Date
Naruto (c) Masashi Kishimoto
Date © fhclause
He wanted to kill someone. Particularly his brother. If his brother didn't open that big mouth of his, his mother probably wouldn't even dare to dance around the idea of him being set up for a date.
Huh. If Itachi thought he would get away just because he was recently married to that crazy, sadistic, tsundere wife of his, he should think again.
Besides, Sasuke thought with a smirk, Anko probably enjoy it more than I do.
Sasuke glanced at his watch and sighed. He was surprised that the meeting was adjourned earlier than he expected because he swore when he entered the board room, the air was crackling with tension. He expected more protests and complaints from his rival company, but all he got was easy nods and approvals. The meeting nevertheless soured his mood. It had gone smoothly, but in the middle of the meeting, his voice had turned hoarse and he stumbled a few words. It was quite embarrassing.
Sasuke pulled loose the tie around his neck—the tie his mother took half an hour to do, undo and redo to perfection—and took a sip from the glass in front of him. The tie was clutching him quite snugly during the meeting and while the Hyuuga's eyes are not as intimidating as the Uchiha's, there was a difference between keeping an eye contact while talking and to hold the glare of a pair of creepy, white eyes for two hours. He hated backing down from a challenge, so he glared back. But the tightness around his neck made him uncomfortable which lead to his stammering. He knew he shouldn't have indulged his mother, but when she shot him that look, Sasuke suddenly felt it was wise to stand still while she was fussing which tie he should wear lest she decide to hit his backside for stealing the cookies when he was five years old. During that occasion, he heard Itachi chuckling behind the door.
Maybe he'd show some pictures of Itachi—very embarrassing ones—to Anko before he killed him. The one with the rabbit tooth? The one where he was wearing his diapers? Or the one where he was running around while he was pis—
"Uchiha-san?"
Sasuke jumped and knocked his knee under the table. He crouched and groaned in pain.
"Oh! Are you alright?"
Sasuke was about to snap at the real cause of his pain when his glare suddenly met with a pair of soft lavender eyes. He blinked.
The other pair of eyes blinked too. "Uchiha-san?"
Sasuke quickly straightened, ignoring his throbbing knee. "Hyuuga. You're here."
Smooth, Uchiha. Smooth. Why don't you ask her how the weather is next?
The woman in front of him nodded, unaware of his thoughts. "Yes, I am. Um…sorry about your knee…"
"It's fine." He cleared his throat and pulled the chair for her. When he started to sit down, he realized the state of his undone tie and quickly tightened it. He looked up at the woman in front of him.
Hyuuga Hinata. The heir of Hyuuga Limited. The daughter of his father's frenemies. The cousin of his rival/bicker buddy. His neighbour. His childhood friend.
His crush.
That was the only reason why he accepted the date in the first place. Because he had a crush on Hyuuga Hinata and because he had never had the chance to ask her out before. Because he was too afraid to ask.
And Itachi knew this.
As irritated as he was when he first heard about this setup, Sasuke was secretly pleased. His brother might have played dirty, but it was a necessary push from him. If Itachi didn't do or say anything to initiate the idea in their mother's head, Sasuke might not even consider asking the Hyuuga on a date. Well, he actually considered it a lot of times but he never acted on it. He and his brother were bad on this kind of thing. "Matters of the heart," his mother said and sometimes Anko too when she was teasing. Both of the Uchiha brothers were very charming and women always flock around them. But when it came to the 'matters of the heart', they avoided it like the plague. Sasuke still remembered how Itachi had avoided his 'matters of the heart' by practically making himself a hermit and working to the point of exhaustion. He was worried, their mother was worried but when their father was worried, Sasuke was forced to force his brother to face his 'matters of the heart' problem.
After two months and a half, he was married. To Anko no less.
This setup was actually a quite nice repay from his brother. Except it was done behind my back, Sasuke thought, gazing at the soft pearly eyes of the girl in front of him. Maybe he would not kill his brother after all. He was just going to show some embarrassing pictures of his brother to Anko.
"Have you waited long? I'm sorry I'm late," Hinata said.
He signalled to the waitress and they made their order. "No, not at all. Just finished my meeting early and thought it's better to come here since I don't really have anything else important to do. How are you?"
"I'm good." Then she grinned as if they were sharing some sort of secret. "I hope Neji-nii-san didn't give you too much trouble."
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "That guy seriously needs a girlfriend. Even his fans in Uchiha Corp started to run away just because he has a worse PMS case than me."
Hinata giggled. "Actually, he's like that lately because Father is pushing him to marry soon. He wants nii-san to settle down before he can give him full authority to Byakugan."
Sasuke grunted. No wonder Neji was in bad mood this afternoon. Byakugan was one of the Hyuuga Limited's subsidiary company and he knew that Neji shed tears and blood to prove that he can make Byakugan stand on its own. That particular request from the old man must have grated on his nerve because—well, it's a dirty play. "Let me guess. A married man is more level headed than one that isn't?"
Hinata shrugged. "What about your brother?"
To be honest, Sasuke didn't see any difference in his brother before and after he married. He might have that content aura—a cool wind rather than calm before storm kind of aura around him—but other than that, he didn't see any difference on how his brother operated the company.
Their orders arrived and Sasuke studied her face when she took a sip of her drink. Could it be... "I'm surprised Hiashi didn't use that one on you."
He smirked internally when his crush blushed prettily and avoided his gaze. "H-He did, actually..."
"Oh?"
"Un. I-I told him I have someone in mind, though."
Wait. What?
"Do you?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
Okay, that didn't go as planned. He had this protocol he made in his head: If Hiashi pulled that trick on Neji then he must have pulled the same one on Hinata. And he hoped for that, for Hinata to be trapped in a choice he knew she couldn't make. Yes, that made him sound like an ass, but honestly, he had no doubt that Hinata was an independent and an intelligent woman. Hell, she even owned an art gallery and was doing well for herself. However, one thing he knew very well about her was that both of them were afraid of commitment. While he never stayed in a relationship for more than a month, Hinata avoided of having any kind of serious relationship with any men like a plague.
So if the above happened, the worst the old man could do was to set her up in an arranged marriage with someone she barely knew. If that was the case, then all he needed to do was to interfere, lay out his cards, show the old man that he was better than the man Hinata would marry and save the damsel in distress from her possible tyrant of a husband. That was the protocol he had in mind.
But when? When did Hinata gained that courage and find someone? More importantly, who was this guy that can make Hinata who never had a boyfriend in her life—yes, he was a creep who had someone investigate this girl's life constantly and apparently he was outdated—break that ice in her? Who? Who? Who!?
He ignored the queasy feeling in his stomach.
The reason why he never asked her out was because he knew, just knew that if he did, he would screw things up. There was some kind of a curse running through the Uchicha's blood. Of course, the proud Uchihas themselves never see it as a curse; just some kind of ill-fated events being caught at a bad time under some kind of abnormal circumstances. But after that night when her mother tucked him and his brother to bed and told them how their grandparents met as their bed story, Sasuke couldn't help but to believe that the Uchiha had been cursed. After his father was conceived, a family conflict separated his grandparents and they didn't meet until thirty years later. When he asked his father about it, Fugaku mentioned that his great grandparents got killed after a year they got married. Fugaku and Mikoto themselves had a rocky relationship and they lived separately from each other. And although Itachi seemed to be happy in his married state, he married Anko. That itself should explain everything.
So Sasuke thought, if he didn't look out for trouble—didn't ask her out and acted like an ass when she was around—and instead let the 'trouble' come to him, the curse should subside, right?
Wrong. It seemed the curse befell on him even before he could start anything with Hyuuga Hinata. He cleared his throat. The tie around his neck was strangling him again. "Who is he?"
The shy face she was showing him chilled his spine. "Um...well, I've known him quite a while. A long while, actually."
Who was it? It couldn't be Naruto. Hinata had a crush on him during their high school year, but after a lot of stammering and blushing around, she gave up before their graduation. Besides, he was engaged to Sakura.
"He can be really rude sometimes and that makes me angry a lot of times, but I like arguing with him. It's...very fun."
Wait. Kiba? No, that can't be. He remembered the day Hinata came knocking his door, crying and mumbling something he couldn't understand. When she was calm enough, she told him that the mutt confessed to her and she had to reject him because she only saw him as a friend. She was terribly worried she had butchered their friendship (which they hadn't), so there was no way she would take that risk of falling for him.
"A lot of people told me we were too different to even have a decent conversation, let alone becoming friends, but I think we're otherwise. We both like silence and... umm, as weird as this going to sound, I actually think it's kind of...intimate."
Shino? The bug-lover? That's...a probability. Sasuke prided himself as a very intimidating guy and not a lot of people can intimidate him in return. Except his father and Itachi. Shino... Sasuke respected him. He might not know Shino as well as Hinata did and he was a very hard person to read, but there was something in him that Sasuke couldn't help but to admire. Even though he was creepy in some ways. And he did share some common interest with Hinata...like plants, butterflies, flowers, silence...
"And I think only he can bravely face Father." Hinata smiled. "Remember that auction party last month? There was an Ikebana classic vase in the auction that Father was hoping to get."
That party. Of course he remembered. He almost got his ear twisted off by his father when he knew about how much his son spent for one mere, very breakable item.
Just for something that Hinata liked.
"Everyone bet on who would win the auction when the bid gets higher every time."
Before that, he almost got burned by the intensity of Hiashi's glare when he won that item.
"Father lost though, because—" Hinata giggled again. "When he came home, he told me that as much as he wanted to buy that vase for me, there was this stubborn duck-head person keep on raising the bid that the price went off too much. Although he did tell me that I would get the vase anyway. Then he was muttering something."
The next morning, he wrapped the item very carefully in a shiny wrapper and went to the Hyuuga's. Hiashi was the first one to greet him. Cold tea was served to him and after a very tense and long silence, the old man opened his mouth and said—
"—next time, I'll win."
Huh?
"What?"
Hinata grinned. "Father still holds a grudge against you, Uchiha-san, even when I did get the vase he wanted to give me."
"Hyuug—Hina—Hyuuga." Sasuke cleared his throat. "Are you implying what I think you're implying?"
"Yes. I hope you don't mind when I told Father that I had someone in mind." Hinata poked her fingers and looked at him through her eyelashes. "Should I ask your permission first?"
"No!" Sasuke suddenly stood up but quickly doubled over when he knocked his knee—again. Hinata quickly went over to him and asked if he was alright. He brushed off her concern and frowned at her instead. "You... why didn't you just tell me at the very beginning? Why do you have tell me as if it was someone...someone I don't even know...?"
"I thought it was fun. You should have seen your face, Uchiha-san."
"...Since when you're this mean?"
"Since I met you."
"Hmph."
Sasuke stood up and brought her chair next to his. It was unconventional, but he need to tell her something and he need her closer. He gestured for her to sit down. "Hyuuga, this date... I don't usually go and ask anyone out on a date, but would you like to have a second one?"
"Yes."
"Good."
The he cupped her face and brushed his lips on hers.
Itachi pried his eyes open when his hand grazed over an empty, cold sheet at the other side of the bed. He sighed. He was a very light sleeper. Even a mere creak of the door could wake him up. But he wondered if his wife was secretly a ninja; he could never tell when Anko slipped away from his arms.
He padded down to the kitchen and the strong smell of coffee invaded his senses. His eyes widened and he rushed deeper to the kitchen when he saw his wife was crouching against the counter.
"Anko! What happened!? Are you sick?"
Anko shook her head and only pointed shakily at the dining table. There was an opened envelope that seemed to have a bunch photos in it. He walked towards it.
"What the fu—"
Anko roared with laughter for his rare usage of profanity. She slapped his back. "Looks like your foolish, little brother got a number on you."
Itachi was going to kill his brother.
Done for SasuxHina fanclub's SasuHina month over in dA. Not exactly my best piece, and Sasuke seemed to be OOC in certain part, but I convince myself that when you're in front of someone you really like but not wanting this person to know, you'll act like that. Sorry for any grammar and spelling mistake. I'l proofread later. In fact, I'll gladly receive any correction from you. Happy reading and kindly review. ^v^