On some mornings, she would wake up far before the rest of the household did to set the teapot on the stove and try fumblingly not to mess up the eggs. It was about fifty-fifty. Hiashi, in a rare display of fatherly intuition and kindness, never complained. He never smiled, either, but to Hinata, his silence was strangely warmer than his words.
On some evenings, Hiashi would have the good sense to stop in and watch his sleeping daughter from the doorway. In these moments, he would allow himself to forget her failings, and understand them as the differences they really were. There was a reflection of kindness and sympathy in his eyes that would slowly fade as he closed the door and shuffled down the hall to his own quarters.
On some mornings, Naruto bothered to drag himself out of bed with his moth-bitten sleeping cap and stumble blearily into the kitchen, often forgetting to check the expiration date on his milk container and learning the hard way why such obliviousness took an iron stomach to handle (something, incidentally, Naruto didn't have). Sakura could normally tell which mornings these were, as Naruto's pained, whiskered face would end up waist-high and miserably asking her for help when she was normally quite busy. Sakura would call him an idiot, lecture him on "use by" dates, sigh, know he wasn't listening, roll her eyes in irritation, hand him a placebo pill and tell him to use the bathroom for god's sake.
On some evenings, Naruto would have the good sense to properly feed himself before passing out on his futon and snoring loud enough to rouse the dead. Jiraiya still occasionally checks up on him. Iruka does too. Ebisu stopped after realizing that three men sitting together on a roof-top looked slightly too gay for him to handle. Neither Iruka nor Jiraiya particularly cared. Last noted, Iruka still refused to read Jiraiya's novels.
It was on some afternoons that they met. Naruto would be training with Jiraiya, sometimes. Other times, Sakura. Once, Kakashi. (Kakashi had politely declined each time afterward, claiming Naruto had injured his pride. This was the first, and last, time anyone heard the word "pride" from Kakashi's lips in describing himself.) Hinata would be timid, but lately, more sure. She carried her chin up, once she passed the gates to the training grounds. She still blushed, still fiddled around, and Naruto was still oblivious as to why.
He would frown and scrunch down right next to where-ever she'd collapsed and scratch his head, as if contemplating the universe in the veins of a leaf. Hinata found herself breathless as he'd lean in close and ask her to tell him what wasn't working. Often then, in her jumbled words, they'd be interrupted as a familiar Akamaru would lead in Kiba and Shino, the one anxious, the other ambivalent. Sometimes Naruto would stay. Sometimes he would go.
Hinata wasn't fainting as often anymore. Sometimes, she even had the strength not to stutter.
Most the time, she wondered how it was the both of them had gotten to caring so much about cross-word puzzles anyway.