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“Is our baby going to eat its twin on the inside?”
Kisame blinks. Sakura has this expression on her face, the most serious one she usually uses outside of surgery. He blinks again, wondering if maybe he’s finally lost his mind. He’s been hit on the head plenty of times through his career. Finally succumbing to the accumulated concussions right now probably wouldn’t be a bad way to go.
Subtly, he opens his mouth to taste the air where Sakura’s scent mingles with it.
“You aren’t pregnant,” he replies.
Sakura rolls her eyes like he’s being the unreasonable one.
“I could’ve told you that,” she huffs. “I’m asking hypothetically. If I were pregnant, would our baby eat its own twin on the inside?”
“On the inside,” Kisame repeats. “Of your womb.”
“No,” Sakura simpers, “the inside of my stomach lining. Yes, the inside of my womb.”
“The inside of your hypothetical womb,” Kisame corrects, finally settling into the ridiculousness of her question. “Where our hypothetical twins are currently fermenting.”
Sakura wrinkles her nose.
“They aren’t bean paste, you idiot,” she snaps.
“Right,” Kisame replies. “They’re just hypothetical.”
Sakura lifts one pink eyebrow and Kisame relents, hiding his laugh behind his hand.
She’d been settling in reasonably well in Kiri. The arranged marriage that brought her from a small family descended of samurai in Konoha had done well for her family. The Hoshigaki were an important family in Kiri; bloodlines were protected fiercely since Terumi stepped in and abruptly ended the purges, deposing Karatachi like he wasn’t a goddamn jinchuuriki.
Still. Hoshigaki Mako wasn’t keen on letting a samurai girl into the family if she wasn’t combat ready. Kiri was a whole world and a half different than Konoha, and her daughter-in-law needed to be strong enough to handle it. The clan had paid for Sakura’s shinobi education in Konoha until she made genin and was an adult, and could move to Kiri to live with her in-laws until she was old enough to be married.
Eight years passed and Haruno Sakura was a holy terror the likes of which Kiri had never seen before. The strong-willed women in Kisame’s family loved her. Haku, of all people doted on her, which meant Momochi spent enough time around her, which ensured that everyone in Kiri knew this random pink haired brat from Fire Country was under the protection of the Swordsmen. Which would have been fine, if she weren’t already under Kisame’s.
She was stronger, meaner, and faster than anyone had expected her to be. She had managed to develop a method of healing that involved direct chakra transplants via stabbing. She had - on more than one occasion - stabbed Kisame in the throat to heal injuries, that in her opinion, he could have easily avoided. Her nagamaki had already been dangerous when she was taught by Kiri kenjutsu masters. She was doubly terrifying when you couldn’t tell if she were aiming to help you or to further hurt you.
And all that cleverness apparently didn’t add up to much when it came to reproducing with a Hoshigaki.
“For someone who is so smart, you can be a real dumbass.”
Sakura snorts.
“I just know that if one of our kids eats another one, then tries eating its way out of me, I need to know someone’s going to be able to use my Ōkuninushi to shove that brat back in me,” she says. And when she taps him lightly on the nose, Kisame has to roll his eyes.
“That doesn’t work either,” he says.
“I know,” Sakura replies blithely. “But if I’m bleeding out on a hospital bed, I know you aren’t going to stab me. So I need a contingency plan.”
“You don’t think I’d stab you to save your life?”
Sakura levels a look at him. Her gaze is positively withering.
“Is my potential children eating themselves and also me from the inside out something I need to worry about or not?”
Kisame pinches the bridge of his nose and wonders if his mother was the one who got Sakura stuck on this, or if his sisters did it.
“They’re part shark, not part parasite.”
“All fetuses are parasites,” she replies, medic training removing any hint of potential motherly compassion. Kisame cocks his head at her; she’s only ever that unaffected when she’s worried about something.
He reaches out and lays one palm on her lower back, pulling her in close. She steps forward until she’s standing between his knees, and he drops his other arm around her waist. Her hands fall to his shoulders, and he takes a moment to taste the air around her throat where her Kiri hitai-ate rests; nerves, of course, but the strong undercurrent of wet grass and blood that followed her here from Fire Country.
“No,” Kisame says, rubbing slow circles at the small of her back to calm her down. “Hoshigaki fetuses are not like live sharks. We do not eat each other in the womb. If we did, I’m sure I would’ve eaten Isonade.”
Sakura snorts, but her hands on his shoulders relax some.
“Iso-nee is my favorite sister,” she replies.
Kisame snorts.
“Isonade is a terror.”
“That’s saying something coming from you.”
Kisame gives her a toothy grin and Sakura returns it. The air around her settles until the acid taste of her anxiety soothes away into the smell of the salty mist always settled around Kiri. She only smells like grass and blood and herself, and Kisame calms once she does.
Then, he lifts an eyebrow.
“You think you’re ready for kids?” he asks.
Sakura gives him a smirk and flicks his nose.
“Ask me again when I take your name.”