Sorry for my really slow update on this one... T.T I was kind of busy trying to get a few more chapters of Sakura out... ^^;
"What was that about?"
"What was what about?" Sasuke asked innocently, batting his eyelashes childishly.
Naruto quirked a brow. "All the yelling from inside," he clarified, "You seemed really angry. And I haven't seen you use such a desperate tone of voice since... well... since you decided to pursue Orochimaru to kill Itachi."
The junior Uchiha's smile fell and he lost any act of innocence he'd had before. But still, he had to ask, "Did you hear anything that was said?"
The blond shook his head. "No, the door muffled the words."
Sasuke sighed with relief... until the twins decided to grace them with their wisdom.
"Papa said that the Uzumones give Uncle Sasu a lot of pent up energy," Reina explained.
"And since Uncle Sasu can't use that energy the way he wants to, he gets angry," Ritsu concluded, "Papa also says that Uncle Sasu's hand gets tired and so he has to—"
"Alright!" Sasuke exclaimed with forced cheer, pointing inside the house, "You guys have explained my 'disease' well enough, so I think it's time you washed up for dinner before your mother gets home."
The twins grinned devilishly and ran into the house to carry out the orders they'd been given. Sasuke sighed and leaned against the doorframe, his head bowed, one hand massaging the bridge of his nose as the other clenched and unclenched, trying to resist the urge to punch Itachi in his big fat mouth.
"Do Uzumones cause Arthritis or something like that?" Naruto queried worriedly.
"Yes, yet it does." It wasn't really a lie. After another twenty years of his hand being his lover, he wouldn't be surprised if Arthritis crippled them.
"Well, is Sakura-chan helping to treat it? How would you be able to carry out missions without your hands?"
"No, in fact, Sakura is only making things worse. And, if Orochimaru can fight without the use of his arms, I can without the use of my hands."
Naruto's lips pursed, his eyes losing some of their shine, and he took the hand that was balled into a fist, gently pressing down on it until the joints relaxed and his hand was flat again. He tenderly massaged the knuckles. "Are they hurting now?"
Sasuke's face took on a light flush and he stammered, "N-Naru—"
"Naruto!" Sakura exclaimed, approaching the house with a delighted smile. "Long time no see. Will you be joining us for dinner?"
The blond smiled happily. "You know me; I'm never one to turn down free food."
Sakura giggled and Sasuke sighed with disappointment when his hand was relinquished so that the medic could receive a tight hug.
"Come on inside, you two," Sakura said, breaking the hug and racing inside with a wide smile. She stopped in the front foyer and raised her arms at her sides as she did everyday when she got home from the hospital and hollered, "I'm home, my darlings!"
Two squeals of glee sounded and Ritsu and Reina came rushing into the room to throw their arms around their mother. Sakura returned every hug and kiss they gave, but Sasuke noticed what he noticed everyday: her eyes, instead of on her children, were locked on Itachi and Itachi's on hers.
She slowly stood and walked forward, Itachi meeting her half-way, and her arms wrapped around his waist, his arm around her shoulders and they shared a long kiss.
Sasuke sighed enviously. He wondered if, had he not developed such hopeless feelings for his best friend, he would have been married by then and if he would be greeted with kisses of adoration from his children and if he would hug and kiss his wife as though it was their first time in years.
He doubted it. Besides, Itachi and Sakura shared a very special bond thanks to all the years of anguish they had suffered just so that they could be together.
The junior Uchiha turned his eyes to Naruto, who was grinning wickedly.
"Get a room, you two!" the Kyuubi container teased.
The married couple broke their kiss and looked at Naruto with amusement. "You're just jealous because you have nobody to get a room with."
"Nah," the blond corrected, wrinkling his nose, "I actually pity you, 'Tach, because that woman in your arms totally put me off women by going to you."
"Oh, really?" Sakura asked with a smirk and all eyes—except Naruto's, of course—turned to Sasuke.
"Go for it, man!" was the message those four sets of eyes conveyed, but Sasuke smartly ignored them. There was absolutely no way in hell that he was confessing to Naruto in front of people.
Meanwhile, in Suna...
"And so, in conclusion..." Baki continued to yammer away, the rest of his words lost on Gaara. "... our gross income over the past year has—Gaara! Stop reading your goddamn Dragon Ball Z manga and listen to me!"
Gaara ignored him as his eyes skimmed the pages, his smile growing. "Ha ha, silly Kisshu, you can't stand up against the Mew Mews."
Silence followed and Gaara looked up. "I mean... go, Goku, go! Defeat those... bad guys!"
Still more silence and then the book fell out of the dust jacket so that everybody could see the cover: Tokyo Mew Mew. He pursed his lips and glared at all of the council-members until they looked away as though they hadn't seen anything. He nodded and went back to his reading when something stopped him.
He gasped. "My Yaoi Senses are tingling... and it's coming from Konoha!"
Everybody turned back to their Kazekage as though he'd gone insane.
"Could it be SasuNaru?" Gaara continued, talking only to himself. Then he stood. "I must warn everybody in the village about this so that Sasuke will have a great audience of people to support him while he confesses!" And then he jumped out the window, his sand catching him and carrying him away to Konoha.
"... Okay, I give up," Baki said with a sigh, "Everybody go home, our Kazekage seems to be detained by other matters."
A/N: Okay, here's the deal with the DBZ and TMM thing... I was intentionally going to use a really masculine shonen manga for the dust jacket (DBZ was the first thing that popped into my mind) and a yaoi for the actual manga, but then I figured that not everybody knows yaoi manga like I do, so not everybody would get the reference. So, I decided on a really shoujo-y shoujo (the first two I thought of were Tokyo Mew Mew and Cardcaptor Sakura, but I figured TMM was more Shoujo-y). And then voila!
NO, I do NOT watch or read Tokyo Mew Mew... there was a time when I was younger when I tried to read it, but it was just too... bleh... and I haven't read Dragon Ball Z either... ^^; had to do some wiki-ing on those.
And I think it's kind of obvious that I would sneak some ItaSaku in there, don't you? X3