Title: Distinct Discomfort
Characters/Pairings: Or, How Itachi discovered The Female.
Rating: T, because Itachi is such a horndog.
Notes: Why Sasuke is such a bully in 'Of Marriage and Diplomacy'. He's not a mean child by nature, and this is the best explanation I could come up with. Have fun, and as always, remember to review!

Uchiha Itachi was distinctly uncomfortable. And this sort of—of discomfort wasn't exactly the sort that he'd been trained to withstand (well, not trained, really, not yet; he was only fourteen, and they'd only showed him projector slides) so he was, to put it the way his cousin Shisui would put it, in deep shit.

Cold sweat broke out on his forehead as Kushina-san unfolded herself from the couch and stretched, reaching linked hands out over her head so that the thin jersey material of her shirt stretched over her breasts (which were not large, but nor were they small, but just right, and a tad too perky for a woman who had given birth, but he certainly wasn't complaining) and leaned her head back (which exposed the finely-boned column of her throat) and arched her back (which drew attention to how her fine and thin waist gave way to the gentle swell of her hips) and groaned (which did…funny things to his nether regions).

Itachi really didn't know whether to curse or to bless the quirk of DNA that had given him the second-best Sharingan in the current Uchiha clan and the photographic memory that came with it.

Because, really, hot damn.

She turned luminous eyes on him. "Itachi-kun? You're the one on the guard roster today?"

"Yes," he squeaked, but hastily said again, and made sure his voice was a couple octaves lower than normal, "Yes. Hatake-sempai requested a replacement."

"Oh," she intoned softly, and stretched again. (Itachi tried very hard not to go cross-eyed, and thanked every god that he'd ever heard of for neglecting to give Uchiha's the ability to blush.) "That Kakashi," she frowned. "He's been avoiding me ever since I caught him reading that dirty book Jiraiya-san wrote."

She sniffed delicately and lifted a sock-clad foot to kick away a pile of blankets on the floor as she made her way into the kitchen.

"Make yourself at home, Itachi-kun," she called from beyond the swinging door that divided the living room from the dining-cum-kitchen area. "I'll have dinner ready by the time Minato and Naruto come home. You might as well stay for it."

It would be perfectly fine, he reasoned, to guard the Hokage apartment from the roof or the balcony. A ninja of his caliber could easily protect the single occupant of the apartment—who in her own right was a pretty magnificent ninja—while she was out of sight. There was nothing that forbade it in the protocol.

Or…he could stay. And maybe sit at the kitchen table while she cooked. And make conversation with her, conversation so blindingly brilliant and peppered with sophisticated allusions and complicated turns of phrase, and he would subtly—subtly!—brag about his accomplishments, until she would utterly forget about her husband and their age difference and declare her undying love for him and fall into his many arms and kiss him and kiss his neck and his—

A heavenly image of Kushina-san, dressed in a frilly red apron and singing softly as she sashayed around the kitchen popped into his peripheral vision, a vision full of swaying hips and delicate hands and a neck exposed by tied hair.

Well. Roof it was then.

Now.

"Welcome home, Itachi-kun," Uchiha Mikoto said as her eldest child climbed over the engawa and into the family dining room. "You're a bit late today."

Late, and a looking a bit strained around the eyes. There was weariness to his face that was new and slightly bewildering.

"Where have you been?" Fugaku grunted, in a foul(er) mood than usual because she'd won their little after-dinner coin toss and Konoha's Next Top Model was playing on the TV instead of the Ninja History Channel's special on the history of kunai usage.

"I was placed on guard duty to the Hokage's family today," he said, "Kushina-san graciously invited me for dinner."

That didn't explain the tightness about his mouth. "I'm sure Namikaze Kushina-san treated you well."

"Fine," he said tonelessly.

"And the Hokage?" Fugaku asked tersely. "Did he say…anything to you?"

Mikoto resisted the urge to roll her eyes, knowing that her husband was referring to a bill that he was hoping to push through the Konoha legislature that would expand the police force's jurisdiction. Really, now. After all these years in politics and he thought the Hokage—who had the instincts of a fox and the claws of a dragon—would let important details slip in front of Itachi?

"Nothing of import," Itachi said even more tonelessly than his earlier replies.

"You met Hokage-sama's son? How do you think of him? Everyone I speak to says he's a particularly rambunctious child," she said. Sometimes, she felt, getting Itachi to speak about any topic in more than monosyllables was like pulling teeth.

"He's fine, mother. In fact, I find him a particularly engaging child," Itachi nearly spat, his tone suddenly bordering on impatience. "Now, if you'll excuse me." He picked himself up from across the low table and disappeared down the hallway.

Well, Mikoto thought, that was new. I wonder if I should be glad he's acting like a normal teenager. She didn't ruminate on it, though. The ninja world was insane at the best of times, and even more so when one was in the throes of adolescence.

Fugaku sputtered incoherently at her side, so she placed a calming hand on his thigh and offered to switch back and forth from her show to his. That mollified him somewhat.

She smiled, as pure and as demure a smile as one would expect from a woman of her station, and wondered if she ought to slip Itachi some condoms the next time she did his laundry.

She sipped her Coke and changed the channel on the TV.

All throughout the exchange, little Uchiha Sasuke stood in the hallway, listening.

He had been in his room after dinner, drawing a colorful picture of him and his brother sticking shuriken into enemy ninja. He had even made sure to make the blood extra red this time, just as a complimentary touch.

But—but--but—that jerk! Naruto! That aniki-stealing jerk! It was bad enough that Itachi hadn't been there through dinner, so he didn't have anybody to dump his green beans on. He didn't even have anyone to practice his shuriken with!

Tears blurred his eyes as he remembered the fast, clipped way Itachi had walked to his room and locked the door. Locked the door! Itachi never locked the door! He always left it open so Sasuke could come in and they would talk and Sasuke would sometimes play with Itachi's really cool ANBU gear.

But this time, after talking to that Naruto kid, Itachi completely ignored him! And all he said was "Sasuke" in a sharp voice before shoving him out and locking the door! He'd even called that Naruto jerk 'engaging'!

Rage coursed through his little body as he rubbed fat fists across his eyes. Just you wait, he thought viciously, I'll teach you what happens when you steal my aniki!