This idea was procured late at night while I was staring at a rock and thinking about my parents.
Disclaimer: Again. Not mine.
Mixed Up
By Nanikato
12/5/07
Something was definitely wrong with this picture.
"Stop tracking dirt on the carpet. I just cleaned it." Neji growled at his son. Little Hizashi, named after his paternal grandfather, tilted his head cutely before giggling. He made a big show of beginning to remove his dirty shoes as his father watched impatiently. Tenten swept by, just as Hizashi had been about to actually pull the shoe off, and sent the little boy running away laughing as she tried to tickle him. The previously clean carpet was quickly covered in dirt again. Neji, to his credit, didn't do anything more than say, "Anata, could you please stop encouraging the mess?"
"Are you the wife or the husband?" Naruto asked bluntly as he watched Neji do housework while Tenten rough housed with their 3 year old son. Neji had invited Hinata over for dinner, and as a sign of courtesy, extended the invitation to her husband too.
"Naruto-kun, be nice!" Hinata scolded. She had become a little more outspoken over the years, but it was only to be expected, having married the loudest ninja in Konoha.
Neji didn't even say anything, his attention only partially on his guests as he began to chop vegetables. "Anata, do you know where my coat is?" Wordlessly, Neji held a coat out—where did that come from? Naruto wondered—and Tenten snatched it up. "Thanks. I'm taking Hizashi out for a walk, but don't worry, we'll be back before dinner. Promise. Bye!"
"Our son is not a dog, Tenten." Neji called back calmly.
"Dude, you are whipped." Naruto tried to poke fun at his cousin-in-law.
"Mmhmm…" Neji hummed, distracted.
Naruto pouted. "Hina-chan, your cousin's no fun at all."
His only reply was silence, and they sat there and watched Neji move about the kitchen with ease, everyone content in what they were doing. "Tou-san, Tou-san," Hizashi toddled into the kitchen with an excited look on his face. "Look at what I found!" He proudly held up a frog.
Neji took one look at it before telling him to put it in the pond out back. When Tenten stepped into the kitchen, Neji whirled around to face her, hands on hips as he began a lecture he felt he had repeated several times. "Tenten, how many times must I tell you not to let him bring anything dirty, slimy, or gross home?.!"
His wife turned a shade of pink. "Um…"
"If this keeps up, I'm going to confiscate your collection of weapons!"
"What?.! You can't do that!" Tenten replied, her embarrassment giving way to anger.
"And you can sleep on the couch for a week too!" Neji added, tossing more vegetables into the cooking pot without turning to look.
Naruto and Hinata looked on in silence, taking in the sight of the couple arguing. "Tou-san and Kaa-san are fighting again," both young adults twitched in surprise and looked down to find Hizashi standing by their chairs. "They fight a lot."
"I'm sure that they don't mean to fight so much." Hinata said, reaching down to scoop the intelligent child into her lap. "Haven't you ever had a fight with a friend?" She waited for the toddler to nod, and when he did, she added, "Well, that's what your tou-san and kaa-san are doing. They'll work it out eventually."
Naruto had tuned Hinata and Hizashi out, focusing on the argument Neji and Tenten were having.
"I do all the work around here! Why don't you do something other than encourage our son to be messy?.!"
"I do not encourage him to be messy! I'm honing his skills so that when he goes to the academy, he'll be ahead of his classmates!"
Naruto tilted his head as he thought about how this would look to anyone else. Neji, with his long hair and pink apron (pink apron? What the hell?), looked every bit the vindictive housewife who did all the work, while Tenten, who had cropped her hair short and was covered dirt, looked every bit the husband who thought they were doing everything right.
Without meaning to, he interrupted their argument, the words escaping before they could register. "Really, who's the mother and who's the father?" he blurted out.
For a moment, everything was silent as everyone turned to look at him with blank stares. It was broken when Hizashi started giggling, and Neji hurried to serve dinner.
Later, when Hizashi insisted on calling Neji 'kaa-san' and Tenten 'tou-san', both parents knew exactly who was to blame.