The thrill doesn't last.
Of course it doesn't. It shouldn't.
She imagines she'd be skirting the edges of sociopathy if it did. What with this new selective lack of empathy she has going.
Unhinged paranoia included, it doesn't make for a good look.
So she tries not to mourn the lack of it—that slightly sociopathic thrill—when she wakes up on her birthday feeling normal again. Sane. Like a person who doesn't go around terrorizing hospital patients or destroying medical equipment.
Just ... herself.
There's something almost disappointing about that; about going through her day, getting ready for her party being nothing but herself.
It's strangely disappointing.
"'Cause you've gone mad with power, Babe."—Is Ino's deeply insightful answer to that.
Hinata gives her a look.
"Thin' abou' i'." She goes on, words warping past her stretched lips as she carefully touches up her gloss.
"You had him at your mercy." She smacks her lips when she's finished. "The Uchiha Sasuke," she caps her gloss, "at your mercy." She wipes the excess from the corners of her lips before clapping her handheld mirror shut.
"And now what?" She turns to her.
"Back to this shit again?" She waves at the wall of surveillance screens in front of them, each streaming live footage of Sasuke's hospital room. "Living in his shadow again?" She cocks a brow. "Being powerless again?"
Hinata turns back to the monitors.
They had dropped by his hospital to hurry Sakura along—get her out early so they could get a proper start on her birthday night—but somehow ended up waiting for her in the surveillance office instead.
Her husband on the other hand, had dropped by because he was the kind of asshole who'd tell his wife he'd be late to her party because of quote-unquote 'work.'
He stands there now, liar that he is.
The monitors have him lingering at the threshold of Sasuke's heavily guarded room, leaning against the doorjamb. Head resting against its glass frame. Gaze lowered.
Watching.
Just watching.
Sasuke's perched at the edge of his cot. Back to him.
The yukata Sakura had sent one of her students to fetch from his empty house is liquid silk on him; glossy black waves, hemmed in red; water-like in the way it ebbs and flows across his skin as he's pulling it up around himself.
He stills when he catches Naruto's reflection in the crystal wall across from him. Waits a heartbeat. Then lets his arm drop back to his side.
Hinata frowns.
She watches his yukata follow, silk washing down one arm while clinging to the opposite shoulder so that it falls open across his back.
Another few seconds.
And then he's sliding his hand down his neck as he turns over his shoulder to look at her husband.
"The fuck ...?" She hears Ino mumble as they watch him smile.
"... Take a picture." He tells him—soft. "It'll last longer."
"What," Ino repeats, "the fuck."
Her husband doesn't answer for a beat too long.
He's distracted; entirely too lost in that fucking tattoo.
The way his eyes slowly roam across the neat, black strokes twining down Sasuke's spine; silently studying it; mapping it; following the way fans flow into spirals until the sun and moon become one.
"... It suits you." He finally says after an eternity. Rough.
Sasuke lifts his shoulder glancing over it down the length of his back. "Does it?" He murmurs.
Naruto pushes off the doorframe.
"I've been told it's …," Sasuke looks up at him as he walks over, "... daring ..."
He trails off as he husband drops onto the cot behind him and reaches out.
"What the actual f—?" Ino starts.
Pencil holders abruptly rattle as Hinata cuts her off, slamming her hands onto the desk, bracing herself to lean in. Her ring strikes wood in the same breath—echoes accusingly while she glares at the screens.
On them, her husband stills with a flinch. As though he's heard it—that tiny metallic accusation.
His fingers stall. Hovering.
But it's a fleeting thing.
If that.
The hesitation melts away before it even has the chance to set in. And he surrenders—just as she knew he would; the way he always has.
It's natural—the quickness with which his hands find Sasuke's sides; the way his thumbs trace the borders of his tattoo with a certain damning familiarity; the way his remaining fingers naturally settle into place around the subtle dip of his waist.
For a second more—an eternity of static-filled silence—he does nothing but stare.
Then, movement.
His thumbs work in slow, deliberate circles; pressing, massaging, exploring.
The ink responds—shifting, flowing. And he watches, seemingly transfixed by the way it comes alive beneath his touch; how it reacts to each motion; every ripple of response to his steady pressure until something seems to pull his hands lower and lower and—
—oh god they're really watching this happen right now. Right here on this disturbingly high-resolution, 15-inch screen—
"Is he ...?" Ino leans in beside her.
Lower and lower he goes. Lower and even lower still. Until he's gone as low as decency will allow.
And then he pulls.
Sasuke inhales sharply. He catches himself on his hand before he can pitch forward.
"Wh—?" He whips back. "Na—?" And then he quiets.
Hinata stills.
Together, they watch her husband sink into the curve of Sasuke's neck—face tucked down, nose buried in his nape, eyes falling shut—as his hands ease off Sasuke's waist to lock around him instead.
"... Naruto …?" Sasuke starts.
But he only shakes his head back—slow.
"What is it—?"
"Don't you ever …," her husband's shaky whisper barely makes it through the feed, "... do that again."
His arms tighten. "Ever." He repeats.
Sasuke stares at him for another static-filled eternity. Then turns back.
He looks down at himself; at her husband's arms—the way they cling to him; cage him in.
And slowly—slowly—raises his hand.
Hinata swallows.
She watches his fingers lift off the comforter to trail over those arms.
Wandering. Aimless. Needlessly indulgent.
Until he finally shifts—tips his head back; lets it rest against her husband's—black hair spilling into her husband's; like ink into gold as he glances over his shoulder, eyes half-lidded.
"Was it really that scary …?" He murmurs, lifting his hand off Naruto's arm. "You all act like I died—."
"Because you did die."
"Funny," his fingers idly trace down her husband's jaw now. "You feel real enough."
He tilts his head further, gaze drifting back. "Or are you dead too—?"
"Jokes." Naruto groans, sinking into him. "72 hours out of a coma and he's got jokes."
"Yeah, I had time to work on' em while I was dying—."
"And that's all you could come up with—?"
"That is premium comedy, you uncultured swine—."
"—You seriously came all the way back from heaven to keep making these shitty ass jokes—?"
"—In what world do you think either of us are going to heaven, dumbass?"
Silence.
A beat. Two.
Then Naruto huffs.
He slumps against Sasuke a second later, breaking up into peals of muffled laughter.
The sound carves through Hinata like a blade—because she almost never hears him laugh like this. Not with her. Never this raw. This real. This much.
And it's fine.
It's fine.
She'd known this. Known for years that the man she married keeps parts of himself locked away. That there are depths to him she can't reach; jokes she won't understand; smiles she'll never see.
She's made her peace with it.
But watching it—watching him be so utterly, carelessly himself—
—and with him.
She bites her lip; just watches. Again.
Watches her husband eventually turn his face out of Sasuke's neck when the laughter lulls; as he sets his chin on his shoulder, tilting his head to look into his eyes.
"... You okay?" He asks softly.
And Sasuke tilts his head. Smiles back that smile only her husband can ever make him smile and says ever so softly—ever so sweetly—"I am now."
Hinata twitches.
She grits her teeth so hard, she thinks she hears the enamel crack.
As she stands there, in that fucking surveillance office—watching the edges of her marriage crumble in 4K—a familiar resignation settles into her bones. Her blood. Her brain. Her entire soul.
It's over, she realizes.
It's over now—the other shoe's dropped.
Gone.
Nearly three years of abstinence—gone. Down the drain. Just like that.
Gone.
Only three days in, and her husband's already hooked on his favorite drug again.