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Hidan breathes in the smoke, letting the familiar scent soothe him before he picks up the wooden comb and starts the long process of working the knots out of Kakuzu's tangled hair. His wrists ache where the iron manacles bit into them, but it's a phantom pain from wounds that healed as soon as he took them off and he knows it will be gone soon enough.
Besides, this closeness is worth it.
The clear night sky, the moonless night that lets the eternal stars shine down upon them, it's all so familiar. They've spent a thousand nights together just like this and, given the lives they lead, they'll probably spend several thousand more.
That used to be a terrifying thought, but it's becoming less of one with every year that passes.
"No one needs to be told that ever since learning has borne rule in the Church, learned Doctors have contradicted and condemned one another in every essential point of the Christian doctrine." Kakuzu's deep voice rumbles, his fingers cradling the book in his hands carefully even as he reads the words as much from memory as the page. "Thousands of learned men tell the illiterate they are lost in this or that Church; and thousands of learned men tell them they are lost if they leave it."
Heh.
Hidan grins to hear that phrase again.
It's his favourite and he knows Kakuzu picked it on purpose.
They both have complicated feelings about the church, but there's one thing they agree on - people who think they know god's plan, no matter what that god is, don't know what they're talking about.
"Hey," Hidan presses a kiss to his lover's dark hair, to strands that will never go white with age, and smiles. "I'm never going to leave you."
"You'd better not," Kakuzu tilts his head back until their gazes catch, and Hidan can see the stars in his eyes. "You know I'd only come after you."
"I know." Hidan leans down brushing their lips together. "Believe me, I know."