Next Time

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

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#21 – Silence

The silence between them was never uncomfortable or awkward at all; actually, Hidan loved those little moments when they could simply sit in each other's presence and go about their own business without ever acknowledging the other's existence.

#22 – Journey

It was an epic journey in itself the first time that Hidan had tried to maneuver his way around the truth of the matter; finally, he had settled on blunt honesty: "Sakura, you see, since we're going to get married, abstinence isn't a law anymore, and—oh, to hell with this; I really, really want to fuck you blind right now."

#23 – Fire

Fire was the only word to describe the feeling of her lips grazing over his navel, hands smoothing over his lower abdomen until he thought he was going to die on the spot; and then fire graduated to burning inferno when she closed her mouth over his length and mumbled some mindless thing around him.

#24 – Strength

Don't get him wrong, Hidan was more or less immune to pain, but it took real fucking strength for what Sakura went through to give birth to the first child he'd ever had the privilege of fathering; she reminded him of this constantly through the eighteen hours of labor, Zetsu acting as a nursemaid as he smoothed her hair back and alternated between biting comments toward Hidan—compliments of his "dark" side, such as, "If you hurt her any more, you sadistic bastard, I am going to tear your limbs off and eat them,"—and encouragement toward Sakura, such as, "This is a simple task that women throughout the ages have completed; I am most certain that you will be able to complete it, as well," courtesy of his "light" side.

#25 – Mask

Everyone knew that Tobi was a bit overprotective of his orange spiral mask—everyone but Sakura, apparently, because she tore it off of him one day in a playful gesture, and he turned on her and attempted to deliver a well-placed punch to the jaw; Hidan was crushing the youngest member's fist in his palm so fast that it seemed to make the world spin on its axis.

#26 – Ice

He required her medical attention after his immortality was so graciously stripped of him often, and he learned to tell by the feel of her chakra how he was affecting her; when it was silken, she was worried; when it was warm, she was proud; when it was insufferably hot, she wanted him to bend her over the table and fuck her so hard she couldn't see straight; when it was like ice collecting in his veins, he knew that she'd been on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of his actions, and he vowed to inflict her with this feeling as little as possible.

#27 – Fall

The first time their child—Taro—had taken a nasty fall, Hidan had been absolutely enraged at the prospect of Sakura coddling him; he needed to learn to handle pain, he'd said, and it had been the first real "married" fight he and Sakura had been in.

#28 – Forgotten

Konoha was more or less forgotten after the first five years, much to Hidan's pleasure, and although they rarely ever kept secrets, he completely refused to tell her how many ANBU corpses were piling in the woods outside the Akatsuki lair; after all, Akatsuki was more or less just a fancy name for the complex, having Leader dead with only a few remaining members and virtually no threat left, and she would figure out that Konoha hadn't forgotten her if she ever saw the proof.

#29 – Dance

The wedding had been completed two ways: traditional Jashinist style and in the style that Sakura preferred, and both had involved a dance of some sort; while Sakura's version of the dance had been purely innocent, with her laughing and moving with practically everyone attending, Hidan's had been quite private and intimate, never really moving from against the wall, hips flush against each other and rolling into her until her nails left little red marks on the skin of his shoulders.

#30 – Body

When he saw the shadowy outline of a foreign body forcing Sakura's to the floor, he deliberately threw a punch at the man, licked the blood off of his knuckles, and drew blood from himself; he would have continued to stab himself in the chest after standing in that circumscribed blood triangle had Sakura not threw herself at him, transformation into some Grim Reaper-esque beast be damned, and pleaded with him to stop hurting himself—literally—for something like this.