as he took them off her. Still completely dressed, right down to the sash holding his kimono, Orochimaru approached sinuously to sit astride her, in a full mount that still left room between their bodies because he was resting his weight on his knees. His pale hands traced the changing shape of her hips, the muscled expanse of her belly, the curve of her lower ribs, the fat collecting in her breasts ... the line of her clavicle. The exposed length of her neck. Anko swallowed hard as he ran smooth, black nails over her pulse, and tried not to think of the last time they sparred. Specifically, of the way venomous snakes had shot out of his sleeve long before he got close enough to actually touch her. She watched the smolder of his slit-pupiled yellow eyes as her body started to throb with heat. Orochimaru's touch was warm, gentle, and suggestive when he wanted it to be, and his features were fascinating. She seldom had occasion to just stare at him to her heart's content, to trace the shape of his lips, the severe angles of his nose and high cheekbones, the purple sweep of his eye-makeup, and above all, the sharp, hard intelligence in his gaze. Birds of prey had eyes like Orochimaru. And, of course, snakes did. But what really held her transfixed was that he was looking at her like she was every bit as interesting to him. Anko felt like Orochimaru could discern everything that made her different from every other human in the world, every private twist and turn that she'd ever wondered if it was okay to feel, and all of it made him want her. Unconsciously, Anko ran her tongue over the edge of her lower lip, as she tried to figure out what to do with herself. With - this sudden sense of wanting Orochimaru more than she'd ever wanted anyone in her life. Her uncertainty didn't last. He kissed her deeply enough that her throat convulsed around his tongue as he started touching between her legs, dipping his fingers into the blood and making clever circles over her sensitive areas. She grabbed him by the hard muscles in his shoulders and kissed him back, moaning, pressing her hips against his hand. Dark blood oozed harmlessly around his pale fingers and dripped onto the bed as he found a rhythm and stroked her. His other hand went from playing with her breasts to wrapping firmly around her back, so that he could support her as she tried to press against him and so that he could grind her naked body against his growing erection. Orochimaru broke off the kiss just as she was starting to really miss breathing, pulling the length of his tongue back into his own mouth. Anko started enthusiastically licking as much of his neck as she could reach, dragging her teeth over the skin a little, but mostly tracing the shape of his muscles with her mouth, kissing and exploring. Her breath, coming in uncontrolled gasps, contrasted with the wet heat of her licks. Orochimaru let himself be pleasured, luxuriating in the sensation and the way even her mouth twitched and paused in response to the motion of his hand, before shifting his body down so that his head was between her legs. He let the sharp tip of his tongue drag agonizingly over the folds above her opening, and Anko shrieked and moaned, arcing her back against the bed in a way that exposed the full expanse of her chest, ribcage, and belly. He applied more of his tongue and moved in closer, enjoying the smell of her, the feel, the way blood slicked against his face as he pressed it against her, and smeared darkly against her thighs. Her muscles flexed powerfully against his stimulation, chakra lancing through her body at regular intervals like an electric current. He could feel the health, youth, and strength running through Anko. Her whole body reacted as one, pulsing with ecstasy and life under his tongue. She was holding fist-fulls of sheet in either hand as a luxuriant flush bloomed over her whole body. Her muscles were as taught as if she was being tortured. It was obviously taking all the willpower she had to keep from interfering with him - from trying to control his motions or trying to pull away. But she clamped her teeth together between screams and restricted her own movement in a way that made Orochimaru admire her resolve. There wasn't much left of her hymen. He could feel thin ribbons of flesh connecting the walls of the entrance, prodding them experimentally with the muscles of his tongue as she writhed against him. He reached up to immobilize her by the wrists now. Anko immediately relinquished her hold on the sheets to grip his arms, white-knuckled, though whether she did this reflexively out of sheer lust, or dread at what might be coming next, he couldn't tell. Orochimaru took a breath and then shot his tongue forward, in one sharp, decisive motion that stretched them irreversibly past the breaking point. It was over in less than seconds, in the endless non-time that marks the difference between life and death in battle. Anko's screams inflected briefly with a cry of pain. She grabbed him even harder. Orochimaru had thought to draw her attention away from the injury with more enjoyable stimulation. His face was already covered with blood from the cheekbones down as his tongue traced around the edge of her opening. But while Anko wasn't complaining, she didn't need to be coaxed. The pain itself gave her an orgasm. Shifting techniques, Orochimaru ran his tongue directly, obscenely through the tatters at her entrance as her body clenched around the intrusion, menstrual blood mingling with wound-blood and spit. He fed his tongue deliberately into her body, feeling the shape of her inside walls and the soft, blood-swollen curve of their limit, and her body clutched at him with all its (considerable) strength. He pulled out as it relaxed and then pumped back in, and chakra pulsed between his tongue and her spasms, each encouraging the other. Even as it seemed like a conflict - her tightening around him and his stretching her - it wasn't. Their bodies were playing off each other in harmony. Then finally, the storm building inside her reached the peak of its intensity and started to taper off. Orochimaru slowed down with her, and pulled out entirely as Anko came back down from it. Gradually and shakily, her body felt its way to a heartbeat that didn't belong to some dragon. Or furnace. Or possibly the goddamn apocalypse ... it felt like slowing down after attaining perfect speed. Deliberately, Orochimaru started cleaning the blood off his face with his prehensile tongue. Then he did his hands, cat-like. He looked entirely pleased with himself. "The blood your body collects for a child is rich with new life," he explained wryly. "People are fools to be disgusted with it." At that moment, Anko couldn't bring herself to care what he was talking about. She tackled him down and kissed him, and he let her. Even when she grabbed the back of his head possessively and pulled him against her, clumsily and hard, Orochimaru was content. And ... possibly even complimented. Anko tore at his sash, his clothes, and he helped her by shrugging out of them. "I want you in my mouth. Right now," Anko informed him, with more than her usual economy of words. She punctuated the statement with another kiss and a very assertive, to-the-point grope. He bucked his hips against her body encouragingly, grinding his erection into her cupped hand. But - "wait," he told her. She didn't contradict him directly, but as a counterpoint to the unwelcome delay, Anko curled her fingers around him and pumped the skin up and down its length. It grew responsively under her touch, hardening further. Orochimaru's breath caught in his throat as he formed seals against the pressure points in her neck. Then, at his nod, she scrambled to her knees at the edge of the bed and took the very head of his erection in her mouth. Orochimaru sucked air between his teeth with a low hiss as her tongue made contact; short, rapid-fire licks touching him with an urgency and a desperation, as if she expected him to abruptly pull away and change his mind. As if she could make up for lack of technique with sheer determination. It wasn't a ... bad strategy, actually, Orochimaru managed to think, through the waves of desire that were flexing and coiling through his body. She was trying things on her own initiative and learning very quickly – and that's about as far as his observations went before the pleasure of being taken in deep and sucked put them (temporarily) on hold. Orochimaru breathed in great lungfuls, his long-trained body reacting at capacity, alternating between its limits as pleasure manipulated it. But aside from the inevitable sound of altered breathing and the soft rustle of limbs against sheets, he was silent. Decades of ninja discipline and holding himself to utterly unforgiving standards had made it impossible for Orochimaru to produce involuntary sounds. Equally beyond him was moving a bit and then stopping. He could give his body permission to move or not, but there was only one situation where he allowed himself half-motions. So he ran his hands over Anko's hair and shot a meaningful, sidelong glance at the snakes still lurking around his room. A brown tree snake slithered up the bedpost and took the invitation to coil securely around the length of his outstretched right arm, to enjoy the way he was radiating heat. Anko made a short sound in the back of her throat as snakes twined around her ankles, up her legs, and settled heavily against her body, all smooth belly scales and rough sides, flicking tongues and twisting pressure. She was uncomfortable with their sudden familiarity, but Orochimaru was (unmistakeably) allowing this. More snakes had come to settle on his arms and thighs, to slither through his black hair and lounge in the warm crooks of his body, to stretch him out and hold him down, tasting the air and molding their shapes to his shape. And then vice versa - Anko couldn't tell when she stopped controlling her movements and the snakes took over, all muscle and silent understanding and coordinated manipulation, but she started having to time her breaths more carefully to avoid having Orochimaru's length entirely down her throat when her body was telling her she needed to breathe. Orochimaru was intermittently petting the snakes with the tips of his fingers as they put their heads under his hands. His half-closed eyes glittered in the firelight. But more than that, he was setting his muscles against them and letting their weight and power restrict his body. The bed dipped as two of the very long guard-snakes joined the others. One curled quiescently on the bed without touching Orochimaru. Its middle was thicker than his neck. The other coiled its tail around his thigh, hard enough to bruise, and curled several times around his lower body and ribs before resting its head over his heartbeat. Orochimaru flinched slightly with an audible intake of breath as it adjusted its position, and then they both settled. Orochimaru's legs spread wider, and his hips started lifting obligingly to meet her open mouth. Anko thought a different snake must have knocked one of the torches from its wall fixture, because it rolled on the stone floor and went out, leaving a red ember in its wake and emitting a white plume of smoke. Then another hit the ground and died a similar death. As the process repeated, the light dwindled and disappeared entirely. Twinkling red eyes of fire glowed at them, level with the floor, in the dark. She made another uncertain sound in the back of her throat and Orochimaru stroked her cheek reassuringly as the snakes paused. "Trust them," he said simply. And she tried. The snakes moved over her with their usual languor, never rushed but never entirely still. They were constricting and heavy and she was extra-aware of them now that she couldn't see anything. They were literally scale-against-skin with her in the dark. Orochimaru's tongue crept out in something closer to its full extension, and he managed to find her vulva with it, snakes parting to give him access to her. Anko started squirming again, now against the many bodies sharing her warmth, and gave up all hesitation. She let them fuck her mouth with Orochimaru's length. Anko was never able to tell, later, if Orochimaru's tongue had penetrated her again or she'd actually had sex with one of the bigger snakes. The orgasms were unlike anything she'd ever felt. And ... while she was scientifically certain that none of the things they'd done could get her pregnant, it did kind of scare her that first time, because she hadn't been on her period anymore when the snakes slithered off them and they disentangled themselves from each other. Blood was all over the sheets, the snakes, and Orochimaru, who looked - sated, that was the word. She remembered the pulsing feeling of having him coming down her throat, so far in that she didn't have to make a conscious decision to swallow, as the snakes held them together. But everything else had sort of blurred into one sensation: into one incredible expanse of - ? Words failed her to describe this. Which was probably just as well, because if she ever tried to tell anybody who didn't grow up in Sound, they'd be horrified. Not least because she'd loved it, enough to go straight to him the next month, and every time after that. No matter how they'd felt about each other, the highs made her wish they could be inseparable. So it was, perhaps ... reasonable that at least once a month, after she left, Anko missed Orochimaru, sometimes badly enough that she had to lock herself in and tie herself down to keep from going back. And not really because it took her several days to stop bleeding, and sometimes it hurt inside, and always, other people in the villages expected her to hide it. More because ... it epitomized the fact that Orochimaru had understood her. He'd never loved her. He had been using her. (Her and everyone else, as a voice in her head always corrected.) None of that stopped being true, or stopped being a good reason for having gotten out. But most of what he'd taught her, she could take with her and adapt to her new life. And this particular work-around was specific to their relationship; to his absolute lack of squeamishness and her absolute lack of shame. To their contract with the snakes, god. And to their shared rejection of things that the rest of the world taught were natural. He'd shown her how to twist a situation that she didn't like and didn't want into something she could actually look forward to. He'd also shown her the seals to deep-throat him comfortably, and the considerably more forbidden seals to cause a miscarriage. She couldn't expect anyone else to understand how much that meant to her. She was already pretty suspect just for having been with Orochimaru at all - having gone with him when he disappeared, but also simply for having survived him. For being alive and well when so many of his other projects had ended up in cages and on his dissection tables. Or as monsters being eaten gradually by the parasitic curse seal. She'd left before he turned into someone who used up everyone he touched, Anko thought, and couldn't help but be grateful for that. But grateful with a divided heart. Ninja teams would occasionally bring the lifeless bodies of his newer creations back to hidden leaf - a boy with two heads, another with six arms; a young girl with horns - and it made her want to stamp out the part of her that still had affection and something resembling nostalgia for him. That never worked. Hating Orochimaru was something she could not do. And neither was nodding in agreement when other people asserted he was crazy. Unethical, yes. Cruel, assuredly. But she would never for a second believe that he'd gone crazy. He'd ... taken a bad direction, and she could see what that meant for everyone who tried to go with him. For everyone who wasn't (at every moment) more useful to him alive than dead. Kabuto was still walking that tightrope, more successfully than most, from what she'd heard. But whatever else could be said about her, Anko valued her life more than that. And because Orochimaru understood her, he never tried to get her back. That's what she told herself the first time they exchanged words as enemies. Anko repeated the same thing to herself afterwards, as she went back to the small, dismal apartment where months were turning into years. She could still feel her life running out when it was quiet enough, but only at the usual rate; in the spaces between her heartbeats. No one from Hidden Sound had followed her. No one had even broken in to slit her throat or drag her back. And that, above all else, felt unreal: alone among all the many people Orochimaru ever said "you're mine" to, he had actually let her go. Anko was as strange as she could afford to be in the Hidden Leaf. Strange enough to keep anyone from getting too close to her. She really didn't think any more eccentricity on her part would be tolerated. So when, after they'd all had too many drinks, the other ANBU asked her about Orochimaru's sexual habits, she always lied. Because the alternative was making herself look like a hapless victim at the expense of making him look utterly depraved (which she was unwilling to do) or tantamount to declaring they were both so far outside the bounds of what other people considered acceptable, even in the bedroom, that the catch-all "pervert" wouldn't begin to cover it. Perverts, in Konoha, were men who peeked at naked women. Orochimaru, on the other hand, spent most of his time discovering new jutsu and reading dead languages to translate esoteric scrolls. He also had sex in ways that these people would never have considered, but Anko couldn't bring herself to talk about it. He wasn't a museum exhibit to ogle. And okay, maybe he sort of was a freak, with his two meter tongue and all the rest, but ... no more so than the orphans with bloodline limits who sought him out and stayed with him. No more so than her. And she wasn't going to give people any more reasons to think of him as a freak. The things that outsiders focused on were never the things Anko wanted them to see about him. They'd only listen up to a point. They'd only listen while she was confirming what they already thought they knew. That shut her up more decisively than anything Orochimaru could have threatened her with. She amused herself sometimes by imagining people's faces if she ever responded to their intrusive questions by announcing, "you know what beats the hell out of having a normal period? Having one that only lasts an afternoon because Orochimaru-sama wrung out all the excess blood from you. With a little help from his friends." Given how disgusted most men were by menstruation, it would not be the sort of racy story they were hoping for, when they prodded her for details on Orochimaru. Anko occasionally had sex with guys in Konoha that she didn't love and wouldn't trust as far as she could throw them. She tolerated the rumors that something must have made her barren with pointed teasing - hey, don't blame me if you're shooting blanks! - and the ensuing fights with relatively good cheer. But she went home to her snakes, and there were things she knew and they knew that she told no one. Orochimaru never admonished Anko to keep his secrets. She kept them anyway. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!