Chapter Text
You thought I would start off this next chapter discussing the morning after. Didn’t you? You were biting at the bit, waiting for me to describe my glorious woman. How the silk sheets clung to her luscious curves. How her head laid softly upon my chest, hair mussed to perfection. Perhaps how she might have moaned upon waking.
Perverts.
I am a man of honor. Of dignity. Of chivalry. And… I also woke up to her kicking me in the face. I literally did not even get to see her sleeping.
Now, it wasn’t a hard kick. More like… more like how you’d kick off a stray cat attempting to hump your leg. There was no chakra in it. A pity kick. A sympathy kick. More of a flick.
She even healed me after becoming aware of her surroundings and remembering the delights of the night before, all while muttering under her breath, “You’ve gone and f*cked up big this time, Sakura.”
To which I smiled sweetly, pressing a kiss to her glowing hand’s knuckles. “Good as new, my sweet and glorious empress. No need for such crude language or cruelty towards your person. To have even felt your toes upon my cheek prior to even dawn breaking is but a pure delight upon my flesh.” I kissed the back of her knuckles again. “To have married a woman as strong and capable as you, I would have felt something remiss had you not awoken and attempted to thwart an enemy shinobi-”
As the color drained from her face, I quickly backtracked. “Well, not that I expected you to kick me. I’m not quite into that. But we can talk about it. Love is a compromise, after all.” Although I sincerely and secretly hoped that I wouldn’t wake every morning being flung about. If I hadn’t activated my Sharingan, noted her ferocious and gorgeous bare naked fury, and also remembered the night before, I likely would have fought back. Both of us would have walked away. But the apartment might have crumbled beneath us.
“Right.” She gave a jerky nod. “Talk about it.” Her gaze dropped then, in thought, until she blinked, and her face went from pale to bright pink.
“You’re… You’re naked!” She accused, using her chakra to toss a pillow at my nether regions.
I caught it with ease but also confusion before it could make contact. “Yes… As are you?”
At once, Sakura went from pink to red. She flew a hand across her chest.
“I think… I think it is normal for married couples to see each other naked. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of - to the contrary, I find your lady bits lovely.”
Her mouth opened and closed multiple times before her cheeks once again paled to their original color - perhaps just a tad lighter, whiter, like all blood had drained from her face. “Marriage, right.”
“Right.” I agreed, letting the pillow drop upon the wooden floor. “And the root of all healthy marriages, all relationships really, is just one thing.” I motioned and pointed to the ceiling at my great proclamation.
“One thing?” she asked, voice muted, likely from the morning ‘kia!’ she’d made at kicking me off.
“Communication.” I made my way around her and to the bathroom. I most definitely had to pee. Really surprised I made it as long as I did. “As long as we communicate - we’ll be just fine.”
“Okay, yeah, yeah - we just need to communicate,” she said, following me into the restroom. “I need to communicate. You see, Shisui, I-”
“Woah there, darling. Not even the great Uchiha founder allowed someone to watch him piss.”
“You need time off, Shisui?” Itachi asked, parroting my demand but not really looking at me. He stared instead at the paperwork in his hands. Budget proposal. A pen was in his mouth as he spoke, teeth leaving an imprint. Nasty habit. Now that I thought about it, his teeth probably left prints on many things. How many of the bite marks in ANBU had been left by him? Here, I thought self-mutilation was just a new trend and to show how flexible one was. I should have known about another person’s involvement with the mark on Anko’s lower back, that it hadn’t been an Orochimaru parlor trick she’d picked up.
“Yes, I just got married and all. I want some time with the wifey. She wants to talk some things through, and a honeymoon at a hotsprings seems like the perfect place.”
“Hn,” Itachi said, removing the pen from his mouth and marking the paper as swiftly as if performing a jutsu. “I see-” His voice trickled off in the way that he wasn’t actually seeing anything except what new building or equipment was needed.
I sprawled upon his desk, looking at the backside of the paper where still more budget numbers and columns ran along the underside. His thin, waspy script had torn this thing to pieces. “Also,” I said, “no more sexy ANBU cases for me. Not sure I could allure another. My heart belongs only to my mistress.”
“Sexy ANBU cases,” Itachi repeated. He marked another line off, sighed, and began scribbling notes in the margins, pressing the paper against my forehead.
Honestly, those are the things I could probably get him to say right now. But alas - I suspected in the bedroom, he’d likely said far worse things than even my sweet, innocent mind could have thought up. I could still barely comprehend the true dark sheep of the Uchiha branch was the Hokage before me.
“Yes,” I repeated. “Get me off the roster for seduction missions.”
Itachi finally stopped writing on my head and set aside the page. He gave one slow blink. Finally, looking at me for the first time all day - I’d been in here since morning. After having breakfast with Sakura, having discussed that an immediate marriage had probably not been the greatest of ideas - which I kindly reminded her was exactly what I tried to suggest last night - of which she then got mad and demanded a honeymoon - I’d then come straight to the tower to request time off. It was almost lunchtime now. I should be insulted to be treated so. First, he stops drinking with me. Now, he ignores my entire existence until it pleases him.
“You are not on the roster for seduction missions. Haven’t been in twelve years. I’m not sure why you think you are still on it.” He scrunched his nose as if I smelled.
“What?!” I jolted upright, sending several scrolls toppling from their perch.
Itachi’s eyes narrowed at the mess. He got up from his chair and began to pick up the scrolls. “That mission in Suna, you got scratched after that.”
“I got the intel!” And I had.
“Not via seduction. According to your handler, you didn’t even kiss the client. You didn’t even touch them.”
“There is so much more to seduction than physical contact, my dear, precious baby cousin.” Perhaps that is why Itachi tied up his lovers with a rope; the poor thing was confused. “At the heart of intimacy is conversation.” I sat up and laid a hand on Itachi’s shoulder right before he straightened up so I could look down and into his eyes. “To truly know someone, you must know their mind. All humans desire this connection.”
Itachi’s eyes flicked to the hand on his shoulder and then back to my face. “I’m not sure you know what seduction actually is, and that is precisely why the handler decided to remove you.”
My handler… Wait a moment. “You were my handler in Suna.”
“Yes, I was.” He smacked the top of my head lightly with the scroll in his hand.
“Why did you take me off?”
He straightened up and rolled his shoulders. “Because you sucked at it.”
Really? “All you know about seduction is knot tying, and that is -”
He was in my space in an instant, his red eyes swirling slowly - mesmerizing like a flame to a moth. “I know a lot more about it than you,” his voice pitched strangely low like he’d just woken up. A little gaspy, too. Sore throat? Why the hell was he breathing on me then! Super spreader, getting so close I could feel warm moisture on my neck. The sicko.
But alas, in my kindness, I wiped his nose like a baby, and then I raised my hand further and rested it on his head to check his temp. “You don’t feel warm. Just a throat tickle, then?”
He laughed, his head tilted back, and his shoulders shook. He patted my cheek like I was one of Hana’s dogs. “Adorable.” Just adding insult to injury. “So weirdly, stupidly adorable.”
Only the Hokage could get away with it. Only he. I rolled off his desk and away from his hand. “I still need that time off.”
“Yes, yes. Done.” Itachi said, setting back up his tower of scrolls. “What was it for again?” Itachi asked.
I threw a wave over my shoulder and took to the roofs. “With the wife.”
“Wife?!”
A genin squad lead burst through the window. “Sir, there’s been an issue reported from the Ambassador from Sound.”
No longer my problem. I popped away. It was time to take my wife on the most incredible honeymoon in the world.
