"By the Window Awaits"
By CloveeD

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Summary: For years now Kakashi has been missing, and Naruto, by himself, has changed. Now, Naruto demands that Kakashi makes up for all the minutes that Naruto had spent missing him alone. NarutoKakashi (Naruto on top, that's right kids. You've been warned.)
Disclaimer: Naruto and co. do not belong to me.
Warnings: Mild cussing, YAOI (male on male), age differences, somewhat AU setting, Naruto x Kakashi - in the order of seme x uke (or top x bottom)!! You've been warned! Many times now!!
Author's Notes: It's a fact of life that this irresponsible, lazy, short attention-spanned author cannot keep up a good updating pace. Not that people are really amazed by this trivial fact, but just thought the air would like to know.

Kistunegirl, Cheysuli-Night, MouChan, Omni-chan, Kamui Gaia 07, thank you all for the encouragement! They're greatly appreciated! Where'smycookie, about your question, um, I don't really remember what I was planning when I wrote that, so it's still undecided, whether there are other people or not. It's okay though, since there's this great thing authors can do with computer - editing online :) Calimora, thank you for the detailed review!! I'm really happy that someone likes my version of Naruto, and the fact that you spotted the few phrases I borrowed from the anime itself ;) Thoughtful reviewers like you make authors very happy :D

Chapter 1: Well Met

The Anbu members, who survived during that mission that day, came back with disbelieve.

"Did you see his face?" a man in his late thirties slid his cat mask off to push a stick of cigarette in his mouth, patting his own jacket down for a light. "That was him, wasn't it?"

"It has to be." the other Anbu teammate replied slowly, looking as if she was still in shock. "That bastard, he---" they both freeze as quiet footsteps were heard in the hallway, but then both sighed in relief when it turned out to be just another Anbu, from another team, who was handing in papers. It wasn't that man --- Naruto Uzumaki.

The second Anbu then continued, this time with a hushed voice, "The bastard actually froze when he saw him. Can you believe it? His head was almost chopped off right there and then, because he froze like an idiot! And you know that guy's no idiot! You've seen him work! The only person who can make Uzumaki react like that has to be that shinobi that they talked about in the early years ---- Kakashi Hatake, the Copy ninja!"

"Are you sure?" The first Anbu scratched his chin as he took a long drag, trying to calm his nerves after a mission that nearly made him lose the left half of his body altogether. "The guy didn't look that old... Got long hair, too... Plus, he was the enemy this time, wasn't he------"

"If you want to speculate..." A quiet, deep voice came from behind the two shinobis. The two Anbus jumped, for all their elite training, they still couldn't hear their captain's footsteps on or off missions. Shit. The two looked at each other with pained faces, they were caught. "...the blank report forms are on the second drawer to your right." Naruto finished coolly, remaining expressionless after a mission that left fourteen elite members dead and one still missing. He placed his own report down onto the administrator's desk, and disappeared from the doorway.

"Well...shit!" the first Anbu member cussed, whistling after the captain's departure, "Think he's mad at us?"

"I don't think he'll do anything about it, you know." the other remaining member replied, rolling her eyes, "He is just incredibly masked, that's all. You know it. Everybody knows it. We just like to bastardize him because he makes us look emotional and weak, that's all."

"Che, cool guy."

"Hey, at least we saw today with our own eyes that he risked his neck for all of us, right?"

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He couldn't wait to see him.

For years, Naruto couldn't wait to see Kakashi.

But now that Naruto saw Kakashi, for the first time after six whole years, he wasn't sure why he didn't feel as happy as he thought he'd be.

It was completely different from what he thought their reunion scenario would be like, and it didn't matter to him that such fantasizing was childish behaviour at its peak. At the same time, if one wanted to conclude that Naruto was unhappy with his reunion with Kakashi this time, one would still be wrong. He was not happy, but he wasn't unhappy either.

And he doesn't know what the hell he's thinking.

For the first time since he had been left alone to grow into what he was right now, Naruto had an urge to throw a childish tantrum. Because it was counter-productive, dissatisfying, and unreasonable. Because he wanted to, for the moment, throw away all responsibility and point at the sky and yell, WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO ME?! HUH?! HUH???!! WHAT THE HELL!!!

Outwardly, however, Naruto calmly set down the slightly chipped teacup onto the table, and poured hot tea into the cheap home ware, as he sat in the kitchen in his small apartment, dealing with the aftershock of today's events.

They had set out, five days ago, to infiltrate the western Jobeiki tree line, where a camp of foreign shinobis had recently moved quite silently into as a pre-battle campground. However, just their luck, they found out that beneath the soil of Jobeiki tree line, there was actually a large base where the enemy had been gradually building into a underground fort for long-term future invasion.

This being incredibly threatening to their own village's current situation, they went in to investigate quietly, after sending an urgent message informing the Hokage about the location of the newly found enemy base. The underground fort was deep, with three levels, and fifteen or so rows of prisons at the bottom floor. A very large underground fort.

And, just their luck, one of the prison guards discovered them.

And, again, just their incredibly helpful luck, the prison guard used some kind of jutsu to instantly summon an entire band of elite guards on their side in attempts to capture and kill the infiltrators --- namely, the merry band consisted by Naruto and co.

And in this exciting action and adventure story, Naruto comes to meet the climax of the plot line, after having slaughtered an entire room full of foreign shinobis and leaving the room with a sea of corpses; Naruto comes face to face with a man with a scar on his left eye.

Disregarding the long, silvery white hair, and a long, grey scarf in replacement of the familiar blackish-blue mask, Naruto froze, and realized that this was it. This man --- this guy who was in a foreign shinobi uniform, slightly shorter than himself now, and holding a katana in one hand --- this man was the precious person he had been waiting for for six whole years. Like an obsessed maniac. Or just a very stupid, naive child. He believed that this man would never die, never betray him, never leave him behind.

Fantasies.

He knew that, of course, but it never hit him, really.

It never hit him that the one who was fantasizing these absurd ideas --- was him.

"Kakashi...sensei?" he remembered thinking inside his head.

However, years of not talking before he thought things through carefully made him miss the chance to blurt out the man's name. The man (whom he had by then already dubbed as Kakashi sensei himself) immediately came at him, katana in hand, in frightening speed. Naruto managed to keep his head attached to his body by shifting to his right at the very last second out of instinct, but couldn't recover from shock as he kept his eyes on Kakashi's half-covered face (Since, he thought, there could always be a chance that this is some long lost brother of his sensei, or some sappy story twists like that). Two of his fellow Anbus appeared from behind and pulled Naruto to safety as another attack came from Kakashi, wielding the katana that now dripped with fresh blood from Naruto's injured shoulder. It was a horribly close hit.

When Naruto recovered from his shock --- only enough to focus on surviving for the moment --- he found the two teammates who had saved him earlier were now nearly losing their limbs, trying to stay away from the abnormally vicious attacks from Kakashi. Naruto could only think to himself rather slowly that he had never seen Kakashi sensei with a katana before.

The man moved as if his feet were on fire. His long, silvery hair flew behind him as he skillfully nailed the Anbu member on the left onto the wall, as he used that force to push himself back in the air to swipe at the second Anbu member with one leg. Naruto caught the second Anbu in time as he instantly shifted underneath Kakashi's leg and slashed at the man's neck.

But this was Kakashi...

Naruto looked on in shock as his own hand seemed to have a mind of its own and stopped his own blade just before it touched Kakashi's neck.

A good chunk of the man's long, silvery hair, cut, fell to the soil below.

Kakashi seemed shocked that his throat wasn't slit. And so Naruto took that few seconds of hesitation on Kakashi's part and knocked the slender man out with a fist instead.

The gray scarf fell from the man's face, and Naruto thought in his incoherent, shocked mind, that it was the first time he had actually seen Kakashi Hatake's real face.

And so this time, out loud.

"Kakashi...sensei?"

...To Be Continued...

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