The Sock Monster

The Sock Monster


10.26

Shikamaru woke up to someone cursing.

He would have wanted to stay in bed for another three hours (he had first woken up when Hinata had gone to the kitchen about 7 am) but couldn’t help but be a bit worried: Hinata never cursed. Well, hadn’t cursed before pregnancy at least.

Crazy pregnancy hormones. Yay. This day should be fun.. not.

Muttering incohorent things under his breath he finally rose and headed towards the sound of silent cries of annoyance, the bathroom.

*

Hinata was battling with the black socks. For some reason, the pile of pairless socks had only gotten bigger during the last hour. In another state of great agitation, she threw the offending pair of almost identical black socks away. With Shikamaru’s good luck, they landed on his head.

When he had first seen the sight he would have laughed at loud: his forever calm, sweet and shy wife cursing at and physically abusing a pile of black socks. He hadn’t dared, however: if his mother was any inclination to how pregnant women might get.. he didn’t want to try his luck with Hinata. As they say, the silent ones are the worst.

“O-ohayo..” (1)

Shikamaru turned to look back at her and did everything he could not to snigger at the sight: the angry, sock-abusing monster had turned back into his quiet, blushing wife. He brushed the socks from his head, walked to Hinata and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. She sighed and picked up another pair of socks to show to him.

“We have too many black socks. These look black, but the left one is clearly green and the other is blue! And look – “ she picked up a third sock from a random pile, “this one is gray!”

Shikamaru blinked. How could anyone get so stressed and agitated over a few socks?

“Shikamaru-kun.. I’m not ready to be a mother! I can’t even organize socks! And – and I kind of left water to boil – for the tea – and it was all vaporized and –“

“And that stops you from being a mother?” Panicking wasn’t Hinata’s style – at all. This made Shikamaru nervous and obviously – in her mind – made him blind.

“Of course! I don’t have the instinct to be a mother! Look, this sock –“

“It’s black. Hinata, just forget about the socks and let’s have some breakfast. I’m hungry” and with that he left for the kitchen, knowing that in time his sock-obsessibe wife would follow.

And she did, half an hour later.

She seemed to have gotten over the sock issue, at least she wasn’t panicking anymore. Actually, in Shikamaru’s opinion, she was too calm.

“Don’t you have the debriefing with Hokage-sama today, Shikamaru-kun?” she asked grabbing an apple from a basket on top of their small dining table.

“Yea, at eleven”

Her pointed look made him realize he had two minutes to get to the Hokage tower. Still he couldn’t just leave her alone to battle against the evil socks and vaporizing water. What else would she come up with when he was gone, an attack of the dust bunnies? He had to go however (he didn’t want to be the object of Tsunade’s anger) so he was left with only one option.

“If.. if it gets too hard, just.. tell me, okay? I can do the.. laundury and the sock thing..”

This seemed to arouse great amusement in her. Nara Shikamaru, offering to help with housework?

Glad that his wife had seemingly calmed down, Shikamaru gave her a short but yet sweet goodbye kiss. Before he could walk out the door, she hugged him from behind.

Leaning in closer to him she whispered in his ear..

“I'm glad that you help out of your own will. I don't want to be your mother, Shikamaru-kun.” (2)