So I had a lot of fun writing this, and the first one. I also really enjoyed discussing it with @giada-luna. This is pretty much co-authored by that darling. She deserves credit where credit is due. More Sasu/Duckling adventures ensue. Part 2 of I no longer know how many.
She had gracefully, elegantly allowed him (and his ducklings) to move in. Not permanently but still, there was a surprising sense of long term associated with hauling several boxes worth of things out of his car and into her house. Or at least, that’s how he secretly felt about it.
Hinata was all smiles, as usual. Sunshine in a person, she laughed and danced through the posse of his ducklings always at his feet, tripping him or squawking loudly when almost stepped on.
“That one!” He snapped, nodding at a particularly clingy bit off fluff stepping in front of him every step he took through the foyer and up the stairs to the spare bedroom. “That one is suicidal or trying to kill me. I’ve almost stepped on him half a dozen times in the last half hour."
Hinata laughed, scooped up the offensive duck and despite his quacking protestations followed Sasuke and the rest up the stairs.
"I believe that he just loves you more than the others.”
“Of course you do.” Sasuke grumbled, although the sound of her saying “loves you” in his direction was distracting any negative thoughts and turning them into rainbows and butterflies in his head.
The storm had washed the city clean and in the noon day sun it sparkled as though doused in glitter. The ducks found this refreshing and as soon as he stepped into what would be his room for the next while they were off to investigate, quacking cheerily.
Hinata’s smile was secretive as she kissed the top of the ducklings head. “Well, I have to run to the dojo to meet my cousin for that toddler lesson and if I don’t show up on time he will panic with the kids…” she drifted off, rubbing her neck.
Sasuke smirked broadly, remembering again the frantic call he had witnessed weeks ago from her stoic unwelcoming cousin and Tenten’s guffaws as Hinata scrambled away to save Neji from a horde of upset toddlers at her family’s dojo.
“Don’t let me keep you. I can…handle this…” Sasuke began strong and upon seeing several ducklings tumble from the bed into the waste basket by the nightstand he winced.
Hinata pursed her lips.
“Are you sure, I… I don’t- maybe I can call my sister to-?”
“Nope.” It came out too fast. Flushing he turned and scooped up the ducklings from the waste basket, trying to not look her in the face.
Hanabi was straight forward, and about as perceptive as a microscope on bacteria. She had taken one look at him and within five minutes began to smile with this knowing and rather nerve wrecking sort of ferocity. If he was left alone there was a very high probability that he was going to say something incriminating and since he had literally just moved into her sister’s spare bedroom…
He shook his head. “I can handle them by myself for a few hours. For sure.”
This was a stretch and Hinata’s face twisting with mild disbelieve said so. Most of the night had been spent awake, despite his best intentions. The ducklings peeped incessantly at the door, and when he finally opened it they wandered through the hall until he couldn’t find them in the dark.
A good portion of the very early morning was spent searching for a duckling that had in fact been asleep in Sasuke’s bed and after all that he and Hinata had passed out in the living room in their pajamas, ignoring the ducklings and their hopping on their backs.
“I wonder if maybe you can get them to nap.” Hinata blinked mildly at the duck in her hands. It blinked back for a moment as if in disbelief at her suggestion and then quacked a small laugh.
“Do ducks nap?” Sasuke raised an eyebrow, sweeping a handful of ducklings off the clothes he had put down on the bed so he could put them in the drawer. They tumbled like bowling pins, chattering indignantly.
“I hope so. They didn’t really sleep at night.” Hinata laughed. “At this rate…”
“We’re going to lose.” Sasuke nodded, pushing another fluff ball aside to step up to the dresser he was filling with clothes.
“Maybe. We need to be smart. We should go to the library.” Hinata tapped her chin thoughtfully with one long finger.
“The library?”
“For books on…”
“Raising ducks.” He fixed her with a long stare and Hinata flushed, grinning.
“They might suggest a farm, I suppose.”
“This… is ridiculous.”
A sound of chimes ringing set the ducklings into a tizzy and while they all sprinted to their dad’s feet Hinata giggled, pulling out her ringing cell phone from her pocket.
“Oh I have to go, that’s Neji-nii.”
“Right.” Sasuke replied, watching her hesitate for a moment with her gray eyes lingering on the hopping ducklings at his feet.
“Are you going to be-?”
“Hinata.” He sighed, trying to instill confidence into his voice. “Go.”
“Okay, okay.” And with a smile and a wave she was hopping down the stairs two at a time, leaving Sasuke alone with his squad of ducklings.
It was not fine.
“When can you be here?”
Sasuke pinned the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he army crawled over the ground, heart in his throat and eyes wide. The flutter of fluffy wings beneath the couch sent him scrambling along the carpet, knocking into the coffee table in Hinata’s living room and setting a ball of yarn she had been using to knit the ducklings a blanket rolling.
“Shit, shit shit!” Sasuke gasped, turning to look at the pink and blue yarn ball spinning into the hall.
From the phone Naruto’s voice came through.
“Uh… Teme? Are you okay? I was fairly sure ducklings were not carnivorous but you sure sound like you’re getting eaten.”
“No. Dobe, are you coming or not?”
“Tch. Never heard you so excited for my company. You must be screwed. I will be right there. Fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes?” Sasuke balked at the sound of his own voice. Somewhere between a cat getting it’s tail pulled and getting kicked in the groin.
Naruto’s barking laugh replied. “I’m coming, princess. Knights in shining armor shouldn’t break the speed limit laws.”
“Oh shut up.” Sasuke growled, throwing the phone over his shoulder.
The ducklings had vanished. In the end he had fallen asleep. The spring sun was shining through the window in Hinata’s spare room and in the haze of heat and the smell of her on everything he had curled with the fluffy quacking balls on the bed for a moment. It had only been a moment.
Upon waking, twenty minutes later there was no ducklings. Just his heart in his chest sprinting to get out.
“She’s going to kill me.”
The exaggeration was not lost on him, but the truth was that just seeing Hinata’s down turned mouth, her eyes shining with tears would probably give him a heart attack. Already there was a knot in his stomach threatening to tighten until he was a pretzel of a man. He couldn’t imagine actually seeing her face in tears.
Over the stupid ducklings.
To be fair though, he was panicking for his own sake as well. Another picture was floating in his mind, of ducklings jamming their tiny bills into electric sockets or finding a vent open to crawl through into the walls, or sneaking out a window and being hunted by neighborhood cats or eating laundry soap pods and dying in poisoned agony.
Shuddering, Sasuke shoved himself up and following the whispered quacking of the escaped duckling down the hall past the kitchen and towards Hinata’s painting studio.
Besides working at the dojo he knew she also taught art classes at the community center and enjoyed it herself enough that occasionally she did commissions.
She had spent a portion of the evening cleaning up and finishing the piece she was working on after their tea and banana bread.
Now, Sasuke had an awful feeling.
A terrible feeling.
A very dreadful sinking feeling.
“No.” He croaked, closing his eyes at the sound of more quacking down the hall.
“No. No. No.”
The studio was the room with the most light. Windows on every wall meant sun in the morning, noon and evening, of a variety of types. Easels stood to attention along one wall, and at the center next to her rough wooden table splattered with a myriad of colors next to her wooden stool another easel lay on it’s side.
The caps must not have been on firmly on a handful of paint bottles because their rainbow essence was spattered all over the floor and to his horror, on the spanning landscape of a meadow on canvas.
Hand over his mouth he stood at the threshold, watching as the ducklings meandered over the canvas, quacking as they splattered their flat feet over the painting in various marbled colors.
He must have stood there for some time because suddenly the front door was being knocked on hard and then flung open without the time necessary for someone to come answer it.
“Teme?"
Sasuke snapped out of his nightmare, blinking hard and turning to look at Naruto down at the other end of the house.
The blonde shrugged out of his jacket, smirking. "You look scared shitless. What’s wrong? Did one die?”
Maybe that would have been better.
His lack of reply seemed to give the blonde pause. “Teme?”
“…I think, I may have screwed up.”
Before this moment Naruto would have said hell would freeze over before such words left Sasuke Uchiha’s mouth. Blue eyes the size of saucers Naruto padded down the hall, past the disaster of yarn in the living room and past the quiet tidy kitchen to the doorway where Sasuke peered at chaos.
“Oh…shit.” Naruto whispered, digging his hands into his blonde hair for a minute. “No… okay, this is fine. This is okay.” His voice was strained and for a moment Sasuke marveled at that while watching as a duckling skidded awkwardly in violet paint. His flappy feet flailing and slapping hard before ending up on his rump in the puddle of purple.
This was bad. If Naruto himself was serious then this was…
The abrupt explosion of laughter from the blonde made Sasuke jump, and dark eyes torn between disbelieving and furious he glared as his friend struggled to breathe through tears of laughter.
“This. Isn’t. Funny.”
“Oh, my god…” Naruto held on to the door frame, fingers white knuckled as he hugged his stomach, rubbing at the tears with his shoulder. “Oh my god, I can’t breathe.”
“Why the hell did I bother calling you of all people? Sai would have been more useful.” Sasuke snapped, giving him a hard shove into the wall before gingerly stepping into the fray.
“Aw, come on. I mean look at it.” Naruto waved a hand at the multicolored ducklings. “It’s adorable, if anything Hinata is going to want a picture. Here.” He flipped his phone out of his pocket and moved to aim the camera.
Sasuke was backpedaling into him so hard they ended up in a tussle in the hallway. Biting words were said, curses were thrown and elbows received by undeserving ribs.
“No pictures!” Sasuke gasped, finally wrangling the phone out of Naruto’s hands and throwing it down the hall. “If I’m lucky I will only have to look at this humiliation once in my life. Don’t immortalize it.”
“Aw come on.” Naruto struggled to his feet, still grinning. “You have to let me document your magnificent crash and burn.”
“Get out. Just get out.” Sasuke bit out forcefully. “I can’t deal with you and the-”
“Ducklings. Wow, you weren’t kidding about how many there were.” Naruto stepped into the studio then, carefully avoiding puddles of paint. “Fifteen, you said?”
“That’s what the last count was. I am hopeful that they are entirely too young to multiply.”
“God help you, poor bastard.” Naruto’s chortling laugh was met with a shake of Sasuke’s head and grabbing an empty cardboard box he began gathering the paint splattered ducklings. Eyes carefully diverting from the overturned canvas he tried to breathe carefully.
“How much do you think Hinata liked that painting?” He finally mustered, grabbing two offending ducklings and tossing them into the box.
The feathery bundles quacked irritably but remained in the box, falling over as he moved to pick up more of their siblings.
“Uh, you’re asking me?” Naruto cocked his head at the meadow, it’s multicolored duck feet prints like confetti throughout it’s soothing background. “Honestly, I have no idea, but I am guessing this was not how she was hoping it to be finished."
"I am so dead.” Sasuke sighed, smearing blue on his cheek as a duckling tried to get free of his grip and floundered against his face.
“I would say you’re toeing the line, yeah.” Naruto’s grin remained firmly in place. “If I can’t take a picture of the mess, can I at least tape the skinning she’s going to give you?”
"I have to get these things in the bath.” Sasuke gasped, realizing what time it was as the clock on the wall tick tocked steadily. “Shit, shit, can you clean this up?”
“Do I look like I know how to get paint out of hardwood floor?”
“You don’t know how to do shit, I realize that but I hoped-” Sasuke stopped, watching as the ducklings began to hop in the box, attempting to make an escape at the edges. “Never mind, forget this. Let’s get these pests cleaned up and then we can deal with the rest."
"Whatever you say, Princess.”
“Call me that again and I’m going to show these ducklings how to stuff a human. They need to learn self defense anyway.” Sasuke growled, moving towards the bathroom with the quacking birds in his hands.
Naruto chuckled behind him. “Aw, look at you. Thinking like a Papa. Wait does that make Hinata the Mama?”
“Jesus, I might actually kill you before this is over."
Still, it didn’t escape Naruto’s gaze that Sasuke’s neck warmed to a bright red glow despite his protestations.
"What did you do?”
Sasuke had been asking himself this for several minutes, blinking in disbelief as his ducklings floundered in the soapy water of the bath tub…
Only to sink.
Naruto watched, brows raised. “I mean- you broke them!”
The urge to bang his head on the tub side was becoming almost impossible to resist and Sasuke pressed a hand to his forehead, glaring at the duckling sinking below the watery surface for a moment longer before pulling him back up.
The duckling did the fowl equivalent of splutter and before the rest could suddenly begin to drown as well Sasuke was scooping them out of the water.
“I cannot believe this.”
“Did you use extra heavy conditioner on them or something? I mean, they’re sinking like rocks.” Naruto conversed lazily, chin in hand from his perch on the counter.
“Extra heavy conditioner? Do you hear the words coming out of your mouth?” Sasuke snapped and jumped slightly at the feel of wet webbed feet stumbling on his shoulders and the back of his neck as the ducks he pulled out of the water attempted to climb his back to get back into the bath.
“Stop it.” He gasped in exasperation. “Your siblings are drowning, get off!"
"This is the best.” Naruto commented, swinging his foot idly. “I am enjoying flustered Papa Sasuke. Oh! One made it back in."
The splash of the duckling taking a dive off his shoulder made Sasuke growl and grabbing several at a time he dumped the whole soaking mess on the tiles of the floor, wincing at the pooling water and slipping and sliding feet of the fowl.
"They’re going to drown. Why aren’t they floating!? They floated a minute ago. My god, I am losing my mind- Stop jumping in!” He gasped, catching another aiming to Pocahontas fly off his head.
“Just the best. It’s just the best.” Naruto continued, his grin so wide it encompassed most of his face.
“That’s it.” Sasuke snapped, shoving himself to his feet only to stop, frozen about to reach for Naruto’s neck at the sight of Hinata in the door way, blinking rapidly.
“Hey…how’s it going?” She stammered.
Naruto and Sasuke stared at her, both boys looking pale and more wide eyed than usual.
“Hey, Hina. You’re looking so lovely today. Look at you all radiant! Perfect duckling Mama I have ever seen. And you know, this guy needs all the help he can get! Personally I think you might want to consider filing for full custody. For the duck’s sake, you see. Just my humble opinion.” Naruto laughed nervously, sliding off the counter and squeezing past her through the doorway.
“I gotta run though, sorry I can’t stay-”
“Oh! A-are you sure, I could make some tea- or coffee?” Hinata blinked at him as he scrambled backwards, ignoring Sasuke’s pleading expression behind Hinata even as it turned less pleading and more murderous.
“Oh, no sorry, thanks though, Hina. You’re the best. Rain check though? I’ll stay next time. Believe it.” Turning to Sasuke finally he pointed. “Aren’t your ducklings drowning?"
Hinata whirled, eyes wide. "What?!”
“See ya Sasuke!"
Sasuke watched, gaping as the blonde almost sprinted out the door and turned slowly back to Hinata who was shoving the shower curtain out of the way and pulling the plug on the drain.
"What! What happened to them why are they-?” She stopped, picking the duckling floundering in the water up and sniffing him. Sasuke stared, completely confused and holding still for the sake of his own survival. Maybe she wouldn’t kill him if there were no sudden movements.
“You…” she laughed then, shaking her head and scooping out the rest of the ducks from the bath and into a towel on her lap. “You washed the oil off their feathers.” Her giggle made him let out a long breath.
“I did what?”
“You washed the oil off their feathers. You can’t use any soap on them. They need very gentle fragrance free soap.” She cocked her head at him. “They can’t float without the oils.”
Sasuke closed his eyes. “Right.”
“Why were you bathing them?” she laughed again. “They were clean yesterday.”
“Um…” Sasuke paused, pressing his lips together hard. Hinata glanced up at him then and paused as well, reaching out to wipe a smear of blue paint from his cheek. “Is that… paint?”
Her touch left a searing mark on his skin, and Sasuke stared at her, wide eyed, trying to memorize this moment before she disliked him beyond any hope of fixing.
“Well… they were badly behaved.” He began carefully, shooting the ducklings padding around on his lap a look.
Hinata’s brows rose, her brain putting two and two together. “Ohhh…no.”
Holding up one of the poofy fat babies Sasuke extended it towards her face.
“Please… try to remember they’re just children.”
As for him, he wasn’t sure there was an excuse that would let him get out of this unscathed.
Already he was learning about parental sacrifice.
Ink Child Writing 