All right, I have a bunch of excuses, but I'm not going to waste your time here by writing them. They'll be down at the bottom for whoever wishes to read them.

This chapter is slightly small, but its VERY juicy, so I hope that makes up for the length. Go ahead, read on!

And please review :)

~conorlover~

Disclaimer applies.

Chapter 15

Ice Cream

Chocolate and raspberry ice cream had such a unique flavour to it.

Most people tried to avoid it, finding the sweetness of the chocolate to be contrasting with the tartness of the raspberry, but for Hinata it was a special treat. Her mother used to make this for her when they were young, and the taste of the rare treat made Hinata revive old memories that reminded her of when she was young and times were good. It was her favorite dessert, and she had spent many an afternoon near the enormous Hyuuga kitchens, watching the kitchen hands prepare the dish for their precious heiress. The last time she had eaten it, though, was several years ago, as a physical fitness instructor appointed by her father at age twelve had listed it as one of the unhealthy things to eat, forbidding her from touching it, and commanding her to instead concentrate on beef and the other red meat to increase the animal fat content, and trained her like a dog, trying to build up muscles. Unique as she was, though, the exercise had had absolutely no effect on her, leaving her arms with the same, wiry, understated muscles that were already present, instead of bulky, new ones, like sumo wrestlers arms.

She had scoured the city in secret searching for her favorite treat, looking desperately for it, but, as it was not a popular dessert, it was not to be found in any of the prominent pastry shops except one, and the owner of that had been strictly instructed by Hiashi not to sell her any items, at the threat of closing his livelihood. Complacent, but disappointed, Hinata had given up her search, resigning herself to a life which would forever be bereft of the delicious treat, until her father relented or was forced to relent.

So, it was today that she could feel fear bubbling deep inside her, somewhat marring the delicious taste in her mouth, at the thought of what would father's reaction be if he found out that she had broken one of his rules. Would he be very angry? Would he remain impassive? Would there be more cutting words about how she had disappointed the entire Hyuuga family, or made her undesirable to the Uchiha family? Would he be so furious that he would sentence her to a 'spar' with one of her cousins (which actually meant a sound beating from one of the former or present ANBU members of the Hyuuga family?

"Oh, lighten up," Sasuke said, licking his own frosted scoop. "It's not like you committed a murder or something."

"Demo, Sasuke-san, you don't understand. Father takes all of his rules to be of the same strength. To break one means the same punishment as if you break all," answered Hinata, in perfect seriousness. She could think of few things worse than her father's wrath.

"That's good, then. If I want, I could break all of the rules and still get the punishment for only one," the dark-haired teenager nonchalantly replied, words becoming slightly slurred due to his tongue being otherwise occupied in licking his rapidly-melting scoop.

Hinata felt a momentary dash of irritation, but it was quickly overcome by gratitude. After all, this man had just restored one of the greatest pleasures of her life.

They had been training, just like they did three times a week, and hinata had finally been a little pleased. She had managed to evade Sasuke's murderous attacks a total of seven times, a new record. The man was ruthless, and it was rare that she was able to anticipate his random attempts towards relieving her of her life, but today, she had beaten her previous record by a whole new three times. Even Sasuke had seemed to think that she was improving – well, at least she assumed that he thought that she was improving. He had ended the session with a noncommittal 'Hn' as usual, but there had been more warmth, and something that looked begrudgingly like respect in his face. Far too happy to be alive, Hinata had quickly washed her arms to remove some of the grass and mud stains, and was preparing to go home. It was not a pleasant thought, but she had nowhere else to haunt today, and home was really the only place she could stay. Neji and Hanabi were both out on missions, B- and D- class respectively, and Hinata had been alone for the past week. Father had left her alone in the evenings, but he had been eyeing her contemplatively last night, and she was certain that he was about to order her to spend her time more constructively when he had been called away by a meeting of the elders.

She had been supremely glad for it yesterday, but was unsure if Lady Luck would intervene in her behalf today as well. Sasuke gave her a grueling workout, and the only thing she wanted to do after that was to relax and unwind with some friends, instead of what her father would inevitably order her to do. Either she would be commanded to practice her taijutsu, or she would have to work on some new exercise that was needed for her upcoming nuptials to the heir of the Uchiha clan.

Lady Luck, though, seemed to be more compassionate than usual, or maybe it was just intuition on the behalf of one ebony-eyed shinobi. Sasuke had stared at her with an unreadable expression on his face, and then asked her, in a low, masculine voice, whether she would like to get something to eat.

She had stared open-mouthed at him for a second, far too shocked to perform any of those basic neural functions, until her brain had kicked in and started to go to overdrive. Beginning to weigh pros against cons, it had promptly put facts such as her impending doom, her grumbling stomach, her curiosity about her trainer, and her unwillingness to go home in the pros section. Under cons came – nothing. Earlier, she would have probably been frightened out of her mind about going out to eat something with the Uchiha, but today her mind was strangely at peace. After all, if he had wanted to kill her, surely he would have done it by now? It would be much easier to break her neck and leave her on the training field, where no one knew they were training together, than to take her out publicly and poison her with some toxin in front of a lot of witnesses.

So, she agreed to go with him. Not only because the pros section was so full, but also because she genuinely wanted to get to know him behind his elusive façade. Hinata was a human being, and humans are naturally curious. After all, humans and cats are from different classes. Besides, she somewhat liked and trusted him to a point.

So that was how they had found themselves wandering the streets of Konoha, searching for something to eat. Both agreed that it was far too early for dinner, the sun having barely set and its rays still shining warm over the sky. Dango was a possibility, but Sasuke had spotted Anko there, and dragged her away, saying something about a 'witch woman', and finally, exhausted they had settled on ice cream.

That was when the impossible had happened.

Sasuke had asked her which ice cream she liked best.

She had replied, meekly, that it didn't matter.

Sasuke had grown irritated and had growled/asked her which ice cream she liked best again.

She had grown scared, and, in a breath of air so soft it could not be heard except by the sharpest shinobi ears, she had replied "Ch-ch-chocolateandraspberry."

Sasuke had miraculously been able to decipher her words and had taken her to a small wasabi shop tucked into a corner.

The shop also sold chocolate and raspberry ice cream.

Hinata had gaped in astonishment.

Sasuke had ordered raspberry and chocolate for her and 'The Usual' for himself.

Which brought them back to their present state.

Hinata snuck a glance at Sasuke. He was moodily picking at his cherry-red ice cream. The colour of it was really quite astonishing. A stain the colour of the ripest cherry decorated the mound of now-melting-previously-frozen cream. She idly watched it as she placed small amounts of her own double scoop inside her mouth, relishing every spoonful, and swirling the flavours around with her tongue. It really was heaven in frozen form.

She wondered what flavour he had chosen. He had only mentioned 'The Usual' in an authoritative tone to the waiter, so it was obvious that he was a regular to this shop. The colour was really quite eye-catching. It looked like a bright cherry, or a new snow apple, or the cheeks of one of the young children running around outside, or the inside of an overripe papaya, or red dango sauce, or…

Or blood.

She suddenly lurched back from the table, a horrible feeling welling inside her. Blood. The answer was really quite obvious. Sasuke was having blood-flavored ice cream. Blood, like the one that beat through her veins at this very moment. Blood. Blood, blood, blood.

She was sitting with a vampire.

It wasn't as if people hadn't speculated that he was a vampire. Both the Uchiha brothers looked extremely alike, but differed in looks from both their parents. That, combined with their otherworldly beauty and the relative homeliness of both their parents, had led to half the village speculating that the boys were the children of a succubus that had seduced Uchiha Mikoto, promising her a life of love and pleasure, and to take her away from her cold, emotionally and physically abusive husband, but left her with only her two boys, Sasuke and Itachi. These boys' extraordinary good looks, combined with their ability to attract women, their amazing abilities, and the legend that an old woman had spun about seeing someone who looked just like them entering Mikoto Uchiha's quarters once late at night, had made some of the more superstitious members of Konoha's community declare that they were vampired – half-admiringly and half-fearfully.

Hinata was not superstitious beyond a certain level, but tonight, perhaps because of the miracles taking place, or the full moon hanging low in the sky, or the sound of people's laughter outside, a sound she rarely heard, but she was feeing particularly jumpy. In the dim light of the red lanterns that the shopkeeper had lit outside barely half an hour ago, Sasuke seemed unusually pale. He always almost resembled paper, but tonight it seemed to go even deeper than that. His hair seemed darker, casting long shadows on his skin, and his lips were stained red from the ice cream. His eyelashes cast long shadows on his ckeeks, forming perfect half circles. He looked ridiculously beautiful, and very, very dangerous. His ivory throat flexed almost menacingly every time he swallowed, and his canines seemed almost inhumanely long – longer than Kiba.

Dimly, Hinata became aware that Sasuke had stopped eating and was staring at her. She was leaning far back into her chair, and had dropped her spoon upon the table, dripping her yummy treat all over the worn wood of their booth. His stare seemed almost contemplative, like she was his…

Meal.

She was his meal.

It would make complete sense – his unnatural niceness, and the way he seemed almost considerate. He was making her drop her guard near him, and then, later, he would attack her and drink all her blood, leaving her mutilated corpse near some lonely building…

"What?"

Hinata startled out of her reverie at that one word, eyes shooting up to meet Sasuke's. He had stopped eating, and was now looking at her strangely. Blushing furiously, she replied with a noncommittal sound.

This was ridiculous. He couldn't be a vampire, vampires didn't exist. And if he was a vampire, then how on earth did he possess the sharingan?

But his mother was an Uchiha too, even though she wasn't a shinobi, and she did possess the sharingan…

If he wanted to drink her blood, why didn't he do it before, when they were alone? He could have pretended that it was simply one of his attacks during training instead of going to all this trouble.

This was becoming too much for even her remarkable brain size to handle. Surely, the easiest route out was to simply ask him what flavour his ice cream was?

So she did.

Sasuke looked up, and blinked once, surprised. Then, looking down again – was that a blush on his cheeks? – he gruffly replied.

"Tomato."

Uchiha Sasuke was feeling extremely uncomfortable.

It had more to do with Hinata's open mouthed, blank stare than anything else. Usually, when he ate ice cream, he was relaxed, enjoying the flavours swirling around in his mouth, but tonight, he felt awkward and out of place. This was new, as a few moments ago he was sitting and enjoying a frosty treat with a girl who fascinated him.

He wondered what had inspired him to ask her out like that. They had merely been training as usual, and he had noticed some marked improvements in her form After seeing her tired visage, he had suggested retiring for the night, and she had briefly become elated, before mentioning home, and then a shadow of dread settled over her. She was clearly trying to stall returning to her house, and, though he did not know the reason, Sasuke felt as though he should help her out somehow. She had, after all, made ridiculous progress during the last few days, and some niggling voice inside him demanded that he make her happy. He was curious as to the reason as to why she didn't want to go home, but the gentleman in him, small as it was, insisted that if she didn't think it appropriate to share her thoughts with him, then he should leave it be. Seeing her small face looking so dejected, though, he hadn't been able to help himself and had proposed that they go out for a meal together.

This had led them to the busy marketplace, which was filled to the capacity with the evening crowd. Sasuke was too busy trying to avoid his omnipresent fangirls and the openmouthed gapes of the villagers to concentrate on Hinata herself, and they soon found themselves embroiled right in the centre of all the hustle. Being that it was merely evening as of yet, he did not feel hungry at all, and he was relieved to find out that she, too, was not eager to partake her dinner just as yet. He had seen a neighbouring sign, and had nonchalantly suggested ice cream, and she had agreed. Despite initial difficulties,he had finally got her to admit her favorite kind, and had taken her to his favorite ice cream shop. Having never taken the flavour himself, he was unsure to as to whether they would have it, but he knew the owner of the shop – had since childhood, in fact – and was aware that if anybody had all the flavours of ice cream, it would be him. The shop wasn't very big, and one had to navigate quite a bit just to see it, but it was worth it. The shopkeeper mostly catered to the exclusive set of people who had actually managed to find his shop, but still kept the widest range of food possible. If the shop could have horseradish ice cream, then why on earth couldn't they have chocolate and raspberry?

So he dragged her into the shop, and ordered a double scoop of both their choices. Momentarily losing himself in the bliss of his own ice cream, he came to when he realized that Hinata's posture had changed. Instead of that ridiculously pleased expression, she was now sporting a rather scared one, and was leaning as far back as she could in her chair, her ice cream forgotten on the table. Her eyes were fixated on him, and he could not help but notice the way that she had just the tiniest bit of ice cream stuck to her lower lip. The creamy chocolate stood out against the pale pink, and he felt a sudden and involuntary urge to lean across the table and wipe it.

Panicking, he tried to divert his attention towards his ice cream, but the red colour reminded him of her lips. The urge was becoming almost unbearable now. It was almost as if he was possessed. He found that he had involuntarily begun to lean towards her, and, panicking, he let out a single, meaningless word "What?"

That word seemed to snap her out of her stupor, and she suddenly jerked forward, hands lowering from the table onto her lap. Her pink tongue darted out to lick the little bit of chocolate cream on her lips unconsciously, and he soundlessly groaned as he realized what his body wanted.

He wanted to kiss her.

It was an insane, completely impossible wish. She was going to be married to his brother in less than a year, and then she would become his sister-in-law. These were the words that he recited every single time before they met, and they helped him overcome this incomprehensible, powerful attraction towards her, but tonight, tonight was different. There was something else, something subtle, in the air. He couldn't understand it. Perhaps it was a mixture of the atmosphere, perhaps his body had just simply lost control, but all he knew was that he couldn't withstand it anymore.

He wanted to kiss her.

For weeks he had shied away from that sentence, fearing himself to be a bad brother, but tonight, tonight he finally allowed himself to say it, even if it was just in his mind. He admitted, bowed in to his attraction towards her, accepted that there was something about this girl which drew him in and kept him there. He knew that it was the highest branches of treason even to think about it, that he was not only violating his own brother's trust but also his family's, but in his thoughts, he could not keep himself contained any longer. He had been in denial for far too long, and his mind yearned to be free, to accept the storm that it had just subjected itself to. His entire life, he had seen his brother take everything, power, affection, position, prestige, and he had begrudged him for each and every single one of them. Initially, he had tried to convince himself that his attraction towards Hinata was only because she was to be married to his brother, only because he somehow, subconsciously wanted to hurt Itachi, and berated himself for being a bad brother. However, tonight he accepted that his attraction towards her was more than any subconscious, childish wish to hurt his brother, but was rooted in a much deeper, much more sensual attraction. Everything she did was desirable to him – the way she bit her lip, the way she tilted her head just so, the way she pushed her hair behind her ears – very single action of hers made him grow more and more attracted to her, until it had reached a breaking point, and just flooded through.

He tried to rein himself in, to control himself, recognizing that if he committed some action now, then he would have violated Hinata's trust, but it was hard, and he found himself leaning forward when she slowly raised her eyes and asked him, in a voice o meager that it could have been the barest whisper of wind among dry maple leaves on a sunny day, what was the flavour of his ice cream.

Momentarily disconcerted, he jerked back, pulled from his pit of misery and desire back into the real world. He couldn't kiss her now, not only because of his family, but also because she wouldn't want it. Sasuke was no gentleman, but even he had a certain moral code to live by, and forcing himself on unsuspecting girls, especially girls he liked, was definitely a violation of aforementioned code.

"Tomato," he replied simply, voice slightly hoarse due to a combination of his tremendous mental ordeal and the extreme cold of his ice cream. The sweet flavour was not one that he was particularly fond of, preferring sour items, but since it was tomato, it was acceptable to him. The attraction towards the vegetable that really was a fruit was rooted deep in his memories and emotions, stemming from vague recollection of a warm, smiling woman handing him one while stirring a pot in a vast kitchen, her cheeks hollow from repeated illness, but still working her heart out for her husband and children. Although Sasuke had very little recollections of his mother, she was still particularly close to his heart, as her warm, self-sacrificing nature had managed to make a deep indent in his heart. Perhaps it was in those qualities that his attraction to Hinata lay, for if he ever found anyone who was as close to being self-sacrificing as his mother was, it would be Hinata.

Said Hyuuga currently looked incredulous. "T-Tomato?" she asked hesitantly, as if unable to believe that he indeed was taking a sweet treat made from the bright scarlet fruit. "Isn't it slightly sour, though? The flavour wouldn't mix with something as sweet as cream…" she trailed off.

He took another spoonful of his ice cream. "I don't like sweet things. I'm just taking this because its tomato flavored."

"Oh." Hinata became quiet again, silently swirling what was left of her ice cream around her. He took another spoonful of his double scoop.

"I'm sorry", she said suddenly, surprising him. "I shouldn't have assumed that it would taste bad. I think the tomato would rather complement the cream, in fact. They would be good together." She smiled sweetly.

He was blind for a second, overwhelmed by the power of that simple, sweet smile. He caught his breath as the last rays of the sun caught her face, illuminating her skin and making her hair shine like the darkest gloss. By God, she was beautiful.

And as sweet as cream, too.

He took another spoonful of his preferred treat, letting the flavour simmer in his mouth. Perhaps another reason for his attraction towards the fruit was the similarity between their sour natures.

He was sour, she was sweet.

Perhaps, if there was any luck and hope in the world, they could be.

Perhaps tomatoes and cream could really combine to create something lovely.

So, my excuses start here.

I accidentally dropped my laptop and smashed the front screen, so I had no computer.

When I got another computer, I had writer's block.

That's it. Please don't kill me.

Oh, and don't throw tomatoes either. After all, we all know how important they are *winks*.

Please, please, please review. Reviews inspire me to write. Writing means new chapters come faster.

~conorlover~