A/N: This fic is for…..IvyAdrena! Woooo! Go read In Your Hands. It's a much better KisaSaku than this junk. Seriously.

Kisame, Tobi, and Deidara sat, slumped, in the living room, each in his unspoken assigned chair. In the air, there was a feeling of utter defeat. And also that someone had forgotten to turn the oven off.

Deidara broke the stillness first, pulling his hair out of the tie to run his hands through it, trying to remove pieces of bark, leaves, tree sap, and an extremely fatigued ant.

"Well, that sucked, yeah."

"Tobi can't feel his legs."

Kisame glared at the two from his chair, as domineering over the others in the room as President Lincoln himself.

"Quiet, you two. We need to think. Did Hidan get back to the house? Did…oh, no." Kisame slapped a hand to his forehead.

Tobi and Deidara released one another from their respective headlocks.

"What is it, yeah?"

"Is something wrong with Kisame?"

"We never were able to catch up to Hidan. That means that if he managed to get back to the cottage, then he had the meeting with the elders to specify the agreed price. Dammit. Sakura's bitch of a mother'll clean me out of everything I've got. That naïve idiot won't know a thing about pricing, and her dad and uncles don't have a clue either. The mom's running the whole thing, I just know it."

"Oh, my mother is not a bitch."

Sakura smiled as all three men's heads snapped around simultaneously. "Hey, guys!"

Kisame blinked. "Sakura. What are you doing here?"

Sakura put her hands on her hips and cocked her head, looking, essentially, like Sakura with her hands on her hips and her head tilted to the side. Kisame simply adored it. Provided it wasn't directed specifically at him, of course. That usually meant he was going to get in trouble. On the other hand, it sometimes meant she was horny. You just never knew with Sakura, he mused.

She barked out a laugh and sauntered over to Kisame's chair, sitting directly in his lap so as to have easy access to his hair, which then submitted itself to some high quality 'running your fingers through it' sort of lovely pastime.

"I just snuck back over here as soon as I heard Hidan in with my poor dad and uncles." She sighed and fell back onto Kisame's chest, which cried out in unheard joy. It was a chest, after all, and chests do not have mouths or vocal chords. They don't even have tongues. "You're right, though. My mom is running the whole thing. It's not tradition for women to take control, but she hid behind a chair and snapped at them through the whole conversation. Sorry, Kisame, but I couldn't intervene in time."

Kisame stiffened. "No."

"Yep. Looks like you're going to be in trouble. She didn't ask for money, though…"

He blinked again. "Then…what?"

The front door banged.

"God, these pies are so fucking awesome, seriously. Oh, hey, assholes. And hello, my darling Sakura. You look ravishing today, as usual."

Kisame glared. "Watch it."

Hidan continued as if uninterrupted. "Could I interest you in some pie? Your mom gave me like a million of them." He held out a plate and fork in his hand and nudged a large brown bag beside him with his foot; a giant slice of rhubarb pie covered the entirety of the plate. "How about you open up and I—"

"Do it and you die."

Sighing, Sakura ran her fingers through Kisame's hair again, which was beginning to wonder if it would fall out early what with all this constant messing up, which is interesting as hair does not have the ability to reason or otherwise think whatsoever.

"Calm down, Kisame. He's only kidding." She extracted herself from Kisame's very tense bodily structure, much to his bodily structure's dismay, and calmly walked over to Hidan, who continued eating his pie fervently. Sakura squatted down and peered in the bag. "Jeeze. There has to be at least ten pies in here!"

Hidan smirked. "Uh huh. And I got some free sake. That's why I don't remember…too much of…the…meeting. Wait. What time is it? I kinda fell asleep while I was there." Here he had the grace to look sheepish. "Well, fuck." He rubbed the back of his head. "I think we talked about something back there…something involving…cows?"

Deidara and Tobi exchanged worried glances for what was not the first or the last time, and Kisame and Sakura looked almost frightened. Sakura wrung her hands and spoke.

"Hidan…how many cows did they talk about?"

Hidan wrinkled his brow in thought. "I…don't really know. Like, seriously. But this pie is awesome. You can have some. But only you." He released one hand from the plate, holding both plate and fork with the other, and gestured at the bag. "Just pick one out."

"Tobi wants a pie, too…"

"Fuck you."

Sakura made a 'tsk' noise at Hidan and knelt to look in the bag again. Then she saw something that had escaped her gaze before, which was very embarrassing because it was honestly right there on top where no one could possibly miss it.

It was a bright orange Post-It Note, scrawled on with her mother's sweeping, elegant penmanship, in glow-in-the-dark pink gel pen. Carefully extracting the note from the plastic cover of a key lime pie with whip cream on top, Sakura peered closer at it, which was necessary because her mother rather believed that she was an International celebrity and made really huge, annoying capital letters.

Sakura read, "'Dear Kisame, my future son-in-law.'" Everyone held their breath except for Sakura, who was reading, and Hidan, who wandered into the kitchen with the pie bag. "'I am most pleased, as your future father-in-law, that you have chosen such a fine and beautiful young woman as my Sakura to marry.' Oh, mom. Why are you doing this?" She paused.

"'For as long as I can remember, there…hmm. The rest is all smudged in. I think he was drunk when my mom made him write this last part…oh, here's more on the bottom from her." Her eyes scanned the paper and lit up when she found what she was looking for. After reading it, of course, she looked absolutely petrified. "For our daughter, we will ask for twenty cows, a golden kunai, a pregnant goat, and assorted remedial herbs? What the…Hidan! Hidan, get back in here!"

Hidan stuck his head in the living room door. "Yes, my lovely?"

Sakura glared at him, the bastard. "Were you even paying the least bit of attention to that meeting? Huh?"

He looked nervous and scratched his arm absentmindedly. "Well…not really. Hey, did you try some of this pie? It's so good!"

Ignoring him, she continued. "This is a fortune! You could have been paying attention! You should have! We'll never be able to get this. Never. Water buffalo cost at least five hundred dollars each as adults. Dammit!"

"Um…"

"Oh, God! A golden kunai! A golden kunai! As of this morning, I'll have you know, the price of gold was up to a thousand US dollars per gram! A solid gold kunai would cost at least thirty thousand dollars! That's forty thousand dollars! A pregnant goat is…well, I don't really know. But these herbs could be obtained for free if we look hard enough, I suppose…"

Hidan smiled sheepishly. "So…you're not mad? Darling?"

Sakura smiled sweetly back, which was extremely disturbing. "Oh, I'm still mad at you. Seething, even." Yes, she was definitely someone to avoid while smiling. "There's no way we can get all this, Kisame and I, which is what my mother intended."

Kisame frowned but continued looking at Sakura expectantly, as though waiting for some sort of alternative Sakura had to offer. He didn't have to wait long.

"Hidan. I am so pissed at you. In fact, you'll never know how pissed I am. It just can't be put into words how pissed I am."

"…I'm sorry."

"You're not now, but you will be later."

Everyone in the entire room held their breath, even Frank, the goldfish.

"As your punishment, it will be your job to go look for…the pregnant goat. I'm pretty sure that'll be easy to find, but goats live in dirty places, and I know how much you love getting your hair dirty." She turned to Kisame, Deidara, Tobi, and the ever-elusive Kakuzu, and carried on. "As for all of you, I'm pretty sure I'll need all of your help getting this junk all together."

"Tobi will be glad to help!"

"I'm not going out looking for any cows, yeah."

Kakuzu left the room. Kisame sighed. "They'll all help, Sakura. What do we do?"

"Well, like I said, Hidan gets the pregnant goat. Kakuzu, if you'll help…"

"…I suppose I have nothing better to do."

"All right, then! Thanks, you're a sweetie." Hidan gagged. "Okay, Kakuzu gets the golden kunai, since I know he's so good about stuff like that. Money and stuff, whatever. Kisame, you get the cows. There may be a lot of them, but there are herds of formerly domestic ones living wild in the hills after that wind knocked out those farm fences. Convenient, huh? Besides, it's traditional for you to get the cows all by yourself. Tobi, you get the herbs since you were under Zetsu for so long and know about plants from him. Deidara, since you get around easiest, I'll have you just fly around and check up on everyone."

"A golden kunai? That must cost—"

"Oh! Tobi knows just where to find all the best wild herbs!"

"Sounds fine to me, yeah. I'm just not dragging some cow back here."

"Shit. A goat."

"Move out everyone!" Sakura cupped her hands to her mouth to make herself heard over the din. "We need this done as fast as possible, or my mom will call it off!"

Kisame held back after the others hauled it to the yard, which sent a pleasant tingle up Sakura's spine. She definitely knew what was coming now. Kisame waited for a sign in his courteous way, and so Sakura decided to give him an obvious one: she ran up to him, threw her arms around him, and grabbed his ass lovingly. Momentarily stunned, Kisame simply stood with his hands loosely situated on her hips. He loved it when she did this.

Both ignoring the obscene noises coming from the front window, they leaned in and kissed tenderly, almost as tender as a filet mignon.

"So," Sakura murmured against his gleeful chest, "are there any empty closets around here? We haven't done it standing up in a ridiculous amount of time."

"Indeed," Kisame answered. "There just so happens to be an empty broom closet down this way."

He took her hand and led her politely down the hall. It was important to be genial to a woman before one planned on fucking the living hell out of her against a wall, of course. Sakura grinned, entertaining similar thoughts inside her head.

The cows could wait a little.

Flight was a blessing bestowed on those who dared to reach for it, Deidara mused as he circled slowly over the half-assed crowd on the front lawn. Actually, he was just thinking about how much his ankle itched, but the first thing is certainly more poetic.

"At least I have the easiest job," he murmured to himself. "No chasing after cows for me, yeah."

Hidan's head shot up. "I can hear you up there, asshole. And if I have anything to do with it, you will have the hardest job! Look out for sharp, aerial projectiles while you're out being a fucking sentry, you spineless dick!"

Deidara smiled genially and waved down at the red-faced, raging, murderous psychopath down below. For the record, said crazy person is also very good-looking.

"It's also nice that, what with all the wind, I can't hear what the hell anyone is saying from up here, yeah. Wish it wouldn't make my hair so shitty-looking."

So, unfortunately, Deidara completely missed the rest of Hidan's rant, which detailed the sorrows and woes of where the fuck to find a pregnant goat and why the hell he couldn't look for cows. Tobi, on the other hand, was very willing to lend a sympathetic ear. That or he fell asleep behind his mask. You never could tell with him.

Deidara was much less sympathetic than Tobi, though, and so immediately turned the bird around and headed towards the nearest city. Sakura was the only one who he was sure would be monitoring his duty as a sentry, and since she and Kisame were rather occupied in a closet at the moment, there would be plenty of time to go to town and get a bit to eat. Nodding sagely at the wisdom of his plans, he reached into his Akatsuki cloak and swiftly pulled out a small, plastic container.

He hoped there would also be plenty of time to eat this pie as well, though he felt slightly guilty.

It wasn't like it was stealing or anything, if you thought about it. No one was guarding it, and no one's name was on it. Therefore, it was totally legal. Normally he wouldn't care, of course, but Sakura had a mind to convert them all to benevolent, gracious, old-lady-helping citizens from the day she met them, and so he acquiesced. For Kisame's sake. The guy was as henpecked as they came.

Twenty minutes, seven seconds, and fifteen nanoseconds later, Deidara landed in the back alleyway of the cutest damn teashop you have ever seen. There were paintings of kittens in the thing, for God's sake. Deidara felt a tingle go down his spine as he crossed the lavender and rose petal threshold, as though his masculinity was being stripped away from his very being while each step took him closer to his favorite table.

There was a reason why he risked everything by coming in here, by being subject to old women coming up behind him and pinching his sweet ass every time he got up to leave.

It was the ice cream.

The ice cream was a special sort, they said the first time they had offered it to him out on the street, a recipe that traveled hundreds of miles to get to their kitchen. Deidara missed the rest of the lady's lecture on the history and culture of Italian desserts while he was choking down the plate of wonderful, soft, creamy, pink cold stuff. Damn good, it was.

Smiling that sort of smile that people can only really smile when they think about their first time eating ice cream, Deidara stretched out his legs and put his arms behind his head, and waited.

It didn't take long before the squeals came, and then a stampede of elderly women in old-fashioned kimono. Retired geishas trying to make a living, they told him before. That made this even better, Deidara thought while being spoon-fed ten brand new samples of the ice cream. One of the women took the tie out of his hair and began to softly brush out his luscious, golden, manly locks. Oh, he'd never hear the end of it if one of the guys walked in here. Was it truly worth it?

Yes, it was, he mused as he pushed unidentified hands away from the fly on his pants for the fifth time. If only to escape that horrid, draconian atmosphere back home. This marriage business was a bunch of crap. If you got married, when would you ever get the opportunity to have ten ex-geisha feel you up?

When Deidara closed his eyes, he imagined them in their prime, smooth, white skin and elaborate hairstyles typical of geisha in their youthful years. He vaguely wondered, drifting slowly off to sleep, if they could hook him up with a geisha who would even consider allowing him to be her patron. It was a nice thing to think about, impossible though it might be.

The door to the teashop opened, brushing against the shop bell and a jaunty ring reverberated throughout the room. Deidara felt a pair of hands leave his right thigh, where they had previously been occupied in some very much welcome massage therapy.

"Oh, Lord Kazekage!" The woman gushed. "How nice to see you here! And you brought your siblings with you as well, how lovely. And is that Baki I see back there? Baki, you're getting foxier by the minute! Come on in, you four!"

Deidara's stomach sank all the way to somewhere in the southeastern Atlantic ocean as he felt not-so-welcome familiar chakra spreading all around them. The door was on the other side of the shop, though, and behind a row of large flower arrangements, so maybe they hadn't seen him yet…

"Oh, come over here and sit with us and Mr. Deidara here, won't you? I'll go get you all some cake. You must be exhausted!"

Shit.

Hidan, meanwhile, trudged down the path to insanity, which, ironically, happened to be the path to the nearest farmstead. Might as well try to get this done as quickly as possible. How hard was it to find a pregnant goat, anyway?

He sighed.

Then he scratched his head.

Then he sighed again and looked back up at the sky.

Oh, yes, this was so enthralling, walking on a path to nowhere. There wasn't even fucking vegetation to look at. Just wide open, boring tundra with a wolf on it.

And there went the wolf.

Wait. Was that a goat over there?

"Ha!" He threw a fist in the air triumphantly and ran majestically across the wide open space, feeling free as a duck. Then the goat randomly changed into a wolf and started charging at him, which set things back a little on the duck issue.

"Shitshitshitshitshit—augh!" Trying to run frantically in a long cloak was extremely difficult, Hidan decided. Even with no vegetation to lose footing on, there was still the hem of the damn thing, which insisted on getting in his fucking way.

Agonizing, patronizing, mesmerizing seconds later, he threw himself across the fence posts panting, too lazy to go any further. If the wolf wanted to come and tear him apart now, well, then what the damn hell. Having a rotund goat bleat right next to his ear and walk calmly through a break in the decaying poles was excruciatingly more torturous to Hidan's current mental state, however.

"The…hell?" Hidan set his mouth in a grim line, which would normally look quite austere and macho on his sexy, manly face, but only exceeded in looking silly since his face was getting covered in goat spit at that particular moment.

Okay. So first it was a goat—he was sure it was—and then it was a raging, homicidal wolf, and then it was a goat again.

…Wasn't it?

Suddenly suspicious of this ungulate, gray and dirty-white creature, Hidan scooted away from the unwanted facial contact and reached out a suspicious hand filled with suspicious chakra. He brushed a hand against the goat, not too surprised when the goat disappeared in a poof of white smoke with a sassy 'maaaah.'

He stood up, a calmly calculative façade overtaking his chagrin. Someone was after him. But who? There were certainly many people who would have him dead, but—?

"I hope you realize that was the least you deserved."

Hidan spun around, somewhat startled, but didn't really get a much better feeling in his gut as a languid Kisame leaning on the fence met his eyes. Something about his posture was more dangerous than what met the eye, though. Shit.

"Hey…" Hidan smiled jovially, trying vainly to ease what he could feel coming. "Kisame. Buddy. You're not pissed that I became slightly inebriated at the little party your lovely fiancé's mother threw for me, huh? I mean, I'm sure you think the rooree or whatever it was called was a tad high, but what's money, eh? Money isn't worth shit between friends."

He smiled, and Kisame smiled back, grinning. "So, uh…what was with that goat-wolf thing back there?"

Kisame laughed uproariously and put an arm around Hidan's shoulders. "I was just messing with your head. Sakura was the one who showed me how to create illusions like that to freak people out in battle. Apparently she made tons of little fake ramen bowls for Naruto when he caught her in a bad mood."

Hidan chuckled nervously behind clenched teeth. Something was off about this situation; he just couldn't put his grass-stained finger on it. Oh, well. Might as well finish off the total pacification of Kisame Hoshigaki.

"Seriously, man. Anyway, what say we head on down to the nearest town and have some sake on me? Come on, it'll be a mini bachelor's party, only with no hookers. So whaddaya say?"

Kisame's smile hardened and his eyes turned steely, the air abruptly swirling with unrestrained chakra, pulsating, alluding murderous intent.

"All I have to say," Kisame growled out menacingly as his arm whipped around Hidan's neck to form a fully functional choke hold, "is that I am damned happy there is no chance of accidentally killing you."

Hidan let out a muffled emission of surprise from behind Kisame's tense form.

He found it increasingly difficult to verbally express any thoughts or concerns whatsoever shortly afterward, however, and for the next few weeks, as his voice box went missing in a sudden, scar-you-for-life event that he never did have the heart tell anyone about.