Author's Note: Chapter two of five.
"Hurk!"
Inadvertently, Sasuke found himself wishing that Naruto had longer hair. Then at least he would be able to help hold it back while Naruto regurgitated the contents of his stomach into the toilet, instead of standing by feeling ineffectual.
It hadn't even been that rich of a breakfast. Pancakes with blueberry jam, scrambled eggs, a glass of milk (that on Sakura's order; apparently calcium was a necessary ingredient to keep the kid from coming out messed up. Well, any more messed up than it already would be from having two men as parents and one of them being Naruto). Sasuke didn't particularly like to cook, but this was the first day in over a week he was home in the morning (missions that paid well tended to be time-consuming) and wanted to make something of it.
Watching Naruto puke their meal back up ten minutes after it had been consumed wasn't the romantic interlude he had imagined.
"You sure there isn't something we can give him?"
Sakura shook her head. She had arrived at their apartment (formally Naruto's apartment, but Sasuke had insisted on moving in after the whole pregnancy debacle to make sure Naruto ate properly) just a few minutes after Naruto had rushed to the bathroom, with a month's supply of prenatal vitamins and instructions to take them every twenty-four hours, but had ended up sticking around. Why, Sasuke didn't know. It wasn't like she was being much help.
"Sorry, Sasuke-kun, but this just has to be ridden out. Morning sickness is very common in the second month of pregnancy."
Sasuke glanced away from the (not exactly riveting) sight of Naruto with his head positioned over the toilet to look at his female teammate hopefully. "So this will only go on a few more weeks?"
Sakura shrugged. "It depends. Probably. Unfortunately, for some women-"
"Naruto's a guy, Sakura."
Sakura rolled her eyes. "No, really? But in any case, sometimes it lasts throughout the entire pregnancy. It varies on the person."
Sasuke's face twitched back into a scowl. "Naruto doesn't have the same hormones as a woman. Why is he getting the same symptoms?"
"I asked Tsunade-sama about that-"
"And?"
"And she doesn't really know, but her best guess is that the jutsu that man used on Naruto is altering Naruto's physical makeup just enough to create a baby. Nothing extra, we think, which is why he hasn't gotten breasts or a vagina. He's still a guy. Just a guy with a uterus and some female hormones, which are probably what is causing the morning sickness."
In the bathroom, Naruto raised his head just enough to pronounce, "And thank God for that. I don't think I could deal with tits or having to pee sitting down on top of the rest of this shit… hurk!" In practical terms, Naruto didn't really have much left to eject from his stomach, but his body was doing its damndest anyway to try and force him to toss his spleen.
Sakura looked over at Naruto in concern. "Naruto… I've looked over your list of missions and you have to go pull some weeds in a few hours, but if you're not feeling up to it I can get it reassigned to a genin team."
Wiping the back of his mouth with one hand, Naruto shook his head. "I'm fine. Ran out of stuff to puke five minutes ago, and I think my stomach's settling down. No way in hell I'm going to be completely dependent on Sasuke for the next eight months to pay for everything."
Sasuke scowled. "So that's why you're doing grunt work, you moron? I don't care. It's not like you're some girl who wants me to buy her a lot of useless clothes. The only added expense I have now compared to when I lived on my own is more food, and that's not all that expensive."
Sakura sent the Uchiha a pointed look. "Sasuke-kun, as good-looking and as occasionally sweet as you can be, sometimes I want to fall on my knees and thank the universe that you turned out to be gayer than a strawberry tart."
Sasuke stared at her blankly. "Meaning…"
Naruto pushed himself to his feet and walked over to them. "Meaning sometimes you act like a chauvinistic asshole. And I'm still doing the missions. You may not care, but I do. The future Hokage can never let go of his pride enough to let someone else pay the electric bill." He seated himself back down at the table in the kitchen and started spooning eggs onto his plate.
It was only while he was raising his fork to his mouth that he caught their incredulous stares. "What? I'm hungry. You don't expect me to pull weeds all afternoon on an empty stomach, do you?"
----
There were really only a few people Naruto cared to hear about his condition. His team, of course. Always them. Maybe the other members of his year along with Gai's former genin cell too, though with them it wasn't so much wanting them to hear about it as knowing it was inevitable and resigning himself to it.
Three of the people he wanted to talk to originally hadn't been in town the week he had discovered he was pregnant. Yamato and Sai were on an extended ANBU mission that neither of them would talk about and would continue to be for about another two months, and Iruka had been in Bird Country with his class at the academy teaching them about different terrains. But now he was back, and Naruto knew he had to tell him.
That didn't mean he would relish the experience.
As it always was when one of them had been absent for an extended period, they met up at the ramen stand. Naruto let Iruka tell him about the various misadventures the academy students had found themselves in over the two week field trip, nodding agreeably in all the right places, but all too soon Iruka noticed his uncharacteristic silence and asked the expected question.
"Naruto… you've been awfully quiet. Did something happen while I was gone?"
Naruto looked down at his empty ramen bowl. Distantly he was pleased that he felt no urge to flee to the bathroom (as he had for once had the foresight to pee before dinner), but it was small consolation now. "Iruka-sensei…" There really was no good way to put this. With Kakashi and Sasuke, it hadn't mattered, because they expected weird shit to happen to him, often because of him. But with Iruka… Iruka expected good things, and that one disappointed look he had made Naruto want to sink into the floor. Naruto really, really didn't want to deal with that look.
But still, it had to be said. "Iruka-sensei, I'm pregnant."
Iruka stared at him. Blinked once. Then he stuck a finger in one ear and moved it around a bit. "Naruto, I'm sorry, I still must have some mud in my ears from when Hanabi and Hoshiko dripped mud in them while I was asleep. Say again?"
"I'm pregnant."
Iruka's chopsticks snapped in his hand. "That's… what I thought you said." He took a deep breath. Let it out. "I'm not going to ask how it happened. I don't think I want to know. Just tell me the date of the wedding."
Naruto looked quizzically at his former teacher. "Wedding? What wedding? I'm pregnant, Iruka-sensei, not engaged."
Iruka's eyes narrowed. When he next spoke, his voice was dangerously low. "You're telling me Sasuke gets you pregnant and isn't even enough of a gentleman to propose? I know he must have learned some awful habits while in Sound, but to have your child be born to a single parent household is the most reprehensible-" By the time he got to your child, the chuunin teacher was nearly shouting. His face was also becoming an alarming shade of red, and Naruto was fairly sure that if the chopsticks hadn't already been broken and dropped on the ground, they'd have just been made into very fine sawdust.
"Iruka-sensei, Sasuke did propose. I turned him down."
At that, Iruka abruptly cut himself off halfway through his tirade (thankfully. Everyone on the street was staring now and Naruto certainly didn't want them to hear this) and stared at Naruto. His eyes were disbelieving. "What? Why?"
It really was too late to weasel out, but for a split second Naruto was tempted to say, "Because I don't love him." It may or may not have been a lie (they were both guys, after all. Since when did love have anything to do with good sex and pancakes?), but at least it would have stalled a little. But though Naruto was a lot of things, many of them bad, he wasn't a coward. So it was with a deep breath that he announced, "Because the kid isn't his."
A myriad of emotions ran across Iruka's face at that moment. The floor-sinking disappointment made more than one appearance. "Then whose-"
"Kakashi-sensei's. But it isn't what you think. We didn't really do anything-"
Iruka's mouth had dropped open at the first word, and even though Naruto did his best to explain as fast as was humanly possible, somehow he knew that his former teacher's mind had shut down long before he got to the important part of the explanation.
"… so you see, it wasn't really Kakashi-sensei's fault at all-" Not looking at him, Iruka shoved himself to his feet and started walking away. "Iruka-sensei, listen-"
Iruka's back was to him now. His tone was conversational and calm in the exact way he had always sounded back during Naruto's academy days just before exploding about whatever ridiculous prank Naruto had pulled this week. "Just wait here, Naruto. I'll be back with Kakashi's head on a pike soon, and then we can finish our conversation." The explosion built. "To think that he would take advantage of you like that… with the age gap it's practically rape-"
Naruto threw his hands up in the air. "Weren't you listening at all? It's because of a jutsu, Iruka-sensei. Some idiot about a month ago put a jutsu on me that the first person who touched me would impregnate me. We didn't have sex. I didn't cheat on Sasuke. You think we'd still be together if I had?"
Iruka turned back around. He blinked. Then his face turned a very different shade of red from the near-purple he had been before. "Oh." He sat back down. "Sorry."
Naruto shrugged. "S'okay."
There was an awkward silence.
"So… when's the baby due?"
"Don't know. C-section, since I don't have a vagina."
Iruka winced. "That's too bad." Then there was more silence. "You know, Naruto… once the baby is born I'll be more than willing to baby-sit a few nights a week so you and Sasuke can have some alone time."
Naruto smiled. It wasn't a very good smile. "Kakashi-sensei and fuzzy eyebrows-sensei are adopting it once it comes out. I won't be taking care of it. Tsunade no baa-chan says I'm not ready for a kid yet, and she's right. I think."
Iruka's face twisted in sympathy. "Oh, Naruto… I'm so sorry."
Naruto felt his false smile begin to strain around the edges. "Fuzzy eyebrows-sensei says I can visit whenever, so… it'll be okay. Really, it will be."
The hug Iruka then gave him was stilted. Naruto didn't mind. Iruka wasn't really a touchy-feely kind of person, and any kind of hug was enough. After all, Iruka never hugged if he didn't mean it. "I can still help until it's born. I can do that much for my favorite former student."
That was enough to make Naruto's smile actually feel natural on his face. "Yeah. Thanks, Iruka-sensei. That'd be great." He returned the hug. "That'd be… really, really great."
The hug lasted a good thirty seconds. It might have gone on longer, but it was then that Naruto discovered that morning sickness was, unfortunately, not only limited to the mornings in the most sudden way possible by puking half-digested ramen all over Iruka's chuunin vest.
Iruka was nice about it, but still… damn it was embarrassing. And here everything had been going so nicely, too.
----
Naruto didn't see Sasuke for three days after meeting with Iruka (the Uchiha was busy with some B-class escort mission or other that was doomed, according to Sasuke, to be boring as hell but had a nice fat paycheck attached to it), and was only coming back to their apartment one evening after going to the grocery store to see Sasuke's sandals by the door. The water was running in the bathroom and a pile of dirty clothes was on the floor. Naruto stared irritably at the bag- they had a laundry basket, for fuck's sake, was it that hard to use? He wasn't that neat of a person, but even he had some standards- before sighing and getting out a pot to boil some water in to make ramen. Sasuke didn't like to cook, but Naruto like to less, so whenever it was his turn, ramen it was.
Sasuke got out of the shower ten minutes later to find a bowl of ramen steaming on the kitchen table and Naruto drinking a glass of milk on the couch, thinking all the while of how drunk he was going to get as soon as the baby was out. Naruto didn't even bother to look over as he said, "You said you'd be back this morning, you jackass."
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Like it matters." He eyed the bags of groceries that lay unpacked on the kitchen counter. "Where'd you get the cash for those?"
Naruto snorted. "I pulled a cat out of the tree yesterday for some daimyo's daughter. D-ranked mission pay is shitty, but I can still buy food for a few days."
Sasuke started going through the bags. "Most of it's ramen."
"That's what I eat."
Sasuke slammed one of the ramen containers on the countertop with enough force to make the wood shudder. "You aren't eating for just yourself anymore, Naruto. You can't eat ramen all the time."
Naruto knocked back the last of the milk. "Oh, fuck you. It isn't like it's your kid I might be screwing up for life."
Sasuke sneered. "No, it's not, but do you really think Kakashi will want it if it comes out deformed? He's being nice enough as it is, but that would really push it. Even Gai won't be willing to take it if it's defective."
On the couch, Naruto was still. Then he threw the empty glass against the wall, where it shattered into several hundred little pieces. The sight was made especially impressive by the fact the glass was made of plastic, which was, according to the manufacturer, incapable of shattering. His voice was shaking as he said, "If you don't like it, leave already. I don't want your help and I don't need it, so fuck you, Sasuke." When he got to the Uchiha's name, the blond chuunin's voice cracked alarmingly, and he started rubbing at his eyes.
Sasuke stared at his teammate, incredulous. "Are you crying?"
"I told you to fuck off!"
"You are." This was… well, Sasuke didn't know what it was. He'd never seen Naruto cry before, and it wasn't like this was even much of an argument. On their usual scale, it was a two or three at most. Naruto usually didn't start breaking things until a six, and the crying thing Sasuke was sure would require a nine or ten at least. It was therefore with extreme trepidation (for shit's sake, Naruto was more likely to summon the Kyuubi than cry, which meant the demon couldn't be far behind, and who knew what would set it off?) that he walked over to the couch and patted Naruto, who was by that point sobbing into his hands, roughly on the shoulder. "There, there. It will be alright." Whatever the hell it is.
"Fuck." Even that word trembled. "Fuck, this sucks. I don't even know why I'm crying. This pregnancy thing really bites." He then, without further ado, whirled around and jumped on Sasuke with enough force to knock the Uchiha to the ground.
Sasuke blinked. He had hit his head and it hurt like a bitch, but with the way Naruto was nuzzling at his neck it was sort of hard to pay attention to his possible concussion. "Are we going to have comfort sex now?"
Naruto stopped nuzzling long enough to growl out, "Hell no. I've been horny for two days, but when you started acting like my mother I forgot about it."
Sasuke dug his fingers into Naruto's hair. "And now?"
"Now we're going to have sex. Rough, hard, 'I haven't seen you in five days and have had blue balls for two' fucking that will likely break furniture, if we're lucky."
Sasuke looked over his teammate carefully. Naruto wasn't one to cry gracefully, it seemed, with snot running out of his nose and his face puffy and eyes red, but the vulnerable look still managed to be somewhat fetching. "I'm topping."
At that, Naruto rubbed his crotch against Sasuke's thigh and bit at his throat. "Not a chance in hell, Sasuke."
"But you're acting like a girl."
Naruto snorted. "Like that makes a difference. I'd top you even if I was a girl. Now do you want to do it here and get rug burns or move to the couch?"
Sasuke thought about it. The couch would be hell to clean later… oh hell, who cared. Better that then having to soap the carpet again. "The couch, and don't you dare get off before we get there."
The grin the blond chuunin sent him then was pure Naruto, with no hint of a weepy girl at all even with the snot. And somehow- though Sasuke wasn't exactly sure how- that was about ten times hotter than the thought of making Naruto take it. At least that was what his hard-on was telling him.
Damn it, they'd better get to the couch now or he was going to kill something.
