Dedicated to Allurement, who has interesting ships.

Hypocritically

It's nothing new, the Hyuuga-Uzumaki attraction. He's seen it before, lived it before, and the end is always the same : love, struggle, and fail like a song set to loop indefinitely. The times may change but people don't, stubbornly clinging to tradition and replaying the mistakes of their ancestors. Despite that fact, it still comes to Hiashi as a shock when he notices that his eldest daughter has become fully smitten with the current Kyuubi vessel: Uzumaki Naruto.

The very minute the realization sets in, he promptly slaps her and tells her to forget about the blue-eyed runt.

Unlike the vast majority of Konoha's residents, Hyuuga Hiashi is aware from the very beginning of Naruto's parentage. He had been many places in his years of active duty, and had run across an Uzumaki here and there often enough to know that blonde is not a common hair color in that clan. He knows without question that the troublemaker's mother is none other than the Red Hot Blooded Habanero herself, Uzumaki Kushina, previous Kyuubi container. And the boy looks so much like the face carved into the mountain that Hiashi has little doubt that the Yellow Flash is the child's father. None of this knowledge changes his opinion of the boy; in fact, knowing this information only serves to strengthen it. He will not permit his daughter to chase after Kushina's son like an enamored puppy.

He will not condone her re-enacting his errors of a bygone time.

Let it not be thought that Hiashi doesn't understand; in this matter, he has nothing but understanding. Too much, perhaps. It was well-known but scarcely recalled that he loved her, the flame-haired girl from Whirlpool Country. Loved her from the very day she set foot in the academy - all fluffy-haired and chubby faced with a blatant lack of grace and femininity that appalled everyone else.

He found the contrast endearing.

He fell even harder for her when she famously displayed her spitfire personality in a show of absolute disregard for others' opinions. To him they would seem to make a perfect match: the quiet strength of the Hyuuga and the fiesty spirit of the Uzumaki called out to one another in a natural compulsion to balance each other out. So when they graduated, he asked her out.

She laughed in his face and asked why a stick-in-the-ass like him would want to date her. He was at a loss for words, and after a few more laughs at his expense, Kushina had nudged his shoulder with her fist and declared that she could always use a few friends and why don't they get to know each other better so he could find out what he was getting himself into in wanting to be with her. Never one to refuse a challenge, Hiashi had conceded. It would be years later before he realized the wisdom in Kushina's warning: she was fire and he was water and the two could never truly mix, but only make steam.

Hiashi would not admit defeat, even when the Kumo-nins kidnapped her and the Namikaze boy saved her and all of the sudden she was head-over-heels for the blonde she used to call a goody two-shoes. He would not admit defeat, even when she and Minato started dating in their teens. He would not admit defeat, even when the clan patriarch announced that he had found suitable fiancees for both Hiashi and Hizashi when they turned twenty.

He would not admit defeat.

He remained by her side as a friend, determined not to give up until either he or she had married or until they married each other. And then Kushina married Minato and still he waited.

And his patience paid off.

At twenty-three, when Hiashi was still skillfully evading his imminent engagement ceremony, Kushina and Minato hit a rough patch in their relationship. Minato was Hokage and Kushina felt neglected and Hiashi was more than happy to devote to her the attentions she craved. It was just supposed to be spending time with a good friend, she had never intended for it to become an affair. From his angle, Hiashi had never intended for it to be just an affair either yet that was what it became, something Kushina would later look at as a lapse in judgement. But for the time being, Hiashi felt higher than the clouds themselves. He made no secret of their relationship, preferring to make his love for her visible by lavishing her with attention and gifts and proudly holding her hand in public. She was his whole world, but he soon found that he wasn't hers.

At twenty-four, Kushina was pregnant. Hiashi was delighted with the news, until she added that she wasn't sure it was his. Through tear-streaked eyes she confessed that she liked him but she just didn't love him, not the way she had Minato. She went back to her husband, against Hiashi's protests, and Minato made promises that the paternity of the child didn't matter and that he would raise it as his son regardless. For nine months, Hiashi agonized over the loss of the love of his life and the tiny life growing in her stomach.

And on the tenth* month, he lost it all.

Forever.

In a final acceptance of defeat, he married the fiancee he'd been rejecting for four years and quietly locked away his heart.

He cannot love Naruto. He cannot love him because he is as much Minato as he is Kushina and Hiashi has anything - Respect. Envy. Contempt. - anything but love for the man who took her away from him.

...

He cannot love Naruto, and so Hinata cannot either. He will break this cycle.

* Jinchuuriki pregnancies take ten months.

A / N : Crack is good for the soul. I don't know why nobody's had this Hyuugas have always loved Uzumakis theory before, but I quite like it. Anyway, this is intended to be an alternative to the semi-popular MinatoMikoto pairing, I wanted Kushina to play the field too :P