Prince Charming
Inoichi passed the ball to Shikato. Shikato threw the ball to Chouza. The ball bounced off Chouza's head and rolled into the bushes. He paused momentarily in his chip-eating exercise and frowned. "Can't you see I'm eating my chips?"
"Lazy!" Inoichi cried as he chased after the ball.
Shikato stole away to a tree with adequate shading, and was glad to not have to miss his afternoon nap.
Inoichi searched and searched through the thick, prickly bushes and grumbled obscenities when he saw how deep it was in the undergrowth. He squiggled and squirmed, not without a few scratches, to reach the damned ball. Before he was able to reach it, though, two small white hands grasped his precious toy. A glimpse of red hair, a girlish giggle, and a shuffle of small sandaled feet--all he was able to see before this imp zipped away.
Irritable and agitated, Inoichi dusted himself off and scoffed when he saw Chouza's empty chip bag and heard Shikato's loud snores. Bums. The afternoon was ruined, but he still had to get his damned ball back.
It wasn't hard to track the perpetrator down after hearing the ball bounce against the side of a building. As he rounded the corner, he saw the face of the thief. Big green eyes that matched the long red hair. But that was all he saw before she let out an excited squeal and vanished from the alley.
Fifteen minutes later, panting, hands on knees, Inoichi growled when he saw his little bandit swinging from the branch of a tree. On her knees. Upside down. She must have been a kunoichi.
"Gimme that back!" he demanded when he came up to the tree. She only giggled and held the ball closer to her chest. Oh, what a terrible girl. He crossed his arms over his chest, then held one hand out expectantly. "Now, girl. Or I'll come up there on the count of five."
"Hehe." Chirped.
"One."
"Hehe."
"Two."
"Haha!"
"Three."
"You're funny!"
"Four."
"Four and a half," she said in her birdlike voice that held a tinge of some foreign accent.
"FIVE!" He spat hotly, and crawled up the tree, none too easily.
He was surprised that she remained there, careless, swinging to and fro without a clue as to how much trouble she was in. Inoichi, seething, first snatched the ball from her small white hands, took delight in her nonplussed expression, and snickered upon hearing her loud Oof! when he knocked her from the branch with his foot.
"Meanie!" she wailed as she got up. Her small fists balled up in her jumper and she pursed her lips, tears lacquering those big, bulbous green eyes. "Why'd you do that for?!"
He scoffed as he landed from the tree in a crouch, then narrowed his gaze on her. "Feh. Because I don't like ugly tomboys like you."
After kicking him rather hard in the shin, she raced away with a little scrap of her dignity. Inoichi stared on, cradling his aching shin, and realized he was in love.
--
Now a chuunin, Inoichi had long since forgotten his five-minute infatuation with the red-haired girl. Going on missions and manning the flowershop had been his goals as of late. Mother insisted that he learn more about flower arrangement (he was quite talented, like any Yamanaka) though he thought it a bit too girly for his tastes.
Father Yamanaka smoked his piped and watched Inoichi fall to his knees in front of Mother. Big Daddy Yamanaka sighed and shook his head in disappointment when Mother tied the strings of Inoichi's cheerful green apron and made him recite the types of flowers again. Oh, his boy was whipped.
Inoichi was optimistic in a strange sort of way, thinking that maybe Mother would teach him some useful flower jutsus. He already knew the mind-control jutsu. Something interesting may have happened then.
Frequent customers were old grannies who wanted flowers for their hats, young boys his age with bobbing adam's apples, and mournful old shinobi who placed flowers on graves. However, it wasn't rare to see a mirthful young face in his family's shop.
One day, as he watered the plants, fragrant and mild, his long-lost love wandered in through the doors and back into his heart. A little taller, hair a little longer, face still babyish. Ah, fan the flames of love anew! Purposely, he sprinkled the plants next her as she glanced around.
"Can I help you?" he purred, sidling up to her.
"Oh, I know you!" she smiled, just a little. "You're the guy who uses those flower jutsus!" A loud, obnoxious laugh. "How faggy!"
His joy melted into a puddle of regret. "Maybe you're thinking of someone else."
"No," she shook her head vigorously. "It's you."
"No, it's not."
She frowned, tugging his ponytail in frustration. "You had the blonde hair."
"I'm not a natural blonde."
"Oh, yes I think you are."
"How do you know?" he asked childishly, drenching the petunias as she began to twirl his ponytail around her wrist. How strange, how bizarre. How painful. He felt fingers in his bangs, gently prying to his scalp. That felt good.
"You don't have roots."
"I dye it frequently."
"You are Inoichi Yamanaka. Don't deny it," she sang as she dropped his ponytail and he suddenly felt cold again. "The one with the fruitcake-y flower jutsus! What a laugh!"
"A fruitcake, huh?" he said, whipping around and dropping the tin watering can, his brows furrowed and his mouth upturned in a gruesome smile.
After he had pushed her up against the wall and shown her some very new, very recent tongue jutsus, she left with a bouquet of cosmos, trotting out with her cheeks flushed and lips sore.
It was the last time she would ever accuse Inoichi of being a fruitcake.
--
It wasn't long after the "flowershop incident," as he liked to call it, that Inoichi disappeared in the middle of the night, much to Mother Yamanaka's chagrin. Though he was a jounin and was raking in quite a bit of money for the flowershop. Charm went a long way, as long it didn't affect business negatively.
In the slums of the Leaf village, Inoichi found his crude, copper-haired nymph. She welcomed him soundly, gave him a tour of her bed, and cried because she was saving herself for someone else besides the flowershop guy. Inoichi, miffed, and oh-so pissed, explained that it hadn't been an easy task for him to slip away from the Yamanaka clan so easily, and that she should've been grateful to him for deflowering her.
First, she chuckled at the unintentional pun. Then she gave him the extra key to her apartment so he wouldn't have to climb through the window anymore.
Many mornings after that, Inoichi dressed and showered at her place. His joints creaked as he hobbled out of bed and into the bathroom. Silently, he brushed his lips against her temple.
Kushina Uzumaki was not into kink, thankfully. At first, he'd envied Chouza because he didn't need male enhancement pills with his jutsus. And he'd also envied Shikato and those fascinating shadow jutsus. But that didn't matter anymore now that she liked that he smelled like grass. And that she said that she thought his hair was silky.
He spent many nights nuzzling her jawline with his broad Yamanaka nose, kissing the cheeks with a feline curve to them. How he loved to see her wanton and aching, her face contorted just the the girls' from the hentai magazines that Chouza kept under his bed.
But when the war started, Inoichi was gone a lot. And she was not there by his side.
--
"Who is it?"
They were ten again. She was up in the tree, hanging upside down. He was holding his hand out expectantly for the ball. Only this time she wasn't grinning and he wasn't even faintly amused.
"No one that you know," she conceded.
The ball flew back into his hand.
He sighed and buried his face in his hands. "I leave for just a while...And you find someone else. I guess that's what you get for loving somebody too much."
He left. She cried.
--
Some time later, Inoichi was quite surprised to see the newest someone on the block blow into his shop. Quite startled actually, when he saw the brighter blonder hair, the feline eyes of the Yondaime Hokage.
The Yondaime casually stated he was looking for some flowers, and scratched the back of his head like he wasn't the Hokage. Inoichi decided that the guy was okay, for someone of such high stature.
"Who are they for?"
The Yondaime smiled. "A woman."
Inoichi smiled back. "What's she smell like?"
A weird question to ask the Yondaime what his lover smelled like, but it was substantial in the means of the flower business. Yondaime scratched his head again (a bad habit, Inoichi surmised) and gave one of those quirky grins that only shinobi can have. "Ginger."
"Ginger?"
"Yeah."
"Right over here," Inoichi said dismally, his blooming flower of like for the Hokage wilting quickly.
--
Inoichi moved on, pressed on, sold flowers. Married a cute girl with corkscrew curls and got her pregnant. Pretended that she had red hair and green eyes. Hated the Hokage for quite some time. Read Chouza's porn. Got wasted with Shikato when he got married.
Bit his lip when he saw Kushina Uzumaki, distended belly and plump breasts, across the street with a grocery bag. Jumped back when she entered his store. Flinched as she kissed his cheek and bought another bouquet of cosmos and waddled out of the store, leaving him aching and wanting again like years ago.