Living a Lie

Chapter Twenty-nine - Cuddle Buddies and Dress Up

When I emerged clean and warm and comfortable from the bathroom half an hour later, I stood and eyed the two beds in our suite. “Wait a minute…”

Itachi looked up at me from his place on one of the king-sized mattresses and quirked a brow questioningly. Kisame grinned at me from the other bed, folding his hands behind his head and crossing his feet in a very blasé manner.

I crossed my arms and just about ‘grrr’d in irritation. “Is it just me, or did we get shafted with the beds?”

At their helpful responses, or lack thereof, my hands migrated to my hips and I adopted what I like to call the “Oh Shit” pose. Now, you may be wondering why I’ve dubbed this classic outward display of displeasure as such. You see, when I was little, if I did something that my mother would ultimately deem worthy of an ass-whooping, she would adopt that pose. At that time, I simply called it the “Uh Oh” pose. When I became apprentice to Tsunade, Uh Oh graduated to Oh Shit. I’m sure you can imagine why, given who my Shishou is and her penchant for violence.

I’d been with the Akatsuki long enough for them to acknowledge the meaning behind my Oh Shit pose, and so Kisame caved first. Holding up his hands in a placating gesture he said, “Hey, we had nothing to do with it. The old man brought two of the spare beds into the other room before we even got up here, so by the time we realized how many beds we had altogether it was too late to even them out.”

Itachi chose this moment to open his mouth, saying, “You didn’t even notice where you were putting the mattresses when you were helping Haru-san, did you?”

In all fairness, I hadn’t noticed. However, a woman must preserve her dignity somehow in a situation like this, so I put on the “Oh No You Di’int” face (as every woman must when a man calls her observational skills into question) and gave Itachi the ultimate punishment…

The Silent Treatment.

Tossing my towel back into the bathroom so it landed in a heap on the floor (Itachi absolutely detests it when I do this), I marched over to the bed Kisame was currently hogging and stared pointedly at him. When he didn’t respond as I’d hoped, I ordered rather imperiously, “Remove your blue self from my bed, Fishman.”

This time, the Oh Shit pose didn’t faze him, because obviously facing my legendary temper was something he found preferable to his other sleeping arrangements. He lifted a brow and stated simply, “Hell no. I’m not sleeping on the floor, and I sure as fuck ain’t sleeping with him.”

I contemplated this situation for a few moments, whereupon I came to the decision that the energy I’d have to exert in order to win the bed for myself wasn’t worth the trouble. I flicked off the lamp that sat on the bedside table between the two beds (I laughed inwardly, since Itachi had been reading before I came into the room) and lifted the covers. As I climbed in, I said to Kisame, “Touch me and you die.” I promptly went to sleep after that, and dreamt of fluffy little bunnies and using my two roommates as target practice.

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My first thought when I awoke the next morning was, “Mmm.”

My second thought was more of a jumbled mass of incoherent panicky noises when I realized with whom I was oh-so-comfortably spooning.

My third thought was spoken aloud, “I thought I made the death sentence pretty damn clear last night, Hoshigaki.”

I felt his arm tense a little from where it was holding me against his warm torso (and I’m pretty sure the snore he made was fake at this point, as a sort of last-ditch self-preservation technique). 

And that’s when I realized precisely how his arm was positioned. His upper arm was placed along my side with his elbow resting on the front of my left hip, at which point his lower arm rested snugly against my stomach, ending of course with his hand. On my boob. And I was 99.9% sure it was on purpose.