family affair
fourteen:
the birdsong
There used to be this grand entrance to the Uchiha Compound that had glass doors. It was bold for the home of a national crime leader, but no one dared to tell Fugaku that. He knew what he was doing. He prided in that boldness, drank it in like liquor, and taught it to his children.
Sasuke spent many evenings beside that door, peering out into the night to watch his brother or father or uncles come in and up the driveway, their cars beacons of light in a forest. The compound, you see, was surrounded by trees. A forest in a city. It was an impeccable piece of land, centuries-old, and belonging quietly to the Uchihas.
The trees were tall and could be considered frightful, depending on the night and the weather. Sasuke was a welcome friend to them as a child, often swinging from their limbs, climbing their bodies, and stumbling over their feet. He climbed a few dozen of them with Itachi. When he turned six, some uncles built him a treehouse, just past the weapons vault and behind the tennis court, expertly placed among the trees that bordered his treasured soccer field.
This land was treasured. Revered. The house itself had a porch that looked out onto its amble lands. It was purposely built to face the west so that the family could watch the sunset while eating dinner. Fugaku spent many nights nursing a drink on this porch, often having his most important and confidential conversations while looking out into a red-orange sky. Mikoto planted entire gardens of food in the space in front of the porch and took pride in sending visiting syndicate members home with paper bags full of produce.
There was a small river that ran just past Sasuke's treehouse where Fugaku taught him how to fish. There was also a structure built near the water, where many secrets came to pass. It was all huge and mysterious to him as a child. The compound was his whole life.
Now it was nothing.
It was a vast empty lot, overcome with weeds and plantlife attempting to take claim. Sasuke did not know that it had been demolished. The concept seemed inconceivable to him. Demolished. Eradicated. Gone.
He pressed hard on the gas, his car sliding down the expressway as if on ice. He hadn't known. He hadn't even thought to check. In foster care, he yearned for this place. He saw it in his dreams. He woke up thinking he saw his mother sending fresh fruit up the pulley system he and Itachi had engineered for his treehouse, her smile a sun of its own kind. He woke up biting into freshly grown tomatoes, the juices spilling onto his skin, the seeds bursting in his hands. Everything felt so real and tangible, he just knew he would be back someday.
When ANBU found him, all that went away. He stopped dreaming of climbing the trees. He stopped dreaming of sunset dinners and warm bread and tart lemonade. He was trained to forget. There was no reason for him to visit because he would not be who he once was when all was said and done. He would be invisible, nameless, identity-less. An agent whose allegiance was to no one except ANBU itself.
He trained long and hard. He became a prodigy. He became awarded. He had no interest in spying, or infiltration, or any of the convoluted work that required an amenable personality. With sharp eyes, he hand-selected the assassin track. He could be even more unknowable here. He could forget everything.
His request was denied when he turned 17. There was no reason attached to the denial. Direction from above rarely provided reason, only commands. Instead, he was assigned to a team. They trained together for six months before being assigned their first mission as a unit: The Orochimaru bust.
Memories hit Sasuke's frontal lobe like explosives, but he could only dig so far until he reached a wall. He liked it like that, it felt safe. As time went on, the more he thought about the compound, the less he could remember. What color has his bedroom been? How many bathrooms did they have? Were the tiles on the kitchen backsplash yellow or orange? Did his treehouse have stairs or a ladder?
Instead, his nightmares started. He remembered the things that he especially did not want to. Soccer fields and gunshots. Long nights sitting in front of the glass door, waiting for his family to come home. Dark hallways. Packages coming down the river. Bleeding men appearing on their porch at dusk. Rifles being retrieved from the weapons vault.
Dog sat him down one day, his gray hair falling over his eyes, and asked in a serious tone if he remembered anything at all about Orochimaru. Sasuke said he didn't. Dog told him to forget everything else. "This mission will dreg up everything if you let it. And if you let it, we will fail this mission."
So he stuffed it all down. The nightmares, the dreams he still had in passing, all of it. He did not think of the compound at all after that. The mission was the most important thing. It hadn't even crossed his mind to visit.
Now it was gone.
Sasuke pulled his car into the driveway of the Estate, parking it behind a black Lexus. It sat in line with an entire group of vehicles; it looked to be a busy week for the Hyuga Syndicate.
It hadn't even been a full 24 hours since Naruto's injury, and still, everything felt different. Night had fallen. ANBU gave him no answers but asked questions with open mouth. Tomorrow he would meet with Itachi. Tonight, he tried to think of nothing. He had been trained for it. But the space where the nothing was supposed to go was instead filled with Hinata.
On his way home, he thought about how he had answered her frantic call but did not come. He did not feel bad perse, but was perplexed by the nagging in his stomach. Perhaps he worried that his absence would breed suspicion among the Hyugas.
But no one spared him a second glance when he walked through the front doors. The new security guard nodded hello as he passed. When he walked down the hallway that held the entrance to the theatre, the guard there paid him no mind. It wasn't until he came upon the double-doored sanctuary near the back of the home that he'd heard a single voice.
Humming.
One of the doors was propped open. Sasuke peered in, his eyes settling on Hinata's figure as she sat on top of her massage table. Half of her hair was up in a bun, and the other half fell in a messy curtain as she tilted her head in concentration. She was sitting with one leg outstretched. She diligently pushed the tattoo machine into her thigh, using her left hand to stretch the skin. She hummed along with the machine a tune Sasuke didn't recognize.
He didn't want to startle her into a mistake so he knocked on the door. The gentle wraps still managed to make her jump, but she didn't ruin anything. She stopped the machine and looked up, turning pink. Her legs were long and pale under her––Sasuke had never seen her wear short shorts.
"S-Sasuke!" She exclaimed, setting the machine on her tray. "What are you d-doing here?"
He shrugged, "You told me to come."
Hinata snorted, "Yeah, like, 15 hours ago."
"That's not so long," he said. "I had to process the information."
Hinata looked at him peculiarly, then she turned back to her tattoo. It was a thistle of lavender on the outside of her thigh. Perfect linework. She was almost done. "I didn't suggest o-otherwise."
Her tone was more clipped than usual. Sasuke watched her move, seeing the hard line of her brow, the frown pulling the left corner of her mouth down, and the tightness of her posture despite the fact that she was leaning over. She didn't have many tattoos on her leg, so this seemed to be new territory.
Overall, her energy was not right. There was something going on. He sat down in the chair across from her, "Why are you up?"
She rose an eyebrow as if to challenge him, but the energy didn't stay on her face long. She shut off the machine: done for now. "Couldn't sleep. It's b-been a long day." Then she looked at him, truly looked at him, and frowned deeper. "Why a-aren't you? Y-you look, um..."
She trailed off. He had bags under his eyes and sweatpants on. She had never seen him wear sweatpants before.
"You can say it," Sasuke said. "I look terrible."
"You look terrible," she confirmed. She wiped the tattoo clean, then put a fresh patch of tegaderm over it, sealing it in. Then she turned around and began to tidy up. The silence between them was an entire ocean.
Sasuke sat like his bones begged it of him. He took the time to take in the framed pieces of art on the wall––most of it flash Hinata had drawn for tattoos. Her work was lyrical: three swans dancing in a pool of water, swords embellished by floating ribbons, women with fierce eyes who peered at nothing. He listened to the sound of her opening and closing drawers, wondering aloud, "Were you serious when you said you'd draw a tattoo for me?"
"Hm?" Hinata looked up over her shoulder at him, trendles of hair falling from her bun. Her distraction was endearing, and it reminded Sasuke of his sudden, insane attraction to her. He felt this in his throat and he hated it. "O-of course. It's...it's um, up in my room. Would you like to see it?"
The Uchiha nodded. Hinata said nothing as she finished cleaning her station, wiping down the massage table, and disposing of her used needles. Without a word, she shut off the lights and didn't look back as Sasuke followed her. He climbed the stairs to her bedroom, privately grateful that there was no security walking down this hallway. Then he realized that Hinata had probably intended it this way, choosing the back stairway through the kitchen.
Her bedroom was the second door to the right. She opened the door and gestured him through. Sasuke wasn't surprised by the design: a minimalist's bedroom with a king-sized canopy bed in the middle, gently decorated with satin sage green sheets. She had a desk in one corner (covered in books and such) and a vanity in the other (neat, tidy, and unused looking). There was a tan ottoman at the foot of her bed that she opened and pulled a sketchbook from. Then she closed it and gestured for him to sit.
He sat. She folded open the book to reveal a page that sent a shock through his system, but he contained it well. Looking up at him were three sleek Ravens in total, two sitting on a piece of birch wood, one in flight. The one with its wings spread had a sharp knife within its talons. Its mouth was open.
For a sharp, biting moment, he wondered if he had been made.
Hinata didn't look at him–– instead, she slid her hands down the page, tracing the lines of ink. She'd drawn it with what looked like a ball-point pen. "I s-saw some ravens a while ago and thought they were beautiful," she handed the paper to him and he held it gingerly, trying to imagine where he would fit it on his body. "Then, I saw you looking at a raven that was bouncing on some cold concrete. I saw the bird look at you, and you looked like kindred spirits."
Sasuke slipped a handle of scotch out of his back pocket with his free hand and gestured towards her. She wrapped her fingers around the bottle, her lips quirking up curiously. The light in her bedroom was dim: she had a small lamp on at her bedside, but it was framed by a couple of towering palm-like plants. The lamp cast a low orange room over their figures.
She took a hefty swig without preamble; whatever she was going through seemed difficult enough without Sasuke digging his nose in it. Sasuke extended his hand to take the bottle back, but she merely held up a finger: wait, and swallowed a couple of gulps more.
Sasuke watched her neck move as she drank the liquor. He took the bottle back when she finally offered, took some sips of his own, and banished the Uchiha Compound from his mind completely with that drink. A Spy trick. It wasn't real if he could not see it––if he could not feel it.
He handed the bottle back and she took yet another drink. She let her hair fall from its bun, then she said: "but I think ravens travel in a pack, called a murder. You're more of a lone wolf, no?"
"No," Sasuke said. "Murders are for crows. Ravens travel in pairs."
"Hm," she looked at the drawing. "Maybe I'll get rid of one."
"Don't worry about it," the Uchiha found himself saying. "This drawing is perfect."
Perhaps the scotch was finally getting to him, but he was aware of how close they were sitting on this ottoman, with Hinata's plush-looking bed behind them. He watched her untuck her leg from where it had been underneath her, standing to her full heigh. "I-I'm glad you think so. Where would y-you want it tattooed?"
They were so close that he could smell the scotch on her mouth. He leaned back against her bed, tilting his head up to look at her, "You're the artist. You tell me."
Hinata flushed red, but she didn't hesitate. She walked across the room and cut out the outline of the ravens, leaving the extra scraps of paper on a pile of books on her desk. She held the drawing up to his forearm, measuring it against his bicep. Her arm was outstretched as if she were afraid to touch him in the dark of her bedroom. "Here?"
"Perhaps," Sasuke intoned mildly. He looked at her expectantly, amusement briefly dancing behind his gaze. "Let's try somewhere else, Hyuga princess."
"T-tough crowd," she commented idly. She moved it down to his forearm, resting the image there. "W-what about this?"
"Seems too obvious."
Hinata scoffed––a sound he had never heard her make before. She had a small but loose smile on her face, "That's not obvious. This is obvious," she said, and held the outline up to his chest, just under his collarbone. This pulled her considerably closer to him, her hand firmly planted against his chest, and her body hovering over him. One of her knees was planted firmly on the futon, while the other found solid ground.
"Oh? This is?" he raised his eyebrows, looking up at her.
Hinata nodded, looking down at him. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was parted as if she was going to say something. Sasuke watched the slow spread of blush across her cheek, saw the way her hair swayed to the side of her head like a curtain, and felt her body tense as she considered her next move. Sasuke had already figured out his.
He kissed her.
She seemed to be expecting this, her lips parting easily to allow him to envelop them in his. She sighed into his mouth, the taste of alcohol wrapping around their bodies. It's like she had expected this to happen––like both of them had––how easily their mouths found movement together. Hinata's hand moved to wrap behind his head, leaving its place from his chest and dropping her illustration to the ground between them.
"Fuck," Sasuke muttered into her mouth as he realized what he was doing. He could not think of it, and he did not after that. He grabbed her waist, pulling her down from her half-standing position. Her body crumbled against him, warm and humming, she responded by wrapping an arm around his neck, her fingers tangling in his hair, pulling her his head to him. Their mouths met hungrily again, with force that threatened to knock them both off the ottoman. Sasuke could feel the heat erupting between them as she straddled him, panting with unexpected want. Sasuke wanted her. He wanted to forget about everything. And right now, she seemed to be the solution to that.
Sasuke could feel how quickly her pulse raced as he moved his mouth to her neck. Hinata's breath was coming fast and Sasuke was half-off the ottoman. He made an executive decision: he wrapped his hands under her knees and grabbed her, walking the few feet to her bed as he kissed Hinata with an open mouth. When he laid her down, he took his shirt off in a fluid motion, throwing it into some far corner. He stretched his body across the top of her as their mouths reunited, and his hands explored the luscious expanse of Hinata's hips. Her arms were tight around his neck, and he could feel her back arch as he slowly moved his hands lower until they tugged at the seam of her shorts. They kissed hungrily. Sasuke worked his hand lower still, dipping over the lace of her underwear and pressing in the small, wet, mound. A low moan left her lips, a sultry sound that wrapped around Sasuke's body and made him shiver with lust.
"Do you want me to stop?" Sasuke asked in her ear when Hinata sighed this long sigh. Neither of them had been expecting this, after all. When she didn't immediately respond, Sasuke stood up slowly, unwrapping their limbs from each other's bodies, and paused to collect his breath and his senses.
Fucking his boss's daughter. It wasn't required of this mission. He usually fucked on missions if it was required or could lead to some precious information, so this was new for him. It could only go poorly––especially if Hiashi, or any of them really, were to find out. But when he turned a looked at her, preparing to end this for good, his words got lost. Instead, his body reacted, leaving no room for argument.
Hinata was laying with her midsection raised as she popped up on her elbows. Trendles of dark hair fell around her shoulders. Her t-shirt had slipped around her bra, exposing her stomach. Her tattoo twisted around her torso and dipped down into her shorts, and her legs remained open. Her mouth, too, was open, and her expression was somewhat confused, somewhat aroused, and overwhelmingly pink. Her chest was moving like her heart was trying to escape from her.
Sasuke began to move away, but Hinata clasped his forearm, holding his gaze. "No!" she said, responding to his question with a force neither of them were expecting. "I mean––I don't think so." Her face pinched, "I-I'm just...I'm going through s-something."
Sasuke looked down at where her arm gripped his and she released it as if ashamed. She turned on her side, away from him, moaning. "D-do you want to stop? Oh my god," he could hear her say. "Ohhhh my god. I'm s-so fucking stupid––"
It's not that this amused him, it's just that he didn't quite know how to respond. No one had ever responded to him kissing them like that before. The bottle of scotch was on the floor. He grabbed it and drank from it as Hinata's breath turned somewhat erratic beside him. There was about a shot or two left. He nudged her elbow: an offering.
"It's okay," Sasuke said softly. He meant it, too. This made her look up from her web of self-pity. "We don't have to do this if you don't want to." It would probably be for the better if they didn't.
Hinata took the offering and finished the bottle. She held it up in front of her face and looked at him through the glass. In turn, Sasuke looked through the bottle to look at her, her body distorted against the silk green sheets of her bed. She cleared her throat and it sounded uncomfortable, "It's n-not that I don't necessarily..."
Sasuke shrugged, an ache in his core he would have to take care of soon, but he wasn't going to rush her. "It's up to you, Hyuga Princess, this is your domain. Just know––it would mean nothing to me. Just sex. It doesn't have to mean anything to you either."
"I've only ever had m-meaningful sex," Hinata admitted, which seemed too honest for the moment, and broke whatever spell Sasuke had been trying to fabricate.
He took the empty bottle from her grip and tossed it to some far corner. He sat down next to her on her bed not touching her. "Okay," Sasuke said, a smirk flitting the corners of his mouth as he looked over at her. "And what other embarrassing fact do you think you need to tell me tonight?"
Her chest rose as she shuddered. He wanted to take her shirt off. "I don't––I don't know."
"Do you want me to leave?" Sasuke asked again, this time with finality.
"No," Hinata said. Her eyes were wide, wild, and lovely. When she looked at him, he saw the moon in her face and it made the energy leave his bones.
Her hand played with the edge of her shirt and he watched her peel it off her body. She grabbed his hand, and brought it to her waist, and mumbled: "Like y-you said, it w-won't mean anything, right?"
"Right," he said, already leaning over her body. He relished in its heat as his mouth found her left collar bone. One hand brought her arms over her head, while the other grabbed her waist and held her there. He let his breath ghost her skin as he she twitched sensually underneath him. Finally, when he got to her lips he said, "it will mean nothing at all."
Hinata woke up a few hours later. It was 5 am, and her head was nestled under Uchiha Sasuke's chin. They were both naked.
And so she jolted up in surprise, tearing her head from under the Uchiha's, sliding out from under his arms, and jumping into the frigid cold of her bedroom.
Fuck, fuck, fuck she thought in a loop, recalling their frenzied, gratifying fucking from only a handful of hours before. Sasuke's arms pinning her down, her mouth on his neck, their legs intertwined. Why did I do that?!
It took her a couple of minutes to realize that Sasuke had begun thrashing in his sleep. She turned away and slipped a black cotton tank top over her head along with a pair of undies that were gently folded on top of her dresser. She immediately felt better when the clothing folded over her body like a warm a hand. It wasn't that she was uncomfortable with her body...just that she was uncomfortable with other people around her body. It didn't matter that they had just had sex!
When she carefully slid back into the warmth of her bed, Sasuke was twitching and breathing heavily, his brow leaving an impression on his forehead. He was frowning heavily and kicking his feet. The expression on his face was of complete desolation.
"S-Sasuke," Hinata sleepy called his name as she watched him wrestle wither her sheets, his bare chest sleek with sweat. She pushed his shoulder, "Wake up, Sasuke, wake up. It's...it's okay."
After a few more seconds of gentle shoving, he wrecked awake, sitting straight up in her bed, coughing like he was dying. Hinata patted his back like she didn't know what else to do, too scared to turn her patting into soothing rubs. It took a few minutes, but Sasuke finally came back to Earth, his eyes blinking at her like she was some sort of alien or mythical creature.
"Why aren't you," he cleared his throat roughly. "Why aren't you naked anymore?"
Hinata merely blinked at him, withdrawing her hand from his back as her face colored. "I w-was cold," she said, lying. "But that's not the point."
"What's the point then?" Sasuke stretched his hands over his head, his hair falling around his face playfully, Hinata's duvet dipping dangerously below his waistline. He looked like a statue, all muscles, and hard lines. It was like his nightmare had not even happened.
Hinata took it all in, thinking idly, sleepily, that Ino would have a fit over this. Still, she wanted to be serious about his abrupt awakeness. Hinata pulled the blanket over her shoulders as she looked at him. It felt like she had just stepped into an entirely different universe when she said, "I get nightmares too, you know. They leave me breathless, m-most of the time."
Sasuke said nothing for a while. Outside, the wind bellowed in big gusts, and the trees made tapping sounds against one of Hinata's windows. Hinata could feel the chill seeping in through the windows and Sasuke laid back down, sliding under the covers next to her, his warmth an inviting space. "I did like your drawing," he said, instead of talking about his nightmares. "They reminded me of my childhood. The Uchiha Compound had tons of trees, tons of crows."
Hinata hadn't been expecting this thread of tenderness, no matter how pillow-talky and hormone-induced it could have been. She nestled her head close to his, her eyes willing him to keep going.
"I used to try to catch them," he said, his voice a tenor away from laughter. "Obvious, I could not."
Hinata snorted. The wind howled outside and she shivered. Her bedroom was a vast and frozen lake outside of this king bed, and she nestled towards the center. "My m-mom used to keep birds actually," she recalled.
Sasuke's shoulder bumped her shoulder. He shifted more even still, radiating heat. Hinata wanted to evaporate into him. "What happened to them?" He asked. "There are no birds in captivity here that I know of."
Hinata snorted, "Y-you only know half the things that exist here."
A sleek eyebrow raised, but Hinata looked away into the far darkness of her room. "No, there are no birds here. We released them all after my mother committed...committed suicide."
Sasuke made no sound, and Hinata did not look at him. Instead, she traced the tiny thread that lined the top of the duvet until she got to Sasuke's side. Then she traced the line back to herself. "We thought it would be bad luck to keep them in cages after that. We let them out, though the p-probably died in the wild." Hinata stopped when her fingers reached his side again. "They...they were summer birds. It would've been better to surrender them."
Sasuke caught her hand and guided her arm up above his face, where he traced a line of her palm up to her elbow, sending spikes of warmth through her. He released her gently, turning his head to say, "Some birds still know how to migrate. Maybe they made it," they were almost nose to nose. "I'm sorry about your mother."
For some reason, Hinata said, "I'm sorry about everything."
And she leaned in to kiss him, and he kissed her back. It was a sweet kiss that left her fingers, toes, and mouth one tingling organism. He wrapped an arm around her, and together they dove into the warmth of the covers. Perhaps this would be a one-night thing. But damn, it felt good as hell.
Not wanting the night to end when she woke, Hinata blinked her eyes closed and nestled deeper into the canyons of Sasuke's body. She breathed in his scent of sweat and sandalwood, saying sleepily, "Go on a run with me tomorrow?"
Sasuke nodded his chin against the top of her head and said "Sure, Hyuga Princess."
AN: *Sweet Disposition plays in the background*
