Suzu: Thank you for 500+ faves!

Just a tiny ficlet, an omake, of appreciation. I have a few shorts languishing in my brain which never made it to Intermissions the actual story, and this was a slightly cracky one about Kushina's eccentric transition into housewife-dom.


Intermission - Omake

- A love story in bits and pieces –


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"Have you heard?"

"Pity." The woman on the street shakes her head. Her companion clucks her tongue, and wheels the stroller a bit slower.

"That quickly?"

"Oh my."

"He's a busy man. It's natural that would happen."

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The Yondaime of Konohagakure finds one Uzumaki Kushina languishing on the sofa.

Languishing is only one of several verbs not-quite-adequate to describe the situation, but since Minato's still angry—ears hot and his core hotter—he'll save it for another day to wax poetic about how he'd found his wife, after the rest of town had found him flabbergasted to hear about his rumored inadequacies in marriage.

"Slander about the Hokage is high treason, you know," Minato deadpans when he finds her.

She knows right away.

"I just…" Kushina stops. Pouts. Reopens her mouth. "I just wanted some romance."

Minato is about to make some comeback. Something witty, like, you didn't have to prostitute our marriage details to your Lamaze Support Group to make me a better husband. But then Kushina leans in, her face dourer than Shimura Danzou's on long weekends. Her arms clamp around his midsection and suddenly, Minato's more interested in thinking of ways to escape, or breathe, etc., than be mad at her.

"I-I thought... we were... doing okay," he struggles.

"We were. We are," Kushina amends. "Except you're gone even weekends. Even Kakashi never visits anymore. I'm lonely at home by myself."

Indeed, Kakashi had made ANBU. As for Minato, his days (and nights) at the Hokage Tower are not always pleasant. Though Kushina was more than content to camp out in his office like a vagrant troubadour—singing wailing laments about wage slavery at whichever hapless chuunin will tolerate her—that temporary arrangement didn't lead to the most productive of work weeks, and the Council of Elders in petty retaliation had threatened to cut all of Minato's remaining work-from-home days (which were a hoax, to begin with). Kushina gave the Elders a piece of her mind, via public shouting match. And lo. She was excommunicated from the Tower after that.

Minato swallows at the look in his wife's eyes. He wisely decides to tread carefully.

"You still have your missions."

"Hah! Those jokes?" One of her deceptively slender arm loosens itself and Kushina's free hand flaps jokingly in the air. "You think they'd give the Hokage's wife an actual mission to do? I'm not stupid, Minato."

Now that the squeezing around his midsection has softened, and Minato's head has stopped swimming at all that, he has the gall to lower himself and give her a peck on her forehead. She accepts the gesture fairly graciously. Her eyes, once triangular, soften their geometry after a few seconds of staring into his.

"I wrote a poem."

Wha-?

Kushina, looking chirpier, digs under the sofa seat to bring up a crumpled piece of paper, its edges ripped from a yellowing notepad.

This is a non-sequitor, if he ever saw one. But Minato adapts well.

"What's it about?"

"Our unborn child."

Minato's eyes grow wide. "Is there something—"

"Nothing's wrong," Kushina grumbles. "You were gone all of last week, remember? Pervy Sage came over to taunt me on Wednesday, and then he told me to get a hobby. So I thought, okay, he sells books, so I'll show him up by writing kickass poems."

"Is that how it works?" Minato says delicately, and takes the proffered poem, hoping for his sanity that it bears none of Sensei's writings'... unique hallmarks. He gets half a page in before he realizes it's a bad parody of Snow White—where Kushina's singing about their child having well-formed lips, tan skin, his blond hair and not her red—and returns the sheet promptly.

"I can't look at unfinished genius," he says with the poker face he uses on the Raikage's envoys on Tuesdays. "I'll wait 'til it's finished."

Kushina rolls her eyes and mumbles something barely coherent into the sofa. "Anyway—" Minato makes out this bit. "I'm doing okay. I know it's not your fault I'm treated like some housewife after your promotion."

She's still loathe to utter in plain terms his accession to Hokage. Something about him getting a fat head and then history forgetting any of the interesting bits of his life, when he's dead.

"But you're a terrifying housewife," he says proudly.

A muffled, but hopeful "Really?" emerges.

"Your name strikes fear into all of Iwagakure." This is not a lie.

Her red head launches up like a reinflated balloon. Kushina's grin is beatific, canines and all.

"Then, you don't think they'll write me off as some boring Hokage's wife, do you?"

"Who would dare?"

"Konoha's stuffy historians. There's like, three sentences on Mito in the entire library."

Minato's eyes soften. He lowers himself to her eye level.

"Is this the start of one of your personal missions again?"

Kushina shifts in agitation, then finds the slight curl of Minato's lips and the steady light in his eye as he brushes a hand to her cheek.

"Because I liked the result of the last one very much," Minato breathes.

He moves in – paperwork hasn't dulled his reflexes – before he can get clobbered for his efforts.

And for once, Kushina has no retort.

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Omake end.