Thank you thank you, precious sweeties for the favs/follows and especially the reviews! I love and read and reread every single one. For those of you coming back from way back when I'm so pleased you still like me (blushes) and all the new readers whom I've helped to cheer up or just plain entertain well I'm glad to hear I'm doing something for you honeys.
This one's a quick little short (3k about), but I'm trying my hand at updating weekly. Wish me luck, friends.
The squad car crept along the street, its notable black and white paint job drawing eyes from dog-walkers and little old ladies alike. Kisame exhaled heavily through his nose and fell back into his seat, shoving the vehicle into park against the curb he'd been attempting to ease along unnoticed. You'd think they'd turned on the flashy blue lights or something for how much they were standing out.
"It's obviously impossible to be stealthy at all in this fucking thing," he bemoaned, squinting across the street at the light blue house they were staking out. It appeared deceptively quiet, empty, as if a kindly grandmother who made cookies lived inside. Kisame knew better and he spat out the open window onto the tar of the road. A mailman dragging along his cart shot him a disgusted look. Kisame made a point to burp loudly in his direction with a rakish grin. Mailman-san scurried away.
He turned to glance at the silent figure in the passenger seat beside him. "Hey, Itachi are you listening to me?"
Instead of answering, his partner leaned down and reappeared with a bag from the local fast food joint they'd gotten as a peace offering for the blue house's occupants. He fished inside the paper and reappeared with his prim little salad, croutons and tomatoes and probably four pieces of lettuce. Kisame scowled instinctively at that slight against humanity. Itachi continued to ignore him, as he usually did, and popped the lid off his salad container.
"We're not eating in the car are we? I thought we got the stuff for-"
"It isn't here." Itachi's voice was the kind of baritone that just cut off any and all surrounding sound like a vacuous black hole. Kisame was perpetually envious of it. Not that he'd admit it aloud of course, Itachi already possessed too much power in this partnership due to his Uchiha name. That family practically ran the town when it came to law enforcement. Kisame was a shark and he still felt like he'd been thrown into the deep end without a lifejacket when he walked into the police department and saw nothing but black soulless eyes staring up at him. It was horrifying.
Recalling Itachi's words, Kisame glanced at the blue house and found that it was, indeed, there. "What?"
"Squeaky-san." Itachi pointed with his plastic spork across the street at the side of the blue house. Kisame made an ohhh sound at the empty dirt patch to its left, a space usually occupied by a beat up, red Toyota.
"So what, we're just gonna sit in the car and eat? Like dogs on the porch waiting for their master to come back?" Kisame muttered, lip curling to expose sharp teeth. Itachi nipped at a large tomato on the end of his spork like some kind of vicious bird of prey. Once he was done, he reached into the bag and produced Kisame's half-pound cheeseburger, holding it out to him across the console. Kisame eyed the giant thing, its plastic wrapper already dotted with damp spots of pooled grease.
Kisame's mouth watered. Itachi didn't quite smirk but Kisame knew it was there, underneath his mask of indifference. Maybe Kisame didn't have as high standards as he liked to believe. And his partner knew it. "Fine, if you'd really rather sit outside a girl's house waiting for her to get home, then by all means. Gimme the food," he muttered, tugging his big, meaty, artery-clogger of a meal from Itachi's skinny fingers. He ignored the actual tiny quirk at the corner of Itachi's mouth and unwrapped his food with jerky movements.
He had just opened his mouth wide, jagged teeth poised at the ready to sink into the fatty blob of delicious dead cow, when a loud banging of wood on wood ricocheted through the squad car. Muffled sounds of a struggle, muted shouts and more thundering of physical attacks had Kisame on immediate alert, the burger lowering to his lap.
The blue house (Haruno Halfway House in fact) no longer carried that visage of a kindly old lady's cookie-cutter life. With it's brown door hanging wide open, large potted plant smashed to pieces on the small porch, and a bundle of human beings rolling down the stairs in a mess of limbs and hair, it looked more like a filming location for a documentary about gang violence.
"It's the religious nut and Barbie isn't it?" Kisame growled, already wrapping his burger back up with a hollow feeling. "For fuck's sakes, I just wanted to eat a burger." He plopped his food back into the bag and made sure Itachi had also secured his meal. With a muttered curse, he flicked the lights on and zipped the cruiser across the road, foot planted on the accelerator with probably more force than necessary. But he wanted his burger goddammit. He ended up half on the lawn with a thud that was more than likely the sound of his head smacking the roof as the front end bucked over the curb like a bull.
He tore out of the car, the image of his rapidly cooling burger (fucking five dollar burger) was enough to make him wanna pound a few twerps into the concrete. Fortunately for said twerps such acts were illegal and especially illegal for him as a cop so he settled instead for his trusty taser. Handheld non-combatant edition. Worst damage the thing could do was make them piss themselves, which honestly would be the highlight of Kisame's day.
Barbie was on top of the little masochist, a hand tight around his throat and a knee digging into his chest. Little masochist was clawing at Barbie's face with his right hand, a palm shoved up under his chin, fingers digging into the side of his mouth. His other hand had a fistful of blond hair, yanking hard enough to bow Barbie's body at an awkward angle.
They looked like stars in some kind of gay fetish porn now and Kisame bit back a laugh, burger momentarily forgotten. "I've seen toddlers fight harder than you two," he announced, schooling himself when Barbie threw a punch hard enough to have Masochist spitting blood (among other choice words that Sakura would kill him for saying). In the noise and commotion of little masochist's attempt at a counterattack, it wasn't difficult to jab the prongs of the taser into the meaty part of Barbie's waist.
He went down with a violent twitch, his entire body seizing up and then releasing rapidly. A whine scratched out of his throat like a dying animal (like Squeaky-san to be honest). Deidara collapsed in a heap onto the dead grass of the lawn, shaking minutely and staring up at the gray sky with unseeing eyes. Kisame was quick to aim for Hidan but was mildly surprised to see Itachi shoving the taser into the guy's kidney. He flailed around as if he were drowning, grunting in the way a man who was being repeatedly stabbed might grunt, before folding in on himself beside the blond.
Kisame whistled low and shook his head. "Damn, Itachi. The kidneys? You trying to kill the guy?"
"He likes pain," Itachi supplied as if that excused shooting 50,000 volts into the only area that would evenly disperse the burning pain throughout Hidan's body. The poor asshole was still twitching on the sidewalk. Shirtless no less. In this weather? These idiots couldn't take care of themselves properly for less than a day, let alone the rest of their lives. Sakura didn't know what she was getting into when she started the halfway house and let this in. They were never gonna leave.
"Soooo…" Kisame drawled out, shoving his taser back into its pouch on his belt. "What were you two infants fighting about?"
Hidan spat black blood into the grass and rubbed his swelling jaw. "Fuck you, fishdick," he snarled, pushing himself up onto his ass and shooting Deidara a disgusted sneer. "You too, fagface." It seemed like the kind of comment someone would say just before walking away in a dramatic exit, except Hidan couldn't do much more than sit there, leaning back on his palms, sweat drenched and panting. He settled instead for giving everyone the stink eye.
"Is Sakura-san out?" Itachi asked in his voice that left no room for anyone else's at all, let alone disagreement. When no one offered up any answers immediately, Kisame kicked at Deidara's leg, eliciting an instant recoil and a hiss.
"Do you see Squeaky-san, assholes? What do you think, yeah? We're not her keepers," the blond growled, voice husky with pain as he managed to leverage himself upright with the bottom stair. His hair was all over the place, bright strands sticking up every which way as if he'd stuck his finger in a light socket. And that was all Hidan, the taser didn't fuck with your hair. As if sensing the crooked grin on Kisame's face had everything to do with his hair, Deidara quickly started running his fingers through it, combing it back into submission.
"I'm sorry," Itachi said, flicking the switch on the taser still in his hands, blue electricity buzzing between the prongs. "That was vague of me. What I meant was, where is Sakura-san?" Hidan and Deidara's collective flinch was amazing and Kisame had never been happier to be Itachi's partner than in that moment.
Both children (mentally anyway) glared at the ground in opposite directions, looking like someone had just told them the ice cream man kidnapped children and could not be trusted. Deidara made a 'che' sound and drew his knees up to rest his arms on them, a handful of torn up grass in his fingers. He refused to look up from what must have been a particularly interesting bit of sidewalk and mumbled something that literally nobody could understand.
"Haa? What was that, princess?" Kisame bent closer with a hand cupped to his ear, taking a small pleasure in the two's obvious discomfort.
"I said dunno," he said, louder this time but just as put out.
Itachi's eyebrows furrowed deeper than usual and Kisame tilted his head. "You don't-"
"She left at the fucking asscrack of dawn, all sneaky like she finally got fucking tired of our shit and ran off to live with that cockhole." At Kisame's confused blink, Hidan explained, "that one with the fucking whiskers and shit."
"Right, yeah. 'Cause that makes perfect sense. You know the government basically writes her checks to deal with our 'fucking shit.' It's illegal for her to run off just as much as it is for us, yeah. Dumbass," Deidara murmured the last word under his breath with a roll of his one visible eye, as if this possibility had already been discussed many times over. Kisame scratched his neck, already growing bored with the conversation and the two of them as a whole.
"Okay. Well as much I'd love to stick around and help solve the mystery of how much money someone would actually have to get paid to willingly put up with you two, I've got a burger in the car with my na-"
"Neither of you contacted her to ask?"
Kisame glowered at Itachi. What was with people interrupting him all of sudden? He had important things to say too, thanks. Like how he just wanted to eat his fucking burger in peace without having to tase two little shits and then give them the third degree about their mama. He felt like he was dealing with a couple of grade-schoolers who got lost on the way home.
"She didn't even answer my last text and it was pretty urgent," Deidara said with something that looked a lot like a pout to Kisame. Hidan smirked at the blond's expression, cracking the blood congealing at the edge of his lips. He looked as if the fact Sakura ignored Deidara was the goddamn highlight of his life. Fuckin' babies, both of them. "She even ignored Tobi, yeah, and she never does that. Ignoring Tobi is like inviting some kind of physical molestation onto your person. The longer you ignore him the more invasive it gets."
Hidan nodded solemnly. "S'fuckin' horrible."
Kisame didn't even want to know.
"SENPAIIII!" Tobi's screech was as grating as ever on Kisame's rapidly fraying nerves. It was like the idiot had some kind of sixth sense and materialized whenever his name was mentioned. Like Bloody Mary but worse. He was nothing but a spiky black blur that launched onto Deidara's back, arms winding around his neck and clinging to him like a koala bear.
"WHAT, TOBI, WHAT?!" Deidara shouted, toppling forward onto his palms and shaking with equal parts fury and exhaustion. "Would you get the hell off me-"
"Sakura-chan texted youuuu!" Tobi sang, seemingly oblivious to Deidara's apparent outrage. He proffered a phone from out of nowhere and dangled it in front of the blond's face like it was a piece of delicious meat and Deidara was a starving lion. Fittingly, Deidara snatched it out of his hand so fast Kisame almost missed the movement. While he furiously made to read whatever Sakura had sent to him, Tobi turned leery eyes onto Hidan and licked his lips.
Hidan eyeballed him, stomach muscles clenching in preparation to run for his worthless life if necessary. "The fuck're you looking at, scarface?"
As expected, the ball of endless energy leapt off Deidara (who'd seemingly forgotten he was even there) and practically tackled Hidan to the dirt. Or at least it'd looked like a tackle. In reality, Tobi had supplied another cell phone from god knew where and smashed it into Hidan's forehead, sending the two of them falling to the ground in a crash of limbs. "Sakura-chan texted Hidan-san too! Tobi doesn't know why though, Hidan-san is a bad man. Tobi thinks Sakura-chan should have texted Tobi but," his eyes bubbled with tears that were suddenly dripping onto Hidan's face. "SAKURA-CHAN DIDN'T!" Tobi was practically sobbing, shoving the phone harder against a wailing Hidan's forehead before jumping to his feet and running back into the house.
Itachi and Kisame shared the look of two men in a sea of imbecility trying desperately not to step in it lest it was contagious. How Sakura had managed not to go completely insane was beyond Kisame's comprehension. "What does Sakura-san have to say?" Itachi prompted, once Hidan had recovered from getting attacked for arguably the third time in less than an hour. Arguably, because Itachi hadn't technically attacked him but Hidan surely counted it.
Deidara was squinting at his phone like it was some alien creature. "She asked 'what kind of milk?' yeah."
"It just fucking says thirty-six eighty-seven." Hidan was rubbing the red squared imprint on his face as he answered. Deidara made a noise similar to Squeaky-san again.
"This is a serious situation, yeah! And she's asking me about milk? MILK? How about 'where. are. you? Did. you. die? and. if. so. why didn't. you. take me. with you?'" Deidara narrated as he texted, smashing send with enough force to almost crack the screen. Hidan contemplated his text from Sakura with a frown. Kisame could literally watch as realization dawned on him, his eyebrows gradually raising, jaw falling open.
"I fucking owe Kakuzu $36.87? Fuuuuuck, I only dug up $35 he's gonna fuckin kill me when he gets back. Shit, or charge me so much interest I'll have to cut my leg right the fuck off to pay it all. I'd like to see the bitch try and sew that one up. Fucking shit I'm gonna die tonight." Hidan collapsed back onto the ground, dead eyes staring at nothing.
Soft footsteps from the tiled foyer had Kisame glancing up to see black and white Zetsu standing in the entrance looking unflappable as usual. "Why is Tobi cry-" he stopped short at the sight of the smashed pot on the porch, soil spilled all over the wood. The green spiky palmetto plant lay, weak and dying, smushed under brown pieces of sharp pottery. Zetsu's yellow eyes flashed and he was eerily still. "What the fuck did you do," the right side of his mouth spat, twisting into an ugly snarl. It wasn't even a question, more like an accusation. His black fist was shaking.
Hidan and Deidara refused to move, let alone turn around and answer. The looks on their faces were akin to a pair of cornered squirrels. For a second, Kisame thought Zetsu was about to wail on them but his disposition suddenly shifted and then he was kneeling down beside the palmetto. His face, previously contorted with rage, smoothed out into a soft sadness as he reached out and petted the spiked leaves of the plant. "Supaiki," he whispered (what Kisame assumed was) his name for the palmetto mournfully.
They could still faintly hear Tobi's sobs through the open front door.
Kisame rubbed his forehead and took Itachi's silence for what it was, sighing so heavily he felt as if his soul had just slid out of his mouth. He just wanted to go home, but the ineffably pathetic sight in front of him was just too sad to ignore.
"We uh… brought burgers?"
Did you laugh at all? I like to think I'm still funny :P
Hope you enjoyed the boys so far. I expect they'll be about this ridiculous roughly ninety-eight percent of the time. The other two percent is delegated to our sweet Sakura of course (not that she appreciates it but that's the best part). Don't worry, Sasori gets to meet the guys next chapter. Things get violent.
Feel free to drop me a line, lovelies!
red