Naruto Fic: Lords and Ladies, Chapter 1 (Sasuke/Hinata/Gaara, Cast)
Normally, I wouldn't bother to put this fic up on LJ since it's only one of many ridiculous little projects that I started writing mostly to have a decent creative outlet in the midst of of a very, very stressful period in my life. But somehow, this silly little plot bunny sunk its teeth deep into me and doesn't seem willing to let up anytime soon. So I had no choice but to post a quasi-modern day AU Sasuke/Hinata/Gaara fic that's less about love triangles and more about love three dimensional figures that had points that go on endlessly into space. Is this something to take seriously? God no. I'm writing almost straight from the hip here. But hopefully, this will at least be a great deal of fun for both my readers and myself.
And yes, reviews are very greatly loved and appreciated and likely to spur me on to write even more of this series. So if you like this, please review. You would truly make a sad little graduate student's day here. ♥
Title: Lords and Ladies, Chapter 1
Fandom: Naruto
Series: Lords and Ladies
Characters/Pairings: Sasuke/Hinata/Gaara, Neji, Itachi, Naruto/Sakura, Ino, TBA
Rating: R
Summary: Lady Hinata had expected that her life would change after being married to Lord Sasuke in a sham marriage meant to throw off the chains of their respective families. But she had no idea that the greatest of worries was only now coming...
Note: This is a purely silly, frothy, fun modern-day AU that takes place with Konoha and Suna still intact but rearranged in strange ways.
***
Lying upon the enormous bed that she vaguely shared with her husband, Lady Hinata Hyuuga Uchiha-- the flower of the court of the modern-day Konoha empire and the highest placed noblewoman in the land only behind the Empress and the Crown Dowager-- found herself wiggling her toes in distress only because she could not quite wring her hands properly.
Not that her husband was any better off, of course. No, Lord Sasuke Uchiha-- the premiere blade among the royal bucks of the court, the second in line to the imperial throne and the shining future of their empire and people-- was huddled onto his side, groaning softly. From the noises he was making, he had either just finished with having the best sex of his life, or he had been beaten about the head with a sack of crazed weasels.
(Since Hinata was the closest thing to a sex partner about and she knew she hadn't just had sex with him-- previously or likely ever, not that she minded that in the least whatsoever-- the crazed weasel hypothesis seemed more likely.)
Gathering up her courage, Hinata vaguely ghosted a few fingers across her husband's back, making a motion that looked a bit like that of a concussed crab but that seemed passably soothing. And in return-- perhaps a sign that he might trust her a little at last, or that her peculiar form of stubbornness had finally worn him down-- he gave another crazed weasel groan and turned over to look at her more clearly.
It improved the view at least, Hinata noted, her breath catching momentarily. Whatever other adjectives people liked to hurl at Sasuke-- jerk, tightwad, asshole, bastard, someone-whose-sour-puss-might-actually-be-improved-by-being-chewed-on-by-crazed-weasels-- even the largest of his critics couldn't dispute that he was an extraordinarily good looking example of a human being. Of course, the more malicious of them would then go on to wonder what gender that human being was meant to be... but between the piercing dark eyes, the stunning fall of midnight-hued hair, the exquisitely drawn features, the cheekbones that could carve steel and the body that was built for all sorts of sin...
Hinata clutched the bedsheets beneath her, less with the dainty catch of well-bred aristocratic lady and more with the desperate heave of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
She wasn't about to head down that futile road, of course. And besides, they had far greater troubles to worry about here.
"A-are you sure?" she finally asked, almost physically feeling her stutter as it exited her mouth clumsily. Had all of those speech classes been for nothing? "M-maybe you heard them wrong? Maybe our clan elders weren't talk about us having... well, you know. Maybe they were, um, talking about us having rabies. You have to admit, between that nest of weasels you ran into the last week and the way you--"
She was about to say the way you usually act, but a look at the gathering storm clouds of Byronic brooding already gathering on Sasuke's brow made her kind heart divert her words easily.
"T-the way you've been a bit touchy as of late," Hinata said instead, more or less smoothly. "I mean, we've all been tense with the goings on in the palace and the arrival of Emperor Gaara--"
From the look of murderous rage that easily slid on Sasuke's face at that name, that wasn't really going to calm him down either. Hinata switched tracks again, trying to decide on a safer topic whilst timidly bringing her hand up to touch her nearly unreachable husband's shoulder, trying to soothe him again in some way...
...And feeling her own variously-described opaque eyes widen slightly, as Sasuke's body tensed like a taut bow-string at her touch, before relaxing effortlessly.
That was... was interesting. They'd been married for months and she hadn't ever realized she was capable of doing this for him.
Although interesting was all it was, of course. Dry. Academic. Distant. Nearly scientific. The sort of thing you could divide into a set of equation and teach to generations of bored graduate students over many, many years.
It was not something that should make the roof of her mouth go curiously dry. Not that her body would ever betray her in such a way.
With some difficulty, Hinata gathered herself up and locked eyes with her often distant husband, somehow feeling as though his strange eyes met her own with a visible fusion of their two beings.
Ridiculous, of course, but given what they were talking about... melding themselves together in one form or another was starting to seem increasingly less unlikely.
"They could just be grasping at the straws now," Hinata began slowly, even as her fingertips burned at their place on her husband's body. "There's been so many changes as of late-- Prince Gaara coming to the court and the Empire of Suna approaching us and all the things we're learning about in terms of even more dangerous outsiders as of late. There's so much-- so much instability around us now and I can understand if my father and your brother and our clans have that certain... points in our marriage need to be arranged for further dynastic ease. Not to mention the way it would cheer the public up as of late. But still, that doesn't mean they can decide..."
Sasuke interrupted her with a rare laugh that would have been rarer still if it had had the least trace of honest amusement within it. As it was, it was simply flat, cold and devastatingly dour, flecked with bits of bitterness and cold grace.
"This matter of our lives? Why not? After all, they've decided nearly everything up till this present day. They decided where we lived. They decided who we were. They decided what we learned. They decided what we were allowed to do. And they certainly decided who we married--"
She could feel the soft burn of a blush caress her face; nonetheless, she had to say something.
"They might have started it," she said softly, her eyes retreating from her husband's to lock upon her fumbling hands. "But we certainly had a say."
Somehow, this prompted another laugh from Sasuke-- an even rare one, this one softer and less marked by bitterness or barely suppressed rage. It wasn't a laugh he granted to everyone and Hinata felt a sudden impulse to bottle it up, keep it close to her, hold it to her and keep it safe.
With Sasuke, you never knew the next time you'd hear him the way she had just done today.
"Yes, I suppose we did, didn't we? More through your efforts than mine but still..."
She let another soft, warm laugh of her own slip past her full lips, this one coming to her easily. She may not have been a genius in the Hyuuga arts as her cousin Neji was... but she wasn't completely harmless, however adorable she might seem. She wouldn't have survived in her cut-throat clan for the last eighteen years if she was as demure and delicate as her sweet face and shy mannerisms made her out to be.
"Yes," she said, her eyes brightening as they met Sasuke's again, the flush on her face somehow not abating in the least. "Yes, we might have been caged birds before but we set ourselves free in this matter--"
"Only," he murmured, "to find ourself in another cage entirely."
Damn, she kept forgetting why she couldn't mix metaphors together in his company. He always had a way of twining about like a snake and biting their heads off dexterously.
...Though perhaps she shouldn't be criticizing. After all, her own metaphoric powers weren't the most pleasing either.
"Still," she persisted, rising a little from the bed and overlooking the effect that a heavy mass of... heaviness straining the front of her dress would have on Sasuke's suddenly less uniform complexion. "Still, we made our own choices here. At least... mostly. We-- we decided that we were going to get married ourselves--"
(Even if it was only to start their own household, free of the interference of others.)
"--and we decided that we would move in together--"
(Even if it was less because they loved each other and more because they were all right with living like glorified roommates.)
"--and we should decide what our-- our future should be!"
(Even if it meant defying the very people who had carved out their past previously.)
"I mean--" she finally stuttered, her eyes going wide and her sweet face nakedly pleading as she looked towards her husband, "--don't you think that should be the case, Sasuke? I don't know if I can do this alone but if the two of us were to-- if we both decided to put our heads together again-- if we really came up with something cunning--"
***
Looking back, Hinata would often wonder what it was that led them to the decision that they would make here.
Was it something genetic? Was there, perhaps, something bred in their blood and bones that drew the two of them together irresistibly? Was there something about their long ago ancestors, those ancestral lines that had diverged from one another, that made them trust each other explicitly? Was there something about their twinned strange eyes that made them see each other in a light no one else had managed to yet broach? Was there something even beyond simple convenience that had made their eyes meet once upon a time and decide, yes, this was it, this is the exact, precise person in my life that I need to pull off my plans eventually?
Was it destiny? Had there been something written in the stars that had foretold this day's comings? Long ago, had some scribe looked up at the night stars and decided that, yes, that constellation meant that the upcoming harvest would go well, and that constellation meant that children born in this month would fare poorly, and that constellation meant that a series of incredibly unlikely events would come about that would lead some poor shmuck of a princess to get a sham marriage to a prince she barely knew to escape her father's oppressive thumb, only to realize she was even more trapped than previously...?
Or was it simply chemistry? Was there something within the air they breathed and the food they ate that would have led them to this moment eventually? Was it something in the water and the blood within their bodies that had led them, heads proudly held up as they had subtly defied their fate, to allow their hands to meet? Was there something somehow electric about the soft, taut touches they exchanged, day after day, that made strange receptors within their bodies stand up and spring to attention... waiting for the moment they made the most complete of physical exchanges...?
Perhaps neither of them would never full know. But if there was one thing that Hinata realized even then, it was this.
Her life-- which was already a roller-coaster of poorly explained plot-twists-- was about to get even more massively complicated here.
***
"But what--" Sasuke interrupted, coming up himself and drawing in a quick breath through barely parted lips, his languorous dark eyes hooded as he took in the image of his wife reclining quickly. The flush on his face hadn't abated in the least, and now, with the little pants he was making as his excitement grew and the mussed sheets beneath his lightly clad body slid underneath him...
Crazed weasels, Hinata told herself, though it didn't sound believable even in her own skull. He looks far more like he's been attacked by crazed weasels than-- than--than tossed about in a bed with his head thrown back in ecstasy and some lucky, lucky, lucky girl about to rip his underwear off with nothing more than her teeth--
(Some distant part of her told her that reading all of those romance novels that Lady Ino had given to her after the wedding had been, not to put too fine a point on it, influential recently.)
"--But what--" Sasuke plowed on, though sadly not into anyone in particular, "--are we going to do to put off our elders with their browing demands for children between us? What can we do, truly? I thought we were doing a decent job in making everyone around us believe we could at least respectably be married to each other, but our respective clans both seem desperate to see us have-- have--"
Hinata's face went from rose red to salmon white in a record amount of time. Eventually, Sasuke spit the word out contemptuously, as though he were speaking the unspeakable in polite company.
"Progeny."
There it was. There it lay-- the word of doom presently. Faux-husband and faux-wife exchanged desperate looks at each other, as they felt their respective scrotum and uterus recoil instinctively.
Though Hinata loved the thought of having children someday, hopefully with someone she loved and with someone who could care for her somewhat as well-- frankly speaking, the thought of having children with a husband who seemed to only grudgingly tolerate her and who she was in a sham marriage with was... Terrifying. Horrifying. Frightening. Disturbing.
Possibly they needed to make a new word for how she felt right now. Terihorifrigdisturying. Something of that sort might have been enough to convey the dismay on both of their faces presently.
(If she was being truly honest with herself, Hinata might have admitted that her present terihorifriditurying was a bit overplayed. But psychological mechanisms being what they were, her conscious mind refused to let her unconscious even display the least bit of that here.)
"W-well," she began desperately, her stutter rapidly increasing as her stress levels shot up through the roof, "I g-guess we just need to st-start making ourselves seem like we-we're even more in love. We've p-probably been too m-mellow in the future bef-before. So w-we need to st-start being more con-convin-convinc--"
Sasuke's finely shaped eyelid-- he was the sort of person on whom even eye-lids had sex appeal-- twitched slightly. "Are you saying that we need to be even more convincing about being madly in love? Begin speaking to the press so that our love story becomes even more celebrated? Dangle the promise of even more intimacy in front of the public so that our elders back off in fear of looking heavy-handed in front of our adoring audience? Perhaps even include a third wheel into the relationship so that people are so riveted by the thought of our parting forever to wonder why we haven't conceived a child yet? Perhaps even that oh-so-dashing Gaara of Suna?"
Hinata could see the diabolical brilliance of all those plans as easily as she could see the way Sasuke's jaw clenched at the mention of a third party. Which made sense, she decided. After all, even at the best of times, Sasuke was a misanthrope. He didn't want to put up with any more human contact than he absolutely had to, which was likely why he had married a girl who hardly ever spoke in the first place. The thought of another party involved in their marriage-- male or female-- might actually force him to engage in even more human contact, which was enough to put him in a mood for weeks.
It wasn't out of jealousy, naturally. Hinata squashed that thought as though it were a bug and she was wielding a boot of reason swiftly.
"T-that makes sense," Hinata began cautiously. In this modern age, royal families in Konoha-- though they still had considerable power and clout in lawmaking-- depended greatly on public perception to keep their peace with more democratic ruling parties, which were even now lead by 'Princess' Tsunade. The Uchiha and the Hyuuga might be the two most powerful and royal clans in Konoha but they would have to be fools to make themselves vulnerable to each other-- and lesser clans-- by appearing heavy-handed enough to demand descendants from what the press and public was largely convinced was an adorable young couple that was still flowering towards love on a public stage.
"It would," Sasuke replied sardonically, "though there would be some trouble in manipulating the press and our family and even more in manipulating Gaara, should we follow that lead. The press and the clans, if they found out, could eviscerate us verbally and financially. Gaara on the other hand..."
Hinata blanched. She was well aware that Gaara of Suna-- if truly pressed-- could possibly eviscerate them quite non-metaphorically. And he'd likely get away with it too, if he did it in his home territory.
(Suna, to put it lightly, put somewhat less of an burden on its press corps to judge the actions of royalty. In Konoha, the royal clans consulted withextremely well paid press secretaries before choosing what to wear, what political parties to endorse, what charities to get involved with, and what marriages to put together. In Suna, the royal clan-- singular-- might well execute anyone who had the nerve to report on any of those things. Therefore, most intelligent reporters in Suna had an inclination towards writing about riveting news stories about kittens on parades.)
"Then," Hinata began slowly, "m-maybe it would be best to leave the love triangle angle alone-- at least where Gaara is concerned. After all... there are other suitable candidates for that if we really need to divert attention from the-- the reproduction issue. Like... like Lady Ino. Or Lord Shino. Or even..."
Sasuke's slightly sardonic smile tightened into a rictus on his face. "Even your 'brother' Neji?"
A flock of flamingos could have gotten lost on the blush coloring her cheeks. "He... he's always had a soft spot for me..."
"More like a hard spot," Sasuke muttered ungraciously, but then sighed and tilted his chin to get her to go on, a signal she took gratefully.
"H-hard or soft," Hinata mumbled, "he does still care for me. And if we needed his help... if I told him that I would be carrying your child if all went ill..."
"And," Sasuke pointed out, "if the general public doesn't find the thought of you potentially mating with a man you publicly called brother a few years back disturbing."
There was, Hinata had to admit, that problem.
Still, she persevered onwards with their plans for misdirection. "St-still, there are so many ways we could g-go about this without dragging some poor third party in to the mix. We could have a friend like Kiba involved. He wouldn't truly be interested in me... though I suppose that if you intrigue him enough, we could have a real love traingle-- or at least, linear line-- on our h-hands here..."
Without twitching a single muscle, her husband somehow managed to convey just how distressing such an outcome would be. But then, he had never been very fond of human beings or animals, let alone someone who had managed to combine the most exuberant traits of both species efficiently.
"Or," he said testily, after the moment of canine-inspired horror had passed, "we could do something far more effective altogether. We could go beyond these silly hodge-podge plans for a fake love triangle for a fake marriage and move onto a fake plan of pregnancy."
Some finally honed sense of danger in Hinata's mind-- some terribly well calibrated sense that had come about from years and years of living in a dangerous political clan when there had been all too many people interested in seeing her 'disposed of' permanently in order to install her younger sister as the true heir of the throne-- began to scream instantly.
Don't ask! it warned. Don't even think about it! Change the subject! Do a little strip-tease! Use your womanly charms to divert him completely!
Distressed that her conscious mind had not done a good enough job suppressing all the thoughts that the bed and her husband's relative lack of clothes conjured up, Hinata plowed on desperately.
"What do you mean?" she asked in all innocence, as her Hyuuga sense began to ring the bells of doom ominously.
"I mean," Sasuke said-- and suddenly he was doing all sorts of interesting things with the dark fall of hair across his exquisitely featured face and even his eye-lids were suddenly quirking into strangely sexual configurations and she shouldn't have asked why did she ask was she a crazy woman had marriage driven her crazy?!-- "that perhaps we should go about this whole pregnancy business as we did this whole marriage business. We pretended to be in love or whatever passes for love nowadays quite well, didn't we? And if we pretended to earnestly do what people who are in love do-- and begin to act as though we truly do little else when there is merely the two of us within a room--"
Hinata clutched the sheets before her as though they were her maiden virtue. Given how quickly they were slipping out of her hands, they might as well have been.
"I expect," Sasuke said slowly, "that we ought to try stimulating-- or even having-- sex sometime within the next few weeks."
Hinata simply looked at him, so startled that her face had been blanked of any human activity.
And the roller-coaster of poorly explained plot-twists that was her life began to slowly creak into activity.
***
Author's Note: Heh, well, that was a hell of a lot of fun to write. And with luck, there will be more to come! I can't wait until Gaara and Itachi enter the scene... they'll both have some very interesting agendas to pursue with both Sasuke and Hinata... much to their dismay, most likely.
And as always, I would be very, very grateful for any reviews. Even if you've got little to say or think that my writing is awful, I'd still love to hear from you. I always like to know there's an audience out there for my strange little scribbles, no matter how demented the writing may be. ;)
And yes, reviews are very greatly loved and appreciated and likely to spur me on to write even more of this series. So if you like this, please review. You would truly make a sad little graduate student's day here. ♥
Title: Lords and Ladies, Chapter 1
Fandom: Naruto
Series: Lords and Ladies
Characters/Pairings: Sasuke/Hinata/Gaara, Neji, Itachi, Naruto/Sakura, Ino, TBA
Rating: R
Summary: Lady Hinata had expected that her life would change after being married to Lord Sasuke in a sham marriage meant to throw off the chains of their respective families. But she had no idea that the greatest of worries was only now coming...
Note: This is a purely silly, frothy, fun modern-day AU that takes place with Konoha and Suna still intact but rearranged in strange ways.
***
Lying upon the enormous bed that she vaguely shared with her husband, Lady Hinata Hyuuga Uchiha-- the flower of the court of the modern-day Konoha empire and the highest placed noblewoman in the land only behind the Empress and the Crown Dowager-- found herself wiggling her toes in distress only because she could not quite wring her hands properly.
Not that her husband was any better off, of course. No, Lord Sasuke Uchiha-- the premiere blade among the royal bucks of the court, the second in line to the imperial throne and the shining future of their empire and people-- was huddled onto his side, groaning softly. From the noises he was making, he had either just finished with having the best sex of his life, or he had been beaten about the head with a sack of crazed weasels.
(Since Hinata was the closest thing to a sex partner about and she knew she hadn't just had sex with him-- previously or likely ever, not that she minded that in the least whatsoever-- the crazed weasel hypothesis seemed more likely.)
Gathering up her courage, Hinata vaguely ghosted a few fingers across her husband's back, making a motion that looked a bit like that of a concussed crab but that seemed passably soothing. And in return-- perhaps a sign that he might trust her a little at last, or that her peculiar form of stubbornness had finally worn him down-- he gave another crazed weasel groan and turned over to look at her more clearly.
It improved the view at least, Hinata noted, her breath catching momentarily. Whatever other adjectives people liked to hurl at Sasuke-- jerk, tightwad, asshole, bastard, someone-whose-sour-puss-might-actually-be-improved-by-being-chewed-on-by-crazed-weasels-- even the largest of his critics couldn't dispute that he was an extraordinarily good looking example of a human being. Of course, the more malicious of them would then go on to wonder what gender that human being was meant to be... but between the piercing dark eyes, the stunning fall of midnight-hued hair, the exquisitely drawn features, the cheekbones that could carve steel and the body that was built for all sorts of sin...
Hinata clutched the bedsheets beneath her, less with the dainty catch of well-bred aristocratic lady and more with the desperate heave of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
She wasn't about to head down that futile road, of course. And besides, they had far greater troubles to worry about here.
"A-are you sure?" she finally asked, almost physically feeling her stutter as it exited her mouth clumsily. Had all of those speech classes been for nothing? "M-maybe you heard them wrong? Maybe our clan elders weren't talk about us having... well, you know. Maybe they were, um, talking about us having rabies. You have to admit, between that nest of weasels you ran into the last week and the way you--"
She was about to say the way you usually act, but a look at the gathering storm clouds of Byronic brooding already gathering on Sasuke's brow made her kind heart divert her words easily.
"T-the way you've been a bit touchy as of late," Hinata said instead, more or less smoothly. "I mean, we've all been tense with the goings on in the palace and the arrival of Emperor Gaara--"
From the look of murderous rage that easily slid on Sasuke's face at that name, that wasn't really going to calm him down either. Hinata switched tracks again, trying to decide on a safer topic whilst timidly bringing her hand up to touch her nearly unreachable husband's shoulder, trying to soothe him again in some way...
...And feeling her own variously-described opaque eyes widen slightly, as Sasuke's body tensed like a taut bow-string at her touch, before relaxing effortlessly.
That was... was interesting. They'd been married for months and she hadn't ever realized she was capable of doing this for him.
Although interesting was all it was, of course. Dry. Academic. Distant. Nearly scientific. The sort of thing you could divide into a set of equation and teach to generations of bored graduate students over many, many years.
It was not something that should make the roof of her mouth go curiously dry. Not that her body would ever betray her in such a way.
With some difficulty, Hinata gathered herself up and locked eyes with her often distant husband, somehow feeling as though his strange eyes met her own with a visible fusion of their two beings.
Ridiculous, of course, but given what they were talking about... melding themselves together in one form or another was starting to seem increasingly less unlikely.
"They could just be grasping at the straws now," Hinata began slowly, even as her fingertips burned at their place on her husband's body. "There's been so many changes as of late-- Prince Gaara coming to the court and the Empire of Suna approaching us and all the things we're learning about in terms of even more dangerous outsiders as of late. There's so much-- so much instability around us now and I can understand if my father and your brother and our clans have that certain... points in our marriage need to be arranged for further dynastic ease. Not to mention the way it would cheer the public up as of late. But still, that doesn't mean they can decide..."
Sasuke interrupted her with a rare laugh that would have been rarer still if it had had the least trace of honest amusement within it. As it was, it was simply flat, cold and devastatingly dour, flecked with bits of bitterness and cold grace.
"This matter of our lives? Why not? After all, they've decided nearly everything up till this present day. They decided where we lived. They decided who we were. They decided what we learned. They decided what we were allowed to do. And they certainly decided who we married--"
She could feel the soft burn of a blush caress her face; nonetheless, she had to say something.
"They might have started it," she said softly, her eyes retreating from her husband's to lock upon her fumbling hands. "But we certainly had a say."
Somehow, this prompted another laugh from Sasuke-- an even rare one, this one softer and less marked by bitterness or barely suppressed rage. It wasn't a laugh he granted to everyone and Hinata felt a sudden impulse to bottle it up, keep it close to her, hold it to her and keep it safe.
With Sasuke, you never knew the next time you'd hear him the way she had just done today.
"Yes, I suppose we did, didn't we? More through your efforts than mine but still..."
She let another soft, warm laugh of her own slip past her full lips, this one coming to her easily. She may not have been a genius in the Hyuuga arts as her cousin Neji was... but she wasn't completely harmless, however adorable she might seem. She wouldn't have survived in her cut-throat clan for the last eighteen years if she was as demure and delicate as her sweet face and shy mannerisms made her out to be.
"Yes," she said, her eyes brightening as they met Sasuke's again, the flush on her face somehow not abating in the least. "Yes, we might have been caged birds before but we set ourselves free in this matter--"
"Only," he murmured, "to find ourself in another cage entirely."
Damn, she kept forgetting why she couldn't mix metaphors together in his company. He always had a way of twining about like a snake and biting their heads off dexterously.
...Though perhaps she shouldn't be criticizing. After all, her own metaphoric powers weren't the most pleasing either.
"Still," she persisted, rising a little from the bed and overlooking the effect that a heavy mass of... heaviness straining the front of her dress would have on Sasuke's suddenly less uniform complexion. "Still, we made our own choices here. At least... mostly. We-- we decided that we were going to get married ourselves--"
(Even if it was only to start their own household, free of the interference of others.)
"--and we decided that we would move in together--"
(Even if it was less because they loved each other and more because they were all right with living like glorified roommates.)
"--and we should decide what our-- our future should be!"
(Even if it meant defying the very people who had carved out their past previously.)
"I mean--" she finally stuttered, her eyes going wide and her sweet face nakedly pleading as she looked towards her husband, "--don't you think that should be the case, Sasuke? I don't know if I can do this alone but if the two of us were to-- if we both decided to put our heads together again-- if we really came up with something cunning--"
***
Looking back, Hinata would often wonder what it was that led them to the decision that they would make here.
Was it something genetic? Was there, perhaps, something bred in their blood and bones that drew the two of them together irresistibly? Was there something about their long ago ancestors, those ancestral lines that had diverged from one another, that made them trust each other explicitly? Was there something about their twinned strange eyes that made them see each other in a light no one else had managed to yet broach? Was there something even beyond simple convenience that had made their eyes meet once upon a time and decide, yes, this was it, this is the exact, precise person in my life that I need to pull off my plans eventually?
Was it destiny? Had there been something written in the stars that had foretold this day's comings? Long ago, had some scribe looked up at the night stars and decided that, yes, that constellation meant that the upcoming harvest would go well, and that constellation meant that children born in this month would fare poorly, and that constellation meant that a series of incredibly unlikely events would come about that would lead some poor shmuck of a princess to get a sham marriage to a prince she barely knew to escape her father's oppressive thumb, only to realize she was even more trapped than previously...?
Or was it simply chemistry? Was there something within the air they breathed and the food they ate that would have led them to this moment eventually? Was it something in the water and the blood within their bodies that had led them, heads proudly held up as they had subtly defied their fate, to allow their hands to meet? Was there something somehow electric about the soft, taut touches they exchanged, day after day, that made strange receptors within their bodies stand up and spring to attention... waiting for the moment they made the most complete of physical exchanges...?
Perhaps neither of them would never full know. But if there was one thing that Hinata realized even then, it was this.
Her life-- which was already a roller-coaster of poorly explained plot-twists-- was about to get even more massively complicated here.
***
"But what--" Sasuke interrupted, coming up himself and drawing in a quick breath through barely parted lips, his languorous dark eyes hooded as he took in the image of his wife reclining quickly. The flush on his face hadn't abated in the least, and now, with the little pants he was making as his excitement grew and the mussed sheets beneath his lightly clad body slid underneath him...
Crazed weasels, Hinata told herself, though it didn't sound believable even in her own skull. He looks far more like he's been attacked by crazed weasels than-- than--than tossed about in a bed with his head thrown back in ecstasy and some lucky, lucky, lucky girl about to rip his underwear off with nothing more than her teeth--
(Some distant part of her told her that reading all of those romance novels that Lady Ino had given to her after the wedding had been, not to put too fine a point on it, influential recently.)
"--But what--" Sasuke plowed on, though sadly not into anyone in particular, "--are we going to do to put off our elders with their browing demands for children between us? What can we do, truly? I thought we were doing a decent job in making everyone around us believe we could at least respectably be married to each other, but our respective clans both seem desperate to see us have-- have--"
Hinata's face went from rose red to salmon white in a record amount of time. Eventually, Sasuke spit the word out contemptuously, as though he were speaking the unspeakable in polite company.
"Progeny."
There it was. There it lay-- the word of doom presently. Faux-husband and faux-wife exchanged desperate looks at each other, as they felt their respective scrotum and uterus recoil instinctively.
Though Hinata loved the thought of having children someday, hopefully with someone she loved and with someone who could care for her somewhat as well-- frankly speaking, the thought of having children with a husband who seemed to only grudgingly tolerate her and who she was in a sham marriage with was... Terrifying. Horrifying. Frightening. Disturbing.
Possibly they needed to make a new word for how she felt right now. Terihorifrigdisturying. Something of that sort might have been enough to convey the dismay on both of their faces presently.
(If she was being truly honest with herself, Hinata might have admitted that her present terihorifriditurying was a bit overplayed. But psychological mechanisms being what they were, her conscious mind refused to let her unconscious even display the least bit of that here.)
"W-well," she began desperately, her stutter rapidly increasing as her stress levels shot up through the roof, "I g-guess we just need to st-start making ourselves seem like we-we're even more in love. We've p-probably been too m-mellow in the future bef-before. So w-we need to st-start being more con-convin-convinc--"
Sasuke's finely shaped eyelid-- he was the sort of person on whom even eye-lids had sex appeal-- twitched slightly. "Are you saying that we need to be even more convincing about being madly in love? Begin speaking to the press so that our love story becomes even more celebrated? Dangle the promise of even more intimacy in front of the public so that our elders back off in fear of looking heavy-handed in front of our adoring audience? Perhaps even include a third wheel into the relationship so that people are so riveted by the thought of our parting forever to wonder why we haven't conceived a child yet? Perhaps even that oh-so-dashing Gaara of Suna?"
Hinata could see the diabolical brilliance of all those plans as easily as she could see the way Sasuke's jaw clenched at the mention of a third party. Which made sense, she decided. After all, even at the best of times, Sasuke was a misanthrope. He didn't want to put up with any more human contact than he absolutely had to, which was likely why he had married a girl who hardly ever spoke in the first place. The thought of another party involved in their marriage-- male or female-- might actually force him to engage in even more human contact, which was enough to put him in a mood for weeks.
It wasn't out of jealousy, naturally. Hinata squashed that thought as though it were a bug and she was wielding a boot of reason swiftly.
"T-that makes sense," Hinata began cautiously. In this modern age, royal families in Konoha-- though they still had considerable power and clout in lawmaking-- depended greatly on public perception to keep their peace with more democratic ruling parties, which were even now lead by 'Princess' Tsunade. The Uchiha and the Hyuuga might be the two most powerful and royal clans in Konoha but they would have to be fools to make themselves vulnerable to each other-- and lesser clans-- by appearing heavy-handed enough to demand descendants from what the press and public was largely convinced was an adorable young couple that was still flowering towards love on a public stage.
"It would," Sasuke replied sardonically, "though there would be some trouble in manipulating the press and our family and even more in manipulating Gaara, should we follow that lead. The press and the clans, if they found out, could eviscerate us verbally and financially. Gaara on the other hand..."
Hinata blanched. She was well aware that Gaara of Suna-- if truly pressed-- could possibly eviscerate them quite non-metaphorically. And he'd likely get away with it too, if he did it in his home territory.
(Suna, to put it lightly, put somewhat less of an burden on its press corps to judge the actions of royalty. In Konoha, the royal clans consulted withextremely well paid press secretaries before choosing what to wear, what political parties to endorse, what charities to get involved with, and what marriages to put together. In Suna, the royal clan-- singular-- might well execute anyone who had the nerve to report on any of those things. Therefore, most intelligent reporters in Suna had an inclination towards writing about riveting news stories about kittens on parades.)
"Then," Hinata began slowly, "m-maybe it would be best to leave the love triangle angle alone-- at least where Gaara is concerned. After all... there are other suitable candidates for that if we really need to divert attention from the-- the reproduction issue. Like... like Lady Ino. Or Lord Shino. Or even..."
Sasuke's slightly sardonic smile tightened into a rictus on his face. "Even your 'brother' Neji?"
A flock of flamingos could have gotten lost on the blush coloring her cheeks. "He... he's always had a soft spot for me..."
"More like a hard spot," Sasuke muttered ungraciously, but then sighed and tilted his chin to get her to go on, a signal she took gratefully.
"H-hard or soft," Hinata mumbled, "he does still care for me. And if we needed his help... if I told him that I would be carrying your child if all went ill..."
"And," Sasuke pointed out, "if the general public doesn't find the thought of you potentially mating with a man you publicly called brother a few years back disturbing."
There was, Hinata had to admit, that problem.
Still, she persevered onwards with their plans for misdirection. "St-still, there are so many ways we could g-go about this without dragging some poor third party in to the mix. We could have a friend like Kiba involved. He wouldn't truly be interested in me... though I suppose that if you intrigue him enough, we could have a real love traingle-- or at least, linear line-- on our h-hands here..."
Without twitching a single muscle, her husband somehow managed to convey just how distressing such an outcome would be. But then, he had never been very fond of human beings or animals, let alone someone who had managed to combine the most exuberant traits of both species efficiently.
"Or," he said testily, after the moment of canine-inspired horror had passed, "we could do something far more effective altogether. We could go beyond these silly hodge-podge plans for a fake love triangle for a fake marriage and move onto a fake plan of pregnancy."
Some finally honed sense of danger in Hinata's mind-- some terribly well calibrated sense that had come about from years and years of living in a dangerous political clan when there had been all too many people interested in seeing her 'disposed of' permanently in order to install her younger sister as the true heir of the throne-- began to scream instantly.
Don't ask! it warned. Don't even think about it! Change the subject! Do a little strip-tease! Use your womanly charms to divert him completely!
Distressed that her conscious mind had not done a good enough job suppressing all the thoughts that the bed and her husband's relative lack of clothes conjured up, Hinata plowed on desperately.
"What do you mean?" she asked in all innocence, as her Hyuuga sense began to ring the bells of doom ominously.
"I mean," Sasuke said-- and suddenly he was doing all sorts of interesting things with the dark fall of hair across his exquisitely featured face and even his eye-lids were suddenly quirking into strangely sexual configurations and she shouldn't have asked why did she ask was she a crazy woman had marriage driven her crazy?!-- "that perhaps we should go about this whole pregnancy business as we did this whole marriage business. We pretended to be in love or whatever passes for love nowadays quite well, didn't we? And if we pretended to earnestly do what people who are in love do-- and begin to act as though we truly do little else when there is merely the two of us within a room--"
Hinata clutched the sheets before her as though they were her maiden virtue. Given how quickly they were slipping out of her hands, they might as well have been.
"I expect," Sasuke said slowly, "that we ought to try stimulating-- or even having-- sex sometime within the next few weeks."
Hinata simply looked at him, so startled that her face had been blanked of any human activity.
And the roller-coaster of poorly explained plot-twists that was her life began to slowly creak into activity.
***
Author's Note: Heh, well, that was a hell of a lot of fun to write. And with luck, there will be more to come! I can't wait until Gaara and Itachi enter the scene... they'll both have some very interesting agendas to pursue with both Sasuke and Hinata... much to their dismay, most likely.
And as always, I would be very, very grateful for any reviews. Even if you've got little to say or think that my writing is awful, I'd still love to hear from you. I always like to know there's an audience out there for my strange little scribbles, no matter how demented the writing may be. ;)