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When you’d been late to your takeoff just by a second, you felt your entire day fall apart in an instant. The next plane wasn’t supposed to leave for another day, and you were certain that there were no more tickets available for your trip home. All you wanted to do was go back to your shitty apartment and throw yourself on the ancient mattress that was falling apart. You wanted to wrap yourself in the blanket you’ve forgotten to wash and just sleep away the weekend. But unfortunately, you arrived late to your flight after getting harassed by TSA for an hour all over a few suspicious looking items. They were right to be suspicious, since you should have been added to the no-fly list ages ago, but it was still infuriating to watch your flight take off without you as you stood at the gate entrance.
When you went to the help desk and cried about it to the poor lady sitting there, you’d been turned down almost instantly. You forced out more tears, though, and expressed that you needed the next flight home - you had to see your sick mother, after all! Your sick mother and your sick siblings! Your dying family, please!
She had given in after the tenth time you leaned across the front desk to cry out in heartbreak at your mothers recent diagnosis. It was all entirely a lie, but you landed a flight for tomorrow morning on a flight back to your bed. It was farther out of the way than you would like, but a two-hour car ride was nothing compared to the night you now had to spend inside the airport. You set up camp at your gate, shoving all your items across a few seats in the desolate section before you wandered off. The airport was far too empty for you to even consider the possibility of theft, and you were craving a shitty airport snack way too much to care anyway.
In the back of one of the only open shops, you came across a strange pale blue man hovering over the refrigerated section. You peeked by and saw him holding two meals in one hand - one packaged meal that came with shrimp, and another one with the same meal except it came with fish. Two disgusting options for airport food, in your opinion, but he looked particularly distraught at the moment. You caught his eye and made eye contact with you, hands full of the most mediocre looking sandwiches in the world. You planned on slipping right past him and out of the store (it was almost criminal for those decrepit-looking sandwiches to be $11! Of course you were going to steal them!) but he had began talking, drawing attention to you.
“I simply can’t decide between shrimp and fish. I like both, but I’m unsure which one is the better option in this case.”
You were quick to notice the sharp teeth that he had. His eyes were inhuman as well, piercing with a certain depth to them that made it look almost as though they were shark-like.
“Go with the shrimp,” you said lowly, “the smell of fish is kinda offensive in a place like this.”
He chuckled, slowly putting the fish meal back into the refrigerated shelf. “You’re right.”
While the man was checking out at the counter, you dashed past him silently and returned to your gate where you found your items exactly where you had left them. After scarfing down both stolen sandwiches, you settled into your spot for the night - you were thankfully able to pull the armrests up on the shitty chairs to create a bed, using two jackets from your suitcase as a pillow and blanket. You silently thanked any gods above for the temperature being bearable as you succumbed to the worst night of sleep you’d ever had.
Being late for your first flight and missing it sucked, sure. But, to look on the bright side, you were the first person to arrive for your second flight! Which meant nothing in the end, since you bought the ticket for the last available seat in the back corner of the plane, but you were still proud to have gotten a good spot next to the gate desk to hear any updates on your flight.
You were in the last group of passengers to get on the plane, finally arriving to your seat after a whopping 15 hours of waiting in the airport. You were more tired than you ever had been and almost dropped your suitcase on your head as you tried to push it into the overhead compartment, but you were thankfully saved by a familiar man you’d met earlier.
“Careful there,” he said just above a whisper, shoving the suitcase into the compartment for you. He was much taller than you, at least a foot, and clearly strong as hell. He pushed your suitcase back with such ease that you knew instantly he could probably crush you in the blink of an eye if he really wanted to.
You smiled, mumbled a thank you, and sat down. The man sat next to you. Furrowing your brow, he shrugged and held up his printed ticket. It marked the seat that he was in currently, indicating that you really were just unlucky enough to get sat next to the shrimp man.
“Guess we’re flight buddies,” he said, voice low and gravely. You politely chuckled before crossing your arms and leaning back, closing your eyes to potentially get some rest for the flight.
“My name is Kisame,” he said after the plane had driven to the runway in preparation for takeoff. “I’m from the Land of Water.”
You opened your eye, giving him a look. “You’re a long way from home then, Kisame,” you mumbled. You sighed and leaned back into your seat. “My name is Y/N.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Y/N,” Kisame said, flashing his sharp teeth at you. “You’re correct, though, I am quite a bit away from my home land. I come from the Mist.”
You nodded. You’d never been there before, but you knew certainly that the Village Hidden in the Mist was infamous for its brutality against its soldiers. You suspected that Kisame was one of them, given his apparent strength and intimidation.
“I’m from the Land of Fire,” you said, giving into the idea that you weren’t going to get any sleep for the duration of the flight. “Konohagakure.”
Kisame nodded slowly. “One of my friends is from there, though it’s been quite a while since he’s been back.”
You scoffed. “I don’t blame him. The place is a nightmare these days, full of snot-nosed kids running around with kunai and being taught nothing but propaganda.”
Kisame laughed lowly, cautious of the passengers surrounding the two of you as he deepened the conversation. “He is of the Uchiha clan, a victim of precisely what you just described.”
Instantly, you knew who Kisame was referring to - there were only two surviving members of the Uchiha clan, Sasuke and Itachi. Sasuke was just barely out of middle school, leaving the only option to be Itachi. Knowing the history of the Uchiha clan and what happened, you were intrigued to hear more about Kisame’s relationship to Itachi.
“So Itachi’s your friend, then?” You asked, “I’ve heard a lot about him. The group he’s in, too. The people he runs with are kinda crazy, I’ve heard, but awesome nonetheless.”
Kisame grinned at your comment. “He is my partner in crime, I suppose.”
You nodded, looking away from him to the window where you saw the sunrise just barely in the distance. The plane was now fully in the air, giving you a fascinating view of the land below growing more distant. You decided to change the subject.
“Where are you headed then, Kisame?” You asked, making simple conversation.
“Top secret,” he responded with a shrug.
“I’m headed home,” you sighed, “I haven’t gotten any sleep at all. I missed my flight yesterday and came up with the most bullshit lie to get the lady at the help desk to book me this flight.” Your vent quickly turned into a ramble. “Of course it had to be at the earliest time ever, too. I just want to be home.”
“Well, if you hadn’t missed your flight then perhaps you wouldn’t have met me,” Kisame spoke. You shrugged. “I don’t even know you, I don’t think that does anything in particular for me right now.”
Kisame laughed and crossed his arms. “I like you, you’ve got a bite to you.”
You gave another shrug. “You could probably kick my ass, but I think you’ve got better things to do.”
He nodded sharply. “You’re right about that.”
You spent the next hour talking to Kisame about everything - he told you about his friends back home that he lived with, who were terrible at doing laundry and couldn’t wash a dish without throwing a tantrum. They were all, save for one or two, sex-crazed idiots that played more along the lines of “kill first, ask questions later”. You learned that his favorite season was also winter - though he loved the sandy beaches and warm ocean water that came with the summer heat, he loved piling on clothes in the winter and watching the snow fall even more.
“I find it to be relaxing, sitting outside in the cold and feeling the frostbite set in.” Kisame chuckled as he watched you look out the window, eyes fixated on the cloud the plane passed through.
“You’re fucking insane,” you remarked.
Kisame then told you a story about when his roommate had dared him to lay out in the snow in his underwear - Kisame, not being able to turn down a challenge, laid in the snow almost entirely naked for a whole fifteen minutes before the cold biting at his toes had became too painful to withstand. His entire body was both tingling and numb at the same time and when he had returned to the warmth of the house, a pot of hot water was waiting to be thrown on him by a different roommate that had overheard the dare. Kisame admitted to “tearing the man limb-from-limb” that evening.
“I remember feeling the stinging of the cold on my fingers and thinking I’d finally gone hypothermic,” Kisame grinned, “but it was really just my body going numb.”
“Was it peaceful, though?” You questioned, turning away from the window and making eye contact. He thought for a moment before nodding. “I think it was. I remember watching the snowfall on the evergreen trees and the silence of nature is just something you can’t beat.”
Kisame asked you about your home life, then - you told him all about your shitty apartment that had way too many cats living in it for one person. You told him about your constantly leaking shower and how one of your cats had developed an affinity for drinking from the leak, then told him about your terrible landlord that had “attempted” to fix the drip three times and continually failed because he didn’t want to hire anyone.
“I’ve always been the one to fix the leaks in my place, since everyone else is pretty much incompetent,” Kisame admitted.
You then told Kisame about one of your neighbors who was an absolute heathen. He was a random village kid with apparently nobody taking care of him - you never saw anyone go in or out of that apartment beside the poor blonde boy. He was loud and rambunctious at night, though, and that made you lose all sympathy for him. “It’s like he’s got the energy of a thousand toddlers,” you groaned, “I can never get any sleep when he goes on one of his stupid rampages. He’s torn up the building before with a senseless prank and almost cost me my house!”
Kisame laughed at your complaint of the child. “Next time the child misbehaves, perhaps you should threaten him with a jutsu. That’ll shut him up, surely.”
You considered it for a second. “I think he’s training to become a ninja, so he’d probably just kill me or something.”
“What, you don’t know any ninjutsu?” Kisame asked, shocked at your response. You shook your head. “My parents never put me into the academy and I never had an interest in becoming a government slave.”
Kisame scoffed. “Being a ninja doesn’t mean you’re a slave to your village. Take me for example,” his voice lowered to a whisper as he leaned in. “I’ve been a rogue ninja for years now and I’m certainly no slave.”
With a shrug, you turned back to the window. You saw the plane was starting to make a slow descent into the Land of Fire.
“I’ve just never had an interest in ninjutsu. Seems pretty complicated and useless to me, I’m not the fighting type.”
He nodded and hummed.
When the plane landed, Kisame grabbed your suitcase from above and handed it to you. You accepted it with a smile and thanked him, then quickly exited the plane to make it out of the airport. All you wanted to do was jump into bed, and nothing was going to get in the way of that. You enjoyed the company of your flight buddy, but that was over now and you were determined to get the hell home.
You’d bumped into Kisame one final time in the airport as you waited in line for a taxi to take you to the train station.
“So you’re finally heading home then, Y/N?” Kisame asked, taking you by surprise when he showed up seemingly out of nowhere.
“Yeah, I’m gonna get some sleep and hopefully not come back to an apartment flooded by shower water,” you said, slightly worried that your cats were sitting under the showerhead and waiting for the water to drip.
Kisame smiled at you one last time. “I’d fix it for you, if you like.”
You took your eyes off the line of taxis that were making their way down the road and turned to Kisame. With a smile, you dug out your phone. “How long are you staying in town?” You asked.
“As long as you need,” he replied, a glimmer of confidence in his eye.