Disclaimer: serialhugger does not own Naruto or any copyrights or trademarks thereof, and does not make any financial profit from this work. Naruto belongs to its original creator, and various license holders.

Like A Stack Of Branches

Hana was agitated to say the very least. It never failed. Every time she was with Naruto, his pink haired former teammate showed up, or something else would happen to keep them apart. She wasn't stupid. She was a kunoichi of Konohagakure, she wouldn't have been able to graduate from the academy if she were stupid, so she knew perfectly well what was going on; the cherry blossom girl had decided to compete for the whisker marked boy's affection.

Naruto was amused. It had been five months since he had patched up Hana's hands while on a mission. It had been three months since Sakura had found them sitting at Ichiraku, breath coming faster and shorter than usual, faces flushed, lips moist and slightly swollen, making it painfully obvious to anyone with eyes that they had been previously lip locked. And it had been two months, three weeks, and four days since Hana began to pout at all of his childhood crush's attempts to keep them from spending any time alone with one another.

He hadn't ever had someone be jealous over him before. It was actually sort of flattering, and the Inuzuka's pouting was quite cute, though perhaps it was about time he did something to put her mind at ease.

"Hey, Hana-chan," he smiled. "Do you remember our first kiss?" he asked from where he lay sprawled on his back in the grass

The Inuzuka nodded her response, a small smile playing across her face as she looked down at him from her sitting position, "It was right after you finished telling me some story about a lion."

"Yeah," he grinned, turning his face so that he was looking directly at her. "You wanna hear another one?"

"Sure." She couldn't say no, not when he smiled at her like that.

"So, once there was this old man," the blonde boy started, " and he had two sons. Now, he wanted to teach his sons a very important lesson, you know? So, he handed them this bundle of branches, and told 'em to take turns trying to break it," there was a brief pause as Naruto wetted his lips, "but they couldn't do it, because the branches were too strong, you know?"

Hana nodded, and chuckled a little to herself, at the familiarity of the situation.

"So the old man, he takes the branches from them and unties them, right?"

Another nod was given in order to show that she was still listening, which she was. She had gotten very good at dividing her attention between listening to what her young boyfriend was saying and watching his very attractive mouth.

"Then he hands them each one of the branches keeping the last one for himself, and tells them to try it again. This time though, they could do it." Naruto eyed Hana thoughtfully, "And do you know what the old man said?"

This time the older girl shook her head in the negative.

Naruto sat up and shifted his body so that he was sitting upright beside the brown haired veterinarian. "He said, that separately they were only as strong as the branches they broke, but together they were like the bundle, unbreakable."

When the story ended Naruto leaned forward and caught Hana in a chaste kiss, just as she had done five months before. "Do you get my point? We're like the bundle of branches in the story."

Hana laughed. Maybe there were times when she rather liked Naruto's story telling.

The next story I'll be posting will be a Naruto/Kurenai; this pairing is a first for me, so it took me a long time to come up with a concept that I thought would work well.

Hugs and Oreos!
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