Hinata played with the tips of fire-red hair groggily. This was special. This was something only she got to see. Gaara curled around her comfortably, though the arm she had under and around his head was tingling from blood restriction.
Hinata didn't mind if he was comfortable.
Hinata couldn't see much of his face pressed into her shoulder. She could barely make out the mark on his forehead, but she knew his normal stony, stressed face was relaxed.
Gaara's breath ghosted over her skin, reminding her of the night before. Hinata blushed, burying her face in his hair. She was ready to consummate their marriage. She never thought about wanting to do such a thing with anyone, let alone her arranged husband.
Her crush on Naruto was never lustful, just bashful.
Hinata would have to talk about it with Gaara later. He seemed just as interested as she did, but something bothered him. She didn't think it was something wrong with her. He would have said if it was. The only thing he tried to keep was his insecurities.
Hinata sighed into his red mop and closed her eyes. She was a married woman now.
Sleeping in was not something he wasn't used to. Gaara wasn't even sure he had ever seen sunlight from his bedroom window before. Hinata was awake before him. He woke to an empty but still warm bed and the sound of water running.
His wife came out of the bathroom and crawled back into the bed when she noticed he was, in fact, awake.
"Morning." Hinata smiled before snuggling back into the warmth of the blankets. The rest of her makeup was scrubbed off, and red marks littered her face from her roughness.
Gaara buried his face into her shoulder. "When do you want to get up?"
Hinata hummed." I think when we get hungry."
Gaara agreed. "We can have food brought."
"Spending your day off in your room all day?" Hinata asked with a smile in her voice.
"Your room, too, now." Gaara reminded her.
"Yeah… Oh, but also your gift." Hinata leaned back from him.
Gaara hadn't thought about that. He was deliberately not thinking about it. He was not a fan of not knowing things that concerned him. He didn't like surprises, and he didn't like that she had felt the need to keep something from him, even if it was a gift.
Hinata put work into it. She worked on it every day for weeks. Something she was making for him. He wasn't worth that kind of effort.
"Sure." Gaara pressed the bridge of his nose into her neck.
"Okay." Hinata led him by his hands. Gaara agreed to keep his eyes closed and trust her not to trip him. "Stop." Hinata let his hands go. "You can look." Gaara opened his eyes to a large structure. He didn't understand. "It's a greenhouse." Hinata tugged him into the thick glass building. "It is for the village's medical plants."
The room smelled of wet earth and fresh leaves and was filled with unfamiliar plants in various stages of growth. The air was moist, even for a greenhouse. How did she achieve all this without someone telling him?
Hinata continued with no input from him.
"Some of these aren't even common in Konoha. They are a wedding gift from the Hyuga. Once the compound is finished, they will take over the care for it as part of the effort to help the medical center here." Hinata stopped at the end of the hall of green. "I knew no matter what I made, you wouldn't get much use out of it unless it was a desk, and I wasn't good at carpentry, but I know the village is important to you, so…"
Instead of making him something, she made something for his people. They would benefit from it in a way only she could help them with her connections to a better climate. He was so deep in that revelation that he almost missed her moving again toward a door in the back corner.
"This part is for us, though." Hinata waved her hand for him to follow as she opened the door.
Gaara followed her to a more dry feeling room littered with little pots and lines of boxes with sand in them, all filled with cacti along with some plants in normal dirt he didn't recognize. It had shaded pieces to the roof, allowing the green plants to be moved out of direct sunlight.
He realized where she got the idea now.
"Kankuro-san said you liked them…" Hinata crossed the small room to one of the plants he didn't recognize to water it. "These are tea over here. They will grow in this dry heat."
Gaara didn't give it much thought before now, but he did not think she could have possibly kept this much from him. She kept the building materials, shipments of plants and dirt, and the construction from him entirely. It made sense now, the sunburns she had healed constantly, the showers before coming to see him, the exhaustion and soreness. She had been doing manual labor.
Gaara crossed the room to her and curled his arms around her ribs, laying his face into her covered shoulder. "I should move a spare desk in here to hide for the council."
Hinata giggled, placing one hand over his arms and the other into his hair and turning to kiss his temple. "I knew you would like it."
Shukaku ran between her legs past her to jump onto her bed or rather deformed on the ground, streamed up, and reformed on her bed. "He seems to be excited I am moving in." Hinata giggled, leaning over to pet the sand mass.
"Is there any furniture you would like to keep from in here?" Gaara glanced around the room.
"I don't think so. None of it is mine." Hinata noted. "I only came with clothing and trinkets." Hinata had barely set anything out. The room wasn't really that lived in. She merely stored her items and slept in it. She spent her personal free time in Gaara's office.
"Do you use the vanity? I don't have one." Gaara noted.
"No, I had no use for it more than a desk before, and now I have an office, so I haven't used it." Hinata glanced at the dusted, abandoned surface.
"Then, this should be an easy transition."
Hinata laid out on her stomach on the bed. A mass of sand curled up and laid on her back with its head glancing over her shoulder as she flipped through a picture book. "I don't remember some of these earlier ones."
Gaara stopped her hand. "Who's that?" He pointed at a picture of a pregnant woman smiling and holding a shy toddler, trying to hide her face from the camera.
"My mother." Hinata tilted her head.
"She looks just like you," Gaara commented.
"You can see that in Hanabi-chan, too, when she smiles just right." Hinata smiled at the thought. "Her cheeks round out, and the hardness she gets from father softens."
"I look nothing like my mother. Kankuro looked the most like her." Gaara's voice held no upset, but she worried talking about his mother might make him uncomfortable.
"She got big when she had me." Hinata pointed at the difference between the belly. "She gained weight everywhere with me. They didn't know she was pregnant at first. They had just thought she was gaining weight from stopping her training to start trying for heirs. She was sick when she had Hanabi-chan, so it makes sense the pregnancy was different."
"Does it upset you, looking at these?" Gaara wondered.
"No. I think it's a rather sweet wedding gift. I don't know where Neji-san got all these. Some of them I have never seen before." Hinata noted pictures of her Hizashi and his wife, Neji's mother before she died on a mission before he was barely a year old.
"This is your first team." Gaara pointed to a picture of her, Kiba, and Shino, all chubby-faced and wide-eyed. "Why are you always covered in bruises in these younger pictures."
Hinata hadn't noticed, but he was right. Bruises on her neck were shown by her short hair and hands, even sometimes on her face. It was ignorable for the most part, but when looking through years of pictures, it did make it noticeable. "The Hyuga has a harsh training regimen for their heirs. Father, Neji-san, and Hanabi-chan probably gave me most of those."
Gaara buried his face into her shoulder. She dropped the page to lose her hand in his hair. She liked his newly learned way of showing comfort and attention.
"It wasn't that bad," Hinata told him.
Gaara curled deeper into her neck. She knew his childhood was so much worse. Why is he feeling bad for her?