A/N: My forays into something new-ish. (First Naruto fic, first above K rating fic)
Warnings: Fluff and suggestions of kinky things. Not explicit.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Naruto universe
Walking In
Thunk-a. Thunk-a. The stance and she were one.
Thunk-thu-thunka. She focused on pulling up more power as she drew to the finish of her attack.
A final Thunk! and Hanabi finished off her volley of hits to the training dummy, glancing over to her father for his appraisal.
"Excellent form, but brush up on speed and precision. That will be all for today," supplied the Hyuuga head, succinct as always. Bowing courteously, Hiashi's youngest daughter turned to the exit compound courtyard. She paused only briefly as she left to nod at Hinata as the older sibling came in to take her place with their father for their daily predawn training.
Outside waiting for her was a shock of dark, blue-black hair framing an angular face. Had they not been currently at odds, Hanabi would have been elated to see her boyfriend of ten months, albeit not showing it on her plain, pointed face. As it was, her mouth tilted down at the corners in a slight frown, her patented Hyuuga version of a grimace—a facial feat rivaled in under-expressiveness only by the patented Uchiha scowl Sasuke was currently bearing. When she came to a standstill beside him, they watched each other heatedly for a moment, as if trying to get the other to back down, before both seemed to reach a consensus that they might as well get it over with and simultaneously started down the path.
The walk to the marketplace was peaceful and pleasantly pretty as Konoha mornings are wont to be. It was spring, and spring is best in the Land of Fire, shocks of desert wildflowers brushing up underfoot, sprinkled throughout with various species of lily. Chirps and uguisu warbles accented the early quiet even as skylarks and sparrows could be seen darting to and fro amongst the jacaranda and sakura trees that lined the way. In the distance rose the great forests of the Leaf framing the famous Hokage Mountain.
Inspired towards conciliation by the surroundings, Hanabi glanced over at Sasuke and stated a blunt, "You're taking me out to eat dango after this." Sasuke merely inclined his head in acquiescence.
When they arrived, they found market bustling already. Mothers strolled along towards trusted stands for the articles they needed, early rising to avoid the heat promised for the afternoon. Laughing shouts heralded laughing children as they chased each other down the lanes, narrowly missing precariously piled wares with the ease granted by much practice and memories of one too many ear-boxings for the last time they miscalculated their swerves. Here and there, shinobi loitered, breaking from the rigor of training and missions to mingle amongst the civilians of the village they fought and lived and loved for. Old men chatted under storefront eaves playing shogi, watching the young change the immutable world.
In the midst of it, Hanabi and Sasuke made a beeline for a standoffish building, with a crooked wooden sign proclaiming in engraved words "Satoshi's antiques," the creaking, dusty wooden porch of which they knew belied the well-kept, charming interior. Unfortunately for Hanabi's mood, a nearby grocer's pitch rose at this moment above the incoherent hubbub of other market noises,
"Fresh produce! Get your produce fresh at Fuwa's grocery! Special discount prices till noonday on carrots, daikon, cucumbers, and tomatoes!" Sasuke's ears actually twitched. This, Hanabi recognized as the patented Uchiha Sasuke perk-up. Muttering an excuse, Sasuke made a sudden ninety degree turn and went for the produce stands.
Hanabi could literally feel the tick developing in her forehead.
Darkness. Nothing but darkness met her eyes as Sakura eased them open, the lashes catching on the fabric she felt wrapped around her head in a blindfold. Her breathing hitched as she tried to move her limbs and found both her ankles and wrists tightly bound by unrelenting rope. The panic and adrenaline slowly kicked in as she began to struggle, to test the bonds, and found escape impossible.
A sound from the other side of the room alerted her to the fact that she was not, in fact, alone, and she instantly stilled, concentrating on trying to discern what little she could about the environment: a flat surface, most likely a floor judging from the cold, hard feeling of it, pressed up against her shoulder blades, her hands were secured above her head to something stubbornly stationary, and she could sense only one other person with her, the faintly masked chakra signature identifying them as a shinobi. She tensed as her observations where confirmed by a smooth, velveteen voice floating across the room from somewhere to her left.
"Do not think you can hope to escape me so very easily, Sakura," drawled the man, sending shivers up her spine. She felt her body begin to shake as she heard his footfalls approaching her, and gasped when his hand came into contact with her cheek in a soft caress. Gently, he lifted the blindfold from her eyes, fingers brushing, lingering at her temples. Her sight restored, she let the setting flood in—the rich hardwoods of the bureau and small table in the corner, the cream of the ceiling, the forest greens of the sheets on the four-poster bed, the foot of which her wrists were currently tied to. But it all faded into a secondary haze as she gazed directly up into the face of Akatsuki no Itachi, one and only elder brother to Uchiha Sasuke. Courageously gathering together the few of the frayed nerves she still had a grip on, she spoke.
"What do you want with me? Where am I? Let me go." She winced to hear herself sounding much more tremulous than she had intended. But then again, one could hardly have expected anything more from a kunoichi prostrated and defenseless before a man of easily ten times her skill. A dangerous man.
"You're hardly in a position to be making such demands, don't you think?" he chuckled darkly, "I can do anything I like with you and you won't be able to do a thing to stop me. But then, perhaps you won't want to." He leaned forward and pressed his lips to the hollow of her neck, eliciting a soft response from somewhere deep within her body as he began to suckle at her sensitive skin. She felt him smirk against her as he heard the moan that was undeniably one of pleasure no matter how hard she tried to pass it off as one of pain. Something warm flipped in her lower stomach, the sensations spreading quickly down to her nether regions. This was wrong, wrong, but it felt better than anything she had ever yet—
"Wait, wait, Itachi," she interrupted, sitting up, "we need a safe-word."
"Aa."
"Yes, yes, I'm sorry to stop when it was beginning to get good. But we need a safe-word to 'foster trust between us as partners and enjoy this experience to the fullest.' I want to do this the right way, and if there's one thing I know about you, Uchiha, it's that you're just as finicky as I am about correctness."
"Get on with it, then, woman. You're the one that wanted to try something new and I'm having you either way," he growled into her ear.
"Gazebo' it is." She slid back down and sighed as Itachi resumed his ministrations on her neck.
Hanabi wrinkled her nose in irritation.
As if it wasn't enough already that Sasuke was insisting Hanabi go through the embarrassment and exertion of buying an antique vase for Sakura-shishou to replace the one she accidentally broke on their last visit (it was not her fault! How was she to know that her mentor was engaging in… certain extracurriculars behind her unlocked apartment door? Anyone would have reflexively backed up on seeing that) and lugging it over there! All for propriety's sake or whatever, he had explained, ostensibly since Hanabi was into rebelling against that sort of thing these days. Bah! Clan politics her ass. He was just scared Itachi was going to get him back for it now that the former missing-nin had been proven innocent and settled back into village life, she was sure of it. The vase had, after all, been a gift to Sakura-shishou from Itachi-san. Really, no one would have cared otherwise, she was sure, about a random vase that just stood there looking pretty, practically begging to be knocked over and shattered. And after all that, he actually have the nerve to leave her in the middle of the excursion for a batch of tomatoes!
Well, he was lucky she was such an understanding and forgiving girlfriend. Of course, the fact that she happened to have the authority to place the vase on his tab was completely beside the point. Yes, he should be glad that he was so fortunate as to have met up with her. (Like hell she was paying for it out of her own pocket money.)
Taking her time walking to her shishou's apartment, a thin, fluted ceramic wrapped and tucked away under her arm, Hanabi indulged in plotting. Why that boy had such a penchant for tomatoes she had no idea, but she was definitely going to find out (because that kind of obsession definitely did not come out of nowhere, and even if it did there was always at least some kind of embarrassing childhood story to go with it), whether she pried it out of him or made Sakura-shishou ply the secret out of Itachi-san to do it. Then, she was going hold it over his pretty little midnight-tressed head. She smirked as she decided he was never leaving her for tomatoes again.
Earlier that morning…
The nascent beams of the morning sun peeked in through a window rimmed in white, tiptoeing over the simple wooden floor of a small apartment to fall upon the occupants of the bed against the opposite wall. A shifting of soft pink hair, and the opening of bright, spring eyes were all that evidenced the awakening of the female, but even this much was enough motion to bring the dark-haired male intertwined with her to consciousness as well.
"Good morning," she murmured contentedly, extracting her arms from his embrace so as to stretch before falling back into the softness of the pillows, intent on starting her day off with some relaxing, extra lie-in time in bed. Unfortunately (or very fortunately) for her, her lover had other ideas.
"Itachi!" she laughed as he began to nuzzle her ear in earnest, "It's morning and we just woke up! It's far too early for another rendition of last night."
"On the contrary, dear Sakura. It's never to early, and from what I remember you enjoyed last night just as much as I did, if not more." He paused in his attentions momentary to smirk at her.
"Just like every night," she conceded before a mischievous light came to her eye, "but only just like every night."
This time he stopped completely and propped himself up on one arm to frown down at her.
"What is that supposed to mean, kunoichi?" he ground out testily. He knew for a fact that he was, erm, very skilled at everything he did, and that what he did included being the perfect pleasurer of one Haruno Sakura. He could tell when his skills were being called into question. This would not do.
"Nothing," she said in all innocence, betrayed only by that anticipatory glimmer in her eyes, "only that we do the same thing all the time. Don't get me wrong, it's amazing. But don't you think we could do something to shake it up every now and then?"
"Are you telling me that you want to play a game?"
"Maybe I am." She grinned, "Maybe I think it was really stimulating how we met."
"Are you telling me you have a kink?"
"Maybe I do."
They stared into each other's eyes for a moment, challenging. There was no longer any question of it being too early for such activities. Sakura leaped out of bed, yelping a little from the shock of the cold floor to her feet and again a little from excitement, and ran off in search of certain supplies. Itachi was only a moment chasing after her.
Present
Mounting the steps in twos, Hanabi spotted the familiar wooden door of worn wood, a dark shade of brown embossed with silver numbers that gleamed in the mid-morning sun filtering in through the gaps of the overhanging roof. Upon reaching it and finding it unlocked, she threw door open and waltzed in as she had done countless times before, figuring that Sakura-shishou and her ardent lover must have stumbled in and not bothered to lock it again after a night out to continue their love-making. Konoha was, after all, a relatively safe place to call home and they could both handle whatever hostile nin was stupid enough to try to break in.
Opening her mouth to declare her presence, she paused when she heard an unmistakably feminine moan sounding from the direction of the bedroom followed by a decidedly wicked sounding masculine chuckle. Setting the wrapped vase on the nearby couch (because really, Sasuke would kill her and she would kill her own pride if she, a kunoichi of noted refinement and poise, managed to accidentally let drop yet another expensive vase), she stealthily and shamelessly peeked into the bedroom through the partially open door.
To say that Hanabi was happy would have been like saying the sun was a tad bright and the ocean was a wee bit wet. This made the disagreements and the embarrassment and effort and lugging—the whole deal—worth it. Oh yes, this was worth a vase forgotten and a tomato secret and so much more.
Jackpot.
"No," she protested, whimpering, "I—"
"—Can't do anything about it," he finished, "You're mine to play with, however I want to."
She gasped at feeling a hand begin to run down her thigh and resumed struggling in earnest, the bindings biting into her wrists. The man certainly knew how to capably incapacitate a ninja, not that anything less could be expected of a prodigy like Itachi. Her frantically kicking legs were easily pinned down by force with a hand of his, while the other, the one that had been so tantalizingly running down her leg, slowly, teasingly pulled loose the knot at her ankles, leaving them free for him split widely apart.
"Cease your struggles," he commanded, and crushed her lips in a fierce kiss, the shock of the contact effectively paralyzing her. Soon, she began to respond and he felt his arousal heighten at her surrender to him. Moving his hands to her waistline, he began to pull down at the top of her—
A wail split the air and took the atmosphere right along with it.
"My eyes, my eyes!! Shishou! How could you do this to me and my poor, innocent eyes?!"
Sakura's eyes snapped to the doorway of the bedroom, feeling simultaneously self-admonishing and secretly pleased that their activities had been sufficiently distracting to prevent their having sensed someone coming into the apartment (then again, this was her own student, a part of her thought smugly). Dramatically flailing about with a hand covering her eyes was her pupil of five years, Hyuuga Hanabi, spouting some such theatrics about her ruined purity or whatnot, to which Sakura would have snorted if she hadn't also suddenly been rendered self-conscience of her current, ah, position.
Blushing, she tried to stifle her growing mortification. It was alright, she reasoned, it was only Hanabi. Hanabi would most likely demand something from them and pester them about it for a few days, but then she would drop it and move on to other subjects. After all, Hanabi was an unconventional sort of girl herself and respected Sakura, she wouldn't make a big deal about it. Now if Sasuke had been with her, why she wouldn't have been able to meet her teammate's eyes for weeks if he'd walked in on such a scene, and that would have definitely caused problems within the team, not to mention the eyebrows raised in question around the village so filled with annoyingly nosy people. Hanabi on the other hand was easily appeased. Thank goodness Hanabi hadn't come with—
"Hanabi? I heard you shrieking," the rude statement sounded from the living room in an unmistakable voice, "you didn't break another vase did you?" The person said voice was attached to stopped at the doorway, catching sight of the situation and slowly coloring before clearing his throat and stepping back out.
Right. Counted her chickens too early.
They were so locking the door next time.
Hanabi found herself walking down the road to the dango shop with Sasuke by the light of a setting sun. They had been effectively kicked out of the apartment directly the incident that morning by an irate Itachi, but had heard noises indicating the resumption of previous activities before they had even reached the front door.
No one who wasn't knowledgeable about how to read the slight variations of his posture would have been able to tell that anything was bothering the stoic, younger Uchiha, who had gone comparatively pale and was stiff with eagernesss to get away. Far away. Their previous tension forgotten in light, he'd dragged Hanabi off to go various places around town with as much impatience as his reputation would allow him to show, and she'd comfortably spent a few hours training with him afterwards. Finally, at her prompting, Sasuke remembered he'd promised to take her to the dango shop and they'd begun to walk over to the quaint little café at the edge of the village.
Still high off the glee of newfound blackmail and the plans her conniving little mind had been concocting (she'd always been a devious child, and not even Sakura-shishou's influence had been enough to cure her of her often useful manipulative streak), Hanabi felt like everything was going delightfully right for once. It was then that something occurred to her.
"Hey Sasuke-kun?"
"Hn?"
"Do you think we could try playing a game with handcuffs tonight?"
fin
Notes:
according to wiki, specifically the article on kigo
-uguisu, sky larks, swallows, and sakura blossoms are associated with spring (at the time of my research, Jacarandas and Desert Wildflowers were there listed as well, but the article has since changed)
-Jacarandas: introduced ornamental trees that bloom blue-purple in mid-spring
-Desert Wildflowers: can carpet after a good rainy season
-uguisu: (Cettia diphone) also known as the Japanese bush warbler, or the Japanese nightingale; often used as an example of sweet sounds; more often heard than seen
A/N: I'm not 100 percent happy with this fic but I am posting it, however, for several reasons:
1) It's been sitting around for months now--it probably won't get better
2) I am submitting it to the lovely Hikari Adams' SasuHana contest and I'm already late in posting! Sorry...
3) I just put in major time these past two days and humbug if it isn't getting posted now
I'll be honest, it was originally predominately Itasaku with Sasuhana as a major side before I failed to conceptualize a new fic in time and just revamped this one to have more Sasuhana. Possibly, this is why I personally perceive it to be a bit drawn out and boring. I only hope that it doesn't actually come off as such to others.
I'd appreciate it greatly if you took the time to review. Thanks for reading!
Amynta