Adoration

Itachi wore silence like armor.

There were a few, however, that could read him. Family mostly. Although there was the occasional outlier like Hatake Kakashi or the S-ranked missing-nin, Hoshigaki Kisame, who he had the pleasure of fighting several times over the years during particularly difficult missions.

But his wife was a different creature entirely. She was open with almost anything, so long as the person had her trust. And to him, she was like glass. She was also easy to unbalance. While he didn't dislike that about her, he just thought that sometimes it could be detrimental.

Not for her, but for him.

Whenever he saw tears rimming her eyes or her lips quivering, he had the urge to shatter something—preferably the cause of her inner turmoil. But that wasn't always possible. In fact, he distinctly recalled the first time that feeling had welled up inside of him. He even remembered the date, too—December 8—because he had his summon trail Hinata while she was out on a mission, so he could purposely time his return with hers. They had travelled together for a few hours and spent the night camping, before being soaked by a storm the following morning. Thankfully, they were close enough to a town that they were able to find shelter just as the winds became treacherous.

He didn't remember any of the common details about the inn that they stayed in like the name or who manned the front desk; it had been too long for him to recall such things. Besides, he had more important matters to focus on back then, seeing as how all that separated his room from Hinata's had been a bathroom. He'd conjured so many fantasies in his head about all of the positions he could've found her in while there, though none of them came true. But Itachi did strangely remember small, unnecessary things like how his room had excessively creaky floorboards and dusty shelves that were dense with emptiness. He also recalled a blue lampshade with orange floral patterns sitting on a table outside of his door. The color combination had irritated him, and he considered burning it no less than eight times before leaving.

But his most vivid memory was staring outside of his window and watching the sky go wild. Trees whipped each other into a frenzy. Lightning cackled in the distance like a warning of things yet to come. The rain didn't simply fall, it pounded. It struck everything that had the audacity to get between it and the earth with a vengeance that rivalled a man whose family had been slaughtered before his eyes.

Itachi had watched an old oak tree, forty feet tall and twice his width, twist like twine under the might of the wind. It didn't break at the core, no, it bent like a pliant pole made of rubber. All of its leaves shifted sideways, twisted over themselves, and then, all at once, the winds had uprooted it. A lattice of wood, soil, and root tore loose and splattered dirt high into the sky. An animal that he could just barely make out got slapped by a stray branch, whimpered, and then ran up the stairs of a nearby building, hopefully to its owner. The storm surged over the oak's home, filling the hole left behind in a matter of seconds, as if it had never been there to begin with.

Itachi breathed, slow and measured, at the sight.

That can't be good, he thought.

But his worries were blown away the moment he heard a strangled shout from the other room. Before conscious thought could stop him, Itachi had already thrown open the two doors that separated them. He found Hinata staring out the window at the same spectacle he'd just witnessed. Her Byakugan was activated, and she had both hands pressed against the glass, as if preparing to go to the animal herself. But she must've seen that it was in good hands because she breathed a sigh of relief not long after. Itachi watched as her whole body seemed to slump forward with the movement.

"Itachi-sama?" Hinata said after seeing his reflection in the glass. It was more a question than a call, and he shuddered at the sound of his name in her voice.

Itachi hadn't been prepared for the sight of her when she turned to face him. Her hair was loosely tied at the base of her neck, and she'd exchanged the baggy clothing for something less modest and more comfortable to sleep in. It wasn't provocative, but it was certainly less than he'd ever seen on her before. His throat dried at the sight of her body. Sage, she was blessed. Kimonos didn't do her justice at all. They were pretty to look at, but they hid so much behind all of those endless layers.

But infinitely more important than his first real glimpse at her, were her wide eyes and how they brimmed with unshed tears. His heart spasmed in its cage. While his fist might not have clenched, his fingers did twitch without his consent, which was a feat in itself. His body never disobeyed him. It was mind over body for him; always had been and always would be.

Maybe it was the sheer number of contradictions within the woman before him that had him reacting in strange ways. He doubted something like that was contagious, but he'd also doubted a ninja's sensitivity to such things before, too, so clearly he could be proven wrong. It was rare, but not impossible, as Sasuke liked to claim.

To this day, he still didn't fully comprehend how she could get all teary-eyed for an animal when she'd seen—and done—far worse. Itachi was suddenly stricken by the thought of her frowning with regret over the corpses of her own enemies. His chest ached at the dreadful image.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, rubbing her tears away with a dainty finger. She smiled in an effort to reassure him. "I just saw that dog get hit across the back, and I just..." Hinata sniffled, then wiped furiously at her eyes again.

She needed to stop doing that. He'd fight the storm if he had to.

"Is it okay?" Itachi asked after a moment.

"I saw it run up to a little girl. She and her mother gave him lots of hugs and checked for any injuries."

"Did they find any?" Itachi knew healing ninjutsu... the basics at least. He was confident in his ability to patch up superficial wounds, and if that dog could still run to its family, then he doubted it had anything more than a scratch.

Hinata activated her bloodline limit again. Her pupils moved ever so slightly, before she shook her head. "He's okay."

"Good."

There was a brief lull in conversation. Hinata continued wiping what was left of her tears, while Itachi stood and stared at her. She either didn't mind her current state of undress or she hadn't noticed it. Either way, Itachi wasn't going to leave until she'd gotten rid of that look on her face. He'd have to close the blinds, too.

As he was thinking of what he'd do to make sure she didn't see another disparaging sight like that again, Hinata spoke, "You're very kind, Itachi-sama. Thank you for checking up on me."

"... It was nothing."

The lights flickered. They both looked up.

"Do you have candles in your room?" she asked worriedly. "I found a lot in one of the drawers. Take a few with you just in case."

Hinata moved, things bounced, and Itachi swallowed. He was caught in a strange dilemma that he never thought he'd be in. He didn't want to tell her to cover up. It went against everything he felt as a man, but if he didn't tell her, then he was afraid that his mother's nagging voice would haunt him in his sleep. There was the added bonus of him seeing her reaction, but damn it all, the view.

Itachi pulled at his collar. His blood was rushing in his veins, like river water through a too small sieve.

He had to tell her.

"Hina—"

"Itachi!" he heard, and his eyes snapped open to find his wife staring at him with a disapproving frown on her lips. "Are you listening to me?"

"I'm getting thin," he said. A part of his mind, it seemed, still somehow functioned within the present even when the rest of it was preoccupied. "I need to eat more when I'm on missions because you can't feed me." Itachi smoothed the crease between her brows with his thumb. "Right?"

Hinata wrinkled her nose ever so slightly at him. She was definitely annoyed. It was a shame that he found the action adorable. Her voice didn't grate on his ears either. Rather, it was unfairly beautiful. Though perhaps that was to be expected, given the rest of her.

Itachi leaned down to peck her lips.

"I'll live."

"I know you will," she asserted. "I'm just trying to make sure you don't collapse. One meal a day isn't enough, Itachi. Your last mission was four months long. I can't pack that much food for you."

"That was a special case."

"You always get sent on missions like that though. The shortest you've been sent on this year was three weeks." There was bottled frustration in her voice. Anxiety, too. But she didn't ask him why, already knowing that he wouldn't be able to give her any details concerning his time in ANBU. "The doctor said you needed more protein... and iron. A lot of iron."

Itachi cursed mandatory check-ups in his mind. It was standard procedure for all ninjas returning from long missions, especially if the mission was rank A or higher. And at this point in his career, Itachi almost exclusively took S-class, which meant a lot of doctor's visits.

"You've gotten paler," she said suddenly. Perhaps knowing that she wouldn't be able to get him to change his bad eating habits on the field just yet. He was unusually absent-minded at the moment.

"I was in the land of snow. It isn't because of the lack of meals."

'Stubborn,' were what her eyes told him then, though what she said was much different. "What were you thinking about?"

He hummed, instead of answering. Itachi placed a hand over her cheek and used his thumb to trace the soft skin below her eyes, wiping imaginary tears away. He'd done it enough times by now to know exactly how puffy her cheeks got. He was glad that she had nothing to be sad about now. Aggravated, yes, but not sad.

"You," he said plainly.

The blush that spread across her cheeks and down her chest was expected, and he followed it all the way to the edge of her clothes with his eyes. When it came to him, Hinata was readable to a fault.

Rose-tinted glass, he thought, before kissing her.