KAKASHI IN WINTER
This story is really the second part of a previous story called "Naruto In Summer", and it makes more sense if you read that one first; but it can be read alone and understood. I hope.
Needless to say, I don't own 'Naruto'. You know who our favourite blond would have ended up with if I did.
Doodles. There was a pen in his hand, and pages of printed-paper before him that he was supposed to be reading: Naruto could see them. But, the meeting was boring, and he was ignoring them, and there was just so much blank space to fill with the oddities of his random thoughts. He couldn't stop his pen from moving, all around the edges of those black, printed words.
Too many doodles had already appeared where they shouldn't have: Lines, circles spiralling inwards. Angles that shoot out to eyes, and crude kunai rushing off the edge of the page, as mumbled, jumbled voice after voice droned on in Naruto's ears, until something was...
Recognizable... A single eye done in black, but imagined to be in crimson. Red, black, tomoe swirling, and suddenly a memory of the last time they'd made love was playing behind his eyes. Naruto groaned deep inside of his chest, where no one else but the kyuubi would hear it and swallowed hard. Something other than the pen in his hand twitching as a purely physical memory washed over his skin and pushed its way inside of him. An indrawn breath saved the embarrassment of further groans, but Naruto had to bite his lip to hide a sigh as he heard his title bounce against his ears.
"Huh? What?!" Kami! This day was so damned long, it felt like it was never gonna end! Who was the idiot that thought it would be a good idea to have meetings on the longest, sunniest, day of the year?!
Crimson touched high on his cheekbones as a chorus of answering sighs was heard around the table. No one was surprised that their Hokage's mind had wandered, and beside him, an eye-rolling Shikamaru Nara patted his hand, taking the pen from his callused fingers.
"The civilian representative has finished his presentation, Naruto." Shika said, giving his former classmate an encouraging smile. "He's just waiting for you to say yes to his proposition."
There was no mistaking the broad hint in those words, nor the indulgent glimmer in the dark eyes, and so Naruto hastened to agree, a gleaming smile brightening his whole face as he rushed to his affirmative. "Ah, yes! Great! Sounds good!" He said very enthusiastically. "Let's do it!"
He might have been a bit overly-effusive judging by the many looks of disbelief that came his way, but Naruto didn't have to linger too long in his unease, for another faceless man eventually stood up to speak, and the mumble jumble of the words began again.
Long, long day. He bemoaned, freed once more to follow his impulses to distraction. A long summer day with a hot sun coming in through the windows, warming him, and making him want to be...any...where...else. Unbidden, Naruto's fingers found the pen, and slow, soft scratch of the nib upon paper started once more.
How long he doodled for this time, he didn't quite know; minutes, hours... The next interruption to his empty train of thought was another very familiar, emotive eye peering back at him from his debriefing paper. Instinctively, Naruto slapped a casual hand over it before anyone else could notice.
But, a single glance sideways confirmed that Shikamaru had already seen it. His Jonin Advisor just snorted at him though, and pushed an instructive finger between the pages to show him what number they were up to now. Naruto nodded his appreciation of his friend's quiet assistance then, for the other man knew all about the troubles he'd been having with his husband but not one word of it had gotten out to anyone else.
Thoughts of Kakashi just brought more images and memories of the silver-haired man to mind, and Naruto keenly felt a mix of jumbled emotions roll around inside of him. All of the distance and the confusion of the last few months rising up in him again
In the beginning, he hadn't been able to believe that Kakashi would sneak around on him like that. To go behind his back and look for active duty and it had stunned him—even as his husband had sought to make him understand. Their arguments about it had filled Naruto with an icy sense of betrayal and Kakashi with this wicked, steaming heat of frustration. Perhaps Naruto had understood his point too well that day. For, in the aftermath, he'd seen in his memories the way his husband had surged with rare heat in the weeks beforehand—the sweaty restlessness that the shade of their love for each other couldn't quench.
Guilt had been added to the burden of emotions that Naruto carried around with him since that terrible day, and having that bearing down on him had only made him colder as he tried to work out just why he felt that way. And, if he'd taken refuge behind the bulwarks of his title, his whole being growing more remote from his husband, Kakashi's shimmering resentment had only intensified until the needful, prowling, directionless movement of his lover had resembled nothing more than a wild animal caged beneath the glaring summer sun.
Kakashi really was better, calmer and happier, when he focused and occupied. As much as he was known for his procrastination and tardiness, all that played a secondary, allusive role to his duties as a shinobi. Naruto realized, the tip of his pen grooving a long, inky channel in the report in front of him. He'd just doodled a sun, he saw, and that line extended all the way to the bottom of the paper from one of its wide, wickedly pointed, rays.
Kakashi was not the sun.
It was a stupid way to compare his husband to anything, but it was how his brain was finally sorting out all of the problems that had come up between them. No. Naruto sighed inwardly. There was no matching his love when his mind was sharp and icy cold. When he was determined, and his will was set, Kakashi Hatake was at his best, and when he was at his best at work...he was at his best at home, as well. Now he understood that. Keeping Sharingan no Kakashi cooped up in Konoha with nothing to do was not good for him. That being husband to the Hokage or no—the man needed to be active to be happy, and that his kind of happiness brought a hard and brilliant shine to that single grey eye that rivalled the glare of ice in the depths of winter.
He needed Kakashi to be happy. More than anything else in the whole world, he wanted the one he loved to be happy to be with him. Suddenly he was stupidly glad that he'd left some breakfast for the man he really did love before he'd left for the morning.
Desperation made Naruto close his eyes and drop his head down, one hand clenching around the pen so tightly it bent under his grip. He wondered what he was going to do to bring back that brilliant spirit, and the warmth in their home.
Lost in his own finally clearing thoughts, Naruto was obviously startled when the toes of his advisor scraped over his ankle wrappings, and he sat up immediately, gazing all around the table, wondering just what he'd missed while he'd been thinking. The open amusement—and laconic mockery—in Shika's dark eyes made him all too aware that he'd given away his miserable distraction yet again. Many of the other eyes about the tables were fixed upon him as well, and all of them contained varying degrees of amusement and/or exasperation.
Naruto felt the heat of embarrassment touch his cheeks, and he subsided back into his chair as Shikamaru rose to deliver the final report of the meeting. The dry, slow drone of the pony-tailed Jonin's voice confirmed that his friend was as bored as he was, and he was sorely tempted to fall back into his reverie. Only the rise of that here-to-fore monotonous voice brought him back from his own searching thoughts, for the impression rising in him that Shika might just be speaking directly to him now was beckoning Naruto to look up at him.
Dark eyes were indeed burrowing down into him, and his own blue eyes widened as he sought to understand what the other shinobi was trying to communicate to him.
"...the numbers for the new recruits into ANBU are up. That's good. We'll need them to replace the ones lost in the war..."
And? Naruto thought, feeling a little lost himself.
"We do have one significant problem however." Shikamaru continued, and the blond was sure that the lanky brunet was now actually looming over him.
What?!
"A & I Sensei Yaomori was a casualty of the war, and there are no other credible experts in ANBU fit to replace him at this time." Those dark brown eyes were really boring holes him now, and Naruto was squirming under the pressure of them as he frantically tried to figure out just what the other jonin was inferring.
"Erm... yeah..." He started to say, only to be cut off by a loud 'tch'.
Naruto could almost hear the 'how troublesome' as he was glared at, and his desperately scrambling brain took an odd moment out to confirm that being married to Temari hadn't made his friend any more patient, just as Shikamaru leaned in so close their noses were almost touching to drawl his next words.
"Tell me, Hokage-sama, do you know anyone that could take up the position of teaching Stealth Techniques to our new recruits? They'd have to be good at assassination and infiltration, and like scaring the crap out of green recruits every...single...day." Shika's voice was low and insinuating, and Naruto knew that there was something he was missing as their eyes locked. It wasn't until one long finger tapped at his latest doodle that he got it, the light of comprehension sparked in his blue irises. "Ah!" He exclaimed, a genuine grin tipping his head back. "Ah..! Ah, yeah! I might just know someone!"
The brunet backed off as he said that, a smirk briefly touching the side of his mouth that only Naruto could see. "I thought that you might." Shika commented, and went back to the rest of his report as if nothing of earthquake-level jutsu importance had just happened between them.
As far as the Hokage was concerned, the rest of that meeting might as well have not taken place, for as it came to an end, there was nothing in his head but seeing Kakashi and finally making his husband happy again. The extra motivation of feeling pale, frost-tipped fingers on his heated flesh put a spring in his step that carried him away from the meeting room and back to his office at double time.
"I'm going home, Iruka-sensei!" Naruto announced, pulling the hat off from where it was hanging down his back and throwing it accurately, amazingly, at the hook where it usually hung when he wasn't wearing it. He stretched to his full height and grinned happily. "It's been a long, hot day... and I'm going home!"
The frown on Iruka's face drew slim, brown brows down as he looked up, and Naruto could almost hear the lecture that was about to come his way before the other man halted, his lips parted halfway to speaking. Slowly, warm brown eyes scanned him, and the surprisingly sly smile that began to appear on the older man's face had Naruto's heart beating rather haphazardly. Kind of stupidly, he was waiting for the remonstrance that would seal him to his desk chair until he was released much later in the day, and yet, he was also light-headed and hopeful, and just teetering there, trying to read that confusing smile.
"Eh?" Squinting, his hands came up to dance aimlessly in the air in front of him as if he could ward off the order to stay with the motions. Naruto held himself there, trying to control a childish urge to just run and let the consequences be damned. "Why are you smiling that way?"
The grin only spread wider over the other man's face, making Naruto even more suspicious, but he didn't pause to ask what was going on when the other man nodded his agreement, he just turned on his heel immediately to make his escape. He was headed out the door when that calm voice called him to a halt. He quivered there, frozen in mid-motion, hoping that the duty-minded older man wasn't about to try and call him back.
Kakashi.
His heart was beating, and his body trembling, wanting nothing more that to be on his way, but Naruto was also frightened of making Iruka mad at him. No one ever wanted Iruka Umino to be mad at them. Really, he just wanted to hitch up his heels and run just as fast as he could. To his husband's arms where he wanted to be.
Kakashi.
"You might as well take tomorrow off, too."
Glee burst through Naruto and an excited giggle escaped him, before he could corral it. Without another word, he vanished into a Hiraishin, not giving the other man even a second to change his mind. He was gone, gone, gone! And there was a certain silver-haired man hopefully waiting for him back home!
The golden sparkles lingered in the room for seconds after his Hokage's disappearance before fading away, leaving Iruka all alone, staring at the spot where his former student had just been standing. The former teacher, now hokage's aide, smiled gently before turning back to his work. "Go get 'im, Naruto..." Iruka breathed for the blond, his compassionately spoken words dissipating into the now-quiet air of the office as prayer for good fortune. "And good luck, Kakashi..." He murmured for the other man. "...he's coming to get you."
The soft laugh that came next was really for no one else but him.
Thanks to my beta, Aozoran...she who is bff and excellent writer as well!
There will be a third part to this, wherein we get to see what happens when our two lovebirds find each other again. I have no title for it yet, though. Just keep an eye out for it.
Thanks for reading, and hopefully reviewing. I appreciate all of your input and the time you take to make it.