Chapter Text
“I really don’t think I’m qualified for this, Sasuke.”
“And you think I am? Just say it.”
“The one on the left.”
“Really?”
They had been trapped in the baby section of the store for almost two hours, constantly going back and forth on their gift for Naruto and Sakura. Sasuke thought they should select a plain wooden crib, while he thought the painted wooden crib would look better in the nursery their friends were slowly constructing. Sasuke liked the simplicity of bare wood, how sophisticated and grown up the maple wood looked in comparison to his painted white oak crib, which Sasuke said lacked character and blended in with the background. They had walked away numerous times, but their many walks through the section always took them back to the same two cribs. And their interactions began and ended the same way. They would engage in a calm discussion, he would make a sound argument, Sasuke would have a rude rebuttal, he would concede, and Sasuke would tell him to make the final decision. Then they walked away, repeating the cycle again and again. He tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling, letting Sasuke poke and prod at the display version of the painted crib he preferred, knowing the man would find one tiny detail that would inevitably grow.
Sasuke didn’t like any of the cribs that lowered in the front, and he couldn’t argue in favor of them when there were constant recalls related to children falling from them, so they had narrowed their search considerably. The first time they’d disagreed on the cribs, he had suggested finding another gift, one equally as important, since he’d promised their friends that they were going to buy a major gift. He had suggested a walker, something that had grown in popularity over the years, and they’d both heard about the increasing usage of strollers, but Sasuke hated all of them and claimed that he hadn’t used a stroller while carrying his brother around the village. So he found another instance of Sasuke struggling with change. In the end, he just wanted Sasuke to stop giving him the final choice after vetoing his selection numerous times. Their discussions went nowhere. More people began to stare at them as they debated about the color of the nursery, which was a pale green called pistachio, being more favorable to pure white or pale wood.
“Sasuke, we’re getting your maple wood. That’s final.”
“Does it really go with pale green?”
“To be fair, she calls it pistachio.”
“Right.”
Sasuke wasn’t impressed by the actual name of the paint color, but he wasn’t surprised. He considered telling Sasuke to use the sharingan and rinnegan to truly examine both options and decide which seemed to hold up the best under a critical eye, but he knew the rude suggestion only came to mind because he was tired of their time in the baby section. Store clerks kept asking them if they needed help, mainly drawn to them for their looks. The women preferred Sasuke, while the men constantly tried the trick of small touches paired with speech when dealing with him. Sasuke hated when men approached them, mostly because he had to send the clerks away on his own, since their relationship wasn’t known. The women fawned over Sasuke because they assumed Sasuke was a future father, which apparently had some pull over them. When Sasuke finally stepped towards the boxes of cribs, he watched Sasuke grab a completely different crib and slapped the man’s hand. Seconds ago, he’d made the final decision, and he’d decided on Sasuke’s favorite crib. Faced with a third option that had never been introduced to the discussion at any point, he was displeased.
The third option was the same white oak that he preferred but in a washed natural selection, something he didn’t quite understand when there was no need to specify what was obvious. That option had equipment to transition from a crib to a toddler bed, which expanded their world. Two hours quickly turned to three hours, and their simple back-and-forth debate grew to include a third option that they both loved and hated, depending on the moment. The discussion shifted to the importance of a crib that could grow with the baby, and a crib that could transition to a toddler bed would have further use. They resorted to rock, paper, scissors, and left with the third option that made more sense, even though neither of them had chosen that option. The moment Sasuke mentioned a gray crib working together with the pistachio walls, he knew they needed to leave. Faced with a boxed crib that was awkward to carry alone, he was forced to accept help from two men in better condition. His ribs hadn’t fully healed, despite the absence of his bruises, and Sasuke only had one arm. There was no other option.
His plan was to wrap the box while Naruto and Sakura were working so they would be greeted with a wrapped present after a long day at the office and the hospital. The present itself removed one big expense from their plate when Naruto was being treated as an unpaid intern. Naturally, Sasuke wanted the delivery men to dump the box on the doorstep to get rid of them, so he had to shush the man on more than one occasion. The walk from the air conditioned store to their friends’ house left them baking in the late July heat, and Sasuke was scowling at everyone, miserable in the heat and annoyed at the men who seemed keen on talking to him about his time in Konoha. The moment the delivery men lowered the box to the nursery room floor, Sasuke was thanking them and motioning to the door. Both men were covered in sweat from the hot, humid air and carting the crib across the village, so he politely offered them lemonade. That proved to be a mistake because they didn’t know how to leave. Once they left, he and Sasuke hovered in the kitchen.
“I think we should put it together for them,” Sasuke said, leaning against the kitchen counter closest to the sink. He stood by the kitchen island, considering how Naruto and Sakura would react to seeing the crib as soon as they opened the nursery room door. He excelled in many areas, but he wasn’t a prodigy when it came to assembly or construction of any kind. “Why do you look like you tasted something sour? Sakura made the lemonade into straight sugar syrup for you, so it’s not that,” Sasuke commented, offending him. He looked down at his empty glass on the kitchen island, killing time before admitting his own weakness.
“I don’t do well with construction, or assembly, in this case. My genin teammate Tenma often completed my tasks in exchange for assistance with genjutsu. My mission record is pristine because of his assistance,” he reluctantly admitted, averting his eyes. Sasuke stared at him in silence, so he thought he would have to repeat himself, but he eventually heard the man’s quiet laughter. It was as embarrassing as he imagined, but he could admit that no one was truly perfect on their own. “I can sort the parts and read the directions, but if you want me to be more hands on with the assembly, parts of the crib will wobble or they will be backwards. You will have to redo my part of the project. I apologize.”
“You’re really that bad? It’s just following directions, Itachi.”
“Yes, but you have to understand that the pictures are often confusing, the directions double back on themselves, and there are always leftover parts at the end that leave you questioning if what you’ve assembled is going to collapse upon first use.”
“We’ll figure it out. How hard can it be?”
After he cleaned their glasses and placed them in the rack to dry, they went upstairs to unbox the crib and search for the directions that he would hold. Sasuke found the directions and he held the box still as the man wrestled the crib from the box. The first thing he noticed was the fact that there was no list of required tools, just pictures, and even with perfect vision, he couldn’t decipher what they needed based on pictures of the sides of screws. The only helpful writing on the page informed him that the pictures were actual size. One part looked like a capsule, one part looked like a tiny ring, and one looked like a hex wrench but without a clear visual of the head. Sasuke stood beside him and studied the pictures, clearly seeing something that he didn’t see. He saw bars and capsules on the first page of the instructions, so he tilted the booklet to one side, hoping to see something else. With a sigh, Sasuke took the manual from his hands, leaving him with no current job in the assembly process.
“We’re constructing the base. I’ll take step one. Grab the materials for step two. Don’t worry about putting anything together. Don’t touch anything but the three parts pictured at the top.”
“I am not a hazard to this project. I know not to attempt to continue without you. For the record, I wanted to gift wrap the box.”
“Only because a twelve year old is better at this than you are.”
“He was ten; however, he was a hands-on learner.”
Sasuke snorted at him, then the man began the assembly. He took the manual from the ground when it began to close on Sasuke, then he kneeled before the man and held the manual open. Sasuke would occasionally glance up at the pictures, but there wasn’t much to see on the page. When Sasuke was almost finished with step one, he gathered the items for step two, struggling to understand why there were lines and circles all over the page. Sasuke didn’t need to explain the process to him, but Sasuke still took the time to explain the purpose of the dotted lines and the circles on the page. He wanted straightforward instructions with accompanying pictures, not some mess of dotted lines and circles and letters that seemed entirely unrelated. With his help, which amounted to a steady hindrance, the assembly process took two hours. He’d helped with some steps that required extra hands, but it was Sasuke in control from start to finish, and the crib looked just like the one in the photo. The frame was solid, the bars didn’t wiggle, and there were no extra parts to leave him wondering.
He stood beside Sasuke and wrapped an arm around the man, content to admire what Sasuke had built. The crib looked much better than a wrapped gift. They only needed to maneuver the crib into the perfect spot. Sasuke had removed his cloak before step three, then he’d rolled up his sleeves, and he was still sweating. Naruto let Sakura control the thermostat, so they followed the power saving rules, which left Itachi and Sasuke at almost twenty-six degrees Celcius in an upstairs room that didn’t have the best ventilation. The couple planned on installing a quiet window unit. Itachi lightly fanned Sasuke with the closed manual, which had Sasuke smiling at the foolishness of it. They both knew the little air circulation produced by the manual made no difference. Once they’d had a moment to breathe, they centered the crib in the room, making sure that once the door opened, the crib would have the attention. Itachi knew Sasuke was on the floor for two hours, going from a seated position to a kneeling position, then bent over, so his first suggestion was a relaxing shower. While Sasuke was showering in their guest room bathroom, he went to cook dinner for everyone.
Because of the July heat, he chose to make tsukemen, knowing the cold noodles would help everyone, and the soup and the alternate take on ramen would please Naruto. Since Naruto and Sakura were due home at any time, he invited Sasuke to help him when the man joined him in the kitchen. Normally, he made homemade noodles whenever they needed noodles, but they settled for the packaged noodles their friends had on hand. Sakura had invited him to cook whenever he pleased while he and Sasuke were guests in the home, but Naruto had made an offhand comment about him being the man’s second wife. He’d walked off in the middle of making dinner and Sakura had to rush in and put out a grease fire. That had been over a week ago. If he and Sasuke didn’t have plans to leave, he would have still been avoiding the kitchen, gift or no gift. Sasuke had tried teaching him during the crib assembly, so he tried teaching Sasuke during their dinner preparation, since Sasuke had never made the dipping ramen before. Sasuke couldn’t slice the ingredients to his standards, but he instructed Sasuke on when to add the ingredients to the pot for their soup broth.
“It smells good,” Sasuke noted, looking down at the mixture in the pot. When he saw the soup was boiling, he reduced the heat, then he used a skimmer to skim the soup. Sasuke made a face at the foam he removed from the pot, so he offered Sasuke a taste. “I’ll add too much rice vinegar if you don’t stop.” He rinsed the mesh skimmer and nudged Sasuke aside with his hip, no longer trusting the man to be his assistant. Instead of taking the dismissal poorly, Sasuke held him from behind, arm wrapped around his midsection, making cooking more difficult.
“Do you want to taste it? I’ve never made this alone before. Mother let me help her.” He held up a spoon with some of the broth on it and Sasuke took the spoon from him to swallow the broth. Sasuke hummed, so he took the spoon back and waited for the man to swallow a few more times, chasing the taste. Without saying anything, Sasuke offered him the salt shaker, so he added a pinch of salt to the broth. The second time he offered Sasuke a taste, the man kissed the nape of his neck, so he deemed it a success.
Naruto arrived home first and called out a greeting that only Sasuke returned, since he was still annoyed and flustered about being called Naruto’s second wife. Naruto followed the smell that had slowly filled the downstairs, finding him before he was fully finished with plating the cold noodles. Naruto plucked a piece of shrimp from one of the plates, but he slapped Naruto’s hand hard enough for the man’s fingers to instantly release the tiny shrimp. Yes, he was still annoyed and flustered, and he didn’t feel bad about slapping the exhausted man. Instead of forcing Naruto to bend down and retrieve the fallen shrimp, Sasuke did it for the man, though not without flicking the man’s forehead. By the time Sakura arrived, dinner was fully ready and the table was topped with their plates and bowls. Naruto already complained about wanting more, since the portion sizes weren’t to the man’s liking, but he’d already planned ahead, due to the combination of Naruto’s bottomless stomach and Sakura’s growing hunger related to pregnancy.
“Your food is always so good, Itachi!”
“Think carefully about what you want to say next, usuratonkachi.”
“I was kidding before! Sakura’s not that bad of a cook!”
“Excuse me! I am a good cook!”
Itachi sat there and watched the three bicker, content to dip his noodles into his soup and ungracefully slurp them into his mouth, since no one was paying attention to him. When their bickering died down, he moved on to pouring himself another glass of lemonade that begged to rot his teeth out, the perfect combination of sweet and sour that had his tongue tingling. Dying hadn’t been his desire, but his recovery process had given him more time with people he cared about. When he thought he could subtly guide the couple upstairs and reveal the crib Sasuke had assembled for them, the doorbell rang. Kakashi brought the couple a bouquet of sunflowers and he fed Kakashi too, since the man had obviously invited himself to dinner. He thought that he and Sasuke would enjoy a private moment with Naruto and Sakura, but watching them interact at the dinner table, he knew that Kakashi belonged in that private moment. Kakashi wasn’t always the best at expressing himself, but Itachi couldn’t hold it against the man. Together, they left the table, with Sasuke remarking that he’d bought Naruto and Sakura the window unit they’d wanted.
He grabbed Kakashi’s elbow, and they stood beside Sasuke as Naruto and Sakura opened the nursery room door. Sakura rushed forward, instantly crying and remarking that it was perfect, while Naruto slowly followed her into the room, lost in a state of shock. And it was easy to forget that Naruto had never had a family before, that they were all witnessing the man adapt to that kind of lifestyle. He could tell that Sasuke was happy before the man ever actually smiled. It was Kakashi that seemed to handle it poorly, and he couldn’t say what had made the man look sad, not when Kakashi expertly masked the emotion with a smile. He wondered if it was a bittersweet moment, because he could acknowledge that even being a guest in the Uzumaki household had him looking forward to a child that would remind him too much of his own childhood and all of the moments he’d shared with his little brother. It would have been much easier to hate children. That was all he could acknowledge.
Even though they all wanted the moment to stretch into the night, Naruto and Sakura had to be up early for work, so they parted ways. Kakashi took part of the leftovers, even though the man insisted that he didn’t need to be so giving, then the man vanished in a swirl of leaves that had Sakura yelling at the mess in her dining room. Naruto offered to clean up, but Sakura rewarded the man with a kiss and a quick dismissal, since they all knew Naruto looked exhausted. Sakura’s job was the hardest, the most stressful, but she offered to stay and help Itachi in his evening cleanup; without a word, he placed his hands on her shoulders, turned her around, and nudged her in the direction of the stairs. He’d helped the couple as much as he could, since they had offered their home and invited Sasuke and him to stay while he slowly recovered. He didn’t have to ask Sasuke to assist him when he began gathering the dishes. Together, they carried plates, bowls, glasses, two glass pitchers, and several pairs of chopsticks from the dining room to the kitchen over multiple trips.
“Sasuke?” By that point, he was scrubbing the last of the dirtiest dishes while Sasuke loaded the dishwasher. He didn’t know how to broach the subject of their departure when it meant facing the fact that they may not see their friends for another length of time, when it meant facing the fact that they may not get to see the newborn. Sasuke hummed, enough of a response, so he placed the pot back into the sink, letting it sit under the stream of hot water. “We leave tomorrow, and I thought we might discuss our friends here. We may not see them for some time. They’ve grown increasingly busy, so we cannot expect them to drop everything to visit us in the Land of Flowers.” Sasuke stood beside him long enough to judge the condition of the pot, then the man placed it in the dishwasher with the other dishes.
“I’m aware.” He didn’t like the short response, clipped, as if cutting off the hope for a productive conversation. Sasuke knew exactly how to avoid the direct approach by being short or deflective, an artform that had taken time to master. He let Sasuke close the dishwasher and set the cycle, then he grabbed the side of Sasuke’s t-shirt and dragged the man to him, knowing he could use his body to his advantage. He circled his arms around Sasuke and pressed several kisses to the man’s neck, then he turned so he could force Sasuke back against the counter. “Itachi,” Sasuke hissed, hand pressed to the nape of his neck to draw him into another kiss. And he had Sasuke right where he wanted him.
“I’d like to make an exception and visit after the baby is born.”
“Okay. Wait. What?”
Sasuke gave up all attempts at dragging him down the winding road of lust that always ended in oral sex. His brother’s brow was furrowed, and he couldn’t understand why the man looked so confused. Sasuke loved Naruto and Sakura, and there was some feeling between Sasuke and Kakashi, so he thought Sasuke would be satisfied with his suggestion, even if it meant him accepting work from Konoha in exchange for the council to look the other way. But Sasuke knew that the arrangement would end up costing him something. Sasuke stopped holding him and openly scowled at him, as if he’d said something repulsive just by suggesting they spend more time with people who make Sasuke happy. He knew it was because of his most recent death and his stint in the hospital. They were so in love that they often sacrificed little things just to make the other person happy. Sasuke no longer wanted him to put himself in a poor position, like he no longer wanted Sasuke to put himself in a poor position.
With a sigh, he placed his hands on Sasuke’s cheeks and slowly leaned in to place a soft kiss on the man’s lips. Sasuke didn’t respond positively to the kiss, then he felt Sasuke’s hand on his chest, pushing him away. His quick attempt at seduction had worked, but he should have followed through with the oral sex before hitting Sasuke with his desire to visit Konoha. The refusal didn’t surprise him, so he wasn’t upset; the rejection surprised him, and that upset him. He was still the taller one between them, but he felt as if Sasuke was staring him down. Sasuke wasn’t merely annoyed—Sasuke was pissed. And he understood. He didn’t try touching Sasuke again, though the man remained boxed in against the kitchen counter. He didn’t want to have an argument when he had the feeling he would lose the argument and end up shunned for the night just for the audacity alone. He tucked his fingers into the pockets on Sasuke’s pants, trying his best to gently reintroduce the subject. Sasuke’s narrowed eyes made him sigh again. Seduction wasn’t going to win him the war.
“Sasuke.”
“Absolutely not. Nothing comes free, and we aren’t paying the price. They’ll learn how to take photos and send them until we can figure out how to meet up without it costing either of us our lives. And don’t think for a second that this is some bargaining moment. I’m not negotiating. I just f*cking lost you. If we get one mission scroll in the next six months, someone is dying.”
“I will respect your decision.”
“I thought this was going to be a drawn out argument,” Sasuke admitted, still pissed off. He pressed a kiss to Sasuke’s left cheek, but the man was still tense, ready to launch into a verbal or physical assault at a moment’s notice. He ran his hands along Sasuke’s sides and peppered kisses along the man’s jawline. “You should have waited until after giving me head to introduce this topic. You might have convinced me if you timed it just right.”
Their lips finally brushed and Sasuke chased a firmer kiss, leaning forward to roughly claim his mouth. His slow, gentle approach of calming Sasuke was gone when the man’s hand went to his ass and he was crushed against Sasuke’s chest. His ribs were still sensitive, so he hissed into the kiss, and Sasuke’s tongue slipped between his parted lips and tasted his mouth. He rested his hands on Sasuke’s hips and absently rubbed against the man, as if they were already hard after their disagreement that had left Sasuke furious. He bit down on Sasuke’s lower lip and the man gasped, squeezing his ass, encouraging him to soothe the sudden burst of pain by sucking on Sasuke’s lower lip. He pulled back to caress Sasuke’s face and they heard the sound of glass breaking, which sent them away from one another.
“Damn it, you two! This is my kitchen! We make food here!”
“How many times have you f*cked your wife here?”
Itachi slapped a hand over Sasuke’s filthy mouth and gently guided the man from the kitchen, quietly apologizing to Naruto as they left.
