I wrote this two years ago, but in updating things on my blog (datte-ba), I thought I would fix it up and repost.
As always, read and review, please!
There's a certain amount of restraint that Naruto and Hinata practice around their children when they're young.
Slobbery kisses are kept to a minimum, make-outs are left for when they're the only ones home, and sex, for a time, is completely and uncompromisingly avoided, unless circumstances permit. The pair are generally in agreement that their children can learn about the world of intimacy when they're older—
—older inevitably meaning when Boruto turns seventeen.
The first time he caught them doing anything remotely forbidden, they were frenching intensely in a storage closet, and he's now twenty-one. He's long since been exposed to his parents' usual antics: the kitchen counter kisses in the late hours of the night, the in-bed tickle fights that grace every Sunday morning, and the rest of a list that goes on and on.
If anything, Naruto and Hinata's desperation for each other has ceased to bewilder their son, only sparking mild annoyance when he can't concentrate over the sighs and punctuated laughter.
His sister, however, can never be bothered by it—love is a force she believes in strongly, and their parents are the epitome.
There is one morning in particular where the two of them catch the couple in a heartfelt kiss, Hinata leaning back into the counter as her husband presses forward. Boruto's eyes linger a little on the way his mother's thumbs skirt the furrows in his father's hair, but he looks away quickly and leaves Himawari behind to stare.
When she finally files out after him, the smile on her face is unmistakable. A dreamy sigh escapes her, and she says, "Our parents are positively adorable, aren't they?"
Boruto snorts and rolls his eyes, but a slight simper rises along the corners of his lips.
Things are better than they were years before; love entwines each of them, most of all his mother, whose face cannot be brighter than when her husband comes home. He makes it a point to remember where they used to be, where they are now. The bandages that wrap around his left arm are a testament to that.
"For real, though," Himawari says, breaking the brief silence. "I would give anything to have what they have." Her smile shrinks a little, and Boruto watches her closely, notices the way she wrings her fingers and smooths out her skirt. "Most of the time, I'm sure Shikadai cares, but then I come home, and I see them, and I—"
"Maybe you should break up with him," he snaps, and a little too quickly, for even his own comfort.
He and Shikadai have known each other since childhood, have gone through the Academy together as best friends, have fought side by side on numerous missions, and yet—how hard it is, to accept that the same old friend is now in love with his sister. Boruto can't remember the last time he looked at Shikadai with a straight face; there seems only to be the imprint of his sister attached to his best friend's person, and loath though he may be to admit it, it hurts.
Himawari, apparently, doesn't take to the comment well, either. She looks at him in a mixture of disbelief and anger, then turns the other way and makes for their father, who tails them by a few feet. The Seventh easily breaks into a new conversation with her, blushing, however, when she brings up the topic of himself and their mother.
"Yo, Pops," Boruto interjects, and he falls a few feet behind, until the steps of all three Uzumakis are matched in stride. Naruto grins as his son drapes an arm over his shoulder while Himawari avoids eye contact, and Boruto continues cheekily, "For the record, I think you and mom are positively adorable."
In one of those rare moments, Naruto Uzumaki rolls his eyes. "Please," he says, and he brushes off his son's arm. "Tell me that when you have a girlfriend, or else I'll know it's your sister talking."
Boruto blinks, unable to form words as his father chuckles to himself and then moves ahead of them. They've made it to the Hokage's office fairly quickly today, and Himawari stops in her tracks on the grass, a hand held to her mouth as she fails to stifle bubbling laughter.
"Sorry, but am I missing something?" he asks, and she snorts obnoxiously in response.
"Brother," she answers pointedly, an adoring smile on her face, "you know exactly what he's talking about." Her amusement over his plight has clearly trumped the earlier indignation, and yet somehow, this doesn't make him feel any better, let alone less confused.
"No, I don't," he insists, but the neurons are firing off in his head, and soon enough, he's running through a list of all the Konoha nin his age. None of them, to his knowledge, have ever held an interest in him that goes beyond the fact of being the Seventh Hokage's son, but that's something he's known for years. It doesn't bother him, either; he knows there are more important things to worry about.
Himawari sighs and drops herself onto the grass, making herself comfortable in the shade of a towering tree. As she folds her legs under her, Boruto follows, taking a seat less than two feet away.
"You know," she says, "for as long as I've gone on about Mom and Dad, I don't think I've ever heard you say anything about them."
Boruto frowns. "What exactly am I supposed to say?"
"That you want it." There's a smile on her face, and he thinks she might be thinking about Shikadai, and how he isn't all that proficient in matters of romantic expression, but that he tries, and she loves him for it. Himawari spreads her fingers apart in her lap, the perfect, contented shadow of her mother, and Boruto thinks, just then, that she might have been born the older sister. "Just like everyone else," she murmurs, "you want what they have."
The sun is rising behind them, and there is a golden glow to his sister's hair, to her skin, that brings him pause. "Intimacy," she goes on. "Courage. Faith."
Her voice dims down.
"A language that's theirs."
And almost as if someone had stabbed him with a real kunai, it hits him.
That he and Sarada have their own, secret way of communication is a fact known universally. Developed in their younger years, the language consists of them drawing made-up characters into the skin of each other's palms when they're close. Even the smallest of scratches holds some significance between them, and although Boruto would argue that the language they share is different from what his mother and father have, he notices too late that his finger is tracing a character into his palm, one he's written into her skin over a thousand different times.
"Fuck," he echoes. He tilts his head back, looking to the leaves above him before they fall down below.
What is this thing between them even supposed to be?
There is no whispering love into each other's skin, no trading of kisses before and after important missions. Hamura knows how many times they've argued over the silliest things, knows how many days on end she's held grudges against him for them. And in all of the years that he's known her—more years than anyone, really—not once has she expressed interest in him outside of their work.
The closest thing he can equate to her caring about him, if anything, is the way she handles him when he's wounded: with delicacy, concern, and so, so much fear.
Oh.
But, the fact of the matter, anyway, is that he's never felt for her like that—not even if the way her hair falls over her eyes has made him want to push it back; not even if the sound of her voice around the corner has sent his heart into a fast pace; not even if the number of times she's willingly endangered herself has kept him from being able to breathe.
"Everybody expects it," his sister says aloud, and something snaps in him.
His whole body flinches, and Himawari looks at him, brow furrowing. "Brother, are you—"
"You want to know what I think of Mom and Dad?" He stands up, rustles the leaves under his feet, and turns around the other way, until he's facing his sister and the bewildered look in her eye. "I think they're disgusting," he tells her, and her mouth drops.
"All they do is hold each other and kiss each other and love each other, and they don't need to do any of it. They've been together for twenty three years, and there's no way they're separating because if they did, then you know I'd kick Dad's ass before he even stepped out of their room."
"I don't even know what you're—"
"Kiss him. French him. Fuck him, even." Her eyes go wide at this last part, and Boruto almost snickers when her cheeks crimson, but his amusement is besides the point. "Just make sure you're with him, because that's what Mom and Dad are. They're with each other. Always."
If it wasn't for an unwarranted rustling of leaves, he would go on; he would tell her that, yeah, he's not so averse to going out to dinner with her and Shikadai if it makes her happy, because he's paid close attention, and he's pretty sure that Shikadai is as prepared to kill for Himawari as he is.
But something does stir behind them, and when Boruto turns to meet it, his heart all of jumps straight into his throat.
The black glasses he's seen perched on her nose since childhood are gone—have been gone. Sarada Uchiha's eyes are alight with a wonder he has never noticed before, and as the first few strands of her hair fall over her eyes, an urge to close the distance between them and push them back surfaces.
"Has he always been this sentimental?" she asks, gaze pinned on Himawari.
Boruto's breath hitches as his sister answers, "Not really." The Hokage's daughter pushes herself off the ground and turns briefly to face her brother, amusement twinkling in each eye as a smile crests her lips. "But we all have our moments."
There's a certain amount of tension hovering in the air, or maybe that's just him and his figurative inability to breathe, but everything seems somewhat controllable up until the moment Himawari passes Sarada by, and after that, well, it's anyone's best guess.
Her eyes circle back to him, and he finds the red of her family crest in there, in little scarlet stars that may burst into suns if need be. Neither of them makes a move to close the distance, but Sarada whispers four words—
"Did you mean it?"
—and the world shifts.
Boruto considers his impromptu spiel, and in doing so, is brought back to the kiss he witnessed this morning. How nice, to fit the curve of your thumb to someone's cheek, to press your fingers into their skin and pull them close with the effort. And breath after breath, to take it together.
A quivering moment of silence passes before he reaches across the gap, takes her hand in his own. Her palm is rough with calluses and blisters, but he traces a finger from the heel to the ball, then back down again. The lines and curves are their own, and her hand smells of pine, and Boruto can't focus his mind on one thing but the path of his finger is so steady that he knows, back to the first words he ever spoke to her—
—he did.