Author's Note: For those of you who know me, I have a lot of stories that you're waiting to see continued. And I will continue them. But as I stated on my profile page, the plots for all of those stories have become so thick that I need to take a considerable amount of time untangling them and planning ahead - in short, time that I don't have right now...hence why I created a new story.
For those of you who do not know me, hi! My name is Sasori33-001 and I write a lot of KisaIta stories and am pretty good about continuing them at some point or another. But sometimes my plots grow so convoluted that I don't have the time to sort through them and end up starting new stories because that's easier than thinking about and dealing with plot. Hence this story~ :D
One more thing: There is no fem!Itachi in this story so don't let the particular diction I've used for the majority of this chapter make you think otherwise.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of its characters; Masashi Kishimoto is the rightful creator/owner :)
Warning: If do not like homosexual romance between children (not porn, mind you - innocent romance) then do not read. Plain and simple. Otherwise, happy reading! ;)
-Chapter One-
"The Smallest Boy on the Playground"
11:30am was Kisame Hoshigaki's favorite time of the day because at 11:30am, lunch ended and recess started.
Recess – thirty full minutes when nobody could tell him to sit in his chair, use in inside voice, and wait to talk to his friends until recess time because it was recess. For the next half hour, Kisame could run as fast as he wanted, yell as loud as he could, and talk to all of his friends and nobody could tell him differently.
Today, Kisame was playing soccer in the soccer field with his friends. Soccer was one of his favorite things to do besides swimming but because the school didn't have a swimming pool outside, he couldn't swim during recess. If they had a pool, he would swim every day as long as possible because he loved swimming just that much. But soccer was fun to play too. When he played soccer, Kisame got to run fast and he got to show his friends how hard and how far he could kick the ball. And he was pretty good at it too. He also liked being goalie because he was good at catching the balls that came his way. And it didn't matter how fast they were kicked – Kisame could handle anything.
But today, Kisame was distracted by something he hadn't seen before. "Hey, who's that kid sitting on the bench?" Kisame asked his friend, Zabuza when the game was paused so someone could run after the ball that had been kicked onto the blacktop.
Sitting on a nearby bench at the edge of the playground was a little kid reading a book about dinosaurs that was almost as big as the kid was.
"Is it a boy or a girl?" Kisame asked.
"It's obviously a boy because girls don't like books about dinosaurs!" Zabuza scoffed.
Kisame and Zabuza watched as the kid rested the book on his legs so that he could turn the page. "But it has a ponytail."
"Then it's a girl!" Zabuza declared. "Hey, look! Here they come with the ball, get ready!"
Kisame got into position as the game continued but couldn't help but watch the little girl sitting on the bench reading a book about dinosaurs. Kisame had never seen a girl who liked dinosaurs before and wanted to know if she liked sharks too, but he couldn't ask her now because he was in the middle of a game and his friends would laugh at him.
"Come on, Mangetsu, kick it already!" Jinpachi yelled to Mangetsu, who was acting as their goalie.
"Okay!" Mangetsu said, swinging his leg back and forth as he prepared to kick it from his hands. After three swings of his leg, he prepared to kick the soccer ball from his grasp only to miss and drop it on the ground.
The rest of the team groaned. "Come on Mangetsu! Ameyuri can kick better than you, and she's a girl!" Jinpachi yelled.
Mangetsu pursed his lips in frustration, took several steps back so that his back was touching the net, and with a running start, kicked the ball so hard that it went flying as fast as Kisame could kick a ball with a running start. Well, almost.
"Where'd it go?" Kisame asked.
Zabuza pointed to the bench where the girl was sitting. "Over there!" He laughed. "It almost hit that girl in the face too!"
Kisame watched as the girl closed her book and held it close to her chest as she hopped off the bench.
"Uh…" Kisame said and tugged on Zabuza's shirt.
"What?" Zabuza asked.
"Her shoe's untied, shouldn't somebody tell her that?" Kisame asked him.
Zabuza looked to his left. "No they're not! Ameyuri's not wearing shoes! She never does!" He exclaimed.
"What?" Ameyuri asked.
"Mind your own business!" Zabuza yelled back.
"No, not Ameyuri, that girl over there." Kisame said but when he turned around the little girl was gone. His eyes darted around the playground for a few seconds before he spotted her stumble over her shoelaces and fall onto the blacktop.
Kisame didn't care about the game anymore. He felt bad that he didn't warn the girl that her shoelaces were untied and now she fell onto the blacktop and probably broke her book too. And it was all his fault for not saying something sooner.
"Kisame! Where are you going? Kisame!" Zabuza yelled.
"Are you okay?" Kisame asked when he reached the little girl's side.
She shook her head. Both her hands and knees were scraped pretty good as far as Kisame could tell but the most damage had been done to the dinosaur book which lay beneath the little girl's small body and was bent in half. It was the book, Kisame decided, that was causing the nearby kids to point and whisper about what would happen when she told her teacher what had happened to it.
"Are you okay?" Kisame asked the crying girl before him.
She shook her head.
"What hurts?" Kisame asked.
With quivering lips and puffy eyes, the girl answered "my knees" before crying even harder.
Kisame extended his hand to help the little girl up and smiled when she took it. Using both of his hands, he pulled the little girl to her feet.
Immediately she pulled away. "My hands!"
Kisame had forgotten that she the palms of her hands had broken her fall. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean it!" One of her knees was bleeding really bad, he noticed. "Your knee is bleeding." He told her. It probably wasn't the best thing to say because it only caused her to cry even harder than before when she noticed it herself. Thinking fast, Kisame said to her "I think you should go to the nurse's office." He said.
She shook her head.
"But you're bleeding and the nurse will give you a band-aid!" Kisame pleaded.
The girl sniffled as large tears rolled down her face. "My book…" She sobbed.
Kisame bent down and picked up the book. Yup. It was definitely bent in half alright, he noticed. "It'll be fine. Just tell the librarian that it was an accident." Kisame said.
"My book…" The little girl whimpered and began to cry some more.
"I really think that you should go to the nurse's office. Your book will be fine! Do you know where the nurse's office is?"
The little girl shook her head. "No…"
"I'll show you!" Kisame said and carefully grabbed her wrist so as to not hurt her hands again.
To his surprised, the girl willingly followed him, crying all the way, but not as hard as she was when she had fallen in the first place.
"Mr. Kakashi?" Kisame asked the playground monitor who was reading a book like usual.
"Hm? Did somebody hurt themselves?" He asked the little girl, bending down to her level.
The little girl nodded slightly and moved to stand behind Kisame and out of the playground monitor's sight.
"It looks like you cut yourself pretty badly." Mr. Kakashi said.
"Yeah, she did." Kisame agreed. "Can I take her to the nurses' office?" Kisame asked.
"Sure!" Mr. Kakashi said and stood up to his full height. "Do you know where the nurses' office is?" He asked.
Kisame nodded enthusiastically.
"Good!" Mr. Kakashi said and looked down at the little girl. "You're lucky to have such a good friend here."
Kisame smiled at Mr. Kakashi and led the little girl to the school entrance. And when he looked over his shoulder at the little girl, he caught her smiling too.
-8-8-8-
"Oh my! What happened?" The school nurse asked.
"She tripped over her shoelace on the playground." Kisame answered for the girl.
"Is that right?" The nurse asked with an expression of concern.
The little girl nodded.
"And what happened to the book in your hand? It looks like it took a pretty bad fall too!" The nurse commented and patted a nearby chair. "Take a seat here, sweetheart."
The girl did as the nurse said and took a seat on the chair.
"Your knees look pretty banged up, huh?" The nurse asked the girl.
The girl nodded.
The nurse nodded as well and leaned in to examine the girl's knees more closely. "Do they hurt when I touch them?" She asked.
The girl nodded and looked as if she were going to cry again.
Kisame stood out of the nurse's way with his arms crossed like the third grader he was and said to the little girl "It's gonna be okay? Okay?"
The girl nodded and sniffled.
"Alright." The nurse said and stood up. Kisame watched her grab a large brown bottle that Kisame recognized as the stuff that his mom poured on his boo-boos that stung really really badly.
"This isn't good!" Kisame chimed and brought a hand up to his mouth to cover the smirk that was slowly taking shape.
"What's that?" The nurse asked and opened the brown bottle.
Kisame shook his head. "Nothing!"
The nurse smiled and nodded before pouring some of the smelly liquid onto a cotton ball. "Alright sweetheart, I'm going to try to clean your knees up before I put a Band-Aid on them, okay?"
"Okay." The little girl said.
"But it's gonna sting a little, alright?" She asked.
"You're doing great!" Kisame said when the nurse pressed the first cotton ball against the little girl's scraped knees.
The little girl's face scrunched up in pain and she let out a small whimper. It looked like she was gonna cry again, but to Kisame's surprise, she didn't.
"You're being so brave!" The nurse praised. "Just one more to go and we'll be all finished!" She said.
The girl's right knee was skinned way more than her left knee and was bleeding a little bit. The nurse saw that and lightly dabbed at it instead of rubbing the dirt away like she did with the girl's right knee. And Kisame could tell it hurt by the way the girl's eyes began to overflow with tears, but she did not cry and Kisame was proud of her for being as brave as she was.
"And now for a couple of Band-Aids…" The nurse sang cheerfully, peeling the Band-Aids from the adhesive strips before placing them on her knees. "There! All better!"
"She also hurt her hands too." Kisame added.
The nurse nodded and went to examine the little girl's hands. "Did you fall on her hands too?" The nurse asked her.
She nodded and cupped her hands together so that the nurse wouldn't see.
"Do they hurt?"
"A little." The girl answered.
"Can I see them?" She asked sweetly.
Reluctantly, the girl showed the nurse her hands which were just as dirty as her knees. The nurse held them in her own and examined them before stating "Well, they're not bleeding, but I'm going to wipe them with alcohol just like I did with your knees. Don't worry, it won't hurt as badly; I just want to clean them up. Okay?"
The little girl nodded.
In just a few seconds, the nurse had cleaned up the little girl's hands. "Would you like an ice-pack for your knees?" She asked.
The little girl nodded.
"Okay. Give me one moment, please!" The nurse said and disappeared around the corner to grab an ice pack.
Kisame, tired of waiting, simply looked around the nurse's office when he noticed that the little girl was pointing at him. "What's wrong?" Kisame asked.
"My book…" The little girl mumbled.
Kisame turned to look at the broken book that he set on the countertop when they came in. "I think you can just take it to the librarian and tell her that it was an accident." He said.
"Did somebody order an icepack?" The nurse said when she came back into the room and handed a small, square ice pack wrapped in a brown paper towel to the little girl. "I'm going to write your teacher a note saying that you were in the nurse's office, okay?"
The little girl nodded.
"And are you in the same class?" She asked of Kisame.
Kisame shook his head. "No." He said.
The nurse nodded and ripped the sheet of paper that she was writing on out of her paper pad and handed it to the little girl. "Give this to your teacher, sweet heart so that she knows where you were, okay?"
The little girl nodded and hopped off the chair.
"And let me write you a note for being a good friend and staying with her until she was done." The nurse said and handed Kisame a similar piece of paper.
"Ready to go?" Kisame asked the girl who nodded and hopped off the chair. He gave her back her book which she took and clutched close to her body and followed her out of the nurse's office. "Where's your classroom at?" He asked.
She pointed to the left. "That way."
"So's mine! It's all the way at the end of the hall, so I'll walk you down there, okay?"
The girl nodded and took Kisame's hand.
-8-8-8-
"Hi honey! How was your first full day of school?" Mikoto asked her son when she hugged him after school. "What happened to your knees? Did you fall down during recess or something?"
Itachi nodded.
"You poor thing." She cooed and took him into her arms. "I see you got all fixed up though! Did the nurse do that for you?"
Itachi nodded and climbed into his mother's van.
"That's good." She said.
"Guess what, mommy?" Itachi asked her once she sat down behind the wheel.
"What, sweetie?" She asked.
"I made a fwiend today!"
"Really! That's wonderful Itachi! I'm so proud of you!" She smiled.
"But…"
Mikoto frowned. "But what?"
"He thinks I'm a giwrl."
Until next time~
Sasori33-001