Superstition

Superstition

Their relationship was built around these silences, she once said, an objective comment she offered to one of the greatest disparagers of their relationship. Naruto was won over after a hundred or so of these arguments. Some days, their roles ended up switched, with him assuaging her fears with his colorful alternative explanations whenever her husband failed to act more appropriately like a husband. Heck, she’ll even settle for a responsive human being who’ll tell her how big he wanted the onions sliced without the annoyed grunt.

(He loved her, of course. That wasn’t the problem.)

It was this. It was his refusal to share with her the multitude of things that dragged down his day. They were things of little consequence, he might say once she’s badgered him enough, issues left over, left hanging over his head. Sakura disagreed; history, time, would judge him—perhaps, unforgivingly----but he didn’t need to live each moment under this threat. She could listen to him, even if never completely understanding him, at least offer some release, alleviate his pains by simple acknowledgment. The negativity he lived with could nest in the secreted corners of his soul, would rot and weaken his fundamentals, his heart.

His heart, in spite of---because of— everything, was a great, great heart. . .)

So.

Yes, silences were fine. Even brooding was fine, to some extent. Her constant bete noir for the past three months now was his tendency to go off to the deep end while preparing for and cleaning up after supper. Their routine involved her doing the preparations: chopping, peeling, picking, and washing. He did the actual cooking, being more versed and skillful with it. With dishwashing, they alternated. Sasuke had survived by himself for years and didn’t have issued with domesticity. (Though not having a female around for years did lead to bathroom habits that tested Sakura’s sensibilities.)

He would usually sit at the breakfast nook. He’d have his elbows resting on the table, hands entwined under his chin. He would watch her for a few minutes before spacing out. It didn’t seem like a moment’s preoccupation on some passing thought. His eyes practically glazed over, under a pair of eyebrows that wasn’t quite what you’d call a scowl.

Because Sakura knew everybody needed such silences, she let it pass the first time. She did the same with the second, and then the third. . .

“Sasuke,” she prompted carefully one evening.

Oddly enough, he didn’t startle out of his trance. He surfaced from it gradually, like a dead body floating down a creek days after a storm.

“What?” he asked eventually. “The onions are sliced the right way.”

“It’s not that.” She knew he hated the coming question. “Is anything wrong?”

“Does something have to be?” he returned, sporting an expression of profound irritation.

And because Sakura didn’t exactly have such a peachy day either, she stormed out of the house before she could beat him to a bloody pulp.

###

“Maybe he was chatting up a dead cousin or something,” Naruto said with a shrug. They were sitting in her living room, with the front door ajar to let the mild breeze in. “He keeps little demon pets. Did you know that?”

Sai had a different theory.

“Say, ugly, are you putting out?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know. . . put out, do things the female do to get male spermatozoa, spread your----”

“If you complete that sentence,” Sakura interrupted sweetly. “I’ll spread your innards all over Hokage-sama’s dinner table and pray he dies from some virulent disease.”

“Hey!” the said Hokage protested. “What did I do?”

“Naruto, why did you bring this aberration from hell into my house?”

“I’m not a marriage counselor, Sakura-chan.”

“And he is?!”

The blond man scratched at his whiskers sheepishly.

“It’s not a marriage issue, okay? I wanted to talk to you because sometimes your insight on him is so right on, it’s flat-out disturbing.”

“Insight, huh? The old woman—” He was referring to one of his predecessors and Sakura’s own teacher. “—told me to stop reading comics in the toilet.”

“Please. My husband is emotionally stunted, not constipated.”

“You never know,” came the dark mutter. “But Sai made a good point, didn’t he?”

“What are you saying? Sai is just being an ass, isn’t he?”

“Thank you, Naruto,” the dark-haired jounin spoke up, though he didn’t leave the Hokage’s general vicinity. “On the question of fryingpan-face putting out, I’m assuming the answer is no.”

“That is so not true,” Sakura huffed. “Besides, it’s none of your business.”

“How often do you guys do it?”

“As- as often as we want!” The mednin’s cheek was violently red, but she kept her dignity and bore Sai’s probing tone rather well.

“Okay, so when was the last time you did it?”

“. . . I am not answering that question, okay? Why are you badgering me?”

“You don’t remember, do you?”

“. . . Ugh. Hokage-sama, make him stop!”

“Sorry, Sakura-chan,” Naruto said, not really trying that hard to hide his grin. “He invited himself, you know.”

“Well, you need to exercise some semblance of political will and kick him out!”

But Sai had already formed his unwanted diagnosis, and his smiling face had turned grave. “I sense,” he portended. “A deprived penis.”

“Whose penis?” interrupted a loud incredulous voice.

“Nobody said penis!” came Naruto’s nervous denial. Kami-sama, if he had to sit through another matchmaking session . . .

“Wait,” the newcomer persisted. “Hokage-sama has penis-envy?”

“Wait,” Sai mimicked. “Hokage-sama has a penis?”

“SHUT UP, SAI! You’re the one with no penis! And you, Ino, you’re the one with penis-envy! Stop, man-hating!”

“Will you guys stop saying that word?” Sakura demanded. “And what is this, Naruto? Am I to receive every Dick and Harry in the entire Fire Country?”

“I think the problem is you not receiving any,” pointed out Sai.

“What’s wrong with the word, ‘penis’?” asked Shikamaru, coming in after Ino.

His other blonde companion gave him a withering look.

“The question’s purely academic.”

“Temari-san,” Sakura said, bravely scraping up a hospitable front. “Welcome to our home. I’m sure you’re used to these weird conversations, but I’ll apologize on all of our behalf.”

“Now you know our Hokage has no penis,” said Sai seriously. “Please don’t take it against all Leaf shinobi.”

Ponytail swinging, Ino sauntered towards the dark-haired ninja. “Wait,” she repeated. “So whose penis were you talking about originally?”

“Sasuke’s,” Sakura said tiredly. “And can we stop calling it that?”

“Fine by me.” Again Sai. “There’s always manhood, privates, member, the Uchiha family jewels, wanton shaft of darkness, dingdong-Itachi’s-dead, I’m a bratwurst, the Uchiha constrictor, number 1 snake-fighting cock—”

“GET THE HELL OUT MY HOUSE!”

At that point, Sai really had to. As the pink-haired monster had already clobbered him three times, it was only a matter of time before he sustained permanent brain damage. He didn’t leave, however, without a nonchalant warning about having last laughs and all that. Sakura ignored him and was able to resist running after him to commit bloody murder.

“Can we get this over with?” Naruto asked plaintively. “I’m late for a meeting with the Sand ambassador.”

“We’ve kinda brought her,” Ino said with a giggle. “I’m sure, Temari wouldn’t mind you finishing this riveting discussion.”

“The problem is, Sasuke is brooding too much,” Sakura announced, just so she could get rid of her increasingly unwanted guests. “And I was worried about him because he won’t tell me anything. I was trying to find out if Naruto knew why, but Sai had to tag along and talk about his eternal obsession.”

“That is so scary.” Ino’s eyes were huge with genuine concern. “So you have to watch out against fangirls and fanboys. That’s the problem when you marry a genocidal sociopath with a pretty face and tight ass.”

“Anyway,” Naruto said, before Sakura could finish counting to ten and scream. “Sai thinks Sakura isn’t giving Sasuke enough baby-making time. And that’s why the bastard has been brooding more than usual.”

“Doubt it,” came the chorus from the other three almost immediately.

“Okay, fine!” the pink-haired jounin exploded in exasperation. “We do it every twenty-three days or so! What do you all think of me, some sort of nympho?”

“Not at all,” said Temari.

“Nope,” Ino concurred.

“You go, girl,” said Shikamaru dryly. “I’m sure that’s what anybody in your place would do.”

“That’s right, Sakura-chan. I’d totally borderline rape him, baby.”

“First of all, Shikamaru,” Sakura said. “That’s creepier than Sai naming my husband’s private parts. And you, Ino-buta, hands off my man! You’re already part of the Nara harem.”

“Actually, it’s Temari’s harem,” Ino clarified with aplomb. “Not this pushover’s.”

“So,” Naruto spoke up after an awkward silence. “Sasuke only gets it once a month? Is he that bad in bed?”

“Or is it the other way around,” Ino said in horror. “After all that chasing, Sakura turns out to be frigid?”

Sakura had given up retaining any semblance of privacy at that point. “He thinks we shouldn’t have kids yet,” she said to derail their ideas before they got more creative. “So. . . that’s. . . it. . . Please, stop staring at me like I’ve lost my mind.”

“More like pure unadulterated admiration,” deadpanned Shikamaru.

“Actually, I don’t get it,” Ino said. “Haven’t you guys heard of contraception?”

Sakura muttered something that made everyone strain to hear.

“Did you say fertility awareness?”

“What’s that?” Naruto asked.

“They count days and time, and they have sex on days she’s infertile,” Shikamaru explained. “It’s really troublesome.”

“I’m sure you’ll find it so,” Temari said sardonically. “They also have to observe the changes in the woman’s body.”

“Once every twenty-three days doesn’t figure though,” Shikamaru continued clinically. “You should have at least ten days each cycle.”

“Well, no,” Sakura said, fidgeting. “Between his and my work schedule, it’s hard to figure time when it’s like definitely safe.”

“But you’re mednin, right?” The details of the topic had obviously gone over poor Hokage-sama’s head. “The changes-in-the-body part should be easy for you, right?”

Sakura, for some reason, blushed and didn’t answer.

“You don’t actually like this set up, do you?” Naruto asked.

The pink-haired woman shook her head.

“Have you told him?”

A negative again.

“Maybe if you’re honest by example, he’d be too?”

“That isn’t quite the insight I’ve been looking for,” Sakura admitted. “But sometimes the simplest ideas work best, I suppose. It’s worth a try.”

Shikamaru and Temari nodded in agreement, but Ino remained preoccupied.

“Huh,” she said after a while. “So Sasuke has some weird prejudice against condoms, but he doesn’t want to knock you up. Is it an Uchiha clan thing?”

Sakura smiled wryly. “Something about a first-born son,” she said. “So that it’s always a boy first.”

“Wait,” Naruto said. “So he doesn’t actually not want kids, right?”

“He wants to wait till his probation period is over. That way, it’s less likely for our child’s status as a Konoha citizen to be affected by it.”

“That’s bullshit. What the hell does that have to with anything? They say kids shouldn’t be glorified for what good their parents did, so why should they be hated for the bad?”

Sakura smiled again, this time, sadly. “Even if you say that, Hokage-sama, even you who’ve changed the world can’t really change people’s memories, you know.”

###

Sasuke came home that evening to an uncharacteristically quiet wife. Of course, Sakura would hasten to clarify that quiet did not equate to mute. Even though she was the one a tad absent today, they easily went through their routines. It was notable, she conceded, but not alarming. She doubted Sasuke had noticed at all, she thought to herself as she washed the dishes after their simple meal of rice, fresh tomatoes, and salted eggs.

“How much ammunition do you need?” the sarcastic drawl came just as she wiped her hands after a final rinse of the sink.

“What was that, Sasuke-kun?” she replied after a while, lapsing to her typical way of addressing him as a child. “I’m kinda spacey today.”

“I asked, how long do you plan to lecture me this time, wife?”

It took her a stymied moment to decipher his meaning. “Is it that obvious?” she asked when she finally did.

“No matter how diplomatic you plot your script, if you think it’ll piss me off, it probably will. Just say it.”

“Please. How could I worry about diplomacy when I haven’t decided on an opening line?”

He was sitting on the sturdy wooden table, in his usual pose, wearing his customary summer robe of dark blue. Perhaps it was the scanty light in his area of the kitchen, but his dark eyes appeared hooded. Perhaps, he was already angry, thinking she was preparing yet another delicate warning about his performance as an average menial worker in the town of Konoha. Sakura couldn’t really find it in her heart to blame him, if he lashed out at her, but she was past hiding the fact that she wasn’t the type of woman to take emotional displacement like that sitting down.

“And since, as you said, it’ll piss you off, anyway, I should just ask.”

“Aa.”

“What are you thinking, right now?” Chagrined by his arrogant tone the moment he started to speak, she made her question sound offensively blunt.

“Your friends are weird.”

“Huh? And what do they have to do with you?”

He took out something from his sleeve and tossed it on the table. Actually, it was a bunch of something. They were a bunch of small packages that looked suspiciously like. . .

“W-who gave them to you?” she demanded, though she already had her suspicions.

“Your weird friend with the expressionless face and that midriff shirt.”

Sakura picked up the note with the little packets and read it aloud. “For the sake of the safety and mental health of the citizens of Konohagakure no Sato, I hereby charge you, Uchiha Sasuke, to give your blushing bride, not only some, but m-more?! What the–!”

“What the hell is right.” Though deceptively mild, her husband of three months had a dangerous edge to his low voice. “What have you been telling that dead last?”

“This is obviously not Hokage-sama’s handwriting! Besides, I-I don’t understand how I became the butt of jokes when you---”

“Let me understand this,” Sasuke continued in the same flat tone. “Not only am I a rehabilitating psychotic prone to relapsing and in danger of gutting a whole village of idiots, but I’m also your sexually deprived pet, the damaged goods you’ve taken up as your whipping boy.”

“Why are you turning it into this again?” Sakura whispered. His last statement considerably altered the tenor of their conversation yet again. No longer was she sheepishly abashed; she was furious. “If I had to take pity on some charity case, I had loads of alternatives to pick from.”

“You are such a hypocrite, waxing poetic about transparency and honesty in marriage, but you can’t say it to my face that you have problems with—”

“Don’t you dare say it, Sasuke. Don’t you dare! Why is everybody making up crap about this like this was some big joke? Kami-sama, I was worried about you! I only wanted to hear what Naruto thought because he usually knows more than I do. And so what if I am afraid you’d suddenly say, ‘To hell with this place,’ and leave? Can I blame you?”

They were both standing in front of the sink by now, hard-set faces inches away from each other. Sasuke’s scowl smoothed back to its usual stoic, though his eyes still burned with the black heat of his anger.

“You want to know what I’ve been thinking that badly?” he snarled after a few moments of staring her down. “I’ll tell you: I couldn’t decide whether to throw you on the bed, slam you on that table, or bend you over the sink and ravage you where you are. If I’m wanting to fuck you every minute of my damned, pointless existence, then it’s a little too late to suggest I can even leave you behind, is it?”

She stared up at him, dazed.

“Still can’t understand?” he hissed to her nearer ear, gripping her by both arms to keep her in place. “I’ve been fantasizing about having my way with you. I’ve imagined taking you in a myriad of positions, in various states of undress. . . How the mighty have fallen, salivating over a mere woman, with a mediocre bust-line and a skinny ass. . .”

“W-who have you been hanging out with?!” Sakura burst out incredulously.

“. . .?”

“Do you expect me to believe you came up ‘damned, pointless existence’ all on your own?” Sakura’s shoulder relaxed and she collapsed against her husband in relief. “If you’re willing to put up a show like this, I believe you.”

“. . . are you an idiot?”

“You are so rude, sometimes,” she complained with deep annoyance. “I appreciate the effort, though, kami-sama, you scared me there for a moment.”

She yelped in shock when he pushed her against the kitchen counter, trapping her with a thigh to her crotch.

“Sasuke, joke’s over,” she said, placating. “I’m giving you my blessing to totally beat the crap out of the person who put you up to this.”

The second push was none too gentle; she slammed against the wooden cupboards with a force that took her breath away. When she regained coherence, she found herself pressed tightly against his body. What she felt through his thin clothing was unmistakable, and she flushed violently.

“S-sasuke,” she stammered uncertainly. “You don’t want to do this.”

“You presume to know what I want now?” He was speaking against her nape, tickling the tiny hair there with his breath.

“We’re not. . . we’re not safe today.” She could feel the burn of his tongue slither about her neck, the graze of his teeth on an ear, the subtle but urgent motion of his body against hers, much lower. “W-we shouldn’t.”

She gasped when he finally engulfed her with his hot mouth to thoroughly explore the contours and dips of her collarbone. Impatiently, his right hand replaced the steady pressure of his knee against her center, his fingers seeking and impetuous, while his left held her still, boding no resistance. She whimpered when he fingered her throbbing nub once and continued to avoid it; she cried out when he tested her portal with a violent thrust of a thumb.

Lost in his deft ministrations after that lone stab of pain, she offered no protest for a few tense moments. Then she mewled in soft discontent when he withdrew his hand. He nudged her chin up to make her look at him, smearing her face with her own juices.

“What were you saying about not wanting this, hypocrite?” he taunted. “If you’d get rid of the evidence, I might consider stopping.”

He touched his knuckles to her lips, even as his he began to fondle her breasts with his other hand. Because she retained enough sense to recognize an order, she proceeded to lick his fingers clean of her essence.

“Sasuke-kun?” she murmured uncertainly, seemingly ages later.

He had stopped.

“Why?” he asked, voice fraught with an unfathomable hurt.

She looked at him in concern, this time the one with a pincer grip on the other’s shoulders. “Why what?” she asked, as if mirroring his pained manner reflexively. “Weren’t you the one who said we should wait?”

“Ever heard of condoms?” he returned sarcastically.

“Who was it who stuck to this ridiculous superstition about Uchiha men never using contraception and this being the reason to their having first-born male children since the dawn of time?”

“I wouldn’t mind a daughter,” her husband said seriously.

Sakura could hardly believe what he was saying. “What?” she barked, just because it might make her feel less like a moron. “What are you saying?”

“I never said I wanted a boy first,” Sasuke continued. “If it’s a girl, we can marry her off to a respectable Konoha nin who’ll confer to her immunity from all the meddling of this idiot village government.”

“And what about other kids if we have them?” Sakura said skeptically.

Sasuke shrugged. “My daughter should have the looks and skills to wrap such a man around her fingers.”

“And share the wealth to her siblings,” his wife completed with a shake of her head. “And if all else fails, our Hokage-sama will make it his personal responsibility to protect your offspring.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“. . . I’ve had a weird day.”

“Aa.”

“You should take steps to help me forget.”

“I was doing that.”

“You should do it at a more comfortable place,” she said primly.

If Sasuke weren’t Sasuke, he would have rolled his eyes.

She tiptoed just a tad and kissed him on the mouth till he was breathless, making sure to press against him in all the right places.

“Is that incentive enough, dear?”

“Be sure to make it worth my while,” was all he said, before he whisked them both upstairs.

###

On a day about six months later, Sakura could be seen stalking out of Konoha hospital in a rare mood. She trailed a couple of steps behind her husband, who seemed to be pausing every so often to wait for her to catch up. She seemed affronted by the fact he was being so congenial to her and not so much by the press of her forming child against her bladder.

“Make it worth my while, he said,” she muttered darkly under her breath. “Oh, look, I have condoms. They obviously didn’t work.”

“If we had done it there and then,” came Sasuke’s mild answer. “You wouldn’t have gotten knocked up.”

“What? Can you elaborate on yet another Uchiha superstition?”

“Uchiha don’t conceive that way.”

“That makes no biologic sense whatsoever. You know your icky, tailed little soldiers? They swim anywhere and everywhere. They’re single-minded and relentless till they reach ground zero. Gravity is obviously not an effective deterrent—why am I even explaining this to you? Anyway, I’m not going to tell my child she was conceived because her father was so deprived by some idiot superstition, that he attacked poor, unsuspecting mommy on the same dirty kitchen table we use to clean fish and chicken guts.”

“By the way,” the dark-haired jounin suddenly said. “Your friend with the flat-affect and bare midriff—”

“That jerkwad’s name is Sai,” Sakura interrupted icily.

“He wants to be the godfather.”

“Why would I want our baby to have a godfather that twisted when her parents are already so out there?”

“In honor of the little one’s conception, which he claims to have a hand in.”

Something in her husband’s little smirk made her think. The realization, when it came, was antediluvian. Sakura grabbed at Sasuke’s sleeve and pulled out the bunch of little foil packets he still had (because he stopped needing them after a month since he acquired them from Sakura’s weird friend. It was then he discovered the saboteur’s slight modifications on his gifts. He decided to formulate a new superstition and declared the prophylactics crucial to his wife’s safe pregnancy.) She opened one with her teeth, much to Sasuke’s unconcealed horror, grabbed a bottle of soda from an unsuspecting passer-by, and poured its content into the sticky rubber sack she managed to shake out with her titanic strength.

The soda poured from tiny, multiple, and obviously there, holes.

“I AM SO GOING TO KILL YOU, SAI!”

~December 16, 2009 (12:06am)


Notes:
I blame no one else but miko-chan. Written for one of her memes, based on an icon where houseband-Sasuke machinates on what to do about a certain med-nin. All that talk about the Uchiha family jewels traumatized me and this fic was locked up in the LJ for over a year. Lost my nerve.