Title: Exchanges
Characters: Fugaku Uchiha, Mikoto Uchiha, Sakura Haruno, Sasuke Uchiha
Summary: Mikoto always wanted a daughter. Sasuke had never expected to try to go about getting one this way.
Notes: Lesbehonest and admit that it's a lot of fun, having Mikoto at every corner to go, "Sasuke-chan!" as if she cannot believe it's not butter.
"Sasuke-chan, what are you doing?"
Sasuke shut the tape measure. Twenty feet, he reminds himself. "Deciding what I'm going to do with the left wall, now that it's free of that hideous piece of sh…"
He sees Mikoto's facial expression and quickly changes his tone. "I need to make this wall even more… aesthetically pleasing than Itachi did."
Honestly, though, it had been an insult to anyone with eyes, in Sasuke's highly cultured opinion.
His mother doesn't look fooled, but she doesn't press. "Why are you doing that, though?"
Sasuke shrugs. "Well, since he's moved out, this room is free and it's bigger than mine."
Back in his room, he has grid paper at the ready. A video game station, mini-fridge, maybe even a small space to do his katas. Once he's done talking with his mother, he would get down to the details. Naruto thought his room was the shit?
Well.
But Mikoto Uchiha is biting her lip and scratching behind her ear. Something's not right. She says, "Sasuke-chan…"
"Kaa-chan, you're not using this room, right?"
"No, but - "
"And Otou-san recently made the add-on his office, right?"
"Yes, but - "
"And we should make use of this large space without waste, right?"
"Sasuke-chan, we aren't wasting this room."
"Damn straight."
"Sasuke-chan," she says, prodding him in the forehead, "I'm sorry, but we already have a use for this room."
He frowns. "What?"
"You'll see at breakfast tomorrow morning," she promises.
Sasuke returns to his room grumbling. He balls up each sheet of grid paper and makes baskets until his trash can is overflowing and all that is left is the cardboard backing. There are no good reasons that I can't have the room, he thinks sulkily. None.
He tosses and turns during the night. Some noise - wheels, murmurs, grunts - comes from Itachi's old room, so he pulls his pillow over his head. Nothing good can possibly come from this, he concludes.
In the morning, he walks into the kitchen, scratching his side. He ignores everything, even his mother's cheerful, "Good morning, Sasuke-chan!" and goes for the chocolate milk.
Drinking straight from the carton, he sits down in his usual chair.
"Manners, Sasuke-chan!" his mother reproves.
He deigns to give her a reproachful glare and spares a second to say, "Why?"
She sighs. "Sasuke-chan, this is Sakura-chan."
He chokes and looks at the person sitting in Itachi's old chair. Pink hair, green eyes, pale complexion, fine features, friendly smile.
Fugaku lowers his newspaper just enough to raise an eyebrow at his youngest son, but Mikoto continues as if nothing happened. "She's an exchange student and will be spending the school year with our family."
"She's a girl," Sasuke says blankly.
"Yes, she is," Fugaku mutters. He shakes his newspaper again before disappearing behind it.
"We've never lived with a girl before."
"Believe it or not, Sasuke, but your mother is a girl."
"Yeah, but she's my mother."
Mikoto sticks a sausage in his mouth and he chokes again. "Sakura-chan, I apologize for his manners. I don't know where we went wrong. Sasuke-chan, can't you just welcome her to the family?"
"Ohaiyo," Sasuke spits around the sausage as he tries to avoid dying.
"Ohaiyo," she echoes, a strong American accent coloring her word.
She looks at him expectantly and Sasuke struggles a little before saying, "You're not gonna post shitty pictures of philosophers on the wall, aren't you?"
"Sasuke-chan!" His mother is, in a word, scandalized.
But he doesn't really pay attention because there's a giggle and then a delicate nudge against his ankle. "Only good pictures of NMR spectroscopy results," she says with a wink
And then, when his mother turns her back, Sakura grabs the chocolate milk from his lax grip and drinks from it, not letting their eye contact drop.
He swallows and regrets it, mouth dry and salty - but mostly dry.
She licks her lips slowly and Sasuke's hormones quickly conclude Sakura is something good. She looks amused as if she knows, so Sasuke raises an eyebrow. She will be trouble.
He likes trouble.