Disclaimer: Don't own them. Damn.

Marked

Tonight, the room has remained dimly lit by candles. The evening is not given purely to sensuality; tonight is to be methodic, calculated - doctrinal. Orochimaru does have experience as a teacher, after all.

Kabuto's glasses sit on the nightstand to the side of the bed. The light is not for him: he closes his eyes, Orochimaru brushing stray strands of hair away from in front of his eyelids - a teasingly gentle gesture. Kabuto sighs softly and smiles.

Orochimaru kisses him on the cheek whilst his hand reaches across to his side of the bed to the kunai sitting atop a pile of scrolls.

Kabuto knows what's about to happen, but makes no move to resist. Trying to defend himself against his master is futile.

Slowly, Orochimaru places the tip of the kunai just below Kabuto's neck. He drags the tip from side to side, never quite grazing the skin.

Kabuto knows he's going to, though, but it still surprises him when Orochimaru pushes the kunai ever-so-slightly more firmly.

To begin, Orochimaru scrapes the kunai over the top of the right side of Kabuto's chest. He drags the kunai half-way back along the cut, eliciting a gasp from his minion. Orochimaru smirks, laughing "If you're gasping already, I don't know how you're going to cope later on. And don't heal yourself." He drags the kunai downwards. "It's much more fun if you don't." His tongue flicks quickly over the wound, before being replaced by the kunai, which Orochimaru draws once more across the vertical line before slicing two sloping lines into Kabuto's skin underneath that. Moving to the right of his 'artwork', Orochimaru quickly draws another vertical line with a slanted line at the bottom.

Kabuto realises what Orochimaru is doing. "'Watashi'? I am your doctor, Orochimaru-sama, not your note book."

Underneath the kanji his tongue has just finished admiring, Orochimaru slowly writes another character. "You will be whatever I tell you to be, Kabuto."

Kabuto closes his eyes and pushes his head into the pillow which is supporting him. He has become so dependent on his medical abilities that pain has become something which Kabuto doesn't experience very often.

Orochimaru wants to put a stop to that.

"Is it too much to ask for you to finish your note-taking in hiragana? I'm worried I'm running out of ink."

"Kanji are much more beautiful," replies Orochimaru, beginning the final character. He makes sure to cut into Kabuto more deeply, more slowly, more painfully than before.

Kabuto whimpers as he discovers Orochimaru's final kanji. It's full of lines which Orochimaru makes sure to get painstakingly accurate. The word couldn't be more fitting.

"There," declares Orochimaru before his tongue slides up his handy work. "Don't you ever forget it."

Already beginning to heal the bottom layers of skin, Kabuto looks into Orochimaru's eyes.

"Of course I won't."

"Good."

Orochimaru's tongue traces the phrase 'watashi no mono' one more time.